HARBINGER

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

In the 150th Century humankind had spread out to the stars leaving the Earth to fade into legend, but not everyone had left the world behind. On the Earth, forces of science and magic had long since converged and powers long banished had once again established a foothold, leading to a war between the forces of Darkness and Light, and Darkness was on the verge of total victory. In this time of need, the ancient wizard, Merlin, returned to set in motion the fulfillment of a long-forgotten prophecy. The once-and-future king, Arthur, was reborn into the world and took up the struggle to unite the forces of Light against the Darkness. A kingdom of Light was created and at its center was the fortress of New Camelot.

The forces of Darkness had sunk their talons into Mother Earth and poisoned the planet's very soul. To cleanse the planet, the forces of Light needed the legendary Grail. Only one whose soul was pure could find the Grail, so Merlin called out to the Spirit Princess Aurora for aid. She told him to summon her again in one year and at that time she presented Merlin with a human child, a boy with a pure soul who could find the Grail. To find this child, Aurora had gone back through time to the dawn of the 21st Century and brought forward the reborn Damien Omen, who had been reduced to infancy when he was reunited with his pure soul.

Following Aurora's instructions, Merlin used his own magic to summon Damien's foster parents, the heroes Paladin and ArcAngel through time to raise the boy and train him as a knight of the new Round Table. When Damien reached the age of 13 it signified the end of the first part of his training. Merlin returned Paladin and ArcAngel to the exact moment in time he had originally taken them, restoring them to the state they had been in at that time, which included erasing their memories of the over 12 years they had lived in the future. For the next phase of his training, Damien was sent to the Dragon Empress Ki, an immortal ally of the Light who taught him how to focus the power of Light through his pure soul. At age eighteen, Damien was given the title Light-Bringer and the quest for the Grail began. The Avatar, the woman who then wielded the purified Spear of Destiny; and the millennia-old Legionnaire, sometimes called Wildfire, joined Damien on his quest. Together they fought against the forces of Darkness and found the Grail. Through its power the hold the Darkness had on the Earth was broken and the forces of Light were finally able to take the offensive in the war.

While under the influence of the Grail, Damien had a vision of his previous life. The power of the Grail had given him all his memories from his life as Damien Omen and also activated his own innate powers. He returned to the tutelage of Ki to make of sense of these new memories he now possessed and to learn to control his new powers. Under Ki's training, Damien mastered his new abilities and was given a copy of his foster father's weapon, a device that could form any melee weapon from light energy. The weapon as also designed to help Damien focus his own Light powers that were a result of his pure soul being touched by the Grail. Armed with his new knowledge and power Damien adopted his true-name, Damien Christopher Lightbringer, as a reflection of all he was and had been, and he returned to New Camelot to rejoin the battle against Darkness.

The war raged on for several more years, but with their foothold on the Earth destroyed by the Grail, the forces of Darkness had little hope of victory. Then, without warning, something changed and Darkness was suddenly on the verge of victory. As the armies of Light lay on the brink of defeat Damien was visited by the Princess Aurora. She told Damien that the tide had changed because of something that happened in the past. Aurora told Damien that in the distant past the forces of Darkness had earned a crucial victory which granted them renewed strength in the future. Aurora then showed Damien a vision of the early 21st century where a man who could be Damien's own twin led the forces of Darkness in a war against the Light. With no one to oppose this Prophet of Darkness, the Light would not stand a chance.

Damien vowed to do whatever he could to prevent Darkness' victory, to act as a Harbinger to warn the forces of Light, and he asked that Aurora send him back in time. However, with her power weakened by the losses suffered by the side of Light, Aurora could not do what Damien asked. The Light-Bringer went out on a quest to find some other way to get back to his original time period. After a year of searching, Damien met a strange yet oddly familiar, traveler. The stranger said he had been waiting a very long time for Damien and that he was there to help Damien because he had to correct a mistake he had made many, many years earlier. Without a word the stranger took hold of Damien and the two hurtled back through the timestream to a point at the dawn of the 21st century only a few months after Aurora had found him as a child. The two arrived in Empire City, Damien's home in his former life, and the stranger turned to him and said, "You need your friends, Damien. And your friends need you."

It was then that Damien recognized the stranger as his former teammate in the Guardians, Flashback, but one many years older than he would have been at this point in the timeline. Damien turned to confront the stranger, but by then he had vanished. Taking Flashback's parting words to heart, Damien set out to recruit others to help fight on the side of Light in the coming war. In Empire City, Damien (calling himself the Harbinger) located three of his teammates from his past life: Tazer, Guardienne, and Flashback (the present incarnation, not the future one who had helped Damien travel trough time). This group sought out another former Guardian, the Human Bomb, and these five were then joined by another young hero, Torch. Together this group of heroes have reformed the Guardians to help stop the forces of Darkness.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Harbinger was raised in New Camelot to be a knight to champion to cause of Light. He was trained by Paladin and ArcAngel who also imbued in him their codes of honor. Thanks to his training Damien is an accomplished marksman, swordsman, and military tactician. During his initial time with the Dragon Empress Ki, Damien learned an ancient martial art, similar to Aikido but with a more spiritual aspect. One of the skills Damien mastered in this martial art was the ability to blend in to almost any situation, making himself essentially invisible to the casual observer.

After his exposure to the Grail, Damien gained superhuman powers, one group related to his then-dormant metagene and another related to his soul. When Damien's metagene activated he gained the ability to control the molecular density of his body. By decreasing his density Damien could render himself intangible, to the extent that he could walk on air, and can even disperse his body over a limited area, creating a fog-like effect. By increasing his density Damien could increase his mass and resistance to injury and could even choose to contract his molecular structure, shrinking himself in height (but retaining his increased mass).

The other powers manifested themselves after his exposure to the Grail because Damien's soul had been separated from him in his previous life it had retained its purity. After he had been rejoined with it and returned to infancy, the soul retained much of its purity as Damien aged again, perhaps due to an increased resiliency imparted to it during its long separation from Damien's body. When the Grail energies interacted with Damien's soul they amplified his inner Light. Thanks to training by Ki, Damien learned to focus this inner Light to produce outward manifestations. When he manifests the energy Damien can channel it into several effects, from a brilliant light to a focused beam of laser-like energy, or he can create a shield to deflect incoming attacks. Damien has also used the Light to manifest wings that allow him to fly. Using his inner Light to manifest these effects is taxing on Damien, though, and prolonged or intense use of these powers can cause serious side effects.

Harbinger possesses two artifacts he brought with him from the future. One is an advanced model of the "Omni-weapon" also used by his foster father, Paladin. Like Paladin's weapon, Harbinger's can use a form of solid light-like energy to create any melee weapon the user can conceive of. In addition to this, Harbinger can also use the weapon to help him focus his Light powers, increasing their potency but at increased risk to himself. Harbinger also possesses a portable Artificial Intelligence name Hope. All of the knights of New Camelot carry these computers, often called squires. Hope acts as a repository of knowledge and also possesses several scientific skills to compliment a knight's more physical ones. Hope and the other "squires" like her are likely the ancestors of the more advanced 853rd century computers like Progeny, the companion that belonged a time-traveling member of Justice Legion K, the Paladin Corps, and is now in the possession of ArcAngel.

Warp Zone | DC Heroes | Guardians | Harbinger