Imagine this. Guy gets stabbed in the face. This is highly traumatic, since getting stabbed in the face sucks. So he triggers with the power of having armor on his face, so he won't get stabbed in the face anymore.
you realize this means i have to gen like. 6 entire powers basically from scratch right? This is going to be my longest post ever. Seriously. I've been working on this for months.
Okay, i'm going to split this into different parts because otherwise it's going to run on forever. This looks better on the google doc ok.
PART 1: THE SIMPLEST, MOST BASIC PART
Let's start this off with the simplest, most basic part: The Travelers cannot become Case 53s. God I wish I could leave it off there because that means I wouldn't have to spend several days (hi this is later flagler here! HAHAHAHAHAHA) writing this, but that's just me being a pedant and the obvious intended question (please powergen cool deviant powers for the travelers) remains unanswered.
The Travelers can't be Case 53s (the whole point of the travelers existence is that they're cauldron capes that cauldron doesn't know about, so if cauldron ever captured them it would defeat the whole point of their existence). THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEY CANNOT MUTATE! But it does mean that if & when they mutated, they would be deviant cases instead of case 53s. Deviant Case is the in-house Cauldron term for anyone mutated by a vial, which I use to mean anyone mutated by a vial but not branded or memory-wiped by Cauldron.
So, The DEVIANT CASE Travelers would be a great thematic fit for their whole arc in worm, so great in fact that one of them already is kind of a deviant case.
Speaking of! The major deviation I came up with here is that there is no Obviously The Zizbomb member of the Travelers. They're all the zizbombs. As a result, Noelle doesn't drink half a vial, she drinks a full one. I guess that Krouse, like, lied to her that somebody else was gonna only take half a vial.
PART 2: WHAT HAPPENED?
Okay, so this premise is actually damn near the exact same as canon actually. This is why I like this prompt. Basically, there needs to be very few alterations to canon in order to make the travelers into deviant cases. In fact, if there's a single group/individual more easily suited to all becoming deviant cases, I haven't met them.
Quick recap: the Travelers are a shitass League of Legends gamer group who are teleported to the land of worm as part of a simurgh plot to reveal the secret conspiracy known as Cauldron to the world. All 7 of them are, technically speaking, ziz bombs (not the blogger). They are transported to Madison, Wisconsin, in December 2009. Additionally, the Simurgh teleports in portions of the interdimensional cauldron compound in places that the travelers would see, such that they would be in a position to steal the briefcase with their power vial, but also desperate enough that they'd feel like they had to drink their vials. So they do, and they do. Voila.
Technically, there's a few different ways this could go. HOWEVER I am going to work off the assumption that every vial results in a mutation. Because otherwise I would have to write 36 different entire things based on each traveler getting or not getting a vial.
Some quick stuff. Krouse takes the first vial, mutates, but still brings a vial to Noelle–the Prince vial–and somehow manages to convince Noelle that he wants to help her. No idea how–Honestly, maybe he just possesses her and makes her drink it–he could! Or he just possesses the vial and tips it down her throat. I dunno. The rest of the travelers are a lot more hesitant to drink their vials, seeing what happened to Krouse, but they still end up doing it for some reason or another–every single one of them mutates! Lol. Idiots. With their new deviant forms, they manage to escape Madison, each terrified of the potential zizbombs lying in wait among them…
PART 3: SKIP TO THIS PART
There are people who spend years just dissecting the travelers and their powers. I should know, I follow them. So, know that I'm absolutely not saying This Is What They Would Look Like. If anyone has other suggestions for any of the travelers, I'd love to see them.
KROUSE/ TRICKSTER -> BRAIN WORM
If we were being more, like, logical about this, Krouse would be the least likely traveler to mutate. Since the Simurgh set this whole thing up, and knows Krouse is basically gonna be the face of the group, she almost certainly would want to steer him towards a less hazardous vial. Also he's just lucky. However, it's not impossible for him to mutate, since the Simurgh's power isn't infinite and neither is luck. Which is fortunate for me, since I wanted to write deviant powers for all the travelers.
But what are his deviant powers? That's a little tough, cause I like Krouse's canon powers, and they absolutely aren't the kind of powers that work well as deviant powers. But here's an idea: take it in an Invasion Of The Body Snatchers direction, to mimic Krouse's Take Something Else's Place theme present in his canon power.
Hm, what about… Okay, so you know Velvet's power? It's kind of like that. Krouse is a sentient cloud of tiny particles of dust, or pollen, or dandelion fluff, or something. His individual particles are capable of moving at a pretty decent clip, if you like, you could say somewhere around highway speeds, but these particles can't actually, like, do anything? Like. they're still just motes of dust, no matter how fast they're going. Krouse can't really see or hear in a traditional sense in this form, but he can sense vibrations in the air to "see" for a short distance around him. He can spread out a lot, or concentrate into a short ball, whatever he wants. It doesn't actually change anything but he can do it if he wants. He can't really be injured normally in this form–a bullet just goes through him harmlessly–but being separated by an airtight barrier can injure him, and inhospitable temperatures (among other things) can kill him. He doesn't need to breathe, per se, but he does need some kind of medium to move through, which basically just means he can "breathe" underwater, but would die in space.
