Davies
Legend
Gideon Gold
The second oldest of a family of five children living in the Cabrini-Green projects in the 1960s, Eduard Berry idolized his older brother Terrence growing up. Terrence was smart, funny, canny and tough, all the things that Eddie wanted to be, struggled and often failed to be. However, when Terrence voluntarily enlisted in the army in 1969 -- some biographies have falsely stated that he was forcibly enlisted in exchange for avoiding jail time -- the brothers had their first real argument. What was his brother hoping to accomplish by going overseas to fight a war that Eddie knew he didn't believe in? "I'm finding a way out of this," Terry told him, and then he was gone.
Whatever he'd hoped to find, what Terrence Berry found was a horrific death in the Battle of Vietnam. And Eddie was left to mourn, to rage ... and then, listening to a song, ironically sung by another victim of that tragedy, to find the same answer as his brother: any way out of the vicious circle was worth taking. In 1973, on his twentieth birthday, he also enlisted in the army, went through Basic, and was sent to South Vietnam to continue to support that fragile peace that had been bought with all those lives. He was not a particularly good soldier, and spent a good amount of time in the stockade, but he did his duty as best as he could.
Eight months into his tour of duty, his patrol encountered a bizarre phenomena left over from the Battle. The nation was littered with such things, detritus from the bewildering powers of Stardust or remnants of the other heroes and villains who'd perished here. Ordered to avoid contact with the pool of golden light, Private Berry obeyed the letter of the command while satisfying his own curiosity by examining it more closely than was safe, as demonstrated when he slipped and fell into the pool.
Emerging from the pool, Eddie found that he'd been transformed into a being of liquid metal that exhibited some of the properties of mercury and gold. He was promptly evacuated to a field hospital where his new condition was studied and examined, with the ultimate result that he was given a medical discharge from the army and returned to the United States. Gideon Gold, as he now named himself, was one of several new superheroes who had their origins in the post-Battle period whom the U.S. government urged the Institute to accept as new members. The refusal of the surviving members to even consider this was one of the reasons that the organization finally shut down.
This annoyed Gideon Gold quite a bit. Despite the inhumanity of his new existence, he found it thrilling, and hoped that this could be the ticket, not only out of the vicious circle, but to an interesting life as well. He attempted to join a number of the other teams that developed in this era, but found himself a poor fit for all of them. The ego that he'd developed, possibly due to his transformation and the way he'd been treated as valuable afterwards, tended to annoy his would-be associates.
Frustrated, he finally decided to go it alone, as Gideon Gold, Professional Adventurer, available for private security, private investigations, charitable demonstrations, and pretty much anything else that would cover his expenses. (While apparently mercenary, he sent most of what he made, beyond what was needed to support a fairly frugal life-style, back to his family in Chicago, helping to ease their desperate circumstances. He also donated to numerous charities.)
In the late 1970s, Gold found that he was receiving a great deal of work for people whose motives were confusing and unclear, and attempted to suss out whom he was dealing with. So it came to pass that he encountered agents of the Pythonian Insurgency for the first time, and was persuaded, or tricked as he often insisted, into viewing their intentions more favorably than he should have. They appealed to his lingering anger over the death of his brother and the way that he had felt abandoned by the government after their attempt to insert him into the Institute had failed. He would later claim that it was against his better instincts that he decided to work for them, operating as the muscle of a team of agents led by a Polish-American insurance investigator-turned-mercenary.
To his credit, the events of 1982 shocked Gold to his core, and he seriously questioned his allegiance to the organization. Unfortunately, the escape of Hazard two years before that had apparently taught the Insurgency a few things about internal security, and Gold suspected that his own attempts to abscond would be thwarted much more effectively. However, the leaders of the organization picked up on his dissatisfaction, and responded by removing him from the active duty list and using him as an entertainer and morale booster. He found this disgusting and unpleasant work, as his own morale couldn't have been worse.
Finally, in 1984, during a raid by JSOT on the Insurgency's base in Hollywood, where he happened to be situated, Gold took the opportunity presented to him and surrendered without a fight, offering to provide the Task Force with every bit of intelligence about the Insurgency that he had, not even asking for any special consideration in exchange -- he was that sick of the Pythons. He wound up being held incommunicado for the next nine years, being interviewed by investigators. Accounts of how much damage this defection did to the Pythons are mixed; understandably, Gold claimed that he helped to cripple the organization, but there's evidence that how much he'd been allowed to find out had been strictly controlled. Notably, he had no idea that the Insurgency was based in Delphi.
Regardless, in the aftermath of the Insurgency's downfall and his testimony against its various captured leaders, Gold was given a suspended sentence for his own role in the affair, and entered the FBI's Witness Protection Program. He spent the next several years living a quiet life in Nebraska, with occasional limited contact with his surviving family. He wrote a book about his life, which proved to be a best-seller, and saw it adapted as a movie, with Christopher Judge playing his role. Despite the wealth this produced for him, he found this existence to be the antithesis of the interesting life he desired.
