Duke Bushido Posted September 26, 2009 Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 My four year old daughter just made her first character! Well, sort of. As I posted elsewhere on the board, I've lost my blank mannequins for doing character portraits. While RPMiller (sp?) was very kind and sent me a bundle of blanks, I had in the meantime been dragging out my old 2nd and 3rd edition stuff and was scanning in and cleaning up some of the original Mark Williams stuff (personal use only, of course, until I could find something more "freely available to the public." My daughter woke up from her nap and wandered in here to see what I was doing. She saw the picture I had just scanned, and said "Daddy! I want to color that! Is that a coloring page for me?" [there are a number of "coloring book" sites that parents use to share line drawings and print them out for their kids. She's used to seeing a line drawing and coloring it ] I was so impressed, I scanned it straight away! That's right-- I was so happy I shoved crayon art through my scanner. I'll worry about that tomorrow I spent a couple of hours using my weak PhotoShop skills to clean it up, and while I was doing that, we talked over and over about the character, who he was, what he did, why he did it--- Once we had a solid, cohesive (if extremely simple in the way that only four-year-olds can pull off) story and character, I filled in the bulk of the details. Not only is he her first character, the background she gave makes him the first "Legacy" hero I've ever had to deal with personally (which, while fun, makes for a lot of extra background work, should you be wondering!). At any rate, let me introduce my daughter's first character: Mighty Jack Brass The dust fell in waves from the old leather-bound book as he opened it. It was a ledger, over a hundred years old. The first several pages had been ripped out, and the book repurposed as a diary. A strong but uncertain hand introduced the story: "My name is Andrew Jackson Brass. I was bornd a slave and I was namt for the man wat ownt my dady namt Brass and I was namt for a army hero from befor I was bornd. I was bornd a slave and I wil dy a hero. I was giv a chans by God to do ryt or do evel and I been blest by choozn ryt." So began a story, written by a self-educated man given the worst possible start in life. It detailed an attack against his master that he and three other slaves helped to fend off. It was self-preservation. Should that man have died, most certainly his slaves would be blamed, and the four of them put to death. As a reward, the four of them were set free. Brass never saw the other three again. He begged for the release of his mother instead of his own, but no deal could be struck. His mother wished him well, and handed him a ream of paper. As a house servant, she was one of the rare slaves who could read, and had been transcribing a Bible. She read it often to Brass and his brothers and instilled in them a deep religious conviction. [side note: this is also the first deeply religious character I've had to work with who wasn't an alien from another planet. ] He made his way westward, where there was no law. Finding only more hatred and discrimination, he eventually found himself part of the 1849 Gold Rush. Lured with dreams of striking it rich and returning to Carolina to buy the freedom of what family he could find, Brass worked like a man possessed. California in 1850 was no better for a black man, and he found himself victimized by crooked scales, "special" pricing in the shops, and unprotected against thieves. Within two years, he had managed only to add to the wealth of dishonest men. He did manage to make enough coins to pay children to read his transcribed Bible pages to him periodically, and had even learned to read a few words for himself. In disgust with his situation, he moved deeper into the hills and, not knowing what else to do, he continued to dig. Over the next couple of years, he found just enough dust and flakes to buy food. He had lost his dreams, and had nothing to show for it but a very deep hole in the mountain and an Asian bride that he had bought at the docks and then, in a fit of self-disgust, set free before he even left town. She followed him to his camp and stayed. Her name was never written in the ledger; he called her "Teensy," saying that she was short and slight, and that he had no idea how to spell her name. She worked beside him daily, and the two developed a genuine relationship. Deep in his mine, he struck metal. A lot of it. Curious, and hoping against hope that it might be a gigantic nugget or precious stone, he began excavating around it. What he found defied all explanation: it looked like a wagon of some sort, but it had no wheels; it was made of metal and glass; it was enormous: it was easily larger than a locomotive, possibly larger than two locomotives. It was hard to say, given that it looked like it had been crushed. Brass managed to find his way in, and after his first look, ran screaming from the cave. For the next week, he considered dynamiting the mine to seal away what he had found. Teensy convinced him that as nothing had happened to them, certainly it was safe to continue working. Brass went back to the wreckage and, steeling himself with prayer, examined what he had found. There was a great deal of material that had decayed beyond recognition. But immediately next to entryway was a cabinet made of some sort of glass. Inside that cabinet were three of the oddest suits of armor he had ever seen. One was massive, with too many arms and too many legs to be meant for a man. The other two were similar: they appeared to be made of brass and looked-- well, he didn't