Superiority

Real Name: Stephen Marks (formally Victor Lazar)
Villain Name: Superiority
Title: The Everyman, Lord Superior, the Ultrahuman
Alignment: Lawful Evil (believes that he is Lawful Good)
Age: 65 (Biologically, however, around 25)
Gender: Male
Race: Human (at least, genetically)
Hair: Black
Eyes: Icy Blue
Height: 5'11
Weight: 210lbs

Costume Description/Image: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Personality: Stephen is calculating, but not by nature; his goal has forced him to do away with ethics until his dream can be fully achieved. Thus, Stephen is not entirely sociopathic (although his abnormal intelligence certainly doesn't help), and does have emotions for other human beings. However, these emotions are dulled, slightly, by the fact that few humans can grasp Stephen's full intellect, and a lifetime of this inability to communicate has left Stephen colder than he would be otherwise. Moreover, he has inadvertently come to view people as chimps or small children: easily molded, weak, and certainly not his equals. However, matters of severe ethical importance do occasionally affect him; he does not murder entirely without remorse, and he occasionally can sympathize even with the heroes he fights. Nonetheless, he feels that such matters are secondary to his dream, and that trying to solve the world's problems now, before he advances humanity, would be a waste of time.

History: Stephen Marks, unbeknownst to most people, was born Victor Lazar in 1963, somewhere in Dobruja, Romania. His family, while not dirt poor, could only afford a small cottage in the countryside, while his father worked on a nearby farm. He was an oddly sick child - his family was constantly worried that he wouldn't live to see two years old, as they didn't have access to any doctors. Then, one day, a miracle happened: the toddler stopped crying, and vibrant life filled his cheeks. His family was overjoyed, as they were too old to have another child and had no other children to support them. Their joy turned to amazement when Victor began advancing at a rapid pace. He learned how to speak in full, coherent sentences just weeks after his sickness left him, and even began to help his mother around the house. His progress, at first endearing, began to turn slightly frightening. By the age of 10, Victor began to demand a form of higher education- an education that his family simply could not afford. Victor, after being told this, let the matter rest. However, he asked his father to take him for a trip into the city. Thankful that their brilliant son wouldn't leave them, they agreed. Quickly losing his parents, Victor became lost for 5 days, only to reappear at their doorstep holding a check that was equivalent to thousands of dollars in U.S. money. Unsure of how to respond to their son's thievery, they locked him in his room and tried to formulate a plan to give the money back.

That was when Victor took fate into his own hands.When his family checked their son in the morning, they found that he was gone.

Any records of what happened to him after he left his home in Dobruja are either non-existent or destroyed. For years, he was simply regarded as missing, until a 16 year old boy with remarkably similar features graduated a college in Romania, under the name Stephen Marks. As soon as authorities attempted to question him, however, he had left again, this time to the U.S., where the police couldn't follow him. There, he graduated college after college using money that he didn't have, with citizenship that he had forged, until he graduated Harvard at 20, with 6 Masters degrees under his belt in a wide variety of fields. Such an accomplishment, however, did not go unnoticed; he quickly came under scrutiny, particularly with his home life. Stephen decided that it'd be best to go in hiding for as long as he could, before he could be deported or worse. And thus, he crynogenicly put himself into suspended animation, until 40 years later, when the "official" arrival of super-heroes heralded what his computers calculated to be the perfect time to make a reappearance. Starting off small, he quickly took courses to catch up on the scant few details of modern science that he had missed during his period of "slumber". Then, as he grew more confident that the world had forgotten Stephen Marks, he began to tackle the field of the economy, hoping to create his own fortune. Using his unique intellect, he won a large, but not overwhelming, amount of money on the stock market, enough to start a small technology business. A few strategic moves, and more than a few corporate takeovers later, and he created his dream company: Superior Corp, a technology company that dabbled in everything, from military weaponry to medical electronics.

