Amazo the Magnificient

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IamLEAM1983
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Amazo the Magnificient

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Name: Amazo the Magnificient (AKA Francis Herbert Quigley)
Age: 151 years old
Gender: male
Species: anthro King Cobra, wizard

Strengths: a master of illusions and elemental magic, Amazo's chief focus is deception. Hiding in plain sight or projecting a slew of dopplegangers of himself are both common tricks he employs, with the rest of his usual tricks largely being based on his background as a traditional magician and his years of survival and research-motivated thievery.

His decades of research in the Far East and his studies with everything from Vedic monks to Tibetan lamas have allowed him to come into the possession of the Eye and Rod of Solomon, two artifacts which are said to have been the property of the Biblical wise man and aristocrat. The Eye grants him Solomon's celebrated arcane potency, enabling him to channel more via than the norm in a safe manner. The Rod, hidden underneath the guise of a simple opera cane, is one of the most sought-after and resilient magic foci in existence. The work of unknown mages dating back to the Fertile Crescent's first recorded turmoils as Saudi Arabia expanded, the Rod allows Francis to produce both extremely fine and controlled elemental displays, or immense blasts of heat, cold or raw kinetic force the thirtysomethings in Hope might equate to Dragon Ball Z's famous “Kamehamehas”.

As solid as the Rod is, this gives Amazo some latitude as to how he is to leech off via from surrounding ley lines. While he isn't made impervious to dangerous levels of abuse or from being killed or turned into a lich, it should be noted that he does have a fair bit more resistance to arcane effort than your average wizard. For all of his affected poise, he is a ruthlessly effective magic-based bruiser.

Much to his opponents' surprise, Amazo is also a fairly competent Judoka and knows his way around a few firearms. From a theoretical point of view, Francis has enough of an accumulated passive knowledge of the other Schools to be picking up his daily bread thanks to a post as a Magical Theory 101 teacher, at Hope University.
Weaknesses: like all mages, Francis' lengthened life span only comes with a sturdier bill of health. He is as vulnerable as the next man, provided you're able to weather your way through his momentarily effective defensive measures.

Also like most dedicated mages, tapping into via on a daily basis leaves him susceptible to exhaustion and has more or less coaxed his metabolism into acting like a literal furnace. Francis isn't known for particularly gluttonous displays, but he doesn't turn down offered meals or lunches with friends, either – nevermind that he's already eaten his at the campus cafeteria. Bucky Wallace still wins the honor of being able to scarf down cartoonish amounts of food, but Francis Quigley still has earned a few notable accolades as a lover of good meals and good company, with his fairly Hobbit-like eating habits. On average, the baseline three daily meals become four or five, as far as he's concerned.

Generally, he prefers to work in subtle and controlled ways, as this gives him ample enough energy to keep working for several hours. Push him to unleash a raw stream of basic arcane aggression, however, and he'll drain himself out in forty-five minutes or so. He can keep going past this point, but doing so involves tapping into his meagre personal reserves – or his muscle mass. Doctors could testify to the fact that the Battle of Hope drove him close to tachycardia, and certainly pushed him to a liquid diet for the following month, coupled with a renewed training regimen and a later stream of high-protein foods.

Considering this, Francis' heart has been fairly taxed in 1975. This has left him with a diminished tolerance for raw physical efforts, and a need to mind his potential bigger outputs of energy. All attempts at stimulating himself past exhaustion and into a researching or fighting shape (such as with energy drinks or coffee) could potentially backfire if he already shows signs of palpitations or general fragility.

Unfortunately, if the cause is just, he doesn't believe in holding back. Seraph has had the dubious honour of carrying the more-unconscious-than-asleep wizard back to the Mystic Theatre several times already.

Being fairly powerful, Amazo also has to contend with the fact that demons and the restless dead have been known to lick their chops at the prospect of taking the passed-out body of a drained wizard for a stroll. Zebediah Buck could testify of Evangeline's own craven need for power, and Francis could mention September 1987, which saw him lose track of the entire month, thanks to the demon Adramalech – the Dominion of Forbidden Knowledge. As far as he's aware of, he spent the month reading over his own library compulsively and then crossed over to the Institute, where he practically performed a sit-in for the last two weeks, with piles and piles of books to sort through surrounding him.

As to what Adramalech was looking for in the mortal plane, he hasn't been able to determine.

