The Mythosverse

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Neo-Paladin
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The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

I've entertained this idea for a while and thought...why not do a few writeups?
This is a universe that has superheroes but pretty much all the supernatural elements have their basis in the cosmic horror writings of H.P. Lovecraft and his peers and those inspired by him and the others. We are definitely looking at a Lovecraft-lite flavor here. People can and do resist the influence of the Many-Angled Ones and there are genuine heroes, but the madness is always there, just churning under the surface. All it takes is one hero giving in and we'd have the Cancerverse all over again.

Inspiration comes from, as mentioned, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton-Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Ruthanna Emrys and many, many more. Also, Marvel's Realm of Kings and the Thanos Imperative and DC's The Doom that Came to Gotham. As for heroes, it will be a wild mashup of DC and Marvel influences, maybe one or two amalgamations, some elements from The Boys, Invincible, Worm, Sentinels of the Multiverse...whatever tickles my fancy and can be squeezed into this universe. Not sure where I am going to go with this, it's just something I find fun to imagine. I might also use a couple of elements from Charles' Phipps' Cthulhu Armageddon novels, especially in regards to the Dreamlands.

As my former worldbuilding projects have burned out rather quickly (besides the Merge Universe, in no small part due to some great contributors) and I believe I have found the reason for that, there will not be a long writeup of the history of that universe. Instead, I will focus on the parts of interest to me (the heroes and villains) and do the worldbuilding through their backstories bit by bit.
Last edited by Neo-Paladin on Thu Feb 03, 2022 4:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

Anthony „Tony“ Stark/Iron Man, part 1


Image

„ I used to believe that the future was set in stone. That we are just watchers. Chroniclers. What would happen would happen. But just watching is something I can no longer do. He would not let me.“

Genius. Inventor. Philanthropist. Billionaire playboy. Hero. That's what people on the street would say about Tony Stark.
Like with many celebrities, this image is a carefully-crafted fabrication. Unlike with most celebrities, the deception runs a bit deeper. For the man Tony Stark, son of weapons manufacturer Howard Stark, is no more.


Tony was born into money. His father Howard Stark had made millions during WW2 developing and selling weapons against the Nazis, including a few special countermeasures against the occult and superhuman programs put into motion by special weapons division HYDRA and its two subdivisions Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) and Nachtwölfe (Night Wolves).

His mother having died giving birth and his father, while not being loveless , being more interested in science and engineering than being a family man, Tony was mostly raised by an army of nannies and tutors. And even at a young age, he quickly proved to be able to think circles around his teachers. When other students would struggle with the basics of their first foreign language, Tony already spoke four languages fluently.
When others would learn about gravity, he was studying particle physics.

He quickly read through his father's library and even managed to find some of the old manuscripts containing Howard's WW2-era forays into what he called „Hypergeometric Engineering“.

But while it was rather easy for Tony to find intellectual stimulation, he longed for the companionship of others his age. Often, he would find ways to sneak out of the Stark household and roam rhe street with other kids, getting into trouble numerous times. Among other children and youths, he felt at home just as much as in the library and he found himself deeply caring about his circle of friends and those who were less fortunate. During these years, he would form lasting friendships with Harold„ Happy“ Hogan and James Rhodes.

When he was 15, he joined an undergraduate program at MIT. He would effortlessly graduate as class valedictorian with double majors in physics and engineering. Afterwards, he was sent to Cambridge University to conplete his education. Tony was quickly determined to make up for lost time, throwing himself not just into his studies but every available party as well. Being a quick learner, he soon lost his initial awkwardness and had numerous flings. Unfortunately, he also picked up a drinking habit which would haunt him for years.

During his last year at university, Howard Stark passed away. His long-time business associate and friend Obadiah Stane, however, told him that he would be welcome as his father's successor and CEO alongside Stane once Tony had finished his studies.

Tony did so and for a few years, the challenges of running the company alongside Stane would provide him with welcome challenges to test his mind. During that time, he also met Pepper Waite, back then Stane's secretary, who fascinated him from the beginning. She was honest, smart and quite willing to call him out on bad decisions. Realizing that her shrewd business sense would be wasted in her current position, he promoted her to head of Controlling and Operations.

