The Simurgh
| “ | The study materials they gave out said it would feel hopeless. More than any other fight against Endbringers. | ” |
| {{#if:Victoria| —Victoria{{#if:Last 20.6|, Last 20.6}} }}}} | ||
<infobox> <title source="name"><default>The Simurgh</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><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>
The Simurgh (Pronounced "see-MOORG" or "SEE-moorg" in US English<ref>\siˈmʊ(ə)ɹɡ\ or \ˈsi.mʊ(ə)ɹɡ\ according to Merriam-Webster dictionary (M-W notation: \ sēˈmu̇(ə)rg , ˈ⸗ˌ⸗ \). The "ur" in "Simurgh" is like the "oor" in "poor".</ref> and "sim-MOORG" in UK English<ref>/sɪˈmʊəɡ/ according to Collins Dictionary. The "ur" in "Simurgh" is like the "oor" in "poor".]</ref>) is one of the three original Endbringers, alongside Behemoth and Leviathan. She is the most recent of the trio to appear, having first made her presence known in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2002.
Personality
The Simurgh's thought patterns are clinical and not human, being very goal-oriented and future-focused.<ref name="28.4 e15">“Ridiculous,” Lung repeated himself. “And you stopped in the middle of a conversation. She is waiting for you to continue.”
“She doesn’t care. Ninety-nine percent sure. Gotta understand, she’s not even close to human, especially once you scratch the surface. We think in black and white, she thinks in… void and substance. In abstracts or in causative contexts, looking into the future and seeing how things unfold. So we’re going to try this, and maybe something sticks.” - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.4</ref> She is a cunning planner<ref name="Cast2" /> who, after finding a desired future outcome, will methodically work backwards to decipher the critical events needed to make this outcome possible.<ref name="II19.z e9">She worked backwards, deciphering the events that brought this reality about. She would triumph in the fight, because Cryptid would find himself sympathizing with her. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref> She then takes actions in an attempt to causally cause these events to occur,<ref name="II19.z eStudy" /> such as taking intervening actions to ideally stop other events from happening that would causally prevent her desired outcome.<ref>The heroine she had crushed underfoot would have accompanied Lady Photon of the flock to meet Riley Grace Davis. She knew Riley Grace Davis, and was recognizable as a member of the flock. In her company, Riley would not feel so isolated, and would not express the words that would allow Cryptid to sympathize with her.
Now an unpowered civilian would attend. The conversation would adjust.
Cryptid was handled. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref>
The Simurgh is aware of the concept of joy and calm.<ref name="28.x e11">She does not feel joy at this. This is the task. Means to ends. - Excerpt from Interlude 28</ref><ref name="28.x e19" /> According to Tattletale, the typical shard lacks human rationales, plays the long game, and follows a set goal.<ref>“It’s going to bounce back from just about anything you could do to it. Prepare for it to have a few tricks up its sleeve, because it’s an extension of a species that plays the long game and that knows we don’t have it in us to permanently stop it. So don’t underestimate it, don’t assume it’s shown you everything it can do.”
[...]
“It isn’t human, and it never was,” she went on. “Don’t expect it to have human rationales. Do expect it to have a program it follows, a set goal that may or may not be one hundred percent clear. It’s going to be somewhat predictable, but powerful enough that the predictability isn’t reassuring or an easy answer.” - From Within 16.8</ref> Although Tattletale believes the Simurgh runs on more emotional response patterns than other Endbringers such as Behemoth and that the belief system of the Simurgh's creator has influenced how she functions, Tattletale still believes her mindset vaguely resembles that of a shard.<ref name="28.4 eBelief">“They run on different patterns. Fair bit of anger, room for some vengeance. Cleverness, sure. More in her than in Behemoth. Some killer instinct, maybe… a blend of fear and caution. Not so they’re afraid, but so they can temper their actions. This? Right here? It’s the closest we’re about to get to communicating directly with a passenger.”
[...]
“They’re passengers?” I asked.
“The shell? No. The outer shell, the concept, the execution, they’re tapping into religious metaphors. The devil, the serpent, the angel, buddha, mother earth, the maiden, each connected in turn to fundamental forces. Flame, water, fate, time, earth, the self. Things deep-seated and fundamental to their creator’s belief system, because that’s how the passengers interpret our world. Through us. But deep down? Beyond that surface, beyond the basic programming that drives them to do what they’ve been doing for thirty years? It’s the passenger’s brush strokes. And I’m getting to her.” - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.4</ref>
She typically has a neutral expression<ref name="28.4 e9">Her expression was neutral, but then again, the Simurgh’s expression was always neutral. A face like a doll’s, a cold stare. - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.4</ref> and does not smile.<ref name="SV art" /> That said, she is capable of raising a rare smile. After the Simurgh spent two years preparing for her fight against Titan Fortuna<ref name="II18.z strength" /> and Fortuna decided to cede some ground during their precog duel, the Simurgh smiled and stretched her wings wider.<ref>Finally, she decided to cede ground. To look for the answer why. Though the silver woman couldn’t reach her, couldn’t see her, a smile crept over the silver face, and wings stretched wider. She had somehow sensed the surrender. - Radiation 18.z</ref>
The Simurgh refers to herself as female.<ref name="I28">Excerpt from Interlude 28</ref><ref name="II19.z">Infrared 19.z</ref>
The Simurgh has not shown any inclination to attack satellites in orbit or prevent space travel in general. Several satellites orbit Earth Bet for applications in communication,<ref>“You’ll each be provided with a satellite phone before you leave, with mobile phones to use when the towers are in operation again. - Snare 13.1</ref><ref>Only two kids were sleeping there, both clearly brother and sister. It was as much privacy as she was going to get. She plucked the satellite phone from her pocket. - Interlude 14</ref><ref>My phone lit up as a connection was established to a satellite.
A moment later, the connection was secured.
The clock changed, followed by a time zone and a symbol. Four forty-six, Eastern standard time, Earth Bet.
[...]
Towers surrounded Brockton Bay, set on mountaintops and high ground within the city itself. It necessitated a careful approach. As we passed between two, I saw that they were communication towers, crafted to put satellite dishes at high points rather than provide shelter. - Venom 29.1</ref><ref>PRT divisions and precincts in neighboring cities were all too willing to send along staff and officers to assist, but her firm requests for the fundamentals -for computers, printers, satellite hookups, electricians and IT teams- were ignored all too often. - Interlude 13</ref> internet,<ref>“No,” I heard Tattletale, “Separate power source, buried deeper beneath the building. Same with the computers, there’s nothing upstairs or even in the city that could turn them off. They’re hooked up to that power source, they’ve got internal batteries, and the only external connection is by satellite linkup. They might terminate our connection to the computer database via the satellite feed, but not the lights.” - Parasite 10.3</ref><ref>You state your location as the north end of Brockton Bay, profess to have a generator and satellite internet. Ok, not unheard of. - Interlude 19.y</ref> TV,<ref>The first things I’d done after Coil’s men had unloaded the furniture and supplies was to hook up an internet connection and computer and get my television mounted on a wall and connected to a satellite. - Infestation 11.1</ref><ref>“Nuh uh. No way. If you two want to play hardass mom and dad and be controlling assholes, okay. But you can’t tell me I can’t watch T.V.”
“I mean you won’t get any channels. There’s no cable, no digital connection and no satellite. Only static.” - Monarch 16.6</ref> observation,<ref>“Yeah, and unless something’s changed,” Kevin said, “The only person he listens to is me. He’d come when I was alone, when the weather was bad or in the dead of night, and however he comes, nobody ever followed him here.”
“They can’t follow him with cameras or satellite, I heard. Have to rely on eye witnesses and global communication to track him.” - Interlude 18.x</ref><ref>And then there was Nilbog. The data focused around him. The city was quiet, and the roads leading into the city were being watched by satellite. - Interlude 26.x</ref> imagery,<ref>The war room sat opposite Aisha’s room, on the same floor as his. It wasn’t large, but it didn’t really have to be. Satellite images of various locations around the city had been printed out onto four-by-five foot sheets of laminated paper, rolls shelved on the wall with labels in marker. They varied in size, with some extending over the whole city, while others covered the various territories. - Interlude 15.y</ref><ref>“Los Angeles?” Chevalier asked. “What area?”
“That area,” Defiant answered, looking at the computer.
Chevalier nodded slowly.
Golem stared at the screen. He could see the satellite image, the concentric circles that marked the area around the blinking blue dot. - Interlude 26a</ref> and Dragon backups.<ref>Example: one phase of the peripheral systems check involved collecting the uploaded data that had been deposited on the satellite network by her agent system, the onboard computer within the Cawthorne rapid response unit. - Interlude 10.5</ref><ref>Years ago, Saint had preyed on Dragon, shutting off her ability to connect to her satellite network, using several of these same mechanisms to slow down and hamper whatever mech or device she was inhabiting. He would kill her, block any final uploads, and leave her to self-revive from an hours-old backup with no knowledge of what he’d done or how he’d beat her. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Multiple space programs exist,<ref>Posted on August 15th, Y1:
To call the efforts of everyone involved heroic would be grossly understating things. This IT project required the efforts of seventy eight PHO staff members, employees of Stateside Online, former officials of the US government, former members of the United States space program, members of international space programs, the Guild (Masamune in particular), and numerous independent experts and volunteers. - Glow-worm P.1</ref> and satellites are still in use during<ref>“I tried to set things up so we’d have some way of maintaining communications and getting some information in, getting information out. Like, I told people about what you said about Scion hating duplication powers. Anyways, only the very high tech and very low tech have really survived. Satellites and hard copies.” - Venom 29.1</ref><ref>My ranged capes aimed for portals once again. This time, I put the exit portals against Earth’s atmosphere, aiming for the general direction of a satellite.
It took thirty seconds of sustained fire before Shén Yù’s power stopped telling me it was a weak point. Other thinker powers in my range were giving me similar feedback. A cape with perfect eyesight was telling me it could even see the explosion. - Speck 30.4</ref> and after Gold Morning.<ref>People got lost or stranded in the wilderness on Earth in 2012, with all that world’s satellites. It can and will happen in new universes. - Glow-worm P.6</ref><ref>Shower: It’s interfering with others’ ability to access things. It might not seem like a problem here, because you’re close to the home node, but there are people on the periphery or far-flung regions and they’re going from satellite to ground to satellite to here, across several Earths. - Glow-worm P.7</ref><ref>His computer had a battery of its own, and the machine it was hooked up to gave it a satellite feed. In a vast sea of darkness, with much of the city unlit at this late hour, people were retreating to Gary’s tent. - Interlude 7.y II</ref><ref>“Overlaying to satellite image of the area.”
On the largest screen, a map appeared, just large enough to have the New York district in its bottom left and Brockton Bay in the top right. Icons with their own abbreviations worked into them were scattered across the city, many flowing from the same general point. - Polarize 10.3</ref><ref>“As was I, for the latter part. Dragon is immensely powerful, but she, like any tinker, is dependent on her pre-established work to function at optimal capacity. The Dragonslayers knew this and used it against her in the past. Teacher used it against her here. With no satellites to use for remote access except the ones she deployed after passing through the portal, she was limited in what she could do. If she dies without redundant systems and infrastructure behind her, she dies for good, just as any of us would.” - From Within 16.1</ref><ref>The main screens switched to each show half of an overhead view. Satellite camera. The epicenter of the attack, the clouds of smoke from the resulting destruction, and those cracks that spread out, like that from the tap of a hammer on a windowpane, except in three dimensions, not two. A city in black and white, with a shadow of gold due to the prevalence of the solar windows reflecting tinted light down onto snow. - Interlude 17.z II</ref><ref>“I don’t know what it is. The capes in Breakthrough’s area have gone quiet. Phone lines are down, satellites are struggling with all of the interference. But we can’t reach them.” - Interlude 17.z II</ref> On one occasion, she physically intercepted the path of a transmission to a satellite with her body; her dense signature gave off strange signals<ref name="II20.a eCollect">The Machine Army was entering the trench, scurrying into the trench, into the dust, where his sensors struggled to read things with the ten kinds of background radiation and-
And strange signals not unlike those he had picked up from Chevalier, when Chevalier had waded into battle.
“They’re going after the pieces of the Simurgh! She gave them pieces of herself!” - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> that scrambled this transmission, which stopped Dragon from getting information from Panacea.<ref>Sixty-two miles above the surface of the Earth, the Simurgh changed the course of her flight.
Following protocol for when Dragon was deployed on a mission, the system routed the message to one of Dragon’s satellite systems. The resulting message was scrambled by the dense signature of the Endbringer en route to Dragon.
