The Cosmodore

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speaker-to-trolls
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The Cosmodore

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

If this seems a bit unpolished it's because it is. It is kind of rushed, in fact, because I did it under duress, as I used the name 'Cosmodore' in conversation with Dakarne and he said that if I didn't make it a Comix character within 24 hours he would project himself through the internet and kick my ass. Now based on this Dakarne clearly has superhuman powers I was not previously aware of, and he's bigger than me, so I didn't want to take the risk. Also this gives me an opportunity to do a certain amount of construction on space things in Comix. See if this is any good or makes any sense.

The Cosmodore

Biography

His holographic pennant blazing like a strange constellation, his black sails spread wide to capture the power of unseen energies, the winds of space whistling across the sleek hull of his mighty vessel, his hundred weapons prepared to spit radioactive fire at a moment’s notice, the Cosmodore is the terror of many an unwary space-being. From the prow of his magnificent and ornately bedecked flagship, the Singularity, he stands in command of a small fleet of pirates that menace the distant, far flung stars of the galaxy.

How he chose the life of a vagabond of the void is not known, and, as far as many are concerned, not important. What is known, and is important, in the eyes of the human beings who have business with him, is the story of how he came to the attention of the human race, which begins more than twenty million years ago, on the golden moon of Beetlegeuse 9.

Beetlegeuse 9 is only the 4th planet from its great star, but is named differently, for the records of the ancient races that have grown up under that star are so laden with tradition and memory that they still count the five planets long since swallowed up by the red giant’s monstrous growth. Twenty million years ago, when, by the standards of that old, patient race, their old home of Beetlegeuse 5 had but recently succumbed, they came to this world to hide a treasure. It was a series of plates, 23 in number, of the rarest materials in the universe, beautiful beyond measure and bound up with strange quantum functions that allowed any who owned them to see into the past and future and change the shape of spacetime. They hid it on this planet, farthest from their sun, to hide it from the nefarious warring factions that had emerged from the annihilation of their old worlds. There, though searched for by the disparate kings of Beetlegeuse in exile, the treasure lay, undiscovered, as the galaxy turned and the eons wore on.

Its legend spread throughout the galaxy, though, and came eventually to the sensors of a being known as the Steel Star, a mechanical entity, a dreadful pirate, a scourge of the space ways, and his knowledge became an obsession. He bent the mighty energies of his will and his materials to the task of finding the secret hiding place, for one hundred and forty years he searched for any information that might lead him to the secret’s location. He hacked the ancient databases of Beetlegeuse 7, he sat for ten years in silent, furious analysis in the shadow of a secluded asteroid, at last he tore up the ground of the Golden Moon, laying waste to a venerable landscape in a futile attempt to find the secret chamber. All to no avail, of course, the entrance to the secret chamber was, he eventually saw, not within the material universe, it could not be found, save by those who already knew where it was.

How to find it, then? For another hundred years he searched for the answer. At last, though, he found it. There was a device, a homing beacon, linked to the mechanism of the doorway by quantum entanglement. Wherever the entrance might be, that beacon would find it, but he would have to find that beacon.

This, at last, is where the Cosmodore enters the story.

He was already a pirate by this time, and a rightly feared one, but the Steel Star was far more terrible than him, but the Cosmodore was known as an excellent treasure hunter, and had been lately in the star system where the beacon was rumoured to rest. Thus the Steel Star made him a deal; wealth aplenty and a squadron of monstrous robotic ships to command, in exchange for finding the beacon.

The Cosmodore, avaricious young creature that he was, could hardly refuse such a commission from such a notorious sort, but he gave a caveat: If he was to find this device, he would need the robotic ships immediately, his own vessel was hardly adequate. The Steel Star agreed, and even modified the Cosmodore’s own vessel as a bonus, then told the young pirate that he had a matter of time that would equate fifteen Earth years to find the beacon and bring it to him.

So he set out with the aim of finding the device, and in doing he found that the robot flotilla which he had been given aided his own business immeasurably. Soon he went from just another pirate to a true terror of the ether, shining a silver seven pointed prism in front of his ship wherever he went, his ships struck brave space men immobile with fear, and he began to forget his bargain. That is, until the Steel Star reminded him of his obligations, for one day, his ships simply refused his orders, and the modifications made to the prow of the Singularity detached and drifted lifeless in space.

That was, as luck would have it, on the day when he encountered the HMS Thunderchild.

Initially unnerved by the prospect of facing a whole squadron of spacecraft which had them somewhat outgunned, the brave crew of the Thunderchild suddenly found themselves with a mysterious space pirate completely at their mercy.

The Royal Navy has always taken a dim view of piracy.

Unfortunately for them, the robots recognised that they would have to defend the Cosmodore in order for him to complete his task, and they disabled the Thunderchild’s guns with a few quick blasts. The two ships stood at stalemate for a while until the Cosmodore offered the men and women of the Thunderchild a deal. If they would help him reprogram his robots to be loyal, then he would let them help themselves to a share of his treasure.

