Alex Holt – Challenge Completed
I have to say, this year didn’t exactly go according to plan – after a fairly decent start I ended up being distracted from the challenge for the best part of the rest of the month, culminating in me doing 12 rushed characters in the space of probably a little over 2 days. Â Art quality suffered severely as a result. Â I found that villains are a lot harder to come up with than heroes for me, and that setting myself a time limit for this tends to result in images I’m not happy with because since the first time I completed the challenge 2 years ago I’ve been doing more full paintings and less speed paints, so my timing is off for the latter. Â I’ll probably go back to some of the more interesting characters later and render them up properly with the time they need.
#30 – The Unscribe
An ancient creature whose pen can manipulate the memories of everyone in existence… Â Full text to be included later.
#29 – Doctor Agar
A former quirky Silver-age villain, now working as a biological weapon creator for the US military. Â Full text to be included later.
#28 – Chimera VII
A Mech built from parts lost from others during battles and used to commit crimes. Â Full text to be added later.
#27 – The Mymistan Mammoth
An Immortal, Indestructible Mammoth used as a weapon by many generations of the same family. Â Full text to be added later.
#26 – The Trianglist
A man who combined his families profession as almost superhuman martial artist assassins, with his own person desire to be a professional classical percussionist. Â Full text to be a added later.
#25 – Alice Remillard
A highly intelligent Lady whose hobby is planning elaborate high stakes crimes. Â Full text to come later.
#24 – Solomon Rivers
A Gangster who deals everyday earth substances to other sentient species for whom they have somewhat stronger effects. Â Full text to come later.
#23 – Gnomdar the Barbarin
A force of destruction who brings chaos and death in his wake. Â Who is also a 3 inch high gnome who can’t even spell his own name… Â Full text to come later.
#22 – Victor
During the years leading up to World War II, Clarence Norfolk, a teenager who had grown up on a farm in rural Alabama had gone to a travelling science fair that was visiting his local town, and in accordance with expectations, an accident while unloading two sets of equipment that modern Health and Safety Standards wouldn’t allow within fifty miles of each other, Clarence was bombarded with strange energy pulses. Â Predictably these left him with incredible powers – flight, incredible strength and toughness and energy beams that he could emit from his hands. Â During World War II he proved himself again and again under the code name Victor, gaining just about every medal you could conceive of. Â He came back from Europe a hero. It was not to last.
A last power slowly became apparent – eternal youth. Â But for a child bought up in the backwaters of rural 1930’s America, this proved as much as curse as a blessing. He found himself uncomfortable with increasing levels of acceptance to communities that in his day had been mistrusted – the Black Community, other Religions, Women’s Rights and the Gay Rights movement were all things which he found difficult to reconcile – but it was his association with the McCarthyist Communist Witch-Hunts of the 50s proved his most famous legacy as on government instruction he brutally beat down an alleged Communist Sympathizing superheroine in a pitched battle through the streets of Washington DC.
He increasingly clung to government as a form of moral guidance on subjects, but after nearly provoking Nuclear War during the later stages of the Cold War, he was locked in a specially designed prison beneath a mountain where his energy was drained to keep him safe while powering America. Â However, in recent years it seems his powers have been getting more potent to compensate, and the base now requires constant upgrades to keep up within the energy he produces.
#21 – Perseus Intailio
Perseus Intalio, often referred to as “Pintail” is one of the world’s richest men and frequent opponent of Rutherford Duckworth III. Â Born into a very wealthy family, but largely ignored by his parents at the expense of his two older siblings, young Perseus was entrepreneurial from a young age. Â He developed a taste for the most expensive things in life, and his wealth always ensured he got them. Â Known for his extravagant parties, some of which spent thousands per person attending he quickly discovered that people shared his tastes for the finer things in life, and were looking for someone willing to pay people to get them. Â Essentially, Perseus for exorbitant fees will find provide any object desired for a person, regardless of the seeming impossibility of acquiring it.
