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So it appears our resident Walkin' Dude is in need of a few more changes to his profile. I figure that since the Crimson King revisions seem to have stalled for now, it'll be worthwhile to get these proposals out of the way in the meantime.
Like always, there's a lot to read through here, so bear with me.
Building level+ Magical AP
According to Weekly and Kaltias, generating cloud-to-ground lightning bolts requires just barely enough power for a Building level+ AP rating, a fact I wasn't aware of until yesterday. Here's a scan of Flagg generating a lightning strike while flying in the form of a raven.
Not much else to say. Pretty straightforward, honestly.
Technological Manipulation
Thanks to his telepathic powers, Flagg can assume control of technology with his mind. Below is a quote of him shutting down an electronically-operated security lock on a prison door.
As the text implies, the "key" in Flagg's hand (which is just a trick-stone that Flagg transmuted into one) was just his means of psychologically messing with Lloyd Henreid. Lloyd realizes this himself when he sees the smile on Flagg's face.
He can psychically seize control of several machines at once. Here's him manipulating hundreds of speakers in order to order someone around:
For the record, these speakers didn't have any power running through them. The only location with running power in The Stand was the city of Las Vegas, and Nadine wasn't there when this happened. So essentially, he reactivated these machines with his psychic power alone.
The act of him so much as speaking can cause circuits to blow out when he's not restraining himself:
Other lesser psychics in DT are capable of similar feats of manipulating technology. Sheemie Ruiz, a fairly mid-tier psychic by DT standards who's decidedly not in the same league as Flagg, could use his powers to quite easily reanimate and control one of the Old Ones' robotic horses that the Crimson King's minions had scavenged for their cause.
Dinky Earnshaw, another psychic far below the likes of both Sheemie and Flagg, states that he and his other Breaker allies have no trouble manipulating and tricking the technology used by the Warriors of the Scarlet Eye in the Devar-Toi, and that the real trouble comes from not burning out said technology in the process:
Ted Brautigan, yet another telepath whose powers are inferior to Sheemie's and Flagg's, had already confirmed prior to this that he and Earnshaw were consistently foiling the Warriors' tech. This includes video surveillance equipment, as well as technology specifically designed to monitor the Breakers and detect their psychic output.
TL;DR: Not only is Flagg shown to have his own psychic powers that work on technology, but other lesser psychics are explictly capable of using their powers on tech as well.
Standard Equipment: Maerlyn's Grapefruit and Black Thirtee
Before they were destroyed, these orbs of Maerlyn's Rainbow were things that Flagg used quite commonly throughout the series. Though he doesn't always have access to them (I'll leave a further note on that at the end of this section), he is recurrently seen with them throughout his many appearances in the DT continuity.
The demon of Maerlyn's Grapefruit is Flagg's direct ally, and was at one point his lover as well. And when John Farson and other characters aren't using the Grapefruit itself (out of their own desire to or not), it usually rests in his possession.
She/it worked for him quite consistently during the time of John Farson's rebellion. Here's a fairly obvious example of that.
Their relationship as lovers...kind of fell apart. But he's still seen with the Grapefruit a good number of times. At the tail-end of Wizard and Glass, he brings it to Roland and his ka-tet, mostly for the sake of using it as a threat.
In the 2017 Dark Tower film, he is seen using it agai, hooking it up to a machine which projects the events he wishes to observe in a holographic manner. (Yes, the movie made it a lot smaller for some reason.)
Black Thirteen is the most powerful of the orbs in the Rainbow, and Flagg has used it for his own purposes many times. In this scan, we see Flagg using Black Thirteen to communicate with the Crimson King.
Here we see him carrying it yet again, forcibly giving it to Father Callahan so that it can basically serve as a trap for Roland and company when they arrive at Calla Bryn Sturgis.
In this scene from the 2017 film, we see him using Black Thirteen in order to spy on Roland from Mid-World while the latter is in Keystone Earth. (Yes, this one is smaller too.)
Another one that's pretty clear-cut, if you ask me.
(Now for that note I promised: While I believe these items should be included within Flagg's standard equipment, he does not have access to them all of the timethanks to plot-related bullshit, and both of said orbs are shown to be blatantly sentient throughout numerous pieces of Dark Tower media. As such, I suggest that this be a case similar to Valkyrie Cai and Master Chief where it must be specified whether or not these items are given to him in whichever VS threads he's featured in.)
