Tenebrous (Dark Superheroes)

[Steerpike]

Tenebrous

My computer recently broke, so I've been using my laptop and stumbled on an older file that had this thing in it.  I'd sort of forgotten about it, but in essence it's an idea for a bizarre, "Steerpike-multiverse crossover" Dark Superheroes game.  I'm honestly at a loss as to whether this is kind of awesome or just silly (or maybe... both?).  Opinions are welcome.  Would anyone be up for playing this?  Obviously it would need more characters, villains, setting details, etc.

I'm not sure what system, if any, I would use – No Stats Theatre, Mutants and Masterminds, maybe a tweaked version of my still-untested "Rugged" system, something else altogether.  Input is welcome.  If anyone can recommend a free or cheap system, easy to use and fairly simple, for running a dark supers game, that would be awesome.

Particular influences, as I recall, included Hellboy/B.P.R.D., Justice League Dark, Vertigo comics, and Spawn.

Roster

[ic=Haematophage]Also popularly known as Bloodsucker, Haematophage was born Caleb Gore, a surname which proved horrifyingly apt.  Caleb's mother was Donna Gore, an escaped mental patient suffering from what was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia.  For days before her escape from Gallowswood Asylum she raved about an entity she referred to as "The Ravager-Worm," claiming that she would become its bride.  After an orderly attempted to sedate her following a particularly intense episode, Donna attacked and killed the man, tearing out his throat with her teeth, stabbing a second orderly with the syringe, and badly injuring a doctor before dashing from the grounds into the nearby swamp.  She was discovered nine months later: pregnant and floating in a backwoods fen, Donna was pale as a corpse and covered in tiny circular wounds.  Fished from the water, she was thought a drowning victim until her rescuer felt a faint heartbeat, as well as the kick of Caleb in her womb.  A local midwife performed an emergency caesarean, saving Caleb – though when he was pulled from his mother's dying body, the midwife nearly dropped him in horror.  Horribly deformed, Caleb was born with slimy, mottled skin and no mouth – on his face.  Two gnashing, circular mouths gaped at his palms, crying and squealing like any newborn.  Donna Gore died on the operating table.

Sold to a travelling freak show by the unscrupulous locals who delivered him, Caleb had an unusual childhood, but found some measure of acceptance, if not normalcy, amongst the other human oddities of the circus.  Despite his unusual anatomy he proved perfectly capable of eating and speaking, and several physicians observed that his improbable physique was astonishingly well-developed: it seemed impossible that all of the necessary secondary organs necessary for respiration and digestion could have developed through random mutation alongside Caleb's strange palm-mouths, and he proved fully amphibious as well, a trait fully exploited in his sensational act in the show.  During his adolescence, Caleb began experiencing night terrors and mood swings.  Most blamed this on puberty – until one day, during an act, Caleb was overcome by an insatiable thirst and attacked several spectators, latching on to a woman watching the show and exsanguinating her in seconds while horrified onlookers fled for their lives.  Coming to as if out of a period of unconsciousness, Caleb look down to see the woman's bloodless corpse sprawled at his feet, the pair of red marks on her neck like grotesque love-bites.  Horrified by his actions, he fled the scene of the crime and his home of fifteen years.

For the next decade Caleb wandered as a vagrant, feeding on animals but occasionally succumbing to episodes of the "Crimson Thirst."  Dubbed "Bloodsucker" by newspapers across the country, he was later found and subdued by the Tenebrae during one of his rampages.  Instead of turning him in, the Tenebrae provided him with synthetic blood and medication to control his dark cravings.  Since his training and induction into the squad he has proved himself a valuable member of the team, channeling his unwholesome thirst to combat occult threats.  With incredible strength, amphibious physiology, and potent natural weapons, Haematophage – as he now calls himself – is fiercely loyal to the Tenebrae.  With every diabolic monstrosity they seal, malignant phantasm they exorcize, and unseelie elf they cast back into Faerie, Caleb feels he grows closer to redeeming himself for his murderous past – if he saves enough lives, so he hopes, he can make up for the atrocities he unwillingly committed.