know, but they looked like nothing he'd ever seen in any picture of armor from King Arthur to the Romans. The two suits were arranged as they would be worn. Metal chestplate and trunk and metal bits over gloves of a fabric like nothing he'd ever seen. They differed only in size. He made his way to the small room that had frightened him before. There, in what must have been a chair and pinned under a crushed forward section were the skeletal remains of something not of this earth. Vaguely like a man, the eyeholes in the skull were wrong, and there were four arms. Deciding there was nothing he could do for this creature, he prayed briefly for whatever soul once inhabited it and began to leave. The armor held his gaze on the way out. The smaller set... Andrew Jackson Brass was a large man: six-four and hard work all his life. But that smaller set looked like it might-- like it just _might_.... Well, if nothing else, it seemed to be made of solid brass, and that had to be worth something if he could melt it down and hide the source of his find.... Over the next few days, Brass studied the armor as best he could. It wasn't brass as he had suspected, but something else. It was very heavy, but not heavy enough to be brass. There were hundreds of "sprouts" inside of it, as if a hundred hundred wires were supposed to be touching the skin of the wearer. The boots and gloves were made of a thick, impossibly strong but supple material, but much of it had rotted away. Studying the fabric of the torso, he realized that the original wearer of this armor had four arms and four legs. There were openings in the back of the breastplate that seemed to accommodate smaller limbs, and the fabric over what he thought was the abdomen revealed holes that were either for another set of legs or a pair of very muscular arms. Either way, it shook him to think that there was something out there-- in the woods? in Hell? In Heaven? -- so alien to his experience. He decided to begin smelting the metal, hoping that perhaps it was at least brass plated. The metal wouldn't melt. Obviously someone had shaped it, but he could not make his open fire hot enough to even discolor it. As soon as it cooled to the touch, wiping off the soot made it look brand new. He tried again to heat it, this time striking it with a pick in the hopes of deforming it or perhaps peeling off the plating. The metal didn't bend. It didn't even scratch. He pulled it from the fire and his mind began to whir. After several conversations with Teensy, he had a plan. Testing had proved that even rifle fire wouldn't damage this metal. He and Teensy began to repair the boots and gloves to the best of their ability, using strips of heavy boiled and pressed leather to overlay the damaged material and to overlay heavy padding and small metal plates and create a flexible-enough abdomen to protect a man. The openings in the back of the armor were filled over and covered with leather, and they fashioned limbs by quilting thick padding and leather strips under layers of the heavy denim canvass the miners had been using to make britches. The plan was straight forward: revenge on everyone who had wronged him. He would take back everything that had been stolen from him, and he would take from the assayers everything that they had. Then he and Teensy would head south, to Mexico, and live out their lives. And it might have gone that way, except that when he entered the assayer's office, a metal-clad giant armed with a rifle and pistol, there was already a robbery taking place. As soon as the would-be thieves saw him, they opened fire. The balls glanced harmlessly off his armor. Enraged at the attack and the thought of being cheated of his goal, he leapt into the attackers, his leather-wrapped and metal-weighted fists propelled by his powerful muscles made short work of the three thieves. One of the two assayers stepped forward. "You with them, Mister?" Brass studied the trio on the floor for a long moment, then he turned to the assayer. "No. Big Jack Brass is better than that." With that, he turned and walked out. It wasn't easy to sneak back into the alley where his mule was, but it was simplicity itself for a black man to lead a packed mule through a crowd, completely unnoticed. And in that moment, his life changed forever... The journal went on to detail events in his life, in particular a time ten years later when, while wearing the armor, he had been struck by lightning while trying to stop a lynching. "The armor comed alyv then, all of itself! God His self put a finger of life in that armor. Of a suden it wernt hevy no more. It was like I was nekid. My arms and legs got stronger than a mule or a ox and them jules on the armor glowed like fire! My fistsis was tingley and it was a prply light craklin rown them. I knowd then that I done right by God and I knowd thet I was gon spend my life left to me helping anyone I culd." The journal detailed the life of Andrew Jackson Brass, but focused mostly on what he did with the armor and how he came to use it. It was as if this man had suddenly become another, a man with no scars from his past, born only to "do right" as best he knew it. He and Teensy had a son, Freeman Liberty Brass. As the boy matured toward adulthood, Jackson began to share with him the secrets of the armor. One day, it would be his, to do with as he saw fit. The final entry in the ledger-cum-journal: "I told Freeman that he needed to keep a diry like I did. It would be something he culd look at and between his hischry and the Lord it wuld gide him to do what was right. I told him it was his sekrit and I wuld nary one time peeps at it. He been using the armor for a cuple years now. Took it back east. Says