Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler)

Kurt Wagner

the basics

Kurt Wagner •
nicknames • Nightcrawler
age • 24 years
birthday • 12/7
occupation • Teacher at Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters.
affiliation • X-men
gender • Male
sexuality • Heterosexual

the appearance

face claim • Kurt Wagner
height and weight • 5 feet 9 inches & 161 lbs
identifying features • Blue fur and hair, glowing eyes, spaded tail.

*the personality

likes • Honesty, fencing, learning, tolerance, students smiling, debates
dislikes • Intolerance, racial hate, misogyny, cold blooded murder, fanaticism, closemindedness.
strengths • great patience, perseverance, tolerance, love of all but the irredeemable.
weaknesses • Almost too patient, gives one too many chances, self-doubts.
dreams • A world of tolerance and union between humans and mutants.
fears • That mutants or humans eradicate the other, that he is not worthy of the trust that God has put in him.

overall personality • Kurt is a patient, tolerant and kind man. He does his very best to be a devout catholic, and a good teacher. He is accepting of others, and meets mockery and negative attitudes with a smile and kindness. He is a man who seeks to bring out the best in everyone, and will meet even the worst people to debate and talk with them. But Kurt is also a man of action, and while he seeks to do as little harm to others as possible, he also strives to end physical conflicts as quickly as possible. However, Kurt also has a tendency to tease and crack jokes during fights, not because he himself is insecure, but to goad his opponents into foolish and rash actions. Though, some suspect that secretly, Kurt enjoys physical fights, just a little bit.

the abilities

Special abilities • Kurt possesses the ability to teleport himself, the clothes he is wearing, and within limits a certain amount of additional mass which is in contact with him. He teleports by displacing himself into the Brimstone Dimension, traveling through it, and then returning to his own dimension at a certain distance from his point of departure. He consciously determines his point of return. The entire process occurs so quickly that Kurt is unaware of being in the Brimstone Dimension at all. Kurt guides himself through the Brimstone Dimension by a subconscious, natural directional sense. Although Kurt controls his teleportation with his conscious mind, his power to teleport is not psionic. Rather it is the result of an unknown biochemical/biophysical reaction which he triggers mentally. When he disappears in teleporting, Kurt leaves behind smoke with a stench reminiscent of burning brimstone. This is a small portion of the atmosphere of the Brimstone Dimension that escapes while the aperture is open. His teleportation is invariably accompanied by the muffled sound of imploding air rushing to fill the vacuum left where Kurt's body was, creating his signature *BAMF* sound.

Kurt's powers automatically displace liquids and gases when he arrives in the course of a teleportation. His powers will not displace solids, however, putting him at risk for materializing inside solid matter, causing serious injury or death. As a consequence, Kurt typically teleports only to places he has been to before or knows the layout of, or line-of-sight teleportation (even though his actual range is much further). Kurt's intuitive spatial awareness allows him to track his movements instinctively and with greater precision than the average person, helping him to pinpoint locations for a "blind" teleport.

The longer the distance over which Kurt teleports himself, the harder and more exhausting it is for him to make the teleportation "jump". It is easier for him to teleport between north and south (along Earth's magnetic field lines) than it is for him to teleport between east and west (against the magnetic lines). Under optimal conditions, teleporting only himself and his costume, Kurt can displace himself a distance of about 2 miles east-to-west, and up to 3 miles north-to-south per jump. Making a vertical teleportation upwards is difficult and dangerous, fighting against both the electromagnetic and gravitational fields. Kurt has made a vertical teleportation "jump" of one mile by pushing himself to his physical limits. Kurt's momentum is retained throughout the process of teleportation: he arrives with whatever amount of inertia he left with. For example, if he were falling from a great height, he could not teleport himself towards the ground in order to save himself; he would land with the same velocity that he teleported with. He can subtract this inertia by teleporting short distances upwards (as though taking two steps back for every one forward).

