| Aldrich Whitney | |
| |
| General Information | |
| Date of Birth: | 16 April 1967 |
| Date of Death: | N/A |
| Age: | 320 (effectively 42) |
| Location Information | |
| Status Information | |
| Status: | Engaged with the intrigues of The Golden Wheel |
| Occupation: | Super Villain |
| Physical Information | |
| Gender: | Male |
| Race: | Human |
| Ethnicity: | Anglo-American |
| Height: | 5'10" |
| Weight: | 140 lbs. |
Aldrich Whitney is a brilliant, charismatic, and psychotic chemical engineer who has cheated death with the use of Dagger Initiative technology. A falling out with his mentor prior to the Great War has been warped in his mind to be his very own mythic, Wagnerian struggle of wills; with the rest of the world as bystanders and acceptable casualties.
Background[]
Pre-War[]
Dagger Initiative[]
Upon attaining his doctorate in Chemistry from CIT, Aldrich was offered a position at one of Dagger Initiative's laboratories located in Rock Springs, Wyoming. His team was given a number of goals, and a generous remit to pursue them as they pleased. Additionally he is assigned to team Charlie Alpha 1 (CA-1), and undergoes standard initiative training for his team's role in a post-apocalyptic United States.
In 1999, Charlie Alpha is put into suspended animation pending a secret, advanced training scenario. Unfortunately, the medic preparing Aldrich's pre-freeze treatment makes a slight error. While the cocktail of drugs does prevent ice crystals from forming in his brain and blood stream as intended, it fails to properly sedate him. Aldrich spends the better part of a year in a state of helpless awareness. In 2000, he and CA-1 are thawed and unexpectedly discover themselves in a bolt hole. Assuming the worst, the team begins to assume post-apoc maneuvers and prepares to reconnoiter the immediate area and make contact with the rest of the Charlie group. They find themselves in a remote, snowy area. Their radios pick up nothing, and their Geiger counters pick up elevated, though still safe, levels of radiation. Aldrich is in a completely numb, listless state but his teammates attribute this to poor coping with the prospect of nuclear war.
In reality, they were on a large piece of Initiative owned land in Montana in the middle of winter, that had been carefully staged to approximate potential post-war conditions and were being monitored. The training scenario was cut short however; while on foot the men and women of CA-1 encountered a poacher trespassing on the land who panicked at the sight of them. His immediate reaction was to fire at them, instantly killing one of Aldrich's friends with a chance bullet to the face. CA-1 returned fire, shredding the poacher apart. The initiative monitors immediately suspended the exercise, sending in a retrieval team to extract CA-1 who were horrified by the entire experience. Aldrich himself considered this a direct betrayal by Cornelius Rockefeller, and in his cryo-induced madness swore to completely destroy him and the Initiative.
Though Whitney was obviously more withdrawn than he used to be, the scope of his psychological breakdown largely escaped notice. The experience with cryogenics influenced Aldrich's thinking, allowing him to use time itself as a weapon and to plot out his revenge over the course of decades or even centuries if necessary. Despite his seething hatred of Rockefeller, he played the part of Rockefeller's committed pupil. His hard work got him a seat on the Dagger Commission in 2007. With greater access and a big picture view of the Initiative and its resources, Aldrich began carving out his own fief: setting up his own caches and drawing in people who would have otherwise failed the psychological evaluations.
Post-Expulsion[]
Not content to simply expel Aldrich from the Initiative, Rockefeller used his influence to have him blackballed: no major corporation or accredited university would take him on. Aldrich still had his personal empire within the Initiative, but he was cut off from his people and initiative resources. Things seemed bleak, until he was contacted by Dr. Arslan Munkhbold. Arslan was in charge of a secret project being run out of the Geisel School of Medicine, and wanted Aldrich's help, off the books.
