Ragman

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Though Rory is in excellent physical condition, whatever combat skills he had from his service in Việt Nam seem to have atrophied. By the time he became Ragman, he was no match for the pair of common thugs. He did have some basic intrusion skills, including some ability at picking locks, though security alarms were too sophisticated for him to deal with.

Albeit his adventures since becoming the Ragman, he has learned some basic occult lore. Rory had occasional precognitive dreams, though they were too vague to provide useful information. A gamemaster could still use them as narrative hooks.

מאַגיש שטאָף

Regan is the latest Ragman, an avenger and protector empowered by a mystical suit. While the wearer is bonded to the Ragman costume, he is almost impossible to destroy. While his durability is only slightly superhuman, any damage sustained is repaired in seconds.

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However, the rags are extremely vulnerable to fire, a weakness added by the Rabbis who created the Ragman as a security measure in case the suit fell into the wrong hands.

The suit also has several modes of transportation. It gives the users prodigious leaping ability, can slowly float through the air, or discorporate and reform great distances away. The latter form of discorporation can also be used in a more limited manner to avoid physical attacks by allowing the rags to simply flow around objects as well as to ensnare nearby opponents by smothering them in a cloud of rags.

סטילער פון נשמות

Perhaps the most macabre of the costume’s abilities is the stealing of souls. The suit is drawn toward evil souls. It can sense them in its vicinity and is compelled to seek them out and attack them. This compulsion is also inflicted upon the wearer if he has the costume on.

The evil acts of people who have been detected in this manner can also be sensed by the Ragman. Rory could not do this at first, having to learn of those crimes in a more mundane manner, but this writeup assumes he simply had not learned so in those earlier stories. This sensing of sins does not work on those people or beings who are not evil.

The suit can steal a person’s soul as long as it is still touching his body. Ragman will usually subdue a target (knock them unconscious or stun them) to minimize their ability to resist, but this is not necessary. In DC Heroes RPG terms such fights also encourage the target to spend Hero Points , further reducing their ability to resist.

Once a soul is absorbed, the body is left a brain-dead husk and the mind and spirit become yet another rag on the costume. The stolen soul is not affected if the physical body subsequently dies.

בעל פון בייז נשמות

After a soul is incorporated into the Ragman suit, it can be used in several ways. Its energy can be directed into boosting the wearer’s strength, speed, coordination, and fighting prowess. When the wearer uses it in this manner, he can become such a skilled combatant that he can easily defeat a roomful of armed men without being struck in return a single time in the process.

This energy can also be directed into making the Ragman’s influence more formidable. When concentrating on such actions, the mere presence of the Ragman can make groups of armed gunmen stop attacking or even flee the scene.

The wearer can also look into the memories of the absorbed soul and extract any information therein as desired. It is also possible that the wearer might be able to use some of the abilities possessed by the souls in the rag suit — using a captured sorcerer’s memories to cast spells, for example — but this is only speculation.

Powered by redemption

There is an implied redemption of evil souls contained within the rag suit, but no mechanism for this has yet been shown. Rory’s comments seem to indicate that this redemption is linked to the soul willingly assisting the wearer in his mission and thus slowly working off its moral debt. This process has been stated to take a century or more.

While the souls power the suit, no single soul seems to make a noticeable difference in the Ragman’s power levels. Accordingly, the acquisition or loss of souls as time goes by is usually not a serious concern to the current trustee of the costume.

The costume can steal souls that are not evil. Indeed, on two occasions the ability to absorb the souls of good people was essential for keeping the suit under control.

On another occasion, Rory attempted to use the suit to absorb the amoral soul of a mystic servitor. He was able to begin the process but the servitor fought it off, indicating that the suit has difficulty absorbing the souls of mystically-powerful creatures.

Psychic links

Like all of those who have trained in the use of the suit, Rory has formed a rudimentary telepathic bond with the Ragman costume. He can communicate with the suit’s collective personality. Though he speaks out loud, only he can hear the suit’s replies. Rory also uses this trait to summon the suit to him over short distances.

Though detailed exchanges are only possible at short range, those attuned to the suit in this manner can still get a general sense of its disposition while active, and vice versa. For example, the Rabbi who trained had trained Gerry sensed when the suit became active again (when Rory first put it on) and where it was despite being an unknown distance away.

The suit also sensed when the Rabbi passed away. It relayed that information to Rory even though the Rabbi was no longer in the same city as Rory and the suit when he died. Rory has not as yet developed this second talent. It may require additional special training in Jewish mystic rituals such as the Rabbi had.

Because the Ragman was created as a symbol of hope to protect communities, he can over time form a limited psychic bond with the people of a given neighborhood. When this process is complete, the people of the community will find themselves acting as one with the Ragman to confront local threats.

Once this occurs, the Ragman’s work is finished and he will move on, teleporting to a new place that needs his help. How the suit determines where the Ragman is needed next is unknown.

The suit has an additional failsafe that compels the wearer to teleport away if the battle for a neighborhood is hopeless. The Ragman was meant to inspire hope, so staying to fight a lost cause would be futile. The suit’s creators felt it was better to have the Ragman live to fight another day rather than be destroyed.

History

(Taken from Batman #551, wherein Rory relates the full history of the Ragman, with editorial notes in parentheses.)

“The 16^th-Century Prague ghettos were filled with oppressed and impoverished Jews in desperate need of a protector. Rabbi Loew, versed in the mystical secrets of the Kabbalah, set out to create such a guardian, forming an indomitable yet obedient creature of clay — the “Golem,” literally meaning ’body without soul.‘

Uneasy about being defended by a soulless monster, however, a council of Rabbis replaced the Golem with a “living costume”. It was animated by a human agent and passed down through the generations from one avenging Ragman to the next.

