Explorer

**Key Features** | »Radio Transmitter Backpack»Hands (X2)»Strong Mental and Psychological State»Countless Memoirs»Immaculately Groomed Hair (silver-grey)

### Tactical Analysis

* **Halt, Vile Knave!:** Whether daring archaeology professors, professional tomb raiders, or any number of other miscellaneous jobs, Explorers are the men and women who once took up the cry of Adventure. Driven by strict physical, mental, and psychological training, they can punch and kill enemy infantry with their bare fists, and in emergencies use the power of sheer grit and will to move faster and shrug off damage.

* **This Looks Like a Job for Science!:** Armed with a backpack with the contents of a miniature radio inside, Explorers break into and infiltrate enemy buildings from a distance, allowing them to infiltrate multiple buildings over time instead of just one. While they take time to recharge after a job, this allows one to be used more than once, compared to other infiltrators.

* **My Worst Enemy... Bullets:** As both infiltrators and melee-ranged attackers, Explorers are tempting targets for enemy guns. While their secondary can allow them to get out of a dangerous situation, it cannot save them forever if heavy fire is brought to bear.

* **Fighting, With Style!:** (Upgraded nature)

### Background

"*Adventure is out there...and half the fun of the adventure is in the chase!*"

- Famous Explorer Robert Braidwood
***Interview with Jack Global, July 4 1939***

*Reporter Walter Richards:* Here in the news offices of World Today, we believe that having a good understanding of this huge and mysterous globe is key to being able to dictate its future. And just this last, week, we were blessed to be able to conduct an interview with perhaps one of the most famous people in these great United States today, academic and adventurer Jack Global! Able and willing to answer a few of our questions on his thoughts about Earth, we present our readers with a small excerpt of the interview below.

*Walter Richards:* Jack Global, we understand that your job takes you to many areas of the world where the light of civilization has not been shown. Can you tell us anything about some of the areas you've traveled to?

**Explorer Jack Global:** Why, of course my good man! I've been to some of the darkest jungles and terrifying mountains to seek out the new, the mysterious, and the unknown, and always I find there is more to discover than ever thought possible! I have dined with the headhunting apes of Borneo, who will only let a man live if he takes one of their females as a wife (but enough on that subject). I have dueled with the sky pirates of the Mediteranean, and sent their bi-planes crashing to the ground. I've even had a run in once or twice with the Hawk Men of the Amazon, and several of their religious scrolls and gears are on their way to the Smithsonian as we speak!

*Walter Richards:* Truly amazing stuff you've seen then, Jack! And yet you do all this while simeultaneously taking a job as a...let's see what your folder says...'modern history professor'?

**Jack Global:** Oh yes! You see, I believe that one day, by studiously going out into the uncharted wilds of the world and exploring them, we can better gain an understanding of how our globe runs and eliminate the fog of mystery that still surrounds so much of us. I mean, do you know how much of the Earth is, and likely will never be completely be taken over by modern society? By jove, there's the oceans, the Russian hinterlands, all those rainforests and deserts in the tropics, all those islands in the Pacific...why, I daresay we couldn't possibly find out everything there is to know about our planet even if we had a hundred years to go at it!

*Walter Richards:* But surely, Jack, the fact that you say we could never hope to possibly discover everything there is out there...doesn't that discourage you at all? I mean, one day you'll be retired, and unable to make any new discoveries...doesn't that bother you at all?

**Jack Global:** I can't possibly see what you mean by that, Walt! I will live and die happily knowing that there is so much more out there for my descendants and students to discover, because when you get that feeling in your lungs...the air of a foreign land, the thrill of adventure and of excitement, the rush from knowing you're delving somewhere that civilized man has never tread...oh, I can't imagine a planet where our children and future citizens don't have that option open to them. It must be one of the most wonderful experiences in the world, to live as I do now.

*Walter Richards:* Ha ha...well, thank you Jack, for elaborating. Is there anything else you would have our readers know about?

