Nicholas Scratch

Nicholas Scratch v2

By Sébastien Andrivet

Source of Character: Marvel Universe (chiefly Fantastic Four comics)

Helper(s): Kal-El el Vigilante, Frank Murdock, Darci

Reasons: Scratch is a very useful, if obscure, mystical baddie.

Writeups.org & Amazon.com recommend Fantastic Four visionnaries: George Pérez vol. 1

Quotes

Nicholas Scratch

“I beg to differ, Reed Richards ! I will get away with whatever I please — so long as I hold your child and his governess my captives !”

“Fools ! You have reckoned without my power ! The power of the SATAN- STAFF ! By the spell of flame and bell ! By the place where demons sing ! Hear my cry ! Turn black the sky ! Let the beasts of stone take wing !! Fly my children — fly !! Destroy the Fantastic Four !” (animates a throng of gargoyles)

“Your stamina is truly amazing, Benjamin Grimm ! Anyone else would have fallen long ago ! But not all the stamina in the world can save you from this, fool — the fury of the ARCANE ARTS !” (blasts the Thing)

“You and your companions were all fools, Thing… for thinking you could ever hope to defy our power ! After all, what chance could any mortal being stand against a city ruled by… WITCHES !”

(To Agatha Harkness) “Keep moving, old woman — you have no friends here to help you now. And justice awaits you at the top of those stairs !”

“By the seven-sided circle ! What manner of madness is this !”

“No ! He’s lying ! But my Satan-Staff will soon still his tongue !”

“Impudent fool ! You dare deny my wishes when, with but the slightest gesture, I can destroy you ?”

“Look at you foolish humans… cowering like whipped dogs ! This day should have occurred centuries ago ! We witches were destined to rule this world !”

“In the new underworld order, I’ll be the Sorcerer Supreme.”

“Arise and come forth, Shuma-Gorath ! He Who Sleeps But Shall Awaken… Who feasted on the bones and the flesh and the blood of humankind’s ancestors… One of the Dark Gods, Reed Richards. The incantation that freed Shuma-Gorath needed to have been read by a person pure of heart… And yes, fool, I banished Strange and took his place.”

Game Stats — DC Heroes

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Nicholas Scratch

Dex: 04	Str: 03	Bod: 04	Motivation: Power Lust
Int: 06	Wil: 08	Min: 09	Occupation: Sorcerer, former mayor
Inf: 08	Aur: 09	Spi: 11	Resources {or Wealth}: 006
Init: 018		HP: 060

Powers: Air walking: 02, Magic sense: 06, Sorcery: 12

Skills: Artist (Actor): 05, Occultist: 10

Advantages: Area Knowledge (Multidimensional topology, New Salem)

Connections: New Salem (Low), Salem’s Seven (high)

Drawbacks: SIA toward Power Lust, Creepy Appearance (Large beard, white streaks in hair, deep and distinctive voice), MIA toward overconfidence

Equipment:

Satan-Staff [BODY 12 SPI 12, Sorcery: 10, Note: Sorcery only acts as its own AV when 18 or more APs active — otherwise the wielder uses their most relevant Action Attribute, Misc.: The range of Sorcery spells that can be cast using the Staff when one is not mayor of New Salem is much narrower — conservatively assume that Sorcery can only produce Energy Blast (ML) if the wielder isn’t the mayor ; Misc.: The Satan-Staff has a powerful enchantment that allows the New Salemites to lend their sorcerous might to the wielder as long as they concentrate. This is resolved using the Multiplier Table - check the number of New Salem witches on the lower line, and add twice the corresponding APs to all of the Staff’s Attributes and Powers. The full population of New Salem (about 300-350 people, I would say) thus adds 18 APs, while a single helper adds 2 APs. Technically, this is considered a Gradual Power Loss Limitation tied to not having the New Salemite witches backing the Staff.]
Drugged tea [BODY 01, Hypnotism: 14, Ammo: 05, Limitations: the tea must be willingly drunk by the target ; Hypnotism can only implant the suggestion “your superhuman powers are no longer working”, and this effect will only become active when announced by the person who brewed the tea and heard by the drinkers]

Rituals:

Calling the beasts of stone
Effect: N.A. - activates other enchantments
Casting time: One Phase
Nec. components: Satan-Staff, being in New Salem, presence of enchanted gargoyles
This simple ritual activates the enchantments placed on the gargoyles infesting New Salem.

