Jump to content

Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

GestaltBennie

By GestaltBennie
in Champions

 Share

Recommended Posts

  • 4 weeks later...
  • Replies 106
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

GestaltBennie Mentor

GestaltBennie

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

 

Just a quick update.

 

Mulling over titles, the latest draft is entitled Gestalt: The Fury Beyond, which is meant to be a little more compatible with "The Hero Within", our first book's title. Like? Dislike?

 

The draft of the HERO system version is nearing completion: I've got the Tyranny League to do, then the invaion scenario to finish, plus a couple moe Eiko constructs and ships, then indexing and proofing. There's still quite a bit of work, and then the Superlink version awaits.

 

I'll be talking with Dave about art resources after the 4th of July weekend holiday is done. Hopefully we'll have at least a few pieces in the final book.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
GestaltBennie Mentor

GestaltBennie

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

 

Well, there's good news and bad.

 

Bad. It's not done yet.

 

Good. I'm on the final major section. Having finished the Tyranny League, I'm now on the major scenario "Purification", the Eiko invasion of Earth.

 

Bad. I have no idea when I'll finish that section. It's a big, important scenario, and I want to do it right.

 

Good. The book will also have an index.

 

Bad. The index is not even started.

 

Good. I've talked to Storn, and we've come to preliminary arrangements about using the art he did for Death Tribble (who has also approved). Thanks to the generous donations of a couple of people, Dave's lined up an artist for some other pieces, so we should have at least a few character illos.

 

No decision on the title yet.

 

I added a few characters: on the villain side, Bravura, Weng Chiang and her Combat Knights, and on the hero side, the ATF's Big Red More might be added to fit the page count (even though it's a PDF, I'm trying to keep to the "multiples of 16" page rule in case the book goes to POD.)

 

I'm running at 193 pages so far; I expect it may come out to 224 when everything's come in.

 

After that, the M&M conversions and that version. And, if I perceive any significant interest, a HERO6 revision of the main book.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 3 months later...
GestaltBennie Mentor

GestaltBennie

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

 

Working on it between classes, though I've hit something of a brick wall. I'm trying to plow through this week.

 

As an apology, here's the text for the Alternate timeline chapter:

 

------------

Gestalt presupposes a 1989 start date for the Gestalt phenomenon, but what if it happened earlier, at a time that more closely mimicked a standard comic book universe? What if the gestalt had been actively shaping the course of human history and that many oddities were in fact, the gestalt at work?

 

In all likelihood, the world would be a very different place than what we know today. However, for those who want to play in a conventional campaign, here’s a timeline that extends the Gestalt process back into the dawn of history. The rules for gestalt bonds not being passed down through a family line are somewhat relaxed in this setting variant: some of the best stories in a campaign where superpowers have existed for decades involve new generations of superheroes struggling to come to terms with their legacy, from living up to a legendary father, or casting off the mantle of a villainous predecessor.

 

In this setting variant, because multiple generation games tend to mirror the comic book “ages” (Golden, Silver, Bronze, Iron, and Modern), the gestalt wave effects tend to fall at a time to usher in the next age. The current setting is meant to mesh with those presented in this book and Gestalt: The Hero Within, so the last few years of both settings are virtually identical.

 

The Beginning

The gestalt phenomenon has been evidenced in small ways throughout history. Often mistaken for magic, the gestalt has “hiccupped” power into the world. Many of these power places (ley points) correlated with the presence of Probability Tunnels buried underground by the Probability Lords during their visit to Earth eight thousand years ago. Power from these tunnels sometimes found their way into objects, particularly those associated with great events, creating “magical artifacts”. The gestalt taught people how to work the soil, invent the wheel, develop writing and trade, even how to make beer. However, the day of the true superhuman was yet to come.

 

July 1, 1916. The bloodiest day of the Battle of the Somme. The carnage of the First World War produced a small wave in the Gestalt dimension, bringing about the creation of people who would develop into marginal superhumans in the 1920s and 1930s. Among the people given superpowers on that day is a young German soldier named Adolph Hitler, who was on the battlefield, who was given a Charisma Gestalt that he later put to evil use.

 

However, the one person who truly stood out was an American named Hugo Griffin. Fighting as a volunteer for the English, bullets began bounding off his skin. He waded into machine gun nests and nearly single-handedly turned the tide of that gruesome battle, until a direct hit from an artillery shell finally took him out. Recovering in only a few months, he kept a low profile for the rest of the war.

 

After the war, poverty forced him to use his powers more openly. He was christened The Eighth Wonder by the press, after his astonishing exhibitions of strength on the Atlantic City boardwalk. With the power to leap to the top of five story buildings, hoist trucks over his head, and bounce bullets off his skin without even feeling them, the Wonder became a circus sensation, then a professional wrestling champion, and then (after accidentally killing an opponent in the ring) a mercenary. Eventually, he retreated to a small Pacific Island, where he lived as a god to a native tribe. The Wonder was the herald of the age to come.

 

Pulps!

The pulp age brought out a lot of heroes. In addition to the Wonder, there was Alex Williams, a young British boy whose parents were killed off the west coast of Africa by pirates, Discovered by an intelligent (gestalt) great ape named Tobi-Eranko, he was empowered as a regional protector, swifter than a leopard, stronger than an elephant, able to communicate with animals and commune over great distances with Tobi-Eranko himself. By the 1930s, legends spoke of a “great naked savage” Alákoso, uncrowned master of the lands west of the Congo, protector of the jungle. His word was accepted as law by most of the tribes in Western Africa, greatly annoying the colonial powers. Alákoso was killed by the French during an incident in Dahomey (now Benin) in 1937, however Tobi-Eranko continues to protect Africa, appointing other, more subtle, protectors, even to the present day.

 

The third great hero of the pulp age was known by the rather comical name of Professor Invento. This friendly, nutty scientist, aided by a pair of intrepid young reporters, Skip and Jane, fought crime throughout the world with his fantastic (sometimes malfunctioning) gadgets. Eventually they teamed up with a courageous Archeology Gestalt named Digger Drake to fight the efforts of the Thule Society, a cabal of proto-Nazi occultists.

 

The Thule Society was the greatest menace of the age. Originally attached to what became the Nazi Party, this collection of occultists, pseudo-scientists and nationals might have died out in the early 1920s had it not been for the efforts of the Hermetic Mage Gestalt Volkssturm, a masked madman who went on a worldwide search for “mystical” objects (which had been empowered long ago by the Probability Lords). Volkssturm believed that the objects would lead him to Ultima Thule, the homeland of the Aryan “super race”, where aliens used magic powers to evolve simple humans into the magnificent ancestors of the German people. This eventually led to a struggle between Drake and Volkssturm inside a Probability Tunnel that resulted in Drake being crippled and Volkssturn being sucked into nothingness.

 

The day that Volkssturm vanished was November 9, 1938, the same date as the assassination of Ernst von Rath, which resulted in the Krystallnact pogrom in Germany. It was also the date of the first true Gestalt wave.

 

Gestalts Go to War!

On November 9, a man was found in a Welsh mine shaft bearing a near-mortal stab wound made by a great spear. When the doctors asked his name, he replied: “Arthur, Dux Bellorum, King of the Britons.” Arthur Rex, as he came to be called, healed of his wound almost instantly, and went out into the streets to become a champion of the people. Possessing strength and abilities that rivaled the Wonder, Arthur was an overnight sensation. Eventually, he became an RAF captain and indeed helped save England in its darkest hour. He was mortally wounded fighting as a paratrooper at Caen on June 18, 1944, and the Lady of the Lake appeared once again to bear his body back to Avalon.

 

World War 2 saw many gestalts enter active service, engaging in battles as fiercely contested as any other in this grisly conflict. Arthur Rex was the first to capture the public imagination, but he was far from alone. The most prominent for the Allies included:

 

Danny Courage, the American champion of the age was the most feared Allied soldier in WW2; dressed in patriotic garb, Danny’s powers of super-speed (“The fastest thing on land”) combined with advanced commando training to make him the most feared Allied soldier of the war.

 

The Fighting Chief may have been the most embarrassing stereotype of the war (especially in retrospect), however Sam Keyes was strongly motivated to show pride in his Apache heritage and “present many faces to our enemy, who only desires one face”). Sam was a Healing Gestalt who died in the Battle of St. Vith.

