Dr. Torque prefers to labor over his fantastic inventions in seclusion in his sprawling laboratory complex. Though his isolation frees his mighty intellect from social constraints, he is but one man and is often in need of additional strength in order to assemble his larger constructs. To this end, Dr. Torque has devised the Heavy Ambulatory Rider Operated Load Dispatching Equipment, or H.A.R.O.L.D.E. as he is affectionately referred to by his Creator. This ìiron manî amplifies a normal fellowís strength fiftyfold and is easily and surely controlled by a series of pulleys and gears as well as the Torque Laboratories patented Emeraldic Energy Extrapolators™ concealed within this behemoth.
The miracle of near-instantaneous messaging notwithstanding, recording and decoding telegraph messages is, at least, massively time consuming and, at worst, is the type of barbaric labor that a gentleman should avoid. Dr. Torque happens to be such a gentleman and has devised an elegant solution to this conundrum. Torque Laboratories is proud to present the Automated Torque Telegrapher, or A.T.T. for brevity’s sake. This ingenious contraption converts the crude dots and dashes of a wired transmission into a finely penned manuscript fit for the civilized eye. Its operation is a closely-guarded secret, and any specious mention of “orphan’s souls” will be met with the fiercest of lawsuits.
Dr. Mortimer J. Torque is the founder of the group. He is a world-renowned inventor and the pre-eminent steamologist in the United States. From his secluded headquarters underneath Washington D.C., he runs a string of factories and mills that produce marvel after marvel of the Steam Age. Steamships, motorized carriages, trains, even an airship: The Centennial that serves as his personal transport to the far corners of the globe.
His latest creation is a steam-powered automated mule on wheels, dubbed Scrappington Hauley. This device was intended as a labor saving aid for man, but something is not quite right with this new invention. Sometimes it seems to act as if it has a mind of its own. In fact, the highly skeptical Dr. Torque has become convinced that a spirit of some sort has possessed his creation. Since coming to this realization, he has also noticed many strange happenings in his factories and at other sites worldwide. He has come to believe that the rising dead are harbingers of the apocalypse, due to arrive sometime after 1900.
