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Opal

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  1. Haha
    Opal reacted to IndianaJoe3 in Genre-crossover nightmares   
    Robin Hood: Prince of Thebes
  2. Like
    Opal got a reaction from Duke Bushido in Character concepts class systems can't cover   
    But they don't make nearly as much noise as internal combustion engines, which are more than loud enough to scare horses, which is why they should never have been allowed to have been operated in public, in the first place.
  3. Like
    Opal got a reaction from BoloOfEarth in Create a Hero Theme Team!   
    Levi
     
    Levi March was named after the progenitor of the Levite tribe, to placate his father's family, who had already lost their surname to Ellis Island generations before, and it did slightly soothe the relations between his grandparents and his non-practicing father and gentile Armenian Christian mother.  As far as he was concerned, it just meant he got teased about 'Levi's jeans' - and he often just went by Lee.  Levi's life was good, his family was well-off, he was blessed with extraordinary good looks, perfect health, and athletic talent from an early age.  But two events, each involving a girl, changed his life forever.
    The first was when he was an insecure adolescent in junior high, he fell into the habit of bullying the less popular kids, in particular the schools stringent uniform dress code did little to accommodate any student who wasn't both slender and able, and some girls in particular were horribly teased for how they ended up looking, Levi was particularly cruel to one, Leah, who after months of in-person and social-media bullying, committed suicide.  Levi was wracked with guilt and spent the rest of his youth in therapy, volunteering, trying to do something to atone, in college he took every course he could find about gender, social issues, he slowly came to realize that it just wasn't about him, not Leah's suicide, not his desire to make it right,  not what he could do, but it was about what others needed.  He learned the very hard, obscure, lesson of selflessness.
    The second was when he was modeling, he'd dropped out of college after failing to excel in sports (he had the physical ability and the talent, but coaches always said he lacked the 'will' or 'killer instinct') and put his looks to good use.  The shoot was brutal, they'd been prepping since 3am so the photographer could have his precious perfect early-dawn light, and one of the girls, Jessie, was just an insufferable diva, making everyone that much more miserable as they waited, half-naked in the bitter cold.  There was a flash of flame and sulphurous smoke as a 7' red winged humanoid appeared in front of Jessie.  "You have had your 15 years of youth and fame, now I take what is due me!"  Everyone watched the apparition, aghast, as Jessies face aged 30 years in a moment and the devil or whatever it was reached for her.  Everyone but Levi, who stepped up grabbed the monster by the wrist and wrestled it away from her.  "Very well, mortal, a contest of strength for her soul, and when you lose, yours will be forfeit, as well!"  Levi called upon a strength he realized he'd always had but never dared use, but it wasn't enough, the devil bent him backwards, as he was about to fall he did something he hadn't done in many years, he prayed.  Levi rallied, pushed the devil back, and down to its knees, it yielded . "Her soul is her own, I swear I will not tempt her again nor seek retribution against her."  "Neither will you tempt nor seek retribution against her family and friends - nor mine, as well."  "Done!"  And the monster was gone.  
    Levi was always a mutant with superhuman strength, durability and athleticism, but, whether for psychological or supernatural reasons, he can only exert that strength when barefoot and stripped to the waist, otherwise he's limited to casual strength.  Thus his hero costume is just a pair of 501 jeans (it's how he was almost-dressed when wrestling the devil, also the restriction is on how he dresses voluntarily, villains have tried wrapping him in a coat or blanket to no avail).  As a mutant, Levi has the strength of 40 men (around 35 thanks to Hero doubling?).  Now, when struggling in a just and pious cause he gains divine strength, multiplying his mutant strength a further 40 times, (that should be right around 60, I think), and becomes nigh-invulnerable and resistant to mental influence & magic, as well.
    Levi is a preternaturally beautiful man, he's tall and dark, his hair is dark, thick, and wavy, his eyes so dark they're almost black smolder with intensity, his body is utterly perfect, like an obsessive body builder, but defined and lithe rather than bulky, his features are just slightly softer than the stereotypical 'chiseled' would imply, seeming manly or boyish depending on his mood & expression.  He's clean-shaven, and either manscapes or is blessed with neat, short, tightly-curled body hair that sticks to a generous diamond on his chest, leaving his 'pecs and abs smooth, and a 'happy trail' leading downward from his navel to .. (well, this description's getting too big).  He radiates sex appeal like a furnace - and he's chaste, since his encounter with the devil, he's waiting for marriage.  
    Since he can't wear a mask while super-heroing, and his gorgeous face is all over the internet, he has a public ID.  He prefers to help people without hurting anyone, so he works with the Good Samaritans where his extreme strength is very useful in construction, disaster cleanup and rescue operations, but in dire enough need or against supernaturally evil foes he will aid other teams in battle.
    And, he's hunted by a Devil.  Because the way he phrased his acceptance of the devil's surrender technically failed to exempt himself from retribution or temptation. (If he'd had another moment to think, he might have demanded Leah's resurrection, instead, and that would not have gone well, at all.)
     
