The Good, The Bad and The Spandex: an Original Superhero Game!

Wait, who says the United Knights cannot have a USA member? If anything, one would be necessary, as America is one of the main members of the United Nations Security Council, no way they would let the official ONU team without a representative. That said, this character has not proven himself yet to the public, so he might not qualify.

edited 22nd Nov '16 4:42:56 PM by Sijo

"As an unspoken rule put into place since the team's inception, the U.S. does not provide a hero for North America, stepping back to give one of its neighbors a time to shine." Though I may be misunderstanding it. Long day.

edited 22nd Nov '16 4:21:42 PM by Booky

No, I'm pretty sure Sijo just forgot that part.

No I didn't forget. I just don't approve. It makes no sense.

Also Damn You Autocorrect!

edited 22nd Nov '16 4:48:19 PM by Sijo

It's so Canada and Mexico can debut their superheroes. This is both the Watsonian and Doylian explanation.

On an official basis, the US military fields their own supers the world over. So do other countries, mind, with any sort of global military presence, but it's not as ubiquitous.

The reason I feel the Knights need representation of all the permanent member nations in the ONU security council (one of which is the USA) is because they need diplomatic immunity to operate. More than any other heroes, they would cause international incidents if their battles caused collateral damage. And they can only get the authority they need if the ONU agrees to it. They are however not limited to just the Council Nations. Any ONU member nation can volunteer a member.

Btw, anyone has suggestions for Knight members?

Well, I had initially limited them to seven members, one per continent (minus Anartica, plus the Fishpeople).

That seems limited. However we can say the there's a main roster -taken from the permanent ONU Security Council member nations, the US, Britain, Russia, France and China- and many auxiliary members from other nations, including the Lemurian?

PS. let's move this conversation to the discussion thread.

Butting into the conversation to say hi, I'm interested in signing up! And working on a character sheet.

All are significantly abnormal in a normal world... All are significantly normal in an abnormal world.

Hi, thanks for the interest. The more the merrier. :)

