New Zealand Heroes

[Southern Cross]

Why,oh why are all heroes from the South Pacific Australian???? Why can't New Zealand have a superhero or two??

[Lord Liaden]

What, Xena wasn't enough for you?

 

FWIW, DC's Global Guardians international hero team did have a member from New Zealand: Tuatara, whose "third eye" could project illusions. Granted they didn't do much with him...

[Southern Cross]

Well,I'm not sure that Xena would consider herself a superhero......

And,while Lucy Lawless is a New Zealander,her character,Xena, ISN'T...

And,from what I heard,Tuatara was just the "token NZ hero",put in to show the Global Guardians were an international organization....

[Hermit]

Well, in the official Champs 5th universe, NZ is lacking superpowered types(a fact ARGENT is taking advantage of )

 

However, to my mind, that just makes it open for GM development. That part of the world is screaming for a new super hero team of youngbloods.

 

And maybe an older guardian of some sort reawakend? Hey, if Oklahoma could once have been Takofanes kingdom, why not New Zealand having something special in a past age as well?

[Southern Cross]

Thanks Hermit.Ahh..how much is ARGENT worth as a Hunted.....

And New Zealand DOES have someone who could serve as a "mystic defender"; Maui himself,who, accordingly to the Maori legends, pulled the North Island out of the sea. (The South Island is supposed to be Maui's canoe.How Maui and his brothers got home is never explained.)

[Ghost who Walks]

I'd like to see Papua New Guinea with their own hero. Indonesia should have a bunch also (big, diverse population)

 

An interesting idea might be to have all the old Polynesian gods/demigods be real, and have rivalries with each other.

 

A New Zealand superpatriot type, frozen in the Antarctica since WWII might also be fun. The Nazi's did send two expeditions there...

 

Link for basic info on Oceania mythology:

http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/oceania/

 

For Maui they say:

Maui figures as a powerful god in the legends of many Polynesians. But the Maoris and the Hawaiians probably make the biggest claim to him.

Maaui-tikitiki, as he was known in AoTeAroa, the land of the long white cloud, was a superb fisherman. Using a hook made from the jawbone of an ancestor, and blood from his own nose as bait, he caught the porch of a carved house on the ocean floor. Drawing in the line with superhuman strength, he pulled up not only the porch and the house, but an entire body of land. Today, Maoris call that land, the North Island of New Zealand, Te Ika-a-Maaui, the fish of Maaui. Look at a map and you will see its head facing south, its tail stretching north.

 

Another time, in Hawaii, Maui's mother Hina complained that the sun traveled too fast across the sky. She barely had time each short day, to attend to the myriad of chores required by island living. So Maui hid behind a rock on the highest peak of the island, and when the sun sped by, Maui lassooed it with a rope and only let it go when the sun promised to change its habits. And so, on the island that now bears Maui's name, the mountain is called Haleakala, House Of The Sun, and the days on that island are always long and bright.

 

In Hawaii, the hawk is personified as Maui, who, in taking fire from the Earth-Mother, was singed by the flames. This is why the hawk's feathers are brown.

[Dr. Anomaly]

When I first started my Champions campaign a number of years ago, I wrote up a 32-page "world summary" that I gave to my players. It included superheroes & supervillains, organizations, countries, the political climate, magic & aliens, etc.

 

Here's the most pertinent paragraph about Australian & New Zealander superheroes:

 

Australia and New Zealand are home to quite a few metanormals, most on the low-to-moderate power level. One exception to this is Southern Cross, Australia’s premier superheroine and one of the most powerful metanormals on the planet. Backing her up, with something of a friendly rivalry, is the loosely-organized group known as ANZAC. They have a dozen ‘regular’ members and over two dozen ‘auxiliary’ members scattered throughout Australia and New Zealand. Their regular membership includes Endeavor (their leader, whose powers are not fully known); Bunyip (the legendary monster); Goanna (former station manager, a half-human / half-lizard hand-to-hand combatant); Kiwi a.k.a. ‘The New Zealand Nightstalker’ (a detective with incredible night vision and sense of smell); Koala Jack (a mutant koala with emotion-controlling powers); Kookabura (an aborigine with very strong but very limited mind control); Quantas (a wind-controlling telekinetic sponsored by the airline); Tasmanian Devil (a fast and furious hand to hand combatant); Wakatipu (a young Maori with the ability to grow into a giant); Wallaby (an outback guide and famous womanizer who appears to be a kangaroo from the waist down); Boomerang (with numerous specialized throwing weapons) and Tuatara (an aged woman who claims to be a sorceress).

 

The reason for the rather scare descriptions is that the handout included what is commonly known, not the actual facts. For instance, Endeavor is a low-scale wind controller with a pistol that never runs out of ammunition and a sword capable of dealing with magical/spiritual foes. And yes, she's descended from whom you'd expect.

