“Dark energy”

–Saul Perlmutter, leader of the Supernova Cosmology Project headquartered at Berkeley Lab

“Various types of dark energy have been proposed, including a cosmic field associated with inflation; a different, low-energy field dubbed “quintessence”; and the cosmological constant, or vacuum energy of empty space. Unlike Einstein’s famous fudge factor, the cosmological constant in its present incarnation doesn’t delicately (and artificially) balance gravity in order to maintain a static universe; instead, it has “negative pressure” that causes expansion to accelerate.”

–Donald Driver, DUSEL Astrophysicist, Butt Mountain

“The universe is made mostly of dark matter and dark energy, and we don’t know what either of them is.”

–Michael Turner, Cosmologist, University of Chicago

From the last will and testament of Reynold Raymond (March 25, 1966 – ):

I don’t know how long this will last. After what happened to Johnny… Well, I just don’t know. These things, these powers, they are unpredictable. And the task I’ve assigned myself is dangerous. I just want to make sure that if I don’t make it you know who I was and why I did what I did. So I’m going to write this all down and hope you never have to read it.

You never met your grandpa Richard, but he and your grandma Linda had five kids. I was the second, a year and a half behind Holly. Amber, Rick, and finally, baby Traci, came along about every two years. You’ve got good family, they’ll treat you right. Don’t be afraid to go to any of them for anything you might need

I was born in a little house in Roanoke, VA. Grandpa was a miner and while we moved a half dozen times while growing up, we never left the mountains of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky. Your grandparents were simple people doing a good, hard days work and happy to be blessed with enough to provide for their family. My childhood was a lot like yours, hiking mountain trails, fighting with my brother and the boys that picked on my sisters, hunting, fishing, and camping. All the things I’ve tried to share with you. It was a good life and we were happy.

I never wanted to be a miner, so dad helped me get a job with a local electrician, Willy Watson, when I turned 16. It was good work and work that I enjoyed. But when I graduated high school, Willy told me that if I didn’t go to college he’d fire me. And he did. Best thing he could have done for me. I figured as long as I was going to college I might as well go away to school and I got a partial scholarship to the Technical Career Institute in New York, NY. Again, thanks in no small part to Willy. At TCI I couldn’t decide between the electronics or climate control programs, and so I ended up getting associate degree’s in both.

The big city, New York, was fun for a young man in college. Full of exciting things to do and adventures to be had. I saw my first supers, rode the subway, and saw more than my share of Met’s games. But while I was away at school, your aunt Holly had gotten married and then pregnant, grandpa was killed in a mine collapse, and your uncle Rick had joined the army just as things were starting to escalate in the Middle East. I missed the mountains, my family, and a simpler life. So I came back to Virginia because my family needed me and because I needed them.

I worked for Willy for a short period, before going to work for Blue Mountain Plumbing and Heating. That lasted a little over five years until mismanagement caused the business to fail, leaving me without a job but with a journeyman plumber’s license. That’s when I went to work for Virginia Tech, where I met your mother, and where your story begins.

Danielle, your mother, was the one who interviewed and hired me for the maintenance position at Virginia Tech. We didn’t hit it off immediately, she was a HR Assistant looking for a handsome professor and I was a blue collar grunt wearing a tool belt and changing light bulbs. But it’s hard to ignore your old man’s charm, and eventually I got her to let me take her to dinner. Then I talked her into going steady. And two years later I talked her into marriage. A year later we were proud parents. Four years later we did it again and became the family you know today.

We were happy, very happy. Things were good, your mother was running the HR department for the school and I was doing well enough that my boss submitted me to be lead for the new facility they were building in the Kimballton Mine for the federal DUSEL project.

I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I want you to know the full story, the truth. If you tell anyone about this the government will deny it all, so this is just between us. It can’t go any further. Consider this my last request.

