Scapegoat

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<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Scapegoat</default></title>

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>

<label>Status</label><format>

{{{status}}}

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<label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox> William Giles,<ref name=8.ye1>One thing was near unanimous, however, and that was that when those versions of William Giles had their power, it was this power, and they fucking hated it. - Excerpt from Interlude 8.y II</ref> publicly known as Scapegoat, and later as The Black Goat, is a pseudo-healer with personal access to the multiverse.

Personality

While generally sarcastic,<ref name="19.3"/> he was still willing to heal people despite risking getting dangerous even fatal conditions transferred to him. He was also willing to transfer these conditions to others even if they didn't deserve it.<ref name="SV1"/>

He was freaked out by the events of the new S-class threat in Brockton Bay, though he tried to cover it up with humor.

Events of the Gold Morning instilled in him a deep sense of despair and futility.<ref name="8.y"/>

Appearance

<tabber> Worm= When in costume Scapegoat has a white and gold color scheme. His mask is an alabaster goat's head in reference to his name, with two curling horns fixed to a golden circlet. He can move the visor up, if needed. He wears white functional robes similar to Myrddin, with armor present underneath, a golden chain around his waist with a goat's head buckle.<ref name="19.2"/><ref name="19.3"/><ref name="Cast"/> He was short enough that Taylor concluded he was probably under 18.<ref name="19.2"/> |-|Ward= Later in his career he would wear a black costume with a golden goats mask.<ref>The cape wore a goat mask, golden, and a black costume. He sat on one of the benches of the bus. There were others in the bus, men and women in cuffs.

Now that I looked, the cape had cuffs on as well.

“This is Scapegoat,” Mayday said. “He can heal. Sort of. It’s complicated.” - Pitch 6.5</ref> |-|Black Goat= As a member of Fallen he wears a goat skull helmet and decorated belt with long black loincloth. His back is tattooed.<ref>He’d gone full mercenary. Now he stood there, shirtless, a tattoo across his back, a helmet miming a goat skull over his upper face. He wore an ornate belt with black cloth draping down.

He wasn’t quite her type. A bit of a slouch, too down on himself. But he was muscular, he took care of himself, that Fallen tattoo excepted. - Excerpt from Interlude 15.y II</ref> </tabber>

Abilities and Powers

Scapegoat "heals" people by means of shifting alternate possibilities and substantiating them into reality,<ref name="19.2"/><ref name="R1">how his power works Scapegoat pulls high definition simulations and images from other realities and situates them in '1.5' space (see my recent Labyrinth explanation) with an eye to making them permanent. He also transfers hard-to-define factors, realities and signatures (such as ongoing power effects) and takes them on or shoves them into other individuals.
If he touches an ongoing, high definition simulation and abstract signature (a duplicate/clone), he might well set in motion an effect that calls them into reality in a more permanent sense. So that walking distillation and encapsulation of the shard's xerox of Mister Mister the duplicator transitions out of 1.5 space and into 1 space.
And from there, you end up with screwed up power dynamics. Mister Mister's shard is sitting there with the following rule: <[I double the number of Mister Misters, I sap his stamina to ensure he doesn't overuse it and bankrupt me, and after 60 seconds I destroy half of them.]> - but there's a problem, because an override is on one of the Mister Misters's Misters from another shard, and it says <~pull this into this reality and keep it there, because this guy has ongoing effects (wounds, diseases) on it~>. So the shard follows its rule, and depending on relationships to shards, the nitty gritty particulars of shard and situation, resources, breadth and depth, and if it would create interesting conflict at an interesting time... sometimes the shard gets around the override by destroying the original, phasing it back into the storage dimension, whatever.
Note: for those reading this comment, added an edit to my last comment above. - Scapegoat power Synergies (Wildbow, reddit.com, 2017-05)</ref> transferring mental and physical afflictions between targets.<ref name="SV1"/> To do this he uses his own body as a bridge and a reference base for this process, keeping him from absorbing every possible symptom.<ref name="19.2 c1">Psycho Gecko:
Wonder what would have happened if she was on her period.

