Life events, including the renovation of Number One Son’s old room into Younger Daughter’s room-to-be have kept me away from the fiction writing, but I’ve been continuing to plug away at the omnibus document of future characters here at the Whethermen site, and I see the light at the end of tunnel, which means I’ll probably crank out another chapter of “The Gathering Storm” soon and maybe a one-shot story within the next week…but in the meantime, how about a few more characters from my big-ole soon-to-be-300-pages (give or take) document of transhumans? (Apologies for any typos…these are copy-pasted from the raw omnibus file I’m working on, which I haven’t copyedited, since I haven’t finished it yet)
American Spirit / Charles “Chuck” Hanson
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: White/Caucasian
Notes: American Spirit wears mostly traditional Western attire (cowboy boots, jeans, sometimes chaps, a Stetson ha, etc. but also wears a sleeveless shirt with horizontal red and white stripes on the front, and a blue field covered with 50 stars on the back (referencing the U.S. flag). He wears a domino mask of a golden-brown hue just a couple shades lighter than his hair (rarely seen) and his handlebar mustache and goatee. American Spirit is very muscular, working out regularly with free weights, and is skilled in boxing and karate. He always carries at least one revolver (usually modeled after antique Old West styles) but also typically other firearms, such as rifles or shotguns, as well as a large knife or two. He is a skilled horse rider but much prefers to ride one of this three motorcycles. He spends a great deal of time dealing with crime at the Texas-Mexico border and sometimes crosses over the border illegally to pursue criminals or to take out a drug operation. The Texas Ranger Division of the Texas state police force has officially deputized American Spirit, though they deny any knowledge of his cross-border activities. American Spirit is also officially endorsed by Reynolds American Inc. through its Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. subsidiary (which puts out Natural American Spirit cigarettes; ironically, he smokes Pall Malls typically). He is one of the members of the Texas transhuman team known as Rough Justice. American Spirit supports Freedom Party candidates frequently, as well as conservative members of the Republican Party. He doesn’t consider himself racist nor does he condone openly race-related violence and such, but he takes a hard line against illegal immigration and tends to shrug off arguments that law enforcement and the criminal justice system is unfairly weighted against non-whites. His powers are Regenerator (autonomic accelerated healing of his body) and Speedster in nature. Several anti-smoking groups, including the American Lung Association, have attempted since 1998 to use the courts to rule that American Spirit shouldn’t be allowed to be a celebrity endorser of cigarettes because his Regenerator powers protect him from the harmful effects of tobacco and thus he makes smoking seem safer, but these efforts have failed thus far.
Location: Texas (based out of San Antonio), though he also makes forays into Mexico
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Bad Hare / Brian Gregory
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: White/Caucasian
Notes: Wearing a full-body costume that makes him look like a disheveled, demonic cousin to the Easter Bunny (complete with razor blades built into the burry paws for his hands), Bad Hare terrorizes Marksburgh relentlessly and randomly, sowing destruction, injury and death in his wake. He is a Psionic with cryokinetic powers (which he primary uses to keep himself from overheating in his stuffy and heavy costume) and an ability to instill confusion in a victim or enemy (though he can only target one person at a time in this way). In addition to his lethal paws, Bad Hare often carries several other weapons, which may include a rusty cleaver, machete, bludgeon, shotgun, butcher knife and/or crowbar.
Location: Marksburgh
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Baron von Walrus / Jackson Ross
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: Black/African-American
Notes: Being morbidly obese and wearing as his costume a nearly full-face latex walrus mask and a brown tuxedo with black lapels, a white bow tie and a red, tan or sage green tuxedo shirt, Baron von Walrus is often ridiculed and underestimated. But he is extremely intelligent and well-read and is an accomplished crime lord who controls many illegal operations, mostly near the ocean (including smuggling, drug running and prostitution) and has been more successful than any other transhuman criminal kingpin in the Pacific/Southwestern United States in terms of capitalizing on the departure of Janus from that region of the country in 2010. One of Baron von Walrus’ powers is Psionic in nature—a powerful cryokinetic ability that enables him to reduce the temperature of a 1,000-square-foot area by as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as 15 minutes before he begins to suffer from the exertion—he can also cause frostbite over a localized portion of an enemy’s body if that person is within a couple feet. He is also an Absorber of kinetic energy. This power is weak against light forces but extremely potent against heavy ones; thus, if he were slapped, he would feel most of the blow. If he were punched hard, he would shrug off a good deal of the blow. If he were hit with a sledgehammer, he would do little more than grunt. In essence, he is also bulletproof, as the bullets strike with high velocity and then lose all of that when they hit him, barely even bruising his skin. (On the other hand, slitting his throat is something he would have no defense against.) This absorbed kinetic energy can then be redirected by him in the form of a kinetic blast of roughly equal strength to the total accumulated energy. In fact, he may need to release the energy, depending on how hard he is struck, because it turns into thermal energy within 10 seconds if not released. That could mean something little more than the equivalent of a “hot flash” or maybe a mild sunburn over much of his body if he were punched several times by a very muscular man, or it could mean him literally burning alive if he were struck by a semi truck at high speed and didn’t release the energy. In fact, when he began building his criminal empire in the early 1990s, he had burn scars over nearly half his body from back when he didn’t know about this side effect of his powers and didn’t release the energy in time—he later (in 1996) paid a skilled private-practice Regenerator more than a million dollars to heal those scars and return him to an uninjured state.
