Heads up. I haven't been very active these last few days. The reason being a vacation. I am now on a train on the way to the airport. I will be gone for a week. I will have access to cyberspace, but nothing better to write on than my phone, so I won't be able to post.
@Hansa preliminary review at least. I pretty much only have the long background left to do, which logically will take some time. Ultra-short version of the long version: The mother-tree is dying, tree people roam the dimensions to find a suitable new one to live in. Found an empty one and now it's all about bringing stuff there. Gorm comes to this dimension and finds lots on interesting stuff. Also finds lots of things wrong and because he's a nice guy he wants to help out.
Alias: (can't think of anything good). Real name: Gorm Daronga. Age: 134 standard earth years. Gender: None, male type.
Appearance: Gorm is roughly the size of a large, muscular, male human. But that is where the similarities end. He is a plant, and looks like a tree specifically grown to mimic a human. He has a face similar to ours, a mouth than he can talk through, a nose to smell with and eyes to see. He lacks any sort of body hair or nails, but can grow claw-like spikes at the ends of his “fingers” if a need should arise. Basically, he does anything he can to look as human as possible. To hide his identity he goes for the old “trenchcoat, hat and glasses”, which works better than he could imagine.
Personality: Gorm is a very friendly person who will always help those who befriend him in any way he can. He is not very talkative, and will mostly think anything he says through thoroughly before speaking. With this out of the way Gorm is a very confident and straight-to-the-point kind of guy.
Short Biography: Gorm is a dimensional traveller from another earth. His earth is dying fast due to an environment turning hostile. He came to this earth in search of artifacts for his sanctuary, a dimension currently free of life, but which will support it. While this earth has some severe problems with nature, there are more pressing issues that he will help with as well. In return, he expects help from his new super-friends with gathering the artifacts.
Powers, Skills & Equipment: Gorm’s race has evolved from sentient plants instead of creatures. This race has travelled to this dimension many times before and shared their culture which explains how tree-worship is so common. Apart from dimensional travel, Gorm can also meld with any material he comes into contact with, either by changing his own cells into the material, or the slightly more advanced technique of going into the material itself and move around freely.
Plant growth - Gorm is a living plant, and can therefore grow as he wishes. He can even transform his own body entirely if there should be a need for it. So far he has kept a basically humanoid body, but could create an extra pair of arms, a tail, spikes, stingers, vines… Anything, given enough sunlight and water. This growth is super-accelerated compared to the natural growth of plants in this dimension. An arm would take about three minutes to grow from scratch.
Dimensional travel - Gorm’s race can travel to other dimensions at will. This is because they are rooted into the essence of the earth and the dimensions are only different perspectives to his race. While he moves in one dimension he will also move in all the others.
Melding 1 - The cells that make up Gorm’s body is fundamentally different to those found in this dimension. They can change at will into pretty much any substance or material, ledning all pros and cons of that material to Gorm. There must be present a large enough sample for this to work. At least enough to be held in both hands.
Melding 2 - This more advanced technique builds upon the first melding. Gorm’s cells will take on the properties of the material, and this will allow him to “go into” the material at will. Note that the material must exist in enough quantity to allow Gorm’s whole body to fit.
Biology A-student - While Gorm is not in detail familiar with this dimension or its flora and fauna, he does possess a deep understanding of its basic principles and can therefore deduce much information from very little, but he might be using the wrong words for humans to understand as well..
Plant empathy - Because Gorm is a plant, he shares an empathic bond with many plants just like a human would with a dog or a cat.
Sapling - Gorm can combine his anatomy with any plant in any dimension and “take over” their properties permanently.
Nothing to speak of.
Weakness: As a plant Gorm have no need of food, but can survive entirely on water and sunlight. This of course means that if he was cut off this these power sources he would quickly lose power and die within a few days. Fire is another big hazard.
Full Biography: Coming soon.
Fun facts: Gorm hates “save the environment”-activists.
