NODES: Web pre-production Thread

[T51R]

Righto, as promised, a character description for George:



Anaheim:

George is one of the few heroes who uses his surname as his operating alias; he was a public figure in both his lives once being the mayor of his small town after retiring from the Iron Guard to marry his long-time love, Tabitha. As the premiere superhero of his world, George Seymour-Donovan was born into a normal suburban family and brought up a staunch Christian. In his late 20’s he began teaching at Sunday School, while holding a normal job as a town planner and architect with his own practice. His alter-ego, “Anaheim,” became a full-time Superhero when he partnered with his venture up with Donald McLain, of V&L Architects International. Donald had for a long time been a fan of Anaheim, and secretly suspected that George was the man behind the mask. When presented with the merger proposal, Donald called for a private meeting of both company owners and told George “simply to do what needed to be done,” and to “leave the rest to him.”

What followed was a mutual understanding and life-long friendship between both men; since childhood, Donald and George had been close and though the latter had a good nose for business, the former often wondered just why it was exactly that George hadn’t expanded his enterprise more aggressively. Donald had never asked and George never told; both were of the same mind and understood each other intimately; perhaps even more than brothers, they were true kindred spirits.

In fact it was through Donald that George met the woman who would one day become his wife and the mother of his children, though at the time he wasn’t aware that Tabitha was also in secret the causality-controlling heroine calling herself ‘Kindred.’ At the time, Donald was himself a married family man who had a passion for old artifacts, his hobby being amateur archaeology. By the time the partnership occurred, Donald had already published several papers on the subject, though none of them met any wide critical acclaim.

George started out early as a hero, with his first adventures beginning when he was 18. Early in his career as “Anaheim,” he started out the same as most heroes; making a grand debut in what would become his signature red leather costume, with armour plate protecting his neck and chest. Opting for a similarly red cape, his costume was in part designed by Joanne Dellinger, his high school sweetheart who had turned ballistics analyst in her mid-twenties. In his first battle, he fought and narrowly defeated the villain who would become his arch-nemesis: the self-proclaimed King Chaos, a dictatorial despot who ruled his own private nation and had almost unlimited scientific, underground and monetary resources. Their feud spanned most of Anaheim’s career, with King Chaos finally being unmasked as the foreign student who once schooled with George; where George was the good-natured, intellectual lad who held his own in sports, Abdullah Bhakir, a well-built and handsome young man of Arabic-American descent and next in line to the throne, excelled in sports and was spoiled rotten. In their epic battle, King Chaos was seemingly killed, but in realms outside the Void Lands, there are whispers that Bhakir may have survived the destruction of his own ‘Verse.

In the decade that followed after his debut, George continued to develop his powers but more importantly, took an interest in philosophy which saw him begin to study the fundamental likenesses between good and evil, beginning to strive to understand them instead of simply placing a label on either then sticking to his guns. In his eighth year as a full-time hero he founded the Iron Guard, a group of crusaders against the “negative and potentially detrimental elements that would willingly cause harm to the planet‘s populace,” in his own words. Operating at first as an Earth-based team, the Iron Guard’s exploits soon took them off-world and earned them respect as well as recognition in the interstellar scheme of things; they were instrumental in diffusing potentially explosive interplanetary feuds as well as taking part in operations to counter multiple-cosmos level threats. In assembling his team, George sought out individuals who had not only proven themselves in terms of power and skill, but also in terms of ideals and matters of conscience. He did not want a band of mercenaries or hardline idealists; the world had enough of those. Instead, he brought together people of level minds and more importantly, open minds. He ended up with nine companions who shared the better part of his adventures, and finally ten when Kindred joined them. As a group, the Iron Guard earned for itself even greater acclaim in not only its own ‘Verse, but also in neighbouring dimensions and timelines.

In its twenty-seventh year, with its members closing in on their mid-forties, the Iron Guard’s members declared personal retirement and the group disbanded leaving behind its protégés, a band of young heroes who had been independently chosen to succeed each member of the old team. Calling themselves the New Guard, they continued in Anaheim’s footsteps and ideas for the next eleven years. Many new heroes joined them, many new teams were formed, and the Platinum Age came thanks to great advancements in science and technology.

