Superheroes: Lady Suprema

Lady Suprema (Silver Age)

A cephalopodic alien refugee from the planet Xenon that crash lands into the Pacific Ocean as a baby after the devastation of their world. When she discovers humanity she arranges herself to be collected for research. As she learns human communication she eventually reveals herself to the grad student of the lab, Larry Larson.

 

There should be a lot more here but... 

 

Powers

As a Xenonian, Lady Suprema resonates at the hydrothermal frequency of the Earth's biosphere; she is empowered by the origin of Earth's life itself. She has super-strength, durability, speed, and senses; flight; a variety of more peculiar powers such as the ability swim through liquid time and project crystallized lightning from her tentacle suckers.

  

Warlord Mystar

A brutish space warlord with a Digitizer Lance. When it strikes the heart of a world, the kinetic blast vaporizes the world and absorbs the space dust from which it constructs a digital replica. Each digitized world is bound in service to Warlord Mystar to maintain some critical and complicated system of his fleet like weapons, navigation, supply chain, or manufacturing.

 
The Operator
A supergenius Xenonian from the colony planet Radon that manages against his will a skyscraper-sized switchboard for the digitized worlds. Radon is among the digitized, hidden and held hostage by Warlord Mystar.

The Free City of Radonite

Lady Suprema was able to reclaim some of the Radonite space dust from Warlord Mystar's Digitizer Lance and reconstruct it as the Free City of Radonite. The city sits on top of a mechanized asteroid fighting a guerilla war against Warlord Mystar and his fleet. The reconstituted citizens are Xenonian but have only a fraction of Lady Suprema's power.

 

Lady Suprema (Bronze Age)

DC purchased the rights to Lady Suprema in the early 90's, relaunching the character for the Vertigo imprint, written by Jamie Delano and drawn by J.H. Williams III.

 

In the Bronze Age, Lady Suprema is humanoid and raised by Pakistani Brits as Zara Zaidi. Her origins are never made explicit, but the Xenonians are implied to be some Lovecraftian, god-like inter-dimensional super-beings.

 

Although Zara appears human, her internals are strange, full of uncanny organs and biological impossibilities. She finds herself often sick, or exhibiting unusual allergic responses, and having uncomfortable interactions with incredulous doctors. The series was full of graphic depictions of her body through brutal injuries in fights, or Cronenbergian body horror dream sequences, or invasive medical procedures. One infamous issue depicted an exploratory surgery panel-by-panel over the course of the entire issue.

 

Warlord Mystar is reimagined as Warren Meister, CEO of Warmaster Games and developer of the VR-MMORPG Radon Crusade. The Operator is an Artificial General Intelligence of Xenonian origin enslaved by Meister.

 

Again, should be more here... 

 

Lady Suprema (Modern Age)

In the Modern Age, the previous versions of the character are reconciled. The Zara Zaidi identity is maintained, but many of the Silver Age scifi concepts, including the ability to transform into her original cephalopod form, are reintroduced as canon.

 

 

Apparently still not quite emotionally ready to go a month without posting so this is going up incomplete. I know the core idea is kinda goofy, "what if Superman was a cephalopod", but I liked the idea. But then later it came to me, Superman is a humanoid alien; he looks like us but perhaps on the inside he's quite different, and wouldn't that be weird? I like the idea of a Modern Age comic that synthesizes the two, but I suspect the Bronze Age / Vertigo series would be the one that would reel me in to the character.

Blood Poppies

In a state of ego death, one's whole body oscillates in an impossible rhythm, communing through a cross dimensional collective unconscious with planet Phaeton and all the other worlds. As the Blood Poppies course through bodies, the iridescent ichor that leaks out from orifices and skin lesions breaks down the barriers between self and other. While a powerful resource and technology, prolonged use comes with many severe side effects, including complete integration into the Noosphere; the experience is often described as being dragged into an infinite abyss by Eldritch beings or falling into a black hole by those who manage to escape it's gravity, ending in a kind of undeath.

 

As Ego alive and undead accumulates in the Noosphere, it's density pulls on the fabric of consensus reality. The Noosphere is something like a dreamscape, a collective unconscious, the internet, a rave, or a psychedelic trip; it is both a Magic and Technology, a phenomenal experience that imposes itself on physical reality. Over time this Magic has been colonized, commidified, and converted by the Empire and other special interests, and it all begins with the Blood Poppies.

