I can have a rough map of the city sketched up by the end of next week, hopefully by the end of this week.
Are we still coastal or have we moved further inland?

Either way works, I think, actually. You can go ahead and pick whichever one you think would best, probably.

Some quick info on Starr. He's an older hero, from the previous generation heroes, from the 60s-70s, and early 80s. He was part of the superhero team that existed then. He had more of a cosmic focus, since his powers involve flight, invulnerability, and gravity manipulation. Later on, as he got better and more skilled, he could also adjust energy's shape and direction. He aged much slower than everyone else, so as the 80s rolled by and 90s drew closer, the team disbanded. Starr retired, married one of his teammates (Who I haven't figured out yet), and they settled in Crystal Falls for a peaceful retirement. When the rest of our heroes become active and more well known, and the negation field begins to disperse, Starr returns to active duty, his wife having passed away already, and he realized they'd need someone with more experience and wisdom to keep them grounded.

Ok, so, some questions.

1. Invictus' powers are derived from biological alterations, not from any sort of cosmic or unknown source of power. Is he effected by the negation zone? (I'm assuming yes, but looking for clarification.)

2. Is the negation zone gradually weaken, no longer present, or still in full effect?

Still working on the character. My time is spread out between a lot of different things, but the ideas are still turning.

Basically:

His father was a scientist from Eastern Europe who created bio-chemical weapons for Russia. He began to dabble in enhancement, the use of bio-chemical agents to enhance the human body. During this time he and his wife also had a son. A Chinese intelligence agency kidnapped the family and forced the scientist to work with their own enhancement program, threatening to kill his wife and child if he refused.

Too passionate about science, and too cautious, to bring himself to sabotage the program, he had no choice but to cooperate. Eventually he developed a process, by which bacterial infections were used to introduce new DNA to the body. In secret the scientist dabbled with the idea of using the process to introduce radical new DNA to fundamentally alter the operations of the human body.

When his son was diagnosed with an un-treatable cancer, he used an engineered strain of bacteria to introduce new DNA into his son. The program allowed for increased genetic and biological elasticity, allowing his body to change itself to adapt to stress, as well as to provide a steady stream of stem cells to facilitate this process. The effects made the child immune to almost anything except instant death, and also increased his neural plasticity, allowing him to develop an incredibly adaptive mind.

At first the physical effects were minor, so the scientist was able to keep the treatment a secret. But as his son's body began to change more dramatically and became noticeable unusual, he was forced to flee with his family. In the act he and his wife were killed, and the son thought to be dead. The bodies were left deep in a Chinese waste land. Of course the son was not dead.

Since then he has been aimlessly wandering through Europe and North Africa, maintaining a low profile and trying to find a purpose to his life. By the age of 31 he will find his way to Crystal Falls, where he hopes he can learn to cope with himself and find some purpose in life.

That sounds like a pretty good bio. The son is Invictus, right? Just had to double-check. For your questions, yeah, I'd say they'd be affected, and the negation field is weakening, yes.

*has been stalking this thread and knocking around a superhero idea, but isn't sure it's any good*

You could always give it a shot to find out.

All right. How should I do it?

Any way you'd like, really. It doesn't have to be any different than how you do the rest of your characters.

I've got a doc with a few ideas; is there any way I could get opinions on it? I don't know if it would fit into the universe, or what... I've never had a character develop like this one before.

Sure. If you want , you could email it to me, or use Google drive to upload, or attach it in a PM (If those are working now.)

That's good, then. I love it when a character takes off in a new way.

All right, will do.

Fantastic!

*pokes thread*

Haven't seen any status updates in a while. Are things going on behind the scenes? Or has everyone been distracted?

Nothing's been going on behind the scenes as far as I can tell. People have gotten busy.

I will start the origin short-story of Terror ^^

Fantastic! Looking forward to it!

I've still got Wisp moving through my head, but it's plot stuff I don't really want to reveal until it plays out in a story. I suppose I should find time to write out a 'day in the life' piece so people can get a feel for it though... I'll have to have a look at that later...

That makes sense, and sounds like a good idea. I should do that too.

I don't know where it will fit in with the writing, so I'll just point out here that Wisp is hugely not impressed by the Falls and can't see why the superheroes come to see it.

That's pretty funny. It could easily come up in dialogue somewhere.

Ok, so the reality-warper from the Big Battle who created the power-negation bubble is named Sentinel and the Elemental is Pangaea. Sentinel's powers are pretty much you're average, run-of-the-mill reality manipulation powers. Pangaea has control over/draws energy from the 4 classical elements of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, as well as being able to communicate with animals and control plants. Will have to fill in the details later, but that's what I've got at the moment.

Still trying to find time to sit down and hash out the map of the city, but hopefully it'll happen soon.

Ok. I played around with HeroMachine and came up with some rough drafts for Sentinel and Pangaea.
Here's Sentinel:



And I haven't decided whether Pangaea is male or female, so I drafted one of each.

It's only a rough sketch, hopefully it'll help me find better pictures for her. This is my picture of Night Wisp.

Sentinel looks pretty decent. Not so sure about the green mask though. It seems to clash with the main color scheme. Either Pangaea looks good, I think.

I suppose another thing to consider is Sentinel's outfit. A lot of times, the suit reflects their personality and personal style that goes with their powers, to strengthen the image of the character by creating a unified look. This one seems almost more of a brawler's outfit. If that's how he fights, that's great! If he uses his power more, there's some interesting clashing there.

Night Wisp looks good!

Um...that's blue not green. The same blue as the rest of his costume, in fact.Hm...you have a point. Not too worried about it at the present though. We can always tweak it later.

It's blue? *squints* *turns head to the side* It is! For some odd reason, it looked very green.

