notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Yeah, your mascot capybara neglected to actually provide their name.
Seven Stars Above: A Magical Girl's Quest to Make Ends Meet (Original, Magical Girl, Superheroes)
- Thread starter notthepenguins
- Start date
- Original Modern Superhero
Well, we can probably get a tomato plant or some other small plant that grows edible things, and use life magic to get free food.
Then we get a pet so we can have a Fluffy the terrible.
Halp, i don't know smol fluffy animals that we could feed correctly with only some plants that can grow in a relatively small pot.
Maybe a bird? Or a snek.
Wait, Sneks don't eat fruits and vegetables, i think.
Then we get a pet so we can have a Fluffy the terrible.
Halp, i don't know smol fluffy animals that we could feed correctly with only some plants that can grow in a relatively small pot.
Maybe a bird? Or a snek.
Wait, Sneks don't eat fruits and vegetables, i think.
[X] [ASPECT] Embarrassment burns in your cheeks, and more than anything you just want to hide. You don't dare open your eyes, for fear of mockery (not that she would mock you for it, not in any real way, but knowing that doesn't make you feel it). You wish you could just disappear. And suddenly, you're wrapped in the cool, comforting embrace of shadowy tendrils.
+Magical Aspect: Shadow
+Motivation: Fear
[X] [METAPHOR] Words, poems, essays, lines of text. Each element described, each picture with a thousand words.
+Mystical Metaphor: Writing
You comprehend magic by way of writing. Abstract effects are easier for you to implement, but it is exceedingly difficult for you to be certain of specifics, whether those are the heat of a flame or order of events.
+Magical Aspect: Shadow
+Motivation: Fear
[X] [METAPHOR] Words, poems, essays, lines of text. Each element described, each picture with a thousand words.
+Mystical Metaphor: Writing
You comprehend magic by way of writing. Abstract effects are easier for you to implement, but it is exceedingly difficult for you to be certain of specifics, whether those are the heat of a flame or order of events.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Not closing the vote yet, as it's very close (and, for the metaphor, tied).
- Pronouns
- Reader
[X] [METAPHOR] Lines of code, inside the curve of every leaf, the shape of every cloud. It's all… procedural.
+Mystical Metaphor: Programming
tie breaker!
annoyed. Really wanted to make frank the carnivorous plant from harley quinn animated series.
+Mystical Metaphor: Programming
tie breaker!
annoyed. Really wanted to make frank the carnivorous plant from harley quinn animated series.
NeoKami
The Dream That Runs Eternal
- Location
- The Daydreaming World
[X] [METAPHOR] Lines of code, inside the curve of every leaf, the shape of every cloud. It's all… procedural.
[X] [ASPECT] Is the thing broken? Are you broken? It can't be. This is your chance, the kind of money you could get could make the difference in your life, in your sister's life, in Mads' life. You can't let this slip away. If you did it'd be your fault. Wasting the chance to fix everything. Just one more failure. And then vines are reaching up from the floor, twining around you, and you know you can.
[X] [ASPECT] Is the thing broken? Are you broken? It can't be. This is your chance, the kind of money you could get could make the difference in your life, in your sister's life, in Mads' life. You can't let this slip away. If you did it'd be your fault. Wasting the chance to fix everything. Just one more failure. And then vines are reaching up from the floor, twining around you, and you know you can.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Not closing it just yet because I don't want to disadvantage time zones that are asleep right now, but seems so.
How do you mean rules not allowing the really fun stuff, though?
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Oh, those rules. Yeah, one of the reasons they're set up like that is to discourage supers from ending the world. On purpose or accidentally.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
That will be something you need to research, as specific interpretations of the Rules have never exactly been relevant to you before now (and you have no idea how you'd go around doing that either, so it's hardly high priority). That said, you've definitely seen supers with animal companions on the news, so there's gotta be some sort of wiggle room.
- Pronouns
- Reader
Life magic + new to power + oh no, person dying + first time working a healing spell = surprise super powered side effect = what? Was I supposed to stand there and watch a man die? What kind of superheroes are you?(get our of jail free card)
With programming we even have the unexpected outcomes being common thing!
A Bunch Of Atoms
...
