Haven Walkur

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Despite Cinnabar being the daughter of the Scarlet Witch, I stayed away from magic because I really don't like the way Champions handles magic. It would be especially bad (all in my humble opinion, of course) when trying to build "luck-based" magic, luck being something else I don't think Champions handles well as a power.

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Cinnabar Character History, Part One of Two (apologies for the length) Barbara Maximoff was the older of Wanda and Victor's two children...but only by a matter of minutes. Like Wanda and her brother Pietro, Barbara and her brother Anthony were fraternal twins. They were the half mutant, half synthezoid offspring of Vision, the Scarlet Witch...and an unprecedented working of Chaos magic. To enable her cells and those of her artifically-created husband to merge in a zygote, Wanda forced her will on probability, making the impossible conception first possible, and then likely, and then certain, in the greatest and most significant feat of magic the Scarlet Witch had ever attempted. Barbara took after her father, both physically -- with her crimson skin and golden eyes -- and in temperament. She was a serious, thoughtful child, highly intelligent and very controlled. Though Barbara was born possessing emotions, something her synthezoid father had struggled long and hard to acquire himself, she seemed uncomfortable with her emotional responses. "They make my head too busy," she complained (at age 3) to her mother. "They give me hiccups in my heart." Wanda shook her head, laughing. "You and Noish-pa*," she said. "So serious. Sometimes you sound just like he does." Her twin, Anthony, on the other hand, seemed emotionally extremely well-adjusted. Like Barbara, he was very intelligent, but unlike her, he was also garrulous, sociable and charming. He had the golden eyes of his father and his twin sister, but Anthony's skin was silvery-gray and crystalline-looking. Both twins inherited their mother's auburn hair; in Anthony's case, it was curly and perpetually unruly. While the twins were young, Vision and the Scarlet Witch arranged a "partial leave" from the Avengers, a rotating schedule that, except in emergencies, allowed one of them to be on duty with the team and the other to be at home with the children. In emergencies, when both Avengers were needed for duty, Lockjaw of the Inhumans would watch the twins...and event always greeted with great enthusiasm by Anthony and Barbara. "Lockjaw's going to watch us!" Anthony announced. "Big mondo dog, dogissimus, word of dog...." He rambled on, stream-of-consciousness style, until Barbara finally chimed in. "Much a-dog about something," she said. The twins' powers had begun manifesting early on, at around age five, but at very low levels. Barbara seemed to have inherited their father's ability to alter her own density, while Anthony had apparently inherited magnetic abilities from Wanda's father, Magneto. Neither child showed any magical aptitude, much to Wanda's chagrin, but Barbara did seem to be improbably "lucky" in avoiding ambush, thrown pillows or grappling by her twin. The twins were, as the Vision had observed more than once, complimentary in many ways. Wanda expressed it in more symbolic terms: fire and earth, action and thought...yin and yang. In any case, the twins were inseperable, best friends and allies, able to read each other's moods, even finish each other's sentences. There were certainly squabbles and fallings-out, but never anything serious, or even out-of-the-ordinary for siblings. Improbable as it seems, for the first fifteen years, Barbara's life was much like that of any other American child growing up in a close, loving and supportive family. As parents, Vision and the Scarlet Witch were a marvel of balance; the fiery and emotional Wanda and the calm, patient Victor were as much complimentary to one another as their children were. When the twins were eight, their parents returned to full-time status as Avengers, following lengthy discussion with the children. "It's not fair," Anthony said. "You get to go out and have all the excitement, and I'm stuck at home where nothing ever happens." "It's not just excitement," Wanda said. "Sometimes it's very dangerous, or so frightening that you can't even think what you should do --" "I could," Anthony said. "I always know...and I don't get frightened. I should come with you, Mom." Torn between exasperation and affectionate pride, Wanda shot a quick look at the Vision. "Sometimes," the Vision said, without missing a beat, "duty with the Avengers is very tedious. Sometimes there is only routine. There are many reports to be written and filed, and because the information in them is sensitive, we cannot entrust them to a secretary. There is a great deal of talking and planning. There is maintenance. Sometimes there are months between emergencies." "Months!" Anthony said. "I'm not doing maintenance for months." "You should go back," Barbara said quietly to their parents. "It's a duty, even when it's not exciting." Wanda looked at the Vision and grinned, her eyes sparkling. "She's your child." Even after Vision and the Scarlet Witch had returned to duty, life was not dull for the twins. Home schooling gave way to more formal education, first at Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, where they were trained in effective use and control of their powers. Barbara discovered that her ability to affect her own density could somehow allow her to affect the density of others, at least to increase it. She also began manifesting a powerful ruby-red laser-like energy beam, that she could unleash from her eyes...much to the amusement of instructor and retired X-Man Scott Summers. The elderly but still vigorous founder of the School, Professor Charles Xavier, warned Barbara -- and Wanda and the Victor -- that she was unusually susceptible to mental attacks and psionic coercion. At his recommendation, Wanda and fellow Avenger Tony Stark (Iron Man), created the graceful golden coronet that Barbara would wear in her hero identity; a techno-magical focus for a powerful mental defense. Magneto, the Mutant Master of Magnetism -- and the twins' grandfather -- also held tenure at the School, and worked extensively with Anthony in the development of his powers. Together, Magnus and Anthony discovered that not only could the boy produce magnetic effects, but he could also generate a diamagnetic field that would neutralize or violently repell normal magnetic fields. Professor Xavier was pleased with Anthony's progress, but was becoming concerned by anomalous results he kept receiving from mental scans of Anthony. However, when he attempted to discuss his worries with Wanda and Victor, Wanda flatly refused to believe that there could be anything wrong with Anthony. Over the objections of the more restrained Victor, Wanda insisted on removing the twins from the Xavier School immediately, and enrolling them, at fourteen, at Empire State University. But Professor X was right; there was something very wrong with Anthony, and there had been from birth. He had very little empathy and almost no emotional connection to others, but he'd learned early to disguise it with lies and roleplaying. He viewed people as objects, and had little sense of the worth of their lives. The garrulous, sociable and charming Anthony Maximoff was a very clever sociopath. *Grandfather. In this case, Wanda's father Magnus.

