Post by carandini on Apr 18, 2010 6:52:38 GMT -5
Rhune
Name: Lok Mayen
Location: Germany
Group Affiliation: Abwehr
Powers: Rhune has conditioned his body to the peak of physical perfection. His atheletic physique is such that his six-foot nine-inch frame is neither lanky nor grotesquely muscled. He is able to deadlift over 250 pounds, able to run at speeds over 12mph and his endurance is such that he can go for almost a week with only a few hours of sleep. He is an expert marksman, pilot, diver, mountain climber, explorer, hunter, sailor and driver.
As much as his body, Rhune has also honed his senses to superhuman levels, able to hear, see and even smell sensations most men would be oblivious to. He has trained his mind to an astounding degree and is one of the world’s foremost biologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, zoologists, and chemists. He is also an accomplished inventor, with several patents to his credit in the fields of radio, mechanics and television.
Rhune carries a wide array of special devices of his own creation. Foremost among them is his modified pistol which he calls ‘The Tiger’s Growl’. This pistol resembles a Mauser, but has been adjusted to be fully automatic and to fire an array of specialized ammunition. Most commonly, Rhune will employ glass bullets that shatter on impact to release an anesthetic gas. He also employs explosive rounds and armour-piercing bullets with a solid-steel casing that are capable of knocking out a rhino with one shot. Rhune’s other most common piece of equipment is a bullet-proof vest of incredible thinness and durability that can be inconspicuously worn under formal attire.
History: Lok Mayen’s father was a prominent German scientist who helped to develop many of the gas weapons employed by the Imperial German Army during WWI. Rudolf Mayen had thought the horrific nature of these weapons would so shock the world that war would prove impossible. He discovered his naivety soon enough as WWI expanded to engulf all of Europe and hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides perished in chemical bombardments.
Rudolf Mayen became a very vocal pacifist, continually denouncing the war and urging the Kaiser to withdraw from the conflict. Rudolf managed to avoid arrest only because of his personal friendship with General Paul von Hindenberg, however he was sent into forced seclusion in the Bavarian Alps. Accompanying him was his ten year old son Lok. Throughout the war years, Lok and his father would live an isolated existence among the idyllic surroundings of the mountain valleys, far from the conflict raging across Europe.
While in seclusion, Rudolf Mayen determined that his son would be a force for good and the betterment of Germany, not a bloodthirsty warmonger eager for glory on the battlefield. Rudolf instituted the rigorous regime of study and exercise that would hone his son’s mind and body to almost superhuman levels. For the duration of the war, Lok would be conditioned to become a perfect specimen of moral fortitude, mental acumen and physical vitality.
After the war, conditions in Germany were such that Rudolf Mayen was unable to endure. The grandeur of Imperial Germany had been replaced by the poverty, chaos and violence of the Weimar Republic. The economy crippled by the harsh conditions of the Versailles Treaty, there seemed no end to the bleak conditions in Germany. Desiring better for his son, Rudolf Mayen embarked upon a series of archaeological expeditions across the globe. Lok would accompany him, serving in the capacity of assistant and colleague. Rudolf hoped that the travel would expand his son’s experience and give him practical knowledge of the subjects he had studied so long and so hard during their years in the Alps.
Lok Mayen grew into adulthood while on these expeditions with his father. In Egypt, they excavated the lost tomb of the Pharaoh Menes at Abydos, the oldest tomb ever found. In the Yucutan they discovered the forgotten city of Xlitli near Komchen and unearthed the mystical Crystal Skull. In Peru the two scientists investigated subterranean tunnels beneath Machu Picchu in the Andes Mountains, finding a lost race of albino Inca troglodytes dwelling in the caverns. Fame and fortune smiled upon the two men and their names became household words across the globe, renowned for their discoveries as much as their daring adventures.
