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Some of the allies and enemies in the lives of The Warriors.
Also
known as Mr Ten Per Cent (because of his human brain housed in a robot
body), Howard Quartz was the owner of Ro-Busters and all its subsiduaries.
One of his many (and more successful) business enterprises was the idea of buying
old, clapped out robots and using them to combat disasters across the globe.
After all, it didn't matter if robots lived or died, they weren't that
important.
During a particularly dry spell for Ro-Busters (which may have had something to do with the fact that Quartz had tried to demolish the port of Northpool), Quartz was losing money fast. In a bid to cut his losses, he decided to close down Ro-Busters (Disasters), but had devised a devious plan to actually turn a profit from it. He would take all his worst robots and put them on the ship The Preying Mantis, then blow it up to claim on the insurance. And no prizes for guessing who the two names at the top of the list would be...
After the closure of Ro-Busters (Disasters), Quartz had several other businesses to fall back on, including Ro-Busters Starships Ltd., Ro-Busters Lay-Mek Ltd., Ro-Busters Solar Exploration Ltd., Ro-Busters Terra-Meks Ltd., Ro-Busters Construction Ltd., Ro-Busters Demolition Ltd., Ro-Buster Publishing Corporation, Ro-Busters Shipping Ltd., Quartz Solar System Holidays Ltd., Quartz Pleasure Centres Ltd., Howard Myster Tours Ltd., Howard The Chemists, Howard Model Agency, Howard Disco A-Go-Go...
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Blonde,
bright and bubbly, Miss Marilyn was Howard
Quartz's secretary, and one of the very few humans who ever showed any compassion
toward robots. Marilyn took it upon herself to warn Ro-Jaws
to the impending disaster when he and a bunch of other unsuspecting robots were
packed aboard The Preying Mantis so they could be blown up by Quartz.
With the closure of Ro-Busters (Disasters), little else is known of Marilyn, though its more than probable she continued to work for Quartz.
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In the great English port of Northpool could be found the best friend a sailor could ever hope to have: Charlie. A huge ship's pilot engineered by a man named Stevenson, Charlie became known across the world to every seaman in every port. During heavy storms, he'd wade out into the water to meet incoming ships and guide them into dock safely. He knew every reef and underwater wreck, and his powerful legs stood firm against even the strongest current.
For
fifteen years, he served the port, never tiring, never complaining, and became
dearly loved by the people of the city, and when the city council decided to
demolish a part of the city to make way for a new aero-space port, it was Charlie
the city turned to for help. But unable to break his programming, Charlie could
only watch helplessly as the Terra-Meks (huge robots sent in by Ro-Busters
(Demolitions) ltd.), tore the city apart. As he watched the debris from
peoples homes float downstream, something snapped inside Charlie, and he headed
off to stop the Terra-Meks single handedly.
Howard Quartz, the semi-human boss of Ro-Busters, watched this scene unfold, distressed at losing some of his robots. Along with a local councilman, Ron Murdoch, he concocted a plan to lay the blame for the destruction of Northpool at Charlies feet, and then have him destroyed. They told the Navy that Charlie was destroying Northpool after having found out he was to be made redundant, so they issued a destroyer to come out an ambush the giant, by claiming to be in distress. Unfortunately, Charlie was a simple minded robot, and upon seeing a ship in trouble, he immediately waded out to meet it. The destroyer fired several salvos, almost destroying him. Although Charlie could easily have destroyed the ship, he surmised that if even ships didn't like him anymore, he'd rather just die, and so let himself sink below the waves.
One stormy night, several weeks later, something stirred in the sea just beyond Northpool. Charlie emerged from the water and tried to make his way back to shore. The currents were too strong, but the entire city came out to the docks to offer words of encouragement. They sang for their friend, and it gave him the strength to make it back to shore, where he and the people of Northpool could face their future, together.
Charlie was given the key to the city, but, unfortunately, no more is known about him.
