BAST

PENDRAGON / CNT /
1 /
2 /
3 /
4
[break]TOUHOU PROJECT, toyosatomimi no miko

[attr="class","appcat"]hero

[attr="class","appcat"]profile

[attr="class","apptext"]


Bast Sa'Amet


Ubaste, Ailuros. She's sometimes mistaken for Sekhmet.


Child of Atem


About 4,900 years old


Ancient Egypt


Lower Egypt (pre-unification)


Female


Female/Feminine

[attr="class","appcat"]dossier

[attr="class","apptext"]



As a goddess whose main role is protection, Bast, unsurprisingly, cares a lot about people. She hates to see anyone get hurt, and she absolutely can’t stand anyone who uses their powers to harm others. She takes her role as a protector very seriously, and while she can seem naive or inexperienced at times, there’s no doubt that her heart is in the right place.

[break][break]

Bast is cheerful and friendly, so making friends is easy for her. Be warned, however–she does have quite the mischievous side. She is very open and frank when it comes to her feelings for other people; if she likes you, it will show in everything she does for as long as she’s near you. If she doesn’t, well...let’s just say she’ll make that pretty clear too. Bast is extremely comfortable around others–even complete strangers–and she doesn’t shy away from getting up close and personal if she feels like it. Sometimes she can be quite the flirt as well.

[break][break]

While Bast is compassionate and very forgiving, her patience does have a limit, and only a fool would want to be in the vicinity when she loses her temper. Bast can certainly hold a grudge, and her wrath, while temporary, is legendary for its fierceness. Although she may not be the most threatening goddess in this corner of the universe, she is cunning and intelligent, not to mention that she can be very patient when she wants to be. As an extraterrestrial being with over four thousand years under her belt, she can afford to wait until the time comes for her to strike.

[break][break]

Even with the experience she’s gathered throughout her long life, Bast is extremely curious about the universe in which she lives. She values knowledge, and is quite learned herself. That said, she can be capricious and absentminded at times; she’ll set out to do one thing, only to change her mind on the way, or forget what she was doing entirely. Of course, Bast never intends to cause any harm with her unpredictable behavior, and in fact she feels terrible if she does happen to hurt someone without cause. She is intensely loyal towards the people she cares about, and will do anything to keep them safe.




Unlike other ancient ‘gods’ who have existed since time immemorial, the Egyptian cat goddess Bast was born as the result of experiments conducted by a mysterious alien being known as Atem, who used his own genetic material to create her, as well as the other gods of the Egyptian pantheon. Atem's 'children' often had radically different abilities and physical characteristics, due to the fact that the primordial being had a tendency to experiment with his creations before they were fully formed. Their only shared qualities were their near-agelessness, superhuman physical capabilities, and a strong connection to 'Ka', a mystical energy residing in their bodies, the origins of which likely lay with Atem as well.

[break][break]

As far as Egyptian gods go, Bast is one of Atem’s later creations, so she isn't nearly as famous as Ra, Osiris, Hathor, or Set. Nevertheless, she played a prominent role in ancient history when she first appeared in Lower Egypt. At the time, Egypt was divided into two separate kingdoms, each one waging bloody warfare in a bitter struggle for dominion over the other.

[break][break]

When she was first discovered by humans who had seen the newborn Bast descend to their world from the sky, the people quickly accepted her as a goddess. They believed she had been sent as a sign of heaven’s favor, and to protect them from the power of Upper Egypt’s armies. At first, Bast was pretty disoriented and it took her a while to understand what was going on. Possibly mistaking her confusion and overall ignorance for divine disfavor, the Egyptians hurried to give her a place of honor in the city of Memphis, where she lived in a sumptuous temple all her own until Egypt’s eventual unification, a cause which she aided when she supported Pharaoh Narmer in his conquest of Lower Egypt. While it broke her heart to oppose the people who had supported her all those years, she knew that her actions would lead to peace and prosperity for the unified kingdom of Egypt.

[break][break]

Bast was pampered and treated like a little princess–if not better–as she slowly became used to her new surroundings and her duties as a goddess. Soon, she began to display abilities that, from ancient humanity’s perspective, could have been nothing less than the power of a deity. She possessed enhanced senses and reflexes and showed herself capable of controlling the Egyptian sands to shape the desert itself. She could also turn into a cat at will, something which drove her worshippers nearly insane with worry whenever they lost sight of her. During her reign, the Egyptians gave cats exceptionally good treatment, just to be on the safe side.

