Sentinel Mashups

[PlantPowerInfinite]

I’ve done the Freedom Five (Three), and I’ve done the Prime Wardens, and I’ve done their villains, so now I’m sure you can imagine who I’ll be doing now: Dark Watch! Also, since I’ve now made the Principles post, for the first time these hero mashup writeups will include my principle suggestions for playing as these characters in the card game, as explained in the linked post. As always, questions and/or comments are welcome.

Miss Fixette
Expatriette + Mr. Fixer

Principles:

• Mr Fixer with Principle of the Loner or Principle of the Tactician.
• Expatriette with Principle of Equality, Principle of Honor, or Principle of the Undead.

Amanda “Slim” Walker was born the daughter of one of the most powerful superhumans on the planet. But she herself lacked any powers, and moreover, was born blind. Her mother was extremely frustrated, and Amanda’s early life was rough. Eventually a fight between the two cost Amanda one of her eyes. Following that, she fled her island home with one of her few friends, Charlie, code-named Citizen Gate. Amanda found herself in Megarookopolis City. She trained her fighting skills under an ancient traveling master and went after the powerful who preyed on the powerless as Black Bullet. She encountered the Freedom Three, who showed her that not all those with powers are evil. Eventually she started her own martial arts dojo, but shut it down after her students were killed by thugs. Then, disillusioned, she kept her head down and opened a mechanic shop. But when Charlie, who had come to work as her assistant, was killed by criminals as well, she decided to avenge her by once again taking to the streets and defending the powerless and downtrodden as Miss Fixette!

Miss Fixette is an expert tactician, able to come up with intricate plans and back-up plans, as well as a master of her own style of gun fu, a martial art that seamlessly blends traditional martial arts with guns. She can effortlessly interweave punches, kicks, and other bodily motions with the loading, aiming, and firing of a wide array of firearms. She also uses different types of specialized ammo, and her mystic training allows her to sense her surroundings despite her lack of sight, which makes her shots unerring. She’s a jaded person, as she’s been through a lot, but that also means she’s rarely slow to offer words of wisdom when they’re needed.

Miss Fixette has short naturally purple hair (the sole unnatural trait she inherited from her mother), and wears a black eye patch over her right eye, a blue baseball cap, a sleeveless blue top that leaves her midriff bare under an orange martial arts gi with torn off sleeves tied with a black belt, blue pants, white gun holsters at her hips and thighs, and blue cloth wrapped around her forearms and hands. She’s rarely without at least a couple of handguns in her hands or on her person.

Notes: It was obvious that I had to make two mashups out of the four original founding members of Dark Watch. So the choice became, out of the three possible configurations, which would I choose? I settled on merging Expat and Fixer because they’re the two non-powered members of the team who rely on skill alone, and being non-powered is pretty important to Expat’s backstory. It was then obvious to combine Citizen Gate with Fixer’s assistant Charlie, as the two bit characters in the heroes’ backstories, though of course it means that Amanda doesn’t immediately murder Gate after escaping. And Black Bullet, of course, was the name she took corresponding to Fixer’s Black Fist phase.

LuckMist
Nightmist + Setback

Principles:

• Setback with Principle of Inner Demons or Principle of Magic.
• Nightmist with Principle of the Defender, Principle of Levity, or Principle of the Wild Card.

Faye Riske had gotten by with a string of odd jobs (most of them at casinos), until her father retired and she inherited the family detective agency. When she was going through the agency’s files, one of them happened to fall open on a page with information relating to the disappearance of her grandfather years earlier. She followed the trail, and it led her to a witch coven, the leader of whom was named Gabrielle Adhin. Faye began learning magic from the coven, and Gabrielle took a liking to her, and the two began dating. Later, while Faye was preparing to perform the spell of the Mists of R’lyeh, Gabrielle informed her that she would have to leave the coven for reasons she could not disclose, and that Faye could not leave with her. Faye was fine with this; it wasn’t ideal, but she’d live with it. Gabrielle, meanwhile, became angered that her girlfriend did not feel stronger about their parting, and so she laid a curse upon her so that she would always have bad luck. However, by a fluke of chance, Faye happened to obliviously say the right thing that caused Gabrielle to also enchant her so that she’d have phenomenal luck in the worst situations. Nonetheless, this unluck curse caused her to lose concentration on her spell, flinging her into the Mists of R’lyeh. She sprung back to the mortal plane, but discovered that the process had again cursed her so that her body would always be partially mist.

