Ghost Rider III:
STATISTICS:
F: Rm/30
A: Rm/30
S: In/40
E: Am/50
R: Gd/10
I: Ex/20
P: Rm/30
Health: 150
Karma: 60
Resources: Fe/2
Popularity: 5
BACKGROUND
Real Name: Johnathon “Johnny” Blaze
Occupation: King of Hell, stunt rider, adventurer; formerly carnival owner, demon hunter, movie stuntman, drifter
Legal Status: Citizen of the United States with a criminal record.
Identity: No Dual Identity
Other Known Aliases: Ghost Rider, JB, Brimstone Biker Brimstone Avenger, The Riding Ghost, Spirit of Vengeance, Frank Ryder
Place of Birth: Waukegan, Illinois
Marital Status: Widowed
Known Relatives: Illyana Kale (maternal ancestor, deceased); Destin Kale (maternal ancestor, deceased); Dante Kale (maternal distant relative, deceased); Noble Kale (maternal ancestor, deceased); Magdelena Kale (maternal ancestor, deceased); unnamed maternal great-grandfather (deceased); Joshua Kale (maternal grandfather, deceased); Naomi Kale (mother, deceased); Barton Blaze (father, deceased); Crash Simpson (foster father / father-in-law, deceased); Mona Simpson (foster mother / mother-in-law, deceased); Dan Ketch (brother); Barbara Ketch (sister, deceased); Roxanne Simpson (foster sister / wife, deceased); Craig Blaze (son); Emma Blaze (daughter); Jennifer Kale (maternal cousin); Andrew Kale (maternal cousin, deceased)
Base of Operations: Mobile
Past Group Affiliations: Formerly Midnight Sons, Quentin Carnival, Thunderbolts, Avengers of the Su-pernatural, The Nine, Legion of Monsters, The Champions
Present Group Affiliation:
KNOWN POWERS:
Alter Ego: Johnny Blaze may transform at will between his normal human form and that of Ghost Rider, a fiery skeletal being wearing biker leathers.
- F: Ex A: Rm S: Gd E: Rm R: Ty I: Ty P: Ty
- Damage does not carry over between the 2 bodies
Invulnerabilities:
- Fire, Heat, Poisons, Radiation: CL 1000
Hellfire: Am/50; Ghost Rider’s body is covered in hellfire. Only his riding leathers keep it in check. If someone uses an edged weapon against him and scores a Red result an explosion of Am/50 intensity occurs and effects everyone within the area including Ghost Rider.
- Create walls of flame: Am/50
- Fireballs: Am/50, requires firearms of some kind.
- Penance Stare: If Ghost Rider successfully grapples someone for one round and forces the other to look into his eyes. The victim must make a Psyche Feat roll or permanently lose 1 rank in Psyche. Additionally the must then make another Psyche Feat versus Am/50 intensity or pass out for 1-100 rounds.
VULNERABILITIES:
- Certain Mystical Attacks (like Hellfire), negate Ghost Riders Body Resistance
EQUIPMENT:
Hellfire Motorcycle: Ghost Rider rides a daemonic looking motorcycle, when in his normal human form it resembles a normal high-end street bike.
- Control: In Speed: Am Body: In
- Alter Ego: Control: Ty Speed: Ex Body: Pr
- Mental Control: 10 Area range
- If destroyed will reform within 1-10 rounds
- Defy Gravity: May travel in any direction so long as a surface is available
TALENTS: Motorcycle, Occult Lore, Guns
CONTACTS: Champions of L.A., Spider-Man, the Thing, Dr Strange, Son of Satan, Daredevil
Midnight Sons
HISTORY:
Blaze once again became bonded to the Ghost Rider, and ended up in Hell. Due to the machinations of Satan, he was set free, and now chases Satan. This led to a confrontation with Doctor Strange.