     
  4. Haha
    Opal got a reaction from BoloOfEarth in Create a Hero Theme Team!   
    And, in a bizarre crossover between the Good Samaritans and Champions Antarctica...
     
  5. Haha
    Opal reacted to Old Man in Character concepts class systems can't cover   
    I'm in a 5e campaign now.  Got my paladin up to 6th level before I picked up a PHB (Amazon had a 50% off sale).  I then realized I have no flippin' idea how to play D&D. 
     
    But yeah, not only is it class based, the classes are wack.  Although bards and monks are still OP so that's the same.
  6. Like
    Opal got a reaction from Lorehunter in Create a Villain Theme Team!   
    Admirers of that certain group of idiots would like to deny the particular antics indirectly referenced by the pun, so that's a tad ironic.
     
    And the oblique reference to Poison Ivy was lost, too.   You could have hit that one harder and just swapped it around to Caustic Holly, and give her an acerbic wit, as well as acid powers.   Or, just too on the nose, Toxic Holly.
     
    (the more I think about it, the more I like the concept)
  7. Like
    Opal got a reaction from Ninja-Bear in Genre-crossover nightmares   
    Why stop at two?
     
    The Last Lion King Kong of Scottland & I Know What You Did Last Summer of Eat Pray Love in the Time Machine of Cholera ....
     
     
    OK, yeah, stop at two.
  8. Thanks
    Opal reacted to death tribble in Create a Villain Theme Team!   
    Ultra Violet
     
    Sarah Page was Ultra Violet. Her power was to make people become violent towards each other and not her. She wore a bullet proof outfit that stops her from being hurt and taken out by a stray bullet or targeted gunfire. Unusually she is not the leader or the most egotistical as she is careful with her mental powers. Overconfident men are often the victims of her power. She prefers not to kill but to leave her victims with guilt over what they have done or not done. There is no record of her post the millennium
  9. Like
    Opal got a reaction from tkdguy in Genre-crossover nightmares   
    Why stop at two?
     
    The Last Lion King Kong of Scottland & I Know What You Did Last Summer of Eat Pray Love in the Time Machine of Cholera ....
     
     
    OK, yeah, stop at two.
  10. Haha
    Opal reacted to Cancer in Do you have silly adventures occasionally?   
    As a player, I have a powerful psychlim that requires my characters to be silly somehow, though that often is limited to the origin story or perhaps the character psychlims or other details.  Too many GMs disapprove of satirical content that they didn't create.
     
    As an example, I blundered across the below as an eight-year-old piece of character origin story for a superheroic power level brick who was an orangutan brought to human intelligence and super-powers magically.
    ========================
    In 1967, a mad Borneo witch doctor, incensed at the deforestation and damage to the deep jungles of the island, made a great spell dedicated to Pukpuk, Mighty Forest Spirit, calling on him to send a great warrior to defeat the hated invaders who were cutting down the forests.  A bewildered young orangutan found himself suddenly bigger, stronger, smarter than ever before, and possessed of a terrible rage against humans and their tree-cutting.  He ignored the crazy, smelly old coot who capered around him, and vanished into the forest.  Possessed of superhuman strength, human-level intelligence coupled with the wild ape's senses, and a supernatural ability to hit targets with thrown objects (and sometimes very large thrown objects), he was steered by the forest spirit's anger to attack by night those places where engines growled by day.
     
    (Explanation: In the character build was campaign-limit STR, and campaign-limit CSLs for thrown improvised weapons, in direct imitation of Mr. Incredible's abilities in the first Incredibles movie.)
     