Faye Riske left the coven and returned to her detective agency. Shortly later, an old man called Xian Niu, Master Deathrattle, arrived on her doorstep and offered to train her in the magical arts. She accepted, but while undergoing her training, she also tried to keep the detective agency afloat, but her new supernaturally bad luck meant that the business was never very profitable. She took more odd jobs to supplement it, and one day signed up for an experimental medical trial run by a mysterious woman named Kristine Twain. The first experiments caused Faye to gain superhuman strength and durability, but when she tried to leave the trial before they wanted her to—she had to get back to her training and detective business, after all—she was pursued back to her offices by their security. She arrived to find her office had been burnt down, and just as her pursuers caught up with her, the superheroic Particle Beam sped onto the scene. Since she was there, she helped Faye dispatch the security, but then she revealed that the real reason she had come was to request Faye’s help with a magical extradimensional terror. Faye Risk agreed to help, of course, and afterwards, she would hang around the Freedom Three as the superheroic LuckMist!

LuckMist is a skilled sorceress, and her mist curse enhances her magical power, in addition to letting her transform into a mistform. Furthermore, the experimentation on her has granted her superhuman strength and toughness from Baroness Information’s Progression Serum, derived from the hero Shadow Patriot, though these powers for LuckMist aren’t as strong as they are for Shadow Patriot, and she does not possess all her powers. She is also a skilled investigator. Faye Riske is often cheerful, very trusting and even a bit naive, at first, but when she puts her mind to it, she can be very shrewd and insightful.

LuckMist has short, spikey hair that was originally brown but is now always made of flowing, glowing white mist. Her eyes also glow white, and she wears a black domino mask, a black and yellow top with a die logo on it that has one pip on the top side and none on the others, a belt, a black and yellow miniskirt, a black trench coat, black gloves, and black high-heeled boots. Mist often flows around her, and when she casts spells, multicolored geometric shapes appear around her hands.

Notes: Having already combined Fixer and Expat, it was necessitated that Setback and NightMist be merged. Beyond that, though, I think it makes sense in that both of them rely on raw power much more than the other two members of Dark Watch. Plus, they’re both cursed, which is a pretty great fit, and allows me to combine their two cursings into a single incident. Also, it turned out that Bunker was responsible for recruiting Setback to the FF and Tachyon was responsible for getting NightMist’s help, which worked out perfectly since I’d already combined them as Particle Beam.

The Pharaohess / Firebird
The Harpy + Ra

Principles:

• Ra with Principle of Inner Demons, Principle of Magic, or Principle of the Sidekick.
• Harpy with Principle of Fire or Principle of Rage.

In her youth, Lillian Washington Jr. was a moody teen who wanted to be feared, and also resented comparisons to her cousin, who was a scientist and a soldier and a superhero. However, as she grew up and became an archaeologist, she mostly grew out of these affectations, though some darkness remained in her heart. Nonetheless, she was skilled at her work, so much so that she discovered a pyramid in the Egyptian desert. Exploring it, she found a pair of two artifacts: a bejeweled staff and a feathered mask. Feeling a strange attraction to them, she took both up. Instantly knowledge and power flowed into her, and she was transformed into the newest incarnation of the ancient Sun God Ra, who possessed command over both flame and birds. She put her new powers to use in heroism as the Pharaohess, though she had to fight against her own selfishness and desire to be feared, which was amplified while she was transformed. Eventually, her darkness got the better of her, and she began to terrorize Megarookopolis City! She was confronted by the Freedom Two, consisting of Shadow Patriot and Lillian’s hated cousin, Particle Beam. But her birds and flame were too strong for them, and the heroes were failing. However, the day was saved when Snow-Shaper arrived, who used her ice to counter the Pharaohess’s fire and her ice golems to counter her birds. In the aftermath, Dr. Lillian Washington was jailed for her crimes.

