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  Thirteen Shades of Darkness 2.0 
   
                    
   
   
  Cover and some interior artwork copyright © Samuel Araya taken from World of Ronin Arts: 
  Character Portfolio Four. Used with permission. Visit the artist’s website at www.paintagram.com 
  or http://samael.epilogue.net and the publisher’s site at www.roninarts.com. 
   
  Some artwork by Tony Perna, taken from Superhero Image Portfolio 1.5. copyright © Louis 
  Porter, Jr. Design www.lpjdesign.com/DevilsWorkshop/ImagePortfolio 
   
  Some artwork by Aurelio Galindo Jr. copyright © 2005.  Used with permission. For information 
  contact akunin773@aol.com 
   
  Some artwork by Robert Burson, copyright © 2004 Used with permission. To learn more visit 
  www.raventower.com 
   
  Some Artwork by Andrea Sfiligoi  copyright © 2005.  Used with permission. To learn more visit 
  www.umbrart.com 
   
  Some Artwork taken from OtherWorldly Art Portfolio 4 © OtherWorld Creations, Inc. All Rights 
  Reserved. 
   
  Some artwork copyright © 2003, V. Shane 
   
  Some artwork by Maciej Zagorski, taken from Medieval Landscapes 2 by The Forge Studios, © 
  2006 
   
  Some artwork copyright © Christopher Shy taken from World of Ronin Arts: Character Portfolio 
  Three. Used with permission. Visit the artist’s website at www.studio.com and the publisher’s site 
  at www.roninarts.com. 
   
  Requires the 2nd Edition of the Mutants & Masterminds RPG by Green Ronin Publishing For Use. 
  Mutants & Masterminds, M&M Superlink, the M&M Superlink logo, and Green Ronin are also 
  trademarks of Green Ronin Publishing and are also used with permission.
  
   
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  Table of Contents 
   
  Introduction 
   
   
   
  3 
  #$&*@!! The Cusswad Man 
   
  4 
  Joe Postal 
   
   
   
  7 
  Captain Skumbag 
   
   
  9 
  Selina the Beautiful Teenage Witch 
  12 
  The White Hand 
   
   
  16 
  Doctor Scorch  
   
   
  21 
  Reverend Strange 
   
   
  25 
  The 50,000 Volt Phantom 
   
  30 
  The Hand of Pain and Glory 
   
  34 
  Contessa Von Blut 
   
   
  39 
  Dr. Jack 
   
   
   
  44 
  The Saturday Man 
   
   
  49 
  The King in Tatters 
   
   
  55 
   
   
   
  Like most people, you’ve probably asked 
  yourself “How can I get my hands on more 
  nightmarish supernatural evil?”  Well look no 
  further!  Thirteen Shades of Darkness 
  contains stats and background information 
  for thirteen occult supervillains, ranging in 
  power from minor annoyances to dark and 
  malignant gods.  
  Each of our thirteen villains offers a 
  slightly different take on the genre; a shade 
  of darkness all its own. They range in tone 
  from lighthearted to unspeakable (while a 
  few of them are both). Some are traditional 
  supervillains whose powers derive from the 
  occult—thieves, killers and murderous 
  megalomaniacs who use the dark arts to 
  pursue traditional supervillain goals, while 
  some are much worse things.  
  Each comes with at least two 
  adventure outlines, for twenty-nine 
  adventures in total. All the blood-curdling 
  horror you could possibly want, and perhaps 
  just a little bit more! 
   
  Using This Book 
  The villains in this book are 
  arranged by PL, from the least to the most 
  powerful.  There is no official “Campaign 
  World” or setting, no “Plain Brown Universe” 
  that you have to try and shoehorn your 
  campaign into.  The various characters do 
  sometimes make reference to one another 
  in their origins and adventures, but this is 
  just for the sake on convenience.  Feel free 
  to substitute any evil wizard for Reverend 
  Strange, feel free to substitute any evil god 
  for the Saturday Man or the King in Tatters.  
  You could adopt any one of these villains 
  into your campaign or some of them or all 
  of them.  In every case, we have tried hard 
  to keep any of them from distorting the 
  shape of your game-universe—even the real 
  world-eaters. After all, the whole point of 
  this book is to make the GM’s life simpler, 
  not more complicated. 
   
  It’s actually easier to do this with a 
  book of mystical villains, since magic is a 
  sideline for most superhero campaigns; an 
  odd corner of the campaign universe that 
  runs on a slightly different track.  Rather 
  than fill in any of the big background 
  elements of your world, I’ve tried to give 
  you a handful of things lurking in that 
  shadowy corner of the game where magic 
  happens. 
  Following the same philosophy, we 
  have no new feats, powers or rules to 
  introduce.  Nor do any of the characters in 
  this book use any of the variant rules that 
  have been introduced in other volumes.  All 
  you will need to make use of this book is a 
  copy of the core M&M rules. 
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
  4
   
   
  Real Name: Merle C. Murrell 
  PL: 8 
   
  “Gimmie that #$%^&!! ice cream 
  cone, kid!  Yer Granny is a @#&%&!!!” 
   
  Str: 10 (+0) Dex: 16 (+3) Con: 14 (+2) 
  Int: 8 (-1) Wis: 8 (-1) Cha: 20 (+5) 
  Initiative: 7 Attack Bonus: 3 
  Defense: 8 Toughness Save: 7 (2 
  flatfooted) Fortitude Save: 8 Reflexes 
  Save: 5 Willpower Save: -1 (7 vs. 
  superpowered attempts to affect his mind) 
  Skills: Intimidate 8 (+13) 
  Feats:  Defensive Roll +5, Distract, Dodge 
  Fascinate, Focus +5, Improved Initiative, 
  Sneak Attack, Startle 
  Powers: Mind Control 10 (Extra: Conscious; 
  Flaw: Sense-Dependant [Target must hear 
  and understand what he is saying]), Mind 
  Shield 8 
  Complications: Loathsome and vile--
  alienates anyone who comes into contact 
  with him even briefly, even if this puts him 
  at a serious disadvantage. 
  Background: Vulgar and crude, lacking any 
  kind of social skills, he’s too dumb to be a 
  nerd and too weird to be a redneck. He’s a 
  little like the worst, smelliest parts of both. 
  The Cusswad Man has been blessed 
  (or cursed) with the ability to project 
  negative emotions into other people’s 
  minds.  He can’t do love or bliss, just things 
  like fear, pain, anger and nausea. It only 
  works when he speaks, and only on people 
  who can hear him. Whether this represents 
  some kind of limitation on the power itself 
  or whether he’s just never figured out how 
  to use it properly, we leave to the GM. He’s 
  never tried using his power while keeping 
  his mouth shut, or projecting less negative 
  emotions, nor is he ever likely to think of 
  trying.   
  The Cusswad Man mostly uses his 
  paranormal talent to intimidate people into 
  giving him what he wants, screaming 
  threats and filthy insults until they 
  capitulate. His insults make no sense, but 
  are often hilariously obscene.  If you’re 
  uncomfortable swearing at your players, or 
  if you think they would be uncomfortable 
  with it, try putting “bleep” noises in the 
  place of his cusswords—that may make it 
  even funnier.   
  In person he is truly vile.  
  Inappropriate and irresponsible, stupid, 
  angry and mean, he flails around like an 
  unwashed, drunken Jim Carrey, telling 
  witless jokes and getting too physical with 
  people.  He smells bad.   
  Neither #$&*@!! himself nor 
  anyone else seems to know where he got 
  his powers.  He can only remember about 
  the last five years of his life. Not because his 
  brain has been erased, but because he’s 
  really stupid. He was a foster child—he’s 
  pretty sure, and was traded around a lot 
  from family to family (in Arkansas, although 
  #$&*@!! doesn’t know the state’s name and 
  couldn’t find it on a map).  He thinks adults 
  must have done some awful stuff to him as 
  a kid, because he hates everybody, but he 
  can’t actually remember anything before his 
  mid-adolescence. The first he can clearly 
  recall (just after he dropped out of high 
  school) he already had his powers, although 
  
   
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  back then they weren’t as strong and he 
  only seemed to be able to use them when 
  people picked on him hard enough to get 
  him really mad.  Now he can use them 
  whenever he pleases, which is a lot better.   
  He can just barely read, so he must have 
  been to First Grade at some point, he 
  thinks. 
  The truth is that he bargained for 
  his powers with the Devil at the crossroads.  
  One day he skipped school to go spit on 
  cars from an overpass.  Actually he did that 
  on a lot of days, but this particular day was 
  special.  Overpasses are funny places—
  crossroads where the roads don’t actually 
  meet.  Strange things happen on 
  overpasses. 
  A gentleman who called himself 
  “Nick Slick” approached the future Cusswad 
  Man (then a mere Cusswad Boy) and 
  offered him one wish, whatever he wanted.  
  Merle’s reply was so garbled that it was hard 
  for even Nick Slick to distangle it, but it 
  seemed to be something like “I @#$%! 
  want for ever-#$%&-body to do what I 
  @!#$*!! say!” 
  His wish was granted, and then he 
  yelled “Now gimmie them @!#$*%!! 
  shoes!!!”   
  Old Nick Slick laughed and gave 
  Merle his shoes.  The Cusswad man has 
  walked in the Devil’s loafers ever since. 
   
  Using the Cusswad Man in Your 
  Campaign:  It hasn’t occurred to #$*@!! 
  that he could use his powers to influence 
  politics, take over a multinational 
  corporation or date a pop star.  Instead he 
  wanders around at random, stealing food 
  and video game money, getting people to 
  give him their beer.  It might cross his mind 
  to rob a bank now and again, but he rarely 
  thinks in such exalted terms. 
   
  Nobody’s idea of an honorable 
  fighter, the Cusswad Man is nonetheless too 
  dumb to be a coward and will fight on long 
  after things are hopeless (he doesn’t much 
  mind going to jail—or at least can’t think 
  that far ahead).  He’ll attack anyone, no 
  matter what the odds.  While he won’t 
  exactly take hostages, he’ll do his best to 
  clutter up the battlefield with mind-
  controlled innocents and he has absolutely 
  no compunctions about putting them in 
  harm’s way.   
  #$&*@!! has no friends but doesn’t 
  seem to care. Perhaps some other villain 
  might make the mistake of teaming up with 
  him, but they’ll soon regret it--he’s a 
  hopelessly disloyal and irresponsible partner. 
   
  Adventures With #$&*@!! The 
  Cusswad Man 1) Beyond Wall-Mart, 
  Beyond Paradise 
  #$&*@!! Is stumbling around at random, 
  when he accidentally staggers into the 
  “Beyond Paradise Golf Resort and Spa”. He 
  has a lot of fun there, ordering waiters to 
  bring him drinks and telling golfers to yank 
  their pants down, but after a few days he 
  gets bored and moves on. This is longer 
  than he normally stays in one place and it 
  attracts more attention from the authorities.  
  Some very strange police reports 
  start reaching the PCs. The first cops who 
  were sent to the scene never returned or 
  reported in (#$&*@!! ordered them to “Do 
  the ‘Magdalina Hagdalina Whookachauka 
  Waukachauka Oka-Moka-Poka Was Her 
  Name’ dance” and they’re still doing it now.) 
  They send another squad car to scout things 
  out before sending in a SWAT team.  
  The cops in the second car report 
  that there is no security on the gate and 
  there are signs that the whole compound 
  has broken down into chaos.  
  Unfortunately for everyone, some 
  crooked police officers notify a bunch of 
  thieves called the “Tricky Dick Clique” (they 
  all wear Richard Nixon masks) that this 
  would be a perfect time to rob the place. 
  #$&*@!! becomes restless and leaves the 
  resort before the Tricky Dick Clique shows 
  up. The SWAT team arrives late, thanks to 
  some delaying from a corrupt superior who 
  is in on the scam. 
  The PCs show up either just before 
  the SWAT team or just after. The thieves 
  won’t want to surrender and will use the 
  bewildered guests as hostages and cover, 
  fighting a running battle with the PCs and 
  cops across the resort’s tidy golf courses 
  and tastefully bland spa facilities. Many of 
  the resort’s guests and staff are still stuck 
  doing ridiculous things that #$&*@!! 
  commanded them to, so they make 
  
   
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  particularly good, helpless hostages.  Many 
  of the guests are very rich and in a position 
  to cause considerable trouble for the PCs if 
  they get hurt.  
  This can also turn into a three-way 
  fight if the SWAT team shows up at the 
  wrong moment and mistakes the PCs for 
  criminals. In the course of the fight, it 
  should become clear that no member of the 
  Tricky Dick Clique has the power to control 
  anyone’s mind and that they’re as 
  bewildered by what has happened here as 
  the PCs or the cops.  
  After the fight is over, a quick 
  review of the resort’s security tapes or an 
  interview with one of the guests will reveal 
  that #$&*@!! Is still on the loose. Then 
  word reaches the PCs that a weird incident 
  has occurred at a nearby Wall-Mart. Their 
  security staff are running around the snack 
  food section, scratching themselves and 
  acting like chimpanzees. A customer is 
  sitting on the floor watching them as he eats 
  a whole stack of candy bars. The guy eating 
  the candy bars sounds just like the 
  mysterious psi who caused all the havoc at 
  Beyond Paradise.  
  It’s #$&*@!! He felt hungry, so he 
  stepped into Wall-Mart and started eating 
  candy bars off the shelf. A security guard 
  tried to stop him, so he made her act like a 
  chimp. Then more security guards showed 
  up, so he did the same to them. If the PCs 
  fail to catch him at Wall-Mart before he 
  moves on, they will at least have some idea 
  of how to track him. It isn’t hard—he’s 
  always causing incidents like these 
   
  2) Diamonds are a Cusswad Man’s Best 
  Friend 
  Word reaches the PCs of a very 
  strange incident downtown. A supervillain 
  called “Kaptain Skumbag” (also known as 
  “Captain Kill-You”, see this gentleman’s 
  description on Page 8) is standing on the 
  median strip of a busy six-lane street, 
  brandishing a lamp-post like a baseball bat, 
  knocking cars off the road and begging for 
  somebody to help him. 
  If they think to check the police 
  reports before they rush to the scene, they 
  will find that less than an hour ago Kaptain 
  Skumbag robbed a diamond import 
  showroom just two blocks from where he’s 
  standing. Why isn’t he making a getaway? 
  Why is he instead attacking random 
  automobiles in public? What kind of help 
  does he need? 
  When the PCs arrive at the scene 
  they find that Kaptain Skumbag is eager to 
  explain it all to them, although he’s under a 
  mental compulsion to attack anyone or 
  anything that gets within thirty feet of him, 
  which may make conversation difficult. He 
  has badly injured a bystander (some poor 
  teenage girl who had the bad luck to be 
  crossing the street) and he’s desperate for 
  the PCs to get her to medical attention, but 
  she’s lying next to him on the median strip 
  and he can’t keep himself from attacking the 
  PCs if they get that close. He’s panicking, 
  begging for help and inarticulate, but if the 
  PCs handle it right they can find out what’s 
  going on. 
  Kaptain Skumbag heard about 
  #$&*@!! and thought he’d be perfect for a 
  particular heist. He asked the Cusswad Man 
  to create a distraction in a public square and 
  draw the cops away from the diamond 
  emporium. Instead of doing his part, 
  #$&*@!! forgot about the heist and went 
  off to get drunk.  After the robbery Kaptain 
  Skumbag spotted him staggering around the 
  neighborhood wasted and chased him down 
  to give him a piece of his mind and maybe 
  beat on him a little for dropping the ball.  At 
  this moment #$&*@!! had the one bright 
  idea of his criminal career and forced 
  Kaptain Skumbag to become the diversion. 
  He took the diamonds and he’s getting away 
  right now. The longer the PCs spend fighting 
  Kaptain Skumbag, the better the Cusswad 
  Man’s odds of getting away clean. When he 
  finds out how difficult it is to sell the 
  diamonds, he’ll throw them in the river. 
  
   
  7
   
   
  Real Name: Joseph Prinn 
  PL: 9 
   
  “I’m just a regular guy who decided he 
  wasn’t going to take it anymore.  I 
  mean, you see some jerk wearing 
  socks with sandals and it makes you 
  want to bash his brains out, just like 
  most people would.  But unlike most 
  people, I’m actually doing something 
  about it.” 
   
  Str: 12 (+1) Dex: 12 (+1) Con: 14 (+2) 
  Int: 14 (+2) Wis: 16 (+3) Cha: 10 (+0) 
  Initiative: 1 Attack Bonus: 9 (with bat) 7 
  with other attacks Defense: 7 
  Toughness Save: 11 (With Force Field)/ 2 
  (Without) Fortitude Save: 4 Reflexes 
  Save: 5 Willpower Save: 6  
  Skills: Intimidate 9 (+9), Knowledge 
  (civics) 5 (+6), Notice 6 (+9), Profession 
  (angry postal worker) 4 (+5) 
  Feats: Attack Specialization (bat), Startle, 
  Rage, Takedown Attack 
  Powers: Device: Eye of Rage and 
  Splendour (Blast 11, Impervious Force Field 
  9 [Power Feat: Selective, can allow matter 
  to pass through at will]; Immovable 5, 
  Super Senses 4 [Danger Sense, Dark Vision, 
  Detect Weird parahuman energy] Note that 
  while the Eye isn't hard to take away from 
  Joe, it is hard to spot, tucked in his mail 
  bag, and therefore counts as a 4pt per level 
  Device), Device: Bat (Deflect 10 [works on 
  all ranged attacks; Extras: Reflect, Redirect] 
  Strike 10; Power Feat: Restricted, can be 
  used only by Joe himself ) Note that if Joe 
  loses either the bat or the Eye of Rage and 
  Splendour, he can't use the bat's powers 
  anymore. 
  Complications: Angry, obsessive-
  compulsive, explodes at the slightest 
  provocation. 
  Background: A mean, repressed, tightly-
  wound little man, obsessively neat and tidy, 
  seething with quiet rage. He worked as a 
  letter carrier for the post office and found 
  life unendurable.  Within a few years of 
  taking the job he began to maliciously hide 
  mail, squirreling it away in his car.  When 
  they fired him and his wife took the kids 
  away, it drove him around the bend.  He 
  probably would have killed his wife, 
  children, himself and perhaps a few random 
  people at some point, but fate intervened.   
  Joe accidentally walked in on a 
  supervillain called the Hand of Pain and 
  Glory in the act of robbing a bank.  Seeking 
  death, he hit the arch-criminal with his mail 
  bag, still stuffed with undelivered letters, 
  and knocked him unconscious.  The source 
  of the villain's power, the so-called "Eye of 
  Rage and Splendor" rolled across the rug to 
  the postman's feet.  Now Joe Postal 
  wanders through the city on foot, dressed in 
  his uniform, with the Eye of Rage and 
  Splendor in his mailbag, inflicting savage 
  punishment on anyone who gives him the 
  slightest grief or who is the target of his 
  many petty hatreds.  Hispanics, convenience 
  store owners who don't speak articulate 
  English, kids with piercings, men with tie-
  dye shirts, people who play their radios too 
  loud and people who wear white shoes 
  
   
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  when it isn't summer are all on his list of 
  enemies and all will feel his wrath.  He 
  genuinely hopes that someone will kill him 
  before he reaches his wife's apartment, and 
  does what he now knows must be done. 
   
  Using Joe Postal in Your Campaign: Joe 
  Postal is probably best used as a one-shot 
  disposable villain, who gets sprung on the 
  PCs as a surprise. Even though Joe 
  sometimes uses lethal force, and certainly 
  intends to butcher his own wife and 
  daughters, he’s convinced that he’s a good 
  man, and will try hard not to injure anyone 
  he thinks is an innocent.  If he does it by 
  accident, he’ll be visibly shaken, but he’ll 
  blame the PCs.  He might or might not keep 
  hitting someone who tries to surrender, 
  depending on how pitiable they look and 
  how mad he is.  He would not take 
  hostages.  Joe will try not to fight 
  superheroes for longer than he has to, and 
  will battle them just long enough to 
  exchange a few words and then flee.  If Joe 
  Postal becomes a recurrent villain, he will 
  undergo periods of deep black depression 
  where he doesn’t show up for months, and 
  then suddenly turn manic and start 
  rampaging again.   
   
  Adventures With Joe Postal: 1) Gone 
  Postal   
  The PCs learn that the Hand of Pain and 
  Glory is back in town.  It’s a reliable tip.  
  Three different sources have seen him.  This 
  is the first time anyone has heard from this 
  mysterious and terrifying supervillain in a 
  year.  Most PCs will be itching to fight him.  
  Before the PCs can track down the 
  tip, the local news reports that the Hand of 
  Pain and Glory is robbing a small branch 
  bank just off downtown.  The police have 
  the bank surrounded and the whole thing 
  seems to be turning into a standoff.  That’s 
  bad news—the last time this guy got into a 
  hostage situation he killed eight people. 
  But when the Player characters 
  arrive at the bank to confront the Hand of 
  Pain and Glory, they discover to their shock 
  that an ordinary postman has already 
  defeated him, and vanished.  Over the next 
  few hours reports come in from across the 
  city of strange, senseless assaults, all of 
  them committed by a man in a mail carrier’s 
  uniform.  As the PC’s engage Joe Postal in a 
  running battle, they learn more about him 
  and his motives, and learn that he has to be 
  stopped before he reaches his destination 
  and kills his family.  But where exactly is he 
  going?  Where do his ex-wife and kids 
  actually live?  If the PCs play their cards 
  right and do enough investigation, it is 
  possible that Joe’s family will be spirited 
  away before he gets there, in which case he 
  will slip away too, and plague the PCs again 
  some other time. 
   
  2) Special Delivery 
  After he fails to kill his family, Joe vanishes 
  for a while, sliding into a deep depression.  
  He lives in his mother’s basement and 
  watches the shopping channel for days on 
  end without pausing for sleep.  Then he 
  decides that this is boring and begins 
  casting about for something else to do.   
  He starts reading the undelivered 
  mail in his bag.  He’s never crossed that line 
  before—it was the last taboo he hadn’t 
  violated, which makes it very exciting.  Joe 
  finds himself deeply repelled by some of the 
  people these letters are addressed to. The 
  ones who clearly won’t write back to their 
  aging, lonely parents, the ones who are just 
  going to ask for more money even after 
  they cash the enclosed check, the ones who 
  are refusing to answer some repeated cry 
  for help.  The gay ones and the ones who 
  don’t speak English annoy him, too. 
  Joe decides to go deliver these 
  letters, and beat the living crap out of the 
  recipients.  He’ll appear at their front door in 
  his uniform, with his bat in one hand and 
  their open letter in another.  First he’ll give 
  them the opened letter, then he’ll give them 
  a lecture on how awful they are and then 
  he’ll give them the beat-down. Can the PCs 
  discover the pattern to these vicious 
  beatings and figure out a way to intercept 
  him before he kills somebody?  
  
   
  9
  (aka Captain Skumbag) 
   
  Real Name: Todd Treadwell 
  PL: 10 
   
  “I am the Harbinger of pain, the 
  bringer of blood and sorrows!  Women 
  kill their children when they hear my 
  voice, for they know there is no hope!  
  My fist is the velocity of hate!  I eat 
  only your blood; I drink only your 
  skulls!  Gnnaaaauugh!  … Heh.  That 
  was pretty good, wasn’t it?  I ought to 
  have my own breakfast cereal.” 
   
