Cosmic Knight [FASERIP]

art by Dean Kotz

COSMIC KNIGHT

STATISTICS
F                 RM   (30)
A                 RM  (30)
S                 RM  (30)
E                 IN   (40)
R                 EX (20)
I                  RM   (30)
P                 IN (40) 
Health: 130
Karma: 90

BACKGROUND
Real Name: Raymond "Ray" Logan
Occupation: Former astronaut, aerospace executive
Identity: Secret
Legal Status: Citizen of the U.S. with no criminal record
Place of Birth: Riverside, Iowa
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: None
Base of Operations: Costa del Mar, California
Group Affiliation: Knights of the Cosmos; Super-Sentinels

KNOWN POWERS
Body Armor. Provides him with Incredible protection against all physical, radiation, and heat- and cold-attacks. He can survive indefinitely in the vacuum of space.
Enhanced Senses. He can detect radiation from all across the electromagnetic spectrum, including heat and radio. He can detect life signs, including specific individual with Incredible ability. he is able to see in normal darkness without penalty. He has Excellent sense of taste and smell.
Flight. Unearthly speed in the vacuum of space and Monstrous speeds in an atmosphere. he is able to create spacewarps allowing shortcuts for travel over interstellar distances.
Regeneration. His armor has a self-repair capability that provided him with Good Regeneration.
Universal Translator. Can translate any language it heard for at least 6 consecutive turns with Monstrous ability. Once it had learned that language, it could store the information in his memory banks, allowing him to speak and understand it at will.
Force Blast. Monstrous intensity
Force Field. Monstrous rank energy sheath, 1 area.
Energy Solidification. Monstrous ability to create and shape solidified energy. Power stunts include:

• Containers of Monstrous material strength
• Carrying Monstrous Loads
• Acting as a limb of Monstrous Strength

Phasing. Excellent rank.

History: Ray Logan was an astronaut whose experiment spacecraft malfunction on re-entry. Burning alive, Logan was transported from the doomed vehicle at the moment just before death by the Cosmic Archons. Even their great powers could not restore his ravaged body, but they were able to transmit his consciousness into a robotic form. The Archons had selected Logan to be one of their intergalactic group of fighters for justice, the Cosmic Knights.

Logan returned to earth with the ability to transform his Cosmic Knight form into something more close resembling his former biologic body, but he is keenly aware of his loss of humanity even as he works to protect earth from menaces from here and from the universe beyond.

Underground Comics is Here!

The wait is over! You can now purchase Underground Comics #1 at IndyPlanet in print and digital. Comixology digital is on the way if you prefer that format. (If you missed my previous talk about UC, check out this post.)

It's 36 pages by some great DIY rpg illustrators. Here are the preview pages that will (eventually) be on the IndyPlanet page:

It Came from the 80s

Well, actually it came from the mind and hand of Kreg Mosier, but it's about the 80s. Remember back when Unseelie Court fae were running rampant, and youthful, fae-touched cops were our best line of defense? You're probably just too young.

Anyway, I haven't read very far in it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

Wednesday Comics: Underground Comics

While I was hoping to make an announcement about Underground Comics #1 being on sale this Wednesday, that is not to be. Instead, I'm announcing the not-quite-as-exciting news that he has been submitted for digital sale at Comixology and print-on-demand at IndyPlanet.

Here are some more images from the first issue:

Weird Revisited: The Muvian-American War (1898-1903)

This post first appeared in Sepember of 2013.

In the wake of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. went to war with at least two of Spain's former colonial holdings. The most protracted was on the islands of Mu. There, American troops faced a foe they were totally unprepared for.

Though Mu appeared to a peaceful colony of Spain, in reality the power of it's Priest-Kings was only held in check by certain ancient ceramic seals in possession of the Spanish. When the Americans inadvertently broke these, the  Priest-Kings were free to unleash their power and reveal their true, inhuman nature. Not only were these reptilian humanoids adepts at amazing powers of the mind, but they were  heirs to ancient Agharta, but they were also in possession of machinery older than all of human civilization that could create monsters.

Of course, Mu hadn't had to wage a war since men were armed with bronze. The U.S. forces were able to hold on, if barely. It was only when the first of the clandestine draftees from the ranks of mentalists, spiritualists, and Theosophists arrived that the Americans began to turn the tide.

FASERIP Aberration

ABERRATION

STATISTICS
F                 RM   (30)
A                 IN  (50)
S                 UN  (100)
E                 UN   (100)
R                 PR (4)
I                   RM   (30)
P                  TY (6) 
Health: 280
Karma: 40

BACKGROUND
Real Name: None
Occupation: Troublemaker
Identity: Existence publicly none
Legal Status: None
Place of Birth: Zota's laboratory
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: None
Base of Operations: Mobile
Group Affiliation: Masters of Menace

KNOWN POWERS
Invulnerability. Class 1000 resistance vs Heat, Cold, Electricity, Radiation, Toxins, and Disease.
True Invulnerability. Monstrous protection vs. Physical and Energy.
True Flight. Can travel at Shift-Z (500) speed within Atmosphere, CL1000 in space.
Hyper-Speed. Amazing rank.
Hyper Breath. Can exhale Monstrous strength winds at a 3 area range. Each area thereafter is at -1CS in intensity. May also emit Amazing intensity cold.
Environmental Independence. Can survive deep space, the deepest part of the oceans, or other hazardous environments (Except those which do environmental damage above Shift-X).
Enhanced Senses. Monstrous Hearing, Amazing Microscopic Vision, and Good Telescopic Vision.

