Malicious Machine Men and Monstrous Maidens in Metal Masks
Malicious Machine Men and Monstrous Maidens in Metal Masks
This is a placeholder post, which will be edited into a bunch of links or something once I finish writing up posts for the characters below. You know, sort of like what FF, Arkh, and Ash have posted in this subforum, only better because it's mine and made by me and I'm the best.
"You probably found 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising' in the humor section. Let's just hope that is where it belongs."
-Daniel H. Wilson
Re: Malicious Machine Men and Monstrous Maidens in Metal Masks
Lord Magtok
Unless you've joined our community fairly recently, Lord Magtok is a man who needs no lengthy introduction. You know him, you love him, you hate him. His greatest deeds and most pathetic achievements are written into the very fabric of the Nexus, his name is known worldwide. He has the kind of distinct face only a marketing exec could love. Still, for those of you who are new, or for anyone who needs a refresher on their MagLore, this post should hopefully suffice in communicating exactly who, what, and why Magtok is the cyborg that he is.
The Basics
Aliases: Maggy, Maggums, Maggot, Mags, Margaret, Mag, Tom Godlark (an anagram of Lord Magtok, not his 'real' name)
Gender: Male - Cisgender, He/His
Ancestry: Human
Birthday: November 28th (Each clone has their own Decant Day quietly celebrating their release from the cloning vats, but they've agreed upon 11/28 as their collective 'official' birth date)
Age: N/A
Profession: MagCorp CEO, Retail Manager, Retired Supervillain, Alleged Savior of the Universe
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Height: 5'10", or 178 cm
Description
The tin man is a pale, spindly creature, whose narrow frame and average height is veiled almost entirely by the voluminous purple robes that cover him from neck to ankle. All that he allows the world to see is his head and his arms, which share the same unifying theme, a fusion of metal and flesh. The left side of his head, his left arm, his left leg, and the overwhelming majority of the left side of his body left unseen all share the same shiny metal exterior. Flesh, organs, ribs, spine, even a chunk of his own brain has been digitized and given over to the machine. Every MagClone begins life this way. The same blood, the same flesh, the same chrome and wires and facial scar over their brown right eye.
His face is gaunt, skin pulled tight over his prominent cheekbones, and the corner of his lips are most often curled upwards into smug smirk, or hanging low in a bitter scowl. Usually the latter, as there's a lot more in this world to needle at his pride than there is for him to boast and brag about. The machinery is always clean and well-polished, kept immaculate regardless of the conditions around him. Looking your best and most menacing is important as a villain, and while Mag might be out of the business now, some habits are harder to break than others. This face is his brand, after all. His trademark. You can't be a Magtok without it.
Personality
There's a lot of words you could throw around to describe Magtok. Egotistical, absent-minded, charming, cynical, overdramatic, evil, passionate, lazy, insecure. He spent most of his formative years as a supervillain, so there's a constant need to be seen, to enthrall and delight and terrify the people around him. He does his best to keep those instincts under control, because keeping the peace is more important to him these days than trying to take over the world, but it still colors a lot of his thoughts and behavior. Monologues flow from him like rivers, superweapons and bizarre science experiments are constructed 'because why not?' and the morality of his choices is usually an afterthought, at best. Magtok will move mountains for a close friend, but will drop that same mountain on his enemies and everyone within a three-block radius of his enemies, if he thinks he can get away with it. Cross him at your peril.
History
Magtok was the supervillain, once. The dramatic evil genius, the megalomaniac inventor, the monologue-spouting maniac who took to the spotlight like a fish to water. That supervillain still lies dormant inside him to this day, but it's been eroded over the years by cynicism and trauma. How can you take pride in taking over the world in the name of the premiere villain organization if it's just going to get handed back to the masses by the team's leader, your own rapist? Who can, in good conscience, kidnap the hero's girlfriend and sing a musical number about how evil they are, knowing some cultists are using your shenanigans to distract the good guys, keeping everyone from noticing their black ritual to birth the biblical plagues and a pink-eyed child who will usher in the end of days? Who can screw around robbing banks and distressing damsels when a talking cat is making contracts with gods and scheming to remove the higher cortical functions of an entire mob of innocent people?
Retiring from villainy didn't make the guilt pass. Working with heroes to stop those greater threats didn't make him any friends. All that saving the world ever offered him was more hate, more pain, more frustration and contempt for the world around him. So Magtok retired from that, too. Sure, he'd continue keep an eye out for threats to the fabric of the cosmos, but he wouldn't spend every day obsessing over it anymore. He'd settle down, have kids, watch them grow up and move out, and then start over again with a new wife and kids. He'd run his businesses, count his money, and wax nostalgic about the good old days. He'd try to be happy, in spite of the world's best efforts to stop him.