  Str: 30 (+10)/20 (+5) Dex: 14 (+2) 
  Con: 18 (+4) Int: 14 (+2) Wis: 10 (+0) 
  Cha: 14 (+2) Initiative: 2  
  Attack Bonus: 10 Defense: 10 
  Toughness Save: 10 (Impervious) 
  Fortitude Save: 10 Reflexes Save: 8 
  Willpower Save: 2  
  Skills: Intimidate 5 (+7), Knowledge 
  (popular culture) 5 (+7), Notice 5 (+5), 
  Stealth 1 (+3) 
  Feats: Fearsome Presence 5, Improved 
  Grapple, Power Attack, Startle 
  Powers: Enhanced Strength 10, Impervious 
  Toughness 4, Leaping 9 (x1000), Protection 
  (Extra: Impervious) 6, Regeneration 5 (+5 
  to Recovery Rate), Super-Senses (Low-light 
  Vision) 1, Super-Strength 8 (Power Feat: 
  Thunderclap) 
  Complications: Won't hurt innocent 
  bystanders under any circumstances. 
  Drawbacks: Hideous (very common, 
  moderate) -4pts 
  Background: Smash stuff, steal stuff, drink 
  beer, dance in clubs, throw up, pass out, 
  repeat.  Life is good.  Or at least that’s how 
  it seemed to Captain Skumbag when he got 
  into the supervillain game.  Now he’s 
  twenty-nine, and he hasn’t done one single 
  thing with his life. He’s always short on 
  cash, always scared of getting killed and the 
  law is always just one jump behind him.  
  Most of the friends he used to party with are 
  married now or in rehab or dead.  The 
  newer kids speak slang that isn’t quite his 
  slang anymore—and anyway the world of 
  New York’s underground clubs can start to 
  seem pretty narrow and confined after 
  you’ve been there every night for years.  
  He’s getting sick of sleeping in 
  squats and peeking out of the windows, sick 
  of being frightened all the time.  Was this 
  what he gave up his life for?  Is this all there 
  is?  And if there’s anything more, how would 
  he find it now?  
  Captain Skumbag’s criminal record 
  won’t make it easy for him to find a normal 
  life.  Nor will all his pending arrest 
  warrants.  And there are master criminals 
  who are used to being able to call on him as 
  a hulking, ferocious henchman and who 
  won’t be pleased if he tries to tell them that 
  he’s retired.  Then there’s his appearance to 
  consider.  Apart from the fact that he’s 
  seven and a half feet tall and blue, his 
  whole body is covered with tattoos, he’s had 
  his teeth surgically modified, his eyes glow 
  in the dark--he’s too weird looking to fit in 
  much of anywhere but the club scene or 
  college.  He tried college briefly but it didn’t 
  work—an opportunity to rob an armored car 
  came up and anyway he was failing most of 
  his courses.   
  Despite the way the criminal life has 
  soured on him, Captain Skumbag is still a 
  jovial, cruel opponent who loves a good 
  fight like nothing else.  He bellows and talks 
  trash.  He mocks his opponents and says 
  scary, nonsensical things to rattle them 
  (“Tasty are the meek!” or "Some people 
  look pretty tough before I eat them, but 
  
   
  10
  when they come back out they all look the 
  same!" or some such).   
  He always seems to have a vicious 
  grin, even when he’s losing.  He likes pain a 
  lot, and the harder you beat him, the louder 
  he laughs.  But he isn’t as tough as he 
  looks.  While Captain Skumbag enjoys 
  frightening people and getting attention, 
  most of his talk is just for show.  Killing 
  people doesn’t really appeal to him, dead 
  bodies are sticky and gross in his 
  experience. He may threaten to eat 
  someone or to peel them like a grape, but 
  it’s just to rattle their cage.  He’s worked 
  with guys who actually do stuff like that and 
  the memories it left him with still make him 
  shudder.   
  While he tries to look as though he 
  doesn’t care whether or not he wins or loses 
  a fight, this too is mostly just for show. He 
  doesn’t care much about his safety, but he 
  values his freedom a lot—he gets bored 
  easily, and prison is a torment to him.  In 
  fact the only time he’s likely to become 
  really dangerous is if he gets cornered and 
  panics.   
  Captain Skumbag doesn’t really talk 
  much about his origins.  Sometimes he 
  claims that he doesn’t know who he is, or he 
  implies that the truth about him is so 
  horrible that it must remain forever a 
  secret.  In fact it’s just embarrassing.   
  Todd Treadwell is the hyperactive, 
  ne’er do well son of an ordinary middle class 
  academic family on Long Island.  His father 
  teaches comparative religion at NYU, his 
  mother is a violinist who sometimes plays 
  for the Metropolitan Opera but mostly 
  teaches music at Columbia University.  He 
  loves his parents, despite sometimes 
  claiming to have eaten them, but he’s much 
  too ashamed to ever think of going back to 
  them for help.   
  Even the way he got his powers is 
  too stupid, uncool and banal for him to ever 
  admit to it.  His parents sent him to prep 
  school, where he was the only kid who liked 
  Norwegian death metal and Satanism. He 
  tried to summon up the devil in his dorm 
  room with a ritual he found in some sleazy 
  paperback—not because he actually 
  believed in any of it, but because he thought 
  that as the school’s resident outcast 
  metalhead/goth he ought to do things like 
  that.   Unfortunately, the Saturday Man 
  heard him and was amused by his lack of 
  sincerity.  So he gave the poor silly boy the 
  power he claimed to want, and sat back to 
  watch him destroy himself.  It has taken 
  years, but it was worth the wait.  Soon Saint 
  Murder may appear to him again, and offer 
  him a grisly deal.  His life back, in exchange 
  for some foul and shocking crime.   
   
  Using Captain Skumbag in Your 
  Campaign: An all-purpose supervillain with 
  a twist, you can use Captain Kill-You as a 
  super-thug for hire, an evil mastermind’s 
  bodyguard or even a bank robber. You can 
  play up his tragic side or hide it from the 
  PCs’ view, as seems appropriate.   
   
  Adventures With Captain Skumbag 1) 
  My Name is Captain Kill-You, and I’m a 
  Slobbering Maniac 
  Captain Skumbag joins Alcoholics 
  Anonymous, where he meets either an 
  alcoholic Player Character, or an alcoholic 
  friend or relative of a PC (if there’s no way 
  to work this in, then the group’s therapist is 
  either a PC or a close associate of one).   
  Captain Skumbag has been having 
  terrible migraine headaches, and blackouts 
  as well.  He talks freely about crimes he’s 
  committed and gives any Player Character 
  present a look into his secrets, origins, 
  problems and anxieties. This works 
  particularly well if the PC continues to fight 
  Captain Skumbag outside of therapy, 
  battling him in the street and foiling his 
  attempts to rob banks, listening to him rant 
  and bluster while they know it’s all an act.  
  The GM should make a particular 
  point of explaining to the PC that it’s 
  absolutely against the rules to ever repeat 
  anything anyone says in the therapy group, 
  or to act on anything that they hear there.   
  If a PC isn’t actually present at the 
  meetings, then someone who is tells them 
  all about Captain Skumbag even though it’s 
  against the rules.  It’s just too fascinating 
  not to talk about.  Then, someone smashes 
  their way into a jewelry store and leaves a 
  security guard dead and mangled at the 
  scene.  All the details implicate Captain 
  Skumbag.  But the Player Character knows 
  
   
  11
  beyond a doubt that he was actually at his 
  AA meeting when the crime took place.  
  How will the PC use this information without 
  compromising their secret identity and/or 
  getting their friend kicked out of therapy (or 
  possibly hounded out of their career, if the 
  NPC is a therapist)?   
   
  2) It Takes a Skumbag 
  Captain Skumbag is making an 
  unsuccessful attempt to retire.  He’s used 
  the loot from a recent big score to buy 
  himself a place off in the woods on an island 
  in a river. We’ll leave the exact location 
  undetermined so that the GM can do a 
  better job of working it into the game.  He’s 
  got a cabin with a wood stove, a privy out 
  back and not much else in the way of 
  amenities, but for now it suits him fine.  
  Todd is trying to get his head 
  together and figure out his next move, when 
  a master villain (pick one) decides to enlist 
  his aid in some big criminal scheme.  This 
  could be anything from breaking into the 
  vault of one of the most secure jewelry 
  stores in New York to holding a city for 
  ransom with a radioactive “dirty bomb.” 
  Whatever it is, it’s dangerous and dubious 
  and he wants no part of it.  So the master 
  villain has sent a particularly vicious super-
  assassin (pick one—Lady Deuce from the 
  book “The Bad Guys” would be ideal, as 
  would the White Hand) to go up into the 
  woods and bully Captain Skumbag into the 
  deal.  Someone calls the Captain on his cell 
  phone and tips him off.  He in turn tips off 
  the Player Characters. Why is Captain 
  Skumbag luring them into the woods with 
  an offer of where to find the White hand (or 
  whatever super-killer you’re using)? Can he 
  be trusted?  Does he sincerely intend to 
  retire? 
   
  3) Once a Skumbag… 
  Captain Skumbag has tried to retire 
  a couple of times, but it’s not as easy as he 
  thought. Every time he attempts to leave 
  the supervilain game, some old foe or 
  former employer tries to track him down 
  and kill him before he can turn state’s 
  evidence or tell a reporter all their secrets. 
  It’s beginning to look as though he’s going 
  to have to fake his own death in order to do 
  pull this off. His sleazy lawyer contacts the 
  Player Characters, and asks if they would be 
  interested in participating. In exchange for 
  their help, the Captain is willing to give 
  them heaps of information about his former 
  employers and comrades. A lot of it is even 
  true. He wants a hero’s death—something 
  that involves having a last second change of 
  heart and rushing into a burning building or 
  explosion to try and rescue somebody, but 
  apart from this his ideas are vague and 
  muddled. Frankly planning has never been 
  his forte. Perhaps the Player Characters can 
  think of a plan? Whatever they put together, 
  just before they give it a try, scary guys in 
  black suits and ties turn up in the vicinity 
  and start asking suspicious questions about 
  Captain Skumbag and the PCs. The Player 
  Characters don’t run into the men in black 
  face to face, but it does seem as though 
  some arch-villain may have somehow gotten 
  wind of what they’re up to. This plot 
  element is really just here to build tension. 
  The fake death goes off without a hitch, and 
  Captain Skumbag vanishes. But a year later 
  he’s gotten really bored. Reports reach the 
  PCs of somebody very much like Captain 
  Skumbag running amok in the Philippines 
  (or some equally remote place), on a one-
  man wave of crime. Just before they 
  investigate, Captain Skumbag’s former 
  lawyer gets in touch. Todd Treadwell has 
  just contacted him, and asked him to let the 
  PCs know that if they reveal that Captain 
  Skumbag is still alive, he in turn will have no 
  choice but to reveal their complicity in his 
  escape. That’s all the lawyer knows. The 
  Captain hasn’t been his client for the past 
  eight months and he has no idea where the 
  man is. As an added twist, perhaps it isn’t 
  really Captain Skumbag who’s running 
  around the far east committing crimes. 
  Perhaps it’s an imposter, and perhaps the 
  real Captain Skumbag tried to warn the PCs 
  away from the Philippines because he 
  intends to come out of retirement and finish 
  off the imposter himself. 
  
   
  12
   
   
  Real Name: Norman Gummidge 
  PL: 10 
   
  “Now, you might want to scream, dear, 
  because this is really going to hurt.” 
   
  Str: 14 (+2) Dex: 12 (+1) Con: 12 (+1) 
  Int: 16 (+3) Wis: 18 (+4) Cha: 16 (+3) 
  Initiative: 1 Attack Bonus: 8 
  Defense: 10 Toughness Save: 1  
  Fortitude Save: 10 Reflexes Save: 7 
  Willpower Save: 10 
  Skills: Bluff 8 (+11), Craft (Artistic) 7 
  (+11), Intimidate 9 (+12), Knowledge 
  (Arcane Lore) 11 (+12), Notice 3 (+7), Spot 
  +6, Stealth 7 (+8) 
  Feats:  Defensive Roll 4, Distract, Fearsome 
  Presence 4, Inventor (magical inventions, 
  uses Arcane Lore and Craft skills), Ritualist, 
  Startle, Sneak Attack, Taunt 
  Powers:  Magic 10 (Spells: Animation; 
  Extras: Alternate Powers: ESP, Force Field, 
  Illusion, Mind Control, Neutralize [Only vs. 
  Powers with a magical source], Paralysis, 
  Summoning, Telepathy, Teleportation), 
  Super-Senses 3 (Darkvision, Detect magic, 
  Detect Holy Ground) 
  Equipment: Iron Hook Forged With the 
  Blood of Seven Murderers on the Night of 
  the New Moon (Melee Weapon, 8 Damage, 
  Extra: Penetrating), Flying Cauldron (Armor 
  6 Impervious, Flight 10), Usually has some 
  tokens, trifles, talismans and nasty little 
  charms that he has made with his Inventor 
  and Ritualist feats, Headquarters (Medium-
  Sized; Toughness: 15; Features: 
  Concealment, Defense System [evil spirits 
  will try to do 7 Damage to anyone who tries 
  to enter the headquarters without Selina's 
  permission, their Attack Bonus is 10], 
  Holding Cells [usually take the shape of 
  enchanted closets or even furniture--for 
  example a huge, soft and somehow hungry-
  looking easy chair which swallows you up 
  when you sit on it], Living Space for up to 
  ten people [although Selina seldom has any 
  willing guests], Power System, Security 
  System [magical wardings, requires an 
  Arcane Lore Roll vs. DC 20 to disable]) 
  Complications: Can't resist an impulse to 
  do something vindictive and cruel, even if 
  puts Selina at a disadvatage or disrupts a 
  plan that's presently in progress 
  Drawback: Power Loss (Selina can only 
  cast spells if he is able to speak and gesture 
  freely.  Selina's spells also do not work in or 
  against any person, place or object that is 
  sacred to the moon or the forces of nature, 
  nor any untouched virgin wilderness, or old-
  growth forest) 
  Background:  A sneering post-punk 
  warlock who dresses up like a witch from a 
  cheap Halloween decoration. He loves 
  anything cheesy and tacky that has to do 
  with Halloween. Plastic pumpkins and black 
  cats made from cardboard and skulls that 
  light up and sing bad pop songs—the worse 
  it is, the more he loves it.  He also likes 
  murder, and pain. 
  Not really a transvestite, he dresses 
  this way because it shocks and annoys.  He 
  loves to shock and annoy people--and to kill 
  them.  He doesn’t actually love eating 
  people, but it’s offensive enough that he 
  does it anyway. 
  Selina the Beautiful Teenage Witch 
  always seems to have some cruel ironic jest 
  on his lips and some petty grievance to 
  avenge. He can hold a grudge for decades, 
  often over things so childish and trivial that 
  his victim has no idea why he has come 
  back to inflict unspeakable harm on them 
  and their loved ones. 
  It’s impossible to get along with 
  
   
  13
  him, even briefly. Almost inhumanly 
  vindictive and spiteful, he can twist any 
  conversation into a fight.  While he doesn’t 
  believe in anything himself, he’s sullen and 
  contrary enough to adopt the opposite 
  position from whatever opinion you express. 
  He’s fairly witty, but he’d rather upset you 
  than amuse you.  In fact, he’d rather kill you 
  than either. Or better yet, kill a bunch of 
  innocent bystanders. 
  He seems to enjoy collateral 
  damage and will go out of his way to inflict 
  more of it.  He’s not a maniac, though (not 
  quite, anyway) and knows when it’s time to 
  withdraw from a fight. 
  What creates someone like Selina 
  the Beautiful Teenage Witch? It’s hard to be 
  sure, but the source of his pain and anger 
  seems to lie somewhere in his relationship 
  with his mother.  
  The early 1960s weren’t a good 
  time to be a witch. When the neighbors in 
  suburban Cleveland found out what kind of 
  religion Selina’s mom was practicing at 
  home, they had the authorities take her little 
  boy away from her.  Then they had her 
  committed to a mental institution.  
  The boy was put in a big disorderly 
  foster home run by religious zealots who 
  beat him savagely for his mother’s 
  wickedness. Under their loving guidance he 
  grew to hate his mother more and more. 
  The rest of the world too, but especially his 
  mom. It was her fault he had been sent to 
  this awful place, her crimes he was 
  punished for daily. By the time he was 
  twelve, he was torturing animals and luring 
  smaller children into danger at every 
  opportunity. 
  In the meantime, his mother had 
  long since used her magical abilities to 
  secure her release, and after years of 
  searching she finally found him. Calling on 
  the power of her Goddess, she arranged for 
  him to escape from the abusive clutch of his 
  adoptive family and to find her at her new 
  home in rural Pennsylvania. He wasn’t as 
  grateful as she might have hoped. 
  For the next ten years he made his 
  mother’s life hell in every way he could, 
  spitefully rejecting her goofy optimism, her 
  new age earth-worship and her silly hippie 
  friends. But he learned her secrets as well 
  as he could, waiting for the day he could 
  use them against her. Yet even now, twenty 
  years after he finally betrayed, killed and 
  devoured her, he still seems to be trying to 
  annoy his mother. Even the way he dresses 
  and the imagery he surrounds himself 
  with—it all reflects the ugly stereotypes 
  about witches that his mother hated so 
  much.   
  She isn’t even haunting him—her 
  shade moved on long since.  But he can’t 
  move on.  In all likelihood he never will.  
  It’s a sad story, but does it really 
  explain him?  Lots of children suffer through 
  abusive childhoods. Only a very few turn out 
  like Selina the Beautiful Teenage Witch.  
  Even if it does explain him, it certainly 
  doesn’t excuse him for his many vicious 
  crimes. 
   
  Using Selina the Beautiful Teenage 
  Witch in Your Campaign: Selina is bad, 
  bad news. This is the evil warlock who other 
  evil warlocks don’t want to work with. It’s 
  almost lucky that he’s so ghastly in a way, 
  since he’s cruel enough that it’s always 
  distracting him from making any bigger 
  plans. Not a threat to world peace or 
  security, not even very interested in finding 
  ancient relics or increasing his magical 
  powers, he’s merely a threat to anyone 
  unlucky enough to cross his path.  
  He doesn’t exactly have a day-job, 
  but his powers allow him to live in a certain 
  minimal level of comfort without any means 
  of financial support. When he isn’t 
  wandering the back roads he’ll set up shop 
  in a forest outside of town, decking his 
  awful little house with tacky Halloween 
  decorations, pink flamingoes and real 
  human skulls.  The interior is always a filthy 
  den, scattered with bones, broken furniture, 
  rusty meathooks and empty bottles of cheap 
  liquor.  It looks like a homicidal wino lives 
  here, apart from the cheesy Halloween 
  décor and the huge iron cauldron.  Don’t 
  under any circumstances let him trick or 
  threaten you into getting into that cauldron. 
  Selina the Beautiful Teenage Witch 
  practices a kind of perverted and corrupt 
  earth-magic.  It delights him to warp and 
  mangle his mother’s legacy and to hurt the 
  earth she loved so well.  He loves to taint 
  
   
  14
  pure places and foul their magic with his 
  own.  This is the kind of thing that might 
  bring him into conflict with mystical 
  superheroes. 
  He doesn’t really commit a lot of 
  robberies.  Sick and bloody murders are 
  more his thing. He can be hired by other 
  criminals, but he’s difficult to work with and 
  prone to picking lethal fights with his 
  employers. The PCs are likeliest to come 
  across him while he’s menacing some poor 
  innocent or pursuing some stupid vendetta 
  over a tiny slight he suffered years ago. Yet 
  it’s possible that a low-rent master villain 
  who needs a mystic on the team could hire 
  him rob banks and knock over armored cars. 
  He won’t be a very good team player, but 
  his comrades will probably find this out too 
  late. 
  Once the Player Characters defeat 
  Selina the Beautiful Teenage Witch, they 
  have made an enemy for life. He’ll keep 
  coming back as often as he can, each time 
  with some awful, sadistic new scheme to 
  make them pay. As cruel as he is, he’s 
  crafty, too, and prefers to hit targets from a 
  distance, ambush them or strike at their 
  loved ones. This is good for the GM, since it 
  allows you to keep him as a lurking, unseen 
  menace in the background, building the 
  tension as the Player Characters wait for 
  him to strike. 
   
  Adventures With Selina the Beautiful 
  Teenage Witch: 1) Avon Calling 
  Zombie Avon ladies start ringing 
  doorbells all across the suburbs. The 
  payment they demand for their dubious 
  cosmetics is unorthodox, to say the least—
  your husband’s blood, the skins of your 
  household pets, the soul of your favorite 
  child.  Many housewives refuse to pay, so 
  the Avon ladies offer to let them become 
  distributors, instead, on credit. Any poor 
  doomed woman who agrees gets held down 
  and slathered in toxic makeup until she dies. 
  She then becomes an Avon lady herself.  
  As with any such multi-level 
  marketing pyramid scheme, signing up new 
  distributors is more important than making 
  sales. For every three new distributors she 
  signs up, or every six distributors one of her 
  distributors signs up, an Avon Lady goes up 
  1 PL (they start out as PL2). By the time the 
  PCs get involved, there are already 3 PL 6 
  Avon ladies  (Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Simpson and 
  Mrs. Kuntzler) and as many PL 2-5 
  minions as the GM needs to keep things 
  interesting.  
  The Regional Sales Manager whom 
  they all swear fealty to, is, of course, Selina 
  the Beautiful Teenaged Witch. He will be 
  holding an Avon Party at his lovely tract 
  home in three days. Everyone will be there.  
  Perhaps the PCs would also like to attend.  
   
  Zombie Avon Lady 
  Str: 18 (+4) Dex: 10 (+0) Con: 10 (+0) 
  Int: 10 (+0) Wis: 10 (+0) Cha: 10 (+0) 
  Initiative: 0 Attack Bonus: 2 
  Defense: 2 Toughness Save: 0 
  Fortitude Save: 2 Reflexes Save: 2 
  Willpower Save: 2 
  Skills: Profession (salesperson) 1 (+1), 
  Notice 5 (+5) 
  Powers: Immunity 7 (to Aging, Disease, 
  Exhaustion, Poison, Starvation, Suffocation 
  [no need to breathe at all]), 
  Super-Senses (Darkvision, Detect Potential 
  Customers), Super-Strength +4 (Flaw: 
  Limited [does not allow the zombie to lift 
  more than their base carrying capacity, 
  useful only to wrestle opponents]), Strike 
  +2 
  Equipment: Bag of cosmetics samples 
  Complications: Totally obsessed with 
  selling Avon and creating more zombies, 
  does nothing else 
   
  Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Simpson or Mrs. 
  Kuntzler 
  PL: 6 
  Str: 20 (+5) Dex: 10 (+0) Con: 10 (+0) 
  Int: 14 (+2) Wis: 10 (+0) Cha: 14 (+2) 
  Initiative: 1 Attack Bonus: 6 
  Defense: 5 Toughness Save: 0 
  Fortitude Save: 0 Reflexes Save: 4 
  Willpower Save: 6 
  Skills: Intimidate 8 (+10), Profession 
  (salesperson) 6 (+8), Notice 6 (+6) 
  Feats:  Fearsome Presence 4, Improved 
  Grapple, Startle, Taunt 
  Powers: Immunity 7 (to Aging, Disease, 
  Exhaustion, Poison, Starvation, Suffocation 
  [no need to breathe at all]), 
  Super-Senses (Darkvision, Detect Potential 
  
   
  15
  Customers), Super-Strength 6 (Flaw: Limited 
  [does not allow the zombie to lift more than 
  their base carrying capacity, useful only to 
  wrestle opponents]), Strike 2 
  Equipment: Bag of cosmetics samples, 
  clipboard showing current sales and how 
  individual reps are doing. 
  Complications: Totally obsessed with 
  selling Avon and creating more zombies, not 
  capable of spending time or thought on 
  anything else 
  Drawbacks: Hideous (very common, 
  moderate) -4pts 
   
  2) Land of Wide Lawns and Filthy 
  Murder 
  A stand of trees, sacred to the goddess of 
  the moon, grows in a wooded space 
  between two suburban subdivisions. Selina 
  the Beautiful Teenage Witch wants it ruined, 
  ravaged, corrupted and fouled. He can’t set 
  foot in it, which makes that difficult. 
  The local children instinctively love 
  and protect the grove, so as his agents he 
  has selected some of their parents. Selina 
  invited them over to his house for treats and 
  cocktails He let the suitable ones leave alive 
  and served the rest to them for dinner. 
  The surviving grown-ups have 
  formed a club, which they call the “Filthy 
  Murder Club” and under Selina’s influence 
  they have decided to kill one of each living 
  thing in the neighborhood. They do this in 
  the grove on moonless nights. So far they 
  have killed a cockroach, a mosquito, a 
  squirrel, and when the PCs get involved they 
  are about to steal and kill the 
  neighborhood’s only pet parrot. 
  The PCs could stumble over the 
  Filthy Murder Club in any number of ways.  
  Mystically sensitive heroes may sense 
  roughly what is going on here, precognitive 
  heroes may have dreams about a parrot 
  screaming for help and begging for its life.  
  The neighborhoods kids know someone is 
  trying to do something bad to the trees and 
  they’ve been trying to meet in secret to 
  figure out what to do about it.  They might 
  decide to contact the PCs behind their 
  parents’ backs.  As an extra twist, the PCs 
  might get involved when they hear rumors 
  of a satanic cult of evil kids killing and 
  mutilating animals in some kind of twisted 
  ritual.  In fact, the parents in the Filthy 
  Murder Club are using this story as an 
  excuse to crack down on them and keep 
  them from going to the grove. 
  There are about ten members of the 
  Filthy Murder Club. Most are PL 1 or two, 
  unless the GM would like to add a PL5 cop 
  or ex-special-forces member to their ranks.  
  They aren’t intrinsically evil people, but all of 
  them are foolish, weak and cruel by nature.  
  Under Selina’s mental influence they’re 
  capable of doing anything, even to their 
  own spouses and children. 
  On one of the twisting streets in the 
  subdivision stands a little tract house that 
  used to be inhabited by a friendly, childless 
  old couple who were like surrogate 
  grandparents to the local kids.  They’re still 
  there, dead in their living room, staring 
  lifelessly at the television.  This is Selina’s 
  house now and the PCs will surely find 
  themselves here eventually once they figure 
  out what’s really happening. 
   
  
   
  16
   
   
  Real Name: Adolph Guzman 
  PL: 11 
   
  “Service the target? Liquidate the 
  objective?  Euphemisms are for people 
  who feel shame.  The men I work for 
  use the word ‘Kill’.” 
   
