Hex's Repository For Things Lost and Now Found.

[Hexaflexagon]

_{“Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the center of things. What do you think of it?” ~ John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy}

Name:

Наталья Романова, Наташа Романова, Наталья Романова-Шостакова aka Natasha Romanova aka Black Widow

Alignment:

True Neutral or Neutral Neutral if you prefer.

Affiliation:

Luther's Justice League although this is nothing but a front as her true allegiance remains with the Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации (Federal Security Service)

History:

Officially the Cold War ended. Try telling that to everyone that was involved.

Ghosts of Stalingrad

The story of the one known as Natasha Romanova starts in Early 1943. The new year was not christened by fireworks, cheering or the marching of the armies this year in the City of Stalingrad. It was rather brought in by a sound that had become familiar over the last few months artillery shells and screaming voices. The Germans continued their defense in the city that was supposed to be only a milestone on the path to Moscow but had instead became their frozen tomb, as the Red Army pushed them back room by room, building by building. Caught in the middle of this brutal bought of urban warfare was the populace of the city. Those that hadn't fled when they heard the approaching Tanks in August, those that couldn't flee when their homes became battlegrounds. They hid in buildings, swears and among the dead and dying hoping that the Nazis would not find them.

One such woman was caught with a small girl when the Germans torched the apartment building they were in to smoke out any Russian soldiers that may have been hiding inside. It was three in the morning when it happened and the woman had been trying to catch what little sleep she could in the small lulls between the fighting. They were a few stories up, because if the Germans entered the building they could hear them charging up the stairwell. It also meant that when the German Flamethrowers began to torch the bottom floor they could escape the blaze the conventional way. Instead the woman forced her way outside onto a frozen fire escape in cold and icy January Winds holding her sleeping daughter in her arms as she descended. Sadly halfway through the descent A German Sniper had spotted her and shot the Woman. She fell but in her last acts on Earth cradled her child and in that saved the Child from serious bodily harm.

The landing in the hardened snow had awoken the child and so she began to cry in the snow alone. Luckily it was not the Germans that had torched her building that had found her, no instead it was the Russian Squad that had repulsed them hours later. The leader of the Squad was Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov and he and the rest of the squad would take the small girl in from the cold and give her food. Natasha Romanova became the "littlest soldier" and would stay with the squad till the end of the Second World War, serving as their mascot and helper running messages and ammo between lines.

Natasha remembers these times fondly. It was back when the world was simple. When everything was black and white.

Department X

Following the dropping of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Second World War ended and the World entered the Cold War. Thus began the origins of Department X, a covert Soviet Agency designed to rival the Super Soldiers of the West such as the famous yet ill-fated Captain America. One of these projects was the Black Widow Ops Program. They took Russian girls - war orphans from across the ravaged USSR - and spirited them away where everyone would forget them. Natasha was one of many to join their ranks when Ivan reluctantly let the girl go into KGB hands once they learned of her and her potential. Here they were whisked away to become assassins ready to kill for the glory of the Motherland. And there they would stay in a base hidden deep away in the wastes of Siberia in a research station hidden deep underground.

The training itself was harsh and of hundreds of girls that were whisked away over a few dozen made it through the program's initial phase. This consisted of physical condition everything from ten mile runs in the snow to hours upon end of seemingly endless body weight exercises. This was followed by combat training everything from various forms of close quarters combat techniques to firearms training among others. The girls were expected to be accurate above levels of standard soldiers within three months of training. After combat training they went into book learning, they learned military history, tactics, law, dozens of languages, cultural skills such as dancing, chemistry among others. And if they were even found to be leaking mentally they were beaten and forced to scrub the bathrooms until their scores improved.

Eventually those one hundred or so that remained entered phase two of the program. It was here that the augmentation process began. Dr. Lyudmila Kudrin, a premier biochemist perfected what she called the new age of super sermons. The remaining one hundred were subjected to 48 hours of constant injections and around the watch hospital supervision. The chemical combinations were too deadly for most of the subjects and many died of complications and organ failure in the twenty four hours that followed. Natasha was one of twenty eight girls to make it through the procedure. As a result they were granted superhuman reflexes, strength, durability, speed, senses and an inhuman longevity. In short they had finally become the perfect assassins.

Soon they were put into active duty and it was here that she met Ivan again. Having retired from the army he was picked back up again by the KGB for his considerable skill and was once again assigned to watch over Natasha, this time as her handler.

Rise and Fall

And thus the life of Natasha Romanova began to hit something of a period of 'normalcy' to it. Ivan and her began to serve the Motherland and KGB in interests around the globe. Natasha had a cover produced for her as a trained dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet which give her an excuse to travel and Ivan was the ever watchful bodyguard hired by her Father. Together the two danced a path of fire and blood across Europe and many of the West and countless traitors to the Motherland were killed by their hands. But do to their policy of leaving no survivors and no witness her cover was never blown and things continued to normal.

She had her hands everywhere from Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. She killed politicians, generals, spies, and double crosser with a brutal efficiency. Some may have been confused by the ruthless and seemingly heartless behavior of the girl but it was all she knew. It was all she could do and having been force fed the soviet ideals from a young age, it was what she knew was right. During this time she ran into other products of her time. She would run across men and women like: The Star-Spangled Kid, Shining Knight, Miss America, Whizzer, Jack Frost and many of the men that would take the costume of Captain America. It was these defenders of the West that presented her and Ivan the real problems. Their powers and abilities defied even her own superhuman injections and many a times they would fate Natasha would have to vanish into the shadows.

But as it turned out the USSR would not persist as long as Stalin had envisioned it to. The collapse was slow and lethargic like a corpse being taken apart by crows. Natasha's own life seemed to mimic this collapse when on a mission in West Germany Kingsley Faraday shot and mortally wounded Ivan leaving Natasha emotionally broken and shattered as she held her only friend and father figure in the rain as he slowly bled to death. It was in that moment that a fight that she had always been distance from became very, very personal as orders became a personal vendetta against the West.

But soon the Dissolution of the Soviet Union began in December of 1991 and the KGB was replaced with the FSB. But agents like Natasha remained in service, for them the changing of the guard may have meant a loss of ideals and virtue but it never meant that the end of the job. Life continued but under a new rule under the Russian Federation rather than the USSR.

Superhuman: The Present

In the 2010s the world changed with the so called "next generation" of heroes. Mutants and superheroes men and women changed by the power of atom, to become far beyond the normal humans that once walked the Earth among us. For one reason or another some believe do to the amount of atomic testing done there and other circumstances America had a huge population of these superhuman among their masses. This was a fact that many nations around the world became worried about especially former foes such as the Russian Federation. The Russians needed somebody on the ground to report back them, to feed them Intel. They needed to know what these knew God-men planned to do. And so they called in one of their best agents for the job. They called in Natasha Romanova. She hadn't been outside of Eurasia in a while at this point dealing with internal security issues that arose after the fall of the USSR. Unlike some members like the Winter Guard, Red Rocket Brigade and others she had remained in the shadows for the most part. Doing what she did best, make people disappear.

And in the time she had grown from the young teenage girl who had killed her way through Europe, and all the old heroes of the West she had fought long ago where at this point confined to their wheelchairs and losing their minds slowly. Nobody remembered her, nobody knew her. And so she was sent into America. She found her way into the mercenary circuit first working alongside names that would become big in the business later down the rode, Deathstroke, Deadshot, and others. And slowly she assimilated herself into the spectra of Superheros and super villains of America none the wiser that she still was reporting back to the Kremlin. She even became an American Citzen.

In fact she had infiltrated one of the most powerful Superhero organizations in the country if not the world. Lex Luthor's newly established Justice League of America. She joined sides with Captain America unaware of her experiences with his predecessors among others. She became part of a symbol of cooperation and hope for a new world. But beneath it all, beneath the double crossing, benath the spying for the Soviets she was still in America for one reason and one reason only. She was going to find Kingsley Faraday, no matter what path of bloodshed and chaos she had to make to do it.

Supporting Cast:

Superhero Associates

_{Superhero Associates:}
Dmitri Pushkin:
'Rocket Red #4' and a member of the Rocket Red Brigade. This Power armor, jet pack using, vodka drinking Russian. A kind man with a love for American culture especially 'cowboy-movies'. As one of the few Russian Heroes active in America he is the occasional confident of Black Widow even though he little taste left in his mouth for the games of the Kremlin.

Daredevil:
During her early years of American infiltration when was still working as a mercenary she met one blind New York City attorney known as Matt Murdock. Little did Natasha know that Murdock was the masked vigilante known as Daredevil. Though after being kidnapped by Bullseye, Murdock soon found out that Natasha was a little bit more than she was letting on as well. After a brief romantic fling the two broke apart. _{Requires approval from Daredevil player}

Captain America:
Another member of Lex Luthor's Justice League. The Captain has no idea of Romanova's past. A little awkward for her as she has tried to kill other incarnations of him in the past. But that was before right? _{requires approval from Captain America player}

Alexi Shostakov:
Black Widow's one time lover back when the Cold War was in full swing. He was trained as the Red Guardian, the USSR's response to Captain America. But he "vanished" under mysterious circumstances in the later period of the war. Thought to be dead.

Other Associates

_{Other Associates:}

Lex Luthor:
One of the founding members of the Justice League of America. As a member of the JLA, Black Widow has a working relationship with the man._{Requires approval for Lex or Sup player. Or both I guess}

Nick Fury:
Natasha knew Fury from his CIA days back during the Cold War. Back then they almost killed one another once or twice. Now well he's gone to ground and even if Fury remembers her, she's seemingly turned a new head in life.

Rivals, enemies, and targets

_{Rivals, enemies, and targets}

Kingsley 'King' Faraday:
Ex-CIA Operative, seems to have 'retired' after the end of the Cold War. Killed Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov and Black Widow wants him dead for it. He's seemingly vanished from the face of the Earth. But that won't stop her. She'll get him, eventually. Whatever it takes.

Nightshade:
Eve Eden was King Faraday protege and a superhuman at that with the ability to manipulate shadows. She worked for the CIA for some time before quitting and going freelance. She's been seen around recently having popped back up after some years of silence. She's Black Widow's first stop in finding Farady. She's the first stop in revenge.

Black Lotus:
Female Assassin for some reason or another she wants Black Widows head. Something to do with what she did during the war. Not that Natasha stuck around to really talk to her.

Leonid Novokov:
Another KGB assassin, he went rogue several years ago and has been on the run ever since. Like all runaways Black Widow has a kill order on sight if he is spotted.

Petra, Marina and Yelena Belova:
Other surving members of the Black Widow Project, once again the Russians have put a kill order on all of them to clean up their dirty little secretes. Locations are currently unknown.

How does the New Frontier version of your character differ from the original?:

Paranormal ghosts may not exists (well at least in our world) but people are certainly haunted ghosts of the past. Last vestigial motes of could of beens and what ifs. This incarnation Black Widow that I'm aiming for is very much haunted by the Ghosts of the Past. I always figured it made sense given her character and her history. A child of war, turned killer, spy and assassin while others her age learned to like boys and did algebra. She's killed more men then many men will ever in their lifetime and she's watch her own world rise and crumble around her while she remained almost suspended in time watching those around her age and fall to a place where sane minds do not dare venture. And the Ghosts of her deeds haunt her, the are specters in her sleep and ghastly flashes across her eyelids when they close for a moment.