Further Information
Equipment
Spine Implant - Each MagClone's spine has undergone significant improvements to put it ahead of baseline human vertebrae. The most prominent of these upgrades is the hover implant, which allows them to counter the effects of gravity and fly at low altitudes. Magtok doesn't like walking everywhere, and he likes the way the hem of his robe moves across the floor reminds him of a ghost drifting from place to place, so he usually doesn't go more than an inch or so off the ground.
In addition to flight, the implant can be used to aid in lifting heavy things, though Magtok doesn't often make use of this feature. No self-respecting evil genius ought to be picking up his own stuff. He has machines for that sort of thing.
The Left Hand - In combat, Magtok rarely brings the same weapons or equipment with him. He'll use an energy rifle in one fight, and then immediately throw it out the next day. He prefers to keep his enemies guessing, and enjoys crafting new and exotic nonsense between battles so nobody can develop a sure-fire, reliable contingency plan for dealing with him. However, one thing he always has with him is his left hand, which has a number of hidden compartments and concealed weaponry. Beneath the tips of his chrome fingers, he has a cigarette lighter, a single-shot revolver, a syringe loaded with enough sedative to subdue an adult human, a lockpick, and [REDACTED] for the most dire emergencies.
The Left Eye - Sometimes you need to see in the dark. Other times you need to see the heat signatures of the things around you. Magtok has an eye that can do both. What his eye can't do is shoot lasers, though. He tried that once; the battery exploded, and...well, long story short, we won't be trying that sort of thing ever again. No one with sense would allow something that can get that hot to attach to your brain.
The Cloning Vats - All throughout Nexus history, Magtok has confidently stood against gods, wizards, and eldritch monsters beyond mortal comprehension, and he did these things because death was of no concern to him. Every clone grown in the MagCave's darkest depths has the same collective memories uploaded into its brain, regularly updated and managed in the same database so they're all effectively the same person. The cloning vats are currently disabled, for reasons that I won't get into here, but there's always a chance they might get reactivated some day.
Hologram Tech - Hardlight constructs, fuzzy blue images like in Star Wars, lifelike imitations of people overlaid on robots to serve as the perfect disguise...Magtok doesn't like to draw a lot of attention to this stuff, preferring people look at all of his more bombastic and spectacular inventions, but he's done a lot of work with holograms that could help with subterfuge and secrecy.
Abilities
Evil Genius - Magtok is more often than not the smartest man in the room, a multidisciplinary genius capable of whipping up preposterous sci-fi technology that would take entire countries centuries to put together, and getting it done in only a few days.
Pretty Much Nothing Else Going For Him - Aside from being smart and rich and resourceful and connected, that's all Magtok's got. No superpowers, no magic, no psychic mind beams, nothing. Even being normal can be an asset if you're clever with it, though. Convince that big angry lizard guy you're not worth fighting because you're just an itty-bitty human, and then WHAM, bonk him right in the back of the head with a cattle prod.
"You probably found 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising' in the humor section. Let's just hope that is where it belongs."
-Daniel H. Wilson
Re: Malicious Machine Men and Monstrous Maidens in Metal Masks
Jenette d'Aubigny
Jenette was originally an attempt at affectionately poking fun at the character trends I'd been seeing in the Nexus. She's a cute tomboy monster girl attracted to other girls. Her combat style would fit perfectly into a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. She joined up with one of the big organizations and she wants to go on adventures and help people and be a good person. Sounds exactly like a character or two you've seen before, right? Tons of them fit into that mold, and I'm not surprised that they do, because it's a very fun mold to mess around with. Of course, because I'm a huge jerk who can't allow any of my characters to ever be happy, she's not just all those trends put together. She's also a ghastly walking corpse that has to sustain herself by butchering and devouring human flesh. How lovely.
The Basics
Aliases: Saint Lazarus (her 'superhero name,' her nom de guerre)
Gender: Female - Cisgender, She/Her
Ancestry: Originally human, now an unidentified form of undead that most closely resembles a ghoul or zombie.
Birthday: Don't worry about it, she doesn't want a gift
Age: I don't know, late twenties?
Profession: Part-time Vigil member, part-time Skyside serial killer.
Sexuality: Homosexual
Height: 6'0", or 183 cm
Description
Jenette was one of prettier girls in North Portside College; it's a real shame what getting bitten by a zombie has done for her complexion. Of course, the knife wounds, stitches, and gunshot holes she's constantly acquiring probably wouldn't heal as nicely if she doing all this crime-fighting as a human, so I guess there's that, too. She doesn't let her hair grow out below her chin for practical purposes, but she does try her best to take care of it with shampoo and conditioner. It's one of the few forms of personal maintenance she still bothers with, since most cosmetic companies aren't really interested in marketing their products towards the undead. She's thought about buying colored contact lenses, to replace her bloody red irises with something a little less spooky, but ultimately decided against it. This is who she is now. If you don't like her eyes, you're just going to have to fucking deal with it.
She's fairly well endowed around the chest, though you'd never know it from looking at her armor. When she's in the role of Saint Lazarus, she wears a suit of plate armor indistinguishable from the sort a male knight might wear, because boobplate is fucking stupid. She wouldn't be caught dead in anything as ridiculous as that, pun intended. When off-duty, she wears a lot of plaid, denim, and graphic tees with goofy jokes on them that she hopes Fidelia will laugh at.
Personality
Unlike that chrome criminal in the post above this one, Jenette is a genuinely good person. She believes in right and wrong. She believes the strong have a duty to protect the weak, that people are inherently good at heart, that the forces of justice will always triumph over evil.
She also believes she is one of those evils. Beneath her chipper smile and positive attitude is a woman who's disgusted with herself and what she does to keep herself going. The creature that lives in her mirror terrifies her, it's a monstrous abomination that just keeps eating and eating and eating. She does her best to hunt Skyside's criminal element, to lop off the heads of murderers and lowlifes and take the bodies home to her kitchen, but the hunger is always there, and playing Batman isn't easy. She's thought about preying upon the homeless. She's thought about consuming her own girlfriend, thought about going back to Inside to eat her own parents. She's thought about killing herself to escape the temptations, but doesn't know if her undead form even can die.
Not now, though. Not yet. She's still doing more good than harm to the Nexus, she thinks. She's only hurt the bad people, just like how all the other heroes do it. Maybe one day she'll find a cure and go back to being human, maybe one day the hunger will stop and she can just be like any other adventurer, maybe one day Fidelia will need her protection again. She has to keep going, she has to keep fighting. Just in case things are different some day, just in case things are better tomorrow. She's gone through too much for it to all be for nothing.
History
As I mentioned before, Jenette grew up in Inside under Prince Vyrn's regime. It was a pretty dull, boring, mundane childhood. She's not an orphan; she grew up with a normal pair of NPC parents. She had normal NPC friends. She went to a normal NPC high school. She even nearly graduated from a normal North Portside College veterinarian program, but she made the unfortunate mistake of trying to pay for college by getting a job as an EMT in Skyside. All it took was one little accident, one misdiagnosed patient, one moment of thoughtlessness and youthful arrogance, and suddenly all her dreams were ruined. A rabid patient bit her, and her entire life was over.
So that's it, that's her origin story. A zombie bit her, her terrified coworker shoved her out of the sky-ambulance, and she fell a few dozen feet, broke her leg, and died in a filthy alleyway. Not the most glamorous of ways to become one of the Nexus's Powered Class. A vampire or radioactive spider bite would've been preferable to all of that mess.
The knightly stuff came shortly thereafter. She couldn't risk anyone from her old life recognizing her. She needed to hide her face, to hide what she had become. An old armorsmith in the Thunderhead district was the only one willing to help her, so she handed off what money she had and took up the arms and armor of a knight in shining armor. She gave herself a new name, a superhero title, as a sort of macabre joke. She'd use her powers to be a hero of the people, one who would always come back, no matter how sure you were that she was dead. The Ghoul Knight, Saint Lazarus of Skyside.
Further Information
Equipment
Big Sword - Saint Lazarus wields a mighty zweihander, taking advantage of her superhuman strength and the two-handed sword's incredible mass to carve apart her victims. She forgets to do basic maintenance for the weapon quite often, and regular use has threatened to dull the blade on more than one occasion. She might end up replacing the sword altogether some day soon, honestly. I mean, it's just a sword, it's not like she gave it a name or a magical enchantment or something.
Plate Armor - It's armor. Knight armor. Swords slide off of it, bullets sometimes cut right through, and others bounce off the armor and bruise her. Just like her sword, there's nothing special or magical or legendary about her armor. It too might get replaced some day, if something happens to it and Jen's girlfriend can't find a way to patch it up.
Romero - Romero is an ordinary greyhound Jen adopted shortly after she took on the Saint Lazarus persona. He's a good dog, very smart and brave and well-behaved, but he's not a zombie rotweiler or German Shepherd with laser eyes or the mythical Cerberus or anything like that, so he doesn't go out with Jen to fight crime. She might pass by a crime scene while taking him for a walk, but she always keeps him out of the fray. His role is strictly that of emotional support.
Girlfriend - Speaking of emotional support, I almost forgot to mention Fidelia. Jen's dating one of Arkh's PCs, after saving Fi from a messy alleyway showdown. Romero is very jealous of Fidelia, who just showed up in his home out of nowhere one day, and started holding hands and doing stitches and repairing iron for their mutual master. He's learned by now to accept her as part of the family, but he still doesn't respect her the way he does Jenette. Also yes, Arkh, Fidelia counts as equipment now. My thread, my rules.
