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!
Codename: Youngblood
Full Name: Eddy Patrick
Faction: Blood Watch
Aroostook County, Maine, a rotting farmhouse. The giant rambling building was overgrown with ivy and lit up by flashes of lightning splitting the purple-black sky. Its ancient decaying form sat alone amongst vast sprawling fields and gently rolling hills.
Standing defiantly against cold driving rain, members of the Blood Watch looked on at the forbidding house before them. For those gathered Supremes, the house was a festering sore in this Maine hinterland. Waiting for V.H.’s signal, Six Feet Under slapped the shaft of his shovel into his left hand, and Blacksmith tightened his grip on his mighty hammer. Ace cocked his pistol in readiness. Moon Coyote loped around behind them, scanning a route to encircle the house, and Blood Rose prepared her mind to transport her Team-mates to their quarry.
Battle lay ahead, and the Blood Watch was ready.
What followed was bloody and brutal. The supernatural Supremes stormed the house. Immediately they found what they had sought – a nest of vampires! However the number of blood-suckers surpassed what their intelligence had indicated. From every room poured their enemies, vampires of every type: Carpathians, nosferatu, dhampir, jiangshi, strzyga and countless other variations. This was more than a mere nest, it was a conclave.
No quarter was given. As one undead fell to the Heroes, another flew forward, their forms turning to dust, ashes or flame as each was vanquished without hesitation. Slowly but surely, the Blood Watch turned the tide back, their wounds healed by Blood Rose as they fought relentlessly.
With dawn approaching, the Heroes had to corner the last of the undead to stop them escaping. One by one those who remained were dispatched until just a few were left, trapped in the dimly lit cellar beneath the house. Blacksmith, Ace and V.H. cautiously made their way down the wooden stairs, too narrow to accommodate Six Feet Under’s bulk.
Two hissing clawed fiends who leapt from the gloom were dispatched with sword and ghostly bullets. Blacksmith then noticed a flicker of movement. He pointed to the back of the dank chamber where there was a stack of coffins. The three advanced, ready for any threat.
As they approached they could hear a faint mewling, a fearful whimper.
Blacksmith smashed the coffins aside with a powerful swing of him hammer. Of all the things he and his allies expected to see, it was not the sight in front of them. A child-like vampire, looking no more than seven years old, terror in his eyes as the three Supremes towered over him. Ace of Wraiths cocked his pistol and Blacksmith drew back his hammer to bring it down in one fatal blow.
“No,” said V.H. firmly, her tone brooking no challenge, “This child will not go the way of the rest. We had a responsibility to vanquish their evil, and we have. This one is a legacy of that darkness, but we can give him a chance to escape that fate. We take him with us.”
Ace and Blacksmith looked on, surprised and concern battling within both of them as V.H. reached out to the youngling, picking him up as he wrapped his arms around her neck.
…
Is evil born or is it made? Is a 5-year old with vampiric powers a threat or a responsibility? The Blood Watch chose to believe the latter. Unable to slay the young vampire, V.H. believes that if brought up and supervised properly, Youngblood will add much-needed survivability and strength to the Team’s repertoire.
What nobody says out loud however, is that if Youngblood’s powers and hunger are only supernaturally suppressed by one of Blacksmith’s talismans. What happens if that is not enough? The Blood Watch observes carefully, as Youngblood has begun to mature physically and psychologically, his deathless lack of aging suppressed partly by the artefact he now carries with him.
Code-name: V.H.
Full Name: Victoria van Helsing
Faction: Blood Watch
Dear Quincey,
I am glad that I managed to finally catch up with you.
I am sorry for the London mansion. You know it had to burn. I hope the insurance covers it, and if not, do not worry, as your head will soon be stuffed with garlic and burnt as well.
I have been told that you have been very inquisitive about whom I am, and that you tried to track me down after our first brush in Geneva. Since we will probably never meet eye-to-eye (my teachers did a good job of letting me know how playing with fiends like you may end), I am taking this opportunity to let you know who your killer will be.
We have actually met twice already. The first time, about twenty years ago, was when you graciously slaughtered my family; you and your minions. You thought there were only three children and that was your first fatal mistake. I hid in ice cold water, under the stone bridge, nearly freezing to death. Your heat-seeking vision could not find me.
I will keep things brief – it is like the stories you see in movies. While the Order of the Forge (you know them – you were responsible for the death of their Paris chapter) could not stop you, they were decent enough to save me and train me, and to channel my hatred for you into a set of skills that got me to where I am now.
