Safe For Work Worm Ideas thread

[Nervaqus987]

Are there any crossovers with The Darkness video games or comics? I could see a bit of fun coming from having those goblin things running about. Also you know, tentacles.

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What about the Witchblade and the Angelus?

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There's a couple of ideas floating around here or there.

One is that Brian ends up as the host of the Darkness.

Another is that Annette had the Witchblade, ran around as a supervillain, and had a massive rivalry with Miss Milita before her death and Taylor eventually finds the Witchblade among her mother's things.

Then there was the idea that the Darkness and the Witchblade would start empowering the opposite gender for usual, with Taylor ending up with the Darkness and Brian with the Witchblade(and having to deal with the Witchblade's sense of aesthetics).

 

[Metallix666]

Beta call for the second part of the snip I posted a couple of pages back.

 

[Prince Charon]

Another Alt-Power Taylor idea, though I'm not sure what trigger event could lead to this (maybe she gets lethally drunk and survives?):

When Taylor is sober, she just has a Thinker power to find alcoholic beverages within a couple of blocks, and analyze them for content, and what I guess would be called a Shaker power to conjure copies of them (container and all), or copies of drinks she's summoned previously that aren't in her current range (cold beer on tap anywhere). When she does drink, the first thing that happens is that toxins do nothing other than make her drunk, and a toxin that wouldn't make her drunk just leaves her a bit buzzed.

Once she's at least buzzed, and preferably drunk, well, take this video (though she'd have a mask, and leave it on)



... and crank it up to eleven. She's a high-level combat/social Thinker with Brute and Mover powers that start small but escalate as she drinks. The PRT will eventually add a higher Shaker rating due to all the useful coincidences her power arranges for her (like Shamrock's precog+telekinesis power that simulates luck), and a possible low-level Master rating if they notice how good she is at convincing vulnerable people to have a drink with her. Along with general Drunken Master stuff, she can pull off all the crazy bullshit things that drunk people think they can.

With enough alcohol in her, she can take on Endbringers in hand-to-hand and 'win' (if the victory condition is 'Endbringer eventually zooms off to another part of the city, so they don't have to fight you'). She might also be able to talk Scion into drinking himself to 'death' (id est, to the point of losing cohesion on his remaining shards), if the author wants to go there.

A sufficiently high-level analytical Thinker (cough:Tattletale:cough) will notice that no matter how drunk she is, she's still very perceptive, aware, and capable of planning.

When she's hung over, her sight and hearing are greatly improved, able to hear the neighbor's alarm clock three houses away as if it were right next to her ear, or see in the dimmest room as if it were daylight. She can avoid a hangover as easily as most other people can, by drinking a few glasses of water before bed, or cure a hangover by drinking enough alcohol to get buzzed again (which doesn't take much, since she's a skinny teenaged girl).

The point of making her over-the-top powerful is that she's a cape that the Protectorate would normally want to pull out the red carpet to recruit, except that her power depends on getting obviously drunk, and she's fifteen when she first appears. It's very frustrating for the PRT, though Taylor gives no fucks.

EDIT: Something like the scene from the movie could happen early on, when she's breaking up a Merchant or ABB human trafficking operation (rescuing Emma?).

 

[Navrin]

Prompt: The Brockton Bay Wards play a game where they try to get Aegis' superpower to give him the weirdest adaptations possible (without doing anything that would interfere with work, school, etc, of course, or going beyond what Aegis himself is comfortable with).

 

[alethiophile]

Aegis' power isn't adaptation, it's redundancy. I don't think he can ever grow capabilities that aren't within human limits. (Other than flying.)

 

[Navrin]

Aegis' power isn't adaptation, it's redundancy. I don't think he can ever grow capabilities that aren't within human limits. (Other than flying.)

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I didn't mean to imply that he could. However, they could still probably make his body react fairly weirdly. Smelling through his hands, hearing through his feet, and seeing through his torso is probably well within what his power can do, and I'd imagine it would be rather weird to experience. Bring Panacea in and she can play exploratory biology with them by, say, watching how his body reacts to some of his bones liquefying or his lymphatic system being blocked up.

 

[Master of Squirrel-fu]

Aegis' power isn't adaptation, it's redundancy. I don't think he can ever grow capabilities that aren't within human limits. (Other than flying.)

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Actually so long as most of him is intact, probably the brain mostly, it's likely he can survive. While his power is said to be redundancy it is closer to adaption give how it's described. Namely if part of the system fails something else picks up the lag, so exploding his heart and his liver will act in it's place, Slit his throat and the blood will stop and he'll be able to breath through his skin, rip out his spine and I assume his veins will start to electrify. I assume it might also improve his physical abilities beyond just "Adrenalin boost" since that would cause self injury and he doesn't technically have a healing factor.

 

[Thread Necromancer]

Haha! Necromancy at it's finest if I do say so myself. The thread is back to to haunt the forums again!

Here let me clog your brain with terrible writing!

Create Your Own Adventure! Worm!
I wake in a black void. There is nothing in all directions. Well except for the other people here literally in a line as far as the eye can see all groggy and waking up. But other than that there is nothing. Then I hear music.

The music starts out soft. But begins to get louder. Soon it is loud enough that I can hear it over the moaning and groaning of all the other people. It is like the kind of music you hear in a elevator only in chip tune. Why anyone would have chip tune elevator music in a void is beyond me but hey. It is the void, and appearently the void does what it damn well wants.

Suddenly a small light appears in the far right and very far ahead of me. This small white light expends into a outline of a box before a voice from the darkness calls out in a voice very close to that of the announcer of a wrestling match declaring.

"Create Your Own Adventure! Worm!" As those same words show up inside the box and the music changes to a extremely upbeat song that made it impossible to feel anything but overwhelming joy and happiness. Then a word popped up infront of me.

Play?

I reached forward and pushed on the word and two options came up.

'Yes' and 'No' where the answers that came up for me to select. Lost in euphoria of the music I pushed the 'Yes' option. A white portal right below me opens and I fall through into the light. Before I fall I notice that some other people were also falling through white portals.

At that point as I was falling all I could think before I fell unconscious was: Letsa Go!

 

[OverReactionGuy]

Haha! Necromancy at it's finest if I do say so myself. The thread is back to to haunt the forums again!

Here let me clog your brain with terrible writing!

Create Your Own Adventure! Worm!
I wake in a black void. There is nothing in all directions. Well except for the other people here literally in a line as far as the eye can see all groggy and waking up. But other than that there is nothing. Then I hear music.

The music starts out soft. But begins to get louder. Soon it is loud enough that I can hear it over the moaning and groaning of all the other people. It is like the kind of music you hear in a elevator only in chip tune. Why anyone would have chip tune elevator music in a void is beyond me but hey. It is the void, and appearently the void does what it damn well wants.

Suddenly a small light appears in the far right and very far ahead of me. This small white light expends into a outline of a box before a voice from the darkness calls out in a voice very close to that of the announcer of a wrestling match declaring.

"Create Your Own Adventure! Worm!" As those same words show up inside the box and the music changes to a extremely upbeat song that made it impossible to feel anything but overwhelming joy and happiness. Then a word popped up infront of me.

Play?

I reached forward and pushed on the word and two options came up.

'Yes' and 'No' where the answers that came up for me to select. Lost in euphoria of the music I pushed the 'Yes' option. A white portal right below me opens and I fall through into the light. Before I fall I notice that some other people were also falling through white portals.

At that point as I was falling all I could think before I fell unconscious was: Letsa Go!

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Foul sorcerer! Have at thee!

 

[Prince Charon]

Lovecraftian Endbringers

When Eidolon was younger, and up to the time that he took the vial and got his powers, he read a number of H. P. Lovecraft books, as well as books by other writers set in the Cthulhu Mythos. Thus, when Contessa told him 'You need worthy opponents,' his unconscious shaped the Endbringers to be more similar to the Great Old Ones.

They're looks probably won't change much, they already looked wrong, but now they have a new power in common: a sense-based Fear/Madness effect, as the observers' unconscious minds tell them these are Things That Must Not Be, and yet They Are. The number of Trigger Events during Endbringer fights is significantly higher than in canon, but those capes tend to be more crazy than usual.

Already-triggered parahumans are not immune to the effect, but appear to be more resistant to it. Still, the more Endbringer fights a cape goes to, the more his or her personality slips into the Uncanny Valley (how fast varies from cape to cape), as they become more like the shard they are linked to - and as a side effect, grow more powerful.

So, how does this affect society as a whole, and the various cape teams and mundane support (PRT, gangs, minions, et cetra), specifically?

