Hermit

And Again!
 
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1177.html

Lot of good ideas. Ham could be brainwashed to loyalty to the Confederation, the "Manchimpian Candidate"

Every major nation in history was built through brutality. Some were more brutal than others. And a few raised brutality to an art form.

Romanians adore Vlad the Impaler...with an attitude of "Sure, he was a monster, but he was OUR monster, and he scared the @##@ out of would be invaders"

You knowledgeable people sure make it hard for us ignoramuses to coast :Shakes fist in faux rage:
 
Seriously though , some excellent factoids here and ideas. If I continue to flesh this out I'll try to incorporate some more. Thank you

Lot of good ideas. Ham could be brainwashed to loyalty to the Confederation, the "Manchimpian Candidate"

If I may be allowed to abuse my historical knowledge of the Apollo program...
 
it didn't have to be all six landings which did the Plutonian's bidding... just one.  Seen in that light, I now have to ask, "What was so important about Fra Mauro to the Plutonians that Apollo 14 was re-tasked to perform the mission Apollo 13 couldn't do?"
 
Also consider in Real Life that LMP Edgar Mitchell publicly admitted to attempting an experiment in interplanetary ESP with someone back on Earth during that mission.  An enterprising GM can take things from there.

I'm wondering if the returned chimp was actually returned completely unchanged.
 
It'd be an interesting if whatever tinkering the aliens did to his genome was something which could be passed along to future generations.
 
You could take it in a number of directions:
 
An ape superteam like the one lead by the Red Ghost which frequently clashes with the Fantastic Four
Gorilla City variant
Planet of the Apes variant
Super-intelligent chimp who has become a well-known advocate for animal rights
A genetic viral outbreak jumping from species to species among animals which makes them hyper-aggressive and mutate (James Patterson's book and TV series "Zoo"). Or perhaps just a contamination from a completely normal Ham the chimp which jumped across to the dogs of the space program. Dogs with telepathy and telekinesis (Cosmo) or something else (Krypto) would make wonderful pets and/or a wonderful black market in super-pets, super-guard dogs, underground dog fighting rings, etc.
 
Or dog kidnapping. This looks like a job for Nura, Ace Vet Detective!

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos

Honestly, I can easily envision French Revolution level out rage...
or American voter level apathy.
I don't know which I dread more.

Jan 31, 1961, a mercury program goes seemingly wrong and an astro chimp, #65 aka Ham, is seemingly lost. Two weeks later, a saucer lands publicly on the White House steps. The Plutonian Confederation returns the Chimp and speaks to a recently Sworn in JFK. The meeting's subject? Classified
This is the winner, so yeah, THIS is when a flying saucer landed on the White House Lawn, cameras were rolling, a chimp was returned, and JFK had a secret meeting. In Scratch World, much discussion still goes on just what was said, but few think it was coincidence that JFK would push for the moon landing. Some conspiracy theorists swear the landing's mission was not merely stepping foot on the moon, but putting something in place there for the Confederation's behalf. 
 
The Plutonian Confederation are not native Plutonians, but they do have a colony within the planet and have encouraged the Earthlings to believe that this is their place of origin.  It solidifies their claim to the outer solar system, and helps discourage discovery of the wormhole nearby that leads to their true home. Charon is no moon, it's a space fortress!
 
And yes, while only a handful know,  the Astronauts did put something on Luna as their president directed, something even they didn't understand. Sadly, when JFK was assassinated, whatever contract was made for this favor was null and void after, or so it appears.  Some believe that if there was a second gunman, then said gunman was not an Earthling at all but a member or agent of a rival galactic power.
 

December 10, 1978, a colonization attempt by the people of the doomed planet Beryllium goes horribly wrong as while their ship is wrecked, each Berylian discovers something about the earth gives them amazing powers and a few of the colonist decide to take over the planet. Earth heroes fight tooth and nail to hold them back, but it is the arrival of Beryllium's Lawman with the Title Reeve, who brings the colonists into line, and takes them in custody
 
This one got a respectable four votes... so we're incorporating it. 
The Berylians attempted a colony on an Island in the Arctic ocean, and all went well for a time but they learned the Earth's unique magnetic nature gave them amazing powers. They also learned of the many abuses of Earth's governments upon their various peoples. Using this to rationalize treating humanity as a savage species in need of being saved from itself (And deciding all of Earth would do nicely for a multitude of others to join them from their doomed world) they began to make their will known. Both American and Canadian heroes kept their reign of conquest concentrated in the far north as best they could. Reeve did indeed arrive and put a stop to it and took them into custody. Much to the frustration of both Canadian and American governments, Reeve also made sure very little of the technology from the colony could be seized. It's a credit to the Canadian and American Intelligence agencies that they covered this event up as 'random supervillains' after the fact, but it was a wake up call to them that they were simply not ready to deal with an Invasion on their own. Project Lovecraft, a joint endeavor that covertly continues to this day does its best to make sure that 'the stars will never be right'.
 

