Iron Age metaverse

Strength
Name: Wangari Owadgi Ngilu
Nationality: Kenyan
Group Affiliation: Tarot

History: The first super-villain to come from Kenya, Wangari Owadgi Ngilu was the only child of a former leader of the Mau Mau. Crippled during a fight with British troops, Wangari’s father instilled in his daughter a vicious hatred for Europeans. He also taught her that the ends justify the means and not to worry about harming the innocent. In his career as a Mau Mau fighter, the elder Ngilu had regularly terrorized other native Kenyans in order to coerce them into supporting the Mau Mau uprising, even using murder as a tool of persuasion.

Growing up in grinding poverty in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province, Wangari learned to rely upon herself at a very early age. Her moral compass already twisted by her father’s hateful mindset and cruel disposition, Wangari became a thief almost as soon as she could walk. She learned to rustle chickens from farms, steal crops from fields and poach game from the nature preserves. By the time she was a teenager, Wangari was leading a gang of youths as her father’s lieutenant rustling cattle and robbing homes.

It was in this period of her life that the young criminal had an encounter that would change her forever. Wangari’s gang broke into the home of a West African farmer who lived alone at the edge of the jungle. The strange farmer wasn’t really a part of the community and lived a hermit’s existence, so Wangari’s father considered he would make an easy target. Like all hermits and misers, it was widely believed the man had treasure hidden somewhere in his home.

Intending to torture the location of his treasure from the hermit, Wangari led her gang in the attack. With ten hardened thugs helping her, Wangari was certain she’d have no problem overcoming the hermit. She couldn’t have been more wrong. For some time, the Rift Valley had been plagued by a string of killings – farmers found dead in their fields, half-eaten by a marauding leopard. Efforts had been made to trap and kill the maneater, but without success. Because of her attempt at crime, Wangari would discover the real culprit.

The gang subdued the hermit easily enough, pouncing upon him in his hut and beating him into submission with their clubs. However, the hermit didn’t remain subdued for long. Rising from the floor, he began to laugh. The laughter faded into a low, bestial growl as the hermit’s flesh began to thicken and sprout tawny hair. The man’s face elongated into a feline muzzle, his hands change into massive paws. Before the stunned eyes of the gang, the hermit changed into a horrific creature, a beast part man and part leopard.

The were-leopard pounced upon the gang, rending them limb from limb. He spared only Wangari, swatting her into unconsciousness with a swipe of his paw. When the young girl came to, she found herself bound and at the mercy of the beast. She soon learned that the were-leopard had no mercy.

Over the weeks as his captive, Wangari learned some of the were-leopard’s history. His name was Ogunlade Kamal and he was from the West African nation of Sierra Leone. He was, he said, a member of the Leopard Society, a terrible order of cannibals and murderers who used steel claws to slaughter their victims. Through their cannibalism, the Leopard Men were able to take on the strength and vitality of those they killed, until at last they could assume the form of leopards. British and French colonial authorities had made every effort to wipe out the Leopard Society, at last cornering many of the were-leopards in a final battle. The Europeans were victorious, but a few Leopard Men like Ogunlade had escaped, fleeing West Africa and scattering to the most remote corners of the Dark Continent.

Ogunlade had grown lonely in his exile, so he decided that Wangari would be his wife – at least until he tired of her. She would share everything with him, including his favorite food. The Leopard Man took a sadistic delight forcing the woman to dine with him on the butchered remains of her gang. The ritualistic cannibalism was the source of the Leopard Man’s power, but he never thought it would confer any kind of benefit to his captive. He’d collected several ‘wives’ over the years and none of them had drawn strength from the hideous fodder he forced upon them.

Wangari, however, was different. Perhaps because of her strong will, perhaps because of her cruel and hard upbringing, perhaps simply because of her Masai ancestry, Wangari flourished upon the loathsome meat. She soon realized what was happening to her and realized that Ogunlade was unwittingly giving her the power to free herself. Carefully husbanding her growing strength, Wangari suffered her captor’s sadistic whims, all the while planning her revenge.
The day came when the Leopard Man decided he was tired of Wangari. After months of slaking his lust and cruelty on her, Ogunlade felt it was time to get rid of her. He rather looked forward to eating her flesh while she was still alive. Pain and terror gave flesh such a delicious taste.

Murder in his eyes, Ogunlade changed shape and began to stalk his prey. He was stunned when Wangari stood her ground. He was terrified when she began to change. Wangari did not alter her shape into that of some slinking leopard. Either because of her different tribal background or because her will was stronger than that of the Leopard Men, or simply because in her need her mind was fixed upon the one beast strong enough to overcome Ogunlade, when Wangari changed it was not the shape of a leopard she wore.

Roaring, the were-lioness pounced upon Ogunlade. She took her time ripping the Leopard Man apart, savouring every scream. Ogunlade was still screaming when Wangari began to feed.

Flush with her freedom after nearly a year as Ogunlade’s prisoner, Wangari rushed back to her home. Instead of being happy to see her, her father started to beat Wangari, cursing her as a wanton whore for staying away so long and forcing him to fend for himself. Wangari was no longer the dutiful, frightened child her father had always bullied, however. Changing once more into the lioness, Wangari killed her father with a single swipe of her paw. His flesh, she found, wasn’t quite so tasty as Ogunlade’s had been.

Wangari’s career of robbery and terror started that night. She was too intoxicated with her power to keep a low profile the way the Leopard Man had, however. Boldly she would stalk into villages, killing whoever she wished, devouring the dead in the middle of the street before horrified onlookers. Kenyan papers soon began calling her Tsavo, after the man-eating lions who had preyed upon railway workers almost a century before. It was a name she found to her liking and she became as enamoured of her notoriety as she was of her newfound powers.

Her notoriety, however, had consequences. At the behest of the Kenyan government, a team of British superheroes were dispatched to end Tsavo’s reign of terror. It took them only a few days to find her. So sure of her own abilities, Tsavo confronted the heroes as soon as she learned of their arrival. It was a mistake she would rue. Outnumbered and outmatched, she was captured by the British superheroes Avalon and Professor Zero. A special detainment facility was constructed to house the powerful villainess while she awaited trial.

Before that trial could happen, however, events unfolded which would benefit Tsavo. Uganda’s power-mad dictator Idi Amin launched an unprovoked invasion of Kenya, his forces led by the remnants of his Most Powerful Royal Guard of Glorious Uganda. The Kenyan military could more than hold its own against Amin’s conventional forces, but there was nothing they had that could match Amin’s cyborgs. In desperation, the Kenyan president offered Tsavo amnesty if she would defend her homeland.

Wangari was many things, but she had a genuine love of Kenya. She agreed to help defend her land from the Ugandans, even though she was expected to fight alone: Kenya had no other superbeings to help her. Since it was expected she’d receive the death penalty in any event, Tsavo preferred to die in battle.

Tsavo didn’t die. Quite the opposite. After her experience with Avalon and Professor Zero, Wangari had learned quite a bit about how to use her powers. Instead of simply throwing herself into the fray, she made an effort to stalk and quickly subdue her enemies one by one. With her prodigious strength, Tsvao was able to tear apart Amin’s cyborgs, her regenerative body able to recover from the effects of even their most vicious weapons. Alone, Tsavo was able to accomplish the impossible: the final destruction of Idi Amin’s Most Powerful Royal Guard of Glorious Uganda. The amazing feat spurred the Kenyan military on to complete victory, driving the Ugandans back across the border and pursuing them straight to Amin’s capital. The dictator fled only hours ahead of Kenyan soldiers.

Because of her role in defeating Uganda, the Kenyan president knew he would have to honour his promise of amnesty. Indeed, there were many outside the Rift Valley who considered Tsavo a national hero. However, the brutal killings and cannibalism could not be forgiven. There was the very real possibility Tsavo would revert to type if she was given her liberty.

In the end, Kenya solved the problem by exiling Tsavo. Feeling betrayed, Tsavo crossed over into Uganda, taking vicious pleasure hunting Amin’s henchmen who had escaped custody. Soon she was approached by Egyptian representatives, who offered her a new home in return for her services. As a national hero of Egypt, Tsavo renamed herself ‘Sphinx’ and was put to service against her new country’s enemies, particularly the mummified sorcerer Ahmet-set. Her duties at this time also brought her into conflict with the heroes of other nations, particularly those of America and Israel.