Contacting Dormammu
Effect: N.A. - requests communication with a specific otherdimensional being, though it may also ensure a better Attitude on its part than normal
Casting time: Unknown, likely hours
Nec. components: Skulls, glowing globes, red paint for pentagrams, a golden cauldron with snake/tentacle motifs, and a green-ish boiling mixture. Most of this is likely intricate and hard to procure.
This involved ritual allows one to contact a major demon, usually to negotiate some deal.

Calling the kobudo demons
Effect: Dimension travel (Summoning): 06
Casting time: Unknown, likely hours
Nec. components: Unknown, but rounding up the Components for the first casting is probably a sizeable project
This Ritual was used off-panel to conjure the “kobudo demons”, who have their own section below.

Calling the outer darkness
Effect: Dimension travel (Conjuring): 14
Casting time: Days
Nec. components: The documented part is the following sacrifices, which have to be done on consecutive days:
- wounding a man inside the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Sorcerer Supreme and painting glyphs on him in his own blood
- ritually sacrificing a beautiful young woman whose initials are all the letter S, then throwing her from a building a specific distance away from the Sanctum Sanctorum (an eligible spot was in the meatpacking district)
- smash the heads of one’s greatest enemies (Scratch cheated and vandalised Alicia Masters’ latest sculpture of the Fantastic Four ; it worked)
- kill exactly 666 butterflies, all at once
- dig up seven recent corpses from their graves and sit them around a table with pentagrams painted on it, in blood (the corpses likely have to have certain characteristics)
This Ritual’s goal was apparently to summon Shuma-Gorath to Earth.

Wizardry !
In his initial appearances, before being depowered by Agatha Harkness, Scratch had a small range of magical Powers at his command. He didn’t have the Powers listed in the stats block yet ; what he actually did was Energy blast (ML): 09, Personality transfer (ML): 12 and Super-ventriloquism (ML): 10 (Ventriloquism also projected a wraith-like manifestation of Scratch’s visage) — and Personality transfer may have Limitations. Neither did he have the listed Rituals - he knew Rituals, but these were all lengthy group projects, such as the eight-persons one that granted powers to the Salem’s Seven to counter the powers of the Fantastic Four. His key asset back then was the Satan-Staff, which allowed him to use full-blown Sorcery as long as he was the mayor.

When he came to Centerville, Scratch didn’t have any Powers and his Rituals were the same as in the paragraph above, plus the Contact Dormammu one. Scratch wielded the Satan-Staff, though it wasn’t as powerful since he was no longer mayor of New Salem or backed by the witches there.

When he came back from his alliance with Dormammu, Nicholas Scratch had the full Sorcery Power noted above.

The Dark Realm
This dimension is a barren badland of black stone, with the occasional mountain. The perpetual night and irregular, silent lightning storms make it difficult to estimate the passage of time. Since Scratch did not seem to need any nourishment and does not mention conjuring food or water, it is likely that the Dark Realm is a Limbo dimension where time does not pass in the conventional sense.

Banishing someone to the Dark Realm is difficult, and getting out even more so — but the place does not seem to be dimensionally very distant, so it presumably has other properties making Dimension Travel difficult. The OV/RV to get in is 18/18, to get out is 20/20 - then the Dimension Travel part proper can take place, against the Travel Distance.

Scratch seemed to travel on foot over the terrible terrain rather than, say, use wizardry to fly. My hypothesis is that the place’s properties impeding Dimensional Travel hinder all magical movement — once you’re inside, any such spell will be hit by a Neutralize (ML): 20 effect whenever one tries to conjure one up.

There exists naturally occurring dimensional loci that can be sensed through sorcerous mental probes, but those are exceedingly rare. Finding them requires tremendous luck and Magic Sense, activating them is done using Occultist (Rituals) against an OV/RV of 09/09, and an activated locus lowers OV/RV to get out to 10/10. Getting out means ending up in some random dimension about 15 APs away from one’s home dimension, so orienting oneself and getting home can be quite an adventure even after one leaves.

