Rocket Raccoon

There have been several versions of him. Since we’re going to discuss these changes, it is best to read his profiles in order and thus first read the Rocket Raccoon (Classic) character profile then come back to this one.

This here profile includes minor S P O I L E R S about Annihilation: Conquest and later storylines involving Rocky.

This writeup covers everything from Annihilation: Conquest in 2007 up until March, 2012. This means that it ends after Annihilators: Earthfall but before the thoroughly unexplained return of the Guardians in Avengers Assemble.

Advertisement

Background

Good things come in small procyons

Though Rocket is officially 4’ and 55lbs, he’s consistently drawn as being about 2’5”. And upon first seeing him Peter Quill does estimate that he’s 2½’ tall.

Powers & Abilities

Rocket is a fully uplifted  raccoon with a heightened humanoid stature and human-level intelligence. He has fully manipulative paws and raccoon-ish assets such as an excellent sense of smell.

The Kree asserted that he has a sort of combat super-instinct, making his decisions in the midst of battle very likely to be correct. In the field this seems to mean that he’s good at shooting stuff, even better at not getting shot by stuff, and generally lucky in a fight.

Advertisement

In DC Heroes RPG terms he also has a respectable amount of Hero Points .

His strength-to-weight ratio seems very high… but at the end of the day he’s just a small furry mammal. He can with great effort move some heavy objects, for instance to drag an unconscious human on the floor.

In hand-to-hand combat he can keep people busy by trying to claw at their face. But he’s unlikely to inflict telling damage to a trained fighter. He might be able to stun some weak opponents if he has an improvised weapon, though.

Action hero

Rocket has superior action skills. He’s an excellent athlete, and a natural with an endless range of guns and vehicles. He can swiftly get the hang of guns and fast vehicles that he’s never seen before, even if they have complex controls.

His acrobatic, evasive and jumping ability are excellent, and he can routinely use them in the middle of combat. It’s nothing that a Chow Yun Fat character couldn’t do, but these seldom are 2½’ tall. Being that small and having a tail for extra balance also helps with his evasive abilities.

Rocket is always in movement and jumping around in a fight, and he can easily maintains accurate gunfire whilst doing somersaults.

Other skills

Though he’s not a proper leader like Star-Lord is, Rocket Raccoon’s combat instinct, high intelligence and genuine expertise in large-scale site security allow him to come up with some really good plans. This is particularly true when that involves getting in or out of a secure perimeter.

He’s also good at :

• Taking into account the unusual capabilities of his allies.
• Finding surprising applications and combinations for those.
• Creatively exploiting enemy weaknesses.

This isn’t a “power” per se. He’s just good at coming up with cunning plans, and has a strong intuition about the sort of things that might work. In tabletop role-playing game terms, he simply has a smart player.

Raccoon is a demolitions expert.

He is also knowledgeable about practical astrophysics (such as the general workings of a warp drive or a Dyson sphere ).

He’s familiar with Earth’s mainstream Anglophone culture. And he learned the language of Planet X (which isn’t included in normal translators) so he can understand his buddy Groot.

Ordnance, part 1

Rocket usually uses slim, size-appropriate laser pistols – and can very efficiently dual-wield those.

However, he’s comfortable with all flavours of guns. For instance during the mission on Phalanx-dominated Hala he manned a Kree replica of a Vickers machinegun  and at least one M72 LAW  clone.

As a Guardian of the Galaxy he often totes an energy chaingun  that is bigger than he is. Such canons presumably have anti-gravity floaters attached so Rocket can wield them. Such guns have a stun mode, and their optics include a life sensor for targeting through cover or in poor visibility.

Modified high-tech grenades of immense destructive power will also sit on Rocket’s belt – though “bombs” might be a better term.

Ordnance, part 2

Rocky’s also equipped with the standard translation implant, which allows written and oral communication using all major known languages in the local cluster. His Kree uniform is cold-, heat- and vacuum-resistant and can become a spacesuit if he affixes a helmet on it (which looks like a simple transparent plastic sphere).

Based on Star-Lord’s similar uniform, it seems likely that Rocket’s is lightly armoured. When conducting EVA , he’ll don a common jetpack – albeit one adapted to his stature.

As a Guardian of the Galaxy, Rocket has a “passport” bracelet from Knowhere. Knowhere is a community living in the severed head of a Celestial, and situated at the edge of the expanding physical universe. Its most notable facility is a teleportation array with universal range and pinpoint precision.

The passport bracelets allows to use the teleporters – and to activate a return teleportation.

