Yet another old account I'm rehashing.
Another member of the mysterious circle of nine that makes up the Black Hand's leadership, directly under the Dark Triad that rules the organization as a whole, Count Bleck, real name Klaudius von Sturmheiser, is the current head of the Black Hand's Brotherhood of the Scorpion. Hailing from another universe, Sturmheiser was brought into the Black Hand when his organization was subsumed into it, and upon proving his power, was made into a member of the circle of nine after killing the old one. Compared to such old standbys as Vorzhilok, Yuri, and Ishmael, he's something of a newbie, but to mistake him as a weak player would be a very dangerous move indeed.
He concerns himself with the frontline military of the Black Hand first and foremost, a job that he takes pride in and by all accounts, does very well in. Fond of social darwinism, he allows those beneath him to squabble for positions and power so that only the fittest remain in place. This not only weeds out those not worthy of their positions, but also ensures that he has little threat to his lofty position as part of the Black Hand's upper most echelons of power as his underlings are too busy with one another to even consider trying to oust him. Such a state of affairs suits Klaudius very well, and there is no indication that he will change any of it.
As his branch of the Black Hand is one of it's frontline combat organizations, he aligns himself most closely to Duke Kargoth, to whom he most frequently answers to. Bleck respects the Duke's military insight and acknowledges that Trodenstoff has his own methods of keeping his underlings in line and that Sturmheiser has his own. Klaudius is not an abhorrently evil man, but he is known to be quite unemphatic at the best of times and is quite willing to spend a large amount of lives to accomplish his objectives. That is not to say he doesn't have his own sense of honor, but he prefers to err on the side of discretion over valor.
On the subject of Sturmheiser's origins, the Count was the head of a villainous organization called the Blitzheer, a holdover from the second world war in his timeline. He had gained a portion of the powers of Tartarus from his universe after drinking from a magic well, granting him incredible might and power of a divine nature and bolstering his might as a son of the scorpion god Vulvrak and a daughter of the spider goddess Lolth, but he always considered his mind to be his most valuable asset. Sturmheiser was fiendishly intelligent, designing multiple highly complex devices and elaborate schemes. He very nearly conquered the world, but the Black hand came and subsumed his organization into their own.
He was made a member of the inner circle, a lieutenant of the current head of the brotherhood of the scorpion. Deciding that he would not settle for being a lackey, he quickly devised a coup in the Brotherhood of the Scorpion and managed to kill and take the powers of his predecessor. Vrakmul, impressed, allowed him to become the replacement member of the circle of nine and transferred full control over the brotherhood over to the Count. The Count soon proved that he was a formidable military and technological mind and overcame the stigmatism that came with being newly risen into such a high position by demonstrating how effective he was as the Black Hand corrupted his home universe and eventually brought the Icon to it.
From then on, he had gone to countless more realities, each time proving to be a deadly asset to the Black Hand as he helped to lead the armies of the Cult to victory after victory in a billion billion different universes. In this universe, he takes his job of managing the brotherhood of the scorpion very seriously, knowing full well that it is one of the three main combat divisions of the Black hand's nine sects, along with the LEGION, and the Sorority of the Spider. He kept a cordial relationship with the other eight leaders, and while he trusted Vorzhilok, he still preferred to design his own technology, magic, and psionics for his sect.
Like much of the Black hand, he is aware that the Cult owes no true allegiance to the Icon, but to the designs of the Dark Triad. This suits him just fine, as despite his heavy ties to divinity, he was always something of an agnostic when it came to religious affairs. Though he still puts on the air of being a fanatical follower of the Icon to outsiders to help keep up the Black Hand's great facade. In this universe, he often involves himself in the Black hand's affairs with supernatural entities in addition to his duties as leader of the Scorpions, and takes a great deal of interest in divine artifacts as well as new pieces of technology.
As he's one of the more presentable faces of the Black hand, he often goes on diplomatic missions, which many other members of the circle of nine are completely unsuited for. In such missions, he tends to be somewhat reserved and attempts to put on a friendly face, but he does try to impress upon them that generally speaking, he could snap the person he's negotiating with like a twig if he wanted to, before they could even think of their next action. This leads well to ensuring that the Black Hand is the benefited party in such negotiations. Being able to smash apart the planet Earth by stamping on the ground hard enough naturally tends to lead to being quite intimidating.
