Characters Name: Doktor Archeville
Alternate Identity: Viktor Heinrich Archeville
Height: 5’10” (1.78 meters)
Weight: 151 pounds (68.49 kg)
Hair: Golden Blonde
Eyes: Rhine Blue
Description: Archeville’s strong Aryan features would’ve made him a prize nab for the Nazi Party, had he been born forty years earlier. His alabaster skin, thin and imperial nose and lips, and cheeks cut of marble make for a regal face. His eyes are Rhine-blue & carry the wolf’s glare, and his hair is silky and golden, falling down past his shoulders. Though he has seen 30 winters, he looks to be only about 21 years old, having aged at roughly half the normal pace since his sixteenth birthday. Archeville usually wears sturdy black rubber-soled boots, black or dark blue khaki pants, a short-sleeved shirt (usually solid red, blue, green, or purple), and his white lab coat. Since he is trying to release his madness in controlled bursts, specifically so it won’t overtake him, Archeville does look after his appearance, wearing clean clothes and keeping his hair neat and tidy. He stands 5’10” (1.78 meters) and weighs 151 pounds (68.49 kg).
History: Viktor Heinrich Archeville was born in the summer of 1977 in Schönwald im Schwarzwald, a small town in the majestic Black Forest of Germany [which is in the southwestern portion of what was known as West Germany], in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Cynthia, his lovely mother and a skilled psychologist, died in childbirth, leaving her husband Varick to raise him alone. Varick was trying to break away from the family trade of making fine cuckoo clocks and enter the burgeoning computer programming field, and so had little time for little Viktor. Fortunately for Varick , Viktor proved more than able to take care of himself, as he was walking before he was a year old, and speaking coherent sentences by age two.
It has been said that the Archeville family was cursed with madness. Some say it was from a hex laid on one of the line’s ancestors generations ago due to some slight, either real or perceived, or influence by some unwholesome and unnatural things (such as the Deviants, or the Lemurians). Some say it was from working with cuckoo clocks, or that they all worked on cuckoo clocks because they were mad. It was not a trait that showed up in all members of the Archeville line, and Heinrich seems to have been spared (though Heinrich’s father, Verrill Herman Archeville, was known to have been a collaborator on numerous Nazi top secret weapons projects, and was very much the stereotypical Mad Scientist). Varick had hoped that by distancing himself and young Viktor away from their families ties, he could lessen the chances of Viktor going mad. Varick was initially quite worried for his son’s sanity — he knew that great intelligence often came with great ego, and with great ego often comes madness. Varick tried to juggle monitoring young Viktor with trying to break into the computer programming field, but doing so did nothing but cause him to develop manic/depressive syndrome and low-grade paranoid schizophrenia.
Viktor seemed hardly to notice his father’s deterioration, or if he did he chose not to point it out. He made a few friends here and there, but none of his friendships lasted terribly long due to the rumors of his family’s affliction (and his grandfather’s past affiliations). His intellect and skill continued to grow as time passed… as did his father’s madness. On Viktor’s 13th birthday, Varick Archeville was admitted to an insane asylum, leaving Viktor to be taken in by Child Services and await adoption.
Unfortunately, adoptions are tricky at best, and near impossible if the child is in his teens, so for several years, Viktor was effectively a ward of the state. He would visit his father occasionally, but each visit grew more and more awkward.
When he was 16, Viktor enrolled in the
Technische Universität München, the Technical University of Munich, as the University was celebrating it’s 125th anniversary. While there, the barest signs of his familial madness began to make themselves apparent. He’d find himself laughing maniacally at times, or he would become annoyed almost to the point of enragement by incompetent people. He was relieved to find that by keeping his conscious mind focused on his studies, he could suppress his outbursts and in fact use that mental energy to make impressive leaps in logic or near-revolutionary breakthrough. Unfortunately for him, the German academic world was too stodgy to accommodate his genius, so he transfered to Empire State University, where he earned a Doctorate in Mathematics and Masters degrees in both chemistry and physics by the age of 22 (Spring 1999). He could easily have done more, but he didn’t want to seem too intellectually flashy.