In 1925, while traveling in the Himalayas seeking the fabled abominable snowman, Rudolf Mayen’s expedition stumbled upon the hidden temple of Agarthi. The mystic adepts of the sinister temple were far from forgiving towards these trespassers, employing their dark arts to destroy the interlopers. Rudolf and Lok were the only men to escape the wrath of the adepts, but they were pursued by the beasts that served the evil monks: the yeti. As Lok and his father tried to climb down the treacherous mountain valleys, one of the yeti caught up to them. The man-beast seized Rudolf Mayen and threw the famed scientist over the side of the cliff, sending him plummeting to his death. Red fury gripped Lok and in a fit of madness he hurled himself upon the beast that had killed his father. Amazingly, before the yeti could bring its awesome size and strength to bear against Lok, the youth broke its neck and sent its body tumbling down the mountainside to join that of his father.
Following the death of Rudolf Mayen, Lok returned to Germany. He helped to establish a new German automobile plant in Cologne and began to lose himself in one of his great passions: race car driving. It took him a year to snap out of this idle existence, when he did he returned to the exploration and archaeology that was his father’s legacy. At the same time, he began to indulge his own passions for invention and mechanics, in a short time becoming an expert in the areas of radio and rocketry. Under the stifling conditions of the Versailles Treaty, he was forced to go abroad to indulge his interest in aeroplanes and flying. For several years he knocked about in America, learning all there was to know about flying, seeking out accomplished stunt pilots and WWI aces to instruct him. The American press began to refer to him as ‘Rhune’ after the Germanic runes displayed on the wings of the planes he flew. Lok took to the alias, and adopted it as his own.
While in the United States, Rhune did not allow his penchant for adventure to slacken. He excavated archaeological sites across the country, from Anasazi cliff cities in Arizona to a Viking village in Maine. It was when he turned his interest toward discovering the fabled El Dorado that Rhune became of interest to American gangsters who desired the fabled wealth of the Aztecs. After a perilous adventure through the Grand Canyon, Rhune was able to thwart the greedy schemes of the mobsters, but as a result he was forced to flood the enormous cave complex in which the Aztecs had hidden their gold.
Another expedition to China met with similar complications when Rhune discovered the mausoleum of the First Emperor of China, Ch’in Shih-huang. This discovery quickly attracted the notice of the villainous Dr. Dragon, who sent his agents to seize the tomb and its riches. Rhune engaged in a running battle with Dr. Dragon and his gang of murderers, trying to protect the tomb from the criminals who would loot it for their own unsavory purposes. In the end, it was the tomb itself that thwarted Dr. Dragon’s plot. Hundreds of terracotta warriors rose from the ground to defend the resting place of their emperor. Even Dr. Dragon wasn’t able to keep his men from fleeing such a terrifying sight. The supervillain was forced to make his own retreat, leaving the mausoleum to its magical guardians. Sensing that Rhune had fought to protect the site, the terracotta army allowed him to leave without any violence.
Other exploits of Rhune during this time period saw him uncovering the immense Great Serpent, a Viking ship buried under a hill in Norway and being forced to defend his find from a madman calling himself Lopt the Mighty. Lopt believed he was the physical manifestation of the Norse god Loki and that with the mystical power of the Great Serpent he would be able to lead the people of Norway back to the old ways and make the world again tremble at the threat of raiders from the sea. Lopt even had a modern version of the longships to further his dream: a fleet of German U-boats supposedly scuttled at the end of the war. Rhune was forced to send the madman to a watery grave, sabotaging his submarine as the routed villain tried to escape to the sea.
In Italy, Rhune came up against a communist plot to hold the city of Rome ransom with a machine that could create earthquakes. In Bolivia, Rhune foiled a military coup against the government of that country. In South Africa, he led the successful hunt for the legendary King Cheetah, a beast twice the size of a normal cheetah and twice as ferocious. Also while in Africa he discovered the terrifying Lost Land deep in the Congo, a primordial world infested with prehistoric monsters.
When Rhune returned to Germany in 1932, he found a country in the grip of change. New hope filled a nation that had been burdened by economic depression and the shame of a humiliating military defeat. The new force within Germany was Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. Hitler gave the German people a sense of destiny; he appealed to their racial heritage and evoked a glorious past that could be rebuilt as the future of a new Germany. Hitler promised to sweep aside the humiliating Versailles Treaty, vowed that Germany would again hold her head proud among the nations of the world.