Location: Los Angeles
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Blue Streak / Gordon Grosse
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: White/Caucasian
Notes: Gordon’s emergence of transhuman powers coincided with the sudden onset of a Tourette’s syndrome-like condition. As such, he is prone to outbursts of profanity and insulting or inappropriate comments. Given that he is a villain, an extremely fast Speedster (a combination of hyper-speed and shift-running) and has a very notable psychological aberration from the norm (which is verbal in nature), parallels are often drawn between him and Mad Dash, with the general attitude being that Blue Steak is like the evil counterpart to Mad Dash. However, being in two entirely different parts of the nation, they don’t cross paths. Blue Streak’s costume is a light blue unitard (with full-head mask) of a Lycra-like material reinforced at the feet with a heavy polymer blend material and over which he wears thin but very sturdy slippers of a tough, high-density material. A yellow lightning bolt adorns his chest. He prefers snatch-and-grab types of crimes as they play well to his transhuman powers, but Blue Streak isn’t above more measured, planned out, extensive schemes, and he has not problem using violence liberally.
Location: Gryphon and Las Vegas, Nevada
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Dementia / Klaus Renner
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: White/Caucasian
Notes: Wearing a leather-and-brass helmet/mantle combo that seems to combine steampunk with World War I tank crew gear and a little gas mask motif thrown in (and often normal street clothes or business attire with it), Dementia will pick a victim every week or so and follow that lone person’s vehicle in his own van, using his Interfacer power (which is quite long range) to begin eating away at the vicitim’s memories. When the person becomes confused enough to stop or veer off to the side of the road, Dementia pulls the person out of their vehicle and throws him or her into his van, taking all the person’s identification and then dropping him or her someplace in the city far from where they belong, preferably someplace a bit dangerous. The memory loss caused by Dementia’s powers tends to be permanent.
Location: Marksburgh
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Fly-Girl / Ellie Grant
Gender: Female
Race/ethnicity: White/Caucasian
Notes: A dancer (of moderate success) and wanna-be actor, Ellie settles (at least for now) for getting her public attention as Fly-Girl, wearing as little as she can get away with on her body and a fly-themed mask that covers most of her head as she fights crime. She is a Psionic with telekinesis, but that telekinesis is very weak at a range while extremely powerful when she is in direct contact. Thus, she can use it to cling to walls or even crawl across a ceiling, and if she grabs someone, she can use her telekinesis almost like super-strength to lift, slam or even fling away the person.
Location: Los Angeles
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Golem / Aaron Chester
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: White/Caucasian (and Jewish)
Notes: Taking his name from Jewish folklore, Aaron’s mask in costumed hero mode is a full-face mask in the shape of a human face that looks like baked tan clay (though it is actually a polymer/ceramic composite. The rest of his costume is basically a simple beige shirt (T-shirt or sweatshirt depending on the weather), a brown or gray utility vest or coat (depending on weather), beige or tan pants, and brown boots and gloves. Aaron is not terribly overweight, but he is stout and portly. He is an Attractor and Repeller with affinity for stone-based materials and he is an Eco with an affinity for the same, allowing his to mold, break up and otherwise manipulate stones and stonework. He will sometimes draw rocks and gravel to him to form a kind of armor over his body.
Location: New Judah
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Grotesquerie / Aesop Dunham
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: Black/African-American
Notes: Aesop is (as of the early 2000s) a well-read, mostly self-educated man on the cusp of middle age and his senior years, and has had several decades to refine his powers, mostly out of curiosity and personal entertainment, before he decided in 2007 at the age of 52 to begin a life a crime. This decision was brought about shortly after Aesop’s wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, an event that happened shortly after he was laid off from his job supervising the food services operation at the UConn–New Judah campus. Without insurance and short of cash, he decided to steal what he needed to get her the treatment she required—as well as pay their other bills and help support their children and grandchildren when needed. As Grotesquerie, Aesop doesn’t wear a costume, using his powers to conceal how he really looks. He is a Morph and a Luminar primarily. He can alter his metabolism in many ways and he has full abilities to generate, manipulate and bend light, and he can be very selective in how he uses both sets of powers. As Grotesquerie, he causes his skin and muscles to become invisible, alters his blood and bones to have fluorescent properties, and then causes his veins, bones and brain to light up various colors, as well as generate bright halos around his head and hands that he can use to distract opponent and blind them (if he increases the halos’ intensity) or simply muck up their vision slightly by leaving them with spots in their eyes and such. Aesop is also a mid-level Brute (Tank), with fairly high-level strength and mid-level resistance to harm). As devout Christian who doesn’t want to sin any more than he has to, Grotesquerie tries to avoid violence, but will not hesitate to fight his way out of a situation if he needs to.
