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[BoloOfEarth]

People disagree whether or not The Voice has actual mental powers, but few dispute her ability to command others to do as she wishes, merely by singing to them.  A finalist on American Music Star, Myra Scherzinger eventually came in second to a 12 year-old girl; in a fit of picque, started singing about everybody Kung Fu Fighting -- and the coaches, other contestants, and audience members all began brawling.  She decided that, if her singing ability couldn't make her rich and famous, her powers to command others to do as she wishes would make herself rich and infamous.

[steriaca]

It would of been more aproprate if the song was "Ballroom Blitz", Bolo. Beyond that, good choice.

[Hermit]

Tell Tale- True! It was, of course, the brilliant Poe who first made me realize the true nature of my condition. God bless, Edgar, and damn the fools who misunderstand his tale of a man who might as well have been me in a past life, if it is possible for a fellow to be so twice cursed. I thought I was going mad, you see. The filthy stink of my peers had grown more pungent until I could scarce breath around them.  The streaks of color they wore became progressively more garish and glaring, as disturbing to my sight as any gleaming vulture's eye. And to touch them, to accidentally brush up against the filthy oil of a fellow adolescent's skin, or the rough texture of some decaying older man or woman who were like lizards that refused to shed properly.

 

But note, gentle sirs and ladies, the worst aspect had to be the sounds; the horrid rushing of their ravenous pulses through blood vessels, the grind grind grind of molar against molar as their jaws clenched and unclenched in cacophonous champing. If not for a short story that revealed all to me, I might have thought I'd descended into madness. Oh yes, the sounds were the worst, to have my ears constantly exposed to the rustling of that stagnant breath, like winds through some fetid swamp's reeds, or the clack clack clack of their joints in motion?

 

Why, I can see why one would THINK I'd gone mad.

 

Where was I? Ah, yes.

 

Of all the sounds, it was the hearts, the wretched thump of that detestable muscle bullying away all lesser sounds, that irritated me most. Some other man might gaze in wonder at the sweet slope of some maiden's torso. I? I could only grit my teeth in frustration as the antagonizing beat in the cage of her ribs pounded away relentlessly like some bird caught in the weave of a net it could not escape, and yet it was too stubborn to be silent and DIE already!

 

 

My revulsion at their ever unwelcome and untimely presence did not diminish one iota with exposure, I can tell you that. Rather it built up. It was Mr. Poe's excellent documentary that lead me to the full realization of my particular problem, not madness, but true acuteness of the senses. I was under constant attack, constant! And did not I, did not any living being, have a right to defend himself from such bombardment?

 

It was my desire for self defense that led me to silence my first enemy. This first and particular heart beat in the chest of a teacher, one Mr. Bellows, who insisted I sit in the front row. It was he who had introduced us to the works of Poe, so I suppose I should have been grateful. But, he read the story. He pushed it upon us. Clearly this was no innocent, he KNEW what his hellishly raucous heart was doing; he had to. And so, it was only right I should first defend myself against him, or more accurately, defend myself against the weapon within his chest that bludgeoned me ear rattling crashes.

 

I shan't go into the details, no no. That would have you thinking I am some lover of the macabre, some murderer who enjoyed taking a life. I'm not. I just want to live in peace. If I could have removed his heart without killing him, don't you think I would have?

Oh, but when it finally silenced, it was more than a peace that descended upon me.

 

It was power.

 

Somehow, the anointment of blood, that first purge, allowed me to project my hypersensitivity upon others.

 

The school girl, the one who tried to be so oh so kind, unaware of how the glare of her smile blinded me, how the attempts at gentle touches she made tore at my flesh... she tried to reassure me that the police would find Mr. Bellows' killer. HER heart was beating too, and I wondered in one fit of despair if I'd have to kill everyone in the school just to finally end my torment. But something passed between her and I, and then?

My senses became as any other man's, delightfully dull, deliciously obtuse, and wonderfully, gloriously weak!

 

I almost kissed her as an angel right then. But as the hour passed on, I watched her twitch at every wayward stink that I could no longer smell, I watched her cover her eyes at the bright colors that no longer bombarded me so heavily. And after an hour, she began screaming to others, "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!"