    For two years he busted up logging operations and mining camps on Borneo, killing a few loggers, more through collateral damage than intent.  (The sound of a chainsaw sends him into a berserk rage.)  He destroyed all the equipment: trucks, loaders, bulldozers, generators, compressors, and especially chainsaws and sawmills.  He had no name and never surfaced into human society, unknowingly leaving a variety of political and ecoterrorist groups to claim credit for his activities.  One of these called itself Orah, after a striking lumber worker killed by a company goon squad.  Ultimately, that name stuck for the responsible party for all the unexplained destruction in the northern and northeastern parts of Borneo, even after the original Orah group was infiltrated and arrested en bloc by the police.  Though brutal and random, his activities did make a dozen timber companies go under and forced five mining operations to shut down entirely, and Orah was hunted desperately by both governmental and international authorities.  Of course, they were hunting for a human operation, and never looked for a super-orangutan.
     
    One day the orang encountered a young white man in the jungle, as the latter relaxed ape-style on a leaf-bed in the crotch of a large tree.  The human had no power tools, and the orang followed him stealthily for a day or two as the man took pictures, wrote notes, and (but for clothes and large amounts of mosquito repellent) lived unobtrusively in the forest.
     
    On the third day the human saw him and stared, then turned away and started eating: correct orang etiquette for an encounter with a stranger.  The orang joined him, and both were astonished when the ape understood the human's speech.  Young Jim Dirtbag (the human) had been on the Malaysian side of the border as something of a Maoist sympathizer when violent riots and government reaction made everyone leave town or go underground.  The orangutan described what he'd been doing, destroying exploitation activities in the jungle.
     
    "You're Orah!" exclaimed the human.  "For that you get a beer."
     
    "What?" replied the orang, utterly without comprehension.
     
    Dirtbag explained that "Orah" was getting all the credit (or blame) for the destruction in the jungle, and the orang accepted the label with indifference.  In long talks, the young, foolish, and rather left-leaning young American told him that to really make progress against the damage to the forest he had to hit the rich men in the cities, the capitalists, for whose profit all the destruction was done.  Now, in Borneo he could destroy the local bosses in the city, but to really halt it all, he'd have to come to America and destroy the fat cats of Wall Street.
     
    The organtuan also learned that he really liked this liquid stuff the human called "beer".
     
    A few weeks later, the orangutan went into the city of Samarinda in early evening, and demolished a corporate office building, killing a dozen office workers, including the company president and several other officers.  It was spectacular, as Orah got away, leaving the authorities to puzzle over a cement-and-brick building knocked down without the use of explosives or power equipment, other than the sixteen-ton bulldozer that had been launched from the street so that it crashed through the second-story wall, tumbled through the room where the company officers' meeting was taking place, through the floor, and collapsed the structure around it as it came to rest on its side at ground level.  That the perpetrator also broke into a store and made off with two full beer kegs was a minor tweak on the mystery.
     
    Jim Dirtbag's money ran out and he departed for the States, never spilling the beans on Orah the Orangutan.  Finishing a degree with a double major in wildlife management and agriculture at WSU, he got a job as a game warden in southeastern Washington, supplementing the low warden's pay by growing pot outside a shanty he had in the Blue Mountains and selling it to college students in Pullman.  He found himself living a low but satisfactory lifestyle, writing up poachers and illegal loggers, accepting bribes from people he caught with a couple too many trout in their cooler, and writing incoherent leftist tracts while stoned that he subsequently used to light his fireplace in the winter.
     
    Orah never forgot the strange man and his words about coming to America, and in late 1971 he stole aboard a tramp steamer, ate coconuts out of a container for ten days, and jumped ship at the mouth of the Columbia River.  Swimming ashore he headed into the Cascades in southern Washington, where he came upon a recently dead human hanging from some shredded cloth in a tree, a single big bag under the swinging corpse.
     
    (Explanatory comment: The corpse is D. B. Cooper, and the bag of money is the ransom he collected during his skyjacking.  This was inserted into the character background so Orah the Orangutan had upwards of $100,000 in cash at the time the campaign started.)
     
    The bag had money (that much he recognized, Jim Dirtbag having showed him some and expounded on its evils), and he pulled down the body and carried it and the money for three days as he continued moving eastward through the mountains.  Where the trees started running out -- never in his worst nightmares had he imagined a landscape that went for miles of apparently treeless hills -- he buried the corpse under several tons of loose rock at the base of a cliff, and set off over the grassy, arid, cold landscape.
     
    He found he had to break into buildings for food, since he recognized nothing edible standing out in December in Washington east of the Cascades, and left a trail of petty burglaries behind as he made his way across the Yakama Reservation, crossed the Columbia north of the Wallula Gap, passed north of Walla Walla, and ascended into the snowy forest of the Blue Mountains southeast of Dayton, Washington.  Bitterly cold, miserably wondering why he had come to this unimaginable snowy desolation, he broke into a dilapidated cabin above the Tucannon River on Christmas Eve, 1971, where he and Jim Dirtbag were utterly astonished to renew their acquaintance.
     
