The Good, The Bad and The Spandex: Discussion Thread

Agreed, but I don't think we should do it now. I still have to wait for Vampireandthen... and others seem to be busy right now to look at this thread...

Good work on explaining the parasites people . I'll be posting the updated character list on the Signup thread later today, as well as posting about current events for everybody's benefit.

Alright, quick thing. I want to swap to Gatewatcher, but Miles is already kind of in the middle of things. So I was wondering whether, after we have him leave Winterbloom's, whether we can Hand Wave him as having done something or having gotten waylayed on the way there so I can actually change characters.

Company Concept: Orion Exo Electronics

Founded 40 years ago, OEE was based on the principles of advanced robotics and "man amplifiers", but rather than autonomous machines they sought to make machines that were piloted by human hands. Feeling machines that were autonomous were too untrustworthy or even too dangerous they decided that machines controlled directly by humans would be better suited.

The company is no more corrupt than typical corporations now and days, but their products remain top quality. So much so that many of them are hunted for black market, to make any criminal stand a better chance at dealing with one of the supers in Easton.

The two most popular products from OEE are the Exosuit, and the Hardsuit.

The Exosuit is a sealed set of mechanized armor that can be outfitted with various weapons and gadgets, but on it's baseline it can still augment the strength of one man to that of 20. It reduces all inertial attacks and is quite bulletproof. Though large caliber rounds or even explosives can still take it out, and EMP attacks will disable the suit, if temporarily thanks to recent advances.

The Hardsuit is a robotic frame controlled through a cockpit, anywhere from up to 10-20 feet tall (1-2 stories), with various models being produced, it boasts great power and mobility, with a variety of weapon and armor possibilities and useful manipulators that use haptic gloves to give the pilot great control over the arms. Though tanks still far outpace it in armored combat the Hardsuit is seeing a rise in urban combat use thanks to the advanced frame and "musculature" designs allowing it better range.

Both are easily rated for a variety of environments and OEE hopes to see their use in hazardous and extreme environments such as deep space.

Any questions?

Sounds like a solid design. I can't see many flaws in it, but then again I'm no expert

I decided to remove Rine's "Dimensional Guard" title, as it is kinda non-existent right now. Considering there is only two of them (three if you include glowey-eyed paperweight) it seems pointless for him to have that title. Maybe he'll find other dimensional travellers to make up a new incarnation of the Guard.

Edit: Copy 3 finally caught up with Copy 4. Roken is slowly starting to be hinted at, although I don't know how to make his full introduction work yet.

Here's Roken's primary weapon: [1]◊

And here is his secondary [2]◊

(Yes, he uses his axe as his primary weapon. I know, he's a complete gibbon)

The blade of the axe would glow a neon red, as would the fuller in the broadsword.

edited 8th Mar '17 9:27:50 AM by Enirboreh

Cwest: Sure, go ahead. Just post something explaining where Miles went to first.

Silence: My only request is that this tech be extremely expensive- otherwise the question of 'why doesn't every agency or organization have those?' comes up.

Enirboreh: I need to know exactly how many copies of Rine are there and where each is right now in order to write for them.

edited 8th Mar '17 10:22:07 AM by Sijo

Obviously the tech would be expensive, you can't just make giant robots and have them be cheap.

How's Fyodor's home so far?

There (were) four copies of Rine, with the original held in a pod. Copy 1 is deceased, and is floating in space due to death-by-Space-Parasite. Don't bother with him.

Copy 2 has been taken by The First Transcendent, and is presumably being experimented on. Also don't bother with him. Until his dramatic reveal of dramaticness.

Copy 3 has just now caught up to Copy 4 and Elizabeth, and Copy 4 and Elizabeth have just finished fighting the Parasites. The original Rine has landed in Easton, and is in the possession of the two remaining copies.

Got it? It gets confusing.

edited 8th Mar '17 12:18:31 PM by Enirboreh

GoA: 2. Round up a group of bastards hard enough to go hunt a tank without a tank.

