Morden Man

DC Universe: Genesis - Justice For All

Quick, someone new app Batman. Preferably with Martha Wayne under the cowl.

@Retired

Ten likes and I'll do it.

DC Universe: Genesis - Justice For All

Wait, you mean we can dust off old characters we've used in defunct games? There I was thinking about trying to come up with something original. What an idiot.

Blighted Kingdom - Looking for Players & Co-GM Partner !

Out of interest @Roman, will you be picking anyone up yourself to play in the game? I noticed in the old IC thread that you didn't before so was wondering whether that would be the case this time out too.

Blighted Kingdom - Looking for Players & Co-GM Partner !

Colour me interested.

I don't have much experience in fantasy games but the Stone Blight concept definitely captured my attention. As regards which time period the game should be set in, personally I would err against starting after the fall if only because I think there's a lot of storytelling potential to be found in terminal decline. Pre and post-collapse Vassidia will be wildly different places and by starting prior to the kingdom falling, you allow for players to explore both.

Absolute Comics - Justice Rising

I've hit a bit of a funk on this and don't know whether I'll be able to push through it. I thought I'd just put that out there in the interest of being transparent rather than ghosting.

Cancelled.

I read the Quinlan Vos trade paperbacks produced by Dark Horse earlier this week and have been itching to write some Star Wars ever since.

I'd like to pick up my old Mandalorian idea from the last Coruscant Underworld game a few years ago (since I never really got done with it) but I'll have a think over the next couple of days and see if I can come up with something fresh.

Absolute Comics - Justice Rising

Mota-Tovi, Denuvi-VII

The cockpit of Jack Knight’s weathered ship vibrated as the sound of Nirvana’s “Something in The Way” passed through it. In the pilot’s seat, the Opal City product sat strumming along as best he could on a guitar as battered as the scavenger’s ship. The cracked and peeling sticker on its body was innocuous enough at first glance but on further inspection marked the instrument out as special. It had belonged to Woody Guthrie once – and as out of practice as Jack was, resistance still seemed to ring out with its every chord.

Lights flashed on the console in front of Jack. “A watched pot never boils,” his father used to say to him. It was one of the few pieces of advice his father had given him that he had taken onboard. It would be another hour or so until the ship’s scans were done. Until then, Jack intended to do little else but sit back and relax. Or so he thought.

Jack’s body tensed as he felt the shock of cold metal against his neck. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t slit your throat where you stand.”

“Cal’syee, is that you?” Jack laughed nervously. “I mean, of course it’s you. I’d recognise that sweet voice of yours anywh-”

“I’d sooner cut that silver tongue out of your mouth than listen to more of your lies, Jackson Knight.”

Cal’syee Nerami, the Shi’ar princess known to friends and enemies alike as “Deathbird”, clutched the back of Jack’s seat with ole hand and held her blade against his neck with the other. The human had no idea how she had snuck onto his ship without setting off an alarm, but she was with him now – and the sudden knick she gave him with her knife was a sign she meant business.

With a slight grimace, Jack let the antique guitar in his hands fall from his grasp onto the floor of his cockpit. With his mind he called out to his cosmic rod. He could feel it stashed against the wall on the other side of his ship. He felt it travelling through the air towards the pair of them and stuck out his arm to collect it.

“What th-”

A moment too late he realised that the rod had stopped short of his hand. Not only that but it rested between the long slender fingers of Deathbird’s left hand. A thin, cruel smile appeared on her face as she brandished the rod in Jack’s direction triumphantly. Try as he might to beckon it to him, the rod seemed completely unresponsive.

Sensing Jack’s confusion, Deathbird’s grin grew and she let the knife slide from his neck. “What’s wrong, my love? You look surprised.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jack murmured as he backed away from Deathbird. “You shouldn’t be able to do that.”

In one swift movement Cal’syee slid her knife back into an unseen slither and placed both hands around Jack’s rod. She pressed a button and it seemed to hum its approval. Again Jack shook his head, trying to make sense of what was happening, but was too alarmed by the threatening energy the rod began to emit at Deathbird’s direction. She thrust the rod closer and closer to him.

“My entire life men have presumed to tell me what I can and cannot do, Jackson, and I have proven them all wrong. You think this rod of yours answers only to you? How could it? I spent months sleeping beside you at night. It sensed our bond. I am as bonded to it as you are – and whilst you have no sense of loyalty, it seems your rod is not as disposed to betrayal.”

Jack had inched so far back that he was almost sat on the console when one of Deathbird's hands snaked towards his groin. “What are y-”

“Perhaps I’m wrong?”

A wave of heat seemed to run up Jack’s leg and suddenly he realised his pink face had become a flushed red with embarrassment. Within seconds, Cal’syee’s fingers had exposed the buried desire he felt for her touch. She drew closer to him, near enough that Jack could feel her warm breath on his face. He was willing to endure the point of his rod thrusting into his neck just to be near her again. The Shi’ar had almost placed her lips on his when clarity shook Jack from his stupor and he pushed her away from him.

“No, this can’t happen, Cal’syee,” Jack said as he straightened himself out. “The last time I saw you, you tried to kill me. Have you forgotten that? Because I sure as hell haven’t. You don’t get to try to murder me and then just waltz back into my life. Not again.”

Deathbird threw the rod to Jack dejectedly. “I told you that I would not share you. Did you think I could not smell them on you? Those perfumed whores you took to cavorting with on Korugar?”

“They were not … women of the night. I told you a hundred times, they were doctors. Doctors! That fever I picked up on Sakaar was going to kill me and, surprise surprise, being tied to your bed without food or water was not helping.”

The scowl that had been plastered on Deathbird’s face softened but Jack knew better than to mistake that for acceptance. He had never once known the Shi’ar princess to concede. He had watched her cut down six Kree for suggesting that she had been cheating at cards. She had, of course, but to Cal’syee that hadn’t mattered. It was only in the rarest of moments that she allowed for even a suggestion of vulnerability to slip through.

“You left me on Korugar with those ghastly people, Jackson,” Deathbird purred with uncharacteristic softness. “I could have been killed. Worse, I could have been captured by that bore Sinestro. What then? You would have let me languish in the Klyn whilst that child rules over my empire?”

There it was, Jack thought, as Cal’syee returned to the subject closer to her heart than any other – even now she contended that the Shi’ar throne ought to be hers, long after her failed coup, and her subsequent banishment from Shi’ar space. Having her birthright rent from her was the source of Deathbird’s seemingly unending desire for retribution. So far from his own home, the thought of it never seemed to convince Jack to plum to new depths in order to find sympathy for his former companion.

“Look, I shouldn’t have left you there without saying goodbye. That was wrong of me. I know that, but … I just didn’t see any other way out. You can be very intense sometimes, Cal’syee.”

Deathbird’s avian features seemed to narrow with disapproval at the suggestion she was anything but dispassionate. “Intense?”

Jack’s response was cut short by a sudden banging from the far end of the ship. Both he and Deathbird’s heads turned to face it in confusion. They stood in silence and waited for several moments until the banging commenced for a second time. Jack sighed and pressed a button on the console and a small screen appeared. He squinted as he tried to make out the blurry images on them. The loading dock looked almost as if it was covered in a glistening blanket of snow – or at least, he had thought it was snow, until he saw a white figure step forward and strike the butt of an unlit torch against his ship.

With a nervous smile, he prompted Deathbird to look at the Solaris worshipers surrounding them. “You aren’t expecting visitors, are you?”

“Pathetic cultists,” Cal’syee spat. “This whole planet is crawling with them. Huddling together in prayer like grieving widows. If they had any honour at all they would accept that their planet is doomed.”

Eighteen months, Jack remembered, as his thoughts drifted back to Shirax and all the other hoarders and junk traders he’d befriended on Denuvi-VII. His head dropped as he tried to imagine the sense of loss they must all have been feeling. Finally, he reached for his rod and strode along the length of his ship to open the landing ramp. He could feel Deathbird stalking behind him like the bird of prey she was and this time was sharp enough to hear her blades slip free when the ramp began to lower.

The screen had been wrong. Though the Solaris-worshipers were dressed in white tunics they were not snow-like, far from it. They were heat. A white hot flame that stretched as far as the eye could see and made even Mota-Tovi’s grimy streets seem bright. They stood in silence, observing Jack and Deathbird wordlessly, their torches flickering. Jack looked to Cal’syee for some kind of instruction and when none was forthcoming he stepped forward gingerly.

“<Uh, sorry fellas, I think you’ve got the wrong ship. Bible study is the next one along.>”

Jack’s broken Denuvi didn’t move them at all. For a second time, the human looked towards the Shi’ar for advice and found only that she had lifted her blades in preparation. He was about to protest when he noticed a hulking figure making its way through the crowd. His skin was not yellow like the others, but a cascade of yellow, white, blue and pink light, that seemed to ebb and flow like liquid. He screamed in a language Jack didn’t recognise and the army of worshipers poured into the ship.

Within seconds, something struck Jack on the head and he folded to the ground. His vision began to fail him, but he could still make out Deathbird striking out at their attackers. One by one they fell at her feet until eventually even she was overran. Another blow hit Jack and this time he slid into unconsciousness – but what he saw was not blackness, but white.

Absolute Comics - Justice Rising

Location Unknown, Space

Celestial bodies danced across the black canvass of space as if guided by a divine hand. Suns rose, set, and rose again on planets too numerous to count as their unsuspecting inhabitants went about their perfectly ordinary lives. All was at peace in the cosmos until its stillness was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a crimson scythe. It tore through the darkness with intent and left behind it a blood red streak that seemed to scar all that it came into contact with.

Aboard the crescent-shaped ship was J’onn J’onzz. The Martian was immersed in a deep sleep. He had long since stopped staring out with wonder at the stars as they went about their balletic journey through the dark. For J'onn there was no beauty in it anmoyre, only pain. It had been a hundred million years, more perhaps, since he had held his youngest daughter’s hand and pointed out the constellations to her, her absence was ever present. Not even sleep provided the Martian with respite from it.

On his way back to his ship, J’onn’s thoughts had turned to the boy on Jiden-V again. “There’s been enough death for one day,” he had said. At that moment with the Kymellian’s hoof resting on him, the Martian had felt the weight of their suffering. Though he was but a boy, J’vanna had seen and endured terrible things: things that ought to have compelled him to urge J’onn on, to bid him to make the Centaurians suffer a thousand times over, and yet he had done the opposite. It had puzzled J'onn. Perhaps if he had seen into the hearts of those J’onn had sent to their deaths, he would have understood that some wickedness could never be allowed to go unpunished.

The Martian had managed to exorcise the doubts from his mind by the time he'd reached his craft. It was the lone connection J’onn had left to his homeworld. A living, breathing bio-ship psionically connected to its pilot. No civilisation before or after had been able to replicate the psychic link his people had established between pilot and ship. Were they to have asked, J’onn would have explained that what they lacked was not ingenuity, but desperation. The Green Martians had pooled cutting-edge technology with ancient and wicked magic to will the bond into existence, running roughshod over their traditions to do so – but it had been for the most noble of causes.

An unexpected judder caused the sleeping J’onn J’onzz to wince. With the disruption there had come a stabbing pain in the Martian’s side. The tank he was floating in shook slightly but steadied once the pain subsided and the green liquid he was immersed in began to calm. Though his body was at rest the Martian’s mind was in turmoil.

He could see his home planet as clearly in his mind’s eyes as the day he had fled from it. The screams of his wife and children rang in his ears until his heart pounded so loudly that it could be heart from outside the tank. Every recollection was as painful as the first time. My’ria’h on that plain holding K’hym and T’ania against her whilst the White Martians approached. J’onn watched on helplessly while their whole world burned. Even now his throat grew hoarse remembering how he had screamed to them, and how his strong, beautiful, loving wife had confined him to their ship and bid it leave their world with her last action. He was out of orbit when he felt his children slip from this world into the next, followed by My’ria’h’s rage burning brighter than any star ever could. It too was extinguished by those monsters.

It was to this ship, propelled by My’ria’h’s love, that J’onn owed his life. Where millions of Green Martian crafts fleeing their world had been gunned down, J’onn’s survived. It would be millennia before he realised that his had been the only one. In his desperation to escape and return to his wife and children, J’onn damaged the ship's navigation system, and still bound to My'ria'h, the ship proved unable or unwilling to respond to his demands. Once rage subsided and grief set in, J’onn succumbed to his grief and entered a catatonic state. His unpiloted ship tore through space for millions of years before the Martian finally rose – and was forced once more to grieve for his lost loved ones.

Still the ship forced J'onn on an unwilling pilgrimage. Celestial bodies grew old and withered, passing from one life into the next, replaced by those with limbs less wizened by their eternal dance. Suns were born, died, and born again on planets whose inhabitants took their first mewling steps onto dry land and in a blink of an eye depleted those same planets of their resources. It was only when J’onn’s grief turned to rage that the Martian found meaning again. The Martian would wield the scythe. He would make those that razed Earths and murdered innocents fear him.

Once J’onn had entered into that deadly compact with himself the ship’s pilgrimage came to a halt. J’onn was not a superstitious man, but even he could not deny that he took the ship's stoppage as an endorsement for the lethal justice he intended to dole out. It would not be long before he learnt that striking a man’s mind with madness was a far more effective form of punishment than extinguishing their meagre lives.

All the while J’onn’s mind remained focused, determined. The passage of years were as nothing to a Martian. Thousands of years turned to millions and all the while the Martian's crusade continued. Empires rose, Skrull, Kree, and Shi’ar all fell at his hands in equal measure during their demented scramble for territory, and the toothless Green Lantern Corps, serving order whilst all the while claiming to defend justice, proved too enmeshed in politics to investigate J'onn's existence.

A deep and throaty alarm roused the Martian from his sleep. His green eyelids slid back and revealed red orbs resting in sunken sockets. “Existence,” J’onn thought to himself as his feet pushed the dark green liquid apart for a few moments. The Martian listed eerily through the liquid and his green arm passed through the hardened glass tube encasing him seconds before. One of J’onn’s huge green hands hit a switch and the tube began to drain leaving him stood covered in globules of swampish gunk. If it bothered J’onn he did not acknowledge it and instead calmly walked towards a monitor to assess his vitals.

They were good. What few wounds J’onn had taken on Jiden-V had healed without complications and it seemed that the little problem he had encountered on D’bari last month had gone. He reached his hand down to deactivate the monitor and stopped abruptly upon noticing something was amiss. Without warning, his hand had passed through the station. The Martian looked down at his hand, which in the last second or two had become faint, and tried to touch his fingers against one another with no success. Growing perturbed, J’onn looked to his other hand for confirmation that it was some trick of the mind but no such reassurance presented itself.

The Martian wasn't sure why or how it was happening but it appeared that he was phasing out of existence. There was only one person J'onn knew that might be able to help him. He let his ghostly hands fall to his sides and instructed his ship to change direction at once. <Denuvi-VII.>

Absolute Comics - Justice Rising

Zkedia Mining Colony, Jiden-V

The Protector of the Universe they called him and yet as he watched the clouds above Jiden-V fill with smoke, Wendell Vaughn couldn’t help but feel undeserving of the title. Drex, leader of the Kymellian outpost at Zkedia since before Wendell was born, was sitting beside him on a stool with a pink shawl thrown over his shoulders. There were red blotches over it where his wounds had bled through their dressings. The sight of it was a reminder of how recent their suffering was. The human struggled for words of comfort before settling upon a cliche.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Drex.”

Drex’s eyes remained glued to the ground but he managed a feeble, distracted response. “Thank you.”

“Had I only arrived sooner I might have been able to st-”

Something about Vaughn’s tone shook the Kymellian out of his stupor and he stood up from his stool. As he did so the shawl fell from his shoulders onto the floor of his quarters to reveal the scale of the injuries beneath it. If he were hurting, Drex didn’t let it show as he lifted one of his hooves and placed it sympathetically on the human’s shoulder.

“You must not blame yourself, Wendell. Not even the mighty Quasar can be in all places at once. My people understand that. You have done enough for us over the years.”

Wendell nodded and a pang of guilt passed through him as he realised that Drex had done a better job of liberating him from his guilt than he had done of consoling the Kymellian in the first place. Vaughn scanned the horizon from the window of Drex’s quarters at the hobbling Kymellian’s making their way across the salt. It was hard to believe that they had survived – it almost felt wrong to say that they had given all that had been lost in the process.

“There’s something I need to ask you about. I busted some Centaurians trying to escape the system on my way here. They were babbling about something the whole way to the Kyln. Something that, well, ought to be impossible and yet I’ve not been able to get it out of my head ever since.”

Vaughn felt the bands on his wrists tingle slightly as the cosmic awareness he had been gifted by Eon began to awaken. The conversation he’d had with the captured Centaurians played in his mind as clearly as if he were having it that very moment. His eyes had glazed over, replaced with a starry look that made Drex flare his nostrils with discomfort, but in a matter of seconds Wendell had returned – and Drex’s discomfort had been replaced by expectance.

“They said that their general’s mind had been melted by a Martian.”

“It’s the truth,” Drex nodded.

A heavy sigh left Quasar’s chest as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Since Eon had named him Protector of the Universe, he had seen no shortage of impossible things – and yet that a Martian would never stray from their homeworld was one of the few unshakeable rules the universe had ever produced. He found himself recounting the reasons, almost in an effort to convince himself as much as the Kymellian.

“No Martian has left Mars for millions of years, hundreds of millions of years even. Why after all this time would they break with tradition? What business would a Martian have on Jiden-V of all places? It doesn’t make any sense.”

The Kymellian brayed in frustration and strode towards the thick glass to place one of his hooves against it. For a time the men stood in silence and watched Drex’s people hobbling along, a Kymellian child or two playing amid the salt, even an elderly Kymellian feeding a wounded Centaurian that had decided to remain on Jiden-V. It was a microcosm of the world that Drex loved so dearly, what he had almost lost, and crucially, what he might lose again if he revealed the full truth to Wendell – and yet he knew he had no choice.

“Do you trust me?”

“You know I do,” Vaughn swore with a sincere nod.

“I saw it with my own eyes, Wendell,” Drex sighed heavily. “I’d be dead now had that Martian not intervened, so too would my people, and for that we are all in its debt. There’s no disputing that. But what it did to the Centaurians was… barbaric. It could have subdued them, planted them to the ground with a single thought, but instead it chose to send them to their deaths as penance for what they had done here. Those aren’t the actions of a man, they’re the actions of an angry god.”

With one of his hooves, Drex tapped against the glass at something in the distance. Wendell squinted in the direction the Kymellian had pointed in and noticed a makeshift shrine that had been erected by a fire. At its centre stood a statue of a hand holding a beating heart.

“There are some among my people that already raise icons in the Martian’s image. Perhaps I’m being impetuous, but it does not bring me comfort to know that such a force exists in the universe. That one day should its wrath might be turned upon those I love, I would be equally powerless to stop it.”

There was pain in Drex’s voice. The kind of pain that Wendell Vaughn had encountered all too many times over the past few years. Though he was ashamed to admit it, this pain he felt more keenly than the rest because of his relationship with Drex. In their hour of need, Quasar had failed Jiden-V and a lethal protector had stepped into the void to fulfil his Wendell’s for him – and now, no doubt, the Centaurians that slipped through his net would pass this horror story on when they returned to whatever hive of villainy they called home.

It would only be a matter of time, be it ten weeks or ten years, before some would-be despot rose the Centaurian banners and sought to finish what was started here. All that death and murder was for nothing – it was an indulgence that served only to perpetuate a cycle of violence that would see more dead. Wendell raised one of his fists in Drex’s direction and let his hand open gently.

“There are times when it takes everything I have to hold back the power of the Quantum bands, but I do it. Even when it means putting my own life at risk, I show restraint. And you know why? Because wearing these things does not make me a god. The power I wield doesn’t give me the right to play judge, jury, and executioner – nobody has that right. There’s nothing impetuous about standing by that whatever the costs, Drex. It’s principled.”

Once more the Kymellian gestured towards the shrines that had been erected.

“I am afraid there are many among my people that will not see things that way, old friend.”

Quasar chuckled sardonically at the suggestion. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing that justice isn’t a popularity contest.”

Drex nodded reluctantly, signalling his acceptance more so than his approval, and limped back towards the stool he had been sat on. As he reached it he perched down to pick up his shawl and let out a pained wince. Wendell knew better than to offer to assist the Kymellian, as proud as he was, so instead stood with crossed-arms and waited as Jiden-V’s leader pushed through his discomfort to grab the shawl.

The Kymellian threw the bloodied shawl over his shoulders and then looked towards Wendell Vaughn resolutely. “What are you going to do?”

Quasar's boyish features hardened into a determined scowl. “I’m going to track this ‘god’ down and make it answer for the things it did here.”

Absolute Comics - Justice Rising

<Snipped quote by Morden Man>

Jack Knight?!?

<Snipped quote by Morden Man>

Opal City?!?

@Hound55

You've got your boy @Byrd Man to thank for that one. It was very much his idea, as most of the things I write that are any good tend to be.