Victory Harben

Origin

The daughter of Gretchen von Harben and Nadok of the Voraki tribe, Victory von Harben was born in Pellucidar, a world of dinosaurs and Stone Age tribes at the Earth's core, on the eve of a great battle between the human-led Federated Kingdoms of Pellucidar and the winged reptiles known as the Mahars. From a young age, she studied under the tutelage of the scientific genius Abner Perry and her godfather Jason Gridley, from whom she adopted a love of science. At the age of eleven, she encountered the ancient Mahar queen Tu-al-sa in the ruins of the underground city of Mintra, who showed her the secret archives of Mahar knowledge. Inspired by what she had seen, Victory traveled to the outer crust to more formally study physics and mathematics, at which point she dropped the Germanic preposition "von" from her noble surname, as the United States, where she found her new home, was then at odds with Germany during the Second World War. She earned a master's degree in theoretical physics at the young age of eighteen. Shortly thereafter, In 1950, Victory returned to Pellucidar with Jason Gridley to investigate why the Gridley Wave, which permitted communication between Earth and the worlds of Pellucidar and Barsoom, had seemingly disappeared as a principle of physics. Victory and Jason traveled back to Mintra, where Victory recalled seeing an ancient stone tablet that might hold the key to jump-starting the Gridley Wave. There they again encountered Tu-al-sa, who for her own secret reasons opened up a wormhole that hurled both Victory and Jason to separate, far-flung worlds. Thereafter, a strange effect seized each of them, transporting them through spacetime after random intervals to new, unknown worlds.

Creation

Victory Harben is the creation of Christopher Paul Carey in the canonical Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe series of prose literary works and comic books published and licensed by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. She is related to several characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, including Karl von Harben from the novels Tarzan and the Lost Empire and Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-bal-ja, the Golden Lion (her maternal grandfather), Gretchen von Harben from the novel Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-bal-ja, the Golden Lion (her mother), and Erich von Harben from the novels Tarzan and the Lost Empire and Tarzan at the Earth's Core (her maternal uncle). She was first illustrated by Mike Wolfer, appearing in the back-up story "Pellucidar: Dark of the Sun" in Carson of Venus: The Eye of Amtor, based on the novelette of the same name published as a bonus in Carson of Venus: The Edge of All Worlds (2020).