Summary
Like always, there's a lot to read through here, so bear with me.
Building level+ Magical AP
According to Weekly and Kaltias, generating cloud-to-ground lightning bolts requires just barely enough power for a Building level+ AP rating, a fact I wasn't aware of until yesterday. Here's a scan of Flagg generating a lightning strike while flying in the form of a raven.
Not much else to say. Pretty straightforward, honestly.
Technological Manipulation
Thanks to his telepathic powers, Flagg can assume control of technology with his mind. Below is a quote of him shutting down an electronically-operated security lock on a prison door.
| The black stone disappeared into his clenched fist again. And when the fist opened, Lloyd's wondering eyes beheld a flat silver key with an ornate grip lying on the stranger's palm. "My—dear—God!" Lloyd croaked. "You like that?" the dark man asked, pleased. "I learned that trick from a massage parlor honey in Secaucus, New Jersey, Lloyd. Secaucus, home of the world's greatest pig farms." He bent and seated the key in the lock of Lloyd's cell. And that was strange, because as well as his memory served him (which right now was not very well), these cells had no keyways, because they were all opened and shut electronically. But he had no doubt that the silver key would work. Just as it rattled home, Flagg stopped and looked at Lloyd, grinning slyly, and Lloyd felt despair wash over him again. It was all just a trick.'' | ||
~ The Stand |
| "Now you aren't very bright," Flagg said, "but you are the first. And I have the feeling you might be very loyal. You and I, Lloyd, we're going to go far. It's a good time for people like us. Everything is starting up for us. All I need is your word." "W-word?" "That we're going to stick together, you and me. No denials. No falling asleep on guard duty. There will be others very soon—they're on their way west already—but for now, there's just us. I'll give you the key if you give me your promise." "I ... promise," Lloyd said, and the words seemed to hang in the air, vibrating strangely. He listened to that vibration, his head cocked to one side, and he could almost see those two words, glowing as darkly as the aurora borealis reflected in a dead man's eye. Then he forgot about them as the tumblers made their half-turns inside the lockbox. The next moment the lockbox fell at Flagg's feet, tendrils of smoke seeping from it. "You're free, Lloyd. Come on out." Unbelieving, Lloyd touched the bars hesitantly, as if they might burn him; and indeed, they did seem warm. But when he pushed, the door slid back easily and soundlessly. He stared at his savior, those burning eyes. Something was placed in his hand. The key. "It's yours now, Lloyd."'' | ||
~ The Stand |
He can psychically seize control of several machines at once. Here's him manipulating hundreds of speakers in order to order someone around:
| She was surrounded by poles, steel poles like sentries, each of them five feet high, each bearing a matched set of drive-in speakers. There was gravel underfoot, but grass and dandelions were growing up through it. She guessed the Holiday Twin hadn't been doing much business since the middle of June or so. You could say that it had been kind of a dead summer for the entertainment biz. "Why am I here?" she whispered. It was only talking aloud, talking to herself; she expected no answer. So when she was answered, a shriek of terror pealed from her throat. All the speakers fell off the speaker poles at once and onto the weed-strewn gravel. The sound they made was a huge, amplified CHUNK!— the sound of a dead body striking gravel. "NADINE," the speakers blared, and it was his voice, and how she shrieked then! Her hands flew to her head, her palms clapped themselves over her ears, but it was all the speakers at once and there was no hiding from that giant voice, which was full of fearful hilarity and dreadful comic lust. "NADINE, NADINE, OH HOW I LOVE TO LOVE NADINE, MY PET, MY PRETTY—" "Stop it!" she shrieked back, straining her vocal cords with the force of her cry, and still her voice was so small compared with that giant's bellow. And yet, for a moment the voice did stop. There was silence. The fallen speakers looked up at her from the gravel like the rugose eyes of giant insects. Nadine's hands slowly came down from her ears. You've gone insane, she comforted herself. That's all it is. The strain of waiting... and Harold's games ... finally planting the explosive ... all of it has finally driven you over the edge, dear, and you've gone crazy. It's probably better this way. But she hadn't gone crazy, and she knew it. This was far worse than being crazy. As if to prove this, the speakers now boomed out in the stern yet almost prissy voice of a principal reprimanding the student body over the high school intercom for some prank they had all played together. "NADINE. THEY KNOW." "They know," she parroted. She wasn't sure who they were, or what they knew, but she was quite sure it was inevitable. "YOU'VE BEEN STUPID. GOD MAY LOVE STUPIDITY; I DO NOT." The words crackled and rolled away into the late afternoon. Her clothes clung soddenly to her skin, her hair lay lankly against her pallid cheeks, and she began to shiver. Stupid, she thought. Stupid, stupid. I know what that word means. I think. I think it means death. "THEY KNOW EVERYTHING ... EXCEPT THE SHOEBOX. THE DYNAMITE. " Speakers. Speakers everywhere, staring up at her from the white gravel, peeking at her from clusters of dandelions closed against the rain. "GO TO SUNRISE AMPHITHEATER. STAY THERE. UNTIL TOMORROW NIGHT. UNTIL THEY MEET. AND THEN YOU AND HAROLD MAY COME. COME TO ME."'' | ||
