Today is just the outfit yesterday showed up at the door wearing (Mutants and Masterminds)

"When pain, suffering and the advent of death become intolerable, there is Tlazolteotl hovering at the crossroads of life to lure a person away from his or her seemingly appointed destination and we are held embrujadas, kept from our destiny, our soul arrested.  We are not living up to our potentialities and thereby impeding the evolution of the soul -- or worse, Coatlicue, the Earth, opens and plunges into its maw, devours us.  By keeping the conscious mind occupied or immobile, the germination work takes place in the deep, dark earth of the unconscious."
--Gloria Anzaldúa

Ghosts, of course, are the pseudo-living (though some ectologists might use the term post-vital or even theorize that wraithly existence constitutes simply an oft-unrecognized additional stage of life) recurrence of a dead being.  Well, objects can sometimes form ghosts, as well, such as the ghost ship phenomenon or the superhero Excelsior, the ghost of a sentient car from the future.

In almost every recorded instance, something or things have kept the ghost from dissipating or continuing on to some form of afterlife.  Ectological databases list almost every imaginable thing as anchors for the dead; they might be tied to a particular object, person, time, or location, or there might be unfinished business or a promise they feel an undying need to fulfill, or even a particular unusual action to which they are metaphysically bound.  Extreme mental states are also quite common in reports of interactions with ghosts.  Many find their emotions continuously routed through depression or wrath as if by some psychic riptide, and memories might be tattered, with grand gaps, or restrictively short and cyclical.  Some ghosts have been known to interpret whatever is occurring to them through the lens of their death or some memory related to their anchor(s).  Simple confusion is rarer than one might imagine, but shows up enough to be a well-known possible symptom of PMPCS (post-mortem persistent communication syndrome).

As a result of the pioneering work done by the androgynous supergenius Professor d'Eon, ectomedical specialties have exploded in number and funding, though not always to positive effect.  Ectodopamine was first discovered, and then extracted, in 1992.  It has since become the foundation of numerous highly addictive, highly dangerous psychoactive substances ~ superdrugs ~ that often give their users temporary spectral superpowers.  The first of these, known as smokes, was created in 2015, only to be followed by a veritable cornucopia such as bean seed, ralph, and a derivative of MDMA (ecstasy) called 2,3-methylene-ectodioxy-indolyl-aminomanteion (or MEDIAM).

"Because of media hype and woefully inadequate information, too many people nowadays are deathly afraid of their food, and what does fear of food do to the digestive system?  I am sure that an unhappy or suspicious stomach, constricted and uneasy with worry, cannot digest properly.  And if digestion is poor, the whole body politic suffers."
--Julia Child

The reasons, mechanisms, and dynamics of the transition into an ectothanatopic state are wildly diverse, and result in a chaotic variety of expressions that are difficult to classify.  The included template covers only the base commonalities of (most) ghosts ~ feel free to modify it to fit a specific ghost.  This includes adding individual powers, such as telekinetic poltergeisting, skin-riding (which has been noted to correlate with an increase in the ghost's intelligence, though ectologists remain baffled as to why), illusory apparitions, flight, life-draining, and more.  Relatively often, ghosts will have additional or greater powers when it comes to affecting their anchors.  For the most part, this would be a -2 points per rank flaw, though a larger or broader anchor such as a widespread family line would be only worth -1 point per rank.

Furthermore, there are certain complex expressions that recur in greater numbers (usually with a similar cause or in a particular geographical or cultural context or with some other common origin), forming what are called ectotypic families, such as the bean sidhe/banshee, भूत, 幽霊, las lloronas, 餓鬼, cihuateteo, and others.  Some ectotypic families, such as the imperial cult of ancient Rome, the ninunò, the 𓅜𓐍𓏲𓏛𓏥, or the lwa for example, have been known to partake in one or more colors of the infinite colors refracted from the Worldlight by the Green Glass Gods at the boundary of the atmosphere ~ that is to say, they partake of the rainbow of divinity. 

"The earth, it has been said, is one vast graveyard, and man can nowhere put down his foot without stepping on the remains of a brother."
--M. Schele de Vere

Ghost

PC PL 5 / NPC PL 0 / MR 5 / SK 13

STA — PRE +1

Powers

Anchored:  Feature 1 (always know where your anchors are) • 1 point

Creep:  Concealment 2 (normal sight); innate Enhanced Stealth +6 • 8 points

Dead:  Immunity 38 (aging, critical hits, Fortitude effects, Sensory Affliction effects); innate permanent Insubstantial 4 (what affects the ghost differs among individuals) • 59 points

Memento Mori:  Innate Enhanced Intimidation +4 • 3 points

Advantages

Fearless

Attributes -8 + Powers 71 + Advantages 1 + Skills 0 + Defenses 0 = 64 points

Born from the metal that burns in our blood so as to carry our breath within (Mutants and Masterminds)

<PBS voice> This blog is made possible by the generosity of patrons like you! </NPR voice>  Special thanks go out to my patrons Keeper, Dave, Ferny, and Diane.  If this post or any of my others impresses you enough to wish to join their ranks, you can do so at this link. 

"There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk "his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor" on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else."

— Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

The planet Mars is a shockingly populous planet, with possibly the second most active and diverse ecosystem among all Sol's planetary children.  From the three-legged blade-footed mollusc-like hematophagous sarmaks to survivors of Atlantis and lost collectives of cube-shaped combining robots, the planet abounds in sentient life.   This is perhaps understandable.  After all, the red-dirt elementals of Mars, cousins to the earth, blood, and rust elementals of Earth, famously gifted several of their own number to the creation of humanity.  Among all of these, however, two species stand out among the others:  the marmar and their advisor species, the vlenti ne.

