#factfile.

kezia isn't even a quarter of the witch she could be. she does possess powers, but many of them have never been used or harnessed. the powers she knows of and can use include:

energy manipulation - where she's able to cast bursts of energy that burn and injure others. she's also able to control how intense and big the energy burst is. this power has the capacity to heal, also, but she never uses it for such, even on herself.

necromancy - this one was accidentally discovered by her. the dead are able to communicate with her, leading her to their secrets and truths. through this, she's able to anticipate future events they warn her about.

clairvoyance - not to the extreme that many others experience it, kezia is capable of seeing details and room plans with her eyes closed. if you blindfolded her, she'd perfectly navigate a cramped space without touching a thing.

pyrokinesis - kezia can control fire to some extent. she's only ever used it in the past to make things worse, but absolutely has the capacity to calm a blaze too, or redirect it to save someone.

telekinesis - the power that revealed she was a witch. she once threw a cupboard at another girl in a rage. prior to that, she knew she could levitate small objects and manoeuvre them. after this incident, fox encouraged her to harness this skill and it's become her strongest ability. it's still not as strong as it could be, but she's always working on it.

it's highly likely that kezia has other abilities alongside these, but they are either dampened or undiscovered due to a combination of lack of education as well as trauma. she's never had a fellow witch to guide or tutor her, and of course the government she's forced to work under keep her tame enough to handle, thus not teaching her anything new. due to her trauma, her relationship with her powers is strained.

she doesn't exactly wish she wasn't a witch, but certainly yearns, from time to time, for a simpler and less complicated life. her powers are largely what created the favouritism that fox possessed for her, and the competitiveness between her and the other girls. it's extremely isolating and causes her to experience loneliness. equally, she finds comfort in her powers as a distraction and they help aid her in her delusion that she is stronger and more superior than others.

her abilities are important to her, and while she never indulged in witch culture due to her background, she feels a part of her is missing without that connection. fox always prevented her from reading too deeply into it to maintain control over her. and thus, she feels other witches will see her as too different to them. through her powers, she's developed an intense respect for natural energies and hates to see them disrespected or abused.

do not copy / steal. this is specific to my portrayal and is headcanon heavy.

1975:   elliot connors is born on july 29th, in torrance, usa.

1976 - 2005: his father begins work as an account. he travels a lot, eli barely sees him. eli is raised largely by his mother, who he holds a lot of respect for.

1979: at four years old, elliot begins early years schooling. it's reported he doesn't play with the other children and, unbeknownst to the staff, keeps stealing toys to bring home.

1989: suffering bullying at school, he gets the idea of his augments. it's a vague idea, some contraption that improves both superheroes and normies. gives them additional powers. he dreams of being stronger than he is.

1991: walking home from the store, elliot and his mother are attacked by thugs. elliot tries to hold his own but his mother is wounded. he decides to aid her for the weeks of her recovery. elliot's hatred of being a normie grows.

1993: at eighteen years old, elliot begins designing his augments for real. they're tangible things in the works.

1994: eli is nineteen years old. he meets robbie roberston. robbie and eli become good, albeit unlikely, friends. robbie is a bully, but eli struggles immensely with friendships so he puts up with it. he introduces robbie to his augments and robbie tries to discourage him. elliot is introduced to robbie's son, robert.

1995: the brave brigade are introduced as torrance's newest superhero group.

1998: elliot learns about robbie's secret identity as astral. robbie joins the brave brigade this year, and elliot grows jealous. he wants to join. he spends the following year designing the astral pulse, a gift for robbie to convince him to let elliot join.

late 1998: elliot is introduced to the brave brigade, including vitalia cosmos.

1999: the brave brigade hold a vote for him to join, he's turned down for the first time.

2001: eli's second attempt to join the brave brigade.

early 2005: elliot's father passes away suddenly from lung cancer ( he was a smoker ), which he kept secret from everyone.

late 2005: his third attempt to join the brave brigade.

late 2007: eli's fourth attempt to join the brave brigade. his augments are almost finished and he promises them to the brave brigade if they let him in. he and vitalia begin developing feelings for one another, he tries to convince her to let him join and she agrees.

july 2008: for the fifth time, elliot's entry into the brave brigade is denied. elliot challenges robbie to a public fight and loses. several hours later, after being healed by vitalia, in a fit of rage, elliot locates robbie's revolver and shoots robbie dead with five bullets. he is 33 years old.

august 2008: he is charged with murder and sentenced, entering the prison system. his mother cuts all contact with him and it hurts.