  Str: 22/16 (+6/+3) Dex: 24/16 (+7/+3) 
  Con: 24/16 (+7/+3) Int: 14 (+2)  
  Wis: 12 (+1) Cha: 14 (+2) 
  Initiative: 11 Attack Bonus: 12 
  Defense: 10 Toughness Save: 10 (7 
  flatfooted) Fortitude Save: 11  Reflexes 
  Save: 11 Willpower Save: 9 
  Skills: Bluff 10 (+12), Craft (Artistic) 2 
  (+4), Languages (English, Spanish), Notice 
  11 (+12), Stealth 6 (+13) 
  Feats: Defensive Roll 3, Diehard, Distract, 
  Fearless, Fearsome Presence 5, Improved 
  Initiative, Move-By Action, Sneak Attack, 
  Taunt 
  Powers: Device (Big Knife [5 Damage; 
  Extras: Affects Corporeal, Mighty]), 
  Enhanced Strength 6, Enhanced Dexterity 8, 
  Enhanced Constitution 8, Immunity 6 (to 
  Aging, Disease, Poison, Starvation and 
  Suffocation [no need to breathe at all]), 
  Insubstantial 4 (Still Vulnerable to Magical 
  Attacks when in Incorporeal Form), Leaping 
  5, Super-Senses 2 (Darkvision) 
  Complications: Always leaves his 
  trademark--an imprint of a white hand, at 
  the scene of every one of his crimes, even if 
  to do so would be contrary to his own best 
  interests 
  Drawbacks: Hideous (very common, 
  moderate) -4pts 
  Background: It never occurred to Adolph 
  Guzman that he might one day have to 
  watch someone set his daughter on fire.  
  Things like that happened in El Salvador, it 
  was true, but not to people from his social 
  class.  Not often, anyway. 
  The son of a prominent diplomat, he 
  grew up happy and pampered at various 
  embassies around the world. He vaguely 
  wanted to be a cartoonist or perhaps a 
  comedian. Friends knew him as silly, 
  unserious, good-natured and apolitical.  
  The early 1980s were a grim time 
  for El Salvador. Marxist insurgents stalked 
  the hills and bloodthirsty right-wing death 
  squads stalked the cities. People 
  disappeared every day and mutilated 
  corpses were found in ditches all the time.  
  When Adolph turned 18 in 1981, his 
  family sent him off to art school in Florida, 
  where college students didn’t run the same 
  kinds of risks they did back home. But 
  American colleges have other risks for 
  wayward young men, and within a year he 
  got his girlfriend pregnant. Adolph married 
  her and they both moved into off-campus 
  housing in Miami. He spent the next two 
  years trying to cope with the demands of his 
  classes and with being a father. He shirked 
  both duties badly and spent more and more 
  time hanging around with the staff of the 
  campus humor magazine, the “Dirty Rag.” 
  Adolph’s tiny daughter frightened 
  and annoyed him with her fragility and 
  constant, clamoring needs.  Relations with 
  his wife were getting strained. Just before 
  his daughter turned two, the university 
  notified Adolph that if his grades didn’t 
  improve he couldn’t maintain his student 
  visa and would have to go home to El 
  Salvador. By a strange coincidence, that 
  same week he drew the cartoon that would 
  change his life forever. 
  While he was never political, Adolph 
  did find the movie “Rambo” obnoxious and 
  stupid. He drew a tasteless and bloody 
  satirical comic called “Rambo in El Salvador” 
  which mocked the movie and its cavalier 
  attitude toward warfare. It was an ugly, 
  
   
  17
  mean, poorly-drawn piece, fueled by the 
  frustration and resentment that he felt over 
  school, his marriage, fatherhood and all the 
  other pressures in his life. It probably 
  wouldn’t have ever been published if he 
  hadn’t been friends with the editors of the 
  Dirty Rag. 
  Shortly thereafter he got kicked out 
  school for poor grades, his visa was revoked 
  and he found himself hastily putting his 
  family and possessions on a hellishly long 
  flight back to El Salvador and an uncertain 
  future. Exhausted as he was from trying to 
  help comfort a screaming toddler through 
  the interminable flight, he wasn’t adequately 
  prepared to explain himself to customs 
  when they found a copy of “Rambo in El 
  Salvador” in his luggage.  
  In those days a lot of the country’s 
  police and border guards were members of 
  the right-wing secret society called the 
  Mano Blanco. The organization had a violent 
  wing—death squads and rogue commanders 
  in the armed forces swore fealty to the 
  Mano Blanco, as did an increasing number 
  of organized crime figures. They killed 
  suspected commies and liberal Catholic 
  priests and people who competed with them 
  for the cocaine trade. It wasn’t a good thing 
  to be stopped by customs officers with 
  subversive pinko literature in your bag. 
  They put the three Guzmans in 
  detention and called the Mano Blanco, which 
  agreed to send a murder team around to 
  dispose of them. But after a few phone calls 
  from Adolph’s powerful family the customs 
  officers grudgingly let all three captives out 
  of airport detention just moments before the 
  death squad was due to arrive. They swore 
  that he hadn’t heard the last of this, and 
  they were right. 
  Adolph’s father screamed at him for 
  getting into trouble.  He screamed back, but 
  he desperately needed his father’s help and 
  accepted his offer of financial assistance. He 
  found an off-campus apartment for his wife 
  and daughter, and was about to enroll in 
  classes when the Mano Blanco caught up 
  with him. They broke into his apartment, 
  tortured his wife and little girl in front of him 
  for a while, set them on fire and then shot 
  him in the head. The neighbors claimed not 
  to have seen or heard a thing during the 
  whole two-hour ordeal. 
  No one really knows why some 
  people get a chance to come back from the 
  dead. Why should poor weak, wayward 
  Adolph Guzman have had the chance to rise 
  from his grave and seek revenge against the 
  Mano Blanco when so many thousands of 
  other victims did not? Perhaps it was 
  because he spent his last thoughts weren’t 
  of himself, but of his daughter, whom he 
  hadn’t loved enough? We cannot say.  But 
  we can say that he did rise, and that he rose 
  angry. 
  The gods of vengeance offered him 
  the same deal that they have, on isolated 
  occasions, offered others.  He could walk 
  the earth just long enough to kill everyone 
  connected with the murder of his loved 
  ones. Then he would return to his grave, 
  and rest. 
  But the men who ran the Mano 
  Blanco and its many feuding chapters kept 
  themselves carefully isolated from the 
  street-level troops, so finding them was 
  going to be tough. He was going to need to 
  know the organization pretty well to figure 
  out who to start killing. So he joined the 
  Mano Blanco. Over the next few years he 
  served them as a parahuman assassin, 
  killing students and peasant leaders and 
  people who had offended the wrong 
  families. On two separate occasions he had 
  to kill friends from his former life—both 
  students who worked for the wrong campus 
  publication. He killed diligently, ruthlessly 
  and without question, desperate to gain the 
  trust of the higher-ups and be allowed into 
  their circle. Once he found himself killing a 
  little girl no older than his own daughter had 
  been when she died, and was surprised at 
  how little guilt he felt. 
  In the Mano Blanco everyone’s 
  loyalty was suspect, only the guys who were 
  willing to commit the most startling 
  atrocities could really earn trust.  It was 
  three years before Adolph even knew the 
  names of any of his bosses, or learned 
  anything about the organization’s structure. 
  By then he was one of the most feared men 
  in El Salvador. They called him “the White 
  Hand” and spoke that name in whispers.  
  Then, in 1986 he suddenly learned 
  the name of the hit team that had killed 
  
   
  18
  him. The Ventana Avengers, they were 
  called. He had worked with them before. 
  Out of the five of them, three were already 
  dead (one in a drunken knife fight over a 
  girl, one from chronic alcoholism and one in 
  a conflict with another Mano Blanco faction) 
  and one was in prison in the US for 
  attempted rape. 
  The remaining one, Arnoldo “Moco” 
  Cruz died very entertainingly over a long 
  period of time, once the White Hand got him 
  alone.  Before he expired, Moco revealed 
  the name of one of the bosses who issued 
  the death order. Colonel Marcos Steissner. 
  Adolph spent the next year working 
  his way into Colonel Steissner’s good graces 
  until he was finally allowed to meet with the 
  man in person at his palatial home in Miami 
  Florida. Alone with the Colonel in his office, 
  the White Hand debated various ways to kill 
  the man. He knew a lot of them by now, 
  and it was hard to pick. So many lovely 
  ways… and come to think of it, once he 
  finished getting his revenge, he would never 
  be able kill anyone ever again. It would be 
  off to whatever black mysteries await us 
  beyond this world—no more blood, no more 
  screams, no more frantic pleas for mercy. 
  And he couldn’t kid himself, if there was a 
  Hell then he was surely going there. Adolph 
  had already been tortured once, and he 
  didn’t like it at all. Much better to give than 
  to receive, when it came to torture. So he 
  gave up his quest for revenge, and instead 
  became Colonel Steissner’s personal 
  assassin. 
  These days the insurgency in El 
  Salvador is long since over, the country’s 
  wounds are healing and the greatly reduced 
  Mano Blanco is more of an organized crime 
  network than a counter-revolutionary terror 
  group. The White Hand serves their 
  interests, protecting their drug smuggling 
  operations, killing their competitors and 
  generally making himself useful any way he 
  can. 
  Laid back and cruel, he makes 
  friendly conversation with his victims and 
  rarely takes offense at anything anyone says 
  to him. He never gets vengeful if someone 
  cuts him off in traffic or jostles him on the 
  sidewalk or for that matter points a gun at 
  his head. Nor does he run around harming 
  civilians when he isn’t on missions. It’s 
  possible to be his friend, although he’ll 
  betray you the first moment it is to his 
  advantage. He still draws cartoons 
  sometimes. 
   
  Using The White Hand in Your 
  Campaign: The White Hand works best as 
  a paid assassin—the terrifying hired muscle 
  whom a mastermind or crime boss might 
  bring in from out of town to deal with the 
  PCs once they become a nuisance.  He 
  seldom initiates crimes on his own.   
  His bosses can send him all over the 
  world with a diplomatic passport on their 
  bloody business and the PCs can encounter 
  him just about anywhere. From time to time 
  the Mano Blanco hires him out to other 
  organized crime groups or even super-
  villains. While murder and terror are his 
  specialty, he can also be hired to do 
  bodyguard work or to break a fellow 
  criminal out of prison. While he doesn’t 
  normally participate in crimes like bank 
  robbery, there is of course a first time for 
  everything.  
  No atrocity is beyond him, but he 
  never goes out of his way to commit them. 
  He’ll do whatever foul thing he thinks a 
  mission requires, but he won’t risk the 
  mission’s success in order to inflict more 
  harm on someone. There are plenty of other 
  people to hurt, and there’s plenty of time to 
  do it in. 
   
  Adventures With the White Hand: 1) 
  Twilight of the Gods 
  In the dark days of the early1980s, while 
  the Mano Blanco was killing any left-wing 
  intellectuals or subversives they could get 
  their hands on, the Salvadoran superhero 
  team called the Ultimadors decided that the 
  time had come to get out of the country. 
  They were never particularly political 
  themselves, but they fought the cocaine 
  trade and they weren’t part of the Mano 
  Blanco’s network, so things began to get hot 
  for them. They helped a lot of innocent 
  people escape El Salvador as their final 
  heroic act. In latter years it made them feel 
  less like they had abandoned their country.  
  For a long time the five surviving 
  members of the Ultimadors have lived 
  
   
  19
  quietly in America, living ordinary lives. 
  None of them have used their powers to 
  fight crime in more than twenty years and 
  they’re all beginning to feel their age now. 
  None of them are any stronger than PL9 
  these days. Unfortunately, their greatest 
  test is just about to arrive. 
  A new leader has come to power in 
  the American wing of the Mano Blanco. 
  Theobaldo Azul is very young, prone to 
  violent headaches and a bit of a crazy right-
  wing fanatic. He wants the Mano Blanco to 
  take a more active hand in hunting down 
  former dissidents and he intends to start 
  with the Ultimadors. Why bother with five 
  civilians who were never revolutionaries and 
  haven’t been active in years?  Because his 
  father tried to have them hunted down, and 
  failed.  In this way, Theobaldo will honor his 
  Papa. 
  The five survivors are the Golden 
  Jaguar (an Indian woman who gained the 
  ability to transform herself into a half-
  human jungle beast with the help of a 
  magical potion that she no longer has 
  access to), the Whip (a hooded vigilante 
  who struck terror into the hearts of the 
  underworld and stood up for the 
  downtrodden with his incredible whip-
  wielding skills) Mesmerista (who could cloud 
  the minds of men with her psychic powers 
  and sometimes tell the future), Senor Zero 
  (who could turn invisible and walk through 
  walls) and the Iron Mask (a superhuman 
  wrestler who drew his strength from an 
  enchanted mask). 
  The PCs are called in when Senor 
  Zero turns up horribly dead in his 
  apartment, in a newly gentrified part of their 
  home city.  While investigating his death, 
  the police discover a secret room with his 
  trophies, mementos and old superhero gear. 
  This looks like a super-crime, so the PCs get 
  roped in to help solve it. Someone has 
  painted a white hand on the wall above 
  Senor Zero’s body. There are many other 
  clues as to what happened here and some 
  investigation will turn up the unhappy story 
  of the Ultimadors. 
  The White Hand found out 
  Mesmirista’s secret identity from Senor Zero 
  before he died and she knows all the others. 
  The PCs will have to hurry to save her and 
  they may already be too late. Once she dies, 
  he’ll stalk the others at his leisure. 
  Senor Zero was a tax-preparer in his 
  secret identity. Some of the other 
  Ultimadors have done better for themselves 
  and some have done worse. Mesmerista 
  runs a tiny psychological consulting firm and 
  has trouble paying her bills. She lives in a 
  tract home in the suburbs with her second 
  husband, (he’s a probate attorney), and her 
  three kids. Her powers are well-suited to 
  fighting off the White Hand, so he’s going to 
  hit her from ambush. 
  Golden Jaguar has prospered in 
  selling real-estate to the Salvadoran-
  American community and has a penthouse 
  apartment downtown with her mother, who 
  she managed to smuggle out of El Salvador. 
  She’s almost helpless without her potion. 
  Iron Mask hurt his back moving 
  furniture some years ago and lives on 
  disability. He’s an affable fellow, although he 
  does have a problem with alcohol. He will 
  put his magic mask back on and bravely 
  make a stand against the White Hand when 
  he comes to call, but his injured back will 
  betray him and he’ll almost certainly die. 
  The Whip still fights for justice on 
  behalf of his fellow Salvadorans—he’s a 
  struggling lawyer and community activist. 
  Alone out of all the Ultimadors, he has kept 
  in fighting trim (despite his thinning hair and 
  spreading gut) and may prove a surprisingly 
  difficult target for the White Hand. He’s also 
  a hard guy to get along with, doesn’t like 
  Anglos much and will initially try to refuse 
  the PCs’ help. 
  For his part the White Hand has 
  been staying at the Salvadoran Legation in 
  the PCs’ home city, sheltered by a 
  sympathetic attaché. His diplomatic passport 
  does not give him the ability to kill people in 
  broad daylight (El Salvador would surely 
  waive his immunity for really serious public 
  crimes) but it does shield him to some 
  degree from things like search and seizure, 
  having to show up for court dates and so 
  forth. Nor can the PCs legally search an 
  embassy for him, or hold him in custody if 
  they snatch him from an embassy’s 
  grounds.  The authorities are severely 
  hampered by these restrictions, so it looks 
  like saving the Ultimadors will be up to the 
  
   
  20
  PCs. 
   
  2) This Time, It Isn’t Personal 
  Colonel Steissner dies of a heart 
  attack in his sleep. The White Hand is 
  surprised to find that this hasn’t killed him 
  as well. The last person responsible for the 
  death of his wife and child is dead—this 
  should end his time on earth. But the gates 
  of Hell refuse to open for him. What can be 
  wrong? 
  At first he thinks that because 
  Colonel Steissner didn’t die by violence, it 
  didn’t fulfill the conditions of the curse. That 
  would be good news—it would free him to 
  kill and ruin and destroy things forever. But 
  in fact that’s not it at all. The truth is that 
  one member of the “Ventana Avengers” is 
  still alive. He was their driver that night, and 
  Adolph never saw him. He’s a killer and a 
  loser and a drunk named Ygnacio Diaz and 
  he’s gotten himself in serious trouble. 
  Ygnacio has lived in the United 
  States for the past ten years. He makes his 
  living fishing and sometimes washes dishes. 
  He’s killed about six people since he got 
  here, mostly on impulse when he happened 
  to feel mean. Five years ago he killed the 
  drummer in an all girl punk band when he 
  saw her walking down the street at night. 
  There was nobody around to see them and 
  he figured what the Hell, why not kill her? 
  Who’s ever going to know? Now they have 
  his DNA from a DUI arrest, and they know. 
  He’s on death row as we speak, and he’s 
  made a lot of enemies there. 
  The White Hand finds out most of 
  this by going through General Steissner’s 
  files. The rest he learns with an Internet 
  search or two. Then he tries to break into 
  the super-maximum security prison where 
  Diaz is being held. The PCs get called in as 
  the nearest available superhero team once 
  the prison comes under parahuman assault. 
  What is the White Hand’s objective? Which 
  prisoner is he looking for and what will he 
  do when he catches him? 
  If the White hand has a tough time 
  breaking in, he’ll adopt a different tactic. He 
  knows that there is a parahuman detention 
  facility in this particular prison, so he 
  abruptly breaks off his assault, vanishes, 
  and then surrenders himself to the PCs a 
  few days later. He explains that he wants to 
  waive his diplomatic immunity and stand 
  trial for his many crimes. While they are 
  transporting him, he may tell the Player 
  Characters his whole back-story. 
  Once in detention, the superhuman 
  restraints seem to hold him, but in fact he’s 
  just pretending to let them. His powers are 
  mystical in nature and it’s hard to construct 
  a cell that can hold him. While he’s awaiting 
  arraignment, he slips through the wall and 
  goes looking for Diaz, letting out as many 
  supervillains and other criminals as he can 
  along the way. 
  By the time the PCs arrive at the 
  prison to stop him, a full-scale jailbreak is in 
  progress. How are the PCs to find and stop 
  him in the midst of all the chaos? 
  If the White Hand does ever 
  manage to get Diaz out, he will maim all his 
  limbs and keep him in a wheelchair under 
  constant sedation, tucked away in some 
  isolated place where he’ll stay out of 
  trouble. 
   
  
   
  21
   
   
  Real Name: Seymour "Sparky" Sanders 
  PL: 12 
   
  "The world is on fire, the air's full of 
  screams and the Doctor is in!" 
   
  Str: 12 (+1) Dex: 14 (+2) Con: 14 (+2) 
  Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 12 (+1) Cha: 8 (-1) 
  Initiative: 2 Attack Bonus:10  
  Defense: 10/6 Flatfooted  
  Toughness Save: 3 with armored 
  costume/ 2 without costume Fortitude 
  Save: 8 Reflexes Save: 7 Willpower 
  Save: 3  
  Skills: Craft (chemical) 11 (+12), Escape 
  Artist 9 (+11), Knowledge (tactics) 11 
  (+12), Notice 8 (+9), Stealth 9 (+11) 
  Feats: Distract, Dodge Focus 4, 5pts of 
  Equipment, Evasion 2, Improved Aim, 
  Improved Critical (with Blast power), Precise 
  Shot 
  Powers: Blast of Flame 12 (Extras: Area, 
  Selective; Power Feats: Alternate Power 
  [Disintegration 6], Homing, Indirect, 
  Precise), Deflect (All Ranged Attacks) 12, 
  Element Control (Flame) 12, Fatigue 8 
  Equipment: 1 pt of armor (Costume), 4pts 
  Sensory Protection Goggles (visual) 
  Complications: Compulsive pyromaniac 
  Background: He's not really a doctor, he's 
  quick to say, just a creepy little pyromaniac 
  with a bad case of attention deficit disorder.  
  It is unusual to find a pyromaniac who has 
  this much of a sense of humor about 
  himself, but then again it's also unusual to 
  find one who can set fires with his mind. 
  Doctor Scorch is a pyrokinetic--
  which perfectly suits his personality and 
  hobbies.  Unlike many people with his 
  ability, he isn't immune to the effects of his 
  own powers and is covered with small burn 
  scars from various accidents.  
  Not exactly a career criminal, in that 
  he makes no money from his crimes, Doctor 
  Scorch burns things purely for the sheer 
  twisted joy of it.  His favorite targets include 
  odd or eccentric looking historic buildings, 
  big tacky fiberglass statues used to 
  advertise stuff, and anything that looks like 
  it would be really tough to burn.  He’s 
  grown adept at seeing what a particular 
  structure would look like on fire, and he’s 
  become quite a connoisseur.   
  Most pyromaniacs set fires to hurt 
  and dominate people, but Doctor Scorch just 
  likes watching things burn.  He actually tries 
  hard to keep people from getting hurt by his 
  obsession.  While he is excited by all the 
  screams and running around that a fire 
  produces, he gets no thrill from burning 
  people.  Alas, the nature of his obsession 
  makes it difficult for him to keep from 
  hurting innocents, and despite his best 
  efforts he has caused more than one death 
  over the years.  If an orphanage is unlucky 
  enough to be situated in a really beautiful 
  old building, look out! 
  He’s aware of how bad his 
  
   
  22
  compulsions are, and that it would be better 
  for everyone if he were locked up again.  
  Yet he honestly can’t control the urge to 
  burn things.  Nor can he really suppress the 
  urge to be free, since he can’t burn things 
  when he’s in custody.  It is lucky for him 
  that his powers are easy to suppress.  
  Otherwise they would have lobotomized or 
  killed him long ago.  As it is, a simple 
  combination of anti-hallucination drugs 
  keeps his powers in check, although it also 
  gives him the shakes and messes up his fine 
  motor coordination.   
  By now he has spent about two 
  thirds of his life institutionalized.  They 
  made the mistake of releasing him only 
  once, but he does have a disturbing 
  tendency to get loose during the periodic 
  mass prison breaks that super-prisons and 
  mental asylums seem oddly prone to.  
  Rueful and self-deprecating, he is 
  clearly ashamed of the stuff he does.  When 
  confronted, he’ll greet the PCs by name and 
  say something like “Gee, I’m kind of glad 
  you guys are here.  I sure screwed up this 
  time.”  
  His attention deficit disorder is 
  clearly visible.  Manic and excitable, he can 
  never keep still, his hands and eyes are 
  always moving and he makes big wide 
  gestures as he speaks. A chronic fidget, 
  instead of doodling or biting his nails, he 
  sets things on fire. 
  He wears a costume, not only 
  because he needs as much protection from 
  the heat as he can get, but because he finds 
  it really exciting.  
  While he does want to be stopped, 
  he won’t go down without a fight. Doctor 
  Scorch prefers not to hurt his opponents too 
  badly, so instead of attacking them directly 
  he will try to undermine whatever they are 
  standing on, drop burning trees on top of 
  them and so forth. He is as adept at figuring 
  out how a fire will behave as any fireman, 
  and can launch indirect attacks with great 
  precision.  He won’t directly take hostages, 
  but if cornered he’s not above setting a 
  nearby building or vehicle on fire so that the 
  PCs will have to leave him and go rescue 
  whoever is inside. 
  Using Doctor Scorch in Your 
  Campaign: Doctor Scorch is a good 
  recurrent opponent for less experienced 
  superteams. The nature of his powers and 
  his habit of putting lots of innocent lives at 
  risk makes him capable of holding off a 
  much bigger group of heroes that his PL 
  would indicate.  A Doctor Scorch plot-arc is 
  usually pretty simple.  Escape, rampage, get 
  locked up, repeat as needed. 
   
  Things can suddenly get a lot more 
  complicated if Sparky Sanders ever 
  remembers who he really is.  In fact he’s the 
  living incarnation of the trickster-fire-god.  
  The thing the ancient Norse called “Loki.”  
  He has a mother and a father here on earth, 
  he was born, rather than falling from the 
  sky, but he’s Loki all the same.   
  If some other reincarnated Norse 
  god ever recognizes him (and it’s not certain 
  they will—that’s entirely up to the GM) then 
  Sparky will suddenly become a PL 16 energy 
  projector, with roughly the same powers 
  that he has now jumped up to a higher 
  level, and he will get a whole lot more 
  ambitious.  If the GM wants, Loki may be 
  interested in things like ruling the world or 
  blowing it up, but he’s more likely to want 
  revenge on any other surviving Norse 
  deities. 
   
  His personality won’t change, 
  although he’ll get both craftier and more 
  self-confident.  He likes to burn things even 
  more, but he’s better at keeping the impulse 
  under control (buy off the weakness with 
  some of his extra points). 
   
  If you would like to use this plot 
  thread, but the god Loki already plays 
  another role in your campaign, then Doctor 
  Scorch is his son.  He can still undergo a 
  sudden leap in power and change in 
  objectives once he figures this out, as 
  above. 
   
  
   
  23
  Adventures With Doctor Scorch 1) 
  We’re Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo… 
   
   
  The Lair of Doctor Scorch 
   
  Dr. Scorch walks out of his mental 
  institution during a power failure. He isn’t 
  really sure where to go or what to do with 
  himself, so he starts setting things on fire. 
  First, he torches a big creepy-looking 
  mansion (it houses the offices of a corporate 
  law firm, if your players want to know) and 
  takes up residence in the burned-out ruins. 
  Then he settles down to think. 
  Unfortunately, his lair is not far from 
  the zoo, and he can hear the animals at 
  night. To his horror, he finds himself 
  irresistibly drawn to the idea of burning it 
  down and listening to the animals die. This 
  thought is terribly upsetting and weirdly 
  fascinating to him. He resolves to get caught 
  before he gives in to it. 
  It’s not in Doctor Scorch’s nature to 
  just turn himself in to the police, although 
  he tries. He stands on the sidewalk in front 
  of a police station, pacing back and forth for 
  nearly ten minutes before a cop asks him 
  what he’s doing there. He panics and runs 
  away. Once this fails, he tries another 
  approach.  He burns down a condemned 
  building and scorches the words, “Please 
  Stop Me!” into a wall nearby. Then a few 
  nights later he burns down a giant pile of 
  tires at a junkyard. His next target is a 
  riverboat casino, which is being remodeled 
  at the dock (no one is on board). Then he’ll 
  burn up a huge grinning fiberglass cow that 
  stands over a local milk distributor. 
  At each crime scene, he leaves a 
  clue as to his next target.  His ADD won’t let 
  him wait for more than a few minutes at the 
  scene for someone to come catch him, so 
  he tries to tip the PCs off in advance.    
  This is a precarious line for him to 
  walk.  He wants to get arrested, he doesn’t 
  want to harm anyone, but he has to keep 
  burning things to keep his pyromania 
  satisfied or he’ll give in and torch the zoo.  
  This is so frustrating for him that if the PCs 
  don’t catch him after a few tries, he’ll call 
  them on the phone and try to warn them 
  (obliquely, with hints) of where his next 
  target will be.  If they engage him in 
  conversation, he’ll actually explain the whole 
  thing.  But if they get into any kind of in-
  depth dialogue with him, he gets too excited 
  for his tenuous self-control to hold him back 
  any longer.  He explains this, regretfully, 
  and the PCs will have to race across town to 
  try and intercept him before he reaches the 
  zoo.   
  Whenever the PCs confront him in 
  person, he acts apologetic and ashamed, 
  but he will do his best to fight them off—he 
  finds the prospect too thrilling to resist.   
  Perhaps the most dangerous way of 
  all for the PCs to attempt to capture him is 
  to attack him unexpectedly in his lair.  The 
  partially-burnt building is a death-maze of 
  unstable floors, support beams on the verge 
  of collapse, stairways that will cave in if 
  stepped on and so forth. Doctor Scorch is 
  familiar with all these hazards and he will try 
  to use the terrain to his best advantage. If 
  taken by surprise he may also lash out with 
  more deadly force than he normally uses, 
  frying a superhero without really meaning 
  to. He’ll feel sorry if this happens, but that 
  probably won’t be of much comfort to his 
  victims. 
   
