I added three more examples in the Meta-Powers File. You can find them at the very bottom.

There was a full story update just a few hours before this one. Click here to read it, if you haven’t done so yet.

Previous | Next

Depending on how broadly one is willing to define, the Shifter classification (which coincides but is not completely encompassed by the Morphing rating) is the single most common type of power there is, outnumbering even Espers two to one, if not more so.

To understand why, one must understand the nature of Shifters. In simple terms:

A Shifter is a metahuman capable of changing their physical state.

This encompasses both shapeshifters and numerous other kinds of powers, which will be enumerated later in this document.

An important distinction, which will be touched upon later, goes to One-Time Shifters, metahumans whose shape changes exactly once, during their manifestation, and thereafter remains constant. While one may consider that to not be a dedicated power, nor worthy of the ‘Shifter’ label, there are certain common elements that justify it being included in this document.

Furthermore, there is a large number of metahumans who have Shifting as a required secondary ability to support or enable their main power, or to protect themselves from the effects of their own power (such as a fire manipulator whose body has adapted to be all but immune to heat, or a metahuman with aquatic powers being able to grow gills). These may often come to be from Origins which have little or even nothing at all in common with the kind of factors which normally lead to Shifter powers.

***

Common Origins

Almost all forms of Shifting powers come from Origins which involve an issue with form or image, be it physical and mental.

The physical ones are the most simple and tend to produce the most straightforward Shifter powers: imagine a girl, trapped in a burning building, slowly being consumed by flames; a man lost in the desert, slowly dying of thirst. Another who falls off a boat in a storm, going under the waves and drowning. A researcher in Antarctica whose base was destroyed by a storm, lost in the cold as she freezes to death. Or turn it around: a man has spent his whole life training to lift weights, against all derision for such a barbaric, backwards hobby until he, finally, wins the World Championship for Strongmen, manifesting upon receiving validation that, yes, his form is truly exceptional.

On the other side, there are mental triggers; in the age of body image issues, these often play a role in Origins, leading to the vast number of Physique powers amongst metahumans, usually as a lesser aspect of the ability (interestingly, there are about as many male as female Physique-powered metahumans out there, in spite of common cliches). Such are the single most common type of One-Time Shifters, and perhaps the most common power type of all.

On a more extreme level, severe mental pressure relating to one’s identity can result in some rather disturbing Shifter powers. A feeling of entrapment, relating often to one’s body, can also result in a Shifter power, or at least a Shifter element attached to other powers. Imagine a boy who’s bullied daily at school due to being overweight, having cruel pranks played on him that continually embarrass and humiliate him, until he’s pushed too far; a young girl tries to live up to her late mother’s image, only to always fall short, particularly in the looks department, seeing herself as far uglier than her mother (whether or not that is true is irrelevant to the example), until one particularly painful reminder that she’s just not as pretty as her mother was that makes her snap. A man was born to a purpose, raised to fulfill it, saddled with restrictions which bind him to the will of another; his whole life is just one, long series of reminders that he belongs to someone else, and he snaps, manifesting in a moment of weakness after being reminded by someone or something that he’s merely a plaything of a greater being.

***

Many Forms

Physique/Adonis
The most simple and common type of Shifter, and a One-Time Shifter at that, and also perhaps the single most commonly appearing power, these are abilities which permanently and lastingly improve and change the recipients’ body, usually to adhere to their beauty ideals (though they also at times come with a twist – it is not unheard of that a person may have their sex changed in this way). Like all One-Time Shifters, these variations can not be negated, dampened or enhanced, as they appear to be permanent, viable modifications to one’s biology.

Chimaera
While technically a subset of the Physique type, Chimaera’s can get strange enough that they deserve being listed separately. A Chimaera appears to be an inversion or carricature of the Adonis, a person whose manifestation has left them twisted, often to the point of being truly inhuman in body. It is particularly common for drug-related Origins (or those involving the incipient metahuman’s own death) to create Chimaeras, though they are far from the only causes and, in fact, a Chimaera trait may appear completely on its own with no clear reason why, appended to another power.

Transformers
Another very common type of Shifter, the Transformer has a basic, often plain human form and can switch into a single (or sometimes several related but distinct) form(s), often with powers which are only available in their alternate form.

Kimotas
A partially tongue-in-cheek subclass of Transformers, Kimotas need some manner of trigger in order to transform, be it a ‘magic word’, a particular substance or anything like that.

Darwins
These shifters do not (or do not entirely) control their morphing, but can morph in a variety of ways based on outside influence (be it environmental, or otherwise). Often crosses over into the Meta-rating.

Modals
The most common type of free-form shifters, these metahumans can shift within certain limitations, but are bound to these, such as a shifter who can take on any animal form, or who can take on any form but it’s always made of concrete.

Toolboxes
Less restrained than Modals, Toolboxes have a collection of options which they can mix and match at will. Depending on which options they have available, they can be incredibly versatile and even edge into a Meta-rating.

Freeforms
Can take any shape, with only minor limitations. Extremely dangerous.

***

Traits

Generally speaking, there are certain traits by which Shifters can be classified and rated. These are:

Consistency
Do they shift into a single fixed, or a variety of fixed forms, or can they come up with new ones on the fly (even if it’s just repurposing the same basic elements)?

Permanence
Are their changes permanent, or maintained by their power? If the former, than nullifying their power will only prevent them from changing away from their current shape, not force them to change into their ‘true’ form, as whichever form they’re currently in, is their true form. One-Time Shifters are always permanent.

Mass-Limitation
Is the Shifter limited to a fixed mass (usually that of their true form) or can they increase or decrease it? If so, within what limits (there is no known unlimited case).

Sympathy
A strange term, admittedly, but it refers to a very important trait – if one form of the Shifter is harmed, does that harm (wounds, power effects, etc) carry over to their other form(s) as they shift? Can make a huge difference in a fight.

Forms Per Minute (fpM)
The term for a Shifter’s speed – how often can they change their form within one minute? The record-holder here is definitely Hemming with the ability to assume hundreds of wholly distinct forms (usually assumed to be about 300 in a single minute).

***

A Common Issue

There is an issue, an ailment, a problem, which haunts many a Shifter, particularly those with multiple forms or the ability to assume any form; a problem so common it has its own scientific name that is widely used in literature dealing with powers, particulary the psychological toll they take on metahumans.

Shifter Dissociation.

Many a Shifter suffers due to feeling that their body is not their own anymore, or that it no longer truly represents their identity, due to changing so drastically whenever they use their powers. This can range from a slight unease whenever they are reminded of the fact to full-blown suicidal depression and has claimed many a life (for a variety of reasons) throughout metahuman history.

It is most common in more powerful Shifters and often appears so immediately and so powerfully that it may be considered, at times, to be a full-blown Power Derangement, though it is not always so, and most often develops over time as a Shifter comprehends the extent of their powers.

Unfortunately, there is no known cure for this, and no standard treatment has yet been invented, due to the highly individualistic nature of every single Metahuman’s power as well as their individual issues and personalities playing into this particular disorder.

***

Exemplary Shifters

• Kraquok: One of the oldest and most famous of Shifters, Kraquok is a founding member of the Dark Five and one of the few people to repeatedly fight Lady Light and walk away (though he’s never actually defeated her). He also happens to be Severance’s archenemy and rival, an enmity that stretches back to the early 1920’s. His power allows him to grow in size and power the more damage he takes, growing faster proportional to the amount of damage he took relative to his size at the time, with no known hard limit. As he grows, he eventually develops the ability to use the Mortal Coil, one of the most lethal attacks known, a breath weapon which ages anything it touches at a frightening rate – it is all but always lethal to take even a glancing hit from it, as it is a true temporal effect, and so cuts through most defenses. His only limitation seems to be that, as he grows larger, attacks which previously caused great harm cause less and less so, and once he stops taking a sufficient amount of damage, he not only stops growing but also begins to shrink again.
• Severance: While most of his abilities are unknown, one that is known is that he is capable of contorting and deforming his body to a ridiculous extreme, to the point where he can actually fold himself into a briefcase, for example, or squeeze himself through the gap between a door and the floor.
• Bakeneko: Aimi’s power allows her to assemble any form she wants within the limits of her own mass out of a toolbox of options she gains through her power scanning nearby living beings (animals or plants). She ‘assembles’ a form out of several options offered to her by her power and then shifts into it and can potentially take on any form that could possibly be assembled out of pieces of all living beings, though she can not change her mass (though she can compress or stretch it, if need be, within limits).
• Ares VII: Possibly the member of the Olympians who most closely matches his namesake both in personality and power, Ares is a brute of a man, both literally and figuratively; his power allows him to absorb non-living material in order to transform into an armoured, heavily armed form which closely resembles a warrior in arms, growing larger, denses and generally more powerful the more material he absorbs, though he can only absorb one kind of solid material at a time (he prefers steel).
• Dionysus: The original (and current) Dionysus is a grab-bag if there ever was one, with one of his powers being the ability to take on any human or animal shape, though only one at a time. He likes to get very naughty with it.
• Dolphin Blue: A current member of Japan’s Okinawa Sentai team, Dolphin Blue has the power to transform his body into a semi-fluid state, reshape it, then solidify into this new form. He is limited by both his total mass and the amount of time it takes to do so (several minutes per change).
• Chrysalis: A woman or girl of unknown origin (even their original sex is unknown, though she identifies as a female now), Crysalis is a mercenary villain with the ability to spin a cocoon around herself, going into a kind of incubation period during which she designs a new shape, which she then takes on before bursting out of her namesake chrysalis. It takes hours to change form and she appears to be limited to organic ones, but she can vary her size widely (ranging from cat-size to building-size) and take on very eldritch forms.
• Hemming: Probably the most powerful, likely the most dangerous and definitely the most evil Shifter known, Hemming is the founder and leader of the Savage Six and generally considered to be one of the single most reviled humans to ever live, rivalling if not surpassing even Weisswald. He is a monstrously powerful Shifter, capable of taking on any form he can imagine, be it organic, non-organic, solid, fluid or even gaseous. He can decrease his mass down to that of a very small mouse, or increase it to the size of a very large elephant, if not more so. He is capable of taking hundreds of forms within a single minute, morphing so fast he often eschews normal movement in favour of simply shifting himself forward, which allows him to move at super-sonic speeds. He can recreate simple technology (he’s been known to masquerade as kitchen appliances, cars, weapons; though whether he can actually be functional or merely takes on said appearance is a different matter) and adapt his body to counter anything thrown at him, meaning that most attacks will only work once or twice before he gets used to it. Being able to shift at very nearly the speed of thought (and he thinks very fast), he is effectively less of a Shifter and more of a mobile, super-fast damage effect that adapts to any resistance he meets. And that’s his lesser power, as both he and those in the know consider his Super-Intelligence to be his most dangerous ability.
  He has never been beaten and never failed to kill a target he actually went after, save for one. Pound for pound, he’s the one member of the Savage Six you least want to face in combat and anyone who knows him claims that he lacks any true weaknesses. He is also considered the benchmark against which all other Shifters are measured, as his abilities are unprecedented and unsurpassed.

