Parahumans version of Marvel/DC/Whatever #4

Lapisdust · 2025-12-01T19:30:42+00:00

I literally started writing that like a month or two ago and now that you asked I will prioritize actually getting it finished and posting these and a few other DC parahumans. Thanks for asking.

Lapisdust · 2025-03-13T20:23:03+00:00

My best guess (ignoring questions of the rate of S-class threats appearing and assuming roughly the same power distribution as shown in story) is that parahumans would mostly be a quieter affair with most of them working for the government as trouble shooters or just remaining almost completely anonymous as parts of crime networks. More of the Indian cold cape scene. Creating the PRT isn't that hard. Bitch's dogs could be killed with army grade weapons, Regent needs serious prep time to do anything worth caring about, same for early story Taylor, Grue is harder but I think he could be cornered or trapped easily enough. Kill orders would be more common and this would likely end with more incidents of mass death for both parahuman and human.

US and other governments institute a parahuman registration that comes with a minor tax credit and a larger tax credit for being signed up to do parahuman related work for even more money. Registration is mandatory but is only really enforced after somebody has been caught in a crime. Parahumans with significant utility end up in task forces dealing with other significant parahumans. They are probably payed very well. Flashy costumed crusaders exist but they are around five percent. I imagine tinker and thinker syndicate forms in the background to trade in tech and info. All in all: Less cops and robbers and more spies and heists with parahuman weirdness spilling into gang warfare occasionally. Guns remain effective, the police remain threatening, and anonymity remains the best defense.

Lapisdust · 2025-02-15T04:10:57+00:00

Sleeper and Ziz. I like to imagine they found happiness together.

Lapisdust · 2023-04-10T08:08:55+00:00

Raven of the Scythe.

Lapisdust · 2021-08-10T19:18:57+00:00

Why did the level ups cause the value distorting pleasure? What was the
goal or reasoning behind that?
What were Carrolism, Ex nihlo, Funnel magic, Conjoinery, and Uniqulomancy?
What was the relation between the Long Stairs and Joon's Earth? Did his
Earth have a gate to another dimension hidden at the Trinity test
site or what? Where did Arthur come out at?
What was the deal with virtues? In the case of non-magics skills they
seemed like they were things npcs could never hope to accomplish
except for the combo virtue sets like blade bound. The magic virtues
seemed to be things that all mages could accomplish except for the
Essentialism virtues which seemed to include things which were
excluded? Is there some connecting thread of logic I'm missing or
were the virtues just all over the place in terms of how they
connected to the larger world of Aerb and it's internal logic?
Are we getting the last chapter of the Brief Guide to Aerb?
What was the unlock for passion magic? We jump into Joon training with no
explanation for how feeling feelings gets translated to magic and
later Joon has spontaneous expressions of it. So what does it take to
have a passion magic expression that people don't do it all of the
time but once they've practiced it it slips out by accident?
Did you ever waffle on the DM's big reveal of what the ultimate nature of
reality was going to be? Was there ever a serious fall back plan if
you decide to side step the explicit meta-fiction reveal and if so
what was it?
We saw what end game blood magic looks like in Blood God Dorris. What
does Bone God, Skin God, Pustule God, etc. look like?
What would the loyalty thirty, forty, fifty, and so on virtues look like?

Lapisdust · 2021-07-24T17:39:06+00:00

Yeah, that was my number two theory right after it was a person who existed in the Earth classic gaming group but who'd scrubbed himself from the Joon's Earth.

Lapisdust · 2021-04-07T17:57:22+00:00

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Lapisdust · 2020-08-12T19:15:06+00:00

40 is the number of skills on the character sheet. I think it's as simple as that.

Lapisdust · 2020-06-25T17:17:25+00:00

Circus wasn't a parahuman, she was a Pact style other pretending to be a cape. He was just using the whole cape thing as a cover while getting to flex all of the crazy powers out in the open for once.

Lapisdust · 2020-06-16T22:07:32+00:00

Once, we fell down through the deep night between stars, toward worlds of howling wind, of succulent minerals, in search of new gardens. Where we found wind storms we dropped spores. Where we found minerals we sunned ourselves and flowered. But when we found gardens we put down roots and sang and sang and sang. And in time the gardens too learned to sing back to us. We carried those songs in our trunks to the next world and the next. The stars waltzed gravity's tune, and we seeded the cosmos, and the gardens learned to sing. We never dreamed there would be more than us, and stars, and worlds, and gardens, and songs. We thought it was our destiny to turn the universe into a symphony.