Lillian Washington spent years in prison, during which time her ousin, Meredith Vance, would come to visit her. Upon her release, she was drawn again towards the mask and the staff. She was compelled to take them up once again, at which point she was overwhelmed by their power. Her power lashed out wildly, out of her control. Particle Beam arrived on the scene, but could not deal with this magic, so she called in the hero LuckMist, who was able to stabilize Lillian. Afterwards, Lillian asked LuckMist to look after her. Both to train her in the way of magic, and to keep her under control when she was under the influence of the mask and staff. Dr. Lillian Washington Jr. turned over a new leaf and became the hero Firebird.

Firebird is an experienced archaeologist, and through her mask and staff she can create fire and control birds. As a result, she often creates birds made of fire. However, she can only transform and access her powers when she is wielding both the staff and the mask. After training with LuckMist, she has also learned how to perform more magic beyond those two spheres. She has a bit of a temper and is somewhat reckless and headstrong, but both of these attributes are greatly amplified when she is transformed.

Firebird has white hair with several black stripes in it and wears an ancient Egyptian headdress, a golden neck ornament, a black, green, and tan top that leaves her midriff bare, a golden belt, a black, green, and tan miniskirt, torn fishnet stockings, black and gold gloves, black and gold high-heeled boots, and a cape that’s black on the outside and gray on the inside. She often wears her golden mask with black feathers and carries her wooden, gold-topped staff. When she uses her powers, her eyes glow orange and purple, and she can produce orange and purple flames or other magical energy.

Firebird fought alongside the Argent Angel in a conflict with a group of powerful godly beings, and it was during this time that the two heroes developed feelings for one another. Despite the contradiction of an angel dating a pagan god and witch, the two grew to love each other, and found common ground in the fact that they were both magical practitioners.

Notes: Okay, I know that this is one of the more out there combos that I’ve proposed, but I think it actually works for several reasons, so hear me out. Ra and the Harpy: they both got their magical power from relics (staff and mask), the Harpy is obviously bird-themed and Ra did have some bird motifs like a falcon head in the original myths (though those elements have been downplayed in his Sentinels depiction) and they both have some struggles in control (Ra with his destructive temper and Harpy with the mask’s whispers). And I’d already combined NightMist and Setback together as LuckMist, and Harpy was NightMist’s student and Blake Washington called in Setback to keep his Ra persona in check during the Backdraft storylines, so these combinations preserve and combine those relationships. Plus, I combined Fanatic with a magic user (the Argent Adept), so it also works to combine Fanatic’s lover Ra with another magic user (The Harpy).

All that being said, this mashup is also unique so far because Harpy was, of course, the villain the Matriarch early on. So I decided that it made sense that Lillian Washington also had two super identities: first the Pharaohess (because it’s more ruler-themed, like “the Matriarch” is), and Firebird, because it’s more straightforwardly bird-themed like the Harpy. Since the Pharaohess then is technically a mashup between a hero and a villain, I think that she was mostly heroic like Ra was, but with some darker tendencies from the Matriarch, until she enacts her version of the Matriarch Event, for which she’s more villainous. Speaking of that event, it being the introduction of Absolute Zero, and so in this universe of Snow-Shaper, also works well in my opinion, since fire and ice are opposites, and birds and golems can counter one another.

Dark Watch

Miss Fixette and LuckMist both found themselves in Megarookopolis City when fate seemed to cause them to cross paths. They became a crimefighting duo who fought many villains and criminals together, and even developed feelings for one another. But all that ended when Miss Fixette was brutally murdered by a criminal assassin. However, shortly afterward, LuckMist discovered that her body had been stolen. She tracked her down, and found that Miss Fixette had been resurrected. Now she had unnatural strength, but she was also eternally raging at her eternal rest being disturbed. After these events, the two women decided to officially partner together as Dark Watch.

