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Any Heros with secret villian IDs?


paigeoliver

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Re: Any Heros with secret villian IDs?

 

One option in The Great Supervillain Contest is for the PC heroes to go undercover as new villains looking to make it big by winning the contest, and in Strike Force , one of the heroes was brainwashed into becoming a villain. I don't think either of those is what you're looking for, though.

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Re: Any Heros with secret villian IDs?

 

Invictus from a few editions back. He was one of my favorite NPCs, and with a slight re-write got tons of use. Brick with political ambitions and a long term plan to become first President and then Emperor of the United States.

 

I think there were a few published "heroes" motivated by greed as well.

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Re: Any Heros with secret villian IDs?

 

One of my players had a dark champions character who was a filthy rich business tycoon with a public reputation for being a "corrupt robber baron and miserly oppressor of the poor" who secretly fought crime in the downtrodden areas of town in the guise of the "liberator." When, in his secret identity, he saw people in need or rampant fiscal injustice, he would use anonymous offshore funds to help them. Interesting character.

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Re: Any Heros with secret villian IDs?

 

Madame Moonlight, from 4E Golden Age Champions. She pretended to be a criminal so that other villains would accept her, enabling her to wreck their plans from the inside.

 

Scarlet Saber was a member of The Redeemed from Allies, a group of former villains attempting to go straight. SS was only using the Redeemed as a cover, though. He created another costumed identity as the Blue Wind under which he could continue to commit crimes.

 

You might also consider the Flashmen from Allies as playing both sides, although they were more con men than villains. They acted like noble, upstanding heroes, but really just wanted the maximum glory with the absolute minimum risk. Looking good was far more important to them than doing good.

 

Falcon from Champions of the North was similar. He would actually hire criminals in his civilian ID to commit crimes, which he would then swoop in and break up as Falcon. Mind you, sometimes he wouldn't arrive in time (needing operating capital and all). ;)

 

Invictus from Villainy Unbound is indeed a great example: a total sleaze with imperial ambitions who deliberately cultivated an appearance of being heroic, noble but with the "common touch." In fact VU had several such examples. "Mass Reaction" was a "superhero" team who were almost all really Soviet moles, while the Dark Prowler was a multiple-personality sufferer with heroic, villainous and neutral identities. (You can read the excellent update of Dark Prowler by his creator, Scott Bennie, on this post.

 

In Shelley Chrystal Mactyre's PRIMUS e-book, the head of PRIMUS Intelligence, Colonel Vasquez, is secretly a superhuman with the power to corrupt others, and his fingers in many questionable pies.

 

IMHO another very interesting premise was presented by Dean Shomshak in his essay on serial killers in the horror villain compendium, Creatures of the Night. Serial killers are often "desperate for approval, prone to fantasies of omnipotence, inclined to violence and skilled at leading a double life." What would such a person do if suddenly gifted with superpowers?

 

Become a superhero, of course.

 

"Imagine his comrades' surprise when they discover what Captain Crusader does on his days off..." :eg:

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Re: Any Heros with secret villian IDs?

 

there are a lot of diffrent type of villian IDs

you have the Thuderbolts villains pretending to be heros for some nefarious purpose

you have the hero disguised as a villain to infiltrate gang or clear his name

you have the split personality hero sentry for example both hero and villain possibly even at the same time without realising.

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