Gideon

*Furthermore*, these notes aren’t quite about Gideon as he appeared in the Marvel Universe. These are campaign notes of mine from the 1990s.

This guy was used as the main mastermind for a mutant campaign of mine. You know, that kind of campaign where everything that happens is slowly revealed to be a component of a vast conspiracy headed by a monstrously influential mastermind.

It worked great, especially as Gideon appeared very early as a highly vocal NPC in the campaign. The players then thought he was just there to allow them to role-play and reaffirm the selflessness of their characters.

But… but it needs to be thoroughly re-researched and redone to only reflect Marvel material. It’s just kept around since some find it a useful stopgap.

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Gideon’s most potent ability is that he’s a filthy rich tycoon, financial wizard and extraordinary business strategist. He’s the owner and CEO to the empire known as Ophrah Industries. The immense resources at his disposal include :

• Advanced technology.
• Androids.
• A personal danger room for exercise.
• Laboratories with power dampeners for holding metahuman captives.
• Black Razor-like elite goons with serious hardware.
• Life Model Decoys .
• Etc.

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Gideon is also a strong, skilled fighter – although he’s not as good as Night Thrasher. But the physical threat he poses comes from his ability to duplicate superhuman genetic templates. He can very quickly copy and use powers at an high level of skill, often using the power in ways the original user never thought about (often more ruthless ways that the user cared for).

The “genetic template” side of this ability should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Since it has been demonstrated Gideon’s mimicry power extends to robots, androids or suits of power armour .

Lastly, Gideon is an EXternal, a kind of immortal mutant.

History

Gideon studied at Harvard  but was expelled under circumstances to be revealed. He went on to build his company, Ophrah Industries, into a corporate giant. The immortal Gideon intended to use his ever-growing financial power to dominate the world.

During the late 1980s, Gideon began forging alliances with :

• High-tech industrial consortia such as GeneTech and the Taylor Foundation.
• Powerful mutants.
• Secret organizations such as AIM.
• Secretive governmental agenciies, possibly including Project : PEGASUS.

He is known to have formed an alliance with the villainous Toad, who was leading the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants at the time, in a scheme to recreate the menace Proteus. Similarly, he joined a group of hedonists known as the Upstarts, although whether or not he carried through with their goals of killing mutants is unrevealed.

Sunspot

A long-time family friend of the De Costa family, he also erroneously believed the young Roberto De Costa (secretly the mutant hero Sunspot) to be the new immortal that the Externals had been looking for.

Gideon manipulated events to have De Costa’s father killed and Roberto to take over the role as leader of the De Costa family company. He positioned himself as De Costa’s mentor, taking him away from his role in the hero team New Mutants and into Gideon’s confidence.

For a long time, Gideon kept his power a secret, preferring to work behind the scenes. However, the heroic New Warriors, when investigating criminal links of the Taylor Foundation, caused Gideon to reveal his mutant powers and sadistic temperament. He soundly defeated the entire team – but later lost a rematch mano a mano against Night Thrasher.

EXternals

When it was discovered that Cannonball (Samuel Guthrie) was the mutant Gideon was searching for, Gideon abandoned De Costa. He subjected Guthrie to vicious experiments, until he was later rescued by the New Mutant’s later incarnation, X-Force.

There later was a weird subplot with Selene killing off the immortal EXternals, starting Gideon. But this apparently went straight into comic book limbo . It is quite possible than Gideon once again manipulated events to appear to have been killed.

Personality

Gideon was quickly nicknamed “the Ziggy Stardust  of the industry”, and it fits to an extend. His unusual appearance is backed by a flamboyant, playful, charismatic and relaxed personality that would be the envy of any rock/pop star or star actor.

He’s the epitome of suave, calm and cool, acting friendly and relaxed in the middle of a firefight. An extrovert and connoisseur, he’s openly attracted by both the best and strangest things in life. This ranges from interesting and beautiful women or art to new and weird mutant powers he can privately experiment with.

The world is his stage, supermarket and private party with great guests and expensive drugs.

He’s a bad guy, incidentally

Gideon is clearly amoral and completely self-centred. He does whatever he wants. In fact, he takes pride in this, and tends to be angered when people clearly declare themselves to be good or evil. To him, this is pure hypocrisy as human nature is neither.

He also actively encourages, usually through manipulation, innocent people to discover their more selfish and violent side and accept it. It is also likely that he would manipulate somebody who only knew evil in discovering his softer side, if only to confuse him and gain an henchman.

Gideon has an usually well-hidden violent and sadistic streak. He’ll sometimes throw away the polite exterior to jump into a fight if he thinks he can get away with it. He’ll even overtly use his mutant ability if outclassed, or if particularly angered). Likewise, if he can perform acts of torture, slaughter and general bloody mayhem without being witnessed, he’ll usually indulge himself.

Lastly, he likes to play with people, but consider himself too mature to be a “supervillain”, wasting time in melodramatic plots. He does love a good fight though, as long as he thinks he can win…

Description

Gideon is really tall and quite broad and muscular, and this powerful physique radiates power and confidence. He’s always dressed in expensive, avant-garde clothes in sharp designer colours or outré business suits.

DC Universe History

Gideon is in several ways an anti-Batman (with a comparable business empire and hidden life, but no moral values). But his abilities are geared toward fighting groups of superhumans. In fact, in Sunspot, he pretty much wanted to acquire his equivalent of Robin. He thus would make a good JLA foe – in a way, you could also consider him to be a cross between Amazo and Prometheus.

Note that against a JLA-level group you will have to pump his Mimic up so he can copy Supes and John’s powers and thrash everyone with them. Of course it’ll probably take Batman to realize Gideon’s powers are not innate but copied from his teammates, then fight him solo when his powers are depleted.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel Universe.

Helper(s): Jackson, Pufnstuff. History based on the one at http://marvelbook.topcities.com/teams/xternals.htm (long since defunct) which was slightly more complete than my own.