SPAWN

 

 

 

 

SPAWN

Alter ego: Al Simmons

Affiliations: CIA

Notable aliases: The One, Hellspawn

Abilities: Superhuman strength, speed, durability and endurance,

Powers: Immortality, Flight, Magical abilities, Teleportation, Shape-Shifting, Resurrection, Empathy, and Wears a living symbiotic costume capable of evolving.

F: RM (30)                  Health: 140                                    Height: 6’2”

A: RM (30)                  Karma: 70                                    Weight: 400 pds.

S: RM (30)                   Resources: Pr (4)

E: AM (50)                  Popularity: 0

R: GD (10)

I: RM (30)

P: RM (30)

 

POWERS

Immortality:

 

o Spawn's Symbiote Suit gives him the following abilities:

· Body Armor: Excellent (20)

· Regeneration: Amazing (50)

· Self Recovery: Unearthly (100)

· Self Revival: Unearthly (100)

· Shape Shifting: Monstrous (75)

· Empathy: Amazing (50); "Sense/Feel"- Misery, Pain and Hatred.

· Extra Attack: The chains can make an attack with +3CS to Fighting/Agility for Incredible (40) damage, blunt or edged; Grapple with Unearthly (100) ability; Unearthly (100) material strength; Elongation: Feeble (2).

· Evolution: Spawn's Symbiotic costume can evolve into a more advanced form, up to a maximum of an Unearthly (100) power rank.

· Magical Energy Manipulation: (Unearthly). Spawn can use magical energy to duplicate almost any power (Teleportation etc.) or use it as a raw energy (Eldritch) attack at Unearthly (100) power rank ability. Each time he uses this power above Remarkable rank the power drops 1 point (from Unearthly-100 to Unearthly-99) permanently. Only in very extreme circumstances can this be recharged.

o Weaknesses

· Decapitation - Supposed to be the only way to definitively kill some Hellspawn.

· Heavenly Forged Weapons - such as Angelic Lances, Whips, Daggers, etc.

· Celestial Fire - Such as that wielded by The Redeemers and The Disciple.

· Wiccan Magic - Such as that used by Nyx but he has to be willing to submit to it.

· Heaven - His presence in Heaven, or in safe-zones of Heaven weaken him and his costume because of his nature as a hellborn warrior.

· Greenworld - He has no power in the ethereal realm of Greenworld.

 

TALENTS

Martial Arts A,B,C,D, and E, Weapons Specialist (Guns), Boxing, Brawling, Marksman, Thrown Weapons, Sharp Weapons, Weapons Engineering, Weapons Tinkering, Military, Intimidation/Interrogation, Detective/Espionage, Demolitions, Survival, Blending, Stealth

 

BACKGROUND

Al Simmons was a highly decorated Lt. Colonel in the United States Marine Corps. He later joined the Secret Service and became a highly decorated member in the USSS also (notably saving the President in an attempted assassination) which led to his promotion to the CIA. In the CIA, he was later recruited by Jason Wynn into a special division known as the U.S. Security Group, a high-level task force with jurisdiction in all domestic and foreign situations. As an agent of the USSG, Simmons was an operative for covert military operations, including assassinations. Simmons always justified his brutality to himself because he believed everything he did was in the defense of his country.

He eventually came to question many of the actions of his agency, believing that certain missions involved the unnecessary sacrifice of too many innocent civilians. Wynn and Simmons began to clash more and more, and Simmons began planning to resign.

Upon learning of this, Jason Wynn ordered another assassin, Jessica Priest (Previously thought to have been Youngblood's Chapel), to murder Simmons during a 1987 mission in Botswana. Simmons is sent to hell because he hit his wife (Wanda), which killed their unborn baby. Making a deal with a devil, Malebolgia, who wants Al Simmons, the greatest assassin and soldier the world has ever known to lead Hell’s army into Armageddon against Heaven. Simmons agrees to become a Hellspawn, a lieutenant in Hell's army, if he is allowed to see his wife, Wanda, one last time.

