Redwood

Jason Ridge

Since he was a teen, ecology was Jason Ridge’s passion. He’d always loved the outdoors, being in nature, but the more aware he became of the dangers to the environment, the more concerned he got. He wasn’t willing to sit idly by while big business and social apathy destroyed the planet, so he took action. This led him to participate in eco-political groups and Jason’s friends, as well as his politics, became increasingly radical. It wasn’t long before he stepped across the line from political protest and civil disobedience to ecological terrorism and sabotage.
As a member of “the Green Front” Jason focused a great deal of effort on the forestry industry based in his native Emerald City: business with deep roots (so to speak) in the community and its history, operating under more and more regulation, but still not nearly enough to satisfy concerns about the depletion of the Arcadian Forest and its natural habitats. Minor acts of sabotage led to a major protest where the members of the Front chained themselves to trees slated for clear-cutting.
Some members of the Green Front practiced a neo-pagan spirituality and Jason saw no harm in their calls to the forest spirits to aid their cause; it was a rallying point like any other. But when the confrontation turned heated, and angry threats were exchanged, when a backhand strike spattered some of Jason’s blood from a split lip onto the forest floor...the spirits answered.
The being that rose up in Jason Ridge’s place towered as high as the oldest trees, flipping tons of logging equipment like toys scattered by a child’s tantrum, sending the loggers and protesters alike fleeing for their lives. The earth cries out in pain, and those dwelling in the lifeless forest of metal and glass are responsible!

Physical Description

Special abilities

In an instant, Jason Ridge can transform from an ordinary flesh-and-blood man to a powerful figure made of living wood, strengthened by a mystic forest spirit. What’s more, Redwood can grow from a normal height of about seven feet tall to tower nearly a hundred feet tall! At this size, his strength and stamina are truly titanic. He can hurl volleys of sharp wooden splinters or thorns and sweep his massive arms in broad arcs to strike opponents.
Redwood is immune to many mortal concerns and recovers quickly from injury, so long as he is in contact with the earth. He is also able to sense places and times where the earth is “in pain” suffering from environmental harm. These wounds in the fabric of nature call him to act, to stop the desecration and to avenge it. The more severe the pollution or environmental damage, the more it drives Redwood nearly mad with rage.

Mental characteristics

Intellectual Characteristics

Jason Ridge is literally a man possessed, by a vengeful forest spirit, feeding on his own outrage and frustration. On the run, he has been driven further into radicalism and desperate action, unleashing the composite being known as “Redwood” when the call to avenge the wrongs done to the environment becomes too great to ignore, or when his continued freedom or survival are threatened.
A part of Jason is horrified at what he has become; at the least, he hopes to gain greater control over Redwood’s power, but he cannot deny that a part of him also wants to surrender to it, to become a part of the unleashed fury of nature, putting his flawed humanity behind him. It is yet to be seen how this struggle will end.

Social

Contacts & Relations

Redwood finds some support amongst the most radical of eco-terrorists, most of whom want to harness his power as a weapon for their cause, but quickly discover they are playing with forces they cannot control. The same is largely true of criminals who seek to turn Redwood into their pawn by appealing to his beliefs; they may be able to aim him at a “despoiler” but woe unto them when the fury of the forest discovers he has been used.
Polluters and desecrators of the environment are all Redwood’s enemies. Most of the time, Jason is able to focus the forest spirit’s righteous rage against the worst offenders: corporate industrial polluters, criminal waste-dumpers, and the like, but sometimes Redwood turns his fury against loggers, hunters, even litterers, or simply the institutions and artifacts of civilization itself, considering all the works of humanity a blight upon the natural world.