[break][break]

Although Bast did her best to protect her people, she was not immune to making mistakes in the process. She was the cause of several catastrophic desert storms when she occasionally lost her temper. She could be capricious and hard to please more often than not; it didn’t take long for her to get used to being treated like a deity, and she expected to have her way in how things were run. Bast also had the misfortune to get roaringly drunk on several occasions when she overindulged herself with wine–events which were commemorated each year by raucous drinking parties in her honor, much to Bast’s embarrassment.

[break][break]

As centuries went on and Egypt rose and fell in power, Bast had her moments of popularity, and other times when she fell into relative obscurity. In all honesty, she didn’t mind–it was actually beginning to bother her just how much the Egyptians depended on the gods for everything. One day, Bast left Egypt, intending to come back after she’d traveled the universe a bit. She lost track of time, however, and instead of the couple of centuries Bast had thought she’d be absent, it turned out that she would actually be gone for thousands of years.

[break][break]

When Bast finally returned in the early 2000s AD, she quickly discovered that not only had the Egyptians become self-sufficient as she’d hoped, but they had forgotten about her completely. In fact, until she started to go public as a hero in the coming years, the modern consensus was that she had never existed in the first place. Bast became extremely depressed as a result, and seriously considered leaving Earth again until she was contacted by her maker, Atem, who urged her to stay. When Bast demanded to know why he had created her in the first place, Atem simply responded, “To save the world.”

[break][break]

Ultimately, Bast decided to remain on Earth, at least for the time being. When aliens attacked in 2008, Bast was there, doing everything she could to keep people safe. In the aftermath of the attack, the Initiative was founded, and Bast was happy to join–a choice she has never regretted.

[break][break]

[attr="class","appcat"]powers

[attr="class","apptext"]



While Bast is technically not a goddess (she’s really an ancient alien’s genetic experiment), she has a number of impressive physical traits that she inherited from Atem that certainly seem godlike. She possesses superhuman strength, speed, and stamina. Bast is immune to just about every kind of disease or poison in existence–at least, she hasn’t come in contact with one sufficiently advanced enough to give her so much as a cold. She does not appear to age, and even though she is thousands of years old she still looks to be about eighteen.
 Finally, Bast can heal injuries much faster than the average human, enabling her to survive damage that would normally be fatal. While she can’t exactly just ‘walk it off’ afterwards, she does recover at a surprising rate (mortal wounds take minutes to heal, depending on the damage, and other, less serious physical injuries repair even faster). With that said, it’s important to note that Bast’s healing abilities don’t lessen the pain of her injuries one bit, and she continues to feel phantom pains for weeks or months after healing extreme injuries.



Bast is able to shape and manipulate sand, due to an ancient energy called ‘Ka’ that flows naturally through her body. She can make sand soft, like quicksand, or as hard and unyielding as steel. Bast can use sand to form constructs of varying complexity and size, such as a flight of stairs or a working clock. She can even make constructs in the form of living creatures, like animals or humans, that move and function much like their flesh-and-blood counterparts.
 It is important to note, however, that none of Bast’s constructs are capable of existing independent from her will. She manipulates them all like puppets, and if she turns her attention away from a construct, it will dissolve into formless sand. Bast can only influence sand that lies within her view, and since she cannot create sand, she must always rely on a nearby source to draw from. She must also be careful not to let her constructs get wet, or else they will become soft and eventually fall apart. Finally, controlling large amounts of sand uses up a great deal of Bast’s Ka, and she will run out of magical energy if she overextends herself for too long.



Bast is currently only able to take the form of a cat with short, sandy fur and golden eyes. Although she is still capable of speech, Bast cannot access her Ka in this form (so she can't manipulate sand). In her ‘human’ form, Bast can make use of a number of catlike abilities without undergoing a complete transformation, most notably night vision and heightened senses of hearing and smell.
The goddess also has quite the flexible body, and she is extremely agile. In a fight, she can either avail herself of retractable claws on her hands and feet, or utilize her sharp teeth.




Bast loves dancing, and she is very, very good at it–so good that it was one of her areas of expertise during her time in ancient Egypt. While it may not be a superpower per se, those who have had the privilege of seeing her dance often describe the experience as nothing short of exquisite.




They say music calms even the most savage beast, and Bast's musical talents are indeed soothing. She possesses skill with a fairly wide range of instruments, including the harp, flute, double clarinet, violin, etc.. Her singing isn't too bad either.