Previous | Next

Vote

Previous | Next

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the “Meta” rating is the most nebulous power classification there is, encompassing a wide variety of effects with only one commonalty: they are powers about powers. From the power nullifier all the way to the power granter, any metahuman whose abilities affect their own or others’ powers earns a Meta rating.

No two powers are ever exactly alike (there are cases of two people having the same power, but in that case, they literally have the same power, not a power each which are exactly alike) and this counts double for Meta powers – not only is the power itself always unique in some form, but it’s also most likely going to show differences in how it interacts with any other power, some obvious, some subtle – and it’s the details that can be the most important.

Furthermore, responses to Meta-powers have to be as varied as the abilities themselves – against a power nullifier, a power mimic or a power thief, you’ll usually want to rely purely on normal human troops, while fighting a power shifter or someone who grants powers to their minions requires that one throws as many and as powerful metahumans at them as possible to overwhelm their power advantage.

So why not just split the classification further? Well, because, for one, there are already so many different ratings and complicating it even further is not well-advised. Furthermore, there are some common themes that run through all Meta-powers, perhaps not pertaining to how to combat them, but to where they come from and how they may function.

Above all, though, ratings are not meant to be the be-all end-all in figuring out how to deal with a threat. When you’re in the heat of combat and you hear “Meta!”, that means you assume the worst and verify the situation first before proceeding. Metahuman assets are pulled back until the nature of the threat is understood. It means you assume that things are going to get weird, because no powers ever get quite as weird (barring time-manipulation) as meta-powers.

In fact, weird could well serve as an alternate classification for meta-powers.

***

Common Origins

Meta-Powers as the dominant/main power all but always arise from Origins in which other powers were heavily involved – it can’t have been just other metahumans playing a role, but rather, their powers had to be a deciding factor. A much rarer form of Origin is one in which there was a distinct lack of any theme, an absence of input.

In technical literature, there are four accepted  types of Origins for Meta-Powers, and Meta-Powers themselves are classified according to those four types. The four known classes are Plus, Minus, Null and Wyrd.

Interestingly, these terms were taken from the remnants of Gwen Whitaker’s own research notes, a stack of which she handed over to a Canadian research team in 1981 in secret. Someone must have let that slip, though, and several villains, as well as at least one Intelligence Agency, attacked the lab trying to obtain them. During the resulting chaos, the lab and the notes were destroyed, with only a single page (partially) left over, on which these four words as well as fragmentary descriptions could be made out.

Someone later published those same pages and they became the basis of much speculation, due to their cryptic nature, as well as the basis for the classification of Meta-Powers.

In detail, the four Types of Origins are described as:

Plus
This term is applied to Origins where powers played a positive role. They may arise from someone being protected by a power during a crisis, being healed or otherwise supported by powers (such as a person manifesting while under the effect of a power-granting power). This most commonly results in powers which, in turn, affect other powers in a positive way – enhancing powers, granting powers, mimicing powers and such.

Minus
The exact opposite of Plus, the term ‘Minus’ refers to Origins which involve a negative relationship to powers. Someone who’s being electrocuted by an Electrokinetic, or being mind-controlled or otherwise harmed in some fashion, be it physically, emotionally or mentally. This tends to heavily emphasise powers which affect other powers in a negative fashion: countering powers, negating powers, shielding from powers, stealing powers and so on.

Null
One of the rarest kinds of Origins of all are those which are so lacking in definition as to be best described as empty. A person has lost all their memories and has not yet had time to build much of a foundation for their personality, lacking the usual lifetime of experience that powers mold themselves to. An abused child, kept locked up in a room since birth, leaves its prison for the first time. Two girls manifest powers before even being born, having not yet made a single experience for their powers to refer to.
With such an utter absence of definition, the resulting powers usually lack definition of their own and work with that – power mimics, thieves and shifters are most commonly Nulls.

Wyrd
As the name might imply, this is possibly the weirdest kind of Origin one can have – Wyrds are those who manifest due to or while a power breaks reality in the viscinity or in relation to them. A man manifests while caught in a time loop. A child manifests while being teleported away from its mother. A youth manifests as a cataclysm shatters the world around him, setting him adrift between realities. A girl manifests after her own death.
When reality itself no longer applies, the weirdest of all powers are born. Unlimited power shifters (often with heavy drawbacks), powers which interact with reality, including other powers, through non-standard vectors. The specific law of reality which was broken tends to heavily inform the resulting power (if time was broken, then the resulting power will often involve a temporal aspect; if space was broken, there will be a spatial theme).
These are the rarest of rare Origins, with only four confirmed cases known.

***

The Results

While the individual powers tend to be extremely diverse, there are some common types of effects that can be described:

Negation
All but exclusively Minuses, these powers reduce other powers in some fashion. This can range from reducing the intensity of an effect all the way to negating it entirely. However, few are so powerful and comprehensive as to categorically negate any power at all – the strongest known Negator, Ember,  found himself unable to negate the Dark’s power, with the implication that it wasn’t that the Dark was unique in some form, but that there was a flaw even in his power – aside from the fact that he had to be touching his target anyway.
Most Power Negators usually work in a lesser fashion, such as dampening powers, cutting down their effect by a set percentage, or preventing them from being used under specific circumstances.
While not technically power negators, metahumans who add negative side-effects to other metahuman’s powers are usually lumped in together with Negators.

Enhancement
In contrast, these powers arise all but exclusively from Plus Origins. Enhancers boost the powers of other metahumans to varying degrees. This can mean outright boosting its raw power (flames burn hotter, strongmen lift more weight, teleporters reach further) or affecting other parameters – making powers easier to use, negating negative side-effects, preventing backlash, and so on.

Power Control
The power to control another’s power while still leaving it in their hands. This can range from having complete control over another person’s power to merely being able to set when it is used, but not how (or the inverse) or to affect a single parameter (like being able to determine at what range a power will take effect if used, or preventing it from turning off).

Endowment
The ability to grant powers to others; specifically, while Enhancers improve on existing powers, Endowers add powers, either to metahumans, norms or both. This may well be the most coveted kind of power there is, at least as far as the world’s governments are concerned.

Mimicry
Being able to copy powers (usually with some limitation) used by other metahumans. Very rarely able to assume powers on a permanent basis, and even then only with other limitations (such as being able to retain a copied power permanently, but only being able to hold three such powers at a time). The prototypical Meta-Power.

Theft
Powers which steal powers from other metahumans. The difference between these and Mimics is that Mimics generally don’t affect the ‘target’, Power Thieves most definitely do, reducing their powers in some fashion, in the rarest cases even permanently!

Cultivation
The ability to grow powers over time, often adjusting them as they so grow. Only two known cases, both the result of Wyrd Origins.

Adaptation
Gaining powers in response to specific circumstances (such as assuming defensive abilities suited to environmental threats, or the feared Nemesis-type, who gain powers suited to fighting a specific metahuman they target).

Shifting
Similar to Adaptation, only more active, with the metahuman being able to actively choose powers, usually from a limited (but not necessarily fixed) selection.

