Glossary of the Adventurers SG

Characters

Allies

• Ellison, Olivia - US Congresswoman representing a Millennium City district (Democratic). Formerly the masked crime fighter Bluebird. Sister of Sarah Ellison; part of the famed Ellison family of hoteliers. Her first campaign for congress was interfered with by opponent Clayton Ewing (then unknown as his alter ego, the Overseer), who defeated her in 2019; she was elected to the seat in 2022.

• McAllister, Kyle - Once a decorated USMC Raider, he was dishonorably discharged for nearly beating a local liaison to death overseas. Disenchanted with the military and wracked with PTSD, he was taken in and effectively pardoned by his godfather, Clayton Ewing (see: Overseer). Kyle eventually slew Clayton Ewing to save his brother (see: Blue Fox) from being tempted to take on the Overseer’s legacy of lawful evil. He is now in prison, though his circumstances are in flux.

• Olsen, William 'Bill' - Construction & property tycoon in mid-1990s Millennium City. Father of Cassandra Olsen (Webcrawler). Had been targeted in a VIPER plot to affect the gold market in 2015, but was spared thanks to the intervention of the Adventurers. Retired from his career as an executive at the investment firm DTO in 2021. Spends most of his time in Northern Michigan with his wife, Marie, at their lakeside home.

MCPD

• Knight, Detective Laura - MCPD Detective in the SCIU (Superhuman Crimes Investigation Unit). A tough, by-the-book and trustworthy associate of the team.

• Sheffield, Detective David - MCPD detective in the Major Crimes Unit. Dispassionate and analytical.

• Weaver, Sandra - Coordinator of IT Services at MCPD's downtown headquarters. Out of gratitude for the team saving her daughter's life, Weaver has provided the Adventurers backchannel access to the MCPD criminal database for years, carefully hiding their use of it from IT audits.

PRIMUS

• Finnegan, Captain Judas - PRIMUS captain. Initially met Tungstan in the wake of a savage hospital attack. After being interrogated by PRIMUS authority- someone had managed to acquire and use Finnegan's identity and access codes- he was transferred from active duty to the overseeing of the 'Athena Compound' which specializes in containing and studying the bizarre and unknown. Later met the rest of the Adventurers during the War Boar Crisis.

UNTIL

• Avery, 1^st Lieutenant Jennifer - Also known as Agent Avery. Orignates from the United Kingdom. Member of UNTIL's Intelligence Corps. While attempting to surveil arms dealer Samuel Paz Bastos at the Panama/Colombia border in 2023, she was ensnared in a plot by Lord Aurum, and ended up captured by Colombian rebels for several weeks. Rescued by the Adventurers. Provided critical intel on the whereabouts of Bastos, leading to his arrest. Flew with the joint UNTIL-NATO aerial combat operation against VIPER when it hijacked Goldsky 1 in February 2024.

• Madison, Alyssa - Ex-Incognito hacktivist (code name: Cyber-Slash). Apprehended by the Adventurers in 2014. Serving her sentence working for UNTIL's "Project Singularity," dedicated to improving UNTIL's use of and response to artificial intelligence.

• Suzuki, Captain Christopher - Attached to UNTIL's Office of Superhuman Resources (OSR). Has arranged the sharing of information and provision of support to the Adventurers, and also requested their help in spearheading operations.

Civilians

• Menderes, Abaza - Turkish teen, briefly a companion of Lord Aurum (then Dr. Adem Altun) in 1908. She joined him on his search for a lost temple near her home village for a promise of riches. She removed a Philosopher's Stone from the temple; unshielded against it, it spent its energies turning Abaza to gold, before it crumbled to dust. In 2021, the Adventurers forced Lord Aurum to restore Abaza to life. Nothing is known of her following her restoration.