Anyway, this is one of two modes Krouse could be in, I'll call it his cloud form, but he has a second one! His second form is his more impactful one. This is the reason I say it's like Velvet's power. Krouse can, over the course of a period of time (ranging from a few seconds to nearly an hour, depending on size), "settle" onto an object, though it becomes less precise the less "articulate" the object is. He can puppet any object but his "telekinetic" power becomes less and less strong the bigger the object's volume (not that it's ever very powerful). For instance, he can "telekinetically" throw a baseball pretty fast, but he can't even move a car. (He can "telekinetically puppet" a car or car sized object to hide, though)
However, the real draw of this power, what makes it really strong, is the Master element. Krouse's power is not manton-limited! Imagine if Regent could take control of someone over the course of, like, 10 seconds. Because that's what Krouse can do. Almost the same as Regent, too, the victim of Krouse's possession is completely conscious, and Krouse can see through their eyes, hear through their ears. Additionally, when controlling a victim, Krouse can also use his victim's power, but this is where we get to downsides: Krouse can take control of humans very quickly, but similarly, it's extremely easy to subvert or remove his control! Anything that would get actual dust off a surface can similarly get rid of Krouse. A feather duster or a hose can completely remove his control, and any area he's not covering is under his victim's control. Additionally, using a victim's power even once will disperse him within a second of turning it on. Like running a lawnmower or something, the engine turning on kicks all the dust off it (poof)! For powers that are always on, like Skitter's, then active, conscious use (such as giving skitter's bugs an order to move somewhere or bite something) will kick him out.
Quick aside: Krouse doesn't have to assert control of anything he gathers on. He can "lie dormant" if he wants to.
Finally, If Krouse controls a specific target for a very long time (we're talking days without interruption), he can "settle" into them, making his control much much harder to remove. At that point, basically nothing can remove his influence other than him deliberately choosing to disperse (which also takes way longer than normal). Or dying. Him, not his victim. He can control corpses. However, the instant he disperses, all the progress is reset on settling, and he'd have to control them for days without interruption again for the same thing to happen. This is his big weakness compared to someone like Regent, because once Regent has somebody he has somebody, but Krouse can never do that.
Basically, what this all means, put together, is that the best case scenario for Krouse to use his power effectively is to rapidly swap between targets he'd master, make them use their powers once, and then move on to the next target.
Misc. notes:
Most of the ways Krouse is dispersed also make it impossible for him to assert control over anything at all for at least a few seconds. Like, if a victim takes a shower or something, it'll wash Krouse down the drain.
You can't slash Krouse with a knife, but separating the dust or destroying it is painful for him. He'll eventually regrow it after a while, but it's technically possible to kill him by destroying each individual particle of dust. Skitter could kill him. Cody–the deviant Cody I made up for this post, anyway–could also kill him.
Most brute/breaker powers will counter him in some way, since they would functionally disperse dust.
For a cape like Alexandria, taking or landing a Big Hit would basically "count" towards dispersing Krouse.
He cannot ever read the thoughts of anyone he's puppeting, no matter how settled he is, so if he's possessing Tattletale or Big Picture or something, it's as if they don't have powers at all to him. He can feel thinker headaches though.
^He can still bluff though
His control is very easy to spot, because anybody he's puppeting will look like they're covered in a thin layer of dust. It's harder to notice on a car or something, people will just think "oh that guy's car is yucky" and maybe draw a smiley face on the window, but on a person you notice it immediately. People aren't supposed to look like that.
POWER RATING: high Master (7+), mid Mover(~4), low Shaker(1-3), v low Stranger (1).
As a deviant, Krouse would be very different from his canonical self. It would be way harder for him to be the face of the group, because Krouse basically can't communicate unless he's controlling someone. Or if he's controlling a speaker system, I guess. He could also possess a toy with a speaker and talk that way, but it would sound really funny cause all he has is a sheriff woody speaker or something. The gang normally lets Krouse bum around inside a smartphone or something–he can see through the camera and speak like he's on speakerphone. Can't make calls though. Whenever something big happens Marissa has to hold up the Krousephone to whatever it is so Krouse can see. Krouse doesn't need to eat in this form, but he does need to sleep. I'm not sure if he needs to possess something in order to sleep, but he certainly doesn't float. Maybe he settles like normal dust onto the floor when he sleeps. He's also the most comfortable of the whole team staying in earth bet, and the least likely to be seriously bothered by suddenly being a dustboy rather than a fleshboy.