Halfworld Asylum

The Halfworld Asylum for the Criminally Insane is a stellar-scale megastructure providing specialised medical care. Its basic architecture is that of a Dyson sphere. This means a hollow globe encompassing an entire star so as to use this sun’s full output as an energy source.

More specifically, Halfword is a series of increasingly larger Dyson rings around its star, arranged for even greater efficiency in capturing energy. This type of stellar engine is called a matrioshka brain , since the usual objective is to use all this energy to run a titanic computing system.

Halfworld was once depicted as having been built around a planet rather than a star, but this an artistic error.

The outermost sphere is called the Galacian Wall. It is heavily armed and armoured to prevent intrusion. The innermost habitable section is the maximum security section, intended for extraordinarily dangerous patients whom even Halfworld cannot cure.

Halfworld orbits a star in the remote Keystone Quadrant, for increased security. It was founded by “the hospice ships”, without any further information. It was stated to be the largest known asylum. Where it gets its funding, how the personnel is renewed over the centuries, etc. is unknown.

One statement implies that Halfword has been operating for about 300 years.

Population

All patients who were seen were human or very-near-human. One assumes that this doesn’t reflect the Halfworld patient population as a whole. It would make sense to keep patients with the same phenotype  in the same section to avoid stressful exposure to alien beings.

The staff is divided between the guards and the wardens. The guards are quasi-sapient creatures of living wood, armed with energy small arms. The wardens run everything else – medical, logistics, technical, security command, etc. and are fully uplifted  animals.

In the section of Halfworld that was seen, the guards were all styled as clowns, and the uplifted wardens all came from Earth or Earth-like animal stock. The clown appearance is there to avoid looking like a prison or an hospital, and the animal uplifts (foxes, deers, rabbits, frogs, ferrets, squirrels, etc.) were specifically selected and shaped to look friendly and reassuring.

One assumes that these Earth-like choices were specific to the section hosting human patients.

The guard drones are specifically made of bioreactive dendronic wood from Planet X. Perhaps this is because that makes them considerably harder to hack than robots. It was mentioned that Halfworld had a “living eco-security system”, but what this means beyond the clown drones is unrevealed.

Halfworld is also briefly referred to as a bio-organic system. Yet, most sections looked distinctly metallic and manufactured – like a typical starship. One of the docking bays had ivy growing in it, though – one gets the impression that the eco-security was added on top, and partially replaced, conventional engineering and security.

Serious spheres on serious sun

Halfworld seems to primarily rely on advanced VR immersion, both as a therapeutic tool and a humane mean of detention. This is presumably why it requires so much computing power.

Named staff included :

• Rocket Raccoon (former head of security).
• Blackjack O’Hare (the new head of security and Rocky’s former number two).
• Judson Jakes (uplifted mole, O’Hare’s number two, deceased).
• Lylla (uplifted otter, nurse, former lover of Rocket and now wife of Blackjack).
• Doctor Dyvyne (head of the psychology department).
• Wal-Rus (a technician or engineer working with the security chief).

Security included short-range fusion warhead missiles along and within the Galacian wall. Most clown drones seemed to have roughly the same combat skills as human correction officers do, and typical blasters .

History

Rocket Raccoon was the head of security of Halfworld, and was running a tight ship. However during the 1980s, an inmate proved almost too much to handle. The Star-Thief (Barry Bauman) was incurable even with Halfworld VR therapy. His cosmic powers eventually allowed him to mentally dominate a large percentage of the staff and other inmates.

Along with his second Blackjack O’Hare, Rocket narrowly stopped Star-Thief. However, it was obvious that Star-Thief would pose a threat again. Rocket had a number of security redesigns take place, then added a new lockdown mode. Halfworld no longer had an exit unless every warden agreed to unlock it.

Rocket then exiled himself. With him gone, the unlocking procedure was impossible even if every warden on Halfworld was mind-controlled by Star-Thief.

Before he left, Rocket volunteered to have his memory rewritten using Halfword therapeutic technology, to maintain security. There were two layers. The first was that he didn’t remember anything about Halfworld, but did not find that curious.

The second was a sanitised version of his adventures repackaged as a surreal cute animals action tale – the 1985 Rocket Raccoon Marvel series. Though the facts were correct, their presentation and reinvention was rather whimsical. This second layer was presumably there to defeat mental probes, since Rocket never spontaneously recalled it.

In-between days

What happened next is unrevealed. Rocket Raccoon was apparently captured by the Stranger and brought to a laboratory world. When Quasar took down the security there, Rocket was glimpsed among the dozens of exotic beings who broke out.