Rhune was not so credulous as to accept everything Hitler and the Nazis expounded. However, he could not deny the empirical evidence that the Nazis were managing what the weak democracy of the Weimar Republic had failed to do – they were rebuilding Germany into a strong nation that would bring prosperity to her people. Rhune was amazed by the scientific and artistic advancements made possible by the endowments of Hitler’s regime. Germany built the finest road system in the world, began to build fabulously magnificent civic works, made scientific advancements unequalled in all the world such as the transmission of television, the first jet engine and the first computer. Advances in medicine led to extensive knowledge of genetic and hereditary disorders as well as the first studies linking environmental factors such as smoking to the spread of cancer in human tissue. The Ahnenerbe-SS, an archaeological and anthropological division within the SS financed extensive excavations throughout Europe and later in such far removed areas as Brazil and Tibet exploring the origins of the Germanic race, vastly expanding knowledge of the pre-Roman German societies.
Rhune saw many good things arising from Nazi policies, and began to accept the intolerant philosophies underlying them as a necessary evil. The emotionless, scientific doctrine behind many areas of the new government appealed to Rhune, who saw in pure science the best hope for mankind. During this time, as he lent his prodigious mind to advancing technology in his homeland, Rhune became involved with Helda Johann, a stunningly beautiful German actress. Although Rhune had been involved with many women over the years, Helda became his first true love. When she began to expound upon the virtues of Aryan culture, as the Nazis were striving to recreate it, he listened, and listened without his usual scientific detachment. Helda impressed upon Rhune that all the advances in Germany were not mere chance, but were only made possible by the changes Hitler was bringing about in the social fabric of the nation. She used basic scientific concepts of breeding and genetics to justify the exclusion and isolation of foreign elements in German society, such as Jews and Gypsies, explaining how only by strengthening the ancient Aryan bloodline could Germany truly become the greatest nation on earth.
The persuasive arguments of Helda Johann slowly wore down Rhune’s repugnance for the uglier side of Nazi policies. While he had enough reserve that he would never condone the brutal violence of Stormtroopers and other Nazi thugs, Rhune began to distance those acts from the overall Nazi ideal. In time, he came to accept that Hitler and the other leaders of the Nazi government found such acts as distasteful as Rhune and that they were further evidence of how quickly the Nazis needed to expand their programs of education and indoctrination so that all Germans would rise above such base and crude emotions. No matter how subtly she tried, Helda could never get Rhune to actually hate the ‘lesser races’. Germans might be superior, but that did not mean they had the right to abuse the other races. Rather, it should be their purpose to look after them, to provide for them and help them overcome their natural limitations.
Helda Johann’s efforts to turn Rhune into an ideal Nazi would never overcome the strict moral convictions he had spent his entire life living by. When she made her report on these moral qualms to her commander, the sinister Eisernteufel, the Iron Devil was far from pleased. German media had built Rhune into a national hero, and he was equally famous in other countries. Had it been possible to twist Rhune into an obedient servant of the Reich, he would have made a valuable asset to the Nazis and to Eisernteufel in particular. As it stood, Eisernteufel felt Rhune would be a terrible liability if his morality made him turn upon the Nazis. Still, the Iron Devil was content to bide his time.
During the 1930’s, Rhune kept his name in European papers not only through his efforts to advance German science. He was also responsible for defeating the deadly menace of Z1, the renegade electronic brain that almost wiped out Berlin with its army of robots. He foiled a Soviet plot to assassinate Hitler after the Anschluss, overcoming the spectral communist assassin Krasnaja Smert with a sonic device that made it impossible for the Red Death to assume a solid form. Rhune was responsible for finally breaking the fearsome criminal syndicate of Professor Phantom, Germany’s most infamous criminal mastermind.
The murder spree of the disfigured fiend called Der Leichnam in Hamburg was ended by Rhune’s efforts, although in this affair he was assisted by the British hero Old Mr. Grim. Thinking Der Leichnam might be an alias being used by the Ripper, Old Mr. Grim joined forces with Rhune, finally cornering the murderous maniac in the Hamburg U-Bahn, the subway system running beneath the city. The capture of Der Leichnam was widely reported in Hamburg and outside Germany, but received a scant mention on German radio and television. Goebbels and the Ministry of Propaganda had a new poster boy for the Nazi ideal, one who they would be better able to mold to their needs: Ubermann.
