New Avalon Picture!

Obtained at the San Diego Comic Convention 2008, Sergio Cariello has done it again. Check out an earlier post for his full bio and description.

ROLL CALL...Jill Canada

Duty Call...The Father

Name: Oskar Stendt

Alias: The Father, Padre, Minister, Reverend, Preacher, Pastor, or Abbot.

Location: Occupied Europe

Group Affiliation: Axis Forces-SS

Origin: Oskar Stendt was born in the alpine town of Bruneck, South Tirol in the Alps of Austria (now Italy). He was the oldest of a half dozen children raised by a discipline-minded father who hauled supplies over dangerous mountain passes between nearby towns. Oskar joined the Austrian army at the outbreak of the Great War. Because of his alpine experience he was transferred to a special alpine unit, the Kaiserjäger.

WWI- the Kaiserjäger participated in a battle near Scharnitz Pass that lasted over six months. The Italians were well dug in along the eastern facing slopes and the Austrian rifle regiment was ordered to root them out. Shearing winds and frigid temperatures stalemated the warring units for months until Colonel Karl Michl devised an ingenious assault plan: he would send a small unit of highly trained men to climb to the mountain top and lower explosives with ropes. The resulting explosion would either kill the Italians outright or trap them underneath tons of rock, debris, and snow. Oskar was chosen for the squad and he performed brilliantly. He climbed higher than any of his fellow soldiers and was able to set up ropes above their intended targets. A series of signal flares was used to initiate the attack. At dawn on the fateful day, Oskar lowered the last explosives into place and set off the charges. The Italians were totally annihilated and when the Austrian infantrymen stormed the complex they could not find a single defender alive. With the stubborn Italian soldiers out of the way, the Austrians were free to continue the War in Ice and Snow throughout the winter season. As Oskar climber down from his perch above the valley, he could not find the other members of the squad; they had been buried by a secondary avalanche that was triggered by his attack. Overcome with remorse, he made his way back to the Kaiserjäger base camp. After a debriefing, he was hailed as a hero by the other members of his regiment and quickly promoted. Now a well respected officer, He was assigned to lead another attack, even higher and farther, but before the assault could begin an internal struggle ensued in the command tent of Colonel Michl. The medical officer attached to the regiment rescinded the order to send Oskar and his hand-picked men; the lack of oxygen from the incredibly high altitudes of the Alps would surely kill the soldiers before they could ever make it to their target. Colonel Michl demanded that Oskar and his men leave at once with the explosives. Their target: the entrance to the extensive fortifications and military headquarters of the enemy. Doctor Hoekell pleaded with the colonel to reconsider, even delay the attack for at least one day until he could retrieve an experimental drug that could help the men. The determined colonel relented and the men of the assault team were eventually inoculated with a drug that increased the oxygen levels within their blood to levels that would allow them to traverse the inhospitable terrain. The enhanced blood treatment had a component of Protein Zero, an experimental drug designed to create super soldiers for the Kaiser. Days into their climb Oskar realized that the drug was a success. His men felt strong and their strength was exhilarating. When they arrived at their target, Oskar’s men could see guns being dragged by hundreds of troops up the mountain slopes, a network of streets, cable cars, mountain railways, and walkways supported by the steepest of walls hand carved into the mountainside; they had to succeed. The explosives were lowered under the cover of a thick storm and low hanging cloud cover. They were laid, detonated, and the command entrance and its supporting road was demolished. As Oskar’s men made their way back, the storm thickened and visibility reduced to zero. The men had to feel their way along steep slopes, some falling to their deaths silently in the howling wind. Oskar became lost and disorientated, but the drug within his blood kept his strength up, which fed his spirit. He carried on until a miss-step plunged him into a deep crevasse. There he fell asleep, injured and unconscious, buried alive in a glacier within the Alps

Villa St. Raphael-

WWII- Oskar was indoctrinated into the SS during a ceremony at Wewelsburg, a castle which was a ritual headquarters of Himmler’s SS.

Powers:

Description:

Duty Call...Kreigeist!

Kriegeist (War Ghost)

Name: Helmut Heller

Location: Germany

Group Affiliation: Axis Forces-SS

Powers: Kriegeist is able to exude fumes of mustard gas from his skin. He has no control over these gasses, they constantly seep from his pores, surrounding him in an aura of poison. The man’s flesh has withered to a point where he is almost nothing more than a skeleton and its touch is lethal. Kriegeist’s touch can corrode living matter like acid, eating away at tissue, cloth or wood rapidly. The monster’s body is largely composed of poison, conferring on him an immunity to almost any form of toxin. He is also immune to pain, the pain centers in his brain having been burned out by his constant agony.

Kriegeist was an experienced and combat-hardened veteran even before joining the SS. Since falling under the command of Himmler, he has undergone even more training, becoming the Nazis’ top assassin. Kriegeist is a master in the arts of stealth and murder, most of his victims never even see him, killed by the poison gas he exudes before they are even aware he is there.

History: Helmut was a soldier in WWI, fighting for Kaiser and country. For four years, he served in the bloody quagmire of the western front. Then, the stalemate was finally broken, the Imperial German army forced to concede that the wind of war was now blowing against it. Armistice was coming. The carnage would soon end. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month would see the end of hostilities. One man who did not share in the jubilation was Helmut’s commander, Hauptmann Erich Ritter. Despite his years on the front, Hauptmann Ritter was not content merely with his survival, nor the officer’s rank he had attained. Ritter had chest pains, pains that would only leave him when an Iron Cross was pinned to his breast.

Before the armistice could take effect, Ritter organized his command for one last, audacious assault on the enemy lines. Horrified, his men still followed the orders of their commander and his desperate gamble to win his medal before the war was over. Muttering prayers beneath their breath, Helmut and his comrades climbed from their trench one last time, charging toward the French lines as their captain commanded. The French reacted with panic as they saw the German assault rushing across no-man’s land. With few soldiers manning the trenchline, the French called artillery support to break the German attack before it could reach them. The artillery teams unloaded everything they had into the advancing Germans, including a motley collection of gas shells left over from four years of deadlock. Ritter’s assault was smashed under the barrage, the Hauptmann and a handful of survivors all that survived to retreat back to their own trenches.

The chemical cocktail floating over no-man’s land finally dissipated a few days after the armistice was signed. French soldiers began to scour the devastation to bury the dead before the corpses could spread disease. They were amazed to find a survivor among the mangled dead of the last German assault. In one of the shell craters, where a thin mist of gas still lingered, they found Helmut Heller. The German’s uniform was all but corroded from his body, his flesh pitted with ugly burns, his face little more than a withered skull. If not for the screams, no one would have believed the man still lived. One of the French troopers raised his rifle to put the German out of his misery, but the officer leading the patrol stayed his hand. Helmut should be dead, but he wasn’t, and why he wasn’t was something the officer was certain would be worth knowing. He ordered Helmut taken back behind the lines to a field station. Donning gas masks, the soldiers tried to recover Helmut’s screaming body, but the first man to touch him was soon screaming himself, the skin seared from his hand by contacting Helmut’s flesh. Finally chains were used to pull Helmut out and drag him back to the field hospital where the horrified doctors could examine him and try to figure out how the German had survived.

For the next ten years, Helmut Heller was passed between different hospitals in France, as the finest medical minds in the Republic tried to figure out what had happened to him. The German’s body had been saturated with an insane amount of poison gas, a cocktail of lethal proportions that should have killed him as it had the rest of his comrades. Instead, the combination of poisons had altered him on some metabolic level. His flesh had an almost acidic quality to it, corroding almost anything it touched on contact. Even more disturbing, he exuded a lethal gas from the pores in his skin, a deadly fume not unlike the mustard gas that had, in part, caused his condition. When he wasn’t sedated, Helmut was screaming, his every nerve afire with the hideous damage his body had suffered. The doctors monitoring him tried to console themselves that there was no mentality behind Helmut’s screams, that his suffering had rendered the man a vegetable.

