Cobalt Claymore
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| En garde! | |
| The Cobalt Claymore | |
| Player: @jchinds | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Scrapper |
| Security Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Todd Galahad |
| Known Aliases: | Whispering Typhoon |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 22 |
| Height: | 6'1" |
| Weight: | 200 |
| Eye Color: | brown |
| Hair Color: | brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | student |
| Place of Birth: | Berwyn, Illinois |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City, RI |
| Marital Status: | Engaged |
| Known Relatives: | Mother Aoi, The Cobalt Ghost |
| Known Powers | |
| No natural powers | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Blade Mastery, Stealth, Misdirection, Acting, and Psychological Warfare | |
| Equipment | |
| swords of various makes and styles, the Microporter Weapon Summoning System, Caltrops, various thrown blades, WWBD Industries Swingline Launcher, numerous types of plant-based combat and recovery drugs. | |
| Hit Level 50 during a successful Statesman's Task Force May 13, 2007 1:05 am Central time | |
Contents |
Affiliations
Jizoku no Himitsu (as Whispering Typhoon)
Personality
Todd has three distinct facets to his personality. His "student" persona is best described as annoyed. He's very picky about his surroundings, would rather spend time in the library than at the bars or other hangouts, and generally keeps his mouth shut while quietly observing his surroundings. His "game" persona is the one that you'll see on the lacrosse field and whenever he's fighting crime. Opponents who have had to face off against him on the field have described it as "like a hunting housecat." He'll be brutal one second, then toy with his foe the next. He has been known to play with his enemies for a while to scare them even further, throwing in little quips and banter as befits the situation. Only when he's around his fellow heroes and closest friends does he seem to relax and enjoy himself.
Since his father's death, Todd has attempted to live up to his father's ideals and heroic image. He has fought with the guilt of leading his father into a trap and the grief from losing his father. While he has attempted to put on a brave face and keep things positive, there are days he'll do nothing but brood and talk endlessly about how much he misses his father. It's not particularly heroic for him, so he fights to keep from dumping it all on others.
(For those of you who follow comic books a lot, especially the little universe that surrounds Batman, think of his personality like this. If Batman and the daughter of R'as al-Ghul had a son, then broke up via a fight to near-death with Batman taking his hypothetical son with him, and then spent the boy's entire childhood teaching him everything he knows you'd almost get the Cobalt Claymore's personality. Now add in the idea of a "divorced and bitter about it" Batman telling his son almost nothing about the boy's mother and generally being a dour and brooding kind of guy, and you've gotten even closer. Now, have this really out-there Batman teach his son how to fake pretty much everything in order to move through numerous social and criminal circles and how to avoid empathizing with those immediately around him. That boy would wind up poorly socialized, rarely able to interact easily with others outside of "work" and likely to appear to have multiple distinct personalities. Generally speaking, he's messed up from the get-go and attempting to fix it without help. The fact that Todd has found love in his life was the biggest help in breaking through his training and programming. It's just a long process.)
Powers
Blade Mastery
Broadsword: Depending on the situation, the Cobalt Claymore has been known to wield numerous types of Western-style swords. His preference is usually a hand-and-a-half sword using high-speed steel. This type of steel is good for fighting fire-using enemies as it will not lose its edge or temper when heated well beyond normal temperatures. If he doesn't carry it under a cloak, it is brought to his side via the Microporter Weapons Summoning System, a secure-channel teleportation system. It was based off of the same technology as used in early Malta Gunslinger teleport rigs. With the controller in a bracelet or glove, the Microporter can locate its user and send weapons directly to his hand. He also uses this with some of thrown weapons in his kit.
[[Image:]]
As seen here, this is the basic single-hand ready stance that the Cobalt Claymore favors.
The Dramatic Comeback
Regeneration: Not true regeneration by any means, the Cobalt Claymore uses acting and misdirection to appear more injured than he really is, creating overconfidence in his enemies and lowering their guard. Coming in for the kill, they find a fully-refreshed Cobalt Claymore wiping blood away from a scratch, and then he attacks furiously. He refers to this as the "Die Hard" Power, as he seems to take horrific damage throughout the fight but bounces back in time for a dramatic finish. He supplements this with a series of plant-based combat drugs to speed up his healing and recovery process, as well as being in near-perfect physical condition. Combine it with a pure stubborn streak that he gets from his father, and he becomes near unstoppable.
Basically, if Willpower had been an available set when he was created in City of Heroes, he would have gone with that instead of Regeneration.
