MAXWELL, O'Ryan James (O. J.)

- born Victor Richter at Castle Nightmare, the von Alptraums' Baltic Sea estate in what was then Prussia, at an unspecified date; he thinks he might be a Summoning Child, a son of one of their retainers or underlings, but the truth is much stranger than that;
- apparently used the name Owen Richter as an alter ego while undercover in Germany during WWII;
- the first Baron Justice, codename given to him by either Angus Dre'Ath or Jock Maxwell ca 1940;
- adopted by Jock Maxwell and Bunnie nee O'Ryan Galvin despite the fact that they never officially married;
- also known as Big Max Maxwell; Security Chief on Centauri Island from approximately 1970 to November 1980;
- definite father, by Aranyani Nightingale Ryne, of Timothy James Maxwell and Firenze Nightingale; possible father of Dolph Dulles;

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So many people came to Castle von Alptraum during those days upon which the window of his memory still opened; people who influenced his life, a few even to this day. There were the German-Egyptians, Wolfgang Shekmet, whose countenance, with that great, dark mane of hair, even then seemed leonine, and Seth Kephren, the supra known as the Sphinx, whose son Horatio he saw killed here on Centauri Island fifteen years ago.

Old Angus Dre’Ath, the founder of the Godling Guild, used to visit the castle, as did his three legitimate and four bastard sons who, during the so-called Secret War of Supranormals, were collectively known as the Skullians. They were sometimes accompanied by Colonel Jock Maxwell and his then friend and now lifelong companion, Bonita nee O’Ryan Galvin. They became his foster parents and he still went by the name they gave him.

Then there was the young mystic, Jesus Mandam (Abe Ryne’s nephew and barely older than Maxwell), who followed St Synne around like a lost puppy. There was St Synne’s other daughter, Sophia, and her husband, Raphael D’Angelo. They were two of the nicest people he had ever come to know. They were also two of the most tragic. Of their eleven natural and two adopted children, only three still lived.

Ironically, though well on in years and fragile, especially Raphael, they – Timmy’s godparents – were still alive as well. But they were Godlings, rather the children of Godlings. Something he’d noted over the years was that Godlings, parents and kids, if they lasted until their mid-twenties seemed to live for a long time after that. In fact, Maxwell reflected, he’d never known a Godling who died of natural causes.

One of Raphael’s two then-surviving sisters, Mnemosyne (known to most as Memory), also visited Castle von Alptraum in the days before the war. So did her future husband, Agenor Heliopolis, and his first wife, Argiope nee Zeross, her brother, Angelo, and his wife, Rom’s paternal aunt, Megaera.

Mnemosyne, the Heliopolises and the elder Zerosses were gone now. So was Demonites, Harry, and Oriani Zeross, Kadmon Heliopolis (Argiope’s only child) and his half-sister Europa (Memory’s only child). Maxwell had known them all, befriended the older folks and helped bring up the younger ones. In the cases of Kadmon, Angelo, Megaera, Demonites, and, mostly because he couldn’t be everywhere at once, Rom’s parents and Europa, well, there was no denying it. He’d also helped to kill them.

One person – if person she was, and there were doubts about that – no one had been able to kill, and not for lack of trying, was Strife. She was literally faceless; didn’t even have bumps for ears or a nose, indentations for a mouth or eyes. What she did have was a shock of red hair that was often just a top knot or ponytail on an otherwise shaved head, and a skinny, waif-like body that never seemed to change in the nearly thirty years she plagued mankind.

She was a regular hellion; in more ways than one, if you believed higher-ups in the Sisterhood of Anthea and its related branches. They believed she was an infernal mani­festation. They may well be right too, reflected Max. That she was an obvious illusionist – how else to explain her appearance? – indicated she had something to do with the various sisterhoods. That she was a killer, equally undeniable, suggested she was entirely rogue.

Somewhat to their credit, Antheans regarded her as their personal problem. On three different occasions, two of their former Mother Superiors (Dolores D’Angelo Rivera, in ‘46 and again in ‘49, and Morgianna by then Sarpedon, in ‘52) claimed they’d taken care of her. Either they hadn’t or there was more than one Strife. A lot more, as subsequent encounters showed.

