Kenneth "Beacon" Welles, former Rivals founder

[Devilpants]

Player Nickname: Devilpants

Name: Kenneth Antony Welles, PhD
Codename: Beacon
Date of Birth: January 2, 1954

Height: 5'10"
Weight: 160 lbs
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Green
Place of Origin: Yonkers, New York, US
Nationality/Race: American, mainly British and Polish descent
Classification/Origin of Powers: Mutant

Status: Supervillain
Occupation: Supervillain

Personality Profile:
- Stern, serious, seldom jokes
- Forthright and honest; strong work ethic and clear-cut morals
- Runs out of patience very quickly these days
- Will quickly escalate to lethal force in fights and has no patience for braggarts and bullies

Physical Description:
- Tall and slim; used to be in better shape but has let himself go
- Hard, angular facial features, high cheekbones, narrow eyes
- Thin mustache, pointed goatee, balding with a shaved head, all grey hair
- Prosthetic arm; advanced cybernetic usually hidden under long sleeves and a black glove

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General Power Information: Beacon's main gimmick is that he generates powerful blasts of light and plasma, controlled through a hyperspecialized form of telekinesis. This telekinesis can be applied to himself to allow flight, as well as used to create defensive barriers.

Ability One:
Light & Plasma Generation: Beacon's main power is the creation and control of plasma. Thanks to his years of experience with the Rivals and his analytical nature, Beacon has developed both extremely fine control and a seemingly bottomless well of energy from which to draw. He can create laser-like effects to cut or burn on a small and precise scale, or generate enormous or huge numbers of orbs, destructive wide-area waves, or huge directed beams of plasma to devastate wide areas. There is no known upper limit to this ability and in 1999, one of his attacks was large and bright enough to be visible from space. While the light and plasma can be any colour he chooses, he defaults to cyan.

Ability Two:
Flight: By applying his limited telekinesis to his own body, Beacon can fly. He has very fine control over this ability, giving him very high mid-air agility. While his top speed is unknown, he has out-flown Tungsten himself, the leader of the Rivals, on more than one occasion. The reason he can achieve such high speeds is because of his third power, detailed below.

Ability Three:
Kinetic Barrier: Beacon can create powerful barriers of kinetic force around both himself and others. The more he concentrates, the stronger the barrier, meaning if he's focused entirely on defending, the barrier is nearly impervious to conventional physical attack. He can create these at a distance and around others, but it takes concentration to maintain them. Additionally, the larger the barrier, the weaker it is.

Drawbacks & Weaknesses:
Age: While he's one of the most powerful mutants in the world, Beacon is getting old. He has arthritis, joint pain, and back pain, and his vision and hearing are slowly deteriorating. While his powers require no real physical exertion on his part, combat is still strenuous and dangerous.
Old Injuries: As a lifelong superhero, Beacon has been in a lot of fights against very powerful enemies, and has had injuries of every stripe. He suffers from tinnitus, as well as migraines from repeated concussions.

Skills:
Plasma Physics: Beacon has a PhD in plasma physics. He has a natural aptitude for advanced mathematics and physics, specializing in plasma physics, and has decades of experience in the field. Before his identity was revealed to the public, he had many published peer-reviewed papers and made a name for himself in the field.
Athletics: Beacon was already in shape thanks to his enthusiasm for wrestling and running before he gained his powers, and while he's still capable, he has lapsed in his physical training since his retirement.
Wrestling & Unarmed Combat: Beacon was on the highschool wrestling team and used what he learned there as a superhero, but also trained with the various other members of the Rivals over the years, blending what he learned to create a personal style. He rarely needed to use it, but he insisted on keeping up his training and staying in shape "just in case."
Lockpicking: Beacon picked this up part of physiotherapy after receiving his prosthetic arm in 2009.
Iron Will: Beacon had a long and successful career as a superhero and has fought villains with many different kinds of powers, but the ones he hated the most were telepaths. He spent many years researching techniques to defend against it. Through a combination of meditation, philosophy, and experience, Beacon has developed a very high resistance to telepathic attack.

Background: Kenneth Antony Welles led a bright and promising early life, an only child born to loving parents, skilled in both athletic endeavors and academic pursuits with high grades in school, and who went straight into university after graduation.

During the 1970s while Kenneth was in his twenties, New York had a serious gang problem only made worse by the emergence of several mutant-led gangs who wreaked all sorts of havoc on the city. After a particularly bloody murder spree was discovered, Kenneth decided he had to take matters into his own hands. He began performing dangerous experiments on himself in an attempt to awaken his meta gene.

While it took years and nearly took his life several times, he was eventually successful, gaining incredible power over the subject of his academic speciality: Plasma. He made his debut on the superhero scene in a handmade costume and went through several names (Lighthouse, Solar, Prominence, and Flare), and only settled on Beacon after Tungsten suggested it.

With the Rivals, Beacon had a long and storied career at first fighting street-level crime, then escalating to national and eventually international threats of all shapes and sizes. Beacon gained a reputation for being stern and serious next to Tungsten's jovial attitude and Queen Raven's goth weirdness, and settled into his role as the Rivals' voice of reason.

In 2008, the Rivals fought a djinn who had gone on a killing spree and become incredibly powerful. After murdering two members of a Philadelphia superhero team, the Rivals were called in for help. While they successfully killed the djinn, many team members suffered serious injuries in the battle, including Beacon himself, who lost his left arm.

After the fight, Beacon immediately retired, citing his age, his lost arm, and his accumulating injuries. He retreated to private life and largely became a recluse, only doing the bare minimum to continue his scientific work while undergoing physiotherapy. He received a prosthetic arm as a gift from a colleague in 2009, and has worn it since.

Criminal Record: None. However, he has killed multiple supervillains, but no charges were pressed because video evidence clearly showed it was self-defense and the foes in question were too strong or dangerous to subdue.

Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts: Beacon's favourite food is perogies.

[Devilpants]

META notes

[+] {Spoiler}

• Essentially a walking nuke
• Endorsements of pro-mutant freedoms and rights activist groups indicates he is a possible future threat against government measures to control mutant population
• Willingness to use lethal force and/or completely disintegrate extremely dangerous foes has left META with limited information and resources on past threats; when questioned, Beacon is quoted as saying he didn't want to leave anything for META or other governments to use to create monsters, citing past supersoldier programs as "crimes against humanity"
• Extremely unlikely to ever be an asset to META