by John McCrae
Shatterbird (Missing) - Typically the one that heralds the arrival of the Slaughterhouse Nine at a new city, Shatterbird is a silicakinetic with the ability to manipulate glass at will over a wide area. She was born in the Arab Emirates and dosed with a Cauldron formula, prompting the manifestation of her powers and the deaths of thousands. Eventually made her way to London, then America, joining the Slaughterhouse Nine. She was kidnapped by the Undersiders and controlled by Regent for some time, escaped in the Echidna Arc, and is expected to have died in the collapse of Coil’s base.
The Siberian (Deceased) - A recurring nemesis of the Triumvirate, the Siberian’s skin is striped with black and white, leaving her nationality uncertain. Her powers make her unstoppable and untouchable, with no armor protecting against her blows, no object barring her way, no weapon touching her, and no power affecting her.
Burnscar (Deceased) - A pyrokinetic with the ability to teleport through flames. A onetime acquaintance of Labyrinth from Faultline’s crew, Burnscar has a mental side effect with her powers that make her more emotionally detached as she uses her power more. A young woman with a penchant for wearing red, she had cigarette burns dotting her cheeks and dark hair. Slain while fighting in Brockton Bay.
Cherish (Imprisoned) – Regent’s sister, has the ability to manipulate emotions and sense emotions in a distinct enough way to track and identify individuals at a distance. Attempted to use her power in a subtle fashion on the rest of the group, only to find that they knew what she was planning. Following the escapades in Brockton Bay, she was trapped in an impervious, life-sustaining shell of Mannequin’s design and sunk to the bottom of the derelict Boat Graveyard, where she is expected to live for several thousand (or tens of thousands of) years.
Hatchet Face (Deceased) - Onetime member of the Nine, supplanted by Cherish. A musclebound brute favoring his namesake weapon, Hatchet Face generated an aura that shut down the powers of others, allowing him to stalk and murder even superior capes with his enhanced strength and durability. Was made into an artificial siamese twin by Bonesaw, melding him with Oni Lee to become ‘Hack Job’.
Damsel of Distress (Deceased) - Once a small time villainess, Damsel had space warping powers, capable of destroying any matter or construction, albeit with a minimum of control. Was either forced or willingly joined the Nine, and was enhanced to gain more control, at the cost of monstrous implants in her forearms and hands. Was slain by Defiant.
Gray Boy (Status Unknown) - Once a member of the Nine, one of Jack’s first teammates. Has been referenced in passing several times, with a measure of awe or fear.
Travelers
A band of supervillains that travels from city to city that undertake crime sprees and move on to a new destination before the local authorities can prepare and respond. It has been explained that the reason for their roving behavior and hunger for money is tied to a situation with one of their members, Noelle. Following Coil’s demise and Noelle’s escape, they disintegrated as a group.
Trickster, Francis Krouse (Incarcerated: Birdcage) - Leader of the Travelers. Can ‘swap’ the locations of people or objects using a teleportation ability. The closer in mass the two subjects are, the faster and the further reaching his abilities.
Sundancer, Marissa Newland (Returned home) - A young woman that has demonstrated the ability to create a miniature sun, hundreds or thousands of degrees in temperature, that she can manipulate at will. She has indicated some unhappiness with the group’s methodology, stating it is too high intensity and lonely for her tastes.
Genesis, Jess (Returned home) - Has the ability to create and project solid images, essentially creating a single creature or person she can control from a remote distance. These images can have minor powers of their own.
Ballistic, Luke (Returned home) - Can accelerate a touched object to a bullet-like velocity in a fraction of a second, from ball bearings to cars. It has been stated/implied by Sundancer that he can’t actually reduce this speed, rendering any use of his power fairly lethal.
Oliver (Returned home) - A noncombat member of the group. He gained powers that alter his appearance and improve his ability to learn or physically better himself.
