Safe For Work Worm Ideas thread

I find infernal Tattletale ending up in the Bay unbelievable in the extreme. At least in anything resembling canon circumstances given the powers of the Green Sun Princess along her normal to type inclinations, the positives and negatives of her character, and the way her Urge and Motivations demands she turns to excel.

It's not like Canon tats would exalt anyway. Mostly because people who'd take her power to be a bum aren't on the trail for exaltation. The characteristic is the take their power and use it to the fullest after all.

And lisa's certainly got the ebon dragon swhiln ceclyne thing going on.

 

Idea: An SI winds up in the DC universe. He promptly decides that in a world of superhuman heroes and villains, he doesn't want to be stuck as a nobody, so he's going to A: gain superpowers, and B: use them in an over-the-top fashion. Thinking it over, he decides to head to London, meets with Constantine, and proceeds to summon Dream of the Endless in an attempt at both. It works quite well. Perhaps too well.

End result? He's gotten the powers of his Mutants and Masterminds character, and the Worm and DC universes are combined (along with the Freedom City M&M default setting as a side-effect of the former). Hilarity ensues.

 

The Entities have a MUCH better plan for gathering viable data: They give everyone of the planet SIMULATED powers. They can't actually affect things, but they can run simulated contests with other people, or against "environmental" challenges.

More miracle points (or whatever you want to call it) are earned by inventing creative applications of the power(s) the person has access to, as well as overcoming simulated environmental challenges, like Endbringer attacks.

They can also be transferred either consensually or by beating them in a fight (which doesn't require them to accept, of course); villains are those who attack people without their consent to take their MP.

MP can be spent to gain access to additional powers or to invoke a superpower in the real world, which can grant healing, technological advancement, insights into solving problems, and countless other applications.


Powers can also be released at FAR greater power levels than the entities would have ever dared actually give, and can more closely model the actual challenges they want solved. And at absolutely no point are the powers even remotely a threat to them.

Add in the additional level of good planning of setting up Dyson swarms around suns in largely unoccupied systems and they can readily move on when they feel they'd accomplished enough with way more energy and without having killed anyone, thus possibly picking up more enemies and preventing other entities from moving on to that planet for insights as well. (Or, given their absurd tech and abilities, a huge number of Dyson spheres might be well inside their capabilities)


*Coughs* So, after realizing that providing a setting change isn't a story prompt... well, I'll try to figure some out later.

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And completely different idea, here since I don't want to double-post: Taylor receives a trump power which allows her to manifest essentially any effect she could possibly want... but only at the culmination of an artistic performance of some sort from her, and the power of the effect is directly proportionate to the emotions created during said performance. So, she apprentices herself to Canary, both diverting the canon trainwreck and giving her a great trainer for how to act to maximize the effects, as well as acquiring at least one artistic talent to take advantage of with her power. She might even learn that she can use group performances and take advantage of the emotions created by everyone in it instead of just herself.

Possibly result: Canary and (Insert Taylor's cape name here) travel the country providing artistic performances and culminating in some beneficial effect at the end. Healing, granting answers to their most vexing question that isn't blocked by Zion/Eden/Abaddon, whatever they can come up with.

You could have a different character, of course, but I'd love to see how Taylor would react to having a power that so strongly encourages traits she has no confidence in, and how she would act with a power that is of very limited "traditional heroing" capability but significant ways to help people beforehand. I think she could readily fix up the Ships' Graveyard, the ferry, and a bunch of other things with her power.

 

The Travellers find safe and low-power vials instead of the ones they did and acquire low-end powers that are a lot more fun. Without the stress of Noelle's situation, the group decides to use their powers for LARPing as villains and otherwise enjoying themselves. (So villains of the nuisance variety rather than actually dangerous)

The Heberts take a trip and end up befriending and adopting Bitch and are forced into a game with the Travellers. The group does so well that the Travellers end up stalking them to keep up with their new favourite gaming buddies. With the power of dogs, friendship, and normal human abilities (and Bitch's rather awesome powers) the four become Brockton Bay's favourite hero team.

(These ideas could easily be separated, of course)

 

Well, if that version of the Travellers move to BB, I could see them playing a few games with Uber and Leet.

