Heroes of legend or simply copycats?
CLEA DATA FILE
Team Identities:
- North wind (bottom – real name unknown)
- East wind (top – real name unknown)
- South wind (right – real name unknown)
- West wind (left – real name unknown)
CLEA Classification:
- Alien Tech Enhanced
(or possibly Alpha)
Special Skills and/or Abilities:
- All – able to heal rapidly
- All – able to travel at high speed
- All – enhance objects or their own bodies via ring
- North wind – skilled in unarmed combat
- East wind – skilled with flint lock pistols
- South wind – skilled archer.
- West wind – skilled swordsman
Limitation(s)/Weakness(s):
- Cannot use rapid travel like speedsters
- Using their “rings” seems to require some sort of charging proces
Rap Sheet/Criminal Traits:
- N/A
Notes/History
The Four Winds are recognised as a team of vigilantes and their “appearance” coincided with the appearance of two powerful individuals that have become known as the Ebony Warriors. All six individuals stand out due to the fact their apparel and lack of understanding appear to suggest they are from another time.
Whilst it appears the Four Winds have an interest in the Ebony Warriors the pair of criminals does not appear to be their sole focus for they are known to have taken down serious criminals. At first, they started on those that performed petty crimes which did not get them noticed but as soon as they tackled bigger prey CLEA became alerted by authorities around the world for the law enforcement agencies considered them Alphas.
CLEA scientists also considered the same due to their “special abilities” despite the fact that they did not appear to suffer any of the negative problems that other Alpha Superiors have (such as burnout and fatigue). However, when it became apparent that none of the members that made up the Four Winds or the Ebony Warriors could be identified by facial recognition the researchers delved deeper.
The initial theory was they were one of the “First” Alphas, created from the meteor impact which hit China a thousand years earlier. They sought Oracle for his help since he was one of the First Alphas but he did not recognise the individuals as being from his village that had been “affected” by the disaster. Though for a long time had consider himself and his children “Judgement” and “Lockbox” were the only ones alive from that time he could not rule out the existence of others but was very sure that the Four Winds or the Ebony Warriors would be amongst them.
The breakthrough in learning who the Four Winds were came from an unlikely source when researchers happened upon old folk stories originating from China. The clothing worn by the Four Winds seemed to keep appearing on old paintings, scrolls and woodcuttings. Such art work did not often show accurate facial features so there was no proof that the Four Winds on the present day had somehow survived for centuries, but their outfits certainly appeared to be the same. Trying to trace the “stories” back to their earlier period, researchers reached possible origin in the form of a remote village in China that no longer exists.
The Legend
The legend stated that the village located in a mountainous region had received visits by people who came from the sky. The villagers named them the “sky people” and the visitors looked nothing like anyone they had ever seen. Primitive folk stories retold across time said the strangers were both tall and thin, standing on three toed feet and instead of skin had scales like reptiles.
At first the villagers were quite scare of the new arrivals, intimidated by their very appearance and mannerisms along with the fact they spoke a language they could not understand, yet the sky people visually managed to indicate via body gestures they meant no harm. Communication was tricky at first since the villagers and sky people could only exchange information via symbology but that all changed after a week when the sky people managed to learn the visitors tongue.
With both peoples able to now talk to each other, the sky people explained that they had travelled a great distance after learning that the area surrounding the village was rich in a mineral that they needed for their very survival. They wanted permission to extract the mineral but since their culture prevented them simply “stealing” from another people they had come to ask the villagers their “price.”
Since the mineral was worthless to them and most were simple farmers the types of items they would find useful, the sky people could not give them. At this point the sky people brought forth machines of magic that started to remove the mineral. The machines seemed to be “powered” by mystic rings the sky people wore on their hands. The villagers asked if they could have such artefacts as a trade, but the sky people explained they were forbidden from such an exchange but instead offered their services and machines to help the villagers with their back breaking tasks such as collecting the harvest. The compromise seemed fair, so an agreement was reached.
Further afield, bandits who had plagued the village and other like it for years soon learned of the sky people and their magic machines and wanted such items for themselves. Less intimidated by the sky people’s appearance than the villagers, the bandits decided to attack.
This would be a fatal mistake for when the attack came, the sky people chose to defend themselves and the village and the simple farmers saw the true power of the mystic rings each of the sky people possessed. Previously the rings had been seen as powering the machines but now the villagers saw them used as weapons. Emitting a strange blue energy, the wearers appeared to be quite protected from the weapons the bandits used on them, healing rapidly and now having great strength. The sky people appeared to possess no weapons. Previously they had stated they were a people of peace but that did not stop them defending themselves and using the weapons used to attack them.
