|
Post by The Mathemakitten on May 11, 2015 16:36:26 GMT
My world has two grouchy cats that hiss even if you only bite their tails a little bit and it has big windows for looking out at my domain which stretches as far as the eye can see, and my eyes are sharper than human eyes, but I don't like to go down out into it because it is noisy. There is a water bowl for splishing and for drowning enemy mousies and a clothesline for doing reconaissance in. Everything in my world is my own personal belonging.
|
|
Undrained
Poster
Posts: 16
World: Haywire
Pronoun: She
|
Post by Undrained on May 11, 2015 16:39:44 GMT
My world is an Earth, with all things from Andrew's "what everybody knows" section true here too, with the exception that there are a some adults who do believe in magic and that the world population is slightly under 7 billion. I haven't seen anything to make me believe that the things from his other sections apply to my world, but given that they're secret, I suppose I wouldn't, even if they were true. What my world does have, which I suspect that none of yours do, is capes. Essentially, a tiny fragment of our population will, at some point in their lives, gain some sort of power or set of powers. To give a couple examples of particularly common powersets: one of the most common powersets is the combination of flight, increased physical strength, and increased toughness. There's a broad class of powers which allow people to invent, build, maintain, and use technology far beyond the levels that unpowered inventors are capable of even understanding. And, of course, there are huge numbers of more unique powers, too. For instance, there's a hero in Toronto with the power to make huge numbers of small forcefields. There's one in Los Angeles who can form and manipulate ice. And lots of others, with lots of different powers, which would be impossible to list in full here, so I'm just going to stop now and assume that you get the idea. A disproportionately high number of these people become public figures, called "capes" in reference to the adornment on the outfits which they stereotypically wear. Realistically, very few capes actually do wear capes, but the name has stuck nonetheless. The three major categories of cape, at least in America (where I live, and am thus most qualified to report on), are "superheroes", "supervillains", and "rogues". The very short summaries of what those are: superheroes try to help the public in a legal fashion (frequently by fighting against supervillains), supervillains do anything in an illegal fashion (whether they're trying to help the public, or hurt us, or just out for themselves), and rogues try (often unsuccessfully) to live ordinary lives which just happen to include powers, making them the least public-figure-y of the three categories. Unfortunately, they often end up being forcibly recruited by either superheroes or supervillains looking to bolster their numbers. There are a large number of researchers trying to figure out the details of where powers come from, how they work, and so on. As far as I know, they haven't had any major successes; they understand the types of situations which most frequently prompt people to develop powers (almost exclusively ones extremely traumatic for the person in question), but they haven't figured out how to reliably replicate those situations, and they don't understand why it works that way. Also, I suppose I should list a few particularly well-known or relevant-to-this-board capes by name, so I can refer to them in the future without confusing anyone. - Scion: The first cape anybody is aware of, and the most powerful by a huge margin. Appeared in the middle of the ocean in 1982, began superheroing soon afterwards. His full powerset isn't known, but the only thing which he seems to have been unable to do, given an attempt, was to kill the Endbringers. Speaking of which:
- The Endbringers (Behemoth, Leviathan, the Simurgh): Three creatures which have, over the past decade and a half, been systematically chipping away at human civilization. Every few months, one of them appears in a large-and-important city and attempts to destroy it. They're always fought by huge numbers of capes at once—the villains and heroes have a truce in place, to team up against the Endbringers even if they're enemies the rest of the time—but even so, their targets are frequently destroyed. The only thing which can reliably push them back is Scion's presence in the fight, and he shows up only inconsistently.
- The Triumvirate (Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon): Three of the four founders of the Protectorate, America's largest superhero organization. The fourth, Hero, was killed slightly under a decade ago. They are all extremely powerful capes, typically some of the most important non-Scion capes at Endbringer fights.
- Professor Haywire: Long-dead and not particularly important in our world, but relevant to this board for having opened a portal to an alternate Earth with a much smaller and weaker cape population. No Scion flying around saving people, no Endbringers going around killing people, generally much lower-key. In general, we refer to that earth as Earth Aleph, while we're Earth Bet, but that naming scheme felt like it didn't really fit this forum's style, hence my choice to refer to my world as Haywire instead.
There's probably some other important stuff I'm missing, since I've never had to explain cape stuff to an audience totally unfamiliar with it before, but hopefully this at least works as a basic overview.
Oh, wait, the magic thing. Basically, there are some people who think cape powers are magic. I'm not quite sure what it would even mean for them to "be magic" or "not be magic", but there you go.
|
|
|
Post by Archangel on May 11, 2015 20:04:30 GMT
Your world sounds like one of the possible outcomes mine is trying to avoid becoming.
Is it known where the Endbringers come from or why they do what they do?
|
|
|
Post by Kit on May 11, 2015 20:34:13 GMT
I think my world is like Earth worlds, except i've never been to Earth and most people live on the colony planets. The colony planets are planets that are colonies, i guess. There's a few of them. We just moved to Nixo, and Nixo is all covered with snow and really cold, so we live underground. People are mining and digging more tunnels and my daddy's one of them. I mostly play with the ice beasts, and i probably shouldn't tell that to anyone on Nixo, but no one here is from my world, so it's okay!
|
|
Cardea
Poster
words
Posts: 34
World: Adunka
Pronoun: she
|
Post by Cardea on May 11, 2015 20:39:02 GMT
How do you find food in the cold?
