Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Heroes of other worlds?

Ooh, a Thanagarian hero. I really don't know a whole lot about the state of Thanagar even in the 20th century, let alone have much of a handle what is like 1000 years later. (Then again, depending on the origin story Hawkman has this week, they might have had roughly the same technology level since the days of Ancient Egypt...)

I like the hard-light construct wings. Reminds me of the visual for Songbird, of the Thunderbolts.

Running with razsolo's Thanagarian inspiration;

Thanagarians have always been a proud and passionate people, capable of love affairs that can last a hundred lifetimes, and yet also quick to take violent offense, resulting in simmering blood feuds that can also last many generations.

Ytarra Lon was the daughter of two such overproud parents, each from a high-born family, and falling into a bitter feud soon after her birth, one that ultimately led to their deaths at each others hands, as their lover's quarrel resulted in the crash of the ship they were piloting. Her extended families quarreled over who was rightful custodian of the child, and a cold war that had been temporarily put aside upon the marriage of two members of these star-crossed houses turned hot again.

'Rescued' by one house or the other at various times in her childhood, she found her release from the endless strife and virtual imprisonment by one or the other 'family' that she increasingly resented when an attack resulted in such confusion that she was able to escape and go into hiding, allowing her latest 'rescuers' to think that they had killed her during their assault (or that her 'captors' had killed her to prevent her from being taken again).

She lived in hiding for months, as her powerful families expended great resources seeking her out (and attacking each other, both in the court of public opinion, each blaming the other for the murder of the innocent child at the center of this latest excuse for bloodshed, and through various violent actions). Huddled in a ruin, she prayed only to be invisible, for the endless running and hiding to not be the only life for her, and her prayers were answered.

She awoke bathed in a violet light, with a small item pressed into her hand. A search team, mercenaries hired by which family, she did not know or care, swept through the ruin, and their leader stood directly in front of her, shining his helmet-lights down upon her, huddled in the sand, and spoke into his comm-device. "She's not here. Sweep the last quadrant and let's get out of here."

She waited until she heard their transport fly away, her hand cramped with the force with which she clutched the small object, and yet when she opened her hand, there was nothing there, only the indentation of a small object in her palm, and a slight sensation of weight. Exploring, she discovered that she held a ring of curious shape, one tingly to the touch, and yet utterly invisible to her sight. She slipped it onto her finger impulsively, and it shimmered into a view, a black and violet ring that seemed strangely translucent. Her clothing shimmered as well, and was replaced by a similar costume, black and violet, with an odd emblem on the chest, similar to the one on the face of the ring.

And so young Ytarra became Thanagar's representative among the elusive Ultraviolet Lantern Corps, a group of invisible agents who oppose strong emotion of any sort, seeking to quell destructive passions, such as those of the intemperate Thanagarians, and so save worlds from being torn apart, using their ultraviolet energies, invisible to most humanoids, to affect the societies under their protection from the shadow, unseen and unrecorded by history.

Ytarra has set to work, first stopping the fighting between her own families, by arranging for her 'death,' and pinning it on the most aggressive members of each family, causing both to lose face equally and publically, rendering them incapable of, as was their tradition, to blame everything on the opposite party. By arranging for similar aggressive actions among her family to fail, thanks to her meddling, and the effective use of her invisible force constructs, while working behind the scenes to greatly accelerate the works of the few members of her family prone to reasonable and temperate behaviors, she began a program of rewarding the moderates and punishing the most confrontational among her hot-blooded people.

Soon she was doing the same with other prominent families involved in violent feuds, causing the most belligerent of them to suffer humiliating (and status-affecting) reversals of fortune, by operating behind the scenes, while defending the works of the more moderate movers and shakers in Thanagarian society.

Love this character Set! there's so many way you could take this character. I like how his powers are connected to the Crystal and that its essentially his life essence that gave him power.

Thanks!

I didn't really know anything about Lupra, so made up details based on Color Kid's pallor and totally black eyes, suggesting that Lupra was dimly lit and a bit monochromatic, which would make his ability to generate dazzling colors seem like a crazy spectacular power back home, and, out in the more brightly lit universe, not so much.

As sometimes happens, the way my brain works, it turned into not just an exercise in building a super-power, and building a characterization, but also in building an entire world to go around it!

Shard ends up being one of those local heroes that can't really leave home and join the Legion, as his powers are tied to that special blend of quartzite crystal that is common on Lupra, and may not exist loose in the greater galaxy.

Set another awesome character. Ultra Violet Lantern is a really unique use of the light spectrum.

great way to use invisibility.

I also liked how you did a Romeo and Juliet take on this world. Honor and reputation are everything but yet that's what destroys their lives.
Nice touch!!!

Thanks! I hadn't meant for there to be a Romeo & Juliet riff, but as it wrote itself, I bowed to the inevitable!

I was thinking of how the green and yellow power rings were sort of antithetical, as were the red and indigo rings, and maybe even the violet and orange rings, but the parallels weren't precise, and I really wanted to make up a ring that was very much the opposite of a 'Love Lantern,' and, at the same time, was sort of an anti-Rage and anti-Fear lantern as well, a foe of all strong emotion, that operated beyond the visible frequencies and was way more subtle and behind-the-scenes.

Sort of a 'Shadow Lantern,' as it were, only not as obviously darkness or shadow-themed.

I think a shadow lantern would be cool to see some day but i think. maybe that can be your next creation.

I keep promising myself that I'm going to stop tapping that Green Lantern well, and with so many great alien races having been introduced as GLs, it's so hard!

