No-Name of the Brood

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Background

Powers and Abilities

No-Name is a hardened Warrior-Prime of the Brood. See our Brood article for what a Warrior-Prime is, and other useful facts about life.

She is significantly faster and smarter than the average Warrior-Prime. She’s about 10% larger — perhaps simply due to age. She could fly whilst carrying about 160lbs (Kate Waynesboro with some equipment and weapons) without being slowed down, and is even more fearless than a typical Warrior-Prime.

Our game stats assume that she has all the normal capabilities demonstrated in the past by Brood Warrior-Primes, even if she personally did not use these in her appearances.

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Super-monster

Though it wasn’t apparent at first, No-Name has superbroodian powers. How strong and durable she is is unclear, but she’s way more robust than ordinary Brood fighters. No-Name took energy cannon fire without significant wounds, and mostly ignores small arms fire.

She could also take Ms. Marvel’s energy blasts at close range, and survived being strangled for some time by the Hulk. She could lift a large, adult alligator with her two main limbs and break it in two – or break the bones of a gamma-spawned monster.

On other occasions she did not seem that strong. For instance she was somewhat unbalanced when Elloe Kaifi jumped upon her without warning so No-Name could carry her. Our DC Heroes RPG data accordingly assumes that this brood is better at hitting things than at lifting and carrying things.

These abilities may stem from the host in which she was born. Perhaps the embryo of No-Name was implanted within a super-durable, super-strong host with energy immunity abilities. If so she presumably was intended to be an elite warrior from before birth.

No-Name never used her poison stingers or her bite in combat, but this is presumably because her tentacles are deadlier still due to her strength.

Universal mother

No-Name has further unusual abilities, these ones pertaining to reproduction. She impossibly can be impregnated by aliens and carry fertile hybrid children to term. She also can implant Brood embryos or hybrid embryos into a living being, an ability that was previously assumed to be the province of Brood Queens or medical specialists.

This spontaneous evolution into a sort of super-fertile Queen might be a Brood evolutionary feature to prevent the extinction of a Clan. When No-Name demonstrated these abilities, she was thought to be the last living Brood of Clan-1982.

After this writeup was completed, Dr. Henry McCoy (aka the Beast) offered an hypothesis very similar to ours – if faced with extinction, Brood will become tougher and soldiers might “evolve” into queens to create more Brood. Dr. McCoy’s hypothesis might also explain No-Name’s abnormal strength and durability.

Apparently, No-Name is also pretty good at telling bedtime stories to children and crafting “hand” puppets.

Can you smell what the alien is cooking ?

No-Name displayed great olfactory acumen. It is unclear whether bloodhound-like tracking is a normal Warrior-Prime ability or one of her unusual capabilities.

Like all Brood and many species of insects, No-Name can communicate by “chemming”  – emitting clouds of chemical markers to convey meanings.

Curiously, No-Name seems able to chemically communicate with all sorts of aliens who can chem – usually insectile-looking species. She could even understand ordinary Earth insects to an extend. It is possible that chemming is an universal language – nobody seemed surprised that a Brood could understand their emissions.

History

No-Name used to belong to the Brood collective which writeups.org calls Clan-1982. This clan is famous for its 1982 war against the X-Men. She (No-Name uses female pronouns) stated that she was from Broodworld – one of the two inhabited planets in the solar system controlled by Clan-1982.

No-Name also mentioned that she had killed and eaten human beings before she came to Earth with the Hulk. The most economical explanation for this is that No-Name was part of the Warrior-Prime cadre that was sent to Earth to make contact with the Shi’ar renegade Deathbird. In this hypothesis, the Brood snipers who engaged the X-Men and Tigra in New York City were part of No-Name’s cadre.

No-Name was present when the X-Men launched a commando strike on Broodworld to save the racial soul of the Acanti. To do so, they invaded the mountainous corpse of the previous Acanti Prophet-Singer. No-Name and other Brood shock troops were sent in after the mutants despite the danger.