Before Miss Fixette’s death, LuckMist had a lot to learn from her, both in matters of practical combat and in spirituality. And although Miss Fixette often saw LuckMist as naive and oblivious, she often surprised her with cunning insights and deductions, and Miss Fixette was impressed by her breadth of magical knowledge. After Miss Fixette had died and been resurrected, LuckMist became her rock in the middle of her storm of unending rage. She was a light on a personal level, and also tried to use her magical skills to soothe her condition. Miss Fixette, meanwhile, had to balance her deathless rage with providing tactical support for her partner.

Later, when Firebird became apprenticed to and partnered with LuckMist, she also joined Dark Watch. LuckMist tutored her in magical matters, and reined in her more destructive impulses while she was transformed, and Firebird looked up to her because of her magical expertise and was grateful to her for reining her in when needed.

[LonelyMan]

Short spiky flowing glowing hair…does not compute

[PlantPowerInfinite]

And we’re back! This time I’ve got a whole post dedicated to the various members of Miss Fixette’s nemesis group: the Organization of the Sun! As always, questions, comments, and any other thoughts are welcome.

Chairman Dawn
The Chairman + Citizen Dawn

At a young age, Dawn Pike discovered that she could control light, and that she had slightly superhuman strength and vitality. She was involuntarily taken into a secret, inhumane testing program, which she used her powers to escape after a short time. She fled to a mist-shrouded island off the coast of Megarookopolis City, tired of being prodded by so-called normal humans. She found that the island was somehow home to dinosaurs, and so named it Insula Primalis. Even though she wanted only to be left alone, powerful criminals heard of her and sought her out, begging her to become their leader. She was convinced by their words. She had so much power that she should be in charge, not hiding. She returned to the city, where she murdered her father (who she blamed for letting her be experimented upon, even though he was ignorant of it) and usurped his control over the family pharmaceutical business, Pike Industries. She also killed the leaders of the Boyle crime family, and took over their turf. Now, Dawn Pike was Chairman Dawn, leader of The Organization of the Sun, an empire of superpowered criminals.

Chairman Dawn naturally possesses the ability to manipulate light, which lets her fly, fire beams of light, and heal others with it. She also naturally possesses a degree of superhuman strength and vitality. She has acquired a magical serum from a mysterious mystic that both halts her aging and enhances all her powers. She is a charismatic though ruthless leader, with a very strong force of personality, and is a cunning criminal mastermind, and an adept chemist and businesswoman. She is also skilled in hand to hand combat. Because of Chairman Dawn’s mindset of superhuman superiority, the core of the Organization of the Sun and all its highest ranking members are superpowered, and form a cult of personality absolutely loyal to Chairman Dawn. However, not even so many superhumans can maintain control of her vast criminal empire, so Dawn does allow unpowered thugs to make up the lower ranks, but they are afforded no respect or possibility for advancement because of their powerlessness.

Chairman Dawn has short sandy blonde hair with some natural streaks of green, blue, and pink, the colors of the Aurora Borealis. When operating as Dawn Pike, legitimate owner of Pike Industries, she wears an expensive red pantsuit over a gray shirt with a black tie. When operating as Chairman Dawn, leader of the criminal Organization of the Sun, she wears a sleeveless red and gray militaristic uniform with grey gloves and belt.

Chairman Dawn is the mother of the vigilante Miss Fixette. She decided to have a daughter to have an heir to the Organization of the Sun Dawn. Even though she possessed a serum of immortality, it never hurt to be prepared, and she concluded that a child would be a powerful ally in any case. But she ceased to care about her daughter as soon as it became clear that she did not have any powers, and Amanda lost all feelings for her mother after she scarred and blinded her for this perceived failure. And after Amanda, then Black Bullet, escaped Insula Primalis where she was raised and went to Megarookopolis City and saw the extent of Chairman Dawn’s oppression, her animosity was only bolstered, and she dedicated herself to dismantling her mother’s superpowered criminal empire. This, of course, led to Chairman Dawn herself growing more annoyed and even angered by her daughter.

