Halt Evil Doer!
Halt Evil Doer! is a third party M&M Superlink supplement for the Mutants & Masterminds rules system. It was created by Charles Phipps, Michael Suttkus, and Mike Lafferty. The first edition was a PDF-only release but a Second Edition has since been released. The book describes the setting of Heroic Earth where superheroes are faced against hordes of extremely well-funded and politically-powerful supervillains. The setting contains numerous Captain Ersatz characters mixed-in with a large number of original NPCs.
The book describes a setting where superheroes are linked to mythology and public domain characters. The modern age has superheroes appearing during the Golden Age of the 1940s, a Silver Age during the 1980s, an Iron Age during the 1990s, and now a Nickel Age for the 21st century. The setting is defined by a Bronze Age mentality with superheroes being genuinely heroic but overwhelmed by a large number of supervillains. The only reason the superheroes continue to prosper is primarily because the supervillains hate each other as much as they do the heroes.
Examples:
- Archnemesis Dad: Splotch's J. Jonah Jameson counterpart is his own father. Noah Stein canonically doesn't know Joel is Splotch, but it's not clear it would change his opinion much if he did.
- Anti-Villain: General Venom, Battle Czar, Red King, most of the Psychotic Seven are misguided but questionably evil.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Pulp-era magician hero the Amazing Weiss — better known to mundane history as Harry Houdini.
- Big Bad: Iron Khan, Death Mask III, General Venom, and Orkus are all archvillains that can carry entire campaigns.
- The Cape: Divinos is The Paragon of good, nobility, and hope that leads all of the others.
- Casting a Shadow: The Ink Spot legacy all can created shadow force constructs.
- Corrupt Church: The Church of Humanity, a fake made-up religion created by a anti superhuman bigot which states that metamen were created by aliens to destroy the world and non humans are all soulless monsters. (Also a Church of Happyology)
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Kenneth Kane, the secret identity of Death Mask III.
- The Cowl: Black Wing II (also a Badass Bookworm) is a genius scientist detective and martial arts master who fights crime!
- Devil, but No God: In the HED! Universe, Heaven has not been proven to exist, but Hell has been established as an existing realm. Mainly due to its ruler being a Big Bad.
- Distaff Counterpart: Angel Girl to Divinos, being his kid sister. Blood Wing to Black Wing, being his insane clone.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Darkness Before Time, Orkus.
- Evil Counterpart: Stain, who's Venom to Splotch's Spider-Man. He also has his own Carnage-like Even Eviler Counterpart, Bloodstain.
- Expy: Has its own page.
- Fantastic Racism: As with the Marvel universe, there is a great deal of mistrust against mutants (called metamen in this setting), with numerous hate groups and government agencies persecuting them.
- The Fair Folk: Their leader, ironically, is a human called the the Dark Undermaster.
- Great Gazoo: Mister Hoppy is an all powerful pooka who loves playing pranks on the heroes.
- Killer Rabbit: Again, Mister Hoppy, who looks like a little boy with rabbit ears but can rewrite reality.
- '90s Anti-Hero: Deconstructed with the Psychotic Seven (though they call themselves the Justicars)-by the time the game's "main" time period rolls around, they've been classified as a supervillain group after their thirst for justice at any price lead them to attempt an armed takeover of the US.
- No Communities Were Harmed: Freehold is Boston, Falconcrest is Chicago, New Amsterdam is New York and Los Dios is Los Angeles. The real cities exist as well, with New York in particular having a longstanding rivalry with New Amsterdam.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Averted. Most of the scientists in the setting have areas of special concern. Red King=Genetics, General Venom=Robotics, etc.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Subverted with the House of Serpents. They are a terrorist organization with superpowered members, but when it comes down to it, they're not even the most evil of the Anti-Villain groups.
- Patriotic Fervor: Deconstructed with General Venom and the House of Serpents; They honestly love America, which is why they plan to overthrow the government-they think it's long since mutated into a form that the Founding Fathers would be disgusted with.
- Public Domain Character: Dracula is a major villain. Dame Michelle Holmes of the Foundation for World Harmony (the SHIELD/Checkmate organisation) is a descendant of Sherlock Holmes, whereas the Death Masks (and Black Wing II) are descended from James Moriarty. Death Mask's equivalent of Latveria is the original Ruritania from The Prisoner of Zenda. And the Black Panther and Aquaman Expies are descended from Allan Quartermain and Captain Nemo, respectively.
- Self-Plagiarism: Many of the concepts in the setting would be recycled by the author into his The Supervillainy Saga books.
- Stable Time Loop: In this setting, Dracula (who was turned into a vampire by Orkus the Entropic Master in the 14th century) was the first vampire, ever. All other vampires are descended from Dracula or people turned into vampires by Dracula. However, vampires have existed on Earth for thousands of years. How can both of these facts be true? Well, Dracula had this little accident with Death Mask III's time machine once, and...
- Space Station: Divinos has one, which is a giant crystal palace in space.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Death's Head is a former Nazi, though he did this by time traveling back in time to try and take over the Third Reich.
- Vampire Monarch: Dracula is the leader of the Vampire Nation. He's also the first vampire, even though there were vampires long before he died; it's a bit timey wimey.
- Western Terrorists: The House of Serpents is actually a fairly realistic version-they're a lot like a widespread, advanced, and well-funded right-wing militia.
