#5 Deluge

Names: Deluge, Jonah Dewitt

Place of origin: New York City, New York, USA

Occupation: College Student

Legal status: Citizen of the USA in good standing

Identity: Public

Marital status: Single

Known relatives: Marcus Dewitt (Father), Maria Riley (Mother), James Smite (Former stepfather), Robert Riley (Stepfather), Veronica Taylor (Former stepmother), Sarah Dewitt (Stepmother) and a list of siblings, half-siblings, step-siblings, and ex-step-siblings.

Group affiliation: None

Base of operations: New York City

History: Jonah was swimming in the ocean when a Deep Other attacked the beach he and his friends were at. The emergence of the Deep Other pushed Deluge away from the beach and knocked him unconscious. He drowned and his body was pulled by a riptide further out to sea. His body was recovered by a naiad, Waveling, who was charmed by his looks. She took him to her father, Poseidon, to see if he could revive him.

The power of Poseidon’s avatar on Shattered Earth had waned since its height during the Roman Empire, but he had reached the modern era in better than shape than most of his pantheon. Christianity had not spread as vigorously in Atlantis and the rest of the Atlantic Ocean as it had in Europe and the continents bordering the ocean. The loss of worship among the land dwellers cost him, but his continued worship among the ocean dwellers kept him as a notable power down through the modern era.

Bringing the drowned and now long brain dead Jonah back to life was beyond his power, but Jonah’s soul was not. Jonah was not raised with any particular faith, so Poseidon’s ancient claim over the souls that died in his waters still applied. He had largely let the claim lapse. With no avatar of Hades to coordinate with, he had no pressing need for souls beyond looking after those that specifically worshipped him. In addition, most of the land dwellers that died in his waters were Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Fighting a war with Heaven over souls he didn’t actually want was simply too much of a bother. However, at his daughter’s request, he brought back Deluge’s soul to see what the young man would like.

Jonah was happy to come back, as he did not want his family to grieve. However, with his body dead, the only way Poseidon could bring him back was to turn him into a cloud of living water. Jonah found that less than ideal, because the naiad’s admiration aside, his life was still on the land.

Poseidon’s dominion extended only over the water, so he couldn’t immediately think of a way to help. Waveling pointed out that the traditional way for water of the ocean to return to land was as weather. Poseidon conceded that point to his daughter but admitted that he did not have a weather god to turn to for help, as Zeus’s avatar on the Shattered Earth was long dead. If Jonah wanted to return to land, he was going to have to find a weather god to petition on his own.

Not unreasonably, Jonah immediately thought of Thor. The spread of Christianity had hurt the worship of the Norse gods almost as badly as the Greek gods, but unlike the Greeks, the Norse gods had a life outside of their followers. If nothing else, the inevitable approach of Ragnarok made the loss of worshippers seem like a minor matter. The late twentieth century had found Thor hanging out in New York City, partying, dating celebrities, and fighting the occasional supervillain. In town, he earned a reputation as rowdy but good to have around. He was also still a weather god. (Think Sandman Thor, not Marvel Thor).

Poseidon contacted Thor. Thor was surprised to hear from the rather reclusive survivor of the Greek pantheon but agreed to help readily enough. After all, Poseidon had already done all the hard work in the matter. Thor summoned a storm from the waters around the city and concentrated the deluge from the sky into a patch of ground in Central Park. Jonah emerged from the mud, fully human. And wet. Also nude, to Waveling’s amusement.

In return for making him human again, Thor demanded that Jonah come and fight at his side whenever he called. As a promise, Jonah probably would have been happier to fulfill it if Thor was willing to train him or even seemed to remember on a regular basis that Jonah owed him big time.

With Waveling’s help, Jonah experimented with his powers and decided upon Deluge as his superhero name. His first time out was a mitigated disaster, with the mitigation arriving in the form of the superhero Speedway. No one was hurt, so Speedway found Deluge’s attempt amusing. She took him under her wing, trained him in combat, and walked him through Officer certification.

Deluge is now a respected mid-level hero in New York City, who often feels pulled between his too many obligations to his family, his job, the standards of his girlfriend’s father, and a call to battle from a god who knows he will die fighting.

When the Supernova Stag landed in the New York City, Deluge spent most of his visit chasing along behind the Stag, putting out fires the Stag was unthinkingly starting.

Story role: With this much detail on just his origin story, it should be pretty obvious that Deluge is a protagonist. His personal conflict is having to deal with being pulled between too many obligations. This means that, unlike most superheroes, his civilian family will feature prominently in his stories as they bring their own needs into Deluge’s life. This puts him closest to Spider-Man in terms of the stories he gets with one crucial difference: his need to be a superhero is not driven by his sense of guilt, but instead imposed by the expectations of those around him, especially Thor, but also Poseidon, Waveling, and Jonah’s family. In the early era of his ongoing story, how he feels about being a superhero would be one of the major ongoing threads.

Height: Tall (can use powers to reach gigantic)

Body type: Swimmer

Known superpowers: Hydrokinesis, water form, ice form, cloud form, flight, can instantly heal damage done to his human form by shifting to one of his other forms and instantly shifts into those forms if he is critically injured.

Limitations: His range of powers makes him a good general hero, but he can have trouble with specialists. There are plenty of people faster, stronger, or whose powers can simply overwhelm his.

Category: 2012, Superhero