Fuzzy Gnome

I like the Golden Age Hawkman mask. Bizarre but stylish.

P. S. - Oh, yeah. Lin-Si would mock priests, but she'd mock them as charlatans or dupes of evil, not child molesters.

Re: What WOULDN'T your character do? What wouldn't Lin-Si, my Shampoo clone, do? She might. She can be an asshole sometimes. I can see Foxbat chasing her Ranma 1/2 fashion, spouting Kunoesque babble. Pigtail girl, I would date with thee! Lin-Si wouldn't give him the time of day. Ooh, wait! As long as I'm doing Ranma 1/2, maybe Foxbat somehow defeated Lin-Si and now she insists on marrying him! That would be silly! ha ha I originally created Lin-Si as an NPC to serve as my Magog (years before Kingdom Come) so it would be more accurate to say Iron Age goes Lin-Si. If she thought it was the ethical thing to do according to her warrior code. Probably not. She was originally Stupid Mousse's sidekick and she was allowed to do any damn thing she wanted in the little free time she had from training. She knows what mischief sidekicks get into. What Lin-Si wouldn't do is worship any god, spirit, fairy, or ancestor. For an explanation, consider the adventures of Heracles, The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven, or the World of Darkness. Basically there's not enough holiness in the Universe to convince a cynical borderline thug like Lin-Si that a god can be trusted. She won't encourage one. Nice miracle, how many children did you have to eat to do that? Another thing she wouldn't do is be pretentious. If she did for example deliberately kill someone, she wouldn't angst about it. Cyberpunks, vampires, and other immature assfaces that go out and happily commit all kinds of atrocities, then loudly feel sorry for themselves by way of feigning remorse only to repeat their crimes the next evening are the suck. Lin-Si is meant to be a barbarian hero who has no patience for that kind of hypocrisy. Ace, my Sub-Marinerlike minibrick, would never take part in another war of conquest. He fought on the losing side in two World Wars out of patriotism. Now he feels his patriotism was more like blind stupidity. Support your country, but don't give your support blindly whether the country is right or wrong.

Traction?

Lin-Si wouldn't have any problem with Communism spreading to the West, as long as the Communist government has no problem with her mystic martial arts. Which they wouldn't as she's much more like Green Dragon than Dr. Yin in power level and politics. She doesn't threaten the government or the fabric of reality, just beats up a few thugs and demons here and there. Seraph doesn't care what kind of government the primitive mortals have, but if the world was too bleak and grey he might go to Malva or somewhere. Plasma worked against the Russians in the early 80s in her lab, reverse engineering KGB and Viper gadgets and alien artifacts, so Q can make sure he's giving the latest tech to the double-zero agents. I wouldn't be surprised if she continued to fight against Communism after the Cold War was lost, probably in the English or Canadian underground resistance movement. Ace is somewhat aristocratic and wouldn't like the Communists one bit. He'd be the heroic defender of some non-Communist enclave.

Seraph was an anthropologist. He'd scoped the primitive tribes out, then reported to his old buddy Prometheus on how the whole fire thing was working out. Lin-Si would be a huntress in a primitive amazon tribe. Ace and Plasma probably wouldn't exist. Ace might have gotten his powers from a divine artifact. On the other hand, Plasma needs to not only blow the alien berserker up, but understand the rubber science behind its Regen from Mushroom Cloud phoenix matrix and take it over so that she is the one reborn instead of the berserker. A neandertal wouldn't have the background.

As long as I'm making pop culture references, Plasma's 'doing' Lucifer's Hammer and Seraph's 'doing Rifts.

Ace gained his powers about the same time the bombs started dropping. Assuming he hasn't died of radiation poisoning, he's probably the leader of a survivor community, preserving what's left of civilization. Plasma is working for such a community, maintaining and restoring if she can. If she has her powers and scientific skills, she's fighting off cannibalistic biker gangs. Immune to disease and radiation, her main job is salvaging gear and knowledge from the burned-out cities. She'd get a nuclear reactor going, and use the electricity from it to purify water, make fuel, and operate any medical equipment that could be found. Seraph's mission was to stop the war. Either he whiffed it big time, or he arrived too late. Now he wanders the wasteland, protecting villages from mutant cannibals. Eventually he may settle in a community and help to build it into a nation. Lin-Si is doing Fist of the North Star.

Ace never believed in the Nazi government in the first place; he only served them out of loyalty to his country. He was horrified when he learned of the slave camps, and he asked himself whether he should betray the government, sacrifice his honor, and lose any chance of protecting his estranged family. As the war progressed he decided he had no choice but to try to stop the Nazis from conquering the world, and was killed in a failed military coup long before he would have gained his aquatic powers. Seraph was sent to Earth to help the resistance. With psionics, Presence powers, and brickishness, he can be a front-line fighter, a spy or saboteur, a telepathic courier, or an inspiring flagsuit type as the need demands. After the Japanese conquered China, Lin-Si's grandparents might have been glad to see them betrayed by the Nazis. Unfortunately by the present day, the Nazis rule China with the proverbial iron fist and martial arts societies like the Chinese Amazons are outlawed. Lin-Si is a member of a ragged band of freedom fighters hiding in the mountains near Tibet.

Plasma would be an otter. Ace would be a gorilla. Lin-Si would probably be an anime catgirl. Lucifer would for some reason be a penguin.

Actually, I lie. If Seraph was a WWII character he would have been sent to Earth by Freya to stop the mass terror bombing of civilians. He would have spent the whole time calling lightning on buzz bombs and doing move-throughs on bombers as they approached London or Tokyo or wherever he happened to be fighting that day. I'm not sure what he'd be doing in 2004 in that case, or whether he'd be considered a hero or villain. Yeah, the Greek Titan dude works for Freya. He's inspired by AD&D and Rifts where different pantheons know each other and sometimes work together or have rivalries. When Seraph is bored he goes and bugs a member of a completely different mythology for something to do.