Scratch cleverly cast his spells through one such locus, and affected people on Earth from there. Those spells took a shortcut through the Negative Zone, a feat likely made possible by Scratch’s Area Knowledge of dimensional typology. One may conclude that the Dark Realm is but a few APs of dimensional distance away from the Negative Zone ; the distance between the Zone and Earth was effectively zero since Scratch used Richards’ Negative Zone Portal as a conduit, exploiting the fact that the security measures of the portal did not include mystical defenses. He apparently could only cast spells of communication and possession through the locus, though — but it is possible those were the only things he could do without components.

Since none of the dimensional agents of Harkness could determine the source of Scratch’s possession magics, I suspect the properties of the Dark Realm also include a high resistance to magical scrying — the mystical equivalent of an Obscure or Mind Blank affecting the entire dimension, quite possibly in the 18-20 APs range. Scratch’s Magic Sense worked *inside* the Dark Realm, so this effect is likely only applicable for transdimensional effects. This is but an hypothesis, though — perhaps Harkness’ contacts simply did not monitor the Negative Zone, which does not seem to have lots of mystic stuff going on. On the other hand, banishing people into dimensions that cannot be scryed into makes a lot of sense.

How to serve man
Like any good Gothic Horror town, New Salem counts numerous gargoyles on its roofs. All are enchanted, and can be animated by the wielder of the Satan-Staff to attack intruders. Although they thankfully do not Team Attack, there is a lot of them - about 18 to 24 were brought to bear against the FF. The gargoyles have the following stats:

New Salem gargoyles:

Dex: 04	Str: 05	Bod: 04	Motivation: N.A.
Int: 02	Wil: 02	Min: NA	Occupation: Statue
Inf: 03	Aur: 02	Spi: 04	Resources {or Wealth}: N.A.
Init: 009		HP: 000

Powers: Flight: 06, Skin armour: 01

New Salem is apparently mutable — in later appearances it was less Gothic and dusky, and looked more like a quaint, antiquated small Colorado town. Whether the town itself changes, or the witches use illusions, is unknown and arguably irrelevant.

Hi oni, I’m home
In Centerville, “Mayor Nicholas” conjured a group of red-skinned, horned, mystical enforcers to capture Patsy Walker. Since they were likely affiliated with Dormammu, and carried medieval Japanese weapons, I’ll call them the “kobudo demons”. There were six of them, and their normal MO is to suddenly phase through the walls, cast the Snare on their target and keep witnesses at bay with their weapons.

Kobudo demons

“You must not resist, girl !”

Dex: 04	Str: 04	Bod: 04	Motivation: Mercenary
Int: 03	Wil: 02	Min: 04	Occupation: Enforcer
Inf: 03	Aur: 02	Spi: 04	Resources {or Wealth}: ?
Init: 010		HP: 010

Powers: Air-Walking: 01, Dispersal: 06

Bonuses and Limitations:

Air-Walking only while Dispersed (-1)
Dispersal only allows the Demons to pass through normal construction material. It doesn’t provide protection or allow for phasing through exotic matter or energy.

Skills: Weaponry (Traditional Japanese melee and thrown weapons): 05

Equipment:

Assorted Melee Weapons [BODY 06, EV 04 (05 w/STR). They tend to have a different weapon each ; in this case there was one katana, one nunchaku, something likely supposed to be a bisento, and an aiguichi]
Shuriken (x9) [BODY 04, EV 03, Grenade Drawback. One of the two guys without melee weapons carries shuriken]
The last guy does not carry any weapon — he has several one-shot Rituals ready instead. The first such Ritual has a Snare (ML): 06 Effect, and the Snare gets to be its own AV ; the second one-shot does Energy blast (ML): 08 and is also its own AV. This Kobudo Demon likely has to read the demonic equivalent of an ofuda so he can insta-cast later, or maybe it’s an old-school D&D spell-like 1/day power.

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Background

Real name: “Nicholas Scratch” is presumably an alias, since those two terms are euphemisms for the Devil. His actual family name might be Harkness — but then we don’t know anything about the naming conventions of New Salem, and I don’t get the impression Agatha Harkness was actually married.
Other Aliases: The Most High, Agatha Harkness, Mayor Nicholas, Doctor Stephen Strange
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Agatha Harkness (estranged mother), Salem’s Seven (children)
Group affiliation: Former member of the witches of New Salem, former master of the Salem’s Seven
Base Of Operations: Formerly New Salem, later the Dark Realm, later Centerville, later the Dark Dimension, later Mephisto’s Hell, later Agatha Harkness’s former house in Whisper Hill
Height: 6‘3” Weight: 220 lbs
Eyes: Blue Hair: Black w/white streaks

Powers and Abilities

Nicholas Scratch is a male witch (but not a witchalok) who further acquired considerable magical puissance from otherdimensional sources, making him a potent and flexible spellcaster.