 

And I'm perfectly aware there's a difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo...in fact, one of Wallaby's 'hot' buttons is when people mistake his animal half for a kangaroo instead of a wallaby. As I said, the handout contained the common public conception, not necessarily the actual facts. I told the players beforehand that not everything in this document could be relied upon, that there would be some misconceptions and some outright untruths, but did they listen? Nooooo....

[freakboy6117]

hmm the whole new zeland rising from the sea thing strikes me as a great aliens as god story say a powerful alien world ship crash lands on earth this forms the south island (teh canoe) they raise the north island from the sea to live on and build a transmitter station, eventually there bretheren return to pick them up and they leave behind the south island the remnants of the ship and the north which they raised from the sea.

 

maui could be the species name and they woudl have to look like the heads on easter island.

 

and now you have some prehistoric alien tech littering new zealand.

thsi entry in the encyclopedia mythica got me thinking

fue

A Samoan god, son of the ocean-god Tagaloa. He rules the convulvulus plant, the sweet potato.

 

now theres a guy whos going to have a lot to prove dads god of the sea and your god of sweet potatoes you know hes going to use his potato powers to fight crime and the forces of evil.

I'm seeing entangles with fast growing sweet potato plants summoning sweet potato golem and chucking the things very hard.

[Hermit]

Originally posted by Southern Cross

Thanks Hermit.Ahh..how much is ARGENT worth as a Hunted.....

And New Zealand DOES have someone who could serve as a "mystic defender"; Maui himself,who, accordingly to the Maori legends, pulled the North Island out of the sea. (The South Island is supposed to be Maui's canoe.How Maui and his brothers got home is never explained.)

 

I'm not sure, I would personally make them worth as much as VIPER, despite the fact they prefer to work by outfitting merceneries with their tech rather than use their own men (Of course, you could change that for your games). Sounds like in NZ, they'd be sneakier, and have NCI.

 

And I like the idea of incorporating the Maui legend somehow.

 

Also, and this could be just because I've enjoyed the movies waaayy too much, but imagine if some of the LoTR sets and locations were left behind even after the movies, but the NZ govt allowed a super team to reinforce it and turn it into a super hero base?

 

You could gather your team in Bagsend

[Brandi]

Originally posted by Hermit

You could gather your team in Bagsend

 

Actually, Peter Jackson bought Bag End and set it up at his place.

[Blue]

[insert radioactive kiwi joke here.]

[Lord Liaden]

Originally posted by Southern Cross

Well,I'm not sure that Xena would consider herself a superhero......

And,while Lucy Lawless is a New Zealander,her character,Xena, ISN'T...

And,from what I heard,Tuatara was just the "token NZ hero",put in to show the Global Guardians were an international organization....

 

The Xena reference was facetious, just in case my winking smiley was to subtle. (You probably picked up on that anyway.)

 

As for Tuatara being a token, the same could probably have been said of Green Flame from Brazil and Icemaiden from Norway, later Fire and Ice of the Justice League. Existing characters are always there for writers to use as they will, even to turn from a joke into a serious hero.

 

BTW Maui sounds AWESOME!

[Southern Cross]

Which is why he'd make a great mystic defender of New Zealand.In a fight between Maui and Godzilla,I'd expect Maui to win.

[Hermit]

I think any New Zealand team should have an aquatic character, call her "Oceania" or something

[Rage]

Originally posted by Southern Cross

Thanks Hermit.Ahh..how much is ARGENT worth as a Hunted.....

And New Zealand DOES have someone who could serve as a "mystic defender"; Maui himself,who, accordingly to the Maori legends, pulled the North Island out of the sea. (The South Island is supposed to be Maui's canoe.How Maui and his brothers got home is never explained.)

 

Maui can transform into anything, as a boy his Uncle (who didn't know he was at the time) taught him how to transform into many many different things ranging from the Wood Pidgeon to the Hawk, a rock to the Mako shark.

 

he could have just swum home.

[Hermit]

OORRR .... you could just have New Zealand be EEEEVIL... oh sure, it LOOKS nice, and the Kiwis seem pleasant enough people...but secretly every New Zealander in the CU 5th works for an evil orginization, ARGENT mostly, but others serve VIPER , DEMON, or Microsoft!

 

And the rest of the world is none the wiser....*gets cold chills*

[assault]

Originally posted by Hermit

And the rest of the world is none the wiser....*gets cold chills*

 

Oh please. Don't you think that Australian supers haven't noticed where all their opponents come from?

 

Alan

[Southern Cross]

True enough,but he had his older brothers with him,who are never described as having his shapeshifting powers.He'd probably keep himself & all his brothers at gigantic size,and they all swam home together.

