Exemplar

# The α And The Ω

*"I have seen this, **again** and **again**. Darkness rising, and light prevailing. Spread across **seconds**, across **millennia**, across repetitious epochs of **eternities**. But no matter how long or how deep the night, the sun rises again. Only, eventually, to set once more. Do you see? The infinite cycle, played out **over** and **over** again. Made **smooth** and **meaningless** by repeated use. When you already know the ending, the journey loses any importance. In that **nihilism**, in that absurd entropy, that is where we find **meaning**. Each event, each moment, insignificant in the scope of eternity, is granted monumental importance to those living in it. **That's** why I fight. **That's** why I'll never stop fighting. Because every moment **spent** living, is a moment **worth** living."*

- Exemplar to Null The Omega, 'Phenomenal #129'

The first among his peers and inarguably the most powerful Virtue in the world, Exemplar wields staggering strength, knowledge, and resources. Few know of his past, and even fewer know the truth of his powers, but his impact on the world at large, indeed the universe as a whole, is inarguable. What is known is that Exemplar is the standard by which all other Virtues are measured. First appearing during the Last Second War, it has been argued that while Exemplar may not be the first Virtue chronologically, he is the first narratively, and his introduction into the story of reality inexorably and retroactively changed history to manifest powers that were not there previously. Regardless of his secrets or past, Exemplar is an unwavering paragon of justice and hope for all peoples across all worlds.

## History

### Origins

Roger Patel-Rodríguez was born in the Principal Firmament, the original incarnation of spacetime, in the relative year of 2165. His middling hometown of Colina de Fuego was situated on the coastline, named for a vision the town's founder had of a golden flame atop the nearby atoll. In 2182 Colina de Fuego was struck by a massive tsunami, which killed Roger's father and left him and his mother trapped in the wreckage of their home for three days. The two were saved by the Armada and during Roger's recovery he met and befriended the trauma surgeon Dr. Mariana Luna. Upon their discharge from the hospital, Dr. Luna would become Roger's mentor. His infatuation with assisting and healing others would guide Roger the rest of his life, eventually sending him to the UNAM. Graduating with a specialty in cardiothoracic surgery, the newly minted Dr. Patel-Rodríguez returned to Colina de Fuego to work in the local hospital.

On the eve of Colina de Fuego's tricentennial celebration, on December 31st 2199, Dr. Patel-Rodríguez was preparing with the rest of the city to watch the massive fireworks celebration on the waters nearby. During the gigantic spectacle, the spaceship piloted by the alien entity BaNyt'k crashed on the nearby atoll. Dr. Patel-Rodríguez saw the streak of fire crashing to the ground and, assuming it to be a downed airplane, immediately gathered his trauma supplies, driving at breakneck speed up to the top of the ridge. BaNyt'k was a member of the Shining Hedronites, a race of semi-physical luminescent life-forms that were scattered across the universe during the first seconds of the big bang. With its last breath, it gifted a minute fraction of its near omnipotent power to Dr. Patel-Rodríguez, granting him the strength of The Glimmer. Reborn as Exemplar, the glowing golden beam of light on the atoll fulfilled the vision of Colina de Fuego.

### Introductory Arc: *A Total Collapse Of Reason* (Phenomenal #112-132)

During the last second of the Fifth Firmament, the warlord Saffron Blitzkrieg Mahatma Genocide, Mad King of Nothing, gathered together an army of rogue morphogenic entities and infused them with entropically-charged anti-neutrinos, granting them automation and pseudo-sentience. Returning to the present day with the intent of harvesting the thermal energy of the sun. To this end, he released the anti-matter nanomachine entity Null The Omega, to build a Dyson sphere using Mercury as raw material. During this insanity, Exemplar appeared amid The Glimmer, laying into Saffron like a god displeased. This first volley would turn into an escalating arms race, with each side revealing their next most powerful weapon; Saffron countering The Glimmer with its antithesis, The Murk. Monsieur Dynamique reverse engineering Null's design, allowing him to create the sentient superweapon Robot Rex. Back and forth, neither side keeping its advantage over the other for long.

