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Okay playground for Lapyd, GM SuperTumbler and Kriznox Haab I have thoughts an ideas on how the three of you met but I would be interested in some of your ideas before I share mine. Of course, the common thread between the three of you is Archeology so with that I hope to see some nice banter that I can work and augment.
Oh and I hope this discussion thing works
My character in development might be invulnerable to physical damage and magic. Other than that, he is very agile and has some martial arts training. He isn't going to be an exceptional fighter like Wolverine or one of the true martial artists like Iron Fist or Shang Chi.
My thinking for his mutant power is that he has an exceptionally strong integral field (the forces that bind his atoms together are much stronger than is the norm).
I'm not sure if we all want to be connected to Norse Myth, but one thought I had is that he is actually a Viking kid. When he reached an age where he could try to become a man, he stopped growing. Eventually people noticed and decided he was cursed or a warlock or something. Then he was sacrificed in a bog and became a bog mummy. Not being able to die, he was trapped in this bog, too weak to escape, until he was discovered by an archaeological team. Similarly, maybe he was captured and enslaved by Anglo-Saxons and buried on a funerary ship (like a Sutton Hoo situation) only to be dug up recently.
The character doesn't actually have immunity to aging, so that might be stretching things.
Alternately, if he is a modern kid, I'm pondering some sort of magical prosthetic that makes his powers usable in a similar way to Cyclops visor. He is immune to magic because this amulet or whatever draws magic in to power itself. Without this amulet, his intrinsic field is so strong that he would be unable to even interact with other fundamental forces. So gravity, electromagnetism, wouldn't work, meaning he might go flying off into space, be blind, or all manner of crazy things.
Thinking of calling him Nix, because nothing affects him (not nothing, obviously. He isn't immune to energy at the moment.
Also possible name Nawiht (Nought)
It's Lapyd here!
Tumbler, I'm not sure if you came out with the idea after reading my backstory on my profile, but honestly - even if not, I don't think it will be fun for anyone (not for me, not for you, not for the GM) to have two characters with such similar stories (talking about the Norse Myth one).
Now, if you want, I can help with new stories or themes, depending on the angle you want to have for the character. I like more flawed characters, so I used for my Anna this effect of constantly under something that makes her powers "unstable" and requiring something to properly hide/control.
If you link to your rolls and want my help, I can go over and give you some ideas (there's quite some time that I don't play MSH, but I played and GMed it in the past and still have the books, so offering my help here!).
Instead of a device, I think the angle of an archaeological artifact interacting with her mutant abilities might be interesting. Notice that we're all mutants, so in essence the things should be somewhat intrinsic from your character.
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For example:
Character is an Egyptian street rat - a skilled, yet skinny pickpocket that preys on tourists visiting the tombs. Unbeknownst to him, though, he's also a mutant.
While practicing his "usual activities" in Cairo, he managed to rob an old scarab amulet from a couple of archaeologists. He took it home to sleep it off - and try to sell on the black market on the next day - when his mutant powers first manifested; he was examining the amulet and cut his hand.
He'd be a latent mutant - one of those whose gene is there, but never manifests - however, the mysticism of the amulet kickstarted his power, connected to his blood: that of take the properties of an object, and adapt it to his body. Being the magical amulet the object which was at its hand, its properties got merged to the young thief, giving him the durability of pure gold and the magical resistance of the mystic artifact.
Yeah he is not immune to aging so actually being around a really long time would make him really old and I am thinking they guy is in the age ran of 18 to 23 at the most.
I see the immunity to magic to be integral to the character along with the physical immunity --- note the only thing holding those back is you saying you are good with them.
Also currently he is not immune to energy which includes Gravity and many other types of energy.
Nawiht seems a neat name what language is that?
Not sure if I shared this with you but I am thinking that your character's parents worked on a excavation site. Probably in Egypt as I feel that puts you in a better zone and one night this girl shows up -- a bit confused -- and the two of you did not, at the time, speak the same language but you faced some weird critters that the two of you were able to quietly take out. Then she just disappeared.
Was it a dream?
