RBYDark

New Frontiers: A High Fantasy RTD

Just to check, are we observing a post order? Or might I be allowed one more post this round?

The Wards: A Grimdark Teenage Superhero Story (Rebooted!)

Webber

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"You might come to appreciate things you thought were creepy or bad, if the situation's dire enough."

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Name: Dwayne Lauder/James Chang

Alias: Webber

Nicknames: Jimi, Spider-boy, Oh Hell No

Age: 18

Gender: Male, he/they pronouns accepted

Personality: Jimi comes across as a typical, if perhaps overly cheerful, teenager at a glance. This glosses over some of his quirks, such as how superstitious he is, his somewhat fatalistic beliefs, and his need to be useful. Jimi is cheerful and optimistic, true, about everything but himself. For his part, he's convinced he's host to an evil spirit and one day, it will consume everything he loves and cares about - so perhaps it's best his lot in life is kept small and insignificant. This steadfast belief is directly at odds with his desire to have friends and not be lonely. The only way he could find to reconcile the two was to employ his services for others, regardless of their moral code. He is fiercely loyal to whoever employs him, but it has not stopped him from apologizing whenever someone gets hurt. It was this attitude that made him a candidate for the Wards program.

Since joining the Wards program, Jimi's attitude appears to have improved immensely. The belief itself has not changed but, according to him, "if the spirit takes over, they can all probably destroy me before it destroys them". This he finds to be a satisfactory condition for friendship. In all likelihood, the 'evil spirit' is little more than constant intrusive thoughts manifesting themselves as desires for violence and death. That has not stopped Jimi from maintaining a small herb garden among his possessions, growing lavender and sage in particular to "ward off the evil spirit". His loyalty has expanded to "everyone here", but it's hard to tell how many of them he actually counts as 'friends'.

As a sidenote, Jimi's performance in academic subjects is exceedingly poor for his age, though his creativity has been growing.

Appearance: Standing at 5'5" - a bit shorter than average - Jimi's none-too-impressive build often leaves others with the impression that he can be pushed around, and nothing about the way he carries himself suggests otherwise. Most of his clothing is a size or two too large for him, and is mostly hoodies and jeans, with bandage wrappings under the hoodie. Thanks to those wrappings, he typically smells of lavender and sage. Under the wrappings are ten scattered eye tattoos, which he insists is part of the 'evil spirit's' manifestation. Testing has suggested that, their placement and realism aside, they are completely normal. On rainy days, he ends up with a slight limp on his right side and has made use of a simple plastic cane when not in costume.

Jimi had to be pressured into a cape costume, not entirely understanding the need for one (in his words, "I don't exactly stick out. Who's gonna recognize me?"). His costume is as plain as his general attire, colored green with gold accents and including a pinned scarf that can be easily removed if snagged and a full face mask.

Biography: Jimi's backstory, as he recalls it, opens in a ravine facing down multiple spiders. He startled, badly, before realizing he couldn't move. The spiders crawled around and even over him, but he recalls clearly that "not a single one bit me". He took stock of his memories - he had no idea how he got there, or why he was hurting so badly and couldn't move. The name 'James' did come to him, so he assumed it was his name, though no surname accompanied it. He did know he was thirsty, though. As the thought crossed his mind, the spiders seemed to leave him - and wove a web that captured the next morning's dew and puddled it in front of him. When he wished for food, the spiders brought him insects that, while not tasty, were enough to keep him living.

James took over a week to be able to move again, weakened and with at least one fractured bone but in no way dead. He crawled his way out of the ravine and made his way back to civilization where he was confronted with a new problem: he had no idea where he lived or was supposed to even go. The thoughts in his head grew dark: hurt people, kill people, take their food, take their homes. They no longer felt like his thoughts. He wanted someone he could talk to who'd answer all his questions. Once more, the spiders came to him but could not directly grant this request, so they did the next best thing: they kidnapped a woman and took her to him, working in concert to do so. James was fortunate in two regards: one, that the woman did not have arachnophobia and so could keep her head toether, and two, that she saw a child first and a parahuman second. He apologized as he freed her, and she asked where his parents were. Upon receiving no answer, she offered to take him to the police. The spiders threatened to swarm at that, at which point she offered to take him to her house instead. Thus, Mei Chang ended up taking Jimi home to her husband, Haoyu Chang. While the child was a surprise, he was not exactly an unwanted one and, as long as he helped out around the house, he was allowed to stay.

And so James, nicknamed Jimi by Mei, became a part of the Chang household. He started getting a grasp on his powers and using them for tasks such as getting spiders out of the bathroom and the like. All the while, that little voice in his head never went away. It practically craved blood and when Jimi researched it, he learned about possession, something he felt fit perfectly. He was possessed, and he could not let the Changs know or else, as the voice liked to point out, they'd probably throw him back onto the streets.

Jimi did his best to balance his parahuman status (which he learned, neither Chang were particularly wild about parahumans), his apparent possession, and his less-than-legal status. He knew at any moment the Changs could hand him over to police to find his real parents - why that frightened him so badly, he couldn't remember, but he knew it had to be avoided. The 'spirit', however, simply got worse and worse until it provided Jimi with a gruesome plan to do away with the Changs. That was the night Jimi packed a bag and left the Chang household. The spiders helped him find an abandoned building that was safe enough to stay in, and he did for a time, before leaving the city entirely and finding a new city to call home. He was 16 (probably), he could handle himself. Though it quickly turned out what he couldn't handle was the loneliness. Even with a spider "pet" he was still lonely (and emphasized that this time, the spiders could NOT kidnap someone). It wasn't until reading the police blotter one day that he was struck by an idea: he could hang out with people, easily! After all, he could make for a great lookout and, if he could be honest, he probably wouldn't be as scared of the 'evil spirit' threatening criminals who would hurt others for a quick payout. And so Jimi began assisting various criminals in robberies, burglaries, and other property crimes. Despite his earlier thoughts, he found he had a hard time stomaching the company of those who really would kill for a quick payout. It wasn't to say no one ever got hurt on the heists he attended, but it was more a side effect than a goal. However, he still proved to be a soft touch, apologizing even to cops who got hurt while he tried to distract them or ditching his post to help someone injured and using spider webbing for makeshift bandages. It took a while to approach Jimi about the Wards Initiative, as by now he'd discovered his ability to create fear and used that to keep people at bay but once approached, Jimi seemed eager to join.

It is at this point that, while being investigated for fitness in the Wards Initiative, his fingerprints brought up a missing person case: a married couple and their son, who was 5 at the time of disappearance. They were Jacob and Victoria Lauder, with their son Dwayne Lauder, reported missing by Victoria's parents. According to them, Jacob and Victoria before their disappearance had spoken of having found a better religion to raise their son in, one that promised to "make him important or some nonsense like that". Cross-referencing the area they lived in with known Cape activity brings up one James H. Fisher, a Master known for being able to impose his mindscape on others' over a period of time. It is known he runs a small religious cult with the aim of bringing people to him. Between Jimi's assumed name and history of intrusive thoughts, it can be theorized that Fisher tried also using his power on him and failed due to Jimi's then-unknown parahuman status. From then, it's all unknown, but it's not unreasonable to assume Fisher had this failure "killed" and thrown into the forest ravine to hide the body, leading into what Jimi remembers.

Powers/Skills: [Master/Trump] Jimi's power is a very simple one - he controls spiders. The range is fairly small, only at 100 ft and maintaining control for 100 yards. Control requires him to be precise in his orders, as any vagueness will be resolved in the most literal interpretation available. He is able to direct the spiders to perform complex tasks, however. Verbal instructions are more effective than mental ones. More interesting is the effect he imparts on the spiders - an ability that allows them to 'transfuse' powers between people (most often from others to Jimi) via a bite. The longetivity of these powers is inversely proportional to their complexity and potency, with no copy lasting over an hour.

Jimi himself is proud of his parkour skills and seems to be quick to learn other physical techniques. He also seems to have developed an immunity to most spider venoms.

Other: He has a 'pet' wolf spider, that he just calls 'Wolfy'. It's a little over 2 inches wide and even with Jimi's power occasionally bites him.

It's also worth noting Jimi has not been reunited with his (technically not) adoptive parents, nor his maternal grandparents. This has been a request on his part, and not an oversight.

"I'll get this done tonight or early tomorrow", I say, like a liar.

Favorite powers by the way are the more scientific ones, or at least the ones they try to justify with science, like Ant-man

Digimon: The Parallel Visage

“Thanks so so so so much! I was so sure she was going to die! So, uh, you guys are digimon, right? What are your names?”

Piximon rolled her eyes. It figured: her brother tried to be nice and explain things, and all he got for it was more questions. Some... very accusatory questions too. She shifted the digivices in her arms, as if her small frame could hide them from view. And then an absolutely ridiculous request. What even was a Jesus? She glanced at Marineangemon to tell him not to bother when she noticed.

Her brother was crying.

He had put up with a lot and hadn’t cried through any of it. He hadn’t even cried when his heart marking scarred, giving it the permanent look of an unevenly-broken heart. Was it just too much at once? Was it the needle that broke the Unimon’s back? Piximon didn’t know and didn’t care.

“Alright, back up,” she shouted as she dove between Marineangemon and the jacketed human, trying to wave her spear (an endeavor rapidly given up when it and the digivices nearly sent her spinning). “We don’t owe any of you a single damn thing so why don’t you lay off, huh? Bro was just trying to be nice, so how about the lot of you use your brains and figure some stuff out on your own, yeah? We aren’t your babysitters, we were just passing by!” A bit of a lie, but only a bit of one. Truly, if it hadn’t been for the digivices she was jostling during her speech, the two of them would’ve been gone by now having sated her curiosity. She was going to add more when she felt Marineangemon’s arm touch her shoulder. She turned to see him wiping his face.

“Sis... sorry for worrying you. I’m okay, I just remembered something was all.” He tried to smile, which looked a little strained. Piximon grumbled and floated back to the side, trying to figure out what in Yggdrasil’s name he’d remembered. Marineangemon cleared his throat, eyes still wet.

“So, one at a time.” His look to May was shy. “We’re... I’m Marineangemon. She’s Piximon. We hatched out of the same egg, you see. She’s just looking out for me-”

“Wouldn’t have to if you looked out for yourself.”

“The rest of your questions... Most of them are kinda philosophical. It may be best to ask your partner when they arrive. But I can explain one reason we know of humans - when things get bad for us, but it needs a light touch to fix, the Sovereigns usually summon humans over. They’re the gods of this world. But that’s just not possible this time.” He looked to Dante. “You also asked why. If I really had to guess the why, it’s to bring back the Sovereigns. They... went missing.” He could feel Piximon’s eyes on his back, probably mentally cursing him for leaving out who had made them vanish. “I was being honest earlier - I really don’t know who summoned you, if it wasn’t the Sovereigns. As for your partners, I once more really don’t know. I imagine they must be around here, though. Partnered digimon in legend always make their way to the humans, sooner rather than later.” And then there was that request for help. Marineangemon traced the edge of his holy ring - wanting protection was a fair concern, just not one he could grant. Well, maybe not the way they wanted, but he could afford them a different kind of protection.

“Um, Bro?” Piximon began as Marineangemon pushed up at his holy ring. “You know we should get - Marineangemon!” She sounded absolutely scandalized as he removed the holy ring over his head and tossed it towards Damien and Friimon.

“We really can’t stay, we are serious about that. He’ll miss us if we’re gone too long. But that ring can be wielded by your partner, to tell if another digimon has ulterior motives for you. Probably won’t work on humans. It’s the best I can do.” His neck felt cold and bare without the comforting metal ring, but what more could be asked of him? Well, besides the DoKunemon, whose questions he’d purposefully saved for last. He floated a bit back from May, facing the DoKunemon. “And as for you - I don’t think there’s a base. There might be a wise mentor, but she’s actually quite young. Most of what we know about humans came from her studies. She mentioned the device linking digimon and human partners, which...” He looked at Piximon, who was mouthing ‘no’ repeatedly, before facing the humans.

“Which I think we have.

“And we’re not giving them back.”

There was a second or two before two heart-shaped bubbles popped into existence, one around Marineangemon and one around Piximon. Piximon’s bubble barely muffled her yell: “DAMMIT, MARINEANGEMON.”

“We need them more. Please try to understand,” Marineangemon finally concluded from the safety of his bubble shield.

The Wards: A Grimdark Teenage Superhero Story (Rebooted!)

I think I get it but honestly, pal, you sorta stacked the deck against yourself with your idea of an introduction.

I think his power is meant to be more like: if someone got hurt, he could reverse time to heal them. He might also be able to age someone, potentially to dust.

P.S. Still working on my WIP, just waiting to hear back from Mintz.

The Wards: A Grimdark Teenage Superhero Story (Rebooted!)

This certainly does explain the numbers I'd been seeing around.

New Frontiers: A High Fantasy RTD

@Timemaster At the moment, more humanoid and less monstrous races are preferred, I can tell you that. Wishing you well!

The Star-Breakers

Admittedly I've been wondering if Slink and Skylar would get along, what with Rook (the little bot bird that expels small explosives).

The Wards: A Grimdark Teenage Superhero Story (Rebooted!)

I suddenly have the urge to finish my WIP sheet, especially since it doesn't have any of that going on.

New Frontiers: A High Fantasy RTD

It had been quite a journey, Jay would acknowledge to anyone who asked. The cart's atmosphere had felt so oppressive and nerve-wracking that he'd chosen instead to study the grimoire in his possession. And wasn't that nerve-wracking in its own right? The one possession he'd come out of this land clutching like his life depended on it (perhaps it did?), with text was almost entirely in an ever-shifting cipher that no one in town recognized, some of it written in his own handwriting, and without any clear purpose. Perhaps he had once known the reason behind acquiring the text, but it felt like he had traded years of his life for it, and those years included the reasoning for the tome.

Such reflections did no good. However, neither did his most recent attempt at deciphering the text. There was no one to blame but himself - he just couldn't figure out the key. As such, when he left the cart, it was more with an air of self-loathing than defeat or aggravation. He brushed himself off physically - it'd been quite dusty - and mentally as he surveyed the terrain lying beneath them. The settlement intrigued him - had he been there? He did hope he could persuade the group to accompany him on a detour to explore its remains.

The coachman was speaking. He was going to leave. Yes, that made sense - he remembered some folks recoiling when he told them where he'd been, as far as he could recall. There had been questions about his very sanity when he made it clear he intended to return as well. Part of him wondered if they'd be able to call the coachman back to this spot once their journeys were through - but that was a silly question, wasn't it? No one wanted to be out here. Not even everyone in the group seemed to be here voluntarily. So instead, he said, "Thank you for your services, good sir. I personally require nothing more." He glanced to the others, wondering what they'd say.

The Star-Breakers

Sorry I took so long to post my sheet - I know my art's not the greatest either, but I feel obligated to draw my character when humanly possible, and lining/coloring would've delayed me longer.