The limits to the mass that Kurt can carry with him while teleporting, and the limits to the distance over which he can teleport himself with additional load is unknown. When he transports a passenger over even moderate distances, they both feel weakened and ill, to the point of exhaustion. Teleportation over further distances could be fatal. Through practice, Kurt has increased the mass he can teleport with him. The upper limits of this capacity are as yet unknown. Kurt can use his powers offensively by grappling with an enemy and teleporting him or her in a series of rapid jumps. The strain of these "multiple ports" can exhaust foes without superhuman endurance while Kurt remains strong enough to continue fighting.

Subconscious Spatial Awareness: Kurt has a very limited subconscious extrasensory ability that prevents him from teleporting himself so that his feet, for example, would materialize below the surface of the local ground. Because this ability is so limited, however, Kurt will not teleport into any place that he cannot see or has not seen in the past. If Kurt teleported himself into an unfamiliar area, he would run the risk of materializing partially or entirely within a solid object. If too much of his body materialized within a solid object, he would probably be killed. As part of his power, Kurt has also exhibited a limited ability to sense the teleportation of other beings.

Micro-Suction Discs: Kurt can stick to objects with the surface of his hands and feet. This enables him to scale surfaces.

Flexible Bone Structure: Kurt's bone structure allows him great flexibility. He can remain in a crouched position for a long time and perform contortionist type feats without causing any damage to his spine.

Camouflage: He has limited abilities to blend into shadows, both as a result of his indigo fur and his connection to the light-bending attributes of the dimension through which he teleports. This is also the explanation for why he constantly appears in shadow, even in direct light.

Prehensile Tail: allowing him to grab onto objects with relative ease. His tail is strong enough to not only support his body weight but also lift an adult man completely off the ground. It is deft enough to fight with a sword or blunt object for example.

Night Vision: Kurt's always glowing eyes grant him a marked degree of heightened night vision as well.

Superhuman Agility: Kurt's agility, balance, and bodily coordination are enhanced to levels beyond the human body's natural limits.

Superhuman Reflexes: Kurt's natural reaction time is enhanced to a level beyond the human body's natural limits.

Weaknesses • Despite Kurt’s superhuman powers, he is just as susceptible to disease and physical injury as any ordinary human. Also, because he is a Neyaphem, Angel's blood, which heals everyone else, hurts him, normally adding to whatever injury he received.

Skills • Master Acrobat: Kurt is an Olympic-class acrobat thanks to his flexible spine that allows him to perform contortionist-like feats and to go long periods in a semi-crouching position without injury.

Master Combatant: He is a skilled hand-to-hand combatant and a master at fencing, which he can even perform with his tail, which is strong enough to support his entire body weight.

Aviator: He has served as the team's pilot and has also been the mechanic of the X-Men's Blackbird jet for a long time.

Medic: He has been the team medic when no more qualified X-Men were around to do so.

the history

father • Azazel, Thousands of years, Lord of a hellish dimension.
mother • Raven Darkholme, several hundred years, Freelance assassin and spy.
siblings • Rogue, half sibling.
important people • Father Wagner, Logan, Charles Xavier, Rogue.
hometown • Castle of Baron Wagner.
overall history • Kurt was born from the union of a shape shifting mutant called Mystique, and a Neyaphem by the name of Azazel. At the time or the union, Mystique was already married to a Baron Christian Wagner, but was instructed by Azazel to lie to her husband and claim the child was his. Azazel told her, “Never confuse a physical passion for a condition of the heart, my dear. Since the dawn of mankind, the two have rarely gone hand in hand. Now go back to the Baron, stay safe and warm in the cozy, comfortable, protected little world you've married into, and raise our child--my child--as his” And with that, he left her behind returning to the strange other realm from which he came. The baron was of course suspicious, but after his sudden, unexpected and tragic death due to a freak accident, no one else heard of his suspicions for almost half a year, as the Baroness was left alone in her grief. The child himself was born with visible mutations in the form of blue fur and hair, glowing eyes and fewer fingers and toes than normal as well as a tail. His existence was kept a secret for nearly a year, but, like all good things, it came to an end. Secrets can never be kept, especially something like this. A maid spoke a little too loudly in the local village, and the next thing the baroness knew, the villagers were knocking on her door. They demanded to see the child, and when they were not let inside, they broke down the door. In a panic, Mystique’s disguise fell, and they saw both her and her son as they truly were. The former baroness and her child was then chased by the angry mob who wished to kill them both. During her escape however, Mystique lost her child in a nearby river. Unable to do anything for him, she continued her escape.