Starting over, John found a new job as an accountant and a new girlfriend, Chloe; but he was still linked to Zarathos, and the demon began to reconstitute within him. Regularly transforming into Ghost Rider again, John quit his job and hit the road. However, the reborn Ghost Rider's personality was different than before, less talkative and more indifferent to the welfare of innocent bystanders. Desperate to escape this renewed curse, John hired mercenary Gunmetal Gray to kill Ghost Rider, whom Gray pursued with malicious glee. Finally cornered at the Sturgis biker convention, John Blaze and Zarathos seemed to make peace with one another and merged in a new way, defeating Gray.
During the superhero Civil War, Johnny ended up in Sleepy Hollow, Illinois where a serial killer was decapitating local children and soon learned his identity: the supervillain known as Jack O'Lantern. Killed by the Punisher, Stevie Levins' body was occupied by one of the several aspects of Lucifer. The local sheriff thought Blaze was to blame but soon realized the truth. Ghost Rider and the sheriff confronted Jack O'Lantern/Lucifer at the door of a preacher's house, and after a short fight Ghost Rider tore out Lucifer's heart and smashed his head.
Blaze angered the Ghost Rider when he tried to save several people and allowed the Lucifer fragment they were currently fighting to escape. Later after watching a broadcast on TV, Blaze decides to go to New York and fight the Hulk, against the Ghost Rider's will. After attempting to urge the Hulk to stop, Ghost Rider engages the Hulk. Their battle is monitored by Doctor Strange and Mister Fantastic. Dr. Strange believes that the entity that supplies Ghost Rider's mystic power is possibly capable of defeating the Hulk, stating that his powers are limitless, and only inhibited by the human side of the Ghost Rider, even going as far as to call his powers "godlike". However, as it is Johnny Blaze, not the fully powered demon Zarathos who is engaging the Hulk, the Hulk easily defeats Ghost Rider. After Johnny is knocked out, Zarathos himself emerges and rides off because, as Dr. Strange says in the end of the issue, Ghost Rider protects only the innocent, which none of the Illuminati are.
Johnny Blaze had devised a plan to destroy Lucifer while engaging the help of his current girlfriend, Dixie. He left her guarding a hotel room while he leaves and Ghost Rider engages Lucifer in the guise of a sports team owner. While Lucifer is secretly planning to blow up a packed stadium, he distracts Johnny by telling him that one of his other avatars has possessed a Little League coach and is holding his entire team hostage. Ghost Rider arrives and attacks Lucifer, inhabiting his coach's avatar, but in his zeal, fails to realize that the barn holding the children has been set ablaze. Luckily, the children had been saved by would-be allies, Emmael and his brother Vraniel, two angels that had been cast out of the highest levels of heaven and who were recently reborn on Earth in an attempt to stop the machinations of Zadkiel as a means to atone for their past mistakes.
Ghost Rider and the two angels returned to the stadium to prevent Lucifer from detonating his explosions and when the Ghost Rider learned that the angels harbor a secret, he used his penance stare on Emmael, destroying him. He then learned that the Ghost Rider was actually an entity of Heaven that was bonded to him by the fallen angel, Zadkiel, in answer to Roxanne's prayers to save Johnny's soul. He also realized that Lucifer actually helped orchestrate Johnny's escape from Hell so that he could be also be freed. Lucifer then tried to form an alliance with Ghost Rider since he, too, hates Zadkiel who had turned on him during his war against Heaven. Ghost Rider responds to his offer by blowing up the building with both of them in it.
Ghost Rider next fought the final avatar of Lucifer. He was able to destroy it because it was not as powerful as Lucifer thought. Two weeks earlier, Ghost Rider had kept a brain-dead avatar alive, thus draining half of Lucifer's power. When the brain-dead avatar gained full power in the hotel room with Dixie, it was shot dead by some gun-happy cops, but Dixie is killed by a stray bullet. Lucifer has been defeated and returned to Hell and as Johnny laments all the things he's cared about, including Dixie, being taken from him, he decides to turn his Spirit of Vengeance on Zadkiel.
