Superheroes! Punching Crime! Yeaaaaah! Sign-Up

[Arhra]

Turns out rambling is very time consuming.

I must confess I have probably missed quite a few things in my wandering rants, so please ask any questions you have.

Now let us talk about why your character might want become a superhero, what a superhero does, where those superpowers might come from and what a superhero does.

In twenty-five hundred words or less!


WHO WANTS TO BE A SUPERHERO?
-------------------------------------------
Superheroes in general revolve around the concept of With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

The costumed vigilante craze came about after the end of the second World War, when the products of various super soldier projects had to be reintegrated back into society. It turned out that patriotism and superhuman capabilities demanded an outlet.

Superpowered individuals appearing at an ever increasing rate meant instability. Some people decided the power to shoot lasers out of their chins meant they were a superior being beyond human judgement. It was easier to give a tacit nod of approval to these 'superheroes' while rushing to establish some means of control.

It didn't quite work out. Things changed faster than anyone could keep up.

Nowadays the government is weak. It's various appendages are either benevolent but ineffectual or corrupt. Sinister corporations engage in secret projects and there's no shortage to chin-laser-ubermensch.

Superheroes however have remained quite effective by retaining a good public opinion. A person who puts their life on the line to help others is generally not a jerk.

Just to get people thinking, here's some reasons your character might have decided to become a superhero:

- You're just a wonderful person,
- Responsibility
- You want to protect your home
- You want to be famous
- Atonement
- You like fighting
- The mantle was passed to you
- Destiny


WHAT A SUPERHERO DOES
-------------------------------------------
Superheroes dress up in colourful, often skin-tight, costumes and beat people up!

No... that's not it.

A superhero is a do-gooder who is in some way extraordinary. and a snappy drsser. There's evidence that people coming by extraordinary powers has been happening for millenia. For whatever reason, it's only over the past sixty years that they've become common enough to be easily identified.

Mutations are appearing at an ever accelerating rate and bizarre discoveries are paving the way for more such talents.

Not everyone with such powers is a good person. And so it is necessary to stop them.

As superheroes, you stand on uncertain ground. The stance on vigilante justice wavers. It's tolerated, but you'll probably get nabbed if you step too far out of line. Keeping to a high moral code, like not murdering people is a good idea.


The World Is Always Doomed
There's always something going on. The approximate threat level can be classified according to this handy scale:

Class 1: Minor. No real threat to life and limb. Example: Saving cats from trees.
Class 2: Street-level crime. Example: Muggings.
Class 3: High stake crime. Example: A bank robbery.
Class 4: Severe damage to a city's processes/large institution collapses. Example: Town hall blown up.
Class 5: City in danger. Example: Mutagen introduced into local water supply.
Class 6: National emergency. Example: Entire east coast of America falls into sea.
Class 7: Whole country affected. Example: Europe conquered by giant robots.
Class 8: Several countries at risk, complete disruption to international status quo. Example: Atlantis rising.
Class 9: Global impact, worldwide breakdown of civilisation. Example: Alien invasion.
Class X: Planetary extinction event. Example: Global Thermonuclear War.

Obviously anything over a 4 actually succeeding is very rare.

I'd expect we'll be nipping quite a few evil schemes in the bud, but they would normally be four or five tops.

Atlantis is essentially getting swarmed by everyone. Founded 11,000 years ago by seven Neptunian Immortals, the last of their race (they weren't always immortal, obviously), it was sunk and they were forced to retreat to their stasis tombs and slumber through the millenia. Now it has risen again, the race is to sink it before its systems and the Neptunians come out of their long sleep.

I have decided against creating a default superhero organisation. Instead, you guys are going to found one after this first mission is completed. Should be entertaining I hope.


GIMME SUPERPOWERS ALREADY
-------------------------------------------
Alright, so you have a motivation for being a superhero, now how do you get those powers?

There are no reliable ways to give a person superpowers, or at least none with predictable results and a lack of side effects.

Klovenhogen's Intrinsic Mental Field Separator might allow you to become a entity of pure mental energy, but the disintegration of your physical body is rather unfortunate. You're rather attached to it.

Let's start with the basics.

Inherent
You are a robot. Or a mutant. Or something. Nothing was needed to give you superpowers - you either always had them or they emerged on their own.

