SPOILER: Black Dragon history/stats
John Hepner
Here are the stats ...
Name -- "Weyland Long" aka "Oolong" aka "The Black Dragon."
Nationality – Chinese (?) / Hong Kong
Male
Power Level 10
"This villain is beginning to disturb Long's inner peace. Perhaps Long should just smash it and make it go away?"
STR 20 (+15 / +5)
DEX 14 (+2)
CON 20 (+5)
INT 14 (+2)
WIS 14 (+2)
CHR 12 (+1)
DMG +5
FORT +5
REF +5
WILL +2
INIT +2
SPEED 30 / 60 / 120
BASE DEFENCE 5
DEFENSE 17
FLAT 15
MENTAL 17
BASE ATTACK 5 (Melee Only)
MELEE +10
RANGED +2
MENTAL +2
POWERS
+10 Super Strength (Extra: Protection)
+10 Regeneration
+1 Luck
+1 Precognition (Flaw: Uncontrolled)
FEATS
Durability
Toughness
Indomitable Will
Darkvision
Heroic Surge
Penetrating Attack (Unarmed)
Power Attack
Expertise
Rapid Strike
Move-by Attack
Whirlwind Attack
SKILLS
Acrobatics (5 ranks)
Knowledge – Religion (3 Ranks)
Knowledge – Martial Arts (1 Ranks)
Listen (3 Ranks)
Medicine (1 Rank)
Spot (3 Ranks)
LANGUAGES
English
Chinese – Mandarin
Chinese – Cantonese
Japanese
CHARACTER FLAWS
Naive (-5) – Not only is Long excessively trusting and good natured, but the sad state of his memory means he is effectively unacquainted with a great many aspects of life in Freedom City.
Quirks (-2) – Believes himself to be a Chinese dragon transformed into a human, frequently has his inner monologue becoming "outer monologue," and speaks of himself in the third person.
"Of course Long is a dragon! What else would Long be? Long is growing tired of this conversation. Perhaps if Long stops talking to the strange man, the man will leave Long alone? Long can only hope so! Is Long speaking his thoughts out loud again? Long hopes not."
Here is the "not currently public knowledge" part of Long's backstory ...
He would come to call himself Weyland Long, so let us refer to him as such from the beginning, such as it is. Weyland Long is a man with certain serious deficiencies of memory. There is the likeliest explanation for such deficiencies – and then there is what Long believes to be the truth of the matter.
Long appears to have been recruited (perhaps voluntarily perhaps not) from Hong Kong to participate in a project involving genetic research. There were tests, injections, medical equipment, more tests, strange bubbling liquids, machines which produced oddly colored lights, even more tests, bland food, sterile rooms, doctors, and tests. Never allowed outside, not allowed to so much as see the sun. Long does not remember feeling that it was captivity – but he cannot now see any reason why he should have been comfortable with the situation. There must have been one once though, mustn't there?
Long, it seems, was exceptional from the start – something about his mother. What about his mother makes Weyland special isn't a piece of information that survived his transformation. His mother hadn't been Chinese. That had been an important part of it.
There were always technicians. There were guarded expressions of amazement at "Subject Double-Naught's" burgeoning abilities, at Long's resistance to strange substances. Tests on muscle mass showed coiled spirals of flesh that made the tissue both denser and stronger. Weyland's flesh started to chip the needles. They had to get a diamond bit drill-head to take a sample of his bone. There was talk of dosages and of replication and contaminants. There were arguments among project specialists. There were hushed whispers about The Treatment. Ultimately there was the day – the day that is responsible for so much of Long's current trouble.
The liquid was greenish-blue. It glowed, and not with a healthy light. The technicians injected it into Long. It was liquid agony coursing through his veins. He ripped loose of restraints that could have held an ox. First Long was screaming and then he fell into a prolonged state of semi- or un-consciousness. The serum, whatever it was, had an effect on Long's memory rather like the effect which a garbage truck might have upon the glass vases of a small shop should the truck in question spin out of control and barrel into the building at near top speed.
This side effect of The Treatment wasn't unexpected. Long remembers a feeling of shock and betrayal when the sound of the technicians' voices announcing that Subject 00 had his brain-waves go off the charts and then start to decay finally filtered through his agony. The matter of fact tone alerted Long that the potential destruction of his mind, quite possibly of the majority of his brain, was by now an expected consequence of The Treatment. They had just neglected to mention it to him.
What was unexpected, apparently by everyone, was that Long survived. He had been the only subject of the experiment to do so thus far.
How long Weyland floated, suspended in a tank of some liquid that wasn't water remains a mystery to him. Only the occasional voices commenting on the state of his bio-rhythms, on the growing stability of his neural processes, of the phenomenal alterations occurring within his musculature, his blood and bones, and the quiet exclamations of technicians expressing amazement at the simple fact of Long's continuing survival served as a marker of the passage of time.
He was moved. A new lab. Something about the exchange of locales struck Long as odd even through the haze. He suspects that the exchange of residences might not have been without violence.
Long heard, and even saw, but what he heard and what he saw he no longer quite understood. Talk of genetics and of harvested bio-fragments no longer sparked anything in Long's slowly healing brain. Although one thing Long did gather, they were preparing another injection for him. A refinement of the process. A new serum. Something to build on what that other lab had already done.
These technicians didn't realize that Long's eyes could see again. They were pure black now, all pupil it seemed, and if they tracked movement there was no sign of it. They didn't realize Long understood what was said as well as he did. If they had known they might have reinforced the tank even more. They might have reinforced the facility. Not that these would have helped noticeably. They might, instead, have refrained from talking in front of the floating corpse – Weyland Enterprises Subject 00, L.O.N.G. project. But even that may not have worked.