As the superhuman Ubermann became the focus of German hero worship, or at least the state-endorsed hero worship, Rhune faded more and more from the limelight, at least in his own country. He began to again take trips into other countries, having adventures in places as wide apart as Romania and New Guinea at this time. Eisernteufel kept a careful eye on Rhune’s activities. With Ubermann firmly fixed in the public eye, the Iron Devil felt Rhune was a liability he could do without. Eisernteufel had seen how efficiently Rhune had foiled the schemes of criminal masterminds like Dr. Dragon, Z1 and Professor Phantom. He wouldn’t appreciate the same attention being directed against himself and his own activities.
Eisernteufel waited for the opportune moment. His chance came when Helda Johann was able to talk Rhune into a trip to America. They would make the journey upon the most elegant airship in the world, the Hindenburg. Eisernteufel employed communist double-agents to move ahead with a plan to eliminate Rhune. A complex plan to destroy the zeppelin was provided to the communists, who in turn communicated the scheme to Moscow. Stalin had as little reason to like Rhune as Eisernteufel and the failure of the attempt on Hitler had nearly resulted in the execution of Krasnaja Smert. The Red Death was dispatched to finish the job.
The Red Death snuck aboard the Hindenburg as she left Frankfurt. During the Atlantic crossing, the spectral assassin planted explosives throughout the zeppelin, but was discovered by Rhune as the airship neared the New Jersey shore. The hero fought Krasnaja Smert, pursuing the Soviet killer through the rigging of the airship and up onto the superstructure itself. In a daring display of bravado, Rhune knocked the undead assassin from the top of the Hindenburg, sending him hurtling to his seeming death thousands of feet below. Rhune then helped the crew of the zeppelin uncover and disable all of the bombs the Red Death had planted.
There was, however, one more bomb Rhune didn’t know about. With Krasnaja Smert defeated, Helda Johann took it upon herself to carry out Eisernteufel’s plan. She set a bomb in the tail section of the airship in a final bid to eliminate Rhune. As the Hindenburg made its landing, the bomb went off, destroying the zeppelin. Over a third of the airship’s passengers and crew would die in the catastrophe. Rhune’s incredible luck held and he escaped the disaster largely unharmed. In an ironic twist, Helda Johann was crushed beneath the wreckage as she jumped from one of the windows and tried to make her escape. Officially, the disaster was an accident, however both the FBI and the Gestapo recorded Rhune’s account of bombs placed by Krasnaja Smert as the cause.
Rhune sought isolation as he mourned Helda Johann, never suspecting the real plot against him or her part in it. For a time he pursued big game in the far corners of the world, then came to Scotland to help excavate a prehistoric village discovered there by a colleague of his father’s. It was while unearthing these prehistoric ruins that war broke out in Europe. Germany had invaded Poland and as a result was at war with France and Britain. Rhune’s name was prominent on the list of German citizens to be rounded up and detained. Almost immediately Scotland Yard came searching for him. Rhune attempted a daring escape across the Channel, but was captured by Old Mr. Grim and the Black Rod.
For the next year, Rhune would be detained in a prisoner of war camp. But even though the British had captured him, they could not keep him. Rhune managed to escape the prison camp. Disguising himself as a Free French pilot, he boldly walked onto an RAF airfield and commandeered a Spitfire. By the time anyone realized the French pilot wasn’t who he claimed to be, Rhune was already well on his way to occupied France.
Upon returning to Germany, Rhune offered his services to the Abwehr, the intelligence service of the German military. Only too happy to take on a man of Rhune’s abilities, the Abwehr eagerly accepted his offer. In a very short time, Rhune became the Abwehr’s top agent, proving himself invaluable against the Imperials. Ironically, Rhune’s deadliest enemy is the one closest to him. Eisernteufel is not one to forget an enemy and the time may come when he will again decide that steps need to be taken to eliminate the potential threat Rhune could pose to his own schemes for power over the Third Reich.
