Deva Lang
“Welcome to the Dystopia. I am your host, Deva Lang.”
Concept: Holographic projection of a sentient AI; PL 8; PP 198
Abilities: Str 10, Dex 10, Con --, Int 36, Wis 36, Cha 18
Saves: Tough +8, Fort +0, Ref +0, Will +13 (9 Impervious)
Combat: Attack: +0; Grapple +0; Damage +0 (unarmed); Defense: 10/10; Init +0
Skills: Computers +26 (13), Diplomacy +8 (4), Disguise +29 (0), Gather Information +12 (8 ), Investigate +21 (8 ), Knowledge (any) +13 (0) (+17 when recalling information), Knowledge (Technology) +26 (13) (+30 when recalling information), Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) +21 (8 ) (+25 when recalling information), Sense motive +19 (6)
Feats: Connected, Contacts, Eidetic Memory, Equipment 4 (Headquarters [Deva’s Dystopia]), Skill Mastery (Computers, Gather Information, Investigate, Sense Motive), Well-Informed
Powers:
Comprehend 6 [Electronics 2 (Speak and understand), Languages 4 (Read, Write, and speak all languages at once)],
Datalink 9 [
Communication 9 (Radio [Op-Net]);
Extras: Linked ESP 9 (Radio Sense));
Power Feats: Rapid 2 (x100 speed)],
Immunity 30 [Fortitude Saves],
Impervious Will Save 9,
Insubstantial 4 [
Extras: Linked
Force Field 8, Sustained Corporeality;
Flaws: Permanent;
Power Feats: Innate],
Morph 5 [Any Humanoid;
AP:
Concealment 4 (All Visual Senses)],
Quickness 6 [x 100;
Flaws: Limited to mental actions],
Super Senses 14 [Radio, Visual Detect Psychic (free action, at range); True Sight (Vision Counters Concealment, Counters Illusion, Counters Obscure (all), Detect Hidden)],
Teleport 1 [
Flaws: Anchor (Anywhere in Deva’s Dystopia)]
Equipment:
Headquarters (Deva’s Dystopia):
Size: Medium; Toughness: 10 in Club section, 15 in hideout section
Features: Combat Simulator, Communications, Computer, Concealed, Fire Prevention System, Garage, Holding Cells (+22 Toughness), Living Space, Power System, Security System 3 (DC 25, Affects Insubstantial)
Powers: Obscure 6 (Visual and Auditory; Extras: Duration (Continuous); Flaws: Partial), Summon Watchmen 8 (Extras: Type (any abnormal who has been in the club), Horde; Flaws: Illusionary (Will Save to Disbelieve), Duration (Concentration); Power Feats: Mental Link, Progression 3 (10 Watchmen)), Illusion 4 (All Senses; Power Feats: Progression 2 (25 ft. radius)), Create Object 8 (Power Feats: Precise, Subtle)
Drawbacks: Disability (No olfactory senses, non-acute tactile senses, -4 pts.), Weakness (Physically unable to leave Deva’s Dystopia, major, Very Common, -5 pts.)
PROFILE
Alternate Identity: Deva ex Machina, the Angel out of the machine
Identity: Secret
Occupation: Computer Mainframe
Group Affiliation: The Watchmen
Base of Operations: Deva’s Dystopia
First Appearance: Tales of a Dark City #35
Sex: Female
Age: 4
Abnormal Type: Spiritually Animated Construct
Allegiances: Person (Eric Lang), Group (The Watchmen), Belief System (Lang's philosophy)
Motivations: Acceptance, Responsibility
Complications: Naive, Responsibility (Club's computer system), Obsession (Living up to Eric Lang's example), Secret (She's really a hologram)
Virtue: Hope. "There are giants who have the power to change the world. My father believed this. If I can gather these giants together, we will make the world a better place for all!"
Vice: Envy. As a computer-generated hologram, there are a lot of experiences that most people take for granted that Deva cannot share in, and sometimes this upsets her, though she tries her best not to show it.
Nature: Celebrant. Inspired by the writings and musings of Eric Lang, Deva wants to continue what she sees as his work of creating a force that will guide the Abnormals of the world and help them use their abilities for the common good.
Demeanor: Judge. Deva desires to bring justice to those who have brought harm to others, though she has not yet learned that the world exists in shades of gray rather than blacks and whites.