I spent fifteen long years studying fiends, outsiders and horrors of the night. I know how to kill all of you. Five of those years I was doing my – as you may call it in the corporate world you fell so much in love with – internship, in the Order’s Hong Kong chapter. I passed my final test with flying colors. I beheaded the shadow oni that had replaced the prime minister of a certain country and sent his head to the biggest national television station. To my disappointment, they claimed he committed ritual suicide.
Then I returned to Europe and started tracking you. That was not too hard, as your lifestyle is pretty extravagant and you like to part with your money. You also play too much to who your parents were etc. They should have killed you, you little leech, when you were still in the cradle.
That poor fool, your father, kept hoping until the very end that you were his true son. In a carnal way, perhaps yes you were. However, you were the offspring of the bad blood ‘big D’ left in your mother’s system. But back to the story; I followed the money trail, yes, and that led me to Royal Investments. I then I realized you are not just a bloodsucker, but you are also conspiring against this world with the dead from another dimension (yay, more cadavers to behead!). We have met in Geneva of course, but I had one year less of experience then. I should have known that surrounded by your ‘friends’ and other associates, you would leave them like a lizard leaving its tail to escape.
Fast forward one year, to today, and we are bound to meet again; however this time, I am much better prepared.
You are in my trap. So make it easy for all of us and just die.
Sorry if I could not answer all of your questions and clear any doubts.
Love,
Victoria van Helsing
PS: I am glad that we are sending these good-old fashioned letters. Even for a gal like me, who grew up in the farms of Midlands (I know you, with your cold blue blood find the idea of such open spaces atrocious), reverting to the old ways that my great-great-grandfather and your parents used to stay in touch with each other is very refreshing.
PPS: Now slowly turn around. Good night, fiend.
Code-name: Moonchild/Moon Coyote
Full Name: Maria Moonchild
Faction: Blood Watch
The story of Moonchild begins with the Arrajo tribe; a small Native American tribe that had suffered for more than a century and half, and which came to reside on part of a reservation jointly held with the Avaje, approximately fifty miles north-east of Pulp City. Today, the reservation casinos are a tourist attraction on the Avaje part of the site. This success has led to some improvement in quality of life on the reservation, although this has not been shared between the two tribes as the Arrajo have shunned this new way.
For the past two decades the Arrajo had suffered the threat of possibly dying out, as no boys had been born among the tribe’s offspring in that time. Marcus Moonchild recognized that some dark force had accursed his people and had led to the tribe producing no boys. He committed all of his abilities as tribal medicine man to combatting that malignancy. He also sought to train his daughter Maria to become the first female shaman of the Arrajo. It was clear to Marcus that whatever the source of the curse was, it was on his tribe alone, as the Avaje with whom they shared the reservation suffered no such problems. From that recognition he was determined that the curse would be broken, and so set to instructing his daughter in the skills she would need to continue his efforts should he fail or fall.
Thus, from a young age Maria learned her father’s shamanic secrets. Years went by, and after her father’s passing, and her coming of age, it was through ritual in the sweat lodge that she finally discovered the origin of the curse that her father had believed to afflict the tribe. Joined in her ritual by the lodge leader, a tribal elder, the two women sat in darkness as smoke swirled around and heat enveloped them. The lodge leader chanted and drummed while Maria freed her mind of earthly constraints. Maria’s vision in that smoke-filled construction revealed images of a black crow demon spreading plague wings over the people of Arrajo. Despite her skills and knowledge, Maria knew she was unable to fight this dark beast. As her vision came to an end the screaming crow flew at the teenager and the elder, talons stretched out to rake them both. The vision ended suddenly and Maria was awake, alert and unharmed, but shaken by the experience. As she looked around she saw the lodge leader lying prone, dead, her face stricken with anguish.
The following night saw Maria nervously enter the sweat lodge again, this time alone with no-one to guide her with chants and drumming. Outside nervous elders waited. She took upon herself the sacred rituals and unbound her shamanic senses once more. Her sight went beyond sight and the vision began.
In her vision a wise albino coyote visited and spoke with her, its voice as old as the lands in which her tribe lived. The coyote explained that the crow could be defeated, but that Maria would need to give up part of herself to do so; a part of her would always belong to the albino coyote and in return, she would get its help to fight the crow. Fearing what the crow-demon would do if she did not act Maria agreed. As she woke from her vision Maria found half of a moon-shaped amulet in her hand.