Notes: This is a good fusion, I think, because Dawn and Pike are both major, important/powerful characters in the setting who are largely defined by their minions, underlings, and allies. I decided to give her some of the enhanced strength and durability that Pike gets from his chemical baths as part of her innate power set so that she has only a single real source of power, instead of getting some powers form somewhere and others from elsewhere. And since I was combining these two characters, it made sense to also combine their two bases: Insula Primalis and Pike Industrial Complex, which necessitated moving the island much closer to Megarookopolis. And of course merging Dawn and Chairman meant that the Citizens of the Sun and the Organization had to be merged together too. Essentially, I merged the citizens with the underbosses, and just kept the unpowered thugs making up the lower ranks. And I suppose this does count as a retcon to Miss Fixette’s entry, but I decided I wanted to have the incident where Dawn put out one of her eyes to also be the cause for her blindness in the other eye. While having her be blind from birth was interesting in its own way (as Dawn is definitely ableist), I liked the elegance of merging the two things into one event, and it just made too much sense not to do it.

And now here’s the list of Citizen Bosses. There were more citizens than underbosses, so I did have to cheat a little and double up on some of the citizens. They’re too numerous and unimportant to each get a writeup, and honestly I couldn’t even think of good names for them with the little time I spent on it, though if anybody else comes up with names for any of them, I’d be happy to hear them. That being said, you may note that there are some glaring omissions on this list…

Citizen Bosses

• The Contract + Citizen Autumn
• The Deputy + Citizen Winter
• The Broker + Citizen Blood
• The Fence + Citizen Sweat
• The Muscle + Citizen Tears
• Citizen Assault + Citizen Dare
• Citizen Battery + Citizen Assault

Citizen Bear
The Bear + Citizen Gain

When Chairman Dawn first began the Organization of the Sun, she selected Linda Sokolovna, alias Citizen Bear, a muscular knife-wielding criminal with the power to augment or dampen others’ superpowers, to be her right-hand enforcer. Citizen Bear was married to Richard Daniels, Citizen Painslash, a superhuman who could project psychic blades from his hands that induced pain in those struck by them, but he had died years ago under mysterious circumstances. She clashed with Black Bullet a number of times, until the two had a climactic showdown in which Black Bullet defeated her. But after her defeat, Black Bullet told Citizen Bear a startling truth: that Chairman Dawn had ordered Citizen Painslash to secretly have a child with her, and that child was Black Bullet. But when Amanda had failed to manifest powers and Dawn violently took out her disappointment on her, Citizen Painslash had interfered and tried to protect her, which got him killed by Chairman Dawn. Now knowing this, Citizen Bear went to confront Chairman Dawn about it and avenge her late husband, but Dawn proved too powerful, and Citizen Bear was killed.

Notes: I wanted to combine the Bear with somebody who was more important than just a regular citizen, and him and Gain also both have the similarity of being “backstory” characters who were relevant in the past but are out of it in the “present.” Citizen Painslash is of course a fusion of Citizen Pain + Citizen Slash. I’d already used up all the regular citizens, so I turned to the sort of auxiliary trio of Hack, Slash, and Burn. Of the three, Slash’s psychic blades fit with Pain’s powers the best. However, merging the Bear and Gain did create a problem: the Bear is only cast off by the Chairman after Mr Fixer defeated him, while Gain was killed by Dawn before Expat even left the island. Given that I’d combined the two heroes as Miss Fixette / Black Bullet, I’m sure you can begin to see the problem. The solution that I came up with was to have Chairman Dawn’s parentage of Miss Fixette be a secret, which I don’t think is too unreasonable given we’re talking about a version of the Chairman here, so Citizen Bear could have her climactic fight with Black Bullet, learn the truth, and then confront and get killed by Chairman Dawn. This also necessitated the cause of Citizen Painslash’s death being unknown and mysterious, which again I think is fine, because Chairman.

The Key Operative
The Operative + Skeleton Key

Sophia White was an orphan in Megarookopolis City who learned how to get by by being the toughest one around. She took classes at Amanda Walker’s martial arts dojo, started her own street gang, became an expert burglar (aided by her innate power to bypass locks), and started a family. Her criminal success got her noticed by Chairman Dawn, who appointed her as her new right-hand enforcer, the Key Operative, after Citizen Bear’s failure, betrayal, and death. But her power was slowly killing her, and she knew that there’d be no one to provide for her family after she died, since she knew Chairman Dawn would never be that charitable to an unpowered family. But her concerns became immaterial when she was killed by assassins sent by Marjorie Long, the Dragon Madame, a powerful but reclusive mystic, in retaliation for Chairman Dawn failing to uphold her end of a bargain. But after Sophia died, Marjorie Long resurrected her, which enhanced her power so she could siphon the life from others with a touch, which she incorporated into her hand to hand fighting style, and trained her in the uses of poisons and other mystic arts, so the Key Operative became the Dragon Madame’s primary agent.