Two years later, he landed his starship on Dandesh-4 to refuel. But he was attacked and petrified when he discovered that the locals weren’t D’Bari people but camouflaged Carbon Copy Men. She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters) and her allies freed him.

Later on, he shared unchronicled freebooting adventures with the Starjammers, back when they were commanded by Corsair (Chris Summers).

In 2005, Rocket was spotted on Earth, in the superhuman division offices of law firm Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway. His reasons for being there remain unrevealed. Perhaps he had come to see She-Hulk, who worked there as a legal counsel.

Since Rocket knows many bits of Anglophone Earth pop culture (for instance he has an Ebay  account), he may have stayed there for several months.

Circa 2006, Rocket was arrested and imprisoned by the Kree Empire. Their claim was that he had breached a restricted zone. Rocket claimed that there were no cross-band beacons signalling the existence of such a zone.

Conquest, part 1

In 2007, the Kree Empire was brutally overtaken as its entire technological base turned against it. The techno-viral  Phalanx struck so hard and suddenly that resistance was impossible on the core worlds. However, there were Kree outposts that weren’t hit. One of these included the prison where Rocket was held.

Since going in with advanced gear was suicide due to Phalanx technopathy, specops Kree officers assembled a commando of primitive prisoners led by the former Star-Lord (Peter Quill). These were Rocket Raccoon of Halfworld, Groot of Planet X, Mantis of Earth, Bug from Kaliklak, Deathcry from the Shi’ar Empire and Captain Universe (Gabriel Vargas) of Earth.

The Kree built replicas of Terran firearms too low-tech for the Phalanx to control. They left just enough time for Star-Lord and his dirty half-dozen  to train with these.

The raid against the Phalanx was done without any available intelligence as to what the target looked like, or its precise location. Deathcry and Rocky’s buddy Groot were killed in action, though Groot survived by growing an offshoot.

Conquest, part 2

The team discovered that the Phalanx’s master weapon was an airborne nano-virus that was being incubated among the entire captive population. They narrowly escaped with the cure.

The improbable success of this suicide mission meant that it was now possible to save billions trapped by the Phalanx within the fallen Kree Empire.

Star-Lord and his team were then graciously volunteered into another suicide mission by the free Kree. Just like he had been instrumental in getting out of Hala despite the security, Raccoon was essential in mapping out the Phalanx HQ so the team could plant demolition charges in strategic spots.

However, Vargas was killed, Quill was captured and the original plan disintegrated.

Raccoon came up with an alternate plan by combining the abilities of Groot and Mantis, and destroyed the Phalanx HQ. This weakened the Phalanx force field isolating the Kree Empire just in time for and elite force led by Nova (Richard Rider) to burst in, and to recharge the cosmic bracers of Quasar (Phyla-Vell).

The secret master of the Phalanx was defeated, and billions of survivors of Phalanx techno-slavery were saved.

Guardians of the Galaxy: take one

At this point, the local cluster was reeling from two galactic-scale disasters – the invasion from the Negative Zone (“Annihilation”) and the Phalanx conquest. A third such catastrophe would likely break it for good.

Furthermore, the mass death had weakened the metaphysical fabric of the universe. Fissures appeared through which an entire universe of Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know  might invade.

Star-Lord and Adam Warlock set up an elite strike team. This unit could close fissures as they opened, and nip in the bud any disaster that might make things worse. They recruited fighters who had been essential during the Annihilation and the Conquest – Rocket Raccoon, Quasar (Phyla-Vell), Gamora and Drax the Destroyer, plus Mantis as a support mentat  – to form the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Between missions, Rocket was taking care of his buddy Groot to help him regrow his destroyed body.

However, the team discovered that Star-Lord had had Mantis give them all a small mental push so they’d agree to join the team without dissension. Though this was understandable given the dire emergencies that had to be faced and the difficult personalities involved, the Guardians disintegrated over this.

War of Kings, part 1

By that point, Rocket Raccoon was convinced of the importance of the Guardians of the Galaxy concept. With all the heavy hitters gone, he quickly assembled a new team to hold the line. These were alums of Star-Lord’s old commando — Groot, Bug and Mantis — reinforced by amnesiac temporal refugee Major Victory (Vance Astrovik).

This team repelled a small invasion by the Badoon. These hostile aliens were starting the power build-up that would make them galactic-scale tyrants in many possible versions of the XXX^th century. The Guardians then rescued Star-Lord from the Negative Zone , as Raccoon wanted Quill to resume leadership.

