Forum Replies Created
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I ended up remaking those HM1 guys after all.
VALENTINE – Vigilante who fights in the name of love. Professes to be the Greek deity Eros, has the superhuman durability and strength to back up the claim. Killer with a crossbow.
CRAG – Intelligent crystalline humanoid, discovered in the remains of a meteorite. He was educated, trained, and recruited by NASA as the perfect astronaut. He doesn’t need oxygen or sustenance, never sleeps, and doesn’t age.
KETURAH – The world’s deadliest assassin who dropped off the face of the planet for a year and returned to wage war on all crime. She started by killing her handlers. None could explain her sudden change of heart, but one tends to want to make the world a safer place when they bring a child into it…
ATEN – Egyptian pharaoh unearthed by archaeologists. Infused with alien technology that allows him to wield solar energy.
And finishing up with the next generation of Spectrum, posthumans Heather has encountered in her line of work and granted a second chance with Spectrum, under Apex and Enigma’s mentorship.
ZERO
Kyle Kinney
Identity: Heterosexual leaning, cisgender man
Bio: Former military. His abilities manifested when his unit was ambushed, accidentally ‘iced’ surviving members of his crew. Remanded to Spectrum’s custody.
Abilities: Thermal energy absorption. Zero can absorb heat energy from his ambient environment to the point of ceasing atomic motion and freezing matter solid. His body stores the energy absorbed, converting it into physical strength (in the 10-ton class). Despite the nature of his powers, Zero runs particularly hot (at an average 110 degrees).
RIOT
River Taya
Identity: Bisexual, genderfluid woman
Bio: Navajo Nation member, former punk vocalist, arrested for inciting riots at her concerts (due to subconscious use of her abilities)
Abilities: Empathic broadcasting. Emits telepathic frequencies that override the rational part of the human mind and amplify primal instincts, aggression, violent tendencies, etc.
HASTE
Tariq Hosseini
Identity: Homosexual, cisgender man
Bio: Afghani refugee, powers manifested when he was to be executed for being gay, initially uncontrollable he sped across the Asian continent before making his way to Alaska and catching the attention of the BPA.
Abilities: Superhuman speed. Tariq can move at several times the speed of sound, faster than human perception. His body’s durability and cognitive reflexes are all amplified to deal with the stresses of high-velocity travel.
DRAG
Xiao Long
Identity: Unidentified, cisgender man
Bio: Chinese national, discovered amidst a shipment of illegal Chinese immigrants, handed over the Bureau of Posthuman Affairs. Has no recollection of life prior to his discovery in that shipping container.
Abilities: Reptilian physiology. Accelerated tissue regeneration, immunity to majority of toxins and pathogens. Superhuman durability, enhanced strength/agility, enhanced senses. Super dense claws on hands and feet. Fangs can inject paralytic neurotoxin. Fire-breathing.
And what happened to their mentors? MAMA, BEAR, and CUB were all pretty advanced in age when Spectrum was formed…
HAROLD (BEAR) and ARNOLD (CUB): Their regenerative abilities had staved off old age for a long time, but eventually the pair began to grow old. They had twenty more years together before Arnold passed away. Shortly thereafter Harold lost his will to live, became enfeebled. As his vitality left him and he neared his end, the deity that had empowered him, the divine bear Kodiak, reached out to him. Kodiak wished to rest, to enter a deep cosmic hibernation and sleep the sleep of gods. He offered Harold the opportunity to replace him. Harold refused, hoping to be reunited with Arnold in the afterlife. Kodiak reached into the beyond and retrieved Arnold’s soul, granting him divinity as the Bear’s herald. Secure that he and Arnold could spend eternity together, Harold passed on. As his mortal body failed, his soul transformed into a massive ursine figure. He was the Divine Bear, and Arnold was his Herald.
