Worst Fear!

[Blue]

Looks like the WWYCD threads have made a comeback! (No, that's not my worst fear. I like them!)

 

But in that vein, your charcter comes across a demented Scarecrow-like villain; One with the ability to project your character's worst fears.

 

What would said fears be?

[Hermit]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Astro Knight: He screws up big, not only killing most everyone in Houston, but reducing it to a wasteland that seems almost post apocolyptic. So shattered is the nation that all funding from NASA has to be pulled just to survive. America will no longer journey into space in his life time, and it is a modern dark age.

 

Gaze: Gaze sees himself as corrupt, immoral, and the evilist of mentalists. The women in his life are now wanton slaves stripped of their free will, and he has become a worse crime lord than Falco ever was. His friends are either mindwiped or brainwashed into being his muscle. In his attempt to become the cure, he has become the next virus infecting the body of the city.

 

Max Thunder: Incurs not just the wrath of Hera, but of Zeus, and the gods systematically destroy everyone in his life, including his adopted parents who raised him. He's helpless to stop it and everyone he loves is either dead, or hates him.

 

Recluse: His secret Identity exposed, Recluse can not escape the limelight. In his attempts to cover it up, he makes mistake after mistake, until it snow balls. Eventually, Grandmother Spider strips him of his powers but that doesn't change what he was. There's no place on earth he can go without being noticed and scorned for his many screw ups. He contemplates suicide, but never seems to find the 'guts' to pull it off.

 

D'ĕthStürm: he wakes up in bed, there is no sign of his gun anywhere. Floral print covers the wall. He turns and sees another man getting dressed, who smiles and says, "Wake up lover, we're going to be late for the "Hilary for President" rally."

[Korvar]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Having just seen this thread, I've decided all my characters worst fear is to be in a comic drawn by Rob Liefeld.

 

"Noooooo! The clenching! Make the clenching stop!"

[ZootSoot]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Tom Cat: Sadly, his worst fear would be nothing more significant than impotence.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Microman II: Depends. If he does it via chemical or normal psionic means, not a damn thing. Otherwise, he probably has to struggle against "realizations" that whatever action he's currently taken is an inevitable result of his programming, with these "realizations" bringing him into doing some action he does not, in fact, want to do ( like surrendering ).

 

Diomedes: Probably lands in the middle of some ungodly cosmic event, with him needing to do something, but lacking utterly in the knowledge or power to do so. . .

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Starguard: her standing unharmed, untouchable, perfectly pristine -- in the midst of an endless sea of suffering, plagued, humanity, all of them on the ragged edge of survival in the aftermath of a holocaust.

 

A holocaust that was /all her fault/.

 

Dr. Pain: I'm not entirely sure. It would definitely involve being too weak to win a slugfest, and great public humiliation, and quite probably innocents who suffered due to his failure to win, but the details are still hazy.

 

Baron von Darien: I know it's a cliche to say that your character is 'beyond' this kind of attack -- but given his EGO 45, his over 1100 years of (really unpleasant) life experience, his having long since gotten more than used to staring into every type of horror and blasphemy that over a millenium spent as a master vampire and demon hunter can produce...

 

... well, let's just say that he got nicknamed 'Victor von Vampire' for a /reason/.

 

Any would-be Scarecrow that pulls this maneuver on the Baron is half a second away from an extremely painful lesson in exactly why that was a very bad idea.

[Blue]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Anthem's greatest fear is slipping into dementia like her father and becoming a raving, murdering lunatic.

 

Audra Blue is agoraphobic, stuck in her base. But that's too simple. Her greatest fear is the return of the man who implanted her cybernetics, a crazed former nazi geneticist living in South America.

 

Uncle Slam would be disgraced somehow, have his country turn against him, and then before he can prove himself, his powers would be lost. All his good deeds would be forgotten. Alternately, he occacasionally has dreams where he relives his historic battle in the air protecting the Enola Gay until it carries it's payload to target; The payload strikes and then the spirits of the damned swell up around him. Truth is, he's not sure that this last thing didn't really happen.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Baron von Darien: I know it's a cliche to say that your character is 'beyond' this kind of attack -- but given his EGO 45, his over 1100 years of (really unpleasant) life experience, his having long since gotten more than used to staring into every type of horror and blasphemy that over a millenium spent as a master vampire and demon hunter can produce...

