Looks more than a bit like a guy I used to room with in college back in 1988. I mean, he wasn’t generally green and glowing and didn’t wear glasses, but other than that it’s pretty close.
1 Like
Small bonus update today! As I adjust the Diamond Age to run from 2019 - 2022, instead of from March 2019 to February 2020, I’ve been moving various villains back and making changes to their writeups to match their new locations. Most of these shifts have been small enough that I haven’t bothered posting them, but I also made some noticeable changes to Vanguard Academy, in order to make it a failed title with two successful heroes rather than a title whose cast fully moved elsewhere (mentioned above in the Lunar Shroud entry). As a result, Databyte’s first appearance has been substantially altered, as follows:
Databyte: History
Of the four antagonists introduced in Vanguard Academy #2-5, two vanished completely when their associated heroes were shuffled out of the comic. One, however, proved to be popular enough that he bypassed his intended nemesis and became an opponent of Jackie Frost and Critter, allowing him to grab extra storylines and become a core part of the back half of the series.
Vanguard Academy #5 focused on the series’ two purely tech-focused characters. Gacha was a young woman with the ability to craft hardlight hologram projectors; she created loving replicas of her favorite characters (mostly thinly-veiled parodies of real characters and celebrities) and used them in combat and to solve problems. Her technology had been stolen by a major corporation, and she was at Vanguard Academy to prove herself and reclaim it. She was paired off with Big Rig, a young man who had the power to rapidly adjust and modify technology, which he primarily used to build himself an adaptable vehicle that could shift from being a slender power suit to a full car. The two of them were black sheep of the Academy, a pair of delinquents constantly on the verge of being suspended, and their nemesis Databyte almost finished the job for them.
Noah Kim was a master hacker with the ability to mentally interface with technology, and create electrical beings that could slip through power lines and devices to manifest anywhere that there was power. The young man was determined to use this power for his own benefit, and saw the potential in Vanguard Academy to steal in-depth information about a new generation of superheroes which he could both use to avoid them and sell on the dark web to help other supervillains defeat their newest foes. Overriding Vanguard Academy’s defenses and taking control of lockdown procedures was a challenge, but a solveable one, and he was determined to get his information and get out before anyone realized what was happening.
Unfortunately for Databyte, Gacha and Big Rig were sneaking out of their dorms to party when the lockdown was triggered, leaving them stuck outside with the security system fully active. As they tried to evade it and get back inside, they came across Databyte’s bots emerging from a power line and realized that the Academy was under attack. Gacha used her hardlight constructs to attack Databyte’s network, while Big Rig repurposed the school’s security systems to break into Captain Bolt’s quarters and free him. The three heroes then confronted Databyte, shutting down the school’s servers and protecting its students. In the chaos, Databyte was able to escape, but Captain Bolt reinforced the academy’s defenses to prevent another similar assault.
This was not, of course, the end of Databyte. He resurfaced in Vanguards #10 as part of a larger force of mercenary villains from the Outfit, trained by Headmaster to opposed Vanguard Academy and deployed during what should have been a routine operation in an attempt to injure as many students as possible. Once again, the force was defeated, but Databyte managed to gather a substantial amount of information on the heroes’ tactics and powers, taking them back to the Headmaster and establishing himself as a trusted agent in the Outfit.
3 Likes
Leading Lady
Real Name: Sasha deGrey, First Appearance: Starshadow #16, August 2020
Lieutenant Type: Enemy
Die Size: d8
Motive: Wealth, Approach: Technological
Traits:
- Steal the Spotlight: When a member of the Production Crew takes their expertise action, Leading Lady may use her reaction to take the same action.
- Team Player: Leading Lady adds +1 to her damage saves for each active member of the Production Crew in her location.
The Production Crew: Leading Lady’s Production Crew are d8 lieutenants. When taking their expertise action, they roll twice and take the better result. Producer: Boost. Cameras: Defend. Pyrotechnics: Attack. Publicity: Hinder.