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Snake Gandhi...and any other interested impending Avengers.... I have a character sheet for Cinnabar written up, and it's posted on Doctor Anomaly's website. Here's the address: http://www.castle-walls.org/stuff/Cinnabar.HTML The formatting's a little bit sketchy (powers and skills aren't alphabetized, no fancy fonts), but everything's there...though I only ended up with 145 points in Disads. Can certainly increase that if necessary. I'm currently working on a brief character background and explanation of exactly who "Antimony, the Diamagnetic Man" is. Please have a look! Barbara Maximoff, aka Cinnabar!

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Cinnabar, red-skinned daughter of Vision and the Scarlet Witch. Control of personal density (just like Dad) Control of density of others (using a Multipower with "density effects" -- TK, Transform) Dice of Luck; dice of Unluck (because of the Scarlet Witch's probability manipulations that led to her being born in the first place) Modest EB Multipower (ruby-red eye-beams; again, the Vision had something similar) Flight (probably through a Focus) Armor or Damage Resistance (she's a synthezoid hybrid) or maybe...is it Combat Luck that serves as defense? That's the powers skeleton. Am I missing anything major? I've already got the back-story and personality, and I'll probably have the complete character sheet tonight (with a "little" help from my friend -- take a bow, Doc).

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Hello, fellow impending Avengers! For character creation purposes, I need a Marvel character as a bad influence, and I can't think of anyone appropriate. Can anyone out there help a wannabe second-generation Avenger? The Marvel character I need can be male or female, powered or not, and of any age (though late teens/early 20s would work best). The character needs to be personally attractive (high PRE, COM or a load of social skills) and affluent. He or she also needs to have a profound sense of entitlement, an expectation that all the good things in life are theirs by right, and everybody else can just fight over whatever's left. In other words, the character is very selfish and spoiled. The character, whoever it ends up being, should be contemptuous of authority and disrespectful of social rules. Laws are for "little people", and don't apply to him or her. The character will be arrogant and probably reckless as well; he or she knows that he/she's better than everybody else and enjoys demonstrating it in risky activities (sky-diving, BASE-jumping, speeding, minor B&E, gambling, hanging around with dangerous associates). Does this sound like any Marvel character you know? Whoever-it-is doesn't have to match all the italicized terms, but that's the sort of bad influence I'm looking for.