And unlike the Black Window of mainstream, none of it just goes away because she falls for some boy. You don't just step away from a life of soviet doctrine being smashed into your head day in and day out, you don't just step away from the people that have become your family, you don't just defect because you might like a pretty boy. Black Widow is not a hormonal teenage, I've think she's gone past thinking with her sexual organs first. So yes this is a Black Widow that never left the KGB, that never defected who still holds alternative agendas, who carries secretes and operations behind the backs of her so called friends.

And it's all because well I have a little morality tale in mind, to tell you the truth. A story of revenge (a tired and well worn concept I know) and a story of duality. So while even she has mission from the the JLA and the Russians, she has another mission one more personal, one I created by taking a father figure and a ex-spy that has sort of been forgotten by the DC Mythos to create a classic tale of revenge. But Revenge is never quick and it's never easy. So well we will see what will happen won't we?

Post References:
Matryoshka
The God Damn Superman
Constantine

[Hexaflexagon]

T H A N O S

_{“There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds”}

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| IDENTITY: |

The Mad Titan, Master, Masterlord, Overmaster, All-Father, Thanos

| ALIGNMENT: |

Neutral Evil

| AFFILIATION: |

The one where everyone dies

| HISTORY: |

There are villains and heroes in the universe, avatars of good and evil, law and chaos, liberty and oppression. They fight in not just battles of physical prowess but representative of these ideals themselves. And then there are other things, forces that move beyond normal compheresion, forces that considered the lives of men to be as insignificant as grains of sand. There are heroes, there are villains, and then there is Thanos.

Thaons was born on the moon of Titan to Scientist and statesmen A'Lars as one of the Eternals. Much like the Kryptoians these seemingly human beings where actually far from it in there case they where the product of an ancient and powerful race simply as the Celestials who were responsible for many key genetic divergence in humanity and to those that know of their existence it is hypothesized that they are the reason for the appearnce of 'superpowers' on Earth. Born with skin of ash and the body of a Giant, Thaons was always different form the other Titans. Because of these oddities about him the other children began to avoid him and thus a long life of isolation began for the Titan.

Despite this fact Thanos had a brilliant mind for schooling. He seemed to learn at an accelerated right even among his Eternal peers and took to learning everything he could about the world. While his success only made others continue to make fun of him and look down upon him, he continued and his teachers and tutors encouraged him forward. It was in his personal studies that he became fascinated with the idea of Death and what lies beyond it. A fascination which would turn into a deep affection later in life when he met the Endless that was one of many personification of Death in the Universe, the pale black haired woman who he would send thousands of souls to in an ill fated attempt to gain her affection.

As Thanos grew he grew tired of those that considered him to be a freak and worked to channel his power. Through us of bionic implants and hours open end of mediation and training the titian was able to master the powers that the Celestials had given the Eternals and became the strongest of their kind if not one of the strongest creatures in the known universe. With these new found power he sought the respect that he believed he had earned through might. But as it turned out those that once scorened him now called him a monster and feared him. He find no respect and he find no power among his people. Unless he took it.

Disgruntled, tired and filled with unbridled rage and after a failed attempt on A'Lars part to talk him down he stole a ship and fled to the outreaches of the galaxy. It was here that Thanos had found a place that respected his skill. After liberating the prisoners held by the Nova Corps, Thanos started to make a name for himself as a leader and a warlord. Cutthroats and savages flocked to the Titan's banner and soon the man had a fleet and army to his name. With this force and his own immense power he lead them back to the moon of Titan where he proceeded to wage genocidal war against his own people. After two weeks of nuclear bombardment, he personally lead his ground troops crushing any resistance that the Eternals put up and soon named himself Lord of Titan. Some Eternals where able to flee across the cosomos like his own father A'lars and some would join Thanos ranks as his lieutenants and generals but many more would die under the hand of their scorned son.

But like all with power, Thanos soon desired more and his fleet of criminals where bloodthirsty and ready for more. So he turned his forces out into the greater galaxy, they raided planets and killed many who resited their role though some proved successful such as the powerful ruler of Apokolips Darkseid, who manged to resit Thanos army and thus was spared from the Mad Titan's worth do to his skill in battle. But this wave of terror was far from the reaches of the men and women of earth with only members of the greater galaxy and peacekeepers such as the Nova Corps and the Green Lanterns were aware of the threat and even with some attempts to stop the Titan his path of warfare and vengence continued. He would rule it all. All would realize Thanos was all powerful.

Thanos's path of bloodshed continues across the greater galaxy and his war never seems to stop. Though recent events have begun to catch the eye of the Titan. One was in the borders of those that were forced into submission of the Mad God where whispers of a force known as the Dominators beings with great scientific power whom the Titan consider to be cowards to hide behind technology. But ever still this encroaching force has begun to put heads with Thanos's forces and war has begun to brew.

And beyond that closer to his capital and home world of Titan is the little blue speck know as Earth. Thanos never considered it more than a distraction for apes. He put no thought into the world, for they where weak and he could crush them with a flick of his finger if he wished. But his spies tell him something new, reports of a new batch of humans. Humans with special abilities and skills that made them great warriors. Names like Superman, the Hulk, among others. Fighters of great skill and strength. He would need to test those rumors eventually, to put their merit in battle to a test. A test of blood and death. Thanos would have to come to this planet known as Earth. And he would have to kill them all.

| SUPPORTING CAST: |

Thanos does not have allies. There are only those who are dead and those soon to be dead. But some of these useless meatsacks of note are.

The Green Latern Corps:
Thanos' armies and many different members of the Green Lantern Corps have clashed due to Thanos's campaigns of death and destruction. Though few of the Corps have actually ever seen the man himself only his armies and those that fight in his name. It's probably better for them that they never did.

The Nova Corps:
Like the Green Latern Corps, the Nova Corps had also had encounters with Thanos and his forces of destruction. They are usually on the losing side of bitter and long fighting as they fight against a monster who's men care little for death and will throw thousands against defenses and fortifications to kill those laying behind them. Though among them one Richard Rider holds a surprising amount of courage and ability managing to even beat back the Titan's forces at times.

Alien Alliance:
The conglomeration of far spread Alien Races lead by the Dominators that wish to take control of the Galaxy and divide it among themselves. Thanos of course will have none of this, as he is the true ruler of all that lives and will crush all those that try and oppose that rule. Thus a war is brewing between the Alience and Thanos.

Drax the Destroyer:
A mysterious and blood thirsty warrior out to kill Thanos for revenge. He has not succeeded as of yet.

The Superman:
Thanos' spies speak of this last son of Krypton, one of the most powerful beings all of the universe. Thanos seeks to test these claims.

Gamora and Nebula:
Adopted daughters of the Thanos they serve as his war maidens and assassins. There loyalty is unwavering or so the Mad Titan believes.

Death
One of the many personification of Death in the Universe and a member of the Endless. Having falling for her beauty and her compassion towards even a creature such as himself. He has tried to earn her favor through killing many and sending their souls her way. It's kind of a one sided thing really.
Earth
An insignificant blue marble. It will be crushed underneath his boot in time.

| DIFFERENCE FROM SOURCE MATERIAL: |

Death, destroyer, conquer, madman, world breaker, hero smasher. There are many names and titles that can be given to Thanos many of which are not undeserved. I would draw this version of him more akin to someone in History like Napoleon, Genghis Khan, or Attila the Hun a ruler that rules through military prowess and ability rather than cheap gimmicks or whispers of an ancient time. Because of this Thanos will care a lot less about those fancy little Infinity Stones than some of his other incarnations. I'm aiming to show him with more depth as a character as he fights his own war against like everyone in Space xD and I also wish to use him as looming threat for our heroes. A sign of sorts that there are more troubling things in the universe for them to deal with than their own arguments of politics. Because when he comes knocking, well bad things tend to follow.

| REFERENCES: |

_{Matryoshka
The God Damn Superman
Constantine}

[Hexaflexagon]

Khünbish

Jarl:

Erlend the Kingbreaker

God:

Like all in the savage north the Khünbish hold special reverence to their gods as they come as one of the only solid foundations in the chaotic quagmire that is the north. Though they have always held a special reverence towards Ymir himself proper as theirs has always been a history of bloodshed and battle. This 'bond' of sorts is further strengthen by the legend of the tribe's founding as taught down by the skalds around the campfires to entertain the children. These legends focus on a particular item that the ruling Jarl holds in their possession a great sword kept in a simple leather sheath that they always carry with them. The pommel is black in color and the blade itself while always in battle ready condition is worn and shows signs of age. This blade is known as the World's Tooth and legend has it that Ymir himself gifted it to the founder of the clan and the Great Wolf of Khünbish himself Hávarðr to mark him as one of his chosen warriors.

Because of this particularly strong worship of Ymir, the men and women of Khünbish are some of the fiercest warriors in all of Ethica due to a culture, religion and history revolving strongly around raiding, conquest, bloodshed and generally other things involving crushing the weak beneath their feet. Children began basic martial training at a young age. How it works is generally children born in the same year or so are placed together in what are called bloodpacks. This packs are designed to form cohesive bonds between the children which will generally end up being stronger then family bonds, as your pack becomes your family. Here they are taught the ways of warriors and to uphold the values that Ymir places upon them, basically strength and honor are key. In this way they also weed out those unfit for battle to work as supplementary forces at home supporting the raiding efforts.

One of the odder social customs of the Khünbish are their ceremonial executions. Half of Khünbish prisoners in raids and battle will end up being used as slaves, the other half will in a ceremony conducted by a Khünbish shaman have their throats slit and their blood collected in large ceremonial urns. These urns are then brought to the highest hill or peak in the surrounding area and cast in a large fire. As they serve as an offering to Ymir to placate and please him. While those in the south would considered savage barbarism in Khünbish eyes it is in many ways an honor to those that the execution is bestowed upon. Because while their fellows will usually die from being overworked slaves, they are killed by the blade and their blood is burned meaning that they will rise directly into the skies towards Ymir allowing them to be judged by the Storm God almost immediately.

Clan and Kin:

Close Family
Erlend the Kingbreaker, age 55: Erlend is a massive man even for those among the nordheim. His frame is tall and stout the muscular figure of his youth having slowly been shed away and replaced with a layer of fat and yet even still he is capable of great feats of strength and his surprising amounts of dexterity for a man of his size being able to swing the World's Tooth with precision and skill. Hair and beard of gray with falls long, wild and knotted. In his old age Erlend has calmed from the battle hardy warrior of his youth and spends most of his days at home dealing with domestic affairs leaving the raiding to those young and eager to prove themselves in battle. Despite that if the Khünbish ever truly want to war, Erlend would be the man in front leading the charge. As a proud seasoned warrior who understands the needs of a bloodthirsty people, he is well loved and respected by those that fall under his domain.

Vala the Merciful, age 45: Erlend's Wife and a warrior of great skill in her youth. She actually came from another tribe of slightly smaller size than that of the Khünbish and the two were married young when Vala herself was only fifteen to consolidate the lands and help secure Erlend's rule having just been made Jarl of the Khünbish a year earlier impressing the peoples with his skill and the great amounts of prizes he brought back from the South while raiding.

Lasse Erlendson, age 29: The couples eldest son and yet not the one most favored to succeed his father. That is because from a young age Lasse had strange dreams and visions being plagued by 'demons' in his sleep. Taking this a sign that he was touched by the gods, Lasse went down the path of a Shaman. Lasse is what those in the south may describe as ruggedly handsome with windswept blonde hair, closely trimmed beard and gray eyes that color of approaching storm clouds.