Beyond the X-Men, the gigantic Acanti corpse was crawling with deadly local predators – plus various aliens, such as the Flock warrior who would later be called Lockheed.

In pursuit, No-Name and her fire team killed various beasts therein. However, a vaguely amphibian-looking behemoth got the drop on them and swallowed them whole. They were left to be digested alive in the monster’s gullet.

System of survival

A short time later, the X-Men and their ally Binary (Carol Danvers) triggered the apotheosis of the Acanti racial soul trapped within the corpse of the Prophet-Singer. Fed enormous energies by Danvers, the Acanti soul bathed everything in its purity, which wrecked and eventually destroyed Broodworld.

One of the most amazing effects was that “impure” creatures were ’purified‘ – turned into immobile crystal. This ravaged the “impure” Brood and seemed to destroy the entire Clan – including the Queen, who was at ground zero of the apotheosis.

No-Name and her fire team were amazingly lucky. The monster that had swallowed them was turned into unliving, extremely resilient crystal by the Acanti soul. This prevented the six Brood within from being digested, shielded them from the Acanti apotheosis, and protected them from the destruction of Broodworld.

No-Name and her kin were left drifting through space in a crystalline monster carcass, seemingly the last survivors of their Clan.

Years later the carcass drifted through a space warp then crashed on the planet Sakaar. The Brood, weakened by years without sustenance, were easily captured by the Empire, who turned them into exotic gladiators.

Bring your warriors to the slaughter

The Brood warriors dominated ordinary opponents in the arena. This made their problems worse as they were shipped to the Maw, an academy for the best gladiators. The application process was simple – any given batch of newbies was left to fight each other to the death and the seven last beings standing would receive training.

When the six Brood arrived at the Maw, they were part of a batch of 22 persons.

The Brood fought as Brood do. They sneaked off until the fight was underway and struck as one once everybody was distracted, killing about half the fighters still standing. However some of the fighters were way more powerful than the Brood. The counter-attack killed most of No-Name’s team.

When the slave-masters stopped the fighting, No-Name was the only Brood among the seven survivors.

Warbound

Having lost all kin, the Brood only identified herself as “No-Name, Warrior-Prime of the Broodworld”. However, she soon started acting in ways not generally associated with Brood warriors.

She joined the pact with her six fellow survivors, who declared themselves “warbound”. She freely told the tale of Broodworld’s destruction to her fellow Warbounds, and in the arena fought with an eye toward protecting the others. She even saved Miek, one of the Warbounds, by flying him outside of an explosion.

The Warbound ended being but five — No-Name, Green Scar (aka the Hulk), Hiroim the Shamed, Korg and Miek the Unhived — after the fight that, by Imperial law, was to earn them their freedom. The obedience disks worn by slaves were then destroyed by the Silver Surfer. This made a rebellion possible, with the Green Scar as its Spartacus.

Gladiators rebellion

No-Name continued to behave inexplicably. For instance she acted in an increasingly friendly manner, and she even showed compassion toward Miek for the loss of his hive. When thousands of slaves from Miek’s species joined the Green Scar uprising, thinking that the Hulk was a prophesied saviour, No-Name took care of their smallest children.

Miek’s species — vaguely ant-like humanoids — shared some ground with the Brood. They had an insectile hive organisation and they chemmed . When the time came for Miek to moult into his full adult king form, No-Name had apparently learned enough to help him through the process.

No-Name fought during the entire rebellion, she and the Warbound being the core of the Hulk’s staff. She was still present when the planet was destroyed, and Hulk led the Warbound to Earth to have his vengeance. In New York City, she fought numerous Earth heroes – notably Ms. Marvel’s Mighty Avengers and the Fantastic Four.

That Hulk might kill the X-Men seemed to make No-Name happy, but she never actually took action against these mutants. In New York City, she specifically targeted Carol Danvers, but stood down when ordered to. Generally, she seemed to have mostly moved on from Clan-1982.

First pregnancy

(There are continuity problems about No-Name’s pregnancies between Heroes for Hire and Aftersmash. I’ve assumed here that both pregnancies took place, but not in the (logically impossible) order given in the stories.)

