Villain A Day (Assembled): Speed Demon

Feb 18, 2015 22:30

Speed Demon

Now we hit another that I’ve done before, and let’s try not to duplicate ourselves. I have an aid, though, and that’s the official biography. According to the official biography:

Eduardo Dacascos had wealth, but craved excitement. He became a race car driver and nearly lost his life in a fiery crash. A blood transfusion saved his life ... or perhaps it was Eduardo’s delusional “deal with the Devil.” The blood transformed him, able to move so fast the air ignited around him. He burned down the clinic and all records of his survival, allowing the world to believe he was dead when, in fact, he was reborn as the Speed Demon. He embarked on an ever more daring life of crime: a courier, smuggler, and thief almost impossible to catch, with a roguish truly devil-may-care attitude.

Text quoted with the permission of Steve Kenson and Ad Infinitum Games, and is not intended to challenge the copyright.

Before he embarked on his new life, Eduardo was probably the black sheep of his family. Instead of going into the family business or a life of carefully curated show, he became a race car driver. I can’t think that his parents approved, though they might have put up with it. Knowing he was a disappointment to them, and suspecting that his family cared a great deal about reputation, hiding his original identity might be his way of honouring them. Yes, he has the exciting life that he always wanted, but he’s hiding his identify for them. His attempts to hide his identity are for them. He does not want to bring shame on them.

In fact, he might be even not be from the country that the campaign is set in. As a concession to the honour of his family, perhaps he changed continents. Perhaps someone from Spain would immediately recognize the Dacascos name, but in the USA (or wherever your campaign is set)….not so much.

I don’t think we’ve talked about the playful nature he can show-a more benign side of his devilish quality. Speed Demon is the one who disables the police by painting the face shields of all the riot gear; he’s the one who delays the army by dropping the trousers of every soldier to the floor (and putting skirts on the female ones); he’s the one who replaces all the guns with water pistols when the confrontation is near a toy store. That kind of stunt is better done to NPCs, but it shows why the regular forces are unable to deal with him, and why the PCs are called in. Anyone who uses dangerous weapons or force (dangerous in a comic book context, anyway) gets treated less politely.

Because he craves excitement, he has been known to slow down and make it look like someone else can keep pace…before he opens the metaphorical throttle and leaves them in the real dust.

Before he got the transfusion, he was in a fiery car crash. He does not look the same as he did before. The scars are small, but he thinks they mark him. They are the mark of the devil, and they affect his choice of jobs. He will not take a job that requires him to go on holy ground. He can (and he knows he can), but he feels that it is part of the deal with the devil that he has made.
His Goals and Strategy

He doesn’t have many real goals: he’s a villain for hire, and he’s very good at what he does. He has a waterproof and fireproof bag for anything he needs to transport. (The bag became waterproof after some hero tried to douse him in water. It didn’t work for him, but it soaked the papers he was carrying.) There are very few problems he can’t outrun, and when you can deliver three Great strikes a panel, you can do a fair bit of damage.

He is paranoid about keeping his past secret. So far as the world knows, Eduardo Dacascos is dead. So something that tied him to the Dacascos family would move him to action. A threat to some member of the family would be dealt with. Even if he’s several hours from his home, he would make the trip. (You’d make a three hour trip for family.)

He’s also prone to his passions. If he decides that he must woo someone in your campaign, he can be an irresistible force.
Story Ideas
  • Eduardo’s sister has come to the campaign city. She is not looking for Eduardo (she thinks he is dead), but she is there on some charitable mission. This is also the time when her fiancé decides to jilt her. This cannot be allowed to stand; Speed Demon must humiliate him (or her), repeatedly, and the PCs must stop it. Things get worse when one of the PCs becomes involved with Maria Dacascos; whether it works out or not, the PC is either a cause of more heartbreak for Maria or not good enough for her.
  • Eduardo has decided that one of the PCs is his beloved. First his attentions start innocently enough: a (stolen) rose where there shouldn’t be one, a suspected thief already trussed up, and so on. But then Eduardo gets more personal, helping at the scene of the crime (and sometimes messing up, because Eduardo is devilish). Can the PCs set him on the right track? Or is he doing this because he wants access to something else in the PC’s life?
  • One of his rules is never to look at the item he has been asked to transport. He puts it in the bag, and leaves. But his mission today called for some discretion: The most valuable (transportable) item from the heroes’ museum. (It doesn’t have to be the PCs; a museum such as the one in Sins of the Past works just as well.) Except that while weighing the merits of various things, he’s been possessed by an alien jewel. The heroes never knew that it contained a whole civilization because the spirits in it move too fast: even superhuman bodies can’t react fast enough. Except Speed Demon is fast enough, and the new inhabitant of his body wants to experience many pleasures of the flesh, and doesn’t care whom he kills. Can the heroes stop this new atypical Speed Demon? And can Speed Demon manage to keep his identity secret and still fulfill his original contract?
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villain a day

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