Trine Erlenddotter, age 26: Trine the eldest daughter and second oldest child is the most likely out of any of Erlend's children to succeeded him. A warrior from a young age her path of greatness started when even as she was the smallest of the children she manged to become leader of her bloodpack in the normal fashion, a no weapons fisticuffs brawl where the last one standing gets to be in charge. After that she's proven herself a proud a strong and steadfast warrior leading many successful raids and bringing glory to her own name. Because of her skill in combat and the belief that if she became ruler that she would adhere to the old ways of blood and battle she is a favorite candidate to take her father's place. She is beautiful if a bit rugged with long blonde hair kept in a single braid and the characteristic stormy gray eyes of her family.

Egil Erlendson, age 22: In every family there is the disappointment, the odd one. Egil is that case. Egil is not a strong warrior like his sister or has any particular repertoire with the gods like his brother. Egil is a thin and willowy young man who looks like a strong breeze could blow him over. More importantly Egil likes books and reading, something that is well not usually looked well upon by those in the North. He had one of the slaves captured during the raids teach him, a monk from the South and ever since he devours books that his sister and uncle bring back from the raids especially for him, despite his father's protests that no son of his is going to spend his days reading. But having a son versed in history and knowledgeable of the politics of the South may be useful one day.

Airi Erlenddotter, age 13: The youngest child of Erlend. A girl who is proving to be a very skillful sailor and at home at the seas. She is the precious little gem of the Jarl's life and her overwhelmingly positive attitude about things is a well deserved changed from the generally stern and bitter personalities that the Jarl has to deal with in the North.

Arls
Arnleygur the Shipmaster, age 46: Vala's older borther and a close friend to Erlend. He and Vala home tribe were master sailors who dominated the seas and raiding sea routes in the South. A skill that the tribe now uses as part of the Khünbish. Arnleygur is the principal in charge of the tribes raiding fleet and so more generally the raids themselves. He organizes them and makes sure that all the logistics check out. He's taken Airi under his wing of late noticing the girls aptitude at handling seafaring craft.

Atsur the Fox, age 32: Atsur is the other arl and another close friend of Erlend. A man with great skill with throwing axes and a shrewd mind. He's currently sort of watching over/ tutoring Egil teaching him how the mind can be just as an effective weapon as the sword.

Sauneq, age ?: While techinally not an Arl, Sauneq is the head shamanness for the Khünbish people and acts as their direct line of communication with the gods. Because of this she holds about the same amount of prestige and power as the two Arls maybe even more so because of her duty as the spiritual leader.

Thanes and Housecarls
WIP
Brunkil the Red, age 30: Erlend's housecarl, a quiet and monolithic warrior most notable for his hair which is bright red in color. Rumored to have a sexual relationship with Trine.

Tribe Bio:
The Khünbish are a storied people who have been plaguing the south since history had been recorded. They trace their heritage back to Hávarðr the Great Wolf, a warrior who was the last remnants of a once powerful clan. His clan was defeated in battle and he was taken as a slave by the rival clan. Hávarðr proved his worth as a slave and eventually was freed from his bondage to become a true warrior. Eventually becoming the housecarl to the Jarl that had once slaughtered his own people. The old Jarl passed away and Hávarðr took control of the tribe after receiving the World's Tooth from Ymir and using it to slay a great leviathan to prove his skill and worth in battle. Hávarðr then lead his tribe on a campaign of expansion taking over many of the surrounding tribes in the area and swallowing them into his own people. These tribes would eventually form a new people group all together collectively known as the Khünbish. The name which was the result of a mistranslation by a southern explore stuck and the Khünbish people were born.

The Khünbish have always been a militaristic culture one that was at home with raiding and warfare, only fitting for a clan founded in blood and battle. Most of these battles and wars were small affairs as they assimilated smaller neighboring tribes into their fold. The Khünbish identity being a conglomeration of all these small tribes that ahd fallen under a larger banner. Though the Khünbish are known through the south for a more particular reason, a odd sort of historical phenomenon know as the Khünbish Expansion or Khünbish Bubble. This refers to a cycle which can be traced since their founding. The general premise is that every two hundred or so odd years once their armies have built back up, their lands reconquered and their people ready for another bloodbath, the Khünbish will push down into the south very rapidly and very aggressively. In this attacks Khünbish raiding parties push far into the southern core burning and destroying everything in their path. Even so these attacks are considered nothing more than really minor threats to the southern kingdoms as while the Khünbish are very good at carving paths and killing, they are very bad at holding lands and generally don't conquer land as much as they destroy it meaning that pushing them back is usually a relatively easy affair once you can hunt down all the war bands.

Khünbish history besides that of Hávarðr and the first five rulers that came after him and those periods during the Expansions (as recorded by Southern scholars with the general biases that come from such things) is generally a murky thing. What little can be gone on is retold generally by skalds who have a habit of bending history to make the better story. What can be gathered is not much of the history remained the same throughout, they are if nothing else a very predictable people following the same cycles of raiding and civil war to a point. The characters may change and their motives and stories will different but the generally themes will remain. It's the same old story of bloodshed, honor and glory and usually ends up with a lot of people dead for some reason or another.

Though Elrend himself is an interesting case in that he's predecessors as Jarl was none other than his own father, Aurvangr. Aurvangr was a peculiar man if nothing else steadfast in his beliefs and yet opened minded to new ideas which he could use to better his people. During his reign the raids on the South subsided substantially with attacks still occurring but not on the almost ever present bases that they once where. Instead Aurvangr tried his best to focus on more domestic problems trying to focus on promoting fishing and agriculture. Because of this Aurvangr was not the most popular ruler in the world and had to keep usurpers from taking his position as Jarl almost constantly though in that regard Aurvangr was always a strong warrior and was able to easily best them. But eventually the pressure became too great and Aurvangr was killed at a feast being held in his honor, poisoned with bad mead and then stabbed to death. Thus at the age of eighteen Erlend was thrown headfirst into a war of succession.

Elrend himself was a strong and capable warrior with many allies in the younger generation and among his father's closest confident but many others older and stronger thought that they could rule the clan better and so a grand little civil war of sorts began. The war itself lasted six years before Elrend had finally finished mopping out those opposed against him. Many died and the Khünbish were weakened. Enemies were all about them in the North and so Elrend began to quickly consolidate his power as Jarl: marrying into Arnleygur and Vala's clan to bring their raiders into his fold, and revoking many of his own father's reforms to bring back public trust, moral and opinion. Eventually he found stability and a sense of normalcy.

The population has been rebounding and the armies getting stronger. It's been a little over two hundred years since the last expansion. Elrend's armies are hungry for war and they see a South fractured and easy for the taking. Elrend does not just want glory and honor for himself, he worries for his children those that will come after him. He wants their positions in life secured and if they helped him successfully ravage the South? His family could be Jarls for generations past him. Maybe even High Kings one day.

Military:

[Hexaflexagon]

[Hexaflexagon]

Maisie Banister
_{The Rookie}

---

Nickname:

Newbie - for more than obvious reasons

Age:

20

Gender:

Female

Rank:

Private First Class

Psychological Analysis:

From first outlooks one would question why Maisie was even joined the army, sometimes she doesn't know herself. As the daughter of Major General William H. Bannister, war is something that has been in the back of her mind since a very young age. All her mother seemed to do was talk about war with her father, worried that because of everything happening on the news that he would have to head out to help defend the UEE. Her father from a young prepared her and her siblings for the eventually of having to protect themselves making sure that besides having normal schooling they were also trained both physically and mentality to survive. Yet for the longest time war was something of a game to her, war was this idea that made it so that when Dad told you to you had to go run and find the nearest thing towards you that looked like the best cover. And if he tapped you on the shoulder well you were dead, you picked wrong. She never figured that those games would end up becoming a reality in the end.

Maisie is young and partly from a rather enclosed childhood were heaps of expectations were dropped upon her and out of her own desires to 'stand out' among her seemingly better siblings that seemed to do everything better than her the girl can be rash, foul-mouthed, impulsive, and temperamental which caused problems during her schooling and during the early days of her training until a drill sergeant saw to at least diverting those flames of fury towards something a little bit more productive. Her father though her to stand up for herself and what she believed in and she has no problems in yelling back at even the most terrifying of figures if she believes in what they are saying happens to be wrong in the end. From equal parts genetics, her own boredom and her father's teaching Maisie has a clever mind about her and something of a wit to match it with survival instincts and peculiar sort of resourcefulness that have been ingrained into her at a young age

Despite this Maisie is still young, She manages to maintain a particular innocence as she has yet to see the darkest sides of human nature and retains a palpable trust in people. There is still a definite line between black and white for her, good and evil and she truthfully believes that the UEE stands firmly on the good side of that line. She is excited about the world and about life in general. She dreams of seeing anything beyond Cerol, of actually getting to travel once in her life. And she has dreams of being a hero like everyone calls her father. But all those dreams have now been whisked away as the shadow of war now looms over her head.

Military Record:

Maisie Banister grew up on Cerol as the middle child of three children born to Major General William H. Bannister and his wife Lilla Banister. The Banister family resided inside a small house with a little bit of land just outside of the heavy urban sprawl which made up Leis, far enough away from the rumble of the city but close enough so that William could report to the military base as needed rather quickly. The house was a small humble affair two stories in make and having been standing since the first colonist settled on Cerol many years prior. She shared a room with her younger sister Emma, or as Maisie liked to describe her as the most annoying person to have ever lived in the history of the world. Besides having to endure her father's own particular brand of survival training since she was old enough to comprehend the words duck and cover, Maisie life was fairly standard for what it was, almost pleasant as some could describe it.

Her father wanted the children to go to Cerol's Military Academy for young students one of the best in the UEE which produces top tier officers and other accomplished members of society serving the Emperor. Their mother insisted against it believing that the children deserved the chance to have a normal life and pick what they wanted to do with their future. In the end Lilla one of course and the children were enrolled in a private school not far from their own home. It was in school that Maisie ended up having the most trouble as it was there she came to realize how much she was lackluster in comparison to her siblings. Her older brother Jon was something of the school hero: star athlete, president of the student council, and beloved by everyone that seemed to meet him and then when Emma started going to school she never heard the end of how all her teachers called her gifted and how she scored top ranks in a whole score of screening tests and how she was destined to do great things with her mind. That of course left Maisie how was extraordinarily average
in comparison to her 'perfect' siblings. She was good at sports but not as good as Jon, she was smart enough to pass her honors classes but no where near as smart as Emma and she didn't have much else to bring to the table in forms of skills and talents.

So Maisie began to get into trouble and start to hang out with the wrong types of kids and do the wrong types of things. The first time her parents got called down to the Principals office due to the young girl having covered the girl's bathroom in some rather vulgar graffiti they were shocked and horrified. Yet the girl didn't seem to care, her parents anguish seemed to only fuel her on as she continued to act out against them. Her grades began to drop and on some days she wouldn't end up going to school at all. This pattern of reckless behavior would continue up until the incident. It was her junior year of high school and Maisie was in a car with several of a friends as they just came back from a big party. The driver of the car was drunk and crashed the vehicle had long into a tree. The driver and the kid sitting the passenger seat died upon impact and one more would die from their wounds in the hospitable, and another had to have her arm amputated and replaced with a robotic replacement after it was pinned and crushed beneath the vehicle. Maisie and one another survived intact and without any serious injuries at least physically.

That moment of shock was enough to bring an end to a lot of Maisie's reckless behavior mostly because of fear and guilt which caused her to become something of a recluse. It was her father that was able to bring her out of her rut and try and put her back on the right track of things. It wasn't his idea that when she graduated a year later that she would enlist, it was hers. She wanted a fresh start, she wanted to make something of herself, make it so that her parents were proud of her again. Due to her delinquent behavior none of the officer academics would of taken her but that was okay because she didn't want to be an officer anyway, her father hadn't he rose from private to general through hard work and persistence so she wouldn't need to either.

