this is a little project I started but never found the right illustrator, so I canned it. The project was intended to be a collaborative adventure series with many contributors.
Tungsten Man Character Summary
Written by Jon Prior
Alloy Industries Corporation: Founded in 2167, the AI Corporation launches private spacecraft in exploration of other planets. Once a valuable substance is discovered, AI establishes mining colonies to extract the material for use here on Earth.
Tungsten Men: The AI Corporation’s most valuable asset is the Tungsten Man machine, a robotic mining tool made of Tungsten Carbide, able to withstand extraordinary temperatures and environments found in other worlds. Human in appearance and containing some of the most advanced software and operations capabilities, the Tungsten Men have made AI Corporation into one of the most lucrative companies in the world.
Tungsten Man: Deployed to Titanium Colony x435 in March of 2224, Tungsten Man is discovered one year later to be the only survivor, man or machine left in place. Like other Tungsten Men, he appears human; though when found his outer layer of paint has been shed to reveal the Tungsten Carbide shell beneath. Unlike other Tungsten Men, this lone survivor has developed intelligence unanticipated by its designer and may thus be called natural intelligence. Because of his relationships developed in the year he spent at the mining colony, Tungsten Man experiences kindness, compassion, pity, confusion and problem solving capabilities beyond the limitations of his initial designs. Because of the incident that occurred at the mining colony, he often experiences grief, melancholy and a quiet devotion to prevent harm to others. His major weakness, however, is that he is naive. His interaction with people is childlike in its development, and he will constantly underestimate the depths of evil in his enemies.
Dr. Gilbert Henri: The initial designer of the Tungsten Men runs his lab in his estate in Washington, D.C., and has spent years trying to develop advanced software for the mining machines. AI Corporation allows him to study the Tungsten Man found at Titanium Mining Colony x435. Considered eccentric and reclusive, Dr. Henri diverges from his quest to discover how Tungsten Man developed this natural intelligence, and, instead, tries to introduce him into the world as a functioning, albeit, over-sized human being. Dr. Henri constantly allows Tungsten Man to make his own choices, an exercise that often leads Tungsten Man into harm.
Page Knightley: In Tungsten Man’s first exploration of Washington, he finds Page, a seventeen-year-old frequent runaway living in the Downs Quarter of D.C., a place filled with criminal terrors and poverty. She’s anything but bland, with brightly dyed hair, and a magnificent collection of rings and tattoos, she leads a double life: impoverished runaway pick-pocket, and the daughter of one of AI Corporation’s most powerful board members. Dr. Henri decides to let her stay in his estate, though the place has been void of a female presence for many years. He believes that her friendship with Tungsten Man will help him shed his grief over the mining colony incident.
Detective Bill Giggs: Old. Grumpy. Tired. Alcoholic. Doesn’t want to retire because then he’ll have to spend more time with his wife. Works in the Murder Department at Washington P.D. The Department’s trying to push him out, and leaves him on the fringes of big cases, so he’s been reassigned to patrol the Downs Quarter, where he runs into Tungsten Man and Page. Troubled by what they see, the three of them devote themselves to cleaning up the area.
Mrs. Beatrice Giggs: Demands that she cooks for Dr. Henri, Page and her husband. Tungsten Man enjoys the smell of her cooking.
Archie Trump: The dishwasher at Maude’s Diner in the Downs Quarter. He’s a loud, funny and proud black man trying to make a legitimate living in this terrible place. He dreams of one day owning his own restaurant, but until then, he provides Tungsten Man and Det. Giggs with information about local criminals. The Villains
Mr. Henry Knightley: Page’s father talks fast and walks faster. His hair is always neatly parted, and his suits never seem to wrinkle. He is the Vice President of AI Corporation, third in command to Mr. Neilson, the CEO, and his son, Robert Neilson, the President. In his sleek office, he carries out his usual tasks of managing the company, executing the good intentions of his two bosses in their search for new worlds and materials. In his Tungsten-Armored limousine, however, he often meets with a variety of politicians, high-ranking military commanders and local criminal heads to discuss how assets at AI Corporation can assist in more unsavory business opportunities.
Michelle Pronti: “Owns” the Downs Quarter. She and other criminal organizers are paid very well to keep the crime in Downs Quarters by Mr. Knightley and the politicians who meet in his limousine, but she is the most ruthless and sinister of the other bosses. MurkBorn Thomas Dimonty in the Downs Quarter, he was sentenced to life in prison at the age of twenty for the murder of a Washington family. For twenty years he served in the Prisoners Work Corp at Mercury Mining Colony m55. He was involved in an accident that led to acute mercury poisoning. It was not an accident, rather a secret project of Mr. Knightley’s and the European Union’s Department of Defense. It was a weapons test gone wrong, and Mr. Dimonty was nearly killed, saved only by a bizarre experimental procedure where his body was “redesigned” to handle the vast amounts of the poison introduced into his system. It was not without side effects. After the procedure, Dimonty was moved to a minimum-security prison in Washington, where doctors could rehabilitate him under the watchful eye of Mr. Knightley. His appearance transformed: silvery pallor, enormous steel staples along his spine, smaller ones on his face, and strange titanium-capped teeth. To even Mr. Knightley’s horror, he escaped in 2220 and haunts those living in the Downs Quarter as Murk. Using mercury-laced knives, his victims suffer from severe depression, hallucinations and suicidal tendencies. However, their intensity in his victims are greatly shadowed by his own suffering and lust for revenge.
PLAGUE: Responsible for the incident at Titanium Mining Colony x435. It is unknown how this highly advanced computer code came into existence, but it has developed intelligence unmatched by any mind or machine on Earth. AI Corporation has codenamed it PLAGUE, because of its unusual ability to move like a computer virus from one mining colony Control System to another without human assistance.
Tungsten Man will meet PLAGUE during its several attempts to infiltrate Control Systems on Earth. Though highly intelligent and even polite in its murderous and destructive activities, PLAGUE’s weakness exists in its inability to analyze or express human emotion, which is Tungsten Man’s greatest strength.
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