FOES of the UNKNOWNS

HISTORY

The Unknowns were a team of outcasts and misfits who faced strange and esoteric threats in the early years of the Modern Heroic Age in Superior City. Here are some of the team's more notable adversaries.

ELUSIVE BUTTERFLY

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

The being called the Elusive Butterfly appeared as an exotically beautiful woman with light purple skin, dark wavy hair, deep black eyes and a pair of large orange butterfly wings. Elusive Butterfly comes from another dimension, one that resembles some of the traditional descriptions of the land of Faerie. Elusive Butterfly was a scout, sent to this dimension to help find sustenance for her people. They fed on emotions, so Butterfly would seek out areas where she could sense strong emotions and attempt to lure the people generating those emotions back to her dimension.

Elusive Butterfly and her people preferred positive emotions, and in her first known appearance she took several college students who had been attending an outdoor rave event. The authorities were at a loss, but somehow the mysterious leader of the Unknowns, V, had information on what had happened and sent the team after Elusive Butterfly. They were able to follow Butterfly back to her dimension and retrieve the missing students safely. Elusive Butterfly would return periodically to find more victims, and each time V was usually alerted to it and would dispatch the Unknowns to deal with her.

It is unknown why Elusive Butterfly and her people chose Superior City as their destination when crossing to this dimension, but theories point to the possibility of the area being an existing weak point between the two worlds where transit was easier to achieve. Elusive Butterfly was last seen at the onset of the Legends crisis, where she initially tried to help the Unknowns against the rising hostilities but was eventually driven back to her home dimension by the intensity of the negative emotions being instilled in the public during the crisis.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Elusive Butterfly was an extradimensional being with the ability to fly with her giant butterfly wings. She could also change her size, shrinking from normal human height down to only a few inches tall. Her people had the ability to sense and feed on the emotions of others, and as a scout Elusive Butterfly was adept at locating and tracking a source of emotion. Her people also had the ability to generate pheromones that could entice people and induce a state of euphoria in them. Elusive Butterfly would use these to lure her victims back to her own dimension, where her people would keep them in a state of euphoria to maximize the emotions on which they fed. The Unknowns were able to deal with her powers due to two of their number, the gaseous Haze and robotic O.M.N.I. being immune. Haze eventually discovered a chemical that could block the effects of Butterfly's pheromones and he could use this to protect the rest of his team.

JUNK

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Garbage was Hiram Muncy's life, literally as it would turn out. Hiram ran a junkyard in Superior City, and was not terribly concerned with things like regulations. As such his junkyard became the preferred dumping site for companies and individuals who didn't want anyone to look too closely at what was being thrown out. When inspectors finally go around to checking in on Hiram's lot he met them with a shotgun and pretty overt threats. When the inspectors came back with a warrant and the police things got really interesting.

The police forced their way in and gave chase when Hiram fled into the maze of garbage. When the junk man let off a couple of blasts from his shotgun towards his pursuers the police returned fire and there was a large explosion. The blast killed Hiram and injured two policemen, and investigators eventually attributed the explosion to unsafe, unstable materials at the site that were set off by the exchange of gunfire. The site was sealed as hazardous and designated for cleanup, and that was that, or so everyone thought.

In reality, the explosion was the result of a stray bullet striking a piece of advanced experimental equipment that had been illegally dumped at Hiram's junkyard. In the blast the device gave off a wave of strange energies that bombarded Hiram, killing the junk man's body but imprinting a copy of his mind on the garbage that had consumed his life. A week after the incident Hiram's consciousness awoke and he slowly came to realize what had happened. What was left of Hiram's mind snapped and in an effort of sheer willpower and rage he formed a new body for himself out of the junk. This animated garbage pile set out to take revenge on anyone who Hiram thought had done him wrong, starting with the police and local public servants who had tried to tell him how to run his business.

The Unknowns were the first heroes on the scene when the creature now called Junk was spotted. In the battle Junk's form was shattered and the pieces scattered. Over the years if enough of the pieces were in close enough proximity then Junk could reform, and when this happened it was usually the Unknowns who would stop the ensuing rampage. Today the majority of the components containing Hiram's consciousness are being held in separate secure and shielded containers at S.T.A.R. Labs and it remains to be seen if Junk will ever reform its body again to threaten the city.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Junk's body was a living pile of garbage. Any time a critical mass of the pieces of trash containing part of Hiram's consciousness were in proximity to each other he could will them to merge together into a coherent form. This usually approximated a human body, with the size varying based on how many pieces were assembled together. Junk's form was malleable, which is how it would approximate walking or picking things up. Junk could also absorb additional material into its animated body, enlarging it further. This material did not have to be one of the pieces imprinted with Hiram's mind in the original accident, and there was some indication that if a new piece was kept as part of the gestalt body long enough it too would acquire an imprint and could be part of the Junk core form in the future.

The only way to stop Junk was to destroy or disperse enough of its body that were not enough core pieces with Hiram's mind near to each other to reach the critical mass needed to maintain a coherent form.

