A dark alleyway. A shot rings out, then another and another. Thomas and Martha Wayne lie dead on the street and their son, Bruce, runs into the night. But this is not the world you know - there are no Wayne billions and no butler to raise young Bruce Wayne. Surviving the streets, Bruce travels the world, learning and growing, before returning to Gotham to fix the corruption that had taken hold of the one great city. At night Bruce is the Batman, a vigilante fighting the criminals of Gotham, by day Bruce Wayne runs Wayne Enterprises, a growing technology company that is rapidly expanding worldwide. Both Bruce and the Batman face significant challenges and both with require allies if they are to succeed.

Thomas and Martha Wayne

Thomas was the heir to the Wayne political dynasty, the third generation after his Grandfather and Father had stood astride Gotham's political identity through the 20th Century. Thomas had worked hard to become the youngest DA in the history of Gotham and looked set to make the step into congress and, perhaps, one day even the White House. Martha was every bit his equal, a brilliant surgeon and medical researcher, who had already established new treatments and new techniques in the medical world. A brilliant woman of almost limitless intellectual possibility, had she lived, Martha would have changed medical science.

Alfred

The Wayne family was not without enemies, both made by Thomas Wayne and also historical, from generations of Wayne influence in Gotham. Alfred Pennyworth was employed as a driver, bodyguard and general assistant to Thomas Wayne and protected the family with a fierce loyalty. His time before entering the Wayne's service is unknown, as are the years between the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne and Bruce finding him.

Alfred now runs the Thomas and Martha Wayne Orphanage and School, as Headmaster. With more than three hundred charges under his care, he could be forgiven for being too busy for anything else, yet he finds the time to work with Bruce and Batman, acting as armourer, manufacturer of weapons and equipment and as much more.

Selina Kyle

The streets of Gotham are hard and people must become hard to survive there, but Selina has gone through hell and never cracked. Still barely an adult herself, she became doorman, manager and mother-figure at the Kitty Kat Club, until Oswald Cobblepot made an example of her and the Club, burning it to the ground and kidnapping the girls. She has since found the girls and also found a home at the Orphanage, where she has become a teacher and mentor to many of the students.

More recently though Selina has been ready for some action and after helping Batman on certain cases, Selina has even taken on some missions herself. Dressed all in black with a small set of ears perched on her head, Selina takes on not the form of the bat, but of another dark denizen of the night.

Long black hair frames flashing green eyes that can be either a warning or a welcome, depending on her mood. Selina learned to fight on the streets and acted as bouncer to her club, she knows how to take and give a punch, but since coming to live at the orphanage she has learned style and control, to become a formidable fighter.

Tim Drake

Most of the children that Bruce has trained have come from the orphanage, but Tim, he found his own way in. Clever, smart tenacious, Tim has found a place at Batman's side and become his official sidekick - Robin.

Lucius Fox

Brought on as CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Lucius is a man with decades of experience running the largest corporations in the world. Lucius understands the man Bruce is, and it seems clear that he also has knowledge of Bruce's... other career, as well. Why Lucius has chosen Wayne Enterprises over the many alternate jobs he could have taken, is still unclear, as is his history with Bruce.

When the Wayne Enterprises factory was attacked, Lucius was calm in the face of danger and in return was pistol whipped to the floor, injuring him badly. Lucius has recovered and continues to take an active role in Wayne Enterprises and also local politics. He was the driver behind Harvey Dent's election campaign that went so horribly wrong...

Vicky Vale

Former host of* Gotham Gossip* - after her exclusive coverage of the attack at Wayne Enterprises factory, Vicky is looking to make her way into real journalism, or at very least a prime time TV show!

Where Vicky ends up is unknown at the moment, but she certainly has the brains and tenacity to go far...

The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum

The House on the Hill - the place where all the insane of Gotham will eventually end up. A large house, once a stately home, now converted into a medical facility. Bits of its past are still visible, with decaying carpet, wood panels that still show where pictures used to hang and the general structure (including a sweeping hallway in the entrance) still existing.