Location: New Judah
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Heliotrope / Janice “Jasmine” Tully
Gender: Female
Race/ethnicity: White/Caucasian
Notes: Heliotrope’s costume is a lavender, gold, and white formal long coat over a white ruffled blouse and white-and-gold slacks. She also wears long leather gloves and thigh-high leather boots that match her light auburn hair more or less, being all of about two or three shades darker. Her mask covers her entire face and is lavender, with a red semi-precious stone in the middle of the forehead, ornate silver whorls and protrusions decorating the upper third of the mask, sky-blue lenses over her eyes and the lips of the mask painted a deep scarlet hue. She is a Primal who can exude sweet-smelling pheromones that induce a sort of fugue state temporarily, and she is a low-level Luminar (able to generate light, such as a brief, bright flash or long-term low illumination in darkness, but not influence lightwaves by dimming, bending or otherwise altering them). She has been very mysterious about her nature and intentions since entering the costumed scene in 2008, and she has been very cautious, to the extent that Query hasn’t been able to effectively track her and learn her secrets. In truth, while she has been seen and known to do heroic acts, she spends at least as much time committing crimes, and feels that these two acts balance each other to give her a healthy moral equilibrium. Her crimes, mostly home invasions, are extremely effective precisely because by using her powers her victims never even remember her being present. She is skilled in judo and fencing, having competed in both sports in high school and college.
Location: New Judah
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Jah Man / Spencer “Spence” Mailhot
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: White/Caucasian
Notes: As Jah Man (which means, essentially, “God Man”), Spence wears a vaguely honeycomb-shaped helmet with a roughly hexagonal faceplate and an all-black, long-sleeved unitard. Adorning the edges of his helmet and arrayed across his bodysuit in various patterns are luminescent tubes similar to a child’s glow-sticks. They are energized by various powercells throughout his costume. He is extremely arrogant and truly does act as if he is a god among men. He commits crimes typically by hiring a crew of other criminals (sometimes including transhumans and sometimes not) and providing a distraction while they carry out the mission. As such, he is never really directly involved in the commission of the crimes and while witnesses often place him near the scene, evidence to link him to anything—even if he were to be captured—would be circumstantial. His transhuman power is Psionic and allows him to connect to a person and then through that person, another, and through them, more and more until he creates a psychic network of dozens of people in whose minds he created illusions. It is not a single illusion but rather a series of different one that each person creates unconsciously themselves, though Jah Man controls the general theme/mood/vibe of what will be generated in all the minds (joyous imagery, fearful scenarios, etc.).
Location: Dallas, but travels extensively
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Jigsaw / Alexander Dushku
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: White/Caucasian (Albanian and Greek ancestry mostly)
Notes: Alexander was scarred heavily over his entire body, but especially his head—and particularly his mouth, cheeks, chin and neck—during a battle between a pair of transhumans when he was in high school. His disfigurement made him an object of pity, derision and discomfort around his former friends, lost him his girlfriend of three years and even left his parents unwilling to look at him for long. Rather than consider that the people around him were simply shallow and his injuries the cause of just two individuals, he went over the deep end and decided to punish all transhumans for what had happened to him (visibly scarring, crippling or killing them depending upon his whims and/or the nature of the personality of his victim). Alexander has no powers but obtained extensive paramilitary training over a period of 12 years after his accident as he worked out his grand plan, and he is adept with hand-to-hand weapons, ranged weapons, explosives and martial arts. He adopted the name Jigsaw and, when in that mode, he draws black “stitches” over all of his visible scars and colors in the various sections with bright face paint colors: red, cyan, neon green, light purple, yellow, tangerine and white. In his civilian mode, he tends to be a recluse and when he does go out for extended periods, he covers over his appearance with hats, scarves, sunglasses and foundation makeup as much as he can—as such, despite having such distinctive injuries and no mask, he has yet to be identified.
Location: New York City, but travels extensively, especially to New Judah, Chicago, Los Angeles, Gryphon, Philadelphia and Marksburgh