In 1928, the screaming stopped.

A new nurse had been appointed to feed Helmut. Because of the horror of attending the man, staff was frequently changed as nurses and physicians suffered breakdowns. Due to his vegetative state, and the fact that anything edible would corrode when he touched it, Helmut was fed intravenously. The nurse had been attending Helmut for only a few weeks, but she had reached her limit. It was cruel, unthinkable to force a man to go on like this, to prolong his suffering. There was a point when death was kinder than life. Instead of Helmut’s food, she prepared a solution of cyanide, injecting it into the suffering man’s body. When Helmut grew quiet and still, the nurse felt relief. When he opened his eyes and rose from his bed, she knew horror. The cyanide had not killed the man, instead all the poison had done was kill the pain centers in his brain. Without agony burning through his brain, Helmut’s mind returned. And it was devoted toward a single purpose.

Hauptmann Ritter never did earn his Iron Cross. After the war, he returned to his home in Bavaria, becoming a clockmaker. He led a quiet, mostly content life, never giving too much thought to his brief military career during the war. That was in the past, and no good could come from dwelling on the past. Ritter was more concerned with the political turmoil broiling within the Weimar Republic, the armed militias of Fascists and Communists prowling the streets and their often violent clashes. It was not so long ago that the NSDAP had tried to seize control of Munich and oust the Bavarian government in a coup. The future was uncertain and frightening enough without worrying about the ghosts of his past.

Then, one night, Ritter discovered that his past wasn’t quite so dead as he had hoped. He had read in the papers accounts of strange animal mutilations, and even more bizarre reports of a ghastly ‘gas man’ prowling the countryside, but hadn’t believed them. A morbid sideshow to distract people from the uncertain political climate, that was all it was. At least so he thought, until he returned home and found his wife lying dead on the kitchen floor, her body twisted and contorted in a manner he’d seen often during the war – the tell-tale residue of mustard gas! Ritter was still reeling from this hideous discovery when a voice called his name, a croaking whisper that seemed at once inhuman yet familiar. The ex-captain turned, only to have a withered hand close around his throat. Poison fumes filled his lungs as the lethal touch of his attacker began to eat through his flesh. Helmut Heller was disappointed when life passed from Ritter. It had all been over far too quickly.

For a time, after the murder of Ritter and his wife, Helmut wandered the back alleys of Munich, trying to avoid discovery even as he desperately tried to find sustenance. It was no easy thing, food would rot as soon as he touched it, providing him only the faintest wisp of nourishment as he tried to devour the burning residue. In time, his hunger became too ravenous, overcoming his caution. He became careless, and when he was careless, people died. Soon the Munich police were scouring the city for him, finally deciding that reports of a ‘gas man’ were more than twisted fantasy. However, it was not the police who found Helmut Heller. It was the stormtroopers of the NSDAP, the Nazis.

Himmler himself had been paying keen attention to reports of Helmut’s activities, always drawn to the bizarre and occult, the head of the Nazi SS had followed the accounts of a ‘gas man’ avidly. He turned his organization toward the purpose of tracking down this strange, spectral creature. Himmler was somewhat disappointed when he saw the ghastly, almost skeletal Helmut. He had imagined the ‘gas man’ would be some superhuman pinnacle of Aryan vitality, one of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch. Instead he found a grotesque monstrosity, the toxic ruin of a man. Still, even if Helmut couldn’t be paraded around as an example of the Nazi ideal, Himmler recognized that his unique abilities could still the party.

Helmut Heller became the Kriegeist, the arch-assassin of the Nazis and was soon deployed against the enemies of the Party, both within and without. Papers across Germany began to report the strange, horrible deaths of prominent communists – a wave of killings that filled the hearts of the Reds with dread. Outspoken critics of the Nazis in the press began to turn up dead, judges and lawmakers who tried to curb the Nazi movement’s excesses likewise began to drop like flies. Trying to oppose the rising power of Hitler invited strange and ghastly death.

For his part in helping the Nazis, Himmler arranged a supply of the intravenous food Kriegeist needs to truly sate his hunger and keep himself alive. Although Kriegeist has become an ardent and loyal Nazi (the party has provided him with both a home and a purpose, things Helmut thought he would never have again after becoming a monster), Himmler takes no chances with him. Kriegeist’s food is carefully rationed, making him dependent on the SS to keep him supplied. To further increase that dependency, Himmler has had portions of heroin added to the protein sludge Kriegeist is fed. By controlling the food, Himmler controls the man, and that control makes the Gestapo chief sleep easier at night. Because he knows better than anyone the abilities of his assassin, and they terrify him.

Description: Kriegeist is a thin, withered shell of a man. His skin is pitted and scarred, his flesh shrunken almost to the bone. A thick yellowish vapour surrounds him as mustard gas seeps from his body. Most times, Kriegeist will be found wearing a special suit crafted form him by the SS which acts to contain his poisonous body. This suit is made of thick rubber and crafted to resemble a German army uniform. A gasmask and stahlhelm cover Kriegeist’s head and face, while the heavy metal vest of a WWI trenchraider covers his chest, providing added protection from small arms fire in the unlikely event one of Kriegeist’s victims sees him coming. The assassin compliments his natural abilities with a selection of grenades, knives and his trust Mauser pistol.

Roll Call...Johnny Dingo!

Johnny Dingo

Name: Evan Aberthol

Location: British army soldier

Group Affiliation: The IMPERIALS

Powers: Johnny Dingo is a fifth generation werewolf, able to change his shape from that of a human being into a half-animal monster. As a werewolf, Johnny Dingo is much stronger and faster than a human, and possesses exceedingly keen senses of smell and hearing. The werewolf’s claws are able to tear through sheet metal like tissue and its jaws able to snap through bone. The strange, supernatural metabolism of a werewolf makes Johnny Dingo immune to many normally lethal weapons, but highly vulnerable to those forces that attack his unnatural substance – fire, certain herbs such as wolfsbane and rose flowers and especially anything crafted from silver. Even in his human state, Johnny Dingo retains traces of his werewolf state, his reflexes are abnormally keen and he continues to exhibit unnatural senses of smell and hearing.

History: The Aberthol family can trace its roots back into the misty ages of legend. And for as far back as the line can be traced, theirs has been a cursed lineage and more than one of the family has found his end upon a gallows. The men of the family have been characterized as violent and intemperate, unable and unwilling to abide the restraints of society. There were always rumors about them as well, dark stories which were almost beyond belief, tales that were too fantastic to be believed. However, in the early 1800’s, an English magistrate took it into his hands to put a stop to the stories about what was responsible for dead livestock and missing animals in his district. Gawl Aberthol, the last of the line, was arrested following a drunken brawl in a local pub. The magistrate availed himself of the opportunity to remove the source of the bogey stories that had beset his community for generations. By order of the judge, Gawl was sentenced to the penal colony of Australia.

In Australia, however, Gawl soon escaped and set about taking a family and making a new life for himself in the Australian outback. The wide-open spaces of Australia soothed him in a way the increasingly industrialized and crowded environs of England could not. For the beast that lurked inside Gawl, that emerged each time the moon was full to hunt and howl needed such open vastness in which to prowl.