Re: Ridiculous things in comics that you don't mind. I agree with Snake Gandhi about Karate Kid -- no, the Super Karate makes no sense, and yes, I love it anyway! But I also love Matter-Eater Lad and Chameleon Boy and Duo Damsel, so obviously I rarely stop to think about those sorts of questions with any of the Legionnaires. As a faithful Legion fan, I'll still admit that a lot of the classic Legionnaires had powers that were rather on the ridiculous side...but the classic Legion of Superheroes comics were so engaging, so heroic, so enjoyable that you didn't notice, and even if you did, you didn't mind. And I've never minded. I also don't mind (in fact, I love) the comicbook contention that mutations are almost always beneficial, resulting in superpowers and the ability to use them without killing yourself. (For example, Quicksilver doesn't end up friction-burning his face off when he runs at super-speeds, Shadowcat doesn't have to worry about phasing right through the Earth -- or even out of her costume -- and Storm doesn't end up with her hurricane winds driving bits of grit into her eyes at hundreds of miles an hour.) I love costumes and spandex and secret identities, and I don't mind the fact that no-one ever sees through the Clark Kent glasses or the Green Arrow micro-domino mask. I don't mind physically impossible heroes and villains at all, if they make sense within the story. I know comics aren't "really real" reality, and I can swallow all sorts of ridiculous things as long as they're still within the "really comicbook" reality.

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 This wasn't what I'd intended to write, but I thought it was interesting, nonetheless; a sort of pre-natal character sketch. One of these children will be my player character (not certain which, yet), the other...let's just say I've already got my hunted, whichever character I choose. The marriage of Wanda Maximoff and Victor Shade -- better known as the hex-flinging Scarlet Witch and the all-too-human synthezoid the Vision -- was the realization of a dream for Wanda and Vic. Their love and committment now legally recognized, the two heroes were partners who found that their marriage provided everything they'd ever longed for...with one exception. Children. The Vision had not been designed to reproduce. As a synthezoid, it was flatly impossible for him to father children...but Wanda, with her strong will and long experience in persuading the laws of probability to shift her way, was determined to make the impossible possible, and the possible likely. This was one of the greatest trials faced by their young marriage, as Wanda immersed herself in exhaustive -- and exhausting -- occult researches, frequently closeted for hours or days with Agatha Harkness and returning home to the Vision only to fall into bed unconscious...and upon waking, begin again. For months, Wanda was almost insane with frustration and desperate hope. At first patient and understanding, the Vision became concerned at his wife's increasing neglect of her reponsibilities as an Avenger, and of her own health. He finally confronted Wanda, and in the literally explosive argument that followed, warned her that she was dangerously obsessed with her magical quest. "I'm doing this for us!" Wanda said furiously. "And you...you're indifferent to the whole idea of us having a family! I've never seen you as a machine before, Vic, but that's how you are now, just saying no, saying it can't be done, over and over again and I hate this side of you -- !" At this point, the real fireworks began. The Vision, irritated by Wanda's "manifestly irrational behavior" -- but more distressed by his own inability to understand why she felt the need to behave that way -- simply increased his density to the point of immoveability and let her vent her fury on him with hex bolts and chaos magic...which his hyperdense synthezoid body shrugged off. But as she tired, Wanda resorted instead to punishing words and accusations, which the Vision found more painful than her magical attacks. And eventually he responded. "You, better than anyone, know that I am not a 'soulless robot', Wanda," the Vision said evenly. "But you mean me to be hurt...and I would have to actually be a soulless robot not to be hurt by your words. I too long for...a family, but not at the cost of my wife." The Vision put his hands on Wanda's shoulders, gently but inavoidably. "Nothing is worth that." "Oh...Victor...." The fight left Wanda and she crumpled into the Vision's arms, crying tears of shame and regret and frustration. "I am your husband," the Vision said. "Let me help, Wanda." A day or two after that furious disagreement -- and some deep discussions and reorganization -- the Vision joined the Scarlet Witch in her researches in a capacity she playfully referred to as "my high-powered search engine." Though somewhat resentful of the Vision's inclusion, Agatha Harkness continued to assist Wanda in her search for the transformative magics she needed, and the Vision's presence, though nettling Agatha, had a greatly calming effect on Wanda. With the knowledge that her husband supported her, Wanda's efforts lost their edge of desperation, becoming more effective -- and at last, successful. On a rainy day in April, eighteen months later, fraternal twins Barbara and Anthony Maximoff were born to Vision and the Scarlet Witch.

