After making a trio of Jewish/semi-Hanukkah inspired heroes, and a whole slew of Christmas-themed heroes, I decided to try my hand at creating a character for the third most prominent of winter holidays, Kwanzaa. "Spirit of Kwanzaa" here is the result. I do not celebrate Kwanzaa myself, and before I created this character, I knew zero about it other than that it involved lighting candels much like people do during Hanukkah. So, it was very interesting doing the research about all the concepts and ideals that make up the celebration in order to work it all into an origin for him and bring it all together as the basis for his powers and abilities. Also, while he has a tragic origin involving gun violence around a winter holiday, I want to make it clear that I am in no way making any kind of political statement in light of similar tragedies that have occurred during this 2012 holiday season. I wrote this long before any of those events occurred, and anything I have written for this character is purely and oddly coincidental. (I would never make light of anything like that anyway.) My intent was strictly to create an impactful origin for the character in the vein of similar "avenging spirit" types such as "Deadman" or "The Specter." This guy is very similar to Reverend Blunderbuss, in that he is a wandering spirit who goes to various locations to help others and combat evil and injustices. However, unlike the Reverend, he isn’t some kind of hunter of evil spirits, and he isn’t working for any of the archangels. He is simply a a good person, who is still doing good deeds in his afterlife, and going wherever he is needed. He’s also a bit more front and center than the Reverend, and will present himself in his physical form to others in order to directly interact with people, whereas the good Reverend tends to more or less remain unseen in his spiritual form while helping others behind the scenes. Their differences in approaches most likely stems from “S.O.K.” being a more modern individual, while “R.B.” is a person from centuries ago in the past, therefore he is less likely to be open to interacting with modern people as much. Anyway, though, “S.O.K,” is still basically a ghost, so he doesn’t really need to have an apartment or anything to regularly live in, but again, being that he’s a more modern individual, perhaps he would be more comfortable in a place like that? I’m just not sure how I would work it out so that he would have a normal home like that considering that he’s a spirit and all. I mean, sure, he can manifest himself physically, but his bio seems to suggest that he doesn’t exactly hold his former occupation as a social worker anymore now that he’s a roaming spirit. So, yeah, he doesn’t really have a job anymore other than that of a supernatural super-hero of sorts, which means that he’s not exactly getting paid, nor would he really have any use for money anymore unless he’s giving it away to those who need it in their still mortal lives. So, maybe he manifests himself in different cities as a kind of “guardian angel” in order to help some people out for a time, and then he leaves, so maybe then, he needs to find a place to live for a short time while he’s helping them out? I guess that could be a thing for him to do, because otherwise it might be suspicious if he was hanging around a place and no one could find him if they needed him, and people kept asking “where he lived.” And, his powers are basically, “mind over matter,” so he can pretty much do anything that he puts his mind to more or less. This is how he helps people, as there is nothing that he cannot accomplish either psychically or mentally with his strength or intelligence, so getting several temporary mortal places to live probably wouldn’t be that much of an issue at all if he needed to do so. However, what about him having some kind of spiritual plane domicile? Could that also be a possibility for him? Could he also maybe just conjure up some kind of illusion of a home that he could direct people to if necessary? For example, instead of going trough the trouble of actually finding a new place to live all the time, maybe he could just stay in a hotel or something all the time, or just set himself up in an abandoned building and just make everyone think that it’s a nice inhabited home. Yeah, IDK, just throwing out some ideas. He’s a tricky one for sure, and I’m not really clear on how to handle him in terms of him having a base. There’s also the issue of his bio not being specific on where exactly he lived in his mortal lifetime before he died and became an avenging spirit. It just says that he was a social worker who did a lot of good for the people of his community, and that his death was caused by a gang who sought revenge against him for making their territory shrink because of his good deeds. There’s nothing about what city or community this all took place in, nor what the name of the gang was. So, we can’t say that it was any real city, or even one of the major established fictional cities of the CSCU, nor can we say that the gang in question was any one of the major established ones either. They were just a nameless gang of punks in an unknown city, and that’s it, and he was a well-known social worker in an unnamed city, and that’s it. It is what it is because that’s all I wrote. I could of course, fill in these blanks later on, and give an actual name to his former city, and even the gang if I ever want to, but for now, it’s up in the air, and I’m not going to just make something up right now to do it. No, that’s for another time, but at least I’m bringing some attention to it for now. So, one last thing, perhaps he could sort of just “haunt” the area of his death in his old city, and that could be his primary base of operations when he’s not going to other places to help others. It’s not like he’s trapped there, because he’s obviously not, since he can go to other locations, which being a spirit, he can probably just teleport to. But, maybe in between missions, he just likes to hang around the old neighborhood? Yeah, IDK, just some food for thought.