However, this was not the end of the young boy, as Kurt miraculously survived the wild river. He was later found by Margali Szardos, a sorceress and gypsy queen. She had decided to become a fortuneteller at a local circus, due to personal reasons that she never disclosed with her new adopted son. She took the young blue boy in, naming him Kurt. She raised him as her own child, though nobody at the circus officially adopted him. It was a happy time for the most part in the circus, as no one held any negative emotions towards a “freak” like Kurt. All except the ringmaster, who despite his dislike of freaks accepted Kurt as he had all other “freaks” at his circus, as they earned him a good profit. Kurt grew up, trained by the many performers in the circus until he himself became an attraction, performing daring feats of agility and acrobatics, which he found natural. However, as Kurt grew older, he drew in less and less of a crowd, until the ringmaster, Herr Getmann, could no longer afford to keep Kurt around. Fearing for her “son’s” future, Margali freed Kurt, helping him escape with the aid of one of her friends. During his escape, Kurt accidentally toppled a torch, lighting the circus on fire. Herr Getmann and his men chased Kurt and when they finally caught up with him, they were ready to kill. However, before they could pull the trigger, Kurt disappeared in a cloud of smoke. He had teleported for the first time, which he knew, was what had saved his life.

Kurt then made his way to Father Wagner's church, a small church out in the forest. He was soon discovered, however, and welcomed. Here he was set to pay for his stay with physical labor. It was here that Kurt, under the tutelage of Father Wagner, learned about and embraced Catholicism. Kurt was actually happy there, and lived a peaceful life for almost a year. It was then, one evening, that a friend from the circus, another freak, barged into the church. He was on the run from Getmann and sought refuge. Not long after, Getmann and his henchmen burst in as well. Father Wagner tried to stop them, but was overpowered easily. The men set the church ablaze as well while hunting for Kurt and his friend. Kurt, for the first time in his life, teleported with someone else, his friend, to a nearby cemetery, before he returned to fight Getmann. Kurt, furious with Getmann’s actions, started to beat and beat and beat on the former ringleader. Kurt got close to killing the beaten man, but was stopped by Father Wagner who reminded him of his humanity. Spotting his chance, Getmann pulled a gun and aimed to shoot both Kurt and Father Wagner, but failed as Kurt teleported both of them out of the church just in time before the roof collapsed, presumably killing Getmann in the process. Without a home, but with the reassurance that Father Wagner and his friend would be fine, Kurt ventured out into the world once more.

A couple years later, on one fateful evening, a chance meeting changed Kurt’s life forever. It had started with the hoots of some punks, the start of what was undoubtedly a mugging. The bald man, the target of the mugging had been Charles Xavier himself, and despite, as Kurt later learned, the fact that he could have stopped the men at any moment, Charles did nothing. Instead, Kurt came to his rescue, deterring the muggers, making them flee with a few simple tricks and no need for violence. Charles had claimed he had seen what kind of man Kurt was from his thoughts and soon the two began to talk, and talk. For most of the evening and upcoming day they talked and Charles shared his vision of a bright, peaceful future for all, mutants and humans. Kurt found it to be a beautiful dream, one he wanted to support, and thus, he joined Xavier, becoming one of his X-men and teachers at his school where he now teach sociology and fencing.

the role player

Doctormichael • Doc is fine
age • 23 years
pronouns • he, his
other characters • Brave, Daken, Magneto, Graydon Creed