Echidna, Noelle (Deceased) - Escaped containment from Coil’s base, only to rampage across Brockton Bay, attempting to kill the Undersiders. Became monstrous after receiving a Cauldron dosage, due to a combination of factors including a partial dose (minus the controlling agent), a past history of issues tainting her development and high physical stress at the time of the ingestion. Slain by her teammates.
Rogue and Mercenary Groups
Faultline’s Crew
High-end mercenaries operating out of Brockton Bay. Left the city prior to the Endbringer arc to recruit a new member. Faultline has developed a rapport with several Case-53s – victims of Cauldron who were made monstrous. She gave them employment and security, and they’ve given her loyalty in exchange.
Faultline – Noted as a capable leader, has a feud of sorts with Tattletale. Her power enables her to cut through any nonliving material with a touch. She is currently searching for means to extend her ability to living materials as well.
Spitfire – Was scouted as a prospective member of the Undersiders shortly after her powers manifested, but backed off after an altercation with Bitch, and joined Faultline’s crew instead. Her powers include the ability to spew geysers of fluid from her mouth. This fluid ignites on contact with air, creating intense flame that can melt concrete.
Newter – Case 53. His powers altered his appearance to the point he cannot fit in with regular society. Has orange skin, red hair and a prehensile tail. Was living in the sewers before he was recruited by Faultline. His bodily fluids are powerful contact hallucinogens, to a degree where even the trace sweat on his hands can incapacitate someone.
Gregor the Snail – As with Newter, his appearance was altered when he gained his powers. Has translucent skin with some blister-like growths of shell, and is rather obese. He spent much of his early career homeless, surviving with the cash he earned as a sometime enforcer for other groups in the city and a bouncer for clubs. His powers let him create chemicals in his body and project them from his skin. His bloated body is filled with thick, tarlike fluids and a soft cartilage-based skeletal structure.
Labyrinth – Retains the ability to manipulate her immediate environment almost completely. While this only extends a relatively short distance around her, her influence gradually radiates outward as she remains in one place for a time. One of the more extreme examples of how powers can affect one mentally, she veers between lucidity and a dissociative fugue state.
Shamrock – Shamrock is, like Newter and Gregor, a onetime subject of Cauldron, though she displays no physical side effects. Shamrock has a particular combination of microtelekinesis and clairvoyance/precognition that allows her to affect small changes to create wider effects, essentially altering events in her vicinity.
Scrub - Gained his powers while under the Merchants when a violent gladiatorial event forced his trigger event. Has the ability to create spheres of energy that annihilate matter… sometimes. He has limited control over this power; while he can dictate general direction and frequency, its placement is somewhat random. Once a Merchant, he assisted Faultline’s Crew in creating a portal, and has remained with the group, presumably with the idea of creating more portals.
The Irregulars
Formed of a splinter group of ex-hero Case 53s and others, following the revelations of the Triumvirate’s involvement with Cauldron. The group does mercenary work, with a focus on doing good deeds more than on making money, and retains loose ties to the Protectorate and Wards.
Weld - Once the forerunner of a new phase in the Protectorate’s plan to acclimatize the public to capes, Weld was to be the ‘face’ of the more monstrous or unusual capes, taking over the Wards, with plans to eventually have him lead a city’s Protectorate team. Left the Wards following the revelations about Eidolon and Alexandria’s invol
vement with Cauldron. Now leads the Irregulars. Weld has metal flesh, a consequence of his ability to absorb metal and incorporate it into his biology. This renders him nigh-indestructible and gives him basic shapeshifting ability.
Gully - Once a member of San Diego’s Wards team, Gully was repeatedly passed over for promotions to team leader, largely due to her monstrous nature. Gully is muscular to the point of being grotesque, eight feet tall, but hunched over, with distorted teeth and a severe underbite. She maintains braids that hang to the ground, and carries a shovel, though it isn’t necessary to use her earth-manipulation powers.
Matryoshka - A case 53, Matryoshka was deposited in Madison, Wisconsin by the same incident that drew the Travelers there. Described as having a great many vertical and horizontal lines to her form, with dark horizontal lines ribbing her entire body, she can turn herself into a mess of ribbons, absorbing an individual, some of their memories and some of their appearance, at the cost of her own. This effect can be repeated, but holding on to anyone too long ‘digests’ them.