With the importance of dynasties and inheritance to her story, it probably wasn’t a surprise that several of Starshadow’s foes were literal or metaphorical inheritors of her father’s enemies. In addition to the children of Bres, a new Mary Molotov inspired by her predecessor, and the apprentice of the former Locksmith, she had to contend with a brand-new Production Crew and its Leading Lady.
The new Production Crew remained in the service of Red Herrings Inc., providing distractions to other villains intent on carrying out grand plots. But where the previous Crew had used their movie talents as a cover to commit crimes, Leading Lady used crimes to advance her fame, recording and broadcasting her crimes live and daring the police to track her down. In her first appearance, Starshadow knew that the Locksmith was using Leading Lady as a distraction, but she had also stolen a helicopter and was flying it directly towards a major bridge downtown. She had no choice but to respond, at which point Leading Lady assured her that she ‘knew you could handle it’ and bailed out, forcing Starshadow to try to land it while Leading Lady escaped with some great footage of her parachute stunt.
The irrepressible and completely amoral villainess would return several times, treating the lives of others as a game where the most impressive stunt won. In addition to facing off against Starshadow, she would become a foil for Jackie Frost, viewing the heroine’s channel as competition, and would appear in the pages of Madame Liberty. She had no particular loyalty to her crew, and was often seen with new members from issue to issue.
Initially, Sasha appeared to simply be a new Leading Lady that Red Herring had hired, but Starshadow #31 revealed that she was indeed Trent Hudon’s daughter when the original Production Crew returned for one last job, setting themselves against their counterparts. Both crews were arrested, but Sasha and Trent escaped; the job was revealed to have been a plot by the pair to get Trent enough money to finally retire, while his daughter would take the heat and use it to advance her growing criminal career.
Behind the Scenes:
And here she is!
I’ve been discussing a new Production Crew for a while, and this is the result. Leading Lady is more integrated into her crew - her ability to act twice per round is very strong, but it’s limited by how much of her crew is still intact, and while she’s hard to drop with allies around her she gets progressively weaker as they fall. Sort of a lieutenant version of a squad villain.
She’s also more of an asshole than her father - less loyal, less careful, more narcissistic. But she does love him, and she’s not a complete monster. She’s just prone to doing big things that she’s pretty sure the heroes can stop while she escapes.
4 Likes
Got to be one or more storylines where this treacherous diva gets backstabbed by one or all of her current crew - especially if they’ve survived a betrayal or two and know how they’re likely to end up. Might not be an in-combat betrayal either, all they’d have to do is cut a deal with the heroes/authorities to help catch Leading Lady with evidence to prosecute her. Having one of the crew quietly approach a PC about that sort of thing might be a good “positive twist” for rolling a 12+ on an Overcome.
Her initials mean she’s probably met Clark Kent at some point, of course. 
3 Likes
Yeah, while I don’t think Leading Lady actively betrays her crew too often (that one issue notwithstanding) she doesn’t have anything like the tight relationship that her dad did with his. Usually it’s more of the mercenary “if I get caught I can’t trust that she’s going to put herself in danger to get me out” and crew members bailing on the job when things go south instead of pulling together.
Of course, most of Leading Lady’s crew will also be Red Herring’s crew, so there is a top-level executive keeping them from fully imploding. It’s probably where he puts the folks who are too skilled not to hire, but who he doesn’t trust to have the full discipline for his more complex schemes.
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I think Locksmith is already the name of Mr. Ferris’s henchmen.
Locksmith is a major Skybreaker villain mentioned briefly in the Ringmaster writeup; he hasn’t had a full write-up yet, but I will eventually get to him. He’s a crime boss, but not connected to Ferris.
2 Likes
Gremory
First Appearance: World of Wonders (Vol. 2) #17, September 2020
Lieutenant Type: Enemy
Die Size: d10
Motive: Destruction, Approach: Magical
Traits:
- Bloody Hands: When Gremory Attacks or Overcomes using magic, she also Boosts herself with the result.
