Monthly Archives: April 2019
The Public Enemies: Inverted Jenny
Superheroes and pulp adventurers need nemeses who are just as colorful, interesting, and talented as the protagonists they oppose. Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery, the Flash’s Rogues, Spider-Man’s Sinister Six, Superman’s legions of foes, the Green Lantern’s Yellow Lanterns and so on, define those heroes as much as their powers and backstories do. So when running a supers RPG, GMs often want to create memorable foes to serve similar roles.
One way to do that is to do pastiche versions of classic villains. Another is to create new villains that draw on similar tropes, but aren’t 1-for-1 homages.
Since villains are often coolest if they have some collective noun (which doesn’t have to mean they work together… though sometimes they might), I have begun pondering a group of colorful foes ready to be the nemeses of nearly any hero.
I call them, the “Public Enemies.”
Inverted Jenny
The master criminal known as Inverted Jenny is well-known to actually be Dr. Jennifer January, an expert in computational complexity theory who funded many philanthropic pursuits by working as a freelance postal and insurance investigator uncovering fraud. After she exposed a profitable money-laundering scheme being used by the Wolf’s Head, she was kidnapped and questioned by the villain Toxin under enhanced interrogation to see how much information she had turned over to the government. This treatment resulted in her developing dissociative identity disorder, apparently as an intentional side-effect of the psychotropic treatment she underwent.
The second identity that developed thought of herself as the opposite of everything Dr. Jennifer January believed in, and thus dubbed herself “Inverted Jenny.” Inverted Jenny is a genius planner obsessed with things that are the reverse of the norm, and stamps and stamp collecting. Though she has no superhuman powers, her ability to carefully plan, prepare for nearly any eventuality, adjust on the fly, and adapt to changing situations in clever and unexpected ways makes her a famously successful and dangerous foe. She is often very well funded, able to gather vast wealth in short periods of time through various forms of fraud, and happily spends that money to commit crimes that bring in much less value, but matches her personal aesthetic.
As Inverted Jenny she wears a domino mask (despite knowing her identity is public knowledge), and a high-quality pinstripe suit with a label pin of the famous Inverted Jenny stamp. She normally carries a handgun (often with specialty ammunition designed to deal with specific problems she has foreseen running into), a utility knife (generally concealed), a big ring (with the biplane from the famous stamp on it), and sometimes a cane (which has about a 50/50 change of having some special function, such as being a sword-cane, or a one-shot shotgun, or a cattle prod).
Inverted Jenny often works with a small club of all-women mercenary criminal specialists known as the Philatelists. These include Basel Dove (nonlethal munitions), Red Mercury (explosives), One-Cent Magenta (naval and underwater ops), Penny Black (disguise and infiltration), and Scinde Dawk (hand-to-hand combat). The Philatelists aren’t insane, and aren’t obsessed with stamps or inverted items. They were first assembled by Inverted jenny in an early, spectacularly successful, caper. While they were captured after they went their separate ways, their reputations were such that they were often freed and recruited by governments, master criminals, and of course Inverted Jenny herself. As a result, they use their stamp-based codenames, even when working independently or with groups with different motifs.
Two other Philatelists have sometimes been acknowledged, Penny Blue being a bodyguard often hired by Inverted Jenny, and Penny Red being a trainee of Penny Black (and possibly a younger relation) who operates independently as a bounty hunter and repossession expert on the gray side of the law.
Since Inverted Jenny is truly and genuinely insane, when captured she is generally confined and treated at the Segefield Sanatorium for the Criminally Insane. Of course, sometimes Dr. January’s personality is dominant, and at such times Inverted Jenny effectively does not exist. On numerous occasions, Dr. January has seemed to successfully and permanently suppress the Inverted Jenny personality, and managed to receive clearance to live in public, though always with regular monitoring and check-ins. Sadly, some treatments turned out to be only temporary, others couldn’t prevent a resurgence of Inverted Jenny if Dr. January was in extreme pain or danger, and in at least two cases what was a permanent fix was undone by some other villain who felt the need to recreate Inverted Jenny to access her planning expertise.