Additional Powers
The WWBD Swingline System
Superjump: The Cobalt Claymore usually travels through the city on a WWBD Industries Swingline System. This pair of launchers each use a 7.62x51mm blank rifle cartridge to fire the grappling claw onto any surface that might hold it, and it trails out a synthetic line similar to spider silk. Travel is achieved by reeling the line back in, and firing the other launcher to find the next swing point.
Combat Jumping: A mix of acrobatics, heavy training in things such as broad jump and high jump and finely honed fighting reflexes keeps CC out of harm's way most of the time.
Psychological Warfare
Presence: When necessary, the Cobalt Claymore can be a very, very scary young man. He uses simple psychological warfare techniques to instill fear into his enemies, or to enrage them into focusing on him. In some cases, he puts on a display of furious rage mixed with deadly swordfighting skills that entire groups of enemies are struck motionless with fear. Quite often the last thing his opponents will hear is "Feel that? That's me using your amygdala as a speed bag!" before he renders them incapable of fighting any further.
Stealth
He's good at hiding and blending in. But then again, when you're trained to be sneaky and look inconspicuous during stakeouts, you get pretty good at hiding in plain sight. Some of this skill is not natural, though, a result of Mother Aoi's Shadow Branding ritual.
Weapons Mastery
The Cobalt Claymore uses a series of throwing knives to engage his enemies at a distance, and supplements this with shuriken-style throwing knives which he jokingly refers to as "Claymorangs." He has also recently teamed up with a few technical geniuses to add high explosives to the throwing knives, turning them into small fragmentation grenades.
Abilities
Outside of combat-related skills, the Cobalt Claymore is known to read, write, and speak at least four languages in addition to English: Spanish, Latin, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. He may speak more, though no one has ever confirmed it. Years of stakeouts have given him a variety of skills, from Chinese take-out cooking to hanging drywall to phlebotomy.
Weaknesses and Limitations
The Cobalt Claymore is not much different from a normal human, albeit a normal human who has an intense workout regime to stay in top physical condition. He does, however have one serious mental blind spot: his hero worship of his late father. So much of his personality is wrapped up in the years as his father's sidekick that it's often difficult for him to socialize without bringing up one "So there I was" story or another. Usually the complete silence around is his first clue that no one wants to hear his stories. Also, he often gets so wrapped up in an investigation that he forgets simple things like anniversaries, birthdays, whether or not he's fought certain villains, and other items of importance.
Equipment
In addition to his swing line and weapons summoning system, the Cobalt Claymore also keeps a PDA/cellphone on him for private calls and information. He also carries a few basic items for evidence collection (latex gloves, fingerprint kit, luminol).
[[Image:]]
One tactical belt holds almost everything the Cobalt Claymore needs for investigations.
Character History
Todd Galahad was born in June of 1988 to Professor Michael Galahad and June Maehara-Galahad in Berwyn, Illinois. At the time he was born, his parents were known to the world of spies and secret agents as Royal Helix Sierra, a Malta Gunslinger, and Mother Aoi, the soon-to-be leader of a clan of shadow-manipulating ninja. Michael Galahad was also known to the world as the Cobalt Claymore, a hero who managed to quickly establish himself as a feared detective and swordsman in the Chicago area. The addition of a new child (Todd has an older brother who hunts in the Rogue Isles as the Cobalt Ghost) and the strain of maintaining lives as hero and villain and covering it all with an identity as an Economics professor at Dominican University in nearby River Forest finally pushed Michael Galahad into the toughest decision he'd make. He decided to extricate himself from Malta. He no longer wanted any part of their global conspiracy, only to raise his sons to be good and proper men. Mother Aoi saw things differently, and this led to their last fight. There, a wounded Cobalt Claymore took Todd from his mother's arms and escaped, going back to the home that he once shared with his wife and both of his sons.
Todd grew up knowing only his father as his immediate family. Whenever Todd would ask about his mother, his father would say nothing, or very little to change the subject. During his elementary school years, the Cobalt Claymore began to teach his son the basics of fighting and put him through intense exercise routines. At the age of 10, Todd finally had achieved enough skill and responsibility to become his father's sidekick, and took the hero name of The Gladius Kid. For the next six years, the father-and-son duo cut, sliced, and hacked their way through the criminal elements within Chicago. By 2004, the pair found themselves fighting a gang of drug smugglers who had a fighting methodology similar to the Cobalt Claymore. This gang, The Warriors, believed that with a bit of minor magical help they could show that archaic weapons such as swords and axes still had a place in modern warfare. The Chicago branch of the gang was run by one Alexander "The Great" Pavilidis, who took his orders directly from the head of the gang, a man known as Odysseus. A personal grudge was created after Alexander's first run-in with the Cobalt Claymore, and the gang leader began to plot with his advisers the traps that would hopefully eliminate the pair.
