Arthur Curry/Aquaman

Subject Facts

Full Name: Arthur Curry
Codename: Aquaman
Age: Early 40s
Gender: Male
Archetype: Meta hero
Aliases: Orin, Waterbearer, Dweller In The Depths, King Of The Seven Seas
Marital Status: Married
Affiliation: Justice League, Aquaman Family

Subject Attributes

Meta-Human Abilities:

Atlantean Physiology: Aquaman’s powers primarily stem from his Atlantean heritage, the necessary natural adaptations for life underwater. However, as a descendant of the mystical royal bloodline of Atlantis, Arthur is superior to a baseline Atlantean by every physical measure, effectively a natural-born superhuman among his people, who are themselves superior to ordinary human standards.

[/b] Aquaman breathes water more readily than air despite his lack of visible gills. This includes saltwater, freshwater and even alien aquatic environments. This also enables him to speak comfortably without artificial help at any depth.
•Superhuman Strength: While all Atlanteans have some degree of superhuman strength, Arthur outstrips them all. Though not quite to the level of the highest class of heavyweights like Superman or Wonder Woman, Aquaman is able to lift more than 100 tonnes in weight underwater, punch through solid steel and knock down monumental stone pillars with his bare hands.
•Superhuman Swimming Ability: While his speed and grace on foot is superhuman, in the water Arthur is even more comfortable and agile. He can swim continuously for hours at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour, sprint swim at supersonic velocity, leap vertically up Niagara Falls and maneuver in the darkest of undersea caverns with acrobatic precision. Even among Atlanteans, Arthur is considered a master of the oceans, with no waterway on the planet being inaccessible to him.
•Superhuman Durability: One of the most necessary adaptations for life underwater. Arthur is almost entirely immune to pressure, able to dive to the deepest depths of the ocean without being crushed. Likewise, ordinary extremes of cold and heat don’t bother him, with only targeted high intensity temperatures presenting any threat. This natural toughness means that he can endure a great deal of physical punishment, being able to resist small-calibre arms fire and impacts from superhuman combat.
•Superhuman Stamina: Underwater, Arthur can exert himself at full intensity for hours or even days at a time before he begins to tire. A mark of Aquaman’s incredible stamina is the fact that his constant swimming, an exercise which for humans is considered relatively strenuous, is simply taken for granted.
•Superhuman Speed: In addition to his superhuman swimming, Arthur’s speed on land is also superior to any athlete, though nowhere close to what he can attain in his native environment. Arthur’s speed extends to his reflexes, able to dodge and respond to the point of being able to fight superhuman combatants, though not speedsters, on their own terms.
•Healing Factor: Aquaman can heal at remarkable speed. He cannot, however, heal from serious injuries, as shown by the loss of his hand. He is more resistant to poisons, particularly aquatic venom, requiring orders of magnitude greater doses than ordinary humans to be affected.
•Superhuman Senses: Light doesn’t penetrate much of Earth’s oceans, yet Arthur is king of all of them. He can see in virtually any conditions and with pinpoint accuracy. He also has incredible hearing, enough to detect sounds from across vast distances beneath the waves. Even his sense of smell is enhanced, with a sharklike ability to detect a single drop of scent in a vast quantity of water. Thanks to his hyperacute tactile senses extending into the water around him, Arthur can feel the subtlest of vibration and motion in his orbit and approximate something similar to sonar.
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Marine Telepathy: Aquaman has a psychic connection to the Earth’s sea life which enables him to communicate with them via telepathy. This includes virtually any aquatic animal, from enormous whales and colossal squid to schools of fish and dolphins and even shellfish or octopus. Most such animals have only limited intelligence, thus making them not particularly stimulating conversation, but they can be useful as messengers, spies and scouts. Arthur can issue direct mental commands to gain help from nearby animals and broadcast his thoughts across a vast scale, marshalling an entire army of oceanic predators with a single thought. Arthur has the potential to utilise his telepathic power on the baser levels of other creature’s minds, including humans, but he utilises this very rarely and it is not something he is comfortable or skilled with. Arthur has access to a universal oceanlife subconscious known as “The Clear”, a kind of worldwide telepathic network through which he can share the senses of any underwater animal, or connect to all of them at once. This is a relatively recent development and he is still tentatively exploring this dimension of his powers.

