Dr. Diabolik

Doctor Diabolik by Elaborate

Dr. Diabolik (Leonides Daibliku) is a high B-list super-villain. He was originally from Yugoslavia, but escaped in the sixties. He considers himself an idealist, devoting his life to the SMI²LE (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension) agenda.

The Green Witch considers that he may be a Science Villain, that is, an extraordinarily intelligent baseline with no paranormal powers.

Aliases

It bears mention that Jadis often refers to him as "Doctor Dad". Spider has referred to him as "Wankerbolik".

Family

His children, Jadis and Malachi, live in a town house in New York that's under permanent surveillance by the FBI when they are not at Whateley. Neither child's mother is known, although Jadis has a suspicion that hers is a super-heroine named the White Witch. The devil he bound into her, as well as the neural implant, are keeping them from identifying each other.

Appearance

Despite being 75 years old as of October 2006 he looks like he is in his late 40s. He is tall and gaunt and has a hatchet face, Roman nose, and a knob chin. His otherwise graying reddish hair stands up into two white "devil's horns" forelocks.

Inventions

Mind Web

Originally intended as cerebral stimulation through electromagnetic induction it instead induces a blank, dreamy state that is useful for paralyzing whole cities on his raids. A welcome side effect is that those who overcome the effect are more lucid than normal for weeks afterward.

Solon-3

Solon-3 is an illegal intelligence enhancing drug. Supposedly it is only addictive in that people like to be smarter. It was submitted for FDA approval, which was denied for unclear reasons, Jadis suggesting that it was merely due to a general disapproval of such drugs.

Modus Operandi

Diabolik has several ventures that fund his activities, including marketing illegal smart drugs such as Solon-3, building custom exotic equipment, and a brisk business creating and implanting custom bionic implants. But his most famous and troublesome money-making venture is paralyzing and raiding median-scale cities. Diabolik’s SOP is to pre-arrange the layout of an array of ‘perimeter pylons’ that encircles several square miles of a metropolitan area and then drop a core broadcast generator from orbit in the center of the array. The array broadcasts what is called a ‘Mind Web’, which induces a mind-null state in everyone within the containment area. People who have survived the Mind Web describe the experience as like being in a mental cloud, seeing what is going on around them, but unable to grasp what is going on, and unable to think. Once the target area has been paralyzed, Diabolik brings down a force of dropships from orbit and sacks the city of everything that can be loaded onto the dropships, in a manner all-too reminiscent of the Vikings. When the dropships are loaded, or if enough people have resisted the Mind Web and are mounting an effective counter-attack, or the core broadcast generator has been destroyed, the dropships lift off to affect a getaway. Diabolik’s Mind-Web is far from perfect, and not only can individuals fight the mental paralysis and act of their own volition, but a dramatic enough example has repeatedly been shown to inspire others to break free of the paralysis. While the paralysis is reasonably harmless in and of itself, the mass paralysis routinely causes accidents and fires and medical situations to go untended, resulting in hundreds of deaths per raid.

Motivation

After allegation of not caring about human life Dr. Diabolik responded with the following broadcast:

<taps microphone> "Is this thing on?"

'ahem!'

"Hello, I am Dr. Leonides Daibliku, possibly better known to you as 'Doctor Diabolik'. While I am gratified at the number of surmises as to my motives and personal reactions as regards my various enterprises, and pleasantly surprised at the number of insightful guesses, I think that it is time that I clarified my position on these matters.

"Simply stated, my agenda is to achieve material advances in the vital areas of Space Migration, Intelligence Enhancement, and Life Extension. Ironically, while the Life Extension is being pursued admirably, it's making these advancements as the worst possible time, when the extension of the lifespans of the elderly merely results in the creation of a great gaping black hole for desperately needed resources for our overcrowded populace.

"Yet the Space Program, THE most vitally NEEDED prospect for Federally funded research and development has been hampered, no shackled, no HAM-STRUNG by the pygmies in Congress who whimper about 'wasted funds'! Wasted Funds! Better use of resources! Weather satellites save hundreds of thousands of lives every year by timely and accurate tracking of major storms. BILLIONS in money are saved by the intelligent movement of vessels given the warning provided the orbital observation system. Global Position Systems, which are a lynchpin of modern travel, would not exist if not for the Space Program. Indeed, modern Communications and the Internet would not exist if not for the orbital satellite system. The world has lost its appreciation of the technical marvel that satellites are, and now takes them for granted. Hmmm... you never really appreciate something until you don't have it anymore... maybe I should arrange for a 'blackout' of the satellites...

"Ahem! Sorry, let me make a note of that... Anyway, beyond the missed opportunity to advance not merely scientific understanding- which is more than enough, in my humble opinion- there are the staggering commercial, industrial and even environmental potentials implicit in orbital and lunar development. And, I say this with the heaviest of hearts, but there is the effect that the lack of a real frontier has had on America's youth. When I came to America in the early 1960s-

"My apologies. I didn't come here to discuss my opinions as regard the Space Program. Let me get back to my point, and say that the Space Program has been cruelly and pointlessly curtailed, when I view it as necessary to our culture's welfare. The other crucial matter, Intellect Enhancement is subject to the harshest legal controls, stifling the stellar potentials that it holds.