MAMA – ROSEMARY: After being injured by a sniper round when the team confronted the Anarqueers, Rosemary’s body had entered a regenerative state and de-aged approximately 30 years. She had aged normally since then and wouldn’t have reached her time of passing quite yet, but during the ET incident she was forced to use her abilities to their utmost capacity and burned away her physical body. She was thought lost, but Rosemary had in fact been able to hold her consciousness together through sheer force of will and she re-made her physical body from the elements themselves, and continues her adventures with Spectrum as a pure elemental being.
Last two of the younger (well not in this case) crowd.
SAFEZONE – HEATHER: Retired from superheroics after the ET incident, but still wanted to dedicate her life to helping people. She became a police officer, part of a special task force on posthumans. Eventually she worked her way to being a top-level federal investigator and is the head of the US Governments Bureau of Posthuman Affairs. In her position, she has encountered young posthumans in need of guidance, and has had the opportunity to send them into Spectrum’s custody.
APERTURE – YRYS: Initially after the ET incident, YRYS struck out on his own as a street level vigilante. He worked closely with Heather on a number of cases as she moved up in the force. Eventually after years of seeing each other off and on, the pair married. Yrys chose to stay at home and act as primary caregiver to their children. He modeled occasionally for Lex’s brand, more and more as the kids got older.
And they’re two precocious little young’uns.
MICHAEL: 19-year-old son of Yyrs and Heather. He was born with Yrys’s ultra pale complexion and physical enhancements, but hasn’t displayed any other posthuman talents. A bit rebellious, he resents his parents preoccupation with helping others when he himself was neglected as a child due to their superheroics.
MAYRA: 16-year-old daughter of Yrys and Heather. She has her father’s unorthodox hairstyle, but her mother’s complexion. She has displayed the ability to project the same energy that composes her mother’s shields, but in a much more volatile state, explosive, unwieldy. Yrys helps her train to channel these energies and control her posthuman abilities. They have a very close bond because of this, something her brother resents.
And now for the retired members of Spectrum. How exactly does one keep busy after a life of superheroics?
QUANDARY – ABIGAIL: When the alien being Nehyut abducted her and used her as a telepathic weapon, broadcasting her telepathic energy on a global scale, it damaged Abi’s mind and took a terrible toll on her body. Since then she has been unfit for active duty and has spent most of her time in recovery. Padma cared for her a great deal, and Abi stays close to her, an important leader in her movement.
META  – PADMA: Retired after the ET incident to focus on her spirituality. She’s become somewhat of a philosophical figure, founding a non-denominational pseudo-religious movement, all about awakening the potential within yourself to be free of the physical confines of existence.
PUTO – XIMENO: After the extreme use of his abilities following the ET incident, Ximeno’s body began to give off a constant, blinding, phosphorescent glow. He retired from superheroics, and decided to stick with what came naturally to him. Ximeno became one of the top earning porn stars in history, eventually earning enough to found his own studio. He occasionally models Lex’s clothing alongside Yrys.
STONEWALL – LEX: Lex retired from superheroics after the ET Incident. Since then ze became a successful self-taught fashion designer, using zir fame as a former member of Spectrum to build a fashion empire. Ze specializes in gender-neutral clothing, to be worn by both genders and those who exist outside of the binary.
Wasn’t feeling super inspired so I decided to do future versions of Spectrum. These are the characters 20-25Â years on from their current incarnations, meaning our teen heroes are in their 40s or 50s and the older characters are well… quite a bit older.
THE ET (EXTRATERRESTRIAL) INCIDENT- At some point an alien being (Nehyut, the singular gender alien being you can find earlier in my thread) attempted to do away with the gender/sex binary of the human race using a high tech array of satellites and some kind of morphological-DNA-rearranging energy field. Spectrum stopped him, but a few members of the team were injured/altered by the encounter so it became somewhat of a fracturing point for the team as it used to be.
