Anti-Villain:
(Except the cape is black; couldn't 'shop it and make it look good)
Name
Carnelian Jael Douglass
Alias
Black Flag
Age
20 (08/16/1928)
Gender
Female
Race
Human (Black)
Sexuality
Bi Curious
Personality
Carnelian Douglass looks like a Nice Young Lady at first glance. She even sounds like one if your conversation remains in the area of small talk, or the latest innovations. Charming, well-spoken, and a snappy dresser within the limits of her fashion budget. She loves science and technology, and believes they can and should be harnessed to break the chains of poverty and drudgery. In fact, one of her goals in life is to literally
invent a way to peacefully liberate humankind from poverty and injustice. After all, new technologies like television and the airplane are coming into acceptance, and no one has to overthrow the newspapers and automobile manufacturers. She hopes that perhaps something like an integration of the concentrated solar power devices of Augustin Mouchot, the products of George Washington Carver's agricultural practice and applied chemistry, architecture designed to minimize the need for heating and cooling, and liberal employment of labor-saving devices, it will be possible to create a human community that works like a forest: a rich diversity of interrelated nature and function, all working together with no rulers, no bosses and no slave-masters, no coal mines and no systemic poverty, all thriving on sunlight and soil.
Except...that kind of gentle patience is not really Carnelian's strong suit. Spend more time with her, especially if there should happen to be a protest or strike going on, and you'll find that she is a Revolution in sensible shoes. Her childhood hero was Frederick Douglass. Her current role models are Lucy Parsons and Emma Goldman. If you should need a fiery speech made, a picket line defended, or someone who's not afraid to stand her ground in the middle of a riot, Carnelian is your girl. She is a passionate Anarchist. Not the bomb-throwing kind though; throwing punches and kicks Wing Chun style, and wielding any handy stick or cane as a rapier is more her style.
She tries to be the calm, calculating mastermind planning ten steps ahead because the oppressors hold all the cards and have to be outsmarted before they can be outfought. Until she sees one too many hungry children, endures one too many insults to her race and gender, until she can't stand the thought of wealthy men extracting their splendor from the misery of countless thousands. Then, her mouth, her fists, or both will get her into trouble. She just can't help it. Her rage never comes out in angry shouts, but in
action. It can emerge in a rousing speech or essay, or expressed gracefully with martial arts. If you see Carnelian behaving like an emotionless robot, that's when you know she's absolutely
furious, and the targets of her hate are about to feel it.
Carnelian does not have an ordinary social life. The demands of long work hours, activism for the Anarchist cause, and her passion for learning and invention leave her no time for it. She is open-minded when it comes to the differing currents of thought within the Leftist and Progressive movements, advocating solidarity over ideological purity.
Interest
Anarchism, social science, science, technology, public speaking, writing, martial arts.
Power(s): (blending of Magic and Technology)
Power Jump/Limited Flight: When her armor is deployed, Carnelian can "leap tall buildings in a single bound," and alter her flight somewhat using her cape, which responds to her will. However, her flight is primarily ballistic, not a sustained, powered flight.
Laser Cannon/Rapier: The weapon that comes with her armor can serve as a laser rifle or a laser rapier (similar to a lightsaber, but without as much cutting power).
Armor-Enhanced Melee Combat: Carnelian's armor helps her fight by making her punches and kicks faster and more powerful (but cannot enhance other actions, such as running). Her cape is also prehensile and detachable, able to shield her against ordinary melee attacks.
Limitations:
Carnelian's powers are not accessible unless her armor is activated. It takes about a second for her to "transform." After about four minutes, forty-five seconds, Carnelian begins to hear a warning chime. From here she has about fifteen seconds to make her exit before her armor deactivates. If she "maxes out" her use of her armor's power in this way, it will require 24 hours to recharge. If she stops using it earlier, it will recharge faster. The shorter the period of use, the more quickly lost time/energy will be restored. If she uses it for less than five minutes, she will still have the remaining time (and gradually, more as her crystal recharges) available.
Skills
Wushu (Wing Chun style), historical European rapier fencing, including the use of the main gauche or cape in the off hand, writing, public speaking, design and invention.
