Oh, right. Yes, it’s a modified cost rider on Combustion, which normally just does Min die damage. My thought was that this is balanced, because it’s more versatile but if you take the damage option you get hurt quite a bit worse, but if you think it’s too versatile I can probably be persuaded.
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Without testing it I couldn’t say for sure. Min irreducible for Combustion isn’t much damage, but with Red Health every little bit matters and there’s no way around it the way there is with the damage Unload occasionally deals out. There’s also the possibility of cancelling the twist cost with a collection.
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A quick note for our last lap, by the way. This week’s update schedule is going to be a bit different, because I’m intending to use the final villain to usher in the Iron Age. So we’ll have three villains, my history of the Bronze Age, and then a fourth villain accompanied by my history of the grand crossover finale for the era. And on that note…
Randomizers:
Approach: 3, 4, 4 [Options: Prideful, Underpowered, Focused, Mastermind, Ninja*]*
Archetype: 8, 4, 4 [Options: Guerilla, Inhibitor, Legion, Titan*]*
Upgrade: 3, 8, 12 [Options: Group Fighter, Quality Upgrade II Defense Shield, Brainwashing Zone*]*
Mastery: 5, 7, 6 [Options: Mad Science, Mercenary, Mysticism*]*
Greyheart
Real Name: n/a, First Appearance: Lost Champion #2, October 1976
Approach: Prideful, Archetype: Titan
Upgrade: Group Fighter, Mastery: Mysticism
Status Dice: Begins at d12. Health: 55+5H (Upgraded 75+5H)
Qualities: Close Combat d10, Imposing d10, Fitness d8, Otherworldly Lore d8, Consumed by Vengeance d8
Powers: Animal Control d10, Plant Control d10, Absorption d10, Vitality d8
Abilities:
- Fury of the Land [A]: Activate one of the environment’s twists in its current zone.
- Frenzied Stampede [A]: Attack using Animal Control against multiple targets. Hinder those targets with your Min die.
- Grasping Vines [A]: Attack one target using Plant Control. Use your Max+Min dice. Defend against all Attacks against you by all other targets until the start of the next turn with your Mid die.
- Enter the Grey [R]: If an opponent ends their turn near you, you may roll your single Absorption die as a Hinder against them.
- Evergreen (I): Reduce all damage taken by 6 if you have a d12 status die, 4 if you have a d10 status die, or 2 if you have a d8 or lower status die.
- (U) Enemy of the World (I): When you take an action that lets you make an Attack, also make an Attack using your Mid die.
- (U) Master of Mysticism (I): If you have access to proper materials, automatically succeed at an Overcome in a situation involving harnessing magical forces.
Special Challenge:
- [] [] Locate Greyheart within her vine cocoon and reduce her status die by one size.
- [__] Disrupt Greyheart’s command of her plant titan and reduce her status die by one size.
Common Scene Elements:
- Packs of Animals. d8 minions. When they Attack or Hinder, they can apply the result to two close targets, and they get +1 to save against single-target Attacks, but they roll twice and take the lower result to save against multiple-target Attacks.
- Demonic Portals. These multi-step challenges create substantial hazards for the heroes until they are resolved.
- An Environment In Chaos. The wilderness is running wild, people are in danger, and sound and energy and thought are vanishing in moments of disorientation and fugue.
The villain known as Greyheart was the background of Into the Green from 1976 through 1979, shaping the background of her adventures and her investigations alongside Aquila. She was first unveiled in Lost Champion, a monumental force of destruction shown only in shadows as she obliterated the nation of New Rome at the head of an army of feral animals and monstrously twisted, animate plants. Over the course of the next two years, she began to appear more frequently as Aquila tried to discover who this strange person who resembled his new ally was and seek vengeance on her. Her powers were eerily similar to Greenheart’s, but stronger and far wilder. In her presence, perceptions became confused, light dimmed, and sonds became muted and ghostly.
