Lionheart (Richard Ashbury)
| Lionheart | ||||||||||
| Player: @Uberturnip | ||||||||||
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| Real Name: | Richard Ashbury | |||||||||
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| Gender: | Male | |||||||||
| Species: | Human | |||||||||
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| Citizenship: | British | |||||||||
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Biography
Lionheart is a veteran hero, having made his first appearance as a crimefighter back in 1997. Since then, he's become extremely well-known throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe. Highly charismatic, something of a showman, and with no qualms against leveraging his superheroic identity for charitable causes, politics, marketing or his own purposes, he's become something of a celebrity in addition to a crimefighter. His own identity as Sir Richard Ashbury, philanphropist and inheritor of a vast family fortune, has been public from the outset - 'Lionheart' was actually coined by the media after his first few appearances and he simply chose to run with it, modifying his outfit accordingly.
Richard's powers stem directly from his home - a renovated 12th century castle out in the countryside. While he has never been able to discern the specifics of this arrangement, extensive research has allowed him to piece together a rough understanding.
In centuries past, the castle was owned by an ambitious, vain and self-indulgent lord who, through negligence and shortsightedness, allowed his land and holdings to fall into disarray. Accounts grow hazy on the following point, but it appears that, despite being an incompetent fool, he nonetheless found himself in the enviable position of being owed a favour by a sorcerer or miscallaneous creature of magical persuasion. Beset by enemies within and without his walls, he rather predictably demanded to be granted strength and skill-at-arms.
Seeking to mold the lord into a better ruler, the sorcerer wove an enchantment that would empower the owner of the castle to reflect the state of the castle and 'all land within its reach'. Because the castle was dillapidated, his lands were withering away and his people starving, he grew grievously ill and feeble. Rather than seek to turn this state of affairs around, he simply confronted the sorcerer on this apparent treachery and executed him. He succumbed to sickness and died shortly thereafter.
Subsequent owners met with similar fates and, because the populace were unaware of the enchantment, the castle was eventually deemed cursed and abandoned, left to fall into ruin. Until Richard purchased the land with the intent of renovating the castle, that is. He himself initially fell victim to the mysterious wasting disease, but modern medicine is a wonderful thing and he held on long enough to see the castle not just restored but improved upon, with all the high-tech amenities one would expect of a playboy billionaire in a superheroic setting. His recovery was nothing short of miraculous - so miraculous, in fact, that he was far stronger and healthier than ever before. Not quite superhuman at that point, but the very peak of physical fitness.
But that was just the beginning. As it turns out, even powerful wizards sometimes fail to grasp the scope and long-term consequences of their sorcery. For when the phone line was belatedly set up (and much later, the internet installed) all land within the 'reach' of the castle grew to encompass, more-or-less, the entirety of Great Britain. Thus, Richard was endowed with colossal strength, nigh-invulnerability, flight and apparent longevity; a classic flying brick. There are odd little quirks as a result of this magical link - mass discontent negatively impacts his powers, strong weather can affect his mood and there seems to be an odd, if usually subtle and symbolic, parallel between his own circumstances and those of his land.
While completely open with the public about his identity and various doings, the source of his power is a closely-guarded secret - perhaps the only one he still keeps. This is largely because he doesn't especially enjoy the prospect of waking up with bulldozers on his front lawn. When quizzed on the subject, he usually just dramatically states that he's endowed with the strength of Great Britain.
Personality
Refined, aristocratic and unfailingly honourable in his dealings, he can nonetheless occasionally come across as arrogant, vain and outwardly aloof - and while none of these descriptions are entirely inaccurate, his patriotism and burning desire to make the world a better place is undeniably genuine. Some controversy does surround his involvement in metahuman politics, however. Lionheart has gone on record for espousing the opinion that superbeings shouldn't hide behind secret identities nor feel forced into a role as a crimefighter. He once stated that metas might even make for better world leaders, but this was blown out of proportion by the tabloids and he was subsequently slandered as a 'metahuman supremacist'. He's worked tirelessly to rid himself of that appellation.