Gorm can eat just like a human, he just doesn’t like the taste.
Gorm once visited a dimension currently in an ice age and nearly died.
Gorm loves the sound of people playing ping-pong.
If he’s fed with dyed water, Gorm will change colour.
Actually, looking at what I've written and all... It was a fun project to write, but playing this character will become very monotonous very quickly. Also, looking at the lineup, I think I see some "typical" super hero-stuff that we're missing. I'm abandoning Legionnaire. You can use him as a villain (or flunky) if you want. I'll post my real character tomorrow.
Alias: Legionnaire. Real name: Mitchell Bellini. Age: 97. Gender: Male.
Appearance: Legionnaire looks like he’s in his mid-twenties. Clear skin, full head of hair and bright eyes. Nothing about his appearance reveals his actual age. He’s a big guy, not easy to miss in a crowd. He keeps his black hair short and his shin clean shaved at all times. He has brown eyes and a slight tint to his skin. Clothes, he always wear a contemporary para-military armor, and hides his face behind a mask. Otherwise people would recognize him after a while.
Personality: Mitchell is a classical anti-hero. He doesn’t want to be a symbol of hope, or a paragon of good. He doesn’t want people to suffer either. He has lived long enough to see everything that mankind has to offer and has come to the conclusion that your basic, average human is a greedy, selfish and shortsighted psychopath. While he will try to do some good every once in a while, he will ultimately do more harm than good in the long run. What Mitchell truly wants is to find those few truly altruistic people that eventually pop up in the lowest, filthiest and sickest parts of the human society and make sure that no one fucks with them. In the beginning Mitchell saw his fate as a gift, a chance to truly make a difference. As time has passed that gift has turned more and more into a curse. He wonders every day when and if he will be able to die.
Short Biography: During WW2 the Nazis worked on several “occult” projects, trying to get any supernatural force on their side. One such project involved infusing living soldiers with the souls of former warriors, giving raw recruits the experience and skills of a veteran. Mitchell was part of a small team of specialists that were sent behind enemy lines to make sure these projects failed. The team failed and most were captured alive, they were then used as guinea pigs in the projects. After being hailed as a great success he used his newfound powers to escape and get back to civilisation. Since then he’s been moving around a lot, but has settled down in Grimmarch for a while.
Powers, Skills & Equipment: Mitchell has become a vessel for the souls of dead soldiers. This has granted him some “powers” that mortals can only dream of.
Slightly heightened senses. Impeccable, but still human physique. Bullet time - Superhuman speed and reflexes. Seemingly immortal - No wound has yet made him fall. Zombie - Very few of Legionnaire’s organs seem to be vital. Fuck-this-shit-mode - Berserk. A myriad of stories about warriors back in the day talks about them being overcome by anger, disregarding their own safety and going all-out in a frenzy. The old norse called it “going berserk”, the templars “Holy fury”, scholars in the 17th century spoke of “primal rage”. It’s all the same. Mitchell calls it his “fuck-this-shit-mode”. While overcome with rage he will completely disregard his own and anyone else's safety. He will not be able to separate friend from foe and will be unable to communicate. This is his biggest strength because he can fight unrestrained with the skill of thousands of men. It is also his biggest weakness because he is easily fooled and may end up doing a lot more harm than good.
Comfortable with the use of every military gear ever created. Master martial artist influenced by hundreds of martial arts. Can operate most kinds of machinery that doesn’t require special training.
MT-56 Assault rifle with laser sight, scope and grenade launcher. Laser-sharpened, light-weight, straight 1½-handed sword with a circular guard.. G-6 automatic pistol. 1789 bayonet.
Weakness: Apart from his “fuck-this-shit-mode” making him likely to harm both friend and foe, and his questionable morals, his biggest weakness is pretty much the same as any mortal. Being confined in a space he can’t escape will mean that he’ll be there when someone is dumb enough to open the door. So far Mitchell only eats when he wants, but he might be able to starve to death.
Work in progress!
