Here are some facts characters and NPCs might know about Tesseract if they succeed with an appropriate Skill Roll:
N/R: Tesseract is a supervillainess with the space-warping powers that allow her to teleport, teleport other people against their will, capture people in
“tesseract traps,” open portals to dangerous parts of Earth, and even open a portal inside a person or object to deadly effect.
K/R: Tesseract sometimes mentions “the sixth dimension”; it’s possible her powers come from or relate to that reality (whatever it is) somehow.
-2: Tesseract also has powers of “hyperpercep-tion,” allowing her to “see” through solid objects all around her; this makes her very difficult to surprise or ambush her.
-6: Tesseract seems to be particularly vulnerable to Magic attacks for some reason.
-8: Tesseract suffers injury when other people Teleport her against her will.
-10: Her Secret Identity is Laura Palamaris.
Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains n Professor Paradigm 151
Val Char Cost Roll Notes
10 STR 0 11- Lift 100 kg; 2d6 HTH damage [1]
23 DEX 26 14-20 CON 10
13-15 INT 5 PER Roll 12-15 EGO 5
12-18 PRE 8 13- PRE Attack: 3½d6 8 OCV 25
12 DCV 45 3 OMCV 0 5 DMCV 6
5 SPD 30 Phases: 3, 5, 8, 10, 12 10 PD 8 Total: 10 PD (0 rPD) 10 ED 8 Total: 10 ED (0 rED)
8 REC 4
70 END 10 10 BODY 0
30 STUN 5 Total Characteristics Cost: 195 Movement: Running: 12m
Teleportation: 60m
Cost Powers END
90 Tesseract Travel: Multipower, 90-point powers
9f 1) Lesser Tesseract: Teleportation 60m 0 Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½)
6f 2) Greater Tesseract: Teleportation 20m 0 MegaScale (1m = 10,000 km; +2), Reduced
Endurance (0 END; +½)
8f 3) Tesseract Gate: Teleportation 30m, x125
Noncombat, x32 Increased Mass 8 125 Tesseract Attacks: Multipower, 125-point powers 12f 1) Involuntary Space Warp: Teleportation 40m,
Position Shift 12
Usable As Attack (not against characters with Tele-portation or dimension-manipulation powers; +1¼), Ranged (+½)
10f 2) Tesseract Razor: RKA 3d6 4
+2 Increased STUN Multiplier (+½), Penetrating (+½), Reduced Endurance (½ END; +¼)
10f 3) Tesseract Trap: Entangle 8d6, 8 PD/8 ED 4 Reduced Endurance (½ END; +¼)
12f 4) Danger Portal: Blast 10d6 5
Indirect (Source Point and Path can vary from use to use; +1), Variable Special Effects (+¼), Reduced Endurance (½ END; +¼)
120 Tesseract Shield: Physical and Energy Damage
Reduction, Resistant, 75% 0
20 Tesseract Defense: Deflection 2
90 Tesseract Reversal: Reflection (90 Active Points’
worth), Any Target (+½) 9
20 Multidimensional Mind: Mental Defense (20 points) 0 46 Hyperception: Detect Physical Objects 16- (no Sense
Group), Discriminatory, Increased Arc Of Perception (360 Degrees), Range, Sense, Targeting, Telescopic
(+10 versus Range Modifier) 0
Talents
3 Absolute Range Sense 3 Bump Of Direction 3 Lightning Calculator
Skills
20 +4 with Tesseract Attacks Multipower 18 +6 OCV with Deflection and Reflection 1 Computer Programming
8-19 Cryptography
20-2 KS: The Mathematics World 11-1 KS: The Superhuman World 8-2 Navigation (Dimensional) 12-11 SS: Mathematics 20-3 SS: Physics 12-3 Stealth
14-Total Powers & Skill Cost: 667 Total Cost: 862
400 Matching Complications (75)
20 Hunted: the Champions (Infrequently, Mo Pow, NCI, Capture)
20 Hunted: UNTIL (Infrequently, Mo Pow, NCI, Capture) 20 Psychological Complication: Code Versus Killing
(Common, Total)
15 Psychological Complication: Wants To Loot, Pillage, And Conquer (Common, Strong)
15 Social Complication: Secret Identity (Laura Palamaris) (Frequently, Major)
15 Susceptibility: to being teleported against her will, takes 3d6 instantly (Uncommon)
20 Vulnerability: 2 x STUN from Magic attacks (Common) Total Complications Points: 75
Experience Points: 462
152 n Professor Paradigm Hero System 6th Edition Powers/Tactics: Tesseract’s powers involve the
ability to warp the fabric of reality, often by creating multidimensional structures known as tesseracts (hence her name). She can use tesseract-constructs to travel great distances in the blink of an eye, move people against their will, open up portals into dangerous areas and substances (bonfires, rockslides, bodies of water) so those substances gush out of the portal and hurt the person standing in front of it, and so forth.
