#2 – Xroma of the Marginal Men

This is the character that started it all. I’ve played her as Chroma in several online newsgroup-rpgs, and every time the super-team made her the leader after only two days. After a little bit of reconceptualising, she became Xroma (still pronounced Chroma, but spelled like the original Greek word, meaning colour).

Xroma is Sarah Bloemdahl (pronounced somewhat like Bloom-darl, which means “valley of flowers”) from Amsterdam, Netherlands. Sarah found out early in her life that she had the power to affect the light-reflecting and light-absorbing properties of exposed surfaces – colours. She kept it a secret, and used it to train herself in the arts.

Unfortunately, the colours she invokes don’t last, so her career as an artist was cut short by a harsh reality-check: nobody wanted paintings that faded after 8 hours. Sarah’s power can be maintained by shere concentration, but this will put her under an extreme strain. Objecte the size of a penny stay coloured for about 8 hours, but the colours fade instantly from a wall, if Sarah diverts her attention to somewhere else.

Sarah found out that she wanted to use her superpower for super-heroism, just because she was special, and specially gifted people should be heroes. Sarah trained herself to become a professional gymnast, and has participated in the Olympic games and various championships for the Netherlands, winning Olympic Bronze a few years ago. She has since started to teach gymnastics in order to pay her bills.

But at night, she dons a white iceskating suit and mirrored glasses, and fights street-level crime in the streets and subway of Amsterdam. Using her powers in unique ways like branding fugitive criminals with a glowing green X, blinding them by turning the outer layer of their eyes (or the tear fluid) black, or entering a camouflage mode, Sarah has earned the respect of the local authorities.

When her existance became public eventually, Sarah realised she needed a name. The letter X is hardly used in the Dutch language, so Sarah picked a fitting name that would make the X her very own. She became Xroma.

Xroma is a very light-hearted heroine, loves physical activities and full contact martial arts. Although fun-loving and cheerful, she is very determined about her heroics.

When she finds out about Blindsight’s quest for fellow heroes, she seeks him out and volunteers, even moves to the US, building up a new school for gymnastics there.

Being a foreigner, Sarah has a few quirks, especially her lousy English. Often, she will mix in Dutch words or entire sentences. Within the “Marginal Men”, Xroma is the field commander, since she is an exerienced combatant and master of improvisation. She’s also the one to cheer everyone up. The fact that underneath her mask she is quite pretty also helps keeping the male members of the team together.

Sarah is secretly in love with Blindsight, who in turn is also fond of her but refuses to admit it because of his constant fear to cause anybody harm. What fascinates Xroma most about Blindsight is his almost complete immunity to her powers. Blindsights x-ray-vision does not perceive colour in a normal way. Since Blindsight keeps the nature of his powers secret, Xroma constantly tries testing her powers on him, which she perceives as “flirting”.

Yesterday: Blindsight
Return tomorrow for Simulacrum

Tags: Marginal Men

Category: Superhero