It wasn’t originally meant to be that goofy! I honestly started with the idea of a straightforward evil underwater factory destroying ships to lure in Flatfoot and Fly Boy. But once I had the joke it was all over. Could not do anything else.
I think that it is ironically probably impossible for SUB-MSF to work with anyone, especially another robot that likes to carve up robots to turn into parts for its own robots.
Dawn
Real Name: Dawn, First Appearance: Paradox #4, October 2023
Lieutenant Type: Ally
Die Size: d8
Relation: Romantic, Approach: Physical
Traits:
The end of Stutter in late 2022 saw Stutter and Paradox working together to use the technology originally developed by Timekiller to create a barrier between reality and timeless space. The barrier canonized the timeline that Paradox had created, integrating it into existence and preventing it from harming Stillmaker and its fellow timeless beings.
This should have given Paradox a chance to rest. But one morning, Paradox awoke to find herself in a ruined world controlled by Hank Ferris’s brain in Flatfoot’s robot frame. Sensing frayed pathways in time, Paradox used her abilities to travel back to the 1930s. She learned that in this timeline Flatfoot had never been created and Mr. Ferris had taken over the United States during the Second World War. She undid the changes and returned home, only to find that now the world was in the grip of Balor and the Fomorians.
In Paradox #4, Paradox followed the trails of broken time again, taking herself back to the age of Atlantis. In Atlantis she met Dawn, the first Champion of Atlantis, bearing the Shield of Durel. Dawn was a resolute fighter but a very awkward person, but she immediately believed Paradox and worked with her to learn about these stranger ‘Fomorians’. Working with Ezekiel, the man who would become the Drifter, they learned that the Fomorians had infiltrated Atlantis centuries early, to prevent the creation of the other divine weapons that would stop them. Paradox also learned that the reason she didn’t know of Dawn and the Shield of Durel was that Dawn was doomed to die in the proper timeline, breaking her shield to save Atlantis and forestall its doom.
As Dawn’s death approached in Paradox #6, Paradox broke history again to save her, pulling her through time to the next point of their journey. Now unfettered from time, Dawn was torn between gratitude and mourning for her people, her family, and her calling. She resolved nonetheless to work with Paradox as best she could, saving the timeline from whoever was manipulating it to various dark ends and making the most of her second life.
But Dawn didn’t have Paradox’s innate protection against temporal instability. She could flicker in place, sending herself back in time to accomplish tasks a few seconds in the past, but she was also beginning to flicker out of existence, a fact that she concealed from Paradox as long as possible. Finally, in Paradox #15 she finally sacrificed herself to save Knightgrave and Merlin in Camelot, leaving Paradox to mourn the woman she had only just begun to know.
At least that was the plan. Fans loved Dawn, her no-nonsense attitude and her awkward banter with Paradox. Speculation flew that the heroine would make a return in the near future. The writers of Paradox didn’t have any such intentions, but Dawn remained a fan favorite in the small corners of Venture Comics that Paradox occupied…
Behind the Scenes:
So this is how I discovered that Paradox is bisexual. Who knew? Everyone, know. The idea started as “person she meets in history who is short-lived”, and then it went from “short-lived” to “meant to be short-lived” and here we are. Wordcount on this one was a bit rough; I wanted to discuss the Paradox comic and also discuss Dawn, and I feel like she ended up a bit shortchanged. I’ll have to delve more deeply into her later.
Obviously there is some risk in using the name ‘Dawn’ in any kind of metaverse where Citizen Dawn exists, but the image is too good and leads to a great pun title down the road. So I bit the bullet and named her that anyway. She’s not a very similar character, either in look, powerset, or role, and if she does return in a different, non-Deep Cut form it will probably be with a slightly adjusted name.
Not like there aren’t plenty of alternatives. Sunrise, Daybreak (heh), Morn, Threshold. Heck, you could even go with Cockcrow, I dare you. 