Mystical Potential: Though Arthur is not a practising sorcerer or even especially knowledgeable in the field, Atlantis has a long tradition of magic use and his royal lineage makes him somewhat innately magical. He has been cursed and blessed by gods, transformed by wizards, made deals with water spirits and generally attracts more than his fair share of attention from the forces of the supernatural. As king of the seas, he has an innate quasi-mystical connection to the ocean that goes beyond simple affinity.

Standard Abilities:

Leadership: Stern and commanding, Arthur is quite literally a born leader who readily takes control of situations. He is a capable military commander and strategist who prefers to be in the thick of things with his men but readily orders them once there. As the king of Atlantis, he is responsible for leading his people, serving as the head of state with all of the political and functional duties that that requires and providing unity and oversight for his fractured nation. His status as an Atlantean royal also makes him subject to diplomatic immunity when on the surface world.

Expert Combatant: A wild child who became a nomadic wanderer and went on to become his people’s greatest warrior, Aquaman has spent virtually his entire life perfecting his skills as a fighter, whether hand-to-hand or using his preferred weapon, the trident. While on land Arthur is merely a great fighter, in his element he proves a virtually unparalleled master of underwater combat, fusing the hard-won toughness of his youth with decades of experience and training from Atlantis’ finest soldiers and fighters.

Paraphernalia:

Trident Of Poseidon: Arthur’s primary weapon and one of the greatest symbols of his kingship and authority. It is a long, golden-coloured trident that was given to Aquaman by the sea god himself. Forged by the cyclops from adamantine, it is virtually indestructible and extraordinarily sharp, making it deadly in Arthur’s skilled hands. Empowered with control over the seas, it can be used to manipulate and direct vast quantities of water, though not with as fine a control as the hydrokinesis possessed by the likes of Mera or Kaldur’ahm. It can also generate thunderous energy bolts, though Arthur uses these less frequently, preferring it as a melee weapon. Likewise, he does not fully understand its seemingly powerful mystical nature, but it has shown the ability to enhance the power of other magic users and open gateways between dimensions.

Royal Power: Though Atlantis is presently all but ruined after suffering devastation at the hands of The Spectre, Atlanteans survive across the seas and Arthur is still recognised by many of them as their king. He is in the process of rebuilding his kingdom and has command over a small but well-trained underwater military force, political advisers, scientific and mystical resources and substantial wealth thanks to command of untapped resources.

Subject Weaknesses:

Dehydration: Arthur is amphibious, but his native environment is water and he cannot be away from it for prolonged stretches without beginning to weaken. While heavy rain is barely adequate, submersion is really what is required within 24 hours of first coming on to dry land. Typically, the drier the environment, the faster he will begin to feel the effects, with deserts being by far the worst. Attacks using dry heat and evaporation can likewise hit him harder than they would even normal humans despite his otherwise superhuman abilities, potentially even killing him outright.

Temper: With his autocratic demeanor and warrior’s spirit, Arthur is proud and easily provoked. It requires little to get him to abandon rationality and self-preservation in favour of indignant grudges and vain questing in search of proving his martial honour. After the death of his son in particular, threats to Arthur’s family are intolerable to him, and sure to result in self-destructive acts of absolute vengeance.

Curse Of Kordax: An ancient mystical curse said to befall any Atlantean born with blonde hair, Arthur is subject to the Curse of Kordax. If he pushes his mental abilities to the limit to dominate and control other minds, he will begin to transform into a similar monstrous form to the legendary Atlantean villain Kordax, and in so doing, begin to grow as cruel and inhumane as his hated ancestor. After such transformations, it requires intensive meditation and humility to begin to transform back to his normal appearance.

Political Upheaval: The people of Atlantis have their own traditions and standards, some of which Arthur meets, others of which he struggles with. He has rejected his people and abdicated the throne more than once and faced revolution and rejection just as often. This means that he finds himself in a state of near-permanent flux, never really given long stretches of authority or command. It also means that divisions between the surface and Atlantis over issues such as pollution or resource control can put Arthur at odds with the authorities and laws that bind his fellow superheroes, putting him in a delicate position that he is ill-suited to dealing with.

