King Brain/The Rogues War
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
A mysterious benefactor had him moved from his high-security cell and given access to the Zig lab, where he was shown a remarkable object - an Incarnate shard. Rumour has it he accompanied his mysterious benefactor into the future, to witness a cataclysmic event. When he was returned to the Zig, he began at once to postulate the nature of the shard and derive a formula for finding more.
It wasn’t long before King Brain was freed from the Zig and returned to a luxuriously appointed lab under the care of his benefactor. Now on the outside again, King Brain quickly developed a system for locating where concentrations of shards could be found, and began to gain the notice of the Well, a sentient force that controlled the Incarnate energy.
King Brain was next seen helping heroes against specific threats, his villainous past apparently behind him. But in truth he was gathering shards. Working both in the field and in his new lab, he created a theoretical construct: the Incarnate Thread. These threads, according to his maths, would exist as multidimentional entities strung out between worlds, weaving together parts of the multiverse and reality itself. In comparison to the broken shards, a Thread would be a much more intricate and powerful source of Incarnate power.
He approached the ruthless and ambitious enforcer known as Uppercut. Uppercut had been working for the Rogues Gallery, but was known to be dissatisfied with his role as muscle. He had risen through the ranks of the Rogues thanks to his focus on getting the job done, but the Crimelords had seen his vicious streak and kept him in check as a result. Uppercut was no genius, but he was cunning enough to know that the Crimelords were holding him back, and a seething resentment had built up in him - he knew he was just as good as any of them.
King Brain approached him with an offer. Having formed an uneasy alliance with Dr. Aeon, King Brain had helped use Architect Entertainment to study the heroes using it. Aeon had primarily been interested in analysing the combat data, but Brain had secretly been siphoning off data to compile a list of body mass and gait to uncover the secret identities of paragon’s heroes. They had even conspired together to construct an AE building in the Warzone, for Vanguard to train in. King Brain offered to split the profits from selling the secret identities, but told Uppercut that he needed the Rogues so that it couldn’t be traced back to him.
Uppercut greedily accepted, keen to score a deal that would force the Crimelords to promote him and accept him as their equal. He took the deal to the Crimelords, Nimrod, Mindswipe and Mr. Mud. They debated it amongst themselves, and then, to his horror, rejected the deal. Nimrod had realised that releasing that sort of data would lead to heroes having their loved ones killed or kidnapped, and to assassination attempts on civilians. He reasoned that the sort of chaos and bad blood that could cause would come back to bite the Rogues, and it would be bad for business no matter who got their hands on it.
Not listening to their explanation, Uppercut stormed out, convinced that they were holding him back deliberately and vowing to make his mark. He rounded up another dissatisfied Rogue, Showtime, who ran a gang called the Klowns. Showtime had sided with the Rogues because it let him in on the action, but he had always fancied himself a natural leader. Together with King Brain, they reached a plan to overthrow the Crimelords and sell the data, cementing their position as new, modern Rogue leaders who didn’t let sentimentality get in the way of power and profit. they called themselves The Usurpers, and prepared to seize power by force and guile.
Uppercut asked Mindswipe to help him on a bank heist, only to turn on him when they arrived in the vault. King Brain had filled the private lock boxes of the vault with psionium, a crystalline substance that dampens and absorbs psychic energy. With his powers diminished, Mindswipe was no match for Uppercut and was soon captured. Showtime had arranged to meet with Nimrod in a building that his Klowns had rigged with explosives. Nimrod suspected a trap, and came prepared. Showtime announced that they would be taking over the Rogues and that Nimrod was in the way. He reached for a device in his pocket, but Nimrod had already stolen it, suspecting that it was the control for the bombs. However, he hadn’t banked on Showtime’s crazy plan of blowing the building up with both of them still in it. The bombs had been on a timer, and while Showtime’s mediport pulled him to safety, the device Nimrod held over-rode his mediport signal and teleported him to a Portal Corps lab that King Brain had taken control of. Burning and stunned from the explosion, Nimrod was in no state to fight as the portal sucked him in and deposited him in a hell-like dimension.
Mr. Mud was targeted for attack by King Brain’s cronies, but even as Mindswipe was captured he managed to send off a warning. Mud changed his plans and went into hiding, avoiding the trap set for him. From his safe house, he contacted a number of the Rogues who he knew would be loyal to him. The Usurpers called a meeting of the Rogues gallery, and announced that Mindswipe and Nimrod had gone on the run, after stealing from the Rogue’s vault. Mud arrived and defended the Crimelords, but Uppercut challenged him to a fight. During the fight, he secretly injected Mud with a chemical designed to interfere with his powers. Mud became slow and his rocky hide began to weaken, allowing Uppercut to defeat him. The loyal Rogues broke up the fight and took Mud back to a safe house to recover, while the Usurpers rallied most of the Rogues to their new regime with news of their masterplan.