During this time George and Tabitha married, finally realising the dream they each held for just over a decade. For another five years, they lived in bliss with the hope of children. George went back to his practice, and was welcomed back by Donald. Declining a Director’s seat, he again took to the more interesting work in the field and formed a new establishment within V&L that dealt with landscaping as well as earth-moving equipment. At this time he also met and conversed with many current philosophers studying the works of the Greats, deepening his own views on light and dark. He earned an Honorary Doctorate for the paper he co-published with Donald, that analysed the nature of “good” and “evil” throughout the history of mankind as perceived by man in various stages of development. The paper met limited acclaim before it was eclipsed several months later by another paper with an anonymous author. George returned to teaching in Sunday School, and became active in the local community before successfully running for Mayor. In the process of taking office, he sold his shares in V&L back to Donald for a sum that would allow both him and Tabitha to retire comfortably. It was the perfect ending to a life of serving the public, keeping them safe from any and all threat.

[T51R]

Until that fateful day came, when the skies turned blood red and his ‘Verse’s Creator began to lose its power; a new Creation was about to be formed, with a new God to oversee it all. Taking this as his chance, Elphin, their God’s first Creation, seized control of the Heavens and Hells in a grand coup de etat, with the intention of breaking the cycle of birth and rebirth where God’s will would carry over from one Creation to the next.

Anaheim and Kindred once again donned their uniforms and stood shoulder to shoulder for what was to be the last time with the re-formed Iron Guard and a new generation of heroes, though many other warriors from the previous generation also turned out in exceptional numbers to fight for their home, and for the deity that had treated them so well. It was a battle that ended in futility; Elphin triggered hyperdimnsional collapse in a final act of spite towards his Father and the multiverse, with all its Continuities, began to collapse into a single nexus from which nothing further could be reborn. With oblivion staring them in their faces, Kindred finally admitted what she had been hiding for the last month: she was pregnant, with twins.

The thought of never seeing the children he had waited so long for became too much to bear, and in that instant, Anaheim awakened into his true powers: while Kindred retroactively attempted to manipulate Causality against a fast-disintegrating timestream, Anaheim summoned the last off his strength and held both halves of the collapsing multiverse apart for long enough that she could pinpoint in its fabric a point for him to tear through. This he did, and the survivors from a ’Verse now extinct found themselves in a dystopic Creation ruled by a sadistic God whose forces were far greater in number and strength than Elphin’s, and whose power exceeded the Deity that they once worshipped.

In this ‘Verse, they found a small resistance, a world that needed protecting in the face of constant assault by both Angelic and Demonic forces. For the next seven months the remnants of the Iron Guard as well as two generations of heroes and converted villains fought the good fight, even tough they realized it was a futile effort. George’s reason was simple; at the very least, he wanted to meet his children before his death. The end came sooner than expected; both Hell and Heaven came to Earth as the Deity itself appeared. In a field of broken bodies and charred corpses, with the lifeless, soulless shells of their comrades around them, the Donovan family made its last stand.

A last stand cut mercifully short by a NODES System Intervention. Their presence an anomaly, they qualified to receive a unique choice because of their exploits and unique situation: be reborn into the newly-recreated Omniverse as individuals, or leave their level of existence behind and go to a place. They chose to stay together and to brave the unknown; with their friends dead and their ’Verse gone, all they had was each other and the twin lives growing in Tabitha’s womb. They became, then, the only two mortal beings to witness the staggering capabilities of a NODE on the clock: they became the first mortal beings to witness the Tactical Dimension Tide and one of its many applications.

The Donovan’s were later inducted into the Void Lands, where they lived for the equivalent of one and a half months. During this time they operated a halfway-house to guide, educate and keep newly-deceased children before they could be summoned to the Trans-Continual Gate leading to the City of Dreams. They were themselves allowed into The City after their period, and The City was where their twin children Nathan and Morgan, were born. The running of the halfway-house was subsequently taken over by Seraph, a being created and maintained by the NODE unit that ushered the Donovan family into a new un-life. (Seraph is a very special creature; she embodies the life after and caters only to innocent entities. As such, she holds sway over Death and other conceptual beings that plague the sentient consciousness, whether such sentience belongs to mortal or God/ess alike. She is special for the reason that NODE’s don‘t Create very often. As such, hers is the power to cancel concepts, ideas, souls or even imagination)

In The City, George and Tabitha took on the surname of Anaheim (recommended by the Fate, Obsidian as a tribute to their old ‘Verse. At this time, Obsidian also presented Tabby with the only remaining thing from their old home: the remnants of their God‘s essence and a Bible to remember Him by.)