  2) Glory and Pain, Cusswad and Scorch 
  The Hand of Pain and Glory breaks 
  Doctor Scorch and another, lesser 
  supervillain (#$&*@!! The Cusswad Man 
  would be ideal, but use whichever low-
  powered villain you like) out of confinement. 
  No one knows why he has done this. Neither 
  one of them seems like they would be of 
  much use to him, or indeed to anyone. But 
  then again no one has ever understood the 
  Hand of Pain and Glory’s motivations. See 
  Page 31 to learn more about this enigmatic, 
  terrifying superhuman marauder.   
  The minor villain turns up dead in a 
  
   
  24
  dumpster within a week, but Doctor Scorch’s 
  whereabouts remain unknown. If the PCs 
  visit the haunts of the underworld and shake 
  down some stoolies, they find that no one 
  on the streets knows anything. 
  Then, Doctor Scorch suddenly 
  attacks a waterfront carnival.  When the PCs 
  arrive, he greets them cheerfully and says 
  that he’s glad to see them.  There isn’t 
  much time, he says, so he’d like them to 
  listen carefully.  Then he explains what’s 
  really going on. 
  The Hand of Pain and Glory broke 
  Doctor Scorch out of stir to create a 
  distraction while he robs a charity auction 
  across town.  Robbing a charity seems really 
  wrong to Doctor Scorch, so he’s decided to 
  screw the plan up.  He’s pretty good at 
  screwing things up—in fact it’s his only 
  really talent, he chuckles.  He didn’t want to 
  end up like @#$% (or whichever minor 
  villain the Hand broke out of prison) so he 
  had to wait until just now, while the Hand is 
  getting ready to rob the auction and doesn’t 
  have time to come kill him.  Dr. Scorch is 
  attacking the wrong target (“That guy 
  actually wanted me to burn down an 
  orphanage!” he notes with distaste) and 
  he’s going too early, so if the PCs hurry they 
  ought to be able to catch the Hand of Pain 
  and Glory in the act. 
  If they think to ask why the Hand 
  killed his other henchman, Doctor Scorch 
  tells them readily enough. The other guy 
  was supposed to create another diversion. 
  The reasons the Hand killed him depends on 
  which villain you’re using.  If he was a 
  hopeless untrustworthy goof-up like 
  #$&*@!! Then the Hand killed him for being 
  incompetent.  If he was anyone else, the 
  Hand killed him because he had some moral 
  qualms about robbing charities and burning 
  down orphanages.  In either case, it sent a 
  strong message to Doctor Scorch.  He’s 
  trying to screw things up in a way so that 
  the Hand can’t be entirely sure that it was 
  intentional, but even so he would very much 
  like to return to the safety of his 
  imprisonment. 
  The PCs now have a choice to 
  make.  Do they believe Doctor Scorch?  Do 
  they stay and fight him, knowing that 
  there’s no time to waste?  Can they afford 
  to divide their forces if they’re about to go 
  up against someone as tough as the Hand 
  of Pain and Glory? If one of the PCs knows a 
  lot about organized crime, mention that this 
  carnival is owned by the Mafia (Doctor 
  Scorch doesn’t know this), and see how that 
  complicates their decision-making. 
  If they tell Doctor Scorch to go turn 
  himself in, he looks nervous and says that 
  he’ll try. He’s tried that before and screwed 
  it up, but this time he thinks he can do it. 
  If the PCs let him go, he does in 
  fact attempt to surrender to the police. 
  Unfortunately, one of the arresting officers 
  is a crooked cop named “Big Chuck” O’Ryan 
  who works for the very same mob guys who 
  own the carnival, and he attempts to kill 
  Doctor Scorch on the spot. The Doctor flees, 
  wounded, convinced that he’s made his best 
  effort. 
  Meanwhile, on the other side of 
  town, the Hand of Pain and Glory prepares 
  to rob a charity auction. He’s so focused on 
  the task at hand that the PCs will take him 
  almost completely by surprise. 
  
   
  25
   
   
  Real Name: The Right Reverend Ezekiel 
  Strange 
  PL: 12 
   
  “With the Lord’s help I can free you 
  from the shackles of existence and 
  release your soul unto an eternity of 
  wondrous, happy torment.” 
   
  Str: 10 (+0) Dex: 12 (+1) Con: 18 (+4) 
  Int: 14 (+2) Wis: 20 (+5) Cha: 18 (+4) 
  Initiative: 1 Attack Bonus: 8 
  Defense: 9 Toughness Save: 4 Fortitude 
  Save: 4 Reflexes Save: 6 Willpower 
  Save: 12 
  Skills: Intimidate 12 (+16), Knowledge 
  (Arcane Lore) 7 (+9), Knowledge (Theology 
  and Philosophy) 2 (+4), Notice 6 (+11), 
  Perform (Oratory) 12 (+16), Stealth 6 (+7) 
  Feats:  Distract, Fascinate, Startle 
  Powers: Immunity (Aging, Cold 
  Environments, Disease, Hot Environments, 
  Starvation, Suffocation [no need to breathe 
  at all]), Insubstantial 4 (Still takes damage 
  from Magical attacks), Invisibility 8, 
  Magic 12 (Spells: Neutralize [only vs. 
  powers with a magical source]; Extras: 
  Alternate Powers: ESP, Mental Blast, 
  Summon, Teleportation), Mind Control 10 
  (Power Feat: Mental Link; Extra: Conscious), 
  Telepathy 10 
  Complications: Obsessed with vengeance, 
  Doesn't understand the 21st Century at all. 
  Drawbacks: Disabled (Functional Illiterate, 
  can barely read, and can make no sense at 
  all of things written in 21st century dialect; 
  Minor, Common) 
  Background: A frighteningly proper and 
  polite Victorian Satanist, who once stalked 
  the plains of the Old West, spreading 
  carnage, havoc and woe.  It took a 
  desperate alliance of the 19th century's 
  greatest heroes to send his soul down to 
  perdition, and he took more than one of 
  them with him.  Now the Right Reverend 
  Ezekiel Strange walks the earth once more 
  and who can save us now?  
  Obsessed with vengeance, he 
  clawed his way up out of Hell to show his 
  enemies the burning glory of his wroth.  
  Unfortunately, they're all long dead, so he 
  will have to content himself with raining 
  destruction down on their descendants. He 
  wants them all to die, but first he wants 
  them to see everything they love fall into 
  ruins.  He wants them to know shame, 
  humiliation and bitter hopeless grief.  
  This may take him a while to 
  accomplish, for he has no idea how the 21st 
  century works and no desire to learn.  He 
  can of course kill their friends and 
  household pets, or set their barn on fire, but 
  he'd also like to have them arrested for 
  awful crimes or watch a cause that they 
  believe in fail.   
  With no idea how to accomplish 
  anything that subtle, he'll probably make 
  some kind of alliance with another villain, 
  offering to aid them with some evil project 
  of their own in exchange for their 
  assistance.  
  Using Reverend Strange in Your 
  Campaign: The Reverend Ezekiel Strange 
  works best as a personal nemesis for a 
  
   
  26
  player character whose family has produced 
  adventurers for generations, or one who has 
  inherited the mantle of some hero from the 
  distant past.  He'll start in on them slowly, 
  with threats and ominous dreams, then start 
  to attack the people close to them.  Perhaps 
  he'll fall in with another villain who will try to 
  make the PC's life miserable in subtler ways.  
  One of Strange's favorite tricks is to send a 
  character some hideous dream and then let 
  them find his boot prints in the dust outside 
  their window when they wake.  
  In person he is an eerie presence, 
  always unctuous and polite in a peculiarly 
  19th century way.  Never rude, he speaks 
  largely in pious platitudes even while he is 
  torturing someone to death. He doesn't 
  breathe, and if you look hard you can faintly 
  see through him. While he does quote 
  Scripture, the passages he recites seldom 
  have anything to do with what is going on, 
  and are often weirdly at variance with his 
  behavior.   
  While Reverend Strange is well 
  educated for an itinerant 19th century 
  preacher, he's surprisingly ignorant by the 
  standards of most 21st century occultists.  
  He learned his craft from the witch women 
  of the Tennessee hills and voodoo priests on 
  the Bayou, not from reading books. He does 
  not know that the earth goes around the 
  sun and he's never heard of William 
  Shakespeare.  While he knows much of the 
  Bible by heart he can barely read.   
  In combat he relies heavily on his 
  power to call shambling horrors up from the 
  abyss, but he has plenty of other tricks if he 
  needs them 
   
  Adventures With Reverend Strange: 1) 
  Book Club of the Damned  
  Ezekiel Strange awakens, eager for 
  revenge and unsure how to get it. After a 
  few bewildering encounters with the modern 
  world, he realizes that he’s going to need 
  help navigating its weird and treacherous 
  paths. He falls in with Selina the Beautiful 
  Teenaged Witch, perhaps the only person in 
  existence who could actually manage to be 
  a bad influence on him.  
  Selina has a plan, and there’s a 
  perfect place for the Reverend in it.  Selina 
  has made his new home in a conservative 
  suburb where a large number of Christian 
  fundamentalists live. It’s the kind of place 
  where the nearest adult bookstore is miles 
  away and burned down mysteriously just 
  after it opened. He grabs a local grade 
  school administrator named Abigail Tidely, 
  and makes her his slave. Under Selina’s 
  mental domination, Mrs. Tidely gets access 
  to the school psychologist’s files and gives 
  Selina the names of all the happiest and 
  best-adjusted children (Selina wants to do 
  as much harm as possible, so it’s better to 
  hurt nice, carefree, happy kids). Not very 
  many of them are from “Christian” families, 
  which happens to dovetail neatly with the 
  plan. 
  Selina sends Reverend Strange out 
  to harass and terrorize these children and 
  their families. He’ll appear in their 
  backyards, on the playground or at the mall 
  and ask the kids if Jesus Christ has saved 
  them. He gets increasingly ominous and 
  threatening with each appearance, and he’ll 
  start telling the kids and their parents that 
  he’s going to take the children away to his 
  Sunday School far off in the woods, where a 
  beautiful lady will instruct them.  
  No one but the people he is 
  harassing can actually see the Reverend.  
  The police scoff at the parents, their 
  neighbors start to wonder about them.  
  Two of the families the Reverend is 
  menacing are Hindu and one is Jewish, 
  which increases their sense of isolation as 
  the local authorities refuse to do anything 
  about the problem. Finally the terrified 
  parents bring in the Player Characters to 
  protect their kids. 
  If the PCs talk to the neighborhood 
  children, they can get a good solid lead 
  almost immediately. Everyone in school 
  knows that Mrs. Tidely, the fat, talkative, 
  kindhearted “Office Lady” has been getting 
  in terrible accidents at her book club 
  meetings. Every week she comes to work 
  missing another body part.   
  Selina the Beautiful Teenaged Witch 
  hosts Mrs. Tidely’s book club in a burnt-out 
  adult bookstore some miles away. Mrs. 
  Tidely doesn’t realize that her fellow book 
  club members are corpses and half-melted 
  blow-up dolls and doesn’t think it odd that 
  they’re studying books like “The King in 
  
   
  27
  Yellow” and the Marquis de Sade’s “Justine.” 
  At each meeting Selina cuts off another one 
  of her parts, cooks it and eats it. She’s 
  already missing three fingers, a foot and 
  one eye by the time the PCs meet her.  
  She has no idea how she can keep getting 
  in all these accidents, but she likes the book 
  club all the same.  
  Completely unaware that anything 
  unpleasant is going on, she’ll happily lead 
  the PCs to her next book club meeting if 
  they ask, where they can surprise the 
  Reverend and the Witch just as they 
  prepare to make off with the children and 
  sacrifice them to who-knows-what awful, 
  unclean gods. 
   
  Here are some stats for Selina’s 
  latest (and most fabulous) creation. 
   
  Animated Blow-Up Love Doll (Lightly 
  Toasted) 
  PL: 3 
  Str: 14 (+2) Dex: 10 (+0) Con: -(n/a) Int: 
  - (n/a) Wis: 10 (+0) Cha: 10 (+0) 
  Initiative: 0 Attack Bonus: 3 
  Defense: 3 Toughness Save: 3 (+0 
  flatfooted) Fortitude Save: n/a  Reflexes 
  Save: 2 Willpower Save: 2 
  Skills: Notice 5 (+5), Stealth 8 (+8) 
  Feats: Defensive Roll 3, Diehard, Fearsome 
  Presence 3, Improved Grapple, Sneak 
  Attack, Startle 
  Powers: Immunity 30 (all Fortitude effects) 
   
  2) Vengeance is Mine, Saith the—
  Wha?!   
  Ezekiel Strange performs some ugly 
  favors for the Selina the Beautiful Teenage 
  Witch. In exchange, Selina explains to him 
  where the descendant of one of his old 19th 
  century foes can be found. The GM should 
  invent a hero from the Old West with a 
  costume and powers much like one of the 
  PCs. They also had the same last name.  
  Unfortunately, this is all just a 
  coincidence. Selina doesn’t really know 
  where any of the Reverend’s targets live and 
  if he did, he wouldn’t tell him. Instead he 
  just picked someone who looked like a good 
  match.  
  The Reverend appears below the 
  PC’s window at night, clouding their dreams 
  with horror. He will start to stalk their loved 
  ones, next. However, in the course of 
  tormenting them from afar, he lets them 
  know his motives for destroying them. If 
  they can prove to him that they really aren’t 
  related to anyone he ever fought, he won’t 
  quite know what to do next. He’s so weird 
  and otherworldly that the Player Characters 
  may not realize just how shaken and baffled 
  he is. But in fact he’s completely knocked 
  for a loop, despite his creepy and 
  unwavering smile. Utterly flummoxed and 
  bewildered, he’ll betray Selina’s location to 
  the PCs and vanish.  
  Selina the Teenage Witch presently 
  resides in a condemned building that was 
  once a home for wayward boys, before it 
  was shut down for lack of funds. He loves 
  the way misery seeps out of every crack in 
  its decaying walls, the way children’s’ tears 
  have watered every inch of its sagging 
  floors. He has decorated the halls so that it 
  always seems to be Halloween there, and 
  taken up residence in the headmaster’s 
  office.  
  When they track him down, Selina 
  the Beautiful Teenage Witch will gleefully 
  tell them what he did to the poor old 
  Reverend, and explain just how naïve and 
  incapable of coping with the modern world 
  the old fool really is.   
  Once Selina is wounded enough to 
  be easy prey, Reverend Strange suddenly 
  appears and attacks everybody, anxious not 
  to be cheated of his vengeance against the 
  one who deceived him. Whether the PCs 
  leave these two monsters to destroy each 
  other is entirely up to them.  
   
  3) Tales From the House of Phelps 
  Thoroughly sick of the 21st Century, 
  frustrated in pursuing his vengeance at 
  every turn, Reverend Strange reassesses his 
  approach, and comes up with an entirely 
  new plan.   
  Back in his own epoch, there was a 
  mysterious sorcerer named Cadmaeon 
  Phelps, who lived in a windowless house on 
  a fog-shrouded island in Puget Sound.  
  Phelps claimed to be the keeper of a 
  doorway through time, which led to some 
  distant point in the future.  If Ezekiel 
  Strange can find Phelps and his weird, 
  
   
  28
  windowless manse, he might be able to 
  escape this benighted epoch and return to 
  his own time, where he could wreak 
  vengeance on his enemies directly, instead 
  of contenting himself with their 
  descendants.   
  Phelps is long dead and his house 
  has been razed to make way for the large 
  and tasteless mansion of an aerospace 
  tycoon.  But the doorway is still there, 
  buried inside a wall behind one of the 
  upstairs bedroom closets.  Sometimes faint 
  creaking sounds from Phelps’ wooden house 
  in the 19th century come faintly out of the 
  wall (although you’d have to be standing in 
  the closet to hear them).  
  Word reaches the Player Characters 
  of an evil haunting at a mansion in Puget 
  Sound.  If any of them have fought 
  Reverend Strange before, they know at once 
  that it’s him.  What is he up to?  Then, just 
  as they’re getting ready to investigate, they 
  are contacted by a lawyer from a venerable 
  San Francisco firm.  One of the firm’s early 
  clients, a Mr. Cadmaeon Phelps, left a set of 
  documents with instructions to deliver them 
  to the Player Characters on a certain date in 
  the 21st century.  It was an eccentric 
  request, but the firm obeys its clients 
  without question.  The lawyer is amazed 
  and a little awestruck that the instructions 
  actually worked.  Mr. Phelps knew just 
  where to find the PCs on this particular day.   
  The papers explain the whole story, 
  (although Phelps is pretty vague about how 
  he found the doorway through time in the 
  first place and why he’s protecting it—but 
  these secrets don’t matter for the adventure 
  at hand).  By looking into the future Phelps 
  has seen that Reverend Strange is going to 
  come through the door into his house, that 
  he will fight the Reverend valiantly but that 
  he will lose and die, and that the PCs will 
  then come through the door in hot pursuit, 
  just a little too late to save him. He has left 
  the PCs maps, equipment, and everything 
  he knows about Reverend Strange’s targets 
  in the 19th Century, hidden in a secret room.  
  It’s off to the Wild West for the PCs, 
  to stop Reverend Strange before he 
  destroys their past.  But they’re going to 
  have to be careful not to affect the past too 
  badly themselves!  
  We’re leaving the specifics of what 
  they find in the 19th Century purposefully 
  vague, so as to let it fit your campaign 
  history better.  Was the Wild West the home 
  of mad scientists, hooded master criminals 
  and supernatural evil?  Did masked 
  avengers ride the plains, upholding the law 
  and dealing out two-gun justice? Or was the 
  19th century a more sedate time, before the 
  age of superheroes?  Is it cartoonish and 
  dirt-free, like a B Western from the 1950s, 
  or is it gritty, smelly and real, like 
  “Deadwood” and “Unforgiven”? That’s up to 
  you and your particular campaign style.   
  We’re also going to leave the 
  question of time paradoxes relatively open, 
  to give you more flexibility.  Ideally the PCs 
  should be cognizant of and worried about 
  changing things too much through their 
  intervention, but you don’t want them to 
  freak out over every blade of grass they 
  crush.  Of course, being able to monkey 
  with the continuity like this could also create 
  some opportunities for an enterprising GM.  
  This could be a good excuse for the GM to 
  adjust some element of their campaign 
  world, by letting the PCs “accidentally” 
  modify history a little.  Call it a continuity 
  update. Having them worried about 
  changing the past is an excellent way to 
  make the PCs act with more restraint in a 
  world where virtually everyone has a vastly 
  lower PL than they do.  There may actually 
  be a couple of PL 10 gunfighters or Indian 
  shamans out there somewhere, but there 
  probably aren’t guys in the Old West who 
  can shoot laser beams out of their eyeballs 
  and leap tall buildings with a single bound.  
  Unless of course, the GM decides that Paul 
  Bunyan, Pecos Bill and the rest of the 
  legendary folk heroes from America’s tall 
  tales were real…  
  Although he’s already dead by the 
  time the PCs arrive, on the next page we 
  have some stats on Cadmaeon Phelps, in 
  case you need them, as well as a generic 
  cowboy and a PL10 Anti-Hero. 
   
  
   
  29
  Cadmaeon Phelps 
  PL: 9 
  Str: 8 (-1) Dex: 16 (+3) Con: 12 (+1) Int: 
  18 (+4) Wis: 20 (+5) Cha: 16 (+3) 
  Initiative: 3 Attack Bonus: 8 
  Defense: 8 Toughness Save: 1 Fortitude 
  Save: 5 Reflexes Save: 5 Willpower 
  Save: 9 
  Skills: Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 10 (+14), 
  Knowledge (Current Events—of the Twenty-
  First Century!) 8 (+12), Languages 
  (Spanish), Notice 6 (+11), Performance 
  (Oratory) 10 (+13), Profession (teller of 
  creepy tales) +9, Stealth 7 (+10) 
  Feats: Fascinate, Ritualist 
  Powers: Magic 7 (Spells: ESP, Illusion, 
  Summon, Teleportation, Telepathy), Super-
  Senses 8 (Darkvision, Detect Invisible Astral 
  Presences, Time Sense, Precognition) 
  Equipment: Headquarters (Size: Small; 
  Toughness 15; Features and Powers: 
  Concealment [forever shrouded in mist], 
  Dock [it looks ancient and rickety but is in 
  fact perfectly solid], Isolated Location [at 
  least it was isolated in the 19th Century, 
  before the Seattle suburbs spread out this 
  far], an alchemical Laboratory, a first rate 
  occult Library, Living Space for up to 9 
  people, Security System [the spirits that 
  haunt the house come tell him if there are 
  any intruders, Arcane Lore Roll vs. DC 20 to 
  disable this feature and sneak inside 
  undetected], Super-Movement [Temporal 
  Movement; Extra: Portal; Weakness: 
  Limited, Time portal only leads to one 
  period]), Rusty Shovel (Melee Weapon, 3 
  Damage). 
  Complications: Forbidden to ever leave 
  the House of Windowless Rooms. 
  Background: Phelps likes to accost astral 
  travelers and tell them scary stories he’s 
  observed from his studies of the future.  PCs 
  may actually have encountered him before 
  in their dreams and heard some of his 
  “Tales From the House of Windowless 
  Rooms.” He’s not a bad fellow, though—just 
  a little peculiar (and prone to overusing the 
  phrase “heh-heh-heh!”) 
  Generic Wild West Gunfighter/Cowboy 
  PL: 5 
  Str: 12 (+1) Dex: 16 (+3) Con: 12 (+1) 
  Int: 10 (+0) Wis: 16 (+3) Cha: 10 (+0) 
  Initiative: 7 Attack Bonus: 6 Defense: 6 
  Toughness Save: 5 (+1 flatfooted) 
  Fortitude Save: 5 Reflexes Save: 5 
  Willpower Save: 5 
  Skills: Climb 5 (+6), Intimidate 3 (+3), 
  Handle Animal 5 (+5), Notice 8 (+12), 
  Profession (Cowboy) 5 (+5), Ride 7 (+10), 
  Stealth 7 (+10), Survival 7 (+10) 
  Feats: Defensive Roll 4, Equipment 1 (5 
  pts. of equipment), Improved Aim, 
  Improved Critical (With pistol), Improved 
  Initaitive, Quick Draw, Sidekick (Horse), 
  Track 
  Equipment: Pistol (Ranged Weapon, 3 
  Damage), Survival Gear, Horse 
   
  The Two-Gun Kid 
  PL: 10 
  Str: 12 (+1) Dex: 20 (+5) Con: 16 (+3) 
  Int: 14 (+2) Wis: 16 (+3) Cha: 16 (+3) 
  Initiative: 14 Attack Bonus: 8 (10 with 
  pistols) Defense: 10 (5 if unable to Dodge) 
  Toughness Save: 8 (+3 flatfooted) 
  Fortitude Save: 10 Reflexes Save: 10 
  Willpower Save: 5 
  Skills: Bluff 10 (+13), Climb 5 (+6), 
  Intimidate 3 (+6), Handle Animal 5 (+5), 
  Notice 9 (+12), Perform (Singing) 3 (+6), 
  Perform (Stringed Instrument) 4 (+7), 
  Profession (Cowboy) 5 (+7), Ride 7 (+10), 
  Stealth 7 (+12), Survival 7 (+10) 
  Feats: Ambidextrous, Attractive, Attack 
  Focus (Pistols), Defensive Roll 5, Dodge 
  Focus 5, Equipment 1 (5 pts. of equipment), 
  Fearless, Improved Aim, Improved Critical 
  (With pistol), Improved Initaitive 2, Quick 
  Draw, Sneak Attack, Startle, Taunt, Track, 
  Uncanny Dodge 
  Equipment: Two Pistols (Ranged Weapon, 
  3 Damage), Survival Gear, Horse 
  Complications: Trigger-happy sociopath, 
  desperate to be liked. 
  
   
  30
   
   
   
   
  Real Name: Philbert Skutch 
  PL: 13 
   
  “You’re crazy. You need shock 
  treatment.” 
   
