Both of today’s characters are from the cast of the Hateful King, one of the things that has come out of Super Sunday that I most want to write. Apart from the original post of the guy, other members of his cast can be seen here.

To recap: The Hateful King is a demonic ruler who is trying to conquer a contemporary European nation called Thrakodacia, ruled by the noble King Balus.

The Duelist

Mystically endowed with extra limbs, the man who goes only by “the Duelist” is the Hateful King’s official assassin. Skilled with all manner of weaponry, but especially swords. Though he uses this skill in service of a particularly leader ruler, he considers himself a man of decency and ethics. Where most assassins would consider stealth and subtlety a positive, the Duelist would not dream of killing someone who doesn’t know he is there for them. When confronting a target, he will declare openly his intentions and the fact that the Hateful King wants them dead. Even with this moment of advance warning, the targets are rarely able to change the fact of their oncoming demise.

This guy got the baldness thing going. And not even a nice baldness. I feel like most of the Noble Sword Guys in fiction are classically handsome, so I didn’t want to go that way. Sure, it also annoys me when bad guys have to be uglier than good guys, but I can’t solve every individual problem with every character, can I?

Alina the Eagle

Alina is the leader of King Balus’s special forces unit, the Knights of Thrakodacia. Though they are, in most ways, a contemporary military unit, there is an element of the supernatural to them as there is in all things in Thraokodacia. In the case of Alina, it is the magic flying carpet she owns. Giving her the power of flight, and thus the ability to strike from the sky, the carpet has earned her the nickname “the Eagle”. Leading the Knights, she is responsible for holding off the Hateful King’s forces and advising her King on the best strategies for opposing the villain.

Those who know me will know that I’m into magic carpets. I don’t even know why. But because of that, the idea of a modern soldier riding on a magic carpet was one of the very first ideas I had when I mentally put together the whole Hateful King thing. Alina herself would have been in the first Supporting Cast thing, if I were more comfortable drawing a magic carpet. One can only hope that if I ever told these stories for real, I’d have an artist who can do them justice.

The Efmons were, as I have mentioned before, a family of evil monster people who lost a war and fled to other dimensions.

Thenner Efmon

When the Efmons had to flee, they left behind the rest of their species. Sure, they look human (moreso before their mutation ritual admittedly), but they’re actually a humanlike species that comes from a fantasy universe. This means that they aren’t biologically compatible with the humans on any of the alternate Earths they come across. If they want to have their family line continue, they need to figure how to solve that. Thenner Efmon is in charge of the family’s mystical genetics project. Using the technology they found on one of the alien worlds they’ve conquered, Thenner has begun cloning and gene-splicing experiments that, when combined with the Mutation Ritual that the family already used, could create a horde of Efmon Super Soldiers that would definitely be a bad thing for everyone else.

Kallis Efmon

When Kallis underwent his mutation ritual and turned into a powerful dinosaur-looking guy, he was thrilled. If Thalamaya had deemed him worthy to recieve such power, it must mean that he was destined for great victories in battle. But then the War was fought and the tide turned against Thalamaya’s forces. Kallis took this pretty hard. It seemed like his destiny had been taken away. Still, his service in the war left Kallis a respected member of the family, and he is given a vote in family decisions. Whenever any such decision arises, Kallis always sides with the choice that will lead the family to new battles and new conquests. Even when others were conviced it would be better for the family to slow down and build up their strength, Kallis wants nothing more than to find new worlds to rule, so that he can achieve the destiny he wants more than anything else.

The Devaluer of Souls

Most devils are into getting souls, everyone knows that. But a lot of humans don’t want to sell their souls. They consider them pretty valuable or whatever. That’s where the Devaluer of Souls comes in. It’s his job to drive down the value that people have for their souls. There’s a lot of ways that can be done. In the past, he’s tried to start philosophical movements that encourage people to think of human life as a worthless, meaningless affair, so why not sell your soul? He’s obfuscated the idea of eternity in people’s minds, so that they won’t understand or appreciate the commitment that selling ones soul really signifies. But suppose some enterprising devil wants the soul of some particular person. That’s when the Devaluer is sent in to do his best work. He will haunt his target, insulting and terrifying them until they think their lives are things from which to escape. When he does his work, people can’t sell their souls fast enough.

But if he’s not the one buying the souls, what does the Devaluer get out of the deal? Why would he do this for all the other devils? He may not get souls, but they pay him in the next best thing: Cash Money! The Devaluer likes to spend his free time lounging in vacation resorts on Earth, and he needs money to keep relaxing in style.

Second-Hand Simmons

Don’t point out that it’s actually a third hand. She’s heard it before and she is getting annoyed with it.

Corrine Simmons has a strange hand-like energy construct that she can control with the skill and dexterity as though it were her natural limb. This secondary right hand, which appeared for no reason known to Simmons (but which may involve certain Space Gods), can stretch to a length of dozens of feet and can lift a car with ease. Unfortunately, Simmons has decided to use this gift for crime. When you can pick up ATMs and carry them away, who is going to stop you? Well, Natalie Archibald‘s police task force, that’s who.

