The Revised Marvel Universe (M&M2)

[Voda Vosa]

Mandarin's Story

The Mandarin's late father was one of the wealthiest men in pre-revolutionary mainland China (and a descendant of Genghis Khan), while his late mother was an English noblewoman. Their son was born in an unnamed village in mainland China before the Communist revolution. The boy's parents died soon after his birth, and he was raised by an order of mystic monks, followers of a lost faith and a dying tradition.
Every last bit of the family fortune was spent obsessively training the Mandarin in sorcery and combat, with the result that he was completely broke upon reaching adulthood. Unable to pay the taxes on his ancestral home, The Mandarin was evicted by the government.
Hoping to find a means of revenging himself upon the civilization that had taxed him and rendered him homeless, the Mandarin explored the forbidden "Valley of Spirits," where no one had dared to set foot for centuries. There he found the lost Tomb Of Fang Yim, an ancient China's Sorcerer, of whom Mandarin learned in his years at the monastery. This man was the founder of the order of monks. Over the following years, the Mandarin studied Fang Yim scrolls and magic until he mastered it. He also learned how to use the ten rings he found within the sarcophagi of the deceased mage.
The Mandarin then became a conqueror and subjugated the villages around the Valley, and, through his powerful magic, rapidly became a power that not even the Chinese Army could successfully challenge.
After a full carear as a full time villain, Mandarin's attention was drawn upon a great assemble of evil doers, a force he thought he could control, as the mastermind he was. However, and to his utter frustration, he was bested by another ruler, another mastermind who "thought" he was best than the all-mighty Mandarin! Fool! He/She would pay for such insolence... However, for much pride the Mandarin has in his heart, he knew he couldn't stand alone against such massive force. So he tried to create an army of golems and other magical creatures in his castle, hidden in the depths of China's Mountains. However, the mysterious leader of the villains found him, and sent the horde of super humans against him. Mandarin stud no chance against the sheer numbers of the Evil Armada. His forced were decimated and his castle utterly destroyed. He was lucky to escape with his life in the last second using his trusty rings to teleport out of his exploding control room.
Now even more vengeful, but with no army nor castle, the Mandarin seeks aid from the most unthinkable people. The heroes! He would do anything to achieve his vengeance and obliterate this new threat, even ally himself with his nemesis...

 

[DistractingFlare]

Looks great so far, everyone! I look forward to reading all of the completed backgrounds, especially. I haven't looked over the mechanical
aspects of your sheet, but that will be secondary to a compelling backstory.

Here's a list of submissions.

Voda Vosa - Mandarin (complete)

jkason - Power Pak (partial)
Relique - Sentinel (partial)
Insight - Franklin Richards (partial)
Shayuri - "Doom Jr." (partial)
WalkingDad - "Black" Tom Cassidy (partial)
Velmont - Gambit (partial)

 

[Velmont]

Why I'm not in the submission list? No one listen to me

 

[DistractingFlare]

Sorry about that, Velmont! I must have glazed right over it. Rest assured, all of your ideas will be given equal consideration when it's time.

And of course for those who don't quite make it in, perhaps we can have a spinoff game, or expand the roster once the game gets going.

 

[Shayuri]

Okay, my ideas are now diverging in two directions...particularly since between Franklin and Sentinel, we're getting more than our share of mad geniuses.

Argh, rethinking this...

[sblock=1) Susan Von Doom - Gamma Activated Clone!]
In this version of the story, the feud between Richard Reed and Victor Von Doom takes a tragic turn. The two men start out as friends and rivals. This lasts until mid-college, when they both fall for Susan Storm. Sue likes them both, and is unwilling to commit until Doom's "accident" that scars him and deforms him. By the time Doom is out of the hospital, Susan is Reed's girlfriend, and future wife.

This does not end the rivalry, however. And Richard, despite having 'won,' or perhaps because of it, becomes increasingly possessive and paranoid about Sue. Confused by his growing irrationality, Sue turns to Victor, whom she still considers a friend. Reed spies on Sue and discovers her confiding in Victor. Although the circumstances are purely innocent, he interprets them in the worst way possible and finally decides that the only way he can protect his family is to destroy Doom once and for all.

