March, Part Nine (1988)

Now that we’ve rounded out the original team inspired by the original Pride Flag of eight colours—in Mutants & Masterminds form, because nerd—let’s jump ahead ten years, to the team’s first major loss. Queer rights owes so much to groups like ACT-UP, which I’ve mentioned before, and we need to remember our loses and the people who fought for those of us who came before (and for those of us who came after).

So, it seemed only right that AIDS should touch my fictional group and change them profoundly—including sending one of their own onto a path of vengeance.

I also whipped up one of the repeat villains March faced down, Major Moral (a riff on the so-called Moral Majority, who were neither), and a vigilante who often worked at cross purposes with the group, The Purple Hand, based on the Night of the Purple Hand.

1988, and the Death of Zap

The original group known as March—Pride, Zap, Blood Sister, Lustre, Silvanus, Faerie, Decibelle, and Prophecy—worked both as activists without their masks and superheroes in costume, and spanned a decade before suffering a true loss. Battling prejudiced, stopping hate crimes, and rising to the challenges of being publicly queer in the late seventies and throughout the eighties, they mostly stuck to San Francisco, mostly remained “local” heroes. The secular and self-styled “moral conscience spiritualist” known as Father Light continued to rise in political power and influence—as well as material wealth through his “church”—all while he spoke of their power as something that would better be found in the hands of “good, moral people with good, moral consciences, and good, moral values.” Father Light’s attempt to focus a collective unconscious into empowering himself in a similar manner as to the spontaneous event that had created March would eventually succeed—his followers believing in him so fervently that he would gain powers of his own, and specifically described abilities he’d guided his followers into believing for him—but he didn’t make a direct move at first, instead using the first stirrings of his ability to sheathe himself in a kind of spiritual armor to further encourage people to join his belief system—which further empowered him. March often, though most unfortunately without proof, believed him behind the undermining of progress of queer rights as well as stoking violence against queer people, and Prophecy and Faerie worked hard to find anything they could to pin him down, without success.

While Father Light refused to bring a direct fight to their door, the team had their share of battles with powered villains as well as the more mundane sort. Of particular note was Major Moral (who was in truth neither), a self-proclaimed soldier fighting for the rights of moral Americans. March would clash with him and his Milita-men followers on multiple occasions, powers-against-weapons, but Major Moral himself would always manage to escape, until 1988. During the funeral of Zap, Major Moral and his followers arrived under the guise of mourners, set for lethal violence that very nearly succeeded, but for the last moment vision granted to Prophecy. While many funeral-goers were injured, none lost their life—mostly due to the efforts of Blood Sister, Silvanus, and Faerie, who pooled their efforts into defence and aiding the escape of the vulnerable—but this violent act at the funeral of one of their own was a final straw for Pride, and had it not been for Lustre and Decibelle, it is likely Pride would have beaten Major Moral to death, rather than stopping at disarming, disabling, and severely injuring him. Regardless, the news caught footage of the moment, where Pride had to be pulled off the already unconscious, bloodied, and defeated Major Moral by his teammates, and the media—especially those who’d already been opposed to the “super-queers”—spun him as a dangerous man.

Pride, instead of issuing any sort of apologetic statement or any of the other options available to him to mitigate some of the damage, instead chose to simply agree. His announcement of no longer being willing to allow people to harm his people without repercussion became a hotly contested speech, and his declaration that he would come after any others attempting to hurt queer people with equal or greater violence in the future wasn’t just contentious, it shattered his reputation as a hero among many—most especially those who weren’t themselves on the receiving end of queer hate. But Andy Parker didn’t care if anyone saw him as a hero or not. “You’ve been saying Pride is a sin for years,” he said, in his last televised moment as a member of March. “That we shouldn’t have pride, that I shouldn’t have pride. Fine. I won’t be Pride any more. From now on, I’m Wrath.” He soon lived up to the moniker, assaulting gay bashers without mercy or holding back, and within weeks of the funeral, the rest of March agreed they had no choice but to to publicly denounce his actions, reducing their number to six. Among the more radical liberation groups, however, Wrath found contacts, connections, and could work his reputation, wealth, and standing to learn where his powers were most needed.

Wrath would sometimes clash with his former teammates over the next ten years, and would end up teaming up with others from time-to-time as well, including martial artist known as The Purple Hand and the dapper mystic Green Carnation. He ranged further from San Francisco, heading throughout America to places where crimes against gay people had occurred and doling out vengeance.

