forum Dynamic Superhero Universe RP OxO • OPEN

Started June 12, 2023 by @Imagine_Logic

tune

We can discuss plot and technicalities, but I’m in the mood for a roleplay set in a superhero world of our own making. We can flesh out the world building and lore together as we go. It can be whatever dynamic we want— both heroes, both villains, one of each— and if you want to do more than one character, I’d be down for that too. They can be strangers, friends, enemies, lovers… or all of those things, in whatever order we choose. I’m just looking for something dynamic, immersive, and fun.

andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer)’s rules apply.

Please show a writing sample.

(hi! this sounds pretty cool, i'd love to join this if you're cool with it. here's a writing sample of mine)

It is weird how things are just normal after all the exorcist and strange things he witnesses. Yes he is aware that there is more to the world than the immortal beings that plague it for better or worse. On the other hand, that is all his world has been ever since he could remember. He tries to see the world as he is seeing the park right now, but it seems impossible for him.

He sighed to himself. His feet kept dragging on, making his steps were incredibly slow. The park lamps illuminated the better portion of the parts he walked through. Only a few people passed by, going on with their lives. He didn't hear anything out of the normal so he is thankful for that.

Or maybe just not yet. A loud boom sound shook the ground for a second. Zente looked up from his ice cream, glancing around the area. Did anyone else hear that? Or was it just a loud truck moving? He wondered if he should call the police or something? No no, those guys won't help and they won't take him seriously too.

Though this maybe a stupid decision or one that he will deeply regret, he decided to go to where he heard the loud noise. Matter of fact, the place where he is seeing a small fire. And as he got closer….well…let's just say that he had to pinch the side of his neck to make sure that he was not dreaming.

Yes, this is reality. And yet, he has no idea what he is standing twenty feet away from. "What the hell is going on?" He asked himself. Zente wasn't even sure if he should step closer, stay put, or run away.

Sorry for the delayed response. I’d love to RP with you! Do you have any ideas or preferences for any plots or specific dynamics? If not, I’ve got plenty.

No you're all good! I don't really have any ideas/ preferences for plot, but dynamics wise, I was thinking maybe either villain-villain or hero-villain.

I don’t think I’ve done a Villain-Villain in awhile. I’ve done plenty of hero-villains though. Then again, those are always classics.

Here are some ideas that come to mind.

1a) Villain x Villain. Two villains who have different agendas have been tormenting the same city for some time. They’re rivals and don’t like each other much, but they end up uniting together when a mutual threat arrives in their city: a new hero that’s more powerful than either of them, who is determined to wipe out all the villains at all costs.

1b) Basically the same thing except one of the characters is a hero instead, so the two have been fighting back and forth for years, and they’re teaming up against a larger villain or hero who is threatening both of their goals.

2) A hero pretends to be a villain in hopes of gaining the trust of and defeating a powerful foe, only to discover that they have a lot more in common than they originally thought. Can also be done vice versa.

3) A hero who gets a corruption arc and a villain who gets a redemption arc (I.e., they very slowly “switch sides” throughout the story with some nicely done arcs.) Or just a hero who gets slowly corrupted by a villain who has been trying to get them to turn for some time now.

4) A powerful villain and their sidekick/minion. The villain, caught up in their own self and their plans, takes their sick kick for granted, seeing them as more of a crony than anything. Eventually the crony gets tired of being unappreciated and goes out on their own; the villain struggles to operate without their support, and soon finds out that their former sidekick is now a more formidable villain than they ever were. When the villain finds themself standing alone while their sins come back to drag them to hell, will their former sidekick choose to help them, or will they become another thorn in the villain’s side and long watching their former “master” squirm?

These are all really cool ideas! I like the sound of 1a if that's alright with you.

Yeah, sounds perfect! Do you have a temp you want to use or would you like me to make one?

Awesome! I have a template here that we can use.

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Sexuality:
Appearance:
Personality:
Backstory:
Villain name:
Powers and weapons:
Villain appearance:
Other:

Okay sweet! I’ll try to have mine up sometime today.

Cool! Same here, I'll do my best to have mine up as soon as I can.

Okay! No rush. I’m still trying to decide whether to do a male or female character lol.

Lol, you're all good! Take your time! Mine's going to be a male if that helps in any shape or form.

Name: Armand Luan Dhampiraj
Age: 28
Gender: Cis male (he/him)
Sexuality: Omnisexual
Appearance: Armand is a tall man with a muscular build and a medium tan complexion. He stands roughly around 6'4". Armand has sharp features along with a well defined jawline and strong nose and cheeks. His eyes are hooded shape. The irises are a hazel green shade. His dark, thick eyelashes and eyebrows give him a sultry, typically handsome appearance. Armand has dark black hair with soft curls and waves. It is long and pushed back, going down just below his ears. One feature that he is known for is his pronounced canine teeth or fangs as everyone calls them. They are not huge, but are rather large compared to the average person's.
Personality: If it weren't for him being a villain, Armand would be a decent person. He is a cool-headed person that prefers to analyze and create strategies rather than acting on impulse. Armand's always ready to jump to action though; he loves the thrill of going out on a whim. It's rare though given he's a serious and quiet person. His heart might be cold, but there's a small hearth keeping it warm. Warm enough for him to care about other people and the world. Armand wants to help people, make the world a better place, even if he's different from them all. Alas, he isn't perfect. Far from it actually. He's very willing to go above and beyond, and is more than willing to do things that others won't. At the end of the day, there's a reason why he is a villain and not a hero. Even for what's in his heart, Armand could never picture himself being one.
Backstory: Armand's story doesn't start with him. It begins with his mother, Esmeralda Kastrati, who met and fell in love with a man named Thoma Mehmeti. Thoma, though, was a vampire and he never told Esmeralda when they were together. When he was gone, and Armand (named Luan at birth) was born, Esmeralda knew. She even knew that even though her son would always be like his father or at least half of what the vampire is. Dhampirs are half human half vampire. Like Armand, they typically have a vampire father and a human mother. They possess vampiric abilities, but still need to eat normal human food and can go out into the sun. Armand always knew that he was…something. His mother loved to tell him stories about how he'd climb up the walls when he was a baby.

It was just him and his mom for a long time, living in a small apartment downtown. Armand excelled at school then would go home to cook and clean while Esmeralda was at work. Eventually he would begin to work too, doing odd jobs here and there. One night, Armand (who was thirteen at the time) was kidnapped by two workers from Aeternus Enterprises, a corporation that specializes in cell and molecular biology. Somehow they found that Armand was a dhampir, and wanted to use him for tests. He can't remember much for the two years that he was there; most of the time he was sedated. Eventually the drugs they gave him started to wear off. Someone forgot to give him more. Once Armand was awake enough to realize what was going on, he started to see red. The thing is, he literally started to see red. He went on a rampage, destroying everyone and everything in the Aeternus Enterprises building. His whole face was covered in blood when he returned to his mom.

Time just went on for him. Him and his mom kept moving around from place to place before a while. Being haunted by his past and his condition, he devoted himself to school (he went to online school) and work. When he was 18, he made his name as a means to protect his mother. Eventually, Armand graduated high school then went off to college, studying criminology and history (both specifically pertaining to superheroes and villains). It wasn't until his senior year when he became Lord Zhalari. After years of watching superheroes, government officials, and other corrupt figures wrecking havoc, he lost it. Armand knew that the innocence and warmth he had was long gone, but all he had felt was nothing. It wasn't until he watched as Vilde, a useless good for nothing superhero, wrecked a part of the city, did he decide to take down this bastard. Sometimes he was successful while other times, he wasn't. Either way, Armand (or Lord Zhalari) always managed to escape.

