Superior

Kal-Zed

Kal-Zed was born a wolf among sheep, a giant among those content to while away their endless lives with trivialities. He was one of the rare births among the Ultima, celebrated by the immortals as the continuation of their race and culture. With only a few centuries of life, he lacked the perspective to understand his people’s tradition of isolation and non-interference with less evolved cultures. Instead he was obsessed with ancient lore about the time when the Ultima strode the world like gods, and were worshipped as such. They were “giants in the Earth” then, not existing like monks in their hidden city of Ultima Thule, far from any other civilization.
So it was no surprise that Kal-Zed was intrigued when outsiders visited Ultima Thule for the first time in many years. They spoke of ancient human legends about the city and about the origin of their race, the Aryan race. The Ultima found their folk-beliefs amusing, but had no interest in their primitive doctrines of racial purity or their political ambitions. They mindwiped the intruders and sent them on their way, with nothing more than vague memories of being lost in a snowstorm.
The seed these visitors planted festered in Kal-Zed’s mind, however. The strangers were right, after all—the Ultima were superior! Why should they not assume control of less evolved cultures and guide them? It would be child’s play to do so; the primitive technology and crude psychic abilities displayed by humans were no match for the cosmic Power Primal of one who was like a god to them.
So, one fateful night, Kal-Zed stole away from Ultima Thule. He traveled to the Fatherland of the visitors and presented himself as a true example of the Aryan ideal, der Übermensch. Upon meeting Adolf Hitler, Kal-Zed was unprepared for the power, the sheer charisma, of the man, amplified with the subtle aid of his occult advisors. Rather than simply seizing control of the Reich, the newly named Übermensch thought it in his best interests to use the Nazis to his advantage.
Übermensch was one of the few Nazi super-soldiers to escape death or capture at the end of the war. Exiled from Ultima Thule, his ambitions dashed, he renamed himself Superior and became a fierce foe of The Centurion, his opposite number in America. The two of them clashed many times over the years as Superior sought revenge and conquest. Eventually, Centurion decisively defeated him and exiled his foe to the Zero-Zone with the assent of the Ultima. There Superior remained, awaiting an opportunity to escape and wreck havoc on his old foe and the world that defied him for so long.
By the time Superior managed to escape the Zero-Zone, he was disappointed to learn the Centurion was already dead and gone, having sacrificed himself against Omega during the Terminus Invasion. On the other hand, he was both pleased and amused to learn that his old foe’s mantle had been passed to Centuria, his daughter from another timeline. Superior made it clear he found Centuria a suitable mate, should she chose to rule the world at his side. Centuria’s reply sent the rogue Ultiman flying through several buildings before finally coming to rest in a crater on the far side of the Wading River. Superior has never again made so “generous” an offer.
Superior has occasionally allied with his “old friend” Overshadow, but the master of SHADOW knows better than to trust der Übermensch himself, aware of the full reach of Superior’s ambitions and the truth about his origins. Still, the two sometimes find it useful to cooperate, and the world is rightly concerned when they do.
Although Superior no longer considers himself a Nazi (if he ever did), he still subscribes to their ethos of innate superiority—with himself at the pinnacle of that ladder, of course. He sometimes manipulates fascist and neo-Nazi groups to rally around him, but gives no more thought to such pawns than one might give to a pack of loyal hounds, and does not hesitate to dispose of them, if it serves his purpose.

Physical Description

Special abilities

Superior is an Ultiman, one of a race of humans genetically advanced by the alien Preservers, then further evolved by their own efforts and an infusion of “the Power Primal” (cosmic energy), giving them tremendous superhuman powers.
Like all Ultima, Superior is essentially immortal: he stopped aging upon reaching adulthood and his lifeforce is sustained by cosmic energy. He does not need to eat, sleep, or breathe, and is immune to any environmental conditions, able to exist equally in the cold depths of space or the crushing pressure at the bottom of the ocean. He regenerates from any injury, up to and including death, and only complete disintegration or dispersal of his molecules would prevent Superior from eventually recovering.
The Power Primal makes Superior tremendously strong, able to lift thousands of tons and deform or break almost any material, and his body extremely dense and resistant to harm, able to shrug off the effects of most conventional weapons and resist even heavy weaponry with only minimal damage (which he quickly regenerates). As with the other physical abilities of the Ultima, there is at least some psionic or energy manipulating aspect to Superior’s strength and invulnerability.
The Ultima are telepathic, although Superior’s abilities in that area are under-developed. He can scan nearby minds to read their surface thoughts, if they are unguarded, and pick up enough to allow him to effectively converse with any intelligent creature, but that is all. Still, since many tend to overlook the Ultima’s psionic abilities, he has been known to use them to his advantage.
Lastly, Superior wields the cosmic energy of the Power Primal, which he can project in powerful force blasts from his hands or eyes, and use to counteract the force of gravity and fly at great speeds. Older and better trained Ultima have learned to use the Power Primal for a great many other effects, from electromagnetism to transmutation; Superior has rarely displayed the talent, skill, or patience necessary for such advanced abilities, although he (like all Ultima) has the potential for them.

Mental characteristics

Intellectual Characteristics

True to his name, Superior is arrogance personified, looking down on all of poor, fragile humanity as inferior creatures in need of the guidance of a strong, capable leader such as himself. He truly believes his benevolent rule would improve the human condition and speed the development of civilization on Earth, but his primary motivation is the sadism of a vicious child playing with creatures he considers helpless to oppose him.
Supremely confident, Superior feels free to wax philosophic about his abilities and his goals. “Just keep him talking,” Centurion used to say, “and he’ll tell you what you need to know before you take him down.” Like any other bully, Superior is a coward at heart; he’s all confidence and bluster when he can rely on his invulnerability and the power to brush aside anything attempting to threaten him, but faced with a real threat, especially the looming danger of mortality, and he will flee or otherwise do whatever he must to save himself.