LAVISH

 

LAVISH

Real Name: Charmaine Grand

First Appearance: Rogue & Gambit (Vol. 1) #5, July 2018

Powers: Lavish is a mutant sensitive to the minds of other people in her vicinity, unwillingly absorbing the memories and emotional connections of people nearby. She can only hold a finite amount of absorbed mental energy within herself, however, without being overwhelmed by the load she's carrying. It's not entirely clear if this is a physical limitation of her powers, or a psychological one due to not mastering her abilities. As a result, Lavish has a secondary ability to create "golems", constructs of pseudo-matter that materialize as humanoids indistinguishable from a normal person. These golems can act as duplicates of herself, "sharing the load" of mental energy when it gets beyond her ability to store the energy in just one body. The golems may demonstrate different aspects of Lavish's personality and desires as well, similar to Multiple Man's duplicates. Lavish has also learned to create golems of the people whose mental energy she absorbs, casting the accumulated energy from the original person out of her mind and into a duplicate of that person.

In practice, Lavish's abilities seem to have several side effects and consequences. When in control of her abilities, she can siphon particular memories or emotions from other people. Acting as a therapist, she can remove specific memories from someone's mind, or merely the emotional turmoil associated with that memory. Like Rogue, she also gains access to someone's mutant powers when she absorbs from them. This can weaken the original person's powers while allowing Lavish's golems to manifest the powers of the original as well. The golems exist to isolate Lavish from the accumulated mental energy, but she can mentally control the golems of other people she creates. She can also absorb the golems back into herself, and in doing so temporarily copy the powers of that person. The golems are somewhat less substantial than a normal person, and will break down under force. At that point, any person nearby may absorb the powers and emotions of that golem, regardless of whether it was the original person or not.

When her mutant powers originally manifested, she accidentally created a golem, "Dr. Grand" (left), from her own memories. However, the power was still too overwhelming for her, so she created "Lavish" (right) as well. She then utilized the pair to operate the Paraíso Island Retreat Center as a front for mutant couples therapy so that she could strip their patients of their memories and further diffuse her power across an ever-increasing multitude of golems.