Receiving the garbled transmission from the satellite, a subsystem of the Dragon A.I. proceeded to sort it. A scan of the message by a further subroutine saw it classified as non-pertinent, and a snarl in the code from Defiant’s improvised adjustments to her programming saw the message skip past several additional safeties and subroutines. The message was compartmentalized alongside other notes and data that included flares of atmospheric radiation and stray signals from the planet below; background noise at best. - Interlude 16.z</ref><ref>His eyes stopped on a file. Amelia’s.
The entire thing was corrupted. Gibberish. Flagged messages filled four pages, each marked private, marked as ‘no conversation partner’, and marked, thanks to the gibberish and random characters that flooded it, with one string of letters and characters.
The same one that had protected the orange box. The same that had protected Saint and his crew from being uncovered, until Dragon had taken a more direct, brute-force approach to finding them. The built-in blind spot, appearing by chance. A one in a hundred trillion chance.
Saint investigated, digging through the gibberish to find the strings of words that actually made sense. It was something he could piece together, with each recitation being similar, containing similar content. Faeries, passengers, source of powers, the ‘whole’, lobe in the brain, Manton Effect… - Interlude 26.x</ref> Indeed, Scion himself is responsible for stopping large numbers of parahumans from leaving the planet<ref>They don't want people leaving the planet they're working with. A very good reason to have an avatar like Scion around. Probably wouldn't draw his notice until people with shards started leaving in any greater number. - Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref><ref>Avatars like Scion are there in part to ensure things continue smoothly. If people decided to mass evacuate, he'd step in. - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles</ref> and the shards already have built-in limitations to sabotage mass transportation options for space travel.<ref>By and large, the shards would sabotage attempts at going to space. Even Sphere's moon base was probably doomed from the start.
[...]
It is a built-in limitation. Individuals could theoretically leave (Legend?), but mass transportation options would likely be sabotaged (like a Squealer spacehulk, or Sphere's power, for example).
[...]
They tend to be missing /current/ limitations; the ban on space travel is something that would be long-established, valid across multiple species. Other stuff varies for different plans of attack and the like. - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles</ref> Regardless of her interference, Sphere's space project was doomed to fail from the start;<ref>Uphill/doomed project from the start. Shards are situated on Earth, reaching through realities for corona pollentiae. Powers don't really go into space, because, well, you've got the shard situated on the planet, and their reach is stretching, stretching up & out to the person with the shard. Do they exceed the shard's reach? - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles</ref><ref>He likely had the means of creating the moon bubbles and tertiary systems and life support and keeping it running... but maintenance starts getting tricky. The first option is that the shard goes 'this is worth the effort' because Gramme is giving the shard fuel for something interesting, and all is well except for whatever it is that the shard was so keen about. The second option is that the moon base works fine, the first colony gets out there, and then somewhere along the line Gramme's well of inspiration and his eye for key details in his tinkerings just... stops. - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles</ref> he was already a vulnerable target because of his other major projects<ref name="15.5 c3">And I should stress that weak points aren’t necessarily just areas which are geographically vulnerable. There’s places where there’s ongoing conflict (like we might point to the middle east over the past decade), places where it takes little effort on the part of the Endbringer to deal maximum devastation (ie. a nuclear power plant, military bases) and spots where a great many resources are invested (be they great minds collected in one place or major projects like Dr. Gramme’s major projects in trying to save the world). Did anyone else catch the mention of the water crisis? Leviathan isn’t always attacking cities, and the world has only so much accessible freshwater. - Comment by Wildbow on Colony 15.5</ref><ref>“He became newsworthy when he took on a project to build self sustaining biospheres on the moon. He had ideas on solving world hunger, and building aquatic cities near cities plagued by overcrowding. And he was putting it all into effect. Until-”
“The Simurgh,” Colin finished. - Interlude 11d</ref> and his shard's dissatisfaction with him.<ref>Keep in mind, also, that the shards aren't inclined to let people sit around and spend months of time working on side projects without getting any dose of conflict. What happens is you get Spheres and Professor Haywires and Leets. - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles</ref>
Her Drives
Eidolon created the Simurgh with a fundamental drive to go to war against him.<ref name="II19.z e6">She had other drives. To go to war against her creator. To these ends, she created a nemesis. She made him better. He freed people, upset the system, disrupted the process, and in that, he created the chaos that would keep her simulation from being too sterile. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref> However, because he unknowingly built her from greater structures intended to salvage a situation where the host species eliminated itself, she also has a drive to collect, consolidate, and sort information<ref name="II19.z e5">She was built out of greater structures intended to salvage a situation where the species eliminated itself. Future-looking, she would create a forced simulation. It was worse than an organically emergent simulation, but in a process that saw the planet revolve three hundred times around its star, it could be necessary in the final years, consolidating and sorting information, forcibly exploring the resources the planet had to offer.
That was her drive, as much as water and food were necessary for this life she farmed out and put to task in a greater system. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref> produced by parahumans and humanity in a world of conflict.<ref name="II20.8 plan">This whole plan, the idea was to give them exactly what they wanted. The Simurgh wanted a fight, wanted conflict, everyone on the planet pushing themselves to the limit, testing a system she’d set in motion.
Well, she’d got that. Contained to this one facility. With her as our primary enemy, more than each other.
Now Fortuna wanted to end the world. We needed to help her do that. If we balked, if we stopped… we lost. Hesitation when parrying an incoming strike was death. My early sparring with Manpower had taught me that much. It was especially true when your opponent was a hundred times stronger than you, if not stronger. - Last 20.8</ref><ref name="II19.z e8">Three or four billion years would pass before one of the entities returned to this world. In the interim, she would keep this world alive, and she would glean all knowledge that the minds of this world could produce. Every means of suffering, every desperate solution, every invention and inspiration. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref> The Simurgh describes these drives as being just as fundamental to her as water and food are for humans.<ref name="II19.z e5" />
If she is unable to fulfill any of these drives, she will take actions that work towards making it possible again. When Gold Morning occurred, the Simurgh concludes that Scion is now an obstacle to remove:<ref>But she faces an obstacle that she is utterly blind to, now. No apparent past or future. In interacting with it, she is limited to context. She sees not the obstacle, but she can see things that are set in motion around it. She cannot see it strike, but she can see the reaction, the aftermath.
She sees the stone fly out of the darkness, and she can determine where it was thrown from.
There is a task to be completed, but things must be set in place first.
An obstacle must be removed. This is critical, but she is blind to it. This is the greatest problem she faces. - Excerpt from Interlude 28</ref> she starts planning for his death via hijacking Dinah's plot<ref>“My agenda is and always has been what’s best for humanity. I predicted the end of the world. I positioned the right people in the right places. Khepri.” - From Within 16.3</ref> of creating Khepri<ref>“This isn’t a solution,” she said, without looking up. “You said a second trigger wouldn’t work. This is… it’s so crude you couldn’t even call it a hack job.”
The Simurgh’s screaming continued.
Dinah had left me two notes.
The Simurgh had reminded me of the second.
‘I’m sorry.’
It wasn’t an apology for the consequences of the first note. No, Dinah hadn’t approached me since. She hadn’t decided I’d fulfilled the terms and deemed it okay to finally contact me again.
Two words, telling me that something ugly was going to happen. Directed at me.
[...]
But there was a possibility that it referred to me. That it was tied to our ability to come out ahead at the end of all this. To some slim chance. - Venom 29.9</ref><ref>Wildbow: That wasn't the Simurgh apologizing. It was her reminding Taylor of what Dinah wrote.
Doctor Mod: Best Girl my blind eye! Thanks for the insight. Seeing that and even seeing Dinah in the final chapters I never thought of that. It feels like so long ago she got that note. Literally and in story!
Wildbow: What do you think Dinah was apologizing for, if not for Khepri? - Conversation with Wildbow on Sufficient Velocity, archived on Spacebattles</ref> and also begins planning for events after his death.<ref name="II18.z strength" /> As she believes the cycle had failed and that the world would eventually be shattered after Scion's death if left alone,<ref name="II19.z e3">The cycle had failed. If left to go on its own, the world would be shattered. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref> the Simurgh explicitly intends to merge with Titan Fortuna,<ref name="II19.z eStudy">So it went. Machines tore into her and studied her. This would play a part in removing three more threats from play. Later, a subversion of this network in coordination with her integration with Titan Fortuna would let her spread her signal.
[...]
She abandoned the Machine Army, having given them what they would need later, and flew to the battlefield. She was already prepared. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref><ref name="II20.2 e2">It felt bad. I was aware of the running clock. The countdown Dragon had provided had shut off when she’d gone dark, but that was for Simurgh exposure. We had another countdown- the time before she merged with Titan Fortuna and enacted her plan. - Last 20.2</ref> take control of Fortuna's network, and start creating a forced simulation.<ref name="II19.10 e1">“Let’s assume they have clear goals. The Simurgh wants… that. Whatever that was. Humanity under her sway, her with Titans, Endbringers, and an army of capes brought back from the dead to protect her. Titan Fortuna wants to bring about the end of our world so their species can try their hand at replicating. Both have similar endpoints. But those are just that. Endpoints. What happens after the end?”
“The world is enslaved, or the world blows up,” Byron said.
“Immediately?”
“The slavery, it seems like. The world blowing up… don’t know.” - Infrared 19.10</ref><ref name="II19.z e5" /><ref>Logic told me that this was one of our last shots. We had to hurt her, take her down a peg so she couldn’t win that tug of war against Titan Fortuna and take over the entire system. - Last 20.3</ref><ref>The reality we saw. She connected to Fortuna and she screamed, and the world screamed with her. We were entirely at her mercy. - Last 20.6</ref> In this forced simulation, humanity is in a caste system<ref name="II19.z e2">Elsewhere, other pieces of the same machine were being programmed with the impulses, needs and courses that would slot them neatly into the superstructure. There were researchers, theorists, civil managers, stables, farms. Populations were bred to bring out traits that would fit them to their role, refine their ability to think the way they needed to think for their roles. Controlled randomness threw wrenches into the works, keeping minds agile and forcing them to adapt. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref> and pushed to its limit<ref name="II20.8 plan" /> in a ceaseless struggle to hurt one another with provided tools and powers.<ref name="II19.z e1">Thirty years in the future, a child was programmed. Messages, impulses, and a noise that ears weren’t receptive to reached into a pregnant belly and they filled the child with rage.
The mother held her belly with both arms as the child thrashed and kicked within its hot bath of amniotic fluid, smiling.
Every living thing was an extension of a greater machine. These children would be trained, weeded out, honed, and made into exceptional weapons, before being flung at one another. Powers would be distributed by a system, utilized against one another, analyzed, and broken down. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref><ref name="II19.z e7">The baby here, when born, would join a caste of the population driven to find the worst and most inventive ways to hurt one another with the tools and powers they were provided with. Brother against sister, kin against kin, in a ceaseless struggle from birth to deathbed that spanned generations. Other segments of the population were made to work harder by the fear that they would be in the bottom seven percent of their caste, given over to people like the torturer this baby would grow up to become.
The mother felt pride that she herself had been programmed to feel, imagining the monster her child might become. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref> Although the Simurgh acknowledges a forced simulation is not as ideal as an organically emergent one, she would be able to satisfy her drive to glean information in her three hundred remaining years.<ref name="II19.z e5" /> She seeks to establish a system that will last until another entity arrives in an estimated three or four billion years.<ref name="II19.z e8" />
After Eidolon's death, the Simurgh explicitly intends to recreate her creator to satisfy her drive to war against him.<ref name="II19.z e6" /> While building a cloning device<ref>“Actually, no. I had suspicions, but the Endbringer making a baby wasn’t one of them.” - Teneral e.5</ref> during Gold Morning, she hides it inside a weapon<ref>A glass tube, three feet across, seven and a half feet long, capped in metal at either end.
This will be step six in a nine step process. For now, she puts it aside, buries it in a larger weapon, forming a decorative gun barrel around the glass. The weapon will fire through other means.
The ones who observe her through cameras and with their own eyes will not report this. They lack the background to know what this tube might be, and this event will be dismissed as unimportant or they will leave it to someone else to report. The events are entered into a log, and the subjects overseeing the logs are either asleep or preoccupied. - Excerpt from Interlude 28</ref> and refers to it as being cradled.<ref>The tube is fully encapsulated, hidden.
Cradled. - Excerpt from Interlude 28</ref> She goes out of her way to protect this device in the ensuing fight against Scion;<ref name="29.2 e8">He hit her, and he sent her flying through the crowd. Capes were turned into bloody smears as she collided with them, and the Simurgh was driven to the very far edge of the settlement, to the beaches at the edge of the bay. The countless guns were pulverized.