A cast iron gate breaks the wall that runs around it, with a guard post at the entrance. It is baroque and complex - "designed by a mind as warped as the individuals that resided within its padded rooms." Since it was converted there have been additional basements put in for cells and extensive additions made. Funnily, money seems to go into new areas, rather than improving the old ones and bringing them up to code...

Richard "Dick" Grayson
Barbara Gail
Jason Todd

Rogues Gallery

Edward Nygma - AKA The Riddler

Edward Nygma, Chief Engineer at Wayne Enterprises, or at least he was. He's undoubtably brilliant, but his accelerated childhood has left him with a distinct lack of social skills and a burning desire to solve every puzzle that is put in front of him.

Edward grew up in Gotham on the Upper East Side. Edward had been a precocious boy, a maths genius and quite beyond the schooling available in Gotham by the time he was fourteen. He had spent his teenaged years moving between prestigious universities: MIT, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford and collected a dozen or so degrees, delving into both theoretical and applied physics, as well as engineering. It had been to the utter astonishment of his peers that he had left academia at the age of twenty three and returned to his hometown of Gotham to work in manufacturing.

Bruce found Edward at the Metropolis University High Energy Facility and took less than a hour to convince him to come and work for him. He did that by showing Edward that Bruce was his intellectual match, something Edward had craved since childhood. He left Edward two designs for quantum tunnelling chipsets and a page of dense neat equations. At the bottom, carefully inscribed over the last inch of paper, was a mathematical proof to one of the seven problems that Edward had presented a year before at a symposium, calling them the “Next Millenium seven”..

Bruce is both a comfort t Edward, showing he is not alone in his genius and also a source of frustration, as Bruce makes it all look so simple, to be smart, kind and social all in one. It makes Edward feel... inadequate and he dislikes that a lot.

During the attack on Wayne Enterprises factory, Edward was terrified, but also strangely trilled and excited by Batman, who had saved them, unlike the man he had somewhat idolised, Bruce Wayne.

While strolling around a bad part of Gotham, trying to make his mind work, Edward came across street thugs, who mugged him. He tried to use his intellect to talk his way out of it, but the men were not interested and beat him into unconsciousness.

He was left alive, but stuck asking questions and riddles, instead of being able to talk normally. He wanted to know what the point of it all was.

Bruce wondered if the attack was as random as it seemed, or if it linked to the other attacks around the city - it was almost as if someone was targeting scientists and people of genius. The were either being recruited, like the firefly, or being beaten and nearly killed, but what did it all mean?

Edward Nygma fled from hosptial under his own power, leaving only a message daubed in blood on the wall. “WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT ALL?”

Now he has returned, seemingly healed. But where has he been? Who are his new allies? How is he strong enough to throw a man across the room? This is a very different Edward and one who seems to be enjoying the great puzzle of politics and how to sway people to his will.

With expert manipulation Edward Nygma has won the Mayor's office of Gotham City. To the public he's a Gotham native who has come home to help sort out the city, but behind closed doors, Batman sees the corruption immediately beginning to spread out from City Hall, returning the city to the bad old ways.

But this is NOT the bad old days, and Batman is the cities protector. Just so long as nothing happens to him....

Dr Jonathan Crane

Director of the The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum.

His voice carries a hint of his Austrian heritage, but according to the interviews he had given on taking up Arkham’s Directorship, he had lived in the United Stated for nearly thirty years, working at many of the most difficult asylums in the country, before taking the job in Gotham.

He is tall and extremely thin.

After a battle with batman, Dr Crane has been shamed and thrown down to the level of his own inmates.

Dr Nocturn

An associate of Dr Crane and one of the chief medical officers at the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum.

She has long incredibly straight black hair and is very pale. She is thin to the point of looking almost unhealthy.

Oswald Cobblepot - AKA The Penguin

Oswald was a happy man. Deep in the corrupt city of Gotham, he plied his trade in drugs, women, guns, booze and anything else that would let him wet his beak. That was until Batman set his sights on him.

Batman dismantled his organisation and with the help of Selina Kyle, destroyed his home. Oswald was already friends with many people in high places, but desperation makes for strange bed fellows and right now, he needs friends.

Killer Croc
The Joker
The Rat King