  Str: 12 (+1) Dex: 14 (+2) Con: 18 (+4) 
  Int: 18 (+4) Wis: 16 (+3) Cha: 6 (-2) 
  Initiative: 2 Attack Bonus:13  
  Defense: 7 Toughness Save: 4 
  Fortitude Save: 4 Reflexes Save: 4 
  Willpower Save: 5  
  Skills: Craft (electronics)12 (+16), Disable 
  Device 14 (+18), Knowledge (technology) 
  14 (+18) 
  Feats: Fearless 
  Powers: Deflect 13 (Energy Attacks; 
  Extras: Action, Reflection, Redirection; 
  Flaws: Only Works on Electrical Attacks), 
  Electrical Control 13 (Extras: Area, Selective 
  Attack; Power Feats: Alternate Powers 
  [Auditory Dazzle, Visual Dazzle], Indirect), 
  Flight 8, Nullify 15 (Electrical powers, 
  electrically powered equipment and devices; 
  Extras: Nullifying Field, Selective), Strike 13 
  (Extra: Aura), Super-Senses 2 (Detect 
  Electromagnetism in a 360 degree redius) 
  Complications: Obsessive collector.  Will 
  do anything to pursue his all-consuming 
  hobby. 
  Drawbacks: Hideously disfigured (very 
  common, moderate) -4pts 
  Background: A petty, obsessive, alienated 
  control freak who commands the forces of 
  the lightning.  Imagine the worst, strangest, 
  most angry and impossible ham radio 
  enthusiast you’ve ever encountered.  Now 
  make him weirder, more obsessed with 
  trivia and harder to deal with.  Now give him 
  the power to shoot lightning bolts out of his 
  eyeballs.  That’s the 50,000 Volt Phantom. 
  An electrical engineer by training, 
  Philbert Skutch was always a fiend for juice. 
  He built electric chairs in his garage that 
  would give him bigger and bigger non-lethal 
  jolts of electricity, and one night he finally 
  went too far, slamming himself with a pulse 
  that should have killed five or six men.  It 
  felt like rapture.  It felt like paradise.   
  As his soul hung there on the verge 
  of the afterlife, the Gods of the Lightning 
  came to him.  They were impressed with his 
  sacrifice and wanted to reward his devotion.  
  He returned to his body, horribly burned but 
  able to control electricity.   
  Badly disfigured by the accident that 
  gave him his powers, Philbert blames his 
  mutilated face for his inability to fit in with 
  normal society.  This is missing the big 
  picture, to put it mildly, but then again the 
  big picture has never been his strong suit.  
  In fact anyone who gets to know him at all 
  will find that his scorched face is the least of 
  his unappealing features.   
  The 50,000 Volt Phantom pursues a 
  weird collector’s hobby, stealing relics of 
  Edison, Tesla, and the other pioneers of 
  Electricity.  His enemies tend to 
  misunderstand the nature of his interest and 
  
   
  31
  assume that he’s either searching for some 
  kind of incredible lost scientific secrets, or 
  that he somehow derives his powers from 
  these objects, like a kind of electrical 
  shaman.  In fact he’s just an obsessed fan.  
  He loves their machines best of all, but he’s 
  just as likely to try stealing Edison’s old 
  coffee table or a pair of Alexander Graham 
  Bell’s socks.   
  Extremely trying company, he 
  knows all kinds of incredible things about 
  electricity, but he won’t stop talking about 
  the subject and he’ll get dangerously 
  agitated if he senses even the faintest 
  disagreement. Constantly correcting people, 
  he’ll never let up on someone if he thinks 
  they’re wrong. Even if they admit that he 
  was right, he’ll keep berating them about it 
  and may become violent.   
   
  Using the 50,000 Volt Phantom in Your 
  Campaign:  A supernatural master villain 
  with a very specific focus, the 50,000 Volt 
  Phantom works best for the most kind of 
  traditional superhero adventure—an arch-
  villain wants to steal some valuable object 
  and the PCs must foil his sinister scheme.  
  His choice of objects is a little peculiar, but 
  he still fits this basic model. 
  While he’s not especially interested 
  in hurting people, he can become incredibly 
  vindictive over tiny matters. Philbert never 
  really tries to hit anyone with lethal force, 
  he just wants to punish them or get them 
  out of his way.  However, he also doesn’t 
  care very much if they die. 
  He won’t torture people for 
  information and it won’t occur to him to take 
  hostages.  Apart from this, he has no limits. 
  He’ll hit people who are weaker than he is 
  without hesitation, he’ll hit targets in the 
  back, he’ll hit opponents who are already 
  trying to surrender, if he’s annoyed with 
  them. 
  When he attacks a site, his first 
  move is almost always to shut down its 
  electrical power and plunge it into darkness.  
  He knows an amazing amount about 
  electrical engineering and has an 
  encyclopedic knowledge of the function and 
  stress tolerances of most electronic 
  components, which makes it easy for him to 
  use his powers to cause whatever kind of 
  blackout his plan requires. 
  When he isn’t stealing things, he 
  spends a lot of time on the internet 
  discussing the history of electrical appliances 
  and trading trivia with other obsessed 
  collectors.  Woe to the hapless nerd who 
  insults him or contradicts him in this arena.  
  He isn’t above hunting them down in real 
  life.  Most of all he hates guys who claim to 
  be the 50,000 Volt Phantom in order to 
  intimidate other guys on the discussion 
  boards.   
  Because of the high-profile targets 
  he attacks, he’s famous out of all proportion 
  to the level of threat he actually presents.  
  He is personally responsible for the 
  Department of the Interior closing the 
  Edison Lab National Historic Site, and 
  relocating its collection elsewhere.  The 
  Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Nova 
  Scotia waits nervously for his first assault.  
  The papers revel in his exploits and paint 
  him as a mad genius bent on who-knows-
  what kind of sinister electric mayhem.  
  Whenever the PCs go up against him they 
  should know in advance that this is an 
  infamous arch-villain of the first rank (this 
  helps build extra suspense).  The truth is far 
  sadder and shabbier, but then again isn’t it 
  always? 
   
  Adventures With the 50,000 Volt 
  Phantom: 
   
  1) Tesla’s Ghost 
  The 50,000 Volt Phantom gets a 
  lead on some artifacts of the strange 
  electrical pioneer Nikolai Tesla—including his 
  schematics for some kind of death ray!  A 
  software billionaire named Wilbur Schenk 
  has just acquired them and he can’t resist 
  dropping a boastful hint about it on one of 
  the Early Electronics discussion boards.  He 
  regrets it almost at once, and when he looks 
  into the matter a little more carefully, he 
  finds that he has cause to panic.  The 
  person who goaded him into dropping the 
  hint signs onto the board as 
  zzzzyyx423@zzzzyyx.net This is almost 
  certainly the same person who used to post 
  as both 426225124423@8166.net and 
  zapz4all@zapzap.net Anyone who ever 
  insulted or provoked a fight with either of 
  
   
  32
  those posters has since been attacked by 
  the 50,000 Volt Phantom.  It seems all too 
  likely that zzzzyyx423 is the Phantom 
  himself, and that he will be coming for 
  Tesla’s death ray soon. 
  Which brings Schenk to something 
  of a personal crisis.  He is desperate not to 
  be taken for a nerd.  He dresses in black, he 
  wears a ponytail, he has hired an actor who 
  resembles him but looks cooler to 
  impersonate him in public.  If he reveals to 
  the authorities that he spends his time 
  posting on shortwave radio and early 
  electronics boards, the image he has built so 
  carefully will be shattered.  So instead he 
  brings in the Player Characters.  If they 
  confront him about how selfish and childish 
  this is, he whines that they don’t understand 
  just how rich a guy like him has to be before 
  quality women will even look at him.   
  Schenk has an isolated, ultra-high-
  tech estate on an island off the coast or 
  Oregon, full of amazing electronic gizmos 
  that will be worse than useless once the 
  50,000 Volt Phantom shows up.  And the 
  Phantom is in fact on his way.  He doesn’t 
  care about the death ray (which doesn’t 
  work anyway) he’s after Tesla’s eyeglasses.  
  “For this will prove to everyone on the 
  boards that the guys who claim the 
  Smithsonian has the glasses are fools!  The 
  hour of retribution is at hand! Mwa-ha-ha-
  ha-ha!” 
   
  2) The Phantom Strikes at Midnight 
  The moment that the Alexander 
  Graham Bell Museum has long feared is now 
  approaching.  125 years ago, Bell founded 
  his private laboratory on one of the hills 
  above where the museum now stands.  It 
  would be almost impossible for the 50,000 
  Volt Phantom to resist making an 
  appearance at the anniversary. He didn't 
  have his powers yet when the lab turned 
  100 years old and this is the first major 
  anniversary he has had a chance to attend. 
  No doubt he has something extra-special 
  planned to mark the event.   
  Desperate for help, the museum 
  asks the Canadian government for aid, and 
  they in turn request international assistance 
  (or alternatively, if they're not the kind of 
  team who would get called in to assist the 
  Canadians, they figure all this out for 
  themselves and decide to lay a trap for the 
  Phantom on their own).   
  The museum is located in an odd 
  place, outside the tiny resort town of 
  Baddeck in Nova Scotia, by the Bras-d'Or 
  Lakes.  It's a remote location, off in the 
  woods, hundreds of miles away from the 
  nearest large city.  Stark looking mountains 
  loom above the cold deep water of the lake, 
  few cars are seen on the road.  Baddeck 
  itself is a one-lane town of bed-and-
  breakfasts and quaint gift shops; just a dot 
  in the wilderness.   
  The museum is located some 
  distance out of town, up a winding road 
  through the trees.  It's a low, wide, 
  sprawling one-story brick building, with an 
  amazing collection of artifacts from Bell's 
  varied life and career spread leisurely down 
  a number of meandering halls. 
  Few people realize the full scope of 
  the man's work.  You can see displays of the 
  phonetic alphabet he invented for the 
  Iroquois Indians and photos of a heroic 
  looking young Bell in full ceremonial 
  headdress being initiated into their tribe.  
  You can see the "photophone" which 
  transmitted the sound of the human voice 
  through the air on a beam of light, decades 
  before the invention of radio.  You can see 
  the innumerable flying machines he 
  invented and tested on Bras d'Or lake and 
  endless photographs of the older Bell 
  playing with his grandchildren on the beach.  
  His pioneering work on genetics is profiled 
  as well.  On one wall, without any caption or 
  explanation, hangs a statue of an enormous 
  goat’s head.   
  Outside the museum one can gaze 
  up into the forbidding hills and see a rocky 
  promontory jutting out into the lake.  The 
  Bell family still owns that entire stretch of 
  land, and their mansion is up there 
  somewhere, in the forest.  Bell's last 
  granddaughter, Alberta, now in her 90s, still 
  goes there every summer, sitting in the 
  huge house above the lake by herself.   
  Bell's tomb is up there too, in a circle of 
  giant sycamore trees, at the highest point 
  on the promontory.   
  Guarding the big, spread-out 
  museum may pose certain logistical 
  
   
  33
  challenges.  Hundreds of strange and 
  obscure artifacts are on display.  Which one 
  does the 50,000 Volt Phantom intend to 
  steal?  Where should the PCs concentrate 
  their forces?   
  The GM should make an effort to 
  build tension as the fateful hour approaches.  
  Use the wild and somber landscape, with its 
  deep dark lake, brooding forests and 
  constant drizzling rain to convey a sense of 
  menace.  Ideally the PCs should be jumping 
  at every shadow by the time the Phantom 
  actually does show up.  In the middle of the 
  cold, wet night, a blazing figure flies past 
  high overhead.  The PCs can only glimpse 
  him intermittently with the heavy cloud 
  cover, but he seems to be coming in for a 
  landing at the museum.  Then he suddenly 
  changes course and gains altitude. He's 
  heading for the high, forested spit of land 
  where the Bell mansion supposedly lies.  
  Does he intend to attack the mansion and 
  do some terrible harm to poor Alberta Bell?   
  Instead he will land at the highest 
  point on the promontory, among the giant 
  sycamores, and attempt to place a single 
  rose on Bell's tomb.  The Phantom will then 
  stand in silent reverie for a minute or so (-4 
  to any rolls he makes to hear or spot Player 
  Characters sneaking up on him). He will not 
  be pleased to have such a private moment 
  interrupted. 
   
   
  
   
  34
   
   
   
  Real Name: Larry Stickle (previously 
  Russell Wayne Boone, and before that Tyler 
  Strang) 
  PL: 14 
   
  “Plan?!  We walk in, we take the 
  money, we walk out.  And we kill a lot 
  of people.  A whole lot of people, if 
  we’re lucky.” 
   
  Str: 14 (+2) Dex: 12 (+1) Con: 16 (+3) 
  Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 16 (+3) Cha: 16 (+3) 
  Initiative: 2 Attack Bonus:13  
  Defense: 14 Toughness Save: 14 with 
  Force Field, 3 without Fortitude Save: 8 
  Reflexes Save: 8 Willpower Save: 6  
  Skills: Bluff 8 (+11), Gather Information 6 
  (+8), Intimidate 10 (+13), Knowledge 
  (Streetwise) 9 (+10), Notice 4 (+7), 
  Profession (Bank Robber) 4 (+5), Search 5 
  (+5), Sense Motive 6 (+9) 
  Feats: All-Out Attack, Move-By Action, 
  Power Attack, Sneak Attack, Startle, Taunt 
  Powers: Device 36 (Eye of Rage and 
  Splendour, conveys the following powers: 
  Blast 15 [Extras: Area, Selective], ESP 10 
  [Visual and Auditory], Flight 10, Force Field 
  14 [Extras: Impervious, Selective], Dazzle 
  [Visual] 15, Immunity 9 [Life Support], Mind 
  Shield 10, Sensory Protection 5, Super-
  Senses 3 [Danger Sense, Darkvision]) 
  Background: In the summer of the year 
  2000, the world watched in horror as a 
  supervillain attacked the Olympic Games in 
  Atlanta, killing dozens of spectators before 
  being driven off by the combined efforts of a 
  superhero group and three members of the 
  Turkish Olympic weightlifting team. The so-
  called “Hand of Pain and Glory” vanished in 
  the aftermath of the attacks, and one of the 
  largest manhunts in American history has 
  still failed to find him, five years later.  
  There was speculation that he might have 
  sought refuge with a white supremacist 
  gang or other anti-internationalist group 
  somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, but no 
  such link was ever proved. Frankly his 
  motives for attacking the games remain 
  mysterious.  The remarks he made at the 
  scene didn’t reveal any kind of political 
  agenda—he was just raving about how 
  powerful he was and how wonderful it is to 
  feel anguish and pain. 
  DNA samples taken at the scene of 
  the crime don’t match anyone in the federal 
  government’s files, so whoever he is, he 
  hasn’t been arrested in the last ten years 
  and may not have any criminal record at all.  
  To add to the government’s annoyance, he 
  has resurfaced no less than eight times 
  since his disappearance.  Each time he robs 
  a bank and vanishes again. There is no 
  geographic pattern to these attacks.  He has 
  hit banks everywhere from Glendale Arizona 
  to Portland Maine to suburban Chicago.  
  He’s coming to the Player Characters’ home 
  city next. 
  The truth about the Hand of Pain 
  and Glory is much stranger than the 
  authorities suspect.  His powers derive from 
  an artifact called “The Eye of Rage and 
  Splendor,” which he carries in his fist.  It’s a 
  little like a gemstone, although its lines meet 
  at impossible, brain-punishing angles and it 
  pulses with a dull red light.   
  It’s unclear where the original Hand 
  of Pain and Glory found the Eye (to make it 
  easier to work into your campaign’s deep 
  background) but it slowly drove him insane.  
  His name was Tyler Strang.  A survivalist 
  from Idaho, Strang was a member of a tax-
  
   
  35
  resistance militia called the “Invisible Army 
  of the Lord.”  Not a white supremacist 
  himself. Strang was more of an anti-taxation 
  kook with a head full of conspiracy theories 
  about the Federal Reserve.  A hermit, he 
  didn’t live in the Invisible Army’s compound.  
  While he turned up at their meetings he 
  largely kept to himself. 
  Some time in late 1999, as the 
  Invisible Army prepared itself for the Y2K 
  bug to destroy the world, Tyler Strang 
  presented himself to the Army’s leader, 
  Harmon White, and demonstrated his 
  superhuman powers to him.  White was 
  delighted and deeply impressed—his Army 
  now had an honest-to-God superhero in its 
  ranks.  And just in the nick of time!  The 
  Y2K bug was about to annihilate civilization. 
  A few months later the world had 
  failed to end and the Invisible Army of the 
  Lord was in a state of collapse.  In fact the 
  whole Militia movement was in upheaval—
  the world hadn’t ended.  The Y2K bug was a 
  joke.  Their leaders had been wrong.  
  People had sold their farms and stockpiled 
  guns and in some cases killed themselves 
  and/or their families and it was all for 
  nothing.   
  Harmon White desperately struggled 
  to keep his group together, but nothing 
  could stop the inevitable.  He had made 
  them look like fools.  By midsummer he had 
  lapsed into a drunken, suicidal depression 
  and begun driving away the few friends he 
  had left.  His second in command, a career 
  criminal named Russell Wayne Boone, stuck 
  by him, but that was because Russell was a 
  wanted man and had nowhere else to hide.   
  White chased off Tyler Strang in a 
  drunken rage, but Tyler determined to 
  remain loyal to the cause.  By summer he 
  came up with a plan that would be sure to 
  bring the Army back together—something 
  no one would ever forget.  The Olympics 
  were right at the center of the 
  Internationalist Conspiracy, plus the place 
  was sure to be crawling with dirty 
  foreigners.  Tyler would destroy this symbol 
  of Internationalist Treason and show the 
  world that valiant America was too wise to 
  be deceived by the One World Government.  
  He wanted to tell Harmon White about his 
  plan, but by this stage Harmon would talk to 
  no one but Russell. 
  For his part, Russell seemed 
  intrigued and he assured Tyler that they 
  would hide him in their half-deserted 
  compound once he brought the Olympics to 
  its knees.  After Tyler staggered back to 
  Idaho, beaten and bloodied, Russell was as 
  good as his word.  He shot Tyler in the back 
  of the head and buried him next to Harmon 
  White under the compound’s privy.  Then he 
  took the Eye of Rage and Splendor for 
  himself. 
  Russell was a full-time supervillain 
  for the next three years.  He used to hide 
  out in the decrepit Idaho compound when 
  the heat was particularly fierce, but for the 
  most part he just lay low in his old criminal 
  haunts, staying with one or another gang of 
  robbers and drug addicts until he ran out of 
  money.  Then he would rob another bank. 
  Nobody ever betrayed his whereabouts, 
  mostly because everyone was terrified of 
  him.  Last year he got murdered in his sleep 
  by a guy who owed him money, so for the 
  past eighteen months or so the Hand of Pain 
  and Glory has been a maniacal, hair trigger 
  killer named Larry Stickle. 
  Like Russell, Larry kept the name 
  and costume of the Hand of Pain and Glory, 
  because he likes the notoriety it brings.  If 
  he makes up his own supervillain identity, 
  then he’s just another new super-criminal 
  struggling to get his career started. But if he 
  doesn’t change anything, then he’s the Hand 
  of Pain and Glory, one of the most feared 
  men in the country, who has made fools of 
  the federal authorities for years.  
  Larry pursues more or less the same 
  lifestyle as Russell, although he has found to 
  his surprise that there are plenty of people 
  all across the country who sympathize with 
  the attack on the Olympics, see the Hand of 
  Pain and Glory as a hero (he killed a lot of 
  foreigners!) and are willing to give him 
  shelter.  It’s considerably safer to hole up 
  with some farm family for a few weeks than 
  it is to live in a crackhouse, so he prefers to 
  lodge with ordinary folks as much as 
  possible.  
  Larry is a gracious house-guest, but 
  this is where his good nature ends.  Even 
  for a professional criminal he’s vicious.  He 
  takes hostages and he kills them for kicks, 
  
   
  36
  he wantonly slays innocent bystanders, he 
  tells people that he’s not going to hurt them 
  and then blows enormous holes through 
  their bodies the moment he sees the relief 
  dawn on their faces.  Gratitude is completely 
  foreign to him, as is friendship.  If you do 
  him a good deed, he’ll think you’re trying to 
  manipulate him and he’ll get enraged.  If 
  you reach out to him he’ll see it as an 
  opportunity to abuse you. 
  He loves being a supervillain and 
  loves making grandiloquent speeches about 
  the joy of pain and the beauty of 
  destruction.  While Larry isn’t an educated 
  guy, and doesn’t really have the vocabulary 
  to pass himself off as an evil genius, he is 
  getting pretty good at sounding like some 
  kind of mad prophet of anguish. And the 
  more he talks like that, the more he feels 
  like one. The Eye of Rage and Splendor is 
  helping him along, making him crazier and 
  meaner and feeding his incipient 
  megalomania. 
   
  Using the Hand of Pain and Glory in 
  Your Campaign:  You should always 
  present it as a major event when the Hand 
  of Pain and Glory shows up again.  Everyone 
  will want to fight him, the authorities will 
  mobilize all their resources to stop him.  
  He’s also a mystery, and the GM should play 
  this up as well.  A major threat without a 
  grand master plan, he can turn up anywhere 
  at any moment, whenever you would like to 
  shake up the campaign.  Because anyone 
  can use the Eye of Rage and Splendor , you 
  can have someone else take up the costume 
  and completely change the Hand of Pain 
  and Glory’s tactics and objectives just as the 
  PCs start to unravel the mystery (see “Joe 
  Postal” on page 6 for an example of this). In 
  his current incarnation, he’s more focused 
  on his own survival than on things like 
  revenge, so he probably won’t serve as a 
  recurrent nemesis.  Frankly, after the 2000 
  Olympics, he’s the whole world’s recurrent 
  nemesis. 
   
  Adventures With the Hand of Pain and 
  Glory: 1) Attention Morning 
  Commuters 
  The Hand of Pain and Glory has run 
  out of money yet again, and decides that it’s 
  time to go get some more.  
  Robbing armored cars is difficult, 
  compared with robbing banks.  It’s tough to 
  intercept them on the road, the guards 
  always put up a fight, and once you have 
  one, it’s hard to find a secluded place to 
  break into the lockbox in back. The Hand 
  has conceived an audacious plan that neatly 
  solves all of these problems.   He learns that 
  an armored truck is going to be passing 
  over a major bridge at around ten in the 
  morning—the very same time that a 
  garbage scow (or other big barge, 
  depending on what your campaign city is 
  like) passes underneath it.  At that moment 
  he will swoop down from the sky, knock the 
  truck off the bridge and drop it onto the 
  barge.  He can then commandeer the barge 
  and open up the truck at his leisure.  
  Luck is with him, at least at first.  
  The day of the heist, a thick fog closes in 
  over the bridge. If it’s the wrong time of 
  year or the wrong kind of climate for heavy 
  fog, then there is either a rainstorm or a 
  snowstorm, whichever the GM thinks would 
  be more appropriate.  But as the Hand of 
  Pain and Glory closes in on the bridge, a 
  Player Character spots him (or gets alerted 
  while listening to the police radio channel or 
  in some other way finds out) and an aerial 
  chase ensues.  Try to give Larry enough of a 
  lead and make the weather conditions fierce 
  enough that he can reach the bridge before 
  the battle ends. 
  Once he engages the truck and the 
  Player Characters on the ground, things get 
  dicey.  The bridge isn’t completely packed 
  with cars at this hour, but there is some 
  traffic and it’s moving really fast.  The Hand 
  of Pain and Glory shows no concern for the 
  bystanders at all, and does his level best to 
  knock the truck off the bridge, as cars 
  smash and spin into one other all around 
  him.  Multiple-car traffic accidents pile up 
  across the bridge and more vehicles keep 
  screaming in out of the fog (or rain, or 
  snow, or whatever the GM is using to 
  obscure the scene). Without some quick 
  action on the part of the Player Characters, 
  this is going to turn into a bloodbath very 
  quick.  But they can’t let the Hand of Pain 
  and Glory get away with the loot, either. 
   
  
   
  37
  2) The Hills are Alive With the Sound of 
  Pain and Glory  
  There is finally a major break in the 
  Hand of Pain and Glory case. Idaho state 
  police are have found the empty, overgrown 
  remains of the Invisible Army’s compound 
  and they stumble across the graves of 
  Harmon White and Tyler Strang.  While 
  doing DNA tests on the bones, they find to 
  their amazement that one of them is a 
  match for the man who attacked the 2000 
  Olympics.  But these bones are five years 
  old, and the Hand of Pain and Glory has 
  been seen at least eight times since then.   
  While investigating the story of the 
  Lord’s Invisible Army, one of the detectives 
  vanishes, never to be seen again.  The 
  authorities in Idaho get really alarmed and 
  call in both the feds and the Player 
  Characters.  For the current hand of Pain 
  and Glory has got wind of their 
  investigations, and while he doesn’t know 
  much about the matter himself, he’s sure 
  that it will bring the authorities one step 
  closer to him.  And that of course cannot be 
  allowed to happen.  As the hunters close in 
  on the truth, he in turn is closing in on the 
  hunters. 
  This scenario works best if you keep 
  the villain lurking in the background for 
  most of it.  As the PCs help investigate the 
  case, play up the harsh and forbidding 
  mountain terrain, the suspicious locals and 
  the danger in the air. 
  The PCs will find that while local 
  people are willing to talk to them, and the 
  sad strange story of the Invisible Army of 
  the Lord will come out bit by bit, a 
  surprising number of the people they talk to 
  openly sympathize with the Hand of Pain 
  and Glory’s attack on the Olympics.   Even 
  seemingly nice, ordinary folks are willing to 
  tell the PCs all about the “One World 
  Government” and their fear of 
  internationalism.  After a few encounters 
  like this, the PCs may well suspect that they 
  are being stalked by some kind of 
  backwoods secret society, but in fact just 
  the Hand of Pain and Glory himself. 
   
