The Gotham Chronicle

Inspired by others having made good scenarios in the same way, this wiki article details information regarding "the Gotham chronicle" which is a Batman inspired setting. Consider it fan-fiction for legal purposes, despite not serving any such purpose.

History
The Chronicle takes place in modern day times, but the events leading up to the beginning of the Chronicle are what makes the story.

Rise of the Rogue-Cartel
Gotham City was a cess-pit following world war I. The city was full of unemployed and underpaid factory workers, the black people were seriously oppressed and the ruling class were all incredibly corrupt. This city gave birth to Harvey Dent and attracted the attention of the Joker. The Joker was arrested when he was stopped by Harvey Dent, during the attempted assassination of the Mayor of Gothham city. The Joker had hoped to create something through his madness, something more than human. An ideal. Someone willing to stand up for all of humanity and be an icon of justice, and he thought he had created that through Harvey Dent, but he was wrong. Harvey couldn't become what the Joker had hoped to create. The Joker eventually managed to turn Walter Arkham into scarecrow, by manipulation. The Riddler was attracted to Gotham, considering it the perfect place to find answers for his many questions. He was also arrested by Harvey Dent, and was perhaps the indirect cause of Harvey losing his sense of Justice, after witnessing what the Riddler had done. The Penguin was born in Gotham, and ended up in Arkham Asylum after almost killing a fellow orphan. The Riddler, the Joker, the Penguin and Scarecrow formed an uncanny alliance that would later be known as the Rogue Cartel, meanwhile, Harvey Dent had become the biggest crime-boss in Gotham City. When Scarecrow managed to help the rest of the Cartel escape, they attempted a hostile take over of the criminal underworld and found an unlikely ally in Harvey Dent.

Scarecrow
Perhaps best known for the fact that he was later discovered to have been Walter Arkham in reality, the owner and warden of Arkham Asylum, the biggest asylum for the criminally insane in all of North America. Scarecrow was his alterego when he was offering patients "special treatment". Arkham Asylum has a brutal history of using alternative treatment methods that often worsened their patients. In modern times, the Asylum has changed quite a bit and now lives up to ethical and medicinal standards, but managed to remain in the possession of the Arkham family, who also own the entire Island of Arkham on which the Asylum is located (making it virtually impossible to wrench it from their grip). Walter Arkham was secretly facsinated with the minds of the insane, and it's believed that he was coached into insantiy by his favourite subject, known as John Doe - Subject X, or more commonly as the Joker, a psychotic serial killer, with whom Walter found that he shared quite a few world views. Walter eventually covered up the Joker's escape, and continued being an ally of his through out their hostile take over of the criminal underworld of Gotham city. Along with Joker, he released an additional two patients that he was also very intrigued by, Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot AKA "The Penguin", a deform giant with several mental defects but genius level intellect whom Scarecrow had groomed for the occasion and Edward Nygma AKA "The Riddler" (not a nickname he actually went by, but he was widely known by this nickname in the Asylum, due to his behavioural patterns), a psychotic, but immensely intelligent man of unknown origin who suffered from several mental illnesses, obsessed with answers and social experiements. Scarecrow mainly stayed in the background and rarely aided in the operations of the Rogue Cartel, but he was known for several mass-murders that was engineered by himself, the Joker and the Riddler, using various chemicals to induce complete and utter ecstasy and others inducing fear, most of these mass murders were done as social experiments that were, for the most part, thought up by the Riddler. Scarecrow took his nickname from the fact that his favourite past-time was to play on his inmates fear, and later invented certain drugs that would cause people to fall into hysterical fear, and that he liked to brandish a mask giving the him iconic appearance of a Scarecrow, how ever in the dillusional minds of his victims, much more so than in reality. Ironically, the Scarecrow passed away from a heart attack when he was exposed to his own toxin. Something scared him to death, following the injection...