In the hands of the sky people and their mystic rings simple weapons such as spears, swords and arrow appeared to be just as enhanced as their wearers. Primitive drawings of the legend had depictions of spears passing straight through the bodies of bandit attackers, arrows penetrating armour and swords cleaving through limbs like they were nothing, all of which would have been impossible with the weapons of that time. Having fended of the attack, the bandits never came back, securing the place of the sky people in legend by making the village a no-go area for those that would harm its people.
Eventually though there came a time when the visitors had to leave after obtaining all they needed. On that day the village elders became concerned that once the Sky People were gone the village would be vulnerable again to bandits and criminals. They pleaded with their strange friends to stay but they could not since they had to get back to their own people. Touched by the fears of the villagers, the Sky People decided on making the villagers a sect of their own people and in annexing the village it meant they could give them access to their “magic”.
The village elders were then presented with eight of the mystic rings and since the sky people looked nothing like the villagers, the elders were told the rings had been adapted to their unique physiology. Before leaving the sky people warned that whilst the rings could grant whoever wore each one great power once worn, if it was ever separated from its host it there was high probability the host would die since the bond between ring and wearer would grow over time to the point they could not be apart.
Several folk stories suggested the villagers presented the eight rings to eight warriors who were charged with protecting them. Over the time, as the enemies in the area diminished due to their actions they began to spread out across China using their skills and the power the rings provided to perform great heroic deeds.
Starting out with eight warriors, though the legends were a little spotty in some areas and differed in others, it seemed that over time as they eliminated their enemies they began to spread further afield using their near immortal lives to help others.
Over time the warriors soon grew accustomed to winning all the time and allowed arrogance to affect their judgement. Thinking themselves undefeatable and growing tired of each other’s company they split up as a group and set out across the word.
Three warriors remained together and happened across a vicious warlord in Mongolia who defeated two of them and took their rings leaving the third to escape. A similar event happened in Eastern Europe where a single ring wearer challenged the female leader of a tribe of bandits. The wearer was defeated in battle after underestimating his opponent and the female victor took his ring.
Eager for more power she went looking for other ring wearers and defeated another one, thus like the Mongolian warlord, had acquired two rings. The remaining four wearers, upon learning the fates of their fellow warriors decided to settle their differences and become one group in order to rid the world of their two greatest enemies their ignorance had allowed to be created.
Unable to defeat the pair who were in possession of two rings each and by now united themselves, the Four Winds as they had become known instead decided to trap the villains instead. Several stories suggest that the “prison” was either a cave or a chasm, but its exact location could have been anywhere in the Asian subcontinent.
After the defeat of the “evil warriors” the Four Winds then seem to vanish from historical records. Mythology and legends hinted the four heroes had decided to “sleep” until the time arrived when they were needed again.
Though CLEA unofficially cannot take folk stories as the truth, theorists cannot deny that after a new mine was established in China upon blasting a new chamber the miners were attacked by two people who were dressed in “old armour”. Few survived the onslaught and the two people responsible were never found by authorities but people bearing their description resurfaced briefly in Europe a few months later. The pair would later become known as the Ebony Warriors due to the fact they both wore black armour. Around the same time the first reports of the Four Winds started to reach CLEA.
Whether the quartet are the same people from legend or simply copycats familiar to the legend is open to speculation. Based on current data, each member of the Four Winds seems to have the ability to rapidly heal. If the source of their abilities in not Alpha and in fact comes from the rings they were, research suggest the rings emit some sort of energy which can enhance objects they possess or be channelled through their own bodies.
Every time they use such an ability the rings they wear appear to glow and the brighter and longer the glow lasts before being channelled alters the magnitude of the outcome. Each member of the group also seems to have the means to move at incredible speed from location to another. During “travel” they do not appear to be able to interact with the physical world and upon exiting this state, a forward blast of air is released. Unlike speedsters who can move rapidly, stop for a few moments and resume high speed movement, the Four Winds seem in capable of reverting to their high-speed travel for a period time, as if some sort of recharging mechanism is in play.
Theorists suggest that if the Four Winds are indeed the warriors of legend then the rings they wear are almost certainly of an extra-terrestrial origin which would fit in well with how a primitive people might explain “Sky People”. On that assumption the rings would appear to be capable of generating an energy which is as of yet not explainable to science. If according to legend the rings are capable of healing the human body, then that would explain why the Four Winds do not appear to age through history. Also, the faint blur during high speed travel and the discharge of air upon stopping might well explain where the name “Four Winds” came from. In a period before technology the people helped by the group could easily assume that the team members were the living embodiment of the wind.
On a final note, the Ebony Warriors appear to possess similar abilities to the Four Winds, only a lot stronger.