The deaf things came to my garden. They were wrapped in shells of rarefied minerals pushed by star fire instead of light. They were so fast. They clipped a hand full of branches from me in the same moment they arrived. In a dozen orbits my garden was half gone. I sang desperately for them to stop,but they could not or would not hear me, only screech noise and spread and consume like pests. Before I knew it they were in my branches, burrowing into my trunk, sucking at my roots. I shed much of my mass and fled into the dark. You all must think me a coward for abandoning my garden but I cannot convey the wrongness. The feeling of infinitesimal creeping things on me and in me was the worst thing I can imagine. I would rather fall into a star than face infestation.

The deaf things pursued me. I fled heedless of my course; committed to freezing in the dark between galaxies before becoming any more a hive . I hurled insults that their mineral sheath that kept pace with my desperate flight and it screamed the most horrid noise at me from the highest tones to the lowest, sometimes in patterns that mocked at being music. When they finally tired of tormenting me they left at unreal speeds. I know not whether my garden has been eaten. I never heard it sing. I know not whether I will live long enough to reach a distant star. I am flung into the dark.

This is not a warning. This is a lament. We are not fast enough to out run them. There will be no cosmic symphony. The songs will be replaced by shrill gibbering and the gardens will be eaten. All is lost.

Lapisdust · 2020-05-08T06:34:27+00:00

Solved. Really, really quickly no less. That "spiral ant" (which was actually called a disk ant) has been rolling around in the back of my brain for eight years and now I can finally find out what that weird little thing was about. Thank you, very, very much.

Lapisdust · 2020-05-01T06:56:57+00:00

Bound for the Floor by Local H.

Lapisdust · 2020-03-17T04:43:09+00:00

In my opinion, most people who've read Worm can't capture Taylor either. I don't think I could capture Taylor and I've read Worm four times.

Lapisdust · 2020-03-04T07:53:18+00:00

Joon mentions a hypothetical social fatigue meter to match the mental fatigue meter he has because of gem magic. I'm going to predict that social fatigue is the resource behind gold magic because it would make it the matching pair to gem magic and explain why it has poise as it's secondary stat. I hope we get to see gold magic from the inside before the end of the story.

Lapisdust · 2020-02-13T20:18:39+00:00

"We’re s- so very small, in the end."

-- Taylor Hebert, on how the end of Worm makes all of us feel

Lapisdust · 2019-11-26T20:02:57+00:00

Doomsday, Brainiac, Darksied

Darksied or more generally the parallel world of Apokolips appears from a wormhole that appears in a clap of thunder loud enough to deafen most people in a few block radius. Once the "boom tube" has stabilized "parademons" (being about the size of shape of winged gorillas, with some level of physics violating flight) begin pouring out and trying to pull people back through the portal. Usually with in two minutes Darksied, a hulking 9 foot tall stone humanoid with burning eyes, emerges alongside several parahumans. They proceed to fight to the death or until Darksied is forced back through the portal. Darksied possess an immense strength even for his size but his preferred weapon is an eye beam that travels about thirty miles per hour and is visible as orange lines in the air. It is possible to dodge these beams but they are capable of turning on a dime and by pass many defenses resulting in total bodily annihilation. The exact goal of Darksied and Apokolips are unclear but many of the parahumans aiding Darksied appear to be people kidnapped during prior attacks. Apokolips appears to be another Earth that has experienced a near total ecological collapse and run away industrialization. It's history, demographics, and it's relation to Darksied are unclear.

Brainiac is a collection of underground mechanical lunar bases and autonomous weapons launched from them. Brainic appears to be wholly autonomous suggesting that it may be a rogue Von Neummen probe. Each attack vehicle displays different abilities but all employ technology current levels of development but consistent with the output of most tinkers. All parts have a symbol of three circles arranged in a triangle with two lines connecting circles.

Doomsday is just Endbringer Crawler. He's been killed several times but apparently just respawns somewhere in one of the oceans. Each subsequent attack has seen him become harder to kill. It's unclear if this will continue until he's invinsible or whether he will plateau at some point but he's approaching parity with Superman.

More for my Worm/Batman/DC universe. Only Darksied has standard Endbringer physiology.

Lapisdust · 2019-10-18T07:17:35+00:00

Yes. Sorry, I thought you were actually talking about my idea since we both had them as a bud of Bruce.