plenty people need help in texis. He left his diry and today I peept in it. I readed the first page and I know I done right to give it to him. Cant nobody ever know why but I am the proudes a dady can be." The next book in the stack, with a clean imprint of the first book, outlined by the dust of untold years began: "My name is Andrew Jackson Brass...." There were eighteen volumes in all, detailing the lives of eight different men, all who wore the armor of the world's first Super Hero. Mighty Jack Brass disappeared a generation or two ago. Historians had given him the honorific 'the Immortal' Jack Brass to reflect both his incredible life-span (over a hundred and fifty years by anyone's count, and who can say before or after his public life?) and the impact that the world's first Super Hero actually had on the public and the lasting changes he has made in the way we think about ourselves. --------------------------------------------------------------------- A few weeks ago, Keegan Jamal Wright got a letter from a lawyer, saying that his grandmother had passed and left him, the eldest grandson of Martin Luther Brass, her home in the Virginia wilderness. There was a note, in his grandmother's hand, giving detailed instructions and offering "I am sorry I never told you. When your grandaddy was killed in that war, and then your uncle Clay died over there too, well-- I just wanted my family to stay safe. But you're Granddaddy has been talking to me a lot lately, and he says it's your right to know who you are and who your people were. It's your right to decide, Jamal. And I finally think he might be right." The instructions were accurate. Go out into the barn, into the cellar, and count out twelve feet from the northeast corner. Start smashing bricks. Inside the hollow recess was a filing cabinet he had yet to go through, pictures of men he had only heard of, a half-finished hand-written Bible with a family tree slowly spreading across the empty page-and-a-half at the end of it, a stack of eighteen diaries. And there, under a heavy canvas, carefully hung on a custom-crafted tree, was the suit of armor worn by the world's first superhero. Jamal had finished reading the journals two days ago, and he had remained here in the cellar under the barn, thinking. Finally, he reached for the hand-written Bible, took a pen from his shirt pocket, and did as had seven men before him: He carefully searched the tiny print of the family tree until he found his own name. Then he struck through it with a single line, and entered the correction: Andrew Jackson Brass Tomorrow, he would find a durable journal.... ---------------------- [Please forgive the length of this; this is actually _greatly_ truncated. Like I said: I now fully understand why so many people are opposed to Legacy Heroes ] History: Jack Brass has no powers of his own, but derives his powers from an alien suit of armor. To date, the armor has always been passed down from father to son, and only the generation of Jamal's father had no "Jack Brass." Jamal's grandfather had been killed before revealing his secret to any of his sons, and his grandmother hid this secret away from her family until just a few days before her death. She never lived to see her grandson wear the armor. The armor was originally designed as a "soldier suit" for an alien infantry, and meant to serve as one of two "support troops" for a larger, heavier mech. It doesn't provide power on the level of many of today's more famous super heroes, but that doesn't matter much to the man inside. Unlike many heroes, Jack Brass has never united himself with a political cause or position, or even a nationality. Instead, he has always taken on social causes, and prefers to deal closely with "everyday people." This has made him not just the world's first super hero, but an absolute champion of the working class, and he is generally more well-received than even [campaign Flag Suit] by the masses. Each wearer has "upgraded" the armor to the best of their ability, but has always made a conscientious effort to not alter the appearance of the suit in any way. While the armor underneath the "human built" portions of the suit has been improved, it remains wrapped in saddle leather and fire hose denim, dyed indigo. The armor has been studied and upgraded (repaired) a little bit by each wearer, as the knowledge and tech becomes available. While the suit has not reached its full potential, it is always at the pinnacle available to the current wearer. Unlike most powered armor, the components of the suit function individually, and do not require wiring or physical connection from one piece to the other. The suit uses the nervous system of the wearer as a conduction system in place of hard wiring. The feats of strength of which it is capable are achieved through the manipulation of an energy field that moves the components in relation to each other. That is to say that, for example, the wearer's ability to lift a great weight is not because the suit uses motors or gears to provide mechanical augmentation, but because the field moves the gauntlets in relation to the breast plate, which is braced in relation to the boots, etc. The "jewels" in the breastplate are in fact crystals that store massive amounts of electrical energy. Powers: In addition to increasing DEF, the suit imparts great strength, endurance, speed, telescopic and night vision, infravision, and tremendous movement through Leaping. The gauntlets can be charged with energy, allowing the wearer to impart a great deal of damage with a physical blow. The suit both recharges and defends itself through a technique of energy absorption and seems equally comfortable absorbing