A ragtag band whose constantly-shifting lineup, explosive personality conflicts and fierce camaraderie made it famous long before the nightmare of 1979. They first met battling Baron Samedi in New York City one lazy Saturday summer afternoon in 1960, and while some of them left temporarily, none of the original six ever truly abandoned the team. They have since been replaced from active leadership of the World Patrol, but still do what they can to aid their world. The first lineup was: Beacon I/Legwork(current title): Real Name: Dr. Silas Meir Age: 75(born in 1939, Apparent age: late 40's) Ethnicity: Jewish-American Appearance: A lanky, tanned, academic-looking man with a mop of curly brown hair starting to gray at the temples, narrow and fine facial features, gray eyes and a soft, weak voice. Usually he dresses in awkward mismatches of casual wear, donning a leather jacket with the World Patrol symbol(a simple depiction of the Earth behind a shield) for his courier work. If called into active duty he wears a striking white and yellow bodysuit with a simplified photon parti-wave on the chest in black. History: A physics undergraduate in New York who discovered a way to harness photonic energy and used it to fight crime, Silas was the youngest member of the Guardians, and in 1979 the last to fall to the Cerebri mindswarm, whose satellites caught his fast-moving mind and sent him across the globe to cause havoc, shut down essential defense networks and murder vital citizens. Shaken by the realization of what they had done, even if against their will, Silas worked tirelessly to coordinate the early stages of the Paradise Protocol, working as a one-man global communication network, supply convoy and recruiter, scouring the planet for new members to help repair their world. Since then Silas has become ever more focused on his job carrying messages, coordinating the efforts of World Patrol psychics and mystics so they can focus their powers on their work, and ferrying presents, mementos and documents all over the globe for whomever asks. Remarkably enough, Silas found time in his busy research schedule to marry and father several children before the Tragedy of '79, and spends time with his family whenever he can. He often invites lonesome World Patrollers or even strangers to family gatherings, and hosts an annual footrace around the entire surface of the Earth for the Swift Squad, Earth's greatest collection of auper-speedsters. Silas is disqualified from the race on the grounds of being "way too fast". Over time, however, his life outside his role as World Patrol courier has shrunk, and Silas has become more and more caught up in the rush of his powers, of the constant burst, the ebb and flow of darting across the globe at the speed of light, everything else falling into a vague haze and blur of commands, questions, replies, well-wishes and the interchangeable weights of parcels and canisters. His scientific work and knowledge are a shadow, and even the Light has left him for its next bearer leaving him to rely on his instinctive photonic manipulation. Now there is nothing but the rush, the endless corridor of life punctuated by the demands of people in a world Silas has found a way to become just another fixture, another miracle of the World Patrol to serve humanity. So long as it keeps him from having to think, he'll run and run and run and never, ever look back and wonder. Personality: Agreeable, honest and upbeat, Silas is always ready to stop and help someone out. He's excited for the future plans of the World Patrol and heartily agrees with their methods and objectives. However, even the laissez-faire speedster has his rough edges. His tendency to try and be a good pal can lead him to the verge of sycophancy, his unthinking forthrighness and lack of tact get him in serious trouble and his optimism has a bad habit of making him overconfident. But that aside he's a reliable and companionable man, with a lot of hard-earned good sense marred mostly by an attitude of disconnection. Relationahips: Silas is trusted and liked by most of the World Patrol, especially the First Wave of heroes and remorseful supercriminals who learned of the Paradise Protocol through him, and who got into the Patrol by his enthusiastic recommendation. His closest friends outside his family are Prof. Susan Sutherland(Beam), Mnene Isifiki(Beacon II), Dr. Storlaz(Tworca, 'Creator') and former supercriminal Professor Perilous. His sole real non-friends are his former adversaries (Minutia) and Mark Clarkson(Madcap II). He is the devoted husband of sociologist Prof. Rebecca Hartlicht. >Speedster PL increased to 11. 