Libertad
Legend
This section is by far the largest in the book, so we’re doing it in several parts, with this post covering the villainous groups. 1e is peculiar in being the only Edition that has no villains that can’t be found in later versions, so for listing Edition changes I’ll note only the later ones for ease of writing. The transition to 2e added a lot more antagonists, although 3e has a few of which are missing, and in terms of the timeskip made quite a few big changes to several of them. Pretty much every villain missing from the current Edition is due to being previously statted in other supplements (such as Mastermind in Threat Report), the RPG’s Patreon page, or in the case of Doc Otaku he retired from supervillainy to run a robotics company. 1e and 2e split antagonists into groups/teams first, then individuals next but were otherwise alphabetical. 3e tends to go back and forth: for instance, the members of the Crime League and Tyranny Syndicate are listed under their respective groups (C and T) although Overshadow, the leader of SHADOW, is listed well before his organization under “O.” I much prefer 2nd Edition’s organization.
The Annihilists (3e) are the various rulers of the Terminus regions that pledged allegiance to Omega. Although their full number is left to the GM, the four detailed here are the most feared and infamous. Each shares a story of how they came to serve the Lord of the Terminus, usually resulting in helping hasten the fall of their now-destroyed homeworlds. Although they are very powerful (averaging PL 13-14), the Annihilists lack the desire for teamwork, instead preferring to use their privilege to jockey for favor and undermine the others via wargames and schemes. Shadivan Steelgrave is a fallen power armor wearing superhero who instigated a civil war among superhumans due to a prophecy proclaiming planetary destruction. He is now the creator and maintainer of the Omegadrones, once-living creatures turned into brainwashed cyborgs to serve as the Terminus’ shock troops. Madrigal Martinet was a superhero who sought revenge against the Warlord, a tyrant who slaughtered her people. She ended up making an alliance with Omega to achieve this, and is secretly in love with Mandragora. Mandragora hailed from a world where dragons and humans lived side by side in a modern world, and was proclaimed to be the one who would bring both people together when gaining the powers of dragonfire. He fought against Omega but failed, and swore fealty to him upon defeat in combat. Physician Friendly was a scientific genius who managed to save his world against a threat known as the Nanoknights, but in the end it wasn’t a world worth living in. He viewed cosmic destruction as a mercy killing, falling under Omega’s sway and becoming his chief torturer and biologist. Physician Friendly is a demented sadist who dresses in a stereotypical doctor’s outfit, accompanied by robotic Nightmare Nurses.
The Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign are cultists who worship the Unspeakable One, aka the Yellow King, aka the Lovecraftian god Hastur. The cult’s origins began in the Serpent People empire of Lemuria, sprouting up as a hidden group among the otherwise Yig-devout reptiles. When Lemuria fell in war against Atlantis, Yig’s example was forgotten, with the Unspeakable One reigning supreme among the Serpent People survivors. When humans evolved the Brotherhood began recruiting them, and when superheroes grew in number in the 20th century the cult clashed often against them. The Brotherhood is rather brief in comparison to other entries: they have a listed goal (summon the Unspeakable One to Earth-Prime who is a Power Level X* entity), stat blocks for PL 4 Serpent People and suggested traits for human cultists, and mention of the Serpent Scepter artifact which is a powerful item that can mind-control reptiles and change targets into Serpent People at rank 20 effects. Although this is extremely powerful by the game rules, it corrupts the user over time.
*term for a plot device beyond game statistics.
The Crime League arose in the 1940s, where the foes of various superheroes banded together due to there being strength in numbers. They served as archenemies to the Freedom League, both as an organization and to individual members. The Crime League’s primary goal is profit and self-enrichment as a group, although individuals often have their own personal goals. The core membership that has stayed the same across Editions are Devil Ray (US Navy deserter who absconded with an armored MANTA Suit), Dr. Stratos (weather-controlling meteorologist who thinks himself a god), Medea (of Greek myth, a sadistic and misandrist mage), Orion the Hunter (non-powered but highly skill gun-for-hire who gets a thrill in hunting superhumans), and Wildcard (jester-dressed guy who can control probability but whose luck eventually runs out). Edition-specific members of the League include Dr. Simian (2e and later, ape granted intelligence by experiments in ASTRO Labs, wishes to free the rest of the animal kingdom and take revenge on humanity for their crimes against nature), Hiroshima Shadow (2e only, city spirit who spawned from the atomic bombing of Japan and has an all-consuming hate of Westerners), the Maestro (2e, musician-themed scientist who hates modern music), and Tom Cypress (imagine a cross between Solomon Grundy and Swamp Thing). One special case is the Freebooter, who was a solo villain in 2e. Jared McGinnis is a wheelchair-bound hacker who built a pirate android to go out and commit crimes. His motivations were hacktivism, targeting political and corporate figures whose wealth and influence allowed them to avoid the consequences of the law, although Jared’s own elitism burned a lot of bridges with other hacktivist groups. He would eventually join the Crime League as a technical consultant, enjoying the wealth gained, although he still has a bit of a moral compass and the book notes there may be circumstances which cause him to defect.