Aldrich worked with Arslan's team on a series of projects intended to modify humans to thrive in a post-nuclear environment. They achieved mixed results, a radical series of cybernetic surgery and gene therapy that would render a subject nearly immune to disease and radiation. However the side effects, including chromosomal damage, caused the project to be deemed a failure.
The Great War[]
Upon receiving reports of nuclear strikes on the east coast, Aldrich and his chosen few entered a private shelter, built to Dagger Initiative standards and put themselves into cryogenic sleep. While his henchmen would spend the duration in a dreamless sleep, Aldrich's chemically altered brain would scheme for decades.
Post War[]
Emergence[]
As per his specifications, Aldrich emerged from stasis one hundred years after the Great War, and did so alone. Those he had permitted to shelter with him remained in stasis, and would do so until he required them. Safe from radiation and privation within his shelter, Aldrich uses the systems within to begin a remote examination of his new world. Scans of the airwaves reveal relatively few active radio broadcasts across the continent; many of which appear to be automated, pre-recorded messages. Using his backdoor access to a surviving Dagger Initiative satellite, he activated a survey mode to update his Auto-Nav's geographic information and sends out a modified Eyebot to collect atmospheric information.
Shadow Initiative[]
In an ironic turn that was not lost on Aldrich, he used methods the Dagger Initiative intended to use to rebuild civilization in order to instead build his personal power base. His retinue of pre-war minions would approach desperate groups and settlements and ingratiate themselves by providing their specialized skills and knowledge to take care of problems. Promising locals would be recruited and brought back to Aldrich. Instead of educating and training these recruits in the Initiative's values however, Aldrich would isolate and brainwash them. Over time, he was able to organize the technology necessary to practically automate this process with recordings and film, allowing his minions to continue to enslave others to his cause while he remained in stasis. He would emerge for a short time each year in order to receive reviews of their progress and to issue new orders.
New Order[]
Main article: New Order
Based on the reports he received regarding Martha's Gulch after the operation to retrieve KR-10, Aldrich believed the New Order could be useful to his purposes. Aldrich recognized that their equipment and discipline were superior to the basic raider archetype, but considered their choice of ideology to mean that they were useful idiots, waiting for someone to assume command. He left behind any of his minions that would provoke the Order's aggressive racism and approached them, forging an alliance that would lead to dramatic uptick in the region's violence and suffering, and Aldrich's short-lived control of the New Order. He was eventually driven away by elements of the New Order and KR-11.
The Golden Wheel[]
The Golden Wheel
Following a number of setbacks, Aldrich returned to the Revanchist Shelter, now underneath a fortress built to accommodate his private army. From there, he coordinated the search for Dagger Initiative's Prime Base over the radio with his teams combing the Rockies and the Northwest. It was this coded radio activity that drew the attention of the Golden Wheel's master, who was able to triangulate the location of the Revanchist Shelter. A courier was dispatched to extend an invitation to Whitney. The courier was eventually brought before Aldrich, who held him at gunpoint while he read the missive. Unimpressed and generally opposed to collaboration, he was prepared to simply shoot the messenger and leave the matter at that, until he noted the signature at the bottom: Dr. Munkhbold. The prospect of another person from Aldrich's past, an active player no less, made him quite furious. Stray information he'd failed to destroy had already cost him a few years of work. He resolved to meet this person claiming to be Munkhbold and to kill him if necessary.
Dr. Munkhbold however is not Aldrich's former colleague Arslan, but Arslan's descendant Alexander. Alexander and his partner Iveta Ozols outlined their plan for the wasteland and Aldrich's potential place in it. Whitney's true thoughts were inscrutable to them, but he elected to join forces with them.
Timeline[]
- 1967: Aldrich is born in Greenwich, Connecticut.
- 1981: Aldrich graduates high school at the age of 14.
- 1982: Having been awarded a Kennedy Scholarship, Aldrich enrolls at CIT.
- 1984: After a chance encounter, Cornelius Rockefeller assumes the role of a mentor to Aldrich.
