The Shrouded Hope

Perhaps the most mysterious of the costumed adventurers active in the United States, the Shrouded Hope seems, on the surface, little different from the rest of his fraternity: a highly trained athlete and detective, outfitted with funds and equipment, and wearing a mask to conceal his identity. But for some reason, most likely the continued reports and stores of writer and investigative reporter Thomas Heart, the Shrouded Hope's identity and real face (which has never been revealed, even to members of his own team) have become a topic of speculation, gossip and tabloid fodder across the mid-west.

The Secret Origin of the Shrouded Hope
Prince Edward, later Edward VIII, later still the Duke of Wales, carried on quite a bit before he met the "American Divorcee" who was central to his relinquishing of the British crown. These dalliances were often with married women, and at least once they had consequences. Those consequences moved to America, where she had a son, raised in both the US and the UK. The royal bastard was named Hope, Charles Anthony Hope, and by a quirk of genetics was the mirror image of his cousin, the future king of England.
     In early 1981 Hope visited London again for the first time in many years and became embroiled in a plot by the League of Nations, a group dedicated to the conquest of Europe. The plot required the kidnapping of Prince Charles and replacing him, and would have worked save that Hope was there to step in and replace Charles. This switch was unknown to all but a handful of the court. Hope acted in the prince's place while he and his allies worked behind the scenes with the MI13 agent Blake Silk to free the rightful heir. While Hope was wearing the prince's shoes, he wooed and won lady Diana Spencer for his royal cousin, as had been arranged before the kidnapping, but accidentally fell in love with the beautiful princess—an emotion she returned as she never would for the true Prince.
     After the victory of Hope and his allies, he returned to America, never to set foot in England again, for fear of the political and romantic repercussions. Once a year he receives a rose from his loving princess, delivered by Lord Silk. He knew he could not live a quiet life any longer, and adopted the guise of the Shrouded Hope, so that he could reenter the life of adventure without compromising his past, for if the world saw his face, the secret would surely be revealed....

The Real Origin of the Shrouded Hope
The boy who would become the Shrouded Hope was born in 1945, the first son of two members of the Cambridge set, the group of British communists that included many prominent upper-crust scions. The Soviets were using many of these people as spies, including the Hope's parents. In 1950 his parents were discovered, and were forced along with several others to flee to the USSR. There the future Shrouded Hope was raised as a proper British lad, if a communist proper British lad, by his parents. In his teens, he was recruited by the KGB as a spy and trained to be an infiltrator in high-ranking UK society. In 1967 he was sent to the West.
     Unfortunately for the Soviets, "the Sixties" were in full swing in London. The counterculture fascinated the Shrouded Hope, and he was soon hanging around with the Beatles and such. Moscow grew angry and demanded to know why he was associating with these long-haired perverts instead of the sons of dukes and prime ministers as he had been trained to do. Hope decided it was time to cut his ties with soul-repressing communism and defected, in doing so compromising and destroying the spy ring that he had been a part of.
     He wished to atone for the wrongs of his past, but knew that he would run into constant trouble from authorities, being a turncoat double agent, trained from childhood by the USSR. Using that very training, he adopted the code name the Shrouded Hope (for, even when shrouded by an Iron Curtain, hope exists) and began operating worldwide under a thousand false identities; a master of disguise, he displays his real face to no one, and no one would know if he were masked or not. His fortunes come from stolen Soviet espionage funds, and while he maintains the Communist distrust of religion drilled into him as a youth, he pays lip service to the Greek moon goddess, another huntress with changing faces.

The True Origin of the Shrouded Hope
There was a spy operating for one of the world powers, some say America, some say the UK, some say the Soviets, who discovered something that he shouldn't, the existence of a conspiracy running to the depths of the world's governments, gnawing at the roots of the world. He tried to inform his superiors. This conspiracy was the Coven, the black magicians that recently nearly destroyed the world. They were everywhere, and the spy, while he fled, could not escape them. The chase ended in Greece, where the Coven leaders summoned a daemon and had it kill him. The Daemon crushed his legs, snapped his spine, clawed off his face and threw him off the cliff into the sea, the full moon looking on, blood red and angry. The Coven leaders vanished, and the spy's body washed up on the score below.
     Hovering between life and death, he was visited by the spirit of Diana, the last remnants of the Greek goddess of the hunt, a leg of the trinity of the moon. She offered this spy life again, then infused his body with an aspect of her essence, in order to carry on his hunt. She healed his legs and spine, but his face was not salvageable. Just as well; when there are those who would kill hope, then hope must wear a shroud. He rose from the dead and began taking the hunt to the hunters.
     The Shrouded Hope knew that he was no match for the Coven leaders, couldn't reveal its existence to a skeptical world. But their agents, their tangled web throughout the governments and businesses—these he could find, and drive off, and let hope breathe again. With the death of the Coven, he has not abandoned the hunt. He has merely changed prey.

The Untold Origin of the Shrouded Hope
Michael "Hope" Diamond was one of CHIMERA's best agents. The strike team he led, code named Manticore, was keenly involved in a number of the agency's most intriguing missions. One such "assignment" pitted Diamond and Mossad agent Lisa Fox (see Justice Defenders: Alchemy) against the recently defected Infiltrator of the Soviet Union's Rainfall Project. Diamond was at the top of his game as America entered the 1980s.
    Diamond's luck changed in 1980. Another job saw Manticore and the British MI13 agent Lord Silk prevent the Killer Thunder suit from laying waste to Parliament. Diamond was forced to co-opt control of the suit to halt the impending destruction. Severely injured in the process, he died in a UK hospital before his wife Diana Ferris could say her farewells—she committed suicide 6 months later, nearly destroying Diamond's ghostly soul.
    Danger Asante had left the civilized world without a second thought to live out his life charting the Lost World. He had outlived not only all of his close friends but his moment in the sun as well. The world he had left behind had evolved beyond his pulp adventures into something... more. The world he reclaimed was populated by Amazon cultures, Bipedal Homosaurians, and Yeti. And he couldn't be happier.
    Until the Journeyman appeared with an offer... and a challenge. Step deeper into the Twilight at potential cost of his soul and use his willpower as another means of assault on Greer. From the Twilight Asante was able to assist Journeyman's earth-bound compatriots in the final battle against the Unseelee prince. The world knows of Stormchild's sacrifice but not of Asante's. His soul was ravaged and his body would have died if not for one last mystery from the Journeyman, who cured two ills with one action and granted both men another shot at the greatest adventure of them all.
    The Strand Magazine cannot identify the man who delivered Danger Asante's full maps of the Lost World to their offices, nor can the Ferris family fathom exactly who the mysterious man is that weeps over their loved one's grave... but the Shrouded Hope can.

A Note From Brian on The Shrouded Hope
The True Origin of the Shrouded Hope was provided by David "Phoenix Talon" Twiddy, with due acknowledgements to From Russia with Love; The Untold Origin of the Shrouded Hope comes to us from Daniel Harvey. If you have any origins for the Shrouded Hope, send them to Bec and we'll see about adding them to the continuity—as far as the Hope is concerned, any origin is as true as any other. I should note that the name The Shrouded Hope was first used in Superguy, as one of the alternate Masked Bruces in the Dash Away, Dash Away, Dash Away All! storyline. For anyone who knows that, I'm now acknowedging the debt. But it's such a cool name!

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