Roland Desmond

## Blockbuster

"Those who don't listen to reason, will listen to force. And I am not a reasonable man."

### Played-by

James Earl Jones (voice)

Roland Desmond was a flatfoot that got himself excused from service in the Great War with the help of a local Zucco wiseguy, since he was regarded as too essential to a numbers operation, as a bookie, to fight in The Big One. His older brother, Mark Desmond, meanwhile, worked as a Checkmate scientist, developing a steroid for use in super soldier experiments. After Mark's project was cancelled due to funding, and he was given a deployment letter to link up with ANZAC, he disappeared mysteriously. Roland later found his brother's work, and experimented on himself with the steroid, seeking to become the boss of all of Gotham City. Reduced to the mind of a child, but with a hulking body with incredible strength, he was experimented on by an occultist psychiatrist who specialized in neuropsychology. Granted genius intelligence, but now the most evil man imaginable, Blockbuster is a New York City gangster of amazing size and strength, with hatred and rage and cunning, an incredible wit behind his seemingly brutish demeanor.

## Sheet

Body: 1h 4d 0w
Charm: 1h 1d 0w
Command: 2h 1d 1w
Coordination: 0h 2d 0w
Mind: 0h 3d 2w
Sense: 0h 2d 0w

BRAWLING: BODY 3h 1d 0w
INTIMIDATION: COMMAND 1h 2d 2w
HEAVY WEAPONS: COORDINATION 0h 1d 0w
CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE: MIND 0h 2d 1w

SUPER SOLDIER: Blockbuster Steroid Serum
Offense: 2h 2d 0w
Defense: 1h 1d 1w
Utility: 0h 2d 1w

HYPER-STEROID PHYSIQUE:
Roland Desmond has been injected with a super soldier serum that gives him freakish size and strength.

MALEVOLENT GENIUS:
Roland Desmond was experimented on by a Satanist psychiatrist, who has granted him genius intelligence in exchange for his empathic attributes.

## Background

Mark Desmond, and his younger brother Roland, were born to a single mother in the slums of New York City. She worked as a burlesque performer to support her two boys, the able student Mark, and the slick protector, Roland. Mark took the path of academic esteem and hard work, while Roland became a working class hero and a troublemaker. The two were close until the Great War, when Mark Desmond disappeared to work on research for Checkmate, a top scientist pick in the burgeoning field of biochemistry.

With samples of Superman's blood, Mark was working to develop a steroid, but after the success of the Captain America project, his project's funding was cut. Mark, desperate to survive being deployed to the Ottoman Empire in ANZAC as a field surgeon, tested the steroid on himself. He was transformed into a hulking brute with a low IQ, and was kept in a testing lab in Scotland by the British government, both as charity, and to see what the full effects of the steroid were.

Meanwhile, Roland had become a mobster essential to the Zucco family, and had dodged service in the Great War by joining the dockworker's union, which was essential to the Merchant Marine. After the war, a Roland's mother, now elderly and savage, wanted to know where Mark was, so Roland came up with an elaborate scheme to muscle a British politician with blackmail after posing as a police officer in a fake speakeasy raid.

A sample of the steroid was given to Roland, and he tested it on himself, dreaming of becoming a super soldier like those that had fought during the Great War, his draft guilt front and foremost. He was transformed into a massive, hulking brute, with great strength, but poor intellect. After a rampage through Gotham City, he was captured and placed in Gotham quarantine. He met an occultist psychiatrist, a former colleague of Mark Desmond, named Dr. Archimedes Neron. Dr. Neron was a specialist in how psychiatric states were linked to psychological states, and experimented on Roland with a serum compatible with the steroid. Roland was granted a genius IQ, at the cost of everything that made him human. Afterwards, Roland realized that he had just wanted to be normal again.

Now gifted with a genius IQ, an incredible stature, and deadly strength, Roland took the name of the steroid project: Blockbuster. Dr. Neron released him into the public as a game theory experiment to test the new Blockbuster serum, and what choices Roland would take. He became a superpowered bootlegger, using his strength and cunning as an enforcer for the Zucco Family, intending on taking over crime in New York City one day. The only thing that stands in his way is his domineering old mother, and his bad heart, a side-effect of the steroid treatment that he does not know how to fix.

## Logs

Eventually this will be a fancy section where all your logs will go! For now you need to manually link logs

## Gallery

Click to expand. (You get the idea.)

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