The team also had connections to other groups within the
Power Universe, serving to actually tie multiple aspects of the setting
together. Despite this, they ended up only really playing a part in one
adventure that was a “mega-event” for the Power Universe at the time, before I
started overhauling the setting. Said event involved the Evolutioneers
stumbling across a temple or stone-carved prophesy that warned of the coming of
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As other Power Universe hero teams battled
the Horsemen around the world, the Evolutioneers found a way to re-seal the
monsters back into Hell. After that, though, I didn’t really have any stories
for them other than participating in other events.
This team was also the last to sport a cast of very obvious
knock-off characters, before I set the policy for myself to quit doing that. I
didn’t even come up with clever names to differentiate them in some cases.
LIGHTNING
Powers and Abilities:
Electrokinesis, Electrosense. Explorer, archeologist, occult studies,
leadership. She is highly intelligent, though not quite a genius.
Description: A
blond woman usually dressed in rugged clothing fit for archeological digs and
travel through the wilderness. Despite her general level-headedness and ability
to lead her ragtag group into battle, she something of a thrill seeker. She is
driven by a deep curiosity about the world’s ancient mysteries.
Inspiration Source:
Funnily enough, there is a very similar younger character I came up with called
Lightning Girl, who is basically Lightning at age twelve. She herself was
inspired by Katie Power of Marvel’s Power Pack (LG’s whole team was a basically
a Power Pack knock-off, whom I creatively called “The Power Team”).
I don’t remember if Lightning was supposed to be a grown up
version of Lightning Girl (which would throw off the timeline somewhat), or if
it was just a co-incidence. The Power Team is team is of debatable canon to the
Power Universe anyway; I think I basically rebooted several of those characters
into the main Power Universe canon as adult characters scattered among
different groups.
That in mind, Lightning is probably the least derivative
character of the team, if only by degrees of separation.
Backstory:
Lightning is yet another mutant created by the Company, and was possibly one of
the original escapees from their genetics facility. While most of those who
escaped went to join up with the Mutant Force team, Lightning decided to make
her own way. Ostensibly, she still has connections to older members of the MF.
What set her on the path to become an adventurous explorer
is hard to say, but it could have been that she suspected there was a deeper
history to the Company than most of the superheroes of the modern age suspect.
Along the way, she got caught up in other discoveries, and just naturally took
to the lifestyle.
ARACHNID
Powers and Abilities:
Has all the powers of a jumping spider, scaled up to human proportions. Genius
level intellect, specializing in genetic engineering.
Description: A
demihuman-style spider-human hybrid, with an overall human body, but extra
spider-like limbs, visible fangs, eight eyes, and a spider-like abdomen secured
to his back. Despite all the extra body parts, he prefers to wear a large lab
coat draped over his form. Despite his monstrous appearance, he is a pretty
friendly fellow.
Inspiration Source:
His appearance was inspired by a spider-themed villain from a Mighty Max
cartoon. To be fair, Arachnid is enough of his own character I don’t quite
consider him a knock-off.
Backstory: Arachnid
is a Company mutant who may have actually been one of the scientists working to
create mutant powers. However, when he found out his superiors were kidnapping
people to experiment on them against their will, he tried to rebel against
them, and found himself captured and experimented on. He considers this a
poetic justice since he was partially responsible for his fellow test subjects
plight.
Nonetheless, he found it too difficult to work with the
other mutants who joined the Mutant Force, giving them as much information
about the Company as he could (which amounted to very little they didn’t
already know), before setting off to do his own thing. He was recruited by
Lightning when she decided to form a group to help her in her expeditions.
Arachnid is also the estranged father of a teen vigilante
named Jen, who was a secondary member of the teen hero group The New Force.
During one of the big events, the two met and reconciled, but ultimately stayed
with their separate teams.
MORPHEUS
Powers and Abilities:
Vampiric powers, including superhuman strength, durability, regeneration,
speed, flight, and the ability to suck blood directly out of people’s skin on
contact. However, he possesses none of the weaknesses of normal vampires, since
his powers are a result of mutation, not demonic magic. He is a genius level
intellect in the medical field, specializing in developing vaccines and
antibiotics.
Description: Bone-white
skin, long black hair, red eyes, visible fangs and claws, dresses in all black
with a ragged bat-wing cape. He is very tormented by his need to drink blood,
and his attempt to be a superhero is something of a penance for his monstrous
nature.
Inspiration Source:
He’s a complete rip-off of Michael Morbeus, a vampire anti-hero from Marvel.
I’m not even going to pretend otherwise.
Backstory: Dr.
Morpheus was struggling to find a cure for a deadly blood born virus (a more
overtly lethal form of AIDs, I believe), and turned to experimental medicines.
During a lab accident, he became infected with the disease, and became ever
more desperate for a cure. Through black market sources, he managed to acquire
a vial of mutagenic ooze raided from the lost labs of the mad scientist Dr.
Mathworths.
Combining the mutagen with a mixture of new anti-virals he
had developed, Morpheus tested the cure on himself, and was transformed.
Although cured of the virus, he was, in return, transformed into a
faux-vampire.
During a few weeks of reluctant feeding on a string of
villages in Southeast Asia , he was hunted and
captured by Lightning’s then-small team. They sussed out his plight, and
Arachnid agreed to help him create an effective artificial blood source, which
they soon succeeded at, allowing Morpheus to feed without hunting humans.