Malebolgia returns Simmons to the living realm, but with only the barest of memory, a badly burned body (Chapel had burned him to death within a warehouse), and a watchdog, the Clown. Simmons slowly realizes that five years have passed. His wife, Wanda Blake, has married his best friend, Terry Fitzgerald, and the two have a daughter, Cyan.

His life over, Simmons has two choices before him: follow Malebolgia, or renounce the devil. The two choices come in the form of Clown, a diminutive, portly, disgusting minor demon (who can transform into the huge, fanged, clawed Violator), and Cogliostro (Cog), an apparently homeless old man who knows more about Simmons (whom both call "Spawn") and his situation than even he can know.

After Death

Spawn arrives on Earth in a daze, off-balance and disoriented. He has only vague recollections of his past and how he came to be. He knows his name was Al Simmons and that he died. He knows he made a deal with the devil to come back. Spawn returns to a world alien to him, as he has lost five years. He finds that his best friend Terry and his widow Wanda are married and have a daughter named Cyan. Spawn's first few adventures are very antihero in nature. He takes down street gangs and organized crime, but in a fairly brutal fashion. He kills a child murderer named Billy Kincaid. He survives an assault by Angela, an angel who wanted to hunt him for sport. As this occurs, he takes over the alleys that comprise "Rat City" and befriends the bums within it. His power is vast, and an odd bum named Cogliostro seems to know a lot about him.

Spawn's early battles take a huge toll on him. His first big test is against the mob enforcer, OvertKill, and it is an encounter he barely survives. Spawn narrowly escapes defeat at the hands of Angela and is also nearly annihilated by the heavenly warrior known as the Anti-Spawn/Redeemer I, who unknown to him was his former boss Jason Wynn. His fight against the Curse goes far better, and he not only defeats him but makes an example of him by nailing him to the wall of the alleys as a warning to those who come into his territory.

Along the way he meets up with the magician, Harry Houdini, and learns about magic and illusion while helping him save the world, which leads to Spawn taking a Batarang to the face from Batman in a Crossover. A friend named Bobby helps fix the wound by stitching it shut with his shoelace. After this, Antonio "Tony Twist" Twistelli mistakenly pegs Terry as the culprit behind the Violator's mob-targeted killing spree. He sends a rebuilt and reprogrammed OvertKill--fresh from an embarrassing defeat by Spawn by the docks--after Fitzgerald, forcing Spawn to protect his friend and eventually revealing his true identity to Terry. Only a single shot from Twitch's gun, going through OvertKill's ear and disrupting his programming saves the day as the mafia super soldier heads off to find Badrock, a member of the Youngbloods.

In a crossover with Youngblood, Chapel returns to find Al in the alleys and kills his friend Bobby. Chapel has decided he got a raw deal and commits suicide in front of Spawn, supposedly in an attempt to conquer Hell. Al uses his powers to bring Bobby back to life. He's then caught up in Angela's trial in the Angela miniseries and goes to Heaven, the location of which causes his suit to malfunction. This leaves his suit practically dead when he returns to Earth, in the heart of the Deep South. He has an encounter with the KKK and "helps" Eddie and Andy Frank with their abusive father while in Georgia. His return to New York was not pleasant. Spawn's encounter with a new Redeemer would not go well as this one was significantly more powerful than the last and his friend Bobby was taken away for study as his resurrection was noted as the first of its kind, a necroplasmic transferal. Spawn attacks a bastion of Heaven in the guise of a skyscraper to try to goad Heaven into returning his friend and the Redeemer appears again to face him. His powers are seriously waning and his suit was acting erratically.

The First Metamorphosis

After a nearly fatal encounter with the Redeemer, Spawn's costume evolved into a more advanced form. The formerly immaculate cape became ragged and shredded, and his costume lost its red coloring and became pure black and white. Spawn's gloves and boots also morphed, becoming heavily armored and covered with spikes. Spawn's costume was now much more powerful, and the cape and chains were capable of shape shifting to a much greater degree. The costume lopped the hand off Redeemer's arm by itself during their second encounter, while Spawn simply watched.

