Character Bio: The Black Diamond

With December upon us, we reach the season of reflection and camaraderie. This is a perfect opportunity to reflect on an enemy already featured in the Core Rulebook, but only briefly. Here we have the greatest evil of the Digital World; enemy of all and ruler of all; the Black Diamond. Here we give some of the backstory, motivations, and description of The Black Diamond, expounding on what was already listed in the book. Feel free to use this information in your adventures as character motivation, backstory, or even a quest giver!

The Black Diamond: Enemy of the Digital World

The Black Diamond: The Greatest Enemy Ever Known

He is a ruthless, brutal tyrant of a man, and he ruled the Digital World for nearly a hundred years, unchallenged. The Black Diamond is a Digimon of immense strength who came to power in a quick, violent political revolution that deposed the old empire after years of corruption and abuse of its citizens. His real name is unknown, but he is called the Black Diamond for the solid, cold and unchanging shade of black in his eyes.

The origins of the Black Diamond are also unknown. Rumors suggest he hails from the lost plane of Handra, or from the Dark Plane, Neflhiem itself. There is no conclusive evidence either way. The only thing anyone knows for certain about him is that he is vastly powerful—more powerful than any mega-level Digimon currently known. The most outlandish rumor claims that he is of evil, supernatural origin and has broken the laws of nature by actually digivolving past the mega level.

In order to gain power, he used the Digital World’s distrust of the government and hatred of the Emperor to fuel his revolution and persuade a massive number of Digimon to help him take over. However, as earth-shaking as this event was, the vast majority of the Digital World may never have even known had it not been for a large uptick in their living conditions and prosperity. In order to solidify his hold on the Digital World, he instituted public works projects to construct mass transit systems to connect cities and planes together—some of which are still in use.

While on the surface, this provided well-paying jobs and security for the public, the real motivation was to create a way for his armies to move freely and rapidly throughout the Digital World. These projects also gave him time to build his armies and an industrial base the likes of which the Digital World had never before seen, nor has since.

After only two years, his true colors were revealed, and he cracked down on the public hard. Dissidence was not tolerated, nor was any disruption of his plans. While during his rise to power dissidents were quietly dealt with, now they were publicly arrested and imprisoned, as were their families and associates. The factories became prison camps. Those who would not work were sent to experimentation camps in the watery plane of Ea run by his chief science officer, Millenniumon.

Here, Millenniumon, who was renamed the “Beast of the Sea” by the residents of Ea, worked around the clock to develop ways of brainwashing Digimon and turning them into mindless, obedient soldiers. In addition, his medical experiments into prolonging his own life added even more suffering to the Digital World. The most notable project he worked on, however, was the Black Diamond’s plan to clone himself and create a super-soldier.

In command of the military was Apocalymon, the Destroyer of Worlds, who was known for his own unique brand of brutality. He was known for destroying entire cities to quell uprisings in the early days of the Black Diamond’s conquest. During the Liberation War, he redoubled his ruthlessness to attack civilian targets and hospitals to demoralize troops and deprive them of crucial medical aide.

Together, throughout the occupation, they laid waste to the Digital World, utterly destroying entire regions and natural resources. In Yggdrassil, the forest plane, the vast groves of ironwood trees were burned to the ground to get at the digi-chrome that the trees had metabolized. The deserts of Anshar saw their most rapid expansion as the Black Diamond deprived towns and cities of water and resources, nearly doubling the uninhabitable ring of desert surrounding the capital. His most destructive feat was to disrupt the entire structure of the Le’ore Mountain Range in Anshar by mining out the entire range and causing it to collapse under its own weight.

It was not until many years later that a chance encounter sparked the seeds of rebellion that would bring down the Black Diamond and his regime. A human being named Joseph Basil, who, at the time was working on the very first incarnation of the Internet, stumbled through a digital gate during a routine test of computer equipment on his university campus. There he met a Digimon, a Gabumon, and rescued him by destroying the guard that was beating the Digimon. From there, the rebellion grew to engulf Gaia, the Mountain Plane, and spread to Ea, Kishar and Yggdrassil. More than a decade later, the Digital World was finally liberated by the Sovereignty—of which this original Gabumon was a part of, now digivolved to Baihumon.

In the grand scheme of things, the Black Diamond’s own ambition was his undoing. By initiating his cloning project, called—uncreatively—the Clone Works, he introduced an unstable factor into the Digital World. After his initial defeat, the project was left abandoned until it was discovered that the seal holding him in Neflhiem—the prison in which the Sovereignty condemned him—was breaking down. Soon he would be free, and the Digital World needed a weapon against him.

The Clone Works project was brought back into the present by the Sovereignty, who, in their research thought they could add enough genetic material from other Digimon to counteract that provided by the Black Diamond. The result was an unstable mix, and, combined with an unknown error in the machine, miraculously fused the digital DNA with a human being. This powerful fusion of Digimon data and Human genetic coding enabled the resultant hybrid to digivolve to a power greater than the Black Diamond and destroy him once and for all.