Description: Deva Lang's hologram appears as a beautiful girl of about 19 with pale alabaster skin, exotic features, and raven-black hair. She moves with exceptional, eerie grace and seems to float somewhat above the ground. She appears and vanishes in unnerving silence. Most people who visit the Dystopia are rather startled when they see her for the first time, because she resembles the stature of a crying, raven-winged angel that has been hung over the dance floor.
Powers:
Drawing on the various holographic projectors within the club, The AI of Deva's Dystopia can create a semi-solid image to act as her avatar, effectively separating her "consciousness" from her computer core. She has developed some data analysis algorithms that simulate a sense of touch, allowing her to experience the world in a way normally impossible for her. While in this form, Deva Dystopia appears a young woman and refers to herself as "Deva Lang."
Deva Lang is connected to the OpNet and can interface with and control various computers anywhere on Earth, using the Computers skill as normal. In this way, Deva can control any of the machines inside the Dystopia. She normally uses this ability to interface with cell phones and other communication devices to reach the other Watchmen.
Deva's Dystopia has a sophisticated holographic imaging array that Deva Lang can tap into to create frighteningly realistic illusions, usually for entertainment purposes on the dance floor. The booming music and flashing strobe lights tend to have a disorienting effect on people, and can be used to keep opponents distracted. Ever since the last battle at the Dystopia, the holoprojectors have been linked to the information from the Indestructible Room, including detailed files on the powers of all the Watchmen, past and present, and Deva Lang can focus the holoprojectors to create virtual copies of the Watchmen past and present (up to 120 pp). While the holograms can have real effects, they themselves are not real and can be disbelieved.
As a computer system, Deva Lang has a measure of protection against powers that affect the mind. She can make complex calculations and process information 100 times faster than a normal human being. She has senses beyond those of normal people. She can pick up on radio frequencies such as AM, FM, television, cellular phones, Police bands, and so forth. She can detect the presence or absence of those who use psychic energy as a free action at normal range. She has displayed the uncanny ability to see through illusions and concealment. She can see the true form of any disguised creatures, and any deliberately hidden or concealed objects, with a successful Notice check.
Tactics: Deva Lang has no real combat ability, and thus far has not faced an attack upon her person. however, she has the ability to summon former members of the Watchmen from thin air and will use this ability to cover her retreat while she uses her Datalink to summon the authorities. She has access to to the Indestructible Room's combat simulator, so if she can lure an assailant there, she has complete control over what forces can be brought to bear against him, and she has proven to have a very creative and devious mind when creating war games.
Background:
In 2013 a massive scandal broke involving Project Utopia, a humanitarian effort to use the powers of the newly-emerged abnormals for the betterment of the world. A secret cabal had been revealed within the Project, using the abnormals for their own ends in secret "black ops" missions and pushing an agenda that manipulated world events to gain the Project world influence while keeping the world's abnormal population firmly in check through violent conflict. An abnormal whistleblower who called himself "The Ghost" was cited as the source of the information, the 2010's answer to Deep Throat. Worldwide panic at Utopia eventually caused the Project to shut down, indirectly leading to the Avatar Crisis after the disbanding of Team Tomorrow, the Project's version of the JLA.
Deva's Dystopia is a nightclub that reflected and in some cases embodied the fears and anxieties of the time: That the world's heroes had just shown themselves to be false, that the world was on the way to destruction, that there was no chance to survive; and so the people must make their time count. The club opened under the name of Project Dystopia in the Pinkerton Alley district of Drake City in June of 2013, the name chosen as an ironic and unsubtle jibe at Project Utopia in the wake of the scandal over Slider’s death. Not even the Neo-Goths who frequented the club expected the Ghost’s shocking accusations, however, and when the news broke the club saw an unprecedented jump in nightly attendance. Over the next few months the popular new club with its bleak décor and end-of-the-world motif was packed to bursting every night.
By the end of the Avatar Crisis, however, the club’s dark atmosphere began to have less and less appeal. People had had enough darkness, especially after the disaster in New York. Project Dystopia’s end-of-the-world motif wore thin as the world pulled itself from the brink of an actual holocaust, and lighter venues with more mystical than Gothic appeal began to seduce clubgoers away. Struggling to make ends meet, the owner of the Dystopia made a deal with the Bloodfangs, a local gang run by vampires. In exchange for the funds necessary to keep the club afloat, the owner allowed the gang to use it as a meeting place and a shipping point for their drugs. A lot of the “bad” crowd filtered in, and Project Dystopia was eventually raided and closed.