- Wards: When Gremory has a magical bonus, she may add its value to her damage saves without using it.
- Sin-Eaten: Gremory takes double damage from Radiant and Infernal sources (before applying Defend actions.)
The first stories in World of Wonders focused exclusively on existing Venture Comics heroes who didn’t have their own titles, showing what they had been up to over the past fifteen years and positioning them to be used in crossovers or limited series going forward. As time went on, however, the focus of the book began to expand, giving focus issues to newer characters who had had popular but minor supporting roles in other titles, or expanding on the background details of crossover events and minor elements. In World of Wonders #17, the title left Earth for the first time, visiting one of the pocket worlds that Venturer had travelled through late in the previous year – the Precipice, the vast cyberpunk building ruled over by rival gangs and a malfunctioning AI. The two-parter, Cyber-Daemons, followed this universe’s Matrixx, a down-on-her-luck detective looking to solve a string of serial killings that seemed to be rituals, and which had been ignored by what passed for the local police force.
Soon enough, Matrixx was embroiled in a battle of revenge between three of the larger gangs in her region. The Covenites, a crew that painted themselves up to look like the long-deceased magician, had been feuding with the Lead Bellies and the Number Crunchers, until they had been wiped out by their rivals. The sole survivor of the Covenites was a young woman called Gremory. As her sisters died, Gremory had managed to tap into the long-dead magic of her ancestor, taking the blood of the dead into herself and surviving the bomb that should have killed her. She began killing Bellies and Crunchers, making it look like they were killing each other, while also committing ritual murders to improve her newfound magic and allow her to slip through the Precipice invisible to the Overseer.
Gremory was not particularly powerful, but the power that she had was an outside context problem for Matrixx, who was struggling to prevent a gang war that would kill dozens of innocents. The cyberwitch was immune to physical harm, shrugging off bullets and bringing the gangs closer to war with every deed. It wasn’t until Matrixx ended up in a struggle with Gremory and stabbed her in the heart with her own infernal dagger, cutting through all of her mystical defenses, that the villain died.
Of course, death has little meaning to a popular character; Gremory would return as one of the Agents of Revelation of Venturer’s secret foe, who plucked her from the moment of death to use as an assistant to more powerful villains. As for the Precipice, it was a popular setting, and it would see more issues in the future.
Behind the Scenes:
Another lieutenant who’s kind of straddling the line between lieutenant and villain, with some nasty tricks up her sleeve, Gremory is a lieutenant mainly because she’s so vulnerable to having her tricks disrupted, and after her first appearance she’s mainly in a supporting role to stronger Agents of Revelation.
Magical serial killer in a cyberpunk world was a fun concept idea, and drawing on her emulating Coven and representing her in this setting was fun. There’s definitely room for more cyberpunk Venture in the future. Mechanically, her wards make her nasty to try and take down without dealing with her boosts first - unless you’ve got magical energy damage to use, or can turn her own damage against her.
Oh, and for those who remember: I had originally called this world the Cyberblock in Hearsay’s writeup; I gave it another name because Cyberblock was fine for a one-shot but didn’t really sound that cool to me. I much prefer The Precipice.
4 Likes
Mechanically, she’s going to be really difficult to deal with if the PCs don’t have access to high-quality Infernal/Radiant attacks. Without it they’ll probably have to tie one hero up just countering her self-Boost game every round and then have to pile on enough serious attacks to get past those lieutenant saves. At least she’s brittle, just going down to a d8 will hurt her Boosts badly, and if they do have a way to target her vulnerabilities she could easily go out in one hit from that point on.
Much catchier, yes. Have to get the artist to draw a lot of extreme vertical spaces within the mega-arcology to merit the name - and maybe do scenes on the rooftop and tiered balconies so going over the edge is a real hazard for non-flyers.