Name: Lok Mayen
Location: Germany
Group Affiliation: Abwehr
Powers: Rhune has conditioned his body to the peak of physical perfection. His atheletic physique is such that his six-foot nine-inch frame is neither lanky nor grotesquely muscled. He is able to deadlift over 250 pounds, able to run at speeds over 12mph and his endurance is such that he can go for almost a week with only a few hours of sleep. He is an expert marksman, pilot, diver, mountain climber, explorer, hunter, sailor and driver.
As much as his body, Rhune has also honed his senses to superhuman levels, able to hear, see and even smell sensations most men would be oblivious to. He has trained his mind to an astounding degree and is one of the world’s foremost biologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, zoologists, and chemists. He is also an accomplished inventor, with several patents to his credit in the fields of radio, mechanics and television.
Rhune carries a wide array of special devices of his own creation. Foremost among them is his modified pistol which he calls ‘The Tiger’s Growl’. This pistol resembles a Mauser, but has been adjusted to be fully automatic and to fire an array of specialized ammunition. Most commonly, Rhune will employ glass bullets that shatter on impact to release an anesthetic gas. He also employs explosive rounds and armour-piercing bullets with a solid-steel casing that are capable of knocking out a rhino with one shot. Rhune’s other most common piece of equipment is a bullet-proof vest of incredible thinness and durability that can be inconspicuously worn under formal attire.
History: Lok Mayen’s father was a prominent German scientist who helped to develop many of the gas weapons employed by the Imperial German Army during WWI. Rudolf Mayen had thought the horrific nature of these weapons would so shock the world that war would prove impossible. He discovered his naivety soon enough as WWI expanded to engulf all of Europe and hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides perished in chemical bombardments.
Rudolf Mayen became a very vocal pacifist, continually denouncing the war and urging the Kaiser to withdraw from the conflict. Rudolf managed to avoid arrest only because of his personal friendship with General Paul von Hindenberg, however he was sent into forced seclusion in the Bavarian Alps. Accompanying him was his ten year old son Lok. Throughout the war years, Lok and his father would live an isolated existence among the idyllic surroundings of the mountain valleys, far from the conflict raging across Europe.
While in seclusion, Rudolf Mayen determined that his son would be a force for good and the betterment of Germany, not a bloodthirsty warmonger eager for glory on the battlefield. Rudolf instituted the rigorous regime of study and exercise that would hone his son’s mind and body to almost superhuman levels. For the duration of the war, Lok would be conditioned to become a perfect specimen of moral fortitude, mental acumen and physical vitality.
After the war, conditions in Germany were such that Rudolf Mayen was unable to endure. The grandeur of Imperial Germany had been replaced by the poverty, chaos and violence of the Weimar Republic. The economy crippled by the harsh conditions of the Versailles Treaty, there seemed no end to the bleak conditions in Germany. Desiring better for his son, Rudolf Mayen embarked upon a series of archaeological expeditions across the globe. Lok would accompany him, serving in the capacity of assistant and colleague. Rudolf hoped that the travel would expand his son’s experience and give him practical knowledge of the subjects he had studied so long and so hard during their years in the Alps.
Lok Mayen grew into adulthood while on these expeditions with his father. In Egypt, they excavated the lost tomb of the Pharaoh Menes at Abydos, the oldest tomb ever found. In the Yucutan they discovered the forgotten city of Xlitli near Komchen and unearthed the mystical Crystal Skull. In Peru the two scientists investigated subterranean tunnels beneath Machu Picchu in the Andes Mountains, finding a lost race of albino Inca troglodytes dwelling in the caverns. Fame and fortune smiled upon the two men and their names became household words across the globe, renowned for their discoveries as much as their daring adventures.
