The Harvestman

 

“Now what gift should I give you? Trypanophobia? Oh, that’s too easy, isn’t it? Same with nyctophobia and acrophobia and anthropophobia. It’s just too easy, where’s the fun? Oh…let’s try this. We’ll switch. You’ll take the shadows, and I’ll take the light. This is photophobia, and if you don’t amuse me, I’ll give you nyctophobia to. And then you’ll really be in a bind, won’t you?”

 

–The Harvestman

 

“He’s not a superhero who went bad. Superheroes don’t go bad. He’s a bad man that pretended to be a superhero because it covered his crimes. He’s why it’s important we stress the fair treatment of captured supervillains and suspects. If you’re doing this job to hurt people, you aren’t a superhero, you’re a sadist.”

 

–Jigsaw Judy

 

“No one’s going to care. Tell them. Tell them I scared you. Tell them I scared you real bad. I’m supposed to. That’s my job. I’m a superhero and I scare trash like you really, really bad! Oh shut up, stop your screaming! You deserve this, don’t you? Say it! Say you deserve this! SAY IT NOW!”

 

–Video of the Harvestman torturing BOL supervillain Shock, of Shock and Awe, submitted as evidence at his trial

 

Beyond Dark

 

As long as there have been superheroes, there has been the debate between “bright” superheroes and “dark” superheroes.

 

“Bright” superheroes believe that superheroes should focus on being comforting symbols of protection. They should smile, wear bright colors, and make jokes. Their weapons are a nonchalant confidence and an air of absolute invincibility. Bad guys are intimidated by them because they refuse to act like the situation they’re causing is any big deal and victims are comforted by their approachable, warm demeanor. Dr. Freeman, Martina Morelli, 

 

“Dark” superheroes, on the other hand, believe that superheroes should focus on 

 

Their weapons are fear and intimidation

 

The debate has gone back-and-forth for decades. Dark superheroes say bright superheroes facilitate supervillain behavior by treating bad guys with kid gloves, bright superheroes say dark superheroes influence 

 

But there are things dark and bright superheroes can both agree on–there are limits to what a superhero can do. When the bad guy is down, when he gives up, the superhero stops. Superheroes capture bad guys. They don’t punish them. It’s not their place to punish them.

 

The Harvestman is what happens when a superhero doesn’t stop.

 

The Master Of Fear

 

Frank Garvis began his superhero career in the 90’s, a time of great upheaval in the superhero community. Several destructive battles between superheroes and supervillains made the public wonder if superheroes were too soft. They wondered if these battles couldn’t have been resolved quicker and with fewer lives lost if superheroes tried harder, if they gave one warning and then went at their opponents full-power. They wondered if what the world needed wasn’t superheroes but supersoldiers.

 

In 1992, Earth State debuted the government sponsored team Zero Tolerance, which lived up to its name and then some. Later that year, the United States federal government, copied Zero Tolerance with Xtion, and hoped that Xtion would allow them to take some public approval away from the superheroes and the minarchist society they championed and bring it over to their side.

 

Frank was a member of Xtion alongside the Hussar, the Scab, Lady Gun, Operator, Hacker X, Sniper Jack, and others. Frank was the Harvestman, the “Master of Fear.” He promoted himself as the ultimate dark superhero. A doctor of psychology, he believed that fear was the ultimate deterrent if it was applied correctly. With fear, he could shut down supervillains before they ever acted.

 

Frank was a robot armor operator who took his supername from from the appearance of his armor. It looked like a harvestman, also called a daddy longlegs and opilones. All the power of the armor covering his body was used to project a protective forcefield about a foot out giving him the appearance of a pill-shaped opilone abdomen. Eight long waldo legs were used for mobility and combat. The legs were equipped with hair-like microbarbs which injected the narcotic paxazocine, often just called pax, a drug that has been used by superheroes to painlessly subdue assailants since the Crime Fighter invented it in the 1930’s.

 

Later, the federal government pulled strings and got Frank an upgrade from the Gerasene labs at Hera City–a fear thoughtform named Aversion with which Frank could implant precise phobias in opponents. Was someone holding a gun to a hostage’s head? Suddenly they had a fear of gunts–and of murder. 