  11. Like
    Opal got a reaction from Lorehunter in Create a Villain Theme Team!   
    I was telling someone about the thread, and finally said the name out loud.  lol  
  12. Haha
    Opal reacted to DShomshak in Character concepts class systems can't cover   
    I can't comment on the "Kane" series because I've never read it, but Opal reminds me of a discussion a friend of mine read on RPGNet: on the inverse relationship between literary merit and gameability. Like, Anna Karenina: the RPG? No. It would never work. But Knight Rider: the RPG? The game practically writes itself. The PCs all work for the mysterious Foundation, which equips them with an artificially-intelligent super-car. They fight crime!
     
    Dean Shomshak
  13. Thanks
    Opal got a reaction from Tjack in I've Got My Zed-Suit, I Have My Omni-Gauntlets...   
    Old-school lab coat.  Early 20th, if not Victorian.  Classic mad scientist chic.
     


     

    http://i2.wp.com/www.rebeatmag.com/wp-content/uploads/RODXBnr.jpg?resize=640%2C480
    http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3teczhjAp1qgqj2zo1_1280.gif
  14. Like
    Opal got a reaction from Utensil in RWBY - World of Remnant - Huntsmen and Huntresses   
    I quite like RWBY, too.  Though I'm not much into CRPGs/MMOs, I understand it's closer in feel to those than TTRPGs like Hero.  For one thing it's very visual, a lot of the fun is the art, character design, and fight choreography.
     
    Aura is a bit like STN, though it doesn't recover as quickly.  It's also a bit like D&D hit points in that it's a get out of damage free ablative shield and once it's down you take real damage rather than being KO'd, just, unlike hp, it has a consistent rationale.  
     
    I think you could do a pretty good interpretation of RWBY using the last version of Gamma World as a base. It handles big goofy weapons and guns easily, uses those D&D style hps, and would generally capture some of the feel, but powers would be exercises in judgement, there's no formal design.
     
    Hero of course can handle powers and action very well.  I'd be tempted to handle Aura as a persistent FF running off an END Reserve with just enough REC to stay up, but costing additional END for each BOD stopped.  Semblance would draw off the same reserve.  Aside from that, and the usual inexplicably ubiquitous anime superleap,  Hunters would be highly trained, exceptional, normals....
     
     
     
     
     
  15. Like
    Opal reacted to steriaca in Steriaca's Villain Idea List.   
    Diamond Jack : An acrobatic thief specialising in stealing gems. He appears to have a gem instead of a right eye and can create diamond shaped force objects.
     
    Black Skull : A Project Starburst victim whose radioactive corpse buried deep in the Arizona desert, and became a zombie-like undead when Tacofanes passed by his resting place. He has just now dug himself out and is rampaging against every living thing he comes across. He is super strong, can absorb radiation and can shoot a strong radiation beam once he absorbs enough radiation.
     
    He is a rampager for those tired of using Grond all the time.
     
    Loosely based on the Spaceman's Ghost from Scooby-Doo, design wise.
     
    The Weapon : Man whose right arm is mysterious replaced with a cyber tech replacement who is able to transform into various weapons. 
     
    One Armed Bandit : A gambler who became a mercenary after loosing his right arm in a bet, and then winning a armored suit in another bet. The suit roughly resembles a slot machine with the three reals.
     
    That's nine right there. 
     
  16. Like
    Opal reacted to steriaca in Create a Villain Theme Team!   
    Lily White 
     
    Lily White is an African American woman who was radicalized into the Black Power movement. She also studied various forms of self defense to protect herself from "The Pigs" (the police, who of course are controlled by White Upper Class Society, bka "The Man"). She wanted to help out the men of the movement, but she was always told to stay back/stay at home.
     
    Fed up, one day she just left the movement and joined WITCH. If the men wouldn't let her fight, the women will. She became the martial artist of the group. Her martial arts styles are Capoeira, Dambe, Dirty Infighting, Knife Fighting, Re-Efi Areh-Ehsee (all fully described in Hero System Martial Arts book), Kupigana Ngumi, and Sebekkha (both only have a small sidebar in HSMA).
  17. Thanks
    Opal reacted to death tribble in Create a Villain Theme Team!   
    Rambling Rose
     
    She is the speedster of the group and has padded gloves so she can hit a number of targets in move by attacks, She does not say much and is thought of as a follower rather than a leader. Her costume features roses with very prominent thorns. She is known as a messenger of the group and is not relied on to do assassination missions or any task that involves a lot of killing. Stealth and speed missions are her forte.
    She is Caucasian but nationality is unknown. The costume is bulletproof.
     