His most famous job was stealing the Empire State building, and it was only returned after a climatic rapier vs. umbrella duel atop the highest point of the building, with Rutherford Duckworth only just prevailing. Â Still, his incredible and ever increasing wealth makes him all but unstoppable as his ability to acquire desirable objects is second only to his ability to seed corruption…
#20 – Psirocusis
Rift Dragons are an ancient Breed who live in the deeps of the oceans where sunlight has never been – they often reach great ages, and collect their hordes from treasures that fall to the seabeds. Â Like all Dragons, they covet power, but unlike most other species are a bit more tactful than “swoop overhead and set everything on fire”. Â Psirocusis particularly has had great success – by selling off most of his horde he was able to have massive tracts of lands bought on his behalf, and instead of a static horde, he now has his land, be it oilfields or low rent old apartments fleeced for every penny they have, calculated in the cold cruel way of dragons…
#19 – Pine Blue
Pine Blue is by all accounts the single biggest poacher in the multiverse – he is a pan dimensional traveller who has dedicated his life to catching every single species of animal in the strange Voxelcube technology of his home dimension. Â However, having caught every single Earth species in his own dimension he has begun to travel through the multiverse to go even further – quite frequently stealing endangered species from Zoos and Reserves to do so. Â His collection is currently rumoured to consist of the best part of 70 trillion animals, though the specifics of how these are stored and how he has had time to collect all of these is unknown – the current theory is that he has somehow synchronized himself throughout the multiverse, so that every Pine Blue out there is essentially the same man contributing to the same collection…
#18 – The Crown of Ctharin
No one is really sure where the Crown of Ctharin came from, and given the highly public nature of it, it has been deemed impossible to get rid of without causing War with its home country of Mulgarona. Â Why it does it’s sadistic machinations, no one is sure, all they know is that it warps the minds of all those who wear it into fulfilling stories. Â A Prince or Princess will rise to the throne, and then they become part of the story – they will meet who the crown chooses, fall in love with who the crown chooses and frequently, murder who the crown chooses. Â Frequently as they get older it will switch the roles, a handsome young prince will suddenly become an Evil King, only to be slain by a young hero who takes the crown for themselves and the process begins again… Â No Arcane reports of Mulgarona have come up with any viable way of breaking the process, and on occasions when people have come close, the crown itself has been known to strike people dead with fire from the eye-like jewel that forms the centrepiece…
#17 – Lady Taheshi
The Lady Taheshi is considered by most to be a Terrorist and an Assassin, but for many of the Tengu who live in Japan, she is considered their last hope. Â Tengu have been pushed back and back into the wildernesses of Japan the more the country has developed, and while there have been reservations set aside in the past, they are frequently encroached upon every time a major building project needs to head that way. Â Lady Taheshi is the first one to refound the great Tengu Court of the Mountains and encourages her followers to violently oppose those who would destroy their homes. Â The results have been mixed – on the one hand the rate of encroachment has slowed, but on the other the rate at which Tengu have died to achieve this may signal the end of their species entirely as even the greatest swords do not protect one from automatic weapons…
#16 – The High Matriach
The High Matriach is in the unique position to be simultaneously the most feared, but most necessary mortal in this Galaxy.  Mortal may be stretching it a bit admittedly, she has a prospective lifespan consisting of most of the rest of the duration of the Universe, and due to the prophecy-curses of her species  is unavailable but by another member of her kind, of which there are very few.  She is cruel, callous and controls the largest army in the Galaxy.  However, this army is also the only thing stopping the things outside our Galaxy getting in…
While most earth literature focuses on the idea of Earth begin invaded or destroyed, the challenge for the Matriach is that might happen to our Galaxy. Â When a Universe dies, not all that was born of it necessarily dies too, and therefore are ancient even as our own Universe forms around us, and long to colonize the new Solar Systems as their own and recreate their worlds. Â Most of the time they succeed. Â Currently the Matriach fights a war on 3 fronts – against the titanic armoured Ur-Gods of Xzar, the endlessly replicating Vordanian Null-men and the hordes infected by the evil Sentient PX3k12 Virus. Â The Matriach may burn worlds, knowingly send a trillion to their death in an unwinnable battle and break apart the very fabric of the universe itself for a victory… Â but the alternatives are worse….