Villains

Creatures

• Space Weaver - Cosmozoic life form. Bears similarity to terrestrial arachnids. Highly evolved, and adapted to survival in harsh environments, including outer space. Known to move between star systems by clinging to spacefaring vessels. Have an extreme survival reaction similar to but more potent than an adrenaline response. Patient predator, able to survive perhaps decades without feeding. Some have clearly been studied by corrupt industrialists on Earth as early as 2014, but there has been only one known landing of Space Weavers on Earth - in 2022, put down by Webcrawler and Night Star. Webcrawler was spliced with some Space Weaver genes in 2014 against her will, which accounts for her physical enhancements, but also her 'monster' transformations.

Masterminds and True Super-Villains

• Cryderman, Edgar Percy - AKA Ascendant. Descendant of Confederate officer. Desired to use the Peyasaskew Stone to rewrite history to something more favorable to the fortunes of his family and his political ilk. Briefly fragmented space-time using the Peyasaskew Stone; the Adventurers helped prevent his attempts to change history.

• Devastator - AKA Rodney Fellowes. Tech armor-wearing adversary of the Adventurers. Hired by Ascendant in 2017 to try to help change history. Tends to go into hiding between jobs. With renewed interest in his capture after he attempted to use the superhero Battery to power a large, destructive robot in battle against the Adventurers, his remote workshop was located in rural Nevada in late 2022. Captured by Adventurers Gold.

• Father Maro - Magic user who has sought to claim the pantheonic powers possessed by Catfight. Abducted Catfight's daughter Ayla in 2017; used his powers to kill Red Spider during the Adventurers rescue of Ayla.

• Lord Aurum - Aged villain being kept alive by cybernetics housed within power armor. He has numerous aliases, including Dr. Adem Altun (possible original name) and Gil de Edmunds. Has a fascination/obsession with gold. Apparently is troubled by visions of a future calamity. Has gone to extreme measures to achieve his goals, including murder his future self to steal his armor (which he justified as a move that bought him, and the world, extra time). Attempted to gain control of the Nereid people of the Undersea, below Cretoa, in 2020, but was defeated by the Adventurers and Royal Cretoa's army. His mansion sits upon a small island in the Aegean Sea, maintained by servant robots. He employs so-called Golden Men robots which are well-armored, flight capable, and equipped with dangerous energy projection weapons.

• Overthinker, The - Once a human, and obviously a genius, the Overthinker is now an unidentifiable disembodied brain, kept alive in a tank of greenish life-support fluid. A master of robotics, Overthinker possesses both an impressively-armed body for himself, and a small army of robot minions of various designs. His pursuits are mostly professional in nature; he commits robberies solely for the money to continue his research and development, intent on becoming the greatest robotics engineer of our time. He does have a secondary interest in biology and neuroscience; after years of his sensory-deprived existence, a part of him yearns for an occasional body to inhabit again, and he has developed a cutting-edge system for transferring minds between different brains. After an incident with the Adventurers that ended in a truce and temporary alliance, Overthinker went gone underground and vanished from the crime scene.

• Xagrim - Extradimensional being and horror. Attempts to subjugate other realms to convert them into a hellscape much like his native one. Has a cult of followers on Earth. Came to Earth in the guise of Dexter Seaton, but the human appearance was noticeably off - allowing the Adventurers, with knowledge from the future, to identify him at a major social event, expose him, and defeat him in summer 2021. He was sent retreating to his own realm.

• Culvara of Obraxus - An extraterrestrial with heroic intent, gone rogue due to her brutal and militaristic ways. She found her way to the top of The Adventurers’ radar after a series of threats and attacks upon team member, Spectrum.

Super-powered Crooks

• Rocko - Thug for hire. Modified through Source Biotech Enterprises experimental mutagen into a man of living rock. Strong and durable, but not very bright. Antagonist of Webcrawler, though he has been hired by team adversaries like David Lyons and Cosmo Liddell.

• Marauder - Power-armor wearing thug for hire. Tends to use sonic blasts. Had participated in Cryderman's attempt to eliminate Webcrawler in the past to change the future, paired with the Devastator.

• TNT - A mass murdering, homicidal arsonist and pyromaniac with genius level mastery and adeptness with explosives, both improvised and not. The Adventurers stopped him from detonated a nuclear bomb within Millennium City.

