Some Characters 2 (The Marquis...)

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Now another one...

NAME: UNKNOWN (as of 1941)
CODE NAME: "The Marquis"
HAIR: Silver-gray
EYES: Blue
HEIGHT: 5'11"
WEIGHT: ~175 lbs
SETTING: 1914-1945

IQ 13
DX 14
ST 12
HT 12

ADVANTAGES
Alertness (2)
Charisma (2)
Common Sense
Strong Will (2)
Unusual Background [Trained by the Unity]

ALLY/ALLY GROUP(s)
Personal Followers (10-30 people, above average, almost all the
time)

ALTERNATE IDENTITIES (3 regular, solid ones, worth +25 pts)
Contacts (multiple contacts around world, 20 pts worth)

PATRONS(s)
'The Unity' (very powerful, secret, appears rarely, provides money
and equipment, requires duties) +20 pts
Nazi Intelligence Services and Gestapo (large groups, powerful,
appear sometimes)

DISADVANTAGES
Addiction (ryshyl herb, rare, legal, dangerous) -10
Intolerance (American military personnel, esp U.S. Army)
Lecherous
Megalomania
Sadism

ENEMIES
U.S. Army Intelligence Special Operations Taskforce Able Charlie
Echo Seven (secret, powerful, small, connected, regularly) -15
Nathaniel Conners (personal enemy, above average, driven, connected,
appears regularly) -10

QUIRKS
1. Careful of grammar, speaks precisely (unless 'in character')
2. Always carries a dagger or knife
3. Enjoys seduction of married women
4. Fond of fine French wines
5. Hates dogs (this is usually mutual, for reasons see below)

PSIONIC POWERS/SKILLS

ESP Power 10
Clairvoyance 13
Precognition 12
Combat Sense 14

BIOPSIONICS Power 8
Life Extension 18
Metabolism Control 18
Healing (self-only) 16

PSYCHOKINESIS Power 7
Telekinesis 14

TELEPATHY Power 6 (with extended range under some conditions)
Telereceive 13
Telesend 13
Psi-sense 12
Mental Blow 13
Mental Stab 12
Suggest 12

SKILLS
Riding 14
Teamster 12
Dancing 16
Play Piano 16
Writing 14
Swimming 16
Fencing 17
Guns 16
Knife 16
Garrote 16
Whip 15 (familiar both as weapon and for inflicting pain)
Cooking 17
Physician 20
Surgeon 16
Diagnosis 17
First Aid 17
Law 13
History 17
Literature 16
Administration 16
Acting 14
Diplomacy 16
Fast-Talk 15
Leadership 12
Politics 17
Savoir-Faire 17
Detect Lies 17
Disguise 17
Escape 16
Forgery 17
Holdout 16
Interrogation 16
Pickpocket 15
Stealth 15
Streetwise 20
Drive (car) 16
Chess 17

LANGUAGE SKILLS
German (native) 18
French 17
English 15
Spanking 15

NOTE: He also possesses a useful smattering (very high defaults) of
some other languages.


AREA KNOWLEDGE(s)
Europe (generally) 17
North America (generally) 15
Paris 19
Berlin 19
Chicago 12
NYC 13
London 14
Germany 18
France 17

HIDDEN LORE(s)
Atlantean 19
Avataric 13
City Secrets
Berlin 16
Paris 16

 

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His exact pt totals vary a bit over the course of the 1914-1945 setting
with shifting alliances and the rise and fall of various patrons and
enemies and changes in contacts and resources, but not by a large
amount. His point totals run between 800 and 900 through this time
period.

He's Bad News, on a number of different levels.

 

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Johnny1a wrote:
> Now another one...
>
> NAME: UNKNOWN (as of 1941)
> CODE NAME: "The Marquis"
> HAIR: Silver-gray
> EYES: Blue
> HEIGHT: 5'11"
> WEIGHT: ~175 lbs
> SETTING: 1914-1945
>

The man known as the Marquis is a puzzle. Just about everything known
about him was discovered through the efforts of a U.S. Army
Intelligence taskforce called Able Charlie Echo Seven, or the Seven
Aces [1], as they came to refer to themselves unofficially. What they
learned was so improbable and disturbing that they themselves never
fully believed it to be true, or credited their own findings.