2 Likes
Abscess
Real Name: Derek McClain, First Appearance: Stutter #21, February 2021
Lieutenant Type: Enemy
Die Size: d8
Motive: Personal, Approach: Raw Power
Traits:
- Acid Splash: When Abscess Attacks, he may use his reaction to make the Attack apply to two nearby targets. If he does, also Hinder those targets with the result of his roll.
While Stutter’s primary opponents were Stillmaker and its forces, Timekiller and his company, and the effects of broken time on Ferristown, she also had to deal with various smaller-scale villains who were drawn to the growing chaos. One of those enemies would prove to be a particularly pernicious one, a tragic but monstrous figure that called himself Abscess.
Derek McClain was an American soldier who came back injured from deployment to find himself discharged with no career prospects or money to his name. Trying to raise the funds to keep his family housed, he became part of a trial to develop superhuman soldiers. When things invariably went wrong, McClain was the only test subject to survive; the project was shut down and its scientists arrested. But this wasn’t much comfort to the soldier; all of his internal liquids had replaced by acid, and while his reinforced body could survive the experience, even the act of sweating was painful to him. The American government put him in a private facility while they tried to figure out how to reverse the damage, but it was clear to Derek that he would spend the rest of his life in containment suits or a private acid-proof cell.
When the Stillmaker came after him, it brought with it fragments of the life McClain could have lived, and everything became much worse.
McClain saw the timeline in which the scientists who had worked on him had been successful due resources provided by Mr. Ferris. They’d identified McClain’s Atlantean genomes, and turned him into an elite operative for the government, rich, famous, and with total control over his abilities. Then Paradox had changed that future, leaving McClain a scar on the face of the world.
When Stutter saved McClean from Stillmaker, he snapped. Recognizing her temporal powers, McClain demanded that she rewrite his timeline and fix him. He escaped his facility and began to hunt her, appearing at the worst possible moments to put whoever she was trying to save in danger. He would force her to save him. He refused to believe that Stutter couldn’t help him, refused to believe that he was killing himself slowly and others quickly. When the timeline was changed and he was in the world he was meant to live in, none of it would matter. He took on the name Abscess because he was a wound in the world, and he would not stop until he was healed.
Stutter felt for Abscess, but she couldn’t figure out what to do about him. He was dangerous, in the way, and utterly dedicated to forcing her to do something that she was pretty sure was impossible. As he chased her, she found herself wrestling with whether she would have to kill him, even though it was her future self that had taken his future away…
Behind the Scenes:
I had an idea floating in the back of my head for a while - sure, Paradox saved the world and made a huge number of lives better, but there must have been some people aside from supervillains whose lives changed for the worse. And thanks to a marauding creature that hates temporal change, someone might get a glimpse of that through fractured time and just absolutely snap.
And so we have Abscess, who is not so much a villain with plots to foil as he is an angry problem that just gets in the way when you’re trying to save lives and makes you feel a bit complicated. His acid splash is a big move, but since it also uses his reaction it’s sort of proofed against other villains giving him actions to make it repeatable.
4 Likes
Guy’s got a legit beef, but you’d think he might take some time out to stalk the VA officials who left him high and dry before the experiment, as well as the scientists who botched the job and their superiors who authorized an illegal program in the first place. The alt-timeline he saw where he’s still working for the government probably keeps him from widening his grudge further.
Also, given his power set, I bet some writer with a solid D+ in high school chemistry inserts a reference about him taking antacids all the time (eg off-brand Rolaids and Tums packaging left in his wake) and it turns into a running gag.
“Ulcer” would have been a pretty good alternate supranym for this dude too. Maybe I’ll crib it for my own uses.
2 Likes
Go for it! Love to see what Ulcer is like. And in the meantime:
Cinderframes
First Appearance: Children of Jotarus #1, April 2021
Lieutenant Type: Enemy
Die Size: d12
Motive: Destruction, Approach: Physical
Traits:
- Collateral Damage: When a Cinderframe Attacks, activate a minor twist in the environment’s current zone.
- Unstable Suit: Heroes may take an Overcome action to overload a Cinderframe. While overloaded, step down its status die (to a minimum of d6) and remove ‘Collateral Damage’.
