Important question for me, how heavily will this be centered around people sandboxing their own plotlines in collabs? Or will this be more of a post by post character driven group interaction?
Primary Character: Mister Terrific (II), "The World's Greatest Athlete"
Secret Identity: Michael Holt, public knowledge
Status: Reservist JLU. He isn’t the easiest to work with at times but he can be relied on to put the hurt on someone for a good cause.
Age: 27
City: Metropolis, sweet spot between living standards and threat levels, but often patrols The Hub as a “concrete jungle”.
Side Job: US Olympian
Powers: The Build: Michael Holt was born a superb athlete, on the upper echelon of those rare few gifted specimens that come once a generation, and he has nurtured his talents beyond the scope of any reasonable human being through relentless training and his constant adventures. Mister Terrific possesses peak physical performance across the board, slightly superhuman even, and has the stamina and endurance to heavily exert himself for extended periods of time. Holt is also exceedingly tough, heals rapidly and has developed a resistance to disease, poisons, toxins and the like.
The Will: Mister Terrific has developed a mental acumen to match his physicality, predicated on his unbreakable willpower. Though lacking the supreme intellect of the original, Holt has excellent control over his body’s functions, able to do things such as shut out pain and push himself beyond his reasonable physical limits at times, and attempts at psychic attacks or mental tampering can be about as difficult as trying to fistfight him. He has also trained himself to not rely entirely on his eyesight, using his other senses in tandem in such a way that he can appear to have a superhuman perception for danger.
The Skills: Whereas the original Mister Terrific was one of the smartest people in the planet, Michael Holt is instead on the shortlist of greatest athletes in the entire world, with an outstanding aptitude for rapidly mastering and employing practically any physical skill he sets out to. Taking this to its extremes for the sake of his heroic career, Mister Terrific has dedicated much of his talents to an obsessive study of martial arts, stripping away restrictive mentalities of styles and schools and forming his own eclectic fighting method that allows him (in a straight and narrow fight) to best the still fearsome Batman in one of his advanced metahuman combat powersuits.
Matters of form aside, Michael’s skills allow him to deliver superpowered blows capable of rending from reinforced metal structures and deliver effective trauma through rigid armor or ablative defenses. Terrific can also brace himself to take all manner of attacks of similar or even greater potency, with the striking surfaces of his body being even harder to damage, or choose to bend and flow to dissipate or redirect harm. Finally, he can move and react with great speed and agility, allowing him to weave around firefights, but rather than constant motion he is limited to bursts to close distances and adjust positions.
Key to Holt’s superhuman displays is his ability to “read” the flow of battle and his adversaries to an intrinsic, instinctive level, a result of his dedication to combat. With this he cuts down his reaction times and stays ahead of opponents that might otherwise outstrip him physically or through greater variety of powers, and it is through this skill that he can sense flaws and weak spots in targets and exploit them to spectacular results, finding the best timing, placement and manner of attack or defense to all manner of challenges.
Weaknesses: Despite his talents Holt is still ultimately a human, albeit an unarguably exceptional one, and his talents are rather specialized as well. He can’t and won’t be able to summon the wrath of the elements or project his chi as pure destructive energy, he doesn’t fly outright even if he jumps good, he won’t somehow develop new unrelated powers. He does one thing, and for someone who engages in close physical combat to the level that he does, his durability still hinges more on active defense rather than simple natural tolerance. Finally, Mister Terrific handicaps himself by choosing to not carry weapons even though he would be exceedingly dangerous with them and will rarely if ever use them.
Skills: With his knowledge of ninjutsu and general gift for physical skills, Michael can actually be exceptionally stealthy when he chooses to be, and with his travels he has become an adequate survivalist with a fair amount of knowledge on a wide variety of environments. Skilled at operating most mundane vehicles, with a preference for motorcycles, perhaps surprisingly he’s also an adequate cook and gardener, and even though his methods can be rough he isn’t a bad teacher when he isn’t simply rubbing his skills in people’s faces.
Appearance:
Michael Holt cuts a respectably imposing figure as one of the premier athletes of the world, standing at a solid 6ft2 and weighing around 215 pounds, with a slender build for a heavyweight but a physique so well marked that it reminds one of greco roman statues. Typically clad in agreeably smart casual threads and giving off the air of a smooth operator, on a more thorough inspection this hazel-eyed specimen is something of a grisly mess to look at, covered in scars and marks from head to toe from his many battles and with his limbs brutally hardened and calloused from conditioning training.
Costume-wise, Mister Terrific’s full body skintight suit colored in black, white and red bears more than a passing resemblance to a professional wrestling outfit, while his Fair Play jacket adds an urban, sporty feel to the ensemble and his black “T-Mask” is both distinctive and adds a slight intimidation factor by turning his eyes a glowing red. The entire costume can be almost instantly applied on Michael’s body from any number of “quick change” gadgets, as it was designed for him specifically by the original Mister Terrific, and while it doesn’t add much that his natural abilities don’t supply it is comfortable, preserves body temperature and is generally meant to endure the rigors of superhero work.
Bio: TLDR: Gifted olympic gold decathlete Michael Holt becomes interested in costumed heroics and receives the unlikely assistance of the heavily aged Terry Sloane, once known as the super genius Mister Terrific, who instills in him a strong sense of justice and helps mold him into the hero they both know he can be before passing away. Taking up the mantle and “Fair Play” motto of his mentor, the World’s Greatest Athlete rises as the new Mister Terrific.
Marked by the loss of his parents to a traffic accident early in his life, Michael Holt was a troubled foster care kid that needed an outlet for a worrying amount of pent-up energies and frustrations. As is often the case the answer turned out to be sports, but unlike most cases Michael showed outstanding promise from the very start. Young Holt seemed to pick up the nuances of any game, any competition put in front of him with simply stunning speed and only seemed to get better as he got older. When his skills attracted jealousy and got him into a bad scuffle with older kids, he looked into boxing and soon had coaches asking for him to train with them. The kid was gonna be a star.
And a star he was, using his talents to get himself an education and landing himself a spot in the US Olympic Team even as he received ever-mounting offers from professional sports organizations. Michael was king of the mountain at an age where most were still trying to figure out their lives, and he appeared to reach a new height when he set the world record for the Decathlon and was declared the World’s Greatest Athlete at only 22 years old. But even with the accolades, the bright future, the enjoyment he got out of the money and fame, Holt soon felt...empty. There was something missing, he knew he could go higher, he needed a challenge as extraordinary as he felt he was and no sport would provide it.
So it was that Michael Holt came to be interested in superheroics, finding it a fascinating world where he would truly be put to the test and find his limits, not to mention one where he might receive even more fame and fortune. Entirely out of his depth, clad in a makeshift costume and wholly unprepared to deal with the mind-numbing pressures and dangers of heroics despite his talents, the olympian’s first forays were chaotic affairs where he found little success and was lucky to escape alive and with his identity mostly uncompromised. Mostly, because his actions did draw the attention of the Thousand Talents Foundation and its head Terrence Sloane, once known as the superhero Mister Terrific.
The original Terrific had made a short splash on the hero scene in its early days, hailed as a super genius working to save the world in a direct manner, but he was only a passable athlete and field man at best and lacked the all-consuming drive that pushed his compatriots on. Quietly, he had taken to working behind the scenes, acting as a handler and gear supplier for his friends and allies and helping to pioneer many advanced technologies, all the while setting up his organization to scout the globe for outstanding people whose talents might be used to make a better world. People like Michael, whose abilities were everything that Terry Sloane had wished for when the threats and rigors mounted.
Holt, for his part, was fascinated by this ancient man that should have barely been alive but seemed to irradiate vitality as he recounted tales of heroism and self-sacrifice. He was especially shocked that this famed intellect, who seemed to have the entire world within his reach, would have such respect for him and his abilities. The two bonded over their parallel gifts and painful awareness of their own flaws, and for the next few years Sloane moved heaven and earth to ensure that Michael became the hero he knew he could be. It wasn’t until Terry felt he had found a worthy successor to the name of “Mister Terrific” that he finally passed away, drifting into the next life peacefully in his sleep.
