Jordan Scott

History
Jordon Scott: the shining example of a reformed criminal. A man who turned his life around through sheer grit and determination, righting the wrongs of his past and never ceasing in his vendetta to repay society.

Hardly.

Born to a lower-class family in Los Angeles, Scott grew up with an abusive father and a mother who ran from the suffocating household at the earliest opportunity. Her son could hardly blame the woman he had never known – he did the same as soon as he was able.

Scott excelled in every aspect of his schooling career, from academics to sports. Topics and ideas that took years for his peers to grasp came easily to him, until he surpassed his teachers and grew bored of the dreary pace of the education system. But he relished the days of school, where he could poke and prod at the strings that bound the fragile social order within. He toyed with human emotions, crafting elaborate schemes to guide and twist the lives of his fellows. Under his watch more than one teacher resigned in tears, humiliating details having been revealed or incriminating photos published. And that is without even mentioning what he could accomplish with the more malleable students.

Easily the most popular kid in the school, Scott was a shoe-in for School President, although he still enjoyed tearing apart his competitor’s reputation and sullying his name – appearances had to be kept up after all. However, manipulating his fellow students quickly became dull. Scott longed to be able to apply himself to a far greater challenge.

Determined to establish himself, in part out of spite for his father and also in part to simply prove what he could achieve, Scott started his own business: Scott Industries. Jordon attempted to break into a number of markets, applying himself fervently to any challenge that caught his fancy; however he soon found that the real money lay in arms manufacturing.

Scott Industries quickly made a name for itself developing cheap, reliable and simple armaments. The company seemed able to sniff out all of the developing hot spots and prospective buyers, quickly threatening the more established giants of the industry. Under Jordon Scott’s guidance, it was almost as if they knew about conflicts before they even started and had an ear with every dictator or tyrant. As soon as the capital started flowing in, Scott found himself able to innovate.

Guided rounds, missile-killing lasers, automated sentries, in a sweep Scott Industries moved from being the poor strongman’s supplier to owning major contracts with NATO members and international military groups. Indeed, Scott Industries grew into a major source of employment and revenue for Jordon’s hometown of Los Angeles, earning the favour of mayor and law enforcement alike.

This relationship had only one end goal in mind: to land the contract that Jordan had been dreaming about. As Los Angeles own superhero team rocketed through the rankings and into the public eye, they became posterchildren for the superpowered West Coast. Everyone wanted to be their supplier – and competition erupted from the likes of Boeing to Raytheon. And yet, it was Scott Industries that had the winning hand. For years, Jordan had been grooming the mayor and the LAPD, providing them with the best of his equipment as a reliable, consistent partner against crime. As far as Scott was concerned, he had proven himself to be the worthy victor. Which made his defeat all the more painful.

Not a single contract went to Scott Industries. And worse, his competitors began to eat into his business with the LAPD as time wore on. Scott was infuriated by the turn of events, confronting the mayor and accusing him of bending over for campaign dollars rather than dreaming of the bigger picture. Humiliated and defeated, Scott vowed to bring down it all down, to prove to the Stars and the world that they had left themselves vulnerable by ignoring his warnings. He secretly supplied major gangs with powerful military-grade weaponry and intended for them to overrun the heroes, who were mainly outfitted with inferior and more non-lethal armaments. However, Scott had underestimated the capabilities of the still-new team and his plan was thwarted. Worse still, in his anger, Scott had failed to cover all of his tracks.

When the Stars tried to arrest him, Scott ran and fought. In the ensuing struggle, he lost an arm and was ultimately apprehended. Brought before a court and found guilty, Scott faced up to life in prison. But the best lawyers money could buy and a few well-placed favours reduced that to 8 years, 6 with good behaviour. While in prison, Scott repeatedly went over his first true failure. He played the train of events over and over in his mind, picking it apart for any chink in his plans or armour. At first he was enraged, distraught at his own inability, but soon he came to accept the stumble as what it was: a learning experience.

