Green Knight
Biographical Details
- Full Name
- Timothy "Tim" Green.
- Born
- New York City; 20 February 1954.
- Died
- Unknown.
- Relatives
- Sebastian Green (father, deceased); Mary Green (mother, deceased).
- Occupation
- Inventor, industrialist.
- Associates
- Founder member of the Defense League of America; President of Green Industries.
Description
Caucasian male; height (without armour): 5'9" (175cm); height (wearing armour): 6'3" (190cm); weight (without armour): 165lbs (75kg); weight (wearing armour): 405lbs (184kg); hair: black; eyes: brown.
History
Tim Green's father, Sebastian Green, founded the Green Munitions and Engineering Plant in New Jersey in 1937, backed by the promise of government contracts. Green was no engineer, but was a shrewd businessman and hired the best in the field. He soon built the company into one of international repute. During the war, Green was one of the United States' main defence contractors, changing the company name to Green Industries.
Green married in 1950, when he was forty five years of age. The Greens' only son, Timothy, was born four years later. The boy received excellent schooling and it was expected that he would show his father's business genius. Instead, Tim showed a remarkable mechanical aptitude and studied physics and mechanical engineering at Harvard, earning his doctorate in 1976.
Beginning in 1977, Tim Green became a vice president in Green Industries, though he spent more time with his men in the labs and workshops than in the board room. He also gained a reputation as a playboy and a philanderer. In addition to these activities, he raced formula one cars (usually his own designs) and piloted himself around the globe. The world media classified him as a reckless hotshot and expected him to burn himself out before he inherited his father's company. When his parents died in an aeroplane accident in 1979, he inherited a huge multinational company with factories in twenty countries and an annual turnover amounting to billions. Business experts predicted that he would lose control of the company within a year.
Thanks to his father's friends in the board room and the loyalty and respect of his top engineers, the playboy inventor did not lose control of his company. Instead, it continued to prosper and grow. Green's personal fortune was considerable and he was a widely acclaimed scientist. In addition to being financial and technical head of Green Industries, he acted as a scientific consultant to NASA and the Pentagon. He personally patented a considerable number inventions, sufficient for the press to label him "The Modern Edison".
In 1982, Green began work on a special project, an armoured battle suit that he hoped to sell to the American military. The battle suit was entirely his own pet project, worked on in secret at his own home and in sealed workshops at his New Jersey plant. He had to invent many new techniques and non-standard components from scratch, and began to realise that the eventual cost of the finished prototype would make large scale production impossible.
Green never intended to become a hero. He designed the battle suit so he himself could wear it, but only for demonstration purposes. He first wore the completed suit on its completion in 1983, when he demonstrated it for the U.S. army at a test site in New Mexico. As he suspected, the army rejected the design on the basis of cost and maintenance difficulties. Green returned to his New Jersey plant with the suit. As his jet circled the factory, waiting for clearance to land at the adjacent airfield, one wing of the building exploded and began a raging chemical fire. With no thought for danger, Green swiftly donned his suit and flew down to fight the fire. The suit had just survived every weapon the army could throw at it—there was no way a simple inferno could affect its performance. In the suit, Green worked to free trapped men and fly them to safety. He entered the very centre of the blaze in order to shut off and remove flammable chemicals. By the time the fire department arrived, the fire was almost under control and Green had saved many lives. Taking his helmet off, he held an impromptu press conference, announcing that the suit had been designed as a weapon but was in the process of being modified into a multi-purpose rescue unit.
That night, members of the terrorist organisation know as the Anarchists attacked Green as he worked on his suit. They were intent on capturing both Green and the suit. Luckily, he was forewarned sufficiently to don the suit and defeat them with ease. When he turned the terrorists over to the FBI, he began to realise that the suit was in fact too dangerous to allow into mass production. He held a second press conference, announcing to the nation that he would produce no more suits. The prototype would remain in his possession, to be used only by himself in grave emergencies. Although he still had no intention of being a full-time hero, he jokingly dubbed himself "The Green Knight", a label that the press soon adopted.