His life finally secure, Stephen turned his attention to the superhero craze that had taken the world by storm, and began to wonder even more about his own abilities. His DNA had no significant abnormalities that could explain his unnaturally powerful physiology, and he couldn't even remember the incident that had changed him. Unable to explain his condition using his vast knowledge of science, he turned to religion, theorizing that he was a "higher being", created to guide humanity into a new golden age. The large number of extraordinary superhumans only reinforced his theory; he started to believe that they were flawed copies of his own perfect design. After all, in at least one aspect, he was better than any of them; one might be stronger, but he was smarter, or another might be faster, but he was far more durable. Thus, his descent into narcissism began, with few who could truly challenge it. After all, for a man who outsmarted nearly anyone on the planet and was physically superior to boot, who could claim they were his better?

But even as his thoughts of himself as being superior made him look down on humanity, he felt a need to help them rise to his level. Here were the only self-aware beings on the planet, and perhaps the only self-aware creatures that could ever develop on Earth; he simply couldn't bring himself to ignore them. Instead, he believed he was meant to guide them to their own prosperity, to ascend to his own level of power. But Stephen was no fool; he knew that the masses would resist the methods it would take to perfect them. Genetic manipulation, the dissolving of governments and countries, and the utter destruction of heretic ideas; all of these steps were necessary, but could never be done out in the open. Still, Stephen believes that it is possible.

He is Superiority, after all.

Powers: Due to some unknown event that occurred in Stephen's childhood, Superiority is literally superior to the average person in every way. He's at the low superhuman level in just about every facet: he can lift tons of weight, run as fast as a car, take hits that would knock anyone else out, and has amazing reflexes that have required no training whatsoever. His most important quality, however, is his intelligence. Unlike his other abilities, it is more than superior compared to humans: most superhumans can't match it either, which he attributes to being highly intelligent even before whatever process made him "more than human". Along with the resources made available by his state of the art labs in his company, his intellect allows him to create devices that, while not outside the realm of possibility, are certainly what most people would call "Science-Fiction".

Power Grid:
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Character Image/Description: Essentially the same as when in costume, but typically seen in a business suit. He doesn't have a secret identity, but he is careful not to allow any witnesses to his "unheroic" actions while in costume.

Roleplay Sample: Another round of tests, and once again, the results were negative. Stephen scowled at the monitor, searching just one more time for any sign of genetic abnormalities. No matter how long he looked, though, it remained the same: perfectly average.

He turned, disgusted, away from the computer, and walked over to his test subject. Held in suspended animation so that biological processes couldn't interrupt him, his subject was a class B "Invulnerable", which required some very specialized equipment in order to penetrate it's skin. It's skin, he reminded himself, not her's. He forced that thought out of his mind; personifying his subjects would get him no closer to understanding their abnormalities. That was what he called "superpowers": abnormalities, defective copies of his own biological design. It helped him cope with nearly torturing the poor creatures.

After he injected the subject with a new serum, taking a few samples before and after the fact, Superiority put on sound-proof headphones and terminated the suspension device. He sometimes hated this part of the process; sometimes, the subjects had no reaction to the serum and merely whined, or were turned brain-dead. Other times, though, it did work- and the transformation process was far from pain free. This time, it seemed, she would transform: already, bone structures were starting to morph, changing her facial features and causing her mouth to open- she was likely screaming, but Stephen couldn't hear it. At this point, however, most subjects would begin to deteriorate, the shock to the body's systems being too much even for a super to handle. Looking at the monitor, however, Stephen noticed that while stress levels were high, no biological system was failing. He reigned in his excitement, however. There had been test subjects who seemed to respond well to the serum- only to die minutes after the transformation.

Finally, the process had finished, and the subject was still alive. Working quickly, he took samples of the subjects skin (a magnetically controlled plasma cutter did the job well) and took it to another machine for processing. A minute later, as he waited for the results, he checked on his subject. It was a miracle- she was still breathing, and her features had returned to normal. Best of all, stress levels were at an all time low- which meant that the memory replacement process had worked as well. But there was one final test to preform before confirming anything. "Hello, Subject 14-B. Who am I?" A moment of silence. Superiority sighed, turning to leave, when he heard a feminine voice behind him speak.

"Lord Superior, sir."

Approved