 

My curse had passed on!

 

They took her away, of course. Not my fault, I am not the one who misdiagnosed her, am I? I am not the one who thrust her into some modern day bedlam institution for the crime of being more aware than they. She senses remained sharp until she took her own life a week later. She was weaker than I, I suppose, or perhaps wiser, who is to say?

 

Sadly, my own heightened state of awareness returned in less than twelve hours.

 

But I  have the cure now, well, not the cure, but a reprieve. Midas could, with but a touch, dull the senses of a target as they became naught but blissfully inanimate gold. I? I can grant the barbed gift I bear to others. It almost always ends up having them labeled as 'mad' by a cruel and primitive society, but really, what's the alternative?

 

I can't rip out EVERY heart, now can I?

...........

 

Tell Tale is a truly disturbed individual, with hyper senses that he just can't cope with. It's driven him utterly insane, though he denies that categorically, claiming all his actions are merely part of self preservation. He works with other members of the team much to their distaste, but his skills, that of a poised serial killer, range from stealth to security systems (hyper senses make it much easier, of course, to bypass much of that) and even psychology (Enough to rationalize his own actions) have proven useful. He often dresses in items meant to muffle or dim his senses, but they never really are enough. His only true respite from his power is to pass it onto others. They stay hyper sensitive (And are almost always driven mad by it to one degree or another), but he finds only a half day of "blissful dullness" before his condition returns again.

[csyphrett]

I was going with when with the Wire, but where is okay too.

CES

[csyphrett]

Horace Hornsby is able to locate anything by the sound it makes. He has a range of a few miles, but it has turned him into a small diviner. That's why he adopted the name Sonar

CES 

[BoloOfEarth]

I was going with when with the Wire, but where is okay too.

CES

 

Ah, sorry for the misunderstanding.  Actually my first thought was that you were going with "how" (since he can project how something happened at a given location), but then I thought maybe the location was the important part.  (I also thought maybe you were playing a bit with words with his name, since "wire" sounds somewhat like "where".)  Still, it all works well in the end.

[BoloOfEarth]

Once again, Hermit stuns us not only with a creative character concept but also an evocative backstory.  Well done.

 

I hope this character's powers aren't too sonic-y; I was going more with the concept of resonance.

 

The son of a classical pianist and an opera singer, Jimmy Turner always wanted to be able to sing well, but his voice was at best pedestrian, and was most often slightly out of tune.  His father attempted to help him overcome this mild tone-deafness with practice and many instrumental aids, including a selection of tuning forks.  One day, after a particularly bad singing lesson, Jimmy was idly playing around with his tuning forks when he notice that each seemed to glow with a different colored aura when struck.  His parents and siblings couldn't see this aura, but Jimmy knew it was there.  As he looked around, he also notice that various objects also had slight auras to them. 

 

Curious, he looked at a stainless steel frying pan, with its tourmaline aura, and selected a tuning fork that had a similar aura when struck.  Placing the foot of the fork against the bottom of the pan, he struck the fork -- and the pan cracked as if struck by a powerful force. 

 

With practice, Jimmy found he could see the resonant frequency of most objects.  And by placing the matching tuning fork against the object, he could cause tremendous damage to that object.  This worked best when dealing with thing of fairly homogenous composition; complex things made of various substances or parts (like living beings or intricate machines) have multi-hued auras and the results of "tuning into" them often produce less dramatic results.

 

This would have been merely an interesting ability had Jimmy not also been the target of several bullies at school, the worst being Tom Denning.  After one particularly humiliating encounter (where Denning dumped Jimmy naked in a dumpster behind the school), Jimmy became fed up and sought revenge.  He sneaked up behind Denning, selected the tuning fork most matching one of the colors in the boy's aura, surreptitiously placed it against the base of the bully's skull, and plucked the fork tines. The resulting tone wasn't particularly loud, but it resonated with part of Tom Denning's brain and caused him to fall to the ground unconscious,  When the school nurse was unable to bring Denning conscious again, he was rushed to the hospital, where they discovered that he had intense damage to parts of his brain. 

