Lt. Fuller, LAPD, was chasing an armed suspect, on foot. He took off down an alley, Fuller following, neither realizing that it was a blind alley. The suspect whirled around and pointed his gun at her; she came *this* close to pulling the trigger on her own pistol. She never actually fired, but the suspect screamed and collapsed as if he had been hit. Melanie discovered that she could make other people imagine things - things real enough that they could be hurt by them. She soon figured out that she could read minds, and even force people to do things against their will. She has also discovered darker things she can do, but has never told anyone.

This campaign began in the fall of 1989. Powers had existed in this world only since June 22nd, 1989, so the world was still coming to terms with them. Powers were popping out all over at this time, and the police fired Melanie Fuller due to public pressure about telepaths. She sued the police department for discrimination against paranormals (backed by WhiteCorp, who was hiring a Hero Team for public relations reasons - the heroes don't get paid, but Mr. White picks up their hospital bills and insurance.) There was an out of court settlement, and the police reinstated her. They put her in the forensics department, figuring she couldn't do any harm there, but she managed to get involved in so many cases that they finally moved her to homicide, and inofficially put her in charge of the paranormal unit. (A couple of other paranormals from Mr. White's team (Seven Swords) eventually decided to take police training and get badges)

Invisible Black is a police officer. She has always been rather arrogant and caustic, so mental powers were natural for her :-) She is also, despite her arrogance, the only truly ethical egoist I have ever seen - ask any of the GMs in the game! She has almost never read anyone's mind without their permission, (only two exceptions in almost 40 sessions) except when people are resisting arrest, and even that is limited to 'where are you going if you flee' type of questioning. She has proved to a court that she can identify people by their mental signatures.

To this date, she has a pretty fearsome reputation, especially among her team-mates, both for taking a lot of damage and getting up again (she has practically no defences, but 50% damage reduction, STUN only [later changed to extra CON and STUN]) and for manipulating the rest of the team. Not that she does it with any powers, mind you; they're simply afraid of her, and slightly bothered by the fact that she seldom explains things to them, and keeps information to herself. They also have this notion that she's got them all under mental domination, which isn't true at all. (Well, not exactly true.)

She is very arrogant, and is unwilling to submit her train of logic to criticism, and hates having to refer matters to other's decisions. After all, she usually has more information than they do, so shouldn't she be the one to judge? She has (completely subconciously) divided the world up into pawns, knights, and queens. Queens are other mentalists, knights have high egos and are difficult to manipulate, and pawns are the everyday 10-15 EGO people. She distrusts other egoists, with reason - she has yet to run into one who isn't a crook, and she knows that she wouldn't trust herself if she had just a tiny bit less self-control.

Invisible Black will probably get herself killed eventually. She has already lost an eye, and suffered enough damage to kill an ordinary person several times over, and she doesn't like staying in hospitals just because she has broken ribs - workaholic, you know!

This character concept was inspired by a short story, 'Carrion Comfort', by Dan Simmons, which appeared in OMNI in September and October 1983. It has since been published as a novel, which unfortunately invalidated some of the things hinted at in the short story, things which are rather central to Invisible Black.

A Hero Designer character sheet for Invisible Black is also available.

The image at the top of the page was taken from "Fashion in Action", a comic by John K. Snyder III, used without permission.