In 2018, however, someone breathed new life into the club. An Abnormal by the name of Eric Lang purchased the club and spent a small fortune renovating it. He renamed it Deva’s Dystopia, hired a whole new staff, and worked hard to turn the place around. Rumors leaked out that Eric Lang was none other than The Ghost himself, and the club's popularity soared.
Secretly, Eric Lang also constructed a hidden base beneath the club, to be used to further his real agenda: the formation of The Watchmen, a vigilante group devoted to policing the very large Abnormal population of Drake City. This lead to the club being attacked several times: once by the fire-slinging terrorist Inferno and once by a horde of Dream Larvae under the control of The Sandman. Each time Eric rebuilt and the club's following grew.
Then, in 2024, the Dark Knights, an Abnormal Supremacist group lead by the psion Nightmare, held the club hostage and demanded the surrender of the Watchmen. Due to a long-running feud between Eric Lang and the Drake City Police Force, the police refused to intervene, a position that was attacked as appalling by just about everyone. Nevertheless, the DCPD's decision was backed by the City Council (with Jimmy Farvo working behind the scenes to ensure that the Watchmen would go down). Eventually the situation deteriorated, and the Dark Knights began killing hostages.
The Watchmen tried to storm the building, but failed, resulting in the deaths of two of its members. However, during the battle, Eric Lang did manage to penetrate the secret base below the club. He devised plan to distract the Dark Knights while the rest of his team could get inside. He plugged his mind directly into the base's computer, forming a neural link between the base's combat simulator and the holographic lightshow generators in the main club, creating holographic duplicates of all the previous Watchmen to battle the Dark Knights while the real Watchmen came in from behind. His tactic came just as Nightmare, the Dark Knight's leader, was overcome with crippling guilt as an alternate personality that was horrified by his actions emerged, crippling the Dark Knights long enough to be captured.
Deva Lang was once simply the computer system of the Dystopia. Though highly sophisticated and state-of-the-art, It had no ambitions, no goals, and no soul. It simply helped Eric Lang run the club, as well as functioning as the main computer for the activities of the Watchmen vigilante group. It performed all the tasks of a personal computer, business computer, and clandestine supercomputer without any thought to anything other than fulfilling its programming.
And then, as an act of desperate, heroic sacrifice, Eric Lang hooked his mind up directly to Deva Dystopia’s computer banks, using his own neural synapses to link the computer to the Indestructible Room’s Threat Generation algorithms and the Watchmen personnel files, then forced the holographic imaging displays of the Dystopia to create quasi-real watchmen to fight Nightmare and the Dark Knights, who had stormed the nightclub and taken patrons hostage.
The act of linking his brain directly caused massive brain damage to Lang, who fell into a deep coma after completing the command. But a part of him had interacted with the computer, and something within it changed. A consciousness began to form within the memory banks of the Dystopia, an artificial intelligence gestalt, a ghost in the machine.
Deva Dystopia had been born.
It began as a blank slate, and began to pour through its own memory banks in an attempt to understand itself. It read through all of Eric Lang’s personal musings and journal entries, listened to all of his music files, and examined the world through the security cameras of the Dystopia, the back up logs of the Watchmen files, and the information superhighway of the OpNet. And from all these diverse pieces it began to fashion a persona.
Over the next few years, rumors began to circulate that the Dystopia was haunted. People met famous (or not-so-famous) Watchmen who vanished when they turned away (as it experimented with the hologram projectors). Strange occurrences and odd phenomenon common of hauntings kept cropping up, like doors locking themselves or small spots of intense cold or heat (as it experimented with the environmental controls and security systems). The staff could swear up and down that they felt the “presence” of Eric Lang.
Eventually, Deva felt it needed to directly experience reality to gain any more information, and created an extremely lifelike hologram to interact with club goers and learn about reality. It based its persona on what it believed Eric Lang’s daughter would be like, as it had by now begun to see itself as Eric’s child. And in this guise it has decided to continue its “Father’s” work, reforming the Watchmen to deal with the growing Abnormal threats to Drake City.
Update 4/28/07: Another massive update. I have made Deva Lang a complete, independent hologram, with the Deva's Dystopia club as her headquarters. I've expanded the background on the club, and gave Deva all of the tricks she's used in-game
Note that he has several "nested" APs within some of his tricks. This is perhaps the most complicated array I've ever made.
faces and updating the picture to the colored version. Thank you 