NAME: As a cape, Krouse would probably go by a few potential names. One that stands out to me is Brain Worm, which he might stick with since mutant capes tend to get the squicky names and he'd probably wear it as a badge of honor. There's a few other possibilities, but I think Mote might be the most likely of them.
It's a real shame he wasn't branded by Cauldron because I would LOVE to know HOW THE FUCK they could POSSIBLY put a mark on him.
This is actually such a cool fucking mutant power that i'm genuinely pissed off that i made it for krouse instead of a character I like.
MARISSA/SUNDANCER -> LERNA
I had a really fucking cool idea halfway through writing this so i'm completely restarting this whole idea from scratch. So, what if, when Krouse "grabs" a random vial to give to noelle, he grabs the vial Marissa takes canonically, so Marissa takes Noelle's vial, while Noelle gets Marissa's vial?
I like this. Marissa's trigger trauma is focused around her not wanting to be the center of attention, but being forced into it by her mom, having to cut ties with her friends.
So for her new power, what if Marissa was a self-duplicator? I read a fic like that once, I think. I barely remember anything that happened in it, but I do remember that there were Marissa clones. And I think Jess had some kind of domain expansion or something. I never read jujutsu kaisen.
So, Marissa's form is like one of those Arno Breker sculptures (this has the side effect of making her look very masculine). A gleaming marble sculpture that looks like some hyper-idealized version of her, to the point where it's so devoid of imperfection that it doesn't look like her. Her face doesn't move when she talks, she doesn't seem to need to eat, blink, or breathe. So, unless she's specifically doing something, she tends to hold herself impossibly still. Her form is like a much weaker form of the Siberian. Very strong, extremely durable, never tires. She, however, cannot eat people, nor does she want to. I guess she could mash things into her face?
But the real draw of her power is that she can self-duplicate. Furthermore, each duplicate Marissa is just as invincible and indefatigable as the first. She doesn't have a hard upper limit, but it gets harder and harder to make more Marissas, and she's increasingly overwhelmed. Her record is 36 Marissas, but she can't keep so many around for more than an hour or two.
But what's case 53 about Marissa is that she's not just a cape who can duplicate. She's a cape who has to duplicate. Marissa can't have just one body. Well, technically she can, but she can't hold it for more than a few minutes. Duplicating is as easy as breathing for her, and just like breathing, not duplicating is difficult and painful. Why? There is no one Marissa. Because there never is one Marissa, and none of the Marissas act like it. Simply put, Marissa is a hive mind. Every Marissa, no matter how many or how few there are, are all simply parts of a single Marissa–Lerna. That's also why it gets progressively harder to continue duplicating. Lerna has excellent multitasking abilities, but she is decidedly worse at it than Skitter. The more Marissas that Lerna is in control of, the more she has to split her attention, and the worse her coordination between bodies, competency at most tasks, and apparent intelligence becomes. I should note, she doesn't actually get dumber, it's more just that she gets increasingly really distracted when there's more than, say, 12 Marissas.Typically, Lerna will be running around in 4-5 Marissa bodies.
This hive mind power, since it functions by offloading all of Marissa's mental faculties onto her shard, actually has the side-effect of rendering Lerna immune to most Master powers, including the Simurgh's scream! Now, if only Marissa hadn't already been exposed to the scream for several days prior to her taking the vial.
Misc. notes.
Marissas will separate by having one Marissa seem to walk out of another, as if passing through air. They could try and stop halfway through, with the two marissas sort of like phasing through eachother, but it wouldn't actually do anything, and also it kind of hurts.
Similarly, two Marissas can merge by one walking into the other. Or if one of them dies. But that hurts and Lerna doesn't like that.
Lerna does need to sleep, if significantly less than a normal human. When sleeping, all her bodies are completely still, like normal statues. She doesn't sleep like a dolphin (letting one body sleep while the others act normally) even though that would make total sense. Originally I had it so she didn't need to sleep, but the idea of somebody being able to theoretically kidnap marissa but it being functionally impossible due to her weighing like 400 pounds and there being 5 of her is really funny to me…
Marissa's form is feminine but sexless. Basically, she's like a barbie doll down there. This is mostly for my sake because Marissa has to be naked for her duplication powers to work, and I don't want to take the Siberian comparisons all the way.
If one of the Marissas dies or is seriously hurt, all the Marissas feel it. You could theoretically distract Lerna by killing a Marissa.
It also removes one Marissa from Lerna, so…
Oh i should probably include that: Marissa can't duplicate anything other than her body. If one Marissa is holding a knife or something, and duplicates herself, then the new Marissa doesn't get the knife. Not that she really needs a knife…
POWER RATING: High level Master (6-9), High level Brute (~7).