The Penguin
The Penguin was the muscle of the group. Socially awkward in many ways, he was obsessed with high-society and had an incredibly violent temper. He desired nothing more, that to be treated as a winner in every way. The Penguin, called as such because his facial deformities made him resemble a penguin, how ever, he recieved surgery as part of his treatment in Arkham Asylum which made him look practically normal (no known pictures from before his surgery remain), for which he remained infinitely loyal to Scarecrow. The Penguin murdered his way to the top of the criminal underworld, and worked as a gateway for the Hand to take position, he was an all time favourite ally of  Harvey Dent AKA "Two-Face", a notorious and completely insane Gangster who allied himself with the hand, becoming the fifth member of the Rogue Cartel's leadership. Without Harvey Dent, the Rogue Cartel could never have gained power over the criminal underworld, as all members of the Cartel lacked the refinement to control a group of criminals, and that statement remains more true about the Penguin than anyone else, who continued to serve as Harvey Dent's personal attack dog. Penguin came from a lowly Mexican working class family who were devout catholics, and when they concieved a child that looked completely deform, they considered it the work of the devil and discarded him like trash. He was raised in an orphanage, but was admitted to Arkham at age 14, because he had hospitalized a fellow orphan and that was far from the first time he had expressed uncontrolled violent behaviour. He underwent official name-change during his time as an inmate in Arkham Asylum as part of his treatment, re-invented himself as a business man from Great Britain, despite never managing to get the fake british accent right. Severely Autistic, as well as suffering from ADHD and several other minor mental defects, Penguin was incapable of understanding normal human behavioural patterns, and never managed to connect with anyone but Harvey Dent, and they managed to get along because they shared a vision of brutal conquest for success, neither of them had any regard for human life and Harvey, more importantly abided by very simple rules that Penguin appreciated greatly. Penguin considered Scarecrow a parental figure, but never connected with him the same way. The Penguin was shot to death by the police when he fled a location for unknown reasons, severely beaten, but armed with his iconic "umbrella-sword-cane", which was another symbol of his fake british heritage.

The Riddler
Edward Nygma was arrested by the police, after kidnapping several children and conducting, what he referred to as "Important experiements" on them. Two out of six children survived the actual experiments, one maimed for life in several ways, the other comitted suicide shortly after. The experiments were on par with the social experiements, or "games" played by "Jigsaw" on his victims in the Saw movies. When captured, he immediately confessed to several other unsovled cases of similar nature, and was institutionalized in Arkham Asylum. He found a friend in Walter Arkham who seemed intelligent enough to entertain Edward's strange habbits of questioning everything and more importantly respected Edward a great deal for having carried out his visions and experiements. It's believed that Edward inspired Walter to become the Scarecrow. Not much is known about the Riddler, as all attempts to figure out who he actually was failed, obviously Edward Nygma wasn't his real name, but rather a running gag, as the name could be abbrivated to E. Nygma or Enigma, reflecting his obsession with riddles, questions and his belief that brains was indeed more important tha brawn. The Riddler partnered up full time with the Joker whom he considered his all-time best "play mate" as the both of them were incredibly amused by the sick games they played on innocent people, often he made great use of the toxins developed by Scarecrow, including the one the Joker had asked him to make (opposite of the fear generating one) to spice up his games, but it's difficult to say what role he actually played in the Cartel, other than being a past-time terrorist like the rest of them. It was long ago ruled out that he wasn't the mastermind behind any of their mafia-related doings, so in many ways, it seems to have been his "gig". He was the first member of the group to die, it's believed that he had a show-down with one of his potential vicitms which must have gone wrong for him, as he was found dead by suicide in his hideout, with a full recorded confession of all of his crimes, as well as an admittance that he was wrong, and that a certain someone made him realize that. No psychology student has so far been able to make any sense of the famous recording yet as the riddlers delusional world view remains an enigma. Perhaps he got the last laugh after all...

Two Face

Harvey Dent, a world war II veteran, was a lawyer turned police officer, turned vigilante. Intitially obsessed with justice, he started seeing the world as being completely black and white, either you were guilty or innocent. Good, or evil. When he became a vigilante, he was unsure of how to punish them, so he started flipping a coin when he was in doubt whether the person deserved death or not. If the coin decided that his victim wasn't deserving of death, he would permanently maim the person, but otherwise he executed his victims, typically by lynching. During the attempted take down of a crime-lord, Harvey Dent was captured, and attempted murdered, but somehow survived, but half his face was burned, leading to his nickname. Something changed in him at that point, while he still kept about his personal sense of justice, he started using his knowledge of the criminal underworld to infilitrate the gangs, posing as a hitman, and at some point managed a hostile take over of a large part of the Gotham criminal underworld. The thing in him that changed, and exactly why is still unknown, was that he now considered the entire world unworthy, and only through him could people achieve salvation, and his new laws were simple. The strong taketh from the weak. He had been running the criminal underworld for the better part of a decade when the Rogue Cartel emerged, and intrigued by their nature, he teamed up with them. In his written diary, he admits to having been quite scared of the three masterminds of the group, but realized his essentiality to them, but he was constantly afraid that they had some master plot they were just waiting to pull off. He had a strange mentoring relationship to the Penguin, whom he considered a lost brother of sorts, and he was seemingly grooming him to take over the criminal empire after his own eventual demise. Harvey Dent was grief-struck when Penguin died and it seems he experienced a moment of lucidness, and realized that the Cartel had to be stopped, so he turned on his fellow members of the Rogue Cartel and teamed up with an unknown stranger attempting to take it down. Harvey was quite the hard-ass, but he died attempting to redeem himself. It is believed that his actions allowed another fellow vigilante to take down the Joker, who was the last remaining member of the Cartel, minutes before launching a city-wide gas-attack, intending to kill everyone in the Gotham City. Despite having been a criminal for various years, many remembered Harvey Dent for his time spent as a hero, and with some controversy, a statue was erected of him, in memorial. He remains one of histories greatest anti-heroes. He died an old man, being almost 60 by the time he was shot to death by members of his own cartel.