I am working on a story arc for these 3 characters and as soon as the 3 of you are ready we are going to get this baby off the ground and take it into the stratosphere
Another idea, Tumbler: your character's powers aren't actually the immunities or resistances. In truth, it's a mild reality-bending power: when you touched the artifact, you were briefly taken to a place in the future, then back. Your power makes it so that reality will be bent, if needed, just to make sure that you can make it to such place on your own (rather than through the brief time travel that the amulet forced). It ends up translating to your apparent almost immunity to dying :)
Ah yes a Fixed Point in Space and Time ;)
With Maelstrom, likely January (his archaeology contact) could end up on the same Egyptian expedition as Anna and her parents. By that point, both Maelstrom and Anna would already have their powers.
I imagine Maelstrom even for more time; Andrew seems to be "older", so maybe he had been using January's help to seek more data about his powers for longer. At this point in time, likely Anna's parents just found her in Denmark, and are now in Egypt with her on a different expedition (potentially January got in touch with them to ask for their help).
That's where Tumbler's character would likely have "stolen" the artifact that January maybe found in a tomb, and that ended up kickstarting his powers. With that, the three mutants end up reunited to investigate more the link between Maelstrom powers, Tumbler's powers, and the Egyptian artifact.
Anna would be there with them for the ride, and as the investigation of the three young mutants progress, they end up learning about their powers together, before Moira (colleague of Anna's mother from Oxford) recommends they go meet Xavier in the States to better understand their mutant abilities.
Thanks Lapyd I actually have a premise for this groups first adventure as well as a sort of lead in. Just been holding off so you all could possible work on some character collaboration and such.
Although I might be getting as antsy as you seemed to be Lapyd and might get you kick started a bit early and then pull in the others as they get things firmed up.
Other than tweaking you backstory a wee bit Lapyd do we have everything for your character concept pretty much finalized?
I gotta be honest. I'm not really feeling a playing a character with randomly generated abilities that you guys create the backstory and given circumstances for.
I'm sure you have the best of intentions and are just tossing out ideas. Just feeling railroaded.
Yes, I'm very much antsy as well, and trying to help the others :) I think there are some pending things in Anna's profile to wrap beyond the background:
1 - If I can pick "Teleportation" as the free first stunt from Darkforce Manipulation. From the text (in my profile):
(...) The hero may have one Power Stunt when the character is created; all other Power Stunts must be developed in the campaign (...)
And across the possible stunts:
. Teleportation, by moving through the Darkforce dimension, at - 2CS Power rank.
Her Darkforce is Remarkable, giving her "Good" teleportation (if I'm reading it right, and you're okay with it).
2 - Who's her mystic/mythological contact. I suggested some possibilities from Marvel comics, based on the Norse mythology (as in Odin could have felt the return of the sceadugenga, and sent someone to stay in touch and make sure the "Darkforce" was under control, and this character became her contact?)
Contact-1 ... 99 Mystic Contacts - 3 Mythology
3 - How will we treat her "limitation" (the constant uncontrolled shadow tendrils moving around her). We already had some ideas, never did quite defined which one would work (both in-character, as well as mechanically - karma points? etc.)
Beyond that, anything else if you have any questions, then we can try to clarify.
@Tumbler My apologies, mate. Truly sorry for my inputs if they're bothering you - I will stop throwing ideas your way. As a couple thoughts, though: 1 - please avoid using something too similar with the background people wrote before, because it won't be fun to anyone; and 2 - the GM is trying to somehow link the backgrounds through the archaeology/mystic angle to ease up the beginning of the game, so it might be interesting to participate with us and throw your ideas so we can work together towards this goal.
Yeah. I hadn't read your background, just saw your comment about Norse stuff. So that was just a case of convergent evolution.
Before I can really delve into story, I have to figure out the pseudoscience of how Class 1000 resistances to physical damage/magic (but not energy) could happen.
You can't just have steel skin and get a resistance/invulnerability that high. Maybe he has Uru skin. That might explain it.
Uru comes from the first moon in the universe or something, so maybe there is a tie to Khonshu since we are in Egypt. That could also explain the martial arts.
If he is going to be young, then I'd prefer the martial arts not be totally just something he learned. I don't think I want to have been studying martial arts long enough to be so good at them. Maybe the uru absorbs some sort of magical martial arts trinkets knowledge, since Uru tends to soak up magic.