- 1985: Aldrich receives his dual B.Sc in Chemistry and Biochemistry. With his own academic achievement and Rockefeller's support, he easily enters the graduate program.
- 1987: Aldrich receives his SM in Chemistry. Rockefeller begins grooming him for a role in the Dagger Initiative, giving Aldrich an internship at one of his shell corporations.
- 1989: Aldrich receives his ScD in Chemistry. Rockefeller takes Aldrich into his confidence, offering him a research position in the Dagger Initiative.
- 1999: Aldrich undergoes first experience with the Rockefeller method of cryogenic suspension.
- 2000: A single-blind, secret training mission with the Dagger Initiative goes horribly wrong, prompting Aldrich's all consuming feud with his mentor.
- 2077: Aldrich enters his Revanchist Shelter accompanied by the defectors of the Dagger Initiative's Charlie Bravo 2 (CB-2), evading atomic hellfire.
- 2177: The timer Aldrich set on his cryogenic pod reaches 0, thawing him out.
- 2180: Aldrich emerges from his Revanchist Shelter.
- 2182: Revanchist agents infiltrate Martha's Gulch to retrieve some members of KR-10, and to execute others. They manage to do this without drawing the attention of the resident factions.
- 2220: After an extended period of surveillance and information gathering, Aldrich and his militia approach the New Order.
- 2224: Aldrich completes his takeover of the New Order, only to be driven out by the combined forces of Otto Wernher and KR-11.
- 2226: Having affirmed to his own satisfaction that he was safe from immediate reprisals from his enemies, Aldrich leaves instructions to his lieutenants to continue raiding and rebuilding his militia to his sadistic standards before returning to cryostasis.
- 2236: Aldrich emerges and is updated on current events and recent history to the best of his men's knowledge. He takes time to update the leadership and renew their fear/awe of him.
- 2275: The Golden Wheel's leaders recruit Aldrich into their circle.
Appearance[]
Aldrich is Caucasian, of average height and weight. He sports thick, ash-blond hair styled with pomade and is otherwise clean shaven. He usually hides his eyes behind large, nearly opaque sunglasses which both give him an air of mystery but allow him to unveil his vibrant, baby-blues in a dramatic fashion. His skin appears flawless by wasteland standards, except for the insides of his arms which are a mess of track marks and bruises from his abuse of primitive cryogenic technology.
Personality[]
Aldrich is irretrievably insane, but appears completely lucid and in control of his faculties. He has become a monstrously cruel tyrant, a sadist who enjoys nothing more than the destruction of other people: their persons, families, communities. His greatest pleasure is to induce others into committing violence in his name or in furtherance of his pursuits. Despite his horrid nature, Aldrich can be charming, even hypnotic, especially to the desperate and the insecure.
Abilities & Skills[]
Aldrich is a charismatic genius, a prodigy in his field of chemistry. If his work hadn't been exclusively on secret projects, he would have likely won a Nobel Prize. He primarily utilized his knowledge in biochemistry, whether in refining the Rockefeller Cryogenic method utilized by the Dagger Initiative, or in the creation of the compounds that would later be used by persons unknown to create the Witchmen. He received a classical education, including learning Latin and Greek. He learned to speak Spanish to impress a classmate, and he would later marry a classmate from Mexico. Due to an error in dosing during his first experience with Rockefeller Cryogenics, he maintains awareness while in stasis. Its unknown if this would be the case with the Vault-Tec method of cryogenics, as their technology is more sophisticated; allowing a person to be frozen without any prior treatment to avoid the formation of ice crystals in the bloodstream and organs.
Equipment[]
Aldrich possesses an initiative V-150, painted a matte, dark blue and armed with a turret mounted M2HB-QCB. It pulls a trailer (likewise painted dark blue) carrying a stripped down Initiative cryogenic pod and an initiative recon team's worth of equipment. Whatever clothes he wears, he always keeps his initiative Armorweave jumpsuit underneath, stripped of any identifying marks.