***

Exemplary Metas

• Desolation-in-Light: Generally considered to be the most powerful metahuman short of the Godking of Mars, DiL has an apparently unrestricted ability to choose multiple top-tier powers at will (on top of at least two major permanent abilities). One of two known pre-natal manifestations.
• Gloom Glimmer: DiL’s younger sister and the only other pre-natal manifestation known, Gloomy’s power can provide an apparently unlimited variety of powers, though she has little in the way of actual control over what she gets – and sometimes over how to use it, even – and can only try to hold onto or push away a given ability, hoping that her power will cooperate for once. Fortunately, her control has been improving as of late.
• Baba Yaga: A Null if there ever was one, Baba Yaga awoke with no name, no past nor much in the way of higher thought, but with the ability to permanently steal the powers of any metahuman of whom she gains a sufficient genetic sample, gaining them at full strength. Recently she’s also demonstrated the ability to bestow these same powers unto others, losing access to them herself in the process.
• General Disarray: One of the founding members and current leader of the Chaos Corps, a British team of (borderline) supervillains and the Archenemies of Lord Buckethead’s Gremloids, General Disarray is capable of enhancing or dampening any metahuman power within about a block of himself, as well as controlling any power in use (he can’t force someone to use their power, but if they do, he controls it, so long as it happens within his range).
• Major Mayhem: Another founding member of the Chaos Corps, Major Mayhem is a power thief. He can drain other metahuman’s powers by punching (or otherwise striking) them, draining a bit of their energy with each hit (the bigger the hit the more he takes). Powers so diminished recover over a short amount of time, unless he manages to land enough hits to drain a hundred percent, in which case it takes days for them to recover. He can himself use a lesser version of any such power (a tenth of its original strength at most, no matter how much he drains), running on a limited charge based on how much he drained. The charges don’t run out on their own, so he can store a wide selection of powers until he needs them.
• Corporal Disorder: The first teenage (and female) member of the Chaos Corps’ ‘Brass’, Corporal Disorder can empower any physical object she touches (usually her gloves, bullets she fires or, most commonly, the pellets in a gadgeteer-made paintball gun) with an effect which scrambles the nerve signals of anyone they hit, with the effect growing more and more discombobulating the more often the power is applied. If she hits metahumans, the effect also spreads to their power, causing it to go out of control.
• Ember: Among his many, many, many other abilities, Ember was capable of simply shutting off the powers of any metahuman whom he managed to physically touch with his hands. The limits of this ability (other than the limited range) are unknown, though the Dark’s ability to counter it certainly proves there is at least one.
• Queen Madeleine: One of only two known Power Cultivators, Madeleine started off with but a single ability (being able to increase or reduce her own density) and cultivated more and more powers over time. Currently, six God-Tier powers have been confirmed, including a much more powerful version of her original density-manipulating power, as well as the ability to control the effects of any one power within her sight (giving her both a main and derived meta-rating). She is now working on her seventh.
• Cyclops: A Greek supervillain and one of the few confirmed Wyrd Manifestations, Cyclops manifested while stuck in a time loop with the ability to assume any power at all, but only one at a time. Each power comes with a time limit, after which it disappears, only to be replaced by another. Both the time limit and the number of powers he can choose from after each such cycle vary due to unknown factors, a great source of frustration for him.
• Aphrodite III: The third Aphrodite, a member of the Olympians, can enhance or reduce the powers of any metahuman by touch, with the effect petering out over time. The longer and more intense the contact, the stronger the effect.
• Rounds: The leader of the New Lennston United Heroes’ team, already mentioned in the Spawner file. He can create spectral copies of any metahuman he touches, which have one half of the original’s powers, while he gains the other half, for as long as the copy persists. Can make up to twelve such copies.
• Heckler: A German metahuman, Heckler has the power to endow projectile weapons with a variety of effects (electric, explosive, acid, paralysing, freezing, infinite ammo, several others), though only one at a time. Once a weapon is so empowered, anyone can make use of it until it runs out of its charge – either a limited number of shots, or a time limit in the case of infinite ammo.
• Aheri: A South African warlord and one of the most successful ones, Aheri has multiple powers, the most dangerous of which is her ability to bestow any of her powers onto any powered or unpowered recipient, losing access to them herself until she recovers them.
• Zincar: A former Brazilian drug lord, he could transform people into living steel statues (with an accompanying degree of super-strength) which were also capable of delivering electric shocks by touch, from the strength of a taser up to a lethal dose. Killed by Quetzalcoatl.

Previous | Next

Vote

Previous | Next

Spawners, Mook-Makers, Birthers, Queens: the names are many, but they all refer to the same class of abilities – those which generate ‘agents’ which are separate from the metahuman himself…

Which is actually not a very good way to classify powers with, because there is a vast difference between the various different ways in which this power may manifest and what may be a well-advised strategy in dealing with one type may lead to catastrophy when applied to another – for example, if a metahuman’s agent is independently intelligent, knocking them out may not cause it to disappear; instead, you’re now stuck with an inhuman monster that’s off its leash (and likely pissed at you for hurting its master).

But first, let’s focus on where Spawners come from.

***

Common Origins

Spawner origins tend to share one common theme – a lack or loss of people. They are also overwhelmingly negative, with only a very few confirmed cases of positive-origin spawners known even within the metahuman community.

The kind of lack often informs the power – is it focused on a single person or on a multitude of people? The former might generate a single agent, while the latter the ability to spawn a great many of them.

Often, spawners and controllers come from very similar, sometimes near-identical origins, but it’s the focus which determines the result. For example, a bullied teenager might manifest either spawning or control abilities, depending on whether their origin focuses on the people who are there (and who could be controlled) or the people who aren’t there (and so need to be generated/replaced).

***

SAVRIC

In general, Spawners can be classified by way of several categories relating to their agents’ abilities, its source and their control over it. This scale is mostly academic, as it’s too cumbersome to use in the heat of things, but it’s quite popular in online debates, among others. It is known as the SAVRIC scale:

Source (S): Where does the agent come from? Does it appear out of nowhere (0), is it constructed out of surrounding material, such as a golem made from rocks (1), does it have to be made in advance, such as in a lab or through a ritual (2) or is it permanent and does not need to be summoned at all, but has to be moved about (3)?

Amount (A): Does the spawner generate a single agent (3), a limited amount (2), a whole swarm (1) or an unlimited/unknown number (0)?

Variation (V): Is the agent always the same (3), does it vary along a limited template (2), can it take any form, but depending on extraneous factors (1) or can it be (nearly) anything (0)?

Range (R): How far from the spawner can the agent(s) move and still be of use? Are they limited to within their immediate presence (3), can they act within a short range (2), long range (1) or is it unlimited (0)?

Intelligence (I): The most worrisome aspect that one uses to categorise spawners is how intelligent their agents are – debates whether its actual intelligence, sub-conscious control via the spawner or something else notwithstanding – and thus, how independent they are. Do they lack any intelligence at all, being merely remote-controlled puppets (3) or are they without intelligence, but possessed of simple robot-like principles and commands they stick to, or which can be programmed into them (2)? Do they have an intellect comparable to some kind of animal (1)? Are they perhaps even as intelligent as humans or even more so (0)?

Control (C): How much control does a spawner have over their agents? Is the agent absolutely controlled (0), does it have leeway in interpreting commands (1), can it outright resist commands (2) or does the spawner have no control whatsoever (3)?

A spawner is thus rated from 0-3 in each of these categories, with their average being known as their SAVRIC score. While it’s not usually equivalent to how dangerous one is, a low score is generally considered to be bad news, especially due to spawner’s prospensity to negative origins and the accompanying derangements and other issues. Fortunately, low scores, especially in regards to Variation and Intelligence, are extraordinarily rare.

The only known spawners with a SAVRIC score of 0 are Weisswald and the Dark.

***

ImPermanency

One of the most important distinctions between Spawners is whether their agents are lasting, permanent beings, or are merely projections that only exists for as long as they are maintained. Does knocking a spawner out cancel out their agent? Does killing them do it? In the case of Weisswald, for example, the answer to both of those is a resounding no. His Spiteborn, once created, are independent, living beings, if utterly twisted.

Also important is that power nullification can cancel out impermanent agents, but can, at best, knock permanent ones out (until they leave the area of effect), if it affects them at all (Spiteborn can be prevented from using their more exotic abilities, such as their black blasts or, for the more powerful ones, their telepathic abilities, but can otherwise operate as usual).

Fortunately, there appears to be some form of trade-off involved – barring extreme cases like Weisswald, the Nightmare Sun or the Dark, Spawners seem to trade off one ability for another – those who produce many agents usually have weaker, dumber ones, while singular agents tend to be more versatile and powerful. More intelligent agents also tend to be harder to control, providing another trade-off.

True permanence in particular is extremely rare. Most agents, at the very least, die or disappear upon the death of their master.

***

The Question of Intelligence

One of the most hotly debated subjects in regards to Spawners relates to those who produce agents with near-human or human-level intelligence (rumors of beyond-human intelligence are usually roundly dismissed as hoaxes or delusions).

The first and most common question is this – are they truly intelligent, independently from their creator? Or are they merely being controlled by way of the spawner’s subconscious, acting as he would expect them to act? The most common evidence brought up towards the veracity of this theory is that agents tend to act in a way that seems to fit their Spawner’s personality, or else their suppressed desires. A common counter-argument is that the same can be said about most powers, that they usually tend to fit the personality of their bearer to some degree, and that the minds of these creatures may just be formed to fit their master.

The second and, perhaps, more problematic question is this – at which point is an agent intelligent (and permanent) enough to count as alive? As sentient? At which point would human rights need to be applied to them, or should they not be granted to non-humans – even if they are of human origin – at all?

Perhaps fortunately, there has never been a case where an intelligent agent came forward to claim equal rights under the law (as far as anyone knows, at least), nor has anyone ever accused another human of murder for killing a permanent, intelligent agent. However, as the number of metahumans grows, so does the number of Spawners, making permanent, intelligent agents more and more common (though they are still a vanishingly low percentage of their kind – if one made a separate category for Spawners who generate intelligent, permanent agents, they’d likely be the second- or third-smallest group of metahumans, exceeded only by high-powered Gadgeteers and, at the very top, the highest end of meta-powers, such as DiL’s, Gloom Glimmers and Baba Yaga’s).

***

Duplication

One of the most common forms of Spawning (though it is still quite rare) is the ability to duplicate oneself or, in very rare cases, others. This can range from being able to split oneself into two, to being able to create a slavishly loyal copy of another person, or an unlimited number of such.

Generally speaking, Duplication, like most Spawning, tends towards being a solo-power, though Self-Duplication in particular appears to be the one most likely to have other, usually ancillary powers.

***

Sub-Spawners

A surprisingly common sub-set of Spawners are those who get Spawning as a sub-rating – usually Gadgeteers and, most commonly, Contrivers, who can create some manner of agents to act in their place. They may range from summoned demons/fairies/elementals/etc to clones, to robots, to weirder things.

Like other sub-ratings, Sub-Spawners are usually described by appending the Spawner rating after the main rating, usually via a backslash, for example:

Legend: Contriver 9/Perception 8, Spawning 11

***

Exemplary Spawners

• The Eighth: One of the most feared Spawners in recent history, the Eighth was a metahuman (presumably) who appeared in Egypt during the mid-2000s. Appearing as a slightly above-human sized locust-like monstrosity with vastly enhanced strength, toughness, speed and senses, as well as winged flight, the Eighth would create permanent, apparently perfect copies of itself each time it killed another human (animals didn’t count, though it killed any it came across), eight at a time. Furthermore, it would poison humans with its scorpion-like stinger, sending them into a murderous rage – any kill these victims would rack up would cause the Eighth which poisoned them to generate four copies of itself. While the individual Eighth did not appear to be too intelligent, and nor did they seem to have a true hive mind, they did cooperate on instinct, raging across Egypt like a biblical plague. Fortunately for the world, they were discovered early and could be eliminated before they managed to multiply beyond any hope to contain them. As no core Spawner was ever found, it is assumed that the first Eighth was the source, but became just one of many once it multiplied the first time, with no one member of the swarm being the ‘original’ any longer.
• Hydra: An old-school villain from the late 20s. Any time he took a hit, he’d split into two, with each duplicate being able to further split upon taking damage. No real limit on how many duplicates he coul dmake, but they got progressively dumber the more were made, until they couldn’t even stand up straight anymore. He usually couldn’t go beyond about a hundred selves before they became too stupid to be of use. He was killed in battle against a rival crimelord in 1929.
• Zomboy: Creates duplicates of himself that begin to rot pretty quickly, dying off within about an hour of their creation, but has no upper limit as to how many he could do, except that he can only make one at a time (they take about 3 seconds each). While he lacks an ongoing connection to his copies, they are all of like mind and predisposed towards cooperating with each other and the original. When a Zomboy dies, be it due to outside influence, its time running out or deliberate suicide, all remaining Zomboys gain his last sensory input and thoughts.
  The original Zomboy does not decay rapidly, nor does he have their immunity to pain and slightly enhanced strength and toughness (neither of which reaches supernatural levels, though).
• Necromonger: A major villain of the early seventies. He could create permanent duplicates of himself by touching human corpses, shaping them into his own duplicates. If he used it on metahuman corpses, they’d have the original’s powers. He was killed by Lady Light and the Dark after he crossed the line, killing over twenty teenagers with powers who’d been gathered for an attempt to make a super-school, creating duplicates out of their corpses. Even with their combined might, putting all Necromongers including the original down proved to be one of the original duo’s most challenging tasks.
• Argus: A Greek superhero and anxillary member of the Olympians. He can create stationary duplicates of himself that share senses with him and can fire laser beams from their eyes. While he can only have up to twelve of them up at a time, they last until he creates new ones or are destroyed (though they are partially insubstantial, and so very resistant to most damage), and operate even when he’s knocked out or asleep, though with only very basic intelligence (usually following pre-programmed commands). He usually has at least two of them watch over him while he sleeps, and several more stationed all around his area, the city of Drama.

• Matryoshka: A Russian metahuman, and a member of the Frozen family. She’s just a living skin, no internal organs or bones. By wrapping herself around a victim, she takes control of their body and drains nutrients from them. She can spawn duplicates of whomever she’s currently got inside her, who are under her complete (verbal) control. The more duplicates she makes, the faster her victim wastes away, and once they die, the duplicates made off of them die, as well. She has trouble letting someone go once she’s wrapped herself around them, making a non-lethal application of her power very difficult.
  For someone with such a ghoulish power, she’s a surprisingly pleasant young woman (though her actual age is likely impossible to determine, seeing how she woke up one day with no memories of her past and her power already active).

• Crawler: A preteen boy from the Midwestern USA, he has command over a permanent agent the size of a small bus, a monstrosity of many limbs, huge muscles and armour plates capable of shrugging off anti-armour fire. While the agent doesn’t appear to be any more intelligent than a very smart dog, he is very independent of Crawler, and has been seen taking actions which directly contradict given orders, usually for the sake of keeping his master safe. They live a nomadic life, moving from town to town with no clear goal known; they are both rather peaceful, unless provoked (which, unfortunately, happens rather often). The agent, commonly known as Crawler (while his master is addressed by his true name), appears to become vastly more powerful (or perhaps he simply stops holding back) when his master is in danger of immediate harm and is very prone to highly destructive rampages while so empowered.
• The Dark: The King of Supervillains can create apparently-permanent, human-level intelligent Darkwraiths, each with a custom powerset and absolute loyalty to him, going so far as to wear (at least) one of them in lieu of a costume. His Darkwraiths are at least as intelligent as normal humans, if not more so, can be created out of thin air, in any number he so wishes, have custom powersets and skills and are both able to operate at any distance from him, as well as absolutely loyal to their master, giving him a perfect SAVRIC score of 0.
• Merkabah: Usually considered one of the most powerful Gadgeteers alive, the terrorist known as Merkabah seems to specialise in creating mechanical monstrosities she unleashes (apparently) at random to cause massive havoc. She has also demonstrated the ability to create organic monsters, so her exact capabilities are unknown; the fact that almost no one has ever seen her makes her all the more mysterious.
• Anna Fastings: Unofficially known as “The Smiling Horde” within the United Heroes organisation, Anna Fastings may well be one of the most important members of the organisation, and one of the most influental, even though she only ever works in supporting positions, such as a secretary, a receptionist, an assistant and so on. Unfailingly polite, cheery and intelligent, Anna is a member of the group known informally as ‘her students’ – metahumans and norms chosen and mentored by Lady Light. Her power is a peculiar one, born out of loneliness and abandonment – she lost her family at an early age, bouncing from foster family to foster family, having trouble fitting in until she manifested powers and was picked up by Lady Light and brought to the UH, back in 1973.
  Anna’s power allows her to periodically spawn a duplicate of herself (the exact time it takes between duplications fluctuates, but usually averages out to four or five a year). While she has no other powers – and the duplicates are independent of each other – her new duplicate is always physically a teenager, a perfect copy of her body at the time of her manifestation, giving her an effective immortality so long as no one kills every one of her selves. Only her youngest living self can spawn a new one, but if that one is killed, the next one up the chain spawns a new self instead. Every new self has the combined memories (including skills) of all currently live duplicates. As such, she also has several selves of hers inserted as spies in various locations across the world, spies which never break cover and never send any information to anyone, yet give her a complete update several times a year when she spawns a new self.

***

Rarities amongst Rarities

There are some rare, confirmed cases of Spawners coming from positive origins – and all of them were or are notable in some way:

• Michele/Michael: Generally considered Italy’s pre-eminent superhero, Michele was once a priest who achieved his manifestation after what gaining what he claims to have been an Epiphany following an intense meditation on the bible, the world and his place in relation to both. He considers superpowers to be Gifts from God, and using them for selfish and destructive deeds a blasphemy worthy of Sodom and Gomorra.
  His power allows him to generate a multitude of semi-corporeal, angelic duplicates of himself, with several secondary abilities which he himself shares – flaming weapons, the ability to use lethal strikes without harm (he slashes someone with a sword but instead of cutting them, they merely feel pain as if they were and are drained of strength, for example), flight, healing hands and a very annoying (for villains) subconscious precognitive ability that guides him towards ‘Sinners’ (i.e. metahumans who abuse their powers).
• Rounds: The leader of the New Lennston UH division, Rounds is generally considered to be a prime candidate for succeeding the Feral Family as a Shining Guardian, should the current Doc Feral not find a worthy successor from within her family. He manifested after defeating a notorious supervillain with his bare hands, while defending several innocents, his younger sister amongst them, from said villain, and shortly thereafter joined first the Junior Heroes and then the United Heroes proper.
  His power allows Rounds to create duplicates of up to twelve individuals by touch, one each. Each of these duplicates has any powers the original may have at half-strength, while Rounds himself gains half-strength versions of their powers as well (essentially splitting the target’s powers between himself and their duplicate). The duplicates are loyal to him, even if made out of supervillains, though they retain their original personality and can be quite hard to deal with even while being loyal. Destroying a duplicate also deprives Rounds of their associate powers. The exact time limit for how long each duplicate can last is unknown, though a time limit definitely does exist.
• Drakaina: The original Drakaina was a gadgeteer who specialised in creating crude (by today’s standards) robots with limited ability to act independently. While not much is known about her, it is known that she gained her power after managing to build her very first robot, after many years of failures and disappointments. Her original, pre-manifestation creation is enshrined in the headquarters of the Drakainas and taking a trip to Toronto in order to visit said shrine and see the (officially) original gadget is considered something of a pilgrimage amongst Gadgeteers.

Previous | Next

Vote

Previous | Next

ESP, short for Extra-Sensory Perception, is easily the most common “power” in myth, folklore and popular culture – countless people are supposed or have claimed to be able to be able to see the future, see  things that weren’t there, talk to people who’re not present and receive messages from gods, spirits or the dead, among many other.

Perhaps it’s thus not surprising that the Perception classification – whose holders are usually referred to as ‘Espers’ – is one of the, if not the broadest one there is, covering a staggering multitude abilities, from the obvious to the strange. While classifications like Gadgeteer and Contriver cover a very specific powerset which stands apart from most, Perception is more of a catch-all classification for all powers that share a general theme.

To be precise, Esper powers cover all abilities that deal primarily with information in some manner.

Unsurprisingly, such powers are extremely wide-spread, though primarily as secondary or tertiary abilities, either in addition to or as support/enablers of other, greater powers.

Note: “Perception X” refers to the end result of the power, while “Esper”, usually, describes the source – for example, an Esper power might also warrant further ratings beyond mere Perception. However, they are just as often used interchangably in colloquial speech. Only scientists and cape geeks tend to insist on proper usage.

***

Sensory Enhancement

Hands down one of the two most common kinds of Perception powers are those which directly enhance or alter the Esper’s senses. Sharper, even telescopic eye-sight, enhanced hearing that goes to the point of echolocation, a nose that can make dogs turn green of envy, a touch so fine it can locate people through the tremors they cause by walking, all those and more make up a large part of Esper powers; they are also the ones most commonly to appear as tertiary abilities, without a direct connection to the main power, but supporting it in some fashion – such as Polymnia’s extremely enhanced, fine hearing, which aids her in her work with sonic technology.

Sensory Expansion

The other most common class of Esper powers has a great deal of overlap with Sensory Enhancement, often going hand-in-hand with it – powers which expand senses, allowing one to perceive things they normally could not. X-Ray vision, Ultrasound-Hearing, thermal vision, remote vision and many more make up this class of powers. Again, Polymnia’s hearing would fall under this classification, as she is capable of hearing the full range of sound, not just the frequencies which normal humans are limited to. Mindstar’s ability to have a second “viewpoint” which moves independently from her body also technically falls under this header.

Sensory Alteration

A rarer, weirder form of Esper powers are those which alter senses entirely. This can be such things as permanent Synesthesia (such as perceiving sound visually, or hearing smells) or any other sensory power which completely alters/replaces one’s sense.

Enhanced Communication

Often considered to have one of the most desirable powers for teamplayers, these Espers are capable of sharing information in exceptional ways, allowing them to enhance or outright replace traditional means of coordinating groups of people. Their power may allow them to transmit their voice across an entire area, create a network of telepathically connected minds or otherwise allow for information to be shared across distance or through obstacles which would normally prevent it.

Expanded Communication

Perhaps one of the weirdest of Esper powers is the ability to communicate with beings or objects one would normally not be able to, or in ways that are normally not possible. This can mean “talking” to animals, or being able to interface with computers with just your mind (this would usually be rated as a Control/Perception hybrid), speak to inanimate objects (such as paintings, statues, trees) or even the dead (whether or not one actually talks to the dead is another matter entirely). Chayot’s ability to read and project emotions are a form of expanded communication, though in her  case it comes at the cost of the usual means of communicating with other people.

These sub-types are the most simple, straightforward ones and require little explanation beyond simply being defined. What follow are more abstract abilities which make up the most interesting kinds of Espers.

***

Pretercognition

The three forms of Pretercognition are considered to be related due to sharing several attributes; in fact, as they stand apart from the ‘lesser’ Esper abilities, there have been repeat proposals to split them off into their own, separate power category.

All forms of Pretercognition collect, process and/or apply information, either from the past, present or future; how they do that is a question which has yet to be answered. Even pericognitive powers (those dealing with the present) seem to have leaps in the information they process which cannot be explained by sensory information available to the metahuman. If the vectors by which information is gathered are obvious, then the power in question is probably not any form of Pretercognition.

Furthermore, all forms of Pretercognition interfere with one another, especially with those of the same type; even when working together, unless Heterodyning is achieved, Pretercognitives are going to give each other a headache as their powers attempt to account for one another. This is most prominent with precognitive powers (the first predicts the second, the second predicts the first predicting the second, the the first predicts the second predicting the first predicting the second, etc) and least prominent with postcognitive ones. Pericognivite powers sit in-between, appropriately enough.

To be clear, one most not necessarily be precognitive to mess with another precognitive – peri- and postcognitive ones can do it, too, and vice versa.

Only very, very few pretercognitive abilities are resistant or outright immune to such interference, either because they deal with such specialised knowledge as to not butt heads with others, or because they are just so powerful they can out-perform all other pretercognitive powers; this last type is the rarest one, obviously.

Regardless of interference and barring a few lucky exceptions, overuse of any form of Pretercognition carries a great deal of risk with it:

• Overusing Pretercognition tends to lead to powerful migraines – from mere headaches to crippling, day-long pain; in some extreme cases, it might cause the brain to hemorrhage or worse.
• Pretercognitives who rely too much on their powers instead of using their own smarts may find that they go down strange, even non-sensical paths, as their powers run unchecked, building upon spotty foundations of mental leaps, lacking or plainly wrong information and a complete lack of (human) common sense.
• All forms of Pretercognition – especially Precognition – carry the risk of making a mistake along the way, not noticing it, and going down a completely wrong path, as they draw conclusions based on faulty facts; this can and does often prove fatal, if not for the Pretercognitive themselves then at least for those who rely on the information they can provide the most.
• There are certain powers/individuals who appear to be blind spots to Pretercognitives, and whose interference can thus seriously screw them up.
  • DiL, unfortunately, is the most well-known example, but there are others, as well.
  • Gloom Glimmer appears to turn into a blind spot intermittently.
  • Tartsche is a blind spot whenever he activates his power.
  • Pristine, much like DiL, is one all the time. However, some particularly powerful ones can work around her as she is a rather predictable person, even by mundane means.
  • Ember appears capable of becoming a blind spot at will, or even selectively, blinding some to himself and not others.
  • Emyr Blackhill appeared to have no protection from Pretercognitives whatsoever, yet he consistently defeated such powers – they would appear to work just fine on him, until they’d suddenly turn out to have been partially or completely wrong, for no apparent reason whatsoever.
  • Lady Light and the Dark have both shown themselves able to outwit Pretercognitives of all kinds; whether this is due to innate powers or due to a deeper understanding of powers is a secret they have so far kept.

Pericognition

The ability to intuit or just plain know facts in the present, as opposed to past or future information.

Pericognition refers to a great variety of powers, dealing with acquiring and processing information in the present, and so may often appear to be some form of sensory or communicative ability; while there indeed is a lot of overlap, the classification of Pericognition refers specifically to powers which gather and process information through unknown vectors, often seeming to work solely within the metahuman’s mind.

Such abilities can express themselves in a variety of ways, such as supernatural skill at planning, super-intuition, an extreme skill at reading people, combat intuition, the ability to use math or some other construct to analyse your surroundings, etc.

Of the three forms of Pretercognition, Pericognition is the one that’s most often overlooked, even though it is, in many ways, the most useful one – as it relies on facts in the present, it is not as easily fooled or led astray as Post- and Precognition.

Postcognition

Gathering information from/on the past, Postcognition manifests in powers such as being able to feel emotions an item’s owner has felt in the past, or see what has happened a few hours ago in some location, or otherwise access that which has already happened.

In many ways, this may well be the most ‘normal’ form of Pretercognition, as it’s not inherently too different from watching or reading a recording, even if it may go beyond just that.

Different kinds of Postcognition are reliable to different degrees – some seem to be all but absolute, always giving out correct facts unless interferred with by other powers, some appear to be able to go wrong somewhere along the way; however, the precise mechanisms by which Postcognitives work are as unknown as those of any power, ultimately.

Precognition

The master discipline of Pretercognition, this is the legendary power to perceive the future in some manner. It is, quite possibly, the most desirable power out there, provided it can be given proper support (which is why almost all Precognitives – even more so than other Espers – are part of some team); cape and cowl organisations worldwide recruit Precognitives as aggressively if not more so than even Gadgeteers.

