Mother Mayhem

"There are just -so- many things we have planned! My children will soon see just how much -love- their Mother has for them."

- Mother Mayhem: City of Heroes: Going Rogue

Shalice Tilman more well known as Mother Mayhem was a character in the MMO City of Heroes originally just an evil counterpart to the super-heroine Sister Psyche' but was expanded to much more in the expansion Going Rogue when the alternate reality Praetoria was made available for players to travel too or even start off in.

Sister Psyche'
Praetoria is an alternate reality in the City of Heroes world. In Praetoria the heroes of the Freedom Phalanx took a different path instead of defenders of the world as overlords of it. In Primal Earth, as the Praetorians dubbed their counter part world, Shalice Tilman is psychic heroine Sister Psyche' who used her powers to fight crime often with her apprentice and friend Aurora Scott, AKA “Aurora Borealis”. Sister Psyche' was seriously injured in combat and was sent into a coma but a young Aurora Scott volunteered to allow herself to be psychically possessed by Sister Psyche's mind, with a technique Shalice called “Mind Riding”, while her body recovered. Eventually Sister Psyche' recovered and returned to her own body and in deep gratitude took Aurora on as an apprentice and helped her grow her mutant powers.

Mother Mayhem
In Praetoria though things unraveled quite differently. Shalice Tilman used Mind Riding to cheat death in the body of Aurora Borealis as well but unlike her Primal counter-part she never returned to her own body as Aurora's mutant powers were formidable and with them and her own put together she was the world's strongest psychic force. Shalice has taken the name “Mother” as she feels she is a mother to the people of Praetoria though many critics, the few who retained their free wills, called her “Mother Mayhem”, an alias the people of Primal earth mainly refer to her as. Mother fought in the Praetorian war against Hamidon with Marcus Cole. When the War was over and most of the world's governments were weakened, destroyed or just plain proven ineffective, Marcus Cole declared himself as Emperor and instituted a Praetorian Guard made of the strongest meta-humans that had fought beside him against Hamidon; Among these new Praetors was Mother. Mother is the Praetor in charge of patrolling public thoughts for any potential disturbances to the peace in Praetoria.

Aurora Borealis still exists as an occasionally reemerging consciousness but she is completely enthralled to Mother even when she speaks separately from her and so Mother many times refers to herself in the third-person sometimes as a proud mother and other times as loyal daughter. There are many who oppose the Praetors as a Resistance and one of the main heads of it is Calvin Scott, who spearheaded the Resistance after he escaped Mother's “Asylum” in an outrage over seeing his wife Aurora possessed by the deranged psychic. Mother has an entire psychic network known as the Seer Network supported by many of her Seers. The Seers are other psychics, some mutants other normal humans with a keen sixth sense much like their Primal-Earth counterparts in Arachnos. The Seers are trained to access the psychic part of their brains in Mother's Asylum and Behavioral-Adjustment-Facility. As the original architect of the Seer Net and the mental master of all the Seers who make it up, Mother can use it as a massive psychic territory overlapping all of Praetoria to hear thoughts all across the city and alter them as she wishes when need be.

Behavioral-Adjustment-Facility and Mother of Mercy Asylum
Mother's Behavioral-Adjustment-Facility or “BAF” is where all criminals and political prisoners are taken to be “reeducated” by Mother and her Seers or to be trained as Seers if Mother sees potential. The BAF is a formidable prison but break-outs have occurred and there are those who hold on with all their might to retain their free-will despite the BAF Seers' best efforts, if a prisoner is ever too much of a problem for the BAF to handle they are admitted into the “Mother of Mercy Asylum” to treat the “deeply disturbed” patient. Mother visits the BAF for routine checkups but mainly stays in the Asylum as it's director and focuses her main attention on “rehabilitating” the patients there. Unlike the BAF, no one in the history of Praetoria, except for the miraculous case of Calvin Scott, has escaped the Mother of Mercy Asylum. Being sent to Mother's Asylum is considered by Resistance members to be the same as a death sentence, as the Asylum completely destroys the personalities of all those who enter and the only ones who make it out are those that have been remade as completely different people.

Powers and Abilities
Mother has a variety of dangerous psychic powers including telekinesis that can outdo even most forms of super-strength. Mother can hear the surface thoughts of everyone within several miles of any of her Seers and alter them if she wishes though this is more applicable for non-super-powered civilians or those with no strong opposition to the Praetors and so her ability to alter minds is used more as a preventative measure. Though Mother -can- enthrall the entire populace as mind slaves, such a feat is hard to maintain and quite noticeable to the people placed under her control if any of them return to their senses, so she reframes from doing so except as an absolute last resort backup plan should circumstances in Praetoria ever get too far out of control. Mother Mayhem can use a more personal one-on-one mind-control and place a smaller psychic copy of her consciousness in the minds of other psychics, thus have the Seers been created. Mother uses her influences on the people of Praetoria to sway public feeling for Emperor Cole.