Gzad

Gzad is an alien mercenary. Currently in the employ of the Lustrian Star Empire, he carries the rank of Deacon-Militant.

Following a lengthy battle with the Plutonian, Gzad was defeated in a joint operation by the Contenders, the Paragons, and Defender. Unconscious but not dead, he was taken to the Blazing World and given to a demonic slave-trader in the hopes he would not be able to return to Earth for a few years at least.

## Biography

Gzad is the last of the Czarnians, one of the most ancient races in the Milky Way. Their culture reached an apex of science and art before most other races had even evolved beyond ugly amphibians struggling to survive life on land.

Unfortunately, after mastering the sciences and bioengineering themselves into nigh-immortal superbeings, the Czarnian race began to stagnate and its culture fell into decline. Eventually the majority of the population embraced a planet-wide suicide pact, choosing self destruction rather than the slow decay of an existence without excitement or discovery. The thrill-seeking fraction of Czarnians who refused to accept this fate turned to violence as a form of entertainment, and with no other worthy opponents they quickly turned on one another. After centuries of constant war, the only Czarnian left standing was a cunning young warrior named Gzad.

Now utterly alone in the galaxy, Gzad hatched a desperate plan to sleep away the millennia while he waited for other species to evolve. He reactivated one of his planet's long-shuttered manufactories and its AI followed his order to build a hibernation pod. While Gzad drifted off to sleep in the pod, the AI busied itself by filling the planet's sky with automated drone defenses. The Czarnian homeworld became a true tomb planet, housing one sleeping man and the graves of his entire race.

The AI watched Gzad sleep for inconceivable eons, until the expansion of the local star threatened to destroy the planet and it had no choice but to awaken him. Gzad arose to find his planet on the brink of collapse, but he was elated: the night sky was filled with the chatter of ten thousand worlds broadcasting their signals into space. Using the manufactory to design himself a fast one-man ship, Gzad left his homeworld for the last time, racing off to join the burgeoning galactic community.

Although a stranger to the galaxy's established races, Gzad's great strength found him plenty of work as a mercenary and bounty hunter. He'd take any job, the tougher the better, and happily threw himself into years of bloody battle. But he gained a reputation for disloyalty: he would quit a contract as soon as he grew bored, and he would sometimes fight on one side of a war, then swap to the other just as it looked like the conflict might be ending. He amused himself to the best of his ability with these antics, but as a result he was forced to flee a number of former employers. Eventually, by pure accident, he wandered into the boundaries of the Lustrian Star Empire and was immediately declared a heretical fugitive.

His status as a criminal gave Gzad the bloody battle he craved, and he eventually decided to kill the Star Emperor himself as the ultimate challenge. But for the first time he found himself stymied by a foe he couldn't defeat: the ancient Eids, rallying around their patriarch, were too powerful for Gzad and eventually managed to capture him. Gzad realized that the Eids had the power of Divinity on their side, something his own race had never explored, and thus were beyond his ability to defeat. Intrigued, he cut a deal to join the Empire and was inducted into the Order of Planet-Killers, a small group of hyper-powered soldiers who fight in the most brutal of the Empire's conflicts. Gzad still serves in this capacity to this day and also has attained the rank of Deacon-Militant in the Church of the Lustrians. For the first time he has found a cause he is happy to serve besides himself, and he secretly hopes that the study of Faith will eventually free him from the ever-looming threat of boredom and stagnation.

## Personality

Gzad is a cocky, foul-mouthed, violent man, addicted to life's pleasures in the most literal sense. He is ancient but staunchly resists maturity, deliberately allowing his emotions to command his actions. He is extremely impulsive and strives to provoke everyone around him, especially if it seems like they can offer him a decent fight. Battle is the most reliable source of thrills for Gzad, but he still enjoys other base pleasures. Whatever planet he is on, he's likely to immediately seek out whatever passes for narcotics in the local culture, even though his hyper-advanced metabolism makes it very difficult for him to enjoy such "primitive" substances.

When provoked, Gzad is a true terror. It takes a great deal to make him genuinely angry-- after all, he's heard it all before-- but those who manage it find him a truly savage fighter. He has become completely desensitized to the horrors of war and there is no line he won't cross once he's decided to kill a foe. In a casual "dust-up," however, he fights with a more jolly attitude, pulling his punches and fighting more for variety's sake than any pursuit of quick victory.

## Powers

Gzad's strength and speed, while average for a Czarnian warrior, are so advanced as to rank him among the strongest brawlers on Earth. He prefers to fight hand-to-hand, aided only with a robotic hookchain that moves of its own volition, but he also has access to an arsenal of potent biotech weapons to deal with tricky foes. Gzad cannot fly on his own, but his impressive leap and ensaring chain attacks allow him to engage airborne foes with relative ease.

When provoked, Gzad can gather his lifeforce and manifest it as incredibly destructive energy blasts. He can use this energy in a wide array of devastating attacks, but these techniques are one of the few ways Gzad's nearly limitless stamina can be drained, and so he rarely utilizes them.

Gzad also benefits from his rank in the Lustrian Church, giving him access to a sliver of the Empress' power. He has the authority to use this power to manifest miracles in the Empress' name, and occasionally receives divine intervention in times of great peril.

Lastly, Gzad's ship *Joyride* is the product of the most advanced technology his race ever produced. Enhanced with upgrades taken from the few races to ever exceed the Czarnians in any aspect of starship design, *Joyride* is an incredibly fast, agile, and deadly craft for its size. Gzad is mentally linked to *Joyride* at all times, and can summon it across light years in mere seconds if need be. The ship utilizes a dark energy forge for its primary weapon, drawing power from the empty vacuum of space, compacting it into densely-packed spheres, and launching these in the form of deadly torpedoes with effectively unlimited ammunition.

## Weaknesses

Gzad has few weaknesses other than his choleric temper and love of conflict. Although he's a veteran of untold battles, he's extremely easy to bait-- in fact, he often falls for traps or feints deliberately just to make things more interesting for himself. Anyone who can play on this weakness, or offer Gzad some interesting new thrill, can easily manipulate his actions.