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Growing up on Termight, Purity Brown bore witness to the many atrocities perpetrated against aliens by the unspeakably evil Torquemada, and, determined to fight back on their behalf, she did everything she could to thwart the Grand Master's genocidal plans. By the time she was seventeen, Purity had earned such a reputation as a resistance fighter that she attracted the attention of both Torquemada (who sentenced her to a chain-gang) and Nemesis (who decided to recruit her). Joining the alien resistance organisation Credo, she was blindly loyal to Nemesis and fought proudly at his side for several years. However, Purity had reason to doubt the mysterious alien's true intentions and motivations.
Unknown to her, Nemesis had used Purity in his battle with Torquemada. Casting a spell on the Grand Master to make him fall in love with her, Purity was then made to find out information vital to the resistance. After escaping with Nemesis to the headquarters of the resistance movement Credo, Purity finally discovered the truth about The Warlock and his schemes, facts that was quickly blocked from her memory. Nemesis' spell blocking her memories temporarily slipped after they followed Torquemada through the Time Wastes, and she finally re-discovered the truth behind The Warlock's game, only to have the facts blocked once more. This time, however, the seeds of doubt had taken root.
Purity became the key to a major victory for Torquemada. After arriving with Nemesis in an insane version of the 20th Century, she was captured by the Reality Police, an organisation set up by the Grand Master to cull the aliens who were leaking into the world through the weakend walls of reality. Torquemada showed her what the horror and pain Thoth had caused to the humans of this world by fooling with the Time Wastes, thus making the already suspicious Purity re-evaluate her take on The Warlock.
After helping Torquemada set a trap for Nemesis, Purity double-crossed her new 'ally' and let the two arch-enemies fight it out. The Grand Master escaped once more, leaving Purity to hitch a lift back to Termight with Nemesis, where she promptly left him, and took over the leadership of the resistance movement, Credo.
After staging a remarkable coup, she became president of Terra, and introduced a more alien friendly regime to the people, forcing Torquemada to seek a much more final solution...
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Following Torquemada's death in The Gothic Empire, many changes befell the Empire of Termight. Torquemada's rightful heir, Barbarossa, was pushed aside, and replaced by a new Grand Master, Krassan. A period of detente was introduced, and a new alien friendly regime ushered in, all under the watchful eye of Grand Dragon Mazarin. Using Krassan as a nothing more than a puppet, Mazarin controlled the destiny of Termight for several years, until Nemesis' son, Thoth, decided to wreak his vengeance, and brough Torquemada back from the dead. Capturing the former Grand Master, Mazarin soon realised his return was a threat to the new alien-friendly Termight, and declared him an imposter, to be burnt at the stake.
With
Torquemada out of the way, Mazarin used the appearance of Nemesis to remove
another obstacle from his path. When The Warlock came to Termight to find Thoth,
he hijacked a school bus, and drove it straight at the bars of a laser cage,
expecting it to be dropped so they could escape. Learning that Torquemada's
children were aboard, Mazarin ordered the voltage of the cage increased, killing
everyone on board.
Thoth's meddling in the Time Wastes began to cause unrest in the Empire. As more and more time quakes wracked Termight, Mazarin realised the people needed something to unite them in hatred, and had the Arch Bigot of Necropolis, Broeder Kruger instigate the infamous Freck Heresy - a new hatred aimed at freckled people. With everything well in hand, Mazarin and a band of Terminators, led by Nostradamus, followed Torquemada into the Time Wastes to finish him off once and for all. However, things didn't go according to plan, and the Grand Master succeeded in turning the Terminators against their leader.
Torquemada proceeded to take care of Mazarin in his own inimitable style...
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The son of Nemesis he may be, but Thoth weilded far greater powers than his father. After he and his mother, Chira, were betrayed by Magna (a female warlock in love with Nemesis), Chira transferred her superior powers to the homunculus, and left him in safety while she fought the Terminators for their lives. Using these new powers, Thoth tricked his would-be assassin into adopting him, and raising him as his own on Termight.
Ten years later, Thoth was old enough to start his revenge on the people responsible for the death of his mother: Torquemada and his father, Nemesis. First, summoning the black tyrannosaur Satanus to become his pet, Thoth plucked Torquemada from an earlier point in time and set him down on Termight to watch him be captured and burnt at the stake for heresy; Thoth placed the Grand Master in a time loop so he could savour the moment over and over.
