Henry Maurice Allard

**Henry Maurice Allard**, the White Scorpion, sometimes also known as Maurice Ayers, would have liked to be Lord Hayes, and later on his sycophants would call him just that.

But the truth was that he was merely an impoverished cousin of the aristocratic English Hayes family, with little hope for the greatness that he believed he was meant for. This kind of bitterness mixed nicely with the destiny set out for him by the date of his birth: December 31st 1800. Ironically, his cousin and closest and only childhood friend, Rose Hayes, was born the day after that. In spite of fate pulling them in the opposite directions, the two were not that different in terms of personality: they were both driven, capable of ruthless action, yet sometimes cripplingly sentimental, narcissistic, and possessed by a considerable wanderlust that took them both to far parts of teh world. But where Rose would become a self-righteously altruistic assassin, Allard would grow into a ruthlessly self-serving and ambitious crime lord, the most feared criminal in the British Empire and then some. While the whole story of his rise to this status (and what exactly had started it in the first place) is known only to very few, practically all criminals know what he had become, even decades after his disappearance. Merciless, erudite, and possessed of some significant scientific and mystical expertise, Allard had many assets, whether innate or looted from distant lands and peoples, but the greatest was always the sheer terror that he was capable of putting into people's hearts. There was a man who could make any threat and be seen to mean it. It helped that often enough, he followed through. His skills as a doctor and a chemist made him exceptionally skillful at torture. In the process, he made many enemies, like Horace Wailor; but many more, even among Centurions, simply did not dare move against him. He also made allies: converts more like, awed and admiring fellow criminals, an Indian sect that worshipped him as a god, a corrupt secret society within the British army...

Even as his shadowy empire spread all over the world, dealing in exotic drugs, occult services and sheer brutality, his one weakness remained Rose. A truth known to few was that he wanted both her parents' title and property (which she showed no interest in) and her, herself, to share his wealth and power with. Repeated rejection did nothing to dispell this obsession; quite the opposite. Time and again during his rise, he would pursue her, sometimes trying to win her over with gifts like her rose quartz necklace, sometimes using threats against those closest to her, sometimes offering alliances against common foes and sometimes attempting to kidnap her. She would not give in; she would fight back, with other Centurions' help, and combat his minions as well as a part of her normal duties; but she could not bring herself to kill him. It was when he finally got sick of playing around and killed her elderly parents and a number of other, more distant relatives on the estate grounds that he crossed a line. Having finally swallowed her reluctance, Rose hunted him down, broke up his organisation's headquarters in Sicily (with a little help from her friends, one guesses), hunted him down again when he narrowly escaped that, apprehended him, tortured him to the point of finally breaking his mind and left him stranded, an insane hermit, in a jungle in Central Africa.

That was at some point around 1885. In his absence, never properly explained, his empire crumbled, a vacuum of power being freed up for newer operators to move into, whether revolutionaries like Masque or fellow crime lords like Mr. Ming, or, eventually, Schwarzmeer. In the process they were often well-served by picking up some of his old lieutenants and other specialised henchmen, as well as the exotic drugs and other rare vices this Columbus of Crime had introduced to Europe. Commonly it was supposed that he had died; many in the know did not doubt that Rose finally put him down.

In reality, however, Henry was still a Shadow Centurion, and still immensely hard to kill without doing so directly. Though reduced to a truly pathetic, almost animal-like state, he retained enough of his native resourcefulness and ruthlessness, as well as knowledge of the African wilderness, to live off the land for all these years, even though he was stymied by the conviction that Rose was still out there, hunting him. No one knows how long he might have continued in this way, even after Rose herself had died (after all, by then the dangerous savage with the dark past had attracted the attention of newer Africa hands like Captain Kessler), if not for a chance encounter with Rose's apprentice, Sarah Hayes, not long after the Saint Haven incident. Not only did she help him escape from Kessler, but she also healed his body and mind to a sufficient degree to restore him to his former self, and informed him of Rose's death - a revelation that was at once heartbreaking and liberating. Although Sarah soon regretted her decision and attempted to apprehend the White Scorpion herself, the man managed to repeatedly give her the slip, having decided to return to Europe and retake control over his empire or whatever remained of it.

Time and again he would surprise his latest pursuer with his resources, ranging from knowledge of rare berries, through the art of dream-combat, to the Indian cult worshipping him as the avatar of one of their gods that acted on his behalf when he was finally captured and brought to Zanzibar. Only the intervention of other allies - including, in some cases, Dr. Methuselah himself, an old competitor in the sphere of evil deeds - had kept him from, if not finishing her off, then at least definitively giving her the slip. His knowledge of Zanzibar itself, and its magic-haunted catacombs, was a final ace up his sleeve, and he very nearly managed to use it to escape. But Methuselah had other plans, and in the end Allard was locked away by his apes. What Methuselah plans to do with him from then on remains unclear, especially considering that Sarah then became his newest ally...

(He is a doctor by the way. He learned how to practice medicine so as to earn some criminal start-up money, get access to his earlier, more conventional drugs and learn to torture people better. Also has psychic dream-invading powers he learned in Tibet.)

Known surviving associates on the outside include:

- Dr. Peter Haas (unwittingly aiding Viktor Vaughn, at least in the past)

- Henri Davide (not surviving anymore, but when he was, employed Zack Zimmerman and himself worked for Mr. Ming)

- Gustaf Karlssen (alias Hjarna, working for Schwarzmeer)