The training was good for Maisie helped give her some order where she didn't have any and gave her some direction in life. From all accounts according to her superiors she was a star recruit already knowing half the material because of her father and the rest she seemed to pick up like it was second nature to her. Those two years seemed to fly and before she knew it she had gradated out of training and was being thrown into the 8118th Mechanized Infantry as they had taken some losses and needed fresh blood. They were supposed to ship out, she was supposed to finally be able to get away from Cerol but than the Coalition fleet appeared.

Equipment:

• STAKEN Battle Rifle: Why would they give the rookie something as notoriously hard to manage as the STAKEN? Simple reason really it is a firm belief that if one can learn to use a STAKEN, you can pretty much learn to shoot anything. It's a sort of rite of passage for all rookies really
• APP-3 Pistol
• Combat Knife
• 4x Electron Gel

[Hexaflexagon]

Valkyrie

19 ♦ Barbara Norris ♦ Lawful Good



_{“The lame rides a horse
the maimed drives the herd
the deaf is brave in battle.
A man is better blind than buried
A dead man is deft at nothing."
~ Hávamál}

_{[ ߜ ] O R I G I N}

---

_{G O D S A N D L E G E N D S}

The story of Valkyrie begins in the time before time. It was the closing years of the first Ragnarök in a time when Earth was known by a different name Aesheim. This young world had been corrupted by the hands of Cul Borso also known as the Serpent, an Asgardian and the older brother of All-Father Odin. He ruled over the oceans, mountains and forests through fear and destruction with the help of his mighty warriors known as the Worthy. Odin heard the cries of the people upon Aesheim and so gathered up his two other brothers Vili and Ve and a group of mighty warriors from Asgard and lead a campaign to rid Aesheim of the evil that their brother had created.

Battles were fought and warriors on both sides were lost in the fighting but in the end Odin, Vili and Ve triumphed over their older brother and slayed his army of Draumar and every member of the Worthy. They stormed Cul's citadel and in a climactic duel for the fate of Aeshei, brother fought brother. Odin proved the stronger that day, and tossed his brother into the depths of the ocean imprisoned by chains forged by Brokkr himself. The evil was banished, and yet Odin was still plagued by dreams bestowed upon him by the Yggdrasill. In those dreams he saw Cul rising back up from the depths empowered and using said power to destroy the entirety of the nine worlds. To prevent this, Odin began to systematically kill all the man and women that had bore witness to Cul. These people carried within them seeds of fear and darkness that had been planted into their being, it was this fear of Cul which would allow the fallen Asgardian to gain his powers back. The people of course did not understand this and tried their best to fight back against Odin to try and save themselves.

One such man was Sigmund, a warrior and champion of the people that had lead the rebellion against Cul long before Odin intervened. In his long adventures Sigmund had met Brunnhilde, princess of the Wrlstead Arms whom Sigmund had trained in combat under the order of her father, the king. The pair loved each other greatly and were a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. Upon hearing of the great culling of the humans of Aesheim, Sigmund gathered an army to fight back against the gods. In the end though Odin's great strength and power would result in the shattering of Sigmund's army, and the razing of Wrlstead Arms.

Yet before Odin could strike the deathblow to Sigmund, Brunnhilde leaped in front of Odin and attempted to strike him down with her blade. Odin demanded that Brunnhilde step aside and let him finish his job, but Brunhilde fought onward. The strength and tenacity of the humans even after they had been bested had impressed Odin who came to realize that the warriors of Aeshim needed a paradise of their own. So rather than kill Brunnhilde he made her into his Valkyrie who would bring the souls of honorable warriors up to the paradise known as Valhalla.

_{H O N O R A N D B L O O D S H E D}

Brunnhilde became the leader of the Valkyrior, a group of six warrior goddess tasked by Odin to bring worthy fallen warriors to Valhalla. During this time she came into the view of Amora. Amora saw Brunnhilde's great strength and prowess and saw use for her. Considered on Aeshim to be the god of beauty, love, and sex who had helped Odin before in his battles, Bruunhilde saw no problem in helping the women. And so using Amora with her magics and Brunnhilde with her strength traveled together in an effort to gain items which Amora greatly desired. At first Brunnhilde held only admiration from Amora both in her beauty and her skills. All the while Amora spun her little web ensnaring Brunnhilde further and further making the warrior into her own perfect little champion.

In the end though Bruunhilde realized her mistake when the Yggdrasill revealed to her that Amora was planning to try and overthrow Odin and take Asgard for herself. The artifacts that the two had been collecting if brought together would've allowed for Amora to achieve immortality, making it so that no man or asgardian could defeat her. Brunnhilde learning of her partner's treachery began working on a plot to foil Amora's plans. Brunnhilde destroyed the artifacts and shattered Amora's army before it could even begin with the help of the Valkyrior and others. Amora managed to escape but promised revenge upon the Valkyrie for all that she had done.

Her revenge would come many centuries later after Odin had limited Asgard's connection with Aesheim for the greater good. Odin's sons Thor and Loki and the Warriors Three had been lost on an excursion to recover Gungnir from the giants of Jotunheim. Odin fearing for the worst dispatched Brunnhilde and the Valkyrior to the world of giants to rescue them. Little did Brunnhilde know that Amora had planned all the events which were to occur to spring a trap upon the leader of the Valkyrior. When they arrived at Jotunheim, they found an army waiting for them. The Valkyrior fought bravely against the giants and managed to carve a path to the dungeons of Utgardhall freeing the trapped heroes. In the end Brunnhilde sacrificed herself - holding the line to allow the others to escape from Jotunheim. The great valkyrie being struck down by a combination of the giant king's might and Amora's magic.

While Brunnhilde perished in the snows of Jotunheim, the soul of the Valkyrie lived on imbued with the power of her spirit. Amora banished the spirit and sent it into the void so that Odin could not recover it and bring Brunnhilde back to life. And so many ( Amora included) thought that was the end of the Valkyrie. What they didn't know was that the spirit would eventually find its way to Aesheim over many millennia where it would eventually find itself a host worthy of its mantle.

_{V A L K Y R I E I}
The spirit would first find its way into Samantha Parrington, a rich socialite born and raised in Gotham. Born into a wealthy family and raised on ideals of empowerment and the betterment of all. The spirit bestowed upon Ms. Parrington amazing powers and the ability to a make a difference in the world. Ms. Parrington became a crime fighter that the news dubbed as Valkyrie known for her sword Dragonfang and her flying steed Aragon. Samantha would end up joining the Justice Society of America and fight alongside the likes of Wesley Dodds, Ted Knight, Jeffrey Mace and others. An impressive feat at the time considered at the time of her joining the league in 1960 she was barely seventeen years old.

The heroic acts of this new Valkyrie had caught the eyes and attention of Asgard. Odin summoned the young girl from Earth to speak with her and learn of her story. After spending some time bouncing between Asgard and Earth, it was decided that Ms. Parrington would become Odin's voice upon the planet and act in his stead as he was forbidden too. Samantha would continue to fight alongside the JSA and face many foes that had fallen from the other nine worlds as well. Her actions would bring her into conflict with a villain known as the Enchantress otherwise known as Amora who saw this semi-reincarnation of Brunnhilde as nothing more than a simple pain in her side.

At the age of thirty five, the JSA had disbanded and Samantha was at a lost at what to do with her life. With nowhere else to go she turned back towards the origin of her powers and went to Asgard. Here Ms. Parrington would join up with the Valkyrior. The group of warrior goddesses had become a shadow of its former self in the time since their original leaders death. War against giants and other foes had resulted in great losses and forced many of the original Valkyrior to be replaced with newer warriors with less experience in battle. Samantha then made it her duty and task to train the Valkyrior back into fighting shape as a force to help defend Asgard.

Eventually though Samantha would perish in battle against Hela, the goddess of death after she tried to steal a piece of Odin's soul. And once more the Spirit of the Valkyrie would continue to live on jettisoned back into the void until it could find a worthy host once more.

---

_{D A Y S O F Y O U T H}

Born to Steve and Krista Norris in Breckenridge, Minnesota, the first of their eventual three children. Barbara lived a normal life in a city that was small by most standards with only around three thousand and five hundred residents at any given time. Her family life was simple at best, her mother a waitress at a truck stop and her father a local journalist that earned his pay writing about high school football. It was the kind of place that people spent their entire lives trying to get out of, because if you didn't do it fast it had a habit of keeping you stuck for the rest of your life.

The early years were normal , she spent much of it with her father as her mother's work schedule was erratic at best. Her father wasn't the best parent in the world with the inability to cook and a permanent stoic distance that he seemed to keep to his children. As a result the routine was established early though with the same dinner of deli meats on white bread with a small selection of condiments every night, they eat at a dinner table where little small talk was engaged. Sometimes though on the rare occasion that the pestering of his children managed to crack his resolve of stone he would tell his children stories. His favorite were the ones he read when he was young boy enraptured with Norse Mythology. For all his lacking in other fields Steve was a grand story teller who was able to fill his children's minds with vivid pictures of Thor, Odin and others battling Stygian terrible foes like giants. Though it would be Barbara that would be sucked into them the most.

In the ended though times of storytelling and the freedoms of early childhood were replaced with School. Unlike some Barbara had found little difficulty adapting to the school setting. Able to run to the jungle gym and back quicker than any of her classmates, and recite the alphabet without messing up forwards and backwards she was on the quick road to popularity. Her teachers could only say good things about her to her parents that she was a 'bright child', a 'pleasure to have in class', among others. But she did have one issue, one that would follow her through most of her life her constant spats with bullies.

You see like many children her age Barbara grew up with more than just the stories of mythological heroes, she grew up with the stories of real heroes. Heroes such as the Flash, The Sandman, Star Man and others. While the time of the JSA had long since passed their dreams and ideals continued to live on and imbued themselves into the hearts of the people that they once protected. Children in particular having an inexplicable draw to the heroes stories and legends. So when Barbara saw her fellow classmates being picked on she would step in to intervene. This lead to many days of her coming home on the bus with a black eye and a call home to her parents. Her parents worried about her and in response to at least give the girl the chance to defend herself they signed her up for karate lessons which she would take throughout high school.

Junior High school came and went with it the first steps into puberty, boys, and all the other not so fun things to do in the world. She excelled once again in most of her classes except for the dreaded fear that was Sarah Keller's Algebra I class in Seventh Grade. She bounced around a lot between groups and friends trying to find her place among them as she was stuck at the epicenter of many intersecting circles. She stayed fairly popular though both among the students and the teachers and things seemed to go alright.

High School rolled around and much of the same followed. She passed through her advance placement classes not with the best grades but ones that didn't have her parents trying to kill her. She stayed active with things such as the student government and leading the girl's volleyball team to the State Championships where they lost in the closing minutes of the game. Relationships, a troubling pastime that she had been dealing with since Junior High continued, nothing ever truly deep or meaningful occurred though and she was smart enough not to get pregnant or anything like that. Senior year rolled right on along and she found herself applying to college something that was easily enough with her good grades and athletic ability.

In the end though she ended up going to Metropolis University where she went to go play Volleyball for the Bulldogs studying political science with law school on her mind for the future. To go from a small city in Minnesota to one of the largest metropolitan centers in the world was something of a shock. Expectations rose, the general craziness of life mounted higher and higher. She almost lost her scholarship by almost getting kicked off the volleyball team, she struggled in some of her classes and found herself scrambling for purchase. Mid-way through her second semester she found her footing again, doubling down in an effort to not disappoint her parents and anyone else.

