Mongrel

Maybe a villain this week, maybe a lowkey hero next week, Mongrel is a mercenary by dint of just trying to survive.

He has a union membership with the Henchmen's Union. He usually is teamed with Geist and Sunder, billing themselves as a henchman squad trio called "the Blood Pack". He recognizes that Marrow is probably really worked up about getting tossed from the team ... but, c'mon, she was getting all tortury and unprofessional on the Murder World job. She could have stopped. When she didn't, the team had to make the hard choice. That's the long and the short of it!

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

Josh Xan Bailey is mad about a lot of things, some of them mutually contradictory:

1. having been born and spent the first few years of his life in Cambodia
2. having grown up in Chicago
3. being the child of multiple ethnicities
4. racists who say it's bad to have a child with multiple ethnicities
5. having to live for a year and a half with his racist, abusive uncle
6. his racist, abusive uncle threw him out of the house at fifteen
7. street gangs in his neighborhood preyed on at-risk kids
8. he was an at-risk kid
9. the street gangs particularly went after him for not being 100% the same race as themselves
10. street gangs definitely do bad guy stuff
11. as a member of a street gang, he was targeted by the Gang Intelligence Unit of the Chicago Police Department
12. the Freakshow invited him to join up
13. the Freakshow demanded that he volunteer to replace his legs with cybernetic gadgets
14. the Freakshow rejected him for membership when he refused
15. since he was rejected for membership, the Freakshow did not help him acquire a Sweet Bike
16. he hates the weather in Chicago
17. he misses Chicago
18. To qualify for membership in the Thieves Society you have to have a sponsor. Which means impressing someone enough that they will bet their own reputation as professional criminals on you becoming an asset to the Society. Nobody knew enough about Josh Xan to be impressed.
19. It turns out to take a LOT to impress a Theme Criminal in Gotham City or Blüdhaven.
20. While trying to hustle up bus fare to the Tri-Cities, Josh Xan lost most of his remaining money to Comanche. Who gently suggested that a lot of people earn their way into the Thieves Society by working a few years in the Henchmen's Union
21. the union rep who signed him into the Henchmen's Union kept dropping the "Xan" part of his name and calling him "Josh"
22. the union rep who signed him into the Henchmen's Union told him that "Mongrel" was a racist slur and he should not use it
23. the union rep who signed him into the Henchmen's Union refused to even try to spell any word in Khmer
24. the union rep who signed him into the Henchmen's Union did not tell Josh Xan that he had in fact filed the paperwork with "Mongrel" as the handle despite telling Josh Xan that it was unacceptable
25. Josh Xan kept getting skipped over for Henchmen's Union jobs in his first few months because he still owed dues
26. Josh Xan could not pay up what he owed in dues because he could not get work
27. when making a living as a mugger in Gotham City it is worth your life to go after a cute little blonde and a statuesque redhead who recently stumbled out of a bar
28. no one forewarned Josh Xan Bailey of this fact of Gotham After Dark life
29. Mongrel spent two months as an involuntary, "greened" henchman for Poison Ivy
30. when Ivy lost a Bat encounter, leaving her henchmen alone long enough to detox, the Henchmen's Union rep said that time period counted as "henchman work" and tried to collect a percentage of Ivy's known profits during the period
31. stealing money from the Theme Criminal for whom one henches is officially grounds for losing one's membership in the Henchmen's Union
32. so is punching out a union rep

Fortunately for Josh Xan, Dwayne Geyer was at Noonan's Bar at the time to check in with the same union rep, and getting pretty mad about how Ivy's victims were getting hoodwinked. Geist stepped in to report the fraudulent behavior of the union rep to a more senior officer in the union, getting the jerk thrown out and several members' accounts credited back to them. In the process, Dwayne and Josh Xan became fairly good friends. They banded together with Sarah so that they could try out for more lucrative henchman gigs as a team, which eventually led them to Sunder.

These days, beyond doing things because he's an angry teenage boy, Josh Xan acts to pay his bills and to support his team. He still has a nebulous goal of qualifying directly for Thieves Society membership, rather than association through the Henchmen's Union, and he thinks maybe he would someday like for the team to move to a warmer city like Vibora Bay. Or maybe go up to Toronto. Josh Xan mostly knows that some other city somewhere has got to be a friendlier place to live than where he has already been.

Social

Mannerisms

In typical angry-teen fashion, Mongrel tends to take his anger out on anyone he can convince himself "asked for it", but he won't attack any person he has already labeled as an ally or as "helpless". He usually works in the team as "ranged DPS" provided the range is not too great. In a close-in fight, he will charge up his hands and do 0AP blasts at punching range.

DC Comics character, no infringement intended or implied
Thanks to Writeups dot Org for the character sheet which we modified a little to fit our story

Story-Relevant Numbers:

• Initiative: 012
• Energy Blast: 10
  Limitation: Diminishing
• Flight: 08

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Quick Facts:

Alignment

angry mercenary

Species

mutant

Year of Birth

1992 18 Years old

Eyes

brown / solid red when using power

Hair

black

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

dark brown with yellow undertone, lots of freckles in summer

Height

5'8"

Weight

135 lbs

Aligned Organization

Blood Pack

Other Affiliations

• Henchmen's Union

Related Plots

• TED-Meta

Known Languages

English, Khmer