electrical, sonic, heat, and light-based energies. There are components in the suit that would allow for energy projection, but so far, no user has figured out how to repair or activate these components. The suit also contains components that would allow for long-term life support, but in it's current condition (ie, not air-tight), the suit cannot provide this feature. In the assorted gear salvaged (along with the second suit) by the second Brass Jack is a backplate that appears to be able to impart flight and assorted weaponry, but again-- no one has yet figured out how to properly utilize them. However, Jamal was an engineering prodigy prior to his grandmother's death, and he may be the one to fully tap the potential of this suit. --------------------------------- Okay guys: I want to apologize for the length of this, and for those who don't remember this comment from my last go-round here some years ago, I don't usually bother posting powers write-ups because my group still plays 2e/3e, and the write-ups would be meaningless to most people. At any rate, I'm inordinately proud of the Queen of Daddy. :D:D [minor edit to correct misspelling that reversed meaning; additional editing for gross typographical errors] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IKerensky Posted September 26, 2009 Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! Xcellent, Sir ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bubba smith Posted September 26, 2009 Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! My four year old daughter just made her first character! Well, sort of. As I posted elsewhere on the board, I've lost my blank mannequins for doing character portraits. While RPMiller (sp?) was very kind and sent me a bundle of blanks, I had in the meantime been dragging out my old 2nd and 3rd edition stuff and was scanning in and cleaning up some of the original Mark Williams stuff (personal use only, of course, until I could find something more "freely available to the public." My daughter woke up from her nap and wandered in here to see what I was doing. She saw the picture I had just scanned, and said "Daddy! I want to color that! Is that a coloring page for me?" [there are a number of "coloring book" sites that parents use to share line drawings and print them out for their kids. She's used to seeing a line drawing and coloring it ] I was so impressed, I scanned it straight away! That's right-- I was so happy I shoved crayon art through my scanner. I'll worry about that tomorrow I spent a couple of hours using my weak PhotoShop skills to clean it up, and while I was doing that, we talked over and over about the character, who he was, what he did, why he did it--- Once we had a solid, cohesive (if extremely simple in the way that only four-year-olds can pull off) story and character, I filled in the bulk of the details. Not only is he her first character, the background she gave makes him the first "Legacy" hero I've ever had to deal with personally (which, while fun, makes for a lot of extra background work, should you be wondering!). At any rate, let me introduce my daughter's first character: Mighty Jack Brass The dust fell in waves from the old leather-bound book as he opened it. It was a ledger, over a hundred years old. The first several pages had been ripped out, and the book repurposed as a diary. A strong but uncertain hand introduced the story: "My name is Andrew Jackson Brass. I was bornd a slave and I was namt for the man wat ownt my dady namt Brass and I was namt for a army hero from befor I was bornd. I was bornd a slave and I wil dy a hero. I was giv a chans by God to do ryt or do evel and I been blest by choozn ryt." So began a story, written by a self-educated man given the worst possible start in life. It detailed an attack against his master that he and three other slaves helped to fend off. It was self-preservation. Should that man have died, most certainly his slaves would be blamed, and the four of them put to death. As a reward, the four of them were set free. Brass never saw the other three again. He begged for the release of his mother instead of his own, but no deal could be struck. His mother wished him well, and handed him a ream of paper. As a house servant, she was one of the rare slaves who could read, and had been transcribing a Bible. She read it often to Brass and his brothers and instilled in them a deep religious conviction. [side note: this is also the first deeply religious character I've had to work with who wasn't an alien from another planet. ] He made his way westward, where there was no law. Finding only more hatred and discrimination, he eventually found himself part of the 1849 Gold Rush. Lured with dreams of striking it rich and returning to Carolina to buy the freedom of what family he could find, Brass worked like a man possessed. California in 1850 was no better for a black man, and he found himself victimized by crooked scales, "special" pricing in the shops, and unprotected against thieves. Within two years, he had managed only to add to the wealth of dishonest men. He did manage to make enough coins to pay children to read his transcribed Bible pages to him periodically, and had even learned to read a few words for himself. In disgust with his situation, he moved deeper into the hills and, not knowing what else to do, he continued to dig. Over the next couple of years, he found just enough dust and flakes to buy food. He had lost his dreams, and had nothing to show for it but a very deep hole in the mountain and an Asian bride that he had bought at the docks and then, in a fit of self-disgust, set free before he even left town. She followed him to his camp and stayed. Her name was