Except for the Mechanovamps, and a Big Bad for the Weeds (I've decided to make one specific character for the Weeds....hmmm....Mistress Sangre might do as a name, and make her a stylish, brassy sort who frequents nightclubs....and wants to make the Earth pure from Humanity--thats right, an evil enviromentalist vampire queen. "We can party tonight, because on the weekend, I'm wiping out the ugly cockroaches. I only want beautiful people around." She would have a strong aversion to children.)
The Weeds have an advantage. They have few powers, and what they have I can mostly steal from other vamps. Only the Big Bad is going to need some special power.
Also, Lady of Sorrows needs a bunch of skills written up for her. After that, the vamp thing is mostly done for me, I think.
===============================
And the Customs Board thing is largely done except for a few characters that need stats.
===============================
So, Wersers....
Wersers? EVIL Versers....your counterparts in the service of villainy, the forces of darkness, or just a really pretty stone.
We'd need an odd distribution. Few at the very bottom end as beginning versers shouldn't meet Wersers. Lots of them moderately powerful to give a challenge to those skilled, less more powerful call these Master Villains like in superhero comics--they can provide a challenge for a whole gather of versers or for one really tough verser like Whisp or Tad or the Martian Terraformer of the Plutonian Space Commando or Captain Carter and Lil Sure Shot....you get my point. And then maybe two terrors like the idea I have of a werser who arrives in a planet, and starts setting up Portable Destruction Planet Device. And then maybe one who can cross swords with the Alchemist....but this guy has been trapped in orbit of a black hole for the last four thousand years by the concerted efforts of some very powerful beings.
Generally, evil is weaker than good. So that needs to be reflected. But you can have a Level Plus One evil going against a Level One good to give the Level One a challenge.
Marquis De Gunn aka Roper Mackings
==================================
Strength 1@7
Animal Magnetism 1@8
Charisma 1@6
Persuasion 1@4
Density 1@1
Stamina 1@8
Flexibility 1@5
Resistance 1@5
Intellect 1@7
Intuition 1@9
Agility 1@8
Hand/Eye 2@1
Willpower 1@7
Education Level 1@10
TV 1@6
DV 1@5
RSV 1@10
MSV 1@9
The Marquis is a sharp, stylish dresser in his stripped pants, cowboy boots, black leather vest, and kerchief. He wears a variety of cowboy hats.
He carries no armor.
His only weapon is his Colt revolver which is loaded with hardball.
Skills
=======
Quick Draw
Use Gun as Martial Arts Weapon
Sidestep Bullet (a Martial Dodge)
Intensified Damage
Precise Target--This is his favorite skill as he does not like making a clean kill.
The Marquis is in the borderlands of being a sociopath. He knows its wrong to kill, but its so much fun. So he hunts versers because they survive which makes it morally okay, he figures.
He calls them out, and if they come, he duels them. If he can, he starts from the extremities, and takes his time to make a kill. This is where Precise Target comes in.
If the verser does not come out, then the Marquis starts hunting. He won't shoot anyone who doesn't try to stop him.
He frequently suicides if there are no other versers in the world for him to hunt.
Before he became a verser, he was Roper, the one everyone picked on in school, and the one his father, a failed rodeo rider used as target practise for beer bottles.
Tandy Martins aka Illwind aka Searcher aka Bombguy aka Forgot
==============================================================
Strength 1@3
Animal Magnetism 1@2
Charisma 1@4
Persuasion 1@6
Density 1@2
Stamina 1@4
Flexibility 1@7
Resistance 1@9
Intellect 1@10
Intuition 1@8
Agility 1@5
Hand/Eye 1@6
Willpower 2@5
Education Level 2@2
TV 1@5
DV 1@8
RSV 1@7
MSV 1@6
Tandy started out relatively normal as a verser with a bit of a rocky start. He was never very deft at it, but so too are a lot of versers. And some people require a century or two to get straightened out.
Then he had the ill fortune to arrive in a wonderful world. It was not perfect, but it was very nice. And there was a girl that seemed to actually like him. Things were looking up.
And then the Marquis De Gunn arrived, and shot him down.
Now Tandy is trying to get back to his 'Utopia'. He doesn't realize that it wasn't as nice as he now thinks it was. In part, it was due to him. He was growing as a person, and learning to deal with life more successfully.
But he's turned his inventiveness to sampling realities, and rejecting them, and blowing himself out of said reality as quickly as possible. He aims to visit and leave very quickly.
His mission is slightly evangelistic as he is willing to spend a few minutes to find another verser, and help them seek utopia as well. That is, he will stand close to you, rant about this not being the perfect world, and then throw a switch.
He has a nine-layered method of versing out. Its suited to nearly any world. He has a magic curse on himself that kills him after an hour. He has a needle with a lethal injection rig in his arm. He has a small bomb in his gut. He carries a Tachyon Grenade (sufficient to Zygote someone, but he has detuned it so that it will not work so perfectly on the person at the center of the blast--him.) He has a knife. He has a psi trigger in his brain which will turn off his heart.
He usually takes less than ten minutes to decide he has not found Utopia, and to verse himself out.
One problem is that he has arrived in a number of worlds that were actually nicer than his long-gone world. Two, such frequent versing out tends to cause insanity--the primary effect for him has been an increasingl level of monomania although he has other issues.
A number of versers have tried to help him. He does not listen very well. Some have tried to force him, which is why he has layered defenses of self-destruction. Stop the needle, and the bomb gets him and you. Stop that and the T Grenade gets you both with you taking a ride on the Zygote Express.
He may well be the most versed out entity in the Multiverse. And he's not even eight hundred years old. He's crossed paths with most versers that haunt this end of the Multiverse.
He called "Illwind" because the Sioux shaman that cursed him so named him. And he's called "Forgot" because by now, he usually can't remember his own name. His brain is turning into tapioca.
Rig Traps a T skill
Hide Mental Traps a P skill
Need to write up the Curse
Knife skill
Master Dark Lord
================
Strength
Animal Magnetism
Charisma
Persuasion
Density
Stamina
Flexibility
Resistance
Intellect
Intuition
Agility
Hand/Eye
Willpower
Education Level
TV
DV
RSV
MSV
Young, clueless, and filled with an overwhelming sense of his own importance, Charles Mickethwait or Master Dark Lord as he was known on the Net, schemed on how he could take over the world. Then he got a 'scriff enabled' keyboard, it smoked, and he became a verser.
Now he really knows that he is special.
And he keeps coming up with ludricrous plans of world domination that have no chance of working.
So far, he's only been in a few worlds, and his open pledges to Evil have attracted attention, but Evil can't directly recruit him in the low-magic worlds he's been too. At the same time, this might be good for Evil as true, scary Evil might scare him back on the path of safety if not virtue. One problem is that he has potential. It may take him a century to stop being such a 'total idiot', but he's eventually going to figure out how to be a proper Dark Lord if he tries enough times.
He does tend to seek out versers to recruit them as 'minions' in his plan. The last time he did this to Di Vars, the three thousand year old warrior listened for a whole minute and a half before cutting him in half.
Since then, MDL has taken to spying on versers with his robot cameras, so that he can get blackmail on them to force them to 'serve me as I take over the World!'
Strength
Animal Magnetism
Charisma
Persuasion
Density
Stamina
Flexibility
Resistance
Intellect
Intuition
Agility
Hand/Eye
Willpower
Education Level
TV
DV
RSV
MSV
Dark Mistress Stephanie, or Stephanie Lanton, is willing to laugh at herself. But even then, its all about her. Long, blonde hair that waves and curls, long legs, and an easy smile. Magic powers. Mind powers. Whatever. Its all tools to keep her in the center of attention, and make those who don't pay her the proper respect to 'learn the error of their ways. Oh, so melodramatic, but I've decided I like melodrama this week. What do you think?'
Stephanie is a girl who would have failed Galadriel's Test when Frodo offered her the One Ring. She wants power, adulation, and the ability to amusingly make her 'enemies' (which is defined as those who don't give her power and adulation) suffer horribly.
Despite her pretense, she really does not enjoy sexual relations that much.
Her first universe, she met several people including an insufferable snot named Tadeusz who acted like he could see right through her. One day, he too will suffer.
She's been doing this for over a hundred years, and has so far ruled two separate universes. In one, she was Queen of Magic, and in the other, she ran the largest Conglomerate in the world (aided by her telepathy that no one else on the planet had). The GM can place her in one of those worlds, or in a new one she is working on taking over.
Unlike MDL, she is an effective conqueror. However, she doesn't really know what to do with the world once she's got it, except organize it for mass worship of her. And after a while, boredom sets in, and she starts taking foolish chances which has led to her downfall in the magic world (in the business world, she handed her self the ownership down three generations, and finally decided to verse out.)
Okay, my grasp of game mechanics isn't quite what it ought to be, so I'm not going to try posting stat blocks - I know my limits.
1: The Good Doktor -
(This one I played a version of in a Vampire: The Masquerade game. He was a Tzimisce. Go figure.)
Dr. Wilhelm Wagner was born an ordinary boy in turn-of-the-century Germany, a good old-fashioned Earther. In his adulthood, he joined the Army like good Germans ought, but he was a sickly young man, so he didn't get into the infantry like he wanted. Instead he got assigned to guard some medics.
During the Great War, he guarded field hospitals and learned some basic medicine from the doctors and nurses he guarded. In between Wars, he went to medical school, married one of the nurses from the field hospital, became a doctor himself, and had a son, in roughly that order.
During the Second World War, father and son enlisted together. Wilhelm was assigned to an up-and-coming medical project leader named Josef, who saw great promise in the middle-aged Doktor Wagner. A few weeks into the Occupation, a bomb planted by the French Resistance killed the younger Wagner. The elder Wagner became even more devoted to his work, taking a special delight in experimenting on Frenchmen.
After the War, he escaped to Brazil where he learned to speak Portuguese, fight Capoeira, and blend in with a culture he reviled. It was in Brazil that he received an X-Ray machine that boasted the latest Scriff technology...
Since then he has continued his experiments. He believed in what the young Dr. Josef said, that their experiments were, in the end, meant to prolong life, not destroy it, and so for the last sixty-odd years he has been capturing people and experimenting on them as the technology of the world allows, trying always to discover the causes and defenses against death. He is particularly fascinated with other Versers, as he believes that determining the nature of Scriff will solve the problem of death once and for all.
2: Hollow Man -
(This one I haven't played in any scenario - he's fresh.)
Imagine the freedom to act without consequence. That's what convicted murderer and diagnosed psychopath David Martin Vries considers Versing. On his homeworld he was called the Swan Street Slayer, guilty of 47 Jack the Ripper style killings and sentenced to hang. The night before his execution, he was found dead in his cell, with a burnt-out ring clutched in his palm that the local Seer dubbed a "Ring of Scriff," but didn't know what that meant. He's not a high-level villain, and he's nobody's idea of a criminal mastermind, but after three hundred years of practice, he's a superhuman hand with a knife and has no fear of death at all. He virtually doesn't feel pain, and revels in increasingly spectacular, gory, and above all public displays of violence.
3: Hephalaestron -
(Inspired by the "Caught in a black hole" thing, above.)
Hephalaestron is an educated, erudite gentleman in the body of a Titan. He is the one banished to the event-horizon of a black hole for four thousand years. In the bent time and crushing gravity, he could not Verse out but that he reappeared back in place, subject to crushing forces almost constantly. He spent the first thousand years learning to regenerate his body, until he could heal faster than the gravity and radiation and vacuum could kill him. He spent the next thousand years learning how to move again, until he was able to walk around on the dense black matter condensing under his feet. He spent his third thousand years learning how to fight again, until he could move /quickly/ despite the environment. The fourth thousand years, he retired. He did little more than the minimum activity necessary to maintain his abilities, spending the rest of the time planning what he would do when he got out and composing epic poetry.
Finally he did get released, and he has vowed to spend the next four thousand years hunting and spam-killing the Verser sorcerer who banished him to that gods-forsaken pit in the first place. He is very intelligent, and an accomplished fencer in a style that resembles Florentine. He is polite and civil to anyone who isn't threatening him or harboring his enemy, he has a taste for classy women and fine wine. He allows people to underestimate him, assuming he is the simple muscle-bound brute his body appears to be, then uses his incredible power in conjunction with a knowledge of tactics to make them regret it.
Okay, I'll try to add stat blocks, and maybe an unfinished list of skills, and do a touch of editing.
====================================
1: The Good Doktor aka Dr. Wilhelm Wagner
Dr. Wilhelm Wagner was born an ordinary boy in turn-of-the-century Germany, a good old-fashioned Earther. In his adulthood, he joined the Army like good Germans ought, but he was a sickly young man, so he didn't get into the infantry like he wanted. Instead he got assigned to guard some medics.
During the Great War, he guarded field hospitals and learned some basic medicine from the doctors and nurses he guarded. In between Wars, he went to medical school, married one of the nurses from the field hospital, became a doctor himself, and had a son, in roughly that order.
During the Second World War, father and son enlisted together. Wilhelm was assigned to an up-and-coming medical project leader named Josef, who saw great promise in the middle-aged Doktor Wagner. A few weeks into the Occupation, a bomb planted by the French Resistance killed the younger Wagner. The elder Wagner became even more devoted to his work, taking a special delight in experimenting on Frenchmen.
After the War, he escaped to Brazil where he learned to speak Portuguese, fight Capoeira, and blend in with a culture he reviled. It was in Brazil that he received an X-Ray machine that boasted the latest Scriff technology...
He versed out after it exploded.
Since then he has continued his experiments in a new world which he considers a 'morally degenerate swamp'. In this world, Winston Churchill was never sent to the wilderness, and Neville Chamberlain never became Prime Minister. Hitler was cut off as soon as he militarized the Rhine. It was there he was stopped, and overthrown.
The local civilization firmly believes in the right of preemptive defense. A threat is regarded as a danger, and dealt with. Communists and Fascists all got the old heave-ho as soon as they started spouting off about 'international revolution' or 'the Volk', the top powers sent in troops and removed them from the scene.
As a consequence, he's surrounded by soft, kindly democrats with an instinct for the jugular who are packing at all times. The thought of giving the normals control of their guns and their lives makes him feel ill at the sheer unnaturalness of it.
He believed in what the young Dr. Josef said, that their experiments were, in the end, meant to prolong life, not destroy it, and so for the last sixty-odd years he has been capturing people and experimenting on them as the technology of the world allows, trying always to discover the causes and defenses against death. He is particularly fascinated with other Versers, as he believes that determining the nature of Scriff will solve the problem of death once and for all.
Strength
Animal Magnetism
Charisma
Persuasion
Density
Stamina
Flexibility
Resistance
Intellect
Intuition
Agility
Hand/Eye
Willpower
Education Level
TV
DV
RSV
MSV
2: Hollow Man aka David Duvall Vries
Imagine the freedom to act without consequence. That's what convicted murderer and diagnosed psychopath David Duvall Vries considers Versing. On his homeworld he was called the Swan Street Slayer, guilty of 47 Jack the Ripper style killings and sentenced to hang. The night before his execution, he tried to hang himself as the cameras revealed. Someone had given him a 'ring of scriff', and told him it offered freedom, but he didn't know what that meant. However, when the electricity coursed through his body, the ring released the scriff into his body, and he versed out of that universe.
He's not a high-level villain, and he's nobody's idea of a criminal mastermind, but after three hundred years of practice, he's a superhuman hand with a knife and has no fear of death at all. He virtually doesn't feel pain, and revels in increasingly spectacular, gory, and above all public displays of violence.
Strength
Animal Magnetism
Charisma
Persuasion
Density
Stamina
Flexibility
Resistance
Intellect
Intuition
Agility
Hand/Eye
Willpower
Education Level
TV
DV
RSV
MSV
Skills
======
1. Use Knife as Martial Arts Weapon
2. Advanced Parry
3. Quick Draw
4. Intensified Damage
3: Hephalaestron -
Hephalaestron is an educated, erudite gentleman in the body of a Titan. He is the one banished to the event-horizon of a black hole for four thousand years. This was the only space that could actually imprison him which is why he was sent there in the first place by the Unnamed Verser. In the bent time and crushing gravity, he could not Verse out but that he reappeared back in place, subject to crushing forces almost constantly. He spent the first thousand years learning to regenerate his body, until he could heal faster than the gravity and radiation and vacuum could kill him. He spent the next thousand years learning how to move again, until he was able to walk around on the dense black matter condensing under his feet. He spent his third thousand years learning how to fight again, until he could move /quickly/ despite the environment. The fourth thousand years, he retired. He did little more than the minimum activity necessary to maintain his abilities, spending the rest of the time planning what he would do when he got out and composing epic poetry.
Finally he did get released, and he has vowed to spend the next four thousand years hunting and spam-killing the Verser sorcerer who banished him to that gods-forsaken pit in the first place. He is very intelligent, and an accomplished fencer in a style that resembles Florentine. He is polite and civil to anyone who isn't threatening him or harboring his enemy, he has a taste for classy women and fine wine. He allows people to underestimate him, assuming he is the simple muscle-bound brute his body appears to be, then uses his incredible power in conjunction with a knowledge of tactics to make them regret it.
