Riddler

Riddler (Scenesys ID: 275)
Quote
"Question: if there are three doors, which do you pick? Significance: the door on the left means you're a superior, the door on the right means you're a subordinate, and the door in the middle means you're a queen."
Profile
Full Name:	Edward Nygma
Gender:	Male
Species:	Human
Theme:	DC (VFC)
Occupation:	Crook/Riddlemaster
Citizenship:	American
Residence:	Gotham
Education:	BA in Mathematics from Gotham U.
Status:	Dropped
Groups:	Gotham-OOC, Hench
Other Information
Apparent Age:	37	Actual Age:	37
Date of Birth	13 October 1993	Actor:	Jason Schwartz
Height:	178 cm (5'10")	Weight:	68 kg (150 lb)
Hair Color:	Brown	Eye Color:	Green
Theme Song:	"Spiral Architect" - Black Sabbath

Profile

Formerly an expert in the application of abstract mathematics and game theory for a private sector corporation that contracted out to the Department of Defense, Edward Nygma was fired after his eccentric methods got on the nerves of an incoming leadership team. After terrorizing them with complex computer and mathematical puzzles before excruciating homicides, Edward Nygma was incarcerated in Arkham Asylum by Batman and placed under the care of a psychoanalytic team from the FBI. Capable of all three modes of eidetic memory combined with active four dimensional capable imaginary tools, all while functioning in a multitasking analytic phase, Riddler's severe intellect and use of his mind has led to neurotic obsessive-compulsion. Diagnosed with an atypical narcissistic paradox, he draws his entire self-esteem from his brilliance, yet constantly seeks to prove it for attention from others, unable to release his role-oriented skillset in favor of his sublimated personality. And Batman makes the perfect challenge for his newfound calling in life: crime.

Sheet

Description

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Description:

He doesn't look like much. Not the strongest, the most handsome, not striking in anyway especially. But he is a sharp dresser. With a forest green suit that appears to be tailor maid, with a standard white oxford shirt and a dark purple tie and a small purple question mark lapel pin. And there is that strange green bowler, with the band and a question mark displayed prominently. Oh, and there is the cane, a long bronze walking stick that is curved in the same shape of a question mark, shining and clearly well taken care of. And yes, he is wearing a mask, but who isn't? His is quite literal however, a small domino mask that covers his eyes and upper cheekbones, the same striking purple as his tie and the band around his hat. And then there is the eyes. The wild, green eyes, constantly gleaming with something that is clearly trouble. And his lips curled in that knowing, smug grin.

History

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History:
Edward Nashton was born in a humble Irish neighborhood, the child of an English-Scottish bartender and a college professor that had been dismissed from her job after an affair with a Dean's husband. Edward's father was a traditional Anglican, and his mother was never content to follow rules, marrying far below her to seize the literary romance of the working class. Edward was never an athlete or a drinker or a politician, but he loved the dynamics of sports and the culture behind the mixed drink and even the human levers and gears of his city's leadership that he saw around him every day. Eddie always wanted to be a senator or a CEO or a head coach, but he was relegated to the role of a razor-honed mind by his father, who saw the need for control in the boy. Eddie had a big mouth, and that meant a fist to the face from his father, instead of a long term prison sentence out of high school from a prosecutor. His mother, meanwhile, made sure that Eddie used the rage of the working poor to dominate people with intellect, instead of using cheap gains from social accolades.

Eddie could've gone to Gotham Academy in high school, after passing a puzzle game with a lockpick burglary, but after his father accused him of cheating and beat him, he was placed in standard high school in the rough burg that is Gotham City. Eddie never forgave his father, and resolved himself to be something greater than his father could ever be. Just as Mr. Nashton had hoped. And when Eddie got a scholarship to Gotham University, Eddie's mother made him the biggest meal he could ever conceive, and Mr. Nashton let Eddie take the head of the table, before hugging him. At that moment, Eddie Nashton understood that pain had nothing to do with abuse, but it was a part of culture, and pointless violence was abusive - not the physical discipline of the working class. A strike from his father didn't mean a shove downwards into obscurity - it was just meant to seem that way.

History2:
Edward graduated with a Bachelor's in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science, becoming a bon vivante on campus with the local professorship and the ladies alike, as his mother had intended. After graduating his university, he changed his last name to 'Nygma', making his full name 'E. Nygma', and got a job working at a computer consulting firm that had scouted him since he refused Gotham Academy. He became a Defense Department contractor, developing logistics systems for foreign countries allied to the United States. But as an exceptionally liberal political administration came over his company's human resources department, they discovered that Edward Nygma was so brilliant that he was criminally insane by virtue of his rules being defined by success.

And to a human resources department governed by progressive family values, that meant a pink slip.