never written in the ledger; he called her "Teensy," saying that she was short and slight, and that he had no idea how to spell her name. She worked beside him daily, and the two developed a genuine relationship. Deep in his mine, he struck metal. A lot of it. Curious, and hoping against hope that it might be a gigantic nugget or precious stone, he began excavating around it. What he found defied all explanation: it looked like a wagon of some sort, but it had no wheels; it was made of metal and glass; it was enormous: it was easily larger than a locomotive, possibly larger than two locomotives. It was hard to say, given that it looked like it had been crushed. Brass managed to find his way in, and after his first look, ran screaming from the cave. For the next week, he considered dynamiting the mine to seal away what he had found. Teensy convinced him that as nothing had happened to them, certainly it was safe to continue working. Brass went back to the wreckage and, steeling himself with prayer, examined what he had found. There was a great deal of material that had decayed beyond recognition. But immediately next to entryway was a cabinet made of some sort of glass. Inside that cabinet were three of the oddest suits of armor he had ever seen. One was massive, with too many arms and too many legs to be meant for a man. The other two were similar: they appeared to be made of brass and looked-- well, he didn't know, but they looked like nothing he'd ever seen in any picture of armor from King Arthur to the Romans. The two suits were arranged as they would be worn. Metal chestplate and trunk and metal bits over gloves of a fabric like nothing he'd ever seen. They differed only in size. He made his way to the small room that had frightened him before. There, in what must have been a chair and pinned under a crushed forward section were the skeletal remains of something not of this earth. Vaguely like a man, the eyeholes in the skull were wrong, and there were four arms. Deciding there was nothing he could do for this creature, he prayed briefly for whatever soul once inhabited it and began to leave. The armor held his gaze on the way out. The smaller set... Andrew Jackson Brass was a large man: six-four and hard work all his life. But that smaller set looked like it might-- like it just _might_.... Well, if nothing else, it seemed to be made of solid brass, and that had to be worth something if he could melt it down and hide the source of his find.... Over the next few days, Brass studied the armor as best he could. It wasn't brass as he had suspected, but something else. It was very heavy, but not heavy enough to be brass. There were hundreds of "sprouts" inside of it, as if a hundred hundred wires were supposed to be touching the skin of the wearer. The boots and gloves were made of a thick, impossibly strong but supple material, but much of it had rotted away. Studying the fabric of the torso, he realized that the original wearer of this armor had four arms and four legs. There were openings in the back of the breastplate that seemed to accommodate smaller limbs, and the fabric over what he thought was the abdomen revealed holes that were either of another set of legs or a pair of very muscular arms. Either way, it shook him to think that there was something out there-- in the woods? in Hell? In Heaven? -- so alien to his experience. He decided to begin smelting the metal, hoping that perhaps it was at least brass plated. The metal wouldn't melt. Obviously someone had shaped it, but he could not make his open fire hot enough to even discolor it. As soon as it cooled to the touch, wiping off the soot made it look brand new. He tried again to heat it, this time striking it with a pick in the hopes of deforming it or perhaps peeling off the plating. The metal didn't bend. It didn't even scratch. He pulled it from the fire and his mind began to whir. After several conversations with Teensy, he had a plan. Testing had proved that even rifle fire wouldn't damage this metal. He and Teensy began to repair the boots and gloves to the best of their ability, using strips of heavy boiled and pressed leather to overlay the damaged material and to overlay heavy padding and small metal plates and create a flexible-enough abdomen to protect a man. The openings in the back of the armor were filled over and covered with leather, and they fashioned limbs by quilting thick padding and leather strips under layers of the heavy denim canvass the miners had been using to make britches. The plan was straight forward: revenge on everyone who had wronged him. He would take back everything that had been stolen from him, and he would take from the assayers everything that they had. Then he and Teensy would head south, to Mexico, and live out their lives. And it might have gone that way, except that when he entered the assayer's office, a metal-clad giant armed with a rifle and pistol, there was already a robbery taking place. As soon as the would-be thieves saw him, they opened fire. The balls glanced harmlessly off his armor. Enraged at the attack and the thought of being cheated of his goal, he leapt into the attackers, his leather-wrapped and metal-weighted fists propelled by his powerful muscles made short work of the three thieves. One of the two assayers stepped forward. "You with them, Mister?" Brass studied the trio on the floor for a long moment, then he turned to the assayer. "No. Jack Brass is better than that." With that, he turned and walked out. It wasn't easy to sneak back into the alley where his mule was, but it was simplicity itself for a black man to lead a packed mule through a crowd, completely unnoticed. And in that moment, his life changed