Equipment
Alien Armor: Generated by the crystal on her bracelet, this is the source of Carnelian's powers. The thicker pieces (helmet, breastplate, pauldrons, bracers) are bulletproof, but the rest is not, so she would be unwise to stand in the path of a hail of bullets. It comes with a sidearm that "morphs" between a laser rifle and a laser rapier depending on Carnelian's intentions. Though the helmet covers her face, it provides a wrap-around VR HUD that assists with aiming and may have other functions she has not yet mastered (additional functions, if any, to be introduced only with GM permission). It produces a robotic, feminine voice when she speaks.
History
Carnelian was born into extreme poverty. So poor in fact, that she didn't even have a last name at birth. Her parents were sharecroppers, children of former slaves who lived and worked on a plantation outside of Cordele Georgia. She was their seventh and youngest child. During her early childhood, her parents struggled to provide their children with the means to escape the sharecropper's life. Their pride and joy was Carnelian's eldest brother Abraham, who was accepted into
Oberlin College when Carnelian was four years old.
She was a bright and inquisitive girl who took to school like she was born for it. It was a poorly-funded rural school for Black children, and she tore through the contents of its small collection of books and textbooks by the time she was seven. Among them were
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,
My Bondage and My Freedom, and
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. The great man's eloquence and fire, and the story of his life inspired Carnelian with a burning passion to be like him even when she still had to struggle with the bigger words in his writings.
For her seventh birthday, her father gave her an unusual, yet precious gift: a tattered newspaper front page dated on the day of her birth, which he had salvaged from the garbage. It featured a photograph of the
Graf Zeppelin arriving in Lakehurst after its first trans-Atlantic flight. Eyes alight with joy, Carnelian read the story to him, and for the first time he found out what the newspaper actually said.
From then on, Carnelian took every opportunity she could find to get access to books,
any books, old magazines and newspapers, especially anything to do with science or new inventions. Her mother volunteered to be a cleaning lady at the Carnegie library in Cordele, and brought books and periodicals home for her children whenever she got the chance. Sometimes she was able to write letters to Abraham, and get letters back. Her letters were filled with questions about science and nature. Sometimes, when Abraham could afford it, he'd buy a book or periodical and send it home. Carnelian was the most passionate of his younger siblings about books and learning, so most of them tended to be about subjects that interested her. The work of George Washington Carver, the lectures of Nikola Tesla, the solar energy collectors of
Augustin Mouchot, ongoing efforts by inventors working to build practical airships and flying machines...
When the opportunity presented itself, Carnelian's father and older brothers would go fishing as a way to supplement the family's meager diet. Sometimes Carnelian would accompany her father or a brother to help out, and clean the fish. Carnelian was a keen observer of nature. She was struck by the way trout were able to hold position in fast-moving currents while exerting almost no visible effort. When a letter to Abraham failed to yield an answer to the mystery from men of learning, she resolved to figure it out herself. Dripping berry juice into the water in an attempt to observe its flow only spooked the fish, so she whittled a trout-shaped form out of wood and used it for her "experiments." Careful dissections of trout heads resulted in anatomical drawings of their mouths and gill systems that became more accurate as Carnelian grew. She came to believe that trout generated thrust by forcing water through their gills, and that the Coanda Effect helped generate a counter-force to currents as water flowed across the tapered shape of their bodies.
She began to envision an airship built with similar streamlining, utilizing a "turbo-propulseur" similar to the one Coanda used for his
Coanda-1910 aircraft, except that her design called for air to be driven by pistons and forced through the shroud under pushing pressure rather than using an impeller, as she believed that would produce a smooth, non-turbulent airflow and more accurately mimic the effect of water squeezed through a trout's gills. Her plan called for hot air lift, utilizing the waste heat of the craft's engines to heat the air. Of course, building a model to test her hypothesis was far, far beyond her capabilities. She also lacked the mathematical skills and equations necessary to accurately model such a vessel's performance, or even find out for sure if it could "perform" at all.
When Carnelian was 12 years old, tragedy struck. Her brother Abraham came home, diploma in hand and full of dreams of a bright future. The sight of a confident,
educated young Black man was too much for the local Whites, especially when Abraham went to confront his family's landlord for cheating them out of their pay. He didn't come home. Pa went to go find him, and returned with his broken and bloodied body. While her family burst into anguished sobs, Carnelian silently turned, went into the kitchen, and returned with a carving knife. Standing stiff as a statue, she said one word: "Who?" Horrified, Carnelian's mother slapped her, then hugged her fiercely. "Don't you think it, girl! Don' even
think it!"