It wasn’t until a two-parter with Dark Rivers in mid-1978 that Greenheart learned the truth of her part in the creation of Greyheart. The two-parter coincided with a four-part limited series, Champions of Yesterday, which detailed a collaboration in 1954 between Greenheart, the Golden Age Penitent, the Golden Age Scion, and the Wonderer, all of whom had joined forces to fight against Scion’s patron the Sovereign of Secrets, who had taken advantage of the imbalance caused by the sealing of other powerful forces to break free. Scion didn’t want to lose her family to her patron, and helped the three heroes lock it away again - but in the process, a piece of the Sovereign broke into the world, swallowing the Penitent and Scion into the dark. Greenheart used her tremendous power over the world to seal the Sovereign of Secrets into herself, and the power of the Sovereign’s will overwhelmed both her and Wonderer, causing them to forget the events that had brought them there.
In the aftermath, Greenheart had been lost, but not forgotten. She had been inexorably linked to the Green, and instead of being swallowed whole, her soul was reborn in a new body, with its memories washed clean. Her old body, soulless, sank into the depths of the Green, containing the Sovereign within it for twenty-five years before the monstrous force was finally able to break free. Even then, however, the power of the Sovereign was limited by its host. It drew on the lingering resentments and anger within Greenheart’s memories, transforming the body into Greyheart, a zealous punisher of the wicked and innocent alike, determined to tear down everything in the world that held the potential to cause harm.
Knowing that her enemy was in a very real sense herself was a terrible blow to Greenheart, but she became doubly certain that she needed to finish the job that had been started a generation earlier. Greyheart was slowly poisoning the Green, driving plants and animals into monstrous shapes in her drive to wipe humanity clean from the world. In a series of confrontations that took place in and around other stories, Greenheart was able to break her doppelganger’s hold over the Green, and finally, in Into the Green #200, she delved deep into the monster, pulling her memories out of it and using her power to seal it away, deeper than ever.
Greyheart’s storyline would become the basis for the disappearance of Scion and Penitent in Penance a few years later, and would lead to the latest alteration to Greenheart’s story. Her nation had been destroyed, in a real sense, by her own anger and resentment, channelled through a battle that she had almost lost. She dedicated herself to helping New Rome rebuild, bringing the best aspects of its culture and the best parts of the modern world together to found a new city that would, she hoped, stand the test of time.
As for Greyheart, she was not completely gone. She would continue to manifest as an avatar of the damage that had been dealt to the Green, appearing briefly and needing to be repaired each time. With only ghostly remnants of Greenheart’s memories and the Sovereign’s power, she could not stay in force for long, but she was always a threat when she did appear.
Behind the Scenes
Wheee!
This idea first cropped up when I realized that a chunk of my Golden Age heroes weren’t going to be straight-up rebooted in the Bronze Age. Originally, I’d planned to have all of them be in the Dark Atlantis arc, with Atlantis being responsible for the loss of the heroes of the Golden Age, but that ended up only covering a couple people, so I decided to go two for two. I didn’t know what kind of villain Greyheart would be, and then I got Prideful and Titan and here we are, with a civilization-wrecking plant and animal master who acts as a blight on the world.
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Randomizers:
Approach: 5, 2, 5 [Options: Skilled, Bully, Focused, Overpowered, Adaptive]
Archetype: 1, 2, 3 [Options: Predator, Inventor, Bruiser, Guerilla, Indomitable]
Upgrade: 8, 4, 2 [Options: Hardier Minions, Villainous Vehicle, Quality Upgrade II Defense Shield]
Mastery: 5, 4, 3 [Options: Conquest, Enforced Order, Mad Science]
Hive-Minder
Real Name: Gordon Keller, First Appearance: Earthwatch #12, Feb 1980
Approach: Adaptive, Archetype: Inventor
Upgrade: Hardier Minions, Mastery: Enforced Order
Status Dice: Based on number of bonuses and penalties in play created with Robotics and/or Technology, along with any inventions currently deployed in the scene. 4+: d12. 2-3: d10. 1: d8. None: d6. Health: 25+5H (Upgraded 30+5H)
Qualities: Technology d10, Alertness d8, Ranged Combat d8, Robot Master d8
Powers: Robotics d10, Deduction d8, Absorption d8, Presence d6
Abilities:
- Attack Drones [A]: Boost using Robotics and use your Max die. Attack with your Mid die. Defend with your Min die.
