Doctor Poison II

Background

Powers and Abilities

Dr. Poison is a formidable chemist, doctor and biochemist. She is particularly adept at working with strange and exotic chemicals and procedures that would stump most other scientists. Dr. Poison could heal even such an unusual being as Devastation. If she has access to sufficiently potent compounds, she can create very impressive effects.

Dr. Poison is immune to the gas she uses (even when in lethal nerve gas mode), and one strongly suspects that she’s immunised herself to known toxins and drugs via mithridatisation and other techniques. One caption indicates that Dr. Poison’s favourite test subject is herself, which gives enough credence to that hypothesis.

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Equipement

Dr. Poison usually has access to a high-level lab, packed with high-end equipment and chemicals. Her heavy smock contains a number of internal and external pockets, allowing her to easily carry medical equipment, samples, test tubes, etc. with her. It might have some protective properties against chemicals, corrosives, etc.

For the Skartaris  campaign, she added gas sprayers within her sleeves, generating thick clouds of knockout agents. She could apparently also belch more of the gas, though I assume it was just a little extra piping near her mouth. She also carries a Lüger P08 pistol, which presumably fires poisoned bullets.

Super-mutagens

Dr. Poison’s Pandora Virus can only be manufactured from the blood of Devastation. The compound reaches the brain stem of the subject and feeds on myths from the subconscious, making them real.

This means that the subject will violently mutate into some version of a creature from myth (at one point Arachne, at another a minotaur). Most probably there will be important deviations from the scholarly myth – more like a pop version of it, with some confusion with other similar creatures from myth and fiction thrown in.

The subject manifesting the Pandora phenomenon will probably be a rampaging threat as it feels maddeningly constrained by the very un-mythic everyday life.

It will also be hideously powerful, being powered by the same belief in myths that endow the gods with divine essence.

Psycho-warriors

On Skartaris, Dr. Poison turned dozens of captured warriors into ravaged psychopaths with enhanced physical power. That was presumably done using local biochemical resources.

It was fairly reminiscent of the Rage virus in the 28 Days Later movies, with the subjects from her body banks looking like repulsive undead humanoids.

History

Dr. Poison II is the grand-daughter of the Princess Maru, the original Doctor Poison of the 1940s. Though she doesn’t like being called “Doctor Poison”, no other name is known for her. Furthermore, she has adopted a costume quite similar to that of her ancestor.

Though Princess Maru was Japanese, the current Dr. Poison’s ancestry is unclear. She has grey eyes, which implies that her mother or grandmother had their children with a Westerner. On the other hand, developing lighter eye colour was a classic of Axis medical experimentation, so she may owe more to that than to normal genetics.

The Pandora virus

In 1999, she was contacted by Devastation and got to experiment with her blood, creating the Pandora Virus. The virus would turn people into creatures of myth that even Wonder Woman would probably be unable to destroy. It was used to turn one man into a version of Arachne, which was so powerful it very nearly killed Wonder Woman and the Hindu God Rama (seventh incarnation of Vishnu).

Rama was forced to rely on his inextinguishable berserker rage and Wonder Woman had to tap the Godwave so the situation was brought under control. This suited the goals of Devastation, who wanted Wonder Woman to be kept busy and if possible wounded and weakened as Devastation was recovering her strength.

After “Arachne” was defeated, Dr. Poison came to take samples from her dead subject, who had reverted to human form. Spotting an unconscious Wonder Woman, she approached to exploit an unique opportunity to dissect her. This led to Dr. Poison’s capture, but before she was imprisoned she released an airborne dose of her Pandora virus from an hollow tooth.

Giant minotaur attack

The virus did mutate somebody into a skyscraper-sized minotaur a few weeks later, but that was the only documented effect. Presumably, this very first batch was less stable than Dr. Poison had hoped, and did not retain its potency long enough to infect enough subjects. The minotaur was defeated by Wonder Girl (Cassandra Sandmark) using the Pandora Box.

Dr. Poison II didn’t spend much time in prison. Soon after she was locked up, Circe started assembling an army of female super-criminals to take over New York City, including the doctor.

Circe was defeated by Wonder Woman and an army of super-heroines, and Dr. Poison was caught and imprisoned again.

Villainy, Inc.

Queen Clea, an old opponent of the first Wonder Woman who had worked with the original Dr. Poison, came to recruit the researcher. She burst her out of jail in 2002 and Poison joined Clea’s new version of Villainy, Inc..