I think issues with that ended around the time RPGs were invented. Resultingly, I wouldn't be surprised if military research into power suppression technology was very widespread; imagine the advantages that would bring on the battlefield for the first person to widely deploy it~

Mind you, power suppression can be very dangerous if you have metahuman medic squads with internationally protected symbols on their uniforms saving the lives of casualties.

Additionally, I'd imagine scope of abilities would be far more important than power, as a single bullet can't win a war the way a tactical nuclear warhead can.

The Power Suits Of Doctor Fraulein Fury

Not a doctor and also not German either, but she faked the accent very well. Beatrix Bianchi was actually an Italian national. What she is now is "very likely deceased but we never found the body so..." by TALOS. She was an Artifiser, and her specialty was failing to create fully functional androids with fully realized and psychotically murderous AI's to carry out her plans of, um... what were her plans, really? No one's quite sure on that one, but she sure did cause a lot of trouble.

She ended up creating the next best thing to murder bots with murder AI's, murder power suits with murderous AI interfaces. This was like the original idea except you had to put a squishy human with their organic brain inside to fill in the hole she otherwise could never build an equivalent for. The suit would wrap around the body and, ideally, the AI would wrap around the mind and completely take over. This was never quite the case, but quite a few subjects who wore the suits ended up being driven mad by the murder AI within.

Back in the heyday, before the Red Child's Rampage, before the Invasion even, a coalition of TALOS footwork and some local super hero muscle tracked down her secret lab and raided the place. She activated a bunch of her test subjects and they went on a rampage. As many as could be saved were, subdued and then removed from the suits. Her elite guard were willing subjects, and were taken down, alive if possible.

During the whole fiasco, she was never found. There was a lot of suggestive evidence that a contingent of her creation turned against her and killed her, but her body was never found and no confirming evidence could be found. However, some of her notes were recovered and it was discovered that she had seeded the globe with a ton of other power suits. Why? Presumably to be an asshole.

All of her suits have been artifaks, each one a unique creation and personal investiture of her time and energy. The mooks battled in her lab showed the obvious signs of an artifiser attempting assembly line mass production, being shoddier and lesser versions to what she had created so far. Even her elite guards were just a step above, created in one go and only extensively tinkered with on a 1-to-1 basis afterwards. The specimens seeded around the globe were apparently unique creations, greater creations that she just left lying around and never bothered to use.

Only recently have those power suits began to reveal themselves. Blood Knight, Demon Slayer, Love Heart's bodyguard and even Rocket Shinobi in Japan. Most of these people have been menaces, psychopaths from the get-go or completely or partially controlled by the AI in the suit. Only Rocket Shinobi was able to conquer the murderous intelligence inside his suit, and consequently hasn't been positively ID'd as wearing one of Fury's suits.

edited 8th Mar '17 4:18:25 PM by God_of_Awesome

I'm considering Roken's Parasites minions, so feel free to murderize.

Or not murderize.

Your choice.

But anyway, just because Roken's Parasites are copies, doesn't mean that they are the same character.

Rine is a different case, however. I consider them different instances of the same character, so they are just as important as the original.

edited 8th Mar '17 12:28:54 PM by Enirboreh

GOA: Nice explanation

Enirboreh: You nailed it.

Edit: Both Orion and Dr. Fury have been accepted.

In fact, The Signup Thread OP has been updated with all currently active members and the newly accepted Ideas, check it out!

edited 8th Mar '17 4:02:23 PM by Sijo

Oh, well, I have a sub-concept in mind. It's more like an addition to the already existing concept (subject to change):

Knights of Transcendence:

Combat forces for the Shield of Humanity (basically, Mooks). They are all either cyborgs, androids or robots. Their leader is Lara Harper. They are divided into sub-categories:

Squad Icarus:

Flight units. Cyborgs and androids. Most wear jetpacks, but elite units wear mechanized wings. They specialize at ambushing enemies. Their weapons are laser guns. Squad Icarus is generally the weakest of the Knights in terms face-to-face combat, since they are made of androids and cyborgs who don't have that much combat capability. But, one should not underestimate them, as they can, well, fly.

