Profile: the Red Widow
Jan. 22nd, 2026 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tartaros_avatarFor the good folks of Pumpkin Hollow, this is a history of the Red Widow, and a basic explanation of the setting she comes from. This is in part intended as a recruitment post, so I'll provide a brief summary, to get the flavor of her and her deal: the Red Widow is an extremely powerful psychic and assassin from the MMO City of Heroes/City of Villains. She founded and led both special operations and the psychic control network of Arachnos, the preeminent villain organization in the setting. Arachnos has plans for world domination and totalitarian control over its territory, but as a faction ultimately joinable by MMO players, its ideology was viciously opposed to any prejudicial behavior: only supervillainy was tolerated, not mundane evil. Red Widow was the life partner of Arachnos' overall leader, but playing her would not lock anyone into that relationship, as her death and resurrection can easily be used as a reason to break off emotional ties. She's a force to be feared, who's lived a wild life in a wild world.
An in-depth description follows.
The world of City of Heroes will be familiar to anyone who knows American superhero tropes, but it puts its own spin on what a world like that would be like. While their history books would say the Age of Metahumans began in 1930, there were startlingly supernatural events happening with regularity, often in full view of the public. These events were normal. Everything that came after was an escalation. I'll cover what would be relevant for the personal history and professional life of the Red Widow, and no further.
We don't know the specifics of the Red Widow's upbringing. We don't even know her family name--we know she sometimes went by Marlene in private (usually pronounced Mar-ley-neh or Mar-lee-nuh at the time), but that may have been a chosen alias. She probably grew up a little bit superhuman--as a latent psychic, she could probably read people better than most, finish their sentences for them, and guess what they were withholding with unnerving accuracy. We know that she became a spy and assassin, possibly some time before 1930.
We know that she joined a shadowy organization called Arachnos, becoming their chief assassin. Led by a man known only as the Weaver, Aracnos was an Italian group that were seen as the real power and organization behind Mussolini at the time, and by 1926 were in violent competition with another, even odder organization: the Council, secretly led by ancient, malevolent energy beings from outer space, that possessed and fed off of their human hosts. As I said, this setting was not what we would consider "mundane" prior to 1930. But events that year would change the course of history.
Before dawn on July 5th, 1930, a golden light was seen silently streaming across the heavens. After that, Marlene's powers would have grown unambiguously metahuman. Mind-reading, mind-altering, and mind-destroying powers slowly became hers, as well as learning how to hide herself from others in plain sight, and possibly even gaining a degree of precognition. She combined this with her other skills to sharpen her abilities still-further, becoming superhumanly agile and resistant to pain. Anyone who worked alongside her would share in some of those benefits as well: her mind-reading and telepathy allowed others to coordinate completely with each other, and benefit from her tactical mastery.
Soon thereafter, another metahuman joined Arachnos: Stefan Richter. An American and Great War veteran, he'd been in the papers across Europe a few times, named as the chief co-conspirator to the famous thief Marcus Cole. Richter was wanted by police in England and France for impersonating a police officer, multiple counts of grand theft, and violently escaping arrest in London and Paris. He arrived with samples of that golden light captured at its source, as well as superhuman strength, senses, and intellect. Above all, he had an absolute drive for personal power. While he was accepted into Arachnos, over the next two years the Weaver became increasingly concerned about Richter's ambitions. In 1932, Richter was "promoted" to lead American operations, in an attempt to banish him from the heart of Arachnos. Instead, Richter consolidated power there, killing spies reporting to the Weaver. His increasingly withdrawn behavior and photophobia led to Weaver loyalists referring to Richter as "the Recluse", a name Richter adopted.
Though there were setbacks, Recluse began expanding his influence back into the European branch of Arachnos: he openly considered Mussolini and the fascist governments of Europe to be foolish and weak. Under Recluse's control, Arachnos would have loyalty to no nation, and privilege none merely for nationality, religion, or any other meaningless division--only power mattered. Those few who saw him reported he'd undergone a startling physical transformation: eight long spider limbs had grown from his back, now encased in metal armor and tipped with blades. Combined with now truly monstrous metahuman strength and intelligence, Recluse had become an existential threat to Arachnos as a clandestine arm of the Italian regime. He was overpowering and out-thinking them at almost every turn. If anyone embodied Arachnos and what it could be, it was him... and the Red Widow.