Sloane left nothing else to Michael, it would’ve been an insult to their strange friendship and their rags-to-riches lives. The Thousand Talents, built on foundations of trust and altruism, would carry on its labor as it had for years, and Holt had no desire to involve himself in the workings of a machine he couldn’t grasp. It wasn’t his place, it wasn’t his style, and he did not want to burden them should his own public image go sour. Instead he stepped out into his own limelight once more. Adapting the Terry’s slogan of “Fair Play” and a nod to his status as the World’s Greatest Athlete, Mister Terrific set out to do good the best way he could.
Story Arcs: -A Terrific Return!: After vanishing from the public eye for five years, olympic gold decathlete Michael Holt finally returns to the limelight! Specifically in the Metabrawl, an illegal bloodsport for costumed contestants run by the mysterious femme fatale Roulette. Though the setting might seem strange, it is the perfect stage for the new superhero Mister Terrific to make his presence known as the World’s Greatest Athlete and keeper of Fair Play. Broadcast around the world, Holt makes an impact by taking down current champion The Sportsmaster as police shut down the operation, and though Roulette escapes his notoriety and credentials make him a natural pick for a tryout as a Justice League reserve. (Flashback Day 1 story, solo).
-Where in the World is Richard Dragon?: Mister Terrific is a spectacular fighter no doubt, but has based himself heavily on his sports origins and accessible mundane instruction and never studied under a true, blue martial master of the heroic world. Wishing to expand his skills further, Terrific finds himself dragged into its ancient intrigues and blood feuds and it all begins with a simple question: where is Richard Dragon? A search for a master held in high regard by the Batman himself and what his disappearance might signify (Teamup).
-The Hundred Man Kumite: Supervillains rarely forget an offense and Roulette has not forgotten how Terrific ruined one of her operations to kickstart his own career. The femme fatale behind the costumed combat events has arranged for the hero to face a gauntlet of 100 opponents in the tradition of japanese martial arts, and even if he could escape Michael's competitive spirit won’t let him run from the challenge, he must step to the arena while his allies find a way to ensure his release and the downfall of the organization (Teamup).
-Rise of the Manhunter Council: Once thought destroyed by their own agent Paul Kirk during Batman's active days, the Manhunter Council is a hidden cabal that seeks to bring about their vision of a Perfect World unhindered by outside interference. Commanding an army of genetically enhanced clones armed with top of the line equipment, they strike out to harvest the world's foremost minds, technology and physical specimens, and without Justice League intervention who knows what the madmen might attempt. (JLU story)
Supporting Characters: -Where in the World is Richard Dragon?: Richard Dragon, Monkey Fist Cult, interested PCs.
-The Hundred Man Kumite: Roulette, a list of fighting-type B-listers and small time metahumans (need to parse a fairly large number of them, you understand). Other PCs up for dismantling an underground superhuman fight ring.
-Rise of the Manhunter Council: Batman and any willing Bat characters, any characters interested in such a story, Sportsmaster, Manhunter (Paul Kirk), Manhunter (metal mask version), Nemesis (Better Than You Powers version).
Additional Notes: I don’t much like characters who are perfect at everything and Terrific always looked more like an athlete than a science man to me, hence this. Thought it’d also be a good play on passing down a mantle to someone who isn’t a replica of the original.
Well, there we go @Omega Man, that took me longer than I thought. I wanted to do something different with Karate Kid, move away from the 70s perception of martial arts during the kung fu craze and go for something more grounded in the blood and guts full contact karate and MMA contests of the 90s. Wasn't working out with Val but turns out it's a perfect fit for his eventual replacement.
Player Name: Zero Hex
Primary Character: Myg of Lythyl, Karate Master
Secret Identity: None, he is who he is and makes no real effort to hide this besides not openly divulging the more outlandish parts of his life story.
Status: Reservist JLU, sometimes reservist Titan. Both teams have their misgivings about him and he isn’t the easiest to work with so he gets bounced around, but he can be a valuable ally.
Age: 21
City: Travels often, enjoys Bludhaven (for its sheer savagery), Metropolis (greater threat caliber) and Tokyo (for his links to japanese martial culture).