Eisendrachen

• Identity: Captain Cordelia Schwarzschild (Classified. For all intents and purposes, secret, unless you happen to work for OMEN with a high enough security clearance)
• Alignment: Hero (Though on the greyer end)
• Job: Professional Superhero/counter-terrorist operative/inventor
• Powers & Abilities:
  • Gadgeteer Genius/The Engineer: Her main schtick. Her power means that her tech can break (though only fairly subtly) the laws of physics, i.e. igniting fusion at lower temperatures than should be possible, or make a mech that works despite the Square-Cube Law, but she can’t, say, create a perpetual motion machine.
    • A note: She consciously attempts to avert Reed Richards Is Useless, with limited success (a, the devices her power allows her to make, only she can fix when they break, and, b, a decent number of them are classified by OMEN.) She has made a tidy sum of money on fusion energy and prosthetics, though.
  • She wears power armor designed by herself. Which depends on the situation
    • Jump-jets: Provides limited flight capability
    • Fusion reactor: Provides a staggering amount of power for how small it is.
    • Armored: Her armor suits are basically impervious to small-arms fire, though anything that can hole a tank will punch through it, and it has a tough time dealing with anti-armor rounds.
  • Carries/has access to a number of milspec weapons and the training to use them, as well as a number of her own design, ranging from a 95%-perfect (on baselines) stun gun to an eight-foot-long-coilgun for use when collateral damage is not an issue. Also a hammer, Eisenstern. Why does she have a hammer? Because it's cool.
  • Even without her power armor, she’s still fairly strong, tough, and agile, being essentially military and whatnot.
  • General (albeit not particularly strong) resistance to psychic/mind affecting powers: Not any sort of superpower, but OMEN trains its agents in how to resist enemy mind-affecting powers, for what should be obvious reasons.
• Description:
  • As a civilian◊
  • Her military armor, also essentially the same as she provides to the OMEN Drachenzaehnen◊ (See below). What she uses when on a strike team (Again, see below). Though the Drachenzaehnen armor is battery-powered, not fusion-powered like hers.
  • Her “hero” armor. Sans the buzzsaw◊. What she normally uses.
• Personality: Introverted, snarky, flirtatious
• Background: Age: 34
  Cordelia was born in Geneva, Switzerland to a… rather dysfunctional family. Her father was… terrible at being a father, and her mother a mostly-absent business executive. The younger of three sisters, and with a pair of younger twin sisters, she was generally overlooked at home. Her eldest sister wanted nothing to do with her, and her younger sisters constantly bickering with each other. The only one who ever seemed to notice her was her other middle sister, Amelia, who was a year older than her.
  Cordelia was always kind of a nerd, and with only a few (equally nerdy) friends, she tended to get bullied. A lot. Unless Amelia was around. While she did judo and could have fought back, Cordelia was, at that time, much too shy and self-conscious to actually do so. For similar reasons, she never made a big deal out of the bullying to the school administration.
  When she was thirteen, Amelia was hit by a bank robber driving away from a crime. The police never caught them. Amelia survived, but was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Her dynamic with Cordelia also changed: Now, instead of it being Amelia who protected Cordelia from getting bullied, Cordelia would protect Amelia from the bullies who wanted retribution on her for protecting Cordelia from them in the past.
  Cordelia discovered her power as a freshman in high school, in her freshman science class. The class was holding a science fair, and her original project had been thrown in a ditch. So, last minute, she built a miniature tokamak fusion reactor. Which produced more power than it consumed. Her teacher was… perturbed (Read: freaked the shit out). So then OMEN got involved. Because they’d really like fusion reactors, thank you, and the person who can build them.
  So that happened, and Cordelia ended up getting a summer job interning at OMEN and promising not to build anything that would level a city block, thank you. Like another fusion reactor. Once she graduated high school, she ended up working for OMEN building technology, and in exchange they would fund her college education. Something they do rather often. It was at this point where she started her first prototype of what would eventually turn into the Drachenzaehnen armor.
  After college, OMEN offered her a permanent job, which she took. While OMEN is not technically a military force, it does, on occasion, operate as a counter-terrorist force, and as such drills all recruits as one. After going through boot camp, she ended up assigned to various field teams. Rarely did she last more than six months on one before a critical mass of smartass comments got her Reassigned to Antarctica.
  This quickly became a running joke in the service (along the lines of “Eisendrachen get reassigned yet?”). Eventually, she got promoted to captain and assigned, along with about twenty other operatives, to Easton City. To put in perspective how much of an Antarctic Reassignment this is: OMEN doesn’t have a branch in the US (Fortunately for Cordelia, OMEN doesn’t operate in Antarctica, or she’d probably rather quickly find herself assigned there). They’ve been petitioning to the US government to allow them one for a while, and this task force is being let in as a test run, to see how it goes.

And, this “OMEN” thing that’s been referenced many times:
OMEN: The Organisation for Metahuman and Extraterrestrial iNvestigation
“Viglo contra noctis” (Vigilant against the night)
A primarily European (with a bit of East Asia and South America thrown in there) task force that dedicates itself to training humans and metahumans, investigating, apprehending, and, in extreme cases, neutralizing, dangerous and criminal metahumans, and protecting the world from extraterrestrial threat - not something that has really come up, fortunately. To that end, they make use of both baseline and metahumans. As they tell new recruits, “We’re not S.H.I.E.L.D., but we wish we were that badass.” (Their PR and HR departments are famous for self-depreciating humor) A better comparison, though, would probably be the PRT from Worm.

An OMEN task force generally consists of around twenty OMEN agents. The “standard” makeup (and that of the Easton City taskforce) is three metahumans (In this case, Eisendrachen, Kitsune (a photokinetic), and Fate (a magic user)), two scientists, three dispatch operators, and 12 soldiers, who, in this case, are all Drachenzaehnen.

OMEN strike teams generally consist of one or two metahumans and a small number of baseline soldiers, all of whom specialize (or have powers which counter, in the case of the former) in dealing with whatever type of meta-criminal they've been sent to apprehend or neutralize.