Later, Daniel Ketch returns with a new mission: to collect the powers of all the Ghost Riders for the angel Zadkiel to prevent the corruption of the powers with their human hosts. Zadkiel has other motives he keeps to himself, what he needs the powers of the Riders for: to tear down the walls of New Jerusalem and wage war on Heaven. The story begins in Tibet with Chinese soldiers harassing a village, questioning them about weapons that killed two of his garrison patrols. During the harassment a peasant enters on a donkey. After an exchange of words and an order to kill given by the General, the peasant changes and kills the General's men while his back is turned. When the General turns back he sees the Ghost Rider and gets a penance stare for his trouble. After the attack the Rider goes back to his sanctuary where he is visited by Danny Ketch. A short while later Sister Sara and Johnny Blaze arrive at the sanctuary to find out how to get back at Zadkiel. After entering, they find the peasant and donkey burnt to husks.
That night the two are visited by Ketch and begins a battle with a show of power. When Blaze does the penance stare to his brother, he sees exactly what has transpired. Ketch has murdered the hosts of numerous Riders for their powers. During a show of pity for the fallen, Ketch is able to return the stare on Blaze, and sends Blaze into temporary insanity. Before Ketch is able to take the power of Zarathos, he is stopped by the new caretaker Sister Sara. She rescues Blaze and they go to a safehouse. At the safehouse, during Blaze's episode of self pity and Sara's trying to pick him back up, they are visited by two more Ghost Riders, the Arabic Molek and the Chinese Bai Gu Jing, whom they follow to Japan.
When Blaze's team arrives in Japan, they learn Ketch has already taken the power of the Rider Yoshio Kannabe. After the conquest, Ketch has another talk with Zadkiel via a communications link. During the conversation, Zadkiel massacres the squad of the Asura who guard the Gates of Heaven. Zadkiel tells Ketch to wait to attack the Riders til the last ones are together. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, former cop Kowalski follows a contact to get a hellfire shotgun for his revenge on Blaze.
After acquiring the item he is then driven to the middle of a desert to sit and wait for his chance. After leaving Japan, Blaze's team journeys to the City of the Skulls in the Congo where the last stand would be made. There they meet the Lords of the Congo, the Ghost Riders Baron Skullfire and Marinette Bwachech, and their Phantom Riders. During the day Sara tells Molek about her new experience becoming a Caretaker, and her wonders about religion, with which she is given secret information that Molek knows about both. As the Ghost Riders and their forces ready for battle, Blaze has his eyes opened back up by two children who go to participate in the fight. He quickly snaps out of his depression and joins the others for the final battle.
During the course of the battle Baron Skullfire dies and the spirit is transferred to one of the Phantom Riders, after which Ketch creates hellfire duplicates of himself to take the on the warriors. A wager is then made by Blaze and Ketch on a race between the brothers around the world for the fates of the powers. During the race, Blaze is critically injured by Kowalski's shotgun and Ketch takes the rider from him as his duplicates overpower the others. Moments later, Ketch relinquishes the power of the Spirits of Vengeance to Heaven, with Zadkiel now able to storm it. The sound of the gates falling is enough to be felt by Spider-Man's senses, and loud enough to be heard even in Hell and Asgard. When an injured Blaze returns to the City of the Skulls, Ketch falls from the sky, revealing that the battle for Heaven has already been decided. As more energies fall from the heavens, one strikes Kowalski and changes him into a new rider that looks a lot like Vengeance.
After the battle with Zadkiel and his Black Host, Johnny Blaze parts ways with Ketch and Sara. He eventually wanders to a Japanese village, living in the nearby temple. The villagers are suddenly invaded by demons and their flesh is transformed into heinous forms by a creature called the Skin-Bender. Blaze's attempt to fight back result in her trying to morph his flesh, but finds his skin burns to the touch due to his power, prompting her to demand he transform into Ghost Rider. When he does, she breaks down crying, claiming he is the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and begged for him to speak. He simply responded with "Burn," leading a storm of fire to rain onto the village, incinerating the demons and restoring the villagers to their normal states. At the same time, Sara arrives in the village to reunite with Blaze to continue their quest against Zadkiel. She finds him in the process of grinding up the Skin-Bender, before tossing her into the sea. Sara then consoles Blaze, asking him to think of his family and asks where they are. He replies, saying that they are in heaven. They then depart from the village to continue their journey.
