Supervillain: The Burning Man

No adventure this week. In fact, this will be the last week for my superhero posts...until such a time I write more up. Next week I'll be going back to my regular articles and opinion pieces on the wider spectrum of rpgs. For this week I'll be posting some loose supervillains I have lying around.

The Burning Man

Vincent Poor was in a horrible fire where his powers of fire manifested. Unfortunately he nopw perpetually burns (most of his flesh burned off). It’s driven him insane. If he needs to move among the general populace he must wear a complete fire suit. Usually he is just in his normal form, but some organizations have given him experimental power suits; some to try and control his fire and some to augment his fire abilities. Thus he sometimes can be found working for other supervillains.

He has also been known to create fire minions, especially as he learns more about his powers. He can quickly summon fire elementals and a DM can add some level appropraite fire elementals to an encounter with The Burning Man to create a complete encounter.

Supervillain: Quickchange

Quickchange

Richard Cartman is a smart person, just not smart enough to pass the final exams for his doctor’s certification. Not having a lot of options, he was out of money for more school, he became a street doctor. Without a license he would practice medicine in the poorer areas of the city, mostly illegal abortions and similar things. It did not net him a lot of money but it did keep him fed. It was during this time he discovered he had the ability to alter people. The effects were not for long, so it did not give him a new lease on becoming a doctor, but he did seek ways to use it to help him make money. Eventually this all led to his joining the Venture Group, a mercenary company.

Supervillain: Lethe

Lethe

April Mendez fell in with the wrong crowd when she was young. They would rather sit around and smoke than become invested and pursue anything of value. Some were rebelling, some were just lazy, some were looking to escape; April just wanted to feel like she belonged somewhere. They took to robbing the poor to get more to smoke but she was eventually caught. She was sent to a juvenile center where she became even more withdrawn.

It was there her powers of being able to make others forget began to manifest. The Venture Group took notice of her and recruited her for their powers-for-hire organization. While she is still withdrawn and listless, that is starting to change as she is starting to feel like she belongs. While she is not a bad person at heart, she is willing to do almost anything Venture Group asks of her.

Supervillain: Sense

Sense

Susan Ford learned of her powers slowly. At first things just seemed weird, people around her at school having problems hearing, vision blurred or numbness. Unknown at the time, it was during times when she was stressed. No one made the connection. Then on one particularly stressful day she wished ill upon some bullying kids and it came true when they were struck blind (though the person did eventually recover). Realizing she was the cause she was horrified by what she had done, yet she told no one.

In an effort to understand what was going on she experimented slowly learning what she was capable of. She learned she could affect the senses of a person, with the effects being temporary. However, she put this down to an anomaly and didn’t use the powers against another person again, burying her abilities.

Her life went on and eventually she found herself in an abusive relationship. On one particularly bad night she snapped and instinctively used her power to destroy the sense of her boyfriend. This time the effect was permanent. She realized she should feel remorse but she did not. The authorities had no clue she had anything to do with his “illness” but someone had an idea she was responsible. That someone recruited her into the Venture Group, a super-powered mercenary group.

Her power is fairly potent and its only true limitation is her own imagination as to what she can do. As time goes on, and she experiments more, the effects she will be able to cause will be become even more varied and of increasing strength.

Supervillain: Bonegrinder

Bonegrinder

Chuck Brown was always a strong person. In school he was used to getting his way with his strength. After school he went into boxing but it was determined he had powers so was barred from the sport. From there he went into sports entertainment wrestling as Bonegrinder. He was never very popular there, so his contract expired without being picked up again after one year. It was after that he was approached by the Venture Group to work for their mercenary organization. He has been there ever since.

Supervillain: Timeout

Timeout

Jason Sikes was an accountant for one of the money management companies that misled their investors with false progress reports. At the behest of his boss, Jason was part of the misinformation. However, he was a low level accountant and when the feds came down hard he escaped the dragnet, mostly by turning state’s evidence against his former employers. It was while he was in a holding cell that he discovered his new powers of being able to slow time. Finding himself out of a job and not likely to be able to find another one, as well as having new powers, he accepted the job offer from the Venture Group.

