Controller
Basil Sandhurst

Powers

None

Equipment

• The exo-skeleton is covered with micro-circuited power converters designed to receive cerebral energies in the form of extra-dimensional radiation and re-convert it into energy for physical strength. The cerebral energies he taps are the latent psionic powers that lie dormant in virtually all human beings. The Controller’s own cerebral energies are sufficient to power his exo-skeleton at the strength level noted above.
• Enhanced by the cerebral energies of others, the Controller’s strength grows proportionately. Each slave disc is capable of diverting about 85% of a person’s cerebral energies to the Controller’s use. With 20 people under his control, the Controller can lift about 2 tons; with 200, he could lift 20 tons. There is, however, a practical limit to both the number of people he can control at one time (determined by how many slave discs he has manufactured), and how much power the exo-skeleton’s receptors and actuators can transform and use at one time. Since being augmented by Titanian technology, the exo-skeleton enables the Controller to lift (press) an observed upper limit of approximately 50 tons.
• Power Transferal: The cerebral energies drained by the slave discs occasionally confer upon the Controller powers other than physical strength. If the person he places a slave disc upon has an above average psionic potential, the Controller is granted their psionic abilities as well as their physical strength. In this way, the Controller has temporarily possessed the power of levitation and psychokinesis, which faded as he was defeated and his subject’s slave discs were removed.
• Telepathy: The Titanian slave discs now used by the Controller can create an Amazing telepathic link between the Controller’s mind and that of the person wearing the disc.
• Mind Control: Through concentration, the Controller can direct a subject’s actions mentally for as long as he concentrates upon his or her. He is only able to concentrate on one person at a time.

Talents

Engineering

Contacts

Thanos

History

Basil Sandhurst was a research scientist whose reputation for unorthodox practices and theories resulted in his being barred from all legitimate commercial and govern mental research enters. Thanks to the influence of his brother Vincent, an unscrupulous lawyer, Sandhurst found work at Cord Industries, one of the leading competitors of Stark Industries (now Stane International). During a visit by his brother, Sandhurst, feeling stifled by the mundane routine of his work, went into a frenzy, wrecking valuable instruments and machinery. Attempting to pacify his brother, Vincent accidentally pushed him onto a countertop upon which were vessels filled with volatile chemicals. The chemicals exploded scarring and crippling Basil Sandhurst but leaving Vincent relatively unscathed.

Consumed by guilt, Vincent embezzled funds from Cord Industries to outfit his paralyzed brother with an automated laboratory of his own. Sandhurst used the facilities to create a “mental wave absorbatron”, a device that drained the cerebral energies of whoever was connected to it. He then transferred it to a uniquely-equipped exo-skeleton that the crippled Sandhurst wore, in the form of motive power. Calling himself the Controller, Sandhurst devised palm-sized “slave discs” which, when affixed to a person’s forehead, converted that person’s cerebral energies into an unusual form of broadcast power that is transmitted to the absorbatron. Form there, it is then re transmitted to the exo-skeleton where it is converted to a simulated- life-motive force. Although he man aged to enslave an entire town, the Controller was defeated by Iron Man when he was tricked into going out of the absorbatron’s reception! transmission range.

Later, as an ally of Thanos, the Controller was given modified slave discs, augmented by Titanian technology, which directly beamed the converted cerebral energies to the Controller without the bulky absorbatron machine as a medium.