I will probably follow the Venture route of “[noun][verber]” that have been used by characters like Skybreaker or Dawn Rider (which is extra ironic, there’s already a character named after dawn.)
And on reflection, I have updated the Impressionist’s Painted Form to read: “Choose one of your minions and merge with them, taking on your Painted Form. After your transformation, take a basic action using your Mid die. While merged, you can use the minion’s mobility options, and redirect Attacks against it to yourself.”
That seems sound.
I nominate Morn. That way she can be a barfly who never says a word, yet still gets an entire episode issue devoted to her.
Circuit Breakers
Real Name: Callie Shaw, First Appearance: Covert Tactics (Vol. 5) #15, Jan 2024
Lieutenant Type: Ally
Die Size: d10
Relation: Close Friend, Approach: Technological
Traits:
The second phase of Venture Comics’ Diamond Age was focused on three broad storylines running underneath the individual stories of the setting. Starshadow, Twilight Carnival, Paradox and the new volume of Cryptic Trails began to focus more on Atlantis of the past and present, and its connection to other groups. Celestial Travels, Champions of Truth, and Vanguards focused on the Dread Powers as Urak, the Empress of Ash, and Singularity began to come into conflict in their respective wars for reality. And Covert Tactics, Earthwatch, and Flatfoot and Fly Boy focused increasingly on a world seeking easy answers, and the spread of accessible but dangerous and unreliable avenues to gaining powers both from those who sought out power without understanding the costs and those who were manipulated and used as experiments.
Callie Shaw was one of the latter. A construction worker in Neulyon, she was nearly killed in an industrial accident. Left comatose, her family was approached by a medical research group who convinced them that Callie could be saved using technology adapted from Big Brain himself, giving her a cybernetic body while retaining her mind and soul. They neglected to mention how unstable and expensive the technology was, or that they were planning to use Callie as a dry run to upload consciousness to a robotic form and mass produce robots with the minds of loyal soldiers within them. The robots explicitly were not the originals; the transference process was lethal to the donor.
When Covert Tactics raided the operation, they were faced with a full squad of Circuit Breakers; the first generation of soldiers. Recognizing the stolen fragments of his own technology, Big Brain was able to hack the Circuit Breakers, restoring Callie’s personality, but in the ensuing battle most of them were destroyed. Three of the robots were rescued by the team, returning to Covert Tactics’ base to try and figure out what to do with their new lives.
The three Callies had a tearful reunion with their parents, who didn’t know what to do with three beings who weren’t quite the daughter that they’d lost, but also weren’t not her. They agreed to stay with Covert Tactics and work to purge any remaining override technology that might be inside them, while trying to figure out and develop their own identities, and Covert Tactics began to look into who else might benefit from mental uploads.
As a plotline, the Circuit Breakers were a success. As characters, they were a very complicated supporting plotline for a team that was already dealing with five major characters, most of whom had existing supporting cast. They weren’t specifically removed, but they gradually faded into the background, finding new lives over the course of 2024 and becoming far less common in the years to follow.
Behind the Scenes:
Coming up to the finish line with our final supporting character! The Circuit Breakers are a neat idea that doesn’t last mainly because they need more time than the comic is able to give them. Because of that, they end up just sort of hanging around in the background for a year and then getting quietly written out of the line.
There is definitely potential for one of the Circuit Breakers to become a superhero down the road, with the other two being redefined as supporting characters for her. Or for a player to just pick up the concept and go from there.
Neat mix of abilities there, and the backstory’s got lots of potential.
The figure reminds me of Joan Rivers’ “Dot Matrix” droid character in Spaceballs, which is weird because she doesn’t really look like her other than a hint of similarity in her facial features. I suppose “hair on a robot” is a factor too, although that’s more Joan’s style than the droid costume’s.
Hmmm. I see that Google search prefers the Dot Matrix from ReBoot to the older one from Spaceballs.
