Well, we all know what Playbook you're taking.

As with the others, let's start with the answers to your Backstory questions, and any other background info you want to work with, and I'll start poking and prodding.

Might still change my mind here, but for names let's go with Alex Hunt aka Barghest.

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Who mentored you in supervillainy?

Catharsis, a supervillain experimenting with the ability to induce superpowers tied to extreme negative emotions. He acted as councillor and confidante on the more mundane side of things, easing her into accepting this new existence, while laying out the pathway that primed her for villainy and then binding her to that track. She was a blinkered and willing pawn more than a student, let alone an equal.

Zeb Carver, just about the most stock example of a merc with no gimmick but guns and no moral concerns that money couldn’t silence. While initially introduced behind the wafer-thin veneer of fitness instructor, he was the man charged with shaping Alex and her peers into something a little sharper than just neurotic kids with powers. He was the hands-on educator and in many regards far more of a presence than the true mastermind, and he instilled in his charges not just an understanding of violence but a certain vindictiveness in applying it.  He wanted students who’d learned to enjoy the chaos, and he considered a little infighting and (un)friendly competition no bad thing so long as it didn’t jeopardise the operation.

Ultimately she studied and served under a villain who went by Catharsis, but he was the sort to leave matters that didn’t allow him to lecture on about morality and human nature to others. He was the poisonous voice of persuasion, the one set on reshaping the mind, but all too often stood at a distance observing rather than engaging. They were his test subjects after all, and while he might offer correction it was more in his interest to see what these children made of themselves.

Alex came up through a team who jokingly referred to themselves as The Breakfast Club, or once things became somewhat more serious: The Outcasts. They each fell into the sway of the villain Catharsis through his assumed position offering counselling and support to ‘troubled’ teens, and with his methods eventually straying from the conventional came to be imbued with psionic powers that let them to vent their frustrations on the world. This wasn’t in its own right a short road to villainy. Had it not been for the voice shaping their direction they might have chosen a quieter course.

Catharsis styled himself as a philosopher king, one chasing the mysteries of human nature, and worked to nudge his charges towards a selfish and self-aggrandising world view. Efforts to build self-confidence became something altogether crueller once powers allowed his students to push back against the world, and he reinforced the thoughts and feelings that led them to push the boundaries of what they were capable of. Acts of anger, violence and even petty criminality were talking points to be analysed rather than red flags, and he only encouraged thinking grander and greedier. He wanted them keen to make their mark on the world.

His ‘suggestions’ eventually saw the group agree to proper training behind the guise of after-school clubs and a summer camp, and they were set loose on the city as a mix of hired muscle and agents of chaos. However they viewed themselves and however much they believed they were carving their own course he always had a hold of their strings.

Who first showed you that you could do good?

Metal Mistress, a retired villain from a previous generation who led group sessions as part of her rehabilitation program. Alex was naturally resistant to this sort of thing given her background, but over time came to appreciate the reality of how she'd managed to find a place in both the civilian and human communities, lending her unique experience to a number of different avenues. She’d never made the transition to hero – it’d been too late for that – but still had managed to turn her life around and achieve a position of quiet respectability.

While not heavily pushing the idea, she introduced the thread that there might be some kind of way forward for Alex that didn’t just involve trying to hide her powers best she could and hoping her past flew under the radar. She showed her change was possible.

Manon Rouzet aka Panthère, a once-villain very much in the Catwoman mold. Having retired from the game in the heroes’ good graces she was someone who concerned herself very much with both her community and the legacy of her generation. Alex was recommended her as a contact who could offer understanding and assistance without the risk of legal consequences, and through Manon and some programs she had ties to Alex was able to ease her way back into living in the world without constantly living in defence mode. After everything that’d gone so badly wrong for her recently it made a world of difference just to be spending time around normal people again.

More pertinently Manon held the keys to a collection of stories and memorabilia from an earlier and brighter era of heroism … and the shadows behind them. Alex got to learn about the struggles of the old icons and their moments of weakness and failure, and through those things she saw how maybe there wasn’t so much distance between someone like her and those who’d gone on to do great things. She found that all-important first spark of hope, and from that the will to actually try change. To give something back.

What was your goal as a villain?

Simplistic and short-sighted self-gratification/creating chaos.

Alex had no real role in setting a grand agenda, nor did she particularly wish to. Her powers were a gateway to something of a revenge fantasy and a chance to reinvent herself at the world’s expense, but she was far more spur-of-the-moment in their application and relied heavily on her boss(es) for serious direction. There was no ideology behind her actions or endgame she was pushing towards. She was just someone suddenly given the chance to feel big and powerful who was relishing the chance to do and take whatever she wanted – at other people’s expense.

Being feared made her feel powerful, and she was quite happy to go on working for others while she could convince herself that relationship could change if she so willed it.

What caused you to switch sides?

Guilt.

Such as it was, Alex original support structure enabled her bad habits and was very much inclined to keep her from thinking too hard about the consequences of her actions. Once that fell away and the reality hit home she lost control in a big way, and that very visceral end to her run on top left scars she still feels to this day. There’s a lot weighing down on her from back then and while she’s hardly beyond those same urges and hasn’t quite severed all ties she’s still trying to be better. And that means finding some way to use her powers in a fashion she can actually be proud of.