Cut a deal with a low-life space corsair? The captain asked with disgust, the very idea was insulting, try the Americans, maybe they would be unscrupulous enough.

If he hadn’t made such a suggestion, things might have gone very differently for the Cosmodore. For it was not so far from here that the USS Valley Forge was itself out on a mission of reconnaissance, shadowing its special allies aboard the Thunderchild, and the Cosmodore came to them next.

The crew of the Valley Forge have a different character to those on board the Thunderchild, due partly to a difference of tradition and partly to the effect of the Thunderchild’s colour reactor on her crew. For all the various reasons that these things entail, the Valley Forge decided to take the Cosmodore up on his offer. Thus they embarked on a grand adventure across space in search of the means to break the Steel Star’s control over the Cosmodore’s robot flotilla, wherein they encountered a group of ancient Beetlegeuseian technologists. These not only gave the Cosmodore full control over his robots, but also pointed him toward the true location of the beacon. The Britons’ rigid adherence to discipline and tradition had kept their record clean, but the Americans came away from their adventure with a valuable contact and a hold full of alien technology from the Cosmodore’s own vaults.

It was three years later when the Cosmodore finally found the Beacon of Beetlegeuse which he had been commissioned to hunt down by the Steel Star. But with full control of his robotic minions, and with a growing sense of danger brought on by the information given to him by the ancient Beetlegeuseian sages he had picked up, he decided to go and find the plates himself. After a long and arduous adventure, he, at last, released the plates after they had been locked away for twenty million years.

He was also, however, the first to use them, peering through the twisted skein of time to see just what the Steel Star would do with the treasure.

He did not like the look of the old pirate’s plans, and so he hatched one of his own.

With the help of the Beetlegeuseian sages, he learned a little of how to wield the power of the plates. Then, he gave the Steel Star not the 23 plates he expected, but 22 plates and one forgery. The Steel Star looked at his treasure with mad mechanical ecstasy, and has he was about to test the plates’ powers by destroying his paid agent, the Cosmodore sprung his own trick, trapping the Steel Star’s mind outside of the flow of time, hopefully forever.

To this day the Cosmodore wears the 23rd Plate of Beetlegeuse 9 around his neck as a medallion, though he knows he cannot let himself nor anyone else use it, lest they accidentally release the Steel Star, who will doubtless come back for revenge.

Since that day, 14 years ago now, the Cosmodore’s infamy has grown as he has roamed the nine vectors of the galaxy, his fleet of robotic corsairs sowing panic and destruction wherever they fall upon a rich world or starship. Several times since then he has encountered the people of Earth, such as when both the Thunderchild and the Singularity were forced to work together to fight their way past the forces of the Son of Skraum, Lord Marshall of the Orion Gulf under Mightiest Mogar, or when the forces of the Earth and Mars united to stop him plundering the treasures of the red planet.

Relationships

The Cosmodore is admired, feared, and, yes, even loved by those of his crew capable of feeling such things. Some of them also hate him or feel intense resentment toward him, or have various other complex emotional connections to their brave commander. Perhaps the most complex of all coming from Im-Ik-Iliker, a rogue Vo-Mirrek princess whose power-form is derived from archetypes of courage, adventurous spirit and curiosity, all of which she can exercise in his crew, with the troubling knowledge that she is working for someone who disrupts cosmic harmony and justice. Then there is his Weapons Officer, Banalamyr of Blackstone, the descendant of humans abducted and sent to other planets by the Orion Greys in centuries past, a mechanic who became a hero when he saved his planet from the armies of the Nineteen Million Sons of Mogar. He is a loyal officer, bound to the Cosmodore by his word of honour and his respect for the pirate, but he does not trust his captain and resents his dishonourable ways and his power over Princess Im-Ik-Iliker. He also has a council of ancient Beetlegeuseian technologists, who seem completely indifferent to his dreams of wealth and power, but try to teach him about the ancient wisdom and responsibilities of the vanishing Beetlegeuseian civilisation. He ignores them most of the time, other than when they might tell him something useful. Sometimes, though, he thinks he can see something in all their gibberish about nobler purposes, which disturbs him a little.

He has met the various long range ships of the Earthly superpowers several times, and tends to think of them in terms of the ships themselves rather than the people inside them, which has some amount of justification. They Valley Forge has been generally open to making deniable deals with him, as has the Russian Arkangel while the British Thunderchild has stayed unwavering in its refusal to make a deal with pirates. He is, however, on particularly good terms with Captain Duke Bainbridge of the the Valley Forge as the two of them both have letters of marque from the Felins of Arcturus and have thus fought and then gone wenching together a number of times. The Cosmodore says the Duke reminds him of a younger version of himself, while the Duke says the Cosmodore reminds him of a younger version of himself, except with a sillier hat and more tentacles.

