[Super Collie!]

Look! Out in the pasture! It's... "Super Collie"!

Faster than a speeding farmbike!

More powerful than "Federated Farmers"!

Able to muster whole flocks in a single bound!

She's the new force in rounding up wrongdoers and putting them through the sheepdip of justice!


Description:

General Appearance -

Super Collie is a female anthropomorphic Sheltie Collie, standing about 5' 8" (1.7m) tall. She has what can be described as a generous yet athletic figure. Super Collie has medium-thick yellow-gold fur over most of her body, except for creamy white fur on her chest, tummy, forearms and inner thighs and a dark brown/black 'saddle' fur pattern on her lower back. Her eyes are a blue-green colour, and she has a long flowing aubern mane which usually winds up draped over one shoulder.

Outfit -

Super powers:

Equipment:

Secret ID:

Esmerelda Braithwaite, a.k.a Super Collie, works as a beta-tester at a Wellington software company, ELB Industries. Tapping into the company's computer network allows Super Collie to keep close tabs on crime situations (besides, if she worked on a farm it would be too easy for someone to guess her secret!). At work Esmerelda wears big glasses and puts her hair up in a bun. Though her office has a 'business casual' dress code, Esmerelda prefers the more formal jacket and tube skirt.

Origin:

While looking for a farmhouse in the Canterbury high country in New Zealand after her car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, Esmerelda Braithwaite stumbles across an ancient cave amid the rocks, tussocks and lupins. Looking for shelter, she enters it, and finds an ancient skeleton clutching a crook. Compelled by some strange force Our Heroine picks it up - and in a flash of light finds herself imbued with the Mystic Power of the Shepherd...

Disadvantages:

Enemies:

Allies:

Bystanders:


Biography

[Super Collie!]Esmerelda Braithwaite is an anthropomorphic Sheltie Collie, and the only daughter of Thomas and Jeanette Braithwaite. She grew up in the small township of Albury in the South Island of New Zealand, and for the most part had a fairly uneventful childhood. Her sense of logic and order, coupled with a very active personality, enabled her to do well at school, although she did tend to be a little socially withdrawn from her schoolmates. This was further exacerbated during her teenage years, as although she was well-liked by her peers (and was a keen player in the school's girls hockey team) Esmerelda as a teenager did have a rather plain appearance, which meant that it was a long time before boys would have anything much to do with her apart from a casual friendship. Despite these setbacks, Esmerelda was able to leave school with high marks, and promptly enrolled at a technical college in the city of Christchurch to study computing (she wanted to go to university, but her parents, being simple shopkeepers, were unable to afford to send her to one).

Esmerelda did very well in her studies at technical school, excelling in all of her work, and after completing her courses she managed to secure herself a job in a small local Web design company. After a matter of months though, Esmerelda became bored with her work - it wasn't challenging enough, and it never seemed to give her enough to do during the day - so she left, and after a succession of other jobs she finally gained a position of a beta-software tester at ELB Industries in Wellington. It was a challenging position, to be sure, and for a while the amount of work satisfied her, but again it wasn't long before Esmerelda felt the familiar tugs of boredom.

But one day Esmerelda's life changed forever - and mere boredom became the least of her worries.

While she liked the life in the city, Esmerelda still enjoyed spending time in the country, especially the near barren, treeless plains and mountains of the South Island high country near where she was born. It was on one of her holiday trips to this wilderness, driving along a deserted country road, that her car suffered a mechanical breakdown, and Esmerelda was forced to try and find a nearby farmhouse to get assistance. At one point striking out cross-country, she stumbled across an ancient cave amid the rocks, tussocks and lupins. Looking for shelter, she entered it, and found an ancient skeleton clutching a crook. Compelled by some strange force, Esmerelda picked the crook up - and in a flash of light she is imbued with a strange unearthly power. What she has discovered is the final resting place of the last holder of the fabled Mystic Power of the Shepherd, and this long-forgotten power transforms Esmerelda into Super Collie!

On discovering her new powers - speed, strength, a sonic Super Bark, not to mention gaining a body that a good number of supermodels would die for - Esmerelda found herself initially at a loss as to what to do next, but quickly realised that with careful management she could become a force for good as well as preserving her own privacy. The latter was the most important to her, as Esmerelda had no wish for all of her life to be on public display if she was going to use her new powers to fight evil and corruption in the world. Plus, she saw no reason to give up her day job - after all, even Super Collie had to eat - and with her new found abilities Esmerelda was sure that she had found the solution to productively occupying her days!