#15 – Ambassadorius
Every Angels is made for a specific purpose – some are there to play harps, some guard people and some have important jobs in the hierarchy of the Heavens. Â One Angel however, lives not in Heaven or on Earth, but in Hell: Ambassadorius – the Grey Angel. Â While there is much talk of how heaven will sweep out Hell one day, the point remains that if they could have done it, they would, and similarly with Hell, much as both like posturing. Â While they talk big, the likely result would be the destruction of both, and then the pantheon of some religion would move in and take celestial real estate, which is about the one thing that both sides hate the idea of more than each other. Â There are various unbreakable universal laws put in place by higher powers to stop direct inter-pantheon conflict, and therefore to prevent the prospect of this chain of events happening, there is the imaginatively named Ambassadorius.
One of the oldest Archangels, he sits in Heavens Embassy in Hell and fixes the problems that arise between the two that might spark something off. Â Unlike all other Angels however, his task is not to ensure the protection of Mortals and Angels from Hell, and therefore in his negotiations to stave off crises, and with his powers of diplomacy, he has ceded souls to hell that should go to heaven, and even on occasion retroactively rescinded Entry into Heaven, a prospect which horrifies most angels. Â He is cold, cruel, and has no regard for anything save his own task, and this is simultaneously highly effective, but also uniquely amoung the divine beings utterly morality-free.
#14 – Randall Steel
Randall Steel is largely regarded as the best value mercenary that money can buy – not necessarily the best out there, as in a world where there is a surplus of superpowered people who want to make a quick buck it makes a buyer’s market for muscle, but Randall has a gold-plated reputation among the nere-do-wells of the world as the go to guy. Â While he does maintain a basic level in a broad range of the sorts of subjects a mercenary might be called to know about, when you hire him and his converted, armoured dust-bin lorry the main thing you get is a guy who has experience. Â Much as many villains feel that a guy in a flack jacket with a crowbar and a sawn-off shotgun isn’t image appropriate for grandiose schemes, many more are happy to have just such a regular guy driving alongside a zombie army, or protecting a moonlazer or even guarding the villain themselves, you can count on him to deliver.
#13 – Sofia Ortega
In the same way that some people spend their lives mastering oration or singing, Sofia Ortega has mastered another verbal art form: lying. Â This isn’t to say that she has some magic ability so she can tell anyone anything and get away with it, more that she has mastered it to the point that she can know the perfect thing to say to get away with the most in any encounter. Â A simple bit of inflection can make the difference between success and failure, and at her criminal height was walking out of galleries with famous paintings under her arm and talking her way out of it. Â These days however, most of her income comes from giving teaching super-expensive symposiums for politicians.
#12 – New Stalingrad
Near to the peak of the Cold War, some truly bizarre creations were being unleashed on the World, hugest and most lingering of which was New Stalingrad – a huge walking armored City. The logic of its designers being that a robotic city could move out of the way of nuclear attacks and be very difficult to pin down with long range bombardment. Â Hundreds of Soviet Citizens were moved in to operate the city and support it with farms in the upper tiers, a small squadron of fighter jets, Â all the power provided by a large nuclear reactor and three medium range atomic warheads. Â It then proceeded to wander around the most deserted parts of Siberia keeping out the way of cities which it has continued to do ever since – the robotics technology at the time wasn’t necessarily planned far enough ahead with a way of deactivating it, and much as there is a general consensus that the people inside should be freed, no one wants to provoke a fairly dim robot armed with atomic bombs…
#11 – Oceanic Leviathan
Normally when people consider the horrible terror of Giant Monsters reaching earth through portals in the sea bed, they have something very specific in mind – a big dragon-esque beast that charges to the nearest city and tries to kill everyone. Â In actual fact, while there is certainly a precedent for that, by far the mot destructive creature to come through portals is the Oceanic Leviathan, a shy herbivore. Â There are several reasons for this – firstly herbivores tend to be more densely packed into a habitat than carnivores, so more come through. Â Secondly, a giant almost unkillable grazer quickly devastates an ecosystem where a giant carnivore just starves. Â Oceanic Leviathans particularly dive deep into sea trenches when startled, so killing them as soon as they are detected is of vital global importance given they can eat entire kelp beds a day.
