META-4 was the first original universe created as the backdrop for Mutants & Masterminds in the game's first edition, followed very quickly by Freedom City. Due to problems with the writing staff, META-4 fell on the wayside, and never made it into second edition, outside of an Updated Re Release of the 1e sourcebook Crooks!
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Heroes of the META-4 Universe
The Homefront
The first superhero team of the META-4 Universe, the Homefront were a band of "super-Americans" — equal parts costumed patriots and experimental Super Soldiers — assembled by the US government who debuted on April 1941. Initial membership was Everyman, Johnny-on-the-Spot, Doc Mesmer, The Ouija Kid (who later went by just Ouija), Trick-Shot, Hap Holiday, The Agrarian, and Swing-Shift.
The Happening
A counterculture-themed band of superheroes who arose in the 1960s as the first official superhero team after the Homefront, and indeed superheroes in general, were pushed into the shadows or even off-planet by McCarthyism in the 50s. San Francisco superheroes Black Cherry Stone, The Clown Prince, Camo Kid, The Tantric Avenger and Adam Century came together independently and battled supervillains of the era ranging from the infernal white supremacist Johnny Reb and Super Supremacist Red Queen to foes like Stereotron, the Brass Dragon, and Bad Trip. They were ultimately broken after a defeat at the hands of Dr. Dungeon.
The Statesmen
The first US government-sponsored superteam since the Homefront, the Statesmen were assembled in 1976, partially to draw attention away from the controversial ending of the Vietnam War. Based in Arcadia, the Statesmen consisted of a single super-powered representative from each of the states, with the core membership being New Mexico's Trinity, New York's Skyscraper Joe, South Dakota's Calamity Jane Doe and Washington's Bigfoot.
The Front
The third of the US governmental superteams, the Front debuted in the year 2000, the brainchild of newly elected president Bert Landon. Members include Alpha Male, Primute and Radiomega.
The Golden Marvel
The Golden Marvel
AKA: Leroy Conte
During the 60s, light-manipulating powerhouse Leroy Conte fought to represent a dying breed of wholesome All-American Values as well as official recognition of the rights of his fellow African-Americans — he was actually the first African-American hero to earn media recognition, and both espoused and genuinely believed in many of Dr. Martin Luther King's beliefs. The murder of his idol and other Afro-American civil rights leader, and an ongoing war against his enemy, the super-powered racist vigilante White Logos, slowly embittered him, until the day he made his greatest mistake. When White Logos attacked the activist Angela Davis after she was cleared on manufactured criminal charges, he found Leroy waiting, having anticipated the super-powered white supremacist would make such a stunt. But when White Logos blasted innocent bystanders in an attempt to cover his own escape, Leroy lost all patience and killed his enemy in a fit of rage. With the news showing his deeds out of context, the federal courts swiftly sentenced him to life without parole — Leroy chose willingly to submit, believing it would make undermine everything he had stood for if he resisted the court. He spent years in prison, with the campaign for his freedom dying down over the course of the 80s, but the publication of his biography reignited interest, and it's possible that he may receive a presidential pardon. Hope of this keeps Leroy going, for he hasn't lost faith in the good fight.- Combo Platter Powers: Leroy is a mutant who has Super-Strength, Super-Toughness and the ability to generate and manipulate light, which he can use to create Deflector Shields and Hand Blasts, and even to fly by surrounding himself in a glowing aura.
- Fallen Hero: Zigzagged. He was a well-respected hero, until he got sent to prison for killing his archenemy in a public fight. But Lero still believes in heroism, and hopes to resume his heroing career if he ever receives a pardon, even if he is a little more reactionary and less trusting of the system after his years in prison.