Powers: amphibious, blood-draining attacks, enhanced strength and resilience, numbing venom

Weaknesses: fire, salt, the Crimson Thirst [/ic]

[ic=Hel]In ages past, Hel was the goddess of death, decay, and slaughter, queen of the Norse underworld and ruler over a realm of the dishonoured dead.  Now, centuries later, her powers depleted from lack of worship, Hel has dwindled into a shadow of her former self, but she still possesses abilities far beyond those of any mere mortal.  Appearing as a blond, statuesque woman of Scandinavian descent and brooding beauty, Hel's semblance occasionally flickers (just for a moment – so quickly one can never be sure of one's eyes) to reveal a different form: a blue-black corpse, horribly decayed, maggot-eaten and mottled from the depredations of frost, bones protruding from her necrotic skin.  Plants wither and flesh putrefies at her touch; flesh creeps in her presence while animals bark or shy away.  She can also call those who died dishonorable deaths to serve her, reanimating their corpses into obedient draugar.  Immune to all mortal disease and impervious to aging, Hel lingers in the mortal world, her realm of Niflheim having long since been annexed by demon-kind in their rapacious conquest of the afterlives.

Following her exile from the underworld, Hel took to wandering the lands of the living, even adopting a "civilian" identity as Dr. Helene Larsen, a forensic anthropologist and later the administrator of a large body farm.  It was here that she was approached by Tenebrous, which had discovered her true identity – Hel functions as a nexus for the uncanny, attracting spirits and weird happenings, and an array of related investigations eventually led the Tenebrae to her door.  Though initially reluctant to accept a position in the organization, the opportunity to dissect some truly strange creatures – extradimensional abominations, spliced hybrids, otherworldly beasts, mutant horrors, etcetera – proved too tempting for the former goddess to pass up.  She now works as the official forensics officer of the Tenebrae while also accompanying other operatives on field assignments requiring her particular skill-set.  Able to tell the time of death and cause of death of any organism with a quick glance (or failing that, a quick taste), Hel can also revive the deceased to interrogate them, providing their deaths were dishonourable.  Her ability to reanimate a small army of cadavers helped the team escape from more than one tough situation, or at least hold out until reinforcements arrived.  Calling her draugar servants "zombies," however, earns one a disparaging look.

With an extremely professional outlook, Hel is actually one of the better-adjusted agents on the Tenebrous roster.  Cold, aloof, and dispassionate, she prefers to be called Dr. Larsen, or failing that Helene – reminders of her past role as a major player in the Norse pantheon make her sad and annoyed.  She finds the code-names of other operatives (Haematophage, Parachronism, Spriggan, etc) "juvenile and ridiculous" and generally refers to her team-mates by their "real" names (Agent Gore, Agent Murdoch, Agent Goodfellow...).

Powers: immortality (not invulnerability), touch of decay, necromancy, preternatural forensic skills

Weaknesses: symbols of the Æsir [/ic]

[ic=Spriggan]For the first thirteen years of his life, Rupert Goodfellow believed himself an ordinary child, albeit an unlucky one.  Apparently born to a pair of junkie parents in the labyrinthine slums of Gloaming City, Rupert was soon placed in foster care and spent his childhood in and out of a slew of homes, rarely staying in one spot for more than a few months – in every instance, foster parents declared themselves unable to care for him, describing him as "disturbed," though none could provide any substantive examples of abnormal behaviour.  Fellow children likewise found him off-putting for reasons they could not articulate.  It was in a high school science class while growing pea plants that Rupert's abilities first manifested.  While other students' plants were paltry things, Rupert's grew to triple the size of an ordinary member of its species, and the peas it produced proved to possess intense psychotropic properties.  Other incidents quickly followed: a high-school bully who mercilessly tormented Rupert hung himself without warning from an oak tree, the verbally abusive physical education teacher was committed to Gallowsgate Asylum after being found babbling in Gaelic and painting the walls and floor of the gymnasium with Celtic knots, female students (and some of the female faculty) started violently fighting one another over Rupert's affections, and the dead ivy covering the walls of his current foster home's walls inexplicably revived and began spreading at a preternatural rate.