Wildbow:
Nothing. Scapegoat uses his own body as a template. He can’t absorb symptoms to parts he doesn’t have. - Comment by Wildbow on Scourge 19.2</ref><ref name="19.2 c2"/>

Scapegoat's power allows him to dig through potential realities to find uninjured versions of the person he is working on and apply that person's condition to his target. This removes the person's injuries, essentially making it as though they had not suffered them at all. The effect is weaker if the target resists, and can be broken if they are subjected to impacts, injuries or shocks in one to six hours following the procedure. They must stay within 150 feet of him.<ref name="19.4 e1">I couldn’t move too far away from Scapegoat. I was tethered to him by an invisible, intangible cord, about one hundred and fifty feet long; about half a city block.

Still, provided I was directly above him, it let me fly about eight or nine stories above the ground. I wasn’t untouchable, but I was safer. - Excerpt from Scourge 19.4</ref> Once he uses his power, he takes on the injuries of the person he has applied it to.<ref name="19.2"/><ref name="19.5">Scourge 19.5</ref> He is even capable of transferring permanent disabilities or power-induced effects.<ref name="playtest"/>

His power has an offensive application, wherein he can apply the injuries he sustains to an enemy,<ref name="19.5 e1">Scapegoat was out of the van and shouting. Weld was among the capes that came to his assistance. He held a female clone in his iron grip, with one hand over her mouth.

Tecton and Wanton moved to help, and Scapegoat looked up at me, gesturing.

Pointing at the ground.

[...]

The second I was settled, Scapegoat laid his hands on the clone Weld had caught.

As before, the sensations hit me. Phantom sensations of every possible texture and experience rippling across my entire body.

This was why he’d told me to land. He’d been worried I might lose control of my power, maybe losing control over Atlas and fall.

[...]

The sensations kept hitting me. It was a deeper sensation now. Tastes, vision, hearing… everything under the sun, fragments of a million different sensations. Picking through the noise was nearly impossible. I had to find refuge in my swarm’s senses, disassociate from my body…

[...]

The clone and Scapegoat were down, struck by the glass from the van’s windshield. Chevalier had been caught by something, a fragment of glass that had penetrated a slit in his visor, and he was struggling to fight three clones and avoid hitting his teammates, all while partially blind.

I checked myself. I could breathe, I wasn’t blind. All despite Scapegoat’s disabled state.

Had he transferred the conditions to the clone? Was I in the clear?

I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t sure I could afford to take the risk and stray beyond that one-hundred and fifty foot range of his. - Excerpt from Scourge 19.5</ref><ref name="19.2"/><ref name="SV1">Scapegoat isn't so bad. He can transmit any mental or physical afflictions to a touched enemy. In a funk? Here you go, Mrs. Asshole Teacher. - Comment by Wildbow on Sufficient Velocity</ref> with a lower chance to revert to him if the enemy is injured.<ref name="playtest"/>

Experiencing Scapegoat's power is very uncomfortable during the transfer, as you briefly feel a multitude of seemingly-random sensations at the same time.<ref name="19.2"/>He can concentrate to "seal" a given transfer, reducing the risk and eventually making the transfer permanent. Alternatively, he can concentrate to influence the duration of afflictions he's applied to himself upward or downward. These options are mutually exclusive.<ref name="playtest">Playtest Capes</ref> Things are harder for if the subject still has organs that he has had removed.<ref name="19.2 c2">Psycho Gecko:
So he can’t do anything about people with appendix or tonsil problems if he’s had them taken out?

Wildbow:
It’d be far less effective, more prone to ‘breaking’.

Whether he could do it at all might depend on whether the removal of said parts predated gaining his power or not. - Comment by Wildbow on Scourge 19.2</ref>

History

Background

He suffered from "what seemed like an endless march of failing health, new illnesses, syndromes, and mystery diagnoses" before gaining his powers.<ref name="playtest e1">He thought his powers meant he finally had relief from a life of what seemed like an endless march of failing health, new illnesses, syndromes, and mystery diagnoses. The poor bastard. - Playtest Capes</ref>

He became a healer for the Wards.<ref name="19.2 E1">“Scapegoat?” I asked. “A healer?”

