Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Making up Marvel characters

Thanks!

I wanted to make them sort of like Iron Fist, in that they would all be totally effective all by themselves, just using martial arts, but also have a super-power they could bust out when the going gets rough.

I might have stereotyped them a little too much. Having Blue Butterfly be a lean athletic man (or Jade Tortoise a chubby Buddha-looking dude with a beatific and infuriating smile on his face), and Molten Heart be a foul-mouthed dirty fighting woman might mix up gender stereotypes a bit more, and make things interesting.

Having them all derive their powers from aspects of the dragon Shou-Lao was just my typical love of dragon-themed heroes striking. The Caretaker would also be tied to the dragon, and his original 'aspect' was the ability to focus his chi to call upon the senses and wisdom of the dragon, allowing him to sense the weaknesses of others (or weak points of objects) to perform surgical strikes. Perhaps his replacement (or himself, post redemption?) could be a fifth Dragon-Soldier, with a Karnak-like 'sense weakness' power and a small knack for sorcery.

I love the various worlds-within-worlds that come with places as rich as the Marvel universe or DCU. How many hundreds of Inhumans do we know nothing about? Deviants? Moloids? The dozen or so Savage Land races, living side by side with alien machines that can turn any of them into superhumans, like those Savage Land Mutates that worked for Magneto, way back in the day? (Imagine a group of Pterans getting their hands on that machine, and making a team of super-powered pterodactyl-peeps to help defend their little corner of the Savage Land!)

The DCU is just as great for this, with fun hidden lands like Themiscrya and Atlantis and Feithera and wherever the original Icemaiden came from. The original Batman & the Outsiders series, in particular, came up with a ton of interesting teams that were just kind of abandoned, that I could riff off of, such as the Masters of Disaster or the Olympians or the Force of July. I'll get around to a 'Making up DC characters' version of this thread, if this one ever takes off.

Kindra Eitrisdottir goes by no superhero codename, being proud to use her own name. Daughter to the King of the Dwarves of Nidavallir (last seen in a certain New Mutants Annual, crushing on Sam Guthrie), Kindra has grown up and forged herself a suit of armor, shield and hammer, as is the tradition among her people. Even the dwarves of Asgard are superhumanly strong, and despite her slight stature, being just five feet in height, she is as strong as a certain wall-crawling Spider-Man, and quite durable, even before her indestructible armor comes into play.

Counter to expectations, her hammer, which she has named Maker, is a tool, not a weapon, and while she can strike with it using her considerable superhuman strength, she prefers to use it to strike the ground, causing it to rise up in walls or shake violently or crack open to swallow foes, changing the terrain of the battlefield to her advantage, to separate combatants by creating chasms or walls between them, etc. to great tactical advantage. When she strikes a foe, she can even cause the earth to heave up around them and imprison them in bonds of solid stone. But usually, when she chooses to strike someone, it is with Breaker, her shield, which has been enchanted so that the 10,000 hammer blows she used to pound it into shape lie reverberating within the metal, ready to be unleashed upon anyone she slams the shield into (or upon any weapon which strikes it's surface), so that, while her hammer blow can crush an armored car, it's her shield that can strike with a force to rival Thor's hammer, and send even a foe like the Hulk flying into the distance. (Which, granted, being the Hulk, will likely serve only to piss him off...)

Sam Guthrie may have the quaint notion that Kindra came to earth inspired by meeting him, or even in pursuit of him, but she's so over him, and will scoff at the notion. She came to Earth as part of a group of like-minded souls from the Nine Worlds (well, not all of them... Muspelheim certainly didn't send anyone!), who some may refer to as 'Team Thor,' although none of them regard that nickname with anything other than disdain.

They don't really work together, for that matter, which is why the Einherjar from Nifleheim and the half-Jotun/half-Vanir Longbow and Kindra from Nidavallir don't really hang out much.

The Svartalfar and Ljosalfar, on the other hand, quite paradoxically, since their races have been at war since the dawn of time, seem thick as thieves...

If *Pym* can have a dozen heroes spawned off of his legacy (2 Ant-Men, a couple Goliaths and Giant-Men, Atlas, the Wasp, another Yellowjacket, Ultrons various creations such as the Vision, Jocasta and Victor Mancha/Victorious) then surely Thor can have a few more legacy characters! He's already got Sif, Valkryie, Beta Ray Thor, Thunderstrike and now even Kid Loki running around as Thor-adjacent heroes, but where are the heroes from Alfheim or Jotunheim or any of the other Nine Worlds? Bring it! Team Thor, all the way! Why let Pym have all the fun?

Ben Marcus wanted to be a singer, or to play the guitar, but he kind of sucked at both, and ended up just being a music groupie, who lucked into a backstage pass to a Lila Cheney show, where the one thing in the world he *was* really good at (sex) landed him a recurring gig as her on-again, off-again boyfriend, and full time road crew.

He got used to setting up and breaking down the band's gear, and the secretive nature of the band itself, who would ride on their own bus, no roadies allowed, not even those with a 'special relationship with the boss,' while the rest of the crew crammed into a second bus, and he mostly had to put up with grumbling from the other roadies, who had the insane notion that he had some sort of special privileges (despite the fact that he was right there, with them, in the crew bus!).

And yet there were also some weird visits to private rooms that the band maintained in some towns, that always seemed exactly the same, no matter what town they were in this week. He was assured that the label maintained these special apartments, and that's why they all looked the same. He wasn't quite stupid enough to fall for that, but could tell from the measuring look in Lila's eyes that he should shut up and never mention it again. Still, he left his lighter under the mattress one time, in Philly, and, sure enough, in Seattle, he found his lighter under the mattress in the 'apartment' there.

Still, he knew what side his bread was buttered on, so he never brought it up, accepting that whatever the hell was going on, Lila and her band had some sort of travelling apartment, or something. (Ben had no idea what a Dyson Sphere was, or that Lila and her band would teleport to their private quarters in another part of the galaxy between sets, while their tour bus was empty but for a driver paid to ask no questions and keep his mouth shut while he drove a tour bus full of gear to their next show.)

So when a post-coitus nap was interrupted by aliens busting through the walls and shooting up the place with plasma weapons, Ben really had no idea what was going on...

Lila and her savvy bandmates reacted with more aplomb, seizing up high tech alien weaponry and attempting to repel the invaders while they regrouped for a quick teleport out of there, but Ben had no idea that Lila was his ride home, and ran screaming outside, only to get an eyeful of alien skyscrapers in all directions, before a distractingly pretty alien (woman?) off-handedly shoved him off the side of the building. Lila had time to see him plummet into the toxic fog that surrounded the base of the building they had used as their intergalactic penthouse crash-pad, before teleporting herself and her bandmates out of this alien assault, powerless to do anything to save the hapless Ben, and cursing herself for having kept him in the dark, so that he wouldn't know to remain by her side, in case of trouble (to her credit, aliens had never attacked their penthouse before, so she didn't know she had to warn him about that eventuality...).

Ben had noticed that the air was cold, at first, but then it got really hot, and he couldn't breath, which seemed less of a problem than that he was going to hit ground and go splat, which he really thought should have happened by now... The orange-y fog he'd fallen into was thick, thicker than air, quickly approaching the consistency of liquid, and slowing his fall so gradually that he suffered no injury, other than from the fact that the orange-y foam/fog/liquid was both toxic and *acidic,* and was now burning his skin off!

He woke up surrounded by green fluid, and with a constant itching. Distorted hideous features stared out from behind glass, and he soon realized he was the one in the glass, jarred up like a bug in a collection, somehow breathing this nasty bubbly liquid that tasted like Cajun-blackened lime Jell-O.