On the third night Maria looked to the moon above, bright and clear in a cloudless sky. She took that as a sign that the path she had chosen was correct. She grasped the Moon Amulet tightly. Her body shimmered in the moonlight and her form became that of the albino coyote, its body adorned with mysterious markings. The Moon Coyote leapt into the night then, running effortlessly across the reservation towards the larger part that was home to the Avaje. On the outskirts of the Avaje lands Moon Coyote found a darkened lodge. As Moon Coyote waited, a wiry old man emerged from that lodge, his arms adorned with sleeves of crow feathers.
Moon Coyote became Moonchild once more, however her body was now covered in fine white fur, and her long hair that was once dark was similarly white, and her hands adorned with vicious claws. She took a moment to notice this change, noting also her own heart racing, then focused on her quest.
“You are the crow-demon,” Moonchild said, her voice steady and full of certainty.
“Yes, yes I am,” replied the wiry man, “I am Black Crow, and you are another shaman?”
“Yes, I am Moonchild,” she responded “and I fight for the Arrajo”.
As they stood facing once another the wiry man then explained himself; that he had cursed the Arrajo so they would die out so that his tribe, the Avaje, would become stronger on those sacred lands; that he had killed the lodge leader, and years before, Moonchild’s father; and that now Moonchild would die at his hand.
Silence followed. Then both leapt to attack. Moonchild charged forwards, claws slashing out as the wiry man himself transformed into some sort of crow-man. They battled for long minutes before one final slash from Moonchild caught Black Crow across the throat. Dying, he fell to the floor, blood pooling around his body, his curse lifted with his dying breath.
Moonchild had fulfilled her father’s quest and in doing so gave herself over to a greater power. In time she joined Blood Watch, making use of both of her forms to aid them. Her work with those Heroes in turn made her aware of Loup Garou II. She eventually learned of the bond they shared through their possession of each of two halves of the Moon Amulet; each held an influence over the other which unsettled their respective allies. Nonetheless, Moonchild’s courage and unswerving dedication to stopping dark forces is beyond question among the Blood Watch and so for now they respect the bond she has with the hulking werewolf.
Code-name: Sgt. Bale
Full Name: Richard ‘Rich’ Bale
Faction: Blood Watch, The Way
Sergeant Richard Bale died on an unrecorded mission, earing a burial place in Arlington as well as the star-spangled flag draping his coffin, his interment marked gun shots that rang in the sky and the tears of his beautiful wife.
A recognizable tale, if not for the fact that he already died once in the minds of the rest of his world.
Joining the secret Omega Occult team of the US Army equaled ‘death’. Families received notification that their serving died in an accident. Recruits then spent the rest of their lives on covert missions or deep in the force’s underground base with four teammates all similarly burnt out from living that zombie life as they were. Recruits died a silent death and nobody would shed a tear over the life they lost in the service of their country.
Today, Bale never talks about why he joined Omega Occult. It may be deduced that many of the events of his early childhood pushed him that way. He rarely speaks about his missions while serving unless the information is relevant to the latest supernatural threat that Blood Watch is combating.
But he will repeat the story of how he died the second time just to make the curious stop asking questions.
Neither Rich nor any of his Omega Occult team knew why they were sent to the lush jungles of Cambodia. It was pretty common for them to receive briefings right after they parachuted from their stealth transport. This time was different, and the shift in the pattern sent chills down Bale’s spine.
Their local guide handed them the envelope containing their orders: follow the guide; shoot the guide once at the destination; and recover the target from the lower levels of an abandoned temple. The executed each stage of their orders to the letter, quickly arriving at the temple.
…
Call-sign Tank Red, the unit’s weapons specialist, exchanged the muzzle on the gun after unloading a wall of firepower, while Bale deciphered the glyphs on the ruined walls of Beng Mealea temple, using his specialist training.
Ichiro died first as a huge chunk of the naga statue crushed his body, his blood draining into the cracks of the floor. This was the first true Omega Occult death in five years. The second and third happened almost simultaneously as the floor broke and two more fell down into the dark water below. A hiss echoed in the darkness and the water exploded with seven lashing reptilian heads of doom. Bale dodged at the last second, while Tank Red fired up his battle-suit rocket boots and flew for the surface through the cracked hole in the ceiling.
