The Hummingbird Thief (Mutants & Masterminds 3e)

Professor Clive Cullen

"We can have no significant understanding of any culture unless we also know the silences that were intentionally created and guaranteed along with it."
--Gerald Sider
 
Colonizers have been getting the religions of those they colonized for centuries.  The tradition dates back to long before the current European-dominated colonialist backwash.  Professor Clive Cullen is just one more of a sadly long line.  He doesn't realize it, of course ~ do they ever? ~ but then again he has a bit of an excuse.  His misinterpretation somehow managed to drum up some actual magickal power.  I blame chaos magick; it's got too much insight into the way the world works with too few of the imprecations to introspection that serve to water the twin ferns of morality and ethics.

Clive began as a rather nebbish professor, with a paunch somewhat larger than the one he sports currently and stock in the company that manufactured the leather-elbowed tweed coats he loved so much.  His specialty was the anthropology of religion; he'd earned his Ph.D. with a thesis exploring Middle Eastern folktales involving the interactions between the androgynous peacock-winged archangel Abbridon who was invoked to reveal truth, Lamal the Law-Giver who was another of the Three Powers of the Modrossus, and the pain demon Shatachna who was known as the Iron Queen.  Specifically, Clive was fascinated by a genre of tale in which the three worked together to achieve some necessary end.  Two angels and a demon, all united in the revelation of reality ~ a simply engrossing challenge to traditional moralities.

"Who could truly set His shield to rest?
His throne? His mighty spear?
Think on that. Remember it well, O princes.
Who could lay waste to Tenochtitlan?
Who dares assail the foundation of heaven?"
--David Bowles, Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry

Clive would have walked through the world this way, pipe in hand, all his life, had it not been for a chance encounter at a conference in Amherst, which introduced him to things like the quetzal bird, and Fray Diego Duran's theory that Quetzalcoatl was St. Thomas, and the huehuetlatolli, and Nezahualcoyotl's haunting meditations on the interplay between earthly pleasures and the certainty of death, and all manner of such things.  Intrigued, Professor Cullen began several years of a slow, creeping total shift in his research from one continent to another.  He didn't fully abandon his original research, however, turning in his spare time to the interminable and interlocking initiations of any number of magickal secret societies (he himself certainly lost count).  Somewhere along the way, he even began to unlock the secrets of a couple of spells, two invoking Abbridon, two in Lamal's name, and a fifth calling Shatachna's dread power.

He finally got himself a job at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas studying pre-Columbian Nahua religion.  His explorations continued, as did the intrusions of what he thought he knew into what he was trying to learn.  The ways of the teteo became twisted by interpretations founded in Middle Eastern religions and Christian theology and Freud.  It's always fucking Freud, isn't it?  But somewhere along the way, he had the bright idea of mixing in what he thought he knew to the thaumaturgies he'd begun to comprehend.

"How we devour one another's culture, do so without shame--ideas like water, free flowing and able to take on other forms. Able to flood highways, level entire cities if summoned with enough force."
--J. Andrew Schrecker, Insomniacs, We

Colin never understood the Aubin Codex.  Not really.  He thought he'd come up with a radical new interpretation of how Huitzilopochtli had stolen the Chichimeca, turned them into Mexica, and done somewhat similar with his sister's heart.  It was complete bullshit, of course, but mixing it into some Hermetic practices with a lot of Nahua dressing and some plumas turned out, somehow, to have some sort of power.  He discovered a spell that allowed him to harvest the motion of those whose blood he spills and concentrate it within himself, dramatically increasing his speed.

He quickly crossed paths with the hero known as Catspaw when the two happened to be robbing the same casino museum on the same night.  Dikadora was allowing herself to be used as a cat burglar by New Covenant Regulator, stealing artifacts brought to this continent in the bloody hands of the conquistadores, relics of the Lord of Peace which battered upon the heads and bodies of the Native Americans.  Clive sought a tecpatl, a sacrifical obsidian knife, that was supposed to have belonged to a powerful and ancient Quetzalcoatl Totec Tlamacazqui.  The two fought like a cat and a bird.  Clive got away with the tecpatl, but Catspaw failed to nab the relic she sought, distracted by the fight and the failed chase.  She broke back in to the casino museum that night only to find the relic gone, but that story has nothing to do with the Hummingbird Thief, as she dubbed him.  I'm sure I'll get around to telling it sometime.