The Joker
The Joker was an insane serial killer who was captured after amounting a body count of no less than 74, spread across several countries in the America's. It's generally believed that he is actually of Hispanic heritage and never was a north American citizen, but no actual information about him is available. He was apprehended by the police after the attempted murder of the mayor of Gotham City. Ironically, he was stopped by Harvey Dent, who was still a police detective back then, before enlisting for the war. Generally underestimated by many, and first assumed to have been, simply a crazy person twisted into following the vision of Walter Arkham, it was later revealed that The Joker was infact the mastermind of the group known as the Rogue Cartel. He fancied wearing clow-makeup and purple suits, but was often disguised so he could walk in public. He was especially known for his scars appearing to have originated from someone attempting to widen his smile permanently, as it fits well with his fascination of making people laugh despite situations quite terrible. The Joker never revealed his master plan to anyone, but he had secretly been manipulating his allies in the rogue cartel to help him along with his plan to wipe out Gotham City. "Why Gotham?" many have since asked, but no one has ever seemed to figure this out. Perhaps this was just another one of his pointless killings? Despite no evidence of his reasons every seeing light, The Joker inspired countless of people to follow in his footsteps. The Joker never had any regard for his fellow Cartel Members, and seemingly used them for his own ends. Nothing of his past, except for the murders he commited is known and despite probably lacking any formal education, The Joker was aware of a great many aspects of human psychology before the medical world was, and despite being deeply insane, he knew exactly how to manipulate people. He saw the world as being a big great lie, and his master plot was to make people aware that the only things they could truly cherish in life, was just that, their lives. He continously asked people why they did what they did. Why maintain jobs they didn't like? Why did they find enjoyment in what they did? When was the last time they had a decent laugh? Many people continue to think that he was actually on to something, and that it was just his methods that were off. He claims that the same vigilante who took down his criminal empire, and stopped his master plan was the reason he came to Gotham in the first place. He knew that a place like Gotham City, the most deprived pit of humanity, someone would rise to the occasion, if he the opposite extreme presented itself. The Joker was arrested and sent back to Arkham.

The Fall of the Rogue Cartel
A masked Vigilante managed to stop one of the Riddlers many so called "social experiments". According to the Riddler's suicide note, this person initially got himself captured when he attempted to disturb the games, and the Riddler had set up a new game, just for this person, but quite against his expectations, the vigilante had won the game, and during a conversation had apparently somehow managed to convince the Riddler that he wasn't at all the enigma he though he was. After giving up some valuable information, the vigilante left, and the Riddler killed himself. Following the meeting, the same vigilante is presumed to have gone after the Penguin, which lead to quite the fight. Several police cars responded to the scene and attempted to surround the building, when a severely batterend and beaten Penguin attempted to flee the scene, armed with a sword and an "umbrella-sheathe", and was shot to death by the police. Searching the crime scene revealed several shuriken (Japanese throwing weapon) and various other evidence of someone being present at the scene, including blood and strips of dark clothing. Several of Penguin's henchmen were found at the scene, some dead, most of them alive. Most claimed to have seen nothing, and said they couldn't remember anything prior to waking up when the police found them, but some of them claims there was a fight between Penguin and a "strange masked lunatic in a cape". The stranger took out most of the henchmen using shuriken, to injure them enough that they couldn't continue the fight, but also beat several of them within inches of their lives. The dead henchmen seemingly got caught in their own cross-fire. A single witness reported that Penguin had the upper-hand in the fight, being practically unbeatable in melee-combat and with the attacker appearing unwilling to use firearms at first, but when he was close to death after being stabbed by Penguin, he resorted to using the looted handgun of a downed henchmen, and shot Penguin twice, once in the leg and once in the arm, with quite the precision, which lead to Penguin fleing the scene before taking any more shots. Harvey Dent wasn't seen for weeks following the death of Penguin and seemingly turned against the rest of the Cartel, in the mean time, Walter Arkham was found dead from a heart attack, with no signs of any struggle apart from the fact that he was somehow exposed to his own fear-drug. An anonymous tip lead the police to Walters private archive, and it was discovered that Walter was the infamous "Scarecrow" and guilty of many homicides. It's theorized that the same vigilante came after him, but no proof has ever been found. Not soon after, Harvey Dent proceeded to attack the hide-out of the Joker, serving as a distraction for the the masked vigilante to get past the guards and take down the Joker. Harvey died, making a last stand somewhere in the compound, with a body count that was off the charts and so was the amount of bullets found in his body for that matter. The Joker was later discovered hanging up-side down, beaten unconscious and the police recieved an anonymous tip of the whereabouts of several cannisters of weaponized gas, designed to cause massive pannick and hysteria (both gasses devices by Walter Arkham), as well as kill the entire population of Gotham City, and as such the biggest terror operation in history was stopped by this mysterious Vigilante.



