Halt Evil Doer! 3.0 - Even more Zaziness!

[Charles Phipps]

Charles, one question...are there other sourcebooks for HED! besides the main one? I am finished with it now and I still find myseelf having a lot of questions...for example, a writeup or listing of the other Entropic Masters would be wonderful...also, did I get it right from Ymir's writeup that some of the Norse gods are actually evil (except for Loki)?

Well, feel free to check out the other two threads but aside from the Defcon 1 supplements by Mike Lafferty, there's no "official" material released for HED! Everything else comes from the threads here (1, 2, and 3).

1. You'll find a list of the Entropic Masters in thread one.

viewtopic.php?p=548029#548029

2. The Norse gods have "Blue and Orange Morality" (see TV tropes) in that their values are utterly removed from modern humanity but they're mistaken for evil by Ymir who is pretty solidly behind Loki the Liesmith. The irony that Loki is ALSO Blue and Orange Morality is somewhat lost on Ymir, who is a pretty solid Chaotic Good.

viewtopic.php?p=533078#p533078

Feel free to ask any questions you want.

[Charles Phipps]

Doubtless "Mad Science and when to leave it alone 101" has become an extremely popular class .

Ethics is taught by Cynthia Van Helsing, who wields a mallet...

Not to mention the worst ones, who kept the bright ideas but not the Aeon Morality - not even a wonky version thereof. One MUST remember Nekros, of course, since if we don't he'll probably Kane us for insolence. . .

The Aeon Knights Code is the following:

* I shall use science for the benefit of mankind.
* I shall seek to promote the cause of science whenever possible.
* I shall recognize science does not preclude emotion, morality, religion, freedom, or imagination.
* I shall not try and take over the world (unless it is absolutely necessary)
* I shall defend those weaker than myself.
* I shall not experiment on people without their permission.
* I will take responsibility for any sentient organisms I may or may not create.
* I will not attempt to deliberately cause temporal paradoxes or risk universe destroying events.

And so on...

To this day Infamy has yet to decide whether Grampa Vice was more of a Scarface or a Corleone - he has therefore been persuaded by Penny to go back in time and try to make Al Pacino star in a biography.

Honestly, Vice's career is more like an American Guy Richie film.

Ditto Infamy.

Which I suppose is mostly a Quentin Tarantino film.

Out of curiosity Charles, just how do you characterise The Hierophant? I'm flattered that you and others have continued to use a character born out of brief blurb, so I am also interested in how your mental picture of him may differ from my own.

I see him as sort of the Khelban/Ebenezer McCoy/Vincent Price to Merlin's Elminster/David Tennant's Doctor/Dumbledore. Hierophant is more or less Doctor Strange with a solid LN alignment whenever the world's crazy elements are needed to be protected.

Privatel, he's a bit of an oddball flake who is not TOO exaggerated if you compared him to Doctor Orpheus.

[quote=Libra]Amusingly Professor PB seems to have modelled his speaking voice on that of Penny's Dad, at least when he's able to speak REAL English, as opposed to 'Talking Dog trying to avoid a witch-hunter mob' English.

There's nothing like a cartoonish speaking voice to let you get away with being a Talking Dog![/quote]

HA!

[Charles Phipps]

Your lost cities work is spectacular as always, Phrozen.

Two thumbs up!

[Neo-Paladin]

Thanks for the links, Libra...and Ymir is pretty much my favourite character in all of HED!

[Charles Phipps]

Cool!

Feel free to share what you like!

I feel absolutely NO shame at flattery!

[Libra]

I, on the other hand, am proud enough to cringe with shame when I'm mistakenly handled a compliment!

Thanks for the links, Libra...

Neo-Paladin, in this case you should thank Charles, not I, since HE actually posted those links!

Ethics is taught by Cynthia Van Helsing, who wields a mallet...

I believe that mallet happens to be saved for Metahumans and that she prefers to take a gavel to the fingers of back-sliding frat-heads!

* I will not attempt to deliberately cause temporal paradoxes or risk universe destroying events.

"Except when I can get away with it by shouting 'Timey Wimey' and/or 'Quantum!"

Honestly, Vice's career is more like an American Guy Richie film.

Which I suppose is mostly a Quentin Tarantino film.

Really? pity ...

(well ... I suppose that's not too bad really).

I see him as sort of the Khelban/Ebenezer McCoy/Vincent Price to Merlin's Elminster/David Tennant's Doctor/Dumbledore. Hierophant is more or less Doctor Strange with a solid LN alignment whenever the world's crazy elements are needed to be protected.