It took weeks for his body to be regenerated by the technology of the Kharokty who lived in the 'toxic' fogs (comfortable for their alien biology) in the lowest levels of the Dyson Sphere's canals (unknown to Lila and her bandmates, the Dyson Sphere was not even a little bit 'uninhabitated,' she just happened to live in an atmospheric climate band that was not hospitable to many of the sphere's remaining inhabitants, none of whom were native or related to the sphere's original builders).

The Kharokty, a highly advanced, but philosophically pacificistic people, rebuilt Ben, noting that his human physiology was highly adaptable (far more than their own, as the Celestials had not gifted their species with the potential for mutation), and so modified him to be able to adapt to their own environmental preferences (high pressure liquid methane), as well as any of a plethora of other options, so that he later found that he could breath underwater, or under various extremes of temperature or pressure, and was highly resistant to various toxins and radiation. They also adapted his brain, to be able to understand their three distinct modes of speech (the Kharokty having three languages, one for familiar/intimate discussion, a second for polite discourse/philosophy and a third for technical/engineering work), which afforded him the potential to translate any of dozens of earth languages with great ease. As a result of these modifications, which were as much for the convenience of the Kharokty in communicating with and interacting with Ben, as for his own survival and advancement, he's a bit tougher than human now, and heals significantly faster than a normal person, his body having been 'upgraded' to levels not quite on par with a super-soldier like Captain America, but still well above average. By switching to 'technical language' in his head, he finds that he can solve complex mathematical computations in his head at computer like speeds, although switching between languages like this can sometimes lead to momentary confusion, as he mentally 'switches gears.'

The most noticeable gift of the Kharokty that Ben returned with was an unusual gun-like weapon that fits neatly over his forearm and hand, that he calls a 'Penultimate Nullifier.' It seems that, many centuries ago, the Kharokty homeworld was destroyed by Galactus, but not before one of their own created the Ultimate Nullifier, which was intended to destroy the World-Devourer and save their world. The Kharokty, pacifists to the end, could not bring themselves to use the weapon, not even to save their world, and the survivors scattered across the galaxy, with some settling in the hidden depths of the 'abandoned' Dyson Sphere that Lila Cheney called her home-away-from-home.

They use weaker versions of that dreaded doomsday weapon for personal protection, and Ben carries one (keyed to only work for him). It's beam suspends it's target partially outside of time and space for sixty seconds (or longer, if trained on the person continuously), making them only semi-visible, and hard to effect with conventional weaponry, as they are partially out of phase with the material world, and experience only a single second of time while 'frozen' for a minute. The weapon essentially puts people in a sort of 'time out' (although someone like Quicksilver would still be able to get a fair bit down, even slowed down to 1/60th speed!), and can even be used to keep a wounded ally from bleeding to death or succumbing to poison. (This exact effect kept Ben from dying of toxin and massive burn trauma, when the Kharokty saved him, as they essentially 'put him in stasis' to buy time to treat his injuries.)

After adaptation, he helped the Kharokty deal with the alien raiders who had caused them much trouble (in addition to their attack on Lila's pad), and set up surveillance at the 'penthouse' to alert him if Lila returned (since she was his 'ride home'). It was a bittersweet reunion, as she did indeed return him home, but then broke up with him, still upset with herself for having to abandon him in that manner. (And, on his side, he wasn't entirely thrilled with her keeping secrets from him that ended up with him being attacked by aliens, plummeting into a sea of acid poison, and being rebuilt by other aliens into some sort of human-looking alien/mutant/cyborg thing that thought in three alien languages, could eat cardboard, drink motor oil and no longer slept...)

An origin story that combines the Ultimate Nullifier and Lila Cheney and a young hero whose only special quality pre-empowerment was that he was good in bed? Yeah.

Actually, I made this character to highlight a sort of power common in games, but rare in comics, 'control' powers, that, instead of damaging someone, instead reduce the number of foes in an encounter, so that your team can concentrate on others, and come back to this one later. In superhero (or other) RPGs or MMOs, a 'controller' might root someone to the ground, either by paralyzing their legs or having the ground heave up and ensnare them or ice shackles appear over their feet and 'freeze' them to the ground, or might 'mesmerize' them with a hypnotic song or dazzling lights or narcotic mists or sedative darts, to keep them from attacking while the team focusses on another foe.

The Penulimate Nullifier works this way, putting a foe on 'hold' while the team deals with someone else. Super-tough or cosmic foes will likely ignore this sort of effect, or 'break out of it,' while speedsters or those capable of dimensional movement (such as Nightcrawler) can likely bust out of it as well, so it's not an irresistible 'auto-win' power, although it's pretty much foolproof against some idiot with a gun.

And hey, a character that is not only not a woman, but is actually kind of a dude. Go me!

The Serpent Society is fun, being, in some incarnations, kind of like the Flash's Rogues Gallery, a 'supervillain union' with membership dues, specific rules of conduct, etc. They also have a tendency to introduce new characters at the drop of a hat, with a run of odd cyborg characters like Rattler and Cottonmouth and Bushmaster, followed by random mutants like Black Racer and Puff Adder and Rock Python.

So, so more random additions to the Serpent Society!

Scale & Fang are a couple that always work together.

Scale is a tough-talking powerfully-built woman with the ability to transform into a giant snake-like form that is well suited for aquatic and land-based operations, as well as the lesser-used ability to assume a quadrupedal giant lizard form, and a flying reptilian form that appears like a pterodactyl, and is strong enough to carry her partner in flight. She prefers to stay 'on-theme' while working with the Serpent Society, and sticks to her sea serpent form, saving the other options for surprise getaways and the like).

Fang generates 'fangs' of electrical energy that emerge from his fists, and can generate a lethal dose of electricity in those he 'stabs.' His 'fangs' somehow inject excess electricity into a target, so that even if a person is not immediately electrocuted, the effect continues to discharge slowly for minutes afterwards, almost like a poison effect, unless the current is leached out of the target (the 'fangs' of solidified electrical energy remain in the wound, and may be able to be removed physically, to mitigate this effect). With some effort, he can hurl these fangs of electrical energy, but the effect is far more potent if he can land a direct hit in hand to hand.

Scale & Fang used to be part of a faction of the Morlocks known as the Tunnelers, operating under the codenames of Scaleface and Berserker, but faked their own deaths, after being very nearly actually killed, and have changed their motifs and joined the Serpent Society, to shield themselves from anti-mutant fanatics.

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Blacksnake is one of the rare 'Power Broker failures' to go on to have at least some sort of life. Left with black scaly skin and an inhuman appearance, this thickly built man is not quite bulletproof, can lift about a ton and a half, can see and detect thermal patterns in the air, and can alter his own thermal signature to be undetectable to heat sensors. Combined with his specially designed uniform, he is fully bullet-resistant, and can also blend into shadowy backgrounds to fully camouflage himself in dark environments. His wrist-launchers have taser-like darts that he uses to short out electrical systems and lighting fixtures, to give him the darkness he needs to become effectively invisible, and, occasionally as weapons to shock or stun an adversary, although he's more of a thief than a combatant, preferring to get in and out without fighting anyone, as a point of pride.

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Mamushi likes to work with Blacksnake, sharing his notion that 'if you have to fight, you've already botched the job.' A (former?) Hand jonin (she gets very touchy if called a Genin, as that is a lower rank Hand position she refers to as 'expendables' and 'nobodies'), Mamushi never wears 'ninja pajamas,' as she considers herself a spy and an operative, not a 'flunky.' She has, through repeated exposure, made herself mostly immune to the selection of viper venoms she prefers to use, and uses poison liberally, on throwing needles, on her nails, in her lipstick, on chopsticks in her hair, in tiny needles she conceals in her mouth, in darts fired through tiny blowguns concealed in hairpins, ballpoint pens, etc. She is talented at getting into and out of places, usually through subterfuge or through acrobatics or feats or contortion or escapology, and is talented at disguise, forgery and bypassing many forms of mundane or electronic security or surveillance systems. She is extremely skilled at bluffs, con games, etc. and much *less* skilled at martial arts than one would expect, being better at escaping a grapple, hitting a pressure point, and then using some amazing parkour moves to escape completely, than in actually participating in a fight.

