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

Set, it's such a pity you don't write fanfics much anymore as your ideas are excellent, really excellent!

Aw, thanks!

I have one in the planning / pre-stages, I've just been too darn lazy to write it all out and turn all the written scenes into a coherent narrative. Work, etc. The usual excuses.

Spelling Bea
Most of the inhabitants of the Sorceror's World are adults who have come to the world after a lifetime of dedication to the mystic arts. There are a few rare children whose magical potential far outstrips their youth however...the Legionnaire Glorith had lived and studied on the Sorceror's World for as long as she could remember before the Black Witch sent her to the Legion Academy.

Another young student is the bubbly 7 year old Beatriz Zatara. Born on the Venusian colony, her parents noticed that she was surrounded by weird supernatural happenings from infancy. Under pressure from Venusgov to do something about Beatriz, her parents allowed the Black Witch to take her to the Sorceror's World to investigate the origin of young Bea's powers and help her master them.

As a focus to help control her abilities & achieve a desired result, Bea needs to spell out her spells. While her vocabulary is limited by her age currently, she's always learning new words. Bea's natural love of adventure and precocious nature has made her much loved by the rest of her community and has earned her the nickname Spelling Bea. She looks forward to following Glorith's path through the Academy into the Legion in a few years' time.

Inedible Kid

Bismollans sometimes take a perverse sort of pride in knowing that they are at the absolute top of any sort of 'food chain,' being, by dint of being able to devour *anything,* essentially the apex predator of all apex predators.

And so, Joakim Drenn, is the swaggeringest of all swaggering Bismollans, as he can not only consume anything, but is also completely invulnerable, his atomic bonds having been replaced with something far stronger than the 'weak force' that ties together all normal matter.

As he boasts, in Bismollan fashion, "I can eat anything, and *nothing* can eat me!"

No force yet tested against his body has caused him even momentary discomfort, and the strange energy that holds his component atoms together has neither a positive nor a negative charge, so that even anti-matter sits harmlessly in his hand, not reacting to his flesh (although exploding normally to the positively charged matter of his clothing or exhaled breath, etc., which, since he's completely impervious to harm, he finds merely inconvenient and / or embarrassing, depending on the state of his not-indestructible clothing afterwards).

Due to his invulnerability, which extends to his hair, he has a permanent scraggly beard and long wavy dirty blonde hair that he can never cut, only tie out of his way and attempt to put up with. Tall and lean, a bit taller and leaner than is fashionable (and annoyingly resistant to over-the-counter body modification techniques), young mister Drenn has learned that he's pretty much stuck with his current appearance, freckles and all, unlike most 31st century youth, who get a makeover for their sweet sixteen.

The upside of that is that he has a distinctive look, quite a bit less 'off-the-shelf' generically fit and square-jawed and flawlessly-skinned shared by his peers.

A Bismollian with true invulnerability. Unstoppable. Wow.

PRISMOR
Hailing from the world Barrio III, Kanelon like all his people is a spherical crystalline being. With their 13 defined senses, the Barriites have a much deeper understanding of the universe around them, and Kanelon left his homeworld to explore and develop those senses further. He spent nearly a century living on worlds like Titan, Naltor & Steeple where he learned to be able to refract the psychic "reflection" of an individual and project a different part of their psyche upon each one of his crystalline facets. This has come in handy for finding the truth in a sentient's words, or helping opposing parties communicate freely. Even in the most bitter cynic for example there's an idealist somewhere inside Kanelon can draw out, and in the worst xenophobe there's a facet of themselves untouched by fear and hatred.

Barriites have a lifespan measuring centuries, and Kanelon was entering his species' equivalent of puberty when he took the codename Prismor and tried out for the Legion of Superheroes. He was still a hundred years too old for their bylaws though, and was sadly rejected. Taking it in his stride, he decided to become an investigative hero on his own anyway, travelling to wherever his 13 senses tell him he's needed.

Basically you are saying that PRISMOR is the Times Square New Years Eve ball.

Sssh don't blow his cover!