An apparent Strife had been captured three times that he knew about. Twice, in 1960 and in 1970, the last time she’d been seen, she turned out to be Ramona Avar, the patriarch’s third wife. In between, in 1965, right here on this very island, she was revealed to be Crystal St Synne. Since Strife first appeared in 1943, when Ramona was only sixteen and Crystal three years away from even being born, it was hard to argue with the Sisters’ assertion that she was some kind of possessive spirit.

Spook or otherwise, a supranormal with ethereal abilities perhaps, she was unmistakably malevolent and probably still out there. The bad ones always were. He even had a good idea who she actually was – and it wasn’t Ramona or Crystal, though the latter hadn’t been seen in well over a decade and may well be dead.

Steltsar was another recurring horror no one had been able to kill until, presumably, 1970. He began his reign of terror as the old Baron, Peashooter’s father, Tyrtod von Alptraum. Maxwell could count four times when von Alp Senior had been thought dead. During the war years he was rightfully known as the Nazi Nightmare. One of Max’s tasks back then was to assassinate him.

In '44, Agenor Heliopolis, the first Olympian, looked to have done the job for him – at the cost of his own life. But the old Baron must be as much part demon as Strife. Somehow his brain, or at least his mind, survived. In a progression of robotic then neo-human constructs, each more sophisticated than the previous one, von Alp as Steltsar continued to haunt the planet.

In '48, when Steltsar was associated with the Soviet Supra Supreme, Old Man Power – a reputed faerie, no less – had blown him away. In ‘53, on the South Sea island known as Salvation, the genuinely evil mastermind behind The Rache and the Supranormal Defence League had gone up in an otherwise unrecorded explosion of one of the first Hydrogen Bombs. (With him also went Jesus Mandam and the top dogs in The Rache.)

In '65, yet another Steltsar was decommissioned, to put it mildly, by the supra known as Pluman – the alter ego of Rom’s father, Alexandros, who promptly suffered a fatal heart attack. The last known Steltsar was the co-leader, along with his oft-times ally Strife, of the late Sixties’ version of WORLD. (‘The Worldwide Order with the Right to Life and Death’: a pretension which Max and AMERICA abrogated when they put paid to the Order ten years ago in Hong Kong.)

Although he hadn’t come across him in a decade, Maxwell sensed he was still out there as well. Perhaps paranoically, he hoped the old Baron would attack Centauri Island.

While finalizing security, he had two abiding requisites. ‘Will it stop supranormals?’ Probably not but, then again, what could? Of course the last eleven, the ten King Crimefighters and the Magnificent Psycho, the best of the best, had been dead for a quarter century. More to the point, he always asked himself and his designers: ‘Will it stop Strife and Steltsar?’

He figured the sum total of all his ‘its’ would.

... taken out of "Nuclear Dragons", the second (unless it's the third or fourth) installment of the Launch 1980 story cycle

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Sometime before leaving Centauri Island in very early December 1980, a perhaps not-so-unlikely partnership forms between the two late-in-life become-supras: Doc Defiance, the Gypsium Man, and the Indescribable Mr No Name. This is hardly surprising given the friendship their non-supra-selves had for decades prior to the launching of the Cosmic Express on the last day of November 1980:

They transformed into their supra-selves: big, Mediterranean tanned-dark, and glowing; plump, ghastly white, and prissily primped as kneaded dough. That, at least, they could still do.

“I’m Doc Defiance, the Gypsium Man. And you, friend, must be the otherwise Indescribable Mr No Name.”

“Call me Max.”

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

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"What’s going on, Defiance?" shouted the Indescribable Mr No Name.

Gone was O.J. Maxwell. Even his clothing, sport coat, trade­mark turtleneck, jeans and shoes were subsumed by the great, lumpy mass of dough in a generally human configuration. Unless No Name had simply switched places with Maxwell like an image in a double-sided mirror that had just flipped.

“Looks like we’re about to find out!"

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

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Heliosophos gagged something unintelligible. If Machine-Memory understood it, she gave no indication. "Don’t harm him, Void," came back the computer wall, using an alternative term for what the onetime Callion Clone had become apparently after receiving twin blasts of devic eyefire on the 30th. "I’ll turn Kinesis loose but, be forewarned, he’s power­less. I’ve drained all the Gypsium out of him."

