[General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Ford Prefect »

Jesus, I can just about see the shorts and suspenders.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

The girl must almost always get kidnapped, or wander into trouble, or otherwise be a damsel in distress? :P
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

This guy sounds utterly crazy, so crazy he just might work! I like the idea that as nuts as he was, his sidekicks actually go on to be a bunch of awesome detectives and vigilantes, and that while he was crazy he was also a mad genius in the best sense of the word.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

One of his clue-solving apprentices become a McCarthyist Senator and the other becomes Russel Crowe from A Beautiful Mind?
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Malchus »

Just a barely-formed idea I'm not even sure I'll pursue. No real ideas on background and motivation and whatnot, but I've a few ideas on the physical details at least.

The Hussar

> Wears powered armored with a look that resembles a stylized version of a 17th Century winged hussar's armor. The wings are for maneuvering in the air, with lift provided by a small jetpack.
> His mount is a teched-up motorcycle with an AI auto-driver system and a few weapons and goodies.
> His signature weapon is a lance torpedo, which is a handheld version of a spar torpedo. He uses these mostly against vehicles by ramming the barb-tipped lance into the vehicle's skin, disengaging the bomb tip from the lance handle. This sends him flying off his bike (which goes its own merry automated way) while keeping hold of the lance. This tugs on a wire connecting the handle to the bomb, which explodes once the wire yanks off the detonation pin. He flies off to safety with his wings.
>Automated aerial drones carry extra lance torpedoes. He either flies to them to get reloaded, or they drop them down to him. The drones also serve as aerial surveillance.
>His other weapons include a pistol resembling a Mauser C96, but with furnishings to make it look like an old wheelock, and a cavalry saber.

That's pretty much it for now. I'm not even sure I'd like him to be actually Polish, or just some non-Polish hussar fanboy.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Invictus »

My main question would be why is this guy so focused on being able to wreck armored vehicles in melee. Is he a Teknoken participant? Maybe he hunts Kragoreshtani marauder robots because they killed his family?
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Maybe he just wants to ruin the shit of grinning Germanian maniacs out trying to conquer the world every week? :D

Why not a biomechanical horse? Similar to Vic's own knight and dragon story, that old one set in The Logical World.

I had a similar idea, since PeZook (from SDN) showed me an awesome book cover with a cyborg Hussar, but I repressed the urge to write a cybernetic Polish killing machine and wrote a German True Lies instead.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Malchus »

@Vic: Well, character explanation is that it's a "fuck you" at that "stupid Polish cavalry tried to charge armored vehicles" bit of Nazi propaganda that some have taken as true and sometimes conflate with hussars, which would infuriate an avowed hussar fanboy like him. Mostly, though, I thought it would be such an insanely stupid and totally awesome way of attacking it could only work in Hollywood--or Comix.

@Shroom: Blame Discovery Channel for rerunning the first season of American Chopper. Plus, y'know, motorbikes can go way faster than mechanical horses.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Malchus »

While that is pretty awesome, I envision the armor as something like the final armor Tony Stark wore in Ironman 2. Escept with a hussar-ish feel. And, well, his bike is made with a sort of stylized armored horse theme.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Czernobog »

Random character idea (just checking it for originality and goodness)

The Aeon King

>Was born 10,000 years into our future, on a world ravaged by nuclear war after the fall of the Terran Empire. He conquered it and led his people to the stars.
>Led a massive army to conquer half the galaxy, including Terra, founding the Galactic Supremacy. After this, he discovered the secret of time travel, and decided to test his prowess against our earth, 10,000 years in his past.
>Failed due to arrogance (he didn't expect metahumans (they were a myth by his time)) and now resolves to conquer our time out of, primarily, an obssessive inability to give up on something.
>Limitations of his time travel technology: can only travel between his past and his subjective present and cannot travel to a period where he already exists, can only bring about 7 people with him (main cause of his failures, after arrogance).
>His technology is so ridiculously advanced that to us it seems like magic, but it is limited by how much he and his 7 Magisterial Warlords (more on them later) can carry. Physically, due to various cybernetic and genetic modifications, he can barely be called human (his consciousness can also jump around through various bodies as necessity requires).
>The 7 Magisterial Warlords are the 7 greatest generals of human history pre-spaceflight, resurrected as his generals. They are: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Belisarius, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Irwin Rommel.
>Due to a number of mind-uploads, he'll pretty much be a constant menace if/until somebody destroys his throneworld. Due to the fact he's dealing with a space cold war, this could happen sooner rather than later.