During Cerebron's attack, he helped to protect Omaha as best he could, suffering serious injuries in battle. As a consequence, he was out of the Program, but when he finally recovered, he knew that the time had come for him to be the superhero he'd always meant to be. He led a somewhat undistinguished career as a solo hero between 2001 and 2005, when he came up with the idea to create a new Grim Brigade, composed of people, like himself, who'd been involuntarily transformed. They were just starting to do a bit of good for the world when they were all slaughtered during Billie Zane's 2006 coup d'état.
Or nearly all. Gold himself was melted into a puddle of the material that made up his body, apparently ending his life ... until the telepath Helice, assisting in the clean-up of the assault on the group's Denver headquarters, discovered to her horror that there was still a consciousness within that puddle. It was a mind that had long since descended into catatonia, but it was nevertheless a mind. No method tried so far has succeeded in rousing Gold to awareness, and a full third of the mass of his body is gone. If it was not Billie Zane's intention to devise a fate worse than death for a traitor to the Pythonian Insurgency and the founder of a new Grim Brigade, she nevertheless succeeded.
Gideon Gold -- PL 9
Abilities:
STR 10 | STA 10 | AGL 1 | DEX 0 | FGT 6 | INT 0 | AWE 1 | PRE 2
Powers:
Golden Body: Elongation 4 (120 feet); Permanent Growth 6 (+6 Strength, +6 Stamina, -3 Dodge, -3 Parry), Density Increase; Immunity 21 (acid damage, aging, life support); Insubstantial 1 (liquid); Protection 2 - 50 points
Advantages:
Benefit 2 (well-off), Chokehold, Connected, Evasion, Fast Grab, Improved Grab, Improved Hold, Improved Trip, Power Attack, Ultimate Effort (Toughness)
Skills:
Close Combat: Unarmed 2 (+8), Expertise: Military 4 (+4), Expertise: Streetwise 6 (+6), Insight 4 (+5), Intimidation 6 (+8), Perception 6 (+7), Persuasion 2 (+4).
Offense:
Initiative +1
Unarmed +8 (Close Damage 10, Reach 120 feet)
Defense:
Dodge 5, Parry 6, Fortitude 12, Toughness 12, Will 7
Totals:
Abilities 60 + Powers 50 + Advantages 11 + Skills 15 + Defenses 18 = 154 points
Complications:
Thrills--Motivation. Fame (or infamy in some quarters.) Soft Spot for Fellow Outcasts. Temper.
The second oldest of a family of five children living in the Cabrini-Green projects in the 1960s, Eduard Berry idolized his older brother Terrence growing up. Terrence was smart, funny, canny and tough, all the things that Eddie wanted to be, struggled and often failed to be. However, when Terrence voluntarily enlisted in the army in 1969 -- some biographies have falsely stated that he was forcibly enlisted in exchange for avoiding jail time -- the brothers had their first real argument. What was his brother hoping to accomplish by going overseas to fight a war that Eddie knew he didn't believe in? "I'm finding a way out of this," Terry told him, and then he was gone.
Whatever he'd hoped to find, what Terrence Berry found was a horrific death in the Battle of Vietnam. And Eddie was left to mourn, to rage ... and then, listening to a song, ironically sung by another victim of that tragedy, to find the same answer as his brother: any way out of the vicious circle was worth taking. In 1973, on his twentieth birthday, he also enlisted in the army, went through Basic, and was sent to South Vietnam to continue to support that fragile peace that had been bought with all those lives. He was not a particularly good soldier, and spent a good amount of time in the stockade, but he did his duty as best as he could.
Eight months into his tour of duty, his patrol encountered a bizarre phenomena left over from the Battle. The nation was littered with such things, detritus from the bewildering powers of Stardust or remnants of the other heroes and villains who'd perished here. Ordered to avoid contact with the pool of golden light, Private Berry obeyed the letter of the command while satisfying his own curiosity by examining it more closely than was safe, as demonstrated when he slipped and fell into the pool.
Emerging from the pool, Eddie found that he'd been transformed into a being of liquid metal that exhibited some of the properties of mercury and gold. He was promptly evacuated to a field hospital where his new condition was studied and examined, with the ultimate result that he was given a medical discharge from the army and returned to the United States. Gideon Gold, as he now named himself, was one of several new superheroes who had their origins in the post-Battle period whom the U.S. government urged the Institute to accept as new members. The refusal of the surviving members to even consider this was one of the reasons that the organization finally shut down.
This annoyed Gideon Gold quite a bit. Despite the inhumanity of his new existence, he found it thrilling, and hoped that this could be the ticket, not only out of the vicious circle, but to an interesting life as well. He attempted to join a number of the other teams that developed in this era, but found himself a poor fit for all of them. The ego that he'd developed, possibly due to his transformation and the way he'd been treated as valuable afterwards, tended to annoy his would-be associates.