I’ll fully write up Kitsune and Fate at some later point, but here are the highlights:

Kitsune:

• Identity: Michiko Kurosawa (Classified)
• Alignment: Hero
• Powers: Photokinesis
  • She can blind opponents, collimate light to create laser beams, create illusions, etc.
• She has a tendency to give herself illusory fox ears and tail, but they’re not real

Fate:

• Identity: Clarisse de l’Aurore (Classified)
• Alignment: Hero
• Powers: Magic
  • Fate specializes in perception magic (She can scry what is happening at the present to or what happened to something in the past with some connection to that thing, e.g. a lock of hair from a person (line of sight also works, here). Ironically, given her name, she cannot see the future at all. Additionally, the farther from her (Spatially or temporally) she attempts to view, the less detail she gets. And temporal separation is far worse than spatial separation. She could, for example, see the Apollo landing sights as a fairly blurry video, but couldn't really see more than a day or two into the past.)
  • Additionally, her other specialty is barrier magic. She creates magical barriers which she can do all sorts of fun things with (Think about what all Green Lantern can do. Fate isn’t quite that versatile, but it gets the idea across.)
• Other: Fate is blind, and uses her magic to sense what is around her.

All are significantly abnormal in a normal world... All are significantly normal in an abnormal world.

All approved! Looking forth to the other OMEN characters. Btw you do know we have TALOS in this game, which is basically SHIELD? How do the two organizations relate, if at all? Also there *was* an alien invasion a few years ago but it was defeated.

The classification I tried to put forth for someone who creates things that bend the laws of physics is "Artificer", so that may be useful.

But yes, we don't have SHIELD, we have TALOS. She may very well be a part of that instead, as part of a branch or taskforce solely focused on countering hostile alien activity.

Re: artificer: Noted.

Re: SHIELD comparison: It's a joke predicated on Marvel Comics existing in-universe. Obviously it doesn't work if Marvel doesn't exist in universe.

Re: OMEN vs. TALOS. 1) OMEN is not UN-affiliated. They're an independent organization with similar goals. 2) They're significantly more open - they don't engage in espionage. They're not spies. For most people working for OMEN, it's a day job. A very bizarre day job, but a day job. The metahumans working for them get Hero Insurance, training, a group with a vested interest in keeping your secret identity secret, etc. They contain criminal metahumans, and make attempts to rehabilitate them into productive members of society. On the relations between the two... Presumably somewhat strained and rivalrous? They're competing over the same resources and do very similar things.

All are significantly abnormal in a normal world... All are significantly normal in an abnormal world.

Omega Prototype
(NPC/Side Character)

---

Designation: PX-7147 Project Omega Prototype; called 'Omega' by his handlers.

---

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

---

Job: Assassin/Mercenary

---

Abilities: - Unarmed Combat And Weaponry Knowledge - As well as having capabilities of utilizing hand-to-hand combat, Operator can use a plethora of most conventional weapons imagined, and how to deal with each type.

- Weaponized Body - Omega is an android composed mostly of reinforced carbon fiber, being able to withstand most bullet round. A tank shell would be more then able to bend his defense, however, and an armor piercing round would be more than enough to deal significant damage.

- Tick Tock, Goes the Clock - While Operator is able to control gravity, Omega is able to control certain aspects of time. He is able to reverse the last couple of seconds before an event occurs, or even control his own movement by speeding up, slowing down, or even reversing its own actions.

- Juggernaut Mode - A more stable version of Berserk Mode. Since Omega is completely mechanical, it is unaffected by the emotional strain the major power flux the mechanism presents.

---

Personality: Is borderline sadistic. It enjoys testing the limits of human survivability, torturing anyone he captures. If he ever does, which is rare in itself. Ever since it's original activation, it's been competing with Operator as to who is the best, almost to the point of killing each other. As such, Omega goes to great lengths to improve an adapt, always looking for technology to improve the already-depreciated technology the android possesses.

---

Appearance: Since it was the original prototype, it appears to have a body very similar Omega in a sharp suit, but with a bulkier appearance, and with a white Tragedy mask, a callback to Operator's own Comedy mask. Omega's Juggernaut Mode completely flips its suit's appearance, shifting the suit from black to white and his mask from white to black.

---

Background: Before Operator, there was the Omega Prototype. Built as a test run to see if an experimental drive core would function normally in humanoids, Omega rapidly gained sentience mere days after initially being activated. The company that built both Omega and Operator, Black Axe Industries, made weaponized bioweapons for military purposes on the surface, but specialized in black operatives in taking out key officials in various world positions for money. Both Omega and Operator were subjected to assassinating each an every target tasked to kill. And while the Operator was repulsed by the thought of outright bloodshed without reason, Omega made no question of it, in fact relishing every moment, figuring out various ways to kill anyone who stands in its way. After Operator's escape and Black Axe's investment loss, Omega was shutdown. Or so the handlers would think.