George now runs his own practice as he did before, but in his office he set up two chairs and desks: one set for him, and one for the childhood friend he lost; Donald. Likewise, on his letterhead, he keeps “Donald McLain” written as “partner in principle.” He works extensively with the City’s planning council, headed up by Amethyst (another of the Fates) and Etrigan,
And has also redesigned and reworked parts of Seicross’ home office (primarily to keep the fax in a separate room)



Powers:

George is a low-level reality warper, and his limit is that he may only effect reality within the scale of his own body. Thus, he can manifest everything from unbeliveable levels of personal strength, an unbreakable skeleton, increase the temperature of his skin to that rivalling a supernova, become invulnerable to projectiles, change his bouyancy, "ride" the solar winds, dash through the timestream as a function of strength, or simply swap the orientation of gravitational fields inside himself so as to move as quickly as he needs to in-flight. He may also relocate himself instantaneously via "wormholing," or, becoming a wormhole through subspace. His abilities are unlimited within the structure of his body, thus he must think ahead to use them and consider carefully how the effect will manifest outside of his body.

The source of his abilities is unknown(to him, his family, and to the scientists and mages in what was his world) what is known is that he began to manifest his powers when he tured 16, and from that point on continued to hone them.

However, Gasari (the Spirit residing in Nikuu's largest sword) seems to know a thing or two about how Anaheim actually got his powers, and has spoken with Kokumotsu at length about the subject(Koku drops by once in a while to check up on the family; he has been named Godfather to Nate and Morgan and continues to help them develop. One of his concerns is their lack of power, considering their parentage. He theorises that at a later age, they will draw even with or even surpass their peers if they come to understand sufficiently)

In The City, George has stopped refining his powers as part of his retirement and hardly uses them(except to keep certain other people from blowing themselves up)

Anaheim, like most every other character, will have an arc dedicated to him.

[T51R]

Nudoru Kaarage & Miso:

The first unit built, Nudoru and Miso are the prototype NODE and ARAMUS respectively. Brief bio to follow.

[T51R]

Expaning on the NODES cast further:


Next up, Street16, a group of Trans-multiversal travellers from different periods of the Earth's existence before the Disark War. They are:


-Damascus Altaine, a genetically enhanced and cyberized Future Soldier from humanity's 5th evolution. A man without emotions and bred as a killer, its his ship, the Earth Cruiser ‘Turbulence’ that the wayward group calls home.

-Holli Fontaine, an anthro mouse girl from the Wild West. Quick on the trigger and with a temper to match, she keeps her feelings, simple wishes and gentle nature barricaded inside herself. It was a harsh world that she came from, and she’s used to hard work and long days.

-Oberon, a renegade, albino Daemon from a world of swords and sorcery who's well steeped in White Magic. His innermost desire is to sever his bloodline’s hold on his future; he’s net in line to Hell’s throne.

-Trish Hudson, a scientist from the modern day, has alien nanotechology flowing through her bloodstream thanks to a failed experiment at Area 51.

-Keisuke Seneda, a Fox-type Ninja from old Japan who carries one of the temporally-displaced swords belonging to the ancient Sengoku warrior called Yamato, a cursed blade that once slew the Son of Darkness. Yamato holds the other, and both swords call to each other.

-A’saathi, Ancient Atlantean, bio-morphs between humanoid and mer-folk. Water elemental, philosopher, the group’s heart and centre.

-Georges Saint, a medieval Knight who turns Werewolf

-Countess Elena Dirage Helvetica, a Vampiress from old Europe during the Industrial Revolution, businesswoman, inventor. Can take full-on Primal Form.

-Vaughn Shepard, from another planet whose civilisation once encountered NODES and attempted to re-create it. Vaughn is the end-product, but does not possess the reality-shattering combat systems or the Divinity Instrumentation Drive; in fact, he’s not even on planet-busting levels. He looks to be in his late teens, but has the mind of a fifteen-year old thanks to his upbringing at the hands of his developers.

-Samantha Colbert, from the near-apocalyptic future. The most introverted of the group, she distrusts practically everyone and has very strong survival instincts. Thanks to radiation, she is slowly mutating and will one day cease to be human. it’s a condition that Trish is constantly helping her through.

-Osiris of the Ascendants, being from the far-flung future where humanity has shed its physical form and exists as energy.



In Nodes:Web, S16 basically plays the part of the people who you ALWAYS run into no matter where you go. You know, the people you somehow run into wherever you go but dont know very well. The main cast usually bump into them while sneaking into other Deities' Creations to shop, rave, or just party. And for some reason or another, they tend to get stuck together until the (mis)adventure ends.

I might do a short run on them, but who knows, they're very complicated when it comes to group dynamics.

[Lord of Nonsensical Crap]

Late replies FTW!

