Zak Mack is played in the WHITE WOLF: MAGE role playing system.

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Dr. Vulgar's Back Ground

QUOTE: "Talent does what it can, but GENIUS does what it must!"
"Let's get VULGAR!!!"

Gadzooks! If you were looking for someone with a colored past, you found one! Zak was the First mage I made when 1st Ed Mage came out on the first day it was available. I've played him ever since leading to a character with over 300 experience points and gobs of study points used up. Frankly, I've lost count.

1976 - Zak's parents meet when they both attend a class taught by Professor Popinjay. Zak's parents are both SoEs. His mom was a mage with a lot of ability, but no drive to be a power mage. His father was a driven mage with a almost non-existent avatar. Neither would ever achieve anything grand, however they did fall in love and get married.

1977 - Zak is born, and even at this young age, his destiny shines.

1985 - Zak's parents are forced to flee their home when discovered by the NWO. While driving down the highway, Zak looks out the back window of the car and says, "I wish they would just go AWAY!" the NWO car promptly exploded when a bolt of energy flew from the back of the fleeing Gremlin. Zak's first magical act was an act of vulgar magic with many sleeper witnesses. It would not be his last.

1986 - At age nine, Zak becomes one of the youngest SoEs to start training in the Gernsback Horizon Realm.

1988 - Zak astonishes the majority of the SoE's old boy's club with his radical new theories on matter and energy. Combined with his flagrant use of vulgar magic (even for a horizon realm) he finds himself asked to leave. He continues his training with old family friend Professor Popinjay.

1989 - Mallory, Zak's future wife and Feline Qualomi Bastet, has a "love" affair with a CoX mage Kyle. He wanders off leaving her with child. Mallory returned to stay with friends and gave birth to Megan, Homid Bastet.

1990 - Zak begins traveling the world by frequently running away to "seek his destiny" Cocky that he will not die until he fulfills his destiny (at the time, a five). He finds himself hanging out with a number of outcasts including the infamous Fishbone, who would in the future, become the world's first bane werewolf/mummy. Zak's mother is always trying to drag him home.

1991 - Zak meets Necker, and later teams up with Randy (an Orphan) and Alecia (a CoX). They form the core of a cabal of child mages. Their first major accomplishment is the defeat of a major demon and his attempt to enter into our world. At this time, Zak goes through his "Marauder" phase. For about a week Zak went Marauder, and turned himself into a were mole.

1992 - After a tremendous paradox backlash, the entire cabal finds itself on the edge of the Tellurian. Zak discovers that it is his destiny to save the entire world from destruction. He gets even more cocky after that, as his Destiny shoots up to a whopping Six. Strange things start occurring in Zak's life. The most noteworthy at this time was his brief affair with a paradox spirit that came out of his phone. The relationship never progressed past casual dating. Zak never talked about them or the reason for the break up.

1993 - He and his friend team up with Saint Dark, a powerful Spirit Mage of undetermined tradition. They form the Saint Dark Cabal. Zak reaches mastery of matter and begins out fitting the Cabal with many powerful weapons. The average age of the cabal, not including St. Dark, is 16. Zak begins to feel alienated from the rest of his cabal which seems to consist of little more that extremely powerful mages going around blowing the Hell out of the bad guys.
Later that same year, Zak fulfills his destiny of saving the world from himself. He travels into the future to stop temporal duplicates of himself from destroying the world. As he witnesses how remorselessly the rest of his cabal mows down his future self he quickly discovers that the people closest to him do not care about him at all. He is little more than a supply of weapons and quintessence.
Zak tries to flee his cabal and escape to a horizon realm, but is hunted down by his old cabal. They refuse to allow him to escape from the world. He grows increasingly despondent about the state of the world. Late November, during a raid against the NWO by his cabal, Dr. Vulgar tells the rest he will go off to cause a distraction. That night would later be know the world over by supernaturals everywhere, especially mages, as Vulgar Night.
Zak had come to the conclusion that the only escape for his was total annihilation. Only the Technocracy could achieve this for Zak, so he decided to be such a threat that they would hit him with everything they had. He took control of a major information broadcasting tower for the NWO's communication network. He used a Quintessence capacitor to flood the NWO network with forces/prime and crashed the NWO world wide information network. The major links were down for 20 minutes, and it would be weeks before all the network would be back up. At the same time, he began broadcasting on sleeper channels weird images and stuff while also sending out subliminal messages readable by people with spheres or Auspex or mystical sensing powers. These messages to supernaturals were messages stating that the time of Apocalypse/Gehenna/Dissension day was here and now was the time to rise up.
Many younger Vampire who watch television picked it and many an Anarch started to rumble. The Sabbat went on 24 hour paranoid alert. Not many werewolves took it seriously, being the jaded sort they are, but it was the NWO that was hardest hit. During that time, any NWO agent that wanted to go rouge, or defect, or go into hiding, took the total disruption of the ever watchful eye's of the Ivory Tower's comm network as the time to act. One fourth of the NWO's lower level staff either went underground or died.
Zak, was indeed attacked by everything the NWO could muster. Strangely enough, Zak survived the first assault. Despondent that his plan failed because the Technocracy could not muster the firepower needed to defeat Zak without massive collateral damage to London. So, Zak surrendered. He was taken to the Void Engineers and disassembled into a vat of ooze and put into cold storage. They did not want to kill him for fear that his avatar would be reincarnated.