Villainy, Inc. was initially planning to take over Atlantis, but ended up invading Skartaris instead. Dr. Poison proved invaluable. She :

• Helped with Jinx’s recovery after Clea freed her.
• Monitored Cyborgirl’s Tar addiction.
• Created combat gasses against which the armies of Skartaris had next to no defence.
• Turned dozens of captured subjects into very strong, very fast zombie-like creatures.

Though the initial conquest was quite successful, Villainy, Inc. was eventually defeated by Wonder Woman, and their own member Trinity turned against them.

Even amidst this defeat, it was Dr. Poison who diagnosed what was going on with Trinity and the Atlantean computers running Skartaris. However she was knocked out when she opposed Wonder Woman and Trevor Barnes’s efforts to contain the Trinity Virus.

Circe again

Jennifer Morgan, Sorceress Supreme of Skartaris, reduced the remaining Villainy, Inc. members to a few inches in height. Wonder Woman and Barnes then took them to Themyscira for imprisonment — despite some misadventures involving time travel, Nazis and dinosaurs.

Some years later, Circe assembled a large roster of former foes of Wonder Woman to crush her once and for all. Among the number was Doctor Poison II, since Circe had obviously successfully raided the Amazon prisons.

At the beginning of the operation, Wonder Woman had been away for about a year, with Donna Troy filling in for her. Troy defeated Doctor Poison II, Osiria and Doctor Cyber, who had been sent by Circe. The trio was magically freed by Circe, but all of Circe’s allies lost to a returned Wonder Woman (Diana of Themyscira) and her allies.

Doctor Poison II later joined the scientific staff of the Society. She was one of the scientists who worked on the creation of Genocide (perhaps because of her experience with Devastation), and still seems to be a member.

Description

In her costume, Poison’s upper and lower eyelids are pulled back with molecularly bonded applique, and her tear ducts receive periodic stimulation to compensate for the dryness. Hooks pull her lips back in an horrible rictus, and a desiccant keeps the salivating from being too much of a problem – though she still occasionally drools.

Her mask is also attached to her face, and presumably takes a special procedure and chemical to be removed. This is intended to make her unidentifiable, repulsive and unreadable. It’s successful across the board.

Dr. Poison has a dictaphone somewhere in her cowl or costume, and is constantly taking medical notes and making scientific observations for her journals, seemingly muttering to herself.

Personality

An amoral, unethical scientist only concerned with knowledge and power. She does a lot of experimentation on human subjects, and spends much of her time in her lab.

Poison is very interested in acquiring potent and exotic chemicals to experiment with, and is rather ambitious about what constitute “potent” or “exotic”. Past examples have included the blood of Devastation and alchemy labs in Skartaris.

Dr. Poison usually speaks in short, precise sentences and care about very little but SCIENCE! She seems to have… a bit of a fixation on dissecting unusual living beings to examine them – and it may extend to sufficiently unique and interesting technology.

She has been called a sadist beyond imagining, and she certainly seems to have left a mountain of corpses and suffering in her wake.

She thinks babies are disgusting, but is adamant about the right of viruses to live and propagate.

Quotes

“8:49 : Full metamorphosis complete. Time elapsed : 17 minutes. Subject displaying extreme violent tendencies. Restraints approaching tensile limits. Administering sedative. Avoiding spinnerets located on abdomen. Experiment a complete success.”

“I don’t care what your motives are. I just need more of that chemical to manufacture the virus.”

“The subject was a carrier. The virus will disseminate. The nightmare of myth shall invade the world of man. This is only the beginning.”

“It seems I’m presented with a wonderful opportunity to dissect a living creature of myth. If a bullet can pierce Wonder Woman’s epidermis, a scalpel should logically do as well. A few tissue samples… some internal organs.”

“I can’t wait to see what they look like on the inside…”

“Idiots and fools — or masters of the world ? Does it matter, Jinx ? They simply become subjects for further study. Subjects to experiment on. To dissect.”

“Perhaps some Tar will help you. Will help take the edge off. I can provide it for you. Control its dosage. Monitor its effects. I can do this for you, you know.”

“Body bank batches A through R exhibit violent hyperresponse to pheromone stimulus, along with accelerated locomotor reaction and metastrength.”

“Analysis : time wave has cause rapid evolutionary degeneration in dozens of subjects through Shamballah — reducing them to helpless infants before further retrogression.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: DC Universe (Wonder Woman books).

Helper(s): Darci.