forever... The journal went on to detail events in his life, in particular a time ten years later when, while wearing the armor, he had been struck by lightning while trying to stop a lynching. "The armor comed alyv then, all of itself! God His self put a finger of life in that armor. Of a suden it wernt hevy no more. It was like I was nekid. My arms and legs got stronger than a mule or a ox and them jules on the armor glowed like fire! My fistsis was tingley and it was a prply light craklin rown them. I knowd then that I done right by God and I knowd thet I was gon spend my life left to me helping anyone I culd." The journal detailed the life of Andrew Jackson Brass, but focused mostly on what he did with the armor and how he came to use it. It was as if this man had suddenly become another, a man with no scars from his past, born only to "do right" as best he knew it. He and Teensy had a son, Freeman Liberty Brass. As the boy matured toward adulthood, Jackson began to share with him the secrets of the armor. One day, it would be his, to do with as he saw fit. The final entry in the ledger-cum-journal: "I told Freeman that he needed to keep a diry like I did. It would be something he culd look at and between his hischry and the Lord it wuld gide him to do what was right. I told him it was his sekrit and I wuld nary one time peeps at it. He been using the armor for a cuple years now. Took it back east. Says plenty people need help in texis. He left his diry and today I peeped in it. I readed the first page and I know I done right to give it to him. Cant nobody ever know why but I am the proudes a dady can be." The next book in the stack, with a clean imprint of the first book, outlined by the dust of untold years began: "My name is Andrew Jackson Brass...." There were eighteen volumes in all, detailing the lives of six different men, all who wore the armor of the world's first Super Hero. Mighty Jack Brass disappeared a generation or two ago. Historians had given him the honorific 'the Immortal' Jack Brass to reflect both is incredible life-span (over a hundred and fifty years by anyone's count, and who can say before or after his public life?) and the impact that the world's first Super Hero actually had on the public and the lasting changes he has made in the way we think about ourselves. A few weeks ago, Keegan Jamal Wright got a letter from a lawyer, saying that his grandmother had passed and left him, the eldest grandson of Martin Luther Brass, her home in the Virginia wilderness. There was a note, in his grandmother's hand, giving detailed instructions and offering "I am sorry I never told you. When your grandaddy was killed in that war, and then your uncle Clay died over there too, well-- I just wanted my family to stay safe. But you're Granddaddy has been talking to me a lot lately, and he says it's your right to know who you are and who your people were. It's your right to decide, Jamal. And I finally think he might be right." The instructions were accurate. Go out into the barn, into the cellar, and count out twelve feet from the northeast corner. Start smashing bricks. Inside the hollow recess was a filing cabinet he had yet to go through, pictures of men he had only heard of, a half-finished hand-written Bible with a family tree slowly spreading across the empty page-and-a-half at the end of it, a stack of eighteen diaries. And there, under a heavy canvas, carefully hung on a custom-crafted tree, was the suit of armor worn by the world's first superhero. Jamal had finished reading the journals two days ago, and he had remained here in the cellar under the barn, thinking. Finally, he reached for the hand-written Bible, took a pen from his shirt pocket, and did as had seven men before him: He carefully searched the tiny print of the family tree until he found his own name. Then he struck through it with a single line, and entered the correction: Andrew Jackson Brass [Please forgive the length of this; this is actually _greatly_ truncated. Like I said: I now fully understand why so many people are opposed to Legacy Heroes ] History: Jack Brass has no powers of his own, but derives his powers from an alien suit of armor. To date, the armor has always been passed down from father to son, and only the generation of Jamal's father had on "Jack Brass." Jamal's grandfather had been killed before revealing his secret to any of his sons, and his grandmother hid this secret away from her family until just a few days before her death. She never lived to see her grandson wear the armor. The armor was originally designed as a "soldier suit" for an alien infantry, and meant to serve as one of two "support troops" for a larger, heavier mech. It doesn't provide power on the level of many of today's more famous super heroes, but that doesn't matter much to the man inside. Unlike many heroes, Jack Brass has never united himself with a political cause or position, or even a nationality. Instead, he has always taken on social causes, and prefers to deal closely with "everyday people." This has made him not just the world's first super hero, but an absolute champion of the working class, and he is generally more well-received than even [campaign Flag Suit] by the masses. Each wearer has "upgraded" the armor to the best of their ability, but has always made a conscientious effort to not alter the appearance of the suit in any way. While the armor underneath the "human built" portions of the suit has been improved, it remains wrapped in saddle leather and fire hose denim, dyed indigo. The armor has been studied and upgraded (repaired) a little bit by each wearer, as the knowledge and tech becomes available. While the suit has not reached its full