Side job: Champion of the Metabrawl
Powers: -The Body: A native of a brutal deathworld where strength rules above all else, Myg was positively born for battle and hit a (relative) genetic jackpot at that. Gifted with peak physical performance across the board for a 31st century human, perhaps slightly superhuman in modern times if nowhere near beings like kryptonians, the lythylian is also an exceedingly tough rapid healer and naturally resistant to disease, poisons, toxins and the like, and has further developed these talents through his training.
-The Mind: Myg possesses unbreakable willpower and has developed a mental acumen to match his physicality. The martial artist has excellent control over his body’s functions, able to do things such as shut out pain and push himself beyond his reasonable physical limits at times, and attempts at psychic attacks or mental tampering can be about as difficult as trying to fistfight him. Myg has also trained himself to not rely entirely on his eyesight, using his other senses in tandem in such a way that he can appear to have a sixth sense for danger.
-The Living Weapon: Myg is easily one of the greatest martial artists of all time, a 31st century master of combat to such an unarguably superhuman extent that he can, when putting all his abilities together, measure up to kryptonians, daxamites and their ilk. Whereas the foremost martial artist of the Legion of Superheroes focused more on defense, using an often deceptive and evasive style that turned his opponents’ strength against them and drew out attacks to find new angles from which to counter, Myg is a more methodical pressure fighter, a seemingly plodding and straightforward aggressor that’s there to be hit but can consistently walk down opponents while keeping up his defense and strike them down with simple but varied and exceedingly precise offense.
Style aside, Myg’s skills allow him to deliver superpowered blows capable of rending from reinforced metal structures to meteors and deliver effective trauma through armor and even more uncommon defenses such as intangibility. The lythylian can also brace himself to take all manner of attacks of similar or even greater potency, allowing him to survive brutal brawls with powerhouses, and the main striking surfaces of his body are even harder to damage and make his blocks quite the serious deal. Finally, he can still move and react with great speed and agility, allowing him to weave around a firefight of directed energy weapons, but rather than constant motion he is limited to bursts to close distances and adjust positions.
Key to Myg’s superhuman displays is his ability to “read” the flow of battle and his adversaries to an intrinsic, instinctive level, a result of dedicating his life to martial perfection. With this he cuts down his reaction times and stays ahead of opponents that might otherwise outstrip him physically or through greater variety of powers, and it is through this skill that he can sense flaws and weak spots in targets and exploit them to spectacular results, finding the best timing, placement and manner of attack or defense to all manner of challenges.
Weaknesses: Despite his talents Myg is closer to a human than a kryptonian and will remain that way, and his talents are rather specialized as well. He can’t and won’t be able to summon the wrath of the elements or project his chi as pure destructive energy, he doesn’t fly outright even if he jumps good, he won’t somehow develop new unrelated powers. He does one thing, and for someone who engages in close physical combat to the level that he does, his durability still hinges more on active defense rather than simple natural tolerance. Finally, Myg handicaps himself by choosing to not carry weapons even though he is exceedingly talented with them and will rarely if ever use them.
Skills: Trained in the ways of the ninja, Myg can actually be exceptionally stealthy when he chooses to be, and between his birthworld being a hellhole and his adventures he has become an adequate survivalist with a fair amount of knowledge on a wide variety of environments. Perhaps surprisingly he is skilled at driving a fair amount of modern vehicles and he can also cook and tend to a garden, and even though his methods can be rough he isn’t a bad teacher when he isn’t simply rubbing his skills in people’s faces.
Appearance:
A vaguely asian humanoid of around 6ft2 and weighing some 215 pounds, Myg cuts an imposing figure, a tall man and slender but with a marked and obviously powerful physique that reminds one of a greco roman statue. The effect is aided by the lythylian’s almost unhealthy pallor, a result of a life oft spent underground, while the alien patterns tattooed across his body in black force a further visual contrast. Though his eyes are a piercing hazel he often keeps them hidden behind pure white lenses, and these days he has kept his little beard and grown his hair out into a messy black mop that cascades down the sides and back of his head.
