“Secret Origins”

Last week I finished the final member of my superhero team the “Doomwatch”, now regular readers will know that heroes in our superhero games have to be created by the players and not actual characters from comic books etc.. This is a little embarrassing, but I actually find it easier to paint or sculpt a figure (or care about it during a game) if I make up a little background story for them while I’m doing it, so though I have had the background stories for my team worked out in my head for a while now I’ve never actually put them down on paper till now. So as I don’t have anything new painted this week I thought I’d share them with you.

Silas Doomchild: Very little is known about the history of Silas Doomchild, even Gisele cannot read his inner thoughts he keeps them so well shielded, all he will say is that “He did a lot of jobs he is no longer proud of, for a lot of different governments, and was very well paid for his time and skills”. Exactly what these skills and jobs were nobody seems to know, though it appears that his last “job” left him paralysed from the waist down and forever confined to a wheelchair. It seems that this was also the cause of the epiphany that drove him to use the skills and fortune he had acquired to form a superhero team to fight for justice and atone for all his previous life’s misdeed’s.

So it was that he began scouring the world for a group of young people with amazing abilities to form his team, not from the great and the good, but from those cast out by society and down on their luck, this is who he found…..

 

Cliff Walker (Ghostwalker): Cliff Walker had it all, a college football star who married the head cheerleader, he was soon a high flier (literally) in his dream job, a “topgun” fighter pilot in the US air force. He couldn’t believe his life could get any better till the day NASA approached him and asked him to pilot a “black op’s” space shuttle mission to launch a prototype “Star Wars” laser system. The mission all went well until the shuttle was hit by a mysterious blue burning asteroid causing it to spiral down out of orbit. Horrifically burnt Cliff somehow managed to pilot the ship down into the ocean but only he and the co-pilot survived, unfortunately he too drowned holding the now unconscious Cliff’s head above water until the rescue helicopters could arrive.

Rushed back to hospital the almost total coverage of burnt tissue his body now had caused the decision to be made to turn off the life support machines. However although all heart and respiratory activity, ceased, his brain continued functioning. Indeed he began talking in his sleep. Fear that he might reveal the “off the record” operation he had been taking part in the decision was made to destroy Cliff’s brain and dispose of the body immediately. It was at this point that the new “un-dead” Cliff came back to conciseness, all pain seemed to be gone, he could stand and walk around as normal, until he saw his reflection in the mirror, the shock of this caused his first “out of body” experience as his ghost or spirit left his body. This then left the room by passing through the door and accidentally entered the body of the guard outside taking control of it in the process. It was at this point the senior medical staff returned to destroy Cliff brain with an acid injection. Using the guard’s body he was able to overpower the medics before a feeling of fading away began to overtake him and he had to return to his own body. Cliff then managed to escape the hospital. Pursued by a government that didn’t want word of either the secret mission or their treatment of a military hero, getting out into the news, where could he go? He could not return home to his wife who thought he was dead, killed in a training accident, he went on the run, hiding in shadows and with no purpose.

That was when Silas found him and asked him to lead his team, reluctantly he agreed, on the understanding that Silas would help him bring the illegal operation and those involved to justice. And so the search for the rest of the team began…

 

Ben Richards (Granite): Mary Richards was raised in a deeply religious family so when she became pregnant to a mysterious stranger the shame of it forced her to run away from home, penniless and desperate she began making her way to the one person she thought could help her. Relying on the charity of strangers, something that was often lacking, she crossed continents until exhausted and due to give birth she reached the small town in Serbia where her sister now lived. She arrived cold and wet in the heart of a storm that had been raging for days and collapsed in the dead of night on the steps of the local church where the priest found her and with the help of his housekeeper delivered the baby, “Benjamin”. Sadly it was all too much for poor Mary and she died after the birth, just managing to make the priest promise something before she died. This meant that she never saw her baby, or the way the priest crossed himself on laying eyes upon it. Ben was born with thick grey “stone like” skin causing the housekeeper to cry “Gargoyle!” and take up a candlestick with which to beat the child to death. However the priest stopped her as he had promised on the Bible to carry out the dying girl’s wishes.

So it was that next morning the priest carried the child up to the local Nunnery and the mother superior there. The priest explained the situation to the mother superior who though sorry for the child refused to take it, that is until till the girls name was revealed, at which point she agreed to take the child and raise it in the nunnery. So Ben grew hidden from the outside world, and though many of the nuns were dubious of having a “monster” in their midst none would challenge the decision of the Mother superior who seemed to love the child like he was family, on the very rare occasion that he was spotted any tales of the “Stone giant” were brushed off as “old wives tales” and “too much drink”.

It was when Ben was in his early twenties that the war came to their nunnery, soldiers looking for supplies of food, burst in and on being refused help their leader shot the Mother superior killing her. Ben rushed in to try and save the nun’s from further harm beating and scaring off the soldiers, however in the fight he hit the leader killing him. Though he had saved the rest of the nun’s the taking of a life meant he was asked to leave the nunnery and the only home he had ever known. He wandered the countryside trying to atone for the thing he had done, and it was reports that a “Golem” had rescued a child from a burning building that brought Ben to the attention of Silas Doomchild, he managed to find him hidden away up in the mountains and convince him to join his superhero team…

Gisele Artios (Migraine): Famous French stage magician and mind reader Charles Artios, was married to his lovely assistant Edith and was thrilled when then had a beautiful baby daughter whom they named Gisele, the child turned out to be both deaf and dumb, but this mattered not at all to Charles who doted on his daughter to the point that jealousy began to brew in the heart of his wife. It was around her eighth birthday that Gisele’s mental abilities began to emerge, she began to “hear” her father’s words in her head and on discovering his child’s abilities Charles worked tirelessly with her to develop them. Soon Gisele could communicate completely with her father a fact they kept a secret from everybody else, as Charles knew if she found out his wife would want to put Gisele into the act, something the shy little girl would hate. Feeling ever more envious of the father and daughters relationship Edith soon began an affair with a rich business man culminating in talk of a divorce, something Charles refused as he feared losing touch with his precious daughter. However Edith’s problems were suspiciously solved when one night a dangerous illusion went terribly wrong resulting in the death of Charles.

Soon after Edith married her lover and the family moved into his Paris home. Gisele grew ever more distant with the loss of the one person she could talk too, she tended to stay away from her mother and step-father as much as possible as he had begun to look at the lovely young girl with lustful eyes. Then one night after a drunken row between her parents, her mother stormed out of the house. Her step father burst into Gisele’s room and pushing her down onto the bed began to force his attentions onto her, unable to cry out or call for help the brave girl fought back with all her strength but to no avail until in desperation she instinctively projected a blast of mental energy into the mind of her attacker, knocking him into a coma!

Fearing she had killed him she fled the house running with no direction or plan. A member of the house’s staff was able to inform the police what had happened on that fateful night and her step father later recovered, this was the final straw between Edith and him and she left still blaming Gisele. The police searched for her and pictures were shown on television saying she was needed to help with their enquires, but Gisele unable to hear the reports thought that she was wanted for his murder, so just ran even more. Desperate and half starved, Silas found her living rough in a Paris backstreet, taking her in and training her to control her powers to the point where she can now talk mentally to the rest of her teammates over distances and can knock out opponents with controlled mental blasts.

 

So there you have it, please feel free to laugh at me (you won’t be the first, or last I guess). I’m not sure what you’ll get from me next week yet, it’ll be a surprise for us both!!

Till then, Cheers Roger.