But it's not the chemicals that made him so merciless, it was the checmicals.
Plague Rat's bio in the rook city rules tells he was a drug dealer, who had to hide in the sewers and was slowly mutated by the chemical spills from Pike laboratories. He now "infects everything he touches".
Edit : full text for the lazy reader :
"Many decades ago, a foul drug-dealer controlled large swaths of the Rook City drug market. He made his hideout deep in the Rook City Sewers, keeping his stash safe from competitors and law enforcement alike. However, his criminal enterprise was worn down by a long battle with anew criminal organization taking control of the city. Over time, he was entirely ousted from the streets of Rook City, and lived in the sewers to survive. Years of handling the vile drugs he sold, mixed with toxic wastes from the industrial plants, slowly twisted and mutated the dealer into a giant, hideous, rat-like monster. Now, his last shreds of humanity all but eliminated, he stalks the Rook City Sewers in search of his next meal, infecting all he touches."
SHoot. yes. I completely forgot about that. Maybe he got infected by the rats?
He could be a drug dealer FROM THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!
For me, he was the "first rat monster" - and he is the "point in time" where the former "equilibrium", where monsters were weaker than humanity and had to hide, began to collapse. But it's just my interpretation of what we know.
Oh man, I forgot that the bios in the books and the bios on the website are different. Face, meet egg.
He's still at most patient zero for plague rats, as other cryptids CR has been described as fighting predate PR. And I still think that, given the description of Final Wasteland in CR's bio he has both a personal reason to consider PR a nemesis and a reason to hunt other cryptids.
Even if we say that Chrono-Ranger has a reason to hate Plague Rat because PR is either (a) a member of the genus/species who ate his arm or (b) the father of all plague rats (my preferred interpretation), that doesn't give PR a motive to hate Chrono-Ranger, especially. Unless we figure that Chrono-Ranger has gotten up in PR's grill enough times, trying and failing to take him out, that PR finally sees red anytime anyone waves a cowboy hat and a poncho in his face.
I completely agree, Cosmonaut Zero. And I had forgoten about the rook city rules bio, too - I re-read them because I remembered things I didn't see on the site and wondered where :)
There's precedent for relatively one-sided nemeses. Voss doesn't have a particular reason to care about one member of a race he's subjugated, and Haka doesn't really have a reason to especially care about Ambuscade except inasmuch as it kind of sucks having somebody who wants to kill you specifically. Which is almost precisely the same situation as Chrono Ranger and Plague Rat.
How about the fact that Rook City Plague Rat was a drug dealer. If anything, I'm sure most drug dealers don't have a full raging love affair for the law. If any semblance of his humanity was left, maybe it associates Chrono-Ranger's shiny metal star with the law...something Plauge Rat may have remembered was a bad thing when he was human.
I'd say as far as Tempest/Voss goes - Tempest represents a race that "belongs" to Voss and the fact that there even remains anything resembling defiance from a race he subjegated probably doesn't bode well with him.
As far as Haka/Ambuscade? You got me. Only clue I have is, I'd be pretty miffed also if someone was stalking me while I was enjoying an ice cream in the park.
I don't have a problem with relatively one-sided nemesis relationships. I'm just noting that they exist in the game. We could ad hoc all the theories in the world to explain why Plague Rat might hate Chrono Ranger, but in the end I don't really think we need to. Chrono-Ranger having it in for Plague Rat (or Ambuscade having it in for Haka) works well enough for me.
Yeah, nemesis relationships can easily be one sided. They don't have to be to the degree of a Fanatic-Apostate relationship to want to fight. Spite has no personal grudge against Wraith. Really, Ermine is more of a severe nemesis to Wraith due to mutual dislike/hate.
Nemesis are a game device that provide extra-damage for a hero and a villain. Some of them make sense, some dont.
The game mechanic sometime include Nemesis in the comic book sense, sometimes not. And Nemesis aren't always reciprocical.
Baron Blade <> Legacy Family : Blood feud that last for many generation, both are well accointed with the power/technics/capacity of the other and usually well prepared to fight each other.
Citizen Dawn <> Expatriette : Family feud, know well each other, Expatriette is supposedly an expert against Supers.
Grand Lord Voss <> Tempest : One slave with extra power rallying against his conqueror. Voss conquer Tempest planet so know the way to fight him, Tempest is extra dedicated to kill Voss and stop his invasion, and know his methods
Omnitron <> Omnitron X : self explatory, know thyself.
Plage Rat <> Chrono-Ranger : Chrono have a lot of experience now in fighting Plague Rats kind of creature. But little success against this one. Plague Rat is more intelligent that the common Chrono's prey, and probably escaped him several time already. He KNOW that the chrono-ranger is after him and thus prepare against him specifically.
Spite <> Wraith : Both Rook City citizens, know well each other, fight regularily one again the other. Is Spite the Wraith agressor ?
The Chairman <> M. FIxer : Known each other for a LOOOOOOONG time, the Operative is an ex-student of Mr. Fixer. Both are well fluent in fighting each other (and dedicated in eliminating each other).
The Matriarch <> Tachyon : Know each other, one hate the other. No justifiable reason Tachyon should be more efficient at damaging Matriarch, I would rather they she would be less efficient. Matriarch is fueled by hate. Possible explanation for Tachyon extra damage : being beaten by her unnerve the Matriarch and thus make her weaker, weaken her control of the birds.
Akasu'Bhuta <> Adepts Argent : cant justify why the hippy tree-hugger is the nemesis of a primordial chaos force... But thoses I dont know well, nor care about :p
Apostate <> Fanatic : Hate fueled rivalry, both know very well each other, know thyself.
Gloomweaver <> Nightmist : Occult detective and Voodo god, should come in competition very often so I suppose they both had trick ready against the other.