The Antichrist, Kid Blackheart, after being hunted down by Zadkiel's agents on Earth, is saved by occult terrorist Jaine Cutter, despite Daimon Hellstorm's efforts to slay him. Eventually, the three encounter Johnny, Danny and Sara, and are forced to join forces in a desperate attempt to defeat Zadkiel in Paradise. Eventually, after reaching Heaven with Danny, he and Danny both attack Zadkiel, but are quickly overwhelmed; however, the spirits of Blaze's deceased wife and children encourage him to rise and continue to fight Zadkiel, rallying the combined forces of the Spirits of Vengeance (whom Ketch had been tricked into returning to Heaven by Zadkiel) against the renegade Archangel. After Zadkiel realizes that he was not, and never would be, the one true God, as Blaze tells him, "Only God can make a Ghost Rider, Zadkiel. You should know that. And only God can destroy one. You may have been able to shift that power around, to even leech it from its hosts. But you were never really able to control it. And you certainly couldn't kill it. You're not God, Zadkiel. You're just another power-mad wannabe who desperately needs his ass kicked. And that's exactly what the Ghost Riders are for", he is defeated and banished to Hell, with God, revealed to have never perished at all, reclaiming Heaven and thanking Blaze for all he did for Paradise and its billions of souls.
During the Shadowland, Kingpin and Lady Bullseye perform a ritual which brings back Ghost Rider in a plot to attack the Hand. After Ghost Rider returns to Kingpin, he is forced to travel to Japan to confront the ancient ninja clan the Hand, and, unable to directly combat them due to the Hand magic binding him, provokes them into killing him. Blaze's soul emerges in an white void, and God, after telling him he is needed still, sends him back to the mortal realm, and, in gratitude for his role in defeating Zadkiel, aiding him by reinforcing him with a battalion force of Black Host warrior angels who are able to quickly slaughter the Hand ninjas with ease. Freed from the curse, Blaze rides off into the distance on his motorcycle.
During the Fear Itself event, Johnny Blaze becomes more agitated about his curse and is then approached by a mysterious figure known as Adam who claims he can help Blaze be rid of the Ghost Rider once and for all. Blaze was ambiguous about the man's gesture thinking there was a catch to his offer, but Sam simply put as that the curse will be passed to someone he never met. Blaze accepts the offer and was told to drive the Rider out of his soul. Blaze was finally rid of the Rider for good from then on while Adam went about his way to find a new host for the Ghost Rider.
In Dayton, Ohio when Sin (in the form of Skadi) attacks the city and fights a new female Ghost Rider. After the female Ghost Rider was defeated, Johnny Blaze learned from Mephisto that the new Ghost Rider is cursed with Adam, whose ultimate goal is to wipe all sin from humanity, effectively turning humanity into mindless, emotionless beings. Blaze, feeling guilty for selfishly giving up the curse, agreed to help him separate the Ghost Rider from Adam.
Shortly after Alejandra and Adam returned to the temple, he ordered her to extinguish the sin from her fellow students. When she refused, Adam enslaved her.[24] When Blaze arrived, he and the Seeker, who disagreed with Adam's plans, joined sides to stop him. Adam turned Alejandra into a bomb of sorts that, after exploding, wiped the sin out of everyone in Nicaragua, save for Blaze and the Seeker, who grabbed Blaze and used his ability to nullify the Ghost Rider's power to protect him from the blast.
Adam then took the Ghost Rider to Cape Canaveral to board a space shuttle and fly to a space station. On board, Adams told her that he wants her to focus all her power and magnify it through the space station's camera lens so that it reaches across the Earth.
Johnny Blaze, having made a deal with Mephisto for a bike he could fly into space, took the Seeker up with him to the space station. But, realizing he was going to use her as a weapon, jettisoned him from the bike, sending him back to Earth.