**Jack Global:** Yes. To all the youth out there who feel negatively about the state of the world...lift your heads, smile, and buck up! The world is a vast place, but there is so much out there to look forward to, and to see! And if we can all work together, and have adventurers, and bring the light of knowledge to those dark places, we can make the world a better place!

*Walter Richards:* Readers of World Today can pick up a full transcript of the interview of Jack Global, Teacher and Adventurer, by asking via post to the World Today newsoffices.

***Interview with Jack Global, July 4 1969***

*Newscaster Nancy Daryll:* This is Nancy Daryll of Modern Earth Television, your source for the latest and greatest of the world around us. Today, we have the privilege of interviewing retired instructor Mister Jack Global with us today. Jack Global was a former adventuerer and academic who has only recently retired earlier last year, and who has since accepted our request for an interview.

*Nancy Daryll:* So, tell us Mister Global, we understand you're retired as of today. How do you feel, knowing you've lived a long and healthy life doing what you've loved?

Jack Global: To tell...well, to tell you the truth, Nancy, I'm feeling a little downcast about it. It's been a long run, and I know at my age I'd probably not last much longer compared to young bucks that took up the craft, but...there just aren't that many newcomers taking up my trade anymore.

*Nancy Daryll:* Well, Jack, the world is a smaller place now. We can get a message from London to Tokyo in less than a minute, SPAM has made expeditions now smaller and faster than ever...and really, it's all thanks to you and your helpers. Wouldn't you be happy, knowing what you've done?

Jack Global: Oh, it's not that Nancy. I'm proud of what I did, make no mistake. But...it's the fact that the world is smaller now. There's just starting to be no place for old men like me. Who wants a man who can get past ancient jungle traps in hidden Mayan temples when some academic who's never even seen the thing declares it a 'historical artefact and cultural relic'? There's no frontier anymore, and that saddens me.

*Nancy Daryll:* Well, there's always space - it is the 'final frontier', as the Soviets refer to it.

Jack Global: Ha, space...from what I understand, it's 95% sitting in a spaceship, making repairs and smalltalk while you wait for contact to get back from your nearest starbase. No tentacle-armed monstrosities, no golden women who need the touch of a rough Earthen man, no fighting for ancient treasures on the dusty surface of Mars...there's no future for men like me in space.

*Nancy Daryll:* Ah, I see Jack. Well, that is too bad, I do feel for your sadness...but is that the source of your regretfulness, the closing of the wild and unknown?

Jack Global: Ah, Nancy...you're a pretty young thing, your generation just wouldn't understand. It was more than the wild...life back then was just, more...richer! I mean, everything has changed!

*Nancy Daryll:* What do you mean by that?

Jack Global: Everything is just more...complicated. Back in my day, you could tell who the good guys were, who the bad guys were, and with a little engine grease and two good fists you could make good triumph over evil. Now, you can't tell who anybody is! I hear stories of the Soviets, who we've been fighting against for two wars now, helping rescue citizens trapped beneath rubble and getting them medical age! When I was young, the Soviets were monsters...but how can you fight against somebody who honestly cares for their people? And my old foe, Luigi da Pipa, I heard he was conducting one of his old plots just a few months ago. I go to stop him, and...

*Nancy Daryll:* And?

Jack Global: (chokes) He was *corporately sponsored*! I...I just don't know. Maybe I'm politically incorrect, but I want a world where you know what's wrong, and know that you can fix it with the right tools. It seems these days there's no right answer...

*Nancy Daryll:* Well now, Jack...is there anything you think you'd do now that you're retired and the world is too different now?

Jack Global: Well...I did hear something.

*Nancy Daryll:* Oh?

Jack Global: Yeah. Some guys over in Panama, saying they need some help recovering some information. Technocrats, they called themselves. They knew of me...they admired me. Said they had read of my words, that they had taken them to heart.

*Nancy Daryll:* So you'll spend retirement...working?