By the autumn of 2004, the feud between Alexander and the Cobalt Claymore was being noticed more and more by Odysseus, as well as by their rivals from the Chicago branch of the Family. Alexander decided to divide the pair of heroes and cause their investigations to defeat each other. A series of clues was placed before Todd to lure him into splitting off from his father in an independent investigation. This culminated with him being led into a trap where he and his father nearly killed each other in a case of mistaken identity. When Alexander and his warlords arrived to recover the heroes' bodies, they found that the two had escaped the trap set for them. The Cobalt Claymore realized he and his son were surrounded, and challenged Alexander to a fight to free the two heroes. Alexander finally managed to sneak in a lucky attack, stabbing the Cobalt Claymore through the lungs, killing him slowly. Alexander retreated to Paragon City known as the Cobalt Claymore's killer.
As Michael Galahad lay dying, Todd promised his father that he would avenge him. Michael asked him to seek justice, not revenge. Todd held his father in his arms as the older man died, and he then swore that the Cobalt Claymore would continue the fight against crime. He sought the whereabouts of Alexander Pavilidis, and tracked him to Paragon City. He moved there, boarding at St. Ignatius Men's Preparatory Academy. A priest who had been rescued from a mugging years earlier by Todd's father helped to provide him with administrative cover while the young man balanced high school and crimefighting.
Then Todd met Nosila Marie. The young merfolk girl captured his heart the first night they met at a Valentine's Day dance, even though it took him more than a few dates to admit it. Technically, they might not be called dates, since both of them usually wound up following leads to solve crimes in the area. Since then he has always had a partner in his investigations. He eventually joined Phoenix Force with Marie after their short stint in the now-defunct Twilight Guard. While he was a member of Phoenix Force, Todd was accepted to Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He moved there, eventually taking a part-time approach to being a hero. It was during that time that Todd was kidnapped by his mother, Mother Aoi, as she attempted to mold him into a killer for her clan of assassins. He fought in the Rogue Isles under the name of the Whispering Typhoon, biding his time until he and his friends formulated an escape plan.
Since his escape, Todd has clung to his father's memory, going so far as to wear the old hat his father wore as a Malta Gunslinger. He has thrown himself into his academics and become even more driven to get his degrees. He gained entrance into The Midnight Club, and has used the Midnight Squad's rare books collection to supplement his academic research. His cover story for this is that he called in a favor earned during his time as a summer intern at Freedom Corps HQ.
The latest event to greatly affect Todd has been his official engagement to Nosila Marie. The proposal itself was subtle to the point of being missed by most people. Marie accepted and the two are often overheard making plans in such a way that people have asked how long they've been married.
Typhoon Warning
With the events of Typhoon Warning over, Todd has returned to Paragon City to re-establish himself as a hero. He will enroll in Paragon City University to to complete his college education, as Dartmouth would most likely not want him back, seeing as he is the only person left from the attack that covered his kidnapping.
Typhoon Warning Fallout: The Cobalt Ninja?
As the Cobalt Claymore, Todd tries to avoid using the skills forced on him from his mother's Shadow Branding ritual and her mandatory ninja training. He's been using a couple of the abilities quite regularly, though, a mild invisibility effect and he occasionally will use some of his Shadow Taijutsu when he gets into grappling range by delivering a barrage of close-in punches to his opponents.
Todd has also shown a sensitivity towards disparaging remarks towards his mother. Some of it may be because of a mild form of mental influence due to the Shadow Branding, some of it might be because Mother Aoi is a link to his father's history, and some of it might be just because she's family, however twisted the relationship. Until recently, he never claimed to have any kind of ninja training or heritage. He recently reconciled himself to his heritage, and has accepted his mother's wish to take over her criminal organization Jizoku no Himitsu. He jokingly refers to himself as more of a "ninja-in-law" than an actual ninja. His training was similar, perhaps, but without learning the traditions in a proper manner, he doesn't consider himself a complete ninja. The others in his supergroup disagree.
Trivia
When in Paragon City, CC often attends Mass with fellow Chicagoan Hephaestus 1 and Young Phalanx leader Back Yard Boom at St. Florian Parish in Kings Row. He's also been known to make a delicious Crab Rangoon.
