Oh boy, does this character have a conceptual history. It started with needing another villain for the Paranormal War (which I told readers about in the last installment of Pieces Of Creation) and being short of time. So I took a villain from one of the many supplements I had for the Hero System who was just a fairly generic brick (and whose name I now forget) and melded the character concept with a homage to one of the mainstays of the X-men comics of the 80s, Colossus, again looking to add an unexpected twist while playing on player expectations based on the visual of that hero. But the character lacked sparkle, he was too generic, and barely able to hold the attention of one PC, never mind a whole team of them, for an entire encounter. There simply wasn’t enough substance or depth.

So the character needed some serious cosmetic surgery for his next appearance in the campaign, when he was to function solo against the group. So I began seasoning with other ideas. I threw in elements of Earthmover, a villain from Villains Unlimited, the Heroes Unlimited sourcebook by Kevins Long & Siembieda, and mixed with elements from another Marvel Comics character, Thunderball, all of which were filtered through elements of the origin story of one of the PCs in the campaign, Blackwing.

Blackwing was an L.A. Cop from the East Coast who migrated in search of his sister, who had fallen into the clutches of a weird cult somewhere in California. In a fortuitous incident, he uncovered a Demon Base (a variant on the Organization from the Champions RPG) base and led a successful raid on it. In the course of that raid, he came into possession of a suit of magical armor that the Sorcerers were doing something to – whether creation, perversion, or attempted destruction was never clear – and for some reason, he instead of logging it into evidence, he chose to put it on, transforming him into the Novice hero, Knight.

What the character didn’t realize was that he was admitted to the team as much so they could keep an eye on him as anything else, because his story simply didn’t make sense, and yet he believed every word. Strange abilities began cropping up almost immediately, like the time the armor absorbed a blaster shot instead of simply deflecting it, or the time it swallowed a bad guy whole.

In an effort to help the team understand how their powers worked, another character named Warcry (who went on to be the focal point of his own campaign) began to analyze their powers. The results were strange almost from the beginning, and what became clear was that Knight didn’t want anyone else to wear the Armor – and was reluctant to even take it off. An attempt to measure the thickness of the armor was the straw that broke the camel’s back as Knight transformed into Blackwing, a Stony superheroic Gargoyle – with no observable Armor at all.

Over the years since, bit by bit, things have become clearer. The armor exhibits a sort of Siren Call that seduces compatible individuals until someone puts it on. Doing so imprisons the wearer in a pocket dimension, whose boundaries appear to be the individual wearing the armor and which embed subconscious instructions to protect against discovery of these facts. So Knight became the shape-changer known as Blackwing.

There’s obviously a LOT more to the story than this capsule review can contain (and more that even the player doesn’t know yet!) – but this gives the basics and the conceptual elements that were incorporated into the character being presented here as “Énorme Force”.

On top of all that, I threw in some original ideas of my own! But all that additional content went into the character concept and background; superficially, at least from a distance, the character still looked like ‘Colossus’. Up close, there are pronounced differences.

I spent quite a lot of time working on an illustration for the character. I took an existing illustration in high resolution and “embedded” screaming faces throughout the “shine” – so subtly that you at first hardly notice that they are there at first – and then can’t stop seeing them. Once again, I wish I could show the full image to you, but I can’t for copyright reasons. You’ll have to settle for a series of small extracts from the original.

Like Mortus, the encounter with Énorme Force started off following the script I had outlined but then went off on a wild tangent, as the PCs managed to release ‘Énorme Force’ from the curse, reforming him – or at least, so it seemed. Yes, the character was sincere – but that’s not the end of the story. The character is – now – too good to let vanish back into obscurity within the campaign!

great results like these are only possible with a great foundation. The Original image by JaspervD can be found at this URL. No claim of Copyright is exerted by me over either the image or the character’s appearance. Hopefully, they agree that this display constitutes fair use! All told, some 65 images of people screaming/in pain were integrated using the ghost effect.