[...]
The Simurgh held one gun. A single weapon she’d salvaged and sheltered with her body and wings in the instants before Scion had attacked her. - Venom 29.2</ref><ref>“A quarantine area. That was the weapon the Endbringer was using.”
A gun. It was dark gray with a faint green speckled coating on it, where one material had been broken down and incorporated into the outer coating. There was a gouge in the side where a feather had cut the housing, but it was otherwise intact.
Over and over, the Simurgh had protected the weapon. He’d seen it, had checked the footage, had seen her go out of her way to shield it with her wings. She’d done it subtly, most of the time, events contriving to make it look more accidental than anything. - Teneral e.5</ref> however, she fails her objective as Scion forces her to lose it,<ref>The weapon had been lost in the course of the battle, and the heroes had decided to minimize contact with the thing, locking it away. - Teneral e.5</ref> and Lung destroys the infant Eidolon with the help of Teacher's precognitives<ref>He was all too aware that he could be walking into her trap. He had enough precogs around himself and, in that video, around Lung, that the Simurgh shouldn’t have been able to leverage her full power against them, but she could have put things in place, not knowing exactly who, but still knowing it would be bad. - Teneral e.5</ref> after Gold Morning.<ref>The light caught the glass, at first, obscuring the contents.
A baby. Male. With large ears and a large round nose. Not attractive, as babies went.
[...]
Lung touched a burning hand to the glass, melting it. Water steamed on contact with his claw.
[...]
The water was crimson and boiling by the time Lung withdrew his claw. - Teneral e.5</ref> Ten minutes after Lung's success, the Simurgh personally confronts and stares at him before returning to orbit.<ref>“The… incident?” Teacher asked.
“Ten minutes from now,” a student said. “He growls a bit, but there isn’t anything we can make out. He was just walking, and our camera follows”
[...]
He stepped up onto the surface, his clawed feet sliding where they were too long and wide to fit on one..
The Simurgh was waiting.
Lung was her height, bristling with scales. She looked more human of the two, pale, her hair blowing a bit in the wind, unreadable.
[...]
“She returned to orbit.” - Teneral e.5</ref> Although she makes no further attempts to clone Eidolon over the next two years,<ref>“Things are better this time,” Sveta said. “We’ve learned from mistakes. It’s a fresh start. The Endbringers are dormant, we’re finally building things without them being torn down all the time.” - Flare 2.6</ref><ref name="II8.12 e1" /> the Simurgh plans on recreating him to be her nemesis once she has merged with Titan Fortuna and set up her forced simulation.<ref name="II19.z e6" />
Should the Simurgh notice a non-sabotaged individual trying to build legitimate spaceships to mass evacuate Earth Bet, she would make attempts to corrupt or destroy this individual and thus keep being able to satisfy her drive to glean information.<ref name="SB massEvacuate" />
According to Fortuna, the Simurgh would make efforts to recreate a new, artificial humanity to use as playthings if humanity went extinct by outside forces.<ref>A path that began with humanity devastated and dying of plague, the silver woman denied her pawns, the Titans assimilated into a greater cluster where Titan Fortuna herself was not in charge… instead ended with the silver woman in control of the network, a new, artificial humanity being created as playthings. - Radiation 18.z</ref>
Her Combat Tactics
The Simurgh has a tendency to fight defensively.<ref>The Simurgh played a defensive game.
This too, was a… I changed my mind from saying habit. It was a tendency. Better to think of her like a natural disaster. The water receded before tsunami. The calm in the midst of a hurricane indicated you were in the midst of it, and that more was to come. - Last 20.1</ref> Before the start of a fight, she also has a tendency to reach a position and then remain still while waiting for her opponents to come to her.<ref>The Simurgh was there in the distance, taking roost in the middle of a clearing, ringed by a crown-like circle of ruined and toppled buildings. It had been a park, once, but there was no grass, no water, there were no trees.
[...]
Rewording: She had a tendency to position herself like this. Waiting for people to come to her, while she remained still. - Last 20.1</ref>
When confronting blind spots, she appears to favor the shotgun approach.<ref>Then she fired the guns. Hers and Kid Win’s.
The shotgun approach. Cover as wide an area as possible, cover as many bases as possible, in the hopes that something hits. - Venom 29.2</ref> According to Tattletale, the Simurgh knows she will be blind sometimes; in a fight, the Simurgh collects and stacks pieces to ideally reach a point where she has so many factors on her side that she can make blind moves and still win.<ref>“It’s not that easy. She knows she’ll be blind, here and there. She collects and stacks the pieces. At a certain point, she’s got so many factors on her side she can make blind moves and still win. That’s where she’s at now. There’s no king for us to take, no weak point to capitalize on, no silver bullet or special trick,” Tattletale said. - Last 20.6</ref> However, she can be overconfident against sufficiently powerful precognitives. During their precog duel, Fortuna and Contessa agreed to work in concert to quickly execute a path without investigating it too much, which forced the Simurgh to leave.<ref name="II18.z eQuick" /> Despite being unable to see the remainder of the Wardens' meeting because of Dinah, she erroneously believed there was no reality where the eventual end result was not entirely in her favor.<ref name="II19.z e16" />
Relationships
Her Creator
She calls Eidolon an administrator of the highest order<ref name="II19.z e4">Her creator was an administrator of the highest order, and she had been selected out of a pool of emergency resources. All of her kind had. Behemoth had been created to break stasis, Leviathan to take away resources in space and land, forcing communities into conflict as they were made to relocate. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref> and uses male pronouns when referring to her creator.<ref name="II19.z e6" /> Eidolon, who has Eden's counterpart shard to Scion's Queen Administrator,<ref name="reddAdmin">HighSlayerRalton: Taylor is Eidolon's 'reflection'. Or rather, the Queen Administrator is the High Priest's reflection.
Taylor gets to administrate bugs, because Scion damaged and limited his Queen Administrator shard before distributing it.
Eidolon gets to administrate the pool of shards Eden was reorganising when she crashed (including the power-drawing ability), because Eden was still using her Queen Administrator counterpart to do that at the time.
The kid who controls bugs and the world's most powerful superhero are two sides of the same coin.
Wildbow: Yeah, pretty sure I already confirmed this elsewhere, but this is a great summary of it. - Conversation with Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles</ref> created her via the shard network<ref>Medium-term consequence: the shard network begins producing Endbringers that Superman can't stop that Eidolon could. - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles</ref> out of Eden's<ref name="reddEndbringerLite">If people start forming alliances/peace and Eden sees it as too much trouble to sabotage, then she sics an Endbringer Lite on them, and then works with the remains. - Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles</ref><ref>Assuming that Cauldron's operatives maybe killed Eden but then just sat on their hands/died, the Endbringers don't exist, the cauldron vials aren't spread out, and there's less of the really powerful parahumans here and there who're capable of acting decisively. - Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref> pool of emergency resources.<ref name="II19.z e4" /> The Simurgh is essentially a revamped version of the "Endbringer Lite" Eden would have theoretically deployed.<ref name="reddEndbringerLite" />
Valkyrie acknowledges her as Eidolon's long-time opponent; two years after his death, a mere mention of the Simurgh's name would agitate his shade.<ref>The Simurgh, was the reply.
Almost instinctively, another spirit deep inside her shifted, agitated. Eidolon. David. The man’s battery was nearly spent, and the cost of replenishing it was high.
Stirred to life by the mere mention of his long-time opponent. - Excerpt from Interlude 9 II</ref> According to Tattletale, she has a real love-hate relationship with him: the Simurgh respects him despite going to war against him.<ref name="28.4 e16" />
Her Siblings
She calls the other Endbringers her siblings and refers to them with either male or female pronouns.<ref name="28.x e17" /><ref name="28.x e18" /> After Scion killed Behemoth, the Simurgh refers to Leviathan as her oldest living brother.<ref name="28.x e18" /> After Scion killed Leviathan, she refers to her deceased siblings as Behemoth and Leviathan.<ref name="II19.z e4" /> Tattletale believes the Simurgh shares some sense of kinship with her siblings.<ref name="28.4 e20" />
The Simurgh does not command her siblings. Although they share the common drive of going to war against their creator, her siblings have a different paradigm and purpose as they were built with other fundamental drives.<ref name="II19.z e4" /><ref>The remaining three Endbringers [...] were created for a different paradigm and purpose. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> The Simurgh cannot force them to take action; for example, if she becomes aware of a non-sabotaged individual trying to build legitimate spaceships to mass evacuate Earth Bet, her siblings would not attack this target on her behalf.<ref name="SB massEvacuate">Khazit: Clearly, the best choice is to build a bunch of Leviathans (the spaceship) and evacuate Earth :p
[...]
Wildbow: If she tries to build leviathans to leave Earth, Ziz is probably going to catch wind of it (people on other side of the planet would probably hear about it, ziz passes overhead...) and send some heat seeking missiles Taylor's way (if she doesn't think she can go after Taylor specifically).
[...]
Wildbow: When I say guided missiles I mean more subtle ziz-tweaked individuals, set up to topple those dominoes and turn Taylor into a problem rather than an escape route, or just destroy Taylor. - Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref> Indeed, her siblings have their own objectives: they have their own criteria for attacking vulnerable targets.<ref>TheAnt: Was Brockton Bay built on an Indian Burial Ground? Because damn, this city is cursed. ABB bombings, Leviathan, The 9, Coil, Echidna. I would honestly not be surprised if the next Endbringer attacked the city again. It might actually have been a good idea to condemn it.
wildbow: It’s more that a lot of things led to the others coming to pass. The two primary threads are:
ABB-> Leviathan attacks city in conflict -> The 9 hit vulnerable target
And Travelers are invited to Brockton Bay by Coil -> Coil provokes/takes advantage of disasters to seize city -> Coil dies -> Noelle goes free.
There’s crossing-over of threads (Leviathan hitting city in part because of potential of contact with Noelle, Coil causing conflict with ABB that led to disaster) - Comment by Wildbow in Scourge 19.5</ref><ref>Asmora: Just thought I’d point this out, since no one else has mentioned it: Lyon was attacked twice. Is this an editing error on Wildbow’s part, attributable to the fact that he was rushed in writing this monstrously huge (and yet it felt like one of the shorter reads to me) chapter? I sincerely doubt it, given that Lyon is the last entry. Thus, we require WMG as to what the deal is there. Was there something in Lyon that interested Behemoth, but he was driven off before he got it on the first trip, so he came back for it? Did he decimate the city the first time, then get upset because they rebuilt it too quickly and thoroughly?
wildbow: Lyon is an area with a great many nuclear plants in the vicinity. - Comment by Wildbow in Interlude 24.x</ref><ref>“Nothing’s truly random,” Colin explained, his voice tight, “Any data shows a pattern eventually, if you dig deep enough. Dragon started work on an early warning system for the Endbringers, to see if we can’t anticipate where they’ll strike next, prepare to some degree. We know there’s some rules they follow, though we don’t know why. They come one at a time, months apart, rarely hitting the same area twice in a short span of time. We know they’re drawn to areas where they perceive vulnerability, where they think they can cause the most damage. Nuclear reactors, the Birdcage, places recently hit by natural disasters…”
He clicked the mouse, and the image zoomed in on a section of the coastline.
“…Or ongoing conflict,” Hannah finished for him, her eyes widening. “The ABB, Empire Eighty-Eight, the fighting here? It’s coming here? Now?” - Interlude 7</ref><ref name="15.5 c3" /> For example, Leviathan attacked Kyushu in 1999 (i.e., before her creation) to satisfy his fundamental drive to force communities into conflict and war against Eidolon via taking away Kyushu.<ref>November 2nd, 1999
[...]
Eidolon was fighting now. He hurled globes of energy the size of small houses at Leviathan, and each one was sufficient to knock the creature away, flaying away the thing’s skin and simultaneously slowing it. The hero’s own hydrokinesis deflected the lizard’s ranged attacks, diverting them skyward or off to one side. Leviathan couldn’t attack from range, and couldn’t get close without getting pummeled. He attempted to run, only for Japan’s foremost team, the Sentai Elite, to step into his way, blocking his progress. - Interlude 22.y</ref><ref>In this setting, for example, Japan isn’t a world power and it’s still dependent on international assistance 12 years after Leviathan’s visit to Kyushu.
But even there, where do you say, “Ok, that’s the sum total of the damage done”? The disaster at Kyushu, the number of refugees seeking living space/work and the pressures on the rest of Asia’s pacific border might have led to some more unrest and tension. Some friction, some ‘small’ wars, infighting and intermingling. Refugees and immigrants. Many settle in major cities across America because President Bradley’s Preservation Act gives them a hand in getting on their feet.
