Overview[]
Crossbones
"Dying ain't much of a livin', boy." - The Outlaw Josey Wales 
Ex-con, assassin, mercenary and Neo-Nazi, Brock Rumlow found his true calling and his codename in service to the notorious Red Skull. As Skull's bloody right hand, Crossbones deals out murder, terror and discipline in equal doses as his employer sees fit. In his free time, he enjoys whiskey, women, hunting, working out and white supremacy. Not a nice guy.
Sheet[]
Character Sheet
Abilities: Skill
Blades: 8, Demolitions: 6, Escapology: 6, Fighting: 8, Firearms: 7, Pilot: 6, Security: 7, Tactics: 5, Torture: 8
Advantages:
Allies Pain Tolerance
Flaws:
Monster, Overconfident, Wanted
Languages: English, German, and Russian
Abilities
Skill: Blades (8)
While he always likes breaking someone with his hands, Brock's just as happy using a knife or other bladed weapon. He's been using them since he got his first switchblade at age 11, and has been in plenty of knife-fights in his life, from the bowels of Stryker's Island to the pits of Madripoor. While he specializes most in using bowie style knives, he's adept in fighting with a broadsword, axe or hatchet as well. He's quite skilled at using them as throwing weapons as well, especially daggers and hatchets.
Skill: Demolitions (6)
Crossbones is a skilled bomber and demolitionist, familiar with both conventional explosives like grenades, mines and dynamite. He's also become gifted with IEDs, Improvised Explosive Devices, using household materials or scraps to create pipe bombs and timed devices that can spread destruction and shrapnel. He knows how to apply these devices effectively to cause maximum damage to structures or, if preferred, maximum fatalities.
Skill: Escapology (6)
Crossbones has been in and out of lockup since he was a child, and he's learned the basics of both being inside and the best ways to get out. He knows the weaknesses of most standard forms of imprisonment and binding, how to find defects and usually has a set of picks hidden on his person (and will swallow them if he expects a cavity search). He's adept in shifting his body, bending and even dislocating joints and bones if necessary to slip a bond.
Skill: Fighting (8)
Brock would never call it martial arts. Brock's style is based in brutality, a hybrid combined from tactics learned on the streets and in prisons with the more formal and structured training he received from professional mercenaries. Having a natural aptitude for physical violence, Brock has far surpassed most of his teachers, becoming a world class physical combatant capable of holding his own against fighters as skilled as Captain America or Batman (although they are likely his ultimate superiors, he'd give them a hell of a workout). He's particularly skilled in close-quarters, if he can get an opponent in a clinch or grapple, where his massive size and strength can give him an advantage over most any normal man.
Skill: Firearms (7)
Crossbones has trained and mastered virtually all forms of conventional firearms, from simple pistols to semi-automatic weapons to even certain kinds of heavy artillery and anti-tank weaponry. He's especially adept in the use of automatic pistols, sniper rifles and Uzis (he especially likes the speedy flow of the Uzi, perfect for creating mass chaos).
Skill: Pilot (6)
Part of his training and work has required Crossbones to often play the role of driver and pilot. He can pilot most standard military aircraft, although he's most comfortable with large cargo planes and military helicopters. He could potentially handle a fighter jet or more weaponized craft, but would do so at a lesser degree of skill. He can drive conventional motor vehicles under fire and on rough terrain with equal dexterity.
Skill: Security (7)
Crossbones has served as a bodyguard for some fairly nasty characters, threatened from all sides, and is considered an expert in protection, security and the command of police forces. He knows how to assess a building from both the assailant aned the enemy's point of view. He knows how to set up security systems and knows how to breach them, always keeping up on the latest models and devices. He knows how to train guard dogs, usually for lethal effect, and how to organize and distribute a team of armed thugs. He also knows how to bypass such things, how to sneak in the dark and slit the proper throat to create maximum confusion, how to dissect the very sort of defenses he's learned to craft. He's also quite adept at the physical act of bodyguarding, keeping himself between his client and danger, knowing how to read crowds and situations, learning the best ways to duck and cover. Of course, how much of that skill he uses often depends on how well he's being paid.
Skill: Tactics (5)
Brock is a skilled tactician and leader of thugs, although he works best in the first mate's role, the captain of the guard, the muscle behind the throne. He can devise attack and defense strategies, assess an enemy's weaknesses and enemies, especially in paramilitary settings.
Skill: Torture (8)
Crossbones loves to hurt people. That's why he chose it as a profession. One of the most satisfying parts of that job is the art of interrogation and torture. He knows how to cause massive amounts of pain without doing permanent damage and how to do damage in savage ways that still leave the victim alive and able to answer questions. He can measure a person's tolerance for such techniques and quickly assess the best methods to apply (of if it should be bothered with at all...although he might still do it, just for fun). He even has the basic medical knowledge to help rescuscitate and keep someone alive if things go just a little bit too far. Safe to say, those who end up strapped to a chair around Crossbones will not enjoy the experience.
Advantages
Advantage: Allies
Crossbones has been a longtime standing associate of the Red Skull, often serving as his bodyguard and assassin, and is considered an agent of HYDRA, with all the benefits accompanying (their dental plan is great). He also has ties to the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang along with several other Neo-Nazi and skinhead organizations that would give him shelter and comfort if he needs.