potential, it is always at the pinnacle most possible by the current wearer. Unlike most powered armor, this components of the suit function individually, and do not require wiring or physical connection from one piece to the other. The suit uses the nervous system of the wearer as a conduction system in place of hard wiring. The feats of strength of which it is capable are achieved through the manipulation of an energy field that moves the components in relation to each other. That is to say that, for example, the wearer's ability to lift a great weight is not because the suit uses motors or gears to provide mechanical augmentation, but because the field moves the gauntlets in relation to the breast plate. The "jewels" in the breastplate are in fact crystals that store massive amounts of electrical energy. Powers: In addition to increasing DEF, the suit imparts great strength, endurance, speed, telescopic and night vision, infravision, and tremendous movement through Leaping. The gauntlets can be charged with energy, allowing the wearer to impart a great deal of damage with a physical blow. There are components in the suit that would allow for energy projection, but so far, no user has figured out how to repair or activate these components. The suit also contains components that would allow for long-term life support, but in it's current condition (ie, not air-tight), the suit cannot provide this feature. In the assorted gear salvaged (along with the second suit) by the second Brass Jack is a backpack that appears to be able to impart flight and assorted weaponry, but again-- no one has yet figured out how to properly utilize them. However, Jamal was an engineering prodigy prior to his grandmother's death, and he may be the one to fully tap all the power of this suit. Okay guys: I want to apologize for the length of this, and for those who don't remember this comment from my last go-round here some years ago, I don't usually bother posting powers write-ups because my group still plays 2e/3e, and the write-ups would be meaningless to most people. At any rate, I'm inordinately proud of the Queen of Daddy. :D:D you have nothing to apoligize for duke i repped you daughter through you i hope you don't mind Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted September 26, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! Not at all! I am inordinately proud! The whole thing was really cute. I had a lot of fun with it. Though today I see I had to make two minor edits: one for bad math, and one for the word "one" when I should have had the word "no." All in all, not too terribly bad. This morning she sat here pestering me until I printed out some paper dolls of her character. She's in the living room now, playing with the paper dolls and a plastic Iron Man doll she got from somewhere. "They're good friends, Daddy." We'll see how long her interest lasts, though I'm probably going to keep that picture, at least on photobucket. in a few years, she may show a genuine, permanent interest. Who knows? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobGreenwade Posted September 26, 2009 Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! She colored that at the age of four? I'm very impressed by her ability to stay in the lines, and her color sense. If she keeps this up she may work her way through college as a comic book colorist. And the background and stuff is really cool. I happen to like legacy heroes, though formulating a past history is, as with you, part of the reason I'm resistant to them as RPG PCs. I'd make an exception for this if I were GM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted September 26, 2009 Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! Great work! Rep to you for providing the raw genetic material behind such talent! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legatus Posted September 26, 2009 Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! That is so lovely! @bubbasmith: there is a "Post Reply" button on the bottom of the thread. You don't have to hit the "Quote" button just to drop a single line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusterBoy Posted September 26, 2009 Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! That's great stuff, Duke Bushido. Your daughter is really talented. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SSgt Baloo Posted September 26, 2009 Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! That is so very cool! You've got quite a bright kid there, Duke Bushido. I'd rep you (and by extension, your daughter) but I'm still repped out from yesterday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted September 26, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! Thanks, guys! The colors are hers, yes, and -- well, I don't have any other four year olds to compare it to (my previous children didn't get into coloring in general), I did note that I had to photoshop it some to "clean it up." She's _mostly_ in the lines, but there was some spillage here and there. Sadly, it was still better than my coloring! HA! I was actually really impressed with her color choices as well, so much so that I asked her about them. Is that gold? Is he made of gold? "I don't know what it's called, but it's like that statue on the bookshelf." [a brass book end] That's called 'brass.' Is his suit made of brass? "Well, it's a good color. I like brass. It sounds pretty. I'm going to name him 'Brass' like his suit." I see. Why are his boots brown? "I wanted them to be 'leaver' ["leather"] like your boots and gloves are leaver because they're really strong." [for those who don't know it, I'm an avid motorcyclist and motorcycle racer, and have been