It wasn’t intentional when I started that the vast majority of human characters in the Valia/Space Gods portion of my character creation would be black, but I’m gonna roll with it. If a lot of white characters had accumulated together in a superhero story, barely anyone would notice. In an ideal world, that could happen with a black cast too.

There has to be some good guys in the timestream right? Someone who isn’t using time travel for their own wants at the risk of reality itself?

Inspector Lacuna

Inspector Lacuna is the head of a precinct of Time-travel Cops who police history to make prevent temporal infractions from tearing the universe apart. This is, of course, a pretty noble goal. Unfortunately for her, the team she has assembled isn’t particularly well suited for the task.

Detective Muhandae

Detective Muhandae has seen it all. He’s a world weary gumshoe who has been solving time travel-related crimes since before he was born (because of time travel, you see). He was a good man, once. Young and strong. But as he gets older, he’s getting tired. It’s become a lot easier to accept a bribe than book a perp, easier to turn a blind eye than follow a lead. He’s not really a bad guy, but he sure doesn’t care as much as he should.

Agent 12:00

Agent 12:00 is a genetically enhanced supersoldier from the future. There’s no worry about her getting too tired to do the job. She will pursue a temporal fugitive like a machine. Unfortunately, she is also as ruthless and uncaring as a machine. She doesn’t care about the good her job does so much as catching the bad guys and she’s perfectly happy to run over civilians that get in her way.

Tobias Tock

Constable Tobias Tock really is a genuinely nice guy. He’s brave and noble and kind. Sadly, he’s also dumber than a truck. Even having worked on the job for decades, he still gets confused about how time travel works. On more than one occasion he has had to stop and ask a criminal to explain the crime to him, which usually gives the chance for the bad guys to just lie and get away. Still, his heart is in the right place. Maybe that counts for something.

Time Venturer

So, if the Time-Travel Cops aren’t good enough, maybe someone from outside the organization can do a better job. How about a superhero? The Time Venturer dedicated his life to holding the timeline together and stopping time-villains from messing things up. But he died. In a time explosion. And his paraphernalia was scattered throughout history and ironically wound up providing a lot of those villains with the very means they needed to travel through time in the first place.

It’s like this: the timeline is screwed. You’ll probably want to be getting out of there.

Last week was the first taste of some of the time travellers messing up the timeline for everyone else. Well, here’s some more of them:

Dr. Von Eiskammer

When this scientist saw his country being taken over by fascists, he decided he wanted no part of it. He invented a cryogenics chamber that would allow him to escape to the future. The only problem with that is that freezing oneself only gets them to travel to the future. If the scientist wants to get back in time to get home and maybe overthrow his enemies, he’s going to have to find another way. For example, he could steal someone else’s time machine. Well, with no better ideas, he’ll go with that one.

Timmy Mallory

In the 80s, this precocious young boy was rummaging through his attic and found a case belonging to his grandfather. Inside there was a digital watch with a button that, when activated, allowed him to travel to entirely different time periods. Being a child, he had no compunctions about using his new powers to just play around and do whatever he wants. Like stealing candy or whatever kids do.

(It has been mentioned that this kid looks like little PDR. I was going more specifically for a reference to the kid from Time Bandits, but hey, whatever. Little PDR was a pretty iconic 80s kid.)

Braininajar Jones

In the future, sometimes people will be brains in jars. This particular brain in a jar has access to a mental projection machine that allows her to send her consciousness through time itself into the bodies of people in the past or future. This allows her to alter the timestream in her favor, gathering a veritable empire of riches. Pretty good for a brain in a jar.

Ghuk

This cavewoman who stumbled across the remains of a broken time machine has decided to explore the future, though where her time machine takes her is mostly not a destination of her choosing. Though she likes the easy lifestyle that technology brings, she is generally not a fan of the clutter and confusion of the future. And with her temper, when she gets unhappy, other people find out very quickly and painfully.

The Khonsu Kid

Time travel has seriously messed with the timestream. As a result there are time periods that shouldn’t even exist, called Anachroclasm eras. For example, this gunslinger is from an ancient Egypt that is full of cowboys and robots. Naturally, to survive in that sort of environment, he’s had to resort to some underhanded acts like robbery. Thankfully, crime pays: During one heist he discovered a fancy hat (not pictured) that allows the wearer to traverse the timestream. Very handy for avoiding the Pharaoh’s lawmen.

Jikan Jingai

From another Anachroclasm Era, this one an Ice Age where criminal shoguns and their samurai mobs thrive while prohibition offers them opportunities, the Jikan Jingai uses time travel to get products from other eras and bring them home for sale on all sorts of black markets. If something is banned or can’t be produced in this freezing world, it just makes sense to go to another period to steal what you want, right?

Time Hobo

The Time Hobo doesn’t have his own time machine or access to any time warps or anything like that. But somehow, he finds his way around the timesteam. From the days of the dinosaur to the distant future, this eternal anachronism has a tendency to just turn up at the strangest times looking for whatever work he can get. Admittedly, he has a tendency to blow his earnings on get rich quick schemes (or wine), but he never stays down for long.

Okay, so that was a bunch more people who are messing with the timeline in their own interests. Isn’t there anyone out there who wants to ensure that history isn’t accidentally destroyed? Next week, we’ll meet the good guys (such as they are).