[INDENT][COLOR=SLATEGRAY][CENTER][sup][h1][center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/90/85/4b/90854b10fe74e0a629327dba568f0747.jpg[/img][/center][b][center][color=black] P U N I S H E R[/color]
[color=lightgray]P U N I S H E R[/color][/center]
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[color=silver][sup][i]"THE WAR ON CRIME HAS CHANGED. WILL YOU CHANGE WITH IT?"[/i][/sup][/color][/CENTER][table][row][/row][row][cell][center][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] C H A R A C T E R   P O R T R A I T[/color]
[color=lightgray]C H A R A C T E R   P O R T R A I T[/color] [/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][sup]_________________________________________________________[/sup][img]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b2/f7/a7/b2f7a76efbe0d3551c37ca895d339af0.jpg[/img]
[sup]_________________________________________________________[/sup][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] C H A R A C T E R   S U M M A R Y[/color]
[color=lightgray]C H A R A C T E R   S U M M A R Y[/color][/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][sup]_________________________________________________________[/sup]
[sub][COLOR=darkgray]Francis David Castle[/COLOR]
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[COLOR=darkgray]41[/COLOR]   [b]|[/b]   [COLOR=darkgray]Widower[/COLOR]
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[COLOR=darkgray]Ex-Marine, Ex-NYPD[/COLOR]   [b]|[/b]   [COLOR=darkgray]American[/COLOR][/sub][/center]
[indent][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] N O T A B L E   A B I L I T I E S   &   T O O L S[/color]
[color=lightgray]N O T A B L E   A B I L I T I E S   &   T O O L S[/color][/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][/INDENT][sup]_________________________________________________________[/sup]
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[indent][sub][b][color=lightgray]   A B I L I T I E S[/color][/b][/sub]
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[COLOR=darkgray][color=lightgray][b]◼ ENHANCED PHYSICALS[/b][/color]
Even without Ven'ahm fully deployed, all of Frank's physical abilities have dramatically improved. He is stronger, faster, more durable, and with greater stamina than ever, on top of an enhanced healing factor. These abilities only improve with the entire symbiote in play, especially if the creature has been allowed to eat.
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[COLOR=darkgray][color=lightgray][b]◼ LIQUID SKIN[/b][/color]
The symbiote's skin seems to be a sort of non-Newtonian fluid that can be controlled at will. This leads to a incredible number of applications, including the suits ability to configure into various specifications of armor or disguise at will, as well as the ability to deploy pseudopods that can fire weapons, operate machinery, and even attack on their own.
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[indent][sub][b][color=lightgray]   T O O L (S)[/color][/b][/sub]
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[COLOR=darkgray][color=lightgray][b]◼ EXPANSIVE ARMORY[/b][/color] 
Over the years, Frank has built up an incredible collection of eclectic firearms of every type for just about every situation. Small arms, long arms, explosives, launchers, and more. Now, thanks to the symbiote, Frank is able to carry more of it on his person than ever.[/color][/sup]
[color=#2e2c2c]-[/color][/indent][/hider][/INDENT][indent][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] N O T A B L E   S K I L L S   &   T A L E N T S[/color]
[color=lightgray]N O T A B L E   S K I L L S   &   T A L E N T S[/color][/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][/INDENT][sup]_________________________________________________________[/sup]
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[indent][sub][b][color=lightgray]   S K I L L (S)[/color][/b][/sub]
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[COLOR=darkgray][color=lightgray][b]◼ WEAPONS EXPERTISE[/b][/color]
Frank is an expert in the care and use of a plethora of weapons, favoring traditional firearms, though he does have some experience with close quarters combat.[/color][/sup]
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[indent][sub][b][color=lightgray]   T A L E N T (S)[/color][/b][/sub]
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[COLOR=darkgray][color=lightgray][b]◼ PAIN TOLERANCE[/b][/color] 
Frank was born with a naturally dulled sense of pain. Even before his bond with the symbiote, he was able to take unbelievable amounts of punishment without faltering.[/color]
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[color=#2e2c2c]-[/color][/indent][/hider][/INDENT][/cell][cell][INDENT][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] T H E   S T O R Y   S O   F A R...[/color]
[color=lightgray]T H E   S T O R Y   S O   F A R...[/color][/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][/INDENT][sup]________________________________________________________________________________________[/sup]
[COLOR=DARKGRAY][indent]My name is Frank Castle, and before The Reach, I was a lot like you. Stable career. Loving Wife. Ugly dog. Pair of beautiful kids. Living the dream. It can change in an instant at the end of a gun. We were innocent, having a picnic in the park. But we were in the way. Drug deal gone wrong. They died like animals. Sometimes I wish I died, too. Instead I woke up in a hospital a year later.