Why do you care about the team?

Because despite all appearances to the contrary she’s afraid – of herself and of the future. Regardless of what her relationships might be like with the other members of the team their very presence keeps her grounded. She’s less of a danger in their company, and they’re some of the people best equipped to understand her even if their backgrounds and ties to the hero game are very different.

This is her second chance, and she’s going to at least try and make some room in her heart for the people giving her that shot.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:58, Mon 30 Jan 2023.

Background post has been updated and the replaced sections clearly marked.

First point has been altered again as it felt like I'd made Catharsis sound the junior partner. Also I've been giving more thought how I wanted some things to work and it didn't seem very consistent with that direction.

This is just what happens when I'm given far too much time to overthink things ;)

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As it's a tiny bit relevant to my When Our Team First Came Together... the members of The Outcasts are/were:

• Havok - projects blasts of kinetic force.
• Nobody - social invisibility (blends in the background).
• Spook - fear projection.
• Tank - manifests forcefields and psychic armour.
• Valentine - minor mind control and suggestion-based manipulation.

Okay! Sorry about the very long delay here.

First:

Standard workshop disclaimer: I like to pick at things and dig into them, looking for places to add conflict or seed narrative or draw out themes and motifs. But it's your character, not mine. Nothing I say or suggest in this process is binding. I'm just throwing mud at the wall and you can decide what sticks and what doesn't. Similarly, you're not obligated to answer any questions I ask or follow me down any given rabbit hole. I'm just  pointing out things I find interesting. If you don't think it's interesting too, fair beans, we'll drop it.

Okay.

First off, the correct switch is from Breakfast Club to The Outsiders. Just to maintain Transferable Brat Pack integrity.

I really like the idea that her way out was a look at a classic age of heroism. That got me thinking.

-What if Catharsis wasn't a villain? Not ostensibly. Or maybe not in his heart. It's possible he started off being all about self-expression and self-actualization and personal freedom and slid down the long, slippery slope toward egotism, self-indulgence, chaos, anarchy, and criminality as a form of protest. The governments own the banks! The bankers control the economy! Capitalism is the enemy! Robbing banks is the only truly moral act left!

-And so therefore maybe his gathering of kids wasn't immediately sinister? Maybe it was more like a self-improvement program that went bad?

-Thinking of the fact that, since you're still in High School when the game starts, and therefore your whole criminal career happened when you were a very young teen (and therefore possibly the other kids too?). And that made me wonder where everyone's parents were. Maybe the points above point to some of that. But if you'd rather the whole process be sinister from the start, then was he poaching kids with no family? Vulnerable kids?

-Or did the group already exist and Catharsis found them all at once and took them under his wing?

-Did Catharsis create these psionic powers in the kids? Or awaken something already within them?

-Where's the rest of the team? Are they still a functioning villain team?

-What's something Alex had to sacrifice to leave that life? What's something she misses about it?

-Where does she live now?

-What does she want now? Specifically to repair the damage she's done? To make up for it all by doing some other sort of good? Hunting down Catharsis? What's her normal person goals look like?

I don't know why I didn't number yours. Maybe because they're less discrete notions that invite discrete responses and more general notes.

I welcome your thoughts.

(and, seriously, thank you once again for being patient)

I wouldn't be totally surprised if there's some contradictions here as it's taken a while to get from start to finish.

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While this is definitely an interesting idea I don’t think it’s really doing it for me. I think that’s mostly because I’m already pretty deep in what I’ve been working with and this’d be a fairly major shift, at least in my head, in terms of how I’m framing my character’s backstory and motivations.

Beyond the very earliest days throwing ideas at you on Discord I’ve always been approaching my supervillain as someone vaguely Judas Traveller-ish. He’s a dumbass-genius with power(s) and resources who’s driven to explore human nature and the conflict between good and evil … and does so by taking vulnerable individuals, doing what he claims is drawing out their innermost wants, and pushing them to follow where they drag them. He’s someone who would absolutely reject the label of villain, believing himself to be pursuing some greater Truth in foisting adversity upon humanity when really he’s just an asshole who’s made the world his science experiment.

He would claim everything he did wasn’t sinister. He offered support to people with difficulties, helped them actualise the means to push back against their struggles, and when they chose to use those tools for immoral ends he played aide and confidante to help them grow into their newfound confidence and sense of drive. He helped them realise their true selves when handed power, and it’s hardly his fault that they lacked the will and vision to use that power for anything but selfish ends.


It’s certainly the tail end of that, yeah.

My angle is that Catharsis came to this school with the intention of combing it for those facing struggles and that the group he ended up with were far from the only candidates. He operated for a time in a seemingly legitimate capacity to get to better know and understand these individuals, and through that he was able to isolate those who were both the most interesting and ‘safest’ prospects to work with.