In terms of 3e metaplot, Devil Ray ended up receiving a “gift” from Dagon which allows him to control aquatic creatures but is gradually transforming him into a monster which he takes pain to reverse; Dr. Stratos designated Captain Thunder’s son, Thunderbolt, as his new archenemy; Orion seeks to “train” the newest Lady Liberty into a worthy opponent, viewing her as far below the prior one’s example; Medea discovered that Wildcard is channeling a kind of “chaos energy” and his keeping a close eye on him; Maestro left to become a solo villain but challenged the Devil to a musical contest at a midnight crossroads, winning and gaining youth and inherent musical powers rather than relying upon technology. As for Hiroshima Shadow, his fate is unmentioned.
The Factor Four (2e) are the archenemies of the Atom Family. They were rival explorers during the 1970s who gained elemental powers from a set of mystical artifacts known as the Prime Elements. Their crimes center around gaining access to magical and scientific knowledge and devices in unethical ways, such as kidnapping and theft. The Factor Four are locked into their current forms, which while granting them power makes it difficult for them to interact and operate in mainstream society. They are made up of Professor Fathom (water powers, amoral scientist), Granite (earth powers, the muscle of the group), Pyre (fire powers, getaway driver), and Sylph (air powers, Fathom’s wife and the least happy about her new form).
The Foundry is an underground arms dealing ring specializing in high-tech weapons and devices they sell to the highest bidder. They operate secret facilities all over the world which are connected by teleportation platforms and heavily guarded by legions of robots. Their leader is Talos, an intelligence android built by the Greek God Hephaestus in ancient times, and was a former friend of Daedalus before becoming resentful at the inventor’s refusal to build him a mate. This led the robot to conclude that mortals were secretly fearful and jealous of his “superior” artificial nature.
Beneath Talos is Keres, an android specialized for assassination purposes and can take various humanoid forms, and Scylla, an intelligent computer system who digitally oversees the security systems of all Foundry facilities. ECHIDNA is a giant physical AI that forms the “core” of the Foundry’s headquarters and can build a wide variety of robots which it teleports to various Foundry sites. The expendable “minions” of the Foundry are the Myrmidons, robots which are sold to the organization’s many customers and come in various models (basic, stealth, combat, and war). As of 3e the Foundry encountered some worthy competition of weapons designers with a similar organization, the Ghostworks, who are operating out of Emerald City. It is unknown whether Talos will seek to destroy or incorporate them into his organization.
The Labyrinth (2e) is a clandestine gathering of the world’s most powerful and unethical business leaders, led by Taurus who is the minotaur of Greek myth and richest man in the world…and who in turns worships Hades, making that deity the technical “leader” of the organization. The Labyrinth’s network of businesses can influence world politics via applying for government contracts for various projects, with deep ties in the military-industrial complex and biotech firms. The organization’s greatest asset is the DNAscent Process, a series of drug, genetic, and cybernetic therapies that can grant humans temporary (and in rare cases permanent) superpowers, often relating to physical enhancement. The scientists responsible are sequestered between various corporations and Pentagon projects so nobody has the entire blueprint, and Taurus retains a tight control of the approval process so as not to overpopulate the world with superhumans he cannot easily control.
Taurus himself is your typical “super-strength brick” but high ranks in various intellectual skills. There’s a “team” of operatives the Labyrinth can deploy for sensitive missions: Ms. Scarlet is Taurus’ second in combat and trains DNAscent subjects in combat training; Dr. Peter Hanks is one of the DNAscent scientists who has a pair of gorilla arms growing out of his sides; Dr. Victor Reeds works on cybernetic enhancements and inventions and has his own inbuilt enhancements; Access is a thief who can move, sense, and speak to machines; Dybbuk is a psychic and former Mob assassin who can mind control and possess people via telepathy; Payback is a Hades-worshiper who has a cybernetic arm granting him super-strength and can nullify the powers of others; Sidetrack is a DNAscent subject who can teleport and blind others with bursts of light; Tamper is a former IRA terrorist and DNAscent subject brainwashed into thinking that he’s assassinating sinners on behalf of the Catholic Church and can nullify all manner of technological devices and powers; and Targette is a former gang member and Sidetrack’s girlfriend, capable of absorbing harm and channeling it back as mental blasts.
