The Ranger
Daniel Morgenstern
Role
Secondary Villain
Details
- Age: late 30s
- Nationality: United States
- Physiology: Baseline Human
Abilities
- Special Forces Training. Morgenstern is a US Army Ranger, trained in close combat and field craft under gruelling psychological and physical stresses.
- Demolitions. Despite his physical capabilities, Morgenstern is outmatched by most superhumans and has taken to building explosive traps to even the odds.
History
On Earth-113, Daniel Morgenstern was a working-class kid from Atlanta who enlisted in the US Army directly out of high school. He quickly established himself as a resourceful and determined field operative, eventually graduating from the army’s Ranger School and joining the 75th Ranger Regiment. He spent most of his 20s and 30s deployed on operations around the world.
On the parallel world of Earth-221, however, Daniel Morgenstern was a legend: the survivor of an incident at a nuclear power plant that transformed him into the superhuman hero Morningstar.
Then the Crisis hit: a cataclysmic event that threatened every parallel Earth. To end the Crisis, the multiverse’s greatest heroes were forced to merge Earth-113 and Earth-221 into one universe.
The Daniel Morgenstern of Earth-113 found his life overwritten. It seemed the universe needed Morningstar more, and so Earth-113’s Morgenstern was erased from reality: his history wiped from the timeline, his relationships with friends and family rewritten to centre Morningstar instead.
But the Morgenstern of Earth-113 didn’t disappear. Instead, he’s a living ghost: a man existentially cut off from the life he had before, tormented by memories of a world that no longer exists.
Motivation
Morgenstern has exactly one goal: kill Morningstar, the imposter who stole his life.
A part of him is convinced that Morningstar’s death will restore reality to its rightful state, allowing Morgenstern to fill the place his parallel-Earth double took from him. It’s impossible to know whether this is actually true—and, on some level, even Morgenstern realizes that. But this mission is the only thing he has left.
Personality
Before the Crisis, Morgenstern possessed an easygoing confidence in his own abilities, a polite and professional air, and an affable Southern charm. This still comes through in his quieter moments, although the stresses of the Crisis and his ensuing struggles have taken their toll – he can be volatile, veering from friendly conversation to violent rage at a moment’s notice.
Like many soldiers, Morgenstern has a dry and morbid sense of humour—a defence mechanism against the mundane horrors of his chosen career. He has a cavalier attitude towards violence and death that can unsettle the civilians he interacts with.
Gameplay
Morgenstern will almost never engage the players directly. He will instead snipe the players from a distance with the goal of luring them into an enclosed location that he’s booby-trapped with explosives. If the players spot the trap in time, they can attempt to set the explosives off with ranged attacks or otherwise disable them; alternatively, some players may elect to simply tank the damage.
Engaged in direct combat, Morgenstern will adopt evasive tactics and attempt to whittle down the player’s health and resources with flanking attacks. He will not fight to the death and will instead retreat at low health – unless Morningstar is in the player’s squad, at which point Morgenstern will focus all his attacks on Morningstar and attempt to kill him at all costs.