Lady Vermin is an uplifted rat, who only received cerebral modifications - she is fully sapient and smarter than the average human, but aside from her brain and some minuscule cybernetic interfaces she’s physically a normal rat. Lady Vermin is one of the few known New Men uplifted using Isotope E.

The lack of physical uplift is quite unusual for a New Man, and likely a deliberate choice on the High Evolutionary’s part. Since Isotope E New Men were designed as defenders, Lady Vermin may have been intended as a spy/infiltrator and saboteur with a tiny size and a normal animal appearance. Lady Vermin was once tasked with delivering a special virus using her bite, which is presumably a clue as to why she was designed to be that way.

Like nearly all Knights of Wundagore, Vermin is a courageous and disciplined fighter and highly devoted to the High Evolutionary and her comrades-in-arms. Once she runs out of Ammo for her dorsal gun she’ll run interference, distracting an enemy by getting in their hair, clawing at their face, looking for weak points to bite and generally keeping them out of the fight. She seemed to prefer attacking women, but this was probably because they had long hair making it easier for Vermin to manoeuvre.

For unknown reasons Lady Vermin was considered a VIP by ordinary rats - perhaps some sort of nobility, or maybe they respected her for being abnormally smart and articulate. Lady V. could generally convince rats to work for her even if that meant risks, as represented by her Connection. She’s fluent in both rat language(s) and English, though she needs vocalising and amplifying equipment to say something to humans other than “eek eek”.

She was surprisingly resilient, even for a rat, and difficult to knock out. Like most Knights of Wundagore, she’d rather die than abandon her lord.

History

Lady Vermin is one of the small numbers of New Men created in 1995 or 1996 - the first generation to be uplifted using Isotope E. Other Isotope E New Men of this generation are a tigress uplifted to be a hunter-killer (the White Tiger - see her writeups.org) and Sir Wulf, an uplifted wolf and apparently a great fighter and swordsman.

This generation of New Men was meant to bolster the ranks of the Knights of Wundagore, and help defend the Evolutionary’s scientific citadel. The Wundagore science base had been recently attacked by the Acolytes of Magneto, led by Exodus, and further attacks were likely. As noted above, Lady Vermin was likely meant to be a special operative.

There may have been other, undocumented Isotope E New Men, but the High Evolutionary became unstable due to his own exposure to Isotope E. It is thus possible that only a handful of new generation New Men were uplifted before his attention drifted away.

Battle for Wundagore

In late 1997, Exodus and his fanatical mutants attacked again, and overcame the brave Knights of Wundagore - in part by throwing a large wave of expendable Genoshan mutates at the Wundagore research citadel. The Evolutionary had to retreat so that Isotope E would not fall in Exodus’s hand. A half-score of Knights survived the battle ; the High Evolutionary placed them under the authority of his ally Quicksilver and sent them to a safehouse - a riverside castle in New York.

The small unit of Knights helped Quicksilver confront a drugged Thundra and her consort Arkon, then solve a situation on Arkon’s home world of Polemachus. Their attempts at mingling with the New York City population were less successful, though, as a brawl erupted as the Knights attended a performance of Cats without Quicksilver. In the wake of this unfortunate incident, most of the Knights - including Lady Vermin - were kidnapped by the Acolytes.

Lady Vermin convinced a rat to stand in for her as she escaped to warn the others, though the hapless volunteer was killed by the Acolytes. The Knights were rescued, and Lady Vermin learned from rats infesting the Acolytes’ jail what the next move of the mutants was. The Knights and Quicksilver rushed to the Savage Land and rescued the increasingly unstable High Evolutionary, taking him to New York.

As preparations were being made to retake the Wundagore science citadel, the Knights were dragged into a conflict with the Heroes for Hire, and Lady Vermin fought Ant-Man (Scott Lang). She took out his small pterosaur mount, but was shocked unconscious in return.

After recovering, Lady Vermin and her companions discovered that one of their own - Lord Anon - had been the Man-Beast all along, and fought him so the unconscious High Evolutionary could be dragged away from Man-Beast’s clutches. The Knights were defeated, however, and even briefly forced to serve Man-Beast as they thought that he was holding the Evolutionary hostage.

In the end Man-Beast was devolved back into an ordinary wolf, the High Evolutionary made himself human again to cure his instability, and Exodus was incapacitated and plunged into a coma. About half the Knights had died during the fights - but Lady Vermin was still alive as were Sir Ram, Sir Tyger, Sir Gator and Delphis - plus the ever-faithful Bova.

Lady Vermin has not been seen since - it is possible that she was killed in 2009 when Modred the Mystic summoned Chthon at Mount Wundagore after killing many Knights there.

Description

See illustrations.

Personality

A clever, courageous fighter with a high level of initiative. Lady Vermin was particularly close to Sir Churchill, a bulldog-based New Man who was killed by the Man-Beast, and often rode on his shoulder.

Unlike the vast majority of New Man, Lady Vermin considered herself to be a rat as well as a New Man, and frequently socialised with ordinary rats. This may be the result of having a normal animal body, and the high intelligence of even ordinary rats.

Writeup completed on the 3rd of January, 2012.