 

Kid Commando, though hailed as a hero, may have been the most macabre gestalt of the era: he was a Sidekick Gestalt who latched onto a hero, elevated him to marginal superhuman levels, encouraged him into battle, and then watched as he was gunned down after a heroic fight. Kid went through seven “Captain Commandos” during the course of the war.

 

Eyepatch, “the Fightin’ Sailor” was one of the most colorful gestalts (in both personality and language). He was a Brawling Gestalt; whose resemblance to a cartoon strip sailor (including huge forearms) was somewhat unnerving. Still, he was very handy to have around in a fight.

 

Watchtower, Gestalt of Buildings, may have been the most powerful of all gestalts in the war. He used his abilities to take apart or reconstruct damaged buildings, and even talk to them, learning the exact position of snipers (and even getting the building to spit them out!)

 

Professor Mull, aka The Thinker, was a Science Gestalt who took it upon himself the job of sabotaging Nazi weapons development, a task he carried out with ruthlessness and efficiency. His greatest invention (which still hasn’t been duplicated) was the anti-combustion bomb, a weapon that caused nearby combustible effects to fail, knocking V-2s out of the skies.

 

Canadiana was a pure gestalt whose archetype was Truth. Though some dismissed her as “a dame” her psionic talents made her one of the useful gestalt heroes of the war.

 

Vivre La Liberté (the gestalt protector of partisans) was the man who made patriotic costumed individuals popular in France, largely because he used his flamboyance to his advantage, attracting Nazi pursuers, leading them into ambush points, then turning invisible at just the right moment. M. Liberté was vital in coordinating the French resistance to assist the invasion of Normandy, laying false documents containing disinformation to confuse German Intelligence.

 

The Axis, however, matched the Allies gestalt for gestalt. Numerous attempts were made to assassinate Hitler, Churchill, and the British Royal Family, however each side managed to protect their leaders. German’s greatest gestalt was Heilige Lanze (“Holy Lance”, a reference to the Spear of Destiny, allegedly the spear that pierced the side of Jesus Christ). Lanze was a pure Gestalt defender of Germany, the Aryan ideal come to perfect life. With physical strength and toughness that was second to none, the perfect German held the Allies at bay, until he fell out of favor with Hitler in late 1943 and was sent to the Russian front. The Deutschland Wundermann died in the defense of the Dukla Pass on the Czech-Polish border on October 8, 1944, when he was forced to commit suicide by the Soviet Despair Gestalt Otchayanie. He was succeeded in his role by Die Schützling (“The Protégé, a Sidekick Gestalt whom Lanze personally groomed for the role).

 

The other German supers of the era included Hauptsängerin (“the Diva”, an Inspiration Gestalt who claimed to be a valkyrie, whose song could amplify the abilities of anyone who sung along to it (of course, she chose well-known German songs); Mechaniker (“the Machanic”) was a Vehicle Gestalt who could reassemble a tank that had been blown to pieces in minutes, or crank on a few bolts and make it considerably tougher for a day or so. Die Faulenzer (“The Sluggard”) was an Inertia Gestalt who was Danny Courage’s most frequent sparring partner.

 

Hochofen (“Blast Furnace) and Eissturm (“Ice Storm”) were a brother and sister team, a pair of Flame and Ice Gestalts who attained a high standing in the Hitler Youth movement, but whose greatest influence was on the battlefield. Germany’s most powerful psionic was the Loneliness Gestalt Absonderung (“Isolation”), whose powers allowed him to make someone feel isolated and alone; a technique he applied as an effective torture technique. He was the only gestalt executed by the Nuremberg tribunal.

 

Maceste was an Italian hero, a Strongman gestalt who claimed to be Romulus and Remus reborn into a single body. He was often partnered with Magnifico, a Light Gestalt. Both gestalts survived the fall of Rome and continued to fight for the Nazis.

 

Numerous other gestalts were involved in the war, hailing from places like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Serbia: regional champions, living ghosts, figures borrowed from folk tales, and a cat turned spy whose tongue purified poisons. Most were only marginally superhuman and did not survive more than one or two battles, learning the hard way that having a gestalt and being invulnerable were two very different things.

 

The Eastern front was no stranger to gestalt battles either. On the German side, Eindrucksvoll (“Impressive”, a Strongman Gestalt), Die Todesursache (“The Cause of Death”, a Death Gestalt) and Die Sturmzentrum (“Storm Center”, a Weatrher Gestalt who held off the effects of the Russian winter) fought great heroes of the Soviet Union like Soprotivleni (“Resistance”, a Determination Gestalt), Zaschitnik (“Defender”, Gestalt Defender of Leningrad), Soratnik (“Comrade”, a Soldier Gestalt), Dostizhenie (“Achievement”, an Inspiration Gestalt) and Brosat’ Vyzov (“Challenge”, a Competition Gestalt).

 

The war between gestalts cumulated in a battle at St. Vith, Belgium on December 23, 1944. Considered part of the Battle of the Bulge, major gestalts from both the Allied and German sides agreed to meet here to fight a “duel of honor”, as stipulated by the challenge’s originator, Die Schützling. Surprisingly, the battle went down without a betrayal. The Fighting Chief, Die Faulenzer and Magnifico were killed, and five other Nazi gestalts were captured, including Die Schützling.

 

On the Pacific Front, there were plenty of superhumans on both sides of the conflict. On the Allied side, the greatest heroes weres the Crimson Tide, a Vengeance Gestalt. brother of a seaman who died at Pearl Harbor and Nurse Nancy, whose healing powers somehow encouraged soldiers to accept her as a comrade in arms (though it was her ability to open long mended wounds which really made her formidable in a fight).

 

Captain Shark was a Navy Gestalt, who fought alongside an elite crew, the Flying Fish, aboard the USS Calamity, undertaking dangerous missions that few would dare. Occasionally they were joined by Jesse Storm, a Water Gestalt who rode the waves into battle, and played a vital role in the American victory at Midway. Lifeguard was a Gestalt of Rescues who saved hundreds of lives. The Texas Tomcat ruled the skies in the Pacific; not only was this Aircraft Gestalt an uncanny shot, his pet aircraft, a Wildcat named Lola, was much more maneuverable and flew faster and longer than comparable aircraft. Australia contributed a valuable ally to the Allied cause: Cyclone Smith (a Tornado Gestalt) and his sidekick Ramsey (an intelligent bomber-jacket sporting boxing kangaroo who may have been the most bizarre gestalt of the war. however no one who saw him in action did much laughing, especially his opponents). “Kicky” O’Hearne was a Gestalt of Legs, a power that let her leap great distances, kick machine gun nests out of the ground, and crush any Jap who got caught in her much-feared body sizzors. She toured as a singer with the USO, but had an uncanny talent for crossing paths with spies and saboteurs.

 

The Japanese fielded a squad of military gestalts renowned for its teamwork and efficiency: this team was known as Taishou (“Certain Victory). Led by Shainingu-Suta (“Shining Star”, a Samurai Gestalt), its members included: Chikaramoch (“Muscleman”, a Strongman Gestalt), Haruichiban (“First Storm of Spring”, a Weather Gestalt), Nobara (“Wild Rose”, a Gestalt of Plants), and Kokuei (“Dark Shadow”, a Gestalt of Fear). Taishou’s “certain victory” came crashing down on them at Okinawa, where the team was forced to retreat. After this disgrace Shainingu-Suta tried to commit seppuku in the honorable manner, but could not find a blade sharp enough to perform the ritual properly. Dismayed, Shainngu-Suta led his team into a Probability Tunnel that they had discovered earlier on a remote Pacific island. The entire team vanished from the face of the earth.

 

On the home front, the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and Company B (a Music Gestalt and his followers, named after the titular characters of the hit Andrews’ Sisters song) led the way for keeping spirits high and discouraging hoarding -- however, except for regional protectors, most gestalts who entered the public eye chose to head overseas.

 

Eventually, the war on Gestalt-Earth ended much as it did on our world: the Axis counteroffensive collapsed, superheroes stormed into Berlin and found Hitler’s body charred in its bunker, Hiroshima and Nagasaki died in atomic pyres, and the Cold War began almost as soon as the war ended. There were two significant differences: first, many believed Hitler managed to project at least part of his consciousness into another body that fled to Brazil after the war to become the world menacing supervillain called The Prince of Hate. Second, there were a lot of disaffected gestalts after the war.

