Difference between revisions of "Hellfire Club"

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====Former Members:====
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====Former Members====
 
 
''Friedrich Von Roehm - Black Rook:'' a mutant, [[Paradise Lost|killed in a police cell]] when his [[Image inducer|image inducer]] failed and his position within the HFC was unable to prevent his arrest.
 
  
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*''Friedrich Von Roehm - Black Rook:'' a mutant, [[Paradise Lost|killed in a police cell]] when his [[Image inducer|image inducer]] failed and his position within the HFC was unable to prevent his arrest.
  
 
==Details==
 
==Details==

Revision as of 11:42, 22 October 2015

This page is about the Phase 2 incarnation of the NPCs. For other uses, see Hellfire Club (disambiguation).

PHASE 2
Hellfire Club
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Portrayed by various
Known Aliases: Emma Frost (White Queen), Sebastian Shaw (Black King)
Affiliations: Independent
Socked By: various
Introduction: Paradise Lost


Following M-Day, the Hellfire Club had to reimage itself in order to protect its mutant members and an uneasy truce was struck between Black and White Courts.

Roster

Hellfire Club.jpg


White Court

Inner Court: White Queen - Emma Frost
Xf emma.jpg
Leader of the White Court, Emma is cunning, manipulative and intensely protective of her people.

PB: Charlize Theron


Inner Court: White Rook - Adrienne Frost Reluctant member of the HFC due to her previous experiences, Adrienne's loyalty to her sister holds her to stay as her Rook.

PB: Evangeline Lilly


Inner Court: White Knight - Doug Ramsey
Xf doug.jpg
Ever loyal to Emma, Doug maintains his role as her Knight.

PB: Ryan Phillipe.


Inner Court: White Bishop - TBD
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(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Outer Court: White Squire - Julian Keller Balked of his desired place of White Bishop by Court politics, the ambitious and wealthy scion bides his time instead as Squire.

PB: Thomas Sturridge.


Outer Court: White Herald - TBD
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(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Outer Court: White Sentry - TBD
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(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Junior Court: White Page - TBD
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(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Junior Court: White Witness - TBD
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(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Junior Court: White Chatelaine - TBD
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(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Black Court

Inner Court: Black King - Sebastian Shaw
Shaw.jpg
A powerful industrialist, Sebastian Shaw is a dangerous and cunning opponent. His mutant status is a tightly-kept secret and while he has often been pitched against the X-Men, he has on occasion used them as a means to an end. Since M-Day and the death of his Rook in jail, he has grudgingly admitted things have to change, and in the area of mutant welfare, at least, has agreed to a truce with Emma.

PB: Jason Isaacs, socked by TBD


Inner Court: Black Rook - TBD
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(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Inner Court: Black Knight - TBD
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(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Inner Court: Black Bishop - Harry Leland
Leland.jpg
An esteemed Manhattan businessman, Harry Leland is also a member of the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle, serving as their Black Bishop. Leland has been assisting his friend in the rebuilding of his company; although now as a full partner with a controlling interest in Shaw Industries. A heart attack in 2007 has significantly weakened his position, but he remains as Bishop, a modifying influence on the excesses of his King.

PB: Sydney Greenstreet, socked by TBD


Outer Court: Black Squire - TBD
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(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Outer Court: Black Herald - TBD
Placeholder.gif
(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Outer Court: Black Sentry - TBD
Placeholder.gif
(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Junior Court: Black Page - TBD
Placeholder.gif
(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Junior Court: Black Witness - TBD
Placeholder.gif
(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Junior Court: Black Chatelaine - TBD
Placeholder.gif
(description here)

PB: To be determined.


Former Members

Details

The Hellfire Club is a social club catering to members of the social and financial elite. Secretly founded by members of a secret cabal, the club is an offshoot of John Dee's Invisible College, established sometime in the sixteenth century. Similar to the Royal Society, but with an interest in the arcane and demonic spheres, the club gained a strong cabal of influential members, to the point that it was forced to hide behind the disgraced guise of other clubs to avoid being targeted by political or religious enemies. In the 18th century, the club used pawns like Phillip, Duke of Wharton and Sir Francis Dashwood to distract those who had heard whispers of their studies, instead sending them to drunken orgies and satirical farces of religious ceremonies. However, as the true club began to recruit the best from their fake counterparts, some of the attitudes began to seep in, changing the mores and focus slowly.

Over the years, secret chapters were begun, mostly following the trade routes of the empire, although occasionally making in-roads into the traditional grounds of other societies in Europe. By the mid-19th century, the Hellfire Club was able to shed part of its cloak of secrecy, transforming itself into the public eye as more of an exclusive social club. Wealthy men and women would maneuver for an invitation to one of their elaborate parties, and membership was considered to be a significant honour. The various chapters undertook a period of re-organization, eliminating small and mismanaged chapters, and laying out the court structure which survived up until September 2015.

Today, the Hellfire Club is seen as an anachronistic institution from an imperial past; barely noticed or known about by the public, only as visible as a thousand other private clubs and societies which occasionally provide quiet charitable support or fundraisers. Its private nature allowed very little access to the media, and as a result, it enjoyed the status of being functionally invisible.

Phase 2

Following M-Day, it became obvious that things had changed for the Hellfire Club with the death of the Black Rook in police custody. Where formerly just citing his position with the Club would have seen him on his way, the fact he was a visible mutant in post-M-Day New York meant his position meant nothing. Faced with this new threat, White Queen Emma Frost and Black King Sebastian Shaw came to a reluctant agreement and restructured the NY HFC according to old lines. Part of the agreement was there would be no Black Queen and no White King - the existing 'royalty' would rule alone, in order to provide balance.

The Black and White Courts are still, in most things, in a certain state of opposition. There are only certain things, primarily to do with mutant affairs that they join together to work on. Part of the reason that they choose to do this, is that the world has changed since M-Day; despite the fact that they have quite a lot of influence in business and politics, all of the members of the HFC must now be considerably more careful about being outed as mutants. The Black Court, particularly as they have neither telepaths nor magic users to cover their tracks, are much less inclined to any overt use of powers in public or in front of non-HFC people they have to leave alive. They also can't just throw money and influence at problems they wish to mutually solve; anti-mutant sentiment is so strong now that they can't simply make things go away or change - for example, they might be able to convince politicians to go a certain way to softening anti-mutant laws etc but they're unlikely to have sufficient influence to overcome the political liability that would come from a politician being seen as a strong mutant sympathiser.

So, as part of that lessening of influence, they have fewer senators in their pockets - a few influential ones, who are very loyal to the HFC for a number of different reasons, but the Courts couldn't simply let those Senators know what they wanted and expect it to happen - they have to do a lot more work to get the result they want, so they expend the need for favours more carefully. In terms of business, they still have a LOT of money and a LOT of influence - but this is also the area where Black and White Courts are primarily in opposition - Frost and Shaw remain business rivals, so they don't tend to work together much in terms of undertaking Court activities through the business sphere.

Plots/Events

Paradise Lost

Meta

Socked by: Various