Strength 3@10
Animal Magnetism 2@3
Charisma 2@5
Persuasion 2@8
Density 3@10
Stamina 3@10
Flexibility 1@8
Resistance 2@5
Intellect 2@9
Intuition 2@4
Agility 2@1
Hand/Eye 2@5
Willpower 3@8
Education Level 2@9
TV 2@8
DV 3@3
RSV 2@5
MSV 2@10
He has never explained why he was imprisoned in the first place. He is aware that versers can change their looks so he strives to make sure that the verser he has sought out is not a shape-changed version of his enemy.
A number of versers think of him as a wonderful being, full of kindness, and wit, and wisdom.
Self-Healing 3@10
Epic Poetry 3@7
Immunity to Gravity, Radiation, Vacuum as Damage
Florentine Style Fencing (A Martial Arts)
Conversation 2@9
Liberal Arts Knowledge 3@5 (He has a vast array of knowledge about histories on many worlds, speech, song, foreign languages, etc.. Effectively what one would attain if they were a Liberal Arts Doctorate with Honors at Multiversal University.)
With Hephalaestron, I imagine that it was done to him because he insulted someone who had the power to do it to him. He wasn't a bad guy at the time, really, just a trifle arrogant, but the years of being constantly squished into a gelatinous ooze ... it's the sort of thing that'll change a man.
I'm not totally sure he's a Werser. One might make a good arguement that he's seeking justice, and he's one of the few entities capable of exacting that justice.
Another possibility is that he was powerful even before his exile, and the black hole was one of the few means of effectively containing him.
He's not actively evil, 'tis true, but he is violent and dangerous. I want him to come off as a sort of twisted-gentleman type, the kind who would sit down to dinner with you, then put a knife in your gut over dessert because he found out you were holding out on him (information, primarily). He's one of those twisted-by-the-quest-for-revenge sorts.
Edit: Ninja'd by WilliamTWodium. I think that's an effective addition, indeed.
Can we make him more actively evil? Like, he's paranoid about information. He's apt to think you're holding out on him when you're not.
And maybe he's also wanting to kill everyone who knew about his situation....so he talks to you real charming, and then finds out you knew he was there because someone told you a story about it...
"And what did you do to try to rescue me?"
Awkward pause.
"I see, well, lets' discuss that...at length."
Proceed to torture scene...
===============
However, its your character, and my views on what makes someone evil are not Revelation.....so you can have him as is if you like.
And I do agree with Wodium's point.
Tad - It was an idea for you to take and run with. If you need him actively evil, go for it. A little paranoia is always good in a villain. Plus, he was a concept I made up because you guys asked for a concept, so I certainly have no objections to you making whatever you need out of him. I'm just glad the premise was sound enough to use at all.
OK. The reason is that versers run into each other very infrequently. So if he and say your verser were in a world, he would likely have no reason to cause you concern. He'd be a perfectly charming guest.
Which means he would not do much.
Then again, there are villains like Lacroix on Forever Knight who rarely do evil, but are always subtly trying to twist those around them to an evil course, and once in a while they do something dreadful.
It could also be that he overreacts to situations that are similar to his.
Or it could be that he's trying to attack a very popular verser that eveyone thinks is wonderful. And to hear him tell it, its was completely irrational and unjust on the other verser's part to do this attack. Now a number of allies of the first verser are not keen to help him.
I'm with Harry (JohnOSevens) on this one--there's nothing wrong with having a "villain" who is not interested in you in particular. After all, the quintessential verser "villain" is almost certainly Mother (unless it's Bob Thomas). Mother is interested in only one thing: find and destroy Whisp. No other verser is a problem unless there is reason to think he is helping Whisp. To most versers, she is an amusement. On the other hand, if both of them are in the same universe, Lord help that universe, as she'll tear it apart to get to him, and he'll do everything in his power to stop her.
Thus it's quite reasonable to suppose that Hephalaestron would be a pretty likeable fellow, but if whoever that other verser is happens to be in this universe, Hephalaestron will find him. And, since you can't identify someone by his scriff signature, that means Hephalaestron will find every verser he can sense in a universe, to determine whether it is the one he seeks.
You could add some interest to it, too. Hephalaestron is aware that versers can completely alter their own appearance, and that his quarry must be hiding. You thus have a wonderful cat-and-mouse game in which Hephalaestron is attempting to determine whether you are actually his enemy in disguise, while treating you as a perfect gentleman who is interested in your history and character simply because good people are interested in the lives of others.
Thus your villain is seeking justice, but might not be sure whether you are the one he seeks or not.
--M. J. Young
Have I mentioned, I love the way this man thinks? ^_^
OK, I am, as stated, flexible. This is because, even when I disagree (unless its really important), its more important to move something cool out of the factory than argue about it. Also, I still struggle with trying to get people to follow their own vision while making sure its cool...hard balance to achieve there. And I know that some people actually enjoy doing things differently than me...weird that.
So, we'll go with John7's Hephalaestron. Kewl. Now, I'm done being a good example, and can go back to being a crazy innovator.
Cool... So... are we still making up villains, or is there a new "something cool" in the works?
Think of me as the guy playing Whack a Mole. Hit on one problem for a while, go to another, come back, wander off again....so any of the preceding topics that are of interest to you, you should work on them.
So, if you want, make more villains. I think we could use some more.
Non-verser villains are also good, if you've got the ideas for 'em. Their utility is less universal,* but sometimes it's more satisfying if the villain actually dies.
_
*multiversal?
Yah, here's one method...take one of your least favorite people....say that city councilman you know is corrupt...so corrupt his own party is working against him....and then make him double-dark evil with superpowers and on a larger scale.
He's now President for Life of a small country, and he's got his hands on the Spear of Destiny ....
Thats one way to do it.
Its a process of being completely unfair to another human being. Instead of saying 'well, yeah, he pursues bad policies, but he's trying to do the right thing, just in a boneheaded way' instead its 'He's sold his soul to to the Abyss, and revels in sadism....'