Later, during an encounter with the Curse, Spawn's costume was surgically removed from his body. When the two were reunited, Spawn found that the costume was going wild, attempting to take control of him and use him for its own purposes. Spawn mentally wrestled with the costume for weeks, being warned by Cogliostro that prolonged use of his powers while the costume was in this state would result in it returning to Hell, dragging Spawn along with it. When Spawn decided to use his powers to cure Wanda's husband Terry Fitzgerald of his cancer, the costume responded the way Cog had warned it would.

Trapped in Hell, Spawn fought desperate battles against the denizens of the various circles of Hell, finally arriving at the foot of Malebolgia's throne. Malebolgia gloated that Spawn was becoming everything he'd hoped, and returned him to Earth. Spawn retained mastery of his costume, but was shaken by Malebolgia's taunts.

Following issue #73 Spawn struggled to find a way to free himself from Hell's control and recapture his humanity. Attacks from both Heaven and Hell were coming faster and faster, and Spawn was on the verge of losing himself to the violence and the evil. Salvation arrived in the form of a mound of festering garbage - The Heap, an emissary of the Greenworld, a power equal to Heaven and Hell that Spawn had never encountered before. They endowed him with a host of new abilities that would enable him to overcome the worst both Heaven and Hell had to offer.

While these powers are not directly described, they appear to give Spawn control over all the elements and other aspects of the natural world. It was explained to him that the Greenworld did not care for the war of Heaven and Hell, but were growing increasingly agitated by the destruction it brought about. They inflicted on him the pains of the Earth, and when he returned Spawn became "aware" of the world. Spawn did not utilize his powers however, other than listening to the Earth, until he was impaled on the pole of a large sign by the dark god Urizen (named after the tyrannical creator-figure in the personal mythology of Romantic poet–artist William Blake). Urizen was wreaking havoc on the world, and the Greenworld imbued him with a "gift" which, after recovering thanks to Angela, Spawn uses to contain Urizen. Spawn splits the ground open and imprisons Urizen within the Earth.

The New King of Hell

After defeating Urizen, Spawn learns that the dark god's release was orchestrated by Malebolgia, as part of an elaborate scheme to take total control of all the kingdoms of Hell. Having failed spectacularly, Malebolgia's power is at its lowest ebb. With the help of Angela, Spawn is able to return to Hell and finally destroy his demon master, although Angela's life is lost in the process. Though offered Malebolgia's crown by the sinister Mammon, Spawn declines both it and an offer to enter the gates of Heaven. Spawn instead turns his efforts towards stemming the torment of humanity and defeating the evil that exists on Earth.

Overwhelmed by the darkness on Earth, Spawn turns to his old mentor, Cogliostro, with a new plan. He will accept the crown of Hell, and then remake it, turning it from a dark realm of evil into a new paradise that will sweep away all sorrow and sadness on the Earth. No sooner do Spawn and Cog embark on this plan, than they are drawn into the lowest reaches of Hell, where Cog betrays Spawn during a moment of weakness, taking the crown of Hell for himself. Cog uses his newfound power to return Spawn to earth, apparently alive and well, back in the body of Al Simmons.

Spawn Reborn

Wandering the Earth in a daze, Al Simmons is confronted by a young witch named Nyx. With Nyx's help, Al is reunited with his shadowy alter-ego, and Spawn is reborn on Earth. Seemingly human, with a human's frailty and vulnerability, when not shrouded in his costume, Spawn has lost much of his power, but continues with his mission to right the wrongs of the world and seek out peace of mind for himself. However, Mammon continues to plot against him from the shadows. After tempting and betraying Nyx, Mammon gains her magical power over the union between Al Simmons and Spawn, and uses it to rob Al of all of his memories. Al wanders the Earth, searching for something he feels, but cannot remember. During this wandering, Al unwittingly unleashes a band of angels known as the Forgotten, angels who were neutral, taking neither the sides of Heaven or Hell during the Fall. Al learns that Mammon is one of the Forgotten, and is far more powerful than Malebolgia ever was.

