Cyrania

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

OK people.

What's your best guesses for what's stored in the poor private's phone that the Martians just stole?

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

M A R T I A N M A N H U N T E R
M A R T I A N M A N H U N T E R

POLICE PRECIENT STATION
Manhattan/Bronx, New York City

The chime hit the hour just as John Jones arrived in the station.

"Jones, you made it!" Lieutenant Baxter glanced at the clock. "Just in time as always."

He shrugged. "I do seek to be punctual, Lieutenant." Then made sure to clock in. "How are things?"

"Busy as usual." Baxter leaned back in his seat. "Captain Stacy's talkin' with someone about something, I don't know what at the moment. We sent a squad of boys over to a reported giant shark attacking stalls in the fish market. We're not exactly clear because all the 911 calls are pretty scrambled. Then we just got reports of an airplane explosion over in Metropolis, though thankfully no one was hurt since 'Thor' it seems landed the plane. If the bomb gets traced here, then we'll have to deal with that. So hopefully it stays in Metropolis. Then of course, we have all the usual. Gang fights, robberies, thefts, complaints, drug dealing, all the rest. So all in all, a pretty typical day for us."

"Indeed." He then headed to his desk, noticing the other detectives either hard at work on their computers, missing from their desks, or 'discretely' whiling away time on their phones.

"Don't get too comfortable yet. I got a case for you."

"Really?" He immediately sprang back to the lieutenant's desk.

Baxter chuckled. "No wonder you became a detective so quick. We got a suspected murder and kidnapping in an apartment down by the river. Could just be a burglary gone really awry, but still, best for you to check it over. Here's the dossier." He handed him a folder.

And John took it firmly, smiling slightly. "Still prefer the paper dossiers I see."

"Hey, you gotta get your eyes off the computer sometime. Also, this way you can make sure to look through it carefully, take notes, and know what info you were given and what got changed later. You'll understand someday, greenhorn."

"We'll see, old man." Then he went through the file, carefully flipping through the sheets. Honestly, he didn't mind the paper. Mars had been basically all digital for as long as he could remember so it was still such a novelty to be able to handle paper like this. But he wasn't going to ever say that. That would be admitting too much. Then he paused. "The kidnapped is a child."

"A girl, yeah...Six years old." He sighed. "It could just be that she ran when the shots were fired and hasn't made her way back home yet. Still, best to see if you can also figure out what happened to her. We got some boys on it, but, especially with that 'shark attack', we're spread a bit thin. If you can find out where she is, then maybe we can get her before it becomes a case for the organized crime or vice squads."

"I'll do all I can."

"That's all we can ask. Do take the squad car though. It's more official looking and quicker than just walking there. Also, please don't feel like you have to wear that trench coat all day. It's not exactly cold out today."

"And ruin the look? I can withstand a little heat. I'll check in when I get there." Then he headed for the stairs down.

"Be sure to! There'll be two officers there waiting as well, so don't go lone wolf!"

"Roger that, Lieutenant!" Then with a salute, he headed down the stairs and looked more thoroughly over the dossier. A girl's life was at stake. He couldn't mess this up.

---

SOMEWHERE IN THE AMERICAN COUNTRYSIDE
Somewhere, USA

"Any luck?"

"Nope. Still no signs of anyone."

"Come on." The on-site sergeant huffed, gesturing towards the giant saucer. "We have their spaceship here. And clear signs that people were on board. Surely there's some signs of where they went."

"Negative, sir."

"Well, keep scouring the area and make sure the perimeter's secure. Our scientists will be looking over the ship shortly. And triple check that cave system! If they're at all still nearby, then that's where they have to be."

"Acknowledged." Then the radio fell silent.

The sergeant could only shake his head. "How could a large group just vanish? The commander's not going to be happy about this..."

Meanwhile, one of the privates went back into one of the nearby caves, shined his flashlight around, and huffed. "Yep, this cave is just empty. Just like the other two times I checked. Whoever was in that ship must be a long way from here..." Then he glanced back to the entrance, making sure there was no one nearby, then covertly took out his phone. "No signal. Of course. Why would somewhere out in the middle of nowhere have service?" He went to put it back, only to find himself shifting forward. "Hey, what was that? An earthquake? ...Better get outta here." And so he scrambled, unaware he left his phone behind.

Ash'r then darted from the false illusion of a back cave wall, grabbed the phone, then darted back down further into the cave, tipping his head to those holding up the illusion as he went. "Thanks for your help!" Then once he came into the main section of the cave system, deep underground, he darted around the bustle of everyone either adapting or finding some other task to do and rushed for the doctor's section of the cave. "Doc. Hey Doc! Look what I've got!"

"What do you have there?" Dr. B'nja'in looked up from the examination notes he'd been pouring through.

"Not really sure." He handed it to the doctor. "But it's earthling tech. One of their soldiers dropped it in our cave."

"And you took it. Ash'r, you know you aren't even supposed to up near there."

"Because I'm defective and can't do all the things a Martian ought to do, so I'll get everyone found out. I know, I know. But anyways," he pressed on before the doctor could dispute that. "We all know that we can't be in this cave forever. We're going to need to shift and blend in with the populace. I think we could use this to help start blending in. Seems like some sort of computer to me, so it's got to have info. Info any Earthling would know."

"Which would then be essential for us to know..." He sighed, rubbing under his glasses. "It is a good idea, Ash'r. But you don't need to take such risks. You have already done many things to help out in this endeavor. Our worries around you being psy-null are not because we think less of you, but because you have less, options if you should get into trouble. Please don't feel the need to keep pushing yourself to be useful."

"I get it...Still, this will help."

"Yes," he glanced down at the device. "However, the earthling who dropped it will undoubtably want it back."

He shrugged. "I'm sure we can stall for a bit until you've studied it enough or made a working replica. Then we could let him find it."

"We'll see...May as well start getting to work then." And he started up the new computer.

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

Gotta love Loki running a theatre with his 'friends'. Poor Volsteg though. XD

Also for a moment there, I thought 'pregnant man' was Loki given the whole Sleipnir incident.

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

<Snipped quote by Mao Mao>

Just curious, but is there one that you have more of a story for than the other?

I had PM'd Half two separate concepts and based on our discussion, I'd originally thought that I'd be applying for the other idea (I still might). But when I actually sat down and thought about it, the only thing going for that concept was that I'd be guaranteed hooks for writing with other people. I had a story arc, but it was really a one-shot and nothing else planned from there.

By contrast, for Arthur, even though I was actually less hyped for it, I had a branching story concept that could keep spinning out as I needed. Which is why I ultimately went with Arthur.

So that's why I ask, are these two genuinely 50/50 for you? Or is there one you have more of a story for than the other?

@Bounce

I'm going to second what Bounce said here.

Also, which idea would you have more fun playing out?

As I see it, the turtles would make it so you are very close to where everyone else is and so make it more easy to integrate into other's stories. While Genosha/Magneto would give you a larger sphere of influence on the story and world that no one else has covered yet.

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

<Snipped quote by Cyrania>

But what about the X-Men? Aren’t they one of the big guys?

@Terry Bogard

X-Men are a big comic book name, but other than Wolverine (who there had been a guy considering having join), most of them tend to be only within X-Men stories.

I also just forgot about them when coming up with that list...Screw me, it was late at night my time.

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

P U N I S H E R
P U N I S H E R

^{"People don't change. They can pick new wallpaper, sure. Find just the right shade of paint for the new drywall. Put a shiny finish on the hardwood. Doesn't matter. It all just hides the rot underneath."}

C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 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 _________________________________________________________ Francis 'Frank' Castle _________________________________________________________ 43 | Widowed _________________________________________________________ Formerly U.S Marine Corps, ARGUS | 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 ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Physical Evaluation You can't do what I do with a beer gut and a love of hot dogs. You need discipline. A training regime. The human body loves patterns. Get into a bad one and you'll have a hell of a time digging yourself out. Keep up a good one, though? You'd be surprised what a person's capable of when they put everything they've got into it. I've been beat to hell with baseball bats and crowbars, had my face stomped into hamburger meat and ate more knives to the gut than I can count. Had to fight a lot of guys bigger than me. Haven't found one that's really got the best of me yet. Not unless you count the freaks of the world. - T O O L (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ A lot of damn guns I've had a long time to build up our arsenal here at the bunker. When I started this mission I figured I'd be working with limited resources. Handguns, semi-automatic rifles and shotguns were easy. I knew a thing or two about improvised explosives, too. But this beautiful country is full of surprises. Who knew you could pop over to the corner store and pick up an MANPAD with your monster and two dollar pizza? Micro's got his tech, too. All sorts of fancy drones and surveillance equipment. - 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) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ Hand to Hand Training isn't just weights and cardio. Training the skills is arguably more important. Doesn't matter if you're seven feet tall and three hundred pounds of muscle if you can't throw a punch. Train hard, often and well. Train until every strike, grapple and throw is second nature. If you're fighting for your life you don't have time to think about kata and combos or whatever other bullshit. The style doesn't matter. Just focus on making it instinctual. Addendum, actually: that K'un-Lun, focus-your-chi shit is fake and it'll get you killed. Never trust a coach you find at a strip mall. Wrestling or boxing are fine for fighting strangers looking for your wallet but if you're chasing the life, go wider. I had a long, boring deployment in Thailand, so Muy Thai's my base. Pick your poison. I saw a piece in the Times once that said I was 'the logical conclusion of the vigilante phenomena.' Said I was what happened when you took one of those guys like the Bat or the Devil- a monster of muscle, tech and will- and took away the 'moral subversion to lethal violence.' It was sensational horseshit, yeah. But I gotta admit: I kinda like it. I mean, they're batting .500, right? Takes a real tough son of a bitch to wade into the muck with only your fists and Peter Pan boots. No powers. Part of me always wondered how I'd stack up. Maybe we'll find out someday. ◼ Military Service Enlisted in October, 2001. Completed training at Parris Island depot before transfer to Camp Geiger for infantry training. Based on my aptitude scores an instructor recommended me for recon screening. I must've impressed him because he had me ship down to Little Creek for RIP and BRC. More training. More tests. It was more grueling than half the shit I did later. But I came out the other side a Recon Marine. I was proud of it, too. Sent pictures of my buddies and me back home to the family. Deployed with 1st Recon for the invasion of Iraq. Earned a Bronze Star in Fullejah kicking in doors. Bialya in 2007, chasing rumors of Al-Queda operatives. Didn't have the government's permission to be there, though, so they kindly asked us to leave- using a lot of bullets. Helmand River Valley, Afghanistan in 2010. Silver Star for dragging Lieutenant Geller's ass thirty yards through open ground under enemy fire. Received a special recommendation for Assessment and Selection for MARSOC. Special Forces. More training, even worse than the last go around. Still, managed to punch through it, and came out the other side a raider. Me. Some kid from New York. Next deployment was Sin-Cong, 2011 to 2015. Got a few more stars and four purple hearts. That jungle was hell on earth. Wouldn't recommend visiting. They don't much like tourists there anymore- not that I can blame them. If another country full of rich assholes decided to drop a firestorm on the U.S because they didn't like our politics I'd probably hold a grudge too. Met a guy named Rick Flag while I was there. He was running something called Task Force C, a joint military and intelligence task force headed by ARGUS. They took us all over the world- had us doing all sorts of unethical and illegal shit. The short version: I'm very good at what I do. The best. I've been running special operations for longer than some of you have been alive. Been to every corner of the world. Learned everything from small unit tactics to hostage extraction, interrogation and long term surveillance. MARSOC and Force Recon took me in, crushed me into a ball and spat out a half decent marine. And that was all before ARGUS. Before Task Force C taught me how to spell 'black ops' in big, red letters. - T A L E N T (S) ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ◼ The Craft I've always been a hell of a shot. Always been good at keeping my hands steady. Not something you can really train, I think. I used to spend summer break hunting upstate with my folks. Dad would have us live out in the woods for weeks at a time. Only ate what we could catch or shoot ourselves. I didn't balk. Even as a kid seeing things die didn't bother me. Skinning deer wasn't any different from folding laundry. He was never father of the year but he taught me how to take care of myself. Taught me how to use what I was good at. -

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... ________________________________________________________________________________________ THE WAR JOURNAL - INTRODUCTION, DEDICATION, pg 2 This book is dedicated in loving memory to: Maria Elizabeth Castle Lisa Castle Frank Castle, Jr Your lives were stolen for my mistakes My name is Frank Castle. If you're a federal agent, let's start with the ass covering: This is not an admission of guilt. Doesn't matter if it was, though. Only way anyone gets their hands on this is if they've killed me already. So congratulations. You took down the big, bad Punisher. Don't let that put you at ease. They might be lowering me into the earth now but I'm still gonna bury you assholes. If you're reading this, there's already a few thousand copies headed to newsrooms across North America. You're too late. The world's going to know what you've done. For everyone else: this document is a record of everything I know, everything I've experienced and everything I plan to do to make them pay. Lieberman calls it the War Journal. Kitschy, but hey. Need a way to keep me entertained while I trawl the depths of my worst memories. Consider this an apology for what we'll call my 'informal style.' Was never much of a writer growing up. English period was too early in the morning for me to still be awake. You understand. Where was I? Right, the beginning. My name is Frank Castle. You know me better as the Punisher. Blame the papers for the name, not me. I'm a marine. Joined up a few weeks after September 11th. I'm a New Yorker. I took it a little personally. Not much of what I did had anything to do with Al-Qaeda: Suddam in Iraq, Harjavti in Bialya, communists in Sin-Cong. Did fight the Taliban in Afghanistan for seven months there, so that was pretty close. Al-Qaed adjacent, at least. I married Maria when I got back from my first tour and found out we'd accidentally made a kid before I shipped out. Oops. I'll be honest. Before Lisa and Frank Jr, I never thought that life was for me. I wasn't built for picket fences and soccer games. I thought I'd burn my wick at both ends for a short, chaotic life and hopefully die doing something important. Then the kids showed up and I realized how much of an idiot I'd been. Highsight's 20/20, I know. But I wish to God I'd gotten out sooner. Spent more time at home and watched them grow. I should've been to more recitals. Should've encouraged Junior to keep at baseball. But like I said: I used to be an idiot. I took them for granted. Maria and I had problems that I wanted to run away from, and I always did my running in McRaes. During my last tour with the marines I met a man named Rick Flag. Guy was the real deal. Cut him and he bled red white, and blue. He convinced me to transfer to his unit: Task Force X. An ARGUS headed op, but it was a joint task force with every branch of the military and a number of civilian operators attached. Our first mission had us pulling off a hostage rescue in Madripoor. It felt good to save people for a change, and the pay was phenomenal. So I stayed. I stayed, and ARGUS showed me the depths of evil humanity can go to. They performed acts so heinous my stomach churns just writing this. Just a warning: this book is not for the faint of heart. Don't know why you thought the Punisher's war journal would be rated E but if you did, close this. Go outside. Hug your kids. Cherish the mundane while you still have it. Amanda Waller is the devil in a flesh suit. Before I die, I promised God I would plant a bullet between her eyes. Hunting her's one of the few joys of my life left. At central park, she took everything I had left. I intend to return the favor. P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ) P L O T ( S ) & G O A L ( S ) ________________________________________________________________________________________ I like Frank. I think he's character with the potential to be complex and multifaceted or brutishly simplistic. Here, I intend to explore a variant of Punisher based partially on his portrayal in the Netflix series: he is a violently traumatized force of nature, intent on hunting down the people he blames for ruining his life. I want to write a political thriller about a corrupt intelligence agency sacrificing normal people on the altar of national security. Since this is a shared universe game, ARGUS seemed like the perfect candidate for that role. Amanda Waller stars as Frank's primary villain, manipulating the world from the shadows. Frank's war against street level crime exists mainly as a means to hunt down connections to shadowy government agents. ARGUS is a kraken with its tentacles spread all across the underbelly of America. It has connections to the Maggia, the Dos Soles Cartel, and even a few cults. I'm hoping to experiment with the format somewhat compared to my previous runs. I want to use the War Journal gimmick to document Frank's experiences from his own eyes. He's a biased actor, and having to get into the mindset of a character like him has been an interesting challenge.

---

@Supermaxx

I'm now very much imagining Punisher meeting up with and getting to know some of the Martians that have just landed, then learning about their history and about the monstrous Martian Manhunter who suddenly vanished. Then all of you finding out where Martian Manhunter currently is...

J'onn will not be having a good time.

Also, think we could have joint custody over Amanda Waller? She's not a major villain for J'onn but I thought she'd be good for the head of the US secret government response to the Martian landings. If not, then I'd need to figure out who else can fit that role. :)

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

<Snipped quote by Cyrania>

[url=Well sorry to say but I did Iris as Flash seven years ago...]roleplayerguild.com/posts/4697874[/url]

Fun fact this was before DC did it as a small part in a Flash Comic.

@Sep

I see

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

<Snipped quote by Cyrania>

Oh I was making a funny I was forgetting we have people that haven't been around these games a while 😂

@Sep

Yeah, it's been a while since I've tried to get into one of these particular games on here. :)

I've touched on it in like the Marvel 2099 and the Justice League: Atlantis roleplays, but they never left the ground for long.

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

<Snipped quote by Cyrania>

Totally unique idea, never done before. What if Iris was the Flash? 🤔

@Sep

That could be interesting.

Barry could be her science guy and contact with the police force. She could be using her new speed powers for her journalism.

Reverse Flash and Professor Zoom could become women, or you would have some very interesting character dynamic differences where one or both of them remain men.

Worlds Collide: A Merged Universe Superhero Roleplay

<Snipped quote by Cyrania>

See if I can't get that Cap done tonight...

@Hound55

That would be amazing!