Character Sheet
Drax the Destroyer (writeup 1 - Classic era)
Category : Comic Books
Subcategory : Marvel universe
Type : Anti-hero
Game System : DC Heroes (Blood of Heroes S.E.)
Drax the Destroyer (classic) v1
Source of Character: Marvel Universe
Helper(s): Darci
Reasons (1): The Classic era covers his origin up to his death at the hands of his daughter. Note that for most of the era covered, this character is solely known as "the Destroyer". I've called him both Drax and the Destroyer throughout his entire history to avoid monotony, though. The Familiarities and Skill were not demonstrated during that period, but from later events he should logically have them.
Reasons (2): As usual, I'm using publication dates as the dates for the events.
Game Stuff
Drax
"I'll break free of your evil domination, Thanos -- then I'll fulfil my sole life-mission. .. to annihilate you, Thanos -- utterly !"
"I exist only to see you die -- and for as long as I live, your eventual death is a certainty !"
"True, Thanos -- but there is one who can crush your schemes ! I, Thanos -- born not of woman, nor of man ! I -- THE DESTROYER !"
"Your new-found might may humble the others, but I was born to be your enemy ! So, no matter what the odds, I fight on, for... I AM THE DESTROYER !"
"You have robbed me of purpose, Mar-Vell ! You have cheated Kronos - destroyed the fabric of his grand design ! And for these reasons, you force me to commit the hollow action of slaying you !"
"No one can destroy the Destroyer !"
"Let them come, Rick Jones. The Destroyer welcomes them ! The Destroyer always welcomes... a chance to destroy !" (CRUNCH !)
"Still I remain a useless force in the cosmos - a spark of life without goal or purpose !"
Drax
| Dex: 08 | Str: 14 | Bod: 14 | Motivation: Destroy Thanos ! |
| Int: 05 | Wil: 04 | Min: 10 | Occupation: Destroy Thanos ! |
| Inf: 07 | Aur: 05 | Spi: 12 | Resources {or Wealth}: 000 |
| Init: 019 | HP: 045 |
Bonuses and Limitations:
- Awareness only applies to events closely related with Thanos
- Density Increase is Always On and Already Factored In
- Detect has a Special +55 Range Bonus
- Invulnerability takes about three or four minutes to kick in
- Invulnerability works for both BODY and SPI damage
- Telepathy is Seriously Marginal and can only be used to communicate - but it drops to Minor Marginal if the Destroyer is only trying to reach ISAAC
- Telepathy has a Special +35 Range Bonus
- Mental blast has No Range but can use the Energy Blast's range instead
- Mental blast can only be used in space, and only against asteroids and small celestial bodies nobody cares about (GM's call)
Advantages: Familiarity (Early 1950s rock 'n' roll, Real estate management), Iron Nerves, Life Support (Full), Near-Immortal, Misc.: Drax has a special +5 OV Bonus against any attempt to mentally or spiritually deter him from his mission
Connections: Mentor (Low), ISAAC (Low), Captain Mar-Vell (Low)
Drawbacks: CIA toward Destroying Thanos, Distinct Appearance (at least on planets without many space aliens)
Discrepancies
The Destroyer is twice seen destroying small planetoids or asteroids with an energy-charged punch. This is well above his normal power level - since we know, for instance, that he cannot normally score RAPs against Thanos using either punches or energy blasts. There are also instances where he cannot do that - for instance at one point Mar-Vell uses a small asteroid to shield himself from the Destroyer's blasts.
Thus we must assume either that the very minor celestial bodies he demolished has a particularly meagre BODY for their size (perhaps they were chiefly composed of very light stone, without large deposits of heavy metals) -- or that he has a special attack that only works on asteroids and small planetoids nobody cares about and that are unimportant to the story.
At one point the Destroyer is seen ripping out the "heart" of a sun, detonating it. This is also fairly disconnected from his normal power level. I'd note that, like the case with the larger of the two planetoids, it happened in a rather goofy story (with robotic space mules and corny Lone Ranger references). Thus the most egregious of these discrepancies may be simply attributed to a strange and sudden Genre shift - to, apparently, something akin to Dragonball Z. Another factor in favour of the special Genre rule or a special attack is that secondary sources state that the asteroids the Destroyer blew up did have a sizeable ferrous content, which would contradict the low-BODY hypothesis. I've eventually added a slightly whimsical special attack.