#10 – Dorris Ramsley
Not necessarily what you’d usually expect in a murderous psychopath for hire, Dorris Ramsley, a pensioner from Ipswich is deemed one of the highest threat assassins on the planet. Â This is largely due to the particularly effective combination of powers she was born with – her eyes are devastating weapons, they combine high power laser bolts with x-ray and telescopic vision meaning that she can be miles away with buildings, walls and other things blocking her line of sight (and those who would defend her target) and still take out someone in a single shot. Â Fortunately, for the world, her former builder son acts as her manager and is not particularly good at setting up meetings with the kind of people who want people killed. Â Generally, they have to track her down themselves if they want her services, and get her to a location through border-control and so on, which isn’t an appeallign prospect for those who wish to keep their dark dealings off the books.
#9 – Urtror Ingotson CXII
While Dwarves are renowned for loving Gold, that is not really entirely fair. Â Dwarves are divided into what most closely translates into “Nations” which have very little to do with territory, and are more to do with what product specialty each produces. Â To produce a certain product, you must be a member of that particular nation, and a handful while some dwarves may be adopted into certain nations, and all nations trade with each other, producing outside your own nation is one of the worst crimes under Dwarven law, considered effectively similar to breaking international law. Â On the occasions when two or more nations need to combine their products to produce a new finished piece, a third “Child Nation” may be created as an intermediary, which individual Dwarves can migrate to if their skills fit. This ends up creating elaborate family trees of Nations, which individual Dwarves can move down (but never up) to take advantage of new products and technologies.
Historically, there have been five Great Nations around which all others circle – Iron, Coal, Stone, Enchantment and, of course Gold. Â These five are so core to Dwarvenkind that they even have more influence than ones who provide everyday products such as farmers of Mole-sheep and Brewers of Mead. For obvious reasons, Gold has long remained the richest of all houses by several degrees of magnitude, but has but a single child nation (the Jewellers) compared to the ten or more for the other Great Nations. Â They haven’t needed to, after all, they are the ones who mint Dwarven currency.
This may soon change due to the Ingotson family, and specifically Urtror Ingotson CXII, the current head of the house. Â For the first time, he wants to create a child nation with the second party not being Dwarves, but human accountants. Â The Ingotson has always been considered very strange in that they have always loved Gold the substance rather than the craftsmanship which the rest of the Gold nation loves. Â His proposals are to split off with the help of humans and form a Banking Nation. There is good reason for this, while Urtror is notoriously greedy and a hoarder and unlikely to give much in the way of interest, Dwarven vaults are about the single most secure location on the planet, designed to resist any kind of assault be it magical, technological or mundane. The Ingotson Banks particularly are claimed would survive the destruction of the planet.
This new house is broadly feared by many, no human nation has really any ability to affect policy of Dwarves, and Urtror is probably already the richest man on the planet, and his inherited wealth is less than a fifth of that. Â He is a cruel and canny business, who by all reports would would happily watch nations burn for an extra 0.1% income…
8 – Black Sparrow
Japan, more than any other nation, has gone in for cybernetics in its security forces, and there are many combat enhanced cybernetically enhanced humans in the police, military and paramilitary. Â During the 90’s their most successful of these agents has a woman who codename was the “Sparrow”, who boasted not only top of the line prosthetics, but a genuine gift for this kind of work. Â In early 2003 she took part in a mission against a cybernetic terrorist cell who were hours away from destroying half of Asia using Biological weapons. Â She was successful, and the plot was not only thwarted, but the cell and all its leaders were killed. Â Unfortunately, so was she, and while her body was initially recovered, her human brain had taken far too much damage and she was declared dead.
However, her mechanical body was unharmed, and it was stolen from a government facility 2 weeks later during the autospy. Â Subsequently, whoever took the body seems to have installed an AI in it, and the body of the hero formerly known as Sparrow is now referred to as Black Sparrow – an incredibly dangerous assassin and terrorist for hire. Â No one is clear who took the body, but whoever it was will be dangerous, as they are presumably guarded by effectively one of the most dangerous combatant of recent memory.
#7 – The Briar Knight
The Briar Knight is a series of men and women throughout the ages, all who have wielded a blade known as the Briar-thorn. Â The blade grants the wielder near invulnerability, immunity to poison, disease, no need to breathe and immense strength and more worryingly, seriously affecting the perception of the world for the wielder.