Evan Aberthol is the great-great grandson of Gawl. Like his ancestors, he too is marked with the sign of the beast. Like them, he was a violent and intemperate man, the spirit of the wolf clouding his every judgement, making him lash out with no thought of restraint or consequence. All that changed, however, when he, like Gawl, found himself in a barroom brawl. Unlike Gawl, however, Evan killed his antagonist, an aborigine labourer. The courts ruled the tragedy a death by misadventure, since the aborigine had instigated the fight. But the dead man’s fellow tribesmen saw things otherwise. The aborigine had confronted Evan over the killing of numerous sheep on the ranch where he worked, killings the werewolf was responsible for. The tribe’s shaman determined that Evan should understand what he had done, employing his tribal magics to open up Evan’s mind, removing the cloud that separated the beast from the man. Unlike his forefathers, the deeds of the werewolf would no longer be foggy dreams at the edge of Evan’s memory. He would know everything the monster did, everything for which he himself was ultimately responsible. It was a terrible punishment and something Evan found himself tormented by ceaselessly. He took to locking himself in a heavy iron box when the moon rose, trying to keep the beast from working any harm.

As time went on, however, Evan found that there was another change coming upon him as a result of the spell. More and more, he found his own personality and mind rising into awareness within the shape of the monster. He found that he could control the werewolf and even will himself to change forms. It took intense concentration and will power to keep the beast in check, but Evan knew that only by such efforts could he ever hope to face life again. His own personality experienced a change, losing the selfish impulses that had been the driving motivations of his entire life, the impulses that were not unlike the hungry urges of the werewolf. Instead, Evan was determined to do some good for his fellow man, to atone for all the hurt and horror his family had caused over the years. When the fires of war began to engulf the globe, Evan offered his services and unique powers to his government, becoming Johnny Dingo.

Description: Evan Aberthol is a tall, broad-shouldered man with a powerful build and a sharp, narrow face. As Johnny Dingo, he is a lean, hungry shape, his body covered in light, sandy fur (matching Aberthol’s blonde hair) with his face stretched into the fanged muzzle of an enormous wolf. In both forms, Johnny Dingo wears the khaki uniform of an Australian infantryman, modified to stretch and expand when Aberthol’s body metamorphoses into the werewolf

Roll Call...Avalon

Avalon

Written by C.L. Werner

Art design by Mike Shutz

Name: Sir Arthur Henry Reginald-Smythe

Location: England

Group Affiliation: The IMPERIALS

Powers: Henry himself is a physically fit man, an ex-soldier with considerable combat experience and an accomplished marksman. The armor he wears, however, is the source of his more impressive abilities – the seemingly outdated and ancient suit of steel plates is enchanted, rendering it impervious to physical damage. Even the highest caliber bullets bounce harmlessly off the armor, and Avalon has been able to survive even point-blank explosions without injury. However, while providing the occupant with physical protection, the armor cannot defend against attacks which circumvent its powers. Avalon is still vulnerable to poison gas, smoke inhalation or even such an ignominous end as simple drowning.

History: Sir Arthur’s father was Sir George William Reginald-Smythe, who was also the man to wear England’s armor as WWI’s Avalon. He served his nation with great distinction and honor during the war, fighting against Germany’s Knight of Antioch, von Thun. In the post war years, Sir George was limited mostly to public appearances designed to increase British patriotism and morale. He also helped the British army quell violence in Ireland, though he had little stomach for turning his powers against people who were, ostensibly, British subjects. He also participated in defending Britain from some of the more exotic criminal elements and foreign spy rings operating within the Empire between the wars.

With the outbreak of WWII, Sir George was called upon to combat the Nazi menace. During the ‘Sitzkrieg’ following the fall of Poland, Sir George and his French counterpart Justicar were both employed in daring raids into Nazi-occupied territories, often coming up against their WWI nemesis Von Thun. The results of these encounters were a mixed bag, sometimes ending favorably for the Allies, but just as often ending with the two knights being forced to retreat from superior German forces. Little did they know that from the very outset Hitler had devised a contingency to deal with what he viewed as the ‘tiresome champions of the west’. He only awaited the opportune time to deal the decisive blow against them. Unlike the allies, Hitler fully appreciated the propaganda and morale value of these national champions, and how hard-felt would be the impact of destroying them.

Rumors German forces building up along the frontier between Germany and France compelled the British and French to concentrate their forces to the north, the border between Belgium and France, which would match the route the Germans had used to invade before. However, after forces had already been deployed, spies reported strange troop movements near the Black Forest. Panicking, realizing that the Nazis might be using an alternate route to strike France, one that would bypass both the fortified Marginot Line and the troops assembled in the north, it was decided to send a joint team of French and British superheroes to assault the German headquarters where the spies said the plans for the Nazi attack were being drawn. Among the heroes sent to carry out the assault were both Avalon and Justicar.

Operation March Violet turned out to be a crushing humiliation for the Allies. The information the spies had reported had been a deliberate plant by the Gestapo, the ‘headquarters’ was in fact an elaborate trap. The heroes soon found themselves surrounded by a division of elite Waffen SS troops armed with the most advanced weaponry the Third Reich had yet developed. In addition, several German superheroes were present to bolster the military forces. Refusing orders to surrender, the Allied superheroes attempted to fight their way clear.

It was then that Hitler’s plan to dispose of the Allied Knights of Antioch fell into place. The top assassin of the Nazis, a horribly disfigured veteran of WWI who had adopted the name Kriegeist, was among the German forces deployed against the heroes. The poisonous gasses seeping from Kriegeist’s flesh easily circumvented the defenses of the enchanted armor, attacking the men inside. Justicar was slain when he charged the spectral Nazi assassin, the horrible vapors slithering down inside his armor and killing him outright. Avalon attempted to save his comrade-in-arms but was likewise struck by Kriegeist’s deadly fumes. The knight managed to disable Kriegeist long enough to escape the gas, but the horrible fumes had already done ghastly damage to him. Amazingly, Avalon was able to fight his way clear along with a few other superheroes and was successfully extracted back to their base of operations in Paris. Even as the defeated Allies flew back to their base, the Germans were extolling their victory against the ‘invaders’ in propaganda broadcasts, taking extreme delight in capturing Justicar’s armor. At the same time, the blitzkrieg began, German divisions striking deep into France even as the Allied heroes tried to recover from their crippling defeat. His lungs incinerated by the mustard gas fumes Kriegeist had used on him, Sir George fought for life in a Paris hospital.

Henry was at the time attached to a British unit fighting in Belgium, oblivious to his father’s fate. The first he learned what had happened was when he heard a German propaganda broadcast detailing their triumph over the Allied heroes and the killing of Justicar. Soon after, officers from the British Special Services arrived on the front lines to take Henry back to Paris. Sir George was dying and wanted to see his son one last time, a request that certainly couldn’t be denied a national hero. En route to Paris, the staff car taking Henry to see his father was strafed by an opportunistic Stuka. Although he himself was unharmed in the attack, the car was disabled, forcing Henry to negotiate his own way across war-torn France to his father’s bedside. Unknown to him, at the same time Kriegeist had been deployed to finish the job he had started, sneaking behind the confused battlelines to reach Paris and the hospitalized Sir George.

Henry arrived in Paris at last, hurrying to the hospital where his father was being treated. He raced to Sir George’s room, but it was too late. His father was dead. He had expired only a few minutes before. One of the other British heroes had remained by Sir George’s side throughout and told Henry about the Nazi trap and how Avalon had met his end. Realising the huge propaganda victory the Germans would derive from killing both Avalon and Justicar, Henry suggested to the Special Services officers with him that they should cover up the fact that England’s champion had died. They needed to get someone else in the armor as quickly as possible. It was not widely known just who Avalon had been, only Sir George’s family and some high ranking members of the British government knew. One of the Special Services officers suggested that Henry should follow in his father’s footsteps and adopt the mantle of Avalon.

While Henry was still making up his mind about becoming Avalon, the choice was made for him. Kriegeist arrived at the hospital, slaughtering everyone in his path as he made his way toward Sir George’s room. The Special Services soldiers and the surviving British superhero raced into the hallways to combat the ghastly German assassin. Though delaying him, the British forces were no match for Kriegeist, gradually falling back. At last nothing stood between the assassin and Sir George. However, bursting into the room, Kriegeist was surprised to find that Sir George was already dead. His confusion mounted when he found someone else wearing the armor of Avalon standing in the room.