King Brain immediately seized control of Warehouse 13 and unleashed a new scheme, while secretly plundering the vaults. To usher in their new era, the Usurpers sent Rogues along with Showtime’s Klowns to attack several heroes. They would make quick hit and run attacks against targets, but used a mysterious weapon against injured heroes. Not long after, several heroes appeared to “go rogue”, causing mayhem on the streets of Paragon. Psychics were baffled, because the heroes appeared to be thier normal selves, free of mind control but somehow corrupted to do evil. Chaotic and dangerous battles ensued, as Supergroups were split from within.
In response to the wave of metahumans turned criminals, the government held an emergency meeting to consider suspending the 1952 Crime Fighting Act that allowed supergroups to act as legal enforcers. The whole thing was exposed as a plot by supervillains to destroy heroes and plunge America into a state of emergency from which they could profit. Affected heroes were captured, but not all of them made a return to normal despite efforts to help them.
Meanwhile several heroes were contacted by a mysterious young man calling himself “the Dataminer”. Using secure online channels, he sent a message to several groups warning them that he was investigating a leak of heroes identities. Some criminal groups had received a “taster” of the database showing a few secret identities of heroes in Paragon. The offer of many more would be made to the highest bidder.
Several heroes shook down criminal “auction houses” for details, and soon confirmed that the ID database was to be sold to the highest bidding group. They quickly realised that this would cause chaos, forcing many heroes to step down or go into hiding along with their families. Worse still was the damage that a group like Malta could do with the blackmail info they could gather.
The Dataminer proposed a league of heroes to find and stop the villains responsible for the creation of the secret ID database. Since his only power was number crunching, the Dataminer asked to remain anonymous, and that heroes should prepare a trap for the sellers in Siren’s Call. The Dataminer issued a fake bid, pretending to be Nemesis. The Rogues accepted, but insisted on meeting up for the sale to take place. They brought along many of their heavy hitters to Siren’s Call, ready for a Nemesis double cross. Instead they found heroes waiting in ambush, along with the Rogues who had sided with Mr. Mud. A confusing three way battle ensued, until Mud convinced the heroes that they should join forces to stop the release of the database.
The Usrurpers and their Rogues fell back to their base, outclassed by the forces they were facing. Just then a fourth, unexpected force joined the fray. Praetorians appeared inside the Rogues base, and quickly overwhelmed the Usurper forces. Only a handful of them escaped, although the leaders of the coup were amongst them. The Praetorians took the Mindwashing technology and their prisoners, and vanished as quickly as they had come, dragging the unfortunates to Cole’s Behavioural Adjustment Facility for reprogramming.
Mr. Mud arrived to find the Rogues Gallery devastated, and turned over the database to the heroes in return for allowing the loyal Rogues to flee safely from the hero forces. They destroyed it at once, along with the remains of the Rogue’s base, ending the Secret ID threat. Unbeknown to them among the equipment they destroyed were the weapons the Klowns had been using on heroes - a prototype Mindwashing ray stolen from Mother Mayhem.
In reality King Brain had orchestrated his most ambitious and heartless plan yet. He had long coveted the technology that allowed Nimrod’s brain to operate faster than any other human being. Nimrod thrived in the middle of chaos, because his mind could make connections and process possibilities as events unfolded around him. He was always cheerful and unshakable, because he was always on top of the game, the calm ‘eye of the storm’. Having evicted him from the safety of the Rogues, King Brain was able to study all the medical data and files on Nimrod, learning about the incredible technology that had boosted his synapses. Now King Brain would incorporate it into his own gigantic brain, making him more powerful and dangerous than ever before.
He knew even before he began, however, not to underestimate the Crimelords. The three Rogues had survived endless plots and heroes, always triumphing in the end or escaping what seemed to be certain doom. They had led a collection of bloodthirsty villains and unscrupulous rogues, and managed to make them all rich without unnecessary loss of life or having the whole squabbling mass turn on one another. And so King Brain knew that he would have to seize what he wanted and then extricate himself before they could recover from his strike and take revenge.
He lured the ambitious Uppercut and Showtime into helping him depose the Crimelords, while causing mayhem in the heroic world. While his plan to topple the Crimefighting Act didn’t reach fruition, he succeeded in luring the heroes to eradicate the Rogues Gallery by posing as the Dataminer. In truth the ID theft contained little useful data, he had simply used it as leverage for his grand plan. The theft of Mindwashing technology guaranteed that Praetoria would be hot on their heels, and a subtle leak to the Praetorian high command was enough to ensure they attacked Warehouse 13 and disposed of the no-longer useful Usurper Rogues (who wants to lead people who switched alliances so quickly?). He had everything he needed, and his enemies had covered his tracks.
As he upgraded his brain with the Nimrod technology he turned his attention to Phase Two.
