Given name:He can't remember his full name, but has taken on the handle 'Ian' (a younger hero joked his name for Ian, rather than Ice, which amused him no end) to his friends.
Hero name: Ambassador of Ice.
Gender:Male.
Age:Unknown, but it is certain that he is one of the longest living meta-humans on the planet - hundreds more years than even Statesman. He was born in a darker age of European history, but due to exceptional circumstances (see backstory for details) was in a coma like state of hibernation, and if not for sustaining the area of freezing air around him when discovered, he would have been pronounced dead by modern medical standards.
Powers:Mutant powers over ice and water, incredible strength and girth and is a highly motivated, disciplined knight, who fights in close quarter combat with his mace.
Description of Powers:Secretes chemicals from his body which affects the moisture in the air, turning it into an armour of solid ice, which covers his entire body, already protected by heavy chainmail and steel plating. Can also speed up and slow down his metabolism, slowing down when he wants to replenish his ice armour during prolonged fighting, or speeding up to unleash strength and might which catches many foes of the same build and height off guard. Due to his extraordinary rate of recovery and his power to focus it, he has incredible strength and can easily lift his own weight and his armour with ease over a great distance, and combines strength and skill with his mace to great effect.
Personality: Bold, calm, quiet and loyal. He is a determined man, he is well aware of his goals but is not brazen so that he would charge into a situation ill prepared. He is sometimes withdrawn, and avoids heavy industrial areas if he can; because he's wary of a world that has changed much during his 'deep sleep'.
Physical Description:A towering knight in shining armour, it sounds cliche, but from a distance he does indeed look like he belongs in a fairytale book. He is a large man, his armour is metallic grey and while it used to be silver, it is actually dulled, but his armour of ice tricks eyes (except around the extremities, where it's thinner). His helmet is medevil in looks, and has wings that look silvery blue when his ice armour is covering his head, and he has simple, decorative blue runes that run in a celtic pattern across the plates that cover his protective metallic mesh.
History/Backstory:Ian is a mutant, one of the first recorded to be around as far back as the Dark Ages. Rather than being shunned as an outcast, or persecuted by those who did not understand, Ian was taken into a castle somewhere in North East England, where instead of languishing in dark pits of despair, he was scholared and taught how to fight and lead, and how to fend for himself. No one ever took it upon themselves to father or mother Ian, and his real parents likely abandoned him when they first percieved his changes. But he never felt alone: there were others like him, and in the same castle they resided for many a year, untill a bond grew between them all, and they considered themselves not only friends to one another, but family.
They didn't sit idle in the castle either - they often ventured far outside the castle walls and yearned for adventure.
When England found itself at war, they realised that many of the castle guard they had befriended over the years sometimes relied on their talents to help defend it's gates; a task they all relished and they all fought side by side like a pride of lions.
When the tidings of war became less defensive and more offensive, the band were called out. For several years they protected the smooth shores looking out into rough seas, where unknown enemies were waiting to strike, fair plains fit for farming, but on the borders of woods that harboured dark and unwanted visitors. After many moons they drove them out, and with their learning and skills, they continued across Europe for a while, seeking out new alliances and settling many petty disputes, often through simple discussion or helping out beseiged villages and towns against bandits and wild tribes.
One night, a messenger arrived from Britain, asking for a secret counsel with the brothers. He told them that they had impressed many and their doings were of local legend, and had reached the ears of the thinkers and planners of the kingdom. His tone then darkened as he spoke of a new wave of chatter that was spreading from the places where these wisened men were studying. Speaking of lands across the western sea, which had long been suspected but never proven for sure.
The brothers understood that they were to be sailing in search of new lands and find the source of the troubles that had enshrouded their castle long ago. They leapt at the oppurtunity and set forth with a small selection of their finest and experienced comrades.
Little is known of their journey and the perils they may have encountered, and lost to legend, but they ended up in the area that is now Paragon City after a long trek. The Circle of Thorns was not in as much hiding those days, before the Europeans came and confused their dark plans and ways (but they were not as obvious or many in number as they are today, and not nearly as powerful). Knowing that they had to stem at least some of the harm coming from the parts of Oranbega that had been partially reawkened, they fought many beasts touched by foul shadow and against some of the guards who sought to protect, and enforce, whatever was in the depths.
Again, much detailed information is lost of these events, but they found their way without any surviving company, determined whether or not they came back to their own land , into some of the passageways of the hidden city. There they challenged the Envoy of Shadow and his minions. They drove him away but at great cost; all but one were slain in battle, and he was barely clinging onto life. It was Ian, the Ambassador of Ice and Water, who drove away the Envoy with his mace encrusted with ice that glimmered and broke many of his subjects. He wandered blindy into dark and cramped arches, and fell into a hibernation phase where his body all but stopped entirely to recover.
He was recently found by a small group of heroes chasing a lone mage suspected of raiding museams into the chasm where he had laid for so long and because of the brief bursts of power and outbursts of energy exhanges, he raised out of the rubble bewildered and disorientated. Then he collapsed, right in front of the group.
He awoke, to a much changed world and rumours of a winged shadow that was once again stalking hallways below...
