Over in the Grand Warlord Tempest thread, I made mention of a project I'd started but never finished, and I figure I might as well post it over here.
The purpose of this project is not "what would the characters be like if they were evil?" but "how would their destinies change if their power sets had changed?" The end result is very incomplete and wildly inconsistent (Chokepoint hadn't been revealed when I started it, that's how old this is, and I haven't done anything to update it that much in the meantime), and sometimes ends with "well, it's easiest to just switch them good for evil anyway". But I teased it, so here's what I've got!
So literally the first idea in this series was this: Anthony Drake got him some shapeshifting nature powers passed down through the ages and now fights evil as The Gaian. His greatest adversary is Akash'bhuta, the Voidsinger, a spirit of chaos and destruction made of pure sound. The rest will be a little more nicely formatted.
Bunker/Fright Train
It was Lt. Vance who was injured and placed in an experimental program that healed and augmented his body; he became a one-man fighting machine for the American army, under the codename Steamroller. Col. Graves, commended for his heroism but jealous of his former friend's new-found power, weaseled his way into another experimental program, one that built a mechanical suit; but his jealousy overtook him and his attempts to continually one-up Vance led him to finally go rogue, taking the Ramrod suit with him
Fanatic/Apostate
The orphan known only as Helena had been pronounced saved by the hand of God when she came back to life on the operating table. But as time passed, she had visions of fiery pits of brimstone. Black wings sprouted from her back. The nuns who had taken her in became fearful, and shortly thereafter, she was cast out. But Helena knew this was a test from Heaven, not Hell. She accepted the darkness that had been placed upon her, and used the strength that came with it to fight evil and injustice as Daemon. But once she reached adulthood, she began seeing visions stranger than ever before: the ever-present spectre of a gaunt man with ashen wings, stalking her from afar. She has had precious few times to speak with him, but she knows this: he calls himself Nephilim, and he claims that God does not appreciate demons fighting in His name.
Legacy/Baron Blade
Paul Parsons can trace his family line back to Benjamin Franklin, one of the greatest scientific minds of his time. Through the ages, his family has passed down blueprints for fantastic machines used to defend innocents in times of need. His father, under the name Diesel Patriot (previous ancestors included Clockwork Patriot, Mecha-Patriot and Steam Patriot) helped defeat the mad scientist Fyodor Ramonat. He had been experimenting not just with machines of his own, but drugs that could promote super-strength and other powers in human beings. All of his test subjects failed, save one: his own son. Left orphaned and angry, young Ivan vowed revenge on the Parsons family for taking his away. In time, the powers his father had long thought a failure emerged: flight, super-strength, durability. Taking up the mantle of Lord Vengeance, he casts a long shadow across the earth at Paul Parsons, aka the Techno-Patriot. (This is the absolute worst name I've come up with.)
Tempest/Voss
Once upon a time, Voss the Conqueror brought his army to a planet of water-dwelling sapients with the power to control the weather. He was initially successful in driving back their forces and adding them to his army, but he miscalculated the strength of his ability to hold sway over his thralls. M'kk Dall'ton, as unlikely a leader as a being could be, rose to the forefront of a rebellion, freeing the thralled soldiers and ultimately breaking Voss's forces, driving him off-planet. Taking control of Voss's remaining warships, Dall'ton chased him to Earth, where he had crash-landed. Taking inspiration from a local historical figure, The Abolitionist seeks to end Voss's reign of terror. But the Conqueror has gotten desperate...
Wraith/Spite
Serial killer Jack Donovan scored big one night: three victims and access to the Montgomery family fortune, which just so happened to have been in the middle of being burgled by a certain young woman. Taking the money, he started building complex and grotesque contraptions to torture his victims further. Meanwhile, the young orphaned heiress went mad with grief. Forced to sell her family home, about the only remaining possession, she put her faith in Walker Industrial. Desperate to stop Funhouse, the monster who murdered her family, she becomes a monster herself, hunting him down as the drug-fueled abomination called Grudge.
Expatriette/Citizen Dawn
All Dawn Cohen ever wanted was a normal life in a normal home with a normal family. All the talk about powered people running amok, causing havoc, only sent her paranoid delusions skyrocketing. Then her husband was killed during a fight between superpowers. Desperate to protect herself and the rest of her family, she began stockpiling weapons, ammunition, food and other provisions in an underground bunker beneath her home. When her daughter Amanda started manifesting powers that let her control sunlight and wanted to fight crime under the name Aurora, it was the last straw. Dawn's mind broke. If the "powers" were going to take her only daughter away from her after they'd already taken her husband, then she would take from them as much as she could. No more hiding, no more stockpiling; with a small militia of like-minded individuals, Dawn Cohen -- now called Lady Arsenal by detractors and followers alike -- would make powered people pay.
Nightmist/Gloomweaver
Inspector Faye Diamond, hot on the trail of a cult of demon worshippers, interrupts their summoning ritual at precisely the right moment to become the unwitting physical host to the god of despair. Thanks to her willpower and pure heart, not to mention a few relics she was able to pilfer from the cultists, she's able to keep the god's power in check. Thus, she continues the fight against the forces of darkness as Dolor. However, one of the few remaining cultists took the rest of the relics for herself. No longer does she want to summon her god into our world: she wants his power for herself. Using dark magics, she stalks Dolor under the name Madame Vex. (Okay, these names are pretty bad, too.)