 

Days of Wonder

No one wanted to think about fighting in the days after the war, and gestalts, like soldiers, were a reminder of a conflict that people wanted to put behind them. Some surviving gestalts joined law enforcement or became local protectors and leaders. For others, like the Texas Tomcat), the world was a cold and unappreciative place —he crashed his plane into a mesa and died in 1947. The Cold War heightened those feelings, as did the firebrand rhetoric of the Prince of Hate.

 

In 1949, the Eighth Wonder returned from his self-imposed exile and helped Danny Courage and Jesse Storm to defeat the Prince of Hate— and then made the world’s gestalts an extraordinary offer. He and Professor Invento had raised a large island from the depths of the Pacific. The Wonder proposed that the world’s gestalt community retire there and raise a utopian society, allowing the rest of the world to remain relatively untouched by superhumans.

 

Several hundred gestalts, moved by the Wonder’s vision of the future, signed on to the plan. Hundreds more followed during the Korean War and the Red Scare of the early 1950s. There were no gestalt waves during the decade, so as the world’s gestalt population shifted to the island, few took their place. The world settled into a semblance of normalcy.

 

Meanwhile, the Wonder and his fellow gestalts set about to build a futuristic society away from the cares of man. Within a decade, using their superhuman talents to the fullest, Wonder Island became a high-tech paradise of culture and advanced living. More islands were raised from the ocean floor, creating an Archipelago of Marvels.

 

In 1957, the launch of Sputnik changed that. All eyes turned skyward, including the gestalts of Wonder Island, who (aside from a few flyers who had risen to the edge of the atmosphere) had not turned their talents into the conquest of space. Invento and Professor Mull, the Thinker went to the Wonder and his Council of Marvels and strongly urged them to consider their own lunar program. The Wonder refused. He said it was not the right of gestalts to take away the dreams of normal human beings to strive for the stars; he felt that mankind would benefit from striving to be first.

 

Both scientists were furious, however the Thinker would not take “no” for an answer. He disregarded the Council’s ruling and built an ambitious space program on his own island, the Mull of Mull. When word leaked to the Wonder of the Thinker’s insubordination, the furious hero descended on the Mull with a force of gestalts, dismantled the operation and threw him into a confinement cell.

 

The Thinker escaped and immediately implemented his revenge protocols. He was the genius who had carefully raised the archipelago from the ocean floor. Now he would undo his creation. Mull also had a special weapon —a bomb that shut down links with the gestalt dimension. He detonated those bombs all over the islands at the same moment he collapsed the tectonic bulge on which Wonder Island rested. The islands sank into the sea. Without their gestalt abilities (and with their other technology sabotaged) most of the inhabitants of the archipelago drowned, including the Wonder. That day, January 24, 1958, is known as Black Friday among gestalts, the day that paradise was destroyed. The resulting tsunami devastated coastlines across the Pacific.

 

The Thinker escaped the deluge; however vengeance was in hot pursuit; when the survivors figured out what had happened, they pursued him relentlessly. Wisely fearing for his life, the Thinker defected to the Soviet Union. Professor Invento was adamant about bringing him to justice; however Die Schützling, the Protégé, got to him first, leaving behind a corpse with a very large hole in its forehead. Thus ended the age of wonders, with the brains of the world’s smartest man splattered on the wall of a Moscow apartment.

 

The Silver Age

The survivors trickled back into mainstream society, and for the most part, tried to live quiet, unassuming lives (at least by gestalt standards). Most were in their 40s or early 50s, and the years were creeping on them. It looked as though the gestalt age would quietly die out, save for a few stragglers with longevity powers like Canadiana, whose youth was restored by the sight of the Northern Lights, or the Protégé, who christened himself Vendetta and wandered the world in search of those who “needed killing” (eventually dying at the hands of a CIA assassin).. For the most part, the world was a normal place. However, on September 22, 1961 that was all to change, forever.

 

That was the day of the second great gestalt wave.

 

Once again, thousands of people around the world were transformed into superhumans, and thousands more suddenly popped into existence. Foremost among these was America Man. Born in the shadow of Camelot, he looked a lot like JFK would have looked if he had one quarter native-American blood. Foiling the Anti-American’s plot to blow up the White House, the patriotic powerhouse was hailed as the spirit of America incarnate. They were not wrong.

 

For years, America Man fought many domestic threats to American freedom like the Anti-American, Golden Gladiator, Dr. Canopus and the Menagerie, Starfinder and Armageddo, Hel and the Living Gun, as well as the finest gestalt heroes of the Soviet Union: Oyagnitsya Chasovoj (“The People’s Guard”, a Toughness Gestalt who served as Khruschev’s bodyguard), Zimnie Vidy (“Winter Storm”, a Winter Gestalt), and Boevojj (“Battle”, a Soviet mad scientist whose battlesuit turned out to be an unreproducable byproduct of his gestalt talents).

 

There were other heroes in the second wave, of course: Apple Girl (the original female protector New York City, Mexico’s El Milagro, Steve Storm (Jesse’s son, who possessed similar abilities). Captain Astra, and Captain Ramsey Clark, waging colorful, occasionally gruesome battles in the heart of the world’s cities. Most considered it a sideshow and went about the business as if they didn’t exist; people appreciated the dedication to public service of folks like America Man, but it wasn’t an obsession or a major source of anxiety.

 

In 1968, America Man was drafted to Vietnam. That one act brought a malaise to America and to the silver age of gestalts. Vietnam was a moral quagmire that couldn’t be solved by someone with a good right cross, and incredibly disheartening to those who embodied the idealistic aspects of America. America Man wasn’t the only gestalt in the war: Ramsey Clark was more effective, however even he could do little more than protect his company from snipers and guerilla attacks.

 

In 1969, man landed on the moon, without gestalts having beaten them to it. It was a triumph for the Eighth Wonder, however, his role in that triumph went unheralded, even by the world’s gestalt community. If the moon landing didn’t feature gestalt participation, it did inspire a pair of future gestalts, Richard Griffin, whose grandfather was Hugo Griffin, and Emilio Astra, Captain Astra’s young son.

 

Vietnam ended, replaced in the public mindspace by the Watergate scandal. America Man returned from duty, suffering from serious trauma. He resumed his career as a superhero, however those who witnessed him in battle noticed that he no longer gave patriotic speeches or made jovial remarks. There were similar changes to the personality of his arch-enemy, the Anti-American, who went from being a ridiculous villain to a hero of the counterculture. However the counterculture and the ideal America that America Man served were both fading, replaced by the “Me” Decade America and a new (seemingly narcissistic) culture.

 

The two men met one final time on July 4, 1976, at the Statue of Liberty. The Anti-American had searched the world for gestalts capable of boosting his power: after receiving ten boosts from ten different sources, he took on the guise of the Bicentennial Man and declared the dissolution of the American union. This brought on a final showdown with America Man. After unmasking his foe, America Man shot the Anti-American in the head and left him for dead atop the cracked face of the statue. He vanished as fireworks lit up the sky above the statue and has not been seen since.

 

The Next Age

A little over a year later, on August 15, 1977, a third gestalt wave occurred. The gestalts produced by this third wave tended to reflect their time; the ones produced by this wave were grittier, emotionally tougher, than those that had gone before. Liberator was born in this wave, and he founded Columbia alongside three other newcomers: Dr. Paragon, Reactor, and Thrillseeker. They fought a new generation of villains, most notably Dr. Typhus, Dr. Matthias Power and the Devastators. Other notable heroes included Mistral, who took over guardianship of New York City after Apple Woman retired; Major Jonathan Clark, who succeeded his father Ramsey Clark in the role of the US military’s best man-sized weapon (though the USMC Vanguard was not formed until the Reagan administration, when it was involved in the invasion of Grenada); and Dr. Astra, son of Captain Astra.

 

This was also the age of Robert Adderlee, when the first theories about the gestalt process were formed. On September 22, 1984, his landmark paper “Superhumans and the Gestalt -- Superpowers and the Human Collective Unconscious” Adderlee died shortly after its publication.