Organized Crime

• Liddell, Cosmo - Leader of the Liddell crime family. Involved in racketeering, heists, contraband smuggling, trafficking in weapons, and dealing in controlled super-tech and biotech. Attempted to have his cousin Lester Brownlee contest for the Democratic nomination to represent Millennium City in Congress, but upon their connection being exposed, Brownlee lost to Olivia Ellison. Jailed in 2023 as part of a plot by the Overseer to acquire Liddell territory; released later that year when charges had to be dropped upon revelation of the Overseer's true identity and schemes.

• Overseer, the - Former career policemen, MARS operative, PRIMUS Colonel, and United States Congressman, Clayton Ewing spent thirty years building a web of corruption in Millennium City to keep it safe after witnessing the destruction wrought in the Battle of Detroit first hand. His domains included broad swaths of organized crime as well as legitimate businesses (Schneider and Hoffman Banking, Ewing Estates, The Millennium City Observer, Compass Laboratories). He was ultimately defeated by the Adventurers, but slain by a trusted guard (see: Kyle McAllister) at the moment of his downfall.

Organizations

Aliens

• Unknown Terraformer Originators - Unknown ancient race of extraterrestrials. Sent the Worldbreaker gem to Earth, intending for a biological host of sufficient cognitive and ambulatory capability to be transformed into a Terraformer. The Terraformer could then gradually affect the planet's ecosystems to better suit its unknown Originators. Very little is known of this race and its intentions.

Heroes

• Adventurers, The - Formed 2014 by Red Spider (Webcrawler), a superhero team based in Millennium City, MI, USA. Notable victories include exposing the corrupt superhero David Lyons, stabilizing and defending the island nation of Cretoa, repelling extradimensional invasions by beings like Xagrim and War Boar, and dismantling the criminal organization of the Overseer (Clayton Ewing).

• Adventurers, The (Classic) - Formed c.1905, consisting of the heroes Mr. Adventure, Tank, El Sombra, the Aviator, Sister Savior, and Eagle Eye. Their final mission in 1917 saw them claim the Worldbreaker Gem in France in the midst of the First World War, and convey it into hiding in North America under the watch of Eagle Eye and Sister Savior. They were also enemies of the Order of Osiris and Lord Aurum (in his guise or original identity of Dr. Adem Altun). Their efforts helped the 21st century Adventurers team expose the Order of Osiris and finally destroy the Worldbreaker Gem.

• Birds of a Feather - Formed 2021, a crime fighting duo of Cardinal and former Adventurer, Bluebird (Ellison).

Companies/Corporations

• Compass Laboratories - “Aiming for True North.” An all purpose international research company formerly partially owned by the Overseer. With his downfall, and the release of his Codex, multiple branches collapsed, but the legal, more forthright divisions remain functional, despite their publicly checkered past.

• MC News - Newspaper produced in Milennium City under owner / editor-in-chief Sirus Blatt. Blatt's alleged connections to the Order of Osiris in 2019 caused him to step back from editorial duties, but he remains the paper's majority stakeholder.

• RidderCorp - Private security firm, with a manufacturing arm, run by Anson Ridderton. Employed the euphemistic "Safety Patrol" to police (with a limited, provisional consent decree by city council) a Millennium City neighborhood. Safety Patrol members - typically police academy dropouts, fired cops, and dishonorably discharged ex-military - cracked down hard on crime, and also attempted to intimidate landlords and tenants in lower-cost, high density properties Ridderton hoped to purchase and gentrify. Wrongdoing exposed by Rubber Bullette (AKA Stretcher) in 2020, causing cancelling of their consent decree. Also opposed by Webcrawler.