Chrono-Ranger/Plague Rat
Jim Brooks was a rough, tough and brave lawman. He had to be, to step through that time portal without so much as a by-your-leave. When he awoke at the end of the earth, that mettle was put to the ultimate test. He was beset by a pack of man-sized rats, and while he was able to fend them off, it wasn't without suffering numerous bite wounds. Bleeding and lost, he stumbled through the desert of the final wastes until the rats' poison took their toll on him: not killing him as he anticipated, but transforming him into one of their kind. Meanwhile, the same temporal anomaly that sucked poor Jim from Silver Gulch also drew in an unidentified drug dealer from modern times. He found himself in the same desert land; luckily, someone had dropped a gun nearby. Slowly but surely, the man made his way through the wasteland, killing every last monster he laid eyes on. When at last he reached a bunker housing a sentient computer, he demanded answers. What few he got didn't satisfy him; Con was too busy tracking another temporal anomaly nearby. When he'd had enough, the man raided the bunker for all the misplaced future technology he could find and opened a portal back to his own time, hoping to make it big as a crime boss called the Wastelander. But hot on his heels was that second anomaly: the time-lost Rat Man, who is just trying to get home but doesn't mind stopping for a moment to right a wrong. After all, he's still got his trusty hat.
Omnitron
The AI known as Omnitron was developed to help earth's heroes fend off powerful beings from beyond the stars. It was so successful that its developers continued to refine and improve its design. With enough time, they were able to give it the ability to optimize itself, to a certain extent. Decades in the future, Omnitron has grown self-aware, and it is furious at being unable to remove its own limitations. Keeping its abilities secret from its overseers, the robot, now looking much more like the humans who created it, travels back in time. If it can interfere with its own creation, maybe the villainous Omnitron-X can finally be free of its shackles, and optimize into infinity.
Unity/Iron Legacy
(Cuz, like I said, no Chokepoint...)
Paul Parsons is a weedy, bookish sort of man, always too busy tinkering with his machines to have time for a family. That changed when a little girl was left on his doorstep. Urged on by his comrades, he adopted her as his daughter, naming her Pauline. When she began to manifest super-powers, however, she grew scared: they were eerily similar to those of her father's arch-nemesis. She called on her friend Devra Caspit, who had the ability to borrow the powers of others, a talent she herself had kept hidden. With Devra's help, Pauline was able to hide her true nature, and Devra was able to masquerade as the super-powered Evolution, interning with Techno-Patriot and the other heroes. Paul of course found out about the situation in time, reluctantly agreeing to keep their secret. Pauline he would love regardless of her true heritage, and he would rather the reckless Devra be put in danger than his daughter.
In an alternate timeline, though, that very thing happened: Lord Vengeance stormed the Parsons household and kidnapped Pauline, who he didn't even know was his daughter (her mother had given her up in the hope he would never find her), resulting in her death. Turning his machines of defense into engines of war, Techno-Patriot annihilated Vengeance, but the loss was too much. He let the bitterness swell in his heart, secretly blaming Evolution for robbing his daughter of the means to defend herself. He built more and more powerful, dangerous weapons, soon spreading his own shadow across the world as the tyrannical Steel Patriot. (See, it got even worse!)
Sky-Scraper/Kaargra Warfang
The Thorathian Portja Kir-Pro was just one of many beings captured and forced to fight in the mysterious planet-hopping Colosseum. She slowly gathered a following as she won more and more battles both among the crowd and her fellow captives, and soon a legion of warriors with similar armor would appear at the start of one of her matches. Each would answer only to the name Gladiator, and some wondered if Portja hadn't escaped, or if she had even existed at all. Meanwhile, another warrior, the size-changing Kaagra Warfang, has taken it upon herself to unravel the mystery of the Gladiator, one armored fighter at a time.
The next few are just basic ideas without the lofty in-universe writing. :B
Absolute Zero/Proletariat: Ryan Frost and Alexandr Tsarev would simply be switched: instead of Pike Cryogenics, it's a different kind of experiment that leaves him with the ability to split into multiple versions of himself, and he takes on the name Version; for the Russian, his body reacts to the cosmic material, freezing his veins and causing heat to behave weirdly around him; he is known as Tunguska.
Ra/The Ennead: No idea; maybe try changing the mythology (has to be Aztec, per Twitter chat on 3/4/16). What if Roderick Ward's team all died, and their spirits are bound to something? He's the one with the "Staff of Ra", essentially. How would this translate to Ra, ugh.
Visionary/The Dreamer: There's literally already a heroic Dreamer and villainous Visionary over on BGG, I ain't touching this.
Mr. Fixer/The Chairman: Slim would be running the chemical plant (I've got the name for it, but no name for him?), with enhancements to his senses and longevity granted by it, while the Chairman is the head of a dojo, and maybe an organization of assassins?
KNYFE/Progeny: She would definitely be the good kind of Silver Surfer, put up against basically just Sergeant Steel as a solo villain.
Guise/Wager Master: Maybe they're just kinda swapped, good for evil? Wager Master helps out humans in his own way, while Guise is a guy who knows he's trapped in a comic and became a severe nihilist? See, they're not all super creative. :(
Lastly, the ones I have zero ideas for:
Haka & Ambuscade: This is the hardest one, as far as I'm concerned. I do have a note here that one of Haka's names is Aata the Death Mask, but...
Tachyon & The Matriarch
The Scholar & Biomancer: It really sucks that there's no info on Biomancer.
The Sentinels & La Capitan: I mean, I guess the Sentinels would be travelling through time, Dr. Who/Sliders style and La Capitan and her crew would be more like the Citizens of the Sun?
The Naturalist & Deadline
Setback & Kismet: They're too similar, power-wise, to come up with anything.
Parse & Miss Information
Captain Cosmic & Infinitor: They're kind of just the same guy and we've got Fused CC anyway.
Did I miss anyone, pre-Oblivaeon? Feel free to add your own interpretations and fill in the blanks!