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.
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