In appearance, he is the consummate 'agent', utterly non-descript, not
especially tall or short, handsome or ugly, thin or fat, there is
nothing about him to keep him from blending totally into any crowd or
background. He appears to be about 50-60 years old, with silvery-gray
hair that remains thick, tanned skin, pale blue eyes and a mild
expression.

The Marquis first came to the attention of the U.S. Government (and the
British and French ones as well) during the Great War, during which he
worked as an operative for the German government. The first encounter
with the group who would later form the nucleus of the Seven Aces came
in 1917, not long after the American entry into the War. Several
subsequent encounters occurred, which tended to end better for the
Marquis than his opponents.

However, this group did prove more effective against him than most
Allied agents or soldiers who encountered him, and after the Great War,
and the formation of Task Force Able Charlie Echo 7, they discovered
that the Marquis was still 'in the business', working free lance for
various employers, but usually working against the United States.

Their first post-war encounter with him came in 1921, though rumors had
circulated for some time that he had not retired after the Great War.
In a complicated business involving both some German weaponry-design
papers smuggled out of Berlin before the Armistice, and a chunk of the
German treasury, likewise smuggled out of Berlin before the Armistice.

They encountered him again in 1922, in Leningrad, and a third time in
1924 in Chicago, where he had formed ties with the local underworld,
profitable ties that let him draw on the steady flow of money through
the city from illegal alcohol during the Prohibition. This flow of
money would continue throughout the '20s, springing through new
channels to his organization even as the Aces and American and Illinois
law enforcement plugged former flows.

During these various encounters, the Aces had their first direct
exposure to the reality of the Marquis' supposed 'magical powers'.
There had been rumors of such during the Great War, but the Allied
intelligence services and militaries had credited them to stories,
rumor, and sleight of hand for the credulous.

It did not take long for the Aces to conclude that this was an
inadequate explanation. There's nothing like having a knife lying on
the ground a dozen feet from anybody suddenly fly through the air to
stab a member of your team to cause a reevaluation, especially when
it's followed by having guns rendered useless by some unseen force
holding the triggers in place and resetting the safeties. This
happened to the Aces in Paris in 1921.

In 1926, the Seven Aces encountered the Marquis again, in Rio. They
tracked him through the jungles of Brazil to an old ruin, though they
had no idea what he might want there. In the ensuing encounter, three
members of the Aces were killed, two badly wounded, the ruin reduced to
a wreck (not that it was in great shape when they arrived), and the
Marquis defeated soundly, barely escaping with his life. It was the
first clear-cut, definite victory for the Seven Aces over this slippery
enemy. [2][3]

The item the Marquis was after proved to be tablets of stone, carved
with symbols none of the surviving Aces recognized. Most of the
tablets were destroyed in the battle, but surviving fragments were
transported in secret back to the States for study. It was during this
period that the Aces, and especially their field leader, Nathaniel
Conners, discovered that the American Government had access to other
puzzling antiquities that seemed to bear a connection to the ruin in
Brazil.

Comparing notes with other groups studying these matters led to the
startling discovery on the part of the Aces that the Marquis, under
another name, was a known scholar on such matters. This lead enabled
them to learn a great deal more about the man, but what emerged as they
compared their own knowledge to that of others was so surprising and
disturbing that it took them some time to accept it.

By the end of 1926, they had fairly good reason to believe that the
Marquis had already been a grown man in Germany in 1825. This would
make him _at least_ 120 years old in 1926.

MORE LATER.

Shermanlee


[1] The 'seven' in Seven Aces refers to their code number, not the
number of members of the group.

[2] The ruin was of Atlantean origin.

[3] The Aces defeated the Marquis and learned in the process that large
amounts of dynamite can be an effective counter to Psychokinesis at
times.

