Let's create a superhero setting!!!

Well, "TK" could be pronounced many ways; I tend to say "Tee-Kay". I doubt that is copyrighted.

Given how much Babylon 5 cribbed from Bester (the real one) on telepaths in the first place, I don't see this as a serious problem.

The (short) story opens on September 7th of the year 2056 in an unspecified location, where we are treated to a scene of an Omniscient Council of Vagueness discussing the future plans for "their organization". The orbital elevator is mentioned, as well as a project being conducted at "Transtech Laboratories" having gone awry due to the interference of a third party, suspected to be the same one behind several other incidents that were to the detriment of the organization.

A plan of action is called for, and one of the individuals suggests using a certain "Mr Clark" to leak a carefully measured amount of information regarding a non-essential initiative, then use the offer of further information to lure their opponent (or more likely their opponent's agents) into a trap, which should, at the very least, reveal who it is the organization is dealing with, and more importantly, how much they know. The others agree, and the topic moves to the specific details of the trap. The scene ends with one of the conspirators suggesting they employ a mercenary using the alias "Lash" for this particular job.

After that, I'm kind of stuck. I'm not sure whether to set the main part of the story on a moon base or a spaceport. To be laconic, the audience surrogate is introduced, overhears some suspicious conversations, follows the individuals, and ends up in the crossfire of a battle between two superhumans and dozens of heavily armed soldiers.

I don't think we have established that there are bases in the Moon yet? Not that I'm opposed to it, just saying. Also, for story's convenience, set this at the Space Elevator base so our characters can get involved.

A moon base would be extremely simple once you've got an orbital elevator in place. Hell, we could build an orbital elevator on the moon with modern technology.

Alright, I've gotten back to writing now that I'm done with work for the week. I think the best place to start this short story out would be outside of an airport that the Audience Surrogate character has just arrived at. It doesn't really matter what division of the Echelon Aerospace Corporation (That's the name I'm using for the MegaCorp; it started in the field of military drone aircraft and has expanded to general advanced weaponry development and space flight) he's been hired to work at, since there's plenty of reasons to have engineers on staff in a place like Echelon HQ (still need a name for the city, Anchor City just sounds a bit meh IMHO). I imagine this conflict will involve the city police force which is, in true cyberpunk fashion is privatized, well armed, and of dubious morality.

Sorry about kinda abandoning this project for a while. Even if nobody else is interested in this setting, I'll keep working on it. I've just had a lot to do. Plus serious writer's block and an inability to come up with a good way to get the necessary exposition across without completely bogging the story down.

I still have this in my watchlist.

That's nice of you. Would you have any ideas about how to open the story I'm working on? My current version opens with the protagonist, who initially serves as an audience surrogate, on a flight in to anchor city and...Well, I'll just post what I have so far here. It's kinda completely unrelated to the actual story which involves him ending up getting involved in two parallel plots by two different masterminds to steal corporate secrets from an Echelon Aerospace mainframe, both of whom have sent heavily mechanically augmented agents (Marisa and Lash) to oversee their respective operations.

(sorry if the formatting is a mess, I'm not entirely sure how to get it right on the forums. Believe it or not, that's a full page on word for me.)

Upward Bound

A thin band of sunlight passing across his closed eyes awoke Jason Bradley from the nap he'd been taking. Gingerly, he sat up, and took a quick survey of his surroundings. From the light outside the plane he was on, it appeared to be late in the afternoon, which meant the flight would be near its end. As if on cue, an androgynous voice with a mechanical sounding edge to it-the plane's digital piloting system-began speaking over the intercom. “This is your auto-captain speaking. We are approximately fifteen minutes away from the Miura-Mercer Airport and will be beginning our final descent shortly. The local time in city is 16:43:55, the weather is currently partly cloudy with a relative humidity of 66.5%, and the mean temperature at sea level is a balmy 304.11 Kelvin.” As the auto-captain concluded its standard end of flight speech, Jason noticed the man with the thinning hair rolling his eyes with a scowl on his face. “Hey Mister Ma-” started Jason, only realizing mid sentence that he'd forgotten his fellow passenger's name for the fifth or sixth time. After an uncomfortably long pause, the man sighed. “Once again, just call me Max.” he said. Jason nodded. “Sorry about that Max. I just couldn't help but noticed you looked a bit troubled. I don't mean to pry of course.” Max shook his head sadly. “You're in your what, mid twenties or so Jason?” he asked. “Twenty-five years, fourteen days, six hours, and fifty six seconds old right this moment if the calendar I just brought up on my retinal display is correct.” Jason replied, tapping the green, faintly glowing iris of his ocular implants. “And it almost always is.” he added, grinning proudly. While he'd gotten the cybernetic eyes more than a month ago, Jason still made a point of showing them off at every available opportunity. Max rolled his eyes again. “Yeah yeah, nice eyes, must of cost a year's savings, cool story kid. The point I was getting at is that you've probably never been on a plane flown by an actual human being, have you?” Jason shook his head. “No, and besides, the loss of jobs for a generation of airline staff who've since retired, I don't see a problem with that; the number and severity of airplane accidents have decreased substantially since major carriers phased out human pilots.”

edited 1st Feb '13 9:29:55 PM by Archereon

I'll get back to you later, as I'm going to bed right now.

Hello?

Sorry, busy weekend.