Jack Global: (grins slightly) I'm an old man, Nancy. If I have to spend my 'golden years' as they say it doing anything, I'd rather be doing something I loved rather than waiting to fade into dust. And...well...I figure there's a few bucks in that group that'd be up for learning how this old man used to do things. I WAS a teacher, after all.

*Nancy Daryll:* Well, thank you Jack. That's all the time we have for today, I'm afraid, but we're glad you finally have something to occupy you that makes you happy. Up next, the situation in America...

### Magazine Titles (Featuring Notable Explorers)

***Tales from the Paradox***

* **Mad Mathematicians of the Quantum Deathgate**
* **Sadistic Soviet Overseers of Gulag 113**
* **Nano-Opiate Sex Offenders of the Orient**
* **Rebel Terrorist Raiders of the Wild West**
* **Mutant Spacemen Tripods of Chinese Hell**
* **Psycho Slave-Pits of the Yoshiwara Sprawls**
* **Clockwork Men of the Lost Expedition**
* **Robot Horde Riders of the Steppes of Madness**
* **Retired Reservist's Revenge at Checkpoint Charlie**
* **The Red Renegades of the Global Foreign Legion**
* **Nationalist Ghosts in the Shells of Cybernetic Citadels**
* **Better Mutated Red Than Dead in the Land of the Damned**
* **Napalm-Happy Rangers of Rạch Giá**
* **Troublesome Tunnelers in Da Nang**
* **Toxin-Spewing Terror in the Desert**
* **Corruptive Cultists Of Macabre Fervor**
* **The Bloodied Warehouses of the Midwest**

***Echoes of Adventure***

* **Explosive-Obsessed Battlemechs from the Sands of Africa**
* **Weird Horrors Unleashed in the Golden Vaults of Guadalajara**
* **The Approaching Storm of Southeast Asian Syndicalists**
* **The Sex-Mad Housewives of Hamilton, NJ**
* **The Dangerous Outback of Scum and Villainy**
* **Horrific Hell-Spawn of the Hall of Night-Terrors**
* **Cybernetic Terrorists of the Southern Cone**
* **The Extraterrestrial Tyrant's War for the Universe**
* **Butcheries Outside the Bajang Ratu Bunkers**
* **Genghis Khan's Band of Daredevil Bikers**
* **Sinister Siesta of Atahualpa's Revenge**
* **Meddlesome Marxist Macheteros of Guevara's Groupthink**
* **The Fierce Feinian Female Fighters of Belfast**
* **Conspiracy Cranks Vs. The World**
* **Goldlusting Oil Sheikhs of Arabia**
* **Socialist Snakes of Lost Babylon**
* **Corrupted Cops on Perilous Patrol**

***Journey through the Quantum Gate***

* **Water Elven Sinners of the Underwater Brothel-Palaces**
* **Chesspiece Autocrats from the Past that Never Was**
* **Dimension Traveling Saga-Forging Berserkers of Thor**
* **Sycophancy and Sorrow of Toxin-Addicted Soldiers in Siam**
* **Threescore Intrepidity-Titillating Triffids Fiddled for Dilated Litanies**
* **Escaping Execution from the Blood Castle Baron!**
* **Savage Warrior Monks of the Forbidden Kingdom**
* **I was a Love Slave of the Under-Princess!**
* **Elite Chain-Gangs of the Inchon**
* **The Miraculous Mountainman Militia of Pyongyang**
* **Ragtag Filipino Resistance Against the Radiating Sun**
* **Sinewy Swashbucklers of the Seven Seas**
* **The Party-Houses of the Balkan Partisans**
* **Mercenary Mayhem in the Waters Darkened with Blood!**
* **The Whistling Killers from Starbase Hell**
* **Despots Vs. Despots**
* **Charitable Community Workers Assemble!**

