Tommycooker

[carandini]

Tommycooker is one of the Wehrmacht's anti-Imperial agents. First deployed in North Africa with Rommel's Afrika Korps, Tommycooker has quickly earned a name for ruthlessness and brutality. He wears a suit of experimental power armour designed by the HWA and is armed with a ghastly promethium projector which he uses to incinerate his enemies.

The name 'Tommycooker' derives from WWII German slang for Sherman tanks, which had a nice habit of catching fire and burning their crews when hit by any sort of heavy ordanance.

[John Helmer]

Sudbury! Another good idea scooped up by C.L. that I should have thought of...

The hook on this guy is that all that fuel is dangerous. The suit needs an Achilles heel to balance its awesome power. I do enjoy the Tommycooker name. North Africa was a resounding defeat at first, then we overpowered the Germans with numerical superiority. How do you address that in your narrative? Who or what finally beats him back?

[carandini]

I haven't developed a full story around Tommycooker just yet. I'm thinking he gets defeated by Dune though, who could gunk up the nozzles of his flameprojectors and cause the weapon to explode when he tries to use it. Like some of teh Imperials, Tommycooker could be a persona used by several Germans over the course of the war, each equipped with a more powerful incarnation of the armour.

[John Helmer]

Dune is an excellent adversary for Tommy Cooker. The sand in the mechanisms work well as a foil.I'll dig up his bio, pic, and post it. Dune is inherently a spy, so we will have to be carefully writing this segment.

[carandini]

Tommycooker
Name: Oberfeldwebel Hans Stossel

Location: Germany

Group Affiliation: Wehrmacht

Powers: Hans Stossel is an elite soldier, a veteran of the German army's gebirgsjaeger. He is a skilled marksman and an experienced soldier, having served in both the French and Norwegian campaigns prior to his being selected for the guise of Tommycooker.

The Tommycooker armour itself is bullet proof and expands Stossel's strength to roughly twice that of a normal human. The armour is bullet-proof, giving him considerable protection from small arms on the battlefield. The biggest asset of the power armour is its weaponry, a flame projector built into the arms that allows Tommycooker to unleash a fifty-foot stream of 'Feurstoff', an experimental chemical that combines the nastier aspects of napalm and thermite. Whatever the Feurstoff hits burns, even underwater. The chemical has been recorded as eating through plate steel in a matter of half a minute. With this hideous weapon, Tommycooker is the bane of British tanks, burning a hole through their armour and cremating the men inside.

The bulky power armour is slow and awkward, so Tommycooker's mobility is limited. The Feurstoff has toxic side-effects as well, forcing it to be handled with protective gear. Tommycooker relies upon support personnel to reload his weaponry as the armour makes it too difficult for him to perform the delicate maneouvre himself.

History: Hans Stossel entered the German Army fresh from Gymnasium (the German equivalent to high school). His endurance and aptitude soon gained him entry into the elite Gebirgsjaeger, Germany's vaunted mountain troops. The training he received perpared him for warfare in all some of the coldest and most unforgiving terrain imaginable.

While Stossel's unit took no part in the invasion of Poland, being kept in reserve should the Italians or the French choose to invade Germany in retaliation for their activities in Poland, he was among the elite force sent to secure Norway after British and French troops occupied Narvik and several other ports in an effort to cut off Germany's supply of steel from Sweden.

Stossel's unit fought several engagements against the British and their Norwegian allies, but was finally overwhelmed during the battle of Bjerkvik when French Foreign Legion troops, supported by tanks and the heroes Justicar and Avalon arrived for an amphibious assault. The German garrison was overwhelmed. Stossel, fighting to the last in order to allow his troops time to evacuate, was taken prisoner when Avalon single-handedly overwhelmed his position.

The prisoners of war taken in the attack were considered the captives of the French. Feeling pressure from both London and Paris to quickly expand his beachhead, the French commander decided he had no time for prisoners. Legionaires bound the German POWs and tied rocks to their feet and hands, then dumped them into the fjord. Fifty men were slaughtered in this fashion. Stossel was the only one who escaped, lucky enough to have a very sharp rock tied to the cords around his hands he was able to cut through his bonds and swim to safety.

Making his way back to German lines, Stossel reported on this atrocity to his superiors. Josef Goebbels, Germany's minister of propoganda, played the incident for all it was worth, stirring up anti-French and anti-British sentiment. As a further element of the propoganda campaign, Stossel, who had become something of a hero because of his escape, was introduced to one of the special weapons programs being developed by the Heereswaffenamt, the army's weapon development division. Stossel was equipped with a suit of powered armour and a deadly weapon that could project a chemical fire. Harkening to his capture by Avalon, Stossel was given the name 'Tommycooker' - a grim promise of what he would do the next time he encountered Avalon.

Tommycooker made his first appearance during the sinister trap orchestrated by Eisernteufel in the Black Forest that saw many French and British heroes killed only hours before the German invasion of France. Quickly redeployed, he took position with Rommel's 7th Panzer Division, accompanying them on their blitz through northern France and helping the future Desert Fox overcome whatever superheroes the embattled Allies still thought to throw at him.

Later, Tommycooker would be sent to North Africa to again support Rommel when the Afrika Korps arrived to help the beleagured Italians against the British in Egypt. It would be in this theatre that Tommycooker would come up against many of the Imperials, proving himself a formidable and remorseless enemy - a foe who would countenance no surrender for himself or his enemies.

Description: Hans Stossel is a muscular, broadshouldered man in his late twenties, with a stern face and short-cropped blonde hair. He bears the scars from the forstbite that afflicted him during his escape from the French.

The Tommycooker armour itself is a bulky suit of steel plate with many cables and hoses fitted to its limbs. The army cross is prominently depicted on the breastplate. The helmet resembles, in some ways, the visored helm of a gladiator. Upon Tommycooker's back is a huge tank which contains the Feurstoff. A steel hose runs from either end of the tank, connected to big nozzles fitted to the forearms of the armour. By pressing a button in the palm of his gauntlets, Tommycooker can send streams of fiery death to engulf his enemies.

[John Helmer]

"...the sinister trap orchestrated by Eisernteufel in the Black Forest that saw many French and British heroes killed only hours before the German invasion of France."

The Great Culling!