I like how Prismor's power is more subtle than the usual. Very useful, and yet not what one would see in a standard 'superhero.' I've always loved alternate universe takes on classic characters, and Prismor sort of allows that sort of thing, to a lesser degree, in that he shows people 'reflections' of themselves that might be very different from their current 'reflection.'

Xera of Manna-5 quietly allows others to assume that her powers have something to do with the elements, but like the others Universo chose to exile to an isolated prison planet, her powers are merely a side feature to her great intelligence.

Researching into quantum theory, Xera and her lab partner Dano were seeking ways to increase Manna-5's productivity by creating a field in which quarks could phase into our quantum continuum, but not phase out, causing matter in the affected area to increase. Control circuitry implanted in their bodies allowed them to interface with and micro-manage the field, far faster than any less direct form of interface, but the effect proved impossible to control, and matter around them began expanding out of control to the point of nearly crushing the two of them to death, when Dano managed to reverse his control interface and create a counterfield, in which quarks could disappear, but not reappear, allowing him to disintegrate the expanding matter threatening them, and, unfortunately, also disintegrating the machinery generating and stabilizing the field effect.

When the dust cleared, Dano had suffered severe neural trauma from his equipment shorting out, and still doesn't remember the events of that day, having lost much of his short-term memory, as well as a fraction of his once keen intellect (which, regardless of what Xera thinks of the matter, was never quite equal to her own, which is why she was the lead researcher, and he was the lab assistant).

Their control implants continued to be charged with the energies necessary to generate the quark-inhibiting field, but each opposite, with Xera being able to cause matter she focuses the effect upon to replicate upon itself and increase, preferring to focus her power on loose material like soil (to generate walls of earth, or cause a hillock to form under someone's feet and throw them off balance), or water (which, in a confined space, can expand fast enough to blast forth at high pressure), or air (creating a sudden gust of wind). Dano's effect remains reversed, and allows him to cause matter to disappear, blinking out of this quantum continuum as their underlying quarks vanish (as normal), but cannot return, causing the affected matter to 'deflate' out of existence.

Both effects prove temporary, so that, if not maintained, affected matter reduces back to it's original quantity (or reappears from 'nowhere') in about sixty seconds, making the effect useless for it's original purpose, of greatly increasing quantities of foodstuffs, fresh water, carbon, clean air, etc. (or Dano's effect from being useful to get rid of toxic or radioactive waste, since it would just reappear a minute later anyway).

After some experimentation on plants and insects, they've determined that the quark-affecting field has horrific affects on living tissue, and so they refuse to either expand or 'temporarily disintegate' living beings, sticking to using their abilities to expand surround elemental forces, or 'zap away' weapons, armor, etc. if faced with potential violence. Both are more likely to use their abilities in non-combat situation, such as disaster relief or emergency services, being less 'super-heroes' and more 'public servants' on their homeworld, a mostly peaceful agricultural world.

While Dano, whose status with Xera has upgraded from 'lab assistant' to 'on and off boyfriend,' has mostly recovered from the brain damage he suffered from the accident that empowered them both, he just didn't quite have that special something that warranted Universo's extra precautions, and while Xera was imprisoned with the smartest Legionnaires, he remained on Manna-5, under Universo's psychic thrall. He's still a little touchy about that, and counts his blessings that Universo didn't spend any time on Manna-5, and didn't make him disintegrate anyone, focusing his attentions on securing Earth, instead.

***

[During Dano's recovery]

Xera - "So thanks to the quantum containment... or should I call it quantum enrichment?"

Dano - "I think the field-specific term already in use is quantum reproduction."

Xera - "Ugh. No thanks."

Dano - "It *is* the recognized term for that..."

Xera - "Fine. Reproductive terms it is. We'll just call what you do quantum sterilization. Or maybe quantum castration?"

Dano - "No. No, no, no. You are, as always, right in all things. Quantum enrichment it is."

Xera - "I knew you'd agree with me."

Rimbor's never had a surplus of heroism on the ground, so the unlikely SP officer-cum-hero known as 'the Lilliputian' is, unsurprisingly, not a native Rimborian, hailing originally from Imsk.