Larceny, Inc. (2e) are four DNAscent subjects who managed to escape incarceration by the Labyrinth and decided to use their powers to get revenge on the biotech firm responsible for their captivity…and make some sweet, sweet cash on the side. Their headquarters are split between three converted lofts, with shell companies purchasing vacant apartments for emergencies. They work well as a team, not suffering from the vindictive one upmanship of some other teams here like the Annihilists and Tyranny Syndicate. Get-Away is the party speedster, a devoted hedonist and thrill junkie; Grab is a professional con artist whose powers allow her to stretch and bounce; Smash is super-strong bruiser with anger issues; and Trap Door is the leader of the team who can teleport and fights with a Kinetistaff that can deliver ranged blasts. Although they are wanted by the authorities, Larceny Inc. has done a lot to disrupt the schemes of the Labyrinth, so they’re more on the anti-hero side of things than being outright villains.
The Power Corps (2e) are a simple entry. Eight soldiers who were former minions of the supervillain Mastermind who decided to go on their own, acting as hired muscle. They are identical in terms of stats and have the typical “Iron Man” assortment of abilities: ranged blasts, radio communication, flight, super-strength, and environmental immunities.
The Psions (2e) are a family of psychics whose patriarch, Artur Zion, is a Jewish man who fled Germany to live in the United States. He naturally hated the Nazis and their proclaimed race-science, although his paranormal research led him to believe that the sudden appearances of super-powered beings represented the next step in human evolution. When his research didn’t coincide with these findings, he resorted to desperate measures such as using criminals to create potential paranormals and even experimenting on himself which ended up giving him psychic powers. He soon cultivated a family of psychics who are little more than a cult, teaching them that they are humanity’s next step and that the rest of the world is unable to appreciate or understand their greatness.
The Psions are a six person group themed around psychic powers. Ironically Professor Psion is the least powerful of them at PL 8 (others are mostly PL 10, generic telepathy abilities). The rest include Empath (emotion control and healing, field leader), Ember (pyrokinetic, doesn’t like the other family members), Jump (teleporter, privately doubts the family ideology), Aura (illusionist and telepath, another person most likely to break out of the family), and Argent (telekinetic, Aura’s twin sister who is torn between furthering the family cause and going on her own independently).
SHADOW, or Secret Hierarchy of Agents for Domination Over the World, is our setting’s HYDRA equivalent. Its leader, Overshadow, is a former Nazi SS officer who is the long-line of reincarnated lives of the Egyptian sorcerer Tan-Aktor and archenemy of the Scarab. His various non-Aryan heritages made him more clued in to the reality of things, with the text mentioning that personal empowerment comes secondary to ideology and that “racial or cultural superiority would be second to his superiority over all humanity.” Although SHADOW is now a more generic “take over the world” organization, it still has many ties and supporters of far-right groups. Such as aiding the South American dictatorships Nazi war criminals escaped to (detailed in Atlas of Earth-Prime), the South African super-soldier program mentioned earlier in this review, and Overshadow has an on-again off-again arm’s length alliance with Superior (detailed later) who was der Ubermensch and Hitler’s Aryan poster boy. So basically they’re still Nazis and Overshadow is an alt-right grifter pretending to be a “non-political moderate.”
SHADOW operates as a comic book terrorist organization. They get up to all sorts of villainous stuff, and their rank-and-file are programmed clones with no identity or individuality, and they have a secret base beneath Antarctica called Nifelheim. SHADOW’s upper leadership is the Penumbra, consisting of Overshadow and some other supervillains of various themes (a few of which have stats). Such examples include the Crimson Mask, who leads the Thule Society and assists in occult development, and Ragnarok, a Nordic half-god summoned to Earth by Overshadow and is the “heavy hitter” of the Penumbra. Two other villains detailed in this book, Taurus and Dr. Sin, are on as advisory members in a “keep your enemies closer” deal. The various Editions added more to SHADOW over time. In 1e the group didn’t even have Overshadow, Nazi origins, or detailed members, being a more general “secret criminal empire” for the GM to fill in the details. By 2e they were greatly expanded upon, and in 3e the Penumbra members (save one for the GM to create) were given descriptions. Additionally the organization’s clone agents gained specialized “super-clone” designs with themed superpowers along with telepathic communication due to experiments from a mind-virus known as Legion.