Esmerelda quickly learned the extent and capabilities of her new powers, after getting her car repaired she returned to life in Wellington. She covertly set up her workstation at ELB to monitor news and police reports for signs of trouble where her expertise may be required, and after Super Collie is involved in exposing and catching several notorious criminals she became a duly accredited and registered Super Heroine, licensed to actively assist the authorities in fighting crime. Of course, Esmerelda's colleagues and friends are totally unaware of her double life as Super Collie, and after judging the initial publicity surrounding her exploits as Super Collie, Esmerelda is happy to keep it that way.

But the Mystic Power of the Shepherd has changed Esmerelda in other ways, even when she is not being Super Collie. She has more confidence in herself, feels fulfilled in her life, and has recently fallen in love with John, a struggling impressionist painter who she cares for very much. In addition, the formerly rather dowdy-looking Esmerelda has been transformed into a very attractive woman, a fact which is not lost on her work colleagues, as among other things several of the programmers at ELB now deliberately put bugs in their code so they'll have more opportunities to meet her (she suspects, but has never been able to prove it). Surprisingly, Esmerelda never really noticed the change in behaviour of people around her in her workplace, and is largely oblivious to the new effect she now has on other people.

It is with her boyfriend John that Esmerelda feels the most conflict regarding her super powers and covert crime-fighting. On one hand, she would dearly love to share the fact that she is Super Collie with him as sometimes she feels she needs someone to talk to about it, but on the other hand the fewer people know of her double life, the better she feels. Esmerelda has kept her secret well, but she feels guilty about holding back such an important part of her life from John.

Standing for truth, justice, and the absence of flystrike!


Super Collie's Staff and the Mystic Power of the Shepherd


"It's not about the staff," Cymbeline said. "I mean, the staff is a symbol of your power but not the power itself. The staff is- is a point of focus you use to call the spirit into yourself." - "Dark Designs"

Perhaps one of the most important things about Super Collie and her powers is her Shepherd's Staff. Not only it is a weapon in its own right, but it - and the pendant that is its alternate form - is the focal point of Super Collie's transformation. Without the pendant, Esmerelda effectively cannot transform into Super Collie, and without the staff Super Collie cannot revert to being Esmerelda. (Theoretically, it is possible for Esmerelda to transform into Super Collie and vice-versa without the staff or pendant, but it would be extremely difficult and require complete and uninterrupted concentration for several minutes - which, given a super hero's life, is not exactly practical.)

The staff does have some protections against either being lost or being misused by others though. In its pendant form, when being worn by Esmerelda - which is more or less constantly - it can only be removed by conscious will of Esmerelda herself, and cannot be removed by anyone else. If someone did try to forcibly remove it, they would find that no matter how hard they tried they could not break it or pull it off over her head without her active consent. While the staff in its natural form can (and often is) separated from Super Collie's person, mere posession of it does not automatically confer Super Collie's powers to that person, and for that person it loses its other fighting qualities such as its ability to extend upon mental command. If the staff does become separated from Super Collie, she can sense its location through the Power of the Shepherd, and she can quickly locate it again.

The only way that someone can receive the Mystic Power of the Shepherd is to have it transferred to that person by the consenting holder of that power. In other words, Super Collie would have to consciously give that power to someone else - and once she does so, the person who she gave it to is now posesses those powers instead. Super Collie would revert to being plain ordinary Esmerelda, and the only way she could get the powers back would be for that person to freely return them to her in the same manner.

Giving of the Mystic Power of the Shepherd to another is the way that previous Guardian Shepherds (the past equivalents of Super Collie) passed on their powers from generation to generation. Esmerelda, however, did not receive the Power in this manner, which raises the question: how did the Power become transferred to her? The answer is that when Friday Mackenzie, the previous Guardian Shepherd, passed on in the cave, he died in his Guardian Shepherd state - in other words, in his incarnation of a Guardian Shepherd rather than his ordinary self. When Esmerelda found what remained of Friday's body - as well as his staff - his power had essentially been circulating around the cairn in what could be termed an 'ungrounded' state, and when Esmerelda took hold of the staff the Power was able to enter her. This was made easier by the presence of Friday's spirit (as well as those of the other Guardian Shepherds) who had finally found the combination of need and suitable person for a new Guardian Shepherd to arise.
 


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Copyright 1999, 2001 Terry Knight and John Plunkett.
Last Updated November 2001
For more information contact: Terry Knight