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Subject History

Amnesty Bay was a lonely place, a remote rocky outcrop home to a solitary lighthouse, and its solitary keeper, Tom Curry. When a storm washed upon the shore a mysterious princess of Atlantis, Atlanna, Tom finally found a partner, and their love blossomed. Yet the child that sprang from their union was always destined to be divided between two worlds, even down to his name: Arthur for the surface, Orin for his people’s heritage. When Atlanna returned to Atlantis after realising that her presence was placing her beloved husband and child in danger, Arthur was left to be raised by his father. Tom struggled to keep his son from the ocean that was his true home, sometimes losing him for days at a time as he frolicked amongst dolphins, who he found he could talk to.

Despite her efforts, Atlanna was unable to keep Arthur from Atlantis forever. When Arthur was just 13 years old, a terrorist faction from his mother’s homeland came in search of the queen’s first-born son, dragging him into the world of danger and intrigue while still just a child. Discovering his true nature and being reunited with his mother ought to have been a source of happiness for Arthur. At the time, Atlantis was under control of a conservative faction, and Arthur was rejected by the people for his blonde hair, which was seen as indicating a bloodline curse, and for his half-human heritage.

First seeking to return to Amnesty Bay, Arthur found his father mysteriously disappeared in his absence. Heartbroken, he took instead to a life of wandering the seas, a nomadic adventurer who rejected both the surface world and Atlantis alike, a lonely watchman like his father had been. In a settlement along the icy coastal waters of Alaska, he conceived a son, Koryak, with an Inuit woman, but was forced away before he discovered the pregnancy. He fought monsters and sea spirits, pirates and polluters. He grew in skill and ability, earning renown beneath the waves, but also a reputation above them as one of the earliest of a new wave of superheroes, ultimately named Aquaman following an early battle alongside Barry Allen, the second Flash.

Emboldened by these adventures, Arthur returned to Atlantis with the intent to make it his home at long last. Instead, he was captured by the dictatorial regime in place at the time, which had only strengthened in the years since Arthur had left. Even Arthur’s mother had been imprisoned within the same facility to which he was sentenced, though they were never able to directly interact. Instead, Arthur became a student of Vulko, a learned scholar deemed too great a threat to the regime. Vulko taught Arthur all about Atlantean culture and traditions, about politics and statecraft, and much more besides. Yet it was only when Arthur’s mother died that he finally saw fit to act, driven half-mad by grief and rage. Arthur led the men of the prison in a break-out, which in turn sparked a full-blown revolution. In the aftermath, Vulko led the government of Atlantis in offering their throne to its true heir. Presented with an opportunity to become the leader of a reformed Atlantis, Arthur accepted, and became their king.

Arthur’s early years as king were defined by the connections that he forged. Finding an abandoned child named Garth left to die by an off-shoot Atlantean colony, Arthur adopted him as his own ward, with the boy growing up to become his sidekick, the first Aqualad, later known as Tempest. Arthur later met the mysterious Mera, exiled queen of an otherworldly aquatic kingdom much like his own. She became his wife, his queen and, in time, the mother of his second son, Arthur Junior, also known as Aquababy. Around the same time, Arthur became one of the founding members of the Justice League of America, the Earth’s primary superhero team. It was these three threads: Kingship, family and his adventures as a superhero, that formed the basis of almost all of Arthur’s subsequent life.

Aquaman conflicted with various foes, chief among them his sorcerous half-brother Ocean Master, who sought control of the throne for himself, and the piratical engineering genius Black Manta. At times, he would be removed from the throne of Atlantis by political maneuvers or villainous manipulation, but he would also abdicate the role when his people showed their darker side or demanded that he focus more on politics than saving the seas. Ultimately, it was Black Manta who scored the greatest blow against his arch-nemesis, responsible for drowning Arthur Junior on dry land while forcing Aquaman and Aqualad to battle. Though initially kept on life support, Arthur Junior succumbed and died before his parents could save him. The devastation fractured the family. Aqualad left his mentor behind to focus on ruling his own kingdom and Arthur and Mera’s relationship fell apart, with her returning to her home dimension of Xebel. Conflict with Vulko forced Aquaman from the throne once more, this time going to New Venice, Florida.