His main asset as the mayor of New Salem was the Satan-Staff, an extensively enchanted artefact that can channel the might of the population of New Salem. To achieve this effect, the locals must clasp hands and join in ritual chanting ; as they do so the eyes of all concerned, including Scratch, start blazing a red, unearthly fire. When it channels the power of the entire burg, the Staff is so potent that even the Fantastic Four are powerless against it.

History

Scratch is a native of New Salem, a small town lost in the Colorado Rockies. The place was secretly founded by witches who escaped the Great Persecution during the famous 1692 events in Salem. Over time the small group was joined by various supernatural beings such as seers, warlocks, immortals and even a succubus or two. The secretive New Salemites had policies punishing contact with outsiders by death, and designed the Eliminators - strange blends of robotics and enchantments - to deal with security breaches.

At one point, presumably during the XXth Century, one “Nicholas Scratch” became the Mayor — a position of some mystic importance since the Mayor of New Salem conducts the collective Rituals and is allowed to wield the powerful Satan-Staff. It was perhaps during this era that he had a number of children with New Salem women. Those would grow up to become his faithful allies and enforcers as the Salem’s Seven.

Ruthless, ambitious and charismatic, Scratch saw mayorship as but one step in his rise to power. Scratch wanted to preventively eliminate those who might oppose him ; the most powerful such witch was his own mother, the elderly and mild-mannered Agatha Harkness. Ms. Harkness was at that point living outside of New Salem, the old laws about secrecy and isolation not really being enforced anymore. Mayor Scratch started campaigning to have these regulations recover their bite, and eventually succeeded in making his case.

Sensing that the witches of New Salem were about to eliminate her as a security risk, Harkness went to see the child whom she had cared for in the past, Franklin Richards. Her hope was that Franklin’s enormous psionic powers could be used to solve the situation, but as it turned out Franklin no longer had access to these abilities. Franklin’s former governess’s visit only resulted in both her and the kid being captured, and the New Salemites sent an Eliminator to erase all traces of Harkness’s life in the outside world. This job of thorough elimination meant murdering Harkness’s former employers the Fantastic Four, but the FF destroyed the Eliminator and started investigating to recover Franklin.

The day strangers came into town

Analysing the metal of the Eliminator’s delivery pod, the FF determined the area where it had been mined in. Flying over the perimeter, they eventually spotted a small town not on the map - hidden between peaks and surrounded by a perpetual howling wind. Coming in incognito to check the town’s mining operations records, they noticed various oddities, such as the wind stopping sharply at the city limits or the absence of automobiles.

Not finding anything special in the quaint and charming burg, the FF were about to leave when Harness, from her cell, managed to conjure up a wall of flame to stop them. Assuming that this was the Human Torch’s doing, the New Salemites dropped the illusion. The perpetual dusk reestablished itself, the architecture recovered its Gothic and sinister aspect, and the quaintly dressed folks now all wore green robes with shadows-filled hoods. Scratch, now in full regalia, cleft through the crowd and came to challenge the FF.

The usual measure - unleashing the gargoyles - did not work, and the Mayor channeled the power of the entire chanting population through the Satan-Staff. Even the FF were felled by such a magnitude of mystical malevolence, and they ended in the same gaol as Ms. Harkness and little Franklin. A bailiff then came to read Harkness’s death sentence, and Scratch magicked Franklin away to ensure that the Fantastic Four wouldn’t rebel.

This wasn’t sufficient - the ever-resourceful FF got out of their cell. The Salem’s Seven, enchanted by Scratch to have powers that could counter the Fantastic Four’s, also failed - when it was revealed that Reed Richards was using prostheses to simulate his missing powers, their empowering enchantment petered out. The Four interrupted the execution ceremony, and in a forceful speech Reed Richards revealed that Harkness had never spoken a word about New Salem, and that the current security disaster was all the result of Scratch’s rash actions. The temperamental Scratch exploded with rage, denying everything and striking down an inquisitive New Salemite with an eldritch bolt. He quickly realized his mistake, but he was too late — the ominous, silent crowd clasped hands and started chanting the ritual of the Great Banishment.