The Dark Knight Rises
The vigilante came to be known as "the Dark Knight" originally, but was later nick-named "Batman" by the general population, due to the descriptions given of his appearence. His real identity never became known to the General Population, but it's believed that he was behind various anonymous tips leading to major arrests within the criminal underworld of Gotham City, as well as several extremely dangerous wanted criminals being found, tied up and beaten within their lives. The City of Gotham regarded him as a Hero after he put his life on the line to stop a plot that would have killed off the entire city, and both a statue of him was erected, as well as a projector with a "bat symbol" was procured for the Police Department to signal him for help with, but orders from the White House soon came down that it was unacceptable to sympathize with a vigilante, despite the situation, and the Statue was moved to a museeum. The Projector never saw any use, but remains on the roof of the Gotham Police Department building, mainly to remind the officers of the city, that there was a time when they weren't enough.

The true identity of the Dark Knight, was that of Bruce Wayne, a young Orphan and sole heir to Wayne Enterprice, perhaps one of the richest corporations in the world, of which he was the majority stock-holder. Wayne's parents were killed infront of him when he was a child, and he was raised by his legal guardian Alfred Pennyworth, who was a former British Officer from World War I, who had been the Body Guard of Wayne's parents. He had been asked to take the night off, when they were killed, and never forgave himself for their death, devoting his life to serving their heir. When Bruce was 17, he ran away from his European boarding school, and enlisted with the British forces during World War II and became one of the Commando's. He participated in several successful operations, but vanished from the face of the earth in several years following the surrender of Japan. Appalled with what the American forces had done, he had to see the result of the nuclear bomb in person. He wandered Japan for weeks after that, reflecting on what he had seen, when he eventually, mostly by chance, found a temple in the mountains that hosted an organization of militarized warrior monks, who practiced the ancient art of Ninjutsu. He became a student there, and didn't return home for another decade, but just in time to see that Gotham needed someone with his particular set of skills. Back then, it was simply a matter of shaking the right hands, to make it seem as if Bruce had been a student at a fancy boarding school and later Oxford University for those years unaccounted for.

The costume he devised originally had no cape, it was just dark practical cothing, a military rig holding his arsenal, sap-gloves, steel toed boots and various modified sporting equipment implemented as padding to make him more endurant in fights, several hidden weapons and some self-invented gadgets. The cowl only had ears, because he needed somewhere for his radio antenna to be, and he thought it looked silly with only one ear. Bruce decided to add the cloak because it fitted with his fightingstyles, of drawing concealed. To begin with, he didn't even have a cowl, but used a specially designed helmet, and most of his operationsin the beginning involved eves dropping and spying and when he occasionally had to fight, he used everything he knew. It was that way he earned the nick name "The Dark Knight", because he looked like a strange armored figure in his dark padding.

