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Safe For Work Worm Ideas thread

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Prince Charon said:
I thought so. Works well for an idea I have, though I could replace her with an OC Tinker if necessary (as it requires her to be willing to help... well, you'll see). Will try to post in a day or two (or later today), once I've got something written up.
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Her limits, seem to be "One Shot Items" where they only get one use each, basically consumables. They appear to be something that can't be irreversible or at least she doesn't create counters to her powers. They have to Begin and End though the the effect they leave can be permanent so no making a continuous black hole or pain radius. Finally it seems they only have an Off/On Switch so no scaling them after creation.
 
Master of Squirrel-fu said:
Her limits, seem to be "One Shot Items" where they only get one use each, basically consumables. They appear to be something that can't be irreversible or at least she doesn't create counters to her powers. They have to Begin and End though the the effect they leave can be permanent so no making a continuous black hole or pain radius. Finally it seems they only have an Off/On Switch so no scaling them after creation.
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The fact that it can leave behind permanent effects is important.

Something like Teacher's power, but permanent and lacking the Master/addiction effect.
 
Prince Charon said:
The fact that it can leave behind permanent effects is important.

Something like Teacher's power, but permanent and lacking the Master/addiction effect.
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How would that work? While Bakuda's power is shown to let her create many exotic effects they all effect everything within the blast radius and are fairly indiscriminate. Whatever Teacher's power does to the brain is probably delicate and not indiscriminate. If you want to do what you are talking about grab a biological tinker like Bonesaw or Overmind.
 
Trigger bomb? Could be interesting.
 
Blargh said:
How would that work? While Bakuda's power is shown to let her create many exotic effects they all effect everything within the blast radius and are fairly indiscriminate. Whatever Teacher's power does to the brain is probably delicate and not indiscriminate. If you want to do what you are talking about grab a biological tinker like Bonesaw or Overmind.
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Yeah, by permanent effect I mean it affects it and leaves a mark. Like the time bomb or the space warp, it leaves a pemanent effect but it doesn't act sustained or continuous. So it doesnt keep slowing down time, warping space, spawning adorable puppies inside vital organs etc forever or even very long. But whatever effect it did get doesn't reverse just because it stopped.

You can think it magic but its space whale magic and has its own rules to follow.

Odds are complex mental manipulation beyond stimulating certain sections of the brain or nerves are beyond her.
 
Master of Squirrel-fu said:
Odds are complex mental manipulation beyond stimulating certain sections of the brain or nerves are beyond her.
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To back this up according to Bakuda her power didn't help her at all when she was implanting people with bombs. So it doesn't do much with biological specific stuff.
 
For some reason I think of a Bakuda power bomb like this

Random shard: Hey bomb library whatch' doin'.

BL shard: getting my host to make stuff.

Rshard: always the same with UGH!!! Wha? What the hell was that BL?

BL shard: my host made a power granting bomb.

R shard: ok but why did it connect MY DICK to it instead of you know my MIND!?

BL shard: it's a prototype.
 
Thread Necromancer said:
For some reason I think of a Bakuda power bomb like this

Random shard: Hey bomb library whatch' doin'.

BL shard: getting my host to make stuff.

Rshard: always the same with UGH!!! Wha? What the hell was that BL?

BL shard: my host made a power granting bomb.

R shard: ok but why did it connect MY DICK to it instead of you know my MIND!?

BL shard: it's a prototype.
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BL? Please don't tell me that's what I think it is
 
OK, here's the Tinker that will be working with Bakuda and a person who is probably midway between them in sanity:

Doktor Gehirn (Dr. Brain) is one of the first biotinkers, and the earliest known neurotinker. An older German man, and primarily a rogue, though he does have a small criminal record due to ethical issues (he is believed to have been a medical student in the late 1980s who failed his medical ethics exams, though it is uncertain whether this related to his trigger event), such as performing elective brain surgery to install an even-crazier Tinker's new headcannon. He gets away with more than he should, because he refuses to work with Geselschaft, and will work against them at a (sometimes significant) discount, especially if he is not required to risk himself in the field. Has a somewhat competitive attitude toward other neurotinkers, especially the Toybox member Cranial.