January 28, 1986- The Space Shuttle Challenger launches and is seized quite publicly by an impossibly large space ship. A message is sent world wide from the ship "This sector of space belongs to Overmaster Kish of the Kuul Dominion. You are not Authorized to go beyond Orbit. " The space program is stymied for years, the crew's fate unknown
 We're going to change this one a lot. While Overmaster Kish and the Kuul Domnion is responsible, they made no such grand display, rather making it look like NASA's own incompetence to set back the space program and discourage interest in Terrans exploring beyond their orbit. It worked very well. The crew of the Challenger did NOT die, but were rather collected for interrogation, and study. This 'mercy' proved to be a great mistake, as the seven would escape after they gained tech and powers of their own to return decades later (and much transformed) as the superhero team :The Challengers!

November 14, 2004- Two joy riding alien teenagers smash into an Earth plane while cloaked. This damages the cloaking device and the ship is shot down by other planes aboard the USS Nimitz . The two teenage aliens ejected, and were rescued. The US took their ship to be studied, and Bel and Loowil were stranded at a strange new home
Not sure how public the recovery would be.. mmm
 
The two aliens in question never made it back to their families.  Overly reliant on the technology they had always taken for granted, with the damage ship retrieved they had no means to contact home and weren't even sure how to get their without an Astragraph doing the work for them. Bel was greatly overcome with guilt for his part in the death of a human in the struck plane, and using his innate 'powers' would eventually become a superhero to make amends. Loowil, however, grew to resent captivity, and she would escape and become quite the villainess. fully mature in their telekinetic powers, the two former friends have clashed more than once. 
 

I have a pretty big audience through my podcast and we usually use roll20. I run a West Marches game and an active small discord with games being run all the time.
 
I've been streaming my BX games.
 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzcmLPbm3yPW7OxHMcIhPEA
 
 

"You deliberately stopped me, Jim. I could have saved her. Do you know what you just did?"
 
"He knows, doctor. He knows."

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos

I would like to be referred to as a 'Couch Involved Person'.

I think our legal system is too punitive and rigged besides...for you if you're rich, against you if you're poor. I DO believe that we should go less for punishing and more for rehabilitating... I have become , in short, a bleeding heart on the subject and will remain so until I'm mugged, assaulted, robbed or whatever...
 
And even I think "Justice Involved persons" is ...a profoundly moronic term.
 
 

Holy Hell! 
 
AOL is still a thing?! 
 
 

SO many thoughts here.
I can't really publish a champions setting without Hero Games approving it as far as I know (Certainly not for profit)
I was thinking of making an unofficial free PDF kind of setting.
And if anyone really liked it, there would be a link in the product to the Innocence Project, a charity I heartedly endorse but even that is a mere wondering 'maybe'
Did I say Amazonia was a paradise? The vote isn't even done yet. It could have men as second class citizens, or religious persecution, etc.
I understand Turkey's government has a problem admitting the Armenian Genocide even happened. It did no matter how much some Turkish officials might get huffy about it. The South were the bad guys in the Civil War, The US broke way too many treaties with Native American Tribes, Stalin starved a lot of people.
I DO appreciate you're concerned for my safety if I publish but honest to gosh; I'm not sure this would have a big enough wave to merit that concern even if I made an official supplement for sale.Which..again, I don't think I can do. 
And, I admit, there is something contrary in me that buckles at the very notion of my being too afraid to even do alternative history conjecture or a 'what if' setting because its safer for me to not upset some conceptual terrorist's delicate feelings.
 
THAT said, I'd like to think that 99.9% of the Turks in the world are decent people just trying to get by. Maybe one of them has stumbled onto this and does feel offended just like I might feel offended if someone portrayed the United States as the worst moments of its history and nothing else. That's not my intent. So..if there is one of these boards? Please, Sir and or Madame, Please PM me. I'll try to adapt a 'alternative world' version of Turkey that could coexist with Amazonia whether relations were tolerant or guarded.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

As far as the Ham thing... actually he was a real Astro Chimp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_(chimpanzee)
 
The Plutonian Confederation was intentionally a tease about the demotion it got from 9th planet to 'dwarf planet'... the irony being of all the planets, THAT's the One of import? Maybe the Aliens have a wormhole near there (Props to Assault) and there was a translation error or the  Press just dubbed them that and that's what stuck.  Maybe Pluto, while a small chunk of cold rock on the outside is another hollow planet and some life is quite comfy there in this setting.  I'm still tinkering.
 
The complaint about Amazonia affecting Turkey I don't quite understand. OBVIOUSLY it would be different. ... we had one of the first superheroines of power arise from the Armenian genocide and put a stop to it.  The history of that part of the world RADICALLY Shifts from there regardless of where we go from 1918 on. The poll indicates that the population is 75% female, and 25% male. with the 'average' amazon at Olympic athlete levels of physicality at least. Whatever reality shard caused that shift  apparently lingers. I think its safe to say they'd be way ahead of most nations in women's rights (More than the USA at the time as well as Armenia) regardless of how the poll goes. 
 