Edward Nygma was enraged that he was fired for being too good at his job. And then, he snapped, tracking down the leadership that had fired him, one by one, kidnapping them off the streets and putting them through mathematical cyclic patterns, each one meant to break their mind into a nervous breakdown based on their mathematic logician defects, before he killed them, each one with asphyxiation from a blunt hook (which would one day become his question mark cane). This weapon pleased the latent sadism that had been the reason for his firing, which Nygma knew very consciously, and he knew his victims were also aware. And then, after Batman found him in his apartment, traceless for the crime, he was beaten brutally, and confessed everything to the Gotham City Police Department, terrified. Batman had correctly supposed, if he had selected a blunt hooked object, he was afraid of extortion from a peer figure. Batman fought him, hand to hand, without any superiority, after tracking him to his home, where he was vulnerable.

History3:

After pleading criminal insanity and being supplied lawyers by the ACLU, via his MENSA colleagues, Edward Nygma was declared criminally insane, and sent to Arkham Asylum. Edward Nygma was observed by FBI forensic analysts, while he recuperated, and it was determined that his level of mental function was so high that he had no conception of anything other than social rules as abstract concepts, the concrete reality of emotional tastes completely beyond him. Batman pushed for a deliberate psychotic break, but Nygma's lawyers blocked the attempt, as Edward Nygma was a model patient. And as Edward Nygma observed all of this, pushing and pulling and standing limp and sitting hard and moving through the puzzle factory with blithe joy, fitting the model of a serial killer that had no idea he killed anyone (despite the brutal nature of the murders), he watched the increasing stress that Batman had created around him.

And he talked, to other patients, one by one, evaluating Batman. And then, Edward Nygma made a decision. He would hunt Batman, the man who had become equal in his intellect, but was a cheater, for using bounds unavailable to Eddie.

Edward escaped Arkham after confusing a doctor into thinking he was a prison orderly, and the prison orderly was committed to his cell, while Edward Nashton got a week's paid furlough and a recommendation to a nice kosher deli.

To challenge Batman, Edward became the Riddler. After all, Batman was cheating, and Edward knew just how. Batman was two people - he was Batman, a master detective, and he was someone else, that hated puzzles. That means, Batman was both an honest student, and a cheater. Riddler abhorred a man that could not be honest. That's why they fired him from his position, after all.

Batman represents the cubic root of two. What does that mean to you?

Personality

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Personality:

Edward Nygma is a man born for the corporate life, that can't handle rejection. His entire basis of self-esteem is academics, success, status, and power, but he can't have it because he is so driven to achieve. His fatal decision was making his compensation come from these things when he lapsed into narcissism from losing them instead of admitting he had a problem, when he was fired, and becoming a self-circling narcissist.

Now, he can never have success again, his social traits so entirely consumed by his mind that he no longer relates to people. A sociopath would be someone that only thinks of themselves; he thinks of other people, but not as the fundaments of their souls, instead of what they represent in the mental world.

To Riddler, you are not your wife, your kids, your favorite baseball team, your worries, your successes, your joys.

You are these things on a spreadsheet, but the world of a human being as a relation between him and you, is simply a system of clockwork gears inside a factory machine for him to move through. He is criminally insane, his only structure being the world in the abstract, with the sensory fundaments of society replacing the inherent connectivity of people.

God is dead to Riddler, and now, Riddler is God.

Abilities

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Genius:

Edward Nygma's parents raised him to be a genius, from his earliest days collecting baseball cards and learning how to mix drinks from his father for those baseball players, to his days in college learning mathematics and computers and engineering quantities, through his time in the corporate world making game theory systems and interacting engineering dynamics for foreign governments.

Riddler possesses three forms of eidetic memory - visual, audial, and kinetic - and can imagine new systems with them in three concrete or abstract dimensions with a fourth dimensional momentum, to determine how these systems look and shift, plus the fifth form used in cryptostudies (hidden knowledge indicated by circumstance) by freezing one of the three previous movements in some pattern or another, and looking at them with evidence to study the system as a partial whole.

And he also knows how to push someone to analyze a dimension he's hidden from them, instead of looking at the visible dimensions, to cause a psychiatric impediment in some form of the logic that he's indicated to analyze.

Skills

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Computer Science:
Riddler is skilled with computers, namely software and programming, and can also work with hardware and security counter-measures at a secondary level to his primary skillset as a programmer. This integrates very well with his mastery of concrete and abstract mathematics, as well as his preeminent skill at logic and dilemmas.

Criminal Method:
By applying law enforcement theory from various mathematic functions and rules and observations, we can derive plots by understanding civil tactics to control society, then taking the same principle in use and simplifying it beneath the complexity of that society. A society has many points to protect - by using the mathematical theory of that protection rule, one can select a single target, then plan one's criminal method with a narrowed version of the mathematical quantity.

Engineering:
Edward Nygma's work for the Department of Defense has taught him a number of basic engineering tricks, and his continued study of various geometric and scientific rules gives him a natural attraction to the field of engineering, both as thought exercises to maintain intelligence quotient, and as future criminal ventures. He is particularly attracted to hidden engineering, often wishing to steal new engineer theories hidden by government, corporate, or criminal bodies and conspiracies for his personal curiousity and future utility.

