As we prepare for Pulp City Full Effect sometime in 2021, we will profile the upcoming Supremes for Full Effect in more detail – well, to get us off to a strong start we will show two characters this week, working from A to Z!
You may have already seen the Amduat’s sculpt, but Zero has only just been finished, and now you get to feast your eyes on the Coven’s long awaited long-range assassin!
Code-name: Papa Zombie
Full Name: Josiah Hudlin
Faction: Coven
Deep among the bayous in a lost parish of Louisiana sat an overgrown plantation. Dark, foreboding, and utterly uninviting it seemed only barely to be resisting the encroachment of a dark and untamed nature. Inside this festering manor sat a man who would serve no master. He sat alone in an old wooden chair and brooded dark thoughts. A man unlike any other sat in an overgrown manse deep in a lost parish of Louisiana, nestled among the bayous. The land was foreboding and uninviting, the rundown house’s walls overgrown with vines and barely resisting the encroachment of a dark untamed nature. A man who would be master sat alone in an old wooden chair, brooding, in that dark house.
The man sitting alone remembered his rise to power. But before a man could rise, first he had to fall. That had been his most important lesson.
Life had offered him little opportunity as he drifted through the system. His parents had succumbed to their own lives of squalid excess when he was young. It had been a miserable childhood, only enriched when his mother whispered in her self-induced haze of the blood of powerful priests that ran in their veins. Her veins finally gave out though, and he was left alone.
The social workers assigned to him made it clear that few were interested in adopting him because of his age. He was a good kid, generally well-behaved, and did what he was told. When he finally left his last foster home, he went into the world with very little. He sought to make a life, but was rebuffed. With few qualifications, despite obvious intelligence, and with no stepping stones, prospective employers turned him away. He was never sure what the reason was. The only place he could afford to live was in the city slums. With few choices left, he finally turned to crime to survive. Even as a criminal there were always those who took advantage of him.
He descended quickly, as he fell far into the stink and mire of the worst of humankind, and he was tested. The man was left with nothing and still others preyed upon him. He realised his own wretchedness and knew he could sink no further.
He had one stark choice – to sink, or to swim those foul depths to survive and become something, someone, else. His mother’s ramblings called to him. In his blood she had said, there ran the power of generations of voodoo kings and queens. And at that moment, with his choice made, he opened his soul and listened for the whispering of the darkest of Loas. He heard their voices and then he knew where his path lay.
What little humility and compassion he had left were slowly, inexorably, stripped away as discarded trappings of one life, as his journey took him to very dark places. There was the back-street curiosity shop where he stole a book of secrets, and the life of the proprietor. Then the pimp-voodoonista whose life he extinguished in exchange for an artefact of power, his skull-topped cane. The city morgue in a crumbling municipal building where he first animated a corpse to do his bidding as it slew the unfortunate attendant on duty.
Those had been the first necessarily gruesome steps on his journey. In due course he came to the attention of the Coven, an organisation with a secret history hidden far away from the world’s prying eyes. They recognised his aptitude and potential and nurtured his burgeoning talents.
With his acceptance to the Coven ranks his knowledge grew, and with knowledge came more power. But even as one secret was revealed to him, another would tug at the edges of his understanding.
He rose through the ranks, deployed where he was best suited. It was he who bent the Ghede in greater numbers to the Coven’s will. But through it all he began to see that nothing came without cost. Even his few failures such as the loss of the young voodoo queen-to-be, did not harm his ascent. And now he began to see the costs of his course.
To the Coven’s foes and its few allies he became Papa Zombie, front-line leader of the organisation. But the truth was a secret buried save only for the highest echelons of the Coven. There were mightier powers than his, greater influence, and more absolute mastery of what the Coven did. And that was his price to pay; to covet the power and rule of the Saints, and their ultimate master, Dimanche. To take that power he would have to do far worse than he ever had before and risk all that he had accumulated. What follows when a man has tasted great power, only to learn of his own insignificance in the grander scheme of things? In the schemes of others? His time trapped in Hellrock prison had showed him whole new worlds of possibilities. It had given him a look into the true nature of the Necroplane, and the power one man might wield – he was prepared to pay the price to acquire it.