Wrath, 1988 (PL 10)
Identity: Andrew “Andy” Parker (Public, and wanted for multiple assault charges)
Cis Male, 38 (appears 28), 1.88m tall, 86 kg, dark blue eyes, dark brown hair
Group Affiliation: Independent, Base of Operations: San Francisco, but active country-wide in the USA

Attributes: Str 8, Sta 8, Agi 1, Dex 1, Fgt 5, Int 0, Awe 1, Pre 5 (14 points)

Powers: Alluring Touch: Affliction 8 (Resisted and Overcome by Will; Entranced, Stunned), Limited Degree, Reaction: Skin-to-skin touch, Selective, Limited: Only affects those who find men attractive. (24 points); Leaping: Leaping 4 (4 points); Perfect Body: Enhanced Advantage (Attractive 2), Enhanced Strength 7, Enhanced Stamina 7, Enhanced Fighting 4, Enhanced Presence 4, Immunity 1 (Aging), Protection 6 (Impervious 10), Regeneration 2 (64 points); Quick Change: Feature 1 (Transform into costume as a free action) (1 point)

Advantages: Attractive 2, Benefit 1 (Wealth), Connected, Contacts, Daze (Deception), Improved Disarm, Fast Grab, Improved Grab, Improved Hold, Improved Trip, Power Attack (10 points)

Skills: Athletics 4 (+12), Close Combat—Unarmed 7 (+12), Deception 4 (+9), Expertise—Politics 5 (+5), Intimidation 6 (+11), Perception 4 (+5), Persuasion 2 (+7), Ranged Combat—Thrown Object 6 (+7), Stealth 4 (+5), Vehicles 4 (+5) (23 points)

Offense:
Initiative +1
Alluring Touch +12 (Affliction 8)
Thrown Object +7 (Ranged, Damage 8)
Unarmed +12 (Close, Damage 8, plus potential Affliction 8)

Defense: Dodge +6, Parry +6, Fortitude +10, Toughness +14, Will +6 (10 points)

Power Point Totals: Attributes 14 + Powers 93 + Advantages 10 + Skills 23 + Defenses 10 = 150.

Complications: Motivation—Vengeance: While Wrath is still motivated by the desire for queer people to be allowed to exist equally, legally, and openly, he is done playing Mr. Nice Gay. He’s not asking, he’s telling, and everyone who hurts queer people have, in his opinion, declared themselves his enemy, and he’ll act accordingly. Prejudice: Wrath is loud, proud, openly queer and sexual, and refuses to be anything else. He pushes boundaries, has a quick temper in response to any hate aimed his way, which leads to escalation—and that’s exactly how he likes it. Hey There, Handsome: Wrath is easily distracted by handsome men, and doesn’t always make good decisions when presented with the opportunity to spend time with someone he finds attractive, including other antiheroes, vigilantes, and even outright villains—though never those who target queer people.

Major Moral

Born in 1952, James Johnson grew up to idolize the notion of military men as the epitome of masculinity and bravery, and wanted nothing more than to be like them, though his parents, deeply committed anti-war activists, refused to allow him to join any of the youth organizations designed to lead him down that path—not even the Boy Scouts. Rebelling against them the only way he felt he could, James practiced, exercised, and did everything he could to mimic the training of a real soldier, and was obsessed with being stronger, faster, and better than the other boys. By the time he was in high school, he was an exceptional athlete, and though his parents refused to allow guns in the house, James secreted away into the nearby woods to practice knife-throwing, honing his abilities to a nearly perfect level of skill, and with every satisfying “thunk” of the knife, moving closer to his breaking point.

That would come with the imprisonment of his parents at an anti-war protest in the early 60s, during which he moved to San Francisco to live with his grandfather, who shared many views with the grandson he’d not previously met, and though a cold and rigid man, helped James put words to his feelings about the world around him: it was immoral, it had lost its way, and it needed to be set back to the ways of righteousness. While James waited to be old enough to enlist, he listened and took to heart his grandfather’s rantings about the people who would destroy the nation—basically anyone not straight, white, and Christian—and in 1970, on his way to enlist in the army, James got into a fight with anti-war protesters, threw one of the knives he always carried, and his path was sealed. He ran away from the scene of his crime, but fashioned a costume based on a variety of military outfits, and like people his grandfather listened to on the television and radio, he took on the mantle of Major Moral in honor of the Moral Majority—and his crusade against those who would weaken his country began in earnest, with Major Moral always claiming to act as the soldier he was (even though he wasn’t).

