To help keep a fire lit under me and in the interest in continued play testing, I would like you all to come up with a starting superhero concept. I will create the characters using what I have completed for my Ubiquity Supers system and when I am done with them, we will play them for a few sessions. If you come up with something I had not considered, I will either need to complete that power or negotiate with you as to an alternative. I plan to make the system as flexible as possible but I am not sure that everything will be possible.
The sooner you get me the concepts, the sooner I can start building the characters.
I have set a goal to have a complete first draft of the book (minus any prose and flavor text) by the end of the year (2015). At that point I would like you guys to try your hand at making your own characters and see what you come up with.We will play test those too.
Between that, writing a Mars adventure and planning for stuff for Origins and Gen Con 2016, my plate will be pretty full.
All that said, this may mean that I need to scale back a bit on the games that I run on Tuesday nights. To fill any void, I will need others to pick up GMing and/or we will need to play board/miniature games. Not saying that I will not run but my focus may need to shift to Ubiquity games rather than PFS. Hope you do not mind being my guinea pigs.
I want to use the concept that I gave you for your PBB Champions game (remember that?): Malachai Mercury. I found the start of an origin story for him in a Word doc, but I seem to recall hashing out his origin with you in the blogspace. You had created some private ones for secret stuff such as origins.
ReplyDeleteFound your villain page. There is an origin for the villain but not the hero. It is here: http://pbbchampionsvillain1.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteThat might explain why I couldnt find Mal's origin. I never finished it!
DeleteA lot of blokes will start their stories by saying “My name is Thus and Such, but that doesn’t matter.” Not this bloke. My surname is Mercury, and it matters very much. I’m a sorcerer from a long line of sorcerers. In our best estimation, the Mercury line was started sometime in the year 1500 B.C., by a woman named Temukhet.
ReplyDeleteTemukhet caught the eye of a genie, or ifrit, or jann, or what have you. History is fuzzy as to Temukhet’s position. Some stories infer that she was a simple peasant girl who longed to improve her station. Some writings hint that she was a minor noble. Regardless, Temukhet and this unnamed supernatural power had a visceral liason, producing a son named Alakhet.
Alakhet learned magic from his father, and perhaps from his uncles. His tutelage is a matter of debate, but most of our knowledge of the world arcane comes from the book he wrote: Incwadi Iwazi.
There was much begetting. We added other supernatural relatives to the family tree (mostly fey, but the occasional selkie or dryad as well). The family migrated generation by generation away from the Tigris and Euphrates, across Europe into Britain. Incwadi Iwazi was handed down and expanded. The book took on a life of its own, becoming a de facto family member, like a crazy uncle.
We collected other books and artefacts as well. We bribed and spelled our way into English nobility. We became major players in the Unseen World.
Which brings us to present day. There are four of us, or perhaps three. Eldest brother, Alexander, disappeared five years ago. Of course it’s possible with a bloodline such as ours that he simply dropped everything and left on a whim, but this is far enough out of Alexander’s character that no one gives this theory much credence. Alex is an Earth wizard.
Velouria, one year Alexander’s junior, lives in London. Velouria is our senior in both authority and power. She effectively rules the Unseen in all of the British Isles. Velouria is an expert Fire mage.
Twelve years younger than Velouria is yours truly; Malachai Mercury. I’m fifty three, though I look thirty years younger. To my knowledge, no Mercury has ever died of old age. We meet our ends in manners violent and weird. I took to fire magic as well, though not as well as Velouria. I moved to the colonies four years ago. The motherland seemed a bit too quiet for me.
Two years younger than me is little sister Callista.
There are black sheep in any family… but can you imagine the black sheep of the Mercury family? Callista chafes at the rules. She seems to have a problem with sanity, as far as I can tell. It bothered her that her skills were the weakest in the family. She didn’t like being the baby. Ignoring the irony, she stole a forbidden book and became the queen of an army of demons. Now I hunt her across the Americas, foiling her mad schemes and covering for her as much as I can.
That’s not all I do. Air mages like Callista are notoriously hard to track, so I have time to deal with other horrors as well. There are Unseen elements in every human city, and most respect the Mercury name enough to lend me aid when they can. Mostly.
Mal can smell magic. He solves crimes using this ability like a supernatural bloodhound.
His favorite combat spell is a fire sword.
He has various Change Environment and Transmutation type spells, usually with a fire effect.
Mal may trip some sensors due to his eldritch bloodline; he is mostly human... which means he's a little bit "something else."
Mal has been around a while and is from a family famous in magical circles. He has a great knowledge of magic things and magic users, but is a little fuzzy on history and events in the Normal world.
Corey has also send me some ideas.
ReplyDeleteDave Reynalds AKA TNT
Dave was a demolitions expert. Specializing in demoing buildings, in particular blowing them up in a specific way so the buildings would fall down in exactly the way it he planned. (The safe way.) There came a time when his expertise was put to the test when a high security research lab was severely damaged in a bad earth quake leaving several people trapped inside little pockets buried under the rubble. It was simply taking to long to dig them out. So Dave was called in to check out the possibilities of using some small explosives to remove debris, which would allow rescue crews to get to survivors quicker. The project took days as he careful examined areas and used small charges to clear things away to get to the survivors. There remained one last large room with some highly secretive research was being done on some alien compounds. As he set the charges there was a cave in that trapped Dave in a small pocket. There was no way to save himself and the survivors from the lab. So he did the heroic thing and set the charges to clear the way for the survivors to get out but he would be caught in the blast. So he carefully set the charges and caused the explosion to free the lab workers and should have blown himself up. However he had been crawling around in some of the alien compound that had bonded with him on a molecular level and he absorbed the blast, though this caused him a lot of pain he survived.
Afterwards he found through some very tragic accidents that he could cause some explosion like effects through contact with his hands. As long as he is conscious he learned to control it, however several people had gotten serious hurt when they first started tending to him after the accident.
Realizing what had happened and how much of a danger he was he went a little crazy and became a villain for a while. After all some one that can blow things up with his fists can certainly make an easy job of robbing banks or even armored cars.
He was eventually apprehended but was brought under a team of superheroes that could try and mentor him down a more productive path for some one of his abilities.
Trent Wellsner AKA the leech
Trent was one of the survivors from the lab that Dave Reynolds AKA TNT had rescued, Like Dave Trent had also become in contact with the alien compound though when it bonded with him it had a different effect since Trent was injured and buried in the rubble at the time. The effect that had been caused from the explosions allowed him to absorb life energies around him to heal. Because he had been injured it was the alien compounds first priority to draw off nearby energy to heal the host and survive. This merely kept him alive until they got Trent to the hospital and then his powers manifested in a larger and much stronger area effect. This caused many people at the hospital to get hurt and even a couple of deaths. This was more than Trent could handle and he went the way of being a villain as well.