If Glory Girl gets the same power set as in canon, will she be more circumspect about her aura?

 

[Nekraa]

Thus, when Contessa told him 'You need worthy opponents,'

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Small annoyance. She didn't.

Otherwise, interesting.

 

[Xilph]

Also Eidolon didn't create the endbringers, this basically just sounds like all endbringers are Simurgh lites in how it would act. Things would be worse and they'd be more scrutiny and all as basically every cape has been warped somewhat, I doubt Glory Girl would be too much muted though.

 

[Prince Charon]

Small annoyance. She didn't.

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Huh. I thought she did.

Otherwise, interesting.

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Thank you.

 

[alethiophile]

The person who actually told Eidolon that was Scion, using his inferior copy of PtV. Which was the quickest/only way he could figure out to kill the High Priest once he'd gotten his fuel-boost again.

 

[Prince Charon]

The person who actually told Eidolon that was Scion, using his inferior copy of PtV. Which was the quickest/only way he could figure out to kill the High Priest once he'd gotten his fuel-boost again.

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OK, so it was just his subconscious that told him (before he activated the Endbringers, if that's what he did) that decided he needed worthy opponents to get strong, again? I already knew about Scion, but I've read a lot of fanfics, and got mixed up as several have him asking Contessa how to regain the power he's losing, and her modelling someone as close to Eidolon as possible without tripping the 'you can't read this person' effect, and asking how that person could regain his power, with 'worthy opponents' being the answer PtV gave her.

 

[alethiophile]

I don't believe that ever happened, no. The activation of Endbringers was purely down to Eidolon's subconscious, I'm pretty sure.

 

[Xilph]

Assuming Eidolon did activate them anyway and it wasn't just PtV providing a phrase to defeat Eidolon with zero care of it's truthfulness so long as it works, because that would be totally normal and unremarkable for PtV to do. He definitely didn't do it consciously though, Cauldron may be many things but the endbringers were not a Cauldron plot.

 

[alethiophile]

Correct. Though I would say that the EBs going back into standby mode after Eidolon died is decent evidence that he was, in fact, controlling them.

 

[doomlord9]

So, I was doing a standard 'Huh, that looks wierd. Let's see what it is' youtube crawl and I came across THIS.

Sooooo.....pretty terrifying and fits memetic Skitter's anti-groin theme, now how to get them to her?

Hmmm....after she is outed, one of her mother's ex-friends from her days in Lustrum's gang recognizes her. Said friend is an ex-friend because she was fully in line with Lustrum's ideals but escaped her downfall. She sees that Annette's daughter is apparently carrying on the torch and sends a gift of several breeding pairs from the university labs she works at, along with several other of the more 'interesting' specimens they have.

 

[Master of Squirrel-fu]

So, I was doing a standard 'Huh, that looks wierd. Let's see what it is' youtube crawl and I came across THIS.

Sooooo.....pretty terrifying and fits memetic Skitter's anti-groin theme, now how to get them to her?

Hmmm....after she is outed, one of her mother's ex-friends from her days in Lustrum's gang recognizes her. Said friend is an ex-friend because she was fully in line with Lustrum's ideals but escaped her downfall. She sees that Annette's daughter is apparently carrying on the torch and sends a gift of several breeding pairs from the university labs she works at, along with several other of the more 'interesting' specimens they have.

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I clicked the link and when I read the title and heard the warning I NOPE'd the fuck out of there. I am intelligent enough to realize that there is some knowledge that is woe.

 

[doomlord9]

I clicked the link and when I read the title and heard the warning I NOPE'd the fuck out of there. I am intelligent enough to realize that there is some knowledge that is woe.

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Wuss.

I'll sum it up. The Brazilian Wandering spider has a venom with a side effect that only affects men, that being it causes priapism, aka an uncontrollable erection.

Sounds amusing but what the video explains is the how's and why's this condition exceedingly dangerous. There's no gore, it's all talking to a doctor about why that 'if you have an erection long than 4 hours, seek medical attention' warning is something to take very seriously.

All medical knowledge with only terrifying descriptions of how they have to cure it, no icky blood or open wounds that may offend your delicate dispositions.

 

[Thread Necromancer]

Wuss.

I'll sum it up. The Brazilian Wandering spider has a venom with a side effect that only affects men, that being it causes priapism, aka an uncontrollable erection.