A thousand years can greatly change a race, and few who knew them in the late 20th century would recognize the Gordanians of the Caretaker caste of Karna. A generation of Gordanians who hatched from eggs bathed in the light of enlightenment shining from X’Hal Reborn, the Caretakers of Karna have taken it upon themselves to undo the ecological devastation they wrought upon the world of Karna, taking up centuries worth of trophies made from the hides, fangs and claws of the various species they had hunted into extinction (including the native sentient race), and using advanced cloning technology bartered from Psions to begin repopulating Karna with creatures born from the fragments of DNA they had saved as ‘hunting trophies’ for so many centuries.

Trozak is a prodigy even among the philosopher-priests that lead the Caretakers, wandering the world of Karna, protected by a combination of the superstitious dread the native Karnans regard the Caretakers, and advanced technology, to spread his unique gift, a psychic talent that allows him to reawaken genetic memories in those he touches. The primitive tribes of Karnans, currently only five generations old, who submit to his teachings relive the pasts of the many millennia-dead Karnans from whom their DNA was cloned, allowing them a chance to recapture and reclaim their original culture and customs, which otherwise would have been lost.

His unique talent proves useful defensively as well, as he can incapacitate a hostile foe by forcing them to experience the entire lives of their ancestors, at a greatly accelerated rate, providing them with incredible access to their genetic/family history, but at the cost of rendering them helpless in the present.

The world of New Rann is settled by a combination of Kranaltine 'Throneworlders,' Rannians and Tamaraneans, having fused into a single harmonious culture over the last ten centuries.

Their pre-eminent super-team, the Strangers, consists of;

Zee Strange, the team leader, claims descent from Adam Strange, a distinction she shares with 60% of the planet's Rannian population, making it something of an in-joke among her people. She became quantum entangled with a zeta beam transport as a child, and retains the ability to summon the zeta energies within herself, causing her body to fly apart into zeta particles and travel across thousands of light years in seconds. She has developed the ability to take others with her, and responds to any force by 'zeta-ing' in her 'Strange Men,' a team of government-sponsored elite troops that have the same sorts of energy and impact resistant life supporting body armor, flight packs and plasma pistols that she carries. After teleporting in her assault team, she enters combat by selecting opponents and zeta-ing them to the nearest moon, to be dealt with later. Vee is a tall and strongly built woman, bald and with large dark luminous eyes that have been modified to see within the entire electromagnetic spectrum. It is widely suspected that her real name isn't 'Vee Strange,' but whatever her true birth name, it remains classified by the government authority that supports the Strangers. Perhaps as a result of being able to fly apart into zeta particles at a moment's notice, re-appearing miles, or light-years, away, Vee tends to be fearless in combat, moving around with confident purpose, rarely taking time to speak, other than to direct her 'Strange Men,' and leaving tactical command to Starwoman, who is rumored by some to be more than just her teammate.

Mister Grey, a Rannian who formerly functioned as a villain, until recruited to the team, was afflicted by the sterilizing radiation of an ancient Rannian weapon, and now can radiate a chilling light-absorbing energy that weakens living creatures, causing them to grow fatigued, and appear to visibly age. Under the full force of this effect, usually inflicted by his direct touch, people die of exhaustion within moments and plants crumble to dust. The same effect has left him visibly withered, yet unnaturally durable and with a wiry strength that surprises those who judge him by his frail appearance. Thanks to special treatments, he experiences moments of life-like vitality, and even learned to direct his life-negating energies in beneficial ways, to selectively kill tumors or hinder the growth and spread of harmful bacteria or even place someone in suspended animation to stave off death by blood loss or poisoning. While Mister Grey appears to be a decrepit old man, when not immersed in his vita-ray tank and undergoing treatment, he is actually a teenager, and may sometimes take out his frustrations regarding his condition with bursts of unnecessary violence.

Vortex comes from a line of 'windtalkers,' Rannian nomads generally regarded as superstitious cranks and throwbacks, but backs up her eccentric mannerisms and often made-up-on-the-spot 'traditions' with the ability to control whirling vortexes of air, generally small, little larger than 'dust devils,' but occasionally standing with arms upraised, screaming her incomprehensible words into the sky, and calling forth devastating tornados. She claims that these vortexes she calls up are sentient, and that her people have made an ancient pact with them, and that her eccentric behaviors and nonsensical taboos are the result of oaths she has sworn to the 'windfolk.' The only evidence to her claims thus far came during a fight in which she was knocked unconscious, and her vortexes continued to fight undirected, while one carried her away to a safer vantage point and 'stood guard' over her until she woke up.

Radiant is a Tamaranian / Rannian hybrid, a rare thing as the two races, while socially and culturally integrated in some places, are not normally reproductively compatible, and require some DNA resequencing to get their biologies to 'play well together.' He has the Tamaranean traits of absorbing solar energy to power flight and slightly superhuman strength, greatly enhanced by embedded technology resembling exotic metal tattoos over his body, allowing him to channel his stored energy into primitive and temporary hard-light constructs, such as hand to hand weapons or shields. Because of his solar absorption-fueled powers, Radiant tends to appear scantily clad, like many Tamaraneans, although he does wear a transparent suit of ballistic cloth that operates like a transsuit and body armor combined, despite being invisible to the naked eye. He deliberately cultivates a playboy reputation, and is rumored to have been intimate with most of his teammates, and many other notable figures on his homeworld, or other worlds on which the Strangers operate (thanks to Vee's zeta beam transport functions). Only his closest friends know that he's waiting for a special someone, and that his reputation is entirely fictitious.

