Varigate

Name Varigate "Vari" or "Gate"
Gender Male
Homeworld Aperture Labs
Class Junior
Nut A Bit Nutty
Totem none
Smarts 3
Bod/Feet 5
RWP 4
Luck 3
Drive 1 (ride dragon 3, navigate portals 6)
Looks 4
Cool 4
Bonk 4
Powers Power Siphon / Use Others Powers; inherited directly from his mother Tabitha, Varigate is able to touch a Vortally empowered person and utilize their abilities for a short time. This lasts either until he does it again, or around 48 hours, though he rarely needs a single power that long. It does require touch, but does not need permission, and cannot be resisted in any way, so he's learned how to be as polite as possible around Vortal folk - particularly those Vortigaunts, because he did make the mistake of not asking them once. Only once. His Siphon on the other hand is something that he takes very seriously indeed, because it denies the person its use for that amount of time. It's come in handy when someone, usually a student, first blossoms into their powers at Carramba, but also if a Rookery member has gotten out of hand. While it's not completely unresistable, only the very strongest of Vortal entities can deny him. The power comes back slowly, so there is little worry of suddenly having the same issue again too soon. This ability is always on, so he must concentrate on either not using a power he's picked up accidentally, or work out a way, somehow, to let the power drain more quickly. That hasn't happened yet, so he keeps trying.
Mix and Match Powers; with a good group to work with, Varigate can either use a number of different powers together for a very short time (around 2 hours), or actually give other people those abilities instead. He usually chooses to do the latter, since he's rarely out in the field at the Rookery or even North Aperture, and wants to make sure that any given hunting party or scout group has enough healing, protection, as well as offensive ability as they can possibly get. He does use it as a bit of a party game at Carramba or in the dorms, though, effectively a spin the bottle kind of 'take your chances' and guessing game. This ability does wear him out a little more than otherwise, as it's something he has to Vortally concentrate on and doesn't just 'happen'. He can choose to turn it off earlier than 2 hours.
Clusters Very Quick Study +2
Skills Remembers Who Has What Power +3
Navigate Portals +2
Knacks Super Cheerful +1
1 Time Travel Machinery and Mapping / Q. Pepper
2 Powers and Their Use / Treason
3 Optimism Under Duress / C'thain
4 Cartography / Rex 903
5 Interspecies Politics / Kuyul
6 Nexus Geohistory / T. Kshau
7 Practical Composition / Feliciane
8 Teleportation Practice / Lane
Pets none
Donor parent Tabitha of the 10
Siblings Unknown

 

 

Story

Dragon

Name: Portal
Gender: Male
Size/Shoulder/Length: Small 6'8" s / 26' l / 35' and 20' ws
Colors: face and limbs including wing arms bright yellow; belly from chin to under tail faded yellow; border scales neck and behind legs melon orange; face, horns and antennae, dorsal marks on neck, body, tail, fronts of legs and wing arms dusty orange; middle armor scales from neck to tail tip golden yellow with red-orange marks; dorsal spines from head to tail tip, claws dark red; wing sails brilliant light blue to slightly dusty blue with mottled black-granite butterfly markings
Features: Pure Silkwing
Powers: Winged Flight, though quite small by his species standards Portal is as good a flier as he can be. Though he can only lift perhaps two human-sized weights, he does so without difficulty and can fly just as well with or without. Not speedy, but very agile in the air, Portal is able to direct his flight extremely well, because portals are dangerous if you hit them wrong.
Teleportation, portal based; somehow Portal has the ability to produce openings between two locations, Portals, hovering improbably in the air. These resemble those made by the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, in that they have obvious 'blue and gold' rims (probably due to speed / dimension shifts) but they are not reliant on being popped onto a stable surface. These portals are also much larger than the device's, though he can make them large or small at will, depending on the needs of the moment. Usually if he's to fly through them, they will be around 20 feet across - they are actually more circular than shown, though too, he can alter their aperture dimension and shape from round to a narrow slit. (more like a cat's eye, rather than a camera shutter.) These portals are quickly made and equally gone - he must concentrate on keeping one open if someone else is using it, otherwise it vanishes the moment he himself moves through it or wants to shut it down. Like Varigate, Portal can use these offensively as well as defense, or just to pop around wherever he can see. Their range is 'unlimited', though he has trouble sometimes, he can create a portal somewhere just based on a picture, video feed, or mental image. (He knows that those Pernese or 'old world' dragons do that, but he's not from their world and gene pool, this is new to him.) Within that however, the portal instantly transfers whatever's on one side, to the other. Unlike the hand-held device, though, he can't just 'leave one open somewhere' and open the second later - he has to have two and they will generally be 'one right next to him and another where he sees'.
Communication; Portal doesn't speak much if at all, only Varigate has heard his voice, aside from the odd chittering and keening sounds that he makes with his antennae while hunting. He can understand basically anything that's spoken, and is trying to learn symbols and letters. He also does have a Vortal sense and can listen to strongly spoken telepathy, but cannot pry into private conversations. He is said to have a strange vibrating Vortal presence, by those who can detect such things.
Silk Production, nope - it's possible that his portal making is a very, very mutated form of silk. Let's go with that.
Parentage: Unknown, and it's even possible that this Pantalan dragon wasn't born on that world at all.** That is true, and some of his powers may be because his mother Solaris has spent time in a Vortal construct outside of any dimension!
Origin: Adopted from (gift) Moonshimmer981 on Deviantart, base by Luna-the-Nightwing, WoF by Tui Sutherland
Other Info: Portal knows that he's a bit weird even for his own kind of dragon, but that won't stop him from integrating both into Carramba's dragon program, or the Rookery. In fact he knows he's welcome there, and has taken instruction from Chell and a few others who use portals just like his only they're so tiny how can they even!