Énorme Force: What the PCs Knew or Could Learn from team files

Énorme Force is an unconventional blend of brick/martial artist/psi/mage. His true identity has never been discovered.

His body is composed of, or wrapped in, bands of an organic metallic compound which contains “cells” or small pockets, each of which confines one of the different fundamental energies and bridges the gap between these usually incompatible forces by permitting the effects of manipulating one to act on the intervening metallic biostructure, transmitting effects from one cell to its neighbors by resonating with the initial effect. Fortunately, most of the potential benefit is tied up in simply holding the unstable conglomeration together. Nevertheless, he manages to pull off a few tricks.

Although from a distance the armor appears smoothly polished metal, when you get closer, it can be seen that the armor actually has a very finely detailed embossing of people’s faces – and the these faces are alive and moving. The armor is literally the bodies of innocent bystanders that have been twisted, deformed, and transformed, and who exist in total agony. These ordinary people function as involuntary ablative armor for the villain. Anyone attempting to reach Énorme Force’ mind psionically connects instead with these tortured souls, whose agonies form a psionic defense with what is effectively a psionic damage shield as well as causing most people to refrain from attacking to cause physical harm. In terms of his actual physical strength and defense, Énorme Force is actually a somewhat second-rate brick.

Énorme Force is believed to have no real understanding of how his powers work, and has never revealed how he came to possess them.

Powers

NB: The following analysis is strictly theoretical, but is the only explanation found to explain the diversity of capabilities that Énorme Force has demonstrated.

Énorme Force manipulates space. He manipulates souls. He manipulates bodies. He manipulates energy blasts. And he takes control of the powers of others he encounters, though he can only control one power belonging to each person at one time. The subject is free to use any other power he may possess so long as it is not in the same multipower being controlled by Énorme Force. It is also believed but not confirmed that a power must be used against him or possibly in his presence before he can control it.

One fundamental energy becomes active, causing resonances in the metallic cell walls, which pass those resonations on to the other two energy forms, where the effect can be further manipulated.

A quick nibble at the campaign physics: In addition to the physical forces and the energies they produce (which includes the atomic and chemical), there are four known additional types of Force, each of which can also manifest in various forms of Energy.

Temporal Force is the Energy Of Time, and has a number of sub-varieties (refer to this article on Time Travel, the second part in a three-part series that I wrote back in 2010 for more information if interested), but it isn’t relevant to this character’s abilities.

Arcane Force is an energy field created by all living things, and exhausting it brings that life to an end, so it is also known as the Force Of Life. It is the most easily manipulated of the fundamental forces (also known as the universal forces, because they are not confined to a single space-time). It can be stored in objects and otherwise manipulated in various ways, and is the most flexible of the forces. Living things radiate it, but for reasons still not clearly understood, there is an energy flow that connects those living things with the world around them in a non-uniform way.

Chi Force is energy of the soul, and is the most mysterious. Martial Arts can manipulate Chi in one of three ways: altering the martial artist, altering the way the martial artist interacts with the environment around him, or altering that environment directly. These are progressively harder to achieve, and so Chi Force is also known as the Energy Of Self.

Psi Force is energy of the mind, and is the product of sentience, capable of the transfer and discovery of information. Because everything reported by the senses must be interpreted by the mind, Psi Force is sometimes referred to the Energy Of Perception.

While these forces can manifest in various energy forms, manipulated by various tools, and converted from one to another in specific ways, they are normally completely incompatible, and any given being can only be a Mage, a Psi, or a Martial Artist, never more than one. Énorme Force hints that this prohibition may be less universal within the campaign than first thought.

Applications against Zenith-3:

(Think of these as examples):

• Stretch Blackwing like taffy, make Blackwing attack another PC
• Make St Barbara’s Energy Blasts fire at random in random directions (toward bystanders) or trigger her flight – or shut it down
• Turn Vala’s Psi attacks on Defender
• Turn Defender’s Chi Strikes on Vala
• Re-target Runeweaver’s spells

Defeating Énorme Force:

The key to defeating him will be to trick him into controlling the wrong power so that an effective power can be brought to bear on him. Indirect attacks work well. Moral issues mandate a preference for carefully-metered nonlethal attacks.