Frustrated, he finally decided to go it alone, as Gideon Gold, Professional Adventurer, available for private security, private investigations, charitable demonstrations, and pretty much anything else that would cover his expenses. (While apparently mercenary, he sent most of what he made, beyond what was needed to support a fairly frugal life-style, back to his family in Chicago, helping to ease their desperate circumstances. He also donated to numerous charities.)
In the late 1970s, Gold found that he was receiving a great deal of work for people whose motives were confusing and unclear, and attempted to suss out whom he was dealing with. So it came to pass that he encountered agents of the Pythonian Insurgency for the first time, and was persuaded, or tricked as he often insisted, into viewing their intentions more favorably than he should have. They appealed to his lingering anger over the death of his brother and the way that he had felt abandoned by the government after their attempt to insert him into the Institute had failed. He would later claim that it was against his better instincts that he decided to work for them, operating as the muscle of a team of agents led by a Polish-American insurance investigator-turned-mercenary.
To his credit, the events of 1982 shocked Gold to his core, and he seriously questioned his allegiance to the organization. Unfortunately, the escape of Hazard two years before that had apparently taught the Insurgency a few things about internal security, and Gold suspected that his own attempts to abscond would be thwarted much more effectively. However, the leaders of the organization picked up on his dissatisfaction, and responded by removing him from the active duty list and using him as an entertainer and morale booster. He found this disgusting and unpleasant work, as his own morale couldn't have been worse.
Finally, in 1984, during a raid by JSOT on the Insurgency's base in Hollywood, where he happened to be situated, Gold took the opportunity presented to him and surrendered without a fight, offering to provide the Task Force with every bit of intelligence about the Insurgency that he had, not even asking for any special consideration in exchange -- he was that sick of the Pythons. He wound up being held incommunicado for the next nine years, being interviewed by investigators. Accounts of how much damage this defection did to the Pythons are mixed; understandably, Gold claimed that he helped to cripple the organization, but there's evidence that how much he'd been allowed to find out had been strictly controlled. Notably, he had no idea that the Insurgency was based in Delphi.
Regardless, in the aftermath of the Insurgency's downfall and his testimony against its various captured leaders, Gold was given a suspended sentence for his own role in the affair, and entered the FBI's Witness Protection Program. He spent the next several years living a quiet life in Nebraska, with occasional limited contact with his surviving family. He wrote a book about his life, which proved to be a best-seller, and saw it adapted as a movie, with Christopher Judge playing his role. Despite the wealth this produced for him, he found this existence to be the antithesis of the interesting life he desired.
During Cerebron's attack, he helped to protect Omaha as best he could, suffering serious injuries in battle. As a consequence, he was out of the Program, but when he finally recovered, he knew that the time had come for him to be the superhero he'd always meant to be. He led a somewhat undistinguished career as a solo hero between 2001 and 2005, when he came up with the idea to create a new Grim Brigade, composed of people, like himself, who'd been involuntarily transformed. They were just starting to do a bit of good for the world when they were all slaughtered during Billie Zane's 2006 coup d'état.
Or nearly all. Gold himself was melted into a puddle of the material that made up his body, apparently ending his life ... until the telepath Helice, assisting in the clean-up of the assault on the group's Denver headquarters, discovered to her horror that there was still a consciousness within that puddle. It was a mind that had long since descended into catatonia, but it was nevertheless a mind. No method tried so far has succeeded in rousing Gold to awareness, and a full third of the mass of his body is gone. If it was not Billie Zane's intention to devise a fate worse than death for a traitor to the Pythonian Insurgency and the founder of a new Grim Brigade, she nevertheless succeeded.
Gideon Gold -- PL 9
Abilities:
STR 10 | STA 10 | AGL 1 | DEX 0 | FGT 6 | INT 0 | AWE 1 | PRE 2
Powers:
Golden Body: Elongation 4 (120 feet); Permanent Growth 6 (+6 Strength, +6 Stamina, -3 Dodge, -3 Parry), Density Increase; Immunity 21 (acid damage, aging, life support); Insubstantial 1 (liquid); Protection 2 - 50 points
Advantages:
Benefit 2 (well-off), Chokehold, Connected, Evasion, Fast Grab, Improved Grab, Improved Hold, Improved Trip, Power Attack, Ultimate Effort (Toughness)
Skills:
Close Combat: Unarmed 2 (+8), Expertise: Military 4 (+4), Expertise: Streetwise 6 (+6), Insight 4 (+5), Intimidation 6 (+8), Perception 6 (+7), Persuasion 2 (+4).
Offense:
Initiative +1
Unarmed +8 (Close Damage 10, Reach 120 feet)
Defense:
Dodge 5, Parry 6, Fortitude 12, Toughness 12, Will 7
Totals:
Abilities 60 + Powers 50 + Advantages 11 + Skills 15 + Defenses 18 = 154 points
Complications:
Thrills--Motivation. Fame (or infamy in some quarters.) Soft Spot for Fellow Outcasts. Temper.