Do you factor that last point into the damage as well? Lung comes to Brockton Bay in part because of the booming population of Asian immigrants (which hasn’t yet set down roots). Bakuda was born to a Westerner mother and Immigrant father. Do you count the damage they’ve done? - Comment by Wildbow on Colony 15.5</ref>
That said, the Simurgh can use her understanding of them to better persuade her siblings to pursue common interests should their objectives align.<ref name="28.x e17" /> If a String Theory Driver weapon that could kill them existed and Eidolon was alive, they would cooperate and carefully plan their appearances to avoid any setup of a proper hit.<ref name="Redd eStringTheoryCooperate">Put all of that aside and look at his fighting ability, the highest end of what he's done (punch the planet buster [surface wiping] beam, nullify/exceed that energy and have the force of the punch still affect the landscape halfway across the world) puts him on a level equal to or surpassing String Theory's Drive weapons. Could a hit from that heavy a punch conduct enough force through Behemoth to get to the Endbringer's core? I think it's likely/possible and would have to, barring extraordinary evidence to the contrary popping up in OPM, say 'definite kill'. [...] (Or, as in the case of String Theory, Endbringer cooperation/timing would keep her from ever being able to set up a proper hit). - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> After her recruitment during Gold Morning following Eidolon's death, the Simurgh communicated when she was able to with her remaining siblings;<ref name="28.x e15">She must be unmolested. This is given freely to her.
She operates alongside the subjects. This serves her aims on several fronts. She communicates when she can with the others. - Excerpt from Interlude 28</ref> they all agreed to cooperate with humanity, remain calm, and attack designated targets when given permission by the groups they were following.<ref name="28.x e19">And so they have fallen into place. They obey, they remain calm.
When given permission, they attack designated targets. They cooperate with the subjects. - Excerpt from Interlude 28</ref> In Earth Gimel, the remaining Endbringers all teamed up against their brother's murderer.<ref>Which was the moment the Endbringers made their move.
The Simurgh plunged from the clouds, hitting Scion.
Leviathan, healed a touch, emerged from the water.
Bohu rose from the earth, going from a human sized head and shoulders at eye level to a tower.
Tohu, for her part, had Glaistig Uaine, Eidolon and Myrddin’s faces.
The Endbringers, come to the rescue. I wished I could have felt relieved. It was a reprieve, a chance to get our footing. But there was an ominousness to it. - Speck 30.5</ref><ref>For the time being, we were holding fast. Scion was still engaged with the Endbringers in Gimel. We had seconds, a minute or two if we were lucky, to catch our breath, to think, plan and communicate. - Speck 30.6</ref><ref>I could remember the files, the information only for team leaders and Wardens. Information on the Endbringers, provided in retrospect, only after Gold Morning when the Endbringers cooperated against Scion and the attacks stopped. - From Within 16.9</ref>
After Gold Morning, her surviving siblings stayed dormant and did not assist her plot to take control of Fortuna's network.<ref name="E.end e1">One window showed the various Endbringers, all of them motionless, but for the Simurgh, who was airborne. The last of the original three. - Interlude: End</ref><ref name="II10.x e1" /> When Defiant started firing G-driver blasts at her, none came to her aid.<ref name="II20.a eFirstShot">The benefit of using this weapon was that it didn’t require exceptionally good aim.
An area of the city a fifth of a mile wide and a mile long was pulverized. Buildings were driven into ground, and broke into chunks no larger than a human head. The wavelength of the beam let those chunks lift up for a fraction of a second before the next wave of the beam thrust them down again with the same force as before.
The Simurgh was almost, almost out of the path of the beam. He clipped her, and she reoriented, pulling out of the way even as she was hurled back and down.
Much of the lower body she had been building broke away from the force of the impact. A wing shattered. The remainder was lost in the plume of smoke that rose from the tract of land he had blasted. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> According to Fortuna, the Simurgh can only command Khonsu, Bohu, and Tohu by successfully merging with her and then using an Eidolon shade via Titan Valkyrie;<ref>A great, long-fingered hand of silver with bone-white nails reached out. The shadow of Eidolon stepped down onto the fingertip.
Titans appeared from clouds of darkness, arranging themselves in a formation around their new center and commander.
Other things stepped out of clouds of darkness.
Not Titans, but scary enough in their own way. Especially considering what all of this meant.
Endbringers. One tall and narrow, of a size to rival any Titan. One small, a knot of formlessness, with faces periodically flashing out. One with a great chrome orb for a midsection, a black, whiskered head, arms, and feet mounted at different positions around that orb. There were other shapes that stood in the dark clouds, but they didn’t emerge or seem consistent. Still taking shape. - Infrared 19.9</ref> the Simurgh-Fortuna amalgamation would then use her living siblings as bodyguards.<ref name="II19.10 e1" />
Appearance
The Simurgh appears as a fifteen-foot tall human woman, waif-thin and unclothed with pale white skin.<ref name="17.1e1">She seemed human, but fifteen or so feet tall, waif-thin, and unclothed. Her hair whipped around her, nearly as long as she was tall and platinum-white. The most shocking part of it all was the wings; she had so many, asymmetrical and illogical in their arrangement, each with pristine white feathers. The three largest wings folded around her protectively, far too large in proportion to her body, even with her height. Other wings of varying size fanned out from the joints of others, from the wing tips, and from her spine. Some seemed to be positioned to give the illusion of modesty, angled around her chest and pelvis. - Excerpt from Migration 17.1</ref> Her facial features are delicate,<ref name="17.1e2"/> conventionally beautiful in every sense, with classically attractive features such as high cheekbones and luxurious hair.<ref name="28.4 e10">Beautiful in every conventional sense, in that every classically attractive feature was there, from the delicate, thin frame to the high cheekbones to the luxurious hair… horrifying in the manner it was all framed. - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.4</ref> However, her eyes are silver, dull, cold, and empty.<ref>The Simurgh twisted in the air, staring at us with eyes that had nothing to them. One silver eye, and one perfect silver orb in a badly tarnished silver skull framed by wisps of hair. - Excerpt from Last 20.7</ref><ref name="17.1e2"/> The Simurgh's hair is almost as long as she is tall and is, like the rest of her form, platinum-white,<ref name="17.1e1"/> appearing gossamer-fine and straight.<ref name="28.4 e2">It was the hair that got me. Gossamer-fine, silver-white, straight, it blew in the wind as if each strand were a separate entity. Not in clumps or locks, but a curtain of strands ten times as dramatic as something one might see in a digitally altered hair commercial.
Artificial. - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.4</ref> Her body is a smooth facsimile of the human form, lacking nipples or presumably genitalia.<ref name="II20.7">A single crack at the lattice at one shoulder widened, inching down toward one nipple-less breast. Just from the stresses.
[...]
She was blocking more of what we were putting out. Her chest gaped open, the laser had flensed away flesh, revealing more of the feather-lattice across her arm and upper body, half of her face was damaged, revealing bone like dark, tarnished silver, and her wings were, by contrast, mostly intact. - Excerpt from Last 20.7</ref>
Besides her height and stark white coloration, her major distinguishing features are her profusion of asymmetrically and seemingly randomly placed feathered wings, many of which appear excessively large compared to her body.<ref name="Cast1">Simurgh – A creature that appears as a freakishly tall woman with a countless number of wings fanning out from her body, some fanning out from other wings. A precognitive, telekinetic, clairvoyant with a psychic scream. - Cast (spoiler free)</ref> Parts of her body are described as being "hollow", or made entirely from carefully placed wings or feathers, which trace the outline of any body parts she may have lost in combat.<ref name="20.a"/> She often wraps her three largest wings around herself.
After seeing her face, despite having no particular feature or quality that he could point to, Trickster found it harder to ascribe any kind of human quality to her.<ref name="17.1e2">She turned to one side, and Krouse could make out her face. Her features were delicate with high cheekbones. Her eyes were gray from corner to corner. And cold. There was nothing he could point to, no particular feature or quality that could help him explain why or how, but seeing her face made it harder to ascribe any kind of human quality to her. If he’d been thinking she had a sense of modesty before, he didn’t now. - Excerpt from Migration 17.1</ref> Taylor found her appearance horrifying in the sense that it was all framed;<ref name="28.4 e10" /> when the Simurgh's hair blew in the wind as if each strand was separate, Taylor believed it was a deliberately intimidating presentation.<ref name="28.4 e2" />
Abilities and Powers
Psychic Echolocation
The Simurgh continuously emits a psychic 'scream' - a type of 'psychic echolocation' that allows her to scan her surroundings. She also uses this scream to influence the minds of any victims within range, whether to alter their behavior, implant messages, or create compulsions.<ref name="R1"/> To victims, it is usually perceived as a scream in the back of their minds, constantly changing in pitch and tone.<ref name="17.2">Migration 17.2</ref> However, she is capable of keeping it inaudible if she chooses.<ref name="28.4 e1">No scream from the Simurgh. At least, not one I could detect. It would fit her to keep it beyond our notice, influencing us, the sort of card she would keep up her sleeve. To make the psychic scream ‘audible’, for lack of a better word, purely for spreading fear, then use it subtly at a time when she wasn’t attacking. - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.4</ref><ref name="R1" /> Her "hibernation" state in orbit allows her to make low-intensity scans of the planet with this sense.<ref name="I28" /><ref name="R1" />
The Simurgh exhibits precognition, perfect awareness of the immediate future, and the more she sings/scans the further it reaches.<ref name="Cast2">The Simurgh is shorter than her brothers, and sports a large number of asymmetrical wings. She possesses telekinesis, clairvoyance, precognition and a perpetual psychic scream. Seen as the most cunning and intelligent of the three, the Simurgh uses her precognition to employ long term schemes, each with Rube-Goldberg sequences of events, culminating in grave disasters and tragedies. - Cast (in depth)</ref><ref name="R1">The Simurgh is the third. She's only 15 feet tall but has a massive wingspan. The key to understanding her is her psychic 'scream' - this is basically a kind of psychic echolocation allowing her to scan her surroundings while exerting a psychic pressure to alter behavior, implant messages or create compulsions. She has precognition, perfect awareness of the immediate future, and the more she sings/scans the further it reaches. The byline for dealing with the Simurgh is that you'll probably win the fight but you'll lose the war. She uses these scans to make long-term predictions of behavior and activity (in the order of months and years) to turn human beings into rube-goldberg devices, with whole streams or strings of horrific events occuring in areas she's been active. This includes laying the groundwork for major heroes to be attacked at the opening of a future crisis, or the creation of supervillains of international notoriety. She's a telekinetic capable of tossing buildings, she flies, and her scanning ability lets her borrow and copy techniques and mental powers from others - including the power of tinkers (essentially scanning Iron Man and gaining the ability to make what he can make, then telekinetically pulling together a macro-scale version of his devices from surrounding materials). - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> She sees the past in a similar manner, but is blind to the present moment. She can focus on a single target for faster uptake of information. The presence of other precognitives obscured possibilities from her sight, as did Eidolon and Scion, and certain other powers. She could see things that were otherwise obscured by looking at people's perceptions of them, or otherwise observing their consequences, as well as by predicting their most likely course.<ref name ="I28"/>
The Simurgh uses her precognitive abilities and information derived from her telepathic scans to make long-term predictions of human behavior and activity, on the order of months or years. She then uses this information to influence her victims in ways that produce maximally tragic or destructive outcomes, effectively turning them into human "Rube-Goldberg devices" that are destined to instigate horrific future events. Strings of tragedies inevitably occur in the vicinity of her attacks, long after she has retreated.<ref name="R1"/> She can influence machines as well as people.<ref name ="I28"/><ref name="22.6">Excerpt from Cell 22.6</ref> With enough knowledge of a subject, she can evoke memories subconsciously through her posture and actions. By placing a target in a stressful environment, this can be used to cause hallucinations.<ref name ="I28"/>
Borrowing Powers
Although the Simurgh is normally unable to make tinker devices herself,<ref name="E.5 e2">She couldn’t make tinker devices herself. She had to copy the designs of tinkers near her. He’d found who she’d copied, a now deceased cape from Brockton Bay, and he’d found the designs.