After a brief confrontation with Nemesis, the young warlock took off into the Time Wastes of Termight with Satanus in tow. In a bid to flush out his son, The Warlock saved Torquemada from the loop. They followed Thoth into the Time Wastes, only to discover his terrible plans to make both of his enemies pay.
Thoth had set about disrupting the balance between the black and white holes on either side of Termight, thereby destroying not only the planet itself, but a sizeable chunk of the universe in the process, rendering all of Nemesis' efforts to save the galaxy from human terror futile. Thoth, fleeing once more into the Time Wastes took Satanus back through time to help kill the earlier incarnations of Torquemada, thereby destroying his Ka, and extracting a more personal and painful revenge on his mothers killer.
Nemesis gave chase once more, finally tracking down his son in 15th Century Spain. Having let Satanus have his freedom in the Prehistoric era, Thoth had moved on to kill the original Torquemada, head of the Spanish Inquisition, only to walk into The Warlocks trap. Thoth, growing older and losing his taste for murderous revenge, decided to let the first Torquemada live, so he would bear the burden of his crimes, and make things up with his father once and for all.
This happy reunion was short lived, however, as The Grand Master had found them. Taking advantage of their temporary lack of magic, he brutally murdered Thoth before The Warlocks eyes.
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The great Emperor of the Terran Empire managed a two hundred and fifty year reign, thanks to the harnessing of anti-tachyon particles. During his life time, he oversaw one of mankinds greatest achievements, artificial black and white holes on either side of the planet - The Black and White Hole Bypasses. Under his command, thousands of planets were were conquerored through the use of this new cosmic spaceway, and a vast empire was carved out.
After
his eventual death, Zallin's personal star ship was made into his tomb, which
also housed the controls for the black hole bypass, designed to operate for
all eternity. For additional protection, the most advanced robots ever devised,
The Mekaniks, were used to patrol
the Time Wastes and eliminate
anyone perceived to be a threat to the control room.
Zallin's legacy lasted for many, many years, and in some of the Terran controlled planets of the Fringe Worlds, he became worshipped like a god.
During their mission in the Time Wastes, The ABC Warriors stole Zallin's tomb ship to escape the Terran Empire, and took it to the planet Hekate, where the Khaotic nature of the planet had a strange effect on the mummified corpse of the once great emperor. During a confrontation between The Warriors and The Imperial Rottweilers, the Terran soldiers used deuterium bullets, which seemingly re-animated Zallin's corpse. Believing this to be the case, he quickly took charge of his army and ordered them to carry out their plan to destroy one of Hekate's moons on the infamous 'Night of the Blood Moon,' but with one slight modification - all three were to be destroyed.
When this action was stopped by the Night Mara's (Hekate's priestesses), Zallin attempted to destroy their temple, only to have his life saved from one of the Mara's by Deadlock. After a brief discussion regarding the nature of Khaos and Order, Zallin ordered Hammerstein to kill Deadlock, but something snapped inside The Warrior, and he struck down Zallin instead.
Zallin's second death was not in vain, as his head provided the final head The Warriors needed to collect for Hekate, and spread Khaos through the Terran empire.
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MAJOR SAVARD & THE ETERNAL SOLDIERS
During the two hundered and fifty year reign of the Emperor Zallin, Terran scientists harnessed the power of black and white holes to create cosmic spaceways to the stars. They believed their empire would last forever and called themselves The Eternals; their armies became known as The Eternal Soldiers, and used these spaceways to conquer a thousand planets.
Led by the tyrannical Major Savard, they first encountered The Warriors after Blackblood betrayed their location. Although The Warriors fought valiantly, they were no match for the superior numbers of the Eternal Soldiers, and were eventually captured.
Savard herself (or 'Piggy', as she was known by her men), was an obstinate and tyrannical woman, desperately seeking revenge for the wrongs done to her in the past. Savard was a caffine addict with no real respect from her men or her fellow officers, with a deep rooted hatred of robots, the reason for which had been her very own child.