Starwoman, decended from the Kranaltine 'Throneworlders,' channels the cosmic energy of her royal heritage. By itself, the energy sustains her without need for food, drink or environmental factors such as atmosphere, gravity, pressure or temperature, and renders her unaging and superhumanly durable. She wears special bracers of crystal, each composed of a series of crystal rods around her forearms that can detach themselves and assemble into a thick staff of seemingly indestructible crystal, allowing her to channel her cosmic energies into glowing concussive force, to propel herself through the air at great speeds, or to strike others with bludgeoning force. Starwoman is somewhat embarrassed by her royal titles, which are purely ceremonial, in the now-egalitarian culture of her world, but finds herself instinctively taking command of the team when they work together, as none of the others seem to have the slightest inclination to leadership or even basic coordination. She worries that she's coming across as elitist or bossy, and yet her teammates are relieved that she's stepped up to the unwelcome task of trying to impose some sort of order on this herd of cats.

I love the Strangers, they are a really dynamic team! They would be really fun to see in combat!

Another upgrade of an older entry, to personalize it a bit more;

Aesti Maakond, aka Colony Queen, is a Imskian mutant, unable to reduce her mass, but able to shrink all the same. When she reduces to half her mass, instead of merely growing shorter, she produces a second self, equally sized, and as she continues to reduce her size, more duplicates of herself appear, all linked to her as they share a single group consciousness. At half-height, there are eight of her. When she reduces to one tenth of her normal size, there are a thousand of her, at that size, each weighing only a few ounces, and while they have only the strength appropriate to their tiny size, they are incredibly well-coordinated, and can perform complicated mechanical tasks (or acts of surveillance) in fluid circumstances that the best programmed mechanical nanobot might prove unable to adapt to. She has learned the hard way that if any of her 'selves' do not return, the loss of mass is reflected in her larger self, as pain and bruising distributed across her body, for a smaller 'manikin,' and more traumatic damage for a more significant loss. While it's hardly the superheroic norm, she has learned that adding a few extra pounds makes it easier to acclimate to such events, as the non-vital fatty tissues seem to disproportionately absorb the trauma of lost manikin. As a result, while many other active heroes try to keep themselves in a lean, athletic fighting trim, she's strongly motivated to keep herself at a less toned 'fighting weight,' and tends to carry a bit more weight than some of her heroic peers. Woe to anyone who mistakes her for soft, however, as she shows no mercy to those who underestimate her, and is not only an excellent student of hand to hand self-defense, but also teaches martial arts (and marksmanship, and law-enforcement procedures) at her ‘day job’ as a trainer for the Science Police academy on Imsk.

Aesti carries a plasma blaster and a laser weapon, each individually powerful enough to kill someone, but, when she is reduced to her preferred form, as a swarm of a thousand selves, each about six and a half inches tall, the blaster produces only hot stinging blasts that are more annoying than harmful, and only by concentrating fire on a single target can the blasts prove dangerous. She prefers to use the blaster to ‘discourage’ attackers, concentrating dozens of shots on stubborn foes to cause them disorientation and pain, but little actual damage, while using her laser weapon as a cutting tool. She wears padded armor, finding that the most modern and up-to-date energy-resistant and impact-resistant ballistic cloth does not ‘scale down well,’ and sticking to ‘old-fashioned’ armor made of carbon nanoweave with New Atlantean coralfoam inserts. To move around, she wears a jump harness that would be only of moderate benefit to increase her jumping ability (or to slow a fall) at full size, but ‘scales down well,’ and allows her thousand tiny selves, each weighing only 2.4 ounces, to fly around nimbly. Due to the elasticene memory plastic ‘wings’ that unfold from her back when she is using her jump harness, and the rigid appearance of her body armor, she is sometimes mistaken for a swarm of tiny bug-women, instead of a mammalian humanoid, leading to her codename of Colony Queen or nicknames like the Living Swarm.

Sort of like an Imskian mated with a Carggite.

Oh hey, a world I haven't touched upon!

Xolnar, homeworld to the Substitute Legionnaire known as Rainbow Girl, is a second-stage colony world, having only been settled in the last century, and still in the midst of terraforming, as the environment and harsh weather conditions are not yet suitable for humanoid life.

Dori Andraison, like many children born to the original settlers, fled for the more comfortable and established worlds of the inner sphere at her first chance, to feel the sun on her face and breath unfiltered air, and enjoy the many luxuries available only on long-settled worlds, but not all Xolnari youth are so fortunate.

As a child, Vijay Bedama became separated from others during a storm, and was blown away down a ravine, the locator in his suit, and his life-support harness, damaged in the tumble. He managed to find a terraforming drone, and huddled near the machine, using the small zone of relatively safe atmosphere as an oasis of protection against the deadly weather of his world, and it was a day and a half before his panicked parents managed to locate him, amazed at their good fortune, and their sons cleverness in huddling in the one place where he might survive being stranded in the hostile climate of their world.

It came as a further surprise when they entered the zone of relative calm around the terraforming drone to discover that it had burned out 24 hours earlier, and that the zone of calm was emanating from their son...

Over the next years, as he matured, Vijay trained and refined this unique gift, developing the ability to extend his zone of influence from a meter around his body to a full ten meters across, not only able to regulate temperature, atmospheric content and windspeed within this area, but also humidity and air pressure, even maintaining a sphere of breathable atmosphere at comfortable temperatures for humanoid life in the vacuum of space! With further refinement, he found he could make life very *inhospitable* in his 'bio-zone,' creating powerful winds, toxic events or powerful rushes of superheated or superchilled air, affecting all or select areas of his sphere of control, not merely moving the atmosphere around, but even transmuting dangerous elements into breathable ones, or vice versa, on a subconscious level, his powers operating even when he is asleep!