It had been an excellent choice. Under his leadership, Stane's ruthlessness and Pepper's brilliant business strategies, Stark Industries flourished.
Unfortunately, under that veneer, rot had set in.

Even during Howard's tenure, Stane had already gone behind his back, diverting money to fund his own projects – projects which were based on hypergeometric technologies that Howard had discontinued for safety reasons.
Secretly, Stark Industries sold dangerous esoteric weaponry on the black market.

Tony could have found out in time, but another doom was in store for him. During a routine demonstration of his new Jericho weapon system, he was kidnapped by a group that called itself „ Brotherhood of the Ten Rings“.
They were an ancient cult dedicated to a group of beings they called „ The Great Race“, a species that had mastered the art of mental time travel and possession.
Existing in the distant past and the unimaginably far future, they gathered knowledge by possessing the bodies of other beings throughout time and space.
The Brotherhood of the Ten Rings venerated them as chroniclers, as bringers of truth and of immortality of a sort. Using an ancient rite, they called for a mind of the Great Race to take over the body of Tony Stark, knowing that such a brilliant mind would be very valued by the alien beings.

Image
A member of the Great Race in its most well-known form.


Tony's mind fought the invading alien presence, but it was no use. Catapulted into the distant past, he was trapped in the body of a cone-shaped alien creature, kept as a curiosity and strongly urged to write down all he knew.

Meanwhile, his body was inhabited by an alien creature which was promptly set free by the cult.
„ Tony“ returned to his old life, but it quickly became obvious that something was strange about him. His memory appeared to have been damaged, although no examination found anything wrong with him. He could still recite the most complex physical equations by heart but was confused by contracts. He showed the ability to speak languages he had never formally studied but often had problems finding the right words in English.

Having no other explanation, the neurologists examining him eventually deduced that he must have suffered a stroke or similar brain trauma during his captivity. Of course, this meant that, for now, he would have to cede his position as CEO and focus on his recovery. Stane was all too happy to take over completely. And while Stark Industries continued to flourish, Stane also forged more connections to shadowy organizations like HYDRA, the Serpent Society, the League of Assassins and others, selling hypergeometric technology to the highest bidder.

Slowly, „ Tony“ fought his way back into life, as the alien mind inside him got acclimated to the time it found itself in. During that time, he made several trips to Australia and to New England, visiting Miskatonic University as well as buying some seemingly worthless pieces of land Down Under.

These things were chalked up to him just being eccentric and eventually, „ Tony“ became so adept at pretending to be Tony Stark that even his best friends believed he had made a full recovery. Only Pepper, ever so observant, suspected that something was still not quite right.
There was no longer a reason to keep him from assuming his position as the CEO of Stark Industries, however, a part he played sufficiently well, although to all outside observers, he seemed to now lack the creative spark that had filled him before the kidnapping.

The entity inside his body had no interest in advancing mankind. That was not its task. It was just meant to chronicle, to store all the information available. And so, it waited, passively.
When Pepper came to him with concerning information about some of Stane's projects, the entity ignored her. Stane would do what he would do, it told itself. Just as the flow of time would ordain.
But if that was true, then why was there this nagging feeling at the back of its mind? Some echo of the original inhabitant of this body, some neural pathways that signified concern for those mayflies of bone and blood and flesh?

The entity grew increasingly concerned as these ideas, counter-productive to its task, kept cropping up. It was beginning to grow attached to these lowly creatures. Finally, it contacted the Brotherhood of the Ten Rings, who wasted little time in spiriting „ Tony“ away to a hideout somewhere in the Mojave Desert.

Tony's body was placed in the ritual circle and the entity focused on returning to its own time. Somewhere in the distant past, one of its coworkers would activate an arcane machine that would now swap out the minds once more, with the human mind having lost all memory of the two years during which it had been in an alien time.

But something went wrong. Horribly wrong. There was nowhere for the entity to go – just a black void, with flickering embers of a human mind, terrified and confused, close to dissolution. Panicking, it fled back into Tony's body, grasping for a refuge to escape the seething, frigid emptiness.

