HELL-RAISERS

HISTORY

The Hell-Raisers began as a one-off team brought together by The Adversary for a particularly difficult job. The group worked out so well that The Adversary has chosen to keep the team together. As a whole or in smaller groups the team often operates as villains for hire, depending on the job, or serve The Adversary directly on one of his schemes to spread evil, chaos, and destruction.

The Hell-Raisers faced off against the New Enforces of Justice when The Adversary came to Superior City to attempt to corrupt a group of young metahumans. The Adversary later sent some of his team to infiltrate the Dark City in Superior in an effort to recruit more metahumans to his cause.

THE ADVERSARY

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Scion of a wealthy Greenwich, Connecticut family, the man who would become The Adversary was frail as a child. Bitter at the world he used his wealth to seek out means to transform himself. He found his answers in the occult library of an obscure New England university. With the rituals he uncovered the man made contact with the demon Neron and struck a deal. As a result of his deal he gained a new handsome athletic body, one which could also transform into a powerful demonic form. In excahnge for this power the man became a recruiter for Neron. So long as he could persuade one innocent per year to sell their own soul to Hell, he could keep his own. He abandoned his old life and took the name Jason Lazarus.

Decades later and Jason is still free, having had no problem finding victims year after year. In his demonic form Jason calls himself The Adversary, a term sometimes used to refer to Satan. Jason revels in chaos and hedonism, committing crimes of theft and destruction, seducing and corrupting innocents, and taking great enjoyment from all forms of physical pleasure.

POWERS & WEAPONS

In his demonic form The Adversary possesses superhuman strength and invulnerability. He also possesses claws that can rend steel and wings that allow him to fly. In either his human or demonic form he has the ability to teleport himself to Hell and back once per day. Jason Haller was a talented occultist even before he made his infernal pact and his knowledge has only increased in the decades since.

SIZZLER

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

As a result of a demonic pact made by her grandmother, Dana Lindstrom was born with the power to generate and control fire. The powers manifested rather violently during a family dinner, after which the newly-orphaned child was raised by the same grandmother that had made the demonic bargain. Raised to use her powers for self-fulfillment and to advance the cause of evil, Dana became Sizzler. Her actions drew the attention of the Adversary, who felt the girl was the perfect addition to his Hell-Raisers.

Dana is a hedonist and unpredictable. She considers herself an artist and frequently leaves pictures burned into the walls at his crime scenes

POWERS & WEAPONS

Sizzler possesses a wide range of powers, mostly fire-related. She can surround herself in an aura of fire, throw bolts of flame, manipulate an existing fire to increase or decrease its intensity and also twist its shape and even make it appear to move, and can cause objects to spontaneously burst into flame with the power of her mind. Her flame powers also allow her fly. Another effect of the demonic nature of her powers is that Dana appears to not age, or at least age more slowly than a normal human; she currently appears to be an attractive sixteen year-old girl despite being in her twenties.

STATIC

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Since he was a child Joe has had an uncanny knack for finding people. Initially using his abilities to help find missing people, Joe used the reward money to escape his lower class neighborhood and eventually earned a private investigator license. His continued success earned him a solid reputation with law enforcement even though he could never explain exactly how he was able to find his targets.

With little formal education Joe did not understand that his ability classed him as a psionic. Nor did Joe understand how the constant effort of using his ability over the years led him to develop more psychic powers. What Joe did understand was that this opened up new opportunities. While maintaining his public reputation with the police he began secretly offering his services to less savory groups and individuals. Organized crime groups found him an especially useful, if expensive, way to locate troublesome individuals who had gone into Witness Protection.

Originally hired by The Adversary to find him victims, the villain was sufficiently impressed to bring Joe in on permanent retainer as the first official member of the Hell-Raisers. When operating with the group Joe has started using the alias Static to help protect his true identity.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Static possesses a range of psychic abilities. His original power was the ability to psychically sense the location of people he concentrated on as long as they were within a certain range (this range has increased over the years as Joe has honed his abilities and is now in the dozens if not hundreds of miles). Over the years he has developed a more formidable array of telepathic abilities including the ability to read minds, communicate with others telepathically, and fire blasts of psychic energy that can mentally incapacitate an enemy. Joe has even learned how to use his psychic powers to render himself invisible to observers. Static has also developed strong mental defenses to protect himself from attacks by other psychics.

BRIAREUS

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Briareus is an artificial intelligence combat android, an advanced model designed and built by the TRADE division of the Crime Cartel. During a delivery to a client the transport carrying this unit was in a traffic accident and the android was activated prematurely. Breaking out of the damaged transport the android fled and wandered confused until it was found by the Adversary. The Adversary befriended the android and named it Briareus after an obscure multi-armed mythological creature. Since then Briareus has served as the loyal muscle of the Hell-Raisers.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The android appears as a tall, muscular, bald yellow-skinned man with a second set of arms attached mid-torso. Briareus possesses superhuman strength and resistance to damage and is well versed in hand-to-hand combat, including how to best make use of its extra limbs in a fight.