We don't know exactly when in this process the Weaver ordered his chief assassin to kill Recluse, but we know the Red Widow was dispatched to kill him. This was a fatal error on the Weaver's part: the Red Widow had no loyalty to Mussolini either. While she made a real and nearly successful attempt on Recluse's life, the end result was that the two gained respect for each other. When she returned to Arachnos leadership, it was to kill the Weaver, and complete Recluse's takeover of Arachnos.
While Recluse was seen as the undisputed leader, the Red Widow had just as profound an effect on Arachnos as an organization. Her psychic dominance shaped the minds of their underlings, and her thoughts became the template for a growing telepathic network that allowed Arachnos agents to coordinate with total efficiency. She oversaw the organizational structure of Arachnos' growing cadre of psychic spies, assassins, and soldiers: a mostly-female order of Widows were trained in her combat and psychic techniques and maintained the Widow Network that provided command and communication for the organization, while a mostly-male group made up the elite soldiers of the organization, their psychic powers turned inward into a self-reinforcing mind control network that kept them utterly loyal to the Red Widow and to Recluse.
These psychics in many ways formed the core of Arachnos' power, and they were all shaped by the Red Widow's indomitable will. She and Recluse saw themselves as above the laws of the old world, forging a new one that would be commanded by the most capable: them. At this point, many in Arachnos knew that they were in a committed relationship, though they never married. Marriage, part of the power structure of the old world, was beneath their consideration.
Through the 1940s, Arachnos gained increasing control over a mid-atlantic island chain to the northwest of Bermuda: the Étoile Archipelago, better known as the Rogue Isles for its history of piracy and corruption. By this point, Arachnos had fully broken from its roots, and secretly fought a vicious war in the shadows against the Axis powers, denying them the Rogue Isles and assassinating many key figures. Following the war, Arachnos made its takeover of the Isles official in 1963, becoming the ruling government of the Isles. The Red Widow was now the leader of a national military and spy network, which grew in numbers and power as more ambitious souls chose to seek their fortunes there. Arachnos had become the world's preeminent, legitimatized supervillain organization, and their path toward eventual world domination was long, but clear.
Throughout all of this, however, Recluse had one unshakable, immovable weakness: Marcus Cole, the man he'd spent his human life with. Similarly transformed by the events of 1930, Cole had eventually become the most powerful and well-respected superhero in the United States, and eventually the world. He was stern, sometimes difficult for his team mates to get along with, but under the name Statesman, he'd been the one foe that Recluse could never truly best, nor ever forget. Recluse was obsessed with Statesman, and Statesman considered it his duty to thwart Recluse.
Whether any of them knew it at the time, this was due to the source of their power, and the source of this new Age of Metahumans: an extra-dimensional, artificial entity, deposited on Earth to collect and concentrate creative energies, and refine them into raw power. Stefan Richter and Marcus Cole had unleashed that power on the world, and absorbed the greatest portion of it in the process. But in doing so, the entity had gained control over their lives, twisting their minds in the process: stories were expressions of creative energy, and thus the being forced the world to conform to the shape of the stories held within it. A hero and villain had to fight each other, no matter who they'd been before, or what other things they might value in their lives.
This, inevitably, led to tragedy. Statesman and Recluse rarely fought face-to-face, but when they did, the results were utter devastation. And while the Red Widow was a terrifyingly powerful metahuman, she had her weaknesses as well. In the chaos and destruction of one such battle, she was killed by an avalanche. Any attempt to resuscitate or resurrect her failed.
But that wasn't her end--she'd been so instrumental to Arachnos that her spirit remained, though how conscious she was of the years, we cannot say. Arachnos shifted as an organization, while maintaining a constant technological and psychic superiority over its competition: the Red Widow's mind itself remained the template for the Widow Network, and all her successors had to bend to her designs. Recluse never trusted anyone like her, leading to more power struggles between the Widows and other Arachnos divisions.
In 2006, the Red Widow spirit was trapped in crystal by one of her jealous successors. The undead Ghost Widow wanted a test subject for a soul-binding ritual she hoped would bring herself back to life. This angered Recluse, who ordered Ghost Widow's punishment and the Red Widow's spirit set free. That seemed the best thing that could be done.
