[Mythos Supers]

[Ragdoll]

No, I didn't come up with it. I just dug it up over on RPG.net. It sounds like a frighteningly fun campaign, especially with it being October and all.

 

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=398547

 

Have a read, and give some feedback if you like. Do you think this sort of setting is viable in HERO? I must admit I like the idea of metahumans with this type of 'singular' origin.

[eternal_sage]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

could be really cool. i am a BIG fan of singular power sources in campaigns, as it tends to take some of the goofy out of supers (a big problem i perceive, but not all will agree on). for instance, i have 2 supers universes, one is mutants only games (martial arts is also viable, but they would be low powered, non super type stuff... just saying) that tends towards 70s-80s style (i guess that would be late silver to early iron? whatever, i don't really care) and the other is set in the 20s and 30s, low power level dark champions type stuff, in which all powers come from ancient deities (Thor and the like) that either gift the heroes powers, or the powers are children of these beings. gods themselves need not apply, btw. this games tends to be more 90s in tone (violent and edgey, basically, like a whole world full of Punishers, and Frank Miller era Daredevils and Batmen)

 

both settings are really fun, because you automatically know what is up with other characters, and trying to make a concept fit into those parameters can be fun. YMMV, of course.

[Egyptoid]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

The US Navy definitively located and mapped R'lyeh in the 1960's. They raided the city's storehouses of weird and unknowable artifacts, and took specimens of its slumbering inhabitants. The Navy (and its associated private contractors) used a newly developed drug cocktail of lithium, psychedelics, and mild tranquilizers to remain sane in such close proximity to ancient and hideously unhuman creatures.

 

The pressure was on to secure a defensible and regular source of Unconventional Assets, as the Soviets Antarctic mission had given them an edge, plus the Soviet listening post in the Dreamlands seriously threatened US security.

 

The British refused to participate in the mission, though it was offered as a joint operation, as their own access to UA had been secure for half a century via their Insmouth facility.

 

Experiments began in earnest on the UA stolen from R'lyeh- and measures were taken to secure the city- including mining it with hydrogen bombs, and ringing it with hunter-killer submarine patrols and listening stations.

 

Efforts to reverse-engineer UA technology proved daunting- the greatest problem simply being identifying the purpose of a given device.

 

More success was made with the still-living tissue samples. While the Soviets had a technical and psychic advantage, the US made phenomenal leaps in pre-human biology, especially when they discovered that the introduction of Cthonic tissues into a higher terrestrial form resulted in beneficial mutations and transformations, as the so-called "C-Cells" integrated and enhanced mortal tissues. By the 1970's, human trials had begun.

 

Special Operations Group 7 (SOG-7) was fielded in Vietnam during the waning days of the war, and the group of enhanced soldiers so bolstered the US forces that the war continued to grind on until 1979. (Since it was really China versus the USA on Viet soil)

 

Since the SOG-7's sensational public revelation, the proliferation of the superhuman has continued.

 

During the 70's and 80's, the world's superpowers maintained the illusion of 'secret origins' - this superhuman fell from the stars, that one was bitten by a radioactive ferret, this one inherited his father's magic ring. The hideous true origins of superhumanity wasn't revealed until the collapse of the Soviet state in 2001, and the public release of formerly ultra-secret documents. While no official admission was made by the US government, it became an open secret about the origins of US superhumans.

 

The Nineties and Post-Millenial period saw a new trend: superhumans arising without government sanction. The source of their C-Cells remains a mystery- frequently stepped down with rabbit serum to the point where little active Cthonic tissue remained, though occasionally with a phial of the pure stuff hitting the streets. Fingers point to the former Soviet state, now an anarcho-capitalistic piranha pit.

 

The British quietly acknowledged their own program, as did a few other nations with UA locations within their territory. China's operational bases in Leng, for example.

 

The unsanctioned spread of the C-Cell drug (sometimes called See-Saw, Big-C, or Shank) revealed another previously secret truth about the supers: not everyone remains entirely human. Gross physical mutation, mental derangement, and behavioral instability were just as likely as super-powers. With some formulations of the elixir, more common.

 

Awesome stuff. we're going to have to purloin it some how.

[matrix3]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

Cool idea, and some very cool applications. I might have to steal some of the ideas in that thread and adapt them to my game...

