X-Men: Shark Bones. Free Form. Sign up and interest check.

Disclaimer: There shall be no important canon characters in this. There may be cameos but they will be rare. If you want a particular important character to be there, you sort out all the continuity and pitch it to me.

The place is Calgary, AB, Canada. The year is 2013. People with "mutations" that have allowed them to exhibit extraordinary abilities have become accepted in society, though there are still people who aren't tolerant of them. Government-funded programs were implemented in the year 2007 to help those with extraordinary abilities develop and control them.

In the early winter of 2013, a gang from Seattle fled from the Washington police to the supposed safety of Alberta in Canada. They settled in on Calgary and have begun causing mayhem. Aside from this, loan sharks have started to die in accidents, be murdered, or caught by cops, at an alarming rate as of late.

Character form:

• Name:
• Age:
• Gender:
• Appearance:
• Nationality:
• Personality:
• History: (Go as long or short as you like)
• Abilities: (Mutant powers and other talents. Please add in weaknesses. Powers must be restricted to things that affect your character's body only.)
• Notes: (Anything extra)

edited 31st Aug '12 6:12:09 PM by Faramir

EDIT: UPDATED History and a few other things.

• Name: Todd Eldridge, a.k.a. “Titan”
• Age: 25
• Gender: Male
• Appearance: "Whaddya mean, 'Not that tough?'”
• Nationality: American (Applying for Canadian citizenship)
• Personality: Despite the brutish nature of his powers, he’s actually a pretty nice guy. When using his powers, he tends to hold back and follows the strategy of “The Best Offense is a Good Defense.” (Although, he could be convinced to take the offensive if he needed to.) See his history for why he’s adopted this strategy.
• History: Todd had a fairly average childhood until his mutant powers manifested themselves during a local football game, where he completely shrugged off a sack that would’ve leveled a normal person. In light of this new revelation, the board that oversees Scholastic Football in his state (which has been redacted for security purposes), took action against this blatant violation by retroactively cancelling out his team’s wins, and stripping them of their championships for the period of time that he was on the team.
  Now shunned by his community, and lacking the drive to do anything but use his powers for good, he became a low-level vigilante in his hometown of [REDACTED] until he faced off against “The Wolfman of [REDACTED]”, a mutant who had animalistic senses and super strength and durability (think Sabretooth without the Healing Factor). A great amount of collateral damage was caused in the ensuing battle, but Titan eventually won. Instead of getting the Hero’s reward, he was reviled by the people of his hometown and before long, the Government had to step in. At the time, the Government didn’t have a great amount of resources dedicated to assisting mutants in dealing with their abilities, so they “suggested” that he take up permanent residence in Canada, where they set him up with one of their government programs.
  Essentially, he’s Canada’s problem now.
• Abilities: Personal Density/Gravity Control.
  • Enhanced Strength, Enhanced Durability, Enhanced Mass
  • He has the ability to make his body denser, hence stronger, heavier, and more durable. Because his ability affects his density alone, when he uses his ability, his physical appearance is unaffected, nor is his overall mobility (in regards to flexibility, anyway. He runs slower, but that’s because he’s heavier). He can turn this power on and off, and has enough willpower to control its intensity (up to a point. Too much intensity causes him to pass out).
  • Weaknesses: Has a tendency to fall through certain surfaces that could support the weight of a normal human when using his powers (like plywood or sheet metal). Using his powers for extended periods of time can exhaust him.
• Notes: Due to Todd’s circumstances, he has two forms of income: The first form comes as a weekly “allowance” (similar to the Welfare Program here in the States) for his day-to-day living. The second form is from his job as an office temp. 100% of that income goes toward paying off the damage incurred in his fight against The Wolfman. (Is this doable?)

edited 27th Aug '12 8:42:37 AM by KarlKadaver

Great! I like Mr. Eldridge. A few questions about his power.

• How much energy does it consume? Can he just use it whenever just like that or does it tire him out, and if so how much?

• What about his muscles? He runs slower if he's more heavy because it takes more effort to run at the same speed, so how do his muscles adapt to the added weight? Is he just stronger because of higher muscle density?

• Why does the change not affect him physically? If he's becoming denser, where is that mass coming from? Something being more dense physics-wise means that it's packed more tightly, ie: there's more of it than it was before in the same space, so where does he get the extra mass?
  • You could avoid this requirement by having him shrink when becoming more dense and grow when becoming less dense, essentially just spreading out his molecules further away or closer together. If that were the case, the physical difference would probably not be that much depending on how fine the control he has over it is. Also it could probably allow him to grow large and get swept up by the wind because of how lightweight he is— which is an interesting escape technique that would also allow him to survive great falls by having him fall more slowly due to his small amounts of weight meaning he'd fall more slowly thanks to drag caused by the viscosity of air.

• If you don't go with the physical change and have no answer so as to where the mass comes from, you could also say that it just affects the way gravity works on him, with the added required secondary powers that to be able to withstand such gravitational pull his body gets automatically sturdier.

edited 24th Aug '12 3:11:20 PM by Faramir

Oh, wow. These are all great questions! I'll try to answer them as best as I can.

1) Make a fist and tighten the muscles in your arm. It's kind of like that, except over his entire body. To him, using his power is like when a sprinter tightens his muscles while getting ready for a race. He can turn it on and off in the sense that he has to focus on making himself denser or less dense. When he's relaxed, he's about at dense as a normal person. Like I said before, it's like tightening one's muscles so using it too much will tire him out and return him to his natural state.

2) He's stronger because of the higher muscle density. At his highest density, his agility is most akin to the Juggernaught (not much more than running and smashing things)than the Hulk (who, IIRC can leap over tall buildings).

3 and 4) I admittedly hadn't given it much thought. :\ I don't want him to be able to make himself less dense than an average person. As it stands now, his defense mechanism against falling is to make himself super dense and just smashing into the ground. Maybe I'll take the Gravity Control perk that you suggested.

Hope that answered your questions!

Interesting...

-slaps himself- No. Bad Strat. Gender switching is not a good power. Shut up.

Or is it?

Proposed Superhero name: Rule 63.

You know I'm in.

@ Karl: I can't help but think that the Square Cube Law is going to be involved here...

• Name: Austin Ramsey
• Age: 27
• Gender: Male
• Appearance: Rather good-looking, well-tanned, about 6'3" with dirty blond hair, blue eyes, and a winning smile. His physique is well-toned, and he usually wears a good-looking business suit.
• Nationality: Canadian
• Personality: Doesn't really carry a passion for biology, though he finds kinesiology interesting. He finds conspiracy theories usually absurd, though he does have one or two fringe beliefs himself that he's found enough evidence to convince him of. He tends to be short-sighted and not consider the consequences of his actions. While physically his brain is sound, he has a bit of a psychopathic streak, considering what he wants over almost everything else. He's often very forward, and has been described as a "Casanova."
• History: Ramsey almost died when he discovered his power at the age of 15, and quickly figured out that he needed to know more about the way his body worked to be able to use it. When he went to college, he struggled with debt for a while, but managed to get a scholarship to pay the rest of his way through college, and paid off his debts with his job. He currently is a high-flying vet, doing house calls for rather high hourly rates.
• Abilities: Shapeshifting. Gets Mode Locked when bleeding. Requires biomass to shift, and detailed anatomical knowledge.
• Notes: N/A

edited 24th Aug '12 9:43:46 PM by Wysp

This looks rather good. I'm not quite sure if this power is too much (especially the presence of both wings and bioluminescence) but if it is I'll happily change it to an acceptable version.

• Name: Nico "Firefly" Smith
• Age: 14
• Gender: Male
• Appearance: Fairly tall and thin teenager. Pale Caucasian with amber eyes and spiky black hair. Normally wears black clothing, including a trench coat (over the wings, taking it off if he needs to fly) and generally goes shirtless as not doing so is absurdly complicated.
• Nationality: British-Canadian (has dual citizenship)
• Personality: Fairly polite at some points and rather impolite at others. Outwardly seems weirdly nonplussed and easy-going, even when being so is dangerous, but inwardly is somewhat jaded and melancholic.
• History: The son of a Canadian man and a British woman, Nico's very visible mutations caused a lot of trouble, both practically and in terms of common non-acceptance of mutants, for himself and his parents, leading soon after his birth to them splitting up and moving back to their home countries, with him being passed between them equally despite the large distance, neither parent wanting him and treating him badly, but neither being able to release custody or being discovered by social services. Eventually it became too much for him and, while in Canada, he ran away from his father. He now lives on the streets, attempting cope with his rather conspicuous mutation.
• Abilities: Stemming from physical changes caused by his mutation.
  • Wings: These resemble those of winged beetles. As such, they are very large and cover his back when not in use.
  • Bioluminescence: His abdomen and long patches on the outside of his legs glow constantly.
  • Weaknesses: While his metabolism is a little better than normal, he still has to eat more to get enough energy. His luminescent sections do heal, but are weaker than the rest of his body. His flight takes up more energy than walking, although it's still viable for casual use. His wings are also very unwieldy, very much limiting his ability to wear clothing on the top half of his body and sometimes getting in the way, and stealth is very difficult due to the fact that he glows.

edited 30th Sep '12 1:24:34 PM by Replica

I'm in! :D

Name: Tari Walser

Age: 24

Gender: Female

Appearance: 5’ 6 ½’’ tall, roughly 125lbs, dark blue eyes and short, straight, brown-blonde hair, which she normally spikes up wildly. She’s skinny to the point of oddity.

Nationality: American, working in Canada

Personality: Tarilee is competitive, and she has a hard time when people play jokes on her, but she likes to prank others (making her kindof a poor sport). She adores fluffy animals, and tends to talk really, really fast when she gets excited. She likes to play sports, especially baseball or softball, and footraces.

History: Tari comes from a loving family where she is the only child. However, she has a lot of cousins that are around her age, and she grew up with them. She was always plagued with severe growing pains as a child, to the point where her parents would have to take her to the doctor’s to get a shot of heavy-duty painkiller, like morphine, to dull the pains. She would have been missing a heck of a lot of school that way, so after her second grade year her parents decided to homeschool her, so her schedule could be formed around her severe growth pains.

When she was ten or eleven, she became angry with a boy who lived on her street for torturing his mother’s dog, and spontaneously sprouted bone spikes from her shoulder blades while she yelled at him. It frightened her just as much as it frightened the boy, and her parents were called. They rushed her to the hospital, afraid something was wrong with her, but by the time they got there, Tari had retracted the bones and all the doctors could do was patch up the bleeding. They explained what happened to their doctor anyway, and he thought they were lying, so he reported them as child abusers.

In the ensuing chaos that followed, the Walser family wound up going to see a number of therapists. One in particular was helpful, since he didn’t immediately dismiss the symptoms Tari exhibited as the lies of her parents. To their surprise, he told them Tari had a gift—she was one of the special children born on this Earth who possessed a superhuman gift. The pains she was experiencing were evidence of rapid bone change, and the therapist referred them to a doctor who prescribed calcium supplements for Tari, rapidly increasing the dosage as she continued to grow.

Tari was excited at the prospect of being special, instead of just different, having this power to manipulate the bones of her own body. As the next few years passed, she would often experiment with making her bones grow and shrink. It went slowly, because whenever bones move it causes pain, but now at least her family knew why she’d been plagued with the horrible growth pains. The next incident happened when Tari entered high school—for her freshman year her parents put her into a public school, after being assured repeatedly that she would do fine.

Tari was pranked while in the girl’s locker room before gym class, and she lost her cool, bones bursting from her arms as she shouted at the boys who’d pulled the joke. All the guys who’d pranked her fled, afraid of what they’d never seen before. After that, Tari had to transfer to a different school, struggling with controlling her abilities.

Now that she’s graduated from high school and is currently attending a four-year university studying for her degree in anatomy. Due to her unique condition, knowing her body very well was essential for her survival.

Abilities: Controlled bone growth—Tari can manipulate her bones at will, changing their size and/or density, however this ability does not apply to the rest of her body. She requires immense amounts of calcium and protein in order to remain healthy due to her routine loss of bone mass, and has to be extremely careful about when she allows her bones to pierce her skin, since she does not have the ability to heal herself. She also has to be very careful about infections.

Notes: (I know this is in a post just a few inches down, but I figured it'd be easiest to keep everything together.) I assume she had the ability to control her cartilage as well, since if she shifted her bones around and not her cartilage, she'd be screwed.

She's working at the University (I'll make it U of C to be simple), as a lab assistant—she's the one who gets all the college labs ready for the classes, making sure the professors have the equipment/ingredients/specimens they need for their science labs. She also tutors the first-year college students in biology and anatomy and physiology.

edited 25th Aug '12 4:03:27 PM by Windee

@Replica: I like Nico . Question: Does his wings' shape (you said beetle-like wings, which are curved) cause him to have to hunch, and does the extra weight cause him back problems? Also, he's 14, is he in any of the government-funded programs to help mutants with their abilities? And, since he's homeless, I'm guessing he sleeps at the Calgary Drop-In Centre right?

@Windee: I like Tari . Question: Does she have power over cartilage as well, or just bone? And if she's American, working in Canada, and also getting her degree in anatomy, what is her job, and is she studying at U of C or somewhere else?

@Faramir:

I assumed she had the ability to control her cartilage as well, since if she shifted her bones around and not her cartilage, she'd be screwed. :)

She's working at the University (I'll make it U of C to be simple), as a lab assistant—she's the one who gets all the college labs ready for the classes, making sure the professors have the equipment/ingredients/specimens they need for their science labs. She also tutors the first-year college students in biology and anatomy and physiology. :)

I would say that there is a hunch, but his body is somewhat adapted to it, so back problems aren't particularly major. I'll just go with yes with not much detail on the other two points.

@Karl: I forgot to ask, your guy is 17, is he in the government-funded programs? Also, how'd he get to Calgary?

I could age him up if you want.

I was originally intending to have him be a refugee of sorts, having caused a little too much collateral damage back in the States (all accidental, of course).

Ok, fill in the history and the rest and then we can sort out the details .

I have a character concept similar to rouge in that she would copy powers but she only copies them at a third of their power's strength/use and in turn gives up a third of her cogitative abilities and IQ. Basically she'd become The Ditz whenever she used her powers on someone, and her version of their power would be the least effective but she would still be leeching a third of their power from them so I wanted to ask if this is too much of a break or would this be alright?

Not sure.

You can have the ability to COPY others' powers (yet you will not have their experience with them so expect messes, and the powers will be weaker than the powers of the person who you're copying, also, no copying physical things, you can't grow wings if someone flies with wings, and then ungrow them unless you're willing to put up with ALL the wonderful side effects that could have), but I'm hesitant to give you an ability that inherently affects other people.

I put the limitation of "only in your body" in the first post because I don't want characters able to spontaneously cause cardiac arrest on other players' characters through telekinesis, or to be able to escape any cell via picking the lock, or to be able to just have an insane amount of super-range for things that the characters in x-men don't seem to think about, but that I trust you guys will. So inherently weakening other characters through your own power seems to be past the threshold on what I'll allow.

I have a few other ideas if that's not good.

Might help to posit those ideas, or accept the change Faramir suggested.

You can pitch other ideas if you like. I'll approve of the power-copying with the limitations I set, and I won't approve of leeching off of people, your mutation should affect your body and only your body.

You can set yourself on fire, but you can't set other people/things on fire (unless you come into physical contact with them), you can read people's thoughts, but you can't broadcast your own to them through mind-links. You can become denser than you would otherwise be, but you can't turn other things denser. You can grow and expand your own bones, but not other people's, the list goes on.

You have power over your character, not other people's.

No thanks. the limits are just too much for me.

Really? I don't see how that's too limiting, and it can make you work around it with certain abilities, what with obstacles breeding creativity and all.

Still, if you don't want to play unless you're able to directly affect others' characters, then I guess this isn't the game for you. Sorry to see you leave .

I updated a few things.

Hey, we need a few more players, so if you guys could spread the word it'd be a big help.

So, could you define Physical Powers?