 

The Blood Poppies have made Phaeton wealthy and powerful. They serves as a drug and medicine, a medium of art and communication, a tool and weapon, a religion and a postmodern science; new applications and new ideas and new experiences, all the time.

 

When the Empire arrived on Phaeton the planet was caught in a Dark Age reminiscent of the 21st-22nd Centuries (Earth Calendar). Some of the artifacts and technologies remained, particularly those most critical to sustaining life on a hostile world, but otherwise lacked the organization or institutional knowledge to leverage what they had, making them easy targets for colonization.

 

The humans who long ago settled on Phaeton have cultivated certain unique knowledge and skills nonetheless. Whereas the rest of the galaxy even up to the present have only been able to create Embodied Machines, the Phaetonians in their deep past created true Phenomenal Machines, thinking machines both embodied and imbued with phenomenology. While the Phenomenal Machines still wander Phaeton in limited numbers today, the Phaetonians are the only ones who know how to work with them, like communing with spirits and magical beasts.

 

Limited physical records and engrams in the Noosphere suggest that the Dark Age was triggered by either a war between some factions of Phaetonians, Phenomenal Machines, and Egos both human and alien in the Noosphere, or alternatively that an alien Ego ravaged the world like a plague. What remains of the Phenomenal Machines are data center dungeons buried deep underground in the old train networks, sometimes marked by pyramids or ziggurats or other such structures above, and these dungeons remotely power the remaining feasible robots or cybernetic artifacts. Too far removed from human consciousness to be truly understood, most robots and cyborgs wander silently like monks or fey creatures, although some have gone mad, like monsters, or evil wizards controlling their data center dungeons towards seemingly no end.

 

The Prismatic Bees that pollinate the Blood Poppies were assumed to be indigenous to Phaeton, however recently discovered engrams suggest that either they came from the Noosphere, or else an alien Ego from the Noosphere exerts its will in the material world through them as a superorganism. The Temple of the Blood Prism, both a physical structure and an organization, built their faith around this alien Ego. The Temple are the beekeepers, the merchants of Blood Poppies, and those who make the pilgrimage to pray at the Temple generate Ego, empowering their node in the Noosphere.

 

The Prismatic Bees look like a cross between a bee, locust, and mantis shrimp. They glow with broad-spectrum light more like a star than any other bioluminescence, and range in sizes from a typical bee, a wolf, or a dragon. When agitated they can level structures, turn night to bright day, and irradiate like atomics. 

 

 

Inspirations: I was going for something like Dune, not in terms of like sandworms and spice, but in terms of blending scifi and fantasy, an ecology and economy built around a unique resource, "geo"politics, and spirituality. Also takes some inspiration from cyberpunk. I originally had larger ambitions for this micro-setting but once again I let it languish so I think this just needs to go up as-is. The data center dungeons were meant to make it more explicitly gamable, and I had other ideas for more factions and fleshing out the mechanics of the Blood Poppies and the Prismatic Bees, so maybe I'll come back to this some day.

Patrick Stuart & Amanda Lee Franck Interview: The Doom of the Dark

 

This is my second interview with Patrick (and first with Amanda!), this time about his current Kickstarter The Doom of the Dark. Unlike my previous interview with Patrick which was in text, this is a video interview embedded below.

Doom of the Dark trailer

 

Weird & Wonderful Worlds interview with Patrick Stuart

 

Additionally, Amanda wanted to share Fantasy Art History with Abelard and Joe, her sock puppet youtube show! Amanda can be found on instagram and itch.

 

Patrick wanted to share the kickstarter page for Knights of the Snail Book One, which will likely launch later this year, and his recently launched book Queen Mabs Palace. Patrick can be found on the False Machine blog and substack.

 

If this is your first time reading Weird & Wonderful Worlds, I'd like to point you to two of my projects.

 

Maximum Recursion Depth, or Sometimes the Only Way to Win is to Stop Playing: The Karmapunk RPG is my TTRPG, available in print+pdf on Exulted Funeral, or pdf-only on drivethrurpg and itch.