The official secondary sources list him as a "class 40". Given the very few benchmarks in the story to estimate Drax's firepower, I strongly suspect this is due to the strength of the "Golden Avenger" Iron Man armour being significantly underestimated in this generation of the Marvel handbooks. As the reader may surmise, the clearest data point on Drax's strength is that he's significantly but not hugely stronger than this type of Iron Man suit, and I assume OHOTMU writers based their estimate on that.
Can you feel it ?
Drax's special senses can err on the "whatever advances the story" side, hence the choice of a loose power - Awareness. GMs are thus encouraged to be a bit lax. An obvious roll would be "Thanos has been resurrected" at about 04/04, but one point the Destroyer got to roll against a 10/10 for "Thanos's greatest enemy, Captain Mar-Vell, is nearby".
Background
Real name: Arthur Sampson Douglas
Marital Status: Either inapplicable or widowed
Known Relatives: Yvette Steckley Douglas (wife, deceased), Heather Douglas (aka Moondragon, daughter), Pamela Douglas (aka Sundragon, niece)
Group affiliation: None
Base Of Operations: Mobile
Height: 6'4" Weight: 680 lbs
Eyes: Solid, dark orange iris over red cornea (irises are sometimes yellow) Hair: None
Powers and Abilities
Drax the Destroyer was created to be able to match the power of Thanos... in his youth. His opponent steadily augmented his power by a variety of means through the years, however, and would become much more powerful than Drax.
Still, the Destroyer possesses enormous superhuman strength and durability, and is a savage and powerful hand-to-hand fighter. He can project potent energy blasts from his hands, sufficient to level most buildings and, sometimes, blow large-ish asteroids up. Those energy blasts have a heat component - he once used them to roughly weld metal. Drax does not have, nor require, a functioning metabolism and is free of all natural necessities - for instance if he swallows something it will never get processed. He can also fly at tremendous speeds, crossing interstellar distances under his own power.
Drax has even demonstrated some mental powers. The main one is his ability to sense Thanos, even across galactic distances. This "Thanos sense" has also enabled him to gain extra-normal perceptions about subjects more or less related to Thanos. During his first appearance, he also managed to telepathically contact Iron Man and Mentor - this seldom-demonstrated ability apparently having enough range to cross a solar system.
Drax's key ability is his indestructibility. Extruded from inanimate earth, Drax's body is exceedingly hard to permanently damage - though he can be stunned or even knocked out with a sufficient level of force. It will reconstitute itself into the semblance of a living humanoid whenever felled. It thus seems reasonable to assume that the Destroyer doesn't age. Note the absence of Systemic Antidote, though - at one point he's somehow incapacitated by a sleep draught of an unclear nature.
History:
Very little is known about the life of Arthur Douglas - an American real estate agent, amateur jazz saxophonist and rock 'n' roll fan. He died in 1953, apparently in his late 30s. At that point he was driving in the desert Nevada night, returning to his L.A. home. Along with his wife Yvette and young daughter Heather, they had come to the International Hotel in Las Vegas to watch a show by Arthur's idol, Elvis Presley. Unfortunately, the car happened on a scout ship manned by a young Thanos, then on his first reconnaissance mission on Earth. Fearing that he might have been spotted, Thanos blew up the Douglases' car. He then came to check his kill - the madman's face being the last thing Arthur Douglas saw as he expired.
The death toll would turn out to be lower than expected, though. First, little Heather miraculously survived, and was thrown out of the car. In shock, she wandered off in the desert, unseen - the first steps in her road to becoming Moondragon. Second, as Yvette and Arthur's souls rose to pass on, Arthur's soul was fetched by an astral hand.
