Lorelei

Stephanie of the Houses of Aranien and Argoleus, Princess of the Second of Undermoon, Duchess of Westmarch is the half-human granddaughter of the king of Undermoon. She is at least as widely known on Earth as superhero and later world-famous actress and supermodel Lorelei, who was regarded as perhaps the most beautiful woman on the planet. In late 2057 Lorelei was revealed to be Stephie Dallimore, then an 18-year old CHHS student. Only a few people knew that she still had a second identity, as Allure, a member of New Blood.

Description
As Lorelei: Lorelei's a gorgeous young blonde woman of unearthly beauty. No part of her shapely 5'6" body is not alluring, but more striking still that almost her every movement seems an enticing pose such as photographers might spend hours coaxing out of a model. Wild shoulder-length hair frames her face, with its high cheekbones, pouty lips and dark sparkling eyes.

She might be seen in any number of outfits, but her "superhero costume" is a skintight shimmering green bodysuit partially cut away, leaving her left arm and shoulder are bare but for her glove, and her right leg but for her boot, with a light blue sash tied about her waist.

Somehow Lorelei now looks unmistakeably like both the old Lorelei and the old Stephie, yet vastly more beautiful than either of them.

As Allure: Allure is a striking and shapely blonde girl who stands 5'6" tall. She wears a short bright red dress, slit up the leg, with matching gloves and shoes, and a metallic blue cape, but also triangular mirrored sunglasses which give her a cool and aloof air - despite which it seems she cannot help but be enticing

Origin
Stephanie Dallimore, to use her full name, was born in Cambridge, England, on August 10th, 2039, the daughter of a lecturer in Biochemistry. Her mother seemingly was killed when she was 7 in a traffic accident (although this has since proven not to be the case). Stephie's life after that was much sadder and lonelier; her father's work kept him busy, though he spent what time he could with her (she enjoyed the skiing vacations). She turned to reading and to writing to keep herself company: a plain and shy girl, she didn't make friends readily, and her only real friend was her neighbour Lucy. The loneliness only worsened as she grew interested in boys.

Her 16th birthday proved an especially hard day: first she heard that her father had got the post he'd applied for in Colonial Bay and they'd be moving within weeks, separating her from Lucy; then she was cruelly rejected by a boy named Eric on whom she'd had a crush for some time. That night she cried herself to sleep, wishing with all her soul that she weren't lonely, that she were so beautiful that people would want to be her friends, that Eric would want to be her boyfriend.

And somehow she woke up changed. At first she thought it might be some magic property of an old ring she'd found, or that she might be a mutant; she has since learned that it was nothing left than her heritage - her mother was fae. But the next morning she was beautiful, and grew rapidly more so over the next few days. The timing was fortuitous: her father helped her keep out of sight until the move, and by the time she arrived in Colonial Bay the her appearance was no longer changing rapidly, so she could maintain her secret.

Her father, however, still insisted that she should try to keep her new improved looks covered up, and so Stephie for a long time continued to appear a shy and insecure girl. Curiosity got the better of her, though, and she tried going out as "Lorelei". wearing revealing clothing, just to see what difference it would make. Soon she found herself involved with the superhero community, and found to her surprise that her appearance even made a viable superpower - and so Lorelei the superhero was born.

Powers
Whether Lorelei even has true superpowers - or at least powers that extend beyond simply looking good - has now publicly been called into doubt.

In truth, Lorelei's fae heritage gives her powers which are not well understood. She is superhumanly beautiful and has an instinctive ability to use this beauty to devastating effect. Apart from her trademark "stunning poses", she can be incredibly persuasive, can cause people to notice little or nothing but her, and can make people weak-willed or weak-minded.

Though similar in effect to mental powers, none of these abilities is truly psionic. Nor does she have to see the targets of her powers: it suffices that they can see her. Her skills at affecting some people but not others with her abilities is due to an untrained use of the glamour magic natural to the fae - she shields others from seeing her full beauty - but she doesn't know this.

