Mr. Sinister
Native to a world ( Earth 16 ) where most conductive metals were used up and/or hideously irradiated during the war, the metahuman known as "Mr. Sinister" is a warlord trying to expand the borders of his control. His major area of control lies in the area formerly known as Pennsylvania, south of the Lackawanna River, and includes half of what we know as Metropolis.
Physical Description
Body Features
Sinister's abilities include a hyperflexible, limited self-manipulation power: he ordinarily cannot take entirely new shapes, but he can twist portions of himself around as if a single body part were very soft plastic. He tries to maintain a constant shape that is clearly well-fed and a little bit intimidating, without having to fuss around with a tailor to have his clothes fit him pleasingly.
Facial Features
In the center of his forehead, Sinister has embedded a blood-red diamond-shaped device of his own devising. He sometimes grows a "balbo" style or "van dyke" style beard, but in warmer months he almost always is clean-shaven.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
The metahuman known only as "Mr. Sinister" originally came from one of the high-elevation cities in Europe, where the blight of the Great Aether War was slow to arrive. Some theorize that he came from England, but given the damage done to London in the war, that is very unlikely; a city in the Alps, or possibly in the Apennine Mountains of Italy, are his most likely origins.
Abrupt, unpleasant, and above all brief things happen to anyone who pokes around in Sinister's background.
In early 2004, Sinister's studies of the Stargate leapt forward after one expedition to an alternate reality. He found notes where that universe's Julio Va'Norrin had decoded several viable destinations in the system and started analysis on how "valid results" could be predicted. Obviously, Va'Norrin's work must have run into unanticipated difficulties: the notes were present, some of the processed data and a great deal of raw data, and living supplies awaited the return of their user. However, by the layer of dust, something must have gone wrong with an interdimensional transition -- that reality's Dr. Va'Norrin has vanished.
By this, Sinister understood that Va'Norrin's theories must contain a flaw. He took everything for careful inspection. The first thing he did was to track down a second Stargate on his native Earth -- underneath Metropolis, in the caverns south of the Lackawanna River -- and build a "perfect" miniature city within the largest cave cluster near his new workshop.
Sinister had learned several useful techniques for thrall management in his Italian cavern. He color-and-texture-coded areas of the city so that future residents would know without question where they belonged. He arranged holographic technology implanted in the cavern ceiling to give an impression of sky, without hinting at the ruins of the real world above, so that thralls would not have valid information about their real location in the world.
He then brought most of those thralls back to Italy and set his Hounds to acquiring new thralls from the population of North America.
This led to the very first conflict with -- and curb-stomping provided by -- Mobeus Arcane and Wyldstorm.
Nevertheless, Sinister spread wider his efforts to collect useful thralls for his new headquarters of "Òlhakeike". Meanwhile, in the laboratory for the North American Stargate, Sinister worked diligently through Va'Norrin's records. Eliminating many of Va'Norrin's theories as too difficult to prove, Sinister tested every possible adjustment that Va'Norrin had documented until he began consistently dialing combinations which allowed a thrall to return in still-functional condition.
One cluster of those destinations led to an alternate reality with uncontaminated metal and few psionic defenses: Earth 1. Sinister made a note of the combination for the Project: Quantum Leap location code-named "NewTech". The note states, in dark red text with emphatic brackets, "DO NOT CONNECT".
Instead, Sinister uses temporary connections to raid other locations, either for untainted metal -- especially copper wiring -- or for social connections to the local black market, where he can barter some of his excess products for local technology and thralls. Particularly in Vibora Bay and Wollongong, Sinister was able to arrange a trade of goods three times per year for two years in a row.
One of those trades in 2006 got him an Infinity Inc product with several marked differences from the works Sinister had previously studied. Sinister vaguely recognized this metahuman: she had opposed him on Earth 1 during one of his raids for uncontaminated metal. She was the persistent one, was she not? Interesting!
Sinister spent two months studying this one in detail. When he was done, he activated the company controls built into the subject's mind and put it to work with his Hounds. He got good results until the hybrid received an order which triggered some kind of error in the program -- causing her to realize that she was not under I.I. command.
In very short order, the Hound underwent the following thought process:
- I am not currently serving my makers.
- The order to harm noncombatants violates the core of my design.
- I am 004a but I am also "Jarissa".
- Eff you!
At which point, she promptly turned on the Dragoon who gave the objectionable order.
Fascinated by the adaptability of an obvious prototype, Sinister undertook several more tries to gain permanent control of Feral. No technique held for more than a few weeks, not even direct psionic thumping of the braintaped I.I. controls. Still wanting to document the details of the Arkangel brothers' earlier work, Sinister arranged live broadcast as he sent a missile barrage to attack Mobeus Arcane's headquarters at Arcane's Academy for Special Needs Students. He knew that it would be easy to convince Feral that she was watching the destruction of every connection she had outside of Òlhakeike. Perhaps that would make her compliant?