It's not entirely clear if she still works for the Hand, and the Serpent Society leadership doesn't entirely trust her, on that count.

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Sea Snake didn't bother coming up with a more inspiring name than that, as this Atlantean outcast doesn't really care for the whole 'supervillain codename' thing. She was a scientist who picked the wrong side (that of Attuma) during one of the Atlantean civil wars, and was exiled along with some of his other prominent supporters. She maintains her own battlesuit, Atlantean tech she stole and brought with her into exile, and it provides her with life support (as she cannot breathe air) and some protection against small arms fire, as well as having a few weapons systems of her own design, including darts coated with paralytic sea snake venom, electrical taser like weapons, and a cartridge that releases a cloud of ink underwater, that, when exposed to electricity (such as from her tasers) turns into corrosive acid! She also carries special freezing cartridges that she can leave behind when swimming to cause an area of water to instantly turn into ice, possibly trapping pursuers, and cartridges that unleash hundreds of micro-filaments like the nematode strands of a jellyfish, wrapping foes in a net of tiny toxic fibers that inject paralytic venom. Like most Atlanteans, she is extremely strong, but she avoids physical combat at all costs, using a combination of electricity and poison to discourage anyone who attempts to grapple with her. As a scientist, she considers fisticuffs beneath her, and only physically strikes foes after her technology has brought them down, to finish them off, as she considers physically punching someone the ultimate expression of contempt. (And similarly obsesses on elaborate revenge fantasies against anyone who dares to hit her!)

The Asgardian goddess Syn operates as the heroic 'Shieldmaiden' on Midgard.

Focused on protection and defense, Syn carries a pair of golden shields fashioned from the scales of the dragon Fasolt (the same dragon whose tooth was used to fashion the sword Dragonfang, wielded by the Valkyrie Brunhilde), and wears armor that evokes the same golden winged bird motif that her shields somewhat share, over pale blue-white scaled leather.

She bears (and needs) no other weapon, being able to bash a foe with the face of her shields, or lash at them with the jagged edges, reminiscent of the wings of a great eagle, and, when faced with overwhelming assault, she can slam the two shields together, their flat inner edges fusing together into a single slanted shield she calls her bulwark. Her shields have rotating hand-grips that allow her to spin them around to fuse together, or face their jagged edges out for combat, and are magically enchanted so that they can draw upon the generative power of the long-dead dragon to cause three more shield sized scales to unfold from their jagged edges, so that the bulwark can quadruple in size to shield not just herself, but those near her, or, when the shields are apart, can extend their surface area to allow her to glide some distance, or slow a fall.

A powerful goddess, Syn can lift 35 tons, making her stronger than the average Asgardian goddess, and even stronger than the Lady Sif (who can lift 30 tons), but no match for the legendary strength of the Valkryie Brunhilde (who can lift 45 tons), or the Prince of Asgard himself. Still, no slouch, her incredible strength makes her a true powerhouse, and she has only recently returned to Asgard after centuries of standing watch over a portal to Muspelheim. (The (relatively) recent final fight with Surtur has rendered this task moot.)

Shieldmaiden's great leg strength and ability to expand her shields into gliding-wings allows her more control over the sort of 'jumps around' transport function used by the Hulk.

In addition to her great strength and enchanted shields, Syn has the power to communicate with birds, and the mystical nature of this communion is such that even feeble-minded Midgardian avians temporarily gain near human level memories and reasoning skills, so that she can more effectively question or instruct them, learning things in these communications that no mere bird should have the capacity to understand.

Syn has an on-again, off-again relationship with Heimdall, and reported to him, from her post guarding the Yggdrasil-path to Muspelheim. She has accepted that no matter how her duties may come and go, Heimdall will never be 'at liberty,' and whatever he may feel in his heart, there will never be a moment where he can relax his gaze and focus solely upon a lover before him. She accepts this with a warriors heart, knowing that part of why she admires him so, is his unshakeable sense of duty, the same thing that keeps their relationship so bittersweet.

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A 'Wonder Woman' type character for Marvel, tapping into the Asgardian mythology (Syn being an actual Norse goddess of defense, and the ability to communicate with birds being an ability gained by a hero who bathed in the blood of a slain dragon, Fafnir, brother to Fasolt). She's strong, tough, even better on the defense thanks to magical shields, and can get around by jumping / gliding (sparing her the need for a flying horse or flying chariot pulled by goats or lions, or other strangeness...).

Alphonsus Lefszycic, aka 'Gomi,' was comfortably 'out of the game' when he got the call from his cousin Ramon Lipshitz. Ramon's scientific acumen and lack of morals had landed him a plum job at Camp Hammond, attempting to create psi-borgs to Norman Osbourne's demanding and seemingly unattainable expectations.

Desperate for results, Ramon lied to his cousin, telling him that he had received an email alert that Bill's power supply was faltering, and that he would begin to suffocate within a matter of days. Alphonse was dubious, but Ramon explained that Bill represented one of his few spectacular successes, and he didn't want to see that success tarnished by letting the bionically-augmented lobster die.

Naturally, the meeting to 'fix' Bill was a trap, and they were dragged off to Camp Hammond, where Ramon attempted to show off his cousin as a 'proof of concept' that he could create cybernetic implants that stimulated psionic potential. Osbourne was unimpressed, and handed both Gomi and Bill to Baron Von Blitzschlag, telling him to 'see if you can make something *useful* out of this worthless crap.'

The Baron disassembled Bill, intrigued by the bionic systems that had enhanced his strength, intelligence and ability to survive out of water, but since the strength-enhancing mechanic were bonded to the lobster's exoskeleton, they were useless to 'scale up' to a humanoid that didn't already have an exo-skeleton to anchor the implants. The obvious solution was to find (or make...) a humanoid with an exoskeleton. Growing a scaled-up version of Bill's carapace was, and adapting it to fit a humanoid body, was a simple enough matter, and he fused the new blue-lobster keratin exoskeleton, with scaled up underlying bionic augmentation, to the hapless Gomi, turning the young man into an armor-skinned humanoid lobster-man with superhuman strength, increased durability, increased processing power and memory storage (affording him total recall), and the ability to operate deep underwater unhindered, in addition to his original implant, allowing force blasts. 'Skirts' similar to the tail of a lobster attached to his waist and lower legs, allow him to jet forward underwater at great speed, and his lobster antennae generally dangling down the front of his chest, are, unknown to him, transmitters that feed his sensory data to Baron Von Blitzschlag, making him an unwitting spy...

Now more freakish than ever, his body covered in blue chitin, and the 'ghost' of Bill lingering in his processing implants, Alphonse has abandoned the nickname of Gomi, and goes by the name Magnes.

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And, why not make use of that Initiative / Camp Hammond stuff to mess with some pre-existing characters? Gomi was probably my favorite Fallen Angel, because he was just so bizarre compared to the others...

Laura Dean, aka 'Pathway,' left the Beta Flight training program and retreated into Live World, the pocket dimension she shared with her sister Goblyn.

Time passed differently there, and the world proved to be reactive to her dreams and nightmares, so that she often found herself subject to monstrous attacks, and she learned quickly to defend herself from these 'monsters of the ID.' She has emerged from Live World a hardened warrior, wearing armor made from the chitin of beasts she has slain, and bearing a spear and dagger made from their bones and bladed limbs. More importantly, she has realized the nature of Live World, that it responds to her fears and doubts and nightmares, and has become fearless, with iron self-control.

She also discovered that Goblyn, her purported sister, is not merely some humanoid defender, but is actually the sentience of Live World itself, and can grow bodies like those of the goblyn entity, not just one at a time, but in great numbers. When Pathway finds herself in over her head, she opens a portal to Live World, and goblyns pour forth to defend their sister, each one a construct spun from the matter of Live World itself. If one is destroyed, it simply dissolves into a dark blue mist and coils back to Laura's feet, before dissipating back into Live World, with no harm or loss to her sister, whose consciousness remains in bulk in the Live World dimension itself.

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One of the more interesting Beta Flight members, Laura Dean has grown into a Ka-Zar like figure, more like the woman from the second Aliens vs. Predator series from Dark Horse, a lean confident warrior, who has the added option of retreating to her extra-dimensional home, or summoning a pack of 'goblyns' to swing unfavorable odds to her favor.

The Guthrie Clan!

For reasons that remain unclear to them (but the attentive reader will find out has something to do with Sinister experimenting on their mom), all ten of the Guthrie kids have the gene for active mutation.

It started with Sam, aka Cannonball, and continued with Paige / Husk and Josh / Icarus, but now a freak event (also a machination of Sinisters!) has led to the rest of the siblings manifesting their mutant abilities, whether they would normally have at this time or not.

Melody, who briefly attended the Xavier school as 'Aero,' and was (mis) identified as having some sort of 'flight aura' (man, rigor in identifying and classifying and testing the mutations of new students just went to hell after Moira's death, didn't they?). Later experimentation under the tutelage of her mother, who was, if untrained, far more motivated to get it right, and didn't see Melody as 'the third student on the fifth squad,' determined that her true ability was to infuse her surrounding environment with psionic energy, energy that responded to her mental commands, and allowed her to 'charge' a mass of air so that it buoyed her up and allowed her to fly, even retaining air pressure and temperature as she travelled higher into the sky, so that she did not suffer the effects of low oxygen or extreme cold at higher altitudes. More unusually, by making contact with another person for a length of time, she could impart in them the ability to psionically control the air around themselves, giving another person the same sort of 'flight' power, for a length of time along a 1:60 ratio. (So that if she touched them for 1 second, they could fly for 60 seconds, up to a maximum of 1 hour, after touching them for 1 minute, which seemed to be the longest anyone other than herself retained this ability.) Belying the initial assumption that her power involved the manipulation of air, she learned that she could also psionically charge a volume of water, and allow herself to walk across it (by strengthening it's surface tension) or it to propel her along in the same way she could cause air to lift her up and carry her through the air. The affected water became bubbly, and retained a comfortable pressure and temperature, even if she moved into colder (or deeper) waters, and, most usefully, became so highly oxygenated as to allow her to breathe the affected water! As with her ability to charge air with psionic energy in this fashion, she learned that she could also impart this ability in another person (tested on her willing siblings), allowing them to operate underwater alongside her. Her latest development is coming more slowly, and she cannot yet 'share' it, but she is practicing infusing psionic energy into loose sand or soil, allowing her to 'surf' on an animated wave of earth. Obviously, in light of these new discoveries, her old 'code name' of Aero is no longer accurate, but she hasn't yet found another name, although, with her mother describing her power as 'imprinting' her will upon the air, water or earth, she has considered 'Imprint.'

Jeb was the only other Guthrie who had already displayed his mutation before the rest of his family spontaneously manifested en masse, demonstrating the ability to produce electrical energy from his eyes, in harmless displays, or deadly discharges. His powers have developed only somewhat since that time, as he has discovered that precisely modulated low levels of his 'lightning vision' can impart a magnetic charge on items of metal, allowing him to move them around by shifting his gaze or the focus of his eyesight, the 'charged' metal object leaping in whatever direction he is now looking. He can only produce limited effects with this stunt, barely shifting the position of a tractor rusting in the field even after 'charging' it with magnetism for long minutes, but can move smaller items, such as a hubcap, suddenly and with surprising force.

Of the five siblings who all gained their powers the same day;

Cissie's body underwent an invisible transformation, gaining a durable plastic-like consistency and affording her superhuman strength, sufficient to lift several tons with ease. Her new body looks exactly as it did, slim, freckled and gawky, barely 100 lbs. soaking wet, with no sign of advanced musculature or increasing height or weight, and yet she no longer needs to eat, drink or sleep, and feels no environmental discomfort, no matter how hot or cold it gets. Medical scans indicate that she no longer has any internal organs, and that her body, despite it's appearance, is one contiguous mass of undifferentiated matter, with no sign of bone, muscle or organs, as if she is like a Barbie doll, plastic all the way through. She seems surreally accepting of this bizarre transformation, and her mother is privately concerned that she is traumatized or in denial, as if the transition from girl, not yet a woman, into 'plastic toy' has caused her to regress mentally, or retreat emotionally.

Elizabeth has developed the power to generate and manipulate sound in her immediate presence. The effect is psionic, and does not involve her normal vocal chords, although she can certainly enhance (or modify) her own vocalizations. Her hearing has been enhanced to perceive subsonic and ultrasonic ranges, and over great distances, as well as to filter out loud sounds, allowing her to listen to music at volumes that would cause permanent hearing damage in even the most devoted Metallica fan. She can process and manipulate sound with great proficiency, separating out and individually replicating the sound of a massive orchestra, all from her flawless phonographic memory. She is often 'in her own world,' listening to sounds that only she can hear, and playing entire symphonies in subsonic or ultrasonic ranges that cause animals to howl in distress, and remain elusively inaudible to her siblings. Sometimes she will even carry on conversations with 'invisible friends' or play with an 'invisible dog,' to the consternation of others. Her mother shakes her head, wondering why a girl with nine siblings needs to make up imaginary playmates, but all would be surprised to discover that she actually *does* have a mutant invisible rottweiler, that she 'sees' through her ability to perceive her surroundings via sonar. She communicates with 'Sparky' in the ultrasonic range, and keeps his existence secret, which may prove a devastating surprise to someone who has prepared to ignore the 'silly girl and her imaginary dog...' Exactly where this invisible mutant dog came from is unclear, but it's fairly certain at this point that there's 'something in the water' in the area of the Guthrie farm.

Joelle is a no-nonsense girl who takes no sass from her flighty siblings, being the one that their mother considers the most dependable and occasionally the only one who doesn't drive her to frustration. Perhaps it's fitting that Joelle developed a mutant ability that helps her keep unruly siblings under control, as she can steal the kinetic energy from anything (or anyone) in close range, arresting their movement as if a giant invisible hand had yanked them to a stop, and maintaining this effect, bleeding off any energy they exert attempting to move as a ripple in the air. She can affect items closer to herself instinctively, so quickly as to stop a fist, or even a bullet, inches from her body. Unlike the effects of vibranium, the kinetic energy remains stored up until she stops maintaining the effect, so that a person who was running will suddenly lurch forward when she ceases to hold them in 'time out.' Greater forces, such as a moving car, may prove impossible for her to hold for more than a few seconds (enough time to dodge out of the way, perhaps), particularly if they continue to generate more kinetic energy (say, the driver continues to gun the engine), and when she releases such an object, it will accelerate with all of the pent up energy, possibly causing it to lurch forward with even greater speed and force! Forces too great for her to arrest in this fashion may rebound upon her, causing her to fly in the same direction as the force she is attempting to 'hold.' She has more recently learned that she can 'still' an area of burning material, causing the flames to cease and buying time for buckets of water to be used to prevent a fire from spreading, but this is a new application that she's yet to fully explore.

Lewis calls himself the 'Sun King,' and is one of the few to have any interest in a 'superhero code-name.' Young and somewhat excitable, he's also the reason why Joelle had to learn suddenly how to put out fires, as he can create globes of warm fiery plasma, generally the size of softballs, that radiate torch-like light and explode in a warm puff of heat and fire when disturbed (or when he wills it, or when they leave a certain range of him). He can direct these spheres to move around him, although if undirected, they generally orbit him slowly, remaining within a few yards of his person (and racing to keep up if he's sitting in the back of a moving pickup or something). He can concentrate to make globes as small as BBs or fireflies, giving off light like a candle, or a larger globe several yards across that would explode like a grenade and set a large area on fire. (Enter Joelle, and instructions to never to that again!) He has, also to his mother's consternation, developed the ability to surround himself with a half-dozen softball to basketball sized plasma spheres, and ride along with them into the air, somehow supported by whatever forces cause them to orbit his person. Not comfortable with her youngest son flying around on a dozen hand-grenades of fiery plasma, his mother is trying to discourage further experimentation in this vein!