Her half-fae physiology also give her extraordinary regenerative abilities, and immunity to disease and aging and a decreased need for sleep. She also has excellent "second sight", enabling her to see perceive many things hidden to mortal eyes, including spirits, fairy paths and the true forms of those disguised by illusion and transformation - by glimpsing an underlying reality of which the physical world is but a manifestation (or so the fae would say).

Lorelei has inherited considerable magical talent from her mother, who is now teaching her to use it. She can cross the dimensions of Greater Faerie, a number of worlds linked by correspondence points, but only at such a point. By using these correspondence points in combination with worlds in which time passes faster, she can also reach far places on Earth-1 in little time - but only to the closest correspondence point, which typically might be up to a kilometre away. She also has some skill with glamour, a sort of temporary reality: she can transform things into other things similar in function or appearance, though the extent to which she can change functionality is limited. She is especially adept at making things more beautiful, since this is so closely tied to her nature - but she is also restricted in turning herself into other beautiful females, so strong is that nature. As part of her training to improve the ease of her casting spells she has learned to transform her clothes instantly. All of these glamours may be dispelled by other magic or by cold iron. On Earth-1, but not in all fae realms, they also end at sunrise.

Personality
Once shy and uncertain, Lorelei is is now carries herself with true confidence. She has grown into the role of fae princess, strong yet gracious, though she still finds politicking somewhat distasteful. She can seem more aloof now than in her youth, but this is a matter of having adopted fae manners.

Somehow neither the star treatment she receives on Earth nor the royal treatment she receives on Undermoon has gone to her head; she remains concerned for people in all walks of life, and does not consider herself above anyone - though she can act the part as etiquette requires.

Lorelei is not a very religious person, though her Christian (Anglican) upbringing her informed her moral sense. She is concerned about the ethics of the use of her powers, and nearly always applies them with discretion.

She holds to the belief that understanding and cooperation are the best way to handle problems, even if she has to allow that force is sometimes necessary, regrettably, in the short term. She's quick to see the good in other people and other cultures. This, combined with her unique heritage, has led her to see improving relations between Undermoon and Earth as her natural role in life.

Relations
For a long time Stephie's only close relative was her father, Dr. Quentin Dallimore, Professor of Biochemistry at CBSU; Quentin's brother and parents are still alive too, though Stephie's contact with them is slight. She gets generally gets on well with her father, though he is often busy with work; in June 2057 Stephie revealed her two other identities to him and he in exchange revealed something of her past to her, which reduced the strain the appearance of Stephie's powers had put on their relationship. Now Stephie has been reunited with her mother she is close to her again too, though her ambassadorial work means Liandere spends much time in Colonial Bay. Stephie gets on well with her aunt Merilwen.

Among metas, her closest friends are Amber and Azure and Rebound, and she is on good terms with the other former members of New Blood,

Stephie dated Izzy Ignizuski until she broke up with him in December 2056. She briefly dated Logan Huntz after that. Lorelei has been romantically linked with Random Factor and (in varying degrees of plausbility) a number of other men by the tabloids. Lorelei has been known to comment, "I don't know who I'm dating: I haven't read the papers this week." From June 2058 she was seeing the tennis player Pavel Kuznetsov, and from 2060 she was seeing Titan for a time.

In September 2064 she married Duke Vanatherion of Westmarch. Though there was a strong political element to the marriage they appear also to love each other.

From August 2056 to September 2058, at the insistence of the Avalon Agency, Lorelei has had a bodyguard. After a couple of less successful choices, her regular bodyguard was Cliff Worth. Cliff was let go after being unfit for work for several months, and the agency has yet to replace him. In 2063, fae factions interested in her welfare also insisted that she (and her mother) obtain bodyguards. The collection of superheroes Lorelei gathered to placate them became known as the Princesses' Guard.

Stephie seems to have acquired a new enemy in the form of the Black King, an alchemist who uses fae blood in his work, and perhaps his granddaughter the Black Queen. Palanir, the exiled former Duke of Westmarch, makes her life difficult at times, though it's not clear that he has anything against her personally - indeed, he tried to take Vanatherion's place before she married him, suggesting that he is not altogether averse to her, at least for forwarding whatever his aims are.