Next is the part you’ve heard. I had to hurt the men who hurt me. Open and shut revenge. Simple. Except for the part where it didn’t stop. Every door I kicked down, I expected to die on the other side of. Live like that long enough, without anything else to live for, and it quickly becomes all you know. At the beginning I would plan obsessively. Every weapon, every angle, every perp checked meticulously so that I knew, without doubt, that [i]these[/i] were the men that deserved punishment. By the end, it was as simple as running into the next room and putting two between the eyes of the next gangbanger I saw. Simple revenge. Haha.

Only reason I figure I got away with it -- being The Punisher, wearing that skull-lookin’ armor, announcing my presence everywhere I went with a burst of machinegun fire -- was on account of the war. The PD and the Feds were spread thin, which gave every scumbag in the city license to do as they pleased. They needed support, and I was all that was coming. Maybe they thought I was helping hold the city together, even as I burned it down.

Next is the part you haven’t. My last weeks of it are the haziest of all. I remember the chug of the gun and seeing, for the first time, the colors of human and Reach blood swirling and mixing on the cracked concrete. I remember that they [i]got[/i] me, hit me with some new weapon. I thought when I finally ran into The Reach, I’d die on the spot. Get a plasma hole bored through my guts or become a denatured pile of slime. Instead, I woke up in a cell.

I [i]knew[/i] The Reach was experimenting on humans, we all did, but I didn’t think that meant they’d have a gene lab buried under Manhattan. Nothing they did to me seemed to take. I think they only kept me around as a control, a tough old bastard to measure their successes against. Even then, I expected to get binned fast. I know what happens to test animals. But their new subjects were few and far between. Fewer and fewer as the weeks and months dragged on. The Reach scientists spent more time in the facility than ever. They seemed cut off… But they were holding on.

This was the pattern for almost five years -- until last month. An asset transfer from another facility, a rare occasion. A thing sealed in a glass tube, running and shifting inside in inky black detail. The scientists were excited. They tried it on all kinds of things. Poured it over blocks, rocks, technology, weapons, even a few houseplants. No change. Until they started trying the animals. It would sink into their flesh, like it was disappearing against their skin. Then the shaking, the vomiting, the screaming. Then the sleep. You could watch, over an hour, as each strip of muscle and skin and sinew receded and faded until there was nothing left of the animal but a bleached skeleton and a quivering black mass sheltering in its ribcage.

They tried it on us next. There weren’t many of us human prisoners left. Only the hardest and the toughest. But it was the same for each of them. Bleached bones and a grinning skull staring at me from across the lab. Until me. It was almost natural coming onto my skin, pushing its tendrils through the gaps between my cells. It was destroying me. But it was rebuilding me. It [i]spoke[/i] to me. There was a voice in my head. It needed to know only one thing. Was I ready to slaughter its captors? Or would it eat me like the rest, and try another?

My name is Frank Castle. Its name is Venom.

[b]Together, we are The Punisher.[/b]

[center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b7/f4/23/b7f4234da9dc52322555e695f31a7fba.jpg[/img][/center]
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[INDENT][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] P L O T ( S )   &   G O A L ( S )[/color]
[color=lightgray]P L O T ( S )   &   G O A L ( S )[/color][/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][/INDENT][sup]________________________________________________________________________________________[/sup]
[COLOR=DARKGRAY][INDENT]One of the fundamental tensions of the Punisher when held up against the rest of a superhero universe is: how justified can his actions [i]really[/i] be? Here’s a mass murderer presenting himself as a necessary, brutal, bloody solution to problems a dopey teen in spandex could solve in seconds. You can handwave it to some extent with the scope of crime in a comic book universe, but you’ll always be asking yourself why any of a hundred heroes don’t put a stop to the madness. By giving him access to the symbiote, I think I can expose Frank to problems he [i]is[/i] more of a justified solution for, especially in the context of Lord’s regime.

More importantly, the most interesting part of The Punisher, at least when talking about a game like this, is whether there could be a good person hiding somewhere in the depths of Frank’s blackened soul. We’ve seen Frank broken down a million times, what if he could be built up? What if he has a chance to grow or change or do something actually positive with his life? To set him on this path, he’s had a long time to think in that cell. Now he’s forced into a role he could never predict, as the adoptive father of a weird alien that lives on his skin that might be the one creature on the planet more naturally hateful than he is.
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