Omega broke out of storage and followed its counterpart as best it could. It upgraded and adapted as needed, hunting down people or even machines and upgraded as needed.

edited 30th Nov '16 7:15:50 AM by Ze_Operator

"I do not cling to life sufficiently to fear death."

Approved.

[Wrong]

edited 10th Dec '16 10:27:54 PM by God_of_Awesome

Dusk/Dawn

Identity: Heller von Dunkelheit

Alignment: Hero (Dusk) / Villain (Dawn)

Job: Full-time Super

Secret Identity

Powers - Dusk: Shadow Manipulation - Can freely control any preexisting areas of darkness, including expanding them to cover a room or moving them to obscure an enemy's vision.

Shadow Constructs - Can form preexisting shadows into solid objects, such as weapons, traps, or tendrils.

Shadow Step - Can instantaneously move between areas of preexisting darkness in a manner akin to teleportation.

Powers - Dawn: Light Manipulation - Can freely control preexisting light, which he can use to blind enemies.

Light Concentration - Can absorb preexisting light and reemit it as a high-powered heat beam.

Light Rider - Can travel along preexisting light rays at superhuman speeds, even through the air.

Powers - Both: Elemental Nourishment - Neither personality requires food, instead drawing nourishment from their respective elements. They do, however, still sleep.

Weaknesses: Neither personality can create their respective element, only control it.

Has a tendency to swap personalities at inoppurtune moments.

Personality: The Dusk personality is kind and empathetic. He will go out of his way to help others, even to his own detriment. But he has almost no will of his own, and is a complete doormat.

The Dawn personality is almost childlike, completely egocentric with no ability to empathize with others. He wants what he wants when he wants it, and won't take no for an answer. He will steal and kill his way to self-gratification.

The original, balanced Heller personality may still exist, but it's buried deep in his subconscious.

Description - Dusk is defined by his lack of definition. His body seems to absorb any and all light, leaving his appearance similar to a clothed black silhouette.

Dawn may be even stranger in appearance. He seems to glow with a brilliance that makes his body hard to look at, but at the same time, doesn't actually produce any light. This makes his body appear bright white.

Both personalities wear an open gray jacket and a pair of ripped gray khakis. They lack a shirt, socks, or shoes.

Background: Heller von Dunkelheit is his own worst enemy. A German scientist working on a self-perpetuating lightbulb in a lab outside of Munich, Heller was bathed in the mysterious energy known as anti-light when an unidentified falling object collided with his lab. Simultaneously exposed to both this and the extreme light energy from his experiments, Heller's body and mind were polarized. His superego became the shadow-powered Dusk, while his id became the light-powered Dawn.

With both personalities at each other's mercy, Heller wandered Europe, performing acts of both altruism and greed. Recently, Dawn was an accidental stowaway on a cargo ship bound for Easton.

Nice use of the the Light Is Not Good and Dark Is Not Evil tropes! Approved.

The Skylark Squadron

An all-female team of international pilots who fought with the Allies in World War II

