Brian

BIOGRAPHY

Brian was engineered by Tate and the mad scientist in his employment, Dr. Setzer, in the year 14 BR. After almost being killed by a gunshot from the Saraw rebel Mahlea Locklaha, Tate had her thrown in prison and was going to personally oversee her execution, but she managed to escape prison and flee the planet at the last second to Arturia, the one place he and the Cabal could not reach without revealing themselves due to the presence of King Arturius and Queen Bowdig. Seeing Mahlea Locklaha as a new, third long-term threat to his plans, and wanting revenge for his near-mortal wound, he began looking for a way of neutralizing her. At first, he relied, through his contacts in the galaxy's criminal underworld, on a crime syndicate called the Azure Blood Brotherhood to hunt her down, Mahlea was able to evade capture by them, forcing Tate to come up with a new strategy. While the other members of the Cabal were somewhat magically gifted, none came anywhere near Tate's level, and none were a match for Arturius or Bowdig, with even some of their students being able to contend with most of the Cabal. As a result, none would suffice for hunting down Mahlea. He and Dr. Setzer had tried cloning himself in the past to create beings with his powerful magical abilities, but these all either died in the cloning process, failed to be born with his abilities, or went rogue and had to be killed. Using tissue and organs from the corpse of the last attempts, Project CR-322, Tate and Setzer decided to try again.

DNA from the tissue lost during Mahlea's attack (Tate had been keeping this in a vat ever since) was used as most of the basis for the clone's genetic code, with supplemental material taken from a random local infant kidnapped by the Cabal (Tate wanted to slightly dilute his mutation in any potential clones to prevent the possibility of creating a being stronger than himself he could not control) and Project CR-322. Pieces of tissue and some whole organs from the corpse of CR-322 were also used to help form the embryo, as failure of an embryo to form was the most common reason for the past clones' failure. As a result, when BR-149 (or Brian as he would eventually be called) finally formed into a stable embryo, he had two hearts, two pairs of lungs, an extra brain stem, an unusually thick skull, extra muscle mass all over his body, four kidneys, an extra gallbladder, and two penises. As both Tate and Dr. Setzer were too busy to raise him themselves, they simply left him to develop in an artificial womb until he was fully grown, downloading required information into his brain and repeatedly modifying his body, brain, and genetic structure to make him easier to control and more suited for his eventual task. Due to the effects of the fluids in the artificial womb and his extra organs, he was fully mature by age 14 rather than 18.

By the time he was mature, however, Tate had mostly abandoned the idea of full biological clones of himself due to the long time Brian had taken to mature, instead having Dr. Setzer and his robots genetically experiment on whatever children they could get their hands on, attempt to implant his mutation into them, and indoctrinate them into the Cabal. All of these failed to show powers to Tate's satisfaction, with the last being disposed of a few months earlier (although surviving, unbeknownst to Tate or any in the Cabal). When Tate finally met with Brian after he emerged from the artificial womb, he was relieved that at least one of his genetic projects had worked after years of failure, although he was disappointed that Brian did not turn out as powerful as hoped. While Brian was already stronger than Santa Muerte (Tate's right-hand woman), he was only barely so. Nevertheless, Tate sent him out to search for Mahlea, who was now far more dangerous than she was when she shot Tate and was beginning an investigation into UNISYN, visually monitoring the encounter from a control chip implanted in Brian's brain.

Using the intel provided by Tate, as well as the tracking skills downloaded into his brain during development, Brian eventually tracked Mahlea to a gas refinery on a UNISYN colony called Deepest Canyon, and dueled her to a standstill. Although Brian was far stronger than her both physically and magically, Mahlea was able to outspeed and outsmart him constantly, frustrating and enraging him. When this reached a breaking point, his hair turned lime-green, his eyes glowed blue, his muscle mass increased to ludicrous levels, and his abilities increased sixfold. Brian was then able to grind her into a bloody paste, easily powering through all of her tricks. After knocking her into what would be a year-long coma, Brian tried to transport the captured Mahlea to Caput Tatiium, but was intercepted in space by Ishga fighters, who forced him to detatch his cargo hold, with Mahlea inside it.

Although he failed to return Mahlea to Caput Tatiium, Tate nevertheless was still happy with Brian on his return, as he had far exceeded his combat expectations due to his enraged state and Mahlea would be out of commission until she woke up from the coma, if she even woke up at all. After this debacle, Tate sent Brian to scour the cosmos for Weasel, a new threat to his power that had emerged in the 14 years Brian had been growing, one who was shaping up to be just as if not a higher priority target than Mahlea, and one who had gone missing since quashing Yengwayo's Uprising on Planet Squid. As Brian saw more and more of the galaxy, met new people, and saw firsthand the damage Tate's operations had inflicted on the galaxy already, Brian began to question his mission and his loyalty to Tate. However, while these seeds of doubt were planted, they failed to overcome the sheer amount of Tatian propaganda downloaded into his brain in utero for the time being, and Brian remained dedicated to his mission.