Eric
Another method is to take yourself (or someone you love very much), and ask yourself in what circumstances you (or he) would become the villain. Then proceed as Tad: throw in the Spear of Destiny and the adoration of several thousand hobgobtaurs. It's the process of being entirely too sympathetic with the abyss.
Indeed. I do have the problem that I can quite easily see how I would be a villain, but I would not be at all a sympathetic figure. But your point is well taken.
One method, semi-related to this, that I used was to give the villain a sympathetic goal--Humanity needs to be saved from all the alien invaders out there. Ok, thats laudable. So, I will rule the planet, and build up a defensive space armada....
I did a bit of work on a Police Detective world...you arrive in a medium sized city, and your doppleganger is a well known police detective. He's gone. If you investigate, you find in his home a 'If you see this, Im dead' videotape where he lays out his plan to assasinate a religious leader. But he doesn't explain why....
Going back to your point, in one of my WAW's Tad runs into the Gauntlet of Ares which basically offers him the power to smash his enemies. Tads already insanely powerful, but this offers him a huge boost. Its a Tolkien One Ring situation, and it definitely tempts Tad as he has a very strong liking for power in his hands. But, if he had not been perceptive enough to realize the power would have been misused, he might have become 'Smackdown the Dictator' throwing bolts of cosmic fire wildly about as he tries to clamp down on the chaos.
Writing up the rules and suggestions for a Vision Quest would be neat too....I'm afraid that this one might be beyond me, tho'.
Eric
Hmm... Non-verser Villains... Alright, I can do that too... Let's see...
Magical Setting:
1: Koba-Nori, Knight of the Shadows -
Koba-Nori was born a frail, sickly boy with a talent for illusion. In his tribal society, the gift for magic was uncommon and those who could use magic were considered unnatural, so he was forced to practice in secret. Because of this, he was never able to find a mentor, someone to warn him of the connection between Illusion and the Abyss, the Shadow Fringe that can draw Illusionists deep into the darkness. Still, he did practice, and he became good. Very, very good. So good that when he vanished from sight forever, no one was really surprised.
But they were surprised when little Nori came back. Ten years later, he was a full-grown man, Lord of Shadow and Fire, a strapping tower of a man in pitch-black armor, riding a horse made of smoke and force. And he brought friends. His legion of the shambling dead raised eyes - "Nori was an illusionist, wasn't he? What's with all these skeletons?" - but not for long. Soon they took over, and Koba-Nori, as he was now called, built himself a tower of bones and fire.
What they never realized was that Koba-Nori never gave up being an illusionist. In the years of his wandering, he met a demoness who, wounded after a fight with a crusading knight from the north, offered him power in exchange for sanctuary. He didn't realize she meant sanctuary inside his very body. Possessed by the demoness, he did indeed learn the secret of real ultimate power, but he lost his soul to the cruelty of the abyss. And it did nothing for his health. When the demoness regained her strength, she returned to the abyss, and left Koba-Nori his power in payment.
He had matured not at all in that time. He had become only more petty and cruel. He used his newfound power to create an illusion of his perfect self - the wrought-iron tower of a dark knight that his people knew him was - then to wreath himself in invisibility. Keying the illusion to his own movement, he had reinvented himself in the only way he knew how. Throw in some fake minions and an aura of fear spell from a third-hand grimoire, and his rise to petty tyranny was solidly in hand.
(Damn I wish I could keep this guy for myself.)
2: Zastor Quill, Bard-Corrupter -
Zastor Quill was born blind. Considered a curse by his family, who could not raise him, he was turned over to the Church (of God, of Tyr, of St. Cuthbert, or whoever is the appropriate god of valor in your setting) to be raised as a monk. He learned to channel the holy power of his god to inspire others through his epic poetry, which he recited to the tune of a lyre. He even learned to overcome his blindness, by effectively seeing sound-waves. (Just watch the movie "Daredevil.")
When he went forth from the monastery - his chaotic and wanderlust-filled nature made him unsuitable for monastic life - he travelled as a mercenary guard, using his inspiring poetics to fill the other guards with power, and in six years he never lost a caravan. From his fellow guards, he learned archery, which was much safer for him than the staff-fighting the monks had tried (and failed) to teach him.
But his exposure to the irreligious began to wear down his faith. Instead of telling the tale of the God of Valor as a deity, he began focusing more and more on the stories of him as a mortal man. He began to glorify the mortal over the divine, believing that the gods had failed, and that only through their own achievements could mortal men overcome their inner evil.
On one of his outings in his seventh year of wandering, his caravan was set upon by a gang called the Red Highway Bandits, who did not believe in taking prisoners. The sounds the blind bard heard destroyed his faith in mankind, and in desperation, he called out not to his own god, but to the dark gods whose servants were attacking him.
He caught the ear of a demon-prince who opposed the one driving the Red Highway Bandits. The demon prince filled him with an unholy fury, and his arrows slew three dozen men in one afternoon. He was immediately horrified by the outburst, and fell into a deep depression.
Since then, he has tried to rekindle his faith. In the Gods. In mankind. In himself. It has not worked. Now an alcoholic singing for his supper, he does not sing the praises of the gods. He has become cynical, bitter, and uses his considerable talents for speaking, preaching, debating, and reasoning to undermine the faith of those who engage him in religious debate. Though he is depressed and destructive, a drunk and a defiler, he has a genuine wish that he could believe in the gods again.
3: Drake Jans, The Faceless One -
You've met him a thousand times. He has a table reserved in every portside tavern. He is welcome at every king's table. And everyone he meets, he greets by name.
And every one of them greets him by a different one.
He was born Drake Jans, but it's been thirty years since anyone called him that. Everyone who knew him by that name, everyone who had ever heard it spoken is dead. He has made carefully certain of that.
A master of disguise, a silver-tongued liar the likes of which are unheard of, he was born to privilege and station, and is a master of every courtly art. In his three-decade carreer, he has killed dozens of men, sired enough children to staff his own legion, and sampled the food and drink of every court in the land.
