So in the Legacy of Destruction timeline, obviously the Freedom Five are the Fearsome Five, and Ivana Romanat, the Luminary, leads the heroes of the world in the battle against them.
So who are the other members of the Vengeance V (or the... Victorious V?) in this timeline?
So far, this is what I thought of:
* Knight Train, who uses his enhanced strength and train-themed crusader armor to stand against injustice and counter the evil Bunker.
* Ferret, expert infiltrator and super-spy, who can find any secret, no matter how well hidden, and keeps the Victorious V one step ahead of their enemies.
But the other two I can't come up with much. Friction needs a new name (one that doesn't imply she's hard to get along with), but not much else needs to change than her reason for doing what she does, and Proletariat seems like he might go along with this just to protect the innocent people from these dangerous super-beings even if he politically disagrees with some of the other heroes of this universe.
I seem to recall Everyman was actually on a Reward card. After OblivAeon comes out, we'll have to ask what universe he comes from.
Fright Train is a pun on Freight Train, so Knight Train doesn't make a whole lot of sense in that context (although I like it otherwise). Could be Knight Rail (pun on Light Rail). If his suit was constructed by Heroic Luminary, I can see something stylishly modern like Maglev.
I really like the idea of the evil Tachyon being created by an accident and the good Friction developing her own speed suit to counter her. Velocity is a good neutral name, but I'm considering Resistance. It's technically a synonym of friction but carries a very different connotation (and is a double entendre with an electrical term as a bonus). Similarly but less loaded, Traction.
I'm more curious about the villains-turned-heroes. Evil AZ and Bunker aren't that hard to imagine, Tachyon not much less so, but evil Wraith could go a lot of different ways. Most likely she cracked when she and her boyfriend were attacked, but what was her M.O.? Was he killed by a hero by accident, and she swears to destroy them all? Did she become a Punisher-like vigilante? I thought she might turn Montgomery Enterprises into that world's Organization, but then Rook City would suck there too, and we know it doesn't (plus it's too close to the Iron Legacy Chairwoman).
Spite originally spends his time stealing and pranking minor villains just for the kicks of being a nuisance that's techically on the side of good. But then when he almost gets caught during a prank and has to kill the villain by turning their own powers against them in order to protect an innocent bystander who stumbled into the fracas, he realizes he gets a kick out of the deal and starts actively killing off villains in ironic ways, sometimes using drugs or tech to copy the powers of the villains he kills to further rub it in everyone's faces. The other heroes aren't sure whether to hate him for being too extreme or reason that him picking off the minor villains leaves them more time to deal with the major ones.
Reminds me of the Steelheart series to some degree. Which would be another cool reality: Every super powered individual is evil. Regular humans have to try and fight their oppressive rule.
Right, as somebody else mentioned, I was basing it on 'night train', and the fact that it rhymes with 'fright'.
I really like the idea of the evil Tachyon being created by an accident and the good Friction developing her own speed suit to counter her. Velocity is a good neutral name, but I'm considering Resistance. It's technically a synonym of friction but carries a very different connotation (and is a double entendre with an electrical term as a bonus). Similarly but less loaded, Traction.
Resistance is interesting, it just doesn't have much bearing on her speed. But that said, speedster names are hard. Most of the good ones are taken!
I'm more curious about the villains-turned-heroes. Evil AZ and Bunker aren't that hard to imagine, Tachyon not much less so, but evil Wraith could go a lot of different ways. Most likely she cracked when she and her boyfriend were attacked, but what was her M.O.? Was he killed by a hero by accident, and she swears to destroy them all? Did she become a Punisher-like vigilante? I thought she might turn Montgomery Enterprises into that world's Organization, but then Rook City would suck there too, and we know it doesn't (plus it's too close to the Iron Legacy Chairwoman).
Well, if that version of Rook City is a sort of bastion of hope and light in a dark world, and the Organization is an extra-governmental group that does good, then it suggests that Maya's parents – who are some of the last powerful good people in 'our' Rook City – are the corrupting influence in 'their' Rook City. They made their money by being just as ruthless and selfish as the worst of those other crime-ridden cesspit cities, and Maya is just following that to its logical conclusion, working in the dark to forward the interests of Montgomery Industries by sabotaging or stealing from their competitors, like Pike Industries or Revocorp.
I was trying to imagine what Spite's major traits would look like aimed at superpowered people and villains… his penchant for petty theft that's meant to be annoying rather than actually steal anything, and his using things of meaning from people to murder them. What's more meaningful and ironic to a superpowered villain than their own tech or powers?
I guess I like the challenge of trying to take someone very awful and consider what they'd be like aimed at the evil people instead… and the converse is true, there's a lot of heroes in the Sentinelsverse who are pretty staunchly heroic that it's interesting to consider what they'd be like bent towards villainy.
I think that Citizen Dawn still creates a haven for Supers. But the difference is that she is a Humanitarian. She tries to lead the Supers in creating peace with the outside world and is working to solve the world's troubles. Instead of "Citizen" she is "Sister" Dawn.
It belatedly occurred to me that there's a pretty good chance that specifically the good-aligned Akash'Bhuta and Ermine we see on Be the Gate might have come from this same universe. Which makes me wonder about Argent as a villain, since we already know about Wraith as a villain.
Now that makes me doubly wonder: we have an idea how Argent Adept could turn evil because we have Vogel and the Dark Conductor for comparison, but I can only wonder what the Cosmic Contest looked like in that universe. Did Visionary get possessed by her good counterpart from another dimension? Did evil AA channel the power of Vogel's Baton (an artifact of good) and restore Visionary to her usual evil self, and turn himself temporarily good as a result?
No I meant neutrino. A tachyon is a hypothetical particle that always goes faster than light. Neutrinos have been confirmed to exist and some theorists say that they go ftl , although they never been measured and that speed would break Einstein's theory of special relativity
Or even better, did he, with his new outlook on life, realize that there was no way he could do this to her, throw the match, and escape with Visionary off to some land of magical love and happiness?
The probability of things happening in that statement approaches zero toward the end. :B