Formatter
Real Name: Xavar Farr**, First Appearance:** Celestial Travels #355, September 1968
Lieutenant Type: Enemy
Die Size: d6
Motive: Conquest, Approach: Technological
Traits:
- Swarm of Shells: Formatter has +2 to damage saves against single-target attacks.
- Sparks Fly: When Formatter fails a damage save, use its save result as an Attack against a nearby target.
- Shed Husk: When Formatter is destroyed, create a d6 “Husk” minion.
Having finally, successfully made his way back to Earth, Neutrino and his new friends didn’t stick around long. Scott stayed long enough to check in on his friends and family, and to repurpose an old Uranian base into a warp gate that the Aurora Borealis could use to return to the Solar System, far enough from Earth to provide plenty of warning if someone else came across it and small enough to be useless for large-scale invasion, but his years of wandering had left him with a drive to learn more. Joining forces with Wavelength and Doctor Cosmos, he decided that the best way to scratch that itch would be to explore the sector of space surrounding the Earth, known as Sector 39 to the ITG. Filled with planets that had been ruined by the Empress of Ash or abandoned by their peoples, the Empress’s fall had left the region a thriving and chaotic hub of lawlessness, filled with refugees, rogues, ancient ruins and abandoned technology.
The Celestial Travelers were not the only people drawn to Sector 39. An alien scavenger named Xavar Far was among the pirates, archeologists, and opportunists moving into the region, and he narrowly beat the Travelers to a centuries-old ruined space station, which they believed had valuable historical data but which he wanted to loot for its robotics. He both succeeded and failed; his body was digitized and uploaded into the station, and he found his consciousness split across its robot operatives. Taking on the name Formatter, Xavar fled the station with a squad of ancient robots, which he began to reproduce before offering his services as a one-man mercenary company.
Formatter was a dangerous foe largely because of his ability to hack, disassemble, and reform machinery into more robot bodies; the process was too slow to be used in combat, but Formatter was fully capable of seizing control of a station and then beginning the process of producing more of himself. His damaged robot bodies would often become hostile, half-broken robot husks, striking at everything around them, and he could reform the shape of his bodies at will, taking on forms suitable for the current tasks. At the same time, he could only control a handful of bodies at a time, and his goals were modest; he fought on behalf of alien warlords, taking control of locations and technologies on their behalf, but he had no grand schemes of his own. He would prove to be a persistent enemy to the Travelers, working for many of their greatest foes.
Behind the Scenes:
Celestial Travels has a huge gap in its timeline right now. After they go to start exploring the galaxy in 1968, I don’t have any notes about them for ten years; they meet Hyperstar in 1978, then the World-Maggot plotline starts in 1982. Supporting characters will help me fill in those gaps; I’ve got this one, and then something in the early-mid Bronze Age.
I like the idea of having a “pulp space archeology” arc for the Travelers; it fits with the Empress of Ash aftermath, with Wavelength’s background, and with the need to build up the team’s new framework. Formatter is just a fun enemy who can show up in a lot of places through that. I don’t want him to be important enough to be a real villain, after all. He’s a swarm of robots operating remotely, and he gets in the way a lot. Like many of these minor villains, Formatter probably has one or two stories where he hacks something particularly dangerous and gets upgraded to a full-scale Legion villain, but he’s usually not nearly powerful enough to qualify for villain status.