"She recalled her absurd attempt to construct an example—an image that, because it was constructed of things it simply did not fit, reversed the idea into an idea silly by itself, ridiculous in application—a ridiculousness that could easily, she saw, have strayed into the pernicious, the odious, or the destructive, depending on how widely one had insisted on applying it."
--Samuel Delany, The Tales of Neveryon

Home Base:  Las Vegas.
Gender:  Cismale
Sexuality:  Straight vanilla
Romantic Identity:  Monogamous aromantic

"We all are influenced by things and copy things, but often where there is a certain level of copying, only the surface value ends up being reproduced and that becomes thinner and thinner. I feel like a lot of appropriation suffers from that."
--Jason Fulford

Recurrent Foes:

• Vincenzo Sangiovanni:  Vincenzo is older than the Mafia, but few people know that outside of the other vampires in the city.  He fled the last gasps of the Renaissance on the mainland to Sicily, and history was made.  Now he owns a casino and has a position in the Mafia far below what he deserves.  He likes it that way: fewer people bothering him about the kind of minutiae the living seem to think are so important.  He ran afoul of the Hummingbird Thief for the first time when he opened an Aztec-themed casino on the Strip.  Clive, oblivious to his own cultural appropriation, was unduly incensed at Vincenzo's.
  
  • Notable Powers:  (PL 12) Metrosexual Vampire from Supernatural Handbook.  Command the Undead, Grasping Graves, Death Sight, Death Vision, Necromancy (with a number of spells as Alternate Effects), Speak with the Dead, Mind Control from Powers Profile.  Death-activated equivalent of Scrying Stone of Sirrion and large installation from Gadgets Guide.  Benefit (wealth 5)
• Tonka Truck:  This Lakota wicasa wakan comes from a post-apocalyptic future where they lead a combine of truckers supplying a wasted west with food, medical supplies, and mail service.  One of the artifacts on display in one of the casinos when the bombs dropped had some sort of reaction with the radioactivity and tore a rip through time.  Tonka Truck found it and came here, now, hoping to prevent his future from coming about.  He claims that defeating the Hummingbird Thief is somehow part of that mission.
• Notable Powers:  (PL 11) A sizeable magical array of spells (Animate Machines, Control Technology, Deactivate Technology, Disassemble, Assemble, Interface, Manipulate Technology, Sensor Masking, and Sensor Network from Powers Profile, for example), tricked-out technomagical dumptruck, Artificer, various junk-magic devices, tech spirit allies.
• Catspaw:  As mentioned, they ran into each other trying to steal different things from the same museum.  Since then, they have engaged off and on in, shall we say, cat and bird chases whenever they would run into each other.  On more than one occasion, werecats of the Qualmi, Pumonca, and especially the Balam tribes have contacted Catspaw to task her with frustrating one of Clive's schemes or recover something he had acquired that he shouldn't have.
  The Hummingbird Thief tends to be a more straightforward opponent for Catspaw than her usual targets, as he isn't trying to exert influence against her.  This sometimes comes as a relief to the werecat, but at other times feels frustrating; she has once or twice tried (and failed) to educate him out of his unconsidered racism. (PL 10)
  
• Ravella the Riverboat Queen:  Younger than Don Sangiovanni, but immortal nonetheless, she began making big bets and keeping cards up her sleeve on the Mississippi some 200 years ago or so.  Her death was gambled away to a demon, and so she's still kicking aorund.  Ravella's come to love the thrill.  She'll bet on anything, with anyone ~ as long as it's big enough, and she's been around to see some big pots.  Catspaw had heard of her and called her in to challenge the Hummingbird Thief to a game of cards with his knowledge of the Nahua at stake.  Ravella still hasn't forgiven him for winning.
  