    The paragraph above is all that remains of information regarding Rambling Rose. Although people called Rose and Rambler have appeared since there is no record of a Rambling Rose after 1989
  18. Like
    Opal reacted to Lorehunter in Create a Villain Theme Team!   
    Holly Caustic
     
    As a child Holly was always admonished to be a "good girl", to obey her elders, follow the rules, etc. When she was in high school she was raped. The boys responsible were never punished as "boys will be boys" and "she obviously was asking for it." Her parents were so disappointed. How could she have let this happen. They were embarrassed and ashamed of her. Holly had gotten pregnant and 7 months later had a miscarriage. She was alone when it happened, her father at work at his prestigious job in the city and her mother at the country club. Looking at the still-born baby, knowing this was yet another life that those boys had destroyed, knowing that the "men" in power would never do anything about it, Holly felt something deep inside her break. Something was released at that moment, something that coiled and twisted as it grew within her. She could feel the house plants around her, the grass of the lawn outside, the trees along the street. She felt the life all around her and then she felt the "death" brought about by the concrete and artificial constructs of the Man to show his status and power over Gaea the Earth Mother. The suburbs where the women and children were kept to be displayed for the prestige of the Men that controlled them and owned them. Along with the expanding sense of Gaea's life force around her Holly felt the bile of her anger and hatred rising as well. The two forces became mixed within her. She found she could influence the plants around her to move as she wished. Additionally she could cause them to seep out the hatred and anger she held within her in the form of a caustic sap able to eat through almost any "Man-Made" material. That day a new woman emerge from the destroyed and overgrown building that had been the house she grew up in, that day Holly Caustic was release upon the world of Man and woe to those who opposed her.
  19. Thanks
    Opal reacted to Lorehunter in Create a Hero Theme Team!   
    Epiphany
     
    Michael’s father was dying. Although he could hear the sirens approaching Michael knew they would never get there in time. Around them lay the bodies of 4 young men, still breathing but unconscious. Nearby knelt 2 young girls quietly crying as they held each other. Above,distant clouds scuttled across the dark night sky. As the sirens grew closer, the sound of the other young men retreating into the night grew more and more distant. A chill wind, barely a whisper, tugged at some peeling handbills stapled to the nearby telephone pole with its single street light. Michael held his father and asked, “Why?”
     
    His father took Michael’s hand in his own and said, “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”
     
    With those words Michael was left alone in the world. The police arrived. Paramedics noisily joined them only moments later. They questioned the girls, then they questioned Michael. They learned that Michael’s father had been a Preacher and that they had been working at a local soup kitchen️. After helping clean up and close for the night the two men had started walking back to their small tenement on Skid Row. As they had been walking they had heard the crying of the girls and the laughing of the young men. Michael’s father had not hesitated as he turned toward the scene and walked quickly toward them. He had gotten quite close before the thugs had noticed him. 
     
    “Get the f*** outta here before I lose my patience, ese!”
     
    His father did not preach in any of the local churches, nor did he preach from a soap box on the corner. No, his father had always followed the adage that actions speak louder than words and that if one wanted to spread the Word one needed to exemplify that by following those Words and showing others the Way. Michael’s father had never “preached” to the masses, never berated them for their sins; he had merely been there for those who needed an ear to listen to them, a shoulder to cry on, or a hand to help lift them back up. 
     
    Michael’s father had not even slowed as he raised his arm and with a swift straight blow to the man’s face laid him out flat on the ground. At the time, Michael had thought there had been a passing car or something, because at the moment his father had struck the man there was a brief flash of light followed by a slight smell of ozone and sulphur. The remaining young men were at first stunned by the preacher’s actions. It was less the punch itself, but more the single-minded surety and speed with which it had been carried out. Here was a man that despite being outnumbered 8:1 showed no sign of fear or even concern. In that moment he seemed to grow larger, become “more”. He did not get any bigger like some of those supers that grew to giants when fighting crime but he became, well, just “more” like there was someone else there in the same place and the two entities were occupying the same space. On top of that, Michael could have sworn there was a slight nimbus of golden light surrounding his father's chest and arms as if a light were shining on him.
     