𒀭𒄊𒀕𒃲, Mars, Αρης, मङ्गल, Angaraka, 𓅃 ~ so many of the gods who focused their attention on the Red Planet have been wargods over the years, and the marmar have been their creation.  Slight humanoids with metallic-green skin and fetish for enhancing themselves with cybernetic antennae who live in tunnels and rooms carved below the Martian surface, the marmar might not seem like the chosen race of a series of divine generals.  Their devotion came in the twin forms of a rigorous dedication to ascetic efficiency and computer-aided mathematical tactics.  Marmar cuisine was reduced to simple pills, light, easy, and without need for attention, which were the general goals in the mechanization of their entire culture; joy, humor, individuality, and most freedoms were excised to allow the troops to focus entirely on achieving their mission objectives.  A very small and select group of marmar known as sages developed  unique and very scientific approach to divination magic, as well, in order to use knowledge of possible futures to ensure marmar victory.

As long as they faced away from Sol's burning shores, these twin virtues ensured marmar victory.  At one point, they were only a moon and couple dozen asteroids away from uniting the entirety of the outer Solar system in one empire.  The problem came after the 1830 Martian Civil War, precipitated by the loss of the frontier to which the marmar had become accustomed.  The victors knew theat their people's martial fervor could not be denied, and so they turned their attention inward, using a 64-Earthyear period of tactical planning as a chance to foster less warlike and more scientific memes in their immortal constituency. 

 "All this trouble over a fat little man in a red suit!"

— Santa Claus Couquers the Martians

They invaded Earth alongside sarmak mechanized tripod infantry in 1894, and were defeated by the inevitable biowarfare of a planet full of microbes.  The sarmak-marmar coalition tried again in 1938, and were beaten back once more by the quickly blooming crowd of Earthling superhumans.  Attempts by the most bloodthirsty among the marmar to understand their chosen enemy by allowing Earth's transmissions to be received by the general populace resulted in marmar children becoming addicted to joyful, cheery Earthling holiday TV, restless and distracted.  The fateful decision was made in 1964 by National Sysadmin-General Kimar to kidnap Santa Claus.

The aftermath of that plot involved Kimar's former servant Dropo being raised to the position of Martian Santa.  The effects have been widespread, multivalent, and unpredictable, as the marmar attempt to weld a newfound crazed addiction to schmaltzy sweetness and incessant humor to their previous militant austerity.  Millennia of repression are bursting forth without rejecting the agent of that repression.

Luckily, the vlenti ne, a species of large black arachnids with bald human faces and eight prehensile hands covered in the same green skin as their heads, exist.  Early on in this process of radical cultural shift, Kimar reached out to these philosophers in their deeper cavernous homes, hoping to enlist their aid in shepherding the marmar through these trying times.  Although Kimar had to enlist Dropo to give them a crash course in humor, they were willing to engage with the cultural conundra plaguing the marmar civilization.

 "Man has escaped from his head just as the condemned man has escaped from his prison, he has found beyond himself not God, who is prohibition against crime, but a being who is unaware of prohibition. Beyond what I am, I meet a being who makes me laugh because he is headless; this fills me with dread because he is made of innocence and crime; he holds a steel weapon in his left hand, flames like those of a Sacred Heart in his right. He is not a man. He is not a God either. He is not me but he is more than me: his stomach is the labyrinth in which he has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words as a monster"

— Georges Bataille

Extremely peaceful, in counterpoint to traditional marmar militarism, the vlenti ne are quite violent in the earliest stage of their life.  Coming forth from their eggs as nymphs with quite limited intelligence, they receive no nurturance from adults and often turn to fighting each other for resources, with 90% of nymphs dying on their first day of life.  This is seen as a weeding out of the weak to ensure the ability of the community to endure the hardship and paucity of Martian living.  Vlenti ne lack any kind of sexual dimorphism, their reproductive abilities and roles being instead a function of age and pupation.  After a vlenti ne nymph gives birth for somewhere between the first and third time, it will undergo a chrysalis and emerge as an adult with a significantly more developed brain and the capability to sire children rather than bear them.

Vlenti ne adults receive all the nurturance denied to them as nymphs.  Very tall, they are passive and communistic, rejecting the idea not just of personal property, but of possessions themselves.  As a result, despite their magnificent cities clustered around the few underground water sources, their lives seem quite impoverished.  Because water is so rare on Mars, and there are so many sentient competitors for what water there is, the voluntary sharing of water between two vlenti ne marks the deepest and most important relationships in their culture, one marked by a complete and ultimate trust bordering on mutual submission.  Water is so important in their culture that they use the same word for both "to know" and "to drink", and their word for "god" is simply an agent noun formed from that word.

The final stage of vlenti ne life are the ones they simply call "the Old".  Ghosts of dead vlenti ne, the Old are almost incomprehensibly intelligent, spending all of their time in ethereal contemplation.  The Old form the governing class of the vlenti ne, their decisions unquestioned, though they often take a few centuries to be made.  This gives vlenti ne civilization its unique feel, in which individual, material, and even political problems are trivialized in favor of abstract yet logical aesthetic questions.  The vlenti ne pursue knowledge out of a deep, patient enjoyment of it, an intuitive and receptive leisure, rather than the active searching and examination to acquire the power to set definitions and draw conclusions.  They thus reject the scientific method, treating religion, philosophy, and science as the same subject.

 "They — my political adversaries — define ‘other’ as anyone not white, male, cis, abled, and allegedly Christian. Romance [fiction], on the other hand, is and has always been about opening oneself to the risk of the ‘other.’ Whether (from the traditional heroine’s point of view) that ‘other’ is a pirate, a Viking, the lord of a manor, or a war-hardened Navy SEAL, a connection cannot be made without accepting one’s own vulnerability, and opening oneself up to intimacy."

— Suzanne Brockman

It took Dropo Claus some time to explain the nature of the crisis facing the marmar to the vlenti ne, for they also lacked an understanding of humor, just as they, with their contemplative lives, lacked an understanding of surprise or resentment or hurry.  Even the idea of fiction once engendered in the vlenti ne a great and terrible distress.  However, theirs was an intellectual confusion, and when Dropo Claus invoked their inability to hate something without first identifying and sympathizing with it, the idea clicked for them.  However, even to this day, the vlenti ne have trouble with telling jokes; they believe that correct timing is accomplished by the completion of waiting, and that just does not lend itself well to comedy.