As Rakshasa, Vijay now operates on his homeworld, providing life-support not only to the sealed communities of natives, but also to expeditions to the dangerous outside, where his powers accelerate the terraforming process more than a hundred expensive terraforming drones!

Members of the terrorist Adapters, philosophically opposed to terraforming worlds to suit humanoid needs, and willing to enforce their beliefs by sabotaging terraforming equipment or even breaching sealed environments and endangering settlers, find him a resourceful foe, able to travel to the most dangerous places on Xolnar and, using his abilities, cause the already dangerous elements and atmosphere of Xolnar to become even more dangerous, as if he is turning the very planet against these wild idealogues!

As with so many Legion worlds, we know little more about Xolnar than that Rainbow Girl came from it, and seemed both eager to leave, and much more eager to never, ever go back. So I decided it must not be a fun place to live!

While nearly every native of Naltor has precognitive dreams, most never dream of anything more unusual than visions of the day to come, or of massive shared visions that wrack the entire world when events such as the Great Darkness transpire.

Rarely, perhaps only a few times in their lives, a Naltorian might have a vision of events years, or even decades, in the future, although such images tend to be capricious and all-too-easy to misinterpret, to sometimes disastrous result.

A very small fraction of Naltorians are 'blessed' to foresee their own deaths, and, to weed out those who have foreseen instead what appeared to be a fatal accident, or foresaw the death of someone that looked like them, or foresaw a 'temporary' death that would be undone moments later by timely medical resuscitation, the High Seer and his Councilors carefully examine these visions, discovering which are true visions, immutably set into the future, and any peripheral information that can be gleaned from these powerful portents is used to chart the course of Naltorian society, always prepared for the events which those rare dreamers among them have foreseen during these unusually powerful and accurate foreseeings.

Iskandar Sahl was one such Naltorian, going about his life, paradoxically out of sorts and with no clear vision of what he wanted to do with his life, until the dream came, and he saw his own death. The High Seer interviewed him personally, and declared his vision true, and, in Naltorian fashion, he chose to have his face marked with a bold red stripe, from hairline to chin, passing over his left eye, so that all would know and recognize that he was one of the fated, and had stared into his own doom.

He has become an adventurer of sorts as Deathwatch, an operative of the Naltorian government, reknowned for his utter fearlessless, for he knows the hour and circumstances of his own death, and so charges headlong into seemingly unwinnable fights secure in the knowledge that whatever odds he faces, he cannot die until his appointed time.

In his early years, he dressed in typically scanty Naltorian fashion, as befits a temperate world with a fiercely libertine peoples, but he learned quickly that while he could not die, he could still be grievously injured, and spend months in rehabilitative therapy for terrible and painful wounds. He is a *fraction* more cautious now, wearing streamlined body armor with built in life-support, much like a less 'invulnerable' sort of operative might wear, and reminds himself that while he may be spared from death by the hand of fate, those who work alongside him are not so protected, and it would be foolish to endanger them unnecessarily with his daredevil antics.

The nature of his vision he keeps secret, so that none might attempt to artificially hasten the day of his death. He has foreseen that, on the day of his death, he will share words with a young man that he recognized to be his teenaged son, and so feels confident that he has at least a few decades remaining to his 'protected' status, as he has no children.

Unfortunately, fate can be capricious. In the southern province lives a young woman he spent a night with, a dozen years ago, and he has no idea that she bore a son of their brief union...

His fate is creeping ever closer, and the day will be bittersweet when he meets his son.

[Not heroes!]

The Hon'h'Re (a Sklarian word meaning 'disaster') is a sleek pirate ship, night-black and edged like a sword, leading to it being better known among the space-lanes as 'the Black Blade.' The energy absorbent black coating and mystical electric blue Talokkian runes decorating it's hull render it nearly invisible to sensors, and give it some small measure of extra protection against energy weaponry.

Captain Xanthia, a tall and powerfully built Sklarian woman with an improbable spiky headdress of hair, leads a mixed crew of Sklaran and Talokkian raiders, who board ships with sword and blaster, taking cargo and hostages for ransom, emboldened by the mystical protections afforded by First Mate Azeun, a lanky and unctuous failed Talokkian priest whose studies in mysticism and theft of a shipment of Talokkian nightstone led to his being expelled from his order. Using lore and materials studied from his previous life, Azeun creates talismans of night crystal that absorb energy, similar to those that decorate the hull of the Hon'h'Re. A single crystal might only absorb a single lethal blaster hit, but that may often be enough to allow the pirate to return fire, or to advance on a surprised foe and skewer them with the cutlasses they carry for close-combat work. More successful raids leads to crewmen being rewarded with more such protective talismans, and Azeun and his Captain each bear a dozen! Azeun himself can perform other stunts with night crystal, absorbing light to render himself invisible, or negating gravity to levitate, but prefers to leave combat to his crew.

Captain Xanthia and Azeun encourages dueling as a means of conflict resolution among the crew (and non-lethal dueling as sport, exercise and training), and themselves duel on occasion, increasing their advantage against the sorts of security forces they are likely to engage, highly trained with their blasters, and unprepared for blaster-resistant foes who attack with swords.

During their occasional sparring matches, Azeun likes to pretend that he 'lets the Captain win,' but the truth is that she's just that much better with a sword than he.

Their use of the night crystals has depleted the initial stock stolen by Azeun, and they have found it necessary to raid Talokk VIII, to secure a new supply. Unfortunately, the Shadow Champion chose that week to visit her cousin...

Another idea inspired by the 'Cloak and Dagger' naming convention. I wanted a 'Blue and Gold' pair that had nothing at all to do with Booster and Beetle, and decided to go with a pair of pirates, one Talokkian 'blue' and the other Sklarian 'gold.'

This one came from reading about Kid Psycho in the archive thread:

Kid Conundrum is one of the stranger footnotes of United Planets history. He was a well regarded hero on his homeworld of Hajor several years before three teenagers ever formed the Legion of Superheroes, and he had a career which lasted over a decade before he vanished as abruptly as he'd appeared. Many Hajorians assumed he'd died protecting their world one final time, but nobody ever knew for sure.

The truth was much weirder than anybody could ever have imagined.

Gahn Iggagna had been born with the ability to project his mind into any of his genetic ancestors or descendants at any point in history as long as they were the same physical age as himself. He learned as a young child that he could not only sense what they sensed, but could control their bodies as well, leaving his relatives in a catatonic state while his psyche was dominant. He was content to use this power for his own amusement until one day while usurping his great great grandfather's form in the 29th century he accidentally witnessed a murder. As soon as he returned to his own body and time, he researched the incident and discovered that the murder had gone unsolved all these years. Gahn anonymously tipped the authorities off to what had really happened, and the solving of a cold case more than 150 years old made the global news.

Inspired by this, he created a costume to hide his identity and embarked on a new career as the superhero Kid Conundrum. With insights from the past, he was instrumental in solving many cold cases. With insights from the future (as well as the occasional reverse-engineered future gadget) he always seemed to be one step ahead of present day criminals.

Kid Conundrum's career ended when he learned on a future jaunt that his planet would be destroyed in less than a decade. Experience had taught him that he couldn't change destiny, he could only take advantage of his foreknowledge. Gahn focused everything he had on starting a family and working hard to support it. When Hajor's destruction loomed near, Gahn arranged for his family to be sent off-world so they would survive. He couldn't bring himself to save himself though, and stayed with his world through its destruction.

To this day, Gahn's wife Selia and their young children Dom and Tara have no idea of his secret life as a superhero or the odd power he held.

Kid Conundrum is pretty awesome! I love the power, as it's not as versatile as precognition or past-viewing, since he has to have an ancestor / descendent in the area he wants to view, but also far more controlled than Dream Girl's prophecies, since he can motor around in the future to view specific things and doesn't just get afflicted with random visions.

Very cool way of having a hero from the lost world of Hajor!

He kind of sets the seeds for a potential reappearance as well. Hajor may be destroyed, but his children represent a potential future place his spirit, or at least his unique powerset, could have jumped to...

Cool character! Very imaginative, and certainly not a power we've seen before!

Also cool to see a name-dropped world like Hajor get representation!

Jakobi Gisel Meer was born on Touston, and discovered her powers as a child, proving able to either attract or repel non-sentient living creatures. At first, she seemed to have an uncanny knack for finding lost pets, or staring down agitated animals, but when flocks of butterflies began settling down on her skin, or angry bees fled from the sight of her, people took note, and it was soon discovered that her ability to attract or repel wildlife even applied to plant life, if she concentrated, allowing her to cause days of growth within hours, as local grasses and vines crawled across bare ground to reach her, or allowing her to repel plant growth over a period of hours, with the plants literally uprooting themselves and creeping away, allowing for development of overgrown land.

J. Gisel found herself all-too-often called to the northern continent, to replant fields that had been uprooted by unseasonal disasters, and it was some years before the odd rash of events was linked to another Toustonite, E. Davis Ester, who left the planet soon after his abilities were identified and confirmed. She found it something of a relief, as she preferred to use her gifts on the southern continent, and remain closer to home.

It was something of a disappointment when 'Calamity King' was rejected from the Legion of Super-Heroes, and returned to Touston...

The two 'heroes' of Touston have little contact, other than her visits to clean up environmental damages from his own powers, and about the only thing they have been seen publically agreeing on was their mutually adverse reaction to a news interviewer quipping that, 'As long as you're going to spend the rest of your life cleaning up after him, you two should probably get married...'

Like all of Touston's metahumans, J. Gisel Meer has been drafted into the planetary service, and wears a uniform similar to E. Davis', only in shades of blue, rather than green, highlighting her bright blue eyes and offsetting her strawberry-blonde hair.

The Sidekick, a Protean whose personality and physiology never quite matured, who spends much of its time traveling the UP and ‘imprinting’ on attractive and popular heroes, transforming into a child-sized duplicate of them with similar powers (and temporarily losing its own protean shapeshifting powers, and its memory of being anyone other than the guise it has adopted) and serving as their ‘sidekick.’ It continues to use its telepathy, mostly unconsciously, to anticipate and better serve its inspiration, but generally proves to be more of a nuisance than it is worth, and never quite taking the hint that its assistance is unwelcome. During its time on Earth, it became obsessed first with Sun Boy, taking the form of a child-hero named Daylight, with light and heat (but not flame) generating powers, then with Dream Girl, taking the form of Princess Sleepwalker, a Naltorian child in a ridiculous getup who was capable of seeing the future, and finally with Brainiac Five, taking the form of a Coluan child that called itself Brainiac Six and had both super-intelligence (mostly telepathically stealing ideas from others, including Brainy, and force field powers).