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Top Ten Geeky TV Series Pitches
A lot of shows got cancelled recently. That’s fine. Good, even. It’s part of the Entertainment Cycle of Life.
So, here are my top ten pitches for new Geeky TV series. Note that in many cases while I am pitching it, I’d be the WRONG person to write, direct, or produce these.
10. Nebula’s
It’s a single-room comedy… in space! Think of it as Cheers, but set at Quarks.
9. UnCivil
The US Civil War was about slavery. In a world where the heroes of the ancient world were real, and super-science and magic are just beginning to develop, this is the story of early mystery men (and women) operating during the civil war.
8. Lower Decks
The U.E.S. Topeka is the jewel of the United Earth fleet. On its upper decks negotiations decide the fate of systems, bluffs end wars, and strange creatures on contacted for the first time.
On its lower decks the sanitation systems have to be maintained, the quantum torpedoes polished, and the missing synthetics crate from storage 141 has to be found before the new official review. What goes on above deck 50 doesn’t make much difference down here.
Unless there’s a hull breach. Or a Krangin prisoner escapes. Or a visiting alien turns out to be accompanied by a vampiric slime that got into the air ducts.
Again.
7. Vigilance
A therapy group on loss decides they are tired of just mourning their dead. They have MMA fighters, engineers, paramedics, even a cop. No one of them could be a hero, but as a group? As a group they can forge one new figure to make a difference.
They can be Vigilance.
Foresee a fight? Then have one of the fighters wear the suit. Need to interrogate someone? Send the psychologist. Someone in the Vigilance suit gets hurt? Patch them up in secret at a member’s house, and send out someone else the next night.
No one has all the skills to be Vigilance. But between the twenty of them, they have this covered.
6. Lost City
Under Seattle is the famous and well known Seattle Underground.
Beneath that are the Tunnels and Cellars.
Beneath that is the Lost City. Things that have been lost, forgotten, or abandoned often end up in the Lost City. Atlantis may never have existed, but there are a few Atlanteans here. the Rat emperor is always lurking at the edges. And this is where the Sasquatch went when they were driven out of their native homes.
Debbie Darbaski’s little brother disappeared when they were children. Now a young adult she gets a letter from him, asking for help. In the Lost City.
5. Perri Hotter and the Arcane Adult Education Class
Look, not everyone in the Magic World can make it at the ivy-wand-league schools, like Warthogs, or Bullbrakes. Sometimes when you AREN’T the chosen one, your life takes an unexpected turn, and you best bet is Arcane Adult Education Class.
Of course that means if some villain DOES manage to encase all the major magic schools in dream ice, you and your evenings-and-online-classmates may the the only hope the Magic World has. And as the best-of-the-worst, everyone is looking to Perri Hotter, who was once mistaken for the Chosen One, to save the day!
Which doesn’t mean she can skip her day job, either. Saving the world doesn’t pay the bills.
4. Asmara
The year is 2100. Asmara is the major, mobile solar-system traveling space station controlled by the African Union. With unlimited solar power and self-sufficient hydroponics, it is beholden to no one, and on it cultures suppressed for millennia are having a Renaissance.
3. The Game Masters
As the world gets weirder, the governments of the world often need experts who can tell the difference between real satanic rituals, and circles taken from the Paladin Roleplaying Game. Combining esoteric knowledge, game theory, and a host of friends with weird hobbies. Han Kite, Robin Kaos, and Mike Selinker (as himself!) tackle the weird cases the more traditional agencies have thrown up their hands and given up on.
2. Ashmen
A group of US firefighters go to help with an out-of-control blaze in Europe, but are cut off and surrounded by flame. they take refuge in a root-encrusted cave, pass out, and when they wake up and come out, it’s the 9th century.
And the locals mistake them for “ashmen,” Dane raiders famous for their ash-wood ships.
They have what was on them at the time, and their collection of modern knowledge. Can they make a new life in the dim past? Can they even learn the language? And, once they befriend a local village, can they protect it from the REAL ashmen, who are coming to raid?