He does this by using an experimental gamma-ray laser that he's been developing at the university. Unfortunately, he makes two mistakes. The first is that Doom's armor is powerful enough to block the radiation. The second is that he isn't alone when the device is turned on. Susan is there as well, and has no such protection.

In the ensuing fallout, Von Doom washes his hands of Reed entirely and retreats to Latveria. Richard, stricken with grief over what he's done, could either become a supervillain or similar to his canon self, depending on whether the experience shocks him back off the dark path, or destroys his capacity for empathy. Insight should have a say in this. Doom does one more thing though...he manages to sneak a sample of what was left of Sue home with him.

A few years pass, and Latveria celebrates its ruler's new daughter! Susan Von Doom's mother's name is not publically released, for privacy's sake...but the truth is simpler. Susan Von Doom is a recreation of the original Susan Storm! However, the intense gamma rays that killed her wrought changes in her genetic structure that Victor could not filter out and still have a viable organism.[/sblock]

 

[Velmont]

Gambit
Abandoned at birth due to his burning red eyes, the child who would one day become Remy LeBeau was kidnapped from his hospital ward by members of the New Orleans Thieves' Guild who referred to the child as "le diable blanc" - the white devil. They believed he was the child that had been prophesied to unite the warring Guilds. Soon after, Remy was placed in the care of a gang of street thieves who raised the child and taught him the ways of thievery.

Later, when he was around ten years old, Remy attempted to pick the pocket of Jean-Luc LeBeau, then-patriarch of the Thieves’ Guild. Jean-Luc took the boy in off the streets and adopted him into his own family. As part of a peace pact between the Thieves’ Guild and their rivals, the Assassin’s Guild, a marriage was arranged between Remy and Bella Donna Boudreaux, the granddaughter of the head of the Assassin's Guild. However, Bella Donna's brother Julien objected to the marriage and challenged Gambit to a duel. Remy won his duel and Julien had to recognize Remy's right to the mariage.

For the next years, Remy and Bella have been playing the diplomat, trying to maintain the non-aggression pact that have been establish between the two guild. But New Orleans have started to be a target of many Super-Villains. First, the hurricane Katrina, enhanced by the power of a weather control mutant have strike New Orleans seriously. Five years after, the city was starting to grow back when a battle on the oil platform Deepwater Horizon was blown off and create a large oil spill that devastate the sea around the city, striking it's economie. Not a year later, another villain created a tidal wave that strike the city, demolishing all that have been build during the last years, striking a deadly blow at the city.

During those hard years, the two guilds bond have suffered but have been kept by Remy and Bella effort. But Remy was not please by the treatment his home city has suffered and the lack of help it has received from the different "heroes" organization. It is then Remy have contacted by an organization...

 

[Insight]

I've added a "background" to Franklin Richards aka Avatar (one of his old hero names from the comics).

 

[Insight]

[sblock=1) Susan Von Doom - Gamma Activated Clone!]
In this version of the story, the feud between Richard Reed and Victor Von Doom takes a tragic turn. The two men start out as friends and rivals. This lasts until mid-college, when they both fall for Susan Storm. Sue likes them both, and is unwilling to commit until Doom's "accident" that scars him and deforms him. By the time Doom is out of the hospital, Susan is Reed's girlfriend, and future wife.

This does not end the rivalry, however. And Richard, despite having 'won,' or perhaps because of it, becomes increasingly possessive and paranoid about Sue. Confused by his growing irrationality, Sue turns to Victor, whom she still considers a friend. Reed spies on Sue and discovers her confiding in Victor. Although the circumstances are purely innocent, he interprets them in the worst way possible and finally decides that the only way he can protect his family is to destroy Doom once and for all.

He does this by using an experimental gamma-ray laser that he's been developing at the university. Unfortunately, he makes two mistakes. The first is that Doom's armor is powerful enough to block the radiation. The second is that he isn't alone when the device is turned on. Susan is there as well, and has no such protection.