Villains of the META-4 Universe
Atomic Brain
Beholder
The Bestiary
Behemoth
Chimera
Manticore
Undine
Black Diamond
Blitz II
Carrion Queen
Choke Chain
The Clique
The Other Woman
The Crush
Jawbreaker
Pixie
Wallflower
Boy Toy
The Czar
Dr. Dungeon
Iron Cross
Johnny Reb
Johnny Reb
AKA: Balshamon (+ identity of current host)
In 1864, as General Sherman marched towards Atlanta, the desperate President of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, entertained all manner of wild projects to try and thwart the Union's victory. In June of that year, the mysterious Vatican-sponsored sorcerer Father Luciano of the Ordo Seclorum came to President Davis on behalf of Pope Pius IX with a truly audacious plan. Luciana summoned a Hellish duke named Balshamon into the body of a young Confederate soldier to serve as a dark champion of the rebellion. The arrogant demon boasted he would never return to Hell until the Union fell, and he slew hundreds of Union soldiers during the assault on Atlanta. The immortal adventurer St. Germain defeated "Johnny Reb" by shooting him in the head with a golden bullet, trapping the demon inside his now-dead host body. The Union paraded Johnny Reb's undecaying remains as a trophy during their occupation of Atlanta, with General Sherman coming to consider it a good luck charm, only to abandon it when they fired the city in November. But the body was rescued by the Incorruptible Society, a white supremacist movement, and in 1964, they removed the golden bullet, allowing Balshamon to possess their supreme leader, Elmer Durrocks, and Johnny Reb lives once more.- And I Must Scream: Balshamon spent a hundred years trapped in the body of his first host, until the golden bullet was removed. His second host then spent several years brain-dead but on life support, with the demon trapped inside his unresponsive body. After his third host was captured, Balshamon isn't eager to be "contained" again.
- Body Snatcher: Johnny Reb can be killed, but Balshamon can simply possess a new human host and take up his identity once more.
- Captain Patriotic: A particularly twisted example; Johnny Reb was created to act as a Captain Patriotic to the Confederate States of America. His artwork in the Crooks! sourcebook depicts him wearing a white-and-gray rendition of a Confederate officer's uniform with a mini-cape and a Klan-esque hood emblazoned with the star-studded red cross of the Confederacy flag.
- Flaming Sword: Johnny Reb is able to envelop his sword in burning hellfire, and can even launch hellfire projectiles from it.
- Magically-Binding Contract: Balshamon still plagues the United States because the oath he swore to Jefferson Davis mystically prevents him from voluntarily leaving Earth until the Union — and thus the modern-day United States — has been destroyed.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Balshamon's second host, Elmer Durrocks, spent several years in a coma on life support after being defeated by Victory Girl, Ouija and the Agrarian, until a nurse named Bryce Atkins decided to turn off Elmer's life support as punishment for his crimes in 1970. This killed Elmer, and freed Balshamon, who possessed Atkins and used him as his third host until he was captured in the late 1980s.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Ironically, Johnny Reb initially didn't care about humans at all, but after over a century locked in the minds of different white supremacists, he's come to genuinely believe that non-white humans are inferior. He literally has the "Racist" weakness, which causes him to never willingly cooperate with or assist non-whites and to always attack them over any other target, even if doing so isn't the most tactically advantageous choice.
- Super-Strength: Johnny Reb possesses superhuman strength.
- Super-Toughness: Johnny Reb is virtually impervious to physical harm.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Johnny Reb's Super-Toughness cannot protect him from gold, and a gold bullet to the brain of his first host left Balshamon trapped in the now-corpse for a century until it was removed.