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 I think the point totals sound wonderful. Does the 25-point Avengers package come out of that total, or do we effectively get 600 points, of which 25 is already committed to the package? (Just asking because I am both literal-minded and remote-gaming inexperienced.)

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Between 500 and 600 points were the totals being bouced around...the Big Snake initially said around 500.

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Ooh, how it all comes back...! The classic Marvel mindset: angst, elaborate complications, geniuses, aliens, mutants and mayhem!

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 I'd hoped to use the child of Vision and the Scarlet Witch as a character -- and have dear old dad killed off in an appropriately Marvel-esque situation involving the couple and their twin children, Anthony and Barbara...Antimony and Cinnabar!

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 I'd prefer 'a current day setting with the Avengers adventures primarily happening in the 70-80's'. This is because trying to extrapolate the current Marvel mess 60 years into the future beggars my imagination! And the 500 to 600 point character cost sounds good to me. As part of these new characters' backgrounds, is it permissible to say that one of the "big name" Avengers was killed?

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Better that than the other way around.

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 I'm thinking about playing a child of Vision and the Scarlet Witch...and doing it for real, this time, regardless of what the comicbook writers, in their infinite wisdom, decided.

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 I'm interested...and it's not just the Avengers background, but the 'five-times-a-week' post expectation. The other PBEM games I've been in eventually dwindled and died because players weren't posting.

Re: Map of Hero System Players - Please Contribute! We have GOT to encourage everybody else to get on the map; it's wonderful!

Re: 12 Days of Christmas Project Off-Line Dr. Anomaly's post for the 12 Days Project for today, Friday, Dec. 16, has been delayed by that server he loves so much suddenly turning flakey and kicking him off. So now he's off-line, and will post today's sidekick as soon as the server relents and lets him back on-line. Thank-you for your patience.

Re: The cranky thread Perception does affect experience, Mantis. If you can't change the nasty experience itself, still, you can change how you react to it; i.e. change your perceptions and reprogram yourself a little. I'm trying to avoid saying anything so inane as "just cheer up," here, so work with me, guy, please....

Re: 12 Days of Christmas Project I can't rep you, Doc, but I think that's a great write-up, based on an ingenious idea...namely "how to make someone called "Kid Lamprey" into a serious character!" Well done.

Re: Who is the most noble or 'good' hero in the CU? American Eagle, from the "VOICE of Doom" supplement and the Champions WWII material. He's definitely the Champions system's version of Captain America!