Sounds amusing but what the video explains is the how's and why's this condition exceedingly dangerous. There's no gore, it's all talking to a doctor about why that 'if you have an erection long than 4 hours, seek medical attention' warning is something to take very seriously.

All medical knowledge with only terrifying descriptions of how they have to cure it, no icky blood or open wounds that may offend your delicate dispositions.

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Gah! Noo! Now the video is ruined for me.

 

[pepperjack]

Gah! Noo! Now the video is ruined for me.

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Yeah, I know, right? Spoilers!

 

[Prince Charon]

Correct. Though I would say that the EBs going back into standby mode after Eidolon died is decent evidence that he was, in fact, controlling them.

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Which means that my idea is still viable. Thank you.

I wonder if this would have any effect on Canary's trial, if it isn't butterflied away, but I'm more interested in how it would affect cape culture, and the public's view of capes, what with the ones who fight Endbringers the most growing more powerful as they grow more inhuman in personality.

 

[cyberswordsmen]

Correct. Though I would say that the EBs going back into standby mode after Eidolon died is decent evidence that he was, in fact, controlling them.

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That isn't the best evidence as it could be Simurgh trolling. Better evidence is the Eidolon clone the Simurgh made.

It would still be her trolling but the evidence is fairly good. Wildbow has also commented that without Cauldron there would have been no Endbringers so we know it is their fault somehow.

 

[Master of Squirrel-fu]

That isn't the best evidence as it could be Simurgh trolling. Better evidence is the Eidolon clone the Simurgh made.

It would still be her trolling but the evidence is fairly good. Wildbow has also commented that without Cauldron there would have been no Endbringers so we know it is their fault somehow.

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Blaming it on Simurg is not the best defense.You could theoretically blame everything on her. Cauldron forming? Simurg, Glastig turning herself in? Simurg, stubbing your toe this morning? Simurg. You need an actual reason why she would actually bother.

 

[daimahou]

Cauldron forming? Simurg,

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She wasn't even born/on Earth yet!

 

[cyberswordsmen]

Blaming it on Simurg is not the best defense.You could theoretically blame everything on her. Cauldron forming? Simurg, Glastig turning herself in? Simurg, stubbing your toe this morning? Simurg. You need an actual reason why she would actually bother.

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I'm not blaming anything on Simurgh. I'm just pointing out that a entity that bases it's entire strategy and behavior patterns on complex multistep plans aided by precog may actually be capable of basic subterfuge. Going dormant gave her access to Taylor, Lisa, and lots of tinkers who weren't trying to kill her at the time. There are all kinds of goals those things could be useful for (like say cloning Eidolon). Hell even if (which I still consider very likely but not proven) Eidolon created and controlled them it is likely the decision to suddenly change their behavior in such an obvious manner was part of a scheme to bring him back because suddenly showing themselves in public doesn't really match "going dormant" staying where they are and not doing anything would make more sense. They were clearly drawing attention to the fact something had changed to get access to parahumans to manipulate.

Not blaming this on Simurgh is insane because she is clearly the one doing it, because she is the one carrying out the action. It's like claiming that Taylor didn't gouge out Lungs eyes, or fight the S9. It happened right there on the screen and she was the one doing it.

 

[Master of Squirrel-fu]

She wasn't even born/on Earth yet!

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Causality loop? Simurg.

 

[alethiophile]

I'm not blaming anything on Simurgh. I'm just pointing out that a entity that bases it's entire strategy and behavior patterns on complex multistep plans aided by precog may actually be capable of basic subterfuge. Going dormant gave her access to Taylor, Lisa, and lots of tinkers who weren't trying to kill her at the time. There are all kinds of goals those things could be useful for (like say cloning Eidolon). Hell even if (which I still consider very likely but not proven) Eidolon created and controlled them it is likely the decision to suddenly change their behavior in such an obvious manner was part of a scheme to bring him back because suddenly showing themselves in public doesn't really match "going dormant" staying where they are and not doing anything would make more sense. They were clearly drawing attention to the fact something had changed to get access to parahumans to manipulate.

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It's very possible this is what happened and it was all a Simurgh plan. But there is no evidence for that, while there is a reasonable bit of evidence (albeit inconclusive) for Eidolon being responsible. Given the lack of a conclusive in-story answer, either interpretation is valid for fanfic; however, it's not wrong to point to the theory with the most in-universe evidence and say "this is what we think happened".