Irrelevant Example

What are your three biggest fears?
Disappointing his father.
Being tortured (a very real possibility during the intifada).
Snakes (an irrational phobia based on a rattlesnake bite he received as a child)

What is your biggest dream?
John used to dream of becoming a rabbi, starting a family settling into a Jewish community. In the wake of the intifada, however, this seems to him rather naïve. He’s been told by a number of people, some of whom actually know what they’re talking about, that he would be a rock star in the software business, given his talent with computers, but the prospect rather bores John. Then again, he doesn’t really have any better ideas. If you asked him, right now, what he wants to do with his life—what his biggest dream is—he wouldn’t really have an answer.
Of course, John has other dreams, some horribly cliché and others simply unrealistic. He dreams that his family would simply get along. He is in love with Julie and dreams of spending the rest of his life with her. And, though he is afraid of admitting it to himself, he dreams that his identity as a mutant will connect him to a destiny greater than anything he could have imagined.

What are your quirks or pet peeves?
John gets sick easily, particularly in regards to colds. Thanks to his mother he is a vegetarian and takes half a dozen different vitamins and herbal supplements every day. He loves reality t.v. He is fascinated by Russian life and culture, owning CDs of folk music, priding himself on his huge Siberian hat, and has a collection of kitschy communist chic (i.e., a black t-shirt with a red star on it, posters of Che Guevara). He has seen Fiddler on the Roof dozens of times. Homosexuality makes him vaguely uncomfortable, and he is extremely irritated by stereotypical gay mannerisms (such as lisping). He can’t stand anime. Superjews piss him off to no end, simply because he thinks that they are so stereotypical that they give other Jews a bad name. He loves tea and can’t stand chocolate. Punk culture in general is a big pet peeve: tattoos, piercings, gutter fashion, silly hair—not for any important reason, but just because he sees it as pretentious and stupid. He can’t stand anyone who likes to make other people feel dumb. And it drives him nuts when people drum their fingers or bite their fingernails.

What is most important to you?
John’s father always taught him that the only thing a man ever has that he can really call his own is his honor. John still believes, as his father taught, that integrity is the most important thing in life; a man should be who he is should do what is right regardless of what others think. Thus, John doesn’t see his identity as a mutant as anything fundamentally wrong; it is simply who he is. It is important for him to find a way to hold onto his integrity—his honor—despite whatever hardships his mutation might bring.

What is your mutation?
John has complete control over electricity in any form. His body’s electrical field is super-charged, making his nervous system extraordinarily responsive and resilient. He can channel this electricity in various ways, although the only manifestation of which he is currently aware is in the form of blasts of super-heated plasma (much like lightning).
An ancillary effect of this power is an intuitive mastery of electronic devices, especially computers. Sit him in front of a computer and he can hack a secure website or write a program; give him a palm pilot and he will know exactly how to get to the datebook without even thinking; give him the brand new fighting game and he will flawlessly execute every combo the first time. John has no training whatsoever in electrical engineering or computer coding; he simply understands computers on a completely unconscious level and they respond naturally to his desires.

What happened the first time your power manifested?
Because of his involvement with Jewish culture and heritage, John began to feel a great affinity for the nation of Israel and its great Zionist mission. On his eighteenth birthday, shortly after his graduation from high school, he enlisted in the Israeli Defense Force.
John learned much during Basic Training, including assault tactics, first aid, basic demolitions, and krav maga (the martial art of the IDF). Unfortunately, the Golan Massacre inaugurated the Third Intifada only three months after John arrived. Led by the mutant Jinn, wielder of sand and smokeless fire, and the rest of the Seven Prophets (as the mutant leaders called themselves), the Palestinian fedayeen sought nothing less than the annihilation of Israel. The Israeli government, which had not dealt with any mutant threat in more than a generation, was ruthless in its response. Skirmishes in Jerusalem spread quickly; Sentinels were mobilized to hunt down the mutant leaders, insurgents streamed into surrounding Israeli cities, and fighting quickly broke down into brutal street wars. The cities of Israel and Palestine became killing fields where the line between soldier and terrorist, mutant and civilian, disappeared in a smear of blood.
After six months of fighting, the Israeli leadership launched Operation Solomon’s Seal: a plan to assassinate Jinn and thus decapitate the intifada’s leadership. Though the mutant leader was apparently killed by rocket fire and over a dozen Sentinels, the operation went horribly wrong. Fires spread through Israeli neighborhoods, fed by an unnatural wind and accompanied by a blinding storm of sand; Israeli forces went wild, raping, looting, and killing indiscriminately. Jerusalem disintegrated into chaos.
In the surreal atmosphere of carnage, something began happening to John. He could feel his skin tingle as the city’s power grid surged and broke; the three other men in his squad were picked off by snipers using infrared scopes but the shooters could not even see him; amidst the terror and the blood and the pounding of adrenaline at was as if something within him was struggling to come to life. Eventually he came across a pair of Israeli children trapped by downed electrical wires, the corpses of their parents still sizzling beside them. The children were terrified of the wildly jumping cables, screaming as the wires spit fire and sparks. John watched helplessly until a swinging cable was about to strike one of the children. Screaming, “Noooooo!” he reached out with his hands—and the electricity disappeared.
Two of his fellow soldiers witnessed this scene. Perhaps they were deluded by unnatural bloodlust, or assumed that they were Palestinian mutants trying to electrocute John. Or perhaps they were men who had simply learned to love killing. Whatever the cause, they gunned down both children where they stood. John watched in shock as the soldiers, finding that they had murdered children, smiled, emptied their clips into the bodies, and said, “Fucking muties.”
Rage. The world dissolved into rage and John wanted to kill those men. Then something horrible happened: John’s fingers crackled with power, his hands glowed with killing light, and before the soldiers could react the light lanced out and burned them down to charred skeletons.
Sick, horrified, guilty, and terrified of the lethal power he seemed to possess, John went AWOL. The days after Solomon’s Seal are still a blur to him; all he can tell is that he left the city as soon as he could. He found that there was an urge for him to go south, a subtle pull that he couldn’t understand. Stealing food and sleeping in holes at night he made his way across the Sinai desert until he stood at the border of Egypt . . . and there he saw a thing that he can barely remember, a curtain of light that throbbed with power, some force that made every nerve in his body sing, a barrier so powerful that it flooded him with a terror more complete and consuming than anything he had felt during the intifada. He ran away, ran until his lungs exploded, and then ran some more. He is still running.

How do you feel about mutants? About being one?
John was exposed to rather different viewpoints as a child, his mother being a former pro-mutant activist and his father fighting for S.H.I.E.L.D. during the Mutant-Human War. Truth be told, however, John never really gave it much thought. Stories of the old Heroes and Mutants always had a feeling of unreality to John, like he was reading a comic book or watching a movie. Like much of humanity, he operated under the assumption that mutants were gone now, and never considered the possibility that he would ever have to deal with mutants—much less be a mutant. This attitude changed suddenly during the intifada, when a small group of mutant leaders were responsible for unimaginable carnage. They became his enemy, caused him misery, killed his friends; naturally he began to bear them some kind of grudge. It is not a long-standing or deeply held belief, but John does feel somewhat conflicted and confused about his own identity as a mutant because of his experience in Israel.

Who, if anyone, knows you are a mutant?
No one knows that John is a mutant. Since his powers dramatically awakened, he has been too afraid to even experiment for fear that he would hurt someone.