Desperate, Scrath petitioned his mother for protection, but she turned him down and the erstwhile mayor was banished to the Dark Realm. Ms. Harkness left with Franklin and the FF ; once they were gone the New Salemites performed another collective Ritual that apparently switched their town into another dimension.

The Ceremony of Renewal

The New Salemites made Agatha Harkness into the new mayor, though she didn’t see the point of governing the town and let the population handle their own business as she continued to live in the outside world. Her responsibilities, to everyone’s apparent satisfaction, were limited to conducting major collective rituals such as the annual Ceremony of Renewal. During one such Ceremony, Harkness invited the FF to come visit, hoping to consolidate an alliance between the Four and New Salem. Franklin, very attached to his former governess and loving the idea of touring a town full of witches, convinced the adults and Johnny to agree to visit.

However, Scratch retained a small group of supporters in town - the enforcers of the Salem’s Seven. They sabotaged the Ceremony, hacking the magical power the locals were pouring into Harkness. They used this energy to allow Scratch to manifest on Earth as a wraith of flame, plunging all mystics present into a trance. Scratch reempowered the Seven (allegedly with three times the power they had before) so the could vanquish the Fantastic Four, and prepared to use the hacked power to exterminate the outside world so his followers could rule over the ruins.

However, Franklin Richards managed to flee as the Seven beat the Four. Hours later, he sneaked back into town to ask “auntie Agatha” to help, but she and all other witches were still transfixed. Franklin started to panic. At this point, he could subconsciously access his powers and a storm of cosmic energy manifested, breaking Scratch’s spell and freeing Harkness and her constituents.

Meanwhile, the Seven prepared to sacrifice the Four on top of the Baxter Building so Scratch could cross over then steal the magical energy of New Salem’s Ceremony of Renewal. The expanding, crimson force field brought forth by the ritual proved impenetrable even to the Avengers, the Defenders or the Army, and access to New York City was thus cut. Scratch could now manifest as a gigantic visage over Manhattan, and cast major spells within the crimson force field’s perimeter.

All this had an unforeseen consequence - little old Agatha was now peeved. Carrying Franklin in her arms to calm his fears, she teleported into Manhattan, sheared through the force circles, had eldritch lightning batter the Seven, swatted aside the offensive spells they hurled at her, walked through the gigantic storms of hail and fire unleashed by her son, and entered the Baxter Building. There, Franklin reflexively broke the spell keeping his family enthralled.

The wrathful Ms. Harkness then resumed her march. She exorcized the Seven’s superhuman powers, erased all memories of the incident from the entire population of New York City, repaired the damage inflicted by the storms sent against her, teleported the relevant individuals back to New Salem, tore the stolen puissance from her wayward son, banished him back to the Dark Realm and made some tea.

The possession of Franklin Richards

In the Dark Realm, Scratch trekked until a stroke of luck brought him close to a mountain with a dimensional locus at its summit. Reaching and unlocking the locus, he managed to work transdimensional wizardry potent enough to affect people on Earth while he was still standing in front of the conduit in the Dark Realm.

The vengeful Scratch possessed Franklin Richards, simulating something very much like a full-on demonic possession with burning red eyes, levitation, eldritch energy and violent poltergeist effects. The harrowed FF managed to sedate Franklin and started looking for help, but Dr. Strange wasn’t on Earth and Agatha Harkness couldn’t locate the source of the possession. An onlooker, Gabriel the Devil-Hunter, offered to perform an old-fashioned exorcism. The exorcism revealed Scratch, who then closed the loci but let Franklin remain possessed. The FF and Harkness were stuck, and had no choice but to go to New Salem to open a gate to the Dark Realm, which had been Scratch’s plan all along. Meanwhile, Gabriel continued the exorcism to neutralise the possessed Franklin.

As the FF, Harkness and Gabriel flew to Colorado, Scratch freed the Seven from New Salem’s prison by possessing a guard. The Seven ambushed and defeated our heroes, allowing Scratch to possess Franklin again when Thornn knocked Gabriel out. Scratch then used Franklin’s psionic abilities to start weakening the frontier between the Dark Realm and Earth ; his plan was to have the two merge and use the altered state of reality to reign supreme. Soon, the local frontier was diffuse enough that Scratch just stepped in back to Earth.