Facing his father’s killer, Henry lunged at Kriegeist, battling the Nazi assassin through the hospital, mercilessly pummeling the villain. Denied sustenance for far too long, weakening before the relentless attack of this new Avalon, Kriegeist turned his mind toward retreat rather than attack, managing to escape after causing damage to a wooden beam, imperiling several wounded soldiers as the ceiling started to collapse. Avalon chose to save the injured men rather than finish off the Nazi killer. In the aftermath of the fight, Henry revealed how he had protected himself from Kriegeist’s fumes, displaying a urine-soaked rag which he had wrapped around his face beneath his helm, a trick his father had used in WWI.

The new Avalon was soon employed to help protect the retreating army arrayed at Dunkirk, returning to England with the defeated Allied forces. Back in Britain, Henry was officially made the new owner of the armor and knighted by the king. Soon therafter, he was called upon as one of the founding members of Winston Churchill’s new Commonwealth superhero team – the Imperials.

Description: Henry is a tall, striking young Englishman, twenty-years old with light brown hair and neatly trimmed moustache. The armor is a suit of steel plate worn over an all-encompassing suit of chain. Henry’s features are concealed behind the rounded steel mask of his visored bascinet. The armor itself is somewhat reddish-tinged, with golden trim. The shield and surcoat display a quartered field, featuring among its other heraldry, the Union Jack of Britain. Avalon is armed with an assortment of modern weapons, the belt around his waist is fully equipped with grenades and ammo pouches and in addition to the symbolic sword he carries, he is armed with a Bren machine gun.

Roll Call...Dune

DUNE

Written by John Helmer
Concept by Sidney pletcher
Art design By Sergio Cariello

Name: Mustafa Faroh

Location: Cairo, Egypt

Group Affiliation: The IMPERIALS

Powers: Dune can control the inherent powers of wind and sand. He is able to move enough sand to fill a man’s lungs, thus cutting off his oxygen. He has been known to dispatch his enemies with this power and leave their bodies in the desert to rot. He heals at an incredible rate and knows the rituals of the Egyptians concerning recuperative herbs and natural mixtures. He can also pick up threats by reading the psycho-kinetic energy given off by a pre-meditated effort to harm him.

History: Mustafa was born in 1848 in the desert outside Cairo. He is a descendent of the ancient Pharaohs and he contains the genetic code of the LONG LIFE MYSTICS. The code has run in his family for generations, but many of his male lineage did not have the code active. If the code is active at birth, as in Mustafa’s case, he has the ability to live up to 300 years. Each second or third generation at random, but never more than three generations, becomes a LONG LIFE MYSTICS (LLM). The genetic code only activates with its full potential on first born males. Mustafa’s father was a SHORT LIFE MYSTIC, or SLM. As in his father’s case, the code was partially activated and the individual is considered ‘normal’ with the ability to live between 80 and 90 years. If the code is partially activated in a female, they can reach the maximum age of 115 years. One visible characteristic of a Mystic is the ability to retain the vigor and strength of a twenty five year old up until the last years of their life. At that point, they rapidly decline. This burnout signal indicates the genetic code turning itself off. A Mystic in the last years of their life will have graying hair. Mustafa’s great grandfather Sameer Faroh was born in 1785. Both his grandfather and Mustafa’s father, Abdul, trained the boy, conditioning him for his long journey through life with his unique abilities. At age sixteen, Mustafa’s abilities began to manifest themselves and he soon found he could see farther, think faster, and endure more than his peers. By the age of twenty, he was able to control and manipulate his abilities. He did find that the farther he journeyed from Cairo, the less effect his powers had. During a trip abroad, he found himself in a snow-covered mountainous region and his powers seemed to fade completely. While he can not create the weather to his liking, such as making it rain, he is able to manipulate the wind, causing conditions that would allow for isolated precipitation. Incredibly, he relishes his ability to control wind and sand. He often finds that he can move a mound from one location to the other with a simple thought. This proved valuable when hiding from his friends as he could cover himself within seconds and remain virtually undetectable. As years passed, he discovered his mental control became more absolute and the emotional impulses of his past seemed to not affect his powers. Gone were the youthful days of losing his temper and having sand whip into a small dust devil around him. Mustafa joined the British army in the early thirties under an assumed name and has worked as a spy for the allies since that time. He uses his Egyptian spiritual knife to dispatch Nazi enemies. He is currently sought by an elite SS assassin named Bachman Eichel. The brutal Nazi had sent four highly trained assassins to kill Mustafa, but the resourceful Egyptian killed them one by one. Eichel was ordered by his superiors to personally assassinate Dune and bring his sacred knife and bloodied Fez hat back as proof.

Description: Mustafa wears a stylish 1930 English business suit. Its subtle pinstripes and dark brown fabric is highlighted by the Fez hat he wears. The hat is faded, plush red with a golden tassel to its side. He is often seen carrying the ancient Egyptian knife, bestowed upon the Life Long Mystics by a Pharaoh. He has black hair and eyes, a moustache, and deep sunken eyes.

Roll Call...Skirmish

Skirmish

By John Helmer

Art Design by Anthony Hoganson

Name: Sir Archibald Phillips

Location: Dover, England Group

Affiliation: The IMPERIALS

Powers: Superior intelligence, coupled with the ability to compute possible military outcomes a 1,000 times faster than a normal human, has made Archie the smartest human alive. History: Archibald Phillips was born to wealthy parents on a large estate outside Dover. He grew up admiring the shores of France, contemplating the distant country and its enticing green landscape. At the age of ten, his impatient father gave the young prodigy child to the boy’s uncle to raise because Archie’s superior intelligence had made him a target at the schools he attended; His was smarter than his parents, his teachers at school, and the physiologists that treated him. Once in his uncle’s care, Edward made sure young Archie had the best personal instructors money could buy. He was educated at Fairburn Castle, located just outside Dover, the land his uncle’s family had owned for generations. With superior private schooling, Archie became an expert at chess and soon won England’s national title. His success was short lived, though, because of his severe claustrophobia, he had to travel in the back of open air vehicles to all his chess matches and this kept him from competing in other markets. Though his local winning streak was unparalleled, his title would remain empty, at least in his mind, because he could not travel to Europe to compete internationally; he was paralyzed by the thought of riding in the confined space of an airplane or boat. When the Second World War engulfed all of Europe, Archie was forced to enlist at an officer’s school, a privilege he was afforded by his well-to-do parents. He scored the highest results ever recorded at the military academy, placing him at the rank of Captain before he had ever put on a uniform. His marks were brought to the attention of Winston Churchill and the British leader immediately realized his potential and transferred Archie to Bletchley Park with orders to decode the entire German secret messaging system: code name ULTRA. But before he could crack the Nazi code, he was transferred to a secret British science facility in the north and an experimental operation was performed to tap into his ability to think faster then any known computer. The operation was a success and he soon could absorb military formations and troop movements, matching those with the allied strengths to predict the probable outcome of battles. A portable computer was attached to a backpack so he could calculate strategies in the field. The results were staggering: battles were won by British troops because of his decisions alone. To increase his effectiveness, Archie was flown by Tiger Moths, open-air cockpit planes, to and from areas of conflict, and his quick thinking saved many allied lives. He was soon paired with the IMPERIALS, assisting the superhero commando group to victory after victory. His luck would run out, unfortunately, during the chaos at Dunkirk the Iron Devil, Nazi Germany’s most feared SS officer, ambushed a small contingent of IMPERIALS protecting the evacuation of important advanced radar equipment. The brutal Nazi fired a single shot between his eyes striking Archie, or as Winston Churchill had nicknamed him Skirmish because of his ability to predict a battle and get his men out safely. A mortally wounded Archie was carried away by IMPERIALS aboard a British destroyer and his lifeless body taken to a hospital in London. As luck would have it, he did not die, but the wound was so severe and the damage so catastrophic that the world’s smartest man was now a vegetable, unable to communicate, a drooling waste in a human shell. Churchill ordered that IV’s be inserted to give his emaciated body nutrients and an oxygen mask kept strapped tight across his mouth to help him breath. He was kept alive because his mind had too much data, too many calculations, and too many allied secrets to loose. His assistant, Lieutenant Harry Glouchesfield, created a way to access his mind with an electronic connecting wire, plugged into his brain and fashioned like a pair of headphones. Archie’s body has the ability to reset the bioelectronic energy needed to keep the data recorder powered so the information requested from the functioning sections of his mind can be stored long enough to be understood by his assistant.

