|
Fighting: |
Fe |
|
Agility: |
Ty |
|
Strength: |
Pr |
|
Endurance: |
Pr |
|
Reason: |
Ex |
|
Intuition: |
Ex |
|
Psyche: |
Mn |
|
Health: |
16 |
|
Karma: |
115 |
|
Resources: |
Gd |
|
Popularity: |
0 |
Real Name: Philip Masters
Occupation: Biologist turned craftsman and criminal mastermind
Legal Status: Naturalized US citizen with a criminal record
Identity: Publicly known
Place of Birth: Dragorin, Transia
Marital Status: Widower
Known Relatives: Marcia (wife, deceased), Alicia Masters Storm (stepdaughter)
Base of Operations: New York City area
Past Group Affiliations: None
Known Powers:
Sympathetic Magic: Monstrous Mind Control by using clay effigies
Mind Transferal: Monstrous ability to transfer minds into miniature clones
Mineral Body (defunct): Good Material body possessed these additional powers:
- Self-Duplication: Splitting into 2-10 smaller replicas with a shared consciousness
- Imitation: Monstrous ability to reshape itself to become a mind-controlling effigy
Equipment:
Radioactive Clay: Each effigy can only be used once.
Talents:
Excellent Reason in the fields of biology, toy making, and portrait sculpture
Contacts:
Alicia Storm
Role-Playing Notes:
Masters is out to stretch the limits of his powers rather than use those powers to loot or conquer. Criminal activities were basically an easily abandoned sideline. His main drive was a paternal love for Alicia and an overwhelming guilt over causing her condition. His over-protective efforts often led to criminal activities, although no malice was intended.
History:
Philip Masters was born in the tiny Balkan country of Transia, his parentage unknown. He lived there until the age of eight when his parents emigrated to America. A precocious child, Masters learned English rapidly and did very well at his studies in school. He was, however, a social outcast, for his cultural differences and personality made it difficult for him to make friends. He spent much of his spare time making wooden marionettes and sculpting clay figurines from the unusual clay he had brought with him from his native land. Masters eventually enrolled in college and sought a degree in biology. While there he met two fellow students, Jacob Reiss and Marcie Deaton, who became his first real friends. Upon graduation, Masters joined Reiss as a partner in a small research center in upstate New York which Reiss’s inheritance had enabled him to establish. Reiss had by that time married Deaton and had sired an infant daughter Alicia. Masters soon began to resent the success of his partner (his wealth, his wife, and his child), believing that he would never have the same. One night, his bitterness overwhelmed him and he decided to rob his partner of one of his successes by sabotaging the research facility where they worked. Reiss, however, had noticed the lights on in the main building and stopped to investigate, leaving his family in the car.
Caught in the act, Masters pummeled his partner, finally knocking him into a vat containing some of the unusual clay from Transia, which they were using in their experiment to recreate the primordial conditions on Earth which promoted the first development of life. Reiss’s plunge into the vat precipitated the explosion which Masters had rigged. The explosion caught Masters, as well as Marcia and Alicia, who had come from the car to see what was keeping Reiss. Although they all miraculously escaped major injury, Alicia was blinded by exposure to hot, vaporized clay. Not revealing exactly how Jacob Reiss had come to die, Masters courted his partner’s widow. She married him a year later, simply so her daughter would have a father. Masters had finally achieved all the things that had been his partner’s, but at the expense of his step daughter’s sight. He determinedly tried to reformulate the mixture that had exploded believing that its formulation might contain the answer to curing Alicia’s blindness. But he failed in this task, and at some point his wife Marcia died from long-acting poisons to which she had been exposed in the explosion. Soon after Marcia’s death, Masters sold the research center and moved to Manhattan. Placing his stepdaughter in a school for the visually handicapped, he opened a sculpture workshop and withdrew into his own world of figurine-making. Masters taught the art of sculpture to Alicia, who proved to have great talent for it.
Masters learned that his special clay had properties that he had never dreamed possessed. By molding it into the likeness of a person, Masters found he could mentally control the actions of that person by manipulating the figurine. Calling himself the Puppet Master, Masters decided to use the clay’s powers to gain power over other people.
As a test of the power, Masters used a clay puppet to force a man to leap to his death from a bridge. The man was saved by the Human Torch, a member of the Fantastic Four. Learning what had happened, the Puppet Master decided to use the clay’s powers against the Fantastic Four. Carving a puppet of another of the team’s members, the Thing, from his special clay, The Puppet Master compelled the Thing to come to him. The Thing was followed by his team mate, the Invisible Woman, whom the Puppet Master captured. Seeing a close resemblance between the Invisible Woman and Alicia, the Puppet Master disguised Alicia as the Invisible Woman with a blonde wig and costume and told her to accompany the Thing back to the Fantastic Four’s headquarters. Alicia, unaware of her stepfather’s motives, obeyed. Once the disguised Alicia and mesmerized Thing were inside the team’s headquarters, the Thing attacked the Torch and the team’s leader, Mister Fantastic. But Mister Fantastic succeeded in freeing the Thing from the Puppet Master’s control.
Mister Fantastic rescued the Invisible Woman, but the Puppet Master had used a puppet of a prison warden to force the warden to set free his prisoners. The Fantastic Four recaptured the prisoners, however.
Alicia, meanwhile, was distraught to learn of her stepfather’s criminal actions. Then he came to her bearing a puppet of himself dressed as king, and told her how, having successfully tested his power, he plans to rule entire nations. Alicia grabbed the Puppet Master’s arm, protesting that no one should have so much power. She slipped and fell, dropping the puppet, and the Puppet Master, trying to pick up the puppet, tripped over her and plunged from a window.
Alicia and the Fantastic Four believed the Puppet Master to be dead, but he miraculously survived, and had menaced the members of the Fantastic Four on numerous occasions. He has also proved to be a threat to other superhuman beings, such as the X-Men, Sub Mariner, and the Hulk. He has allied himself with another enemy of the Fantastic Four, the Mad Thinker, on several occasions. The Puppet Master, Mad Thinker, and the criminal scientist Egghead once formed a short-lived alliance in order to attempt to blackmail the United States government with an orbiting satellite that could fire highly destructive laser beams at Earth.
At one point the Puppet Master himself became a being composed of the mystical clay he used. However, he was returned to normal human form by the being called the Sphinx.
Over the years one of the Puppet Master’s primary concerns has been the happiness of his stepdaughter Alicia. As a result of their meeting during the Fantastic Four’s first encounter with the Puppet Master, the Thing and Alicia began a long-term romantic relationship. Opposed to this relationship, the Puppet Master long sought to destroy the Thing. However, Alicia and the Thing recently ended their romantic relationship. Learning of the fact, the Puppet Master told the Thing he would no longer bother him. However, it remains to be seen what will happen when the Puppet Master learns that Alicia is now in love with another member of the Fantastic Four, the Human Torch.