Code-name: Feartigo
Full Name: Unknown
Faction: Coven/Necroplane
Feartigo stepped through the back-alley detritus. His raggedy presence was unsettling enough to an unwary onlooker, but it was his psychic broadcast of raw dread which sent a scrawny drug dealer counting his take fleeing into the night, money fluttering to the ground in his wake. Beneath his sack-cloth mask, Feartigo smiled his ruined-face smile.
He was here to provide an update, and his contact was always punctual. Why Sanguine chose to meet in a filthy alley amid the city’s grime was unclear. It was out of the way of prying eyes, that much was true, but it was not on the bloodsucker’s usual hunting trails. The squalor did not bother Feartigo, he just questioned it, wondering what Sanguine’s angle was. He had found that to succeed in his true mission he had to question every motive and trust no-one.
Feartigo’s mind flashed backwards to earlier times when his circumstances were far different. A minor Petro loa, he had been cast out, cursed to never again to be able to mount a human host. A disembodied spirit, his urges to violence and spread fear were held in check by his lack of physical form. Those responsible were powerful bokor, and eventually those sorcerers founded the Coven. Time drifted by almost without meaning for the spirit, a century, then two. All the while from the shadows between realms the loa watched the Coven grow. Decade blurred into decade as the secret society’s ranks swelled. In time their focus fell on a wretched city on the West Coast, which soon became their main base of operations.
The loa continued to observe. New players emerged, rising through the Coven hierarchy, competing for mastery of the inexorably strengthening cabal. The loa took interest in one such, Papa Zombie. The human was a potent practitioner of voodoo, but out of his depth compared to the true powers behind the Coven. The spirit sensed the human could be useful in some way. The loa followed his quarry through a portal when Papa Zombie was captured by agents of the Necroplane and taken to their blasted world. There the loa watched, unseen, as the Necroplane made plans for an insidious invasion, systematically replacing key figures from Pulp City and across the Earth with Hollow One simulacra, Papa Zombie among them. Seizing his chance, the loa mounted a mindless Hollow One – he could exist in the physical world once again.
What happened next was remarkable, even within that alien world. The once-inert creature’s features flowed like melted wax, before slowly taking greater definition. Within minutes he stood ready before surprised necro-scientists. Feartigo was born, the embodiment of dread once more. In that instant an idea struck him, a perfect strategy. He demanded to meet their master, as he had something to offer, a bargain to make, and his wish was granted.
The plan was simple. Sacrifice the Papa Zombie simulacra as a way to support and deflect away from Feartigo’s own infiltration of the Coven. Revealing a false agent and ‘freeing’ Papa Zombie would allow Feartigo to join the inner circle and rise above suspicion. The plan worked perfectly.
Feartigo’s thoughts returned to the present. Sanguine materialized, taking form from a coalescing crimson mist. These encounters were always fraught with danger. One slip or mistaken detail could be enough to betray him. But he was not afraid. He was the essence of fear.
Sanguine looked at Feartigo with narrowed eyes and a barely concealed aversion. The lead agent of the Necroplane on Earth had refined tastes, and had lived a high life until the invasion was thwarted three years earlier. His shadowy networks remained largely intact, and that made him the ideal handler of Feartigo. The vampire hissed a little as he acknowledged Feartigo.
“I don’t trust you,” began Sanguine, surprisingly candid, “But Tenebrous has placed stock in your operation, and you have delivered useful intelligence. So far.”
Sanguine’s claws lengthened an inch, glinting in the moonlight. Was he trying to provoke Feartigo? Was he following his own agenda? Feartigo did not flinch, making no move to betray himself or provoke action, even as Sanguine took a sudden step forward. He had to see how this concluded, and ensure his best possible outcome. After a long pause, tension ebbed away as Sanguine adopted a more nonchalant pose. Feartigo pondered if he was testing him, and could only assume he had passed.