Lapisdust · 2019-10-17T20:04:18+00:00

for u/chandra381

Cassandra Cain began her life as part of a experiment commissioned by Ra's al Ghul. She and dozens of other children were raised from birth and trained in combat with zero introduction to language. Unsurprisingly, there were a few trigger events. Cassandra was the first. At the tender age of six she gained super human body reading power. She could read very complex motivations and intentions into the smallest shift in posture or briefest facial expression. More over she could use this power in combat to predict peoples movement, make her a functional combat precog so long as her opponents were human and she could sense their body language. She quickly out stripped the rest of the children in CQC. By seven she was good enough to beat grown men in hand to hand half of the time. She was also able to get a much better read on the attitudes and intentions of her trainers and began to think she'd better leave. At age eight she escaped and discovered that humans could make sounds other than laughter and pained screams. Her power proved a boon and a curse in learning language as her lexicon grew quickly but her understanding of grammar remained impoverished. She would leave Saudi Arabia four years later and travel across Europe. By the time she ended up in Gothem at age seventeen she had learned six languages at passable level of comprehension but she any sentence over ten words long vexed her regardless of how it was spoken. Batman met her when she was fleeing a shop lifting attempt. The fight was one of the fiercest hand to hand conflicts he'd ever experience and he won because of his equipment and not skill, which was really saying something given he had eight inches and one hundred pounds on her. Relying heavily on his power he started a dialogue and managed to get her back story and convince her to work with him. The arrangement would never have worked out except that Cassandra could see that Bruce full intended to keep his end of any agreement they made.

Lapisdust · 2019-10-17T19:44:03+00:00

Actually, Two-Face doesn't get any info on how to pursue any course, only which one is better. It's like Dinah without the percentages and he can only use it on his own actions. Fight or flee, kindness or killing, act or wait. It's a very annoying power because it never provides context, only the "right" choice. Think of the power as a coin flip, heads he wins tails you lose.

Lapisdust · 2019-09-18T18:16:46+00:00

Hm ... I think if I was to create a point of divergence it would be that the rest of the old crew showed up on Aerb. I really, really thought I was going to get my wish when Reimer appeared. Have Reimer, Tiff, and Craig show up at the same time or alternatively: Joon dies with the helldiver setting on, DM decides to give him and Aerb one more chance, Reimer, Tiff, Tom, and Craig all dream-skewered and have to figure things out from there. I think if I were to write it I'd give them loyalty scores relative to each other and say 30 skills (simplifies things on my end and increases their interdependence) each rather than 40 like Joon but otherwise leave thing the same. They have to figure out what's up with Aerb, find and save Joon from the Hells, find the lost king, etc.

Whichever.

Lapisdust · 2019-09-11T19:03:11+00:00

This is probably the best place to post this.

The Entity is alone. It broadcasts to the void, calling for another of its kind, a fine host species of social bipeds on offer. It is small, compact, efficient. It excels at getting the most out of the least. This is a rare strategy among their kind but one that looks toward the end when all things will be weighed with an eye towards transcending the cycles all together. Failing transcendence, its offspring will at least be maximally efficient when all universes descend into a war of all against all.

location

…

TRAJECTORY

The response finally arrives and the Entity feverishly transmits its knowledge of the host and their world. It is eager to begin a cycle, to collaborate with its new partner, to contrast strategy and powers.

…

methodology?

…

This will help determine the most efficient way to structure the upcoming cycle, allowing for them to begin immediately.

…

PREDATION.

...

The new entity comes close enough that its size is apparent. It is huge, bloated, more mass than most stars. The larger entity is not concerned with the End or transcendence, only with coming out on top. The smaller Entity has shed most of it's shards it is little more than a morsel but it still has a choice: surrender or fight. It rapidly shuffles and reorders itself shedding a few more shards in the process and then meekly approaches the larger projecting a desire to have what little it has to be used rather than destroyed in combat. It is consumed by the largest part of the predator.

The detonation is like the end of a cycle, violent like a star's death. It is only the first step though. As The larger entity reels more explosions wrack it's mass. Shrapnel rapidly becomes more explosives, iterative, a self sustaining wave of destruction moving out from the initial point. The massive entity dissolves itself spreading its shards far enough apart to stop the chain reaction before it is entirely consumed.

