Difference between revisions of "Ghost Owl"
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| + | The original Ghost Owl had no metahuman powers to speak of, but the same cannot be said of his successor. Jacob Stele is a natural medium, harbouring an instinctive form of ESP that enables him to see, hear and speak with lingering spirits of the dead. By the same token, spirits are generally aware of this connection and are thusly drawn to him. Unfortunately, he lacks any form of telepathy and to other, less mystically-inclined individual tend to think he's talking to himself. | ||
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| + | Spirits commonly have important unfinished business and/or strong emotions stemmed from the circumstances of their death. And as they can no longer finish that business or avenge their death, they're trapped, anchored to this world until someone comes along to ''remove'' that anchor; a problem solver. Someone like Ghost Owl, although all-too-frequently his method of problem solving entails venting the ghost's accumulated anger and sorrow by delivering a brutal beating unto their murderer. Cleansed of their rage, satisfied that justice has been dealt, the vengeful ghost ''usually'' (but not always) moves on. | ||
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| + | Ghost Owl's ESP lends itself to more than mere communication. In addition, it confers: | ||
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| + | * '''Spectral Carrying:''' Ghost Owl can invite spirits to occupy his body, depending on how tightly anchored they are to their haunting ground. Often, he requires to carry about his person an item they were particularly attached to in life - perhaps a piece of jewelry, an old photograph of a loved one, a keepsake, although in a pinch a tooth or fingerbone taken directly from the remains will suffice. Carrying places the spirit in a better position to offer guidance and information, and on occasion their minds may overlap, allowing Ghost Owl brief access to their thoughts and memories. But it's not without it's dangers. If the spirit's thoughts and feelings are particularly vehement, there's a good chance they'll influence Owl's emotional state - and that rarely ends well. Some spectres are capable of hopping aboard regardless of consent, and particularly malevolent entities may try to assume control of his mind and body. | ||
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| + | * '''Memory Bleeding:''' Particular strong, prominent memories of spirits carried for an extended length of time may trickle through and lodge themselves in Owl's brain on a more permanent basis. This has proved beneficial on occasion, but all too often the memories are merely confounding abstractions devoid of any real background context. Having his head stuffed full of other people's baggage has also been more than a little detrimental to Ghost Owl's ailing mental health. | ||
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| + | * '''Psychometry:''' | ||
Revision as of 00:35, 4 October 2013
But he wasn't alone. A kid in a hoodie that couldn't have been any older than sixteen was huddled up against a nearby wall, shivering not from the cold - he didn't even feel the cold, not now - but from the shock and horror of what he'd just seen. From the anger of allowing it to happen. His name was Jacob Stele and this was a Christmas he'd never forget. Chances are, you know how it goes: a good man dies, a bad man lives, a newborn vigilante, angry, screaming, is baptised in blood. Old tale, played out a thousand times over. But it has punch. It resonates. And you have to make allowances for the classics.
Nevertheless, this time around it seems somebody got bored with the same old script, demanded a last-minute twist thrown in. So a sharp-eyed observer - not that there any other witnesses that night, sharp-eyed or otherwise - would have noticed Jacob was clutching something, staring down at it with the sort of wide eyed disbelief typically reserved for first-time alien encounters. It was a .45 revolver, and it had five bullets chambered. A spent shell casing, still warm, lay in the snow not three feet away. No prizes for guessing where the rest would be found.
An anonymous vigilante made his big debut on the Hudson crimefighting scene in the spring of 1962 - and he knew how to make an entrance. The police who later raided the dockside warehouse found a metric tonne of cocaine, a small army of thugs exhibiting an entire medical encyclopedia's worth of injuries - and one Marco Narcelli, notorious underboss of the Danovicci crime family. Narcelli had suffered the additional humiliation of being tarred and feathered then hung upside-down from the rafters. During an interview, he described his assailant as 'some psycho in an owl costume'. For the next few months, the papers, local news networks and street gossip were all abuzz with speculation, rumours and alleged sightings of the mysterious new crimefighter. He didn't stay anonymous for long.
"...man reportedly dressed as an owl foiled a bank robbery..."
"...no hostages were harmed..."
"...the would-be victim Fred Highfield, 46, described his rescuer as 'a ghost'..."
"...We don't care what 'good' he thinks he's doing. This Owlman, he gets caught breaking the law and he goes down..."
"...don't he realise Halloween ain't for another four months..."
"...HCPD commissioner issued a warrant for the masked vigilante's arrest..."
"...just another crook with an entitlement complex..."
"...a real hero..."
"...another sighting of Hudson's very own ghost owl..."
"...Ghost Owl..."
Ghost Owl. It was the papers that saddled him with the name. Maybe it wasn't what he'd have chosen for himself, but he never raised any objections. Not to the name and not to anything else - the see-sawing opinions of the press, the arrest warrants, the public denouncements and whispered praise; none of it seemingly mattered. He just continued his private war in silence and left everyone else to draw their own conclusions.
Maybe he sought a worthy successor, maybe he had a soft spot for strays or maybe he simply wanted someone to make the tea after a long day cracking skulls. But for whatever reason, the mid-eighties saw Ghost Owl break a lifelong habit and take a sidekick under his wing: a teenager who dubbed himself Kid Strigid. A bright boy, exceptionally gifted - smart, brave, loyal, tough; everything a veteran crimefighter could possibly seek in a protege. But the Kid was ultimately cast from a very different mold than his dour mentor - his outspoken views and optimistic (if naive) worldview made him the darling of the media, a veritable poster child for Hudson's cadre of vigilantes. To no-one's great surprise, he grew into a fine young man, a formidable street warrior in his own right - everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the aging Ghost Owl (he must've been, what, in his fifties by now?) would hand over his cape and utility belt to brighter, newer generation.
And then, entirely without warning, the Kid went stark raving mad and tried to murder his mentor. And very nearly succeeded.
The reason for Kid Strigid's treachery and descent into lunacy remains unclear to this day, although there is substantial evidence to suspect brainwashing and the involvement of Owl's long-term nemesis and criminal strategist-for-hire Checkmate. At the time, it was believed by all parties that Ghost Owl had perished in the ambush - he'd been riddled with bullets and left for dead and to add insult to the injury, his hideout was exposed and ransacked by every two-bit goon with a grudge. No shortage of those. Kid Strigid - who had since taken for himself the absurdly appropriate appellation King Cuckoo - took advantage of his former mentor's absence and set about putting everything he'd learned to good use, carving a niche for himself in Hudson's bloated underworld.
But Ghost Owl, miraculously rejuvenated, put an abrupt end to his former protege's deranged ambitions. After a bloody set of skirmishes, King Cuckoo found himself beaten to a pulp and unceremoniously locked away in a psychiatric ward. That was where he met his end at the hands of a grief-stricken nurse, hell-bent on revenge for the death of a lover caught in the crossfire. The fatal overdose was ruled 'suicide' and forgotten; nobody was fooled, but nobody gave a damn. Except for one man, of course - but they didn't bother to ask his opinion.
Ghost Owl's upgraded costume c. 1990.
Being shot multiple times changes one's
perspective on the need for armour.
Ghost Owl's last pre-millennial appearance occured in the winter of 1998, putting a prompt end to the nefarious activities of Joybuzzer, a harlequin-themed assassin with a penchant for electrocution. And then he simply vanished. Granted, he'd never been one for public appearances, but the Owl still found ways - dramatic, profound ways - to make his presence known, his ever-watchful gaze felt. And, to make matters worse, he'd disappeared at a time when he couldn't have been needed more - every major representative of his rogue's gallery was out in full force. Some said he'd retired (and who could blame him? Crazy guy must've been on the wrong side of sixty by now) but Ghost Owl didn't seem the retiring type; he was just too stubborn to quit, not without a replacement lined up to pick up the slack. And after the fiasco with Kid Strigid, there likely wasn't anyone else he could bring himself to trust. So general consensus was he'd snuffed it, bitten the bullet, tumbled from the nest. All the big newspapers agreed with this assessment.