 

... well, let's just say that he got nicknamed 'Victor von Vampire' for a /reason/.

 

Any would-be Scarecrow that pulls this maneuver on the Baron is half a second away from an extremely painful lesson in exactly why that was a very bad idea.

 

Batman is usually thought to be the hero equivalent of Victor, at least in that way - or close enough - and he's still vulnerable to the fear inducement.

 

No one, in the comics, tends to be outright immune to mentalism.

 

Assume it was powerful enough. What skeletons DO still lurk?

 

 

If it was my character, I'd go for something related to their lost humanity; perhaps having been spared, while watching one he cared for those long years ago step blithely into the abyss he had spared himself from - you know, a twisted wish effect.

 

He'd still make them _pay_ through the nightmare haze, barely breaking stride, but it's more genre if you do actually still see the nightmare.

 

 

Latest Character:

Arachnoid would have nightmares of a spreading infection, being eaten alive by insects. It's not unique, but it's _his_ nightmare.

[TheEmerged]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Stefan "The Grey" Sashkey (from The Emergence campaign, that world's equivalent of the Spectre): Stefan can see the future to the extent that such a thing is possible, and realized the two most likely futures were both dystopias. In one the Earth is enslaved by an alien empire. In the other, Earth is the empire enslaving the aliens. Which one happens depends on whether "Everett" succeeds in conquering the Earth. Stefan therefore committed himself to the difficult path: killing Everett, and then spending the rest of his nigh-immortal existance saving the universe from the scum of the Earth.

 

SythRyss (D&D "Skull Empire" campaign). SythRyss's fear is simple: he fears that when he confronts the elf that charmed him into killing his friends, he won't be powerful enough to exact his revenge.

 

The Disruptor. Again, his fear is simple: he fears being captured by the "authorities", because he knows he'll never survive imprisonment. He actually has this as a Total disadvantage.

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

> Batman is usually thought to be the hero equivalent of Victor, at least

> in that way - or close enough -

 

Actually, no. High-end supervillain telepaths can send Batman sprawling, unless he uses tech-based Mental Defense.

 

Victor can take a mind-control attack sufficiently powerful to control the entire planet Earth, including people such as Captain America and Thor, with his every technological defense deliberately deactivated -- and not blink. ("Emperor Doom" graphic novel)

 

The Baron von Darien is closer to the second than the first.

 

> and he's still vulnerable to the fear inducement.

 

> No one, in the comics, tends to be outright immune to mentalism.

 

> Assume it was powerful enough. What skeletons DO still lurk?

 

Well, you see, here's the problem. What sort of fears are you projecting?

 

* Having your wife and children brutally murdered by vicious raping thugs and arriving just in time to fail to protect them, but in time to sift through the burnt wreckage of your home to find their stiff and cooling bodies?

 

* Making a devil's bargain for the power to exact your revenge, cursing yourself to immortal damnation?

 

* Having every second of your day be a struggle against an unholy thirst?

 

* Living with the memories of having eaten people?

 

* Spending centuries as an honor-bound knight, indentured by your word to an utterly honorless, selfish, untrustworthy fool?

 

* Falling in love /again/, and being so unutterably stupid as to think you're doing her a favor by sharing your vampirism with her?

 

* Having your second true love devolve into a psychopathic monster that you have to deliberately hunt down and kill, in a grand stalk and chase that spanned half a continent and several decades?

 

* Stare Qlippothian horrors in the snout?

 

* Spend eleven centuries watching every single torture, depravity, horror, and damnation that men, vampires, and demons can all combine?

 

* Live a lie for centuries, every waking minute a deep-undercover role in a society of vampires where the slightest slip means your death, while you secretly plot all of theirs?

 

* And doing all of this /all alone/? And for /no thanks/?

 

... this is the Baron's /origin story/.

 

I really can't imagine what could scare a mind capable of living through all this and still being 100%, coldly, intelligently sane -- and I think any mentalist that could imagine these things would drive /himself/ crazy before he had the chance to share his experience with anyone else.

 

We're talking about somebody who rolls 1d2 for SAN loss staring at Cthulhu.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

> Batman is usually thought to be the hero equivalent of Victor, at least

> in that way - or close enough -

 

Actually, no. High-end supervillain telepaths can send Batman sprawling, unless he uses tech-based Mental Defense.