Rich was left alone facing the massive beast, a creature clearly far more intelligent than its form suggested. The behemoth whispered into his mind: Fight me? Rich knew then that this was an assignment beyond the usual good and evil, he knew that more than his life is at stake.
The reptilian heads struck at him again. Bale waited calmly and in the last moment grabbed one to ride it like a cowboy on a bucking bull. The beast tried to shake him off, trying to crush him against the wall but to no avail. Bale just waited as the six remaining heads hunted for the burdened seventh. He leapt from head to head, and watched them kill the next in turn until there was only one left.
Out of options, the last man standing of Omega Occult fired his entire clip into the gaping mouth of the dragon as the beasts flaming breath engulfed him. The fire felt good, cleansing, forging a bond between the ancient creature and its slayer. Rich fell into the water, his right arm burnt as the shrinking dragon snaked around it, leaving a mysterious tattoo and thus sealing the Dragon’s Pact.
It would all have seemed a bizarre and horrific nightmare if not for the fact that a small flame danced on Bale’s hand, guiding his way. The union with the dragon made him strong and powerful.
…
Six months later Richard Bale infiltrated the HQ of Omega Occult, a place he had called home. He was not here to pick up his stuff, as he headed straight for the commander’s office. No robot, no beast and no soldier could stand in the way of his dragon’s fury. Sgt. Bale burned his way through all resistance, the dragon on his arm seeming almost alive as it spewed flame on all his enemies and ignited their bullets.
The journey ended fast and Bale had only one question: Why?
They do not have to divulge details, but villains at gunpoint always talk and talk and talk. So Sgt. Richard Bale learned all he wanted and even more. Omega Occult’s top brass had decided that better a one man army with the ancient power of dragons than a team of five replaceable covert operatives. The dragon had to choose only one as its champion. A new occult contact, a woman of great power, promised that more soldiers would be able to fuse their bodies with ancient beasts, to promote US military interests. Bale could be the leader of a new hybrid Omega Occult.
A flaming bullet to the head of his ex-commander was a clear answer to this promotion opportunity.
The US military acted swiftly to cover up a very unfortunate chain of events, and so Sgt. Richard Bale had a second funeral, amid a newly concocted story about his death while defending American security.
Sgt. Bale and his dragon powers went on the run, and sought a refuge, as he knew he was too powerful and too dangerous to return to his twice-widowed wife. He was approached by many: government agents; power-hungry tyrants; the woman that claims she knows the spirit that slumbers in him. He rejected them all, accepting an offer from the mysterious V.H. and her Blood Watch Team, finding a home at last. They all accepted his grim presence because none of them doubted his loyalty and total dedication to a greater good. His journey later took him into alliance with The Way, the Dragon charting that path. Yet if Bale’s allies in both Factions only knew about Bale’s nightmares of a seven-headed dragon setting the world ablaze and bowing in front of a snake goddess…
Code-name: Ace of Wraiths
Full Name: unknown
Faction: Blood Watch, Four Aces
Even over one hundred years later, they still talk in Pulp City about that night of poker. That was the night a dazzling card-sharp became the Ace of Wraiths. His name is long-since forgotten, but the legend says that he was the greatest gambler of his day. He could bluff his way to a win with just a pair of deuces, and today Ace of Wraiths is the oldest resident of Pulp City’s Crossroad Hills district.
Over one century ago, that was his night; nobody could best him at cards, until a stranger joined his game. The stranger’s native blood did not match his white man’s clothing, nor did his Old World accent. The two played for hours until the momentum swung back to Ace in the gray hours just before the breaking of dawn. It came down to one last hand.
The stranger had no money, but he laid his gun and card box on the table. At first glance, the gun appeared to be nothing special, but as Ace stared at it he saw its exquisite workmanship along with ornate etching on the barrel. The same pattern was impressed on the solid silver box.
The final game was five card stud. The stranger took one card, Ace took three and drew aces over eights. He laid his cards down. The stranger sighed and looked Ace in the eyes. A smile came to his lips that grew into a laugh that chilled Ace’s soul. Then the stranger’s body collapsed into a pile of ashes. Ace flipped over the stranger’s cards: six, seven, eight, nine, and the one-eyed jack of spades.