  3) Glory Bound 
  A street person called Ethanol Jake 
  timidly approaches the PCs.  He knows 
  people say he’s crazy and sometimes he is, 
  but he knows what he saw last night—he 
  was thinking clearly and he wasn’t drunk.   
  The Hand of Pain and Glory appeared on a 
  rooftop over the alley where the poor 
  frightened bum was trying to sleep. He 
  stared at something for a long time.  Then 
  he vanished.  Jake is really worried.  If the 
  Hand of Pain and Glory is plotting 
  something, people are going to die.    
  PCs who investigate Jake’s story will 
  find something interesting.  If they stand on 
  that same rooftop and look in the direction 
  Ethanol Jake suggested, they see the back 
  of a run-down currency exchange shop. 
  Tomorrow is the first of the month—the 
  store’s usual patrons will all be there to cash 
  their paychecks and the exchange will have 
  stocked up on cash to prepare for it.   Could 
  this be a chance to catch one of America’s 
  most wanted criminals in the act?   
  The next day, at seven in the 
  morning, just as the exchange opens, the 
  Hand of Pain and Glory walks across the 
  street and approaches the storefront.  The 
  PCs will almost certainly be able to hit him 
  by surprise. But there is a surprise in store 
  for them, too.  When they capture the Hand 
  of Pain and Glory, it swiftly becomes 
  apparent that his DNA doesn’t match that of 
  the man who attacked the Olympics.  In fact 
  he has an iron-clad alibi—he was in prison 
  at the time!  To make matters worse, the 
  PCs hit him on the street, before he had a 
  chance to commit any crime.  He claims that 
  he was just walking across the street and 
  had no intention of robbing anybody. The 
  only witness who can confirm that he was 
  casing the joint ahead of time is Ethanol 
  Jake, and his testimony is less than 
  compelling, considering that his hobby is 
  drinking rubbing alcohol.  
  Larry Stickle wants the PCs brought 
  up on charges for assaulting him, he 
  threatens to sue them and he claims that 
  the Eye of Rage and Splendor is his personal 
  property and demands to have it back. The 
  courts won’t actually pursue charges against 
  the PCs and the lawsuit goes nowhere (he 
  can’t even find a judge who’s willing to issue 
  a restraining order against the Player 
  Characters, despite the fact that they beat 
  him up in broad daylight). The city 
  
   
  38
  authorities refuse to give him back the Eye 
  of Rage and Splendor even though they 
  have no legal justification for hanging onto 
  it.  Then, as he leaves the city courthouse 
  after filing yet another motion, a vigilante 
  stabs him to death right there on the steps. 
  What happens next depends on the 
  PCs relationship with the media and the city 
  government.  If they are popular and well-
  connected, then their career is almost 
  unaffected by the ensuing scandal.  If they 
  have enemies in the press and city hall, or if 
  they are already outlaws, then there is a 
  massive backlash against vigilantes and 
  things get really bad.  In either case the PCs 
  will have a chance to redeem themselves.  A 
  crooked cop steals the Eye of Rage and 
  Splendor from an evidence locker and 
  attempts to sell it to the highest bidder.  
  The PCs get word of the impending 
  underworld auction. Can they break it up in 
  time?   Or will the Hand of Pain and Glory 
  rise again? 
   
  Generic Thugs for an Underworld 
  Auction 
  PL: 2 
  Str: 16 (+3) Dex: 12 (+1) Con: 14 (+2) 
  Int: 8 (-1) Wis: 8 (-1) Cha: 10 (+0) 
  Initiative: 1 Attack Bonus: 2 
  Defense: 2 Toughness Save: 2 
  Fortitude Save: 2 Reflexes Save: 2 
  Willpower Save: 0 
  Skills: Intimidate 5 (+5), Knowledge 
  (Streetwise) 5 (+5), Notice 3 (+2), Sense 
  Motive 3 (+2) 
  Feats: Connected, Quick-Draw 
  Equipment: 9mm Handgun (Ranged 
  Weapon, 3 Damage) 
   
  Here’s one possible successor to Larry 
  Stickle—a version of the Hand before he 
  fully learns how to use the Eye’s powers.  If 
  he isn’t tough enough to challenge your PCs, 
  use Larry’s stats instead. 
   
  New Hand of Pain and Glory 
  PL: 9 
   
  Str: 28/12 (+9/+1) Dex: 12 (+1)  
  Con: 14 (+2) Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 12 (+1)  
  Cha: 10 (+0) 
  Initiative: 1 Attack Bonus: 9 
  Defense: 9 Toughness Save: 9 (2 without 
  Force Field) Fortitude Save: 6 Reflexes 
  Save: 6 Willpower Save: 6 
  Skills: Profession (Any--but he’s probably a 
  crooked police officer or an underworld 
  boss) 3 (+4) 
  Feats:  All-Out Attack, Power Attack 
  Powers: Device (Eye of Rage and Splendor 
  [Can be taken away only when the wielder 
  is incapacitated]: Enhanced Strength 16, 
  Energy Blast 9, Force Field 9, Mind Shield 8) 
  Complications: Being driven slowly crazy 
  by the Eye of Rage and Splendor 
  
   
  39
  (aka the Red Contessa) 
   
   
  Real Name: Her Grace, the Graffin Erzabet 
  von Blut 
  PL: 19 
   
  "Why Mr. Harker, you seem to have 
  mislaid your crucifix. In the interest of 
  fair play, I shall give you a moment to 
  locate it before I rip out your throat 
  and drink your fine hot English blood.  
  Still can't find it? Well, what a shame.  
  Give my regards to your sweet little 
  wife. No, wait--don't bother.  I shall 
  tender them myself.  But first, a little 
  refreshment to reward my exertions…"   
   
  Str: 18/34 (+12/+4) Dex: 16 (+3) Con: - 
  Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 20 (+5) Cha: 24 (+7) 
  Initiative: 15 Attack Bonus: 19 
  Defense: 19 (+15 flatfooted) Toughness 
  Save: 19 (+15 flatfooted) Fortitude Save: 
  n/a Reflexes Save: 18 Willpower Save: 
  19 
  Skills: Bluff 6 (+13), Intimidate 11 (+18), 
  Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 4 (+5), 
  Knowledge (History) 3 (+4), Notice 19 
  (+24), Stealth 19 (+22), Survival 10 (+15) 
  Feats:  Attractive, Defensive Roll 4, 
  Distract, Dodge Focus 4, Fascinate, Fearless, 
  Fearsome Demeanor 5, Hide in Plain Sight, 
  Improved Initiative 3, Minions (the number 
  of minions available to the Contessa varies, 
  but once she's been able to establish herself 
  in an area she can have up to 110 PL1 
  vampires under her control, as well as a 
  gang of 11 PL2 non-vampiric gangsters for 
  daylight operations, with 6 tougher PL 3 
  thugs on call and 3 PL3 Lieutenants, she will 
  also likely have 2PL 5 greater vampire 
  servants and a PL 6 vampire lord as her 
  second in command), Move-By Action, 
  Power Attack, Startle, Takedown Attack, 
  Taunt, Tracking, Trance 
  Powers: Animal Control 10 (Extra: Mental 
  Link; Flaw: Limited [Works only on wolves, 
  bats, rats and sharks]), Drain Constitution 8, 
  Flight 8 (Flaw: Limited [Only Works at 
  Night]), Enhanced Strength 16 (Flaw: 
  Limited [Only Works at Night]), Immunity 30 
  (all fortitude effects), Insubstantial 2 
  (Assume Gaseous Form), Mind Control 12 
  (Extras: Conscious, Mental Link, Subtle; 
  Flaw: Limited [only works on targets who 
  can see her eyes, or who have had their 
  blood drained by her]), Morph 2 (Can 
  assume the form of a wolf or a bat; Flaw: 
  Limited [Only works at night]), Protection 15 
  (Extras: Impervious; Flaw: Limited [vs. holy, 
  silver, or magical weapons.  See the 
  Description of her Drawbacks below to see 
  what qualifies as “holy”], Regeneration 5 
  (Resurrection; Flaw: Limited [Does not work 
  if she has been beheaded or impaled with a 
  wooden stake]), Teleport 8 (Flaw: Limited 
  [Only Works at Night]) Weather Control 8 
  (Hamper Movement with rain and wind; 
  Extras: Alternate Powers [Dazzle Visual and 
  Auditory Senses with thunder and lightning, 
  Obscure with fog] Flaw: Limited [Only 
  Works at Night]), Strike (Claws and fangs) 5 
  (Extra: Mighty), Super-Movement 1 (Wall-
  Crawling), Super-Senses (Darkvision, 
  Enhanced Hearing [Accurate, can determine 
  precise location of things that she Notices 
  with her auditory senses], Scent [Extra: 
  Enhanced Sense, Scent is Accurate as well 
  as Acute], Tracking Sense [scent]) 
  
   
  40
  Equipment: Headquarters (Castle Blut; 
  Size: Medium; Toughness 10; Features: 
  Combat Simulator [the so-called "Garden of 
  Sorrows" where illusions torment anyone 
  who ventures inside], Holding Cells in the 
  dungeon, Isolated Location, a Laboratory 
  once used by a mad scientist of the 
  Contessa's aquaintence, which now stands 
  vacant--the Contessa has not bothered to go 
  inside for more than a hundred years, a 
  first-rate occult Library which the Contessa 
  seldom bothers to use, Living Quarters for 
  the Contessa and up to 18 guests, a 
  Security System [Some of the evil bats who 
  hover over the castle will come tell her 
  Grace if anyone intrudes on the grounds, 
  while the rats in her walls bring her news of 
  intruders inside the castle—it takes an 
  Arcane Lore roll vs. DC 20 to get past them 
  undetected], Super-Powers [One room--the 
  Contessa can never remember which one, is 
  so haunted that it exerts a Drain 9 on the 
  Wisdom of anyone who spends the night 
  there; another guest room will attempt to 
  use a Mind Control 15 [Extra: Concious] on 
  anyone who sleeps in it and turn them 
  homicidal; one of the closets will Teleport  
  anything or anyone placed inside into 
  another random closet in the house; the 
  Contessa has a seldom-used mirror with ESP 
  19 hanging disused in her library, ready to 
  show her visions of the world outside her 
  walls, in the unlikely event that she ever 
  wants to see them; a bathtub in one room 
  will attempt to drown anyone who bathes in 
  it [Suffocation 9]; one of the halls will seem 
  to grow impossibly long and exert a Paralyze 
  9 [Flaw: can only Slow] effect anyone who 
  attempts to flee down it; a ruined stairway 
  leading up a shattered tower appears to be 
  whole [Illusion 9] until you tread on one of 
  the missing steps; there is a staircase that 
  exerts a Teleport 9 effect on anyone walking 
  down it, taking them back up to the top 
  once they reach the bottom, and thus 
  trapping them indefinitely in an endless loop 
  of stairs; horrendous Illusions 10 stalk the 
  halls from time to time; the doorway which 
  leads to one of the guest rooms will Teleport 
  9 anyone stepping through it into a much 
  more remote and dangerous region of the 
  castle, a painting hanging on one of the 
  Contessa's walls has the capacity to 
  transport the viewer to the sceneit depicts--
  this counts as Teleport 9 [Extras: attack, 
  extradimensional; Flaw: Only one location] 
  unfortunately, the painting depicts a dismal 
  nighted plain haunted by ferocious 
  monsters.  Other Residents: 40 or so 
  diseased PL 1 bats flutter about the castle’s 
  halls, ready to do the Contessa's bidding, 
  while 4 huge and hungry PL 2 hounds stalk 
  the grounds, there are 2 PL 3 ghosts, as 
  well as a PL 4 and a PL 5 ghost wafting 
  about the castle somewhere, but they're 
  often sullen and hostile to the Contessa and 
  can't be trusted not to harm her guests). 
  Complications: Unfamiliar with the 21st 
  Century and its ways. 
  Drawbacks: Weakness (dependant on 
  blood, common, minor, -2pts.), Weakness 
  (holy symbols, dazed for one round by 
  losing an opposed Charisma check, 
  common, moderate, -3 pts. Note: “Holy 
  Symbol” is hereby defined as any symbol 
  sacred to the bearer, and not consecrated to 
  the gods of death—a pentagram would work 
  if wielded by a Satanist or Neopagan, as 
  would a hammer and sickle if wielded by a 
  devout Stalinist, but a skull and crossbones 
  in the hands of a necromancer would not), 
  Weakness (Sunlight, minor, per round, 
  destroyed after 12 rounds, -8 points) 
  Vulnerable (to attacks from sharp stabbing 
  weapons made of wood Common, 
  Moderate, -3 pts) 
  Background: In the sleepy, bucolic 
  mountain province of Syrtia, now part of 
  Hungary, there is an unhappy little valley 
  called Blutwald, where nothing seems to 
  have changed for a hundred and fifty years.  
  The Austrian authorities always avoided this 
  place, as did the Communist authorities who 
  came after them.  It does not appear on 
  official maps and can be reached by no 
  paved road.  The village is half-empty, the 
  castle at the top of the valley is falling into 
  ruin and the farmers go about with weary, 
  hopeless faces. No orders have come down 
  from the Castle in a century and a half.  No 
  orders are required. The Contessa has but 
  one demand of her subjects: they must not 
  leave the valley, for her ladyship thirsts.   
  This is the realm of the Contessa 
  von Blut.  Queen of Shadows.  Mistress of 
  the Un-Dead.  Monster. Unholy Arch-fiend.  
  
   
  41
  She is all these things, and things more 
  terrible yet.  For as Dr. Abraham Van 
  Helsing once observed, the Contessa is an 
  unusual type of vampire.  She has a mind, if 
  not a soul (to use Van Helsing's clumsy turn 
  of phrase: "Her brain it is not of the child-
  type, but of the criminal type!").  She is no 
  mere ravening beast--she can think and plan 
  and plot and scheme.  No one really knows 
  how or why the Contessa clings to her 
  ghastly unlife or even how long she has 
  stalked the night. But this we do know—in 
  Blutwald the dead travel fast.   
  It is not surprising that the Graffin 
  Erzabet’s name strikes fear into ordinary 
  Syrtians and Transylvanians for hundreds of 
  miles about her loathly castle.  Yet they do 
  not know the half of it.   For the Red 
  Contessa is no longer content to slurp the 
  thin blood of her weary subjects.  She 
  wishes to spread her shadow across all the 
  world and drown mankind in rich red blood. 
  The Contessa has tried twice before, 
  and twice the world has rebuffed her 
  advances.  During the First World War she 
  was roused from her dim musings by the 
  sweet sounds of violence and the rich smell 
  of blood.  The whole continent seemed to 
  be drowning in gore—what was this 
  wonderful new world she had awakened to?  
  She looked around, delighted at the 
  paradise of suffering Europe had remade 
  itself into, and determined to have it all for 
  her own. First she would take over Austria-
  Hungary, and then send her vampire 
  minions fluttering across the continent.   
  She was opposed by Herr Doktor 
  Professor Abraham van Helsing, vampire 
  hunter extraordinaire.   A tireless crusader 
  against the forces of horror and death, 
  Professor Van Helsing was perhaps the 
  greatest vampire hunter ever to live.  But by 
  1914 he was old, and felt his age. He had 
  begun to forget things, begun to find his 
  mind wandering in circles. It actually 
  amazed him that despite having faced death 
  and eternal damnation so many times, he 
  feared senility so much worse.  It was his 
  one great hope to win a final battle before 
  his mind entirely failed.  This was not to be.  
  Van Helsing lost a lot of blood as well as his 
  wits fighting the Contessa and was 
  committed to a lunatic asylum in Budapest.  
  But not before his young companions had 
  gravely wounded the Contessa and driven 
  her back to the Blutwald.  She swore 
  revenge.  But first she determined to 
  prepare herself more carefully to face this 
  strange new world’s perils.   
  The Contessa came out of her castle 
  once more in 1939, smelling blood and 
  death on the air.  She worked with the 
  Nazis, in their Department of Special 
  Sciences, and raised a vampire legion to 
  help them fight the Allies.  But this plan also 
  failed.  The Allies had their own 
  superhumans, Professor van Helsing’s 
  descendants plagued her at every turn and 
  she was once more forced to retire to her 
  lair in defeat.  This time she determined to 
  be more careful, not to rush into combat 
  before she understood things better.   
  By the late 1990s it was clear that 
  the world in fact changed faster than her 
  ability to learn about it.  By the time she 
  understood the Cold War—poof!  It was 
  gone.  So she said to the Devil with 
  preparation and began her conquest.  By 
  now she has connections in Russian and 
  Hungarian organized crime groups all over 
  the world, and they have arranged to bring 
  her to America. Soon the night will run red, 
  and the joyous sound of screams will echo 
  across the world. 
   
  Using the Red Contessa in Your 
  Campaign: The world has largely forgotten 
  about Contessa Von Blut, although there are 
  a few American superheroes who remember 
  her, or at least know that the Nazis had a 
  vampire working with them. They tend to 
  think she must have perished in the Battle 
  of Berlin, for no one has seen her since.   
  While the Contessa knows people in 
  Eastern European crime circles and while 
  they owe her favors, she is not exactly a 
  crime lord herself.  At least not yet. She 
  pursues a much older school of vampiric 
  infiltration—move into a run down area, 
  start making nosferatu, get some minions in 
  the waking world who can protect her lair 
  and interests (probably corrupt cops or 
  eastern European gangsters), acquire some 
  businesses that attract young people and 
  are open late (dance clubs and crack 
  houses, for example) and spread the taint of 
  
   
  42
  the vampire as far as she can. 
  A gothic villainess of the classic 
  Victorian mold. she sneers, she leers, she 
  taunts wickedly.  She has an evil sense of 
  humor and loves to hear the sound of her 
  own voice. If defeated badly, she return for 
  her revenge next week or she may run back 
  to Blutwald and lie low for years.  She is 
  vengeful and sadistic, and will pursue 
  lengthy vendettas against people who trifle 
  with her. Yet her chief concern is always 
  staying alive to feed again.  This trumps 
  anything else she might want.Despite how 
  utterly evil and depraved the Contessa is, 
  fighting her may actually pose some ethical 
  problems for the Player Characters.  Most 
  superheroes aren’t used to facing opponents 
  that they actually have to kill.  And yet the 
  Player Characters’ best option for dealing 
  with Contessa von Blut is almost certainly to 
  pound a stake through her cold black heart 
  and send her withered soul screaming back 
  to Hell where it belongs, and to do it 
  quickly, before she has a chance to lead 
  them onto her home ground. Confronting 
  her in Blutwald is extremely dangerous.  Her 
  awful little valley is full of supernatural 
  horrors, many of which she has no 
  command over.  There are chambers 
  underneath her tumbledown castle where 
  even she dares not venture. 
   
  Adventures With the Red Contessa: 1) 
  Rose of Ashes, Garden of Sorrows 
   
  A mystic-powered hero falls in battle, and 
  the GM announces that only a long-lost 
  artifact called the “Rose of Ashes” can save 
  them. Unfortunately, the Rose was last in 
  the possession of famed occult adventurer 
  John Shade, who vanished along with the 
  Rose on a mission for the allies during World 
  War 2. A contact in the federal government 
  agrees to show the PCs the ancient, 
  crumbling file on John Shade’s last mission. 
  Part of the information in the file has been 
  blotted out (“redacted” for security reasons) 
  but it seems clear enough that they sent 
  him deep into Nazi Germany, to Blutwald, to 
  gather information on the infamous 
  Contessa von Blut. 
  The Red Contessa does indeed still 
  possess the Rose, tucked carelessly into one 
  of the books in her library. It looks like an 
  intricately folded origami flower made from 
  black paper. It has the power to bring one 
  person back from the dead—but the 
  Contessa has never wanted to bring anyone 
  back from the dead (nor does it seem likely 
  that she ever would), so she has left it 
  there.  
  Brave characters may try to slip into 
  Castle Blut and steal it from her. Braver 
  characters may try to confront her and take 
  it from her. Really brave characters may try 
  to negotiate with her for it.  If they take this 
  last and most dangerous route, the GM 
  should remember that she regards the Rose 
  of Ashes to be almost useless, but that she 
  is bored and cruel and can sense that the 
  Player Characters badly want to have it 
  (unless of course they can somehow 
  convince her that it’s not that important to 
  them). In any case, she now knows the PCs, 
  and will suddenly start taking an interest in 
  the world beyond her castle once more. 
   
  2) A Little Game of Death 
  The Red Contessa has grown desperately 
  bored with her existence, and determines to 
  liven things up. She sends invitations 
  (written in blood, q’elle surprise) to a 
  number of prominent superheroes and some 
  villains as well, inviting them to Blutwald for 
  a little game of death. The rules are simple, 
  she will hunt them and they will hunt her. If 
  they kill her, she will not hold it against 
  them, for if she catches them she will surely 
  do the same. Characters who have no 
  particular reason to come try to kill her are 
  offered a large financial reward. 
   
  
   
  43
   
  More than one supervillain takes her 
  up on the offer, as (presumably) do the 
  Player Characters and a European superhero 
  or two. The other heroes are all just window 
  dressing. The Contessa kills them all on the 
  first night, leaving no one but the Player 
  Characters and a few untrustworthy 
  supervillains for potential allies.  
  Ideally the cannon fodder heroes 
  should be people the PCs don’t know 
  personally, and who seem a little off-putting 
  and difficult to approach. If you don’t have 
  any NPCS like this in your campaign, then 
  they are a Spanish monster-hunter and 
  thrill-seeker called the Matador, who has a 
  bad reputation for grandstanding and using 
  excessive force, a French vigilante who calls 
  herself La Belle Noir, who doesn’t speak 
  English and constantly says disdainful things 
  about Americans in the press, and the 
  mysterious, silent masked British super-
  agent called Danger Man, who has actually 
  come to blows with superheroes whenever 
  they interfered with whatever mission he 
  was on. None of them look like good allies 
  initially, but suddenly it doesn’t matter.  The 
  Red Contessa drinks their blood and kills 
  them all in nasty ways almost immediately—
  even Danger Man. 
  Use whichever villains seem best. 
  The scenario probably works better if there 
  are two or three of them, between PL 9 and 
  12. Kaptain Skumbag would be a good 
  choice, as would the White Hand. 
  The residents of Blutwald will refuse 
  to give the outsiders any help or aid once 
  they realize why they are here, and the 
  Contessa is a formidable foe on her home 
  ground.  
  Can the Player Characters make 
  common cause with the surviving 
  supervillains and work together to defeat 
  the Red Contessa? Perhaps as an added 
  complication, the Contessa has also invited 
  a maniacal supervillain like Selina the 
  Beautiful Teenage Witch, who can’t be 
  worked with and shows no interest in 
  hunting the Red Contessa, preferring to kill 
  off the other contestants instead. 
  
   
  44
   
   
  Real Name: Dr. John Seward 
  PL: 9 
   
  From Dr. Seward’s Journal: "Have 
  awakened once more in 
  Klautzenburgh. Blood loss quite severe 
  this time. Condition very grave. Seems 
  improbable that I shall survive another 
  turn, should the game go against me.  
  Will make arrangements to kill self, in 
  the event that she wins the next 
  round. Death clearly preferable to 
  complete loss."   
   
  Str: 12 (+1) Dex: 14 (+2) Con: 16 (+3) 
  Int: 18 (+4) Wis: 20 (+5) Cha: 14 (+2) 
  Initiative: 2 Attack Bonus: 9 
  Defense: 9 Toughness Save: 3 
  Fortitude Save: 9 Reflexes Save: 7 
  Willpower Save: 9 
  Skills: Craft (Mechanical) 8 (+12), Gather 
  Information 5 (+7), Investigate 9 (+13), 
  Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 6(+10), Medicine 
  9 (+13), Notice 8 (+13), Profession 
  (Psychiatrist) 9 (+13), Search 8 (+13), 
  Sense Motive 8 (+13), Stealth 8 (+10) 
  Feats:  Fascinate, Improved Critical 
  (Wooden Stake), Improvised Tools, 
  Inventor, Trance 
  Powers: Immunity 1 (to Vampiric Mind 
  Control), Super-Senses 2, (Detect Vampires, 
  Low-Light Vision) 
  Equipment: Oversized doctor’s bag, 
  containing 19th century medical gear and a 
  seemingly endless supply of wooden stakes 
  (5 Damage) 
  Complications: Completely unable to use 
  modern information technology (computers, 
  cell-phones, pagers, etc) 
  Drawbacks: Minor Vulnerability to poison 
  and disease attacks. 
  Background: Professor Van Helsing once 
  headed a formidable team of vampire 
  hunters.  There was Arthur Holmwood (Lord 
  of Godalming), one of the Victorian era’s 
  great explorers.  There was Arthur’s friend 
  Quincy Morriss, legendary cowboy and 
  gunfighter from the American west.  And 
  there were many others, over the years.  
  The only one left alive is the dubious Doctor 
  Jack Seward, MD, who has either discovered 
  a means to retard his own aging, or else is a 
  corrupted servant of the Red Contessa, 
  befriending would-be vampire hunters and 
  leading them to their doom. Which is he?  
  That’s up to the GM. 
  Seward is a strange, dry man—cool 
  in his passions, detached and scientific, 
  vaguely sinister even if he isn’t a vampire.  
  His body is physically about twenty-eight, 
  but he seems much older, or perhaps 
  ageless.   
  Jack Seward was fascinated by the 
  workings of dementia and by 1890 he had 
  dedicated his life to the study of Abnormal 
  Psychology. He was drawn into the shocking 
  world of the Un-Dead through the strange 
  case of a madman named Renfield. Jack has 
  long since burned the Renfield file and never 
  speaks of the details, but whatever 
  happened, it was enough to convince him 
  that vampires exist.   
  If he is human, Jack has survived 
  until the present day by injecting himself 
  with vampire blood.  It puts him into a sort 
  of suspended animation.  He lies in 
  dreamless slumber for decades, hidden 
  under the floorboards of his old hospital.  
  