Advantage: Pain Tolerance
Crossbones has been taking beatings for as long as he can remember. He started out getting beaten, he spent maturing years getting beaten, and he's gotten beaten on plenty in his adult years. Initiation into the Brotherhood involved a series of beatings, broken bones and savagings, all of which he had to endure without making a sound. In short, Brock has learned to shrug off anything short of crippling pain, and even fight through that. Combined with his formidable physique, he may not even respond to the average man's punch or kick, taking it the way and elephant takes a bird landing on its back. He will continue running on a broken leg, he will continue fighting with a broken nose or a splintered rib, usually without losing much in the way of ferocity. He ain't got time to bleed, as the man says.
Flaws
Flaw: Monster
According to at least four prison psych reports, Brock Rumlow qualifies as a sociopath/psychopath. He organizes the world by tribes, only trusting those of his tribe (both racial and personal) and seeing the rest of the world as either victims or enemies. While a useful trait to have in a paid assassin, it's not a very flexible worldview and limits Brock's personal relationships and alienates him from those of a normal mentality. In addition, even by psychopathic standards, Crossbones is extraordinarily brutal and ruthless. Like many gang members, he sees violence as message as well as weapon, and so he often makes rather brutal displays of his victims, gory and messy and intended to be remembered. It's not done in a raving fashion, however, or some sort of outburst or frenzy, but with the same cool, calculated precision with which he would debone a chicken or filet a fish. Very few humans can see him perform such acts and see him as anything other than a pure monster and, so he rarely inspires loyalty the same loyalty in anyone except those as sick as him. Fear, yes, even respect, but never true friendship. Extremely sensitive or empathetic individuals can also sense that emptiness in Crossbones and will instinctively shy away from him or regard him as a predator, even without knowing anything about him. With his empty eyes, scars and intimidating physical presence, he can't pass for anything but the monster he is.
Flaw: Overconfident
Crossbones has spent his life having to prove himself to be the alpha dog (which isn't the same as the ridiculous machismo urge to prove it - such emotional urges and unprofessionalism amuse Crossbones). He's fought his way to the top of multiple gangs and won his place as the chief henchman and weapon of one of the world's most notorious villains. As a result, he's developed a rather serious (and not entirely misplaced) assessment of his abilities. Nonetheless, there's always someone badder, always someone better, and, while Crossbones won't fight simply to prove he's the best, he doesn't fear anyone else physically (even those with powers that should make them beyond his reach) and he won't ever retreat or back down simply for fear of harm.
Flaw: Wanted
Crossbones has a rap sheet a mile long and is wanted for countless acts of murder, sabotage, torture, terrorism and a host of other offenses in at least a dozen countries across the world. His fingerprints and DNA are coded in national and international law enforcement files, along with his identifying marks and tattoos. Some criminal organizations even have bounties on his head that other mercenaries might be interested in, some near the million dollar range.
History[]
Things might've been different if Brock Rumlow had stayed a country boy. His mother dead in childbirth, Brock's earliest days were spent in the deep wilderness with his father, hunting, fishing, skinning. living off the land. His father taught him about right and wrong, us and them, about tradition and what it meant to be a man. And then his father died, the Marlboros taking him young, and Brock ended up in the system, the system his Daddy had warned him about. They moved him to a city, choked with pollution and infested with vermin, both animal and human. At age thirteen, he left his first foster family, stealing them blind and leaving them tied to their beds in the night. He ran the streets for a couple of years, learning to survive in a different kind of jungle. He quickly gathered followers, a ragtag band of thugs and bullies who terrorized neighborhoods. Brock ended up in another kind of system, juvenile detention, and then, at age sixteen, real jail, tried as an adult after lighting a homeless man on fire.
In prison, Brock adapted again. He joined the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison gang aligned with his personal beliefs, and became one of its most brutal members. When he finally got paroled (mostly due to overcrowding), those connections got the adult Brock the training he craved, first with the Aryan and survivalist militias and then in the dojos of much more serious and professional trainers, always trying to make himself better, more dangerous. He became a mercenary, building up experience and reputation, learning more weapons.
And then he almost died while hired to take part in a terrorist attack. While his fellow hired guns retreated, Brock had stayed, slaughtering more than two dozen U.N. security troops before being brought down in a hail of gunfire. His stand, however, had earned the admiration of the unnamed employer for that attack: the Red Skull. The Skull had Brock taken from the hospital and nursed him back to health at his own expense. To Brock, the Skull was a legend and the offer to work for this man, who had now saved his life and given him purpose, became everything he ever dreamed. Given a mask, Skull dubbed him Crossbones. In time, he would become almost an extension of the great man's arm, the punishing hand of the Red Fuhrer.
As the years have passed, Crossbones has remained a constant at the side of the Skull. Through imprisonments, resurrections, duplications, assassinations, he remains a faithful servant, earning a rare place of trust in the eyes of the paranoid old man. It is trust well earned. To Crossbones, the eventual victory of Hydra, of the cause, of the Skull, is inevitable. It's merely a matter of how many bodies he has to pile at the man's feet to get them there.
Logs[]
The following logs feature Brock Rumlow:
News[]
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Associations[]
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[Schmidt/Red Skull] Crossbones' employer, mentor and hero. Evil incarnate. |
Wanted[]
| Brock Rumlow's Wanted List |
