Riddick

Real Name: Richard B. Riddick

Identity/Class: Human subspecies (Furyan)

Occupation: Escaped convict, murderer

Affiliations: Imam, 'Jack' (a.k.a. Kyra), Aereon, Caroline Fry, Paris P Ogilvie, Sharon 'Shazza' Montgomery

Enemies: Johns, Toombs, Night-creatures, Necromongers (especifically Lord Marshal, Vaako)

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: mobile across interstellar space, some centuries in the future- around 26th century

First Appearance: Pitch Black (2000)

Powers/Abilities: Can see in the dark due to genetic surgery on his eyeballs; capable of withstanding the pain involved in dislocating such limbs as arms or brief periods; is stronger, more agile and has greater endurance than the human norm. Highly skilled fighter.

History: Riddick was born to the Furyans, a race of warriors. When he was an infant, almost the entire Furyan population was massacred on the orders of a young warrior named Zhylaw who would later become known as the Lord Marshal of the Necromongers. The future Lord Marshal had heard a prophecy that he would one day be slain by a Furyan warrior, and sought to prevent this fate by killing them all first. He was merciless in his butchery, going so far as to have the babies strangled with their own umbilical chords. Despite the extent of his plans, however, the Lord Marshal had missed one Furyan baby - Riddick.

He was found in in a liquor-store trash bin (presumably by visitors to the Furyan homeworld), an umbilical chord wrapped around his neck, but still alive nonetheless. He grew up with this knowledge, leaving him with the firm believe that God existed, and that Riddick hated him. As he grew, Riddick went all over the universe, committing an unknown number of murders, ending up being wanted on five different worlds in three different solar systems. He never killed for the thrill of it, but simply to overcome any obstacles standing in the way of his freedom. Despite all the advanced weaponry in his day, Riddick's traditional weapons were 'shivs', or daggers, with which he commonly gutted his opponents, although he certainly wasn't averse to guns if the need arose. During his stay in Butcher's Bay, a prison where then inmates never see the light of day, the surgeon-preacher Pope-Joe introduced an unidentified chemical to Riddick's bloodstream, allowing him to see in the dark.

Over time, he became an especially cunning and dangerous character, regarded by many as the most lethal man alive, and those who knew him rarely underestimated him. Naturally, several bounty hunters made it their missions to track him down for the money, favouring bringing him in alive due to his value being worth twice as much if he was in that state. He was eventually captured by a bounty hunter known as Johns, who posed as a policeman to divert suspicion from himself, and was dumped on a passenger ship heading through space. However, the ship was caught in an asteroid storm, killing the captain and most of the passengers, leaving the few survivors crashed on a desert planet with three suns - a definite problem for Riddick's night-vision. Using sun-filtering goggles, however, he managed to effect an escape, although he was then captured shortly after one of the survivors was killed, being a natural suspect.

However, the survivors soon realised that there was something else on the planet besides them, and, despite the reluctance of Johns, Riddick was freed from the ship on condition that he didn't use shivs and followed Johns' orders. They eventually tracked down an abandoned mining base on the planet, which included an abandoned shuttle that they could use to get off the planet, but there were two problems. Firstly, the shuttle required five power cells from their vessel to work properly, which would take a while to transport across. Secondly, the creatures that were on the planet only came out in darkness- and the planet was approaching a period that only occurred every twenty-two years, when all the planets in the system were in a stright line from each other, depriving their world of any kind of sunlight. They tried to finish the job before the eclipse occurred, but they only managed to get one cell to the ship before the eclipse took place, and they had already lost three people by that time. However, they did manage to destroy one of the creatures, and discovered that light was actually harmful to them, which gave Fry, the ship's pilot and unofficial 'captain' the makings of a plan. They would collect together anything they could find that produced light, gather the four remaining necessary fuel cells onto some metal plates, along with a power source for some of the lights, and then head for the ship, with Riddick leading the way to the ship with his night-vision.

However, even with this plan, the journey didn't go all that smoothly. Three more people were killed by the creatures, and Imam and Jack, two of the other survivors, were left trapped in a cave while Riddick headed off to the ship on his own, with Fry in hot pursuit. However, on the bright side, Johns was killed when Riddick threw him in front of one of the creatures after Johns suggested he kill Jack to buy them time to get away; even Riddick's criminal conscience didn't like the idea of killing someone for no real reason. He nearly left Imam and Jack to die on the planet, but Fry made it clear she wouldn't leave them to die, and that she'd die for them if she had to. This convinced Riddick to help her, and he got Jack and Imam into the shuttle, although Fry sacrificed herself returning to help an injured Riddick reach the shuttle. Affected by the death, maybe more than even he knew, Riddick took off in the shuttle with Jack and Imam, but only after hitting the creatures with a large burst of light from the ship's engines.