The Ennead <> Ra : Fight each other for millenium, self explanatory.
Haka <> Embuscade : Embuscade is there to kill Haka specifically so he is prepared. Haka isn't. But Embuscade is taking risk to get closer to him and his focusing on him, making him more easy to attack for Haka than other vilain.
I know I am reapeating myself, but for me, the "Nemesis" relationship exist because if the comics this game was based on existed, the readers would immediately associate this pair of characters, because the villain is the most memorable / most intriguing / most often used in the story for this character. Spite was the most memorable opponent of Wraith, Ambuscade is the most recurring villain in Haka stories, and so on.
It goes even farther, as the villain we have are not the whole story about this villain, but the villain at a precise moment in the story, with a specific plan/storyline. Like Baron Blade : in one famous story, he tried to crash the moon on Earth, so the villain we can play is Blade in this specific episode of the story. And "Mad Bomber Blade" was another memorable story line. And Vengeance will give us another memorable storyline of the comics, when Blade assembled a team of villain !
It's like Red Richards /Doom. Why are they Nemesis to each other ? In the beginning there was not even a reason, later it was just a problem of Doom having gained a little scar on his face "because" of Richards ! They are not Nemesis because they have all the reasons in the world to hate each others, but because this pair of character was so interesting that they kept making good stories when fighting each other. In fact they really began to hate each other because they fought so often. Same for, let's say, Spiderman and the Green Goblin : they did not have specific reason to be ennemies. GG did nothing (at first, he did later) to gain the hate of Spiderman. But he was, in the beginning, the obvious Nemesis of Spidey, even if later the web-slinger gained others.
In the "books", Legacy probably has tons of ennemies, most of them less powerful than the villains we have in the game. But Blade is the one that would be voted his nemesis.
I know it may be a strange point of view, but I think that the game is thought as a game about a fictional line of super-hero comics, and not directly about a world where super heroes exist. Ad so we have "strange" things like Nemesis, or some cards like AZ cryo-chamber. He doesn't take it with him when fighting ! But it is a part of his storyline, a memorable thing about him, and so it is in his deck.
But well, I am a strange person.
I don't think your reasoning is too weird or strange. The only thing I would have to say is that as Spectators we can only definitively judge the information that is given to us. I am more invested in the Wraith-Ermine rivalry more than the Wraith-Spite rivalry simply because I've been given more information about Ermine's personality and why she hates the Wraith. I like Spite, and I'm giving G> the benefit of the doubt and assuming that yes these two have had many encounters and Spite has given Wraith many reasons to hate him, but I'm still guessing. I know why Ermine hates the Wraith, which gives any possible dialogue or scenario I come up with in my head for them have more meaning and are more personally enjoyable for me.
The main reason why Spite is Wraith's nemesis is because The Wraith is the protector of the people in Rook City and Spite happens to be the biggest threat to the people. Other than that there really isn't too much, Wraith really just wants to get rid of this guy from terrorizing the people of her city.
Also I feel like since Wraith is an homage to Batman. Just like how Joker and Batman is Nemesis, but Bane and Batman also have a specific story line since Bane is responsible for breaking the Bat. They each fit as Wraiths nemesis to some extent, just like Spite and Ermine are both Nemesis just one fits more than the other due to their history.
I pretty much take the nemesis icon to mean that if these were real comics, that villain would show up mostly in that hero's books or be most strongly associated with that hero. Keep in mind this whole game is effectively one gigantic team-up book. In the context of just Batman, sure Joker is Batman's nemesis. But in the context of Justice League, all of Batman's major villains are much more strongly associated with him than with any other hero. I mean, I wouldn't call Penguin or Killer Croc Batman's nemesis in an absolute sense but if he shows up in a Justice League story Batman is the one everybody's going to be looking at. In a licensed version of SotM, I wouldn't hesitate to give Riddler or Poison Ivy Batman's nemesis icon.
Also Spite is totally Wraith's nemesis because he's a mix of Bane and Zsasz. You couldn't assign that kind of homage to any of the other heroes.
I don't question that Spite is Wraith's nemesis, and I'm sure there are reasons for it, I'm just saying that there isn't much definitive knowledge of their relationship which makes it hard to immerse myself in that particular story. Right now Ermine is more interesting to me because I know what her relationship to Wraith is. Wraith caught her and exposed her identity and destroyed her social life. Ermine has a concrete reason to hate that I understand and can follow along with. Spite just doesn't stand out to me because everything that he's done to get on the Wraith's bad side is all stuff I have to assume and guess. There's nothing wrong with that, but I will always be more interested in a relationship where the goals and motivations of both characters are well thought out and established as opposed to relationships where I have to fill in most of the backstory and past encounters myself.
The big difference between Ermine and Spite, is that Ermine is a "normal" person, with hates, jealousies, rivalries.
Spite kills children. He kills for pleasure. He only seeks is own gratification, and power. And he has super human abilities. Even worse : he doesn't have the "excuse" to be a demon, or a monster. He is a human, but has no humanity. The most horrifying villain imaginable.
Ermine may be a rival, for the Wraith. The Chairman is an arch-ennemy. Spite is the worst possible nightmare.
The Wraith (and Batman) fight crime. They chose to assume this repsonsability because they believe in justice, in right and wrong. Spite (and the Joker) don't care about responsabilities, morality, or human life, even their own.
The Wraith was a victim who chose to fight back - Spite is the maker of countless victims who never had the chance to fight back.
Ermine is a warped reflection in a mirror - Spite is the complete antithesis of everything the Wraith fights for, of everything important to her. In many ways, he is not a villain - but pure horror. The boogeyman. The real one.
At least that's how I see it.