Simultaneously excited and terrified by the bizarre occurrences he seemed to be unconsciously causing, Rupert began learning to harness his powers, making his will a reality.  He found he could make himself so inconspicuous that teachers simply wouldn't notice if he got up in the middle of class and wandered out of the school, that he could make people on the street see things that weren't there simply by picturing them in his mind, and also – strangely – that the touch of iron in metal-working class burnt him as if it were white-hot.  It was at this point that the government operatives working for the Department of Preternatural Investigation took an interest in him.  Posing as social workers, D.P.I. agents plucked Rupert from his foster home and placed him in their custody.  After performing DNA tests they were able to confirm their theory – Rupert wasn't human.  In fact, he was a changeling, a fey child left in the mortal world by Unseelie Sídhe.  Though now fully mortal – having eaten human food and lived amongst humans for his entire life – Rupert nonetheless possessed powers derived from his fey blood, a heritage traceable back to the infamous hobgoblin Puck.  While D.P.I. scientists began preparing a serious of experiments to perform on him, Rupert planned his escape from their facility.  Using the full range of his abilities he slipped out of the D.P.I. base.

Realizing that he couldn't return to school or his previous life, Rupert struck out on his own, becoming a con man of exceptional ability, stealing fortunes on a weekly basis and burning through them just as fast, flickering through dozens of aliases, always staying one step ahead of the D.P.I. agents – and, later, hunters seeking to rid the world of fey, and previous marks he'd robbed.  The Tenebrous organization finally caught up with him a few years ago after rescuing him from the clutches of the Order of the New Temple, a splinter-sect of the Society of the Black Rose.  Though uninterested in glory or fighting evil, Rupert was convinced to hear the Tenebrae out when they promised they could tell him more about the nature of his powers and heritage while protecting him from the long list of individuals and organizations that want him dead.  As he learned more about his abilities and about the Tenebrous organization, Rupert found some of his cynicism and studied amorality beginning to ebb.  Finding a real family for perhaps the first time, Rupert has now become a full member of the Tenebrae, accepting the code-name Spriggan and joining the rest of the team in their efforts to fight fire with fire.

Powers: unseelie magick – glamers, emotional manipulation, temporary invisibility, plant-growth and animation

Weaknesses: cold iron (elemental iron) [/ic]

[ic=Abyzou]"Abby" to her team-mates, the demoness Abyzou has several forms, the most common being an enfant terrible culled from the Japanese horror movies the entity loves with an all-consuming passion: scraggly black pigtails, pinafore dress, an obscene giggle, and sunken, flashing eyes.  Other common guises include what Abby refers to as her "jail-bait" form, resembling an older version of her schoolgirl-semblance done up in Gothic makeup.  In her true form she resembles a clawed succubus with writhing, black tendrils for hair.  A demonic mischief-maker and trickster who thinks of mortals only as playthings (or snacks), delighting in violent and usually gory pranks, Abyzou was taken captive and bound through occult rituals after the Tenebrae thwarted an attempt by the forces of Hell to gain access to the Tree of Life.  She now serves the organization unwillingly, having bargained six years, six months, and six days of service to the Tenebrae in exchange for her eventually freedom – though she takes every opportunity to try and circumvent the spirit of this agreement or commute her "sentence."

Abyzou's powers draw on the demoness' ability to project images and words into the minds of other beings.  In addition to simply communicating with team-mates telepathically – a useful ability in conditions when standard communication devices are inoperable or unavailable – Abyzou can fill the brains of her victims with abominable visions, sometimes of horrors so extreme that the afflicted individual is driven hopelessly mad.  She cannot read thoughts or mentally dominate or possess other beings, but she can implant suggestions.  She can also psychically manipulate objects, either simply moving them telekinetically or warping them subtly: she might alter a light-bulb so that it burns red, twist a mirror to reflect a rotting corpse, transform water into blood, change the song on a radio so that the singer encourages the listener to perform depraved, sadistic acts, or cause a portrait to alter its expression.  Finally, Abyzou can unhinge her jaws like a serpent and swallow victims whole, though this ability is taxing and gives her heart-burn.  After devouring an individual, Abyzou absorbs all of their memories.

Something of an imp, Abyzou has a cruel sense of humour and is a source of both amusement and constant annoyance for Tenebrous staff.  So long as she is provided a steady stream of horror movies, comic books, and gruesome snacks (sheep's eyeballs, rotting cow's livers, fried baluts, KFC Double Downs, etc), Abyzou causes minimal trouble.  If the market was out of offal and Blood Feast II: All You Can Eat – or whatever esoteric film Abby wanted to see that day – was unavailable, however, Abyzou gets bored.  Inevitably, little things start to go awry at this point.  Files of data and official memos suddenly proliferate with horrifically obscene adjectives.  Desk photographs of family members appear decapitated.  Ringtones change to piercing human screams.  The endings of the novels in the staff lounge change so that all of the characters brutally murder one another.  To punish such transgressions, members of the staff have begun carrying around small water pistols filled with holy water; when they see Abby on the prowl, looking for mischief, they spray the demoness as one would a misbehaving cat scratching the furniture.