MIRE

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

The creature called Mire was the creation of eccentric scientist Dr. Myron Jackson. Jackson was experimenting with plant life in the swamps near Superior City when he caused the wetland to coalesce into a single organism. Jackson also discovered that the equipment that caused this to happen also let him control the swamp creature, so he immediately decided to use it for his own benefit. The first thing Jackson did was send the creature to attack Centennial University as revenge for the Biology department kicking him out for his dangerous experiments. The Unknowns were able to stop the creature's rampage and drive it into the sewers, and V tracked down Dr. Jackson who was arrested.

Jackson would periodically free himself from jail, often with the aid of the creature which the media had started to call Mire, and send it on another rampage to get revenge on someone or steal something for the scientist. On one occasion Jackson managed to transfer his own mind into the creature, leaving his body comatose but him in control of Mire. Once again the Unknowns defeated him and put Jackson's mind back into his proper body and send him back to prison. Mire was apparently destroyed for good in its last confrontation with the Unknowns and Jackson remains in prison.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Mire was a colony organism made up of plants, peat, earth and water from the swamp where Jackson performed his original experiments. It was amorphous, but typically had a vaguely humanoid form and was roughly the size of a small elephant, though its size would often vary from appearance to appearance. It was superhumanly strong, and being made up of viscous material meant it was extremely resistant to damage from most attacks. Electricity seemed to cause it the most harm, and it could be slowed or even frozen solid by extreme cold. The creature did not appear to be intelligent and was typically sedentary unless under the direction of Dr. Jackson.

MIST DEMON

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

The Mist Demon was an otherworldly being that would manifest as a cloud of fog that could kill anyone trapped in it. The Mist Demon first appeared in the wilderness near Superior City and caused the disappearance of some hikers before the mysterious man called V assembled the Unknowns for the first time to confront it. The robotic O.M.N.I. was key to defeating the Mist Demon thanks to the unique alloy of its body being able to interact with the creature (exposure to the Demon's extradimensional energies are what granted O.M.N.I. its phasing powers). The Unknowns were able to drive the creature away, but it would periodically return to Earth whenever the Mist Demon's hunting pattern brought it near the planet again.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The Mist Demon was an alien entity that existed partially in another dimension, and as a result was not fully solid when it manifested on Earth. Due to this the Mist Demon would appear as a bank of thick fog, but one that could move on its own and at a relatively fast pace. The Demon was a predator and would hunt by enveloping its prey and draining their life force. The Mist Demon preferred hunting humans, and its victims would be left as desiccated corpses with ashen skin due to the red blood cells being disrupted by the Demon's feeding process. Most humans would be killed within seconds of being enveloped, but superhumans with enhanced physiologies, like Knockout of the Unknowns, could withstand the attack for longer and survive prolonged exposure.

As an effectively non-corporeal being the Mist Demon was resistant to most forms of attack, though O.M.N.I.'s robot body could affect it and Haze could adjust his own form to a density where he could also interact with the creature. Though the creature had no discernible eyes the Mist Demon appeared to have a sense of sight that relied on visible wavelengths, as it would become blinded and disoriented when Midnight used his darkness powers on it.

SAVANTE

PERSONAL DATA

HISTORY

Excelsior Cribbens was a man gifted with a superhuman intellect. Craving intellectual challenges he became an expert at puzzle solving and a chess master. He would travel across the globe, holding exhibitions and issuing challenges in various cities and the press began to refer to him as the Great Savante. Law enforcement agencies would occasionally hire Cribbens to assist with particularly difficult cases, but even with these he would only take the most challenging ones. On one of these occasions the Savante was in Superior City where he crossed paths with V, the mysterious leader of the Unknowns.

Savante became obsessed with V and was determined to find out who and what the mystery man really was. He began using his intelligence to devise crimes and mysteries designed expressly to lure the Unknowns into action just so he could make more observations of V. Savante did not care if anyone was hurt or killed by one of his schemes, his only concern was learning the truth about V. Eventually the Unknowns traced the threats back to Savante, whose obsession had led him to take bolder and bolder actions until they could not help but be linked back to him. Savante was imprisoned but would still use his intellect to manipulate others to continue his efforts to learn the V's secrets.

When V was apparently killed, Savante was still determined to learn the truth but no longer saw a need to prioritize it so planned to wait out the rest of his sentence. When the villain Carnage began recruiting inmates in Mercy Island Prison to be part of his plot to take revenge on the city he forced Savante to help. Savante's went along because his intelligence showed him that any other choice would result in his death. He was key to the planning of Carnage's plot, but surrendered as soon as it became clear that the city's heroes were going to be victorious in their efforts to stop the villain. He is back in prison serving the remainder of his time.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Savante possesses superhuman intelligence and is one of the smartest beings on Earth. He has mastered computers, math, engineering and science and could revolutionize any of those fields if he desired to. His ability to analyze and process information is powerful enough that he can effectively predict the future. Under the influence of Carnage's telepathic ally Psychotrope, Savante actually managed to train his own mind up to the point where he developed telepathic powers as well.

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