Among his questionably-ethical experiments is paying various often-desperate volunteers to let him examine their brains before and after they gain powers from power-granting Trumps, including Teacher (both while they have the power, and after the power fades; some Trumps have allowed him to scan the subjects' brains during the process). The main reason it's only questionably-ethical is that he doesn't like using mind-control rays on test subjects - though he has no problem using them on Nazis. The human-Master gadgets he does create only have temporary effects, by design. He's also examined the brains of volunteers who've been Mastered, or sometimes Strangered, though mostly when helping the victims of other capes, which limits his ability to determine the pre-attack states of their brains (it says a fair bit that he does sometimes get volunteers who agree to get Mastered or Strangered, sometimes multiple times).


Thoughts?

If you want to use him in your own stuff, feel free, but post a link here.

The actual idea isn't typed up, yet, but if necessary, I can just link back to this post, if it takes too long.
 
So I had this idea for a fic but I know I will probably never run with it so I'm putting it here in hopes someone will take up the story.
It starts in the hospital just after Taylor's trigger while she is still unconscious. Emma is there and starts explaining to the unconscious Taylor that she had been trying to force her to trigger but believes she has failed not knowing that she has just succeeded. She knew she would never trigger because if she was going to she would have in the ally so she had planned for her Taylor and Sophia to be a team by purchasing a Cauldron Vial. Now that it seems that she has failed to force Taylor to trigger she has decided to give it to her since she knows she will be a better hero than she will till she has the money to purchase another and proceeded to pour the vial down the unconscious Taylor's throat and leave. The result
kate_the_wraith_queen_by_hellraiser_89-d41oxz3.jpg
She awakens shortly and seeing what has happened to her and having an inexpiable hunger she flees the hospital. She runs into some merchants and ends up feeding on them but then realized what she is doing and pours the life force back into them giving them the ultimate high and the biological enhancement of the Wraith Enzyme. They decide to work for her to have access to that high and enzyme boost so help her find a hideout in a large ship in the boat graveyard. She has the full Wraith Bio-Technology knowledge effectively making her a tinker and still has the full cannon bug control powers. She basically uses the merchants to get the tools to build a workshop for the price of giving them their new high and some rats and stuff for her to feed on till she can make a Wraith Hibernation Pod to feed her in her sleep and ends up reforming the druggies from the inside of their organization. Then she develops a variant of the Iratus Bug Retrovirus to make her human looking and able to eat human food without loosing all the benefits of being a Wraith Queen so she can go home to her dad. Then she develops other Wraith Tech up to and including a small Wraith Drone Cloning facility and the Wraith Pathogen which she uses on a Drone instead of a human and forms a small Wraith ship from the resources available in the Boat Graveyard.

What do you think. Anyone interested in this.
 
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Early in the Parahuman Era, when capes were so new that people in places that didn't have any (or didn't have any obvious ones) often thought the whole thing was a hoax, a smart, charismatic youth tried to become the sidekick of a local hero. That hero didn't want such an intelligent, likeable kid to get himself killed, and so refused, first gently and then with more force, bluntly explaining that real life is not a comic book. That a boy with no powers would both not be much help, if any, and be very likely to end up dead, and perhaps get others killed, as well. This did not go over well. The boy developed an obsession, but never to the degree that would let him trigger. Because he was both smart and charismatic, he did well in school, and then in business, while that cape was killed by Behemoth in the early 1990s. By then, though, the damage was done. The young man was bound and determined to find a way to give everybody superpowers. Because when everyone is super, no-one will be. Still, though, he never triggered, so he needed to find another way to accomplish his goal.

The first big step was when he went to Germany and contacted a mad scientist called Doktor Gehirn, and soon began sponsoring his research. This advanced his agenda considerably, but something was missing. Things didn't quite come together until a young student at Cornell triggered due to exam-related stress (along with a number of other factors; really, the exam was just the straw that broke the camel's back). The addition of 'Grenade Gal' was the key, even though it meant dealing with the woman's massive ego, and limited the delivery method of the eventual supering devices. The businessman, who took up the name 'Syndrome,' after a cartoon character from Earth Aleph with similar motivations (but much crazier methods and intentions), was in the third and fifth batches of test subjects. (Note: For purposes of this idea, assume that the girl who became Bakuda in canon is capable of adapting to circumstances; that is, that she would behave differently when hired for a shitload of money by a visionary businessman who leads by inspiration and skill, than she did in canon after being recruited, possibly by force, by a rage-dragon who rules through fear and strength.)