During the Slyther invasion, Sphinx was a member of the human resistance, fighting to throw back the alien conquerors. This brought her into prominence outside Egypt, especially after she single-handedly tore the leg off a Slyther war-machine in New York. After the Slyther were driven back, Sphinx was offered membership in the international superhero team Vanguard. She accepted and became a valued asset of the team, especially after the death of Fafnir. The gruesome stories of her beginnings in Kenya were all but forgotten, laid down to a young girl unable to control her powers.

The reality hit Vanguard hard. One of the team’s members, the Japanese superheroine Foxfire, had always been suspicious of Sphinx. Following her one night from the team’s Paris headquarters, she discovered Sphinx in the catacombs under the city, stalking and devouring homeless vagabonds. Confronted by Foxfire in the midst of feeding, Sphinx admitted her need for human flesh – it was the source of her strength. Horrified, Foxfire tried to defend herself as Sphinx lunged at her. The fire-producing Japanese wasn’t able to stop Sphinx, however, and was quickly at her mercy. Like Ogunlade, Wangari had no mercy and the were-lioness intended to eat the Japanese while she was still alive.
Foxfire’s communicator had been on, however, altering the rest of Vanguard to her predicament. The rest of the team arrived before Sphinx had been able to gnaw off more than a hand. Raging, the were-lion fought her former team-mates, her immense strength allowing her to hurt several of the heroes and allow her to escape into the gloom of the catacombs.

When Wangari next appeared, she again called herself Tsavo. Returning to Africa, she sold her services as a mercenary to anti-Apartheid rebels in South Africa. Her ability to inspire terror was deemed an asset by the more ruthless rebels and Tsavo proved she had learned from her father’s career as a Mau Mau. Tsavo’s career of slaughter and murder brought her to the attention of other forces, however. Several Leopard Men had moved to South Africa. They approached Tsavo, not as enemies, but as allies. They wanted her to be their leader and to start a new Leopard Society in South Africa. The sheer magnitude of the havoc she could cause with an entire army of were-leopards appealed to Tsavo and she quickly agreed. With her Leopard Men, Tsavo started a campaign of chaos through the streets of Johannesberg that shocked the world.

The brutality also brought the attention of the world’s heroes. Fifteen superheroes converged upon Johannesberg to oppose Tsavo and stop the massacre, including many members of Vanguard. Even so, Tsavo had nearly a hundred Leopard Men by this time, having inducted many rebels into the cannibalistic cult. The resulting battle devastated the city.

One of Tsavo’s pet projects at the time had been the sadistic torture of the South African hero Voortrekker. During the battle, Voortrekker was able to escape from the chains Tsavo had put upon him. Having been forced to partake of the same hideous rituals as the Leopard Men, Voortrekker was able to change himself into a were-lion and attack Tsavo. Even more powerful than Tsavo because of his previous super-powers, Voortrekker was able to maul Tsavo to the point where she was assumed dead. Horrified by what he had become, Voortrekker destroyed himself after the battle by walking into a nuclear reactor.

Tsavo’s remarkable healing properties allowed her to survive, however, and she escaped before her body could be thrown into the funeral pyre arranged for the Leopard Men. Frightened by how close she had come to death, Tsavo smuggled herself to Brazil and retreated into the vastness of the Amazon. Unable to fully control her need for human flesh, even in the Amazon word of her activities spread, leading to a few confrontations with super-heroes. Each time, however, Tsavo was able to escape into the jungle.

It was while in the Amazon that Tsavo met the Magus. Aware of her abilities and her sociopathic mindset, the Magus felt she was a perfect recruit for the Tarot. Seeing in Tarot a way to be protected from her enemies and strike back at them, Tsavo agreed to join the organization, becoming Strength.

Powers: Strength is, naturally, immensely strong, among the strongest super-beings recorded. During the Ugandan invasion, she made a habit of cracking tanks open like eggshells. Her claws are strong enough to shred steel, her fang-filled jaws are powerful enough to pulverize bone. She is able to leap a hundred yards at a bound.

In addition to her prodigious physical might, Strength’s body possesses an incredible healing ability, recovering from some of the most intense damage in an amazingly short time. She is vulnerable to silver, however, and attacks made with this material are toxic to her. Certain magical attacks are likewise dangerous to her and she has learned to either avoid or immediately take down any magicians she encounters. Her fear of wizards is one element the Magus uses to keep control over her.

Description: Strength is a horrific mix of lioness and woman. Standing nearly seven feet, weighing in excess of eight hundred pounds, her body is almost pure muscle. Her paw-like hands conceal six-inch claws. Strength wears a brief costume of leopard-skin loin cloth and halter, garments made from Ogunlade’s hide. Since her fight with Voortrekker, she bears a number of disfiguring scars, including claw-marks that run down the left-side of her face. Even her healing ability has not been able to restore the damage dealt to her by the Boer hero.

Increasingly, Strength remains in her were-lioness form, finding the appearance of her scars in her human shape depressing – and a dead giveaway as to her identity.

The Hanged Man
Name: Abel Kane
Nationality: American
Group Affiliation: The Tarot

History: Abel Kane was the most brilliant detective on the New York Metropolitan Police Force. Graduating with top honors from the police academy, he cut his teeth as a beat cop for several years before his smashing of a Mafia protection racket brought him promotion within the force. As New York’s ace of detectives, Kane continued to hit the Mafia hard, personally breaking cases against two of the city’s crime families that saw their dons sent to prison and their organizations severely crippled. Kane survived numerous attempts at retaliation against him, his keen insight into the criminal mind allowing him to out-guess the hitmen and assassins hired to dispatch him.

His first dealings with the superhero Fear came about at this time, and Kane found the vigilante’s tactics contemptible. Working within the law to outsmart and out-think his criminal opponents, Kane had no respect for a man who could simply work outside the law and use terror to break down criminals. Publicly sticking to the high moral ground, Kane refused to work with or accept the vigilante and did everything in his power to stop Fear’s activities. This resulted in a tragic standoff when the twisted Uncle Gunnysack became active in the city. A nightmarish kidnapper and cannibal, Uncle Gunnysack was the terror of New York, preying on small children. Protected by the Hatian community who lived in absolute terror of him, Kane and his squad of detectives were unable to find Uncle Gunnysack and put a stop to his activities. Fear, however, was able to make headway by intimidating the same people protecting Uncle Gunnysack into revealing what they knew.

Before Fear could act on this information, however, Kane became aware of the vigilante’s involvement. Using SWAT teams to try to capture Fear, Kane initiated a stand-off in Harlem as police tried to apprehend the elusive Fear. Unknown to either Kane or Fear, even as the standoff was unfolding, Uncle Gunnysack was perpetrating his most audacious crime. The monster invaded a private school, taking over a hundred children hostage. The news of Uncle Gunnysack’s atrocity forced Kane to break off the hunt for Fear and scramble all of his forces to the school. Police did their best to break into the building, but were confronted by the grisly powers of Uncle Gunnysack – who was able to unleash the trapped ghosts of his victims from the ouangas he’d made to trap their spirits. With his ghosts holding off the police, Uncle Gunnysack prepared to offer up the children he’d taken prisoner as a sacrifice meant to evoke the powerful loa of Baron Samdei, the voodoo lord of the dead. Before his hideous plan could be completed, Fear penetrated through both the police cordon and the ghosts to confront the monster. After a terrific fight, Uncle Gunnysack’s ouangas were destroyed and the released spirits took their revenge on their murderer, shattering his mind. Fear left the twisted wreck of the supervillain for the police to capture.

Despite the near catastrophe with Uncle Gunnysack, Kane’s continuing successes with breaking the Mafia’s operations in the city made him the toast of the town. Soon, he was appointed police commissioner by the mayor. As police commissioner, Kane continued to batter down the bastions of organized crime in his city and to pursue his vendetta with Fear.
However, all was not right with Abel Kane. Law enforcement to him had never been about stopping crime or protecting the innocent. To Kane, it had been more of like an intellectual challenge, a contest between his own deductive reasoning and the intelligence of the criminal. Now that he was police commissioner and with the full resources of the department at his beck and call, the challenge was gone.