There were discrepancies. - Teneral e.5</ref> her scream can pull on nearby Tinker powers.<ref>Tattletale was caught up in a conversation with Knave of Clubs, and fell under the Simurgh’s shadow. The Simurgh, for her part, seemed to be busy building other tinker devices, drawing on the abilities of tinkers in the immediate area. - Venom 29.3</ref> As long as Tinkers stay within scream range, her scream can allow her to borrow their schematics<ref name="29.1 e5" /> and techniques,<ref name="R1"/> copy the design of specific devices present,<ref name="29.1 e5">“Way I understand it, she needs to have a tinker in her sphere of influence to borrow their schematics, or a specific device, if she wants to copy it. - Venom 29.1</ref> and collect knowledge to create related tinker tech via a Thinker/Trump sort of approach.<ref name="R2" /> The Simurgh can also choose to create a macro-scale version of their devices from surrounding materials.<ref name="R1"/> If relevant Tinkers are not nearby, she can only make cosmetic changes to her tinker devices.<ref>Either way, she didn’t have schematics or anything she’d need to modify the guns.”
“Or she can modify them, and it’s a card she’s been keeping up her sleeve for the last while. I mean, it was only three years ago or whatever that she really showed off her ability to copy a tinker’s work wholesale.”
Tattletale nodded. She frowned. “I don’t like being in the dark. But that’s the gist of it. She made cosmetic changes because she couldn’t make concrete ones.” - Venom 29.1</ref>
| Tinker Devices | |
|
Her scream can allow her to pull on the perception powers of nearby Thinkers and tap into them; as long as they stay within scream range, she can then borrow those specific powers.<ref name="29.1 e6">Thinkers, too, I think she borrows their perception powers as long as she’s tapped into them. Might be why she’s attached to me. - Venom 29.1</ref> When the Simurgh was not fighting during Gold Morning, she tried to stay near Tattletale to pull on her power.<ref>The Simurgh, for the time being, came part and parcel with Tattletale. When she wasn’t fighting, she was a distance away from my teammate and friend. - Speck 30.2</ref> However, she still filters these borrowed powers through her scream: despite having control of the Mathers Giant and being in the same room as Tattletale and Victoria Dallon, she was unable to see Dinah and thus stop the Dinah-influenced Victoria<ref>“She skipped ahead. We thought we had a bit longer,” Tattletale said. “She jumped to going after Fortuna ten minutes early. We didn’t do enough for your plan.”
“No.”
I looked.
Dinah had spoken. Now she pointed, one hand held to her head, grimacing.
I looked, and I saw the syringe, empty.
I grabbed it.
There was only one valid target. - Last 20.5</ref> from disabling the Mathers Giant.<ref>She can’t see Dinah. She can’t see us if we interact with Dinah.
[...]
“That’s why I could get the syringe to the giant,” I said. “She didn’t see me to stop me?”
Tattletale nodded. “Think so.” - Last 20.6</ref><ref>This time I hit the plunger.
The veil fell yet again. This time for real.
The screaming picked up, faint at first, and then a roar. It was all an illusion. All a mind-fuck.
She was here, perched. Fucking with us all the while. - Last 20.5</ref> The Simurgh also lacks the processing power<ref>Torrieltar: How fast can Path to Victory react to unforeseen changes?
Wildbow: All changes are foreseen, as a rule. Can't cite anything, but there's a line that sorta appears in the story, where you run into the perfects (perfect defense, perfect offense) and stuff gets fucky - and the rule of thumb is that 'unless your ability beats -everything-, it doesn't beat this'. For processing power Contessa's ability would be on this level (as with Flechette's Sting, Clockblocker's inviolability, Siberian's invulnerability). - Conversation with Wildbow on Reddit</ref> to borrow any perception-based powers from Contessa:<ref>hitherbydragons: Only, Contessa isn’t actually going to do all of these things: it’s just that she’ll do those things _in the world where the Simurgh is doing that plan._ So her power becomes a shape, a shadow, over the set of futures that the Simurgh can build. And normally vice versa, except that Contessa’s power apparently wins.
[...]
wildbow: That is pretty much exactly right. - Comment by Wildbow on Crushed 24.4</ref> despite perching on Titan Fortuna's shoulder during their precog duel,<ref name="II18.2 e1">The Simurgh was perched on her shoulder. The video feed fritzed momentarily, and I could see faces in the crowd flinch. - Radiation 18.2</ref> Fortuna still had a hundred times the Simurgh's strength.<ref name="II18.z strength">We began this fight when you broke, child, the Titan Fortuna thought, trying to communicate to the battered kernel of human consciousness within herself.
She began this two years ago, when Gold Morning occurred. It doesn’t matter that we have a hundred times her strength. She’s within paces of the finish line, and she’s no stupid rabbit racing a tortise. Nearly every action she could take brings her closer to a checkmate. - Radiation 18.z</ref> When Fortuna and Contessa worked in concert to quickly execute a path without investigating it too much, the Simurgh could not tamper with it, forcing her to leave.<ref name="II18.z eQuick">The child refused to be a slave again. The Titan refused to be a slave for other reasons. But they were able to think and act in concert.
A path. One that most likely ended in a desirable outcome. To investigate too much would leave it on the table long enough for the silver woman to get silver fingerprints on it.
[...]
As if sensing the resolution, the silver woman turned and levitated herself away. Ceding the battle, or taking her own initial steps. - Radiation 18.z</ref>
Telekinesis
A powerful telekinetic, the Simurgh is capable of lifting and tossing buildings as if they were softballs.<ref name="R1"/><ref>Three buildings floated in mid air, a distance away, the lower floors ragged where they had been separated from the ground. One by one, they were hurled through the air like someone might lob a softball. Even with the impact happening half a mile away, the ground shook enough to make them stumble. - Excerpt from Migration 17.1</ref><ref>The Simurgh lifted Lucas’ apartment building into the air and tore it into shreds. The various fragments, the little things, the bodies and pieces of furniture, they became part of a protective maelstrom around the Simurgh, orbiting her and blocking the barrage of long-range fire that the good guys were directing at her. - Excerpt from Migration 17.2</ref> On one occassion, she picked up six buildings to orbit around her.<ref name="17.3 eHundredTargets" /> Although he did not actually see the targets, Krouse speculated the Simurgh could strike a hundred targets simultaneously with thrown debris.<ref name="17.3 eHundredTargets">There was a distant rumble. The Simurgh ascended from the skyline a mile away, a half-dozen uprooted buildings orbiting lazily around her. As chunks of concrete came free of the ruined ends of the structures, they too orbited her, a protective shield.
Or a weapon. Each of her wings curled forward, and the smaller pieces orbiting her went flying ahead, simultaneously striking a hundred targets Krouse and his friends couldn’t see. Scion fired one beam, and she moved one of the apartment complexes she was lifting to put it between herself and Scion. The goal seemed to be less about blocking the attack and more about hiding herself from Scion’s sight so she could take evasive action. - Excerpt from Migration 17.3</ref>
The Simurgh can telekinetically create and control "decoys" made from debris.<ref>Telekinesis. She’d created a false image of herself out of snow and ice, baiting Scion away. Judging by the sound of Scion’s continued onslaught, she was still controlling it. Controlling it even though there was no way she could see what it was doing by eyesight alone. - Excerpt from Migration 17.2</ref><ref>I looked at her, at Bastard, who barely seemed to be breathing anymore. In the distance, Scion followed up his attack on the Simurgh. She continued to focus on defending herself, raising sand in false Simurgh decoys, manipulating water, all to misdirect, as she kept her wings folded around her like a shell. - Venom 29.2</ref><ref name="30.6 eDecoy">In the other Earth, the winged Endbringer fell from high above, her innumerable wings broken, ruined and bent. She reached skyward, as if clutching for Scion, high above, and then the hand crumbled.
The rest of her followed suit.
[...]
The moment he left Earth Gimel, the Simurgh scattered the mixed sand and dirt she’d gathered above her, then climbed to her feet, gun in hand. The pieces of the fake body she’d formed of the materials at hand broke apart as they fell free. She waited, recuperating. - Speck 30.6</ref> She uses this defensive tactic against Scion because he had a pattern of destroying decoys first.<ref>I’d thought he was perceptive enough to see through the decoys, but he was the golden fool. The Simurgh had deceived him before.
[...]
He was an alien combatant, a stranger from another world, who saw the world in an entirely different way from how we did.
But there was a pattern.
I divided the swarm decoy in two.
Divided each of those two into two more.
He’d stopped the spirit from spreading across the sky, and had made a concerted effort to eliminate Glaistig Uaine’s spirits. He’d eliminated Eidolon’s illusions.
Whether the creations were concrete or otherwise, it was something that seemed to provoke him.
Was it something instinctive? A part of his species? Something he watched out for in enemies, in threats or competition?
Scion turned and blasted the swarm out of the sky. - Extinction 27.5</ref><ref>“There are options. There are always options. Ways to circumvent powers, ways to trip him up. He really didn’t like it when I created multiple swarm decoys. When anyone duplicated. Maybe there’s a clue in there.” - Cockroaches 28.6</ref>
Because her telekinesis manifests itself as a grip, the Simurgh cannot use her telekinesis on objects that are too slick to grab.<ref>Gibbet was cloning the painted bits of wall and floor that Withdrawal had covered with the stuff that made the rubble too slick for telekinesis to grab, walling off sections and piles so the Simurgh couldn’t grab as much. - Excerpt from Last 20.7</ref> Thus, anything sprayed by Withdrawal's yellow fluid<ref name="II20.7 eYellowFluid">The chemical in his syringe turned yellow. Veins crawled across his costume, yellow, and the fabric turned yellow where it had been pink. The lenses shifted color too, to orange.
He couldn’t lift his own syringe on his own, but he stood it on end, then stepped on a jutting bit at the side.
The spray rained down over himself and his frame. - Excerpt from Last 20.7</ref> cannot be picked up or held by her telekinesis.<ref>Withdrawal was back in his frame, now, covered in yellow that looked like he’d sloshed a bucket of paint over himself. As a chunk of broken concrete platform floated near him, he sprayed it with a gush from the syringe.
The platform hit ground.
I could see as he did more, spraying more things, hitting the tinkertech the Simurgh was using, and causing it to fall. Everything he sprayed came free of her telekinetic grip, and none of it was getting picked up again. - Excerpt from Last 20.7</ref> Her telekinesis is not effective against Endbringer-derived materials.<ref name="II20.6 eArmorResist">Chevalier was here, and put his sword out like a wall, some of his squadron gripping the channel that bifurcated the two great blades.
The screaming in my ears reached a new pitch, the Simurgh unfurled her wings and raised one long, thin arm, and the blade twitched, the blade turning so it was no longer perpendicular to the ground. The material of his costume and the blade seemed resistant to her efforts… good thing, because if it hadn’t been, she might have turned his weapon so the blade was poised to catch anyone and everyone she threw. - Last 20.6</ref>
The Simurgh is unable to use her telekinesis on biological living entities as her telekinesis is Manton-limited.<ref name="II20.5 eNoFlung">There were five capes who hadn’t been flung. Five capes who’d done the sensible thing and worn bodysuits instead of armor, to get the most bang for their buck when it came to the Manton effect. - Last 20.5</ref> She cannot manipulate materials that are adjacent to the skin such as bodysuits<ref name="II20.5 eNoFlung" /> and presumably explosive armbands.<ref>The armband beeped, then beeped again a second later. There was a steady repetition, beep, beep, beep.
Grandiose turned his head, “Why are you…”
Beep.
“…Still here!? Run!”
Krouse grabbed Marissa and turned to run, barely managing to keep his feet under him with the uneven ground and Noelle’s weight. He glanced over his shoulder to see the cape pressing the armband against his collarbone.
They weren’t four paces away when the armband detonated, a small, localized blast that didn’t even consume him in entirety. It did take his head, most of his upper body and his left arm. The remainder of him was scattered around the surrounding area.
Krouse stared. - Excerpt from Migration 17.2</ref> This Manton limit even extends to non-living materials that become part of one's identity;<ref>“I can’t promise it would work, but hair can confuse the Manton effect. It might be that the power gets confused because it’s a part of your identity and a part of you, but it’s not alive either. There are parahumans who impregnate their costumes with hair to make them resistant to their own powers. There are some who have costumes that are just hair, or mostly hair, but those are pretty scanty, as you can probably imagine.” - Shade 4.6</ref> the Simurgh cannot use her telekinesis directly on the Marduk<ref name="II20.a eConfront" /> as Defiant truly considered the ship as part of him when plugged in.<ref>Defiant was plugged into the Marduk. Its sensors were his eyes, its air intake his lungs, its considerable power source his heart. Sensors tracked the movement of air along the Marduk’s exterior, and he felt it much as he would feel the wind over his own skin, where his present body still had conventional skin.
It came to him in data, each block of data represented by a three-dimensional arrangement of numbers and letters. A part of his brain that he had modified with Dragon’s help read that data, processed it.