Description: Archie is a drooling vegetable permanently affixed in a wheelchair. He has military nurses change his IV and his oxygen tank 24 hours a day to ensure his mind survives. The battle information accessed from his brain can accurately predict a requested outcome, but it takes his assistant Harry time to decipher a single event, much longer than before Archie’s accident. What was once the world’s smartest man is now the its most ineffective soldier and trapped within his brilliant mind is an incredible wealth of tactical knowledge encased in a useless, decrepit body.

Duty Call...Dr. Gottwin

Dr. Gottwin

By John Helmer

Art design by Brad Eastburn

Name: Dr. Ernst Gottwin
Location: Antarctica research base
Group Affiliation: Axis forces, SS science department
Powers: Ernst Gottwin controls non-communicative distortions of ethereal energy in the form of glowing green amoeboid-type globules. He captures the energy from a human shredding device that siphons off ethereal energy when the subjects are killed. He dispenses the deadly energy from glass capsules filled with minute portions of the original energy mass. When the SS doctor releases the bottled-up energy for an attack, it seeks out its human prey attempting to connect itself to the inherent energy of the living target. The resulting interaction makes the attacking energy fuse with the living human target. Since the two energies cancel each other out, they simultaneously dissipate within seconds, leaving only the human’s clothes and jewelry.

History: Dr. Ernst Gottwin was indoctrinated into the SS shortly after it was formed. He was transferred to Department VII, of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA). The RSHA is the central SS-department. It controlled all official and secret police and security organizations of the Third Reich and is a multitude of departments, offices, groups, and sub-divisions. The SS-leaders of the RSHA were provided with almost unlimited power by Himmler. Gottwin was assigned specifically to Sonderkommando-H under the command of Dr. Johann Veidlin located at a mountain top retreat in Southern Germany. Department VII administered book stocks and archive materials of political, ideological, and religious content. Much of their research material had been confiscated from Jews, Freemasons, and politicians. All depositaries throughout Germany were searched thoroughly: churches, libraries, and universities. An area of interest that sparked Department VII’s attention was the theory of Shoggoth energy. Shoggoths are protoplasmic entities in a mutable form. They look like gigantic amoebae made of green tar with glowing eyes floating on their surface. Dr. Veidlen read accounts of witches and warlocks creating lumps of the material, only to be consumed by their creation in a brilliant flash from the combation of the witch and the Shaggoth energy. After several tests that yielded positive preliminary results, Veidlin sent Dr. Gottwin to Berlin to convince Himmler that they could create vast quantities of the energy and control it to crush the allied armies. Himmler was intrigued and authorized funding for their project. But there were doubters in the SS and rumors began to spread that Himmler and his Department VII were creating a division of witches and warlocks. Himmler, fearful that Hitler might pull the plug on the funding, moved the SS scientists’ experiments to the secret Antarctic base where Veidlin and Gottwin could proceed without interference. What they found out immediately was that the energy was indeed “magnetic” and attracted to the person who tried to collect it. The other troubling issue was the amount of human tissue needed to make one minute globule. Their findings were reported back to Berlin where Himmler issued an immediate remedy for one of the obstacles. Civilian ships loaded with undesirables, under the cover of refugee transports leaving Germany for South America, were sent to the base. These political prisoners and other religious persecuted groups provided the necessary organic material to harvest Shaggoth energy. The civilian ships tricked the allies into thinking the civilians were headed to a place of safety, but when they arrived, the undesirables were met with cold-hearted SS soldiers and scientists eager to end their lives. With a never ending supply of material, the Nazi scientists ground the human subjects in a flesh crushing machine and harvested vast amounts of Shaggoth energy. The globules formed into a large collective which were encased in a glass drum imbued with an Elder sign: a giant five pointed star that focused the ethereal energy. The Antarctic scientists were able to mold minute parts coalescing the globules into colonial organisms, evolving their accumulation of ethereal energy into a thousand times more massive than their first attempt. Eager to advance the project, Dr. Gottwin suggested the idea of having it form into a semi-intelligent polymer capable of being rapidly polymerized or depolymerised as the need required, but the theory was constantly revised due to the unpredictability of the energy mass and thus abandoned. Furthermore, Gottwin presented to Veidlin a colonial organism analysis concluding several theories. The first was its lifespan: the energy remained constant inside the protected glass chamber. The second was when the energy was used up; it dissipated from view, possibly into a new containment area or an unknown plane of existence. Gottwin’s theories grew popular with Himmler, thus threatening Dr. Veidlin’s status. To protect his job as director of the project, Veidlin ordered Gottwin to undergo further tests and experiment advanced siphoning of ethereal energy from living subjects. Additionally, Veidlin concocted a scenario where Gottwin’s loyalty was questioned and Gottwin soon faced a firing squad. To prove his utmost allegiance to the Fuhrer, Gottwin performed the final phase on himself to prove his life was an expendable part in the Reich’s war machine. His situation was desperate: die testing the machine and be remembered as loyal subject of the Reich, or live with its unknown effects and become transformed by the unknown. With little choice and his family’s safety threatened, he chose to gamble his life with the new machine. The experiment sucked the life out of Gottwin, but did not kill him. Unfortunately, the doctor’s energy was unable to be captured as the consistency of living energy was not the same as those of the dead. Himmler was impressed and reassigned the risk-taking doctor to another division of the SS to utilize his new skills. He was now able to handle the energy without fear of death; he had become the perfect assassin.

Description: Dr. Gottwin currently works for the SS as an agent, capable of delivering any quantity of Shaggoth energy to his intended victim. He wears a black SS raincoat, a black hat covering most of his face, and black shoes. His facial features are sunken, due to the repeated ethereal energy removal experiments he performed on himself. He cannot be attacked by the Shaggoth energy as he has none within his body anymore for it to attract to; he has no soul

Duty Call...Ubermann

Ubermann

Written by Clint Werner

Art Design by Bob Hall

Name: Reinhardt Krohn

Location: Germany

Group Affiliation: SS

Powers: Ubermann is incredibly strong, far beyond anything even the most physically fit human being should be capable of. He is able to smash armoured plate with his fists, able to tear steel as though it were paper. Ubermann is able to throw anything up to the weight of a small tank as though it were little more than a medicine ball. His body is incredibly tough, resilient to damage and able to regenerate any damage that is inflicted upon him. The Protein Zero in his body has completely eliminated any need for oxygen in his system, rendering Ubermann immune to gas attacks and even allowing him to operate underwater (although immune to the effects of pressure, as well, Ubermann does need to retain body heat, and so cannot operate at extreme depths). In addition to his enhanced abilities, Ubermann is a highly trained soldier, easily the equal of any nations elite forces.