Considering, Amazo is fairly wary of being knocked out or forced to pass out. His bedroom essentially acts as a spiritual Faraday cage. Even with his not being a particularly skilled Diviner, excessively motivated spirits and demons have been known to yank untrained souls loose to take the body out for a spin.

Appearance: at a hundred and ten pounds and six feet two, you'd be tempted to call Francis Quigley emaciated. His ribs very obviously show, his arms and legs appear unable to sustain any serious or standard amount of muscle mass and yet, being an anthro snake and a mage, he isn't hugely troubled by any of it. As far as any physician could attest, as long as he doesn't exert himself while plying the Art, he's the spitting image of health.

Like his animal parentage suggests, he displays a brown-black and scaly epidermis, contrasted against his chest, neck, inner arms and thighs' cream-coloured areas. Unlike simple cobras, however, anthros of this lineage tend to be born with the extended vertebrae forming the classic hood solidified and deprived of any sustaining muscular system. As such, while other anthro snakes might display a fairly narrow head in relation to the size of their body, Francis presents an overall head width that corresponds with the average human head. X-Rays also reveal the fact that the hood supports an extremely sensitive sense of hearing, which is sufficient to compensate for there being no outright holes for air or sound waves to reach the inner ear's mechanisms. Quigley hears entirely thanks to the way surrounding vibrations are transmitted to him, which remains as effective as your average mammalian auditory system.

Like most anthros, however, Amazo sees a few facial features amplified or modified in order to maximize the recognition of his emotional state or intent. Cobras normally tend to have brown eyes, while Francis' are obviously front-facing, as well as of a deep gold, almost ambergris tone. His naturally flexible maw lends itself well to highly expressive facial contorsions, to the point where, a bit like Wallace Doherty, you'd think he's sprung out of an old cartoon. The rapid evolution of his anthro strain has almost entirely neutered the fabled venom of his species, leaving his fangs as little more than cheekily displayed facial features, usually in the context of blithe grins. At best, there's barely enough toxin left in his borderline vestigial venom glands to numb any and all exposed skin zones he might chomp on.

From his human father, Francis has inherited a full set of human teeth, with his incisors swapped for the fine and elongated fangs of his mother. Underneath the twin little holes of his nose, you'll also find a minuscule patch of now greying hair, which he keeps fashioned into an ultra-fine 'stache that would make Cary Grant proud.

Coming from a background in which showmanship was key and having been forced by his own travails to consider that remaining armed and ready at all times was sacrosanct, he's combined the dapper and practical into a set of opera wear he's rarely, if ever seen without. At best, the cape and tails might get swapped for a lab coat for the purposes of lab research, or he'll remove those two – plus his top hat – and roll up his sleeves during his teaching hours. On average, however, White Tie attire seems to be as habitual to him as jeans and tee-shirts are for most of everyone else.

As to why – this is largely because Opera wear is so uncommon it catches most people's attention. Someone who's busy gawping at your shined shoes, gloves and gibus isn't paying any real attention to what you're doing with your hands... As even the most nefarious types are prone to being puzzled into near-complete subjugation, putting on the Ritz isn't strictly a display of vanity, as far as he's concerned. He's taken great pains to make Fred Astaire's getup as bullet, fire or ice-proof as he possibly could; and being able to store implausible things in his hat is always a plus. His cape also looks smooth to the untrained eye, but there's about a dozen small pouches and pockets hidden throughout. If a spell needs a specific focus or if he ever needs to lift something off someone discreetly, chances are he's got the object on his person, or a place to store it while leaving his own pockets empty.

Of course, the White Tie getup also is a fair bit of a display of vanity. Notably, however, this is well-earned vanity. Having “done his thing” since long before World War Two, Quigley tends to fill the tie and tails with the kind of quiet, composed self-assurance to pull it off. This makes his flashier moments fit with the generally debonair qualities we've come to associate with the outfit. You don't dress like you're going out to clap energetically at showgirls if you're uncomfortable with yourself or unable to allow yourself the occasional bit of flamboyance.
Behaviour: Amazo is one of the core storied and celebrated superheroes in Hope, the only one in the group without an origin story you'd consider to be textbook for a city-wide defender. Instead, having started out as a magician and entertainer, he's made showmanship the core of his entire persona. Give it a few decades and there was no longer any artifice to it all. He's lived enough, suffered, bled enough and been cheered enough to afford his liquid smiles and silver tongue, his infectious personality and undeniable “people person” skills, as well as his apparent lack of any serious stress and his eccentric moments spent poring over artifacts or grimoires.