Clothes and costume-wise he wears an outfit similar to a mix from the given image: a cobbled together ensemble of strong 31st century boots and reinforced compression tights worn along with ragged clothes, leathern handwraps akin to old cestus inscribed with strange characters and a sash-closed hooded jacket that is somewhere between a monk’s robe and a karate gi. Myg’s appearance is meant to evoke ancient vagrant warrior traditions, the karate hobo archetype if you will, with a modern touch, and so it’s colored in washed out reddish browns and greys though his belt of course remains a clear black.
Bio: TLDR: A masterful fighter from the 31st century, born in an anarchic battle-obsessed deathworld, inspired to heroism by the Legion of Superheroes’ foremost martial artist, the Karate Kid Val Armorr. Myg has found himself shunted through spacetime after a period serving on the Legion’s reserve and has fully embraced his arrival in this age of heroes as a personal test of his abilities and a chance to do good.
For starters, Myg hails from the distant 31st century, and as though this weren’t particular enough he is a native of the former prison world of Lythyl: a sun-scorched and volcano-riddled rock where anarchy rules, only the strong survive and battle is the way of all things. Young Myg was a favored son of this hellhole, athletically gifted and a quick study, and by his early teens he had climbed to a lofty station in his planet’s frankly psychotic society. Who knows how he might have turned out had it not been for the Legion of Superheroes, the premier superhero team of the future, and especially their own martial arts expert the legendary Karate Kid Val Armorr.
The Karate Kid’s own father had been a powerful warlord of Lythyl and a feared supervillain before his passing, and the young martial artist sought to make peace with his roots through a pilgrimage to the brutal world. There Armorr and Myg met and as was customary engaged in a test of their skills. The test turned into a battle that lasted a day and night with no clear winner, and the inconclusive nature of the contest led to a rivalry marked by mutual respect and admiration. The Karate Kid would soon leave the planet to return to his heroic duties, promising to return to settle their match, and his peaceful demeanor and dedication to a greater good greatly influenced Myg’s worldview.
The rematch would never come to pass. The Karate Kid perished on the line of duty, overcoming impossible odds to save an entire planet from doom and leaving his mark in the Legion’s history. It wasn’t until Val’s teacher, the great Sensei White Crane, and his friend Timber Wolf came to Lythyl to fulfill a part of the hero’s testament that Myg learned of his rival’s passing. Shaken by the Kid’s ultimate sacrifice for his convictions and the admiration others professed for him, Myg’s esteem for Armorr only increased when he heard the warrior’s final request: to plant specially prepared seeds in Lythyl’s famously inhospitable soil and bring life to the barren rock.
Out of respect for his fallen rival, to follow in his footsteps and discover something greater for himself, Myg accompanied the two men offworld and joined the Legion Academy, taking additional lessons from Sensei White Crane to both bolster his fighting skills and learn of peace, mindfulness and self control. Though still a rough product, impulsive, overly straightforward, prone to striking out on his own and more than a little bit violent, he blossomed into a promising recruit and soon received a tryout as part of the Legion’s reserve, sometimes rather ignominiously known as the Legion of Substitute Heroes.
While he would go on to show his worth in his new role, after all the Legion cannot cover all emergencies at all times, Myg would never attain true full Legionnaire status. Following in the footsteps of his once rival, the lythylian sacrificed himself in a pitched battle with a race of spacetime-crossing invaders come to harvest the advanced civilization of the 31st century, destroying the devices anchoring their floating castle to the timestream and sending their headquarters and himself hurtling across reality. Once again a martial artist had left his mark in the Legion’s history and he was presumed dead. He thought he was dead.
Imagine Myg’s surprise when he awoke a thousand years in the past, stranded with no real idea how he got there, no idea how to get back and no simple way to explain his existence. The lythylian soon realized that there were clear differences between what he knew of the past and the world he now saw, too many and too marked to be simple historian errors, but things were rather rapidly cleared up when anyone minding the sanctity of spacetime anywhere within his range turned up screaming about the anomaly alarms. Through his reckless deed the hapless martial artist had been shunted not only backwards in time but also laterally, towards a similar but distinct reality.
