💥 POWER SERIES: JANUS
general ones
IMMORTALITY
Given that he is an entity for whom space and time wields absolutely no meaning, Janus is unburdened by the possibility of death. He’s equipped with a regenerative factor that allows him to survive conventional injuries, and when facing anything more extreme – such as, for example, complete disintegration – he’s able to respawn/resurrect without much effort. He doesn’t age, doesn’t need to breathe, doesn’t get sick and his ingestion of food is largely recreational, though it does play a part in keeping things running smoothly from a physiological angle in his humanoid form. Why have organs if you won’t use them? That’s just wasteful, dude.
SPACETIME TELEPORTATION
Janus’s most distinctive power inherited from his primordial father is his ability to travel across the multiverse, hopping between dimensions as often as he voyages from one side of the continuum to the opposite into completely different or even bizarre dominions or planes of existence. Unless a greater force blocks passage into a particular dimension, Janus’ power has no limits and all axis of reality and unreality are available for him to engage.
He’s met multiple versions of the same person, even at different life stages, for he can go back and forth across the spectrum of time as well. Minor parallel dimensions are constantly sprouting in order to sort out all these incidences.
The ability to reconcile with the concept of infinitude and boundlessness is both a mental and physical job, often called The Consciousness. It happens both inside Babel (on a small cosmic scale) and with the multiverse itself; it’s an ability your average human does not have, just like your average human is not equipped to deal with the true forms of many other primordial beings and cosmic entities.
The mechanism of teleportation is gate or fire based. Janus can create portals into other dimensions, though their properties make it so only he can cross them safely – unless, of course, he’s explicitly projecting his ability so he can take people with him. They can be made out of thin air (“raw”) or they can take the form of gates or doors native to the world he’s in (“designed”). An example of the latter would be crossing an arbitrary entrance (walking into a building by the front door for example) only to wind up at a different universe. His fire-based teleportation is used primarily when taking objects into Babel, burning them with his touch until they become ashes, but he can burn himself or others to teleport too.
FIRE CREATION AND MANIPULATION
Janus has an intimate relationship with fire and energy. He’s immune to its damage, and he can manipulate its shape and size as well as give it a direction in an offensive attack, or he can extinguish it too. The fire he creates is special, for it can thrive in realms without the chemical properties necessary to sustain proper fire, as it is merely his energy given a familiar shape and temperament. It can act like normal fire, or it can be harmless to the touch, in which case it will be used for teleportation purposes and in lesser cases as a healing agent for biological tissues.
SHAPESHIFTING
1. humanoid form: it’s the shape he uses most often to interact with the world at large, mostly out of custom, as it was the shape he was born in. it greatly emulates a human being on the outside, though he works at a different wavelength than one – his blood is denser and heavier, colored like liquid gold, and his internal organs are all fully functioning, but they are not vital. he’s stronger and faster than it’s normal for a human and physically, he takes after his mortal mother. he’s tall (6′4 / 194 cm) and heavier than he seems (270 lbs / 122 kg).
2. animalistic form: it resembles a great feline, specifically a golden tiger. he developed this form roughly around the same time he began to be associated with the deity of caishen. much like in the case of his humanoid form, it’s bigger and heavier than the normal animal, but it can also get even bigger than his basic size. his energy is more free-flowing in this shape, exuding aura-like out of his body, something he has to will in his human form. it can either look just a bit unusual or extremely abnormal.
3. primordial form: it takes after his father, which is to say, it has no definite shape, for its ruled by the viewer’s perception. it’s his energy given free reign. though he can tap into it anytime, he seldom uses it, for it has a tendency to disturb the general surroundings of the places he’s in (with the exception of babel) and has a correlation with the creation of space/time rifts that “disrupt the peace” of your otherwise slice of life universe if he’s not careful. in other words, he can inadvertently cause probability meltdowns or strange phenomena that otherwise does not occur (like perfect circles and other geometric impossibilities), on top of the customary effects on lesser living forms (insanity for humans, primal fright responses in animals).
BENEDICTION
Janus can bless people by having them drink a drop of his blood. Such blessing may grant the subject with a variety of gifts, usually depending on Janus’ intention – a predilection towards wealth and prosperity, an ease towards acquiring great knowledge, a special access to him and ability to summon him, healing from a certain illness and even a limited biological de-aging, in other words the chance to look and feel younger than you might really be.
Any attempts to use/steal/take Janus’ blood by force due to its desirable properties usually winds up being deadly for the assailant due to the toxicity his blood has otherwise.
CALLING
Janus can telepathically communicate with followers (easily) and non-followers (if he tries very hard)! He can be summoned via prayer as well as some sacrifices, and he’ll more often than not heed your call if you do it properly.
GOLDEN TOUCH + GOLD MANIPULATION
1. The ability to turn things (living or not) to solid gold by manner of physical contact. He seldom uses this power offensively. Instead, he uses it for when he needs money for whatever reason in worlds where precious metals are used as currency or have a high price value (like Earth), or to build things. He can revert the change.
2. By necessity that also means he can control gold and to a lesser degree other metals, although he can’t create them outright the way he can gold (he can create less pure versions of gold and alloys, which by necessity will have other metals added to it, like copper in the case of rose gold). Mostly, he can reshape and mold gold almost effortlessly.
babel-based
Inside Babel (which is, more or less, a habitable extension of Janus’ primordial energy – ergo, an Eldritch location, as well as a liminal space) Janus’ abilities are greatly amplified. This is his home realm, and he has a total control of what happens in it.
OMNISCIENCE
Nobody knows exactly how Babel works except Janus, and nobody knows exactly where everything is except for Janus. He’s the “Man of the Book”, so to speak, and without him Babel is about as easy to explore as a foreign country when you have absolute zero knowledge of the language or the culture. Finding something in such a vast, infinite, and uncooperative place can only be done with Janus’ aid, who has empathic familiarity of the library and every one of the books in it.
It is limited to Babel, and outside the library, he knows a lot, but he doesn’t know everything.
OMNIPOTENCE
Janus can do anything inside Babel, not limited to the aforementioned list of powers. He can create and reshape and destroy reality in any way just by thinking of it, and he can engineer anything, including sentient life.