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- Any
[X] [ASPECT] Embarrassment burns in your cheeks, and more than anything you just want to hide. You don't dare open your eyes, for fear of mockery (not that she would mock you for it, not in any real way, but knowing that doesn't make you feel it). You wish you could just disappear. And suddenly, you're wrapped in the cool, comforting embrace of shadowy tendrils.
[X] [METAPHOR] Words, poems, essays, lines of text. Each element described, each picture with a thousand words.
[X] [METAPHOR] Words, poems, essays, lines of text. Each element described, each picture with a thousand words.
- Location
- Oooooooh emotional roller coaster
If i'm not too late and way behind, then:
To those who accept their fate, happiness. To those who refuse it, glory.
[x] [ASPECT] You're not the only one who's been approached by these mascots. You know that. Others have figured it out. Probably with help from those things. You scraped and clawed to get here, to get your sister here. In spite of your parents, in spite of the fucked-up system giving them so much control. You're damn sure you won't be shown up by some pampered brats. You won't allow it. And then pure, shining golden light surrounds you, and you know you have something to be proud of. Something that's yours.
To those who accept their fate, happiness. To those who refuse it, glory.
[x] [ASPECT] You're not the only one who's been approached by these mascots. You know that. Others have figured it out. Probably with help from those things. You scraped and clawed to get here, to get your sister here. In spite of your parents, in spite of the fucked-up system giving them so much control. You're damn sure you won't be shown up by some pampered brats. You won't allow it. And then pure, shining golden light surrounds you, and you know you have something to be proud of. Something that's yours.
You aren't late, although what you are voting for would need 7 votes to win.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Still definitely in vote open range, but currently Life and Shadow are ahead of everything else by quite a bit.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Vote closed. Winners: Life (Guilt) and Programming.
1.3: Research
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Code runs through every leaf and branch, every blade of grass, but you know you're missing something. It's like there are layers of it, almost? You try to focus your sight, see beneath the surface, and for a split second you can see even more layers of code, beneath everything, blindingly bright without illuminating anything. And then the split second is followed by a splitting headache, as whatever happened to your vision snaps off, leaving you staring at an ordinary forest instead.
The capybara tilts their head, and you groan. "Why in the fuck…" you wince, rubbing at your head in a futile attempt to ease it. "That hurt."
<<I cannot see through your eyes, but it sounds as if you attempted to push your sight too far, too fast. I apologize, I should have warned you more clearly.>>
"It was like… everything was code, all of a sudden, but there was more code beneath it and I tried to see that and… ow."
<<Focusing your sight and understanding will take time. While your potential abilities are quite broad, the initiation ensures that you are combat-ready first. Esoteric knowledge is of little use if you cannot survive to utilize it.>>
"Right, because we're little soldiers for you, yes? Get in line and fight the baddies." You can't keep the bitterness out of your voice, nor can you really bring yourself to care.
<<Your initiation is one of heroism. As humans have long known, heroes who refuse the call to face evil have a distressing tendency to have evil come to them. Make no mistake, Alysanne Kelly, I do care for your well-being. Your survival is a necessary foundation of that.>>
Okay, now you feel like a heel. A little bit. "An initiation I didn't choose. But… ugh, fine. I get it." Thankfully, the headache is already starting to recede. "Am I going to need to use that sight whenever I need to do magic, or…?"
<<No. Once you have learned how to do something, it should come instinctively, as will most of your innate abilities. Your Sight is best utilized when experimenting with new capabilities, altering existing effects, or learning more about the world. As you grow more skilled with it it will allow you to perceive a great many things that ordinary mortals cannot.>>
"Innate abilities…" you rub at your forehead. "So, that would be the combat readiness you were talking about?"
<<Yes. While no two individuals are quite the same, from what I have seen I would guess that you have an innate ability to create and control plants, and quite likely heal. An attunement towards, for lack of a better English word, Life.>>
"Plants…" you frown, and fix your gaze on a flower. "How do I…"
<<Willing it to happen is the most common mechanism, but it varies. Once you have done it the first time, it will become as intuitive as moving your body.>>
Just desiring it to happen doesn't lead to anything. Probably for the best, given the risk of accidental magic use. Maybe… you focus. I need this to happen. I need to have control of my powers, I need to be able to do this or all of it was for nothing and I can't fix anything and-
Something clicks, and the flower grows, from a small bud to a bush, all at the guidance of your will… and then back again, back to normal, showing only slight changes from before. Experimentally, you focus your attention on the grass. This time it comes easily, naturally, with no need to talk yourself in the direction of a panic attack. The grass grows, un-grows, grows itself in a hollow circle, and then returns to normal. As well as you can remember normal, at least.
