Vengeance

(Brandon Foster)

Campaign: Questionable HEROes (Dark Champions)

Background:
Brandon (Bren to his friends) is the son of a mutant mother and a normal father. His mother died when he was seven while giving birth to his sister Mary, and he was left to grow up with two normals for a family. He loved his father, and his father loved him, but he could not understand what was going on in his son’s life. Over the years, Brandon had learnt to suppress his powers and to ignore the little voices in his head. They didn’t have much, but his father made a decent living fixing motorcycles and even found the time to volunteer in the local mutant hostel. All in all, Brandon had a pretty happy childhood.
This all came to an end on one stormy October eve. Brandon was helping his father out at the mutant hostel, serving hot meals to poor mutant youngsters who had nowhere else to go. A group of genoists (mutant haters) calling themselves HumanPower selected that hostel to vent out their hate. Brandon’s father and ten other innocent people were gunned down mercilessly.
The police was no help at all. They arrived too late to make a difference, and didn’t care enough to try and track down the criminals afterwards (“lack of evidence”, they said). On that night, Brandon came to the realization that no one would look out for him but himself. On that night a new hero was born. Vengeance was his name, and vengeance was his essence. He cared not for law or moral values. He existed solely for the exerting retribution on those who hurt the innocents. Admired by some, hated by other but respected by all, mutants had a new champion, and he dressed in black.

Personality:
Brandon is a young man consumed by his self-imposed sense of guilt and his sense of vengeance. When he took on the mantle of Vengeance, he did it out of a sense of being better than his hated foes. Whereas the people who killed his father relied on guns to give them the advantage, Vengeance is almost fanatic about his refusal to use any weapons, but to rely only on his skill and innate powers.
Even though Vengeance is a feared crimefighter, he never killed anyone. True, his is ruthless, but he is not a murderer. He inspires fear in the criminal element by causing severe injuries and breaking limbs. However, the fact that this is true does not mean it is necessarily common knowledge.

Appearance:
Brandon is an attractive young man. He is fairly tall and well built. He usually wears his work clothes (an old pair of jeans and a stained T-shirt) and cuts his hair short. Only the small wrinkles around his deep brown eyes can tell the story of what he had gone through the last couple of years.
When he takes the identity of Vengeance, he wears a pitch black body suit that does not interfere with his acrobatic movement and a black mask that covers his entire face. Black gloves make sure that he does not leave any finger prints and reveal his true identity.

Powers/Tactics:
Although Vengeance is a telepath and a telekinetic, he is quite different than the normal comic book mentalist. In fact, he spent so many years suppressing his powers and trying to ignore them that he can no longer even consciously control them.
In combat, Vengeance relies mainly on his mastery of the Savate martial art which he has studied extensively. Realizing that a fight is won first in the mind and only then on the battlefield, Vengeance has a tendency to use big showy maneuvers to inspire fear in his opponents, even when a simple jab would have done the job.
The reason that Vengeance is such an able fighter are his mutant powers mentioned in the first paragraph. Even though he can’t consciously control them, Vengeance definitely uses them. Without being aware of it, Vengeance reads his opponents mind during a fight. This way, he always seems to know what opponents are going to do before they do it, and is able to anticipate their every move. He can dodge almost any attack and always seems to find the weak spot in a rival’s defenses or exploit the small mistake his assailant didn’t even know he was making.
He also subconsciously uses his telekinesis to add power to his blows, height to his leaps and to help propel him forward when leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

Campaign Use:
Vengeance is a loner, both out of choice and out of distrust to those who hold “lower” moral standards than he does. This, and the lack of his control over his powers keep him a nickel and dime vigilante out on his own crusade.
With the right telepathic training and the right group of allies, nothing will stop Vengeance from becoming one of the major forces in the local super hero scene.