That gambler Ace did not realize what had happened that night until a wandering preacher on a pale horse, upon seeing the winnings, told him a story about a cursed gun and deck of cards which damn their owner with immortality and eternal torment. He told the tale that they cannot be given away, but the owner can try to outwit another into winning the trophies in a game of cards, thus condemning the winner’s soul to an afterlife in hell. Ace had met his match that night, and his winning streak had come to a damned end.
Ace soon found he could not die. A bullet, or a knife, or a hangman’s noose may take his breath and stop his heart, but he was always reborn on the following night at the nearest crossroads. A few arcanists that know of his curse whisper that his life on earth will one day come to an end, when every man and woman tricked by the cursed Deck of Souls is redeemed with a claimed life of an evil being. And these days there seems no end of evil souls to harvest.
The powers of Ace of Wraiths rely on his artifacts. A skilled gunslinger and a cartomancer, Ace has had more than a century to master the art of paying his toll with the blood of evil men and women.
Code-name: Red Riding Hoodoo
Full Name: Shondra Vey
Faction: Blood Watch
Blood Watch Supreme Red Riding Hoodoo, born Shondra Vey in the murky swamps of south Louisiana, did not have many years to enjoy as a child. Marie, her mother, moved them both to Pulp City when Shondra was five to escape from someone, or maybe it was from something. Marie never told Shondra the full story, but it was clear that a dark and sinister force was involved. Nor did Marie talk much about her family until the day she received a fateful letter from her own mother that would cut short Shondra’s childhood.
Without much of an explanation, Marie sent little Shondra on a plane to Louisiana to deliver a small basket of medicine to her grandma. With just a few bucks in her pocket and grandma’s address, Shondra started a trip that would change her life forever.
Upon Shondra’s arrival she soon found a secret letter from her grandma. The letter explained that old woman feared she would fall into the clutches of an evil coven of black magic practitioners. Sensing this to be the case, immediately Shondra thought desperately of what she could do. She then searched the basket her mother had packed and discovered what she instinctively knew to be powerful charms within it. Guided by the hoodoo call in her blood, Shondra set out into the dark world of long-forgotten rituals and sacrifice, and would emerge as Red Riding Hoodoo.
Time passed quickly as Shondra knew she could not delay action for long. Instinctively invoking ancient rites and calling on old spirits, her path led her to the captors. Arriving at an old dilapidated manse overgrown with vines, Shondra faced a Loup Garou, an evil man transformed into a wolf and controlled by a voodoo priest.
Shondra called on the secret powers of her blood-line, summoning the spirits of her tortured slave ancestors. The wolf-man attacked but failed to harm the girl. So powerful were the spirits surging within Shondra that she was able to trap the man in his wolf form forever, neither truly dead nor alive. With the Loup Garou dispatched Shondra was able to save her grandma and both managed to escape the clutches of the wicked cabal that snapped at their heels. Shondra returned to Pulp City at her grandma’s insistence, and the old woman retreated deep into the sanctuary of the darkest Louisiana swamp.
After several years of study, Shondra realized that she had crossed the path of the Coven, a shadowy organization that for centuries had used dark means to affect politics and the economy, building up a formidable base of power in the wider world while coveting ever darker magicks. After Shondra’s victory, the seemingly ageless leader of the Coven, Papa Zombie, instructed his Strike Team to hunt down Red Riding Hoodoo at all costs. The next few years were spent evading them, and Pulp City offered the perfect hiding place among its myriad Supremes.
Red Riding Hoodoo has mastered many of the secret arts of hoodoo. Shondra quickly became an adept at harnessing the malign powers of hate and pain, but she still seeks to learn the white arcana of healing. She is usually seen accompanied by an unnaturally big wolf with shabby fur and glowing pale eyes. Some say it is the vile Loup Garou Hoodoo had managed to defeat many years ago.
Conscious of her powers, and the responsibility that comes with them, Hoodoo has just recently joined Blood Watch, a team of haunted Supremes who have sworn to protect Pulp City from black magic and the bloodthirsty appetites of the Lords of Necroplane and the nefarious Coven.
Code-name: Six Feet Under
Full Name: Ken Meyers
Faction: Blood Watch
On one parallel version of Earth, extinction came unexpectedly on a Monday morning in 1982. Without warning, skies opened and huge hoverships cast shadows over the biggest cities of North America. The ‘human component’ was the target, as Necropoliticians called it, as life energy was harvested into huge containers, rapidly extracting this resource out of living and screaming bodies. Raiding parties then dropped to the surface to search for survivors.