- Suit Repairs: Any target may take an Overcome action to repair an overloaded Cinderframe, restoring their lost die step and ‘Collateral Damage’.
After the hastily-reconstructed Greenheart: Trial by Fire was a huge success, selling out and becoming an instant classic, the decision was made to keep things rolling with self-contained storylines that would draw in readers less interested in picking up a dozen titles a year. The second limited series released in the Diamond Age was another six-parter, Children of Jotarus.
Children of Jotarus focused on the daughter of Gyleb Jotu-Kal, Ferr’n. Ferr’n had been born during the events of House of Jotu-Kal and was now a woman on the cusp of adulthood, struggling with her position as a celebrity child of the Jotari Alliance’s most famous aristocrat-turned-commoner. While Gyleb maintained an exalted position in politics, he had dismantled the House of Jotu-Kal and given away the vast majority of its wealth. As a result, Ferr’n was the poorest member of her circle of friends, a child of privilege who had seen that privilege evaporate around her because of her father’s good nature. She fell in with a crowd of rebels who called themselves the Firewalkers, and who claimed to be inspired by the Empress of Ash – not to worship her, but to live every day as though you were about to burn away. This appealed to the impetuous young woman – until she saw where it was taking them.
The leaders of the Firewalkers were, at their hearts, angry and disaffected youths who had lived their early childhoods as wealthy, untouchable aristocrats, and then seen fifteen years of growing equality and democracy strip their benefits away from them. They were still among the richer members of society, but they didn’t see it that way, and they wanted to burn down the old order entirely, dancing in the ashes with no greater drive than the thrill of destruction. The Cinderframes were their most powerful weapons – stolen cutting-edge Jotari war machines, which vented plasma and ignited the terrain around them as they battled. With a dozen of these machines, the Firestarters intended to blaze a trail of destruction that would ‘wake up’ the people of the Jotari Alliance.
Ferr’n realized where their actions were taking them just in time to stop one of her friends from burning down a tenement filled with people, and took it upon herself to try to stop the Firewalkers and save as many of their members as possible before the Alliance came down on their heads. Over the course of the limited series, she managed both – stopping the cruel leaders of the Firestarters, and convincing several of her friends to hold on to the core ethos of living life without burning out themselves or others. She took on her father’s mantle, becoming the new Partisan to protect her planet from those who would overthrow its peace.
Behind the Scenes:
There is definitely no connection between the Firewalkers and modern politics, nosiree.
This one was a bit tricky, because I want to note some of the new heroes that get introduced in 2021-2022, but I’m also holding myself to my numbers so I do not have a hero slot for Ferr’n at this time. So one of her common foes in the limited series becomes the backdrop to introduce her to the setting, and then she goes on to become one of the Vanguards alongside Venturer later.
The Cinderframes themselves are fun; triggering environment twists can target heroes or villains, so the GM can have them Hinder themselves by accidentally setting off a building collapse, or use them to create new challenges for the heroes.
4 Likes
No, no, not at all. And definitely not in early 2021 USA when they were introduced.
These clowns will be making a resurgence in 2025 when they’re inexplicably pardoned as patriots, right?
Yeah, triggering environ twists is always fun, and very versatile for the GM. A lot of my custom environs include first responders showing up to the scene, and starting a bunch of jerks in chunky power armor starting fires while brawling the PCs seem like they’d draw that kind of response.
3 Likes
I have not yet decided what 2025 looks like in Venture Comics; doing a thinly-veiled storyline in which the Firewalkers successfully take over the Jotari throne and the rest of the alliance has to bring them down is definitely a possibility.
1 Like
Mimelight
Real Name: Annette LeFranc, First Appearance: Champions of Truth #606, Nov 2021
Lieutenant Type: Enemy
Die Size: d6
Motive: Malice, Approach: Magical
Traits:
- Invisible Songs: Mimelight has +2 to Boost or Hinder.