Feartigo’s loyalties were not to the Necroplane, that affiliation was simply a convenience. Those who had cast him out were long gone from the Coven, and there was no vengeance to be had. His infiltration had allowed him to swiftly rise within the ranks of the organization, aligning him to the Saints. Mastery of the cabal which had ultimately cast him out could be within his grasp. Obstacles remained, but with the correct choices, they too could be removed. Unknowing rivals such as Vendredi and the true Papa Zombie could be dealt with. The vessel of his past downfall could prove to be his true ascent, beyond the confines of the loa pantheon. Vast power could be Feartigo’s, he just had to act carefully and bide his time. They would not see him coming.
Full Name: Loup Garou II
Allegiance: The Coven, ally to Moonchild
Years Ago
Shondra Vey ended the threat of Loup Garou, the most recent of the Coven’s wolf-men, but unlike his predecessors, this one was bound to a supernatural focus, a broken amulet. Drawing on the arcane powers of her bloodline Shondra was able to destroy Loup Garou. She summoned the spirits of her tortured slave ancestors, and so mighty were they that she was able to trap the man in his wolf form forever, neither dead nor truly alive. The amulet however was lost.
Years Later
A full moon night in the deeps of the Louisiana bayou, and dark things were afoot. A group of Coven voodoo priests were gathered and they were lost in their feverish rites. Sacrifices had been made and blood had been spilt. In the flickering of firelight a muscular man writhed on the ground, a dreadlocked Creole. With a past littered with violence committed at the behest of the Coven, he had entered into this ritual by choice, but even so he never anticipated the pain that would follow after he swallowed terrible juju powders.
The perimeter of the area was guarded by a motley mix. Rook assigned Coven Soldiers to watch at various stations. Dead Guard lurched around, the stench of decay heavy around their hulking misshapen bodies. Zero crouched upon a rotten tree stump, silently surveying his surroundings.
Papa Zombie stepped through the circling throng. He waved his cane aloft as he called on the darkest powers of Saint Edmund. In one hand he gripped one half of the shattered Moon Amulet. A powerful gris-gris, it was the catalyst to this ceremony. It was already dripping blood from a wolf, and blood from a man; both lay dead nearby.
The Creole was bound at his ankles and wrists to stakes in the ground, for this was a truly dangerous practice if it succeeded. Papa Zombie approached the supine man with sureness of step, while all around the Coven cultists’ exhortations to Saint Edmund lifted towards a zealous crescendo. Papa Zombie’s eyes glinted with malevolence as he was about to ensure the delivery of a powerful agent for the Coven. This could give him an edge against those others vying for prominence in the Coven. Eve and Kane, and most of all Comte Vendredi were all threats to his influence, and that just would not do.
Papa Zombie bent down beside the thrashing Creole. The young man was now foaming at the mouth. The juju powders had done their work. The bound man began speaking in tongues, dark portents heralding Saint Edmund’s grip upon his soul.
Papa Zombie began uttering the Unspeakable Oaths. He carved a pattern in the air with the broken relic. Energy from some other realm seemed to bleed through where he slashed with the Moon Amulet, becoming a smoke-like substance which was then breathed in by the young Creole. He then lent close in to the young man and whispered in his ear before first slashing at his body then carving a sigil on his chest – Saint Edmund’s Mark of Three. The mark represented a third state, neither man, nor wolf but a hybrid of the two. Then Papa Zombie thrust the sharp-edged talisman into the staked-out man’s abdomen. The gris-gris then seemed to be absorbed into the man’s body, as if pulled from the Coven leader’s grasp.
The injured man strained at his bindings. He snarled and howled. His wounds appeared to heal, scar tissue where the Mark of Three had been drawn into his flesh the only sign he had been injured. Suddenly he ripped from the ground the stakes holding his wrists. His finger-nails became like claws which he used to slash apart the bonds at his ankles. Fur grew rapidly across his body. His face contorted and started to transform, nose and mouth becoming snout-like. Vicious teeth snapped as spittle flew from a bestial maw.