In the wake of Star-Lord’s return, Drax and Phyla-Vell came back from their successful quest to resurrect Moondragon (Heather Douglas). Warlock and Gamora, concerned about an impending war between the Kree and the Shi’ar , also offered to temporarily ally with their former teammates.

War of Kings, part 2

Since this war could ravage the local cluster, Raccoon and Quill planned two peace envoy missions. Quill’s half of the team would talk to the Kree and Raccoon’s half would talk to the Shi’ar.

Both missions went right into the toilet, but Raccoon bounced back by allying with his pals the Starjammers. The ’jammers and Raccoon’s team rescued the deposed Imperatrix Lilandra of the Shi’ar. They also scored a major coup when Lilandra convinced the mighty Gladiator (Kallark) to serve her rather than the mad Imperator Vulcan (Gabriel Summers).

However, Lilandra was soon murdered and the situation continued to disintegrate despite the efforts of the Guardians. The war hit rock bottom when the Inhumans leading the Kree detonated a Terrigen-Bomb to cripple the Shi’ar invasion forces. This accidentally ruptured space-time and opened a gigantic fissure.

Adam Warlock stopped the expansion of the fissure, but at the cost of becoming his evil alternate future self, the Magus. A complex temporal intervention allowed the Guardians to prevent the Magus from collapsing all futures into a single timeline under his rule – but several team members were thought killed.

Cancerverse and Thanos Imperative

The remaining Guardians soldiered on. Drax and Raccoon scouted the other side of the fissure to install sensors. A later incident let a monster from the other side of the fissure escape into Universe-616, but Moondragon contained it in her body to avoid a carnage.

This feat let her learn the basics of the universe on the other side. It was dubbed the “cancerverse” as it was filled to bursting with undying life.

The Church of the Universal Truth captured Moondragon to release the cancerverse creature, but Rocket Raccoon came up with a counterattack. He hijacked Knowhere, and used it as an assault vehicle against the fleet of the Church.

This surprise tactic was successful. Moondragon was evacuated, the monster she had imprisoned within herself was expelled back through the fissure, and the Guardians prevented the Church from killing billions.

However, the Magus had survived his previous clash with the Guardians. Furthermore, he had secretly taken over the Church of Universal Truth. In a vast effort, he ripped open the fissure that Warlock had stabilised so the cancerverse could pour into Universe-616 .

An immense battle took place around the fissure as the main space empires, eventually joined by Universe-616’s abstract entities of great power, attempted to contain the cancerverse. Analysing the situation the Guardians realised that a recently resurrected Thanos was the key. They accompanied the mad titan in a strike deep into the cancerverse, based on their previous reconnaissance.

This initiative was successful – in large part thanks to Thanos’ trickery. The fissure was closed, the forces of the cancerverse in Universe-616 were destroyed, and Thanos was trapped in the cancerverse.

Guardians no more

Over the course of these battles, the Guardians lost Phyla-Vell, Drax the Destroyer, Peter Quill and Nova (Richard Rider). With Quill having heroically sacrificed himself to trap Thanos on the other side of the fissure, they had no leader left. Furthermore, too many casualties had broken their morale. Rocket Raccoon and the other survivors disbanded.

Their ally Cosmo carried out Star-Lord’s last wish – assemble a new team of protectors. The Annihilators were titanic fighters — Quasar, Ronan the Accuser, Gladiator, Beta Ray Bill and the Silver Surfer — who could now clearly see the benefits from Quill’s Guardians of the Galaxy concept.

Due to poor morale, the loss of Quill, and his awareness that he was just a talking raccoon with a gun facing cosmic menaces, Rocket took an ordinary job. He became a mailboy with the Timely Corporation. However, after six months, killer clowns made of animated wood tried to murder Raccoon.

Quitting his job, he investigated this wood all the way to Planet X. There he freed his old buddy Groot, who had been imprisoned by his people. Together, they then saved Planet X from a new cadre of killer clowns. Rocky and Groot then left for whence the clowns had come : Halfworld.

On Halfworld, Raccoon was reunited with his former staff, and regained his deleted memories. However, he also realised that Star-Thief had been luring him back to the asylum in order to unlock the exit. Star-Thief took control of Halfworld, but Rocket and his allies came up with a cunning plan. They successfully locked the cosmically-powered madman back into a therapeutic VR simulation.

Rocket and Groot were then exploited to star in a Mojoverse show. But they broke free and negotiating at gunpoint a 60/40 cut on the merch, making them extremely wealthy.

Description

Rocket occasionally uses some dated British slang (such as calling a prison a “chokey”). So it is possible that he has the Cockney accent he was depicted with in some cartoons.