  • Notable Powers:  (PL 10) Variable (can bet and receive bets for anything; Affects Others, Slow, Precise, Variable Descriptor, Distracting, Limited: Only in Betting Games, Side Effect 1, Check Required: Opposed Expertise: Gambling), Immortality, Immunity (aging)
• Trademark:  Pierce Draper, the dream-controlling advertising agent, sees lots of value in the Hummingbird Thief and his image.  At first, he simply appropriated the Hummingbird Thief as a mascot, seeding dreams throughout the nation of him wearing various brands of shoes and other clothing.  Clive did not take well to such non-academic fame, which led to Trademark trying again, but this time to advertise a line of children's books about the Aztecs.  That fell apart over arguments about money.  Mr. Draper had the most success when trying to use his powers to "convince" Professor Cullen to film commercials for his clients.  The relationship between the two has continued in this fashion, with contentious alliance after contentious alliance.
  • Notable Powers:  (PL 9) Benefit (wealth), Connected, Inspire, Trance.  Features (Fast Sleeper, Light Sleeper, Lucid Dreamer), Sleepless, Dream Mastery, and Psychic Vampirism (Asleep as third degree) from Power Profiles.
• La Malinchista:  UFO abductions don't just happen in the States.  Concepcion Lopez is one such abductee; it was the scariest moment in her life.  Concepcion's proudest moment was when her daughter, Marina, joined the AEM.  Little did she know that this would bring Marina into contact with the species that implanted her within Concepcion's egg.  Falling in love over interstellar radio with one of the aliens, Marina agreed to serve as the invading force's agent on Earth, preparing it for easier conquest as the supervillain La Malinchista.  Area 51 was part of that plan, so she emigrated to the US, where she ran afoul of both Corporal Cadmus and the Hummingbird Thief.  The first was because of her mission, the second because of how poorly he treated the culture of her ancestors.
• Notable Powers:  (PL 8) High Presence, high interaction skills, Attractive 2, Affliction (horniness; entranced, compelled, limited degree), Communication (olfactory), Weaken Awareness.  Cosmic Awareness, Universal Translation (expanded language, animals, machines) from Power Profiles.

Recurrent Allies:

• Emberwight:  Professor Cullen might be over-focused on (his interpretations of) Huitzilopochtli-as-hummingbird, but he hasn't forgotten that he was also a sun god, or had been raised to such exalted status by the cihuacoatl Tlacaelel I.  This has led him to team up from time to time with the fiery ghost Emberwight.  Usually, he allows Emberwight to possess him, allowing them to combine both the Hummingbird Thief's superspeed and Emberwight's control over flames.  They often go by the name of Solar Flare in this form.
• Notable Powers:  (PL 8) Skin-rider from Supernatural Handbook.  Death Stare, Death Touch, Death's Gate, Death Sight, Death Vision, Speak With the Dead, Feature (deathly aura, tiny flame, cooking from the inside, flaming Presence bonus), Fireball (Soulfire), Fiery Breath (Soulfire), Fire Blast (Soulfire), Flame Aura (Soulfire), Immolate (Soulfire), Heatstroke, Melt, Smoke Cloud (Linked to Suffocation with Area), Fire Shield, Heat Absorption, Immunity to Heat, Infravision, Pyrokinesis, Warm from Powers Profile.
  