Till today,even the vast intellect of the being has no idea what exactly happened. Maybe the body in which the human mind had been cast had died. Maybe the machine has had a malfunction.
Whatever the reason, it was once again inside the stolen body. The cultists were confused, unable to understand that the procedure had not worked – after all, it always had worked before. So the one now demanding to be let out had to be the real Tony Stark – apparently not mindwiped and thus with dangerous knowledge about the cult. They could not let him go.

Trapped in the compound, the entity was content to wait while it tried to understand what had happened. But when it overheard the cultists talking about someone named James Rhodes investigating his friend's disappearance and deliberating whether or not to kill him, Tony's old memories stirred again.

The being out of time was still confused and lost, but that emotion, concern for a close friend, gave it something to hold on to. „ Tony“ needed to keep the cult from murdering one of his best companions! Using what knowledge the human host could hold inside his limited brain, „ Tony“ began to build a suit from rubbish he found in the cave system, using hypergeometric principles to entrap a tiny portion of the Blind Idiot God Azathoth inside a small generator to power it.

Using the suit, he blasted his way out of the compound and managed to keep the cultists from assaulting James. Returning home with his friend in tow, he then spent a few weeks deliberating what to do now. The entity felt utterly lost. Its home was gone. It had no way to contact his people, to find out what had happened.

And, even worse, it had already acted against the rules that governed their method of time travel. It had not been content to observe. It had changed the course of events by saving James Rhodes. Even if he could somehow find another of his kind, he would be an outcast, maybe even purged from this body, adrift on the winds of oblivion forever.
Death holds a terror beyond belief for the immortal.

No, it would not attempt to reach out. It would remain and live. For now, it would have to be enough.

But, for all their alien nature, the Great Race are still beings of flesh and blood and no such creature can be without a purpose.
But what could that be? Should it just play this role? Be Tony Stark? Be rich, create weapons and hope not to be discovered?
Was this enough?

It was during those deliberations that Pepper came to him once more. She had done more digging and uncovered truly disturbing details about Stane's black projects, among them a techno-organic virus that had been used in a terror attack on Hongkong, costing hundreds of lives.
This time, she made it clear that she would not stand by and let him ignore this again, that, if he would not go to the police, she would.

Before he could truly answer, she slammed a couple of files onto his desk and stormed out again, leaving „ Tony“ baffled.
Last edited by Neo-Paladin on Thu Feb 03, 2022 4:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

Iron Man, Part 2

Stane, meanwhile, had found out his dealings had been uncovered and was setting in motion plans of his own. Cashing in a few favors, he had Pepper kidnapped and presented „Tony“ with an ultimatum – destroy the evidence he had received from her or never see her again.

When the entity realized what it was doing, it was already wearing the armor again. Acting on instinct alone, it had followed not its own desires but those of the body it was now imprisoned in. Tony's wish to not see harm come to the woman he valued so had not died with his spirit. And as the entity soared through the sky, encased in armor, it found itself clinging to those remnants once more, finding comfort and direction.

Using the suit's advanced technology, it found Stane's hideout, where Pepper was already working on her own escape, although Stane, now armed with some of his hypergeometric prototypes, was hot on her heels. He had almost caught up to her when „Tony“ interrupted, resulting in a fierce battle that finally left Stane crippled, half fused to the biomechanical harness he was wearing to enhance his strength.

As „ Tony“ stood above his defeated opponent, Pepper grateful to be alive by his side, the entity heard a voice inside its mind.

Nice save. Pretty sweet feeling, right? You want that again? Let me guide you and we might make a decent Tony Stark out of you yet.

The entity knew that it was just an interpretation of impulses from it's host brain, that Tony Stark was not co-inhabiting the body. This was it's people's version of madness. But it was better than just drifting about, directionless. And so, it made a decision.

They made a decision.

He made a decision.

Over the next weeks, he reworked his armor, upgrading it with some of those hypergeometrical elements his human brain could still grasp and which would be safe to use. At the same time, he and Pepper restructured Stark Industries, getting rid of their weapons program. For Tony knew that, in the future, Stark Industries would provide at least some of the weapons that would lead to mankind's extinction.

He would not do that to his adopted species. Caring about people...it proved to be addictive. With it, though, also came concerns. There were groups out there that had weapons they could not even understand, things that could do tremendous harm. Stane's crimes needed to be undone. And there were few people as capable of doing that as him.

His suit, his intellect and his knowledge of human and alien technologies would make him a formidable force for order and good.

Not just as Tony Stark. But as one of Earth's most powerful heroes.

As Iron Man.
Neo-Paladin
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

Powers and Abilities

Supreme Intellect: Tony Stark had been an extremely intelligent person, with an IQ ranging from 200 upwards, making him one of the smartest people to have ever lived and the smartest human currently on Earth. The entity now inhabiting his body brought with it its own understandings and knowledge of reality, centuries ahead of what human science could conceive.
Usually, a lot of that knowledge cannot be used when the Great Race exchanges minds with a human, the neural pathways of the average human brain simply unable to " fit" the alien terms and concepts into its perception of reality. With Tony Stark, it was different. The being that now lives as Tony Stark has access to a lot of its own memories and knowledge, allowing it to make great leaps forward in engineering and design as well as predicting outcomes even in the most chaotic of situations.
The entity also has knowledge of future events, but those are becoming less and less useful the more it influences the flow of time.

Its particular way of " inhabiting" Tony Stark's brain makes reading its thoughts tricky for telepaths as their abilities cannot always find purchase.


Iron Man Suit:
Originally created mostly out of scraps and some hypergeometric engineering (Tony does not like it being called " sorcery"), the armor has been refined over the years. Crafted from extremely durable semi-stable alloys, it reacts to Tony's mental commands and cannot be used by anyone else barring some heavy-duty rewiring.
The armor can withstand most heavy ordnance and explosives and can, in time, repair most damage on its own by siphoning trace elements from the environment and repurposing them in its internal microfabbers. At its core sits a miniaturized reactor inlaid with hyper-geometric sigils to contain a tiny flicker of Azathoth, the true core at the center of all existence, the Blind Idiot God from which the cosmos springs. This ember of divinity is enough to power the armor, but must be kept contained at all times, which means that Tony can only draw upon a limited amount of power at a time.
Besides providing a substantial boost to his strength, speed and dexterity, the armor can fly using gravity control devices.

It also boasts an array of weaponry, most of which is energy-based, drawing upon the A-reactor. The strongest of these would be the Uni-Beam, a blast of pure electrical force which nearly depletes the energy storage of the armor.

The suit can also create an energy field strong enough to dissipate nearly all forms of incoming energy, although it can be overwhelmed if taxed for too long.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

Personality

Prior to his first abduction, his friends and associates knew Tony as a well-meaning if cocky young man, someone who was sometimes all too certain of his own superior intellect, leading to bouts of arrogance. Still, he was someone who could be counted on, as any of his long-time friends could attest.

After his abduction and possession by the Great Race, things changed drastically. He would become passive to events around him, his former creative, inventive spark seemingly lost. His close friends would first attribute the changes to trauma, possibly even brain damage, but nothing amiss was found. Still, he was very prone to erratic behavior and memory lapses. He grew distant from pretty much his entire former life.

This again changed after the attempt by the entity to return to its time spectacularly failed. After breaking out of the cult's compound and saving James Rhodes, " Tony" seemed to have regained his will to change the world around him. He still occasionally shows certain peculiarities and bizarre behaviors, but nothing that can't be explained by him being a rich eccentric. On other occasions, he seems to throw himself into life with renewed zeal, often overindulging, as if experiencing life's pleasures for the first time. This has caused some friction between him and his friends, especially Pepper, who often has to " clean up" after him (deal with media coverage etc.).
His hero work - and the fact that he has admitted to being Iron Man - has created a lot of goodwill, at least in the general population, whereas the US military views his work with more suspicion.
It doesn't help that Stark Industries terminated all weapons research and development contracts it had.
Being so involved with humanity, mentally sparring with those who want to bring him under military control and being adored by millions around the globe, are feelings the entity has never experienced and for now, it enjoys them immensely, allowing itself to be distracted from the fact that it is now and forever alone, a pariah among its own people and a stranger among humanity.

