Hecate

> *Lore of: **Lasta-Tir***
>
>

> For showing me the sky for the first time... Thank you.
>
> ― **Hecate** to **Luriel**

**Hecate** is a combat-focused artificial lifeform currently serving as a member of Raze and as the guardian, best friend, and underling of Luriel. Though she doesn't look like most others, by definition, she is classified as a Synth. One could also classify her as undead, since her consciousness was transferred to her current body post-mortem, and also due to her corpse being integrated into her current body.

## Appearance

Most of her body is painted white, with various shades of gray as well as black to grant her a more varied appearance. Some smaller details also have a red accent to them, as well.

Hecate's body is vaguely humanoid in shape, but only generally: she features a head, a torso, two arms, two legs, and multiple other attachments. Because of that and her height, standing at precisely 5 meters tall (16 feet and 5 inches), she is often mistaken for a limited awareness combat robot when she does, in fact, possess a consciousness.

The outer layer of the armor covering some of Hecate's parts is made of a unique and currently non-replicable material that can be freely controlled on a nanoscopic level, giving Hecate the ability to alter some of her armor to better suit her moment to moment needs. You can think of it like Iron Man's nanotech suit (the Mark 50) or an even smaller version of the nanobots from Big Hero 6.

Her head consists of a black sphere, which is, in its entirety, a screen. Some basic framework wraps around it, separating it into two sides. Hecate's head accessories are attached to that band, and they are made fully out of the shape altering material featured on a large part of her body. These attachments are almost completely decorative. She prefers keeping them in a shape resembling long sci-fi ear pieces, vaguely reminiscent of rabbit ears. Using her screen, Hecate projects her eyes as two slightly inwards tilted red lines cutting off an equally red ellipse, giving the impression of eyebrows and eyes in a minimalistic style. She can freely modify her eyes' appearance, color, and position, although she rarely ever does so. She has never been seen manifesting the equivalent of a mouth.

Her torso is whole, not split into multiple parts, made from a material that can seemingly fold in on itself while retaining the same properties as metal. While her front is sleek and pleasing to the eye, her back features an open vertical strip down her spine, which grows into a somewhat larger window around the kidney area, where two short and subtle arm-like protrusions are able to expand and retract at will. Her torso is curvaceous, although she lacks chest protrusions, making her chest-waist-hip ratio the only physically feminine trait about her.

At the back window, attached to the back arms, are a large pair of wings made from three separate metal strips which can move individually. These wings provide additional thrust which can greatly increase Hecate's speed, but can also be detached, folded, and combined to make a gigantic, symmetrical twinblade, which Hecate uses as her main weapon. This, however, decreases her maximum speed, and is usually only used during ground combat mode.

Her arms are slightly bulkier, focusing more on defense, although they retain the general sleek look of her entire body. Her hands are grayer and less plated, although not fully skeletal in appearance. Her arms are also able to be compacted further into a pair of makeshift side wings.

Hecate is a **digitigrade**, meaning her legs feature the ankle joints much farther up than human legs, i.e. what a dog's legs look like. The thighs are plated, and their topmost region features an array of smaller, dark gray trapezoid plates, which can be interlocked and moved independently. The middle section (knee-ankle section) is much more barebones, being just the skeleton she needs to stand up, featuring no plating whatsoever. The lower section (ankle-fingers) is, again, plated, and looks highly compact and resistant, like it was built for kicking. Because of their evenly distributed total length, her legs can fold in on themselves. Bringing her knee joint to the side of the torso and pushing her hip joints down, while also interlocking the trapezoid plates at the beginning of her legs, transforms her legs into two thrusters.

Her transformed arms, legs, as well as back wings, allow her to take on the vague appearance of a jet plane, making Hecate one of the fastest ways of traversal that isn't teleportation.

## Personality

Most of the time, Hecate carries herself with an incredibly stoic and mission-driven attitude, only strengthening the first impression that she doesn't have human emotions. In actuality, she simply reserves those emotions for whomever she acknowledges as a close friend.

She has shown gratitude and peacefulness to Luriel, after the first time the two flew together. Whenever Akrasia's insults towards Luriel reach into the level of harmful, she displays typical irritated behavior, and also becomes protective over Luriel. She respects Apophis for her power and wisdom, while also being grateful that she allows Luriel a place within Raze. In spite of her stoicism, Luriel has caught her practicing lines and intonations, as well as modifying her head accessories in a manner akin to trying on different hair styles, on multiple occasions.

Hecate rarely speaks, even though she has full vocal capabilities. This tends to make her seem more menacing than she actually is, due to multiple kinds of robotic combat-associated noises being mistaken for her actual voice.

However, her inability to disobey Luriel's direct orders can rarely lead to her questioning their relationship and trust in them, while also causing her to become more aloof for a time, during which she tends to display lower overall capabilities in favor of introspection, sorting out her thoughts and emotions more than usual instead of being wholly prepared for combat.

## History

Hecate keeps her personal history a tight-lipped secret from everyone, including Luriel, who knows better than to order her to speak about it. All Raze and its members know is that Hecate was found in one of Tor's facilities, where she was also first activated and instantly went along with Luriel's plans without any resistance. Hecate and Luriel were by themselves only for a few weeks, before running into Apophis and Akrasia while on a flight above the forest surrounding Caro Bel, which was followed by the first loss they had ever experienced as a team. Hecate kept her frustration mostly inside, but decided to not oppose Luriel's decision to join Raze, after seeing the positive impact Apophis' influence seemed to have on Luriel.

