- This topic has 94 replies, 19 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
As promised, here is one of the Two O’Clock Warriors, my other Family Contest submission (and my first top-five creation for any contest) from last year. For anyone who is new to Heromachine, The Hallows and the Two O’Clock Warriors are part of my Clockwork Project.
Clockwork is a group of twelve heroes or hero teams, each inspired by an hour of the clock. The Hallows represent Noon (or N’Un, if you like that better) and Midnight, and the Two O’Clock Warriors represent, well, you know…
I went with a yin-yang theme, creating twin sisters with contrasting fighting styles. First is the low-tech, offensive sister:
Name: Sword
Alias: Nihonto (Japanese for sword)
Team Affiliations: The Yakuza, Two O’Clock Warriors, The Enforcers, Clockwork
Race: Human
Birthplace: Beijing, China
Powers/Abilities: Agility, Reflexes, Skilled hand-to-hand and with daisho (pair of Japanese swords, one long and one short).
Bio: When their mother was pregnant with them, she traveled with their father to Beijing, where he had been transferred in lieu of a job promotion.
But on the day the girls were born, their mother awakened from anesthesia prematurely to find that, though the ultrasound she had had in the United States confirmed twins, only one baby girl awaited her in the nursery. Storming through a back door in the nursery, she found her other child in the process of being euthanized (because in China at that time, mothers were only allowed to bear one child). Running on superhuman, maternal strength and a lioness’ courage, she somehow rendered all the attending doctors unconscious and escaped the hospital with her newborn twin daughters, who were both still very much alive. After much domestic turmoil, she took the girls on a flight out of Beijing, leaving China and her work-focused husband for the relative safety of Japan.
But that safety came with a price. One day, a Yakuza enforcer came looking for protection money and, finding her financial situation lacking, took the twins as collateral, killing their mother when she resisted.
The girls were raised by the Yakuza, a childhood utterly devoid of all things childish, and eventually became initiated Yakuza themselves. The fearsome Nihonto (Sword) served as chief enforcer, and Shirudo (Shield) became the Yakuza boss’ personal security guard.
The sisters’ lives would change again when Nihonto returned from a mission to find her sister being assaulted by their boss, forcing Nihonto to kill the man and making the two of them targets for the criminal organization that had been their family for so long. They managed to survive daily attempts on their lives, thanks in part to Nihonto’s incomparable stealth and ruthless fighting style until the day they would cross paths with Strong Arm and Sextant, who had come to Tokyo following a trail of Yakuza activity from the states.
The four formed a formidable fighting force to face down their felonious foes, finally felling a fearsomely fatalistic franchise (phew! Stan Lee would be proud). So begins the formation of Clockwork….I finally got a version of Nihonto’s sister that I’m happy with. As has been the case so far, she’s re-posed and shaded in all her high-tech, defensive glory. Hope you dig her.
Name: Shield
Alias: Shirudo (Romanized Japanese for shield)
Team Affiliations: The Yakuza, Two O’Clock Warriors, The Enforcers, Clockwork
Race: Human
Birthplace: Beijing, China
Powers: Enhanced strength & reflexes, Antimatter energy shields.
Bio: When their mother was pregnant with them, she traveled with their father to Beijing, where he had been transferred in lieu of a job promotion.
But on the day the girls were born, their mother awakened from anesthesia prematurely to find that, though the ultrasound she had had in the United States confirmed twins, only one baby girl awaited her in the nursery. Storming through a back door in the nursery, she found her other child in the process of being euthanized (because in China at that time, mothers were only allowed to bear one child). Running on superhuman, maternal strength and a lioness’ courage, she somehow rendered all the attending doctors unconscious and escaped the hospital with her newborn twin daughters, who were both still very much alive. After much domestic turmoil, she took the girls on a flight out of Beijing, leaving China and her work-focused husband for the relative safety of Japan, safety that came with a price.
One day, a Yakuza enforcer came looking for protection money and, finding her financial situation lacking, took the twins as collateral, killing their mother when she resisted.
The girls were raised by the Yakuza, a childhood utterly devoid of all things childish, and eventually became initiated Yakuza themselves. The fearsome Nihonto (Sword) served as chief enforcer, and Shirudo (Shield) became the Yakuza boss’ personal security guard. Having been mutilated as a baby, the woman now known as Shirudo had long ago been given a bionic suit, fashioned from stolen tech, to help her walk and fight. Over her years with the Yakuza’s tech division, Shirudo quickly learned to repair her own suit and made the defensive modifications that would earn her name and position.
Their lives would change again when Nihonto returned from a mission to find her sister being assaulted by their boss, forcing Nihonto to kill the man and making the two of them targets for the criminal organization that had been their family for so long. They managed to survive daily attempts on their lives thanks in part to Shirudo’s defensive armor, until the day they would cross paths with Strong Arm and Sextant, who had come to Tokyo following a trail of Yakuza activity from the states.