Year: 1941. Location: Top secret compound a few miles down the rails from Auschwitz. Team Shadow broke away from the prisoner train that had carried jews, homosexualls, political prisoners and others that were “uncomfortable” to the current rulers to the concentration camp. The train had not been completely emptied there, and some unfortunate humans had been taken to a second camp a few miles away. While armed guards led a rough dozen men and women into a big box-shaped concrete building the six members of the allied assault team snuck into the shadows. They had been briefed on their mission several hour before, and each member knew it by heart. What they didn’t know was the missions of their companions, their names, nationalities, even their hair colour… In short, they didn’t know anything, so they couldn’t reveal anything if they were captured and tortured. Mitchell Bellini, a third generation Italian from jolly old England was tasked with entering through the sewers, planting a few explosives and getting out. He would then meet up with another member of the team that had mirrored his mission from above and together they would detonate their bombs exactly three hours after mission start.
Getting into the sewers had been the easy part. All modern houses had indoor plumbing and such things required sewers to carry the waste away. The pipes were a bit narrower than he’d expected, but crawling through them was not a problem. The blue-prints of the compound burned in his memory, every crossing, turn and drop was as well known to him as the street where he’d grown up. The explosives were quickly set and Mitchell turned inside an expansion tank and made his way out. It was late night when he finally breathed fresh air one more. He’d spent almost two hours with his lungs filled with the fumes of human waste, even air so polluted by evil smelled sweet and fresh. A discreet cord followed him away from the sewer grate. He was already some way away from the concrete building, and almost completely safe from the guards. He hid by the rendezvous-point and waited.
Ten minutes before detonation he could see the shadow of his team mate slide down the vertical wall of the concrete building. It was a slow process, but also quiet. A squad of guards passed right underneath the climber and didn’t notice a thing. The same kind of cord trailed behind him as he lept from shadow to shadow, closer and closer to the ground. Just as the man set his feet on mother earth the alarm went off. Red lamps were lit, sirens screamed and huge, insanely powerful lights started to search the skies. No need to keep quiet, Mitchell’s team mate started to run, then sprint toward him. Mitchell’s heart pounded like a hammer on an anvil with each step. His eyes darted from the man to each of the sides of the concrete box, expecting guards to round them at any second, guns blazing.
The shot came at the exact last second. The team member had arrived and was on his way down to a prone position when a single gunshot was heard and the man’s body suddenly went limp. Mitchell couldn’t see where the shot had come from, but the sound had come from the concrete box. “You must do it” his friend whispered in broken english as life poured out of him. He knew the mission, he took both cords and twisted them into one, then separated the anod and kathod and plugged them into the detonator. With a twist of his hand, the building would be gone. With one last glance at his friend he twisted the dial.
Nothing happened.
He turned it again and again, hoping it was simply a fluke, but after an eternity of twisting the bombs still would not go off. Their whole mission, possibly the fate of the world, foiled by a faulty detonator. The other guy carried the spare. Mitchell took it and began to rewire it, but as he was plugging the anod into the new detonator he heard footsteps coming from his right and instinctively rolled away to his left into a thick batch of bushes. He tried to stay still and breathe as slowly and silently as he could. Two guards came from the right, weapons armed. The inspected the body on the ground, spoke some german into a walkie-talkie and gave the body a three-shot spray into the chest just to be sure. Mitchell tried to force them away with his mind, thinking “go away” over and over and concentrating on the soldiers. Only a few seconds later they turned and began to head back, they had not found, nor suspected another intruder. With a sigh of relief Mitchell thought himself safe. Then the detonator was yanked out of his hand by force. One of the soldiers had gotten his foot stuck on the cord and kicked to get rid of it, the detonator flew through the air and hit the man in his ass.