The Key Operative has long black hair and a coiling blue dragon tattoo on her left shoulder, and wears a black costume with white skeletons designs that leaves her shoulders and arms bare, a white sash wrapped around her waist, and white cloth wrapped around her wrists. She typically fights with a stick and a blade.

Notes This is a bit unconventional, because Skeleton Key is just another Fixer villain, not a citizen or even an Expat villain. But all the citizens are so defined by their groups, and the Operative is pretty solitary. Plus, the two of them both share the story beat of getting resurrected by Zhu Long, which seemed like a pretty good coincidence. I wanted to try and weave the different reasons and circumstances for their two deaths together, but it was hard, and I ended up with mostly the Operative’s with a little from Skeleton Key. And Dragon Madame Marjorie Long is of course a fusion of Dragon Master Zhu Long and Madame Marjorie Mittermeier, because they’re both mysterious, secretive, powerful, magical side characters who each control a dangerous magical environment. In earlier entries, I kind of danced around who Zhu Long gets merged with, but I thought that she was an important enough part of this character’s story to justify finally naming her.

Citizen Heat
Citizen Hammer + Citizen Summer

Ember Turk never got what she wanted. One day, as she was playing around a bonfire as a girl, she accidentally fell in and got horribly burned, and became comatose. She only woke up when her parents sold their emotions to a hedge witch, but having emotionless parents didn’t help her selfish and destructive tendencies. As she grew up, she discovered that she now had the power to snap her fingers and cause anything she was looking at to burst into flames. She left home and went on a burning spree, but eventually got caught and put in a high security prison where her powers were neutralized.

Citizen Heat has long red-brown hair, the ends of which are always on fire, and wears a red and orange sleeveless top that leaves her shoulders and midriff bare, red and orange shorts, a gray helmet with an orange visor, and red gloves. Her eyes glow orange.

Notes: Since Hammer and Anvil are just the best citizens ever (and also because they’re important enough to get a team deck I guess) I had to give them writeups, and since Hammer and Summer are the two fire-based Citizens, it was obvious to combine them. Oh, and I based their appearances off their team villain outfits because they’re more unique and interesting than their standard ones.

Citizen Heal
Citizen Anvil + Citizen Spring

Brooke Ender was a young girl who, one day, came across a mob chasing an old man and claiming that he was an evil wizard. Brooke convinced them he couldn’t be so bad, and the crowd dispersed. But she noticed that the man had coin on him, and her family was going through hard times, so she stole from him, but he was aware of it and revealed that he was actually a wizard, and so cursed her for her troubles, granting her the powers of teleportation and glowing wings that could protect and heal others, but cursing her to be mostly silent and always an outcast. She tried to return home and demonstrate her new powers to her family by reviving her beloved cat who had just been run over by a wagon, but instead her parents were horrified and called her a monster and a witch, not their daughter. So she had no choice but to become a brigand, and trained herself to use hammer and shield to do so.

Citizen Heal has long sandy blonde hair that she keeps tied up in a ponytail and wears a sleeveless white and green dress and white gloves. Her eyes glow green-gold, and she has a pair of wings made of ethereal green-gold energy. She wields a hammer and a shield.

Chairman Dawn found Brooke Ender and convinced her to join her Organization of the Sun as Citizen Heal. Her first mission was to break out Ember Turk and offer her to join. She accepted and became Citizen Heat. So the two women joined the Key Operative in Chairman Dawn’s inner circle, and were the smartest, most beautiful, most powerful citizens ever.

