White Knight

White Knight (aka Gannon Baine) is a man approximately 40 years old, and a protector of all lifeforms good and evil. He ends all battles, even if they are in self-defense. Because of this, he is neither a villian nor a hero, although his efforts to protect the innocent classify him as the latter.

Early Life
As a child, Gannon Baine was constantly berated for his tendency to go to great lengths to prevent violence. His father, Chicago Police Chief Finnian Baine, would often worry that his son would be injured when attempting to protect others. One week after beginning ninth grade, Gannon was hospitilized for blunt-force trauma to the back and head, the victim of violence after protecting a smaller student from a drunken adult.

After this, Finnian Baine chose to relocate his family to a less violent area. Gannon, his sister, and his parents moved to Helena, Montana, where Gannon continued his ninth grade year and his sister Felicity continued her seventh.

When Gannon was twenty he moved to Greeley, Colorado, to work at a high school in the district. He was so horrified by the gang activity and violence that one night, after seeing seven high schoolers killed by the police after the boys attacked, Gannon vowed he would take action.

Peacekeeper
Baine's chance to change the world came when he noticed the reflection of a sword in a Greeley pond. When he bent down to run his hand through the water, however, his fingers brushed against the leather of the hilt. The sword was no reflection.

The minute he touched the weapon, Baine could see everything: He saw the screams of innocents that were soon to die. He felt the pain in criminals being beaten or executed, and wanted fair trial. And he realized that, with this sword, he could help.

Baine soon realized that while the sword, "Pureblade," was amazingly sharp, it must never be used for injuring others in any way. Rather, the beams of pure light that emitted from the blade would render a person temporarily unconscious, giving Baine enough time to remove the combatants from each other, thus avoiding battle and bloodshed.

Taking the name White Knight, Baine moved back to Chicago, Illinois. From then on the crime rate in Chicago decreased dramatically; Baine was rendering entire groups of gang members unconscious with Pureblade and moving them away from one another. This pacifist tactic is known to Baine as Purifying.

Several heroes have had to combat White Knight in the past, simply because he would not allow them to incapacitate even the most dangerous of villians. Because of this, White Knight is hard to classify in one group, hero or villian. However, most of the heroes that have duelled him agree that his intentions were good.

Pureblade's Shift and Retirement
After seven years of Purifying the United States, White knight met the superheroes Scarlet Cyclone and The Hornet. Cyclone and Hornet were persuing a robotic clone of the Cyclone called "Black Twister." Unfortunately, White Knight saw this as a threat to Twister's rights (although Twister was an android) and attempted to stop the two heroes. After a pitched "battle" between the two, he succeeded in rendering Hornet unconscious, but Scarlet Cyclone evaded Pureblade's attack and continued the duel. In the end, Cyclone attempted to end the duel without injuring White Knight, taking Pureblade from him and attempting to stop the Knight's flow of power. When this failed, Cyclone attempted to encase the sword in wet cement.

Cyclone was intercepted by not only White Knight, but Black Twister as well. After yet another tiring fight, Cyclone managed to plunge Pureblade through Twister's artificial heart, rendering the android clone lifeless.

This had negative repercussions on Pureblade. Because it was a sword that was nearly sentient, killing the android had a strange effect on it. Pureblade transformed into Retaliator, a black sword capable of causing death with a single baem of red light.

White Knight fell to his knees, lamenting the loss of his blade, and Scarlet Cyclone threw Retaliator into the cement, which hardened unnaturally fast around it. Then Cyclone left White Knight kneeling on the ground.

The Knight's career was over, and after that night Gannon Baine was mortal once more...but unbeknownst to all, Retaliator had not been destroyed.

Powers and Abilities
White Knight possessed several abilities that developed when he found Pureblade, including:
 * Heightened awareness
 * Amplified vision
 * Purification (The ability to stun individuals without killing them)
 * Increased speed and agility
 * Ability to discern lies from the truth

Appearance
White Knight appears to be in his forties, with neat blond hair and a matching beard and mustache. As Gannon Baine, he appeared as a normal human. However, after finding Pureblade he became taller, more muscular, and most noticeably his eyes dilated to a pure white color (without irises or pupils.) He commonly wears midieval-looking white armor with gold highlights. He wears occasionally dons a helmet that matches his armor, though frequently seen without one.

The symbol on his breastplate and helmet is the Libra Scales, a symbol of equality and justice.