"The fleeting pomps of the world are like the green willow trees, which, aspiring to permanence, are consumed by a fire, fall before the axe, are upturned by the wind, or are scarred and saddened by age.
The grandeurs of life are like the flowers in color and in fate; the beauty of these remains so long as their chaste buds gather and store the rich pearls of the dawn and saving it, drop it in liquid dew; but scarcely has the Cause of All directed upon them the full rays of the sun, when their beauty and glory fail, and the brilliant gay colors which decked forth their pride wither and fade.
The delicious realms of flowers count their dynasties by short periods; those which in the morning revel proudly in beauty and strength, by evening weep for the sad destruction of their thrones, and for the mishaps which drive them to loss, to poverty, to death and to the grave. All things of earth have an end, and in the midst of the most joyous lives, the breath falters, they fall, they sink into the ground.
All the earth is a grave, and nought escapes it; nothing is so perfect that it does not fall and disappear. The rivers, brooks, fountains and waters flow on, and never return to their joyous beginnings; they hasten on to the vast realms of Tlaloc, and the wider they spread between their marges the more rapidly do they mould their own sepulchral urns. That which was yesterday is not to-day; and let not that which is to-day trust to live to-morrow.
The caverns of earth are filled with pestilential dust which once was the bones, the flesh, the bodies of great ones who sate upon thrones, deciding causes, ruling assemblies, governing armies, conquering provinces, possessing treasures, tearing down temples, flattering themselves with pride, majesty, fortune, praise and dominion. These glories have passed like the dark smoke thrown out by the fires of Popocatepetl, leaving no monuments but the rude skins on which they are written.
Ha! ha! Were I to introduce you into the obscure bowels of this temple, and were to ask you which of these bones were those of the powerful Achalchiuhtlanextin, first chief of the ancient Toltecs; of Necaxecmitl, devout worshiper of the gods; if I inquire where is the peerless beauty of the glorious empress Xiuhtzal, where the peaceable Topiltzin, last monarch of the hapless land of Tulan; if I ask you where are the sacred ashes of our first father Xolotl; those of the bounteous Nopal; those of the generous Tlotzin; or even the still warm cinders of my glorious and immortal, though unhappy and luckless father Ixtlilxochitl; if I continued thus questioning about all our august ancestors, what would you reply? The same that I reply—I know not, I know not; for first and last are confounded in the common clay. What was their fate shall be ours, and of all who follow us.
Unconquered princes, warlike chieftains, let us seek, let us sigh for the heaven, for there all is eternal, and nothing is corruptible. The darkness of the sepulchre is but the strengthening couch for the glorious sun, and the obscurity of the night but serves to reveal the brilliancy of the stars. No one has power to alter these heavenly lights, for they serve to display the greatness of their Creator, and as our eyes see them now, so saw them our earliest ancestors, and so shall see them our latest posterity."
--Nezahualcoyotl

Physical Appearance:  I can't draw, so I really like providing a few reference pictures and trusting in your imagination to build a good image of the Hummingbird Thief.  He looks like some combination of these five pictures:

"The fact that we restored Teotihuacan or that Father Garibay labours to translate Aztec poems brings no benefit to the Indians, adds not a single tortilla to their daily diet. We adorn ourselves with their jewels, excavate the earth to turn up their ancient artifacts, but we stubbornly ignore their rags, protect the men who steal their lands, fail to punish their exploiters... We have one attitude toward the dead Indians, a very different one toward the living. The dead Indians excite our admiration, stimulate a stream of tourists; the living Indians make us blush with shame, give a hollow ring to our fine words of progress and democracy"
--Fernando Benítez, "Los Indios de México"

The Hummingbird Thief (PL 8)
STR 0  AGI 0  FGT 0  AWE 1
STA 0  DEX 1  INT 4  PRE 0 
Powers
Stolen Tecpatl:  Easily removable Str-based Damage 2 (piercing), accurate 6, concealable, dangerous 4, impressive, indestructible • 9 points
All-Seeing Eyes of Abbridon the Lantern of Heaven (spell):  Remote Sensing 2 (visual, auditory, mental) • 8 points
Illumination of Abbridon the Lantern of Heaven (spell):  Environment 2 (bright light), feature 1 (equal to daylight) • 5 points
Legate Lamal’s Mighty Hands (spell): Move Object 2, Precise, Subtle • 6 points
Light of Legate Lamal (spell):  Ranged Affliction 4 (resisted and overcome by Will DC 14; controlled), progressive, limited degree, limited to speaking the truth • 4 points
Shatachna's Seal of Silence (spell):  Perception ranged Affliction 3 (resisted and overcome by Will DC 13; controlled), progressive, limited degree, limited to communication, limited to specific information • 6 points
That Which is Owed to the Hummingbird Thief (spell):  Weaken Movement Traits 8 (broad, incurable, check required: Expertise: Magic 5, limited to only after spilling the person’s blood) • 4 points
Paynal's Song (spell effect):  Dynamic Array (8 points) • 24 points total