Archeville soon returned home, but now faced a conundrum. He had numerous offers from a number of technological firms, both in Germany and in other countries, but no one seemed right for him. He was sure that if he didn’t find some constructive way to use his intellectual skills, he would likely end up in the asylum (like his father) — as time passed, he felt his intellect continue to grow by leaps and bounds, and he feared his familial madness would grow with it. For many months he busied himself with being a wandering tinkerer, helping people in need of his electrical and mechanic skills, or setting up a small repair shoppe in a quiet corner of a small German town for a few months before moving on to another quaint town, and for a time he felt truly happy in helping others. As months turned into years, though, and his intellect continued to expand further and further, he began to suspect that he was a mutant/metahuman. At first this made Archeville excited, for it meant he finally had an answer to why his mind seemed to continue expanding with no end in sight, an explanation that wasn’t necessarily tied to his bloodline’s “condition.” This excitement soon turned to dread, though, as he realized that, were his madness to overtake him -- and if it did so with as much fury and vigor as that shown by his superhuman intellect -- then he could easily become a megalomaniacal supervillain, like Doctor Doom or the High Evolutionary (or mutate himself into a monster like the Lizard). He knew of the few superhero groups which existed in various countries, and the idea of working as a superhero intrigued him. By using his skills to combat evil and injustice — a never-ending battle — he’d be sure to never be idle and thus not allow the madness to overtake him. He worked for a while as a crime fighter in Germany, using teleportation devices to get nearly anywhere he needed. Sometimes he’d go into a situation with nothing more than his armored labcoat, trusting in his inherent genius to be able to turn whatever items he found at the scene of the crime into some gadget that could be used to stop the villains. In between “jobs,” he sold some of his theoretical notes and designs to various tech firms, and wisely invested the money to form a "nest egg" that, while not making him super-wealthy, does allow him to live comfortably without requiring a standard 9-to-5 job.
Eager to work with other high-tech heroes like Reed Richards and Tony Stark -- and chafing under certain bureaucratic and snobbish aspects of German academia -- Archeville has recently come to Manhattan. He plans to do great things.
Personality & Motivation: Archeville is trying to redeem his family name and keep himself busy with important, useful work. As long as he’s busy in superheroics or working on some gadget that can help himself or his teammates, he’s fine. If he goes for about a week without something to do, he becomes noticeably edgy and paranoid, and will often throw himself into some project that no one can identify the reason behind.
Over the past several months, though, Archeville has noticed that his madness has been starting to manifest even if he’s in the midst of something truly noble and heroic. After having fought it for so many years, Archeville is trying something new — controlled outbursts. Like rangers starting brushfires to retard the spread of a raging forest fire, or slowly opening a shaken-up bottle of soda so that the contents don’t explode outwards, Archeville occasionally lets his madness have free reign. He’ll laugh maniacally at times, becomes somewhat absent-minded, gets readily annoyed by incompetent people, becomes somewhat arrogant and overconfident, speaks with an exaggerated German accent, and will spends several rounds describing exactly how his latest invention will aid his allies/bring ruin to his opponents. He’ll never use his inventions to kill, or even permanently harm a foe... at least, not usually.
Archeville enjoys a professional rivalry with other high technologists. He loathes magic, as it cannot be reliably controlled or scientifically analyzed (or he sees it as the user actually being a mutant or psion but deluding themselves as to the source of thier abilities), and due to the possibility that his lineage’s madness is the result of a mystical hex. He’ll work with mages and witches if he absolutely must, but he’ll grumble the whole way through.
Roleplayng Notes: Archeville's inner conflicts are often represented by two "Shoulder Angels/Daemons." On his right is an angelic version of Archeville, in a pristine white labcoat and a white-gold glow about him; this represents his conscience and morals, his super-ego. On his left shoulder is a demonic version of Archeville, with a gore-spattered labcoat, a very nasty looking bionic arm, and a cybernetic skullcap with antennae/horns projecting from it; this represents the temptations and madness within him, his desire to take disproportionate revenge over quasi-imagined slights, his id.
Powers and Tactics: Archeville’s enhanced intellect makes him a master of a variety of scholarly and scientific fields, from acoustics to zoology. His work stands far ahead of the efforts of most other conventional researchers, allowing him to produce gadgets, machines, and computers more advanced than any in the real world, and in some cases more advanced than even cutting-edge technologies seen on Marvel Earth. Archeville is also skilled at using mundane items to produce highly effective gadgets and gear. Using baling wire, duct tape, circuit boards, and a TV, he could produce a laser rifle, a hologram projector, or some other gadget. With access to a standard janitorial closet, he could create potent corrosives and various types of bombs. If he has sufficient raw materials on hand, he can produce nearly any kind of technological gadget. These items last for a short time before their jury-rigged construction fails (the TV he uses to project an illusion burns out from the strain placed on it, or the crude laser pistol’s barrel melts).
Archeville's brain works approximately 100 times faster than a normal human brain, through a combination of both truly working faster and being able to hold multiple trains of thought at once, and retains everything he experiences with nearly total perfection. He also requires less sleep than most people; his brain is so efficient it doesn't need "rebooting" as often as others.
