[hider=Richard Hoss - Forge]
[center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/41/dd/fa/41ddfa66016f78ca48e7d57a4bd64f99.jpg[/img] 
[color=ORANGE][h1][b]FORGE[/b][/h1][/color]
[b][color=ORANGE]"Heroes were a failed endeavour. It’s time to make way for the future."[/color][/b][/center]

[color=ORANGE][B][  NAME  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Richard Hoss[/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][  HERO IDENTITY  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Forge[/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][  NICKNAME/ALIAS  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Rich[/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][  AGE  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]36[/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ GENDER ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Male [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ AFFILIATION ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Villain/Vigilante; formerly a member of HERO[/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][  APPEARANCE  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]At 6’ 4” and 260lbs, combined with his broad shoulders and muscular build, Richard is an imposing individual; his height and his size, which includes a wide, barrel chest, thick arms and legs and large hands, give him a presence and physicality that is hard to ignore. His skin is a tanned bronze in colour, marred in places by the occasional pale scar, which complement his reddish brown hair and brown eyes. [/INDENT]

[INDENT]Richard keeps his hair short on the sides but longer on top, letting the locks of hair fall as they may; his facial hair he pays more attention to, keeping his goatee neatly trimmed and in order. His face is as broad as the rest of his body, with a square face, broad nose and a strong, angular chin. [/INDENT]

[INDENT]When it comes to his wardrobe Richard dressed plainly, but smartly, keeping to solid black or slate grey clothing. He will wear slacks or jeans, dress shirts or a sweater, depending on the occasion and the weather. Under his clothing he wears a bodysuit that covers his upper body and his lower half down to mid-thigh, black in colour; it is made of the same heat resistant and sturdy material that his old hero costume was made out of, capable of surviving him using his power without compromising his dignity.[/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ PERSONALITY TRAITS ][/B][/color]
[color=Orange][INDENT]JADED[/INDENT][/color]
[INDENT]Richard wanted to change the world at one point. In a way he still does, but the hopeful and optimistic dream he once had as a young boy first donning a costume died a long time ago, snuffed out by repeated failures and the realisation that the world was not the way he thought it was. Richard is a cynical individual with little faith or trust left to put in people; he expects them to act in their own self-interest, nothing more, and treats them as such. [/INDENT]
 
[color=Orange][INDENT]DRIVEN[/INDENT][/color]
[INDENT]The drive Richard had as a hero still exists; he has not given up on his goals, merely changed them. He never was the type to give up or turn away from a problem and he was never the type to let others keep him from doing what he felt needed to be done. In the past this meant fighting against villains or criminals, or standing up to the injustices he saw; now it’s the heroes who are standing in his way. [/INDENT]

[color=Orange][INDENT]COMPOSED[/INDENT][/color]
[INDENT]Richard is not the type to wear his emotions on his sleeve, nor is he the type to let them dictate his actions. That is not to say that he doesn’t act based on his emotions at times, but instead that he is able to keep a level head even when under duress. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ BIO ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Richard comes from a family of heroes; he is third generation, with both his father and grandfather being heroes before him, and it was never really a question whether or not he would follow in their footsteps; not for them and not for him. His grandfather, Michael Hoss, became a hero in the 80’s during an era when heroes were just starting to reach the peak of their fame, with many becoming celebrities and household names in their own right. He operated in Texas, his home state, first as an independent hero and later on joining the hero company TEXAS. Although his grandfather, who went by the name Ironside, never managed to reach that level of notoriety himself his attitude and beliefs towards costumed heroes were shaped by his experiences in this time period; Michael held an idealised view of heroes, tinted by rose coloured glasses and later by nostalgia, believing that they were good and righteous people. Not that they [i]should[/i] be good and righteous, but they that [i]were[/i] be default just for being heroes.[/INDENT]

