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Thursday, January 18, 2024

New Salem Character #19: The Dutchman

The Dutchman (Raymond O'Reilly)

Pyramid Tier: 4    Experience level: 9

Affect/Gimmick: He's an Aquaman villain living in a Batman world. One of the classic "raiding the treasures of the sea" types who retired to smuggling and sometimes ship raiding with his crew of faithful henchmen.  

Gang?: Yes, the Crew, this is a group of 20 hard bitten pirate soldiers/expert divers who are so fanatically loyal that they have let themselves be surgically altered to have gills.  

Status: He is one of the 'public' triumvirate that runs the New Salem Syndicate (not really public but he's part of the firewall that blocks the real leaders); he's also a (as he says it) self made billionaire with a reputation as a treasure hunter. 

Powers: 6

  1. Life Support Device: as normal
  2.  Animal Powers Device – Fish: +4 Endurance, -4 Agility
    1. Heightened Strength C: +11
    2. Heightened Endurance C: +19
    3. Speed Bonus: +80" swimming speed (Normally S in inches per turn)
  3. Paralysis Ray Device: 15 charges, can be delivered by toxic needle from his palm, gas spray from his shoulders, or taser beams from his pistol. There may be other delivery methods in the suit, he is always modifying this.
  4. Heightened Agility A: Superior kinesthetic sense gives +11 (but see -4 from Animal Powers)
  5. Heightened Expertise: Superior kinesthetic sense gives +4 with all melee combat 
  6. Heightened Senses: His senses superhumanly sharp. There's a non-zero chance that his family has some sort of strange aquatic background.
    1. UV Vision: he can naturally see into the UV spectrum.
    2. Treasure Sense: His Detect Hidden is 5x normal. He has an uncanny knack for guessing where things are. 
  7. Mute: The esophageal cancer forced him to an artificial larynx; while he can speak it is now a mechanical voice; recent innovations have made this less of a burden it still prevents him from speaking much. This also has tinges of Phobia/Psychosis (can be easily goaded about his voice) and Physical Handicap (needs life support device to thrive; otherwise initiative interval is 18).
Weight: 160      Basic Hits: 4    Agi Mod: +0
S: 26        E: 36        HP: 98 (out of armor it is 26)
A: 23        I: 16         Pow:  101 (OOA it is 71)
C: 17                        Move: 85" ground, 106" water (OOA 55)
Accuracy: +4 (OOA +5), +8 melee
Damage Mod: +3 (OOA +4)
Reactions Mod: +2
Carrying Cap: 1694    HTH: 1d10
Inventions: All of his crew are modified with Surgically Modified Gills so they all have Water Breathing A. Those gills also contain Micro-detonators to glow their carotid arteries if the Dutchman commands it. His armor has a built in collapsing trident +3 to hit, +1d4 damage), and a forearm sheath bowie knife (+1 to hit, +1d2 damage). 

Background/Origin:  Francis Dijkgraaf was a flamboyant oil man and treasure hunter. His success at finding oil deposits made him wealthy, while his locating lost ships and using new innovative technologies to explore them made him a media darling, smiling his movie star smile, cigarette jauntily in hand, against the backdrop of the ocean waves. Everyone was willing to overlook the sordid family history of swindles and corruption to focus on his exploits… up until he was laid low by esophageal cancer. The chemotherapy and operations saved him but gone was the athletic idol with the caramel smooth voice. Dijkgraff vanished from the spotlight, becoming a famed reclusive millionaire.  

    The extensive medical treatments revealed that things Francis took for granted – his keen night/depth vision, his extraordinary kinesthetic sense and his preternatural ability to find things – were not normal. He either had some sort of mild mutation or was carrying the legacy of some distant crossbreeding. Obsessed with finding the truth of his family origins, he turned his fortune to developing the ultimate diving suit. He fitted his esophageal replacement to the oxygen extraction device and took to the seas again... under the seas! 

    His obsession and secrecy pushed his already sketchy sense of property rights directly off the deep end. In his quest to locate lost treasures and clues to "Atlantis" or whatever origin he thinks his family line has, he recruited a set of fanatically loyal henchmen. Eventually he either found what he was looking for or realized that the smuggling and piracy were awfully lucrative. Settling in to a private island off New Salem - ostensibly to search for Blackbeard's treasures - he actually became one third of 'public' Triumvirate of the Syndicate. 

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