Coming out of the state of intense focus, though, you find yourself light-headed, almost woozy. "Why am I…?" you mumble.
<<Magic will consume energy of its own, and if you lack that energy then it will be as physical exertion does. Initial transformation and experimentation has likely consumed a great deal of your energy, and you have not yet given it time to recover.>> They shift, you sense something at the edge of your awareness, and with a flash of light a granola bar is in your lap. <<I took the liberty of acquiring this from your home before answering your call, in anticipation of this.>>
"...wait can you just burgle people?" you ask, unwrapping it and taking a bite. "What's stopping you from going wherever you want?"
<<Setting aside that that would be wrong and I would not do it, I cannot. I can only transport myself to people with magical signatures I know well, or places steeped in their presence. Thus, your home, or you yourself.>>
You just grunt in response, continuing to eat. At least that means teleporting mascots aren't going to rob everyone blind. Not that the capybara would, they seem like too much of a stick in the mud for that, but… you're not sure about that fox.
Questions for later, you suppose.
For the next couple days, you take it easy. Oh, you still go to work, but clearing the viruses off of some moron's laptop is easy, gives you a fair amount of downtime, and you've become highly resistant to the psychic damage of seeing some stranger's porn habits. That downtime gives you plenty of time to research.
Before you became a magical girl, you never had much interest in the super scene. You knew it existed, of course, but beyond the household names that no one could really miss, it never impacted your life enough for you to bother caring. Now, though… now, it's pretty relevant.
The easiest topic of research comes first, of course: the Seven. The Rules are easy, you can find them listed anywhere, but… you get the feeling, skimming over them, that this can't be the be-all, end-all. They're too short to be a code of law, too much room for vague interpretation. Whatever the more specific lines are, though, aren't listed anywhere you can find. Maybe they're something supers only discuss among themselves?
The Seven themselves, though, turn out not to be the unchanging monolith that you thought. Only four of the current Seven were in the original crop, three of them having died (or "died" – as it turns out, supers die and come back enough that it is customary to just refer to them as "MIA" even when you do have the body). The current listing is… you don't know what you expected, but it's interesting regardless.
Gravity Lass you knew of, of course. She's one of the earliest, most iconic heroes, making her main home in New York. Her core power is gravity manipulation, which she can control in a fairly wide range around her, in frankly physically absurd ways. Flight and rough telekinesis, sure, but micro black holes? A gravity-based skintight forcefield? What the fuck? She also hasn't visibly aged a day since she was old enough to drink, but you have no idea whether to pin that to her powers or something else.
The Suzerain is similarly well-known to you, though for… substantially less positive reasons. He is an old-school supervillain, rules his own nation (which he claims is a successor to the Ottoman Empire) as sultan, and has tried to conquer the world more than once. He is, for better or for worse, also well-known to keep to the letter of his agreements and abhor unnecessary violence and destruction. His metahuman ability seems to be broad-spectrum hyper-intelligence, which he uses to great effect. He ascribes his apparent biological immortality to his advanced science.
Oddly, he and Gravity Lass have had a number of major battles since the establishment of the Seven, but that doesn't seem to affect their membership. Good at compartmentalizing, maybe?
Basileus is one of the newer crop, joined in 2015. He eschews what he calls the "hero-villain dichotomy" and instead sells his services as a strategic planner and mercenary. His metahuman abilities include advanced intelligence and combat ability.
A'ta'a-a (which you cannot pronounce to save your life) is an alien metahuman, which… raises a whole lot of questions, actually. You're no biology expert – though it sounds like maybe you should look into fixing that – but humans and aliens should be more distant genetically than humans and bananas, right? Aliens shouldn't have directly analogous genetic phenomena, right? Unless maybe it's just a term of convenience for convergent… you know what, no. Doesn't matter for now.
