The Nobodies (An Under-Dog Superhero Adventure)

[Sir Lurksalot]

THE CHAMPIONS OF JUSTICE

Forged in the fires of the Second World War, there exists an organization of paragons, defenders and HEROES that have defended the Earth from the forces of EVIL for the past eighty years. Comprised of Earth (and some other places)'s mightiest, brightest and most courageous, these CHAMPIONS are the hope and inspiration of countless billions across the globe, raining PURE, UNADULTERATED JUSTICE down upon the wicked where ever they may rear their ugly heads and safeguarding our homeworld!

This is the story... of a group of idiots, screw-ups and losers who are most definitely not the people we were just talking about.

No, THIS is the sordid saga of...

A Bunch of Fuckin' Nobodies.

Alright, so, therein lies the basic premise: We are a dysfunctional bunch of D-list Superhero misfits probably in way over our goddamn heads in a world that doesn't exactly expect much from us. To be honest, I'm kinda making this up as I go along but I figure to start, we could have some sort of crisis that forces us to band together when the mainstream heroes are incapacitated and screw things up so perfectly that we somehow manage to save the world.

Now, at it's heart, this is a humourous riff on the whole superhero genre... but that doesn't mean I don't want character depth; chances are, if you're on the bottom-wrung of the superhero hierarchy (and as such, aren't raking in government funds and merchandising profits), you probably have bills to pay or other things going on in your life that you'd have to balance with dressing up in tights and getting punched in the face a lot. Substance is what I crave, make your characters make sense or, at the very least if you decide to go full ham, don't overdo it and turn this into Teen Titans Go.

For instance, here's a few examples of the kind of stuff I'd like to see;

-Maybe you're a former henchman who decided the awesome dental plan was decidedly less than that when you realized how frequently some guy in bright red pajamas made you use it.

-Maybe you're a washed-up, former member of some universally-beloved Teen-Hero squad that grew up and got stuck in a dead-end retail job, reminiscing about the glory days and forcing a smile for dimwitted customers because rent's coming up and you need that damned commission.

-Maybe you're just a naive, but well-meaning alien with a heart of gold (and nuke) that shouldn't be left unsupervised for any reason.

Sky's the limit, so go nuts. Just... uhh... keep the arbitrary edginess to a minimum, if you wouldn't mind. I mean, if you're heart's set on some thin, waifish boy with a massive sword, spiky hair and a tragic paaaast, I won't stop you, but that's not really what we're aiming for here and I may or may not make it my mission in life to turn your character's very existence into a running gag.

Now, all that aside, some ground rules-

BEHOLD, THE DEMANDS OF HE WHO LURKS.

1) Don't be a dick.
2) Don't be a dick.
3) Keep the OOC chatter where it belongs.
4) Romance is allowed, just keep 'er PG-13 and fade to black if you have to.
5) Regarding Rule 4, if you're gonna get all lovey-dovey, I'd prefer if it actually occurred naturally over the course of the IC instead of coming screaming out of left-field. There are few things in this world that are quite as insipid and painful to read as a badly forced romance.
6) Arguments between players should be taken to PMs. If you want mediation, ask for it. Start a flame-war in my OOC and I'll be dispensing boot-fucks out the door like some kinda disgruntled Santa Claus.
7) Mid-High Casual writing, if you'd be so kind. I'm not expecting War and Peace here, but a few paragraphs and some effort would be nice.
8) Shit happens, life is kinda like that. If you're gonna be unable to post for a while, lemme know and we'll work something out.
9) Don't hijack the IC. I'm not gonna enforce a posting order or anything like that right off the bat, but if I have to, I will. And I'll be extremely grumpy about it.
10) Swearing is allowed. And if you can manage some inventive wordsmithing when you do, you'd make me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.
11) Don't make me make more rules, we're already on eleven, goddammit.
12) Read rules 1 and 2 again.
13) Do not turn this into Teen Titans Go
14) OH GOD PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING.
14) I am the law.

So, uhh... any takers? Ideas?

Better yet, anybody wanna help?

[Pathfinder]

I'm game.

[1Hawkeyes]

This sounds like a lot of fun. I'm down to help where I can. :3

[MonkeyBusiness]

I am curious about this.

[Traitor]

Incidentally, I have secretly been a

Fuckin' Nobody

for almost my entire life so this is both relatable and interesting to me.

