Character Profile

[general_ruination]

Name: General Martin Ruina, AKA Ruination
Age: 43
Country of Residence: Germany

Occupation: A four-star general with Deepfire, a private international military contracting firm that does work for multiple nation-states, all supposedly allied with the US (although they do covert work for non-allies as well). Deepfire's base of operations is in Stuttgart, Germany, although they have satellite bases throughout the world. There is at least one Deepfire safehouse in every developed country, and many of the undeveloped ones.

Background: Ruina was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1969 to ethnic German parents. Both of his parents were distant and worked so hard just to keep the family afloat that they had little time to spend with him. In particular, his father was often harsh and occasionally abusive toward him. When conditions started to deteriorate in Romania (in the lead-up to the Romanian Revolution), they emigrated to Germany in 1984 under the German right of return. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, they attempted to emigrate to the US in 1990, but his mother was killed on her way home from work by street thugs several days before they were set to leave, and his father was unable to make the journey without her. They moved instead to Hamburg, and one year later Ruina--who had become even more estranged from his father following his mother's death--left to join the French Foreign Legion, which he served in for six years and attained the rank of Senior Corporal. He was recruited by Deepfire in 1997 (at the age of 28) and has officially been working for them ever since.

Ruina's persona of Ruination began to take shape in 2004. Deepfire was contracted by the US military to participate in operations in Iraq, and he was sent on numerous missions within the country. One such mission involved the use of a biological agent that Deepfire had developed (the formulation of which is still proprietary). They planned to shoot canisters of the toxic gas into a town known to be an insurgent stronghold (the town also housed a number of women and children, which Deepfire deemed an acceptable loss), but their transport was hit with an rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) before they could take it into enemy territory, and the toxin was released, killing everybody in the vehicle (who hadn't been taken out immediately by the RPG explosion). Ruina was the sole, miraculous survivor, and he spent several days in the desert, crawling through the sand (both his legs had been mangled below the knees in the explosion) toward his base. When he was finally recovered by a medical team, they found that although his body had somehow overcome the effects of the toxin, his mind had been seriously affected, from a combination of the poison itself and the trauma of his time alone in the desert. It took some time before he was declared sane enough to be returned to active duty (a decision still disputed by the on-site psychiatrist in Iraq).

Ruina's legs both had to be amputated below the knees, and today he walks with mechanical limbs, thus giving him a heavier gait that can be quite frightening to hear approaching. No longer fit for traditional combat, he was trained in interrogation. The effects of the toxin and the trauma continued to manifest themselves in a fracturing of his personality, however, and made him prone to mood swings and a host of other disordered behavior. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), he took to interrogation readily, and his skill at extracting information became so impressive that Deepfire couldn't afford to let him go (and frankly, if he took special pleasure in hurting someone or was even more frightening due to his mental instability, Deepfire had no real problem with it).

Although he continues to work for Deepfire today (and has been promoted to their top rank) and lives just outside Stuttgart, his work is mostly off-the-books. He is often called on to head up particularly distasteful missions that involve activities their employers cannot be connected with in any way, such as the murder of entire royal families, or causing mass carnage in a village that's harboring an opponent of the state. His reputation as the bringer of destruction eventually led to the nickname "General Ruination", and finally just "Ruination".

Personality: Ruina's mental instability and his experiences as a soldier (both in an army and a private mercenary force) have given him a deeply conflicting mindset toward violence--on one hand, he revels in it and enjoys causing pain and destruction, and on the other hand, he despises what he's become and is sickened by what he does for Deepfire. His fractured personality often struggles with different aspects of itself, that are alternately horrified and pleased by the misery he causes.

He has never had a serious relationship, although he's had numerous encounters with people who were willing to let him use them for a short time. If he's honest with himself, Ruina would have to admit that he craves the physical affection that he never got from his own parents and hates the physical aversion and fear he causes in everyone who knows him. He is not, however, very often honest with himself, preferring to submerge any of the more human qualities he retains under a shell of condescension and ruthlessness. Although he was never given any formal higher education, he is fiercely intelligent and considers most people to be mentally and emotionally inferior to him. He hates weakness in himself, thus he despises it in others.

Connection to Marvel Universe: Deepfire was a hidden backer of the terrorist group Ten Rings, prior to Obadiah Stane's patronage. Stane contacted Deepfire initially about abducting Tony Stark and they put him in contact with the Ten Rings prior to the events of Iron Man (Earth-199999), although Deepfire officially disavows any ties to that group. There are multiple terrorist groups that take orders from the firm, and are they are often used as pawns of various governments, who find it useful to have a particularly heinous terrorist attack on their soil, to make their point for the necessity of warfare or greater defense budgets. When Stark Enterprises stopped building weapons, Deepfire contracted with Hammer Multinational.

SHIELD is often alerted to security threats posed by Deepfire or the groups they control, and the Avengers are usually sent out to deal with them, although Ruination himself has only faced them in combat once, usually leaving the scene long before they arrive and letting Deepfire's agents deal with them.