 

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Johnny1a wrote:

>LANGUAGE SKILLS
> German (native) 18
> French 17
> English 15
> Spanking 15
>
>NOTE: He also possesses a useful smattering (very high defaults) of
>some other languages.
>
>
>
>
>
Spanking is a language skill? Quite an interesting campaign setting you
have.

--

The majestic equality of the law forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France


Comic book klatch: http://ibntumart.blogspot.com

 

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Ibn Tumart wrote:
> Johnny1a wrote:
>
> >LANGUAGE SKILLS
> > German (native) 18
> > French 17
> > English 15
> > Spanking 15
> >
> >NOTE: He also possesses a useful smattering (very high defaults) of
> >some other languages.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> Spanking is a language skill? Quite an interesting campaign setting you
> have.
>

I saw that after you pointed it out and my first reaction was WTF?

As I'm sure you guessed, that _should_ have been Spanish. Damned if I
know what happened, I wrote the post in a word processor and I'm
guessing somehow it 'corrected' the spelling to that. :lol: (Though if
you read that to be an understated version of 'likes to use whips on
his victims' it might actually be appropriate).


Shermanlee

 

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"Johnny1a" <shermanlee1@hotmail.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:1124772998.968669.234800@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

>
> They encountered him again in 1922, in Leningrad, and a third time in

If they encountered him there in 1922, they encountered him in Petrograd,
not in Leningrad. A minor nitpick.


>
> By the end of 1926, they had fairly good reason to believe that the
> Marquis had already been a grown man in Germany in 1825.

Given his code name and his tastes, one wonders whether German is really his
native language; maybe French is, and he was already a grown man back in the
1780s... in any case, his longevity should feature in some form under his
Advantages.

>
> MORE LATER.

While I don't much care for extremely high-powered characters, the
background story for a Cliffhangers setting was interesting. If you have
more of that, please go ahead. In particular, I would like to know more
about ACE Seven and "the Unity".

Michele

GURPS WWII - GRIM LEGIONS:
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/ww2/grimlegions/

 

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Johnny1a wrote:

>
> By the end of 1926, they had fairly good reason to believe that the
> Marquis had already been a grown man in Germany in 1825. This would
> make him _at least_ 120 years old in 1926.
>
> MORE LATER.
>
> Shermanlee
>

Over the course of a year, the Seven Aces tracked down every lead they
could identify. They searched from Chicago to Berlin, from New York
City to Buenos Aires, from London to Paris. They contacted old friends
and acquaintances in British, French, and Weimaar German intelligence
services, they spoke to professors and students of the esoteric matters
the Marquis was known to be interested in.

By indirect request, the Seven Aces prevailed on the FBI and various
State law-enforcement organizations to search their records in regions
where the Marquis was known to have either operated or to have
connections of some sort. Some of the Seven Aces even prevailed on
former enemies in the Imperial German government to provide some
information from the Great War period.

The information was collated in Washington, and in the Seven Aces
headquarters in Miami. What emerged was a confusing and rather
disturbing picture, with many gaps and blank spots. Still, it was more
information about the Marquis than any major government had ever
possessed previously, even the Kaiser's.

The earliest knowledge they were able to obtain regarding him placed
him, as a functioning adult, in Berlin in the 1820s. They could find
no birth records, nothing to do with his childhood. Supposedly the
records had been destroyed in a fire, which _could_ have been true (the
fire certainly happened) but struck the Seven Aces as extremely
convenient. The earliest solid record they could attach to him had him
living in Berlin and making a living as a medical doctor at that time.

Interestingly, they were able to find some descriptions of the man from
that period that indicated that his physical appearance (sans all
disguises) was very similar in the 1820s to what it was in the 1920s,
except that all of the accounts they found from the time (not that
there were many!) indicated that he had _brown_ hair. They had no way
to know if that was disguise of some sort, or if his hair had actually
turned gray in the century since.

