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Tom Durant was a part of the original team of experts who developed the Southern Cross International organisation in 1984.  He helped design Sanctuary One and headed several key research projects in the early years, although his interests lay with engineering and geophysics rather than the more popular emerging field of ubergenics.  However, when his metagene activated during a seismic disaster in Antarctica, Durant found himself the centre of interest back on Sanctuary One.

His work in geophysics and seismology was restricted by his superiors in favour of Durant taking up the role of Professor Quake and joining the Southern Knights team.  Durant was fascinated with his new powers but there was also a part of him that was reluctant to turn away from his research.

Professor Quake served as part of the Knights for three years, including a six month term as team leader.  In 1989, he retired to relocate his young family to New Zealand where he returned to his seismological research.  The following four years were the best in his life, but when he was recalled to the Southern Knights to help mount a rescue operation Durant never realised he would never return.

The Southern Knights had been captured by a South American God who had inspired, or enslaved, thousands of Brazilians to build him a new City of Gold.  Professor Quake and eight other alumni travelled to Rio de Janeiro in a covert move against the New God.  They were discovered and Quake found himself in battle against the brainwashed Knights.  The rescue team were horribly outnumbered.

That day, December 7, 1993, Rio de Janeiro was destroyed by a sustained earthquake measuring 7.2 on the richter scale.  Sixteen thousand people died and many more were injured.

Professor Quake never recovered from that day, and because he never faced the media who considered him solely responsible for the deaths, he was branded a criminal.  In his own eyes, Quake considered himself damned but refused to let the hypocritical leal system use him as a scapegoat for the tragedy.  He disappeared from public life and never returned to his family.

After years of exile, Professor Quake returned in Australia to oppose the opening of a new Southern Cross installation in Brisbane.  He clashed with the new Southern Knights and defeated them, vowing to liberate the 'young mutants' who had supposedly been enslaved by Southern Cross.  Quake had been receiving inside information on his former employers and tracked down individuals who had been identified as mutants by Southern Cross but who had not yet been contacted by them.  He recruited Omen and Embrace from Brazil, Pele from Hawaii and Dumaguete from the Philippines.

Professor Quake is one of the most powerful mutants in the world in sheer destructive force.  He is able to call forth massive earthquakes, bend and render the earth at will and cause extreme amounts of damage over large distances.  He is also able to reduce the severity of earthquakes, and has in the past averted many disasters.  

In costume, Professor Quake he wears an armoured costume which is predominantly black and white, but has a blue chest plate, red shoulder guards, and a black star on his chest surrounded by a yellow circle.  His 'Quake Belt' is golden with red and blue raised sections which contain his energy battery and field projectors.