The wolf-man flew into the crowd of cultists then, rending bodies with slashing claws. Coven Soldiers and Dead Guard fell before him, even the supernatural resilience of the undead troopers no match for his furious assault as he tore them limb from limb. As the last Dead Guard fell, Rook and Zero moved in to guard Papa Zombie. He waved them aside as the creature approached. He looked into the eye of the beast, deep into its soul. For now the Coven had a new Loup Garou and he would serve the whims of Papa Zombie, but the Coven master knew then that the loyalties of this wolf-man served Saint Edmund more than him. Already the man inside the beast was dying, as the wolf feasted on his corrupted soul.
Elsewhere, at the Blood Watch’s mansion headquarters, Moonchild felt her half-amulet tremble. The words of the Moon Coyote spoke in her mind. Something had wakened in the world, a kindred spirit, her opposite dark half. The wolf was unleashed once more and it wished to throw off the shackles of its masters in this world and from beyond, and it needed Moonchild’s help. She knew then she had work to do.
Riding on top of a Dead Guard
Not the fall of Pulp City. Quite the opposite.
The Pulp City team is quite busy with a couple of projects. What can you expect?
– New packaging. We are switching to (mostly) single miniature blisters. Not only it is more cost efficient, but also it should greatly improve the regularity of releases as the necessary preparation time is shortened and production made easier. In this format, we are aiming at two new blister releases per month.
– First blisters, in no particular order, will include Red Bella, Primates of Power, Terror Cotta Warriors, Green Emperor, Comte Vendredi on top of a Dead Guard, V. H. and Blacksmith.
– As you might have heard, we are preparing for an update of the rules. The first impressions of the playtests are that the game got much faster, as all of the rules for each model are on one side of the card (yes, new cards) and overall the game plays more intuitively. All Supremes are still very unique and contribute to their Teams in a very special way. We recently moved into closed beta and the open beta for all of you will follow soon after that (TBA).
Code-name: Twilight
Full Name: unknown
Faction: The Coven
Less is known about the origins of Twilight than almost any other Pulp City Supreme, and not much more is publicly known about the truth of the group she represents. Hidden beneath the web of corporations that form Coven Enterprises, The Coven is a secret organization headed up by practitioners of the dark arts. Some scholars claim that after centuries of undermining Southern social structures with voodoo and assassinations of politicians, leaders of The Coven have forged a bloody and secret truce with official authorities.
Today, following its recent public exposures and now lurking less and less in the shadows, in trying to pursue its political and economic goals the Coven deploys a small but highly skilled Team of Supremes. This Team acts not only in the South (where the location of the Coven’s primary headquarters is confidential and closely guarded), but in other important cities, reaching out to influence politicians, local businessmen and celebrities. Pulp City has become one such key location in Coven plans. Since the Coven rarely relies on brute force alone, despite the power of Loup Garou II and Rook at its disposal, Twilight, the mysterious shadow thief, is without doubt one the leading operatives for the organization in Pulp City.
It has been suggested that the Coven is hunting down those who have left its ranks or have stood in its way, and that Twilight was banished to Pulp City after a spectacular failure in Louisiana, where a young Creole managed to slay Loup Garou, an important Coven resource. Twilight was subsequently tasked with delivering the death-proclamation of the Coven, the trail leading to Pulp City where the Creole woman found refuge in the ranks of the Blood Watch. Despite Twilight’s many successes since, rumor on the Supreme grapevine is that this one failure continues to hang over her Coven career.
Twilight is a mistress of avoiding detection and cheating death. Her enemies claim that she possesses the skill to disappear into shadows or to strike from behind with her twin blades, known as the ‘fangs’, only to reappear a hundred feet further in the blink of an eye. Some experts in Supreme matters have speculated that her origins may lie to the East. Others have wondered whether Twilight is just a codename for an assassin in the Coven’s ranks, or whether there is there a troubled woman behind Twilight’s mask? Nobody outside the Coven knows the answers to these questions, or if they do, they are not saying.