• Enhanced Speed 16, limited to power points drained with Weaken Movement • 8 points (1 point per 2 ranks)
• Enhanced Winged Flight 16, limited to power points drained with Weaken Movement • 2 points (1 point per 2 ranks)
• Enhanced Multiattack Strength-based Damage 4, limited to power points drained with Weaken Movement, precise, penetrating 4 • 2 points (1 + 1 point per additional rank + 1/rank of penetrating)
• Enhanced Dodge 14, limited to power points drained with Weaken Movement, precise • 2 points (1 + 1 point per 2 ranks)
• Enhanced Parry 8, limited to power points drained with Weaken Movement • 2 points (1 point per 2 ranks)
• Enhanced Quickness 14, limited to power points drained with Weaken Movement, precise • 2 points (1 + 1 point per 2 ranks)
• Enhanced Advantage (Improved Initiative) 16, limited to power points drained with Weaken Movement • 2 points (1 point per 2 ranks)
• Movement 2 (wall-crawling, water-walking), limited to while moving, limited to power points drained with Weaken Movement • 2 points.
• Concealment 4 (visual), limited to while moving, limited to power points drained with Weaken Movement • 2 points

Advantages
Beginner’s Luck, Benefit (wealth 2), Equipment 1 (camera, smartphone), Evasion, Fascinate (Expertise: Teaching), Languages 4 (Arabic, French, German, Hebrew, Latin, Nahuatl, Quiche Maya, Spanish), Instant Up, Ritualist, Seize Initiative, Uncanny Dodge
Skills
Expertise: Anthropology 8 (+12), Expertise: History 10 (+14), Expertise: Magic 6 (+10), Expertise: Teaching 10 (+14), Investigation 4 (+8), Technology 10 (+14), Vehicles 6 (+7)
Offense
Initiative +0 (up to +64 while Paynal's Song is active)
Tecpatl +12:  Close, Damage 2 (piercing; up to 6 with Multiattack while Paynal's Song is active), Crit 16-20
The Light of Legate Lamal +1:  ranged, Will DC 14, compelled to tell the truth
What is Owed 0:  Fortitude DC 18, lose power points from Movement traits
Unarmed 0:  Close, Damage 0 (up to 4 with Multiattack while Paynal's Song is active)
Defense
Dodge  0 (up to 14 while Paynal's Song is active)
Fortitude  0 
Parry  0 (up to 8 while Paynal's Song is active)
Toughness  0
Will  2
Ground speed rank 0 (2 mph; up to 16, 125,000 mph, while Paynal's Song is active)
Flight speed rank -- (up to 16, 125,000 mph, while Paynal's Song is active)
Complications
Intellectually Arrogant:  Clive has a tendency to trust what he reads in books or the conclusions he draws therefrom over the theories of others or, in fact, the lived experiences of the people he studies.  This has not endeared him to the Jews, Arabs, occultists, pious Christians, Nahua, or Maya that he has objectified ~ I mean, studied.  He doesn't have a reputation, per se, but his attitudes usually become apparent rather quickly, as he lectures and corrects people (wrongly) on the culture they were raised in.
Motivation ~ Knowledge:  Clive isn't in the supervillain business for money or revenge or power.  He just wants to know things because he likes knowing things.  Well, he likes thinking he knows things.  More than one of his supervillainous plots have been attempts to force one of his fallacious interpretations of native American and Mesoamerican culture to be true.

Power Point Totals:  Abilities 12 + Powers 66 + Advantages 14 + Skills 27 + Defenses 1 = 120