 

In 1986, the Red Plague struck India, perhaps the first sign of the dark age that was to come. The Red Plague fanned a lot of anti-gestalt hatred overseas, and international agencies who had previously welcomed gestalt involvement suddenly distanced themselves from gestalts, though many agencies still used “talented locals” in their operations.

 

 

1986 was also the year of the Challenger disaster. The disaster hit even harder with gestalts because one of those who died in the tragedy was Roy Chess, who would have been the first gestalt in space as part of a legitimate space mission. His death encouraged his brother Ted (who was not then a gestalt) to join the space program.

 

In 1987, the long-awaited Columbia-Devastators clash occurred, with Columbia barely eking out a victory as the Devastators self-destructed. The great battle of the age, however, was Columbia and Canadiana against Dr. Matthias Power. Matthias wanted to get his hands on Professor Mull’s technology, some of which was buried at the bottom of the Pacific, so he conceived of a way to raise Wonder Island from the bottom of the ocean floor. He succeeded, but while a team of scavenger villains distracted Columbia, Canadiana confronted him and his teenage daughter Theresa, on the spire of Wonder, the highest point of the island. Matthias tried to throw his daughter from the spire, but slipped, fell instead, and died.

 

Age of Blood and Glory

On September 24, 1989, Mistral was performing a routine surveillance of New York City when she noticed a disturbance at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. She arrived to find several hundred people dead, including the archbishop of New York. Another wave of gestalts had occurred, and one of the recent arrivals, the Blood Red King, had decided to strike early.

 

This wave was called “the Dark Wave” by many. Although the name was overly influenced by the King, it was not entirely misplaced, as many of the new wave of gestalts seemed to delight in violence, pain, and suffering. Mistral died soon after the St. Patrick’s massacre, though Kinestar soon took over her mantle and became the third vigilante superheroine of the Big Apple.

Kinestar quickly assembled a rogue’s gallery of villains. Energy Master, the Magician, Mindwarp, Bloodkite, Jericho Bronze, and Scarlet Knight. Eventually the group was rounded up by Phillip Dansen, great-nephew of Professor Invento, to serve as the core of his supervillain team, the New Devastators (later renamed the Tyranny League).

 

Another emergent gestalt who was born in this wave was Influence. Desiring to be the secret master of the world, he founded the Council of the Mind and worked behind the scenes to weaken laws that were designed to curb the use of gestalt abilities.

 

If that wasn’t bad enough, a fourth nemesis appeared in the wave, perhaps the most dangerous of all. Dr. Theresa Power followed in her father’s footsteps, establishing a vast network of hidden fortresses and factories on a quest to avenge his father’s death. She captured Canadiana, last of the golden age heroes, and Thrillseeker disappeared investigating one of her lairs.

 

The early 1990s was also the time of the Iraq War, which went down as described in Gestalt: The Hero Within.

 

Not everything that occurred in the 90s was “dark”. There were numerous developments in scientific research, especially in the field of space development and exploration, thanks to Dr. Astra, who made building the world’s space capacity into his personal mission, assisted by NASA astronaut Ted Chess, whose interstellar flight capabilities allowed humanity to go places that no human eye had ever seen. There were comparable developments in computing, thanks to Richard Greer’s Trident computer processor. The superhero Technarch made large strides in robotics, but kept most of his creations to himself.

 

Columbia experienced a massive reorganization. All of the original members but Liberator left the team, replaced by Labyrinth, Rex, Reactor, Powerjack, and Starbird. Powerjack’s tenure with the team was short-lived, and he was quickly replaced by Bombard.

 

The new Columbia team would soon be tested: by the Tyranny League. On January 24, 2000, at a press conference in Chicago, Dr. Astra formally unveiled a set of power armor designed to allow humans to survive and function at a superhuman level in space. Imperator and the Tyranny League broke into the conference, declaring they weren’t allowed to accept the development of any technology that could put an individual human on the same combat level as a gestalt. The League destroyed the prototype, captured Dr. Astra, and tortured him to determine the whereabouts of every piece of his research. He managed to get a signal to Columbia to come rescue him; in the resulting battle, the Tyranny League was forced to retreat, though Bloodkite, Rex, Reactor and the good doctor lay dead on the battlefield.

 

The Modern Age

On September 11, 2001, terrorists linked to the Al Qaeda network blew up one of the World Trade Center towers. Columbia and others managed to evacuate most of the people in the first tower, and Technarch prevented a second plane strike from hitting the second tower. Even so, hundreds died, and the ramifications of the deed reverberated around the world; 9/11 was the most brutal act of mass murder that had occurred on America soil since the St. Patrick’s incident, and it was caused solely by non-gestalts. The USMC Vanguard lamented that Al Qaeda’s leadership had adapted to their snatch and grab tactics, as Bin Laden had eluded capture by the Vanguard in 1998. Major Clark called for an overhaul of the group’s small unit tactics. A new department, the Department of Homeland Security was added to the US cabinet, with a superhero team, Patriot Action, attached as a special ops force.

 

The United States soon found itself in a two-front war, one against Syria, the nation that the Bush administration deemed their biggest enemy in the Middle East, and a second in Afghanistan. The Syrians launched missiles into Israel, but the US air force quickly took out the missile sites. The worst case scenario, an aggressive Israeli invasion that completely destabilized the region, didn’t occur, as the United States managed to dissuade the Israelis from invading (though they later moved to neutralize Syrian sympathizers in Lebanon). It took five weeks for the US military to force the Syrians to surrender and insurgent attacks, despite a large American occupying force, continue to the present day.

 

A conflict in Kurdistan between the Kurds and the Turks was largely confined to border skirmishes between the two powers. Kurds seized most of the Turkish section of Turkey to incorporate into their greater Kurdistan, but after a surprisingly long and bloody fight, retook its lost territory and rained major devastation on formerly Iraqi Kurdistan.

 

However prominent that 9/11 had been, the arrival of new superheroes soon grabbed the headlines. On December 5, 2001, another gestalt wave occurred. The modern age of gestalts had arrived.

 

The first and foremost gestalt of the age was Trevor Griffin, Hugo Griffin’s great grandson. He was working as part of the ground crew during a space shuttle launch when the rocket began to malfunction. Trevor somehow got the idea to fly to the shuttle, detach it from the side of the rocket and, holding onto its undercarriage, fly it to safety.

 

Dubbed the Titan, Trevor was America Man for the new age. Immensely popular, he shunned most of the typical heroics of the age to work as a human booster rocket for NASA’s space program. Even without seeking trouble, he made more than his fair share of enemies. One of them set a trap that propelled Trevor into the depths of interstellar space. On June 24, 2004, Trevor made first contact with the Ar’Turodain, the first extraterrestrial species ever encountered by humanity. Formal relations soon followed. A year later, on May 4, 2005, the Ar’Turodain’s more antagonistic cousins, the Ar’Kayadin, made contact as well. Unfortunately, this activity brought humanity to the attention of the Eiko, who are in the process of launching an invasion.

 

Two other incidents occurred that shook humanity to its core. In August 2005, the old Silver Age villain, Golden Gladiator, founded a cult called the Mundane Alliance. With the help of a pair of powerful psionics, he stripped America of all faith in the gestalts, and replaced it with fear and hatred. It took an alliance between Columbia and Influence, with help from one of Gladiator’s old nemeses, Steve Storm, to bring down the cult and reveal its true mastermind, the Blood Red King.

 

The other incident was the Tyranny League’s attack on an Atlanta industrial facility that was secretly building battlesuits for the US government. On January 24 2007, they launched the most devastating supervillain attack on an American city to date, leveling everything in a thirty block radius, and damaging the surroundings in a 10 kilometer radius.

 

All of this has undermined faith in heroes, though President Obama sees an important role for them in rebuilding a nation hit by recession, supervillains, terrorism, and war. More importantly, however, the Eiko are coming, to put humanity to the test—one which threatens to be the last test of the human race.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Black Ops Rising Star

Black Ops

Posted
Posted

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

 

Umh ?

Good research on the German names just two suggestions:

Instead of Hauptsängerin Meistersängerin ( Hauptsängerin is not even a word or name) and der Faulenzer instead die Faulenzer (in this case "die" implies multiple persons).

