Claudius Webster

  • His father fought in WW2 when Claudius was an adolescent, and came home shellshocked. His mother worked in a factory in Detroit and lost a finger on one of the machines. Years later, Claudius would have a favorite uncle return from the Korean War missing a limb. This all soured Claudius’s opinion of the US Military.
  • When he turns 20, he is drafted into the Vietnam war. While Webster still despises the military, he makes no effort to dodge the draft, desert or get kicked out and is actually a very capable, model soldier.
  • During one incident, he is ordered to set fire to a small village near Rung Sat because the villagers would not tell the commanding officer where “Charlie” was hiding. He follows orders without question or remorse.
  • While at war, he is assigned to be a forest sprayer during Operation Ranch Hand. During this operation he is actually captured and taken prisoner.
  • Webster spends about 6 months to a year in a POW camp before somehow making a daring escape, surviving in the jungle while eluding recapture, and eventually finding his way to a US base.
  • While on tour, he experiments with drugs, but quits when he sees some his fellow soldiers get addicted to it. He keeps connections with the dealers, however.
  • Once he is sent home, he and his girlfriend find out that for some reason he is completely sterile. Webster takes an interest in pharmacology to help find a cure, because after all of the death he had seen in Vietnam, he desperately wants an heir and does not want to adopt.
  • He reconnects with his drug dealer friends, and builds a small fortune selling “greenies” to baseball players. He uses that money to launch the Better Aids for Augmented Living Corporation, (or BAAL Pharmaceuticals.), and spends the next 20 years of his life building it into the world’s leading pharmaceutical authority. But he still cannot find a cure for his sterility, and his now-wife leaves him.
  • At age 40, he develops a twitch, and is diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Now, he is literally losing control of his own body, and is now desperate to find a cure for all of his ailments…at any cost…