Master Midnight

Master Midnight

Character Profile
Secret Identity: Percy Winkley
Origin: Magic
Affiliations: The Master Midnights
Archetype: Mastermind
Power Sets: Zombies/Dark Miasma
Height: 5'7" (5'9" with lifts)
Weight: 135 lbs (180 lbs in full regalia)
Eyes: Black
Hair: Red
Distinguishing Marks: His fearsome countenance

The End

Montague Castanella was beaten.

As the last of his strength faded, he collapsed to his knees. Time seemed to crawl as Montague's eyes swept across the dead faces of the Midnighters who lay strewn about the hall. He knew each by name. These were men and women whom he considered family, and before him stood their murderer.

The figure was clad head to toe in garish armor, designed more for show than function, but it was the swirling cloud of eldritch wards surrounding him that had made him so formidable. Montague had never before seen such magic. As the murderer folded his arms in quiet victory, the last words out of Montague's mouth were, "No! Percy--what have you done?"

A Nobody

Percy Winkley never had respect until he took it for himself. Unappreciated and openly mocked by the members of the Midnight Squad, treated by the preening Montague Castanella like a dim-witted pet, Percy struggled for years to gain their acceptance. Time and again, he failed. All of that began to change, however, when he first laid eyes on Tammy Arcanus.

A Dream

She was the daughter of Tommy Arcanus, one of the Midnight Squad's most influential members, and the apprentice of the great wizard Cerulean. As far as young Percy could tell, Tammy Arcanus didn't know he existed. What chance did he have with a girl of that power and pedigree?

But as different as they were, Tammy had something in common with Percy Winkley: ambition. Despite Cerulean's warnings and her father's prohibitions, she delved into magic she was unprepared for. Percy mustered up the courage to warn her of the dangers of astral travel, but she dismissed him like a piece of pocket lint. The tragic loss of her material body and the murder of her father by her own hands sparked a crisis that echoed throughout the Midnight Squad. Tammy fled with her father's soul, a villain to be hunted down and destroyed. Percy was shaken to the core. The woman he loved was evil, and he found himself more attracted to her than ever.

A plan began to form in Percy's mind. He would follow in Tammy's footsteps, learn the same magic she had used to kill her father and enslave his soul, and then use it on the entire Midnight Squad. He would become someone that Tammy Arcanus would be incapable of resisting. She would have no choice but to acknowledge him, respect him, and ultimately love him. He would rule the Midnight Squad, with Tammy by his side.

An Opportunity

But one thing stood in Percy's way. He was not entrusted with the secrets of magic. As fate would have it, however, Emperor Cole began to neutralize the many schools of magical practitioners throughout Praetoria. The Midnight Squad was forced to hide inside the Midnight Mansion, a magically constructed fortress nestled neatly between realities and beyond Cole's reach. It was this period of isolation that gave Percy his opportunity. The Midnighters needed every wizard in their struggle against Cole, even one as unproven as Percy.

Although his magical study had been from observation of others, never from his own experience, Percy's hours of theory had given him a unique insight on magic. The realization struck him: Magic wasn't the enigma he had originally believed. It had a system and a set of rules. But most amazing of all, it also had a universal rule that made it possible for all the other rules to be broken. It was this rule that Percy intended to make full use of. To test his discovery, he scoured the Midnighter library for spells and rituals that were beyond either his comprehension or his ability to counter. He could find none.

Percy hid this discovery from everyone, using the disdain of those around him to his advantage. He found the spells that Tammy had used to bind her father's soul, and committed them to memory. He studied wizard dueling strategies and then set about inventing his own; mixing spells so dissimilar, breaking rules so traditional, that no magical defense could possibly withstand him.

A Master

Between his studies, Percy worked on assembling a suit of armor to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies. The amount of fear induced by its appearance was questionable, but the eldritch wards he laid upon it more than made up for that. He had even come up with a name for himself, one that would strike awe into those who witnessed his fearsome visage.

Then, one night, while the Midnighters slept in their beds, read in their studies, or enjoyed tea with their tightly knit little groups (into which he was never invited), Percy revealed his new persona. "I am Master Midnight, your new lord and master!" They laughed at first, but this gross underestimation of Percy would be their last.

Room by room he moved, effortlessly performing the sequence of carefully prepared spells designed to completely disable each of the Midnighters he had grown to hate over the years. The Midnighters responded exactly as Percy had expected, overly confident one moment only to have their spells dashed in the next. Each opponent had a different combination of arcane wards, offensive spells, and contingencies designed to defend against any adversary, but these spells were useless against him. Percy had studied them all. The Midnighters watched in terror as their magic was dismantled and their bodies slain and then reanimated to serve Percy's will. Only Cerulean regarded him as a true threat; their duel ended when Cerulean fled.

The Beginning

When he had finally defeated Montague, a duel that left Percy strangely unsatisfied, Montague had the gall to ask what Percy had done. Percy answered, his voice distorted by his helmet to carry a dreadful weight altogether unlike the voice of the young man he had been.

"Percy Winkley is dead, Montague. You killed him. I am Master Midnight now." He crouched down and gripped Montague by the throat with a gauntleted hand and looked him in the eye. "And what I've done is something even the Emperor could not do."

Montague could feel his soul being ripped from his body, and the last thing he heard was Master Midnight:"I destroyed the Midnight Squad."