This was the result of a request by Mentor, father of Thanos and leader of the Eternals of Titan. Knowing that he would need a powerful warrior to oppose the growing evil of his powerful son, Mentor had entreated the help of the astral Eternal demigod, Kronos. Noting that he would only do so once, Kronos created a body from the ground, and infused Douglas's soul into this golem. Mentor then telepathically blocked Douglas's access to the memories of his life, as an act of mercy.
The newly-animated Drax left immediately to perform its mission of destruction. Relentlessly, he tracked Thanos through the void, destroyed many of his minions and troops as befitted his name. He became quite feared among associates of Thanos, acquiring the reputation of having the power of a legion and being unstoppable by anybody save Thanos. Single-minded to an extreme, Drax apparently clashed over and over again with Thanos during the second half of the XXth century. Most of these assaults are unchronicled, though I would assume that Drax found it increasingly hard to hurt Thanos - and of course he never managed to kill his opponent. Thanos never managed to destroy Drax either, as his nemesis would always reconstitute himself. Though his attempts were increasingly futile, Drax never gave up. His presence forced Thanos to have many of his interstellar mercenaries oppose the Destroyer to delay him, apparently with a poor success rate.
At one point, on a forlorn planet with an unpronounceable name, Thanos killed the priesthood guarding their most precious religious artefact - their planet's last flower - to break the locals' morale and obtain their surrender. Drax intervened but could not hurt Thanos. When Thanos threw a nearby pilgrim and her daughter to their death Drax, experiencing a flashback of the apparent death of Yvette and Heather, chose to save them rather than renew his assault. Mocking this, Thanos then teleported off.
In 1972, Drax found Thanos on a deserted planetoid, and as always eagerly engaged him in combat. Drax was knocked unconscious when the energies of the battle destroyed the planetoid. Thanos then imprisoned the Destroyer in his current war camp, on Earth. Using telepathy, Drax contacted Iron Man to come to his rescue, and Mentor for back-up. After Mentor remotely supercharged Iron Man's armour to destroy the bindings holding Drax, they vanquished two more servants of Thanos (the Blood Brothers) but only caught a robot double of Thanos. Impressed with each other, Drax and Iron Man parted ways.
As was later revealed, Thanos was in Earth's solar system on a quest for the Cosmic Cube. He eventually found it thanks to Death, but Drax somehow managed to be there first. Thanos engaged him in something called a "time-mind sync-warp", apparently some form of spiritual combat - Thanos's goal being to render the Destroyer insane so he would stop harassing him. Though Thanos won the fight, Drax managed to tear his mind off the sync-warp and survive the spiritual damage. Over the unconscious body of the Destroyer, Thanos then took the Cosmic Cube.
Recovering, Drax went looking for Captain Marvel, eventually learning he might be found at Avengers's Mansion. Aftera brief misunderstanding he joined Mar-Vell and the Avengers to form a strike force against Thanos ; also present was Moondragon, though neither she nor Drax realised at that point that they were relatives of a sort. They failed, though, and despite their best efforts Thanos used the Cube to neutralise Kronos and become a god. Undaunted, the Destroyer started blasting the cosmic wraithlike form of his nemesis, but the return fire pulverised the building he was in.
Within minutes, the invulnerable Drax emerged from the wreckage and flew off to attack again. Thanos then tried something new, and undid the block Mentor had left to prevent the Destroyer from remembering his life as Arthur Douglas. This did not work, either -- in fact the Destroyer found renewed focus in remembering how Thanos had killed him and his wife and ruined his orphaned daughter's childhood. The Destroyer found Thanos again, who was toying with his only remaining opponent, Mar-Vell. The Kree warrior had Drax keep futilely blasting at Thanos to keep him occupied. Mar-Vell used the respite to use the Cosmic Cube to destroy Thanos. Deprived of his all-consuming goal and not knowing what to do, the Destroyer awkwardly left for outer space.