[austenandrews]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

Heh, reminds of a bit I wrote awhile back:

 

THE VERIDIAN LENS

 

I. The Shape On The Wharf

 

Since ancient times philosophers have written that Truth owes nothing to frail human perceptions and Justice can pursue unnatural hungers. These were the morbid thoughts that lingered nervously on the lips of my boyhood friend, James Olsen, as he fidgeted with his teacup in the midnight gloom of my parlor. I had not expected a visitor at so late an hour, and in such a shocking state. Never had I seen his red hair so threshed nor his green eyes so swollen with barely-constrained terror. His bow tie lay unkempt at his throat. He acquiesced, grudgingly, to my insistence on a pot of tea. Then he loosed upon me a babble of mad thoughts about strange murders and cosmic spheres and new forms of optical lenses. All the while he constantly thumbed a curious green stone that hung like a pendant from a chain around his neck.

 

"I know you must doubt my sanity, Carter," he muttered, his freckles stark upon near-bloodless cheeks, "as I did myself, until I uncovered the hideous secret behind the mystery. God! That I should have left well enough alone. But you know me. I have no inhibition when chasing the truth. I am deeply sorry to hand you this burden, but I must tell someone before it is too late. When I am finished, you will understand why I did not ring ahead to warn you of my coming. No man or god could get me into a telephone booth, Carter, now that I know what I know."

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

No, I didn't come up with it. I just dug it up over on RPG.net. It sounds like a frighteningly fun campaign, especially with it being October and all.

 

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=398547

 

Have a read, and give some feedback if you like. Do you think this sort of setting is viable in HERO? I must admit I like the idea of metahumans with this type of 'singular' origin.

 

That thread reminded me of my favorite CoC session. My character was the Scientist who started with a sanity of 96, but just couldn't get a break with the Sanity rolls. He routinely went temporarily insane at every encounter with "something beyond" with clocklike regularity. If the "Professor" (I regret I have forgotten his name) went nuts, the rest of the party knew without a doubt that whatever caused it was the Thing Which Must Be Destroyed (or thwarted). He was the guy who, at least once in every adventure, would ask: "Couldn't I just wait in the car?"

 

In that (final) scenario, one character had already looked upon the object that "Man was not meant to know" and died. My character caught a glimple of the object and, contrary to all experience, became as calm and certain as he had been crazy in oall his other adventures. This immediately alerted the characters that Something was Dreadfully Wrong. They foiled whatever had driven the Professor insane, but he was forever after a completely insane NPC.

[eternal_sage]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

CoC at its finest! very nice!

[Egyptoid]

Powers from the Gods...

 

[b]ELDER              OUTER[/b]
Cthugha        Shub-Niggurath	
Cthulhu        Yog-Sothoth	
Tsathogua      Azathoth	
Hastur         Nameless Mist	
Ithaqua        Nyarlathotep	
Nyogtha			
Shudde M'ell			
Father Dagon + M.Hydra
Y'golonac

 

In coldest space, in blackest hole,

those who plunder fear me,

and to whom I've sold my soul.

 

new oath of the Malachite Lantern

[eternal_sage]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

having actually had the chance to read the linked post now and not just some input on single power source campaigns, i must say it looks pretty awesome!

[proditor]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

That's so awesome it makes my teeth itch.

 

I think I know what I'm running on Halloween.

[Egyptoid]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

I like the way this feels with Eosin's Karbite Thread....

[Egyptoid]

Come back, come back. I'll carry you to safety

 

[Dr Archeville]

Re: Powers from the Gods...

 

[b]ELDER              OUTER[/b]
Cthugha        Shub-Niggurath	
Cthulhu        Yog-Sothoth	
Tsathogua      Azathoth	
Hastur         Nameless Mist	
Ithaqua        Nyarlathotep	
Nyogtha			
Shudde M'ell			
Father Dagon + M.Hydra
Y'golonac

 

In coldest space, in blackest hole,

those who plunder fear me,

and to whom I've sold my soul.

 

new oath of the Malachite Lantern

 

While that is indeed nifty, I would imagine a Lovecraftian Lantern's Oath would be far less... intelligible.