Being more than a little rich also helps.

What people tend to ignore, however, is that behind the brazen smiles, the tap-dancing his way across dens of evil or his wooing the Red Scourge's female companion despite the obvious threat to his own existence this posed, there's a fair amount of churning bowels underneath. He's lost a lot to gain his power and sacrificed even more. While his background isn't the most tragic one you could imagine, the few people who do really know him outside of his “I'm eternally okay about everything!” affected outlook could attest to the fact that he's starting to yearn for those things dedicated mages don't really have the time to indulge in.

Friends more than adventuresome coworkers, for instance. To be recognized as a pedagogue, instead of a superhero-turned-pedagogue. For his research to be taken seriously, despite the fact that he shows up during Lab classes with his cummerbund on, underneath the lab coat.

There's also the fact that while people have apparently digested and accepted Seraph's retreat into being simply Ethan Alderan – mainly because he joined the force – Amazo still has his fan club. He still is accosted by people who spout his own one-liners back at him or who gush just at the thought of asking him to recount one of his many adventures.

As it turns out, being famous, famously wealthy and being able to reach out and take just about anything and anyone he desires is a lonely place to be in. He might be able to blitz his way through a few fast cars and a smattering of supermodels, he might be good friends with Hollywood stars and movie producers, but the rush these things once gave him has long-since subsided. The public is still expecting him to strut, however, to grin and wink and start up the summer fireworks with a blast from his opera cane. He's starting to feel himself slip behind the mask and, quite frankly?

He'd like for someone – anyone – to reach out and give him a little support. Not because he's Amazo the Magnificient, the man who beat back Erwin Rommel's secret occult branch of the Afrika Corps out of the Black Continent – because he's Francis Herbert Quigley, an old man who's starting to like his bathrobe and fleece slippers more than his steel-toed dress shoes. A guy who'd like to sleep in and drool on his pillow without feeling that his saliva stain's going to make it onto celeb rags. A man who would honestly like to eat junk food by choice, not because that's all he and his colleagues can grab in-between two stabs at the Evil Entity of the Month.

He's getting a little desperate for an excuse to not smell as fresh as a spring rain, to wear the same clothes two days in a row and to maybe get away with the TV, a cheap microwave tray and a brewski. As much as he doesn't mind putting on the same old show to motivate the kids down at Holden Hall, he's hoping that there's someone, somewhere in there, who won't gush at him or ask him to sign an autograph.

Goals: while he's obviously been mandated to bring Shield's magic-prone recruits up to speed on their own abilities and the Occult in general, what he honestly wants is to loosen up his bowtie and a few shirt buttons and get to talking about real stuff with these young folks. What he really wants is to find someone he'll be able to more or less quit being Amazo for. He's aware that he'll probably never be entirely able to stop being Amazo, but Francis is essentially itching for a reprieve, even if it's one that only lasts a few months, while he trains Aislinn.

Being able to affect vulnerability safely, for instance, would be a dream come true for the anthro. You have no idea how taxing it is, to constantly project the image that you wake up in the morning thinking that yet another epic magical duel against Thomas Quint or a re-possessed Zebediah Buck would be a swell idea.

The truth is, these instances terrify him as much as they do anyone else. He's just not allowed to show it, and it's gnawing at him. The people need to keep thinking that power precludes any signs of human weakness, and that wealth means you get to handwave anything and everything that looks ever-so-slightly cumbersome. As long as someone is willing to make it look like mortal peril is basically nothing to whine about, the city's inhabitants will remain able to soldier through practically anything.

Hell – they soldiered through the Battle of Hope precisely because he and Archie took great pains to make the absolutely daunting defence of the Centennial Tree look like piffle; like something they'd handle in their sleep. All Francis hopes for is that nobody ever learns of how close he came to blacking out, during his massive simulation of the Tree and mark's immediate surroundings, in an effort to waylay Rendell and his forces. He still has nightmares about that one trick, that one illusion that nearly turned his heart to mush and his brain into so much dead weight.

