Star-Lord
(Peter Quill)
Context
Star-Lord is a late 1970s/early 1980s Marvel Comics character, with science-fiction stories using older elements. Though he was interesting, he didn’t get any real traction.
When this profile was done he had just unexpectedly resurfaced in the wonderful cosmic events of the 2000s (Annihilation and Conquest), among with a host of old (often 1970s) “space” Marvel characters. The full revival and reinvention, then another round of revival/reinvention after the Guardians of the Galaxy movie , had yet to take place.
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Background
- Real Name: Peter Jason Quill.
- Other Aliases: Boyo, Starlord.
- Race: Spartoi / Human hybrid.
- Marital Status: Single.
- Known Relatives: Jason of Spartoi (father), Meredith Quill (mother, deceased), Eson of Spartoi (paternal grandfather), Gareth of Spartoi (paternal great-uncle), Jake (step-father), Kip Holm (adoptive brother), Sandy (sister-in-law), Alain (adoptive nephew), Rhys (adoptive nephew), Robyn (adoptive niece, deceased).
- Group Affiliation: United Front, formerly Shi’ar Imperial Guard, partner of SHIP.
- Base Of Operations: Mobile.
- Height: 6’2” Weight: 175lbs.
- Eyes: Blue Hair: Blond, now Brown.
Powers and Abilities
The Star-Lord was the master of languages, of all things mechanical and of the primal elements of life: earth, air, fire and water. He was superhumanly fast, agile and strong and was a master marksman, swordsman and unarmed combatant.
His powers allowed him to survive indefinitely in space as well as granted him some regenerative capabilities. Although he can fly at near light-speed, his main means of transportation is the sentient organic life form and companion named Ship.
He has now lost his powers or chooses to no longer access them. His current cybernetics allow for visualizing all known spectra and a 100 % recall rate of anything experienced since the memory chip was implanted. He has developed his skills further and is now a capable combatant and warrior.
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History
Peter Jason Quill, formerly known as Star-Lord, is the hybrid offspring of a Terran mother and Spartoi father, Prince Jason of Kritnah, the result of a brief relationship during a time when his father had crashed on Earth. Always fascinated by the stars, Peter’s interest became an obsession when assassins sent by his father’s enemies slew his mother.
Peter joined NASA’s space program, eventually being stationed on the Space Station Eve. The enigmatic Master of the Sun plucked him from there. After Quill desperately killed his opposition, the Master transformed him into the Star-Lord and gave him the sentient known as Ship as his companion and transport.
Peter learned that his uncle Gareth had arranged the assassins who slew his mother and that he was now plotting to usurp his father, now the Spartan Emperor. Star-Lord traveled to Sparta, where he was reunited with his father and killed his uncle. Jason asked him to stay, but Peter declined to become his heir, preferring the freedom of space.
He wandered the stars aimlessly, fighting Lorq starfighters, saving the planet Cymoril from the Haalmbad homeship, witnessing the revolution of the Beastmen of Redstone, and encountering the sentient planet Symbion.
About 12 years ago, Star-Lord and Ship were separated while escaping the pull of a black hole. Reports suggest Ship had chosen another partner from the Probiti to be a temporary Star-Lord while they hunt for Quill.
Quill himself does not wish for Ship to find him. After their separation, he caused the deaths of over 350 000 people while subduing the Fallen One, a former herald of Galactus. Quill now considers that his time as Star-Lord is over given this disaster.
After the disaster
Plagued by guilt, Peter allowed himself to be sent to the Kyln interstellar prison, where he subsequently aided Thanos the Titan and the Shi’ar Gladiator against the Maker (i.e. The Beyonder). Gladiator remanded Quill into his custody and drafted him into the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, where he helped plan strategies to deal with the threat Thanos posed.
Quill then left the Guard, signing up with Nova Corps operative Richard Rider of Earth’s anti-Annihilation Wave forces shortly after the Tartus Minor incident. Peter became Rider’s main aide and advisor, still trying to make up for his terrible mistake.
Star-Lord stopped using his Star-Lord identity and powers completely. He no longer possesses the Ship or his Element Gun. He has imbued himself with cybernetic implants to supplement his base abilities instead. It is unclear whether or not he can even access any of his old powers.
Notes
Peter was originally born in February in the year 1962, but parts of his history are now contradictory, and near-impossible, and so it is quite possible that time-travel elements have been present at one point or another in his long career.
Several of his adventures seem to have taken place in the future, although he has also been active long enough in the current era to earn him a near legendary status as a space-traveling hero.
Rider about Quill during the Annihilation war: “Mr. Sunshine’s my number two, goes by the name Peter Quill. Used to be called Starlord. Quill signed on right after the Tartarus Minor debacle. Takes a good bit of courage to sign on after witnessing one of history’s bloodiest defeats. Then again, he could be crazy. Lord knows, crazy’s easy to come by out here.”
“Like I said. He just might be crazy. Did I mention he used to be the Starlord? Guy was a living legend. Something… happened. He won’t talk about it, but it had to be brutal. Ask him about it and he’ll tell you ’The Starlord is dead.‘ Period. No more, no less.”