Link to comment
Share on other sites
GestaltBennie Mentor

GestaltBennie

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

 

Umh ?

Good research on the German names just two suggestions:

Instead of Hauptsängerin Meistersängerin ( Hauptsängerin is not even a word or name) and der Faulenzer instead die Faulenzer (in this case "die" implies multiple persons).

 

Thanks! Getting authentic names in languages you don't speak is a trick. I always appreciate corrections.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Steve Grand Master

Steve

Posted
Posted

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

 

A couple of questions.

 

Will there be more information provided on the Probability Lords and maybe how they connect with the Gestalt Dimension?

 

If a bonded Gestalt dies, what happens to the Gestalt portion of the superhuman? Does it get recycled back to the Gestalt Dimension to be re-bonded in the next wave? Or does it die with the human host?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
GestaltBennie Mentor

GestaltBennie

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

 

A couple of questions.

 

Will there be more information provided on the Probability Lords and maybe how they connect with the Gestalt Dimension?

 

If a bonded Gestalt dies, what happens to the Gestalt portion of the superhuman? Does it get recycled back to the Gestalt Dimension to be re-bonded in the next wave? Or does it die with the human host?

 

1. You'll learn a little more about the Probability Lords' in connection with the creation of the Eiko. Interest permitting, the Gestalt Dimension will be the focus of a third book, in a similar fashion as this one focuses on space.

 

2. The gestalt portion of the superhuman dies with the host, though it (usually) gets resurrected in those rare occasions the superhuman is brought back from the dead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
bubba smith Grand Master

bubba smith

Posted
Posted

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

 

Working on it between classes, though I've hit something of a brick wall. I'm trying to plow through this week.

 

As an apology, here's the text for the Alternate timeline chapter:

 

------------

Gestalt presupposes a 1989 start date for the Gestalt phenomenon, but what if it happened earlier, at a time that more closely mimicked a standard comic book universe? What if the gestalt had been actively shaping the course of human history and that many oddities were in fact, the gestalt at work?

 

In all likelihood, the world would be a very different place than what we know today. However, for those who want to play in a conventional campaign, here’s a timeline that extends the Gestalt process back into the dawn of history. The rules for gestalt bonds not being passed down through a family line are somewhat relaxed in this setting variant: some of the best stories in a campaign where superpowers have existed for decades involve new generations of superheroes struggling to come to terms with their legacy, from living up to a legendary father, or casting off the mantle of a villainous predecessor.

 

In this setting variant, because multiple generation games tend to mirror the comic book “ages” (Golden, Silver, Bronze, Iron, and Modern), the gestalt wave effects tend to fall at a time to usher in the next age. The current setting is meant to mesh with those presented in this book and Gestalt: The Hero Within, so the last few years of both settings are virtually identical.

 

The Beginning

The gestalt phenomenon has been evidenced in small ways throughout history. Often mistaken for magic, the gestalt has “hiccupped” power into the world. Many of these power places (ley points) correlated with the presence of Probability Tunnels buried underground by the Probability Lords during their visit to Earth eight thousand years ago. Power from these tunnels sometimes found their way into objects, particularly those associated with great events, creating “magical artifacts”. The gestalt taught people how to work the soil, invent the wheel, develop writing and trade, even how to make beer. However, the day of the true superhuman was yet to come.

 

July 1, 1916. The bloodiest day of the Battle of the Somme. The carnage of the First World War produced a small wave in the Gestalt dimension, bringing about the creation of people who would develop into marginal superhumans in the 1920s and 1930s. Among the people given superpowers on that day is a young German soldier named Adolph Hitler, who was on the battlefield, who was given a Charisma Gestalt that he later put to evil use.

 

However, the one person who truly stood out was an American named Hugo Griffin. Fighting as a volunteer for the English, bullets began bounding off his skin. He waded into machine gun nests and nearly single-handedly turned the tide of that gruesome battle, until a direct hit from an artillery shell finally took him out. Recovering in only a few months, he kept a low profile for the rest of the war.

 

After the war, poverty forced him to use his powers more openly. He was christened The Eighth Wonder by the press, after his astonishing exhibitions of strength on the Atlantic City boardwalk. With the power to leap to the top of five story buildings, hoist trucks over his head, and bounce bullets off his skin without even feeling them, the Wonder became a circus sensation, then a professional wrestling champion, and then (after accidentally killing an opponent in the ring) a mercenary. Eventually, he retreated to a small Pacific Island, where he lived as a god to a native tribe. The Wonder was the herald of the age to come.

 

Pulps!

The pulp age brought out a lot of heroes. In addition to the Wonder, there was Alex Williams, a young British boy whose parents were killed off the west coast of Africa by pirates, Discovered by an intelligent (gestalt) great ape named Tobi-Eranko, he was empowered as a regional protector, swifter than a leopard, stronger than an elephant, able to communicate with animals and commune over great distances with Tobi-Eranko himself. By the 1930s, legends spoke of a “great naked savage” Alákoso, uncrowned master of the lands west of the Congo, protector of the jungle. His word was accepted as law by most of the tribes in Western Africa, greatly annoying the colonial powers. Alákoso was killed by the French during an incident in Dahomey (now Benin) in 1937, however Tobi-Eranko continues to protect Africa, appointing other, more subtle, protectors, even to the present day.

 

The third great hero of the pulp age was known by the rather comical name of Professor Invento. This friendly, nutty scientist, aided by a pair of intrepid young reporters, Skip and Jane, fought crime throughout the world with his fantastic (sometimes malfunctioning) gadgets. Eventually they teamed up with a courageous Archeology Gestalt named Digger Drake to fight the efforts of the Thule Society, a cabal of proto-Nazi occultists.

 

The Thule Society was the greatest menace of the age. Originally attached to what became the Nazi Party, this collection of occultists, pseudo-scientists and nationals might have died out in the early 1920s had it not been for the efforts of the Hermetic Mage Gestalt Volkssturm, a masked madman who went on a worldwide search for “mystical” objects (which had been empowered long ago by the Probability Lords). Volkssturm believed that the objects would lead him to Ultima Thule, the homeland of the Aryan “super race”, where aliens used magic powers to evolve simple humans into the magnificent ancestors of the German people. This eventually led to a struggle between Drake and Volkssturm inside a Probability Tunnel that resulted in Drake being crippled and Volkssturn being sucked into nothingness.

 

The day that Volkssturm vanished was November 9, 1938, the same date as the assassination of Ernst von Rath, which resulted in the Krystallnact pogrom in Germany. It was also the date of the first true Gestalt wave.

 

Gestalts Go to War!

On November 9, a man was found in a Welsh mine shaft bearing a near-mortal stab wound made by a great spear. When the doctors asked his name, he replied: “Arthur, Dux Bellorum, King of the Britons.” Arthur Rex, as he came to be called, healed of his wound almost instantly, and went out into the streets to become a champion of the people. Possessing strength and abilities that rivaled the Wonder, Arthur was an overnight sensation. Eventually, he became an RAF captain and indeed helped save England in its darkest hour. He was mortally wounded fighting as a paratrooper at Caen on June 18, 1944, and the Lady of the Lake appeared once again to bear his body back to Avalon.

 

World War 2 saw many gestalts enter active service, engaging in battles as fiercely contested as any other in this grisly conflict. Arthur Rex was the first to capture the public imagination, but he was far from alone. The most prominent for the Allies included:

 

Danny Courage, the American champion of the age was the most feared Allied soldier in WW2; dressed in patriotic garb, Danny’s powers of super-speed (“The fastest thing on land”) combined with advanced commando training to make him the most feared Allied soldier of the war.

 

The Fighting Chief may have been the most embarrassing stereotype of the war (especially in retrospect), however Sam Keyes was strongly motivated to show pride in his Apache heritage and “present many faces to our enemy, who only desires one face”). Sam was a Healing Gestalt who died in the Battle of St. Vith.

 

Kid Commando, though hailed as a hero, may have been the most macabre gestalt of the era: he was a Sidekick Gestalt who latched onto a hero, elevated him to marginal superhuman levels, encouraged him into battle, and then watched as he was gunned down after a heroic fight. Kid went through seven “Captain Commandos” during the course of the war.

