Character Sheet
Colonel Ling
Category : Comic Books
Subcategory : Marvel universe
Type : Villain
Game System : DC Heroes (Blood of Heroes S.E.)
Colonel Ling v1.2
Source of Character: Avengers v1 #42-44
Helper(s): Darci
Reasons: This writeup was done as part of our Black Widow work. It has now been rewritten from fresh research to avoid quoting Marvunapp.com in one section.
Game Stuff
Colonel Ling
"We have no need to defeat him, fool ! Yet, for all his vaunted strength, he shall never bother us again ! Observe... and tremble !"
"It is with pleasure, comrade general, that I welcome you to my nation's most secret base !"
"So... the Black Widow somehow deceived the lie detector ! Thus, I find her guilty of treason and sentence her to... death --!" (KRAK !)
"Whatever else may befall... even though the Psychotron itself be reduced to flaming ashes... CAPTAIN AMERICA MUST BE DESTROYED !"
Colonel Wai Ling
| Dex: 03 | Str: 02 | Bod: 03 | Motivation: Power |
| Int: 04 | Wil: 05 | Min: 04 | Occupation: Commanding officer |
| Inf: 05 | Aur: 04 | Spi: 04 | Resources {or Wealth}: 010 |
| Init: 012 | HP: 020 |
Advantages: Language (Mandarin Chinese), Rank (Colonel in the PLA)
Connections: People's Liberation Army (High), Red Army (Low), Red Guardian II (Low), Doctor Yen (Low), Chinese intelligence agencies (High)
Drawbacks: MIA toward Arrogance
Equipment: He could access any weapon stored on his base - see the profiles below.
Ling's troops - the elite
Ling's troops are clad in special suits and used advanced weapons :
Ling's elite:
"We do NOT have a moment, comrade !"
| Dex: 03 | Str: 03 | Bod: 03 | Motivation: Patriot |
| Int: 03 | Wil: 02 | Min: 03 | Occupation: Soldier |
| Inf: 03 | Aur: 02 | Spi: 03 | Resources {or Wealth}: 002 |
| Init: 009 | HP: 005 |
Advantages: Familiarity (PLA equipment and protocols), Rank (Private first class)
Connections: None
Drawbacks: Minor Rage
Equipment:
- SPECIAL SUIT [/BODY/ 04, Flame immunity: 04, Sealed systems: 06, Bonus: Those suits also protect against the Psychotron, allowing the wearer to ignore its effects unless it is breached]
- One weapon among the following:
- Flamethrowing rifle [BODY 03, Flame project: 07, Limitation: Flam project has a Range of but 03, R#04]
- Heavy laser pistol [BODY 03, Laser beam: 05, R#04]
- Laser rifle [BODY 03, Laser beam: 07, Telescopic vision: 01, R#04]
- Some had JETPACKS [BODY 03, Flight: 05, R#03]
Vehicles
Ling's elite troops had access to numerous special vehicles, such as:
- TANKS WITH LASER CANNON [STR 08 BODY (Hardened) 13, Laser beam (Autofire): 12, Running: 05, R#03]
- MIG JET FIGHTERS [STR 08 BODY 09, Flight: 10, Projectile weapons: 09, Radar sense: 12, R#4]
- WHEELED GIANT ROBOT [STR 10 BODY (Hardened) 11, Growth: 06, Running: 05, Note: Growth is Already Factored In. Note that the robot has arms with pincer-like "hands".]
- MARTIAN TRIPOD-LIKE ROBOT [STR 05 BODY (Hardened) 11, Growth: 07, Laser beam: 06, Running: 05, Note: Growth is Already Factored In, Laser Beam is fired with an Automatic Action but has an AV of 01 (it is a quadrule rotating array on top of the tripod). Note that the robot has arms with pincer-like "hands".]