The team known as The Enforcers was born, a team that would one day grow into a formidable group of Clockwork heroes….A bit of laziness on my part, but here is a straight copy-over from my old thread. I changed the line color in a few places, but this character remains unchanged for the most part. He has all the tricks a good ‘machiner needs to make a pose pop: facial and costume Zypping, a decent energy effect, shading, a vein bulging on his face, and a massive pink arm holding up a boulder. So why mess with a good thing?
I came up with this guy while I was at work, pushing something very heavy with one hand, and the Psychics contest just happened along, so I got to making him that night, submitted him a day or two later, and he wound up making the polls for that week.
Here’s Terrence Armstrong:
Name: Strong-Arm
Alias: Terrence Armstrong
Team Affiliations: Sixth Street Sinners, The Enforcers, Clockwork (reserve member)
Race: Human
Birthplace: London, England
Powers: Mentally enhanced strength, bulletproof astral arm.
Bio: Terrence Armstrong was always powerful for his age. As a boy, he once tipped a car that had fallen on his father, who had been working on it at the time. As a mixed-race child, Terry was already a target for his less tolerant peers. But it got worse when kids at school heard about his father’s accident and what Terry had done to save him. They called him a freak, often attacking and beating him even though they knew not to mess with a ten-year-old who could lift a car. Young Terry endured the name-calling and abuse for several months, hoping that, like all children, their focus would switch to some other target.
But when his father passed away from complications stemming from the accident, the stress and pain grew too much for him. That day, Terry ran away from home, eventually winding up in a bad part of town, where the local gang hid him from police and the foster system.
Terry would grow up to be an enforcer for the Sixth Street Sinners, the gang that had since become his family, taking the nickname Strong-Arm because of his ability to channel his mental energy into superhuman physical strength. As his powers grew, he discovered he could manifest his psychic strength as a giant arm that he could use to lift anything, or even increase the density of the astral arm to the point that it became bulletproof.
One day, Terrence was sent to intimidate a bookmaker who owed the Sinners a large sum of money. As he was about to beat some sense into the man, a little boy walked in on them. It was the bookie’s son, and the sight of him stopped Terrence in his tracks. Having been beaten as a child, Terrence recognized a look on the boy’s face that he had felt on his own face during those long ago beatings.
With that encounter, Terrence decided to turn over a new leaf, and made it his personal mission to stand up against organized crime, starting with the Sixth Street Sinners.
In his career, Strong-Arm’s former gang affiliation and his extreme crime-fighting methods have brought him toe-to-toe with Sextant on many occasions, usually ending with the pair teaming up against some greater common enemy.While Heromachine’s new server is allowing me to do so, I’ll post Sextant. She is the final member (and leader) of The Enforcers, as well as the Six O’Clock member and founder of Clockwork.
She was one of my entries into last year’s Fashion contest, when she looked a bit more cabaret. She drew some interest but didn’t qualify for the polls that week. I have since re-posed, re-costumed, and shaded her as follows:
Name: Sextant
Alias: Six L’Orange
Team Affiliations: The Enforcers, Clockwork
Race: Human
Birthplace: Paris, France
Powers/Abilities: Superior intellect, reflexes, expert swordsmanship (sword hidden in her cane), precognition.
Bio: The daughter of wealthy French producer Alex L’Orange, Six L’Orange grew up watching Stanley Kubrick movies. Her mother died giving birth to sextuplets, leaving them in the care of a father so absentminded that he could only think to name his identical children after the first six cardinal numbers, Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, Cinq, and of course, Six. Absorbed in his work, their father would keep the young girls distracted by plopping them down in front of the television before he went on set. Though Six was technically the youngest, she had her sisters easily convinced otherwise, and would use her false seniority to monopolize the DVD player with her favorite movie, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. It didn’t make any sense to her at her young age, but she liked the silly costumes, and the hero (who shared a first name with her father) made her feel safe in her otherwise neglected household.
One day, the movie’s surrogate power gave way to an overwhelming desire to see her father, as though he might be in some terrible danger. So as soon as she thought he had gone, she sneaked out of the house and followed on her bicycle, all the way to an abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. Her father had borrowed money from a local mob boss which he failed to pay back, and Six arrived just in time to hear gunshots as the mobster’s henchman executed him. In her shock, she stumbled over something that gave away her position and started running as the gunshots turned in her direction.
If she had been made as Alex L’Orange’s daughter, that meant her sisters were in danger as well, and she would have to get home as soon as possible.
Six pedaled her bike like Satan himself was after her family, but she again arrived too late. Her father’s house was already surrounded by a flashing red-and-blue glow, meaning the police had already responded in the wake of her sisters’ murders.
She was entered into a special foster program with U.S. Witness Protection. When she came of age, Six left the program and used her WitSec identity and the self-defense tactics she learned from her supervising marshal (who was also her foster father) to cover a third alias, Sextant. As the Clockwork Orange-inspired heroine, Six would use her innate intelligence and finely honed fighting skills to take revenge against the crime family that had taken her sisters’ lives.
Sextant would later realize the larger nature of crime in the world, and assemble a group of numerically inspired heroes to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Soon, Clockwork was born.OK, so it was actually four days before I could give you another character.