 
As for the location... I wanted Amazons and tried to borrow a little from the Greeks who claimed to be experts
While researching them, I studied this...
 
Then suddenly I was inspired. What was going on around that time at that area during World War One? The Armenian Genocide... nasty business. Instead of some 'what if this horrible thing was even worse' angle, I could do a divergent history that actually came out better...at least in the short term, than our real one.
And I avoided the 'Island of Amazons' bit which has been done in comics so it felt different on top of it.
 
 Turkey in "Scratchworld" (For want a better term) never formed as it we know it in our world. The Ottoman Empire broke up, and whatever variation of Turkey formed, it formed without the area of the Terme River in its grasp. Amazonia is protected by militant super women who have either strange magics and superpowers, or high tech, and superpowers. Radical terrorists might storm into Amazonia to cause trouble, but it would be kind of like trying to slip into Metropolis with Superman and a vacationing Bat family around.
 
Assuming this setting is a duplicate of our own world would be a mistake- one reality crashed into another and made that impossible. Oak Ridge is Atom City and a metropolis (Meaning other cities in Eastern Tennessee are likely smaller as it drew off population)  , Aliens from outer space are publicly known, and so on. The nice thing about the 'minor and major' reality shifts it it should allow for some changes to be subtle, others blatant, and lets me play fast and loose with some consequences if I need to. 
 
Obviously, folks can take any setting and alter it to as grim dark, realistic, silly, corny etc as they need to. They can move things to their hearts content and as suits their campaign best. But for the 'official'Scratch World? I'm keeping Amazonia in the Northern Anatolia area near the Terme River because otherwise it rips out the meaning of one of the first great changes in the setting. Whatever Amazonia is like in Scratch World 2019, during the Great War, a horrible genocide was happening, and in Scratch World? A Heroine arose- and she put a stop to it.
 
Maybe I'm a sap, but I can't bring myself to back track on that now.
 
 
Edit: And I'm getting the feeling folks are just ignoring this post *Sigh*
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

If your Pluto is hollow, make it bigger on the inside
While you're at it, Charon is no moon, it's a fully-armed and functional battlestation defending the Plutonians...

Little Boy Pariah started Kindergarten today.

For the first time in a long while I found myself walking down the twilight road. The way was as I remembered it -- stretching over the empty heath ringed by distant hills, with a red setting sun on my left and a silvery full moon to my right, a few bright stars emerging over my head. The cool air was still and fragrant with the scent of heather.
 
In time I came to the crossroads of the oak. The tree had changed since I was last here -- now the eastern branches were budding, the southern branches were in full green of summer, the western branches bore leaves that seemed like banked fire, and I knew that the northern branches must be winter-bare. At the foot of the tree next to the split in the road stood a milestone, lichen-covered and unreadable and very old, but it had not been here last time. The road sign was where I remembered it, but now it bore four hands. It pointed along the three roads of the crossing, and also towards the north and the tree.
 
I stood for a while under the summer branches, just breathing the restful air and watching the bands of mist gently dance over the heather. It was a good while, but the sun and the moon and the stars never moved. I began to feel a bit chill, so I walked around the bole to my meeting. On the northern side of the tree, under the bare gaunt branches, was a fire and a man. The man was sitting on a large root, and was just taking a steaming kettle off the fire.
 
"Ah, boy" he said to me. "Welcome back! Long time no see." He poured the boiling water in two mugs. "No milk, right? Two sugars. Here you go, get some warmth inside you."
 
I cradled the proffered mug and felt the hotness begin to chase the chill from my hands. "Thanks," I mumbled. I sat down on a rock across from the old man. I started bobbing the tea bag -- Lipton's Earl Grey, I noticed; my drink -- in the hot water. "Uh ... there's nothing strange in this, right?" 
 
"Oh, my boy," the man said with a not-at-all sneer, "no, just tea. Nothing unseemly, apart from the sugar."
 
The little fire popped and sent sparks soaring. I followed them with my eyes, and saw the desiccated corpse hanging in the branches. "Huh," I said. "Isn't that me from before?"
 
"Yes, your last visit. That went rather well!" he said with a chuckle. "A very good initiation; very effective."
 
"I'm sorry?"
 
"Eh, no matter, we'll cover that later. I've asked you here tonight to continue our discussion." He took a sip. "What is it you want out of this?"
 
"Uh ... what can I want?"
 
"Come on, boy, don't bandy words with me. I am much better at it. Just out with it -- what do you want?"
 
What did I want? 

And Allies of the US is a very big possibility . If comics have taught us anything is that at least some  Amazons are drawn towards macho American heroes.
 
*Crosses fingers*