Yep, that's true. Tweaks can come later.

And I'll probably make a more traditional outfit for Wisp later, but right now, she really doesn't care to have one.

That definitely works.

So we have some characters and background. What's the premise of the story? The inciting incident and such.

We don't have a story. Or villains.

Then let's do that next.

I really liked the idea of having the superhero mission where the Christian wanted to reach out to the heroes.

I'm not sure about villains yet, but there could be other heroes that are playing the public for fame and power. That would cause tensions.

Probably a good idea, yeah.

I do have one villain for Red Ryder. His name is Railroad Bill and he hijacks trains with hazardous materials and holds them hostage by threatening to crash it in a city unless he gets paid. Not entirely sure about powers, but I'm thinking able to mentally connect with machines.

There would definitely be those kind of heroes, I think.

Technopathy, that's called. And it's what my hero's power is. . . . who I haven't fleshed out beyond a few words. XP

Yep. Thank you! Railroad Bill is even less. All I have for him is in the last post, so I can definitely change it.

I don't think I want to have a villain specific to Wisp. It would be more likely to bring the fight out in her but if she doesn't have one, the nothing to push against would bring her to her need to turn around better.

Introducing: Jerome Dylan.

Sounds great!

The ideas for my character have still been stirring about. I'm slowly learning more about her backstory and personality. (And I'm going to have to make an effort to check at least this thread on SF while I'm still mostly gone.)

Excellent! Sounds good, and yes. You will.

While we wait for a city map, we can probably start creating the city cast of important and influential people. I put up one possibility for the mayor a ways back.

Okay. So, let's see... Cities in Virginia are actually, in essence, counties (since there's no other branch of government between them and the State government). I can't seem to find much detail, but Varon and I agreed that a simple Mayor-Council-constituents format would work for now.

Varon's idea for the Mayor:
Her name is Kristen Lin, and she's the daughter of two Chinese immigrants who individually moved to Crystal Falls for their jobs, met, got married, and decided to stay. They became citizens, and Kristen was born a citizen in Crystal Falls. She grows up there, and very involved in community service and civic service as a reformer, and she gets elected mayor on a platform of civic pride, reform, community involvement, and hard work ethics. She's what really pushed Crystal Falls towards a really successful, happy, vibrant city. People love her for this, but there's tension because reactionary groups claim she's not American, corrupting American society with Communist values, and so on. Others hate her because she's not progressive enough and can come down pretty hard on people.
Personally, I think this is a good idea.

Other influential people to consider creating:
Rich people, politicians, news anchors, top journalists, newspaper owners/editors, crime bosses, union leaders, lobbyists, industry leaders. (Industries we discussed: Electronics, lumber, fishing/canning [if coastal])

I'll have to get to work on some of these.

EDIT: Got my first industry idea, Integrated Device Corp, Ltd. They're my superhero's employer.
EDIT: If there are Superhumans/Metahumans, would the Fed have a group to monitor them? Enter the Federal Super Restraint Bureau (FSRB).

I also paid some thought to classification differences between superheroes (and I'll leave the specifics up to cleverer minds than mine. )

The FSRB, in order to streamline their operations and allocate resources in a responsible manner (I know, that doesn't sound like the government, but maybe they're short-handed) has invented two classifications: Metahumans and Superhumans.

Metahumans are those who have low-key, limited-impact powers; e.g. one-way telepathy, short range telekinesis, limited geomancy, super speed, rapid self-healing... you get the idea.

Superhumans, on the other hand, are those with world-shaking/public-endangering abilities or combinations thereof; e.g. unlimited telepathy, telekinesis, super strength, teleportation, flight, reality warping, etcetera.

Thoughts?

Metahumans and superhumans are generally the same. The terms are interchangeable. Some examples I've seen rate it similar to the nation defense code, from level 1 to 5 or an equivalent to that. It helps account more for the variance in power abilities.

Super speed is actually much more powerful than people generally give it credit for.

And the FSRB and IDC sound awesome! Thanks! I'm working on a criminal fence/job finder type person right now, so I'll get stuff stuff up once I have him finalized.

Ah, see, that would work better. I was just trying to find two catch-all terms whereby I could divide the FSRB's priorities.

Yes, but think: how much good would super speed be without invulnerability? I mean, running into a bee at 300 MPH could easily put your eye out!

You're welcome. Looking forward to it!

The Flash doesn't have invulnerability. Incredibly useful, in fact, especially if the brain can keep up with it. A bee? Just dance aside. Everything else is essentially moving in slow motion. Especially at light speed.

Hmm. Probably Threats and Not Threats, I think, which can then be sub-divided into power levels.

Cool!

That would also be a good reason for The Wisp to say she shadow teleports... She wants to keep a low profile and that would make her a bit less threatening than if they knew about all of her real powers.

Yep. That definitely makes sense.

I'm getting ready to write the origin story for Invictus in January. It won't be the whole origin story, as it will deal with the origin of his power, not of the name Invictus or his role as a hero, which he takes on due to later events (things that happen in Crystal Falls, etc.).

Also made some changes to the origin of his mutation. His additional genetic information was introduced using gene therapy as an infant. In other words, he was infected with a genetically altered retrovirus (a retrovirus actually alters the genetic information of the cells it hijacks) from the lentivirus group (importance because only a lentivirus could actually infect all the cells in a body; most viruses can only hijack a cell during cell division, limiting their effectiveness and duration, whereas lentivirus can strike any cell) that introduced the new DNA into his genome.

He doesn't know it, but his infection can be transferred to others via his blood...which will eventually create serious problems for the world...

Awesome! Looking forward to it.

Red Rider is mostly ready for anything I wish to write her in. Starr is as well. We're making good progress here!