------
Okay, that's it for the version of Tony Stark. Any questions, comments and suggestions are welcome.
Next up will most likely be The Deathless One, this universe's version of Ra's al Ghul, leader of the League of Shadows and the Cthulhu Cult.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

The Deathless One, Part 1

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" Gotham City is done. Tonight, we will help it throw off the shackles of sanity and watch it burn in joyous conflagration. Great Dreamer Below, show them the ways of murder and unshackled ecstasy! Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn!"

No one knows his true age. His true name is forgotten, lost over the millennia, now known only to himself. But he has always been there. He poured over Atlantean tomes with the sorcerer Thulsa Doom. He ruled great Babylon. To the Egyptians, he was Apophis, the Great Serpent of Chaos. He orchestrated the murder of Julius Caesar and was known as the Scourge of God when he rode with the Huns. People feared him as Tomas de Torquemada.
These days, he often goes by the name of Ra's al Ghul, the Head of the Demon, leader of the League of Shadows, a group of assassins without peer.

He has wielded them like a scalpel, carefully cutting away those branches of humanity that would stand in the way of his ultimate goal and fostering an undercurrent of fear and madness that runs through the hidden histories of the world to this very day. All to prepare mankind for its final fate as playthings of the god he serves - Cthulhu, the Dreamer, the tentacled abomination that dreams in its sunken city of R'lyeh, awaiting the moment when the stars are right and it shall rise to teach mankind how to kill and scream and celebrate itself into oblivion.

He remembers becoming aware of Cthulhu and the other Elder Gods that dwelled in the Outer Dark as an apprentice to the dark sorcerer Thulsa Doom in a time before the oceans drank Atlantis. But unlike his master, who deluded himself into believing he could use the powers of the gods, he himself realized they could not be controlled by a mere mortal. All men could do was to embrace their insignificance and find temporary pleasure in subjugation before the inevitable end.

After having absconded from Thulsa Doom's abode with some of the sorcerer's tomes, he sought out cults that worshipped these malignant cancers on reality, joining them and rising through their ranks before discarding them again when he had learned all he could. His mental faculties, surprisingly enough, did not crumble under so much otherworldly knowledge, though whether that was due to a genetic quirk or because he had managed to so thoroughly rationalize his devotion to the Old Ones he never bothered to find out.
But where other cultist degenerated into babbling madmen, he only grew in power, to the point where he performed the most blasphemous rites to put himself beyond the reach of death. Now, he waited for the inevitable return of the Old Ones, eager to lead the way as they gifted his fellow men with delightful madness. But that time did not come. The stars would not be right. Something beyond his power, beyond his reach, was keeping them from aligning.
He would find the reason - Galactus, the Devourer - only an eon later.

He survived the fall of Atlantis and the end of the Hyborian Age, watching from the shadows as mankind clawed its way back to some semblance of civilization. Witnessing the tenacity of humanity firsthand, he hatched a new plan.
He would sow the seed's of man's final liberation. The stars might not come right, but the power of enough mortal minds could maybe accomplish the same thing the universe denied his master. Possessed of a patience only an immortal could have, he set to work.
Last edited by Neo-Paladin on Mon Mar 07, 2022 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
greycrusader
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by greycrusader »

Casting Galactus as the reason the stars will never be right for the Outer Gods is brilliant! Intriguing premise overall, with superheroes and related phenomena set in a heavily Lovecraft influenced setting.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

I will finally get to doing more for this over the weekend. I have not abandoned this and still have a lot of ideas...but...well...first there were RL issues and then...Elden Ring happened.
Harnos
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Harnos »

An interesting approach to super-heores. I've seen a similar idea in Paragons book but nothing full-fledged like this. Explaining Tony Stark's hedonistic habits with the curiosity of an alien is quite good. Also the Galactus twist made my day.

By the way, you could look at the Cthulhutech setting. It has some ideas that can be used in a superhero settings. Such as Tagers; humans bonded with extra-dimensional symbiotes.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

The Deathless One, part 2

It was a grand plan and so, he set to work. Unlike so many other cultists who were prone to burning out or falling afoul of those who refused the eldritch enlightenment the Great Old Ones offered, he knew the value of patience. Over the next millennia, he moved across the face of the Earth, taking on many different guises - a conquerer, a god made flesh, an assassin, a mad poet, a poison-tongued advisor - steering history as much as he could, away from stability and towards death and terror.
The very few who had an idea about his true identity came to call him " Nye'arla'thotep", a word meaning " The Chaos that Squirms/Crawls" in a language thankfully long forgotten.

