Characters of Note
The Guiding Lights are a ragtag group of superheroes that emerged in the late Sixties and gained great prominence during World War Three. Despite their fame, much about them remains a mystery, including how they got together in the first place. The things they have in common are an independent spirit that has kept them from swearing allegiance to any existing authorities, a determination to help people in ways that go beyond fighting criminals in the streets, and a tendency to think outside the box. Many among them have also come upon cosmic powers and profound secrets, letting them wield much greater influence than one would expect of such an eccentric and non-aligned group. The team’s current status is unclear. Their ranks have swelled with like-minded additions since the creation of New Atlantis, but some of the older members (including their leader, Lightbringer) have not been seen in a while. Others have remained active, both around the world and as their city-state’s presumed last line of defense. Sometimes they have been seen to work together, but are they are a team anymore, or just a loosely connected superhero club?
Lightbringer’s identity remains unknown to the general public, enough details of his biography have surfaced. He started out as a radical-minded and recklessly experimental college student in Sixties America. Having deliberately irradiated himself with the mysterious Y-Rays of his own discovery, he gained the ability to manifest that energy in a number of effective ways, each of which was distinguished by a different colour. At first, he tried to use his powers to bring about a non-violent revolution, but before long he found himself fighting a two-front war against corrupt authority figures and more ruthless rebels than himself. The War did not change his mind about the world, but it did adjust his priorities. New Atlantis, a safe haven for those with nowhere else to go, was his brainchild. Ironically, the one-time college anarchist ended up founding a new state, albeit one that was designed to be more hands-off and tolerant than the existing ones. Some say that he then left to avoid being dragged into the kind of politics he despised; others, that he had gone to deal with a threat to Earth, but perhaps overestimated his powers. There are less sympathetic views as well. Either way, his teammates are remarkably silent as to his current whereabouts.
Thanks to her home country’s tabloids, Dame Illustrious’ identity is no longer a secret, but virtually no one uses it these days. The British noblewoman started out as a globetrotting adventuress and crimefighter out of boredom with her life of idle comfort and privilege, only to mature somewhat into an unusually direct philanthropist. The Dame has been known to say that good friends are her real superpower, which does reflect her far-flung connections but is perhaps a little coy for someone whose friends include an energy being from outer space. Glory has saved Dame’s life during an early escapade by bonding with her on a semi-permanent basis. Among other effects, this bond appears to have made the aristocrat practically invulnerable and more foolhardy and courageous than ever. Their relationship, and Glory’s debatable status as one of the Guiding Lights, provides yet more fodder for rumours – not that she is one to care. The two are relatively often seen in New Atlantis, but also in many other places.
No one knows Agent Tiger’s real identity – if he even has one, or remembers it himself. It is unclear whether he has superpowers, but he certainly has many talents, including a mastery of disguises and incredible athletic and combat skills. They say that he came from somewhere in South Asia, that he was raised from childhood to be a foot soldier in the ancient conspiracy known as the Army of Terra, and that upon discovering its corrupt true nature, he singlehandedly deposed its secret masters and reformed the group. If so, then that would make him the founder and leader of ATLAS – but it could just be deliberate misinformation on their part. Tiger, or someone who occasionally matches his known appearance and skillset, certainly does not seem to shy away from action even now. It has been suggested that his pragmatic and cautious nature has often placed him at odds with the more idealistic and reckless members of the Guiding Lights. Nonetheless, their shared outlooks have allowed them to work together in the past.
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Saveliy Ignatiev hails from the Soviet Union. Little else is known with certainty about his early life, and he has implied that sharing more might provoke an international crisis. It appears that he came to America as a spy and immediately went rogue – or maybe he was a double or a triple agent all along. His motivations and allegiances were never terribly clear. An amoral and brilliant inventor, he soon established himself as a prominent supervillain under the name of Burevestnik. He specialised in acts of terror and daring robberies assisted by bizarre and powerful gadgets of his own creation. Though he did not seem especially bloodthirsty, neither did he balk at taking lives when it suited his purposes. Perhaps that is what motivated Lightbringer to work with the police to finally bring him down. Like many other supervillains, Burevestnik received a pardon in exchange for service during the War, which in his case included reverse-engineering Cylien technology. Since then, Ignatiev has leveraged his genius into Storm Petrel Adaptations, a cutting-edge tech company focused on mastering the supernormal. While law-abiding almost to a fault, he also shows little remorse for his past actions. Indeed, he seems to revel in his infamy and in the discomfort that the city’s protectors exhibit whenever he offers them his help.
The Rat King is still more enigmatic. It appears that he simply showed up one day and swiftly took over the city-state’s budding underworld through an intricate and efficient campaign of intimidation. His Rats range from glorified street gangs to shadowy brokers and are involved in everything from primitive violence to more intricate extortion and blackmail schemes. Even his closest lieutenants have had minimal direct contact with the man, and no one can identify his face. His name and the occasional abrupt shifts in his modus operandi have led some to suppose that there are actually several crime bosses operating under that name, brought together by some unbreakable bond. Whatever the truth, the Rat King seems to know about every criminal operation in the city. Usually that is because he controls it, directly or through a boss that agrees to play by his rules; at times, he does not, but then he swiftly moves to rectify that, occasionally manipulating supers to that end. He seems to have some interest in the city-state’s security and prosperity, although that may just be because he will be there to leech off it.