A fair percentage of Imskians, upon leaving their homeworld for the first time, discover that they suffer from 'Lilliputian Syndome,' and that their size-changing ability is linked to the gravitational fields of their home world, so that they are frozen at a single size when off-world (generally ending up 'stuck' at 1/10th the size of a standard Earth-normal humanoid).

Mazir (MAH-zer) Morse was such an Imskian, and instead of turning around and going home, he chose to tough it out and attempt to continue his off-world SP assignment, to the rough 'beat' of Rimbor, despite being just under 8 inches tall. Unusually tall, for an Imskian (if he were human scale, he'd be six and a half feet tall), he's instead a lean doll-like figure, riding around on an SP surveillance drone, which can easily carry all two pounds of him.

His blessing, which makes him able to function, and exceptional at his job, is that a freak mutation allows him to shrink other things at range, up to about the size of a person. He uses this talent most commonly on inanimate objects, reducing someone's clothing or gear until it is so tight and restrictive that they can barely move or breathe, or shrinking a weapon in someone's hand to the size that it cannot be effectively manipulated, and poses little or no danger (although, after accidentally severing someone's trigger finger, caught in the guard of a blaster that he had reduced to one tenth of it's normal size, he's much more careful about how he uses this ability).

Occasionally, faced with a single perp, he will shrink the entire person to 1/10th scale, and demonstrate an unparalleled knack for micro-scale hand-to-hand combat that an untrained person suddenly reduced to the size of a doll can rarely match.

Mazir's dark skin, beard and eyes, and square-jawed features suggest East Indian origin, and his large Imskian family prefers to retain their Indian Sikh traditions, and their posh British accents (which have been mostly abandoned on Earth, in the year 3015). As a concession to Sikh tradition Mazir wears a turban, but has only a sword-shaped pin on a sash as a ceremonial nod towards his people's requirement to carry a sword.

The one-time war-torn world of Pasnic is divided into two hemisphere spanning nation-states, one dimly lit by a fading red sun, and the other by a distant pale blue gas-giant-turned-dwarf star in further orbit, as the world is 'face-locked' towards it's sun. As a result, the 'sunward' facing nation state is lit by a constant orange sunset, while the starward half of the world has a more purple shade to it.

After their decades-long civil war was finally ended by the intervention of Legionnaire Duo Damsel, each of the nation-states sent their greatest champion, formerly bitter foes, to work together and embody the new spirit of community.

Dusk represents the 'sunward' nation, and wears armor of deep orange/umber hue, that taps into the geomagnetic forces of the planet allowing her to fly, to freeze others in place with 'magnetic rays' or to move objects remotely with similar forces. She's a calm methodical sort of person, working on her own technology when not in action, and incrementally tweaking and enhancing her capabilities, in a relentless march towards self-perfection. The ore from which her armor is composed is a natural compound found deep within the sunward regions of Pasnic, and does not function off-world, limiting her to operating on Pasnic, a limitation she finds acceptable, since she has never been (or found a reason to want to go) off-world.

Twilight comes from the 'starward' nation, and wears a dark purple leather harness and cloak of feathers, entering super-conflict on the back of an enormous bird of prey, native to his 'side' of the planet, and commonly domesticated by the Pasnians there. He has the superhuman ability to communicate with all sorts of animal life, although no capacity to directly control them, requiring him to negotiate with and 'train' them normally, if far more easily than someone unable to understand them or convey specific instructions to them. He prefers avians, for their mobility, and is often accompanied by great flocks of barely-trained creatures of this sort, but has trained with dozens of other species, some commonly domesticated on Pasnic, some 'wild' and untamed and dangerous, so that he can often turn wild animals or trained guardian animals to his will.

After an unfortunate incident in which his flying steed was brought down by a blaster shot, he always wears a short-use grav pack under his cloak, so that he can drift safely to the ground if something goes wrong, or he feels the need to 'abandon ship' in mid-air. Dusk similarly once encountered a rogue scientist who could block the geomagnetic forces she tapped into for flight, and now also wears a similar pack built into the backplate of her armor.

This is perhaps the only thing these two former enemies have ever agreed upon...