• Silverline Industries - “The future’s silver lining.” Silverline Industries is a modestly successful robotics and cybernetics company that hit it big with the release of a relatively-affordable, commercially-available labor robot, profits thereof allowing them to move their corporate HQ to Millennium City. Resclusive founder and CEO, Raymond Silver, believed to spend most of his time in the penthouse of his recently-opened Club Silver, makes appearances remotely. His wife Selene Grey-Silver has taken over the public face of the company. Silverline has come under fire for shoddy security, including a mass robbery of cybernetic technology that resulted in a new gang terrorizing the city. In response to the controversy, Silverline has gifted the MCPD with several of its Silver Sentinels: powerful law enforcement robots to keep the city safe.

• Source Biotech Enterprises - Biotechnology and biochemical research and development firm. Had numerous unethical members selling mutagens on the black market, creating some of the Adventurers early adversaries. Defeated c.2017 and raided by the FBI. A number of its projects have been carefully catalogued and are kept in a warehouse as evidence, but many of its illicit mutagenic products remain unaccounted for.

Law Enforcement

• PRIMUS - Paranormal Research and Investigation Mission of the United States - originally a military group established in 1964 to handle intelligence and operations dealing with "paranormals," their blanket term for all super-powered entities. PRIMUS have been under Department of Justice oversight for some years as an organization with scope similar to the FBI, but for paranormal or supercriminal affairs. They have significant resources, but they are ultimately run by the US government and its agenda. The Adventurers were the target of a PRIMUS capture operation in late 2016, until the team were able to prove that the superhero David Lyons had framed them for crimes of his doing. Relations between PRIMUS and the Adventurers have been frosty since, though Webcrawler maintains necessary ties as a voluntarily (secretly) registered superhuman to keep the agency at ease. PRIMUS operates the Stronghold prison in New Mexico, where the US's paranormal criminals are kept awaiting and following trial.

• UNTIL - The United Nations Tribunal on International Law - Established 1963 to counter the growing threat of super-crime world-wide, emphasizing a highly-trained international force of ordinary human officers able to deploy around the world, more reliable than the disparate groups of costumed crime fighters whose identities and agendas were unknown. The USA was not an UNTIL signatory until 1993, when the American public was outraged to learn after the Battle of Detroit in 1992 that UNTIL assistance was prevented from crossing the border to help due to treaty and jurisdictional hurdles. Since then, UNTIL may conduct law enforcement operations in the US, but must defer to jurisdiction of relevant authorities. The Adventurers have acted in concert with UNTIL operations, notably against VIPER in 2015, David Lyons in 2016, and the Order of Osiris in 2019. Captain Christopher Suzuki of the Office of Superhuman Resources (OSR) is a contact for the team, and has been a reliable ally. Red Spider registered with the organization in 2016 in order to gain help for her clone ('Samantha') and herself in treating their monster mutation. The organization has provided material support for the team, including medical care and transport, but expects assistance with its operations in return.

Opponents

• Blackshield Defense Industries - “Protecting Tomorrow.” A very large American defense industry corporation, notable for a variety of military ventures ranging from missile propellants and guidance systems to caseless ammunition for chainguns to pharmaceuticals and one-piece tourniquets made for combat medics. One of the unsung players in the military industrial complex, they have branched out into more radical projects that are meant to put them into the leagues of the likes of Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin. They have a dense internal security apparatus, and are fairly camera shy when it comes to public interface. More recently, two of their projects [Mantis and Project Chimaera] have come into contact with and have become entangled with one Trespasser, and subsequently have run afoul of The Adventurers not long after that.

• Eden, Ltd. - A genetics research company that funds outreach organizations and clinics. Secretly performs diabolical experiments and kidnappings while forging underworld ties with an organized paramilitary force and expendable 'face' operators.

• Incognito - A hacktivist collective formed in 2007. They are decidedly against the association of masked vigilantes with the justice system. Are willing to go to extreme lengths to expose such associations. More radical members have tried to dox superheroes by uncovering and exposing their secret identities, though many members are more moderate 'white hat' hackers trying to make sure the public knows the true toll of superhero conflicts on regular people.