If you look at some of the last posts on my old thread, you’ll know that the inspiration behind my Power Suits team is that I was trying to create a team of armor-wearing villains with names and abilities based on various kinds of suits and suit-related phrases. They are meant to be Frank Hallows’ villains, but have also crossed paths with other heroes (Clockwork and non-Clockwork alike). This latest villain of mine is the only female member of the team, and is based off of the Little Black Dress.
Name: Kurosutsu Sukoshi
Team Affiliations: The Power Suits, The Yakuza
Enemies: The Enforcers, Frank Hallows
Race: Human
Birthplace: Tokyo, Japan
Powers/Abilities: Anti-Knavium battle armor (Enhanced strength and reflexes, red matter energy shields), skilled at hand-to-hand combat.
Bio: Sukoshi is the only child of crime boss Kurosutsu Shibomo, who was betrayed and killed by Nihonto and Shirudo, his two most trusted Yakuza. Sukoshi took over the organization following her father’s death, and fueled by her long-simmering jealousy toward her adopted sisters and a newfound desire for vengeance, Sukoshi enlisted the help of her organization’s science division to develop a suit of armor far more sophisticated and powerful than Shirudo’s prosthetics.
The Yakuza scientists fashioned a shield-equipped suit from anti-Knavium (a carbon-Knavium alloy that was tempered through bombardment with anti-matter particles). When powered by a stolen and modified P.A.T.C.H. core, the anti-Knavium suit produced a new kind of energy called “red matter,” which had the potential to disperse anti-matter, rendering Shirudo’s shield projectors useless. Unfortunately, prolonged use of the Anti-Knavium armor has deformed Sukoshi and left her wholly dependent upon the armor for her survival. The severity and nature of her underlying symptoms is unknown at this time.
Notes: Sukoshi means “little” in Japanese. Kuro means “black,” and sutsu is Romanized Japanese for “suit.” The name Shibomo is derived from words meaning “fat” (Shibo) and “lord” (omo).Appreciate the feedback, Light and Jack.
Ugh. A whole friggin’ week gone by this time. I’ve been working on a shaded version of my old Tetra character, but I stopped because a new idea got in the way and I decided to finish it first.
I’m going back to the Elemental Witches (not a team, as some of the covens wage war against each other) to bring you the Alice In Wonderland– inspired Witch of Space.
Name: Wonder Girl
Alias: Alice Gladwell
Team Affiliations: The Coven of Leodd, The Enforcers, Clockwork
Enemies: Tempora, The Society of Foes
Race: Human
Birthplace: London, England
Powers/Abilities: Size-shifting, Super-strength, Increased skin density, Can breathe in oxygen-poor environments.
Bio: All members of the Coven of Leodd were born with an unusual substance in their blood, a substance we now know to be an alloy of liquid Kanvium and Mercury. Deathly poisonous on their own, when molecularly bonded their alloy fosters an array of special abilities, including super-speed, teleportation, interdimensional travel, and growth and shrinking, among others. Some in the coven present multiple abilities, as Alice has, but it is rare to come across a Witch of Leodd who possesses them all–a Leodd Supreme. Leodd witches are unaligned as a coven, but individually they remain active in the war, often contracted as territorial enforcers or messengers for their speed and physical durability. Upon finishing her service, Alice briefly joined The Enforcers under the codename Wonder Girl. She is currently a reserve Clockwork hero, but has remained in contact with her coven since learning that one of Clockwork’s founding members is a rogue time witch.
Note: Leodd is one of the Welsh words for “space.”Appreciations to Stulte for your positive comments so far.
Another week gone by and another character done. I said in my old gallery (somewhere around page one) that I was unsatisfied with a character I had submitted into the Transformations contest last year, and would at some point redesign her. Beginning with her angelic form, here is Fallen Angel as an Angel of Foresight.
Name: Angel of Foresight
Alias: Fallen Angel, True Name Unpronounceable by Human Tongue
Team Affiliations: Eyes of Heaven, Soul Survivors, Clockwork (reserve member)
Race: Angel
Birthplace: Heaven
Powers/Abilities: Physical blindness, Can see into the future through human eyes, Access to low-level Angelic technology (Wings, Armor, Staff of Foresight).
Bio: The being who would become Fallen Angel was born and engineered to be an Angel of Foresight. Foresighted Angels had no vision–at least, not in the conventional sense–but had the ability to witness the future through human host eyes by using a Staff of Foresight to focus their powers. They served as communications officers, under Angels of the Guardian rank, and were rarely called upon to work in the field. One Foresighted Angel grew tired of her disconnected life, using her advanced knowledge of Heaven’s communications network to hack into Hell. She wished to see the world through her own eyes, and so made a deal with a high-level demon who promised to restore her vision. On their meeting, the demon branded her with the mark of the dragon, which would pollute her Grace and slowly transform her into a demon as well. Now able to intervene in the physical world, Fallen Angel uses her slowly deteriorating foresight and her half-demon powers to save human souls from her future masters before her own soul fades away.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