Starhaven's latest hero, Violet Indigo, sometimes just called 'Vi' or 'Six,' has the not-uncommon racial mutation that allows her to accelerate herself with an unknown propulsive energy. Like her more famous world-mate, Dawnstar, Kelay Sparrowhawk has wings, although hers are the glossy black of a crows wings, matching her short black hair. Her two-toned violet and indigo tights, countershaded like the hide of a killer whale, bear the Anglic** characters 'VI,' for Violet Indigo, on the front, which has resulted in someone mistaking it for a Roman numeral six, and her other nickname of 'Six.'

Using her power, she can accelerate with incredible speed in short bursts, protected by the same force that propels her, even without flapping her wings. She moves with such speed and force, being immune to kinetic forces while moving, that she is surrounded by a visible 'red shift' aura when moving away from someone, or a 'blue shift' corona of light when moving directly towards someone (which occurs fast enough that they see her noticing them in the distance, then a blue flash, and then they are bowled ass over teakettle as she either slams into them, or, if they are not superhumanly durable, stops in front of them and allows the slipstream of displaced air from her supersonic flight to fling them away). Unlike Dawnstar, Violet Indigo lacks the ability to travel in outer space, or any sort of navigational abilities, making it extremely dangerous for her to use her power as part of conventional flight, since she could easily end up slamming into a mountain, or zooming out of the atmosphere into deadly vacuum. As a result, she is more likely to use her abilities while standing firmly on the ground, or at least, very carefully, while closer to ground level.

One reason she's sanguine about the nickname 'Six,' is that she is the 'sixth' hero native to Starhaven, after Dawnstar, Hue & Cry (mentioned upthread), a Nth armored winged warrior with no known super-human powers (and controversial because of Thanagarians disputing the provenance of his armor), and Sunayi Edahi, 'the Night Goer,' or 'the Imprecator' a nocturnal shapeshifting Cherokee shaman/witch who refuses to share their true name, appearance or even gender.

**When the Anasazi dialect of the Hopi / Zuni language-family was converted to a written form, it used Anglic script, and traditionalists tend to eschew updating it 'again so soon' to Interlac. (With 'so soon' being nearly 1000 years!)

What, it's been almost a year? Time to find a few Legion-verse aliens that I haven't made heroes for!

The Seerons of Seeris (Adv 379) lived entirely too much the life of the mind, finding themselves forced to try and manipulate Legionnaires to fight their battles for them. After that went about as well as one would expect, one among their number chose to find a way to turn the telepathic energies of his people into a more physical weapon, for use against foes that they could not affect with their mental powers (such as robots). Months were spent designing a 'battlesuit' of sorts, that allowed this Nameless individual (Seerons have no need for personal names, and so, to off-worlders, he is simply known as 'Nameless') to turn his telepathic power into telekinetic enhancement of his own strength and durability. The suit looks like a sleek metallic bodysuit, with swirling bands of coppery red (following muscle paths and lines of force), silver (connective tissue) and gold (near the head, where the energies originate, but also at the finger tips and pads of the hands and feet, where telekinetic energy is released during flight or in combat). Surrounded by a telekinetic shield that appears as little more than a shimmer or heat distortion in the air, and flying on similar waves of telekinetic energy, Nameless can project bolts of telekinetic energy, fueled by his own telepathic abilities, and so act to defend his people against threats that cannot be addressed by mere telepathy, such as a falling meteor!

I like all of this batch Set, but the Lilliputian is my favourite - shrinking powers are up there (or down there I guess) as one of my favourites and this guy has a touch of Dr Pym, Scientific Adventurer about him (which was Hank Pym's best incarnation imo)

Thanks raz!

I find it amusing how many Imskian heroes I've made, compared to, say, Daxamites or whatever, who have much sexier powersets. There's just so many directions you can go with shrinking powers!

And yes, Pym was fun in the West Coast Avengers, when he gave up his Giant-Man/Goliath/Yellowjacket identities and functioned more as team scientist / adventurer than 'super-hero' (which is kind of the niche Reed Richards occupies).

Ooh, I found another alien race and world!