Kalak the Mystic
Miss Martian
Miss Martian
AKA: Nyra Gazz
Nyra Gazz was a Walorian who turned space criminal, terrorizing the galaxy for thirteen years before she was apprehended by a Myriad interstellar police patrol. Luckily for her, the ship crashed into an asteroid whilst passing through Earth's solar system, killing everybody aboard but Nyra, who managed to guide the dying vessel to the nearest habitable planet: Earth. Specifically, downtown Hollywood in 1955. Although the crash initially elicited panic, after a curvy blue antennaed woman in a yellow mini-skirt and go-go boots wearing a jetpack jumped out of the wreckage, everybody thought it was just a stunt to promote some upcoming sci-fi film and calmed down. Realizing she had crashed on a pre-spaceflight planet, Nyra decided she had the perfect opportunity to lay low. But not without seizing the opportunity to obtain wealth and adoration as a movie star. With her brains and charm, and only slight judicious applications of her mind-control powers, she soon became the starlet of a 1956 color musical; "Dinner with the Spacemen". At a press conference about its upcoming release, she spun a story of being the last survivor of the dead world of Mars, a warrior-woman on a self-appointed mission to encourage humanity to follow the path of love and happiness instead of the warlike ways that had destroyed her world, and asserted that she would become a superheroine under her new nom de guerre of "Miss Martian". And the Walorian criminal actually did try to fight crime, briefly, but the McCarthy Era had no patience for superheroes, especially alien ones, and so instead she turned to focusing on an up-and-coming movie career, releasing her second film — "Slave Girls of Neptune" — in 1957. Alas, Nyra's gravy train came to an end in 1959, on the set of her third movie, when META-4 agents led by the Ancient Astronaut arrived to arrest her, publicly outing her as an alien super-criminal. When Nyra used her psychic powers to enthrall half of the META-4 agents and direct them to kill their companions before fleeing in the chaos, leaving sixteen men dead, that was the end of her movie career. Since then, she has popped up about once a decade, typically either to commit a stunning theft — or to abduct some particularly handsome or gorgeous young star...- Cute Monster Girl: Nyra is an alien who looks like a beautiful human woman with blue skin, antennae on her forehead, and solid black eyes.
- Deflector Shields: The six golden rings that Nyra wears like some kind zeerusty baubles — two around each wrist and a pair around her upper thighs — are "protection rings", generating a protective forcefield that keeps her safe from both physical damage and hostile environments.
- Depraved Bisexual: Nyra wants to breed, and since her Walorian physiology allows her to both impregnate and be impregnated, she's interested in both men and women. As for the "depraved" portion, Nyra's the kind of girl who is perfectly happy with kidnapping, mind controlling, and raping her potential baby-daddy and/or mother(s).
- Evil Is Petty: One of her two suggested storylines revolves around Nyra infiltrating the set of a remake of her first movie, "Dinner with the Spacemen", and using her powers to slowly make the cast and crew maim, mutilate and murder each other because she's angry that anyone would dare remake one of her films without her in the leading role.
- Game Face: She has the Super-Charisma power "Intimidating Presence", which is described as an enraged Nycra assuming a face so horrifying that anyone who sees it may be paralyzed with fear or will simply flee in terror.
- Green-Skinned Space Babe: She's a beautiful alien who could pass as human, were it not for the solid black eyes, blue skin, and fleshy antennae on her head.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Her writeup in Crooks! notes that Nyra was actually happier pretended to be good than she had ever been when reveling in evil. She even genuinely tried to give superheroing a go, only to be stopped by McCarthy Era politics. But once her criminal past was unveiled and she instinctively lashed out, that was the end of any possibility she might have reformed.
- Hermaphrodite: Walorians may look like cute alien girls out of a cheesy 50's Space Opera, but they're actually simultaneous hermaphrodites with, as Crooks! puts it, physiology that allows them to impregnate and be impregnated.
- Interspecies Romance: Well, for a rather twisted definition of "romance". Nyra is feeling the urge to breed, and so has been kidnapping the most attractive human men and women she can find until she can find one (or perhaps more than one) attractive enough that she considers them a worthy breeding partner.
- Jet Pack: She constantly wears a jetpack on her back so she can fly away if she needs to escape.
- Mind Control: Her primary superpower is the ability to telepathically enslave others. Those under her influence have their eyes turn solid black so long as they are being controlled.
- Psychic Powers: Her Mind Control and "Super-Charisma" powers are both described as psionic in origin.