She thought she had finally found even footing. She thought it was going to be easy from that point forward. She was wrong.

_{H E I R O F G L O R Y}
The truth of the matter was that Barbara had forgotten about the heroes of her youth. It wasn't until the Kryptonians attacked that she remembered them. The attack hit Metropolis pretty hard and a whole lot of lives were lost in the process, hell half of Barbara's dorm at Met U had been completely demolished when a Kryptoian mech was tossed into it by Superman. But like the many other civilians who there that day, she watched as the Superman, Steel and Supergirl fought against the Kryptonians. Watching them almost immediately her mind was brought back to the days of her youth playing pretend with her siblings.

In the weeks following the attack Barbara found herself thinking about the superheros more and more. Her notebook was filled with sketches of the heroes that she had pretended to be in her youth. It was a stupid fantasy of course, something to get her mind off of the stress for a minute. She knew she was enraptured with the idea of being a superhero, she could never be one herself. She was just Barbara Norris from Minnesota, she played volleyball and she wanted to become a lawyer some day. She wasn't like them, the best she had done was get beat up trying to stop bullies in elementary school.

That changed of course.

April 20^th, 2016 it was a day that would become ingrained in Barbara's head for the rest of her life. She was walking back to her dorm after going out to go see some punk rock band with her friends. The rest of them were staying out getting drunk with their fake I.Ds and what not. In all her heart she wanted to go them but she couldn't, she couldn't afford to get caught by the police it would mean the end for a whole lot of things she worked far too long for. And so she trudged it alone back to the campus grounds. She had made such treks what seemed like a million times and she suspected it to be the same as always.

She heard a cry for help and instinctively she turned down an alleyway heading off of the main street. There she saw a woman being assaulted by a man. Barbara froze unsure what to do, the pair having not noticed him yet. She could run back to the safety of the main street and head on with her day, no that wasn't right. She could call the cops and hope they arrived quick enough, they wouldn't. She could stick around to see what happened, things were getting worse by the second. No. She knew what she had to do. She yelled out at the culprit starling him and charging into him. The culprit pulled a gun as the young Norris wrestled him to the ground. He fired.

The bullet should of killed her. The man left her for dead in a pile of her own blood. She could feel her heartbeat getting slower and slower. Then a warmth of light surrounded her and the pain vanished. She was no longer in her own clothes but out of something of some fantasy viking novel. She felt the strongest she had ever been in her life. On her back was a sword of all things. She chased after the man that had shot her and found him easily enough as the scratches that she had left on him left a blood trail. The next morning, the cops found him tied up in front of their police station, bickering about some golden haired warrior that had come down from the skies.

It's been a week and a couple days since. In that time Barbara had been introduced to a slew of interesting things including a flying horse and ghosts of dead warriors talking in her head. For now though she's playing it cool, not jumping to any conclusions or doing anything that would draw the media to her. In fact she hasn't even stopped a single crime since the one that got her stuck in this mess. She's got a long road ahead to becoming anything close to a hero, but everybody has to start somewhere right?

_{[ ߜ ] A L L I E S}

---

Mercedes Knight | A close friend of Barbara and another student at Metropolis University. Studying Criminal Justice, wants to be a cop some day.
Elsa Bloodstone | Barbara's roommate. A friendly girl from Boston that is studying biology. She has vampire problems. Currently they are the only people that know of one another's respective problems.
Felix Alvarez | One of the best lawyers working in America and a total dream boat. He's Barbara boss down at her current internship at Luthor Law Solutions.
Detective Ry Sovereign | Works for the metropolis police department, specializing in super human related crimes. Hasn't got to know Ms. Norris just yet.
Odin | The big man himself, is aware that a new Valkyrie is up and about it somewhere but has more important things to deal with at the moment.
Yggdrasill | Less of a person and more a tree that is central to the very fabric of reality and all but you know. It can communicate though by sending people prophetic dreams about usually very bad things.
Balder Odinson | Son of Odin sent to Earth to try and find the new Valkyrie. He landed in Russia, probably going to be awhile.
Aragon | Flying horse. Yep you read that right, flying horse.

_{[ ߜ ] F A M I L Y}

---

Steve Norris | Barbara's father, a journalist from Minnesota who is pretty good at telling stories. Kind of a grump.
Krista Norris | Barbara's mother, a waitress from Minnesota. Barbara's biggest fan.
Jack Norris | Barbara's younger brother. Sixteen years old and full of hormones, he likes drawing things.
Kathryn 'Kate' Norris | Barbara's younger sister and twin of Jack. She throws a mean softball.

_{[ ߜ ] E N E M I E S}

---

Adaliah Hazlewood/ Hela | Asgardian and Goddess of Death. Currently pretending to be a human and budding up to Barbara who is taking a strange liking to her. Hela has plans of course.
The Enchantress | Amora is the age old enemy of the first Valkyrie and probably won't like the new one that much either. Right now though she doesn't even now that she exists or cares. That might change in the future.
Malekith the Accursed | Ruler of Svartalfheim and generally a pretty big jerk. He sometimes comes to earth to try and conquer, destroy, exploit, et cetra.
The Doom Maidens | Harbingers of the end times.
Nathan Garrett/ Black Knight | One time British scientist set to win the noble prize in Physics turned evil man with a sword that corrupts all that it touches.
More to come

_{[ ߜ ] N O T E S}

---

At the start of Maximum, Valkyrie has been well Valkyrie for like two weeks. She stopped one crime in the middle of the night and that was it. As a result the world doesn't really now about her yet as he hasn't had her big revel yet. That will happen soon enough though.

[Hexaflexagon]

---

D I G I M O N: C O N V E R G E N C E

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_{FAST FACTS}

_{▲ Digimon RP (obviously), modernish setting.
▲ More tonally in common with Tamers than say Adventure.
▲ There be action, slice of life, adventure, drama, romance, and most importantly mystery.
▲ May contain references to Vannevar Bush, Marian Rejewski, Alan Turing, John C. Lilly, Ullin Place, Proust and more
▲ Or in other terms its like Evangelion, Narutaru and Shin Megami Tensei had a Digimon baby.}

_{P I T C H}

---

From the idea that the self is not given to us,
I think there is only one practical consequence:
we have to create ourselves as a work of art.
~ Michel Foucault

In early 2010, Matsukata Kenshin a professor and researcher at the University of Tokyo, after being plagued with nightmares creates a prototype for something he calls a Digivice. A virtual reality integration systems designed for an increasingly digital world. Soon after its creation Mr. Matsukata appears to lose grasp on his own sanity. Becoming increasingly withdrawn, spending less and less time with his wife and children. Soon he never seems to only leave his lab for meals and the occasionally use of the bathroom, having even brought in an inflatable mattress. He reports hearing voices in his computer speaking to him, wanting to be let free and became increasingly protective of his Digivice. Things came to a head in a tragic end in the Winter of 2012 when after having not being seen for several days, his colleagues discovered that Mr. Matsukata had hung himself.

Following his death his research and prototype Digivice were recovered by Toyoshima Industries. Toyoshima Industries was able to perfect and adapt Matsukata's Digivice as part of their newest product, a virtual reality world know as BABEL. Designed in direct opposition to the tower of myth that its name is dervied, BABEL was designed to act as a gateway of the world, connecting people from across the globe together in a place where they can chat, shop, play and work together in a space that could meld and reshape itself based upon their whims. Matsukata's perfected technology allowing for a 'digital upload' of the self into the Computer allowing for full user integration. BABEL's release in the spring 2014 changed the world and made Toyoshima Industries one of the biggest names in the world nearly overnight.

To reach out to a younger demographic and encourage brand loyalty earlier on Toyoshima Industries added a 'game' to BABEL. This game would be called Digital Battle. Based of a strange series of code left inside of Matsukata's original prototype Digivice. Users would be able to collect, trade, and battle creations known as Digital Monsters or Digimon for short. Digital Battle soon became a world renown phenomenon spanning several more television shows, card games and more monsters in expansion packs to the BABEL based game. A large tournament scene starting in Japan and soon branching out all over the world began to formalize and soon every kid with access to an internet connection was playing along. By late 2016 BABEL and by extension Digital Battle in general has grown astronomically with many other BABEL like replicas and ripoffs appearing but never holding up to the original's dominance and the sheer power that comes with recognition.

It is upon this stage that the students of Awa Ikuei Juku will be thrust into the spotlight. A coastal city in the Tōhoku region. Awa was rebuilt almost exclusively by Toyoshima Industries as part of its community outreach and expansion initiative after the city was nearly destroyed in an 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The resulting rebuilding efforts and the following movement of Toyoshima Industries to the city resulted in an economic boom that changed Awa from a sleepy coastal town to a bustling metropolitan city. Awa Ikuei Juku or as it is also called Awa Academy was founded soon afterwards by Toyoshima Industries to serve as an upper level high school serving both the cities residents, as well as other students both from across the country and abroad for its quality education.

Strange things are going afoot in Awa and in the world as a whole. Internet outages, cyber attacks, and sightings of strange creatures unlike any animal the world had ever seen. Yet they seem to vanish just as quickly as they are spotted. Some things are never meant to be and the secrets of the Digivice should of died with Matsukata. Two worlds are beginning to bleed together with BABEL acting as the bridge that is connecting them. Is it the end of the world or something new? Well that's up to you to deiced.

_{O O C I N F O R M A T I O N}

---

Welcome one and all to the interest check for Digimon: Convergence. A different take on the idea of Digimon. At its heart its a general deconstruction of the whole Mon genre in the first place. Taking into account a more accurate account of what would happen when you give a bunch of children walking death machines and tell them to go fight some other walking death machines. Have fun being labled as international terrorists or whatever. ;) Don't expect your characters to get out of this okay in one piece mentally or physically. A story about power and its consequences as much as it is about plucky school children trying to save the world.

The Japan and by extension Earth of this world is a mirror to our own. Cracked and distorted in places, the reflection that it casts still resembles that of of our own. In general most of its history is the same leading up to early January of 2010 where things start to branch off in their own direction. Yet still the fears are the same, fears of loss of self, of identity, of a dramatically changing world that's sweeping aside the edicts of its elders. Like any good science fiction story which Digimon is, the technology stands in service of telling a good story.

The story itself will go at a slower pace focusing more upon character interaction and development in the interest of creating good scenes and interactions between players rather than rushing forward from action set piece to action set piece. The focus always being on telling a good story. It's a strange tale about friendship, the inevitability of oblivion, security, and the definition of a soul. But hey if it sounds like your thing well then why don't you come and say hi?

_{D A T A B A S E}

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General world-building stuff for your reading pleasure. More will be added as we go on.

[Hexaflexagon]

S T A R W A R S : S K I E S O F R U I N

_{Join the Empire they said. It'll be fun they said.}

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F A S T F A C T S

_{▲ Star Wars Universe, Rebellion Era, 2 BBY, Opening months of the Galactic Civil War
▲ Action, adventure, drama, and all the other good stuff.
▲ Players take on the role of Echo Squadron, a tie fighter squadron know for two things mostly: achieving mission goals often determined suicidal at best and losing countless personal along the way.
▲ Character focused story. Less on the War and more on its effects on the individual cogs that make up the Imperial war machine.}

_{P I T C H}

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A galaxy at war! The discontent bodies rising by the day in protest against the Empire have unified as the Alliance to Restore the Republic or Rebel Alliance for short. Lead by the traitorous Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, members of the Imperial Senate intent on securing power for their own nefarious deeds. The Rebel forces have begun a guerilla campaign across the galaxy, in a campaign of terror designed to cripple the Empire's infrastructure and scare its fear citizens into complacency. Shipyards and Imperial garrisons have been attacked, government buildings have been bombed and reports of hostage by nefarious rebels flock into our news room by the day.