Powers: limited shape-shifting and reality-warping, telepathy, telekinesis, thoughtography

Weaknesses: holy water, holy symbols and phrases[/ic]

[ic=Parachronism]Six years ago, Serafina "Naughty Angel" Murdoch – also known by her Tenebrous code-name, "Parachronism" – was an exotic dancer working in Gloaming City strip clubs, living paycheque to paycheque.  While giving a client – incidentally, the crime boss now known as Revenant, back when he was still alive – a lap dance, Serafina collapsed into unconsciousness, her eyes rolling into the back of her head.  The owner was alerted and, believing Serafina to be suffering from an overdose of one sort or another, conducted her into a backroom, where she shortly revived.  Upon awaking from her stupor, however, Serafina was oddly changed: her voice, mannerisms, body language, and facial expressions were all subtly but distinctly altered, and she seemed to have no memory of her own past.  Looking down at her risqué outfit and raising an eyebrow, she informed the club owner that she would no longer be requiring employment at his establishment and briskly walked out, still unclothed, into the street.

Serafina is, of course, no longer Serafina: she has been possessed by one of the Great Race of Yith, a being projecting its consciousness forward through time in order to record future history and make certain observations regarding the shape of events and the development of culture.  
As this phenomenon has been documented by certain government agencies such as the D.P.I., Yith-possessed individuals are often rounded up by federal agents, locked in specially developed cells to prevent their consciousness' return to its own time, and then interrogated, sometimes forcibly, in order to extract valuable technological and occult knowledge – knowledge the Yith are reluctant to surrender, given their time travel protocols (what they refer to as "Chronological Etiquette").  Other, less tolerant occult groups such as the Teratocidists also sometimes hunt down Yith-possessed men and women and exterminate them.  The Tenebrous organization managed to find Serafina before either the feds or rival groups of monster-hunters could get hold of her – it wasn't hard, as she'd built a functional poly-oscillating t'lsho emitter in her basement leaking enough eldritch radiation to summon a G.O.O., a device which had caused a spate of nightmares and nosebleeds across the city for a fortnight.  After convincing her that she was in danger the Tenebrae brought her back to their headquarters and eventually persuaded her to take a position on their roster of agents.  Now the Tenebrae' resident specialist on temporal anomalies, alien technology, and experimental weaponry, Serafina can often be found in the Tenebrae' lab, but she does go out on field assignments as well when her expertise or firepower are required.

Physically, Serafina appears as an extremely attractive human woman in her early twenties.  She cut her host's long red hair and keeps it very short.  Tattoos cover most of her body, including a pair of prominent black angel wings tattoos on her back, quotes from the Song of Solomon along her right inner thigh, and a pentagonal tramp-stamp.  She has swapped the contacts her host used for a pair of very large horn-rimmed glasses.  Intellectually, Serafina is a super-genius by human standards, fully versant in over fifty languages and adept with certain experimental technologies being developed by human research institutes based on reverse-engineered alien artefacts, though more banal devices – like cars and toasters – sometimes give her trouble.  Insatiably curious and wry of wit, Serafina sometimes makes embarrassing faux pas, as she is still not fully versed in the niceties of modern etiquette.  Though the Yith have an extensive knowledge of history, their accounts are incomplete, and so Serafina frequently makes anachronistic references.

Apart from her extraordinary knowledge, Serafina possesses the ability to affect an organism with amnesia with a touch, a minor psychic ability inherent to all Yithians.  Her weapon of choice is a "lightning gun" which she cobbled together out of miscellaneous bits and pieces; though it takes several seconds to charge up, its effect is devastating, though it is not capable of pinpoint accuracy.  She usually equips herself with a shield as well, a device clipped to her belt which displaces incoming projectiles forwards in time (don't ask her how it works).