Of all forms of Pretercognition, and ESP in general, Precognition is by far the rarest one – and even then, it rarely manifests in anything as straight as being able to outright see the future. Examples would include the ability to look someone in the eyes, mentally think of a course of action and see a colour which indicates how likely that person is to follow said course; or a danger sense that goes off like an alarm whenever one (subconsciously) perceives a threat coming, perhaps with the added advantage of intuiting an optimal response.

More powerful ones may be able to view a single possible future, and be unable to see ahead again until they have caught up to it; or they can only see their own future, from their viewpoint, or only the future of other people, from their viewpoint – never their own. Or any of countless other possibilities.

Straight-up seers who can look ahead at will or with only minor limitations, perceiving the whole of the future they focus on, are one of the, if not the rarest power there is, and the few known to exist are all top tier capes and cowls.

Precognition is the most fragile form of Pretercognition, likely because the future is ever-shifting, affected by countless constantly changing factors; as such, Precognitives are the ones most likely to go down completely wrong paths due to a single piece of misplaced or misinterpreted information; and they are the ones who are most strongly affected by other pretercognitive powers, as well as by blind spots interfering with their visions.

On the upside, even though other pretercognitive powers can seriously derail a precognitive’s predictions, they are also the ones who’re the most difficult to account for, and the ones most likely to be able to trump “lesser” forms of Pretercognition – though it may cause them one hell of a migraine to do so.

Precognition and Free Will

The age-old question – if someone can predict the future, is there even such a thing as free will? Can the future be changed, even if one knows what’s coming?

Barring a few specific exceptions of Precognitives whose powers forbid them from changing the future, the answer is “Yes, free will exists and the future can be changed.”

If there is a Precognitive out there whose visions are absolute, never wrong and impossible to change even by the metahuman himself, then they have yet to become known. As far as anyone knows, Precognition only gives one information of possible futures, not the one, inviolable future.

***

Common Origins

Usually, Espers come from Origins that are defined by a lack of information. The particular circumstances and nature of said lack are what then informs the individual Espers’ power.

Some example Origins:

• Being lost in a dark cave, but not trapped; there is only one way to go, really – what is problematic are all the hazards along the way that one is incapable of perceiving and accounting for.
• Struggling to make friends in a new town, but unable to penetrate the pre-existing social circles due to lacking knowledge of local customs and history, leading to a painful, perhaps humiliating rejection.
• Having just stolen a huge package of drugs, the thief is struck by fear and indecision – they have the drugs hidden at home, but what to do now? Can they keep them hidden? Did someone notice they took them? Should they try to sell them as quickly as possible, or wait until the heat dies down? What’s the safe course of action?

***

Gadgeteers – Just another form of Espers?

In recent years, there has been an increasing number of proponents of the theory that Gadgeteers are actually a specific form of pretercognitive Espers. While such claims have yet to be proven, they are not without merit. The two most common theories are:

1. Gadgeteers are subconsciously precognitive, reaching into the future to find technology which will or may exist in the future, and reconstruct it in the present.
2. Gadgeteers are subconsciously post-/pericognitive, absorbing, analysing and correlating information through unknown means to develop their advanced technology.

Opponents of this theory often bring up the fact that Gadgeteers neither cause, nor suffer from pretercognitive Interference; however, proponents argue back that Gadgeteers may well just be such extremely powerful Pretercognitives, or so over-specialised, that they do not clash with other Pretercognitives or simply steamroll them with their own power.

Either way, the debate as to the true nature of Gadgeteering, ESP – and all other powers – goes on, still unresolved.

***

Espers and Intelligence

As one may have noticed, none of what has been said so far touches, in any way, on Intelligence.

Superhuman Intellects are a staple of fiction, and yet the closest thing to super-intelligent people, Espers, don’t tend to be more intelligent than normal people – in fact, since most Espers originate from situations in which they lacked or were unable to obtain information in some way, many of them tend to be less intelligent than average.

Espers have more information available than normal. Some have something in their heads – or maybe attached to their heads – which processes information better than any human could, before passing it onto them. However, they still must make decisions with their own intellect, based on the information which their power gives them – ultimately, they are no smarter than anyone else.

True Super-Intelligence was long thought to be a myth (with two exceptions), and to this day, there is no publically confirmed case of true Super-Intelligence.

Hemming may actually have such an ability, at least according to Macian – however, it has not yet been proven, nor is the specific mechanism by which it works known; does he simply think faster than normal? Does he have multiple brains to mull a problem over with? Does he just have really powerful pericognition that makes him act as if he was super-intelligent?

No one knows yet.

Lady Light, the Dark and Super-Intelligence

There is no question that Gwen Whitaker and Peter Goldschmidt are scientific geniuses. After all, their research somehow led to the advent of apparently supernatural, reality-warping superpowers. And even before that, they were far ahead of their time, making numerous scientific inventions over a wide variety of scientific fields, while also being very accomplished fighters, detectives, tactitians and writers.

After gaining powers, they each created huge, international organisations which essentially equal, if not outstrip, most nations in terms of political and economic power. Even though they are not invincible (in spite of Lady Light’s reputation of such), nor have the strongest powers there are, they have consistently remained at the top of the world of metahumans, over almost a hundred years of activity. They have even shown, consistently, that they can outwit, if not outright defeat, most pretercognition they have found themselves at odds with (when they can’t just plain overpower them on account of being physical powerhouses).

To which extent that is caused by them being just naturally that smart, and how much their powers play into it is unknown – some argue that they have to be just naturally super-geniuses, as they already performed so extremely well before Point Zero. Others argue that they were smart before, and only became smarter, not just more experienced, after, by gaining powers that enhanced their already considerable intellect.

Even more extreme is the theory that they were the first metahumans to begin with – long before Point Zero. Whatever they did on that day then allowed for others to become metahumans, or perhaps it would have happened anyway, and Point Zero merely hastened the process. Perhaps the two – the Advent of Metahumans and Point Zero – are not related at all, their connection a false correlation!
Much like with anything else about Point Zero, Lady Light and the Dark refuse to speak on the subject, if they even know the answer.

Previous | Next

Vote

Previous | Next

Everything comes from somewhere, and so do metahumans, and the powers that come with them. While few, if any, really know where the powers as such come from, there has been an enormous amount of research put into the process of Manifestation and the so-called Origins which precede it.

Origins

An Origin (always capitalised when used to refer to this concept) is the event, or series of events, which precedes a person becoming a metahuman.

What exactly qualifies as an Origin varies from person to person, with the minutiae of each having a significant impact on the attributes of the resulting metahuman, beyond just the nature of their power.

While it is pretty much impossible to predict what exactly might lead to a person manifesting powers, there definitely appears to be a common theme of extreme emotions which can be seen in every Manifestation to date; they’re usually events which push the person to physical and/or mental extremes, or come about due to those extremes.

In general, they can be divided up into two categories: negative and positive Origins.

A negative Origin is what most people think of when they speak of an Origin.

A man trapped underneath tons of concrete, trying desperately to get out before he is crushed by shifting rubble or suffocates due to the lack of air; a girl trapped in a burning building, breaking down in screams as the flames begin to lick her body; a young man finding himself on the cusp of achieving his life’s dream, only to hesitate at the last moment and lose it all; a heavily bullied boy, barely holding on at school, finally snaps when his tormentors drive away his last friend; another boy, running from a blazing monstrosity, desperately trying to carry his baby sister to safety even as he tears his own, bare feet apart.

That’s just a small sample of possible negative Origins, events which push people to the extreme in ways that threaten to, and often do, break them. Unfortunately, they happen to be the most common type of Origin by far, making up at least eighty percent of all recorded Origins – and likely far more, considering that not only is it considered a taboo to openly ask a metahuman about their Origin, but that many, especially heroes, often lie about or else obfuscate their Origin, for various reasons (not the least of which being an attempt to dissuade people from chasing harmful experiences in the hopes of gaining powers).

As they almost always result from people coming to harm, negative Origins generally lead to Manifestations providing violent, combative powers, which further skews the perception of the public, as the most visible metahumans – capes and cowls – are fighters, and so “favour” people who experienced a negative Origin.

Such power comes at a price, however, a price beyond simply having to undergo and then live with an experience harmful enough to cause a Manifestation. It colours the Manifestation, those unforgettable visions which all metahumans experience and which perhaps only a handful, if that many, people in the world actually comprehend. From that point forward, that person’s power is forever linked to these experiences, and every use of it will remind them of what they went through to gain it.

Furthermore, negative Origins are extraordinarily more likely to cause serious derangements, which can range from the annoying, but harmless (Hecate’s super-OCD) to the monstrously demented (Mindfuck’s obsession with making others suffer as he suffered), as well as serious physical mutations.

A positive Origin, in contrast, is an event diametrically opposed to its counterpart, yet also quite similar – an event which pushes a person to their physical, mental and/or emotional limits, and perhaps even beyond those, resulting in a manifestation. The difference being that they, as the term implies, are positive experiences – good things happening to you can also give you powers.