- Countermeasures [A]: Boost using Deduction and use your Max die, also Boost with your Mid die, and either make one of those bonuses persistent and exclusive or Attack with your Min die.
- Replication Through Study [A]: Use an action ability of one of your allies.
- Adaptive Shielding [R]: When attacked, Defend by rolling your single Absorption die. Also Boost yourself with the result of that die.
-
Drone Developer (I): At the end of your turn, create a d6 Robo-Drone minion (which counts as an invention) which acts at the start of your turn, then Boost it with your sole Robotics die. Discard this bonus and add one of these forms (see Page 88 for details):
- +1 or higher: Floating, Burrowing
- +2 or higher: Reinforced, Pack
- +3 or higher: Harsh, Swift
- (U) Hardier Minions (I): Hive-Minder’s robot drones are d8 minions instead of d6.
- (U) Master of Enforced Order (I): If you have complete control over your immediate surroundings, automatically succeed in an Overcome to organize rabble to accomplish a task.
Common Scene Elements:
- Hive Drones: d6 minions. They have the ability to move to anywhere in the scene immediately and count as inventions.
- Hive Guardian. A relatively uncomplicated robot Villain designed for the current operation.
- Stellar Hive. A large space station or starship that the Hive-Minder has taken over to use as a temporary base of operations.
The heroes of Earthwatch alternated between fighting against humans whose plots were a threat to the stability of the Earth, and alien forces that wished to invade or raid the planet. Occasionally, however, they would encounter someone who was both, and of those their most pernicious and dangerous was the maniacal super-scientist who called himself the Hive-Minder. Gordon Keller was a simple astronomer whose attempts to contact interstellar life attracted the attention of a dangerous robot swarm that followed the signal in the hopes of stealing its technology for themselves. They attacked his facility, and by the time Earthwatch arrived, most of the scientists had been taken over by robotic implants, which were being used to telepathically download their knowledge. In the ensuing fight, Zeitgeist was able to use his telepathic ability to short-circuit the robots, giving the facility’s staff a chance to fight back.
What Earthwatch didn’t expect was that Gordon would take advantage of that chance to reverse the download, telepathically hacking into the Hive and learning how to develop new hive robotics. He feigned unconsciousness, allowed Earthwatch to clear the Hive out, and then set about building his own robots which he could use to build a new world order, one in which everyone had a purpose and a place, free of hunger, want, or free will. Earthwatch was able to defeat him, but he escaped, using a home-built Hive spaceship to reach the stars, stealing alien technology and returning to Earth to launch a new conquest attempt.
Hive-Minder was primarily an Earthwatch foe, but the Celestial Travelers would also occasionally encounter him in their own journeys, and when his plans were dangerous enough, other hero teams could get pulled in to his schemes. Usually, however, he was more of a raider than a global threat, dropping into single locations to test his latest drones and develop refinements for his next generation. His ultimate goal was world domination, but he was a very patient and detail-oriented threat, one who saw each setback as no worse than an experiment whose hypothesis had been disproved…
Behind the Scenes
Fun fact - for my Mastery I rolled “5, 4, 4” and then my next four rerolls were also 4s.
I did my best to grab less-used sets, but every upgrade had appeared three times, so Hardier Minions joins the wiped list. Our last two villains will probably close out a few more things; there are only three Upgrades and three Masteries that haven’t been used three times now. Adaptive and Inventor are a pretty good synergy; Adaptive gives you a lot of versatile bonus-creation capabilities, and Inventor takes advantage of them. And yeah, Hive-Minder is starting to look a bit more Iron Age, but we’ve hit 1980 so I think that’s probably okay.
Drone Developer is a customized Inventor ability, for those inventors who invent minions. It’s much less powerful than what a Legion or Mastermind can deploy, but it balances that power by not requiring an action and giving you versatile-powered minions (until they get killed, which will happen pretty quickly.)
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Randomizers:
Approach: 5, 1, 2 [Options: Relentless, Skilled, Prideful, Bully, Disruptive, Focused]
Archetype: 4, 4, 6 [Options: Guerilla, Overlord Formidable, Inhibitor, Squad, Titan]
Upgrade: 8, 1, 10 [Options: Mook Squad, Quality Upgrade II, Defense Shield, Calming Aura]
Mastery: 2, 1, 8 [Options: Annihilation, Behind the Curtain, Profitability Superiority]
The World-Maggot’s Core
First Appearance: Celestial Travels #517, March 1982
Approach: Disruptive, Archetype: Titan
Upgrade: Calming Aura, Mastery: Annihilation
Status Dice: Begins at d12. Health: 50+5H
Qualities: Imposing d10, Fitness d8, Alertness d8, Worldeater d8
Powers: Cosmic d10, Vitality d10, Telepathy d8, Flight d8
Abilities:
- The Eve of Destruction [A]: Attack multiple targets using Imposing. Use your Min die. Hinder each target with your Max die. If one of those targets rolls doubles on their next turn, they take damage equal to the penalty.
- Immortal Starspawn [A]: Hinder using Cosmic. Use your Max die. Recover using your Mid+Min dice.
- Devour Intruder [A]: Attack using Vitality and use your Max die. The target can either be Hindered equal to your Max+Mid+Min dice, or be unable to take any other actions other than using an Overcome to attempt to escape.
- Internal Defenses [A]: Activate one of the environment’s twists in its current zone.
- (U) Aura of Despair (I): The heroes act as being in the Green zone for status die, access to abilities, and for the purposes of all abilities. Heroes may remove this ability with three Overcome successes. If a hero takes a minor twist, you may use a reaction to Hinder them by rolling your single Telepathy die.
- (U) Master of Annihilation (I): If you can cause massive collateral damage without regard for casualties, automatically succeed at an Overcome where a show of overwhelming force can solve the problem.
Special Challenge:
[][] Counteract the World Maggot’s telepathic aura
[__] Turn the World Maggot’s aura of despair against it
Common Scene Elements:
- The World-Maggot’s Flesh. The starfaring body of the great beast is vast enough to be an environment in its own right, spawning defensive minions, creating challenges in the form of maze-like biology, and interacting with nearby stellar events.
- Cosmic Lymphocites: A swarm of (H) d8 minions. As long as any remain active, add one more each time the scene tracker ticks up.
- A Rival Villain: Either here to steal material from the World Maggot’s core, or attempting to direct it against a particular planet.
In March of 1982, the Celestial Travellers encountered the first of what would become a recurring danger over the next several years, the World Maggots. Initially created as part of a push to create a new space-based adventure comic that never fully transpired, the World Maggots instead became the focus of a multi-year story arc that took the Travelers further away from Earth and its heroes, fully isolating them from the rest of the Venture line from 1982 through 1985 under a determined writing team led by new head writer Ernest Mallory, fresh from a stint writing space-based comics at GR. This storyline largely removed the Travellers from the interdimensional travels that had been more standard, leaving them entirely spacefaring and grappling with a slow-burning galactic apocalypse.
The first contact with one of those monsters was when the Travellers responded to a distress signal to find a small planet in the throes of a volcanic cataclysm, a city-width tunnel burrowed into its crust and a World Maggot devouring the planet’s molten core, hollowing it out to form a nest in which to pupate. The Travellers intervened, and were able to overcome the semi-quiescent creature’s psychic field and drown it in the same magma it had been stirring up, but the damage was done, and the planet’s population was forced to flee in search of a new home. A few months later, in Celestial Travels #521, a second Maggot was discovered in the depths of space, being steered towards a populous Uranian world by a group of extremists led by Admiral Trake. This time, the Travellers were able to stop Trake and irradiate the maggot in space, but it was becoming clear that something was up.
Over the course of 1982 and 1983, it became clear that clusters of World-Maggot eggs hidden in the depths of a hundred worlds across the galaxy had all hatched as their cycle came to completion. Each hatching unleashed a dozen of the vast creatures, which warped through space in search of warm worlds filled with life in which to burrow and nest in preparation for a new generation thousands of years in the future; each World-Maggot held the potential to be death for an entire planet, their psychic fields protected them from most space forces, and there were over a thousand of them on the loose. Fortunately, the creatures moved slowly on intergalactic scales, but they were nearly impossible to spot and they moved in unpredictable patterns, and as time went on they sprouted more and more defenders to guard them as they plunged towards their targets. The battle against the World-Maggots was a backdrop to a growing galactic instability which would continue into the Iron Age…
Behind the Scenes
You’ve gotta have a world-eating danger that threatens to upend everything! And a villain who is also an environment is something that Venture Comics has been a bit lacking in.
In part, this villain was created because I haven’t created anything for Celestial Travels or mentioned them in any crossovers in a while, which led to the idea that this is because that comic was just less and less connected to the rest of the setting. So we get a vast problem for them to deal with that’s conveniently not part of what anyone else is doing, which will be discussed more tomorrow when we get into the History of Venture Comics for the Bronze Age…
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Is that a GWAR reference?
Or possibly Barry McGuire?
Dear gods, did GWAR cover Barry’s song at some point?
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My thought is… maggots are larvae. What do they become if they’re able to pupate? D:
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Presumably planetary-scale versions of this:
The question then becomes what produces the poop your giant flies feed upon? 
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That sounds like a problem for the Iron Age!
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You know, I had no idea what I was referencing when I wrote it. The phrase was just kind of swirling around my head. I’m going to assume that in-universe it’s a Barry McGuire reference that some writer slipped in about the approach of the World-Maggots.
History of Venture Comics, Pt. 7: New Ground (1970-1974)
Following the cancellation of Venture into Mystery in 1969, sales of Venture Comics’ new and established lines were doing well. A new slate of writers were bringing in new stories drawing on the histories and events they’d grown up with, and the editors at the time decided to start introducing a new line each year, with the goal of reaching sixteen ongoing titles in 1973.
Part of looking back, however, meant aligning some of the increasingly wobbly histories of various characters. To this end, Venture Comics introduced a mostly-official in-house set of rules regarding the history of the setting:
- It was always nebulously the present day.
- Anything that took place during World War II, took place during World War II. This placed Madame Liberty, Flatfoot, and the Steward as heroes who had been active for around thirty years at the dawn of the Bronze Age.
- The Silver Age as a whole, from 1958 to 1970, was set to have lasted roughly five years of comics time. The exact durations of individual comics varied within that period, but all of the heroes introduced in that time had now been active for anywhere from six months (Veilwalker) to five years (Skybreaker and the Vanguards.) This meant that, for example, the characters of Covert Tactics were declared to now be in their late 20s.
This created a particular challenge for Kid Liberty, who had now been born in 1944 but whose backstory was clearly still about having worked with Madame Liberty in wars, especially because all of Madame Liberty’s stories of the 1940s were also still canon. The editors of Covert Tactics chose to solve this problem by entirely ignoring it, never discussing Kid Liberty’s past but continuing to suggest that he was an old compatriot of both Madame Liberty and the Steward, who had explicitly been retired since the early 1950s. Meanwhile, the editors of Madame Liberty began to suggest that there had been two Kid Liberties, with one active in the 40s and another, the one who would go on to be part of Covert Tactics, active in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The first comic introduced as part of this expansion was Fallout, in November of 1970. The plan was to launch Drifting Along in 1971 and give the Drifter his own line at last, but events almost immediately caught up with Venture. Wondrous Adventures found its sales slipping dramatically, and rather than revive the line, it was cancelled, with Drifting Along changed into a four-issue limited run in mid-1971. The limited run proved extremely popular, and rather than replace the Wondrous Adventures slot with a new hero, the decision was made to simply have a rotating selection of limited-run series, introducing new heroes or exploring existing heroes in more depth. This also caused the planned launch of Candle in the Dark in 1972 to become a limited-run series, leaving Venture with thirteen publication slots for most of the early Bronze Age. For a brief period in 1973-1974, the addition of Fly Boy to the roster left them with fourteen slots, and things were looking up. 1974 saw the beginning of a “Christmas Annual” tradition; six Christmas Annuals would be published between 1974 and 1982, with holiday stories, traditions, and battles that proved highly popular.
