Star of Justice
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| To protect and serve | |
| the Star of Justice | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Peacebringer |
| Security Level: | 50 |
| Identity | |
| Real Name: | Jamie Gunn/Promises to Keep |
| Nationality: | American/Kheldian |
| Occupation: | Police officer (Awakened Division) |
| Place of Birth: | Paragon City, RI |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City, RI |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Janie Gunn (sister) |
| Physical Data | |
| Species: | Human/Kheldian |
| Age: | 28/unknown |
| Height / Weight : | 5' 9" / 170 pounds |
| Eye / Hair Color: | Brown / Red |
| Known Powers | |
| Kheldian energy manipulation | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Police training, expert marksman | |
| Equipment | |
| Handcuffs, radio, service weapon (revolver) | |
| Updated: 7/1/2014 - Player: @Megajoule | |
He was Jamie Gunn, a good cop mortally wounded in the line of duty.
It was Promises to Keep, an energy being from beyond the stars.
They fight crime!
Contents |
Affiliations
Jamie holds the rank of Captain in the Paragon Police Department. A former sharpshooter, he is currently assigned to the Awakened Division. He despises "the tights" and wears them only if ordered to do so, preferring the shirt, slacks and jacket typically worn by PPD Sergeants.
Jamie has a variety of contacts on both sides of the fence, from his career as a cop and a hero and through his sister Janie. He previously dated Silver Gale of the Do-Gooders; their relationship was complicated, and ultimately ended, by his determination to remain chaste until married. They are still friends.
Promises is a Peacebringer, a reluctant but dedicated soldier in his species' war for survival against the perversion of the Nictus.
Personality
"The Star of Justice" is a composite being, a symbiosis or melding of Jamie Gunn and Promises to Keep in the body of the former. In some areas, they balance each other out - Jamie is naturally hot-tempered, while Promises is cautious, practical and stable. Jamie speaks plainly and directly, while Promises is prone to grand gestures and poetic metaphors. In others, they reinforce and amplify the traits they share - both are stubborn and determined, especially when it comes to seeing justice done, the innocent saved and the guilty punished.
In the early days of their bond, the two personalities were distinct, like roommates in a very small apartment, with the complication that one was still grieving for his old partner and resentful of having to lean on the other, who bore it all with patient wisdom. Even after they got that sorted out, Jamie continued to handle the social interaction with other humans, while Promises, having experience in fighting in other forms, came to the fore in combat. At this stage they have nearly completed their merger into a single being, but there are still times when it's clear that one or the other "side" is speaking.
Powers
The Star of Justice possesses the usual abilities of a joined Peacebringer.
Luminous Blast
Star can use some of his internal store of energy to blast a single opponent, all enemies within a fan-shaped area, or everyone around him. He can also discharge that energy through physical strikes in melee, doing considerable damage. He can even form this energy into semi-intelligent masses that will seek out their own targets and detonate, or simply emit a bright flash that will blind and disorient most things that use eyes to see.
Luminous Aura
The shell of radiance surrounding the Star of Justice protects him from most physical harm.
Transformation
"Energy is matter is energy" is something that took Earth's scientists until last century to figure out, but is intuitively obvious to Kheldians. Promises is able to guide Jamie in converting their physical body into others that Promises has previously bonded with, or even into pure Kheldian energy for a while. They can use a similar process to repair and restore that body, even on the brink of death. (This is, of course, how Promises saved Jamie's life upon their initial bonding.)
Promises originally preferred to take "Nova" (Mefnanim) form for combat, but as the two personas have merged and gained experience in fighting with a human body, Star now tends to stick with that form. "Dwarf" (Kurukt) form tends to be used only when a strong defense is more important than offense, such as when facing overwhelming odds.
Abilities
In addition to standard police training, Jamie has received advanced training to function as a police sniper. His father taught him and Janie to shoot from a young age; while Janie is good with pistols, Jamie has always been better with a rifle.