Yet the bravery of the Imperial Military knows no bounds. In the name of protecting the people and keeping the peace, the military has fully mobilized to quell the rebel incursion. From the men and woman of the Stormtrooper corps trained and disciplined as fine instruments of war. To the heroic pilots of our mobilized infantry such as the colossal ATAT. The daring and courageous pilots that take to the skies. And we cannot forget the disciplined and heroic officers and Moffs that organize brilliant battle plans. Everyday these men and women fight for the rights and safety of the fair citizens of the Empire. Honored by their communities, loved by all (the uniform's make anyone dashing), and made up of men and woman just like.

Do you have what it takes to?

If so ENLIST today!

That holovid probably sounds familiar to you. The promises of glory, wealth, a stable career might of hooked you in. Or maybe your family has a history of service, you have relatives that fought in the Clone Wars against the Separatist and later the Jedi traitors - so of course it just felt natural to sign up. Maybe you come from a well-off family and to help keep their influence in the massive bureaucracy of the Empire, they sent you one of their unimportant spare children away to join the military. Maybe your just some farm kid from some backwater in the outer rim, and don't want to die in the same boots as your father so you jumped at the first chance to see the world. Whatever it was something convinced you to sign up.

You went through the academy and they found out you could fly, or at least you had the aptitude to fly. You made it through your advance flight classes without crashing and kept your grades up. Maybe you joined a club or a fraternity or something. Then you got a letter inviting you to attend Flight School. A chance to become among the best pilots that the Imperial Navy has to offer. You go and live on a training vessel for the next six months. It's hard, really hard. Most of the time you can't find time to even sleep. When the first of your cohorts dies screaming in a fireball during a live fear test against the combat drones you vomit and have nightmares for a week. By the time the tenth one rolls around you barely even blink.

The TIE becomes an extension of yourself. You learn its quirks, it sounds and particulars. Somehow along the way you've gone from some kid to a weapon in the Imperial Arsenal. You learn to put the value of the equipment and vehicle ahead of your own life. You learn how to follow orders without thinking, you learn loyalty, you learn how to kill. And then just like that its over. You've graduated. Your on Coruscant, and somebodies pinning a metal, Grand Vizier was there and everything.

You expected things to be easy now. Fight off the occasional pirate, patrol the Empire's shipping lanes, grow old retire and collect your pension. You didn't take the rebels into account. I mean its not that you have anything personal against them. Some of your family might even be rebels, but you have a job to do. A galaxy to protect and they are making it real hard to do that.

Soon you found yourself being transferred aboard the Imperial I-class Star Destroyer Tempest. A rugged and worn Star Destroyer that had been in active duty since the concluding years of the Clone Wars. The Tempest usually spent its days out in the outer rim crushing pirate kings and bringing order to dissenting colonist. More famously though its the traditional home of Echo Squadron. Your new squad.

Echo Squadron has a rather infamous reputation among the Imperial Navy. Suicidal even in comparison to their cohorts, Echo gets the job done no matter what. They take on the most dangerous of missions and somehow come out alive and swinging. Their casualties rates are high especially among the new recruits dragged in to supplement their constantly falling numbers but those that stick around manage to do so with ease. They are famed for having never failed a mission, their tenacity and their unorthodox methods.

And now the Tempest and by extension Echo has been recalled to Coruscant to resupply and rearm themselves before heading out to deal with high level rebel targets. Try and not die too quickly will you? Rookies don't grow on trees.

_{O O C I N F O R M A T I O N}

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mkmkmkmkmkmkmk

So if you.
- Like Star Wars.
- Like cool space ships.
- Like generally good people fighting in a desperate struggle not only to survive, but to retain their humanity even while serving an increasingly inhumane regime.
- Like fun bits
- Like depressing bits
- Like character focused stories
- And can write at least one post a week.

Maybe this is the Star Wars RP you've been waiting for.

[Hexaflexagon]

_{Atemporality: A Magic Realist Ghost Story}

_{"It’s enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment."
~ Gabriel García Márquez}

[Hexaflexagon]

S T O N E F I S T

[Hexaflexagon]

S E C T I O N 1: T H E K I N G D O M

_{N A M E}

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The Divine Kingdom of Ba Sing Se

_{S Y N O P S I S}

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• In short Ba Sing Se is an Economic and Military Powerhouse rivaled only by the loftiest of powers and its not afraid to use that power.
• Since the assassination of the late Emperor and the transfer of power to the Military Council, the kingdom has effectively become an authoritative war machine bent on conquest.
• The adage that all roads lead to Ba Sing Se holds true and because of its name and influence trade flows easily enough through the city.
• The Walls of Ba Sing Se stand as an enormous deterrent to any that would try and face the city. The fortficans having repulsed any invader that dare come at them.
• Despite this the kingdom is plagued by political infighting between the various factions vying for control (kept in control barely with the iron fist of the military) and those very divides could bring the entire system down atop itself.

_{T H E R O Y A L C A P I T A L}

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Legend has it that Ba Sing Se is one of if not the earliest cities in known human history. Formed soon after the first peoples began to leave the safety of the Lion Turtle. Once a humble subterranean dwelling carved by those first Earth Benders to provide safety from the elements and predators lit by luminous crystals still mined to this day. Soon though the city grew too large to be contained underground and it broke to the surface and kept on expanding ever since. In the current era Ba Sing Se is the largest city in the known world, a sprawling metropolis far flung from its humble beginnings. Built into tiered rings with rank and nobility matched by how close one lives to the elaborate royal place, a large sprawling complex bigger than some smaller nations capitals. The center of the kingdoms prosperity its people are content if a bit full of themselves. The bloody wars and conquests held in their name seem a worlds away hidden beyond the safety of the walls which have repulsed every invader that have dared face them. Yet the city is one in motion schemes and plots run wild in the streets and chaos is never far behind.

_{M I L I T A R Y S T R E N G T H}

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_{E C O N O M I C S T R E N G T H}

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_{S O V R E I G N R E L A T I O N S}

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_{R E C E N T H I S T O R Y}

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_{O T H E R I N F OR M A T I O N}

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S E C T I O N 2: T H E R U L E R

_{N A M E}

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Crown Princess Zhu

_{A G E}

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13

_{P E R S O N A L I T Y}

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_{A T T R I B U T E S}

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_{B I O G R A P H Y}

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_{F A M I L Y & A L L I E S}

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_{I M A G E R E F E R E N C E S}

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₁

[Hexaflexagon]

_{The setting is Sengoku period Japan with an anachronistic twist.
That twist may include cyborgs, night-vision googles, and anti-materiel rifles among other things.
Inspired by Afro Samurai, Samurai Champloo, Samurai Jack, and Thirteen Assassins.
Featuring: evil warlords, physics-defying swordplay, arms that happens to be guns, guns that happen to be arms, and shenanigans.}

Plot

---

_{“The only reason a warrior is alive is to fight, and the only reason a warrior fights is to win”
~ Miyamoto Musashi}

Our story begins in a land ravaged by war. The local lords hunger for power and recognition has soaked the land with the blood of their escapades. Among these warlords arose a man known simply as Hagane. A disgraced samurai he joined one of the many groups of disenfranchised peasant turned into a full armed revolt. Hagane would become their leader both military and spiritually and as his peasants evidently began to win battle after battle against more heavily armored and experienced armies more and more flocked to the man's cause. Overtime Hagane would become a fearsome warlord in his own right bringing a sizable portion of land underneath his control.

As these things go though, all the power soon began to corrupt their savior. Consumed by an ever-present paranoia nipping away at him old friends became hated betrayers with no cause or justification. His domain became one of fear and horror. The citizenry were freely raped, tortured and slaughtered. Heavy taxes were placed on all to pay for his massive war machines and the reinforcement of his fortresses. The continual pressure leading to massive starvation and depopulation of several villages. Those of his soldiers that disagreed with such tactics and treatment were killed as well, replaced with emotionless unflinching automatons. The bubbling discontent which he had used to seize power was to slowly rise again. The peasantry not in a condition to fight had to look for other options.

With the rest of the land plunged in bloody civil war and the comparatively small size of Hagane's domain looking towards other local lords came only with scoff and rejection. They had rivals to fight and there own lands to keep peace over, not worry about removing a heavily entrenched peasant-king who seemed perfectly content living in his own bubble. And so the peasants were forced to look elsewhere. The collective elders from the various remaining villages collected up what little coinage they had to hire a group of warriors to deal with their problem

[Hexaflexagon]

I R O N M A N

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^{" I promise I will explain it all when we get back. I will draw you pictures, I will use puppets...but for right now, you have to just listen to me."}

^{A N T H O N Y E D W A R D S T A R K ♦ May 29, 1970 (47) ♦ M A L E ♦ C H A O T I C G O O D}

C O N C E P T A B S T R A C T:

---

As I see it being Iron Man is something that Tony gets. It's a fairly simple job all things considered you punch, shoot, blow up, or otherwise incapacitate the bad guys. Then you smile for the cameras, get the key to the city, and call it a day. What Tony Stark doesn't get is being a functional human being. And so thus begins the tale that I would like to tell simply entitled STARK VERSUS LIFE. It's a little different with less of the focus being on his actions as Iron Man, and more on him trying to get the rest of his shit together. He's almost fifty and the longest he's ever been able to hold a relationship is about two weeks. He is still a raging alcoholic despite several attempts to go clean. Not to mention whenever he wants to retire from the whole super hero business somebody blows his house up. In the end it's a superhero story or at least a story about a superhero, but one told through the lens of Bukowski or Lowry

The first tale begins in Tijuana or close enough to it. Following a sampling of the local flavor that begins one bad trip both figuratively and literally.

N O T E S:

---

Tony was an original member of the Avengers underneath A.R.G.U.S. But is now something of a 'reserve member' more on his own wishes than anything else. He does offer his services though as a 'consultant' of sorts to the various superhero groups of the world providing logistical assistance.

[Hexaflexagon]

[Hexaflexagon]

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

W A R B I R D

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^{_{C A R O L D A N V E R S ♦ S U P E R H E R O ♦ W A S H I N G T O N D. C ♦ T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S
O F A M E R I C A}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right. - Carl Schurz}

---

The world of today is different from what it once was, new threats and dangers challenge the old order of things. The dawning of the new millennium has shown that the United States of America once defined by its stalwart impregnability can bleed. A bleeding that has only been worsened by the continued arrival of metahumans and other 'powered individuals'. This new existential threat to the country having been clearly shown in the recent tragedies in Star City and New York. The damage to both innocent lives and property endured in this devastating attack on the American people has confirmed earlier suspicions by the Department of Defense that America must have a readied response to these new types of potentially catastrophic threats. These fears would lead to the formation of the Department of Extranormal Affairs headed by King Faraday. It was then quickly decided that the Department would need a face for the common people to rally behind. With Wonder Woman's loyalty being questioned more and more each day, and Captain America swallowed into Nick Fury's shadow games, it was felt that America needed someone new to hold up the virtues of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Luckily for the USA they already had an ace up their sleeve.

Carol Susan Jane Danvers was born in Boston, Massachusetts to working-class parents, Joe and Marie, and had two brothers, Joe Jr. and Steve. Succeeding both academically and athletically in her younger years, Carol gained admittance to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado, Springs, Colorado. As her time in the Academy ended, she was tapped to undergo further training to prepare her for operations underneath the banner of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). Predictably Carol would excel in her time in the special forces, she would earn high praise from her commanding officers, as well as numerous commendations including the Air Force Cross. It would be her continued gallant actions and her time and time again commitment to the cause that would lead her to being tapped for EXCELSIOR.