Another gift of his lineage that he's only partly aware of is his odd robustness. Archeville's ancestors lived extremely long lives for their day, aging very slowly and rarely getting sick. Archeville knows of his resistance to diseases and toxins, attributing it to a "tolerance" built up over years of labwork and exposure to assorted nasty things in his career as a superhero. He has only recently begun noticing that he appears and feels younger than he should -- he's 30 now, but looks barely 21 -- though has not yet done any concerted study of it.
When Archeville's superhuman intelligence first became clear to him during his adolescence, he suspected that he was a mutant and arranged to get tested for active mutation. However, the tests came back negative. Soon after graduating college, he arranged to be tested again, with the same results. This baffled Archeville at first, until he began research in non-mutant superhumans, such as the Eternals, Deviants, Atlanteans, Adam Warlock, Vargas, and others (though in many cases his research found little concrete data). This sparked in Archeville an idea: that his own mental abilities were semi-psionic in nature, similar to 'standard' mutation but just different enough to not be picked up by the standard mutation detection tests, and to be immune to 'standard' mutation-draining or -nullifying techniques; that is is similar to yet different from Mutants in being the "next evolutionary step" in human existence.
This theory is completely wrong. Archeville's mind is enhanced due to his mystical heritage, the culmination of thirteen generations of supernatural-tainted Archevilles. Archeville's devices and inventions are all solidly scientific and technological, but his mind itself is enhanced by magic. Why [these beings] chose to alter his lineage is unknown (if indeed there even was a purpose -- and if there was, it would mean the beings behind it was capable of very long-term planning), and even if Archeville were confronted with the truth he'd scoff at it as "an atypical mutation regarded as magical by superstitious fools."
Archeville is a mathematician even in combat. He analyzes every possible permutation of an opponent’s moves and profile almost instantly, and adapts to exploit weaknesses and apply his own strengths to their best effect. (This is why his Fighting and Agility are higher than what should be possessed by a regular scientist with little to no formal combat training.)
Archeville has interwoven his nigh-ubiquitous lab coat with various metallic and polymer threads that diffuse incoming energy, including kinetic energy. His gravimetric belt (utilizing both antigravity and contragravity technologies) enables him to fly and can surround him with a protective force field; the belt can also allow him to teleport short distances (creating brief, small wormholes), stabilize him against unwanted movement, and bend electromagnetic energies (light and radio waves) around him to render him invisible (as long as he doesn't move too fast -- the belt cannot yet keep up with rapid movement). For a time he wielded an
elektromagnetische pistole ("electromagnetic pistol") which could unleash potent and lethal blasts of any form of electromagnetic energy (gamma rays, hard x-rays, soft x-rays, extreme ultraviolet, near ultraviolet, visible light, near infrared, moderate infrared, far infrared, microwaves, and radio waves/telvision), but he used the parts from it to both upgrade his gravimetric belt and construct his very versatile
elektromagnetische schraubenzieher ("electromagnetic screwdriver").
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Dr. Archeville is a character I've used in numerous games over the years, in one form or another, though -- surprisingly -- never in MSH. I thought it'd be interesting to see what he'd look like in MSH terms; here is my best guess (please take into account that I've not actually played MSH in close to a decade). Comments and constructive criticisms are more than welcome.
F: Good/10
A: Good/10
S: Poor/4
E: Good/10
R: Remarkable/30 (Amazing/50)
I: Excellent/20
P: Good/10
Health: 34
Karma: 60 (80)
Resources: Good/10
Popularity: Excellent/20
Known Powers
Hyper-Intelligence: Excellent/20
Hyper-Invention: Excellent/20
Resistance to Disease: Remarkable/30
Resistance to Toxins: Remarkable/30
Equipment:
Electromagnetic Screwdriver: Archeville's "multitool," capable of performing a wide variety of minor (no more than Typical/6 intensity) stunts. Examples include: hologram generation, lasers, "lightsabers," remote computer operation/hacking, and scanners and sensors of all types.
Gravimetric Belt: Grants the powers of Flight (Good/10), Force Field (Excellent/20), Invisibility (Excellent/20 vs. all visual and radio senses; while 'cloaked' the force field is reduced to Good/10 intensity), and Teleportation (Excellent/20). When not flying, the energies from the 'thrusters' can be used to counter Slams; treat the Force Field as being of Incredible/40 rank for purposes of resisting Slams in these instances.
Labcoat: Despite looking like a normal full-length long-sleeved labcoat, it provides Ty/6 protection from attacks, and Ty/6 resistance to heat and cold.
Talents: Chemistry, Electronics, Engineering, Physics, Repair/Tinkering.
Contacts: Assorted German/European superheroes.