Cyclops:

Scanner units. They are all robots who have the scanning technology. As the name indicates, they have one eye. There are even robots who are floating mechanical eyes. Only few of these robots have combat capabilities, and even then they're not that powerful. One thing they have though is maneuver skills: they can get almost anywhere they want. Patrol on rooftops, stick to walls and all those nifty things...

Followers of the First:

All of them are cyborgs. They specialize in combat. Followers take orders directly from the First Transcendent. They all vary from each other, from hulking brutes of strength to assassins who have cloaking ability. Speaking in game language, they have all types of RPG classes. Followers have their own sub-categories:

'Squad Alpha': Stealth-expert assassins. They can cloak, move with great agility and crawl walls thanks to their Assassins Armor Mk 1. This armor induces a serum to the wearer that makes them have great agility. However, it causes Alpha Squad to lose empathy and become amoral in the process. As such, they are incredibly ruthless. They are even willing to kill children... For an easier comparison, they are Assassins from {{Franchise/Assassin'sCreed}} in terms of physical skills and Templars from the same series in terms of ruthlessness and motivation.

'Squad Omega': hulking brutes I mentioned above. They are genetically engineered to have a huge mass and then wear a super armor tailored to them. However, only few people can become part of Squad Omega. Because it essentially means that a person is willing to devote himself or herself to the cause. Besides, not everyone is suitable for this genetic-engineering process. As such, they are treated with utmost respect. One thing to note is that they are not stupid, and that's why they are the most dangerous things that Shield makes (outside of Arms. See below on what that is).

'Squad Beta': sappers. Engineers of the group. Mostly combat ones. Their tools include automated drones, flamethrowers, various explosives and all those other tools. Squad Beta is tasked to assist in Squad Gamma on their mission. The idea of sappers was proposed by one arsonist who used an incredibly unique design of flamethrowers (it could shoot fireballs).

'Squad Gamma': Just an average day cyborgs with average combat abilities. Many of them, but weak. Could be considered as Jack-of-all-Trades or Master of None. Their strength lies on their adaptability to various situations. If the squads mentioned above are mostly equipped for specific situations, Squad Gamma is more flexible. Straight assault units.

Seekers of the Flesh:

These are incomplete androids who seek to become humans. Despite their name, they are not scout units. Instead, their strength lies on their sheer unpredictability of their actions. There are not that many of them. Their ways of becoming human is infecting a human with a nano-virus that have their DN As, their data and such. Then, this virus slowly begins to assimilate the infected, absorbing some of the human data in process. And so, the infected becomes human no more, and sheds his skin to show an android. They are not Shield made and they themselves don't know where they come from. Some artifiser, Omnitech... no one knows and, probably, it's better left that way. One thing that Shield did, however, is make sure that they won't go against their fellow disciples. Actually, they really didn't need to, since all of them are already cyborgs, androids or robots.

Arms of Humanity:

Living weapons. Machines and non-humanoid. Hit like tanks (and they have the function of tanks). There are only 3 of them in their HQ. And they vary on their appearance. Arms are currently asleep, because disciples know that if they need to be awaken, then the situation is beyond hopeless. They are the ultimate weapons. Arms cannot be used for trivial purposes.

Anyone is free to add something to this mini-army basically.

EDIT: I will control Lara one time, then I don't think i will touch her for a long time. She is basically going to command her henchmen to do her job.

EDIT 2: Added this to Shield of Humanity concept.

edited 10th Mar '17 5:53:50 PM by kaalban

I just altered my post about the Parasites. When more details about Roken are revealed, I'll do it again.

Edit: Rine isn't that good at explaining the details, so I'll fill in the gaps. When they were in their heyday, they would travel to different dimensions, hoping to assign reinforcements and technology to protect the different dimensions from the Parasites. The original Rine would create and assign copies to each dimension with his extraordinary amount of reserve Hardlite, fulfilling his duty as a guardian.

