Watchmaker
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Lord of Time | |
| the Watchmaker | |
| Origin: | Mutant |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Controller |
| Security Level: | 50(+3) |
| Identity | |
| Real Name: | Rufus Brand |
| Known Aliases: | Watch, Professor, Mr. Raymond |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Tourist, inventor, registered hero |
| Place of Birth: | Providence, RI (alternate Earth) |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City, RI |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Quickshot (daughter of alternate counterpart), possibly others |
| Physical Data | |
| Species: | Human (mutant) |
| Age: | 49 |
| Height / Weight : | 5' 6" / 130 pounds |
| Eye / Hair Color: | Blue / Brown, greying |
| Known Powers | |
| Telepathy and telekinesis; mental domination, clouding minds, psychic healing, levitation | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Knack for making things | |
| Equipment | |
| Voice recorder, journal | |
| Updated: 8/30/2019 - Player: @Megajoule | |
"Trauma and tragedy - they define so many, hero and villain alike. Sometimes they're all that separates one from the other. Consider the unfortunate example of the Clockwork King, crippled by a hero's ruthless attack and left for dead; deprived of body and of sanity by one mind-shattering event. That's how the story goes... but as Portal Corp. has discovered, ours is only one of many realities, many possibilities. And stories can change in the telling.
Submitted for your approval: a curious man in an old suit, visiting Paragon City from parts unknown. Possessed of powerful psychic abilities and an erratic genius. Fond of taking things apart to see what makes them tick."
Contents |
Affiliations
The Watchmaker shares an unconscious mental connection with his counterpart in this dimension, the Clockwork King. The two telepaths first became aware of each other through dreams and were drawn to seek each other out, but were not aware of the other's true identity until they finally came face to jar. The resulting psychic feedback loop put the Watchmaker in a sanitarium for most of a year, and may have done even more damage to the Clockwork King's already deranged mental state. The bond still exists now that the Watchmaker has recovered, but he is extremely reluctant to focus or call upon it, for fear of losing his sanity and identity once more.
Quickshot, the adult daughter of yet another parallel double, is the closest thing to family that he has on "Primal" Earth.
The Watchmaker is now employed by Portal Corp. as a dimensional explorer, traveling to and cataloguing various alternate Earths as a solitary observer, much like his original arrival here.
Personality
The Watchmaker is a detached intellectual who has spent most of his life alone with books and gadgets, keeping his special abilities a secret. His great curiousity is one of the few things that can draw him out of this shell. He fancies himself an objective student of humanity, but his extensive reading (of books and of minds) has left him with a cynical outlook. He is by turns guardedly taciturn and enthusiastically loquacious (and yes, he uses words like that), depending on his current obsession and stage of the bipolar cycle. He is accustomed to reading minds to help him through social situations, and becomes very awkward and uncomfortable if something (courtesy, mental shields, etc) prevents him from doing so.
Powers
The Watchmaker is a mutant telepath and telekinetic. His home Earth is one with fewer metahumans than this one [more like your average comic-book universe -- Ed], and those that do exist are subject to more attention and distrust, especially mutants. For most of his life, he elected to "hide his light under a bushel" and live in quiet anonymity. It was not until he came to Paragon City that he began to use and practice with his powers openly. His full potential remains unknown, but it could someday rival the Clockwork King's - unless the latter's insanity and lack of a physical body have actually increased his power.
Mind Control
The Watchmaker is able to dominate the wills of others, forcing them to remain still and helpless no matter what is done to them. He can also put them gently to sleep (though this rarely lasts more than a few seconds in a pitched super-battle) or brutally hammer and squeeze their minds into unconsciousness. The latter usually wake up with terrible headaches.
He also possesses the "power to cloud men's minds" (also known these days as the "Jedi mind trick") which allows him to make himself appear to be a friend (or a friend to be an enemy), or to erase himself from the perceptions of others entirely. Cameras, robots, and the simple undead are not affected by this power; the Clockwork, however, are. (This was one of the Watchmaker's first hints that the junk-pilfering robots were not what they seemed.)
Telekinesis
The Watchmaker is capable of both fine and crude manipulation of objects with his mind. He can open a door, serve tea, or bash a Skull against the walls and ceiling. He can even take control of Clockwork and animate them like puppets, although this requires great concentration and his range is very limited.