History: 1874 saw the birth of two figures that would each shake up the world in their own way. The first one is Erich Weisz, more largely known as Harry Houdini. The Hungarian-American's roadmap would become populated with notable skills in the creation of illusions, legerdemain and the general pioneering of the craft plied by magicians. After all, his very name is a callback to Robert-Houdin, to whom the world at least partially owes Clanks. Also a renowned skeptic, Houdini would go on to serialize his own character and publish a few stories by himself, as well as then-obscure literary figureheads such as Howard Philips Lovecraft. The Society of American Magicians certainly remembers his thankless death, after an overzealous fan ruptured the man's inflamed appendix in the back of a theatre; with an excessive demonstration of the magician's renowned ability to withstand severe blows.

Only one would go on to be officially recognized by the SAM. The other would earn recognition after a much longer and arduous path.

Francis Herbert Quigley was born in Detroit, Michigan. In the mid-to-late eighteen-hundreds, the city was a flourishing industrial centre. Unfortunately, you can imagine that the average worker's living conditions were still very much lifted almost directly out of the pages of Les Misérables. If you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth and couldn't afford Classical bourgeois education, you were essentially a nobody, born to work in the city's factories and tanneries until either old age, physical injury, infection or the toxic fumes caused by the process of tanning leather in large vats got to you.

Considering, Detroit's industrial and residential sectors would've felt rather homey for people like Archie or Bucky or just about anyone unlucky enough to have walked the sweating, stone-filled narrow back-alleys of the Victorian world. Francis was raised in these conditions and quickly promised to a life of illiteracy, thankless manual labour and of worming around between large presses and gear heads. His decidedly lithe frame having made him prime rib for factory bosses looking for someone small or scrawny enough to fit in tight and dangerous spaces, it seemed obvious to everybody that he'd die young, more than likely crushed by a press of some kind or with a limb or two torn apart by stubborn wheels grinding on despite the presence of gristle and bone in their teeth...

His evenings and rare off days were generally spent running around the industrial district with the neighbourhood's other young folk, usually the kids of Eastern European, Scottish or Irish immigrants. Petty thievery was engaged in as a means to ensure proper nutrition once the teenage hunger pangs started to hit him – and they hit him hard. In a sense, it was rather useful. The poor little lizard really did look rather wretched in the winters between 1884 and 1888... Sometimes, widening his eyes and letting his lower lip tremble while his stomach did all the talking was more than enough to earn him a seat in one of the poorhouses that should have closed their doors hours ago.

His games seemed rather normal to him, and the other kids were too accepting, uneducated and thankfully naive to question him. Creating snowballs in the middle of June seemed like a fun and normal activity to him, as was the notion of climbing into a water tower and heating its contents enough for a fun bath in the middle of February. Back then, of course, most technical implements weren't shielded against via emissions. He drove the family's stove wonky a few times after the occasionally strong mood swing – but it didn't seem to bother anyone.

In 1889, however, a rather severe tiff between him and his parents culminated in a blaze that insidiously started by working on their residence's obviously cheap insulation. The crudely stuffed newspapers caught fire like kindling and chewed at the walls from the inside out. Carbon monoxide claimed his mother, Henrietta Quigley, while his father James all but disowned him once he was given cause to understand what had been the source of the blaze.

Thankfully, the event was enough to attract the attention of Praetorius the Great, a man whose claim to fame was to ply more than simply keen motor skills and a fine sense of observation. Of course, magic hadn't been codified or vulgarized in an effective form yet, so very few people came to truly understand the energies Mages had been weaving and shaping since time immemorial. You couldn't quite advertize as a spell-slinger anymore, and the only adequate way for a practitioner to earn money from his craft was to use it to usurp the talent and ability of your average magician.

Considering, Praetorius had been touring Detroit's poorer districts in order to earn his pittance. The human, being a keen sensitive, picked up on the young cobra's own latent powers as soon as he spotted him in one of his usually mundane crowds. Immediately, he took him upon himself to try and free the boy from his utterly pedestrian destiny. Much to his surprise, James Quigley didn't need much convincing. For Francis, this was both a blow to his very core and a joy. Torn between the sense of being rejected and his exhileration at finally being allowed to show his worth, he accepted his apprenticeship with some reluctance.