Description
The Star-Lord is a tall, athletic man.
Art by Jim Starlin in Marvel Preview. Click on the image for a larger version.
He wears a stylish dark blue, full-body covering Star-Lord uniform. The uniform has a helmet piece complete with a pair of large blue goggles, a yellow star on the forehead, pointy, yellow gloves and boots and an odd girdle-like yellow belt with a star as its buckle. White stripes frame the costume along the arms, legs, chest and back. It looks real classic superhero sci-fi style.
Peter Quill currently looks like a man who has gone through a lot. He has dyed his blonde hair to brownish black. His left eye is completely replaced by cybernetic eye(s) allowing him to see all wavelengths of the spectrum. He also has visible metallic cables in his neck and arms, giving him the look of a cyborg.
Personality
As the enlightened Star-Lord he became transformed into a champion of the just. This pulp-style hero seemed to be an icon larger than life. A hero for the underdog and the exposed.
He travels the universe and rights wrongs wherever he sees injustice being done, at the same while he is studying the secrets of space. Not at all unlike classic heroes such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
Before becoming the Star-Lord, Peter Quill was a ruthless man caring only for his own freedom and getting into space. He has dreamed about space all his life and there was nothing he wanted more than becoming an astronaut. He performed many an irrational act during his years on Earth, and his arrogance earned him many enemies.
As he wasn’t selected to become an astronaut, despite being the greatest student at the NASA academy, he took matters into his own hands and even mortally wounded some guards without remorse to be the one to become the Star-Lord.
According to his own thoughts, he is now Star-lord, the explorer, because his need to know outweighs his desire to kill. He never intends to stop finding answers and he will never stop searching for them either. He is a seeker after a cosmic holy grail, a dream and that which is forever unattainable.
He is intent on seeing what is beyond the farthest star. He will not stay in one place for too long.
He fools himself into thinking that as Star-Lord he is incapable of killing anyone, because he has to stand for something, and yet he has been known to kill opponents out of necessity on occasion when the stakes have been very high. It is possible to stop him from killing anyone by reminding him that he is the Star-Lord.
However, if Killing Combat is initiated against him, he will himself very likely retort back to Killing Combat.
As the Star-Lord he is intensively focused, disciplined, principled, and perceptive and gets the work well done. Once he partnered up with the living SHIP, he eventually developed a romantic relationship with her, perhaps as a substitute for his complete lack of any human friends on Earth. He has always had odd relationships with humanoids and still is the odd man out.
As a child he was a great fan of Star Trek. His hobbies then used to be long walks and television shows. The adult Peter Quill, particularly, the battle-hardened veteran version, has a real strange sense of humor; the aliens surely don’t get his meanings.
He has always been aware that his social skills leave much to be desired, but he couldn’t care less. Peter quit his Star-Lord identity due to failure and the guilt of being responsible for 350,000 deaths and so prefers to leave that to his past if possible.
Whenever people tell him that he did that and that, during his Star-Lord day, he will correct them that it was Star-Lord who did that and not him, and that it is a big difference.
Likewise when people as him if he did not use to be Star-Lord, which happens often, he will give a short reply refusing to discuss it further. This hints at more than a little denial of his part.
His original personality, which has more or less resurfaced, meshes very well with being on the battle front against the forces of the Annihilation Wave. His experiences have led him to become a capable leader in the greatest times of crisis, powers or no powers.
His tactical and strategic analyses of the battlefield are usually very sound, and he is a real asset in the fight against the forces of chaos as Richard Rider’s cocky aide-de-camp with the United Front.
Quotes
Classic
“The stars — so beautiful ! This is where it all is: out here ! Not down there on that ’mortal coil‘ ! We’re just specks — and this is —- everything !” (first time ever in space)
“The name, gentlemen, is… Starlord !”
“Peter Quill wouldn’t have minded killing them — in my own way, I was a very ruthless man. But Starlord isn’t that man. I… won’t kill. I don’t even think I can.”
As Peter Quill, post-Star-Lord
Quill: “Let me see if I got this straight. You finally get a few hours to call your own and you leave a looker like Gamora to hang with me? One word. Priorities.”
Rider: “She is exhausted. We all are.”
Quill: “She wouldn’t come in till the last straggler was accounted for. You ask me, Gamora’s trying too hard to live up to her ’most dangerous woman in the galaxy‘ rep.”
Rider: “You ask me, Peter Quill should be living up to his ’Starlord‘ rep.”
Quill: “Nobody asked you.”
Rider: “Who are these guys, Peter ?”
Quill: “Oh, the usual: Terrax, Paibok, a giant Mad Thinker robot…”
Game Stats — DC Heroes RPG
Tell me more about the game stats
Star-Lord
| Dex: 11 | Str: 09 | Bod: 05 | Motivation: Seeking Justice |
| Int: 09 | Wil: 12 | Min: 07 | Occupation: Astronaut, Explorer |
| Inf: 07 | Aur: 04 | Spi: 06 | Resources {or Wealth}: 00 |
| Init: 031 | HP: 075 |
Powers:
Comprehend Languages 08, Flight 28, Force Field 05, Regeneration 04, Sealed Systems 20
Bonuses and Limitations:
Gadgetry is a Powered Skill.