1995 - A purge takes place among the Technocracy. The shift in the balance of power because of Vulgar Night finalizes in an alliance between Iteration X and the NWO in a new Hard Line against the spirit world. In the end Zak's actions only served to cause the moderate members of the technocracy to flee and leave the radicals in power.
The Void Engineers, long having had problems with the radical line voiced there displeasure against the new Hard Line. A fleet of Iteration X ships shifted to selected VE outposts, declared them "Deviant" and proceeded to make an example. The VE's mobilized what ships they could, but received a royal pasting. The VE's, to avoid further loses, gave many concessions to the NWO regarding monitoring VE's stations. A few ships, however, refused. They took what they could and fled the solar system to plot revenge. One ship was at the cold storage, deep space facility and took everything that wasn't nailed down, including Dr. Vulgar.

1996 - Mallory's child Megan shows much potential and looks like she's going to grow up to be a special Bastet. Mallory comes to the conclusion that having children with mages produces better offspring. Being a feline (as opposed to homid) it only makes sense for Mallory to want to mate with the best. Mages, being the most powerful supernaturals, seemed to produce better children more likly to change. Mallory asked Necker, a mage she had worked with, who is the most powerful mage? Necker told her of Dr. Vulgar.

1997 - Mallory spends some time tracking down where Dr. Vulgar would be. Infiltrating Dark Side Moon Base she discovers that Zak was listed as missing, presumed stolen by the Starship Picard. To make a --long-- story short, she tracked down the location of the missing Starship with the assistance of one of Zak's old Cabal, Necker.
Upon finding the ship, they discover that it was low on needed fuel and desperate for a new source of energy. They agreed to help control Dr. Vulgar and make him recharge the ship in exchange for his release. Upon awakening Zak's first words were "I cannot escape, even in Death?" Mallory replied, "I hope you had a nice nap, but the world needs you. By the way, this nice spaceship needs it's engines recharged or everybody on it will die. NO pressure." and smiled at him.

1998 - At first Mallory and Zak's relationship was just physical, but they both found themselves falling in love. They had a child (Candra, feline Bastet) and Zak decided to start to have a simpler life. Zak set himself up a lab and took on some students. On the home front he moved in with Mallory and considers himself to be Megan's step dad.
Megan grew curious about her father and wanted to meet him. Zak found and arranged for a meeting with Kyle, who tried to run away when Mallory told him he was a father. There were some rocky times and hard feelings, but Mallory get past it and Kyle ended up really changing his life around. Megan ended up leaving after Thanksgiving to spend 6 months on the road getting to know her dad and seeing the world. (Megan is chronologically 9 years old, but looks 14 and acts 18.)
Zak currently is at a stand off with the Technocracy. They conclude that as long as he keeps out of Technocracy business he is not worth the losses to take out. Zak no longer believes that the Technocracy is a threat, so as long as they keep their distance, he will make no effort to attack them. In fact, he's on a first name basis with the poor S.O.B. MiB that screwed up enough to get Dr. Vulgar Monitoring Detail. In fact, Mike and Zak's Number One, Carrie, frequently wind up arguing with each other in the parking about ideology. On occasion, they go back to his place to do the wild thing. Zak is unsure what to do about this. Carrie says, "He's a total perv!" Firebug says "Only 'cuz you're a slut!" This only serves to further confuse Dr. Vulgar.