It was a flash like fire, like a dagger of white-hot ice being thrust into the back of his head. That first time, it was almost as bad as the injection of the serum.
Long saw.
Long saw himself floating in the tank; more aware than his captor-doctors realized. He saw himself injected by a glowing blue serum. He watched his body spasm, contort, and then flatline. He watched as his heartbeat was restarted, but his brainwave activity had become that of a vegetable.
The flash of vision passed. For the first time in quite some time Weyland Long felt what remained of his mind clear. They had been keeping him sedated he realized. Long knew he didn't have much time to try to stop that possible future from becoming reality. He didn't know how he knew this, but he knew.
A technician walked past the tank, clipboard in hand, id tag dangling from his neck. The tank was reinforced. Bullets wouldn't have chipped the glass. This no longer mattered to Long.
Long reached through the glass and grabbed the technician by the throat. He squeezed lightly, so very lightly, and the man went limp. Long could remember enough of his martial arts training to know the difference between unconscious and dead and (even in his augmented body) somehow retained the ability to refrain from killing the man accidentally.
Project L.O.N.G. had its first success. And this facility was unprepared for how successful it was. Perhaps the old facility would have been better prepared. Long used the technician's key-card, hand print, and retinal print to open the door to the lab. The next door required a voice print as well. Long kicked the door. The door was no longer an issue. However the alarm was.
Still reeling from sedatives and who knows what else in his bloodstream, Long remembers walls breaking, lights flashing, and the sound of gunfire. The bullets didn't bother him much – they stung like the dickens, but the wounds healed with amazing speed. He fled up, always up. He remembered that he was underground. A long way he thought. There had been elevators when he had been unloaded here. Long struck at support beams and doorframes as he passed. He ignored the niceties of doors entirely. These things hardly registered. He walked into an ambush. The gunfire was enough to panic anyone, but it didn't hurt him. The gunmen he punched with a little more force. They went down. Their bullets had had no effect, few could actually get a bead on the oriental man who practically seemed able to evade their shots gliding with deadly grace, striking like a cobra, landing blows with the force of a sledgehammer. Neither did the electrical fence noticeably slow Long. The land mine left a bloody gash up one leg though. It was a gash that wouldn't heal for almost a minute.
Long was out of the Facility. Long, it appears, is unusually lucky. He was in a city. He fled. They followed. But there was only so much they could do – it seemed that his captors, perhaps his creators, didn't want the local authorities involved. Plus, that night there were parties and parades, fireworks and dancing in the streets. It was the Chinese new-year, and this close to Chinatown, that meant a lot of people around. Too many potential witnesses to simply silence.
A chase. Old buildings. A large truck. One with hazardous-materials warnings plastered all over it. Long distinctly remembers hearing his own voice saying "That vehicle is moving far too rapidly" just before it hit him.
No longer moving under his own power Long went down an alley, through an industrial strength dumpster, and continued on through the crumbling brick of the building behind him. There was a massive explosion. But the building was falling on him, and that mattered a bit more to the dazed Long than the burning chemicals outside.
It was some time later, as firefighters were still trying to put out the blaze in what (fortunately) had been a very decrepit and largely abandoned warehouse which the truck had rammed, that Weyland Long came to.
On the news the next morning there was talk of a programming error that had contributed to a truck running off course, rumors of drunken driving, praise for the fire department for containing the resulting blaze, and expressions of sorrow for the death of the truck's driver.
As for the fireman who claimed to have seen someone crawl his way out of the rubble on the far side of the blaze and stagger off into the night, muttering to himself; his fellows ridiculed and ignored him from the first – and he himself kept his mouth shut about it afterwards. Even when that nice, nondescript man in the business suit specifically came looking for him to ask him questions about what it was he thought he saw on that night. It must have been some poor drunk staggering back to home or perhaps back to the party.
As for Weyland Long – he can remember the paper lanterns and streamers, cheering crowds, the long dragon dancing its way down the street, and (at last) sweet oblivion in an alley.
It wasn't until he woke up the following day that he had the leisure to stop and take stock of his situation.
He couldn't remember his own name, nor those of his parents. His memories of Hong Kong were hazy at best: studying languages, eastern mysticism, and martial arts. He had traveled. Somehow he had become caught up in the experiments at the facility. In the haze, the label on his tank had become his one anchor on who he was. He was Weyland. It said so on the tank. He was Long. Oolong. Or more properly #00, L.O.N.G. Oolong – the Black Dragon.
No human could have possibly survived being shot repeatedly. Humans can't see in the dark. Nor could a human survive being hit by a truck. Perhaps some humans talked to themselves, murmuring much of their conscious thought; largely bereft of the mental filters that usually keep internal monologue "internal" – but they were mentally disturbed. Weyland, of course, is perfectly sane. Just ask him. He will tell you so. Certainly a mortal man would not have survived having a building collapse upon them. Besides, there had been that dancing serpent amid the cheering crowd and all the fireworks heralding his arrival.
No, Long felt the truth of the matter – he wasn't a human, but a dragon. Clearly he was a Chinese dragon of some importance since he had five fingers and toes. His memories of the facility, of the strange tests, of his human life ... these were the fabrications. How he could have forgotten being a dragon he couldn't say. Neither could he explain his transformation into this human body. But clearly that was what had happened.
Now though he had to learn to make his way among the people of this western city. He felt an urge to protect and defend these poor, strange folk. They clearly needed it if there were monsters living hidden among them who would (and could) take a dragon and strip it of the bulk of its memory and form, leaving it only with its native strength and ferocity in combat.