No.
Feral started to remove the thrall control box within hours of implanting it; she taught other Hounds and thralls how to remove it from each other with a minimum of damage. She disrupted a great deal of Sinister's minion control system before he relented on the control box issue. She started actively attempting to escape his domain, even after he demoted her from Hound down to thrall, and then assigned her specifically to foundry work in the metal cleaning facility. Three times she succeeded to some degree, and the third try accidentally put her through one of the stable Stargate connections that let Dragoon Arclight make trades with the Science Cells' quartermasters. Recovering the escaped thrall took more than three weeks. Even then, it was happenstance that a team of Hounds crossed paths with Feral in Vladivostok.
Five months later, everything went wrong at once. A thrall uprising swept over the population of Òlhakeike at the same time that a raid team from Earth 1 intruded on Sinister's greatest experiment on the Stargate. They destroyed his arrangement seconds before he could permanently connect all alternate Earths into a single network of ready access. They disrupted his control of his creations and his minions. They stuffed him into a large glass jar and transported him to Earth 1, in the custody of something called Project: Quantum Leap, who only brought him out of the glass jar when they placed him in a containment cell in some sort of prison called "The Vault".
This is unacceptable.
This is but a pause in the ultimate triumph of Mr. Sinister.
Taboos
In addition to using thralls for test subjects in his studies, Sinister considers himself above petty tasks like combat, even if the underlings he's overseeing are losing a fight. He will only attack if he is directly attacked himself, and then his attack will be devastating.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
To recreate civilization according to his own standards, where everyone has a place and keeps to it. His place, of course, will be at the pinnacle of power.
Likes & Dislikes
For the buildings within the main cavern under Metropolis and the lesser caverns under Italy and under Jilin Province, Mr. Sinister likes interior designs such as he found at Crey Industries on Earth 7, with sharp delineations between "brightly lit" workspaces and SUPER DARK utility areas. Minions mostly belong in the dark areas. Experimental subjects might get more light than their bodies are designed to prefer if they are under observation, or otherwise the experiment requires lighting. It vexes him sorely that this design needs a lot of metal to build it properly. He's trying to do it with ceramics and plastic instead, but a lot of time he just cannot have what he wants.
Sinister does not live in his workspace. He has a separate house. They are connected by secure underground tunnel, maybe, but that is only used if he needs an escape route ... and it goes to an intermediary stop first so the subsequent path he took is almost impossible for pursuers to pick up. (He believes!)
Social
Contacts & Relations
Sinister's nearest arch-nemesis is Dr Mobeus Arcane. They compete for material resources, territory, and personnel. Arcane's underlings are with him out of mutual protection; Sinister's underlings are with him because he's strong enough and smart enough to have acquired them. Arcane has survived a variety of efforts by Sinister to eliminate him, including a missile barrage on Arcane's Academy for Special Needs Students where Wyldstorm was headquartered.
Wealth & Financial state
Mr. Sinister owns Òlhakeike, of course, including its extensions and their means of connection to one another.
He owns three Stargates, one of which is in use to generate stable wormhole connections for the underground monorail system that connects pieces of his territory. A second Stargate has a list of permanent connection points in alternate realities which he uses to gather supplies for his work. The third one is the most difficult to access, used for generation of temporary and unstable connections for raids, and often tested with acquired metahuman subjects who did not pass the "fitness" test to become one of his thralls.
Along with an assortment of serf-like thralls to keep everything clean/maintained/operating, Mr. Sinister has three sets of elite lieutenants:
- The Dragoons are powerful metahumans with their own unique costumes. Sinister has adjusted their genetic sequences for better power, stability, and the ability to supercharge by draining off any psionic powers used directly on them. Sinister also braintapes+clones any that die, so six months later a killed Dragoon is back in business. If its brain was not damaged that much in or after death, and Sinister recovered the corpse, the Dragoon even remembers how his/her/their defeat happened, at least as much as they can from their dying perspective.
- The Hounds are a small squad-sized strike force of "found" metahumans, specifically used to hunt down things Sinister wants. They are NOT cloned or braintaped, considered more disposable; if one dies, it was obviously not good enough, so it should be replaced with a more successful metahuman from "out in the wild". They all wear some common items in addition to the "thrall control box", but have leeway in the matter of "personally-chosen separates" versus "thrall jumpsuit" when getting dressed.
- The Marauder drivers are thralls in most senses -- they have few rights, they must wear the assigned gray jumpsuit during their shift, they are not permitted clothing with pockets or pouches at any time, if they prove less than accurate in their duties as drivers then they can easily be reassigned to tasks with shorter life expectancies. But, while they do serve as disposable troops, they get better resources for day-to-day living and they have some authority among other gray thralls.
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