Code-name: Rook
Full Name: Jason King
Faction: The Coven
Jason King was adopted by a progressive couple who grew up on hippie movement ideals. Few facts are publicly-known about his apparently happy childhood, and even fewer about how he became the world’s most sought-after personal bodyguard.
Several years ago, June Summers, Channel 4′s ‘all-Supreme’ news reporter did a segment spotlighting Rook. Not much light was shed on his mysterious persona but the investigation found all the surviving written records of Jason King’s life: a couple of high school and college awards, state championship in chess and football, and a police file implicating him in the murder of a family of five on a Christmas Eve. Most interestingly, a still frame from a security camera allegedly showed Jason in high-tech combat gear alongside Twilight and Loup Garou II, after planting explosive charges in Royal Investment’s missile manufacturing plant.
The Coven had been following Jason’s bodyguard career for a long time and had a high appreciation for his obvious talents which they believed were being squandered. Several attempts to recruit him had failed, thus they resorted to more devious methods. Their frame-up pinning the Royal Investment disaster on him was nothing sophisticated, but the trick was to actually make Jason believe he might have been responsible for what happened. Which as it turned out was easy to do. They simply slipped him a Mickey Finn, which caused him to black out for twelve hours, and planted a little left over bomb material in his apartment.
Like a wounded animal, Jason fled to New Orleans to disappear in the carnival crowd of tourists, pickpockets and cutthroats alike. In a blues bar down an alley off St. Ann’s, drunk on Hurricanes and jello-vodka shots and dreading to contact his adoptive parents, he was approached by a red haired beauty who knew so much about him that the encounter was instantly sobering.
And thus, Jason King became Rook in the service of The Coven, with “no” never being an option. His first assignments took him all over the world, where he oversaw technology thefts and industrial espionage. Some of these were simple loyalty tests which Rook, surprisingly, never failed. He never took the opportunity that these assignments offered him to escape the clutches of the Coven. It was as if he followed his own secret code of honor or his own private agenda, or his own personal sins for which these jobs were penance. Only Rook knew the reason.
After several spectacular exploits where Rook’s muscle and mind was tested to their limits but proved more than equal to the task, Jason was promoted to serve as a personal bodyguard to Papa Zombie, probably the most frightful man in the world. King felt creepies crawling on his back every time he had to look in the man’s eye and listen to his voice. There was something ancient and yet very threatening about this Coven master, as he chanted verses in otherworldly languages while executing hostages without remorse, using a laser pistol at point blank range.
After several years of servitude to Papa Zombie, witnessing things both horrid and supernatural, Jason King relishes every minute he spends with the Strike Team, working with colleagues such as Twilight, Loup Garou II, Zero and even the freakish Francis Gator; they are by-and-large people he respects and admits to have grown fond of. Being a very smart man, Jason knows that there will be a day when a crack will appear in the Coven’s absolute unity, and he will use his wits and martial prowess to support rebellion within the ranks. That is why, whenever the field team strikes, Rook makes sure that the Saint twins, Saint Kane and Saint Eve, are sound and safe as they might be the gateway to overthrowing the tyranny of the Elders and Papa Zombie.
Rook is stronger and more independent than any of the Coven’s pawns, but Jason is aware that a time when he is a true King is still yet come.
…
Rook’s combat gear was built with the technology he stole in his early days of service to the Coven. His armor grants superhuman resilience to damage while the most vital areas of his body – such as his head, arteries and heart – are protected with flickering micro force fields to disperse the force of an enemy blow. The suit is powered with liquid-chemical batteries which allow two hours of effective combat. His Super Tremor Halberd is a state-of-art weapon capable of delivering an explosive hit with the equivalent impact force of six kilotons. The Halberd is remotely connected to the suit batteries so Rook is able to power up most of the hits in a truly Supreme style.