In 1925, while traveling in the Himalayas seeking the fabled abominable snowman, Rudolf Mayen’s expedition stumbled upon the hidden temple of Agarthi. The mystic adepts of the sinister temple were far from forgiving towards these trespassers, employing their dark arts to destroy the interlopers. Rudolf and Lok were the only men to escape the wrath of the adepts, but they were pursued by the beasts that served the evil monks: the yeti. As Lok and his father tried to climb down the treacherous mountain valleys, one of the yeti caught up to them. The man-beast seized Rudolf Mayen and threw the famed scientist over the side of the cliff, sending him plummeting to his death. Red fury gripped Lok and in a fit of madness he hurled himself upon the beast that had killed his father. Amazingly, before the yeti could bring its awesome size and strength to bear against Lok, the youth broke its neck and sent its body tumbling down the mountainside to join that of his father.
Following the death of Rudolf Mayen, Lok returned to Germany. He helped to establish a new German automobile plant in Cologne and began to lose himself in one of his great passions: race car driving. It took him a year to snap out of this idle existence, when he did he returned to the exploration and archaeology that was his father’s legacy. At the same time, he began to indulge his own passions for invention and mechanics, in a short time becoming an expert in the areas of radio and rocketry. Under the stifling conditions of the Versailles Treaty, he was forced to go abroad to indulge his interest in aeroplanes and flying. For several years he knocked about in America, learning all there was to know about flying, seeking out accomplished stunt pilots and WWI aces to instruct him. The American press began to refer to him as ‘Rhune’ after the Germanic runes displayed on the wings of the planes he flew. Lok took to the alias, and adopted it as his own.
While in the United States, Rhune did not allow his penchant for adventure to slacken. He excavated archaeological sites across the country, from Anasazi cliff cities in Arizona to a Viking village in Maine. It was when he turned his interest toward discovering the fabled El Dorado that Rhune became of interest to American gangsters who desired the fabled wealth of the Aztecs. After a perilous adventure through the Grand Canyon, Rhune was able to thwart the greedy schemes of the mobsters, but as a result he was forced to flood the enormous cave complex in which the Aztecs had hidden their gold.
Another expedition to China met with similar complications when Rhune discovered the mausoleum of the First Emperor of China, Ch’in Shih-huang. This discovery quickly attracted the notice of the villainous Dr. Dragon, who sent his agents to seize the tomb and its riches. Rhune engaged in a running battle with Dr. Dragon and his gang of murderers, trying to protect the tomb from the criminals who would loot it for their own unsavory purposes. In the end, it was the tomb itself that thwarted Dr. Dragon’s plot. Hundreds of terracotta warriors rose from the ground to defend the resting place of their emperor. Even Dr. Dragon wasn’t able to keep his men from fleeing such a terrifying sight. The supervillain was forced to make his own retreat, leaving the mausoleum to its magical guardians. Sensing that Rhune had fought to protect the site, the terracotta army allowed him to leave without any violence.
Other exploits of Rhune during this time period saw him uncovering the immense Great Serpent, a Viking ship buried under a hill in Norway and being forced to defend his find from a madman calling himself Lopt the Mighty. Lopt believed he was the physical manifestation of the Norse god Loki and that with the mystical power of the Great Serpent he would be able to lead the people of Norway back to the old ways and make the world again tremble at the threat of raiders from the sea. Lopt even had a modern version of the longships to further his dream: a fleet of German U-boats supposedly scuttled at the end of the war. Rhune was forced to send the madman to a watery grave, sabotaging his submarine as the routed villain tried to escape to the sea.
In Italy, Rhune came up against a communist plot to hold the city of Rome ransom with a machine that could create earthquakes. In Bolivia, Rhune foiled a military coup against the government of that country. In South Africa, he led the successful hunt for the legendary King Cheetah, a beast twice the size of a normal cheetah and twice as ferocious. Also while in Africa he discovered the terrifying Lost Land deep in the Congo, a primordial world infested with prehistoric monsters.
When Rhune returned to Germany in 1932, he found a country in the grip of change. New hope filled a nation that had been burdened by economic depression and the shame of a humiliating military defeat. The new force within Germany was Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. Hitler gave the German people a sense of destiny; he appealed to their racial heritage and evoked a glorious past that could be rebuilt as the future of a new Germany. Hitler promised to sweep aside the humiliating Versailles Treaty, vowed that Germany would again hold her head proud among the nations of the world.