We could even make a hammer out of you!
Honestly with his invulnerability and only moderate fighting, he might best be used as a weapon someone else wields. Fastball special, maybe.
You need to see my fighting!
Okay GM SuperTumbler I will drop that part of my idea and await more information from you on how you want to proceed with your character. Keep in mind I am just here to try to create a fun experience and sitting around doing nothing is not usually a lot of fun. So I tend to try to make connections and create potential backstory stuff to help launch into a beginning story arc that involves more than on PC.
So please do not feel you are being railroaded as that I do not do, I do get excited and try to move things forward fairly quickly as PbP is a desperately slow medium to begin with.
As to the pseudo-science the only way can I explain it is to pull the cat out of the bag. So hear go --spoilers-- I was thinking that the 3 Archeology characters have this common thread -- that thread being your mutant powers are like Wanda's in that they come from your innate connection with magic and they simply manifested in different ways. Due to your different personalities, or due to your different physiological make ups, or due to your ancient lineage, or something I have not thought of yet.
So your character is currently immune to magic energy and kinetic energy due to this connection that they have -- does this mean he will never be immune to elemental energy... by no means it just means maybe he has to do something to facilitate that. Perhaps is powers manifested the way the did because he happened to touch some ancient egyptian artifacts and absorbed their magical energies without actually understanding that is what happend or maybe not.
Now we could take that a step further if you want and he has a connection to an entity (or entities) associated with those items and these entities can communicate with him except the speak in a very ancient dialect. Still the one he gained the martial arts from can at least show your character how to improve his abilities and helped him learn how to exploit his incredible agility.
Or maybe this Uru idea is the path we go down. Again all I can do is through out potential ideas and strive to help you feel good about your characters. The beauty to totally random characters is sometimes you play something you would never have thought of playing and it is as much fun or more fun than that which you would have simply designed.
So in the end however you wish to tie all your strings together for your character its completely up to you. All I do is suggest certain notes.
I want to be clear and explicit that I absolutely think and thought earlier that everyone was trying to be helpful and constructive. I just was feeling boxed in and needed some time to wrap my head around concepts.
Thanks for everyone for listening to those needs and for stepping back. I'm going to try to roll some of these ideas together and see what I can come up with.
This is all up for change or discussion:
Sef is a lanky teen, 14 years old. His father works as a digger at archaeological sites, and Sef comes along to do what work he can and learn the trade. Sef is especially useful at climbing or wriggling into small holes, but most days he carries water, moves buckets of dirt, and does other menial tasks.
One day, Sef is called to squeeze into a shaft and see what is in it. This is the sort of thing the well funded digs would use a drone or a robot for, but today it is Sef being lowered down a narrow shaft on a rope, his foot wedged into a loop at the end. In the room, he found whatever Maguffin the GM wishes to insert. Then the chamber collapsed. No one expected Sef to be alive when they dug him out, but he was completely unharmed. He had a strange aftertaste of metal in his mouth, as though he had been sucking on coins, but it must have just been that the knocking about had bloodied his lip or he had bitten his tongue.
one night this girl shows up -- a bit confused -- and the two of you did not, at the time, speak the same language but you faced some weird critters that the two of you were able to quietly take out. Then she just disappeared.
Was it a dream?
Sef's mutant power is that he can transform his body into rune carved Uru, in this case, for now at least, the version that looks like poorly worked iron, much like Mjolnir. This grants him extreme durability and resistance to blows. Magical effects targeted at Sef in his Uru form are absorbed, causing the runes etched into his body to glow like UV tatoos in a nightclub. This magical energy seems to be stored in such a way that Sef can tap into it subconsciously to fuel incredible feats of agility.
Since his strange experience, Sef has been visited in his dreams by a shadowy figure. The shadow speaks in a language Sef does not understand, but nevertheless the two are able to communicate through movement. It moves in ways that show Sef how best to use his innate agility.
DeJoker, what I am going for here is that this is what his powers look like at the moment. He hasn't even interpreted them this much at this point, as they only just developed. Unless you want him to have seen himself metal up during the encounter with Ana, he might not even know that happens. Gives a chance to play out that whole New Mutant sort of experience.