10 ranks in Bluff and Diplomacy, +6 ranks of Knowledge(Physical Sciences) (+8), +2 to Notice (+12); Benefit 3(Security Clearance(Paradise Protocol); Status: Guardian/World Patroller; Wealth 1), Connected, Contacts, Fearless, Interpose. Comprehend 3(translator implant; Speak All, Understand All), Immunity(gene tampering, Aging(1/2), Disease, Poison(1/2), Light Effects, Light Damage, Dazzle with Light Descriptor) Centurion, The: Real Name: Mark Leeds Age: 97(born 1918, Apparent age: mid 30's) Ethnicity: Mediterranean-Caucasian Appearance: By his craggier face and slightly longer hair, with an ugly scar twisting across his right cheek and jaw, Mark is easy to differentiate from other Centurions, even without his red/gold variation of the costume. He wears his white cape bordered with blue over his right shoulder, concealing the stump where his arm used to be. On special occasions he dons either a realistic cybernetic replacement or a heavier, more brutish ironlike 'war' arm. History: Everyone knows the Centurion, rocketed into the Cosmic Coil from a world on the verge of conquest and absorption by the Terminus, granted vast powers by his passage through the omniverse, breaking through the dimensional folds into countless Earths as their greatest champion or their darkest tyrant. One of the great icons of the world since his debut alongside the Inhuman Inferno and the Neptunian in the years of World War II. He who alone escaped the Cerebri mindswarm thanks to Chant's last-ditch blessing shielding his mind, who destroyed the satellites and routed the aliens too late to do more than mitigate the destruction that raged across the planet. Mark lent his Sanctum(here located in the Amazon river basin) and advanced otherworldly technology to the first stages of the Paradise Protocol, ensuring much of its initial success. As on Earth-Prime, the Terminus struck at this world in 1993, though unlike there the Invasion was an utter rout. The fewer and more centralized population centers, better-coordinated and trained superhumans and a world with defenses much stronger than most in the Omniverse did their job, and Omega was sent fuming back into the Terminus after a battle in Manhattan with the Centurion that badly injured him and cost the Man of Adamant his right arm and much of his strength. Realizing that other otherworldly beings might try their luck, Mark had messages sent to all enemies they knew of in the Omniverse warning them that if any attacked their world, the World Patrol would ignore the armies and obliterate the mind, body and soul of their leader. Thus far this has proven a remarkably effective threat, keeping at bay even reknowned conquerors such as Una of the Netherworld and M'Krie the Maker. With the Earth now more or less at peace, Mark has retired from active duty and splits his time between his extended family, helping with construction and landscaping, training the new generation of Patrollers, monitoring the dimensions neighboring their own from his refitted Sanctum, and handling the reams of bureaucratic work that managing a society bent on perfection requires. Of the original Guardians Mark has managed to find a much better balance than the others, though that might just be because the Tragedy of '79 doesn't weigh as heavily on him as it does the others. As a matter of principle Mark takes it upon himself to greet all newcomers to Earth-H Tech 10, and if time permits gladly shows them around. Personality: The Mark Leeds of this Earth is nearly impossible to tell apart from that of Earth-Prime, with only trace differences, like his harsher view on aliens and otherworlders and more cautious attitude in general, observable over a prolonged period. He unconditionally supports the Pacification of supercriminals and the erasure of negative impulses in the public, though the mass enlightenment programme is still something he debates thanks to a deep-rooted suspicion of psychics. Relationships: Mark is on good terms with most of the World Patrol, especially his fellow originals and recruits from the later Waves like Yu-Nus(Unity), and exiles such as Jo Chance and Ka'Komek(Utopian Idol). Some of the former supercriminals, like Professor Perilous and Fraser McGinty(Remora) are still on tense terms with him thanks to lingering, almost instinctual grudges for the man who bested them so many times. More morally-flexible recruits like Tanya Sky(Lady Luck) occasionally clash with him and many of the more independent heroes like Lemuel Lawners(Wild Spider) dislike his heavy-handed and too-serious attitude. He enjoys meeting immortals like Xi Chen(Wanderer), the long-lived such as José Mariano Jiménez, or time-travelers such as Marie Cure for their historical perspective. >The Centurion Drop to PL13 with appropriate reduction