R'kel of Trevenon

While attempting to overcome a racial fear of fire (common on his homeworld, which has a higher percentage of oxygen and some methane in it's atmosphere, resulting in fires burning more spectacularly and uncontrollably) with aversion therapy, he instead learned ‘to make fire afraid of me!’

R'kel can repel energy, pushing it away, or even extinguishing it entirely, creating areas of darkness, cold, etc., and causing machines to become powerless as their batteries discharge harmlessly (with all such discharges happening directly away from him, as energy is literally repelled from his presence, which can result in him shocking people with the discharged energy stored in their own blasters). He's an enthusiastic hero, having overcome not only his fear of fire, but seemingly any sort of social anxiety or fear of death or any other sort of fear or doubt (and his mothers complains, even common sense and caution...) as well!

I was just going back through this thread because I couldn't remember if I'd posted any of these next guys previously, and man we have come up with a lot of characters! Mining my old posts for fanfic inspiration as we speak

THE SPECIALISTS are a Coluan super-team who each embody one of Howard Gardner's theorised types of intelligence (going through this thread I see IB actually came up with a character who does this on their own ages ago too so I guess great minds think alike ). Because they've each specialised so intensely in one particular area to the expense of all other intellectual pursuits, other Coluans view them with a level of distaste. This combined with the boredom of Colu's static society has inspired the nine to travel other worlds both alone and together as an interplanetary superhero team.

CHOIRMASTER is a 12th level musical intelligence. He possesses perfect pitch, and is a prodigy with all known musical instruments. He can instantly analyse complex musical arrangements and flawlessly identify their various distinct components; more useful in criminal investigations is his ability to discern voiceprints with complete accuracy. He has even been known to be able to aurally identify people or machines he knows well by individual quirks such as the unique rhythm of their footfall or an almost unnoticeable deviation in pitch that one vehicle's propulsion systems might have compared to another for example. On one memorable occasion he detected millions of credits worth of drugs being smuggled through Zuun customs when the cargo platform's higher pitch alerted him that it was carrying more weight than expected. These abilities come in useful for detective work, but Choirmaster learned very early on that being a superhero was easily as much physical work as theoretical; to address this he is constantly surrounded by his "choir", ten floating orbs about the size of tennis balls which can produce sonic effects in a variety of different combinations depending on Choirmaster's commands. With his choir he can create a defensive sonic shield, a piercing vibratory lance and upset the equilibrium of one or more targets among other things.

SHARPSHOT is a cocky young man with an uncanny spatial awareness which more often than not he uses in conjunction with wrist-mounted blasters to make shots most sentients would consider impossible. This also translates to throwing attacks, but Sharpshot finds primitive thrown weapons to be beneath him if he has any other choice. This ability helps him in other more esoteric ways as well; he suffers very little inconvenience when facing unseen or multiple foes because he can almost instinctively calculate where they'd be most likely to be filling space in his immediate area.

THE OMNILINGUIST is the least physical of the Specialists. He prides himself in his refusal to ever use a translator device because he can decipher and communicate in any verbal or written language he's ever come across with only minutes of exposure. More to the point, he can pretty much talk his way into or out of pretty much any situation and he can intuit a lot of hidden information about someone by virtue of the words they choose to use when communicating.

MR LOGICAL has an ability to comprehend logic chains and abstract reasoning which is surpassed only by Brainiac 5 to the best of his knowledge. He has an extremely high resistance to any kind of illusion or mental persuasion abilities, and he's been known to circumvent cyber-security and crash highly advanced artificial intelligences by literally out-thinking them. He also has an ability to analyse probable paths of cause and effect which isn't quite as all-encompassing as postcognition or precognition, but it comes in handy more than it doesn't.

KINESIS is the team's resident martial artist. With the murder of the second Karate Kid, she has no living peer. She's scoffed at any suggestions she could become the third person to carry on the Karate Kid legacy; Kinesis may not be the typical Coluan, but she's Coluan enough that she can't see the logic in her codename highlighting only one of the hundreds of martial arts she has mastered. Outside of combat, Kinesis is almost superhumanly flexible and capable of daunting acts of dexterity and physicality. She is equally dextrous with her feet as with her hands, and she can even use her mouth as an extra appendage where necessary with less (but still impressive) skill. Kinesis' studies of various martial arts and physical disciplines have taught her to slow her heartbeat to simulate death or slow the metabolisation of poisons, and she has such precise control of herself that even her body language and micro-expressions are wholly premeditated at all times to achieve an intended result.

