The Iron Master

"The Iron Master's superpower is Treknobabble."

-Anonymous



The Iron Master is secretly Smith Sterling, once a Long Beach engineer who worked for a non-descript tech company. He made contact with Whisper, using his then-prototype "terminator" killbots to convince Team Red's 411 operator that he had what it took to become a super villain. Whisper would then help him to gather the resources for a few more early inventions, most notably his ecto-reader, before the Iron Master took the stage with a raid on a Scientology Museum and began funding his own experiments with a variety of heists and criminal enterprises.

As the main character of his now-eponymous quest, the Iron Master's full criminal history can be found in the Plot Summary. He has fought numerous battles with heroes and villains alike, establishing himself as a force to be feared in the city and possibly getting himself a bit in over his head and drawing more heat than he can handle on occasion. The Iron Master wavers between anti-villainy and a sort of classy but still ruthless self-interest, typically leaning towards the former. His primary ambition is to find a "cure for death," though it's difficult to tell whether this is a self-aggrandizing "a god am I" ambition or a genuine desire to reverse the inevitable and better mankind. As a more immediate goal, he intends to conquer the underworld of Los Angeles in order to fund his experiments while doing away with irritating rivals who might sabotage them. Initially he accomplished this primarily with subterfuge, using false flag attacks to pit his rivals against one another and bribing their underlings into switching sides before declaring open war. As his powerbase expands and his gang, variously called the Iron Guard or the Iron Legion, has become entrenched in the city, he has begun to favor more direct tactics instead. He has also frequently pondered starting up legitimate enterprises to act as cover for his criminal activities, but has not yet gotten around to putting this plan into action.

The Iron Master shows a strong attachment to his henchmen Rica Rivera and Julio Pedone, particularly Rica, who has proven quite loyal. Though she does not yet work for him, he is also quite attached to Sofia Span, aka Kestrel, a super hero he has worked for some time to subvert to Team Red. He's called her "the only 'good' person on Team Blue" and gone to great lengths to bring her back before her ghost could pass on when Swordsman killed her. He is also strongly attached to his android "son" Steve, who was originally created to subvert Kestrel. He has also gone out of his way to recruit former EdenTech scientists Doctors Rud and Iveson. Though the alliance is purely political, the Iron Master has worked in the past with both Daimyo Okata and Mesmer, and they get along well enough. On the other hand, the Iron Master has developed a lethal vendetta against Swordsman and Chimera, in the case of the former because he killed Kestrel (though whether you can claim he successfully killed someone when they didn't stay dead is arguable, he certainly gets points for effort), and in the latter simply because they're ruthless, heartless terrorists that the Iron Master can't bring himself to support on even his darkest days.

The Iron Master's true appearance has never been seen by the public or any of his allies. Only the most trusted of his minions has ever seen him, and usually then only because there's not much way of getting around it when he needs to bring them back in a hurry for fear their ghost might pass on if he doesn't make them Deathless immediately. When making appearances in public, he uses robotic decoys synthskinned to look like a real person, but which bear almost no similarity to himself.

Stat Sheet
The Iron Master (Smith Sterling)   :

Power: 4 (12) Athletics: 2 Cunning: 3 Technology: 5 Insight: 2(+1) Observation: 3 Nefariousness: 2 Stealth: 1
 * Health: 1 (3)

Powers :

*Peak Strength (For 1 PP, you gain a +2 to your Athletics for one encounter)

**Meta Strength (For 2 PP, you gain a +3 to your Athletics for one encounter and your unarmed attacks ignore mundane armor, req. Peak Strength)

***Super Strength (For 3 PP, you gain a +4 to your Athletics for one encounter and your unarmed attacks ignore mundane armor, req. Meta Strength)

*Peak Speed (For 1 PP, you gain a +1 to your Athletics for one encounter)

**Meta Speed (For 2 PP, you gain a +1 to your Athletics and one extra action per turn for one encounter, req. Peak Speed)

***Super Speed (For 3 PP, you gain a +2 to your Athletics and two extra actions per turn for one encounter, req. Meta Speed)

*AI (You create an AI which gives you a +1 bonus to all Technology checks whenever you have access to it)

*Synthskin (Your robot minions can look and act like actual normal humans, even in close personal interaction)

**Terminators (For 2 PP you can create robot minions with stats of 2, which can be adjusted but not raised higher than 4 and which must average 2 or less, cannot control more robots than maximum PP)

**Model T (Your standardization of terminator construction allows each terminator to count as half a robot for purposes of determining how many robots you can control, req. Terminators)

***Mechs (For 4 PP you can create robot minions with stats averaging 4 and which cannot be raised higher than 6, and which can have powers (which can be paid for by selling ACTIONS for XP at the rate of 1 XP per point of any ACTIONS decreased, so decreasing Athletics from 4 to 3 gives you 1 XP for powers, and the same is true of decreasing it from 3 to 2 and etc.).  These powers must be pulled from sets you have unlocked.  All Mechs must use the same build which cannot be changed once selected, however you can buy additional builds for 2 XP each.  This build doesn't replace the old one; any given mech can use either of them (though they cannot change mid-battle).  Your mechs are at least eight feet tall, and can be as tall as 30 or 40 feet.  Each one counts as 3 robots for purposes of determining the maximum amount you can control, req. Terminators)

***Mobile Dolls (Your standardization of mech construction (likely including some kind of factory line for how big these things get) allows each mech to count as only two robots for determining how many you can control, req. Mechs)


 * *Ghost Whisperer (Summon the ghost of anyone whose name and face you know (and who is dead), ghost cannot act on the physical world but can answer questions or even act as a spy, ghost is not necessarily cooperative once summoned)


 * ****Deathless (One soul is contained within an object of your choice, and if that soul's body is killed, the restless spirit will remain bound to the Earth by this phylactery until they are able to possess another vessel (who must be either willing or too weak-willed to resist))


 * **Monster Form (3 PP to transform into monster with +3 to one stat, +2 to another stat, -2 to four stats, 4 free XP to spend on powers from any set, and can change your size by one category in either direction, for 1 XP you can add an additional monster form, and there is no cap on the number of monster forms you can have)


 * Puppeteer (Special bonus. After merging our minds with the alien entity called Eidolos, we gained the ability to take over the bodies of normal humans and make them our mindless drones. The take-over is very obvious as the drones act and walk unnaturaly. Once taken over, they cannot be released again)