Haven Walkur

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team!

GOLDBUG (Gold Bandits; 5 of 6)

Palmetto Bug -- an insect-controlling "shake-down" artist named Jim Bugge -- joined the Gold Bandits less than a month before the fateful robbery transformed them all. He was then and is still the most unpopular member of the team; vulgar and obnoxious, he has unpleasant personal habits and rather too much in common with his "little friends" where diet and preferred habitat are concerned.

During the transformation, Bugge lost all his body hair -- even down to nostril- and ear-hairs -- and his skin became flexible but stiff golden chitin, making him very tough physically. Despite the loss of sensory hairs, Bugge's senses of smell and hearing became incredibly acute, though what he thought of as "hearing" was actually a new ability to detect and interpret vibrations.

And Jim Bugge's insect-controlling power also underwent a transformation.

As Palmetto Bug, Bugge had been able to control only those insects within the range of his senses. However, after the "gold-change", Bugge found that he could call insects to him from far outside the range of his senses, and in apparently unlimited numbers -- but only insects of the Family Blattaria; cockroaches. Bugge's ability to share the perceptions of "his" cockroaches had also been greatly expanded, allowing him to use the cockroaches as small spies; "bugs" of the non-electronic kind.

Apparently delighted with this trade-off of powers, Bugge took a new villainous sobriquet: Goldbug

On the Gold Bandits team, Goldbug performs reconnaissance (via his "little friends"); in combat he can entangle/immobilise opponents, damage structures/equipment and make monstrous PRE Attacks (again, all via his "little friends" -- in swarms). Goldbug is an extremely antisocial personality; he really gets a kick out of making someone scream in horror as cockroaches to crawl all over them, and he also likes beating up those "distracted" opponents as the group's demi-Brick.

But despite these shows of aggression, Bugge is a coward, unwilling to attack anyone not already engaged by his "little friends"...the cockroaches.

In his spare time, Goldbug still practices his special brand of extortion, as both a nasty hobby and a source of extra revenue: "Pay up or my little friends here will find a new home in your home...or maybe just in you!" Goldbug also lusts after team-mate Spun Gold, constantly making unwelcome advances to her and showering her with crude compliments and come-ons, to her disgust.

Unfortunately for Bugge, Spun Gold isn't particularly scared of cockroaches.

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Is it just me' date=' or is anyone else having trouble with all of Bazza's s3.amazonaws links?[/quote']

 

About 3/4 of those links wouldn't come up for me; all I got on them was a "no information here" notification and a link tree.

Re: Scions of a New Age... (Long)

What a remarkable, original approach to "supers"! It's an exciting notion, a challenging one for potential players, and I shall be very interested to hear how it plays out.

Sorry, no useful comments in this post...but as it's after three in the morning, I lack the brain-power.

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life.

Sparkymark : "...Collectively they are overground' date=' underground and wombling free."[/quote']

 

Thanks for posting this. Repped! Wombles FTW!

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Last night's Amber Diceless RPG session....

Thank-you for posting, sir. These quotes are hysterical...and all-too-familiar (though in our case, the "Trouble Twins" were named Quinlan and Darius). You are Repped.

Amber Diceless FOREVER!

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

PeaCOCKs are male and they are the ones with the tail. PeaHens are the females and have no fancy coloration

Ants, like most colony insects, are almost exclusively female. Their colonies are made up of the daughters of the queen ant -- the worker or soldier ants, which are all sterile females and all genetically identical sisters -- and the much larger fertile female queen ant. The tiny winged male ants -- drones -- appear in the colony only briefly and only when the colony is preparing to divide, requiring new queens. The drones die on their single mating flight.

So Ant-Man has to be "Drone-Man" instead, because fighter and worker ants are all female and he's male? Shall we tell Dr. Henry Pym he has to "feminize" his costume because all the tough ants are girls?

Dr. Pym chooses to dress up and fight crime in a costume based on the form and features of the female ant.

The Peacock chooses to dress up and fight crime in a costume based on the plumage of the male peacock.

And real hawks are raptors with talons, not huge bludgeoning maces à la Hawkman & Hawkwoman.