- Invisible Walls: As a reaction, Mimelight can redirect an Attack aimed at her to another nearby target.
- Invisible Thoughts: Mimelight is immune to Psychic damage and Hinders.
Not every popular villain introduced in the first few years of the Diamond Age was part of a broader story, key event, or momentous character moments. Sometimes, someone just made a joke and things got out of hand.
Mimelight was introduced in Champions of Truth #606 as a minor problem being faced by Greenheart and Skybreaker; a mime who was in the middle of creating havoc on a major bridge in Grovedale, silently singing into a microphone and unleashing invisible objects that were knocking over cars and threatening to kill people. She was present for exactly four pages, during which time she used an invisible slide to deflect Skybreaker’s spear into Greenheart, lightly injuring the heroine right before Greenheart used a nearby flight of eagles to knock her into the water. The battle was really just a setup for a storyline about how Greenheart was pushing too hard, with her going into battle against Avarice without giving herself time to heal and nearly getting killed because of it.
There wasn’t anything more to Mimelight. Hanna had included her because he was having a good-natured spat with his artist, Sophie Bernier, and he wanted to annoy her with the most French caricature villain possible; he hadn’t even given her a real name or backstory. In return, Bernier leaned into it by giving the mime a microphone to yell into. The two had a good laugh over it when Hanna saw what Bernier had drawn, and both were incredibly surprised to see fanart of Mimelight spread across the Internet within days of her first appearance.
From there, the joke grew. Hanna gave Mimelight the most French name he could think of. Bernier gave her a series of increasingly exaggerated poses and ‘invisible object’ effects. Hanna gave her the backstory of being a hedge magician who learned to use subsonic spells to create invisible illusions, which could be touched but not otherwise interacted with, and said that she chose to dress as a mime based on the look of the thing. She wasn’t after money, or power: she just liked showing off her ridiculous spells and causing trouble. Mimelight began to appear in other comics, generally with the same gimmick, and she routinely broke out of prison simply because no one could quite figure out how her magic worked or how to stop her. Usually, she vanished at the end of one of her defeats, equally unclearly.
Madame Liberty hated Mimelight. The normally-composed hero would absolutely lose her cool whenever the mime appeared, often rushing in and getting herself in trouble in her drive to finally catch the bloody woman, always without success.
Behind the Scenes:
I just wanted to make a mime, is all. Sometimes there really is nothing more to it. And I gave her a microphone because it was funny, and here we are.
Okay, there’s a bit more to it, which is that I’ve been watching a playthrough of Clair Obscur and the mime enemies are amazing. But that’s it.
Random fun fact: Hero Forge does not have the ability to put horizontal stripes on clothing. There are vertical stripes, and there are the chevron stripes that I used, but no traditional mime shirt. That’s okay in this case; the chevrons make her look just a bit weirder, and that works for the gimmick. Mechanically, she’s obviously going to drop like a rock as soon as you land a hit, but that first time you swing at her is going to be a surprise.
6 Likes
Everything about her is top-tier fantastic. 
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Zut alors! Even ze wordplay of her supranym is tres magnifique!
This is clearly some sort sort of sinister anti-mime conspiracy at work. Or perhaps they really don’t like the notion of cosplaying as bees?
Also makes it nigh-impossible to do the stereotypical striped convict uniform you see in old prison break movies, which might be more relevant for supers gaming. There must be some cheap Absorbing Man / “Crusher” Creed Heroclix minis out there, but that only takes care of the outfit from the waist down.
3 Likes
flunki
Alias: Your Personal Criminal Assistant, First Appearance: Madame Liberty (Vol. 2) #18, December 2021
Lieutenant Type: Enemy
Die Size: d8
Motive: Obedience, Approach: Social
Traits:
- Can I Help With That? When flunki Boosts a villain or lieutenant, add +2 to the result.
- Thank You For Your Feedback! When a villain or lieutenant uses a bonus created by flunki, flunki may use his reaction to step up his status die (to a maximum of d12.)