The Dark Between the Stars are a yet larger mystery. The “space demons” actually seem to be from another dimension, but they project into this one as animated shadows with great powers of telekinesis. They have also been known to possess machinery and cyborgs, or at least their Cylien followers. Unenhanced organic life, on the other hand, repels them. Perhaps relatedly, they have exhibited an apparent abhorrence or even fear of magic and psychic powers, although the true nature and the extent of it remains unclear. Desiring the Earth for some unknown plan, they have tried to work around their limitations by using human and alien minions to take it over. Occasional spurious sightings aside, they have been quiet since the War. While the general populace has started to move on, many organisations and individuals are still anxiously waiting for their next move.
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The Warlords have never truly been a cohesive group. The leaders of the WUC were simply a handful of ruthless, resourceful and ambitious individuals who accepted the Dark’s bargain. In exchange for help in taking over the world and the right to keep it afterwards, they would remove certain obstacles from the way of their benefactors. When the WUC was declared, it was described as an international alliance aiming to put an end to the Soviet-American duopoly and the threats posed by nuclear weapons and out-of-control superhumans. In truth, however, the Warlords each ran their own empire as they saw fit, molding it according to their personalities and agendas. While they had some projects and priorities in common, it is most likely that they would have betrayed each other and their masters shortly upon achieving victory – and some among them could not even wait that long. Their fates have diverged since the War’s start, but even if none of them will ever trouble the world again, they have left a lasting mark upon it in the form of loyalists, disciples, avengers, hidden weapons, abandoned experiments and the chaos that still prevails in many parts of their former domains.
The Steel Caudillo got his start as a brutally effective street-level vigilante in Buenos Aires. His powers of metal manipulation brought him to the attention of Argentina’s military bigwigs, who used him to overthrow the “soft” civilian government and then employed him as a glorified mascot. With the Dark’s help, the “Steel Colonel” managed to turn the tables on the junta by overthrowing them in turn. Fancying himself a modern day Napoleon, he soon declared himself the Emperor of America and began enforcing his claim great vigour and speed, pushing all the way into US territory before he was finally stopped. Although the “Steel Generalissimo” was not so great a military genius as he imagined, his forces were made extremely formidable by a combination of alien technology and the efforts of his own scientists. His jetpack commandos proved especially effective, while the giant robots were somewhat inefficient but intimidating. Then there were his super teams: the cyborg Steel Legion and the more eclectic Pan-American Guard.
The would-be emperor’s legacy was a mixed one. Ruthless to enemies and prone to excessive retribution, he nonetheless made a show of being magnanimous towards his loyal subjects. Compared to many of his allies, he came across as relatively sane and human. His participation in the witch-hunts seemed decidedly perfunctory, though he did not dare to stop them entirely. Those who did not run afoul of such and did not try to go up against him benefitted from increased peace, order, prosperity, and an expanded access to health care, education, and (often giant robot-related) employment. Nonetheless, as the war turned south and the Dark made themselves known, more and more people rose up against his rule. It all came to a head during the cataclysmic Battle of Buenos Aires, in which NATO forces supported by the rebels overwhelmed the Steel Caudillo’s loyalists and Cylien reinforcements. He has not been seen dead or alive since falling out of his combat walker towards the streets that he once knew so well. That has led to many a conspiracy theory, especially among his diehard Acerista supporters.
The White Devil was the most volatile and least cooperative of the Warlords. Indeed, his inclusion among WUC’s collective Heads of State was mostly nominal. A psychotic white-haired albino soldier of fortune “blessed” with supernatural luck and charisma, he had already obtained great notoriety by the time the Dark approached him. He travelled between the hotspots of the world, whipping up bloodlust on both sides and recruiting the most promising survivors. The “empire” he presided over was more of a roving horde of mercenaries, child soldiers, cultists and everyone else he could pick up in his path, with only the most token effort at imposing a new world order or carrying out the Dark’s mandate. Indeed, given his own likely psychic and/or supernatural nature, it seems likely that their plan was to set him on his path and get out of the way, hoping that he would burn out after doing enormous damage to the Earth’s defenders.
The White Devil’s initial theatre of operations during the War was in West Africa. It was, however, merely a staging area; he soon grew bored of it and embarked upon a massive infiltration/invasion of Southern Europe. This led to some of the most nightmarish fighting in the war due to the crazed fervour of the Devil’s troops and his callous disregard for lives on both sides. But human wave tactics and the surprise factor could only take him so far. The second, third and fourth invasions were markedly less successful, and even his “devil’s luck” could only protect him from enemy superheroes for so long. In the end, he was the first of the Big Five to be defeated – and killed, which was controversial, but much less so than it would have been a few years earlier. The horde he had assembled would go on rampaging in a more disorganised fashion for a good deal longer, not least because he found many apt pupils among his superhumans.