HEARTIAC 12 alleges to be the descendant of the 853rd century heroine Heartiac. She is stronger and more resistant to injury than even Kinesis thanks to future genehancements, though as a pacifist she has never entered physical combat. It was Heartiac 12 who brought the Specialists together in the first place, and while they all have their own ideas on the matter she hasn't told any of them why she has journeyed so far back into the past to bring this team together. Heartiac 12's emotional intelligence registers a GM0z on the scale; a system of measurement not comparable to any modern-day equivalent. Her empathic and persuasive abilities are so enhanced that they simulate telepathy and mind-control. She has disabled suicide bombers and talked down entire teams of super-villains purely with the power of her words. Heartiac 12 has been very open about her abilities with her team, and some of them do harbour suspicions that she manipulates them now or has done in the past, but they are all intelligent enough to know if she really wanted them to do something they'd be hard-pressed to ever deny her; as she seems to have genuinely altruistic motivations they just try not to consider the possibility too much.

THE INTRAPERSON is a quiet young woman who has an almost mystical knowledge of herself. She has a photographic memory and can instantly recall any point of her life back to her time in the womb. She is completely immune to any kind of emotional/mind control, mental illusion or even simple telepathic contact if she wishes to be. She is the only member of the team to have really taken an interest in hand to hand combat and trains regularly with Kinesis. The Intraperson has never revealed her birth name or her history prior to joining the Specialists, but has hinted that before being recruited by Heartiac 12 she led a life she wasn't particularly proud of. The Intraperson can feel emotion, but she only does so by choice. Even by Coluan standards she tends to present herself as being fairly emotionless and almost robotic. Her ability to ignore physical pain is even more impressive than that of Kinesis; on one occasion when fighting the new Monster Master, the Intraperson's hand was bitten off by one of his creatures. While her teammates took care of the creature, the Intraperson calmly collected her bloody hand and made her way to a nearby Science Police officer to be taken to the nearest emergency medical facility. There, she remained conscious while her hand was re-attached and then just as calmly left to rejoin her team.

NATURE BOY at one stage was actually considered to be Colu's greatest intellect next to Brainiac 5. His people were disgusted when he left his world at the age of 11 to start a journey among the less technologically advanced worlds of the UP where he could immerse himself in more natural environments. A later addition to the Specialists, they actually encountered Nature Boy during their fight against the new Monster Master. With his incomparable affinity with animal and plant life, Nature Boy proved incidental in defeating the villain. Nature Boy is a walking talking encyclopedia when it comes to natural life, which aside from allowing him to placate any animal also allows him to identify dangerous flora and to be able to tell if someone is under the affects of a particular substance. He joins Kinesis, Sharpshot and the Intraperson in being one of the team's physical combat specialists.

COSMIC QUEEN was Heartiac 12's first recruit to the team, and they've often wondered if Cosmic Queen actually sought the heroine from the future out specifically to be recruited. Always fascinated by more existential pursuits, the girl who would become Cosmic Queen left Colu for the Sorceror's World on her 12th birthday. She lived on the Sorceror's World for exactly one year, soaking up any and all knowledge she could about the meaning of life and death. She found that she didn't have much of an interest in actually performing magic though, and on her 13th birthday she felt that she should go back to Colu. She met Heartiac 12 soon after, and the Specialists were formed. Cosmic Queen has an upgraded awareness of reality which gives her clairvoyance as well as the general ability to detect anomalies or large sources of power in her current region of timespace. She doesn't have actual precognition, but Cosmic Queen does have a vague sense of the best and worst paths to take in any given scenario. Her time on the Sorceror's World gave a metallic tint to her skin and gives her the appearance of a starscape in her black hair, making her the most exotic looking of the Specialists.

Ooh, an entire team of Coluans! I like Choirmaster, best of all, because it's just such a cool concept, musical awareness as a super-power!