On his first operations, he utilized acrobatics and careful planning to move far above normal eye-level, and with Alfred positioned as a spotter and handler, feeding him information via the inbuild radio in the cowl, he had a strategic advantage. On several occasions during his first operations, Alfred had to use a long-distance cross-bow or sniper rifle to incapacitate targets that would have otherwise killed Bruce, but he grew with the task, and eventually managed to get on the trail of the Riddler. He was actually captured by the Riddler, attempting to take him down, and was then subject to one of the Riddler's games, but by surviving the game impressed the Riddler so much that the Riddler came to respect him, even fear him, despite holding Bruce at gun point and being full aware of his identity. After a lengthy and deep conversation between the two, Bruce was released, after giving Bruce the locations of his accomplices. Bruce had no idea he had affected the Riddler's psyché so much that the later was going to kill himself but never expressed any remorse. Not exactly able to see through the complexity of the Rogue Cartel's composition, he assumed that the Penguin was the official leader, due to being the biggest and meanest of them, also because the Penguin was officially thought of as the leader, if Harvey Dent wasn't, and he hadn't managed to track the latter of the two down yet, so Bruce went after the Penguin, and despite pulling off the impressive feat of disabling all 14 of Penguin's henchmen without killing a single one of them, the Penguin was still too much of a match for Bruce in direct combat, so Bruce had to improvise, and used a gun he picked up, taking two disabling shots at the Penguin who then fled the scene, leaving Bruce to make the same choice as he was greviously wounded. Lawenforcement dealt with the Penguin in their way, and that was good enough for Bruce, who proceeded to go after Scarecrow, this time, taking better time to prepare himself, and it paid off. He managed to catch him during one of his sessions with a patient involving the scarecrow mask and the fear-drug and turned the tables on Scarecrow, but the situation backfired, and Scarecrow suffered a fatal heart-attack. The irony wasn't lost on Bruce, who vowed to be more careful when he took down Harvey Dent who had just popped up on his radar, but to his surprise, Harvey had set him up and apparently wanted to meet, and the two joined forces when Bruce was finally made aware of the plot the Joker had in mind. Harvey lead a one-man charge against the Joker's goons, and Bruce snuck in like a thief in the night, and took out the Joker and managed to find a map detailing the locations of several hundred gas-cannisters to be spread across the city and handed it to the police, along with the Joker.

Recgonized as a national hero, Bruce had to keep a low profile, and even went as far as officially being opposed to his own alter-ego. From that point and on, he acted in much more secrecy. As he continued to get older, as well as Alfred, he started making use of new gadgets, including planes, boats and an armored vehicle, not much different from a tank, but operations happened months apart, and otherwise, he spent his time profiling and gathering information.

The Protegé
During the mid-60'ies, a terrorist/freedom fighter who called himself "Bane" rose from South America, Cuba specifically, as a result of the Vietnam War and the Cold War. He targetted Gotham City, and liberated the Joker from Arkham Asylum to have him create more of the Gas he intended to use. After recieving the formula, he let the Joker go. At this point, the Dark Knight had almost retired as his body was having trouble keeping up with the injuries and the life-style, but when the Joker started killing randomly, Bruce made the decision to take him down. The Joker had killed countless of people in a matter of a few years, and Bruce had tracked him down several times attempting to stop the madness, only to find that he was being setup time upon time again. The entire killing-spree was one big charade to draw him out for a final show-down. During one of these show-downs, the Joker killed the parents of a young teenager. Bruce managed to save the boy, but had to let the Joker escape. That boy was Richard Grayson, and out of some misguided feeling of guilt, he adopted the young boy, upon learning that he had no family. At that point, he knew exactly how Alfred had felt. If he had just killed the Joker, the boy wouldn't have been orphaned. Bruce subconsciously started grooming Richard to take his place as the Dark Knight, but devoted a lot of time to finding the Joker. The boy was plagued with survivors guilt and anger, and enlisted in the Vietnam War. He bacme a Green Baret, in part due to his mentoring from Bruce, and while Richard was fighting in the war, Bruce finally had the last showdown with the Joker, which ended with the Joker's death. The Joker used his dying breath to forever taint the soul of Bruce, as he asked him "How exactly are we different, you and I? Passing our personal judgement on to the people...". The truth was, that Richard had long since figured out that Bruce was the Dark Knight, and it despite never admitting to knowing it, and Bruce never admitting it, Bruce was aware that Richard knew. Upon killing the Joker, Bruce retired permanently, or so he intended, as Richard returned from the war, he was disappointed in Bruce who, partially out of spite, started training him more actively to take his place all the while still promising both himself and Richard that it would never happen, still without ever admitting to being the Dark Knight, but then Bane finally struck...

Bane_0001.jpg
Bane was a political idealist who believed that the capitalists were going to destroy the world. He originated in Cuba, but through out his travels in South America, he garnered supporters, and secretly infiltrated Gotham City, intending to launch a massive attack. He freed the Joker from captivity, unleashing a mad dog upon the citizens of Gotham and also procured the formula for the drugs used by Scarecrow and himself. He eventually tracked down some scientists willing to weaponize the drugs into a gas, but the scientists also created something else... Venom and Lucid, powerful drugs that permanently altered Bane's physical capabilities working as doping/steorids with the only side-effects being an addiction to the drugs, as well as a slightly increased temper, and seemingly a case of sudden gigantisism, where as Lucid icreased his brain capacity vastly, but also slowly started driving him insane. After almost a decades worth of preparations, he finally struck.