History: With the Nazi party gaining control of the Reichstag and the Chancellery, the full resources of Germany were put at their command, along with the finest scientific minds in all of Europe. Unlike the petty, squabbling Weimar democracy, the Nazis had both vision and purpose – and would stop at nothing to see their vision made reality. Among the precepts of Nazi philosophy and dogma was the belief in the ancient Aryan civilization of Thule and the genetic superiority the descendents of the ancient Aryans had coursing through their veins. None of Hitler’s lieutenants was quite so obsessed with the ‘theology of the blood’ as Heinrich Himmler. Himmler created numerous programs within the SS to prove the ancient legacy of the Aryans and the birthright which was that of the German people. The Ahnenerbe was one such project, scouring the oldest ruins in Europe and beyond for evidence of Thule and the primordial Aryans. Anything that would substantiate the supremacy of the German heritage of blood was supported by the SS, no matter how eccentric or dubious.

While Himmler searched for evidence of Germany’s genetic superiority through archaeology and the occult, his chief rival within the SS, der Eisernteufel, took a different path toward proving the Fuehrer’s claim of Aryan supremacy. The Iron Devil looked to science to prove Germany’s right to rule over lesser men. Not through eugenics and the other phisiological studies supported by Himmler, programs Eisernteufel dismissed as ‘passive’ sciences, but through what he termed ‘proactive’ sciences. Eisernteufel looked to chemistry, physics and the new science of bio-genetics to achieve his ambition. He would not simply find evidence of the greatness that had once been the birthright of every Aryan. He would find a way of recreating it, of restoring to the German people the physical might that had once been theirs.

As head of the science division of the SS, Eisernteufel funded many projects to augment and improve the human body, supporting several radical and outlandish programs encompassing everything from robotics to genetic manipulation. The research provided differing levels of success, but only one project seemed to deliver what Eisernteufel was looking for. An Austrian chemist named Frederick Neumann had been working upon an artificial blood supplement he had named ‘Protein O’, ‘O’ for ‘oxygen’, the component in blood which his chemical replaced. Due to a mis-transcription of Neumann’s research notes for his SS superiors, the additive was soon known by the more enigmatic code-name of ‘Protein Zero’.

Neumann’s research with Protein Zero provided a mixed bag of results. Most of his test animals died when the additive was introduced into their systems, their bodies shutting down as the alien chemical was injected. Other animals, however, would become energized by Protein Zero, exhibiting enhanced strength, endurance and stamina. Their respiration was also found to be far lower than normal, their bodies far less dependent on oxygen than they should have been. It was the results encountered with one dog, however, that interested Eisernteufel the most. Given an excessive dose of Protein Zero, instead of dying, the dog in question had grown so strong that it had actually gnawed through the steel bars of its cage. Bullets fired at the dog had failed to pierce its skin, glancing off as though striking solid stone. Attempts to subdue the dog with gas had also proven ineffective – the dog’s system had absorbed so much Protein Zero it no longer used oxygen at all. Only when its body had depleted the stores of Protein Zero coursing through it had the super powered canine finally been subdued. While the chemical had been active within it, the dog had been unstoppable.

Eisernteufel ordered that the dog experiment be replicated with a human subject. Against Neumann’s objections, twenty SS soldiers were injected with massive amounts of Protein Zero. When all of the subjects died, Eisernteufel was unfazed, he simply arranged for a second test group, this time of a hundred pure-blooded SS men. Only one man from the second group survived the experiment. He was Reinhardt Krohn and after Neumann filled his body with Protein Zero, Krohn was no longer human. He was much more. He was the living embodiment of Aryan superiority. He was the physical incarnation of Nazi racial theory. He was the golden child of the Third Reich. He was now Ubermann.

Since his creation, Ubermann has served as the primary hero of Hitler’s Third Reich. Goebbels has executed a propaganda campaign that has exemplified Ubermann as a representation of Germany’s glorious future and a physical testament to Nazi dogma about racial purity and superiority. Newsreels represent Ubermann and his superhuman abilities in every cinema in Germany and accounts of his deeds fill front pages of newspapers and nightly radio broadcasts. The Party’s first superhuman also serves another function, allowing them to slowly faze out public interest and support of older, pre-Nazi heroes such as von Thun.

Ubermann is considered one of Germany’s greatest weapons and he is deployed only by approval of Hitler himself. When not employed upon missions or engaged in some moral-boosting stunt for the Ministry of Propoganda, Ubermann is never far from his Fuehrer, acting as bodyguard to Hitler. It is a role that makes the dictator’s inner circle extremely nervous. Hitler can only see the enormous power of Ubermann, he seems oblivious to the danger the superhuman might also present.

Before undergoing the process which made him Ubermann, Krohn was a disciplined, stalwart soldier of the Fatherland. Now, however, he is being overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the power coursing through his body. Ubermann enjoys showing off his abilities, exhibiting little restraint when using his enormous strength. He enjoys knowing that those around him are weaker, enjoys seeing their awe in his presence. Ubermann also displays little restraint with his emotions, and is not very particular about how or to whom he expresses himself. Around Hitler, however, Ubermann reverts to the subdued, disciplined soldier. In all the Reich, only Hitler and Eisernteufel are able to fully control Germany’s champion.

Ubermann is dependent upon regular transfusions of Protein Zero to maintain his body. Every twenty days, the Nazi reports to a physician at the Iron Devil’s fortified research facility in Thuringia, there to receive the next dose to keep him going. However, it was soon discovered that extreme physical exertion caused Ubermann to burn through his Protein Zero reserves at a much higher rate. This was displayed quite prominently during the Polish campaign when a Wehrmacht general, employing Ubermann as a one man offensive against a Polish armour battalion, caused the super human to almost completely exhaust his reserves of Protein Zero. The nearly comatose Ubermann had to be dragged back to German lines and more Protein Zero hastily flown to the battlefield to revive him. For his poor tactics and nearly losing a vital military asset, Hitler personally ordered the offending general shot. Since this incident, Ubermann has been employed more cautiously. If he is sent into a situation where it is expected that he will burn a great deal of Protein Zero, special agents are sent along with him, each equipped with emergency supplies of the chemical.

Eisernteufel has spent the lives of nearly a thousand SS men since Ubermann’s creation but has, to date, been unable to successfully replicate the results Neumann achieved with Krohn.

Description: Ubermann is a massive, broad-shouldered man. Like all men of the SS, he is blonde-haired and blue-eyed and in the peak of physical health. His features are classically handsome, what Goebbels describes as ‘heroic’ in his propaganda. He wears his blonde hair cropped short in military fashion. Ubermann wears a tailor-made black SS uniform trimmed in white. On his breast he displays the numerous medals that have been awarded to him. At his hip he wears a pistol, not as a weapon but as simply another award. The luger was a gift presented to him by no less a personage than Adolf Hitler himself.

Roll Call...The Original Leaf...

Concept by John Helmer

Art design by Matt Haley

The Leaf (original)

Name: Walter MacSorly

Location: Toronto, Canada

Group Affiliation: The IMPERIALS

Powers: Superhuman strength, Superior reflexes, and the ability to withstand tremendous physical force.