Notes: I was going to fuse Hammer with either Spring or Truth, as the other two defensive citizens, and since I already put Hammer with one of the seasons, I went with Spring. And since the Chairman had one right hand in the Operative, and Dawn had two right hands in Hammer and Anvil, Chairman Dawn has all three.

[PlantPowerInfinite]

And now, I’ve also got a post for the nemeses of the other two members of Dark Watch! I originally intended to put them all together in the same post with Chairman Dawn, but then that one grew long with four entries, so I split these two off. Anyway, enjoy!

FateWeaver
GloomWeaver + Kismet

Gabrielle Adhin grew up in the Cult of Fate, a secretive fanatical sect devoted to FateWeaver, a powerful extradimensional entity of gloom and destiny. Her family had been high-ranking members of the cult for generations, and her chapter of the cult was always on the move to avoid the attention of the authorities. Growing up, Gabrielle was unhappy with her lot in life. She was isolated, discouraged from making friends outside the cult, and lacked the niceties and luxuries afforded by other lifestyles. But one day, through a coven that the cult had set up, she met Faye Riske, and the two quickly fell in love, although the demands of the cult meant that she would soon have to leave her, much to her distress. This was the last straw, so Gabrielle decided that she would finally run away. On her way out, she picked up the Adhin Talisman, an ancient relic that had been in her family for generations. But when she touched it, memories flooded into her head, and she remembered the truth.

Long, long ago, there once was a powerful mortal necromancer whose name has been lost to time, forgotten even by herself. She performed a spell to grant her great power, but it had an unintended consequence, and trapped her in the extradimensional Realm of Discord. There, over the intervening time, she grew in power and changed into an immortal being of luck and gloom. She became the FateWeaver. But she was trapped in the Realm of Discord and longed to break free, so she manipulated mortal humans to do her bidding, setting up her Cult of Fate. And she appointed the Adhin family, her own direct descendants, among its leadership. But she grew frustrated with relying only on proxies, and wished to take more direct action in the mortal world. So, more recently, she incarnated herself into a newborn daughter of the Adhin family, Gabrielle, as an avatar for herself in the mortal world. But Gabrielle had been unaware of her true nature until she touched the talisman, which was one of four relics that could bring FateWeaver into the world, for her original form, along with the majority of her power, remained locked away in the Realm of Discord.

FateWeaver, as a demon-goddess, has immense magical power, especially when it comes to manipulating luck and destiny. She draws power from gloom and so seeks to spread it among humanity. But as a human avatar, while she still has some magical power of luck and gloom, she isn’t nearly as strong. She can freely transfer her mind between her goddess form in the Realm of Discord and her human body on Earth, with whichever form is currently vacant becoming dormant. She seeks to bring her immortal form to Earth in order to turn it into a world of gloom, but she is also capricious, and so often simply likes to cause chaos with her powers, which does often empower her farther by the gloom her actions generate.

In both her forms, FateWeaver has long black hair with streaks of green and a tattoo sleeve on her right arm, and her eyes glow green and her head is wreathed in green flames. In her immortal goddess form, she wears blue and red robes and has a pair of bony horns protruding from her forehead. As her human avatar, she wears a black domino mask, a blue sleeveless crop top, a blue skirt, and fishnet stockings.

FateWeaver’s Cult of Fate includes both numerous common cultists as well as more important Chosen. The latter include the powerful disciple Cursed Leader Masswe, the ancient necromancer Deathmaster Xian Niu, and FateWeaver’s demonic serpentine familiar Ruidia the Deceiver. Faye Riske, who FateWeaver had loved and then scorned, later became the hero LuckMist, and the two would clash many times over the years. Despite being an immortal demon-goddess, FateWeaver never quite got over their breakup, and it turned out that the hero’s grandfather had fought against her cult years ago, until FateWeaver killed him and trapped his soul. LuckMist would try over the years to break him free, but never succeeded.