 

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

[Egyptoid]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

well the trick is, it's an Amalgam Universe, ideally it should do homage to both Worlds.

 

instead of DC/Marvel, this is Heroes/Cthulian

[Ragdoll]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

well the trick is, it's an Amalgam Universe, ideally it should do homage to both Worlds.

 

instead of DC/Marvel, this is Heroes/Cthulian

 

Hey! What a bang on idea.. we can start with the canon heroes the champions, combine each with some lovecraftion (sp?) horror. I'd never event though of that, that's a fantastic idea!

 

Who wants to do Defender first?

[Sketchpad]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

Have you seen Ken Hite's Adventure Into Darkness book for M&M? I had thought he was doing one for Hero as well ... but it's got some great ideas in it

[bubba smith]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

i think he meant the TV SERIES heroes

[Egyptoid]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

That which is Dead Cannot Die:

 

LINKY

 

LINKAGE

 

LINKS

 

 

anyways, Defender:

 

James Harmon the 5th knew he didnt have what it took to fill his dad's big shoes.

College was hard, and engineering was harder, so when he volunteered fro the Peace Corps, and then found the technological cache from the Elder-Things while in Tierra Del Fuego, he knew he had an edge now, and he could make his own suit of powered armor now. And all would be good and right from now on, yes it would.

[Egyptoid]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

Here's a great one:

 

HERO?

[Dr Archeville]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

Here's a great one:

 

HERO?

 

That's awesome.

[Egyptoid]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

NASA has found the planet Cykranosh....

[CoreBrute]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

Hey! What a bang on idea.. we can start with the canon heroes the champions, combine each with some lovecraftion (sp?) horror. I'd never event though of that, that's a fantastic idea!

 

Well since we already have Defender done, here's Witchcraft and her sister Talisman:

 

Witchcraft:

Martika Sanshin, was a girl who lived for the pleasures of life. She left school when she was 16, stole cars to sell them for Drugs and alchol, slept around for the heck of it. People assumed she was going to kill herself before she was 30, and she knew it too.

 

Then she met a dealer named Roger Duquesne and they got hitched. Living with him, she got first case access to all sorts of drugs, including a variation of the new C-drug which she took hungrily. Then strange things started to happen.

 

She began having hullucinations, of other worlds with strange creatures. Her nightmares were filled with these tentacle faced creatures. And then she became pregnant.

 

She gave birth to two beautiful twin girls, Bethany Duquesne and

her twin sister, Pamela, were strange from the word go. They both had an unusal aura around them, and were as different as fire and ice.

 

Pamela took after her mother, lived the life of sin. Bethany was a good, well behaved girl who studied hard. And then they discovered their powers.

 

With their gifts, the two sisters left their twisted family and Bethany went on to help people, While Pamela went on to try and understand the source of her powers. And thus gain more.

 

Witchcraft and Talisman were born.

 

Now all we need is someone to do Ironclad, Because there is no way you can get Adam Monroe or Hiro Nakamura as Chtullu characters, so Heroes is out. Although it would be fun to try...

[Dr Archeville]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

Now all we need is someone to do Ironclad

Lars Drogen wasn't a very complicated guy. He put in decent hours, didn't goof off too much at work (at a secret government facility), and spent his off-hours watching a mix of sci-fi and sword-and-sandal flicks. One day, while helping to move some boxes for an attractive techie, a vat inexplicably exploded and showered him in molten alloys. Amazingly, he did not die, but rather the metal bonded with him on a cellular level and turned him into a man of living metal!

The metal had been an experimental alloy containing materials from one of the C-Sites (possibly even R'lyeh itself), one that was amazingly strong yet lightweight, and seemed to actually emit some form of energy. Scientists theorize that this weird energy -- along with the extreme trauma of being so radically changed -- are what led to Drogen's shift in personality (and shaped in large part by his entertainment habits), for he now believes himself to be an alien gladiator from a far-off world named Drogen Lar.