The last of the Guthrie clan goes by the nickname of 'Ten' (a joke on her status as the tenth of the siblings to be born), because she's not a fan of her real name, Penny. (Lewis sometimes calls her 'ten-cent,' as a result.) She has the unusual ability to displace herself in space, allowing her to teleport a few yards. More uniquely, she can choose to displace only an aspect of herself, such as her mass (leaving her intangible, with an invisible 'mass' elsewhere in close proximity), or her visible image (so that she becomes invisible, while her visible image appears many yards distant), or her voice, or one or more of her senses (so that she becomes blind or deaf in her current location, but can perceive things as if she is standing many yards distant). By displacing her mass, in addition to become incorporeal in her visible location, she also can invisibly effect things at the location where she has displaced her mass, creating the appearance of telekinesis. An occasionally moody girl, feeling like 'the baby' at times, and somewhat overlooked, especially with her brother Lewis getting himself into so much trouble, 'Ten' *loves* her newfound abilities, and is demonstrating an uncomfortable level of cleverness with the many ways she can use them to poke into places where she should not be, having blossomed into a fey trickster exploring a new world of possibilities. Shifting her senses to hear what the older kids are talking about way over there? Shifting her entire body to get up onto the roof of the school, where the high schoolers go to make out? Invisibly shifting her mass to poke or push someone across the yard without anyone knowing it was her? It's Ten's party, and everyone's invited!

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Ah yes, the mutant Guthrie Clan. Their mom might as well be a mutant as well, since she seems to be a mutant-baby-making-*machine!*

I tried to give each of them a fairly unique power, but Melody, Joelle and 'Ten' got the best of them, with Cissie, Lewis and Elizabeth, not so much (and Jeb, like Melody, was more or less already chosen for me, although I modified the heck out of Melody's poorly defined 'flight aura').

The Guthrie Clan are still amusing me, if only for their characterizations. A fun mix of troublemakers acting up and serious ones who, like Sam, tend to think of themselves as the 'adult in the room' or 'the responsible one.'

Anywho, someone new.

Ms. Fantastic, in her first appearance, had used an image inducer to appear to be the Super-Skrull, and displayed the powers of the Thing and Mr. Fantastic, more or less.

Unknown to most, she's wearing a modified battlesuit that Reed Richards had designed for his friend Ben Grimm, during a time when he'd lost his powers, allowing him to operate alongside the rest of the team in a super-strong and super-tough armored exoskeleton that resembled his rocky orange mutated form. Not content with 'merely' a suite of Thing-like abilities, she modified the suit to also include adaptations upon the 'extensor arms' that Reed had designed for himself when *he* lost his abilities.

Further modifications, displayed in later appearances, including adding extensor-limb technology to the legs of the suit, allowing it to replicate the feats of the Stilt-Man battlesuit, and to the neck, allowing it's head (and the cameras and audio sensors therein) to rise thirty feet into the air, and give her a better view of her surroundings. Incorporating the image inducer, and modifying the outer surface, she included adaptive camouflage, allowing the battlesuit to blend into it's surroundings, and become effectively invisible, so long as she remained motionless. Her own slender body did not occupy nearly as much of the exoskeleton as Ben Grimm's, and she had slightly expanded it in any event, so she built fuel reservoirs into the lower legs and foreams, with exhaust ports in the feet and fingertips, allowing her to jet into the air on plumes of flame, or spray an area with an aerosolized compound that ignited on contact with air, functioning like built-in flamethrowers (and slowly refueling itself by extracting oxygen from surrounding air and / or hydrogen from ambient humidity). By this point, she was able to mimic the strength and durability of the Thing, extend her arms, legs and neck 30 ft. to mimic some of Mr. Fantastic's tricks, blend into her surroundings like the Invisible Girl, and produce jets of flame for offense or rocket-assisted leaps, like the Human Torch.

Some vibranium inserts and supports greatly increased the exoskeleton's durability (and as a bonus, made her move quite silently when camouflaged), and Valeria Richards is now in business as Ms. Fantastic!

The masked vigilante and prankster who calls herself Oubliette wears a costume the most closely resembles Spider-Man's black and white symbiote. Minor variations include split-toed boots, like Japanese tabi, ending in pointed toes, as well as pointed fingertips, and a larger rigid white skull mask that rises to two points above her temples, similar to the one worn by an old foe, the Enforcer.

Combining expected 'Spider-man' like powers of incredible agility and wall-climbing, as well as a seemingly superhuman talent for blending into shadows, she can also teleport short distances with a soft explosion of black sulfurous smoke, as she is one of the elusive 'Azazel-spawn,' a half-sibling to the X-Man, Nightcrawler.

Beneath her costume, her skin is smooth and ruddy and has the appearance of scales, and her fingers and toes do indeed end in pointed caps, like the chitinous ends of actual spider legs, while her temples are adorned by a pair of gently curving horns that sweep back along her skull, and contrast with her long blue-black hair. Keratin ridges decorate her limbs and outline her face, providing for a level of rigidity and toughness exceeding that of human skin, as well as a distinctive appearance.

Her powers of teleportation are quite different from her more famous half-sibling, and she can only teleport herself a few meters, at most, but with incredible speed and control, and proving able to teleport others she is touching directly into the Brimstone dimension entirely! After a short time, rarely more than a few minutes, the Brimstone dimension 'spits them out' in a gout of smoke and brimstone, usually the worse for wear from their time in it's hostile environment. Sharing the irreverent attitude of both Nightcrawler and Spider-Man, she tends to accompany such an attack by shouting "Yoink!"

She can also open micro-portals to the Brimstone dimension, allowing her to strike someone thirty feet away, or snatch an item out of their hand, or even teleport a thrown item so that it leaves her hand and appears *behind* her target, catching them unaware. (A favored tactic!) She has an assortment of knives and blunt-edged 'throwing irons' that appear to be stored interspatially, being able to call them to her hand in a flash of smoke, and then make them disappear back into extra-dimensional 'storage' when she no longer needs them.

Her most strenuous trick, which she only uses before a fight, or in extremis to cover a mass getaway, is to suspend herself mid-teleport, 'hanging' between the material world and the Brimstone dimension, causing great volumes of choking black smoke to billow forth from her body, in seemingly inexhaustible quantities, creating a vast 'smoke screen' (which does not seem to significantly affect the vision or breathing of herself or other Azazel-spawn or Brimstone-dimension residents, no matter how much it chokes and blinds and burns out the sense of smell of others).

Oubliette is a fearless jokester, bon vivant and outrageous flirt in costume, but will refuse to reveal her true demonic appearance to those she does not trust (which, to date, has been anyone...), afraid of rejection once her inhuman 'monster' face is seen. Having been forced to live on the streets, and go on the run many times because of her appearance, and cast out by her Inhuman mother, whose people rejected her half-breed child and gave her the choice of rejecting her or being cast out of Attilan herself, Oubliette has abandoned any identity other than that of costumed vigilante, and has all but forgotten her birth-name of Mari, and the language of her mother's people.

From an alternate universe where a gamma radiation-disaster has befallen a town in the Midwest, and led to dozens of gamma-irradiated mutates, comes the teen heroes of Future Green!