The power grenades have a fairly wide, spherical area of effect, which rapidly expands and fades, while the grenade is destroyed in a relatively small explosion. The results are not precisely what Syndrome intended, but are close enough: everyone in the sphere of effect, cape or not, experiences an often-stressful hallucination, then gains low level Thinker and Tinker powers, along with the potential for weak Brute and Mover ratings, and a power that could be considered either a mental Brute power or a defensive Trump power: a form of elastic resistance to powers that mess with nerves or brain chemistry. This could be described as 'allowing will-saves,' as more determined or stubborn subjects will both resist harder, and recover faster, for reasons that sound like complete technobabble to non-biotinkers. They also tend to be less driven than normal capes, unless they were already driven before being hit by the effect. Repeated or overlapping exposure to the effects makes no difference.

The 'potential Brute and Mover ratings' come from the body being modified so that the upper limits of speed, strength, healing, and durability are higher, and the effects of training set in faster, but they remain only potential if the subject doesn't train, or trains very little. If noticed, this also would allow a possible Thinker 1 power, as you tend to learn faster, if you bother to study.

The Tinker and Thinker powers tend to be related to each other, and to any powers that the subject has, though you may need to tilt your head and squint to see it, or to find any useful synergies between them. The type of Thinker power and the theme or aesthetics of the Tinker power tend to be related to the interests or shard-powers (if any) that the subject already has, such as a guy who plays a lot of D&D reflexively building tinkertech that looks like magic items, or a girl who controls bugs perhaps becoming an arthropod biotinker (or just a Tinker that builds useful stuff from bugs, bug parts, and bug byproducts, but with a wider range than canon Skitter; or Taylor might have a theme more closely related to a book or show she likes, instead of her powers, as it's not an exact science). A single person of average intelligence, creativity, and resources would likely be given a threat rating of 3 or less based on the Tinker/Thinker abilities alone (tending toward 'less'). A smart, creative person could bring this up to 4 or 5, perhaps 6 or 7 if they have enough of the right resources (money helps a lot, but so do powers that gather useful resources rapidly, like bug-control for a bug-Tinker), and time to build up. Existing Tinkers might gain a secondary theme, or just a wider theme on their existing power, and similar for Thinkers. The lower-level Tinkers would actually be more useful (or dangerous) maintaining or copying more powerful Tinkers' work than building their own, and in many cases, might be more inclined to do so.

A normal human with no Corona Pollentia or Gemma only gains the above. A human with a Corona Pollentia but no Gemma, that is, a potential parahuman, will also trigger, despite the hallucination being somewhat below the usual threshold for triggering. They gain whatever power they would with a normal trigger, along with the powers everyone gets. A parahuman who has triggered once will experience a second trigger, developing whatever improved version of their power they'd get from a normal second trigger, but without the trauma associated with it. Those who have already had a second trigger tend to have more refined versions of the new Tinker and Thinker powers, and/or have better synergy than they otherwise would have.

Brockton Bay is well-known as a 'Cape City,' and with his associates' madness feeding his own (amplified by the fact that they hadn't actually ironed out all the bugs in the process by the third batch, and being in the fifth didn't fix it), and a bit vice-versa, Syndrome decides that it will make an excellent first demonstration (helped along by some of the former test-subjects among his employees building enough power-grenades to accomplish this). Rather than asking permission that would result in government scrutiny, they simply hid remote-detonated grenades throughout the city (some tall buildings got two), and set them off all at once, then settled down to observe the results.