1999 - Megan & Kyle returned to visit, after spending Christmas and New Year's at Balador.

Dr. Vulgar Today
Dr. Vulgar is currently in married and in love with Mallory and his family. Zak's life on the surface does seem to be ideal. An adventurer settling down to a semi-retirement of teaching and raising a family. But many things external and internal haunt him. Internally, Zak has many self-doubts. He doesn't think he has to save the world anymore, but when he had his daughter, Candra, his Destiny started to rise again. He's had his fill of destiny he wants control of his own life now. He also fears a prophecy that was told to him in youth of how he goes Nephandi. He's afraid that he hasn't avoided that fate. His biggest concern is he's beginning to wonder if that week he spent as a Marauder ended as everybody told him. He has increasingly started looking for proof, one way or the other if he is a Marauder or not.
Zak has never suffered from a paradox flaw or had physical paradox backlash. It always affects the area around him, as a paradox spirit, or a paradox realm. He's never talked to his Avatar and a free roaming Avatar once told him that "The reason your Avatar hasn't talked to you is because your Avatar is happy with you." He has asked all his friends if they think he's a Marauder, but nobody will give him a straight answer. As of now, he has no proof one way or the other, and currently has no desire to "test" his immunity to paradox.
Externally, Zak is watched by the Technocracy. He is haunted by future versions of himself He frequently finds the hands of someone else guiding him. He has developed a pathological hatred for mind control and people who use it.
He is also the finest weapon smith in the world, having recently studied Fay weapon smithing methods in Arcadia Gateway as well as the more conventional forms of smithing. He is frequently sought out for his Zakium (A refined form of Primium requiring Matter: 5, Prime: 5. Instead of 2 dice of counter magic, it has 5) as well as his skills. Zak's Armor is renowned as the best as well as his Overkill line of weapons and ammo. In short, the world won't leave him alone.
Zak puts on an air of intimidating superiority. He is totally inhuman and does not understand humanity at all. He frequently misses cultural references and jokes because he just hasn't spent any time with normal people. He does want to be more human and well liked, but really hasn't developed any personality at all until he met Mallory.

Dr. Vulgar's Neighborhood
Zak's nearest other Tradition cabal is made entirely of Militant Feminist Verbena. They aren't trying to actively kill him, which he feels is the best he can hope for. It helps a bit that Mallory is friends with one of their disciples from way back (Kris). They are, however, trying to lure Firebug away from his cabal. Their extremist tactics have not produced results at this time.
The Vampires of Minneapolis / St. Paul really don't care about him. A talk with the local Prince resulted in both walking away believing the other to be of no significance.
Dr. Vulgar's base extends into all three umbras. He rebuilt the warehouse in all three umbras (out of Zakium, of course!) In the low umbra, he uses it mostly for storage. He also tosses all his junk out into the surrounding area in the low umbra. Thus the local wraiths love this area and a circle has staked it out. Dr. V and the wraiths have a deal: they stay out of the warehouse and warn him if anybody breaks in, and he gives them all the stuff he doesn't need.
The High Umbra is where he keeps his Library. To make sure nobody bothers him here, he has summoned a number of destructive concept spirits that prowl the surrounding area in the high umbra vulgate. War, Guardian, Melee, Fire fight, and Death and armed with the latest in "Overkill" weapons and are on constant patrol. They are bound and kept happy with Quintessence.
In the middle umbra, Dr. Vulgar does his experiments. The warehouse and grounds are larger that in the real world and there is a huge hangar where he keeps his vehicles. For protection he collects pattern spiders and coats them with Zakium. Thus the dreaded Vulgar Spider being a cross between a spider and a small tank.

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