Star Harbor Nights

The west coast's premiere superteam was formed in the mid-80s just during the run-up to the Portal Wars when three brothers, separated as children, were re-united by fate along with several other allies. They make their home on Olympus Island, a disputed territory twenty-odd miles off the coast of California that was magically cloaked from before the Spaniards arrived in the New World until today. The Pantheon (as it is often known, for short) now exists in an uneasy truce with the United States government, sharing its unique resources in exchange for a considerable degree of freedom.

Though the Pantheon's members emulate and pay homage to the gods of old with their names, they do not claim to be them or encourage people to worship and pray to them... though they still get considerable flack from religious fundamentalists for their obvious pagan overtones.

Zeus

Though it's essentially a democracy, Zeus is the Pantheon's de facto leader through his power and strength of personality, encapsulated in a voice which booms, appropriately enough, like thunder. He is a genuine larger-than-life character, described (not entirely inaccurately) as a "cornball" by his own niece, though he appeals to people's better natures by reminding them of heroes in the classic mold of the past, be they from Homeric epic or the pages of a comic book.

He is the most powerful known weather manipulator on the planet, and is capable of channeling and storing electrical energy within his body for feats of super strength. His powers are sufficient to gradually dispel even a category 4 hurricane, though he's learned that such large-scale manipulations usually have unpredictable effects that are felt elsewhere. Aside from sheer power level, he's shown a high level of precision and nuance in the use of his powers, managing such signature stunts at "lensing" the air to create the illusion that he's larger than he actually is, or displaced from his actual location, in the manner of a mirage.

Poseidon

The adopted son of a corrupt industrialist, Peter Walters (later Waters) first came into his powers on a visit to his father's environmentally destructive gold mining operations in South America. This lead to his introduction to his future wife, the alluring Brazilian mutant Iemanja, and to his early career as an ecological hero. The formation of the Pantheon and his reunion with his brothers Zacahary (Zeus) and Hadrian (Hades) took him away from Iemanja's domain, and the two grew apart, though they never fully renounced their ties. They have an adult daughter, Amphitrite, who has inherited both of their powers.

His primary ability is to mentally control water, which also allows him to breathe underwater by extracting the oxygen from it and swim tirelessly at great speeds by directing the flow of water like a jetstream. With intense concentration, he can also set up "waves" through the air or ground, to deliver a seismic jolt. This often catches land-bound opponents by surprise, as they think of Poseidon as "the water guy"; i.e., useless on land.

Poseidon has a strong sense of social justice, forming the team's conscience in many ways... though he retains a weakness for the ladies that has got him into trouble in the past... including an affair with Venus, married to their teammate Vulcan. Outside the team, he is a friend and frequent collaborator with the adventuring oceanographer Dr. Leo Aquarius. He remains friendly with a loose network of environmentally-themed heroes that operate in Brazil, and around the Amazon basin in particular. He is one of the few men to know the location of the secret Atlantean colony located there.

Hades

Hades was born with the power to nullify energy in all its forms: the electrical energy that drives technological devices, the chemical energy that powers combustion... even the emotional energy that drives a person or the esoteric energy behind a superhuman's powers. He used this ability in the field alongside his brothers Zeus and Poseidon and their teammates during the team's early years, until the problem of what to do with all the new superpowered threats that were being defeated and captured began to spiral out of control. Hades came forward with what was meant to be a short-term, stopgap solution. He became the chief jailer of those with dangerous powers, using his dampening field to keep the inmates underpowered and docile.

Now more than a decade later, the warden has become a prisoner of his own success. He rules over an island prison containing almost one hundred of the most dangerous superbeings on the planet, an island which he cannot leave for more than twelve hours every thirty days, or else the dampening field which holds all his charges in check will collapse. That he has even this small degree of freedom is thanks to the late inventor Vulcan, who tried unsuccessfully to create a more permanent substitute for the unique abilities of Hades. Popular rumor holds that there is a nuclear device primed beneath the prison, waiting to go off the moment Hades's field is no longer in operation... a chilling ultimate failsafe for the event of his death.

Pride and duty keep Hades from abandoing his crucial post, though the strain it puts upon him grows greater every year.