Something else else in the Sidekick's unstable protean nature allows it to duplicate the powers of those it mimics, in addition to their personalities, and it usually takes on a youthful and optimistic demeanor, like a hyperactive child on a grand adventure, although its innate intelligence, telepathy and grand obsession with its current hero has led in the past to some truly insightful commentary, at times, when its 'hero' has actually chosen to speak with it, and not just dismiss it out of hand, as it ends up learning everything about the target of its obsession, and can provide some truly insightful advice, when not shooed away or dismissed out of hand.

When 'between gigs,' The Sidekick, whose Protean name is a telepathic glyph unpronounceable to most humanoids, has a distracted and child-like personality, refusing most attempts to communicate and shuffling along dispiritedly, waiting for its next inspiration...

Another installment of *Villains* of Other Worlds!

The Planetary Gang has appeared multiple times, and in multiple iterations, to plague the good people of the Sol system.

Their usual motif is to have members that represent different planets (and sometimes moons, the asteroid belt and / or the sun) of the Earth solar system, although they've never had a member that specifically represented Earth itself.

Their membership has included, among others;

Mars Master – The original Mars Master was a human who grew up on Mars and had a fascination with ancient Rome, having studied the use of the gladius and the hasta, among other arts, and speaking Latin in combat. He used illegal gene-mods to enhance his strength, reflexes and endurance, and had technological enhancements to his Roman-style weaponry and armor, but was still nowhere the league of a truly superhuman combatant, like Timber Wolf. After some time in Takron-Galtos, he returned to a civilian life. The new Mars Master is a volume of red iron-silicate particulates that can solidify itself into a human form, fusing some of his constituent particles into a steel-hard crystalline form as Roman style armor and weaponry (generally a spear, short sword and shield). He’s superhumanly tough, almost as hard as solid iron, held together by an innate electromagnetic attraction, and yet he can also fly apart, turning into a skin-flensing ‘dust storm’ of metallic flakes, and travel through the air in this form. A strong enough blow can ‘stun’ him, and cause him to fall apart for a moment, before he can gather his bearings and ‘pull himself together’ (or fly away) and heroes with electrical or magnetic powers tend to be his bane. Despite his association with Mars, the red planet of war, Mars Master works with the Planetary Gang primarily as a means of funding a cure for his condition, as he was once a flesh and blood man, and wishes to be again. Since he intends to retire after finding a cure, he strenuously avoids unnecessary bloodshed or casualties on the Gang’s heists, as he intends to be a normal man again, and doesn’t want to be branded a psychopath and end up in prison for the rest of his human life. His human identity as Italian-born Paulo Marin is not a matter of public record, as he is believed to have died in the incident that resulted in his new ferro-silicate form.

Asteroid Belle – Bel Serap Verde is an unnaturally thin young woman, who, like other members of the insular communities who had lived and worked in the Asteroid Belt for centuries before artificial gravity became viable, grew up in microgravity and has prehensile feet that are fully usable as a second pair of hands. She sits serenely, floating cross-legged, supported by her telekinetic powers, coordinating the activities of the Planetary Gang during heists, distinguished by her wafer-thin vacuum-suit and sealed helmet, a common sight among her overly cautious people, even when visiting worlds with a stable environment, where they are in no danger of a containment failure or atmospheric breach. From a backpack, a half-dozen small ‘meteors’ of dense metal and mineral drift forth to orbit her on waves of telekinetic energy that her brain generates unconsciously, so that, even as she sleeps, items tend to float around her in a slow dance. When combat ensues, these ‘meteors’ can intercept attacks, or lash out with bone-crushing force, each weighing a hundred pounds or more (far more than she could ever lift with her micro-gravity adapted limbs!). She wears a grav-harness, and a second backup grav-harness, being compulsively over-prepared, as, bereft of her telekinesis, she wouldn’t even be able to stand in earth-normal gravity, and would suffocate in minutes, unable to draw breath. She names her ‘asteroids,’ Pallas, Vesta, Europa, etc. but this is affectation, and she will snatch up loose debris to replace them as they are blasted away or thrown out of her sight. They’re just rocks, after all. She’s fanatical about planning things, and is essential to the team’s success, having ended up being the Gang’s default tactical planner, since her plans are generally meticulously well thought out, and nobody else has proven willing to oppose her.

Saturn Man – Muunokhoi Ganbaatar (‘Khoika’ for short) can create multiple halo-like rings of radiant electromagnetic energy, either defensively around himself or offensively around others to bind / shock them. He can also levitate objects he has surrounded with his ‘rings,’ including himself, and jokes that he has his own ‘Flight Ring.’ A mixed-race Earth-human (primarily Mongolian), ‘Saturn Man’ has no relation at all with Saturn or Titan, other than his namesake energy ‘rings.’ He also wears an assortment of metal rings, and has metal bracers, metal arm bands, metal greaves, a very thick metal belt, metal bands around his shoulders and a metal collar, all connected by wires and tubes, with a control panel on the belt, which helps him to control and maintain his electromagnetic rings (without the setup, he can still generate his rings, but they aren’t as strong, he can’t fly as fast with them, and he can’t shock people with electricity). Saturn Man Is a sadistic ‘traditionalist’ super-villain, and likes to grab people off the ground in a halo of force and crush them slowly, while monologuing. He likes to think of himself as the leader of this incarnation of the Planetary Gang, and none of the others care to challenge the ruthless man on this assumption, even if Asteroid Belle is fairly obviously the one calling the shots, most of the time. Saturn Man seems comfortable with that arrangement, as he’s often too distracted by posturing and bullying and using his power to cause harm and intimidate civilians once a heist gets underway to bother with those pesky little details that she’s already handling so well…