Superorganization: Venture Group

Venture Group

This is a mercenary group of individuals with powers. While they skirt the edges of the law, so far they have always managed to stay clear of any serious repercussions. They usually hire themselves out to high paying nations. Any wrongdoing is blamed on the hiring country, as they allow for plausible deniability. Rumors persist that they have engaged in crimes, but even if that were true it would not be something they instigated; it would be in the course of working for someone else.

Current membership includes:

Timeout- Speeds up and slows down time.
Bonegrinder- Brute strength.
Sense- She attacks the senses.
Lethe- Makes people forget things.
Quickchange- Swaps abilities and stats.

Supervillain: One

One

One mind, one world. That is the philosophy of Warren Bond. He wants to bring peace and security to the world and his belief is that there is only one way to do that. People must come together to one way of thinking. His way of thinking, since he is obviously the better mind. The old ways have not worked, only his one way can lead the world out of its despair into a new world.

Warren Bond is able to manipulate machines. He is constantly equipped with state-of-the-art technology. In fact, he leveraged his abilities and formed the Bond Corporation. For many years it was a leading technology manufacturer until it was discovered it was a front for One. Since then the company has dissolved, but One managed to become extremely wealthy before that happened.

One should be considered an Epic tier villain. Characters should not be able to physically go toe-to-toe with him until they are themselves nearing the end of an Epic tier campaign. If he is encountered before then it will be against his minions or the characters will have to defeat him in ways other than a direct confrontation. One is capable of creating a wide variety of devices; if he needs a certain device it can be assumed he can build it.

Superhero Adventure: An Old Dawn

An Old Dawn

One (a major supervillain) comes looking for the characters. Apparently one of his plans worked, worked too well. As he explains to the characters, One was able to gain control of the majority of the nuclear weapon systems of the major world powers. Then he launched them which caused those he did not control to also be activated. Nuclear rain fell upon the Earth destroying civilization and humanity. Those that did not perish in the immediate blasts fell to the nuclear fallout thereafter.

One felt remorse, loneliness, regret. He has sent himself back into the past, the character’s time, and is asking them to stop him. To this end they must disable the devices he has set up to control the nuclear weapon systems. He provides them with a hand-held device that can detect the control devices if they are close by (10’). They will need to do this by going to each world power and either asking for their aid or, at the most extreme, disable the device themselves by force.

The devices have already been planted and are set to go off in one week.

Supervillain: Alienist

Alienist

As Sigmund Freud developed his theories in Austria he gathered a set of followers who studied and debated his theories. Among them was Charles Braun. He was fascinated by the concept of transference, in particular countertransference. Whether it was his research or the manifestation of a power, but Charles eventually found he could literally enter the mind of another person and control their actions. At first he did it as research but eventually his own sense of reality became twisted. Taking over other people’s minds and bodies became exciting and exhilarating. Then came the day he realized he was getting older and that he could extend his life by permanently taking over a person’s body. Since then taking over other people’s bodies has become a way of life for him.

Alienist does not have stats as per a normal NPC. He has the stats and abilities of whatever body he has taken over. Each turn he can dominate a person as a Standard, At-Will power. If the target has powers then (save ends). If the target does not have powers, then they get no saving throw.

Supervillain: Wormfood

Wormfood

Wormfood is a mass of sentient hive worms. He does not know how he came to be; one day he simply existed with self awareness. Soon thereafter he had his first contact with a human being and upon touching, he instinctively moved into the human. From there he took over control of the body, able to access the various functions of a human body. He also found he could interact with human society. The problem was that the body soon deteriorated within a year, so he took to claiming new bodies as needed.

He eventually found Alienist and together they formed the Bodysnatchers, a duo who specialized in kidnapping people. However, while he can take the form of a body, he is still a mass of worms and each battle he finds himself in causes the loss of some of his mass and each time a part of himself died as well. He has now approached the time where it is getting harder to maintain himself and his bodies. In effect he is dying and he has no idea of how to stop it.

