Reed Richards

## Background

### 1961 - 1995: Reed Richards

Reed Richards was born in Stockton, California as the only son of wealthy physicist Nathaniel Richards & scientist Evelyn. He was a child prodigy with special aptitude in mathematics, physics & mechanics. Evelyn died when Reed was seven.

After her death, his father encouraged & guided young Reed in his scientific studies. At a young age, Reed was taking college-level courses & eventually enrolled at California Institute of Technology at the age of fourteen. He also attended Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology & studied abroad at the University of Vienna in Austria. By the time he was twenty, he had obtained multiple degrees in subjects like engineering, math & physics.

It was when he was working on another degree at Empire State University in New York that Reed first met some of the most important individuals in his life: Victor von Doom & Ben Grimm. Like Reed, Victor was a scientific genius though he took an immediate dislike to Richards. He requested to change rooms & Reed was given the former high school football star Ben, who became Richards’ closest friend. At the time, Ben was already intending to build a starship for interstellar travel & Grimm jokingly said that he would pilot the starship for Richards someday.

Doom became obsessed with developing a machine but Reed pointed out a flaw in his calculations. Doom arrogantly ignored his warning, feeling that Reed was trying to upstage him. The machine exploded, scarring Doom's face & he was expelled for conducting unethical experiments.

### 1983 - 1995: Reed Richards

After they both got degrees, Reed & Ben served in the military together. Their time together increased their trust in each other. When they returned, Reed continued working on his starship while Ben became a construction worker. Not long after, Reed's father passed away & left two billion dollars to his son. Reed spent most of the money on his project to build & launch his starship. The project also received further funding from the federal government. Richards recruited his old friend Ben & officially began dating Sue Storm, who was a student working to get her Master's. The two instantly fell in love.

Unfortunately, the federal government withdrew its funding from the project but Richards decided to take the starship on a test flight himself before the funding was withdrawn. Grimm was opposed to the idea, warning that the starship was not shielded from intense radiation storms. Nevertheless, Grimm served as pilot while Sue & her brother Johnny also accompanied as passengers. The four friends stole onto the launch facility, entered the starship & blasted off. However, a solar flare caused the radiation belts to be filled temporarily with unprecedented, ultra-high levels of cosmic radiation.

The group was bombarded with cosmic rays while passing through the Van Allan belt their ship causing the rocket to crash land back on Earth. Once back on Earth, the four passengers discovered that the cosmic radiation had triggered mutagenic changes in their bodies. Reed discovered that his body had become malleable & that he now had the ability to elongate his body at will. Richards convinced the others that the four of them should use their new-found powers for the good of humanity as members of a team he named the Fantastic Four. He used the profits from his patents & royalties to fund the team's activities.

## Romantic Relationships

* Susan Storm: Girlfriend (1994 - 1998); Wife (1998 - )

## Personality

Reed Richards is an intellectual who prefers to examine foes & negotiate with them before actually fighting them. He is often intrigued by the scientific implications of a problem, so much so that he almost forgets there is a problem in the first place. He is an extremely likable fellow who keeps a pleasant smile on his face & cares deeply about those he is close to, particularly his extended family.

However, Reed does occasionally lapse into depression & self-hatred over long-standing unsolved problems, most notably Ben’s inability to return to human form & Franklin’s mysterious potential. Reed is a humanitarian who will try to prevent any intelligent being from suffering. This can lead him to do controversial things that fly in the face of all apparent logic.