“No,” Scapegoat said. “But I can fix you. Sort of.”

“What do you mean by ‘sort of’?”

“What I do is fragile. It’s not healing. You’ll stop hurting, the wounds will disappear, but it’s a delicate balance, and the duration is limited.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” I said.

“When the duration expires, unless certain conditions are met, the injuries come back. Sometimes not as bad, sometimes worse. And they’re usually slower to heal.”

“What’s the duration?” I asked.

“Anywhere from one hour to six hours.”

“And the condition?” I asked.

“Longer you go without breaking the effect, the better the chance the injuries stay gone.” - Excerpt from Scourge 19.2</ref><ref name="Cast"/>

Post-Slaughterhouse Nine

During the Echidna Incident he was paid off by Tattletale to heal the damage done to Skitter without informing him of the extent of the latter's injuries. He was reduced to a blind coughing wreck after absorbing her injuries.<ref name="19.2">Scourge 19.2</ref>

He was later able to transfer these injuries to an Echidna clone.<ref name="19.5 e1"/> Overall he acquitted himself well in the fight against Echidna, vastly reducing fatalities and casualties among the defending capes, such as Clockblocker.<ref name="19.6">Scourge 19.6</ref><ref name="19.3">Scourge 19.3</ref>

He was nowhere to be seen at New Delhi,<ref name="24.x">San Diego, absent. They’d lost too many members, abandoned by those who’d lost faith in the Protectorate, with the remnants cannibalized to support other teams in need. San Diego was more or less stable, so there’d been little pressure to resupply them with new members.

Except that Spire, San Diego’s team leader, hadn’t felt confident walking into the fight. There’d been the human element, the fears, the concerns. He’d had cold feet at the last second, decided not to come. An integral part of their defense, gone, forcing them to adapt. - Excerpt from Interlude 24.x</ref> possibly because of his young age.<ref>XV Question: What does the PRT/Protectorate do with capes that are too young to join the Wards, such as the five-year-old third-gen cape mentioned in Piggot's interlude? Is there a daycare program?

Wildbow No daycare. Gradually more involvement over time, trying to make it feel like family/home. Come after school, meet the heroes. Let's do some fun training! Let's do a costume and do a photoshoot, how cool is that?
[...]
Doc_PRT "Oh hey how do you feel about fighting S-Class threats. You can do that now!"

Wildbow (Generally discouraged, but kid heroes will want to protect their hometown. Brockton Bay Wards are hardcore) - Conversation on discord, archived on spacebattles.</ref>

Post-Gold Morning

Survived the end of the world, although deeply traumatized,<ref name="6.5 II">Pitch 6.5</ref> specifically by the scale of destruction, that mostly no one else was able to see.<ref name="8.y">Interlude 8.y II</ref> Joined Advance Guard at some point.<ref name="5.5 II">Shadow 5.5</ref>

Early-Ward

Scapegoat participated in the Mathers Compound Assault on the hero's side, but revealed himself as a Fallen agent by sabotaging his team,<ref name="6.5 II" /> giving the Crowley's and their allies time to escape.<ref>Pitch 6.6</ref>

He was placed in a parahuman prison camp.<ref>“Scapegoat’s here, Seir’s here,” Rain heaved out a sigh as he said it. “Valefor is in a hospital with one of these ankle bombs attached. Mama Mathers is…” - Excerpt from Beacon 8.4</ref> Where he was found and recruited by Teacher.<ref name="8.y"/>

Post-Time Bubble Pop

William gave a new breath to Teacher's organization.<ref>Black 13.x</ref>

During the Wardens' assault on Teacher's base he was paired with Ingenue to counter Valkyrie and her Flock. Billy was tortured and nearly killed by Spawner for denying Ingenue.<ref name="15.yII">Interlude 15.y II</ref>

Black Goat retreated to The City alongside Ingenue.<ref name="16.1II">From Within 16.1</ref>

Trivia

• Scapegoating refers to the practice of leading a goat outside a town's limits and killing it therefore banishing all the ill will.
  • In modern usage, it refers to blaming someone for someone/everybody else's problems.

References

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