In the nU reality, he was instrumental in helping the Nazis rise to power, and provided them with the technology and resources they needed to start their space program and form the current cosmic Reich the Nazis still hold to this day; occupying thousands of worlds and subjecting them to the brutal treatment that only the acolytes of Hitler could provide. Out of the members of the Council of Nine, he has the most interest in Earth's affairs, or more correctly; Germany's. He's considering rigging the voting process in modern day Germany to bring a fascist or Monarchist power in play, or perhaps even leading the Space Nazis back to earth and conquering the earth under the Swatzika.
He himself wouldn't mind being crowned the new Kaiser of Germany if the Black Hand were to fall, but given Vrakmul's intolerance towards unsuccessful rebellion, Klaudius keeps such thoughts to himself, as he is quite keen on not being erased from reality by the Lord of Doom striking his truename from the omniverse itself. He considers himself a German patriot, and has always meddled in Earth's German affairs, helping to guide them to being the mightiest power in Europe, if not militarily; then culturally or economically.
Powers and abilities
Fighting skill: As someone who has been a combatant for enough time to have operated in a billion billion universes, Sturmheiser has had more than enough time to bring up his fighting ability to truly tremendous heights, having mastered a series of styles directly suited to his unique powers and physiology.
Intelligent: One does not enter the Circle of nine without being a fiendishly intelligent supergenius, and Klaudius is no exception. He is superhumanly intelligent and has demonstrated great tactical, strategic, economic, political, mechanical, magical, scientific, and psionic knowledge and skill.
Super strength: The count is tremendously strong, easily able to lift a jupiter sized mass or destroy an earth sized planet with a single punch with enough force to send the superheated shards flying away at three quarters of the speed of light. He can also focus the impact of his blows to concentrate all force on a single target for massive damage. He could snap Captain America's shield Titanium-Uru-Vibranium shield apart with some effort.
Durability: The Count's skin alone is tougher than Uru. It takes nothing less than planet busting attacks to even hurt Klaudius. His bones are even stronger than that. His insides are as tough as his outsides, foiling those who would seek to defeat him with internal damage. He is also immune to any and all diseases and poisons and has no need to eat, sleep, or breathe.
Healing factor: The count is in possession of a significant healing factor (as fast as the Lizard's was in TAS) which allow him to recover from minor injuries almost instantly and from major ones in a matter of seconds. Decapitation however, still kills him outright.
Truenaming: Count Bleck has his own knowledge and skill with the arcane art of truenaming, in both cosmicspeak and in high draconic shouts. With these powers, he gains access to yet further reality warping, though his power in this language certainly isn't an equal to the multiversal level of power Vrakmul wields.
Speed: The count can move at up to eight times the speed of light with reflexes approximately sixty four times better than those of the "average" person who can move at these speeds which when paired with his danger sense, makes him infuriatingly difficult to even hit.
Power of Tartarus: The power of Tartarus allows Klaudius a tremendous degree of Pyrokinesis, Cryokinesis, Sonokinesis, and Umbralkinesis, giving him titanic levels of control over fire and darkness, which he can even shape into constructs or draw upon to add to his power. Additionally, he is capable of calling upon the mysterious force of hellfire, Negative energy (which fuels the undead), and is naturally in tune with underworld related magic. With the power of Tartarus, those who are associated with "bad" afterlives such as Demons can be instantly mind controlled by Klaudius as long as they do not surpass him too greatly in power, he can also exert this control over the undead and spirits in the afterlife. His control over these elements is on a planetary scale at least. And of course, he is immune to being attacked with heat, cold, sound, hellfire, darkness, or negative energy.
(Tartarus continued) He can charge his attacks with these energies to deal significantly more damage. This also makes him immune to life drains, makes him biologically immortal and thus immune to premature aging, and death effects such as death touches. He can also deal out these effects, draining out the life from his foes, vampirically adding their life force to his own, strengthening and healing him across the board, or simply killing them outright with the touch of death (it can be resisted by the sufficiently tough though.) His power over souls also allows him to consume or destroy the souls of those he slays, obliterating them completely by denying them an afterlife. Beings comrpised of spirits such as Demons, Angels, Mordons, and Slaadi can similarly be obliterated by Klaudius with a thought by destroying the essence that makes up their forms.
Arachnid power: The Count gains more benefits from his other divine parentage, such as his skin acting like an exo-skeleton, meaning internal damage is extremely difficult to inflict without breaching his epidermis, a command over arachnids of all kinds, the ability to create tremendously strong psionic web constructs, the power to add lethal and insanely virulent poisons to his strikes, a power to manifest eight spider legs and a scorpion tail from his back which can fire forth deadly divine energy as well as cut and pierce most objects. He can crawl on walls, and turn his hands into pincers capable of immense shearing force. It also allows him to stick to surfaces, which is more useful for making highly difficult to escape grapples than crawling walls. His clawed spider legs, pincers, fangs, and stinger can pierce through anything short of the infinitely strong material divine steel without effort, and are capable of catching and deflecting divine steel weapons and matter disruptors. This is why he carries no weapons.