Years would pass before they'd even come close to the thought of leaving America behind. With an embittered father and a rather draconian master, Francis didn't have much time for regret. Still, Praetorius – whose real name was Warren Ogilvie – had his own knack for producing riches and fineries out of thin air. One good show, a finely tailored routine and a circuitous route throughout each theatre's highest-grossing seats was all it took. They fenced off their stolen goods, spending on extra training equipment, everyday essentials, as well as literacy.

Francis' first stretch of American living as a practitioner involved touring all of the country's great libraries. Whenever he wasn't training for a trick or developing his own routines, he was reading. Thanks to his nature as a quick study, the skittish street viper who could barely scrawl his own name on paper turned into quite the silver tongue, plying general culture and natural wit to wonderful effect in the handful of salons he and his master visited. While his purely practical skills would remain few and far between, he'd managed to coat his streetwise sensibilities with enough trappings of civility to disarm most of everyone who would've thought of him as just another knave, another pickpocket.

All the while, however, it was obvious to Francis that America was only a training ground of sorts. Warren had something else in mind, and the old coot often spoke of the Orient – of the true power that waited there. Ogilvie was rather keen on talking about demons, of all things, and gave Francis a liberal and thorough instruction on the spheres and circles of Hell. The old man had a bit of a yen for forbidden knowledge, and his own backstory came complete with motivating factors. Having lost his family in Ireland's last great famine, he'd developed a bone-chilling terror and revulsion towards disease and death. He wanted to live on, to become more than just your average semi-competent wizard. He, rather simply enough, wanted to spit in Lady Death's face, foolishly seeing it as a means to conquer his fear.

Francis was too young to have serious ambitions. All he could think about was that being around Praetorius had unlocked a great hunger in him, a deep wanting for more. More of life, more of its experiences, more knowledge, more things to be passionate about, more girls to kiss – more of everything, truly. As far as he was concerned, he'd never be well and truly free from the starving little boy who either came home to rancid potatoes after a gruelling day at the factory or who pilfered from the local markets to maybe eat something that'd be fresh. He seemed to perceive magic as a way out, even if a part of him already knew there'd be no way out.

He was good at magic. Magic made people love him. Magic made people smile and it gave him a sense of power. The tingle of via flowing through the side of the body that receives magic would never cease to thrill him, ever. Back then, in the heady rush of it all, it was easy to plant Amazo's seeds in his own subconscious. The rakish apprentice with the devastating smile and the tendency to take off with the female assistants for the night hadn't quite found his cape and gibus just yet, however.

Finally, 1899 would mark the end of his first American glory days. Praetorius had done his own research, and something was pushing them East, across the Atlantic. He'd heard talk of two artifacts of tremendous arcane power that had been waiting for their new wielder for thousands of years, hidden deep in the Fertile Crescent.

After slumming it through Cairo and sipping strong tea in little cups in Jerusalem, they finally heard of the Eye and Rod of Solomon; reliquaries of the king, Biblical figure, wise man and reputed archmage. Solomon had a great number of accomplishments to his name in Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition alike, and his Lesser Key had nearly been lost to Aleister Crowley's Thelemic bastardizations. Even today, in 2025, scholars will admit that Solomon could have given Merlin and Meris a run for their respective money – especially in the art of wrangling demons into the service of mortals.

The catch was that Solomon's greatest asset was his pure heart. Noble of intent, he'd opposed a gentle and yet firm nature to the depredations of the natives of the Pit. Never simply covetous for power, he'd only ever sought to use what was his to use to protect his subjects. Naturally, Praetorius didn't quite see it that way and Francis, like it or not, was in it for the long run.

In the end, the two of them were driven towards Saudi Arabia and eventually faced death in the Rub-Al-Khali desert. By 1905, they'd managed to find Iram, the fabled City of the Djinn. In it, enshrined for all eternity, had been the Eye and Rod they'd so desperately sought.

June 1905's second week is all a blur for the cobra, who remembers Praetorius clutching both artifacts, only to find himself swallowed by a rapidly expanding sinkhole. Francis doesn't quite remember the particulars of what he did in order to face a veritable swarm of immaterial angel-demon hybrids, but all he does remember involves making it out of the sinking ruins with the Eye and Rod in hand, along with an indentured servant of the blatantly supernatural kind... Khadim Aswad ibn Marut Al-Malik would eventually grow to become his travelling partner of sorts, much as Archie would come to lean on Bucky for assistance. Despite his trauma and the sinking realization that his beating back a horde of angry djinn thanks to the Eye and Staff meant that he'd received a substantial power upgrade, their way out of Saudi Arabia saw the snake carefully and cleverly burn through all three of his wishes in order to premanently bind the Black Servant to his service – as well as to change the nature of his more worrisome ambitions.