"Simply stated, social, political, legal and financial issues that the Powers That Be could deal with but choose not to, strangle these crucial developments. 'Sweetheart deals' and vested interests contrive to place restrictions that make real advancements in areas such as Petroleum Alternatives, and more effective personal vehicles almost impossible. Funding is withheld, legal constraints are place, political pressure is applied, social movements are set against responsible research, and the inevitable accidents are blown up into horrible disasters by a sensation seeking Media. We are forced to crawl, where we should stride like giants!

"Faced with the evisceration of NASA in the early 1970s, I decided to become an outlaw, and pursue these advances in defiance of the Law. I feel that this was a regrettable but necessary step. I accept that circumstances require that I do illegal, criminal things, and even things that I personally regard as wrong, in order to pursue my 'SMILE' agenda. People have died, because of the things that I have done. The saying 'you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs' is trite, and it doesn't cover the real tragedy. Yes, people died when I tried to put Pittsburg into orbit. More would have died if I had succeeded. But those that would have survived would not merely been party to the establishment of a complete orbital manufacturing complex! And more, they would have awakened to their full potential!

"My nightmare is an Earth choked with the wastes of trillions of human beings, alive, but not really living, stumbling through their years in a haze of electronic stimulation, making the barest effort to get by, never getting anywhere near their true potential! You think that this is a paranoid imagining? Look at the constant degradation of Public Education and Services in America. In trying to keep more people alive with the minimum, they are all cheated and shortchanged! That is, except for the constantly shrinking minority that live comparatively well, at the expense of their fellow humans.

"And, here is my true nightmare- what happens to those benumbed, dumbed-down, barely educated, unmotivated, distracted, technologically-illiterate somnambulant billions, and their equally technologically-illiterate leadership, when the increasingly complex systems that they barely perceive, let alone comprehend, FAIL?

"Billions will die. A ten percent survival would be an optimistic forecast. I have killed thousands. I hope to save billions.

"THAT is why I fight.

"Thank you."

Activities

As of February 9, 2007, he'd killed 17,246 people (by Jadis' count). He built a moon base intending that it be taken over by the government, but the team that tried to take it over destroyed it. The Tin Man was part of the raiding team.

He put THX-1138 into the drinking water in Biloxi, thereby increasing test scores in the local schools by 23%. He tried to cause Mt. Rainier to erupt, possibly as a trade for something with Crucible. He tried to put Pittsburgh into orbit, but was foiled by the Amazing Three. He tried to put an asteroid into lunar orbit, intending that it be used for raw materials for orbital manufacturing; Gulf Coast Legion interfered, apparently thinking he meant to crash it into the Earth, and some communication satellites were knocked out in the ensuing fracas.

He trades favors with other super-villains from time to time in furtherance of his agenda. His idea of a "measured response" is orbital bombardment—but in that case the proposed target probably deserved it.

You do not diss Dr. Diabolik. “My father has a hard-earned reputation for cruel, unusual and humiliating revenge that Mal and I are VERY proud of! When the Big Man of Berlin fucked with Doctor Dad, he shrunk the Big Man down to three inches tall, and flushed him down the sewers. After Dad got through with the Pirate King, he was deathly afraid of water! When the Fascist Four turned on him… well, you ever heard of a movie called ‘Watermelon Man’? Oh, and you may have heard of the Iron Warlord, big buff macho guy, always wore a lot of armor? Well, he thought that he could get a handle on Dad by kidnapping Mal and me- well, the last that anyone ever saw of the Iron Warlord, he was serving cocktails at a Syndicate party, wearing a French maid’s outfit and a blank smile....

On October 8, 2006 he executed a raid on Cincinnati, mostly to finance his other activities, but taking the opportunity to economically retaliate against The Purifier after she had interfered with his operations in Paraguay. Among the other cities he has raided was Dresden in 1999 and Fort Wayne at some point before 2007.

On New Years Eve 2006 he was in Darwin for unclear reasons when Doctor Reaper attacked. He decided to help defend the city, and apparently killed Doctor Reaper after Eldritch had cut off his legs.

Associations

While it's uncertain how many of the following are part of Dr. Diabolik's permanent staff and how many are temporary hires, these people are known to have worked for him:

• Barton
• Carver
• Derrick (villain)
• Dexter and Sinister
• Dzerzhinski
• Madam Lash
• Major Ironhand
• Protoplasmik
• Valencia

Trivia

• In James Blish' seminal work, Cities in Flight, Pittsburgh was the first city launched into space using an anti-gravity drive; it proceeded to travel the stars as a processing/manufacturing facility hiring out to less advanced cultures, the long years of travel made possible by life-extension drugs developed at the same time as the anti-gravity drive, and advanced educational methods developed to maximize individual's potentials. In other words, SMILE.
• Solon is attributed with a series of reforms of Athenian Culture.
• THX 1138 was a dystopian film by George Lucas.