To this day, the marmar make pilgrimages to the vlenti ne, both individually and as a collective, for advice and counsel in important decisions and for cultural direction.  The vlenti ne's commentary tends to center a few key ideas developed from considering what they have learned from Dropo Claus, listed here in relative order of importance:

1. Being funny is not a good thing, for it is never funny to the one to which the thing happens.  However, laughter is bravery, and goodness, a sharing against pain and sorrow and defeat.
2. The essence of the discipline is, first, self-awareness, then, self control.
3. Live each golden moment as if it were eternity — without fear, without hope, but with a sybaritic gusto.
4. Every drinking thing is simply your other end, and the universe is just a little thing we whipped up among us the other night for our entertainment before agreeing to forget the gag.
5. You eternally are the action you take at the cusp.

As a final note, Santa Claus has demonstrated that human and marmar biology is compatible enough to cross-breed; the byblow of his affair with Kimar's wife Momar is the superhero known as Silverbelle on Earth.  Indeed, ever since the marmar entered the United Nations in 1996 (thanks to the pioneering work of diplomat Professor Donald Kessler), their ambassador to the UN, Consmar, has been dogged by rumors of incessant indulgence in sex workers and other affairs of the loins.  If you believe the tabloids, he has sired any number of half-Martian bastards throughout New York City.

 "The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason."

— John Cage

Physical Appearance:  I can't draw, so I really like providing a few reference pictures and trusting in your imagination to build a good image of the marmar and the vlenti ne.  They each look like some combination of three pictures:
Vlenti Ne Nymph

Vlenti Ne Adult

Marmar

 "There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth."

— G.K. Chesterton

Marmar Template
PC PL 8 / NPC PL 8 / MR 8 / SR 24
STR -1  INT 11
Powers
Cyberbrain:  Comprehend Languages 5 (read, speak, and understand all languages, speak with machines); Quickness 4, limited to mental tasks; Remote Sensing 4 (auditory and visual), limited to technological sensors; Senses 9 (acute analytical extended radius rapid ranged Detect Wireless, radio, time sense) • 29 points
Cybernetic Antennae:  Selective area rapid subtle 1 radio Communication 4  • 26 points
Long-Lived:  Innate Immunity 1 (aging) • 2 points
Martian Native:  Innate Movement 1 (environmental adaptation: low-gravity); Senses 3 (visual: direction sense, distance sense, low-light vision) • 6 points
Metallic Skin:  Innate Protection 1 • 2 points
Powerful Mind:  Impervious Enhanced Will +6 • 12 points
Advantages
Assessment, Beginner's Luck, Eidetic Memory, Fearless, Jack-of-all-Trades, Second Chance (Deception effects), Second Chance (Intimidation effects), Second Chance (Persuasion effects), Skill Mastery (Technology), Ultimate Effort (Expertise: Science), Ultimate Effort (Expertise: Tactics), Ultimate Effort (Technology), Well-Informed
Skills
Expertise: Science 4, Expertise: Tactics 4, Technology 4
Complications
Weakness:  Disease-related effects have their degree of effect increased by 2 when affecting a marmar.

Abilities 20 + Powers 77 + Advantages 13 + Skills 6 + Defense 0 = 116 points

Vlenti Ne Nymph Template
PC PL 3 / NPC PL 3 / MR 3 / SR 9
STR 0⇰+2 STA 0⇰+2 AGL -1 FGT +3 INT -3 PRE -3

Powers
Bloated:  Permanent innate Growth 2 • 5 points
Chitinous Exoskeleton:  Protection 1 • 1 points
Grub:  Burrowing 2; Movement 3 (slithering, wall-crawling 2) • 8 points
Insectile Sensorium:  Senses 5 (danger sense, darkvision, acute smell, tracking) • 5 points
Mandible:  Binding, dangerous 4, grabbing, impressive Damage 3 • 10 points
Martian Native:  Innate Movement 1 (environmental adaptation: low-gravity); Senses 3 (visual: direction sense, distance sense, low-light vision) • 6 points
Advantages
Fearless, Great Endurance, Trance
Skills
Perception +6
Defenses
Dodge  +2⇰+1
Parry  +2⇰+1
Fortitude  +6

Abilities -8 + Powers 35 + Advantages 3 + Skills 3 + Defense 10 = 43 points

Vlenti Ne Adult Template 

(for an Old, simply use both this template and the ghost template, with all the variation that implies)
PC PL 6 / NPC PL 6 / MR 6 / SR 17
STR 0⇰+4 STA 0⇰+4 AGL -1 FGT +3 INT +4 AWE +2 PRE -1

Powers
Chitinous Exoskeleton:  Protection 3 • 3 points
Discorporation:  Attack Movement 2 (dimensional 2: afterlives; resisted by Dodge) • 4 points
Eight Legs:  Dynamic array (6 points) • 11 points

• Extra Limbs 6 • 7 points
• Leaping 6 (30 feet) • 2 points
• Movement 3 (sure-footed 3) • 2 points

Hands for Feet:  Movement 2 (wall-crawling 2) • 4 points
Insectile Sensorium:  Senses 5 (danger sense, darkvision, acute smell, tracking) • 5 points
Large:  Permanent innate Growth 4 • 9 points
Martian Native:  Innate Movement 1 (environmental adaptation: low-gravity); Senses 3 (visual: direction sense, distance sense, low-light vision) • 6 points
Upon the Completion of Waiting:  Immunity 5 (interaction Skills) • 5 points
Advantages
Eidetic Memory, Fearless, Great Endurance, Second Chance (trip), Trance, Ultimate Effort (Will checks)
Skills
Perception +6
Defenses
Dodge  +2⇰0
Parry  +2⇰0
Fortitude  +6
Will  +5

Abilities 14 + Powers 47 + Advantages 6 + Skills 3 + Defense 15 = 85 points

Half-Marmar Template

PC PL 2 / NPC PL 6 / MR 2 / SR 6
STR -1  INT 9
Advantages
Assessment, Beginner's Luck, Jack-of-all-Trades, Second Chance (Deception effects), Second Chance (Intimidation effects), Second Chance (Persuasion effects), Skill Mastery (Technology), Well-Informed
Skills
Expertise: Science 4, Expertise: Tactics 4, Technology 4
Complications
Weakness:  Disease-related effects have their degree of effect increased by 1 when affecting a half-marmar.

Abilities 16 + Powers 0 + Advantages 8 + Skills 6 + Defense 0 = 30 points

All the world is made from oppression; how then do we use what we are given to free ourselves? (Mutants and Masterminds)

Thank you again to my patrons Keeper, Dave, Ferny, and Diana ~ your contributions are invaluable.  To join them, become my patron here.  Thank you in advance!

 Dr. Barbara “Barbie” Banger

"Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard."
--Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"

 Doctor Barbara Banger got rip-roaringly drunk for one of the only times in her life after the Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center in Las Vegas offered her the position.  It was a dream job, researching the effects of quantum dynamics on neurological processes.  Possible breakthroughs abounded, any one of which would make her career for life, all on its own.  Not to mention save or improve countless lives.  Sure, one of her coworkers, a Dr. Bobby Lirdenham, was a particularly creepy blend of dapper 19th-century chauvinist and railing internet incel, but he seemed to know to keep his head down at the job.  Sometimes the threat of getting fired was enough to keep it in people’s pants, and it is true that his insights, while few, were instrumental in their experiments.

Dr. Lirdenham had a hobby, however, delving into occult secrets and pushing the boundaries of technological knowledge for the purpose of shaping women into the sex objects he believed them to be.  He chose the stuck-up bitch he worked with as his first test subject, slipping strange chemicals into her tea, hacking her equipment to bombard her with rays hitherto unknown to science, and more, until he finally got up the courage to tell her to come to his house for Christmas, knowing that he would have almost two weeks wherein no one would worry overmuch if she didn’t come into work.  She seemed perplexed and angry at being told to come over, but found herself at his door that night.  And then in his basement, strapped down and surrounded in ultratech devices, being changed.

"It is thus necessary to envisage a parodic-serious stage where the accumulation of detourned elements, far from aiming to arouse indignation or laughter by alluding to some original work, will express our indifference toward a meaningless and forgotten original, and concern itself with rendering a certain sublimity."
--Guy Debord

The Patriarch, as the new supervillain dubbed himself, used her to recruit more and more women for him to “perfect” and his operation got fairly large before hubris got the better of him.  Well, Hubris’s niece, anyway.  Bobby wanted a pet superhuman, and ended up targeting said niece, the fey werecat Dikadora Kelly, otherwise known as Catspaw.  Because of the nature of the Patriarch’s control, being an increase in certain of Catspaw’s urges and inclinations paired with a reduction in others, she was free to act as a liberator without negating her own maledictive powers, which strike any trying to use, manipulate, or control her.  When everything Bobby had built collapsed under this curse-weight, Catspaw acted quickly to liberate the women he had oppressed, desperately finding ingenious methods of reversing Dr. Lirdenham’s procedures.

The androgynous supergenius Professor d’Eon was certainly surprised when Dikadora showed up in eir lab with a crowd of supervillainously dumbed-down women behind her, but e immediately set emself the task of reversing what had been done to them.  Luckily, Catspaw had nicked some examples of the Patriarch’s techniques and chemicals, which gave the Professor the advantage e needed to quickly develop a reversal process and run all of Bobby’s victims through it.  That was when a few of them surprised their benefactors, their faces fallen and their voices grievingly quiet.  When Catspaw approached them to find out why they weren’t rejoicing like their fellows, one among them stepped forward to tell her that they were grateful for her actions, but that the problem hadn’t been what the Patriarch had done to them.  They liked being stupid and horny and giggly like they had been; they just didn’t like being enslaved by a man who wanted to exploit them.

"When Hardbeen heard this, a demoniacal frenzy suddenly took him; he furiously bit and devoured the edges of his shield; he kept gulping down fiery coals; he snatched live embers in his mouth and let them pass down into his entrails; he rushed through the perils of crackling fires; and at last, when he had raved through every sort of madness, he turned his sword with raging hand against the hearts of six of his champions. It is doubtful whether this madness came from thirst for battle or natural ferocity."
--Saxo Grammaticus, "The Danish History"

That was when Dr. Banger spoke up.  She didn’t know exactly what Bobby had done to them, but her field of expertise and the many hours of shared lab time she’d had with Dr. Lirdenham gave her some ideas.  With a little bit of help from Professor d’Eon, she thought she could whip up something relatively similar.  Though she wasn’t among the seven who wanted to return to what they had been, only sovereign and free, her ethics refused to allow her to use anyone but herself as a guinea pig for the process.  It did, in the end, work, and it was Dr. Banger herself who named the group even as it was doing so ~ as she felt her brain slowing and her libido rising, she thought of H.G. Wells’s vision of the next stage in evolution and giggled out, “I guess we’re, like, the Whorlocks!”

Once everyone who wanted to return to that permanently altered state had done so, the Whorlocks tottered out onto the Las Vegas Strip to make whatever life they could for themselves in this world.  Of course, any number of nefarious forces out there sought to take advantage of those who rejected the benefits of intelligence as base and leaden.  They weathered through every trial by sheer force of luck and heart.  Once, all of Las Vegas was bedeviled by a zombie horde staggering hungry and untiring down neon-lit streets.  The Whorlocks found themselves trapped in a truck stop on the edge of town, with a Lakota truck driver who ended up in a conflict with someone he said was going to cause problems in the future.  Tonka Truck was the truck driver’s name, and he said he was a time-traveller.  When someone supposed aloud that that was why Tonka Truck had arranged to be at that truck stop at that time, he simply said no, and then turned to Barbie Banger.  He held out a bra of brown and coarse lace and told her that a Vinlander spirit had told him to make it for her.  That, according to him, was the most powerful thing he could do to build a better future than the one he came from.  Barbie quickly discovered that the bra, which had been sewn from bear-fur, allowed her to assume a much bulkier and somewhat hairier form while an astounding rage overtook her.  Foaming at the mouth, she knew she could defend her bimbonic family this way.

"No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption
--Paulo Freire

Home Base:  Las Vegas.
Gender:  Bimbo ciswoman
Sexuality:  Heterosexual vanilla/bimbo
Romantic Identity:  Aromantic free use

"If woman has always functioned "within" the discourse of man, a signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier which annihilates its specific energy and diminishes or stifles its very different sounds, it is time for her to dislocate this "within," to explode it, turn it around, and seize it; to make it hers, containing it, taking it in her own mouth, biting that tongue with her very own teeth to invent for herself a language to get inside of. And you'll see with what ease she will spring forth from that "within" - the "within" where once she so drowsily crouched - to overflow at the lips she will cover the foam."
--Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa"

Recurrent Characters:

• HEART:ACHE II:  Although at first the Invisiblizer aimed his resurrected supervillain team at the Whorlocks out of the simplistic and mistaken assumption that any group of women rejecting male control must be composed solely of lesbians, it is true that four of the dozen Whorlocks fall afoul of the team’s vision of strict and enforced heterosexuality.  As such, their attacks upon the ragtag group of bimbos making their own way through the world have continued.  Sometimes they come with a frontal assault, but they are increasingly trying any number of schemes, cunning or crazed or both.  Every time, Lingerage is there to bash back.
• דּוּמָה, the Angel of Silence:  The Whorlocks, obviously, would never give up being what they have chosen to be.  However, their state does make it difficult for them to get their needs met sometimes, leaving prayers as the only currency they have to feed themselves, and to pay rent, and all the many other costs associated with keeping twelve people happy and alive.  Well, if they were different people, they’d probably have a wider variety of strategies, but see the previous note that they like being what and who they are.  This has made them something of an engine furiously throwing out requests to Heaven, which has in turn purchased them not only food and gifts, but דּוּמָה’s attention.  Megaconsumers of divine aid, they are the very epitome of what it hopes to avoid, taking up more than it considers their fair share of space on יהוה‎’s to-do list.  Empowered by a different divinity entirely, Lingerage has had to insist that fairness has little, if anything, to do with prayer.  Even under the effects of berserkergang, fists don’t help much against angelflesh, yet somehow Lingerage manages to come out ahead anyway.
• Powers:  Messenger to All That Lives, Longing (renamed) from Rack Angel’s statblock.  Flight, Summon Angels of Destruction, thousand eyes, flaming sword (Immunity (fire), Nullify Summon, Damage, other fire powers), magic item with spell array, Movement (dimensional), Senses (analytical extended rapid vision that counters concealment and illusion and penetrates concealment, darkvision, distance sense, infravision low-light vision, ultravision, microscopic vision, dimensional).  Sonic Absorption, Sonic Immunity, Phase Cancellation linked with Silence, Sonic Masking, White Noise, Lamal's Rebuke, Mists of the Modrossus, the Second Wheel of Weyan, the Fifth Wheel of Weyan, the Seventh Wheel of Weyan, the Wondrous Working of Weyan, Fireflash, close Melt, Nova Burst, Warm, Danger Sense, Defensive Awareness, Aura Reading, Lie Detector, X-Ray Vision, Synesthesia from Power Profiles. (PL 16) 
• Váli Óðinnson:  While Váli’s brother Víðarr might be fixated on avenging Silverbelle’s theft of their father’s intellectual property and aesthetic, Váli is an ulfhednar, a wolf-warrior.  News of a new berserker walking Miðgarðr naturally piqued his interest, and his rage when he discovered that it was a woman!  Completely ignoring his on father’s history, Váli became enraged that the one masculine magic was being co-opted by one who should, by all rights, be seiðkonur or völva.  He has once more taken his oath to kill, and has neither washed his hands nor combed his hair the entire duration of his pursuit of Lingerage.
• Powers:  Asgardian template from Book of Magic doubled, silence, additional super-strength (and most of the strength powers from Power Profiles), magic thick shoes, magic armor, magic shoes, rage (PL 16)
• Rack Angel:  The Whorlocks visited Rack Angel’s homeless shelter and soup kitchen shortly after they were liberated from the Patriarch’s control, before they really had their feet under them as a group and when times were even harder than they are now.  Seeing them as a group which has all-too-often been ignored, nay has made the uncharacteristic definition to refuse them the benefits of Vox Populi Vox Dei Est.  Nay simply cannot condone stealing the voice of the routinely voiceless.  This doesn’t mean the fallen angel has hardened nix heart against the group, however; perish the thought!  Rack Angel has simply had to find more mundane and effortful ways to give aid, and has been able to do so, in both forms!
• Lieutenant Bubblegum:  Glowsmith, the leader of the zamynto klyltling, sent one of her fellows to Earth in an attempt to recruit the klyltlingsa Bile, who had been the very first of the species to come to the planet.  It had been rejected by the other two interstellar polities of the klyltling, and Glowsmith thought that perhaps that might make it useful to the zamynto.  Sanguine, as Glowsmith’s agent came to be known by the Earthling media, had budded off of Glowsmith directly, which might perhaps be why it went rogue, joining Bile and two other klyltling in a superteam known as the Four Humors.  The Four Humors themselves ran afoul of the United States government, specifically the forces of Colonel Cadmus, head of Area 51 who had been charged with finding ways to weaponize superhumans.  Her agents managed to acquire a small portion of Sanguine’s amorphous body, which they took back to Area 51 and forced it to develop into a full-grown klyltlingsa while subjecting it to any number of cruel experiments.  One such involved exposing it to highly concentrated doses of magical radiation and alchemical mistures from the Land of Sweets, which seems to have turned it pink.  Once they thought they could do no more to the alien without killing it, they finally allowed it to bond with a soldier picked carefully for his patriotism, naming the result Lieutenant Bubblegum.  Colonel Cadmus sees a useful tool in the Whorlocks’ combination of lust amplification and lack of intelligence, and she has sent Lieutenant Bubblegum to collect the girls.  Lingerage has an opinion about this proposal.
• Powers:  Elite Soldier from Gamemaster’s Guide, Visual Concealment, blending, partial; Enhanced Traits (Agility, Strength, Benefit (ambidexterity), Fearless); Extra Limbs, continuous, AE: Str-based Damage, variable descriptor (weapon types); Immunity (all suffocation effects); Feature (extradimensional storage of 50 pounds of material), limited to one mass rank lower; Sticky (Affliction (Resisted and Overcome by Strength; Impaired, Disabled, Incapacitated), reaction (when touched); AE: same thing but ranged instead of reaction); Protection; Bubble (Deflect; AE: Immunity (life support)), Movement (Safe Fall, Swinging, Wall-Crawling).  Tarpit, Slingshot, Stretching Stride, and Stretching from Power Profiles (PL 11)
• The Patriarch:  Naturally enough, the women of the Whorlocks are the very definition of a Gigastacy to Bobby Lirdenham.  Worse yet, he made them that way, raised them from Stacylites (at best) to this exalted state, then they go on to call him a Melvin!  Simply unacceptable.  Ever since they were “liberated” from the effects of his inventions, he has sought to reclaim what he understands to be his natural position in the hierarchy.  For their part, the Whorlocks has found Bobby nauseatingly useful from time to time.  A few women (and one enby) have sought to join their ranks since they struck out on their own, prompting them to steal some of Bobby’s technology from him.  Once, HEART:ACHE II had almost defeated the Whorlocks, and it was only an uneasy alliance with the surprisingly gay-friendly Patriarch that they were able to fight off the homophobic supervillains; naturally, the Whorlocks turned on their former oppressor as soon as the danger had passed.
• Powers:  Pink pills (array:  Enhanced Trait 2: Attractive with Affects Others and Reduced Trait 3: Awareness or Enhanced Trait 3: Presence with Affects Others, Quirk: Increases Libido, and Reduced Trait 3: Intellect), bimbo-maker raygun (Weaken: Intellect with Quirk: Increases Libido), pheromone spray (Emotion Control from Power Profiles with Area and Limited to Horniness). Artificer, Inventor, Ritualist, Very Attractive, Fascinate, Daze.  Bitter Lash of Bal'Hemoth and the Enchantment of Ios and Mists of the Modrossus and Shatachna's Seal of Silence and Somnambulent Silence of Sirrion from Power Profiles (PL 11)
• Catspaw:  Dikadora made it a point to habitually check in on the Whorlocks after rescuing them, worried that some master plan of the Patriarch’s yet ensnared them or that their chosen horny vapidity would make them easy victims for any predator to come across them.  She was quite impressed when nothing like that occurred, and by then had struck up a number of friendships with the women.  Catspaw remains in close contact with the Whorlocks, has gone on several adventures with them, and has even begun dating Lingerage!