It could be the athlete who, after sacrificing most of his childhood to prepare, finally wins Olympic gold, in that moment when he stands upon the podium with his medal, bathing in the adulations of the crowd and his own euphoria; the social worker who, after years of failure, finally manages to save one of her charges and see them off to a better life, at last finding affirmation that it wasn’t for nothing; the boy who lifted a car off of his mother with nothing but his own muscles and will; the girl who, after years of toil, ostracism and sleepless nights, finally sees her dreams come true, side-by-side with her love, stepping forth into a new tomorrow; the last of a long line of treasure hunters, thought to have been nothing but madmen, finally finding the treasure his ancestors sacrificed everything to find, vindicated at last.

Such Origins are extraordinarily more rare than negative ones, as the threshold to manifest out of a positive experience seems to be much higher than vice versa; however, the rewards are more than worth it.

Positive Origins usually result in less focused, more versatile abilities (often lacking a clear, distinct issue to focus on, such as a collapsing building, fire, or bullying and abandonment); sometimes more abstract ones than usual, as well. Some of the strongest metahumans known claim decidedly positive Origins (Elysium’s/Diantha Whitaker’s great dance with the love of her life being one of the most well-known examples for having resulted in a decidedly overpowered ability), as do most metahumans with non-combat powers, such as Second Season, the man who travels the world making crops grow and trees bear fruit to combat world hunger.

The greatest advantage of such Origins, though, is the fact that they are the ones most likely to leave a metahuman stable, without any, or merely minor, derangements. As well, their powers are forever tied to a memory of jubilation and success, rather than being a reminder of the lowest moment of their life.

If only more people underwent positive Origins, perhaps cowls wouldn’t outnumber capes four to one even in more civilised places such as the USA.

***

While it may seem, so far, that Origins are usually singular events directly preceding the Manifestation, them is actually not always so. While that is most often the case, an Origin can actually cover a lot of time, a series of experiences which are topped off by one final crescendo pushing the nascent metahuman over the edge.

The build-up and the finale can contrast, too. An Origin may be many, many good, happy things happening to someone, only for one final, big catastrophy to hit, undoing or tainting all those happy memories in one fell swoop; or a long, long series of disappointments and despair, only to finally find success and vindication at the end of it.

Generally speaking, Origins taking place over longer periods of time tend to result in more complex abilities, as well as a disproportionate amount of Contrivers and Gadgeteers, rather than the simpler, more straightforward powers that a singular Origin may cause.

***

Armourface: A derogatory term referring to the idea that powers come about as a direct response to a single event (get stabbed in the face, face gains armour). This is almost never the case, and even when it is, there are usually aspects and deviations which put lie to the idea that things work in so straightforward a manner.

***

Second-Generation Metahumans

In some rare – though increasingly more common cases – metahumans appear with powers that appear derived from those of other metahumans whom they are close to – often family members or close friends.

These so-called second generation metahumans seem to require far less stressful Origins in order to manifest and are less likely to be deranged or to have some manner of inherent issue with their powers.

While their powers tend to be related to those of their ‘parents’, they are not necessarily directly derived; it is far more likely that a 2nd Gen will show aspects and elements in their power related to that of those metahumans they are related to, while their actual powers are, at their core, fundamentally different.

As metahumans become more and more common, the number of Second Generation Metahumans has also been rising, slowly countering the trend towards a disproportionate amount of cowls compared to capes, as these people do not require nearly so traumatic experiences to obtain powers.

There does not appear to be any meaningful difference between second- and third-generation metahumans.

***

Usually, there are common themes, connections and relations between an Origin and the resulting powers, such as:

• An obvious, physical threat -> offensive power.
• Bodily harm to the nascent metahuman -> protective power
• Threat of harm (real or imagined) -> change self to escape or evade
• Lack of information at the core of the issue -> Esper power
• Recurring issue over a long time period -> Contriver or Gadgeteer

The reversals of these can lead to the same kind of powers, through a positive Origin:

• Resisting bodily harm -> protective power
• Resolving an issue by uncovering information -> Esper power
• Overcoming a recurring issue -> Contriver or Gadgeteer

And so on.

However, these are just simplified examples, and it would take far too long to go in-depth as to which particular Origins may lead to what kinds of powers, nevermind that that’s always just guidelines anyway – in the end, one may still end up completely surprised by the result of a Manifestation.

***

Deviants

There are always those that buck the trends, cases where the apparently established powers simply don’t seem to apply at all. Some known cases of such would be:

• Type/Level Zero: Persons who show signs of minor Physique powers (healthier, more fit and more beautiful than normal), without any other symptoms of being a metahuman, nor having ever experienced an Origin or a Manifestation.
• Born Metahumans: Both DiL and Irene Whitaker/Gloom Glimmer manifested at birth, with no apparent Origin whatsoever. Irene does not remember experiencing any kind of Manifestation, either.
• Queen Madeleine: Eye witnesses report definitely that Madeleine died to wounds inflicted on her after days of torture, as well as extreme exhaustion. Her status was confirmed and she was officially declared dead, before she appeared to spontaneously reincarnate into her monstrously powered form.

***

Final Words

This is but a small primer into the issue of Origins, Manifestations and power mechanics. Expanding upon the subject would not only take a long time, but would also risk an enormous amount of spoilers I am unwilling to divulge at this point in time.

As such, I’m afraid this will have to do for now…

Previous | Next

Vote

Previous | Next

Ah, the Contriver. No class of metahuman has caused the people on Earth as much of a headache as this one.

That’s a good way to sum Contrivers up: Headaches for others. No kind of metahuman is as unpredictable, or as annoying, as a Contriver to deal with, whether you’re their ally, their enemy, or just a bystander trying to avoid becoming collateral damage.

It doesn’t help that it’s easily the most nebulous class of powers that we’re talking about. Where do item-based powers end, and where does Contriving start? Are some Contrivers perhaps just extremely advanced Gadgeteers which contemporary science just plain can’t comprehend?

Many a Contriver of the early years has, in retrospect, been revealed to have been a Gadgeteer, and many a past Gadgeteer has since been re-classified as a Contriver, further muddling the classification.

Then there are “artifact-based Contrivers”, a classification which many abhor and which has been retired since the reform of the Classification system – people who express their power through a single, unchanging item, but can not create anything beyond it, nor modify it, really – merely requiring some manner of outside focus to express their power.

As if all that wasn’t enough, their specific condition – being tied to a particular, usually very elaborate fantasy – makes it nearly impossible to actually work with a Contriver directly for the sake of exploring the true nature of their power.

Currently, Contrivers are classified thusly:

A Contriver is a metahuman with a fluid, changable power or set of powers which they can not express independently, but require external tools to do so, whose nature is determined by their individual ‘theme’.

While succinct, this definition is not very useful, as Contrivers are perhaps the most diverse kind of metahumans, falling into several different classes:

• Artificers: what most people think of when they speak of Contrivers, and by far the most common kind, Artificers create fixed items which are empowered by them, often but not always following a theme of ‘mad science’ of some sort, though there are also many ‘magic’ Artificers, who create ‘enchanted’ items.
  • Canon Examples: Doctor Despair, Spellgun
• Casters: Far more rare, Casters express their powers through temporary constructs, be they vocal or otherwise – such as chanting spells, drawing runes, or other such temporary means. Almost always ‘magic’ based, there have only been two confirmed ‘science’-based Casters in history.
  • Canon Examples: none yet
• Weirds: Not a formal classification so much as a catch-all term for Contrivers who fit into neither of the above categories, using more abstract or unusual means to express their powers through, such as a Contriver relying on specific constellations of people or circumstances for various effects.
  • Canon Examples: none yet
• Hybrids: Combine two or more of the above in various ways.
  • Canon Examples: Hecate (Artificer & Caster), Heretic (Artificer, Caster & Weird)

Beyond these classes, Contrivers are usually differentiated by which one of two main themes they follow:

• Mad Scientists: Following a pseudo-scientific mindset, Mad Scientists are almost always Artificers, creating items themed after their particular brand of science. They tend to be more rigid in the application of their powers, rarely able to improvise much on the go, but in return also (usually) create more stable, reliable Contrivances.
  • Canon Examples: Spellgun, Doctor Despair
• Mages: The other big theme of Contrivers is, unsurprisingly, magic. Most, though not all, Mages are Casters. In general, Mages tend to be more adaptable than Mad Scientists, their powers less strictly defined, but they’re also more likely to suffer backlash of some kind or simply fail.
  • Canon Examples: Hecate, Heretic

Regardless of which class the fall into, Contrivers can not simply do anything they like that fits into their particular theme. There are several factors to consider:

• Resources: Usually, Contrivers require specific materials to craft their Contrivances, be it raw materials to make ray guns, or chalk to draw magic circles, or any of a number of things. Depending on their theme and the particular Contrivance they wish to produce, these can get pretty exotic and, often enough, expensive. Some Casters can eschew these.
• Time: It takes time to craft Contrivances, usually proportional to their power. Again, some Casters can eschew this, being capable of ‘creating’ their Contrivances (usually ‘spells’) on the fly.
• Research: A Contriver doesn’t simply know everything they can do all at once. They usually start out with only a few ‘patterns’ with which to work, using them as blueprints for Contrivances (usually, a single pattern can be used for multiple different Contrivances), and have to perform research, each their own particular kind (a Mad Scientists might have to crunch mathematical formulas which’d give a normal person brain cancer, a Mage may have to do ‘spell research’ or negotiate with imaginary demons, deities or other sources) in order to obtain a new pattern.