Code-name: Francis Gator
Full Name: Francis Gagnon
Faction: The Coven
Little Francis was a sickly child. When he was born, his wet nurse, Sister Mary, informed his mother the child was stillborn. Francine, whose face was marked with every experience of her long, hard and eventful life as a New Orleans mistress dabbling in the occult, sighed. “Thank you, God.”
But her prayers were unanswered as the infant suddenly heaved a breath, gulped in some air, and started crying. Francine grew silent and never spoke again. The ugly baby was born with a skin disease that covered most of his body: cracked skin, greenish complexion and tough hide around the knuckles and feet.
Three nights later, Francine was found dead, little Francis licking the blood that gushed from deep raking marks across her chest. The wet tracks of huge clawed feed suggested a ferocious reptile had walked in, killed the woman and walked out; at least that is what the investigating detectives claimed. Since Francine had no family and her well-deserved reputation of an old weird woman had scared off most of the neighbors, nobody asked any more questions. Her body was buried by the fence of the cemetery wall and her ugly child was placed in an orphanage.
Francis’ skin disease grew stronger with each passing month and year, and at five years old he was a terror to behold. When Scabs and wounds healed over, they formed scales over his arms and legs, while over time his nose flattened out. Those who bullied him finally gave up on beating him, and by the time he turned seven, whenever they would hear Francis’ shallow breathing, they would run in fear.
On the eve of his twelfth birthday, that nobody cared to celebrate, the almost-mute teenager spent many hours glued to the window, staring into the darkness as if looking out for something …or rather somebody. When one of the orphanage nuns tried to chase him off to evening prayers, Francis hissed, “This is the day to say goodbye, ma’am.”
As midnight was tolled, the door to the orphanage burst open and a huge, bipedal, albino alligator-like creature walked in, scattering everybody aside as it waded towards the teenager.
Sister Mary shuddered, as she realized that the hideous rumor of Francine bedding the ancient swamp devil under the guise of an albino gator had to be true, and so the soul of Francine was doomed to spend eternity in hell.
The giant beast grabbed the boy, jumped through the window and both disappeared into the black of the night.
Thirty years passed, and now calling himself Francis Gator, he returned to humanity and began a painful attempt to meld back into society and enjoy southern comfort and hospitality.
Forty five years after his return, Francis Gator finally realized that he would never be accepted, and that his natural talents, backed up with his ‘swamp years’ experience, predestined him to strike terror in the hearts of those who would reject him.
One of those behind the Coven had a vision of a gator-man who would be a key element to one of the organization’s agendas. Thus, Francis ended up on the Coven’s payroll. Even after many years of service to the shadowy organization, he was feared and rejected by most of the Strike Team, never getting along with likes of Rook or the enigmatic Twilight who could shed their Coven apparel and go out for a beer or other preoccupations in the evening. Papa Zombie, seeing that this distance could cause more trouble, but seeing how useful Francis could be, chose to let Gator return to the swamps and the ancient shack of his mother, a place that had become the refuge of a black magic user. Gator now boards the Coven jet only when the Strike Team needs him. Since the fall however, Gator has been spending more and more of his time in the Pulp City, as the Coven seeks to reestablish their power.
…
Gator’s powerful physique is only a host for a mysterious demonic soul able to control the forces of nature. When Gator mutters and hisses, enemies who have faced him before know it is time to duck. In his bag of dirty tricks is the ability to control swarms of mosquito and raise nearby water levels. Some claim that he is able to call upon the spirit of his sire but if so that has never been recorded. He is brutal and cruel but only as evil as the society and rejection that shaped him. The desire to belong and be loved by people rarely ever surfaces, but if it does, it places Francis into weird alliances. One such time, June Summers of Channel 4 shot some bizarre footage of Gator side by side with Stone Hawk and Seabolt, the force of elements battling the Zoidrod X, prototype experimental military robot, believed stolen by the Mysterious Man.