Kestrel

• Identity: Karolina Adler, from Czechoslovakia, specifically what is now the Czech Republic.
• Powers:
  • Expert pilot, markswoman, hand-to-hand combatant, and mechanic
  • She has a gift for languages, strengthened by her travel as an airmail pilot. She's fluent in Czech, German, Polish, Yiddish, and Slovak, and proficient in English, French, Hebrew, and Russian.
• Description: A woman of average height (5 foot 5) and a stocky yet athletic build, with short brown hair and gray eyes. Her Skylark uniform is a dark blue pilot's uniform with a bird symbol.
• Personality: Kestrel is adventurous and energetic, not to mention incredibly stubborn. Once she makes up her mind, virtually nothing can change it. As a result, she's often hard to get along with, but she stands by the people she cares about. She also stands by her code of ethics no matter what, but she manages to do that while still being clever and cunning - though she's deeply uncomfortable with lying.
• Background:
  • In the 1930s, this Czech charmer disguised herself as a man to become an air mail pilot. In the 1940s, she used her expertise to lead the Skylark Squadron against the Axis Powers. (Official description from a 1950s radio dramatization of the Skylark Squadron's adventures.)
  • The long version: Karolina Adler was born in Prague in 1914, in a middle-class Jewish family. Growing up, she was fascinated by stories of World War I flying aces, and when she was six, she decided she would be a pilot someday. The day she turned 16, she disguised herself as a man, and "Karol" Adler got a job as an airmail pilot.
  • Karolina excelled at her chosen profession and earned the nickname "Kestrel," after a type of falcon, even as she suffered psychologically from living under a false name and gender. In 1938, she came clean and ultimately quit. She returned to her parents, and began working as a part-time cook.
  • When Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Karolina snuck back to her old place of work and stole her plane so she could try and get help. She was shot down over Poland, and she probably would have died if not for Bryda Sienkiewicz (AKA Partridge), a Polish farm girl who pulled her out of the wreckage and nursed her back to health. In gratitude, Karolina taught her the basics of aviation, and the two became close friends.
  • When Germany invaded Poland in September of that year, Bryda's farm was destroyed. Karolina, Bryda, and Bryda's brother Kazimierz narrowly escaped in Karolina's plane. They made it to America, and Bryda swore revenge on the Nazis for killing her parents and destroying her home. Karolina continued teaching her about aviation, and they also befriended Denise Kahn (AKA Sparrow), a Jewish refugee from France who dabbled in aviation herself. Karolina attempted to join the Air Force, but was turned down because of her gender and her status as a non-American citizen.
  • When Denise discovered a Nazi plot to subvert the RAF, she enlisted Karolina and Bryda to help stop it. They beat the brutal Doctor Stryker first in a dogfight and then on the ground, with the help of a brilliant chemistry student he had kidnapped, Madhura Pathak (AKA Kingfisher). Afterwards, Karolina was offered a place in the Air Force, but she turned it down to form a squadron with her new friends: the Skylark Squadron, where she adopted her old nickname Kestrel as her callsign.
  • The Skylark Squadron was active throughout World War II, and gained new members Sunbird and Swan in 1941 and 1943, respectively. When the war ended, the Skylarks lost their aid from the American government due to the Skylarks opposing Operation Paperclip. They tried to stay together despite growing interpersonal friction, but it didn't work out. Kestrel and Partridge grew apart after the latter got engaged and started waging a two-person war against the remaining Nazis. Sparrow was looking into going into politics, and Kingfisher wanted to return to her first love - science. Ultimately, the group parted ways in 1956.
  • Kestrel, not the sort to settle down, went on the lecture circuit, touring Europe, performing aerial stunts, and working on her memoirs. She wasn't alone - Swan was with her every step of the way, and while they were officially just good friends, Swan later confirmed in her memoirs that, yes, they had been in a romantic relationship. Kestrel published her memoirs, "Flight of the Kestrel," in 1960 to great acclaim. Kestrel died in 1980 during an aviation stunt gone wrong.