Later that night, her father came for her, handed her a fishing stick, and took her to the river. Her family didn't go night-fishing very often, but then, nothing was normal about her father's behavior. How could it be? They fished in silence for awhile. Carnelian had not said a word since her query for the names of her brother's murderers. Finally, there was a tug on her line, and she pulled out a big catfish. Any other night, she might have smiled with pride, grateful to God for the food the fish would provide; not on this night.
“That’s a mighty good catch girl,” her father said, finally speaking. Carnelian nodded solemnly. “Here now, let me see it.” Carnelian handed him the line and watched as her father unhooked the fish and threw it onto the ground.
“C’mere and look at this,” her father instructed. "I'm gonna show you somethin'...your grandpa showed me. Somethin'...I shoulda paid mind to. If'n I had...my boy'd still be livin'. So you
look, an' you larn it
good! Carnelian did as told, peering down at the fish. It flopped about, its mouth and gills opening and closing, trying to catch the night air. “In them waters,” Pa said, “this catfish be right at home. He can swim all he likes. He can eat as he pleases. He can raise a family. The waters is his home. And that there’s freedom. You understand?”
Carnelian's face stayed taciturn, with only a hint of a question in her brows. “But look at him now,” her father went on. “He out of his home. He done wandered where he shouldn’t be. He can’t swim. Can’t eat here. Can’t raise no family. Can’t even breathe.” Carnelian listened. The fish's glassy eyes caught the pale moonlight, seeming to stare back up at her. The opening and closing of its mouth looked as if it were trying to utter a plea for help. A wave of pity swept over her, and she started to reach for it to pick it up and throw it into the water, but Pa shoved her back.
Suddenly, her father grabbed a heavy rock and brutally bashed the fish's head, again and again and again, until there was only gobbets of flesh and smashed bone. A single eye, like a glass marble, still hung loosely in the remains of a socket torn from its ruined head, accusing her as it started to slowly glaze over. Carnelian was shaking now, eyes riveted on the spread of gore. Her father bent down and grabbed the fish by the tail, then held its ruined body up. He remained at eye level with Carnelian, his face serious and grim.
“Girl, dis fish just like you an' me. And this is what happens when we try to leave our home, looking for things that don’t concern us. Dat's why they killed our Abe. 'Cause...'cause I di'in't have the sense to...to keep him on de farm...to keep him in 'is
place. If I’d kept him here on the farm he woulda been all right. We has got to larn dat we ain’t like white folks, and never will be, and no amount o’ eddycation can make us be, and dat when we gits outten our place dere is gonna be trouble.
"When we go home, we gon' throw out your books an' all. An' you gon' grow up an' find a good man to love, an' raise you some li'l boys an' girls. Whenever you think 'bout readin' or learnin' 'bout stuff that ain't fo' us, or think 'bout fightin' the White folk...you think of yourself as this fish. And what we just did to it, is what White folks do to Negroes. You remember that in life, and it’ll serve you best.”
Carnelian stared in horror for a moment at the pained resignation in her father's face, tears streaming down her cheeks. Then her expression hardened, and she shook her head.
"Papa...fish don' leave they
place. That ain't why he's dead. Folk come for 'em 'cause they
hungry. An' take 'em
out o' they
place, an' eat 'em, whenever they decide to.
That's what White folk do to us. Ol' man Boatwright keeps th' knuckles of a man he helped lynch right there in th' front window o' his shop, an' ever'body jus walks on by, or goes in t' buy a cut o' meat. If'n I 'stay in my place,' he gon' jus' keep 'em there, an' his son an' his son an' his. An' it ain't
never gon' stop. They ain't
never gon' stop the killin' long as nobody
makes 'em. 'Cause they
hungry.
"It weren't Jethro put Emma in a fam'ly way. He jus'...took the blame so's they could marry an' she don't gotta live in shame. It was th' McCallister boys, an' they friends." Pa's eyes widened in horror. "She told me...when I aks her why...why some o' the White men
look at me the way they do. Like they's
hungry." She looked back down at the fish. "I'll
die 'fore I'm their
meat. I ain't gon' make no baby--
no baby--'till I can make a world where ain't
nobody gon' tell him, tell her where they
place is!" she said, shaking with rage.