Speaking of, small idea: Uber and Leet decide to became video game-themed heroes, rather than villains - and are most frustrating for the villains in general, for much the same reason they could be frustrating for the heroes in canon: constantly changing power-set, thanks to Leet's Prototyping shard.

 

Two ideas to get this thread a kick in it's pants.

Lisa's hobo days: a look into the two years Lisa was living on the streets traversing across the states, dodging psycho killers and cops on the interstate/Highways, hitching rides with semi drivers, getting picked up by both the nice guys looking to help someone and the sleaze balls willing to take advantage of pretty girls out on their own, just barely getting out of cities that the S9 are visiting, starting gang wars and giving info to the PRT/Protectorate; Basically a look into her life up til Brockton Bay and how it changed her into the Lisa we all know and love and wish to throttle sometimes.


Greg Veder - parahuman herovillain: Greg triggers some time before the locker as a tinker specializing in serums like Labrat....but in a more Curt Connors/Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde manner, Greg in a not to bright moment tests his first serum on himself....and promptly blacks out waking up the next morning smelling of puke and wearing clean clothes, the city that night though got to deal with his rather amoral uninhibitated personality.

 

Danny Hebert, HERO OF EARTH BET! All he wants to do is keep himself, his family, and his subordinates/friends happy and safe. However, he keeps getting thrown against dangerous forces due to bad luck, temper, and a refusal to abandon his people and wins due to tenacity, luck, people with odd skills, teamwork, and a few other boons. Eventually he kills Zion himself, all the while never becoming a parahuman. Most, if not all, of his faction probably aren't either. And, of course, he develops a truly ludicrous reputation throughout all of this.

 

New Tattletale artwork, drawn by Sawitry, commissioned by theslowblitz on SV.

 

I'm pretty sure her eyes don't glow, and that her gloves would cover her fingers, but it's otherwise good artwork if you assume she's posing that way for a publicity shot or something, and has someone or something to catch her down below.

 

Dragon meets up with Uber & L33t and completely derails their latest scheme when she starts throwing videogame references at them and they start continuing them enthusiastically and beginning others that Dragon continues.

A round of negotiation later and Dragon has fulfilled one of her childhood dreams: having proper minions.

 

"Undersiders promo calendar" sounds like a wonderful thing.

In fact, wasn't there a parahumans-gone-wild calendar idea a while back? So successful that they all start doing photo-shoots?

 

That sounds like one of the Cauldron Cape Chronicles omakes at SB.

(There's no way to be subtle about this)

 

I know... I know... I've been sitting on half an update for too long. At some point I'm just going to have to blow through this tricky spot and not even bother to rationalize it.

 

Hello Worm Ideas Thread of QQ.

Elsewhere, I have been known as zergloli or jerkface. I am a man with an idea. The idea is terrifying and probably beyond my ability. It's the result of a discussion involving a bunch of people elsewhere, so I can't really take credit for the idea. But the idea has stuck to me, and here I am presenting it.

- Fortuna fails utterly: she doesn't almost drop the knife, she actually drops the knife.

- Eden smiles sweetly, an expression full of mercy and divine grace, and then portals the pesky humans into the garbage disposal dimension.

- The garbage disposal dimension is Cecelyne.

- Fortuna and Dr. Mom wander in the Endless Desert for 5 days, kept alive by Fortuna's perfect Survival rolls.

- Oh look, it's a city!

Fortuna: "... and the golden one has an all-destroying spear of light! And the silver one is able to trick anyone, to subvert any defense! And they give normal people superpowers, but the powers corrupt the people and they end up wrecking everything! And in the end the world gets destroyed!"

Malfeas: Yes. I totally understand exactly where you are coming from.

~ ~ ~

So basically, it's Contessa with her canon-restricted PtV, plus an Infernal Exaltation, plus a mildly sympathetic and helpful Hell on her side, against a fully functional Eden and Scion.