It was six months after Kane became police commissioner that a new murderer began to prey upon the city. Flaycrow announced himself by sending a particularly ghastly parcel to the police: the entire flayed skin of a young woman. This was the beginning of a hideous stream of murders throughout the city. Flaycrow struck everywhere, without seeming rhyme or reason. He would murder with guns, knives, bombs, hatchets, almost any kind of weapon. His victims came from all walks of life. Always he would announce his handiwork, however, by leaving a few crow feathers at the scene of the crime.

The police force unable to stop the crimes, Fear became prominently involved. Soon the mocking Flaycrow began leaving cryptic notes behind challenging Fear to stop him. The game of cat-and-mouse that ensued led to several encounters between the psychopath and the vigilante, but always Flaycrow was able to slip away. His features concealed behind a grisly burlap mask, even Fear did not know who the killer was after months of trying to stop him.

Kane, however, did. He publicly announced that he had evidence that Fear had gone mad and was himself Flaycrow. The public outcry over this claim was immense, but soon evidence at the scenes of the Flaycrow crimes began to implicate Fear. Bits of weaponry lost in his fights with the killer somehow found their way to the sites of new murders. A good case was soon made that Fear was indeed the murderer.

Hounded throughout the city, Fear couldn’t operate in the open, but was forced to pursue his hunt for the killer in a variety of disguises. It was at this time that he noticed the pattern to Flaycrow’s crimes. The murders were always committed in places where police forces had been absent. More than absent, they had been removed, sent to reinforce police elsewhere in the city for a variety of reasons. The ghastly truth dawned on Fear. There was only one man who had the authority to move police in every district in the city as though they were chess pieces.

Fear confronted Abel Kane in his own office in police headquarters. Seeming to get the upper hand over his foe, Kane freely confessed his double-identity as Flaycrow. Having exhausted the challenges of law enforcement, Kane had turned to crime. He wanted Fear to understand this so that one person, at least, could appreciate his triumph. Unknown to Kane, however, Fear had visited his offices earlier and wired it to broadcast the police commissioner’s confession to every squad car in the city at the touch of a button.

As police arrived to arrest him, Kane employed one of the gas bombs he’d used as Flaycrow to escape through the window. Fear was quick in his pursuit, but Kane had planned his escape well, using a police helicopter to fly away. Fear was just able to catch the landing strut and, climbing into the rising helicopter was able to confront Kane, now once again locked in the hideous identity of Flaycrow. Disabled by the ensuing fight, the helicopter crashed into the river. Fear managed to dive from the hurtling craft, but Flaycrow went down with the helicopter.

For months it was presumed that Kane had died in the crash or drowned in the river. Then the Flaycrow murders began again, announced as before by a flayed human skin. This time with the police force helping him, Fear once again was locked in a battle of wits with Kane. Six more people died before Flaycrow was stopped. This time Kane did not escape, but was captured by Fear and the police. Remanded to trial, Kane was found legally insane and committed to the notorious Steelside Sanitarium.

Insane or not, the genius of Abel Kane endured. He soon escaped Steelside, taking with him Uncle Gunnysack. The two murderers began a reign of terror in New York before Fear was finally able to track them to the abandoned private school where Uncle Gunnysack had been stopped the first time. Once again, Flaycrow was judged insane and sent to Steelside.

A pattern soon emerged. Flaycrow would spend a few months at the sanitarium before figuring out a new way to escape. He would murder several people, Fear would finally track him down, and he would be sent back to Steelside so that the cycle could begin again. This might have continued forever had Flaycrow not made the mistake of killing a particular young girl during one of his escpades. The young girl was the daughter of Judge Randolph Weston.

Weston had seen that in the case of Flaycrow, the law had failed. Now he wanted revenge. Using his authority, Weston arranged for Flaycrow to be transferred to another facility – a minimum security one. However, the maniac never reached the new hospital. The men the judge had hired instead drove him into the countryside. There Judge Weston was waiting. So was an old dead tree and a new silk rope. In his brutal game of wits with Fear, Kane had never considered the lives he destroyed in the process. He had time to think about that as he slowly strangled to death at the end of a rope.

When it was over, Weston made no effort to hide the execution, but left Kane swinging, to be picked at by the crows.

That should have been the end of Abel Kane, alias Flaycrow. If not for the sorcery of the Magus, it would have been. After a month hanging from the tree, Kane’s body was discovered by the Magus. Employing the blackest of the black arts, the sorcerer restored Kane’s soul to his decayed body. The notorious killer would now put his cruel intellect at the service of the Tarot as the Hanged Man. The Magus had a very simple method to ensure Kane’s loyalty: if he tried to betray the Tarot, the magus would simply dispel the magic that sustained the zombie’s decayed body.

The Hanged Man didn’t take long to agree to the Magus’s terms.

Powers: The Hanged Man is no longer among the living, but an undead monstrosity. As such, he is immune to many things that would kill a man. His decayed flesh can sustain bullets, stabbings, burning, poison of all types, extremes of cold and pressure, even the vacuum of outer space. Any damage dealt to him will slowly repair itself and restore him to a ‘freshly cut down from the tree’ condition.

Beyond the powers of a zombie, the Hanged Man retains a brilliant analytical mind, even if it has been twisted by sadism. He is a great strategist, often providing the plans for operations suggested by the Magus. He is also extremely skilled in many kinds of weapons, from creating his own acids and poisons, to employing exotic forms of martial combat with everything from swords and axes to sledgehammers and hatchets.

Description: The Hanged Man is a grisly sight. His face has been picked raw by birds and other scavengers, leaving a decayed skull with lifeless, staring eyes. He wears the tatters of the suit and coat he wore when Judge Weston ‘transferred’ him from Steelside and about his neck dangles the slipknot of the noose used to kill him. The Hanged Man’s head is constantly cocked at an angle as a result of his broken neck.

That is beautiful, Clint. Truly beautiful.

Well, the Tower is meant as a very messed up version of the Golem from the movie 'It!' As they say in that book, neither by fire nor water nor anything of man...

Awesome stuff as always Clint.

And man, is The Tower like the supervillain equivalent of Jason? Freak just won't DIE.

The Emperor
Name: Grigori Vaslov
Nationality: Russian/Sarmatian
Group Affiliation: Tarot

History: In the dim days of WWII, an ambitious aristocrat, a descendent of the tsars, bent his brilliant mind and imdomitable will towards one purpose: to seize control of his own country. Building an army from Russian exiles, Axis deserters and Soviet defectors, Grigori Vaslov led his force in a campaign of conquest. Seizing control of the Baltic region known in antiquity as Sarmatia, Vaslov was able to carve out his kingdom by attacking German rear-echelon forces and establishing strongholds with withstand the retreating Axis armies and the Soviet Red Army that pursued them.

Among the first things Vaslov established in his new kingdom was his capital of Dracograd, the City of the Dragon. Here he built his underground factories and laboratories. Russian scientists and other refugees from both the Nazis and the Soviets were put to work developing the ideas conceived in Vaslov's genius: new wonder weapons that would keep his fledgling country inviolate from both Hitler and Stalin. The destruction of a Luftwaffe air raid by lightning cannons ended Nazi interest in Sarmatia, the massacre of an entire Red Army tank division by robot troops made Stalin decide the annoyance of Vaslov could wait until after the war.

By the time the war ended, however, Sarmatia's defences were firmly established and developed. Conquering the country would no longer be the easy matter Stalin thought it would be. Instead, he tried to win by trickery and subtlety, sending SMERSH assassins into Sarmatia to kill its so-called Tsar. The effort nearly succeeded, but Vaslov survived the attempt and unleashed his army with its super-weapons in a campaign of revenge that nearly penetrated to Moscow before Soviet devlopment of the atomic bomb finally threw it back. In this war, Sarmatia was at first supported by the west, but these allies quickly reconsidered their support when Soviet atomics entered the picture. It was an act of treachery Vaslov would never forget, or forgive and it was to have a long-lasting effect on the world at large.

Disfigured by the attempt on his life, his body weakened by posions, Vaslov was forced to entomb himself in a robotic suit of armor, its mechanics serving him in the place of his ravaged muscles. Into his armour was built a wide array of weaponry and detection devices, but his most vital asset reamined his incredible intellect. Ruling Sarmatia as absolute despot, Vaslov christened himself Voyakyedok - the Wolfeater. Outside Sarmatia and Russia, however, he soon earned a different name: Doctor Destruction.