Powers: lightning-gun, temporal displacement shield, technology expert, amnesiac touch

Weaknesses: ignorant of modern history, culture, and technology[/ic]

[ic=Justine]A specially grown sex-slave genetically engineered by the experimental biotech company Fetishware Industries to cater to the sadistic pleasures of certain perverse (and rich) individuals, Justine possesses augmentations that greatly increase not only her capacity to endure physical pain while remaining conscious but to rapidly heal even serious wounds.  Engineered for maximum sensitivity, with a hyper-responsive amygdala and an artificially low pain threshold coupled with an extremely high level of pain tolerance, Justine was black-marketed as the "Ultimate Victim," a woman who could endure even the most hideous mutilations and restore herself to virginal purity, unscarred and perfect, only minutes later.  Justine was not intended to enjoy her function: quite the opposite.  Clients were very specific - they desired unwilling prey.

While Justine's physical recuperative abilities were perfected, however, her psychological resilience was not.  While she performed as intended for six months, the mental strain of so many traumas eventually caused her to snap completely.  During a particularly extreme session with the client renting her, the various neural fail-safes and memory-dampers her designers had installed in her brain were overwhelmed and the submission protocols they'd implanted overridden: a surge of sudden, murderous rage filled her.  While her tormentor performed violent acts of sadistic perversion upon her body, she broke free of the restraints used to pin her down: the massive amounts of adrenalin surging through her body endowed her with extraordinary strength.  The deviant, disentangling himself, lashed out with the serrated blade he had been using to extract the screams he desired, but the wound he gave her was nothing compared to the injuries she'd already sustained.  Grabbing the knife from him she defended herself, pinning the man to the ground and hacking him to bloody tatters. When an attendant entered the room to collect her, she was waiting behind the door with the knife; as he entered she pounced on him, killing him swiftly and taking his pistol.  She proceeded to shoot her way out of the clandestine pleasure-den in which she'd been sequestered.

Taking to the streets of Gloaming City, Justine was at first lost and confused, but she proved adaptable.  Attempts by Fetishware Industries to retrieve her were somewhat half-hearted: though she was a valuable investment, the client's influential family would not pursue recompense for risk of tarnishing their good name, and the company had already recouped her costs several times over.  When the operatives they sent to reclaim her disappeared one after another, they eventually ceased their efforts - a decision which they would later regret.  Growing into life on the streets, Justine longed for vengeance.  She became a vigilante, hunting down pimps and predators, posing as a prostitute long enough to move in for the kill.  She lived off money stolen from her victims; her skills grew.  She killed with guns, with knives, with wire garrottes, with venomous lipstick and nails.  She became adept at concealing herself, at treading quietly, at disappearing suddenly into the shadows.  All this, however, was mere preamble - practice for her true mission.

When she deemed her abilities sufficiently honed, Justine sought out the past clients who'd abused her.  One by one she brutally tortured and murdered them, eliminating armed guards when necessary.  Even this hit list, however, was a mere appetizer for the feast of violence to come.  Having slain her erstwhile abusers she turned her attentions to the technicians who'd placed her in their hands.  Embarking on a one-woman campaign of revenge, she left the laboratories of Fetishware Industries drenched with corporate blood, destroying many expensive experiments in the process.  It was at this time that the Tenebrous organization became aware of her.  Tenebrous recruiters tracked her down and offered a place on their team, giving her a new purpose, a chance to continue her crusade against predators of a different sort.  Though Justine took some convincing, she eventually joined the Tenebrae, and though she keeps to herself and rarely converses with her team-mates she has proven herself a major asset on multiple occasions.

Powers: healing factor, stealth, expert assassin

Weaknesses: mental instability[/ic]

Rogues Gallery

[ic=Voracious]Renowned archaeologist Josiah Blackwood was once the world's leading expert on certain primordial human civilizations from the dawn of human history until he disappeared on an archaeological expedition in the tunnels below Gloaming City, along with the rest of his team.  The official account – that the disappearance was due to a spelunking accident – was partially correct: such an accident did occur after a minor cave-in trapped Blackwood and his team in the tunnels.  What the newspapers didn't know was that three members of the expedition, including Blackwood, survived the collapse for many days and in fact continued their exploration of the tunnels, unearthing evidence of an ancient, subterranean city beneath the modern metropolis above, fulfilling Blackwood's wildest hopes and confirming suspicions he had long held but hadn't dared advance to the scientific community.  Trapped underground in the ruinous catacombs of a primeval society, the team-members slowly began to starve.  When one of them was killed in a fall while desperately attempting to reach the surface, the other two were faced with a horrific opportunity to survive.  Blackwood's surviving team-mate, unable to cannibalize one of his colleagues, shot himself in the darkness below the city.  Blackwood, alone and terribly hungry and still intent on bringing knowledge of the tunnels to the upper world, forced himself to consume the bodies of his team-members.