Ling's troops - the grunts
There's a company of soldiers with standard uniforms and guns
defending the base. Their stats are:
PLA grunt
"The Americans must never escape to tell others what they have seen here !"
| Dex: 03 | Str: 02 | Bod: 03 | Motivation: Soldier |
| Int: 02 | Wil: 02 | Min: 03 | Occupation: Soldier |
| Inf: 02 | Aur: 02 | Spi: 02 | Resources {or Wealth}: 002 |
| Init: 007 | HP: 005 |
Advantages: Familiarity (PLA military equipment and protocols), Rank (Private)
Connections: None
Drawbacks: None
Equipment: PPS43 Submachinegun [BODY 04, Projectile weapons: 05, Ammo: 06, R#02, Advantage : Autofire]
Various features and defenses of... Red China's most secret base
The documented features of Ling's base were:
- Extensive internal video surveillance
- Several rooms with sleep gas dispensers [BODY 04, Knockout gas: 13]
- People-holding plexiglas tubes [BODY 07]. Some of those tubes are "fed" by trap doors at the ground level of the base, dumping the person stepping into the trap door into a tube.
- Lie-detection machines [BODY 02, Detect (lie): 06]
- Radar array [BODY 05, Radar sense: 20]
- Huge Blaster Cannon emerging from the ground [BODY 06, Energy blast: 14. The crew stays underground and operates the cannon through a periscope.]
- Some of the catwalks can be electrified [BODY 06, Lightning (no Range, includes AV): 12]
- One of the towers has a sliding panel revealing another artillery emplacement - a Para-Sonic Thermo-Ray [BODY 05, Flame project (Area of effect 1 AP): 15, Limitation: Range is but 04]. No, I don't know what a Para-Sonic Thermo-Ray is.
What a fool believes
The Psychotron was a building-sized piece of machinery with extensive
control consoles. It had Illusion: 14 - which could either be
focused in a small room in the base (Area of Effect: 03) or radiated
everywhere (with a Diminishing Area of Effect, the strength dropping
by one for every AP of distance from the Psychotron).
The illusions were apparently tailored to the targets, within the limit of available intelligence. The classic one was to project a tsunami, but it was also used against Hercules to convince him he was caught in an endless fight against the ever-regenerating hydra. As for the Black Widow, she saw a horrible flaming face flying around her and shooting eyebeams at her while laughing a nerve- wracking laugh.
Background
Real Name: Ling Wai
Marital Status: Unknown
Known Relatives: None
Group affiliation: People's Liberation Army
Base Of Operations: A secret base in China
Height: 5'9" Weight: 150 lbs
Eyes: Brown Hair: Bald
Powers and Abilities
Ling is a competent PLA senior officer, and is actually a very good shot. He's smart, ruthless and has a commanding presence.
History:
Colonel Wai Ling was the PLA officer in charge of one of the most secret bases in China (possibly in Hei-Lungkiang / Heilongjiang). This site was where, after decades of research and sacrifice, the dreaded Psychotron was developped -- a towering electronic device capable of projecting terrifying hallucinations straight into the mind of China's enemies. For whom the gods will destroy... they will first make mad ! (apparently Colonel Ling likes Euripides). As befits tradition, the base was built into a reputedly extinct volcano (it was 1967, after all).
As the Psychotron project neared completion, the KGB sent secret agent the Red Guardian (Alexei Shostakov) to reinforce the base's security. Ling was very proud of having Shostakov serve under his command.
Due to the highly strategic nature of his base, Ling had extensive contacts within Chinese intelligence agencies. When the Black Widow came to visit his base, he thus knew that she was actually a double agent working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and trying to pull off a daring espionage mission. After pretending to greet the Widow on his base as a respected colleague, Ling tricked the Widow into entering the Psychotron chamber, and made her a test subject for his terror technology.
As it turned out, the Widow wasn't broken by the effects of the Psychotron and nearly managed to escape. She was recaptured and Ling handed her over to his chief scientists, Dr. Yen (who had brainwashed the Widow into serving the Communists anew a few years before), to discover how she had resisted.
Meanwhile the Avengers - and in particular her ex-lover Hawkeye - learned of the Widow's capture, and considered mounting a rescue attempt. That played right into the hands of the Soviets, since a Russian general present at Ling's base decided to turn it - and the Red Guardian - into a trap to kill Captain America.