However, we know two things: First, death was not kind to the Red Widow. Her eventual resurrection in 2012 saw her murderously furious with Recluse for his role in her death. Through the intervention of others, she eventually regained calm, and regained her place as the psychic master of Arachnos.
And second, we know that the multiverse is a strange place. Lives don't always work out the way they seem destined to. In another world Stefan Richter was killed by Marcus Cole on that early morning of July 5th, 1930, leading to his arrival on Marrow Isle last year. And Calloway's shop has just come into possession of a familiar crystal, lit from within by a reddish light, whispering to the minds of those around it...
An in-depth description follows.
The world of City of Heroes will be familiar to anyone who knows American superhero tropes, but it puts its own spin on what a world like that would be like. While their history books would say the Age of Metahumans began in 1930, there were startlingly supernatural events happening with regularity, often in full view of the public. These events were normal. Everything that came after was an escalation. I'll cover what would be relevant for the personal history and professional life of the Red Widow, and no further.
We don't know the specifics of the Red Widow's upbringing. We don't even know her family name--we know she sometimes went by Marlene in private (usually pronounced Mar-ley-neh or Mar-lee-nuh at the time), but that may have been a chosen alias. She probably grew up a little bit superhuman--as a latent psychic, she could probably read people better than most, finish their sentences for them, and guess what they were withholding with unnerving accuracy. We know that she became a spy and assassin, possibly some time before 1930.
We know that she joined a shadowy organization called Arachnos, becoming their chief assassin. Led by a man known only as the Weaver, Aracnos was an Italian group that were seen as the real power and organization behind Mussolini at the time, and by 1926 were in violent competition with another, even odder organization: the Council, secretly led by ancient, malevolent energy beings from outer space, that possessed and fed off of their human hosts. As I said, this setting was not what we would consider "mundane" prior to 1930. But events that year would change the course of history.Before dawn on July 5th, 1930, a golden light was seen silently streaming across the heavens. After that, Marlene's powers would have grown unambiguously metahuman. Mind-reading, mind-altering, and mind-destroying powers slowly became hers, as well as learning how to hide herself from others in plain sight, and possibly even gaining a degree of precognition. She combined this with her other skills to sharpen her abilities still-further, becoming superhumanly agile and resistant to pain. Anyone who worked alongside her would share in some of those benefits as well: her mind-reading and telepathy allowed others to coordinate completely with each other, and benefit from her tactical mastery.
Soon thereafter, another metahuman joined Arachnos: Stefan Richter. An American and Great War veteran, he'd been in the papers across Europe a few times, named as the chief co-conspirator to the famous thief Marcus Cole. Richter was wanted by police in England and France for impersonating a police officer, multiple counts of grand theft, and violently escaping arrest in London and Paris. He arrived with samples of that golden light captured at its source, as well as superhuman strength, senses, and intellect. Above all, he had an absolute drive for personal power. While he was accepted into Arachnos, over the next two years the Weaver became increasingly concerned about Richter's ambitions. In 1932, Richter was "promoted" to lead American operations, in an attempt to banish him from the heart of Arachnos. Instead, Richter consolidated power there, killing spies reporting to the Weaver. His increasingly withdrawn behavior and photophobia led to Weaver loyalists referring to Richter as "the Recluse", a name Richter adopted.
Though there were setbacks, Recluse began expanding his influence back into the European branch of Arachnos: he openly considered Mussolini and the fascist governments of Europe to be foolish and weak. Under Recluse's control, Arachnos would have loyalty to no nation, and privilege none merely for nationality, religion, or any other meaningless division--only power mattered. Those few who saw him reported he'd undergone a startling physical transformation: eight long spider limbs had grown from his back, now encased in metal armor and tipped with blades. Combined with now truly monstrous metahuman strength and intelligence, Recluse had become an existential threat to Arachnos as a clandestine arm of the Italian regime. He was overpowering and out-thinking them at almost every turn. If anyone embodied Arachnos and what it could be, it was him... and the Red Widow.We don't know exactly when in this process the Weaver ordered his chief assassin to kill Recluse, but we know the Red Widow was dispatched to kill him. This was a fatal error on the Weaver's part: the Red Widow had no loyalty to Mussolini either. While she made a real and nearly successful attempt on Recluse's life, the end result was that the two gained respect for each other. When she returned to Arachnos leadership, it was to kill the Weaver, and complete Recluse's takeover of Arachnos.