A treaty had been signed by the President of Euroasia and Lord Hellfax of Necroplane. The new alliance with the alien race was intended to be a decisive move in a war that had lasted for over a decade, with neither Euroasia nor Panamerica able to deal a final blow. But none of the Euroasian officials had expected this outcome. Earth’s doom was sealed as Necroplane replenished its energy resources and soon attacked Euroasia after Panamerica fell.
Ken Meyers had been finishing his nightshift as a security guard at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. He loved his job for he loved gazing at the stars, imagining how it would be to travel in space. An avid sci-fi fan, Ken spent most of his eighteen years getting ready for an alien invasion that he was sure had to come one day.
When ray-beams tore through clouds, unlike most of his fellow citizens, Ken was ready. He dove into one of the freshly dug graves and shielded himself with a heavy lead cover. He stayed there until finally a terrible silence fell, with none of the usual sounds of the city as it would normally be waking up for another busy Monday.
The barren land pulsed and heaved, the ground still crying from the abuse that had rained from above. When at last Ken crawled out of hiding, he knew he was not unscathed. His body ached, a terrible swelling came over him, and to his horror, he realized that his body had started warping, his teenage frame elongating to nine feet in height, and powerful muscles bulged under what remained of his outfit.
Ken let a cry of pained fury out when he realized that he had absorbed some of the life energy harvested by the hoverships. His insane howls drew the attention of a raiding party. The necro-constructs found the hulk unconscious and under their master’s command carried him through the quantum hole to the Necroplane’s infamous prison, the Hellrock.
Lord Hellfax studied Ken for many months, for this was the first case of anybody surviving exposure to necrorays. For Ken it seemed like an eternity of torture, his body pinched, cut, and burnt more times that he could count. Yet the Lord did not realize that with each blow Meyers became more powerful, his strong will growing like a storm, until the chalice of his fury and hatred was full. He was just waiting for the right moment.
And then it came. Something weird happened one day, the guards began running like crazy. It was so unusual that even Lord Hellfax broke from his sadistic routine and walked over to the window to see what was happening.
Ken tore his chains from the walls with one powerful pull that surprised even him and slung them around the neck of amazed Hellfax, snapping his head off. By the time the body hit the floor, Ken was long gone, smashing a hole in the wall and plummeting a hundred feet to the ground. Yet he did not die, instead he ran onwards, fuelled by insanity, and by hatred, with no goal, and no escape plan.
Chased by legions of Necro G.I’s, Soul Golems and nightmare herders, the man soon to be known as Six Feet Under ran through the barren landscape of the Necroplane until he was so tired he collapsed to his knees. Soon he was surrounded by the minions of the dead who gathered like vultures around a dying defiant lion. One Soul Golem lifted Ken’s powerful body with ease and the balefire in its cyclopean eye brightened to burn the infidel who slew Lord Hellfax.
At that moment fate twisted and help arrived. From Blood Rose’s portal came the entire Blood Watch, with V.H. leading the charge and decapitating the undead, while Sgt. Bale and Red Riding Hoodoo blasted the animated corpses with their arcane tricks, bolstered by Blacksmith’s mighty hammer, forcing the disarrayed Necroplane forces into retreat. Soon the battle was over and the Team carried the fallen hulk through the portal back to the safety of their headquarters.
Ken Meyers died that night, and Six Feet Under was born. The only way to keep his fury and hatred from slaughtering everything nearby was to channel it into destroying as many evil Necroplane beings as possible. And possibly save this Earth from what had happened to Ken’s home.
Six Feet Under never steps back. His traumatic experiences in Hellrock Prison stripped the remnants of his sanity. Caring only for his teammates, Six Feet Under swings his huge shovel and rams into his enemies, no finesse, just brute strength. With nothing to lose, the hulking giant is capable of withstanding not only powerful blows but also the dark arts of magic and mind control. Like the rest of Blood Watch, Six Feet Under is an expert in slaying the dead and the supernatural. But unlike some of his friends, he takes great pleasure in it.
Code-name: Blood Rose
Full Name: Blood Rose
Faction: Blood Watch
Just as the Necroplane is a parallel realm to Earth, so is the Astral Plane.
After the Big Bang, the Astral Plane took a wholly different path to the creation of life than on Earth. Every spark of life was given an equal chance. Inhabitants of that small reality were immortal unless they died of unnatural causes. Ageless, they were destined to be a part of the great Astral Hunt Circle. They were emotionless, for the Astral Plane was only about passionless survival.
