Ben Santini

Background

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Powers and Abilities

Since his second knee was destroyed and age has slowed him down a bit, Santini doesn’t consider himself to be a front line soldier. Thus, he doesn’t normally enter combat or run around on the battlefield. But he’s still an extremely proficient special forces soldier, and a master of both armed and unarmed combat.

Santini is an excellent leader, a superb tactician and a highly intelligent, ruthless planner. He’s definitely a “the end justifies the means” thinker, since he’s often the last line of defense. If he fails, the unthinkable may happen – so he doesn’t pull any punch.

He will lie, cheat, manipulate, kill, betray and sucker punch as much as necessary. He’s every bit as much a student of Machiavelli  as he is of Sun Tzu . Although he doesn’t like it, he has no problem with playing dumb or weak to lure opponents in a false sense of superiority.

When fighting Santini expect plans within plans, expert decoys, being manipulated into destroying your own assets, tons of dirty tricks and booby traps and having unexpected hacks messing with what you considered to be reliable assets. Also expect to end up fighting Santini’s enemies for him.

Santini also has access to Project:ENTRY technology.

Project: ENTRY

Project : ENTRY is an I.O. project. It was launched under Santini’s authority under the direction of Dr. Kendricks, a former NASA scientist. The goal was to have an equivalent technology to the “doors” teleportation gates used by the Authority. That is, teleportation through parallel universes.

Due to Kendricks’ skills and information derived from a StormWatch project (which had briefly managed to open a gate to another universe before the StormWatch II satellite had to be destroyed and StormWatch closed down), the project was functional within ten weeks.

However, I.O. still had a number of men who owned their loyalty not to Santini but to the previous director – Ivana Baiul. Baiul saw project : ENTRY as the perfect vehicle to get rid of Santini, by sabotaging the installation. After the initial team of Black Razors and scientists, led by Blake Coleman, stepped through the gate, the machinery crashed due to subtle sabotage.

As Baiul had anticipated, Santini then mounted a rescue op. He stepped through the repaired gate with the rest of the Black Razors. As soon as they were gone, Project : ENTRY crashed again. The entire Black Razor team, I.O.’s operations director and several scientists were stranded on another Earth.

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Death world

They soon understood that every man, woman and child on this Earth had been slaughtered a few months ago. The streets of every city on the planet were full of piled, rotting corpses. As they came under attack, it became evident that a single superhuman, named Devil, was responsible for this unimaginable slaughter.

The whole science team and most Black Razors were slaughtered. Only Santini, one Dr. Offenberg and two Razors (Coleman and Cisco) survived. Eventually, Santini bluffed Devil, teleporting him to the Australian Outback. He then detonated a compact nuclear device placed on the murderer.

After gating back to Wildstorm Earth thanks to Dr. Offenberg’s skills, Santini investigated. He discovered that Devil had been produced a project born on his own Earth, in his own organization, and headed by Ivana Baiul. As the latest biological super-weapon, Devil had been field-tested on an Earth that was completely unprepared for him, and stranded here until needed again.

Santini attempted to have this terrifying scandal brought to the Hague as a war crime. But I.O.’s liaison with the US government, Senator Terns, buried the whole affair.

We can still use this

None of the survivors of project : ENTRY would forget what happened, though. Those events are in many ways seminal to what would later become Team Achilles. In particular, Santini arranged to become the sole man alive to have all the plans of tech necessary to operate project : ENTRY.

The limitations of Project : ENTRY are not precisely known. It first opens a gate between Earth Wildstorm and Earth ENTRY. The point of appearance of the gate in Earth ENTRY is the exact equivalent of the point it was opened in on Earth Wildstorm.

Then another gate is opened on Earth ENTRY, at least six or seven meters away from the first. Stepping into this gate takes you back to Earth Wildstorm, but at pretty much any point targeted by the project : ENTRY operator.

Since Earth ENTRY is littered with corpses and nothing has been maintained for months, this can make stepping from Earth Wildstorm from Earth Entry impossible.