While he was plugged in, he was the Marduk. It had been his go-to ship in the months immediately following Gold Morning, and it was his backup ship now, while the Uther was replaced by several of Dragon’s A.I.. The landscapes of then and now were not so different. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> That said, she can telekinetically grab costume parts that are not close enough to the skin to be considered an extension of the individual, allowing her to obliquely throw around these specific individuals.<ref>I could feel her grip, taking hold of my hood, the ends of the spikes at my shoulder, the ends of my coat. Parts of my outfit that weren’t close enough to my skin to be considered an extension of me. I tried to fly and I couldn’t. I could use my strength and try to tear free of my costume, but I couldn’t get my hands to where I could grab it. My forcefield-
-couldn’t. As she expanded around me, she started at my costume. Her own body blocked her ability to claw off my costume.
Open! I told her. Cocoon! Reach in-
Too late. The Simurgh flung me. Us. Everything. Directly away from her. - Last 20.5</ref><ref>They ran, putting distance between themselves, Grandiose’s remains and the fighting with the Simurgh. One wave of capes was retreating, backed up by another squad. A woman with a black costume, a heavy cape and straight black hair flowing from the back of her helmet led the charge. Alexandria.
The heroine dove at the Simurgh, and the Endbringer was quick to fly to one side, reaching out to catch Alexandria with her telekinesis and use her momentum to force her into the street. The road caved in, sections of pavement with accompanying drifts of snow falling into a sewer or storm drain beneath the street. - Excerpt from Migration 17.2</ref><ref name="28.4 e4">She gave no sign she’d listened. Her telekinesis grabbed four members of the Yàngbǎn who’d gotten too close, lifting them by their costumes or by some other debris that had surrounded them.
As if launched by catapults, they flew straight up, where they disappeared into the clouds above. - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.4</ref> Withdrawal's tinkertech frame has mechanical extremities not covered by the Manton effect; she can pin these extended limbs.<ref>Withdrawal moved close to the tinkertech, reaching, but failed to grab it, not that it looked like he was really trying. He landed, hugging his syringe, and rolled with the landing, before crouching, both hands at a terminal on the syringe’s side.
The problem was, he had extremities that weren’t covered by the manton limit. She got a grip on the extended limbs with telekinesis, and pinned him. - Excerpt from Last 20.7</ref> However, having less vulnerable costume parts can weaken her grip; after Victoria Dallon removed her cape and shoulder decorations,<ref>Breathing hard, wincing, I pulled off the decorations at my shoulders. My coat. Fuck. I shrugged it off, knowing I’d pay for it later. - Last 20.5</ref> her flight and forcefield could now overpower the Simurgh's faint grip.<ref>I felt telekinesis roll over me, grabbing at parts of my sleeve that stuck out, a prong at my shoulder where the decorations attached, my hood.
With flight, a wrenching of my body, and my forcefield gripping the floor and hauling me to one side, I tore myself free of that faint grip, getting some distance from the Simurgh. - Last 20.6</ref> Withdrawal could still disengage from his tinkertech frame,<ref>Withdrawal disengaged from his tinkertech frame, and he held his hands over his head, pointing up at Byron’s stone. It looked like he was holding a remote control.
[...]
Withdrawal went back to his syringe, slipped something into a chamber, oblivious to his surroundings as more debris fell around him. - Excerpt from Last 20.7</ref> allowing him to apply his yellow fluid<ref name="II20.7 eYellowFluid" /> and hard counter her telekinesis.<ref>Withdrawal’s trick with the paint was great, but it was defensive. For our offensive tricks, our heavy hitters were out. Dragon’s mech was in pieces. Chevalier appeared to be out of ammunition. Damsel was injured and uncooperative. Torso was running around like an idiot. - Excerpt from Last 20.7</ref>
Sufficiently powerful telekinetics such as the Giantess (i.e., an individual strong enough to lift buildings<ref>Cords became elastic, and the thing that had been Hunter let herself tip forward, then snap toward the Giantess, a rubber band fired from a hand. She was deflected, struck by thrown buildings, and those buildings crumbled with the impact more than she did. - Radiation 18.z</ref>) can overpower her telekinesis.<ref>The Simurgh lifted a length of metal that might have been part of a crane, once. A second later, it was slapped down to the ground. The Goddess Giant, countering her. - Last 20.1</ref> The Bakunawa Zero can send out spherical waves capable of stripping away the Simurgh's telekinetic hold.<ref name="II20.1 eBakunawaCancel">Dragon’s spherical craft was crackling, sending out spherical waves that rippled over the crowd, over parts of the battlefield. A whole section of the dust cleared away, stripped of the Simurgh’s telekinetic hold.
She chose that moment to emerge, while our eyes were searching the gap for any sign. She wasn’t even that far from me. From Breakthrough.
The scream tore through my senses, everyone’s senses, delaying our response. The countdown timer in the corner of my vision whirred, a speedometer flying by, costing me tens of seconds with every moment.
[...]
The Dragon craft drew nearer. The Bakunawa Zero, with its pulses that disrupted powers and power effects. I knew the idea was to throw as much chaos as possible at the Simurgh, to disrupt her reads, to scramble her signal and her information gathering as she screamed. - Last 20.1</ref>
Flight
The Simurgh is capable of flight.<ref name="R1" /> This ability does not appear to depend on her wings.<ref name="II17.4 e1" /><ref name="28.4 eFlightSpeculation" />
Although Weaver speculated the Endbringer used telekinesis to move,<ref name="28.4 eFlightSpeculation">She rotated in the air, holding her position, wings flat at her sides. The wings were purely ornamental, much as Behemoth’s bulk and musculature had been. She used telekinesis to move, and she used it now to keep herself oriented in the air, rotating so she matched our orbit around her, her eyes and attention fully fixed on the Dragonfly. - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.4</ref> the Simurgh does not refer to the use of telekinesis when she flies.<ref name="II19.z" /> Indeed, the Simurgh could still move after the Bakunawa Zero cancelled her telekinesis;<ref name="II20.1 eBakunawaCancel" /> the Simurgh was built out of structures that presumably have the common ability of flight.<ref>Our ability to fly comes from the waste common to most of our kind, because we had to fly to get to our destinations. We had to fly to reach barren versions of this Earth, where we form our structures and our routines so we can conserve and distribute energy, process, and provide the mechanisms for power. For capabilities. - Heavens 12.all</ref>
The Simurgh cannot fly fast enough to fully dodge a G-Driver blast fired outside scream range.<ref name="II20.a eFirstShot" /><ref name="II20.a eOutsideRange" /> Her flight speed is also slower than Victoria Dallon carrying Rain O'Fire Frazier;<ref>The Simurgh rose up, toward the hole in the ceiling. I flew us to meet her. The golden beam lanced out beside me, carving out a line in the Simurgh’s leg.
[...]
The ceiling, the wall, and pieces of everything around us pulled away, reoriented so the most ragged, pointed parts were poised toward us.
[...]
The Simurgh lunged, but not for the hole in the ceiling. For the floor.
I dove, with enough force that I thought my collarbone would tear free, or that lightheadedness I was feeling might cause me to black out.
The telekinetically poised debris collapsed in on us, barred the way.
I didn’t flinch, didn’t waver.
Someone shot one chunk. Others warped, veering out of the way.
A pillar of black-blue Capricorn stone speared out below us, more a barrier than the chunks it shoved out of the way, then dissipated into motes of light a second later.
We closed the distance, and the blade met the Simurgh’s silver flesh, carving out a shimmering silver line, so close in color that it looked like there was no line at all. From shoulder to back, to hip. - Excerpt from Last 20.7</ref> Victoria can keep up with a train travelling at around 100 mph.<ref>A train came, traveling west-to-east. I knew Sveta and Tristan would be boarding it. Had I been on foot, it was the one I would have caught.
When the other train came, traveling the opposite direction, I followed it.
[...]
The train was old-fashioned in look, cars linked by couplings, and passengers could move between cars, with the space between each car being open to the air. Periodically passengers would step out to smoke or get fresh air. Most were parents with kids.
At the caboose, a figure had stepped out onto the back. Rain.
He climbed over the railing and jumped, while the train was going well over a hundred miles an hour. - Glare 3.5</ref>
Other Abilities
The Simurgh has incredible durability, at least for her largest wing,<ref>“Then go get Ingenue. Let’s get this started.”
As Legend departed, Chevalier’s eyes didn’t leave the objects.
One of the Simurgh’s severed wings. The largest wing, since regrown.
Behemoth’s severed leg.
They warped space for optimal density, were unbreakable with conventional means. Scion had taken seconds to obliterate Behemoth. - Excerpt from Interlude 28</ref> and can regenerate<ref name="20.a">She was already healing. Missing wings were growing back, and her lower body existed as a series of feathers, touching end to end, or end to middle. Like she was the thinnest of lace, formed of feathers harder than steel. It gave her legs, and suggested she was hollow, where Behemoth had had a skeleton and a core. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> thanks to her Endbringer physiology. Like other Endbringers, she cannot be predicted easily with the typical Thinker danger sense<ref name="II9.12 e1">“Could it be an Endbringer?” Rain asked.
“Jesus,” Byron said. “Don’t even joke. They’ve been dormant.”
“They can’t be predicted easily with danger sense either,” I said. - Gleaming 9.12</ref> and is also a blind spot to the typical precognition,<ref name="II11.4 e1">It wasn’t Jeanne who answered. Cinereal gave me my reply. “Thinkers say no. They’re either drawing blanks or they don’t like what they see.”
“Nothing specific? No details?”
“No,” Cinereal said. “But if you look at some of the other major thinker blind spots, you’re going to find yourself running into topics like Eidolon, Sleeper, the Endbringers, Valkyrie, the Island-state, the Pastor incident…”
“Concentrations of power,” I said.
Jeanne shook her head. “Complexity of power, most often. Whatever thinker powers come into play, with these cases, there’s often too many variables to fully consider, thinkers report that their powers are fuzzy, inconsistent, or blacked out.” - Blinding 11.4</ref> including Contessa.<ref>“Right, that wasn’t my second question. What I want to know is why the hell you haven’t used a power like yours to figure out how to beat the Endbringers.”
“My power is a form of precognition,” she said. “Unlike most such powers, other precognitive abilities do not confuse it. That said, there are certain individuals it does not work against, the Endbringers included.”
“Why?” Tecton asked.
“No way to know for sure,” she said, “But we have theories. The first is that they have a built-in immunity, something their origins granted them.” - Crushed 24.2</ref><ref>Not as I or my power understand circumstances, and my power understands everything outside of the blind spots that are Teacher, Valkyrie, the Simurgh, and two broken triggers that authorities aren’t aware happened.” - Dying 15.7</ref> That said, she is not a blind spot for Titan Fortuna.<ref name="II18.z" />
History
Background
The Simurgh was the third Endbringer to appear, appearing just after the turn of the millennium. She first appeared in Lausanne, Switzerland in December 2002<ref name="24.x eLausanne">Lausanne, December 30th, 2002. Simurgh. - Interlude 24.x</ref>, and initially appeared benevolent and cooperative while psychically manipulating the people around her for three days, <ref name="17.2 eThreeDays">“So the whole world watched for something like three days, to see if she would be another Scion, or if she'd be something else. People approached, she even communicated with them some. Not talking, just gestures, I guess. Interacting might be a better word. And when we thought things would be okay, she made a move. The entire population of the city around her, with all the people who had come to talk with her and research her…” - Excerpt from Migration 17.2</ref> after which she let out her first 'audible' psychic scream. <ref>Tons of people gathered. Then she… sang? Screamed? Whatever this is.” - Excerpt from Migration 17.3</ref> Most residents of the Swiss capital, due to exposure to her mental manipulation, became violent and aggressive, attempting to kill as many people as they could and disrupt the world's resistance to the Endbringers as much as possible. This caused havoc throughout the country and the continent with wide ranging consequences. Lausanne's population was barricaded in and bombed. James Tagg was one of the people involved in that campaign.<ref>Cell 22.2</ref>
She attacked London on August 12th, 2003. It is unknown what the outcome of this event was.
The Simurgh was responsible for the corruption of Sphere, leading him to become the serial killer and Slaughterhouse Nine member known as Mannequin.<ref>Plague 12.7</ref>
She also attacked Madison, Wisconsin, in December 2009. Heroes won,<ref name="R3.1">In the aftermath, he gets a lion's share of the credit in the Endbringer defeat like Eidolon did with the Simurgh in Madison. - Comment by wildbow on Reddit</ref> but as in previous attacks the aftermath necessitated the quarantine of the city. The Travelers were created as a by-product of this attack, which set the stage for multiple other events.
