Anyone remember Erg / Wildfire?

[TaxiMan]

He was a Legion of SuperHeroes member, nothing but energy in a suit. He'd fire beams out of his hands, feet, face. He could fly. Once he fired his entire "essence" and his suit fell to the floor, empty. Everyone thought he was dead - after a while he was able to get back into his suit again.

I don't remember much else about him, and wanted to make an Erg-type character. Anyone remember what he could do? Flight and energy-blasts and an accidental change - was that all there was to this guy?

[JmOz]

Yes I remember Wildfire. All I can remember him doing is being a blaster type...BUT A VERY POWERFUL BLASTER, kind of what Superman is to bricks he was to Blasters...

[Hugh Neilson]

Very powerful blaster with flight, full life support, etc.

His blasts should be +1/4 indirect to be able to fire from any point on his body.

He should also have a Multiform - if he leaves the suit, he's imperceptible and desolid, can't communicate, etc. He should have an accidental change when he uses some higher level of power (maybe some level of damage classes used in a phase or a turn) which simulates overblasting and dispersing out of the suit, or damage to the suit forcing him to lose cohesion.

His defenses would be pretty good - he was pretty much indestructible, unlike the suit.

As I recall, he much later developed the ability to maintain a solid form outside the suit.

[TaxiMan]

Yeah, I think I remember he could lift very heavy things (buildings?) by holding stuff and flying (picture huge flames shooting out his feet).

[death tribble]

The DC heroes book had him. very powerful is right.

He was in love with Dawnstar. Quislet showed him how to exist as a composite entity outside of a containment suit.

[Eosin]

I played a version of him once. I will see what I can find around the house but I do remeber that if he took more than 5 BODY through his FF it triggered an accidental change into his desolid form. He also went desolid when he threw his highest energy blast AND pushed.

His EB should mostly be zero end up to about 12 dice, then start tacking END on until his 18d6 EB costs about 10-15 END per shot. Flight and FF should run similar, decent power at 0 END but able to wratchet it up with some END expence.

He was also a low grade brick - STR 30-40 and probably had a passing strike judging by how often he chose to do that (he did not stand up and fight). His flight was pretty skilled also, not to Dawnstar or Angel level but he was maneurverable.

Like Mentioned....LS, FF, Flight, Multiform triggered by rupture of the suit, big gun energy blaster. Legion flight ring, built in communications, probably some other mechanics.

Another thought if you desire...Could be abusive as all get out. Buy the suit as a vehicle that generates an intense EM field that keeps him "solid". If the suit/vehicle is ruptured then he is no longer in an EM field and goes desolid.

[ChaosDrgn]

He's in the current run of Legionaire's and has been back in the book for the last 5-6 years or so.

[lemming]

Sam Bell wrote up a version in 1995 which can be found at: Wildfire
You might want to read Sam's explanation of how he came up with the numbers for all of his writeups.
And yes, he had some STR.

[Eosin]

Wow...31 dice EB and a 37 dice passing strike. I don't even rate the Omega Beams at 35 dice.

Mind you, I think it gives good thought to his powers, it is just a little too much. 93 CON .... 93 CON.....

Did you notice he had a 93 CON? Superman doesn't have a 93 CON. The write up of the Hulk has nowhere near a 93 CON. WOW.

[lemming]

Originally posted by Eosin
Wow...31 dice EB and a 37 dice passing strike. I don't even rate the Omega Beams at 35 dice.

Mind you, I think it gives good thought to his powers, it is just a little too much. 93 CON .... 93 CON.....

Did you notice he had a 93 CON? Superman doesn't have a 93 CON. The write up of the Hulk has nowhere near a 93 CON. WOW.

31d6 only as a one shot, that's releasing him from his suit. 27d6 otherwise.

Superboy had a 93 pd/ed with his 55 Con. WF is probably harder to stun. Sam put a lot of work into these balancing them via comparisons. He also had a hell of a lot of comic books.

He also didn't use these writeups as anything more as excercise. He had a crop of around a 1000+ characters of his own.

[DaBadGuy]

In his first appearance (as ERG1), Wildfire was the ultimate metamorph. He could grow, shrink, stretch, etc. He was actually turned down for membership because his powers duplicated those of other Legion members. I don't think he showed his EBs until he unleashed everything at once and emptied his suit. After that, he was granted Legion membership "posthumously". I also believe that later he could only pull off those metamorph tricks with "special" containment suits, to keep him from stepping on toes every month.