Behind the bamboo curtain
As it turned out, the hot-headed Hawkeye decided not to wait for the rest of the Avengers (who were concerned about the diplomatic consequences of an invasion) and went to China with recent recruit Hercules, whose presence enormously increased their firepower and allowed them to take on the base's defences. Seeing this, the Red Guardian astutely lured the Prince of Power into the Psychotron's chamber to take him out of the equation ; he then goaded the rash Hawkeye into making a stupid mistake, and knocked him out.
This left little choice for the rest of the Avengers but to come and get their allies out of there to avoid a disaster. In the meanwhile, Colonel Ling expounded his plans for world conquest to the Soviet General visiting his base, explaining that what he needed was Soviet nuclear submarines to ferry troops and Psychotron projectors to the enemy. After that, given the sheer terror the Psychotron could blanket armies and population with, conquest would be trivial.
Social-traitors !
Most readers are presumably wondering what a People's Republic of China senior officer and senior Soviet officer are doing working together in 1967 - with the 1961 Sino-Soviet crisis being one of the key events of the Cold War.
It is worthwhile to note that, during the story, one gets the impression that neither Ling nor his Soviet counterpart are on the up-and-up and working through their normal chain of command. It all comes across as some kind of clandestine manoeuvring, and it is possible that neither the PLA nor the Red Army are ware of what is going on.
Using this unsupported hypothesis it is possible that the plan was more a James Bondian plot than a Cold War story, with a few thousand Chinese and Soviet renegades planning to conquer part of the West Coast of the US and turning it into their personal realm.
The Soviet officer insisted on investigating why the Black Widow had resisted the Psychotron, however, and told Ling to submit her to a lie detector test. The Widow fooled the detector, insisting that she had never been a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and remained a loyal servant of the USSR. Colonel Ling begrudgingly released her and placed her under the Red Guardian's command.
Meanwhile the rest of the Avengers arrived - Captain America, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, Giant-Man (Henry Pym) and the Wasp (Janet van Dyne). As the others fought against the massive defences of Ling's base, Captain America was separated from the rest and the enthusiastic Soviet General had the Red Guardian engage Cap in a great patriotic duel. The far more pragmatic Ling fumed, wanting to just take the Avengers down without playing games, but had been ordered to obey the Soviet officer by his superiors.
Showdown
Though the Red Guardian and Captain America seemed evenly matched, Cap eventually gained the upper hand. Colonel Ling decided that he had had enough of this nonsense, and ended the fight by electrifying the catwalk Cap was standing out. The American went down, though the honourable Red Guardian vehemently objected to this.
Though it seemed that Ling and his men could still handle the attack, events were pretty determined to go south for them. The Widow raced off to sabotage the Psychotron ; realising that he had been duped, Ling opened fire on the Widow. The Red Guardian, who was the Widow's ex-husband, reflexively interposed his body to protect her, giving her the time to blast the controls and free Hercules. Ling managed to shoot the Widow now that the Red Guardian was down, but a shot by Hawkeye spoiled his aim and he just stunned the Russian.
At this point the base was wrecked and in flames ; Colonel Ling made a last attempt to shoot Captain America with a laser rifle as the unconscious sentinel of liberty was being evacuated. Having had it with Ling, whom he viewed as dishonourable, the badly wounded Red Guardian body-blocked him. As a result Ling's shot went completely off, hitting nearby gas pipes and triggering a major explosion. The explosion in turn triggered the eruption of the supposedly extinct volcano, utterly destroying Ling Wai's base.
Though both Colonel Ling and the Red Guardian were thought to have died in the deluge of explosions, it turned out that the Red Guardian survived. There is thus a faint possibility that Colonel Ling may have gotten out of the disaster alive.
Description:
See illustration. The colonel is a smoker and is almost never seen without his favourite cigarette holder.
Personality
Smart, ruthless, driven, charismatic, pragmatic, ambitious. He was a very eloquent orator in the Stan Lee/Roy Thomas tradition of soliloquizing villains - see quotes for examples.