She has energy manipulation powers, absorbs energy and converts it into other forms. Can shoot beams, make force fields, make hardlight constructs. Enhanced baseline physical abilities, too. She runs around as a hero, but keeps moving between hero teams. She's one of the originals.
Vault is an independent, with metahuman traits related to dimensional manipulation that apparently give him an incredible gift for math. Or maybe he's just naturally good at math and the powers need that to work properly? Opinions are divided, and he's not sharing. He offers financial and banking services to heroes and villains across the world, as well as the wealthy in general. He claims to be unaffected by mental abilities, and that items and money stored through him are utterly untouchable. His physical abilities are unclear, since most people aren't interested in fighting someone who handles their money, but someone did try to shoot him on camera once and the bullet just vanished into the ether before it hit him. He, too, is one of the original Seven.
Gadgeteer, the most recent to join the Seven, is an independent inventor, with metahuman abilities geared towards invention and a dose of technopathy. When he fights, he usually sends drones, suiting up in power armor when his personal presence is required. No one's ever actually seen his face, as far as you can tell. You're not entirely sure what purpose he serves on the Seven, but you do know that he manages one of the big, ostensibly secure, mechanisms for capes to have digital communication without risking their identities. It predates his position on the Seven, but maybe that was a qualifying factor? They don't exactly publicize how they choose new members. It would probably undermine the mystique.
Starsworn is more of a title than an individual identifier, you find; there have been three Starsworns on the group, each inheriting the title from the last, along with a name of their own. They're cagey on the specifics, but it seems to be an Atlantean title for one of their greatest magic users, with a linkage to some sort of astrology. Certainly, all three have shown advanced magical abilities, though the specifics vary. The current Starsworn, a young woman calling herself Atapiac, joined in 2020, and in her first appearance shattered a spell that had overlapped Chicago with an alternate Chicago in a reality where sapient humanoid frogs ruled the world.
That was a really weird week.
"So, let's talk about the debut."
You blink, looking up at Madison from your laptop, finding that she's set her sketchbook down. "What?"
"Well, you need to make your debut in the next couple days, right? So you can get a message with a job offer for the evening."
"Uh… yeah, right. I was thinking probably just a standard cape patrol, but… I'm not sure."
"Right. So, first off, if you get yourself killed I will reverse haunt you."
"...reverse haunt?"
"Like a haunting, only the ghost is the one who can't get away."
"...noted."
"Now that that's out of the way, I've been doing some research myself. The way I see it, you've got a few options. The most dangerous, stupid, and boneheaded is also the most obvious. Find a cape and jump them. Villains are going to be easiest there, especially some of the gangers, since they have, you know, territories."
"Hm. I hadn't actually thought of that one. Sounds… reliable, at least, but real risky." Jumping a cape in their territory… a lot of them would fight like cornered animals, and who knows what traps or resources they might have?
"Yeah. I don't recommend it, odds are way too high you come out significantly injured."
"On the other hand…" you consider it for a minute. Conjure some vines, maybe, and… "If I can actually pull off an ambush, I can just tie down most capes before they know what's up."
"Big, dangerous if, though."
"Yeah. My original thought was basically going on a patrol, like most heroes do. Either find a cape fight and join in, find some shitheads trying to mug someone or do a drug deal, or find a cape on patrol and ask to join in."
Madison nodded. "Yeah, those were the others I came up with as well. Goons are safest, cape fight is mostly likely to get you some attention, joining a patrol is a bit unreliable but could get you good contacts as well."
"Yeah. And whatever it is, it should be soon. Gotta give time for the turnaround, and to recover from any exhaustion. Don't know how good my healing will be."
Madison blinked. "Wait, one last option. Do a little ambulance chasing, heal someone up with your magic. Good way to make a splash without making any enemies. Well, outside of hospitals. It's probably illegal to do metahuman healing without a license."
"Hm. That's not a bad idea, actually, though… the fox said her contact wanted muscle. A healer might not do the trick."
Madison waved a hand airily. "Everyone wants a healer, though. Especially when they intend to get into a fight."
She does have a point. You know Caduceus over in Dallas is pretty much untouchable, and sells her services to everyone. Granted, she can do a lot more than just heal, and you're not entirely sure of your limits.