Let’s start with the remaining active members:
APEX –Â <b>CODY: </b>Married to TJ, leads the next generation of Spectrum. His powers have stabilized to the point where he can utilize his maximum amount of strength and speed at all times without experiencing any hormonal imbalances.
ENIGMA –Â <b>TJ: </b>Married to Cody and still a member of Spectrum. He perfected the use of his mimicry abilities and can now store the abilities of three genomic sequences at a time in his body, calling on them at will. Very protective of their daughter, to a fault.
And we also have their daughter:
ULTRAVIOLET
Caroline Knowles-Cavanaugh
Identity: Heterosexual, cisgender woman
Bio: Daughter of TJ and Cody (who had preserved his eggs before transitioning). Using her vast intellect she designed a cybernetic suit that allows her to perform superheroics alongside her fathers under the codename: Ultraviolet.
Abilities: She has the ability to telepathically absorb information from a number of sources (datastreams, the minds of others, texts), coupled with her eidetic memory she has become a living library.
</p>Some more revisions while I try to think of new concepts (pretty much the entire rest of my Spectrum team)
STONEWALL – our friendly neighborhood nigh invulnerable non-binary knockout!
SAFEZONE: Token straight member of the team (natch) and our badass forcefield generator
QUANDARY – Ace thought-scrambling telepath, I gave her silvery hair since I thought two redheads on the team was a bit much, and also made her Korean (since I had changed Meta’s original ethnicity in my redesign)
YRYS: Our pansexual protector of pan-dimensional origin.
I just had to use those amazing new mech legs that dblade uploaded. They were perfect for fleshing out my Grafts character a little better:
GRAFTS (rev 1):
I did a few revisions during the forums down time too, here’s a few from my Spectrum team:
META:
APEX:
PUTO:
Our resident mage from Kenya…
NGOMA: A powerful Maasai medium and wielder of Soul Magic, Ngoma can communicate with the spirits of the recently deceased, channeling them if they desire to interact with the physical world. He can convene with inhuman spirits as well, deities and demons of various kinds. Most powerful of all, Ngoma is able to channel the ambient spiritual energy in the world and funnel them into his guardian spirit. He enters a trance while his invulnerable and immensely strong Soulself manifests into the real world.
Thanks guys!
Continuing my trip around the globe, here’s two guys for the UK…
[EDIT – Yikes! the forum dimensions were not kind to my first sorta-widescreen image, let’s just look at the attachment in a new tab and pretend this never happened…]
AVALON:Â Kunal was always an isolated child, preferring the fanciful images in his head and the occasional adventure with his imaginary friends to the company of other children. His parents thought it a phase, but Kunal didn’t grow out of it. The voices grew stronger. He started having convulsive fits. He was committed to psychiatric care, doped up and left in a padded cell. Eventually Kunal stopped taking his medication in secret and after a particularly violent fit he emerged with total clarity. He knew who he was born to be. Kunal is the nexus being for the otherworldly plane of Arthurian legend. He can manifest creatures and beings from the realm of Avalon to our plane of existence to aid him and fight his battles for him. Able to summon the greatest sorcerer’s of the UK’s history, Kunal has also been able to train in practical magic, becoming a powerful mage in his own right.
SCION: Sometimes worthiness is not about great character or morality, but about being born to the right bloodline. Such was the case for Charles “Chas” Ackerman. When a coven of Banshees invaded a small coastal town, Avalon had an especially hard battle. In summoning so much of the Otherworld’s presence, he allowed an opening for the lost sword of Excalibur to reach out into our plane. It found a hint of Arthur in the bloodline of nearby town ne’er-do-well Chas and manifested itself, the hilt emerging from a horrified Chas’s chest. Upon pulling the sword hastily out of his body, Chas became the SCION OF ARTHUR. Able to manifest enchanted armor and the legendary sword Excalibur, Chas is also granted near invulnerability and superhuman strength. He travels Avalon, who hopes to teach Chas how to use his ability for something other than impressing chicks and beating people senseless.
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