History
From her first outing as Lorelei, Stephie's life took some odd twists and turns. The first was that her Lorelei persona was older than she is - presumably about 22 to her then 16 - simply because she tried to see if she could get into a club in her Lorelei guise and then ended up helping some heroes there and so gained some publicity, and thus had to be 21.

After some unfortunate incidents Stephie's insecurities grew for a few months, but she managed in the end to try to adopt a different, more experimental approach to life to try to shake these off. She became a cheerleader in early 2056 and stopped hiding under baggy clothing, and became enormously more popular at school. She also became involved with the teen superhero team New Blood - but since she couldn't admit to them that she was the adult Lorelei, she did this under a second heroic identity, Allure.

Meanwhile Lorelei was "discovered" by the Avalon modeling agency, and she has become known more and more as a model - indeed most people now think of Lorelei much more as a supermodel than as a superhero. Since the Halo brand shampoo advertisements of August 2056 she has been known worldwide, and rumors abound that some other great advertising project is in the offing. Despite endless speculation, no nude photos of Lorelei seem to exist.

This school year Lorelei has been following a performing arts course of study at high school: a sudden break from her earlier more academic pursuits, to explore if her real talents lie in that direction.

In November 2057 two significant televised events forever change public perception of Lorelei. The first showed her being ineffective against a villain called the Compressor, and caused public questioning of whether she was a true superhero or even had any powers. The second publicly revealed that she was Stephie Dallimore - as well as the fact that she was even more beautiful then believed when she was not pretending to be just either Lorelei or Stephie.

In December 2057 Lorelei's first movie, the Redmond Flint movie Rift  opened. Her movie career had made her perhaps the most famous TransMat commuter, living in Colonial Bay while she films in Hollywood. It had two sequels, Rift II and Rift III, which came out the next two Decembers; each time her part was larger. To date she has not been in other films.

When her father was captured by the Black King and the Black Queen, she discovered a letter her mother wrote to her, together with a magic candle that allowed her to travel anywhere (she had recently learned from her father that her mother was one of the fae). In the spring of 2060 she used this to travel to where her mother came from, which proved to be Undermoon. There she learned that her mother was still alive, though a victim of black magic, and with her companions managed to rescue her.

Since that time Lorelei has been greatly involved in improving relations between Undermoon and the rest of the Twilit Worlds and Earth. In January 2062 the Undermoon embassy to Earth opened in Colonial Bay, and in 2063 the Princesses' Guard was founded to defend it and the gate between Earth and Undermoon - and also act as a superhero team more generally; she was deeply involved in both these initiatives. She help found and has invested heavily in the Earth and Undermoon Trading Company. She has also spent much time in Undermoon, promoting understanding and acceptance of humans and Earth culture. In consequence, since 2060 her activities on Earth have greatly declined, and her careers as an actress and model have ceased.

In September 2064 she married Vanatherion, Duke of Westmarch, and she is now not seen on Earth except for brief visits.

Status and Public Opinion
In Undermoon, Lorelei holds three high ranks: Princess of the Second of Undermoon, Duchess of Westmarch and Grand Mistress of Modling. Such social status alone would lend her consider regard in Undermoon, where rank is taken very seriously. Moreover, her incredible beauty (even by fae standards), her artistry at modling, her good works and (it must be said) a royal publicity campaign - which made well known her more fae-like qualities - have made her generally popular on Undermoon.

Set against this is that she is half human, which for many fae is too great a blot to ignore - especially among the nobility. In consequence, public opinion about her tends to be strongly polarised: the majority support her, while a vocal minority ardently oppose her.

On Earth, she is still known above all as a beautiful model, actress and superhero. That she is a fae princess and her wedding to Vanatherion were widely reported, but to most people these things seem remote; moreover, she hasn't been seen much on Earth since these revelations.