salome sage baptiste

the basics

full name ♦ Salome Sage Baptiste (sahl-OH-may)
nicknames ♦ Sal, Sally at your own risk
age ♦ twenty-six
birthday ♦ September 20th, 1993
occupation ♦ works at a tech-start up (wip), creator of evOlvd
school ♦ phalanx alum
species ♦ human
ability/power ♦ transduction
how the ability works ♦ Salome has the ability to transduce energy from one form to another. She works solely with taking in electromagnetic energy, and most often, this manifests in her being able to pick up on signals or EM waves in the area she’s in. She’s a walking internet hub, able to connect to and intercept any number of transmissions or digital data. Messages, radio and television broadcasts, the subtle connection between a wireless appliance and its home hub: Salome can hear it all. At first, this was daunting to her, as the power is passively activated. Since its manifestation, she has been bombarded with signals and waves. Turning it off only got easier with time and practice. She can still get splitting headaches from the waves and sometimes turns to less than legal means to numb them for a little bit.

The energy she can put out is currently pretty limited to herself. She can’t broadcast what she sees to other people, but she is actively working on transducing the energy to outside of herself. She is limited to digital signals at the moment; she cannot track natural signatures like chem trails or take in kinetic energy. She is also limited where there are things to actually pick up on. If there are no waves to ride on, there’s nothing to detect, even as dead zones get less and less likely.
gender ♦ female
sexuality ♦ pansexual

the appearance

face claim ♦ Rihanna
height and weight ♦ 5'8" and 140 lbs
identifying features ♦ any scars, piercings, tattoos or birthmarks
overall appearance ♦ Salome's looks are constantly changing whenever the mood strikes her. She plays with length and color and cut more than most, and she is always willing to push boundaries. This extends to her makeup and clothing as well. Sal tends to make her own trends and has little use for things like false modesty. She wraps her curvy frame in whatever she likes, alternating silhouettes and trends whenever she pleases.

the personality

likes ♦
♤ going out: sal loves nothing more than spending a night out on the town
♤ getting high: there’s very little sal hasn’t tried
♤ learning new things: sal’s pursuit of knowledge is lifelong
♤ gossiping: people fascinate sal; she loves their secrets

dislikes ♦
♤ when there is too much going on: sal's power makes her prone to sensory overload
♤ mornings: sal was born for the night owl lifestyle
♤ hangovers: these just make everything worse
♤ people who talk too slow: just spit it out already, damn

strengths ♦
♤ obsessive-like focus: sal gets hyperfocused and doesn't stop until she finishes or understands something
♤ intelligent: sal's appetite for knowledge is deep and boundless
♤ quick learner

weaknesses ♦
♤ obsesses over projects and locks people out: good luck getting sal to talk to you while she's working on something
♤  has no idea how to be wrong: should she ever be wrong, she has no idea how to take it.  at all.

dreams ♦ to have full and complete mastery of her power
fears ♦ that one day she won't be able to shut out her power, alternatively that it could disappear completely
overall personality ♦ Warning for drug mentions
Ever since Sal could read, she has been a voracious learner. Facts, charts, data, formulas, theories; she has sought to know them all. She renders the world in data and observations that are very dry. She has an innate need to be right and to have all the facts, and Sal has sacrificed a lot of sleep in her life in order to learn the world and its structure. She is used to assuming she is the smartest person in the room, whether she really is or not, and this can definitely come across, no matter how much she tries for it not to. Sal often takes a very objective view, which puts her in a position to pursue things outside of a purely ethical code. This does not mean she is not moral, however. Sal has very deeply entrenched morals, but it is usually something she can prove

Unfortunately, Sal often approaches relationships with other humans in much the same way, with much the same bald fascination. As a result, she has always felt that they were at arm’s length from her, no matter what she did. Her fascination with others doesn’t exactly lend her the warmth or the ability to connect to them in the way that she has always wanted to. She has a need to know everything about everyone, collecting their secrets like her data charts so that she can organize them into a facsimile of friendship. This is a way that she gets to understand people and cut through the unpredictable nature of other humans.

Sal has never been one to give up easily, however. Instead, she watched others, saw how they connected, and learned the “shortcuts” that seemed to come naturally to others like her brother Grey. Sal never wants to meet a stranger, but she doesn’t always know how to make friends, hence why she relies on what she has seen other people use. Despite all those years of trying, Sal comes off as little more than cold and scientific, her eyes too sharp and focused to be friendly, her speech too clipped to be amiable. When her learned tactics often inevitable fail, she can get rather frustrated with other people quickly and has been known to go the opposite way, earning a reputation as someone who is very polarizing. This bothers her more than she admits, but she tends to hit it beneath the malaise of recreational drug use and having too much fun.