Still… it's a thought.
[ ] Identify a cape territory, sneak in, and jump them once they show up in costume. Deliver them to law enforcement, so your name gets spread.
+Trait: Hit Them Where They Live
[ ] Patrol at night, until you find a cape fight. Dive in and kick some ass.
+Trait: Strike First, Debate Later
[ ] Patrol at night, until you find some goons doing something unwise. Kick their asses.
+Trait: Never Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
[ ] Approach an existing cape out on patrol, ask if you can tag along to make your "public debut."
+Trait: When In Doubt, Ask
[ ] Try some ambulance chasing, and heal some folks up, making sure it gets seen.
+Trait: Enlightened Self-Interest
The capybara tilts their head, and you groan. "Why in the fuck…" you wince, rubbing at your head in a futile attempt to ease it. "That hurt."
<<I cannot see through your eyes, but it sounds as if you attempted to push your sight too far, too fast. I apologize, I should have warned you more clearly.>>
"It was like… everything was code, all of a sudden, but there was more code beneath it and I tried to see that and… ow."
<<Focusing your sight and understanding will take time. While your potential abilities are quite broad, the initiation ensures that you are combat-ready first. Esoteric knowledge is of little use if you cannot survive to utilize it.>>
"Right, because we're little soldiers for you, yes? Get in line and fight the baddies." You can't keep the bitterness out of your voice, nor can you really bring yourself to care.
<<Your initiation is one of heroism. As humans have long known, heroes who refuse the call to face evil have a distressing tendency to have evil come to them. Make no mistake, Alysanne Kelly, I do care for your well-being. Your survival is a necessary foundation of that.>>
Okay, now you feel like a heel. A little bit. "An initiation I didn't choose. But… ugh, fine. I get it." Thankfully, the headache is already starting to recede. "Am I going to need to use that sight whenever I need to do magic, or…?"
<<No. Once you have learned how to do something, it should come instinctively, as will most of your innate abilities. Your Sight is best utilized when experimenting with new capabilities, altering existing effects, or learning more about the world. As you grow more skilled with it it will allow you to perceive a great many things that ordinary mortals cannot.>>
"Innate abilities…" you rub at your forehead. "So, that would be the combat readiness you were talking about?"
<<Yes. While no two individuals are quite the same, from what I have seen I would guess that you have an innate ability to create and control plants, and quite likely heal. An attunement towards, for lack of a better English word, Life.>>
"Plants…" you frown, and fix your gaze on a flower. "How do I…"
<<Willing it to happen is the most common mechanism, but it varies. Once you have done it the first time, it will become as intuitive as moving your body.>>
Just desiring it to happen doesn't lead to anything. Probably for the best, given the risk of accidental magic use. Maybe… you focus. I need this to happen. I need to have control of my powers, I need to be able to do this or all of it was for nothing and I can't fix anything and-
Something clicks, and the flower grows, from a small bud to a bush, all at the guidance of your will… and then back again, back to normal, showing only slight changes from before. Experimentally, you focus your attention on the grass. This time it comes easily, naturally, with no need to talk yourself in the direction of a panic attack. The grass grows, un-grows, grows itself in a hollow circle, and then returns to normal. As well as you can remember normal, at least.
Coming out of the state of intense focus, though, you find yourself light-headed, almost woozy. "Why am I…?" you mumble.
<<Magic will consume energy of its own, and if you lack that energy then it will be as physical exertion does. Initial transformation and experimentation has likely consumed a great deal of your energy, and you have not yet given it time to recover.>> They shift, you sense something at the edge of your awareness, and with a flash of light a granola bar is in your lap. <<I took the liberty of acquiring this from your home before answering your call, in anticipation of this.>>
"...wait can you just burgle people?" you ask, unwrapping it and taking a bite. "What's stopping you from going wherever you want?"
<<Setting aside that that would be wrong and I would not do it, I cannot. I can only transport myself to people with magical signatures I know well, or places steeped in their presence. Thus, your home, or you yourself.>>
You just grunt in response, continuing to eat. At least that means teleporting mascots aren't going to rob everyone blind. Not that the capybara would, they seem like too much of a stick in the mud for that, but… you're not sure about that fox.
