Cold hands, cold heart.
Adventure first, adventure second.
A (mis) interpretation :
Name : Arnaud Mission.
Alias : Merde.
Age : 65 years old.
Affiliation : Special Activities Division "Medusa" - Terra Military Intelligence Bureau; Founder of various cults of the dark arts.
Std. armaments : .25 semi-automatic pistol x 9; Various magic objects and mystic items.
Abilities : Magical energy manipulation; Daemon sorcerer physiology; Expert hand to hand combatant; Master strategist and tactician; Weaponry expert; Multi-linguist; Cyber-warfare expert; Stealth; Cunningness; Deception.
2001, Stretto di Messina, Mesogeios sub-sector. A severely injured Bleak Mission stands and watches as Charybdis the Maelstrom, of which realspace and The Warp bleeds into one another, swallows his father Arnaud, whom had attempted to invoke a powerful sorcery to bring about the End of Time, following an intense personal battle of magic and sorcery between father and son before Bleak prevails. For killing his own biological father, Bleak escapes with Custard to the Isle of Avallone to avoid the Furies, before ending his exile to return to realspace upon the outbreak of the Robot Island War and Arnaud's return from The Warp.
Arnaud is the son of Richard "Dick" Mission, and an aristocratic mother, Lady Delacroix, of the Canton de Vaud. His birth is considered illegitimate, as Lady Delacroix, though separates from her husband, is still legally married. The young Arnaud spends much of his early life abroad, becoming multilingual because of his father's work as a Rothchild's armaments company representative. He is orphaned at the age of 11 when his father is killed in a mountain climbing accident in the Aiguilles Rouges near Chamonix.
Arnaud then lives with his aunt, Charmaine "Charm" Mission in Albion City, Europa. Upon completion of his early education, Arnaud is initiated by Charmaine into the Cult of Osiris, an underground occult society. He learns about occultism, mysticism and arts of magic from the Elders of the society. After Charmaine's death at 80 due to pneumonia, Arnaud volunteers to join the Terra Coalition Armed Forces, highly consider to be a suicidal career of choice. His excels in his military career, gains many accolades and awards of valour, which is rare in the Great War. Recognising his capability, Arnaud is sent to join one of the elite commando units, The Uncle 5. He serves in all theatres of war from the Arctic Circle to Eurasia and from Middle East to Indo China sub-sectors. Their operations ranged from small groups of men landing from the sea or by drop pods to a brigade of assault troops spearheading the Coalition Army counter-attacks of Ecclesiarchy's occupied sectors of Eurasia and Eastasia.
Later, Arnaud is recruited into the Terra Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB), formed to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Eurasia, Eastasia, Republic of Middle East and United Kingdom of Afrika against the Ecclesiarchy of Mars forces, and to aid local resistance movements. He enters into a relationship with a leader of the Siam sub-sector resistance movements, resulting in a son, whom Arnaud named William. A "friendly fire" incident kill both his lover and son. Unbeknownst to him, William survives. Having nothing left to live for, Arnaud goes to Saigon and, under the careful guidance of Alexan Crowley, ends up training for the "Medusa" Special Activities Division. Upon completion of his training, Arnaud is deployed as a highly trained assassin for a variety of missions all involving lethal action. He completes his missions mechanically, without knowledge of his subjects' identities or the crimes they had allegedly committed.
Initially, Medusa was designed to infiltrate parts of Northern Nam Viet, and kill suspected members of the Ecclesiarchy and its collaborators. Medusa was considered an assassination team or death squad. Each member of Medusa is handsomely paid for their works. Later, Medusa widens their scope of initiatives which include political covert actions and paramilitary black operations. Arnaud successes include the cryptanalytic effort for interception and decryption of foreign communications by hacking through the firewalls of Merlin using the Fata Morgana programme, extensive "double-cross" system to feed misleading intelligence and imagery intelligence activities conducted by the West Bromwich's Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) Corps. When MIB itself is compromised by double-agents of the Ecclesiarchy known as the Albion Five, it is Arnaud whom successfully flush them out and terminate them with extreme prejudice. He also infiltrates the Rothchild Corporation and M.O.D. faction, gathering confidential information on them for Medusa. Arnaud directly involves in majority of political coup d'état and assassinations.
After the embarrassment of the Venlo Incident, Arnaud ousted Crowley as the commander of Medusa. He re-organises it, and runs it with an iron fist. He became well known for his ruthlessness, his disregard for orders, and his disturbing success rate on his missions. His life is slowly consumed by his leadership in Medusa. Members of Medusa by then consist of rogue operatives and criminals.
Arnaud lives in a nightmarish world where laws are written at the point of a gun, like a wild beasts to be able to kill without thinking. It was part of his profession to kill people. It was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. He once commented, 'If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional—worse, it was a death-watch beetle in the soul.'