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Teen Hulk is their leader and spokesperson, a She-Hulk-esque teenaged girl with a powerful statue-esque build and the strength and toughness one would expect of her appearance. Her skin is counter-shaded green and gray, similar to the patterns on a killer whale, and her straight black hair is shaved short on the sides of her head, but rises in a thick fringe on top, before trailing down her back. Outspoken and self-confident, she is known to be 'stuck' in this form, which seems to suit her just fine!

Kid Abomination was a scrawny kid, often harried by larger and more popular peers, and while he can return to his human form, he chooses not to, reveling in the strength and toughness that comes with his new monstrous form (even if it is no match for that of Teen Hulk!). Well over six feet tall, and incredibly broad across the chest, his right arm hangs to his knee when he stands fully erect, seeming proportioned to a figure at least nine feet in height, but he usually slouches and lets his fist rest on the ground at his side. On his left, he has an arm appropriately sized for his thick build and height, and a second smaller arm, closer in size to his original human arms, protruding from beneath it. Large black eyes, set slightly to the sides of his head, give him excellent peripheral vision, augmented by a third black eye set directly in the back of his skull, allowing him a constant 360 degree awareness (although he often closes this third eye, finding the view distracting). His claw like fingers and long toes have webbing that expands when he is immersed in water, and ridges on this skin engorge as well, forming fin-like structures that greatly enhance his ability to move underwater, combining with his ability to extract oxygen from water using his skin surface, and his unusual eyes sensitivity to the lower wavelengths of light, which penetrate more deeply beneath the water's surface. Added to an apparent immunity to extremes of pressure, or sudden changes thereof, he is perfectly at home on the surface or in the darkest depths of the ocean floor. When confronted with a dire threat, he can also extrude a massive spike of bone from the palm of his oversized right arm, serving as a meter-long spear, and a quartet of three meter long tentacles can emerge from his shoulderblades to assist in grappling, or cling to walls with their suction-cup-like tips. Kid Abomination does not merely revel in the intimidating effect his appearance gives him, but even more so the ability to explore hostile environments that others cannot survive.

Green Machine wears a suit of armor that is similar to one Tony Stark might design, but in shades of green and gold, instead of red and gold. Boot-rockets are replaced with wings and struts, like those of Mach V, and palm-mounted repulsers with the shoulder-mounted weaponry seen on a War Machine armor. The shoulder-mounted weapons are lasers, and the flight systems powered as well by the gamma radioactivity emanating from the young man trapped within this armor, not for his own protection, but to spare others from the deadly waves of gamma radiation that his own body throws off constantly. His own gamma-irradiated teammates are immune to the radiation, but 'normal humans' could suffer permanent harm within minutes of exposure, so he takes care to not only keep his armor in good repair, but to carry sealants to repair breaches immediately. The armor itself merely allows him to focus his own radioactive energies into lasers (from the shoulder cannons) and flight, having no internal strength-enhancing technology. The gamma radiation infusing his body has left him with a degree of superhuman strength (which some might assume comes from his armor), toughness, and, more uniquely, intelligence. He used his gamma-enhanced intellect to design his first 'containment suit,' and has been refining it ever since, quickly picking up technical and engineering skills that he never had much use for in his previous (barely remembered) life as a would-be football legend.

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Combined with La Bruja Verde, upthread, and perhaps a swarm of insects granted superhuman recuperative abilities and a hive mind intellect by a gamma incident, an entire 'Young Avengers' roster of entirely gamma-based individuals could be fielded!

These are awesome Set! I really like the Guthries

Thanks!

I have a list of powers I haven't used yet, and I pretty much always forget to check it at times like this, and went ahead and just came up with stuff for them. It was a day later that I remembered that I had that list... It's kind of weird how many characters in comics have either generic Superman powers, or a combination of telepathy and telekinesis, when there are practically infinite options out there!

More fun than their powers, is trying to picture the interaction dynamic for seven super-powered Guthries (some of them quite young, and many of them quite strong willed) and their mother.

Veronique Abernathy allows others to believe that she comes from an alternate universe she calls 'the Gernsbeck Continuum,' but grew up here on 616 Earth, a somewhat sheltered child, due to a hereditary auto-immune deficiency. From her 'bubble,' she voraciously devoured the tales of pulp heroes and steampunk serial heroes, as well as cutting edge research from high profile 'celebrity scientists' like Richards, Stark and Pym.

By herself, she engineered a potential cure for her condition, and attempted her untested treatment, falling into a comatose state for months, as her genome literally rewrote itself to no longer carry the gene for her autoimmune deficiency.

She woke able to stagger forth on nearly atrophied legs from the 'bubble' in which she had been forced to spend her life, to that point, and spent the next year and a half recovering from the ordeal she had put herself through, as well as furthering her own scientific and intellectual advancement, as rapacious for new information as ever, despite her hard-won physical liberation. She now saw science as the cure for all the worlds ills, not merely her own, and redoubled her efforts to master the most esoteric and cutting-edge disciplines.

It was in her research into the mysteries of Pym Particles that she created the exotic material she refers to as 'Thonium gas,' itself no simple gaseous state of matter, but an exotic particle that exists in an undefined quantum state, until she applies current to force it to temporarily display the properties she wants it to manifest. The potential is literally unlimited, but for now, she uses this exotic matter to expand or contract matter on a molecular level, causing the atomic bonds to constrict or loosen, and the matter affected to greatly increase in size (while retaining it's original mass, and therefore becoming less and less tangible) or to reduce in size (again, retaining the same mass, so becoming ever denser and more durable).

She fashioned for herself a suit of self-repairing material, shiny silver, like a spacesuit from her pulp serials, and a jet-pack that allowed for short power-assisted hops (although it works more efficiently if her own mass is supported or reduced somehow, such as underwater, or in 'atomized' form, or in the weightless void of space). The translucent 'bubble helmet' of the suit is a tongue-in-cheek remember of her 'girl in the bubble' days, and protects her from environmental effects, as well as repairing itself within moments if damaged, the 'liquid crystal' flowing to seal a breach and re-crystalizing into a rigid protective barrier (or liquefying and flowing back into her collar, when not needed). The suit itself serves as a layer of protection, similarly 'crystalizing' upon impact, and stopping bullets or blades, while 'relaxing' to a cloth-like consistency, when not subject to extremes of force or energy.

But her most notable feature is the bulky gun she carries, connected by tubes to her jet-pack, and the means by which she projects her 'thonium gas' to 'atomize' her targets (or herself) causing the subject to expand greatly in size (eventually becoming gaseous and all-but intangible, as well as increasingly translucent) or decrease in size (becoming ever more durable and hardy). She moves quickly as a nearly invisible gaseous form, over sixty feet tall, noticeable chiefly as a strong wind, before reducing to normal size and using her atomization technique to render foes harmless (expanded to such a size that they are effectively immaterial) or reducing them to decrease their ability to escape (leaving them very tough, but no stronger than normal, and able to be locked away in a small container!).

As Dame Atomika, a name she finds delightfully over-the-top and reminiscent of the sorts of steampunk pulp serials she loved as a child, she finds new uses for her atomization technology every day, 'shrinking' hostages to make them resistant to gunfire or danger, or 'growing' a rampaging brute until it becomes a towering haze, no more dangerous than a strong breeze.

Clad in her Flash Gorden-era spacesuit, complete with 'glass' bubble helmet, backpack rocket-booster, and oversized rifle weapon, Dame Atomika takes to the streets, to better the world with the power of (mad) science!

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Dame Atomika is a name totally stolen from White Wolf publishing, from a character who was one of many techno-mages from an organization of crazy pulp-style steampunk inventors calling themselves the Sons of Ether. (A name which Dame Atomika refutes as hopelessly chauvanistic, choosing instead to call herself an 'Electrodyne Diva.')

As the White Wizard, Annika Strom cuts a non-traditionally heroic figure, being a young woman with short white hair frosted blue and silver at the longer bangs and tail (which she gets annoyed if anyone refers to as a mullet!), wearing urban camo pants, grey army boots, a white oversized t-shirt with an interrobang symbol (over Kevlar) and lots of bangles and jewelry from wrists and neck.