The breaking point would come eleven days into the War. Unable to break the spirits of his foes, Saffron turned to the only resource he had left: Himself. Recursively chaining his own time-travelling technology, Saffron began to create an infinite army of Saffrons, each as powerful as the original. As reality began to buckle under the weight of so many iterations of a single reality-warping megalomaniac. With no other option, Exemplar overcharged the time-looped machinery using The Glimmer. This created a time-space mobius, warping the interactions of cause and effect within the bowels of the device. As it detonated, a wave of energy flowed up both directions along the timestream, creating the first meta-retcon.

There were, originally, no other empowered individuals besides Saffron and Exemplar present at the moment of the detonation. "After" the Glimmer's radiation saturated the timeline, suddenly there had always already been Virtues, Variants, and Valiants from all over the world, grappling with Saffron's army. This double-edged sword became the lynchpin of Saffron's defeat. A massive surge of superhumans and citizens alike crashed against Saffron like a wave, and decimated his assault, casting the Mad King outside of time. The Fifth Firmament had been saved, but with the addition of many new complications. Without hesitation, Exemplar stepped forward to take responsibility for guiding the newly minted/already extant super community along the path of justice, peace, and progress.

### Notable events

* The Light We Carried (*Phenomenal Horizons*, #75-90): The paradox empowered BitWraith begins the heist of all time, simultaneously stealing artifacts and arts from across the timeline. One of the things BitWraith stole, somehow, was The Glimmer. Relying on his skills and tech, the now-mortal Exemplar took up the temporary mantle of Sunspot to team up with Night Terror and Desperada to stop the thief of time. After a centuries-long running battle, the trio held their last stand atop the Eiffel Tower as it plummeted down to Earth from the Moon.

* The 51st State (*The Undefeatable Exemplar* #12-30): Administrator X's secret projects were varied and autonomous. One of these was the creation of the 51st state in 1980; a mobile island hidden in the Bering Strait, populated with spies and counteragents meant to covertly monitor the easternmost edges of Russia. The site became unintentionally lost during the transfer of power to the Clinton administration; a rogue Company agent suffered head trauma and lost the infoconstruct required to remember the 51st state existed. Upon finding references to the state in the 2010's, Exemplar travelled with Lady Eve and Melody Magus to the island to rescue any survivors.

* The Sun Plucked From The Horizon (*Wretched* #12-22, *Outriders* Limited #1-10): In his quest to research the nature of higher- and lower-density hyperstates, Isekai accidentally unleashes a flood of narrative from within the pages of Japan's most popular manga. This meta-narrative disjunction fundamentally altered the nation's relationship with the Firmament. In way over his head, Isekai called a council of six other Virtues to help; Triunfante, Eastern Bloc, Bateleur, Borealis, Haocao, and Exemplar. Called the Outriders by the media, the seven dove through the threshold of madness to bring the island nation back to reality.