Officially, Butt Mountain didn’t make the cut. The DUSEL project was awarded to the Homestake gold mine, outside the town of Lead, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I’ve been there. It’s real. They do plenty of research out there. But what most people don’t know is that Butt Mountain and the Kimballton mine were deemed an ideal location for a second lab, one that the government didn’t have to disclose to the public. That’s where I worked.

Both facilities are vast sites with hundreds of miles of tunnels already carved into the stone. Each capable of hosting a comprehensive suite of experiments in all major fields of science. At Homestake, the emphasis is on astrophysical research including studies of gravity, neutrinos, and dark matter, the mysterious form of matter that is invisible to our current means of detection, but whose ubiquitous presence throughout the universe has been indirectly confirmed.

It was a good job, it was challenging, paid well, had good benefits, and most importantly let me spend time with my family. I didn’t get the lead, but I was a supervisor. Like any place I’ve ever been, there were good people and bad, there were interoffice politics and bureaucratic headaches to deal with, but I enjoyed it and there was always something in need of fixing.

I don’t want to go into the details about your mother and I’s break-up. There are some things I think you don’t need to know. We loved each other for a long time, and maybe we still do, but there are things that happen to people that change them sometimes those things change them so much that they no longer fit together. Maybe that’s what happened to us. Suffice it to say that we were having problems before I had my accident.

The day that the accident happened, May 20th, it was a Thursday; I was doing my usual routine maintenance on the labs systems. I knew that one of the scientists was going to be running some experiments in the deeper chambers and so was making sure that everything was fine. I returned to the security station just as the announcement to clear area’s 51 through 64 came over the intercom. The guard, looked up at me and asked if I’d seen Gerald Gromm, a guy on my crew that was a bit of a dullard, on my rounds, because last he’d seen Gerald he’d been heading toward unit 63. I said that I hadn’t and told him to call up and postpone the experiment until I found Gerald or cleared the area. He said he would and I headed back into the tunnel as he picked up the phone.

I found Gerald in a bit of a compromising situation with a pretty young secretary named Maggie, apparently, oblivious to the announcement being blasted over the intercom. They weren’t happy to see me, and I wasn’t happy to find them taking a ‘break’ in one of my labs. After some shouting and scrambling for clothes I got them out and moving back down the tunnels.

I don’t know why the experiment didn’t get stopped. But one second I was walking down the tunnel with a couple of embarrassed and pissed off love birds and the next I was being hurled backwards by some invisible force. I blacked out and when I woke up I was in the infirmary with Gerald and Maggie. The doctors said we were lucky to be alive and at that moment, feeling like a thousand pound weight was being pressed down on me, I wasn’t so sure.

The doctors let Maggie and I go, we were fine, a few scratches and some bruises, nothing major. I asked the doctor about the pressure I was feeling, but they could find nothing and told me to get some rest. Maggie didn’t say anything; she just glared at me and walked out. Maybe it was because I’d seen her naked, maybe she was just a bitch. Gerald wasn’t so lucky, he’d gotten pretty beat up, some broken bones and some internal injuries, nothing life threatening, but still, he’d gotten the worst of it.

In the coming weeks my weight fluctuated wildly. I broke two scales as my weight shot up to a thousand pounds and then vanished nearly as fast leaving me weighing less than fifty pounds. Through it all, my shape never changed, I never felt any difference other than that constant pressure that pushed in on me. I brought this to the attention of one of the lab guys, Donald Driver. He ran some tests and determined that while my mass never changed my weight seemed to be under some sort of gravitational force. Through a series of after hours tests and experiments over weeks and months he came to the conclusion that I had some how been saturated with dark matter, an invisible, impossible to detect form of matter that scientists believe makes up 70% of the universe and coincidentally the focus of the experiment I’d been caught in.

It was shortly after this discovery that a bloated and over muscled Gerald smashed through a granite wall and rampaged through the mine before escaping to the surface. Apparently the dark energy had affected him as well. Two weeks later he and a flying superwoman calling herself Dark Magdalene robbed a bank and killed a policeman, a security guard, and injured 10 others. Somehow the accident had given them super powers, powers that they were not using to help people.