Just before leaving Sakaar, No-Name discretely had sex with Miek of the Warbound. The gestation period was brief, and at the end of the World War Hulk she gave birth to a pod of a half-dozen infants. These appeared to be hybrids of Brood and Miek’s race. Though No-Name was very excited about having children and feverishly built an underground nest, disaster struck.

The infants were nearly mindless, savage things only driven by hunger. They immediately tried to bite their own mother and kill nearby things. In Brood culture, they were perfect babies, and No-Name felt enormous pride. However, very young Imperial orphans (a quasi-Human race with reddish skin), who considered No-Name to be their adoptive mother, had followed her to her nest to ask her for a story.

Prime directive

The hybrid babies attacked the Imperial little kids. Considering the Imperial brats members of her extended clan and sworn to protect humans as a Warbound, No-Name destroyed her own children to save the softskins.

The Brood was still pregnant, though. Either she immediately got pregnant again, or her physiology allowed her to give birth to a series of small pods from a single impregnation. She then came in contact with former super-villain Humbug, a human of dubious sanity and utterly fascinated by insects, who volunteered to be her King.

It was a trap. The collective insect consciousness of Earth was terrified of the possibility of a Brood establishing a new Clan on the planet. Thus, they had been manipulating Humbug as their unwitting agent. Humbug’s body was saturated with poison, and the embryo that No-Name implanted into him would be stillborn.

Furthermore an insect drone shot the Brood in the abdomen with a laser, which did not kill her but destroyed her womb.

Truth and consequences

The Hulk eventually went out of control, and No-Name saw how Earth would soon be destroyed by the fighting. Refusing to see another world die she was the first Warbound to break ranks, defending Hulk’s foes Reed Richards and Tony Stark so peace could be brokered.

The Warbound then learned that the traitorous Miek was actually the one to blame for the destruction of Sakaar. No-Name went berserk and attacked Miek in the name of the millions dead, particularly the children such as Miek’s own hivelings. She slashed his eyes open with her tentacles then fatally wounded him.

World War Hulk was over, and No-Name stuck with the remaining Warbound. However, the group and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Kate Waynesboro were captured by the Leader, who wanted to steal the power of a Warbound, Hiroim the Shamed. The plan was foiled by the Warbound and Waynesboro, to whom Hiroim transmitted his Old Power as he died.

Heroes

After Hiroim died, the roster of the Warbounds became No-Name of Broodworld, Korg the Kronan, Elloe Kaifi the Imperial, and Kate Waynesboro of Earth.

Despite being reviled by most humans, the Warbound fought to save hundreds of civilians from the Leader’s gamma-spawned horrors. They then remained for months in the area ravaged by the Leader’s gamma mutates, now called “Gammaworld”.

Formerly the city of Stoneridge (NM), the area had suffered grave casualties. The Warbound helped with the recovery, with No-Name organising the care for the orphaned children. Waynesboro brokered a deal with Norman Osborn so Osborn’s men wouldn’t step in and make the situation worse.

Skaar son of Hulk

When Skaar, son of Hulk, came to Earth, the Warbound offered their support. Both Skaar and the Hulk initially rejected them in order to fight each other, but the furious Waynesboro showed them the damage their battle was inflicting. Thus, father and son reluctantly cooperated with the Warbound to control the worse of it.

Boththen left, and the Warbound presumably returned to their work in Gammaworld.

In 2011, after a fight with Zeus, a ravaged Hulk was rushed to Gammaworld so Kate Waynesboro could reanimate him using specialised medical equipment. As the Hulk recuperated, he received an e-mail from Ka-Zar.

The Savage Land had taken in refugees from Sakaar, who had travelled to Earth on Hulk’s spaceship. But these refugees, mostly Imperials, were being stalked and attacked. Hulk took No-Name, Skaar, Elloe, and Korg with him to the Savage Land.

