Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business Pitch your One-Issue Legion fic ideas!

So I was thinking, what short one-issue stories would you like to see? Ones that don't necessarily involve much knowledge of Legion history, or the tying up of long-running plot threads. They can even be "Elseworlds" that don't fit into continuity (either canon continuity or your own fic's continuity).

Such as:

- A boys' night out with the gay Legionnaires - Lyle, Condo, Tel, Jed and Jan, where the two couples help Jan find a date! (I might do this one day, but with another character in place of Jan...)
- Gates, Tellus, Blok take a class on carbon-based humanoid culture. Quislet is forced to join, but disrupts things instead. Sensor can join as a bonus, in this Elseworlds she coexists with humanoid Projectra
- Treasure hunt: Kinetix enlists Violet in a race against time versus Kono for a mysterious treasure (I might do this one day!)
- royal summit: 5YL Nura, Jeckie, and Tasmia talk about the headaches of running a planet (or being closely involved in one)
- Shikari and Dawnstar talk about their similarities vs. differences (this is also something I could possibly do one day in my fic!)

What are your ideas, whether silly or serious?

Legion Academy party issue.

^ Chemical Kid uses his powers to make people be able to drink without getting drunk, but Dragonwing still manages to set fire to the VR room.

Topar the Robot Super-Teacher from Krypton shows up to "train" the Legionnaires.

...and immediately alienates 1/2 the Legion:
Quote: "You are a mere girl! And no female is fit to use super-powers wisely!"

The issue does not end well. For Topar.

"Little Hyrkanian"- Alternate Universe/Elseworld where Earth is mostly water due to an invasion by the Gil'Dishpan (they eventually lost), and a curious Princess Lamprey ventures into the main universe.

This is cool, I've often thought that there was a lot more story potential with Hykraians and Gil"Dishpans.



Topar always annoyed me, so I would like to read it getting some comeuppance!

Random fic ideas stirring around my head;

1) Something else else dealing with Jan/Element Lad and his stewardship of Trom. The UP votes to 'regenerate' Trom using the DNA of the dead Tromnites to grow clones of those that died and downloading into them all of the historical data on their planet that remained in their information archives. There are many voting on the measure for purely humanitarian reasons, considering the Tromnian genocide to have been a great injustice, and reversing it to be a noble cause, but others behind the scenes want A) thousands of transmuters, who may lack the pesky morals and ethics of Jan Arrah, who has a monopoly on his gift (and how it is used) at present, B) an entire new world with it's own representative seat on the UP council, completely beholden to the UP (for resurrecting them) and totally naïve about matters of UP realpolitick (and who, for instance, they should never under any circumstances, trust, for instance). Jan recognizes that this is going to happen with or without his blessing, and may take drastic action to prevent it...

2) Tharok had a 'Dark Man' clone, who created the League of Super-Assassins, one of which, Lazon, has pretty much the same powers as Quanto, of the uh, some other villain group I forget the name of... (and looks almost exactly like Quanto, as well!). Tying these things together, Tharok has Quanto somewhere, held prisoner, and created Lazon through cloning, planting him with the other children he was grooming to be assassins. His end goal was to isolate the powers and graft them into clones of himself, to create a 'Light Man' counterpart to his 'Dark Man.' Or, as the Legion will discover later, to create *many* Light Men... These Light Men have a purpose, and that is to unlock the darkness deep within the heart of Talokk VIII, source of the powers of the Shadow Champion (and her cousin). The darkness itself isn't the true prize, however. Tharok has discovered that the darkness within Talokk VIII's heart protects and hides something, a thing of great value, that he suspects will prove to be far more valuable and universe-shaking than clones of Quanto or Leagues of Super-Assassins.

Where he'll run into trouble is when he discovers that the darkness at the heart of Talokk VIII isn't hiding something precious from the universe, it's *protecting* the universe from that which it holds prisoner...