He finances his wandering lifestyle with a series of mercenary contracts. Spying. Assassinations. Thievery. No one knows who he really is, and all he needs to do is wear one city's mask in another city's court, and he blends as a simple exotic stranger - one who will have a dozen people in his home city who like him well enough to vouch for him. Of course he was guest at my villa on the night your prince was killed; you must have the wrong man...
And of course, one could write up ideas for villains for the games of other players. Like, write up some bandits for JohnA1Nut's game, or a pack of sneak thieves for Wodium's game....I'm not saying MJ would use them, but you never know. And only do this in a spirit of trying to be helpful, to help them have more interesting games, as a kindness....:)
Like when I suggested Graeme should meet a Kraken in his long and boring sea trip. Purely out of concern for him to have a more fun game.
Tad - Do me a favor and let me be bored, hmm? =^_^=
Edit: Yay time for some psionic villains. Have I mentioned I suck at handling psionics? Mostly because D&D Psionics are so very broken and I hate dealing with them.
1: The Lord Overmind -
Originally a member of the local militia, people found him very agreeable. He was easy to get along with, likeable, and above all, convincing. He could get people to do whatever he pleased with what seemed like no concious effort. And he was an excellant tactician, despite being a bit stiff. He did not mind using unorthodox strategies, so long as they proceeded in a mostly orderly fashion, at least until fighting broke out.
He rose through the ranks quickly, and when the (Insert Generic War) was over, he retired a Second Lieutenant (analog). Someone mentioned that he ought to run for public office, since he was just so damned agreeable, and everyone seemed to want to do as he directed anyway.
By now he was beginning to realize what was going on. True psionics, though possible, is so rare that there is no government provision for dealing with it. His meteoric rise through the ranks and flawless record despite a less-than-flawless reality reflected his ability to influence people's minds and opinions on a subconcious level. He began to actively practice it for the first time in his life.
He practiced on the campaign trail. After all, what better way to get elected than to make frequent appearances among the people? That, and spreading around enough psionic mind-bending to thoroughly troutslap any illusion of free will.
His political rise to power was just as meteoric as his military one, and when another War broke out, the two became one. A powerful wartime Chancellor who also had the faith of the military and the experience to lead them, he was immensely popular and commanded a level of fanatical loyalty that no leader in history had enjoyed.
Now in his middling years, he has been Chancellor for over a decade. His psionic influence is so great that its area spreads over the whole of his country (roughly the size of England) from his tower, which is lined with crystals and hand-tuned by the Chancellor himself to work as an amplifier. Everyone in the country agrees with him on every issue, and he can turn common people into slobbering mad zealots on a moment's notice.
The Chancellor does not consider himself an evil man. All he wants is an orderly society, and his ability has allowed him to achieve that - to give that gift to his people. Order. Harmony. Peace. As he looks forward to the end of his life, as he realizes that he has more days behind than ahead, it is with sadness not for himself but for his people, for what chaos will reign when their wills are not so carefully balanced?
2: Freakout, the Jester -
What's more terrifying than a clown? A howling madman in clown paint (minus the green hair and nasal voice), who can share his insanity with others. ... ... ... I guess that's really it for this one. It's not much of an idea and I'm kinda tired, but it seemed scary as hell when I thought of it.
Well, I had an idea for another Werser but I'm not sure if it's possible.
Is it possible for any Verser to manipulate the Scriff of another?
And if so, does the ability to condense the Scriff out of someone hold the key to causing the permanent death of a Verser?
Can a Verser be completely stripped of Scriff by someone who knows how to manipulate it, leaving him but a helpless indig?
MJ makes the final call here, but I'm pretty sure the answers are "no."
The first question might get "yes, to a limited extent; describe the skill you're trying to create, roll the dice, and I might tell you if it's possible."
It just seems to me like, without the prospect of permanent death, Versers really have nothing to fear from anything. I can throw myself blindly into battle again and again and again, eventually becoming inured to even the most torturous agony, and really know for a fact that I will recover from anything that could ever be done to me - I will always exist and can ALWAYS restore myself somehow, even if it seems prohibitively difficult. (Just look at Hephalaestron for "recovering from the prohibitively difficult.")
Another Werser Group:
The Canadian Frat Boys: Jake Lansdale, Riordan Martins-Stevens, Lew Styles, Nick Devoreius, Micah Donsix, and Charles Xavier-Hallton all went to Toronto State which was The Party College for the NorthAm Confederation. And as members of Pi Rho Tau, known among the Greeks as 'a bad boy fraternity with lots of dough', they claimed an obligation to do every crazy and stupid thing anyone else had tried, and then invent some more.
So, at one kegger, they had a new 'scriff-enabled' big screen TV, and to no one's surprise, at one point, it got dowsed with suds. It was part of a frat prank.
Can you rent a several thousand dollar tv, and then return it a smoking ruin, and get away with it?
They never found out the answer.
Instead, they all became versers. Some of the others with them became corpses because you never can tell with scriff what will happen.
After dealing with the freak-out, they looked around for advantage. And found it pretty quick. They had arrived in a Temple to Loki which was loaded with magic items.
They were eventually killed, but the whole running a kingdom they had conquered by aid of magic, and by their bigger muscles than the poor underfed peasants had been a lot of fun.
Eventually they moved on to 'becoming gods', and usually claimed to be members of the Greek Pantheon.
They've not always been in the same world.
And they've developed a bizarre mix of powers.
But they've become fairly tough.
And they've managed to destroy several civilizations as they tend to take one over, and then play competive games with each other.
They have roped other versers into their game, enlisting them as 'demigods'.
They've also managed to really infuriate a number of more sophisticated civilizations. These civs now know what a verser is, and have very good reason to suppose all versers are evil.
And one more civ that is laying in the brush for a verser to wander by....
Adam Chetwynn was a stockbroker, and "Poor Right's Activist" which meant he hated himself as he lived in a very nice penthouse. It also developed that in between bouts at the soup kitchen, he alternated with buying himself expensive electronic toys.
So when he saw the latest, greatest wristcom as they called the underpowered PDA's in his reality he wanted it. When he realized that it was 'scriff enabled' and 'waterproof' he really had to have it. He tested it out in his shower.
It was made in a foreign country where 'quality control' was manned by a fellow in such a mind-numbing and poorly paid position that chewing hashish was the only way to keep his sanity. What this did to his quality control skills was seen by Adam.
Adam kept up a better front than the QC guy, but he was not all that sane to begin with himself. His first thought was that he had been sent to Hell because of his desire for expensive toys. He did have a faint bit of bemusement as logic kicked in very slowly...Hell was fire and darkness with no stars. He moaned away the night, and then got up as dawn broke. This place was light...and very orange. Perhaps....
And then a plant burned him with a laser?? beam.
He went through several other realities, with each step making him less able to cope. Finally, he arrived in The Valley. The local psionic avians, a Stone Age tribe, took him in, and soothed him. He lived there a long time. In that halcyon time, he learned some psionic skills.
And then his peace was rudely broken by a man arriving. This fellow was not much more skilled than he was, but he was a totally different person. Daniel Kendriks is a self-described 'fix-it man', and 'troubleshooter'. He had been a guy who bought troubled companies and turned them around, and then resold them.
So when he saw how the locals were being continually bombarded by meteors from space, and they had great psionic skills, he conceived a fatal plan as Adam saw it. Why not use your clairvoyance and your telekinesis to rise to space and sweep the orbit clean. It took a little effort to explain 'orbit' to the avians, but once they understood, they were eager to try.
Because right now, they were penned up in their little valley.
Adam thought this a good thing. A small, stable community appealed to Adam. The idea of avians spreading like cockroaches across the planet did not. And yet, he realized that the other 'verser', a strange word, but meaningful, would not turn from his delusional mission.
So Adam ambushed him. But Adam was not very good as a fighter. And the both of them versed out.
Adam arrived in a modern world with Humans, and wandered about a bit unsure what to do. And then he sensed a new arrival, another verser. Now he knew what to do.
He went to the local police, and confessed what he was. He then asked for help in tracking down the other verser. They laughed at him, and sent him home.
Angry, he sent them a letter detailing where they could find the top five suspects they were currently pursuing. With his clairvoyance which he had learned to use to find a person by name, he was a shock and a blessing to the police.
After a few more demonstrations of finding serial killers and bank robbers, the police put him in touch with the Security Board. The SB ran counter-intelligence and security in the nation. Once they examined a few of his electronic items, they believed him. He had items that were ten years in advance of what they could make.
And so the SB sent a strike team to capture the 'verser'. Luckily for Adam, the fellow was truly bad news. Va Keptain Fredevik Vo Duspau was a Nazi SS ubercommando who had volunteered for the Verser Project in his home timeline. He had been putting together a 'cleansing agent', a genetically engineered virus that would only kill those with 'Jew blood', when the SB team burst in on him. The ubercommando still managed to maim two of them before he realized to his horror that they were trying to capture him.
By then it was too late.
The head of the SB was a civilized man, and a Jew, and so he found Duspau's 'little joke' not very funny. Only the pleas of Adam kept Duspau alive. And so it was that Duspau was operated on, and dropped into a chemically induced coma. And for good measure, a nuke was placed in the ten foot cement pad below his bunk if the poison gas did not get him first, the nuke certainly would.
If he awoke at all. Its been twenty years, and he hasn't moved a muscle except at the urging of the machines hooked up to him.
Adam still helps the police find their top criminals. And he checks four times a day, breakfast, noon, dinner, and midnight for other versers. So far, they've captured and imprisoned seven more in medical comas. Four escaped by versing out instead of being captured.
By now, the SB Capture team is the most elite combat unit on the planet.
It just seems to me like, without the prospect of permanent death, Versers really have nothing to fear from anything.
You mean besides defeat and failure? What about loss - loss of valued equipment, loss of a rare opportunity, loss of a well-loved indig before getting a chance to make the offer?
I can envision a verser holding the belief you're espousing. I can't envision him holding it for long.
Wodium - What means defeat? A few centuries of my immortal existance wasted on this project, and on to a new amusement. Equipment can be rebuilt, opportunities recreated, and after a thousand thousand years, indigs are beginning to repeat anyway.
This argument is part of something much larger I've been working on as a reader of Vampire fiction - and now a Verser: the psychology of immortality. I honestly believe that after you realize (really and truly realize as I haven't yet in my Verser game) that you really have /eternity/ ahead of you... eventually you wind up with an outlook on life that is nothing resembling human.
I like the idea of the clairvoyant anti-terrorist. Has he seen the error of his former wealthy ways and begun a life of voluntary poverty while he hunts the Multiverse's Most Wanted?
I'm of the belief that a human being is incapable of coming to that realization. What does that realization even mean when we can't even really come to grips with mortality in the first place?
As to the last question, yeah that sounds good. Only problem is, he thinks all versers are wersers, except for himself. And of course, he's convinced his local civilization that its true too.
Which would likely have some small social effect. Those in the know, who are elite leaders, tend to think in terms of An Evil Outside with Only a Few Heroes. And since what dominates elites thoughts does tend after a time to find its way to popular culture....there is a small strain of prize-winning movies (another way for elites to multiply their thoughts power is to give prizes to those who agree with them) about Demonic Figures from Beyond that would not be in this reality except for this guy's presence.
I would say that no one can strip a verser of his scriff. Harry is right, you start to develop a psychology of immortality--but Scott is right, too, that there are losses, defeats, pains.
There are ways "out", but they are chosen by the verser himself--most notably, leaving the border supernatural into the deep supernatural, which is usually by invitation only, and by decision only.
I've had people toy with the idea of scriff removal machines, and I suppose in theory it's possible to manipulate scriff in such a way as to take some away from a verser--but I would think that to take all of it away (and thus remove the aspect of versing entirely) you would need a successful roll of at least 100% on your attempt, and that's not terribly likely, and I don't think anyone would get more than one attempt.
Also, it wouldn't be cumulative. If you rolled 99 you would reduce the scriff by 99%, but if you rolled 99 again, you would take away 99% of what remained, leaving yet enough for the verser to stay alive.
--M. J. Young
would taking away the scriff to that point alter anything, like the amount of equipment they take? I got the impression that scriff builds up as you verse, and I don't know that I am right but I had the impression that the reason your equipment limit keeps going up is due to the accumulation of scriff, both in the equipment and in the verser.
IF you stripped someone of all of their Scriff, like was my intention, you would strip a Verser of his Verser-ness, rendering him mortal. But yes, theoretically, stripping someone of some of his Scriff should reduce his weight capacity since, as I understand it, the 'more weight' thing is really a 'more Scriff' thing.
It could also theoretically play hell with his ... what's the word... Followers? Associates?
Going back a year ago...I'd say the clairvoyant anti-terrorist might well hang on to his toys which fuels his self-hatred and drives him to assume all versers are scum just like him.
He's falling into despair.
Perhaps.
Or, he's proud of himself as he moved past petty material things, and found a way to be useful protecting this nice society against criminals and the uber-dangerous scum 'versers'.
I'm not comfortable with increasing a weight limit by injecting additional scriff, so I doubt I would allow a reduction accomplished via extraction of scriff. Besides, the "more scriff" thing is a simplification devised by the mostly ignorant to explain an observed trend; the trend could be as easily explained by steadily heightening attunement of the existing scriff, with the "amount" thus rendered irrelevant.
Yeah, that's a judgment call. I can easily ignore scriff injections because it's not the amount of scriff in your body but the amount of extra scriff bound to your molecular structure. I know that there have been scriff removal machines tried in Ed's game, but the people always wound up re-infected (probably because anyone who has a scriff removal machine is experimenting with scriff, so there's plenty around in other devices). It's too much trouble for me to figure out some correspondence between scriff content and weight limit, and Scott's explanation is as good as any (although yes, others say it is an increasing amount of scriff in your system, which need not be very much at all to have significant effects).
It would not affect associates, because associates are separately scriff infected--that is, an associate goes with you because he has become a verser whose scriff is very closely attuned to yours, because you have a relationship that binds the two of you together. Associates are not impacted by weight limits or scriff quantities.
--M. J. Young
Cassandra Cornfed aka The Lady Cassandra aka The Harvest Woman aka Cassie aka Cassandra Luanne Morgan aka Seedbearer has many names and in several worlds she is worshipped as a goddesss, but in some its as a destroyer and others its as a protector.
After her first few worlds, she bumped into The Gardener, and saw how he used local plants to perfection to make the most wonderful vegetables she'd ever had. And then she remembered a bit of history, how foods got introduced to new areas. So she gathered herself some seeds, and next time she versed out, she planted them.
The local ice age tribe seemed quite greatful to have cabbages and tomatoes instead of the antecedents to thousands of years of breeding of those. It helped the tribe not starve in the next five winters. She thought it good, and next time she had a chance she really stocked up.
And she started planting everywhere she went.
In some worlds, her choices were inspired, and she saved whole countries from famine. She saved a variant of the Roman Empire, and she helped to orchestrate the rise of the Cherokee Nation to be a partner with Mexico and the US.
In one world, the wheat she planted wiped out the local grasses and the herbivores that could eat the hard wheat were few, and so the rabbits died and the sheep died, and then the people died. She had already versed out by that time.
In another world, she got a bit more ambitious, and used an alien plant she was not familiar with, but it had excellent fruits. Unfortunately, she didn't know that before the fruit-bearing stage was the carnivorous stage.
============
The Lord of Disease, the Disease Maker, Plague, Dr. Plague, and Vaughan Duff are his names, not that he goes by the last one.
He was familar with the tales of the the spread of smallpox, and even had a few courses in biology under his belt when he was versed out by the school mainframe. After a few worlds, he arrived in one in which a casual conversation revealed that no one had ever heard of Ebola, or smallpox, or cholera.
Later that night, as he wiped the blood of his blade, and then took the money, he realized he was small-timing it. Granted it was fun to stick people, and see the look of shock on their face, and their wallets provided him with food, but it was small. If only he had the smallpox virus with him, he could unleash it here, and ....
He smiled, and stabbed himself. It took a few more worlds, but he managed to get several strains of dangerous virii and bacteria, and he found a world where they had never heard of the Bubonic Plague.
It worked.
It worked very well indeed. He managed to kill over sixty percent of the people with the plague, and another twenty percent from war and chaos and starvation.
He summoned the few survivors in the area of a major capital city as he'd been pretending to be a doctor. And to their faces he confessed his crime. Oh, it was delightful seeing the shock and incomprehension on their pained faces fade to belief and understanding and then rage. And then he released smallpox, and versed himself out.
Later, he did it again.
He likes to meet versers. He's always charming and amusing to them, and he likes to give his 'friends' gifts. These gifts can be things like his 'Staggering Cow Water Purifier' which he claims is a kitschy device he bought that purifies water poured into it. It keeps back some of the water and later releases it in a fine mist when the verser is not around. The mist is laden with germs....
Dr. Plague is not trying to infect the verser, but he's trying to make the verser a carrier. He wants the verser to use whatever odd little device the evil undergrad gives, and frequently so he makes sure its helpful in a day to day way...like a solid quality water purifier which has a second secret function.
Dr. Plague has some exhibitionistic tendencies so he always leaves around clues as to his real plans. Like 'staggering cow' or he might be using a staff-spring out scythe as a hand weapon...