“Fun” is not always fun for Sal; the vast majority of the time, it is misplaced coping. She loves her power and could not imagine her life without it, but it is often a power that is bright and loud and thunderous. Since it is passive, the only way to even come close to putting it on “mute” is to fog her mind in some way shape or form. From an outside perspective, it seems as though Sal is nothing more than a bitchy, impulsive young woman who takes her time out on the town too seriously, but like everything else in life, Sal approaches it with calm and cool detachment. She knows what to take and what not to take, and she sticks to strict, self-enforced rules. These are, of course, never foolproof.

the history

father ♦ Hanson Baptiste, 48, fisherman
mother ♦ Delphina Baptiste, 49, nurse
siblings ♦ Grey Nicholas Baptiste , 28, brother
important people ♦ anyone else important, from family to close friends
hometown ♦ Bridgetown, Barbados
overall history ♦ Warning for heavy drug mentions and use.

Epidural.
For reasons you will never be able to understand, your mother chose to have a natural birth with you. It was quite unceremonial, and you joined the Baptiste family as the second child and only girl. Your mother says, right from the start, you were quiet and inquisitive. You were always asking questions, and she wasn’t even sure who taught you to read so young. Once you started, though, it was all you did. Your family had a tattered set of encyclopedias that you read until the covers officially fell off. When you weren’t exploring Bridgetown with Grey, you were learning, anything and everything you could get your hands on. Books and knowledge were your first friends, and you found them much more responsive than other children or even most adults. A prodigy, your mother used to cautiously call you, but all you knew was that you were curious and insatiable.

Ibuprofen.
You weren’t prepared for the headaches. Overnight, the world had gotten a hell of a lot louder. You fell asleep the night before, and everything felt normal – and quiet. In the morning, you woke to a world on full volume. It started with advertisements; you could hear the commercials even though you knew the TV wasn’t on. Even outside, you could still hear them, along with the crackle of radio wave static and then, clear as a bell, there came other stations. They overlapped each other. The world was suddenly a cacophony, and you couldn’t outrun it. It all started with ibuprofen, to keep ahead of the splitting headaches, but even at fourteen, you knew it wouldn’t be able to hold them back for long.

Naproxen.
You had been so scared to tell your parents about what was happening to you, about the noises and the visions and the world that was too close and too loud. You were scared they would make you go away, like Grey did. You tried self-medication until you were 16 and your powers were growing. Your parents weren’t sure what to do, but since your power only affected you, Monroeville wasn’t really an option. You weren’t sure how to feel about that. There wasn’t another option until a kindly-sounding man from New Orleans contacted your mother about a school he had just opened. It would provide you with some help, you were told, and you were sent off with a prescription for migraine pills and what little luggage you had. At least you would be closer to Grey, you reasoned.

Mary Jane.
You started researching things you could take or do to dull the brunt of your power. You were going to be smart about it, follow some sort of rules that wouldn’t hurt you in the long run. It started with marijuana, which even you had to admit was quite cliché. You would be careful, you promised, and no one would have to know. It just hurt so much, and no one but you could feel it. It was a cruelty you had never been prepared for, but you were smart. You could strike a balance between functioning and numbing; so far, it’s worked for you. You've never even OD'ed, though you feared once or twice you might have come close.

California Sunshine.
The morning of the day Grey officially got out of Monroeville, you were on LSD, tripping in the woods near Phalanx. You missed your interview for the MIT scholarship the night before, and you never even told your mom that you had one. It was a long shot, anyway, and Tulane was already knocking down the door of Phalanx for you. The high was gone by the time your brother arrived at Phalanx, but you still swear you saw him glowing in the doorway that day. You were just happy that he was finally there with you again, even if you had to hide some things from him along the way.

Snow.
In nearly record time, you finished your degree in Computer Science from Tulane. You had no idea what you were going to do with it afterwards, and so you tried coke for the first time the night before you were to walk. It made the whole experience a bit fuzzy. Since that day, you still weren’t quite sure what to do with your degree, your years of schooling, or the vast amounts of knowledge you have always taken in. You keep sitting in on some classes, toying with the idea of going back to school, and playing around at tech start-ups. That was, after all, something you felt destined to work in, given your power. You wonder if you ever had a choice.

Adderall.
The idea for evOlvd came to you when you were quite a few pills deep in someone else’s Adderall. You don’t remember why you took them or when, but the next thing you knew, you were imagining an online space just for people like you. You had the means, the know-how, and the time, and before the high wore off, you were quick at work developing the app. You never expected the response to it that it has now, and you’re an anonymous superstar. But you hate that, and while you gladly rake in the dough from ad sales and investments, you’ve never told a single soul that you made it. You probably never will.

the role player

alias ♦ bree
age ♦ 23
pronouns ♦ she-beast
code ♦ ADMIN EDIT
other characters ♦ so many