[Hermit]

Originally posted by assault

Oh please. Don't you think that Australian supers haven't noticed where all their opponents come from?

 

Alan

 

hmm, the WETA trademark on the battle armor probalby WOULD Give it away...

[Southern Cross]

Bloody Americans.They have the nerve to invade a Middle Eastern nation already wrecked by a ruthless dictator & his crazy family,plus the UN sanctions on the pretext that lunatic has WMD's

The problem being a complete lack of WMDS in Iraq.And this after months of searching,mind you.

And then one of the more respected posters on this board has the gall to claim (jokingly mind you) that New Zealand is "a hive of scum & villainy" to quote George Lucas).

[Hermit]

Originally posted by Southern Cross

And then one of the more respected posters on this board has the gall to claim (jokingly mind you) that new Zealand is "a hive of scun & villainy" to quote George Lucas).

 

Much like Rome, at times I have a lot of Gaul.

 

Sorry if I offended though...

 

(BTW, if this is Irony, as an American, I'm afraid I'm not allowed to get it. We're funny that way )

[assault]

Originally posted by Southern Cross

And then one of the more respected posters on this board has the gall to claim (jokingly mind you) that new Zealand is "a hive of scun & villainy" to quote George Lucas).

 

Dude!

 

I'm not going to comment about recent wars, HERE. Elsewhere, yes, with bells on. But not here.

 

Anyhoo, I actually thought Hermit made a fine joke. I'm quite amused by the concept that Assault (an old character of mine from the end of the 1980s) would run into a whole bunch of Kiwi agents and super-villains.

 

Unfortunately, the FREd version of the CU wasn't good for those Champions players in Australian and New Zealand. Let's face it, on a per capita basis, we are actually big markets for Hero Games. They made a mistake.

 

So, what we have to do is write our own histories. This is actually good, in that we don't get "other people" churning out cliches for us.

 

But, on the other hand, it means that people can fill in the blanks as they see fit. Sometimes, that will be humourously. And that's fine.

 

Incidentally, in the 1980s, there was this fabulous Australian superhero comic. It was rather short-lived, but it paid homage to the earlier Golden Age Australian comics industry, and it was quite excellent. It was also a little bit less than serious. I'm talking about the Southern Squadron, from Cyclone Comics. (A Google search will give you some more details.)

 

Recently, I discovered an old copy from that series. Oh yeah, I remembered why I loved it. Apart from the fact that a friend of mine wrote one of its sequences, it involved a super team from the US getting a bit bothered by anti-, err, super (not explicitly mutant), prejudice and deciding to head off to the middle of Australia. Needless to say, the official Australian superteam was sent to chase them off. They suceeded, and the last few frames involved the Australian team ringing up their NZ counterparts to warn them that the US team was coming.

 

The basic joke was that an Australian and a US superteam would meet and fight.

 

Of course, given the various sporting rivalries between Australia and New Zealand, you _do_ realise that NZ is the perfect source for supervillainous opponents for Australian superheroes, don't you? (And vice versa.)

 

Well, and the US, the UK and France... I mean, why would we want to have home-brewed villains? Sheesh.

 

And for US readers - Assault can get enough friends together to kick your respective behinds - don't you worry about that, matey. Heck, yep.

 

Alan

PS: substitute appropriate words for "heck", etc.

 

PPS: My most recent version of Assault is a 450 point character. I could give him more points, but...

[Hermit]

Originally posted by assault

Unfortunately, the FREd version of the CU wasn't good for those Champions players in Australian and New Zealand. Let's face it, on a per capita basis, we are actually big markets for Hero Games. They made a mistake.

 

I'm inclined to agree, but that's also why I think it would be an ideal area for the "Next Big Super population" Explosion. It would almost be like playing the first generation of super heroes.

 

You could have a great campaign as Australia and New Zealand publics both grappled with just how they felt about this... are they grateful for protecters of their own? Is national pride involved? Are they worried that the madness of the United States and Europe has finally infected their lands?

 

Heck, I'd be tempted to start a campaign for my TT group covering that... except I don't know enough about the real area and I worry I'd fall back on total cliches.

 

Originally posted by assault

So, what we have to do is write our own histories. This is actually good, in that we don't get "other people" churning out cliches for us.

 

 

If you folks start anything up either on this board or off like that, let us know how it's going. It's nice to get more accurate resources to steal... uhm use, for our own campaigns.

[assault]

Originally posted by Hermit

Heck, I'd be tempted to start a campaign for my TT group covering that... except I don't know enough about the real area and I worry I'd fall back on total cliches.

 

It's quite easy. Assault will refrain from kickin' yo' a*** until all you have a problem.