Johnny “Dare” Lomax
History: Johnny Lomax was born in 1895 and grew up in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. He had a typical lower-middle class childhood free of
any major incidents until the death of his much-loved older brother
during World War 1 in 1910. Eager to take his brother’s place in the
war but unable to serve as a soldier because of a leg injury from his
youth, Johnny, an active member of his high school’s literature club,
was able to catch the tail-end of the war as a war correspondent.
Writing for the local Philadelphia paper, he earned a reputation as a
fearless reporter of the war and gained some fame around America for
the crazy things he would do to get a story.
When the war came to a close in 1918, Johnny found himself with little
to do. Luckily, many mercenaries and other seekers of derring-do were
bored as well with this unfortunate outbreak of peace, and these
people turned to a life of adventuring and treasure-hunting to satisfy
their thirst for excitement. Johnny saw a chance to continue his
perilous reporting style by traveling with these adventures and
reporting their exploits to readers through a magazine dedicated to
these men of action. Johnny tracked down one of these men, Bruno
Rockwell, and offered a deal: he would write about Rockwell’s travels
for a cut of the gold bullion that Rockwell was looking for in a cave
somewhere in Southern Africa. Eager for money and fame, Rockwell
accepted. Unfortunately for Rockwell, the gold turned out to be a
religious artifact of a long-forgotten race of cavemen who didn’t
take kindly to this foreign man absconding with their goods. On their way
out with the gold, Rockwell was killed by a poison dart, while Johnny
was barely able to escape with his share of the loot (and at the same
time was overcome with Z-Waves).
Flush with cash and no longer tied to his commitment to Rockwell,
Johnny, now going by the nom de plume of Johnny Dare, set up his own
adventure magazine, Daring Tales of Two-Fisted Adventure, and began
publishing with Rockwell’s fatal journey his first story. His next
story involved a decent into a newly discovered sub-basement of the
Great Pyramid of Giza with a young archeology student from the University of
Chicago named Henry “Indiana” Jones. Once again, Johnny barely
survived, this time having to break the grasp of an angry mummy and
leap over a fiery chasm to escape a swarm of man-eating scarab
beetles. Luckily, Jones survived the expedition as well, and
Johnny’s reporting made the handsome, young, aspiring scholar into
a local hero.
His third adventure saw him travel into the jungles of
northern Thailand with British adventurer Sir Neil Cox, a dashing,
older gentlemen who was on the hunt for a 60-foot long snake that had
taken to eating local villagers. The snake was never found, and Cox
wrote it off as a silly superstition, but rumors of its existence
still go around. Since then, Johnny has traveled to the four-corners
of the world, recording the dangerous exploits of the few brave men
who are willing to push the envelope of what man can do.
Currently, Johnny is a fairly well-known person in the small
sub-culture of adventuring. He has many contacts and has met most of
the major players at least once. He has a team of freelance reporters
that work for him, as well as a full-time secretary, Ms. Bigglesworth,
who is always reminding him not to forget his coat.
Motivation: Johnny doesn’t see himself as a hero. He believes that
the real heroes in the world are the people like his brother and the
adventurers who risk life and limb going from adventure to adventure
around the world. He does strongly believe, however, in the value of
his actions, as his writings give hope and happiness to the common
people who read his publication. He respects and admires the
adventurers he works with and sees himself as a fortunate witness
rather than an active assistant in their work (despite what some of
his former adventurer colleagues might say). But despite the good he
believes he is doing, he still sees himself as lacking compared to the
actions of those around him. Because of the circumstances of his
brother’s death, he views giving one’s life for a worthy cause as
the ultimate benchmark of true heroism, and so throws himself into risky
situations at a whim, knowing that his death in the line-of-duty is
the only way to prove his own worth as an equal to his brother.