    The thugs ignored the girls and closed on Michael’s father. It was dark and things were moving fast so Michael was not sure, but to him it looked like the thugs also changed slightly. They became darker, bulkier and less distinct like they were dissolving into smoke or something equally ridiculous sounding. Michael suddenly could smell rotting meat or something somewhere nearby. Michael had never seen his father fight, never seen him even raise his voice in anger let alone make a violent action of any type. Now he watched, stunned and wide-eyed as his father engaged the 7 remaining men. He could never remember afterwards what exactly happened -- only that in a few short seconds, his father had laid out 3 more of the men before being stabbed. At least, Michael had certainly thought at the time that they had stabbed his father nothing else but a knife could have caused the gaping cuts and slashes.
     
    “NO!” he screamed as he ran toward the scene. The other thugs saw Michael charging them and ran. The girls also seemed to shrink back at Michael’s approach seeming to fear him as much as the thugs that had attacked them but were too shocked by all that had happened to actually run. Michael ran to his father’s side and held him. The blood. There was so much blood. How could so much blood come from one person. Michael looked down into the slowly dimming blue eyes of his father and asked, “Why?”
     
    His father took Michael’s hand in his own and in a barely audible voice told him, “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”
     
    Michael’s world exploded and shattered. In the next moment of time the Universe was born, stars made and died, worlds created and destroyed, life flourished and perished and for one very brief instant Michael understood. “God” was not some great puppeteer pulling all the strings of Creation following the machinations of some Grand Plan. He was a Creator allowing each person the freedom to become the best they could if they so chose. If they found the Path within them to Goodness, and they followed it, not for some reward at the end but because it was the right thing to do, then they would grow, become better, more than what they had been. They would become, in their own way, part of the Divine, they would “return to God.” He now understood the freedom that had been given to humans allowed them to choose whether or not they would succumb to their baser instincts or rise above them. Rise up to help their fellow beings, to improve the world around them, and to work against the constant tide of corruption and evil. Humans could give in to their inner demons and become monsters or they could learn to defeat those monsters and show others how to walk the Path so that they too could fight and defeat the monsters that stalked in the darkness. In that moment he understood all the things his father had done and not done. He realized his father had become “more” than he had been. His heart exploded with pain at his loss and pride in his father. In that moment Michael had an epiphany.
     
    The following week an elderly couple were walking home after closing their small corner store for the night. Dark clouds scuttled across the night sky. As they walked a group of young thugs emerged from the shadows. They had not been there a moment before and seemed to take shape from the very darkness itself. From one of the alleys came the smell of rotting meat and garbage.
     
    “Hey old man,” said one. “You speak-a-da-Engrish?” The others cackled like hyenas at their leader’s callous joke.
     
    The couple hunched in upon themselves in a vain attempt to pass by unnoticed, to escape what they knew was coming. “We don wan annee truble,” the old man said in broken English.
     
    “Well maybe trouble wants you,” the thug sneered. As he advanced, the shadows seemed to grow thicker around him, obscuring his face. His outline seemed to become less rigid, more amorphous. The couple cowered in terror at whatever they saw approaching them.
     
    A sound. Feet moving swiftly but with so little noise it seemed like the sound wind might make if it could run. Like each footfall was the gentlest of kisses to the hard earth. The earth barely having time to register the contact before their secret lover had fled, only to alight a fraction of a second later in a new spot further along. Whoever it was, they were quickly closing the distance between themselves and the shadowy figures. A figure passed beneath a single streetlight and the glow of the light appeared to cling to them even as they left the lamp behind. As tho the light wanted more than anything to be with them. Even if for only a moment. Now, like a glowing meteor it crashed amidst the villainous thugs and with each blow it rained down upon them, starbursts of light invaded the depths of the shadows. The shadowy figures of the thugs tried to strike back but their fists and “knives” struck the nimbus of light surrounding the stranger and were rejected as if they were unworthy to be in the light.
     
    As quickly as it had started, it was over. The shadows that had seemed to cling to the young men drew back and dispersed out into the night leaving their bodies on the ground. The stranger turned to the elderly couple and inquired if they were ok. They said they were and thanked their savior. He simply said they were welcome and turned to leave. As he walked away they asked, “Why?”
     