• Liddell Company, The - Legitimate face of the organized crime group led by Cosmo Liddell and his family in Millennium City. Enterprises include the Horizon Casino (Liddell's HQ and home) and Swift Shipping & Logistics (transportation and warehouses)

• Order of Osiris, The - Ancient cabal formed in Egypt thousands of years ago. It was created by a group who obtained, studied, and worshipped the Worldbreaker Gem, generating some of the earliest empirical knowledge of its workings. When the Worldbreaker was lost to them, the Order remained together, keeping as its top priority the recovery of the gem; but as a secret society with powerful members, they wielded political and economic power, and spread throughout the globe over the centuries. In 2019, they were revealed to exist to the public through the actions of the Adventurers team.

• Scrappers, The - A group of thugs from Westside, their mediocre existence changed when they obtained some Silverline Technologies cybernetic components that supposedly “fell off the truck”. All too willing to mutilate themselves for power, they’re now a small but intimidating gang of grungy cyborgs that terrorize their neighborhood! While a mere thirteen cyborgs are considered the main group, they also have a number of recruits who have either not earned or opted out of prosthetics, but handle the more mundane activities like caring for the more extreme, handless members.

Items

Artifacts

• Mystery Crystals related to the Originators - Large gems (approx 3-4 meters tall) found in caverns in Colombia and Northern Michigan, so far. Blue Fox reported that being in the presence of the Colombian one triggered sensations similar to when he held the Worldbreaker Gem. True purpose and potency unknown. The Colombian one was buried in a cavern collapse triggered by Adventurers Midnight in 2023. The Northern Michigan one appears to have been excavated and removed by VIPER.

• Peyasaskew Stone - Meteorite that crashed in Western US. Revered by Native Americans. Seized by a Christian missionary and eventually put in a museum in Millennium City. Taken by the villain Ascendant in 2017; cut and forged into a magical artifact (Peyasaskew Orb) permitting its bearer control of time travel. Used by Ascendant to attempt to alter his and his family's fortunes, at the expense of the Adventurers and Red Spider in particular. Seized by the Adventurers and turned over to the Sorceress, Adrynne. Adrynne was corrupted by it before she could unmake the Peyasaskew Orb; the orb was used to resurrect Red Spider (who had been killed a month prior) as a demonstration of Adrynne's power, in a bid to gain the Adventurers' loyalty as she envisioned dominating the world. The Adventurers refused, fought Adrynne, and assured the Orb's destruction. Shards of it remained, at least one of which was used by the Order of Osiris in an attempt to bring the Worldbreaker Gem into 2019, which did not succeed.

• Worldbreaker Gem - Created by an unknown race of originators. Seeded to worlds like Earth to find a native species capable of using it. Exerts powerful attraction force upon organisms so that they will pick it up. Transforms a species meeting minimum cognitive requirements into a Terraformer, a being endowed with tremendous powers to reshape terrain and affect ecosystems. Intended as a tool to terraform planets like Earth into one more suitable for the Originators. Earth's Worldbreaker Gem was obtained by a group of ancient Egyptians (the Order of Osiris) who studied the Worldbreaker extensively. They learned that beyond terraforming powers, it also granted enhancements to intellect and and imagination to those near it. Osirians also learned methods to shield against the gem's attractive power so that their order's members could benefit from being near it, without the risk of calamity from actually letting the gem carry out its pre-programmed purpose. The gem was lost to the Order for centuries; rediscovered in northern France during WW1, and taken by Allied agents to Canada to be hidden from the Order of Osiris. Rediscovered in 2019; it was carried by Red Spider, then Blue Fox (who was turned into a Terraformer), and then destroyed by the Adventurers.

Locations

Extraterrestrial

• Rorum Galaxy - Exists billions of light years away from Earth. Home to several inhabited planets, such as Zenovia and Obraxus. A prismatic nebulaic energy source thrives in scattered pockets of the galaxy, originating from the internal energy of fallen/deceased Zenovians. Similarly, this galaxy is home to a unique metallic substance which has been used to forge weaponry and architecture of sorts.

• Zenovia (Planet) - An extraterrestrial planet, native to the Rorum Galaxy. Not much is currently known about this planet, other than it playing a key role in the near-extinction of the Obraxian population.