While sleeping in the lightless depths of the catacombs, the taste of human blood still on his tongue, Blackwood had a horrible nightmare in which he wandered a snowy waste while fell voices shrieked and gibbered on the wind.  Reaching an icy lake, he looked down upon the surface and saw not his own reflection but a monstrous, fanged creature, gaunt and emaciated, with a skeletal, animalistic visage, tattered lips, and eyes glowing with an awful hunger.  When Blackwood awoke, his belly growled and rumbled, but he was filled with great strength and renewed vitality.  Mustering his energy, Blackwood managed to climb back out of the caverns, but by the time he reached the surface the pain in his stomach was unbearable, and a terrible lust for human flesh filled him.  The first person he saw on the surface – a vagrant wandering the wintry streets of Gloaming City and begging for change – became his first victim.  But the man's flesh did nothing to sate Blackwood's hunger; it only made it worse.  Now little more than a frenzied beast, Blackwood prowled the streets of Gloaming City devouring whomever he came across.  With each killing he became more and more bestial, as the Wendigo spirit that had possessed him in the tunnels grew stronger.  Soon no trace of his former identity remained: he appeared as a huge, hairy animal, all fangs and wild hair, emaciated and reeking of carrion.  The Wendigo that was once Blackwood made a lair for itself in an abandoned building and began a string of serial killings that plunged the city into terror.

When the Tenebrae tracked the Wendigo to its lair the creature quickly put Spriggan out of action and devoured the draugar Hel sent its way.  It was Haematophage who took the beast down, wrestling it to the ground and draining its blood till it passed out.  Once unconscious, the creature once more became Josiah Blackwood.  But before the Tenebrae could get Blackwood back to a secure holding cell, the D.P.I. burst into the Wendigo's lair with guns blazing.  Haematophage, Hel, and Spriggan were forced to beat a quick retreat or be captured themselves, and Blackwood fell into the Department's hands.  Code-named Voracious by the Tenebrous organization, Blackwood now languishes in a government holding facility, though given the feds' track record with containment, it's only a matter of time before he gets out again to resume his rampage.

Powers: enhanced strength, enhanced speed, enhanced toughness, fangs and claws, scent, grows stronger with every person he consumes

Weaknesses: single-minded obsession with human flesh, animalistic brain (when fully possessed by the Wendigo)[/ic]

[ic=Cain]Thought by some to be the primordial murderer of legend, Cain is an immortal – cursed with everlasting life, invulnerable and ageless.  Whether or not his origins are truly Biblical, Cain has wandered the world for many millennia; though he has found occasional solace in the arms of mortal women, he has watched all who he loved die, one way or another.  Ancient scars are still visible on his brow; any who strikes Cain activates the Mark, bringing upon themselves instant retribution – their own blow is instantly replicated on their own body.  Any wound Cain is given heals at a fantastic rate: if some part of Cain survives on even a molecular level he will eventually regenerate.  He cannot starve or die of thirst, is immune to all disease, and cannot drown.

Over the long centuries, Cain has come to long desperately for death.  In an attempt to redeem himself and find the peace he seeks, Cain walks the Earth in search of Heaven's enemies.  Demons, of course, are his favourite prey: he has a hound-like patience and a thousand lifetimes of experience in hunting and in fighting (Cain is adept with almost any weapon), and with his virtual invincibility he is almost always victorious in combat.  By exiling demons back to the Abyss - essentially working as Hell's parole officer - Cain hopes to eventually cleanse his soul and so be granted death.  His targets are not only demonic, however: he has also been known to track down other threats, including monsters, fey, rogue deities, mutants, extraterrestrials, and all other manner of creature.  Though he has worn many guises over his life, Cain is mostly commonly mistaken for a vagrant.  Grizzled and dark-eyed, Cain is thoroughly mad, and has been known to spend years locked in one of his 'black moods,' staring at brick walls in catatonia or gibbering in an antediluvian tongue.  Other times he is more stable, albeit grim and eccentric, with a black sense of humour and a propensity for anachronistic references.

