Contestant: Velour

Art

Name: Veevee (Velour) Aedran
Age: 21
Height: 7' 10" (Variable)
Weight: 498 (Variable, dense musculature)
Species: Feline (Panther)
Gender: Female
Alignment: Scrupulous (Good)

Occupation: Unemployed, though formerly worked for a small time trading business as a junior assistant.

Special skills: Aside from being a flirt, and an excellent socialite, Velour possesses little technical
training or specialized combat skills. Her ability at carousing a group of people, to squeeze information with just a wiggle of her hips, and read reactions gives her a great advantage in certain situations, but has not taken the time to develop this talent especially well.

Powers or Unusual Abilities: Velour does have a very distinct ability. Her unique physiology allows her to take in vast quantities of air, and use it to condense and alter her body, shaping it in various ways. Although most other 'Balloon' creatures like her tend to retain air simply as a large pocket, her body is close enough to a normal fur that she can redirect air into specific muscle groups or other body parts.

Although she prefers to keep at a rather large height and muscular build, She can grow anywhere from 5' to nearly 20' tall, and varies tremendously with weight, depending on how dense she has compressed her cellular structure. This provides immediate benefit, including vast physical strength. Although her limit is yet to be determined, she can nominally lift several thousand tons without any serious effort. Her body is also a lot more resistant to blunt trauma, given her heritage, though this does not mean total invulnerability, only increased resistance to overwhelmingly powerful blows.

Velour possess enhanced senses, far above the capability of a baseline person, but this is not one of the areas that can be upgraded by using her inflation abilities, leaving her vulnerable against fighters with immense speed and dexterity.

Her regenerative abilities are also superior to other competitors. Even if suffering from numerous cuts and bruises, she can channel the air that amplifies her strength into healing her damaged body. She can survive many encounters that would cripple a normal person.

Limitations and/or Weaknesses: The biggest limitation of Velours abilities is fairly easy to manipulate. The supply of air she uses to control and increase her own powers. Steady breathing will only take one so far, so if brought into an extended fight, or one where she is grossly underpowered, finding a source of air isn't an easy objective in the least.

Also, while her upper limits of strength could potentially place her in the top tier of female powerlifters, a great psychological and physical limit has to be overcome. Bringing in too much air brings the risk of becoming far too large for her body to contain, and would result in death, but so far, nothing close to that has occurred.

Velour is not a practiced and trained fighter. Aside from knowing how to street fight and play a little dirty, a weaker competitor with knowledge of a martial art would be able to even the odds considerably against her.

Personal History:

Velour grew up on a little backwater world just inside the boundaries of Assembly space, Dahla IV. It's technology and population base clearly resemble 20th century Terra, with only the recent and extraordinary visit by Assembly ambassadors. It has been an exciting time to live in, as the introduction of new technologies and mineral resources has led to a new sense of unity and progress among the residents of this world, and even more remarkably, has allowed their people to travel out onto the stars.. A dream of any would-be explorer.

Her birth was marked as a very strange occasion. When the Assembly first set up bases on Dahla, they had petitioned the planetary government to establish research bases on their planet, knowing that it would be easy to experiment with cutting-edge genetics research in the relative privacy of a new colony world. Any measures to gain an advantage in the arms race that has been brewing across the universe for some time now. Velour's father, Nalem, was hand-picked to work on a new field of genetic research for the various active super-soldier programs.

But instead of working on how to make the body produce energy more efficiently, increase muscle mass through chemical injections, or modify a species normal genome, they were given a mundane task. Create an outfit that can withstand the blows of a paranormal battle, and still grant the wearer the same mobility as before. Success came in only small steps and with more than enough failures to confound the Dahlaian scientists. They had been given a task of importance, but even with the added expertise of Assembly scientists, they were unable to come up with any immediate gains. They were forced to give up working with any sort of natural or man-made fabric, and decided to try something a little more unorthodox. They came up with a special composite substance.. YR-434. Which has the appearance of melted rubber and black tar, with a smell just about as bad. The genius behind the substance is that even a handful of the liquid can be stretched and manipulated to nearly 100 times its own size, making it perfect for resisting even heavy weaponry. The second bonus is that through careful electrical stimulation, it can be shaped and crafted into an actual suit to be worn.

Nalem volunteered to be the first test subject of the material, to see if there were any side effects involved. The experiment was less than successful. Upon applying the material to his body, it rapidly constricted and enveloped his entire form, quickly bonding with tissue and nearly choking him to death. It was only after a medical examination that the remaining scientists realized that he was not dead, but had gone through remarkable changes.. His entire body had been subsumed by the substance, and his mind and memories left intact, spreading throughout the whole body as a collective. Although unsure of why this effect happened, the project was immediately suspended.

Of course, being the spirit he was, not even his new condition could keep Nalem down, and he quickly married Velour's mother, Veevee. And so, Veevee junior, (Changed to Velour, to keep her from being embarrassed), was born. She showed no real sign of her father's unique condition, apart from the rather short length of her fur, which looked more like a glossy black paint. She lived a rather quiet and normal life, doing well in school, but never had the ambition to do more with what she had.

On her 18th birthday, while taking a trip out to the bar for the first time in her life, she got into a wild, drunken squabble with a much larger Dahalian, who jokingly challenged her to an arm wrestling match, which she gladly accepted, much to her friends chagrin. While the outcome seemed to have been decided, the young panther had been panting and heaving for breath, as hard as she could.. That's when the strain and definition started to form under her shirt, nearly popping the seams of the fabric as she accidentally threw the man into another table, knocking him out cold. Scared out of her mind, and completely confused, she ran out of the bar, and into the night.

It turned out that she had inherited much more from her father than just the odd condition of her fur, she could take in large amounts of air, and by concentrating, change her body in remarkable ways. After intense practicing and keeping herself in isolation for a number of years, the rather plain, shy panther had changed herself into a curvy, musclebound titaness. Her personality also underwent a complete reversal, becoming much more extroverted and wild, continually coming in late for her job, spending all hours of the night partying and having fun, and becoming somewhat of a local celebrity.

After spending so much time at home though, seeing all of the sights and doing all that she could, her spirit of adventure has gotten the best of her. After much convincing of her parents, she managed to claim an exclusive ticket on the next shuttle heading off-world, on a trip that should last her for a long time. She took off towards the nearest Assembly hub, hoping to see the best and most exotic worlds of both Assembly and Imperium space, knowing that there was so much more for her to do.

Her encounter with the leaguers happened only a couple months into her trip, on a dirty, depressing mining world off in the Eternity region. Having been stranded by a malfunctioning shuttle, she encountered an exile of the Powered League, a woman named Qi. She had inadvertently presented herself as a threat to Qi's dominion of the operations, and the two met in a frightful battle that left both of them badly injured. In the aftermath, Velour had allowed Qi to flee the planet, but only after learning about the various Leaguers.. Women and men with strengths just like her own, people she could relate too.

It sparked her curiosity, and again, Velour fled into space, this time resolved to find out more about the Leagues, these tensions sparked throughout the galaxy, and maybe something about her own condition. And what a perfect opportunity presented itself when she was waiting in line at a large, cosmopolitan space station. A little advertisement, set up in a holoscreen, urging applicants to apply for the “Might of Maidens” competition..