Arnaud has a dark, rather cruel good looks with cold eyes. He is known for his womanising ways, practises tantric sex and made love to them with cold passion. Arnaud is extremely prejudiced against gays, opining that homosexuals were "a herd of unhappy sexual misfits – barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied", adding that "he was sorry for them, and has no time for them." As a highly paid secret agent, Arnaud leads an extravagant lifestyle of which 99.9% of Terra population could not even dream off. An alcoholic, Arnaud is known to consume an average of 40 to 60 drinks during an operation consisting of exquisite and expensive wines, whiskies, beers and others. For his non-alcoholic drinks Arnaud eschews tea, calling it "mud". He instead prefers to drink coffee. He eats extravagantly, and smokes heavily, on an average of 80 sticks of King Size Chesterfield a day. Arnaud carries his cigarettes in a wide platinum cigarette case which carries 50; he also uses a custom gold plated Ronson lighter. He occasionally supplements his alcohol consumption with the use of other drugs, for both functional and recreational reasons such as amphetamine benzedrine accompanied by champagne. Arnaud also uses the drug for stimulation on missions, or remaining awake and alert when threatened.
Arnaud is a formidable hand to hand combatant and always "go straight for the jugular" without wasting time on his opponents. He can take a huge amount of physical punishment and despite his opulent lifestyle, possesses extraordinary endurance and stamina. He is also an accomplished marksman, once earned a reputation as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world". He often uses improvised weapons, using tactical improvisation and proficient with evasive protocols. Mentally, Arnaud is a very quick-thinking, linear type of person who moves quickly and brutally towards his goal, as well as knowing how to remain "off the grid" from his enemies. He also shows an immediate ability to utilize lateral thinking to solve problems. He is considered to be a master strategist and tactician, from experience, and highly manipulative and deceptive to the point of being devious. After his behavioural modification as part of his training, Arnaud has zero empathy and conscience. He would not hesitate to kill women or children to complete his assigned mission. He would employ brutal torture on suspect abducts via extraordinary rendition programme.
Arnaud secretly practises occultism and magic skills while not on mission. He hides his abilities and knowledge on the occults and mysticism well, and rarely uses his equally formidable magic skills during combat or confrontation. When he assumes the leadership of Medusa, Arnaud uses the alias Jimmy Bourne to channel the slush funds from secret arms trades to establish various occult sub-organisations link to the Cult of Osiris. For this purpose, Arnaud wants to ultimately reverse the effect of the Age of Enlightenment which brings about the dominance of science and technology.
His downfall begins when he learns that he is suffering from a terminal cancer. For someone whom once kill his way across the Indochina to terminate a double agent, Arnaud is ironically afraid of death. Through Baron Seth von Sydow, Arnaud obtains the Book of Lorgar, which blood inscribed canticles on pages made from human skins contain the passage to ascension as a daemon prince. He nearly succeed, until being foiled at the very last minute by his own son, William "Bleak" Mission. But by then Arnaud has lost all his compassion and without a shred of humanity. Disowning Bleak there and then, both father and son fight each other using physical and magic abilities ferociously. Bleak is outfought and outsmarted by Arnaud. Bleak finally casts aside his own hope for reconciliation and redemption for his father, and unleashed a mighty spell which breaks Arnaud, causing him to fall into the yawning Maelstrom, Charybdis before closing the portal with his final ounce of strength.
Arnaud is physically torn apart within The Warp instantaneously, but his soul remains and is enslaved by a Greater Daemon believes to be Šulak the Lurker. He succeed in convincing the Lurker in a nefarious plan to spread discord, influence of Chaos and restoring the Kingdom of the Ruinous Powers in return for him to be re-instated on realspace. With his soul as guarantee, Arnaud returns, now with even greater sorcerous powers as daemonic bloods flow through his body and mind. He is now referred to as "Merde" i.e. The Shite by Bleak Mission for all his "shit-stirring activities" across Terra on behalf of his daemonic master. Arnaud "Merde" Mission's feeling is mutual towards Bleak. It is a matter of time before the two clashes again, perhaps for the very last time.
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This is the ready made, surprise drop 3A Bambaland version of the Taiwan's retailer Beast Kingdom 3A Toy Show exclusive Merde Mission, called Cold Mission after great demand from 3A fans to Ash to make it available through the online store. Differences are the disappearance of pencil moustache, possibly denoting a younger version, and colour way in line with snow theme, like the Hard Nipple War set starring Cold Dick Mission, Flakey Lil Shadow and Snow Paw Custard, which thankfully, due to the whitish hair of Merde, doesn't suffer from dandruff like effect of the set :) All I know of Merde, which means, er, "shit" in French, is that he is father of Bleak and Tommy's the grandson of course. The figure is nicely done, except I don't like the finishing on the 9 pistols and the Velcro straps don't hold the pistol holsters nicely. I re-imagine Merde as a secret agent with mage like powers, taking liberty of information from write up on this figure by 3A, Wiki on James Bond and Jason Bourne, as well as WH40k from Games Workshop.
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