The Mantid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harrod The Mantid

Owen Parks was a hunter, pioneer and colonel in the French army in Algeria. Parks disappeared during a hunting expedition in Algeria, and was found to have later been hired by the Cortex Corporation. Parks partly left his old life due to disagreements with his family and a paranoid belief of there being a bounty on his head.

Early Life
Parks was born into an affluent pioneering family, and his clan was in perpetual conflict with the local negroids in the area.

Disappearance
Owen Parks disappeared during a hunting expedition with a group of friends in Algeria. The group had sold Parks out to the local negroids, as a way to enact vengeance on Parks for outstanding debts that he owed to their families. Parks tried to fight back, but was outnumbered and outgunned, so he surrendered by throwing his weapons onto the desert sands.

Parks was then taken to the primitive's local village, where he was imprisoned within a small wooden shack. When Neo Cortex and Nitrus Brio were also imprisoned at the camp, Parks was already working on creating a small incendiary device which he hoped he could use to enflame the village and consolidate his escape. At first he spoke little with the two madmen, and regarded them as imbeciles more than anything else. During an argument with one of the local guards, Parks' incendiary device was discovered and he was immediately brought to be executed. Parks' execution was interupted when Nick Briose distracted the primitives with a random and incoherent speech, while Cortex retrieved the incendiary device and used it to alight the village in flames. The group then worked together to kill many of the surviving primitives, and escaped Algeria together via a cargo plane bringing a shipment of steel and other resources to the United States. Afterwards, Parks maintained a working relationship with them over the subsequent years, serving as their primary "hunter".

Assassinations
Parks fell out of contact with the two scientists shortly after their escape from Algeria, and spent most of his time trying to clear his name from the French Bureau of Criminal Records. Meanwhile, Cortex and Brio were unsucccessfully trying to jumpstart their company. Their attempts were mostly unsuccessful due to heavy competition from monopolies in the area, and an adversarial relationship with local crime leaders. Hearing wind of Parks' initiatives to clear his name, Cortex offered to clear his name if he could help him "eliminate" certain competition. Parks agreed, and shortly after eliminating the last of the opponents his name was cleared and Parks returned to France with full intents to desire.

Mutant Vortex Crisis
Needing Parks' expertise with conflicts against native Wumpians, Cortex arranged for the discreet exposition of Park's true identity. Parks never learned that Cortex was responsible for this, but after having fled from the police was offered sanctuary on the islands. With nowhere else to go, Parks hesitantly agreed and would later spend the final years of his life working for the Cortex Corporation at Cortex Castle. After learning about the small group of explorers causing havoc on the archipelago, and Ripper Roo's failure to apprehend them, Cortex ordered Mantis to deal with them personally. Mantis took much amusement with his task, and though he could have perhaps accomplished it with relative ease, he chose to toy with the group and follow them slowly during their explorations on the archipelago.

Bombing of Southern Ocean Observatory Base
After the Royal Society pinpointed the location of the Wumpa Archipelago, Parks was sent to disrupt their operations as much as possible in order to delay their colonization efforts. The society was using the magnetic frequencer at the Southern Ocean Observatory Base in order to provide precise data for their charter planes navigating towards the islands. Parks managed to infiltrate the base early in the morning, incapacitating several guards before forcing the project manager to upload all of the society's information onto a USB drive. After this, Parks left the base and detonated an explosive device which destroyed over half of the facility. The magnetic frequencer was caught up in the destruction, and as a result no one was able to travel to the islands for over six months.

Death
Parks remained on Tasmania in a bid to locate and neutralize Edward Mire, Richard Birmingham, and Clare Helgerson. After failing to neutralize the later two, Parks was cornered by Edward at his family farm, where after a short skirmish he was surprised by a sudden ambush of local farmers and crushed between two intersecting combines.

Personality
"'Not much of a talker is he? Think he's in shock?'"

Parks was a diligent pioneer and freedom fighter, deeply scarred from his past and motivated into a bloodfury resentment of his lineage. It is unknown if Parks had any measures of Edomite blood, but it could be suspected from his behaviour. It is possible that some of his family may have intermarried with Algerians sometime in the past.

Parks often expressed guilt for his association with the Cortex Corporation, and would often show secretive sympathy towards workers and soldiers employed by the corrupt organization. Parks was driven by a sense of indebted honor towards the corporation after being rescued from primitives in Algeria, and due to his criminal background there were little other places he could go. This trapped Parks in his employment by the organization, and he developed an apathetic attitude where he followed orders blandly and with little enthusiasm. When Richard Birmingham toyed with Parks during their encounter near the Vista Volcano, Parks was highly entertained and saw it as a much needed "break from the tedium."

Near the end of his life, Parks showed an outright negligent denial to follow the corporation's orders, and nearly became a rogue agent. This was substantiated by the fact that Parks blatantly lied when asked regarding the condition of Richard Birmingham, claiming that he had assassinated him when in fact he had made no attempts to do so at all.

Abilities
Parks was highly trained in various firearms and maintained an excellent level of marksmanship ability. He also favored machetes and longblades, and often chose to exhibit them in combat often only for aesthetic purposes at best. Mantis' armor was designed by N.Gin, and featured small jet propelled wings that allowed him to glide over small distances. The armor also provided Parks with a small degree of protection against the elements, and during the battle of Vista Volcano it even provided evident resistance against full contact with lava.