Marissa's deviant form is fun! What I like about the idea is that if you see one Marissa, she doesn't look that weird. Lerna is quite possibly one of the most outwardly normal looking Travelers! She just looks like a moving statue. Not that weird. Practically Weld… and she could seem more normal by wearing clothes! However. There's never just one Marissa. There's always like 5 of them, all moving in perfect synchronicity and only speaking one word of a sentence. That's the part that gets fucking weird. The Travelers always have numbers on their side, they have like half-again their entire team in Marissas. This does become something of a problem when it comes to, like, lodging. If they're sleeping in a motel room or something, there's always a pile of Marissas in the corner. At least once the floor broke and the pile of Marissas fell clean through into the room below.
NAME: Obviously Hydra is an option, but I don't like that, since it sounds too obviously evil, and the Travelers are at least intending to be pure mercenaries. Lerna (from Lernean Hydra) is actually pretty good. I do like it. But it doesn't feel right, I guess. Let me know if you have a better idea.
JESS/ GENESIS -> POTEMKIN
Jess is another really fun member of the travelers. Great at parties! The most chill member of the group–luke doesn't count because he has undercover cop vibes to me–not that that's a particularly high bar.
She's also unique, because her power literally is Imagine A Case 53. Which is. That's kind of my job, Jess.
But what are the themes of Jess' power? I did read a wog on it, and, this tracks with what I remember of Jess' power: her power is focused around blurring the lines, dreams, etcetera. I will say I was always happy Jess' power had very little to do with her being disabled. I always thought it was so cool that like Wildbow didn't write Jess as a one-note character who's sad cause she lives life sitting down. Sure, her power allows her to walk in dreams, but that's not really its focus. It's more that she tries to fill every role, and now her power gives her the power to actually do that, but it's flawed and doesn't work right. She can take any role, but never perfectly, and never all at once.
I talked around with the gang about this one, and I heard some great ideas. My favorite idea I heard was "guild navigator from dune." which I really like. Jess is like Trainwreck. Her case 53 form is something small and weak–I dunno, like a little slug or something. Not important, honestly. But her power gives her a–projected–body, that can take almost any form she can imagine! In fact, she's basically using the projected form 24/7. Inside her projected form, her "actual" body is just like a floating little thing. Some powers can pierce the projection, so I like the idea of the little slug thing floating around in different spots. Like. You can't actually hurt her unless you hit its main body–which, in this case, is inside her foot. I also like the idea of the projected form slowly melting like wax in the sun. Like, if she keeps a single form for too long, it starts going wrong. So she has to constantly be morphing her projected form to be different somehow or else her face will melt off. She can basically keep her projections up 24/7, since she's pretty much a noctis cape–not completely, but I think she can probably sleep like a dolphin or something weird.
Some notes:
If sufficiently damaged, her projection will just pop, and her little slug body will fall to the ground. It doesn't hurt her but it is pretty embarassing
She can form a new one almost immediately after one pops, though I think it takes some time and effort to form better, stronger, or faster forms. Which she can slowly morph towards!
The reason she has to constantly her projection is because her shard has the alien supercomputer equivalent to adhd, and jess' projection is like a fidget spinner.
Some attacks can just pierce her power and hit her true body–the little slug. Which is why it's best to be cautious!
Jess can see through her projections, but she can't see through its eyes. You can't do eye contact with Potemkin, because you'll be staring at her "eyes" and it turns out her real eyes are staring at you from her left shoulder.
The name "Potemkin" HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GUILTY GEAR CHARACTER. The name is from the term "Potemkin Village" which refers to a probably fake story about a russian general who tricked Catherine The Great into thinking the towns along her path were thriving, by putting up facades of big fancy prosperous buildings along the empty riverbank.
I really like the way Jess has to constantly swap out features of her projections, and decide which parts of it are worth prioritizing moment-to-moment. Keeps her on her toes! Thanks to diaphanous from the earth vav discord for the help with this power by the way! The dune readerrrrr.
LUKE/BALLISTIC -> MISTY MOUNTAIN
Always, to me, Luke is sort of the most boring member of the travelers. He's not the character i forget about all the time, he's the character so forgettable i know i'm gonna forget about him so i specially make sure to not forget about him and because of that i forget about a more important/interesting member.
What are the themes of Luke's power? Luke is a friendly guy. Everybody loves Luke Not Casseus… But then his power shatters that. His power can only destroy, when he's a guy who wants to help. So let's take that theme in a slightly different direction. Luke wants to help, he wants to be the glue that keeps his friends together, but his power ends up being indiscriminate and vile. Slaughterhouse 9 material.
Luke's power firstly makes him look mostly human. An idea I like is that, below the neck, he's completely unchanged, but his head and neck have become a vaguely human shaped cloud of mist. Which is his power! His power is to emit this mist in an area around him, mostly indiscriminately, though he has some ability to control this mist around him, in that he can make it cover certain areas and not cover certain other areas. It's still mist though.
