As a famous story begins, "Once upon a time in Colorado lived a man named Abednego Danner and his wife, Matilda." Actually, those were not their names, nor was the name of their only son Hugo. But though most of the names were changed, the story told by Philip Wylie in his 1930 novel Gladiator was more or less an accurate tale of his life. The one real point of divergence between the text and the truth came at the end.
In the book, Professor Hardin suggests to Hugo Danner that he ought to use the formula to create a new race of super-men in his own image. Considering this, but uncertain of the morality of it, Hugo charges up a mountain and bellows a challenge to God, asking whether or not he has the right to do this. God apparently answers by sending a lightning bolt to kill him dead, and incidentally destroying the only copy of the formula. It is a dramatic and vivid scene.
It didn't even come close to happening like that. In reality, the man the book called Hugo Danner was persuaded by the Professor's arguments to let him have a look at the formula his father had devised -- and was subsequently stunned to learn that the learned scientist came to the conclusion that the formula was bunk. It couldn't possibly have had the results that were readily apparent in the young man's abilities. However he'd gained them, it had been some other way.
For a while, the young man despaired. If he had no idea how to give the powers he'd been given to anyone else, how was he ever to pass on his legacy? But the professor came up with a solution. It an easy task to become a father in a biological sense. How much harder would it be to become a father to an ideal, to live a life that would inspire others to a higher standard of excellence than they could ever otherwise achieve? It would be the task of a lifetime ... even for a superman.
Inspired himself with this new ambition, the young man set out to accomplish it. He crafted a costume based on that worn by a circus strongman in his act, and set out to provide an example to the world of the way things ought to be. At the same time, he created a new "civilian" identity for himself, in the form of popular writer Paul York, to give himself something to do when he wasn't striving against the powers of darkness. He was pleased but not terribly surprised when his example drew other costumed crusaders and mystery men out of the shadows. Most were only humans with courage and skill, but a few possessed unusual talents all their own. None were his peers, though he hoped that would come.
His first true moment of greatness came when he led a group of heroes against a group of invaders from Mars in 1938, keeping them penned up in the immediate area of their landing until Earth's microbes killed them. Flush with this victory, a little less than a year later, when the war in Poland broke out, he contacted President Roosevelt and offered to end the war immediately by arresting Hitler and Stalin and dragging them before the League of Nations. Roosevelt counseled patience, and gently suggested that it wasn't really the Ultimate's job to get humanity out of the messes that it got itself into. He should lead the way, but it was up to them to follow his example.
Moved by the President's words, the Ultimate followed this advice. During the war, he canvassed for war bonds, and fought saboteurs and spies, as well as criminals whose selfish ambitions threatened the war effort. Only on a handful of occasions did he ever go near any of the fronts, and usually only as a carefully scripted morale booster for the troops. (Sure, he thought he was invulnerable, but what if he was wrong?) He served as an example to the Super-Men of America when they formed, but rarely associated with them at this stage.
It was around this time that he began to realize that his powers were growing. He'd always been able to make incredible vaulting leaps, but eventually realized that he was maneuvering during them with far too much accuracy for them to truly be considered leaps. He was flying, somehow. And though his senses of sight and hearing had always been preternaturally acute, he realized now that he was able to use them to sense things that were literally impossible for him to actually see or hear. Somehow, he was actually engaged in "remote sensing", to use a term that wouldn't be coined until much later. (He would later learn that he could alter the energy that he projected when using this ability so as to do damage.) It was all evidence that the Professor had been right that his powers weren't the result of his father's supposed formula, which had never been designed for such things.
And the Ultimate found love as well. During the early part of his career, when the authorities had been deeply suspicious of his motives, a private detective agency had been employed to find out all they could about him, and one of their operatives, a rare female investigator, had kept at it all these years. During an adventure, she finally obtained proof of his identity as Paul York ... but realizing that she'd only ever been interested in finding out for herself, rather than for her company's clients, she promised that she would tell no one. Moved by her tenacity and her integrity, the Ultimate began to woo her, and they were married soon after the war ended.
The next decade was hard on the Ultimate. He was hurt and angered by accusations from people who should have known better that he could have ended the war -- both the war and the ugly little mess in Korea -- in days. Didn't the people understand the lesson he was trying to teach? Didn't they understand that it was up to them, not him? Shaking this off, he fought the Communists on the home front, as well as aliens and strange mutated monsters. But the luster of this life was beginning to wear off, and he questioned whether what he was doing made any difference.