Sanguine – A red skinned, red-haired cape, Sanguine is a case 53.
Gentle Giant - A tall cape exceeding even Gully in height, a case 53.
The Birdcage
A containment facility for parahumans who can’t be held in an ordinary prison, deemed inescapable.
Marquis – Amy Dallon’s father, an osteokinetic, capable of manipulating bones, including his and any exposed bone of his enemy. A powerful Shaker and Shifter, once leader of a villain group in Brockton Bay’s ‘bad old days’, Marquis heads a cell block in the men’s wing.
Lung – A half-Chinese, half-Japanese individual, he was sent to prison in the East and eventually escaped, making his way to America, where he defeated and absorbed a number of sub-gangs, retaining all the Asian members. Tall and bearing tattoos of dragons up his arms, back and neck, he has a power that lets him gradually transform over the course of a conflict, gaining armor plating, enhanced strength, regeneration, claws, enhanced pyrokinesis, and other benefits. At the most extreme end of his transformation, he is capable of trading blows with an Endbringer, though he has only participated in one such fight.
Amy Dallon – See entry under New Wave, above.
Glaistig Uaine - A cape that seems much younger than she is, Glaistig Uaine styles herself as a Faerie Queen, and claims that she collects the lesser faerie that grant other parahumans their powers. Whatever the true nature of her abilities, she can draw in the essence of recently dead parahumans she has come in contact with – or kill wounded or dying parahumans – and store it within herself. At any one time, she can have two or three of the parahumans she has ‘claimed’ manifest as ghostly spectres, complete with the ability to physically affect the world and use their powers.
Canary, Paige Mcabee - A ‘rogue’, or a cape without affiliation to either the heroes or villains, Canary worked as a singer, steadily growing in popularity. Her abilities made her particularly good at singing and rendered listeners suggestible. Following an accidental use of her power, Canary was charged with aggravated sexual assault with a parahuman ability and sentenced to a life imprisonment in the Birdcage.
Major Heroes Outside of Brockton Bay
Scion – The first parahuman to make his presence known, and one of the most powerful. Mentioned in the first Interlude. A golden haired, golden skinned man. Has been described as having flight, the ability to flash-freeze a breached levee and the capability to stop an erupting volcano, among other powers.
Legend – Leader of the Protectorate. Runs the team based in New York. Is one of the best, if not the best ‘flying artillery’ capes, with flight and unsurpassed versatility and power from the lasers he can emanate from his body. Among other things, his lasers can turn corners, fork into multiple lasers, pass through walls and freeze or ignite his targets. He has recently left the Protectorate’s Triumvirate.
Alexandria – Second in command of the Protectorate. Flies and has enhanced strength, a virtually invincible body, eidetic memory, and senses emotions. The triad of flight, strength and invincibility recurs often enough, in enough variations, that it’s often referred to as ‘the Alexandria package’. Runs the team based in Los Angeles. Member of the now-disbanded Triumvirate.
Eidolon - Third member of the Protectorate’s ‘Triumvirate’. Eidolon has the ability to use any power he needs at a given point in time, maintaining a set of two to four powers at a time. Adopting a new power is not immediate, but after minutes, his abilities with that power grow to the point they rival or surpass veteran users of the same abilities.
Dragon – Heralded as the most skilled and powerful Tinker in this reality, this superhero deploys to every incident with a new and original suit of armor. Manages the Birdcage, the top security prison for supervillains based in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, all of the computer systems for the Protectorate, and has designed much of the equipment used by the PRT. A member of the ‘Guild’, a Canadian superteam that focuses primarily on threats of an international scale, and an honorary member of the Protectorate.
Defiant, Colin – Dragon’s partner, Defiant is Armsmaster.
Narwhal – Leader of both ‘The Guild’ and of the Protectorate station in Toronto, Ontario. Narwhal is an unparalleled wielder of forcefields.