The accounts from the 1820s indicated that he was respected as a
physician, and a respected citizen of Berlin. There was no hint of
anything secret, or illicit, anywhere in the accounts from the time,
and the name they found, Dr. Leon Buddenbaum, was quite ordinary. They
had no way to know if that was the Marquis' 'real' name, or just an
alias from an earlier time.

The only hint of anything 'out of line' about him during this period,
from what information ACE-7 could gather, was in 1831, in which there
was a reference to a patient's death under mysterious circumstances,
and some hint of an official inquest. However, yet again, most of the
relevant records had apparently been lost, unaccounted for in the
bureaucratic maze. No amount of effort by the Seven Aces was able to
dig out anything more about whatever had happened in 1831, the records
were just gone.

MORE LATER.

Shermanlee

 

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Johnny1a wrote:

>
>I saw that after you pointed it out and my first reaction was WTF?
>
>As I'm sure you guessed, that _should_ have been Spanish.
>
I figured that's what you meant, but I couldn't resist commenting.

> Damned if I
>know what happened, I wrote the post in a word processor and I'm
>guessing somehow it 'corrected' the spelling to that. :lol:
>
Now you've got me paranoid---I'm going to pay extra attention next time
I use a spellchecker!


--


The majestic equality of the law forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France


Comic book klatch: http://ibntumart.blogspot.com

 

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Johnny1a wrote:

>
> The only hint of anything 'out of line' about him during this period,
> from what information ACE-7 could gather, was in 1831, in which there
> was a reference to a patient's death under mysterious circumstances,
> and some hint of an official inquest. However, yet again, most of the
> relevant records had apparently been lost, unaccounted for in the
> bureaucratic maze. No amount of effort by the Seven Aces was able to
> dig out anything more about whatever had happened in 1831, the records
> were just gone.
>
> MORE LATER.
>
> Shermanlee

The 'record' went blank for a time after that, in spite of the best
efforts of the Seven Aces. The next fairly clear appearance of the
individual they would come to call 'the Marquis' proved to be in 1864,
again in Berlin. This time, he was not a doctor, but had begun his
career (assuming he had not actually done so in the earlier time) in
espionage and secret activities.

This was a tense period in central-western Europe. Prussia and Austria
were contending, sometimes openly and sometimes behind the scenes, for
control of the fractured and fractious remnants of the former Holy
Roman Empire, the German statelets. Prussia and Austria were the
'superpowers' of this fractured region, with Austria initially
dominant. At times they allied in various efforts, but the tension had
been rising throughout the first half of the 19th Century. There were
two competing visions of 'German unification' at play, a Prussian led
version that would unify just the 'German statelets' or perhaps just
northern Germany, and an Austrian version which posited a
super-Germany, led from Vienna, and incorporating the Slavic
territories of the Austrian Empire.

The debate turned 'hot' in the War of 1866, in which Austria, in
alliance with most of the German statelets, was opposed by Prussia in
alliance with several north-German statelets and Italy. The Battle of
Königgrätz ended in a surprise Prussian victory, against numerically
superior Austrian forces, and left Prussia largely dominant in the
territories of ancient Germany.

It was clear from the information the Seven Aces unearthed that the
Marquis had been mixed up in all this...somehow. They found clear
evidence of his presence in Berlin, Frankfurt, Vienna, Munich, Rome,
Paris, and St. Petersburg, with most of the traces showing him in
Berlin, Frankfort, Vienna, and other places in the lands of 'Germany'.
What was not exactly clear, six decades later, was whose side the
Marquis had been on, and what exactly he had been doing. What was
clear was that he was in contact with Bismarck, and had been so at
least since just after Bismarck's rise to power in 1862.

When the fighting was over, and a victorious Prussia had been left in
effective command of most of Germany, absorbing some formerly
independent statelets as provinces and creating the North German
Confederation as a sort of unofficial Greater Prussia, the Marquis was
working for the newborn united government, or at least working with
Bismarck. Whether he had been working for or with the Prussians all
along, or whether he managed to 'land on his feet' afterward, was
unclear. The people who could have shed light on the matter were long
dead, for the most part, and secret activities, by their very nature,
are rarely well documented.

