Endymia

Endymia (pronounced /ɛnˈdɪmiə/) is a heroine of Villainia with formidable psychic powers, which, however, she can use only while asleep. However, having mastered lucid dreaming and developed the ability to remain asleep for arbitrarily long periods of time, she gets around this limitation by spending all her time interacting with others primarily through intangible projections. Although she is active, through her psychic powers, all over the world, the location of her sleeping body is unknown, and no doubt closely guarded by allied heroes. One of the most powerful heroes of Villainia, Endymia is an important asset to those who fight the metarchs... which means, of course, that the metarchs themselves would love to see her neutralized.

History

Endymia was born Nerine Xirellis, in the small town of Kalloní, in Greece. Her childhood was relatively unremarkable; she was a quiet, introspective youth given to wandering the hills and forests near her home and spending much time lost in thought while gazing over the waters of the nearby bay and up into the night sky. She showed a particular interest in the latter, and had aspirations of entering into a career as an astronomer. Her powers began to manifest when she was about sixteen years old, and initially she had no idea what she was doing or how she was doing it. When it became clear to her parents what was happening, however, her mother admitted to her that such powers had in fact run in the family for many generations. The family tradition was that they were granted by the gods in the days of antiquity; nowadays, she wasn't sure if she really believed that, but she wasn't sure of the real explanation.

Nevertheless, despite their power, the family had always kept their abilities hidden, and used them only in secret and subtle ways. Nerine, however, found this idea distasteful; with all the problems in the world, she thought, if she had these problems she ought to help people. She became a superheroine, although one who initially kept a very low profile, focusing more on supplying occasional aid to other heroes than in striking out on her own. Many of the heroes she helped seemed in awe of her powers when they discovered their full extent, but she still kept to her lowly methods, not even bothering to give herself a code name.

During the Deconstruction, all this changed. Nearly all the other heroes that Nerine had met were killed or imprisoned by the metarchs, leaving her with no one around to give her aid to. More to the point, it seemed at this political nadir the people more than ever needed heroes to look up to and rally round—and once again, Nerine stepped up to the plate. Now calling herself Endymia, she finally rose to a higher level of visibility—although, working mostly by projections, she has managed so far to keep her physical self safe from the metarchs' vengeance. Today, Endymia is one of the most well known and most renowned heroes in the world, and one whom many of Villainia's other heroes find themselves turning to in times of need.

Powers

Endymia's psychic powers are many and versatile. While it's likely that nobody but Endymia herself knows the full extent of her abilities, some powers she has been known to use include projection, telepathy, mind reading, and the distortion of thoughts and perceptions to create powerful illusions. She also does have some abilities of possession and mind control, but prefers to use them only in extremis. She also has some power over dreams, and can not only see what people are dreaming, but can control and enter those dreams, and brings others into them as well. When Endymia herself appears in a dream, she usually does so as a constellation of stars forming the outline of a female body. (When she projects outside of dreams, on the other hand, she appears in her real, human shape, albeit generally appearing somewhat younger than she actually is, usually dressed in a loose white chiton.)

One particularly interesting power that Endymia has manifested is the ability to create a second, separate persona within a person's mind. To date, she has only used this power on supers whose own powers enabled the second persona to separate itself as a distinct entity, but presumably she could use it on anyone if she wished. It was through this power, for instance, that Endymia created from Abhoth the being that would later become Saint Nicholas.

However, Endymia's powers have one important limitation: she can only use them in her sleep. While awake, Endymia is no more psychically powerful than any normal person. Endymia deals with this limitation by spending most of her time sleeping, only interacting with the outside world through her projections. At first, she achieved this perpetual sleep primarily through drugs, but at time went on she learned to use her powers on her own mind to keep herself asleep, and even to give herself the ability when awake to quickly fall asleep when she wanted to. Now, she is generally awake for only two or three hours a day, most of which is spent eating and tending to other bodily necessities. Unfortunately, her reliance on drugs in her former days left her with an addiction that, even after the drugs were no longer necessary, took her some time to break. She is by now more or less over it, but still every once in a while has a craving for the soporific benzodiazepines on which she formerly depended.

Goals and personality

For the most part, Endymia is a selfless agent of the stand against the metarchs. She doesn't know where she got her powers, and doubts they were really given her by the gods, but regardless of their source she feels obligated to use them as best she can to help others, and right now the best way she feels she can do that is to tear down the metarchs' rule. Although many times some metarchs have offered temporary alliances with her for various purposes, she always turns them down, not believing that the end justifies the means and fearing that forming any such ties with any metarchs could lead her down a slippery slope that could endanger her commitment to her cause.

This is not to say that she follows her cause cheerfully. Endymia embarked upon her campaign against the metarchs out of a sense of obligation rather than because she enjoyed the idea of adventure and rebellion, and she remains a devoted but reluctant freedom fighter. Had things gone differently, had Overkill and Ten Thousand Years not accomplished their precipitative conquests and had the Deconstruction never happened, it's unlikely that she ever would have become a superhero; she would have been far more content pursuing the career as an astronomer she intended in her youth. Still, while she regrets the necessity that she feels drove her to her current situation she feels the duty to continue along her path until the metarchs are defeated and liberty is restored... an eventuality she longs for but doesn't honestly expect to happen in her lifetime.

Relations

Endymia works closely with many other heroes all over the world, although she does so generally through her projections and not through her physical presence. Indeed, the physical location of her body is kept a close secret, known only to a few trusted heroes who are themselves kept mentally shielded through Endymia's power; even the identities of the heroes who know her location are unknown to other heroes or to the world at large. Still, even if they don't know her real location and have never seen her physical body, nearly all the heroes of Villainia know of Endymia, most major heroes have worked with her, directly or indirectly, at one time or another, and a few heroes work with her regularly. Among Endymia's most frequent coworkers are Anansi, Binary, Mystery, and C.

Most of Endymia's friends and family from before her rise to superherodom remain on the island of Lesbos where she grew up. With the help of allied heroes, as well as with careful use of her own powers, Endymia has converted the island into a fortified haven of sorts, the better to protect her loved ones from villains who might seek to strike at them to avenge themselves upon her. She has been successful enough at this endeavor that Lesbos has now become something of a general safehouse for those in particular danger from the metarchs, including the friends and family of many heroes besides Endymia. At first, Endymia opposed this move, fearing that the more of the metarchs' targets that were kept there the greater the metarchs' motivation for attacking it and the greater the chances that Endymia's loved ones would be hurt, but over time she accepted that it wasn't fair for her to show favoritism to her own friends and relatives when there were others as much in need of protection, and she gave her chary support for its wider use.