Earth 10 Vigilante
Metaphor
The Reconstruction Amendments
Rogues Gallery
Note: During his WWII adventures Vigilante had a sidekick in Stuff, the Chinatown Kid, who passed away before the age of heroes having become a Federal Representative from California.
The Dummy
This diminutive desperado has somehow acquired a copy of MacTaggart’s uncle’s notebooks, giving him the same genius that powered Adam’s resurrection and electromagnetic gear. This makes the Dummy very dangerous indeed. Shortly after their first encounter (when he was still an ordinary weapons manufacturer working for criminals) his attempt at self-healing went gloriously awry, reducing him in stature but increasing his density to that of hardwood, making him a human ventriloquist’s dummy. In this form he manages a small stable of criminals who use his advanced technology for crime. He’s doubly dangerous since he’s slightly more technically adept than Adam, making him better able to adopt his uncle’s technologies.
The Rattler
Another western themed villain, the Rattler is Vigilante’s opposite number when it comes to cowboy skills, and has a definite edge over Adam in those skills. He’s a killer for hire, travelling across the west, and his trademark is using rubber bullets laced containing slivers of concentrated rattlesnake venom. While Vigilante has never been able to best him in a gunflight Adam’s technological and physical advantaged let him carry the day. Someday the Dummy and the Rattler will team up and that will be a dark day for the defender of liberty.
The Rainbow Man
This classic costumed villain operates across the American west pulling color themed crimes. He carries with him light and gas based devices, with the Red, Orange and Yellow pistol generating flames, lasers or blinding flashes while the Green, Blue, Indigo and Purple gasses change depending on the crime, but always tying to some common phrase or idiom (such as hallucinogenic purple haze, depression generating Blues, introspection inspiring Mood Indigo). Like all obsessed theme villains he’s a goober but surprisingly effective.
Dead Man’s Hand
This group of 5 card themed villains as existed in some configuration since the fateful day when Wild Bill Hickock was shot by Jack McCall on August 2nd, 1876. Hickock’s hand at the time was the ace of diamonds with a heel mark on it; the ace of clubs; the two black eights, clubs and spades, and the queen of hearts with a small drop of Hickock's blood on it – that drop of blood completed a dark ritual. Since then the Dead Man’s Hand has reconfigured itself whenever Vigilante takes it apart, be it a gang of desperados, a motorcycle club, a group of dandified assassins or a dark riverboat magician enslaving souls for gambling debts. Currently it is a quintet of actual super-villains, with the ace of clubs having a high tech energy-projecting staff, the ace of diamond having a flying ‘ace’ board that contains a variety of weapons, the eight of clubs being a martial artist able to make duplicates of himself, the eight of spades able to create and throw spades of pure solid darkness and the queen of hearts with mind and emotion control powers. This is a villain set that will definitely require the JAA’s help to permanently take down. (this is obviously the Earth 10 version of the Royal Flush Gang, but I like mine better).
Zalozhniy
Pitor Ivanovitch was born on February 2nd 1918, a day that never existed with the adoption of the Georgian calendar, this child of the Revolution was blessed by a kindly old grandmother in a forest hut to be on Earth for his 100th birthday. He fled the chaos in Mother Russia to the United States, where at the age of 18 he was unceremoniously killed in mob violence and dropped in an unmarked grave. As a member of the unhallowed dead he has stalked the earth ever since, waiting for his 100th birthday. During that century he has raised mob after mob to tear down society. He can be incredibly persuasive in leading the downtrodden. His undifferentiated anger sometimes leads him to embrace white supremacy, other times mobs of the homeless, or the mad. His only constants are directing the anger of the mob against civilization and the inability to die.
The Chainman
A recent edition to the Vigilante’s super-powered rogues’ gallery, the Chainman built technology to the point of magic into collars and chains and manacles that force those wearing them to operate under Asimov’s laws. High tech slavery, with no risk of revolt. Already too much of the world’s slave trade is under his control, and he is extending it, bit by bit into the United States. He will find that attracting the attention of the defender of liberty will be his greatest mistake.