After some discussion and argument at home, it was decided that the family would save whatever money they could, going without food as necessary, until they could send their children North one by one, to look for work in the factories. And any money the kids could save, would to toward helping pay the next one's way. Carnelian would go first, even though she was the youngest: none of the others' first thought upon seeing Abraham's body had been to go get a weapon. Pa washed Abraham's bloodied head, dressed him in his best suit, then buried him. Carnelian struggled to hold her hate in, keep her head down, and mind her 'place' until her family could scrape together enough money for a train ticket.
After what seemed like an eternity, Carnelian was put on a train for Chicago with only a spare dress and her small handful of books, one more drop in the tide of the
Second Great Migration of African Americans headed North. Her resolve to fight injustice had not ebbed in the least, but at this point in her life she resolved to adopt a strategy that reconciled her parents' pleas and orders to stay out of trouble with the revolutionary zeal that burned hot within: she would keep her head down as her parents wanted--until she could develop a thoroughly thought-out, careful
plan.
In Chicago Carnelian found to her dismay that the "free" North had its own system of oppression,
industrial style. She found work in a garment factory: long hours of relentless drudgery in exchange for a pittance. Yet, she also found something she hadn't expected: a mass movement of
allies, led by a new hero and role model,
Lucy Parsons. Carnelian joined the International Workers of the World. When she wasn't working or pursuing her scientific interests, she started to attend rallies and hand out Anarchist literature. Luckily, she was able to stay a step ahead of the cops and avoid arrest.
A little more than a month into her new life, she received an envelope in the mail, sent from Georgia. Expecting a letter from her family, she tore it open and drew out the contents. Inside was a newspaper print of a photograph...of her mother, father, and siblings, all hanging from trees amidst a gathering of well-dressed townspeople in their Sunday best. There was no letter or note, only the picture. She would never know if it had been sent to inflict pain, or warn her against visiting her home.
Carnelian would not allow herself to cry. It was time to learn how to
fight. From among the workers she rubbed shoulders with at the IWW, she sought out anyone who could teach her fighting skills. From a Spanish immigrant who worked on the docks, she studied the
deztreza style of rapier combat, and took in first-hand accounts of fighting for Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War. From workers in a Chinese laundry, she learned Wing Chun.
Years passed. World War II came and went. Carnelian worked, contributed articles to Parsons' magazine,
The Liberator. Taking the surname Douglass in honor of Frederick, she threw herself wholeheartedly into the Anarchist and Labor movements. Though she dreamed of going to college to study science, tuition was far beyond her means. Furthermore, her goal of creating a patient plan began to give way to wanting the Revolution, and wanting it
now. Carnelian practiced her skills in writing and oratory, gradually eliminating the poor Southern Black patois from her speech. Thanks in part to her martial arts training, she developed poise and grace. She was not ashamed of her sharecropper heritage, and had no qualms about including it in her speeches and articles. It was just a cold, hard fact: people like Frederick Douglass, Lucy Parsons, W. E. B. DuBois and George Washington Carver were able to stand against the tide of racism and even gain a degree of admiration from White folk through articulate speech and upper class dress and mannerisms; people like her family remained beneath contempt.
Class was the invisible prison designed to keep all but a few toiling in squalor forever. To have a chance at freeing the masses, Carnelian would first have to free herself.
Despite her best efforts though, the dream of a working class united against the powerful remained elusive. Black migrants like herself were forced into competition with the local Irish community for jobs and housing, resulting in rising ethnic tensions.
For my White brothers in the working class, I beg you to think on this one question: Whose interest is served when White working men turn their hate toward Negro working men, and Negro working men turn their hatred toward Whites? I can tell you this: it is not the interest of working men! Take a moment and imagine what would have come to pass if somehow, we Negroes were able to find fair work for fair pay in the South, and not a one of us had come North. Do you think the bosses would not simply bring in Italians, or Slavs, or Chinese, or even greater numbers of Irishmen, so as to place you in your present desperate state of fighting over the crumbs from their tables? Of course they would! That is their interest: cheap labor, as cheap as they can get it. As Spartacus knew, the other gladiator thrown into the ring with him was not his true enemy. Rather, it was the men who put gladiators in rings who were the mortal enemies of both. So it is for us as well.