of Power Ranks, Skills, Saves and Combat ranks. Add the Fearless, Leadership, Interpose and Rallying Cry feats. Benefit 3(Security Clearance: Paradise Protocol; Status: Guardian, World Patroler; Fame: global recognition). Extra AP of Healing. Chant: Real Name: Victoria Comtfer Age: 90(born in 1924, Apparent age: late 50's) Ethnicity: Caucasian Appearance: Willowy and with coarse straight black hair streaked with grey draping her shoulders and upper back, a bony face and prominent Roman nose, small green eyes and narrow, wryly-twisted lips. Most of the time Victoria wears trim, soft black comfortable clothes under a dark green kaftan, with her only jewelry an iron ring on her left ring finger. As Chant or on 'official' magical business she wears a green bodysuit embroidered in eye-twisting curled designs, thin black gloves and boots and a wimple-like hood framing her head and hiding all but the lower third of her face. Lenses hidden in the embroidery over her eyes let her see. History: A foundling raised in a circus, Victoria got her gift of tongues from the Howling Dream, which awakened her mind to the voices and names of all things. While under the control of the Cerebri mindswarm in 1979 her words stopped rivers and hearts. Dormant volcanoes sprang to life and storms lashed the planet. When she and the rest of the Guardians were freed, Victoria was the only one who disagreed with the proposed creation of a paradise on Earth, claiming they could never truly atone for what had happened and that restoration would be better for everyone than creating an artificial utopia. Brought around by Mary's arguments, Victoria has since then reluctantly bent her knowledge and powers to keeping the world at large in peace, from commanding the elemental forces governing the Earth to repair the environmental and geographical damage, to forbidding mystic entities from entering her dimension uninvited. While not the Master Magi, her expertise was used to help create the Ban that acts as an even more stringent barrier on top of the Pact, and while localized to Earth-H Tech 10 has proved its worth time and again. As one of the few dissenting voices highly-placed enough to be easily heard, Victoria has never stopped questioning and challenging the actions and motives of the World Patrol. Even if consistently beaten when new measures are debated, she doesn't trust her or her comrades' power to really create a perfect society without some fatal loss. However over time this has shifted into a simple contrarian streak, borne by her growing dislike for Mary and her open antipathy for Benedict, and while her arguments are still very pertinent and her interrogations have swerved the Patrol from serious errors in the past, they are increasingly perfunctory. Victoria now spends much of her time reading and writing in her small home on New Manhattan, preparing to pass on her accumulated knowledge to some unknown successor. After decades of labor she welcomes the chance to relax and leave the work of saving the world to the newer generations of World Patrollers. She still occasionally travels the Dream Dimension and the Astral Plane to watch for hidden perils to the minds of Eartth, but mostly keeps to herself and her vast collection of animal, mineral, spiritual and vegetable friends. Personality: Polite and withdrawn, Victoria prefers to observe before acting, letting others speak first as she forms her own opinion. The only break in this trend comes with things she thinks of as obviously wrong, such as the forcing of one's will on another. That her own powers require her to do this to work is something she has long been uncomfortable with. Like many mages she has a flair for the dramatic encouraged by work as a magician's assistant, mostly brought to the fore when speaking on behalf of something, and once given the chance to warm up to people regularly proves herself an intelligent and thoughtful friend. Relationships: Victoria has relatively few contacts or friends in the World Patrol besides Beacon and Diamond, and while a revered member of the mystic community many of her allies in the Sphere of Sirrion are wary of the woman blessed by the Howling Dream, even the open-hearted Master Magi call on her only rarely. Shieldbearer and Chant actively dislike each other, despite their mutual suspicion of the more extreme metods of the Patrol. Her closest friends besides her fellow Guardians are other former entertainers such as stage magician Amelia Adonai (Astarte) or blues saxophonist Martin 'Brimstone' Barrow. She and her long-lost brother Vincent Comtfer (Sigil) are still at odds from years of battling each other. >Truenamer PL increased to PL12, Saves, Combat and Skills increased; Add