After the death of the previous Briar Knight, the blade evaporates from the hands of the wielder and has been unable to be contained. Â It then seemingly finds its way to a random person in the world who is in danger at that moment where it appears as a small knife with which to defend themselves. Â From there on, every death the blade causes causes it to grow slightly as it absorbs the blood of the slain, and the greater the size, the more entwined with a being it becomes, and more influence it has on them. Â The problem is the way the blade expresses itself is to send the new Briar Knight on quests, but unfortunately the standards by which it does so are very medieval in their attitudes – it will take an objective and the Knight will end up slaying anyone who gets in his path. Â General public advice on a Briar Knight coming through an area is a broad evacuation.
The current Briar Knight seems marginally less Bloodthristy than the last, and also more cunning, but his greater success is reflected in the sword reaching the largest size of any Briar-thorn incarnation on record. Â Due to the practical indestructibility and devastation caused by Briar Knights, several have been killed by bearers of the Divine Rod, who in doing so became unworthy of their own weapon.
#6 – The Ivory Tower
The Ivory Tower is to outwards appearances a huge building perched high in an obscure corner of the Canadian Rockies, but further inspection reveals far more than meets this initial inspection. Â For one the white substance it is clad in is not rock but carved vertebrae from some gigantic animal. Â Secondly, records of the building go back as far as anyone was present in the area, and appears in the legends of the native peoples. Â No one knows how it got there or what it was originally for, but to those in the know, it represents the most terrifying intellect on the planet. Â What isn’t obvious from the outside is that 98% of this titanic structure is filled with something resembling brain matter, and it is active and conscious.
The remaining 2% represents a slender spiral staircase at its core while lead up to a small spherical room where one may interact with the Tower, though the front door of the place only opens to exceptional intellects. Â What little is known about the tower is that not only does it possess tremendous brainpower, but telepathic powers on an incalculable scale, suggestions are that it works to the point where it manipulates the basic thoughts of the entire planet if not further in subtle ways, trying to steer us towards some future goal. Â It also seems to have access to communications and be able to make trillions of subtle alterations per second to messages passed, although to what ends these happen no-one knows. Â No one has been able to ascertain what its eventual goals are, and while those who do get admittance may ask for any knowledge in the world l (excepting things about itself), doing so is playing with fire, as even though it always seems to answer truthfully who knows what subtle plots the Tower sets up with its answers…
#5 – Elias Winston – The Futurist
Elias Winston is a man from the year 2103 who has returned to the present to instill his values on the present to hasted the creation of the world he lives in. Â It just so happens that he isn’t the only one who that sentence applies to. Â Time Travel is a bit of a strange thing, yet compared to inter dimensional travel it is very easy, however because various futures can come about from one present, you can end up with a case like that of the two Elias Winstons. Â They both traveled back in time to our present, which is a past they share.
Elias Winston (aka The Futurist) is the World Leader of Future Timeline designate BZ2-0002346-2103, commonly referred to as “The Age of MegaCorps” – in this timeline Starlin-style hyper-Communism was rampant leading to massive oppression of the people when Elias Winston was born.  There is some suggestion that his bloodline may have something to do with the Order of Solomon (see Samuel Bonaparte Khan) but most believe he was purely just a perfect storm of genetics and upbringing that made him an unparalleled talent in technology, leadership and genetics.  After a starting and winning a revolution over 16 years, he decided to travel back into the past to instill his perfect world order back when the beginnings of the Communes were taking route.  Fortunately despite his prodigious talents have been held back by another time traveler: The Revolutionist – Elias Winston, the World Leader of Timeline AF6-0093925-2103, whose own desire to travel to the past and change the past to match his Commune based World directly opposes the future of the Futurist, and thus fortunately, the great fighters of the world have not had to deal with his full intellect…
The Futurist is an expert in power armour, advanced energy sources and weapons, military tactics and corporate dealings. Â He quickly established a power-base in countries with a more lax approach to being invested in by Time-travelling Despots and is believed to be behind various Technology companies off the books. Â He has also amassed a substantial private military, but due to various setbacks caused by attacks by the Revolutionist, he has only been able to use it fairly sparingly.
#4 – Elias Winston: The Revolutionist
Elias Winston is a man from the year 2103 who has returned to the present to instill his values on the present to hasted the creation of the world he lives in. Â It just so happens that he isn’t the only one who that sentence applies to. Â Time Travel is a bit of a strange thing, yet compared to inter dimensional travel it is very easy, however because various futures can come about from one present, you can end up with a case like that of the two Elias Winstons. Â They both traveled back in time to our present, which is a past they share.