Kinesis is fun. I like the very last bit, about being able to control her body language. One variant hero I'd considered a while back was a new Marvel Swordsman, whose fighting technique would baffle anyone fighting him, especially trained swordsmen or melee combatants, since wherever he *seemed* to be about to strike was not his true target, and he always seemed to know exactly what his opponent was intending. Secretly, he was Doug Ramsey/Cypher, a mutant with language powers, who had learned to not just read body language to know what a foe was planning, but to *lie* with his own body language, and trick them into parrying or dodging right into his true objective. An experienced fencer might find that they are much more successful fighting him *if they close their eyes,* because he won't be able to 'lie' to them anymore with his faked body language!

Heartiac 12 and Sharpshot are also cool. I love the idea of a super-genius marksman, calculating angles and probably building their own guns and ammunition.

I had fun coming up with them, I think I will come up with a story to use these guys somewhere down the track

I love the idea of Doug being able to lie with fake body language...they started developing him into a more physical character toward the end of the last New Mutants run, but then that seemed to have kinda been dropped when Peter David used him in X-Factor which is a shame.

I never even thought about Sharpshot making his own weapons that break spatial physics, that makes total sense though...I might steal that off you!

It just sort of clicks for me that a Coluan master at some discipline (in his case, sharpshooting) would never be satisfied with guns or ammo made by other people, and make his own, including funky stuff like special bullets designed to curve in flight (so he can shoot someone around a corner) or an energy blaster that wraps a magnetic containment bubble around a ball of plasma, designed to withstand a number of impacts and 'bounce' before finally exploding, so that he can 'bounce' a shot off one person (still knocking them backwards) and into a second target (such as a vehicle or robot or wall), where it then explodes into a fiery ball. He'd likely have a couple of different guns, at any time, for different situations, and possibly even be testing out something new at any given time (which may or may not work as well in the field as he'd hoped...).

In any event, cool concept!

Another *villain* of another world!

Born on Okeno, the so-called 'Gorilla World' settled by descendents of the intelligent apes of Earth's Gorilla City, Baku'an had white fur, a rare sign that carried some superstitious baggage related to being doomed to evil, or born soulless, or some such ancient nonsense. He also had a weakened immune system, and had to be raised in a life-support system, as the medical customs of Okeno did not support the notion of gene-therapy. His mother tried all sorts of spurious techniques, some traditional, some quite advanced, to help her son in his struggle to survive, skirting local law and custom, in her desperation. It was experiments with anti-microbial silver nanoparticles and 'vita-rays' that unlocked some strange mutation, and caused his fur, and later his skin, muscles and bones, to absorb vast quantities of silver, eventually becoming as strong and durable as the metal itself, and immune to the many diseases that had threatened him every day of his life. His mother's actions had led her into blatant acts of theft (of many kilo's of silver, among other things, including restricted technology), and she was under effective house arrest, but considered it all worth it, as she had saved the life of her son, and he had grown from a sickly infant, not expected to survive, into a great and powerful young sapen, who took to calling himself 'Silverback.'

It was at his hands that she died, crushed as he absently struck her aside during a moment of temper, and Silverback went on a rampage, the silver nano-particles infusing his body (and brain) having poisoned his mind. Resistant to many forms of weapons, and superhumanly (supergorillaly?) strong, he destroyed everything that stood in his way before finally being taken down by a combination of Okeno security forces, and local hero Laser Ape.

Now he broods in confinement. Any attempt to cure him of his berserk temper and antisocial rages would require unbonding the silver from his system, and quite possibly kill him, if not immediately, soon thereafter from the countless microbial infections that threaten someone like himself, with no functioning immune system. And so he sits, and plots...

The return of Laser Ape!

I like a good tragic monster, and Silverback is one of those animal names that is just begging to be turned into a comic book character!

Love the Coluans! It never seemed right that they'd be as uniform a society as they've been portrayed in the comic. I'm really looking forward to any story you write about them.

Silverback - great origin story to go with that name. It is a tragic story, especially if he has moments of non-rage clarity. Sounds like a job for Element Lad.

Thanks! I just saw the name, and had to have a metal gorilla. I'm weak like that.