 

In 1997, Xtion crashed and burned amid a wave of lawsuits. Several supervillains claimed mistreatment after surrendering and somehow all recordings of them in Xtion custody had been deleted. A long and comprehensive investigation promised to follow, but Operator fell on his sword for the team and admitted to several counts of assault and mistreatment. He remains imprisoned on O’Brien Island to this day. The United States federal government were forced to settle with the plaintiffs for sums that remain undisclosed to this day, and as went the funding so went the team, but even if they had all the funds in the world they couldn’t stay together. The lawsuits had turned the public against them. Now “strike first and strike hard” types were liabilities. They were dangerous. And it was hard for them to find work on other superteams. No one wanted to partner up with people with a reputation for brutality. Operator took responsibility for all the misdeeds of his team, even going as far as to claim he used his hologram projector to appear as other teammates (which considerably added to his sentence given the penalties for supername impersonation), but everyone knew it was more than just him. 

 

But no one suspected the Harvestman to be in on the abuse. 

 

The claims made against him were too extreme. Several supervillains alleged that the Harvestman injected them with something that wasn’t pax, something that paralyzed them and forced them to have waking nightmares. Surely those had to be lies, though. He only ever used pax, and if he wanted to torture them like that then he had Aversion. Why would he create a drug to do what his thoughtform could do at his command? What, was he some kind of sicko that liked to stick needles in people?

 

Surely not him.

 

But Frank kept secrets–even from his teammates. Though he presented himself as a man who used fear responsibly, who carefully used specific phobias to defeat bad guys, he was at heart, a sadist. He liked the idea of specific phobias because he liked the idea of making people afraid of specific things–of any specific thing he could imagine. General fear was boring to him. It got boring after the first dozen or so supervillains. Specific fears were fun…especially when he could make them afraid of contradictions. He liked making them afraid of light and of dark, of hot and of cold, of being alone and of being near people. He liked it when they froze up, unable to do anything but be afraid, unable to do anything but shak down to their very souls. 

And then he made a drug that could do that, and that was the best of all–even better than the thoughtform.

 

They never asked why they needed certain drugs. They were fear drugs, to study fear. Harvestman was the fear guy. That was enough.

 

Sometimes it was so easy it wasn’t fun at all.

After Xtion

 

Frank took the breakup of Xtion very hard. They were supposed to be the future of superheroics. The future was supposed to be superheroes that were uncompromising, government-backed. The superheroes of the future were supposed to be very edgy and gray, and when things are edgy and gray, it makes the perfect place to hide when you’re far over the edge and blacker than dirt.

 

Still, he had enough of a reputation left to maintain a presence in the superhero community. He even put in some time on the Limitless, Urban Ranger’s team.

 

But a disturbing trend began to emerge among those the Harvestman captured. They seemed very quiet, very submissive. They kept their eyes averted from the guards and meekly kept to themselves. They talked to no one. At first, their behavior was brushed off. “Ha ha! They’re all shook up because they went up against the Harvestman! They should feel lucky they didn’t have to go up against the Operator! Ha ha! They’re trying the same crap those other guys tried back when Xtion got sued! Ain’t that funny?”

But then another one showed up .

 

And then another. And then another. And then another.

 

Gold Star, one of those superheroes everyone trusts, was asked to interview the victims. They opened up to him, everyone opens up to Gold Star, and what they told him was damning.

 

A joint investigation was launched by Crime Web and the Statesmen. A search warrant was obtained and Frank was asked to turn over his robot armor so that it could be analyzed.

 

Frank rabbited, and a search of his home turned up a vault of videotapes and photographs.

Once a superhero, the Harvestman was now a wanted man. The Statesmen moved his file from the superhero section to the supervillain section of the database under the “black file,” the “superheroes gone bad” file.

 

Now that he had nothing to lose, the Harvestman showed his true colors. He continued to fight supervillians even while being hunted and was even more brutal in his methods. In his final days, he left his victims broken in body and mind. He even tortured superheroes that went after him.

 

It was Urban Ranger who finally brought him in, alone. When asked how he dealt with Aversion, he replied “I deal with fear like I deal with pain. I ignore it.”

 

Custodian Of The Labyrinth

 

Depowered by a spinal implant which neutralized Aversion, shamed, and facing down a long, ugly trial followed by a longer, uglier prison sentence, Frank Garvis could do nothing but stew in the Sandcastle, the off-shore prison near Joyous Harbor which contained several supervillains he himself had placed there.

 

Then there was a bright flash in his cell…and then he was not in his cell.

A floating seashell stood across a marble table from him. At his side was a statuesque giant with a handsome face and a brutal-looking double-headed ax in his hands.

 

Frank regretted never sitting down to study the Crime Web supervillain profiles. He had no idea who these two were or where he was or what they could possibly want from him.