Set, are you looking over my shoulder at my draft storylines for LW6 because of you take out the Lazon/Quanto part the idea that Tharrok is after something dark and mysterious (and utterly evil) at the heart of Talok VIII is just about bang on what I'd planned. It would reference the first appearance of Shadow Lass and other points from that planet's history. Oh well, back to the drawing board. And at least you didn't say what that mystery is, so I've still got that to work with.

Mwa-ha-ha! I'm in yer head, peeking at yer thoughts! (Or maybe I just got back from the future in my Time Bubble and had already read your fic?)

Seriously though, I hadn't decided yet. Is it a creature, a Lovecraftian horror of some sort? Is it a powerful source of dark magic, sealed away to protect the universe? Is it, gasp, something good, sealed away like Hope in Pandora's Box, that Tharok will unwittingly unleash (and the Shadow Champions had been tricked into helping keep confined) to the universe's betterment? Was the entire settlement on the kind of inhospitable Talokk VIII deliberately engineered by some external (and long forgotten) race or power (originally being natives to one of the other inhabited Talokkian planets) for the sole purpose of keeping this darkness bound, creating a race of tradition-bound warriors who don't remember, after all this time, why they were put on Talokk VIII in the first place?

It was just a seedling. If I were ever to feed and water it, it, like most of my fic ideas, would likely grow in strange directions that would surprise even me.

As a side note, I planned on tying Radiation Roy's powers and origin into that of the old villain Modulus (who also had the same powers and origin story), either as some sort of 'beta-test' of Tharok's 'clone a villain' plan, or a red herring that had nothing to do with Tharok, but was just coincidentally similar.

I remember you touching on the proposed "resurrection" and exploitation of Trom in your latest fic, Set. An interesting thing to explore!

And I like the ideas for Talok VIII, Light Man and Radiaton Roy/Modulus too!

I just realized that many of my "pet" favorite characters have died or been through a lot of bad things.

Legion - Kinetix (dead in legion of 3 worlds, which I choose to ignore!). Honorable mention to Gates, trapped in 20th century and disfigured
JLA - Doctor Light, depowered for a while (she got better thankfully). Honorable mention to Ice, who died for a while and got better
Titans - Kole (dead in Crisis)
Outsiders - Windfall (raped, killed her attackers, joined Suicide Squad and died in battle)
JSA - Cyclone (was depowered for a very short while, but got better). Honorable mention to Ma Hunkel,who was in witness protection for decades and away from her family

Most are female. I should write a story with them meeting up...

Thank you, IB! I like the true aliens in Legion World and wish more would be done with them. In my Earth-S/Earth-4 stuff I made envy and nihilism the primary motivators of the Venusian worms, and I think the Gil'Dishpan would feel similar. They would ask themselves; what is the purpose of sentience in such a form?


I like Set's ideas as well. Set, do you see Element Lad's powers as more magic or more science?

In the Reboot, at least one Gil'Dishpan (they are called Gil'dans only in the Reboot) expressed hatred for air-breathers. That could be an element of envy.

My fanon on the Gil'Dishpan, and why they look more like an internal organ than an actual complete organism, is that they exist at least partially in multiple dimensions, and the part you see in their containment bubble is only a part of the whole creature manifesting in this dimension. How big a part? Who knows. They aren't sharing that sort of information (or even confirming that theory). If somehow brought fully into one dimension (and they may well exist in more than jst two, perhaps even scattered across a half-dozen or more!), a single Gil'Dishpan might be as large as a house. Crazier theories include the notion that all of the Gil'Dishpan yet seen are extra-dimensional appendages of a single massive creature, as large as a moon, and that any appearance that they are working to cross purposes are a ruse, to create the illusion that they are a race, and not an individual, or, stranger yet, that they are of many minds, despite being all one creature, and quite capable of having different thoughts and feelings on a given matter.

In any event, I like the notion that what you see is only the part of the Gil'Dishpan that can exist in our dimension. Like Quislet, in a sense, they are a 'probe' into this dimension from another.