Her 'spells' and 'gremlins' cause bad things to happen to bad people, the result of nanotech devices she keeps stored in her many items of jewelry and pouches and pockets of her outfit, and in the backpack she wears (alongside a few other gadgets, and some useful items, like duct tape and super-glue and a flare gun and some tear gas grenades, just for, whatever sorts of situations might come up that call for a flare gun and some tear gas grenades...).

These microscopic machines infest all machines near her, transmitting data to her glasses and earpiece, and allowing her to take over or sabotage those machines, giving her the appearance of supernatural insight and powers, which she keeps secret. She can cause her micro-machines to assemble into a small robotic form, resembling a centipede or spider, usually, and perform small physical tasks, such as turning keys or pushing buttons, for tasks that require some manual override function. By drawing upon visible light, ambient heat and static electricity, these micro-machines can even create glittering clouds or shadowy areas that obscure vision, increase or decrease temperature in an area, or shock a person. They can observe and record visual and audio data, and even produce sound (although it takes many dozens of them working together in synch to produce sound visible to others in the area, a very small group of nanos can infiltrate someone’s ear and transmit whatever messages she wants to them, without anyone nearby hearing, leading others to perhaps think that they are ‘hearing things’ or suffering from hallucinations or delusions!).

Her technology is derived from work on artificial intelligence and cybernetic parallel processing (as well as highly advanced miniaturization work) and she carries an assortment of other unusual gadgets at any given time, such as memory metal insta-cuffs, multi-tools, etc. made from alloys designed to alter it's form when exposed to heat, cold or electricity, such that an innocuous item of jewelry can transform into a weapon or tool.

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Annika, like Dame Atomika and Animalia, earlier, is meant to add a few more super-hero super-geniuses of the feminine persuasion to a Marvel Universe chock full of genius dudes vying with each other for the 'smartest guy' mantle. (Generally swapped around between Richards, Doom, Stark and Pym with occasional showings by Octavius, the Leader, the Mad Thinker, T'Challa, etc.)

Oh hey, I've fallen back into making lots of hero-ladies and not so many hero-dudes! My brain just naturally veers in that direction, I guess.

And so;

Crusader! Mark Daniel Damian dresses like a deceased superhero who alternately went by the names Marvel Boy and the Crusader.

He allows people to believe that his powers, superhuman strength, flight, incredible toughness, and energy projection, come from some sort of alien quantum bands on his wrists, but these are simply decoration. (Although made of fantastically expensive materials, a sturdy gold-silver-copper alloy set with enormous flawless topaz stones, a gift from his 'Aunt.')

His true powers stem from his heritage, which he has been instructed to keep secret from the people of Earth, as he is the son of the Eternal Ikaris and his mortal love, Margo Damian. Raised by his maternal grandfather, Mark has only a fraction of the powers of a full-blooded Eternal. Where his father can fly faster than the speed of sound, Mark tops out just over 100 MPH. Ikaris can lift 40 tons, and Mark, barely 10 tons. Ikaris is one of the most powerful energy-projectors of his kind, through many centuries of intense training, but Mark can merely project bolts of force and heat sufficient to shatter brick, or blinding flashes of light, at this stage in his development, barely enough to qualify as a 'one' on the Eternals five-tiered scale of proficiency. Still, he seems as durable as a full-blooded Eternal, and his strength, flight, energy projection and toughness are supplemented by other powers, such as a weak gift for telepathy (requiring physical contact and concentration on his part), graviton manipulation to levitate objects (also requiring close proximity, if not direct contact) and the barest level of transmutation.

He currently lives with 'Aunt Sersi,' in her Manhattan penthouse, and she has taken him under her wing in an attempt to teach him to refine his transmutation talents, which even full blooded Eternals often find too strenuous to develop. He currently is hard at work turning mercury into gold, and, with many days of effort, can transmute several ounces...

While not a terribly impressive feat, it's still something he intends to use to support himself in the future, when he's outstayed his welcome as Sersi's 'nephew' and 'project,' as he's all too aware that she can be somewhat difficult to live with, being both the most disciplined and hard-working of all her race (the only one in *three thousand years* willing to master that most difficult of Eternal disciplines, transmutation) and yet also the most free-spirited and undisciplined, at the same time, so much that the rest of her race are never so happy as when she's off living amongst the mortals for another couple of centuries, since even to the superhumanly patient Eternals, Sersi can be a paradox wrapped in a contradiction, smothered in a warm layer of 'You're making me crazy!' and 'Get away from me!'

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Ah, the Eternals! So many Eternals have unique and amazing gifts, *in addition to* being crazy awesome powerful (Makkari's super-speed, Gilgamesh's Thor-class strength and super-senses, Ikaris and Thena's energy manipulation, Sersi's transmutation and illusion specialization). Even a *baseline* Eternal would be head and shoulders above the majority of Avengers, and perhaps a bit more than I want to play with here, so, a *half* Eternal should be perfectly suitable, his energy-projection, strength, flight/graviton manipulation and telepathy all cut down to useful, but not crazy awesome levels.

The pretense that he's using some sort of Titanium quantum bands for his powers may come in useful, when they get destroyed or stolen from him, and he turns out to be less 'powerless' than an attacker might assume...

So, I've tapped into Eternals, Inhumans, Azazel-spawn, mutants, etc.

Still no Spaceknights, 'though!

Kiran the Sunjumper is a sleek figure of clean lines and sharp angles, her armor black and dark blue, with golden gilt-edges. She can summon forth from sub-space an armature that conjures forth a blast of plasma energy, sun-hot, able to stabilize as a blade or lance, or able to fire in short ranged pulses at long range. On her other hand, a different wrist-mounted device can generate a shield of solar plasma. From her back, six wing-like structures unfold, as blue and black as the rest of her armor, and generate six blade like streams of solar plasma that leave wing-like trails behind her as they propel her with great speed and agility, either in atmosphere or the vacuum of space. The solar plasma she generates internally is split between these three devices, so that, to fly at top speed, she can't be attacking with her 'plasma lance,' and to unleash her most potent offense (or protect herself or others with her strongest shield), she has to focus all of her energy into that function.

Kiran is one of only four Galadorian Spaceknights entrusted with an Annhilation Engine, a planet-destroying single-use weapon meant to only be used on a world that has been completely lost to the Dire Wraiths. The weapon causes matter to begin losing it's bonds, sleeting off in vast destructive torrents of electrical energy as everything turns to dust in an ever-expanding zone of destruction, until nothing is left of the target planet.

The history of these weapons is uncertain, with one having been used as intended, to utterly raze a world that had fallen completely, and become a Dire Wraith stronghold, from which they terrorized an entire system, and threatened other nearby systems. The Spaceknights who activated this weapon chose to remain in place until it activated, defending it from being stopped, and were it's first victims. The second Annhilation Engine was co-opted by the Dire Wraiths somehow, and used to destroy a Galadorian outpost that was instrumental to the ongoing liberation of a nearby system of inhabited worlds from Dire Wraith domination, leading to the deaths of the Spaceknights (and Galadorian support staff) based there, and the inevitable loss of the entire system, as the worlds fell to Dire Wraith control soon after. The Spaceknight entrusted with the third Annhilation Engine has been lost, and it is unclear if the engine was destroyed, or remains to be recovered. Due to Galadorian uncertainty about the morality of such planet-destroying weapons, it takes at least two Spaceknights together to arm the device, so Kiran can only summon the device forth alone, but will require another to make the weighty decision to activate the device.

And so, like the other bearers of this great responsibility, she always travels with at least one other Spaceknight.