Armand graduated college then finished his masters and later on, his doctorate. The dhampir did all of this while Lord Zhalari was raising hell on the city. At this point he was twenty-seven, even though thanks to slow aging, he didn't look a day over 21. A university offered him a position as an associate professor, teaching history of superheroes and villains. By day, he teaches students. By night, Lord Zhalari is destroying Aeternus Enterprises or government buildings while making the lives of scientists, politicians, and police officers a living nightmare. He believes that by not having the people who bring such corruption in the world, the ones who kidnap people like him for their own amusement, the world would be a better place.
Villain name: Lord Zhalari
Powers and weapons: Most, if not all, of his abilities come from him being a dhampir. Armand has vampire physiology which lets him to have superhuman abilities like strength and senses, but he can also scale walls and so on so forth. The thing is, given that he is only half vampire, he really cannot use his fangs to drink blood, but they do make for good stabbing weapons.
Villain appearance: Physically, he is pretty much the same. Although, his irises turn crimson red. Lord Zhalari wears a dark red and black velvet cloak that only goes down just above the back of his knees. (Honestly, the cloak is just for aesthetics. He always takes it off during a fight then picks it uo later.) Underneath it, Zhalari has on a matching red/black ombre body suit with combat boots. On his hands, he has on black leather gloves that he designed to have retractable claws. Zhalari does wear a black mask, covering from his forehead down to above his mouth.
Other: Armand technically has a weakness of garlic, but it's more like an allergy. Religious artifacts don't really have an affect on him since he does attend mass from time to time without having any problems. (Silver on the other hand, it's also like an allergy for him.) Some of his hobbies include watching old movies, working out, reading books, going to museums and cooking.

(Here he is! Sorry for the long wait. If there's anything I need to edit, just lmk :D )

He’s awesome! I like him a lot. :0 I’m doing a character a lot different than my usual to expand and experiment with my roleplaying abilities.

Name: Leora “Leo” Aris

Age: 26

Gender: Cis female

Sexuality: “Graysexual” ace but can experience romantic and sexual attraction towards males or females.

Appearance: Leo stands at about 5’6, with fair skin and a light, lean, agile build. Her thick light-brown hair reaches down to chest/shoulder blade length, and is a perpetual mess of unbrushed and unkempt layers sticking in every direction; she has wispy bangs that are equally as messy. Her face is heart-shaped, a mixture of soft and sharp angles but a very youthful appearance overall, with her blue-grey eyes and medium sized Roman nose standing out the most. She has long eyelashes, thin lips, and very straight teeth— except for one extremely crooked one on the bottom that she used to be extremely self conscious about. Her expression is often bored or tired, with dark bags under her eyes more often than not. She doesn’t wear makeup very often at all, but will on occasion (she is not good at doing it). She wears a pair of large black framed square glasses.

Personality: Prefer to reveal in RP, but Leo is what many would describe as “oddly-turned.” In her “civilian” life she’s quiet, antisocial, blunt, intelligent, detached, and aloof. She doesn’t tend to take the best care of herself and seems to do nothing except for either lay around or workout to the point of collapsing, starve herself or binge eat, sleep for fifteen hours or not at all. She can be lazy at times and has gone weeks without showing up to work; her bosses are impatient with her informality but haven’t brought themselves to fire her due to her brilliance and contributions to the company. She suffers from severe depression, low self esteem, anxiety, and PTSD. She does care for some people, and when she cares she cares very deeply and seriously, with extreme loyalty, but in general she isn’t known for her friendliness, compassion, or hospitality. It takes a long time for her to commit to someone or something. Deep down within her is the heart of someone who would do anything to save the people she cares for, someone who wants to be heroic, but it is buried beneath years of pain, bitterness, hatred, and misery, which has shaped her into something cold and strange. She is easily frustrated and impatient, does not take orders from others, and hates society. She suffers from distrusting others and severe paranoia, and believes that everyone hates her, probably because she hates herself. She does not feel like others understand her nor does she know how to express herself; she only feels like she’s being her “true self” when she is acting as Anguish, where she can express the depths of her rage and pain freely. She hates society and truthfully she wants to fix it rather than make it worse, but she doesn’t know how to go about doing so. She feels as if she has no purpose, especially since her sister no longer needs her. She wants more out of life than the way she’s currently living, but feels hopeless when it comes to getting there.