Street16 actually sounds pretty cool. I don't get the rationale behind their name, though (since there aren't 16 of them, and I see no references to streets in their description). I'm looking forward to a potential group shot of them, though.

[Farealmer]

I might do a short run on them, but who knows, they're very complicated when it comes to group dynamics.

It especially be interesting to know how they get from one creation another, how they formed(and why), and why they call themselves Street16.

[T51R]

Well, they're basically inspiried by the Olympian Gods and their huge chessboard of mortals in Clash of the Titans. They're the living the dickery of one particular God/ess, without even knowing it(they don't realise that they can choose to go against their causality) But, to an extent they really are enjoying their time together and don't want it to end(hence subconciously avoiding the choice)

Everyone in S16 realises that this adventure brings infinite possibilities, so its something that's embraced instead of rejected. They want to go home, but at the same time they want to know what's out there. And the personal relationships that form make going home all that harder; they've met very interesting people and experienced incredible cultures, and through it all they've found great friends who they don't want to leave behind.


Some fast facts:

-At one point they will spend a good amount of time in the Void Lands, and be the second group of living beings, after the Anaheims, to see the transcontinual Gate.

-They will be meeting the Sengoku and Sendiri on one of their treks, entering into Drak'a'lar's Creation. Here Keisuke will take center stage as he's drawn into battle with the ancient swordsman Yamato. Expect hell to break loose when both the swords are reunited after Keisuke's was flung through Creations in the distant future of that ancient Earth.

-They will also experience Kokumotsu's first Creation, a dual-world where there is a technosphere and a biosphere, a world strong in both technology and magic(it has an inner sphere and outer sphere)

-They'll cross swords with Rod Haxon's Red Unit and its interstellar fleet.

-They will also spend a good deal of time on the Wolfen world where they will live with Vetasuri(an albino wolf-girl and her adoptive father, the exiled techno-organic mercenary called Kombat. Here, we'll discover something else about the Disark)

-And at some point, someone will fall victim to Sayaka's womanly frustrations. :D

[Farealmer]

I have another question, you say most people in the City of Dreams are more powerful than disarks to the point where they're at least within spitting distance of NODES in terms of power. Why then didn't any of them smite the disark before the spatial processing web created NODES?

[JDogindy]

BUMP!

Hey, Mech, are you going to show anything else you'd like to present before the comic gets launched?

[T51R]

Next page in progress,

All questions answered soon, gotta get some lunch. :p

[T51R]

BUMP!

Hey, Mech, are you going to show anything else you'd like to present before the comic gets launched?

Progress pics will be put up prior to and after launch, and hopefully post-launch I'll be able to post updates and teasers here.

I have another question, you say most people in the City of Dreams are more powerful than disarks to the point where they're at least within spitting distance of NODES in terms of power. Why then didn't any of them smite the disark before the spatial processing web created NODES?

This will be investigated in the "Kombat" arc, where we will get an in-depth look at the Wolfen world and Nudoru discovers something about his first assignment that he couldn't initially anticipate. As a by-note, NODES hasn't really made any headway with its encoding ever since entering the City; The City is the one place that The Pulse failed to reach. In effect, NODES reached the City ahead of the Pulse.

So, you may find that the individual units aren't really all that compared to some of the more ancient entities to be introduced later. (They still get driven crazy though, being ancient doesn't save you from that.:D )

[Lord of Nonsensical Crap]

Next page in progress,

All questions answered soon, gotta get some lunch. :p

WOOOT! SAYAKA!

Keep 'em coming, T51R.

[T51R]

Yer, I need to step the pace up and I finally got my page formula down. Which helps TONS with production speed and the grahpical layout.

How's my artwork BTW, please help me to get better! :)

[Lord of Nonsensical Crap]

I really like the swirly light effects in that last picture, so yeah, I'd say you're steadily improving.

[Farealmer]

This will be investigated in the "Kombat" arc, where we will get an in-depth look at the Wolfen world and Nudoru discovers something about his first assignment that he couldn't initially anticipate. As a by-note, NODES hasn't really made any headway with its encoding ever since entering the City; The City is the one place that The Pulse failed to reach. In effect, NODES reached the City ahead of the Pulse.

Excellent, is the Pulse what annonced the Disark?

So, you may find that the individual units aren't really all that compared to some of the more ancient entities to be introduced later. (They still get driven crazy though, being ancient doesn't save you from that. )

Even more powerful than the NODES.

How's my artwork BTW

It's great, i only wish i was as good.