Thoth

An Egyptian-born spy, detective, and inventor, Thoth is a self-made Renaissance man and holds a reputation as being perhaps the cleverest man on the planet. His career in espionage started out of a desire to better the world starting with his own country, but he quickly grew disillusioned with the dark realities of the cloak-and-dagger biz. Inspired by the legendary crimefighter Reason, and by the ancient Egyptian god of knowledge, Thoth took his skills and created the costumed identity for which he is known today. He eventually rejoined the world of global espionage as Agent 8 of the Ring of Ten, serving not one country's government but the whole of the world.

Thoth views the team as his family, doting on Amphitrite as much her flesh-and-blood uncles do, and he includes her friend Allison Powers (Mindfyre) in the extended family, as well. He was deeply affected by the death of the team's armourer and inventor, Vulcan, and the subsequent departure of Vulcan's wife Venus from the ranks, having been very close to both of them. He is closest, of course, to Bast, with whom he shared many adventures before the founding of the team, and to whom he is now married. They have two teenaged children.

A skeptical man who believed in neither destiny nor magic before joining the Pantheon, he quickly became a believer in both in the face of considerable evidence. He's a Holmesian detective, adhering to the maxim that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be true. Though he has fantastic technological tools at his fingertips, Thoth relies on the simplest tools of reason and logic to get to the heart of a problem.

Bast

Martial artist, acrobat, thrill-seeker, and infiltrator, Bast was once a bored heiress who amused herself with activities that included urban exploration, scaling skyscrapers, BASE jumping, and the like. After she successfully penetrated the interiors of several well-guarded institutions (museums, banks, government installations) just to see if she could, she was recruited by the mysterious spymaster known as Zero of the Ring of Ten to be one of his agents (Agent 9).

It was in this capacity that she first crossed paths with the man who would become known as Thoth.Her courtship by him was a stormy one that saw them pursuing conflicting goals more often than not, especially before he adopted his present heroic identity. She represented to him the secret he could not discover, the mystery he could not solve.. until one day, deeply frustrated and running out of options, he asked her to marry him. She reciprocated the gesture by bringing him into the fold as Agent 8. Their engagement was a lengthy one, preceding the formation of the team but only being fulfilled during the Portal Wars, when the impending destruction of the human race added a sense of urgency to the matter.

Unlike most of her teammates who have only borrowed the names of gods, Bast's destiny is tied up in the mythology of the Egyptian goddess whose name she bears. Though outwardly human, she is able to channel certain cat-like abilities, including enhanced reflexes and balance, heightened senses, etc. She is also in possession of a cache of "star metal", remnants of a meteoric explosion over the Libyan desert in ancient times. This metal has several fairly unique properties, both scientifically and mystically.

Morrigan

Very, very little is known about the sorceress who calls herself The Morrigan. It was her magic that kept the island now called Olympus Island off the maps until modern times, and her powers that brought the team together for their first mission. It is undertood by all that she is very old, though she doesn't always look it... she alternately appears as a fierce, red-haired woman of majestic bearing and a withered and stooped crone. Though officially a full member of the team, she comes and goes as she pleases, appearing unannounced to join her comrades on missions she believes to be important, and disappearing without warning at other times.

Vulcan (deceased)

Vulcan was quite possibly the most brilliant inventor the world has ever seen. If anybody were capable of creating the devices that could have ended hunger, prevented war, and extended the human lifespan into the realms of immortality, it would have been Vulcan... but he was also intelligent enough to know there would be no way to predict the long-term effects of such sweeping changes and no way of going back once the genie was out of the bottle. Thus, he focused his efforts more locally, but was always haunted by the visions of what he could have done.

Vulcan died not long after the inception of the team, defusing a doomsday device created by the Portaliens. His contributions to the team are substantial, embodied in the fantastic technology in their vehicles and other equipment.

Venus (retired)

Vulcan's wife, an illusionist who self-effacingly referred to her abilities as "the power of looking pretty." She never made a huge contribution to the team, being in many ways a throwback to the stereotypes of earlier eras... the beautiful woman who would fetch refreshments while the men of the team talked serious business, the pretty face who would inevitably endanger herself in a combat situtation and force the other team members into awkward positions trying to save her. After Vulcan's death, she was consumed by guilt over her numerous affairs (reality having imitated mythology in this regard) and left the team, rejoining civilian life.

She hasn't used her powers in years.