Making MHR Characters: Geist (ANOHotMU #4)

Creeeeepy old man

Geist shows up right at the beginning of 90s Marvel, in Wolverine's solo series and . . . I really like him. Well, I mean, not like like, he's a Nazi made scientist who brags about how inhuman his experiments are. He's several kinds of gross and awful and disgusting. No, I like him in the sense that he's an interesting character and a compelling villain. You want him to lose so very badly, and yet he's extremely slippery. Whenever he's confronted head-to-head, he folds like a house of cards because, well, he's a centenarian held together by a cybernetic skin, but he makes a great lead villain up until that point.

He's worked with Hydra, for the most part, but I do prefer his run in Wolverine where he's the one pulling the strings on a long-term project to develop a race of super-soldiers. He shows up several times through the run of the story, and each time is memorable and creepy. Seriously, kids, Wolverine strips the cybersuit off an old man and leaves him to die, and the only problem I have is that I wish he'd done it earlier.

Geist really is a long-term planner type - if used in a game, he'd be one of those bad guys who either gets away in the final act, disappears, or who at least appears to get killed, but you never find the body. He's slippery - oily, almost - in his personality and I think that should carry through in his behaviour.

The creepiest thing about him, honestly? His obsession with keeping himself and others clean-shaven. It's just a weird little personality detail that takes him from weird and unsettling to truly
disturbing.

Geist

Solo 1d6

Buddy 1d4

Team 1d8

Distinctions

Loves A Clean Shave

Mad Doctor

Unapologetic Nazi

Cyber Suit

Enhanced Stamina 1d8

Weapons 1d8

SFX: Razor Arm - Add a die ot he doom pool to step up physical stress by +1 on an attack action.

SFX: Tranq Gun - Step up by +1 any complications related to drugging or paralyzing a target.

Limit: Cybersuit - Add a die to the doom pool and step up stress taken by +1 when hit by attacks intended to target cybernetics.

Limit: Feeble - Increase physical stress taken by +1. If Geist takes physical trauma, he can be removed from the scene.

Business Expert 1d8

Crime Master 1d10

Medical Master 1d10

Menace Master 1d10

Psych Expert 1d8

Science Expert 1d8

Making MHR Characters: Gazer (ANOHotMU #4)

Pre-Apocalypse

Gazer is a good example of how Marvel can take an interesting, low-powered character and make them boring and overpowered.

When we first meet Gazer, he's alone in the middle of space, the only one who can survive the terrible radiation of his space station thanks to his mutant powers. He's alone and he's happy, content to live life on the edge of space, interacting with people only at a distance. And, yes, there's some narrative play with the idea that a person who's so good at seeing the detail in things keeps people as far away as possible.

And then, as happens, he spots a race of evil aliens headed straight toward Earth, so he does he knows he has to and contacts the X-Men, hoping they can save the day. They come up to his space station, intruding on his personal space more than a little, but he copes with it well and even has a few minor moments of heroism.

Post-Apocalypse, in all his lesser-known
henchman of Skeletor-like glory

You like Gazer, or at least I think you're supposed to.

And then Apocalypse happens. Well, first Gazer, like a lot of mutants, loses his mutant powers in M-Day, tries to kill himself in the inky blackness of space, and then Apocalypse happens, turning the hapless depowered mutant into yet another one of his Horsemen. War, in this case.

And he's powerful and driven, a shattered shell of the person he used to . . . y'know what, I'm not going to finish that description because it's silly and pointless and frankly he already had a perfectly serviceable character arc before the writers started mucking around with him. Short story, he gets turned into yet another of Apocy's disposable antiheroes and goes around killing stuff and stabbing stuff until he is, in his turn, stabbed. The end.

So, this one's a twofer - you first have Gazer as he was earlier, as an interesting support character who might be kind of fun in a low-level mutant campaign or something, and then later, as a powerhouse.

Gazer (First Appearance)

Solo 1d10

Buddy 1d6

Team 1d8

Distinctions

Comfortable In Solitude

I Just Watch

Laughs to Cope

Mutant Powers

Superhuman Senses 1d10

SFX: Immunity - Spend 1 PP to ignore stress, trauma or complications from any type of radiation

Limit: Mutant - Earn 1 PP when affected by mutant specific Milestones and tech.

