The Sentinel

The Sentinel is a mystic superhero born in Afghanistan. He has renounced his citizenship to any country and has vowed to protect mankind as a whole. He is considered to be among the world's strongest heroes.

## Biography

Kamal Khambar was a boy in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion of the 1960s. His country was a flashpoint of the greater conflict between East and West, and his family was forced from their meager home by a mortar strike that killed both his sisters. He fled into the mountains with his parents, but neither would survive when the slopes were blasted with bombs. Alone and wounded, Kamal made his way blindly into a cavern complex that had been opened by the explosions.

He descended further and further, following a ghostly green light that reflected off the glassy cavern walls, until he found himself at the foot of a great temple. He was immediately confronted by an impossibly ancient man who stood guardian over the ruins. The man, dressed in golden armor studded with glowing emeralds, spoke to Kamal, asking a question in a dead tongue. Kamal had no idea what the man was saying, but he inadvertently agreed to the offer when he clasped the man's outstretched hand.

Instantly the guardian's power, which had been accumulating over millennia of disuse, flowed into Kamal. He found himself changed, transformed from a boy into a powerful man-- powerful and wrathful. He exploded out of the mountainside, rising into the sky and began tearing the planes that flew overhead into bits with his bare hands. He wanted to kill every soldier in the country, no matter their allegiance, but he found that he was magically leashed to the underground temple and couldn't abandon it. Unable to pursue the retreating soldiers, he descended back to the peaks to watch helplessly while the country burned around him.

As the conflict began to die down, it was the Plutonian, then a relative rookie, who followed the reports of a powerful, unknown supervillain into the Afghan mountains. But he only found Kamal, once more a boy, alone and scared. The Plutonian heard Kamal's story and realized that the boy had unwittingly sworn to guard the temple for all time, and had been endowed with great power to accomplish that goal. He immediately reached out to his most mystically gifted allies for aid, and returned with experts to unravel the curse. In the end, the mystics were able to amend the magic to bind Kamal to guard the Earth as a whole, rather than just the temple, and he was freed. He was so grateful that he vowed to protect the Plutonian most of all, and the amused hero took Kamal on as his sidekick.

Kamal fought crime as the Sentinel, originally alongside the Plutonian but eventually going his own way in the 1980s. Over his long career the Sentinel has faced some of the most cataclysmic threats the world has ever seen, and is a well-known opponent of such menaces as Mechanon, Dr. Destroyer, and the Warlord. There is no country in the world that has not benefitted from his unceasing vigil against mankind's enemies.

## Personality

The Sentinel is essentially two separate beings that swap control of a single body. His two forms are that of Dr. Kamal Khambar, a respected anthropologist and historian, and the Sentinel, a mystic hero of incredible power. As Dr. Khambar he is calm, urbane, witty and always willing to turn the other cheek. But as the Sentinel, he is brooding, suspicious, and quick to avenge any insult. While the Doctor prefers to solve problems diplomatically, the Sentinel brooks no such foolishness and happily throws himself at any supervillain no matter the situation. He typically stops short of killing, but he will otherwise deal out brutal punishments without hesitation.

The Sentinel has no true friends, but there are heroes and a few upstanding world leaders that have his respect. He is willing to work with any hero, no matter how morally dubious, if they fight for the safety of the world.

## Powers

The Sentinel is endowed with incredible strength, speed, and the powers of flight and invulnerability. His eyes glow with a mystic green light that provides him a number of powers: he can see in any conditions, has both binocular and microscopic vision, and can even look straight through walls of any thickness. His eyes can also fire beams of extraordinary power that strike with unerring accuracy no matter the distance. If the Sentinel can see a target, he can blast it.

Due to the origin of his magic, created by a people who opposed the Sorcerer-Kings of the Hyborean age, he has a near-total immunity to the spells of others. Even the mightiest curses will only have a partial effect on the Sentinel, and most mortal magic users couldn't even hope for that. The Sentinel is also immune to the effects of most hostile environments and needs no sleep to function.

While in his civilian form, the Sentinel loses many of these powers, but he can still access his incredible powers of sight (minus the energy blasts). Dr. Khambar is aging at a normal human rate, but the Sentinel appears to be immortal (or at least ageless) and is always in his physical prime. The Sentinel can switch between forms instantly by snapping his fingers, and this transformation is accompanied by a tremendous explosion and a flash of emerald light.

## Weaknesses

The Sentinel's powers are not his own. They are conditional on his agreeing to guard the Earth and further, they issue from an ancient temple whose location is his most carefully guarded secret. The Sentinel has to spend at least a few days out of the year replenishing his magic by resting in the temple, and should it ever be destroyed he would lose all his powers forever. He has no special awareness of the temple's condition and so has to check on it often.