Partridge

• Identity: Bryda Siekiewicz, from Poland. (Later known as Bryda Katzoff.)
• Powers:
  • Expert pilot, markswoman, hand to hand combatant, and mechanic
  • Fluent in Polish, proficient in Czech and English
• Description: A pale, dark-haired, heavy-set woman, the shortest of the Skylarks at 4 foot 11. Her Skylark uniform is brown and has a bird symbol.
• Personality: Bryda is compassionate, maternal, and sensitive, but she will also destroy you if you hurt anyone she cares about. While she is largely motivated by rage, she also wants to keep people safe, and she was undeniably the mother hen of the Skylarks.
• Background:
  • Don't let this diminutive dame's size fool you - she's just as tough as any of her teammates, and she will have revenge on the Nazis for despoiling her country. (Official description from a 1950s radio dramatization of the Skylark Squadron's adventures.)
  • The long version: Bryda Sienkiewicz (born in 1918) grew up on a farm in Poland with her sister Agata and brother Kazimierz. Her life was happy but uneventful up until the day a plane crashed near her farm in March 1939. Bryda pulled its pilot from the wreckage and nursed her back to health. The pilot, Karolina Adler (aka Kestrel), taught Bryda the basics of plane mechanics, and the two became good friends.
  • When Germany invaded Poland in September of that year, Bryda's farm was destroyed. Bryda, Karolina, and Kazimierz narrowly escaped in Karolina's plane and made it to America, Karolina continued teaching Bryda about aviation, and they also befriended Denise Kahn (AKA Sparrow), a Jewish refugee from France who dabbled in aviation herself.
  • When Denise discovered a Nazi plot to subvert the Air Force, she enlisted Bryda and Karolina to help stop it. They beat the brutal Doctor Stryker first in a dogfight and then on the ground, with the help of a brilliant chemistry student he had kidnapped, Madhura Pathak (AKA Kingfisher). Afterwards, the four of them formed their own air squadron to help fight the Axis: the Skylark Squadron. Bryda adopted the callsign Partridge.
  • The Skylark Squadron was active throughout World War II, and gained new members Sunbird and Swan in 1941 and 1943, respectively. When the war ended, the Skylarks lost their aid from the American government due to the Skylarks opposing Operation Paperclip. They tried to stay together despite growing interpersonal friction, but it didn't work out. Partridge got engaged to Jack Katzoff, aka the Human Hurricane, a wind-manipulating American superhero, and the two made plans to hunt down every Nazi that they could. This brought them into further conflict with the American government due to Operation Paperclip. Partridge grew apart from Kestrel, Sparrow was looking into going into politics, and Kingfisher wanted to return to her first love - science. Ultimately, the Skylarks parted ways in 1956.
  • Bryda and Jack married in 1957, and in between fighting Nazis they had four children: Natalia (born in 1958), Paulina (born in 1960), and Renata and Jan (born in 1963). The children spent most of their childhoods in Poland with their uncle Kazimierz, due to Bryda and Jack's frequent absences. Natalia and Renata inherited their father's powers; Paulina and Jan did not.
  • Bryda died in 1989, two years after Jack. She was survived by her four children and six grandchildren. Natalia is active as the superhero Huragan in Poland, while Renata lives in America and is active under the codename Maelstrom.


Sparrow

• Identity: Denise Kahn, from France.
• Powers:
  • Expert pilot, markswoman, hand to hand combatant, and mechanic
  • Fluent in French, Hebrew, and English, proficient in German and Russian
• Description: A curvy olive-skinned woman with dark curly hair and a beauty mark near her eye. Her Skylark uniform is light blue and has a bird symbol.
• Personality: Sparrow was often thought of as "the pretty one" of the Skylarks, a characterization that is technically accurate but highly unfair. Sparrow was The Social Expert of the Skylarks, who secured funding from the American government and kept the team running smoothly. Her people skills later served her well in her career in politics.
• Background:
  • Heart of gold, nerves of steel, and a silver tongue, Sparrow is a formidable foe for any Nazi she may meet. (Official description from a 1950s radio dramatization of the Skylark Squadron's adventures.)
  • The long version: Denise Kahn (born in 1920) came from an upper-middle class Jewish family in Nice, France. Her childhood was happy, and her parents were permissive enough to allow her to explore whatever fancy momentarily caught her eye, including aviation.
  • In 1939, shortly before the Nazis invaded France, Denise's parents arranged for her to be sent to America so she would be safe. Denise never saw her parents again.
  • In America, Denise befriended Karolina Adler (aka Kestrel) and Bryda Sienkiewicz (aka Partridge), refugees from the Czech Republic and Poland, respectively. Denise soon discovered a Nazi plot to subvert the Air Force, and she enlisted Bryda and Karolina to help stop it. They beat the brutal Doctor Stryker first in a dogfight and then on the ground, with the help of a brilliant chemistry student he had kidnapped, Madhura Pathak (AKA Kingfisher). Afterwards, the four of them formed their own air squadron to help fight the Axis: the Skylark Squadron. Denise adopted the callsign Sparrow.
  • The Skylark Squadron was active throughout World War II, and gained new members Sunbird and Swan in 1941 and 1943, respectively. When the war ended, the Skylarks lost their aid from the American government due to the Skylarks opposing Operation Paperclip. They tried to stay together despite growing interpersonal friction, but it didn't work out. Sparrow returned to France, and she parlayed her fame into a political career with the Socialist Party, first as a member of the National Assembly, then as a member of the Senate. She married in 1969, but had no children. She passed away in 2010.

Kingfisher

• Identity: Madhura Pathak, from India.
• Powers:
  • Expert pilot, markswoman, hand to hand combatant, mechanic, and engineer
  • Fluent in Bengali and English
• Description: A dark-skinned Indian teenager, 5 foot 6, with a smile that borders on maniacal. Her Skylark uniform is bright green.
• Personality: Kingfisher believes that everything is a tool, and achieving goals is only a matter of using what - and who - you have. While she does have a manipulative streak, she's not malicious, and she's easy to get along with. She's cheerful and perky, bordering on manic, and she's very talkative.
• Background:
  • A Bengali engineering prodigy, Kingfisher knows her way around the cockpit and the engine of a plane. (Official description from a 1950s radio dramatization of the Skylark Squadron's adventures.)
  • The long version: Madhura Pathak (born in 1924) was interested in science from a young age, and her impressive mind allowed her to attend Bombay University at 14 to study electrical engineering, with her parents and siblings' full support. At 16, she was kidnapped by Doctor Stryker, a German mad scientist who wanted her help to build a device to destroy America's planes. Madhura did her best to fake going along while secretly sabotaging his efforts and trying to alert the authorities. In America, Madhura helped three women - Karolina Adler (aka Kestrel), Bryda Sienkiewicz (aka Partridge), and Denise Kahn (aka Sparrow)- to stop Stryker's plan. Afterwards, they formed their own pilot squadron: the Skylark Squadron. Madhura took up the callsign Kingfisher. While she was a novice at piloting, she proved to be a quick learner.
  • The Skylark Squadron was active throughout World War II, and gained new members Sunbird and Swan in 1941 and 1943, respectively. When the war ended, the Skylarks lost their aid from the American government due to the Skylarks opposing Operation Paperclip. They tried to stay together despite growing interpersonal friction, but it didn't work out. Kingfisher returned to India, where she returned to her first love: science.

Upon returning home, Kingfisher found that the political climate had grown even more contentious - and that her sister had died during the famine of 1943. This ultimately pushed Kingfisher into becoming a vocal supporter of Indian independence.

• She later got a Ph D in engineering and became an important figure in the field of Indian aeronautics. Dr. Pathak died in 2016.

Sunbird

• Identity: Liesl Benyamina, from Germany.
• Powers:
  • Expert pilot, markswoman, hand to hand combatant, and mechanic
  • Fluent in German, proficient in English
• Description: A teenage girl with light brown skin, curly hair, and a perpetual mischievous grin. Her Skylark uniform is pale yellow.
• Personality: Sunbird is, objectively, in over her head, considering that she's an inexperienced teenager fighting Nazi super-scientists. But her willingness to fight dirty and her knack for intrigue gives her an edge, and she's a quick enough study to keep up with her teammates. She can be moody and sarcastic, but she's a determined fighter who will stand up for what she thinks is right.
• Background:
  • A schoolgirl saboteur from Germany, Sunbird is tough as nails and twice as sharp. (Official description from a 1950s radio dramatization of the Skylark Squadron's adventures.)
  • The long version: Liesl Benyamina's father, Adam Benyamina, was a French colonial soldier from Algeria occupying the Rhineland after World War I, and her mother, Ilse Schultz, was a citizen of Cologne who became very close to him. When the occupation ended, he stayed in Cologne, and they raised Liesl together once she was born in 1924. They had two more children, Kurt and Oskar, in 1927 and 1930, respectively.
  • Liesl had a rather unremarkable childhood, though she often felt isolated from her white peers. When the Nazis came to power, teenage Liesl and her family found themselves in deep trouble. Adam started working to get them out of Germany as quickly as possible, and he managed to get visas for himself, Kurt, and Oskar in Canada. Ilse refused to leave the only home she had ever known, and Liesl chose to stay with her mother.
  • Liesl started rebelling against the new regime any way she could: smuggling jazz records to her classmates, talking back in class, and vandalizing school bathrooms. This frustrated Ilse to no end, as she was terrified Liesl would be severely punished, and the two of them frequently argued over it.
  • Eventually, Liesl went too far when she sabotaged the work of Nazi scientist Rosamunde Rotwang. Rotwang tried to experiment on Liesl, but the girl was saved by the Skylarks before that could happen. Liesl almost immediately demanded to join them. While they were somewhat hesitant due to her youth and inexperience, they allowed her to join after learning the basics of flight. She adopted the callsign Sunbird.
  • When the war ended, the Skylarks lost their aid from the American government due to the Skylarks opposing Operation Paperclip. They tried to stay together despite growing interpersonal friction, but it didn't work out. Sunbird and her mother joined the rest of their family in Canada. After graduating from college in 1949, she became a journalist. She married Michael Leduc, a coworker of hers, and they had three children together. She remained in Canada for the rest of her life; after what she had seen in Germany, she never felt comfortable there again. She passed away in 2014.