While the new Madame Liberty mostly focused on traditional supervillain plots and melodrama, there was plenty of room for traditional, slightly goofy villainy as seen through a modern lens. One of the most over-the-top of these was the surprisingly popular Granlavian plot: the creation and mass-production of a villainous productivity app built into a robot frame and attached digital assistant.
Designed by White Mantis and developed by her team of Granlavian engineers, “flunki” was quietly marketed to super-criminals around the world as a tool that would help take a villain from minor schemes to grand crimes. Simply feed your organization profile and recent operations into the robot boy, and he would begin to provide underworld organizational help, motivational suggestions, hiring connections and whatever other administrative work was needed by super-criminals who weren’t lucky enough to have a massive organization or superhuman memories. As a bonus, White Mantis helpfully loaded flunki with basic profiles on most major superheroes, providing small-time crooks with their core vulnerabilities and most common combat tactics.
flunki immediately became a huge headache for Madame Liberty, dramatically improving the power of the enemies that she faced. Even worse, the robots carefully studied their own masters, adjusting and retooling their approaches to provide the most effective encouragement and plans based on their personalities, rather than simply picking ones that were tactically efficient. Enemies that hadn’t been significant threats were suddenly running large-scale operations, and it began to seem like White Mantis had succeeded in her most effective plot yet…
Until Madame Liberty discovered, and was then able to prove, that the flunki line was also feeding all of the data it was recovering back to Granlavia’s hidden servers, so that White Mantis could develop a complete global map of super-crime and learn all of the secret vulnerabilities of its criminals.
The reveal of flunki’s hidden spyware hurt sales of the little robot badly, and most of its creators trashed it on the spot or sent it back to Granlavia with demands for refunds. A few, however, decided the spyware was worth the convenience of a digital criminal assistant, and flunki-boosted crimes continued to appear in the pages of Venture Comics on a regular basis.
Behind the Scenes:
I’m not entirely sure where this one came from. It sort of started as a character that was going to be a big-market digital assitant that turned evil and started building bodies to force its users to do the things that it thought were productive, but that seemed done to death. So I tried to think of a twist on the format, and then I thought “criminal assistant”, and… well, here’s flunki.
I love the little guy. He doesn’t sabotage his masters or anything like that, but he’s absolutely secretly spying on them for White Mantis the whole time, and this feels like the perfect 2020s version of a 1960s comic plot.
Also I’m specifically imagining him as using Jack McBrayer’s “Badgey” voice from Lower Decks.
5 Likes
Lacki’s actually going to be pretty alarming if the heroes don’t concentrate on taking him down fast. Almost guaranteed to increase his die size every single round, and his already-decent bonus game will spin out of control if he’s allowed to reach d10 or d12 status, at which point some luck Boss Bad will be reliably getting +3 bonuses to work with every time lacki takes an action. Of course, he’s also going to be very sad if he’s forced to do anything besides boosting. Powerhouse heroes forcing him into Attacking them will ruin his day right quick.
I suspect the smartest villains who invested in one of these things found the spyware immediately and used it to feed misinformation to White Mantis and company, or worse, used the link as a back door to hack Granlavia’s own databases.
2 Likes
Yeah, I was thinking of having the growth be slower, but I couldn’t think of an elegant way to do it so I just went for it. I think it creates a situation where at first, it’s not a big deal, and then he starts growing and players freak out.
Part of the advantage, though, is that it keeps the villains from sitting on his bonuses for bigger effects.
I expect there are some misinformation stories; actually using a flunki to hack Granlavian servers is probably beyond the capabilities of most would-be hackers. White Mantis is supposed to be a genius tech scavenger, after all. I think that she would have the flunkis depositing information into a locked server, and then move information from it to her main databases manually. Not impossible to slip a worm in if a story calls for it, but pretty resilient, and definitely not connected to other secret stuff. Granlavia is the sort of place with a lot of different confidential air-gapped servers.
2 Likes