After Ocean Master destroyed New Venice, Aquaman returned to Atlantis, which was embroiled in struggles with the surface world, with tensions ultimately rising to war, which Arthur defused by becoming a UN ambassador, earning Atlantis international recognition as a sovereign nation. This position ultimately proved untenable, however, as Arthur’s popularity began to overshadow his replacement as king, leading to tensions which thrust Atlantis into civil war. Though Aquaman was able to restore peace, Atlantis had been devastated by the repeated conflicts and troubles it had gone through. In the aftermath, Arthur attempted to position himself as a chronicler of his own stories and those of his people, rather than their king.

Arthur’s investigations and research for his new role led to the discovery that his long-standing foe Ocean Master was in fact his half-brother, which led him into depression. When Garth tried to stir him from his mood by getting him involved in an adventure, it was revealed to be a trap laid by the terrorist Charybdis which led to Arthur losing his left hand. The troubled Aquaman, now using a mechanical harpoon in place of his lost limb, began to travel widely once again, this time seeking to more actively defend the world’s oceans from exploitation. It was here that he first met Koryak, his half-Inuit son, who joined him in Atlantis. This ultimately led to yet more political upheaval as the jealous King Thesily moved against the father and son he perceived as a threat.

Koryak and Vulko went on to lead a migration of Atlanteans in the search of a new homeland, while Arthur remained behind with his new love interest Dolphin. He and Dolphin ultimately couldn’t consummate their relationship due to the reappearance of Mera, who had been captured and brainwashed by Arthur’s sinister interdimensional doppelganger, Thanatos, with either Arthur or Thanatos being the father of Mera’s second son, AJ. Koryak and Vulko had awakened the same Kordax whose blonde hair had led to the stigma against blonde hair in Atlantean society, and he proved a troubling foe, while in the aftermath of their conflict Arthur succumbed to the Curse Of Kordax, devolving into a monstrous form due to overuse of his power to dominate marine life.

In order to overcome this curse, Aquaman had to conquer his demons, done with the help of the Atlantean god Poseidon. Impressed by Arthur’s diligence and achievements, Poseidon entrusted his trident to Arthur, naming him as King Of The Seas. Finally at peace, he welcomed back the people of Atlantis to their home after their pilgrimage and accepted his position as their king once more. He would subsequently face challenges from both of his surviving sons, with Koryak attempting to usurp him and being banished for his troubles, while AJ reappeared as an amnesiac and conflicted with his father before returning to serve as the Aquaman of his home dimension. In his triumph, Arthur successfully annexed the surface nation of Cerdia to Atlantis and reunited with Mera.

Yet the challenges facing Atlantis were just beginning. War with Imperiex consumed the entire world, but Atlantis was tossed back in time during the conflict, landing 3,000 years ago, its present day citizens enslaved by its ancient ruler, who was only defeated thanks to a combination of Aquaman working with the entire Justice League and several powerful magicians. Blamed by his people for their prolonged suffering, Arthur was put on trial for treason and sentenced to death, while the kingdom was taken over by dark sorcerers. Arthur escaped his fate by journeying to an extradimensional ocean, where the Arthurian Lady Of The Lake gave him a mystical hand, one which gravely punished anger. Now empowered as much by gentleness and compassion as by the aristocratic temper that had previously defined him, Arthur succeeded in undoing these magical threats.

Once again divorced from Atlantis, Arthur found an improbable new home when the US city of San Diego sank beneath the waves in a giant earthquake. The citizenry, it transpired, had been genetically modified into aquatic mutants by a scientist who anticipated such an event due to global warming. The resultant settlement, nicknamed Sub Diego, became Arthur’s new home and he offered them leadership during their difficult transition to undersea life. For the first time, Aquaman’s life resembled that of any ordinary superhero, living in a big city and partnering with the police to combat street crime. Arthur was happy enough even to refuse Vulko when he came to offer Arthur the throne again.