Five years after that, Riddick was living on an ice planet, having left Jack and Imam to make lives of their own, when he was attacked by a bounty hunter called Toombs. Since Imam was the only person who knew where he might have gone, Riddick instantly tracked Imam to the planet Helion Prime, where Imam revealed why he had given away Riddick's location. The whole universe was being threatened by the Necromongers, a dark army making a pilgrimage to their promised land, 'Underverse', a collection of dark stars and planets, who either killed everyone on the planets they found, or turned them into Necromongers themselves. Their leader was the Holy Half-Dead Lord Marshal Zhylaw, the only person alive to have gone to the Underverse and returned, stronger, stranger, half-alive, and half... something else. The full extent of his powers beside enhanced strength was unknown, but he was capable of extracting other's souls, and also moving at superhuman speeds, although his soul briefly left his body during that time.

At first Riddick was unwilling to get involved, stating that it wasn't his fight. However, he started to get a bit more interested in fighting them after Imam was killed by a Necromonger; Riddick rarely met people in the universe who he didn't end up killing, and he didn't like it when someone killed what few friends he did have. He managed to take out a few of the Necromongers, but was still captured and scanned by the Lord Marshall, who ordered his death upon discovering that he was a Furyan. As always, Riddick managed to escape, but was captured by Toombs, who had escaped the ice planet, and taken to the Slam, a prison on the planet Crematoria, where the twilight was tolerable, but where otherwise the surface was lethal, with night falling to -300 degrees Celsius and the sunrise always measuring over 700 degrees Celsius. The prison, fortunately, was underground, so the sun wouldn't be an issue for Riddick at the immediate moment, but it would still pose a problem for when he tried to escape. While there, Riddick met up with Jack, now a grown woman called Kyra, who was angry at him for leaving her behind all those years ago, as well as unintentionally leading her on a false trail while trying to acquire nightvision like his.

Fortunately, things managed to work out a bit better between them after Riddick saved Kyra from an attacking guard, impaling the man on a damaged teacup. Toombs and his crew then got into a fight with the prison governors after they learned the Necromongers were after Riddick, this allowing Riddick, Kyra, and a few other convicts the chance to escape. However, the cart that would have taken them to the only remaining spaceship was damaged, and with the prison wardens already some way ahead on the underground path, there was only one alternative; race along the surface, ahead of the sunrise and behind the night, and hope they'd be in time. They managed to get to the ship, but then had to deal with a large number of Necromongers who'd gotten there first. Despite their managing to take down several of them before the sun hit, Riddick was knocked out and assumed dead, and Kyra was taken back to Helion by the Necromongers. Fortunately, Riddick was rescued by the Necromonger 'purifier'- the man mainly in charge of converting new Necromongers - who revealed that he himself was a Furyan, who had been waiting for the chance to direct the last of his race against the Lord Marshall. The Purifier then walked out in the deadly sunlight, leaving Riddick alone to take the ship back to Helion and try to save Kyra.

However, upon arriving on Helion, Riddick swiftly discovered he was too late; Kyra had become a Necromonger. The Lord Marshall gave Riddick his choices; if Riddick fought the Lord Marshall and fell, he would die there and then, never to rise again, but if Riddick converted to a Necromonger, he would live, and be united with Kyra again. Riddick, shaken and enraged at the Lord Marshall for destroying the only people in the universe he could call friends, threw a knife at the Lord Marshall's head, but only cut his ear and a cheek. The battle began, but Riddick was clearly at a disadvantage; he got in a few good hits, but the Lord Marshall's superior strength and speed gave him a distinct advantage. He even attempted to take Riddick's soul at one point, but Riddick vowed that the Lord Marshall would never claim that prize, and threw him off again. Eventually, the Lord Marshall got him in a headlock, and would have strangled him if Kyra - still loyal to Riddick - hadn't impaled the Lord Marshall on a spear at the cost of her own life. Weakened by Kyra's blow, Lord Marshal asked his aide Vaako for help. Vaako instead picked up an axe and prepared to kill the Marshal so he could become the next Necromonger Lord, spurred by his wife's scheming. Lord Marshal used his astral abilities to dodge Vaako's swing... only to run right into Riddick's waiting knife. Riddick drove the blade deep into the Lord Marshall's brain, killing him once and for all. After Kyra died in his arms, revealing that she had always been on his side, Riddick realised something he hadn't been expecting; according to the Necromonger belief of 'You keep what you kill', having killed the Lord Marshall, Riddick was now in charge of the entire dark army.

Comments: Played by Vin Diesel

Profile by David Spence. Thanks to Eric Warren, Jonathan Ojedo, Justin Walter and John Ware for corrections.

CLARIFICATIONS: None.

Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.

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