Abilities
Zombie Strength - You have nerves in your body telling you to back the fuck off if you try to lift something too heavy, something that would risk damaging your muscles if you did. Jenette doesn't feel any of that, and her body regenerates swiftly after she's eaten a meal, so there's nothing stopping her from committing to ridiculous feats of strength.
Regeneration - Saint Lazarus can recover from pretty much anything, given enough time and human flesh. Gunshot wounds, stabbings, broken bones, lost limbs...the only thing she hasn't experimented with is getting shot in the head or decapitated. It would be nice to know if she could survive that, but she's not in any rush to experiment with that. Some things are better left a mystery.
Frenzy - Jen doesn't like doing it, but in dire circumstances, she can put aside her reservations about the sanctity of human life. She can take a step back and let the feral, animalistic hunger take charge, to withdraw into herself and let instinct take over. She struggles to distinguish friend from foe in this state, and barely recognizes her own sword, preferring instead to strike with tooth and claw like some kind of disgusting animal, consuming whatever screaming, terrified humanoids dare to stand in her way.
"You probably found 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising' in the humor section. Let's just hope that is where it belongs."
-Daniel H. Wilson
Re: Malicious Machine Men and Monstrous Maidens in Metal Masks
Needs Food Badly
Needs was originally meant to be just another squad member on a team of wacky disposable MagClones. There was a grumpy soldier, a grumpy traitor, a wilderness expert, and uhh...well it's not really important anymore, is it? Fortunately for him and his squadmate Haz, I grew attached to two of the weirdos, and made the irrational decision to keep them around for future scenes, while the rest of the squad faded out of existence.
The Basics
Aliases: Needs, NFB,
Gender: Male - Cisgender, He/His
Ancestry: Human
Birthday: February 31st
Age: Does the Black Moon Howl?
Profession: Multidisciplinary Wizard
Sexuality: Only To Startle The Sun
Height: 5'10", or 178 cm
Description
Remember two posts ago, when I described Magtok as 'a pale, spindly creature' and made it clear he was a skinny nerd in a stupid purple bathrobe? Well Needs is that but with incoherent shapeshifting, supernatural drug addictions, and a bad habit of getting lost in his work and missing meals both meals and showers. They're literally the same person genetically, so Needs, with his weird blemishes shaped like religious icons, occult tattoos, and strange burns scattered haphazardly across his skin, is sort of a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to delve into the forbidden magicks and eldritch rituals, drink deep from the well of infinite arcane knowledge, or party with the frat boys down at Innsmouth University. He's gross, and I would not be surprised if you found mold or lizard eggs growing inside him one of these days.
Personality
As unpleasant as his lack of self-care might make his presence, Needs is honestly one of the nicer clones around. He just has some language issues after trading away his gift of tongues to a fey noble. Hardly anything he ever says is coherent, couched in riddles and flowery poetry and obscure movie quotes that happen immediately before or after what he actually means to say. It's not by choice, and I don't think he fully understood what he was giving away when he made the exchange, but it's cost him a lot. Imagine being the only MagClone physically incapable of charming, smooth-talking, and persuading others. All he has left is his books, his rituals, his magic, and his brother. Magtok is the only one who can ever seem to decode the gibberish Needs spouts, and even then it's only sometimes. It's so horribly lonely living like this.
History
There's not much to tell. Needs has largely been an accessory to Magtok all his life, an ace up his brother's sleeve for situations where nothing but magic can possibly hope to save the day. He resents it a little, but it's not like Magtok doesn't care about him. His brother cares. Needs has his own room, books, food, drugs...everything he can manage to request without leaving everyone else scratching their heads in confusion. It's just...it's not very fulfilling, just reading books all day, channeling ghosts all night, only ever going outside to harass seemingly random strangers on their first dates, in order to prevent the parents of future cult leaders and warlords from ever reproducing.
Further Information
Equipment
The Same Stuff As Magtok - Needs is still a MagClone, so all the tech and stuff that exists inside every Magtok exists inside of him too. Some of it leaks swamp water or rat blood at random intervals, but it all mostly works the same way when Needs is in his base, humanoid form. Don't ask me about the blood or the swamp water.
Abilities
All Of The Magic - All of it. Just as Magtok is an omnidisciplinary scientist/engineer, Needs is a spellcaster who is constantly trying to master every single school of magic from every single setting. This makes him absurdly powerful...when he knows what he's doing, when he's pointed at the bad guys, and when he isn't self-medicating. He doesn't get a whole lot of fight scenes as a result, because it'd be pretty lame and uncool of me to throw that kind of raw power at other PCs that other players are attached to.
"You probably found 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising' in the humor section. Let's just hope that is where it belongs."
-Daniel H. Wilson