Knightfall
Bane had spent almost a decade trying to create enough gas to repeat the plot the Joker had intended, and along the way had turned himself into a super-human using mind-doping as well as some powerful steroids. Bruce managed to take Bane's operation down during his impressive comeback after an entire year with no operations, but when he finally faced Bane himself, he suffered an astounding defeat, as Bane broke his spine by throwing him out of a window from several stories up. Incredibly, Bruce wasn't paralyzed, and was extracted by Richard, (using the tank) who had assumed Alfred's role during operations, seeing as Alfred had passed way recently. Bruce was forced to pass on the torch, as he never managed to fully recover. Richard made it his first priority to track down Bane, and successfully did so. Facing a younger, more vigorous opponent, Bane found himself at worse odds. During a pause in their battle, Bane fixed himself up with more Venom, and accidentally overdozed, sending him into a crazed state. Richard managed to defeat him, but when the police got there, Bane had already suffered too much brain damage, and spent the rest of his life as, practically a vegetable in Arkham. Bruce continued to maintain Wayne Enterprice while Richard continued the legacy of the Dark Knight, using Bruce much the same way as Bruce had formerly used Alfred, as a spotter and handler, but also as a mentor. Alfred had lived a long and healthy life, unlike Bruce who's health was in rapid decline by the time he turned 60. Richard needed new help...

Fledgelings
Much like Bruce had done, Richard had long since started searching for a potential candidate to take over, but meanwhile, history seemed bent on repeating itself. Facing a new threat that the police was not capable of dealing with, a mass-murderer with a disturbing MO was making the streets of Gotham unsafe to traverse...

Victor ZsaszZsaszBooth.jpg
Victor Zsasz was a highly unstable person who just happened to fall under the care of the wrong psychiatrist, Hugo Strange. Manipulated into becoming a serial killer, this otherwise seemingly harmless individual became a relentless killing machine with no apparent pattern, but always leaving his victims in positions where they appeared as if still alive, sending a message about life not ending with death. Zsasz was dealing with the loss of his parents, who had died in a boating accident. For some reason, he kept count of his killings by carving tally marks into his own body, this behaviour remains unexplained.

Hugo Strange
A psychiatrist working at a small mental insitution dealing with much less severe cases than those found at Arkham, Hugo was secretly fascinated with Rogue Cartel and sought to copy their ways, especially the ways of Walter Arkham. Victor Zsasz was his pet project, but his real goal was to take down the Dark Knight, as he realized that this would render the city defenseless against a new Rogue Cartel rising. Hugo came from a family of academics, but had suffered severe abuse as a child which had caused him to become control freak in adulthood. He was powerless physically as a child, to resist his parents, but he remained a great thinker. Despite his dillusions of grandure, Hugo Strange never had the know-how, the oppertunity nor the resources to actually fulfill his visions, and he remained simply the criminal master-mind behind Zsasz. Not content to remain in Zsasz shadow forever, after Zsasz was eventually apprehended, he applied to become a psychiatrist in Arkham, where he managed to get close to Bane. Though psychotherapi and heavy drugging, he managed to bring Bane back to a state of mental clarity for long enough to have Bane reveal the forumula needed to crecreate the drugs he used on himself, as well as the ones he intended to kill the population of Gotham City with, but he also revealed something interesting, the fact that he recognized the heir of the billionaire Bruce Wayne as the person who had evacuated the defeated Dark Knight. Following that procedure, Bane passed away, but his spirit lived on in Hugo who was left to figure out what to do with the information he had procured, most importantly, being the only one alive who knew the identity of the Dark Knight, except for Bruce Wayne.