1. The Morrigan
Erin Gabanna always loved her grandmother, but is still shocked when she inherits everything upon her grandmother’s death. In a letter, her gran warns her that this includes the title of The Morrigan–Erin is now the harbinger of death, lady of crows and wolves, and a member of the unseelie court.
Erin will be drawn to death and war for the rest of her life, and will be hunted by the one-eyed Cuchulainn as her geas.
Erin’s grandmother hid her connection to death, but Erin is going to fight it. Or, at least, seek to bring justice to those deaths she is drawn to. In this she leans on her friends of college, which include a paramedic, a lawyer, and her best friend, a celebrity bodyguard.
The Morrigan is a murder-of-the week procedural, as Erin is supernaturally drawn to death but decides to solve these crimes on her own accord, with a running B-plot of supernatural politics with Maeb, Dagda, and other entities trying to draw Erin in as a young, inexperienced member of the court with a lot of enemies, and few allies.
…
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(Want to pay me to actually work on these, or create more ideas for you? Leave me a note in the comments, or shoot me a line at owen.stephens@gmail.com!)
Ungol
Ungol is the Accursed City, the Land of Maddened Death, and the location of the Skulmance.
It is a kingdom, a ruin, a demiplane, a demigod, and an artifact.
Ghouls live in Ungol, as do wererats, rakshasa, jackalweres, and hags.
It can be reached only through rituals, though some rituals once performed open a path on a regular, though often infrequent, basis. It opposed, and is opposed by, Valorgard.
Only pain and wickedness comes from Ungol, and to even know of it can give it power. Even its dust has power. So we do not speak of it.
But anything written of Ungol morphs and changes, until the writing spreads dangerous lies that benefit only Ungol. Only writing inked with the blood of an unwilling sapient creature, and scribed on pages made from another unwilling sapients skin, can hold unchanging words of Ungol.
So we also do not write of it.
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The Icosantheon. No. 19 – Garuuhl
The Icosantheon is a host of twenty deities bound not by a common origin, but by a united conservatorship of the immaterium that forms the sides and edges of the material plane.
19. Garuuhl
Garuuhl is also known as the First Lich, the Bringer of Bottled Sorrow, and (especially where his veneration is allowed in major cities) the Preserver and the Fermented One. He is always depicted as a roughly 4-foot tall, lean, humanoid, desiccated corpse with a long, slender, pointed nose, bright white points of light for eyes, and durable clothing of resin-impregnated leather. His gauntlets are light gray leather and fingerless, with twisted mithral and adamantine thread at every seam and cuff. Though his throat, chest, and abdomen are normally covered with a leather work-coat, when opened it is revealed that fungus and mushrooms grow in his flesh at these places.
It is believed that this depiction of Garuuhl is so clear and consistent because, unlike most deities, he still visits his temples and shrines from time to time. All these places remain working distilleries, dairies, apothecaries, canneries, and herbalist shops, and the Preserver has been known to come to have some new discovery or process explained to him, or to loan out his gauntlets to a worthy student, or to set a cask or vat to ferment in a cave beneath a dread monastery for a few centuries, or to pluck a fungus from his flesh, and set it to grow in a corpse laying in the yard, and command it be left to grow. None of these events are frequent, but every few decades Garuuhl appears at some place that reveres him.
The First Lich is just that, the first mortal to achieve lichhood. What his species was prior to this is unknown, and it has been suggested he is anything from a shrunken human or elf or a thin dwarf, to a gnome, goblin, or halfling. When asked, the god himself just notes he is a lich, and it’s hard to argue with that. During his original life Garuuhl invented beer, ale, yogurt, wine, spirits, jam, and cheese, all while seeking a way to preserve his body forever (which eventually lead to his creation of the lichification process).
It has been suggested that in his mad dash to exist forever, Garuuhl invented the things needed for civilization entirely by accident. He created uses for the caves beneath the earth, the things that grow in it, fire for cooking and tanning and fermenting, cold for freezing and drying. He is a god of dread and terrible knowledge, but also the wonders it can create.