Rhune was not so credulous as to accept everything Hitler and the Nazis expounded. However, he could not deny the empirical evidence that the Nazis were managing what the weak democracy of the Weimar Republic had failed to do – they were rebuilding Germany into a strong nation that would bring prosperity to her people. Rhune was amazed by the scientific and artistic advancements made possible by the endowments of Hitler’s regime. Germany built the finest road system in the world, began to build fabulously magnificent civic works, made scientific advancements unequalled in all the world such as the transmission of television, the first jet engine and the first computer. Advances in medicine led to extensive knowledge of genetic and hereditary disorders as well as the first studies linking environmental factors such as smoking to the spread of cancer in human tissue. The Ahnenerbe-SS, an archaeological and anthropological division within the SS financed extensive excavations throughout Europe and later in such far removed areas as Brazil and Tibet exploring the origins of the Germanic race, vastly expanding knowledge of the pre-Roman German societies.
Rhune saw many good things arising from Nazi policies, and began to accept the intolerant philosophies underlying them as a necessary evil. The emotionless, scientific doctrine behind many areas of the new government appealed to Rhune, who saw in pure science the best hope for mankind. During this time, as he lent his prodigious mind to advancing technology in his homeland, Rhune became involved with Helda Johann, a stunningly beautiful German actress. Although Rhune had been involved with many women over the years, Helda became his first true love. When she began to expound upon the virtues of Aryan culture, as the Nazis were striving to recreate it, he listened, and listened without his usual scientific detachment. Helda impressed upon Rhune that all the advances in Germany were not mere chance, but were only made possible by the changes Hitler was bringing about in the social fabric of the nation. She used basic scientific concepts of breeding and genetics to justify the exclusion and isolation of foreign elements in German society, such as Jews and Gypsies, explaining how only by strengthening the ancient Aryan bloodline could Germany truly become the greatest nation on earth.
The persuasive arguments of Helda Johann slowly wore down Rhune’s repugnance for the uglier side of Nazi policies. While he had enough reserve that he would never condone the brutal violence of Stormtroopers and other Nazi thugs, Rhune began to distance those acts from the overall Nazi ideal. In time, he came to accept that Hitler and the other leaders of the Nazi government found such acts as distasteful as Rhune and that they were further evidence of how quickly the Nazis needed to expand their programs of education and indoctrination so that all Germans would rise above such base and crude emotions. No matter how subtly she tried, Helda could never get Rhune to actually hate the ‘lesser races’. Germans might be superior, but that did not mean they had the right to abuse the other races. Rather, it should be their purpose to look after them, to provide for them and help them overcome their natural limitations.
Helda Johann’s efforts to turn Rhune into an ideal Nazi would never overcome the strict moral convictions he had spent his entire life living by. When she made her report on these moral qualms to her commander, the sinister Eisernteufel, the Iron Devil was far from pleased. German media had built Rhune into a national hero, and he was equally famous in other countries. Had it been possible to twist Rhune into an obedient servant of the Reich, he would have made a valuable asset to the Nazis and to Eisernteufel in particular. As it stood, Eisernteufel felt Rhune would be a terrible liability if his morality made him turn upon the Nazis. Still, the Iron Devil was content to bide his time.
During the 1930’s, Rhune kept his name in European papers not only through his efforts to advance German science. He was also responsible for defeating the deadly menace of Z1, the renegade electronic brain that almost wiped out Berlin with its army of robots. He foiled a Soviet plot to assassinate Hitler after the Anschluss, overcoming the spectral communist assassin Krasnaja Smert with a sonic device that made it impossible for the Red Death to assume a solid form. Rhune was responsible for finally breaking the fearsome criminal syndicate of Professor Phantom, Germany’s most infamous criminal mastermind.
The murder spree of the disfigured fiend called Der Leichnam in Hamburg was ended by Rhune’s efforts, although in this affair he was assisted by the British hero Old Mr. Grim. Thinking Der Leichnam might be an alias being used by the Ripper, Old Mr. Grim joined forces with Rhune, finally cornering the murderous maniac in the Hamburg U-Bahn, the subway system running beneath the city. The capture of Der Leichnam was widely reported in Hamburg and outside Germany, but received a scant mention on German radio and television. Goebbels and the Ministry of Propaganda had a new poster boy for the Nazi ideal, one who they would be better able to mold to their needs: Ubermann.