When in this mist (which technically is Luke's head), living creatures will begin to mutate, and fall under a weak Master effect. Things inside this mist are semi-loyal to Luke, and will loosely obey non-specific commands. As in, if Luke tells the creatures in his mist to attack people, they will, but he can't tell them to attack certain people and not attack others.
Some notes:
Luke's mist affects different creatures at different speeds. The larger and more complex they are, the slower it affects them… A bug can be fully mutated and mastered within about 10 minutes, but to master a human takes hours.
The mastering effect is stronger the more mutated a creature becomes.
Luke's mastering is similar in concept and effect to ant pheromones.
All mutations are, essentially, permanent. They eventually will revert after several years, depending on the extent of the mutations. These reversions can take decades.
The less a creature touches the mist, the less it is affected. A person wearing a full SCBA kit and hazmat suit will never be affected by the mist, until something pokes a hole in that suit.
Luke can still direct any creatures he's affected when they aren't in his mist (they must however be near wherever his mist is, enough that his pheromones can reach them), though the master effect is much weaker and won't affect creatures that aren't heavily mutated. Also with no more precision than "get that motherfucker!" or "run away!"
All creatures, whether in his mist or not, are otherwise unaffected by his master power. It's somewhat similar to Goddess' effect, in that while they have to obey commands like "attack people" they have full discretion to do that however they want to.
The actual mutations themselves vary from individual creature to individual creature, but they tend towards direct combat applications, and the Things he mutates never get much bigger than the size of, like, a car, and size is one of the last things his power properly affects.
Luke can put a small thing such as a cricket or hamster inside his "head" to mutate it without having to expand his area of effect. It can sit on top of his collarbone or something, I dunno.
Even though his head is made of mist, Luke can still talk somewhat normally. Though the sounds come out of where his head should be, not actually anywhere in his mist, which technically is his actual head.
Luke can see anywhere inside his mist, and look outside it at all times. However he does not have the multitasking ability of Taylor, and basically just ends up choosing a place to put his perspective. So in an area he's largely affected, he can be anywhere, but not everywhere.
Luke can't really eat in a traditional sense, but he does have some kind of nutritional requirements, which he can satisfy by basically pouring soup down his throat. It's pretty gross.
Luke also needs to sleep, and while sleeping he just doesn't make any mist. So he looks basically like a decapitated corpse. Which is gross. It doesn't help when he moves in his sleep.
If you want to imagine what he looks like, imagine the headless body of spiro agnew from futurama and you'll get the picture.
POWER RATING: High level Master (~8), High level Shaker (~8).
You people have no idea how long I agonized over trying to come up with something for Luke. He's so boooooooring. I'd like to think I got something pretty cool out of it eventually. I think this is a pretty neat power! But, better than that, I never have to think about luke again! THANK GOD!
NAME: I would want him to call himself something straight out of a silver age comic like Mist Man or The Living Mist, but Luke hates fun and whimsy and would pick something stupid. He'd probably actually pick Fog, before being informed that "Fog" is, in fact, taken. However, rebel sqrrl suggested the name Misty Mountain as a LotR reference which is really clever, and I like it! Everybody say thank you rebel sqrrl!
CODY/PERDITION -> DEUTERONOMY
Cody is a hard one. Like. We don't get very much Cody. Like. We know he's a jackass, who's stuck in the past. He gets a time-rewinding power to, like, thematically capitalize on that. But how do you change that? Well, I'm not sure you really can capitalize on that. At least not in a way I like. But what if we look at it from a different angle…?
Cody's whole thing is, in a manner of speaking, resistance to change.
So what if we slightly alter this? What if… Cody's power is still resistance to change, but the change can only be stopped for so long, and when that time is up it gets even worse? Cody's power lets him freeze an object in time. Much like clockblocker! However, the key difference between the two is that when the object unfreezes in time, it explodes. This is technically because of a physics interaction (when an object freezes in time, all its kinetic energy is converted to potential energy, and then when it unfreezes, that potential energy is re-converted into kinetic energy again. Of the explody kind) but whatever that's boring. the fun part is that things go kablooie! Now, you might be wondering, what kind of wild deviant case form will anemia come up with now? None. Cody's deviation is something extremely insignificant. My main thought for a deviation would be that Cody now has a pair of angelic wings, and his hair is now pure white. Otherwise he's just, like, regular cody. Being Cody (read: the worst), cody lords his mostly human appearance over the rest of the travelers like a total fucking asshole.
Some fun facts:
Cody has to touch an object to freeze it, and touch it for a length of time which is equal to the amount of time it can be frozen up to. Like. He'd touch, say, a rock, for like, i dunno, ten seconds, then freeze it for ten seconds again.
