Post by Admin on Nov 26, 2020 1:33:28 GMT
A Condensed Origin of Captain Catapult
Introduction
Valor and honor are sometimes rewarded!
Setting
A short introduction to Captain Catapult - longer origin story to follow
World War I HiJinks
Heidi Heine was an American nurse in World War I, and Charlie Manley, her fiance, was an Army pilot. Right at the end of the war, Heidi had a short, passionate affair with one of her patients, a German pilot who had been shot down and taken prisoner. He died shortly afterward of inoperable complications from his wound. When Charlie and Heidi returned to the States, they were married. If Charlie ever had any questions about why Heidi’s pregnancy with their son Tom Manley had only lasted 8 months, he never gave any indications.
World War II Adventures
Tom Manley eventually joined the Marines, and became a fighter pilot, and became an Ace during World War II. His first air combat mission had been a disaster, and he’d barely kept the plane in the air long enough to ditch in friendly territory, but throughout the war, he came home safely from every subsequent mission. Except for the last one, which happened less than a week before Germany surrendered.
Exceptionally vigorous, perhaps desperate efforts of German fighter pilots managed to breech the escort of a bomber flight, and one of the bombers was damaged and had to make an emergency landing in Westphalia, in Germany near the border with the Netherlands. Tom followed it down to protect the crew from any German who thought shooting down an already crippled bomber might be a good idea. He got into a dogfight with a German while defending the bomber, and though he managed to down the German, his last kill of the war, the German managed to crash his crippled plane into Tom's plane and he had to bail out. He angled his parachute descent to land as close as possible to the bomber, and then hurried to the big bird’s final resting place. The pilot had managed to bring the bird down on the Ruhr River, near Arnsberg, grounding it onto the shore. By the time he arrived, a crowd of Germans was surrounding the plane, helping the crew out, and salvaging whatever could be carried out.
The Locals are Friendly
The local population had never been big supporters of the Nazi government and they wanted to be sure that the German military, by now significantly under-supplied and under-provisioned and desperate for supplies and munitions and anything else they could use to fend off the looming advance of the allies, wouldn’t be able to scavenge anything useful from the wrecked bomber - but they also wanted to protect those they saw as liberators. The local Freiherr (Baron) Standhaft, an elderly man who’d been severely wounded as a soldier in the Prussian army, and had lost a son in World War I, offered them his protection. Standhaft hated Hitler; his family's coat of arms included the motto: “Diese Hand ist Tyrannen feindlich gesinnt.” ("This hand is hostile to tyrants.") A good part of the Schloss Standhaft, the Freiherr's castle, was given over to a military museum, and a good part of his life now involved tending the exhibits. One of the display items was a completely restored, fully functional medieval catapult.
An Ancient Treasure
One night, Tom couldn’t sleep - he seemed to hear voices of some of the long-dead castle inhabitants. The voices led him into an unused area and in a long-closed room, he discovered a belt, made of leather threaded through disks of polished stone, each stone inscribed with runes. The belt was lying amid the remains of decayed clothing, armor, and weapons, but appeared to be in perfect condition. The Baron recalled the history of the belt, it had been in the Standhaft family forever, and was reputed to be a gift to a Viking ancestor from Týr, a Teutonic God of Courage and Honor, sometimes known as the God of War, a son of Odin and brother of Thor, and Sága, a Goddess of Wisdom, Clairvoyance, and Clarity. The two stones nearest the buckle are carved with runes representing Týr and Sága.
When Freiherr Standhaft had gone to war in the late 1800s, he'd sealed many of the family's relics in this room, and when he'd returned home, injured, he'd not gotten around to reopening the room - and when he was better, and took on the duties of the local Baron, and married and raised a son, he'd forgotten that it even existed.
Freiherr Standhaft gave Tom the belt as a gift, and he took to wearing it regularly.
An Ancient Military Weapon
The German military in the local area made one effort to capture the allied fliers, but they were driven off, in part because Tom was able to use the catapult against them - they fired some salvaged bombs from the bomber at the Germans, and the Germans actually had higher priorities, as they had been recalled to the defense of Berlin. The other fliers began calling Tom Captain Catapult.
The End of the War
It wasn’t long before Allied land forces reached the area, and the fliers were able to find transportation back to their units, but Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered before they could get back into action on the German front.
After Tom was discharged and returned to Chicago and his wife Connie, he began to realize that wearing the belt was giving him super powers.