Major Moral clashed multiple times with March after their inception in 1978, and while he rarely maintained the upper hand, he also managed to elude capture every time, and he gained fame and notoriety for “standing up to the perverts” and “championing decency.” His influence grew, and he soon gathered what he would call “the Militia-Men,” after the second amendment (albeit with little understanding of the definition of “well-regulated”) and while he himself always stuck to his knives, his followers were far more willing to use bullets. During the AIDS crisis, Major Moral and the Militia-Men pushed back against protestors fighting to earn awareness or action, and he and Zap went toe-to-toe multiple times, often relying on his own anger and rage to withstand Zap’s empathic abilities. But it was Zap’s death that would be Major Moral’s undoing. He led his Militia-Men to disrupt Zap’s funeral in 1988, and when some of his followers began shooting, most of March defended the innocent mourners, while Pride came for Major Moral with everything he had, and was only stopped from actually killing James by the intervention of Decibelle and Lustre. Severely injured, this time Major Moral did not escape, and was unmasked.

Although some of his hardest and most loyal supporters continued to stand by him, the revelation of who Major Moral was—and specifically his complete lack of a military career—cost him nearly all his support, and the severe injuries he sustained at the hands of Pride at Zap’s funeral left him unable to recover his health enough to continue his “mission” in any meaningful way. While he tried to pivot to a radio personality instead, Major Moral’s lies about his military service, not to mention the pending and mounting charges from his assaults during his time in costume, dogged him endlessly after 1988, and in 1991 he vanished the public eye completely, without a trace—a fate some put down as lethal payback from Wrath, The Purple Hand, or any number of other vengeful people Major Moral crossed in his day.

Major Moral, 1988 (PL 10)
Identity: James Johnson (Secret until 1988, public thereafter, vanished in 1991)
Cis Male, Age 36, 1.8m, 84kg, Brown Eyes, Blond Hair
Group Affiliation: Leader of the “Militia-Men,” Base of Operations: California

Attributes: Str 3, Sta 3, Agi 6, Dex 6, Fgt 7, Int 0, Awe 2, Pre 1 (56 points)

Powers: Perfect Aim: Perception Ranged Damage 5, Easily Removeable, Strength Based (Thrown Blades) (9 points)

Advantages: Accurate Attack, Defensive Attack, Defensive Roll 3, Equipment 6 (Usually blades and other military gear and/or vehicle(s) for his followers), Improved Aim, Improved Critical (Thrown Blades), Improved Initiative, Inspire, Leadership, Skill Mastery (Persuasion), Takedown, Ultimate Effort (Aim) (13 points)

Skills: Acrobatics 10 (+16), Athletics 8 (+11), Close Combat (Blades) 8 (+15), Deception 10 (+11), Expertise—Paramilitary Organizations 6 (+6), Expertise—Streetwise 6 (+6), Insight 4 (+6), Persuasion 10 (+11), Ranged Combat (Thrown Blades) 6 (+12), Stealth 6 (+12), Vehicles 6 (+12) (40 points)

Offense:
Initiative +10
Unarmed +7 (Close, Damage 3)
Blade, Melee +15 (Close, Damage 4)
Thrown Blade +12 (Ranged, Damage 8)

Defense: Dodge 13, Parry 13, Fortitude 8, Toughness 3/6*, Will 10 (26 points)
*with Defensive Roll

Power Point Totals: Attributes 56 + Powers 9 + Advantages 19 + Skills 40 + Defenses 26 = 120

Complications: Motivation—Nationalism: Major Moral espouses he is exactly that: a soldier for the Moral Majority, but is in truth, neither. His pick-and-choose brand of nationalism—for the straight, white, military-supporting, religious (but only Christian), “family-values” and “constitution-loving” populace gives him no short supply of recruits for his “Militia Men” (use minions to represent those), but scratch the surface of his idealism and it mostly boils down to “people like me are better and deserve more.” Fame: Major Moral has a following among those who fear the other, and he doesn’t just love it, he craves the attention and furore he can bring just by showing up somewhere and spreading his brand of “patriotism.” Secret: Though he often claims to be both a “veteran” and “soldier” of the “true” America, Major Moral has never served in any division of the United States military, and though he is highly-skilled and incredibly lethal, he’s not at all what he claims to be, and lives in fear of his true identity being revealed for precisely that reason.

The Purple Hand

On Hallowe’en night in 1969, when protestors outside the offices of the San Francisco Examiner had a barrel of printer’s ink dumped on them, those who didn’t fall victim to the police brutality thereafter ran through the streets of the city, using their hands to ink messages and handprints in the name of visibility and liberation. For twenty-two year-old Giovanni Russo, the protest was personal; his name had been published by the paper, and it had cost him his job, his family, and his future. And when three police officers caught up to him placing another handprint on a wall, it also nearly cost him his life. But as their batons cracked Russo’s bones, a trio of voices pierced the pain and fear and spoke to Russo, asking him if he was willing to accept the power they offered in order to fight back not just for himself, but for others like him. Russo accepted as he blacked out—waking what must have been hours later in the alley, now seemingly unharmed, but forever changed.