History of Venture Comics, Pt. 8: Spiralling Apart (1974-1978)
But all good things must come to an end, and two serious problems began to take shape in 1974 that would ultimately lead to trouble down the road. The first were the back-to-back cancellations of Liberty’s Dream and Madame Liberty. Both comics had been struggling to maintain interest, and while Madame Liberty was replaced by the expansion of Cryptic Trails into a permanent volume, the company was back down to thirteen publication slots.
But the broader problem was that Venture Comics was splintering into three rival editorial teams. In the Silver Age, there had been dramatic overlap between titles, but now different groups with their own ideas were taking over. The Champions desk, which was in charge of Celestial Travels, Champions of Truth, Fly Boy and Skybreaker Stories, wanted to keep things traditional, with square-jawed heroes and simple threats. The Super-Science desk, writing in the pages of Covert Tactics, Flatfoot, Vanguards and Fallout, was pushing the envelope of the Comics Code, writing increasingly conflicted heroes and more real-world issues*.* The Mystical desk was interested exclusively in the new weird: they wrote strange and increasingly opaque stories in Dark Rivers, Into the Green, Cryptic Trails and Hidden Champions. The editorial teams spent less and less time coordinating with each other, leading to villains appearing in the pages of one book who had been declared dead in another, or heroes having noticeably different personalities and motivations depending on where they were appearing.
Over the course of this phase, the Champions editorial team was gradually pushed out of importance. Champions of Truth was cancelled in 1977, and replaced by a new Liberty’s Dream starring Madame Liberty and Reverie, under the purview of the Mystical desk. In 1978, Fallout was cancelled, with the hero rolled into the Vanguards and the new Earthwatch title handed to the Super-Science desk, and then Fearless Flatfoot and Fly Boy were merged together as ‘Fearless Flatfoot and Fly Boy’, also under the Super-Science desk, who added a swirl of noir to the Blaxploitation origins of the character.
History of Venture Comics, Pt. 9: The Bronze Age Collapse (1980-1983)
Despite the best attempts of the Mystical team, Cryptic Trails was cancelled in 1980, and it presaged the beginning of a period of slowly slumping sales. The struggles behind the scenes expressed themselves in confused storylines and fewer crossovers between desks; gradually, the Super-Science desk began to assert its authority, but at the same time, sales continued to fall. Vanguards was cancelled with Issue #300 in 1982, and both Fearless Flatfoot and Fly Boy and Skybreaker Stories followed in August of 1983; even the addition of World of Wonders left Venture with only nine publication titles, counting their limited-run titles (which were by now often slipping a month or two between runs.) Venture’s editor knew that something had to change, and that something would be unveiled early in 1984…
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I really like the part about Kid Liberty’s backstory. XD You’ve got this down to a science!
But ooh, what could be coming in 1984 I wonder? 
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This!
It’s my fourth anniversary here at the Greater Than Games forum, which seems like the perfect time to wrap up the Bronze Age with a little anniversary wishing…
Randomizers:
Approach: 1, 7, 3 [Options: Relentless, Prideful, Underpowered, Focused, Mastermind, Overpowered]
Archetype: 7, 3, 6 [Options: Bruiser, Overlord, Formidable, Inhibitor, Loner, Squad, Fragile]
Upgrade: 3, 4, 12 [Options: Group Fighter, Villainous Vehicle, Brainwashing Zone]
Mastery: 11, 5, 4 [Options: Enforced Order, Mad Science, Unfathomable]
The Scion of Silence
Real Name: George van Horne, First Appearance: (as George) Penance #2, Oct 1981. (as the Scion) World of Wonders #7, February 1984.
Approach: Focused, Archetype: Inhibitor
Upgrade: Brainwashing Zone, Mastery: Unfathomable
Status Dice: 3+ heroes with at least one penalty: d10. 1-2 heroes: d8. No heroes: d6. Health: 25+5H (Upgraded 35+5H)
Qualities: Insight d10, Magical Lore d8, Holder of Secrets d8
Powers: Wishcraft d12, Radiant d8
Abilities:
- Erasing Light [A]: Attack one target using Radiant. Use your Max die. That target cannot Defend or use reactions against this Attack. Attack multiple other nearby targets using your Min die.
- Remade Reality [A]: Hinder using Wishcraft against multiple targets and use your Max die. Attack one of those targets with your Mid die.
- The Longing Heart [A]: Hinder using Wishcraft. That penalty is persistent and exclusive. As long as that penalty is in play, reduce damage dealt to you by 1 and whenever you are dealt damage, the target with this penalty takes 1 irreducible damage.
- Numinous Being (I): Ignore all Radiant damage.
- Evade Consequence [R]: Defend against an Attack against only you by rolling your single Wishcraft die. Boost yourself by the damage reduced.
- (U) Lure of A Better World (I): While the scene is in the Green zone, all heroes’ quality dice at d8 or above are reduced one size. In the Yellow zone, all heroes’ quality dice at d10 or above are reduced two die sizes. In the Red zone, all heroes’ quality dice are treated as if they are d4. Heroes may remove this ability with three Overcome successes. If a hero takes a minor twist, the hero must lose access to a quality entirely until this ability is removed. If a hero is knocked out while this ability is active, you may create a new minion using the hero’s highest power die to represent the reshaped version of that hero.
- (U) Master of the Unfathomable (I): If you are in a situation involving eldritch and disturbing forces, automatically succeed at an Overcome to do the bidding of the Soverign of Secrets.
Common Scene Elements:
- A Doomsday Device fueled by the heroes’ own hopes, which will reshape the heroes’ personal realities if not counterspelled, and which advances the scene tracker by one space each turn, creating minor twists that rewrite reality in small ways in the process.
- Spawn of Silence. d8 minions that roll twice when Hindering and apply the higher result.
- A Changing Environment. Each zone moves the environment from its original form into a new shape that fits the Scion’s goals more fully.
The instigating factor of the events that became known as the Scion of Silence began in 1982 in the pages of Penance, with the rise of the new Penitent and the fall of her family and its empire. In 1983, the writers of the new World of Wonders revealed that Penitent had forgotten the existence of her murderous brother George, a fact that concerned the Wonderer deeply. As he investigated, he uncovered a terrible truth.
George had died, but his soul had been taken by the Sovereign of Secrets, wiped clean from the world such that only beings immune to the effects of reality manipulation could remember him. Within the Sovereign’s heart, George’s memories were transformed, giving him access to the easy family life he had once had, and he was promised that if he could unleash silence on the world, turning every person’s life into a secret held by the Sovereign and shattering reality into fragments, he would have an eternal paradise in which everything he ever wanted would be his. Agreeing, George became an undying conduit for the Sovereign’s power - the Scion of Silence.
The Scion would appear in the pages of Earthwatch and Liberty’s Dream in March, Covert Tactics and Into the Green in April, and Dark Rivers and Celestial Travels in May. Each time, he sought out a single hero, manipulating them into wishing for a better life, for their past mistakes to be erased, or for a tragedy to be undone. In five of those six cases, his appearance led to a dramatic reshaping of the comic’s setting over the next few months, appearing at first to be an idealized version of what those heroes wanted, gradually descending into a nightmare in which they were trapped. The sole exception was Celestial Travels; the writers of that comic refused to take part beyond the minimum mandated by editorial, and instead had Dr. Cosmos successfully ward the Travellers’ ship and save Wavelength from the Scion’s efforts before the three continued on the quest to deal with the World-Maggots.