 

Victor can take a mind-control attack sufficiently powerful to control the entire planet Earth, including people such as Captain America and Thor, with his every technological defense deliberately deactivated -- and not blink. ("Emperor Doom" graphic novel)

 

Bah. Mere Marvel telepaths.

 

 

 

Let me put it this way: A what now?

 

The Baron von Darien is closer to the second than the first.

 

> and he's still vulnerable to the fear inducement.

 

> No one, in the comics, tends to be outright immune to mentalism.

 

Okay, so they fall short of his Ego. You should still be able to sense what is being projected - and the Phobiapathic type effects do always hone in on the right thing.

 

> Assume it was powerful enough. What skeletons DO still lurk?

 

Well, you see, here's the problem. What sort of fears are you projecting?

 

* Having your wife and children brutally murdered by vicious raping thugs and arriving just in time to fail to protect them, but in time to sift through the burnt wreckage of your home to find their stiff and cooling bodies?

 

* Making a devil's bargain for the power to exact your revenge, cursing yourself to immortal damnation?

 

* Having every second of your day be a struggle against an unholy thirst?

 

* Living with the memories of having eaten people?

 

* Spending centuries as an honor-bound knight, indentured by your word to an utterly honorless, selfish, untrustworthy fool?

 

* Falling in love /again/, and being so unutterably stupid as to think you're doing her a favor by sharing your vampirism with her?

 

* Having your second true love devolve into a psychopathic monster that you have to deliberately hunt down and kill, in a grand stalk and chase that spanned half a continent and several decades?

 

* Stare Qlippothian horrors in the snout?

 

* Spend eleven centuries watching every single torture, depravity, horror, and damnation that men, vampires, and demons can all combine?

 

* Live a lie for centuries, every waking minute a deep-undercover role in a society of vampires where the slightest slip means your death, while you secretly plot all of theirs?

 

... this is the Baron's /origin story/.

 

I really can't imagine what could scare a mind capable of living through all this and still being 100%, coldly, intelligently sane -- and I think any mentalist that could imagine these things would drive /himself/ crazy before he had the chance to share his experience with anyone else.

 

We're talking about somebody who rolls 1d2 for SAN loss staring at Cthulhu.

 

Okay. He's cool, calm, and collected. He's faced his demons, and made them run crying home to their momma.

 

Really, sounds like he has dozens of terrors lurking within him - and he's dismissive of them.

 

They'd probably prise the entire back story loose, hurl it at his psyche... and watch as it bounces. Or splatters.

 

Now that - that is what you'd see in the BVD comic. Not just 'he raises an eyebrow, and a panel later the would-be mentalist is a bloody smear'.

 

Anywho...

 

 

 

Thought: There's _always_ a bigger fish. Maybe it would take something utterly obscene to take him on in mental combat (or more likely, years of subtle digging AND something utterly obscene)... but really, there's always a bigger, badder challenge.

 

(shrug) your character, your vision.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

For Special Agent Trent:

 

An innocent mentalist makes contact with his mind. For maximum angst, let's make it an attractive young girl, with a low-level broadcast power she can't control, so it's definitely not her fault.

 

Trent feels this contact--like a soldering iron shoved into his temple. The mental stimulus bleeds over into his aggression centers. It hurts. He's angry. Without hesitation, he lashes out to Make It Stop.

 

Trent hits the poor girl dead center with his full-power psychokinetic blast (16d6 normal vs. PD, FYI). This makes a horrible "thrunch!" sound as all her ribs shatter. She doesn't go far before hitting a brick wall. Her head is crushed by the impact, and one eye is pushed out of its socket. For the brief moment that her body sticks to the wall, the remaining eye stares at him in seeming shock.

 

Trent's mind clears as the telepathic intrusion is removed, and he sees this for an instant, then watches as the leaky bag of goo he's just created slumps off the wall into a puddle of blood.

 

. . .

 

On the other hand, if the fear-projector uses standard telepathy, a similar scenario might play out that Trent would be okay with.

 

Zeropoint

[TheTemplar]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

The Tornado! - Believes that his father is Dr. Destroyer, and that he is absolutely powerless and has to watch as the Big D wipes out his teammates one by one.