It is always warm here, but it is a little cooler in the dark season.
|
|
Undrained
Poster
Posts: 16
World: Haywire
Pronoun: She
|
Post by Undrained on May 11, 2015 20:51:29 GMT
Your world sounds like one of the possible outcomes mine is trying to avoid becoming. Is it known where the Endbringers come from or why they do what they do? If it's known, it hasn't gotten out to the general public. We know what they can do—Behemoth is a dyakinetic, Leviathan is a hydrokinetic, the Simurgh is a telekinetic and telepath, all three of them are ridiculously resilient to attack (both powered attack and conventional weapons up to and including nukes)—but we don't know anything about their origins or motives. We do have strong evidence that they're connected in more than just superficial patterns of behavior, though; ever since Leviathan first showed up*, the same Endbringer has never made an attack twice in a row without one of the others taking a turn. Not to mention that they follow a sort of "schedule" which has changed each time a new one has appeared: when it was just Behemoth, he attacked every 7-8 months; after Leviathan showed up it accelerated to an attack every 4-5 months; and after the Simurgh it became 3-4. *Behemoth appeared in 1992, Leviathan in 1996, the Simurgh in 2003, and it's currently 2009.
|
|
|
Post by Leaf on May 11, 2015 21:02:08 GMT
Kit, what is an ice beast?
|
|
Hadassah
Regular
Posts: 107
World: Pantheon
Pronoun: She/Her
|
Post by Hadassah on May 11, 2015 22:02:12 GMT
Essentially, a tiny fragment of our population will, at some point in their lives, gain some sort of power or set of powers. To give a couple examples of particularly common powersets: one of the most common powersets is the combination of flight, increased physical strength, and increased toughness. There's a broad class of powers which allow people to invent, build, maintain, and use technology far beyond the levels that unpowered inventors are capable of even understanding. And, of course, there are huge numbers of more unique powers, too. Sounds a lot like our demihumans, except for the part about creating technology beyond normal understanding. Superintelligent demihumans usually work with what tools are available. We generally have a several classes of demihuman powers, though most of them take the form of natural ability enhancement, followed by psionics.
|
|
|
Post by Kit on May 12, 2015 0:21:14 GMT
How do you find food in the cold? It is always warm here, but it is a little cooler in the dark season. Mostly food doesn't grow on Nixo. We grow a little but mostly bring it on the spaceships. There's more that grows underground that the ice beasts eat, but other people haven't found much of it and people can't eat it anyway. Ice beasts are just big animals that Nixo has, they're maybe 3 times as big as humans. They look a little like pictures I saw of ferrets, but not really very much. They're white and they have something mostly like fur but smoother, and they live in the caves, and some people are scared of them but that's just because they're big. They're really smart but I guess not as much as humans. They're soft and they let me play with their kits.
|
|
Turquoise
Poster
Posts: 19
World: Uplides
Pronoun: She
|
Post by Turquoise on May 12, 2015 1:48:03 GMT
The Uplides is consisted of 7 'planets' called Regions, 10 if you count the small island-like Regions. Each planet has its own unique climate and it rarely ever changes and they are also all about the same size. The region I live on is called Pluma. It is a beautiful forest Region with a few beaches scattered here and there. Giant, sentient versions of various Earth creatures live here, including birds, mammals, and some reptiles (but they dominate the desert areas). Pluma is a predominately an agricultural Region with fertile river valleys and a large variety of edible plants. Despite this, all of the different Regions are technologically advanced in one way or another. The Regions choose what and how much technology they want to use.
As for me, I look very reminiscent of what some would call a red panda. I'm larger (about the size of the humans here) and is more of a blue-ish purple kind of color. My kind is called a Balt and so is all large and sentient creatures here. I live in an actual treehouse close to a local beach.
There are many different species here, including elves, gnomes, dwarves, humans, and some hybrids of different species. Balts dominate about 3 of the 7 Regions while everyone else dominates the rest.
|
|
|
Post by Andrew on May 12, 2015 16:15:40 GMT
Kit, how did your world’s humans get to other planets?
Turquoise, do the Uplides actually have an Earth? If not, how do you know that some Earth creatures are small, nonsentient versions of Balts?
|
|
Turquoise
Poster
Posts: 19
World: Uplides
Pronoun: She
|
Post by Turquoise on May 12, 2015 22:36:26 GMT
Andrew, The Uplides do have an Earth and it is one of the 7 Regions here. It is mostly aquatic with some land, but not a lot. Humans and aquatic Balts mostly thrive there, but that's it. There aren't large civilizations there, but they make due with what they have. As far as I know, the ones who live there are good at fishing and deep-sea research.
I've also done some extensive research on each of the Regions here, mostly out of a mixture of boredom and intrigue. I would like to share my knowledge with everyone if that's all right.
|
|
|
Post by Andrew on May 12, 2015 23:00:52 GMT
I would be interested in hearing more about the regions, if you’re willing to share.
|
|
|
Post by Kit on May 13, 2015 3:07:43 GMT
We got to other planets by building spaceships, and then we found out how to make them go so fast they slowed down time, i don't know how.
|
|
|
Post by Andrew on May 13, 2015 3:11:30 GMT
Oh, wait, the magic thing. Basically, there are some people who think cape powers are magic. I'm not quite sure what it would even mean for them to "be magic" or "not be magic", but there you go. Well, the categories aren’t really well defined. I think that generally we’re going with “if it’s something that doesn’t work like the rest of the science for the world, especially something that people deliberately control but didn’t invent out of smaller parts, it’s magic”, but if anybody has another definition that’s probably better. Given what sort of stuff here tends to be magic, I would expect cape powers to count. Does anybody know how capes do whatever-they-do (like how aeronautical engineers know how airplanes work even if I don’t), or has anybody been able to get a non-cape to (for example) form and manipulate ice the same way the LA guy does? Whether cape powers are magic or not, could you tell us more about them? For example, are there other broad classes of powers besides “flying, strong, and tough” and “really good inventor”? Can it do things that other people on this forum can, like remove colors from dyes, change the genetics of plants or animals, predict the future, do TK, etc.? Are any of the powers actually repeated, or can they just get really similar?
|
|