[INDENT]Michael Hoss was a good man; too good, in a sense. Because he was a good man he couldn’t conceive of a hero who didn’t meet his ideal of what a hero should be and this blinded him to their faults. When his eldest son was born and began to display powers, he passed on his beliefs to him and began to train him as a hero; what he didn’t do was teach him how to be a good man. Because heroes were good by default he didn’t have to and so Richard’s father, Nathan, felt that he didn’t have to do anything to be good either; he just was. After spending a few years working at TEXAS with his father, under the name Thermal, he moved to Castleburg and signed up with HERO instead; a few years after that, he met his wife.[/INDENT]

[INDENT]Nathan Hoss is not an evil man, he wasn’t even a particularly bad one; mostly he was just selfish, a little conceited and utterly lacking in self-awareness. When Richard was born and began to display his powers Nathan passed onto him the same beliefs that his father taught him, despite them being out-dated before he was even born. For a while, like his father, he even believed in those values; he believed in heroes, in his father, in HERO. That they were more. That they were better. That they were special. Once he turned eighteen he joined up with HERO himself, looking to continue his family’s legacy but unsure if a normal person like himself would ever be able to match up, and found that reality was not quite as he had been taught to believe. The heroes he met, the ones he worked alongside were… less than expected; arrogant and egotistical, petty, vain, overly concerned with their own fame and popularity, reckless and unapologetic about their mistakes. Even costly ones. They were, well, human; they were not the paragons that he had heard his father and grandfather talk about. Even his own father wasn’t immune; he just was blind to the man’s faults before seeing him in action. [/INDENT]

[INDENT]Once he came to this realisation Richard began to question why people were okay with letting heroes act the way they did; if there was nothing separating heroes from regular people other than their power, if they were as flawed and imperfect as everyone else, then why were the hero companies allowed to act with as much freedom as they did? There were no qualifications to become a hero, he knew that for a fact since he was one; anyone walking in off of the street could become a hero, so why were they as respected and trusted as they were? His previous fear, that a normal person like himself could not match up to the lofty goal of becoming as good as the other heroes became the fear that they [i]weren’t[/i] any better than him. And when some heroes held as much power as they did, power to ruin an entire city single-handedly, wasn’t that a terrifying thought?[/INDENT]

[INDENT]Richard spent the next several years trying to become the best hero he could be; rather than be defeated by the shattering of his worldview, he sought to fix it instead, thinking that if he could become the kind of hero that he originally wanted to be and even inspire others to do the same, then things would be okay. Along the way he encountered a disappointing level of resistance and criticisms from those around him; most didn’t see any problem with the way they did things so long as the villains were caught and the disasters prevented, others were more blatant about the fact they just didn’t care, while a few even accused him of trying to upstage them and make other heroes look bad with his “crusade”. After five years of this he gave up and Richard quit HERO, instead deciding to become an independent hero and vigilante while also publically advocating for changes to laws regarding hero companies and heroes themselves. This approach didn’t make him many friends among the hero community, but he never had many of those to begin with. [/INDENT]

[INDENT]When the e-Police were first introduced and heroes began to decline in popularity, he understood why. It seemed that the general public was finally starting to catch on to the idea that heroes were more trouble than they were worth. Why wouldn’t the public put more trust in a robot, than the heroes who were a constant source of collateral damage because “it was necessary”? Heroes who were nothing more than flawed individuals with too much power and not enough culpability. Heroes who were no better trained, sometimes even less trained, than the police but given far more leeway. The robots weren’t perfect, of course, and likely never would be; there would always be threats that required a person with powers to intervene, but if the heroes were starting to experience a decline then it meant people were starting to realise that occasionally needing a “hero” didn’t mean having to put up with the hero companies or the hero culture. If the heroes couldn’t recover from this set back and restore public opinion, then didn’t that mean it was fair that they were replaced? [/INDENT]

[INDENT]Richard hopes that the current situation will be enough for the heroes to change their ways or for the hero companies to disband entirely, but he is not hopeful. If things are going to change then he will need to lend proceedings a helping hand and put the final nail in the coffin of the heroes. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][b]|  MISCELLANEOUS  |[/b][/color]
[INDENT]During his time as a hero working for, well, HERO, Richard always hid or chose not to use certain aspects of his power due to it being too dangerous or destructive to bystanders or the surroundings. This has made it easier for the company to disavow the fact that he used to work for them before becoming a villain by highlighting the fact that he has since started using abilities that he had never shown as a hero before, stating that he has either undergone some change or was hiding information about himself and was always planning to betray them. This is further help but the fact that his relation to his father and grandfather were also kept a secret while he was a hero, at his own request. [/INDENT]