And teleporting, for a Gil'Dishpan, is just like pulling your hand out of the water and putting it back in a few feet away. To a particularly dimwitted fish, your hand just disappeared from their 'universe' and reappeared in a different place. Magic! But you know differently, because your 'universe' is bigger.



I haven't nailed anything down, but I think of it as a little from column A and a little from column B. The Tromnians didn't just happen to evolve transmutation abilities randomly, or to adapt to an inhospitable environment (as Braalians, Tharrians, Bismollans, etc. might have), but were perhaps designed to have transmutation abilities, as part of some sort of longer-plan, one which Roxxas came close to foiling. (And did Roxxas really 'accidentally' almost kill every living Tromnian, or was he manipulated into doing so by some hidden force opposed to whatever long-plan the Tromnians were created for?)

I kind of see it in Hindu Trimurti sort of way. There are forces of creation (sometimes thought to be mindless, pumping out things both good and bad, adorable puppies and nasty ebola, indiscriminately) and forces of destruction (equal indiscriminate, the rain falling on the just and unjust alike). Balancing them is a force for balance, an 'architect', who decides which things that have come from the forges of creation are worthy or useful additions to the universe, and which need to get funneled off to the 'Destroyer' to be gotten rid of. I see transmuters as being part of this force for balance. There's too much of element A in the universe and not enough of element B? A transmuter can turn some of that extra A into B. But someone, forces of destruction, perhaps, want the universe to run out of resources, to fly out of balance and 'halt and catch fire.' The existence of balancing forces keeping the universe spinning on frustrates their plans to see it all burn.

In any event, I like the notion that there is a certain amount of transmutation power that the Tromnians tapped into. When there were thousands of them, it really wasn't all that spectacular. Nothing like Jan's feats of changing the lead content of the atmosphere of the entire Earth single-handedly. The secret is, as long as Jan is the 'Last Son of Trom,' he has *all* the transmutation potential that was once shared by his entire race. If I went with this notion, and tied it in with the fanfic notion upthread, some might speculate that Jan doesn't want Trom to be resurrected because he wants to keep the power all to himself. (Which would be very far from the truth. He just doesn't regard clones of his dead people downloaded with some archived Tromnian history and religion and culture would *be* the people who died in the Tromnian genocide. They'd always be imperfect copies, and while he wouldn't kill one that had already been brought to life, he certainly doesn't want a bunch of copies of his dead friends and family and whatnot running around, wearing their faces and answering to their names and aping their acts of faith.)

A few other friends from Hykraius-Earth:
Bouncing Blowfish
Brain-Coral-5
Invisible Squid
Mon-Eel
Shadow Bass
Sun Fish

Great White Witch!
Timber Shark!

Traveling 1,000 years into past, they recruit history's greatest hero: Topo!

Phew, Topo's cool.

I thought you were going to say Jerro the Merboy, and I was going to flip a table.

Who is Topo? Google ceased to be useful. I remember Jerro from an Encyclopedia though, such fun.

Earth- Hyrkaius Superman- Kal-el's pod ends up in the ocean due to a miscalculation and he is raised by Atlantean peasants (if he can survive the vacuum of space then water should not be an issue). I could see him going through a hero's journey similar to that in Greek mythology. He helps establish long-lasting relations with Hyrkaius.

Duke Pericles- The child of Aquaman and Wonder Woman who helps push back the Gil'Dishpan invasion.

Maybe Atlantis becomes the superpower on Earth and joins in a Federation with Hyrkaius and other amphibious aliens?

Topo the Octopus is Aquaman's pet octopus, originally, although he's been later re-envisioned as a humanoid with an octopus for a head (both in comics and the Young Justice cartoon), and, in the new 52, as a giant kraken like beast with tentacles and crab claws. I have no idea which version Quislet meant, but I'm going with the normal unpowered pet octopus as 'history's greatest hero,' because that's funnier.