The Nega-principle: A power granted to him by Kargoth, this power gives Bleck the ability to fire homing beams from his eyes that can twist and turn to follow a foe no matter where they go, capable of doing all sorts of effects from matter alteration to outright removing someone from reality to just plain zapping someone with a metric crap ton of energy, the Nega-principle's scale is that of a planetary level, allowing him to alter or erase whole worlds. The beams move faster than light and can teleport to keep up with teleporting foes and cross through entire dimensions. They can also be used to enhance the powers of his allies by allowing them to tap into the strength of the lower planes, grant them new powers,, or be used to teleport his foes away or into other dimensions to remove them from the battlefield.
Senses: The count's senses are all enhanced to an unimaginable degree, capable of seeing in any part of the spectrum, hearing any frequency, feeling slight pressure alterations, tasting the subtlest of flavors, and smelling the faintest of odors, as well as a special "life sense" that tells him about the power level, condition, and type of being he is analyzing.
Equipment (All are solid to incorporeal creatures and can self repair)
Armour of the recluse: A special suit made of a black hand version of divine steel, Sturmheiser is clad in virtually indestructible armor made in a pseudo-greco-roman style. Additionally, he places special enhanced vibranium plates underneath his armor to cancel out concussive force. Unlike many suits of divine steel though, his armour does have gaps such as on his biceps, elbows, feet, hands, underarm, calves, back of his thighs, knees, upper thighs, etc, which are only covered by the enhanced vibranium, treated to be as strong as an adamantium-vibranium-necrodermis alloy, though it is capable of rapid self repair. The armor's enhancements defend him against space and time warping, and as the materials used in it's construction are non-magnetic, he is safe from such powers.
Helmet of Arachnus: This helmet, as tough as his armor, grants the Count protection from telepathic assaults as well as a large degree of psionic resistance. It also allows him to use high level psionic assaults, with deadly usage of Telekinesis, Telepathy, Biomancy, Energomancy, and Divinitation on a planetary scale. The helmet also blocks out incorporeal and intangilable enemies who try to reach into his brain. The helmet perfectly absorbs concussive force, rendering that strategy with dealing with armoured foes useless. It also allows him to passively pick up on the thoughts of those around him.
Robes of the Scorpion: This majestic robe gives Klaudius the ability to utilize powerful magic on a similar scale to his psionic ability, as well as granting him heavy duty spell resistance and the power to fly and teleport (to anywhere in the universe, to other universes, and to other dimensions) under his own power as well as the power to turn intangilable or invisible at will. The robes also grant him and his equipment defense against matter, energy, biological, and reality manipulation. The robe is seemingly indestructible, with even divine steel weapons not managing to cut it. As it also perfectly absorbs incoming force, it is very useful as a shield.
Weaknesses
Positive Energy: Due to his massive connection to the lower planes and Negative energy, he is harmed by positive energy as if he were undead, and has no special resistances against it. This also means that sufficiently powerful users of positive energy can "turn" him as if he were any other form of undead.
Light: Due to his connection to the darkness, weaponized light energy is especially effective against him, doing vastly more damage than it otherwise would to someone of his durability. This does indeed mean that he has a weakness to lasers.
Personality
The Count is a shrewd if slightly bombastic individual who enjoys making a show, though he rarely allows his desire for grandeur to outweigh his own caution and desire for victory. While he is usually unemphatic and callous, he's not irredeemably evil and is perfectly capable of kindness. He has something of a soft spot for children and finds bringing himself to fight those under the age of majority to be very difficult due to his fatherly complex. That being said, he does have limits. While he prefers to keep to his work, he still likes to keep company with the fairer sex, and has a healthy number of consorts.
Traits
Height: 6'9
Mass: 247 lbs
Eye colour: irises are yellow, rest of the eye is burning red.
Skin tone: Caucasian.
Ethnicity: German (Prussian)
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Species: Primally empowered Human Demi-god (3/4ths divine). For all intents and purposes, he's a full god.
Affiliations: Cult of the Black Hand, Brotherhood of the Scorpion.
Sexuality: Heterosexual.
Age: Incalculable.
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