- Zeerust: Nyra's writeup in Crooks describes her as hearkening back to a simpler, "more innocent", view of aliens and sci-fi, with an outfit and an appearance that could come right out of a 50s Space Opera.
Moodswing
Moonquake
Mountain King
Murder Man & Butcher Boy
Neutronik
The Nihilist
Player 2
Redhawk
Rose Monk
Sister Blister
Sovereign
Spasm
Sulemain
Tag Team
Burner
Tag
Toykiller
Toreador
Unifier
Vagabond
Wasphawk
Waymaker
Hexorcist
Hexorcist
AKA: Emil Graystone
As an aspiring Evil Sorcerer, Emil Graystone studied the dark arts in the underground Black School, an academy for sorcery in caverns under Spain run by a demon that taught any would come and listen to its profane tutelage... In exchange for being allowed to devour the flesh and soul of whichever student escaped from the Black School last upon graduation day. With his gimp leg, Emil was the obvious loser, but when his teacher closed in, he discovered too late that Emil had cunning and ambition beyond any of his previous students: Emil bound the demon in a magical trap, then cut out its heart and ate it. Thus Emil became the Hexorcist, seeking to rise to the status of demon prince by accumulating magical artefacts — and, more importantly, consuming the hearts of supernatural creatures. After several years as the Hexorcist, however, he pushed the gambit too far, and tried to oust the demon prince Belial. For his arrogance, his soul was imprisoned in Hell, suffering a comparative eternity of torture even as his comatose body was moved to Lockdown PHU to convalesce. Then, after four months, Emil woke up. He claims to have escaped from Hell, and is determined to never return. Since then, he's been a model prisoner, and worked tirelessly to convince other prisoners to likewise turn their backs on evil.- Black Magic: Hexorcist's superpowers stemmed from his mastery of dark sorcery, and included animating inanimate matter, traveling between dimensions, erecting forcefields, turning invisible, controlling minds, ensnaring others in energy bindings, launching blasts of energy, choking others with energy bindings, and draining the powers of others.
- Cannibalism Superpower: Hexorcist's central gimmick was ceremonially cannibalising the hearts of supernatural beings, including magic-empowered heroes, in order to steal their abilities and strengthen his own magic.
- Demon of Human Origin: Invoked. Hexorcist wanted nothing less than to become a Prince of Hell.
- Evil Cripple: He has a gimp leg, which forces him to hobble when he walks. He may not be evil anymore, but he's still crippled.
- Evil Versus Evil: As Hexorcist sought to become a demon prince, he would often battle demons, monsters and hell-empowered supervillains for their hearts. It's the fact he would just as happily battle angels and magical superheroes that makes him a villain.
- Food Chain of Evil: Hexorcist was a human Evil Sorcerer who hunted demons and other monsters so he could eat their hearts to strengthen his own magic.
- Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Invoked. Emil is perfectly comfortable in his life as a prisoner and is happy to obey the rules, not because he has the ability to escape at any time or because being in prison impedes his criminal plans... but because after being in Hell, an American prison might as well be a luxury resort by comparison.
- Retired Monster: Hexorcist may have done a lot of heinous acts, but he swears he's given up all that Black Magic nonsense after having spent multiple lifetimes of being tortured in Hell. The last thing he wants is to truly be stuck there permanently.