Armageddon

With the aid of the Greenworld, Spawn regains his lost memories, and something more. His costume metamorphoses again, seemingly becoming one with his necroplasmic body. Spawn is captured by Mammon and his demonic minions, and tortured horribly so that the secrets his body contains can be revealed. Spawn's discarded heart, torn from his chest in an earlier battle with the Disciple, Heaven's Warrior, transforms into a young boy named Chris. Chris, together with Sam and Twitch, rescue Spawn from Mammon's clutches and return him to Earth. Spawn learns that thousands of human souls are contained within his body, each one capable of being summoned in the form of a Hellspawn. As signs of the end of days wreak havoc across the world, Spawn must find a way to stave off Armageddon, and learn the true nature of Heaven, Hell, and the Earth.

Spawn learns that Wanda's twin children are the ones responsible for Armageddon. The twins, who have been displaying destructive and sadistic tendencies for months now, attempt to murder their entire family, when Spawn arrives to stop them. Spawn is unable to destroy the twins, and the unexpected arrival of Zera, the Queen of the Seraphim, reveals the awful truth - Jake Fitzgerald is God, and Katie Fitzgerald is Satan.

It is revealed that both God and Satan were removed from their respective kingdoms and reincarnated as human children by the all-powerful being known as Mother. Mother is the creator of the universe and all its worlds, and God and Satan are two of her many children. She regards them as disappointments, being consumed with destructive hatred towards one another. Mother, who has aided Spawn in the past under the guises of Kali, the Keeper of the Greenworld, and the Man of Miracles, warns Spawn that he alone has the potential to rise above God and Satan, and preserve the human race. She also warns that Armageddon cannot be stopped - it is Earth's destiny.

Spawn is entered into one last final test to prove if he is worthy to preserve the human race: the Disciple. Before his final test, the Mother told Spawn to trust Cyan because she is "wise beyond her years". She also reveals that the Disciple is actually the guard of the portal to the Garden of Eden, where Spawn must eat the Forbidden Fruit in order to save humanity. After Spawn blasts the Disciple into Eden and killed him, it is revealed that there are actually 11 more Disciples, who are based off the Twelve Apostles. Also, because Hellspawns are never meant to enter into the Garden of Eden, Spawn's life will fade away the longer he is in the garden. This is shown through a video game like counter, which Cyan sees through a laptop. With the help of Cyan and the souls within him, Spawn fights each of the Disciples, killing them off one by one as the counter continues to drop to zero until the final Disciple left is Judas, whom Spawn is about to kill. However, Cyan yells to Spawn to not kill him. Spawn, remembering what the Mother said about trusting Cyan, does not deal the final blow to Judas. Judas stabs Spawn through the heart and his counter reaches zero.

As Spawn lies slain, Mother appears and plucks a piece of fruit from the Tree of Life. She speaks with Judas, revealing that when she took the form of Jesus, Judas was his most beloved disciple, the only one who had the courage to betray him. Without his death, the life of Jesus would have had no greater meaning. Mother gives the power of the Forbidden Fruit to the lifeless Spawn, resurrecting him in a new form - his cloak and chains are gone, replaced with shining white wings. Mother explains that Cyan was right; Spawn needed to die in order to be resurrected and gain the power to rival God and Satan. Returning to Earth, Spawn finds New York totally destroyed by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The slain population of the Earth has become possessed by angels and demons, who are gathering for the final battle. As Spawn races to the place where Armageddon will be fought, he confronts Zera, the Queen of the Seraphim.