[hider=Abilities]
[color=ORANGE][B][ RANKING ][/B][/color]
[color=Orange][INDENT]A [/INDENT][/color]

[color=ORANGE][B][ POWERS ][/B][/color]
[color=Orange][INDENT][b]Molten Metal Generation[/b][/INDENT][/color]

[INDENT]Richard Hoss has a power which appears straight forward at first, but is surprisingly multi-faceted in reality. He has strength and durability beyond that of a normal human, which by himself would make him an effective hero or villain, but in addition to this he is able to produce molten metal from his body at will; the substance he produces is atomically identical to high-grade steel and its temperature is high enough to remain fluid. Richard does not have any direct control over the movement of this metal, aside from his ability to keep producing more of it, but it will remain heated so long as he is in contact with it and so long as he will it; it will cool naturally should it leave contact with him.[/INDENT]

[INDENT]He is also able to instantly cool any of the metal that is in contact with him, solidifying and hardening it into solid steel at a moment’s notice. He uses this defensively, to quickly coat himself in a layer of armour to protect against attacks or offensively to harder a part of his body for an attack. However, even when solid he still does not have any direct control over the shape of the metal and his body will be sealed inside the hardened shell, unable to move. That being said, he is not trapped forever as Richard is able to remove the metal from his body by shattering and propelling it away from his body like a burst of shrapnel.[/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ PHYSICAL STRENGTH ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]■■■■■■■□□□ [/INDENT]
[INDENT]7/10 – Richard physical strength is greatly enhanced, being able to easily lift several tons of mass with his bare hands. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ AGILITY ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]■■■■□□□□□□ [/INDENT]
[INDENT]4/10 – Richard has no enhanced ability to speak of, but his strength allows him to move faster than a normal person by using great, leaping bounds to cover ground quickly. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ INTELLIGENCE ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]■■■■■□□□□□ [/INDENT]
[INDENT]5/10 – Though many assume that he is a dumb brute due to his power or his way of fighting, Richard is a surprisingly well educated individual. He is no genius, but he is intelligent and well spoken. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ DESTRUCTIVENESS ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]■■■■■■■□□□ [/INDENT]
[INDENT]7/10 – His strength combined with the molten metal he leaves in his wake and the explosive shrapnel he produces mean that Richard has a great capacity for destruction whether he wants to or not. This was a limitation for him as a hero and made it so he needed to hold back or limit himself when fighting, but since leaving that path he is no longer fettered so. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ LETHALITY ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]■■■■■■■■□□ [/INDENT]
[INDENT]8/10 – With destruction comes lethality. The carnage he can cause to his surroundings can also be visited on his opponents and the hazardous nature of his powers mean even bystanders are not safe when he is fighting his hardest. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ ENDURANCE ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]■■■■■■■■□□ [/INDENT]
[INDENT]8/10 – Richard’s body is hardy even without activating his full powers, but when coated in molten metal or a layer of solid armour he becomes even harder to hurt. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ EFFICACY ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]■■■■■■■□□□ [/INDENT]
[INDENT]7/10 – Though straightforward, Richard’s power is surprisingly complex. Even so, he has had years to practice using it and in a way the fact that he used to hold himself in check as a hero has made him even more proficient than he would have been otherwise. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ SKILLS ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Kickboxing/Wrestling – Rather than just rely on his size and power to win fights, Richard has spent several years learning to fight both on his feet and on the ground in order to be able to deal with a variety of opponents.[/INDENT]

[INDENT]Public Speaking – A side-effect of being someone in the public eye first as a hero then as a grass-roots activist, Richard is confident and capable of addressing large audiences while getting his point across. [/INDENT]

[color=ORANGE][B][ EQUIPMENT ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]N/A[/INDENT]
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