My own side effects seemed more detrimental, sometimes I would feel so heavy that I could hardly move and I would bend or break tools and equipment without meaning to. At other times I would feel so light and dizzy that I couldn’t keep my feet on the ground. Donald became my answer man and confidant, your mother was at her wits end with all the accidents that were happening around the house. She was afraid, and rightly so, that I’d crush or drop or somehow hurt her babies.

Donald and I worked to control this force that seemed to surround me. I learned to use my power to first levitate and then fly. We measured my strength and found that I could at times lift four or five thousand pounds. But in the end it was a struggle to control the energy. I could expel it, but it would come crushing back. I could contain it, but my weight and strength at such times were incredible. In the end we conquered the energy with the help of technology. With the help of some bracers and a helm I was able to more fully control and manipulate the dark energy and dark matter that both saturated and flowed around me.

I learned to control my strength, flight, and density. I even learned to project the energy in powerful blasts. I was a super. I could help people. I could make a difference. It was something I’d dreamed of as a boy. There was never any doubt as to what that meant; I had to stop Maggie and Gerald.

Your mother wasn’t pleased by any of this. She wanted a normal husband with a normal job who could be a normal father. I could have been more understanding. Looking back, I can see how this changed everything for each of us. We tried to make it work, but in the end it was just too much change for both of us. When the government removed Virginia Tech from the project, your mother and I were out of jobs. She filed for divorce and took you to Central City to find a normal life.

I helped the police stop Maggie and Gerald before going north. With my access to Butt Mountain revoked I went to Washington and joined a support group for individuals affected by super events. It was there that I met Johnny ‘Atomic Man’ Johnson, Lenny ‘Stalker’ Landers, and Bethany ‘Corona’ Birches. The four of us made plans to form a super team, we were going to call ourselves the Capital Crusaders and try and make our mark amongst the growing super community of the Washington DC. That fell apart when Johnny died of radiation exposure as a result of his accident. Then Lenny decided that crime paid better than being a vigilante hero. When Beth met a lawyer and became pregnant it was over.

My Washington career was over after stopping half a dozen muggings, saving a tour bus from going into the Potomac, and putting the Doppelganger away. It seems like a bigger list than it actually was. When I contacted Vanguard in Central City to see if there was room for another hero, I was happy to hear him say that if this is where my family is, it’s where I should be. So here I am, the latest hero in Central City.

I’ve got a little business going that allows me time for you kids and is flexible enough to allow for some heroing. I’m seeing some wonderful ladies, though I haven’t decided on any one in particular. I’m getting my life back together after three years of chaos. And that’s my story.

Hopefully, you’ll get to learn it all from me and never have to read this. But if I die doing the right thing, then I died for the right reason. My only regret is that I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Love,

Dad

Ray Raymond
— — —

Reynold Raymond a.k.a. Radiant
Radiant’s Family:

Ex-wife:

• Danielle Drayton (35): Divorced 2004, dating, HR Coordinator

Kids:

• Rebecca (12): 7th-grade, likes boys, make-up, and pop music, claims to be misunderstood
• Reynold Jr (8): 3rd-grade, likes trucks, guns, and anything with a ball

Parents:

• Richard Raymond: deceased (1987 mine accident)
• Linda Raymond (62): Retired, recently dating, amateur bird watcher and photographer

Siblings:

• Holly Horton (42): married (Hank-43), 3-children (Chuck-16, Brenda-15, Jill-13), restaurateur
• Amber Anderson (38): twice divorced, childless, PR office assistant
• Rick Raymond (36): Army – lost leg in Middle East, builds custom ATV’s, married (Shari-24), 1-child (Richard-5)
• Traci Raymond (33): Central City lawyer, single, dating, 1-child (Tami-15)

Radiant’s Friends:

• Donald Driver (28): DUSEL Astrophysicist
• Jimmy Johnson (14): Son of Atomic Man, little brother/big brother guardianship

Girl Friends:

• Jessica James (33): Barmaid/Waitress at the All-Powerful Sports Bar and Grill
• Barbra Brooke (38): local channel cable TV host
• Samantha Stillson (30): Central City police officer

Known Supers and Radiant:

• Gerald Gromm – GERALD – None to bright but strong super villain
• Maggie Manchester – DARK MAGDALENE – Former secretary turned super villain
• John Johnson – ATOMIC MAN – deceased (radiation poisoning)
• Lenny Landers – STALKER – batman-esc villain
• Bethany Birches – CORONA – wife, mother and legal assistant with light powers
• VANGUARD – Central Cities most famous superhero and mentor
• DOPPLEGANGER – shape changing villain in Washington DC

H. Anders Worthington IV, wealthy dilettante and big game hunter, written and played by Joel Cardella in the Shadows Play campaign

My hands shook in stunned silence after I had opened the envelope, making the scrawled address dance. It was almost a year ago, but that face had remained with me, in every waking thought and always in my dreams.

Farnsley and I had split off. The old boy had given us a good chase, but we were closing in. The wager was standard, going to whomever got the first shot in. I was closing in, I could smell his wet fur in the slight breeze. I thought it odd that he would expose himself downwind, but I had never taken this large a bear before, so hubris could have made his instincts evolve past the need to hide his scent.

I saw him lumbering about, as though he were rooting. I knew the danger of a male seeking a mate, but this chance was larger than any I’d had up to now. I took aim, the powerful scope zooming in on the rump as the old boy snuffled about in the sand.

Then, without warning, it stood. Not reared. Stood on two legs. And turned toward me.

I shall never forget that face, as I stood in frozen disbelief, as the animal features melted away to the hideous visage held beneath it. The absence of eyes, soulless, dark cavities of absolute blackness. A slit where the mouth should be. Feathered, leathery skin stretched tight across face but stopping halfway, when the skin peeled away to show the pulsing brain beneath.

Suddenly, my scope went dark. I looked up, and saw Farnsley had come between me and the creature. I screamed for him to move, but he brought his rifle up. He glanced back at me, his face pale, but with a champion grin.

I shall never forget how it took Farnsley’s shots, one, two, three, four. It crossed the distance to him in a blur, and drove its long spindley skeleton fingers directly into his heart. Farnsley twitched on the end of that claw, and croaked out for me to run. Then the thing bent him in half. I heard the segments of his spine snapping and yelled out in pure terror, rapping off bullets of my own.

I turned and fled, knowing it would catch me and I would be its next meal. I escaped, but only by the grace of God, forever shamed by my fear and cowardice. I lived to remember that thing, the thing who killed Farnsley, the thing whose photo I held in my shaking hand now.

The thing I was ever since hunting, and would destroy, to avenge my good friend’s courageous act and hopefully buy myself peace.

Valiant is the end product of a secret research project, ADAM (Advanced Deoxyribonucleic Acid Manipulation), designed to create a more perfect human being. Using gene splicing and DNA modification the scientists in charge of ADAM hoped to create the perfect human being, one stronger, more durable, and resistant to disease and infection. ADAM’s goal was to create a being which would be the next step in human evolution. Due to worldwide bans on human genetic experimentation and fear of government interference the ADAM project was moved to a super-technology space station. There on January 19th, 1972 the project gave birth to experiment a231, a baby boy.

The scientist’s were pleased with the results of the experiment, nearly all of the genetic changes they had designed were successful. But they soon realized that something was causing continued genetic activity that they had not seen previously. After nearly two years of testing the child they determined that the cosmic rays that bombarded the spacestation were the cause of this continued modification of the childs DNA. Fascinated, they began to run even more tests on the child.

