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According to Rayes family legend, family patriarch Lieutenant Thomas Rayes, who had served under General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, journeyed east from Fort Smith in Oklahoma one dry spring day in 1819. Along his journey, he met a dying Comanche “medicine man” named Rain Singer. When Rayes shared the last drops of water in his canteen with the Comanche, the grateful Native American shared with him the secret of making rain, and that rainmaker power has stayed in the Rayes blood ever since.

The truth is somewhat darker. Thrown in the stockade and threatened with hanging for raping a French trader’s wife, Private Jake Callaway dug his way to freedom and fled east, creating the false identity of Lieutenant Thomas Rayes. Parched with thirst, he murdered an elderly Comanche (named Kerchee, not Rain Singer) for the skin of water the man carried. The skin did indeed imbue him and his family line with rainmaking abilities, but the murdered Comanche’s spirit cursed him, too. Anyone loved by Callaway or his descendents would die tragically.

Born in the midst of a tornado strike in her small Oklahoma town, Aimee Rayes has the most potential of any member of her small family. Due to the curse that the family itself was only dimly aware of (most ascribing their family tragedies to misfortune rather than mysticism), the Rayes family tree was understandably a thin one with few branches. Aimee's mother died moments after giving birth to her, when the tornado tore a beam out of the family house and threw it into the new mother’s side. And Aimee herself was an only child with no cousins.

Aimee’s father Hank, an embittered wheat farmer with few rainmaking talents of his own, loved his daughter, but was distant with her, leaving her largely to her own devices, concentrating only on keeping his small farm alive. He only began to take on a more disciplinary role when Aimee was 14 and spending the vast majority of her free time with her 16-year-old neighbor Jerry Hollenbeck. Motivated by intuition and fatalism, Hank Rayes urged her to break things off with Jerry, to no avail, while she made plans to run away with Jerry.

That year was a drought year in their county, and Hank began to make suggestions to his daughter about using the rainmaking powers he suspected she had, instructing her as best he could with his own meager talents. Feeling guilty about her impending departure, she ultimately relented, trying her utmost to make it rain the day before she intended to leave Oklahoma for good.

It rained, all right. It rained and it poured and then, in the midst of one of the worst thunderstorms the county had ever seen, half a dozen tornados sprang to life and tore through the area. Almost every building that Aimee had ever laid eyes on, save her own home, was destroyed by the storm, which she was helpless to call back. When the clouds finally cleared, the governor declared the event a disaster. More than 50 people were killed. The mangled, broken body of Jerry Hollenbeck was found five miles from the storm shelter he’d been running toward, impaled on the top of a small wind-powered oil derrick.

Aimee swore off rainmaking after that, but the tiger was out of the cage and she couldn’t ever get it back in. She gradually learned that she had to use her powers to avoid terrible wracking pains from spreading through her body. Fortunately, she gained much, much more control than anyone else in her family ever had. She could summon and dispel tornados, ride atop them, create blasts of wind and rain, and even call up swirling winds that would protect her from harm.

A private person, Aimee kept to herself for many years, keeping her abilities private and using them only in secrecy. Somehow, though, the mysterious owner of the studio that created the Heroes of Filmland tracked her down, offering her the opportunity to do some good with her abilities as part of his team. He also dangled two gifts in front of her: The first was the knowledge that she was indeed cursed with a magical effect, not simply the victim of generations of bad luck. The second was a promise (perhaps truthful, perhaps not)—that he would find a way to cure her curse for her. Soon she joined the Heroes of Filmland as one of the founding members: Twister.

Created by Rob Rogers

Aimee's curse gives her superhuman endurance and agility; the Comanche wanted his murderer’s descendents to live long and suffer great emotional anguish. The skin from which Private Jake Callaway drank gave his descendents—and Aimee most of all—amazing control over air and winds. The most powerful wielder of winds in her family’s history, Aimee can effortlessly cloak herself with protective winds that reduce most of the damage from incoming attacks. She can also “ride the wind”—flying from spot to spot as a tornado seems to spring from her lower body. She can “feel” the air around her to an incredible degree, sensing any movement in her vicinity. As befitting the curse and her ancestor’s violence, the most powerful effects Aimee can achieve are violent ones—tossing things from place to place, blowing enemies backward or driving debris or even just narrowly focused air into them. She can cause small storms, too, disorienting her opponents. Her most powerful ability, and the one that she fears the most, is her ability to summon tornadoes. She believes these to be true, natural twisters (and they appear to be actual tornado funnels). But in reality, she is summoning angry, semi-sentient storm elementals. For the most part, she is able to control their behavior (per typical Summoning rules). But sometimes they get away from her and wreak havoc. In addition, her control over the more forceful of her abilities (her Multipower) is still somewhat limited. If she misjudges her abilities (fails her Power Skill Roll), she can unwittingly unleash an angry storm in her immediate area.

Twister is an attractive brown-haired woman with tanned, freckled skin and an athlete’s body. She wears her long hair in a braid that whips around her and occasionally becomes untied when she activates her powers. Her costume is a dark gray bodysuit covered with swirling cloud patterns not unlike the storms she creates. It covers her entire body except for her head.

Art by Rob Rogers