Mitchell didn’t wait, he was already on his feet. The gun in his hand roared twice and neatly punctured the right lung and heart of one of the men. The other raised his weapon, but didn’t have time to pull the trigger. Another two shots severed the spine and ruptured the aorta. Mitchell threw himself on the ground as guns all around him began to send their deadly payloads at him. He was surrounded, he hadn’t even noticed them filling the area. With both ends of the cord and the detonator he had a chance of completing the mission before he died. A stray bullet caught his shoulder, and with pain shooting out in every direction he pushed the metal wire into the tiny hole. He looked up again, one last look on the concrete box before it would erupt in fire and smoke. He saw a reflection of light, then the detonator shattered into a million pieces and his hand hurt as if it had been struck with a sledgehammer. A sniper. He got up, at least he’d try to get away, but as he turned around the wooden butt of a rifle met his jaw. Surrounded, captured… MIA. End of report.
Mitchell awoke, genuinely surprised, a few days later. His body was naked if not for the bandages that he had already began to bleed through. He was in a cell of some description. All alone in the dark. The floor and three off the walls were made of hard concrete. The last wall and roof was made from iron bars. “Er ist wach” said a voice above him, and heavy boots clanked against the bars. “verwenden Sie ihn.” A door opened somewhere in the iron wall and at least two men in german uniforms came in, they grabbed his arms and led him away through along and dimly lit corridor. Then a lift, it brought them up for a long time, maybe they were far down, maybe the lift was slow, Mitchell couldn’t tell. He was greeted by bright lights and people with white coats and strange hair. It looked like their heads had exploded, hair standing out, reaching out, trying to escape. One of them stepped forward and ordered the uniformed men to follow. He led them through the building. Past rooms where the doors were closed, some walled up. Other doors were open, and from the rooms came disturbing sounds. Bones rattling, dark chants, meat splashing, metal being dragged across bone, flesh and concrete.
He was forced into a square room, still everything made from either concrete or iron bars. The whole building was a work of great haste. His room didn’t even have a door. I did however have a altar, a huge thing, big enough to serve christmas dinner on for the whole family. On the side symbols of varying origins were carved, some with great detail and care, while others looked like they had been scratched there in a matter of seconds by some very angry men. He recognized some of them, mayan, egyptian, even old norse symbols were then, but for each symbol he could guess the origin of there was at least three that he’d never seen before. On the altar laid two pairs of shackles. One pair for the arms and one pair for the legs, as Mitchell soon found out. He was stretched over the altar, and even though he was a pretty big guy he could not reach the edge of it with either his hands or his feet.
The guards left the room and he was alone with the man in the white coat. “Please, let me go” Mitchell tried, but the man looked puzzled for a second, before he turned around to face a shelf containing many strange objects. The guy didn’t speak a word english, just his luck. Something was splashed over him from a bucket, nothing landed near his mouth, so he couldn’t taste it, but the smell of blood was a familiar one for a soldier. The man in the white coat started speaking, but not to Mitchell, he spoke german, or something close enough at first, but as he spoke he changed language several times. Some of the european languages were easy enough to identify, but once he moved outside that zone he could only guess. A dagger was thrust into his hand as the man kept talking and mitchell’s fingers grasped the handle of it. He didn’t know why he had been given a weapon, but if he got a chance he knew how to use it.
The man in the white coat kept talking for several minutes while he walked around the room, every now and then he glanced at Mitchell on the altar, as if he expected something about the shackled man to change. Mitchell didn’t know what was going on, and was starting to get pretty scared. If only he’d been allowed to do something, anything, walk around, move his arms around, kick the concrete wall. Just lying there made him too scared to open his mouth and scream. He tried to block out the man in white, but the constant changes in language made him very hard to ignore. Suddenly the man stopped, turned toward the altar and brought a heavy dagger down upon Mitchell’s chest. He screamed, no fear could hold him back now, but still he made barely a sound. The weapon was heavy, it had shattered the bone that was protecting his heart and punctured it. Blood poured out and ran across the surface of the altar and down its sides. Mitchell spent his last seconds looking into the eyes of the man in white as he kept speaking a language he didn’t understand.