 

Because there is no way you can get Adam Monroe or Hiro Nakamura as Chtullu characters' date=' so Heroes is out.[/quote']

Bah

 

Adam Monroe: English bandit 'vacationing'/working in Japan (under the name Takezo Kensei) during the 17th century. In 1671 he mets a time-tossed Hiro Nakamura (see below). During sneak attack Adam is shot by arrows and believed killed. However, the arrow had been contaminated with C-Cells which, due to the presence of Hiro (specifically, Hiro's own C-Cell-tainted aura/energy field) reacted in him in a strange way to grant him an amazing healing factor. (The bandits had occasionally fought what researchers would later identify as Cthonic creatures, and they retrieved and recycled their arrows whenever they could.) Adam eventually believed himself betrayed by Hiro (thinking he had stolen his bride-to-be) and swore revenge on him; over the centuries of his long life he learned of other "superhumans" and pieced together what he had become -- what Hiro's mere presence had turned him into -- and his hatred of Hiro grew.

 

Hiro Nakamura: Son of Kaito Nakamura, one of the original 12 founders of the Company (an organization heavily involved in C-Cells and the people they have altered, primarily by using those it deems useful and imprisoning or destroying those it deems are too dangerous). At a very young age young Hiro blundered into one of his father's laboratories and was contaminated with C-Cells from a canine-like entity that was (pseudo)naturally able to transverse space and time. Initially Hiro seemed fine, but Kaito kept a close eye on him, even arranging for him to work in one of his other companies despite Hiro's lack of interest and bare qualifications. Eventually Hiro did show signs of infection, when he spontaneously manifested the ability to travel through time and space. Also, his blood took on an odd purplish color (not quite the red/brown of a human, but not quite the blue of the original creature), something his father managed to keep secret. At one point he went back to 1671 and met one of his historical heroes, but things went... poorly.

[Clonus]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

Nitpicking, but Innsmouth was supposed to in the United States.

[bubba smith]

Re: [Mythos Supers]

 

Lars Drogen wasn't a very complicated guy. He put in decent hours, didn't goof off too much at work (at a secret government facility), and spent his off-hours watching a mix of sci-fi and sword-and-sandal flicks. One day, while helping to move some boxes for an attractive techie, a vat inexplicably exploded and showered him in molten alloys. Amazingly, he did not die, but rather the metal bonded with him on a cellular level and turned him into a man of living metal!

The metal had been an experimental alloy containing materials from one of the C-Sites (possibly even R'lyeh itself), one that was amazingly strong yet lightweight, and seemed to actually emit some form of energy. Scientists theorize that this weird energy -- along with the extreme trauma of being so radically changed -- are what led to Drogen's shift in personality (and shaped in large part by his entertainment habits), for he now believes himself to be an alien gladiator from a far-off world named Drogen Lar.

 

 

Bah

 

Adam Monroe: English bandit 'vacationing'/working in Japan (under the name Takezo Kensei) during the 17th century. In 1671 he mets a time-tossed Hiro Nakamura (see below). During sneak attack Adam is shot by arrows and believed killed. However, the arrow had been contaminated with C-Cells which, due to the presence of Hiro (specifically, Hiro's own C-Cell-tainted aura/energy field) reacted in him in a strange way to grant him an amazing healing factor. (The bandits had occasionally fought what researchers would later identify as Cthonic creatures, and they retrieved and recycled their arrows whenever they could.) Adam eventually believed himself betrayed by Hiro (thinking he had stolen his bride-to-be) and swore revenge on him; over the centuries of his long life he learned of other "superhumans" and pieced together what he had become -- what Hiro's mere presence had turned him into -- and his hatred of Hiro grew.

 

Hiro Nakamura: Son of Kaito Nakamura, one of the original 12 founders of the Company (an organization heavily involved in C-Cells and the people they have altered, primarily by using those it deems useful and imprisoning or destroying those it deems are too dangerous). At a very young age young Hiro blundered into one of his father's laboratories and was contaminated with C-Cells from a canine-like entity that was (pseudo)naturally able to transverse space and time. Initially Hiro seemed fine, but Kaito kept a close eye on him, even arranging for him to work in one of his other companies despite Hiro's lack of interest and bare qualifications. Eventually Hiro did show signs of infection, when he spontaneously manifested the ability to travel through time and space. Also, his blood took on an odd purplish color (not quite the red/brown of a human, but not quite the blue of the original creature), something his father managed to keep secret. At one point he went back to 1671 and met one of his historical heroes, but things went... poorly.

very good:thumbup: