I've already mentioned this to one player in a PM, so I may as well put it here.
In light of Half withdrawing as Batman, I want to give whoever takes the cowl a clean slate while leaving myself open to new possibilities since the original idea was to take advantage of Gotham to have a pool of writing partners I could more easily collaborate with than I can with Maine/Atlantis boy.
I say that to say that I am withdrawing Jason Todd/Spawn.
Half also knew this was likely coming, but tagging @Half Pint so he sees it.
I mean, to be fair, that was half the fandom's reaction to Bailey/Spider-Boy, so... it kinda fits for a Bailey sheet?
I know Matt wants Bailey's Shazam suit to be patterned on the Spider-Boy costume, so I imagine that what Matt's trying there is to duplicate Bailey's colors.
C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y C H A R A C T E R S U M M A R Y
_________________________________________________________ Zatanna Zatarra Patrick "Eel" O'Brian Alec Holland Ronnie Raymond/Martin Stein
_________________________________________________________ 26 34 43 17/65 | Single Divorced Widowed Single _________________________________________________________ The Fantastic Four | American
N O T A B L E A B I L I T I E S & T O O L S N O T A B L E A B I L I T I E S & T O O L S
A B I L I T I E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Zatanna Zatanna is a descendant of the Homo-magi, and of Giovanni Zatara and as a result has latent magic abilities that she has only relatively recently began learning to control. She casts spells speaking backwards or 'Logomancy'. As she studies her fathers journals and becomes more adept in using her magic her power will grow, but currently she has only experimented with spells relating to the elements, telekinesis and minor telepathy. ◼ Plastic Man Patrick O'Brian's body has become a living polymer, able to stretch, reshape, and flatten with inhuman elasticity. He has barely begun to understand the limits of what he can become. His regenerative ability and resistance to damage are growing, but his control is not, moments of panic or rage leave his form unstable, twisting beyond his will. ◼ Swamp Thing Alec Holland's transformation into the avatar of The Green has only just begun. His link to the living ecosystem allows him to command vegetation, regenerate from organic matter, and sense life through the soil. However it has also warped his body beyond recognition, turning more monster than man. With this brings brings benefits as well as the obvious downsides. His size and strength has grown far passed that of any normal human. He is able to lift and hit harder than he ever could as a normal man, and take far more damage too. ◼ Firestorm Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein share a single unstable consciousness bound within the a single body. They can generate nuclear heat, fly, and manipulate matter on a molecular level, but their understanding of how or why it works is limited. Emotion and discord between them distort the transformation, creating unpredictable bursts of energy. The Matrix seems to have its own will, feeding on their confusion. Neither man yet grasps whether they command the power, or if it merely allows them to make use of it. -
T O O L (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Zatanna Zatanna carries the remnants of her stage magician's life. A wand, cards, and the black top hat she once used in performance among a miriad of other tricks and props. Many of these have taken on unintended magical resonance since her awakening, acting as focus to stabilize her unstable incantations. Her spellbook is incomplete, she has used any knowledge she gained from her fathers journal and built on this after practice. ◼ Plastic Man Do cool sunglasses count as a tool? ◼ Swamp Thing None ◼ Firestorm None. The Firestorm Matrix is capable of generating its own tools if the user is apt enough. -
N O T A B L E S K I L L S & T A L E N T S N O T A B L E S K I L L S & T A L E N T S
S K I L L (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Zatanna First and foremost Zatanna is a trained magician. She was her fathers assistant for years and was being trained to take over the family business when she was of age. As a result she is a master of stagecraft and misdirection. On top of this she has developed a knack for investigation as a result of her quest to fight Alchemax. Lastly a minor skill she has is her knowledge of the occult. This has only been a recent development though, and her knowledge is strictly limited to what was in her fathers journal and the small amount of demons she has already encountered. ◼ Plastic Man Before his transformation, Patrick was a skilled thief and con man. His understanding of locks, infiltration, and street-level networks gives him an edge when navigating the underworld that birthed him. ◼ Swamp Thing Alec retains fragments of his scientific mind; an advanced understanding of plant physiology, biochemistry, and environmental systems. He may even understand all of this on a much deeper level after his transformation. Along with this, even before his transformation, Holland was adept at surviving harsh conditions due to his time doing field research in places like the Amazon. These skills now blend with the Green's instincts for camouflage and predation. ◼ Firestorm Professor Stein provides a deep foundation in nuclear physics, chemistry, and energy theory, though his influence is often drowned out by Ronnie's impulsive decision-making. Together, they can solve complex problems, if they can agree on the approach. This extends into their fighting style, mixing Ronnie's athletic background and improvisational instincts with Stein's analytical focus. -
T A L E N T (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Zatanna Even before discovering true magic, Zatanna possessed a natural affinity for performance, rhythm, and language. Her mind easily bends around complex phrasing and mirrored syntax, allowing her to speak backwards spells with fluid precision. She also has a natural stage presence and charisma that borders on the supernatural ◼ Plastic Man Eel O'Brian has an effortless adaptability. A gift for rolling with the punches, physically and mentally. Even before becoming Plastic Man, he could think on his feet faster than most could blink, his mind always one absurd step ahead. His humor, his looseness, and his knack for improvisation are innate traits that now mirror the fluidity of his new body. ◼ Swamp Thing Alec has always had an intuitive sensitivity to the emotions of others - human or otherwise. Even before his transformation, he could walk into a room and feel tension like a shift in temperature. After merging with the Green, this empathy has only evolved into something more innate and primal. Despite his osmosis with the Green not being fully complete, it still flows through him instinctively. Healing him, guiding him, sometimes even protecting him from himself. ◼ Firestorm Both halves of Firestorm bring innate gifts that together form something extraordinary. Ronnie's raw intuition and fearless impulsiveness grant him a natural sense for movement and reaction. Stein, on the other hand, possesses a natural genius for pattern recognition and abstract thought. Fused, their shared consciousness expresses a rare, intuitive creativity, a talent for perceiving energy, matter, and emotion as interconnected threads waiting to be shaped. -
T H E S T O R Y S O F A R... T H E S T O R Y S O F A R...
This version of the Fantastic Four is far different from the normal family we all know and love. Rather than being brought together by an expidition gone awry, and using science to carve their path forward towards a brighter future, this group has a very different origin and goals.
Each of them were negatively affected in some way by the multinational pharmaceutical and chemical organisation, Alchemax. To the world they are one of, if not the leading corporation behind anything ranging from makeup to cancer medication. Another faceless conglomerate whos name is ignored on every pill bottle and dialysis machine. However, to those who can get close enough to the truth without being silenced, they are much darker and nefarious.
Patrick 'Eel' O’Brian was a small-time thief, a cat burglar and safe-cracker who made his living in the cracks between Mammoth Citys bigger fish. The one thing in his life he never expected was that his biggest score would come with a corporate contract. When Alchemax offered him a job to steal back some 'sensitive research documents' from a rival, the pay was too good to refuse. What they didn't mention was that the papers exposed Alchemax's own illegal experiments and cover-ups. After returning the documents to his employer he was shot, and disposed of in a chemical vat in an Alchemax factory, courtesy of the same corporation that hired him.
He woke days later changed, his body melted and reformed into living plastic. Patrick O'Brian became something more than a man, he became Plastic Man
Alec Holland was a botanist and bio-chemist with a dream. To heal the world's dying ecosystems through synthetic biology. Alchemax promised him funding, resources, and freedom to pursue his 'bio-restoration formula.' What they didn't tell him was that his work would be repurposed into a weapon, a toxin meant to sterilize crop fields in conflict zones. When he discovered the truth, he tried to destroy the research. Instead, the lab exploded.
Holland should've died that night. But something ancient and alive in the swamps pulled him back, merged him with the soil, the rot, the endless Green. He became something beyond human, a consciousness woven through the roots and water, merging with the plantlife around him and beyond.
Now, Swamp Thing haunts the edges of civilization, neither man nor monster. His body remembers fire, his soul remembers betrayal. And beneath the moss and mud, he feels Alchemax's corruption spreading, poisoning the world he has become part of.
Ronnie Raymond never asked to be a hero. He just wanted to graduate, play football, and keep his mom from worrying about rent. But when his high school partnered with Alchemax for a 'future of energy; internship program, he jumped at the opportunity. The company promised a scholarship, hands-on training, and a chance to work with one of their lead physicists, the famed Professor Martin Stein.
Neither of them realized that Alchemax's 'Project Firestorm' had ulterior motives. The project was meant to stabilize quantum energy harvested from dimensional tears into a new clean energy, free from the societal bias nuclear energy had. However, their intention was far from stabilizing this, they wanted to tear open the tears and built the reactor with this in mind. The reactor went critical, and Stein in an attempt to save Ronnie's life jumped in front of the blast.
Instead of dying, they fused: two minds, one atomic body. The two became one, both consciousnesses existing within the same body. In the aftermath, Alchemax erased the records, declared Stein missing, and painted Ronnie as a reckless vandal. Now he's on the run, trying to keep the unstable nuclear force within him under control and trying to avoid Alchemax at all costs. Against their will, Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein became Firestorm
Zatanna Zatara grew up surrounded by smoke and mirrors. The daughter of a stage magician whose shows blurred the line between performance and true sorcery. To her, magic was a craft of illusion, sleight of hand, and timing. To her father, Giovanni, it was something far older and far more dangerous. She never understood why he warned her never to read from his black journal, or why he'd vanish for days under the guise of 'consulting work'. But for a girl who was living the dream of travelling the country doing magic, she knew better than to doubt a good thing. However, this all came to a head in her teenage years when her father went missing for good. She'd later come to the conclusion that he'd abandoned her, and moved in with her relatives to live a semi-normal life.
Years later, she learned the truth. Giovanni had been contracted by Alchemax after one of their dimensional research experiments went wrong, a tear in reality opened during an attempt to weaponize extradimensional energy. They brought him in to 'contain the anomaly' but it was far more than a science problem. It was magic. Giovanni succeeded in sealing the being they had summoned, but it cost him his life. Alchemax covered it up, branding it a lab fire and erasing every trace of his involvement.
After his death, Zatanna finally opened her father's old trunk she'd refused to look in since his disappearance, and found the journal. It was filled with backwards words, binding sigils, and sketches of the Alchemax sigil hidden inside magical circles. When she spoke one of those words aloud, the world changed: light bent, reality folded, rabbits began pouring out of every hat in the room. The illusions she had been practicing all her life became real.
Now she travels the shadows between the seen and unseen, tracing the threads that connect Alchemax's experiments to the entity still imprisoned beneath their labs. Her father died sealing the door, Zatanna intends to be the one who opens it and makes them pay for what crawled through. To this end she has set out to find and connect those affected by Alchemax. Her name eponymously is Zatanna and she intends to lead her Fantastic Four against injustice.
P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ) P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S )
As evident from my last application in 'Ultimate One Universe: Resistance', the traditional Fantastic Four are my favourite comic team, and Reed Richards might just be my favourite comic character. I really enjoyed writing a different take on them, but wanted to go for something a bit different in this roleplay.
My thought process behind this is taking the idea behind the Fantastic Four and flipping it on its head entirely. The Fantastic Four are very science forward, they were given their powers by a freak experiment and solve a lot of their problems through the use of science. On top of this they are brought together by their familial bond, both in blood but also in love. They were family before their accident and brought closer together by it.
This team is the complete inverse of that. They were all given their powers or at least affected in some way by science, yes. But science used for evil rather than good. A corporation bent on its own nefarious means that scarred each of them and took away their family and life. They chase down Alchemax not for altruistic reasons, but for selfish ones, they are out for revenge and I aim to tell a story about a revenge based on loss and how each of them grow and form a found family from this experience.
As another reversal of the classic Fantastic Four concept, I aim to lean more towards the magic and mysticism of these characters rather than the cosmic science expiditions of Reed and the family. They are all relatively new to their powers, and haven't looked far into how they got them or what they mean for them. I want to explore The Green, Zatanna's 'homo-magi' lineage, the Firestorm Matrix, and maybe some other surprised for Plastic Man.
I aim to have them roam and do battle with both the mystic and human enemies at Alchemax' disposal. I want to have them available either as a team, as a duo, or individually to be able to show up in others stories. I'm keen to collab as much as possible with this team and would love to get involved with others.
All formatting originates via the work ofLord Wraith
The All-New, All-Different Fantastic Four is accepted (even without a banner image)
Well on to idea #2....Captain Marvel aka SHAZAM. I was gonna post both sheets together so...that's what I intend to do. Yall getting another kid hero whos happy as fuck and yall gonna like it.
Tagging @mattmanganon so he sees this, out of fairness to you both as it sounds like this could become a competition.
Matt has a concept for Captain Marvel/Shazam that has been in development hell for a bit, but should be ready to be posted.
Just a note, I have to go out of town and won't have regular access from Thursday through Sunday, so you're all at Half's mercy until Middle School Monday.
But when I'm back, I'll kick off the New York event.
This means I'll be skipping Adult Swim this week. We'll catch back up with Jason next Friday.
Cyrania
Guardian Angel Haruki
N3v3rM0r3
Lurking Krog
RPM
Finetales
mattmanganon
