the Tenacious Ten

This summary of the so-called Tenacious Ten has been compiled by Chase Storey, one of Agency 13's best fact-finders; while the others definitely contributed to this report, he's the guy that figured out all the secret links between these fellows, and 'read between the lines' to figure out just why they were assembled in the first place. He's still looking into why they remain together, though...* - Mike 013

So I'll bet you're wondering just what the heck this is all about, this silly 'Tenacious Ten' group. Well, the truth is stranger than fiction, to use an overly tired cliché, but the Tenacious Ten is a group of super-human goons collected by Elys, a powerful dragon from another plane of existence, to do her bidding here on earth. After all, dragons are kind of conspicuous when hanging out in the local grocery store...

So Elys, this giant red reptile, she's apparently born with a wild hair in her posterior, and finds herself enamored with the notion of technology. Sort of rare where she came from, since she was born in a realm of barren rock occasionally interrupted by caverns full of howling-mad winds, Elys decides that she wants to learn more about it. And, as dragons apparently tend to do, she wanted to hoard lots of this 'treasure'.

She then began wandering through various planes, looking for a hotbed of technological ingenuity. Elys' wanderings eventually saw her running amok in the dimension known as Mechanus, an apparent realm of immense clockwork, peopled by strange, geometric creatures called modrons. These things, beasts of flesh and gears, were something Elys had never imagined... but once she saw them, she was hooked.

She wanted to be like them. Some kids want to get a tattoo, some decide to ram metal rods through their genitals, but Elys, she wanted to utterly mangle her physiology, and become a creature of both magic and technology. A cyber-dragon, if you will. The only problem with this is that, on most planes of existence, even this Mechanus she likes so much, the know-how to accomplish this doesn't exist.

So Elys wandered further off the beaten track. In her travels and researches, Elys learned of a powerful technomage, a wizard who uses elements of both wizardry and invention to perform various tricks. Insinuating herself within this wizard's presence, Elys 'convinced' him to teach her everything he knew, and he did - dragons are hard to say no to. The trick was that even this fellow lacked what she needed.

One tasty sorcerous snack later, Elys ransacked the man's study, and further research revealed the identity of an even greater technomage, some fellow named Morbis. Now, this guy was one of the earth's greatest wizards about twenty thousand years ago, but he'd disappeared, oh, back then. Elys didn't know this until she showed up on our world, though, and boy was she annoyed when this became apparent.

She then decided that she was going to work out the details of her transformation on her own. Setting up shop over a city of lost humans nestled beneath the Antarctic ice shelf, Elys began leeching them of their advanced technology, gear they had since it takes a lot of high tech prowess to survive beneath a mile of ice at the bottom of the world, and started formulating the ultimate result of her transmogrification.

Elys occasionally required that somebody go out into the world of humans and collect stuff for her. As such, she conjured forth a familiar, a sort of mystic servant. This fellow, an oversized, super-powered wood gecko from another plane, was easily cowed into doing Elys' bidding. Treecko, as he called himself, thus began his career of thievery of items both minor and major for Elys - along with a few things for himself.

Similarly, Elys decided that she needed protection. Eventually, she reasoned, Treecko would make enemies in the world, enemies who would trace his actions to her. So, she sent Treecko on a quest, a quest to find all kinds of elite thugs to protect her from whatever enemies should surface to oppose her. She could easily kill most anything on the planet, mind you, but she figured 'Why should I have to?'

Ultimately, this strange little reptile, a living, breathing Pokémon (boy, would my ex-girlfriend's kids love that) from another universe, rooted out ten super-human people who would not necessarily be averse to working for Elys - or were at the very least easily tricked into doing her bidding. Once he'd identified them, Elys summoned them forth much like she did Treecko, and made them offers they couldn't refuse.

You don't live for a thousand years without learning to be a little bit persuasive, you know. Regardless, this investment in time and (Treecko's) effort paid off, after a fashion. You see, after learning that Morbis, that technomage she was after, had come back to life recently - if only to get killed mere hours later - Elys sent Treecko to his recent headquarters to recover anything of him that might be left.

He found a cloned, nano-tech filled hand of the wizard, which was sort of alive still, but was prevented from delivering the item by the gang of violent, unstable vigilantes that had ended Morbis' resurrection gambit previously. Irked by this, Elys decided to pay these fellows a visit, and did some considerable damage to them before they even knew what was going on; nobody'd mentioned a dragon, after all.

Once Elys left the area, these fellows interrogated Treecko, and through a series of misadventures, managed to find their way to her Antarctic hidey-hole. There, Elys put the Tenacious Ten to work, ordering them to violently get rid of these interlopers. As Treecko had planned, a bunch of them had personal ties to these vigilantes, and didn't have to be told twice - but as things turned out, the Ten weren't up to the task.

Annoyed that Treecko's hand-picked team failed, Elys whisked them off to safety, though she was just as likely to eat them for failing her. Since her defenses had finally failed, Elys then waited for these interlopers to make their way to her lair, and planned on dealing with them personally. This, too, didn't work out as she'd planned, and Elys ultimately died fighting these reckless maniacs. But that wasn't the end, oh no.

By this time, you see, Elys had constructed the mechanical framework, and a lot of the innards, of the cyber-mystic chassis she planned to merge her body with, and as she passed, her essence transported itself into this thing. It wasn't a perfect mesh, though, since the system required her flesh as well as her spirit to function indefinitely; as it sat, though, it would give her enough time to exact her vengeance!

And she did, too. Elys, having already wore those vigilantes out, really gave them a good trouncing in her heavily armed robotic chassis. Unfortunately for her, Elys' contingency plan was flawed, and her 'last laugh' fell apart on her as she tried to kill these jerks. So, after over a thousand years, the deviant dragon was finally put to rest, if in an exceedingly violent end to her many days.

With Elys gone, those vigilantes suddenly forgot about Treecko, though, and he escaped while they began to loot Elys' respectable hoard of riches and supercomputers. Violently angry that they, not he, were stealing her loot, Treecko decided to get vengeance of his own. If anybody - anybody - had earned that booty, it was him. With this in mind, he began to seek out the Tenacious Ten anew...!

Masterminds Behind the Ten:

the Tenacious Ten Proper:

* Of course, it should be noted that the primary purpose of the Tenacious Ten, in an 'out of character' sort of sense, is that they were put together as grade 'a' antagonists for the heroes of the v13 electronic mail role playing game. As such, one can include or disallow the presence of the Tenacious Ten in their own games, if attempting to utilize the v13 world, or just parts of it for their own campaigns.

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