Return of the Mad Titan
With Thanos gone, the Destroyer found himself utterly aimless, and grew to hate the man who had deprived him of his opponent and reason for being - Mar-Vell. Some months later, he randomly stumbled on the Kree in deep space and simply charged him. Though Mar-Vell was a more agile and skilled fighter, he could not stop the Destroyer, and was eventually forced into a Desperation Recovery before resuming the fight with renewed aggressiveness. This attitude, and Drax's attack, were inspired in part by the Supreme Intelligence, who had manipulated them into fighting. However, a wild card intervened - Fawn, a virtual being generated by Rick Jones as an image of the perfect woman. She told Drax that Thanos was back, and told Mar-Vell to go help the dying Rick Jones instead of fighting pointless battle.
Drax listened to Fawn and flew off. Apparently, Thanos had found some mean to partially cloak himself from the senses of the Destroyer, since Drax was not immediately aware of his return and apparently had some difficulties finding him. Thanks to this delay, the resurrected Thanos had made solid progress on his plan, which involved building a 'star gem' to tap some of the power of the Infinity Gems. On his way to attack Thanos, the Destroyer encountered an important minion of his enemy, Gamora, and flew right through her spaceship. She narrowly managed to survive. The Destroyer's subsequent confrontation with Thanos is unrecorded, though Thanos obviously managed to detain or banish the Destroyer for a while. Thanos was soon defeated by Earth defenders - when Adam Warlock was resurrected as a being of seething cosmic energy at the last second and turned Thanos into a granite statue.
Perplexed by his inability to sense Thanos to renew his attack, Drax eventually found Sanctuary II (Thanos's flagship), and after a brief exploration of the deserted ship found the statue that had once been Thanos. Erroneously assuming that only Mar-Vell could possibly have defeated Thanos, the Destroyer then flew to Earth to find and kill him for again robbing him of his goal. After blowing up some random buildings to force Mar-Vell to intervene, he attacked. The spectacular clash, however, was soon interrupted by ISAAC, the master computer system of Titan, telling them that the remnants of Thanos's followers were attacking Titan in revenge. The Destroyer and Mar-Vell left for Titan.
As the cosmically-aware Mar-Vell had sensed from the beginning, it was a trap. Minions of Thanos had taken control of Titan, and reprogrammed ISAAC. Mar-Vell revealed the truth to the Destroyer, who of course agreed to fight Thanos's minions. The two warriors, eventually joined by a renegade servant of Thanos named Elysius, defeated all opponents and freed Titan. They then left for space to prevent the last post-mortem minion of Thanos, Stellarax, from conquering Earth. Despite everything, the Destroyer still maintained he would kill Mar-Vell once everything was said and done.
On Earth, the Destroyer attacked Stellarax's ship whilst Mar-Vell engaged the would-be conqueror himself in Washington, D.C. The Destroyer defeated all forces and freed Rick Jones, who was a prisoner aboard. Jones had Draw clear a path toward the craft's cockpit and rushed the controls, tilting the craft slightly as it fired a planet-busting ray. The Destroyer and the teenager thus saved Earth. At this point, the Destroyer silently renounced killing Captain Marvel.
Flying back to Titan, the pair (joined by Rick Jones and his then-current girlfriend, Gertie) clashed anew with the corrupted ISAAC and his servants. As all seemed lost, Mar-Vell interposed himself between Drax and a powerful attack, taking a bad hit. Amazed to see Mar-Vell ready to die to save one who had sworn to destroy him, Drax flew into a rage and started burning HPs and hammering ISAAC's servants, turning the tide long enough for Mar-Vell to try a desperate manoeuvre. The legendary Kree warrior bathed everyone in his lifeforce, exposing them to the power of life, passion and dedication. Sensing this energy, the Destroyer was made conscious of the vacuity of his monomaniacal, dead existence. After Mar-Vell and his allies triumphed, Drax once again awkwardly left, alone and wondering what to do with his non-life.
Daughter
Eventually, Drax started wondering if the only logical thing he could was not to seek his own destruction. When he randomly happened on a strange alien race floating through space, threatening to destroy any who breached its ecosphere, the Destroyer impulsively charged in. One of the creatures attached itself to the Destroyer's face, sacrificing its life away from the ecosphere. A powerful telepath like the rest of its race, the alien (looking like a cross between a brain, a starfish and a jellyfish) continued to telepathically attack, keeping him stunned and slowly killing him.