In particular, it seems difficult to teleport inside buildings. For instance, Team Achilles couldn’t port in straight in the Federal Reserve building and had to assault the place normally. But it *was* possible to teleport in personnel inside buildings in the UN building or in Grozny.

Basically, the GM gets to say no to any teleportation that would be abusive and bypass the scenario. That’s fully supported in that by the source material.

More teleportation

Project : ENTRY never failed to open a gate, and could be very precise in its gate placement. On several occasions, a Team Achilles operator could jump from a building, fall through an ENTRY gate, continue his fall in the ENTRY Earth for two meters or so then fall through another gate and come back on ground level somewhere else on Earth Wildstorm.

This proved very convenient to extract the sniper team. Which in turn allows them to take position on elevated points dominating the battlefield – something you normally avoid in order to have both a less conspicuous position and an escape route.

There have been instances where the door from Wildstorm to Entry wasn’t in the same spot. For instance when the Midnighter was catapulted from Manhattan to China via an ENTRY warp. The most likely explanation is that Tefibi was gaining a better mastery of the ENTRY technology.

There are also hints that the gates themselves exist in the Bleed, which is sort of the Wildstorm equivalent of the astral plane .

One last bit of teleportation

Another strength of Project : ENTRY teleportation is that the gates are a natural phenomenon, not an electronic field like most teleportation technologies. It is thus impossible to block it with dampers or force fields. This is a tremendous tactical advantage if the opponent doesn’t understand ENTRY teleportation, as the UN Special Security Council realized too late.

Likewise, ENTRY teleportation doesn’t leave energy residues to trace, unlike “normal” teleporters in the Wildstorm universe.

The net effects of Project ENTRY are Dimension travel (Travel): 03, possibly with the Limitation Only To ENTRY Earth, and Warp: 35. Tefibi never had any problem with this technology – either it doesn’t require skill rolls to operate, or such rolls were trivial for somebody with this many APs of Gadgetry Skill.

History

What happened during Project : ENTRY, and the realization of Devil’s true origin, marked a turning point for Santini. He now knew humanity needed a considerably more powerful protection against SPBs . And he knew he couldn’t do it as part of American forces, given the issues with I.O. The situation with the Authority was also getting out of hand.

How exactly the new StormWatch came to be is unclear. It is known that it was voted on by the UN’s Security Council. The vote had taken place after it had been made certain the US representative couldn’t veto the initiative. Since it was obvious the US would never go for something that could threaten their own SPB activities.

The creation of the new StormWatch also was done without the consent of the “United Nations Special Security Council”. This was a group of six multi-billionaires who controlled much of the UN and had specifically been the real masters behind Bendix’s StormWatch.

Assembling Achilles

Santini spent months before the actual StormWatch launch inspecting and cracking numerous files with Coleman and Tefibi – although Coleman and Tefibi never met each other. In particular, they managed to start cracking the encryption on many very, very juicy Bendix files.

It is also apparent Santini came with many top secret I.O. technologies and data in his briefcase. In particular he had a fully operational ENTRY projector assembled in the UN building in Manhattan. However, he didn’t give Tefibi enough info for him to understand the full implications of ENTRY tech.

Despite those preparations, the new StormWatch had to be rushed into action three weeks early. Santini’s old nemesis, Ivana Baiul, was now head of an Homeland Defense agency. She decided to test Santini’s steel (and increase her own budget) by having Islamist terrorists attack the UN’s H.Q. in Manhattan.

Going in hot

Santini and Coleman, who were jogging in Central Park at that point, managed to slip in the building, kill a superpowered guard, capture another and assemble the team. Then they took out the majority of the SPB terrorists and forcing the two survivors to retreat.

Shortly after, Santini was teleported against his will by the UN’s Special Security Council. The multi-billionaires were furious to see a new StormWatch not under their control, and wanted to make clear to Santini who was boss.

