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Dr. Zarathustra

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Dr. Zarathustra
One of RiesigeFrau's most dangerous and implacable foes is the unbalanced superhuman scientist, Dr. Zarathustra.  Able to face her in direct superhuman conflict, he is even more dangerous due to the power of his inhuman intellect.

Powers and capabilities:
In a world with a large number of super-geniuses and hyper-intelligent scientists,  Dr. Zarathustra may have pushed the boundaries of science further than any other entity born on Earth.  Many of his inventions and devices seem to break the laws of physics, even as understood by other superhumans.

He has shown particular skill in making inventions that deal with high energy physics, temporal mechanics, and manipulating the energies and forces used by superhumans.  He is less adept in the biological sciences, although he has managed some feats in this area that other super-scientists have as yet not been able to replicate.  Additionally, due to his hyper-advanced thinking, Dr. Zarathustra's technology is very difficult to analyze or reproduce.

Beyond his boosted intellect, Dr. Zarathustra has a suite of superhuman abilities based on channeling raw superhuman energy.  He can throw bolts of force, fly under his own power, and protect himself with a force field.  His power level in this area is quite high.  His force field is powerful enough to take a full out punch from RiesigeFrau at full size, and only be rattled and bruised. His force bolts have been known to kill lesser superhumans in a single blast.  In fact, RiesigeFrau is one of the few opponents to have survived taking multiple strikes from Dr. Zarathustra in combat.

Although extremely powerful and difficult to hurt, Dr. Zarathustra has not taken great pains to develop combat skills.  He sees such things as beneath him, and in truth, he rarely needs such skill and finesse.

Resources:
Due to the highly advanced technology at his disposal,  Dr. Zarathustra is able to use self-replicating devices and energy-to-matter conversion to create extensive facilities and assets.  At any time, he usually has dozens of labs or bases that he reside at, in a variety of exotic an inaccessible locations (inside an active volcano, deep ocean depths, cloaked in orbit, located in a pocket dimension, in another star system entirely, and so on).  

Being quite anti-social, Dr. Zarathustra doesn't use minions, and has few allies.  Instead, he will often make a small army of attack drones, equipped with attack technology that will give most superhumans pause.

One of his few allies is the supervillainess Powera (see separate entry).  Dr. Zarathustra rescued her from being captured after a particularly extensive defeat.  Since then, he has allowed Powera to use some of the bases and labs he doesn't currently need.  In return, he expects her help when he has a scheme where her assistance would be useful.  He will also sometimes give Powera scientific tasks that he feels beneath him, especially in bio-science, her area of expertise.  However, Dr. Zarathustra can be quite mercurial, and whether he sees Powera as an ally or not can depend much on his mood.

Of course, Dr. Zarathustra has a large array of technology he can bring to bear on various situations.  Among the weapons and devices he has been seen to use

- Transportation devices that can cross between alternate timelines

- Space-time manipulators that can block teleportation

- A small device that block telepathic probes or mental attacks

- A raygun that temporarily shuts down superhuman powers in most targets

And Dr. Zarathustra will often take the time to create additional weaponry as needed for the situation.  Past examples include a battleship-sized attack platform use to lay siege to a military base and a spaceship made from a hollowed-out asteroid to fight an alien starbase.

Activities:
As some might deduce from his chosen name, Dr. Zarathustra admires Nietzsche, at least in his own twisted way.   Dr. Zarathustra considers himself above human morality, and believes other sentient beings to be far below him, due to his intellectual superiority.

Having not much need for additional physical resources, Dr. Zarathustra doesn't need to engage in standard crimes such as robbery.   However, as he engages in his own research and agenda, he will often endanger people, property, or even all of humanity.

RiesigeFrau first encountered Dr. Zarathustra when he was engaged in what he saw as a minor experiment.  In order to calibrate his cross-timeline travel grid, he accepted payments from various powerful and rich individuals in return for sending them to an alternate timeline where the "client" was the most powerful, or richest, or most famous person in that version of the world.  Then, Dr. Zarathustra would help the client kill their counterpart and take over the role in the alternate world.  The payments were secondary to gathering the scientific data.  RiesigeFrau and allies investigated the disappearance of several significant people, and put an end to this spree of cross-timeline assassinations. In the ensuing combat Dr. Zarathustra was defeated for the first time, although he escaped.

Since then, RiesigeFrau has battled Dr. Zarathustra multiple times, usually with the help of other superhuman allies.  Other encounters have included:

- Dr. Zarathustra attempting to induce a supernova in a star several hundred light-years from Earth in order to retrieve an alien artifact at the star core.  This was stopped both to prevent the long-term threat to humanity and to save an alien race that was much closer to the target star.

- Using a network of energy-shutting satellites, Dr. Zarathustra threatened to shut off the Sun. He did this in order to blackmail the world governments into attacking a country where a rival superhuman villain had taken refuge.  An alliance of superhumans, including RiesigeFrau, attacked the satellites and re-programmed them to block Dr. Zarathustra from trying the same tactic again.

- Setting a trap with cross-timeline transporter,  Dr. Zarathustra once banished RiesigeFrau to an alternate timeline where superpowers didn't work, just to get her out of the way of his current plots.


In summary, Dr. Zarathustra has proven to be a dangerous and unpredictable foe.  Given both his superhuman powers and his mad genius, and is certainly a contender for being RiesigeFrau's greatest enemy.
This is the background description of Dr. Zarathustra, an NPC from my "States of Grace" RPG campaign, and one of RiesigeFrau's greatest enemies.
© 2013 - 2024 Shag49931
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hotrod5's avatar
There are evil geniuses and there's Dr. Zarathustra. He takes evil genuis the next level. I like him. ;)