History: Walter was born in Toronto, Ontario Canada in 1915. He was the youngest sibling of three children, all boys. His father was an assistant secretary to the Governor General of Canada. Walter traveled frequently with his father to England during his early teens and his affinity to the crown of England grew with every trip. He studied royal lineages and their abundant history during each visit.
When he reached the enlistment age, his father used his political connections to get his youngest son in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Walter, physically fit and a superior athlete, excelled with the RCMP and became an incredible Mountie. He was stationed in the Northwest Territories in 1935 to a cabin near Yellow Knife. Arresting illegal fur traders and common thieves, he became a name to be reckoned with. Walter was assigned to arrest a man named Claude Bellevue, a ruthless French Canadian criminal attempting to hide in the snow covered peaks and lush green valleys of the Territories. Bellevue the Butcher as he was commonly known by gold miners had murdered a family at their cabin during a snowstorm. Walter tracked the killer to an unfrozen river forging its way through an uncharted river valley. He caught up to the murderer who emptied his revolver at the trusted policeman, one of the shots striking the Mountie’s faithful Alaskan Malamute Crown, killing him instantly. Walter charged at Bellevue, thrusting a Bowie into the neck of the criminal. The two fell into the freezing cold river, thrashing at each other. As the water began to settle, only Walter rose out of the soft moving current just before the rapids. A streak of blood stained the pristine river water, but Bellevue’s body never surfaced. The Mountie's knife was missing as well; Walter swore he embedded it deep into the thief’s torso.
When war broke out, he enlisted in the Canadian Army and was transferred to officers’ school. The 1st battalion Canadian parachute Regiment was being organized and Walter was accepted and promoted to the rank of captain. To drum up Canadian war bonds and promote a national sense of unity, the character of The Leaf, a strong, unconquerable fighting soldier was created with the symbols of the Canadian commonwealth: a red maple leaf. Weeks before his unit was to be shipped to England for training, he was taken to a secret military facility outside Toronto. The General staff recognized his excellent RCMP service history and the positive marks his commanding officer had given him from the parachute regiment. This paved the way for Walter to become the Leaf. He was given the new costume and placed back into his regiment for morale purposes.
During a parachute commando raid into occupied France, the Leaf and his unit attacked a German radar installation that was sending vital information to Berlin, resulting the deaths of hundreds of allied pilots. The Leaf and his men destroyed the facility, but Walter was wounded by rifle fire from a German unit protecting the structure. His brother, a parachute soldier in the unit, pulled him from the grounds and carried him to the extraction site. But their departure was delayed by a group of Vichy spies led by Bellevue. The French traitor singled to his grimy Vichy mountain men who fired upon the retreating paratroopers. Bullets sliced through the Canadian unit, killing two-thirds of its soldiers. Walter’s brother was struck in the shoulder. He collapsed to the ground dropping his taller and more muscular sibling. Bellevue halted his men and told them that he alone would finish off the Canadian symbol of freedom. When the mutilated face of the criminal came into view, Walter yelled out the French Canadian’s name. He in turn recognized the RCMP and pulled out the damaged Bowie knife he had kept for so many years, next to his twisted heart. Bellevue exclaimed he had ended the life of the Mountie’s dog, and now he would end the Mountie’s. He swore vengeance. Bellevue’s face was distorted and disfigured from the repeated thrashing his limp body had endured against the jagged rocks of the river’s rapids. A grisly site even the most strong of stomach could not take. He plunged the Bowie downward, but Walter, managing every last bit of strength, drove his dense black gloved fist into the abdomen of the French Canadian, rendering him unconscious with one thundering blow. The Leaf, wounded himself and bleeding at an accelerated rate, picked up his older brother and ran through the lush grass of the French field. The transport landed and took away the surviving party of the commandoes.
He now fights for Winston Churchill and his band of strong, faithful Commonwealth heroes: The IMPERIALS, ridding the European continent of the Axis scourge and anywhere it infests democracy and freedom.

Description: The Leaf wears a standard Green Commonwealth World War Two battle dress and pants. Flanking his pants from his knees to his hips are two red half leafs, one on each side, jutting out from his wool pant legs. His British “Pancake” helmet is made of advanced composite metal created in a secret Canadian laboratory and fashioned into the standard shape. It can deflect almost any kind of munitions, except those that pierce tank armor. The faded green helmet has a red maple leaf at its front. He wears black gloves made of dense, but malleable fabric; his fists pack a powerful punch. Beneath his battledress, he wears a thin sheet of blue chain mail armor covering his chest, shoulders, and arms. It is made of the same material as his gloves. Most bullets flounder when impacting his upper body.

Duty Call...The Green Glove...

The Green Glove

Written by Clint Werner

Concept by John Helmer
Art Design by Mike Shutz

Name: Ljang Khu Arihant (The Green Destroyer of Enemies)

Location: Tibet

Group Affiliation: SS-Ahnenerbe

Powers: The Green Glove is skilled in powers that tap into abilities locked deep within the human mind. He has mastered the powers of the mind to a level few men have ever achieved, able to control the chakra not only of his own body, but of those around him. Employment of tumo, the ability to endure sub-zero temperatures with nothing more than manipulation of his chakra is the least of his powers. He is able to induce crippling pain and accelerated healing with the touch of his hand. By exerting his will, he can hypnotize almost anyone who dares to meet his gaze, displaying varying levels of control over his subjects. Those who fall deepest under his control have their will completely subjugated, becoming slaves to the Green Glove’s mind. The Green Glove can also induce hallucinations by deceiving and manipulating the senses of his victims, making them see or hear things that are not there, or else fail to see things that are. The other Adepts of Agarthi are able to also able to exert these abilities, although in an extremely limited fashion. A normal ‘Green Man’ might be able to control the will of a half-dozen men at the same time, the Green Glove can command the minds of hundreds.

The Green Glove has many powers that are unique to himself, as well. He is able to enter several trance-like states that allow him to transcend the barriers of time and space. He can astrally project his consciousness, allowing him to send an intangible ‘ghost’ of himself to a specific target destination. Although able to be seen and heard, this astral form of the Green Glove is not material and incapable of interacting with his environment. He is also unable to project himself to any site which exact location is unknown to him. Another trance state projects his spirit back in time, allowing him to observe past events at whatever location his physical body is occupying. Unfortunately forward projection in this fashion is almost impossible as ‘the future is constantly in motion’. However, the Green Glove is skilled in the arts of both Tibetan and Chinese astrology, and has made several uncannily accurate predictions through these forms of divination.


History: In 1936, the Ahnenerbe, a scholarly division of the SS charged with uncovering archaeological and anthropological evidence for the origins of the Aryan race, mounted an expedition to Tibet, a region which some scholars felt might very well hold the secrets of the genesis of the Aryan race. The expedition employed many methods toward achieving their goal, examining the cultural, historical and religious aspects of the Tibetans, seeking any trace of Aryan influence, and even physiological comparative anatomy to determine if there was a genetic link between the Tibetans and ancient Aryan peoples.

Another goal of the expedition was to disprove the evolutionary claim that men had descended from apes by proving that the notorious ‘abominable snowman’ was nothing more than a Himalayan bear, certainly not any manner of ‘missing link’. A small group detached itself from the main Ahnenerbe expedition, climbing high into the mountains to seek the elusive Asian black bear and prove it to be the source of the yeti legend. The German hunting party soon found itself high in the icy mountains, climbing peaks perhaps no man before them had ever trod upon. Their Sherpa guides and porters grew increasingly nervous as the Germans pressed them onward, here they said was the domain of the yeti, a place it was unsafe for men to be. Threats kept the Sherpas from deserting, and after an arduous climb, the Germans stood upon the roof of the world, gazing down into windswept valleys and snow-covered mountains. The Sherpas urged that they should turn back, that the Nazis had already tempted fate too long. The Germans would not abandon their hunt, however and ordered their porters to begin the climb down into the valley.

That first night, camped upon the walls of the icy valley, three porters vanished, snatched from their tents with such impossible skill that the men beside them had not been disturbed from their sleep. The morning sun was blotted from the sky, blackening the landscape as though a shroud had been thrown over the world. The Sherpas begged the Germans to turn back, but there would be no turning back. After the most vocal of the guides had been silenced with a bullet in his skull, the expedition pressed on. All that day, as they descended into the valley, every man felt malevolent eyes watching him. That night, the screams began – sharp, piercing and unearthly; echoing from the summits all around them, wailing their haunting challenge into the darkness. In their tent, the German leaders conferred with one another, wondering if perhaps they should not turn back after all. They had been charged with proving the yeti a myth, nothing more than a mountain bear. They weren’t equipped to deal with… with whatever it was that had been stalking them. After long hours of debate, a decision was reached – in the morning they would turn back. But it was already too late.