A few weeks spent recuperating in Egypt would allow him to revise Praetorius' imparted ethos with what he'd discovered from Solomon's own moral code. Making Khadim consider his own servitude with a contented nature had been a rather hefty trick of semantics, which convinced him of his own ability. Finally, going back on what he'd loved of his time as an assistant made him realize just where he exactly sat, morally and thematically speaking.

What left Egypt for the distant peaks of Nepal and Tibet didn't wear the busted khakis and cavalry boots of fashionable late Colonial gentlemen who'd been put through the wringer. Instead, Amazo the Magnificient came into being – a now rather conscious and properly seated mixture of the blithe confidence of music-hall performers and of the breezy and eminently respectable smidgen of arrogance expected of the wordly and educated. He'd survived something akin to the fabled Storm of the Djinn and had pulled through with a long-suffering companion in the making and a steadily improving bill of health.

Little by little, his reaching wizard status began to show. By the time the Roaring Twenties rolled around, there was no use for him to deny it any longer. He was cursed with good looks for a snake anthro, exceptionally solid genetics, serious natural potential as a practitioner and access to two of the most effective magical foci known to Man. Lucky for him, the Rod and Eye didn't seem to run humility checks... Only purity of intent seemed to matter. Francis came to display his occasional moments of being a flamboyantly breezy asshole, but he always did manage to hide the gooey softness of altruism underneath his increasingly obvious self-love.

While World War One raged, he studied with Oriental practitioners and martial arts masters. He broadened his spectrum of theoretical knowledge with impressive primers on Divination and Mentalism. He learned how to deal with more powerful foes in instances where his magic would desert him. He was back in Detroit by the time speakeasies and Tommy guns became in style, however, and began to seat his reputation as a magic-centered vigilante and performer.

As could be expected, someone who could both wow crowds and save lives attracted rather generous bookings, publishing deals and even movie appearances here and there. An avid escapologist and pickpocket and a born pedagogue in his field, his borderline autobiographical textbooks would quickly become required reading for all mages in training. His diverse experiences allowed him to find respect among the lawful and the lawless alike, with Khadim's rather neutered resourcefulness coming through in those moments where a pinch of outside help was required.

By the time Hope caught his eye thanks to a conversation he'd had with Archie Holden, he was swimming in cash. Already gracefully aged but possessed of the nimble nature of a twentysomething man, he began to frequent Alfonzo Bizzi's rather overt dancing halls and to line up a rather steady string of conquests. It wouldn't be long before one of the city's borderline-routine zombie uprisings would give him the keys to the city. Considering, he'd established himself atop the Mystic Theatre by the onset of World War Two.

By then, however, the involvement of supernaturals, mages and others of a particularly capable nature would be commonplace in this conflict. Francis was one of the stubborn few Americans who resented Neville Chamberlain's passive response to Hitler's bellicose nature. Long before Pearl Harbour would motivate the Americans into joining the front, he'd become part of an American detachment called to server under the command of the British Army.

Codenamed “Dandy”, his purpose was rather simple. He was dropped within range of nevralgic German targets no traditional forces could immediately reach, and told to more or less go to town on the Jerries. If this involved slipping in as a captured or hired performer, so be it. If it involved strolling his way through a blazing inferno of his own creation, that was fine too. While he didn't speak German fluently, all he had to do was get started on a trick, flash his pearly, long and pointed whites and get the Krauts to have fun for a few minutes. Once their guard was down, turning a harmless trick into a lethal act was easy enough. As such, Quigley was the only Captain of Britain's entire foreign partipants to be allowed to skip the military uniform and regalia. His cape, gloves and top hat saw him through the French countryside, when he more or less flew across to meet with some of Omaha Beach's survivors and lead them towards their objective.