Over the next few weeks, Green carried the suit with him constantly, afraid that it would be stolen. He was twice attacked by foreign agents, being forced to fight them off as the Green Knight. On a third occasion, he took the initiative in capturing several crooks involved in a shoot-out with police in Washington, DC. The press began comparing him with the Defender, who had recently begun operating in New York, calling them both "super heroes".
The Green Knight's first clash with a super-powered villain was a public fight with Neutron above the streets of Los Angeles. Although Neutron escaped him, Green was firmly on the path to becoming one of the modern wave of heroes.
Early in his career, The Green Knight was approached by Supernova and the Defender, who were about to confront the Aztec Warrior. He joined with them in order to defeat the villain and suggested they remained together as a team. Though the other two demurred, he persisted and thus the Defense League of America was born.
Green used his fortune to finance the League, providing a headquarters and specialised equipment, much of which he designed himself. He also began a media campaign to publicise the League. When it became awkward for the League to be apparently owned by Green Industries, he set the team up as an independent, self-financing, non-profit organisation. Green was naturally seen as the leader of the Defense League and became their public spokesman. Unfortunately, he could not always supply the required commitment that being team leader required. This caused some friction within the League, particularly with the Defender. Eventually, by mutual consent, he turned the leadership of the team over to the Defender.
The Green Knight remained been a member, off and on, throughout the history of the Defense League. During that time he fought many menaces both solo and with the League. At the same time, he continued to be a noted public figure and accomplished inventor and businessman. Green Industries continued to grow and prosper.
Psychological Profile
Green was comfortable with his image as a playboy and happy to lead his very public lifestyle. He spent money freely, throwing show-business-style parties and buying expensive toys such as yachts and jets. However, he was a good businessman and knew when to invest wisely and when to speculate on a new venture. He was also a philanthropist and contributed out of his personal fortune to many charities.
Green had always been personally reckless, driving fast cars, boats and planes. This provided much of the initial incentive to don the Green Knight battlesuit himself during its initial demonstration (rather than employing somebody else to wear it). He undoubtedly loved the challenge and adrenaline rush of being the Green Knight. But this does not mean he wore the suit purely for thrills or for publicity. He was truly dedicated to helping people and laid his life on the line more than once to protect others.
In combat, Green was cool and practical. He was intimately familiar with his armour's capabilities and used it intelligently and efficiently.
Skills and Abilities
Tim Green had no personal superhuman powers; all of his abilities came from the Green Knight armour.
Green was an accomplished inventor and well versed in many scientific disciplines. He was perhaps the greatest all-round technical innovator of his time. In addition to his design skills, he was a competent technician, able to build anything he designed. He had an uncanny ability to take assorted components and produce useful devices from them. He often improvised weapons and gadgets from apparent junk in the middle of a battle.
Green was also an expert computer programmer.
Green was a skilled pilot, motor boat pilot, and racing driver, with the exceptional reflexes those occupations require. He was exceptionally fit and played many sports for recreation. He was an above average fighter out of his armour, though he had no special combat training, always claiming he was too busy to take up the Defender's standing offer of martial arts training for any of the League.
Equipment
The Green Knight armour's design evolved over the years. New systems were added at various times, and often removed when they proved inefficient or of limited use. The following therefore describes just one configuration that was in use in the period 1988–9.
The main structure of the armour was of magnetically bonded crystal alloys, ensuring that the suit was lightweight and flexible while retaining great strength. The suit was totally impervious to normal blows, bullets and blades and could survive any explosive force up to and including direct hits from anti-tank shells without being breached and with minimum harm to the wearer. To supplement this protection, the suit had a built in force field that formed an all-over barrier 2cm from the armour's surface. Although this could be overloaded by sufficient impact, it recharged in seconds, thus forming an almost constant barrier around the armour. The force field caused a significant drain on the main power reserves of the suit, and therefore was only activated when absolutely necessary. However, the field was able to absorb all energy from laser, heat, and electrically-based attacks striking it and use this energy to recharge the suit's batteries.
Integrated magno-dynamic servo-motors amplified the wearer's strength by a factor of 200 or more, allowing the Green Knight to lift almost fifty tons under optimal conditions. When connected to a sufficient external power source, the maximum strength could be almost doubled for a short period.