***The Battle Against Annihilation***

* **The Bloody Union Jack Strikes!**
* **Legend of the Pagoda Killers**
* **Workers of the Many-Worlds Unite**
* **Gore-Soaked Islands of the Blue-Blooded Butchers**
* **The Hidden Hands of the Shadow Warriors**
* **A Million Earths is not enough for Two God Emperors**
* **Mission to the Great University of the Sea**
* **Man Against the Living Shadow**
* **Manila by the Flower-Studded Hilt**
* **Revolutionary Riders Against the Warsaw Pact**
* **Brutal Basque Seperatists in the Pyreenes**
* **In Which my House was Ransacked by Loveless Star Demons**
* **Radioactive Jackals From the Void of Space**
* **Monarchical Masters of Concealed Camelot**
* **Horrors Birthed of the Lost World**
* **Panzers and Perils In East Germany**
* **Convoluted Construction Conundrums**

***The Null Set***

* **Dreams of a Red Pacific in the Otherworld**
* **Lunar Lunacy and the Hidden World**
* **All Is Fair in Trade and War in the Blood Warm Waters of the Pacific**
* **A Belated Meeting at Midday with the Red Tsars of the KGB**
* **'Twas Another Quarterlife To Spend in War**
* **Starved for Vengeance in a Crusade Against the Eldritch Aristocrats**
* **The Blue-Skinned Angels of Planet X**
* **The Horror Hunger of the Hideous Horde from Space**
* **The Blood Red Freedom Fighters of the Dark Continent**
* **War Junkies in the African Brush**
* **Junker Devils Against the Very Soul of Freedom**
* **Ever-Smiling Sleeper Agents in the Very Heart of our Country**
* **The Supreme Surprise of Soviet Superscience**
* **Secrets of the Sinister Star Scientists**
* **Loot Loving Raiders and Sell Swords of the Sagittarius Stars**
* **Caught in the Crossfires of an Alien Game of Shadows**
* **Travel Delays from Hell between Universes**

***The Pandemonium Peril Palooza***

* **To Seduce A Paladin of the Andromedan Imperium**
* **Conquest Craving Carnage Conossieurs of a Far Cluster**
* **Vargas' Vacuous Vainglories in New Brazil**
* **The Tyrannical Terror Titans of Risen Mu**
* **Snow White and the Army of Seventy Thousand Dwarfs**
* **Robo-Syndicalist Freedom Fighters of the Eleventh Galaxy**
* **Europan Rebels Exist Beneath the Very Ice**
* **Heirs to the People's Africa**
* **War and Peace in the Last Great British Colony**
* **The People's Hammer in Alter-Germany**
* **The Mystery of the Druids**
* **A Strange Case of the Unexpectedly Benign Snake Worshippers**
* **The Emperor's Gigolo Geisha Guards**
* **Biological Aborted Atrocities of Altruistic Aspirations**
* **The Last Stand of the Evil Eight Empires**
* **Newton's Third Law of Black Revolution**
* **The Dastardly Despots of the Dover System**

***Insatiable Incidents Of Insanity***

* **(Asia-Pacific Revolutionary Compact)**
* **Proletariat Butchers of the Gore-Soaked Sands of Iraq**
* **Tales of the Blue-Eyed Orientals from a China that Could Have Been**
* **Bushido-Bound Victorian Steam Soldiers in the Factory of Blood Oil**
* **Bronze Buxom Elf Rangers of the Forbidden Forest**
* **(Luminous Phalanx)**
* **(Conven of Shadows)**
* **(Army of the Starless Night)**
* **(Living Anomalies)**
* **(The Hidden Brotherhood)**
* **(The Lost Dwellers)**
* **(Paladins of the Imperium)**
* **(Aridixynth Indigenous Defenders)**
* **(Cosmonaut Command of the Communist International)**
* **Horrific Tales of Secret Lab 221**
* **(Allied Space Command)**
* **Hungover Stories of Interdimensional Fratbros**