Equipment:
Otherworld Talisman. As his belt buckle, the Aberration wears a magical artifact of Otherworld made of Class 1000 material. Should the belt be removed, his physical attributes drop by - 1CS, and he will loose his powers within an hour.

History: At the dawn of human history, the wizard Zota of Otherworld sought to overcome what he viewed as the inadequacies  of empowering mortals as champions. In his laboratory, he created an artificial being he hoped would be an eternal, perfect Champion, despite the Council of Otherworld having ordered an end to his research. Unfortunately, the materials Zota utilized proved insufficient to hold the power of the Champion’s talisman without deteriorating. He’s Champion was powerful, but physically, mentally, and morally defective.

Zota would have destroyed his failed experiment, but the being escaped before he could do so. It began calling itself “the Aberration”—the term it had heard Zota use to refer to it. The Aberration still sought to act as the Champion, but its flaws led it to actions that terrorized and endangered the people of Earth.

Zyrd was sent by the Wizard’s Council of Otherworld to deal with the matter. He could not destroy the Aberration, but he was ultimately able to imprison Zota and his creation in a bubble of unreality, ending the threat and erasing the Aberration from history.

Thousands of years later, unfortunately, Zota and the Aberration were inadvertently released back into the world. Zota was eventually apprehended and sent back to the Otherworld, but Aberration has remained free, occasionally challenging the Champion for the roll of Earth’s protector.

Weird Revisited: Malice in Slumberland

This post originally appeared in June of 2010. It marked the first foray I believe of Weird Adventures material into more fantastic realms and other planes. This stuff would get brief mention in the book, but the planar stuff was never a big feature of my campaign, nor did it seem to garner as much interest with readers as other things.

All humans (and human-like beings) dream. Like "thought balloons" in a comic strip, clouds of dreamstuff float "upward" from the dreamer into the Astral Plane. There they form bubbles in the Astral substance, tethered to the dreamer until waking. These bubbles are permeable with, and ultimately dissolve into, the Dream Realm--more commonly called Slumberland or Dreamland, or sometimes the "Land of Nod" (but not this one, or this one ;) ). Given their nature, dreams represent the easiest portal for humans to cross the transitive plane of the Astral and move into the Outer Planes.

Slumberland is ruled--or perhaps merely managed--by a being known by many names, but often called the Dream Lord, or Dream King. He appears as a robed humanoid figure wearing a bronze, mirrored mask. He doesn't create dreams--these come from mortal (and perhaps immortal) minds, themselves--but monitors and maintains them. His castle, with its strangely-angled, dream-logic, expressionistic architecture, sits on the border between the material and immaterial worlds, existing both in Slumberland and on the dark side of the Moon. From there, he maintains the oneironic devices, and monitors the content of the flow of dreamstuff. He strives to ensure virulent nightmares don't readily infect other dreams, and that idle fantasies don't spoil and bloat to become perverse obsessions.

It's a big job, and the Dream Lord doesn't do it without help. Gnome-like creatures called "Sandmen" serve him. They carry pouches of silvery, glinting powder made from dessicated and alcehmically treated dreamstuff. They use this oneiric dust to induce sleep in a mortals, or cause waking dreams, or even to cause multiple beings to share the same dream. This is their primary tool for observing or even entering dreams--supposedly for the purposes of monitoring and testing.

"Supposedly" because there is some evidence for the existence rogue Sandmen, or at least breakdowns within their system. Regrettably common are the condensed nightmares called bugbears, or sometimes "bogies" or "bogeymen." These creatures emerge from dark, foreboding places--like "haunted" houses, abandoned subway tunnels, ancient ruins, or even children's closets! They're variable in size, but usually appear slightly larger than humans. Their bodies are described as "bear-like" or "ape-like", but their heads are something like deep-sea diving helmets, albeit with blank face-plates, and strange antennae. Bugbears, as nightmares given flesh, torment humans to feed off their fear. They then employ electronic devices or machinery--with an appearance both nonsensical and menacing--to siphon oneiric potential from the minds of their victims to incubate bugbear pups.

Bugbears aren't the only evidence of corruption in Slumberland. There are persist rumors of Sandmen on the take, selling blue dreams to Hell Syndicate incubi and succubi to slip to unsuspecting marks. There are also rumors of black-market Tijuana bibles produced from the concentrated salacious dreamings of certain celebrities being peddled on the streets of the City, and possibly elsewhere.

Thanks  to G. Benedicto at Eiglophian Press for suggesting a link between bugbears and nightmares.