The Hard Parts
- fully functional Eden, infinitely smarter than me personally, oh god how do I write this
- a whole different world because of the Eden butterfly, oh god how do I write this
- Malfeas is a big place full of terrible wonder, oh god how do I write that


Fusion Issues
- Gods. Maybe the Entities hijack gods as part of their operation? Maybe a 'shard' has a tentacle in the cape's head, but also a tentacle in an appropriate god? Maybe they get their power from gods, and powers are mind-control causing a god to misbehave?
- Fate & Blasphemy. Maybe the "loom" is merely Eden's web of plans, and a Blasphemy effect means Eden knows automatically and immediately.
- Path to Victory and dice. Maybe PtV gives the user perfect 10s on whatever the roll would have been, in addition to the narrative use of giving the steps to perform to reach a solution. PtV is blind to Scion and Eden, and in this story Eden is vastly more active than Scion was in canon, so PtV is going to have a lot of blind spots.

 

Way ahead of you. I posted the idea in the NSFW Quest Ideas thread a few weeks ago.

I also brainstormed a list of candidates for the rest of the Assembly Circle Coven. The setup is for a more vanilla chargen, but the ideas should still work for "Oh, btw, you're playing in an Edenverse. dealwithit.jpg"

Spoiler

[] Slayer
-[] A child soldier forced to walk where none dare tread (Miss Militia)
-[] A girl with too much enthusiasm and no sense of restraint (Glory Girl)
-[] A fundamentally decent man who couldn't hold back his vengeance (Chevalier)
-[] A made man whose love for his daughter is only surpassed by his cruelty (Marquis)
-[] A prodigal son imprisoned by his homeland (Lung)
-[] A woman twisted into a beast by her captors (Night)
[] Malefactor
-[] A girl fleeing her abusive parents (Tattletale)
-[] A lone crusader, valiantly battling an apocalypse hidden in plain sight (Saint)
-[] A revolutionary whose fanaticism drove away her closest friend (Lustrum)
-[] A Southern man born again in the silver sands (ex-Haven or Fallen OC)
-[] A Special Forces agent who escaped the labyrinth at great cost (Coil)
-[] A young girl exiled into Hell by an abomination (Contessa)
[] Defiler
-[] A boy who refuses to live down to his father's expectations (Theo)
-[] A brilliant mind whose master plan was rejected by his superiors (Accord)
-[] A girl betrayed by her best friend (Taylor)
-[] A master of engineering whose pride is his undoing (Armsmaster)
-[] A mystical girl who couldn't handle the truth (Glaistig Uaine)
-[] A woman who exploded under pressure (Bakuda)
[] Scourge
-[] A bright woman who followed her husband into depravity (Purity)
-[] A girl trapped by her home in a city of hate (Shadow Stalker)
-[] A humble accountant with a bloody past (Number Man)
-[] A man furious at the system that claimed his father (Assault)
-[] A serial killer who usurped his King (Jack Slash)
-[] A woman who slaughtered a country in her grief (Black Kaze)
[] Fiend
-[] A gangbanger in search of the perfect high (Skidmark)
-[] A girl on the run from her lustful father (Cherish)
-[] A mastermind with her feathers in every pie (Simurgh)
-[] A schemer whose plots please the Ebon Dragon (Teacher)
-[] A underground fighter with a tribal morality (Hookwolf)
-[] A woman who can't help but drive her lovers insane (Ingenue)

 

Doing it as a Quest might make sense, but why NSFW, and why a coven?

 

The NSFW half of QQ is far more popular than the SFW half.

Even if the quest doesn't go full porn - and this one shouldn't, because look at all that plot - NSFW would at least allow it to show scenes that wouldn't be out of the ordinary on HBO, Showtime, or FX.

Coven is the canonical term for the Infernal equivalent of a Solar Circle or Alchemical Assembly. See MoEP:I pg 15.

Also, check for invisitext if you don't want to guess the identities of each candidate from just their blurbs. Some of them are... unconventional.

 

That's nice, but since TanaNari brought over a wake of new posters (including me), the SFW section might get a bit more popular.

Also, Exalted has enough naughty content in its canon that I feel like making an NSFW quest would be misleading, since I have no plans for any naughty content. People see "Exalted" and "NSFW" and they may have certain reasonable expectations, and I have less than zero plans to ever meet those expectations, so IMHO it's a terrible idea to invite that kind of expectation.

