<span style=“line-height: 1.5;”>Research on “Neanderthroid”</span>
Keith Miller was born in Gresham, Oregon in 1952, the younger of two brothers. His family was poor, and his father often resorted to crime to support his family. Keith, like other members of his family, had had several run-ins with the police, and for him they were mostly vandalism and petty theft.
When Keith was fifteen, he first exhibited meta-human abilities, a much higher than average strength and resistance to injury. At this point he dropped out of school, and there was no records of him, but matching his description was an independent hero code named “Thumper” working out of eastern Portland, mostly combating gang activity.
In 1978 he was seen as a member of the newly-formed superhero group, the Fortunate Ones, with the new code name Stonefist. Other members were Mr. Wonderful (the charismatic leader), Amazonia (female warrior), and Brain Babe (super-intelligent lady gadgeteer). They were an active group for about fifteen years, and their biggest success was their fight with the Blue Butcher and his Slaughter Squad in 1988. The Slaughter Squad had taken several dozen people hostage in the US Bankcorp Building, intending to kill them all, but the Fortunate Ones were able to rescue all of the hostages and capture the villains. Unfortunately, Amazonia was killed in that fight.
After that, the hero group was less active, and had occasional other heroes join, but officially disbanded in 1993. Mr. Miller worked at some normal jobs, owned a bar for a few years in the early 2000s, but was in difficult financial straits in the last few years. He started hiring himself out as a superhero, mostly for local film work and security. His last known job was working for the Five Foundation, assisting in the Portland tryouts for the new Daniel Dunlap-funded superhero group. During that time, he was assigned the code name Neanderthroid. He participated in over a dozen simulated combats with potential recruits, including one with the group that was finally selected as the Rose City Five.
After the tryouts ended, there was no record of him until the incident at Dr. Anonymous' lab, and the mutated being known as “The Beast” being apprehended at Lloyd Center, with police able to determine that The Beast was Mr. Miller through fingerprints.
Mr. Miller has no living relatives. His parents divorced, and his father died of a heart attack in 1983. His mother died of alcoholism in 1985, and his older brother Frank was killed in prison in 1998 while serving a life sentence for a double homicide.