Game Theory:

Puzzles, dilemmas, logical tricks, and neurological illusions are all things that the Riddler enjoys. Riddler knows how to entice, trap, lead, reference, and delude with mathematics, ranging from test questions to determine who someone is (if you could mindread anyone, who would it be? cheat: I would mindread myself - therefore, you are the mindreader, your secret has been revealed behind the 'mask'), to magic tricks like Phi (used in the Parthenon and the Sistine Chapel, also known as the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio).

They are all solvable, since Riddler doesn't understand cheating - he'd be a less talented criminal, it's a consequence of his upbringing - but they are not always healthy to solve. Everyone has a form of mathematical defect. Riddler happens to fail parabolic logic, emotional linkages. Batman, Riddler knows, fails long division - necessary for traffic laws - but excels at fractions, necessary for traffic safety. He would wager that Great White Shark has a similar defect.

Resources

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Contacts:
Riddler has a network with which to recruit gang members, preferring criminals with dependent personality disorders that will tolerate his eccentric methods, and work well with his directions. As a result, however, they fail when the plan requires alteration, or unforeseen difficulties arise. These are, however, elements Riddler attempts to plan for.

Patents:
Riddler is independently wealthy via patents registered to his name, often created from stolen corporate secrets, the manner of design so illusory and arcane that it is not discernable that the basic expertise is from another patent. This money from royalties, and the option of selling a patent, allows Riddler to finance his crimes.

Workshop:

Riddler has several of workshops located around Gotham City and elsewhere where he makes machines, computers, parts, plans, and weaponry for his schemes and heists and traps. Their locations are known by various Riddler Gang members, none of the locations entirely known by a single gangster.

Weaknesses

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Criminal Record:
Edward Nygma is a former government employee with a full register of corporate work, government contracting, Gotham police arrest, FBI forensic analytics, and Arkham Asylum observation. Since his neurosis demands that his mode of dress match his role state (a common failing of narcissistic personalities that are being hunted by the authorities), he has to stay in the Gotham City underworld to be safe.

Egomaniac:
Riddler is completely obsessed with his well-being, his self-image, and his reputation. Riddler isn't just a person - it's a brand, a symbol, a deity. In short, Riddler has a god complex, and will savagely avenge any threat to his bristly ego with a savage assault. Even if it's bait, he will be lured out to play a game, and he often knows when it's bait, not caring regardless. An insult to his pride is the worst, lowest way to strike Riddler, Riddler's claustrophobic sense of vindication his primary lever.

Riddles:
Riddler's name is, the Riddler. The Riddler wants to terrorize people with mathematics, logic, abstractions, and mind-bending observations, as a way to challenge both himself and Batman. He always leaves clues, whether it's accidentally, from using an abstract scheme that has a solution from whatever theorem or puzzle or frame of reference he's using to plan the crime (simplicity is beyond him), or a deliberate clue, to lure someone into a game with him, when he premeditates his method. This is from his functional insanity, where the American academic system, and the skills he learned, dictate his entire form of social interaction. He's beyond the rules, but still follows them, for his basic health (and self-preservation).

The Batman:

Edward Nygma was once bested by the Batman. Being bested, is not a problem. However, he was bested by a cheater. A follower of Pythagorus (inventor of the Pythagorean theorem, the basis of right triangle calculation and a vital tool in trigonometry - necessary to understand other people's perspectives), Hippasus, once attempted to find the square root of two.

This was a crime against the gods, since only the kings and stately men of Greece could do this (treat a female as if you were the male parent), and Hippasus was drowned at sea. Ever since, a non-repeating, infinite decimal chain, has been referred to as an irrational number, after the reaction to Hippasus' theorem.

Batman poses as a rational number that has a great deal of force and Riddler feels him to be his equal, yet Batman stacks the deck against all his foes with unseen methods. Batman is the cubic root of two - he dresses in tights and engages in physical violence, and is a close paramour of a whip-wielding woman that he refuses to marry. And worse, Batman knows who Catwoman is (and outed her personally), yet even Catwoman doesn't know who Batman is.

Batman wants to be the maternal parent of his female mate, and holds the power of a deity over the Gotham city underworld. This, Riddler cannot abide by.

Logs

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Title	Date	Scene Summary
Gotham Rogues	April 23rd, 2023	When is a meeting not a meeting?
The Question Of The Day	April 13th, 2019	Batman, Robin, Red Robin, and Blackbird are caught in Riddler's (NPC) trap. Red Hood and Kestrel arrive in time to help stop Riddler from gassing an apartment building.
Radio Nygma	August 29th, 2018	Summary needed
A Proprieter of Purloined Principle	August 26th, 2018	Summary needed
Night out in Hell's Kitchen	August 20th, 2018	Summary needed
Riddle You This	August 20th, 2018	Summary needed
What snake has two legs	May 18th, 2017	Riddler has some questions for Sibilance.
A Question Within Creation's Pattern	May 13th, 2017	Ra's al-Ghul tracks down Edward Nygma, and chances upon a serpentine mystery woman. A grand experiment first requires the basic materials.

Cutscenes

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Title	Date	Scene Summary
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Gallery

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