Questions for later, you suppose.
For the next couple days, you take it easy. Oh, you still go to work, but clearing the viruses off of some moron's laptop is easy, gives you a fair amount of downtime, and you've become highly resistant to the psychic damage of seeing some stranger's porn habits. That downtime gives you plenty of time to research.
Before you became a magical girl, you never had much interest in the super scene. You knew it existed, of course, but beyond the household names that no one could really miss, it never impacted your life enough for you to bother caring. Now, though… now, it's pretty relevant.
The easiest topic of research comes first, of course: the Seven. The Rules are easy, you can find them listed anywhere, but… you get the feeling, skimming over them, that this can't be the be-all, end-all. They're too short to be a code of law, too much room for vague interpretation. Whatever the more specific lines are, though, aren't listed anywhere you can find. Maybe they're something supers only discuss among themselves?
The Seven themselves, though, turn out not to be the unchanging monolith that you thought. Only four of the current Seven were in the original crop, three of them having died (or "died" – as it turns out, supers die and come back enough that it is customary to just refer to them as "MIA" even when you do have the body). The current listing is… you don't know what you expected, but it's interesting regardless.
Gravity Lass you knew of, of course. She's one of the earliest, most iconic heroes, making her main home in New York. Her core power is gravity manipulation, which she can control in a fairly wide range around her, in frankly physically absurd ways. Flight and rough telekinesis, sure, but micro black holes? A gravity-based skintight forcefield? What the fuck? She also hasn't visibly aged a day since she was old enough to drink, but you have no idea whether to pin that to her powers or something else.
The Suzerain is similarly well-known to you, though for… substantially less positive reasons. He is an old-school supervillain, rules his own nation (which he claims is a successor to the Ottoman Empire) as sultan, and has tried to conquer the world more than once. He is, for better or for worse, also well-known to keep to the letter of his agreements and abhor unnecessary violence and destruction. His metahuman ability seems to be broad-spectrum hyper-intelligence, which he uses to great effect. He ascribes his apparent biological immortality to his advanced science.
Oddly, he and Gravity Lass have had a number of major battles since the establishment of the Seven, but that doesn't seem to affect their membership. Good at compartmentalizing, maybe?
Basileus is one of the newer crop, joined in 2015. He eschews what he calls the "hero-villain dichotomy" and instead sells his services as a strategic planner and mercenary. His metahuman abilities include advanced intelligence and combat ability.
A'ta'a-a (which you cannot pronounce to save your life) is an alien metahuman, which… raises a whole lot of questions, actually. You're no biology expert – though it sounds like maybe you should look into fixing that – but humans and aliens should be more distant genetically than humans and bananas, right? Aliens shouldn't have directly analogous genetic phenomena, right? Unless maybe it's just a term of convenience for convergent… you know what, no. Doesn't matter for now.
She has energy manipulation powers, absorbs energy and converts it into other forms. Can shoot beams, make force fields, make hardlight constructs. Enhanced baseline physical abilities, too. She runs around as a hero, but keeps moving between hero teams. She's one of the originals.
Vault is an independent, with metahuman traits related to dimensional manipulation that apparently give him an incredible gift for math. Or maybe he's just naturally good at math and the powers need that to work properly? Opinions are divided, and he's not sharing. He offers financial and banking services to heroes and villains across the world, as well as the wealthy in general. He claims to be unaffected by mental abilities, and that items and money stored through him are utterly untouchable. His physical abilities are unclear, since most people aren't interested in fighting someone who handles their money, but someone did try to shoot him on camera once and the bullet just vanished into the ether before it hit him. He, too, is one of the original Seven.
Gadgeteer, the most recent to join the Seven, is an independent inventor, with metahuman abilities geared towards invention and a dose of technopathy. When he fights, he usually sends drones, suiting up in power armor when his personal presence is required. No one's ever actually seen his face, as far as you can tell. You're not entirely sure what purpose he serves on the Seven, but you do know that he manages one of the big, ostensibly secure, mechanisms for capes to have digital communication without risking their identities. It predates his position on the Seven, but maybe that was a qualifying factor? They don't exactly publicize how they choose new members. It would probably undermine the mystique.