While Cain has sometimes proved an ally to the Tenebrae, often-times his goals have been at odds with the organization, and frequently he sees Tenebrous operatives as threats in and of themselves.  Fortunately, Cain doesn't limit his wanderings to Gloaming City, but he has a habit of showing up in town just when things are at their most fragile, providing an additional complication just when the Tenebrae least need one.  He has a particular enmity with Abyzou, whom he has sent back to the Abyss on multiple occasions.  The demoness has temporarily defeated the demon-hunter herself several times over the centuries (including one memorable time when she had him confined in an oubliette in medieval Normandy, and she may be responsible for at least some of Cain's madness.

Powers: immortality, invulnerability, healing factor, the Mark, weapons expertise

Weaknesses: insanity[/ic]

Setting

[ic=Gloaming City]Why exactly Gloaming City is a magnet for the strange and the sinister, no one can be sure, though everyone has a theory.  Some point to the convergence of ley lines at the heart of the city.  Others note that certain indigenous tribes used Hag Island for various unwholesome rituals and claim that the surrounding area is cursed as a result.  The extensive natural caverns that snake beneath the city have never been fully explored, and thus some posit that some long-buried chthonic cosmic entity's dozing brainwaves may be to blame.  Whatever the truth, Gloaming City is a nexus for supernatural activity and weird happenings.  When a witch-cult springs up dedicated to summoning Hecate, odds are that it has roots in Gloaming City.  When an outbreak of lycanthropy transforms the homeless population into cannibal werewolves, the safe bet is that the epidemic strikes in Gloaming City.  When newborn babies begin simultaneously reciting prayers in R'lyehian, prophesying the reawakening of the Great Old Ones, they're sure to be found in the hospitals and homes of Gloaming City.[/ic]

[Steerpike]

I've been rereading this, and I think I like the overall idea - a Dark Superheroes one shot type game where you play as occult-themed anti-heroes - but I might eliminate the references to my other works and do a new version; I'm not sure they add anything, on reflection.  Thoughts welcome.

[Nomadic]

I love the references to your other stuff in this and I would play the crap out of it if I had the chance. I'm totally calling dibs on Abyzou though (for obvious reasons). Something tells me sparkle is probably calling dibs on Parachronism.

[Xathan]

I'm interested in playing! Not sure who, but I do love the references to other games you've run. I wonder if I could play some ersatz Gideon, Sjack, or Llitul...

[Magnus Pym]

This is excellent stuff. If a game can be set I'd like to join as Spriggan :)

[LoA]

You know it's really funny. I just got Sentinels of the Multiverse a week ago, and began playing a lot of it with my sister. I was thinking something like that would be a fun PbP game on here.

However I don't do "dark". And by dark I mean 90's comic scene "dark". I wouldn't mind a dark superhero game in the same sense that Batman: The Animated Series is "dark". But if were talking about hunting down depraved sociopaths and vile gangs, instead of fighting world conquerors and giant monsters, I wouldn't find that very fun...

But of course Steerpike this is your game, and I would be loathed to suggest that you shouldn't do things in your wonderfully twisted ways. Have a good game, good sir.

[Numinous]

I'm interested.  Love the heck out of Spriggan, especially as the only time I ever made a Mutants & Masterminds character, they were a fey with similar powers.  But regarding the calling of dibs, I would gladly defer.  Still interested in the game though, perhaps Justine?

[sparkletwist]

Ersatz-Gideon would be fun.

He's a grizzled spaceship captain with a prehensile fungus for an arm. She's a super-genius from the future. Together, they fight crime!

[HippopotamusDundee]

This looks very very cool and taps into all of my love for Hellboy and BRPD - I am filled with a strange conviction that the long-buried chthonic cosmic entity is Yuddarath with Ktan-Ydheel entombed in state within trapped in death-like slumber xD

I'm definitely interested in the game - can I put a bid in on Hel? (also a vote in favour of using the Rugged system but that's just 'cause I really like it)

[Steerpike]

Wow - a much more positive response than I'd anticipated!  I'll ponder... I might try and come up with some "original" heroes and see how you guys like them (would probably keep Spriggan, maybe Hel, and a version of Abyzou if not Abyzou herself).  I wrote the above about a year ago, so I feel a little distanced from the material; I'll see if I can re-interpret some of it, perhaps into something more coherent-feeling.