Reasoning that the only way to protect his new nation and the people who had flocked to him to protect them from the Nazis during the war and the Soviets after, Voyakyedok decided that he must be able to exert his influence over the governments of the world. His hand was soon discovered in many plots to bring the nations of the earth to their knees, plots that involved everything from alliances with alien invaders to awakening ancient monsters to more subdued plans involving robot doppelgangers of world leaders. Voyakyedok was always defeated in these plots, plots where he tried to place the world in jeopardy so he could emerge at the last instant in the role of savior and in so doing gain the power he wanted. Eventually, the menace posed by Voyakyedok could no longer be tolerated. Conspiring with Sarmatian traitors, the People's Commisariate and several American superheroes supported a coup in Sarmatia. Voyakyedok fought to the bitter end for control of his country, but at last even his super-science could not hold back the tide. As a last ditch effort, and with the mantra that if he were to loose, so would everyone, Voyakyedok threw open his doomsday plan, opening gates all over the plant to the alien dimension called Sardiss. For the next year, the world would be ravaged by the extra-dimensional invaders, loathsome reptilian creatures called the Slyther.

Feeling betrayed by mankind, Voyakyedok allied with the Slyther in exchange to be made governor of those humans the reptiles left alive. In truth, he was playing a game of double-cross, stealing Slyther technology while in alliance with the monsters. Using Slyther biogenetics, Voyakedok was able to regenerate his body and increase his innate physicality to superhuman porportions. Adopting the guise of a new superhero named Resistance, he led the belleagured heroes of the Earth in a final attack on the Slyther (using the secrets he had learned about them to great advantage). However, the Slyther were not gracious when they learned of this betrayal, and in a final act of spite, when a grateful Earth was singing the praises of this new hero, Slyther rear-guard made certain that the true identity of the planet's savior was made known to his fellow humans. Voyakedok barely escaped the ensuing outrage, his face almost obliterated by a furious Streltsi who had seen his entire family wiped out by the Slyther. From the hero of earth to the most hunted and despised man on the planet, Voyakedok was forced underground.

Once again using his trademark power armour, Voyakedok explored the hidden world beneath the surface and found new allies to lead against his enemies. Ancient beyond human understanding, the Elder Ones had slept for entire epochs before Voyakedok awakened them. Formless, existing in a state of neither life nor death, the advent of the Elder Ones upon the surface world was almost as great a catastrophe as the Slyther invasion. This time, Voyakedok did not try to trick humanity. Boldly he appeared at the UN, demanding the resortation of Sarmatia to him in exchange for the secret that would send the Elder Ones back to their timeless tombs. Unable to do anything else, the UN was forced to accept the tyrant's demand. The world's heroes were put in the unlikely role of protecting the villain as he constructed the machine that would 'change the phase of the Elder Ones'. By exposing the monster-gods to a certain sound, Voyakedok was able to shift them 'five seconds away' so that the creatures were invisible, intangible and incapable of interacting with the physical world in any way.

Restored to the throne of Sarmatia, however, Voyakedok was not content. He established a terrorist organization called The Hand of Ruin to act as his assassins, operating across the globe to destroy his many enemies. Even though it was widely suspected Sarmatia was behind these attacks, the world feared to rise against Voyakedok, knowing he might be capable of reversing the sound that had sent the Elder Ones away. However, the actions of Acolyte, uncovering a more esoteric and permanent way of removing the Elder Ones, eventually changed the status quo.

Avenging the brutal death of Streltsi, the entire People's Commisariat descended on Sarmatia. The Hand of Ruin was utterly destroyed in the attack, and Voyakedok was able to escape only through the grudging aid of the Crusaders who protected him only on condition that he renounce the throne and leave Sarmatia.

Voyakedok was once again a man without a country, but the power-mad villain was not about to rest. He again opened a portal to Sardiss, and united with a faction of the Slyther to overthrow their own theocracy. Realizing the havoc Voyakedok would cause if he became defacto ruler of the Slyther, earth's greatest heroes pursued him into Sardiss and managed to put down the rebellion. Captured and beaten, Voyakedok was brought back to Earth to stand trial for his many crimes.

One final twist came about in the career of this master-villain, however. As he stood before a UN council, Voyakedok faded from existence. Despite every precaution, one of the villain's contigency plans had snatched him from the very jaws of justice. Reappearing in one of his many secret lairs, Voyakedok began to plot his next scheme for power.

This time, however, the despot was not alone. Within the shadows of his hidden lair, the Magus emerged. It was time, the wizard said, for Voyakedok to assume the role he had made for himself - that of Emperor, Emperor of the Tarot. The despot considered the question very carefully, then accepted. The Tarot would make valuable allies in his bid for power. And once they had served their purpose, he would dispose of them as he had so many other allies who had outlived their usefulness.

The Emperor is one of the strategists of the Tarot, as well as one of its chief combatants. He is rated very near the top of supervillain threat assessments, even without the support of legions of henchmen and super-powered dupes. He is always developing new contingency plans, and takes pains to find the Achilles' heel of any enemy he encounters so he is ready for them the next time. He takes the same measures against friends as well and spends considerable time trying to learn the weaknesses of his fellow Tarot members.

Powers: The Emperor has superhuman strength that allows him to lift weights in excess of ten tons. His armour has an array of devices built into it that allow him to project concentrated blasts of 'heavy gravity', pulse beams and a wide array of other energy rays. He is able to achieve a gliding sort of flight by reversing his gravity beams, repulsing the earth's innate gravity in the same way two opposit manets repel one another. His armour is forged from Sardite, a fantastically strong metal from the Sardiss dimension and has resisted incredibly destructive events, even the touch of the Elder Ones which causes most matter to dissolve into melted pools of muck.

His greatest power, however, is his mind. The Emperor has been the originator of some of the most astounding technological devices in the world and the only man to build a physical weapon that can affect the Elder Ones or master Slyther genetic science. He uses his knowledge to do everything from creating super-powered thugs to building inter-dimensional portals and faster-than-light starcraft. The current leaders of Sarmatia are still very much his minions and the Emperor can draw upon the resources of the Baltic nation. He also maintains contacts with Slyther dissidents, both in Sardiss and also stay-behinds of the original invasion force.

Description: The Emperor is a towering figure, seven feet tall, encased in a suit of Sardite armour that is of such blackness that it seems to actively absorb light. The helm of this armour is fashioned in the likeness of a snarling wolf. Over his armour, he wears a crimson cloak upon which the golden creast of Sarmatia acts as a clasp. The Emperor never reveals his face, but it is speculated that there isn't much left from Streltsi's attack, so little that even the Emperor's knowledge of genetics can't fix it.

The Tower
Name: N/A
Nationality: N/A
Group Affiliation: Tarot

History: Barnabus Dark, one of the ten wealthiest men in America, had a little secret - the reason he was so wealthy was because he happened to be one of the world's greatest sorcerers and used his black magic to build up his fortune. It was not for the sake of temporal wealth that Barnabus used magic to swell his fiances, but to gather still more esoteric and forbidden knowledge. Assuming the guise of master-villain Dark Arcane, he founded the worlwide terrorist organization Fenris and used it to loot some of the holiest places in the world. Equipped with the best weapons the black market could supply, Fenris became a terror to law enforcement agencies around the world, with few aware of the occult thefts behind their global outrages.

Dark Arcane's relationship with Fenris finally came to the attention of the Crusaders and Madame Magic during the group's attack on the New Old Synagogue in Prague. While the terrorists worked to destroy the holy building as another instalment of their campaign of atrocity, Dark Arcane ransacked its hidden vaults, absconding with the body of the Golem and the Maharal's secrets for giving it life. While the Crusaders were able to stop destruction of the ancient temple, Dark Arcane was able to flee with his treasures.