Moondragon sensed that her father was dying, and managed to find him. She brought him back to Earth in the hope the Avengers could help, and Thor did manage to separate the Destroyer from the alien - though the alien controlled Drax in an attempt to stop Thor. The alien pleaded for death, as it could not bear to live when separated from its hive - and Moondragon and Drax decided to go back to space together to reunite the alien with its fellows.
When they learned Mar-Vell was dying of a cancer, Moondragon and Drax came to visit him on Titan. Having travelled together in space for months, they even brought a Skrull emissary, General Zedrao, who wanted to express the Skrull's respect for one of their greatest enemies. The Destroyer, seemingly at peace now that he had been reunited with his daughter, told Mar-Vell about what death was like before the Kree would pass away.
Drax resumed his travels with his daughter, who helped him find purpose beyond the destruction of Thanos as they explored the cosmos. At one point, they stumbled upon Ba-Bani, a world torn by war. Moondragon decided to intervene and use her vast psionic powers to bring peace. Though he deeply wanted to trust his daughter, Drax started admitting that she was on a colossal ego trip and basically taking control of the entire planet. Unsure of what to do given his newfound peace, he sent a request for help to the Avengers.
When the Avengers came, everybody on the Ba-Bani planet was more or less under Moondragon's influence, including Drax. Iron Man managed to convince the former Destroyer that he was hypnotised and he shook off the control before flying off to confront his power-mad daughter. In the meanwhile, though, Moondragon had managed to seduce and hypnotise Thor, of the Avengers. Nevertheless, Drax managed to confront his daughter.
Enraged at seeing her attitude, the Destroyer overcame the Mental Freeze that was holding the rest of the Avengers and started advancing against Moondragon's telepathic force. In a fit of megalomania and refusing that anything could resist her will as a "goddess of the mind", Moondragon temporarily burned out her mental powers and telepathically killed Drax.
After Thor took Moondragon away to be judged by his father, Iron Man, the Wasp and Captain America dealt with Drax's body. They gave him a Viking funeral of sorts, putting the body in Moondragon's ship and programming it to fly away into space and explode in far orbit of the Ba-Bani world.
Years after his demise, Drax the Destroyer was seen as a part of the Legion of Unliving assembled by the Grandmaster. Allegedly, the legionnaires had been plucked from the realm of Death - but as with all Legions of the Unliving, the exact nature of those supposed revenants is very much unclear. This version of Drax seemed roughly similar to what he was in life, plus some unclear ability to siphon lifeforce into its undead body. The Destroyer, along with an undead Mar-Vell, greatly weakened and eventually defeated Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), and Drax later broke the spine of the She-Hulk. All "players" of the Grandmaster' s game against the Legion were eventually healed and/or resurrected, and the legionnaires returned to whence they came (IMO, probably the Dimension of Manifestations) .
Description:
See illustration. Drax's voice has been described as "steel-hard" and looks somewhat unearthly.
Personality
During much of this era, Drax is the Noble But Savage Space Avenger. He has a dramatic manner, and his speeches seem somewhat influenced by classic Romantic authors. As his CIA implies, the Destroyer is utterly consumed by his quest for vengeance against Thanos, no matter what the odds - he knows he's indestructible and that, sooner or later, he'll get a sufficiently lucky break.
At this stage he's a very, very simple character - he makes grandiose monologues about how he is going to foils Thanos, and he attacks like a rabid pitbull on PCP, without the most ephemeral shred of doubt despite his regular failures. If Thanos is not alive, he laments his terrible fate like a cursed Romantic poet on a windswept cliff during a dark and stormy night - then does something violent, since all he has is his great power and anger.
The Destroyer is, of course, the incarnation of stubbornness. It usually takes a ridiculous amount of evidence for him to change his mind.
Near the end of his unlife, Drax had become somewhat peaceful, though he remained a tad pompous. Tellingly, he was finally destroyed after he had slipped back into his Destroyer mode, furious at the realisation of what his daughter had become.