"My community, the BimboTok, the place that I’ve created, is so important to me because all it means to me is self-love. I will wear a mini-skirt with pride and you’re not going to blame me for the way that men treat us. We’re going to blame men for the way men treat us"
--Chrissy Chlapecka

Physical Appearance:  I can't draw, so I really like providing a few reference pictures and trusting in your imagination to build a good image of Catspaw.  She looks like some combination of these five pictures:

"A third song I know, if sore need should come

of a spell to stay my foes;

When I sing that song, which shall blunt their swords,

nor their weapons nor staves can wound

. . . .

An eleventh I know, if haply I lead

my old comrades out to war,

I sing 'neath the shields, and they fare forth mightily;

safe into battle,

safe out of battle,

and safe return from the strife."

--The Poetic Edda

Lingerage (PCPL 10 / NPCPL 7 / MR 10 / SKR 30)

STR 0⇰8 STA 0⇰4 AGL 0 DEX 1 

FGT 0⇰3 INT -2 AWE 1 PRE 2⇰6

Powers

Bear-sark Brassiere:   Device (removable), noticeable, quirk (must be the only thing worn, other than shoes, accessories, and makeup), alternate form (standard action required to activate) ● 90pp

• Berserkergang:  Enhanced Athletics 4; Enhanced Dodge 4; Enhanced Fighting 3; Enhanced Fortitude 2; Enhanced Parry 2; Enhanced Stamina 2; Enhanced Strength 6; Enhanced Will 2 ● 34pp
• Hamrammr:  Enhanced Perception 4; Feature 1 (eat anything); Growth 2; Immunity 50 (fire, piercing, slashing); Protection 2; Senses 2 (low-light vision, acute smell) ● 61pp
• Weapon-Blunting Glance:  Perception-ranged incurable move-action Weaken Damage 7 (resisted by Toughness), affects objects, limited to metal effects, limited to slashing and piercing damage ● 22pp

Cloud of Pheromones:  Permanent progressive insidious subtle 2 burst 2 olfactory-dependent Weaken Will 2 (Fortitude to resist) ● 9pp

Seductive Attention:  Visual-range cumulative vision-dependent Affliction 6 (resisted and overcome by Will; dazed, compelled, controlled), Persuasion check required (DC 10), limited to pursuing Lingerage romantically or sexually ● 11pp

Sexually Optimized Brain:  Enhanced Presence 4; Enhanced Persuasion 6; Enhanced Inspire 3 ● 18pp

Surgically Enhanced:  Enhanced Advantages 4 (Attractive 2, Fascinate (Persuasion), Great Endurance) ● 4pp

Advantages

{Attractive 2}, Benefit 2 (independently wealthy), Equipment 3, {Fascinate (Persuasion)}, {Great Endurance}, {Inspire 3}, Inventor

