Today is the
Heroes & Villains Blogfest hosted by
Jackie and
Dani. This is
Part 2 of my post for that,
Part 1 was posted earlier today.
http://danibertrand.blogspot.com/2013/06/heroes-villains-blogfest.html
I want to continue talking about
Villains & Vigilantes I thought it would be interesting to bring back my superhero character
Justice and introduce her new arch nemesis.
To bring everyone up to speed Justice is a character I created for the Mutants & Masterminds RPG for a game we were going to play that day. Her real name is Astra Ka-el, aka Astra Kent and she is the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman. I based her off the last few pages of the comic
Kingdom Come, which deals with the superheroes we know in about 20 or so years. I won't spoil it all for you. Read it, it is fantastic (or watch
this fan made trailer). But one of the futures they point to is the possibility of Superman and Wonder Woman having a daughter. You can read the back story I did for her in "
Issue 1: Justice is Blind". The last time we saw Justice was
Issue 5. In Issue 6 I wanted her to go to London where she could potentially run into the legendary, but retired,
Acrobatic Flea. This serves a number of purposes. It gets her to England to meet her new arch-nemesis, it ties in Villains & Vigilantes and it gives a shout out to +Tim Knight (the Flea himself!) who has been wanting me to do more with V&V forever.
So I introduced my hero. Here is my villain.
Maggie "Mags" Shaw nee O'Neill aka "The Iron Maiden"
Maggie O'Neill was a plain, if brilliant girl, who lived in one of the poorest areas in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Maggie hated being poor, she hate being scared all the time (the Troubles were at their height) and she wanted nothing more than to get away. To her that mean London. After a car bomb destroyed the bus she was supposed to get on for school that morning (no one was killed) she had haad enough. At age 14 she ran away from home and made her way to London a couple of months later. The education she had on the road was a hard one, and it hardened her. When she got to London she was "discovered" by a talent scout looking for young, and maybe disposable, girls for modeling. Mags, as she called herself now, quickly turned a would-be tragic situation to one where she was on the cover of every fashion magazine by 16 and a national and tabloid celebrity by 18. She used her keen intellect, charisma and complete lack of moral center to get to the top of the heap. Her looks, while plain as a child, transformed her into "The Face of London". Her name even became so synonymous with magazine covers that people thought it was a play on words.
In her 20s her career took a dip when she tried acting and was terrible. Same with pop songs. She quietly completed degrees in mathematics, engineering and robotics while people suspected she was out partying.
At 24 she stunned the world when she married multinational billionaire Halloran Shaw, depiste being nearly 40 years younger. She took a keen interest in his business and became a full partner and soon rose (by much of the same combination of lack of ethics and keen intelligence) to a position of VP and a seat on the board. Her enemies begrudged her polished public image and despised her ruthless private one. When Shaw died he left everything to her including controlling stock in his company, locking out his own grown children.
Mags would have had it all had it not been for a PR stunt gone tragic.
Shaw International was responsible for making high capacity batteries for cell phones and small electronics. Their factories though were located in India and were the worse sort of sweat shops. Thousands, cramped into small spaces to build batteries with caustic chemicals. Ventilation was poor, and deaths were common, but as they were the only employer for hundreds of kilometers she had all the workers she could want. Protest groups caught news of this and were making a stink. Mags herself went to the factory to hold a press conference. Most of the employees where cleared out (with out pay) so tours could be given.
In the midst of this pr stunt the factory exploded. The death toll was high, but would have been much higher had it not been for Justice, who had been near by and heard the explosion with her super hearing.
One person though she didn't save, because she didn't know, was Mags. Mags watched and Justice saved all these people, while she was pinned under tons of rubble while chemicals and fire burned her skin.
Mags was found, alive, but the damage was too great. For a year she was in the hospital. She lost her legs, an arm, part of her face, some the fingers on her other hand. She eventually recovered, but swore she would have her revenge. The news (thanks to a healthy pay off) made the claim that eco-terrorists caused the explosion, so popular opinion was for the "poor woman" who had "lost everything".
Secretly Mags has built herself a suit of armor that not only keeps her alive, but also enhances all her physical stats. She has been using it to steal what she can't buy or make herself. She has killed and seems likely to do so again. Though no one suspects that the armored thief the tabloids call The Iron Maiden is really Mags Shaw. And no one know that she is building a weapon to kill Justice!
Here they are in their Villains & Vigilantes glory. Justice and her arch nemesis The Iron Maiden!
There might be errors here. It has been years since I played V&V.
See more posts here:
