BoloOfEarth

Another non-powered member of Snak Attak!, pizza delivery guy Mike Copperton, aka Deep Dish, has a bunch of pizza-themed weapons and other equipment to assist him in his "crime-fighting" exploits. These range from "pizza cutters" (metal throwing stars and throwing knives painted to appear as whole pizzas or slices of pizza) and "pepper-oni spray" (simple pepper spray) to a (not really) "bulletproof" vest made from discarded pizza pans welded together. Frankly, Mike is a bit of a loon, and would have been thrown out of Snak Attak! if he didn't provide team members with free pizzas on a regular basis.

The Architect of Desire sat back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and smiled. "One of my role models has always been Frank Lloyd Wong."

"You mean Frank Lloyd Wright, don't you?" asked BB absently, flipping through a magazine.

"No," replied the Architect as if talking to a four year-old, which made BB scowl. "I most definitely meant 'Wong.' He was an Asian-American architect in the late 1980s. His parents named him in honor of Wright, but the young Wong took an... unusual approach to building design."

BB set aside her magazine, and her irritation. "Unusual in what manner?"

"He combined early AI technology and microbots to create truly organic buildings. His goal was for the AI to direct microbots to subtly adjust the building's internal structure to better meet the owner's desires, most often making changes while residents were sleeping."

The Architect grinned sheepishly. "Unfortunately, the AIs became hostile toward residents, so they directed microbots to make structural changes that were ultimately dangerous to residents. Nothing structurally unsound, mind you. Just things that caused injuries -- or in several cases, fatalities."

With a smirk, BB asked, "And this made him your role model?"

"What made him my role model was that he wasn't afraid to think outside the box."

The Assistant leaned over to whisper to Professor Mayhem. "Or to trap the people living there inside the box..."

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New Team: The Remotes

This team of five villains never appear themselves, but can only work through proxies (be they agents, robots, summoned creatures, etc.). In each case, the villain *must* work remotely for a good reason (crippled, trapped somewhere, etc.) that should be specified by the poster. Please also find a way to make your villain's proxy unique in some way.

Jenni Connor is Pop Tart. Dressed in a very naughty schoolgirl outfit, chewing and popping bubble gum, and playing pop tunes on her mini-boombox, she uses her karate and tai chi training to good effect. And woe to anybody that gets too grabby -- Pop Tart has been known to go postal on pervs, breaking quite a few hands along the way. Many people criticize her for projecting the wrong image for women, but she doesn't seem to care.

Beyond her martial arts skills (which are moderately advanced, but nothing exceptional), Pop Tart is a normal (non-powered) person.

I'll start off with Big Mac. Jimmy MacDonald is a physics student who was involved in a lab experiment gone awry. He now has the ability to grow to four times his normal height (with the associated increase in strength). Mac is not known for subtlety... or self-control, for that matter. He is very likely to charge any group of foes, making him also the likeliest Snak Attaker to fall unconscious in battle.

Well, it's about lunchtime where I am. The Nar Neo-Knights covered out drinking needs, but how about some munchies?

The irreverent teens known as Snak Attak! (yes, I know that's spelled wrong -- it's part of the team's "charm") are a group of starving college students who patrol their campus in pairs or trios to help keep it safe. Each one's name and/or powers must be related to a snack or fast food. Team members are not all necessarily super-powered, but then again, most of their foes are normal muggers and what-not, so being non-powered isn't usually a major problem (When facing off against super-powered foes, the non-powered Snak Attakers usually fall back, help bystanders to safety, and that sort of thing.)

You may post as many Snak Attakers as you wish. The team will be complete when the fourth contributor to the team says he/she is done. If a fifth (or sixth, etc.) contributor wants to join in before the "final bell" rings, hey, the more, the merrier -- that contributor becomes the one that calls a halt when he/she doesn't have anyone else to add.

The only other rule is: NO HEALTHY SNACKS! If I see a lettuce wrap, or a tofu burger, or some nice crunchy veggie chips, there will be BLOOD TONIGHT!

Methinks the team needs another woman.

Asha Ramirez is the spicy young Latina of Street Beat. As Salsa, she often dances around the battlefield, a racier counterpoint to the more demure Ballerina, enticing opponents to stop fighting and dance with her. The public story is that Salsa exudes pheromones as she dances, but the truth is, she is a low-powered but highly skilled mentalist. Considering the distrust most people have for mentalists, she goes to great lengths to keep her mental powers hidden. Since most of her powers have IPE (Invisible Power Effects), she mainly uses Veil and other mental skills to keep targets from realizing the truth of her powers.

- - - - - - - -

New team to follow as soon as I can.

(Even though the initial description doesn't specify it, to me the name Street Beat suggests the members have a musical theme. So that's what I'm going with.)

The street hero known as Wrapper (although often mis-named Rapper by the press) is a low-grade telekinetic who specializes in grabbing up whatever materials are at hand and using them to "wrap up" foes. Levon Jackson is currently in his third year of college, pursuing a degree in music (with a concentration in classical music -- he's quite the accomplished pianist), but he knows enough about rap music to convincingly fake a gangsta rapper persona in his hero ID.

"Mitt? Cherry Bomb on line 2."

Mitt Fielding sighed and picked up the phone. "Hey, CB! How's it going?" The talent agent doodled on a pad of paper as he listened for a bit. "Cher, we've gone over this a dozen times. You wanted to be a superheroine, but you wanted it to be a paying gig. Well, THIS is a paying gig. Nar-Cola..."

Mitt held the phone away from his ear. He was pretty sure Tanya could hear the shouting in the outer office. "Hey, Nar-Cola's marketing people came up with the costume, not me. And no, I have no idea what is so 'magical' about a cleavage window. Maybe it magically increases their market share a few percent every time you light off a fireball." He chuckled, but it was obvious no laughter was coming from the other end of the phone line. "Hey, at least we got them to ditch the short skirt. Seriously, what kind of genius gives a flying lady a short skirt to wear?" The voice on the other end of the phone was strident, and Mitt sighed. "Okay, fine, I'll have another talk with the PR guys at Nar-Cola."

He sat up and opened a file on his computer. "Say, Cher, while I've got you on the line, how are you with the origin story?" He nodded. "Yeah, I agree, getting your powers from falling into a vat of radioactive Nar-Cola is pretty far on the ridiculous side, but they were insistent that Nar-Cola be directly involved in you gaining your powers. Say, you never told me -- how did you get your powers?" He listened, nodding unconsciously. "Uh-huh. Yeah. Oh, geez, kidnapped by that psycho?! Hey, maybe we can work that into the Nar-Cola origin! So, how did you get out..." He wrote "DR. NYMAX" in block letters on the paper, then drew flames atop each letter. "Yeah. Heh, that was pretty clever."

Mitt sat back, twirling his pen between his fingers. "So, cleavage issues aside, the new costume's okay? Holds up to your fire shield like it's supposed to? We don't want another costume malfunction like at the mall opening." He doodled some more, nodding and saying "Yeah" and "Uh-huh" every now and then. "Good, great. YES, I will talk to the PR guys. Hey, how about we get them to move their logo from your back to your front, replace the cleavage window entirely? Add a fuse to the 'C' and make it look like a stylized cherry bomb. Okay, sounds like a plan. Well, Cherry, I've gotta run. Let's get together Thursday, I'll have a sketch of the revised Cherry Bomb / Nar-Cola logo. Ciao, babe!"

Also done.

Ever since her college boyfriend's physics experiment exploded, Rose Connelly has been able to summon versions of herself from different points in her timeline to assist her in her studies and, eventually, with her crimefighting career. (She also gained the ability to project some of her trans-temporal energy, causing damaged items and people she touches to heal or break down, albeit temporarily). As the 1960s heroine Threesome, she could summon a middle-aged experienced superheroine and a wizened senior citizen retired heroine. By the time she changed her name to Tribond in the late 1980s, Rose was summoning a brash younger self and a wise older self. And now that she's the retiree, the versions she summons are her young and middle-aged selves. She's a lot more careful about summoning them now, since she fears something happening to one of her younger selves and the effects causing a temporal paradox. (She needn't worry, since she's actually tapping into alternate dimensions that happen to be incredibly similar to her own.) She calls herself Trifecta now and fancies herself the "grand dame" of the Golden Agers.

Dr. Corpse brushed some imagined dust off the brim of his black top hat, set the hat on the table beside him, and picked up his glass of whiskey. "In any group of mad scientists, the pre-eminent member must, of course, be Dr. Victor Von Frankenstein." He ignored Dr. Maximinian's snort of derision and took a sip. "I have it on good authority that Mary Shelley's so-called creation was actually an homage to a real-life medical doctor and scientist -- a pioneer in my very field." He paused in thought. "You know, I wonder if in fact that long-ago doctor was an ancestor of mine. Wouldn't that be remarkable?"

The "L." in "L. Marcus" actually stands for "Liberace."

NT: The shocking villain in the next superhero movie (and name the superhero too).

Agent 34 is James Niven, a smooth-talking Brit with a pencil-thin mustache and a ready smile. He fancies himself a master of disguise -- as long as the person he's masquerading as happens to be a thin Brit with a pencil-thin mustache.

Some great ideas. Thanks, guys!

The 1990s magazine expose claimed that the NSA super-agent known as Pscanner used his psionic powers to cause aneurisms or even make targets' brains explode. The latter half is completely false, but the first part is half-true. He was only trying to read the mind of a South American junta leader when the man did have an aneurism and died. Pscanner certainly did not intentionally cause it, and he's not even sure his telepathy was the inadvertent cause of it, but he feels horrible about it nonetheless.

Perhaps PC superheroines could overhear henchmen ranking the, um, assets of various superheroines, including them?

In one of my campaigns, the heroes had to deal with Viperia several times. Once, they managed to knock her out -- and then took pictures of her with them in... suggestive poses. They even had one picture of her (the male heroes convinced one of their female teammates to change Viperia into a lace teddy) blown up into a life-sized poster. IIRC, the heroes replaced some top-secret PRIMUS vehicular blueprints (about to be stolen by VIPER) with that poster.

Viperia was NOT amused.

Going by Taskmaster's first appearance in the Avengers, minions and henchmen are preferred to be of below average intellect.

For instance, I've had the players encounter a VIPER agent who is quite educated but was simply unable to find a job in his field, so he took the VIPER work to pay off his student loans.

One of my favorites was a junkyard owner who rebuilt a villain's scrapped robot to help do the heavy lifting around the junkyard. When the heroes saw that robot, they assumed Artificer (the villain whom the robot formerly belonged to) had something to do with that junkyard or the owner. But that wasn't the case at all.

No, this thread isn't calling for the extermination of henchmen. I'm trying to compile a list of things that henchmen do to while away the boring hours of guard duty, stakeout duty, off-duty hours stuck in the base, etc.

To give a little background, I just finished reading The Henchmen's Book Club by Danny King (great book, by the way, I'd give it a score of 4 of 5). In it, the agents (called Affiliates) read, rate, and discuss various books to kill time while serving their various megalomaniacal overlords. This got me thinking of how in past games I've tried to give my agents and other goons some three-dimensionality.

In past Champions games, I've had the PC heroes overhear agents discussing things that had little or nothing to do with the plot, but added a little color and sometimes piqued the players interest. In one case, a PRIMUS agent revealed that in his off-hours he and some friends played in a garage band, and had even gotten a gig at a local bar, earning him the radio call sign of "Rocker." In another case, a hero in a bar overheard two agents discussing a new villain group forming -- but the player was enjoying the interplay between the two as much as finding out about the villain group.

So what I'd like are some suggestions for ways to add some color to the goons the player characters might run into along the way. What could PRIMUS agents do to pass the time while they wait for the "go" command before a strike? What might two VIPER agents talk about while they're standing guard in front of a door? I'm not looking for anything that would provide tactical or even plot utility, just something to make the agents seem a bit more human and less like a bunch of numbers.

Okay, why is it that, when I post to a thread, it adds the post but doesn't show on the forum page that the thread has a new post? Honestly, it makes a guy feel unwanted.

I'd hate for this thread to die with a team unfinished...

Y'know, I'd be a normal girl if it wasn't for those two psycho dancers. Sure, it's flattering to have two brothers fighting over you, especially when you're a middle-aged woman, but when they're supervillains like Hi-Tap and Twinkle Toes, well, you know something bad is going to happen.

I finally got sick of them bickering over me, each trying to win my affections or prove he loved me more than the other. So I told both of them to take a hike. I guess they didn't like that, because they kidnapped me and dragged me off to some run-down factory, chained me up to some huge piece of equipment while they sparred with each other to see who would "win" me once and for all. While they're dancing around, trying to kick each other to death, I'm trying to get loose. And apparently I pulled too hard on something I was tied to, because suddenly I feel this huge electric shock. It arced from me to both of the boys, and then there was a huge flash of light.

When I came to, both Hi-Tap and Twinkle Toes were out cold. I noticed a sharp piece of metal near my hands, so I tried using it to cut the ropes and get free. Unfortunately, I didn't have a good angle, and I felt the metal slice into my arm. But there was a wierd tingle-feeling, and then my arm didn't hurt any more... and I noticed Hi-Tap's arm was now bleeding, in the same spot mine had been cut. I kept at the ropes, and wouldn't you know it, sliced the back of my hand. Once again, that odd tingle, and Twinkle Toes' hand was sliced open. Didn't take me long to figure out what was going on, so after that I didn't worry about cutting myself to get free. By the time I was done, the Corsican Twits each had cuts galore, and I was high-footing it out of there.

After a while I noticed that, while I didn't get off on those two fighting over me, I did start to miss all the expensive presents. Well, apparently I can't be hurt now, so I decided to rob a jewelry store. After the guard shot me three times (resulting in two customers and a cashier getting injured), I walked out with a few thousand in cash and a whole lot of sparklies. Now I run around as Rebound. I signed up with dexniJ, just until I can get a handle on this supervillain gig.

- - - - - - -

New team, if anybody cares to continue this:

Stewart Brubaker doesn't know who he swiped the iPhone from -- some guy in the mall left it unattended for a minute, and Stewie ran off with it. But he's pretty sure the guy must be some powerful villain type, because Stewie discovered that when he activated some of the apps on the iPhone, people would "fuzz" into existence right in front of him, ready to do his bidding.

The Apps are five super-powered individuals, each summoned by a different iPhone app and bound to obey the user's commands. These don't have to be real apps, though if you want to make that the case, more power to you.

I'd offer to join in, but I'm guessing you wouldn't be keen on that, prior knowledge and all. Still, I've been enjoying reading the story boards and am looking forward to see how things progress.

I'd offer to join in, but I'm guessing you wouldn't be keen on that, prior knowledge and all.

Still, I've been enjoying reading the story boards and am looking forward to see how things progress.

I'd offer to join in, but I'm guessing you wouldn't be keen on that, prior knowledge and all.

Still, I've been enjoying reading the story boards and am looking forward to see how things progress.

I'd offer to join in, but I'm guessing you wouldn't be keen on that, prior knowledge and all.

Still, I've been enjoying reading the story boards and am looking forward to see how things progress.

I'd offer to join in, but I'm guessing you wouldn't be keen on that, prior knowledge and all.

Still, I've been enjoying reading the story boards and am looking forward to see how things progress.