The object needs to be either moving or about to move for it to, like, do anything. Like with the rock, if cody froze it while it was sitting on the ground, the explosion it could generate would be so insignificant it basically wouldn't exist.
Cody can freeze an object after it leaves his hand, but it's still up against the same time limit, basically. If he held the rock for ten seconds, then stepped away and then froze it after five seconds, it'd only be frozen for five seconds. Basically up to the point that ten seconds total have passed!
The main thing that invested me in this was the idea of cody throwing a knife, then freezing it in place for like a second, then having it pop like a firecracker when it unfroze. Loud and distracting, not very deadly!
Cody's power is manton limited. He can't freeze people, or even clothes, because they touch people. Mostly because if he could he'd run the risk of freezing his underwear in place and then exploding his cock and/or balls off. Idiot.
Cody is not immune to the explosions he generates. As evidenced by the serious possibility of him exploding his cock and/or balls off.
When an object is frozen, and a force acts on it, the energy that would have affected the object is added to the force of the eventual explosion. So if we take the rock, Cody can freeze it in time, hit it with a sledgehammer or something, and then make it explode.
Cody tries to complain about how he's stigmatized as looking kind of like the simurgh to the rest of the travelers. Because The Krousephone does not have arms it can't strangle him to death right then and there. That's the only reason.
Editing anemia here. His power is pretty much the dnd spell delayed blast fireball.
POWER RATING: Mid-high level Striker (~7-8), mid-level Shaker (~3-5).
I actually really like this power! It's almost a shame it's a power i'm giving to cody.
NAME: Kinda want to call him killer queen for the anime reference but I sincerely doubt he'd call himself that. Even though it's entirely possible that JJBA part 4 exists in the wormverse (it was serialized 1992-1995). But! Cody is lame. Sad. He'd pick a dumb biblical reference–I'm not a bible knower, so know that i had to do like a weirdly large amount of research into the biblical apocalypse for this. You're welcome :/. Okay, as I figure, cody would probably call himself Deuteronomy, after the book in the bible where god blew up sodom and gomorrah. Still a very "punishing sinners" kind of name, same as Perdition. Only this time more homophobic. Because he's Cody. I kind of like the name "Grapes of Wrath" after the line in battle hymn of the republic but it's objectively kind of a bad name for a cape. What would he call himself in short? Grapes? That's dumb. (also the novel exists) Sad! (wait the obvious short form of deuteronomy is dooter which is even dumber. hooray!)
OLIVER. -> STILL OLIVER.
Oliver does not drink a vial, and as a result does not get a power. Get fucked, idiot.
POWER RATING: None.
NAME: Oliver.
NOELLE/ ECHIDNA -> MEDUSA
Okay, I just had a weird thought. What if… Noelle drank Sundancer's vial, and Marissa drank Echidna's vial? Basically, it's a shard switch between Noelle and Marissa, with the added factor that they're both mutated. meaning that in this universe Noelle takes Prince (the cauldron vial, not the guy).
So, basically, we keep Noelle's canon trigger-trauma (relating to her semi-canon eating disorder) but switch out their vials. Now, I do like the idea of continuing the thematic trends of each's character's power. But that means…
Noelle's power is, in canon, based around her implied but never outright stated eating disorder. Noelle was implied to suffer from bulimia, meaning she felt compelled to vomit up after 'overeating' and was immensely conscious of her weight. So, her power mocked her by making her power be based around consuming and vomiting, as like a theme. I know powers are supposed to be cruel but this is seriously a contender for most cruel and mean-spirited power in the entire book. Girl who suffers from disordered eating has a superpower that works by eating massive amounts of material and then throwing it up, which results in her constantly gaining weight until she's a big scary monster who can only think about consuming? Jackass.
So, if I had to change that, I guess I'd flip it on its head? Like, instead of her form representing her "failure state" of disordered eating, it represents her "suffering from success"? What if, instead of constantly getting bigger, Noelle's power had her keep getting smaller, until there's nothing left? Something more ephemeral. And, instead of the Echidna, she's another greek monster: Medusa?
Noelle's deviant form is ghostly, rotten, not-all-there. Y'all read Pact? Imagine Noelle's mutant form as something like the Thorburn Boogeyman–well, imagine her mutant form as that, because her power means that you can't actually look at it. I like the idea of Noelle's mutant form being basically covered in a kind of "hair" that's really made out of various pieces of trash. Plastic bags, burlap sacks, a soggy blanket.
Looking at Noelle's "true form" underneath her 'hair' is genuinely difficult. It causes the eyes to water, headaches, brain fog, stuff like that. It's physically painful to even see Noelle out of the corner of your eye. Continued exposure can eventually lead to injury and death. Additionally, Noelle can tell who can see her "true form" and knows where they are for the entire time they can see her, and a short time thereafter. Additionally, Noelle's actual power is to form things out of her body. essentially telekinetically controlled blobs of garbage. These blobs, as they are formed from her body, have the same "can't look at them" properties, and are loosely controlled by Noelle. She can move them around pret-ty quickly, too, and their solid makeup ensures that they can be downright deadly if she puts a mind to it! She can use these chunks of her body as projectiles, as shields (she can merge her constructs together into bigger constructs, or split big ones apart into little ones), as nearly anything–she's only limited by her mass and imagination (and seeing as it's Noelle, she's not very limited by imagination).
POWER RATING: Shaker 10. Stranger ~3.
This is the first–and only–power i've ever "built" a power in the RPG sense instead of "genning" it in more typical worm sense–that is to say, I came up with a role and stuff first–Noelle's power makes her an excellent distraction–before I actually did the nitty gritty details. Every other time i've done this I'll think of a cool power that's a thematic fit and then come up with a role later. So if it sucks, that's why.
NAME: This one was easy. Noelle's called echidna, after a mythological greek screature, right? So just pick a different screature. Medusa! That actually came before I thought of the actual power, so I can't deny that it had some level of influence on how the power turned out.
PART 5: THE ZIZ BOMB
I kind of like this idea for the travelers because there isn't actually an obvious "Okay, well Obviously this person is The Simurgh Bomb." that the original travelers had. Like a lot of what I liked about Migration initially was that nobody was actually sure who the Zizbomb was. Who's gonna snap? Who's gonna kill somebody? So what if that's their whole fucking thing? What if the entire team is consumed with paranoia at which one of their former friends is going to go off the deep end? It could be any one of us! That's cool! I like that! So who actually is it though? I actually prefer the idea that it's not any one of them, it's actually all of them together. Working together, still paranoid, still waiting for somebody to snap, but not realizing that they already did snap. The group fragments and falls apart, with infighting even as they cause an S-Class threat to the world around them. A group of gamers so toxic they cause radioactive fallout over the whole continent. But how do they actually reveal Cauldron to the world? 'Cause that's the point of the Simurgh plot.
It'd probably end up being Krouse. Because he sucks. I would imagine it would be by him possessing Alexandria and a reaction from another member of the Triumvirate giving the game away to everyone? Maybe they reveal Cauldron's deceptions vis a vis Manton by showing how they got vials from regular cauldron and are all mutated. Whatever it is, we can all take solace in the fact that they all kind of suck as people. Except for Mars and maybe Jess.
In the meanwhile, though, what do they get up to? Probably much of the same as the canon Travelers, though Noelle is still "well" enough to actually lead the group, and they'd need Oliver or Cody to basically be the face of the group literally every time they interact with civilians. At least Marissa can take point if and when they deal with Accord. They don't need to deal with finding a cure for Noelle–at least not in the "she's going to kill someone if we don't keep her locked away" sense, though they do need to cure everybody (except oliver).
So there you go! Finally! Case 53 Travelers. Hooray.
Trigger: A single father of two girls just lost his job. He has enough saved up to keep them going for a while, but they have to move because he can't keep paying rent, unfortunately, the only cheaper places are in gang territory. He does his best, but no one hires him on for more than a week. This goes on for about 3 months until it comes the time of the month when the gang takes "protection money" and he doesn't have enough this time. He had to buy medicine for his younger daughter this month and he's short. The parahuman enforcer decides one of his girls will be the payment instead.
a trigger-for-power after so many power-for-triggers is nice, even with the implied sex-trafficking 😭
through-line of loss, losing job(s), threat for losing daughter to illness, losing daughter to the protection racket. Also the poverty creating more problems that makes poverty harder thing.
I could see this as a master-tinker?
He has a fair amount of freedom in the shape of minions he builds and how many, but each of them is also obligatorily filled with an entropy-accelerating effect, which quickly wears down the internal components while each drone-minion is active.
Those entropic effects can also be extended and tuned for a range of shaker-y weapons and tools, and he can mitigate (possibly completely) the damage to his minions if he manages to get his hands on specific neodymium isotopes and alloys.
I think the prt + protectorate would try to help support him? If they're present in his country, but how effective they'd be and how much support they'd offer would likely not be enough, especially in his personal opinion.
So, Wildbow's written a lot about parahuman abilities and trigger events over the years. If you know where to look, you can find it, but there's no centralized place to reference it.
So I decided to make one.
If you know of sources I didn't include which you think would be helpful, please let me know! I'd like this to be a reasonably complete index for parahuman power stuff, and on my own, I can only include the stuff that I know how to find.
Movers
Document, listing several types of subcategory a Mover power might fall into.
Shakers
No documents at this time
Brutes
Document, with a detailed breakdown of subcategories associated with different kinds of physical harm, specific examples of powers in those subcategories, and some stuff about secondary Brutes which looks most applicable when you're running an actual Weaver Dice game.
Breakers
Document. It first clarifies what makes a trigger Breaker-ey and explains how they work. Also lists several categories of Breaker power, but only Death Breakers got fully written up. No indication of which triggers go with which categories, so maybe it's best to treat this as a set of example perks and drawbacks.
Masters
No document. The Stranger document mentions Stranger/Master powers. This is helpful for finding the line between "mess with people" Master powers and "make minions" ones.
Tinkers
Document, with a detailed list of "methodologies" and the trigger event types associated with them; you are expected to pick two, for extra flexibility, though they can be the same.
Provides lots of detail, plenty of examples, a smidge of inspiration for secondary tinkers, and also Weaver-Dice-specific stuff. The gold standard I wish other power types had.
Document 2.0, much as above but with a somewhat different set of examples and more information on specialties. Can be handy if you need a "second opinion".
(Man, tinkers are spoiled. I get the sense that Wildbow was seeing a lot of bland or nonsensical tinkers in Weaver Dice games.)
Blasters
Document, with a list of different blaster types, the triggers associated with each, and some examples. Also has stuff about blaster element, secondary blasters, and dozens of pages of specific examples, complete with trigger.
Thinkers
Document, with several categories of triggers (and associated power types); plus some very vague stuff about "Thinker Types," incomplete Weaver Dice data, and a few specific examples.
Strikers
No documents at this time
Changers
Document, listing several different types and potential combinations, albeit without explaining what trigger events are associated with each. It still has a decent overview of what Changer powers and triggers look like.
Document 2.0, with a whole step-by-step process for generating Changers, alongside some other bits. At time of writing, those bits (and some small bits of the process) are visibly WIP. (More so than most of the Weaver Dice docs, I mean.)
The Stranger document mentions Stranger/Changer powers, explaining why it's a common crossover and giving examples.
Trumps
Document, eleven vague numbered Trump categories with trigger guidelines. Includes an introduction reminding you of important points. No insurrection.
Strangers
Document, with two pages of "WIP thoughts" on subcategories, about half of which have trigger event guidelines.
Also has several pages of guidelines for crossing Stranger powers with literally every other power category. For some reason. Well, it's helpful, especially for power categories without their own documents.
Ordered from oldest to youngest.
Raycast is the leader of the Wards and a prospective protectorate member in the coming few months, let's hope nothing bad happens between then and now! 😊
Raycast has the ability to orientate himself relative to chosen people or objects, and path towards or away from them. He also has minor heightened agility.
Aeterna is a body modification tinker that creates short term cybernetics. His tinkertech requires function as a whole, or the entire system fails, and therefore he has decided to take inspiration from magical girl anime, and uses a transformation sequence. Because the individual components are short-lived, the transformation will abruptly end. His transformed state takes the form of a girl with long flowing blond hair and a blue-white dress. In this state, he carries a wand that functions as a control mechanism for some of the body mods.
Dremel wears yellow and black plated armor, and has the ability to shift into a breaker state, where his arms and legs become fast vibrating serrated blades. In the breaker state, Dremel can use his limbs to quickly move, however he's wheelchair bound without his power.
Aitía has the ability to diagnose problems, with her power supplying more detail the smaller the scope is. Her power gives her no knowledge of solutions to the problems. Aitía spends a significant amount of time at the hospital, helping to diagnose conditions.
Finally, Aria is the newest and youngest member of the wards. Her power is detailed in other posts in the #detroit cluster au tag.
Lmk if you have any thoughts or suggestions!
It’s the World Series, bottom of the ninth, Game 7, bases loaded, two outs, three balls and two strikes, down three points. You’re the best batter in the world, you know you can win this game for your team and bring home the championship. You could not be more confident as the pitcher begins to throw, but for some reason, you see not a ball, but a Christian baby. You know you can smash that baby out of the park, putting your name in history forever, but you also know it would be a sin to murder a Christian baby. Torn in two, you trigger.
It’s the World Series, bottom of the ninth, Game 7, bases loaded, two outs, three balls and two strikes, up three points. You’re a mediocre pitcher, and sweat runs down your brow as you face the greatest batter to ever live. You wind up your last pitch, but instead of your pitch coming out as expected, a baby flies out from your arm, sailing towards the batter whom you know can hit that ten times out of ten. You’re going to be remembered forever as the dumbass who managed to throw a Christian baby instead of a ball and lost the World Series. Trigger.
You’re a superintelligent baby who, after having your intelligence enhanced by a particularly strange villain, took up a belief in Christian theology. Your creator, an avowed atheist, did not much like this, and thought up a dastardly scheme to dispose of you- he would teleport you into the middle of a baseball game to be murdered by a batter. As you’re teleported in, you tremble- you would be fine with being martyred, but you’re going to be causing everyone watching intense mental harm in your martyrdom. As you cry saintly tears at the pain of others, your life about to end as you sail over the plate, you trigger.