Leo wants to be someone who does something that matters, but she feels doomed to be only something that destroys. And in her own suffering, she has come to enjoy the feeling of destroying.

Backstory: (TW: sucde attempt mention at the end)
Leo’s mother passed away giving birth to her younger sister, so the two were raised by an extremely abusive father. They were poor and rarely allowed to leave the house; they were even homeschooled and isolated from most of the world for years before their aunt made complaints and forced their father to send them to school to avoid losing them to CPS. Which would have happened anyway had any authorities known of the girls’ psychological and physical conditions.

Leo was forced the be the “parent” of the household at a young age, as their father was usually too high or drunk to be present, and they preferred it so due to his aggressive nature. Leo took it upon herself to care for and protect her younger sister to whatever degree she could, though as a child there was only so much within her power. She blamed herself for every mishap, and so did her father. When she was in her late teens, her little sister came down with some strange disease that was deteriorating her body and killing her. Doctors write the younger girl off as incurable and only treated her to the extent of trying to make her death a little less miserable. Immediately upon graduation from high school Leo pursued an education in biology and neuroscience; she spent most of her time trying to find a way to save her sister. As time passed and her sister was deteriorating faster than she was making progress in a cure, Leo became desperate and resorted to experimenting on her own body. In the process, she did something to herself that she could not reverse (and has since, experimented on herself further to try to control and enhance), and gave herself powers that were more of a burden than a blessing. Though the experiment on her own body mostly backfired, she still discovered what she needed to in order to save her sister. She cured her sister, and in the process fortified her body and gave her incredible strength, endurance, immunity, and accelerated healing. Her sister went on to become a small but locally successful hero. Leo later on did the same to her own body, and though it wasn’t as effective as her sister’s it still fortified her body. She later regretted the decision to strengthen her own body when it preserved her body from a suicide attempt via throwing herself off of a tall building.

She became a villain shortly after receiving her own powers at the age of 22. At first she was very unprofessional and only started with stealing money or supplies to fuel her project of curing her sister. As time progressed she became more aware of her abilities and how to use them. She grew more calculated and malicious, and even killed her own father as well as other people she deemed evil and unfit for the world. Her sister doesn’t know about her powers nor her life as a villain. She isn’t the most active villain currently but she does become active on a somewhat regular basis because doing so is the only thing that distracts her from how stuck and pointless she tends to feel.

She works at a neuroscience laboratory.

Villain name: Anguish

Powers and weapons: Leo has the ability to manipulate the neurons and five senses of other people when making physical contact with someone and for about one to five minutes after. That is to say, she can cause them to feel excruciating pain simple from the air against the skin or to go completely numb to all feeling; she can cause their eyes to become over sensitive to light or to not see anything at all; she can cause them to taste or smell the most rancid thing to the point of them vomiting; she can cause them to become so sensitive to sound that they can’t stand even a whisper, or deaf entirely. The drawbacks of this power are that it does not last long, and it has adverse effects on the user. Overuse will cause a strange reaction in her brain where her own neurons fire off incorrectly and can result in the same effects mentioned above. This can also happen to her even when she’s not using her powers. For a long time she could not touch anyone else without somehow messing their senses up at least momentarily but she has since gained more control. She also has a somewhat fortified body like a milder version of her sister’s body.

She relies more on her powers than weapons, but she does carry a pistol, two small knives, and some gadgets she uses to help herself get around faster, such as a grappling gun.

Villain appearance:
An eerie metallic mask with built-in night-vision and infrared goggles that make the eyes glow yellow, a dark sleeveless form-fitting charcoal grey top, black combat pants with a belt, yellow and black combat boots. She also has an attachable hooded cloak she uses to keep her hair hidden, and a warmer jacket-version to cover her arms during the winter month. The color scheme of her costume is black and charcoal grey with some bright neon yellow accenting in certain places, to contrast the color and to make herself stand out. She wants people to recognize her just enough to know that she is a villain who can and will hurt you.

Other: Her costume will probably be revised because I am brainstorming more character design ideas for her right now.