Major Villains Outside of Brockton Bay
The Endbringers - According to Tattletale’s power, they were never human. Rather, they are monsters (in every sense of the word) who take turns attacking locations around the globe, aiming to cause as much damage as possible. Apparently unkillable, they retreat to their respective domains when they have sustained sufficient damage and heal, only to attack again months later. Their arrival is almost always followed by devastation, including dead capes, massive civilian losses (sometimes ranging into the millions), catastrophic damage to cities and/or large scale damage to landscapes.
■ Behemoth, originally called Hadhayosh, is a forty-five foot tall horned brute with incredible strength and durability, regeneration and dynakinesis; the ability to manipulate energy in all its forms. Creates shockwaves, lightning, thunder and delivers massive impacts, and can ignore the Manton effect within a radius of about thirty feet, allowing him to roast capes from the inside-out. He has racked up the most cape kills during the fights, and is consequently nicknamed ‘Herokiller’.
■ Leviathan is a thirty-foot tall monstrosity with enhanced speed, enhanced strength, a watery afterimage that follows after his every movement and macrohydrokinesis. He killed forty six parahumans during his attack on Brockton Bay, leaving many others wounded or crippled. Most see him as the weakest of the three. Has shattered islands and coastlines in the course of his attacks.
■ The Simurgh is shorter than her brothers, and sports a large number of asymmetrical wings. She possesses telekinesis, clairvoyance, precognition and a perpetual psychic scream. Seen as the most cunning and intelligent of the three, the Simurgh uses her precognition to employ long term schemes, each with Rube-Goldberg sequences of events, culminating in grave disasters and tragedies.
Nilbog – A crazed lunatic, Nilbog gained the power to create life, collecting raw biological material and using it to fashion minions. With this power, he has settled in a small town and depopulated it to repopulate it with his own creations.
The Lost
They have no team they could be listed under, and they’re either dead or gone in some sense of the word.
Kaiser (Deceased) - Was leader of Empire Eighty-Eight. Real name: Max Anders. Could summon metal objects from solid surfaces – blades, beams, bludgeons, spears and needles. Ripped in half by Leviathan.
Oni Lee (Deceased) - Lieutenant of Lung. Real name not given. Could teleport, leaving duplicates of himself that would continue to fight for several seconds before exploding into a cloud of carbon ash. Was scouted for the Slaughterhouse Nine by Jack Slash, failed his test, and was made into an artificial siamese twin by Bonesaw, melding him with Hatchet Face to become ‘Hack Job’.
Bakuda (Deceased) - Lieutenant of Lung. Half-asian tinker, member and once-temporary-leader of the ABB. Specialty in advanced bombs, including gravity, time-stop, physical distortion, cryogenic and flesh-to-glass transmutation effects. Imprisoned in Birdcage and summarily killed by Lung. Resurrected as Glaistig Uaine’s puppet.
Skidmark (Deceased) - Leader of the Merchants, Skidmark was a meth addict in a serious state of physical decline and ill health. Capable of creating an effect that coated an area and pushed things in one direction. Killed by the Nine.
Squealer (Deceased) - Skidmark’s girlfriend, classified as a Tinker and a Mover. Her abilities allowed her to create advanced vehicles. Killed by the Nine.
Mush (Deceased) - Classified as a Shifter, Mush could form amorphous or vaguely humanoid bodies out of trash, mud, dirt and sand. Killed by the Nine.
Trainwreck (Deceased) - Few details have been provided, but Trainwreck has a mechanized suit or mechanized body with enhanced strength. Was working undercover in the Merchants on Coil’s behalf before being killed by the Nine.
Coil (Deceased) - Coil had the ability to create a concurrent reality and make different decisions in each, with each of his selves remaining aware of ongoing events in the other reality. He could then choose a reality and cause the other to fade away, enabling a fresh use of this power. Using this ability, he became exceedingly wealthy and generated more positive outcomes for his various teams and forces. His aspirations to have complete control over Brockton Bay were cut short by the Undersiders.