Everything culminated in a pair of five-issue limited series: Scion, in which the Penitent and her allies faced off against the Scion and tried to stop him from shattering the world into ten billion pocket realms, and Silence, in which the Wonderer and his companions delved in the dimensional depths, seeking to cut off the Sovereign’s influence on the world. The two storylines merged in November of 1984 for the double-sized finale issue, “Sovereign of Secrets”, which was one of only two issues released that month (the other being the ongoing Celestial Travels, which refused to take a month off.) In the finale, the heroes came together, rejecting easy wishes in favor of hard effort, and pooled their powers, but it was not until the Steward finally sacrificed himself, using a wish from the Wonderer to push his powers past their limits and face off against the Sovereign directly, that they were able to succeed. With the Steward’s sacrifice, Gordon was cast into his own pocket realm in which he had succeeded and was master of all that he surveyed, gradually fading into oblivion as the Sovereign’s only vassal.
The aftermath of the Scion of Secrets storyline was a mixture of reboots and continuations, as the Wonderer knitted the fractured world back together with the help of his magical allies. Timelines were adjusted, the damage the Sovereign had done to the fabric of reality was repaired or replaced, and a new world was born. What would come next would be a new age of Venture Comics - the Iron Age.
Behind the Scenes
At the end of the Bronze Age, Venture Comics gets its very own company-wide crossover and its very own Crisis On Infinite Earths, one that is probably going to ripple for a while. One of the ways that I’ve been working to keep Venture smaller and less successful than Sentinel Comics is to have more of these events that actually restart things, because the comics aren’t doing as hot. So here we go!
I kind of deliberately reused a ‘grand’ villain that was supposed to have been laid to rest when Greenheart exorcised Greyheart, because that’s exactly the sort of thing that happens in comics. Someone has an idea, resolves the situation completely, and then a couple years later someone else comes along and is like, “what if no, though?”
Mechanically, this Scion is not too dangerous except for the things that he’s paired with. By himself, he’s a powerful Hinder engine who can deal moderate damage and occasionally fend off a blow, but his health is not that impressive. Combined with a doomsday device fast-tracking the environment and an ultimate effect weakening heroes and slicing away their qualities as they take twists? His Hinders get a lot nastier. We can assume a lot of the comics listed involved people not winning their first encounters with him.
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Clever spin on the Crisis trope, for sure.
Doomsday Machines are always rough when there’s an Inhibitor around, and one that accelerates the scene and has Hinder-optimized minions around will be a nightmare. OTOH, given that it’s described as using the heroes’ own hopes, you could balance that by making the twists it creates all hero-positive effects rather that being villain-friendly or neutral. That would be interesting.
The whole scene would be one of the few times where you might hear a player say they wished they had Purification, a Red ability I’ve never actually seen taken. That’s one that could use some work IMO.
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wow, that is really cool! 
totally worth the hype, and quite original as well!
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apparently today is also my 4 year anniversary.
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Pretty sure the forums migrated to the new environment 4 years ago.
I also got the notification. 
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Hah, that makes sense. I was about to say how interesting it was that we all signed up at the same time!
I guess we’re commemorating the new forums with a new Iron Age, then. 
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I’m not sure I trust my own profile. It claims I joined up on October 14, 2011 (I was playing the card game that far back, but I don’t recall trying to register) and yet I’ve only got two anniversary badges (which sounds about right to me). I do know it took me well over a year and many, many tries to let me finally register a few years back. Probably something one of these three jerks did.
Huh. The system says that you did make two topics way back in October '11:
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Weird. The writing style does sound like me (from over a decade ago, anyway) but I honestly have no memory of writing them, and no recollection of having an account way back then.
I was sharing computers with a couple of housemates at that point and we all played SotM. Wonder if one of them signed me up and posted under that account without mentioning it, or if my memory’s just shot. Might explain why I had so much trouble getting registered using the same email account years later. If I ever knew the old password it was long gone by that point, and that would have been the old forum anyway, right?
Blaming time traveling supervillains is funnier, regardless.
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