Atlantis was not finished with Arthur yet, however. The same evil sorcerer who had taken control of Atlantis after its travel through time had, despite his defeat, cursed Mera to grow lungs. When Arthur’s attempts to save her proved fruitless, his one-time sidekick Tempest, now a powerful mage, assembled a team of magic users to try and undo the damage instead. Tragically, this clustering of magic attracted the attention of The Spectre, who had gone on a rampage against magic due to being separated from a human host. In a single blow, the all-powerful spirit of vengeance destroyed Atlantis, killing Arthur’s son, Koryak, and his oldest friend, Vulko. Driven insane by the loss and desperate to restore normality to San Diego at all costs, Arthur made a deal with a cabal of dark sea gods, agreeing to be warped into a twisted new form in return for the magical power to save the city.

Amnesiac and monstrous, Arthur was renamed The Dweller In The Depths, a tentacled prophet. He came to serve as the mentor for a new Aquaman, Arthur Joseph Curry, a relative on Arthur’s father’s side who, thanks to the spell which raised San Diego, shared a portion of his mystical essence and his soul. Arthur attempted to make Joseph a worthy successor, while also slowly regaining memories of his own life and heroism. Fearful of a prophecy that Arthur would prevent their god from rising to power, a cult known as The Order Of The Thorny Crown raised Koryak as an undead assassin, Narwhal. Narwhal succeeded in breaching Atlantis and killing his father, with the already-decayed and twisted body of Arthur melting entirely into water, seemingly dying for good.

When the Black Lanterns resurrected many of the world’s dead superheroes in an effort to build an army for the dark god Nekron, Arthur was returned to life, albeit in an undead form, with the power to control hordes of zombie sealife. Unlike many other Black Lanterns, Arthur was bonded with a White Lantern ring, returning him permanently to life, whole and undamaged, complete with his missing hand. Arthur’s return to life was a mixed bag, however, as the effects of being touched by the Black Lantern remained. First, he discovered that Mera had been sent to Earth intended as his assassin. He was then sent by Deadman to seek out a new Aqualad, Kaldur’ahm, the half-Atlantean son of Black Manta. Together, they managed to prevent an invasion of Earth by Xebel, before Aquaman was summoned to serve as Earth’s water elemental in restoring health to the corrupted Swamp Thing, who in turn became the avatar of the White Lantern Corps, and removed the lingering Black Lantern corruption from Arthur.

Finally restored fully to life, Arthur finds his people fractured, his family barely held together and the oceans more at risk than ever. No longer able to afford to question his role, he looks to fulfill his destiny as a hero in one world and a king in another, uniting the two threads of his life at once and bringing salvation to the worlds above and below the waves alike.

Subject Interview

Atlantis and stories went hand in hand, the very name of the lost continent so inherently entangled in tall tales and fantastic fables that folklore underpinned the civilisation like skeletons. First, there were histories, murky and muddled by exaggeration and hearsay, but ultimately trusted enough, as agreed upon as needed to be for the collective memory to function. There were myths and legends, grandiose fables that had slipped whatever bounds of fact had once held them to dance freely among the more wild imaginings. And then there were the things which were not spoken of. Old things, dark things, which lurked in secret knowledge and occulted text. Of these hidden secrets of Atlantis, one of the oldest was known as the Schism.

The Schism was a trench in the seafloor, hundreds of miles off the west coast of the African continent. In Atlantis’ imperial era, when colonies had been founded and the seas taken over, they had known to avoid it, they had called it a foul and forbidden place. In Atlantis’ modern glory years, when they had banished the old superstitions and traditions, fear of the Schism lingered. Now, in Atlantis’ fractured destruction, as thousands drifted the currents and hoped to find somewhere new to call home, those survivors still remembered the history, still avoided it.

In years past, it was easy enough not to. Atlanteans maintained their own taboos, while monitoring teams ensured that the scanners and survey ships from the surface never discovered. But with Atlantis destroyed, there was no one to prevent its discovery, no one to dissuade blundering humanity from stumbling into something they could never understand. Their scientists had come by to investigate this fascinating new topography. They had beamed in sonar and dropped in depth charges. What had come next was seaquakes. Superstition or not, something had happened, and someone needed to investigate.

