Hey all
I had some ideas for Heroes for SCRPG and thought I’d share them.
Here they are:
Officer Volt
- Backstory: Kris Storm was your average Danish police officer. But one day when he was on a routine patrol, an alien star-ship crashed into the nearby countryside. He made his way inside it, and found that it had only one passenger: the last member of a reptilian alien race called the Disparians, who had been entirely wiped out. The alien, who called himself D’lan, was extraordinarily intelligent, but also physically fragile and weak. So, he offered Kris the chance to use the alien’s advanced technology and intellect to protect and serve the people of Earth, something that he failed to do for his own people. Kris Storm accepted, and now as Officer Volt, he does so.
- Description: He’s a tech-based hero. His primary weapons are a pair of gloves that generate electricity (mainly to shoot it for ranged attacks, although if he really needed to, I suppose he could fight with them in melee range), and two blaster-guns. Why does he need two different ways to shoot at foes? Well, I’m thinking that the gloves give more metaphorical punch and can hit more than two targets, whereas the blasters can do some gimmicky tricks (such as stunning the target). He also has a jetpack. Additionally, D’lan acts as a sort of dispatcher character, sitting in the crashed ship giving him information via coms.
- Metafiction: Officer Kris Storm was a character owned by a small Danish comics-publishing company. The company wasn’t a superhero-comics publisher; it did more slice-of-life-type stories, and Kris was just a regular cop. The company had been going since the Golden Age, and published good-quality comics, but it just didn’t have the budget for the modern market. Thus, it was bought out by Sentinel Comics, around the time of the OblivAeon Reboot. Since it didn’t have any supers, SC couldn’t use much of it’s material. However, Kris was one of its most popular and longest-running characters, so SC decided to make him into a hero.
- Inspiration: I got the idea for Officer Volt when, one day, I was absentmindedly fiddling with some random LEGO® minifig parts and when I looked at what I had, I though it could make a possibly-interesting hero.
Shortcut
- Backstory: Armands Antons was a loyal member of the Mordengradian Blade Battalion. He knew that he was fighting for his home against the American scum. And when his glorious leader, Ivan Ramonat, began to work on the Progression Serum, Armands was eager to help him by being a test subject. The Serum failed to affect him, however, but at least it didn’t harm him like the others. So, he returned to his Battalion. Spurred on by the feeling that he was a failure, Armands fought even harder for his country. He rose through the ranks of his Battalion, until eventually he was its Captain. Upon receiving that rank, he was granted access to previously inaccessible files on his Baron’s struggles with the Americans. This is how he found out that the man that he thought was a genius had tried to pull the Moon into Earth. Armands was shocked that the Baron would destroy glorious Mordengrade for his petty feud with those costumed fools. He realized that Ivan Ramonat and others like him cared more for their own goals than for the loyal people who they might harm in the process. So, Armands Antons left Mordengrade to stop those people, as Shortcut. He doesn’t do things the right way, but he gets them done.
- Description: He’s an assassin-type character. He uses his Blade Battalion combat training to wield knives for cutting his foes. Additionally, the Baron’s shocking betrayal caused dormant remnants of the Progression Serum in his system to become active again. But, due to his rare AB-negative blood type, Armands developed the ability to shrink himself, instead of the Serum’s normal effects. Get it? He cuts people, and he can shrink himself shorter? (He’s also natural shorter than most.)
- Metafiction: There was this one short Blade Battalion member that first appeared in the Silver Age, and kept appearing in stories. He was finally named in that issue that followed a Battalion around (as discussed in the Minions & Henchlings Episode of The Letters Page), although he was not part of that Battalion. He was used several more times when a writer needed a high-ranking Battalion member. So, when a modern writer wanted to make a former-Battalion hero, Armands was an obvious choice.
- Inspiration: This character was inspired by an offhand comment made on The Letters Page. It was during either the Tachyon or (more likely) the Friction portion of the Vengeful Five Episode (I known, that was years ago). Christopher & Adam kept talking about how Friction kept taking shortcuts, and one of them said that “shortcut” sounded like a good super name. So here we are.
The Traveller
- Backstory: In England, in the year 1895, a man (you can call him “Moses”) invented a machine that could travel through Time. He used it and his other ingenious inventions to have many adventures throughout History and Futurity. He fought many foes, including Martians invaders, an invisible man, a mad doctor and his beastly experiments, and the debased descendants of humanity. Some time (if that term can be used) later, his technology picked up an unprecedented temporal anomaly in Rook City, US, in the year 2016. He travelled there, and saw that an epic battle was being fought against a terrible cosmic entity. He joined it. But, after the battle was won, he tried to use his Time Machine, and it no longer allowed him to travel through Time. He could still use it to bend Time around him, but no longer traverse it. So, Moses stayed and protected the time he was in, as The Traveller.
- Description: He is, obviously, a time traveller. He modified his original Time Machine into a more mobile Time Suit. He also has some of his other inventions, notably his trusty Time Pistol. And, as said above, he can’t travel through Time, but he can pause it in a localised area around himself.
- Metafiction: Back in the Golden Age, a writer made a comic adaptation of the book The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells, with Moses as the protagonist, in an anthology title. A few months later, that writer made a second part, continuing the story past where Wells had ended it. Moses made a few more small appearances in stories in other titles set sometime other than the present, but he did not really catch on. Now, after the OblivAeon Reboot (and time travelers being more popular), a different writer who had read those stories as a child liked Moses, so the writer decided to try to bring him back. That writer succeeded.
- Inspiration: Like my metafictional counterpart, I based this character on the works of British Sci-Fi author H. G. Wells.
Radio
- Backstory: Nicole Nakamura’s mother, Rosa, had moved from the Philippines to be the assistant to the brilliant American inventor and nuclear physicist, Adam Nolan, for many years. They made many great scientific breakthroughs together, but Nolan felt that his science alone wasn’t helping the world enough. So, he decided to use his intellect to fight crime as Doctor Fission, which Rosa assisted him in as well. But, one day, a freak lab accident left her irradiated by nuclear radiation. Nolan was able to stabilize her, and she eventually recovered. However, the radiation left her with strange new nuclear powers. She used them to help Doctor Fission in his crime fighting, as Radio. They did so for years, until one day when Adam Nolan abandoned Rosa midst-battle. Because of that, several lives were lost. Feeling betrayed, Rosa resolved that she wouldn’t depend on others when the stakes were down; the only person she could rely on was herself. She continued Nolan’s work, though, as both a scientist and a crime-fighter. Years later, she had a child, Nicole. When Nicole was little more than a decade old, Rosa died in battle. Now, her daughter, who inherited her powers, takes up the mantle of Radio, and she won’t make the same mistake that her mother did.
- Description: Radio’s nuclear powers includes violating the Law of Conservation of Energy by firing blasts of radiation at her enemies. She can also absorb any excess radiation that she produces to speed up her cell division (i.e. she has a radiation-fueled healing factor). She can also fly.
- Metafiction: Doctor Fission and his assistant had an ongoing series in the Golden Age. It was very short-run, though, mainly due to the uninteresting lead. The writers gave Rosa Nakamura her powers in an attempt to boost sales, but it didn’t help much. After the series was canned, some of the writers who liked Radio used her in a few other titles, but she pretty much just faded away. And, like the Traveller, a modern writer who liked her old stories decided to bring Radio back after the OblivAeon Reboot, but put a new spin on it by having Radio be her daughter instead. (Possibly riding on the excitement of the passing of the Legacy mantle.)
- Inspiration: Nothing in particular.
Expertise
- Background: Wang Hui was an ambitious Samurai in ancient China. He heard the tales of a mysterious Temple high up in the mountains, overseen by one known only as the Master Dragon. The tales told that he was as old as Time itself. Thus, Wang Hui sought out the Temple so that he could win the immortality of the Master Dragon and serve his shogun’s family indefinitely. When he finally found the Temple, he marched up to it and fought it’s protectors. He prevailed, and entered the interior, where he found the Master Dragon himself waiting. They fought a great battle, but Hui’s prowess was no match for the Dragon’s might, and he retreated. He did not give up, however, and some time later, he sneaked into the Temple, and stole the Master Dragon’s secret to immortality. He then returned to his shogun, whom he served well. But, Hui outlived him, and all his children. He become a great warrior, and saw that he could benefit humankind in greater ways. So, he traveled the world, learning things from all who would teach him. He learn many combat techniques and how to wield countless kinds of weapons. He also became well-versed in many academic fields. He helped people against many inhuman threats and renegades of society who sought to harm the weak, although he did not take part in war, for he would not choose between the nations of humanity. He has had many adventures throughout history, and has seen human ingenuity triumph over adversity countless times. He still uses his incredible skills to fight for the greater good today, as Expertise.
- [Edit: Well, this is embarrassing. Turns out samurai and shogun were Japanese. Well, I guess he’s just a warrior, then.]
- Description: Firstly, he is not invulnerable or invincible; he’s not that kind of immortal. He merely doesn’t age. He can still be killed in all the normal ways. As said above, he knows many combat techniques and academic fields. He primarily wields a katana, but he also carries with him a pair of daggers, several shurikens, and a revolver.
- Metafiction: There was a story where Black Fist went to the Temple of Zhu Long. There, he teamed up with this mysterious, unnamed, katana-wielding warrior, who acted sorta as a mentor-type character to him. That character was Wang Hui. In the present, a writer was looking through a collection of old comics, and saw that issue. That writer decided that Hui might be interesting to explore more. And he was.
- Inspiration: I wanted to make a character who used nothing but the power of human skill. So, I thought, what better way to showcase that than have him have had centuries to practice it?
Whoa, that took way longer to write than I expected it to!
All comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome, on both story and mechanics!