Rocket is familiar with at least some Earth cultures (he’s a Bette Midler fan and owns the special edition DVD of Beaches ), so it wouldn’t be extraordinary if he deliberately adopted a Cockney accent. Maybe he liked Mary Poppins too.

Rocket Raccoon said that he is considered handsome and has beautiful fur, whiskers and eyes by the standards of small woodland uplifts – though he may not have been serious. He frequently uses the expletive “flark” or “flarking”, which is presumably the Kree equivalent of “fuck”.

Personality

Rocky is a sarcastic, grumpy blue-collar wisenheimer. He will do the job and do it well, but he will kvetch  and make sardonic remarks all the way through. And he’s certainly not shy about making his opinions clear.

He has a sort of roguish side to him, a bit like Han Solo. But he’s clearly devoted to the common good and isn’t really interested in money. As time goes on and he attempts to fill Star-Lord’s shoes, Rocket becomes more like a swashbuckling space hero, like his pal Corsair used to be.

He’s a smart, experienced professional and can remain on top of really tough situations.

However, he’s not a steely-eyed juggernaut either. He feels fear (though he’ll hide it as best as he can), his morale can be damaged, he’ll realise it when he’s in over his head. Raccoon is extraordinarily brave, but this courage is more a demanding sense of duty plus ample experience than super-heroic imperviousness.

Rocket has a minor obsessive/compulsive behaviour issue. He feels much more comfortable if he personally cleans and maintains the equipment he and his associates use. This seems to be a modal action pattern  inherited from the “washing” behaviour of ordinary raccoons. But Rocky might also be concerned with lowering the odds of detection by smell.

He also doesn’t like dogs as part of his raccoon instincts. He occasionally jokes about burrows, woodland animals, trees, etc. since many of his instincts are those of an actual raccoon. He actually seems to think like a raccoon, but to reframe his thoughts when he talks since he doesn’t want people to think of him as some sort of cartoon character.

Quotes

“I want a rocket loaded with hyper-reactive terpenoids and silver iodide fired in the upper atmosphere ! Right flarking now !”

Rocket: “So we wander around looking for something that we might not even recognise when we see it ?”
Star-Lord: “Something like that.”
Rocket: “Glad to know this ‘mission’ was so well thought through.”
Star-Lord: “There’s Kree efficiency for you.”

“I married our locator beacon to an echo loop, reversed the polarity of the nav system. We’re a moving blind spot, surrounded by doppelgänger readings. Your security is a joke, Quill.”

“You know how you wanted a backup plan, Mantis ? Well, Groot and me, we’ve come up with a doozy.”

“Eat blaster, toaster-heads !” (VAM VAM KVAM KVAM VAM)

Cardinal of the Universal Church of Truth (erecting a force shield with his faith): “I believe ! Your bullets cannot harm me !”
Rocket: “And I believe you just haven’t met a big enough gun yet !” (BA-BOOM !)

(Sighing) “Did you take a double dose of naïve pills today, Pete ?”

“Never doubt a raccoon.”

“Flark on a stick !”

(Sheepishly facing Gladiator) “Now let’s not do anything hasty, okay ? I mean, you wouldn’t hurt a cute little mammal with fur this soft, would you ?” (takes off his glove and weakly holds his furry paw in front of Gladiator) “Feel.”

(As the Royal Family of the Inhumans engages disgusting, slimy Cancerverse creatures) “Medusa’s gonna need a truckload of L‘Oréal  all by herself…”

Raccoon: “I want to rescue Heather as much as the next placental mammal, Pete, but we’ve got to fight clever ! Strategic, you know what I’m saying ? And who’s the resident tactical genius ?”
Star-Lord (sighing): “You are.”
Raccoon: “You better believe it, buddy. And I’ve got a cunning plan…”

Star-Lord: “Rocky ? I can’t bear to look. Did Thanos just screw us over ?”
Rocket: “Oh, like you wouldn’t flarking believe.”

(As a mailboy) “They bring a psycho gun-toting clown to the party, I bring parcel tape and bubble wrap. That’s the mailroom way. Who sent you to waste my bushy backside ?”

“Me and my friend Groot… we’ve got Star-Lord’s legacy to live up to, Lylla. The legacy of the Guardians of the Galaxy ! And together we’re going to save the universe – whether it wants to be saved or not !”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel Universe — starting with the Annihilation: Conquest stories in 2007. This is nominally the same character as the one described in the previous entry, but in practice it’s a new character.

Helper(s): Peter Piispanen.

Writeup completed on the 28^th of April, 2014.