## Powers & Abilities

* **Mutate Physiology:** Mister Fantastic possesses the ability to convert the mass of his entire body into a highly malleable state at will. How his body's respiration & circulatory systems function at these distorted extremes is as yet unknown. He can alter his form in a matter of seconds & revert to his normal shape within similar time. The greater the distance he stretches or the more extended the size of the object he becomes, the weaker his overall strength becomes. His transformation to a malleable state is reflexive & if he was taken unaware by machine gun fire, his body would still absorb the bullets' impact through radical deformation. His skin is virtually impervious to laceration or punctures unless he willfully relaxes his reflexive control over small areas of his body.
	+ ***Dense Flesh*:** Due to the great malleability & elasticity of his molecular structure, Reed is able to absorb the impact of any type of man-made ballistic projectile by deforming his body along the path of the projectile's trajectory at the point of initial impact. He can contain explosions by enveloping them & allowing their force to expand him. He can enclose & absorb the energy of a large explosive, on the order of 8 to 12 pounds of TNT. He can also expel an object back along its trajectory by flexing his body like a trampoline if he is adequately braced after his body absorbs the kinetic energy of a ballistic projectile's impact.
	+ ***Elongation*:** He can extend his limbs, torso, or neck to great distances. The maximum length he can distend before his body segments become painful is about 1,500 feet. He can extend discrete body parts, such as a finger or an ear, if ever isolates such parts in his elongations. He may restrain opponents very efficiently by using his elastic form to entangle them. He can also move at great speeds by stretching to his destination.
	+ ***Shape Changing*:** Mister Fantastic can stretch, deform, expand or compress his entire body or parts into any contiguous shape he can imagine for a variety of uses.
		- ***Imitation*:** He may alter his basic physical features, allowing him to take on the appearance of any other man with similar hair & skin tone.
		- ***Canopy, Parachute or Sheath*:** He can also extend his body in two directions, creating a canopy, parachute, or sheath, its thickness determined by the extent of its distention.
		- ***Gliding*:** Reed can transform himself into aerodynamic shapes such as parachutes or hang-gliders. In this form he can support an additional 1000 pounds.
		- ***Cushion*:** Mister Fantastic may form his elastic form into a trampoline & other cushion-like objects, allowing him to safely catch falling people and objects.
		- ***Sling Shot*:** He may use his elastic form as a slingshot to hurl objects with great force.
		- ***Geometric Shapes*:** Reed has compressed his body into the shape of a solid sphere, a cylinder, a cube, a toroid & a rectangular prism. He can assume the shape of any solid that he can envision clearly, of a volume no greater than 1.7 cubic feet. He can generate thin-walled shapes that enclose great volumes of space.
		- ***Fist Weapons*:** Mister Fantastic may form his fists into large hammers, maces, etc., which improve his physical effectiveness in hand-to-hand combat.
		- ***Bouncing Ball*:** He can transform himself into any of a number of resilient shapes, such as balls or springs that allow him to leap or bounce great distances.
		- ***Two-Dimensionality*:** Reed can flatten himself to the thickness of an average sheet of typing paper or narrow himself to a diameter small enough to pass through the eye of a needle.
		- ***Infiltration*:** Mister Fantastic can lower his body’s cohesion so he can actually flow through minute openings.
		- ***Open Locks*:** Reed may form his fingers into various types of keys, allowing him to open most forms of mechanical locks.
		- ***Wind Generation*:** He may form his hands into fans, allowing him to generate wind by twirling them at great speeds.
		- ***Semi-Solid Liquid State*:** Mister Fantastic can willfully reduce his body into an almost liquid state in order to flow out of small cracks or passages, even through needle-sized holes.
* **Genius Level Intellect:** Reed is one of the most intelligent beings on the planet. He possesses a mastery of electrical, mechanical & aerospace engineering, electronics, chemistry, all levels of physics & biology (human & alien). A visionary theoretician & inspired machine smith, he has made breakthroughs in such varied fields as space travel, extra-dimensional travel, biochemistry, robotics, computers, synthetic polymers, communications, mutations, transportation, holography, energy generation, spectral analysis & more. Reed’s patents are so valuable that he is able to bankroll the Fantastic Four, Inc, without any undue financial stress. Not only has Reed proven himself to be a genius in virtually every science native to Earth, he has shown himself to be more knowledgeable than even some of the most highly advanced alien civilizations in the known universe as well. He has often be stated to be the smartest man on Earth.
* **Martial Arts**: Mister Fantastic has a black belt in Judo. As one of the few masters of Judo, he is the master of Atemi-Waza (body-striking techniques).
* **Fantastic Four Uniform:** Like all the Fantastic Four's costumes & the rest of Reed's wardrobe, his suit is made of "unstable molecules." This means that the suit is attuned to his powers, which is why Reed's costume stretches with him. The costume has a complete data processing & telemetry system woven into its fabric on a molecular level, making it a wearable computer. The costume forms a network with the rest of the Fantastic Four, providing a constant uplink of everyone’s physical condition as well as their location & current situation. The costume has an intricate scanner system which can detect things around the wearer, from how many people are in the next room to what dimension or planet they are on.
* **Universal Translator:** Reed has a Universal Translator that can decipher and interpret languages, both alien and terrestrial, into the native language of the user

### Ratings

* **Acumen:** 7 - Master / Elite
* **Might:** 5 - High / Exceptional
* **Quickness:** 4 - Trained / Learned
* **Mysticism:** 1 - Nonexistent
* **Gadgets:** 4 - Trained / Learned
* **Projection:** 6 - Expert / Advanced
* **Tactics:** 6 - Expert / Advanced
* **Battle:** 4 - Trained / Learned
* **TOTAL:** 150 - Power Level 4 / Moderate Threat

## Trivia

* When he's asleep, parts of his body relaxes to the point where they "sag."
* Along with his penchant for inventing, he is known to rewrite works of Stephen Hawking & decode alien languages.
* He is agnostic & doesn't believe any human religion is the one true religion. However, he has stated that he is aware that Abstract Entities exist but would in no way worship them.
* He failed his driving test four times.
* His father was good friends with Howard Stark, the father of Tony Stark. Because of this, they had met in their youth.He killed his first person at the age of 16, though it was an act self defense.
* He aided Doctor Doom & Dr. Moira MacTaggert in saving Shadowcat after she was injured & gradually began to dissipate due to not being able to regain her solidity.

## Notes

* The original character of Mister Fantastic belongs to the Marvel Universe.