Better Angels: Doomslaughter of the Villainous Nine

Written by Greg Stolze and illustrated by Kurt Komoda, © 2014

Doomslaughter was one of the first people General Null approached with a request for voluntary joining with a demonic spiritual parasite.  Dr. Glen Baker had a privileged upbringing, a doctor and the son of two doctors who went to Ivy League colleges. He had a lucrative urology practice in Boston for the better part of two decades before a vacation in Africa put him in contact with an old med school lab partner who was working in the Congo for Doctors Without Borders.  Hearing about the conditions there awoke something in Glen, and he left his practice to his partners and threw himself headlong into philanthropy — to the point that his wife, who thought she had been more than patient, eventually filed for divorce and took his two kids. Then came Null, and Dr. Baker became Doomslaughter.

Doomslaughter, by Kurt Komoda

With a demon installed, Glen was, at first, content to return to urology and concentrate on keeping his evil spirit completely corralled.  That hope faded the first time his demon (who goes by “Afak-Tuhy the Indelibly Maleficent”) went full Flame-Wreathed during a routine prostatic stent installation, costing the patient his life and Dr. Baker his license to practice.  (Witnesses were extremely disjointed about the episode, and it was eventually blamed on static discharge to an oxygen tank — an extremely unlikely accident but easier on the ear than “the devil made me blow him up.”)

Losing medicine made Glen a darker and angrier person. If he couldn’t help the good, the weak and the innocent, he decided to harm the bad, the strong and the unjust.  Doomslaughter’s assaults on blood-diamond organizations are sold in the media as his attempt to consolidate that illegal trade, but really it was Dr. Baker trying to destroy it entirely.  Unfortunately, the violence only fed Afak-Tuhy’s indelible maleficence, and it was almost ready to drag Dr. Baker to the abyss.  Learning what Afak-Tuhy had in store, Baker went sickhouse on a squad of police and superheroes and got himself killed before Afak-Tuhy could take over and chase down his children and the ex-wife he never stopped loving.

Afak-Tuhy is incensed that he got so close with Glen, only to have it all go pear-shaped on him.  He’s determined to do better (meaning ‘worse’) with Esther Minges, who is dubious about taking on the title ‘Lady Doomslaughter.’

(The stats below work for either Glen Baker or Esther at the beginning of a supervillain career.)

Glen was a heavyset, jolly black man with thick glasses.  His version of Doomslaughter wore a voluminous black robe with bloodstain-crimson details on the gloves and the hem, along with a horned mask.

In demon form, Doomslaughter looked like a satanic T-Rex, only with longer arms that and a shorter, narrower snout.  The Carapace power expressed itself as smoldering scales, glowing like embers in a dying campfire.

Esther Minges’ demon form is the same, and for now she’s going with the same Doomslaughter costume design, even though she’s five inches shorter and eighty pounds lighter.

CUNNING 1, PATIENT 3
Greed 1, Generosity 3
Espionage 2, Knowledge 3

SLY 3, OPEN 1
Cruelty 2, Courage 2
Cowardice 2, Endurance 0

DEVIOUS 1, INSIGHTFUL 2
Corruption 1, Nurture 2
Deceit 2, Honesty 2

POWERS: Ineffable Defense, Terror

ASPECTS: Giant, Carapace

PRIMARY SINFUL STRATEGY: Sly

Better Angels cover

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