The Secret Origin Of Énorme Force (that isn’t a secret any more):

Énorme Force was born Adoghe Lionel Ngouabi in the French (Middle) Congo (western central Africa) in the late 1960s. As happens from time to time, tribal violence erupted in the region and Adoghe was captured and sold on the black market as a slave to another tribal warlord after seeing his son killed by the raiders. Security was lax, and he escaped, returning to the village of his birth to find the township empty and in ruins, his wife and daughter missing. Knowing that this was a normal response to raids – the populace fled into the jungle in all directions and returned only slowly and when they had no other option, hoping that their attackers had moved on in the meantime – Adoghe settled down to await the return of his neighbors.

The next memory that he possesses is fighting as a mercenary somewhere else in Africa, he’s not sure where. His relationship with and the behavior of those around him suggest that he had been doing so for some time. He knows it was sometime after 1974 as he heard someone singing a popular song by the Fania All Stars, amongst the most popular musical performers in Africa at the time.

Some time later – with no memory of the intervening years – he recalls stealing a suit of armor from a European castle (Germanic accents) but he doesn’t know who they were or where things took place. Cornered by his pursuers, he was left with no choice but to put on the armor and hope that it protected him from their weapons. He braved the waiting force when cornered, and witnessed the armor absorb the bodies and souls of one of his would-be attackers to form a shield against another, who was also then absorbed. His life since that time has been miserable. He never slept soundly again; the cries of the imprisoned echo through his mind incessantly, disrupting his sleep and bringing him close to madness; he suspects that his lost memories are of such times of insanity from which his subconscious shields him for his own defense. In those periods he can recall, most of the time he finds himself in situations with no comprehension of how they developed; he also believes that it is not entirely clear who controls whom, himself or the armor.

More years are then blank, filled only with broken and scattered fragments of memory, until he found himself in the USA in his armored form, a hunted man, offered refuge by Crimson Claw, organizer of the Paranormal War. Crashing out of that contest early, he was free to wander and made his way aimlessly to Bosnia, which is where Ragnerok found him. Over the last five or six years (it’s now May 1987 in the game continuity) he has tried to make his way in the world, seizing opportunities as they present themselves and making desperate choices when he had to.

More than anything else, he just wants his nightmare to end, to get out of this suit of ‘damned armor’ and go home to Africa so that he can locate his wife and child and leave all the bloodshed and victims behind. But the suit won’t let him, driving him relentlessly on to another conflict, another battlefield, and more victims. Nor will it let him end his own life – he’s tried, he’s sure of it, even though he can’t recall doing so. He sees himself as an antihero and victim more than a villain; though he may have done some villainous things, it’s far from clear how much self-control he has.

A behind-the-scenes note:

The periods of blackout are essential to the character. Over time, you can get used to almost anything, even the tortured souls of those you have ‘imprisoned’ – but because of the blackouts, these are experienced afresh each time.

What became of Énorme Force:

Zenith-3 were able to break the curse, releasing Adoghe from his living hell. He appeared not to have aged a day since putting on the armor, even though that was getting on for 20 years ago. The armor itself now consisted of nothing more than the transformed souls and flesh of his victims, who were freed as a result, causing the ‘organic metal’ to sublimate into nothingness. Adoghe was left to find a ship going to Africa who was willing to let him work for his passage.

What will become of Énorme Force:

Who knows (well, I do, but the players don’t). But there’s clearly a lot more to his story, and so far, the similarities between his story and those of Knight/Blackwing have yet to hit home for the PCs.

Interpretations

Altering the idea for use in other genres should not be too difficult. People wear armor in all sorts of campaigns and (depending on the transormative mechanism) this rather nasty idea could be found in anything from D&D to Cyberpunk by way of Horror. There are a few obvious unanswered questions, but that would just make it easier to adapt Énorme Force to suit your campaign. Have fun and make your players squirm…