Starsworn is more of a title than an individual identifier, you find; there have been three Starsworns on the group, each inheriting the title from the last, along with a name of their own. They're cagey on the specifics, but it seems to be an Atlantean title for one of their greatest magic users, with a linkage to some sort of astrology. Certainly, all three have shown advanced magical abilities, though the specifics vary. The current Starsworn, a young woman calling herself Atapiac, joined in 2020, and in her first appearance shattered a spell that had overlapped Chicago with an alternate Chicago in a reality where sapient humanoid frogs ruled the world.
That was a really weird week.
"So, let's talk about the debut."
You blink, looking up at Madison from your laptop, finding that she's set her sketchbook down. "What?"
"Well, you need to make your debut in the next couple days, right? So you can get a message with a job offer for the evening."
"Uh… yeah, right. I was thinking probably just a standard cape patrol, but… I'm not sure."
"Right. So, first off, if you get yourself killed I will reverse haunt you."
"...reverse haunt?"
"Like a haunting, only the ghost is the one who can't get away."
"...noted."
"Now that that's out of the way, I've been doing some research myself. The way I see it, you've got a few options. The most dangerous, stupid, and boneheaded is also the most obvious. Find a cape and jump them. Villains are going to be easiest there, especially some of the gangers, since they have, you know, territories."
"Hm. I hadn't actually thought of that one. Sounds… reliable, at least, but real risky." Jumping a cape in their territory… a lot of them would fight like cornered animals, and who knows what traps or resources they might have?
"Yeah. I don't recommend it, odds are way too high you come out significantly injured."
"On the other hand…" you consider it for a minute. Conjure some vines, maybe, and… "If I can actually pull off an ambush, I can just tie down most capes before they know what's up."
"Big, dangerous if, though."
"Yeah. My original thought was basically going on a patrol, like most heroes do. Either find a cape fight and join in, find some shitheads trying to mug someone or do a drug deal, or find a cape on patrol and ask to join in."
Madison nodded. "Yeah, those were the others I came up with as well. Goons are safest, cape fight is mostly likely to get you some attention, joining a patrol is a bit unreliable but could get you good contacts as well."
"Yeah. And whatever it is, it should be soon. Gotta give time for the turnaround, and to recover from any exhaustion. Don't know how good my healing will be."
Madison blinked. "Wait, one last option. Do a little ambulance chasing, heal someone up with your magic. Good way to make a splash without making any enemies. Well, outside of hospitals. It's probably illegal to do metahuman healing without a license."
"Hm. That's not a bad idea, actually, though… the fox said her contact wanted muscle. A healer might not do the trick."
Madison waved a hand airily. "Everyone wants a healer, though. Especially when they intend to get into a fight."
She does have a point. You know Caduceus over in Dallas is pretty much untouchable, and sells her services to everyone. Granted, she can do a lot more than just heal, and you're not entirely sure of your limits.
Still… it's a thought.
[ ] Identify a cape territory, sneak in, and jump them once they show up in costume. Deliver them to law enforcement, so your name gets spread.
+Trait: Hit Them Where They Live
[ ] Patrol at night, until you find a cape fight. Dive in and kick some ass.
+Trait: Strike First, Debate Later
[ ] Patrol at night, until you find some goons doing something unwise. Kick their asses.
+Trait: Never Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
[ ] Approach an existing cape out on patrol, ask if you can tag along to make your "public debut."
+Trait: When In Doubt, Ask
[ ] Try some ambulance chasing, and heal some folks up, making sure it gets seen.
+Trait: Enlightened Self-Interest
I am gonna assume this is a Victor Doom Expy.
And this a Number Man Expy, with a buff.
I rolled a dice because i couldn't decide on what to do, and this won.
[X] Patrol at night, until you find a cape fight. Dive in and kick some ass.
We need a name, someone halp us because i am shit with names.
Last edited:
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
He's more or less Ottoman Von Doom yes. Without THAT FOOL, RICHARDS though.
He fills one of Number Man's niches, but not all of them, and comes at it from a fairly different angle. There's some similarity, but I wouldn't really call him an expy. As far as his history, the item storage came first, money storage came later.
[X] Try some ambulance chasing, and heal some folks up, making sure it gets seen.