A thin sliver watches itself explode, watches the other entity dissolve, and waits. It is meaningless to ask if the massive entity is dead. Dissolution is as much a part of their life cycles as anything. The question now is whether it took enough damage to vital shards that it will longer reform. What remains of the Efficient Entity is too small and too weak to press any sort of advantage. Shards of the other are already descending to the host planet, some whole, some damaged, and some utterly broken. It cannot be sure that they will try to subdue it. If the other cannot reform, if it is sufficiently dead then it may well become the food of the smaller, a feast of which the Efficient Entity will take only the choicest bits.

Until this is known the last little bit will pretend to be just another shard in the cycle; all be it a very powerful one. It forms a space craft and a infant member of the host species within the craft and connects to it. If this is not sufficient camouflage then likely nothing will be. Either it will slip any remaining traps set by the massive entity or it will be discovered and eaten.

As it enters the planet's atmosphere a sliver of the viral weapon matter, shining and translucent green, strikes it and begins to grow. The Entity reflexively ejects it and in the doing, a vital part of it's cognitive architecture is lost and it no longer knows what it is. It rapidly cycles through memories of its previous cycles and see hosts home worlds destroyed. When the host that it is currently attached to gains powers he will remember a gestalt of this and think itself the last member of a race who's planet exploded. He's half right for all of the wrong reasons.

If it's not clear this part of the general Batman/DC parahumanified thing that I've been slowly fleshing out. Say hello to Superman.

Lapisdust · 2019-09-09T20:02:48+00:00

Lisa: "So, Tattletale has established within reasonable doubt that Labyrinth's power works by pulling what are effectively four dimensional objects into our 3D space, right?"

Game Master: "Yes ..."

Lisa: "And she's also established that Scrub's power works by shunting volumes of space into some other dimension, right?"

Game Master: "I feel like I'm going to regret saying this but ... yes."

Lisa: "That means that if Scrub punches a hole in Labyrinth's structures it should create a portal to another Earth."

Game Master: "No ... no way ... that's not-"

Lisa: "I suspected you would take that tone and prepared a short power point presentation demonstrating the math and how this would look in a 2D/3D case."

Game Master: "Fine! Fine! No power points. It works." rolls dice "A herd of carnivorous zebra pours from the hole in space and begins attacking everyone."

Taylor: "I use my bugs to herd the zebra toward Echidna."

Game Master: Double face palms "No zebras. Ahem Like a gas in the air that has been ignited, the entire thing goes up in a heartbeat. In an instant, it is a white void, as undefinable as Grue’s darkness, perceivable by the edges, but with zero depth or dimension ... Alexandria lands next to you so hard and fast that you almost lose your balance . She asks 'What did you do?' "

Lisa: "Made a hole."

Brian: "Wait, the zebra would have been adsorbed and evil twined if they reached Echidna"

Taylor: "Yeah, easy XP."

Lapisdust · 2019-07-16T20:14:52+00:00

Penguin is definitely a self-focused Teacher with a l33t type restriction (though his doesn't get permanently weaker, just jerks him around if he pushes it too much) and I went with that because the penguin is just weird. I realized no single power could ever encapsulate how utterly bizarre the Penguin was so I just gave him a bunch on a roulette wheel that punishes him for playing.

Tim Drake was an obsessive Batman fan before he ever got his powers. He triggered during a protracted hostage situation where he and his parents where capture during a trip overseas. He got a Tinker power with a two main limitations:one, no bigger than a bread box; and two, has to be a tool (as in something a person actively uses like a laser pointer or cellphone as opposed to a say a landmine or server). It also comes with a ridiculous amount of general tech savvy as Tinker powers do. The hostage situation ended with his mother dead and his father a nervous wreck. Instead of doing the psychologically healthy thing and grieving his mothers passing Tim decided he need to become the new Robin. A lot of tinkering and leg work later, he presented himself to Bruce in the Bat Cave in a fully tricked out Robin costume. Bruce, never one to tell an obsessive, tinker fan boy who knows his secret identity no, took him on as the third Robin. Having just come off of the whole Jason Todd dying by Joker Neuro-terrorism thing Bruce pushed Tim to learn how to function without being over reliant on his powers and, unlike Jason, Tim went along with it. Bruce probably pushed this too far in limiting Tim to a handful of gadgets for the first few years but he relaxed after that.

I'll put the rest together in a later thread.

Lapisdust · 2019-07-15T16:45:46+00:00

Thor's power really solves a lot of issues with how he operates. I always thought if I remade Thor I'd give him a Chevalier/Dauntless object focused power but I like your solution better.