That leaves plenty of room for you to get up to whatever story shenanigans you want to with regard to the origin/source of all of this.
For example, crazy things I could see a comic doing with this: he isn't transforming at all, but his consciousness is being projected into a sort of Uru golem. He actually has the mutant power to control Uru, and there was some Uru artifact in the room that collapsed that he shielded himself with. His family is part of some ancient god killing cult, and he is a weapon bred for this purpose. I'm up for whatever. I like his power set a lot and it has a lot of opportunities for solutions other than punching.
Sef's father probably won't take well to his son turning into metal. Ana seems to be going with supportive parents, so that will provide a contrast.
I can see this being workable and I am good with him having initially gotten his powers at 14 but let us say it has been 4 to 7 years since then and about 3 years since the mysterious shadow girls last appearance.
Next he is not aware of his body changing because the early encounters where he helped this mysterious shadow girl were at night. Further he might just think this shadow girl is a child of this other shadow that speaks in a language he does not understand. Especially since they both appear to him only at night, thus far.
As for being bred for this purpose, I do not feel that fits the overall story very well nor does it fit the randomly appearing mutant aspect portrayed in most of the comics. Further if he had been bred that means they know how to do this and would have produced others. So I think it is best if it remains just a totally random mutation.
As for the god killing cult I am on the fence about the god killing part but fine with it being some ancient cult that has to do with ancient egyption mythology in some way. Also perfectly fine with his father not taking well to his son having these strange powers due to that connection with the cult as maybe it prevented him from being initiated into the cult - a magical ceremony - when he was 16.
Thoughts?
Yes, I'm very much antsy as well, and trying to help the others :) I think there are some pending things in Anna's profile to wrap beyond the background:
1 - If I can pick "Teleportation" as the free first stunt from Darkforce Manipulation. From the text (in my profile):
(...) The hero may have one Power Stunt when the character is created; all other Power Stunts must be developed in the campaign (...)
And across the possible stunts:
. Teleportation, by moving through the Darkforce dimension, at - 2CS Power rank.
Her Darkforce is Remarkable, giving her "Good" teleportation (if I'm reading it right, and you're okay with it).2 - Who's her mystic/mythological contact. I suggested some possibilities from Marvel comics, based on the Norse mythology (as in Odin could have felt the return of the sceadugenga, and sent someone to stay in touch and make sure the "Darkforce" was under control, and this character became her contact?)
Contact-1 ... 99 Mystic Contacts - 3 Mythology3 - How will we treat her "limitation" (the constant uncontrolled shadow tendrils moving around her). We already had some ideas, never did quite defined which one would work (both in-character, as well as mechanically - karma points? etc.)
Beyond that, anything else if you have any questions, then we can try to clarify.
@Tumbler My apologies, mate. Truly sorry for my inputs if they're bothering you - I will stop throwing ideas your way. As a couple thoughts, though: 1 - please avoid using something too similar with the background people wrote before, because it won't be fun to anyone; and 2 - the GM is trying to somehow link the backgrounds through the archaeology/mystic angle to ease up the beginning of the game, so it might be interesting to participate with us and throw your ideas so we can work together towards this goal.
Hey GM, would you mind addressing the questions above? Thanks! :)
As for being bred for this purpose, I do not feel that fits the overall story very well nor does it fit the randomly appearing mutant aspect portrayed in most of the comics. Further if he had been bred that means they know how to do this and would have produced others. So I think it is best if it remains just a totally random mutation.
As for the god killing cult I am on the fence about the god killing part but fine with it being some ancient cult that has to do with ancient egyption mythology in some way. Also perfectly fine with his father not taking well to his son having these strange powers due to that connection with the cult as maybe it prevented him from being initiated into the cult - a magical ceremony - when he was 16.
Thoughts?
I'm not attached to any of that weird stuff. Just saying I'm up for whatever you want to put in his backstory that he doesn't know.
How are we going to deal with languages? Following RAW, it is pretty expensive to learn extra languages. Not sure we want to spend the whole campaign speaking Arabic and Old Norse at each other.
Maybe everyone gets English and another language?
Might be cool if Ana names him Ofvaegr, which is Old Norse for Invincible.