all my life. "Avid" to the point that until my children were born, I had never actually owned a _car_. I still do all my solo traveling by motorcycle regardless of distance or weather. I _do_ have some rock-solid leather gear, and it is almost _all_ brown. I never got into that "Fonzi" black leather thing. The particular pair she's talking about are my daily wear boots, which are particularly heavy since I will likely be on a bike at least once any give day: http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y196/DukeBushido/DSC00778.jpg So why is the middle brown? On his belly? "I don't know. It looks nice, and it's all stripey like his boots and gloves, so it must be brown leaver, too." And his arms are blue? "Yeah, they're blue." Why are they blue? "Because he's not racing. He's just going to go in the woods for a while, so he only needs his blue jeans on." [i have a couple pair of Draggin' Jeans I wear when I go hunting or camping. The undergrowth around this part of the country has to be experienced to be believed, and the Draggin' Jeans are reinforced with kevlar. Works great against brambles, falls, slides, etc. Usually when we go walking in the woods, I wear them specifically so I can tear a child-size path through stuff that I would ordinarily just step over. Seems she's drawn a connection between those jeans and "armor."] Well his arms are blue, too. "Yeah." Did you want a different color? "No; that would be too many colors. So they're blue, like your license plate jacket." [short version: one of my street-legal drag rods has no place to mount a plate, so I bolted it to the back of my shop coat, which is denim. When I want to race that bike, I put the coat on and ride to the track. I love living in rural parts The jacket: http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y196/DukeBushido/forum%20doo-dads/mail059.jpg Anyway, that's where the colors / materials came from, and the materials rather dated the character, obviously. When was the last time in the modern age that denim and leather were "armor?" Fire hose denim-- the last _true_ denim, is almost impossible to find these days, and that stuff that passes for denim now isn't much more than a thick T-shirt. So I started to work on the character: is he a robot? "No.... I don't think so. I think he just looks like a robot wearing blue jeans and boots. I think he's a man inside of a robot, like Iron Man." and it went on from there. Though apparently the man inside looks a lot like one of my former co-workers, on whom she has something of a crush :rofl: But thanks for the kind words! I'll be sure to tell her you like her character! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobGreenwade Posted September 27, 2009 Report Share Posted September 27, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! Maybe you should bring this guy in to Champions Online. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted September 27, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! Thanks, Bob-- but I'm really not familiar with anything beyond 3e, and don't have access to _anything_ from 6e. Which is too bad, because I really didn't like 5e at all, and from what Ghost Angel replied in a different thread, I expect I'll really like 6e once I get my mitts on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucius Posted September 27, 2009 Report Share Posted September 27, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! But thanks for the kind words! I'll be sure to tell her you like her character! Unless you think it will swell her head too much, tell her that lots of folks she doesn't even know, know about her now and think she's a good artist and a good storyteller. Lucius Alexander And tell her that the palindromedary, a funny looking talking beast that looks like a camel with a head at each end, met Mighty Jack Brass in 1881 but no one knows yet what adventures they had. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobGreenwade Posted September 27, 2009 Report Share Posted September 27, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! Thanks, Bob-- but I'm really not familiar with anything beyond 3e, and don't have access to _anything_ from 6e. Which is too bad, because I really didn't like 5e at all, and from what Ghost Angel replied in a different thread, I expect I'll really like 6e once I get my mitts on it. Champions Online is the computer game. You don't need FREd, 5ER, 6th Ed, or any other edition of the Hero System to play it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted September 27, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! Ah; I see. That one snuck by me. I thought it was some sort of play-by-post game going on. I reckon I've been gone a little _too_ long! Thanks for the head's-up, Bob! I'll have to do a bit of research into that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phookz Posted September 28, 2009 Report Share Posted September 28, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! She colors remarkably well for a four year old. Incidentally, if you're looking for character outlines to use, and you like the Bruce Timm style of things, check out these http://members.fortunecity.com/hyperverse/templates/timmtemplates.html Edit: Finally went and read the back story - very cool indeed. Repped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Bushido Posted September 28, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 28, 2009 Re: I am so unbelievably proud...!! Thank you; twice! Once for the tip, and once for the kinds words. Thrice, even-- Thanks to all for the reppage on her behalf! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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