The all-white mass of mostly the Grey pulsated briefly, as if it was laughing. “Think I’ve got enough powers for both of us, Memory. Wouldn’t you agree?"

As soon as the computer wall released the professor, it was O.J. Maxwell who had Helios in a stranglehold."Hey, pro, back with us?"

"Seem to be.” Kinesis slumped into the chair, hefted the bottle of retsina, and, not bothering with a glass, took a heal­thy swig."Where’s what’s-his-name?"

"Around and about, I imagine.” Max didn’t need to be any more of a mind-reader than Memory was to catch the reference."“Guess that’s why he’s considered a Multivoid, capitalized. No Name exists in a multitude of voids; spatial pockets of next-to-nothingness. He’s also a suspicious type. Figures both Helios and Memory know how to get rid of him. Doesn’t want to give them a target."

"You going to break his neck?"

"The thought had occurred to me."

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

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- Big Max is quoted here;
- see also: MULTIVOIDS; RICHTER, Victor in Teutons; the Indescribable Mr. No Name;

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ST SYNNE, Sedon

- also known as Sed-son; during the Second World War called himself Satan St Synne;
- has many children including Crystal St. Synne (who may have become Crystallion, the leader of Hell's Horsemen) by Corona Power (the Lady Takeda in 'The Volsung Variations'), Cybele St Synne & Sophia D'Angelo by Louise nee Riel, Mata Avar by Rhea Ararat; possibly his own daughters' daughters Ramona by Mata and Meroudys Maenad by Cybele, possibly Aranyani Nightingale by Eden Nightingale Ryne and, equally possibly, Sapphire Lancz by Tereza D'Angelo Lancz; probably Pandora Mannering (Hush, Joli Blon, Young Life) by Celeste Mannering as well;
- all his children are girls, though there is some thought that he, Sed-son, and not old Joe, may have been the sperm-father of Jesus Mandam;
- Faceless Strife adheres to his daughters for some reason; presumably it's because he's a sedon (small case) or Sed-son; it also may be that all his children were born with a membranous caul covering their faces and some believe a caul is how Strife hides her face;

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Sedon St. Synne was a peculiar mixture of widely separated races. His father, Kabul, was a world-travelling French missionary-cum-diplomat who was born in Indochina and had an abiding interest in anthropology. His mother, whose name was Takeda, was an Ainu woman. The Ainu were an aboriginal race related to the Japanese as well as a number of neighbouring peoples on the Siberian mainland. St. Synne himself was born on Sakhalin Island in 1875 but was actually raised in Plainsland America, first by the Sioux then by the Metis and their Cheyenne benefactors.

His eventual wife, Louise Riel -- whom he married, oddly enough, in London England in November 1895 -- was a bit of a hybrid herself. She belonged to the Metis people, the initially half-French, half-Indian clans of the Great American and Canadian Plains. Metistis were not to be confused with the Titan, Metis, Zeus' first wife, the mythological Goddess of Wisdom whom he impregnated then swallowed much as his father, Kronos, once swallowed his Olympian brothers and sisters. Somewhat ironically, given that Louise was a long time friend and associate of Athena Kinesis Ryne and helped her found the Athenan war witches, the Classical Metis was the mother of Athena, yet another goddess of wisdom, one who supposedly popped out of Zeus' head before anyone could say Gesundheit.

Sophia D'Angelo, their first child, was also born on Sakhalin, albeit thirty years after her father. Their second child, Cybele, the one who was lost during the Summoning, was born on Crete three years later, in 1909. The St. Synnes spent a great of deal of time on Crete, particularly in the first decade of the new century after their return from Mesopotamia and Magister Mandam, Sedon's rival as much as his mentor in the old Godling Guild.

... from 'The Moloch Manoeuvres';

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In his prime, and long beyond it, Sedon St Synne could send his dream self to those either of his own blood or with whom he shared blood, cut to cut. Reputedly, albeit as System, he still could. Indeed, there were those, particularly on Apple Isle, who said Judge Warlock (Cybele, the Korants’ long time Miracle Maenad’s father) walked the Headworld to this day.

Thanks to the Conqueror’s life support system, as rebuilt at California’s Stanford University’s campus in Palo Alto, St Synne was technically alive ...

... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle

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see also: Judge Warlock and the entry on the Daemonicus shell in the Additional Characters web page;

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