Around a year later, Weasel resurfaced on Aurea, hiding behind that planet's policy of isolationism after being essentially adopted by the locals. Weasel had gotten himself wrapped up in Aurean politics, and eventually became the Dominus, or leader. While Tate knew that Brian would absolutely crush Weasel in a 1-on-1 duel, he also knew that Brian had no experience or talent leading troops in battle and couldn't stand up to the Aurean Dominate's huge armies on his own, so Inquisitor Rhys and Spjot Ragnarsson were sent instead, each with mercenary armies backing them. Rhys was defeated and eventually killed by Weasel, and Spjot was defeated as well, but managed to escape and return to Tate with the Key to the Jungle, the magical item binding Yengwayo to his prison on Planet Squid and the artifact that Weasel had hoped to safeguard on Aurea in the first place. Finally ready to reveal himself to the galaxy, Tate and all available Cabal members including Brian journeyed to Planet Squid to bust Yengwayo out of prison, knowing Weasel and the rest of the Knights of the Square Table would follow and attempt to stop them.

PERSONALITY AND TRAITS

Raised and programmed for 14 years in utero to be nothing but a thuggish fighting, tracking, and killing machine, Brian at first had little more than the blind hatred of Mahlea programmed into him to define his personality. Because of this, he is very stunted socially, speaking in incomplete sentences, failing to understand boundaries or loyalty (outside of the loyalty to Tate and Setzer programmed into his brain), failing to understand that his actions have consequences, and failing to see things from anyone's perspective but his own. As a result, he sees fighting as nothing but a big game, as causing injury or death to others is meaningless to him outside of pleasing his masters and having fun. When he does not get what he wants immediately, he is prone to extreme bouts of rage and frustration in which he enters his superpowered rage state and can cause huge amounts of destruction to his surroundings and/or anyone around him. In this rage state, he almost completely loses control of his actions and goes on maniacal frenzies, once destroying an entire city on Deepest Canyon upon learning Weasel was not there. Brian is prone to histerics during these frenzies, often laughing while engaging in unspeakably horrible acts, such as when he laughed while crushing a toddler's skull in his bare hands during a rampage on Australis.

While Brian has committed atrocities that would make any self-respecting person want to vomit, he does these things out of boredom and anger rather than any deeply held malice towards those he kills or that which he destroys. When not either fighting or in a blind rage, Brian has a much more docile and polite demeanor, sometimes even going out of his way to help those he meets without any benefit to himself, such as when he helped repair a power coupling in a home in the Minnehaha System while a family was allowing him to stay there during his search for Weasel, or when he saved the life of a fisherman whose boat had capsized in the Yepacow Sea on Deepest Canyon. As he spends more time traveling the galaxy, he begins to feel some guilt for the death and damage he causes during his rampages, forms attachments to sentients other than Tate and Dr. Setzer, and gradually starts speaking in more coherent sentences.

POWERS AND ABILITIES

From the time he emerged from his artificial womb, Brian has been the strongest member of the Cabal, edging out even Santa Muerte in his base state. His rage state, however, multiplies the power of his base form sixfold, allowing him to make mincemeat out of any known person in the galaxy besides Tate, Arturius, or Bowdig. While this rage state is physically unstoppable, Brian lacks much in the way of self-control while using this form. While he is aware and in control of his actions enough to remember and comprehend what he does in that form, he is seeing red with rage the entire time and is prone to making stupid and often extremely cruel and impulsive decisions, as well as getting tunnel vision and losing awareness of his surroundings. Although he is powerful enough in his rage state to kill even powerful opponents like Weasel or Mahlea in seconds, he is easily outmaneuvered and outsmarted by anyone who can survive his onslaught long enough to do so.

While trained in advanced martial arts techniques by his programming, Brian prefers a more unorthodox, self-taught style of fighting that better utilizes his bulk, focusing far more on techniques like grabs, uppercuts, stomps, takedowns, and clotheslines than the rapid flurries of punches and kicks used by most faster and nimbler fighters. Overall, his style most closely resembles wrestling. Additionally, Brian is fairly unique in choosing to do his melee fights without the assistance of weapons or armor, relying on his natural bulk and Sun magic to do the heavy lifting. While not intentional on his part, this often leads to his opponents underestimating him. Additionally, his extra organs make him far less vulnerable to attacks that would normally prove fatal to other sentients. For example, Mahlea was able to land a stab to his heart during their fight, and while he bled quite a bit from this and it was painful, his other heart was able to pick up the slack and keep him alive long enough to beat her to near death.

In terms of magical ability, Brian has downloaded training from Tate on all of the non-Shadow schools of magic, but is only able to use Storm and Sun. He uses these masterfully, however, having developed his own lime-green-colored variant of the energy sphere he refers to as the "green eraser". He also has another ability that is not well understood: he can emit a beam of energy from his hands that can turn any living creature to stone statues on impact. Those in statue form enter a sort of coma until Brian blasts them with a counterbeam that reverts them to their natural state, and a statue breaking will kill whatever creature it originally was. While it is known that this ability originated in the genetic experimentation used to create him and was carried over from Project CR-332, the specifics of its cause are unknown.