While Casters may seem to have quite the advantage here, being often able to eschew materials and time spent crafting fixed items, instead casting spells on the fly, they are usually saddled with other restrictions and flaws beyond what a Mad Scientists often has to suffer, such as being dependant on the whims of some kind of ‘patron’ who might revoke their powers at will, or having to risk backlash if they mess up their ‘spell casting’, which isn’t unlikely to happen in the heat of combat.

Beyond all this, there are some common attributes all Contrivers share, both in terms of naming and process:

• A Contriver’s creation is called a ‘Contrivance’, regardless of whether it’s a spell, a machine or something else.
• Assuming unlimited time to research and build, as well as unlimited resources, a Contriver can do anything which fits their theme.
• Power nullifiers can prevent a Contriver from both creating and using their Contrivances. This is usually the easiest way to determine whether a particular metahuman is a Contriver or a Gadgeteer, assuming a power nullifier is available.
• All Contrivers are at least slightly mad, as they each truly, fully believe in their particular fantasy, even if it may not be immediately obvious.
• Bad things happen when someone tries to actually convince a Contriver that what they’re doing is ‘not real’.
• Contrivances usually lose all power if their creator dies, reverting to being nothing but curious decor, at best.
• Even beyond their particular delusion, Contrivers are the metahumans most likely to suffer from Derangements, ranging from the extreme (Doctor Despair’s megalomaniacal compulsion to conquer the world) to the merely quirky (Hecate’s obsession with proper Grammar and Neatness).
• Contrivers and real technology don’t mix well. While this is not a hard rule, the weird nature of Contrivances tends to play hob with any mundane technology they interact with, especially more complex ones (such as computers).
• Contrivers and Gadgeteers really don’t mix well. While Contrivances and Gadgets usually interact with each other no different from the way mundane technology interacts with Contrivances, it is universally considered a horrible idea to have Contrivers and Gadgeteers try to create something in close proximity of each other or, worse, together. The results can be as harmless as both of them simply being unable to make anything that works, up to creating the Ultimate Lifeform To Replace All (ULTRA).

The Magnum Opus

While not exclusive to Contrivers (Gadgeteers are also capable of this), magnum opi are more often associated with Contrivers than Gadgeteers, if only because Contrivers are so much more common than Gadgeteers, and thus more of them have created these.

A Magnum Opus is a Contrivance (or Gadget, though we’ll focus on Contrivances here) on a different scale from what the metahuman usually creates. It is not a once-in-a-lifetime creation, but simply something grander, often but not always an expansion of their usual work into the megascale, though it may also be simply an extremely powerful, smaller item (Infinity+1 Sword).

Magnum Opi differ from normal Contrivances both in the time it takes to make them, the value of the resources required, and the potence of the result, all three far exceeding the normal results of the Contriver’s efforts.

Seeing the Truth

Many people have tried to show a Contriver that what they do is not what they think it is, and observe the results. Their efforts have been met with various, often detrimental results:

• The most common reaction by Contriver is to simply ignore these attempts, rationalising any proof they might be shown.
• Also quite common, and not at all desirable, is them going into a rage, lashing out at whoever or whatever challenges their delusion.
• Rare but not unheard of is the case of a Contriver suffering a ‘crisis of faith’, losing their powers until they return to their fantasy.
• One of the most rare results is the Contriver losing their power entirely, essentially ceasing to be metahumans. This may in some cases actually kill the Contriver.
• Rarest of all observed reactions is the Contriver losing their power and, essentially, manifesting again on the spot, gaining some other power instead, which is usually related to their Contriving’s theme.
• There are rumors of one more possible reaction, though no confirmed cases exist – that is, that a Contriver might realise that their delusion is not reality, yet retain their Contriving and unlock untold potential. This may or may not simply be wishful thinking.

Previous | Next

Vote

Previous | Next

Before I settled on Basil as the main character, I went through a lot of early drafts with various main characters, some of them radically different.

Here are some of them – they may or may not show up in some form in the future, but these incarnations, at least, are not going to be told:

Hemagoria

One day, Amanda Blake woke up in a back alley of New Lennston’s Shades – naked, alone and with no memory other than a mission – Find Basil. Her only companion a weird, lizard-like cat which she knew she made herself – though she could not, for the life of her, remember when or where.

Amanda was a gadgeteer of a very rare type – instead of having a specific field that she works in, she could create an extreme variety of equipment – but it all needed her blood to run. Her power mostly settled in three distinct fields, all connected to blood:

• Living beings, such as her lizard-cat, of animal-like or lesser intelligence and with various abilities, grown out of her own genetic material to be obedient, but requiring a regular dose of Amanda’s blood so as not to break down.
• Small-scale Equipment – power armor which requires a small infusion of blood to boot up, energy guns which regularly take some of her blood through spikes in the grip in order to continue functioning, grenades which took a one-time infusion of blood to be primed, a teleportation device that uses her blood as a marker to determine destination, etc.
• Medicine of various kinds, though the base of everything she concocted used her own blood as its base.

Amanda’s team consisted of:

• teenage delinquent Godou Takahama, also known as Osore, a Japanese immigrant capable of projecting fear as well as great feats of strength and toughness.
• Jack O’Connors, also knowns as the Snow King, a young man capable of creating localised flurries of snow, as well as manipulating said snow for offence and defence.
• Timothy Louis, aka the Ogre, a rather easygoing boy who could turn into a brutish rage monster at will – but at the cost of having to spend a proportionate amount of time in the form of a preteen girl.

Medes

Jake Blake, a young psychic capable of using both telekinesis and telepathy, has been looking forward to being a hero ever since he gained his powers upon a mysterious incident during which he and four other people gained powers, each going their own way.

Medes was capable of both gross and fine telekinesis, was a general telepath (though he usually could only affect one person with any amount of precision, as it required great concentration) and had a knack for picking up skills from other people through telepathy and training.

The other four people who gained powers with him were:

• Hecate, an insane witch obsessed with the “mission” given to her by her namesake goddess upon her manifestation – a sinister mission requiring, among other things, the deaths of the other four people who gained powers at the same time as she did.
• Tyche, a morose, dedicated young man blessed with unnatural luck and a gift for martial arts who joined the Stormwatch (later renamed the United Heroes, upon me finding out about Vertigo’s Stormwatch books)
• Polymnia, a gadgeteer focusing on all things musical and auditory in general, though having paid for it by losing her voice and any sense for keeping a rhythm or hitting a note, unable to produce music of her own anymore. Joined the Stormwatch.
• Eudocia, a preteen girl with an extremely powerful voice and more than a few screws loose. A wild card.

Animus

Casimir Blake woke up in the medical ward of the Stormwatch, with no memory whatsoever, having been found by the heroes of New Lennston alone, in torn clothes and with heavy, nearly lethal wounds. Nursed back to health, they gave him the only name they could think of – the one sewn into the cat plushy he’d been clenching in his hand when they found him.

Motivated to repay their kindness by supporting them with the strange power he wielded – and eager to find out where he came from, and what had happened to him – he took up the mantle of Animus and joined the fight.

Animus power allowed him to animate any sufficiently life-like object – be it a plushie, an action figure, a statue or – if desperate – even a corpse. Anything that represented a living being without being one was fair game for his power.

He joined a team of junior Watchmen consisting of himself and:

• Dike & Tyche, twin sisters with strangely interconnected powers – one could “pay back what is owed”, healing allies proportional to the support they gave her and harm opponents proportional to the harm they caused her; the other had the ability to “break proportion” (a simple tap would shatter bones, a crushing blow would only tickle, a light misstep caused one to lose balance entirely, etc). When they combined their powers, they could strike enemies with blows of disproportionate power.
• Polymnia, pretty much the same as the canon version.
• Noctis Lumen, the son of Lady Light and The Dark, a power mimic who could copy the power of any metahuman he had previously touched, provided that metahuman was not currently within a certain range of him.
• Timothy Louis, the Ogre. Same as Hemagoria’s version.

Wanderer

Amanda Blake was a young woman fresh out of high school. With the whole world in front of her, she decided to make a journey and see the world. Unfortunately, her plane crashed during a flight over the pacific, trapping her as the only survivor on the shattered hulk of a vehicle, with little hope of being found before it broke apart and sank. She manifested gadgeteering abilities, creating a device that allowed her to flee the plane and return home.

Amanda was a gadgeteer specialising in cross-dimensional technology, creating various devices that could move energy and/or matter across parallel dimensions.

She became a vigilante and gathered a small group of other young gadgeteers around her:

• Hecate (Vasiliki); a gadgeteer specialising in creating illusions of various kinds, though mostly audio-visual ones.
• The Ogre (Timothy Louis); a gadgeteer who created a single, rather brutish android he was constantly working on.
• Tyche (Dalia Fitzhampton); a gadgeteer, capable of building basic combat equipment (power armor, some weaponry, etc) and technology which calculated, predicted and exploited probabilities (e.g. a targeting system that calculated the bost moment to pull a trigger in order to bounce a bullet around two corners and into the target).

There were many more, but these were among the most fleshed-out ones.

Previous | Next

Vote