So your point is?

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

The Peacock's Cry (sonic vocal attack) and The Peacock's Tail (dazzling rainbow-hued light displays).

Have you ever heard a peacock calling? ey-AAW

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Puppy feet and crab joints!

I stay away from that app entirely; there's nothing there I can take seriously.

I know there was something in 5th Ed -- was it a Talent? -- you could buy that would reduce the cost of a character's Knowledge Skills, but I can't find it! It was something like the 'Linguist' Talent (which reduced the cost of languages) or the 'Jack-of-All-Trades' Talent (which reduced the cost of PSs).

I've been looking for a Talent called 'Scholar' that works the same way, but no luck. I thought it was a 3-point Talent that got you a 1-point price break on all your KSs...but maybe I'm delusional. Does anybody else recognise/remember something like this? Was this how it worked, or am I getting things mixed up?

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Thanks muchly for the tips, SteveZilla! That was enough info to lead me to the name of the artist in question: Stanley "Artgerm" Lau, and one of my new favourites.

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Heh. I estimated at least 40,000 when I went there for a glass of absinthe....

...I think my estimation was too low, but I was already half-blind from staring at all those lights for several minutes.

No, that was the absinthe. So how long has the Hyatt been serving the real thing? ;-)

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets reimaged by an artist...

Thanks for posting this, SteveZilla; I love "grown-up" / more realistic versions of G-Force. (But then I loved the original 'Battle of the Planets' on TV; at 14, I always made sure I was home from school in time to watch it!)

It's a wonderful, moody piece...but oddly enough, the team's masks look more insectile than avian. Who is the artist? Please to tell this humble querent.

But in the meantime, here's some 'Mystery Artist' Rep.

Re: The Umbrella Academy

Issues availble online here;

http://www.htmlcomics.com/html.asp?Series_Name=Umbrella Academy&Alpha=U

Thanks, Escafarc, and Rep for your generosity.

So now I've read the 6-issue 'Apocalypse Suite' and been really impressed by the characters and the dysfunctional family dynamics, though less so by the story, which was oddly flat/inert in a number of places (particularly the death of the Conductor and the climax at the Icarus Theatre), and the artwork, which was dynamic but clumsy/sketchy. I'm very taken with the world, where sentient chimpanzees and space squid are apparently just another variety of "everyday people", and supernormal heroes and villains simply a part of life. And I particularly liked The Kraken and the oddball Séance, but...

The Boy (Number 5) 4 teh WIN!

Re: naming a city for a supers campaign

San Dante, CA.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Thanks for the extinct-early-human kudos, Legatus!

Oh, and the HM3 problems causing the before-referenced cursing and swearing weren't related to the patterns; I didn't add those until the character was largely done. No, the expostulations were brought about by trying to make HM3, a system based on pre-set shapes/options, do something a little unconventional -- create a convincing Homo neanderthalensis out of Homo sapiens parts!

;-)

Re: More Images...

Here's a character I've had brooding in my head for a while now, Smells-Snow-from-Ice. She can smell the difference between snow and ice, a sense of smell considered remarkable even by her own people. And who are her "own people"? As you might have guessed from the picture (inspired by several recent recreations), they're neanderthals.

As modern science definitely accepts the possibility of neanderthals having language, I decided that Smells-Snow-from-Ice's people do speak, but their language is very noun-and-verb heavy, arranged in simple, active (or imperative) sentences. It's also very literal, with no use of simile or metaphor. Some of Smells-Snow-from-Ice's clan members are Eats-Hands-of-Eggs, Makes-a-Strong-Spear, Sees-the-Hilltop and Kills-a-Longtooth.

A "longtooth" is what the clan call the sabre-toothed cats. "Greatlegs-longnoses-benttooths" -- usually shortened to "greatlegs" -- are mammoths, "hookclaws" are the carnivorous giant ground sloths, "one-and-many" are the dire wolves; if you see one, it means there are many out there. I'm having trouble coming up with something simple, striking and literal for the giant cave bears. The neanderthals themselves, of course, are simply, "the people."