Feats: Benefit 4(Security Clearance: Paradise Protocol; Status 3: Guardian, World Patroler, Spherist of Sirrion). Connected, Contacts, Fearless, Well-Informed; Powers: Comprehend +2: Objects, Spirits, to Comprehend 3(Langauges, Speak and Understand All At Once), Immunity:(Aging(1/2), Disease, Poison(1/2)), Super-Senses 2: Detect Spirits, Ranged. Diamond: Real Name: Mary Salas/ 'Maria Diamante' Age: 87(born in 1927, Apparent age: late 50's) Ethnicity: Caucasian/Hispanic Appearance: A tall and graying matron with broad, gentle features, luxuriant hair and a still-smoky voice. Normally she wears the height of modern fashion, though when on the job she prefers subdued professional suits. She can turn at will into a human-shaped nexus of coruscating energies, which resembles swirls of colour flashing through a diamond. She always wears a small badge or pin with the World Patrol symbol on it. History: A blues singer who discovered her energy-altering powers when attacked backstage by an obsessed fan, Diamond was the hardest hit by the havoc inflicted on their world. The child of immigrants from Puerto Rico, Mary knew what it was like to grow up different, and had become a public advocate for tolerance and partnership between nations, traveling the world with her music and message. It was thanks to her speaking that the world's leaders helped the Guardians build the weapons that enslaved and savaged their planet. Afterwards she was integral in persuading reluctant heroes and criminals to band together into the World Patrol. Now the speaking is mostly done. These days Mary is one of the few original Guardians to actively interact with people outside the Patrol, as she uses her powers to help power energy grids, attends public events, acts as a liaison to the ultrahuman Areteans and Utopia Isle, visits the few remaining sick or infirm on the planet and organizes events to support human-made initiatives. Those trips grow fewer by the year, however, as the Earth gradually homogenizes, and is starting to become a source of concern for the almost aggressively-optimistic woman. By now more a human-shaped conduit of energy transformation than an organism, Mary also spends much of her days in lab experiments, materializing ever more obscure aspects of the electro-magnetic spectrum and synthesizing wavelengths and particles for study by the scientific and super-scientific community. While not a scientist herself, Mary is grateful for the chance to help the world in a more tangible way, with superheroics now taken over by the mostly much younger World Patrol, and her dream of a united Earth now realized. However, the price paid for her dream is high, and most of Diamond's public speaking tours are devoted to easing peoples' concerns, with a greater and greater focus on entertainment and glib catchphrases over real discussion and public relations. Mary puts her heart and soul into every show, whether it's diplomacy with the Hierarchs of Aretea, meeting an old man stricken with brain cancer or celebrating a city's latest crime-free year. Personality: Vibrant, colourful and passionate in everything she does, with every appearance of a practiced and experienced people person. Mary values cooperation and good feeling among both the World Patrol and Earth's regular populace above almost anything else, and has developed a nearly obsessive determination to prove that the sacrifice of total free will and eradication of negative impulses are worth it. Of all the Guardians, she's most favorable to the Pacification and rehabilitation of supercriminals, and the most vocal proponent of Total Uplift, believing it to be the only way to avoid future disasters. A social butterfly, she can't stand to be alone for more than a few hours, and being around conflicting views or opinions puts her on edge. She loves to meet new people. Relationships: Mary once had a soft spot for irascible, brilliant and stoic Benedict, but that's long gone, and the other original Guardians are now further apart than ever. As the most outgoing of the team, she has a vast number of acquaintances she treats like her dearest friends, both in and out of the super-community. Her closest real friend is the enhanced extradimensional-exile daredevil Jo Chance, while her personal nemesis is the hostile and standoffish former Sub Terran despot the Underworlder. >Transformer (Increase to PL12, add Immunity(Fortitude, Dazzle Effects), Regeneration 10(Recovery, Regrowth, Resurrection(1 day), Persistent, Drawback: Needs Access to Energy); Benefit 5(Security Clearance(Paradise Protocol); Fame(world-wide recognition) Status: Guardian/World Patroller; Wealth 2), Connected, Contacts, Fearless, Interpose; slew of languages