Elias Winston (aka The Revolutionist) is the World Leader of Future Timeline designate AF6-0093925-2103, commonly referred to as “The Commune” – in this timeline run away Capitalism was rampant leading to massive wealth disparity into which young Elias Winston was born. Â There is some suggestion that his bloodline may have something to do with the Order of Solomon (see Samuel Bonaparte Khan) but most believe he was purely just a perfect storm of genetics and upbringing that made him an unparalleled talent in technology, leadership and genetics. Â After a starting and winning a revolution over 16 years, he decided to travel back into the past to instill his perfect world order back when the Mega-Corporations were taking route. Â Fortunately despite his prodigious talents have been held back by another time traveler: The Futurist – Elias Winston, the World Leader of Timeline BZ2-0002346-2103, whose own desire to travel to the past and change the past to match his Capitalistic Corporation-State based World directly opposes the future of the Revolutionist, and thus fortunately, the great fighters of the world have not had to deal with his full intellect…
The Futurist is an expert in cybernetics, advanced energy sources and weapons, espionage and guerilla warfare.  He quickly established a power-base in poor, financially frustrated countries which didn’t have a problem harbouring  Time-travelling Terrorists and is believed to be behind other terrorist groups in secret.  He has also amassed a substantial terrorist network, but due to various military assaults by the troops of the Futurist, he has been unable to make broader assaults on other corporations and states.
#3 – Plyron Accaf
Plyron Accaf is a member of the Ordati – a minor species in the Galaxy in terms of political power, but thanks to Plyron Accaf, a very wealthy one. They are an androgynous species whose don’t specifically have individual names in the human sense – Plyron is the house name (a house only established a few generations ago) while “Accaf” represents the specific place in the house, with each letter representing to which child they are.
Plyron Accaf however has not made himself and his house wealthy, but his entire species – his secret? He sits in his ship in near earth orbit and intercepts all earth broadcasts and acquires DVDs. Â He then duplicates films and television and sells it to the intergalactic market who lap up these products that are still exotic to galactic audiences and cost him nothing to produce. Â Earth Security forces are well aware of this, but to they feel it would be far too much effort to inform all the copyright holders, and have to deal with potentially centuries of litigation and costs in the trillions – what they don’t know can’t hurt them.
#2 – The Goblin Slayer
Historically, Goblins have been a menace to various out of the way communities around the world, and in many cases out of the way communities were only saved by members of the Ancient mystical order of Goblin Slayers known as the Trowguard. Â Unfortunately the Trowguard have not modernized with the rest of society and in 1974 the leaders of the Goblin Communities petitioned the UN for protection from the Trowguard. Â After attempted negotiations with the organisation were rebuffed, Â a series of raids and arrests followed.
At this point, only a single member of the Trowguard remains free – a Filipino woman named Charito Tomas, who was initiated into the order at a young age, and escaped the arrests, and subsequently went on to step up her campaign, killing both Goblins and those who defended them, police, army or civilians. Â She has proven herself adept with numerous weapons, but mainly seems to favour battleaxes, a traditional magical gauntlet and pistols.
#1 – The Duke of Cats
It is something of an embarrassment to various World Security Organisations that various “10 Most Wanted” Lists contain the Duke of Cats, to the point where “Officially” no one knows the identity of this criminal mastermind, and he just has a blank space where his portrait should be. Governments don’t like to have a single domestic cat sitting alongside Warlords, Despots, Terrorists and Other-worldly threats. They feel doing so takes the seriousness out of the thing.
That being said, The Duke of Cats surely deserves his place on those lists – a criminal mastermind with enormous resources, both financial and political, who has come close to world domination on three separate occasions in the past twenty years, and would have succeeded in any of them if hadn’t been for a certain Gnome and Guinea Pug duo. Â He has armies of minions, both human and feline, and access to enormous funds. Â He is rumored to have numerous powerful figures on his payroll.
No one is really sure of his origins, as surely a hyper-intelligent talking cat should have some fairly obvious origin story, but as people can work out, he just has some aura to him that makes people take him seriously despite appearances.
#30Characters Chatter…