The Cosmodore obviously has many, many enemies. There is the Son of Skraum, Lord Marshall of the Orion Gulf under Mightiest Mogar, whose personal enterprises have been interrupted by the Cosmodore’s flotilla. He has placed a bounty on the Cosmodore’s head of seventeen trillion Mogons and personal ownership of an asteroid in the Mulotis system. He has also run afoul of several Orion planets by raiding ships around their stars and disrupting commerce, causing the Cosmic Hosts of Orion to come after him on several occasions. As long as he plies his scurrilous trade in Mogar’s space, though, they let him be. His actions have also raised the ire of the Princesses of the Universe, who seek to bring glory and joy to their race by bringing him to justice, as well as wishing to find some way to rehabilitate their wayward sister.

His last and greatest enemy is, of course, the Steel Star, whose body is a great spacecraft locked in an orbit not dictated by gravity, an image that remains utterly unchanged from the moment it was first preserved. Time does not effect it, even light cannot truly reflect on it, only give back the image that it showed in its last instant in the universe. The Steel Star cannot move, cannot think, cannot use the power of the artefacts it possesses, but as long as the ruse holds it cannot be destroyed. The Cosmodore’s Beetlegeuseian sages ward that, should it ever be released, it could do unspeakable evil with the treasures of their ancient civilisation.

Powers and Abilities

The Cosmodore is a member of the race of Rastaxia, making him roughly humanoid, but somewhat taller than a human being, with blueish skin and wide, green, multifaceted eyes, as well as scaly prehensile tentacles around his mouth and head. He also has a pair of large, red wings, which he can use to fly in the thick atmosphere of the Rastaxian homeworld. He, of course, also has a personal antigravity generator, so he can actually fly anywhere.

The Cosmodore wears any number of concealed weapons about his person, he has guns hidden in the folds of his coat, in his collar, and several surprising items in his enormous, pentacorn hat. He is a master of quick draw, and can use his hands, clawed feet, wingtip claws or beard-tentacles to draw weapons in a dangerous situation. He also has several long Rastaxian Boarding Blades, and is a master of a form of Arcturan knife fighting.

He is no mean mechanic, even without the aid of his Beetlegeuseian techno-sages and ingenious Banalamyr he knows his way around many of the spaceships, weapons, robots and all sorts of other systems from across the known galaxy. His knowledge of science is also, though by no means exhaustive, enough to put nearly any human academic to shame. He has used all of this to incorporate systems into his flamboyant clothes which include his aforementioned weapons and antigravity harness, as well as personal forcefield generators, concealed oxygen tanks, computer systems and remote controls, and a form of artificial telepathic field generator. The last of these is concealed in his hat and is able to block most telepathic attacks against him and his immediate companions, as well as potentially being able to augment the power of suggestion and misdirection which he has honed over decades of dealing with criminals.

In addition to his personal attributes he of course commands the Singularity, a solid two kilometres of monstrously beweaponed Cosmic Steel, armed with enough particle cannons, missile racks and laser batteries to hold its own against the ships of Orion or Mogar on any given day. He also commands the robotic squadron of the Steel Star, eleven huge, powerful starships shaped like great, tentacle pseudocephalopods, which answer now to no one but him.

EDIT: Added another member of the Cosmodore's motley crew and a little bit about his telepathic pirate hat.
Last edited by speaker-to-trolls on Wed Jan 26, 2011 5:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Shroom Man 777
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Re: The Cosmodore

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

This is pretty darn awesome. You win, speaker. You maverick renegade you. :D

Seriously, I like this. A roguish ambiguous Cthulthoid space pirate with a whole lot of guns and a shortage of scruples, plying the space lanes for a pillagin' and fine space rum. Yo-ho-ho!

And, man, the Thunderchild and the Valley Forge. :P

While the Colour Reactors make the Martians all environmentally desolate, it just makes the British more... British!
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Re: The Cosmodore

Post by Siege »

Sweet! I like the way space is filling up, and the Cosmodore is definitely a worthy addition. And man, are the Americans ever dicks...
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Re: The Cosmodore

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I heartily approve of this guy.
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Re: The Cosmodore

Post by Heretic »

I know NOTHING of Comixverse's aliens, but this just took all that I strive towards and plaster it on the road and run it over a thousand times. Instead of focusing on only the eldritch Captain Blackbeard, you went back farther to talk about quantum treasures, robot pirate predecessors, and how we Americans got some of our technology.

I really love how the HMS Thunderchild saw The Cosmodore. It didn't matter if the thing was a Cthulhu with guns, if it had a pirate hat the British would flick it off. The relationship between the Cosmodore and the Captain of the USS Valley Forge is just pure silliness. I love it. I love it so much I might be willing to gather enough willpower to figure out the alien situation that's been going on.
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