 

Since nobody else saw what Jimmy had done, everybody thought the damage was caused by a massive stroke.  But Jimmy knew the truth.  And rather than feeling remorse at crippling the bully, Jimmy felt flush with the power.  He has since used his powers to take on a life of crime (breaking into safes and bank vaults being a particular talent of his).  He has taken the name Resonating Man and joined Clatter because there's safety and power in numbers.  He may look ridiculous with dozens of tuning forks hanging from his outfit, but few deny he can be very dangerous.

[CaptainCoulson]

The Roadies are a gang of duplicates. Originally a woman named Vera Dean, she was kidnapped by a mad genius musician after scoring backstage tickets to a gig he performed in Germany (she's from Wales, in the UK), she was brainwashed into servitude and given two abilities:

 

1) She can split into several different people, so as to serve him as either his sixteen minion gang or as his famous masked roadie crew.

AND

2) She can recombine into one person with sixteen times the strength and toughness of the original fangirl.

 

After the death of her original, and of "Mad Barry Lancaster" (also known as NoiseMachine) the hive-mind duplicator managed to escape, but had become hooked on the anarchic lifestyle of the Supervillain's henchwoman, selling herself as a combination of a loyal lieutenant and a crowd of hired thugs. She is unskilled in anything but basic street-crime and simple violence, but she is easier to pay off than any actual gang, let alone an additional super-strong servant.

[steriaca]

OK. We are at six. Next person with a character also gets to post a new team. And, Happy New Year!

[BoloOfEarth]

Garble has the mutant ability to scramble a person's thoughts, hearing, and speech, making communication practically impossible.  He isn't very close to the other members of Clatter, since his own speech is so garbled as to be nearly impossible to understand.  He used to be a member of the Foxbat Five -- for some reason, Foxbat is the only person who seemed able to innately understand what Garble says -- but left the team after a disagreement with the Cowled Crusader.

 

- - - - - - - - - -

 

I've used this idea for a villain team in a past Champions campaign, but let's see what the people here come up with.

 

The Alexandrian Order is a group of 6-7 individuals who use magic items to try and hinder DEMON.  However, their view that "the end justifies the means" has caused them to commit many criminal acts and harm a few innocents, making them villains in nearly everybody's eyes.

 

Each member should specialize almost exclusively in one type of magic item:

 

 - Potions

 - Scrolls / spellbooks

 - Rings

 - Wands

 - Rods / staves

 - Weapons / Armor

 - Wondrous Items

 - Runes

 - Artifacts

 - Intelligent Items

[Cygnia]

Mother...

 

...mother, I know I am a disappointment to you.  Mother, would you but say the word and I would die for you a thousand times over.  Mother, you have given me up for the sake of saving the world.  What else can I do but the same?  When I took up the Horn of Gabriel, it was to defeat evil.

 

Mother?

 

Mother, it is heavy.  Mother, it burns my lips and tongue.  Still, I play on.  I strike the note and evil men scream in pain.  I strike the note and thunder cracks the walls.  I strike the note and the earth is split asunder.

 

Mother, angels and demons are hunting me both.  Still, I play on.

 

Mother...

 

...mother, I wish I was the daughter you wanted instead.

 

Aeriel is his name, the unwanted son of the immortal Sophia.  Desperate for his mother's love and approval, he stole a relic called the Horn of Gabriel from her possessions.  Unfortunately, he has taken up his mother's viewpoint that the ends will justify the means -- and if he destroys enough evil, she will finally accept him.

 

The tragic thing is, she never will.

[death tribble]

he is The Lord of the Elements and uses the Staff of Elemental Power.

Why take the risk of breaking into the enemy's stronghold when you can use an earthquake to destroy their lair ?

Why take the risk of attacking a sacrificial rite when you can use the power of the winds to summon a hurricane force wind to destroy the cultists ?

Why take the risk of rescuing a prisoner when you can flood the prison and kill the prisoner and the guards ?

Why carry guns when you can summon fire to devastate the enemy ?

 

Heroes are after The Lord of the Elements after he used Fire and Earth to create a mini volcano which took out a Demon lair and most of the town nearby with dreadful consequences for the people who lived there.

[SKJAM!]