   
  45
  The next time there is another major 
  outbreak of vampirism and the forces of 
  undeath begin to stir across the nighted 
  face of the world, it calls to the tainted 
  blood in his veins and he awakes. 
  He’s adjusted fairly well to the 21st 
  century (it took him a lot longer to adapt to 
  the 1940s) although he’s still a complete 
  novice at personal computers, and has no 
  idea how to send an e-mail or surf the web.  
  He has actually known how to drive an 
  automobile since the 1890s, and finds 
  modern cars easier than their earlier 
  counterparts.  His medical skills aren’t quite 
  up to snuff for the period, but he doesn’t 
  believe in leeches and he knows to wash his 
  hands before performing surgery. 
  Alas, this will probably be the last 
  battle for poor Jack Seward.  The vampire 
  blood in his veins has given him a fatal, 
  wasting anemia that modern science can do 
  nothing to fix.  He needs large, regular 
  transfusions of blood and this won’t keep 
  him alive forever (if he’s really a vampire, 
  then this is just an excuse). 
  To his astonishment, Jack finds 
  enormous strength and clarity of purpose 
  when he contemplates his impending death.  
  As a physician, he has no illusions about 
  how badly he has damaged his body.  He 
  has at best another year of life left in him.  
  He will never grow old, he will never 
  complete his life's work on the causes of 
  psychopathy, he will never write his 
  memoirs or raise a family.  Another man 
  might despair at this knowledge, but Jack 
  finds only peace in it.  For now he knows 
  that his life has been reduced to a single 
  purpose--the destruction of Contessa von 
  Blut.   
  The Contessa likes to spread 
  malicious gossip about Dr. Seward.  Not 
  only does she actively cultivate the story 
  that Jack is one of her agents, she likes to 
  tell people that Dr. Seward was in fact Jack 
  the Ripper.  Whether or not there is any 
  truth to this odious rumor is up to the GM.  
  Jack wearily says that there’s no point in 
  denying it—you will believe it or not, trust 
  him or not, just as you prefer, no matter 
  what he says about it.   
  If Jack is actually a vampire, then in 
  death he retains more of himself than most 
  nosferatu.  His compassion, his reverence 
  for science, the careful storehouse of his 
  mind have all been reduced to ashes.  Yet 
  his cunning, his patience and his implacable 
  strength of purpose are intact.  One could 
  argue that he is far more dangerous than 
  vampires who have stalked the earth for 
  millennia. But soon you will have the chance 
  to judge for yourselves. For Jack thirsts... 
   
  
   
  46
   
   
  Real Name: Dr. John Seward 
  PL: 11 
   
  Str: 22 (+6) Dex: 16 (+3) Con: -- (n/a) 
  Int: 18 (+4) Wis: 20 (+5) Cha: 18 (+4) 
  Initiative: 3 Attack Bonus: 11 
  Defense: 10 Toughness Save: 9 
  Impervious Fortitude Save: n/a Reflexes 
  Save: 8 Willpower Save: 9 
  Skills: Bluff 11 (+14), Gather Information 4 
  (+7), Intimidate 8 (+12), Knowledge 
  (Arcane Lore 4 (+8), Notice 8 (+13), Sense 
  Motive 6 (+11), Stealth 8 (+11) 
  Feats:  Distract, Fascinate, Fearless, Hide in 
  Plain Sight, Move-By Action, Sneak Attack, 
  Startle 
  Powers: Drain Constitution 2, Immunity 30 
  (Immune to all Fortitude effects), 
  Insubstantial 2 (Assume Gaseous Form), 
  Protection 9 (Extras: Impervious; Flaw: 
  Limited [vs. holy, silver, or magical 
  weapons.  See the Description of Contessa 
  Von Blut on Page ** to see what qualifies as 
  “holy”], Mind Control 10 (Extras: Conscious, 
  Mental Link), Regeneration 5 (Resurrection; 
  Flaw: Limited [Does not work if he has been 
  beheaded or impaled with a wooden 
  stake]), Super-Movement 1 (Wall-Crawling), 
  Super-Senses 3 (Darkvision, Acute Hearing) 
  Equipment: Oversized doctor’s bag, 
  containing 19th century medical gear (which 
  Jack no longer knows how to use) and a 
  seemingly endless supply of wooden stakes 
  (5 Damage) 
  Drawbacks: Weakness (dependant on 
  blood, common, minor, -2pts.), Weakness 
  (holy symbols, dazed for one round by 
  losing an opposed Charisma check, 
  common, moderate, -3 pts.), Weakness 
  (Sunlight, minor, per round, destroyed after 
  10 rounds, -8 points) Vulnerable (to attacks 
  from sharp stabbing weapons made of wood 
  Common, Moderate, -3 pts) 
   
  Adventures With Doctor Jack 1) Enfant 
  du Sang 
  A giant freighter smashes its way into port 
  at midnight, crushing everything in its path. 
  All its lights are out, there is no way for 
  anyone on the docks to prepare for the 
  disaster.  
  After they manage to stop the 
  gigantic container ship (or fail to stop it) the 
  PCs may want to board it to find out what 
  caused the disaster. At first it looks as 
  though the ship has been abandoned. Yet 
  none of the lifeboats have been used.  
  There are signs that some terrible struggle 
  took place on board. The crew seems to 
  have attempted to barricade themselves on 
  the bridge and the captain has welded 
  himself into his stateroom (he’s dead of 
  suffocation—the only corpse on board). 
  Someone has ripped the log-book to 
  pieces, but the remaining fragments tell a 
  horrible tale. Something stalked the crew by 
  night. Something foul and sadistic and 
  unstoppable. It wanted their blood. Just as 
  the PCs start to understand what happened 
  here, the police board the ship and there is 
  a huge commotion. They have caught a 
  survivor in the hold, a stowaway. He calls 
  himself Doctor Jack. 
  Despite the fact that he’s being 
  charged as a suspect in twenty-eight counts 
  of murder, Doctor Jack remains cool under 
  interrogation and refuses to cooperate with 
  the police. He will only speak to the PCs (or 
  to whichever one of them has the strongest 
  mystic credentials) and after failing to break 
  him (he somehow reduces their staff 
  psychologist to tears) the cops reluctantly 
  call in the Player Characters. 
  He tells them that there is no time 
  to lose. He is pursuing the Contessa von 
  Blut herself.  After chasing her across 
  Europe he stowed away on the ship she was 
  using to transport herself to the new world. 
  It was a foolish, unbelievably dangerous 
  thing to do, but there was no other way to 
  know where she was going.  And now that 
  he knows for sure, the news is very dire. 
  After decades of brooding and 
  planning, she is ready to find and kill the 
  legendary Enfant du Sang—a child of perfect 
  innocence whose blood will enable her to 
  walk in the full light of day.  The prophecies 
  
   
  47
  surrounding the birth of the Enfant du Sang 
  are vague and contradictory, but they 
  precisely predict the hour of the child’s birth.  
  The Enfant would be six years old now, 
  would be of French ancestry, from a very 
  old family and would have been born 
  somewhere on the east coast of North 
  America. 
  The Contessa has a list of twenty-
  three children, any one of whom might be 
  the Enfant du Sang. She is going to drain 
  the blood from them all, until she finds the 
  right one. But first she will need to establish 
  herself, to find a base of operations and 
  allies in the underworld and to create some 
  servitors who know the ground. 
  She will no doubt be baffled but 
  intoxicated by the strange new world of the 
  twenty-first century and may want to enjoy 
  herself and explore it a bit, too. If the PCs 
  help Doctor Jack to strike now, before she 
  has grown too strong, they might have a 
  chance of driving her off. But first they have 
  to break him out of custody.  
  Should the PCs trust Doctor Jack?  
  Is he in fact leading them into some grisly 
  trap? We leave the answer in the hands of 
  the GM. 
   
  2) Foundation of Horrors 
  Doctor Jack stumbles up to the door 
  of the Player Characters’ headquarters (or 
  into some public place where they hang out, 
  if they don’t have an actual headquarters 
  per se). Wounded, bleeding and weary, he 
  is pursued by three crossbow-wielding 
  vampire hunters from a group called the 
  Van Helsing Foundation. 
  Doctor Jack will explain hastily to 
  the Player Characters that they have to hide 
  him, that he has found out something 
  monstrous, unthinkable, and that the 
  hunters are coming to kill him before he tells 
  anyone. 
  At this very moment the kill-squad 
  from the Van Helsing Foundation arrives at 
  the scene. They tell the PCs that Doctor 
  Jack is a very dangerous vampire, full of 
  deceitful lies and that the PCs should hand 
  him over for disposal now. If the PCs refuse 
  or try to question them in any way, they 
  abruptly announce that they can see the 
  PCs are already his blood-slaves and they 
  will attempt to kill everyone. 
  If the PCs manage to get Doctor 
  Jack somewhere safe, he tells them the 
  awful secret. The Foundation is corrupt—it 
  has become the tool of some powerful 
  vampire lord, who uses it to wipe out his 
  enemies and keep other vampire hunters 
  away from his own operations. Or her 
  operations—Dr. Jack doesn’t yet know which 
  vampire lord it is.  Nor does he really know 
  what to do next.  
  How much of this story is a lie?  The 
  Van Helsing Foundation is real enough. They 
  have about forty agents, equipped with 
  crossbows, garlic and holy symbols, 
  scattered across ten “Chapters” in various 
  cities around the Untied States and Europe 
  (place chapters wherever it would be 
  convenient for your plot). They may or may 
  not have been founded by Jack Seward’s 
  own friend and mentor, Professor Abraham 
  Van Helsing, but they certainly claim to 
  operate in his name. 
  We’re including some stats for a 
  typical operative on the next page. They are 
  a fairly motley bunch, with widely different 
  abilities and backgrounds, but they all tend 
  to be about PL5. They are ruthless and 
  fanatical.  They make no distinction between 
  rapacious vampires who murder people 
  nightly and those who manage to live 
  without hurting anyone. As far as the 
  Foundation is concerned, vampires lie a lot, 
  they have the ability to cloud your mind if 
  you waste time talking to them, so the only 
  real option is to kill them all indiscriminately, 
  along with their human slaves. 
  Whether or not Jack is telling the 
  truth about their leadership is up to the GM. 
  It could well be that Doctor Jack himself is 
  the villain, and that he’s trying to lead the 
  Player Characters into destroying the only 
  thing standing between humanity and the 
  nightmarish, bloodsucking evil that 
  threatens it. In either case, the Foundation 
  won’t stop trying to kill him. 
  
   
  48
  Stats for a typical vampire-killer from 
  the Van Helsing Foundation 
   
  PL: 5 
  Str: 12 (+1) Dex: 14 (+2) Con: 12 (+1) 
  Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 14 (+2) Cha: 14 (+2) 
  Initiative: 6 Attack Bonus: 5 
  Defense: 5 (2 if Flatfooted)  
  Toughness Save: 5 (1 without Body 
  Armor) Fortitude Save: 5 Reflexes Save: 
  5 Willpower Save: 2 (5 vs. mental attacks)  
  Skills: Climb 3 (+2), Bluff 5 (+7), Craft 
  (Mechanical) 6 (+8), Diplomacy 5 (+7), 
  Gather Information 5 (+7), Investigate 7 
  (+8), Notice 8 (+10), Stealth 8 (+10), 
  Sense Motive 5 (+7) 
  Feats:  Assessment, Connected, Dodge 
  Focus 3, Equipment 3 (15pts of Equipment), 
  Improved Initiative, Interpose, Inventor, 
  Ranged Pin (with crossbow), Track Powers: 
  Mind Shield 3 
  Equipment: Body Armor (5 Impervious 
  Protection), Crossbow (Ranged Weapon, 5 
  Damage), Holy Symbol, Never-Ending Bag 
  of Wooden Stakes (Melee Weapon, 5 
  Damage) 
  Complications: Fanatically dedicated to 
  wiping out vampires, can't be reasoned 
  with, will risk life, soul, reputation, 
  imprisonment, in order to strike at a 
  nosferatu.  Does not care very much if he or 
  she accidentally kills a human being while 
  trying to slay a vampire. 
  
   
  49
   
   
   
  PL: 23 
  Real Name: Unknown; may be Baron 
  Samadhi, Lucifer or Saint Murder the 
  Damned 
   
  “I’m the one they named the Saturday 
  Night Special after.  I’m the reason 
  dudes always seem to get killed on 
  Saturday night.  I am the Saturday 
  Man!  Dig me or die!.  Or better yet, dig 
  me and die!” 
   
  Str: 18 (+4) Dex: 20 (+5) Con: 18 (+4) 
  Int: 48 (+18) Wis: 48 (+18)  
  Cha: 48 (+18) 
  Initiative: 13 Attack Bonus: 23 
  Defense: 23 Toughness Save: 24 (20 
  Impervious) Fortitude Save: n/a Reflexes 
  Save: 15  
  Willpower Save: 23 
  Skills: Bluff 2 (+20), Diplomacy 10 (+28),  
  Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 10 (+28), Notice, 
  Perform (Oratory) 10 (+28), Sense Motive 1 
  (+19) 
  Feats: Assessment, Diehard, Distract, 
  Fascinate, Fearless, Fearsome Presence 20, 
  Improved Initiative 2, Move-By Action, 
  Startle, Takedown Attack, Taunt 
  Powers: Aid 23 (Flaw: Limited [he can only 
  use this power if someone asks him to, and 
  if they make a deal with him in exchange, 
  he cannot use it on himself]), ESP 20 (Extra: 
  Dimensional), Flight 8, Healing 23 (Power 
  Feats: Persistent, Regrowth; Extras: 
  Energizing, Resurrection, Total; Flaw: 
  Limited [he can only use this power if 
  someone asks him to, and if they make a 
  deal, he cannot use it on himself]), 
  Immaterial 4 (Still takes damage from 
  Magical attacks), Immunity 30 (to all 
  Fortitude effects), Illusions 20 (Extra: 
  Action; Flaw: Phantasms), Neutralize 
  Magical Powers 20, Protection 20 
  Impervious, Regeneration 4 (Resurrection; 
  Extras: Reincarnate), Strike 20 (Extras: 
  Affects Corporeal, Aura, Mighty), Super-
  Senses 16 (Magical Awareness, Blindsight, 
  Darkvision, Detect Magic, Direction Sense, 
  Distance Sense, Precognition, 
  Postcognition), Telepathy 20 (Extra: 
  Dimensional), Teleport 20 (Range: 
  Anywhere in the Universe; Power Feats: 
  Change Direction, Change Velocity, Easy, 
  Turnabout, Extras: Accurate, Dimensional, 
  Portal) 
  Equipment: Sometimes turns up with 
  weird and terrible artifacts which he is 
  willing to give to anyone who asks, in 
  exchange for a favor or two. 
  Complications: Cannot directly tell a lie. 
  Drawbacks: Disabled (Can only manifest at 
  night, can only appear in person in a place 
  that is sacred to the gods of murder), Power 
  Drawback (turning off his 
  Insubstantial Power is Sustained duration) 
  Special: The Saturday Man has the plot-
  device ability to grant superhuman powers 
  to people who request them of him.  As with 
  his Healing and Aid powers, he can only do 
  this if he is asked, and if the person asking 
  him is willing to do something for him in 
  exchange.  Sometimes it’s a little thing, 
  sometimes it’s a big thing, but it’s always a 
  bad thing. 
  Background: He is the one that killers pray 
  to in their secret dreams. Maniacs leave him 
  strange offerings at crudely improvised 
  altars and professional murderers breathe 
  his name to keep them safe when their 
  
   
  50
  bullets run low and the enemy is all around 
  them.  He is the eater of kin, the spiller of 
  blood, who walks with dogs in the night and 
  knows secrets that would blast and flay your 
  soul.    
  They call him the Saturday Man, or 
  Sometimes Saint Murder the Damned, when 
  they can be persuaded to say his name at 
  all.  He lurks invisibly outside the bloody 
  spots in the world’s fabric, feasting and 
  gloating and laughing with joy.  No human 
  cult worships him, but all killers know him in 
  some hidden part of themselves.  
  He’s not the god of war or the god 
  of death, he’s the god of murder.  Is he the 
  thing that has tempted mankind to bloody 
  acts of carnage from the dawn of time?   An 
  outside force that corrupts our nature?  Or 
  did we create him ourselves from our dark 
  and hungry cravings?  Opinion is divided on 
  the subject, but most mystics agree that 
  whatever he is, he didn’t start visiting our 
  world in person until some time in the 
  1950s.    
  In some respects he resembles the 
  Voodoo death-god Baron Samadhi or his 
  associate, Carrefour, but he is much less 
  concerned with death than with the act of 
  killing itself.   Anyone who makes an 
  offering of bullets, blood and filthy prayers 
  can get to speak with him, provided their 
  heart is pure in its murderousness, and 
  sometimes he gives them weird powers.    
  He seems to be working toward the 
  culmination of some huge and terrible 
  scheme, moving human beings around like 
  chess pieces, but what the stakes of the 
  game might be or who he is playing it 
  against, we simply do not know (by which 
  we mean that we’re leaving that to the GM 
  to work into the background of the 
  campaign world—the Saturday Man’s evil 
  schemes could be a major part of your 
  world’s secret history or he could just be 
  shoving people around at random for the 
  twisted joy of it).  
  Whatever awful plans he has for 
  mankind, they don’t seem to involve our 
  extinction.  If the world is drowned in 
  silence forever, who will be left to kill one 
  another?  Instead he seems to want a world 
  filled with glorious unending violence.  
   
  Using The Saturday Man in Your 
  Campaign:  The Saturday Man is a lurking 
  presence who manipulates events from 
  behind the scenes, for the most part.  He 
  gives maniacs and psychopaths superhuman 
  abilities or artifacts of terrible power.  He 
  may well be the one who brought the Eye of 
  Rage and Splendor into the world—it’s 
  exactly his style.   If the PCs disrupt his 
  plans enough or stumble on a villain 
  carrying out some loathsome private ritual 
  to invoke him, he may actually appear in 
  person.  If he does, he never stays for long.  
  Sometimes he takes a liking to a 
  Player Character (especially one who is 
  struggling with some moral conflict over 
  whether or not it’s right to kill people) and 
  he will tag along invisibly with them on their 
  adventures, whispering horrible advice and 
  diseased suggestions in their ear.    
  Good natured for an arch-fiend, he 
  always seems amused by people’s attempts 
  to thwart him, even if they succeed. He 
  speaks ordinary conversational English (or 
  Spanish, or whatever language he needs) 
  and uses slang terms that seem to have 
  come straight out of a 1970s “blaxploitation” 
  film. 
  Driving him back into his home 
  dimension (or back into the sordid depths of 
  the human unconscious, whichever you 
  prefer) is about the best most teams of 
  Player Characters can hope to achieve 
  against him, but if your PCs find this too 
  frustrating in the long run, you can always 
  create some magical artifact that does 
  inordinate amounts of damage to him, or 
  even that seals a place off from him for 
  good.   And every time the PCs drive him 
  off, the area they chased him away from 
  dramatically improves.  The crime rate goes 
  down, the gang war or the insurgency 
  stops, peace talks are suddenly held by the 
  warring factions, flowers grow in the vacant 
  lot where people were once gunned down 
  daily, etc. 
   
  Adventures With the Saturday Man: 1) 
  Jack Carver and the Rat-Boyzz 
  Jack Carver worships the Saturday Man, and 
  honors him with strange and secret 
  offerings.  He stalks the city’s subway trains 
  at night, catching random citizens and 
  
   
  51
  dragging them off to a fate best left 
  undescribed. Once he has finished doing 
  unexpected things with knives to their soft 
  parts and hidden their remains, he leaves 
  patterns of blood and bones on the subway 
  tracks, wherever the Saturday Man requires 
  them.   
  He does this all for love.  For Jack 
  hopes that if he spreads enough blood and 
  terror, the Saturday Man will give him the 
  power to confront the Rat-Boyzz.  This is the 
  only way he might get his Norma back.  
  The Rat-Boyzz are an exclusive 
  fraternity of sadistic young psychopaths 
  from some of the city’s wealthiest families.  
  These merry scamps are always looking for 
  new tricks and thrills, and lately they’ve 
  taken to seeking them on the subway.   
  A month or so ago they set upon 
  Jack Carver and his wife, Norma.  They cut 
  Jack in some funny, clever ways, and left 
  him without the ability to speak or do 
  certain other things.  But the worst thing 
  that they took away from him was Norma. 
  They didn’t kill her, but they dragged her off 
  to some unknown place. 
  As Jack hung between death and 
  life he called out for someone, anyone, to 
  help him get his wife back.  Unfortunately, 
  the Saturday Man answered first.  
  Jack wants desperately to confront 
  the Rat-Boyzz before they do something 
  unthinkable to Norma, but they’re rich and 
  well-protected, while he is an illegal alien 
  (from England) who doesn’t even have a 
  job. There are a lot of them, and they have 
  a lot of knives.  He only has one.  
  The Saturday Man offered to help 
  him open a gateway to the dimension called 
  the Seventh Throne of Hooks and Howling, 
  where he would find all the power he 
  needed.  It has taken him much too long to 
  prepare the sacrifices that he needs, but 
  every time that he has asked, the Saturday 
  Man has assured him that the Rat-Boyzz still 
  have Norma, and that they will give her 
  back if confronted the right way.  He isn’t 
  lying.  After the PCs try and fail to catch 
  Jack Carver, they should stumble across his 
  journals and find out what the “Subway 
  Slasher” is really up to.  They should learn 
  where he intends to open the gate, and they 
  should have a chance to catch up with him 
  just as he confronts the Rat-Boyzz with his 
  new-found power. They are skating in an 
  outdoor plaza when he finds them. Alas, 
  they killed Norma some time ago, but they 
  still keep some parts of her in a box, which 
  they will give him when he demands her 
  back.   
  Jack is now a PL 9 character, more 
  than strong enough to hold his own against 
  the Rat-Boyzz.  But he becomes completely 
  unhinged and unable to defend himself once 
  he sees what is in the box.  Worse, the 
  gateway to the Seventh Throne of Hooks 
  and Howls is still wide open, and now worse 
  things than Jack Carver are spilling out into 
  the subway, hungry for sane brains. 
   
  Stats For Jack Carver 
  Str: 16 (+3) Dex: 14 (+2) Con: 16 (+3) 
  Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 14 (+2) Cha: 10 (+0) 
  Initiative: 2 Attack Bonus: 9 
  Defense: 9 Toughness Save: 3 
  Fortitude Save: 9 Reflexes Save: 8 
  Willpower Save: 9 
  Skills: Intimidate 9 (+9), Notice 8 (+10), 
  Profession (butcher) 7 (+8), Stealth 8 (+10) 
  Feats:  Distract, Improved Critical (Knives), 
  Startle 
  Powers: Insubstantial 4 (Still Vulnerable to 
  Magical Attacks when in Incorporeal Form), 
  Super-Senses 2 (Low-Light Vision, Tracking 
  [by Scent]) 
  Equipment: Complete set of butcher knives 
  (Melee Weapon, 5 Damage; Extras: Affects 
  Corporeal, Penetrating 3), Regeneration 10 
  (Can make a Recovery Check vs. being 
  Injured or Disabled with one round of rest) 
  Complications: Totally obsessed with 
  rescuing his wife, has no other purpose to 
  his existence 
  Drawbacks: Disabled (Mute) 
   
  Stats for a typical Rat-Boy 
  PL: 4 
  Str: 16 (+3) Dex: 14 (+2) Con: 14 (+2) 
  Int: 12 (+1) Wis: 10 (+0) Cha: 14 (+2) 
  Initiative: 6 Attack Bonus: 4 
  Defense: 4 Toughness Save: 2 Fortitude 
  Save: 4 Reflexes Save: 4 Willpower 
  Save: 4 
  Skills: Bluff 4 (+6), Gather Information 3 
  (+5), Intimidate 6 (+8), Knowledge 
  (Popular Culture) 5 (+6), Notice 4 (+4), 
  
   
  52
  Search 3 (+3), Stealth 4 (+6) 
  Feats:  Connected, Improved Initiative, 
  Quick-Draw, Sneak Attack, Taunt 
  Equipment: Knife (Melee Weapon, 3 
  Damage), Really Expensive Handgun 
  (Ranged Weapon, 4 Damage) 
  Complications: Impulsive sadistic 
  psychopath, prone to doing stupid and 
  vicious things, even if it gets him in terrible 
  trouble 
   
  2) Saturday Night’s All Right for 
  Fighting 
  The Saturday Man decides that Captain Kill-
  You has grown desperate enough to have a 
  little fun with.  The Captain once made a 
  bargain with the Saturday Man for his 
  superhuman powers, but he doesn’t want 
  them anymore.  See his description earlier in 
  this book for more details.   
   
  The Saturday Man appears to 
  Captain Kill-You in a dream, and explains 
  that he would be happy to take back his 
  powers and let him lead a normal life.  All 
  he has to do in return is to kill his parents 
  and eat them by tomorrow at midnight.   
  Captain Kill-You has no desire to do 
  any such thing.  Frantic for a way out of this 
  bargain, he comes up with a surprisingly 
  cunning subterfuge.  He pretends to be 
  concerned, and explains to the Saturday 
  Man that superheroes are constantly foiling 
  his evil schemes.  What if he makes every 
  effort to devour his parents, but he gets 
  thwarted at the last second by some do-
  gooder hero.  To his surprise, the Saturday 
  Man agrees that should that happen, the 
  reward is still his to keep.  All Kaptain 
  Skumbag has to do is to make a good try. 
  Amazed at having tricked the 
  Saturday Man into giving him a loophole, 
  Captain Kill-You calls up the Player 
  Characters, threatens them, tells them that 
  he plans to kill and eat Mr. And Mrs. 
  Treadwell (his parents) at their home in 
  suburban Long Island tomorrow at midnight 
  and that the PCs had better not try to stop 
  him.  If the PCs seem dubious, or mock him 
  for trying to lead them into some kind of 
  clumsy and obvious trap, he’s willing to 
  break down and confide the whole truth in 
  them.  He’s off to eat his parents and he 
  needs them to stop him. 
  It’s not going to be possible to warn 
  his parents in advance.  Phone calls to the 
  Treadwells get only their voice mail.  No one 
  answers their door if the PCs come knocking 
  (in any case they probably won’t have time). 
  The Treadwell home is out in a fairly 
  woodsy part of Long Island.  It’s not a 
  mansion, just a reasonably nice two-story 
  house.  There are a lot of old trees in the 
  yard, which partly obscure the PCs’ view.   
  The Player Characters will probably 
  try to get there early so that they can lie in 
  wait.  But Captain Kill-You presents himself 
  almost immediately, just after they’ve gotten 
  into position.  He makes a clumsy, half-
  hearted rush at the PCs, giving them every 
  chance to hit him with ranged attacks before 
  he closes with them, fully hoping that they 
  beat him. 
  But the Saturday Man is not actually 
  fooled, and he has arranged a nasty surprise 
  for poor Kaptain Skumbag.  Another and far 
  less pleasant of his agents is on their way to 
  the proceedings tonight.  As Captain Kill-You 
  charges the players, he sees the horrible 
  cannibalistic warlock who calls himself 
  “Selina The Beautiful Teenaged Witch” (see 
  page 11 for a full description—he’s perhaps 
  the worst villain in this book) descend out of 
  the night on his family home, and slip 
  inside.  Now he has to fight the PCs in 
  earnest.  If he doesn’t get past them, who 
  knows what that maniac might do to his 
  hapless parents? 
  The Saturday Man has one final joke 
  in store for Kaptain Skumbag.  His parents 
  aren’t home.  They’re safe on vacation in 
  Barbados, a thousand miles away.  Selina 
  will do some awful things to some of 
  Captain Kill-You’s old toys, but that’s about 
  all he stands to lose here, apart from his 
  self-respect and his last chance at a normal 
  life. 
   