***Excursion Into Extremist Lands***

* **Revengeance of Soviet Legion Mental Omega Epsilon**
* **Making Insects of Unusual Size out of Anthills**
* **Blood, Glory, and Profit in the Milky Way**
* **Rise of the Red Robotic Revolutionaries**
* **Knights of the Skies against Tyrannical Mini Mountainmen of the Andes**
* **Defrosting the Heart of the Ice Queen Admiral of the Far North**
* **Elites of the Red Bear and their Band of Psycho Supporters**
* **My Bizzare Misadventures with Green-Skinned Alien Warhawk**
* **(The Marked of the Messiah)**
* **(JADE Mutants)**
* **(Imperial Robotic Citizen's Association)**
* **(Atlantean Ascendant Guard)**
* **(Imperial Space Sentai)**
* **Time Force Power Rangers of Alter-Germany**
* **Cyber Punk Edgerunners in the Sprawls Shadow**
* **Feng's Feudalist Fiefs of Forgotten Footmen**
* **(Intersea Maritime Protection)**

***Sightseeing At The Silentium Soiree***

* **Fear and Hunger in the Underground of Ukrainian Ultranationalists**
* **Uncovering Multidimensional Conspiracies of Doomsday Puppeteers**
* **Majestical Mystical Magnificent Maidens of an Ancient Order**
* **Attack on Titans from the Under-Earth**
* **(Abyssal Ancients)**
* **(Drakonate of Rigelis)**
* **My Secret Affair with a Multidimensional Black-Ops Agent**
* **(The Horde of Unliving Metal)**
* **The Million Man Militia of the Yellow River**
* **(Polynesia Ltd.)**
* **(NKGB Division A)**
* **(Y-Files)**
* **(Imperial Department for Anomalies)**
* **(CBURA)**
* **(SPIDER)**
* **How I Won my Freedom in the Blood-Soaked Arena of Aliens Warlords**
* **(Intergalactic Explorer's Lodges)**

***Fan-Submitted Adventures***

* **The Knight-Mares from the Pink Portal of Pain**
* **Sinister Siesta of Montezuma's Revenge**
* **Poisonous Parano-Spacists from Isla Dominicana**
* **Secrets of the Red Sands**
* **Killers from the Paris Catacombs**
* **Victorian Bandits From a World That Must Not Be**
* **Madness at the Mounts of Machu Picchu**
* **Religion Crazed Animal-Men of the Amur**

## Explorer Hero

 **Key Features** | »"*Apex*" Monitoring and Chemical Distribution Pack»Hands (registered as lethal weapons)»Physical body enhanced via eugenics»Mental state operating beyond normal human capabilities»Own comic book series

### Tactical Analysis

* **The New Man:** Only available via Protocol calldown, Explorer Heroes cannot infiltrate like their normal counterparts but excel at disrupting infantry. Their normal punches are fast and stun as well as damage nearby infantry, while their periodic leg sweeps knock back infantry back instead.

* **Punch-Out:** Similar to normal Explorers, Heroes can temporarily boost their speed to even greater heights at the cost of decreased speed afterward. Instead of defence, however, it increases the damage they deal with their attacks instead and terrifies nearby enemies.

* **Lead Belly:** While faster and more hard-hitting than regular Explorers, Heroes retain the same weaknesses to anti-infantry weapons and area of effect attacks if they cannot outrun them.

* **Spinal Tap:** Heroes that are even more heroic than usual have been known to utilize what is unofficially known as "Aspide blades", capable of both cutting flesh and injecting neurotoxins from poison dart frogs from their tips to inflict additional damage over time to their unlucky targets.

### Background

*"Witness the Birth of Humanity's Children!"*

-Promotion of the Explorer Hero on flyers for the 1970 Porto Alegre World Fair
Thirty years ago, the idea of human eugenics was a relatively unexplored field full of possibilities and promise. The idea of taking the same practices that had applied to farming and evolutionary biology and applying them to the human population in order to encourage genetic improvement and eliminate negative defects reached its peak in the 1920s and 30s, and all across the world people and communities joined forces to try and guide the evolution of the human race.