[Keksalot]

@Sir Lurksalot
very fuckin cool, i adore that kind of superhero games
would it be okay if my power would be from the beginning designed to overall look unimpressive and weak but be actually potent if used creatively? I promise to not abuse it in-character and try to properly roleplay my dude exploring the extent of his abilities and understanding them.

[Hylozoist]

...could I register my interest? I can? Okay!

I'm interested.

[SouffleGirl123]

So in!

[RumikoOhara]

I love odd heros

[Sir Lurksalot]

Alright, happy to see this garner some interest. =D

I'll start working on actual details when I get home from work, so sit tight.

[FantasyChic]

I'll throw my hat into this

[dereken]

I am so into this.

[Core]

I am so into this! Sign me up!

[Sir Lurksalot]

@Pathfinder@RumikoOhara@SouffleGirl123@Hylozoist@Keksalot@Traitor@MonkeyBusiness@1Hawkeyes

Alright, so, world-building.

Feel free to chime in with thoughts and ideas.

(A work in progress, of course)

A Brief History on Modern Superheroes

Chapter 1: The Great War and Proto-Heroes (AKA: A Few Good Men Forced to Violently Murder Eachother Over the Course of Four Years)

The first real recorded instance of what can be considered the modern Superhero can be traced as far back as the First World War, though there is a fair bit of scholarly debate (and yes, there are university courses about this kind of thing) about it, as these 'Proto-Heroes' were markedly different from their caped contemporaries in a few small, but notable regards.

For one thing, they weren't exactly paragons of "Truth, Justice and the [-insert country here] Way", they were soldiers, the monikers we know them by today weren't self-given titles and indicators of their power, but clever nicknames bestowed by their comrades, often in jest and the masks weren't there for show or to hide their indentities (though they often did), but to keep the mud and blood off their faces.

On the side of the Central Powers stood the 'Vengeance Corps' ('Das Rächer-Korps', in German), the first known major organized unit of superhuman or otherwise exceptional individuals in modern history, so named for their widely-acclaimed mission statement of seeking payment in blood for the assassination of the Archduke, Franz Ferdinand.

Opposing them on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, came the First Irregular Company, a dysfunctional, unruly but no less gifted gaggle of soldiers drawn up from across the armies of the Entente, colloquially known as the 'Mad Lads' for the tendency of their operations to lead them head-long into harm's way, and for the simple reason that, to stand against the Vengeance Corps who'd been efficiently tearing the Entente a shiny new asshole, they'd have to be completely bugfuck crazy.

True to the nature of that war... near it's end, not many were left on either side. Then, in 1918, barely a week before the armistice of November the Eleventh there came a new, profound development-

The First Supervillain

When Dr. Siegfried Holtz, A member of the Korps recently disfigured and driven mad in a gas-attack, heard the news from his hospital bed... he didn't really take it well. Butchering the staff, guards, and patients in the military hospital, Holtz took on the name 'Arzt Abscheu', locked himself in the building, started raising those he just killed with a perversion of science to attack the town and began working on what is only known to history as 'The Time Weapon'.

Now, when some guy starts calling himself 'Doctor Abomination', raises an army of zombies and begins building something called THE FREAKING TIME WEAPON, it generally warrants a fairly serious response; And so, with surprisingly little bickering by their respective commanders over the details (people back then tended to stop fucking around when zombies and the space-time continuum were involved, it was a simpler time) both the Korps and the Lads were sent in to put an abrupt stop to that shit. This is generally the part where Superhero Scholars (again, a real thing) from either side of the fence begin gushing about the very first time in recorded history a team of super-powered individuals banded together to take on some cackling madman and his doomsday device.

Though the exact details of what transpired there remain classified to this very day, the fact that we're all not being eaten by zombies right now or worshiping our melty-faced overlord should tell you who came out on top of that little rumble.

What we do know, however (thanks to a certain heavily censored book), is that only three men came out of there alive and, after having just saved the entire frickin' planet, went their separate ways-

'Oversight', Canada's regenerating sharpshooter, came back from the war and simply vanished into obscurity.

'Herr Feuersturm' of the German Army, an aristocratic Fire Mage of Saxon origin, would return to Germany after the war for a few years, before emigrating to Oslo, Norway to become a History Professor during the troubled Weimar Era.

Pawel 'The Wall' Kowalski of the French Foreign Legion went home to his native Omaha, reconnected with his estranged parents, got married, moved to New York and started writing a whole lot of books.

Though these men had no idea at the time, they had sewn the seeds for something that would echo across history for years to come.

And history, for it's part, wasn't quite done with them yet...