Scratch was once again foiled by his mother. Collaborating with Gabriel as her Ritual assistant, Ms. Harkness turned her sorcerous might and lifeforce into a slowly-advancing eldritch bolt that would consume both herself and her son. Witnessing the old woman’s stone-cold determination, Scratch chickened out at the last moment and broke his enchantments. Harkness then deprived him of his spellcasting abilities, and announced she would now remain in New Salem.

Cheese and crackers !

Scratch somehow stole the Satan-Staff and ended up in California. Using his imposing figure and charisma, he became the mayor of the small town of Centerville, best known as the hometown of comic books star Patsy Walker. ”Mayor Nicholas” allied with Hedy Wolfe, a local who had been the rival of Patsy Walker decades before but was now working to revitalise Centerville. The two community leaders turned the place into a town-sized theme park, simulating a mythical 1950s America reminiscent of the old Patsy Walker comics, with white picket fences, a simple and hearty life, and related fantasies. The concept was apparently quite successful.

“Mayor Nicholas” had other projects going. He learned to wield different magics, unrelated to his heritage as a witch, and which originally seemed to be connected to either the Elder God Set or the Heliopolitan god Seth. He resurrected the Salem Seven, and disguised them as Centerville locals. He allied with the local cell of the xenophobic militia the Sons of the Serpent, and had them gradually kidnap many locals and tourists so Scratch could have them possessed by serpentine demons - possibly the spirits of Serpent-Men.

Things went wrong when Patsy Walker, who had recently escaped from Hell, returned to town as part of a nostalgia TV show. As Hellcat, Walker determined that something was rotten in Centerville and summoned the Avengers as backup. A short time later, Walker and her friends stormed the Sons of the Serpent’s base. Scratch’s pawn and Wolfe’s chief administrator, Russell Daboia, then revealed himself as a Serpent-Man sorcerer, and his acolytes as the Salem Seven. The motley crew of Avengers was first beaten back by Daboia, the Seven and the Sons of the Serpent, but soon turned the tide. After Hedy Wolfe tipped over Daboia’s summoning concoction, the Salem’s Seven and Daboia’s summoned demons were banished. Scratch, however had been careful not to be seen, and the heroes thought that Daboia was the mastermind and the plot was over.

Cat Scratch fever

Walker decided to reestablish herself in Centerville, and her paranormal senses soon confirmed that “Mayor Nicholas” was a dark magician. As many do, Scratch underestimated Hellcat - the fierce Walker thrashed the “kobudo demons” he sent after her, then made a beeline for his hideout, dodged his security’s laser grid interrupted the ritual he was conducting and beat him up. Hellcat then discovered that the serpent motif of Scratch’s previous plot was misdirection - his true master was Dormammu rather than Seth or Set.

Scratch was serving Dormammu in exchange for a promise of power, and was helping the Faltine in his plot to take over a number of hell-like afterlife dimensions. What Scratch was bringing to the table in his dealings with Dormammu remains unclear, though my personal No-Prize hypothesis would be that it had to with Scratch’s apparently unique knowledge of dimensional mechanics demonstrated during his escape from the Dark Realm.

Dormammu banished Hellcat to a prison dimension to get her out of Scratch’s hair, then launched his big surprise attack against the assembled Hell-Lords, with Satannish revealing himself as Dormammu’s secret ally. Scratch and Satannish soon stood at the sides of the triumphant Dormammu, and one of the main Hell-Lords, Mephisto, was banished to a prison dimension.

However, Hellcat had again been underestimated — she brokered deals with the various Hell-Lords and conducted a clever plan in alliance with Umar, resulting in Dormammu being overthrown and losing the Flame of the Faltine. Dormammu and Scratch desperately joined forces and fled in the nick of time, while Satannish was blasted apart by Mephisto.

Things man was not meant to know

Scratch’s subsequent activities are unknown. He parted ways with Dormammu, but the Faltine apparently honoured their deal, and restored and enhanced his human ally’s sorcerous powers. While he was away, Scratch came up with a plan to summon the dark god Shuma-Gorath (He Who Sleeps But Shall Awaken) to Earth.

