Painless and The 144

So, Nekochan’s condition is improving in accordance with the doctor’s predictions. As of Monday, I’m back to working on the game at least 6 hours a day- so things should continue to progress well. Monday was mostly spent on adding the ability for characters to learn spells from the tomes they can be equipped with, but I also added a new shop and a couple new investments. Yesterday was mostly spent on Meline’s Love Quest, and I’m very pleased with how the revamp is turning out so far. Next week, I intend to do a full-on teaser for new content, characters, etc. So for today, in honour of the recent release of Guardians of the Galaxy (and the fact I am seriously pining for Avengers 2 next May). I present for your approval some scraps from the ol’ idea book, superhero ideas of mine that I always intended to do something with but never got around to it.

Painless

Painless is probably the weaker of the two superhero concepts I came up with. I originally concepted Painless in college, during the unit on abnormal psychology in Psych 101. Painless was a regular joe, until a fateful day where he and his girlfriend, driving while out on a date, are both shot in a failed carjacking. While Painless’ girlfriend dies due to her injuries, Painless just barely makes it out alive, having been shot through the forebrain. His injuries leave Painless with, among other things, amnesia, analgesia, and a terrible anger management problem.

A scheming neurologist, realizing that A) our hero is now prone to rages, B) is completely insensitive to pain, and C) is probably going to have a severely shortened life expectancy, decides to try and make something positive out of it. Through the neurologist’s manipulations, Painless is convinced to take to the streets as a vigilante, fighting a partly-imagined criminal syndicate to get revenge for his dead girlfriend.

Painless was meant to be very dark and gritty- there are no superpowers that aren’t explained by actual medical science, no real villains, and not even any real “hero” in the strictest sense. Painless was supposed to take injuries over the course of the series and either get patched up by his doctor buddy or do the job himself by way of staples and duct tape, but his analgesia means he can keep fighting despite being in a pretty gruesome state. Also, in a subversion of the usual amnesia tropes, Painless would be fully aware of his past, he just doesn’t feel any connection to it- and part of the doctor’s plan is making out Painless’ relationship with his girlfriend to be more poignant than it actually was, to the point where Painless fetishizes the poor dead girl he was only dating for a few months at best.

The story- which I had kinda sorta plans to write eventually as a novella, but never got around to it- was supposed to end on a downer, with a bunch of dead petty criminals and mobsters, Painless himself being dead, and the doctor getting away clean. Maybe a series would come out of it, based on this doctor searching for other, similarly afflicted people to turn into similar vigilantes. Either way, the story is too dark for me at this point- I’m not all that interested in writing it, but I may come back to it someday.

The 144

When the first Fantastic Four movie came out, my friends and I were pretty pumped about it. Keep in mind this was 2005, and we didn’t really know any better. Joking around and hanging out after seeing the movie together, Nekochan, Chibi and I, along with a fourth friend, came up with superhero personas for ourselves and theoretical powers we would have, imagining ourselves as another “Fantastic Four” in the same universe. We really were just goofing around, and didn’t even come up with much of an origin story or even villains to fight. But the idea stuck with me, in time would be influenced by Heroes, the TV show, as well.

The 144 sort of grew naturally out of that. The initial story had a group of four people discovering they have superpowers around the same time, and foiling a group of domestic terrorists in their home town. The original team of four were a guy who had super-toughness, a woman with super-agility (both had a minor strength boost as well- the female character in particular was inspired by Cybersix), a second guy who had the ability to alter the state of matter by touch (that is, he could turn any contiguous object into a solid, liquid or gas as needed) and a second woman who was capable of controlling light and projecting energy beams. The foursome agree to work together to discover the origin and limits of their strange new powers, with crime fighting in general not on the menu- yet.

They eventually track down theirs origins to a cult that had operated somewhere in the US about twenty years ago. The cult engaged in genetic experimentation, guided in part by an ex-Nazi scientist who worked with the cult without buying into their pseudo-Christian belief system. This experimentation lead to a group of 144 genetically engineered children being born to cult members, that the cult believed were Nephilim. Before the cult’s plans really get off the ground, though, a Waco- style government raid breaks up the cult. The affected children are distributed to new families through adoption centres, with no idea that the cult’s crazy beliefs actually had a basis in reality.

The main villain of the piece was a guy with a healing factor, who discovered his powers pretty early on in life and was literally worshipped by his parents, and discovering the truth about the cult only made this guy’s messiah complex worse. He eventually recruits a group of similar cult orphans who have powers that are extremely dangerous in terms of scale- including a woman capable of absorbing and then selectively spreading any disease she has contact with. The messiah-healing-factor guy plans on using this woman to wipe out “normal” humans in preparation for the “eventual” dominion of the earth by his fellow “angels”. However, they are eventually foiled by our team of heroes (supplemented by other superpowered orphans they convince to help out).

From there, the plan was to keep the series relatively small-scale and contained. The focus was on the lives and dramas of the 144 orphans- hence the title- and the conflict would never be larger or smaller than that. I think this concept would be really good for a tabletop RPG, and I’m thinking of running it using a system like BESM one of these days (obviously letting the PCs in control of the heroes pick their own powers, too).

Anyway, just wanted to share that stuff with you, because I’ve kinda got superheroes on the brain. Next week: something actually to do with Harem Collector.