Telepathy
The Watchmaker can read minds and send thoughts, allowing him to communicate mentally with others (even non-telepaths). This ability works best face-to-face, but can be used at greater distances, depending on his familiarity with the subject.
Psychic Healing
To assist his allies, the Watchmaker can block the sensation of pain and consciously encourage healing and the release of certain hormones, including adrenalin. He can also shield them against other psychic influences.
Levitation
Using telekinesis on his own body, the Watchmaker is able to lift himself (by his own bootstraps, so to speak) and move through the air. At first he was only able to move slowly, but his speed has increased with practice. He is also able to lift and push others away from himself.
Abilities
The Watchmaker is an exceptionally talented and mostly self-taught tinkerer and inventor. He has the knowledge for an engineering degree, but not the credits or diploma. Given time and the necessary parts, he is able to jury-rig almost any sort of electromechanical device. His talent for assembling working gadgets from junk is nothing short of miraculous, and is almost certainly augmented by subtle use of his telekinetic gift. He is also able to repair most mechanical wrist and pocket watches.
Weaknesses and Limitations
The Watchmaker is literally his own worst enemy. Madness and obsession are demons he must wrestle with daily; the increased use of his mental abilities seems to have worsened this tendency, even before his fateful encounter with his doppelganger. His psyche, though repaired, remains fragile. He also suffers from arrogance, impatience, and (paradoxically) loneliness.
It is difficult, but quite possible (especially for beings with natural or artificial mental shielding) to blindside him. And as powerful as his brain may be, his body is that of a man of 50 who never got much exercise.
Equipment
The Watchmaker rarely keeps any of his crude inventions for long, discarding them or taking them apart to re-use the components in new creations. He does carry a small voice recorder, along with a more traditional journal, to keep a record of his travels and thoughts.
Character History
By chance or fate, the man who would take the heroic alias of "the Watchmaker" encountered a group of Portal Corp. explorers while they were visiting his native universe, a close neighbor of this one. Intrigued by what he saw in their thoughts, he cloaked himself from their eyes and followed them back through the portal. His original intention was to merely return the favor - observe this dimension for a while, then return to his own - but public accolades and the chance to use his mental abilities openly (with official approval) were just too enticing. Not long after that, his sleep began to be disturbed by nightmares... and the rest, as they say, is history.
The inevitable confrontation with his dark reflection left the Watchmaker's mind in pieces, swinging between catatonia and megalomania, unable to tell where he ended and the other began. His sanity was finally restored when his case came to the attention of Quickshot; impossible as it seemed, their DNA indicated a blood relation. Bit by bit, she accomplished what "all the King's horses and all the King's men" could not; and together, they confronted and defeated the Clockwork King again.
After his restoration, the Watchmaker spent some time resting, tinkering, people-watching, and doing some heroing on the side. For a while his attention turned to Overbrook, particularly to young Penelope Yin (and investigating his counterpart's interest in her). This led him into the center of the many-sided struggle for control of the PsychoChronoMetron, and for a shining moment he actually held that artifact in his hands... only to realize that he was not wise enough to wield such power, merely enough to give it up to be unmade. The experience almost broke him again, until a conversation with a kindred spirit lifted him out of his despair.
The next year saw the Watchmaker making himself available as a resource for other heroes, helping to repel the second Rikti invasion, and spending more time with Quickshot and her new baby. He eventually came into (open) contact with Portal Corp.; once some ruffled feathers regarding the circumstances of his arrival were smoothed over, they warily offered him some freelance work. He took to it surprisingly well and was soon on their official payroll.
Trivia
- Due to temporal variance between universes, the Watchmaker is almost twenty years older than the Clockwork King. [See the Discussion page for details.]
- Coincidentally, he hasn't owned a (working) television in about that long.
- Currently displays the "Dimensional Explorer" badge. Past titles include "Intellectual" and "Inventor."
- He flunked out of university after a year, having learned everything he wanted to know from the textbooks and the minds of his teachers and classmates; he couldn't be bothered to do the assigned work, and had lost all respect for academia. Finally he even stopped showing up for tests. He probably could have made them give him straight As anyway, but why bother, just for a piece of paper that no longer held any meaning to him?
- During his early days in this dimension, he supported himself by taking cash from the wallets of those he arrested.
- His favorite beverage is tea, which he takes straight, without milk, sugar or honey.