Some years later, the aftershocks of the Scarlet Witch’s rewriting of reality freed the Salem’s Seven from extradimensional banishment — which apparently was the impetus for Scratch’s return to Earth. Knowing that the mostly-amnesiac Seven would congregate in Agatha Harkness’s old Whisper Hill home, Scratch went there and mystically assumed the guise of his mother, enlisting the Seven in a plot supposedly intended to bring Nicholas Scratch back. With the Seven’s mystical help, Scratch-as-Harkness performed most of the steps of his Ritual to summon Shuma-Gorath, then ambushed Doctor Strange, imprisoned him into a mirror dimension, and prepared to impersonate him too. Scratch then repeated one of his classic performances by possessing Franklin’s younger sister Valeria and having her make death threats against the Fantastic Four.

The Four went to “Strange” for assistance with Valeria, and Scratch-as-Harkness-as-Strange continued to unfold his plan. He had them drink mystical tea that could neutralise their powers on demand, and gave them a scroll with a supposed counterspell to be read by Sue. Everything apparently went fine - the Four left for Whisper Hill, overtook the Seven, and confronted “Harkness”. Sue read the scroll with the “counterspell” to stop “Harkness”’s plot. As it turned out, the scroll was the last step of the Ritual to summon Shuma-Gorath, being an invokation that had to be read under certain circumstances by the pure of heart. Triumphant, Scratch cast aside his Harkness glamour and triggered the magical effect of the tea, robbing the FF of their powers. Meanwhile, Shuma-Gorath started breaching in and pouring itself onto Whisper Hill.

However, the FF were wise to Scratch’s plot - Reed Richards had realised that something was wrong with “Strange” when they consulted about Valeria. Unequipped to deal with matters mystical, he had discreetly contacted their old foe Diablo the Alchemist, freeing him from his place of imprisonement in return for his help. Diablo honoured his promise, fishing Strange out of the prison dimension Scratch had cast him into then preparing for a confrontation with Shuma-Gorath along with the Sorcerer Supreme. The Master of the Mystic Art and the Alchemist unexpectedly appeared in Whisper Hill and Strange took Shuma-Gorath to Stonehenge, where he had banished the dark god during their previous confrontation. As to Diablo, he reverse-engineered the scroll that had been given to Sue Storm-Richards to produce a banishing spell, and filled the purity of heart requirement by having Franklin and Valeria Richards read it.

As the two mystics dealt with the dark god, Reed Richards negotiated with the Salem’s Seven, pointing out that Scratch wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice them to He Who Sleeps But Shall Awaken. Scratch’s children agreed with Richards when Scratch refused to help free one of them from Shuma-Gorath’s tentacles, and allied with the Four to take down their father. Scratch was banished along with Shuma-Gorath.

Finding himself in Hell, the fuming Scratch swore to escape ASAP — but within minutes was greeted by Mephisto, who offered to recruit him as a warrior for a dawning war among the Hell dimensions. Given how their previous meeting had taken place, Scratch had little choice but to agree, and he hasn’t been seen since.

Description

See illustration. Like all New Salemites, Scratch has a faint golden red glow in his eyes, which lights up when he uses his power. During the execution of Harkness’ death sentence, Scratch wore a ceremonial helmet ; as “Mayor Nicholas” he wore a dark business suit.

Personality

Nicholas Scratch is a powerful, subtle, overbearing warlock who harbours but scorn for more mundane folks. Len Wein gave him great Stan Lee-style grandiose villain dialogue - see the quotes above.

While Scratch’s plans and imprecations are complicated, his personality and goals are straightforward - he’s consumed by his Power Lust. He has no loyalty toward anything, not even his own kin, and if he’s thwarted in his quest for power he will immediately explode in murderous rage. Tremendously proud and arrogant, he’s very big on gaining revenge on anybody who opposes him, carrying grudges for decades. The more he’s vanquished, the grander his plan for revenge will be.

Scratch has little honour — he will reliably strike at the weakest spot of his adversaries (such as children), and routinely use underhanded tactics. Note from the History section the constant use of duplicity, manipulation, blackmail and decoys.

DC Universe History

Nicholas Scratch actually works fine as somebody who routinely operates both in the DCU and MU, using unique loci discovered in the Dark Realms to commute between the two and bring the Salem’s Seven with him. In the DCU he might have connections with the pre-dead and a vendetta against the former members of Infinity, Inc. due to previous defeats.

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