Professor Synodite

Professor Synodite:
Name: Montgomery Lucas Salisbury
Aliases: Monty, The Nerdinator
Sex: Male
Age: 29
Height: 5’9”
Ethnic background: American with British and Austrian ancestry
Nationality: American
Family: Parents living in Pinnacle city. 7 year old daughter who lives with him in Omerta city.
• Build: Thin and lanky with very little in the way of muscle mass
• Hair: wild and spiked with wild strands
• Hair Color: Black
• Eye Color: Hazel
• Skin Color: pale
Distinguishing Features: Monty Salisbury is instantly recognizable due to a vivid purple chemical burn mark that blemishes his left cheek, rarely does he not hear a question about it when in conversation with new people. That aside, he also lacks the lower lobe of his right ear, a memory of a violent mugging he suffered.

Clothing: The most common outfit you would attribute to Monty is a long white lab coat with a breast pocket stuffed with pens, a black dress shirt and plain tan pants with expensive armani shoes. A pair of rubber gloves and thick, blue tinted blast goggles are frequently on his person as well as a handy set of pens and calculator. His casual wear are usually sweater vests, shirts and on occasion, informal slacks and Hawaiian shirts. Monty is also a surprisingly smart dresser, owning several elegant tuxedos and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses.

Skills: Monty is a scientific prodigy, blessed with true genius when it comes to the domain of research and development. He possesses a doctorate in biochemistry and an academic minor in quantum physics. Although possessing no license, he is also an experienced engineer, capable of fixing most pieces of technology himself. Monty is also a cultural intellectual, being well versed in both Kant and Heidegger, the former being his favorite philosopher. His skills at video games are nothing to be scoffed at either, he is a textbook “internet badass” with many admirers in the gaming world. Physically Monty is deceptive, although not a fighter and far from muscular, he has nevertheless trained in Tae Kwon Do enough to give adequate resistance to any attacker.

Alignment: Although technically considered a villain, Monty is first and foremost a researcher who considers that his work takes precedence over everything, including the law and hypocritical ethics. Although his research is volatile and oftentimes dangerous to himself and others, the man himself does not engage in illegal acts to satisfy any cruelty, merely to further his accomplishments.

Alter-ego: The moniker of “Professor Synodite” was chosen by Monty for three studied reasons. Firstly, it marks him as the scientific genius he is. Secondly the word Synodite is a mixture of Synergy and Node, when taken to mean his cerebral nodes, the word indicates his nodes working together, thus achieving perfect synergy. This makes him a person whose cerebral nodes are in full synergy, ergo a Synodite. The final reason for his title is something we can all relate to, it just sounds cool!

Costume: Although not possessing a costume in the traditional sense, Synodite’s laboratory outfit and opaque goggles have become akin to a disguise for him, despite covering only his eyes. Although infrequent, he occasionally dons a welding faceplate when there are chances his precious looks are in danger.

Weapons and Gear/Equipment: Synodite is a fully equipped, fully prepared scientific genius. A state of the art, well-stocked laboratory is ever at his disposal and secured against everything from break-ins to the explosions caused by an experiment going awry. His lab also hosts a variety of personal additions, fantastic inventions that have yet to see the light of day. When outside his lab, Synodite is no less prepared, carrying a personally retrofitted laptop, a collapsible field lab stowed in a briefcase, and a series of tubes and beakers containing useful compounds.

When the gloves come off, Monty prefers to not remove his own, instead keeping a number of weapons on hand. The aforementioned compounds include deadly sulfuric acid, homebrewed poisons and toxin extracts, gas mixtures and several more surprising agents. If those run out, Monty has re-fitted a common taser gun into a pistol capable of firing electric shocks of up to 1000v. And if all else fails, he can always escape using a reinforced, armored van that has been equipped with an array of devices such as an oil hose, caltrop dispenser, and buoy for amphibious escapes.

Personality: Monty Salisbury is both simple, and infinitely complex. He seems to vacillate between an excitable, manic, theatrical intellectual, and a quiet, sedate, introspective one. The shift in his mood seems directly tied to the success of his research. If it goes well then he is enthusiastic, reveling in his progress and screaming his genius to any present, if not, then he is silent and methodical, focusing every ounce of his mind into making his research bear fruit. He has little tolerance for fools and has an ego to match his genius, but is surprisingly able to reign it in most of the time. Monty is also rather sensitive, easily angered when his inventions are ridiculed, or flustered when dealing with a woman. Despite this, he isn’t horrible to people and will not lash out unless truly provoked, his only true lack of patience is with bullies and thugs, a result of abuse he suffered as a child.

Background: Montgomery Lucas Salisbury was born in Pinnacle City on the eastern coast of the United States as the only son of a renowned college professor and his fashion designer wife. From a young age, Monty showed signs of superior intellect and was enrolled in a prestigious elementary school for gifted youngsters by his loving parents. However the school was unexpectedly closed four years later due to a scandal and Monty’s parents decided to send their son to a public school in order to broaden his experiences.

Although Monty excelled in his studies, it soon attracted the attentions of his peers who predictably began to alienate him. Despite a few friends in his academic circle, bullying and social dismalness plagued Monty all through high school, this led him to withdraw into himself, taking comfort in his studies and fellow nerds. By his final year, he was known as the Nerdinator, or the King of the Uncool by most of the student body and ultimately failed to attract the attention of the girl he loved, this sparked his disdain for the “popular” people and hatred of the educational system.

His college years were much happier, Monty was introduced to the wonders of modern science and even managed to find himself a group of friends, including a true girlfriend. Unfortunately it was obvious that as the years went by, no one was going to follow him fast enough and he chose to further proceed with his education, forsaking social interaction to attain his doctorate, an act he now regrets.

After graduating, Monty began work at a prestigious academy in Pinnacle City where his ambition in scientific progress earned him both admirers and critics. Some saw his research as reckless and potentially unsafe and unfortunately, the critics managed to subvert his research and discredit Monty in the eyes of all of the scientific community of Pinnacle City. Profoundly humiliated and enraged, Monty left town never return without even informing his parents.

In the interim of his wandering, at the age of 25, Monty found a 3 year old girl left on his doorstep with a note from his old college sweetheart, Meredith Lane. She had broken with him when she had graduated and did not want to be the person who held Monty back because she knew that he might drop out to be with her. However it seemed something more had come of their relationship, as was explained in the note. Merry felt that Monty, successful scientist that he was, was far more capable of providing the child with a happy life. With no address by which to find her, Monty became the father to Rebecca Salisbury.

After a year of wandering, he decided to set up shop in the chaotic Omerta city and found that the anarchic nature of the city meant that no one would pay attention to a poor scientist trying to create the next revolution in humanity’s way of life. Soon he found out that with the right incentive, he could procure quite a lot to fund his research, not only that, but there was no one around to cry about the nature of his work. Better still, it seemed that some people were willing to pay him handsomely for his services as a chemist or engineer, if creating a stronger powder or assembling an electric cannon earned him a fat check in his bank account, then who was he to say no? After all, professor Montgomery Salisbury was the future of science, whether those fools at the academy accepted that or not, his nodes were in synch, Omerta City would bear witness to the emergence of a new player, and his name is Synodite!