The Rise of the Knight-Wing
Hugo Strange was wrong about one assumption: Bane wasn't the only person alive who had known the identity of the Dark Knight. During a small time operation, Richard had hidden the car under a cover, a very simple way of concealing the car, and entirely legal. No one quesitoned a legally parked car with covers on, as long as apparently legal plates were showing. No one but a potential car-thief that is, and the young Jason Todd, street urchin, was looking to score some easy cash so he could eat that night, and figured, if someone went through the trouble of covering their car, it was probably an expensive car. Pulling the covers away revealed something far more intersting, the armored car that was legendary on the streets of Gotham. The vehicle used by the Dark Knight. Unsure what to do, curiosity got the best of him; so he quickly found a small bottle with a lid, filled it with paint from a nearby construction site, and poked small holes in it and taped it underneath the vehicle, and then he hid nearby. He almost had a heart attack when he actually saw the mythical figure get in the vehicle and drive off at daring speed... And then he followed the dripples. Richard never realized he had been followed back to Wayne Mannor until he eventually spotted the young boy in the entrance of the bunker hidden in the caverns under the mansion, standing there with his mask off, speaking to the ageing Bruce Wayne. Initially, Richard wasn't sure what to do about the situation, but ended up deciding that it was probably better to take the boy in, now that he knew. Jason turned out to be a great study and was eager to take over Bruce Wayne's duties as assistant, but that wasn't going to happen until at least a few years later when Zsasz started killing all over the city, but as Jason grew older, his ego and self-confidence also grew, as well as his skills. The truth was, at age 15, he was as skillful as Richard ever was, despite not having his wisdom and knowledge or raw power and experience for that matter, but when it came down to raw talent and skill, he was more than an equal match, and so Richard and Bruce agreed that Bruce could carry on with his duties a little longer, and that Jason would become an actual partner in the field instead. Using a similar suit, he decided against using a similar cowl, and wore an earless cowl instead, and opted to have his radio antenna installed on is rig. He brandished himself as "Knight-Wing", being the Wing-Man of the Dark Knight, AKA Batman - A flying rodent. An endless pun, and another example of Jason's well developed sense of humor. Richard adopted Jason as his legal heir, not soon after, just as Bruce had adopted him as his. Despite being Jason T. Wayne and Richard G. Wayne officially, the two adopted members of the Wayne family kept using their middle-names as surnames for quite a while.

Voice of the Oracle
Team Dark-Knight had expanded even further, as a contact and long time supporter of the Dark Knight, Jim Gordon, was now Chief of Police in Gotham. Back when Bruce first established contact with him, he was just a detective working Organized Crime. Jim Gordon's daughter, Barbara Gordon had in the mean time also discovered the secret identity of the Dark Knight. Jim could probably have figured it out a long time ago, and maybe he did, but he never wanted to know, because knowledge is responsibility, and deep down inside, he believed the Dark Knight was the best thing to happen to Gotham in years. Barbara was only a year younger than Jason, not nearly as skilled in martial pursuits, but she was smart, unlike Jason, not street smart, but actually clever having grown up in a modern day home with a police detective for a father, and a Criminologist for a mother. One day, she simply walked up to Richard, catching him in an elevator, and hit the stop button. Recognizing her, but not supposed to know her, Richard did his best to pretend that he was confused, but she broke it down for him quickly. "I know your secret. You're the Dark Knight, and Bruce Wayne was before you. And I know that you're training another one. I want in... "

Once more, Richard found himself in a situation he couldn't control, and was more or less forced to bring her aboard, but it turned out to be a good decision, as she managed to replace Bruce as handler, after only a few months of training, and occasionally, she could get places where Richard and Jason couldn't as an incrowd spy or information gatherer. On several occasions, she functioned as a stand-in for one of the two field operatives. It was Barbara who brought in technology to the group. Using Wayne's amasing funds and contacts, she managed to have several lines connected in secrecy linking the mainframe of the Wayne Bunker directly to City Hall, local military bases and law-enforcement and many other local corporations, and ske kept expanding. Using superior computer power, she managed to keep the connection hidden, and infact, these lines have not yet been discovered, and the few that were eventually disconnected due to renovations or what not, were simply re-connected anew. This gave her access to a vast network of information. Tapping directly into the data-bases of criminal informers and by using hardware designed to disguise a voice as someone elses, as well as brief studies of behavioural patterns, she could practically tap these informants for information at any time. She quickly earned the code-name "Oracle" for those feats. Barbara continued to study and was considered to have genius level intellect by age 15. Wayne officially hired her as an intern and personal assistant, to help him run his company, and paid to have her privately schooled, and of course secretly trained her to be able to lift the tasks of a field operative for when she would eventually be needed. Barbara never came close to being as good as any of the other, when it came to field ops, but her other skills with science and information technology made her an invaluable asset, especially after wide-spread use of the internet became a thing.

The Fox
Lucius Fox was a long time secret ally of Wayne. A well kept secret. This young genius studied at Oxford and had dual P.h.D's in Business and Finance. It was originally Alfred Pennyworth who had taken notice of the young student who was desperately applying various business for internships, but he had done so in quite an unorthodox way, in that he had taken the official financial statements of all the companies he applied to, and shown them how he could do better. Alfred had talked Bruce into sponsoring Lucius until his education was finished and then head-hunt him into the company as acting CEO, because the bare-boned truth was that Bruce hardly knew how to do his job as CEO, and Richard was perhaps even worse at it, Jason had no clue about such matters and Barbara, while seemingly intelligent enough also had her skills in other areas, and with Alfred's passing, the last person on the team that knew how to actually maintain the company had perished. Lucius was introduced some time after Alfred's death as the new acting CEO, just as planned. Completely and utterly loyal to Bruce and the "Waynes" he vowed to uphold their interests. Bruce had suspected it for a long time, but it came as quite a surprise when Lucius revealed to all the Waynes at the same time that he knew their secret, but assured them that it was safe with him, and he was taking precausions to obscure the funds they were taking out of the firm to support their operations. With the cat out of the bag, he simply asked that they would respect him enough to ask him to do their financial work, instead of simply leaving him to clean up their messes. They all agreed to that. Lucius never played an active role in the Dark Knight operations, but was an important supporter.