At the end of the fifties, things began to look up. In an orphanage in Kansas, he found a young girl who had powers like he'd had as a young man. Adopting her -- for he and his wife had never been able to have childen of their own -- he called on the services of an old friend to determine her origins. He was shocked to learn that she was his grand-daughter, the child of a son he'd fathered shortly after the First World War. His son had never shown any signs of super-powers -- he'd been crippled shortly before the end of the war, and came home just long enough to father a daughter of his own before he killed himself. She in turn was abandoned on the steps of an orphanage.
Perhaps some inheritance from the mother's side had allowed the recessive traits from the Ultimate to breed true in his granddaughter. Or perhaps there was some other explanation. To the Ultimate, at least, it didn't matter, he had a child to whom he could pass on his philosophy and who would become a standard bearer for his beliefs among the young. So he kept her existence a secret for a long time, even from most of his allies, whom he began to associate with more frequently, particularly after they learned of the existence of a second Earth.
By the start of the seventies, his adopted daughter was ready, and she also joined the Super-Men of America as one of their newest members. For a while, everything was perfect ... but then things began to go wrong. First, the Fox, his closest friend among the other heroes, was killed in battle, and then the legendary Dr. Incredible was murdered by an old foe. Adding to his woes, he began to learn things that suggested to him that humanity had never actually been the master of its own destiny, rendering his philosophy at best naive and at worst actually harmful.
And then, in 1985, while the Super-Men were assisting in the resolution of a multiversal catastrophe, his daughter was killed. In a fury, he launched into the fighting, battling the evil that had taken her life across dimensions. When it was finally done, he found that he had lost the way back, and set out to find it. Just what happened to him over the next eight years has never been adequately described.
He returned to Earth in 1993, just in time to assist in another situation of cosmic significance. Silently accepting the praise of the world, he addressed the United Nations. In a startling development, he revealed his secret identity and most -- though not all -- of his history. His wife had passed away in the years of his exile. He no longer had any real ties to the nation of his birth, and he proposed to cut what little remained. He would retire to an isolated island in the North Atlantic, outside of any nation's territorial waters, and live out the rest of his life in peace. All that he asked was that he be treated as the island's sovereign ruler, with full diplomatic immunity -- the ruler of a nation of one. The UN granted the request, perhaps believing that this would assure that the Ultimate's strength could never be used as an instrument of American foreign policy.
But what the world didn't know was that he had developed his own "foreign policy". Since the day that he was granted his sovereignty, he has quietly pursued a course of removing threats to mundane humanity's domination of the Earth. If humans go to war with each other or murder each other, that is their right to do so ... but if they do so because shadowy manipulators behind the scenes wish them to do so, then those shadowy forces must be eliminated, whatever the cost, whatever it takes.
In and of itself, this perhaps wouldn't be a problem. But the Ultimate goes further. In his view, any superhuman entity that attempts to influence humanity in any way -- whether positively or negatively -- is engaged in a corrosive, corruptive act. If they restrict themselves to fighting other supers in ultimately pointless battles that don't hurt anyone but themselves, that's one thing. But any attempt to alter the course of human affairs by a super is something that the Ultimate will never forgive.
So it is that the Ultimate is the enemy of most of the groups of supers who have come out of the phonebooth in the last decade. He opposes the efforts of the Alliance, of Eternity Enterprises, and of the Mutant Underground, and is recognized as an enemy by all three groups. While the leader of the Fright Knights also regards him as an enemy, he regards their activities as unimportant. He's also correctly regarded as a serious threat by the Cabal, the Alphans and the Loi.
Over the last decade, the Ultimate has experienced quite a few successes in his campaign. Several teams of supers who imitated the Alliance's policies have dissolved, with their members often retiring, or changed their goals to follow the example of Detroit's Tomorrow League, thus keeping within acceptable limits as he sees them. The Mutant Underground, in particular, has suffered serious reversals following Lord Firebrand's arrest, botched execution, and subsequent imprisonment.
However, new groups like the Utopian Academy and the Primal Pattern have arisen to vex him, and he also suffered a major reversal when the new leader of the Fright Knights publicly exposed the Ultimate's goals and some of the less than legal steps he'd taken in pursuit of them. Consequently, he's been declared persona non grata in a number of nations, most notably the United States, which has limited his ability to respond to such challenges. However, he takes a certain cool comfort that the backlash against him is also damaging many of his enemies.