In the ensuing fallout, Von Doom washes his hands of Reed entirely and retreats to Latveria. Richard, stricken with grief over what he's done, could either become a supervillain or similar to his canon self, depending on whether the experience shocks him back off the dark path, or destroys his capacity for empathy. Insight should have a say in this. Doom does one more thing though...he manages to sneak a sample of what was left of Sue home with him.

A few years pass, and Latveria celebrates its ruler's new daughter! Susan Von Doom's mother's name is not publically released, for privacy's sake...but the truth is simpler. Susan Von Doom is a recreation of the original Susan Storm! However, the intense gamma rays that killed her wrought changes in her genetic structure that Victor could not filter out and still have a viable organism.[/sblock]

[sblock=Shayuri]We'd have to work out how Susan managed to pop a kid out before getting vaporized. In this version, Susan Von Doom and Franklin Richards would be ... aunt and nephew? What do you call a clone and her source material's son? What is the etiquette here

What if Victor Von Doom did an in vitro thing with Susan's DNA? That way, Susan Von Doom would technically be Franklin's half-sister.[/sblock]

 

[Shayuri]

Insight, yeah, that whole thing is kind of collapsing under its own weight.

I am currently crushing it and restarting from concept.

Basically, my goal with that was to get Sue's powers...which I like...without having to be Franklin's mother.

But since Sue got her powers in an utterly random accident, it could have happened to anyone, really.

My tech-head idea is faltering, since we have many geniuses already pitched and Sentinel is already a very tech-oriented hero.

 

[jkason]

Some mechanical help...?

I have one power structure worked out for Pak, though it seems really cheap. My intent is that he can only control any given set of powers at a time (controlling one of the four alien power aspects), though any given aspect may have more than one power he might make use of at a time. I downloaded Ultimate Power to see if it gave me any more insights, and the Container structure seemed like a decent fit, though as I said it seems way too cheap for what I'm getting:

[sblock=The Power Container Model]"Main" power Container: Acceleration (23 PP) :

* Flying Charge (Strike 10, limited: must move first -1/r: 5PP)
* Spectrum Flight (Flight 6 (12PP) linked: Light Control 3 (6PP)) Total: 18 PP

AP Container: Density (Cloud Form) (15 PP):

* Flight 1 (2PP)
* Insubstantial 2 (10PP)
* Obscure 3 (All visual +2/r, Flaw: Range (touch) -1/r) (3PP)

AP Container: Density (hyper-dense) (23 PP):

* Immovable 1 (1PP)
* Protection 5 (Impervious +1/r) (10PP)
* Shrinking 12 (Feat: Growth strike +1, Drawback: Full Power -1) (12 PP)

AP Container: Energy (20 PP):

* Power up (Corrosion 5, Vampiric +2/r, Distracting -2/r) (10PP)
* Power ball (Blast 10, fades -1/r) Recharge: 'vampiric' corrosion (10PP)

AP Container: Gravity (23PP)

* Hypergrav (Friction Control Increase 3) (9PP)
* Low-grav jump (Leaping 4) (4PP)
* Applied gravity (Super-Strength 5, duration Sustained -1/r) (5PP)
* Null gravity (Super-Movement Slow fall) (2PP)
* Directional gravity (Super-Movement Wall Crawling) (2PP)

23 PP base + 4 Alternate Power feats = 27 PP[/sblock]

Like I said, it seems way too cheap. I tried breaking things down so that the attacks would be one power array, environment control another, movement, etc. Of course, then the power structure doesn't take into account the important thematic element I'm after: i.e. the gravity powers can't work with the density or acceleration or energy powers. And the density 'forms' add another level of complication, in that they're each a set of linked powers with variable abilities (cloud form is a protective ability, but also provides environmental control).

My third thought would be to just give each 'container' a drawback benefit associated with the fact that it's exclusive to its type (acceleration powers are only available in 'acceleration mode,' or what have you), and that Pak can only switch 'modes' once per round. +3 as a Very Common drawback (it'd basically come up all the time). That'd pull the non-AP'd version of the containers to 88, which seems closer to what I'd expect from a decently-powered character.

I'm honestly not trying to wheedle out of spending points so much as trying to find a workable middle ground between 27 and 103 (yoinks!).