Any comments/criticisms or anything else?
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Mobius 1 »

Waht. This is some sort of joke, right? Right?
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Invictus »

Well, that's one way to design a reusable bossfight. Usual constructive criticism applied so I'm not going to repeat it here. Put another thousand words into it and it might become a decent idea, or it might not. As it is now, I won't even try to render judgment on it.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Czernobog »

Mobius 1 wrote:Waht. This is some sort of joke, right? Right?
To be fair, I did not intend to rip off the AEON KHAN - The only similarity is the name, I was going for an entirely different character, with the name only intended to fit the time travel theme.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Czernobog »

Invictus wrote:Well, that's one way to design a reusable bossfight. Usual constructive criticism applied so I'm not going to repeat it here. Put another thousand words into it and it might become a decent idea, or it might not. As it is now, I won't even try to render judgment on it.
Doesn't matter, I'm off to start work on a completely different Comix character idea. Will be German, so people may not like that, but who won't be your standard insane villain.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Invictus »

Here's another thing. I'm not against people pitching their skeletal ideas here, since developing concepts into full-blown characters is what this thread is for. Every scrap can hypothetically be refined into a good idea through patience and feedback, although this one trips on so many of Comix's thorny issues (time travel, galactic empires with an eye on Earth, resurrecting historical figures, etc.) it's probably unsalvagable in practice. I was even going to suggest that you should focus more on imagination-catching hooks about the character and less on weighing threat levels and limiting factors in a misconceived attempt for acceptance but hey, you were quite quick to declare it abandoned. Hope your next idea looks more palatable, I guess.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Ah, yes, better luck next time, Kamin. Still, what Vic just said about imagination catching hooks is a good piece of advice, try to think of things like that for whoever your next character is.

OK, I have a few ideas I might like to emit here regarding my mercenary character. I have been mainly thinking about his background and his old team, the Thunderchildren, so as of yet I still don't have much on his relationship with Moses Knight. I'll post a few of these ideas anyway just to see if it sparks something.

His name is Derek Morse and he was born to a respected doctor and researcher called James Morse, but James was never entirely sure whether Derek and his brother Martin were really his sons, which led to him taking extreme lengths to make them his. One was to pressure them both into going into medical school, another was testing experimental concentration drugs on them. Martin went to medical school, Derek went into the army, Martin gained extraordinary extrasensory perception, so precise that even being in normal human company caused him to pass out from the pain of remotely feeling so much movement, while Derek gained superhuman awareness of his surroundings, superhuman balance, and the power to kill a yak from two hundred yards away with mind bullets.

Derek began his career in superheroism when, as a young soldier attending a parade, he saved the Queen's life from a Shadow Legion assassin using his telekinetic powers. He was immediately taken in by RACKET, who decided, somehow, that Britain needed a superhero for the post-war age, and that hero would be known as H.M.S!

H.M.S was put forward as Britain's new wonderboy with his powers of flight (through telekinesis) and yakslaughter, he often worked alongside Major Britannic, and both being military men they got along surprisingly well. The Thunderchildren entered into things a bit later, when H.M.S was a well established and well respected superhero, these disparate, superpowered youngsters from across the Commonwealth were in need of someone to guide their hands as they tried to help the world and perform awesome deeds, and who better to do that than the steady, sensible and patriotic H.M.S?

The Thunderchildren (who I've thought of) were:

Journeyman; The son of Indian immigrants, and nephew of a former Gurkha turned adventurer, from whom he inherited his enterprising spirit, gadgets and martial arts training. A certifiable genius at the tender age of sixteen, with no physical powers beyond furiously honed physical fitness and an array of ingenious devices, both inherited and invented.

Pathfinder; A strange young Canadian girl named Freya Gray, trained in mysterious shamanic arts by her strange wild family and some native shamans, she also claimed to have spent some time at a magical school at the North Pole. Her mastery of magic, ability to speak with the spirits and sense the unseen, as well as occasionally transform into animals and venture into the spirit world, was used to fight the enemies of civilisation.

Tidal; A shy young man with the power to control the motion of water, with potentially devastating results, as witnessed by the carnage he caused in Bristol while trying to fight off a group of monstrous fish creatures. Under H.M.S's tutelage he learned increasingly to control his mighty but chaotic powers.

Moonbeam; She came from the Ten Thousand Lanterns of the Home Clusters, an alien who called herself a Princess of the Universe, a beautiful vision blazing in silver with the power to change reality around her to protect and support her friends. She came to bring hope to our planet from the far side of the Orion Gulf, and when she was gone, Derek had no hope left.

Their final charge will be in the late sixties or early seventies, and I'm still mulling over how many of them have to die, what I do know is that Moonbeam does have to go, and the manner of her death was shocking enough that Derek turned his back on the British Army forever, so that as far as everyone knows, none of the Thunderchildren survived.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Invictus »

If you're still going for the Teen Titans analogue, then I think the team needs a fifth member in the form of a speedster. Purely tactical-wise, I think the team needs some kind of tanky member because none of the existing ones seem up to it (unless you are intending to have H.M.S. himself fulfill the role). Other than that, the Thunderchildren look fairly well-rounded already and I don't think they need many more members.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Malchus »

Moonbeam's reality-bending powers leave all sorts of horrific ways for her to die. Like, say, if the British Army made her over-tax her power to the point that the time-space around her completely fell apart. The place of her death could be some place of permanently twisted space-time, with an appearance that would make M. C. Escher at his most creative look plain. Maybe, when looking at the insanely broken, you also catch glimpses of her past, making it an even more painful reminder.