I'm sold if you make that /Christopher Lee - we wouldn't want to get a certain Master Mage mixed up with The Hierophant in any crossovers, would we now?

Privately, he's a bit of an oddball flake who is not TOO exaggerated if you compared him to Doctor Orpheus.

Only when he's had his tea and can therefore safely interact with headstrong ruddy snarks without feeling a crippling urge to turn them into toads or mindwipe them from his memory!

HA!

Ah-ha your laugh for the week has arrived - my work here is done.

[Neo-Paladin]

Sorry, Charles...I had Libra's name floating in the back of my head, no idea why...of course, I am thanking YOU I'll find something to thank Libra for, too, I reckon

What i like most about Ymir and the stuff he handles (insane gods etc.) is that it's so wonderfully hammy and unapologetically over the top while still leaving a lot of room for drama and character development. It's the distilled essence of what i love about superheroes
Ymir even inspired a character of mind in Champions Online: NUKLEON, GOD OF THE ATOM! (always shouted), a scientist who got irradiated and now thinks he's a divine representation of nuklear power...mixing it up with genuine gods and legendary monsters in battles he isn't even supposed to take part in...nice, friendly but incredibly hammy...

On a different note, by the way...can someone point me to a good instruction on how to convert 2e stats to 3e?
I'd like to use some of the HED! stuff as basis for my own writeups for Earth-47.

[Phrozen]

Your lost cities work is spectacular as always, Phrozen.

Two thumbs up!

Thanks Charles.

I think my next project will be some humorous D-listers. How does Mr. Red Tape and Major Killjoy sound as villain names?

[Charles Phipps]

They sound like great villains, guys!

BTW, after I finish the Liberators, I'm going to do an extensive write-up on the Future of Wonders.

Star Trek
The Legion of Superheroes
Buck Rogers (as played by Ymir!)
Mass Effect

And even Megaman.

Basically, humanity had advanced to ridiculously Utopian levels where everything is seemingly peaceful and pleasant. The problem is, well, not to put too fine a point on it.... mankind has become a race filled with weenies.

Earth is pretty vulnerable in the wake of the Great Disaster and its attempts to shed its past and it falls to a small cadre of human beings brave, noble, and honorable enough to defend the human race in the cowboy New Frontier while humanity sort of takes for granted the prosperity that they have. Most of the old space empires have collapsed and it's up to the heroes to make Earth a shining beacon of hope, as opposed to a future victim.

[Phrozen]

Star Trek and Mass Effect don't seem like they would go together. One is about space communists and how the Federation is so great the other about fighting against Space Squid and that government couldn't find a clue if you showed it to them. Which you did many times. Also, it has the younger Cancer Man with weird eyes.

[Charles Phipps]

Star Trek and Mass Effect don't seem like they would go together. One is about space communists and how the Federation is so great the other about fighting against Space Squid and that government couldn't find a clue if you showed it to them. Which you did many times. Also, it has the younger Cancer Man with weird eyes.

The short version is that the Galactic Federation of Allied Worlds is pretty much desperately TRYING to be the Federation, but the problem is that the galaxy is filled with colossal psychos who don't respect the message of universal brotherhood and peace.

So it falls to the Captain Kirks and Shepards of the galaxy to punch the galaxy in the face until it accepts LOVE AND PEACE.

*PUNCH*

"I SAID LOVE AND PEACE!"

[Charles Phipps]

Starfall

One of the biggest flaws of the Thran is the fact that they've achieved something of a genetic bottleneck. Having interbred their royal houses so thoroughly and screened their genetics so well, they've made it impossible for random mutation to increase their genetic power base. To be fair, evolution doesn't really work in a straight line but the eugenics obsessed Thran ignore this.

Their arguably most successful attempt to reverse this involved a young girl genetically engineered to be the "perfect" Thran, simulating the cumulative effects of natural genetic screening in an uncontrolled environment like planet Earth over the course of several million years. Starfall tries not to think of the literally billions of aborted lives that must have occurred in that laboratory to bring about her existence.

Artificially aged to adulthood, Starfall possessed strength comparable to (if not equal to) the Mithran as well as psychic abilities nearly as powerful as the Grigori. Furthermore, Starfall was extraordinarily intelligent and wise. Too wise. Starfall resisted the attempts to condition her to be a loyal servant of the empire and was horrified by their plans to breed her "en masse" via cloning to the various royal houses.

Easily defeating the unprepared Star Guard, Starfall stole a ship and spent the next few decades attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment. This occurred, of course, on Earth. Crash-landing on the Thran's motherworld, she recovered a set of Tsavong Stones from the ship that shot her down. The Tsavong Stones were immensely powerful mystical artifacts that the brutal Adjucator was seeking for his own race's advancement.