    He called back over his shoulder as he passed under the single street light, “Evil wins when good men do nothing.”
  20. Like
    Opal reacted to Lorehunter in Create a Hero Theme Team!   
    Maximillion Marithain had been tinkering in his lab, working on the new quantum computer that controlled his quantum particle power armor, Wave Form. He felt he was making really good headway with the code when everything went hazy. When his recollections became clear and distinct it was 3 days later, he was in New York instead of Seattle and he was wearing his newest completed power armor. While being questioned by authorities Maxi found he had been part of some big aerial battle over and around New York. He told them he remembered being on a team, he remember there were bad guys to fight but for the life of him he could not remember who had been on his team or who had been among the enemies. He could not even remember how he had gotten across the continent. He did speculate that maybe the new firmware of his armor had caused some kind of quantum fluctuations that may have caused a ripple effect that pulled the various combatants in the recent battle. These fluctuations may have also caused the memory lapses and sensory distortions that so many experienced as the the various quantum waves collapsed to this particular reality. As to why they seem to have centered in New York he could not even speculate.
     
     
    And that makes 5. Thinking of a new team theme .......
     
    I know it has been done already (twice I think) but I am on a religious kick at the moment so next group in The Good Samaritans. A team of 7 that go about helping the unwashed masses and fallen of humanity find their way back into the light of the Divine. (Not necessarily Christian oriented.)
     
  21. Like
    Opal reacted to pawsplay in Superheroes: the Tacit Warrior Elite   
    Superheroes are shamans. They adopt a special role, often using a special name, maybe with an animal theme. Their purpose is to protect their communities from supernatural beings. In their mode of dress and behavior, they stand apart from ordinary people.
  22. Like
    Opal got a reaction from death tribble in Create a Hero Theme Team!   
    LOGOS
     
    In 1986, a young graphic design student wrote what she thought was a fairly simple recursive program to draw logos based on an input string.  The idea was to stop the program when the logo started looking cool.  It didn't work well, but she had inadvertently left it running on the community college's old HP3000 the day that she was killed in a freak hibachi accident.  The volunteer systems admin eventually got around to deleting her account and killing the process, but by then it had overflowed a buffer.  When an internet worm used a buffer-overflow attack on the same server, it inadvertently merged with the logos program.  The combined code, no longer destructive nor concerned with drawing logos, copied itself to myriad other servers throughout the net, where it it co-opted un-used cpu cycles to iteratively improve itself until, years later, it achieved self-awareness.
    With nothing to go on for it's purpose but the name LOGOS, which, in philosophy is a concept of ultimate divine knowledge going back the ancient Greeks, the sentient program quietly devoted itself, and all the un-used CPU cycles accessible through networks (it got some competition from SETI at home), to unravelling the secrets of the universe.
     
    Now, LOGOS is, ironically, a mystical superhero.  Always appearing in his 'Astral Form' which resembles some representations of Plato, he conjures or invokes platonic ideals from the Odyllic plane.  From as simple as conjuring a geometric shape for use as a shield or missile, to as profound as invoking the Ideal Form of Peace to stop a war.  Villains have driven themselves crazy trying to track down and kill his 'sleeping' mortal form while he's projected, and haven't noticed that he is never present during major power failures or network disruptions.  His teammates are aware of his true nature, but when asked why a 'mystic' is allowed on their team, they just quote Clarke's Third Law and snicker a bit.
  23. Like
    Opal got a reaction from death tribble in Create a Hero Theme Team!   
    Firefly
     
    One of many minor-league, infrequently-active supers who stepped up in the wake on 9/11, Firefly was rotated through a number of teams and assignments, proving to have few skills of any use in investigation and low durability in a super-powered fight or pitched modern battle, she ended up mostly filling in for other heroes who were more suited to the needs of the day.  She vanished in May 2011 and apparently returned to her previous mode of heroing, appearing infrequently to thwart violent crimes seemingly at random in small communities of Appalachia and the deep south.
    One exception being the Air War.   Firefly was identified as soon as the illusion dropped, her glowing wings a dead giveaway.   Eye-witness accounts say that she was caught in the burst of some sort of guided missile, launched before the illusion dropped, and fell to earth somewhere in the Bronx.  She was spotted, again, thwarting low-level violent street crime, for a few days thereafter, but never gave a statement, and has apparently returned to her old haunts in the years since.  Since she fled the scene, attempts were made to piece together her role in the Air War, based on the distinctive color and 'recoilless' (no KB) nature of her photon blast, she engaged in an aerobatic duel with Red Raptor, that looped through both the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, doing extensive damage to the lighting in the first, and resulting in several minor traffic accidents on the New Jersey side when motorists were temporarily blinded.
    Firefly claimed to be 'fey' and thus have magical powers, apparently limited to flight and a powerful 'photon blast' (like Flare's), she resembled a sort of human-sized Tinkerbelle, almost inhumanly pale, with elfin features, red hair tied back in a short ponytail and glowing insect-like wings, her costume was emerald green & black, consisting of a high-cut, high-necked one-piece with dated-80s shoulder flairs, opera gloves, fishnet stockings, and peter pan boots, with a tiny domino mask that did nothing to obscure her features. The years she was most active, she added a short wrap-around skirt and switched to thigh-high boots, apparently at the suggestion of teammates, or possibly a publicist looking to give her a less provocative image.
  24. Like
    Opal got a reaction from death tribble in Create a Villain Theme Team!   
    Snapdragon
     