Such a situation might be far too much for others to cope with, but Myg of Lythyl soon came to terms with it. Things were what they were, and as far as anyone knew they were impossible to solve, with the only caveat being that his presence in the past would not alter either future. Finding himself rapidly accustomed to this less civilized time, as full of heroic adventures and great champions as his own present was, Myg saw no reason to not continue with his life’s work. Battle called, and perhaps he might yet do more good.
Story Arcs: -The Hundred Man Kumite: The novelty of an unbeatable mysterious champion has worn off, profits are dropping and Myg will not compromise his martial spirit for the sake of business, leaving him a target for Roulette’s wrath. The femme fatale behind the Metabrawl has arranged for the lythylian to face a gauntlet of 100 opponents one after the other and Myg’s honor does not allow him to run from the challenge, he must step to the arena while his allies find a way to ensure his release and the downfall of the organization (Teamup).
-The One Who Is All: A faction of the League of Assassins comes to believe that Myg is a mythical figure in the League’s lore, the One Who Is All, a perfect warrior who will help usher a golden age for the murderous cult. Some wish to follow him no matter his path, others believe he should be made to take his rightful place, many want him dead for the sake of their own maneuvering while others seek to best him and claim the title for themselves. And with a war of assassins brewing across the world, where does Myg stand in all this? (JLU Story).
Supporting Characters: -The Hundred Man Kumite: Roulette, a list of fighting-type B-listers and small time metahumans (need to parse a fairly large number of them, you understand). Other PCs up for dismantling an underground superhuman fight ring.
-The One Who Is All: The League of Assassins, The Council of Spiders, likely Spyral, any major martial artist or fighting figure (Lady Shiva, Bronze Tiger, Richard Dragon, Constantine Drakon, the Monkey Fist Cult, the Bats, the Cains if they exist, the Brothers in Silk etc) and anyone who’d take an interest in a war of assassins over a title of the ultimate fighter.
Nobody has. I almost went with a timelost Ultra Boy for this. So glad somebody's still interested in the LoSH characters...
I was going to write it off like a handful of Legion members would be trapped in the past cause Superman isn't alive and able to help them return. UB was gonna be given a new alias and become a Titan before I decided on B'Wana Beast.
- Ω
Alrighty, cool, I'll get to working on that then. Might take me a little while, I want to change stuff around and play something different from the white bread asian mysticism Karate Kid so I need to settle on a style of character.
Leone didn't shrink under the brute's glare, he didn't step back, he didn't overreact. He held his ground and looked Big Red dead in the eyes, returning the demon's predatory grin with a well humored one of his own as he came up from his bow with a shrug. "Well I didn't ask to be here so I must've been doing something right to be called up, eh?", he mouthed off, well aware it might provoke the famously temperamental bruiser. Not that he much cared, about hierarchy, risk to himself or even his family history. He was who he was, he was strong and he'd get stronger, he was gonna make it to the top. That'd never change.
Perhaps fortunately for Leone's future, Big Red appeared to have more important things to deal with that also involved violence and so he left the group to socialize while he took care of it. Well this was a crummy first day on the job, awful management. He'd even consider lodging a complaint, if he were the type to do those things and if this were an actual job. He took stock of his would be companions: a giant multicolored walking pigeon, some rotting goat guy that looked like he'd fold like wet paper, the umpteenth shadowy guy he'd met and the "lovely lady" that was probably some kind of warty hag that'd make his dick fall off.
What the hell, it was as if he'd never stopped running with the gangs and the mobsters back home. At least down here you knew what everyone was, crap most were pretty goddamn open about who they were and what they did. He could deal. "Well...", he started then stopped, interrupted by a shrill scream of agony coming from inside. He sighed, rolled his eyes and gave it another go. "Guess we're stuck together and I dunno about you but I'm not gonna just wait here while he has his fun. Anyone wanna go for some coffee?", he shrugged again and flashed his best killer smile at the group, giving an ample wave at a pick of coffee shops and even one odd traveling cart making his rounds at hand. "Been a long and busy night, I sure could go for some coffee before work".
Bluetommy,
Mixtape Ghost N