Soon a new, seemingly unconnected attack by Fenris occured in England when the terrorists destroyed the Tower of London. The real purpose behind this terror-attack was to steal rubble from the Tower, bringing it back to Dark Arcane in his New England castle. Dark Arcane had unravelled the secrets of the Golem, but rather than simply create more of the creatures, he was going to twist and pervert the ritual to bend it to far darker purpose. In a pact with infernal demon lords that would see his sorcerous powers swollen beyond measure, Dark Arcane promised to create an unstoppable juggernaut that would exist only to sow chaos and carnage across the world, the negative energies released by such acts being devoted to the demon lords to feed their own perverse hungers. Where the Golem had been built as servant and protector, from river clay saturated in the forces of life and nature, Dark Arcane's monster would be crafted from the blood-soaked stone of the Tower of London, a place saturated in misery, murder and evil. It would not be a servant and protector, but a marauding weapon of blackest sorcery.

Madame Magic, pouring over the surviving records in Prague, bent her full powers to unlocking Dark Arcane's motives, then stretched her abilities even farther to pierce the spells he had woven to protect his true identity. She appreciated the full magnitude of the chaos he intended to unleash and despite the toll her desperate spells took on her, Madame Magic threw herself into the task. Aged decades in the blink of an eye, Madame Magic found the information the Crusaders needed, pointing them to Barnabus Dark's New England castle. Too weak to accompany her team, Madame Magic bestowed her occult talismans and artefacts upon her apprentice and daughter, Acolyte and sent her to support the Crusaders in their coming battle.

Walpurgis Night found Dark Arcane focused upon the ritual to create his monster, so he was forced to leave defence of his castle to his private security forces, hired mercenary super-beings and hidden guardian demons. It wasn't enough to stop the Crusaders, but it was enough to delay them until the ritual had nearly run its course. reaking into the subterranean temple where Dark Arcane was working his sorcery, it was too late for Acolyte to stop the magician from giving life to his creation. What she was able to do, however, was siphon off some of the power infusing the creature and transfer it into the body of the original Golem, which Dark Arcane had kept as a trophy. When the monster rose, filled with purpose and motivation, so too did the Golem. Absolute opposites, the two man-made automatons instantly came to blows, their elemental fury rocking the very foundations of the castle. While the Crusaders battled Dark Arcane to a standstill, the Golem and the monster brought the entire structure crashing down, entombing them beneath tons of rubble.

The evil Dark Arcane had created did not remain buried for long, however. A Halloween lightning storm struck the ruins of Castle Dark, and the elemental power brought the monster digging its way to the surface. Now filled with even more energy, the beast was able to generate fire and lightning from its stony fists and bloodstone eyes. Worse, it was still filled with its urge to bring chaos and destruction wherever it walked. It set about razing the countryside, marching inexoribly towards Boston. The Crusaders scrambled to stop the monster, now called the Tower after the stone used to make it, but their best efforts were in vain. Worse, Dark Arcane emerged from hiding to claim his creation. It was only when the wizard found that the Tower would not obey him that any hope of stopping the monster emerged. Forming an uneasy alliance, Dark Arcane and Acolyte combined their powers to banish the Tower into the infernal Netherworld.

Like most evil, however, the Tower refused to stay gone. The next May Eve, it tore a hole back into the physical world. This time, the Crusaders were too late to stop the monster from reaching Boston and begining to tear the city apart stone-by-stone. With Dark Arcane vanquished and seemingly destroyed in a battle months before, Acolyte knew they would not be able to banish the creature as they had before. Instead, the Crusaders lured the Tower into a pit of molten oryhalcon, the wonder metal of Atlantis, the strongest substance known to man. Trapped like a fly in amber when the metal hardened, the Tower was dropped into the Arctic Ocean, hopefully never to be seen again.

It was not to be. After years of constant, tireless effort, the Tower broke free from its prison and marched across the ocean floor and emerged in Siberia. Battling the Soviet Union's premiere superteam - the Nardonyy Komissariat Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (People's Commissariat for State Security), the Tower nearly provoked WWIII by damaging a Soviet nuclear installation and launching its missiles. Only the quick action of the Soviet hero Streltsi and use of his flame control powers prevented the missiles from reaching their targets in America. Trapped within one of the silos, the Tower was seemingly destroyed when one of the nuclear missiles was redirected back to the base and the silo, along with everything else, vanished in a mushroom cloud.

The dark magic binding the Tower's form, however, could not be annihilated by any weapon of man. The very dust of the Tower reformed over time and three years after its seeming destruction, its was once again threatening the world. Wrecking havoc across Siberia, the Tower had gained new atomic powers from the blast, drastically increasing its size and rendering it deadly to approach due to radiation poisoning. The People's Commissariat tried desperately to stop the monster from reaching China and provoking an international incident. In the end, it took the combined efforts of the NKGB, the Chinese Wu Xing, and the American Crusaders to stop the monster, destroying it with a Chinese Neutron bomb buried into its guts by the Chinese hero Tu with his elemental control over earth. Blown to bits, it was desperately hoped this was the last the world would hear of the Tower.

Such was not the case, however. Without Dark Arcane, control of the Fenris organization had been seized by Fenrir, an ancient lycanthrope and virulent sorcerer in his own right. His son and second-in-command, Skoll, led the effort to collect the Tower's remains and restore the monster to life. Now restored to its 'normal' state of roughly twelve feet in height, the Tower was dominated by special artefacts in Fenrir's possession. Using the Tower in an attempt to destroy the severely weakened and aged Madame Magic, Fenris was instead confronted by the Tarot. The Magus used his own magic to break Fenrir's control of the Tower, then used the Hierophant's psionic abilities to stir a greater awareness of self and intelligence within the monster's psyche. For the first time rendered with a semblance of sentience, the Tower was drawn into the ranks of Tarot, becoming a deadly weapon to be turned against any who would interfere in the organization's plans.

Powers: The Tower is nigh-on unstoppable, its stone substance invulnerable to most kinds of attack. It has almost no mentality and is immune to almost any sort of psychic manipulation: even the Hierophant was barely able to find anything he could colaesce into sentience. Slow, ponderous and as relentless as a glacier, the Tower is immensely strong, able to tear a three-story building from its foundations with no appreciable effort: and able to do much worse given time and concentration. The monster can project fire and lightning, both to devastating effect. Perhaps its most terrible power, however, is its aura of dread and despair it evokes in any who come too close to it, a will-sapping malignancy that can defeat foes before they even try to fight.

Description: The Tower is a twelve-foot tall stone monster fashioned in the shape of some reptilian gargoyle. Its eyes are huge bloodstones that always display the same emotion: rage.

The High Priestess
Name: Victoria Baron
Nationality: English
Group Affiliation: Tarot

History: From an early age, Victoria was inveigled in criminal activity. Her mother ran a phony medium scam, bilking her high-paying clients out of fortunes through table tapping and other fraudulent spiritualist trickery. Victoria assisted her mother in these scams, being inducted to help provide spirit voices and work hidden mechanisms for the apparitions that would appear at these seances. A remarkable thing happened to Victoria around the age of 13 however. She began to display genuine fortune-telling abilities, a sixth sight that allowed her to accurately predict the future. Unfortunately, her mother, too used to the scams she had been running, didn't believe Victoria. One of her daughter's preidctions was that one of her mother's clients was an undercover agent from a police bunco squad. It was only as she was being led off to jail that her mother realised Victoria had the 'gift'.

Victoria was bounced from an array of foster homes, never fitting in with her new families. At the age of 16, she ran away entirely, establishing herself in Atlantic City and running her own fortune telling business. It was when she gave a reading for a young woman that she discovered her wealthy paramour was secretly the superhero Thundersmasher that more larcenous ideas came to Victoria. She took this information to the local mob, selling it for top dollar. The Mafia, in turn, called upon the supervillain Bloodbath to deal with Thundersmasher. Unfortunately for the crime bosses, Thundersmasher was able to overcome the ruthless super-powered assassin they had called in, even in his civilian ID.

Fearing retribution from Thundersmasher for exposing him, and already forseeing that the mob was out to get her (thinking she had tipped off the hero), Victoria took it on the lamb. She fled across country, picking up extra cash by using her powers to predict the outcomes of races and other gambling events. Once again, these predictions brought her to the attention of organized crime and in Chicago, she was cornered by Little Tony Scar, boss of the Outfit, the Chicago mob's own home-grown super-powered crew. Unlike the rest of the mob, Tony Scar didn't see Victoria's powers as a threat, but as something that could be used to their benefit. He made the young fortune teller an offer she couldn't refuse: join up with the Outfit. Victoria became 'Evil Eye', and would act as the Outfit's ace in the hole when it came to outsmarting the cops and the superheroes.