It should be noted that this produces an interesting problem for the PRT (though a minor one, as long as some bureaucrat doesn't get stiff about it): technically, any member of the PRT who gains powers is required to quit and expected to join the Protectorate. If enough personnel trigger that this brings the number of personnel below required levels (as happens in some cities that survive an Endbringer attack or visit from the Slaughterhouse 9), Directors from other cities are expected to transfer personnel from their cities to bring the numbers up. There is no regulation for 'BOOM, everyone in the city is suddenly a cape!' as that was dismissed as practically impossible. Director Piggot's issues do not help, though they shouldn't be as much of a problem as in some fanon interpretations.

Have not firmly decided on an exact date, but was considering having the bombs go off after Taylor agreed to join the Undersiders, but before the bank job (and in fact butterflying away the bank job, because this situation has the Protectorate staying in town, thus making the kidnapping that much harder, even if Coil wasn't scrambling to revise his plans (for one thing, having every Thinker in the city working for him or not at all is no-longer an option).


Thoughts?
 
Gotta love Syndrome. Über genius bringing out super heros to kill them with death bots and a ton of other inventions.

Also in comparison to Hero how does Syndrome stack?
 
Thread Necromancer said:
Gotta love Syndrome. Über genius bringing out super heros to kill them with death bots and a ton of other inventions.
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To be fair, he's just using the name, he isn't planning on killing anyone.

Thread Necromancer said:
Also in comparison to Hero how does Syndrome stack?
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This guy is around Tinker 6 or thereabouts, while the Syndrome from 'The Incredibles' was probably a fair bit higher. We know too little of Hero to say how he would be in comparison to Incredibles-Syndrome, but I'd say he was rather far above Worm-Syndrome.

sunspark said:
Emma and Greg with powers. Dockworkers with powers. GANGS with powers. This will not end well. This will not end well at all.
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Of course not. It could be very interesting to observe from a safe distance, though.

Do note that the less intelligent and creative someone is, the lower their threat rating will be. Of course, a large team of weak Tinker/Thinkers lead by a strong Thinker/Tinker is another matter...
 
Interesting. I'm guessing her contact is Coil, but you could do a potentially cool twist by having it be someone else.


On another note:
sunspark said:
Emma and Greg with powers. Dockworkers with powers. GANGS with powers. This will not end well. This will not end well at all.
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Lupercal said:
But it would be Glorious!
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So, what do people think would be the short-, medium-, and long-term consequences of Syndrome & friends' demonstration in Brockton Bay?

One thing is for sure: Unless we posit a TL where Cauldron doesn't exist, or has died out or succeeded (any of which would create a very different TL from canon), Doctor Mother is going to be very interested in this, and she's far from the only one.
 
Okay, I have a plot idea that I don't think I've ever seen before. Ever.

So, we know that Worm's universe has had extraterrestrial species before, because the Entities have done their cycle on plenty of planets before. Here's the idea. Not all of them just took it. Some species of aliens (maybe one that hasn't been visited by the Entities yet), has been tracking the entities, slowly trying to find a way to stop them from destroying yet another civilization. Then Eden died. Now there's proof that the Entities can die and they're very interested in that. However, they have to operate under the radar to avoid Scion realizing they're there and stopping them.

Sort of a first contact/benevolent invasion alien story mixed with Worm. Could also be crossed with something like Mass Effect or another sci-fi setting with non-hostile aliens to give context to the aliens existing.
 
kamenhero25 said:
Okay, I have a plot idea that I don't think I've ever seen before. Ever.

So, we know that Worm's universe has had extraterrestrial species before, because the Entities have done their cycle on plenty of planets before. Here's the idea. Not all of them just took it. Some species of aliens (maybe one that hasn't been visited by the Entities yet), has been tracking the entities, slowly trying to find a way to stop them from destroying yet another civilization. Then Eden died. Now there's proof that the Entities can die and they're very interested in that. However, they have to operate under the radar to avoid Scion realizing they're there and stopping them.

Sort of a first contact/benevolent invasion alien story mixed with Worm. Could also be crossed with something like Mass Effect or another sci-fi setting with non-hostile aliens to give context to the aliens existing.
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I've seen a prompt like this but it was set after the series(, I think).
 
kamenhero25 said:
Okay, I have a plot idea that I don't think I've ever seen before. Ever.