SHRARD
Powers and Abilities:
A humanoid mass of jagged glass shards. Each shard can break off and fly
independently of the rest, enabling him to become a whirling storm of shredding
glass. This also gives him a general ability to fly, and gives him superhuman
resistance to damage as he can flow through or around most physical attacks. He
can send off small clusters of shards up to one-hundred feet away to act as
floating hands, though he can only use a few of these at a time before he loses
concentration.
However, he can be trapped by melting his glass form into a
puddle (he loses control over liquefied parts) or flash-fusing it into one
solid mass (trapping him as a glass statue that others have to shatter in order
to let him move again).
Description:
Appears as thousands of glass shards of various sizes stuck together into the
rough shape of a broad-shouldered man. He has something of a gruff, grumpy
attitude. Knowing how deadly he is, he tries to avoid needless fights, but he
also doesn’t put up with other people giving him grief.
Inspiration Source:
Shrard was inspired by Marvel’s Sandman character, during a storyline where he
was turned into glass, then shattered, and managed to reform himself into a
glass-shard form. Like Arachnid, though, I don’t know if I’d call him too much
of a rip-off, since the resulting character was pretty different.
Backstory: Shrard
was found wandering the Russian countryside, warily hanging around the
outskirts of towns, but shyly running away whenever anyone tried to contact
him. It was only when he discovered the existence of superheroes that he tried
to find some in the hope for answers. The Evolutioneers were the first group he
encountered, during their expeditions into the Siberian wilderness. After
helping them battle some demon-possessed bears, he asked them for help in
rediscovering his past.
Shrard has only vague memories of a life as a down-on-his
luck trucker who became unemployed and homeless, increasingly desperate to find
some kind of work to turn his life around. His next memory was of digging
himself out of a chemical vat in a ruined laboratory a hundred miles from the
nearest town. Lightning believes he may be a Company mutant or the experiment
of another mad scientist, who had been lost and forgotten in any number of
destroyed labs. Shrard thinks he may be a lot older than he feels, as he
doesn’t remember home computers existing before his memories go dark.
Despite investigating the lab, no solid answers were found.
With nowhere else to go, Shrard remained with the group.
DEMOGOBLIN
Powers and Abilities:
Superhuman strength and durability, fast healing, ripping claws and teeth,
thermographic vision, night vision, enhanced smell, flight, pyrokinesis,
smoke-kinesis, Hellfire projection, the ability to sense deceit in a person, great
magical knowledge including ritual spells, ability to see ghosts and spirits,
can sense mystical forces, can survive the Hells without special protection
Description:
Appears as a golden-scaled reptilian with a full maw of long pointed teeth, an
extendable tongue, long claws, and blood red vipers-eyes. Dresses in ragged
brownish clothing with a similarly ragged orange cape and hood.
Inspiration Point:
He is pretty directly ripped-off from Marvel’s Demogoblin, though his outfit is
more like the Hobgoblin’s. Yes, once again, I didn’t even bother to come up
with a different name. To be fair, this Demogoblin is a heroic soul, a noble
demon in the vein of Ghost Rider or Etrigan.
Backstory: Like
several heroes and villains of the Power Universe, Demogoblin is a demon from
Hell, which in the Power Universe was basically just treated as another
dimension. While most demons are evil, as one would expect, there is a notable
faction of Noble Demons, who have foresworn the evil path, and fight to protect
Earth and various worlds from the infernal ambitions of their fellows.
So it was that the Demogoblin came to Earth to forewarn the
coming of a new invasion force. In an early mega-event, the Earth-Demon Wars
erupted, with the world’s superheroes and advanced armies managing to win thanks
to the Demogoblin’s advanced warnings, and the infernal army not being in any
way prepared for the generation of superhumans and advanced technology that had
arisen since their last invasion attempt.
Despite his heroism, the Demogoblin did not wish to be a
part of any existing hero team, and spent some time wandering the Earth.
However, he fell in with the Evolutioneers during the Four Horseman’s assault
on the world. Liking this group of traveling heroes, and seeing they definitely
needed a more knowledgeable mystic among their group, he decided to stick
around.
STEEL
Powers and Abilities:
Uses a suit of power-armor that grants him superhuman strength, durability,
flight, and energy blasts. Initially wielded a war hammer that could channel
electrical blasts, but lost it after a time. Genius level engineer and
roboticist.
Description: A
tall, powerfully built man who dons a gunmetal grey power armor with silver
plating over the chest, gauntlets, waist, boots, and part of the helmet.
Inspiration Source:
He’s a complete rip-off of DC Comic’s Steel. I’m not even going to pretend
otherwise. I didn’t even change the name, despite intending to eventually.
Backstory: Steel
was a roboticist working to backwards-engineer some of the robotics technology
of Dr. Mathworths and the Dreadnaught. He was able to create an effective
prototype power-armor. However, when the Ferocious Five raided his lab to
reclaim their technology, he donned the armor to fight them off.
He got thoroughly thrashed by their combined might, but
managed to survive the encounter. However, his boss in the project was revealed
to be a supervillain as well, hoping to profit from the sale of the power armor
to corrupt governments. Steel traveled to one such nation in order to sabotage
the technology that had already been shipped, and in the process encountered
the Evolutioneers who were already struggling against the regime. After joining
forces to topple the dictator, Steel joined their group in gratitude and to
lend his tech experience.
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