Her daughter, Petra, had fallen in love with a robot several years before, and ran off with it, leaving Savard a broken woman. Blaming this event for the deterioration of her life to that point, she managed to take some small pleasure in capturing the ABC Warriors during the their journey through the Time Wastes. Only later was it revealed the true feelings behind Savard's hatred; it wasn't disgust at the fact that her own daughter could love a machine, rather it was jealousy at her daughter being chosen over her.
Major Savard met her fate at the hands of Joe Pineapples. The final fate of the Soldiers is unknown, though many perished during their confrontations with both The Warriors and The Monad. However, Terra being an earlier incarnation of Termight, it would seem the Eternal Soldiers fell by the wayside as Torquemada rose to power. Because many of the Soldiers were followers of the 'Worm' religion, it's concievable many were persecuted by Torquemada's 'Termite' religion for their alien friendly attitudes.
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Entering the Time Wastes for the first time, The Warriors encountered the Mekaniks, possibly the most advanced robots ever built; they were programmed to maintain and protect the tomb of Emperor Zallin, home of the black hole control room. They patrolled the Time Wastes eliminating anything that would be perceived as a threat to the tomb itself, and thus attacked The Warriors countless times on their journey.
For undisclosed reasons, the Mekaniks kept humans in pens, one of whom was Terri, the human female who later became the seventh Warrior.
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Millions of years in the future, when the sun had become a red giant, mankind had simply decided to stop its evolution and regress back to the sea. Like lemmings, humans were driven by an overwhelming urge to return to the waters that first spawned them, in the final act of the human race.
Just as man today breaks down food inside his body for energy, so future man could break down his body into a liquid life form, a pool of plasma floating on the ocean at the end of the world, finally returned to the primordial soup which had spawned him. For millions of years, humanity slept, enjoying a peace it could never find on land.
And then Torquemada arrived.
The Terminators discovered the Primords (the name given to future man) were composed of a hydrocarbon fluid similar to oil. It proved to be a vast source of energy that Torquemada needed to power his engines of destruction. And so purification plants were set up, to pump and refine future man, flaring off his 'useless' spirits into the atmosphere, filling the air with screaming as they were separated from their bodies, which would be used in Terminator war machines.
The spirits did not die however. They flared up into the atmosphere to form a vast intelligence, a huge mind cloud of electro-magnetic energy, an evil intelligence, twisted by the pain of purification. It was the quintessence of human evil. The Monad.
This horror escaped into the Time Wastes, sensing the nearing end, savouring the prospect of the resulting death and destruction, it would have fed upon the energy surge created by the destruction of Terra and the Galaxy and grow into an unstoppable force, powerful enough to ride the winds of Khaos, and make it a force wholly for evil. In a sense, Torquemada's dream of dominating the universe would finally come into being.
In a bid to ensure the destruction of Termight, The Monad disguised itself as an alien, named Abaddon, and followed the Eternal Soldiers to the black hole control room. With it's goal in sight, however, the creature revealed its true self and set about hurrying the demise of the world. Using the combined memories of the ABC Warriors, the centuries of bloodshed and cruelty each robot had experienced, Deadlock managed to create a mind creature, darker than even the sinister thoughts from which The Monad was was comprised. It was an unstoppable force and The Monad was finally dispersed.
Unfortunately, such evil can never truly be vanquished...
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The Terran Empire's ultimate commando force. The elite of the elite, armed with the latest in Terran weaponry and feared throughout the Empire. They've had several run-ins with The ABC Warriors, and have proved to be one of the few enemies to give them a real challenge.
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The planetary conscious of Mars itself lay dormant for billions of years, suspended in a state of peaceful existence somewhere between life and death.
Until the humans came.
After centuries of peaceful co-existence between human colonists and the native Martian Trimorphs, the humans had taken a step too far. Treating her children like a sub-class, arrogant enough to believe Mars was theirs, they tried to terraform the planet further, to make it more like Earth. But Medusa refused to be tamed. She brought storms and earthquakes down on the humans in a bid to destroy them - she even brought the dead back to life, terrorising every human settlement on her surface, from the frontier towns to the major cities. She drew on the sub-conscious fears of the populous and used H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds' to create Martian tripods to destroy Viking City. The ancient Garganteks that had been left to roam the planet were destroyed for the crime of terraforming her. In one such robot, she found The Mess, and after decoding its memories, built it a new body. Using the newly re-constructed Steelhorn as her voice, she did something very few have ever managed: defeated The ABC Warriors. Eventually, she unleashed a strange EMP, plunging Mars back into the stone age. Coupled with a virus that was slowly killing machines, it seemed like the end for the humans. Medusa was on the verge of winning.