[Benzini]

Wildfire
Drake Burroughs of Earth
First appearance: Superboy (1st series) # 195
Joined Legion: (original) Superboy (1st series) # 201; (new) Legion of Super-Heroes (3rd series) # 50
Left Legion / Disappeared (presumed dead): During five-year gap, depicted in Legion of Super-Heroes (3rd series) # 52
Dates of Legion membership: June 1, 2981 - August 13, 2991; August 19, 2995 -

Drake Burroughs was an ordinary college student, with his mind more on girls than on his schoolwork. This is normal enough, but it can lead to disaster when you're an astrophysics major helping construct an anti-matter-powered spacecraft as part of a class project. Drake, clowning around, accidentally broke a safety device, and the engine suddenly discharged, smothering him with anti-matter and destroying his body. His mind, however, survived, as living anti-energy. Some consider him lucky to have survived. Others have considered him unlucky to be in such a state, presumably forever.

But if he could be said to be lucky to have survived, then he was certainly lucky to be, at that time, in the company of Professor Bothar Vultan, who happened to have a suit made to contain anti-energy. Professor Vultan managed to siphon Drake's energy into the suit, and it gave Drake human form once again. With the help of the Professor and his daughter Zera
, he learned how to control his new form, and how to use it to perform superhuman feats, mimicking the abilities of many members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. What he did not learn was why the Professor had such a suit in the first place.

This he found out too late. Burroughs left the campus to try out for the Legion of Super-Heroes as ERG-1 (an acronym for "Energy Release Generator"), and was rejected because he only showed the Legion his ability to copy the powers of Legionnaires, and refused to show them his unique ability, which each Legionnaire was required to have. Hoping to eventually convince them of his worth, he stowed away on a Legion cruiser when they went to Manna-5 to stop a machine called the Devourer from destroying the planert's agricultural output. He stayed in the background, but when it looked like the Machine was going to kill Colossal Boy, he revealed himself, and his unique power: the ability to release his energy in a massive power-blast through the face-plate of his containment suit. The Legionnaires assumed he died, and brought his empty suit to Legion headquarters as a memorial for the hero. But energy can't be destroyed, and ERG-1 was still alive, albeit dispersed. It took him almost a quarter of a year to gather his energies and find his way to the Legion's Headquarters, where he tried to get back into his containment suit. He managed to do this just in time to save the Legion from the Molecule Master, an android that posed as a Legion applicant and tried to poison them. Burroughs was now accepted into the Legion, and renamed himself Wildfire. He then went back to the campus, to tell the Professor the reason for his absence, but he had died. The containment suit had been for the Professor, who had a degenerative disease, and for whom anti-energy was the only cure. But Wildfire's months-long absence deprived the Professor of both his energy and the suit, and he died. Zera tried, half-heartedly, to kill Wildfire by draining his energy, but he was able to convince her that her father wouldn't have wanted her to do that. She agreed, but demanded that he never see her again.

Wildfire, as a Legionnaire, took great interest in the youngsters in the Legion Academy, and often challenged the older members to defend their decisions and positions. After less than one year of such treatment, the Legionnaires voted him leader, to see if he could put his money where his voice-modulator was. One of his first acts as leader was to bring Academy student Dawnstar to the team, partly for her valuable tracking powers, and partly because he was smitten with her...a fact it took her several years to acknowledge. Wildfire did a reasonable job as leader, but the experience humbled him considerably, especially when the older members' advice proved pivotal in winning the Earthwar. He retired his leadership after that year, but still remained in charge of new-member recruitment. He developed his relationship with Dawnstar, and in time, she returned his love, despite the fact that it could never be consummated. He was, for a while, able to control his energy-form without the containment suit, thanks to the help of Quislet, but his touch burned Dawnstar...and the two of them agreed that their love would never be complete. In addition, Quislet was soon forced to leave the Legion, and Wildfire was unable to keep his physical form without Quislet's help.