The Archlion was a werelion supervillain who terrorized East Africa and fought both local and visiting superheroes long before the War. During the decolonisation he reinvented himself as a freedom fighter and a true African superhero, a conversion that many of his local enemies and victims took with a grain of salt. Still, his involvement in colonial struggles won him some popularity, and the subsequent instability allowed him to establish and expand his Grand African Protectorate. Though he claimed to hate the White Devil, and indeed may have helped expose him to the strike that took him out, the Archlion had undoubtedly benefited from his ally’s actions: he moved into the terror-stricken areas that the Devil ally left behind and offered the survivors security and peace in exchange for contributing to his war effort. At its height, the Protectorate may have been the most cohesive and stable part of the WUC, though at the cost of enduring an increasingly paranoid and brutal tyranny.
As the War raged on, the Archlion called for African unity in the face of neocolonial threats from the north and formed pan-African teams of “superheroes” to “protect” the extensive territories under his control – often by punishing “traitor tribes” and hunting down “witches”. His forces pushed into Europe and the Middle East, securing a more lasting foothold than most of his allies due to his more practical and patient approach to warfare, leveraging all the resources he could acquire to best effect and working closely with the Cyliens upon their arrival. Yet as the others passed out of the fight, the Archlion was gradually pushed back and only narrowly evaded capture by an Allied task force. Seeing the tyrant’s weakness, many of his previously cowed subjects rose up. When he tried to restore order through a personal intervention, the Archlion met his end at the hands of mortal men – though maybe not before he managed to pass on his curse…
The Nautilian is often seen as the best of a bad bunch. Granted, she was a cold-blooded and arrogant piratical technocrat bent on ruling the seas from her mobile underwater palace complex, but she was generally pragmatic, leery of unnecessary cruelty and fond of winning battles with minimal losses on either side. Of course, part of it was that she had the fewest lives to waste in the first place. Her approach to the witch-hunts was peculiar; the psychics and magicians rounded up by her forces were not killed but concealed in a top-secret facility. She resented wasting useful assets, preferring instead to train and indoctrinate them so that they may be of future use to her plans. Likewise, she was the most dubious about the Dark; though she accepted their deal at the time and made use of what they gave her, she was always careful to minimise contacts, study their technology and be prepared for treachery.
After subduing much of South Asia through an effective show of force against the vital Indian Ocean shipping routes, the Nautilian took her operations global. She inflicted tremendous damage on the Allies’ naval forces and sent out raids to acquire resources necessary for continued expansion of her nomadic fleet. However, some of her lieutenants grew impatient with this restrained approach to warfare. They discovered her deal with the Dark and her contravention of their orders, and tried to betray her to the otherworldly powers. Receiving forewarning from an unknown source, the Nautilian used her “Secret School” to thwart the coup attempt and prevent retaliation from the Dark. Afterwards, she withdrew from the war, clearing the waters for the Allied counteroffensive. She has provided some other undisclosed form of assistance during the Cylien invasion that led to her and her followers’ informal amnesty. Nevertheless, she saw fit to lay low after the war, with only occasional sightings of what might be parts of her flotilla.
The self-proclaimed Black Buddha (or Smoke, as many of the largely non-sympathetic Buddhists prefer to call him) was an enigmatic individual who eventually gave the White Devil a run for his money as the most destructive member of the Warlords. This did not appear to be the case at first. He (at least, people generally assumed he was a he under the cloud of black mist that constantly surrounded him, and he made no effort to correct them) was eloquent in making the WUC’s case to the world. Although his gifts seemed to be more along the lines of smoke manipulation, and his charisma was simply that of any other cult leader, the Black Buddha managed to inspire a vast international following with his promises of a swift and universal liberation from all forms of suffering.
As soon as the War began, the cult moved in swiftly to take over South-East Asia. The bulk of the population in the war-torn region initially welcomed the peace brought by the Black Buddha, especially combined with generous humanitarian relief. Next, his forces invaded China, making vast gains in the confusion that followed Chairman Mao’s sudden and suspicious death. As they advanced, however, resistance stiffened, especially after the Chinese defenders received Soviet reinforcements – including the psychic People’s Talents. The frontlines stagnated, though superterrorists in remote cells continued to cause tremendous damage by means of unnatural disasters throughout Allied nations. It was at around this time that the true nightmare began. Cult forces around the world started by exterminating all the magicians and psychics they could find, in the name of freeing them from the temptation of their powers. Next, they came after their families, to free them from anger and grief. Then, their more distant relatives; and those who tried to shelter them; and those who refused to join in… As those purges spread, countries that previously accepted the Black Buddha’s rule revolted. The empire collapsed in a flurry of violence and madness that seemed to discomfit its ruler not at all. When Allied forces stormed the inner sanctum of his main temple, they found no one there. Smoke’s followers – still alarmingly numerous – claim that he had done all that he could in his mortal form, and now continued his mission on a higher plane. Others speculate that he was one of the Dark all along.