During her time on Earth, Starfall displayed a naive innocence about daily human interaction. She made many "normal" human frends while accidentally screwing up their lives with the best of intentions. At times, thanks to the Tsavong stones, she seemed close to omnipotent. Honestly, however, she had almost no real control over the obscenely powerful magical artifacts.

In the end, after single handedly fighting off an entire Thran fleet of alien invaders, she realized that her presence was attracting far too much trouble to her adopted homeworld. Speeding off into space, she came to live on the planet Edenia with her mortal lover. Eventually, after he perished of entirely natural causes, she returned to assist the people of Earth in several cosmic events.

She has since gone on to become a PL X entity.

[Charles Phipps]

As a note, my recent entry in the Amazing! thread about Whispering Meadows applies to a city in the HED! verse too.

I figure Phrozen may want to do that one.

[Charles Phipps]

The Order of the Ninth Circle

"We give praise to our Horned God, Lord of the Eighth, Bringer of Darkness and Despair with this offering of blood and suffering. Let him strike down our enemies, spare our existences, and dull the horrid fate which awaits us post death. Amen. *ahem* Okay, gang, now that that's done who wants smores?"
-Typical Ninth Circle Den Mother during a prayer meeting.

Satanism in Heroic Earth is... weird.

The first issue is, of course, that they are well aware their deities are real. They exist and answer their prayers when summoned. Next, of course, they have the difficult theological question of how to deal with the fact that their deities are directly opposed to all that's good in the universe.

The third issue is, of course, that demons aren't particularly interested in the sort of people who would normally be attracted to Satanism. The Damned are already sent their way and the Good are useless to them, so they're more interested in luring the people who can be persuaded one way or the other.

The Order of the Ninth Circle is the best compromise the Lords of Nightmares could find. It is an order of largely average, normal, and pleasant people who love their children and raise them in loving households. They also are engaged in all manner of depraved acts of murder, occult research, and supernatural rites.

The Order of the Ninth Circle is the assistant to many occult-based villains, bizarrely believing that way they do is actually for the greater good. Their philosophy is convoluted and based around the belief evil is necessary to conceptualize good. As a result, many are eager to join in plots that have seemingly no benefit to the world as a whole or even themselves.

Of course, like any religion, the cult has its "Sunday only" members. These individuals mostly make use of black magic to enrich themselves and keep within towns they have taken over. These make only the occasional human sacrifice, usually outsiders, and reap the rewards expected of such actions.

Because of the obvious benefits of succubi and incubi, a staggering number of cultists have demonic blood running through their veins. In some communities, this means deformities and "strange behavior", while in others it means tha its members are superhumanly successful and charismatic. The modern age has resulted in many branches of the organization worldwide, much like Christianity, and usually they're willing to help one another even if they are not necessarily the same group. As a result, Wolfram and Hart-style law firms mix with Silent Hill-esque cults.

Disturbingly, the Order is actually growing larger as opposed to smaller as a number of its sects have come forth and tried to start presenting themselves as a legitimate movement. After an initial scandal, the organization has actually managed to sell itself as an eccentric pagan cult (hiding its "upper mysteries" has helped matters tremendously).

The comfort of a doctrine that states the world is a terrible place because the gods are terrible and need to be placated has a nihilistic honesty that appeals to many. The material benefits of magic being offered directly to people is also something which doesn't necessarily work for everyone but works for enough that it is also a serious attraction.

Unlike Satanism in real life, the organization is a theistic organization which directly reveres the Lords of Nightmare. Mister Hoppy is simply referred to as "The Great Beast" while Belial takes the place of the cult's most popular god. All of the Lords of Nightmare are honored by the sect, however, which several "monastic orders" devoted to specific evils in its rank also existing. The group has had several "offshoots" ruthlessly stamped out since revering the Entropic Masters is considered the one heresy punishable by death.

Given the Patriots have fought several of the Order's schemes, this has gone over like a ton of bricks with the superhero community. The White Lotus Society's Western Branch has actually had several members indicted for murder and terrorism due to its actions against the Order since the group "went public." (albeit, not revealing its real size by any stretch of the imagination).

[Neo-Paladin]

Very nice take on that topic, Charles...however, I have one question...how many people know that the "Great Beast" they worship is a cartoon bunny?
I can really see it before me...the great summoning ceremony is at its climax, everyone feels something is rising from the depths of the Underworld...and then Hoppy bounces into the circle. Which self-respecting satanist can keep his faith under such circumstances?