Blaze was too late to stop Adam from forcing Alejandra to release all of her power but tried to get her to take control of it. His words touched her and she was able to overcome Adam's influence and blew up the space station. Alejandra saved Blaze, and they returned to Earth. Seeking to give the Nicaraguans back their souls, Alejandra drove off without Blaze, not wanting another person telling her what to do.
After working solo for a while, Alejandra asked the Seeker for help in finding a way to restore the Nicaraguan souls. He told her that their sin can be found in Hell and that Blaze could help her since he is in contact with Mephisto.
But Adam had survived the space station explosion and called on Steel Wind and her dead sister Steel Vengeance for help in bringing the Ghost Rider to him.
While tracking Blaze down, Alejandra found that he was being hunted by Hawkeye, who thought that Blaze was to blame for the situation in Nicaragua. Alejandra came to his aid but they were both transported to Japan via a portal. Steel Wind and Steel Vengeance came after them but instead of grabbing the Ghost Rider, they made off with Blaze, wanting vengeance. As Alejandra prepared to chase after them, Hawkeye struck her in the chest with an arrow with an amulet attached to it that neutralizes magic. Hawkeye went after the sisters to help Blaze but only ended up getting captured by them as well. Alejandra was able to pull the arrow out of her chest and defeated them both.
Blaze decided to join Alejandra and teach her how to handle being the Ghost Rider, taking the amulet that paralyzed her with him just in case.
After Alejandra was betrayed by Blackheart, when he offered her to restore the souls of the innocents Alejandra destroyed in exchange of helping her to spread Hell in Earth, she hit the road once again with a new quest: to drag those souls out of Hell by any means necessary.
Blaze followed a powered-up Alejandra to Hell, where she was about to annihilate it by destroying Mephisto's heart. Using his contract with Mephisto turned into a bullet, Blaze stopped Alejandra, but made her fall over an edge. Johnny managed to hold her hand, but after realizing she used the Spirit for selfish purposes, she allowed herself to fall into the lava, thus returning the Spirit of Vengeance back to Blaze. Johnny, now as the Ghost Rider, saved a burning Alejandra, who survived by having still a part of the Spirit in her. After going to Nicaragua and showing what she had achieved, Alejandra stated that she was still angry at him for everything he put her through, declaring that his actions deserved vengeance. They both rode off in separate directions.
After a failed attempt to become an actor, Johnny Blaze retook his career as a stunt rider. He then joined the Thunderbolts providing his services to help them bring down their former teammate Mercy.
During the mission, the Leader incites a spell that momentarily removes the Ghost Rider from Johnny Blaze. In that brief moment with his powers gone, Blaze is suddenly ripped apart and killed by a swamp demon.
However, at the end of the mission, time was reset by a new god and Blaze was alive again with the rest of the Thunderbolts.
Following several other missions, the Punisher quit the Thunderbolts, only to find that his safehouse had been boobytrapped. Setting out for revenge on the Thunderbolts, Punisher manages to remove the Spirit of Vengeance from Johnny using Mephisto's sword. Johnny, grateful, leaves to go live his life.
After the Thunderbolts and Avengers captured the Leader, Punisher used the Rider's skull to put Sterns under permanent Penance Stare. Mephisto appeared to bring Sterns to Hell, as well as returned the Ghost Rider back to Johnny.
The Avengers of the Supernatural were a group of supernatural heroes chosen by Mojo for his newest reality show. They were mind-controlled into abducting the Avengers Unity Division from the Avengers Mansion. Ghost Rider begun submitting the inhabitants of Mojoworld to his Penace Stare both Avengers team fought Ghost Rider in order to distract him, and let Satana pry the Spirit of Vengeance from Blaze and temper it. Satana failed to attack Ghost Rider, but Rogue managed to sneak up on him and touch him to absorb his powers. This way, she became the new Ghost Rider and tempered the Spirit of Vengeance, but as it begun taking control over her, Blaze reabsorbed the spirit into him, becoming the Ghost Rider once more. Having saved Mojoworld and having controlled the Spirit of Vengeance, the Avengers of the Supernatural and the Unity Divison returned to their universe, where they quickly started a pool party.