Characters: Simone Frost
Real Name: Simone Cordelia Frost
Occupation: Business mogul, oligarch, Queen of Crime
Identity: Known
Legal Status: Citizen of several nations with no criminal record
Place of Birth: Geneva, Switzerland
Known Relatives: Simon Frost (father, deceased); Gwendolyn Klausen Frost (mother, deceased), Simon Frost II (brother, deceased)
Group Affiliation: Frost Omnicom (President and CEO), The Alliance
Powers and abilities: Simone Frost inherited a variation her father's ability to decrease the thermal energy of ambient water vapor in his vicinity to below zero degrees Celsius, freezing it into ice. While Simon typically used his ability to create various ice structures and weapons, his daughter's abilities manifest differently. Simon could also change his body into organic ice.
Simone can similarly radically drop the temperature of nearby water vapor and change her body to ice (although she dislikes the experience). She is able to form a super dense layer of ice around herself as protection from concussive force and impacts.
Simone's most unique ability is the power to create semi-autonomous ice golems that are powered by the infusion of another being's life essence. While Simone's mother had this ability to a limited degree (the ability to create ice golems powered by her will), no one can yet explain Simone's ability to capture/or extract the essence of life from a being and place it into another. Similarly the method by which the golems become powered is also unexplained. These abilities are most likely side effects of Legacy's process and hundreds of years of the Frost family's breeding program.
Although Simone can form many golems, one golem (the one called Mother) is never too far away from her side. This golem appears to be the strongest she can create (it can lift over 50 tons) and often acts in ways that are unsettlingly affectionate or decidedly protective towards its creator.
Abilities: Simone Frost is a world class chess grandmaster, a shrewd business mogul and a deadly tactician.
Brief personal history: The Frost family name was a fixture in aristocratic circles throughout European history. The patriarchs of the various family branches were renowned as military leaders or businessmen and the family as a whole pooled its wealth and resources even across borders and regardless of nationality. This secretly made the Frosts one of Europe's richest families. The Frost family held many secrets and their deepest and most closely held secret was that the Frosts possessed various superhuman abilities connected to their ability to create and manipulate ice.
Frost family history traces their abilities back to Einar Frost, a minor late 14th century Norwegian nobleman. In order to gain a foothold and a voice of influence with the rulers of the profitable Baltic region, Legacy convinced Einar to become his agent in exchange for wealth and formidable powers. The infernal geneticist remade Einar into a weapon of winter who rose to prominence within the Kalmar Union. Einar was a man of many appetites who sired many children in and out of marriage, spreading the Frost gene far and wide.
Eventually Einar passed leaving an immense fortune to his kin. At some point his many children (most of whom had inherited some form of Einar's abilities) convened to determine the fate and direction of the family. It was at this convocation that the phrase "Frost shall wed Frost, to hold the gold, to keep the cold" was born. For the next six centuries the Frosts would intermarry in order to secure and grow the family's wealth and to prevent the power of their bloodline from diminishing.
Simon Frost was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1948 and by the time he was five years old exhibited some of the strongest Frost abilities of any family member for generations. Much of the Frost family fortune had been ravaged by the wars in Europe and Simon's birth and power level were seen as signs of the family's resurgence. Simon's father, Brahms, was a strict and sadistic military man who chaffed at the praise showered on his child. Around Simon's eighth birthday Brahms began to raise the boy as he had treated defiant military prisoners. Harsh physical and psychological punishments were the norm and the boy grew to hate his father. Brahms drilled the boy in business, economic theory and military tactics, pushing Simon to the point where he became more powerful and proficient in the use of his abilities than any other Frost. But there was no love between them. Brahms was creating a weapon.
At his eighteenth birthday ceremony, Simon Frost slew his father and many other senior Frost family members from around the world and assumed control of Frost family assets. Not content with the Frost's legitimate holdings, Simon funneled vast sums into criminal enterprises and within 10 years was the head of an operation that rivalled many long established European criminal syndicates. Although he was now enormously wealthy, Simon was not averse to getting his hands dirty with regards to violent criminal activity. He in fact relished opportunities to use his powers to threaten, hurt or kill.