~ The Stand |
| Now she was in the alley the cars drove through to get into the drive-in and the ticket stand, looking like a small toll-booth, was just ahead of her. She was going to get out. She was going to get away. Her mouth softened in gratitude. Behind her, hundreds of speakers blared into life all at once, and now the voice was singing, a horrid, tuneless singing: "I'LL BE SEEING YOU ... IN ALL THE OLD FAMILIAR PLACES... THAT THIS HEART OF MINE EMBRACES ... ALL DAY THROOOOO ... " Nadine screamed in her newly cracked voice. Huge, monstrous laughter came then, a dark and sterile cackling which seemed to fill the earth. "DO WELL, NADINE," the voice boomed. "DO WELL, MY FANCY, MY DEAR ONE." Then she gained the road and fled back toward Boulder at the Vespa's top speed, leaving the disembodied voice and staring speakers behind ... but carrying them with her in her heart, for then, for always.'' | ||
~ The Stand |
The act of him so much as speaking can cause circuits to blow out when he's not restraining himself:
| He had sat on a hundred different Committees of Responsibility. He had walked in demonstrations against the same dozen companies on a hundred different college campuses. He wrote the questions that most discomfited those in power when they came to lecture, but he never asked the questions himself; those power merchants might have seen his grinning, burning face as some cause for alarm and fled from the podium. Likewise he never spoke at rallies because the microphones would scream with hysterical feedback and circuits would blow. But he had written speeches for those who did speak, and on several occasions those speeches had ended in riots, overturned cars, student strike votes, and violent demonstrations. | ||
~ The Stand |
Dinky Earnshaw, another psychic far below the likes of both Sheemie and Flagg, states that he and his other Breaker allies have no trouble manipulating and tricking the technology used by the Warriors of the Scarlet Eye in the Devar-Toi, and that the real trouble comes from not burning out said technology in the process:
| "And Sheemie's your teleport," Eddie said. "You guys help him—facilitate for him, to use the Tedster's word—and you cover up for him by fudging the records, somehow—" "They have no idea how easy it is to cook their telemetry," Dinky said, almost laughing. "Partner, they'd be shocked. The hard part is making sure we don't tip over the whole works."'' | ||
~ DT7: The Dark Tower |
| Most of the Damli House basement was a large room jammed with equipment. Not all of the stuff worked, and they had no use for some of the instruments that did (there was plenty they didn't even understand), but they were very familiar with the surveillance equipment and the telemetry that measured darks : units of expended psychic energy. The Breakers were expressly forbidden from using their psychic abilities outside of The Study, and not all of them could, anyway. Many were like men and women so severely toilet-trained that they were unable to urinate without the visual stimuli that assured them that yes, they were in the toilet, and yes, it was all right to let go. Others, like children who aren't yet completely toilet-trained, were unable to prevent the occasional psychic outburst. This might amount to no more than giving someone they didn't like a transient headache or knocking over a bench on the Mall, but Pimli's men kept careful track, and outbursts that were deemed "on purpose" were punished, first offenses lightly, repeat offenses with rapidly mounting severity. And, as Pimli liked to lecture to the newcomers (back in the days when there had been newcomers), "Be sure your sin will find you out." Finli's scripture was even simpler: Telemetry doesn't lie. Today they found nothing but transient blips on the telemetry readouts. It was as meaningless as a four-hour audio recording of some group's farts and burps would have been. The videotapes and the swing-guards' daybooks likewise produced nothing of interest. "Satisfied, sai?" Finli asked, and something in his voice caused Pimli to swing around and look at him sharply. "Are you?"'' | ||
~ DT7: The Dark Tower |
| Then I can go back to the Devar-Toi, where my job isn't just protecting myself but protecting Sheemie and Dink, too. Making sure that when we go about our covert business, it appears to the guards and their ******* telemetry that we were right where we belonged the whole time: in our suites, in The Study, maybe taking in a movie at the Gem or grabbing ice cream sodas at Henry Graham's Drug Store and Fountain afterward. It also means continuing to Break, and every day I can feel the Beam we're currently working on—Bear and Turtle—bending more and more. | ||
~ DT7: The Dark Tower |
Standard Equipment: Maerlyn's Grapefruit and Black Thirtee
Before they were destroyed, these orbs of Maerlyn's Rainbow were things that Flagg used quite commonly throughout the series. Though he doesn't always have access to them (I'll leave a further note on that at the end of this section), he is recurrently seen with them throughout his many appearances in the DT continuity.