 

Eyepatch, “the Fightin’ Sailor” was one of the most colorful gestalts (in both personality and language). He was a Brawling Gestalt; whose resemblance to a cartoon strip sailor (including huge forearms) was somewhat unnerving. Still, he was very handy to have around in a fight.

 

Watchtower, Gestalt of Buildings, may have been the most powerful of all gestalts in the war. He used his abilities to take apart or reconstruct damaged buildings, and even talk to them, learning the exact position of snipers (and even getting the building to spit them out!)

 

Professor Mull, aka The Thinker, was a Science Gestalt who took it upon himself the job of sabotaging Nazi weapons development, a task he carried out with ruthlessness and efficiency. His greatest invention (which still hasn’t been duplicated) was the anti-combustion bomb, a weapon that caused nearby combustible effects to fail, knocking V-2s out of the skies.

 

Canadiana was a pure gestalt whose archetype was Truth. Though some dismissed her as “a dame” her psionic talents made her one of the useful gestalt heroes of the war.

 

Vivre La Liberté (the gestalt protector of partisans) was the man who made patriotic costumed individuals popular in France, largely because he used his flamboyance to his advantage, attracting Nazi pursuers, leading them into ambush points, then turning invisible at just the right moment. M. Liberté was vital in coordinating the French resistance to assist the invasion of Normandy, laying false documents containing disinformation to confuse German Intelligence.

 

The Axis, however, matched the Allies gestalt for gestalt. Numerous attempts were made to assassinate Hitler, Churchill, and the British Royal Family, however each side managed to protect their leaders. German’s greatest gestalt was Heilige Lanze (“Holy Lance”, a reference to the Spear of Destiny, allegedly the spear that pierced the side of Jesus Christ). Lanze was a pure Gestalt defender of Germany, the Aryan ideal come to perfect life. With physical strength and toughness that was second to none, the perfect German held the Allies at bay, until he fell out of favor with Hitler in late 1943 and was sent to the Russian front. The Deutschland Wundermann died in the defense of the Dukla Pass on the Czech-Polish border on October 8, 1944, when he was forced to commit suicide by the Soviet Despair Gestalt Otchayanie. He was succeeded in his role by Die Schützling (“The Protégé, a Sidekick Gestalt whom Lanze personally groomed for the role).

 

The other German supers of the era included Hauptsängerin (“the Diva”, an Inspiration Gestalt who claimed to be a valkyrie, whose song could amplify the abilities of anyone who sung along to it (of course, she chose well-known German songs); Mechaniker (“the Machanic”) was a Vehicle Gestalt who could reassemble a tank that had been blown to pieces in minutes, or crank on a few bolts and make it considerably tougher for a day or so. Die Faulenzer (“The Sluggard”) was an Inertia Gestalt who was Danny Courage’s most frequent sparring partner.

 

Hochofen (“Blast Furnace) and Eissturm (“Ice Storm”) were a brother and sister team, a pair of Flame and Ice Gestalts who attained a high standing in the Hitler Youth movement, but whose greatest influence was on the battlefield. Germany’s most powerful psionic was the Loneliness Gestalt Absonderung (“Isolation”), whose powers allowed him to make someone feel isolated and alone; a technique he applied as an effective torture technique. He was the only gestalt executed by the Nuremberg tribunal.

 

Maceste was an Italian hero, a Strongman gestalt who claimed to be Romulus and Remus reborn into a single body. He was often partnered with Magnifico, a Light Gestalt. Both gestalts survived the fall of Rome and continued to fight for the Nazis.

 

Numerous other gestalts were involved in the war, hailing from places like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Serbia: regional champions, living ghosts, figures borrowed from folk tales, and a cat turned spy whose tongue purified poisons. Most were only marginally superhuman and did not survive more than one or two battles, learning the hard way that having a gestalt and being invulnerable were two very different things.

 

The Eastern front was no stranger to gestalt battles either. On the German side, Eindrucksvoll (“Impressive”, a Strongman Gestalt), Die Todesursache (“The Cause of Death”, a Death Gestalt) and Die Sturmzentrum (“Storm Center”, a Weatrher Gestalt who held off the effects of the Russian winter) fought great heroes of the Soviet Union like Soprotivleni (“Resistance”, a Determination Gestalt), Zaschitnik (“Defender”, Gestalt Defender of Leningrad), Soratnik (“Comrade”, a Soldier Gestalt), Dostizhenie (“Achievement”, an Inspiration Gestalt) and Brosat’ Vyzov (“Challenge”, a Competition Gestalt).

 

The war between gestalts cumulated in a battle at St. Vith, Belgium on December 23, 1944. Considered part of the Battle of the Bulge, major gestalts from both the Allied and German sides agreed to meet here to fight a “duel of honor”, as stipulated by the challenge’s originator, Die Schützling. Surprisingly, the battle went down without a betrayal. The Fighting Chief, Die Faulenzer and Magnifico were killed, and five other Nazi gestalts were captured, including Die Schützling.

 

On the Pacific Front, there were plenty of superhumans on both sides of the conflict. On the Allied side, the greatest heroes weres the Crimson Tide, a Vengeance Gestalt. brother of a seaman who died at Pearl Harbor and Nurse Nancy, whose healing powers somehow encouraged soldiers to accept her as a comrade in arms (though it was her ability to open long mended wounds which really made her formidable in a fight).

 

Captain Shark was a Navy Gestalt, who fought alongside an elite crew, the Flying Fish, aboard the USS Calamity, undertaking dangerous missions that few would dare. Occasionally they were joined by Jesse Storm, a Water Gestalt who rode the waves into battle, and played a vital role in the American victory at Midway. Lifeguard was a Gestalt of Rescues who saved hundreds of lives. The Texas Tomcat ruled the skies in the Pacific; not only was this Aircraft Gestalt an uncanny shot, his pet aircraft, a Wildcat named Lola, was much more maneuverable and flew faster and longer than comparable aircraft. Australia contributed a valuable ally to the Allied cause: Cyclone Smith (a Tornado Gestalt) and his sidekick Ramsey (an intelligent bomber-jacket sporting boxing kangaroo who may have been the most bizarre gestalt of the war. however no one who saw him in action did much laughing, especially his opponents). “Kicky” O’Hearne was a Gestalt of Legs, a power that let her leap great distances, kick machine gun nests out of the ground, and crush any Jap who got caught in her much-feared body sizzors. She toured as a singer with the USO, but had an uncanny talent for crossing paths with spies and saboteurs.

 

The Japanese fielded a squad of military gestalts renowned for its teamwork and efficiency: this team was known as Taishou (“Certain Victory). Led by Shainingu-Suta (“Shining Star”, a Samurai Gestalt), its members included: Chikaramoch (“Muscleman”, a Strongman Gestalt), Haruichiban (“First Storm of Spring”, a Weather Gestalt), Nobara (“Wild Rose”, a Gestalt of Plants), and Kokuei (“Dark Shadow”, a Gestalt of Fear). Taishou’s “certain victory” came crashing down on them at Okinawa, where the team was forced to retreat. After this disgrace Shainingu-Suta tried to commit seppuku in the honorable manner, but could not find a blade sharp enough to perform the ritual properly. Dismayed, Shainngu-Suta led his team into a Probability Tunnel that they had discovered earlier on a remote Pacific island. The entire team vanished from the face of the earth.

 

On the home front, the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and Company B (a Music Gestalt and his followers, named after the titular characters of the hit Andrews’ Sisters song) led the way for keeping spirits high and discouraging hoarding -- however, except for regional protectors, most gestalts who entered the public eye chose to head overseas.

 

Eventually, the war on Gestalt-Earth ended much as it did on our world: the Axis counteroffensive collapsed, superheroes stormed into Berlin and found Hitler’s body charred in its bunker, Hiroshima and Nagasaki died in atomic pyres, and the Cold War began almost as soon as the war ended. There were two significant differences: first, many believed Hitler managed to project at least part of his consciousness into another body that fled to Brazil after the war to become the world menacing supervillain called The Prince of Hate. Second, there were a lot of disaffected gestalts after the war.

 

Days of Wonder

No one wanted to think about fighting in the days after the war, and gestalts, like soldiers, were a reminder of a conflict that people wanted to put behind them. Some surviving gestalts joined law enforcement or became local protectors and leaders. For others, like the Texas Tomcat), the world was a cold and unappreciative place —he crashed his plane into a mesa and died in 1947. The Cold War heightened those feelings, as did the firebrand rhetoric of the Prince of Hate.