including Aretean, Atlantean, Utopian, Sub-Terran) Shieldbearer: Real Name: Benedict Bonhomme Age: 85(born in 1930, Apparent age: early 50's) Ethnicity: African-American Appearance: A towering, muscular, darkly-handsome and sanguine man with a face dominated by bristling wideburns and cold, piercing brown eyes. A few patches of skin on his head and arms shows traces of the cybernetics he's installed to keep up his physique and mental ability. He usually dresses in drab, disposable utilitarian clothes unless working on something delicate or important, in which cases he dons crisp white techical gear and a white coat. His Shieldbearer armor is a bulky deep blue behemoth marked with the World Patrol symbol. History: The armored hero Shieldbearer was the first to fall to the Cerebri mindswarm embodied in Cosma. At the time a little-known New York state politician and brilliant inventor whose family company, Bonhomme Manufacturing, once served the world, Benedict was forced to trick his fellow Guardians into helping him build the brainwave-amplifying satellites that ensured Cosma's brief yet catastrophic victory on Earth through its superhuman defenders and menaces. Shieldbearer's other contribution were his dozens of experimental armors that he sent on a rampage across the globe. After regaining their minds thanks to the Centurion, Benedict was the first to look over their world in its ruins after the Tragedy of '79, and suggest they do more than merely rebuild what was. He had to go into hiding when he and the Guardians unmasked, and the world learned of what he had done. In the decades since then Shieldbearer has left a substantial legacy of defences and civic work. The network of psi-bafflers that blanket the Earth prevent future mental attacks, the powerful force-field emitters that nearly all citizens use have shrunk accidental deaths to nearly nothing. Under his direction all rebuilt cities have the capacity to transform into shielded fortresses, and workers all over the world use his armor designs for most hazardous situations. There's even a force-field under construction to shield the entire planet from attack, though it won't be completed for years. Benedict has seen nearly none of this, however. The man lives in his laboratory with half an ear on daily newsfeeds and World Patrol reports, working day and night, desperate to try and make up for his failing. Compounding this is a severe drug addiction he developed long before the Tragedy, which has weakened his once-peerless mind and left him a self-loathing shadow of what he used to be. He's still vital and sharp for an old man, thanks to the work of Dr. Moby the Human Amoeba, and with the assitance of countless human and robot helpers isn't likely to stop churning out super-tech for decades to come, and still handles most of the day-to-day technical problems of the world. Personality: Withdrawn and almost monosyllabic, with a dislike of either formality or familiarity, Benedict is by now wholly a man of matter, with his earlier distrust of magic and religion now hardened into open contempt for them and their practitioners. He holds fast to the values of the Old World despite his futurism bent, believing that the proposed Total Uplift scheme, where the world's psychics and mystics force enlightenment on all humanity, is a fatal breach of human freedom to choose. For the most part he stays out of any discussions or debates, keeping to himself and only dealing with technical matters through proxies and go-betweens, a deep, pervasive anxiety preventing him from leaving his lab or actually meeting and dealing with other people in person. Relationships: Most other tech-focused Patrollers are at least acquainted with the man, and he's not shy about giving advice if it's asked for or he thinks it should be heard. Fellow Old World inventor Dr. Amelia von Kauf (Mite) and childhood friend Lt. Col. Jack Smith (Silverhawk) are closest to him, and some of the few able to really reach or persuade him. Most mystics on the Patrol are on bad terms with him, and he utterly loathes both the 'converted' villains he works with and joksters like Lemuel Lawners (Wild Spider). >Battlesuit PL increased to 12, with Exotic saves, Knockback, Attack, Defence, Toughness and Damage adjusted accordingly; Additional Skills 8(buying Knowledge(Business)/(Civics) 12 (+17) and History 8 (+13)) ; Additional Feats of Benefit 5(Security Clearance(Paradise Protocol); Status: Guardian/World Patroller; Wealth 3), Eidetic Memory, Equipment 7(for a well-appointed super-tech team base skyscraper that turns into/is also a doom fortress), Fearless and Interpose. Add Immunity 3(Aging(half-effect), Disease, Poison(half-effect); Power Feats: Innate)
