Note: this has been reposted from The Phalanx and in due time will be updated to reflect the most current status of this character.

Name: Leonidas Heracleides
Codename: Spartan
Birthplace: Oglala, SD
Birthday: December 21

Vital Statistics

Age: 27
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 168 lbs.
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Brown
Blood Type: O+

Distinguishing Features

Tattoos: Marine Corps emblem, left shoulder
Scars: GSW scars on his right thigh, side and shoulder
Other: Chevron-shaped birthmark, back of neck

Personal Data

Strengths: As a former Marine, Leo is trained in combat (both close and ranged), numerous types of weaponry, and stealth. He also possesses a degree from UNLV in mechanical engineering. His chief skills, however, reside in the areas of surveillance and security. Not only knowledgeable in the technical aspects of the field (including the various types of hardware, software, and other equipment), Leo seems to have a preternatural gift of observation, able to deduce at a glance what most people are capable of and even able to make an accurate prediction as to their immediate actions and intents.

Weaknesses: Honest to a fault, Leo is a very poor liar - anytime he tries, even the least observant person will be able to tell he's being dishonest. Despite that, he does have an excellent poker face - so long as he keeps his mouth shut. Though he's not quick to anger and able to keep a cool head in most situations, that makes it all the more difficult when he does lose his head, and there's been more than one occasion that he's forgotten to stop once a fight is over, even to the point of turning on friends at least once.

Relatives: Myles Heracleides (father(NPC)), June Running Deer (mother, deceased)
Relationships: None
Known Adversaries: None
Known Allies: Edward Batten (Employer), Kyle Pontius (direct supervisor), Jason Tatopolous (Deputy/Assistant(NPC))

Standard Equipment

Item Name: Central Computer Portable User Interface
Item Description: Comparable in width and length to a paperback book, but only a few millimeters thick and made of a substance that resembles black-bordered clear glass, Leo - like his boss - never goes anywhere without this tablet. The operating system is a simple multi-touch user interface coupled with a very powerful transceiver uplink that can connect remotely to Batten Industries' central control computer from virtually anywhere. The tablet is biometrically encoded to Leo and can only be activated and used by him.

Item Name: IMI Desert Eagle Mk. XIX .44 Magnum (with 3 spare clips)
Item Description: Kept on or near his person at all times, this pistol features a black carbonized finish, an integral laser sight, and anti-slip grips. Loaded with frangible armor-piercing rounds, this gun can punch through just about anything up to (and including) standard light vehicular armor.

Background Information

Factoids: Leo is the latest unwitting product of a genetic breeding program established in ancient Greece by a mysterious organization known only as 'the Order.' His ancestry can be traced back along his father's family as far back as ancient Sparta by all but the Order's own archives, which lists his ancestry as beginning with the legendary Greek hero Heracles (known more commonly as Hercules). Tracing back along his mother's side delves into such great figures of Native American history as Crazy Horse of the Sioux Nation, but more important (and mysterious) is a notation near the beginning of that line that lists a 'Red Man' and a 'Stone Beauty.' Whom these figures are is not known, save that they appear to have been of supernatural origin.

What this genetic intertwining of bloodlines was supposed to achieve is not known for certain - the Order's files beyond Leo's ancestry are non-specific about which traits they are trying to achieve with their breeding program in his file, suggesting that information lies elsewhere.

History: Born in South Dakota, Leo's father left before he was born. Most children might have accepted this, having never known what having a father is like; Leo, once he was old enough to realize what was missing in his life, began to wonder if perhaps his mother wasn't to blame.

She would tell him things, strange things. Listen to the earth, she would say. Feel the world around you, the way it breathes, and watches, and even sometimes sleeps or shifts. Everything has a spirit, she would tell him, from a grain of sand to the mightiest mountain, from a blade of grass to the tallest tree, from the meanest mite to the great whales of the ocean.

The old men they would sit with around fires at night, telling stories, singing songs, beating on drums. She and they spoke of heavy magic in his blood, power and potential that, they said, would give him the power to move mountains, to lift the sky, to lay low the wicked and become a champion.

It was a lot for a pre-teenage child to absorb, and he didn't understand very much of it at all. Like most children, he wanted only to be a child, to be normal and fit in with the others...and he couldn't.

Even the other kids looked at him in mingled awe and fear. Some simply avoided him...others would stare. Still others would taunt and tease, the way kids do. For years, he simply wished to escape those fearful eyes, those jeering words...indeed, he would even pray to whatever gods might be listening that one day, maybe, he might have what he wanted.

At the age of ten, his mother was found dead, hanging from a tree in their meager front yard on the Pine Ridge reservation.

The coroner's report listed her death as suicide, one which was accepted by many, decried by others. An older Leo, looking over the report and knowing his mother, would have little trouble believing it - the odd things she told him aside, his mother had been not only a heavy drinker, but so often seemed depressed and angry at the world. Occasionally she would rant to the walls, to the ceiling, even to the point of running outside and screaming at the sky that they already took one and they couldn't have the other. He never understood it, but as time wore on it seemed to the recollections of his mind that she was becoming increasingly unbalanced.

Fortunately, the people that came to get him that day just happened to already know who his father was and how to contact him.

His father told a different version of his story, offered to his only son that he had never been told of his son, that his mother had fled in the night shortly after Leo himself was conceived. Whether it was the truth or not Leo wouldn't ever be able to find out - his mother had not been willing to discuss his father or the events surrounding his conception and birth, had done her best to keep him from asking or changing the subject when he managed to steer it that direction.

His father's explanation made sense, to the memory of a child.

It was a different life from then on out - his father, already the chief of security for an up-and-coming Las Vegas resort and fairly well off, brought the boy home with him. To the eyes of a young boy whose life had been lived in a ramshackle trailer and spent running around a dusty little village of many more such homes, Las Vegas and the life his father gave him were gifts from heaven, riches after having been so poor.

No more taunts or jeers, no more stares and glares. Life began to move forward at a swifter pace, as he lost himself in the pursuits of the life of a little boy. He made friends, played sports, did his homework, rode a bike. He'd eat dinner with his dad at a table or in front of the television, go to boxing and wrestling matches, go camping, and even get into trouble on occasion, the kind every boy gets into.

It was the life every boy wants, so many have and so very few can really appreciate - normal, with friends and enemies, good times and bad, love and heartbreak (mostly of his doing), cuts and scrapes and bruises (though never a broken bone).

From boyhood he became a man, and with it, his decisions that led him here. He idolized his father (still does, actually), and since the age of twelve he had decided who he wanted to grow up to be.

He followed in those footsteps almost perfectly - first to college, then into the Marines, and then home again to work for his father, who had ascended from head of security to overseeing all aspects and operations of the Olympus Grand Hotel, Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, where he had been working ever since before he brought his son home with him.

There are advantages to being the boss' son.

And there he would stay, until his father received a letter from a company looking to expand not into other cities, but rather to another world entirely.