Dark Messenger – The Dark Messenger (representing Pluto) appears in the form of a small child-like person made of black energy. His touch causes intense cold and shock, like exposure to outer space, which can be fatal, although the Dark Messenger seems to accept that the others don’t like it to kill people wantonly. Unknown to most, the Dark Messenger is the ‘soul-self’ of a very old man named Venn Zaravos, located somewhere far away (in his own private space station, which even his teammates don’t know about!), wrapped in bandages and unable to move of his own power. As the Dark Messenger he acts like a petulant child-like unfathomable alien entity to draw suspicion away from his true nature (and vulnerability). He is also a bit senile, and has lost himself in the act, growing more childish and petulant the longer he maintains this pretense. The more he shocks and chills others, the more he prolongs the life of his aging host body, so he has a vested interest in attacking guards, or even bystanders, to leave them unconscious, or dying…

Caelus – A member of the first iteration of the Planetary Gang (representing Uranus), and not seen since, the creature known as Caelus was composed of ice-like crystals and generated hurricane force winds and liquid nitrogen level cold. On its powerful winds, it could also propel hundreds of razor sharp icicles, ice diamond ‘blades’ or snowflake ‘shuriken’ at great speeds. It had a humanoid electric blue outline, with blocky shoulders, a large head-crest and three blade-like fingers. Stronger and tougher than a human, it also had limited use of flight on cold winds with little fine control. It did not control winds, but somehow generated them from within itself, and proved to be capable of flying in space at much greater speeds than in an atmosphere, leaving a cometary ‘tail’ in its wake. Real name and species unknown as it was never captured (or seen again after its first appearance).

Eros – Nord Welles, representing Venus in the first iteration of the Planetary Gang, has the power to create warm clouds of mist that cause people to become light-headed, disoriented, prone to hallucinations and to eventually pass out (and, if they remain too long after this, to die). The mist is thick enough to obscure vision, and utterly foul the senses of anyone who tracks by scent. Exposure to the chemical compounds that comprise the mist causes suggestibility, pleasurable lassitude, addiction and health problems. As Eros, Nord seems to be an attractive man who uses addicted and suggestible flunkies to fight his fights for him, but he’s become hopelessly addicted to his own clouds (although surprisingly resistant to their health-wasting effects, displaying above average strength, stamina and pain resistance) and is in a constant state of drug-enhanced megalomania and overconfidence. He uses narcotic fogs during crimes, generally, to sedate and manipulate civilians and authorities present, as well as obscure the actions of his teammates. Saturn Man has developed special filters and a topical antidote / screen against the effects, for use by him and other teammates, to protect them from Eros’ powers. To those unaffected by his mists, and able to see him clearly (since he’s often surrounded by visible clouds that obscure his appearance), Eros is in relatively poor shape, pale, scrawny and dissipated, and looks haggard, with lank hair and hollow, sunken eyes, due to the effects of his drug-mist on himself, but those affected by the mist see him as painfully beautiful. He can ‘fly’ on his mists, but only a meter off of the ground, and even generate a think shell of atmosphere around himself in a vacuum, providing temporary life-support (which tends to also intoxicate those he’s harboring). Eros has not been active since the first crime spree of the original Planetary Gang, and remains in Takron-Galtos, on life-support, having collapsed under the cumulative degenerative effects of his own powers, which, perversely, are the only thing keeping him alive. Attempting to detoxify and ‘cure’ him, at this stage, would place so much strain on his body that it would kill him.

Miss Mercury – Karadia Xin has super-speed, and leaves a trail of fire behind her as she runs, as a result of the high-octane chemical her body produces to fuel her superspeed, which evaporates in her sweat and turns into a pyrophoric cloud that bursts into flames in her wake. She appears as a silvery faceless female humanoid figure wearing a red outfit with yellow trim, but the silvery appearance is a protective bodysuit she wears under her red and yellow ‘costume,’ and when she pulls back her silvery skintight mask, she’s a red-skinned humanoid with blonde hair and golden eyes. The silver suit gives her life-support (she requires much higher temperatures to survive) and protects her from the abrasive friction of super-speed travel. Ranging from coldly practical to hot-headed impetuous and emotional, she’s the 31st century equivalent of bipolar, and if stabilized, might turn away from a life of crime, particularly if a combined rational argument / emotional appeal can be made that appeals to both her strong pragmatic streak *and* to her suppressed sense of empathy. Unlike some other speedsters, she does not normally think or react at superhuman speeds, but has to ‘enter the zone,’ when travelling at superspeed. Much of the time, she’s actually pretty laid-back, and surprisingly patient. Her teammates express annoyance that someone capable of moving at supersonic speeds can take an hour in the bathroom, always arrive late to meetings, and doesn’t finish reading assignments any faster than anyone else. Favorite combat tactic is to sweep past enemies at superspeed, bowling them over with a rush of super-heated air / explosive sonic boom that trails in her wake, setting things on fire and knocking them flying.