From Warsaw to Gotham

“Just prior to World War II, the costume was inherited by Jerzy Reganiewicz, who became defender of the Warsaw ghetto. He suffered crushing defeat when the Nazis invaded Poland. As “Gerry Regan”, he moved to the United States after the war.

He opened a junk and pawn shop in Gotham’s worst slum (named “Rags’n’tatters”). All the while he shielded his son from the terrible responsibility of the Ragman’s failed cloak.

(Gerry’s desire to protect Rory became even stronger after Rory returned from the Việt Nam War as a traumatized wreck. Rory married and lived a life separate from his father’s for a while, but his marriage fell apart. This in conjunction with other failures eventually drove him back to his father’s pawn shop.)

“Some gangsters wanted to use the junk shop as a front for drug sales. They murdered Gerry Regan and left his son Rory — me — for dead. Only (then) did I discover my inheritance — hidden inside an old suitcase. With the help of my father’s Rabbi, I was able to master the tattered costume and its powers. I’ve used them to defend the weak and downtrodden ever since.

(End of Batman #551 excerpt)

Wherever I may roam

Once Rory had cleaned up his original Gotham City neighborhood, he traveled wherever the suit took him. Though he has roamed quite a bit, few details of these adventures are known. Regan has ended up in both Gotham City and New Orleans on several occasions. He has also made at least one trip to Blüdhaven.

On the mystic front, the Ragman joined a group of Earth’s mystic defenders, the Sentinels of Magic. Thus he aided in resolving the Day of Judgment crisis in which the demon Neron claimed the power of the Spectre.

More recently, Regan collaborated with a new iteration of that same group, now called the Shadowpact. He thus confronted the mystic crises that threatened the world during the Day of Vengeance and the Infinite Crisis. He became a full-time member of the Shadowpact after the Infinite Crisis.

Description

The Ragman is a terrifying figure to behold. He wears a suit of rags that blows around him independent of the wind, making him seem like there are grasping hands all around him. His identity is entirely obscured by the suit. Ragman, when pursuing an evildoer, will sometimes call out their sins as he chases them down.

When not wearing the rag suit, Rory is a somewhat homely man with thinning brown hair and a thin but wiry build. He has a series of scars all over his body, a remnant of the attack that left his father dead and him the inheritor of the Ragman costume. These scars have faded over time and even the diagonal scar across his face is no longer evident to casual inspection.

Personality

Rory was initially hesitant about the responsibilities of being the Ragman. But he eventually began to take pride in the idea of fighting evils and working to bring communities together.

Rory has a strong moral sense of right and wrong. At the same time, he truly cares about the souls of those he captures and hopes to help them find redemption. This concern for others originally even extended to trying to convince the less-hardened criminals to give up their evil ways.

Years of cleaning up the dregs of society has had its toll, though. Rory has become almost jaded about it. Now, Ragman is just someone with a job to do. He thinks of it no differently than being a street cleaner. Someone needs to clean up the human garbage and that someone happens to be him.

On matters beyond his primary quest to garner evil souls, he is still a selfless hero willing to give his all to better the world.

Emotions in motion

While Rory has become somewhat inured to his role as the Ragman, he has oddly become more temperamental and excitable about other subjects. When he first became the Ragman, Rory was amazingly resilient. Even when suffering multiple serious setbacks such as being beaten nearly to death, having his father killed, and losing everything he owned all at the same time Regan responded with quiet, calm resolve.

He now gets slightly panicked or flustered more easily than he did in previous years. This is probably due to a combination of the horrors he has seen during his work and the continued corrosive influence of the souls of the suit, which take every opportunity to mock or defy him.

The Ragman suit’s souls formed a collective intelligence of sorts. This group-mind often engages in subtle psychological warfare with the suit’s wearer.

In addition to inflicting the suit’s compulsions upon the wearer, the group-mind will often make spiteful comments about the wearer or relay troubling or upsetting facts. Examples of the latter include telling the Rabbi that Rory had absorbed repentant souls and informing Rory that his beloved Rabbi had died while he was in the middle of a very challenging fight.

While Rory at one time simply thought of the collected spirits as “the souls,” he has since become familiar enough with the suit that he now regards each of the souls as an individual as he draws upon their energies.

Quotes

“Bringing the authorities into the situation may complicate matters, but I do have feelings. Innocent lives must not be imperiled… In addition to feelings, I have patience. I have kept these men away from the stairwells while the building is being evacuated. Thus, patience has its rewards. And thankfully, its limits.”

“I allow the rags to rustle and swirl in the building’s still air and make sure that the thugs notice them. It is important that there be no doubt that the rags are alive…and that they are invincible.”

“I serve not myself, but those who need me.”

(While tapping the energy of souls for strength) “They scream bloody murder all the while, but they give up the goods. I notice Joe doesn’t pitch in yet. They never do at first. He’ll learn or he’ll be part of the suit long after I’m no longer the poor sucker wearing it.”

By Mike Winkler and Roy Cowan.

Source of Character: DC Comics (1991 Ragman mini-series, Legends of the Dark Knight #51, Ragman: Cry of the Dead mini-series, Batman #551-2, Day of Judgment mini-series, Robin #143-5, Day of Vengeance mini-series and one-shot, Infinite Crisis mini-series).

Helper(s): Sébastien Andrivet.