Throughout his term, Scott proved himself to be the model inmate. He performed endless hours of community service, used his still substantial wealth to fund rehabilitation projects for his fellow inmates and publically apologised for his crimes. By the time the six years were up, Scott practically had to be coerced into accepting the shorter sentence for good behaviour – although the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

Scott emerged from his cell wizened, and more ambitious than ever. He had learned that public attention was everything, and that real power came from tugging at shadows. During his internment, Scott Industries had floundered; but upon his release Jordon hurled his personal wealth at a single project. In mere years, he revealed his gift to the world as penance for his crimes: a new form of industrial-scale battery that dwarfed the efficiency of any that came before it. The affordable creation promised to bring clean, renewable alternatives to the masses and breathe new life in the drive to wean humanity from fossil fuels. In a press statement, Scott actively encouraged other companies to make use of his invention, giving away patents for only the slimmest of royalties to his competitors in the name of “bettering the world.”

Overnight, Jordon Scott went from being a flawed villain to a hailed visionary and hero. He announced that Scott Industries would focus on making “products that matter” from then on, causing the stock price to surge, even if profits were near non-existent from the act of practically giving away his new product. But that was soon to change.

The sudden promise of a sharp rise in renewable energy usage in the developed world caused the oil price to tumble dramatically. The sudden instability this caused in oil-developing nations lead to massive deficits and civil strife – inevitably, wars began to break out. Oil rich nations delved deep into their hefty coffers to purchase new arms, and while the world praised them for their more public sales, Scott Industries was more than happy to base its bottom line on the market it had grown up on: missiles and guns.

Now, Scott has reclaimed his lost fortune and then some. But money quickly loses its meaning after the first few billion. No, it is influence and power that Scott now desires – and although he does wield it in droves, there is always more out there just waiting for the taking. The great game goes on, and he has learned the lessons of his past failures. In order to win he must appease the mindless masses while tugging at the strings behind the scenes.

Powers
[Intelligence]: Jordan has always been able to see patterns more easily than others. He has an innate ability to see connections between things, events and people, an uncanny knack for connecting dots that others may not even know exist. His superior intellect hasn’t given him the ability to create magnificent, unseen devices – he leaves that to his employees – but it has allowed him to bend the markets to his will and manipulate circumstances to his advantage.

[Charisma]: When Jordan Scott announces a new product, or a new discovery, he captures the airwaves. Scott has a way to make people listen to him, to like him when he wants them to. He can motivate his workers to put in double hours, or break down the walls between himself and a buyer until they’re chatting like old friends over a glass of scotch.

[In-shape]: Not one to allow the trappings of wealth to fester into a weakness, Scott treats his body like a temple. He goes to great pains to maintain a rigorous workout routine and a healthy diet, hiring the best trainers that money can buy to ensure that his body continues to operate at optimum performance. That’s not to say that he can even come close to the strength of even peak humans, but Scott’s physique can prove useful in situations ranging from the boardroom to a mugging on the street. It has also provided unique publicity opportunities, such as when he organised a charity boxing match between himself and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for victims of super villain attacks.

Limitations
[Only Human]: Scott is a flesh and blood human (barring a total of one cybernetic arm). He isn’t even peak human, in fact. While he may be able to hold his own against a low-level thug that decided to mug the wrong man on the street, he wouldn’t even last a second against a serious opponent.

[Not that kind of intelligent]: While Scott has an IQ that can compete with the best of them, he does not possess the intelligence required to create an army of robots, or a breakthrough drug. Rather, his intelligence lies in the manipulation and organisation of people.

Weaknesses
[Not a Superhuman]: Similar to stated above, Scott’s a human being – and not even a superpowered one at that. A couple of good punches will knock him down, bullets are overkill.

[Narcissistic]: If there is one defining feature of Jordan Scott, it is that he loves nothing more than himself. He is greedy and self-centred and will do anything to save his own skin – a personality trait that he goes to great lengths to hide from the public.

[In the Public Eye]: Jordan Scott has found that the best way to achieve his goals is to do so in plain sight. He has no evil lair tucked away in the mountains, unless you count his vacation penthouse in the Alps. Rather, he goes out onto talk shows and gives interviews to curious journalists. Jordan Scott is a known, public figure, and he relies on controlling public opinion. If the masses were to learn of his true colours, then his empire would come crashing down around him.

[The Enemy of my Enemy]: Perhaps the one thing that Jordan Scott has more of than money, is enemies. From the corporate world, to that of drug dealers and terrorists, you can always find somebody that wants a piece of Jordan Scott’s skin. Fortunately, he has proven to be better at keeping his enemies at each other’s throats, lest they decide that they’d rather have his hide than each other’s.