If things had gone his way, humanity would still huddle in clay huts, peering frightfully at the dark citadels their inhuman masters erected across the planet.
But he had underestimated mankind's sheer tenacity and stubbornness. His puppet Nephren-Ka was killed when the gods-fearing Egyptians rose up, toppling his eldritch monuments and removing all mention of him from the records. His attempt to destroy Rome by having Caesar assassinated backfired spectacularly by turning it into an empire that spread further than imagined. The Huns were beaten and fragmented before the Holy Roman Empire could buckle under their assault.
No matter what he did, mankind kept struggling back onto its feet. That is not to say he was ineffectual. The seeds of madness he left in his wake still plague the world today. Nearly every major religion has been undermined by the cults he founded and many of the old gods would have been forgotten without him.

During the time of the Crusades, he led a group of disaffected fanatics, assassinating key leaders on both sides to keep the conflict going, hoping that the bloodshed would awaken the ley lines around Jerusalem and create a rift in space for one of his masters to come through. These Hashashin would inspire his later creation of the League of Shadows.

He was the leader of the cult that gathered underneath what would become Gotham City, summoning a dreadful Lloigor, binding it to the very foundations of the city and ensuring that it would always be a place of shadow and madness.

He was an advisor to the Russian Tsar before being ousted by what appeared to be a simple unhinged monk, forcing him to flee to Serbia, where he convinced a young nationalist to assassinate Duke Ferdinand, setting off WW1.

WW1 and WW2 would prove to be among his greatest successes, especially given how little he actually had to do to accomplish so much carnage. All it took were a few suggestions into the right ears, a few occult secrets revealed and simple human greed and malice did the rest. The destruction and suffering was strong enough to permanently damage the veil between worlds all around the Earth, even though it was not enough to fully cause his masters to rise.
Last edited by Neo-Paladin on Wed Nov 23, 2022 9:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

The Deathless One, Part 3

Unfortunately for him, the weakening of the dimensional barriers had other, less desirable, side-effects. The eldritch energies coursing across the world brought with them the emergence of people with superhuman powers as natural laws weakened and mindless eldritch symbionts were drawn towards human brains and bodies in the physical world.
And, as people are prone to do, they began to worship these paragons, who fought for them in the wars and at home, starting the era of the superhero.
He saw that this worship, even though it could lead to fanaticism and misery, could give people exactly what they needed to counteract his works: Hope in a brighter tomorrow.

He would need to act quickly if he wanted to subvert this new development before it solidified into something that would permanently keep him from raising his masters. Already enjoying the trust of the upper Nazi echelons, he offered to help them create not just technological superiority via HYDRA and their hypergeometric tech but their own superheroes as well. To that end, he approached Frederick Vought, a young HYDRA scientist, offering him the basics of what would later become Compound V, a substance that would cause the recipient to develop unnatural powers.
Vought worked on prisoners of the concentration camps to further refine the substance, for the first people injected with it became rampaging unholy monstrosities.

Which, to the Deathless One, was not surprising, given that the substance mostly consisted of the Milk of Shub-Niggurath, an eldritch goddess of fertility and mindless mutation and procreation.

It was only very shortly before the end of the war that Frederick Vought would be able to create the first stable superhuman, the woman later known as Stormfront. But by that time, the war was already lost and, like so many other Nazi collaborators, Vought fled to the US, together with Stormfront, who was rebranded as " Liberty".

The Deathless One was satisfied. He had never wanted the Nazis to win. Their brand of oppression would not be what could help his masters. He did not want totalitarianism but total dissolution. Sooner or later, the superheroes Vought would produce in the US would undermine those whose origins were less tainted. Shattered hopes were a much more powerful instrument than tanks and guns...
Last edited by Neo-Paladin on Sun Oct 29, 2023 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by betterwatchit »

That goes a long way towards explaining why Compound V has that effect on people.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

betterwatchit wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 4:02 pm That goes a long way towards explaining why Compound V has that effect on people.
It's still not an excuse, that would undermine the point. Starlight in this universe is still a decent young woman.
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Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

The Deathless One, Part 4

The Deathless One did not take an active part in the further consolidation of what would become Vought Industries. His long life had taught him all he knew about the greed and vanity of man. They would do the work for him without any further " assistance".