While Recluse was seen as the undisputed leader, the Red Widow had just as profound an effect on Arachnos as an organization. Her psychic dominance shaped the minds of their underlings, and her thoughts became the template for a growing telepathic network that allowed Arachnos agents to coordinate with total efficiency. She oversaw the organizational structure of Arachnos' growing cadre of psychic spies, assassins, and soldiers: a mostly-female order of Widows were trained in her combat and psychic techniques and maintained the Widow Network that provided command and communication for the organization, while a mostly-male group made up the elite soldiers of the organization, their psychic powers turned inward into a self-reinforcing mind control network that kept them utterly loyal to the Red Widow and to Recluse.
These psychics in many ways formed the core of Arachnos' power, and they were all shaped by the Red Widow's indomitable will. She and Recluse saw themselves as above the laws of the old world, forging a new one that would be commanded by the most capable: them. At this point, many in Arachnos knew that they were in a committed relationship, though they never married. Marriage, part of the power structure of the old world, was beneath their consideration.
Through the 1940s, Arachnos gained increasing control over a mid-atlantic island chain to the northwest of Bermuda: the Étoile Archipelago, better known as the Rogue Isles for its history of piracy and corruption. By this point, Arachnos had fully broken from its roots, and secretly fought a vicious war in the shadows against the Axis powers, denying them the Rogue Isles and assassinating many key figures. Following the war, Arachnos made its takeover of the Isles official in 1963, becoming the ruling government of the Isles. The Red Widow was now the leader of a national military and spy network, which grew in numbers and power as more ambitious souls chose to seek their fortunes there. Arachnos had become the world's preeminent, legitimatized supervillain organization, and their path toward eventual world domination was long, but clear.
Throughout all of this, however, Recluse had one unshakable, immovable weakness: Marcus Cole, the man he'd spent his human life with. Similarly transformed by the events of 1930, Cole had eventually become the most powerful and well-respected superhero in the United States, and eventually the world. He was stern, sometimes difficult for his team mates to get along with, but under the name Statesman, he'd been the one foe that Recluse could never truly best, nor ever forget. Recluse was obsessed with Statesman, and Statesman considered it his duty to thwart Recluse.Whether any of them knew it at the time, this was due to the source of their power, and the source of this new Age of Metahumans: an extra-dimensional, artificial entity, deposited on Earth to collect and concentrate creative energies, and refine them into raw power. Stefan Richter and Marcus Cole had unleashed that power on the world, and absorbed the greatest portion of it in the process. But in doing so, the entity had gained control over their lives, twisting their minds in the process: stories were expressions of creative energy, and thus the being forced the world to conform to the shape of the stories held within it. A hero and villain had to fight each other, no matter who they'd been before, or what other things they might value in their lives.
This, inevitably, led to tragedy. Statesman and Recluse rarely fought face-to-face, but when they did, the results were utter devastation. And while the Red Widow was a terrifyingly powerful metahuman, she had her weaknesses as well. In the chaos and destruction of one such battle, she was killed by an avalanche. Any attempt to resuscitate or resurrect her failed.
But that wasn't her end--she'd been so instrumental to Arachnos that her spirit remained, though how conscious she was of the years, we cannot say. Arachnos shifted as an organization, while maintaining a constant technological and psychic superiority over its competition: the Red Widow's mind itself remained the template for the Widow Network, and all her successors had to bend to her designs. Recluse never trusted anyone like her, leading to more power struggles between the Widows and other Arachnos divisions.In 2006, the Red Widow spirit was trapped in crystal by one of her jealous successors. The undead Ghost Widow wanted a test subject for a soul-binding ritual she hoped would bring herself back to life. This angered Recluse, who ordered Ghost Widow's punishment and the Red Widow's spirit set free. That seemed the best thing that could be done.
However, we know two things: First, death was not kind to the Red Widow. Her eventual resurrection in 2012 saw her murderously furious with Recluse for his role in her death. Through the intervention of others, she eventually regained calm, and regained her place as the psychic master of Arachnos.
And second, we know that the multiverse is a strange place. Lives don't always work out the way they seem destined to. In another world Stefan Richter was killed by Marcus Cole on that early morning of July 5th, 1930, leading to his arrival on Marrow Isle last year. And Calloway's shop has just come into possession of a familiar crystal, lit from within by a reddish light, whispering to the minds of those around it...