Savage Land

The Warbound soon determined that Miek was still alive, and both more powerful and more insane than before. As an evolutionary safeguard to counter extinction, Miek had become female and capable of self-impregnating. Now she was killing to find suitable hosts for her larvae. It wasn’t working, and Miek wanted to use the Hulk as a sufficiently robust incubator.

Hulk and his Warbound did defeat Miek, who fell into a volcano. But several of her larvae had reached a sustainable stage. Skaar prevented a raging Hulk from smashing them, and No-Name volunteered to help Skaar raise the larvae in the Savage Land.

As Elloe was asked to lead the Imperial survivors there, the Warbound established themselves in the Savage Land to defend and develop the last surviving Sakaarian cultures and species.

Defenders

In 2013, No-Name was seen investigating a project by the Celestial Order of the Hai Dai, who were growing their own cloned Brood in the US. Finding these creatures disgusting, No-Name attacked as Elsa Bloodstone, the Valkyrie (Brunnhilde) and Misty Knight came in to destroy the lab.

The four were successful, and No-Name left to continue her investigation into the source of Brood DNA. Though Valkyrie’s astral vision revealed that No-Name was a potential Shieldmaiden, the Asgardian did not mention it to anyone.

Description

See illustration.

Personality

At first No-Name was hostile, sarcastic and underhanded. But when she found herself the last of her Clan, she had no idea what to do and just tagged along.

The normal Brood reaction would apparently have been to commit suicide in despair over being clanless and queenless. But No-Name decided that she would live and stuck with the others as they represented her best chance at survival.

No-Name soon decided that the Warbounds were now clan to her, treating them almost as seriously as she would relate with Brood clanmates.

A motherly figure

No-Name has a strong interest in the safety and development of children around her, no matter what their species. This applies even to softskin humanoid sprogs which normal Brood would consider a light snack. This seems to be partly the result of a biological imperative, though No-Name as a person obviously enjoys caring for children.

Since her womb was apparently universally adaptable, there might be no limit to the diversity of offspring she could potentially have. So all infants might look to her like children she could have had.

When not fighting, No-Name spent nearly all her time on Sakaar caring for the children of rebels and considering ways to have children of her own. She particularly liked telling them stories, which might be part of the Brood culture of oneness and sharing common ground. On several occasions she was seen using hand puppets (well, tentacle puppets) to narrate.

The first thing No-Name will do in any battle is to fly anything that she identifies as children to safety, unless that would have catastrophic tactical consequences.

Warrior-Prime

Being Brood, No-Name will unerringly support her Clan and fight for it to the death. The trick is that she freely determined what she wanted to be her Clan, and that those choices she made trump even deep-seated biological Brood imperatives.

Her goals are still normal Brood ones. To serve the Clan, belong to a collective, aggressively counter any attempt to eradicate her race, breed for strength and survival, etc.. Simply, what she considers to be the Clan and race is, out of necessity, abnormally broad.

No-Name still occasionally makes jokes about cooking and eating people, which may seem quite threatening to outsiders (she’s Brood !). Her instincts to kill and eat people are as strong as any Brood’s, but she chooses not to act upon those as she wants to be a nurturer, not a ravager.

As No-Name sees it, the Green Scar (Hulk) taught the rebels that they could be who they wanted no matter in which species or caste they had been born. And her own choice is to be a compassionate warrior and a caretaker rather than a killing machine.

Normal Brood would probably consider her an abomination. As they well know, any Brood who has been cut off from the normal oneness and constant psychic, chemical and physical contact with their kind is bound to be completely insane.

Quotes

“He doesn’t need you to tell him his duty, Dr. Waynesboro. We Warbound chose this fight together. We’ll see it through, no matter what.”

(As a fight is about to erupt) “Hah. This is going to be fun.”

“Shhhh. Mama’s here.”

“Heh.” (her most frequent line by far)

(Shielding Stark, Richards and Kaifi) “We didn’t come here to watch another world die.”

(Clobbered by a horde of gamma-irradiated, mind-controlled schoolkids) “They’re just children ! I can’t [fight back !]”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel Universe (chiefly Hulk books).

Helper(s): Darci.