Santini had a plan, however. The SSCC didn’t realize he had a hidden emitter within his knee, nor that project : ENTRY teleportation couldn’t be electronically blocked.

After a short, tense discussion Santini had two members of his assault team, Hämäläinen and Weiss, teleport in and execute the SSC members. He then massaged the situation so that it would look like the SSC members had been killed into the UN buildings by the terrorists. This allowed him to escape any retaliation planned by the SSC.

Special tactical unit

The new StormWatch was very low-key. No super-satellite, no super-powered operatives in colourful Spandex, no squadrons of high-tech fighter-bombers. This time, the team was working with an UN budget, without the benefit of billions from the SSC.

Santini had an international team made of less than ten persons, almost all of whom had elite military training and an impressive track record. All the Americans on the team (Cisco, Coleman, Tefibi) were ex-I.O. operatives who hated Baiul and I.O.’s policies, and were personally loyal to Santini.

The rest included two ladies from France and Russia respectively, as well as shock troops from Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom and Israel. The new StormWatch, called Team Achilles, relied on training, experience, hard-hitting military tactics and top-of-the-line intel, technology and weaponry.

Later on, superhumans were added to the team, though usually not as front line personnel.

Team Achilles personnel included :

• Captain Golovin (sniper).
• Sergeant Pinckney (spotter).
• First Lieutenant Weiss (assault).
• Master Sergeant Coleman (assault).
• Lieutenant Hämäläinen (close combat).
• Specialist Cisco (entry).
• Lieutenant-Colonel Grunier (medical, negotiator).
• Lieutenant Barak (telepathic warfare).
• Civilian expert Tefibi (ordnance, computers, tech).
• Two SPB “consultants” :
  1. Buzz Dixon (intel).
  2. Frederick Ngebe Braumholstein (aka Codename Alias, intel/impersonation).

The two “consultants” operated outside of the team. In fact their existence wasn’t revealed to the team until after several weeks.

Well-heeled

Coleman was eventually KIA, and Cisco retired due to both serious wounds and his marriage. Santini eventually added an SPB to his front line troops – Victoria N’Gengi aka Flint. Most of the team had had hostile encounters with SPBs prior to joining Team Achilles, and shared to some degree Santini’s distrusts of what Master Sergeant Coleman called “superfucks”.

During the following months; Team Achilles proved to be up to the task of controlling a number of threats.

A powerful Serbian empath radiating low-level hatred over the Balkans was taken out and had his powers neutralized.

The remainder of the terrorist group that had attacked the UN was taken out, along with a major target. Namely Dhul Fiqar, one of the few known activators of Seedlings, who was providing SPBs to Islamist terrorist groups.

Stormwatch’s Team Achilles. further prevented the Russian army from moving into Chechnya (from which they had been expelled by the Authority). Then they took down a reality-manipulating SPB who had taken over a small American town.

From there Team Achilles prevented the reincarnated George Washington from pretty much destroying the US. However, extensive damage had already been done to key Federal buildings and personnel in Washington, D.C. – such as the SCOTUS and Congress. They also stopped an European villain named Baron Chaos.

Vendettas

However, during that time, the vendettas continued. Baiul managed to capture Tefibi. But she was outmaneuvered as the StormWatch telepath was much more powerful than her intel indicated, and had layered multiple booby traps in Team Achilles minds.

Santini also abused his resources to track down and kidnap Senator Terns, the man who had prevented the truth about the SPB named Devil from reaching the Hague. Santini kept Terns, widely considered to be the most powerful Democrat in Congress, prisoner in his H.Q.. He also had Codename Alias replace him.

Santini also sent Flint to Earth ENTRY on his behalf to bring him the head of Alfredoi Ga… of Devil, and she did.

During those months, a highly dangerous feud developed with the Authority, though both parties’ action. Santini considered SPBs taking the world into their own hands an abomination. Though he made a point of not killing any of them, he still kept outmaneuvering them.

Nevertheless, the Authority came to the conclusion he was out for SPB blood. Santini and his men ended up on their list of terminate-with-prejudice targets.