Equipment

Camera, knife (Strength-based Damage 1, Improved Critical), motorcycle (Medium; Str 1; Speed 6; Defense 10; Toughness 8), smartphone

Skills

Athletics 0 (0)⇰4 (+12), Expertise: Current Events 2 (0), Expertise: Pop Culture 2 (0), Expertise: Science 6 (+4), Intimidation 0⇰1, Investigation 4 (+2), Perception 0 (+1)⇰4 (+5), Persuasion 0 (2)⇰6 (+12), Stealth 0⇰-1, Technology 6 (+4), Vehicles 2 (+3)

Offense

Initiative 0

Unarmed 0⇰+3; Close, Damage 0⇰+8

Knife 0⇰+3; Close, Damage +1⇰+9, Improved Critical

Weapon-Blunting Glance Toughness vs. DC 17; Visual perception range, reduce Damage by check difference

Cloud of Pheromones Target’s Fortitude vs. DC 12; Within 60 feet of Lingerage, reduce Will by check difference

Seductive Attention Lingerage’s Persusion vs. DC 10 then target’s Will vs. DC 16; anyone who can see and be seen by Lingerage, 

Defense

Dodge 0 (+0)⇰4 (+3)

Fortitude 0 (0)⇰2 (+6)

Parry 0⇰2 (+4)

Toughness 0 (0)⇰4 (+8) 

Will 1 (+2)⇰3 (+4)

Size rank -2

Ground speed rank 0

Complications

Motivation ~ Responsibility:  The Whorlocks need a defender, someone to ensure that they never again fall under the dominion of a man (or anyone else) who would control and exploit them as the Patriarch once did.  Lingerage put herself forward to be that defender, and the collective of bimbos readily agreed.  Of course, this also means that many chores and random bits of work fall upon Lingerage’s occasionally-furry shoulders, but she doesn’t mind.  She loves this family she’s found.

Perpetually Horny:  The Patriarch’s processes overclocked and heightened the various hormonal and neurological processes involved in human sexual attraction, interest, and readiness.  Like all the Whorlocks, Lingerage chose to revert to that state after Catspaw freed them.  As such, their baseline is significantly hornier than the general population.

The Wages of Power:  Use of the Bear-Sark Brassiere takes a toll on the body it changes.  After any scene in which its power is used, the wearer must roll their unmodified Fortitude vs. a DC of 15.  On a success, they are impaired for the next day.  On one degree of failure, they are instead exhausted for the day; every degree of failure thereafter either adds a day to the duration.

Abilities 4 + Advantages 6 + Skills 11 + Powers 132 + Defenses 1 = 150pp

The Whorlock Procedure

The various chemical, ray-bomabrdment, and other ultra-scientific processes that the Whorlocks underwent and, on a couple of occasions, have given to others reduces the subject's INT to -2 and gives them the Perpetually Horny complication.  Its benefits are a bit more mercurial, especially as Dr. Banger both had to reverse-engineer the process and tries to operate it in her current condition.  The subject receives 30 power points, plus however many they lost with the INT reduction, to spend on Cloud of Pheromones, Seductive Attention, Sexually Optimized Brain, and Surgically Enhanced.  Almost always, Surgically Enhanced (Enhanced Attractive 1 or 2)) is among the powers chosen.  However, the options are not restricted to those manifested by Barbie ~ remember, it is a mercurial process ~ feel free to add any other sort of power based on the idea of being sexually attractive in some way.

Amalgam Cinematic Universe

This post, like all my posts, is only possible through the generosity of my patrons.  I'd like to thank Diana, Ferny, Keeper, and Dave, for their continued support!  If you'd like to join them, you can become a patron of mine here.   

Hmmm....

Iron Man 2 came out in 2010. Green Lantern (which, admittedly, sucked) came out in 2011.

In Amalgam Comics, there is Green Lantern, who is both of them jammed together by the powers of a cosmic-level mutant named Access and metacosmic beings known only as the Brothers.

What if there was an ACU (Amalgam Comics Universe)?

Phase 1 Films (12)

Iron Lantern: When Hal Stark, veritable rock star in the world of aircraft manufacturing and technology, escapes imprisonment from the Legion of the Ten Rings terrorist group, this newly changed man shuts down his entire weapons division and dons the Iron Lantern suit he created from alien technology to fight the Highly Evolved Creature Totally Oriented on Revenge (H.E.C.T.O.R.), changing the entire world in the process.

The Incomprehensible Skulk: Bruce Banner is a man on the run. Once a brilliant scientist, radiation from his failure in recreating the 1940s Super Soldier serum changed him into the mindlessly sullen monster known as the Skulk. Dr. Strangefate's magics can return him to humanity for short periods of time; however, Thunderbolt Ross, his old government benefactor, only sees a weapon and will stop at nothing to reclaim it.

JLX Origins: Dark Claw: Having come to live with his RCMP uncle after the death of his father, Logan Wayne ends up having to flee with his first cousin, Creed H. Quinn, after criminals kill his uncle, too.  The two join the Royal Canadian Army and fight together as soldiers for the next century, eventually transferring to the Royal Canadian Ari Force and becoming enrolled in Canada’s answer to the Super-Soldier program, known as Weapon X.  Simultaneously the program’s greatest successes and greatest failures (for Logan has a conscience and Creed is criminally insane), the two fought alongside other superhumans in Team X.  After Weapon X is finally dismantled as a result of his leaving the team disgusted by their lack of concern for life, Logan lives as a lumberjack with a woman by the name of Kayla Silverfox.  General William Stryker arrives, claiming that Quinn ~ now known as the Hyena ~ has killed Kayla.  Logan agrees to have adamantium attached to his skeleton so that he can defeat the Hyena, but breaks out after overhearing that Stryker wants his memory erased.  He learns during the breakout that Stryker is in the service of ancient metamutant Ra’s A-Pocalypse, who wishes the destruction of all other metamutants.  The movie ends with Dark Claw and Hyena teaming up to defend New Gotham City from Ra’s A-Pocalypse, Ebenezer Crane / Scarecrow, and General Stryker’s team of metamutant agents.