High-efficiency micro turbines in the boots, belt and backpack, operating on ramjet principles, gave the armour comparable acceleration to an interceptor aircraft and much greater manoeuvrability than any aircraft. The Green Knight could travel at trans-sonic speeds for several hours before its energy reserves were exhausted. At lesser speeds, the suit had sufficient manoeuvrability to negotiate the insides of buildings while in flight. It could reach full airspeed while loaded with 20 tons and still maintain high sub-sonic speeds when at its maximum lifting limit, though maximum flight range would be reduced when carrying heavy loads (and particularly non-aerodynamic loads).
The armour was sealed to withstand airless environments, as well as high pressures (such as at ocean depths) and both high and low temperatures. Oxygen was recycled with almost 100% efficiency, giving the wearer many hours of breathable air. The suit could operate at full efficiency at an ocean depths of up to 1000m and could protect the wearer at four times that depth.
The armour was equipped with numerous sensory enhancement devices and detection systems. These includes infra-red scanners, ambient light enhancement, telescopic sights, computer image enhancement, long distance radar, and short-range, high-frequency sonar.
There was a full-band two-way radio with automatic tracking, scanning and direction finding capability. The suit had a small launcher to fire a miniature homing beacon that could magnetically attach to a target. The beacon would transmit over a distance of several kilometres.
Other sensors in the suit were designed to measure and map ambient energy fields and detect large outputs of energy at close range.
The suit was equipped with full inertial and satellite guidance systems.
All of these sensory inputs could be overlaid over the wearer's normal field of view by means of a heads-up display projected on the helmet's vision lenses.
The suit was invisible to most radar tracking and could detect most forms of active scanning and radar lock-on attempts.
The Green Knight's primary weapon systems were micro-rocket launchers mounted on his right wrist. The rockets were semi-active homing, supersonic missiles with a practical tracking range of 160m. These tiny missiles had three warhead types: concussion, gas and armour-piercing, all fired through the same launcher and selected at the moment of firing. Despite their small size, the launcher's magazine could only carry 24 of these missiles, typically eight of each type.
The secondary weapon system was a high-frequency, rapid-fire pulsed particle beam emitter mounted on the left wrist. The destructive power of the beam was controllable, and high-density capacitors allowed for extended bursts with minimum cooling and recharging time. Maximum effective range was limited to 40m.
The armour had a powerful tractor beam that could pull, push, tow, or otherwise manoeuvre a single object of up to 50 tons. The tractor beam had a range of 40 metres. The tractor beam had a high energy requirement, and although it could be used continuously for several minutes, few other active suit systems could operate simultaneously with it. The Green Knight could fly with a tractored object, with speeds limited as if he was physically carrying the weight.
All of the armour's systems were cybernetically controlled, responding directly to the thoughts of the wearer detected by circuitry in the helmet. The cybernetic systems were tuned to the mind of Tim Green and would not function for any other wearer (though this did not stop resourceful villains taking control of the armour on at least two occasions).
Onboard computers automatically monitored all systems and provided the Green Knight with necessary information on the heads-up display in the visor. In addition to onboard memory, radio links allowed data to be transferred to and from the main Defense League and Green Industries computers. All weapons systems could be computer assisted and benefit from computer-aided targeting and timing. In addition, an advanced autopilot was engaged automatically upon the Tim Green falling unconscious inside the armour. In this eventuality, the computer would accelerate the Green Knight away to what it evaluated as a safe location, avoiding obstacles, and land the suit.
The Green Knight armour was powered by a set of high-density capacitors, supplemented by an array of solar energy convertors designed with the help of John Miller. The suit could operate at peak output for four hours before recharging, and operate "housekeeping" functions in passive or cruise mode indefinitely under solar power. The batteries were designed to be easily replaced without removing the suit, or could be recharged in a number of ways using a set of inbuilt adaptors and power convertors.
Resources
When necessary, Tim Green could call on a personal fortune of several million dollars, and much more if he was to liquidate assets. He owned several houses, cars, a yacht and private jet. He had an extensive private art collection. He was the majority shareholder in Green Industries, a multi-billion dollar corporation, and had interests in several other companies. He was one of the richest individuals in America.
With the resources of his company, he owned several manufacturing plants and design laboratories worldwide. Green Industries had access to ships, vehicles, aircraft and even a space shuttle and launch facility.