As was customary, Simon married a distant Frost cousin who quickly bore him a son and a daughter. Simon and his wife Gwendolyn openly despised each other and it was clear that Simon preferred his male child, often ignoring the existence of his daughter Simone. Simone was withdrawn, thoughtful and the spitting image of her mother. Her older brother Simon was boorish and cruel, a perfect vessel for his father's twisted tutelage. The younger Simon was taught to loathe his sibling and she was often the victim of physical abuse at his hands. He was at his worst during their father's long absences (presumably for "business"). Violence was his gift. Chess was hers.
Simone was a chess prodigy and Gwendolyn hired some of the best chess masters in Europe to teach and challenge her daughter. By the time the girl was nine she beat them all and could learn no more from them. Unable to deny his daughter's genius the elder Frost sought another method to teach her and her mother their rightful place. Around Simone's fifteenth year, Simon Sr. proposed a contest between his children – to win the game all one of them had to do was to kill the other child and/or Simon Sr. himself, and they would inherit control of all Frost holdings. Thus began the deadliest game of all.
Simon II's powers easily lent themselves to violence and he'd been trained in combat by his father and others. Simone possessed a wider range of abilities but her strongest power was the ability to create ice golems and to infuse them with a portion of the life force from other living beings. Apart from Simone herself, only Gwendolyn knew that these golems were powered by actual life forces (this was a power that Gwendolyn herself possessed albeit a much weaker version). It was these golems that she created to act as her guardians and soldiers as the Frost household devolved into a place of constant danger. With a small army of ice golems at her command Simone's knowledge of chess balanced the scales. Dozens of servants died and even more fled as attacks and assassination attempts became almost daily occurrences. Everyone and everything in the Frost mansion was used; teachers, maids, grounds men, butlers …all became would-be assassins. Only Gwendolyn remained true and untouched. She was Simone's rock.
That fact is probably what led to her death at the hand of her own son.
In what was probably an attempt to weaken Simone, Simon II killed his mother in front of his sibling. In her shock Simone unexpectedly placed her mother's essence and a part of her consciousness into a golem larger and more powerful than any she had created before - and used it to pull her brother's head off. She then stalked her father throughout the house and grounds and after a desperate battle that destroyed much of the estate, used the golem to rip her father's body to pieces. Simone named the golem "Mother."
Sixteen year old Simone Frost had triumphed, but at terrible cost. The shy and quiet girl was gone. Simon Frost too had been forging a weapon, he just got the gender wrong.
Once Simone seized control of all Frost holdings through questionable legal means or proxies, she immersed herself in the business. She dedicated herself to applying her prodigious mind to the business world. She often arranged to have herself temporarily employed at various low/mid-level positions within her own companies in order to learn skills and gain vital information and insight. She became the pawn, the knight, the rook - and by the time she officially took over the company at the age of eighteen she knew more about the company than many who'd been there for decades. She was ready to be the queen. Simone reformed all Frost holdings under a new banner; Frost Omnicom, and quickly steered the company to unprecedented profit. She believed she had finally defeated her father.
She was wrong.
Simone was attacked one night by two super powered assailants who confessed that they were carrying out a contract that her father had taken out on her life in the event that she was alive after he had died. These men were her father's cohorts in a secret enterprise called the Alliance; a group of superhuman criminals, cults, murderous enclaves and world threatening cabals. The Alliance provided support services, information, safe haven and exploited mayhem. Simon Frost had not only been a founding member, he'd also been Chairman.
There was a new game to play. A new challenge.
Simone dispatched the two assassins back to the Alliance hierarchy, expressing a desire to carry on her father's legacy as a member of their association. When the Alliance responded with even more assassins Simone began a campaign against them with forces of her own in a secret war that spread across the globe. When the smoke cleared Simone Frost emerged as the new leader of The Alliance. Under her leadership the Alliance expanded its membership, its sphere of influence, increased its recruitment of some of the world's best scientific minds and foiled T.A.S.K.'s attempts to dismantle it. Profits have also soared to record highs.
In an unprecedented move Simone orchestrated the political and martial takeover of the tiny South American island nation of Jehrlat. The Alliance now has a sovereign state from which to operate. What this means for T.A.S.K.'s ongoing efforts against the Alliance and superhuman villainy worldwide, remain to be seen.
Written by Damion Gonzales
Character design by Sean Isaakse