Medical Expert 1d8

Science Expert 1d8

Tech Expert 1d8

Vehicle Expert 1d8

Gazer (as War)

Solo 1d4

Buddy 1d6

Team 1d10

Distinctions

Born from Pain

Heartless

Loyal Soldier of Apocalypse

Mutant Powers

Enhanced Durability 1d8

Enhanced Stamina 1d8

Psychic Resistance 1d8

Solar Blasts 1d8

Superhuman Strength 1d10

SFX: Absorption - On a successful reaction against a radiation-based attack, convert your effect die into a Solar Blasts stunt or step up Solar Blasts by +1 for your next action. Spend a die from the doom pool to do so even if you failed the reaction roll.

SFX: Burst - Step up or double a Solar Blasts die against a single target. Remove the highest rolling die and add 3 for your total.

Limit: Mutant - Add a die to the doom pool when affected by mutant-specific Milestones and tech.

Apocalypse Tech

Superhuman Durability 1d10

Superhuman Speed 1d10

Superhuman Stamina 1d10

Weaponry 1d10

SFX: Self-Repair Cycle - Before you make an action including an Apocalypse Tech power, you may more your physical stress die to the doom pool.

Limit: Gear - Add a die to the doom pool to and shut down Apocalypse Tech. Activate an opportunity to recover.

Combat Expert 1d8

Menace Master 1d8

Science Expert 1d8

Tech Expert 1d8

Vehicle Expert 1d8

Making MHR Characters: John Garrett (ANOHotMU #4)

So, Bill Sienkiewicz. Bill is . . . how do I put this? "Unique" isn't quite right, but it's close. "Singular" is about as close as I can get, really. Yeah, Bill Sienkiewicz is singular. If you're standing twenty paces away from a comic, you can still tell he's the artist. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of personal taste.

For me, the cover to the right is the first issue of New Mutants I ever saw, and I immediately, on the spot, needed to have that comic in my possession. It was at the corner Becker's, a convenience store chain from back in the day when randomly appearing comic book racks were still a thing in my hometown. I picked it up off the rack and realized that I was coming in partway through a plotline and groaned. I still bought it, but went home, hopped on my bike and went off to the comic book store to buy every back issue I could.

Since then, I've picked up Stray Toasters, some of his work on Moon Knight, and, yes, Elektra, which is where we're introduced to John Garrett. He's an incredibly obnoxious man, and you're kind of glad that the comic makes it clear that you aren't supposed to like.

The series, "Elektra: Assassin," is written by Frank Miller from before he became just another angry old man, and it's really quite excellent. It doesn't fit neatly into the Marvel Universe, similar to his run on Daredevil, but it's quite excellent.

Anyhow, Garrett is a moderately powerful cyborg whose vulnerable to hypnotism and suchlike, and ends up pretty darned messed up by the end of the series. He spends much of the series at least somewhat allied with Elektra, but it's pretty clear that he's really just looking out for his own self-interest, and I've drawn him up as such. I've designed him so he's really easy to mess up mentally.

Solo 1d8

Buddy 1d6

Team 1d4

Distinctions

Capable Investigator

Dangerously Deluded

Truly Despicable Person

SHIELD Equipment

Guns 1d8

SFX: Focus - If a pool includes a SHIELD Equipment power, you may replace two dice of equal size with one die +1 step larger.

Limit: Gear - Shutdown SHIELD Equipment and add a die to the die pool. Activate an opportunity to recover.

Cyborg

Cybernetic Senses 1d8

Enhanced Durability 1d8

Enhanced Speed 1d8

Enhanced Stamina 1d8

Enhanced Strength 1d8

SFX: Overclock - Add 1d6 to your dice pool for an attack action and step back the highest die in the pool by -1. Step up the effect die by +1.

SFX: Unleashed- Step up or double and Cyborg power for one action. If the action fails, add a die to the doom pool equal to the normal rating of your die.

Limit: Cyborg - Add a die to the doom pool when affected by cybernetic-targeting tech and Milestones.

Limit: Unstable - Stress or complications caused by mind control are +1 step higher.

Combat Expert 1d8

Covert Expert 1d8

Crime Expert 1d8

Menace Expert 1d8

Tech Expert 1d8

Making MHR Characters: Gargoyle (ANOHotMU #4)

The Defenders are weird, even for Marvel.