During this battle, Spawn shows Zera his true power as an equal to both God and Satan. Spawn defeats Zera and returns to the battle between Heaven and Hell with her head as a trophy. Spawn arrives at the battle as the last of Heaven's warriors are slain. He believes that he knows one of them. Searching the battlefield, Spawn discovers that he knows one of the soldiers as Granny Blake. She realizes that she has been betrayed and mislead by her faith in God. Spawn faces off against the Hellspawn of Satan's army, declaring that the Earth realm belongs to him. Calling him a traitor for breaking his oath, the Hellspawn from all the ages converge on their "brother." Spawn battles the Hellspawn, calling upon the earth to swallow them, returning them to Hell. Hearing of this, Satan sends all of his remaining warriors after Spawn. Fearing that Spawn will unbalance Armageddon, God does the same. These events are watched by Mammon and a cloaked figure, whom Mammon responds to as a subordinate. During their exchange it is implied that all is going according to their plan, and Mammon says that he should have never been doubted. As Heaven and Hell attack Spawn, he calls to himself all the power given to him by the Mother, and in a single display of power destroys the armies of Heaven and Hell, along with the rest of humanity.

Laughing, he dismisses his act as a way to halt the Armageddon itself, leaving God and Satan without soldiers to use in their battle. He then asks the Mother to restore his children to their former glory and powers, but refuses to fight them. They eventually incinerate Spawn, then proceed their endless battle... fighting by themselves, in a barren, scorched Earth. Spawn, now given the powers of a god and the protection of the Mother, gains the power to recreate Earth, restoring to life everyone, but leaving humanity every memory of the Rapture. God and Satan have no role in the "new" Earth, because they're trapped in their perception of a barren Earth until they cease their seemingly endless fight, and Spawn, with his last act as a god himself, closes every door between Hell, Heaven and Earth. He then asks the Mother to turn him into Al Simmons, talking her into leaving the former Spawn the chance to win back Wanda and becoming a fatherly figure for Cyan. A now fully human Simmons returns to his former home, but facing the memories of the miscarriage he inflicted upon Wanda by beating her the last night before dying, he relinquishes once more humanity, accepting to go on in his death as the monster he always thought to have been in life. Realizing how Al Simmons himself, not Mammon, claimed the Hellspawn role as penance, Spawn, again in his "red-cowled" costume, takes once more residence in a deserted and barren Rat Alley.

Left alone, and searching loneliness as penance for his actions, he's sought and brought back in action by Twitch, who is investigating on a wave of madness and paranoia sweeping between the restored humanity.

Powers

Original and Current Powers

Spawn's body is quite dense, weighing around four hundred pounds (180 kg), and is composed completely of necroplasm. This gives him super strength and durability. While he still has internal organs, they are non-functional, and their damage/destruction does not hinder Spawn in the least. These organs re-appear when he magically regenerates his wounds. This may be due to Spawn's inability to let go of his human self, retaining his human organs even though he no longer requires them.

Spawn wears a living symbiotic costume, Leetha of the 7th House of K (aka: K7-Leetha). While wearing it the host assumes a dominant role over his suit. His cape, spikes, chains, and skulls are all part of an organism bonded to his central nervous system that will protect Spawn even if he is unconscious. Violator once said the suits feed on souls. This is true, as the suit is a K7 model which is one of the pureblood breeds that siphons the souls of those it kills and sends them straight to Hell to bolster Malebolgia's army. The K7 model is a stronger, more refined symbiote which makes this Spawn stronger than many that came before him and some that have come after him such as Billy Kincaid who was once bonded to the less powerful K2-Myrlu. While it is not known exactly what effect the consumption of souls has on the hellspawn's uniform it is likely that it helps the suit evolve over time. Violator was obviously upset that Spawn not only had the power to regenerate (called "The Gift") but that his suit was able to move to a higher necrostate at a completely unprecedented pace. There are nine different necro-states, during which time the suit goes into a dormant hibernation stage to mutate and evolve. When it awakens it is more powerful and if the suit evolves faster than the host's ability to control his suit then the suit will assume the dominant role.

The true source of the costume is the necroplasm in Spawn's body, from which it feeds. It is possible for Spawn to draw this energy back when he needs it, using it to power his abilities without draining his own reserves. The costume can also feed off evil energy from the physical world, feeding off the ambient evil of people, animals (mainly carrion insects, but also wolves and bats) and even certain parts of the city.