Superorganization: Body Snatchers

Body Snatchers

This is less an organization than a duo of crime. The Alienist and Wormfood have made a criminal living at kidnapping for money. They have a near flawless record for getting away without any contact with authorities or apprehension. Unfortunately, they sometimes kill their kidnapping victims; sometimes by Wormfood because he can’t really help himself and sometimes by Alienist because he enjoys it.

The secret behind their success is that they both are able to take over bodies. Their normal methodology is to get close to the victim and then take over the body. Then they simply walk out as the person and hide until the ransom is paid. Likewise, they collect their ransom by taking over various bodies as they carry the cash away, easily evading the authorities.

Their presence has been rare of late. Some speculate that they have either retired or died off. In fact, Alienist has been captured and imprisoned by the Russians and Wormfood is simply old and dying. If Alienist were to gain his freedom, he would seek a replacement for Wormfood and start anew.

Supervillain: Bloodvine

Bloodvine

Gregory Desmond was a world renowned botanist. He had some uncommon ideas, including that plants were sentient much the same as humans or animals, it was just that they had no way to communication with us. Eventually his ideas began to take a more radical turn as he began to splice human genes with plants, specifically his genes. Whether his theories were proven right or not is up for debate, but the plant, a creeper, did gain sentience. It also killed him shortly thereafter. Since then Bloodvine has existed with a hatred of humans but with the intellect of a human.

Bloodvine usually is accompanied by controlled plants. Add appropraitely level plants to any encoutners with Bloodvine. It should be noted that Bloodvine does have the ability to dominate human beings as well as plants, thogh this is not an ability he is aware of until later in his career.

Superhero Adventure: Garden of Evil

Garden of Evil

The town of Warren Township, in New Jersey (pop. 14000), is having problems. Specifically, the entire town is under the control of Bloodvine. Bloodvine has finally figured out he can control people as well as plants; though actually, he is using his plants to suborn the minds of the people. The FBI (and now military) is aware of the situation but the last tactical team they sent in with plant killer did not come back; this makes three teams lost. In the mean time Bloodvine has been spreading. The next option is to bomb the town out of existence, but that would not go well in the presses so the FBI is looking for other options. They go to the characters.

Supervillain: Steel Bullet

Steel Bullet

Miguel Henrique can move metal with his mind, basically a telekinetic who can only affect metal. In fact, whatever he is trying to move must be composed primarily of metal or his power will not work. Thus he is not able to move people by their belt buckle.

He is your typical hothead who uses his powers to show his power over other people. He plays into the tough guy image, but in fact, he tends to try and keep clear of those evenly matched with himself. Right now he is the leader of the biker gang, the Ghouls. He, however, has been known to take other jobs and has worked with other villains in the past.

Superhero Adventure: Return of the Spirit King

Return of the Spirit King

The Spirit King was a villain from long ago. His ability to communicate and control the spirits and ghosts of this world gave him tremendous power. He used this power over others. He was defeated several years ago fighting against other people with powers out to stop his wickedness. He was killed during the battle when the spirits he controlled broke free and tore him apart in revenge for all the evil he had made them do. The world was happier for his passing.

Perhaps reports of his demise were premature. People and families have been disappearing in the area where the Spirit King once operated. Spirits have been seen walking the streets. People fear the worst.

Supervillain: Sawbones

Sawbones

Dr Theodore Dicena could have been a surgeon that helped the world. For a time he did just that, serving as a field doctor for the army. Sadly, he saw one too many mangled body brought to him for repair and something snapped. Since then he has made it his life’s goal to create the perfect, and most resilient, human form possible. To the detriment of humanity he uses people as material for his experiments. Unfortunately, his experiments thus far have created nothing but abominations.

Superhero Adventure: ORB

ORB

Sawbones has a new experiment. He is looking into regressive research, wherein the human body is regressed to an earlier form of evolution. He feels he can then take the best parts, the parts that helped push the species forward, and reintroduce some of the human components that have been lost since time and medicine has “weakened” humanity.


Part One
The players are called to the Rock Institute, a research facility on AIDs. Some creatures with powers are attacking the place. When the characters get there they will have a chance to fight some of Sawbone’s Abominations (see the chart at the end for possible opponents). After they clear up the fight they will learn Sawbones has made off with a bunch of technical research.