Swan

• Identity: Aleksandra Andriyevna Salenko, of the Soviet Union (specifically, what is now Ukraine).
• Powers:
  • Expert dancer, pilot, markswoman, hand to hand combatant, and mechanic
  • Proficient in first aid
  • Fluent in Russian and Ukrainian, proficient in English, can curse people out in German
• Description: Statuesque (tallest of the Skylarks at 6 feet), pale, and slender, with shoulder length blonde hair. Her Skylark uniform is black, with white accents.
• Personality: Poised, calm, and rational, Swan doesn't show her feelings easily, but she feels very deeply. She's not much for joking or goofing off, but she does have a deadpan sense of humor that comes out around those she considers friends. She was a devout believer in revenge, assuming that it would help her get over the death of her brother, but soon decided that when the war was over, it was more important to aid the attacked than go after the attackers.
• Background:
  • Ballerina turned Night Witch turned Skylark, Swan's grace on the stage is only matched by her grace in the sky. (Official description from a 1950s radio dramatization of the Skylark Squadron's adventures.)
  • The long version: Aleksandra Salenko was born in Brianka in 1920, to Mariya, a dressmaker, and Andriy, a music teacher. She had a brother, Mikhail, who was four years her senior. At 11, she began studying ballet, and by the time she was 14, she was performing in the Kirov Ballet.
  • In June 1941, Germany began its invasion of the Soviet Union. Aleksandra, feeling that she could contribute to the war effort, began training as a nurse. She changed course after receiving word that her brother had been killed in action. Aleksandra was furious (in her memoirs, she would say it made her so angry she couldn't breathe), and she changed her goal. She wanted to fight the Germans like her brother had, and so she applied to the Soviet Army. After graduating from navigator school in 1942, she was assigned to the 588th Night Bomber Regiment - known to the Germans they bombed as the Night Witches.
  • Aleksandra first crossed paths with the Skylark Squadron in late 1942, during an extended dogfight with Nazi aviator duo Sturm und Drang. She became unlikely friends with them, particularly Kestrel, and, with encouragement from her friends in the Night Witches, joined the Skylarks in 1943, under the callsign Swan. She stayed with the Skylarks for the rest of World War II.
  • When the war ended, the Skylarks lost their aid from the American government due to the Skylarks opposing Operation Paperclip. They tried to stay together despite growing interpersonal friction, but it didn't work out. By that point, Swan had had her fill of revenge, and she returned to nursing and eventually became a doctor, reasoning that the wounds of the war still needed healing. She didn't settle down, instead traveling with Kestrel, until the Czech pilot's death during an aviation stunt gone wrong in 1980. While they were officially only good friends, Swan later confirmed in her memoirs that they had been in a romantic relationship.
  • Swan returned to Ukraine, where she worked as a doctor. Later in life, she agitated for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union. She passed away in 2005, at the age of 85.

Edited by emilyorthoclase on Feb 14th 2019 at 3:18:30 AM

Pretty much a Distaff Counterpart to The Blackhawks, but why not? Approved, though most members didn't live to the present. Of course, nothing prevents a new incarnation, maybe even made up of relatives, from forming.

edited 14th Jan '17 5:29:50 AM by Sijo

Or a whole team of Lady Blackhawks. Good stuff. I was sort of hoping two of the Skylarks would end up together.

edited 14th Jan '17 7:00:45 AM by Booky

BTW, Emily, you can go ahead and post the valkyrie profiles.

@Booky: I have to add a few things I forgot, so do you have any shipping preferences?

@Go A: Will do!

@ emilyorthoclase well, you know the characters better than me, obviously. . I just felt like they all clearly had such a hard time and cool adventures it would be sweet if two of them had a relationship.