Aviation pioneer Ace found the Atlantean Albatross Amulet on dry land. Now he can breathe air and soar like an albatross. Seraph can breathe water naturally instead of needing a spell. Otherwise no changes. Lin-Si uses a martial art suited to water. 3D tactics, grabs, one-inch punch, kiai shout, that sort of thing; no throws or sweeping movements. Plasma... currently is powerless underwater. Aqua Plasma might never become a superhero, or take much more training and experimentation to get her powers to work underwater. Most likely she'd never realize she could use her plasma control powers for force fields and energy blasts and stuff. She might become a powersuit character instead, or not be a superhero at all.

Plasma would be an enchanter who sacrificed herself to destroy an evil artifact in a mighty blaze. (Bit it off and dove into the crack of doom?) Instead of dying she became fused with the artifact and now wields elemental fire magic. Seraph, Lin-Si, Ace - no significant changes. For a science fiction fan I make a lot of high fantasy characters.

Boy-type Lin-Si would be... Green Dragon again. This time with a bit less jealousy and bullying than Green Dragon, just enough to be an annoying hero or honorable villain instead of a jerk like GD. I don't know what fake Chinese name I'd give him; probably Qi-Ti or something. That name looks stupid. How about Long Wang or Yu Fat Cao? no... Dame Ace (called Lorelei in this world) wouldn't have had any military adventures... In the 20's and 30's she was a Lara-Croft-esque adventurer; by 1960 she was long retired. Her children had moved out. She was bored and wanted to go exploring one last time. Underwater, she found an amulet that granted superhuman strength, the ability to breath water, and eternal youth. Without a violent past to atone for, she wouldn't have any reason to capture violent criminals. Instead she'd get her adventure own TV series, similar to Jacques Cousteau. "The Adventures of Lorelei." Female Seraph... would be much the same only curvier. Wings, white robes, COM and PRE up in the high 20's, probvably a huge fan club. Is Seraph just a huge pile of powers without much personality? Guess so.

Legacy Ace was a U-boat commander during World War II whose submarine went down. The crew swam to the surface; the commander stayed until he knew everyone else had escaped. By that time, the U-boat was on the bottom and the commander was unable to find the way to the surface because there was a lot of oil and silt in the water and he was also suffering from the pressure. He felt something calling to him and discovered an ancient artifact that granted him superhuman strength and the ability to breathe water. He swam to the surface and helped his crew survive. For the duration of the war he had to fight as a super-powered amphibious commando and saboteur. Among the powers he gained from the artifact was eternal youth. Today, he makes up for his warlike past by fighting for justice. Seraph is ancient; he could have become a superhero during WWII or the Hundred Years War, it wouldn't make much difference. Legacy Lin-Si is Cologne from Ranma 1/2.

The Submariner-inspired Ace sent his African wife and sons to Canada to escape Nazi racism in the 30's, then later gained powers from Atlantean ruins. The Evil Ace would be a Nazi sorceror seeking the war spells that sank Atlantis. Plasma gained a Code vs Killing and hatred of terrorists when her secret agent husband was killed by a Viper sniper in a scene stolen from On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Evil Plasma would be a ruthless vigilante sniper, killing Viper agents and enemy supers from cowardly ambush. Evil Seraph the 1000 point + munchkin flying omnibrick emulates the vicious aspects of the Greek Titans instead of the heroic ones. Instead of an ancient playboy seeking adventure, he's a conqueror who demands to be worshipped as a god, and instead of fighting with a sissy sword, he just mind-controls his enemies and makes them his slaves. Lin-Si isn't all that good to start with. Evil Lin-Si would be Green Dragon; just change his character image to a Chinese beauty in a slit dress.

Smell like an ashtray.

Mr. Fluffy.

You have to add ballast to the rigging to keep from rolling over in a storm.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Life on a Lunar Colony If the center of mass is in synchronous orbit, the beanstalk will be perfectly in balance. As you say, it would be unstable. Things on the edge of balance usually are. So what needs to be done is to add weight at the outer end of the beanstalk. The added weight has to be enough to balance the heaviest load that might be added to the bottom part, plus a margin of error. If the power cables in the beanstalk are picking up back EMF from the solar wind or the Earth's magnetic field, weight has to be added to compensate for that, too. If the beanstalk is being blown back more than normal because of a solar flare or something, the counterweights should be able to move upward on the beanstalk so they don't get pulled into too low an orbit.

I'm a doofus. My reasoning went like this: 1. The moon turns really slowly. 2. A beanstalk would have to be really long to be in synchronous orbit. 3. Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp! 4. Crash into Earth. After editing out the nonsense with the red felt-tip of rationality, I realized that the Moon not only turns slowly, it also has weak gravity. It balances out. Anyhow, a beanstalk stuck through either of the two closest Lagrange points ought to be stable and not hit the Earth. But I don't think it would generate much power because the magnetic field is too weak.

A lunar beanstalk would only generate power as it passes through the Earth's strong magnetic field. Which it would, because it would crash into the Earth! No lunar beanstalks in my backyard

I just read the Apocalypse Troll by David Weber. After being put to sleep by the Shiva Option by the same author, I was taking a chance. But I liked it. It was a heroic adventure that concentrated mostly on the two main characters rather than a theater-level strategic analysis like Shiva.

We named the penguin Intercourse. Junior.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "We´ve seen their faces, but who are they?!" Well, if your name was Slartibartfast, you'd have a strange sense of humor too.