They aren't a team so much as a slightly-less-than-loose affiliation of loners, B-listers, newcomers and oddballs. Their membership has included Cloud who is . . . well, a cloud, Doctor Strange (when he's not busy), Valkyrie, who's basically Thor with a torpedo bra and a spear, faux-Batman Nighthawk, the Son of Satan and the Hulk, Overmind, the collective consciousness of an entire planet, Interloper, one of the not-cool-enough-for-prime-time Eternals and Manslaughter, a serial killer. That's before we start in with Daredevil, Angel, Iceman, Professor X, Silver Surfer, Hellcat, Hercules and various others who came through the group at various points. I mean, that's not a team, that's what you find at the bottom of your box of action figures after moving across country and everything's shaken up and moved around.

Their villains included Ruby Tuesday, who replace her head with a red-colored, pearl-shaped supercomputer. She was the leader of the Headmen, whose members included a plastic surgeon who'd transplanted his head onto the body of a gorilla, a mad scientist who shrank only his skeleton, and Chondu the Mystic, who once almost ended up with his transplanted on She-Hulk's body.

And they're one of the more normal villains.

Anyhow, they're weird, but they were also one of the major avenues for Marvel writers who wanted to play in the Marvel Universe's deep, well-stocked toybox of occult and demonic plotlines. While neglected for a while, during the reign of the Comics Code Authority (see Fury entry), it came back with a vengeance in the mid-70s through the mid-80s. Gargoyle came into the comics right around the emergence of the Six-Fingered Hand, a group of six minor demons who figured that they could add themselves up to equal one demon lord, if they played their cards right.

Isaac Christians, the well-meaning mayor of the town of Christiansboro, makes a Faustian pact with the Six-Fingered Hand. He'll work for them for a while, and in exchange, they'll show him how to save his suffering town, which is on the verge of economic collapse as factories close. Yes, that's right, the man makes a deal with the devil because of Reaganomics.

Anyhow, he's jammed into the body of The Gargoyle, one of the Six-Fingered Hand's minions and . . . *looks at the actual chronological series of events* uh, is a bad guy for a while until he decides to be a good guy. Yay!

That's a crummy summary, but, well, this is a character with a long history whose been through a few rewrites. His abilities have actually stayed remarkably consistent - flight, super-strength, durability and "bio-energy" powers. That's basically the ability to manipulate the energies that are, like, all around us.

I chose to build them as two separate power suites because the powers he derives from his Gargoyle body are specific to the body, while the bio-energy abilities are unique to the synthesis of The Gargoyle and Isaac Christians.

Solo 1d8

Buddy 1d6

Team 1d10

Distinctions

Friend of the Defenders

Old Hand

Redeemed Soul

Gargoyle Body

Enhanced Strength 1d8

Flight 1d8

Superhuman Durability 1d10

SFX: Immunity - Spend 1 PP to ignore stress, trauma or complications from poison, disease or fatigue.

Limit: Conscious Activation - If stressed out, asleep, or unconscious, shut down Gargoyle Form. Recover Gargoyle Form when stress is recovered or on waking.

Limit: Devil Child - Turn any Gargoyle Form power into a complication and gain 1 PP. Activate an opportunity or remove the complication to recover the power.

Bio-Energy Manipulation

Bio-Energy Blasts 1d8

Drain Life 1d8

Healing Breath 1d10

Mystic Resistance 1d10

Psychic Resistance 1d8

SFX: Multipower - Use two or more Bio-Energy Manipulation powers in a single dice pool at -1 step for each additional power.

SFX: Mystic Healing - Add Healing Breath to your dice pool when helping others recover stress. Spend 1 PP to recover another’s mental stress or step back another’s mental trauma by -1.

SFX: Mystic Shields - Add 1d6 and step up your effect die by +1 when using Gargoyle Form to create assets or stunts to block a mystical attack.

SFX: Soul-Draining - Add a d6 and step up your effect die by +1 when using Drain Life to inflict complications on a target.

Limit: Exhausted - Shutdown any Bio-Energy Manipulation power to gain 1 PP. Rcover power by activating an opportunity or during a transition scene.

Limit: Linked - Shut down Bio-Energy Manipulation whenever Gargoyle Body is shut down. Recover Bio-Energy Manipulation when Gargoyle Body is recovered.

Business Expert 1d8

Medical Expert 1d8

Mystic Expert 1d8

Psych Expert 1d8