The demon of Maerlyn's Grapefruit is Flagg's direct ally, and was at one point his lover as well. And when John Farson and other characters aren't using the Grapefruit itself (out of their own desire to or not), it usually rests in his possession.
She/it worked for him quite consistently during the time of John Farson's rebellion. Here's a fairly obvious example of that.
Their relationship as lovers...kind of fell apart. But he's still seen with the Grapefruit a good number of times. At the tail-end of Wizard and Glass, he brings it to Roland and his ka-tet, mostly for the sake of using it as a threat.
| The dark man on the green throne continued to smile, unperturbed. "Roland?" he asked. "What about you?" Slowly, he raised the drawstring bag. It looked dusty and old. It hung from the wizard's fist like a teardrop, and now the thing in its pouch began to pulse with pink light. "Cry off, and they need never see what's inside this—they need never see the last scene of that sad long-ago play. Cry off. Turn from the Tower and go your way." | ||
~ DT4: Wizard and Glass |
| The man on the throne shrieked and cringed back. The bag fell from his lap, and the glass ball—once held by Rhea, once held by Jonas, once held by Roland himself—slipped out of its mouth. Smoke, green this time instead of red, billowed from the slots in the arms of the throne. It rose in obscuring fumes. | ||
~ DT4: Wizard and Glass |
Black Thirteen is the most powerful of the orbs in the Rainbow, and Flagg has used it for his own purposes many times. In this scan, we see Flagg using Black Thirteen to communicate with the Crimson King.
Here we see him carrying it yet again, forcibly giving it to Father Callahan so that it can basically serve as a trap for Roland and company when they arrive at Calla Bryn Sturgis.
| "Don't!" Callahan says sharply. Because the man in the black robe mustn't open the box. There's something terrible inside the box, something that would terrify even Barlow, the wily vampire who forced Callahan to drink his blood and then sent him on his way into the prisms of America like a fractious child whose company has become tiresome. | ||
~ DT5: Wolves of the Calla |
| Then a great many things happen at exactly the same time. The water pump in the alcove goes on, starting its weary thudding cycle. And Callahan's ass bumps into the heavy, smooth wood of the door. And the man in black thrusts the box forward, opening it as he does so. And his hood falls back, revealing the pallid, snarling face of a human weasel. (It's not Sayre, but upon Walter's forehead like a Hindu caste-mark is the same welling red circle, an open wound that never clots or flows.) And Callahan sees what's inside the box: he sees Black Thirteen crouched on its red velvet like the slick eye of a monster that grew outside God's shadow. And Callahan begins to shriek at the sight of it, for he senses its endless power: it may fling him anywhere or to the farthest blind alley of nowhere. | ||
~ DT5: Wolves of the Calla |
Another one that's pretty clear-cut, if you ask me.
(Now for that note I promised: While I believe these items should be included within Flagg's standard equipment, he does not have access to them all of the time
Summary
- Flagg should be Building level+ with magic due to generating natural lightning bolts.
- Flagg should have Technological Manipulation via his telepathy, due to himself and other less capable psychics/telepaths having numerous showings of such.
- Maerlyn's Grapefruit and Black Thirteen should be a part of Flagg's standard arsenal on his profile, though I recommend leaving a note that their inclusion in any VS matchups must be specified by the OP.