Additionally, they were listed as a separate entry in prior Editions, but given their relationship to SHADOW I’ll include them as part of them. Overthrow began as a leftist terrorist cell during the Cold War to strike out at Western governments, although in modern times they became completely coopted by SHADOW. As the general public is not aware of the rise of SHADOW, the fascists use these supposed anti-capitalists as a front to distract from their parent organization’s true plans.
The Tyranny Syndicate are the Freedom League of Anti-Earth, where history and the rotation of the sun are uncannily “backward.” Here the Centurion became the Praetor, who viewed his powers as giving him the right to rule over the world as a new Caesar. He made alliances with other supervillains, forming the Tyranny Syndicate which soon became the sole global superpower, with most resistance (superpowered and otherwise) ruthlessly squashed. Praetor was eventually betrayed and murdered by the rest of the Syndicate, and their leaders have a high turnover rate: Captain Thunderbolt murdered Praetor, and was then murdered by Dr. Daedalus. The Syndicate’s members are basically evil versions of the Freedom League, and barring one exception (Madame Sin is evil Raven and has her own stat block) they use the stats of their Earth-Prime counterparts. Their backstories are understandably different: Dr. Daedalus gained immortality by sacrificing his own son to the Underworld, while Deathbolt was Captain Thunderbolt’s slacker son who stole his father’s powers via the assistance of Praetrix (herself a clone of the Praetor’s DNA).
3rd Edition expanded on Anti-Earth greatly in addition to providing more metaplot. Lady Anarchy, a former member of the Tyranny Syndicate, went rogue and unleashed a Chaos Storm in Viridian City in the Pacific Northwest, creating a new generation of superhumans to upset the status quo. We also have details on the Panopticon, the Syndicate’s aerial headquarters that is equipped with orbital weaponry that can fire anywhere on Earth’s surface. Then there’s the Academy, which is basically the Claremont Academy and tasked with indoctrinating young superhumans to be loyal to the Syndicate. We also have three heroic groups on Anti-Earth opposing the Tyranny Syndicate: the Courage Foundation (Crime League but only a few low-level lackeys remain), LIGHT (Liberty’s Insurgency for Goodness, Hope, and Truth, basically good-guy SHADOW), and Mind-Master (Mastermind’s good counterpart and sole remaining superhero of Anti-Earth, once got so depressed he tried to destroy this reality via one of Omega’s bombs via the Time of Crisis adventure).
Thoughts So Far: Overall I like the various villain teams, although some rise to the occasion better. My favorites are the Crime League and Tyranny Syndicate; the former are a great assortment of villains who can easily work as a team or individually for their own plots, with distinct personalities for each of them. The Tyranny Syndicate provides not just an evil Freedom League and an excuse to use that team’s stat blocks against your gaming group, but the entire concept of a “mirror world” allows for the fun idea of making evil doppelgangers of the PCs. The Foundry isn’t a team per se, but also have wide reach via providing a source for robot henchmen and all kinds of doomsday weapons to threaten your superheroes and the cities they defend. The Labyrinth also occupies a similar niche via its DNAscent program, and “rich evil corporations” are a broad enough concept to use for a variety of adventures.
A few fell short of the mark for me: the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign is rather lacking in specific members and superpowered stat blocks unlike the other entries, with the human Cultist stat block and Serpent People being too low PL to menace actual superheroes. The Power Corps are fine as nameless “powersuit soldiers,” but they feel too one-note in comparison to the stronger write-ups of the other teams with individual villains and their backstories.
Finally this is more of a personal taste brought by IRL events rather than a mark against them as a concept, but SHADOW hits different now. As an American, seeing 74 million of your fellow citizens vote for a former sitting President who told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by is a very better pill to swallow. So is seeing a large percentage of the Party who still support that President believing in reflavored anti-Semitic blood libel and other racist conspiracy theories.. The clone armies and Antarctic bases feel a bit too cartoonish and Silver Agey, while the “no longer racist but still #1 with racists” thing and using the apparent threat of left-wing terrorists as cover more closely mirrors how the modern alt-right deploys tactics. SHADOW thus feels in a strange in-between state, where on one hand it makes fascism into a rare and distant threat bound to lose and “isn’t really that racist,” while still having their rather explicit symbology such as the redesigned SS thunderbolt as a logo and the obsession with Nordic naming conventions. I perfectly understand the need and desire to have a punchable Nazi group for superhero games,* but personally speaking it’s a bit hard to have them as a sort of Silver Age style “evil secret group who has to rely on artificial clones” when you know that in the real world they can easily find recruits among mainstream society.
*The Agents of Freedom sourcebook notes that the SHADOW clone’s lack of individuality and desires is to make them cannon fodder one can kill with less moral reservations.
Join us next time as we cover the first group of Solo Villains!