Anyway, the intro sounds good to me. It lets the reader know that this is a cyberpunkish setting without having someone come out and say "this is a cyberpunkish setting!" I also like the commentary on the effect bionics have had on society. The only problem I might have is that it needs to be split into two paragraphs for easier reading, but that's minor. Try leaving two spaces between paragraphs if you are copypasting stuff on posts here.

edited 4th Feb '13 2:30:36 PM by Sijo

I'm new to this but I would like to throw a character out there for you to use.

Dimitri Gunnar: He is a member of the upper class of America. He has robot eyes created out of the alien material to replace his eyes because he was losing his eye sight. He also has robot legs created from the alien material that replaced the legs he lost in a war long ago. The legs also make him faster than sound. Which gives him the idea to become a superhero and also decides to help out the lower class because he doesn't like the way they're being treated by the upper class and the American government.

edited 4th Sep '13 7:32:05 AM by KyleBrackman

Not bad, but he'll need something else to avoid the effects (to himself and those around him) of running at supersonic speeds. (See Super-Speed for ideas.)

Maybe he wears a metal suit that limits how fast can really go since he can only run that fast for ten minutes and if he runs for longer than that, his legs start to get damaged from the friction.

I also forgot to mention that my character is part Native American and part Indian (the one from India) and the other reason he is helping out the lower class is because he's looking for kids with psychic powers to make a superhero team to defend their home city (Central City, Phoenix, Arizona) from crime.

edited 4th Sep '13 8:52:12 AM by KyleBrackman

Wait, this is still alive? I'd kinda binned the setting, or rather my own permutation of it (more sci-fi than superhero), as a "maybe later" project, but if people are still interested in this...

I'm still willing to help if there is enough interest.

Well, now that school's over for the summer and I have time to really sit down and do some creative writing (as opposed to essays and lab reports), I'm hoping to revive this thing.

Of course, over the intervening months between this thread dying and the present, I came up with a few ideas for the setting that I'd like to share. Just food for thought of course since this is a collaborative work, but would anyone mind me sharing them?

I don't.

Are you guys still doing this? because I wouldn't cribbing a setting for a superhero RPG I is working on.

edited 9th Jun '13 6:00:13 AM by joeyjojo

okay (note that I haven't read past the OP and so have no idea about what's been decided), I reckon a world shared with ancient Celtic Mythology (because everyone knows about Norse and Roman/Greek mythological figures, but no one knows of celtic ones past the leprechaun), but pushed forward to the modern-ish era (1900s, I suppose. The Roaring Twenties? or maybe full on twenty first century).

The Fair Folk and Gods and the like exist, but are largely extinct due to a war between them and humans, in which the humans won and all of the mythic creatures died. Those who remained hide as superheroes of a sort, but all must be at least somewhat similar to the original mythological versions of them (i.e. banshees simply cry to warn people of an upcoming death rather than the scream being an actual weapon).

The main focus of the setting is the son of some dead God (maybe the Dagda, or maybe someone like Lugh) who lives as a normal person until his powers (research into feats of Celtic heroes to decide what exactly) draw the attention of some rather dodgy figures from the mythos (the Morrigan could make an excellent Chaotic Neutral (slightly more literal than others), or one of The Fair Folk) who seek to recruit him to a gang of sorts.

The main villain would be some Eldritch Abomination (the dullahan, the dearg due, Balor the demon King, Carman the witch, lots of things like that), but some sort of modern-day witch hunts seeking out these mythic figures would be a huge hindrance to the morally dubious gang of 'superhero' mythological figures who are fighting their own secret wars whilst resorting to crime to survive. They're all criminals, but they're fighting WORSE criminals who seek to rise to power and kill all humans. All deaths are final, excepting more powerful gods who can come back if they have a significant sacrifice dedicated to them (like in American Gods) and those who were only thought dead. B Oth of those are really, really rare.

Set in Dublin, maybe, because superheroes seem to forget that there are english-speaking cities outside of New York, and that the U.K. isn't the only country in Europe that speaks English. The ancient mythological figures would also reference ancient irish language to add some air of ancientness. Other religions do not exist (could get messy otherwise, saying THIS religion is true but this one isn't) so people tend to worship some of the celtic figures who fought alongside humans but ultimately died out all the same (e.g. the fir bolg)

edited 9th Jun '13 7:38:10 AM by VincentQuill

It a good setting but it seems to be to heavily invested in classical mythology to really count as a 'superhero' setting.

There is no reason for anyone to put on tights and start fighting street crime.

well, not necessarily fighting crime, per se, more being criminals and fighting some ancient evil that aims to kill them and everyone else, so it's in their own interest to do this. You just reminded me of another thing; superhero costumes tend to annoy me, so instead of wearing outrageously tight clothing they will wear civilian clothes to blend in, but since they're criminals, they tend to be hoodies etc. I suppose the Morrigan might be some high-class lady who is secretly the goddess of war and acts as a ruthless assassin when paid enough, so would dress appropriately.

edited 9th Jun '13 7:41:42 AM by VincentQuill

well, not necessarily fighting crime, per se, more being criminals and fighting some ancient evil that aims to kill them and everyone else, so it's in their own interest to do this

Then isn't that urban fantasy and not superheroes?

edited 9th Jun '13 7:42:43 AM by joeyjojo

can't it be both? they might act as vigilantes some of the time to prevent some of the more senseless crime. The ancient evil might be the main conflict but there are a million different things they might aim to sort out. the oppressive witch-hunting authorities, for one, that might oppress and torture normal people in an aim to stamp out the mythic figures. Fighting a war on behalf of the people is being a hero as much as fighting criminals on their behalf.

edited 9th Jun '13 7:46:24 AM by VincentQuill