The Simurgh also attacked Canberra on February 24th, 2011; the event was a Scion no-show, but a Legend/Eidolon victory.<ref>Scarab 25.6</ref> The aftermath of this attack necessitated the construction of a dome around the city.<ref>Interlude 26.x</ref> This was a factor in Canary having a highly biased trial that sent her to the birdcage.<ref name="SB234531">Wildbow:
Think of it in terms of political context, the simurgh attack on Australia being recent & rather a loss for the good guys, her being a Simurgh-alike, news & public perception turning on her, and other factors playing in.
For Canary's court case ending up an uphill battle.
People are ~scared~ of mind/emotion control. - Wildbow on Discord, Archived on Spacebattles</ref>
Post-Slaughterhouse Nine
The Travelers and the emergence of The Echidna performed their intended function, it is unknown if the resultant portal was planned. The revelation of Cauldron to the larger parahuman community and the subsequent schisms in The Protectorate was likely planned.
Prevented Dragon finding out crucial information from Panacea.<ref>Interlude 16.z</ref>
Post-Echidna
The Simurgh's use of the Travelers culminates in the near-assassination of Chevalier and Tattletale and the death of Accord by the expelled Traveler member Perdition at New Delhi. It is unknown whether the death of Behemoth was predicted, given Scion's and Eidolon's interference.
Timeskip
Attacked Paris on December 19th 2012 and accessed Earth Shin.<ref name="25.6">Paris, December 19th, 2012 // Simurgh
Notes: Victory by Scion.
Target/Consequence: see file The Woman in Blue. See file United Capes. -
Excerpt from Scarab 25.6</ref>
Gold Morning
Was recruited by the Undersiders and the Guild into the effort against Zion. Her first mission was to fight off The Yàngbǎn.<ref name="28.4">Cockroaches 28.4</ref>
Later, after her sibling Leviathan was used to punish The Elite, she upgraded him.
It is unknown if the Simurgh was involved in the creation of Khepri. She was able to fake her destruction at Zion's hands and helped to break his mind.<ref>Speck 30.6</ref>
Post-Gold Morning
Apparently, tried to clone Eidolon only for it to be destroyed.<ref>Teneral e.5</ref>
Ward
She is recorded as being inactive for the two years since Gold Morning.<ref name="II8.12 e1">“The remaining Endbringers are quiet,” Capricorn said. - Excerpt from Beacon 8.12</ref>
Post-Goddess' Takeover
Reports had it as her being active again,<ref>“This was easy,” she said. “A touch sad, but easy. You were dealing with the Simurgh.”
“She was restless but we can’t figure out what she was actually doing. It was scary but it was easy, as you put it. You can’t keep going like this. Why don’t you go back to the city and relax? Sit around in your comfortable clothes and watch movies. Go hang out with friends- I know you have a standing invitation from an old friend of mine.” - Excerpt from Interlude 9 II</ref> her intentions were unknown.<ref name="II10.x e1">There were other things. News. Status of Class-S threats…
- Sleeper; active
- Machine Army; 4.83% growth since last check, active
- Endbringers; one dormant, one active, others dead or unknown locations.
Active Endbringer. She zeroed in on that. A few mouse clicks brought her to a site that tracked the Simurgh.
The activity was only a renewed cluster of sightings. Not an attack. The Simurgh was somewhere near Bet’s Indonesia. Not flying as she’d once done, either. Floating around. Facilities and factories in the area had been repurposed into accommodations. People in the area were hunkered down, enduring life on new Bet instead of moving on to new places, leaning on some risky non-tinker tech advances. Going the sci-fi route in tackling what Bet was going through. Those same people were responsible for the flurry of reports about the Simurgh, which had led to her being flagged ‘active’. - Excerpt from Interlude 10.x II</ref>
Post-Assault on the Time Bubbles
After Dauntless undergoes a broken trigger and merges with his shard, the Simurgh approaches the Kronos Titan and begins 'whispering to it'.<ref name="II12.none e1">He could only remain where he was.
The reason for the panic and the imminent assault hadn’t been him, but another guest. She settled on one arm, comparatively tiny, a weight on one arm and on one shoulder. Feathered wings draped his arm.
And she cried, and the cries were pitched to pull at the heartstrings and to tug at the mind. He couldn’t step into another room or walk away to leave those cries behind to find a chance to breathe. - Heavens 12.none</ref>
Post-Attack on Teacher
Ziz abandoned her perch for a moment after the encounter with Chevalier.<ref name="II17.6">Sundown 17.6</ref> But returned back after the threat had passed.<ref name="II17.7 e1" />
The Ice Breaks
Simurgh switched her nest from Kronos to Fortuna.<ref name="II18.2">Radiation 18.2</ref> According to the Wardens' think-tank Simurgh scrambles Fortuna's communication.<ref>"Tattletale said the thinkers are analyzing Titan Fortuna and the Simurgh. With those two you can never be sure, but it looks like they aren’t aligned. The Simurgh is interfering with the information Fortuna is trying to transmit to her network.” - Excerpt from Radiation 18.9</ref> Simurgh had managed to outplan the titan. Their duel was interrupted by the interference in The Shardspace.<ref name="II18.z">Radiation 18.z</ref>
After ensuring her domination over Fortuna Titan, Simurgh set up Cryptid emotionally, sabotaged Dragon's efforts, and fed pieces of herself to the Machine Army. She skipped attending the Wardens' meeting.<ref name="II19.z e16">It did not matter that she couldn’t see the remainder of that meeting in the lobby of the headquarters. Were she to fly closer and gather information by emitting her signal, she might be able to piece together the events, but it did not matter. She was entirely assured of Cryptid, Chris Elman’s trajectory. There was no reality she could interpret where the result wasn’t entirely to her favor. - Excerpt from Infrared 19.z</ref>
When the Wardens attempted an assault on her, she humored them for a while, then deployed the Machine Army to tie their forces, and went straight to their HQ.<ref name="II20.1">Last 20.1</ref> She later ambushed the leading group, that was securing the complex, killing several heroes in the process.<ref name="II20.3">Last 20.3</ref> Meanwhile, Simurgh-compromised individuals put pressure on the Wardens thinkers.<ref>“Be careful going there,” Chastity told Sveta. “Half these guys we caught were heading there like they were given orders. We’ve been holding them off but…” - Excerpt from Last 20.4</ref>
The Simurgh for a short period took over the Mathers Giant, that was used to sedate all her other victims. It allowed her to wreak a massive chaos and kill a dozen or so capes.<ref name="II20.5">Last 20.5</ref> Antares was able to turn the tide by disabling the Giant and temporarily blinding the Simurgh to the people present with Dinah Alcott's help. The Simurgh was cut in half with Precipice's blades, but escaped.<ref>Last 20.7</ref>
The Simurgh's Final Flight
In a desperate attempt to subsume Titan Fortuna before Dauntless can join her network, the Simurgh flies towards Fortuna's small army of Titans. However, Dauntless attacks her en route as she is pursued by Defiant and Dragon.<ref>Defiant steered a careful course around the cluster of Titans, mindful of the Simurgh’s plotted course, as she tried to stay away from Dauntless and the attacks the Titan made with the spear of light. He watched Dauntless, studying the Titan, trying to gauge. He thought of the recording he’d seen of the Titan turning to look at the boy. What had his name been? Addison? - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Using the cover provided by the surrounding ruined cityscape, she tries to dodge the relentless attacks from Dauntless until she eventually gets close enough for Fortuna's group to make its move, causing Dauntless to stop his attacks.<ref>Dauntless fought the Simurgh, striking out, over and over again, every time she pulled out of cover. The Titan was relentless, and stopped only when Fortuna’s group made its move. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> The Machine Army, effectively in service to the Simurgh because of their previous exposure to her,<ref name="II19.z eStudy" /><ref>Now he worked to do something similar to the Machine Army, which was effectively in service to the wounded Simurgh.
As that thought crossed Defiant’s mind, he saw the Simurgh change direction.
In service to the wounded Simurgh… because she spent long enough in their proximity. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> then arrive and open fire on Defiant and Dragon<ref>“She’s moving.”
“I noticed.”
The Machine Army lurched out of chasms. They’d traveled across the crystal landscape, and now they rose up, flooding out onto the ruined cityscape around them. As they got their footing, they oriented, then opened fire. His Marduk’s sensors tracked the lasers, even though they were invisible to the naked eye. His naked eye, singular, could see the damage each of those lasers was doing. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> as they are eager to collect their technology.<ref name="II20.a eSelfInterest" />
While Dragon provides cover, Defiant aims the Marduk in the Simurgh's direction and primes the G-driver<ref>The Simurgh used the opportunity to soar, rising up above the buildings she had been perched behind.
Defiant brought the Marduk around, aimed, and switched the channels on the power core. For this weapon, he could only hover while the weapon primed. There was a countdown.
Dragon moved in sync with him. Her crafts protected him, there were forcefields erected to keep him from being knocked off course. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> outside scream range.<ref name="II20.a eOutsideRange">But he had to stay out of the Simurgh’s range. She was weakened, he was relatively clear of her scream, and that weakened her predictive power. It meant his shots landed, and she was forced to choose between destruction and a grazing hit, instead of destruction and a miss. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Although Fortuna's group<ref name="II20.a eSelfInterest">Defiant’s thoughts were interrupted as he was struck again. The Machine Army this time. The first blow had come from Fortuna’s group. There was no logic with these opponents they were fighting. Each acted according to self-interests. The Machine Army had decided it wanted what he had, half of the machines that had reached this particular battlefield scuttling over to the tract of devastated land, pausing as if staring at it. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> hits the Marduk and knocks his shot off course,<ref>As if to punctuate the statement, the Marduk was hit from the side. An attack that bypassed the forcefields. It knocked his shot off course- brought his nose around toward Dragon’s craft.
He steered hard, compensating. He’d anticipated this. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> the weapon did not require very good aim which meant the blast still clips the Simurgh<ref name="II20.a eFirstShot" /> (and also Dauntless by accident<ref>Dauntless, too, was in the path of the beam. He had his shield, and he was rooted into the ground in a way that resisted being thrust away with the kind of power that could push a moon out of orbit, but the grazing hit still demolished one of his arms, tore out a chunk of the Titan’s side.
For long moments, Dauntless didn’t move. Defiant fought to reorient, switching systems around so he wasn’t so vulnerable, and so Dragon could do what he needed.
Was that what she put in your head? Defiant thought. When the Simurgh roosted on you, was she thinking of this moment, reminding you of the times I exerted authority to take away your time with your son?
Are you aware enough to realize I didn’t mean to do that to you? Or is resentment building? Are you reaching a point where you serve her instead? - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref>). However, the Machine Army soon forces Dragon to focus on preventing them from collecting the Simurgh's lost body parts.<ref name="II20.a eCollect" /><ref>Dragon changed tasks, shifting to a full-on offensive, unloading every weapon she had into the dust cloud.
This was the danger, the fact the Simurgh could use to manipulate them. That they were forced again and again to make sacrifices today, to save tomorrow.
[...]
Dragon focused on keeping the machines from collecting the Simurgh’s parts. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref>
Under fire from the Machine Army<ref name="II20.a eSelfInterest" /><ref>He took evasive action as more of the Machine Army’s lasers sought to cut him to pieces. Where he could, he flew back, kept his distance, even though it made his effective responses worse. When he fired his own energy weapons, the sheer distance between himself and the robots added a time lag. The lasers didn’t really face the same lag.
[...]
He was watching the dust cloud, and he was ready when the Simurgh emerged. Lasers raked him, and systems failed, but he was ready and able to open fire. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> and staying out of scream range,<ref name="II20.a eOutsideRange" /> Defiant notices the Simurgh will reach Fortuna before the next G-driver shot can finish charging.<ref>He focused on the Simurgh, watching the countdown.
Simple math told him that the numbers didn’t add up. The Simurgh was making her move. Seeking Fortuna. He could do the math. It took her thirty seconds to get to Fortuna. He needed forty to shoot again. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Breakthrough via Lookout contacts him with their plan to contact Dauntless.<ref>One of the monitors on his console flickered, then showed a pair of hearts, a curved line between and below them, a smiley face.
He smashed his hand into the top of the console, shattering the glass of the monitor, the crack running through one of the heart-eyes. “No!” - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref><ref>“Defiant!” Lookout’s voice came through the console.
“Not the time!”
“It has to be! Dauntless-”
“I know!” he roared.