--Carnelian Douglass, "If There Were No Negroes," The Liberator, February 1, 1946
Despite her best efforts, the cause of Anarchism was already on the wane when she joined it. The labor movement itself was purging itself of radical Leftist elements and supporting President Truman's Cold War policies. Though she fervently opposed Soviet tyranny as a betrayal of the Revolution, she found herself becoming more and more alienated from the very people she sought to fight for. Even so, she joined in sympathy with the
Strike Wave of 1945 - 1946, putting her combat skills to use in street fighting.
She was arrested on charges of assault and incitement to riot. The police searched her flat, finding among other things, her most recent design drawings for her airship, and other invention ideas. A military intelligence investigator was brought in. Her interrogators demanded to know how she'd stolen what had to be sensitive military secrets, and where she'd stolen them from. Despite a brutal interrogation, she insisted that she'd created them herself. She was finally allowed to demonstrate that the drawing style was hers, as was the handwriting in the descriptions. Copies of the drawings were sent "upstairs," but no one knew of any secret project that corresponded to the designs. However, the inquiry did bring Carnelian to the attention of highly-placed individuals in America's top-secret military research and development programs.
The authorities decided that a public trial of an articulate and charismatic young woman could prove to be an embarrassment if the press took her side, or worse, make a martyr of her. With the airship drawings as "evidence," they arranged to have her quietly committed to an insane asylum instead. Surely, a young Negro woman
had to be insane, if she thought she could concoct designs for airships and energy production! It was not long though, before exceptionally muscular men in eerily identical black suits came for her, and removed her from the asylum.
On July 8th, 1947, the U.S. Army Air Corps had recovered what appeared to be debris from a crashed alien spacecraft outside Roswell, New Mexico. The recovered objects seemed as much magical as technological, and efforts to reverse-engineer it proved fruitless for the most part. Some elements of the technology seemed to respond directly to consciousness. Initial experiments were performed with elite soldier volunteers of unimpeachable loyalty. Despite tantalizing indications that the alien technology offered a route to superhuman abilities, the soldier volunteers died on contact, went insane, or self-destructed in various ways.
The secret organization in charge of the experimentation, known as Majestic-12, decided it would be necessary to try a more gradual, methodical approach utilizing expendable subjects. Carnelian fit the bill perfectly. She was brought in to their research facility in what would come to be known as Area 51, and subjected to a thorough battery of medical and psychological tests. To her horror, many of the scientists studying her were
German, high-ranking Nazis brought to America as part of Operation Paperclip. This destroyed what little faith she had in America. Just as the South had managed to restore white supremacy after the end of Reconstruction, so it seemed that the Nazis, having lost the war, were winning the peace by infecting and taking over America's national security establishment. Carnelian resolved to resist with every fiber of her being. Not that the researchers were particularly concerned about her consent.
Finally ready to begin in earnest, the scientists began exposing Carnelian to various items of alien technology. One object, a crystal attached to eerily moving tendrils of metal, glowed in proximity to her. When allowed to touch her, it wrapped its tendrils around her arm and attached itself firmly. Carnelian screamed in agony and terror as incomprehensible alien thoughts entered her mind, while living-metal fibers inserted themselves into her flesh and started to grow. Pressed beyond her limits, she went into a coma. The researchers did their best to study her, but could not make sense of what was happening.
One day, the crystal re-shaped itself and its metallic components to become an Art Nouveau style bracelet:
Just as suddenly as she'd lost consciousness, she awakened. Carnelian did her best to walk the line between denying any useful help to the MJ-12 agents, and getting herself dissected. She played for time, while she tried to process what had happened to her, gain and understanding and rapport with the alien technology growing inside her, and plot her escape. At last, opportunity presented itself. Carnelian surprised her captors by touching the gem of her bracelet, causing strange light to emerge from and cover her. When it faded, she was wearing alien armor. Using its powers, she was able to break out of confinement and escape.
She has since made her way to Geld, where she lives in the slums and tries to organize an Anarchist movement there. Where there is injustice that cannot be fought in the usual way, she becomes Black Flag and takes the fight to the enemy.
Other