Under a heavy training regimen, Victoria found she was able to predict events within 24 hours with almost 100% accuracy, events at more distant times being too subject to chance for her to pinpoint without greater margin for error. Further, she was able to draw details of the past from the minds of people around her simply by remaining in close proximity to them, much as she had done with Thundersmasher. She assumed the role of the Outfit's faceman, going in ahead of the team to study the lay of a business they were going to knock over. In this way she could learn security routines, combinations and secret caches of loot simply by plucking the details from the minds of those around her. During the actual crimes, she would adopt a form-fitting costume of red and silver to match the rest of the Outfit and would act as battle strategist, able to predict the actions of opponents before they could do them. In this way, the Outfit became notoriously difficult to fight, always one step ahead of anyone who tried to get in their way.

Victoria, however, was far from content and she knew, better than anyone, how limited her future was in the Outfit. She allowed herself to be captured during one crime and although she was quickly rescused from prison by her teammates, the FBI had already made a detailed assesment of her powers. Which was exactly what Victoria wanted when she was captured. She had forseen that this information would reach the right people and interest them greatly.

It was during a raid on the Museum of Natural History that Victoria broke away from the Outfit. She didn't bother to tell Tony Scar that somebody else would be coming to the museum, not for loot, but for her. As she had predicted, the Magus had learned of her powers and had decided to recruit her as the High Priestess of the Tarot. Not expecting Tarot to show up, and by now almost wholly dependent upon Victoria's powers to co-ordinate themselves in battle, the Outfit was quickly defeated by Tarot. Victoria sneered at her old teammates as she left with the Magus, on to the power and wealth she knew she would never have under Tony Scar's thumb.

As the High Priestess, Victoria is one of the main strategists for Tarot, using her powers of prediction to greatly enhance their effectiveness and to almost ensure the success of any operation. She has found, however, that she is not able to predict events when magic interfers, as magic violates the laws of probability that influence her predictions. For this reason, she is unable to predict on missions that involve the Magus or the Fool, among others, and this limitation of her abilities has made Tarot especially wary of mystical superheroes.

To defend herself in such situations where her foresight isn't enough, the High Priestess has been given a paralyzing ray gun created by the Chariot as a means of enforcing her wishes on anyone who tries to do her harm.

Powers: The High Priestess is possessed of the ability of foresight and prediction. She can accurately predict future events and extrapolate past events simply by close proximity and lengthy exposure to other people, the detail and accuracy of her foresight being dependent on how close and how long she is near someone. The further out an event, the less accurate her prediction, as things are influenced by chance and change. She is able to use her foresight to dodge attacks in combat before her opponent is even aware he is going to make them and can pass this information along as warnings to others.

Description: The High Priestess is a well-built young woman in her early twenties with raven-black hair and jade-green eyes. She wears a skin-tight costume of blue and white with a black half-moon across the chest. The costume is a modified version of the one she wore as Evil Eye when with the Outfit as she enjoys reminding her old crew of her defection to Tarot, knowing they don't dare touch her now that she has the protection of villains like the Fool and the Magus.

The Hierophant
Name: Chiang Tse-Kong
Nationality: Chinese
Group Affiliation: Tarot

History: A product of the cultural revolution in China, Chiang Tse-Kong was one of hundreds of young students of dubious poltical leaning who were victims of the Communist regime. Imprisoned in the infamous 'Camp 12', Chiang was subjected to a battery of horrific experiments designed to create superbeings for the Chinese government. Against all odds, Chiang was one of the few who actually did develop powers as a result of these inhuman experiments. The chemicals injected directly into his brain by the scientists resulted in a terrific transformation: alone among humanity, Chiang was now capable of using 100% of his brain, not the 10% used by normal humans. These untapped areas of his brain awoke suppressed abilities that rendered Chiang something far more than simply human. The first of these powers to awaken was the ability to read thoughts, which enabled Chiang to discover that the scientists were going to disect him in order to study how the experiment had worked and to replicate it in a loyal communist. The second of Chiang's powers was that of implanting commands inside the minds of others: in this case compelling the scientists and later the camp guards to destroy themselves. Liberating his fellow prisoners, Chiang remade himself into a super-powered enemy of Red China and the Chinese government.

As Ye-si-wang (the Glorious Death), Chiang began a campaign of revolution, terror and sabotage against the government of China. Immensely powerful, he was single-handedly a match for the many battalions of China's Red Guard, the communist superteam. Unfortunately, Ye-si-wang's immense intellect and superhuman powers also rendered him largely amoral, utterly unable to sympathize with those who were harmed in his campaign, incapable of appreciating the means and wholly focused upon the ends. During one particularly violent battle in Shanghai, British superheroes from Hong Kong intervened to prevent further slaughter of innocent civilians as a by-product of the fight. Outraged that these champions of the free world should oppose him and side with the Red Guard, Ye-si-wang destroyed Shanghai with a murderous psionic blast. It was thought the villain was destroyed in his own burst of power.

Unfortunately for the world, Ye-si-wang was very much alive. Now viewing the world as a whole as his enemy, and not just the Chinese government, the villain enetered the stage on a global scale, coming into conflict with superheroes across the globe. Never quite able to achieve his goals due to the sheer numbers of his enemies, no prison was ever able to hold Ye-si-wang for long. It was after his escape from the lunar facility maintained by the UN to house the most dangerous supervillains, that Ye-si-wang was approached by the Magus and offered a position within Tarot. Understanding that his failures could be laid down to a lack of capable allies, Ye-si-wang accepted the offer, becoming he Hierophant of the Tarot.

Powers: The Hierophant is capable of astounding feats of mental power. He is able to employ mind control over entire neighbourhoods, he can read thoughts as easily as another man might listen to a radio, he can implant hypnotic suggestions that can be time delayed and which the victim never suspects are ideas other than his own. e is able to generate heat and cold at will, creating both fire and ice through cryogenesis and pyrogenesis. He is able to dominate animals and control them. He can employ telekenisis and levitation, allowing him to fly through the air at astounding speeds. His most sinister ability is that of biological manipulation, enabling him to stop a beating heart through sheer concentration. The only limit to his abilities are those of distance and concentration: many of his schemes have involved machines to boost his powers to affect greater areas and ranges. within the Tarot, the Hierophant uses his powers to support his teammates and also to act as a one-man secret police for the Magus to monitor the others. After one horrifying attempt to investigate the insane corridors of the Fool's mind, the Hierophant studiously avoids contact with the Fool as much as possible, and the Fool is perhaps the only person who the Hierophant truly fears.

Description: The Hierophant continues to dress as he did in the role of Ye-si-wang. He wears the purple robes of a Mandarin emperor, richly embroidered with dragons, lions and phoenixes, his hands beringed and bejewelled, his head covered in a black skull cap tipped with a bead of pearl. He tries to evoke an image of wealth, sophistication and power, while at the same time reminding his fellow Chinese of their Imperial past and rich traditions. Chiang is a lean, sparely built man whose time in Camp 12 has aged him beyond his years. He sports a long Manchu-style moustache but is otherwise clean shaven.

The Chariot
Name: Tsunagi Kato
Nationality: Japanese
Group Affiliation: Tarot

History: Tsunagi Kato was a brilliant engineer working for Japan's Self Defense Forces. His field of specialty was in robotics and his research was devoted towards developing weapons to combat the ever-increasing frequency of monsters menacing his homeland following the opening of the kimon gate by the demonic Oni-tengu. He was responsible for creating a series of exo-armour to protect the five-man combat squads regularly deployed by the JSDF against these monstrous incursions. The strain and responsibility, however, were tremendous, with Kato taking personal responsibility for any failing in his armour designs. Unable to predict the powers and strength of every abomination spawned by the malignant energies of kimon, Kato nevertheless felt guilt each time a squad member fell in battle. These feelings of remorse and blame increasingly preyed upon him, driving him to throw himself into his work with ever-increasing fervour and obsession.