"So there we are, sitting knee-deep in muddy water in some irrigation ditch on the way to the town. We signaled for help from the artillery with a flare, so of course it's coming down on our own heads as I realize I'm out of smokes, so I start getting a little mad. As the Bulgarian starts puking, I poke my head out from our cover and see that there's at least three hundred screaming undead charging down the hill towards us, so I cry out in alarm which nobody hears and then I am handed a cheese sandwich."

-Excerpt from 'Irregular Adventures', by Pawel Kowalski

[RumikoOhara]

Interesting History, Kind of a cross between Aberrant by White Wolf, the Silver Age History RP and I heathy dose of Original SL

[Pathfinder]

@Sir Lurksalot

I can dig it. So magic is a thing, have you come up with the rules for magic yet? On a second note, how weird can we get with our powers/characters?

[tal0n]

@Sir Lurksalot I am totally down for this RP, if you'll have me

[Sir Lurksalot]

@Pathfinder

Well, I was figuring that magic would indeed be a thing in this universe, just extraordinarily uncommon and mainly used by old families who've kept the tradition alive, hence why the main guy in the history (so far) who makes frequent use of it was a German Aristocrat.

Also, weird is good. Show me what you've got.

On that note...

@tal0n@RumikoOhara@Core@dereken@FantasyChic@SouffleGirl123@Hylozoist@Keksalot@Traitor@MonkeyBusiness@1Hawkeyes

It's 3-something in the morning and I'm no longer in a work-induced coma, have a CS while I do some more world-building.

CS

Name:
Alias: (Bearing in mind, in some cases you might not have one; like if you're a fresh-off-the-ship alien/dimensional traveler or just some guy on his first day of wearing a mask and hasn't thought up a catchy name yet)
Age:
Gender:
Nationality/Place of Birth: (Pretty self-explanatory. If you're an alien, or something else not from the world as we know it, put it down here anyway and elaborate in your backstory)
Base of Operations: (Where you usually work. If you wanna make somewhere up for this, go ahead, just elaborate it in your backstory)
Occupation: (Unless you're doing the hero thing full-time, you've probably got some bills to pay and some dumb shit you do every day to make that possible. Not everyone has the fortune to be born a millionaire, after all.)
Appearance: (Pictures are fine, but if you want to write out a description that's cool with me)
Personality:
Skills: (Stuff you've been taught or just know how to do that doesn't necessarily involve eye-lasers or some shit)
Abilities: (This is where you tell us about your character's eye-lasers or some shit. I'll be pretty lenient here, so have at 'er, just bear in mind we're playing characters on the bottom wrung of the superhero world, so don't go too crazy.)
Bio: (A few paragraphs, if you'd please.)
Other: (If you wanna add a theme-song or anything else, this'd be the place to toss it.)

[Keksalot]

@Sir Lurksalot
Almost done making my sheet, but i was suddenly struck with the realization that i probably fucked up the whole thing.

Clarify some shit for me once you go online, please:
1) Would it be okay for a D-lister to be a dishonorably discharged marine who gained superpowers during a highly unlikely incident during a campaign and is now getting by as an unscrupulous and uninhibited mercenary? D in the rank comes from both bad publicity in certain circles, the fact that he simply doesn't do "non-lethal" and due to him only being employed by small-time military groups in south america and africa. Oh, and also because he is a socially inept asshole with a gung-ho attitude and complete lack of understanding of stealthy or peaceful approach - even though at heart the dude is actually pretty okay as a person, not inherently evil nor particularily vicious, but simply incapable of leading any other sort of lifestyle.

2) His power, as i imagined it, was to have his body be full of сonstantly burning white phosphorus, hence the alias Willy Pete. This bestows unto him resistance to extremes of temperature, a certain degree of super-durability (he actually has hardly any tissues or organs or anything important except white phosphorus under his skin) and makes his body shoot out a horrible gout of all-burning flame whenever he suffers even a moderately deep cut or laceration, plus lets him vomit streams of WP from his mouth at will, kinda like a flamethrower. Would that make the cut for a D-list power or is it too stronk? I sort of thought that the very fact that he actually can't fight anyone without burning everything around him to a cinder being a factor in him ranking low, but otherwise the power is very destructive n shit. Additionally i thought about giving him an opportunity to teleport around the world through large fires in order to justify him being able to be present in where the game takes place as opposed to some african warzone, but that level of mobility would probably kick him up in the ranks, right?

[Ashevelendar]

I love the idea. I'm in. Will have a CS up soon .