While Archie could only legally be allowed to act from behind a desk, considering his age, Amazo was tapped by the Americans to effectively scout out North Africa, with which he'd had time to grow familiar. The Afrika Corps had jury-rigged nigh-indestructible tanks together by using revised Osirite creation processes and First Dynasty Egyptian Scribing, effectively turning some of their tank drivers into undead monstrosities piloting gigantic sarcophagi on wheels. As much of a gentleman as Erwin Rommel would prove to be despite his loyalties, this was more than enough to justify some of the rather decisive blows Amazo would strike, encased in a bubble of temperate air in the middle of the Libyan desert.

Thankfully, Rommel would prove to be of the decidedly old and conservative guard. Too lucid to give in to the full scope of the Reich's lunacy, it would be revealed that he hadn't authorized “Operation Osiris”. His entire division stands free and clear of all outstanding war crimes to this day, a notable rarity in the otherwise liberal amount of sentences delivered by the Nuremberg Trials. Considering the unusually humane reputation of the Desert Fox, Quigley's final joust against him was strictly verbal. If you were to ask Francis his thoughts about Erwin Rommel nowadays, he'd lament being unable to vindicate him in time to save him from his forced suicide.

The end of World War Two saw Francis return to Hope and to Khadim. A few decades of well-earned peace passed, with his more momentous happenings involving the occasional intervention in the midst of a crime spree and his beginning to formally teach Arcane Theory at the local university. He'd go on to nurture two generations of modern-day mages into being and to coach a smattering of post-grad students in their own research and theories. Even in the midst of these fairly nerdy and bookish endeavours, his rock star status never truly dissipated.

Then, the re-purposed Karthian drop-ships let their armed and indoctrinated payload loose on Hope. Called out of his retirement, Amazo was forced to collaborate with his now fairly close friends. With all three major local Clanks, Ethan Alderan, Thomas Griffin and a few others, he mounted rescue operations for the first attack's survivors and took great pains in order to slow down Gregory Rendell's progress towards the Centennial Tree. With relatively little to lose and once it became clear that simple counterattacks wouldn't cut it, he pooled all of his resources together and threw up one of the most impressive illusions the discipline would have ever seen. He effectively managed to cover the actual Tree with the appearance of another naked stretch of park grass, and to simultaneously project a fake Tree and attending dryad, several hundred meters off to the side. He spent long minutes holding up a cubic veil that reached to Buck Tower's first height, pushing himself further than ever before.

In the end, he managed to slow down Rendell's progress by half an hour, giving enough time for the others to attack. While Sophia was reached and effectively injured, his efforts were still instrumental in the local superheroes' efforts against Elysium.

Francis doesn't remember much of the weeks that followed. Others told him that he spent most of fourteen days alternating between deep hibernation and scarfing down whatever food Khadim put on a platter on top of his bed. Later exams would reveal that he'd severely taxed himself and that his near-coma had been an understandable response by his body in an effort to heal. Coming to and returning to an active life required patience and his conscious understanding of new limitations that hadn't been there before. His heart hadn't forgiven him for the amount of excessive focus he'd forced on himself, leaving him a confirmed wizard with an archmage's corresponding levels of notoriety, but an aging mortal's vascular fortitude. While his extended lifespan remained, new wrinkles appeared and his fine little mustache greyed out over the following weeks.

Today, in 2025, Francis has been living in the renovated Mystic Theatre – which has earned an “al” in its name, for the last twenty-seven years. His house doubles as a museum for his own adventures and accomplishments, and stands as a celebration of magic as a form of entertainment. While one of the old showrooms has been adapted into a private loft of sorts, the remaining two projection rooms each have their own stage and host a number of performances each year. He naturally has a certain penchant for booking modern magicians, but vintage movies are also occasionally projected, as fitting the period of the year.

Notably, Amazo had always taken it upon him to gather contentious magical artifacts to save the world from their deleterious effects. Quigley doesn't trust world powers, particulars or private investors with some arcane trinkets of a clearly nefarious background, so there is a hidden showroom for others to stumble upon, somewhere in the theatre. Referring to it as his Shadow Gallery, this is where he stores all the trapped demons, vindictive angels, Lovecraftian contraptions and the tools and trinkets of condemned warlocks he's run into and which he wants to pull out of circulation.

As of late, and considering how the old War on Terror shows no real sign of diminishing, Francis' most stubborn nemesis has largely consisted of government suits requesting access to this or that objectionable magical focus that could, they hold, “tip the scales” in America's favour. He's exhausted most polite means of saying no and is starting to run out of smiles and convenient excuses...
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