Project EXCELSIOR began soon after the end of the Second World War as an attempt to create an improved Super Soldier Serum. Due to budget restraints and bureaucratic red tape, EXCELSIOR would be canned, and the project would all but be forgotten until a decade ago. Everything changed when a Kree scout ship would crash in the New Mexico Desert; ironically enough it was the Corpse recovered in the crash that would breathe new life into EXCELSIOR. Gone now was the old plan of simply making a stronger Super Soldier Serum, instead using cutting edge genetic engineering technology they would splice together Kree and Human DNA to create the perfect mixture of both species’ strengths.

Carol was the 23rd EXCELSIOR test subject and thus given the designation of Subject - W. But where the others had failed, Carol's DNA took to the gene splicing exceptionally well. The two divergent helixes would merge together to create something entirely new. The DoD immediately saw the potentiality of Carol's powers and soon Carol would be shifted back under the oversee of United States Special Operations Command under a new codename - Warbird. Not wanting too much information to be leaked about their new weapon, SOCOM would use Carol sparingly and only in the direst of situations usually rescuing other operators that otherwise couldn't be saved.

But now Carol's time in the shadows was over. Transferred out from underneath SOCOM and under the jurisdiction of her new boss King Faraday. It was something that Carol welcomed with eager arms ready to take a more proactive role with the powers that she had been granted. And with the Department of Extranormal Affairs first press conference scheduled, it would only be a matter of time until the whole world knew Carol's name.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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^{“By stressing that the identity of a democratic political community hinges on the possibility of drawing a frontier between 'us' and 'them', Schmitt highlights the fact that democracy always entails relations of Inclusion & Exclusion.” - Chantal Mouffe - The Democratic Paradox}

---

Without mincing words too much the story I currently have outlined is very politically charged, as at its heart it is fundamentally the story of the failure of the Western democratic model. A model built on the promise of ensuring the rights of all its citizens but having never really been able to do so. A model that has propped up and supported increasingly authoritarian systems of governance supported by its most fundamental framework of inclusion and exclusion. The plot, I currently have outlined attempts at least in part to explore not only these broader ideas but the underlying themes of fear, hate, displacement, and the "other". For a point of reference thematically it is much closer to a House of Cards style show than a West Wing style show.

Carol then, serves as the perfect character to use to explore these narratives. In many ways, she represents the strange juxtaposition of ideals and values that can form in distinctly non-homogeneous place such as the USA. On one hand, she matches even the Cap himself in her belief in the American experiment. On the other hand, she is everything that same exact experiment seems to despise: a woman, LGBTI+, and in the Absolute Verse she falls under the category of Extranormal. And so, there is an unmistakable tension there in her character, which will serve primarily as the central tension of the story going forward. A tension that will only increase as Carol rather than rejecting the establishment outright as some might do, instead chooses to take up the herculean task of trying to make real change from the inside.

Beyond flexing my creative muscles with a tale about the moral gray on gray of the modern nation state, Carol also provides with me an opportunity that Zatanna's story did not - collaboration. Carol's position as the "face " of the Department of Extranormal Affairs will hopefully allow me to be much more open and active with collaboration and just helping expand the wider world further.

All in all, this is a story I’ve been thinking about for some time now, and I’m excited to have the potential opportunity to share it with you all.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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^{"Order, is a kind of compulsion to repeat which, when a regulation has been laid down once and for all, decides when, where, and how a thing shall be done, so that in every similar circumstance one is spared hesitation and indecision." Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents}

---

• Carol will be wearing her more modern Captain Marvel style suit, because aesthetically I feel it fits better with where she is coming from and what she is doing in this story.
• Putting my money where my mouth is, I will be listing a supporting cast below, but there inclusion here no way, shape or form means that I'm claiming complete ownership over them the only thing I ask is please consult me before you do anything life changing with characters marked with a Δ.

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▼ Department of Extranormal Affairs ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Δ King Faraday - - - ◼ General Samuel Lane - - - - ◼ Δ Jessica Drew - - - - - ◼ Jimmy Woo - - - - - ◼ Avril Kincaid	- - - - - - -

▼ Enemies of the State ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Δ Karla Sofen / Moonstone - - - ◼ Δ Robert Hunter / Nitro - - - ◼ Albrecht Krieger	--

S A M P L E P O S T:

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^{"By this I mean a number of phenomena that seem to me to be quite significant, namely, the set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy, of a general strategy of power, or, in other words, how, starting from the 18th century, modern Western societies took on board the fundamental biological fact that human beings are a species. This is what I have called biopower." - Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population}

---

Prologue

1401-1409 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Willard Hotel, Washington D.C | Four Hours Ago

---

^{Blast Radius|Prologue}

0

A buzz of activity hung in the air around 1401–1409 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, as a pack of journalists made their way into the Willard Hotel. All the big names were there: Times, Post, WHiH, Planet anyone that was anyone was sending somebody to the press conference held by the Department of Extranormal Affairs. The government's newest department was creating a significant amount of noise on the political circuit. The cynics amongst them were eagerly anticipating new blood to grease the gears, expecting similar controversies to that of Homeland Security, the last department created in response to an attack on American soil. Others were just curious to see what Extranormal Affairs purpose was going to be. The Extranormal Affairs Bill which give the department life followed very typical political mannerisms in that it said a lot while saying very little at all.

This air of anticipation was only intensified by the lack of information following the bill's passing. Little was made public about the hiring and staffing of this new department with only a few key roles being disclosed. The names that were released predominantly included former members of the military and intelligence communities. Among those drawing several raised brows being the inclusion of one General Samuel Lane, an old warhawk that made his name during the War in Iraq and being one of the main playmakers in the United States more proactive counterterrorism policy. With members such as Lane, it didn't take long for the conspiracies to begin to form about a militant wing of the government seizing power. This chatter only increased in volume when it was announced King Faraday, a relative nobody when it came to public politics, but someone with many ties with Langley and the broader Intelligence community, was tapped to serve as the department's inaugural secretary.

The shakers and movers in the Department of Extranormal Affairs seemed to be playing into this aura of mystique. Where the traditional way of communicating to the journalistic community may have been a courtesy phone call or email, the details surrounding the press conference came much more traditionally. The selected editors in chief finding a spotless white envelope on their desks closed with a wax seal carrying the department's crest. Only two dozen of these letters were sent out in total, the rest having to watch the live television broadcast like everyone else.

The lucky two dozen were ushered from the Willard's lobby to a second-floor conference room. The room was spartan in its layout, at the back a table with miniature bottled water, cups filled with precision cut spears of carrots and celery, and a small selection of patriotic themed baked goods. Beyond the table was the camera equipment being used for the press conference. A small film crew worked to get rigs set up, microphones ready, and gaff tape on the ground. They were following the directions of an arthouse documentary filmmaker who had made a minor wave at Cannes the year before for her documentary on Seoul's grassroots punk rock scene. Her presence another oddity replacing a veteran C-SPAN crew that would traditionally be taking on a conference like this. The journalists filtered pass the film crew and towards the front of the room where a few rows of chairs and a lectern was set up.

As the press moved to take their seats, Agent Woo counted heads with an analogue clicker as his partner checked passes. Dressed in a finely tailored black suit with matching tie and sunglasses, Woo played the role of government spook like he was born into it. Having served with the South LA County Violent Crimes Task Force for the better part of a decade, before spending time teaching at the Macau Security Forces Training College to get back in touch with his roots. He dropped the grade book and picked up the badge again when Faraday had finally cashed in an old favor. Woo would never tell his wife, but it felt good to be back in the field.

As the number on his clicker moved closer to the magic number he leaned into his arm to cough. As he leaned in closer, he whispered into a receiver that was clipped to the lapel of his suit jacket.

"This is Fisher to Kasparov, only a few stragglers left."

"Understood, be with you shortly Fisher." King Faraday replied.

He sat in an adjoining room as he tapped the ashes of his cigarette into the soil of a windowsill planter. Faraday wore the same navy-blue suit that he had been wearing for the past thirty years. The old intelligence operator was shameless to admit he did not own a suit in any other color. It came from some old kernel of wisdom he had picked up from his grandfather years ago - "King, my boy" he would say, "suits are like women. When you find one that fits stick with it." The hand spun Italian linen wasn't necessarily the kindest to his wallet, but it breathed easily and didn't restrict his movement.

King lounging there in his chair as he took another drag from his cigarette was the complete antithesis of Carol.

Carol Danvers stood in front of a mirror straightening out her medals for the fifteenth time as she practiced smiling. It was ridiculous really, she could storm an entrenched enemy position no problem, fly a million-dollar tin can with rockets strapped to it breaking the sound barrier, but she couldn't smile. Each attempt only managing to push her further and further into demented serial killer territory. And it wasn't like this was a new struggle that she was dealing with, her parents had an entire school yearbook that said otherwise. When she was little, her mother always told her to just think of something funny in her head, but how could you laugh at your own jokes?

As the blonde-haired woman gave out a defeated sigh, Faraday piped up from his chair.

"Loosen up Danvers, you look like somebody just shot your dog."

"Easy for you to say, you aren't the main event."

King stood up grinding the butt of his cigarette into the planter. He had the rigid locked-in perfect posture of a career military man; his 6'1" stature giving him roughly three solid inches over Carol. Despite being on the far side of fifty, King managed to fill out his suit quite nicely, he adhered to a strict physical fitness regimen to combat any ill effects that his advanced age and lifetime pack-a-day habit may have brought. As he walked over to the mirror were Carol stood, he licked two fingers and flattened out an unruly strand of white hair.

"Danvers, I spent years using media to influence foreign elections to suit our great country's many interests. And in that time, if I learned anything it's that the media loves a good story."

"So what? I love cake but I still know when I'm eating a shitty one."

"Well good thing we aren't feeding them cake then. And even if we were, any cake will taste good after being starved for weeks. We've been denying them any information for weeks and now they are just begging for any little morsel we may dish out. Trust me Danvers everyone in this country is going to know who you are by the end of the day."

Yeah as that girl who can't even smile right Carol thought to herself as she followed Faraday out of the room and into the hallway.

King straightened his tie before entering the conference room. He gave a small wave as the clicking of cameras filled the air like rain rolling off a roof. He walked towards the lectern at a controlled pace, giving the cameras all the time, they needed to track his movements. Despite being a spook for most of his life, Faraday navigated the crowd like he was a movie star. From his first step he made it clear that he was in command here and everyone else was just along for the ride.

As he got to the lectern, he made a show of pulling a piece of paper from his suit pocket. It was a piece of loose leaf, the edges off kilter in a way that suggested he had just torn it out of a notebook moment prior. It echoed another man called King, who finished his "I Have A Dream" speech in the Willard's lobby several decades prior. Of course, in King's case, the paper was blank, an artist hired to rip, wrinkle, and fold it in such a way that created the most aesthetically pleasing mimicry of frantic energy that money could buy. Another prop in the carefully planned show that was unfolding in front of a nation's eyes.

Clearing his throat Faraday began to address a waiting populace.

"Thank you, members of the press, for joining me here today, as well as all of you at home watching this live. Today is a monumental day in the history of our great nation, because today I get to introduce to you the future of American security & safety. Before we begin, I believe introductions are in order, my name is King Faraday and I will be serving as your newly appointed Secretary of Extranormal Affairs.