While it's not a fic, I had an idea for a series of Encyclopedia Galactica articles. Here's one;

"Oh Cham, another pet?" "Didn't we learn from the Proty fiasco?" "Or the hairless ceej infestation and quarantine?" "Or Urkzilla?"

Scuttles – genetically engineered giant centipedes used as pets in several Earth nations (but regarded with horror in North America, Mexico, the Middle East and Europe), they have no venom glands, and have the personalities of dogs, ‘programmed’ by scent when purchased to adore their owner (although mistakes can occur and you can end up with a scuttle that loves your ex-boyfriend, and is coolly tolerant of you, more like owning a cat than a dog…).

Scuttles can only eat special kibble (a security precaution) and find the smell of most other organic matter unappetizing, eating once a day to maintain their current size and activity level, or twice a day if the owner wants them to grow (up to seven or eight feet long, and as thick around as a strong man’s arm). Even the largest rarely have more than 36 legs, so nobody calls them ‘centipedes.’ Scuttles are playful and friendly, and thrive with plenty of attention and cuddling / grooming / cleaning from their ‘favorite person.’ They have little if any ability to defend themselves (although some of their play behaviors are adapted from hunting instincts and threat displays), and due to their dependency on their special kibble, and inability to reproduce, are generally thought to be unable to ‘escape into the wild’ or become strays. Like most arthropods, scuttles are fastidiously clean, and spend a fair amount of time grooming, if not kept in a tidy household. Scuttles molt infrequently, if only fed a ‘maintenance’ diet, but as often as three to four times a year if fed with the intent for growth, eating their own sheddings if allowed to, and replacing any damaged or missing legs (or antennae) with each molting. (A scuttle with a damaged leg will generally just tear it off and devour it, rather than deal with the hassle, growing a replacement with it’s next molting, and injuries like this can prompt a premature molting.) Due to their instinctual ‘programming,’ scuttles do not particularly enjoy novel experiences (such as unfamiliar people, or going for trips to unfamiliar places), yet another security precaution to keep them inside of the homes into which they’ve been introduced while young, although they can be ‘primed’ via a special scent to accept to additions to a household, or a new household, in case of a family moving.

Urban legends abound of scuttles spontaneously regrowing their venom sacs (and predatory habits) and devouring their owners, or their owners children, or guests, or neighbors, or of black labs that use genetically engineered venomous (or acid-spitting, telepathic, electrically-charged, metal-carapaced, cybernetically-enhanced, etc.) and dangerous hybrids for security, or of scuttles growing a dozen feet long and thick around as a man, or of scuttles escaping into the wild and forming wild dangerous packs of ‘zombie scuttles’ eating anything they can, starving for the nutrients they aren’t able to get from kibble any longer, but no actual evidence of such exists. They make for popular ‘true story’ documentaries, ‘though.

Random other plot bunnies hopping about in my brain-gardens;

1) The Daxamite embassy on Earth had 15 members during the Great Darkness Saga, most of whom were just embassy staff, but some having been posted on Earth, with its yellow sun, for years. Only one, the ambassadors bodyguard (largely a ceremonial task, although she took it seriously), had any sort of combat training, or experience using her powers in a fight, and when the ambassador nearly died during the initial assault of the Darkseid-controlled Daxamites, he gave her authority to use lethal force against her mind-controlled kin. She killed forty-five rampaging Daxamites (and incapacitated dozens more) during the next few hours, and the four Daxamites who held her down also died in the concentrated barrage of heat vision from a dozen others that finally took her down. Six of the fifteen Daxamite mission died during the assault, protecting Earth from their own people, and a statue memorializing ‘the six from Daxam’ stood for some time, before being taken down as ‘too controversial’ and ‘a flashpoint for xenophobes’ several years later, after multiple acts of vandalism. On Daxam, the six are remembered as heroes, but the bodyguard herself is rarely mentioned by name, due to a combination of residual guilt over the whole affair, and unspoken resentment at how she killed so many of her own people, in defense of ‘aliens.’