2010: he gets the idea of the red ring, a gang of supervillains and criminals. bring order to chaos. elliot begins plotting. he realises he could use his augments.

early 2020: eli ends up in a cell with toxic, who becomes the first member and lieutenant of the red ring.

the next 3 years: he spends his time recruiting criminals to join the red ring.

late 2020: a gang member ( not red ring ) attempts to assassinate eli, slitting his throat. eli barely survives. his assassin is moved. eli retaliates, sending his own assassin after them. no one messes with him after that.

2022: he learns of the blonde blazer and makes time to watch news reports on her on the prison tv. he becomes obsessed with her.

early 2023: robert robertson visits eli in prison.

mid 2023: elliot breaks out of prison alongside his fellow recruited red ring members and lieutenants. he names himself shroud, after robbie's final words to him. he goes on to implant an augment into the side of his head. he spends much of his time implanting augments into his people. the work of shroud begins, the red ring rise up and begin causing trouble. their primary goal is to set up a warehouse and lure robert robertson to them so shroud can obtain the astral pulse.

mid - late 2023: he meets and then begins dating mandy ( secretly blonde blazer. ) they date for just over a month before elliot learns she's blonde blazer and becomes obsessive. mandy then finds out he's shroud and cuts all contact with him. ( exclusive with blondebl4zer. )

late 2023: within a week of breaking up with mandy, toxic is hunted down and questioned. he tells robert where to find shroud. it's a trap.

the emptiness machine by linkin park. the lyrics resonate with bastian, hardcore. there's also a theme running in the song about societal pressure to conform. one of the singers in an interview about it discusses how people are pushed into restrictive roles, leading to a loss of identity and i think that spells out muse perfectly.

angel song by nothing more. the song is about the world getting darker, souls being swallowed by technology and mankind's animal nature being criticised and reprimanded. equally, it's about people wanting to fight back against this, and remembering the light in the dark. all things that represent much of muse's mindset and work.

i also have a whole playlist of songs i think speak for muse.

he’s gone by john d. and j.d. in the past. neither of these even vaguely resemble his first given name. deacon, his latest alias, means servant, waiting-man, or messenger. this is intentional.

he’s human. and while he wasn’t the founder of the railroad, he’s certainly been with them longer than most. long enough to have his team die, long enough to reintroduce himself to a new one. he is, potentially, the oldest surviving member of the railroad.

he’s a dead shot. one of his highest stats is perception — with the other being agility. it wasn’t something he honed, or trained — it’s just always come naturally to him. it was his party trick, running with the university point deathclaws, and it’s served him well as an agent in the railroad. this is also why he makes so many sniper comments, expressing his dislike of open spaces.

desdemona makes a comment in p.a.m’s terminal — ‘ deacon was barely here all year. chasing ghosts. ’ he’d been looking into the past, eventually finding the sole survivor, frozen in vault 111. if you travel up a hill, you can find a chair and drinking water under a tarp, along with a railsign. someone had settled there and waited. someone was waiting for the sole survivor to live, and that someone was deacon. when he makes that little comment about finding the sole survivor himself, if they hadn’t found the railroad first, he wasn’t lying. he needed to sink his claws into them before the institute did. he needed to find the sole survivor.

that said — deacon doesn’t have any truly personal / ulterior motives. he hates the institute. he wants them exterminated. he doesn’t want fame, or wealth, or power. he just wants to see everything through to the end.

and he’s lucky. he is tragically lucky. he’s survived massacre after massacre. he’s witnessed people give their lives for the railroad, and he’s had to live with it. he was lucky enough to be given a second chance that he did not believe he deserved. he has no ulterior motives — he just wants to see everything through to the end. he has to make it mean something.

besides being a liar and a fraud, he feels like a joke. he feels like a big fucking joke. for him, everything ends with a drum roll and curtains. he knows that at the end of the line, he’s going to have the last laugh.