Alex is someone I regard as coming from a home where her parents weren’t exactly neglectful so much as they’d failed to connect with their child and kinda given up on improving things. They were aware that she was quiet, seemed to have few friends and had been the victim of bullying, but her grades were holding up and what token efforts they’d made in the past hadn’t come to anything so … nothing doing. She didn’t feel like she had anyone in her corner and they weren't doing anything to dissuade that impression.

This new school councillor was just expected to be another stop-gap that’d fall through after a couple of sessions, but it stuck and actually seemed to be producing positive results. Alex had friends, a new sense of self-confidence and appeared to be getting out of the house and doing things. And because it seemed to be working her parents were all too happy to stay out of it and let things run their course.


I'm certainly approaching them as relative strangers he brought together, although I'm not opposed to the idea that some or all of them already had ties. Either works really.


All of the villain team’s powers are meant to be manifestations of their own strong emotions, so in that regard I think you’ve got to go with this being something drawn out of them rather than wholesale created. I don’t really have a strong picture on the how (and hadn’t even decided whether this came from Catharsis or a third-party in his employ), so if it comes down to it I’d be open to anything from their having latent psychic potential to being shot with a grant-themed-powers laser.


That’ll all depend how the group resolves our When Our Team First Came Together… as I’m bringing them to the table as the terrible enemy from Alex’s past.


In effect she had to pull a disappearing act, and that meant losing her entire ‘normal’ practically overnight. Things had already got messy enough at home once she started getting into more serious trouble (off the back of having friends she could crash with now) that it wasn’t exactly home anymore, and once she had her violent break-up with her old crew it hit her hard and fast that she’d just burned her bridges with most of the support systems she’d had at hand. Showing her face around any of her old haunts risked drawing the wrong kind of attention, and coming clean and seeking help risked serious consequences.

She basically had to work on rebuilding something from the ground up (hence some of her obligations) while always watching her back.

What she absolutely misses is how uncomplicated being The Bad Guy was. Being able to cast aside any fears about being making a good first impression or even being liked and lean into the idea that you just needed to be a monster, something that made other people afraid, allowed her to find a role she was comfortable in and change herself into a shape that fit it. Not having to worry about what other people thought finally let her be comfortable in her own skin, and since then she’s had to work to find an entirely new image of self she’s okay inhabiting.


Between some support from Manon and less-than-above-board work on the side through some of her old contacts Alex is just about holding up her end of a shared apartment. It’s extremely not great but she’s getting by.

Technically speaking there’s nothing outright stopping her going home, especially if we put her old crew out of commission, but after last showing her face there at pretty much her lowest point she’s too ashamed to cross that threshold again and really doesn’t know what sort of reception she’d get if she ever chanced it. She’s not brave enough to try and cross that bridge again.


In a word: Purpose. Some kind of meaning she can’t really give a name to.

Alex is someone struggling with the fact that she’s let her sense of self come to centre on these powers and violence, and even though she’s working to piece together a healthier sort of identity for herself this path into playing the hero isn’t really it. She doesn’t believe that she can repair or offset the harm she’s done, but she dearly wants to believe she can make something good of her gifts and that there was actually some kind of worth to everything she’s been through. Trying to be Good is both her push at bettering herself and a fuck you to Catharsis for telling her villainy was an expression of her true nature.

I have this Manon quote bouncing around my head (which may well be stolen/paraphrased from something else) to the effect of “I’m proud of you for choosing to be a hero, but I hope one day you’ll realise you don’t have to be,” and I feel like that’s kinda the crux of what I want to do with this character. She’s tried being the villain and then the hero, and in the end she’s going to have to come to terms with the fact that what’s best for her is just trying to be a good person.

So at the moment she’s not actually very good at ‘normal people goals.’ She’s kinda in that proto-Batman phase where her life balance is in an absolutely awful place because she’s far too focused on establishing the mask (or MASK as it were). She has a handful of something-like-friends and does volunteer work alongside being busy in the light and shadow, but right now she’s not actually doing the best job taking care of herself or looking beyond the next night. She's not thinking in the long term as far as civilian life is concerned.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:55, Wed 01 Feb 2023.

That all really helps. I have a much clearer picture of Alex and her story now.


Perfect. That actually dovetails wonderfully with the sort of thing I had in mind. Especially the idea that he was operating above board for some time.


My instinct is that this could use a sharper edge. But since her parents aren't a going concern at the start of the game, we can leave this as is and define it a little later if (when) they show up again. In the meantime, give a little thought to how her relationship with them (and theirs with her) could be less passively shitty and more actively shitty.


I think this is the key world-building point. I think I know what I'm going to do with it, and how it might be part of what binds everyone's stories together, but I'm going to think about it a little longer. So long as you're okay with me screwing with the other end of it, we'll be good.


This is all excellent. 10/10, no notes.

I especially like the idea that Alex is almost already over being a hero. She's seen the other side, and since she knows what being a villain is like, by extension she knows what the Hero role looks like, and she thinks maybe neither is for her.

That all might work well when she's near the "Must retire" point in the game.

Unless you had something else to add, I think Alex is ready to roll. Once I get the Relationship thread up, you're go to jump in.