Manhunter

Context

This character is an original creation. We often call these “homemades” or “homebrewed” – think home cooking or craft beer.

Many of these characters were created to take part in tabletop role-playing game sessions. Others were invented as a creative writing exercise, often as part of a community event.

This specific character is based on DC’s “Tangent” concept – sharing the name of a well-known DC characters but being a different person on a different world.

Background

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Powers and Abilities

Jack has the power to read into the soul of people. He will see their crimes and project them in the mind of the guilty using his Scalpel. This’ transmission is images of their core fears and the pain they have provoked to their victims.

He humiliates them so they can reach their repentance… and then he offers them the chance to change, a sincere chance, forbidding them and giving them inner peace.

But there are also those damned and unforgiven. Imagine then a scalpel, made of the blackness of Jack’s soul, that will fill them with pain and cold until death. Nobody escapes the Manhunter.

Other abilities

As one with Darkness, the Manhunter has no problem to see by night as clearly as by day. As one black among the souls, he can change his shape into a shade.

As a legend among men, he’s virtually immortal, although pain is never far away.

As a myth among criminals, his skills has been heightened to unbelievable extremes.

As the embodiement of Humanity’s Sin, a sixth sense tells him whenever the Earth’s in danger.

“Jack” knows a myriad of civilizations along the galaxy, although it’s not his choice whether to go on world or another. It’s the Watchmen who choose when and how… and what for.

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History

“My name is not Jack, but that’s what they called me, so the name suits me as any other. I lived in London in the… let’s say the ’80’s.

I disappeared to all Humanity as fast as I had shown myself. Some said I had died. That would have been to easy. I was hijacked by an alien race, a family of galactic demigods self-called The Watchmen.

I had been observed, judged and found guilty. And precisely for the nature of my crimes I had been chosen for a task they found dirty and unworthy. To redempt or to terminate monsters like myself, aberrations that didn’t deserve to remain alive.

So (how ironic !) I went from accused to executor. My skills where enhanced beyond measure. Was I a doctor before? I can’t quite remember. I ended gifted with dark powers with whom I started a galactic pilgrimage to find and redirect lives and motivations of the vilest creatures I was marked to.

I was sheathed in an unbreakable willpower and a frightening and commanding presence. I ripped the fears from the sinners and disembowelled their crimes, exposing them to their eyes as if they were the victims. Then in the verge of sorrow and despair I made rebirth in them a hint of hope. Sometimes that was not enough.

The Watchmen have told me that I will go back to the Earth. I suspect they want to test me, to see if I have changed enough… or at all, if it’s all a mask, a façade I myself believe, easier as I’m far from other humans.

I’ve seen many things, but have they make me better? It’s not my time… but, of course, neither I’m the same”.

Description

Jack is a man in his late 30’s. He has an unhealthy build but issupernaturally nimble.

He dresses in the fashion of the late XIX^th century, with black elegant suit, white shirt, red waistcoat and top hat.

The shadow he casts and the ones over his features are always a bit darker than they should.

Personality

He has inhuman presence and will. He tries to keep calmed in every case.

Jack’s an intelligent and logical man, and considers every aspect of what he sees. Although he is still not in touch with the human civilization after the XX^th century he has known many worlds in this years, some more advanced than Earth. Thus, he adapts fast.

He doesn’t trust too much on the Watchmen, as he knows very little of their reasons and motivations. But he plays their game by their rules, even if he despises them.

He always walks in the dark, one would say he comes from it. As his soul is as black as that of his targets, he executes himself every time he kills a guilty Sinner. Thus, every time he’s a bit closer to his own redemption… or to becoming a emotionless machine ?

Jack can’t remember much about his human life. But he does remember that his father abandoned them for the sake of a beautiful prostitute, that his mother treated him bad and that the hate for one and the other was the spark that took him to the Whitechapel murders. Although reformed, he is still Jack, damned for all times… or so he thinks.

Quotes

“I will not shed an innocent’s blood. NEVER !”

“Nobody escapes the Manhunter !”

By Oscar Lazaro and Marcos Muñoz.

Source of Character: Homemade DC Tangent Universe.