Arthur approached the Schism from the warm waters to the south, advancing alone. This was not an expedition. It was an adventure. Danger, mystery, only one man who could help. It was exactly how he liked it. Already hundreds of meters below the surface above, the tropical sun refracted through the water like broken glass. The orange of his tabard glittered rich against the deep navy blue of the water, the sand below him mounded in great banks and dunes of creamy white, dotted here and there with opalescent shells, navigated by schools of darting fish. In these luscious, scuba-diver surroundings, the last thing one expected to see was the sudden falling away of the seafloor. Usually, sea trenches stretched with all the languid geology of a glacial valley. This was a gouge, a brutal jagged scar like crack in the bedrock two miles long and a half mile wide.

Diving still deeper, dim twilight faded into inky blackness, the warm currents which swirled in this region receding until he could feel nothing but the greasy cold. As he reached the edge of the deep black scar, an anglerfish emerged from the gloom, flat eyes and fangs like a Halloween mask. No go. Its warning bounced on the inside of Arthur’s skull, its voice scratchy and sad. No good place. Go, no come back. It was not reassuring to hear, but he could not go around listening to the dire warnings of abyssal fish. Besides, they didn’t get out much, so their perspective could be skewed. Arms by his sides, splitting the water like a torpedo, Arthur pushed on.

Aside from the darkness and their cold, the first few hundred metres of the Schism were unremarkable, no more than any other undersea cave. Perhaps, he thought, this was just a story, the quakes a mere coincidence. It wouldn’t be the first time Atlanteans had clung to the irrational. But as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Arthur began to notice something. Though the walls were gnarled, they had been shaved, here and there, into flat surfaces. He looked closer. There were shapes there, like relief carvings, bulbous in the walls. They were figures like none he had ever seen, hooded and weird, the proportions wrong for Atlanteans, wrong for humans, wrong for life in general. Perhaps it was erosion, the thousand years of water washing simple carvings into inhuman-seeming figures. Perhaps, and he relished the fear that bolted through him and called it a simple reaction to the cold, it wasn’t.

He raised his hand to brush against carved words. The script was like Atlantean, but misshapen, primordial, crude scratchings of the same shapes that he knew so well. The language, too, was familiar and yet unfamiliar. Arthur knew all the dialects of his people. He knew their texts back to the days of Atlan and Kordax. He had never come across one like this before. “Or… is-kah… Nattal…” Even though they meant nothing, those guttural sounds wrapped themselves around his tongue and gave him a sense of foreboding, like swearing in a foreign language, like an accidental insult, like a curse.

As Arthur mumbled to himself in the gloom, below him, something subtly stirred. On his far blind side, there came a great unfurling, a tentacle writhing and rising through the water. It was verdant and nauseous green, mottled along its dorsal side. On its soft and paler underside, suckers the same colour as bad milk popped back and forth, as hungry as a mouth licking its lips. Its motion was sinuous and ribbonlike, but aching and ancient, the stiff first movements of something very old and very displeased to be awakened. Its thin tip twirled towards Arthur as if locking onto juicy prey, or a much-needed breakfast.

Arthur felt its motion in the water a second too late, spinning in place to find a tentacle he had not sensed at all lashing towards him. It was faster than he could believe something so long and huge could move, so fast that a bubble popped at the end where it created a miniature sonic boom like a bullwhip. Arthur’s eyes bulged in shock, a stream of bubbles bursting from his lips as he gasped as the impact forced the breath from his amphibious lungs.

He trapped the thick and leathery outer membrane in a gloved hand, suckers pulsing beneath his grasp. Its writhing was so strong that he was stuck between grappling and simply riding it like a bucking bronco. Below, it widened out to almost as wide as Arthur’s own body, and then plummeted deeper, longer still, growing into who-knew-what down there in the dark. Wrestling free for a moment as he gulped down lungfuls of water like a prizefighter would air, he used the space to turn, body like a dart and facing downwards. As the probing tendril thrashed to catch him, he pushed onwards, towards the belly of this unknown beast.

Author's Notes

Player Alias: Kerr
Other Characters: N/A
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