Coil

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>

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<label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox>

Thomas Calvert was a supervillian operating in Brockton Bay.

Personality

His personality seemed to mesh well with Accord given there was a supposed partnership, or even friendship between them.

He has strange morals quite happy to capture and torture individuals as long as these actions do not actually happen.

Relationships

The Travelers

Coil had several plans to assist the Travalers with their main issue. But when these failed, such as getting the assistance of Panacea, <ref name="R2">Another Comment by Wildbow on Reddit</ref> he schemed to turn their situation to his advantage.<ref name="R3">What if BB Super-villains</ref>

The Undersiders

Cauldron

The chess-master was a pawn in a much larger game. He had to make promises and deals with powerful people to gain his abilities, and put himself into debt doing it.<ref name="I8x"/> His position and potential importance netted him his chance in the first place.<ref name="R4"> Cauldron SOP</ref>

Appearance

Thomas is described as a skeletally thin man, taller than Grue.<ref name="5.1">Hive 5.1</ref>

In his civilian identity, he had close cropped, coarse hair, trimmed eyebrows, thin lips and a cleft chin. He wore the body portion of a PRT uniform with an insignia stitched onto his sleeve.<ref name="16.10">Monarch 16.10</ref>

As Coil, he wore a skintight black bodysuit with a stencil<ref name="6.8">Tangle 6.8</ref> of a white snake curling around it, its head on his forehead, extending down the back of his head, looping and winding over his entire body with its tail at one ankle.<ref name="5.1"/><ref name="I8x"/> A zipper was hidden in the snake, at his ankle. His mask didn't have eye holes. The fabric of the costume allowed him to see and breathe through it, but was an opaque black-gray to outside observers in all but the brightest light.<ref name="I8x">8x (Interlude; Coil)</ref><ref name="10.6">Parasite 10.6</ref> The way it clung to his skin let you see his individual ribs and joints.<ref name="5.1"/>

Abilities and Powers

Coil is arguably one of the most powerful supervillains in Brockton Bay. In addition to his power, he employs a variety of supervillian teams and independent supervillains; the Undersiders, the Travelers, Uber and Leet, Circus, Chariot, Trainwreck, and could hire Faultline's Crew as needed. He is also the head of a large mercenary force that he outfits with top-of-the-line gear including tinker-tech rifles.

Coil's power appears to grant him the ability to 'split' the world into two timelines and then collapse the timeline he likes less whenever he wants. In truth his power allows him to mentally simulate concomitant timelines, or corcognition, until he dies in one of the simulations or he chooses to end one of the simulations.<ref name="SB1">Wildbow on spacebattles</ref> He can never have more then two.

This power allows Coil to attempt different courses of action regarding a situation and then pick the timeline he wants to keep while retaining all knowledge from the other timeline. Much of his success ultimately hinged on this ability to create feed-forward loops; being able to test his plans in different permutations before acting upon them.

Sources of "causality interference" interfere with his power, including most precognitives, meaning he can't make use of information-gathering powers again and again in different timelines.<ref name="R1">Comment by Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

History

Background

Thomas was a part of the PRT's special forces. When the PRT received reports about Nilbog, his team was sent in to deal with the situation. He was one of the only two survivors of the following incident, the other being Emily Piggot.<ref name="16x">Interlude 16x (Donation Bonus)</ref>

At some point, Thomas found out about and approached Cauldron before he bought a superpower. It was expensive, forcing him to postpone his plans and spend years gaming the market in order to pay it off.<ref name="I8x"/>

Story Start

Attended the meeting at Somer's Rock completely by himself.<ref name="5.1"/>

Following several successful jobs by the undersiders he revealed himself to his employees.

Post-Leviathan

Began making moves to secure territory in the devastated city through his employed villains.

Post-Slaughterhouse Nine

His plans so close to fruition he had to deal with Dragon and Defiant deploying. Taylor found out about his identity and confronted him. Calvert was unprepared and made a clumsy attempt to kill Taylor. He almost turned Taylor's teammates against her, but failed due to Grue's power allowing them to uncover the deception. In the final meeting, Tattletale revealed that she bought his soldiers. Taylor than took a gun and prepared to shoot him. Coil assumed she didn't have it in him. Taylor bluntly told him "No. But I suppose in a roundabout way, you made me one." She than shot him in the head.

As a final spiteful gesture Coil released Echidna to plague the Undersiders and Brockton Bay.

Legacy

His murderers would take everything that was his, including his place in the expectations of the organization that had secretly backed him.<ref name="20.y">Chrysalis 20.y (Interlude; Accord)</ref>

Quotes

"I’ll admit I am not proud of my failure to see the bigger picture, and I assure you, it is not a mistake I am prepared to make again<ref name="7.11">Buzz 7.11</ref>."

References