 

The Templar - He fails to prevent The Librus Arcanum from falling into the hands of the Vampire Underground, and they utter the magical formulae that turn all life on Earth into Vampires.

 

Frostbite - The AC in his car goes out & then he finds out that his sister is engaged to Armadillo.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Jessica - she would be ostracized by her pack and chased out of the city, her lover would reject her as nothing more than an undead monster and she would be forced to roam the country again, more alone than ever.

 

Silence - her soul would be lost to oblivion without the peace of the Afterlife, nor the purpose of the Between Places. And the agony of knowing her shell would be left to wander, soulless, destroying all in its path for no reason.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Martin Power: Something would happen to his sister and he would be powerless to protect or avenge her.

 

Mark 2: Final proof that he would never be able to regain his physical body.

 

Brian Tresdin: Finding a road totally out of the T-maze with no exit portal.

 

Halelujah: Discovering a person who truly has no 'good' in them at all.

 

Tommy: His quest to scientifically reconcile the Occult proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that magic and mysticism have a genuine 'otherworldly' source.

 

The Good Guy: the world continues to doubt the validity of his work, and the werewolves succeed in their mission to split the moon into halves, bathing the earth with a constant full moon, even during the day.

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

> Let me put it this way: A what now?

 

Doom captured the Purple Man, and put him in a gigantic amplifier that revved his normally immediate-area-only mind-control powers up to where they could not only cover the entire globe, but successfully dominate people up to and including Thor. With this, he conquered the entire world.

 

The Purple Man, enslaved as he was, told Doom that Doom was nothing -- it was /his/ power fueling Doom's conquest, and that therefore he was the one who should be ruling.

 

Doom, responding as he usually does to a challenge aimed at his pride, immediately stepped into the heart of the amplifier with the Purple Man, took off his mask, turned off his technology-based mental defense, and told the Purple Man to take his best shot -- which he did.

 

... and Doom didn't even blink.

 

"Now, Killgrave -- /who/ is fit to rule?"

[Hermit]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Ah, Doom, every once in a while he proves why he's still a bad #$$ even after all these years.

 

Gotta love him.

 

Though he'd probably prefer if you feared him.

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Sadly, "Emperor Doom" was published in the 80s. Doom's /recent/ appearances in comics have been... ummm, written by writers who didn't really grasp Doom, is the politest way to put it.

[Hermit]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Fair enough.

I thought his action in the Secret War series in the 80s was the hightlight of that crossover event.

(Though Spidey trashing the X-Men was a close second*G*)

 

EDIT: Apologies for continuing a side track, but I got caught up.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Sadly' date=' "Emperor Doom" was published in the 80s. Doom's /recent/ appearances in comics have been... ummm, written by writers who didn't really grasp Doom, is the politest way to put it.[/quote']

 

Of course Doom, as a villain, can be _allowed_ to do that kind of thing. Heroes need to actually be overpowered.

 

Erm... I mean, beatable on raw power.

 

Dramatically speaking.

 

 

Has he done anything else like that, or is it a firelord event?

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

No, it's quite characteristic of Doom to resist truly ungodly psionic attack by sheer force of will. He's done it to Mephisto and the original Over-Mind, among others.

[KA.]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Removed because it was just plain snarky.

 

Sorry ChuckG, I shouldn't have posted it in the first place.

 

I was in a bad mood over something else and took it out on your character.

 

KA.

[Karma]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Fore Eyes: Goes blind or becomes unable to control precognition and constantly sees the worst of all possible futures.

 

Hardball: Is back in prison faced by a gang of Mafia Dons and unable to use his powers.

 

Caress: Is a man or the slave of one.

 

Kookaburra: Is in an asylum for the criminally insane.

 

Marionette: Is once more under her father's control.

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

(edit) Apology accepted.

[Badger]

Re: Worst Fear!

 

Badger-well probably not being able to stand up to the one who killed his family. (the reason for why he has become who is) or a world of complete peace (he has now become addicted to battle and it would be doubtful he could adjust)

 

 

frosty Bob- well he is addicted to battle too. But his fears may be of a more simpler nature. "OH crap that chick I have taken on a date has an Adam's apple......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH............ AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"