Moon Maiden – Maxia Keiros can attract or repel things with ‘moon magnetism,’ allowing her to fly by repelling herself from the ground, or become invisible by repelling light, or travel into space or underwater while maintaining a breathable environment around herself (attracting air / repelling water). She has a Mediterranean skin tone, with long black hair that floats around as if she’s underwater and large solid black eyes, and wears a sparkly white crystal costume. She claims to have gained her power from a crystal tiara of ‘moon crystal’ which is indestructible, but that is a deception to trick others into thinking that she’ll be powerless if they take her ‘moon crystal tiara’ away from her. The tiara was once the source of her powers, but she is hardly powerless without it. She also wears bracers, a pectoral and belt of similar ‘moon crystal,’ but these items are synthetic diamond, and have no special traits. Moon Maiden does seem to lose her powers at odd intervals, as she only has a certain amount of power each month, and if she exhausts it, she has to wait up to thirty days for it to recharge (or, she has recently discovered, by visiting the Earth's moon, Luna, and touching its surface, which is much easier!). She tends to keep the exact nature of her moments of weakness a secret, and is prone to getting caught up in a ‘good fight’ and showing off too much, and then running out of power and having to make excuses like ‘I got bored’ to justify her poor showing. Maxia thinks of herself as a bit of a princess, superior to others, and steals mostly for new pretty things. She’s the most likely to turn against the others, because she doesn’t really think of herself as a bad person, let alone a supervillain, and could be convinced that she’s just ‘fallen in with bad people’ and can ‘turn things around.’ Unfortunately, she’ll likely prove as treacherous and unreliable a hero as she did a villain…

Jenny Jupiter – Doyen Mora was born in the factories deep within Jupiter’s atmosphere, and grew up under gravitational forces that would crush a normal earth-human in seconds. Super-strong and tough, due to adaptation to survive the crushing gravity of Jupiter, ‘Jenny’ is built like the love-child of an elephant and a Mack truck, with the strength of a hundred men and bones as tough as composite diamond, to support her incredible weight. She has a special gravity harness to reduce her weight and allow her to walk around without collapsing the floor beneath her, and also uses it to simulate a higher gravity, as the ‘low’ gravity of Earth makes her nauseous and light-headed, and could kill her, over time. Wearing a fairly utilitarian work suit, practically a uniform among her strongly communist people, Jenny has the ‘big red spot’ as a distinguishing symbol on her costume. ‘Jenny’ has a chip on her shoulder about being considered ‘the dumb bruiser,’ despite having designed her own gravity harness and having a keen mechanical mind (not a theoretical genius, by any stretch, but a highly skilled and trained mechanic).

The Planetary Gang briefly had an energy creature with a serpentine appearance representing the Sun, but never got around to fielding a member representative of the Earth or of Neptune. Like the Devil's Dozen before them, they never quite got around to filling out their planned roster...

I remember when I was a kid I had a villain gang named after various bits and pieces of the solar system.....all I remember now was the Earth guy was an acrobat and the sun guy was suspiciously very much like the New Mutants' Sunspot....

I love this gang though, would love to see them go up against the Legion! Miss Mercury and Jenny Jupiter are my favourites I think

I was actually thinking of using them in a fanfic, but I've hit a bit of a dry patch, and it's lying about in fragments on my hard drive.

The idea of a team of villains based on a theme, like the Royal Flush Gang or whatever, has a certain Golden Age charm / goofiness that appeals to me.

I also liked the idea of them, like the Devil's Dozen, having never quite gotten around to filling out their roster, and having made exceptions for people with asteroid belt or Luna or Pluto based 'themes.'

(Not that most of them have much to do with the planet they represent anyway. Dark Messenger, for instance, has nothing to do with Pluto, and is just a very old, very rich man on life support, wrapped up in Negative Man-like bandages, who sends out a dark side of himself to steal a few more years of life from others.)

In the Last Issue of the Legion, Saturn Girl speculates that Brainiac 5 will organize a Coluan-Only Legion of Super-Heroes. What would a couple of dozen of teen-aged 8th-and-10th-level intellect super-heroes look like?
• A Coluan “Sun Boy”
• A Coluan “Storm Boy”
• Certainly a Coluan “Shrinking Violet”; maybe with a nom de guerre of ‘Mite’, or ‘Mote’, or ‘Viridian Virus’
• Maybe a Coluan “Colossal Boy”, who figured out how to reverse Brainiac’s shrinking tech?
• A Coluan telepath
• A Coluan telekinetic
• A Coluan android, such as Indigo
• We have seen a Coluan with high emotional intelligence: ‘Heartiac’ of DC One Million.
• A Coluan cyborg / transformer, such as the animated Legion’s Brainiac 5
• A Coluan “Blok”, named Greenstone; he is considered mentally impaired by his colleagues, having only a 7th-level intelligence.

Assuming that Colu has 3D printing technology (which we have today, so hardly a giant leap), I could envision a Coluan named Cohort who has 'printed' themselves an artificial body, that has the usual advantages of a synthetic body (tougher than flesh and bone composition, computer-like reflexes and reaction times, superhuman strength, enhanced senses) and, more interestingly can be downloaded to other 3D printers in the area, so that in a fight, if their body gets damaged, they can send out a 'print ALL' command, and in every home and laboratory and public station within a kilometer or so, copies of their body start printing out. Within minutes, dozens, perhaps even *hundreds* of them swarm to engage whatever threat has appeared, all under the control of the central intelligence of their manufacturer (whose intelligence is stored digitally, and doesn't actually reside in any one of these android bodies, making them effectively immortal).

Because their intelligence would be distributed across these many bodies (and this sort of 'mass attack' strategy would require seizing control of dozens, if not hundreds of local privately and publically owned printers, and eat up a lot of resources that they'd have to repay or replace, if the government doesn't take care of that for them), they would collectively lack the sort of impressive abilities that a single body would display, but still, stronger, faster, tougher, so, no pushover!

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I wouldn't mind seeing a Coluan capable of using some sort of Nth-dimensional math equations to manipulate space, or even time, to a limited extent. They'd seem like a magician, to someone who couldn't keep up with the formula they are spouting. I just don't know enough about math to personally write anything meaningful about such a character...