 

He hoped he wasn’t brought here for revenge–but he knew that someone powerful enough to teleport him out of the Sandcastle and ignore all the counter-teleportation technology modern prisons had was someone wayyyyyy out of his league. This wasn’t anyone that he could have possibly pissed off.

 

The floating seashell introduced himself as Daedalus, and the name was vaguely familiar to Frank. Where had he heard it before?

 

Daedalus said that he admired how the Harvestman was able to cause fear, but his problem was that he didn’t cause fear for a purpose. Now he would. 

 

He would serve Daedalus and ply his trade in his Labyrinth, or he would find himself back in his cell.

 

Daedalus explained that he had this thing, this universe he created called the Labyrinth, and what the Labyrinth did was project a person’s thoughts and memories around them. Daedalus apparently thought he was some kind of super-therapist because he said that he wanted to force people to confront their innermost problems in his Labyrinth, but to do that they sometimes needed to be goaded. It took a lot of courage to face one’s inner demons, and Daedalus had found that many people simply didn’t have enough.

Daedalus wanted to fight fear with an even greater fear. He wanted people that were so terrifying that people would rather face their inner demons than them. Daedalus wanted to place his “sufferants”  in the Labyrinth, their inner demons ahead of them and the Labyrinth’s Custodians behind them, and watch them run screaming into the arms of their inner demons.

 

Frank would be a Custodian, or, as Daedalus explained, he would wind up back in his cell, never to feed on the fears of others again.. 

 

Frank agreed to be a Custodian. What was he going to do, tell them no, send me back to jail to be paraded in front of the media? The moment he said “okay,” the ax-guy placed his old robot armor on the table.

 

“How did they get that?” Frank thought, then mentally slapped himself. They got it the same way they got him, obviously.

Frank tried his robot armor back on–and then he knew without a doubt that he made the right decision. His armor was improved! The response time had never been better! The energy output was never so high! This Daedalus knew his machines!

 

So he had to be more discriminating in his prey. So he had to obey a strange seashell-person and his large ax-wielding henchman. So what?

 

The Harvestman was back, and better than ever!

 

Powers and Abilities

 

The Harvestman armor concentrates most of its energy on protecting Frank with a reactive forcefield. It seems the master of fear is very afraid about taking a punch to the face. This field only covers his body, however, and his six “legs” operate beyond the field. They are thus weak points for the armor and can be damaged far easier than Frank himself.

 

The legs are coated in microbarbs that, at Frank’s mental command, inject a cocktail of poisons and toxins he calls his “dream demon.” Dream demon is made of saxitoxin, a neurotoxin found in algae that induces paralysis and legally classified as a chemical weapon, epinephrine, a key drug in the flight-or-flight response, and oneirobitol, a sedative with hallucinogenic properties designed to aid in the study of telepathy and dreamwalking. The effect of blending these chemicals together has been compared to a very bad case of sleep paralysis. The victim is paralysed, and aware they are paralysed, while horrific nightmares assault them. Breathing becomes difficult as the saxitoxin takes effect, adding to the fear produced by the epinephrine, sharpening the delusions brought on by the oneirobitol. It’s not lethal, but you’ll probably wish it was while under the dream demon’s influence.

 

For enemies that can’t be subdued by the dream demon, Frank uses a fear thoughtform named Aversion. Aversion was modified by the thoughtform laboratory Gerasene, located in Hera City, to produce or eliminate phobias. The purpose of Aversion was the study the fear response and to potentially be used in immersion therapy, but it was entrusted to the Harvestman, “The Master of Fear,” back when he was a superhero in the hopes that he could use it to skillfully subdue superhuman opponents by inducing the right phobia at the right time. Instead, Frank used Aversion to torture his victims, forcing them to endure more and more phobias as he watched.

 

Aversion takes the form of a lime-green light when manifested and can give a victim any phobia Frank can think of. He can give a person as many phobias as he wants, but he typically only gives one or two at a time, and goes out of his way to pick odd phobias for his own amustement. Remember, Frank is, at heart, a sadist, and he likes to play with his prey. It’s his reason to be, but also his greatest weakness. When he makes the mistake of playing with you instead of fighting you, make him pay dearly for that mistake.

 

Something to keep in mind when fighting Frank–he may never have been a real superhero, but he was trained like one. He knows how to fight. He’s equipped his legs with a variety of secondary weapons and gadgetools like any good robot armor operator. He’s got smoke bombs and sonic emitters and force projectors and laser beams. Frank has his blind spots, sure, but he’s far from stupid. Don’t underestimate him.