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23
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25
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10
On March 15, 1964, a team of Norwegian geologists investigating a glacial fragment that had recently settled against a fjord on the North Cape of Norway, near the town of Nordkapp. They made a startling discovery, one of the most amazing archaeological finds of the twentieth century. Frozen in the fragment, perfectly preserved, they discovered a Neanderthal hunter. His pale skin was intact, his arms outstretched as if trying to catch himself. Wanting to preserve the specimen, they proceeded carefully, leaving the ice around his body. They’d all heard stories about
woolly mammoths broken free from the ice, their bodies beginning to rot almost as soon as the air and the heat touched them. They wished to risk no such destruction of their Neanderthal, who they dubbed "the Nordkapp Man." Quickly, they contacted a team of archaeologists to help them preserve the body and study it properly. Late that evening, though, something rather amazing shook them up even more than their initial discover. Beneath the ice, the Nordkapp Man’s eyes opened.
When it became clear that somehow, miraculously, the Neanderthal was alive and struggling to escape from the ice, the team worked together to chisel him out and offer what medical attention they could. He was terrified and confused, but fortunately was weak enough from his ordeal that they were able to lend him aid without being injured themselves.
The months that followed proved momentous for the Nordkapp Man, the teams working with him, and the field of anthropology. Whether because of the metahuman powers he quickly manifested (as many theorized) or because of a quick intellect that had survived for centuries (as the Neanderthal himself would later assert), the Nordkapp Man—"Grak" in his prehistoric tongue—adapted to his new situation quickly and was soon able to communicate with other people. Testing positive for the metagene, he proved to have formidable cold-projecting, or cryokinetic, abilities.
As the world’s only living Neanderthal, Grak became quite a celebrity. At the same time, he was the focus of much anthropological study because of what he was able to tell the world about the Stone Age and his life prior to falling into icy waters. Grak was surrounded by academics, and it was into their world—not the world of superheroes—that he was drawn first. His keen mind soaked up language, philosophy, science, and more; within less than 10 years, he grew from a Stone Age hunter to a professor of cultural anthropology and—through studying his own abilities—a noted cryogenics expert.
In April 1998, while lecturing at a seminar in Bern, Switzerland, Grak witnessed the
German superhero Shriek trying to stop an attack from the supervillain team calling themselves the Elementals. Seeing that she was greatly outnumbered, he tore off his tweed jacket and tie and went to assist her, using his ice powers to blast away at the villains. He and Shriek were still trounced by the Elementals, but they put up a good show of it. Seeing Shriek in action, and fighting alongside her, he felt a calling to distinguish himself in the same way that she did, to use his ice powers for more than just chilling cocktails at academic functions where his Homo sapiens sapiens colleagues treated him with respect, yet gawked at him when they thought he wasn’t looking. He decided to become a superhero.
Maintaining the well-known name "Nordkapp Man," Grak began a short career as a solo hero, quickly joining the Dawnstars. Finding that his academic pursuits prevented him from full-time hero status, he maintained a position as an adjunct member and consultant. He was performing in that role in 2001 when the uberhuman Torch destroyed the Dawnstars’ headquarters and the Silver Marten murdered Grak’s protégé Eternity. When the European Union added insult to tragedy by withholding funding, he decided to abandon superheroics and devote himself to academics full-time once more. More recent attacks on his former comrades have brought a swift end to that retirement, and he is a pillar of the current Dawnstars team.
Because of his years of experience, his study of cryogenics, and his training with the Dawnstars, Nordkapp Man has developed a wide range of effect with his ice control (cryokinetic) abilities. He can generate blasts of ice that pummel and freeze his opponents, can superfreeze the air around his arm into a huge and hard spiked club that he can use to bash a large area, can create opaque ice bonds to grapple a single target or blanket a larger area, can create a wall of ice, can superfreeze a target (usually an inanimate one) to make it brittle and more susceptible to physical damage, and can create a huge ice storm about 2 kilometers across to disorient those within. He can also generate a shell of ice around himself that protects him from damage. He can create a simple shell like this effortlessly, a shell that stays close to his skin. With effort, he can create a larger and harder shell that supplements the first one. That second shell tends to break away when he’s stricken with powerful attacks, and he can only restore it through the same effort. Nordkapp Man has also developed a way to use his ice powers to help propel him along; these ice slides work best when he’s moving himself along the ground, but he can also build them up like ramps or pillars to carry himself upward. The ice supporting his body is vulnerable to attack, however, and more than one opponent has made him fall to the ground by knocking the supports out from under him. Other results of his ice abilities include the ability to see variances in heat and a general resistance to cold.
Nordkapp Man has experienced other effects from his metagene and the centuries he spent imprisoned in the ice. On the positive side, his aging seems to have been retarded. He can also return his body temporarily to its suspended state, feigning death. On the negative side, he has developed epilepsy and suffers occasional petit mal seizures. The epilepsy also sometimes affects his powers; occasionally, a microseizure can prevent him from activating some of his more dynamic abilities unless he takes extra effort, through energy, concentration, or time, to compensate for the possibility.
Perhaps one of Nordkapp Man’s greatest "powers" is his keen intellect. He is frequently underestimated for his appearance, yet his seemingly crude exterior hides a rich and well-trained mind. He has proven to be a strong asset to the Dawnstars.
Nordkapp Man looks much like the classic Neanderthal picture: huge head with jutting jaw, slumped shoulders, arms trailing near the ground. His long, blond hair and beard are often unkempt, though he has taken to pulling the hair back in a ponytail. He often wears only a pair of shorts (usually cut-off jeans), sometimes with a flamboyant shirt. In most public situations, he activates his icy shell force field, and often the stronger, breakaway ice shell on top of it. The result is that he looks like he’s covered in a layer of thick, semitransparent ice. While he’s mastered several modern languages, his jaw structure does force him to speak with a slight lisp. Several women have commented on the brilliance of Grak’s blue eyes, but this never seems to have led to anything more serious.