 

In 1949, the Eighth Wonder returned from his self-imposed exile and helped Danny Courage and Jesse Storm to defeat the Prince of Hate— and then made the world’s gestalts an extraordinary offer. He and Professor Invento had raised a large island from the depths of the Pacific. The Wonder proposed that the world’s gestalt community retire there and raise a utopian society, allowing the rest of the world to remain relatively untouched by superhumans.

 

Several hundred gestalts, moved by the Wonder’s vision of the future, signed on to the plan. Hundreds more followed during the Korean War and the Red Scare of the early 1950s. There were no gestalt waves during the decade, so as the world’s gestalt population shifted to the island, few took their place. The world settled into a semblance of normalcy.

 

Meanwhile, the Wonder and his fellow gestalts set about to build a futuristic society away from the cares of man. Within a decade, using their superhuman talents to the fullest, Wonder Island became a high-tech paradise of culture and advanced living. More islands were raised from the ocean floor, creating an Archipelago of Marvels.

 

In 1957, the launch of Sputnik changed that. All eyes turned skyward, including the gestalts of Wonder Island, who (aside from a few flyers who had risen to the edge of the atmosphere) had not turned their talents into the conquest of space. Invento and Professor Mull, the Thinker went to the Wonder and his Council of Marvels and strongly urged them to consider their own lunar program. The Wonder refused. He said it was not the right of gestalts to take away the dreams of normal human beings to strive for the stars; he felt that mankind would benefit from striving to be first.

 

Both scientists were furious, however the Thinker would not take “no” for an answer. He disregarded the Council’s ruling and built an ambitious space program on his own island, the Mull of Mull. When word leaked to the Wonder of the Thinker’s insubordination, the furious hero descended on the Mull with a force of gestalts, dismantled the operation and threw him into a confinement cell.

 

The Thinker escaped and immediately implemented his revenge protocols. He was the genius who had carefully raised the archipelago from the ocean floor. Now he would undo his creation. Mull also had a special weapon —a bomb that shut down links with the gestalt dimension. He detonated those bombs all over the islands at the same moment he collapsed the tectonic bulge on which Wonder Island rested. The islands sank into the sea. Without their gestalt abilities (and with their other technology sabotaged) most of the inhabitants of the archipelago drowned, including the Wonder. That day, January 24, 1958, is known as Black Friday among gestalts, the day that paradise was destroyed. The resulting tsunami devastated coastlines across the Pacific.

 

The Thinker escaped the deluge; however vengeance was in hot pursuit; when the survivors figured out what had happened, they pursued him relentlessly. Wisely fearing for his life, the Thinker defected to the Soviet Union. Professor Invento was adamant about bringing him to justice; however Die Schützling, the Protégé, got to him first, leaving behind a corpse with a very large hole in its forehead. Thus ended the age of wonders, with the brains of the world’s smartest man splattered on the wall of a Moscow apartment.

 

The Silver Age

The survivors trickled back into mainstream society, and for the most part, tried to live quiet, unassuming lives (at least by gestalt standards). Most were in their 40s or early 50s, and the years were creeping on them. It looked as though the gestalt age would quietly die out, save for a few stragglers with longevity powers like Canadiana, whose youth was restored by the sight of the Northern Lights, or the Protégé, who christened himself Vendetta and wandered the world in search of those who “needed killing” (eventually dying at the hands of a CIA assassin).. For the most part, the world was a normal place. However, on September 22, 1961 that was all to change, forever.

 

That was the day of the second great gestalt wave.

 

Once again, thousands of people around the world were transformed into superhumans, and thousands more suddenly popped into existence. Foremost among these was America Man. Born in the shadow of Camelot, he looked a lot like JFK would have looked if he had one quarter native-American blood. Foiling the Anti-American’s plot to blow up the White House, the patriotic powerhouse was hailed as the spirit of America incarnate. They were not wrong.

 

For years, America Man fought many domestic threats to American freedom like the Anti-American, Golden Gladiator, Dr. Canopus and the Menagerie, Starfinder and Armageddo, Hel and the Living Gun, as well as the finest gestalt heroes of the Soviet Union: Oyagnitsya Chasovoj (“The People’s Guard”, a Toughness Gestalt who served as Khruschev’s bodyguard), Zimnie Vidy (“Winter Storm”, a Winter Gestalt), and Boevojj (“Battle”, a Soviet mad scientist whose battlesuit turned out to be an unreproducable byproduct of his gestalt talents).

 

There were other heroes in the second wave, of course: Apple Girl (the original female protector New York City, Mexico’s El Milagro, Steve Storm (Jesse’s son, who possessed similar abilities). Captain Astra, and Captain Ramsey Clark, waging colorful, occasionally gruesome battles in the heart of the world’s cities. Most considered it a sideshow and went about the business as if they didn’t exist; people appreciated the dedication to public service of folks like America Man, but it wasn’t an obsession or a major source of anxiety.

 

In 1968, America Man was drafted to Vietnam. That one act brought a malaise to America and to the silver age of gestalts. Vietnam was a moral quagmire that couldn’t be solved by someone with a good right cross, and incredibly disheartening to those who embodied the idealistic aspects of America. America Man wasn’t the only gestalt in the war: Ramsey Clark was more effective, however even he could do little more than protect his company from snipers and guerilla attacks.

 

In 1969, man landed on the moon, without gestalts having beaten them to it. It was a triumph for the Eighth Wonder, however, his role in that triumph went unheralded, even by the world’s gestalt community. If the moon landing didn’t feature gestalt participation, it did inspire a pair of future gestalts, Richard Griffin, whose grandfather was Hugo Griffin, and Emilio Astra, Captain Astra’s young son.

 

Vietnam ended, replaced in the public mindspace by the Watergate scandal. America Man returned from duty, suffering from serious trauma. He resumed his career as a superhero, however those who witnessed him in battle noticed that he no longer gave patriotic speeches or made jovial remarks. There were similar changes to the personality of his arch-enemy, the Anti-American, who went from being a ridiculous villain to a hero of the counterculture. However the counterculture and the ideal America that America Man served were both fading, replaced by the “Me” Decade America and a new (seemingly narcissistic) culture.

 

The two men met one final time on July 4, 1976, at the Statue of Liberty. The Anti-American had searched the world for gestalts capable of boosting his power: after receiving ten boosts from ten different sources, he took on the guise of the Bicentennial Man and declared the dissolution of the American union. This brought on a final showdown with America Man. After unmasking his foe, America Man shot the Anti-American in the head and left him for dead atop the cracked face of the statue. He vanished as fireworks lit up the sky above the statue and has not been seen since.

 

The Next Age

A little over a year later, on August 15, 1977, a third gestalt wave occurred. The gestalts produced by this third wave tended to reflect their time; the ones produced by this wave were grittier, emotionally tougher, than those that had gone before. Liberator was born in this wave, and he founded Columbia alongside three other newcomers: Dr. Paragon, Reactor, and Thrillseeker. They fought a new generation of villains, most notably Dr. Typhus, Dr. Matthias Power and the Devastators. Other notable heroes included Mistral, who took over guardianship of New York City after Apple Woman retired; Major Jonathan Clark, who succeeded his father Ramsey Clark in the role of the US military’s best man-sized weapon (though the USMC Vanguard was not formed until the Reagan administration, when it was involved in the invasion of Grenada); and Dr. Astra, son of Captain Astra.

 

This was also the age of Robert Adderlee, when the first theories about the gestalt process were formed. On September 22, 1984, his landmark paper “Superhumans and the Gestalt -- Superpowers and the Human Collective Unconscious” Adderlee died shortly after its publication.

 

In 1986, the Red Plague struck India, perhaps the first sign of the dark age that was to come. The Red Plague fanned a lot of anti-gestalt hatred overseas, and international agencies who had previously welcomed gestalt involvement suddenly distanced themselves from gestalts, though many agencies still used “talented locals” in their operations.

 

 

1986 was also the year of the Challenger disaster. The disaster hit even harder with gestalts because one of those who died in the tragedy was Roy Chess, who would have been the first gestalt in space as part of a legitimate space mission. His death encouraged his brother Ted (who was not then a gestalt) to join the space program.

