Difference between revisions of "Ghost Owl"
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Ghost Owl made his big debut on the Hudson crimefighting scene in the spring of 1962 - and he knew how to make an entrance. His nocturnal activities ruffled the feathers of almost every major crime boss in Northside. Fortunately, he ''also'' knew how to make an exit, leaving behind nothing but broken bones, foiled schemes and heartfelt promises of long, long jail sentences. | Ghost Owl made his big debut on the Hudson crimefighting scene in the spring of 1962 - and he knew how to make an entrance. His nocturnal activities ruffled the feathers of almost every major crime boss in Northside. Fortunately, he ''also'' knew how to make an exit, leaving behind nothing but broken bones, foiled schemes and heartfelt promises of long, long jail sentences. | ||
| − | + | But few - friend and foe alike - ever learned about the man beneath the mask, and that was how he liked it. Nathan 'Nate' Sutherland was STUFF GOES HERE. His family, hardened criminals one and all, had never been particularly big on the idea of ''atonement'', so Nate took a leaf or two out of Jesus' book and shouldered the weight of their sins all on his own. Actually, he took the whole damn book and joined the ranks of the clergy. Not very orthodox, as priests went - even in Hudson, most men of the cloth don't spend their nights beating criminals to a pulp with their bare hands - but he made up for the occasional idealogical hiccup with a fervent devotion to an ascetic lifestyle. His day-to-day life he lived as simply, humbly, as he could, forfeitting the cozy manor, the fine wines and miscallaneous assorted luxuries; he sold it all, and funnelled much of the proceeds - along with a great deal of his dirty inheritence - into various charities and public works across the city. The rest he scattered across various offshore accounts, saving for a rainy day. No shortage of ''those'' in Hudson City. And crimefighting without the luxury of superpowers burns a hole in your wallet pretty damned quickly. | |
STUFF | STUFF | ||
Revision as of 00:00, 11 September 2013
But he wasn't alone. A kid in a hoodie, 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. It 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 the kid 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.
History
Ghost Owl made his big debut on the Hudson crimefighting scene in the spring of 1962 - and he knew how to make an entrance. His nocturnal activities ruffled the feathers of almost every major crime boss in Northside. Fortunately, he also knew how to make an exit, leaving behind nothing but broken bones, foiled schemes and heartfelt promises of long, long jail sentences.
But few - friend and foe alike - ever learned about the man beneath the mask, and that was how he liked it. Nathan 'Nate' Sutherland was STUFF GOES HERE. His family, hardened criminals one and all, had never been particularly big on the idea of atonement, so Nate took a leaf or two out of Jesus' book and shouldered the weight of their sins all on his own. Actually, he took the whole damn book and joined the ranks of the clergy. Not very orthodox, as priests went - even in Hudson, most men of the cloth don't spend their nights beating criminals to a pulp with their bare hands - but he made up for the occasional idealogical hiccup with a fervent devotion to an ascetic lifestyle. His day-to-day life he lived as simply, humbly, as he could, forfeitting the cozy manor, the fine wines and miscallaneous assorted luxuries; he sold it all, and funnelled much of the proceeds - along with a great deal of his dirty inheritence - into various charities and public works across the city. The rest he scattered across various offshore accounts, saving for a rainy day. No shortage of those in Hudson City. And crimefighting without the luxury of superpowers burns a hole in your wallet pretty damned quickly.
STUFF
In the mid-eighties, Ghost Owl was seen fighting alongside a teen sidekick, Kid Strigid. He'd rescued him from a terrorist bombing that'd claimed the lives of his parents, left him bitter and destitute. Having no family of his own, Owl took him under his wing; textbook apprenticeship. And the Kid was gifted, no doubt about that - smart, brave, loyal, tough - he had it all. Owl couldn't have asked for a better sidekick. A better heir. If only he'd known the truth; being betrayed, stabbed in the back and left for dead might not have come as such a big surprise.
Besides noisily springing out of clocks, the cuckoo bird is known for laying its eggs in other nests, duping the mother into raising the resulting hatchlings as her own. Could be that Checkmate, underworld strategist-for-hire and long time adversary of Ghost Owl, drew a measure of inspiration from that. Kid Strigid was an orphan, but he didn't have any bombs or terrorists to thank for that. No, he was just some street urchin, some random nobody that wouldn't be missed when Checkmate picked him up and subjected him to months of gruelling mental conditioning. Drugs, hypnotherapy, memory implantation, the works; he even brought in a telepath. Dumping him in the aftermath of a seemingly random terrorist attack for Ghost Owl to find was just another part of the plan.
STUFF
He was getting old, worn down, slow. His health was failing thanks to rigors of age coupled with a legacy of broken bones and battered organs. But that didn't matter; there was work - so much work - left unfinished and he was simply too damned stubborn to hang up the cape and belt and retire, not without making Hudson City a place worth retiring in. And after his experiences with Kid Strigid, relinquishing the burden to a younger, brighter star was simply out of the question. So he grit his teeth against the protests and pleas of his aching joints and pressed on - right up until his ignominious end on that fateful Christmas Eve, gunned down in an empty street by a scared and confused teenager. Not even in costume.
STUFF
everything here is a wip
hoot hoot