The remaining copies were created before this arrangement, so they were assigned to the HQ.

Copy 1 was the acting leader, Copy 2 was a warrior, Copy 3 helped during dimensional catastrophes, escorting the inhabitants to the safety of the HQ, and Copy 4 was a scout and negotiator.

edited 9th Mar '17 4:54:29 AM by Enirboreh

So, what can Elizabeth and Rine do now? Talk about Dead Space? Alien-squid gods (as potential candidates for the leader of Parasites)?

edited 9th Mar '17 5:54:08 AM by kaalban

Maybe they could talk about the alien squid, then it devolves into a discussion about Cthulhu.

They'll be so disappointed when they meet Roken

Another idea involving the end of Roken is that the Parasites turn on him, ripping out the technology that stops him from becoming an Eldritch Abomination like the rest of them, and he painfully transforms into an intelligent Parasite.

Doesn't necessarily have to stop him, but it would most likely put him off of attacking dimensions for a while.

edited 9th Mar '17 6:37:18 AM by Enirboreh

Yeah, I think that will be good. Considering the parasites are feral monsters, it will be strange for them to NOT turn on their master. Though I think there needs to be one special ability for Roken that will make him stand out from other Parasites aside from his intelligence.

Still, even after Parasites stop coming from this dimension, Rine has to deal with the Shield after his body. I think Cyclopes and Alpha Squad should be introduced a bit later (we need to have a break from conflicts). Poor guy can never catch a break, can't he?

EDIT (reply to the post below): Yeah. For the distant Grand Finale that we don't when it will come...

EDIT 2: Maybe he will deal with Alpha Squad of the Knights? Like say, he decided to come to Easton for whatever reasons (maybe he wanted to finish Rine personally) and, since the Shield is finding people with Hardlite, Cyclopes would see him and inform Alpha Squad of Roken's presence.

edited 9th Mar '17 7:56:25 AM by kaalban

I dunno, it would seem like an appropriate punishment for Roken to lose his individuality. Maybe he would have some kind of shapeshifting, like Carnage from Spider-Man. Anyway, that's for later on. Roken just looks like an evil version of Rine right now.

I keep having this image in my head of an army of Rines. Some would have Hardlite wings, some would have plasma rifles, swords, etc in this black, empty space. Maybe the final battle could take place in the Void.

Ideas everywhere! But again, that's for later.

Edit: Yeah, Rine's grand finale probably won't be that soon. Even so, I don't think he'll die. Maybe the original does, or one of the main copies. Dunno yet.

Anyway, how do you think I should introduce Roken? He's clearly been playing a long game, toying with both Rine and the dimensions that he's destroyed. I feel like he needs a grand, but not hammy entrance.

edited 9th Mar '17 7:50:30 AM by Enirboreh

Hey, Enir, would it be alright with you if Copy 3 and Gatekeeper ran into each other? Since Rine is a dimensional traveler, seeing someone with similar (albeit more limited) abilities run into them would be interesting.

Especially if more parasites got involved. Those devious, devious rascals. Ya gotta hide yo wife, hide yo children, hide yo husband, cause these parasites are coming out of the woodwork up here.

OK, that could happen. Maybe 3 bumps into him on his way back.

Maybe that's the way Roken comes in. He may have slipped through without Gatekeeper noticing. He has invisibility, remember?

Ooh, this is gonna be good. -rubs hands in glee-

edited 9th Mar '17 8:58:49 AM by Enirboreh

Hey Kaalban where is the Shield of Humanity getting their android tech? Did they use the leaked designs by Dr. Charles Bates?

As for the singular eye robot, sounds like a Stryder.

That sounds awesome. Yeah, Gatekeeper probably wouldn't notice- if he wasn't invisible, sure, but he can only see in the Void- being invisible would be a problem for him.

Or perhaps some of their tech is artifaks?

Perhaps. Would work better if they don't want sapient machines talking back or questioning orders.

The Bates android design is so heavily made to make sapience a certainty.