I know. My question is why would you try to make troupe play in a Quest which has a pre-decided, dreadfully dominant power (Contessa's PtV)?

Also, isn't troupe play more of a PbP thing than a Quest thing?

Meh, whatever. If I do anything relating to this, it'll be SFW and single-player, so your NSFW quest is entirely safe from pilferage.

 

I'll accept that.

Contessa has neither the time nor the effort required to do everything herself. The more powerful uses of PTV often boil down to "Get someone more specialized to do it." In canon, that meant creating the Protectorate, triggering Lung, social-ing GU and Bonesaw, etc. Infernal!Contessa could do troupe play all on her own by leveraging the VEE charms and a Cult rating into Cauldron II: The Cauldroning, but that feels like a waste of a plot compared to locating other Exaltation candidates and populating the Thing Infernal with new members. The first two chapters of MoEP:I deserve their bad reputation, but that was a legitimately good idea IMO.

The first NPC Infernal of each caste should get an arc or two from their perspective like in Alchemical Solutions, but generally they would just be sent off for missions in an expy of Assassin's Creed Brohood/Rev mechanics. Roll for difficulty (adjusted for their total spent XP), roll for how awesome they were (adjusted for whatever intangibles might affect offscreen stunt quality) and then award them an appropriate amount of XP when they return. XP voting is stressful enough for a solo character, so I would just give them preset builds dependent on their backstory, personality, and caste. If an NPC dies, we simply find and recruit a replacement. If one of the First Five dies, we find and recruit a replacement and the second-most veteran of that caste gets a POV arc.

(Also, I don't care for Doctor Mother. Just kill her off no later than Contessa's arrival in Earth Bet's dimensional neighborhood.)

 

Use the Eden interlude from Worm canon, and Wildbow's own statements on the setting. Conflict is largely a war between two alternate earths, where nerfed versions of the Endbringers serve as superweapons. Eden and Zion go around making sure that nobody manages to negotiate peace or figure out what's really going on. Tinker mass-produce to outfit large armies while other parahumans serve as elite soldiers. Global society crumbles.

Right out of CoCD: Malfeas. City full of alien beauty and strange people desperate to scrape together a life in a very dangerous world where you're the only person you can trust.

 

Yep. I got the vague broad-strokes from the same chapters you did.

It's just that the specifics seem rather daunting.

Especially since Fortuna wouldn't be jumping in at the end. She'd be there at step six: balkanize the USA. What's the specific plan? How can Fortuna even try to foil it? Repeat.

Yeah, I have all the books.

What I doubt is not my ability to research Malfeas, but rather my ability to do justice to its terrible majesty.

I'm not sure if I'd be able to do this kind of thing alone, especially not as a quest.

 

I think that if Fortuna failed to kill Eden, Eden would do its damnedest to kill Fortuna. Alternatively, it'd take back PtV or alter it to uselessness. She seemed to have kept those abilities whereas Scion gave them away. That would be the real clincher; any parahuman ability that even marginally threatened the Entities would be nerfed by Eden.

So really, it'll be about hiding in the background and building up enough personal power to learn the "punch this guy across the dimensions" charm. Or bust Malfeas out and let him do it. Or bust the Entities in and watch the Yozis do terrible things to them.

As for describing the City, I'd shoot for the sort of stuff you see in early Worm; neighborhoods, street-fights, etc. Things like the army or Protectorate reinforcements were real threats, but would only come in if there was sufficient chaos. Same in the City, just substitute higher circles of demons.

You could follow her building her personal cult, carving out a territory and politicking against Octavian to keep him from moving in on her turf. Maybe she does some sort of social reforms that the first-circles love, but second-circles think they're getting uppity so now there's war in the streets. That sort of thing. Don't get bogged down trying to describe how everything is so alien and different; we can build that up in our heads. Just toss in details like basalt floors and brass doors, and wandering troupes of demons being hired off the street to play music when the current players get tired or fall out of favor.

 

PtV is so powerful it doesn't really need a Green Sun Prince exaltation attached to be effective, here. Modeling Fortuna in Exalted terms... she doesn't 'roll' for anything. She just automatically succeeds. Only perfect defenses can no-sell her, and there's only so many motes to power those...