That would be cool! Anna definitely speaks English (or I should say - Scottish English!) but it would be fun if she somehow also still "remembered" enough Old Norse (plus I think Ofvaegr sounds truly badass) :D
I can speak English and nothing else if we want to go that way.
Profile is in this alias. I think I got all of the numbers right, but it would be good to double check.
Lapyd did you get my last PM to you. I am asking because I did not hear anything back from you on it and wanted to make sure you got it as I answered all your questions.
"Now wonder where Anna Clyde-Myers has gotten to? I was supposed to meet her today." Naibus looks around and checks is watch and then says to himself, "Ah I will give her a few more minutes, she is just probably running a bit late."
I haven’t got your PM, GM! I wonder where did it go?
Also, if you want to start gameplay, there’s a gameplay forum too! Or am I missing something? Sorry, a bit lost here :) heh
I was trying to show you Naibus Haldazer and get your attention ;)
Unfortunately I got no PMs from you man, and I’m still waiting for the answers - and very much excited to start already :)
I thought I’d pop on over and say hi. I’m looking forward to playing with you all!
Hello, Tempest. Looking forward to it.
Looking forward to it as well, peeps :) we got a good group here going on.
Great sorry been a bit busy on my end I if I have anything outstanding with any of you please let me know otherwise I just have a few in the Recruitment thread to finish up however I will be probably starting a few introductory adventures for folks to get you all used to playing in MSH again. Nothing earth shaking but a chance to stretch your um.. ah legs ;) yeah you all got legs
Is this game dead in the water? :(
Idk, I was looking for background help
No did I miss something? Also sorry been very busy trying to get things finished along with RL stuff but I almost never abandon a project I begin.
Okay FreeRadical what help do you need as Shadow Scalar. I was waiting to brainstorm things with you do you have no ideas at all or do you maybe have a tentative starting point I can launch from?
I'm good to go but in no rush. Recovering from a couple of draining weeks at work.
Great I am attending to my to do list while trying not to add anything additional to it. Regardless of what I would like to do as I feel I have made commitments that I must attend to. And some of those commitments are this game and getting it started.
Okay unless I can figure out a way to have multiple threads under my Gameplay Tab I will sadly be forced to having to run this game from a Discord server. As I will need to have multiple gameplay threads and was totally flabergasted that I could not do that easily here.
So this is just a heads up to current and future players as it appears (unless I am wrong) that Discord will be a necessity. You can friend me by joining Discord (a free software) sending a friend request to DeJoker#1460 that is a capital D and a capital J
I will be setting up a Discord server for this game so that I can invite you to it. My apologies, however I have put out feelers to Piazo to figure out an easy way around the current limitations that appear to be Paizo's gaming forum and will let you all know if I get any solid feedback.
Sorry, I don't think I can sign on for a PbP on Discord. I am barely keeping up with my campaigns here on the Paizo site. I do have a Discord account, but I'm not ready to go all in on that yet.
No problem GM SuperTumbler but really it would be just a PbP on Discord so not much different than on here other than I would not be restricted to a single game play thread for everything. Still fully understand if you change you mind you know where to find me ;)
Idk, I don't know what to really do with the character or how things are really going to work with this all. I have rough idea of her father or mother being a state assembly rep or something.
Okay just as a heads up for one and all -- I am working on getting caught up on everything but as usual it seems it always comes in spurts so I have many things to catch up on and trying to spread my limited time to the best of my ability.
However, once caught up (and I am not taking on anything new at this time) I am able to keep up with things fairly consistently. So please bare with me as I slowly move myself to that point of balance where I can focus on all the items I have on my plate equally.
Okay trying to re-establish this to use for the game which is still going on as Discord for games is not working very well for me. No way to get reminders when others have posted.
I am hoping this does re-establish this game.
Checking in... Can we get Shadow Scalar and Flanderdash from the other page?
Okay but you would need to remind me who Shadow Scalar and Flanderdash are I am currently only aware of you and I do not know what you mean by "the other page"
Oh and please do not post to the Game Play until I say okay in here I am going to bring all that transpired from Discord to here so we can pick up from there.
This other page is where they expressed interest:
https://paizo.com/campaigns/v5748p75ivmbf/recruiting&page=5#212