The Last Valkyrie

[Running Riot]

Codename: Die Walküre
Real Name: Sara Rachel Deckard
Other Aliases: Valkyrie, the Last Valkyrie
Age: 109
Sex: n/a
Gender: Female
Height: 5'6" / 168 cm
Weight: 121 lbs / 55 kg

Background:
Built in Nazi Germany during the last months of World War II by the twisted scientist Adolphus Maximillian Deckard, the Valkyrie project was intended to produce an army of nearly undetectable superhuman soldiers, spies, and saboteurs. Of those, Sara was the first, a prototype hand-crafted by Adolphus Deckard himself. Made in the image of the half-Irish daughter he’d lost during an allied bombing, Sara became Adolphus’s obsession, and not simply because she was the best tool to train his ‘production model’ Valkyries.

Equipped with advanced sensors to detect “pure Aryan blood,” Sara was soon disturbed that her father’s words on Aryan superiority could not be corroborated. The genetic variance between “Aryans” and other races was often less than the variance between two “Aryans,” and every time she presented her findings to her “father” he berated her and subjected her to sensory adjustments and enhancements. Her findings remained the same each time.

The Valkyrie project died almost before it began: an allied commando team lead by one of America’s first costumed metahuman superhumans, Liberty Belle, infiltrated Adolphus’s labs and halted Valkyrie production at a mere five-hundred, a far cry from the ten-thousand robotic Stormtroopers Adolphus had envisioned. Only a month old, Sara spoke to the allies on behalf of her inactive sisters, preserving their lives in exchange for all of the information she had on Adolphus Deckard. By the end of the war, the scientist’s fate was still unclear, but Sara had parlayed her knowledge of Nazi codes into a future. Her sisters were activated one at a time, allowed to live as they chose rather than following Adolphus’s twisted designs. The Valkyries dispersed, all save Sara, who joined Liberty Belle and the other costumed heroes of the day to found the Hero Union, an international organization promoting metahuman welfare and discouraging the nations of the world from using their metahumans as disposable super-soldiers.

Her career since is one of the most storied in the Hero Union. She considers her work as a superhero secondary to what she calls her ‘true calling,’ speaking out on behalf of oppressed minorities. One of the first American metahumans to throw her support behind Martin Luther King, Sara found the fight for freedom far more appealing than a life of battling supervillains. In the 1970s, she threw her support behind Gay and Lesbian equality, and delivered a stirring speech to the Supreme Court with her fingers intertwined with her partner and lover at the time, a popular young superheroine named Soul Train. Although their bid was ultimately unsuccessful, the Supreme Court would revisit the issue less than a decade later, legalizing gay and lesbian marriage even as the Berlin wall crumbled.

She’s pursued other causes since, both in America, in Africa, and on other continents around the world. In spite of her humanitarian efforts, Sara Deckard is now largely retired, taking up a new calling: the educating and training of up-and-coming superheroes. Only Sara can say why she quit the International team; perhaps wear and tear on her robotic body is taking its toll or perhaps she simply saw something in the new generation that bore watching. No matter her reason, the international team has asked her to rejoin them once a year for the past nine years.

Personality:
Friendly, kind, and outspoken, Sara Rachel Deckard has a gentle demeanor and doesn’t enjoy violence. She believes strongly in freedom, equality, and the concepts of justice, and is on record saying she’d rather anger everyone on the planet to defend one oppressed innocent than stand by and say nothing while they suffer needlessly. Sara Deckard’s support has become something symbolic, she’s often sought by groups looking to add the weight of her name to causes she cares nothing for.

Metahuman Capabilities:
Sara’s skin is made of bulletproof polymers, her bones a composite of ceramic and steel. Her obsolete processors the creation of a machine savant: an as-yet unique metahuman power able to compel more from machines than should be theoretically possible. Her sentience is real, she’s as alive as any human, in spite of her mechanical origins. Her body mimics biological processes, her steam-powered heart can even fool sensors her creator never imagined. Apart from being tougher and stronger than a human of her size and build, she’s otherwise powerless. Of all the Valkyries though, Sara seems to possess a faint spark of her father’s brilliance: she has created weapons of her own.

Her primary crime-fighting tools are a pair of gauntlets able to project force-fields and force blasts, shielding friends and knocking away foes like bowling pins. Her electromagnetic boots latch on to the Earth’s own magnetic fields, allowing her to levitate quickly enough to emulate true flight. She’s not the fastest flier in the Hero Union, but she is a tireless one—in the nineties she flew around the world unaided for charity—even if she prefers to cross oceans in the relative comfort of a modern airliner.

Other Skills:
- Inventing, although her skills often lag behind with modern electronics.
- Public speaking
- Trained surgeon
- Sara earned a law degree in the 1970s, although it is now outdated, she has not attempted to pass the bar since 1986.

Known Limitations:
- Sara’s views are often extreme and sometimes outdated, making her something of a publicity risk.
- Speculative: her body is wearing out, or growing fragile with age.

Hero Union Notes:
- The last of her known sisters died in 2019, Sara is now the last Valkyrie.
- Sara’s merchandise remains popular. Her action figure especially so among young girls and teenage boys.
- Does not feel metahumans need to be ‘manipulated’ into helping people, speaks out strongly against the handler program.
- Does not require a handler.