I agree with Peanuckle that starting at street level would be cool. Carving out a section of Malfeas from the Blood Ape gangs, perfectly avoiding the deathly wind and the 'night' of Malfeas when the Ebon Dragon flies overheard and you must dance and revel, or else you will vanish into the shadows of his fetich soul. Navigating the bizarre, strange, terribly twisty laws of Cecelyne, which of course Fortuna is entirely capable of (Why are we not looking at the law-book?" "Because it is written in blue ink." "And why...?" "The color blue is forbidden.").

Doctor Mother, meanwhile, never gains an exaltation or becomes an akuma or anything. Pure human, all the way through, forever. Just taking this shit in stride.

She's probably demon-racist though, just saying.

 

So my idea is a odd one I think. From what we know, Eidolon subconsciously made the Endbringers because he's a Blood knight with a modicum of control. His Shard taps into and can drain the power of other Shards, that means that there's a shard that allows for the creation, and possible communication and maybe even control of Endbringers or just other lifeforms.

So what if Taylor gets this shard and it awakens after wishing something would help her out of that locker?

My logic is that since Eidolon wished for a constant challenge, he got beings that constantly give him one and pretty much don't die unless they fight Scion or someone with a set of powers that uniquely counter their own (Lily/Sabah combo could take out Behemoth on easy mode if Lily had a good enough weapon.)

Because Taylor wished for something to help her, her power manifests as summoning a being that is always situated, powered, and mentally inclined to help her accomplish said task. It seems broken, but it has a few limits to keep things interesting.

1.) Taylor can't control what she summons, be it the scale or the powerset, only that it helps her accomplish a given task.
2.) Her power reacts subconsciously for the most part. If she doesn't truly care about a task her power does squat. On the other hand, if she has something that's bugging her alot more than normal her power could act without her notice. Either way she has no means of consciously activating it.
3.) It's not always clear how her creations can help her for the task needed, or even what task it was they were summoned for. It's up to Taylor's own mental ingenuity to figure those out since most of those beings lack a definitive method of communication.
4.) The beings are not able to be controlled by Taylor, but they are mentally inclined to help her. Consequently, they often have different ideas on what helping her means than Taylors friends and even Taylor herself. This means it's possible for the creatures to go rogue and Taylor has no simple way of countering it.
5.) If a being previously summoned is capable of assisting in a task sufficiently by itself, then her power won't respond to that problem. Basically if she summoned a being for a task, and it had an ability that can be used in multiple ways, she can't summon a being when faced with a task that could be solved with that abilities many uses. This was a built in limitation to prevent redundant creations.

Those are the limits of the power itself when concerning the mechanics. The Endbringers were created to battle, so their biology and broken powerset is built on that. Let's move to positives now.

1.) Freaking. Eldrich. Abomination. Summoning.
2.) Most of the problems that comes from managing her creations can be fixed by summoning other creatures that are created for managing her creations. Granted she needs to feel completely convinced that that lack of communication/control is a problem so it probably won't happen till after a few screwups.
3.) Beings created by this power seem to be immune to PTV (possible side affect of Eidolon creating them rather than the beings themselves)
4.) No Manton limits. Manton limits are mostly psychological, a being with a completely alien mindset wouldn't have it, or at least the version of normal parahumans.
5.) It is possible to literally counter any major players - even Scion - with proper application and control, though she might have problems handling creatures of that scale of power.

That's pretty much my idea, feedback would be great. Thanks.

 

Eidolon is the most widely accepted reason. From what Scion said to Eidolon's personality to WoG saying Endbringers wouldn't exist without Cauldron. I just mainly go by what Scion said here. And Eidolon is a Blood knight. He seeks battle constantly.

Not really going to argue the Manton thing cuz I haven't read Worm in awhile, but I can probably find a way around it.

And it is possible to counter Scion, it happened in Canon. Sure it'd be a draw or phyrric victory at best, but when your power is basically an indirect PTV that summons Eldrich abominations that are uniquely suited to specific tasks, your limits are only your creativity.

Now that that's done, can I get some feedback on the idea itself?