What they did find was the first known reference to the 'magical
powers' that the Marquis supposedly possessed, and of which the Aces
had experienced painful confirmation. A diary that had been in the
possession of a historian in Frankfort spoke of strange things
happening around the Marquis during the years immediately after the was
of 1866, apparently he had been a figure of some very quiet and nervous
controversy in the inner circles of the Prussian government. The diary
(which had belonged to the wife of a Prussian cabinet minister)
revealed that it was thought that of all the cabinet who knew of the
man, only Bismarck did not particularly fear him. [1]

Over the course of the next few years, the Marquis had apparently
assisted the North German Confederation (meaning in practice Prussia)
in their more secretive diplomatic and intelligence efforts. The Aces
found evidence of appearances by the Marquis in London, Paris, St.
Petersburg, Rome, Vienna, and other capitols, as well as critical
places that were less well known. His presence in a capitol often
presaged a change in policy that would somehow benefit the NGC, or the
NGC learning something useful that had been kept secret from them.

The rise of Prussia to dominance brought it into conflict with France,
and in 1870-71, this war turned hot. Through the pretext of a Spanish
succession dispute, and some editing on the part of Bismarck of a more
conciliatory message (the infamous Ems Dispatch) from his sovereign,
the French were manipulated into declaring war on the Prussians, a war
that ended in disaster for France.

The Marquis, from what the Seven Aces could discover, was right in the
middle of all this. Apparently he was involved in the Ems Telegram
affair (though exactly what he did was lost to history), and then he
played some role in the unification of North Germany and the southern
statelets into the German Empire in 1871.

In the aftermath of the war, the Marquis went to Paris. This the Seven
Aces had fairly clear knowledge of, assembled from various diaries,
historical accounts, and third-hand accounts from living people who had
known people involved. They did not know every detail, but the trail
led them to some old memos in Paris and Berlin that indicated that the
Marquis had deliberately worked to push the Paris Commune from a
reformist mood into extremist overreach, and then helped manipulate the
newborn Third Republic into overreacting, imprisoning or murdering
thousands after they reconquered Paris. [2]

The Seven Aces were able to track the activities of the Marquis
throughout the first few years of the ensuing peace, and always he
seemed to be working for (or at least _with_) the German Government,
but his activities always seemed to be made up of wheels turning within
wheels. It was by no means clear that his ultimate agenda had been that
of the newly unified German state.

When Bismarck finally fell from power in 1890, forced out by the eager
young Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Marquis' trail again vanished, in spite of
the best efforts of the Seven Aces to track where he went next.

Shermanlee

[1] In my backstory, there was a great deal more to the story of
Bismarck than is commonly known to history, too. Among other things,
he had a powerful mind shield, and knew how to use it. In the
relationship with the Marquis, he was the one in control, which was
unusual.

[2] The Paris Commune would help lay seeds that would sprout elsewhere
in later years, some of them in very improbable places. The Marquis'
efforts there would have a large harvest.

 

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Johnny1a wrote:

>
> When Bismarck finally fell from power in 1890, forced out by the eager
> young Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Marquis' trail again vanished, in spite of
> the best efforts of the Seven Aces to track where he went next.
>
> Shermanlee

Despite their best efforts, and the considerable resources the Aces
were able to bring to bear on the problem, the trail went cold after
Bismarck finally fell from power. The next clear appearance of the
Marquis was one that needed no research, because it was part of the
personal experience of the senior Seven Aces, i.e. the Great War, in
which the Marquis worked for Wilhemine Germany, causing considerable
difficulty for Britain, France, and (indirectly at first) America. When
America entered the Great War, the small group of soldiers who would
eventually become the nucleus of ACE-7 began having their encounters
with the mysterious man. From that point forward, rather than scouring
old records, the Aces had first-hand information to go on, such as it
was.