Ten years ago, the idea of human eugenics was a joke, a laughable pseudoscience on the scale of astrology, anthropometry, and N-rays. The Soviet's overeager trust in lysenkoism and ape-men hybrids had turned the Western world sour towards trying to genetically modify humans to improve their physical capabilities, and with syndicated scientists beginning research into improving the human condition through mechanical rather than biological means the idea of genetic modification became little more than fodder for mad scientists on television.

Five years ago, the Columbia Future Society officially welcomed the Human Eugenics Project into the ranks of the Technocratic Combine.

A loose collection of fringe theorists, cranks, and scientists who still earnestly believed in what was widely dismissed as a practical or attainable field, the Human Eugenics Project once sponsored sanitariums in the United Kingdom to keep those with mental illnesses away from the general population, assisted local and state hospitals in the United State with the sterilization of individuals with hereditary diseases, and handed out birth control supplements to areas where censors indicated unhealthy levels of 'impure gene mixing' was occurring. In recent times, however, the Human Eugenics Project has changed in focus with the realization that its previous efforts were reactionary instead of proactive, focusing now upon the active improvement and elimination of undesirable elements of the human body rather than attempt to metaphorically starve said elements out. To that end, the Project has engaged in the study of everything from microbiology to biochemical reactions to psychology in its mission to improve the human condition, performing esoteric and occasionally questionable studies in hopes of finding that one big breakthrough. And less than a year ago, they made one.

The Heroes are the first successful test subjects of the Human Eugenics Project, twenty four men and women of various ages and nationalities that have voluntarily gone under the knife in Project laboratories and emerged from it as eugenically-modified humans. A system of various chemical serums and drugs monitors their vital signs and controls activity allowing them to stimulate or relax their systems as required on an ongoing basis; modifications to their bone structure and musculature systems gives Heroes increased muscular strength, endurance, and flexibility compared to unmodified humans; modified cells seek and destroy cancerous growths or transform to replace certain lost ones while eugenically modified tapeworms live in symbiosis with their hosts by ingesting harmful substances and secreting nutrients; even the brain's mental capacity is affected, increasing the span of both long and short term memory and increasing the speed of neural connections in the Hero allowing for quicker reaction times. In battle, these individuals are even more terrifying than normal Explorers - though they lack the equipment necessary for breaking into and infiltrating buildings, the Heroes that choose to fight in battle are a deadly combination of speed and power, dashing almost faster than the eye can see to straight-arm a soldier one second and whirling around to send a squad of reinforcements scattering the next. The ability to artificially stimulate their aggression and adrenaline levels only further increases their danger, often to the point of inducing panic as enemy soldiers are forced to confront a screaming near-shirtless person racing towards them with fists at the ready.

All of these and more combined make the Explorer Heroes more than normal men and women, turning them into a symbol of what the Human Eugenics Project strives for: a New Man, a child of humanity that is above and beyond its parents in the same way that *homo sapiens* was above and beyond its predecessors. But they are only the beginning in what is almost assuredly a long and hard road: the current process used to create said Heroes requires a human subject to already be in high physical and mental form...and willing to accept the risk that the tests and processes needed to uplift them might very well result in death. As such, the majority of volunteers willing to undergo the process are Explorers, people who are still in shape and sharp of mind but who are aware of their advancement in years. Such volunteers are largely unconcerned with the possibility of death, seeing it as an acceptable risk when the alternative is often a lonely decline in quality of life after years of adventure and service.

### Comic Book Series (Featuring Notable Heroes)

***Madcap Maria!***

**Pedro the Parangon**

**Jaguar Johnson**

**Impressive Isabella**

**José Torrealba of the Humanitarian Guard**

**Marvelous Marcos**

**The Adventures of Ana Maria**

**Mr. Misterio**

**Santos**

**Amy Smith and Laura North**