Talona

Real Name: Atalanta Francesca “Frankie” Moreau, Ph.D.
Villain Name: Talona
Title: ...Queen of Beasts?
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Age: 52
Gender: F
Race: Irish-German
Hair: blonde
Eyes: blue
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 170 lbs
Blood type: O+



Dr. Moreau is of Irish and Germanic descent, lending to her tall stature, blonde hair, blue eyes and pronounced cheeks. She is a classical anglo-saxon beauty who looks young for someone her age.

As Talona, she is dressed in a rather gaudy "celtic druidic shamanic attire", built around some body armor, with a predominantly pastel green underclothes, gold trimmed metals, and a dressed up regular spear.



“Frankie”, or Dr. Atalanta Francesa Moreau, is a very well-known and regarded wildlife conservationist, with her own program on Netflix. She is a bright, cheerful British television personality who cares deeply about the environment and animals, and also a highly scholarly and academic biochemist, like a cross between Steve Irwin and David Attenborough.

Privately however, Dr. Moreau is a massive misanthrope, seeing how humanity had won the evolutionary arms race but now had become an invasive species. She is sick of the abuses done by her species against the natural world, and also extremely cynical of human nature. This is not helped coming from an abusive background, from a family that she considers “filth” and how she came about from that gene stock was a happy accident of nature. She deduced her mother was guilty of infidelity easily enough, and it took almost 15 years before her alcoholic father realized that they had a tall, fair and blonde daughter in a family of stocky brown heads.

From her mother’s death bed, she found out and eventually sought out her real father, a tall handsome specimen of a philosophy and psychology professor who was only happy to play the role of daddy for a while. From him she gleaned her belief in the imbalance of humans and animals, and the metahuman condition. This man was also a lecher and sexual predator who preyed on Frankie’s classmates and later students, and she suspects, even herself given time, reinforcing her bias against the ‘human disease’. It is a complicated philosophy, and her goals teeter between naked genocide and controlled culls. She believes the natural order is unbalanced, with much of the human race’s best and brightest not passing on their genes, while the “ones that should have died when they wandered into the wilds alone” reproduce like rabbits.

She is a massive classist, elitist, and bigot who makes arbitrary calls about who lives and who dies. She does not shy from killing anyone, even young children, if her crimes are witnessed, but otherwise will try to steer younger generations to responsible treatment of the natural world. She is also extremely protective of wildlife, as well as those people who take an active role in protecting them like the bush rangers in Africa. She hides this all well behind a veneer of a conservationist.

She has spent her life perfecting the application of her powers to create mighty creatures that could safeguard nature from the encroachment of humanity. She is hell bent on one day isolating the metahuman genome, and creates meta beasts- animals with superpowers, to shift the power back to the natural world.



Frankie grew up in the slums of northern Ireland, to a raging alocoholic of a butcher and the home coming queen mom who came from a rich brewery family but married ‘for love’. It was, naturally, an unhappy home, and Frankie was the product of her mother’s extra-marital dalliances, with a man who “gave her what she deserved”. This early life colored her view on people for much of her life, and she couldn’t have left home earlier, leaving her parents and siblings a day after her father beat her.

It was in university and getting in touch with her biological father that Francesca found her mind- and her metahuman abilities- flourish. Being able to manipulate cellular matter meant she became a brilliant Biochemist, quickly writing new treatises and journals in the fields of biology and biochemistry. She had plenty of time to be an active animal rights advocate, and a protector of natural habitats, even being arrested once, but not convicted, after joining radical eco-terrorist groups. Her abilities allowed her circle of friends to be particularly active.

Once she grew out of her activist stage, Frankie taught at the university for a time, but she and her father parted on poor terms when she saw him having an affair with her younger student, a girl who was failing her classes. She began working full time on the full extent of her abilities at another biochemistry venue for a number of years, working on her first life forms. She worked on pre-existing animals at first, but experimented with chimeric creatures, and testing them against local human populations and metahumans. She was very careful to cover her tracks, and studied her targets extensively.

Years go by and she develops her alternate persona, “Talona, the Queen of Beasts”, a very memorable extremist villain with a taste for theatricality…. And brutality, thanks to her command over animals. Fighting superheroes proved to be a stimulating if dangerous activity, and Talona would always vanish for years before returning in sporadic bursts. There was always another fight against mankind’s encroachment into nature, but also time for family, children and a career as well. What was time to someone who had complete mastery over her aging, after all?

The Gryphons matured around the time Frankie created her show, which raked in much needed extra funds. Still, there are bills to pay, equipment to procure, and experiments to run- and the hero scene has been getting rather dull of late without “Talona”. She also needed a vast amount of metahuman DNA to proceed with her experiments, and North America was just the melting pot of superheroes than the doctor requires. She moves her show and her family to Los Angeles, and in weeks, sightings of an old villain and a mysterious flying monster begin to surface…



Biomancy: Healing

Dr. Moreau has the ability to manipulate living cells, even antibodies, to rapidly divide or act according to her whims, accelerating the healing process. She can mend bone, muscle, skin, organs and nerves. She also uses this ability to effectively nullify the aging process in herself and keep her body in peak physical condition.

Biomancy: Create Life

Dr. Moreau has the ability to manipulate DNA on a molecular level and psychically create conventionally “impossible” or mythical life forms, even able to cause cells to undergo meiosis or mitosis. Thus she can breed two favorable specimens to create superior offspring, or in a pinch cause an egg cell to grow into its mother’s clone. She can even accelerate its growth and write basic instinctual programs such as obedience, loyalty, aggression and performing simple tasks. Most animals can be gestated at 400% faster than normal - she can birth a new litter of dogs in as little as 15 days with no defects. any faster and the results tend to be... unpleasant.

Biomancy: Charm or Dominate Animal
By the power of her mind alone, Talona can either “befriend” or “dominate” an animal. Befriend means the animal regards Frankie like a trusted companion, and will protect her or follow her commands within their capacity. "Dominate" means to completely invade the animal's brain and directly control its movements like a puppet.



Weakness for Biomancy Healing: Requires contact with the subject to be healed. Biomantic healing does not work on dead cells, so the dead remain dead. Dr. Moreau cannot control cancer cells (but she can supercharge white blood cells to precisely attack cancer cells).

Weakness for Biomancy Create Life: The stranger or more bizarre the creature, the more unstable it is. She must still conform to the basic body structures and size limitations laid out by nature. Bidepal, Quadruped, one head, two eyes, two ears, nose, etc etc. Furthermore, granting the organism can only receive one mutation or trait from another animal – any more causes genetic problems. She personally prefers not going any bigger than 2000 pounds.

Dr. Moreau also cannot create thinking, speaking life. Powerful as she is, the human brain and sentience is still a great mystery that biomancy and neurobiology still has not fully unlocked. With her current powers, developing the equivalent of the human brain would be the equivalent of writing trillions of lines of code, making it a lost cause.  

As no living thing could sustain accelerated growth of an embryo, Dr. Moreau grows her accelerated creations in special artificial wombs, which are hooked up to nutrient feeds that can sustain rapid development.

Dr. Moreau’s creations lack the natural social skills that develop in the wild. As a result, no natural born creature of the same species can stand her creations- they will attack and kill them on sight, otherwise they will steer clear of them.

Dr. Moreau’s powers and work is known to the dragon community. She is forbidden from creating dragons, drakes or dragon derivatives on pain of a fiery, drawn out death. Dr. Moreau is terrified of dragon kind and will hesitate if they are mentioned.

Weakness for Biomancy: Charm or Dominate Animal
Charm or Dominate can only work on a single animal at a time. Charm is limited by communication and the animal can usually only protect the doctor or follow her around. Dominate effectively lobotomizes the animal, leaving them brain dead once Wild ends the ability.



Talona Costume – more for show than for the battlefield, the Wild Queen costume is functional body armor covered in leaf patterns, feathers, fure cape, with a deer horn helm.

Talona – a regular steel spear dressed up as a 'celtic, shamanistic, spiritual trinket'. No special abilities.



Galahad the Gryphon

Galahad is Dr. Moreau’s finest work, the product of blending avian and mammalian biology to recreate the mythical beast. Galahad is of the four limbed variety, with his wings acting as his forearms on the ground. Galahad is large enough to be ridden as an aerial mount. As a Gryphon, Galahad is naturally strong and tough, able to track and search by scent and has claws capable of shredding the frontal armor of main battle tanks. He’s about as intelligent as animals can get, and can understand a few basic commands.

Galahad was neutered once he grew to sufficient size. Dr. Moreau feels that while this may curb his aggression, it saves her the headache of a giant beast in heat.

Weaknesses: (1)Galahad can only follow simple commands as mentioned above. “Go”, “Stop”, "Play" (nonlethal attack) “Attack” (Kill), “Search” (usually with an object that carries a target's scent). (2) Commands must be issued verbally. If Galahad cannot hear Dr. Moreau, he'll complete his last task then return to her. Risk of being separated. (3)  Galahad has neither social skills nor natural pheromones towards wild Gryphons. This causes any natural Gryphon to regard Galahad as an abomination to be killed on sight, especially since they tend to be bigger.  (4) Hates equines. Upon seeing a horse, donkey, or other equine, heck even centaurs, Galahad will go out his way to kill it.

Also, Galahad is a frickin' gryphon, and not easy to bring around in public.

Rex VII and Rover IX: A pair of normal German shepherd guard dogs that act as the doctor’s pets and bodyguards in public. They respond only to her verbal commands. They wear canine Kevlar vests, and are conditioned to be loyal to the doctor as to throw themselves at bears, lions, tigers, or any of her creations that go nuts. Based on their names, this has happened a lot.



Fit physical adult - but no real combat skill to write about. She does boxing, yoga and running for fitness, but a trained combatant, even an amateur martial artist can quickly overwhelm Frankie.

Animal whisperer – nothing so supernatural but rather a deep, instinctual understanding of communicating with animals, a combination of conditioning, rewards, verbal cues and body language. Used on common domesticated animals like dogs, livestock like cows and pigs, and Frankie’s own creations.

Famous personality – “Dr. Frankie Moreau’s Fantastic Bestiary” is an award winning British documentary series available on multiple streaming services, now on its third season. The doctor shot to fame in the UK for her conservation work, and now for her third season she will produce and host a show on North American wildlife.

If it ever becomes public knowledge that Dr. Moreau was Talona, her credibility will likely be destroyed and she will lose her assets and many legitimate associates.