As the superhuman Ubermann became the focus of German hero worship, or at least the state-endorsed hero worship, Rhune faded more and more from the limelight, at least in his own country. He began to again take trips into other countries, having adventures in places as wide apart as Romania and New Guinea at this time. Eisernteufel kept a careful eye on Rhune’s activities. With Ubermann firmly fixed in the public eye, the Iron Devil felt Rhune was a liability he could do without. Eisernteufel had seen how efficiently Rhune had foiled the schemes of criminal masterminds like Dr. Dragon, Z1 and Professor Phantom. He wouldn’t appreciate the same attention being directed against himself and his own activities.
Eisernteufel waited for the opportune moment. His chance came when Helda Johann was able to talk Rhune into a trip to America. They would make the journey upon the most elegant airship in the world, the Hindenburg. Eisernteufel employed communist double-agents to move ahead with a plan to eliminate Rhune. A complex plan to destroy the zeppelin was provided to the communists, who in turn communicated the scheme to Moscow. Stalin had as little reason to like Rhune as Eisernteufel and the failure of the attempt on Hitler had nearly resulted in the execution of Krasnaja Smert. The Red Death was dispatched to finish the job.
The Red Death snuck aboard the Hindenburg as she left Frankfurt. During the Atlantic crossing, the spectral assassin planted explosives throughout the zeppelin, but was discovered by Rhune as the airship neared the New Jersey shore. The hero fought Krasnaja Smert, pursuing the Soviet killer through the rigging of the airship and up onto the superstructure itself. In a daring display of bravado, Rhune knocked the undead assassin from the top of the Hindenburg, sending him hurtling to his seeming death thousands of feet below. Rhune then helped the crew of the zeppelin uncover and disable all of the bombs the Red Death had planted.
There was, however, one more bomb Rhune didn’t know about. With Krasnaja Smert defeated, Helda Johann took it upon herself to carry out Eisernteufel’s plan. She set a bomb in the tail section of the airship in a final bid to eliminate Rhune. As the Hindenburg made its landing, the bomb went off, destroying the zeppelin. Over a third of the airship’s passengers and crew would die in the catastrophe. Rhune’s incredible luck held and he escaped the disaster largely unharmed. In an ironic twist, Helda Johann was crushed beneath the wreckage as she jumped from one of the windows and tried to make her escape. Officially, the disaster was an accident, however both the FBI and the Gestapo recorded Rhune’s account of bombs placed by Krasnaja Smert as the cause.
Rhune sought isolation as he mourned Helda Johann, never suspecting the real plot against him or her part in it. For a time he pursued big game in the far corners of the world, then came to Scotland to help excavate a prehistoric village discovered there by a colleague of his father’s. It was while unearthing these prehistoric ruins that war broke out in Europe. Germany had invaded Poland and as a result was at war with France and Britain. Rhune’s name was prominent on the list of German citizens to be rounded up and detained. Almost immediately Scotland Yard came searching for him. Rhune attempted a daring escape across the Channel, but was captured by Old Mr. Grim and the Black Rod.
For the next year, Rhune would be detained in a prisoner of war camp. But even though the British had captured him, they could not keep him. Rhune managed to escape the prison camp. Disguising himself as a Free French pilot, he boldly walked onto an RAF airfield and commandeered a Spitfire. By the time anyone realized the French pilot wasn’t who he claimed to be, Rhune was already well on his way to occupied France.
Upon returning to Germany, Rhune offered his services to the Abwehr, the intelligence service of the German military. Only too happy to take on a man of Rhune’s abilities, the Abwehr eagerly accepted his offer. In a very short time, Rhune became the Abwehr’s top agent, proving himself invaluable against the Imperials. Ironically, Rhune’s deadliest enemy is the one closest to him. Eisernteufel is not one to forget an enemy and the time may come when he will again decide that steps need to be taken to eliminate the potential threat Rhune could pose to his own schemes for power over the Third Reich.