What is Extranormal Affairs you may be asking? All of you, I assume are painfully familiar with the attacks the befell New York and Star City. I will be frank with all of you, we were unprepared, and we paid the price. The Department of Extranormal Affairs was created to ensure that we are never unprepared again. By committing to developing our state of readiness and enabling proactive measures against potential threats we, will ensure that no Extranormal threat is able to devastate our people in such a way again.

But our mission isn’t just preventative, it is also about building bridges. The only way our new department's mission will ever come to pass is through the aid of those among us that possess abilities and understanding far beyond our own. As many of you undoubtedly know it was many of these exact kinds of individuals that at the end of the day were essential in stopping the attack on two of our greatest cities. And so, it is our intent to foster dialogue and communication between the everyday citizen and these remarkable individuals. For it is the belief of myself and the entire department that we will work better together.

To that end, I would like to introduce you to a very special individual. Many of the bravest members of our armed forces community know her personally and those that don’t, know someone that was saved by her. She is one of our own having graduated near the top of her class at Colorado Springs and afterwards serving with Air Force Special Operations Command with distinction for several years. And yet she is also unlike us with abilities that most of us could only ever dream of. In this way she has a foot firmly planted on each side of the divide, and if our mission goes according to plan, will help erase that divide from our vernacular completely. When she is on mission, we call her Warbird, but today I will introduce her to you under a different name. Without further delay, it is my pleasure to introduce you all to Ms. Carol Danvers.”

The woman of the hour closed her eyes and exhaled as she tried to expel the tingling sensation which was causing her lungs to seize up. Standing in the hallway by the same door that King had entered moments earlier, she half-listened to Faraday. She had heard the newly christened secretary give the speech at least seven times during their car trip to the hotel. The words were already solidified, but each variation he would change his dictation and inflection in subtle ways. The meticulous way in which he hung on each word reminding Carol of an old fling who worked at the Smithsonian telling her why the old renaissance masters marble sculptors were so impressive, it was because they were about subtraction. Painting she told her was about addition and so wayward mistakes were easier to fix, but sculptor was about subtracting and that was permanent. That’s how the white-haired man went over his speech, the subtle cutting away at particular pauses and moments of emphasis to give a new angle that would reshape the work.

The words all too familiar at this point, she waited absentmindedly for her cue. Most of her attention was drawn towards wrestling with the other thoughts that were racing through her head. The primary one was that she didn’t give her parents a courtesy call before the conference went down. None of her family knew about the whole “super powered government” agent deal, they just knew that she did work for the Government that she wasn’t able to talk about. The first that they would be hearing about any of it was going to be with the rest of the country. Carol could only imagine the angry string of text messages and voicemails that her mother was going to send her way. Her father would try to do damage control of course, but being an undercover superhero was a lot bigger than hiding a rescued stray cat in your bedroom for a month, and when Marie found out about Apollo, Frank had only managed to reduce her sentence to one long month of nothing but chores, homework and sleep. And now the Danvers’ matriarch babied old Apollo like he was her long-lost child or something.

Was it okay to feel nervous about your entire way of life changing? Since her last day at the Academy life had become at least partially defined by the bureaucratic masquerade. A system of security clearances, long established cover stories, and the type of lies that after a while just ended up becoming fact. A structure of organized hoops and dotted lines to at least create the facade that somewhere in the chain of command that someone knew what they were doing. After all, if the public even understood half of the uncertainty that went with protecting and securing the interests of the world’s biggest superpower, Danvers was sure they would wonder where all that money for drones and the NSA was going. But now in a way, Carol was being liberated from that structure, though if she was being honest, it felt less like being freed of something and more like being pushed out of the nest.

Though if that was the case, she only had herself to blame. She was given ample opportunity to turn the offer down and the DoD would have been more than happy to keep her for themselves. She couldn’t though, Danvers wouldn’t have necessarily described herself as religious despite growing up in a family of self-identifying Ulster Protestants, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that doing this was what she was put on the Earth to do. She believed tremendously in the Department of Extranormal Affairs intended message of collaboration and acceptance. A fundamental idea that at the end of the day you were always better trying to build a bridge than burn one. It was a simple choose to her really, it didn’t take more than a casual observation of any playground brawl at the local school, violence always ended up breeding more violence. Healing only was able to happen once you put the swords down. It was time for Carol to put those beliefs to test, to make them more than just moral philosophizing done in the dead of night to bring her own demons to rest. And that all started now.

“…it is my pleasure to introduce you all to Ms. Carol Danvers.”

There was a moment before Danvers had entered the room, while Faraday pivoted his torso and extended his arm to greet her that their gazes met. In that brief fraction of a moment as the perfect blue of the sky collided with the deep earthen gray all that needed to be said was. A playwright from England once said that all the world was a stage and now for just a few minutes that stage was going to belong to Carol. She nodded her head in affirmation, smacking a palm across her right shoulder to get the blood pumping again and then she stepped in from the hallway.

The blonde-haired woman had to fight the urge to block the flashes from the cameras. The rapid fire clicking that preceded each shot sending an involuntary shiver down Carol’s back as they sounded eerily like the punctuated staccato firing of a machine gun emplacement. There was no moment of reprieve as each barrage of flashes followed closely on the heels of the last volley. Somehow though, despite the efforts to seemingly blind her, Danvers was able to make it to the podium.

Standing there she felt like a specimen on display. Bright lights from either corner of the room brought in by the film crew were centered on the podium radiating heat like two miniaturized suns. As sweat began to build on her brow, Carol looked out onto the crowd but only found shadows looking back at her as the lights swallowed any significant detail from their facial features. The conditions were at least vaguely familiar to her, having been cast as the corn stalk in her preschool thanksgiving play, but they were still unwelcome. The world watched on in a stretched out and agonized silence, as Carol took a few seconds too long to get adjusted. The ease and command that her boss exerted moments earlier replaced with an awkward anticipation. Gripping the edges of the podium, she forced out a slow and shaky breath as she looked down at the podium, King’s artisanally disheveled paper still sitting where he placed it. As she exhaled, she looked back up at the journalists and too nervous to think about it, Carol produced the easiest smile in her entire life.

“Sorry,” She started out “it’s a little bright up here.”

Her words hung in the air for a moment as the blonde fought the urge to sprint out of the room. Thankfully, one of the journalist’s chuckled and a few others followed. Carol wasn’t sure if the journalist was laughing at her or with her, but in the moment, she didn’t care either way. The laugh dissipated the tension in the room, as Carol could feel the heavy knot in her chest start to loosen. Flickering her eyes quickly to her left, she caught Faraday stone-faced and standing to one side, but ever so slightly he nodded his head in approval and confirmation to continue. Having caught her own momentum and unwilling to let it go again, Carol practically jumped to the next comment.

“My name is Carol Danvers, but I guess you all know that already don’t you? I am a superhero and I will be working with the Department of Extranormal Affairs to bring back a sense of normality, to allow our great country to heal the wounds that have been unjustly placed upon it. And it is my hope, that along the way, I can inspire some of you to do the same…”

The script that a gaggle of speechwriters had worked hours on painstakingly crafting for her had gone straight out the windows. The words became muddle and key points lost in the haze of the moment unable to find purchase upon her tongue as she spoke. Despite going off the range the journalists seemed to respond well to her comments as she reinforced many of the same talking points that Faraday had hit on previously. Her primary focus being on a message of unity and community building rather than the disciplinary side of Extranormal Affair. Hopeful in tone and assertive in her convictions, through the course of her speech citizens of not only the nation, but the world watched as Carol slowly came into her own. And at the end she gave an even bigger smile than before as she looked out into the crowd.

“Any questions?”

A forest of hands sprouted from the seats as the eager journalists all began to try and get Carol’s attention. Peering into the crowd, she picked a hand jutting outward from somewhere in the middle. The lights still made it hard for Carol to get a look, the journalist’s face still covered in shadow. Though as she peered forward Danvers was able to pick up on two details: The first was the man’s long white hair pulled up into a tight ponytail; the other was the slightest glimpse of the man’s eyes. It was the eyes that made Carol freeze, she’d seen those eyes on only two kinds of people before: those that were about to kill themselves and those that were about to kill somebody else. The blonde could hear the smile on his voice as he spoke, his voice distinctly light and velvet smooth, like a cold glass of water on a hot summer’s day.

“Have you ever seen a man explode Ms. Danvers?”

Time slowed down to a crawl around Carol as her human/kree adrenaline gland kicked into overdrive as her “sixth sense” kicked in. She watched as the white-haired man’s skin began to crack and flake away as pulsating red energy poured through rapidly forming cracks and fissures. Her options were limited, if she broke the sound barrier she was at risk of permeant deafening the people with less than superhuman eardrums, the bomber had intentionally positioned himself in a location where she also couldn’t safely let off an energy blast without hurting the other journalist. The only real option she had was trying to absorb whatever energy that the man was about to release. And so, she moved.

In the blink of an eye, Danvers vaulted over the lectern and bolted forward like a bullet through the air. She outstretched her right hand and gritted her teeth as she flew directly at the “journalist”. The last she saw of his face was a haunting wild grin before it vanished consumed by the red energy. As the man combusted and the energy rocketed outwards Carol attempted to absorb it. Like smoke being pulled into a funnel the energy pulled towards her. She could feel it begin to course through her veins, but the energy was too much for her to handle, it felt like liquid metal coursing through her body and she couldn’t hold on. The explosion spilled back outwards filling the space as it went, and the last thing Carol saw before the darkness took her was an angry wall of red as she felt the heat and heard the screams.

The world, through the lenses of one of the still functioning television cameras, watched in horror as there was a bright flash followed by heavy smoke. And in the middle of that smoke there was a newly reformed figure who emerged from his cloud of death. The white-haired man’s hair was no longer in a ponytail and he was now wearing something closer to a skintight jumpsuit, but the manic grin still clung to his face as his eyes were bright with bloodlust. He stalked up to the camera slowly and with inhuman strength yanked it up and into his hands so that the whole world could see his face.

“The meek shall inherit the Earth no longer.”

And with that he threw the camera to the ground; as the picture faded into static, he to faded into the smoke.

_{Prologue End}

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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^{"The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world" - Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition}

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N/A

[Hexaflexagon]

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_{a roleplay by hex}

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[Hexaflexagon]

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

AQUAMAN

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^{_{Arthur Curry ♦ Protector of the Seven Seas ♦ Location Unknown ♦ The World}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{I know the oceans better than anyone, but they're still full of secrets, even to me.}

Sometimes the oceans feels like void given breath. A restless mass of churning dark water that takes and takes and takes without stop. Arthur Curry knows this only too well, after all the ocean took both of his parents and it took his own son as well. For years, Arthur had been like Atlas holding the weight of all that water against his back, but the death of Arthur Jr was the thing that finally broke him. And when the flood comes bearing down on you, you have to left something go.

Arthur could no longer be a king. How was he to be the bulwark upon which the foes of Atlantis break if he could not even protect his own son? Arthur could no longer be a mere defender, he had to become the spear of Atlantis itself.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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Why do you want to play this character, what is the driving motivation behind both this desire and the character themselves. What do you hope to accomplish and where do you want the character's story/stories to go?

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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Any additional notes you want to put either for yourself, the GM's or other players to help clarify your vision or continuity.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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A sample post that can be used in the IC if you so desire upon acceptance. This post should provide an example of your vision for the desired character. This sample post should meet all standards outline in the rules and additionally include dialogue, mannerisms and other actions representative of your intended portrayal.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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A list linking to your IC posts as they're created. This can be used for a reference guide to your character or to summarize completed arcs and stories.