The humans were prepared to unleash a nuclear strike into her bio-mass pits and sterilise the planet unless she stopped he assaults. In a bid to increase the peace, Deadlock struck a deal with Steelhorn to give her another option: Turn the human President Cobb into a Martian. Once the operation was completed, and Cobb gave some new presidential decrees giving humans and Martians equal rights, Medusa was finally appeased.
But for how long, no one can say...
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MARS PRESIDENT COBB & THE BIO HAZARD TROOPS
The
Mars President, elected by humans, had never really given the native Martians
a fair deal. Under Cobb's rule, the Trimorphs were treated as sub-class citizens,
forced to live in ghettos, while humans lived in the luxury of the cities. Embodying
the humans arrogance regarding the planet, Cobb gave the order to terraform
Mars even further, and make it
just like Earth, something which the planetary consciousness Medusa
tok a great exception too. Aided by a dangerous minority of Trimorph bio-terrorists,
assaults were launched on human colonies, causing Cobb to give the presidential
order to have all Martian ghettos cleared by human Bio-Hazard Troops,
the human military wing of the Mars colonies, and the inhabitants taken to special
clearing camps as a security measure. Armed with the latest in Atomic, Bacterial
and Chemical weapons, the Bio-Hazard troops provided strong armed support to
the Presidential decree, but met their match with The ABC Warriors.
Cobb sat back and watched helplessly as The ABC Warriors failed to save Viking City, and then ordered them to go to a polar research station to discover the fate of the Terran scientists working on a vaccine for the virus that had wiped out the city. A very forgiving man he may claim to be, but Cobb is definitely one to bear a grudge. He ordered the base security chief, Barris, to destroy The Warriors drop ship, leaving them stranded, while he set off a nuclear explosion to destroy the bio-mass pit located directly under the base, effectively sterilising the planet. Barris was to bring whatever amounts of the vaccine he could back to the ruined city. The Warriors, however, had different ideas and succeeded in foiling the plan, and brought the vaccinne back themselves.
After striking a deal with their former comrade Steelhorn, The Warriors kidnapped Cobb from his presidential home, The Red House, so he could have an operation that would appease Medusa. Cobb was given a third eye, arm and leg, making him into a Human-Martian hybrid. After all, humans under Cobb had "operated on" and terraformed a living planet. Was it so different to operate on and Mars-form Cobb? After four months of his new outlook, Cobb issued a series of presidential decrees that gave the Trimorphs and any other Martian creatures the same rights and freedoms as the human colonists. All terraforming was to cease and all decisions on the planet to be made by humans and Martians together.
With the new Martian President Cobb, Mars found peace and balance for a time, but his transformation has sparked a civil war...
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Skulmo
was another ageing ABC Warrior reactivated by The
Terminators. He served with Hammerstein,
Mad Ronn and Hitaki
during the seige on The Gothic Empire.
He was killed by Hammerstein after disobeying a direct order and murdering an innocent family of native Goths. His body was stripped by Ronn and Hitaki.
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The
Black Cardinal headed up the robot inquisition during The
Gothic Empire campaign, making sure all the robots used were loyal to Termight.
He sentenced Hammerstein to immediate
termination for refusing to cleanse a group of native Goths; Mad
Ronn and Hitaki were sentenced
to the same fate for not reporting him.
It was the Cardinal who ordered Hammerstein and his comrades on the suicide mission that first brought them into contact with Nemesis The Warlock.
Hammerstein | Joe Pineapples | Deadlock | Blackblood | Mongrol | Ro-Jaws
Mek-Quake | Steelhorn | Nemesis the Warlock | Tomas de Torquemada
In Memorium | Supporting Cast | Fields of Battle | The Armoury
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