### Powers and Abilities

#### Powers

1. The only supernatural ability Exemplar has access to is The Glimmer, the aspect of omnipotent power granted by BaNyt'k. The Glimmer manifests as sparkles and beams of golden light around Exemplar's body. The light itself is simply a by-product of the actual energy itself, which allows Exemplar to perform the following abilities:
	1. Super Durability - A sheen of Glimmer coats Exemplar's form, making him impervious to all but the mightiest attacks. Additionally, it protects him from intense pressures and total vacuum. Finally, The Glimmer constantly self-maintains a CO2 purification engine, allowing Exemplar to breathe in any environment.
	2. Flight - The Glimmer elevates and rockets Exemplar upwards. He is capable of speeds up to Mach 10 at his maximum. Ignoring inertia, Exemplar is able to go from 0 to full speed and back in an instant. Additionally, this physics-defying ability allows him to carry passengers while allowing them to similarly ignore inertia, wind resistance, and so forth.
	3. Super Strength - The Glimmer envelopes any tangible object Exemplar touches, allowing him to lift and carry about 100 tons at his maximum. Secondarily the mass of his extremities can be altered in an instant, making his physical blows connect with massive force.
	4. Molecular Accommodation - Exemplar wears a specially-treated spandex suit under his clothing. The rest of his outfit is created on the fly by arranging the molecules around his body into clothing. These outfits must be 'programmed' ahead of time, and generally Exemplar only keeps his super suit and a single white-gold-and-blue two-piece suit in 'memory'.
	5. Meta-Narrative & Cosmic Energy Interaction - Having existed since the Primary Firmament, The Glimmer has passively absorbed information and energy from five different iterations of reality. As such, Exemplar is aware of hyperrecursive meta-narrative entities and energies. In certain situations, he is able to modulate certain aspects of the Firmament itself, changing the meta-narrative in an ExM Event. Similarly The Glimmer's harmonious energetic resonance synchronizes with background cosmic radiation, giving him the ability to slightly manipulate cosmic powers.
	6. GLANCE - Focusing the power of The Glimmer into a three-dimensional shape gives Exemplar the ability to fire beams of energy from his body. The shapes can modulate the area and direction of the blast, from narrow pinprick lasers to massive staggering energy waves.
	7. Morphogenic Restructuring - The Glimmer interfaces with the self-image of living and semi-living entities, allowing Exemplar to 'roll back' damage and injuries. This effect defaults to target Exemplar, constantly healing any damage he takes. However, he can choose another target to receive this benefit as long as that target has a morphogenic resonance.

#### Abilities

1. Expert Medical Knowledge - Exemplar has maintained his medical license in the United States across all Firmaments, under the title of 'Doctor Exemplar'.
2. Intermediate Martial Artist - Exemplar has trained in several martial arts styles, picking and choosing the aspects of each that he can most effectively empower with The Glimmer. This makes him an effective but limited martial combatant, though his overwhelming power more than makes up for this.
3. Expert Tactician - Having seen thousands of battles across every imaginable scale, Exemplar has learned by experience what to do in combat. His allies trust him to put them in positions that best allow them to effectively utilize their abilities.
4. Intermediate Linguist - Living through five realities has exposed Exemplar to multiple iterations of different language structures. While fluent in Spanish and English, he has a learned conversational fluency in all other Romance languages. All other languages spoken by a few thousand people or more has more than likely crossed Exemplar's ears, allowing him to use context clues and sentence fragments to make a reasonably accurate guess at what is being said.
5. Novice Magician - While The Glimmer is undeniably technological in origin, its effects do have impacts similar to that of magic. To further investigate this, Exemplar has studied under several magical practitioners, including both Bryce Brimweld and Za Wytches III.

#### Weaknesses

1. The Murk - The antithesis of all light, the anti-energy of The Murk counters and dissipates the energy of The Glimmer. While Saffron Blitzkrieg Mahatma Genocide was the most acclaimed user of the energy, The Murk is technically accessible to anyone.
2. Glimmer Dependence - As intelligent and competent as Exemplar may be, the majority of his strength lies in The Glimmer itself. If this power is blocked or removed, Exemplar is brought down to the strength and prowess of the average man in his late 40's.

### Paraphernalia

#### Weapons

1. The Glimmer - Though it lacks a physical manifestation, The Glimmer is still disparate from Exemplar's body. Thus it can be removed either willingly or by force.

#### Equipment

1. Merriweather Suit - Trypophobia Dopamine Merriweather designed Exemplar's spandex undersuit to withstand the rigors of the superhero's use. Barring extreme circumstances, it cannot be torn, burned, stained, or otherwise damaged, though it offers no protection for anything other than Exemplar's modesty.
2. The Heap - Through his many adventures, Exemplar has gained and lost a staggering number of artifacts and technology from all five Firmaments. At any time, Exemplar may return to his base of operations and rummage through The Heap, potentially finding some gizmo from another time that helps save the day.