Weaknesses and Limitations
The Star of Justice has the usual Kheldian vulnerability to Quantum weaponry. Jamie also happens to be mildly allergic to shellfish, which makes jokes about "crab" or "lobster" form extra-ironic.
Equipment
Jamie carries the standard equipment of a PPD officer: badge, radio, baton, handcuffs, service revolver, etc.
Character History
Who They Are and How They Came to Be
Jamie is the son of a third-generation Irish immigrant living in Paragon City, and had a reasonably normal childhood (aside from such minor complications as the Rikti War) until his father ended up a "civilian casualty" during a fight between a hero with poor situational awareness training and a 5th Column robot. Chris Jenkins, attorney-at-law and professional vulture, offered his services in extracting damages from the city - and when they were awarded, took 90% as his "fee" and legally prohibited any member of the family from discussing the matter with anyone. His mother, already shattered from the loss of her husband, broke down completely and turned to alcoholism, leaving Jamie and his little sister Janie to fend for themselves.
Jamie, as the responsible elder sibling, realized that someone was going to have to support the family and applied to the PPD Academy. Janie, already furious with "the system", didn't take it well; the fight they had when he was accepted ended with Janie storming out and taking up with the Hellions. Jamie told himself that she'd cool off, wise up and come back. Except she didn't. First she got in deeper with the gang; then she got herself killed and came back from that... somehow; and then she wound up in prison. His one visit involved a lot of sullen silences and ended with more shouting through the glass. After that, when they told him she was being "rehabilitated," Jamie didn't ask; he was just glad she wasn't his problem anymore. He never asked for that, never asked for any of it. He just wanted to be a cop, and shortly they made him one.
The Kheldian now known (in English) as Promises to Keep never wanted to be a soldier. He was an artist among his people, creating delicate arrangements of energy fluxes that sang with the music of the spheres. His friends asked him to come with them and join the struggle, but he refused the call. News of their deaths and many others plunged him into despair; his only finished piece from this period is a fragmentary dirge, the gaping holes in the tapestry where whole motifs were ripped out and silenced achingly apparent to any who can perceive soft x-rays. Finally he resolved to put that life behind him and take up a new identity in memory of the fallen, continuing and someday finishing their fight against the Science-Lord and his followers.
For many years, and in many shapes on many worlds, Promises and his fellow Peacebringers faced their corrupted brothers. He trod the desolate plains of a burnt-out star and flew on the endless winds of a gas giant. At last he came to a small planet, mostly covered in water, whose inhabitants were perhaps the strangest yet.
Jamie had been on the job as a sharpshooter for a little over a year when he and his spotter were called out to the scene of a bank robbery on Peregrine Island. Leading the robbers was the notorious Silver Mantis, Black Scorpion's freak girlfriend; it was reported that she'd already killed at least one guard, apparently just for kicks. Jamie was told to take the shot as soon as she came out of the bank, and he did, center mass... only to have the high-powered round bounce right off the metal she'd grafted to her body. Worse, she figured out where it came from, and managed to get up onto the roof of the building.
Jamie was the lucky one - he made it to the hospital. His partner went to the morgue, in three bags. For a while it looked like Jamie might soon follow him. Then the guys from Awakened Division showed up in the ICU with a most unusual offer...
A difficult adjustment period followed. Jamie soon regretted his "cowardly" and irrevocable deathbed decision and lashed out at the alien who allowed him no privacy, even in his own head; Promises, who had experienced both bonding and mourning before, offered counsel when he could and tactfully stayed "on [his] side of the line" the rest of the time. Eventually the two minds learned to live together, then work together, and finally began to grow together into something more than the sum of its parts.
New Challenges
Gaining new powers and a new "partner", along with a transfer, was only the beginning. As an Awakened officer, Jamie found himself thrust into situations beyond ordinary police work; it also came with a whole new bunch of enemies, chief among them the Nictus and their human patsies, the Council. He was soon spending a lot of time on Striga Isle, which was outside the PPD's jurisdiction but not a Peacebringer's. He found out how much it hurt to be shot by Q-guns, and heard (and felt) his usually unflappable partner horrified by an invention that inadvertantly consumed Kheldian life forces much like the Nictus did.