Thor Thorsson (no relation), amateur spelunker and archaeologist, discovered a treasure trove of runestones in a remote cave in the Swedish mountains.  They described recipes for potions of great power.  At first, Thor considered it merely a curiosity.  Then DEMON wiped out his home village in an effort to recover the runestones, not realizing they'd already been sent off to the Circle for safekeeping.

 

Thor had memorized the recipes, and now uses the potions to battle against DEMON as Gift ("poison").  He is not above tricking civilians into swallowing berserker potions that make them nigh-unstoppable in battle...until it wears off and they die from the wounds.  After all, everyone he actually cared about is already dead.

 

Sometimes the Circle will arrive in time to undo the effects of Gift's potions, but you shouldn't count on that. 

[csyphrett]

Arlen Hilsey is covered in tattoos. Each tattoo is a word. Each tattoo is part of a description. Arlen uses these tattoos as the Illustrated Man, linking their descriptions to change his own capabilties from super strength, to molecular bending, to shape changing, to simple mind control.

 

His direct approach to problem solving causes as much problems as it solves since he doesn't always make sure he has the right sentence for the job ahead.

CES

[steriaca]

(Been trying to post since yesterday.)

.

Vorick was once a simple thief. Given a job to steal a ring by a mysterious Morbain, Vorick decided to keep the ring for himself after being told by the ring itself what DEMON plans to do with it and the eleven other rings in the set. Vorick swares to make shure that nobody but himself possesses all twelve of them.

.

Unbenounced to Vorick, who now has six of the twelve (and each ring casts a different spell), that he is an addict to the powers of the rings. And once all twelve comes under one owner, Vorick will no longer exist, being replaced by the King of Edom who has diminished his power to cross the dimensions via the twelve rings.

[death tribble]

Fight fire with fire ! When Irdun Morgale saw DEMON destroy the empire he vowed revenge. He learned magic and used it to strike back at them, despite the fact that his mentors begged him not to, told him not to and tried to use force to stop him. Irdun has been fighting DEMON for centuries and the name of Odric, Master of Magic is his latest incarnation. He changes identities every so often and has a spellbook that masks his identity. DEMON have no idea despite their prowess and sources that it is Irdun who they believe died centuries ago. Irdun believes that the ends justify the means. And if people get turned into zombies or worse, then the only thing to do is have a large asteroid collide with them. It s the only way as far as he is concerned. This has brought him into conflict with hero groups. Irdun looks like the sorceror in Fantasia who Mickey is apprenticed to.

Irdun hunts for spellbooks and scrolls particuarly those that do lots of damage like Fireballs, Lightning Bolts, Cones of Cold, Prismatic Sprays, Meteor Swarms, Cloudkills and Power Word Kill. A Magic Missile just does not cut it unless the missile is the size of an 18 wheeler....

And Irdun will willingly sacrifice anyone to stop DEMON. Including his team mates. Who do you think has been manipulating some of them ?

NB: The Sophia and the Sybll know who Irdun is and tend to keep out of his way or sometimes curb his excesses as they might jeopardise their own work.

 

New Team:

Some people like Giants (we are looking at you Log Man !) but some hate them ! Welcome to the League Against Giants ! The League does not have to be dwarves or small people just people who really, really do not like Giants. Please state why. Minimum number 5.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

That makes no sense!

[steriaca]

David Starr was always bullied by his older brother Greg "Golith" Starr for being so short. It diden't help that Greg became a basketball star, while David diden't show any skill in sports. His gadgetearing friend made him a remote control basketball for him in an atempt to humiliate his brother, but he ended up killing him. Calling himself Rockshot, David sets out to humiliate all giants in the game of basketball, and slay them like the clasic biblical David. (By the way, "Rock" is a slang for the Basketball itself).

[death tribble]

Snow Black

 

Snow White had a rotten time in school. People always mentioned the seven dwarves and Disney. She begged her parents to change her name but they would not. And tall people always mocked her saying she should 'hang out with the little people'. Her anger grew and grew and festered into something horrible. Her reasoning distorted into this line of thought. There was nothing wrong with people who were smaller than her but those that were bigger thought they could do anything and everything and no one could or would hold them to account. Well that would change. She got hold of a battlesuit and set out to bring down the giants once and for all. Snow is 5 foot 3 inches so anyone 5 foot ten inches and taller is a vald target. But she hold a special hatred for heroes and villains over 10 feet tall who she targets with lots of power.