So, we know that Worm's universe has had extraterrestrial species before, because the Entities have done their cycle on plenty of planets before. Here's the idea. Not all of them just took it. Some species of aliens (maybe one that hasn't been visited by the Entities yet), has been tracking the entities, slowly trying to find a way to stop them from destroying yet another civilization. Then Eden died. Now there's proof that the Entities can die and they're very interested in that. However, they have to operate under the radar to avoid Scion realizing they're there and stopping them.

Sort of a first contact/benevolent invasion alien story mixed with Worm. Could also be crossed with something like Mass Effect or another sci-fi setting with non-hostile aliens to give context to the aliens existing.
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Pfft! Mass Effect? Come on this setting needs something to give Taylor powers after an alien abduction. I'm talkin' Xcom baby! Psionics, MELD, and mec suits for all! Just submit to the evil alien overlords and they will take care of everything!
 
Thread Necromancer said:
Pfft! Mass Effect? Come on this setting needs something to give Taylor powers after an alien abduction. I'm talkin' Xcom baby! Psionics, MELD, and mec suits for all! Just submit to the evil alien overlords and they will take care of everything!
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Given that the Ethereals are trying to make a psychic species superior to themselves for some nebulous, unknown purpose, the lore could actually integrate really well with Xcom. And Taylor being the first true psychic on Earth would be fun.
 
kamenhero25 said:
Okay, I have a plot idea that I don't think I've ever seen before. Ever.
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Mother of Vengeance eventually focused on an alien invasion (more than one), but the aliens' reasons for opening contact were entirely selfish and unrelated to the Entities.

I once posted the idea of that an individual from a previously-harvested civilization psychically stowed away on a shard as a final fuck-you. A year later, SirWill actually wrote it, though he approached it from a completely different angle.
 
Hmmmm, I kind of want to do this Worm/XCom thing, but I don't know much about the games. Anyone interested in helping?
 
Over on SB.com, there's a story called The Othersiders (currently on indefinite hiatus, but what's there is good), in which each of the Undersiders has a power similar to or inspired by another one of the canon Undersiders, but interpreted by their usual shard - for example, Taylor has an ersatz of Tattletale's power, based on QA-level multitasking (which also lets her become a serious hacker, and fake being a Tinker), Alec has something like Skitter's power with much weaker multitasking, and emphasis on different areas, Brian and Rachel have versions of each others powers (and are a couple), and Lisa has a fairly interesting interpretation of Regent's power, but more sensory, requiring her to be a close-range combatant, and includes what she calls a 'baby Tinker' power (Tinker 1 or 2, maybe 3). Other characters in that timeline have their canon powers, apart from those who would have become Undersiders later on (Aisha, Sabah, Lily).

Now, to the idea: Take a cape, and think of how their shard might do something like the powers of another cape, perhaps from the same team, perhaps another.

For example, there's a fic (maybe Ack's Another Way?) where Amy's power is a shaker ability based on how much she likes or hates the people around her. That sounds like the way Vicky's shard might interpret Panacea's power. The reverse, I'm not so sure about; the closest I can think of is an angelic form with superstrength, durability, possibly regeneration, and pheromone powers.

Anyone have ideas for this concept?
 
Prince Charon said:
Anyone have ideas for this concept?
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Huh. Didn't think it was that boring.

Different idea:

A couple of ways to do an entertaining CYOA fic (that I haven't seen done) are to 1, have the SI visit briefly, make a bunch of changes, and then leave, and the story focuses on the locals trying to deal with those changes, or 2, have the more worldbreaking powers be temporary, so the SI makes changes, and then stays in that world for a while with a more manageable powerset, and helps deal with the aforementioned changes (which they may not be completely aware of, if they're gone from a God-tier Thinker to a more normal Thinker, or a non-Thinker).

I'm working on more specific ideas for both options.

Thoughts?
 
If the first one is done it might be better to just have the focus start from the Worm characters, and use it as an excuse for a wildly divergent/strange Au. As for the other I am of the opinion that less powerful SI or OC's are better as more interesting stories generally can be written from them.
 
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