Kato was raised as a very traditional Japanese, his grandfather having been one of the last true samurai of the Meiji era. The precepts of honour, duty and bushido were ingrained upon him like a religious mantra. As his growing sense of guilt and responsibilty weighed upon him, he decided there was only one thing for him to do: atone for his failure with an honourable death. He constructed a new suit of exo-armour in secret and bided his time. When a major monster infestation broke out in Tokyo, Kato donned the armour and set out to meet the threat alone, thinking in terms of noble death rather than victory. He'd built his armour a little too well, however, and even against such hideous odds, he was able to prevail. Kato was stunned, but slowly it dawned upon him that his victory was vindication of his work: it was the men inside the armour who had disgraced him, not the armour itself. Understanding this, Kato felt vindicated.

Instead of being hailed as a hero, Kato was reprimanded by the JSDF for disobeying orders, acting without authorization and misappropriation of government property. He was dismissed and criminal charges were filed against him. Before he could go to trial, however, the outraged Kato escaped custody, broke into his old lab and stole the experimental armour he had worn. Feeling betrayed by his country, which he now saw was simply a mirror of the decadent west and not the Japan of Empire and tradition, Kato declared himself ronin, a masterless warrior who would serve only his own needs and demands.

As Suchiryu, the Steel Dragon, Kato began a crime wave that stretched throughout the Pacific rim, attacking art galleries, banks and other centres of wealth in places as far apart as Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Constantly improving and upgrading his armour, Suchiryu was a nasty opponent to those superheroes who opposed him and always managed to ellude custody. In true ronin manner, he sold his services as a mercenary to other criminals, providing some needed muscle and firepower to many a scheme.

Recruiting for a member to represent the Chariot, the Magus decided upon Suchiryu. The wealth and power offered by membership in the Tarot was enough to appeal to the jaded and disillusioned Kato, who had only hedonistic self-indulgence and his own quest for technological and martial perfection to fill the hole left by his selfless nationalism. As the Chariot, he is one of the heavy hitters of the group, dependable and loyal, almost fearless and extremely skilled in all aspects of combat.

Powers: The Suchiryu armour is constructed from special alloys derived from demon-tainted metal called Koumagane, the result of kimon's influence over Japan. As a result, the armour is not only highly resistant to physical damage, but magical attack as well. Kato has built a wide array of sensors into the armour, greatly extending his vision and hearing, as well as allowing him to see into the IR and UV ranges. He is able to monitor outside communications and even jam them for a radius of several miles. His weapon systems are based on the five elements of Japanese mysticism: a quick-drying cement-like substance that can imobilize tanks, a freezing spray that can turn steel into powder, a clinging jellied incendiary that clings to its target and burns with the intensity of white phosphorous, a sub-sonic screech that can cripple bystanders for a distance of 100 yards, and a katana-like blade that can telescope out from the armour's right forearm and which incorporates the original Tsunagi clan sword as its foundation. Kato himself is an incredibly brilliant fighter, fearless and unrelenting in combat, approaching his battles with the emotional detachment attributed to historical samurai. This coolheadedness under fire is probably his greatest asset, allowing him to seize opportunity when any other man would be gripped by panic or rage.

Description: The Suchiryu armour is a bulky suit of metal plates that is roughly anthropomorphic. The helmet is shaped like the head of a dragon. Once coloured a dull steel, since assuming the role of the Chariot, Kato has recoloured his armour in a black and white scheme. Kato himself is a nondescript Japanese man in his late 30's.

Death
Name: Obergruppenfuehrer-Doktor Hans Schreckmann
Nationality: German
Group Affiliation: Tarot

History: Hans Schreckmann was a member of the infamous SS during WWII, operating out of the Belsen extermination camp. In charge of conducting experiments designed to physically improve the German soldier, his brutal research claimed the lives of thousands. Crafty and cunning, Schreckmann did not linger as the Reich toppled around him, but slipped into northern Italy in March, 1945. As the victorious Allies tried to make sense of the scope and nature of Nazi atrocities, Schreckmann's activities at Belsen made him one of the most wanted of war criminals. However, by the time any real effort could be made to trace the so-called 'Dr Death', he had already escaped Europe by way of one of the Odessa organization's rat lines to South America. Hiding out in Argentina, Schreckmann soon ingratiated himself with the Peron regime, helping to organize his secret police and continuing his cyborg experiments with political prisoners.

Even half a world away, however, Schreckmann was still a wanted man. Nazi hunters made tracking him down their top priority and even the obstruction presented by Peron's government was not going to stop them. Masada, the first superhero of the new nation of Israel, became involved in the hunt for Schreckmann - in a perverse way owing his powers to the Nazi's filthy experiments as he had been one of Schrekmann's test subjects. Tracking him down to a government lab in Argentina's mountainous interior, Masada and a group of Nazi hunters launched a military raid on the complex to capture their quarry. Argentine troops were the least of Schreckmann's defences, however, and he unleashed his cyborg test subjects against his enemies, then set his laboratory to self destruct while he made good his escape. Masada was the only survivor of the explosion, vowing renewed vengeance against the human monster who dared to refer to himself as the hero's father.

For many years, Schreckmann bounced from one petty dictatorship to another, offering his grisly services to governments ruthless enough to use him and with moral compunction to question his methods. His activities made him wanted by both the KGB and CIA, and many covert operations were launched to stop him and the threat he posed. Several superheros from both the East and West became involved in these operations, trying to stop Schreckmann's deranged half-machine monstrosities and Masada several times came across the trail of his nemesis. It was as the Baptista regime was crumbling in Cuba, toppled by the revolution of Fidel Castro, that Nazi hunters were able to launch their best effort to capture Schreckmann and bring him to justice. Once again, Masada lent his support to the effort.

As it had in Argentina, the operation became a savage fight against Schreckmann's creations. This time, however, as Schreckmann set his laboratory to self destruct, Masada caught the war criminal. Bending a steel pipe to restrain the madman, the hero left the Nazi to perish in the resulting explosion.

The world had not seen the last of Schreckmann, however. His assistants recovered his scorched body from the rubble and removed his brain, keeping it alive in a tank for many years. Disembodied, the brain of Schreckmann had lost none of its vicious intellect and was able to guide its human associates into recreating his cyborg experiments and expanding upon them. All too soon, the brand of Schrekmann's diseased science manifested in Paraguay, in service to the Pinoche regime. After a fierce battle with a Soviet team of supers, the brain of Schreckmann was captured by the American CIA. Instead of destroying the vile thing, it was instead transferred to South Vietnam, in hopes that Schreckmann's perverse science would tip the balance in the war. Schreckmann, however, was not about to lend his science to the decadent democracy. Instead he arranged for some of his cyborgs to go berserk in an area where their presence was guaranteed to be broadcast to the world. As he had planned, the presence of his cyborgs drew Masada to the CIA laboratory outside Saigon. Schrekmann used the superhero's attack on American forces as a screen to cover his own escape.

Now free of human handlers, Schremann was his own master once more. He next surfaced in the service of Uganda's notorious Idi Amin. Realising that Amin's "Most Powerful Royal Guard of Glorious Uganda" were not real superheros but cyborgs after one of them was destroyed during the Entebee airport raid launched by Israel's MUSAD, the connection was made that Schreckmann was still active and in Uganda. Masada, hearing this news, set out on his own to confront the Nazi criminal. Tearing his way through the Ugandan superteam, Masada was already severely weakened by the time he reached Schreckmann's lair. Destroying a brain preserved in elaborate apparatus, Masada thought the Nazi destroyed. However, the brain was only a decoy. A hidden panel in the laboratory opened to reveal the new body Schreckmann had constructed for himself, a hideous skeletal frame of tempered titanium and equipped with an array of ghastly weaponry. Schreckmann took savage delight in killing the troublesome hero, raging about how Masada had persecuted him for decades and promising he would see the vermin of the earth crushed beneath the heel of the true master race: the race of steel!