“Tell him we have plans-”
He hit the console again. He disconnected the breaker. He didn’t need to be told. He’d followed that conversation, read the transcript as they discussed. A part of his brain had recorded it without him needing to. That part had come directly from Dragon. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Defiant decides to trust in Dauntless<ref name="II20.a eTrust">He kicked every thruster into action. Spearing down toward Fortuna.
His trajectory carried him past Dauntless. Dauntless, who had endured the Simurgh’s company for as long as just about any person who hadn’t lived in Lausanne, the unwitting audience for her very first appearance.
Dauntless, who had every reason to hate and resent him.
He could only trust. That Dauntless was a better man. Trust that the Dauntless who they’d discovered had spent years trapped in time with only his own thoughts could somehow hold out against the Simurgh’s influence. She had two vectors of attack, with one being prediction, the other being the ways she could grind down a man’s sanity.
The prediction would be weak right now. As for the other part… Defiant trusted that his old teammate had held onto that sanity.
No choice but to trust. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> and flies his ship right past him at speeds fast enough to peel away damaged hull.<ref>The Marduk roared, the velocity causing hull to peel away, where the lasers had caught it. He swept past Dauntless, bracing himself for a shield to come between himself and his destination, or a spear to strike the side of his Marduk. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Defiant then places his ship right between the Simurgh and Fortuna.<ref name="II20.a eConfront">The impact to the side of his Marduk drove him off course.
He corrected.
It was telekinesis. A chunk of building.
He descended, placing himself between the two most dangerous things in existence, at least as far as humanity was concerned. A ship a little larger than a house placed between an Endbringer and the queen of the Titans. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref>
When a projectile hurled by telekinesis proved ineffective,<ref name="II20.a eConfront" /> the Simurgh literally uses herself as a living missile and crashes into the Marduk.<ref name="II20.a eCrash" /> Yet despite all her efforts,<ref name="II20.a eTrust" /> Dauntless takes action and saves Defiant.<ref>He turned his eyes to his left, where he should have been able to see terminals. There was only a wall of electrical ruin, blinding a cyborg eye that was supposed to be able to see in any combat scenario.
I didn’t deserve this, he thought.
[...]
The electrical ruin to the left of the Pendragon was Dauntless’s shield, raised between the Marduk and the Simurgh. But for that shield, the Simurgh would have crashed right through him on her course to Titan Fortuna.
Dauntless had saved him, and it felt like the man shouldn’t have. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> With his ship severely damaged,<ref name="II20.a eCrash" /> Defiant is forced to manually fire the Marduk's G-driver.<ref>Fire, he thought. He couldn’t see the countdown, but he knew it should be time.
The signal was distorted. He could hear the scream, and in that three dimensional sprawl of data, that part of his brain that he’d replaced with technology was parsing the data as corrupted. Out of his reach.
He reversed course, his feet shifting, the treads in his boots relaxing, letting him slide down the sloped deck toward the console. His combat program helped his movements to coordinate.
[...]
He reached the space next to his chair, the wall of that crackling shield illuminating everything, until his surroundings looked like ninety-nine percent white, one percent almost-white. The trajectory and his program-coordinated movement saw his hand meet the button. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> However, as they are now in scream range, her signal could interfere with the signal of the manual firing button and prevent it from reaching the weapon.<ref>G-driver, second shot.
He could see it in his readouts from the console. Disruption in the power supply. The signal wasn’t getting through from button to weapon.
He checked. Reading transcripts. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref>
Resuming his attacks once more, Dauntless strikes the Simurgh with his spear:<ref>Dauntless moved, the spear sweeping to one side, striking the Simurgh.
Defiant, at the very front of his ship, nose pointed almost at the ground, almost everything illuminated by brilliant white light, could see the Simurgh’s upper body, and part of her face. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> the electricity from his attacks overrode the interference caused by her signal.<ref name="II20.a eMissTiming">The Titan Dauntless moved again, the spear sweeping up.
The data readouts warped. The electricity was its own distortion, its own interruption.
Defiant hit the button for the manual instruction to fire, but the timing was wrong. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Shouting at Dauntless, Defiant asks him to join Fortuna's network.<ref>“Dauntless!” he called out, at the top of his lungs.
[...]
“They’re saying they’ll help you!” he bellowed. “After! But we need you to do like we discussed before!”
[...]
“Connect to Fortuna!” Defiant called out. “She knows what to do!” - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Unfortunately for the Endbringer, the Skadi and Liminal Titans then gang up on her and stop her from physically contacting Fortuna.<ref>Titan Skadi was there too, her blade-hand at the Simurgh’s back. Digital readouts read that the Custodian Titan was active in the area.
All dogpiling the Simurgh, who struggled to make contact with Titan Fortuna. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Although Defiant mistimes the first button press,<ref name="II20.a eMissTiming" /> when Dauntless attacks her again, Defiant simply held the button down; this successfully fired the G-driver and flung the Simurgh and the Titans back.<ref name="II20.a eOverride">Dauntless’s spear moved again, and this time, Defiant simply held the button down. When the spear’s disruption overrode the Simurgh’s signal, the signal got through.
Simurgh, Titan Skadi, Custodian, and Dauntless were all flung back. The Marduk ripped in half from the strain of firing- - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> Although the resulting blast was not a proper hit capable of killing an Endbringer<ref name="Redd eStringTheoryCooperate" /> because of the Marduk's severe damage<ref name="II20.a eCrash">The Simurgh crashed into him. Damaged parts of her body were like the teeth of a saw, her feathers sheared through parts of the Marduk like blades longer than he was tall, passing into the very chamber he sat within.
[...]
The Marduk couldn’t fly. Defiant did what he could to disengage from his chair, and ran up a sloped deck that was partially obstructed by feathers. He grabbed a spear and an old halberd he’d kept for posterity. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> causing it to break apart while firing this blast<ref name="II20.a eOverride" /> and Dauntless having to guide the direction of this blast with the help of Fortuna's sight, it was more than sufficient to knock the Simurgh into Sleeper's storm.<ref name="II20.a eGuide" />
The Wardens previously baited in Sleeper and lured him to the City in an attempt to slow down the Titans.<ref>“I am fucking open to better ideas, anything,” I told her. “But I’m worried the Wardens’ contingency plans won’t work-”
“They aren’t.”
“They…”
“Sleeper has been baited in. No luck. Saint had a trick up his sleeve when it came to dealing with A.I., in case his big red button for dealing with Dragon didn’t work. He’s trying it on the machine army.” - Last 20.9</ref><ref name="II20.b e3" /><ref>Sleeper’s storm was creeping forward.
[...]
Sleeper was at the horizon, south of the Simurgh and Titan Fortuna’s small army of Titans. Thirty-five titans now, and the number was growing, the accumulation speeding up, not slowing down. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref> When the Simurgh was flung into his storm, she was trapped, lay prone, and was taken out of the picture entirely.<ref name="II20.a eGuide">The Simurgh lay prone within the storm that was the Sleeper. Unmoving. That hadn’t been him. That had been Dauntless, acting with the benefit of Titan Fortuna’s sight, guiding the direction of the blast.
The storm crackled, boiled, popped, the colors taking on a rainbow sheen that somehow felt it shouldn’t make sense with the way the colors unfolded.
That would be enough to take her out of the picture. - Excerpt from Last 20.a</ref><ref>The Simurgh was out of action. Sleeper had her. - Last 20.10</ref> She was still dealt with even after Sleeper retreated from the area.<ref name="II20.b e3">“First of all, the Sleeper is retreating. He is not an immediate danger, and we will let you know as soon as we can, if that changes.”
[...]
“The Sleeper was lured to the city specifically to slow down the Titans and was used to trap the Simurgh. Some of our best minds and strategists are confident the Simurgh is dealt with.”
[...]
“Didn’t you want to be a lawyer?” Presley asked, leaning onto the snow-dusted railing. In the distance, Sleeper’s cloud was receding. - Last 20.b</ref>
Chapter Appearances
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Quotes
- "She seemed human, but fifteen or so feet tall, waif-thin, and unclothed. Her hair whipped around her, nearly as long as she was tall and platinum-white. The most shocking part of it all was the wings; she had so many, asymmetrical and illogical in their arrangement, each with pristine white feathers. The three largest wings folded around her protectively, far too large in proportion to her body, even with her height. Other wings of varying size fanned out from the joints of others, from the wing tips, and from her spine. Some seemed to be positioned to give the illusion of modesty, angled around her chest and pelvis." - Migration 17.1
- "She turned to one side, and Krouse could make out her face. Her features were delicate with high cheekbones. Her eyes were gray from corner to corner. And cold. There was nothing he could point to, no particular feature or quality that could help him explain why or how, but seeing her face made it harder to ascribe any kind of human quality to her. If he’d been thinking she had a sense of modesty before, he didn’t now." - Migration 17.1
Trivia
- This article includes information from a chapter that Wildbow said he would likely change later.
- Wildbow commented on March 30, 2015, that the Simurgh is the only Endbringer he has not seen drawn accurately yet because artists tend to under-scale the size of her wings.<ref name="SV art">As an aside, and this is in no way a reference or meant to give offense to your top tier art skills, B.H., the Simurgh is the only Endbringer I haven't seen drawn accurately.
Much of the time her wings are just far too short, and she's smiling. - Wildbow in Sufficient Velocity</ref> However, he later commented on June 3, 2016, that he was a huge fan of the illustration by DamienDraidecht on DeviantArt because of the intensity and scale of the wings.<ref>I'm a huge fan of this rendition, because it really does have the sheer intensity and scale of the wings that many other images have lacked. Nice work, damien. - Wildbow on DeviantArt</ref> - "Simurgh" is a benevolent, mythical flying creature. It is sometimes equated with other mythological birds such as Arabic Anqā, Persian Homā or Turkic Kerkés, Semrug, Semurg, Samran, and Samruk.
- "Ziz" is the third creature in what can be called an Abrahamic trinity of beasts. As Leviathan is first among the creatures of the water, and Behemoth is first among the creatures of the land, Ziz is first among the creatures of the air. This serves as a larger clue to the Endbringers' constructed nature that they deliberately tap into these belief structures.
- In Isaiah 6:2, above the throne of God "...were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying." In the Bible "feet" often stood as a euphemism for genitalia (Deut 28: 57) (Ezekiel 16:25). Simurgh's multiple wings and attempt at modesty might, therefore, be a reference to Biblical seraphim.
Fanart Gallery
<tabber>Detailed=
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Debut in Switzerland. Illustration by v_wind on Reddit
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Illustration by Sweet Chimera
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Illustration by khridr on Instagram
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Illustration by ElCuervoBorracho on Reddit
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Illustration by SereneNocturne on Twitter
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Illustration by LastCheer on DeviantArt
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Illustration by Lonsheep on DeviantArt
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Illustration by DamienDraidecht on DeviantArt
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Illustration by NotForYouHiggins on Reddit
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Illustration by Beru-bera on DeviantArt.
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Illustration by Saniika on DeviantArt
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Illustration by Turtle-76 on DeviantArt
|-|Group=
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With Antares. Illustration by SereneNocturne on Twitter
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With Titan Fortuna. Illustration by SereneNocturne on Twitter
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With Eidolon. Illustration by DerTodesbote on DeviantArt
|-|Cartoon=
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Illustration by BenswFrenefits on Reddit
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Illustration by Liujuin on DeviantArt
</tabber>
References
<references/>
| Behemoth {{#switch: deceased | deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Leviathan {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • The Simurgh • Khonsu {{#switch: unknown |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Tohu {{#switch: unknown |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Bohu {{#switch: unknown |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} |
| Endbringers | Behemoth {{#switch: deceased | deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Leviathan {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • The Simurgh • Khonsu {{#switch: unknown |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Tohu {{#switch: unknown |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Bohu {{#switch: unknown |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Titans | The Kronos Titan {{#switch: deceased | deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Titan Eve {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Titan Fortuna {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • The Nemean Titan {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Titan Arachne {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Titan Oberon {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • The Ashen Titan {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Titan Skadi {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • The Ophion Titan {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • The Strange Titan {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Auger {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Titaness Amenonuhoko {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • The Flowing Titan {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Drillbit {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • The Liminal Titan {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Pouffe {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Valkyrie {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Morgana {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Yakshini {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Ashoka {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Ghast {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} |
| Groups | The Slaughterhouse Nine {{#switch: former | deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT= | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Parahumans | Ash Beast {{#switch: deceased | deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Echidna {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Khepri {{#switch: former |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT= | deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} • Scion {{#switch: deceased |
deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT= | deceased=† | noncanon=≠ | former=‡ | unknown=* | #DEFAULT=
}} | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||