The puzzling thing about born superhuman powers is it doesn't always seem to be genetic. Oh sure there's some arrangements of genes that seem to be related but they don't appear in all cases. Let's not even start on cases where these markers have appeared after manifestation of abilities.

Lucky Accident
A lack of equipment standardisation between manufacturers and the desire for secrecy means even a state of the art laboratory is a mess of incompatible technologies wired together by purpose build adaptors, making those freak lab accidents we all know and love more likely. Maybe you stopped that nuclear meltdown and got superpowers instead of cancer. Or maybe there was just a set of circumstances that somehow combined to give you powers. Who knew being covered in algae and struck by lightning could do that?

It's an untested theory that the people who get superpowers from this sort of thing had some latent quality that made it possible.

Deliberate
You decided to do out and get yourself some superpowers or they were offered to you. Super-soldiers, being rebuilt as a cyborg, being given the Eye of Alitz, inventing rocket boots and decided to kick people with them. You have to be careful with inventor types though. If you've made something amazing, why aren't you selling it for heapa cash?

Human peak potential is exaggerated. Maybe you just trained really hard.

Or you could just buy all these wonderful toys with your vast fortune I suppose.

Found
Maybe a dying superhero somehow based their powers on to you (or is even still living on in you). Maybe you found a lightsaber. Maybe that alien bioarmour fused to your body. Whether this could be considered lucky or unlucky is up to you.


WHAT A SUPERHERO DOES
-------------------------------------------
They do things that are super.

Let's talk about some random topics on superpowers!

First off, if your science is hard, actually make it be hard. If you're just goofing around with nonsensical technobabble then whatever.

Superheroes frequently possess unusual structural changes to their bodies. There has to be something that lets you levitate, right?

SNEERING AT EINSTEIN
There are a number of laws of the universe that get in the way of superpowers. We are assuming that the rules are a lot more relaxed because giant robots are cool, but there are still some fundamental constraints.

If you can shoot lasers out of your chin, the energy for that has to come from somewhere. If you can turn into a dinosaur, the mass has to come from somewhere (let us not get into the problems in surviving the change). Many powers don't have any direct analog (what exactly is a forcefield made of anyway?). So it would help to think of some justifications.

So here's a few handy explainations for how you might wriggle around various inconvenient science facts. They should hopefully cover all the bases:

1) Another dimension!
Your powers involve another dimension somehow, pocket or otherwise. It's a convenient source of energy, a medium to teleport through, a storage area for all that extra mass and can possess weird physical laws.

Can be useful for other things, like a size changer who actually has a dimensional complexity that allows them to interact with the normal universe as if they were much smaller or larger than they actually are. It sidesteps a lot of issues.


2) Access to a superset of physics that our physical laws are a subset of.
To be blunt, you are hacking the Matrix. Either you are invoking a thing to which the normal rules do not apply (like megafire), or changing the rules for a localised case (I have always hated you, gravity).


3) Exotic matter
You think that's atoms you're made of?

To summarise, material that's not made of matter as we know it. Obviously the aforementioned superset of rules or ANOTHER DIMENSION are handy excuses for where this stuff comes from.

There's a number of possibilities: Stable Island materials waaay up in the atomic weights (warning: stupidly dense, requires a particle accelerator to produce); alternative atomic arrangemnts that stand outside of the standard peroidic table; stuff not even made of subatomic particles we recognise...

Various uses for this are energy storage, enhanced physical attributes and excuses for other strange material behaviour like a shapechanging weapon. Obviously, many of these options are also possible with regular materials.

There seems to be forms of virtual matter: you input energy and get something that looks and acts just like a rock or sword or suit of armour as long as the charge lasts. If badly damaged the suffer critical existence failure. Some varieties seem to need constant energy while others seem to store a certain ammount. The line between these and forcefield or 'energy' projections is so ill defined it may be nonexistent.


4) Psychic Powers
Psychic powers can do so many wonderful things.

So many wonderful, unscientific things.

I don't really need to go into the details much here I suppose. Let us talk about a few random features instead. Stuff leaves psychic traces, stuff that's rendered intangible seems to end up in the same place as ghostly things and there's psychic predators.

A rather specialised telekinetic might be able to reinforce themselves in an incredibly tough forcefield and fly. Hmmmm.


Summing Up
Basically, if you can provide a handwave for the more serious physics breaking, that would be excellent.

Try to think about a few other little issues. For example, if you can project a forcefield, what exactly is holding it in position? Have ye ever heard of a thing called recoil?

It helps me judge weird power interactions.


YOUR SUPERPOWER IS A THING!
Believe it or not, there's enough cases of people finding a thing that gave them superpowers or that does something amazing that a rough classification system has grown up. Some of these items have are awfully clingy or permanently fuse to a host.


Billionaire Supertechnology
"I love being rich!"

There literally is such a thing as billionaire supertechnology. The market is pretty messed up. Companies have increasingly moved towards small product runs of extremely advanced technology. Mass produced goods are generations behind.

This sort of thing is limited to near-future level technology. Which of course still includes combat cyborgs, genetic engineering, energy weapons and giant robots.


Xenotech
"It came from spaaaaaaace!"

We are not alone in the universe.

In the seventies, an arcology of extrasolar origin was discovered on the dark side of the Moon, imaginatively named Extraterrestial Superstructure One, or ES-01 for short. It seems to have been a museum and many odd relics were found in it. The place is still being explored.

On top of the hundreds of unidentified samples, there are three known alien races:

Neptunians
The Neptunians were the most advanced race that remained confined to the Solar System. They possessed near complete mastery of the physical world; Alchemy may have its roots in Neptunian science. They were powerful psychics as well. The Neptunians themselves are essentially an amorphous mass of superconductive nerves, brains and organs encased in indestructible, shapechanging frost armour. Psionic amplifiers and some useful forms of exotic matter have been reverse engineered from samples of their technology.

Greys
Greys are the only known intact alien civilisation. It's more a loose collection of misanthropic jerks who think they are funny. Their ships have a crew of one since they can't even stand each other. The only exception is staffing them with expendable, shortlived, somewhat explosive clones, since the only other intelligent life a Grey can tolerate for any period of time is itself. To the best of humanity's knowledge, they fly around the universe messing with less developed species for the hell of it. A Grey is physically fragile, unable to survive long in Earth gravity without special equipment, part of why crashes and our puny weapons can ocasionally take them out. Their technology involves some cloning and genetic manipulation, an interesting variety of rayguns and anti-gravity.

Venusians
Not much information about this extinct race survives, because Venus is a hellhole. Evidence suggests the runaway greenhouse effect that caused Venus' current state is their fault. They were particularly interested in life extension sciences, cybernetics, chemical warfare, microbiology and genetics. They apparently looked like green, cybernetically enhanced space elves.

Jovian Lizards
There is no Lizardman Conspiracy. If there was, they would not have technology that allows them to appear human, nor would they be able to conceal their presence. This would not include shapechanging, synthetic skins, polymorphic alloys, holographic projections, tactile illusions, cloaking, computer hacking or data manipulation.


Archaeotech
"The shaman was said to be able to strike down people with his gaze. Turns out it was his mask."

Human-era artifacts that, for some reason, do something strange. Go nuts.


Paleotech
"This tyrannosaurus... appears to have been shot."

The difference between archaeotech and paleotech is about a million years. These items are all pre-human and frequently fossils.


Obscura
"What is this I don't even"

For every system of categories, there are the miscellanies. Anything that cannot be cleanly placed into the other categories.


CHARACTER SHEET
-------------------------------------------

Name: You do know your own name, don't you?
Alias: Hero name. You might have more than one.
Age: How old you be.
Gender: Male, female or robot.
Appearance: What you look like.
Equipment: Stuff you have.

Abilities: What exactly can your freakish powers do? That's disgusting.

For power level I shall say only this: you are powerful enough to make a fight on your own against half a dozen mooks interesting.

This does not mean steamrolling right over them.

I must admit actual mooks will probably be pretty thin on the ground, seeing it would take a small army of them to challenge a large group of players.

Biography: Describe your personality, origin and current status. How long have you been a superhero? Keep in mind you'll all be working together so DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE. Do you take pains to conceal your real identity?

Superhero Persona: Your costume, how you try to be perceived and a little about how you operate. I will cut the first person to use a T-shirt with an insignia and jeans as their costume. CUT YOU.

Affiliations: You might have some connections.

Enemies: Just a few thoughts for now. They probably will turn up later.

[IHateMakingNames]

Not making a bio yet for lack of internet, but throwing out idea to get judged for when I get internet back.

Short teleport and time traveling about six seconds back. Hero fights some guy, goes back six seconds, while villian is still fighting previous version, Hero punches villian in back of head. Then previous hero disappears from the time traveling he just did. Pre-time travel version always has to time travel, and is forced to if he tries not to because of differences caused by the traveling.

[Arcanum]

Placeholder for now.

[Overcast]

Name: Fredrick Jobes
Alias: The Force, which he REALLY hates because he thinks it is corny and awkward but ever since the newspaper credited him as that he can't get rid of it.
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Appearance: 5'3, 120lbs. Short black hair, brown eyes. Never actually stops wearing his costume anymore.
Equipment: Blankity, blankness.

Abilities: The Force can move things. WITH HIS MIND! It is a bit weird, he has described it as having two variable sized mind hands. So it actually requires he grab things with his head. On the upside this means even when there is nothing to throw he can start doing some mental kung fu. The downside is he might have a hard time slamming some more powerful opponents repeatedly against a brick wall since his grip is escapable.

Biography: Fredrick has been able to move things with his mind his whole life. It started as a baby when his parents thought every house they moved into by some stroke of bad luck was haunted by a poltergeist when his, don't know no better, tiny childness would throw things around with his mindhands. Though eventually he grew up enough to show them why they were moving so much. His parents were fairly accepting, but warned him about how this was going to make them suspicious of any "accidents" that happened in the house from that point on.

This relative kindness and responsibility rubbed off well on him. He learned to his his mind hands about as well as his normal hands for everyday tasks. Opening doors, playing videogames, drinking soda, for him the power wasn't exactly something he was going to use for some greater purpose, just a little special skill he had picked up. Though one day at school a big bully was picking on him for being dorky and short and right when the big brute was going to point him he beat the piss out of him invisibly.

So another talk from his parents that did establish, "You have superpowers, you really can't use them to just randomly beat people up unless you plan to do that for a living."

And so he did. Because when he did it that day at school he earned the admiration of most of the classmates that had shunned him before for being the smart kid. By all means he would prefer to be a hero than go to college. That stuff is way cooler.

One trip to Goodwill and a couple lime green paint handprints later and he was showing up as that next big thing, "The Force" as they called him since his power reminded people of the Jedi from Star Wars. He has been beating up people with his brain from muggers to big bad superbeings. All in all he is having a wonderful time...he just wished they hadn't given him such a dorky name.

Superhero Persona: When The Force first started he tried pulling your typical superhero, "TRUTH, JUSTICE, and UNBEARABLE CORNINESS!" schtick but just couldn't keep it up without breaking out in giggles at how terrible it was. He has since taken a more casual approach, acting like a fairly average person figuring the important part isn't his personality, but his actions. His costume is a pure black getup consisting of a long scarf, sunglasses, gloves, a thick tight sweater, hammer pants, and boots. All over the blackness are stylized hands in lime green pushing in random directions.

Affiliations: Currently none.

Enemies:
~Sketchballer: Sex, drugs, money, and superpowers. Sketchballer is a psychic skilled in emotional manipulation, good at making people feel uncomfortable, scared, and things of that nature. He uses it to manipulate himself into positions of power, and in combat he ends up forcing a person to fight with their own morale rather than him physically. He actually doesn't like his name, and is the archnemesis of Fredrick mostly because it is his fault he got it, since after their first superscuffle he named him that for the newspapers. And as always it stuck.

[PhoenixFlame]

Name: Karen Taylor
Alias: "Vixen" Though she didn't approve at first when the title was applied to her, it has since stuck and been grudgingly accepted.
Age: 26
Gender: Female

Appearance: As the incident empowering her has subliminally modified her appearance, Karen is a tall, athletically trim woman with long orange hair, blue eyes, fox ears and tail. She commonly wears a white crop-top with a blue jacket and jean shorts for freedom of movement while superheroing around. She hasn't gotten an actual costume, since she's still relatively new at this whole thing. Regardless, she's relatively certain that, even with her aberrant biology, she looks less ridiculous than most superheroes. If this is for better or worse has yet to be determined.

Equipment: A pair of gauntlets created from a superscientifically durable material.

Abilities: Kinetic negation/impaction. Directional shield creation and kinetically empowered punches (and improvised weapons) make the the majority of her capabilities. Due to the I/K nexuses interspersed at varying points along her body, this also results in some mild degree of super strength and toughness. Shield projection need not be disclike, and can be used to sheathe weapons much as she does her fists. Though this has little to do with the damage inflicted, as the weapon is merely serving as a shaping device. Furthermore, since Karen is a nexus of nigh-unlimited I-space energy, she is capable of shielding her body to negate equally powerful attacks. Granted, there is a limit to transfer rate, which may require breathers between soaking artillery shells.

Biography: Karen, a Nalacany city native, is your average girl genius and MIT graduate. Her devotion to her studies and life as a run-of-the-mill geek girl had gone rather uneventfully. Until recently, she was a theoretical physicist working for the NexGen corporation, whom produces cutting edge energy manipulation technology for the highest bidder. Karen and her colleagues had been given the task to create an energy shield projection system that utilized power from 4th dimension "imaginary" space rather than clumsy atomic reactor systems that were prohibitively large and expensive. While the daunting task of 'creating' energy by stealing from other dimensions was no doubt the cause of many sleepless nights for the entire team, within six months they believed they had a working prototype.

Then things got interesting. While pulling overtime in the lab unassisted after having an epiphany as to where one would look for alternate dimensions, Karen managed to successfully activate the prototype system... On accident. Caught between the converter reciever and collector emitter, she was struck by a beam of I-space energy that, could any of the collective team's theoretical calculations be believed, should have instantly vaporized her.

Only later did Karen find out that she was possessed of a uncommon, latent and generally benign human chromosomal mutation. However, upon being exposed to the transdimensional energy stream, the 'metagene' in question was activated and purged the errant energy back to its extradimensional source location, inadvertantly sparing her from a grisly (if instantaneous) death. The result of the gene's activation has altered her biology in a rather amusing manner, gradually reshaping her into her 'ideal' body form. Karen's ideal body form however given her entertainment preferences, is slightly embarassing, if attractive. This apparrently tangental shift is not without cause however, as Karen's ears and tail function as 'nexus points' at which I and K space intersect, allowing her to draw the unbelievable amounts of energy required to project and deform her directional 'forcefields'.

She no longer works for NexGen. After the incident, it became apparrent to the otherwise naive-to-corporate-posturing scientist what the corporation's true aims were. Laid off for being 'biohazardous', and discovering that the company's research division had been designing purpose-built pseudomilitary hardware for a single wealthy businessman (who's name had not been disclosed in the documentation), Karen leaves her previous field to join the foundation. Unable to secure funding or a job that requires her talents in the current economic climate, she decides her new and improbable powers would be better served fighting crime and injustice.

Notes: Yes, copypasta from last game, but altogether similar. We'll take 'Theoretical Physics' and 'Lucky Accident' for 500, Trebek.

[Astral Harmony]

Name: Alice Hornsbury
Alias: Shinigami
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Appearance: Stands at 5' 6". Weighs roughly 107 pounds. Has long freeflowing black hair and sky blue eyes. Her skin tone is unremarkable and her muscle build is lean.
Equipment: 2 carbon steel 12" combat knives, steel-toe boots, steel-braced gloves, a set of tonfas, two batons, a 7' steel quarterstaff that can be detached midway, a utility belt with various doohickeys like lockpicks and handcuffs, and a backpack that holds some explosives and medical supplies. She also has a couple pair of sunglasses that can feed objective data to the frames and can see in night vision, infrared and x-ray.

Abilities

Faultline Agent Training: An expert at Karate, Muy Thai kickboxing, Judo, Ninjutsu, and in the use of various non-lethal weapons like tonfas, batons, and quarterstaffs, obviously. She's been trained in stealth, infiltration, interrogation, and takedown techniques.

Berserker Mode: If Alice is taking too many hits, say from engaging with superpowered enemies, her body and mind go into a berserker-like rage. It's nearly impossible to subdue or even psionically dominate Alice at this point, and trying to read her attack rhythm is difficult as well, since she no longer follows any combat rhythm at this point. She cannot maintain berserker mode for long, and her body is very exhausted after a brief while of fighting in this mode. Alice is currently not aware of their power inside her.