## Combat & Abilities

**Overall Abilities:** In spite of her large size and relatively bulky frame, Hecate is the most versatile and varied fighter of Raze, even more so than Apophis. She is capable of both quick and dexterous movement as well as strong blows at the same time, and is able to fight both in melee distance and at range. Furthermore, she is able to fight on the ground as well as in the air, both scenarios featuring methods to counter targets at either elevation. All her abilities are only further improved by her computing power, allowing her to accurately predict trajectories, lock on to enemies, and efficiently multitask.

**Durability:** Hecate's armor, frame, and the materials they were built out of, allow her to tank quite a bit of damage before being affected, effectively turning her into Raze's 2nd most durable member, below Akrasia. Not only that, but she features a triple redundant core system: Her head houses one core, her upper chest another, and her lower abdomen a third. She is able to stay functional even with two cores destroyed or offline, although her abilities are diminished for each inactive core. The cores are equal parts technology and magic (by way of runes), and are still unable to be replicated.

**Speed and Flight:** Hecate's maximum speeds have never been recorded, since there's never been a need for her to move that fast; however, she has been able to reach speeds around 450km/h on land, and regularly breaks the sound barrier while flying as a jet. Her speed on the ground is due to her back boosters, pointing out of her back window: whenever her wings are attached to her back, they also provide independent thrust and thereby increase the maximum thrust, thus allowing for a higher acceleration and top speed. Whenever her wings are removed and form her twinblade, her top speed decreases to somewhere around 300-315km/h.

She can also use smaller thrusters hidden all throughout her body to more dexterously maneuver around opponents, making her deceptively agile. A set of boosters is also hidden inside her feet, which are normally used for gliding across the ground by hovering to prevent friction, but can also be overclocked to allow for more stable flight without transforming to her jet mode.

**Combat Twinblade:** Hecate's combat twinblade, formed by detaching her two back wings, folding them, and combining them at the roots, is by far her most used and deadliest weapon. Due to both sides of both ends being made out of Hecate's white, transformable armor plating, the twinblade's sharpness can be changed on the fly, but Hecate usually prefers keeping it blunt so as not to accidentally harm Luriel, although its bluntness doesn't decrease its effectiveness. Hecate can use it traditionally, as both a sword (albeit more restrictive than a normal sword) and as a staff, by gripping one end of the twinblade and swinging it as such. The damage it deals is respectable, being able to shatter boulders with a more powerful swing, which is only made deadlier by Hecate's smaller thrusters amplifying her movement speed.

While the above is already enough to make Hecate be fearsome in melee combat, there is one more factor that makes her incredibly powerful: her **style.** Taking after Apophis' unusual and exotic movements, Hecate fights in a completely non-traditional way. Her attacks can feature her body contorting, spinning her twinblade around, anchoring it in the ground and using it as a pole to kick or jump off of and follow up with an aerial attack or a slam, along many other strange moves that only add to her unpredictability.

Lastly, the fact that her wings provide independent thrust remains unchanged. Hecate can use either end of the twinblade for a quick but strong boost, opening up the possibility for vaulting, or for quickly modifying her direction in the air. Not only that, but by opening up the wing on either side, she is able to angle her boosts, allowing for the twinblade to spin in mid-air. This cannot be used while holding the twinblade, but it does make for a devastating projectile akin to a boomerang.

**Weapon systems:** Hecate features many smaller weapon systems around her body, mostly hidden either by her transformable armor plates or through clever integration into her body. These systems range from small tracking missiles to guns, both magic as well as kinetic. These systems are by no means useless, although they don't see as much use as her melee combat. They serve more as supporting fire than as primary damage output.

**Transformable armor:** The armor sections mostly covering her shoulders, collarbone area, head, lower arms, sides, hips and groin, and upper and lower leg sections is painted white, and is made of a unique and currently non-replicable material that can be freely controlled on a nanoscopic level, giving Hecate the ability to alter some of her armor to better suit her moment to moment needs. This does **not** grant her the ability to solidify said armor; it merely allows her to control its shape. This is used mostly to hide her smaller weapon systems, or to form makeshift weapons if need be. She also uses it for decorative purposes, especially around her head, albeit rarely.

**Weaknesses:**

* **Limited potential:** Hecate's most debilitating weakness is that her entire body is mechanical, and as such has no way of surpassing its physical limits, unlike an organic body. Her limits are hard-wired, and once reached it is impossible for her to overcome them. She plans for this in advance, but a competent enough team can either trap her so that she can't escape, or figure out all of her movements and plan accordingly. Hecate only has access to powerful computational tools; she is **not** an AI, and therefore can have the odd lapse in judgement.
* **EMP:** Although Hecate has a magic side to her, a large part of the systems that allow her to function are still technological in nature. Therefore, an EMP wouldn't shut her off completely, but it *would* cause her to get staggered until her systems are up and running again. Most importantly, it would disable her visual sensors, rendering her temporarily **blind.**
* **Luriel:** Luriel serves as both a command center for Hecate, but also as a liability. Any possible harm that might come to Luriel will make Hecate hesitate to act.
* **Ammo reserves:** Her small missiles are many, but not endless. Her kinetic guns will eventually run out of bullets, and her magic-based weaponry drains the power that otherwise enables her systems to run endlessly. Using them too much runs the risk of depriving herself of enough magic to fully function, possibly even causing a shutdown.