Iron Lantern 2: Hal Stark's ego has grown something fierce since announcing that he is Iron Lantern. Throwing lavish parties and organizing massive expos, he's living like a man with nothing to lose. But a smarmy rival, a mysterious foe with a powerful grudge, and Agent Bruce Wayne of S.H.I.E.L.D. remind him of who he is and what his legacy means.

Thorion of the New Asgods: After prideful and vain Prince Orion Thanoseidson is resurrected on Midgard (Earth) by Highfather Odin using the power of the Hammer of the Old Gods, he grows close to Dr. Jane Foster and learns compassion and humility, taking the name Thorion the Hunter. All the while his half-brother L'ok D'saad of Apokolips, schemes to conquer New Asgard for their true father, Thanoseid.

Super-Soldier: Founder of the Justice League Avengers: World War II is coming to a close, but the Nazi deep-science division HYDRA is still a problem. Clark Kent is chosen to become the Allied Powers' first-ever Super-Soldier thanks to cellular samples from an alien corpse and an infusion of solar radiation, and together with a Franco-British agent codenamed Mademoiselle Peggy and Sgt. Rock's Howling Commandos, Super-Soldier fights to save the world from the ambitions of HYDRA's insane leader, Lex Luthor / The Green Skull.

The Dark Claw:  Logan Wayne is summoned to Hawai’i by the head of a tech company, whose life he saved when they were both imprisoned in a POW camp in Nagasaki in 1945.  The man offers to relieve Dark Claw of the immortality which so curses the hero, transferring it into the executive’s body instead.  Logan is tempted but after battling the Hyena (who had followed him to Japan on a whim), he refuses; that night, he dreams of the man’s doctor introducing something to his body.  After gangsters in the service of the Hyena shoot up the executive’s funeral, Logan escapes with the man’s granddaughter (with whom he falls in love), his wounds healing more slowly than usual. The two team up with the local district attorney, Harvey Osborn, to defeat the Hyena.  In the process, they discover a robotic parasite on Logan’s heart, suppressing his metamutant ability to heal; while Logan cuts himself open to remove it, they are attacked and the granddaughter taken.  Logan turns to the district attorney for help, only to find that the Hyena has facilitated his transformation into a supervillain calling himself the Two-Faced Goblin.  Tracking his love interest, the Dark Claw arrives just in time to witness her death at the hands of the Hyena, be captured, and be hooked up to a machine designed to remove his metamutant abilities.  The Silver Samurai, a suit of electromechanical armor with energized adamantium katana reveals itself as the man who brought Logan to Japan, having faked his death in an attempt to acquire immortality.  With help, Logan escapes and kills the Silver Samurai.

Man of War: After sacrificing himself to defeat Ultra-Metallo, a robot built by the Green Skull, Clark Kent wakes up to find himself in a 1940s-style hospital room.  Hearing a radio broadcast of a baseball game that he attended in 1941, Kent grows suspicious, flees outside and finds himself in present-day Times Square, where Agent Bruce Wayne of S.H.I.E.L.D. informs him that he has been "asleep" for nearly 70 years.  Agent Wayne proposes a mission with worldwide importance, sending Super-Soldier to investigate a starship resently discovered in the Canadian Arctic by the Green Skull's daughter, Selina Luthor (also known as Madame Cat).  Clark learns much about the alien species that contributed its cells to the formula that transformed him (falling in love with Madame Cat in the process).  Just in time for a fascist criminal from that species to escape from the Phantom Negative Zone and attack Super-Soldier in hopes of rebuilding his planet's population and building a society on his ideal of genetic purity.

Dark Claw vs. Super-Soldier: Avenging Dawn:  In the aftermath of the destruction in Metropolis caused by the fascists in *Man of War*, Logan Wayne/Dark Claw grows dangerously wary of Super-Soldier despite the latter’s mid-century fame and having saved Earth, and sets out to kill him. Public opinion is also deeply split about the Man of War. Meanwhile, the sinister Green Skull conspires against both superheroes behind the scene, turning a scientist employed by him into Doctor Doomsday, who finally kills Super-Soldier.

Imperial Suicide Squad: Unscrupulous Shi’ar government official Amanda Deathbird secretly creates an expendable black ops team on Earth, Task Force X ("The Imperial Suicide Squad"), by coercing super-criminals (Deadeye, Typhoid Harley, Captain Boomerang, Diablo the Volcano Man, Cybercroc and Slipknot) into it. When she accidentally resurrects Enchanted Tigra, former lover of Thanoseid and mother of Orion/Thorion, Amanda Deathbird sends the team to deal with the threat. Meanwhile, the Hyena sets out to rescue his lover, Harley.

Freelance: Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, grows up and trains as a warrior on the isle of Themyscira alongside her adopted sister and rival, the rescued metamutant Ororo. Upon rescuing the vengeance-driven US pilot and secret agent Trevor Castle (codenamed the Punisher) from nearly being killed by a Mafia criminal, she sets out to kill the god of war Ares on the European battlefields of World War I.

Justice League Avengers: Following the death of Super-Soldier, L'ok D'saad has returned with a vengeance and the Steppenwolf Legions in tow, declaring war on Earth with the intent to bring the powerful Tesseract to his father. To stop this threat, Agent Bruce Wayne of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Freelance assemble the greatest heroes Earth will ever have: Hal Stark / Iron Lantern, Clark Kent / Super-Soldier, Arthur McKenzie / the Aqua-Mariner, Thorion the Hunter, Bruce Banner / The Skulk, Blaze Allen / Speed Demon, Eve Romanoff / Night Widow (given powers from the Darkshade Dimension by a Soviet attempt to recreate Super-Soldier), Clint Archer / Hawkeye (who studied archery in a Tibetan monastery while creating an arsenal of high-tech trick arrows), and Aaron Stone / Cyber Man.