Lambda Story Background

A typical day in the life of Ned and Krista

Ned has an electronics consulting business; he is also working on a secret project he calls the Supernova project, updates to the Lambda gear - including a short-range disintegrator that can poke dime sized holes in just about anything and improvements to the force field. He doesn't sleep very much, which he attributes to a side effect of the alien med that gave him his enhanced physical and mental powers, and he spends a couple of nights a week at his recently-completed observatory, which is across town. He has spent several hours a week for the past few years analyzing the alien drug, and he is finally convinced that it is safe for humans. However, he is not able to synthesize more of it. He is still wearing the ring he acquired in the Rocky Mountains, and every once and a while, when he is nervous, he twists it on his finger, but most of the time he seems unaware that he is wearing it. He is a troop leader in the Boy Scouts and regularly takes his troop on weekend camping trips in the wilderness north of Marble City.

He is concerned that someone has figured out a way to access the Supernova files, and decides to destroy them. After his friend Albert Einstein dies, he can reconstruct any schematics and plans from memory.

Krista has returned to college full time; she is going to med school with a major in psychology. She wants to become a college professor and teach psychiatry when she graduates. She is learning to fence as well.

When Ned and Krista get over the Valor thing, Krista announces that a) it is now OK for Ned to go back to being Dr. Lambda b) she is ready to return as Lady Lambda and c) she wants to use the alien drug

Ned had awakened to find himself trapped in the beam of the Destructo-Ray, a half-mile high and falling fast. He had no memory of how he had come to be there. Fortunately, he had been wearing the Valor battle-suit, and had discovered how to make it fly before he crashed to earth. He used every power of the battle-suit to escape from the ray, but Valor’s powers failed him. It looked like the Destructo-Ray was going to kill him, just as it had killed the other Dr. Lambda.

But Ned Quest had an advantage that neither Vic Valor nor the other Dr. Lambda had. After hearing Krista describe the Destructo-Ray, the two had discussed the problem and figured out how to use the Stellar Sceptre to create a gravity lens to protect himself from the ray. So when Ned had realized that he was indeed in the Destructo-Ray trap, he already knew how to use a gravity lens, if he had a Stellar Sceptre in hand. He didn't. But the Valor armor basically used the same circuitry and mental interface as the Stellar Sceptre. When Ned realized that, he had created a gravity lens which protected him until Krista destroyed the Destructo-Ray.

And though he hadn't realized it that evening, later on he realized that the other Dr. Lambda could have saved himself as well, if he had been able to think of the right method in time.

put details here...

The Vacation

Rocky Mountain Vacation

Before Valor, after Ned has retired

The Quests and the Trasks go on a camping trip to the Rocky Mountains, and in a very remote valley Ned finds a ring. He puts it on and afterwards wears it constantly. This is after Krista has retired as Lady Lambda; probably before she receives the message from Future Kris.

Where: Earth 2, North America, Forbidden Gorge, Montana (an isolated valley deep in the Rocky Mountains, a 4-day hike from the nearest safe place to land a helicopter or an airplane) The valley was incredibly fecund, practically choked with luxurious vegetation during the wet fall season...

during a game of sky tag, they discover that the Lambdas are much faster but the Storm Birds are much more maneuverable. The practice of holding the Stellar Scepter out front and aiming it and letting it pull the bearer behind it in the desired direction leads to high speeds but long, sweeping turns. Kris discovers that holding the Scepter close to her chest and having it work on her whole body at once, flying upright instead of horizontal, makes it easier to change directions although but she can't fly as fast in that position. Ned is stubborn about adopting the new method until he is "IT" for a long period of time.

They discover that the Storm Birds have built-in proximity detection, and Ned realizes he can build that into the helmet gear, and also declares he can put in some kind of fail-safe collision avoidance system - but these will require work in the lab.

The Storm Birds have some impressive powers including encyclopedic knowledge of flora and fauna, lightning and sonic powers, and limited communication with animals. With the less intelligent animals it is more like empathy; they can project calm and approach even the most timid animals, with the more intelligent ones - wolves, big cats and bears, for example, they can exchange concepts.

One of the group finds a ring, a flat band of unknown composition, seemingly carved from stone with tan coloring streaked with brown veins which are almost fractal. It exactly fits the middle finger of Ned's right hand (he is left handed); he is determined to investigate it when they get back to his lab, but after he slips it on, they all seem to forget he is wearing it.


Ned should develop a habit of twisting his ring when he is nervous. Several times he decides to just stop wearing it, but then he doesn't...


In a story that occurs after Ned retires, there should be some mention that Ned is having problems sleeping; he rarely sleeps all night long and when he does sleep, he is usually very restless. He starts spending a lot of time in the observatory. Perhaps in this story he actually funds and builds his own observatory / lab / workshop.

In the aftermath of the end of Valor, Ned and Krista should notice that Ned is no longer wearing his ring.

Valor/Strobe story (the big reveal)

Years later, after Valor meets Strobe, Valor tells Jim the story of the ring. Sometime in the Galactic Patrol era, a planetary law enforcement officer named Vic Valor (in his own language) joins the Galactic Patrol. He is given the ring, which is a memory recorder attached to his sensory inputs, giving him perfect recall of everything he experiences while wearing the ring; extracts from ring storage are often used as legal evidence in court cases. Somehow this ring was lost on Earth. Without a consistent source of power, parts of the circuits shut down, parts of the programming were inaccessible, and various safeguards stopped working, and the ring became more like an entity than a machine. When Ned began wearing it, it became more consistently powered, and when Ned was tired, the Valor persona in the ring realized it could take control of him. So at night, he began building the Valor armor, and as a last step, he sealed the ring into the helmet. The ring could control Ned at a distance at night, so Ned became Vic Valor at night. The shock of fighting the spotlight ray broke the connection, and once broken, it could never be reestablished.

The armor was dormant for years, until it was moved to the basement trophy hall of the Alliance of Mystery Heroes. Somehow the move reactivated the ring and it found that it could extend its consciousness into the Valor armor...


It was virtually without power on Earth, and remained dormant for over a hundred thousand years, and during that time, operating on minimum power, it developed

Krista is worried that somehow Ned is Vic Valor. She notices that he is no longer wearing the ring.

I think Valor should encounter a villain empowered by Dr. Daytona who is carrying some kind of power rod and that villain kills Valor at the same time that Valor defeats the villain.

Krista sees it on TV and is horrified. She recognizes it as