Biography: Alice and her father Frederick had lived together for a long time. Ever since she was a kid, Alice believed her father worked for a business conglomerate. She was sickly at birth, and doctors believe she wouldn't live to be ten, but miraculously her father was able to afford the huge expenses to pay for both Alice's medicine and her rehabilitation.

So she wasn't entirely surprised when her father and some strange men told her she was going to carry on his legacy as Shinigami, an international peacekeeper. Her father had been injured during a mission and was now bedridden, never to take up the mantle of Shinigami again. It was because of her father's employers, a secret agency called Sulphyr & Brymstone, that Alice was able to recover from her childhood illness with the compensation that Alice would have to take up her father's position as Shinigami when he could no longer do Sulphyr & Brymstone's bidding.

Alice's simple and peaceful life did a complete 180. In the handful of years that Alice spent deep underground, she learned a few different styles of martials arts and various techniques in stealth and infiltration. Alice still lives with her father, and when they're not talking about Alice's new life as Shinigami, they actually do function like a normal family. A family of a guy who can't leave his bed without crutches and his daughter who occasionally gets called away to bring powerful crime lords to justice.

Her training had officially ended two months ago. And she is about to be tested with her first real mission.

Superhero Persona: A skin-tight black and blue spandex bodysuit that leaves the arms and legs bare and affords some protection through thin armor padding.

Affiliations: Sulphyr & Brymstone ~ a company based in North America that manufactures military-grade technology as a front. Certain high-profile FBI, military and political big wigs know about their special unit, called Faultline. Alice is the newest member of this unit, replacing her father Frederick.

Their buildings are where Alice can go to get patched up, no questions asked, and rearmed for the next mission. Their mission coordinators send live-streaming intel to Alice's sunglasses during her missions. That's about it.

Enemies: The Fallen Angels ~ A paramilitary force that wants what Sulphyr & Brymstone has, government contracts and a reputation for getting the job done, no questions asked and done as commanded. They don't have any kind of front, and it's suspected that their agents operate covertly as regular civilians until given their marching orders. Alice has been told that one of their top-ranking agents, some bimbo who goes by the name Jaden, was the one who disabled her father.

They function more like assassins than special police, snuffing out targets instead of turning them over to the authorities. This puts them at odds with S&B, since villains who're still alive tend to be more useful.

[The Kneumatic Pnight]

Originally Posted by PhoenixFlame

Notes: Yes, copypasta from last game, but altogether similar.

This is also my plan. Mostly because the game turned crapsack out from under my feet so I couldn't really seem to get my golden-agey character to fit in. Luckily, this is a perfect chance to salvage the concept (by design).

I will probably stick Adya right here when I'm done rebalancing, fleshing out the backstory, and working together some concepts that got lost in the shuffle last time.

[Arhra]

I left out some details about your home.

The city you people are living in... has no name. The City's name was stolen by the Abstraction Thief in 1989 and he took the secret of where it was stashed to the grave with him.

This City With No Name is a moderate sized coastal city. Its citizenry lives in a state of mild terror from various cartoonish supervillains. Get to work on fixing that, yo! Pray it is not simply a cover. If there's a feature you really want it to have, say so. It probably has it.


Overcast: DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE. Killing people with little discrimination completely flunks this key requirement! Let us not even get started on the 'try to avoid killing people' requirement.

Plus a guy who can shoot with amazing precision at incredible speed with bullets that are always effective for some reason while doing backflips on a unicycle is ridiculously overpowered.

I find sharpshooters in general are a real headache. They either win instantly or are completely ineffective.

Phoenix: Approved! Of all the justice so far, yours is the punchiest! Might want to slightly tweak the bio though.

Armored Bishoujo: Nothing huge to object to power-wise but I'm a bit wary after last time with your 'totally doesn't eat human hearts' hellhound and the first thing it did when faced with an opponent. Deadly assassins aren't terribly heroic, y'know?

Also, I... I want my recurring villains.

Krogoth: The Cosmic Defender makes me smile. Approved!

Krylo: Copy pasta is deliciously approved. I wish there was a slightly neater way of handling those powers though. To summarise them for everyone else: Shadrach can't be hurt and you can't make him go away.

[Dracorion]

There, all done.

I worry I'm stepping on Batgirl's ideas, but this team needed some serious super-strength, and I don’t mean just Toastburner’s character.