I imagine having that as her sort-of grave would be more than sufficient to throughly break Derek. The place is so twisted and broken that anything that goes in it ends up being swept up in chaos, and just looking at it gives him occasional glimpses of happy memories interwoven with a tangled patch of reality that's already literally difficult to look at.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Invictus »

It also leaves me curious as to what exact sort of heavy shit went down during the Thunderchildren's final mission as to be enough to do in a Vo-Mirrek. It would be a good opportunity to establish the Princesses of the Universe's general abilities and power level.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Malchus, that is an excellently horrible idea, and probably better than the one I had come up with before (which was basically that she had been using her powers to make herself appear humanoid rather than the insectoid she was, this failed due to injuries and the Army mistook her for an enemy biomorph). Thanks!

Vic, I've thought about adding a Kid Flash and a Wonder Girl analogue to the roster, but so far my conceptualisation of them only goes as far as 'Kid Flash and Wonder Girl analogues'. H.M.S is probably the closest thing they have to a tank in this lineup, and possibly Moonbeam as well, if I could only work out what her powers were. I still have to do a lot of working out for the Vo-Mirrek's powers, it would be very easy for them just to become insectoid Green Lanterns, but I want something a bit more distinctive.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Malchus »

Well, maybe you could go with some sort of "visual" analog for their reality bending. For Justinian, I made it so that he'd perceive reality as threads of time-space which he pulls out and weaves into his little tesseracts. However, this is only how he sees things and it may not be how others see reality.

Maybe, for the Vo-Mirrek, you can do something similar but not quite. Like, say, they might see reality not as threats but strings to be plucked and played like music, so the manipulation of reality is literally music to their ears. Or, y'know, something to that effect. Another possibility is that reality is to them as water is to fish. Fish move through the water by making fine fin and body manipulations to move the water around them to their ends. Similarly, maybe the Vo-Mirrek exist on a level that they have to actively manipulate the local reality around them in some manner to exist through it. Their normal "motions" don't produce disturbances in reality that most people notice but, as some fish sometimes purposely produce wild disturbances in the water to disorient or even stun other fish, they're capable of distorting reality for offensive/defensive purposes if needed. But, as a fish can only manipulate the water in the immediate vicinity, a Vo-Mirrek can only really manipulate reality up to a certain area of influence.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

The music and string idea is awesome and lends to the idea of awesome alien musical instrument-artifacts. And ties in with the POWER OF ROCK! AND goes with the whole PRINCESSES OF THE UNIVERSE thing, which is also a lyric from Queen. :D
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Invictus »

Speaker: I can understand, since there's only so much you can do with speedsters and Wonder Girl-like characters generally need you to create some totally new realm/dimension/world for them to be from. Though Moonbeam resembles Starfire more, I think the Wonder Girl niche is as good as occupied by her as well. Come to think of it, I also like the arrangement of the team having no "tank" other than H.M.S. himself, since it makes them all the more fragile and reliant on him to stay intact.

I can contribute one concept I've had for a young speedster: "The Human Chainsaw", who since infancy has possessed, or rather suffered, from a condition which can basically and unpleasantly be called "super-epilepsy." It causes his body to twitch uncontrollably at superhuman speeds, but when controlled with rudimentary medication he can turn the twitching into a high-speed resonant vibration which can shake apart objects he is in contact of of turn sharp objects in his hands into super-efficient cutting instruments. When sufficiently medicated he can also coordinate enough of his muscles to make short bursts of superspeed movement. Needless to say, he is incapable of living a normal life.

Malchus et Shroom: I think the idea of the Vo-Mirrek exercising their powers by playing the universe like an oversized musical instrument is wonderfully evocative. However, I think it's a bit too much to make the species exist naturally in a higher layer of reality. If anything, it's the symbiotic "worms" that empower them which exist in this state, their psychic network forming a vast web across the galaxy which is only tangible to their hosts and few others. The Princess of the Universe would draw their so far undefined archetypal powers through this medium.
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Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

The special chosen (BORN TO BE QUEENS!) Princesses of the Universe being the ones who do the whole music of the spheres thing is cool. Everyone of their species being able to do this, not so.

Unless the "normal" members of their species can only do so in a very limited fashion, like perceiving the universe-musics like how we hear normal sound or like how we perceive the electromagnetic spectrum in a very limited fashion with our eyes, and being able to manipulate it/make vibrations no better than how our lungs and mouths make us speak by vibrating the air slightly (rather than vibrating the air so powerfully that the soundwaves break things).
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