War Master and...War Master

I've been meaning to do this one for a long time. I even finished the image some time ago, but never got around to looking over it.

I wanted to shed some more information on Traveller's past form, War Master. 'Cause I prattle on and on about him, but never really go in any detail. And, more specifically, I want to ensure that the War Master that's been turning up lately (such as in Freedom Dies With Me) is very different fto the actual War Master. Think I might just call him Clone Master. But then there'd be three of the same bastard running around and urgh...I'll deal with it later. Meanwhile, let's compare them.

War Master is the one on the left, the original. He is essentially the original Master's hatred and violent nature given form. Sort of. He began during the SonAmy crisis, sourced from The Trickster tying to push Master to cracking point. While it worked...sort of, he soon recovered. But you don't just "recover" from insanity and War Master was created from deep within him, slowly stewing in his increasing hatred. Near the end of 2011, Master fought Delago to find his kidnapped sister, who Delago had drowned for his own amusement. This tasteless and horrific death, coupled with Delago's...pleasure over it, finally gave War Master the needed amount of grief to take over, killing the true Master in the process and taking over his body. From there, he went on the multiple attacks described elsewhere within my work, before finally cooling off and coming to regret his anger-fueled actions, reforming as the bitter and tired wanderer known as Traveller by the events of Freedom Dies With Me (and possibly onwards).

War Master, compared to his alternates, is cold and almost emotionless. By the time he was enough of a problem for others to become fearful of him (often after destroying a whole world to revive his sister), his original goal of avenging her sister by killing all that allowed her death to happen instead degraded to merely killing anyone who got in his way, be it within the pursuit of power or just trying to catch a break, disguised under various "good deeds" that only he believed in. His spent his time going around the multiverse, killing and stealing, to fuel motives and plans even he fully didn't understand. Just killing and stealing for the sake of killing and stealing, to be honest. He was grim, serious and determined to get his way, not showing off flashy or epic moves and often standing stock still during his more dramatic executions. He also had a habit of disguising himself and mangling his voice in some way (such as a voice modulator) to appear more mysterious and more threatening to his victims (because, face it, you probably wouldn't be too scared if you saw what is essentially an edgy brown Sonic coming to kill you), a tactic his clone picked up on. Unlike his clone, or indeed his successor, War Master didn't actually use a Desert Eagle as his sidearm; he used a more reliable .40S&W Walther P99, at least until he DID switch to the stronger Deagle after too many people survived shots and tried to backstab him. He also used a SIG 552 Commando, a SPAS-12 shotgun known as The Huntstman and of course The Blade of Hysteria.

Clone Master, on the other hand, has a much different backstory. He hails from the Autoverse, a failed attempt to clone War Master while he was in the area after taking a sample from him directly. However, the DNA alone was unstable due to War Master's...interesting genetic makeup, so they added in another element. However, this element turned out to be an accidental one; Mephiles. After being wiped from the universe due to the climax of 06, what was left of him floated around the void for years, eventually taking the form of the Time Eater seen in Sonic Generations. This was defeated and destroyed...sort of. Once more the remnants floated around until it found the Autoverse and was collected by Robotnik's scientists to be used in some of his crueler experiments. After he was...disposed of, the remnants once again laid dormant until mixed with the War Master DNA, creating a clone warped beyond belief. Waking up, Mephiles fought his way out of the lab, killing his creators and escaping to plan his own moves. He eventually found out what he was supposed to be and, finding it to be necessary to get back on top and get revenge on the creature who erased him from time and space, went along with it and posed as War Master. After a while, however, he found two things about himself; he was REALLY good at killing and he didn't have the actual War Master's excuses for his deeds. The War Master persona finally overcoming whatever was left of Mephiles, the new persona found joy in senseless carnage, destroying for the sake of it, but never hiding behind any excuses like his host. Clone Master was born, spending his time following his alternates and joking with them for a good year, until he screwed up and subjected an early War Master to a post-Genocide Undertale universe. War Master, driven even closer to the brink by this little adventure, tracked Clone Master to a planet known as Exol 7 alongside Traveller, the two teaming up to bring a superpowered Clone Master down. Eventually War Master managed to stab him repeatedly in the stomach and left him to bleed out in the snowy wasteland. He survived, however, and went on to plan revenge against at least one of them, which eventually led to something truly worse.

Clone Master is much more unhinged compared to even War Master, to the point he threw himself clean off the doorframe and into the kitchen. He plays up his act like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, wisecracking and hamming it up like a pig on a plate, all while destroying all within his path for no other reason than it's incredibly fun to him. He may look non-serious and perhaps too smug for his own good, but when things go wrong for him he won't hesitate to drop the act and become much more foreboding and serious. Unlike War Master, however, he does have standards; torture is for cowards too scared to act on their own and killing parents is the sign of a true bastard. He is allowed these because, as said before, he lacks the past crimes of War Master, only his most basic feelings about them. War Master DOES use a Desert Eagle and a mechanical replication of the Blade of Hysteria used just for him, until Traveller destroyed one and War Master destroyed the other during their battle on Exol 7.

To put it another way in terms of Jokers; War Master is Heath Ledger, Clone Master is Mark Hamill (and probably about a million more similar interpretations). Thank you for your time.

And for one final note, I made this for two reasons; one is that I'm planning a small contest-esque thing and this is the reference. The other...well, you'll see...

1/12/15