Spawn has vast magical powers. In the issues before issue #50, Spawn had a limited power supply or "9:9:9:9". Each time Spawn used his energy, the counter would drain. Because of this reason, he relied primarily on his costume's natural abilities in fights. Other than the counter, the only limit was Spawn's imagination. Though he always tried not to expend a lot of magic, he has been shown using it for a variety of effects including resurrecting the dead, firing blasts of necroplasmic energy, teleportation, shape shifting, and curing the sick.

Spawn still retains the military training and weapons expertise from his days as a soldier and thus frequently uses guns as an alternative to his magic.

Spawn has an ability to "feel" or "sense" misery, pain and hatred as a gift/punishment given to him by The Keeper, an agent of the Emerald Parliament of Greenworld. He is aware, even subconsciously when someone is attacked or murdered because he has gained a further affinity with the creatures of the night and shadows and through them experiences the anguish of all mankind. Spawn typically travels in the shadows, even "flying" on occasion. He is often described as notoriously difficult to spot, often only caught out of the corner of one's eye as just a streak of red (his cape). Spawn can also transform into a swarm of bats and transports from place to place. He has done this on several occasions. Recently, Spawn has shown that he contains an unknown number of lost souls who can share his Hellspawn abilities that are collectively known as the Legion. Detective Twitch theorized that the souls that Spawn carries are those that died during the same hour that Al Simmons was killed, and that there could be as many as 6,000 souls within him. It seems that the power from these souls is the reason Spawn was uncontrollable by Malebolgia, and often referred to as "the One". With the help of a young Hellspawn (Christopher) he is able to summon them to aid him in his quest to stop Armageddon. Eventually these souls moved to a higher plane of existence and Spawn is no more able to summon them, but still retains their knowledge and experiences.

Divine Powers

Following Issue #161, the Man of Miracles had given him fruit from the Tree of Life and propelled his power to high-omnipotent levels, enabling him to rival God and Satan. Now with the powers equal to both God and Satan, Spawn is the third power in the battle of Armageddon. Spawn has apparent control over the Earth itself, using it to his will when in battle against both armies. Spawn used the Earth to swallow all other Hellspawn and imprison them back in Hell. Most impressively, he used his new powers to wipe out the earth of all the legions of heaven and hell in one blast without showing any obvious wear on his power. In issue #163 he resurrected all humans and had undone all the damage from the four horsemen.

Weaknesses

Almost unstoppable, Spawn is unable to die outside of a patch of alley known as "The Deadzone" unless beheaded by a weapon of heaven. The "Deadzone" is the small patch of Earth that is Heaven's domain. In that small stretch of alley, Spawn has no power... thus making him an ordinary person. Spawn has, however, used this area to perform an exorcism, but the few times he has ventured there, the results were nearly fatal. Aside from divine wrath, Spawn can regenerate (given a considerable expenditure of energy) and recover from virtually any injury, including massive organ damage, and even partial dismemberment.

Many of these weaknesses appear to have been entirely removed, as shown by his conflict with Zera, who was the favorite warrior of God in the Armageddon story arc. Despite being armed with heavenly power and weaponry, and even after almost completely bisecting him, Zera was unable to kill Spawn. Nigh-omnipotent as of issue #161, Spawn no longer had weaknesses, albeit, restored after the Armageddon to his role and stripped of his "angelic" appearance it is unknown if he still has a bulk of his omnipotence.

Appearance

In the Armageddon issues, Spawn has transformed yet again. His flowing red cape is gone, replaced with a pair of angelic white wings. The suit still covers his entire body, but has taken on a much more organic appearance. The suit does not appear to produce chains anymore, but still creates spiked gauntlets around his hands and forearms area.

In recent issues, after his voluntary penitence, transforming himself into Spawn, the suit once more reasserted his demonic appearance, exchanging wings for a new ragged flowing cape and creating padded red spiked forearms protections.