Skills:
Charisma (Interrogation): 07, Gadgetry: 09, Martial Arts: 10, Weaponry: 09, Vehicles (Space): 10
Advantages:
Familiarity (Astrology), Insta-Change, Lightning Reflexes, Rank (Lieutenant, previously only), Scholar (Astronomy).
Connections:
NASA (Low), SHIP (High).
Drawbacks:
Misc. Drawback (Empathic connection; for every two RAPs of Physical damage inflicted on SHIP, the Star-Lord takes 1 RAP of Bashing Mental Damage; also, for each widget being destroyed, Star-Lord takes one additional RAP of Bashing Mental Damage).
Equipment:
- Element Gun [BODY 06, Flame Project: 12, Projectile Weapons (earth): 12, Super Breath: 12, Water Blast: 12, Note: The gun will not work at all for anybody else but Peter Jason Quill, The materials projected from the gun are teleported there from the planet R’ralmis, Limitation: All Powers are Linked and Limited to the user’s WILL attribute and its APs (i.e. Quill uses his WILL as the APs of various Powers)].
- Star-Lord Costume [/BODY/ 07, Note: Originally his powers were all provided by the costume, but they all became innate at some point of time.]
The Ship
The ship is a life-form of sentient living energy in an organic steel form, able to change its size, density or shape at will. Star-Lord shared a psychic rapport with her (and the widgets), so that each felt the other’s pain. It has the following stats:
[BODY 16 STR 12 INT 07 WILL 08 MIND 08 INFL 04 AURA 03 SPIRIT 04, HP 25, Damage Capacity: 06, Density Increase: 06, Dispersal: 06, Energy Absorption: 12, Energy Blast: 18, Flight: 40, Growth: 12, Invulnerability: 07, Omni-Sense: 25, Radar Sense: 14, Remote Sensing: 20, Sealed Systems: 25, Self Manipulation: 15, Shrinking: 12, Superhearing: 10, Medicine (Brain-washing): 08, Scientist: 06, Bonuses: Hardened Defenses, Immortal, Self Manipulation can be used to create a temporary metallic, humanoid female form (not subject to emphatic link) that can participate in adventures with Star-Lord (with the stats: DEX 06 STR 06 BODY 08, Flight: 28, Sealed Systems: 20, Scientist: 06, Medicine (Surgery): 06, Attractive, and the same HP, Mental and Mystical Stats as in SHIP form), although doing so will leave the SHIP completely inert and non-functional while this form is being used. Limitation: Remote Sensing is Limited to the immediate surrounding of sent-out widgets (-1), Misc. Drawback (Empathic connection; for each RAP of Physical damage inflicted on the Star-Lord, the SHIP takes 1 RAP of Bashing Physical Damage), Note: SHIP also has unexplained sensory abilities, that, for example, once allowed it to experience and memorize another person’s psychic visions and another time allowed it to quantitize anti-grav generators on a planetary surface from orbit; all of these effects are represented by her Omni-Sense Power (Sensory powers purchased thus by use of HPs are active for one hour), R#2].
The SHIP also carries small deployable Widgets (x20) with the following stats: [BODY 04, Flight: 06, Thermal Vision: 08, Medicine (Surgery): 06, Note: These flying widget transmit lots of data, including audial, spectral, visual and radio data to the SHIP enabling direct communication to and from it. These are remote-controlled by the SHIP and usually accompany Star-Lord to keep continuous contact with him. If they are destroyed SHIP can relatively soon build new ones; they are in fact animated by SHIP’s own power as fragments of its Self Manipulation power.]
Peter Quill, freedom fighter
| Dex: 06 | Str: 04 | Bod: 05 | Motivation: Seeking Justice |
| Int: 09 | Wil: 12 | Min: 07 | Occupation: Warrior |
| Inf: 07 | Aur: 04 | Spi: 06 | Resources {or Wealth}: 00 |
| Init: 024 | HP: 075 |
Powers:
Recall: 25, Self Link (Gadgetry): 08, Thermal Vision: 08, Ultra Vision: 08
Bonuses and Limitations:
Gadgetry is a Powered Skill.
Skills:
Charisma (Interrogation): 07, Gadgetry: 09, Martial Arts: 10, Military Science: 05, Military Science (Field Command): 07, Weaponry: 09, Vehicles (Space): 10
Advantages:
Expertise (Tactics), Familiarity (Astrology), Iron Nerves, Language (Interlac), Leadership, Rank (Lieutenant, previously only), Scholar (Astronomy).
Connections:
Richard Rider aka Nova (High), Shi’ar Imperial Guard (Low), The United Front (High).
Drawbacks:
Guilt.
Source of Character: Inhumans v4 #4, Marvel Preview #4, #11, #14, #15 and #18, Marvel Spotlight v2 #6-7, Marvel Premiere #61, Marvel Super Special #10, Starlord: The Special Edition #1, Star-Lord 3 Issue Ltd Series, Thanos #8-12, Annihilation #1-6.
Helper(s): Annihilation Nova Corps Files issue (History).