She can also trap someone in his own personal tesseract, so that every time he tries to get out, he automatically puts himself back inside! — unless, of course, he exerts enough force to overcome her power threshold, in which case the tesseract collapses.
Tesseract’s powers also protect her. She subcon-sciously shunts most of the force of any attack into alternate realities, so that it doesn’t affect her. In some situations, she can open up a better portal and avoid all of the force of the attack — or even redirect it to affect one of her enemies.
Tesseract’s perception of reality is actually a form of hyperperception that lets her sense the objects around her, regardless of the existence of intervening physical objects. It’s as if her percep-tions work through the Sixth Dimension, and can thus “see around” three-dimensional objects as if they weren’t there. It’s virtually impossible to stop her from “seeing” the world around her — even if her normal eyesight is somehow blinded, she doesn’t lose her ability to perceive things... and to strike back at whoever blinded her.
In combat, Tesseract usually prefers to use her Involuntary Space Warps to confuse the heck out of her opponents — and possibly put them in position for the other Paradigm Pirates to attack them more effectively. (Teleporting them into the middle of one of Displacer’s dangerous “dimen-sional overlays” is a favorite tactic, provided she’s confident doing so won’t kill the victim.) Alter-nately, she may move the Pirates into more advan-tageous positions. If that’s not enough to get the job done, she’ll use Tesseract Traps and Danger Portals, or even Tesseract Defense if she’s facing enough opponents with Ranged attacks (she loves shooting someone with his own attack!). She’ll only use her Tesseract Razor (which involves opening reality warps inside a target) against unliving targets, or if she has no other option. A lot of her powers have high END costs, so watch her END expenditures carefully.
(If the GM allows characters in the campaign to use Reflection with Deflection, as discussed on APG 113, Tesseract should definitely have that ability. Rebuild her Deflection and Reflection powers to suit.)
Campaign Use: In addition to her “job” with the Paradigm Pirates, Tesseract could serve as the focus of stories involving other attempts by the beings of the Sixth Dimension to take over Earth.
If you need to make Tesseract more powerful, give her some Armor or other defenses to supple-ment her Damage Reduction, or increase the dice of her attacks (or the meters she can Teleport someone). Making her weaker is a little trickier, since the way some of her powers are defined, they can’t really be changed much. However, you could shave off a few points here and there, or simply get rid of a lot of optional features. You could also decrease her SPD to 4, which reduces her END usage problem a little.
Associates, Allies, And Adversaries: Tesseract may also have some connection with the Japanese villain Teikei (CU 83, 108), who claims to be from the Sixth Dimension.
Appearance: Tesseract is a white female, 5’9” tall with shoulder-length brown hair and dark eyes.
Her costume is black, with green gloves and a green T design on the front. She also wears a black cape with a green design along the other edges.
She doesn’t wear a mask.
Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains n Shadow Destroyer 153
s many mystics know, Earth’s plane of existence is not all there is to Reality. The dimensions of the Multiverse are infinite, ranging from planes where humans would feel right at home to planes so bizarre, so abstract, so other that even the most powerful human sorcerers can barely conceive of them.
Lying “near” (relatively speaking) to Earth’s plane are countless “parallel planes” where things are just like Earth... only not. The differences range from the minor (humans breathe water instead of air, mankind has never visited space), to the signif-icant (the Roman Empire never fell, all human societies are controlled by women, Nazi Germany won World War II, there are no superhumans), to the severe (everyone is a superhuman, humans all have mental powers, humans are plants rather than animals). But even the most extreme of these parallel Earths is still recognizably an Earth, however odd it might be.
One such parallel Earth, known to less than half a dozen mystic’s in Earth’s history, has no special name, though one of those mystics referred to it in his writings as the Multifarian Earth. It is one of the strangest of the alternate Earths, a place where past, present, and future history mingle together in ways that someone from Champions Earth might find baffling, and where historical dead-ends on Champions Earth sometimes continued on to bear strange fruit. A section of Victorian buildings stands right next to glittering twenty-first century skyscrapers in New York, while dirigibles and da Vinci flying machines traverse the sky overhead and a space station rides the heavens as a twin to the Moon. Walking down a street in London one might chance to pass Benjamin Disraeli, then Shakespeare, then Tony Blair, then the 38th century warlord Forsythe Rutledge... none of whom might be present in the city tomorrow. Nor might they be quite like their counterparts of Champions Earth — in the Multi-farian, Shakespeare is a cold-hearted wastrel who steals the works of talented men and passes them off as his own, and Foxbat is a competent and respected crimefighter. It is a place where Science exists, but Magic rules, and a strange darkness underlies all.
And in the Multifarian there lived a man named James Harmon IV.
Background/History: The blood felt warm as it cascaded over his fingers from the still-beating heart he’d ripped from his father’s chest. The Harmon family had long been one powerful in both Science and Magic, and that power had to be maintained in each generation, not just by learning but by sacrifice. His father had sacrificed his own brother, as was the usual way... but James IV had no brothers, so he turned on his father, subjecting him to an ancient Aztec ritual lost to all the world but the Harmon family.