Jamie also found out that his sister had escaped from custody and was hiding out in the Etoiles, better known as the Rogue Isles. Some of her new friends contacted him and set up a meeting on neutral ground, in the Pocket D club. The siblings were cautiously glad to see each other (with Promises acting as a moderating influence), but there were many questions that Janie was unwilling or unable to answer; her loyal posse of ghosts, former Hellions sacrificed in the same ceremony she was, did most of the explaining. Jamie left the meeting with a reluctant admission that she seemed to be in good hands (while still strongly disapproving of her choices and lifestyle), and with his first clues to the existence of a mysterious intelligence organization. (Janie's friends actually tried to warn him not to investigate that angle, but he's as much like a dog with a bone as she is - doubly so, with Promises in the mix.)
Some high-profile arrests and ongoing work on behalf of the Peacebringers led to good press for the Department; Jamie earned his detective's shield in record time. The Star of Justice uncovered and foiled a few Nemesis plots and fought beside SWAT, Psi Division and the Power Armor squad to stop villain rampages and Rikti raids. Eventually his clearance was sufficient to go to Indigo and Crimson and demand some answers to his questions, though they warned that he wouldn't like what they told him. They were right.
Coming to Terms
An enigmatic summons from the Midnight Squad led to an adventure neither Jamie nor Promises could have imagined - traveling through time to ancient Rome and fighting side by side with Janie and half a dozen other heroes and villains to stop the Nictus and the Fifth Column from invading the present with an army led by a Nictus-infused Roman traitor, a pair of giant robots meant to be powered by Statesman and Lord Recluse, and the Science-Lord himself! After the day was saved and Cimerora restored to its rightful ruler, brother and sister finally admitted their pride and admiration for each other.
Shortly afterward, the Star met and began a relationship with the heroine Silver Gale. At first they were concerned that she might only be attracted to the "Jamie" aspect, but she soon assured them her interest went beyond the superficial; as a mage and energy channeler, she was just as fascinated by the Kheldian part, and the righteousness and strong moral character they shared. A more critical obstacle, which they discovered later, was Jamie's insistence (as a good Catholic) on not having sex before marriage. While Promises still finds most human reproduction somewhat bizarre, he does understand and support his other half in upholding the Law, including those of God and the Church. Gale, on the other hand, felt that she could never commit that much without first being sure that they were compatible in all respects... thus, stalemate. They broke up, got back together briefly, then drifted apart again.
Gale was (and still is) professionally involved with Star as well. She was with them when they got the call that Silver Mantis was tearing up another part of the city, and the next day when they went to lay flowers and a broken-off spike on the grave of Jamie's last partner. (And then Black Scorpion busted Mantis out of jail two days later. What can you do?)
Between his promotion to Captain (and the accompanying increase in paperwork), trying to keep his mother off the bottle and in treatment, and the unexpected return of Janie to Paragon City as part of the new amnesty program - and oh yeah, the bad guys - Jamie's life has gotten pretty busy. It's a good thing he has someone to help juggle it all.
Trivia
- In-game, it's "Star of Justice." with a period at the end. (Yeah, someone else got to it first, can you believe it?)
- Currently wears the "Vigilant" badge; others from the past include "Justice Incarnate", "Watchman", and "Police Chief".
- Is the Chief (leader) of the "Paragon Police Dept." Super Group, but ICly he's just a Captain (that's the most I could justify at his age, Awakened 50 or not, and even that's pushing it a bit). If anyone reading this would like to join the SG, let me know here or with a /tell to @Megajoule.
- At their first meeting, before they actually bonded, the dying Jamie asked Promises if he was an angel; the Kheldian assured him it was not. [I am as mortal as you. Only our composition differs, and not as much as you might think.]
- Jamie (like his sister) has a pretty strong Irish accent for third-generation American - but it's comics, what do you expect?