Visions of the three officers seemed to guide Russo to find those who would have killed him—or, perhaps they had killed him and the voices had brought him back, he wasn’t truly sure—and upon confronting the first, the true depth of his new abilities became clear as his strength and skill in a fight allowed him to best the man easily. Russo offered the man the option to confess what he and his other two officers had done, but the man refused, and Russo left him broken and barely breathing—and a purple handprint on the man’s apartment door.

None of the three officers would confess, and once Russo had dealt that vengeance, he learned of others who’d been harmed in the same protest, and visited a friend in hospital to check in on her. When he touched her, he found he could see clearly those who’d harmed her, and his next targets were chosen. The purple handprints became a calling card, and the vengeance he meted out was always preventable with the promise of confession, but rarely did people choose it. It left Russo more and more jaded with every night. Nine years later, the visions of March Violet led them to cross paths on multiple occasions, with her attempting to shift Russo from his path of violent vengeance and vigilantism to something closer to justice, and while Russo would have liked to believe it possible, given how few of his targets chose to admit to their crimes and confess, he remained unmoved and often had to work against March, rather than with them. March Turquoise would later note three dark spirits of Vengeance—perhaps even the Erinyes themselves—seemed to walk alongside The Purple Hand, but Russo already knew that. In 1988, when Pride officially left March after the events of the funeral and changed his name to Wrath, The Purple Hand sought him out and worked with him to track down all the so-called “Militia-Men” who’d fled the scene, as well as the deposed Major Moral himself. Parker and Russo had a brief but intense affair in the early 1990s, but ultimately went their separate ways.

The Purple Hand, 1988 (PL 10)
Identity: Giovanni Russo (Secret, Mystically protected)
Cis Male, 51 (appears 22), 1.79m, 80kg, Dark brown Eyes, Dark brown Hair
Group Affiliation: Independent, occasionally paired with Wrath, Base of Operations: San Francisco, and the West Coast

Attributes: Str 3, Sta 3, Agi 5, Dex 5, Fgt 12, Int 1, Awe 6, Pre 1 (72 points)

Powers: Endless: Immunity 2 (Aging, Sleep), Immortality 5, Regeneration 5 (17 points); Eyes of the Erinyes: Senses 6 (Postcognition 4, Limited to identifying inflictors of violence after touching those they harmed, Tracking 2) (4 points); Veil of Vengeance: Feature 1 (People cannot identify Russo, only vaguely describe him, unless he specifically tells them he is The Purple Hand) (1 point)

Advantages: Agile Feint, All-out Attack, Contacts, Defensive Attack, Defensive Roll 4, Favored Environment (Shadows and Darkness), Hide in Plain Sight, Improved Critical (Unarmed), Improved Initiative, Improved Smash, Languages 1 (English, Italian), Move-by Action, Power Attack, Precise Attack (Close, Concealment), Skill Mastery (Athletics), Startle, Takedown, Tracking, Weapon Break, Well-informed (23 points)

Skills: Acrobatics 6 (+11), Athletics 4 (+7), Close Combat (Unarmed) 2 (+14), Deception 4 (+5), Perception 4 (+10), Sleight of Hand 6 (+11), Stealth 6 (+11)

Offense:
Initiative +9
Unarmed +14 (Close, Damage 3)

Defense: Dodge 11, Parry 12, Fortitude 9, Toughness 3/7*, Will 11 (17 points)

Power Point Totals: Attributes 72 + Powers 22 + Advantages 23 + Skills 16 + Defenses 17 = 150.

Complications: Motivation—Vengeance: Giovanni Russo has a chorus of vengeful mystical beings entwined with his soul as part of an agreement he made to allow them to do their work on the mortal plane. Once he has had a vision of someone who has gotten away with violence, he finds it nearly impossible to resist tracking them down and offering the chance to come clean or face his wrath. Eternity is Lonely: Although Russo has only been The Purple hand for about thirty years, his body hasn’t aged since he accepted the Erinyes’s offer, except as he’s honed himself into a better and better fighter. While he occasionally does take a lover, his sense of being “not quite human” usually gets the better of him and ultimately self-sabotages the relationship. Some of his contacts and network sometimes reach out to him to attempt to create more of a friendship, as do some of the people he’s touched for visions, but Russo continues to hold himself apart. Empowered by the Semi-Divine: Magical or divine effects that target spirits, magic, or divinely-empowered beings affect Russo, and can disrupt his visions or wound him in ways his healing and immortality have trouble coping with.