However I don't do "dark". And by dark I mean 90's comic scene "dark". I wouldn't mind a dark superhero game in the same sense that Batman: The Animated Series is "dark". But if were talking about hunting down depraved sociopaths and vile gangs, instead of fighting world conquerors and giant monsters, I wouldn't find that very fun...

This might not be the game for you.  I'm not sure how much of my other stuff you've read, but I've posted a lot of game logs over the years (some links below, though there are other game-logs archived on the site), which should give you some idea of the kind of stuff I run.

Examples of "dark" scenes/plots/adventures from various games I've run over here:

- Interrogating an imprisoned angel who's been half-flayed as a form of torture by cultists worshiping Lovecraftian Elder Ones (the players were Demons).
- Taking out a gang of cannibal drug-dealers in an abandoned insane asylum (partly with the aid a statue that induces suicidal thoughts when looked upon).
- Stopping a necromancer who's been robbing the graves of young women to create zombie prostitutes.
- Investigating the disappearance of ranch-hands only to discover that the Black Goat in the Woods with a Thousand Young has devoured them and then re-birthed them into hideous goat-men with a lust for mortal flesh.

So it can get pretty dark, though not (usually) ludicrously dark, I think.  Generally, I don't set out to run something and say to myself "let's make this as horrible and unpleasantly grim as possible," I just tend to like grotesquerie.

In terms of specific comics and the like I have in mind with this, think stuff like Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, The Dark Knight Returns, and Spawn for tone.

[Numinous]

- Taking out a gang of cannibal drug-dealers in an abandoned insane asylum (partly with the aid a statue that induces suicidal thoughts when looked upon).

For some reason this reminds me of the paintings that are inexplicably calming to dogs.  I think it's from HIMYM?

If I may, if you're running the game, would you want to premake and let people bid on heroes or let players make thematically appropriate heroes in concert with you?  I just thought when reading Hel for example, that she sounded more like an NPC/resource than a hero in the playable sense.

Insane other idea, use it or lose it, I don't mind.  Letting players just pick up a hero for each session, keeping to an episodic, JL-style game where the group is determined from the premade roster of heroes and each player selects one. This lets everyone get a chance to play Spriggan, or change it up if someone got sick of being Abyzou.  This would of course rely on mechanical simplicity and playing fast and loose with character development too.  Just thought dumping, enjoy!

[Steerpike]

Usually when I run extended campaigns I have players create their characters from scratch, but for more casual one-shots or episodic games I generally pre-make characters.  This has a few benefits for a shorter game.  In a longer game, relationships between player characters can accrue organically, but in a one-shot there's less time to build up those relationships; with pre-mades they can already be in place.  With one-shots the world is often less clearly-defined than the settings I run long games in, as well.  So in the Cadaverous Earth, for example, there's a wealth of info for players to draw from to create their characters.  With one-shots where less info is available, premades tend to give players a "foot-hold" into the setting.  That said, I don't think I've ever disallowed a player from creating their own character if they wanted to, so long as they ran it past me first, and in several of my games with premades, characters people created themselves were pretty easily inserted alongside the premades.

Insane other idea, use it or lose it, I don't mind.  Letting players just pick up a hero for each session, keeping to an episodic, JL-style game where the group is determined from the premade roster of heroes and each player selects one. This lets everyone get a chance to play Spriggan, or change it up if someone got sick of being Abyzou.  This would of course rely on mechanical simplicity and playing fast and loose with character development too.  Just thought dumping, enjoy!

I kind of did this with my Sixguns, Spaceships, and Cyclopean Horrors game (Lovecraftian Space Western), with players switching characters fairly often.  Good idea, though!

[sparkletwist]

If Parachronism doesn't really fit what you want to do with this game any more, I don't mind picking something else to play, or possibly trying to come up with something of my own. One Sthena might be more than enough!

[Steerpike]

If Parachronism doesn't really fit what you want to do with this game any more, I don't mind picking something else to play, or possibly trying to come up with something of my own. One Sthena might be more than enough!

I think I may end up cutting the more overt referential characters like Parachronism, Haematophage, and Justine, just because I feel like the DNA of their respective worlds is bound up too strongly in them and they feel a bit self-plagiaristic.  I might keep Abyzou, because I sort of like the idea that Tempter might be set in the same universe as this, or one close enough that her presence isn't distracting in the same way.