Berlin Betty
Berlin Betty
AKA: Elizabeth Stacy Holman
Born in 1920, Elizabeth Stacy Holman's aristocratic British family spent her childhood traveling the territories of the British Empire, inculcating her in their beliefs in classism and white supremacy. Upon reaching maturity and never finding a suitably "fiery" suitor in Britain, Elizabeth began traveling in Europe — where she fell passionately into the rising Nazi movement. Such was her dedication that she joined the Gestapo — first as a spy to operate on British soil, and then as a volunteer for the hidden Super-Soldier projects of Amt XIII, which boosted her natural attributes to peak human level. Though she survived the fall of Nazi Germany and fled to Argentina with dreams of helping to launch the Fourth Reich, over the decades her allies were winnowed by Nazi Hunters, and finally "Berlin Betty" herself was captured and sent to Lockdown PHU, where she has remained ever since, her aging slowed by the Nazi Super Serum in her veins. Favoring a quieter, less overt form of racism based on her British colonial upbringing, Elizabeth has finangled her way into a position of some trust as the "Ward Boss" of the female prisoner's ward. What her captors don't know is that even though the Super Serum that altered her is losing its physical boosts, its giving her emergent powers of the mind...- Even Evil Has Standards: Elizabeth scorns the use of racially-charged epithets, considering them crude, unimaginative and beneath her, and she discourages her lackies from using them. This in no way lessens her contempt for non-white people, it just means she won't throw slurs around.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: A British colonial supremacist turned Nazi. Elizabeth looks down on everybody; she scorns non-white people as inherently inferior to white people, and she scorns white people who aren't aristocrats as inferior to those who are.
- Psychic Powers: Unbeknownst to anyone, Elizabeth is developing an arsenal of telepathy based powers, including Mind Control and mental blasts.
- Super Serum: Berlin Bettty's powers stem from a Nazi-created chemical agent that heightened her physical attributes to the very pinnacle of human ability. Over the decades, the boost has slowly worn off (though she does still possess heightened reflexes), but it's also retarded her aging process — she's in her 70s, but physically capable as a very fit 40-something.
- Super-Soldier: The programs run by Amt XIII were intended to create super-powered soldiers to champion Nazi Germany.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Downplayed. Despite being a known white supremacist, Elizabeth has presented herself as well-behaved enough to earn "trustee" status within the Lockdown prison complex. It's all an act to cover up her own ongoing schemes and plots.
- With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: It's noted that in her prime, Berlin Betty's Super Serum boosted her beauty as well as her strength, constitution, and reflexes.
Belladonna
Belladonna
AKA: Donna Amaryllis
Kidnapped by a mysterious organization that ran a brutal "school" for female assassins hidden deep in the Alaskan wilderness, Amaryllis was told from the get-go that her only options were to either die, or become skilled enough to escape. Aided by determination and her mutant ability to generate floral toxins, Amaryllis survived for a decade before she finally deemed she could make it, leaving the bodies of most of the teaching staff in her wake. But when she reached Anchorage, she was confronted by a stranger, who handed her a cell phone, safety deposit chit, and simple note: "Congratulations. Now await your assignment." Though she initially tried to refuse, the reality was that her total lack of any records of her existence left her homeless and alone, with no skills but her training to fall back on. Unwilling to become a thief or a prostitute, Amaryllis accepted the offer she couldn't refuse, and became an assassin. Her latest assignment: go on a crime spree and get arrested. Then wait for orders about her target in the Buckner Ridge facility. Though she privately wants to be free, she has no idea how to go about escaping the cage her life has become. Ironically, the missions give her life meaning.- Determinator: Belladonna's determination is called out as one of her strongest attributes. Determination that carried her through a decade of Training from Hell, let her kill multiple assassin teachers, and then survive alone and without any gear in the Alaskan wilderness until she found her way to Anchorage.
- Poisonous Person: Belladonna's mutation allows her to secrete any toxin she can desire, so long as it stems from plant life. She can either deploy it through her touch or disperse it into a lethal haze in the air around her.
- The Sociopath: Her writeup notes that Belladonna has to fake her way through even simple sentiments because subtle emotions are alien to her.
- Training from Hell: She was kidnapped, dragged into the Alaskan wilderness, and forced to learn how to be an assassin under the caveat that the only way she would leave the facility was if she died or got skilled enough to escape. The training was so harsh that at least one trainee died every week.