The current Daxamite mission to Earth has only three Daxamite members, and they remain mostly in the embassy, under red lights that mimic the properties of Daxam. When they go out for rare public statements or diplomatic work, they wear special transsuits that convert the yellow sunlight of Earth to red sunlight, as Earth is unfriendly to alien visitors, even allies, with such incredible levels of power.

Every year, new legislation is advanced to move them off-world entirely, or to require Durlans or Titanians or Bgtzlns to wear similar power-restricting gear, or for Legionnaires from powerful or controversial alien races like Mon-El, Chameleon Boy, Element Lad and Brainiac 5 to be forced to leave Earth, or at the minimum have their activities monitored and restricted, and quietly quashed in conference, thanks at least in part to backroom strong-arming and straight-up blackmail arranged by more alien-friendly and Legion-friendly individuals, using information from diverse sources, including Dev-Em, of the counter-intelligence corps, who uses his super-senses to catch rival politicians in various sketchy endeavors that, if publicized, would destroy their credibility or turn their constituents against them. (This is no idle threat, and several career-ending scandals have come to light from these actions, including one outspokenly anti-alien candidate losing support when it was discovered that he was dating a Durlan, and fully capitalizing on her ability to appear in the form of other rival politicians…) Several other ‘scandals,’ involving alien politicians, have also come to light, but these scandals conveniently never seem to involve their ‘alien’ powers or attributes, and serve instead to make them seem ‘more human.’ A Bgtzln senator will be discovered to be funneling choice government contracts to her family. A Titanian embassy aide will be revealed to have been smuggling proscribed pharmaceuticals in his diplomatic pouch. The Durlan ‘Speaker to the Outer Worlds’ will be found to have an entire closet full of expensive clothing, in violation to Durlan sumptuary laws. The conspiratorially inclined would suggest (rightly) that it seems like someone in Earthgov has been selectively releasing ‘scandals’ that make alien ambassadors seem ‘more like us,’ and perhaps squashing any that might involve xenophobe-triggering factors like alien shapeshifting or telepathy.

2) A new technology of unknown provenance has the SP concerned. 'Z-packs' are organic tech, not in itself unusual or shocking in the 31st century, that attach themselves to a humanoid torso and unfurl insect like wings, allowing for slow short range flight (nothing so extravagant as a Flight Ring). Other 'Z-tech,' which integrate seamlessly with the Z-packs, allow for feats of enhanced strength, life support (similar to a transsuit) or armor protection (a chitinous outer covering for the later two protecting from hostile environments and some attacks).

Totally unrelated, really, totally a coincidence, the Zazyl Queens have been strangely quiet, even thought it's coming up on their Swarm Time, when they breed a bunch of new Queens and send them forth to try and expand their area of dominion to new worlds and systems. (Obvs the 'Z-packs' are just clever Zazyl tech to turn the unsuspecting buyers into new Zazyl drones, and use them to help conquer their own worlds. The best way to defeat an enemy is to turn them into a friend, and the Queens have a unique twist on that.)

The Zazyl Queens control a half-dozen or so worlds, and like cicadas or locusts, go through a decade or two long cycle of warring amongst each other for influence and control before settling down to a stable domain and birthing dozens, if not hundreds, of new queens who expand in all directions from their area of space in gigantic hive ships filled with drone soldiers, to conquer new worlds and bring them into the Zazyl domain. A shadowy group within the UP has been infiltrating their worlds and trying to keep their internal bickering going, to stave off the next ‘swarm event,’ but have been caught and the Zazyl queens now have a unified purpose, beyond their internal power struggles…

