| “ | You know who I am. I'm the greatest and most powerful of Lord Recluse's lieutenants - Black Scorpion! | „ |
| ~ Black Scorpion; City of Villains |
Black Scorpion is the cybernetic henchman of Lord Recluse and a sort of bouncer for Lord Recluse's stronghold of Grandville. He is the base concept of the opportunistic villain who is just in it for the money and the violence. He is also by far the stupidest member of the Arachnos Patrons.
Background[]
Ernesto Rodriguez was a highly experienced thief in South America that was hired to deal with super powered threats that most other mercenaries would or could not deal with. He was by all accounts just another heavy handed mercenary until he was hired to break into a lab in the US southwest. The lab owner was a scientist called Leonard Bowen. Bowen was known as a brilliant but eccentric scientist so when Ernesto and his team raided the lab, they met with highly advanced technological opposition. Ernesto himself used the bloodbath that was his team's attempted raid to sneak in and steal one of Bowen's most advanced projects, the Black Scorpion Armor Suit. He found Bowen and tortured him for information on how to use the suit and then killed him upon learning everything. From that moment on, Ernesto was a one man army and began taking bigger and bigger jobs now that he had his own super suit and no team he needed to share the profits with. From that day onward Ernesto started going by his suit's title, "Back Scorpion"
Black Scorpion eventually came to the attention of Lord Recluse and then was hired for his services. Upon seeing the vast amount of man-power, technology and money Arachnos possessed Black Scorpion decided that rather than work for Lord Recluse in the short term he wanted a much more permanent position in Lord Recluse's ranks. He was hired for his talents, but it was his brutality that landed him a position as one of Lord Recluse's right-hands as a Patron of Arachnos. On one of his mission runs, Black Scorpion encountered a techno-junkie named Tamura Shirai or 'Silver Mantis' as she went by. Silver Mantis had a metal fetish and enjoyed stealing high quality metals to use in metal fusion surgery. Silver Mantis had far more than piercings, she had replaced several bones with metal stand-ins through elective surgery. Like him, she was willing to do anything for the right upgrade and was an outright villain just looking for a fix to her addiction, so Black Scorpion proposed a team up. Sliver Mantis quickly became Black Scorpion's sidekick and almost as quickly his love-interest, though it is never clearly stated whether the two are actually in love or just each other's sex toys off hours as super-villains. Aside from money, Black Scorpion gets many free upgrades whenever available. Black Scorpion has no qualms about what part of his body or soul he needs to give up to install just one more piece of advanced hardware on his suit. Black Scorpion is also far from loyal to Lord Recluse - he takes bribes on a fairly regular basis to sell out information to other villains groups like the Crey. However as most of the information he is privy to is low level and Lord Recluse's Arbiters keep a close eye on him, as of yet all of Black Scorpion's "cunning double crosses" have been child's play for Lord Recluse to have resolved quickly. None of Lord Recluse's Patrons are completely loyal to him and each would turn on him the second they had the opportunity but thanks to in-fighting between them, the four are far more concerned with out-doing each-other than challenging Lord Recluse. For this end Black Scorpion serves his function well; Ghost Widow considers him too stupid to hold any respect, Scirocco considers him to be far too brutal to associate with and Captain Mako considers both Black Scorpion's efficiency any viciousness to be sub-par. Lord Recluse considers Black Scorpion to be the perfect muscle-for-hire as he is strong, brutal, opportunistic and above all too stupid to ever usurp his position.
Powers and Abilities[]
Black Scorpion's suit gives him amazing super strength and heavy resistance to almost all forms of assault. The tail and claws of his suit can shoot deadly lasers as well as crush most anything that gets in his way making him a threat both in melee and long range combat. He has the loyalty of Arachnos's robotic creations and is programed in as a higher priority command than the other Patrons of Arachnos to the many robotic drones and cyber-mutants. His two biggest weaknesses are ghosts and psychics as both psychic and negative energy pass through his suit's defense effortlessly making his fellow Patron Ghost Widow a major threat he dislike putting up with.
Arachnos Drones[]
The faction within Arachnos most loyal to Black Scorpions are the Aracno Drones and Tarantulas. In part because Lord Recluse has ordered them to be programed to serve Black Scorpion in combat and in part because few to any human soliders have any sort of respect for Black Scorpion, making the robots programing the closest thing to loyalty given. The standard robotic drones of Arachnos have precise radar senses that can pick up anything in the area as well as highly destructive lasers and flight capabilities. The Arachno-bots are miniature spiderlike tanks
Arachno-Bots
equiped with rail guns and cannons. Then there are the Tarantulas, car sized spiderlike robots equiped with deadly acids, poison sprays and dangerously sharp claws as well as high quality frames. The last and most advanced group of Arachnos drones are the Tarantula Mistresses, Arachnos psychics that have undergone biological mutation and cybernetic augmentations, the Tarantula Mistresses are just as powerful as a Tarantula bot but with psychic abilities as well and human minds that can adept much easier and quicker to new situations than their robotic counterparts.
Gallery[]