  3) Early One Saturday Morning 
  The next time a Player Character is dying, 
  as they hover on the threshold between this 
  world and the next, the Saturday Man 
  appears to them, and says that they can 
  have their life back, if they do something for 
  him in exchange. It won’t be anything evil—
  he knows they don’t dig on evil deeds.  Just 
  a simple little thing.  
  
   
  53
  If they say yes, or ask him what 
  they have to do, he explains the whole deal. 
  After they recover from their injuries, they 
  should go to a toy store (he’ll tell them 
  which one), buy an action figure and give it 
  to one of the two little boys standing 
  outside—the one on the right. It’s not a 
  haunted toy store, it’s not an evil toy.  In 
  fact, to add a little spice to the deal, it’s an 
  action figure of the PC (unless this isn’t 
  possible).  
  Most PCs will immediately sense 
  danger and won’t want to take the Saturday 
  Man up on the deal. That’s why this is a 
  particularly good trick to play on a PC who 
  has been mortally wounded while defending 
  something they really care about.  If they 
  have to choose between getting ensnared in 
  the Saturday Man’s schemes and letting 
  their girlfriend get eaten or a bus full of 
  school kids get thrown off a bridge or the 
  world get destroyed, they’ll be more inclined 
  to consider his offer. To be fair, only pull 
  this scenario on a character who has 
  screwed up badly, as a kind of deus ex 
  machina to let them off the hook.  Of 
  course, now they’re on a worse hook.  
  The Saturday Man will cheerfully 
  answer any questions a suspicious PC might 
  have about the deal, but he’s evasive and 
  mendacious.  For example, if a PC asks him 
  why he wants them to give the kid the toy, 
  he’ll say “Because he wants it real bad.  I’m 
  not allowed to do good deeds myself” (this 
  is sort of true)  “or to lie, by the way”  (this 
  is a lie).   
  He’ll even assure them that their 
  soul is not at stake, and that they’re not 
  about to damn themselves by dealing with 
  him.  Weirdly, he’s telling the truth about 
  this last part. The PC will surely regret 
  getting involved in this plan, but it will not 
  damn their soul.  Frankly, the Saturday Man 
  isn’t very interested in corrupting anyone’s 
  soul.  He just wants to destroy their 
  bodies—and perhaps to fill their minds with 
  horror and despair.  He’d much rather make 
  innocent people suffer than turn good 
  people bad.  
  If the PC agrees to participate in the 
  scheme, they are likely to try to wriggle out 
  of the deal.  Their first move will probably 
  be to find out everything they can about the 
  toy store and the action figure.  Both are 
  completely ordinary.  
  When the PC visits the store, two 
  little boys walk up to the display window 
  and stare inside. They’re both well-dressed 
  kids, about six years old, with expensive 
  haircuts.  They look like nice boys, and they 
  are.   
  If the PC hesitates, the Saturday 
  Man taps them on the shoulder, right there 
  in the toy store, and says that he’s worried 
  about them, people say bad and freaky 
  things happen to cats who bust deals with 
  him.  He’s not sure that’s true, he says, but 
  it might be better not to take chances. 
  The two boys watch the PC 
  approach, wide-eyed and a little scared. 
  Their names are Penhurst “Davey” Fitzhume 
  III and Robert Stansfield Black.  Although 
  they are both rich kids, from very prominent 
  families, neither one could have bought the 
  toy by themselves (they’re only six, and 
  their parents don’t entrust them with money 
  yet). They are best friends, at least until the 
  PC hands the toy to Robbie Black.    
  When the PCs give the toy to young 
  Mr. Black, Davey screams, a scream of utter 
  loss, betrayal and rage.  The PC didn’t 
  realize such a little boy could scream that 
  loud.  Davey runs off crying and shrieking.  
  Robbie stares at the toy in his hand, flings it 
  away as though it were hot and runs 
  sobbing in another direction. 
  Here’s what’s really going on. Davey 
  wants that action figure—wants it 
  desperately, like nothing he’s ever wanted 
  before in his life. His friend Robbie doesn’t 
  want it at all.  His dad has always told him 
  that superheroes are stupid and Robbie 
  would do or think anything to please his 
  dad.  Davey’s parents don’t think much of 
  superheroes either, and they wouldn’t buy 
  him the toy.   
  Two months ago, the Saturday Man 
  came to Davey in a dream, and told him 
  that he could have the toy, if he smothered 
  his grandma to death in her sleep.  Davey is 
  a good boy, and he refused. A week later, 
  his grandma died of pneumonia, quite 
  suddenly. Guilt-stricken, baffled and aghast, 
  Davey hasn’t told anyone but his best friend 
  Robbie about what happened. Robbie didn’t 
  know what to say to his friend to comfort 
  
   
  54
  him (he’s only six, after all) so he told him 
  that it was a stupid toy, anyway. 
  The two of them wandered over to 
  the toy store today, miserable and scared, 
  without even knowing why.  They stood 
  outside for a while, afraid to go in.  Then 
  the PC walked out of the store and handed 
  Robbie the action figure.  You can imagine 
  what Davey thought--Robbie smothered his 
  Grandma to get the toy!  And Davey’s 
  favorite superhero was in on the deal! 
  What happens next depends on 
  what the PC does. If he or she fails to catch 
  Davey, or fails to convince him that the 
  whole thing was just a horrible trick on them 
  both, then he sets Robbie’s house on fire 
  and four people die in the conflagration, 
  including Robbie’s dad.  
  The Saturday Man appears in the 
  aftermath and tells the PC that they did 
  great. Robbie’s dad, Foster Nightshade 
  Black, was a retired supervillain who tried to 
  bust a deal with the Saturday Man. He was 
  really well protected against supernatural 
  attack, so the Saturday Man had to find 
  another way to get at him.  In about six 
  years he would have destroyed the world 
  (or at least so the Saturday Man claims) so 
  the PCs should feel pretty good about 
  themselves just now—they saved the world 
  and their souls are pure. They didn’t do 
  anything wrong, as far as the powers of the 
  cosmos are concerned.  The bad stuff they 
  did do was all his own fault anyway, 
  although that won’t cheer Davey and Robbie 
  up very much, he supposes.  He hopes the 
  PC enjoys thinking about this in heaven, for 
  eternity. Still, there’s dudes who’ve done a 
  lot worse to get into the place.   
  Why did the Saturday Man want to 
  save the world?  Because if the world was to 
  end, who would be left to kill one another?   
  If the PCs do manage to get the 
  whole thing straightened out, and poor 
  traumatized Davey and Robbie are once 
  again friends, then the Saturday Man’s plan 
  was different.  In this case Robbie’s father 
  isn’t a supervillain, he’s just a rich guy with 
  a creepy-sounding name.  After the PCs get 
  the whole mess put to bed, calm down the 
  suspicious parents and their bodyguards and 
  so forth, the Saturday Man appears to 
  congratulate them.  They did great, he says.  
  Davey will grow up dedicated to fighting 
  injustice and evil, Robbie will grow up hating 
  superheroes with a crazy passion.  Davey 
  will become a superhero, Robbie will 
  become a Senator, and at a certain moment 
  in 2060 it will suddenly become absolutely 
  critical for the two of them to trust one 
  another for just a few seconds.  And then 
  they’re both going to remember what 
  happened when they were six. 
  “But” he says “you’ll have long since 
  gone off to your eternal reward in Heaven, 
  so I guess there’s not a lot you can do about 
  it.  Anyway I’ve left just enough out of this 
  story that you’re sure to screw it all up even 
  worse if you try. You may be asking yourself 
  if you really deserve to go to heaven after 
  all you’ve done here.  And if it’s damnation 
  you’re looking for, there’s another little job 
  you could do for me…” 
  
   
  55
   
   
   
  Real Name: None 
  PL: 25 
   
  “All light ends in darkness, all screams 
  end in silence.” 
   
  Str: 16(+3) Dex: 10 (+0) Con: -  
  Int: 20 (+5) Wis: 24 (+7)  
  Cha: 18 (+4) 
  Initiative: 0 Attack Bonus: 15 
  Defense: 9 Toughness Save: 25 
  Impervious Fortitude Save: n/a Reflexes 
  Save: 0 Willpower Save: 25 
  Skills: Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 15 (+20), 
  Notice 1 (+8) 
  Feats:  Fearless, Fearsome Presence 25 
  Powers: Blast 25 (Power Feats: Alternate 
  Powers: [Blast 25; Extra: Homing], 
  Progression 3 [on “Area” Extra]; Extras: 
  Area [Blast Covers a Shapeable Area of up 
  to 250 five-foot cubes]), Flight 10, Immunity 
  34 (all Fortitude effects, Dazzle Effects, 
  Critical Hits), Magic 25 (Spells: Neutralize 
  [Magical Powers Only]; Power Feats: 
  Additional Spells [Disintegrate, Drain any 
  one stat, ESP, Immaterial, Obscure, Strike 
  [Extra: Aura], Teleport [Range: Anywhere in 
  the Universe; Extra: Dimensional]) 
  Impervious Protection 25, Super-Senses 
  (Magical Blindsight, Darkvision) 
  Equipment: Headquarters (Labyrinth of 
  Dust and Shadows, somewhere on the 
  wrong side of Infinity, fill it with whatever 
  awful stuff you wish) 
  Drawbacks: Disabled (has no sense of 
  touch, performs all skill rolls requiring fine 
  manual dexterity at a -6), Hideous (very 
  common, moderate) 
  Background: Lord of ten-thousand 
  dimensions of hopeless despair, monarch of 
  bones and silence, the King in Tatters 
  comes. The Pulsing Crown rests on his brow 
  and our doom sits in his rotting hand.  
  Where he walks, he leaves dust and 
  stillness—so he would be happy to tell you.   
   
  No one living is insane enough to 
  worship the King in Tatters, nor does he 
  seek anyone’s adoration.  Instead he seeks 
  everyone’s death.  He doesn’t want to rule 
  the world, he wants to smother it in 
  darkness and blot the sun and moon from 
  its sky.  He wants emptiness and silence for 
  the cosmos.  And he has done this to more 
  than one cosmos in the past.   
  The only reason that the Earth 
  remains safe from him for the moment is 
  that it doesn’t have his attention yet.  How 
  he would hate it!  All whirring with noise 
  and motion, never sitting still for an instant.  
  But it won’t take long for him to fix that.   
   
  Few mystical texts mention the King 
  in Tatters, for no one would ever want to 
  invoke him or draw his notice.  He comes 
  from some long-lost dimension at the far 
  end of time; some realm of total entropy 
  and absolute hopeless grief.  By now he 
  rules a fairly wide swath of infinity, although 
  it doesn’t require much time or effort to 
  administer a realm of utter nothingness, 
  dust and ruins, where nothing stirs but 
  himself.  It is no exaggeration to call him 
  the lord of ten-thousand dimensions.  It 
  may be more than that.  Maybe a lot more. 
   
  While he is a deadly opponent, he is 
  not a cruel one.  People who suffer get all 
  agitated and make noise.  He prefers the 
  calm and quiet of death.  Nor does he care 
  enough about mortals to bother seeking 
  revenge against them.  He would never 
  stoop to consider one of them his personal 
  enemy.  This concept is completely beyond 
  him. 
  If a dimension resisted him 
  
   
  56
  vigorously he might have to think up some 
  kind of cunning plan to get past its 
  defenses, but he’s so powerful that he 
  hasn’t felt the need for a very long time.  
  For the most part, all he has to do to kill 
  another world is to show up. 
  A distant, distracted opponent, he 
  seldom even acknowledges the presence of 
  anyone trying to attack him.  He rarely 
  speaks and doesn’t move very often.  He 
  just appears, seated on his terrible throne, 
  and hovers over the world as it perishes.  As 
  a handy rule of thumb for the GM, he will 
  never speak to or look directly at anyone 
  who is less than PL 21.  When he does 
  speak, it is in a dry, faint, slow whisper.  He 
  seldom addresses anyone directly, and 
  instead just makes cryptic, threatening 
  observations (see his quote). 
   
  He would never tell heroes that 
  resistance is useless or that they are fools to 
  oppose him or that his power approaches 
  the infinite or any such megalomaniacal 
  arch-villain stuff.  Nor is he much of a 
  gloater.  Once he wins, who would there be 
  to gloat to? 
   
  Using the King in Tatters in Your 
  Campaign:  Gaaah!  Don’t let your players 
  fight this guy directly unless they’ve been 
  very, very bad.   
  It’s tricky to create a good scenario 
  for a world-devourer like this one, since he’s 
  not only so powerful, but so static as well.  
  Nonetheless it’s a staple of the genre to 
  have terrible gods like this lurking out on 
  the edges of the campaign universe, so we 
  thought we’d provide you with one.   
  Most adventures that revolve 
  around the King in Tatters should involve 
  keeping him from noticing the Earth, or 
  closing some gateway to his realm before he 
  has a chance to see it.  There may be some 
  madman or evil genius who is foolishly 
  about to open a door to the King in Tatters’ 
  domain and who must be stopped before he 
  brings destruction on the Universe.  Perhaps 
  he’s suicidal, perhaps he misunderstands 
  what the King really is. 
  You could also run a scenario where 
  the King’s herald shows up on Earth to tell 
  the world to make itself ready for 
  destruction, that the King in Tatters will 
  arrive soon and that they are to prepare 
  themselves for annihilation—or not, just as 
  they choose.  Then the PCs might be able to 
  bargain with or kill the herald before he has 
  a chance to report back to his awful master 
  and tell him where the Earth can be found.  
  The herald should be really tough—PL 18 to 
  20, but only a shadow of his dread master. 
  Or a really adventurous group of 
  heroes might try to raid the King’s domain 
  for some lost artifact of unbelievable power, 
  and attempt to sneak out without drawing 
  his attention. 
  If your PCs are totally stuck, if they 
  have failed to prevent the King’s arrival and 
  here he is, ready to reduce the world to 
  nothingness, there is one last card you can 
  play to keep your campaign from coming to 
  an ignominious end.  To everyone’s shock, 
  the Saturday Man appears and rushes to his 
  world’s defense. 
  “If there was nobody left to kill each 
  other,” he explains “Saturday Night could 
  get kind of dull—you dig?” 
  The Saturday Man isn’t nearly as 
  tough as the King in Tatters, but he might 
  wound him before he dies, which could give 
  the PCs the chance to hurt him badly 
  enough to drive him away.  This world 
  tastes funny, perhaps he’ll leave it alone 
  now. 
   
  Adventures With the King in Tatters: 1) 
  The Book of Nothing 
  Somewhere on the edges of the 
  King’s domain lies the Holophrastic Library 
  of Infinite Regret. 
  No one speaks in the Library. Its 
  soundless halls extend to infinity in all the 
  directions we can conceive of—and many 
  more. Each of its giant volumes contains a 
  single word, comprised of a single letter, 
  comprised of a single mark. It is the word 
  "despair.” To pronounce it would take eons. 
  One corner of the Library of Infinite 
  Regret touches our world, and on certain 
  unfortunate occasions one or another of its 
  books slips through into our realm. 
  The PCs are unlucky enough to be 
  drawn into this matter when sadness 
  engulfs a run-down neighborhood in the city 
  they protect.  A minor occultist and full-time 
  devotee of grief, one Norville Oates, has 
  
   
  57
  uncovered a volume from the Library of 
  Infinite Regret and is trying to pronounce 
  the word it contains.  Everyone within five 
  blocks is overcome with grief, silently 
  weeping and shuddering.  Cars crash into 
  one another, fires start to burn out of 
  control and a perpetual twilight falls over 
  the neighborhood.  
  Anyone who enters this domain will 
  suffer a PL 9 Mind Control attack each and 
  every round they can spend in it (there is 
  only one command: Stand There and Do 
  Nothing but Feel Miserable) until they can 
  locate Mr. Oates in his cluttered, decaying 
  mansion and wrest the book from his hands.  
  Once he is relieved of his terrible book, 
  Oates will fall to the floor, unconscious, 
  aged by a dozen years.  If he recovers his 
  wits, he is a changed man, devoted to the 
  cause of joy and contentment forever 
  afterwards.  Now that he’s seen them up 
  close, misery and despair aren’t nearly as 
  much fun as he thought.  He’ll gladly help 
  the PCs, and even though he’s only a PL 8 
  magician, he knows a lot about the matter 
  they now find themselves entangled in. Here 
  are some stats for him. 
   
  Norville Oates 
  PL: 8 
  Str: 10 (+0) Dex: 14 (+2) Con: 8 (-1) Int: 
  16 (+3) Wis: 14 (+2) Cha: 8 (-1) 
  Initiative: 2 Attack Bonus: 6 
  Defense: 8 Toughness Save: -1 
  Fortitude Save: -1 Reflexes Save: 2 
  Willpower Save: 8 
  Skills: Craft (Artistic) 3 (+4), Concentration 
  11 (+13), Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 7 
  (+10), Languages 7 (Aramaic, French, 
  German, Greek Hebrew, Latin, Russian), 
  Notice 3 (+5), Profession (Depressing Poet) 
  5 (+8) 
  Feats: Ritualist, Detect (Magic) 
  Powers: Astral Form 8 (Power Feat: 
  Dimensional 3 [can reach any accessible 
  dimension in your campaign setting]), Magic 
  7 (Spells: Drain [any power with the 
  Descriptor “magical”], Alternate Powers: ESP 
  7, Neutralize 7 [only powers with a mystical 
  source]); Super-Senses 2 (Detect Magic, 
  Detect invisible beings) 
  Drawback: Power Loss (Must be able to 
  gesture and speak freely to use Magic) 
  The GM should play Oates as a 
  comic figure, who tries desperately to be 
  cheerful and upbeat without a clue as to 
  how to do it.  Happiness clearly does not 
  suit him. He constantly tries to tell jokes, 
  and fails. 
   If the PCs ask him where he found 
  that cursed volume, he explains that he 
  performed a ritual to locate the unhappiest 
  book in the world, and was directed by the 
  spirits of misery to go look at a particular 
  spot on the shelves of the Argentine 
  National Library in Buenos Aires.  There it 
  was, jammed awkwardly onto a shelf where 
  it didn’t belong, three times the size of any 
  of the books around it. 
  Anyone looking at the pages of the 
  book must make a Willpower Save vs. DC 15 
  or begin compulsively reading it aloud, 
  which has exactly the same effect as when 
  Norville Oates tried it. 
  A little occult research or a little help 
  from Mr. Oates reveals what the book is, 
  where it comes from and why its very 
  presence is putting the Earth in danger.  For 
  the King in Tatters will sense that one of his 
  volumes is missing, and soon.  Only the fact 
  that there are an infinite number of them 
  has kept him from noticing it yet.  If he 
  comes looking for it, and finds a warm and 
  lively world like Earth, buzzing with life and 
  activity, he is going to try to snuff it out 
  before he goes home. 
  The PCs are going to have to sneak 
  into the Holophrastic Library of Infinite 
  Regret and put the book back in its place on 
  the shelf.  This is extremely dangerous.  
  Anyone who spends too much time in the 
  Library risks being overcome with sorrow 
  and standing there in silence among the 
  shelves until the stars burn out.  Sometimes 
  awful Things wander the stacks, looking for 
  a choice volume of despair they can borrow 
  and enjoy.  Any evil extradimensional 
  sorcerer or Thing of Entropy the PCs 
  encounter among the shelves should be at 
  least PL 15, just to be able to survive in this 
  place. 
  Reaching the Library is deceptively 
  simple.  Any sufficiently potent focus of 
  despair will let a sorcerer with the power 
  “Dimensional Travel” find the way to its 
  silent stacks. 
  
   
  58
  A shabby downtown public library, 
  full of snoozing derelicts and broken 
  dreams, should be the ideal spot to find 
  your way into that more terrible Library 
  beyond.  But so might a house haunted by 
  ghosts of unutterable sadness, or a gallery 
  of paintings by some lost soul who once 
  glimpsed the Court of the King in Tatters or 
  any other really potent locus of 
  unhappiness.  Let the GM decide what 
  would be most dramatically effective and 
  would fit best with the PCs. 
  The Library itself exerts a Paralysis 
  11 effect per minute on anyone who spends 
  more than one minute inside.  It will take 
  4d6 minutes minus the smartest character’s 
  Intelligence bonus to find the empty space 
  on its limitless shelves.  It will take an 
  absolute minimum of two minutes.  Roll 4d6 
  again, once more subtracting the smartest 
  character’s Intelligence bonus, to see how 
  long it takes to find their way out again.  
  The Library defeats all efforts to make a 
  path through its corridors. PCs who have 
  trailed a string behind them will find it tied 
  in loops that go nowhere; a trail of 
  breadcrumbs will bend back on itself in 
  impossible ways.   
  If the PCs are having too easy a 
  time of it, the GM should feel free to let 
  them stumble over some awful patron or 
  librarian stalking among the shelves.  Or 
  perhaps the King himself draws nigh… 
   
  2) In the Court of the Ragged King 
  Frenzied, mad with grief, a creature 
  who calls itself “Null-Unit” falls from the sky.  
  It is too upset to be reasoned with and goes 
  on a brief rampage before the PCs defeat it.  
  Use the standard PL10 “Powerhouse” 
  template for Null-Unit. 
  It is fleeing the charred remnants of 
  its imploded universe.  The King in Tatters 
  rose from the void between realities and 
  crushed the cosmos Null Unit was pledged 
  to protect.   
  Null Unit was unable to save its own 
  world, and came here, to the next place 
  slated for destruction.  But this world is so 
  puny!  It has barely any heroes at all!   
  Before Null Unit has a chance to tell 
  the PCs very much about their foe, the 
  herald of the King in Tatters, the creature 
  they call the “Desolation Angel,” appears in 
  the sky and announces that her master will 
  arrive in two days to teach this dimension 
  the peace that is to be found in oblivion—
  they are most fortunate, for the King will 
  come Himself. 
  Even if the PCs could kill or imprison 
  the herald, it wouldn’t do any good this 
  time.  The King in Tatters already knows 
  about the Earth and is already on his way. 
  The world is gripped by panic. 
  Weird and horrible supernatural events, 
  fiendish signs and sinister portents appear 
  around the globe as His Obliterating Majesty 
  draws nigh. 
  Accompanied by Null-Unit, the PCs 
  must race to the far ends of reality, rousing 
  our dimension’s greatest, oldest powers to 
  rise in its defense.  We don’t know what 
  gods populate your game world, but the PCs 
  should try to contact as many of them as 
  they can in the remaining three days.  
  These should be entities with an average PL 
  of 22-24.  Some of them will be cranky and 
  odd, some will not want to help and some 
  are terribly evil and will want to make 
  unsavory bargains with the PCs in exchange 
  for their assistance.  Can the universe yet be 
  saved?  Or are we fated, like so many 
  others, to fall into horrible silence?
  
   
  59
  OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a 
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  15 COPYRIGHT NOTICE 
  Open Game License v 1.0 Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc. 
  System Reference Document Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan 
  Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave 
  Arneson. 
  'D20 System' and the 'D20 System' logo are Trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast and are 
  used according to the terms of the D20 System License version 3.0. A copy of this License can be 
  found at www.wizards.com/d20. 
  Modern System Reference Document Copyright 2002-2004, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors 
  Bill Slavicsek, Jeff Grubb, Rich Redman, Charles Ryan, Eric Cagle, David Noonan, Stan!, 
  Christopher Perkins, Rodney Thompson, and JD Wiker, based on material by Jonathan Tweet, 
  Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Richard Baker, Peter Adkison, Bruce R. Cordell, John 
  Tynes, Andy Collins, and JD Wiker. 
  Mutants & Masterminds, Copyright 2002, Green Ronin Publishing; Author 
  Steve Kenson. 
  Advanced Player’s Manual, Copyright 2005, Green Ronin Publishing: 
  Author Skip Williams. 
  Silver Age Sentinels d20, Copyright 2002, Guardians of Order, Inc.; Authors 
  Stephen Kenson, Mark C. Mackinnon, Jeff Mackintosh, Jesse Scoble. 
  Mutants & Masterminds, Second Edition, Copyright 2005, Green Ronin Publishing; Author Steve 
  Kenson. 
  Thirteen Shades of Darkness 2.0, Copyright 2006 James Thomson. Published by Plain Brown 
  Wrapper Games 
   
   
  
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