One of the ADAM scientists, Phillip Randall, was appalled by this and felt he had no other recourse than to rescue the child from this fate, a fate no human should have to endure. He smuggled the child away from the lab, abandoning his research and his position, and smuggled the child back to Earth. In order to hide the boy from the ADAM security personnel Randall gave the child to his cousin, Donald Bruce and his wife Thelma, who adopted the boy and named him Kent. The Bruce’s lovingly raised the child to be a good citizen and a nice guy. They raised him along side their own daughter and gave him a life full with friends, family, and a good dose of Midwestern values.

Kent spent his youth in rural Indiana on the family farm; he went to public schools and was popular among the locals. His natural physique allowed him to excel in athletics. Thus, despite the low profile he was encouraged to maintain by his parents, he was granted a football scholarship at the local university where he excelled athletically but was a struggling student.

Kent became a college quarterback with a promising future in the pros. At the height of his career, his super-powers began to manifest in unexpected and very public displays of strength and durability. In his final game against UCLA three of the opposing team’s players suffered serious injury due to his abilities. The NCAA and the fans were aghast that a “super” would play in the sport against “normals.” He was disgraced and expelled, his scholarship revoked.

Unsure where to go and what to do he drifted from job to job, helping those he came across and trying to make some sense of his life, all the while he studied newspaper and television reports on the heroes of New York, Metropolis, and Gotham and decided that it was the role he belonged in. Unsure of where to go, he began his heroing carrier in Coast City.
Kent soon uncovered a plot by Carcinogen and the Human Liberation Organization to assassinate the President and Vice President of the United States. With his powers now in full bloom he quickly foiled the plot and became an overnight sensation.

Taking the name Valiant, and a costume designed by his sister, Kent cashed in on his fame while battling the HLO. Valiant enjoyed the publicity, and began to endorse several products, becoming the first hero in the Midwest to get rich in this way. He spurned disreputable companies and selfish causes, but his endorsements of products and commercial ambitions were met with disdain by other heroes.
The original Valiant Enterprises recently gave way to Valiant International (VI), located in a refurbished mansion in Central City. In addition to handling Valiant’s endorsements, VI handles fund raising for a variety of causes. Currently VI is pulling itself out from scandal and struggling to pull itself out of bankruptcy.

A brave hero, Valiant has aided several superhero groups in battles against villains and madmen, but is currently not in the active ranks of any particular group. Valiant came up against the Asesinos in Millennium City and was invited to join the newly reformed Champions by James Harmon IV. The other members of the Champions rejected Valiant, not liking his practice of endorsing products. Valiant then proved his worth in by defeating the Royal Flush Gang, and joined the JLA for a short period of time. In Detroit he tackled the organization known as T.O.T.E.M. with the DNAgents, but left them shortly afterward.

Since then, Valiant has spent most of his time with get-rich-quick schemes, trying to rebuild the financial empire he lost due to carelessness after his sister died. He’s tried marketing a line of Justice Inc. products, running a south-western restaurant with former team mate Dark Knight, and many other schemes, all of which have ended in failure and ridicule. After watching many of his teammates suffer extreme injuries at the hands of the Spawn, Valiant has limited his commercial activities and refocused on his heroic persona.

Valiant has been romantically linked to the heroine Dove, though it’s believed that this relationship has come to an end.

Valiant feels he is out of place in this world, but he also realizes he can help it. Rather than use his powers to impose his will on others, he has chosen to be a gentle guardian, pledging never to kill anyone, or ignore the laws that govern the free will of nations. Sometimes it’s difficult for him to remain detached, especially when he sees the effects that bad policies have on the planet. Even as Valiant there’s not much he can do about that, though he does champion the fight of the common man through his many media appearances. In some ways the good Valiant does in the media is just as meaningful as any of his heroic feats. Valiant is out to make a name for himself, but not if that gets in the way of helping people. He often stays around to share a word with the media after a battle. Some people treat Valiant with suspicion, believing that a man as selfless and good as he must have an awful lot to hide. Some people even fear him, dreading the day that Valiant will turn to the “dark side” and decide that the world is not fit to govern itself, and that what it needs is him. Foolish as that is, being a rather powerful hero, some paranoid souls are inclined to think the worst.

BACKGROUND CHARACTERS

Vigil & Virtue

Vigil & Virtue, Ian & Barbra Parker, are a brother and sister team of crime fighters. Both are just out of their teens and full of youthful enthusiasm. They were trained by Valiant during the time that he resided in Capitol City.

Valiant was respectful of their decision to go it alone. Like any teacher he knew his pupils had to graduate sometime and watched them go with a mixture of pride and regret. Now in their new roles as full fledged crime-fighters they still occasionally team up with their one-time mentor, but Valiant often finds his one-time pupils have new, and in some cases radically different crime fighting ideas of their own.

The pair is quickly establishing themselves in Capitol City as a young, powerful and mysterious force for good.

Phillip “Doc” Randall

The brilliant Professor Randall is general director of F.O.C.A.L. (Farad Optical Component Advancement Labs), a Nobel prize winner many times over, and one of the remaining scientists who worked on the ADAM project. Randall has developed much of the super-technology that, with the right legislation, will make Central City a true city of the future. He’s a close friend of Valiant’s and was instrumental in rescuing the child from the orbital lab where he was created. And placing him with the family of his cousin. Randall has virtually no life outside of his lab. He lives and breathes science and his dialogue is peppered with techno-jargon. In fact, when explaining how a new invention works, Randall will use so many obscure technical terms that people often wind up asking him for an English translation. Truth be told, Randall’s much more comfortable around computers and machines than he is around people.

Benjamin Wainwright

Little Benjamin is the only child of a working mother and is determined that his match with his Big Brother Valiant will be the longest one ever in the history of Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Benjamin is a bright, charismatic, 8-year-old who enjoys any challenge. He is blessed with the spirit of youth and the passion to learn, which Valiant is eager to share. He is a great kid, and will someday will be a great man.

Ben and Valiant have a terrific friendship and get together to talk, work out problems, and have fun at least once a week. In their years together, he and Valiant have taught each other a great deal.

Donna Anders

Donna is the woman who heads up the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization that Valiant is apart of. Donna is like an aunt to Valiant and he is hard pressed to tell her no when it comes to helping her kids. They have a good relationship, though she feels he could be doing far more good in the world if he would give up this superhero business, as she considers it folly, and little more than an excuse to go get into fist-fights.

Richard Parks

Rich is one of Valiant’s old college buddies, something of a tag along. He never got drafted into the NFL and has tied himself to Valiant as something of a hanger on. This is fine with Valiant as he enjoys the roughneck humor of his longtime friend and confidant, along with the ties to his small town roots. Though, he does wish Rich was a bit more discrete about their relationship, as it tends to put him in harms way quite often..

SUPPORTING HEROES AND RECURRING VILLIANS

Dove

Dove is the crime fighting partner of the Dark Knight. Though she and Dark Knight do not have a romantic relationship, they are very close. Dove and Valiant have been romantically linked in the past, and some romantic feelings still exist between the two, though it’s believed that this relationship has come to an end.

Dove is a “super” with the ability to fly. She is currently based in Detroit, Michigan.

The Spawn

Some sort of plasma based creature from the dark side of the moon, probably of alien nature. Valiant most recently fought this beast with the aid of Justice Inc. in a battle that resulted in Valiant’s renewed interest in heroing and much harm to his former team.

Dark Knight

Friend, business partner, and sometime rival. He and Valiant have had more than their share of tussles. Radically different styles of crime fighting and a strange relationship triangle with the heroine, Dove, have lead to many disputes. But they’re common interests have always outweighed their personal differences. Dark Knight is currently based in Detroit, Michigan.

Scarlet Raptor

This former hero has taken the “heroing for profit” thing to a whole other level. He has turned to a life of crime and personal profit. Though he has never hurt anyone in his crime sprees with each new endeavor he takes greater and greater risks to the lives of innocents. Valiant hopes to stop his former companion before he does.