he doesn’t have anyone. if the sole survivor is friendly to him — they’re the first friend he’s had in years. he’s being honest when he pulls the sole survivor aside to tell them that.

he really just gets a kick out of lying. and even if he did tell the truth, no one would believe him. that makes him disposable. that means he gets to die with the truth.

his so-called recall code, you can’t trust everyone, is double-edged. it tells the sole survivor that by reading it, he can’t trust them. and if they accept his warning — they can’t trust him.

when we first see him in go set a watchman, he’s finally established some routine and normalcy in his life — no longer does he hold a rifle by his side, no longer does he dissemble and reassemble it obsessively, late into the night, switching one weapon of destruction for another, replacing the grip of his rifle with a stake to be polished.   now, he wakes at five a.m. because his body won’t let him sleep any longer.   he brews a pot of coffee, he irons his clothes, he drives to the gym, and he shows up to work, starting a second pot of coffee.   when he gets home, he cleans, and he drinks.   on sundays, he cooks his meals for the week, some of which he will not eat.   runs to the gas station are made on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, late into the nights he cannot sleep through.   on saturdays, he goes to the meetings that james holds for veteran slayers.   though he’ll stand outside, waiting until the meeting is over and james starts stacking all the chairs — he faithfully arrives, as they are his fixed points throughout the week.   other constants exist in the form of people.   christian, for instance, becomes someone he can rely on, and someone he can trust.   ophelia checks in with him, almost weekly.   james has always been there for him.   emmett’s a phone call away.   and though ashley would rather not have anything to do with him — even blackwood is there.   but despite all the routine he’s established, and the connections he tries to maintain — he’s not human.   he hasn’t gotten that part of himself back.  

in a physical sense — slayers were altered.   in order to win against the vampire threat, humans were engineered into something more resilient, something more offensive.   ashley’s quick.   not as fast as christian, but he’s got a noticeable edge.   he’s not human, not entirely, and he still doesn’t know what the slayer corps put in his system.   he’s quick, he’s strong, he can’t feel pain.   he endures.   walking in the dark, under flickering street lamps, he evokes a sense of unease — the unease you feel when you look at something that isn’t quite human.   he’s a desperate replica.

and in the other sense — dying and coming back does something to someone.   he didn’t just near the edge of the cliff — he fell from it.   he didn’t wake up from the dream before he hit the water.   after forty-five minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, two fractured ribs, and a fractured sternum — ashley graves was declared KIA.   he was dead for three minutes before his heart started beating again.   he was dead for three minutes before henri felt ashley’s pulse under his blood-stained fingertips again.   after that day in alaska, the corps shaped him into something fatal.   he left a part of himself on that shore.   the part that was human.

RIEKA’S PACK & HIERARCHY.

eli knew robert when robert was a child. he didn't recognise him at the bar because of how different he looks / was too preoccupied mentally.

robbie never stole the astral pulse from eli. elliot gave it to him, after building it himself, in hopes he would change his mind about letting eli into the brave brigade. he did, however, demand for him to give it back, which robbie didn't.

eli was never part of the brave brigade. following the comics, there was a vote five different times on whether he could join and robbie always prevented him from getting in, despite other members of the brave brigade wanting augments.

robbie promised to help eli build a mech, which he never did. eli had to figure it out on his own.

elliot got the name shroud from robbie, as one of the last things robbie said to him.

the fight wasn't private. it was public, and everyone saw eli lose.

elliot built his initial outfit on his own, prior to killing robbie. this outfit inspired the shroud mask, which is much stronger than the original.

elliot was frequently bullied by robbie, and chase only sucked up to him to get an augment. eli struggled immensely with feeling left out, but being autistic he was led to believe he had a chance in the brave brigade when he never did.

despite what robbie says, he never would've let elliot join the brave brigade. robbie always sensed eli wasn't hero material.

unlike the comics, elliot didn't get his augment implant until post-prison. in his mugshot, he's shown without it. he was, however, working on his augments pre-prison.

elliot was driven to implant his augment due to his bad decisions in the past and his disdain of their outcomes and being surprised by them.

a minor one, but eli had feelings towards vitalia.