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel No Reading After Dark This is a room in the hotel, not a denizen thereof...but I think it's sufficiently creepy to offer here. When a guest checks into this particular room in the hotel, all seems normal. The room is a clean, comfortable and well-appointed double, with a spotless white wool carpet and new-looking curtains and bed covers. However, guests that read in the room after dark will have a less than pleasant stay.... If any book, newspaper or other reading matter is opened in the room after dark, the pages will appear to have been spattered with a fine spray of reddish-brown droplets, now quite dry. This also applies to the room's phonebook. (If the reading matter is an E-book, the screen will seem to have been spattered with the mysterious droplets.) Any guest who tries to remove the droplets will find they can be wiped away normally with a wet cloth and a little soap. But any guest who does this, or anything else that causes him or her to be distracted from their reading matter, will have an unpleasant surprise when he/she looks at it next. The droplets on the pages are now red and wet, and they smear if touched. If the guest checks other pages in the book, each page has more of the wet, red droplets...and now there are little clumps of something gray and greasy speckled across the pages. (If the guest has an E-book, the red droplets and gray specks appear on the page inside the screen.) Now the guest will begin to hear a dull thumping or booming in the corridor outside, as if someone were walking slowly down the hall towards the guest's room and slamming their fists into the walls and doors on the way. When the guest looks at the bevelled mirror opposite the bed, he/she will suddenly see a bright red liquid running and dripping down the splattered glass. The white carpet isn't white anymore; near the bed it's almost scarlet, and it squelches underfoot when the guest walks. The bed linens are dripping, as if someone had upended an oil drum of something red over the bed. The thumping and banging is getting closer and louder...and suddenly, the phone rings. The phone's white plastic is spattered with sticky red and more little clots of gray. If the guest answers the phone, a shrill, breathless voice on the other end babbles, "It's out, I tell you, it got out and it's in the hotel now -- !" The voice breaks off with a shriek and the door shudders under a perfect barrage of thunderous banging. The doorknob rattles furiously as if someone were twisting it from side to side -- the guest can see it moving -- the air smells of suddenly of vinegar and hot copper -- and all the lights go out. Silence. The lights can be turned on normally, to reveal that everything is as it should be again. There is nothing amiss in the room; no red droplets in the books, no banging on the door and the mirror is clean. The guest is left to wonder if it were all a terrible hallucination...and likely as not, will insist on changing rooms that night. There are no further disturbances for the guest, until he/she checks out of the hotel. The next time the guest opens his/her suitcases after check out, that guest will finds that he/she needs to buy all new linens...because every white item in the suitcases has somehow managed to get covered in spatters of dried rusty-brown.

Re: Daily Art Findings Poor Eosin! Friends don't try to make friends into anime freaks. Anime-style art is something I put up with if the story is good enough (as in Cowboy Bebop), but it's not something I enjoy. I dislike almost all the stylistic choices anime traditionally makes; characters in anime art generally have huge eyes, tiny mouths, non-existent or blade-sharp noses, a child-like appearance (even when the character is supposedly an adult), exaggerated limb length and other gross physical distortions. It's distracting, and doesn't appeal to me at all. At best, good anime art is highly stylized and attenuated. At worst, it's a series of distorted and crudely executed cartoons/caricatures. Keep resisting, Eosin! Do not submit to the anime side of the Force.

Re: Personal Immunity...to What exactly? Hello, Lucius...I think the palindromedary is too sexy for its hump.

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel The Shadow Lindsey is a student at the local community college, and apparently lives at the hotel. She's a skinny girl in her early 20s, and very big-hipped for her build. Lindsey has lank brown hair, pale skin and freckles, and apparently lives on junk food. She's perennially short of cash and drags an overstuffed bookbag around with her everywhere. And her shadow is just -- wrong. Regardless of the ambient light level, Lindsey's shadow is always sharply defined. The shadow is often either far too big or far too small for Lindsey's 5' 4" form. Sometimes the shadow is displaced, appearing in front of Lindsey or far behind her, or in locations where no shadow could reasonably be cast. Sometimes the shadow is truncated, so that only the upper or lower half of it appears, or only the right or left side. Sometimes the shadow isn't there at all, regardless of the light. And sometimes the shadow doesn't look entirely...human. Partially human, yes, or even mostly, but with...things...added. The shadow of skeletal shark jaws. The mantle of a huge squid. Ribbon-like streamers that undulate and grasp. Spindly mechanical protrusions. Mandibles. Great softly bobbing growths. Toothed cogs and misshapen gears turning, turning.... Lindsey affects not to notice anything odd about her shadow, and is aggressively rude to anyone who comments on it. "What are you, some kind of nut? You're sick, you know that? Get away from me before I call the police, you lousy freak!" But her eyes are haunted.

Re: Daily Art Findings Thanks, Eosin. That's a phenomenal picture. The young artist's name is Marta Dahlig, and her Seven Deadly Sins pictures are almost unbelievably lovely. I know of four so far, and Avarice, Sloth, Vanity and Envy can be found on the same site (Link 17), with a bit of poking around in the artist's account and other links. Please, please display the others on this thread.