Coup d’État

When the Authority took control of the US in a coup d’État, the situation for StormWatch became dire. They could no longer operate from Manhattan, and it became almost certain the UN would fold if the new Authority-led US government demanded Santini’s guts.

Santini destroyed everything in his H.Q., killed his one remaining prisoner and evacuated a few seconds ahead of the Authority. They were left to contend with the vicious booby traps Stormwatch had left behind.

Santini told two new recruits and his support personnel (Grunier and Barak) to go. They weren’t closely associated with him and would escape Authority retribution. But they chose to remain with the team anyway. The rest had to hit the mattresses and go rogue.

Biblical

Santini still intended to do his job, though – and control SPB threats to humanity. He accepted a contract from Vatican contacts. He thus found himself in a struggle between the two self-declared descendants of the Merovingians – and thus, of Christ.

Santini eventually maneuvered his way out of the thick intrigue. He had everyone killed and sold all the remaining info to his main contact in the Vatican – who incidentally seems likely to be the future Pope.

At that point, several of Team Achilles’ prisoners on Earth Entry (including Senator Terns and the latest reincarnation of George Washington) made an escape attempt. They clashed with Team Achilles again, and Santini and his staff ended up trapped on Earth ENTRY.

While Santini has a plan to come back to Earth Wildstorm, it does involve trekking from the US to Siberia to access a top-secret lab. Team Achilles may thus not reappear on Earth Wildstorm before several years have elapsed.

Description

See illustration.

Personality

Santini’s sharp, devious mind is both his dominant personality trait and his greatest asset.

Santini doesn’t like SPBs, as a rule. This is because he’s familiar with the phenomenon of distantiation occurring in many SPBs. They start to consider themselves more than human, and then start getting trapped in their own fantasy where they stop considering themselves as human.

From there, no longer valuing human life and eventually seeing oneself as a perverted Nietzschean man-god becomes way too tempting.

From his I.O. days, Santini has seen several men and women going down this path. This occurred they replaced more and more of their body with cybernetics or were activated. Furthermore, nobody who as ever been on Earth ENTRY can doubt the terrifying danger loose cannon SPBs poses. There, one man killed 6 billion.

This doesn’t mean that Santini hates all superhumans. He simply intensely distrusts them, seeing them as more likely than not to snap at some point. He’s perfectly able to work with superhumans (and more than that – he married Flint) – as long as he’s quite certain their psychological profile means they won’t leave humanity behind.

Other traits

Santini is a devout Catholic, and invests a fair amount of faith in his Church. He seems to have read a lot about the history of the Church and Catholic theology. In fact, in many ways, he is reminiscent of the Jesuits at their height.

Santini isn’t a rigid leader. Although he makes it certain that people know who’s boss, controls access to information (mainly to defeat enemy telepaths) and occasionally rants a bit about how he’s ready to sacrifice any member of his team for the greater good… Yet it is obvious he’s a fair officer who trusts his men and makes the best decisions for them.

Santini has a calm, wry, abrasive sense of humor.

Quotes

“We’re not super-heroes. We kill super-heroes.”

“Insertion team, this is Santini. Our visuals are for shit. Somebody give me a sitrep. Can we transport out the hostages ?”

“Who needs proof ? I’m not some judge or jury who you can buy off. Jukko ? Kill these pieces of shit.”

Coleman : “Why can I never beat you at poker ?”
Santini : “Because I never blink and I love to bluff.”

(After Cisco complains about the smell on Earth ENTRY) “That’s what eight million rotten dead bodies smell like. Think of it as a reminder of why we’re necessary.”

“Me ? I believe that an informed citizenry and a free ballot change more for humanity every day than any group of spandex-and-leather-pantsed superzeroes ever could.”

“You’re the one who fucks their religion, buddy. You don’t see me out killing innocent people in the name of the Pope.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: StormWatch : Team Achilles comic books.

Helper(s): Phil Dixon, Roy Cowan.