Name: Ellen Gardner
Alias: Andromeda, Kendra Sanders
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Appearance: Ellen is a meek little girl standing at 5'6'' and weighing 100 lbs. She's cute with her shoulder-length brown hair and blue eyes, but not drop dead gorgeous.
Equipment: None.

Abilities: With a thought, Ellen can transform into Adromeda. Andromeda can only have one of these abilities active at once, though she can switch between them at any time:

- Strength: Andromeda can lift about three times her own body weight.

- Durability: Andromeda can become extremely durable. Basically, this sucker can stop a knife short, and while low-caliber rounds will bounce off her, they will also slow her down. Anything above that will start to leave a mark, though.

- Flight: Andromeda can fly. This is how she gets around.

- Speed: Andromeda can move twice as fast as an average human.

Biography: Ellen was raised a military brat. Her father, highly decorated Air Force General Sam Gardner, pushed her hard as a soldier, though Ellen was never quite able to live up to his expectations. Ellen was always quiet and shy, she prefered to tinker with machines, and she wasn't very good at combat situations.

Ellen grew up into a fine woman, despite not being quite what her father wanted her to be. Though she failed as a soldier, she became an Air Force technician, a job she enjoyed even if she always felt bad for dissappointing the General.

When she was twenty, she volunteered for the Air Force super soldier program that General Gardner was overseeing, Project Prometheus, against her own father’s protests. She was strapped to a table and bombarded with strange radiation, but when nothing happened, she was written off as a failed experiment. The project continued, with disastrous results as they finally created a successful super soldier who was driven insane by the radiation.

Ellen’s powers activated upon hearing about the test subject going insane and she transformed into Andromeda, immediately rushing to her father’s aid. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to reach him quite in time. Though Andromeda was unable to capture the crazy test subject, she managed to drive him off.

Seeing her father severely injured and trapped in the chamber where the test subjects were originally exposed to the radiation, Andromeda attempted to break her way in unsuccessfully, due to the entrance being blocked by more debris than she could lift. She then reverted back to Ellen, the only one who could shut down the machinery. General Samuel Gardner lived, and wasn't exposed to enough of the strange radiation to actually affect him, but he was confined to a wheelchair and a respirator for the rest of his life.

Soon after, Ellen was relocated to The City With No Name, still working for the Air Force as a field test for Project Prometheus. This originally meant going on missions. Recently the missions stopped and she was told to act like any other superhero, though she's still under surveillance. This is to gauge her reaction outside of a controlled environment, to ensure she won't go crazy like the first test subject.

Ellen soon found a problem in Andromeda. Being two separate people, Andromeda wanted to have her own life and not just get called out when there's people in danger. Eventually Ellen relented out of guilt and she agreed to share a life with Andromeda. Which led to her getting a two-bedroom apartment, with Andromeda (going by Kendra Sanders) having her own room.

After the original incident, the General and Ellen reconciled, with him finally seeing Ellen in a new light. He has also more or less adopted Kendra into the family, as well.

Superhero Persona: Andromeda is a blonde, blue-eyed, big-breasted smoking hottie standing at 6' and weighing 120 lbs. She wears a brown leather duster over a skin-tight red spandex bodysuit that leaves the arms and legs bare, emblazoned with a large yellow A on the front, black leather gloves and thigh high black leather heels.

Andromeda is an entirely separate person from Ellen, and pretty much her opposite. Where Ellen is quiet and shy, Andromeda is forthcoming and loud, not quite as smart as Ellen, and quite capable of flaunting her assets when she has to.

Affiliations:

Megaton: A large superhero with super strength, durability, speed and more muscles than brains. He has a huge crush on Andromeda and is constantly hitting on her, much to her chagrin.

United States Air Force: On paper, Ellen works as a technician. In actuality, though, she's more of a field test for their supersoldier program, to make sure she doesn't go crazy like the other test subject. She's allowed a larger amount of freedom than she would normally be alloted, thanks to her father's influence.

Enemies:

Captain Gygas: Captain Allen Adam was the other successful product of Project Prometheus. His powers are the same as Andromeda’s except, due to being exposed to a large amount of radiation, they are stronger. As a side effect, he was driven insane. The bad, evil kind of insane.

[PhoenixFlame]

Originally Posted by Dracorion

I worry I'm stepping on Batgirl's ideas, but this team needed some serious super-strength, and I don’t mean just Toastburner’s character.

You wound me!