Wildfire's Legion career came to an abrupt end during the event known as Black Dawn, in which Doctor Regulus made the sun unstable, and he merged his energy with the sun's to fix the problem. He was presumed dead thereafter, but he reappeared shortly after Mordru's attempt at universal conquest. His anti-energy was still mixed with solar energy, and the only vessel he could find to contain his energies was the corpse of Sun Boy. He took it, and then covered it with one of his containment suits, and rejoined the Legion, keeping the shameful circumstances of his return secret, even while the Legion had to go on the run. But "NRG", as he called himself during this period, was forced to reveal his secret when, during Zero Hour, the Time Trapper revealed that the only ones remaining at the end of the universe were those who had both adult and SW6 counterparts, and Inferno wanted to know where his was. Drake explained what happened, and then disappeared in one final handshake with the younger Dirk...a sign of forgiveness for his desecration of the body.

and Post Zero-Hour:
"Drake Burroughs" of Earth
First Appearance (in current state): (first published appearance) Legion of Super-Heroes (3rd series) Annual # 7; (first chronological appearance): Legionnaires # 74
Joined Legion: (first published depiction) Depicted in Legion of Super-Heroes (3rd series) Annual # 7; (recorded acceptance into the Legion) Legion of Super-Heroes (3rd series) # 125

Flesh dies and rots away, but energy cannot be destroyed.

Thus, when Atom'x and Blast-Off lost their bodies in battle against Mordru, the mystical nature of their deaths caused a part of the energy of their souls and their powers to linger on. Their scattered energies coalesced when mystical energy again flared on the planet where they died, due to a battle against the Elementals. This coalescence, together with the new heat-sensing powers of Legion associate Dirk Morgna, caused the energy to be discovered. However, their energies were in danger of scattering again, so the Legion rushed to save them, placing their energy into a containment suit that gave it humanoid form, and in the process, their individual essences were merged into a single being with shared memories. This being, combining the names of both his former selves, called himself "Drake Burroughs". The merger of their memories has cause Drake to remember the origin of his powers as a failed anti-energy experiment on Earth, which necessitated that his new anti-energy self be contained inside a special suit by Professor Vultan, who had conducted the experiment, which is most likely some combination of Blast-Off's and Atom'x's origins. Through his creation as an energy-being, he gained immortality, and also the power to absorb energy and project his energy in destructive bursts. Following the Blight's takeover of Earth and several other planets, Drake found himself most at home amongst the Legion of Super-Heroes. On a suggestion from one of them, he adopted the code-name "ERG-1" (ERG standing for Energy Release Generator) and, when he joined their fateful mission to help heal a rift in space, the Legionnaires declared him to be one of them. He was one of the ten Legionnaires who disappeared into the rift.

He remained in the form of disembodied energy for an unknown amount of time. The nomadic race known as the Kwai mistook him for a shooting star and followed him, as is their wont. This brought them into contact with the genocidal Progeny, from whom the Kwai girl Shikari was fleeing when she came across the remains of the Legion Outpost that had fallen through the rift. When she returned to the other Kwai with the other Legionnaires in tow, Kid Quantum recognized his energy signature and the Legionnaires retrieved him and placed him in a newly-constructed containment suit. He rejoined the Legionnaires and, taking a cue from Shikari's making a mistake with his name, renamed himself Wildfire. He returned to Earth after a battle against former Legionnaire Element Lad, who had become the genocidal Progenitor.

As a Legionnaire, he protected the United Planets both in the concrete and in the abstract, promoting peace and harmony between the galaxy's different races.

Being immortal, he watched his friends in the Legion age and die, he saw members leave, he saw new members join, he saw members die, and he saw the Legion itself fall apart. Through it all, he remained committed to the concept of interplanetary cooperation, and as long as there was open communication amongst the galaxy's various races, this was not a difficult task.