Schreckmann was as good as his threat, popping up in several terrifying attempts to create armies of machine-men to slaughter entire populations. Always his efforts were thwarted by the heroics of superteams, but always the Nazi slipped through their fingers. At least until an attempt to 'process' the students of the prestigious Virginia Military Institute in 1981. Schreckmann was incensed to find himself opposed by Vanguard, an international association of superheros, and in particular by a German superhero called Fafnir. Taking the fight directly to the hulking Fafnir, Schreckmann forgot his careful tactics and strategy, allowing pure rage to direct him in the fight. Fafnir bought time for his teammates to neutralize the ghastly automated machinery Schreckmann was using to create his cyborg Stahltruppen. Brutalized by the vindictive Schreckmann, Fafnir was able, at last, to close upon the metal monster, ripping him limb from limb before expiring from the wounds he had suffered getting that close to him. The torso of Schreckmann's machine-body, with his brain inside, was functional but helpless. Trying to goad the other members of Vanguard into destroying him, Schreckmann was horrified when they decided to turn him over to the authorities instead: the Israeli authorities.

It was while awaiting execution in an Israeli prison that Schreckmann was contacted by Tarot. Bursting through the maximum security prison, the Fool himself offered the disabled cyborg two choices: death or Death. Schreckmann decided to accept the Fool's offer, assuming the role of Death in the villainous society of Tarot.

Death is reviled by the other members of Tarot, his recruitment unique in that it was not a carefully calculated choice on the part of the Magus, but wholly the product of one of the Fool's lunatic whims. He acts as a lethal element in any Tarot operation, revelling in creating as much havoc and death as possible through their activities. Nor has membership in Tarot deprived him of his insane dream to remake mankind as a race of steel. His xenophobic madness is such that he is looked upon with suspicon and outright hatred by many of his teammates, and indeed, he has sometimes run his own schemes outside the command structure of the organization. Only the terrible patronage of the Fool prevents the others from rising against him, though even the threat of the Fool's anger is not enough to make the others trust the unrepentant Nazi madman in their ranks.

Powers: Death's body is crafted from Tempered titanium with an artificial diamond coating, rendering it one of the toughest materials in the world. His intellect is that of a crazed genius, and there is almost nothing unknown to him in the fields of surgery and robotics. He has built into his body a wide array of weaponry, from poison gas sprayers to disintegrator beams, to mundane railguns and flamethrowers, given enough time to study an enemy, he will build a weapon uniquely suited to combat him.

Description: Death is a grisly skeleton of metal, with cable instead of muscle and wire instead of veins. he affects the uniform of his former rank as an SS Obergruppenfuehrer, revelling in the psychological edge such a vivid reminder of his past gives him upon many of his enemies as raw hate overcomes cold reason. The only thing left of Schreckmann, his diseased brain, is housed inside his chest in an armoured cabinet, a last ditch refuge for the villain. A dummy brain occupies a small compartment inside his body's skull-like head.

The Fool
Name: James Morgan
Nationality: American
Group Affiliation: The Tarot

History: James Morgan was a normal young man working at the Oak Ridge facility during WWII. An accident involving one of the cyclotrons imbued him with the terrifying and awesome power of the atom. After recovering from his injuries, which healed in an amazingly quick manner, James Morgan found he could do much, much more. He had gained superhuman strength, the ability to negate the effects of gravity (allowing him to fly), and unbelievable powers of regeneration. When these abilities were discovered by the US government, James was pressed into service for the war effort as Atomic Man, the nation's newest superhero. Battling Nazi Ubermensch throughout the war, Atomic Man became the most 'heroic' and revered of America's costumed crusaders. He was a founding member of the Crusaders, the pre-eminent American superhero team that was formed in the waning days of the war.

With the war ended, Atomic Man and the Crusaders devoted themselves to stamping out crime, uncovering spy rings and protecting the public from natural disasters. While the roster of the team changed through the decades, the one constant was the stalwart Atomic Man, always leading his comrades into battle with the forces of evil.

Everything changed for Atomic Man in 1966. One of the other Crusaders, a vigilante named Fear, had been working to uncover the perpetrator of numerous ritualistic murders in New York City. Finally uncovering the culprit, a genuine sorcerer named Louis Zoller, Fear realised that he needed help to bring down the diabolist. One of the other Crusaders, the witch and seeress simply dubbed Madame Magic by the press, was able to figure out Zoller's ghastly intention. The sorcerer was seeking to undermine the zodiac shift into the Age of Aquarius by using the disturbed cosmic energies to blast a hole straight through the fabric of reality and unleash the devil Baphomet from the pits of Hell.

Racing to stop Zoller, the Crusaders were too late to prevent the sorcerer from killing his last victim and opening the gateway to Hell in a small Long Island community. While the other Crusaders battled minor demons and other horrific things that scrambled through the rupture and Madame Magic bent her own powers to countering Zoller's sorcery, Atomic Man ploughed into the emerging bulk of Baphomet, pushing the semi-solid devil lord back into Hell, but in so doing, he was himself pulled through the fissure.

Through the eternal night of fire and pain, Atomic Man battled Baphomet, eternities unfolding around their conflict. The devil soon lost its mocking contempt for this foolish mortal who dared defy him. Indeed, before the end, Atomic Man made Baphomet know what it was to fear. In a burst of herculean power, Atomic Man tore asunder Baphomet's body, and tossed the butchered remains into the lake of fire.

The contest, however, had left more than physical marks upon James Morgan. He had experienced an eternity of suffering, pain and sorrow by following Baphomet into Hell. The superhero's mind and soul snapped from the experience, and where James Morgan had been, only madness and a dark vision remained.

Somehow, the mortal was spit back into the physical world, despite Zoller's portal having collapsed behind him. For his teammates, the eternity Atomic Man had experienced had only been a few minutes. Whatever tenuous grip on sanity Morgan still had was broken by the revelation. Calling his friends fools for trying to stem the inevitable hand of destruction, and himself as the biggest Fool of them all, he attacked his former colleagues. Madness had not lessened his powers, and passage through Hell had only increased them. The Fool soon laid his old teammates out, scattering them like seeds before him. He approached the subdued Louis Zoller, freeing the sorcerer and taking him away as he vanished into the darkening night.

Zoller would become the Magus, the Fool's first recruit in his new dark vision, a living Tarot that would sow evil, chaos and destruction throughout the world. Awed by the Fool's terrible display of power, Zoller wisely accepted the post.

Although he is the founder of the Tarot, the Fool is not its leader, that role being assumed by the Magus. The Fool's shattered mind is too unstable to co-ordinate the organization. He is, in many ways, a threat to his own team with his unpredictable mood swings, insane impulses and fluctuating mental capacity. Sometimes he is nothing more than a dumb bruiser, easily manipulated by his comrades, at others he is a terrible intellect, making even the Magus seem feebleminded in comparison. One sign of his madness is his habit of conversing with a dog only he can see, a figment of his diseased imagination. At least, that is what the Magus and other mystically-attuned people try to tell themselves when they catch a shadowy glimpse of something capering at the Fool's heels from the corner of their eye.

Powers: As Atomic Man, Morgan had incredible strength, able to throw a full-sized German panzer up to a mile. His regenerative powers are nothing short of phenomenal: bullet wounds closing upon themselves as quickly as they can be made. He is able to repel gravity, allowing him flight at speeds approaching that of sound. As the Fool, Morgan has gained the ability to produce hell-flames from his body, either in a projected stream or in a pulse. These eerie fires impossibly both char and freeze their victims.

Description: The Fool wears a variety of body-form outfits, but they are always remarkable for their exploitation of contrasting colours, usually broken into quadrants. He keeps the white mask of Atomic Man, though now darkened and charred, leaving only his eyes and lower face exposed. He is powerfully built, with thick cords of muscle and steely sinews. There is a swirling darkness in his once blue-eyes though, and no one can maintain his gaze for long without feeling their own sanity being drained away by them.

The idea behind the Iron Age concept is to take comics back to their roots in many ways: back to when heroes were heroes and villains were villains and the stories weren't decompressed filler material.

The basic structure of the universe allows that superbeings began to appear during and immediately after WWI. Since that time, there has been a steady stream of high strangeness on the planet, with aliens and spirits and all sorts of superscience. Heroic superbeings form the first line of defence against most of this high strangeness and each nation on earth does its utmost to either create or foster superheroes loyal to their homelands.

Naturally, human nature being what it is, there are alot of bad guys running around as well, with the most prominent threat being a ghastly league of supervillains called Tarot. The menace of this international alliance of evil is made even worse because two of its members were once the most respected and powerful superheroes in the world.