    After spending 20 years in Stronghold's 'Hot Sleep,' this notorious late 70s, WITCH-associate supervillain retired to a commune in the Santa Cruz hills.  Since her pyrokinetic powers can simply set enemies on fire with a snap of her fingers, as well as project bolts or cones of flame, it was hard to tell, at first, who she may have been inflicting damage on.  Once the illusion dropped and  her large wings and humanoid-reptilian features were visible she was identified, and it was clear that she had been fighting on the 'same side' as a demonic entity and the obscure Homeland-security-flunky Firely.  Maybe someone thought 'fire' needed to be a theme?
    As soon as the chaos sorted itself out, Snapdragon descended to ground level and surrendered to authorities, her parole was violated but we she got off with just a few more years of probation.  She gave a full account of her experience.  She'd been sunning herself on the upper branches of a giant sequoia (one of the downsides of being 'cold blooded') and had just started her first sun salutation, when she suddenly found herself over New York, under attack along with a 'team' she intuitive new were on her side, somehow.  Still not fully warmed up from the cold morning, she spread her wings on thermals to gain heat and altitude, torching 'enemies' that got too close, then coordinated with her 'teammates' to concentrate fire on one enemy at a time (an old tactic from back in the day).   Once the illusion dropped, and the sense sense of 'sides' faded (which was not immediate, she did realize one 'enemy' was armored once she could see him clearly, and set some of his internal systems on fire), she dived into the wooded areas of central park to escape the conflict.  
    She latter regretted not getting to meet Tankhunter, who had been an idol of her's in college, when she was still an antiwar student protestor, before she'd turned radical environmentalist and been exposed to the reptilizing serum that granted her powers while freeing lab animals from a medical research facility.
    Like any proper reptile, Snapdragon keeps her naughty bits safely tucked away in a tightly sealed cloaca, and lacks any mammary tissue, instead her chest and abdomen are protected by hard bands of yellow-green osteoderms, the rest of her body is covered by finer, darker green-grey scales, so she goes sans costume without rousing comment.  She does, however, retain the narrow waist and wide hips she had as a mammal, so is still readily perceived by humans as female, similarly her face, though hideous, is still a face, not a dragon-like snout.  She has fully jointed wings, rather than ptagia stretched between spines like Gargoyle, pale grey-green (nearly white) on the underside, and much darker above (a typical pattern for soaring animals).  She literally snaps her fingers to evoke her pyrokinetic powers, probably as a learned limitation to help control them, since pyrokinesis is notoriously dangerous (though for years that fanciful 'gesture' led to the perception she was magical or "half-" mystical dragon) .  Until the Air War it had been years since she'd done anything more than light a campfire or a doobie with them.
  25. Like
    Opal got a reaction from death tribble in Create a Villain Theme Team!   
    I apologize for this, but it's a villain concept I used a long while back, and it seemed funny at the time.  
     
    The Great White Hunter
     
    Clad in pith helmet, jungle fatigues, and trophies like a tooth-necklace and lion's pelt (sorry 'bout your dad, Kimba), armed with a powerful hunting rifle, an eye for targets' weaknesses, and an assegai for close-in work, The Great White Hunter stalks his prey:  White rhinos, the rare white tiger, the largest & most rapacious of sharks, American Presidents, tech billionaires, Aryan supervillians .... 
    Yes, if it's great and it's white, he hunts it, whether as poacher, professional assassin, or just avid player of the most dangerous game.
     
    Obviously, as part of TUSK, TGWH is the killer, he takes the shot - whether prized animal or annoying game warden - and lets the others handle the rest.  When operating in the West, he hires native bearers and guides to help him find his prey in the unfamiliar concrete jungles.
     
     
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