Impossible Iron

Ike Rust was born in 1969. His father's name was Roger Rust. His mother's name was Joan Rust (nee Summers). Roger Rust, son of Ike Rust, was the proud owner of the Rust Family Steel Mill, famous for providing many American cities with fine steel and architectural plans to match its quality.

The Rust Family was responsible for the building of many great cities across America, and for the skylines so many people began to think of as being iconically American.

On his twenty-first birthday, Ike Rust was given his first major opportunity, supervising a new mill outside the edge of a new capital being built with funding from the United Nations. This city would become, upon its completion, the capital of Earth, if it was able to live up to its expectations.

In the meantime, however, it needed to first become a city.

Ike looked after the steel mill for an entire year before there was any incident. Nuclear Winter struck about fourteen months after his commencement as the main supervisor of the foundry. Nuclear Winter (real name Kolya Winters), was a villainess famous for her hatred of globalism and the United States, and the United Nations' stance that the U.S., and western Europe, should be the two staging grounds for world capitals.

As such, she was happy to tear down an American icon like a Rust Family Foundry. In her anger, however, she spun out of control. She pulsed herself along with her nuclear jets, and blasted with wild abandon as she crashed through the foundry roof.

Ike stood on a catwalk near the middle of the building, and was knocked, with Nuclear Winter, far across the foundry and into a vat of molten iron.

Nuclear Winter had spun out of control, and now she was about to die. The nuclear energy which she had stored in her body all her life caused an explosion of epic proportions. It destroyed the foundry and much of the land around it. However, it was never radioactive and was quickly considered a safe zone once more.

Without the influence of Nuclear Winter, the United Nations felt even safer with continuing the project. Ike Rust was considered dead, and was given a plot of land in the memorial in the city. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. Though a drop into molten iron would kill most, Ike Rust was submerged at the exact moment Kolya Winter exploded. The nuclear energies powered his body through the iron, and the molten metal protected him from the nuclear energies. The two forces opposed and aided each other.

Ike Rust became a man covered in iron. It burned through his skin, and it bonded to his muscles. As they contracted and flexed through the pain, the iron cooled and became one, allowing him full mobility with the invulnerability of an iron exoskeleton.

But he was weak. And he laid in the crater for well over three years, practically in a coma, though he was awake and aware for the entire time. Over time, the crater and site of the former foundry was filled in as landfill and became a scrapyard.

Ike Rust laid among the cars and the wreckage and realised that this was a place where metal came to die. He vowed to stop the waste of such a precious resource, and to become the ideal human being, who could be invulnerable, strong, and resourceful.

Ike Rust became Impossible Iron.

In what he now thought of as his 'previous' life, Ike Rust was the heir to the Rust Family fortune. With his 'death', the patents, architectural designs, and deeds to over a hundred buildings were given to the government, and the architectural designs became a part of the public domain.

In his new life, he had none of this. He was left with a skin of iron and a will to make metal the new standard of nobility.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Impossible Iron stands around six feet tall. He is grey and silver in colour, and his face has only the rudiments of human similarity. His eyes are deep and black, and his teeth are a shiny, metallic white. His face is the hardest part of his body for him to move, but he is somehow able to speak quite clearly, and with a resounding boom.

Often, his exoskeleton becomes quite ragged and torn. It is only after repairing himself with more molten metal that he is able to smooth himself off once more, and sculpt in his musculature.

If one thing defines Impossible Iron, it is his fortitude. He is immune to nuclear power. He does not feel the heat or sting of fire until it is hot enough to melt steel. Freezing temperatures will slowly stop his joints from moving if he is held still for an hour and left to endure the cold, but if he moves about with a quick enough pace, he is able to keep this from happening.

Despite his extra weight, he is incredibly mobile. The weight actually seems to add to the momentum he can gain, being capable of accelerating to a very fast sprint. He is not quite dextrous, however, and is better at running in straight lines than turning corners quickly.

The weight of the iron comes in handy in other ways, however. He is very strong. Much like an ant, he can lift up to fifty times his own weight (including the iron weight). He can also strike with the force of a small truck.

It should be noted that it is very difficult to penetrate the exoskeleton of Impossible Iron. The exact amount of force it takes to crack his iron skin is variable, depending on the maximum force your PCs can output. It is slightly easier to tear off chunks of iron, giving him a ragged appearance. These chunks are most likely to peel off around the joints where he has made them thickest, but still weakest.

Eventually, if the PCs can form a crack, a burst of nuclear energy will seem to exhale from his body. It will run out quickly, and have whichever effect nuclear radiation has in your setting. In Superpowered settings, it ideally does nothing unless the character is weak to nuclear radiation. This can be changed, however. Keep in mind that it should only be a small amount before the crack is 'healed'.

If there is a true crack, Impossible Iron will flee from his cause to reemerge weeks later with a replenished body, potentially remolded to be thicker in places the PCs had previously cracked.

IMPROVEMENTS AND DEFEAT

Impossible Iron is constantly in some state of progression.

Whether he is appearing as a one-shot villain (Villain of the Week style), or as a campaign-long master manipulator, Impossible Iron's end game is to become superior to all.

He will often work towards outfitting his exoskeleton with mechanical elements. Flight is something he often wishes to achieve. Adding rocket boosters to his back is a general upgrade he might use. The upgrades he might want to build into himself are often designed around a particular super hero (or other type of PC).

Whatever the weakness of your PCs, he will attempt to find it and exploit it.

In order to defeat Impossible Iron, your PCs must find out where his lair is after defeating him at least once in battle and defeating him in his lair. Since he has nowhere to flee to and repair his exoskeleton, this is the one place that he can truly be defeated, cracking him until he breaks down mentally or is so broken that he cannot move.

If a little nuclear energy is expended from inside him, he will be weakened. Enough of it will kill him. Whether the PCs find this out or not is up to the GM running him.

MOTIVATIONS AND PLOT HOOKS

The number one thing which motivates Impossible Iron towards supervillainy is the wasteage of metal by society. It is pushed around and molded into shapes which are displeasing. It is melded with plastic to create phones. It is wasted on vehicles, art, and weapons. It is wasted on ammunition which is shot away to never be used again.

Impossible Iron forbids the use of metal by anyone other than himself. He personifies metal, but not metal objects, and will go out of his way to hurt or kill someone using metal for something he does not deem worthy.

Plot Hooks

Impossible Iron will frequently attack steel mills, mines, and other places where metal is used. He will attack buildings built by the Rust Family and tear out the steel girders. He will destroy bank vaults, vehicle yards, and create scrapyards of empty lots to show off to the world how much wasteage there is.

He is used best by being popped down very obviously in the middle of a city to begin wrecking buildings and property with metal.

He is not very subtle, but he is persistent and powerful.