 

 

I've also been working on The Superhero Project, an SCP-style collaborative worldbuilding project that's like a wiki for a fictional superhero publisher with a focus on Morrison-esque weirdness. The codebase is open source, seeking contributors but more than that suggestions for how the project should operate logistically, and most of all someone with graphic design or frontend experience to make it look nice.

 

And finally for those of you here specifically for T&T, many years ago I wrote quite a bit of T&T content. 

THE SUPERHERO PROJECT

"The Superhero Project" is a pet project I proposed several years ago and most of my blog posts with the superheroes tag were created with this project in mind. I have finally started developing it and theoretically it could be deployed as an actual public website relatively soon.

 

The idea is for an SCP-style open source, creative commons, collaborative worldbuilding project, but specifically for a shared Superhero universe similar to Marvel or DC, while also perhaps being more Weird & Wonderful ;).

 

I have made the code open source and someone with software engineering skills should theoretically be able to create a local build, as I am currently developing with, but also keep in mind it's very much still WIP.

 

Here is the Superhero Project GitHub Repo.

 

Also embedded in this blog post is a video demo of the local build.

 

EDIT: I originally uploaded the video directly to blogger but they downscale it to 360p so I've uploaded it unlisted to youtube instead. 

 

 

Even technical things aside, a lot of this is WIP. Here are some questions I have, I'm sure I have many more...

 

• What should the project be called?
  
  
• Is there anyone with frontend and graphic design experience especially who would like to contribute? 
  
  
•  How do I effectively convey the wiki-style of the project i.e. the meta vs. in-universe concepts?
  
  
• Are the Type fields sufficient? Should it be more constrained or less constrained?
  
  
• Does Markdown for the Content make sense?
  
  
• Any other general questions, thoughts, comments, concerns, etc.? 

Superheroes: The Rat

A small wiry man in a black bodysuit, red shorts, brown loafers, white gloves with torn fingers exposing dirty, gnarly long nails, and wearing a cheap costume mask of a rat mascot.

 

Most Rat comics are a single issue or short story arc, beginning with The Rat shown out of costume but obscured so as to hide any identifying features, working some mundane job like dish washer or street maintenance worker. Other characters serve as the point of view character, and plot points not experienced from PoV are inferred through interactions with The Rat or through the consequences of his actions.

 

The Rat rarely speaks, so much of his background and motivation are unknown. Some revelations or implications are that he is an orphan, and as a child he was diagnosed with multiple speech, learning, and mental health disorders. Most of his stories center around the unhoused, especially sex workers and children.

 

He has a possibly superheruman ability to withstand and inflict suffering, although this may be an affectation of the storytelling and the perceptions of the PoV characters. He does not have any obvious combat training either. Compensating for his small size and lack of training is his tenacity; he often grapples around his larger foes, slashes with his nails, bites, and makes unsettling noises such as yells, grunts, or hisses to rattle his opponents. The art and action choreography is often presented as equal parts visceral gritty ultraviolence and clumsy, erratic, grotesquery.

 

While The Rat stories are often street-level, rooted in the real world and social issues, it is also not uncommon for them to explore literal or thematic Mythic Underworlds and supernatural elements.

 

Most stories end with The Rat seemingly dying in some gruesome or awful manner, with only a sliver of plausibility of him living to the next story, implying The Rat may be immortal, or that each story may actually be a different person embodying The Rat.

Shining Mother Gamayun

Psychedelic sword and sorcery setting. A world ruled by a flying matriarchal species in the midst of a paradigm shift.

The dominant species of this world are the Lamia, an all-female* chimeric species granted the power of flight by their matriarch, the Shining Mother Gamayun. They depend on humans for reproduction, acquiring young children who transform into Lamia during puberty, or less frequently consorting with adults for sexual reproduction. For this reason they tolerate human civilization on the earth, although humans are banned from the seas or skies. Children are sometimes bought or stolen, but most are acquired through coercion. Entire cultures have been domesticated; rendered dependent on and indoctrinated in fealty to the Lamia.
* Although the Lamia are biologically all female, they express gender multidimensionally.

Lamian society values art and aesthetics above all else. Their markets are a quasi-capitalist system of performance, nest crafting, singing, collecting, and patronage. The closest equivalent they have to coin are Shinies, which were originally shining objects, but the word has since evolved to refer to a variety of rare and beautiful objects.

Shining Mother Gamayun, the Lamian Matriarch, spends most of her time in the sound baths of the Crystal Moon, transmitting the Lunar Songs through moon beams which the Lamia record through their various Shinies. The recordings of the Lunar Songs combine elements of tabular data and cultural mnemonics and serve as muse and oracle and fuel; the source of Lamian arts and crafts, divine providence, the luster of Shinies, and tactical acumen in their skirmishes against the human civilizations.

Lamian aeries are discorporated over vast swathes of land and sea; atop treacherous mountains, remote islands, forest and jungle treetops. Through the flight granted by Gamayun and the power of Shinies, there are fewer barriers to transit, so Lamian aeries are less so defined by geography, walls, structures, and borders, and instead more by flocks and migration patterns. Their domain sits atop that of human civilizations, they largely don't need to compete, and anyway the Lamia don't see it as much of a competition; they literally reign over humanity, to observe and strike freely; human armies cut down before they can even train and organize a contingent of archers large enough to pose a threat.

The Lamia see humans as stupid and brutish and ugly, they lack art or soul, they do not Shine. They are disgusting but must be tolerated, they serve a necessary role in the Lunar Songs.

Only recently have the Lamia faced serious threat from humans. A man stole the Love of a Lamian High Witch. He flew the stars upon her back, and when he was done with her he slew her on an alien world and traded her Love for Shinies which he shrewdly invested. His return was on the backs of monsters in his employ, across Dreamland roads paved over dead dreams, lit day through night with Miracle Gold harvested from stars in the state of Being and Becoming. The man, now called Immortal God King Gilgamesh, built the Uruk Empire with the Miracle Gold, a substance like the Philosopher Stone of ancient myth. It generates warmth and light and genius, it sterilizes germs and cures illnesses, and channels aether and lightning to power newly developing machines used as tools, vehicles, and weapons. The Lamia are as vulnerable to Miracle Gold as are the Fey to Cold Iron or Werewolves and other Night Creatures to Silver.

 

A representation of Shining Mother Gamayun

A game in this setting would likely be human PCs who are citizens of or otherwise involved with the Uruk Empire. I implied at the end that there are other species in this setting like Fey and Werewolves and other Night Creatures, so those could be expanded upon.

 

PCs could get up to regular D&D or Sword & Sorcery shenanigans, and there could be various political machinations and grander conflicts between the Shining Mother Gamayun's Aerie and Immortal God King Gilgamesh's Uruk Empire.

 

It's also mentioned that the Lamia are capable of traveling the stars, and that there are alien worlds with intelligent life, and a Dreamland, so there's room for scifi and science fantasy and cosmic horror.

 

I also intentionally reused concepts and characters from real mythology and prehistory, so this could be an alternate universe or a far future or an ancient past or a Dreamland in itself.

 

I would like to add at least one more major Lamian character or faction, something like an Evil Witch or Hermit Witch, and another human civilization besides the Uruk Empire.

 

I could also provide some examples of Shinies or Lamian spells from the Lunar Song or the machines and weapons created with Miracle Gold, but I'm not really trying to do anything too fancy with that, it can just be regular D&D magics. I guess I see the Miracle Gold stuff as Da Vincian but they can be steampunk or whatever else you want.

 

Shinies could work as currency, but it shouldn't be 1:1 with gold, it should be mechanically distinct, leaning into ideas around Art and Adventure. It would take inspiration from theories presented in Graebor and Wengrow's Dawn of Everything and Prum's The Evolution of Beauty. 

Goblin Frame

A cyberpunk fantasy setting. After centuries of exploitation and massacre, the goblins struck back, and now it's their world.

Whether human or elf or orc, everything is too large. This world wasn't made for you, it was made for a Goblin Frame. Nonetheless, there are niches for those who can fit into the nooks and crannies of society, too small to be bothered with.

 

I know it's short but my other drafts are unfinished and probably not getting finished before the end of the month and I'm not emotionally ready to lose my >=1post/month streak that's been going since I started blogging mid-2018...