But some four thousand years later, a mysterious cannon began appearing out of nowhere every hundred years to destroy a star, resulting in an electromagnetic discharge that disrupted communications throughout the galaxy, leading to isolation amongst the planets and interplanetary fear and suspicion. To combat this, Wildfire tried to organize groups of heroes from different planets and get them to work together as a new Legion of Super-Heroes, inspiring them with the legend of the Legion he had participated in, back on the long-dead planet Earth. One of the first of these was Membrain, a telepathic creature capable of engulfing matter and energy, who became Wildfire's most steadfast ally. Wildfire based himself on the planet Rimbor, the last bastion of open-mindedness in those xenophobic times, and he was aided by a succession of youngsters. In the seventy-fifth century, Wildfire had assembled a team that included Membrain, Metrox of Colu, Graft of Durla, Nervosa of Bismoll and Phase of Bgztl. They set off to destroy the star-destroying cannon, but they distrusted one another too much to do their jobs effectively, and Wildfire was stopped before the cannon could be destroyed. Membrain returned Wildfire to Rimbor, where they and their Rimborian associates Gizi and Ziga used a sensory-deprivation technique on Wildfire to help him remember what worked about the original Legion that was absent in Wildfire's new incarnations. Thinking back, he realized that the reason the original Legionnaires had worked so well together was that they were young, and were raised since childhood that different races should cooperate with one another. Rather than wait until shortly before the expected centennial attack, Wildfire immediately went to recruit pairs of younsters from different planets: Magno-Boy and Lodestone from Braal, Triad-III and Triplicate from Cargg, Argent and Silverwing from Renii and Shape and Shift from Durla. He ordered them to not fraternize amongst themselves, knowing that this would drive them into one anothers' arms, and he'd have several generations of Legionnaires to raise cooperatively. He trained this generation of Legionnaires as if they themselves were to be his strike force...a good thing, since the cannon reappeared prematurely, after an attack of Ocean-Stealers gave them a potential scapegoat. But Wildfire was able to see through the ruse, and knew that the guards surrounding the cannon were not Ocean-Stealers, but Durlans...alerted to the danger this new Legion posed by the traitorous Shape and Shift. This time, however, the other Legionnaires managed to get along with one another and carried out Wildfire's plan, resulting in the destruction of the cannon...and hopefully, a new beginning to interlanetary communications and a new United Planets.

Wildfire continued in his capacity as a Legionnaire over millenia of different incarnations of the team. However, in the 843rd century, a Braalian seperatist set off a bomb inside the core of Earth, and he and the Superboy of that era were the two beings who prevented it from destroying Earth. In doing so, Wildfire spent his energy to such a degree that he lost cohesion. His energy could no longer maintain a humanoid form, and instead was housed inside a sarcophagus on Braal and called the Wild Flame. In this guise, he was able to impart his memories of the Legion's history to anyone who could bear to enter his energy. In the year 85271, this duty fell to the leader of the Justice Legion L, Cosmicbot. Cosmicbot was faced with the apparent disintegration of the United Planets Cluster, and Wild Flame informed him of the great telekinetic abilities of the Superboy of one millennium earlier, leading the Justice Legion L to summon that Superboy to their time to help them.

At some point in the ensuing millennium, Earthmen created a number of tesseracts, spatial warps that are bigger inside than they are outside, and populated them as complete worlds. In one of these worlds Earth Tesseract 63060, all people were of similar types, and day-to-day activities of work and education were extremely mundane. Art and imagination were frowned upon, looked at as sinful by the religion of that tesseract in the year 86271. Somehow, the Wild Flame, contained in a flat rune depicting the members of the Justice Legion L in the year 85271, made its way to that tesseract. (It is not known if that rune contained the Wild Flame in its entirety, or if there are other containment runes on other worlds and in other tesseracts.) This rune was found by three children, Dav, Chec and Vara, who, in seeing it, encountered the concept of different-looking people for the first time in their lives. That night, Dav drew a picture of the rune and was discovered doing so by his father, who beat him for it. Dav was thereby convinced that the rune was evil, and the next day, he tried to destroy it, but instead, he released the Wild Flame, which told the children the story of Titangirl's betrayal of the Justice Legion L one thousand years earlier. These images of other people, other worlds, fantastic powers and epic conflict remained in the minds of the three children, leading the doctors who found them to conclude that they were delusional. However, in truth, the Wild Flame once again preserved for another generation the legacy of youthful idealism and imagination, keeping the spirit of the Legion of Super-Heroes alive.

[TaxiMan]

Thanks tons, Benzini! That's great info - how did you find it? What's the "Legion Help File"?

Anyway, that's awesome - thanks again!

[Benzini]

If you are a LSH fan, and who isn't? well, go to this page and DL what may be the most comprehensive work I've ever seen...how about ...individual issue synopsis for entire run?
(and that't just one thing)
http://omega.animefringe.com/lshhlp/

[Benzini]

Chaim Keller is the genius behind that file. can you imagine the time he put into it? for free?