The Legion (and the Heroes of Lallor, and Murra, and the Wanderers, some of whom are ‘in the area,’ others of whom have planets under imminent threat) will have to deal with this massive Zazyl swarm event, leading to a number of Zazyl sub-queens being sent to Takron-Galtos, where it is discovered that without their drones, which seem individually all-but-mindless, the queens are irrational and unbalanced. They get some sort of psychic feedback from their ‘hives,’ and in fifty years or so, Takron-Galtos will be administered by Zazyl queen ‘wardens,’ who recognize Takron-Galtos as ‘their’ world, and yet have integrated into the United Planets, having finally found a ‘place’ in which their instinctive biological need to control and organize entire worlds serves a purpose. (The ‘free’ Zazyl queens will regard them dangerous freaks, precedent to a horrible future where they will be, to their own minds, slaves to the other races of the UP, which should be properly slaves of theirs. The notion that these ‘race-traitor’ UP Zazyl queens on Takron-Galtos have *jobs* and are serving a productive role in the society of lesser races is an outrage to them.) But that's a tale for the far-flung future of even this far-flung future!

The entity some call Queen Bee 3000 appears as a humanoid insect queen sitting on a massive throne in her command ship that looks like a mantis the size of a small building, and when she’s threatened, she seems to fall backwards into it, revealing that she is simply a mobile command unit and the giant bug is her actual body, kept on life-support until needed, with organic feeding tubes falling away as it rises to the attack. Having had to deal with Green Lantern Corps interference with their attempt to colonize/conquer the universe, the Zazl queens use particles of weaponized dark matter to negate and destroy energy constructs (and force fields, and similar energy effects), storing them in special pouches carried by drones (or within the giant body of the queen) and scattering them like pollen to dissolve ring constructs used against them. The pheromones she uses to control her drones (which are like winged xenomorphs with spinnarets, acid spit and a venomous paralytic bite) has been adapted to be addictive and selectively pleasurable or painful to many types of humanoid, allowing the queens to enslave entire worlds. Zazl queens start off as clones of each other, but quickly become independent and competitive rivals, with some physical differences appearing over time, as they self-mutate. She has defenses in her throne room to deal with various other threats, such as red sun lights to drain the power of Kryptonians (or Daxamites), and a disruptive kind of pollen that eats its way through transsuits and renders otherwise ‘protected’ people vulnerable to her pheromone powers or bio-chemical attacks.

Some good stuff here, Set! I really like the scuttles idea and how you wrote it.

I like your idea of the Daxamites depowering themselves off-planet. I had a similar idea for the Reboot where, as a result of the White Triangle rampage, all Daxamites now have to wear an armband that limits their powers BUT leaves them enough to defend themselves (i.e. increased resistance to injury and slightly enhanced strength, so they won't be sitting ducks in a fistfight). I love your "six from Daxam" idea, and the exploration of the xenophobia that comes with it, and Earthgov keeping the Legion and fighting xenophobia by selective blackmail...

And the Zazyl idea is brilliant! A large-scale war between the UP and Zazyl would be fun to see.

Random one-issue ideas from me:

1) Legionnaires and siblings. A compare/contrast on various sibling relationships. From the Reboot:

- Cosmic Boy and little bro Pol, who have a healthy relationship. Pol is slaying the magno-ball courts too, like Rokk did. What does Pol think about that? Any "shadow of my big bro" issues?
- Saturn Girl and little sister Jancel, Jancel is envious while Imra seems oblivious. What does Imra think? Garth noticed this right away, could Imra really be so blind?
- Live Wire and Spark with older bro Mekt, whooo boy.
- Kinetix and little bro Thanot. They seem to have a good relationship, but Thanot always rolled his eyes at Zoe's search for magic.
- Sensor and brother Prince Willum; Sensor abdicated in favor of her little bro. The siblings are united in pushing for reforms on Orando. Have them
- Kid Quantum II thinking of her deceased bro Kid Q I. They had a difficult relationship growing up
- Magno and nasshead older brother Omar, cool younger sis Trin, and younger bro Lev. The biggest family here. Lots of dynamics there, Magno and Trin get along and they both think Omar is a #*@*!&

2) Legionnaires on vacation. What would each do while taking down-time? We could find some interesting hobbies or likes that some have