[BoloOfEarth]

(Tongue firmly in cheek)

 

Eccentric scientist Dr. Penny Hym, who discovered the mysterious "Hym Particles" than can change the size of objects and people, was not a happy person.  Her friends and colleagues had laughed at her idea of becoming a superhero and especially at her suggested name:  Ms. Mite.  "How the heck is becoming really, really small a superpower?" they scoffed.  "Sounds more like an anti-superpower.  Anti... get it?"

 

Things might have gone a different route if a superbattle hadn't erupted in her neighborhood between Termite Man and SuperLogger (the mutant lumberjack hero who could grow to six stories tall; he used to be able to grow seven stories tall, but that's another story).  The battle completely trashed her home (along with many others) and destroyed most of her cherished possessions.

 

She blamed SuperLogger almost exclusively for the damage.  (After all, it was his body that fell on her house.)  Such wanton destruction by a so-called superhero could not be tolerated.  She would show them.  So Dr. Hym created a battlesuit that used Hym Particles to allow her to shrink and return to normal size.  (She considered finding some way to control mites, ants, gnats, and other small insects but really, how useful could that be?)  She also created a "Hym Particle Projector" that can shrink others for up to an hour, and she particularly enjoys using it on giants to "bring them back down to size."

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

If you're going to do it, do it right ...

 

Jack Taylor  was a superstitious dreamer. He was always considered a bit of a happy-go lucky fool, but in truth he was a lazy con-man and a petty thief. After one particularly bold (and ill-advised) acquisition, he ran afoul of particularly bad tempered (and foul smelling) ogre of a man. This big man wasn't just a crime boss, he was sadistic metahuman that could grow to enormous size. As elusive as Jack was, the giant soon caught him. As revenge, he made jack watch as he literally trampled over Jack's house ... with his pregnant girlfriend inside. And his mother, who was paying a surprise visit. And his cat. Then the giant snapped Jack's femurs using just two gigantic fingers, threatening to grind him to dust. 

 

But he let Jack live.

 

A man who has lost everything has nothing to fear and Jack had juts lost everything to an evil behemoth simply because he had stolen a golden guitar. Jack laid in a hospital bed for a long time. He went through a year of physical therapy just to walk, and another year so he could run. All of this time Jack plotted his revenge. He plotted and he planned. And he dreamed, oh how he dreamed! At last the day came when he took his gruesome revenge upon the big man, but that is a tale far too terrible to tell. Please dear reader, don't ask me for details, for I must never consider those details again lest I be driven mad. Be satisfied in knowing that he made it look like an accident. 

 

And off he went with a newly found drive and a purpose-to kill giants!

[csyphrett]

Herman Kitenan was created by Telios to purposely fight giant heroes as the Virus. His ability allows him to get inside their physiology and rip apart their cells until they drop. When freed, he joined the team as he has been programmed to hate giants above anything else.

CES 

[csyphrett]

The Fluffies are 6 of the meanest critters that resemble stuff toys that have ever lived. They are reverse care bears that spread hate wherever they go.

CES

[SKJAM!]

The being known as Pancake has a very simple motivation for its hatred of giants..It used to be a normalish human until a gigantic villain stepped on it.  An adaptive mutation allowed Pancake to survive as a two-meter wide, one centimeter tall circle of flesh, but it can never be returned to its original form.  It's not always useful in a fight with giants, but its hatred never wavers.

 

ETA:  Was typing while the above was posted.

[Badger]

The being known as Pancake has a very simple motivation for its hatred of giants..It used to be a normalish human until a gigantic villain stepped on it.  An adaptive mutation allowed Pancake to survive as a two-meter wide, one centimeter tall circle of flesh, but it can never be returned to its original form.  It's not always useful in a fight with giants, but its hatred never wavers.

 

ETA:  Was typing while the above was posted.

Well, if it was up to me, I'd add it.  Way too insane a concept not to.  (trying to figure out how it still lives might be cause for nightmare fuel.)