There is no question that Garuuhl is evil. He cares only for his own researches and discoveries (and safety), and happily sacrifices anyone and anything that slows his desires. But there is also no question that his temples and monasteries are sources of great teaching, knowledge, and, and medicine. While most other gods oppose him (though Karrackar continues to simply try to convince the Fermented One to stop being a deific ass, and Tazoteot doesn’t much care what Garuuhl does as long as the First Lich keeps Tazoteot and their worshipers well-supplied with narcotics as desired), they also accept that his contributions are more beneficial than harmful. But Garuuhl also demands he be credited as the primary source of any discovery made by him or his followers, and rains horrors down on those who don’t acknowledge him.
From great evil can come knowledge that can be used for good. This neither changes that it was created through evil, nor that it’s main uses may be benevolent.
Even in lands where it is illegal to openly worship Garuuhl, as he is an evil deity, it is sometimes allowed to cautiously venerate him. His monasteries and temples sometimes operate openly even where his worship is forbidden, staffed not by “priests” but by “cantors” and “curates.” And, in truth, as long as they do his bidding, Garuuhl does not care if those he empowers and protects worship him, or not, though mostly to gain his divine power one must be willing to sacrifice all other entities at his command, which requires at least a non-good alignment.
*Garuuhl is Neutral Evil. He accepts the devotion of entities of any alignment, but only non-good creatures can truly worship him. Some alchemists and wizards do study and venerate him as the source of much knowledge, while at the same time opposing his and his followers’ excessive experiments.
*Garuuhl’s colors are red, black, and white.
*His favorite weapon is alchemist’s fire.
*His favored animal is the bee.
*His servitors are alchemical inevitables and fiendish undead.
*His holy symbol is a knot of red fire, black ice, and white hide.
*His areas of concern are preservation, invention, discover, experimentation, and self-important.
Pathfinder 1st Edition Rules:
*His domains are Death (undead), Earth (caves), Fire (smoke), Magic (alchemy), Plant (decay), and Water (ice).
His priests can take the “bombs” section of the alchemy feature of alchemists in place of channel energy, and gain appropriate bomb-related discoveries as feats. Spellcasters and alchemists who venerate, but do not worship him, can learn formulas to duplicate any spell from his granted domains as spells or extracts, but must never destroy or suppress knowledge of his church’s work, regardless of whether they try to stop it.
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The Icosantheon. No 2 — Karrackar
The Icosantheon is a host of twenty deities bound not by a common origin, but by a united conservatorship of the immaterium that forms the sides and edges of the material plane.
2. Karrackar
Also known as the Loremaster, Shade Dragon, and Kobold King, Karrackar is generally depicted as a plump, cheerful dragon of rainbow colors so bright that all other hues look dim and shaded in his presence, or a Large kobold of similar coloration and girth. When depicted with a hoard, it is normally of books, scrolls, and fine food.
While Karrackar is clearly a kobold deity, most kobolds speak his name in hushed whispers. They fear the mighty god not because he might harm them, but because Karrackar finds kobolds adorable and if one draws his attention, the Shade Dragon will appear to hug, pet, and shower praise on the kobold endlessly. Kobolds so treated generally become great champions of knowledge and fairness… much to the annoyance of their clan-mates.
Karrackar is also the patron deity of those who have been abused, especially the young and weak. He can be called on to defend anyone bullied or systemically harmed, and in his Rainbow Sanctum is surrounded by children and others of all races he felt could only be protected by being taken from the mortal realm entirely. These he teaches, heals, and supports until and unless they are ready to return to the world.
Karrackar is the god of love of learning, speech, fair play, protecting the abused and downtrodden, and ancient things. Though many other pantheons have attempted to dismiss him as “merely” a minor dragon god, Karracker’s combination of vast good cheer, deep knowledge, and wicked wit generally force civilizations to accept him as a patron of the arts and lore, whether they want to or not.
While Karrackar is normally well-disposed toward all sapient beings, his rage can be aroused by those who abuse others, cruelty, and systemic injustice. Those kobold clans who have fully embraced him have generally done so after being driven from their hereditary lands without cause, and have learned the Kobold King can use his wisdom and knowledge to wreck terrible havoc on those who harm his charges. Once a people have angered Karrackar, the best way to appease him is to both cease lashing out at others, and build and fund sanctums where any creature can claim sanctuary as long as it does no harm to others. These sanctums are often homes for the oppressed and dispossessed, as well as great libraries and schools which do good works for the poor and injured.