To his surprise Mitchell woke up. His eyes opened and began scanning his surroundings. He was in a cell once more. The door was open though, and he couldn’t see or hear anyone nearby. Instinct motioned him forward. There was a long corridor outside, empty. He looked back and saw a pile of dead bodies, some of the faces he’d seen earlier when he had peeked into the other rooms. They hadn’t survived whatever had been done to them. He then remembered the dagger and touched his chest, but it was whole, no wound suggested that he had been brutally stabbed before. It could’ve been a dream.
He made his way down the corridor and met his first obstacle at the far end. A single armed guard stood with his back against the corridor, humming some sort of tune. Thousands upon thousands of lethal takedowns flashed inside Mitchell’s head, he selected one and performed it as if he had done so hundreds of times. He stole the weapon, an smg of german design, and went on. He took his time, chose his targets and slowly made it out of the building. He was so relieved to see the sky again that he didn’t even bother to look around for more guards one he was outside. A small patrol rounded a corner just as he walked by. Time froze, Mitchell stood there right in front of the armed men, stunned. The guards couldn’t believe their eyes. A gunshot echoed out over the landscape and a small crater was formed right below Mitchell’s right leg, it was slowly filling up with blood, his blood. Time resumed, Mitchell brought the smg up and sprayed ten to fifteen bullets point blank into the guards and then ran away. A second distinct gunshot came, but this time something jerked Mitchell’s head slightly to the right and he could see the bullet ricochet of a small stone in front of him. The sirens began to cry out, the red lamps were lit and the searchlights started to scan the night sky, but this time Mitchell didnät stick around, he kept running. He didnät stop until the searchlight looked like upturned flashlights in the distance.
The snipers bullet had penetrated his thigh, but it was not a serious wound, the guards hadn’t had a chance to fire, so he was almost unharmed. Lucky son of a gun.
Eventually Mitchell made it across the border to occupied France and could contact the resistance. They set him up with a trip back to England. Mitchell kept fighting in the war, but another squad took over the demolition mission in 1943 and succeeded.
Fun facts: Mitchell’s middle name is “Sofia”.
Since he broke his tooth on one as a child, he can no longer eat hard fruit.
Mitchell loves meat.
Despite everything, he is an agnostic.
There is no living person today that is related to Mitchell by blood.
Super power wiki If you're having problems figuring out a super power or just want to check out what kind of weird shit some crazy asshole has thought up... Give it a gander.
I don't normaly read interest checks with more than 30 replies, but when I do, I'm interested.
After spending a small eternity reading I want to contribute, so here are my opinions on what have transpired so far...
Three threads portraying three different locations: I like it, it would get mighty crowded if we tried to cram ca twenty superheroes into one location. Crime wold go way down over night.
Liquid vs Solid time: While liquid time has its advantages in a game like this, very few players can handle three different timelines that take place at the same time. I'm not trying to be condescending, but experience tells me that this a typical thing that can become “too much”. Solid time, while not the best of systems to use in a superhero setting, is easy to grasp and follow. Every character is in one location at any given time (unless their freaky super powers say otherwise). It will also force players to interact and give exposition once a character travels to a new location. They won't instantly know what is going on, and so one of the players in that location has to tell him/her. Good roleplaying bonuses all around. My vote is for solid time.
The three cities explained: I like the idea and diversity of the cities. I think you've covered the three big “comic book cities” so everyone should have a place where their character would feel the most “at home”. Also, it's easy to find real-world cities that could mirror the cities in the game. Like this: Grimmarch – London. Claychester – New York. New Skywell – Tokyo.
Last but not least, questions. Being a superhero-rp, there is always the question of limitations. Has the GM(s) given this some thought? I'm not thinking so much about power levels, but more on origins. In some worlds things like magic can clash with the setting, of perhaps aliens shouldn't exist. Perhaps the eternal war between heaven and hell is a bit too much of a side note... Just throwing the thought out there.