 

In 1987, the long-awaited Columbia-Devastators clash occurred, with Columbia barely eking out a victory as the Devastators self-destructed. The great battle of the age, however, was Columbia and Canadiana against Dr. Matthias Power. Matthias wanted to get his hands on Professor Mull’s technology, some of which was buried at the bottom of the Pacific, so he conceived of a way to raise Wonder Island from the bottom of the ocean floor. He succeeded, but while a team of scavenger villains distracted Columbia, Canadiana confronted him and his teenage daughter Theresa, on the spire of Wonder, the highest point of the island. Matthias tried to throw his daughter from the spire, but slipped, fell instead, and died.

 

Age of Blood and Glory

On September 24, 1989, Mistral was performing a routine surveillance of New York City when she noticed a disturbance at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. She arrived to find several hundred people dead, including the archbishop of New York. Another wave of gestalts had occurred, and one of the recent arrivals, the Blood Red King, had decided to strike early.

 

This wave was called “the Dark Wave” by many. Although the name was overly influenced by the King, it was not entirely misplaced, as many of the new wave of gestalts seemed to delight in violence, pain, and suffering. Mistral died soon after the St. Patrick’s massacre, though Kinestar soon took over her mantle and became the third vigilante superheroine of the Big Apple.

Kinestar quickly assembled a rogue’s gallery of villains. Energy Master, the Magician, Mindwarp, Bloodkite, Jericho Bronze, and Scarlet Knight. Eventually the group was rounded up by Phillip Dansen, great-nephew of Professor Invento, to serve as the core of his supervillain team, the New Devastators (later renamed the Tyranny League).

 

Another emergent gestalt who was born in this wave was Influence. Desiring to be the secret master of the world, he founded the Council of the Mind and worked behind the scenes to weaken laws that were designed to curb the use of gestalt abilities.

 

If that wasn’t bad enough, a fourth nemesis appeared in the wave, perhaps the most dangerous of all. Dr. Theresa Power followed in her father’s footsteps, establishing a vast network of hidden fortresses and factories on a quest to avenge his father’s death. She captured Canadiana, last of the golden age heroes, and Thrillseeker disappeared investigating one of her lairs.

 

The early 1990s was also the time of the Iraq War, which went down as described in Gestalt: The Hero Within.

 

Not everything that occurred in the 90s was “dark”. There were numerous developments in scientific research, especially in the field of space development and exploration, thanks to Dr. Astra, who made building the world’s space capacity into his personal mission, assisted by NASA astronaut Ted Chess, whose interstellar flight capabilities allowed humanity to go places that no human eye had ever seen. There were comparable developments in computing, thanks to Richard Greer’s Trident computer processor. The superhero Technarch made large strides in robotics, but kept most of his creations to himself.

 

Columbia experienced a massive reorganization. All of the original members but Liberator left the team, replaced by Labyrinth, Rex, Reactor, Powerjack, and Starbird. Powerjack’s tenure with the team was short-lived, and he was quickly replaced by Bombard.

 

The new Columbia team would soon be tested: by the Tyranny League. On January 24, 2000, at a press conference in Chicago, Dr. Astra formally unveiled a set of power armor designed to allow humans to survive and function at a superhuman level in space. Imperator and the Tyranny League broke into the conference, declaring they weren’t allowed to accept the development of any technology that could put an individual human on the same combat level as a gestalt. The League destroyed the prototype, captured Dr. Astra, and tortured him to determine the whereabouts of every piece of his research. He managed to get a signal to Columbia to come rescue him; in the resulting battle, the Tyranny League was forced to retreat, though Bloodkite, Rex, Reactor and the good doctor lay dead on the battlefield.

 

The Modern Age

On September 11, 2001, terrorists linked to the Al Qaeda network blew up one of the World Trade Center towers. Columbia and others managed to evacuate most of the people in the first tower, and Technarch prevented a second plane strike from hitting the second tower. Even so, hundreds died, and the ramifications of the deed reverberated around the world; 9/11 was the most brutal act of mass murder that had occurred on America soil since the St. Patrick’s incident, and it was caused solely by non-gestalts. The USMC Vanguard lamented that Al Qaeda’s leadership had adapted to their snatch and grab tactics, as Bin Laden had eluded capture by the Vanguard in 1998. Major Clark called for an overhaul of the group’s small unit tactics. A new department, the Department of Homeland Security was added to the US cabinet, with a superhero team, Patriot Action, attached as a special ops force.

 

The United States soon found itself in a two-front war, one against Syria, the nation that the Bush administration deemed their biggest enemy in the Middle East, and a second in Afghanistan. The Syrians launched missiles into Israel, but the US air force quickly took out the missile sites. The worst case scenario, an aggressive Israeli invasion that completely destabilized the region, didn’t occur, as the United States managed to dissuade the Israelis from invading (though they later moved to neutralize Syrian sympathizers in Lebanon). It took five weeks for the US military to force the Syrians to surrender and insurgent attacks, despite a large American occupying force, continue to the present day.

 

A conflict in Kurdistan between the Kurds and the Turks was largely confined to border skirmishes between the two powers. Kurds seized most of the Turkish section of Turkey to incorporate into their greater Kurdistan, but after a surprisingly long and bloody fight, retook its lost territory and rained major devastation on formerly Iraqi Kurdistan.

 

However prominent that 9/11 had been, the arrival of new superheroes soon grabbed the headlines. On December 5, 2001, another gestalt wave occurred. The modern age of gestalts had arrived.

 

The first and foremost gestalt of the age was Trevor Griffin, Hugo Griffin’s great grandson. He was working as part of the ground crew during a space shuttle launch when the rocket began to malfunction. Trevor somehow got the idea to fly to the shuttle, detach it from the side of the rocket and, holding onto its undercarriage, fly it to safety.

 

Dubbed the Titan, Trevor was America Man for the new age. Immensely popular, he shunned most of the typical heroics of the age to work as a human booster rocket for NASA’s space program. Even without seeking trouble, he made more than his fair share of enemies. One of them set a trap that propelled Trevor into the depths of interstellar space. On June 24, 2004, Trevor made first contact with the Ar’Turodain, the first extraterrestrial species ever encountered by humanity. Formal relations soon followed. A year later, on May 4, 2005, the Ar’Turodain’s more antagonistic cousins, the Ar’Kayadin, made contact as well. Unfortunately, this activity brought humanity to the attention of the Eiko, who are in the process of launching an invasion.

 

Two other incidents occurred that shook humanity to its core. In August 2005, the old Silver Age villain, Golden Gladiator, founded a cult called the Mundane Alliance. With the help of a pair of powerful psionics, he stripped America of all faith in the gestalts, and replaced it with fear and hatred. It took an alliance between Columbia and Influence, with help from one of Gladiator’s old nemeses, Steve Storm, to bring down the cult and reveal its true mastermind, the Blood Red King.

 

The other incident was the Tyranny League’s attack on an Atlanta industrial facility that was secretly building battlesuits for the US government. On January 24 2007, they launched the most devastating supervillain attack on an American city to date, leveling everything in a thirty block radius, and damaging the surroundings in a 10 kilometer radius.

 

All of this has undermined faith in heroes, though President Obama sees an important role for them in rebuilding a nation hit by recession, supervillains, terrorism, and war. More importantly, however, the Eiko are coming, to put humanity to the test—one which threatens to be the last test of the human race.

man the paperback novel this story would make

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...
GestaltBennie Mentor

GestaltBennie

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Re: Gestalt: Architects of Change: What Would *You* Like to See

 

Okay, i've come to a bit of a decision on this book.

 

It's almost done, but the Eiko invasion scenario continues to be a brick wall. So I'm going to jettison the sections on the Eiko for another book, finish. edit, polish and index the rest (which should be a reasonably short process) and publish as soon as I have art for it and Dave can get it in the channels.

 

It's still a big book -- the manuscript's at 174 pages at the moment -- so I'm confident you'll get value out of it. Once I get the superlink version done (provided that life allows me the privilege), I'll start work on a third book to cover the Eiko and maybe add some material on the Gestalt Dimension. There might be a 6th edition HERO version, provided there's interest, which may well end up being a Gestalt 2nd Edition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...