March, Part Seven
Today marks the second-to-last stop on my Pride Month trek through a Mutants & Masterminds superhero tabletop role-playing game lens based on the original Pride Flag’s symbology. (If you missed this week, it starts here.) The next stripe of the original Pride Flag’s rainbow is indigo, and is a character very much inspired by Marsha P. Johnson.
March Indigo (later Decibelle)Among the colours of the original pride flag, indigo represented serenity. When the light washed over the eight people in the 1978 San Francisco Pride Parade and transformed them into the superhero group that would be known as March, serenity was the last thing on Beau Wright’s mind—though that day he was walking as “Decibelle,” his loud-and-proud, southern belle drag queen alter-ego, alongside other drag queens and the local San Francisco S.T.A.R. group inspired by the 1970s organization of the same name in New York. After the flare of light, Bea found herself in possession of an empowered voice, and an unflappable nature, and set immediately to using both to ensure the violence didn’t harm those under her care.
Where March Pink/Pride earned scorn for his overtly sexual nature, and March Turquoise/Faerie angered those with rigid ideas of gender, March Indigo did both—backwards and in heels—without apology or regret, often loudly proclaiming her pride over all of who she—and he—was. As Bea or as Beau, March Indigo was already a well-known face and a force for sex workers, drag queens, and the gender nonconforming, and after gaining powers alongside the rest of March, March Indigo did everything possible to uplift and protect them. Sometimes this meant using her vocal powers to captivate those who might otherwise attack, and sometimes it meant violence done to those who would do the same in return. Either way, the scream of Decibelle ensured Beau Wright never had to be silent again.
Like the other members of March, at first March Indigo kept the true identity of the heroine secret, but as the AIDS crisis unfolded, Bea came out in all her identities publicly in order to garner attention and focus her activism efforts (most often alongside March Red/Zap and March Orange/Blood Sister). Upon the death of March Red/Zap in 1988, Decibelle grew even louder, oft repeating the truth of the Silence = Death project. After the torch passed from the original March in 1998, Decibelle joined Blood Sister in becoming very much a mentor to the new generation at March Tower, and remains a force for AIDS, sex workers, drag queens and any gender nonconforming people to the present day, despite her health being quite fragile now she is in her seventies.
March Indigo, 1978 (PL 8)
Identity: Bea Wright, aka “Decibelle” / Beau Wright (Drag name, stage name, birth name; originally secret, but soon public)
Genderqueer Male, 26, Height 1.8m, Weight 84kg, Brown Eyes, Black Hair
Group Affiliation: March, Base of Operations: San Francisco, later March Tower
Attributes: Str 0, Sta 1, Agi 2, Dex 2, Fgt 2, Int 2, Awe 6, Pre 6 (30 points)
Powers: Quick Change: Feature 1 (Transform into costume as a free action) (1 point); Serenity: Enhanced Advantages (Fearless, Trance, Uncanny Dodge), Enhanced Attributes (Awareness 3, Presence 3), Enhanced Defenses (Dodge 6, Parry 6, Will 6), Immunity 30 (All effects resisted by Will, Limited to Half-Effect) (48 points); Voice of the Unheard array with Scream: Cone Area Damage 6 (Sonic), AE: High Art: Cumulative Hearing Area Affliction 6 (Resisted and Overcome by Will; Entranced/Stunned), Concentration Duration, Instant Recovery, Limited Degree, and AE: Shatter: Ranged Weaken Toughness 6, Affects Only Objects (14 points)
Advantages: Connected, Contacts, Defensive Roll 2, Fearless, Trance, Uncanny Dodge, Well-informed (5 points)
Skills: Deception 3 (+9), Expertise—Streetwise 5 (+7), Insight 4 (+10), Investigation 3 (+5), Perception 4 (+10), Persuasion 5 (+11) (12 points)
Offense:
Initiative +2
High Art — (Cumulative Hearing Area Affliction 6)
Scream — (Cone Area Damage 5)
Unarmed +2 (Close, Damage 0)
Defense: Dodge 12, Parry 12, Fortitude 4, Toughness 2/4*, Will 12 (10 points)
* with Defensive Roll
Power Point Totals: Attributes 30 + Powers 63 + Advantages 5 + Skills 12 + Defenses 10 = 120.
Complications: Motivation—Responsibility: In any of March Indigo’s personas, March Indigo considers taking care of the queer, the gender non-conforming, the HIV+, and sex workers to be the most central responsibility of having these powers. March Indigo funnels most of their income into setting up safe houses for those under their charge, and threating or harming those under their protection is one of the few ways to truly unleash March Indigo’s temper. Prejudice: All the members of March are targeted for being queer, and March Indigo is also openly and visibly a Black drag queen, which leads to confrontation and anger or violence. Whether presenting male, as his drag queen persona Decibelle, or in any other presentation or playfulness of gender, March Indigo refuses to back down or be silenced, which often results in escalation. Reputation: March Indigo is open about the sex work they’ve done, and in supporting other sex workers, and this often leads to others having preconceived—and usually negative, puritanical, and hypocritical—opinions before they’ve so much as met.