The Ultimate -- PL 15
Real name: Unknown; used the alias Paul York for most of his adult life.
Date of birth: December 25, 1895.
Identity: The identity of Paul York is publicly known, but his life before 1931 is secret. (Gather Information DC 15/40, Knowledge (history) 20/na.)
Occupation: Sovereign.
Base of operations: Ultimate Island. (Northwest of Greenland.)
Affiliation: Former member of the Super-Men of America.
Height: 6'4''.
Weight: 3000 lbs.
Eyes: Black.
Hair: Black.
Abilities: STR 18, STA 7, AGL 1, DEX 3, FGT 6, INT 2, AWE 1, PRE 7
Powers:
Nigh-Invulnerable: Reaction Damage 8 (being struck), Limited to lesser of effect's rank or attack's damage; Immunity 12 (aging, life support need for sleep);; Regeneration 10; Impervious Toughness 15 * 61 points
Super-Speed: Enhanced Advantages 8 (Close Attack 2 [Limited to targets with a lower Initiative], Improved Initiative 6); Enhanced Defenses 12 (Dodge 6, Parry 6); Flight 24 (64,000 MPH); Movement 10 (dimensional travel 3, environmental adaptation [zero gravity], space travel 3, time travel 3); Quickness 6 * 93 points
Super-Strength: Enhanced Strength 3, Limited to lifting; Variable 6 (feats of strength) * 45 points
Vision Powers: Array (46 points)
* Blast Vision: Perception Range Damage 15, Precise * 46 points
* Remote Vision: Remove Sensing 21 (visual), Subtle 2; Senses 2 (Darkvision) * 1 point
Advantages:
All-Out Attack, Benefit 5 (diplomatic immunity, status, wealth 3), Defensive Attack, Equipment 4, Improved Grab, Improved Smash, Takedown Attack, Ultimate Save (Toughness).
Skills:
Close Combat: Unarmed 4 (+10), Deception 12 (+19), Expertise: Politics 7 (+9), Expertise: Science 9 (+11), Insight 12 (+13), Intimidation 15 (+22), Investigation 12 (+14), Perception 15 (+16), Persuasion 6 (+13), Technology 8 (+10).
Offense:
Init +25
Unarmed +12/+10 (Close Damage 18)
Blast Vision -- (Perception Range Damage 15)
Defense:
Dodge 7, Fortitude 18, Parry 13, Toughness 17, Will 12.
Abilities 110 + Powers 246 + Advantages 15 + Skills 43 + Defenses 13 = 426 points
Complications:
Megalomania--Motivation. Enemies (most of the world's superheroes and villains).
High Power Version: ... are you crazy? You're crazy, aren't you?
<sigh>
High Power Version (PL 18): Increase STR to 21, STA to 19, AGL to 3, FGT to 9, AWE to 3; add Impervious Will 15; increase Reaction Damage to 9 ranks, Impervious Toughness to 18 ranks, Enhanced Strength to 4 ranks, Variable to 8 ranks, Perception Range Damage to 18 ranks, Remote Sensing to 25 ranks; increase Intimidation to 18 ranks, Perception to 18 ranks; add Power Attack, increase Fortitude to 21, Will to 15.
Low Power Version (PL 13): Reduce STR to 16, STA to 15, PRE to 6; reduce Reaction Damage to 7 ranks, Impervious Toughness to 13 ranks, Enhanced Advantages to 4 ranks (Improved Initiative 4), Enhanced Defenses to 8 ranks (Dodge 4, Parry 4), Flight to 18 ranks, Movement to 1 rank (environmental adaptation [zero gravity]), Quickness to 4 ranks, Variable to 4 ranks, Perception Range Damage to 13 ranks, Remote Sensing to 17 ranks; reduce Intimidation to 12 ranks, Perception to 12 ranks.
Ultimate Island - 20 ep
Size Huge; Toughness 10; Features Communications, Computer, Dock, Grounds 2 (Colossal), Habitat, Hangar, Isolated, Laboratory, Living Space, Power Dampener (Magic), Power System, Security System (DC 25), Workshop
The Ultimate's Big Secret: He is doing exactly what his creator, the King of Cataclysm, intended him to do when that entity implanted him in his mother's womb, more than a century ago. He is a flaw in the diamond that is humanity's superhuman nature, which will make crushing that diamond so much easier when the time comes ...