The yeti attacked in the darkest of night, descending upon the German camp in an avalanche of bestial fury and superhuman strength. The Sherpas were slaughtered as they cowered before the hulking, ape-like hominids. The Nazis tried to resist, firing wildly at their inhuman attackers. But bullets seemed to have no effect upon the yeti, rounds fired at the beasts seemed incapable of finding their mark. As they had with the Sherpas, the yeti tore the German mountaineers apart with their brutal strength. Not a man of them was left alive, bar one. Of all the men who had set out on their ill-fated hunt, Gestapo agent Erich Wunsche was the least equipped for survival. He was no mountaineer, no big game hunter, not even a naturalist familiar with the animals of the Himalayas. He was a watchdog for the Party, an agent sent along simply to ensure that any discoveries made by the expedition would be disclosed to Himmler and the SS before they were made known to anyone else. It was somehow absurd that Erich should be the one spared by the yeti. Yet spared he was, the monsters leaving him alone as he fled into the night.

Erich ran, ran until his heart felt like it would burst and he dropped into the snow, quivering with terror. Then he picked himself up and ran some more. At some point, he fell and did not have the strength to rise again. He resigned himself to his fate, letting his eyes close as sleep crashed down upon his exhausted frame.

Erich never expected to see another dawn, yet when his eyes fluttered open, he found himself staring into the golden disc of the sun. Against all the odds, he had survived. He had endured the cold of the night, he had managed to keep from falling into a crevasse in his flight through the darkness, he had escaped the murderous wrath of the yeti. Erich laughed, a sense of victory filling him. He looked at the bleak, icy landscape around him, trying to find his bearings. As he did so, he found his eyes drawn to something, something that he would have sworn had not been there a moment before, something that stared at him with bestial eyes and grinned at him with massive fangs. Before his eyes, more of the creatures seemed to materialize from the thin air, glaring at him with their inscrutable gaze. He hadn’t escaped the yeti at all. Erich leapt to his feet, fleeing once more down the mountain. The yeti followed him, their long stride easily matching Erich’s frantic dash. But the monsters made no effort to close with their quarry. Sometimes one would draw ahead of Erich, blocking his path and forcing the German to change his direction. Whenever the Nazi stopped to rest, one of the monsters would hoot or growl, urging the man onward. Erich understood now that the yeti were more than simple beasts, more than some ‘missing link’. There was intelligence about them, a cruel intelligence that was playing with him, herding him toward some final and horrible destination.

It was nearly nightfall before Erich saw it, rising from the side of the mountain, perched atop a jagged outcropping of rock. It looked like a Buddhist monastery, but there was about it a suggestion of something even older. Somehow, the structure looked wrong in some way Erich could not define. He only knew that the place filled him with dread, that it was the last place he wanted to go. But the yeti seemed to have other ideas, continuing to drive the German toward the foreboding monastery.

Exhausted, driven to the limits of endurance by his ordeal, Erich collapsed before the gates of the monastery. The yeti withdrew, seemingly content to leave the man on the doorstep of the monastery. As they had appeared, so did they vanish, seemingly to blink out of existence back into the ice and snow of the mountain. Erich tried to make sense of what he had seen. It was impossible, how could such massive creatures simply vanish into nothingness in the twinkling of the eye? He did not have long to consider this affront to his logic and reason, however. His attention was soon fixed upon the massive doors of the monastery, twin portals that appeared to have been crafted from solid gold. The great doors were slowly swinging open.

Erich could see nothing of the interior of the monastery, even when the doors stood gaping before him. What was beyond those doors was darkness, a darkness deeper than what mere shadow should achieve. It was the darkness of the Pit, the blackness beneath the world. From that darkness, a man emerged. He was Tibetan, dressed in dark green robes, his hands clothed in what looked like gloves of green velvet. There was age and wisdom in his face, yet also a strength and vitality Erich had never seen in even the most robust athlete. The Gestapo agent could feel the power of the monk’s will wash over him as the Tibetan strode toward him.

‘Erich Wunsche,’ the monk said. It was not a question. ‘No man may gaze upon this place unless he has been called here. You have been called. You will serve the Adepts of Agarthi.’ Erich’s mind reeled as the Tibetan spoke, his words uttered in such a precise, articulate German. There was something more than simple words in the monk’s tones, there was something deeper and more sinister, something that seemed to crawl through his very soul.

‘Please, I need rest,’ the Gestapo agent begged. ‘Creatures… beasts chased me here… I need sanctuary.’

The monk looked down upon him, his expression never changing. ‘The yeti watch over this place… there is no sanctuary here for you.’ The monk stepped forward, placing one of his gloved hands against the German’s forehead. Erich wanted to scream as he felt the monk’s nauseating touch, but found himself unable to utter a sound. Then a strange energy seemed to course through his body, running through his exhausted limbs and tired mind. Fatigue and confusion passed from him as though they had never been there. He tried to remember the fear and revulsion the sinister monk had filled him with, but even these had slipped away from him.

‘The comos stands at a crossroads,’ the monk said. ‘It is an auspicious time, when the stars themselves may turn from the sky. The age of prophecy has come. I would see the man from Thule, the warlord who would make the earth his own. You shall take me to the great Khan in the west that I may… attend him and give him council.’
Erich did not speak, did not give any sign that he understood the monk’s words, yet the monk knew he would obey. There were few who could not. From the darkness of the monastery, more green-robed monks emerged. Like their master, the adepts were all Tibetans. Unlike their master, their hands were bare. Silently, they filed after Erich Wunsche as the Gestapo agent retraced his passage through the mountains, bringing the Adepts of Agarthi to the small Himalayan village where the rest of the Ahnenerbe expedition was conducting its investigation. A few weeks later, the Ahnenerbe returned to the Fatherland. With them they took nearly a hundred Tibetan monks and their enigmatic leader.

The Adepts of Agarthi were introduced to Heinrich Himmler, who was impressed by the mystical abilities of the monks and decided that they could be of use to the occult studies of the SS. For their part, the monks seemed to ask nothing in return, professing that they had come to Germany merely to serve the ‘great khan of Thule’. Their assurances rang hollow in the ears of many, but Himmler decided that there was too much that could be learned from the monks to turn them away. The hypnotic and spiritual powers the Adepts of Agarthi displayed could be of immense value to the Reich if only they could be tapped properly.

The leader of the adepts has neither name nor title, such an inconsequential detail is beneath him. Officials in the Reich have taken to referring to him as simply ‘The Man with the Green Gloves’ or just ‘The Green Glove’. He has become one of the most inscrutable enigmas in the Reich, moving through the corridors of power, exerting his influence at even the highest levels of the party. The Green Glove has advised Himmler on numerous occasions and even consulted with Hitler several times. Great value is placed on his occult predictions. He does so on his own terms, however, the Tibetan does not ‘perform on command’, nor would even the head of the Gestapo consider trying to give the monk orders. Indeed, only the Fuehrer seems to have the force of will to match the Green Glove’s dominating presence.

Whatever the Green Glove’s purpose is, it is not serving the Third Reich. Although he has lent his considerable powers to Germany, although he has allowed his adepts to become guinea pigs of the SS, the Green Glove’s ultimate loyalties lie elsewhere. There are some who wonder exactly what the true nature of the Adepts of Agarthi is, and who… or what… they ultimately serve.

The Green Glove has been seen all across Europe, visiting the oldest and most ancient of sites. He has been involved in recovery operations organized by the SS to capture mystical artifacts and eldritch texts. There are even reports that he has been seen far behind enemy lines, stalking the streets of London and Moscow in pursuit of whatever dark purpose has drawn him down from the roof of the world.

Description: He wears a traditional Tibetan robe and sandals. He carries an incense staff and has a hand-carved bone necklace draped on his chest. His head is shaven revealing a small black swastika on his upper forehead. He his is often seen wearing a Tibetan monk ceremonial headdress.