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Supervillain lair inspiration thread


megaplayboy

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This is a thread for real-world and drawing-board inspirations for potential Supervillain lairs, mobile bases, etc.  

Example Number One: The Lockheed CL-1201

CL1201.jpg

 

http://www.tailsthroughtime.com/2010/06/in-aviation-those-who-dare-to-dream-are.html

 

1120 foot wingspan, 5000+ ton weight, carries 22 fighter jets(!), nuclear powered with a flight duration up to 6 weeks.  

Image result for lockheed cl-1201

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That's just insanely cool.

 

So add just a bit of comic book tech so it can move in and out of orbit, maybe....

 

Some serious cloaking / inviso fields so it doesn't get blasted to mesons passing over a souther ocean....

 

This is so much cooler than that helicopter / carrier thing in the movies.   I'm sorry: that helicopter / carrier thing is just goofy.  This is ridiculously cool.

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A rolling land base is a bit trickier, but here's one that could be adapted for that purpose:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_Elevated_Bus

 

 

Image result for giant chinese bus

 

The basic version carries 300 passengers, and some projected versions were designed to carry up to 1200 passengers.  Sadly, the project turned out to be an investment scam, but the basic idea was considered feasible.  

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I forget where I read about it, but in Berlin (IIRC) there's a huge, windowless, cylindrical concrete building. It started as a storage tank for keeping natural gas or coal gas under high pressure. In WW2 the Nazis converted it into an office building because its incredibly thick walls of reinforced concrete made it bomb-proof. Later it was turned into apartments. Perhaps a new buyer could find other uses.

 

Dean Shomshak

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One might find inspiration in Megalomania: Too Much is Never Enough, by Philippe Tretiak. A book-length photo essay on modern excess, from artificial islands in Dubai to the diamond-encrusted Rolls-Royce of a Russian oligarch/mafioski. Lots of inspiration for Master Villains, not just architecture.

 

A sequel called Megalomania: The Madness of Builders is probably more apropos, but I haven't seen it.

 

Dean Shomshak

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Also: More than a year ago, I started a thread on "Ready-Made Villain Lairs": Places a villain could move right into an adapt with minimal cost or effort. (Or heroes on a budget, for that matter.) I received many good suggestions, but the No-Prize went to Lord Liaden for his suggestion of a derelict ship. Several of these are just floating around on the ocean, apparently abandoned. Perhaps LL still has the link handy to the article about these ships?

 

Dean Shomshak

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On 11/17/2018 at 5:29 AM, pinecone said:

During WW2 one of the weird concepts was an artificial ice berg as a unsinkable aircraft carrier. Add in a comic book power source, and the built in refigeration units make for an awesome mobile base. 

Project Habakkuk:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

The idea was to use it as a floating airfield/unsinkable aircraft carrier.

 

And I think they did have an actuall floating Iceberg in Code Geas. As they are building on the Titanic 2, what if the original ship was actually sunk by a iceberg villain base?

Edited by Christopher
forgot "sunk by"
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1 minute ago, Christopher said:

Project Habakkuk:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

The idea was to use it as a floating airfield/unsinkable aircraft carrier.

 

And I think they did have an actuall floating Iceberg in Code Geas. As they are building on the Titanic 2, what if the original ship was actually a iceberg villain base?

Seems like a suitable lair for a cold/ice based villain or team of such villains.  

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With cutbacks in mental health spending, there are also various abandoned mental asylums.  Many of these look downright spooky and foreboding.  Back in high school, some friends and I used to sneak onto the grounds of a local one (Eloise Asylum), which consisted of around 70 buildings - it had its own power house, post office, apartments for staff, rooms for patients, fire hall, warehouse, and of course plenty of medical and psychiatric treatment facilities. 

 

1jpg-0b348000064a3fd4.jpg

 

 

 

 

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