In the meantime, he continued his work, destabilising the world wherever he could. In his dark wisdom, he realized that the times, where superhumans were becoming a greater part of everyday life, would allow him to act more openly, taking on the mantle of a supervillain and thus hiding his true intentions in plain sight.

Gathering the disaffected and delusional as well as the most promising adepts among the various cults he held sway over, he began to indoctrinate them, crafting a fake history of an ancient order of assassins that they were now a part of, the " League of Shadows", who would, through select killings and sowing of chaos, create a paradise upon Earth. And even though his pupils soon believed in this lie wholeheartedly, even fanatically, it was just that - a lie. There was only one grand goal - create chaos, make sure mankind would never rise to a level where they could pose a danger to his plans...and finally, when everything was ready to fall into anarchy, use mankind's anguish to free his masters once and for all.

His minions killed all over the world, believing their targets were all means to a great end, a better future for all. In the meantime, the Deathless One, now most often going by his adopted supervillain name Ra's al'Ghul, planted the rumor that he was in possession of a legendary artefact that could grant long life and even resurrection - the Lazarus Pit.

In reality, the pit was filled with ichor from Shub-Niggurath mixed with Shoggoth matter. It would indeed grant long life, but it also would plant seeds of madness, dementia or mutation into the one being treated this way. Still, the rich and powerful tripped over themselves for a means to hold onto what they had for just a bit longer....and damned themselves in the process.

Of course, his League and he himself had their run-ins with superheroes, which often foiled their plans. But it mattered far less to him than he would let on. In fact, he would sometimes make sure heroes knew of planned assassinations and instruct his followers to make sure there was as much collateral damage as possible, thereby undermining their public image.

Things seemed to go according to plan, but as the decades went on, Ra's began to feel the first signs of age. Apparently, even his unnatural immortality had its limits. He knew he would probably still live for at least another century, but the thought that he might not be there when his masters finally threw off the shackles of slumber became more and more of a reality for him. A reality he found utterly unacceptable.
He needed to step up his plans.
Or, if that was not possible, find a successor.
Neo-Paladin
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Joined: Sun Dec 11, 2016 8:48 am

Re: The Mythosverse

Post by Neo-Paladin »

The Deathless One, Part 5

And he found exactly that in a young man from Gotham City. Already marked from simply being born in that tainted city, Bruce Wayne had lost his parents at an early age, instilling in him both an immense rage and a single-minded obsession to keep such tragedies from happening to anyone else.
R'as made arrangements in order to subtly lead Bruce towards an old temple in the Himalayas where he had set up a base for his " Leage of Shadows".
And there, he offered Bruce the opportunity to learn from him, ostensibly to become a blight upon crime.
Of course, it was never his intention to ever let Bruce leave again - not until he had thoroughly corrupted the young man and made him the inheritor of all the awful secrets he held.
Sensing the cracks in his pupil's mind, he did his best to subtly widen them, to break the already fragile shell of sanity that Bruce's trauma had left him with...but found himself stymied.
His pupil was immensely talented, his mind and body eager to learn. He wanted to be molded, to be turned into a weapon, using the darkness to fight the darkness. A foolish endeavor, but R'as did his best to encourage him. Only...things did not turn out the way he'd imagined.
Bruce would not break. His mind would not shatter. No matter which unholy revelation R'as visited upon him, Bruce just took it in stride. R'as had never seen anyone who'd been able to resist his personal attentions.
But, ironically, Bruce's single-minded obsession, the very weakness he'd meant to exploit, protected his pupil's mind. R'as' frustration grew until he decided that, despite Bruce's potential, he would have to destroy him.
The confrontation was brutal and by all rights, he should have snuffed out his wayward pupil. But through a combination of trickery, determination and sheer luck, Bruce survived and even managed to destroy the temple, nearly killing the Deathless One in the process.
It would take years before R'as had recovered and when he did, he vowed that, if nothing else, he would see to it that Bruce would see his world devoured by the Great Old Ones before he granted him the mercy of death!
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