Dr. Mystery

This noble hero is Valiant’s revered mentor. Though he has no superhuman powers, he is just and honorable, with a single-minded drive to protect the helpless. He uses common sense, quick thinking, and an arsenal of inventions in his pursuit of justice. He is mainly retired now and is the third partner in Planet Hero. Dr. Mystery is currently based in Coast City.

Vlad

This super-vampire is nearly a match for Valiant in strength and resiliency. Vlad is one of the Dark Knights greatest foes, and a would-be suitor to Dove. Two things that have caused Vlad and Valiant to cross paths in the past. Vlad is consumed by the desire to possess Dove, to destroy the proprietors of Planet Hero, and to create a breed of vampires to enslave the humans of earth. He is currently in the Detroit area.

Mr. Miracle

A close friend and comrade of Valiant’s from his days with the West Coast Avengers. Mr. Miracle is a teleporting hero with a few additional gadgets and an uncanny “miracle” sense.
Miracle turned down the chance to be a partner in Planet Hero, and any number of Valiant’s other get-rich schemes as he always does, with a quick smile and a shake of the head.    Reactra
This stunning beauty is as deadly as she is gorgeous. Capable of shooting waves of radiation from her eyes, and permeated with atomic energy that boosts her strength, endurance, and speed. Reactra is one hot villain, and despite they’re opposing stance on the law and personal freedoms. She and Valiant seem to be attracted to one another like opposite magnetic charges. On more than one occasion they have exchanged a kiss before or after a fierce battle.

Damselfly

Formally, the Wasp, she is a member of Justice Inc., Wasp was seriously injured by the Spawn. She lost most of her powers, and was only able to return to the role of the costumed avenger when Valiant used what was left of his personal fortune to commission a super-powered bodysuit for her. She has since taken on the persona of Damselfly.

Fallout

Not all of ADAM’s projects have been shut down, and most of those that are still active are designed to recoup on the loss of their greatest success, Valiant. Fallout is a top of the line super-technology android designed to capture and return Valiant to the ADAM scientist for further study. Programmed to take advantage of Valiant’s weaknesses and bring him back to the lab.

Bennick written and played by Doug Parks in the 5 Kingdoms campaign

Appearance: Bennick is thin and wiry, with no body fat. His skin is rough and scarred from his many years of living on the street, and his hands show the calluses of many walls a-climbed. He wears loose black clothing over his leather armor.

Distinguishing Marks: Scar on left cheek.

Mannerisms: Bennick smiles a lot but is quiet around strangers. With friends, he talks to excess.

Fears/Phobias: Bennick has a slight fear of open spaces — he much prefers to have city walls around him.

Background Info/Character History:
Bennick grew up on the streets after the death of his mother. He was despondent without a family and found nothing to latch onto. Invariably he became a thief; a second-story man with the moniker “The Invisible Man.” He was a loner who longed for something to belong to, but the Thieves’ Guild didn’t fit the mould. At first he was a member in good standing, but he quickly lost his enamoration — he broke with the Guild and went freelance. His successes became fewer and farther between until he was steeped in debt and careless with his life. His downward spiral hit rock bottom as he lay in prison facing death. Bennick alone stood calmly in line for the gallows while the other prisoners cursed or begged for mercy.

The Queen, required to oversee the events, asked the Guard Captain of his name and his crime. “Bennick, m’lady,” he replied. “A burglar, a second-story thief. They call him the Invisible Man.” The Queen was intrigued and spoke quickly to the Guard Captain. Minutes later, Bennick was pulled from the line. “You’ve been offered leniency by the Queen herself. You’re to trade your death sentence for a stint in the military.”

“And if I refuse?” Bennick replied.

“Your life’s not your own. It belongs to the Queen now.”

Nationality: Vanion

Home: Avarona

Family/Siblings: Bennick’s mother was a prostitute killed before his eyes when he was 8. His father is unknown. Bennick has no siblings.

Early Education: The school of hard knocks.

Formal Education: Thieves’ guild, Laurundis.

Instructors: Salguod Skrap, master thief.