All members of the Icosantheon respect Karrackar, even those who oppose him, and once every century he hosts a great convocation in his Rainbow Sanctum where all gods are welcome to come under truce, revel, and discuss their differences.
*Karrackar is Neutral Good, and accepts worships of all non-evil alignments. He also accepts all kobolds and all those who have suffered abuse, regardless of their alignments. However, evil worshipers are constantly visited by dreams of care, love, and gentle teaching, until their alignments change or they reject Karrackar… though even then they are accepted back if they seek to change their ways.
*Karrackar’s colors are the rainbow, though his worshipers are free to select any color or colors they love and wear it in his honor.
*His favorite weapon is an enormous quill that can become a spear, longspear, or javelin.
*His favored animal is the bear.
*His servitors are the divine dragon-bears, and the celestial warpriests who are the abused he took to his Rainbow Sanctum, and who decided to return to the world to smite the hateful.
*His holy symbol is a twisting scroll that takes the shape of a dragon.
*His areas of concern are knowledge, fairness, community, acceptance, and fierce protection.
Pathfinder 1st Edition Rules:
*His domains are Good (friendship), Knowledge (education), Protection (defense), Rune (language), Scaleykind (dragon), Sun (revelation), and War (tactics).
Many witches select Karrackar as their patron. These can replace one hex with gaining access to the next level of cleric spells (learning them in order, from cantrips, to 1st-level spells, 2nd level spells, and so on) as spells known and available to prepare as a cleric of the same level as their witch level. Any calculations from such spells that normally use Wisdom or Charisma, the witch may instead use Intelligence.
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Icosantheon Index
The Icosantheon is a host of twenty deities bound not by a common origin, but by a united conservatorship of the immaterium that forms the sides and edges of the material plane.
This page is updated as new members of this divine collection are added.
2. Karrackar, Loremaster, Shade Dragon, and Kobold King. NG.
5. Eirsival, Knight of the Final Thunder, the Coming Storm. LG.
7. Ovinnec, the Wild Visitor. CG.
13. Tazoteot, the Demon God/Devil Goddess. N
19. Garuuhl, the First Lich, the Fermented One. NE
20. Aor, the Beacon Tower, N
Icosantheon by Domain
Air (cloud, lightning, wind) – Eirsival
Animal (fur) – Tazoteot
Artifice (industry, toil) – Aor
Chaos (whimsy) – Ovinnec
Charm (lust) – Tazoteot
Community (family) – Tazoteot
Community(cooperation, education) – Aor
Darkness (night)Good (friendship) – Karrackar
Death (undead) – Garuuhl
Destruction (torture) – Tazoteot
Earth (caves) – Garuuhl
Evil-subdomains only (Daemon, Demodand, Demon, Devil, Kyton) – Tazoteot
Fire (smoke) – Garuuhl
Glory (chivalry, heroism, and honor) – Eirsival
Good (friendship) – Eirsival
Healing (medicine) – Tazoteot
Knowledge (education) – Karrackar
Law (loyalty)- Eirsival
Liberation (self-realization) – Tazoteot
Magic (alchemy) – Garuuhl
Plant (decay) – Garuuhl
Protection (defense) – Karrackar
Protection (defense, fortification, and solitude) – Eirsival
Repose (souls) – Ovinnec
Rune (language) – Karrackar
Rune (wards) – Aor
Scaleykind (dragon) – Karrackar
Strength (ferocity) – Ovinnec
Sun (light) – Aor
Sun (revelation) – Karrackar
Travel (exploration) – Ovinnec
Travel (trade) – Aor
Trickery (ambush and deception) – Ovinnec
Water (ice) – Garuuhl
Water (oceans) – Aor
War (tactics) – Karrackar
Weather (storms) – Eirsival
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Owen K.C. Stephens 