Difference between revisions of "Steel"

The origins of Steel go way back, when he was known as Kais, a character I have portrayed in many different games. I felt that the name needed a rest from Champions Online, and so I said farewell to the concept and reconstructed him as Steel. The look and armour concepts were the same, as I really enjoyed them. Instead, all I was doing was trying to create a completely new persona. Something which I had difficulties with putting to paper, rather than actually imagining it.

I wanted to take inspiration from Batman’s past, where the death of his parents changed him. So that’s what I decided to do with Steel. To keep it from being too much like Batman, I made the event occur later in his life, and with different circumstances: an assassination, in which the assassin almost claims his own life. I was initially going to go the way of a deliberate explosion, but a good friend helped me steer clear of it. Driven by vengeance, he creates a suit to counter the assassin’s preference of firearms. Of course, rather than waste his creation after he defeats the assassin, he uses it for the good of the public.

I had to create a location of my own to have a big playground, and so I made Rockwood, a fictional city in Scotland. With this in mind, I also had to create an alibi for why Steel appears in Millennium City, both in-game and in some of the lore I create. Simple, he is a businessman on business, but has no problems donning the armour to combat any threats. Similarly, he has links to UNTIL and the like, so he receives critical hero work like everyone else.

A quick note to everyone, content across all of my pages is strictly out-of-character. Nobody knows Steel’s real identity but a few close allies, so I don’t expect your own character to know, unless given permission. Not even if you have mind-reading abilities or are an expert at hacking computers, as I’ve thought about them and created some gear to counter this.

So, I hope you’ll like reading about Steel as much as I enjoying writing about him.

Stephen O’Connors is not your average person. Publically, he is known as a well-respected businessman in his home city of Rockwood, but has had a tragic loss of both parents at the hands of a cold-hearted hired killer. People hear of him on the news, regarding conferences of new technology unveiled by his company Innovation, to simple interviews of what it is like to be a multi-millionaire orphan in his mid-twenties. But they see him far more on the news than they actually think. What they see of him is simply one side of the coin.

Privately, Stephen is the superhero known as Steel. Equipped with an advanced suit of powered armour, Steel fights against crime with one simple purpose - to make sure that no one else is subjected to the same kind of loss that he has suffered. The citizens see Steel as a shining guardian of Rockwood, while the criminals see an indestructible avenger who makes them warily watch the skies. With a multitude of multitude of armour and weapons at his disposal, Steel can adapt to almost any kind of situation, criminal or otherwise.

“My technology will always advance, and gradually it is becoming harder to counter. It is simply only a matter of time before the criminals I fight run out of ideas.”

Born on June the 9th of 1986, Stephen O’Connors was raised by his parents, Colin and Claire, in the city of Rockwood, United Kingdom. He was brought into relative wealth, as his parents were the CEOs of a family-built company, Innovation. He had his own room in the family mansion, a private residence just outside the city. He showed a remarkable intelligence in science, engineering and technology subjects at school, as well as scoring high marks in other general subjects. Other than this, he had a fairly standard childhood, and there was little to else to differentiate him from the other children at his school.

Stephen left school aged eighteen, with high final grades in his science and technology subjects. As he had gone down a different educational route than his parents, because they had studied management subjects, he could not go straight into the preparing for the role his parents played as CEOs for the company, liked they wished. Instead, he would have had to take a further education course at the city’s college. Stephen didn’t want to immediately get into this, however. He wanted to work in the development laboratories, helping to create new technologies. He parents let him, but asked if he would do an evening course for management as well. He accepted in turn. It would become his legacy, after all. His working life down in manufacturing was quite good. It was interesting to see how each piece of software and hardware worked in tandem, and he was amazed by the industrial developer machines as they forged away all the time, creating all manners of products with laser cutting. He was given a personal, small-sized one for his nineteenth by the other employees from the lab, which he used to make a couple of interesting items, but nothing ever ground-breaking.

When not adorning one of his suits, Stephen appears as a young, handsome man in his mid-twenties, with short dark-coloured hair. His eyes are also quite dark, almost black in pigment. He is of average height, measuring around six feet, while his body build is relatively slim, although he is quite athletically muscled. He tends to be very well-dressed, commonly wearing expensive tailored suits. His casual clothing style is no less expensive, as he is seen wearing designer jeans, shirts and jackets.

When it comes to personality, Stephen and Steel are almost two different people. Stephen tends to be well-spoken and sociable, often going to celebrity hotspots and social events in work. To many people, interacting with him is an enjoyable experience, with his emphasis on politeness and a natural intelligence to almost any conversation subject.

Steel, on the other hand, is quite the silent type. He very rarely speaks out, but when he does it tends to be tactical advice or an intelligent remark. His voice sound quite mechanised, a product of a voice changer to further conceal his identity, which makes him more threatening to his enemies, and slightly unnerving to the general public. He is not one for a monologue, whether issuing or listening. He actually tends to interrupt most villains, taking them out while they get preoccupied “storytelling”.

He prefers working alone, but when working in tandem with the police department of Rockwood, or sometimes the Millennium City equivalent, he like to distance himself. This gives him freedom to act, generally succeeding where a group of multiple officers fail. He admires the police, but finds them a little interfering. Overall, he feels that working alone creates less collateral damage.