Crystal aliens are cool; and it’s a design that’s not super common.
As a member of a long-lived species he figures he can spare a few decades playing do-gooder for these frail aliens, It’s a fair repayment for being saved from a one-way trip to the spice mines or galactic gladiatorial arenas.
I like how that alien perspective gives him a unique motivation for heroism.
Corundum is frequently bemused by Earth customs, and asks a lot of awkward questions about everything from biology to politics.
Well, yeah, that’s pretty obligatory for an alien hero, right?
Common, but not universal. The Martian Manhunter never seemed to have a problem fitting in. Neither does Superman, but the guy was raised in Kansas so calling him an alien instead of an immigrant feels questionable. At least three of the many Captains Marvel have been aliens (and one was a android to boot) and they seemed to grok humanity fine.
New villain, this one a hired stealth sniper with freeze-ray guns and and bunch of other high-tech gadgetry. He’s got a beef with the legal system’s many failings and makes a living by making it even worse, but also likes proving his point by bumping off or maiming those who’ve escaped justice because of those failings. Calling him contradictory is an understatement, but at least he isn’t trying to conquer the world or turn the whole city into mice.
Yeah, copy paste error, I had that on the clipboard for something else. Fixed now - as you might expect it was supposed to be Power Upgrade, reflecting him having a big paycheck and getting Savant to do a second re-engineering pass on his gear.
Type in haste, repent at leisure.
Worth noting that this is my second unseen/stealthy Predator-archetype assassin, the other being Life-Ender. Unsurprisingly they share some abilities but their play style’s quite a bit different, with Zero Justice playing keep-away and sniping while Life-Ender stalks around staying unnoticed through psychic “nothing to see here” tricks as much as actual light-and-sound manipulation and stabs isolated targets when he can. L-E’s got a much better mod generation game, and can actually help protect any convenient distractions…er, allies he brings along for help against teams, while Z-J only care about his own hide. Z-J has better dice overall (although L-E’s got some dice-fixing) and way more mobility choices.
Interesting to see how different the two come out mechanically, and Z-J has his peculiar agenda for personality where L-E is a more basic jobber of a murder machine.
Another hero from the Syracuse Seven group, this one a classic FISS tipped toward the speed end of things. Just past the halfway mark now.
Meteoric - Multi-role speedster, flyer, and super-strong brick all rolled into one, member of the Syracuse Seven
Actually tried to tone her down a bit when it came to Red zone abilities. I’d almost forgotten how strong the Nature and Speedster abilities were in both Green and Yellow, and putting them together feels like having extra Y/R abilities that start a zone early.
Another villain, this one a psionic brawler with a nasty combination of TK and teleportation tricks. If you’re using the Syracuse Seven stuff, he’s a nemesis and former academy classmate of Meteoric, but he’ll work fine as a baddie-for-hire outside of that sub-setting.
now I am picturing Legacy/Heritage fighting Dead-Beat in Mexico City so they both feel obligated to speak Spanish, so the bystanders know what is going on and it is so awkward and stilted that the Mexican reporters turn off the cameras because of the crimes done to their language.
Although as I noted in the post intro, the thing would certainly have gotten a revival in the edgy grimdark days of the late 80s and 90s as the Comics Code lost its grip.
And a villainous duo meant as a nod to the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android, Professor Ivo and Amazo, and all the other “big brain” villains with a signature construct servant.
Five full villain writeups, representing a whole class (pardon, klass) of trainee villains plus their instructor on a field trip from another reality where English has no hard “c” spellings. They could, of course, be used as more conventional villains operating either as solos or with allies. They’re a real grab bag of weirdos if I say so myself.
I also sketched out enough of their home reality that you could do more with it if you wanted, although my campaign doesn’t seem to be headed that way.
Yet another villain as this project nears its end.
I had a lot of fun playing this guy (these guys?) in the couple of one-shots he’s made it in to. The obnoxiously British gentleman thief half of him is a good opportunity to practice my dreadful accent while sneering politely, and when the reigns slip his Despoiler half is gleefully bombastic.
Not enough alien space monster types in my villain portfolio, so here’s another. Easily used as a new variety of genebound for campaigns infested with Thorathians as well.
Includes a new lieutenant and minion to model different stages of maturity.
This was an interesting Approach/Archetype combination. I decided I wanted to try building a viable Creator villain who’d only summon minions once or twice a scene but when they did there’s be a lot of them in one surge. This mix of abilities works fairly well for that, although I waffled a long time on which reaction and which offensive ability I wanted to use. The other option (using Creator’s sole Attack ability and Guerrilla’s reaction) would have cared more about having a lot of minions out at once and had similar damage output, but it would probably be less durable thanks to the lack of healing.
In the end I went with the published version because you only get so many chances to name an ability Opportunistic Cannibalism.
I like the alt-reality that the Klass comes from; the huge number of supers reminds me somewhat of Kingdom Come. Also, Twofold’s backstory mentions “‘anti-superfreak’ bigots,” but that seems kind of odd in a setting that has so many supers.
They’ve still got a version of SEVER stirring up trouble, although they’re even more secretive than the “normal setting” one. “Innate” supers still face more bigotry than ones who use technology (which a “mundane” could theoretically also access so it’s less “unfair”) and there’s a serious “mundanes first” movement that has all sorts of “replacement conspiracy” stuff going on. Just having to live alongside so many supers (with attendant higher risks of getting caught up in their affairs) has had bad effects on the public’s mental health in general. Familiarity has bred tension rather than contempt in this case. Heroes get treated better overall, but newly emerged supers (like Twofold was) are an unknown quantity and the bigots see them as fair game if they think they could take one out. It’s one of the reasons neither side in the supers conflict does more to block the other’s recruitment efforts - you risk getting a vulnerable super killed outright if you get to fighting each other.
Little bit. I’m amazed no one’s commented on the fact that the minion-form Hexxus are literally newborns. You’re beating up babies, you monsters! Admittedly, they’re babies that are actively trying to kill you, but still…you just watched the miracle of birth, hero.
At least I managed to restrain myself from calling Spawning Surge “Tactical Parturition” instead.
power?
Like the genius who made it, obviously!