It was fairly clear to the Aces in 1926 that the Marquis was still
working with some groups within the Weimar government. The German
republic that had taken the place of the former monarchic federation
that had fought the Great War was a complicated and in many ways
politically shaky state. The power vacuum created by the peaceful
abdication of the kaiser and the kings and nobles of Germany in 1918
had been filled by a republic, which had suppressed an abortive
socialist revolution in the process of taking power. Germany was still
far from a truly stable society, even in 1926.

The War To End War had resulted in a 'peace' that had left Europe in a
state of constant raw irritation. Germany had been defeated, but not
decisively. At the farcical 'peace conference' after the war, the map
of Europe had been redrawn with a blithe disregard for such
trivialities as language, religion, national loyalty or ethnic
identity, or simple common sense.

Germany had been split by a Polish Corridor that literally sliced
Germany into two non-contiguous sections, and transferred the city of
Danzig to Polish control, creating a perpetual source of German anger.
Even the most conciliatory and peace-minded politicians of the
post-Great War Weimar Republic tended to refuse to accept the Corridor
as a final settlement.

Germany had also been assessed gargantuan 'war reparations' out of
proportion to her role in the Great War, reparations so huge that even
had her industrial strength been intact, they would have been
effectively insurmountable, and in the event Germany had lost a
significant chunk of her capacity to France in the Versailles
settlement. [1]

The Austro-Hungarian empire was gone, dissolved into various newborn
states drawn up along somewhat arbitrary geographical lines, and the
ancient and tied Ottoman Empire likewise was gone. A German plan to
free up troops from their eastern front in the Great War had involved
sending a rabble-rousing Russian activist named Lenin into Russian
territory to try to bring about a revolution that would end Russian
participation in the war. As far as it went, the plan worked, but with
the side-effect of the creation of a gigantic, dictatorial madhouse
state, the USSR.

Of course, Russian and Germany were allies throughout most of the
1920s. When Poland anad Russia went to war in 1919-20, Poland defeated
the Soviets, successfully annexing areas of the Ukraine and Belorussia.
[2]

This embarrassment for the USSR led to an aliance of convenience
between Weimar Germany and the USSR. The Russian Red Army, while very
large, was embarrassingly ill-trained and ill-led. The German military
had skilled personnel and a very professional command staff, but was
forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles from most forms of rearmament and
deployment. Now the German military began training the Soviet one, who
provided the Germans equipment and locations for their own training and
maneuvers. It was a profitable alliance for both sides.

In the meantime, the French were pressing the Germans for payment of
the titanic war debts, and in 1923, to enforce compliance, the French
Army invaded Germany and occupied the Ruhr Valley region, a heavily
industrialized region of Germany, and a key economic and strategic
asset. Germany, her military power effectively neutralized by
Versailles, could not stop the French, but instead engaged in a massive
program of passive resistance.

All this led contributed to the bizarre economic situation in Germany,
one of the key elements undermining the shake Weimar Republic.

The Weimar Republic had been suffering from a tremendous monetary
inflation in the early '20s, one that had in part been deliberately
engineered by the government of Germany in order to nullify the
overwhelming war reparations that had been imposed by the Treaty of
Versailles. While this was successful as far as it went, it generated
the unfortunate side effect of wiping out the value of savings and
wealth in Germany. Many a thrifty, hard-working laborer or small
businessman found that his wealth simply evaporated in the early 20s.
It was not that they lost their money, they still had it...it was
merely that the money was now worthless. [3]

MORE LATER.

Shermanlee

[1]To be just, the French had their own previous claims on the land
annexed after the Great War, the Alsace-Lorraine and related
territories. Indeed, in a sense Germany and France had been disputing
that region, under various names amd circumstances, almost since the
breakup of Charlemagne's empire.

[2]Which side 'started' the 1919-20 Russo-Polish conflict depends on
who you ask. Each side cited acts of the other as the cause.

[3]The Weimar inflation became legendary. At its height, the
dollar/mark ratio had risen from single digits to literally billions/1.
People were _literally_ taking wheelbarrels full of cash to purchase a
day's worth of bread or milk, mail a letter, or fill a gas tank.