Her companion of choice is Jor the Spellbreaker, a brutish looking Spaceknight of blocky gray iron, over three meters in height and with a powerful hulking build not common to Spaceknights, like a brutal engine of war in design, unlovely to look at, and with oversized barrel-like torso, forearms and lower legs. Jor's cyborg body is covered with metallic red sigils and glyphs, that glow with a ruddy light when he is engaged in his primary function, defending against the magic commonly used by the Dire Wraith enemies. Designed to absorb all forms of energy, Jor's metal body repairs itself and powers it's own vast strength with the power absorbed by energy attacks upon it's surface, while the various runes and symbols graven on it's surface protect against all forms of magical assault, and cause his blows to have enhanced effect on supernatural or conjured creations of the Dire Wraiths, with a single punch being able to dispel a summoned demon back to whatever hell spawned it, even if it isn't powerful enough to cripple such a creature on it's own. In contrast to his brutish simple construction, Jor is a priest of one of several Galadorian faiths, centered around a pantheon of gods, the Starfather (god of the night and starry sky) and Seamother (goddess of life and the sea), and their four children, Skydancer (goddess of sky, rain, clouds and fertility), Burning Son (the sun god and god of light and knowledge/truth/revelation), Stone Princess (goddess of earth and stone) and Molten Core (god of fire and the molten heart of Galador), and a gentle philosophical soul, showing only rage when faced with creatures of supernatural evil, such as conjured demons. He is also conversant in other Galadorian faiths, such as that of Kiran (who is a practitioner of a form of ancestor worship that believes that all souls go on to fuse into a single divine all-entity after death).

Daeva Helena Walker, aka Hellwalker is a slim tough-as-nails young woman with short spiky red hair, bright blue eyes (that turn golden-green when she's channeling her powers) and a red pentagram tattoo centered on her bellybutton, shown off by her combination of red leather pants and sports bra, with combat boots and fingerless gloves. A black 'Shadow Cloak' billows behind her, completely incongruous to the rest of her outfit, but it's powers more than compensate for any sort of fashion-clash that results.

The daughter of Patsy Walker (Hellcat) and Daimon Hellstrom, Daeva has slightly superhuman strength and the ability to channel 'hellfire' from her father's side, as well as enough sorcerous knowledge to use the pentagram tattooed on her belly to call up lesser demonic servitors, capable of various functions (such as 'hell hounds' capable of tracking people, a 'hell horse' capable of carrying her quickly overland, etc.).

The animate Shadow Cloak appears to be indestructible, and can wrap itself around her, or those in close proximity, functioning as defense and weapon (much like Medusa's hair), and, more impressively, can fold her up and teleport her up to two miles at a step. Within it's extra-dimensional folds, she can store several hundred pounds of gear, and usually keeps a sword made of netheranium, weighing thirty pounds (not too heavy for a young woman who can lift 750 lbs) and capable of channeling her hellfire blasts.

Hellwalker prefers to use her strength, sword, flames and Shadow Cloak for most of her 'heavy lifting,' as she finds summoned demons to be notoriously unreliable and hard to control, requiring close monitoring and near constant concentration, as they seek to exploit any lapse in her focus to break free and cause trouble...

Red Beast

The so-called 'Dark Beast' of the Age of Apocalypse continuity boasted often of the hundreds of mutants he'd experimented upon, both as head geneticist for Lord Apocalypse, and later on his Morlock creations, and of the many modifications he'd made to his own mutant physiology.

But he was very secretive about what those 'many' powers actually were, and did not demonstrate them often, preferring to keep his true capabilities secret (particularly when he was impersonating this world's Hank McCoy, who had no such array of new talents).

One such modification was that his brain and nervous system could function a single time as a sort of 'antenna,' broadcasting his consciousness from his body at the moment of death, to awaken in a prepared clone body possibly hundreds of miles away.

This secret allowed him to survive several 'near death experiences,' awakening in new bodies, to continue his work. Unfortunately for him, his last 'death' resulted in the destruction of much of his brain before he could trigger the signal, and so his new clone woke up with none of his most recent memories, only older information he'd downloaded into the waiting clone, which happened to be a young female version of himself.

This 'Red Beast' has analyzed the behaviors and history of her predecessor(s) and found them to be flawed. Surely he wouldn't be getting killed so much if he had actually worked *with* the various mutant factions he preyed upon from the shadows!

And so she has chosen to present herself to the mutant community, shunning the half-truths and manipulations that kept getting her previous incarnations killed (and forcing him to live in the sewers, in hiding, which she also finds unacceptable for someone of her genius and talents!).

The Red Beast, aka 'Henrietta McCoy,' has the typical powers of the Beast, including a degree of superhuman resilience, agility, strength, senses and recuperative powers, as well as prehensile toes, triple-jointed flexibility and ambidexterity/pedry.

She also has a *ton* of other powers, the result of mutations that her previous incarnations have studied and managed to adapt into their body. (More 'exciting' mutations, like psionic powers or weather control or turning to metal or teleporting seem not to integrate well with her own physical mutations, such that she'd lose powers, and perhaps even her genius!, attempting to integrate them!)

Pretty much every time she appears, she'll demonstrate a new power, and, unlike her 'Dark Beast' predecessor, she actually revels in 'showing off' her many talents, occasionally forgetting herself and bragging about how 'I first saw this mutations in a mutant prisoner...' before remembering that she's technically not the same Dark Beast that dissected various mutants for Lord Apocalypse, and her new friends probably don't want to hear her tales of those days...

Powers she's displayed;
She can change the color of her fur, as well as it's texture, causing it to stick to itself and form feathery plumes (which she can use to glide safely from a great height) or fin-like structures, or spidery strands that allow her to cling to walls or ceilings like a gecko. Causing her hair to lengthen and fold together into keratin like plates or spines can serve as defensive armor or offensive piercing weapons. She can even cause her forearm / foreleg hair to grow long enough to use as whips, and control it's motions independently, as if the hair had muscles of it's own, and temporarily detach hair, to restrain someone, or for others to use as a rope. (She prefers to regather it later, because the nanotube structure that makes it so durable and receptive to whatever static electricity she uses to manipulate it is hard to regenerate.) Additionally, she can extract oxygen from water through her hair, and conduct electricity or inject poisons she generates from a completely different set of powers.

Thin silvery strips of skin hidden under her fur can generate electric-eel-like discharges, and are also very sensitive to external electromagnetic energy, giving her the ability to sense power sources nearby (particularly underwater). She can sense north via this sense and is painfully aware whenever Magneto is within 100 yards...

Glands within her body can generate poison, acid, a pyrophoric liquid that bursts into flames when exposed to air, or a chemical that holds an electrical charge that releases explosively when disturbed. She can grow squishy tumors filled with any of these fluids and either hurl them at people, or leave them behind as 'traps.' She's only got so much of whatever nutrients she needs to generate these, and must eat some strange things indeed to 'fuel up.'

She's a one woman sensory laboratory, able to smell if someone is sick, a mutant, has Legacy, etc. and by tasting a drop of someone's blood can tell all sorts of things about their genetic profile, including what sort of mutation they may possess (in a general sense, such as 'he's a psychic' or 'she's an energy manipulator').

Her bones are articulated, like those of a snake's spine, and lock into place to form 'long bones.' She can 'unlock' them and move like a snake, compressing her body, even her skull (her brain has three lobes that fold flat like pancakes when she's 'squishing' herself into a place she shouldn't be able to fit). She has to hold her breath in this state, and her thinking is slowed to an animalistic level, and could pass out in minutes (and die shortly thereafter), so she tries to make limited use of this.

And the list goes on. At least a dozen other powers exist, such as a 'DNA lock' that prevents her modified mutant genome from being altered by any outside means (such as radiation damage or a retrovirus or a 'mutant cure'), or teeth composed of a strange crystal that begin growing when broken off inside a warm blooded living creature, expanding as it consumes the bodily resources of the victim, forming deadly branching structures that tear it apart from within!