Blackcroft
Percy-Herbert Blackcroft
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, August 1890, Percy-Herbert Blackcroft was an intelligent and well-read child whose affluent family squandered their wealth and whose parents descended into syphilis-induced madness. After completing high school, he found a niche for himself by writing stories set in the morbid and alien Nyathuhg Mythos he invented, married a woman named Sophie, and moved to New York. But in 1924, things began to go horribly wrong. The Blackcrofts began suffering terrible, unremitting nightmares, with Percy-Herbert finding the only release to come when he poured his visions into his work. After Sophie went mad, was institutionalized, and commited suicide, Percy-Herbert moved back to Providence and roomed with his aunts, pouring himself into his work. His fanbase grew, but then people began to send him letters, claiming to have visited his fictional New England towns of Dartholm and Innscourt. First Blackcroft's aunts, then several of his neighbors, began suffering terrible hallucinations, and then disappeared. When the police investigated, they found the missing people in the basement, pulled apart on a cat's cradle of hooks. Blackcroft was sentenced to death... but they couldn't kill him. And people kept seeing horrible things around him, they kept vanishing. And then one psychologist tried something unorthodox: he ordered Blackcroft be denied all access to writing materials. It worked; without the conduit of Blackcroft's writings, the madness was locked away inside of Blackcroft's head. Blackcroft has remained institutionalized since 1937, never aging, never sleeping, never eating; screaming at the waking nightmares trapped inside his own skull, begging for a pen to release them.- And I Must Scream: Blackcroft has been given immortality... but also left irrevocably insane.
- Expy: He's obviously based on H. P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos, as well as the tongue-in-cheek fan-theory that Lovecraft's writings weren't imagined, but inspired by dream visions that really connected him to the Mythos.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: In the 1930s, after he was convicted of murder, they hanged Blackcroft five times, leaving him dangling and twitching for hours each time before they relented and cut him down. They put him before a firing squad, strapped him to the electric chair, and even put him in the first experimental gas chamber out in Nevada. None of it worked.
- Reality Warper: Nobody is certain, in-universe, if Blackcroft's writings open rifts to horrific otherworlds or if he merely gives life to his own fevered delusions.
The Red Scare
The Red Scare
AKA: Oleg Dityatin
In 1951, with his anti-Communism movement already growing like wildfire, Senator Joseph McCarthy decided it needed a push; drawing upon existant plans for Super-Soldier programs, he recruited a number of poor Russian immigrants who were desperate enough to agree to undergo the dangerously experimental power-granting radiation bombardment treatment and then play the role of Communist super-terrorists to give McCarthyism more credibility. Oleg Dityatin agreed in exchange for his family's lifelong financial well-being, and became the program's only survivor. As "The Red Scare", he spent the next three years engaging in scripted battles against McCarthy's superheroine team the Liberty Belles to make them look good. But after the Senate censured McCarthy in 1954, Oleg came under attack from legitimate superheroes; warned that his family would lose the financial support that McCarthy had promised if he revealed the fraud, he kept his mouth shut, even when he was finally captured in 1957. Fortunately for Oleg, repeated appeals kept him alive until President John F. Kennedy commuted his sentence to life in prison. In the present day, however, Oleg has been contacted by representatives of the Cartel, who revealed to him that McCarthy betrayed him all those years ago: he had Oleg's family deported behind Oleg's back. Embittered by this revelation, whilst Oleg hasn't committed himself to the Cartel yet, he is planning to make a comeback as a real supervillain...- Combo Platter Powers: Oleg's power set revolves around emitting and absorbing atomic energies, which also allows him to create both intense cold (by draining ambient heat) and blinding flashes of light, supercharge his stamina, produce blasts of heat and radiation, and fly. As the Red Scare, he also wore a suit of Powered Armor.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Almost literally. Oleg had no real ties to Russia and was certainly not affiliated with Communism. He only became the Red Scare to support his family, and his fights with the Liberty Belles were so scripted that they would make the WWE proud.
