Head, torso: Red Spot
Arms, legs: Slice (VvV)
Waist: Frostbite/Snow Job (Spy Troops Snow Cat re-release)
Feet: Sgt. Bazooka (VvV)

Mask: Chap Mei Construction Worker

Recent developments with another custom (the Turk) got me to thinking about the Red Shadows and the Baron.

Now, I don't know too much about his UK history, although I hear that he was destined to become the UK's Cobra Commander.

I'm planning a different tack; that the Red Shadows will split off from Cobra (in lieu of the Coil doing this in the DDP run) and be the bastion of deadly weird science. I'm also stealing an idea from AdrienViedt's Crimson Guard, that the Baron is a descendant from the original Praetorian Guard who served Julius Caesar.

The Baron joined Cobra and underwent surgery to become an Appel series Crimson Guard (although he kept more fit than the portly Professor Appel). His cover was a bank president in Germany.

After Cobra's show of force in Trucial Abysmia, the world powers finally took notice of the tiny island terrorist nation. The CIA put a hefty bounty on the Commander's head, while many nations either made preparations for overwhelming force or placed diplomatic pressure on Cobra Commander to 'make nice.' China, Cuba, and Libya (among others) brokered a deal to call off the impending war, if CC went into seclusion and Cobra forces pulled out of Trucial Abysmia. With his own survival a grave concern, CC agreed, and turned his attentions to making Cobra Island more self-sufficient for his Cobra followers. Cobra operatives undercover outside of the Island were ordered to go into indefinite sleeper status.

As the region commander for Central Europe, the Baron took this as a display of weakness on the Commander's part. Still hurt by the loss of Serpentor (Caesar reborn), the Baron severed his ties with Cobra and set out with other disenfranchised Crimson Guardsmen to try to replicate the cloning process, succeeding first with Dr. Mindbender (who was then sent out without the full knowledge of his rebirth to rejoin Cobra).

The Baron reclaimed his hereditary title and became the leader of this new terrorist faction calling themselves the Red Shadows.