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#100 - Count Vertigo
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In the first campaign, the character of Vertigo was mired in in a life of regrets. First and foremost anchored by the unimaginable guilt of being the prince of a country so detestably evil that it was wiped from the face of the Earth by the Spectre, the psychological toll one must endure for that iniquity simply cannot be fathomed. My mind struggles to wrap around the very description of being the being who can be blamed for the extinction of a culture. My heart breaks for Vertigo in that way. You consider how wayward he strayed from his family, spending his days as a lackadaisical floating, flipping, flying nuisance in America, how he struggled with both physical and emotional disorders that made him both a perfect career villain... Vertigo never rose to the level of being a true A-List supervillain. Yet, he was just competent enough to avoid capture as a member of dozens of teams, even serving as one of the five longest-tenured Suicide Squad member. When most Squaddies average 1.4 mission survival rate, Vertigo lasted twenty. Floating forever, unable to establish roots. A man with no country, no home.

And then, Varra came along, and the entire nature of my beloved prince changed.

Discovering that Vertigo had a son, there was suddenly a slow-gestating change in the heart of Werner Vertigo. MI really leaned into the past history of Varra and Vertigo in the first campaign. Some of my favorite, moving scenes were between the two. Willing to overlook his bipolar disorder and its more curious effects, Varra laid out the truth to Vertigo regarding his son, Brennus, and Vertigo... chose responsibility for the first time in his life. He lost his country, every member of his nation he ever met. This was the smallest amount of redemption possible in the cosmic abacus that being like the Spectre carries around. And then, for years afterwards, Vertigo began to be the father he never expected to be come.

So now, when we look at the characters who have had the largest, most enduring, undeniable impact on the PCs, Vertigo might very well be #1 with a bullet. Brennus has, over the course of the campaign, leaned more and more into his new father's legacy, and pushed away more and more from the darkness surrounding his mother's hidden history. This sets Brennus down the winding path of villainy, in a roundabout way. Yet, there's something noble about this form of villain. Perhaps a rogue by the less fantastical nature of the word. Rebellion is integral to Brennus, but it's a Sin Tzu kind of rebellion, something more Machiavellian. Brennus wants to be a prince, like his father before him. He wears the crest of his trueborn heritage. He's taken up his father's cape, only altered to match the color of his raw magical blue fist.

And with the Sortofgin story, MI and I sank so quickly into a father-son relationship between these characters. Vertigo always does so well at, as a nobleman, saying far more in his silences and his restraint than in his words themselves. You can feel that from Brennus' end - there's innate understanding, that unspoken language between the all-too-legible for an outside observer. To me, there's no greater force propelling Brennus forward than his unseen father. Now, knowing that he has both taken a seat on the High Society and forsaken it in short order... you have to wonder if like father, like son, there is a rebellious honor in Vertigo's heart still.

Or maybe he's still living that vertiginous truth, floating unbound without reference to reality still, lingering like a wild card in the tempestuous Darkseid War.

Hint: We ain't doin' hints this time around.