DRILL-BIT

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Louise's father was a talented medical researcher and engineer who had developed pioneering new sonic-based surgical equipment. Learning he had cancer, the researcher used an untested treatment he had developed on himself. The treatment cured his cancer, but also drove him insane. Driven by paranoia, the researcher subjected his teenage daughter to the treatment as well. He then turned his surgical equipment into a weapon and embarked on a career as a super-villain. His career was cut short when he suffered a fatal heart attack during his first robbery attempt. His last act was to send a message to his daughter warning her that "they" had gotten him, and to set his equipment to self-destruct.

Building a variant of her late father's costume and weaponry Louise followed in his villainous footsteps. Her actions brought her to the attention of the Adversary who invited her to join his Hell-Raisers.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Drill-Bit's power suit grants her increased strength, agility, and endurance. The built-in sonic weaponry can generate a force field for protection and project narrow or wide-field sonic attacks. The sonic systems can also let Drill-Bit quickly tunnel through solid rock, or can provide sufficient lift and thrust to let Drill-Bit fly while wearing her power suit.

CORTEX

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Edward Hope was a British tourist visiting Superior City. While out camping he was exposed to toxic waste from one of the Jensik Medical Institute's illegal dump sites. The mutagenic chemicals gave him his powers and also drove him insane. Believing he had been recruited and modified by aliens to serve as their vanguard on Earth he began wreaking havoc to help weaken the planet's defenses so his new masters could invade. His capacity for causing chaos made Cortex a perfect recruit for The Adversary's Hell-Raisers.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Exposure to the toxic waste activated Edward's latent psychic powers. With his powers Cortex has shown the ability to mentally control the actions of others, project realistic illusions, and to project his thoughts to communicate mentally with others or strike them down with mental energy. Cortex's body also heals from injuries at a much faster rate than a normal human, a process he can accelerate further by physically and mentally draining a victim like a kind of psychic vampire.

TAI

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Son of a Soviet defector, Tyler Markov was recruited by the CIA where he became one of their top assassins. Captured on a mission to assassinate a Kremlin official, Tyler learned his target was actually a vampire. Tyler was turned into a vampire himself and was enslaved by his undead master. After several years of servitude Tyler's master was slain by a vampire hunter, a fate that Tyler himself barely escaped. Returning to the United States but knowing the CIA would never believe his story, Tyler became Tai and began operating as a freelance assassin. Hired for a single job by the Adversary, Tai impressed his employer and was put on the permanent payroll of the Hell-Raisers.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Tai has the strengths and weaknesses of a traditional Eastern European vampire. He possesses superhuman strength, agility, and endurance; he can use his claws to attack or to crawl along walls and ceilings with ease, is virtually invulnerable, can see in the dark or hypnotize a victim with his eyes; casts no reflection in a mirror and does not show up on film, and can transform himself into a bat, a rat, or a wolf at will. Conversely Tai is vulnerable to fire and can be harmed or killed by exposure to sunlight or killed by having a wooden stake driven through his heart. He can also be repelled or blocked by garlic, silver, and by holy symbols like a Christian Cross or Star of David as long as it is wielded by a person of that faith. Tai must consume blood (preferably human) to survive and his vampiric instinct is to bite his victims on a vein or artery with his fangs and suck the blood directly. Any person Tai kills by biting and draining their blood will rise as a vampire a few days later.

Thanks to his CIA training Tai is a skilled espionage agent and assassin. He is trained in multiple forms of armed and unarmed combat and is a skilled infiltrator and sniper. Tai tends to rely on his training more than his vampiric powers, using the powers instead to enhance his effectiveness so he does not give away his supernatural nature. On a mission Tai wears a black armored full-body suit, which in addition to the added protection from attacks also helps shield him from sunlight if he needs to operate during the day. The suit also offers a plausible reason for his apparent resistance to injury and ability to see in the dark. Tai is usually armed with a combat knife, .44 Magnum automatic pistol, and an advanced hi-power sniper rifle.

TITAN

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Titan is the newest and youngest member of the Hell-Raisers. Andrew Peach was one of several children in Superior City to develop metahuman powers as a result of the toxic waste dumped in the area by the Jensik Medical Institute. Andrew possesses superhuman levels of intelligence that manifested at a very young age. He could have sailed through school and into university in no time, but a rotten demeanor stemming from a detest of those he considered inferior (anyone less intelligent than himself) plus a complete disinterest in any scholarly discipline other than the sciences kept him in high school.

Wealthy by age 12 thanks to a series of inventions, by his mid-teens Andrew was living on his own, having effectively bribed his parents into moving to the Riviera. Andrew's next major invention was the Titan power suit, which he promptly used to commit robberies. As Titan, Andrew was recruited by a woman named Flare to join a group of thieves made up mostly of other teenagers from the area that had also gained powers from Jensik's mutagenic waste. When the Adversary approached this group looking for new recruits for the Hell-Raisers, Andrew was the first (and only) one to take up the offer.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Andrew possesses superhuman intelligence and perfect memory. He has focused his enhanced intellect mainly in the fields of science and engineering and despite his intelligence has limited knowledge outside those areas (he is, after all, still a teenager). Andrew's greatest invention to date is his Titan power armor, which he uses when committing crimes.

The Titan power armor is a 12-foot tall robotic suit that Andrew pilots. The suit has superhuman strength, is highly resistant to damage, and has built-in energy blasters for offensive firepower. The suit also has flight capabilities and a cloaking device that can render it invisible despite its size.