2002. HCPD were baffled by a wave of new vigilantism. Always the same scene - they'd happen upon some scumbug beaten to a pulp with photographs stapeled to their forehead. Sometimes just the one, sometimes a dozen; didn't take a genius detective to work out the connection between the size of the makeshift photo album and the number of unnecessary broken bones. The pictures, whether newspaper cuttings and website printouts, were all of murder victims, the kind relegated to the back of the big book of unsolved cases to collect dust, thanks to lack of evidence, interest or clout. But here all the juicy details - all the sordid secrets and unsettling facts - were printed on the back. Big letters, too. Easy to read.
And the perps recited the same words over and over, like the chorus of a catchy new song: "It was the Ghost Owl. Ghost Owl's back." But was it the same Ghost Owl? Unlikely - at least according to the reports that came trickling through. It wasn't merely a change in M.O, either. He lacked, at least in the early days, his predecessor's finely-honed edge of experience and made up for it with brutality, improvisation and sheer bloody-minded determination. But in the end, it didn't matter if he wasn't the Ghost Owl. Whether successor of imitation, he was a Ghost Owl. And that was enough.
RecentActivity
The new Ghost Owl doesn't confine himself to Hudson City. Most of his predecessor's rogues gallery have since migrated, so he opted to expand his sphere of influence. It's known that he maintains permanent safehouses in Millennium City, Hudson City and Vibora Bay, but evidence suggests he's made brief sojourns to locales as diverse and distant as Central America, Europe and East Asia. He comes and goes - typically without warning or explanation, though rumours suggest he's lately been attempting to establish a more permanent foothold in Millennium City through the formation of a network of likeminded, hard-hitting vigilantes - much in the vein of the now-defunct Moonlighters, of which he was a founding member.
Powers
The original Ghost Owl had no metahuman powers to speak of, but the same cannot be said of his successor. Jacob Stele is a natural medium, harbouring an instinctive form of ESP that enables him to see, hear and speak with lingering spirits of the dead. By the same token, spirits are generally aware of this connection and are thusly drawn to him. Unfortunately, he lacks any form of telepathy and to other, less mystically-inclined individual tend to think he's talking to himself.
Spirits commonly have important unfinished business and/or strong emotions stemmed from the circumstances of their death. And as they can no longer finish that business or avenge their death, they're trapped, anchored to this world until someone comes along to remove that anchor; a problem solver. Someone like Ghost Owl, although all-too-frequently his method of problem solving entails venting the ghost's accumulated anger and sorrow by delivering a brutal beating unto their murderer. Cleansed of their rage, satisfied that justice has been dealt, the vengeful ghost usually (but not always) moves on.
Ghost Owl's ESP lends itself to more than mere communication. In addition, it confers:
- Spectral Carrying: Ghost Owl can invite spirits to occupy his body, depending on how tightly anchored they are to their haunting ground. Often, he requires to carry about his person an item they were particularly attached to in life - perhaps a piece of jewelry, an old photograph of a loved one, a keepsake, although in a pinch a tooth or fingerbone taken directly from the remains will suffice. Carrying places the spirit in a better position to offer guidance and information, and on occasion their minds may overlap, allowing Ghost Owl brief access to their thoughts and memories. But it's not without it's dangers. If the spirit's thoughts and feelings are particularly vehement, there's a good chance they'll influence Owl's emotional state - and that rarely ends well. Some spectres are capable of hopping aboard regardless of consent, and particularly malevolent entities may try to assume control of his mind and body.
- Memory Bleeding: Particular strong, prominent memories of spirits carried for an extended length of time may trickle through and lodge themselves in Owl's brain on a more permanent basis. This has proved beneficial on occasion, but all too often the memories are merely confounding abstractions devoid of any real background context. Having his head stuffed full of other people's baggage has also been more than a little detrimental to Ghost Owl's ailing mental health.
- Psychometry:
SkillsandAbilities
Equipment
Major WIP. Expansion + rewrites incoming!