The pic was assembled, with more than a little swearing and cursing, in HeroMaker 3.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Another character, because I felt like it and because I'm so glad to see Fábrica online again.

Jill-in-the-Green, an avatar or elemental spirit of the warm dreaming seasons of the year and the burgeoning power of growth, based on a favourite Jethro Tull song and created in good old Fábrica de Heròis (hooRAH). The lyrics below are Tull too, just slightly modified.

Have you seen Jill-in-the-Green,

With her long tail hanging low.

She raps her bow-stave upon the ground,

Signals the crocus it's time to grow.

It's loads of fun being Jill-in-the-Green;

Her power a dance, her smile song.

She wears the colours of the summer soldier,

Carries the green flag all the winter long.

Jill do you ever sleep,

Does the green spell run

Deep in your heart? (oh, oh, oh)

Or will these changing times,

Motorways, powerlines,

Keep us apart? (oh, oh, oh)

Well I don't think so;

I saw some grass growing through the pavement today.

Re: Heromaker 3 Alpha Image

Very elegant picture, and splendid colour choices/balances. Which application is it, or is it an original? (And if so, absolutely NO offense intended by the 'which app. is it' question.)

Re: Lantern Corps...Only Not

Have you?

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Speaking of being in shape....

No, Tabby's not a goddess; she's better than that! Presenting my old Amber Diceless Roleplaying PC: Tabby, princess of Amber, daughter of King Random and the lady pirate B*tch Maggie. The John Tenniel version of the Cheshire cat was her personal symbol; its head was on her the back of her Trumps.

And I've discovered, to my annoyance, that Hero-Maker 3 doesn't have the option of short, curly hair for characters, or short blades (that might fit in a bracer).

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

In HM3 there is an option called "masking". If you mask the bow to Corona's hand' date=' it will look as if she was holding the bow in her hand. Right now the bow is simply put behind the hand.[/quote']

 

Many thanks, Legatus; that "masking" option will help a lot! There are a lot of options in HM3 I haven't puzzled out, so I've mostly been doing things the brute-force way, pulling my pics into PaintShop Pro and manipulating them directly. It works, more-or-less, but it lacks...finesse.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Here's a PC of mine from my distant past, with a tie to the gods of old: Dr. Laurel Kane, feline zoologist (felidologist?) and demigod daughter of Apollo. Yes, that Apollo; Mount Olympos, ancient Greece, god of archery, music and medicine -- and also Laurel's dad, which makes most of the other Greek gods her aunts and uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents and cousins. Heroing runs in the demigods of her family...or should that be 'pantheon'? Just ask Heracles, Jason, Autolychus....

She battles crime as Corona, metanormal archer and member -- with Blackjack and Double Helix -- of the San Diego Sentinels.

Re: Champions Sneak Peek #1: The Cover!

It's too busy; this cover illustration is a visual confusion that gives the eye no opportunity to "rest". The overall effect is a frenetic blur of vivid colours and overlapping shapes, with no empty space to define/separate characters, and the figures themselves are actually pretty crudely drawn.

The text on the back cover is lost in the chaos.

As may be apparent from the above comments, I don't like the cover.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Here's my version of Ereshkigal, Sumerian goddess of death, created in HeroMaker 3 with lots of PaintShop Pro post-work. The elements of her clothing -- the layering, fringes and off-the-right-shoulder look -- are copied from photos of Sumerian votive statues from the late Sumerian Dynastic Period/early Old Babylonian, circa 2100 - 1800 BC.

I had and have absolutely NO intention of trying to upstage Legatus with this picture. The idea of depicting ancient non-European gods with the various hero-maker apps was all his; I just liked the idea so much I had to try it myself, and when I chose my favourite Sumerian god as a subject, Legatus hadn't yet done the pic of Ereshkigal. So why am I posting my pic now?

Because I've only just finished the blasted thing!

It's taken me from the time Legatus posted his 2nd or 3rd Sumerian god until NOW to finish making Mesopotamian clothes out of the choices on HeroMaker 3. Man, do I love Cut-Colour-and-Transform applications!

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Re: Egyptoid's pic

No picture, alas! When 'attachment' is clicked, all that appears is the following text:

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