Aralia Luxor

Aralia Luxor, codenamed Vanguard is an Alien, empowered by a high tech sentient power source called the Starflame. She comes to earth to fight for those that cannot defend themselves and justice for all. She also hopes to meet similarly minded individuals amongst the emerging superhumans of earth, to meet her peoples desire to have a galactic peace keeping force.

## History

### **Origins**

Aralia Luxor was a working caste member in capital city of Heraos on the planet Ithenia. As soon as an Ithenian child is 5 they are placed in the education system. They undergo a series of tests the results extrapolated to determine their most suitable job within society. Aralia was placed in the law enforcement program due to her aptitude for determining right from wrong and her sense of justice based on these tests. Ithenia as a society is very morally righteous and with a strong social responsibility aspect, as such it makes sure all citizens are looked after and provided for and the basis of its society is very similar to Ancient Greece and Rome on Earth due to observations of the planet in the past.

Upon successful completion of all educational processes Aralia started out as the equivalent of a beat cop. Maintaining order on the streets and attending incidents and maintaining the peace. However she was always more willing to go above and beyond in her role. Showing a compassion not always seen in Ithenians due to the forced nature of their professions.This earned her the respect and admiration of her superiors and she made it to the equivalent of detective.

On Ithenia there are those that reject the caste system and live outside of society. They call themselves the Hadians, they are the main focus of violent crime on Ithenia. Most other crimes are civil in nature or corruption in public office. A sect was rising to dominance hooking honest working caste members on drugs and convincing them to disrupt work processes and having stolen some military hardware they began assaulting districts of the capital. Aralia was investigating certain aspects of their operation when she found herself in a bloody crossfire in a civilian populated area. Whilst the main order was to eliminate the Hadians many cvilians were under threat. Aralia broke the chain of command in order to protect the civilians and wound up mortally wounded.

Meanwhile elsewhere on Ithenia, the council were preparing to instigate a galactic scheme. Ithenians always benevolent by nature, had witnessed the universe long enough. Many races such as humans were learning how to take to the stars and making themselves targets of malevolent forces within the universe. The Ithenians aren't the only super advanced race in the Universe. The Ithenians sought to make a galactic federation and civilsation. To maintain the order and protect it against other forces in the galaxy they needed a new weapon. One that would uphold their ideals and be able to protect whole star sectors without the need to deploy fleets of warships. To this end they created the sentient energy weapon, with the Ithenian forge masters, dubbed the Starflame. However the Starflame refused to bond to any other the council's chosen members. Whilst the people of Ithenia majorly were 'good' it was duty bound and tied to the beaurocracy, it needed someone with compassion. It was at this time it sensed Aralia's sacrifice whilst all other members of the justice department simply pursued the terrorists. The Starflame broke from it's containment and bonded with the mortally wounded Aralia, healing her and bestowing it's powers to her.

Aralia was then taken in by the Ithenian council. Understanding where they had been going wrong they accepted it's decision. Aralia was tasked with going to the sentient worlds and assessing whether they were advanced enough to join the federation or simply just required their protection. She was allowed to use the power as she saw fit with autonomy, whilst the Ithenian council tried to replicate the Starflame to eventually bolster the ranks of this soldier to protect the universe with Aralia being the Vanguard and dubbed as such by the council.

Aralia chose to go to earth first, her species probes in that sector picking up very limited information of isolated technological advances outside Earth's standard era of technology and also the advent of mutant and empowered beings. Also she wished to visit first hand the planet that had caught the attention of her own many times in the past with it's similar ethos.

## Powers

**The Starflame**

The Starflame allows the user to manipulate energy. It also sustains the user by absorbing solar radiation and allows survival in the vacuum of space and flight. The main ability is the use of this energy to augment the users strength (Base 10x to 1000000x max), speed (base subsonic to max mach 10 in atmosphere, point to point FTL in space) and regenerative abilities (minor wounds in minutes, major wounds in days). The energy can be shaped as fiery apparitions of objects and is capable of being tangible. The Starflame is sentient and chooses its host, it is also attuned to positive morality. As such the Starflame can never be used for evil, and will only ever exert lethal force in the most dire of situations rationalised out by the wielder. Whilst it is a power source it needs to recharge. It slowly charges through the day but excessive use can deplete the reserves faster, base limits of power depletion will match replenishment rate. As the usage and power increases the faster the drain. Max power can only be sustained for approximately half an hour and require the rest of the day to recharge. However it is more likely that depending on the threat, max power will only be able to be sustained for several minutes. Charging can be boosted by close proximity to a star.

**Ithenian Physiology**

Ithenians appear similar to humans. They have bronze to turquoise coloured skin, slight pointed ears making them elf-like compared to humans as well as slit pupils. Due to the size of Ithenia as a planet an Ithenian is adapted to withstand gravities of 10x earth. On earth this grants them proportional speed and strength of approximately 10 humans (Approx 2 tons lifting capacity). Ithenians have denser muscular and dermal proteins, whilst conventional earth weaponry will hurt them it will be to a lesser effect. Handguns for example would not pierce the skin but leave a nasty bruise and have potential for internal trauma depending on where shot.