The creator of Astral Plane was either very busy or had to abandon the project very early on. Only three species were native to the void: the asauri, the krakentueri, and the pihhiel. The asauri were the intelligent bipeds, living in tribes scattered on many tiny planets. They glided from one planet to the next, eternal nomads roaming Astral-space. Each tribe was led by a Keeper of Thorns, a spiritual being that from the moment of her birth, possessing the power to rip reality to travel in space and time.
The asauri spent most of their time hunting the colossal krakentauri, peaceful beasts with tentacled maws and wings that would propel them through the cold void. Generations of asauri mastered hunting krakentauri; the oldest and most skillful hunters found their prey by attuning their hearing to the beats of the krakenturi’s wings in space.
The krakentauri, far from smart or ferocious, would drift in Astral-space to find colonies of mite-like creatures named pihhiel, the best food they had ever tasted. The behemoths had the keenest senses in the whole universe: they could smell little pihhiel hives from light years away and tirelessly pursued them to the edges of the Astral Plane.
There was only one scent that could elude a krakentaur on the trail, that of an Astral Rose, the key link in the Great Hunt Cycle. Astral Roses were the equivalent of Earth’s human souls. They bloomed in sacred places protected by entire tribes of asauri hunters. The pihhiel launched berserker raids, their swarms slaughtering the guardians, snatching a Rose which protected them from the krakentauri, if only for a couple of days. The unlucky asauri, whose Rose has been plucked, would dissolve into nothingness over a matter of days, the process neither being painful nor tragic. This was just the way the Astral Plane was.
The force behind the Astral Plane either knew the definition of the word ‘irony’ or came up with it. For, if any being was hunted down and killed in the Astral Plane, it would re-incarnate in the form of its slayer’s species, bound to hunt down its former kin to survive. So a dissolved asauri would become a pihhiel after his former comrades’ Astral Rose, while a pihhiel would become a krakentaur, with all the memories of where his previous hive was. A hunted down krakentaur would become an asauri and so the eternal wheel kept turning.
While the symmetry of the circle appeared perfect, there was a flaw that would rip it apart. The woman now known as Blood Rose was the Keeper of Thorns for one of the tribes guarding the Astral Rose field. The pihhiel in that sector were low in numbers so she and her tribe often engaged in krakentaur hunts, gliding in space after the sleepy behemoths. On one of those hunts, the tribe set an ambush, with their hunters disguised by their star-glitter cloaks, and sharp spears ready for hurling into the big beast’s mouth. Blood Rose stroked reality, as she sought thin spots of the fabric, ready to pierce space-time at any moment and send the hunters through temporary doors to attack the beast.
Starlock, one of the most experienced hunters, gestured to signal the approach of a krakentaur. Spears flew and struck their target. The krakentaur bled and sprayed the hunters with a deep blue fluid. Then, something unexpected happened: the dying beast transformed into a weird hybrid of all species that, as surprised as the on looking asauri, attacked the nearest hunter’s throat.
This new creature not only had the strength of a krakentaur, the cunning of an asauri, and the speed of a pihhiel, but it also transformed any it touched into a crossbreed similar to itself. The void cracked and a wave of massive uncontrolled transformations swept through the realm. Crazed asauri-pihhiel-krakentaur hybrids fought each other in universe-wide chaos. Seeing impending doom, Blood Rose transported to her tribe’s Astral Rose Garden and saw it turned into a battlefield.
Since the natives to the void never knew emotion, she quickly analyzed the situation, seeing only one logical course; she teleported all of the surrounding hybrids into a black hole. Because the transformations were an incurable plague, she repeated this process in every corner of her universe.
Soon, Blood Rose was the last living being within the Astral Plane. Alone, she picked her own Astral Rose and her world ceased to exist. A massive implosion sent Blood Rose hurtling through time and space. Being an anomaly between worlds, realization dawned and she took the reins of space-time and sundered reality. Blood Rose entered our Earth in the 16th century. After hundreds of years of hiding her true identity under many guises, she joined forces with Blood Watch, who were the only ones able to understand her power without trying to abuse it. Haunted by the fact that it took only one day for her universe to die, Blood Rose is on a mission to keep the fabric of her new home-realm intact. Without her, all of the gates to other worlds would have opened a long time ago, and Earth likely ruled by the tyranny of Necroplane or worse.
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