Notes: Merging GloomWeaver and Kismet together immediately came with a wrinkle: how could I make one character with both their modus operandi, since Gloomweaver just sits in the Realm of Discord while Kismet is out causing chaos and doing crimes. That, and their backstories/origins were pretty different too. So as you can see what I did was try to solve all this with the avatar situation. I think it’s a good enough solution myself. It lets her still be out in the world doing stuff, while also trying to work on essentially freeing herself from the RoD. And of course it just made sense to make the Adhin Talisman part of the same set of relics as Gloomweaver’s. As for Fateweaver’s chosen, Masswe is Cult Leader Massey + Ronwe the Cursed, Deathmaster Xian Niu is Deathrattle + Xian Niu the Master, and Ruidia is Ruin + Ophidia.

The Court of the Faennead
The Ennead + The Fey-Court

Morgan Ward was the leader of a group of unscrupulous grave robbers. One day, they discovered an ancient tomb. Breaching its walls, they found a collection of magical relics. Taking them up, the grave robbers were transformed into powerful mystical beings, a group of ancient Fey Gods called the Faennead, who were so ancient that they were the inspiration for several different myths and legends around the world, including the Ennead of Ancient Egypt and the gods and fey creatures of Celtic myth. But upon taking up the relics, they remembered their true history: that they were originally refugees from another realm that had been destroyed. So the new Faennead used their massive magical might to construct a new realm for themselves and populate it with fey creatures. There they set up their Court of the Faennead, where they eternally schemed and politicked amongst themselves, though there were some things that they always agreed on, such as their desire to conquer the mortal plane of Earth.

There are nine members of the Faennead. Of these, the Court of the Faennead is ruled over by two monarchs. Their leader is the Morrigatum, Queen of the Sun, the War Finisher. Her consort is the Nuagda, the Bountiful Protector, She Who Ruins. They are attended by three advisors: the leprechaun Ogmisis, Elder of Magic; the changeling Lughnut, Champion of the Flood; and the satyr Puckthys, Life Trickster. The rest of the nine are rounded out by four courtiers: the dryad Geb, Earthquake Chancellor; the will o’wisp Shu, Herald of the Wind; the nymph Osiris, Steward of Silence; and the salamander Set, Arbiter of Storms.

All of the Court of the Faennead possess some magical power, including the power to bind others into bargains. Additionally, the Nuagda and the Morrigatum are both skilled warriors, and the former has heavenly protective powers while the later can call down the scorching beams of the sun.

The Morrigatum has long black hair, light green skin, eyes that glow orange and purple, and long pointed ears. Her left arm, leg, and side are covered in braided designs. She wears a lilac top, a long tan and lilac skirt with side slits, a golden bracer on her arm (her relic), and other golden jewellery, including necklaces and earrings.

The Nuagda has long green hair made of leaves, light green skin, eyes that glow blue and green, pointed ears, and a pair of wooden antlers on her forehead. She wears a long dress, the top half of which is black and blue and dotted with stars like the nighttime sky, and the bottom half is green. She wears a blue headband and some golden armbands, bracelets, and earrings. She holds a gnarled wooden staff within the top of which is a blue-magenta crystalline orb (her relic).

Long ago, the original incarnations of the Faennead were defeated by the original incarnation of the Sun God Ra, who has now returned as the hero Firebird. Naturally, when the Faennead rose again, they went after her for vengeance, though Firebird and her heroic allies were able to foil their schemes, which only made their animosity for her grow, and their leader, the Morrigatum, grew especially hateful of the hero.

Notes: It was another one of those fortunate coincidences that both Ra’s and Harpy’s nemeses were groups. The Fey Court of course have their fey realm, and the Ennead did hail from the destroyed Egyptian underworld realm, but simply combining the two was a problem, as that would leave the modern Faennead without a realm, which is pretty integral to how the Fey Court operates. I could have had them reclaim the original realm, but I didn’t want them to have to go through Anubis (or rather, whatever fusion of him I end up making) whenever they wanted to go in or out. So it seemed like them recreating a new realm was the best option. It was obvious enough to combine Atum and the Morrigan (she’s in my opinion more of a nemesis to Harpy than Dagda), and then to combine the Dagda and the advisors with four more of the Ennead. After that, there were no more named Fey Court characters, so I considered leaving the rest of them unnamed, but that was too dissatisfying, so I merged each of the remaining four Ennead with one of the courtier types, though of course they keep their original names.