His father’s power filled him, expanding and layering upon his own until his sorcerous strength became the equal of his scientific acumen. But it wasn’t enough. Like taking a sip of wine, the mere taste of true power he’d just received made him hunger for more.
So began years of study and sacrifice, of research and ritual, of eerie energies and eldritch evocations. Using all the vast resources of his family and his own towering intellect, he delved deeper into the occult than perhaps anyone else in the history of the Multifarian. Fragments of power came to him, here and there, but never the true power he sought. But at last his mind and his will carried him past human limits, past the bound-aries of what was known to touch... the Presences Beyond.
Strange they were, so strange he intuitively realized he would never truly comprehend them
— almost as if they were anti-entities, beings nega-tory to all he knew. But they had power, immense power, he could unquestionably sense that. And he could sense, too, something more... a yearning?
a disdain so powerful it was desire inverted? a backwards energy, drawing into itself rather than expanding? Whatever they wanted, whatever they must have, he would give it to them, and they would give him what he craved: power. He pledged himself wholeheartedly to the Presences Beyond. They said nothing, did nothing...
...but slowly and surely, his powers grew. And there came into his mind a vision, unbidden but welcomed, of a great talisman: a suit of armor, forged with the best of his sciences and his sorceries, that would make him the mightiest man in the world, a being who could humble all the so-called “superheroes” that would stand in his way.
154 n Shadow Destroyer Hero System 6th Edition It was the work of thirteen moons, each moon
punctuated by the bloody and horrific sacrifices he sensed his masters wanted. When he was done he garbed himself in his new armor, never to take it off again.
A few years passed, during which he tested himself again and again against the heroes of his world: the impudent buffoon Foxbat; the self-righteous fools of the Sentinels and the Justice Squadron; the justice-robot Mechanon; and countless more. He lost more often than he won, but his defeats were never total and his enemies never laid hands on him. And he learned, always he learned, and his power grew with every passing month.
H H H H H
There came a day when his finely-tuned mystic senses perceived... a visitor. A man from another place, another reality, come in search of what he himself had so long sought: power. He sensed in this man a heart as dark as his own, and aims not unlike his own, and a potential threat. He could destroy him... but better to make use of him.
Deep within the strange slums of Multifarian Paris was a grimy bookshop he knew of... and he knew, too, that hidden among its stacks and stacks of quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore there lay a book of dark power — a book that could consume one’s soul. Always he had avoided it, for Destroyer’s soul must remain his own!
That much even he was not willing to sacrifice for power... but he sensed that this other black-hearted man was. So with spells most sensitive, he subtly nudged him toward the shop, easing the path he might otherwise have traversed with difficulty.
H H H H H
After the black-hearted man took his anti-widdershins path back home, he began contem-plating what could be done with the lore rumored to be in that foul tome. It described beings like his masters, and perhaps the black-hearted man would worship them, or try to take their power, or use them for some purpose. He would almost certainly fail. But... what if he helped him? Perhaps he could aid the man’s plans so he could twist them at the last moment in the service of himself and his own gods. Maybe he would weaken the gods of the book in favor of his own gods, or take their power for himself, or even sacrifice them to the Presences Beyond! The danger was great, but the possibilities were intoxicating.
But to take advantage of them he’d have to follow the black-hearted man to his home plane, and bring a strong force with him. Traveling there himself was no difficulty, but bringing followers — his Karkaradons, his vehicles of war, his Shadow Colossi, his acolytes — was a different matter. For that he would need power... lots of power. And in exchange for power, the Presences Beyond desired sacrifices.
It took months of preparation to lay the groundwork for the spell, since rituals that complex and powerful were not things to be cast in a few minutes, or even days. Thousands of sacrifices would be needed, both of ordinary humans and beings of great might. Based on its population and location, he chose the city of Detroit for his purposes. When all preparations were complete, he moved his forces into position under cover of an invisibility-spell and bade them await the opening of the way.
What happened next is not entirely known to the rest of Multifarian Earth. Without warning a great, shadowy cloud enveloped Detroit, blocking out spy satellites and mystic scrying alike. Superheroes from all over America, and even the world, responded to the threat... just as Shadow Destroyer had planned. He unleashed the full force of the Qliphothic shadow powers his masters had granted him for the ritual, draining both them and the city below of their life-force, their vital essence... their souls. When the cloud dissipated, Detroit was a shattered ruin littered with the corpses of superheroes where a few pitiful survivors scuttled like rats through the shadows in search of food and shelter. At Shadow Destroyer’s command the survivors rebuilt it as New Harmon, a city that’s both a tribute to his power and an enormous ritual working space. At its center Shadow Destroyer created a Rift Gate that led to the black-hearted man’s world... and he and his followers marched through.