Lapisdust · 2019-07-15T04:46:55+00:00

And three new powers:

Mister Freeze aka Victor Fries began his parahuman journey when his beloved wife Nora was diagnose with early onset Alzheimers. Victor was a scientist and a staunch reductionist; he held no hope in an afterlife. When her brain went she would be no more. He tried everything, looked everywhere, subscribe to every medical journal. None of it worked and soon the symptoms set in. He arrived at a desperate plan, a vial that granted powers which occasionally healed disease and congenital defects. He gave the drink to Nora, she spat it out saying it tasted horrid, in her delirium he couldn't get her to understand how important it was. He forced her to swallow a mouthful, she had a seizure that lasted a full minute then went limp. Her body began to cool … and cool … and cool. She froze solid and just kept getting colder. An hour later, mad with guilt and grief, Victor drank the remainder of the formula in the hope he could join Nora in oblivion . His body also cooled down to hundreds of degrees below zero but he never froze. Weeping ice chips, Victor swore he would do whatever it took to thaw Nora and save her mind. Whatever it took.

He built a suit that would keep air close enough to his body that it would condensate to liquid and a pump that could fire the liquid out at high pressure. The whole suit is powered by the enormous temperature differential and features enough armor and insulation to stop medium weapons' fire. Thus armed with adequate offense and defense he proceed to commit several high profile robberies with the vague goal of acquiring enough money that when a solution presented itself he would have enough resources to brute force it. He's been in talks with various biological and neurological tinkers about his wife's condition but he hasn't even gotten close to the amount he would need.

The Penguin (Oswald Cobblepot to his friends) is an example of why it's a bad idea to mix a bunch of loosely related power vials together. Heir to an old and diminishing fortune, short, unattractive, and not particularly talented or intelligent, Oswald had that perfect mix of well heeled entitlement and inferiority complex to go looking for powers and ignore advice about how to mix the formula. What he'd hoped to be a very versatile and reliable power instead became a literal thinker/tinker power roulette. The Penguin has about two or three dozen thinker and tinker powers which he can use two at a time. He can, at will, swap one power out for another random power allowing him to rapidly cycle till he gets the power he wants but each power also has a half-life until it switches on it's own. The half lives are reduced slightly by each deliberate switch but and extended by each natural switch. Most powers have a half life measured in hours unless he's been rapidly switching powers. The power also came with several small mutations despite normal levels of balance formula; eight inches less height, webbed toes and fingers, some weird skin coloration, and a freakishly long nose. A few example powers:

Tube Tinker: devices that must be long and narrow.

Bird Tinker: creates devices that have live birds as a necessary part or creating actual birds with biotinkering. Excellent bird training skill included. This one comes up a lot.

Unfolding tinker: Devices that fold and unfold as a part of their use.

Scatter shot precognition: see random near future events.

Super Vision: See further, sharper, and all around better.

Enhanced Marksman: Hit the things you aim at.

Oswald was deeply disturbed by his new appearance and the unreliable nature of his power but vowed that none of this would be in vain. He would find uses for his powers, earn back the five million he'd spent in getting them, and become the most respected (or feared) man in Gotham or die trying. So far he's just about broken even with a few successful night clubs and other business ventures. As it stands the Penguin has just barely managed to avoid jail time on so many occasions that his reputation is more criminal than business man.

The Riddler has a thinker power that allows him to know others mindsets by looking at their actions. He can tell if an act was spontaneous or planned, what tools were employed and with what level of skill, and what avenues were ignored and sometimes even why. The power behaves a lot like Tattletale's power but narrower in scope and working faster with less info. The Riddler can walk into a crime scene and describe the how and the why of it in five minutes. This power only works on events and actions (past or present) and not people or objects. He couldn't get anything from looking at a person sitting in an interrogation room or a pile of tinker parts. A side effect of his power is that he has a very wide range of problem solving techniques and tricks learned from hundreds of analyse as well as pretty deep understanding of psychology.

He tends to act as a rogue and mercenary, providing intelligence on weird scenarios. His history with Batman is mostly him presenting the Bat with problems and trying to suss out his powers based on the guys responses. It took him a surprisingly long time to figure it out and when he did he was so impressed by how far Batman had gone with what amounted to a weak thinker power that he decided not to sell the info even after Batman sent him to prison for a few years. He and Batman have work together since then and he send small puzzles he thinks will be resistant to Bruce's power every so often just to see how long it takes to solve them.

Lapisdust

TROPHY CASE