Ravenswood’s story

Oxford, 1970

A BRILLANT
YOUNG MIND

From the very beginning, Hadrian Ravenswood was exceptional. Born of minor nobility and heir to a long line of renowned tailors, he grew up in the London suburbs already more capable and intelligent than his peers as soon as he began his schooling. Rapidly spotted by his teachers he was somewhat a phenomenon by participating and winning every national math competition he was sent to. To top it all of he was to become the youngest ever mathematician to publish in the prestigious Royal Society at the age of 15. The same year he began attending Oxford University after having decided to change his focus subject from mathematics to Quantum physics, more specifically sting theory. He found the same resounding success in this discipline than he did in the last and it is only a few years later that he published his thesis on the theorization of the possibility of teleportation by bending the space-time continuum.

Oxford, 1972

Research
at all costs

Hardrian was indeed promised to a brilliant and rewarding academic career as a researcher in Oxford but that was before his thesis caught the eye of the US military. In order to ensure the cooperation of the young lord Ravenswood, they sent an envoy, captain Elia Kingsley to offer a generous proposal where they would fund his extremely onerous research on teleportation and promise him his independence from the hierarchy on the condition that he would share every and all results with them. Unable to pass up the opportunity to try to make this historic discovery, Hadrian dove straight into work with the help of his old flatmate in Oxford and now, new assistant John Crawford.

London, 1975, 10:44 am

THE WATCH
EXPERIMENT

On the 14th of may 1975, Ravenswood was alone in his laboratory when he started testing his new theory. As a prop, he placed his pocket watch inside the first receptacle and began the experiment at 10:44 AM. As hoped, the watch was instantly transferred from the first receptacle to the second making our favourite researcher believe that he succeeded in creating the first teleportation in human history. Proud as he was he decided to treat himself to his favourite restaurant in order to celebrate.

His elation only lasted one hour as it was in the middle of this restaurant at 11H44 sharp that under his incredulous eyes he saw his watch disappear from his hand after having checked for the time. Swiftly realising that his experiment was not as successful as he had first hoped, he rushed back to his laboratory as quickly as he could only to find his assistant and friend, Crawford, startled in front of what was for him a materialisation of Ravenswood’s watch inside the first receptacle.

Now what had occurred became clear to Hadrian, he had not created teleportation but rather a 1 hour time loop. Realising how this discovery could be used to nefarious purposes, Ravenswood started to destroy any and all pieces of research against the opinion of Crawford. The row was ferocious but in the end, Crawford managed to save some documents and flee before his mentor destroyed them all. After that, our genius inventor stopped all of his researched and concentrated on his teaching career trying to forget this dangerous episode.

CAN I CHANGE THE PASSED ?

York, 1977

AN UNEXPECTED
OBSTACLE

Ravenswood kept on track with a more normal life after that as a professor at Oxford University, his Alma Mater. He married the Cpt Elia Kingsley with whom he had started a relationship shortly after they met. Together they had one beautiful child, a girl named Eleanor.

Everything changed on the day Crawford came back into their lives. Having tried for years, with the help of the documents he stole, to find the secret to the time travelling machine that his former mentor had accidently created, Crawford was ultimately unsuccessful. His last desperate ploy led him to kidnap both Elia and Eleanor in order to blackmail Ravenswood in creating the machine for him. He threatened to kill them but Ravenswood refused to help him under the assumption that his old friend would not be capable of hurting his family. And this is how Ravenswood made the biggest mistake of his life for he underestimated the greed of his former friend who gaged that by killing Elia and Eleanor. He would force Ravenswood to recreate the machine in order to prevent the murders from occurring.

The horror felt by Ravenswood when seeing the bodies of his loved ones was only match by his determination to try to save them and make Crawford pay for this despicable act. Two weeks later the machine was done and it is with great anticipation that Hadrian decided to attempt to go back the time where Crawford was his assistant to take him out of the equation. This is how Ravenswood realised the limits of this technology. Try as he might, he was unable to go back that far in time, the same occurred was he tried to directly prevent the kidnaping. The machine only allowed to go back a week in time and for a duration that did not exceed one hour. Heartbroken, he tried for years to overcome those limits but in the end he did not make an inch of progress on that front.

Unknown places, 1979

TO PROTECT AND
SERVE

Having realised that his earlier decision not to use this invention cost him the life of his loved ones, Ravenswood decided to dedicate his existence to the prevention of horrible acts around the world with the help of this machine. He knew that he could not share his discovery for it would be too dangerous were it to fall into the wrong hands. As a cover, he decided to take over his parents chain of tailor shops around the world and use them as a front for his activities. As he could not risk going on mission himself he set to find, recruit and accompany agents trustworthy enough to accomplish their mission successfully and discreetly. Today, governments, intelligence agencies or even random citizens come to lord Ravenswood in order to get help, right a wrong or prevent a catastrophe that has occurred. He chooses the missions carefully for he has no allegiance to anyone but to himself and is every mindful of the agents lives that he puts at risk by sending them on missions.

To this day Crawford is still at large and aware of the technology in the hands of his former mentor. The last intelligence gathered on him tells us that he has associated with other international criminals in an organisation called XxX and that he is still desperate toto acquire the machine.

ARE YOU A HERO ?