Death and re-birthJoker_is_Born_(1989).jpg
In the mid-eighties, Bruce Wayne passed away, and roughly at the same time, Hugo Strange re-invented himself as the Joker. Having studied the Joker through medical records found at Arkham, he had gained such insight into the criminal that he had become obsessed with him, to the point where his mind eventually reinvented itself as Hugo's own version of the Joker. Richard had never actually fought the Joker himself, but he knew how much the Joker had initially affected Bruce, especially his death by Bruce's hand. Richard immediately dismissed the possibility that the the Joker was actually the same Joker as before. The team moved to take him down, but Hugo Strange already knew the identities of the caped crusaders, and as such had managed to psychologically profile them, and prepare traps for them. He tricked them into attacking him from two directions, knowing exactly which direction would be for whom, with Richard taking the major heat while Jason snuck in to get eyes on. It came as a huge shock for Richard when the fight seized, and the Joker revealed himself, carrying an bound and gagged Knight-Wing to his car, dropping him in the trunk and driving off. He knew that Richard would attempt to follow the car to save his adopted son, and as such simply moved the car out of sight, to remove Jason and place him an another vehicle. Oracle geared up and moved in to rescue the hostages, while Richard pursued the empty car, but the Joker prepared for someone coming for the hostages, and when she moved in, he shot her through the spine and left her for dead as he poured gasoline on the hostages and lit them ablaze. Half-ways unconscious, she watched the people she tried to save burn alive. Meanwhile, the Joker transported Jason to a remote location where he tortured him to death and left his mutilated corpse for the Richard to find with a message written in Jason's blood on the wall, reading: "How many of my people haven't you removed from the equasion?"

Recovery
Oracle was permanently paralized from the waist and down. She continued to be Richards assistant, but she fell into a temporary depression due to several factors, one being that she was secretly in a relationship with Jason, another being that she had lost the ability to walk, and third of all, the haunting memory of watching the people she failed die. Richard was on his own the entire time she was in recovery, but without support, the battles became difficult at best, at one point Richard found himself wounded and having expended his vast arsenal of gadgets, attempting to escape some members of the Joker's gang. He found himself rescued by a man dressed almost exactly like Knight-Wing used to. Richard was almost passed out from blood-loss at the time, but the stranger carried him to his car, and toggled the auto-pilot, sending Richard home, leaving simply a card that said "If you want to meet me, come to where we first met, a week from now at midnight".

Curious to find out who his saviour was, Richard met up with the Knight-Wing copy-cat, maintaining his iconic hostile outlook during their entire conversation. The stranger took off his mask, and introduced himself as Timmothy Drake. Tim explained that he had a background in police work, originally in anti-terror SWAT units, but later also as a detective. He had grown disenchated with his job, and when learned from a reliable source within the Joker's gangs, that Knight-Wing had been killed, he decided that it would do the city more harm than good if that was to be believed, so he decided to erase that fact by becoming Knight-Wing, quickly adding that he wasn't interested in a partnership like the one the former Knight-Wing and the Dark Knight had shared, but that he wouldn't mind supporting eachother, especially with the Joker. Richard taunted Drake for a while, angered at his attempts to take up the mantle as Knight-Wing, and the two fought briefly. Richard was still wounded, but came out on top after their short scuffles, and Drake stated his respect for the Dark Knight, but admitted that he thought that his attempts to kill as few as possible were pathetic, and he also utilized handguns himself. Driven into a dark state of mind, Richard reluctantly agreed that Gothham City perhaps needed something new and declared that he wasn't going to attempt to take Drake down, at that time anyway, as long as they went after the Joker on Richard's terms, to which Drake agreed. The two of them then proceeded to take down the Joker, and had him institutionalized. Their partnership continued for a while, until Drake eventually grew disenchanted with the life as a caped crusader as well, realizing that Gotham was too corrupt to save, he started plotting to take over the city through controlling the gangs, but at the same time, he retired his Knight-Wing Costume, leaving it, in a package by the old bat-signal-light which he activated so that richard would find it, allowing him a memory of the past.

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