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Post by redsycorax on Dec 9, 2022 3:01:01 GMT
One little wrinkle that could be used on Earth-CS is that Tibet is independent from Chinese control there and its Lamaist mages are constantly spinning prayer wheels to prevent the development of nuclear weapons there? (Rather like they do in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos for exactly the same reason?)
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Post by dans on Dec 9, 2022 18:43:11 GMT
I wonder if Gulfstream may be a member of an undersea people who have a migratory lifestyle, and then move around the North Atlantic and follow the Gulfstream?
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Post by redsycorax on Dec 10, 2022 0:22:31 GMT
Perhaps they worship a water deity who may have provided Gulfstream and/or her ancestors with her abilities?
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Post by dans on Dec 10, 2022 0:34:25 GMT
Perhaps they worship a water deity who may have provided Gulfstream and/or her ancestors with her abilities? That sounds good to me. I can't quite figure out why they are migratory, though.
I was thinking that Sirocco and Gulfstream are kind of like opposites - a Sirocco is a hot, dry wind, while the Gulf Stream is an ocean current - and they form a bond, kind of like Fire and Ice did in the JLI.
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Post by redsycorax on Dec 10, 2022 2:06:03 GMT
Well, the Gulf Stream does act to regulate circumatlantic temperatures, so perhaps their migration routes are due to sensing the presence of fish species or phytoplankton that acts as their predominant food supply. Perhaps they're chemosensitive, so they detect seasonal changes in surface waters and migrate accordingly? Perhaps Sirocco and Gulfstream were both given their abilities by elemental deities- an Earth deity in Sirocco's case, a water deity when it came to Gulfstream? In which case, there should also be individuals who were similarly empowered by air and fire-based elemental deities, in that case.
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Post by dans on Dec 10, 2022 12:28:42 GMT
perhaps the 'Gulfstream elemental' and the 'Sirocco elemental' are rivals but not really enemies - both bring warm winds to Europe, but the winds brought by the Gulfstream are warm and humid while the winds brought by the sirocco are hot and dry.
I think these two heroines, despite their totally different backgrounds and descents (Sirocco comes from North Africa, while Gulfstream is from an aquatic sub-species of humanity) look almost like twins. And they may have similar histories - each woman somehow misused her powers, which led her to becoming an outcast. Perhaps each was banned from her home and another member of the home group was elevated to have the same powers, and while their powers can't be removed, the former heroes are banned from returning... and each is an idealist of sorts and wants to make up for her misdeeds by using her powers in good cause in a wider context. So while their personalities are widely different and oftentimes clash, their motivations and goals are similar.
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Post by redsycorax on Dec 11, 2022 1:33:54 GMT
I think the question might be, what might the taboos involved here be? There might be suspicion and mistrust of baseline humans for repeated intrusions into aquatic environments, especially if it's associated with whaling and dolphins. So, maybe Gulfstream crossed a line and inadvertantly caused serious injury to a whaling ship crew, which might have led to increased tension between land and aquatic humans, resulting in her exile from her community. However, as with our own Earth, whaling is a fraught issue on Earth-CS. Perhaps even more so, if Gulfstream's people can communicate with cetaceans. As for Sirocco, let's say she tried to prevent cataclysmic flooding somewhere in the Mediterranean, but ended up causing a serious drought elsewhere. For this 'abuse' of her elemental abilities, she was exiled. So, in both cases, they acted with good intentions, but their actions had unforeseen consequences.
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Post by dans on Mar 18, 2023 22:49:42 GMT
Here are Gulfstream and Sirocco Each has a limited power set: Gulfstream has control over wind, wet humid weather, and ocean currents and Sirocco has control over wind, dry weather, and fire to some extent. Both women were asked to leave their homes for some actions that violated strong local mores, and they have found their way to America, and are now members of the Equity Concord of America. Despite their very different personalities (Gulfstream is sweet and a little naive, Sirocco is worldly and often cynical) and power sets that almost conflict, they have become very close friends.
They may each be more powerful when they are using their powers in close proximity to each other; the elemental spirits that give each her powers may be in competition.
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Post by dans on Mar 25, 2023 14:44:19 GMT
Another hero in the fictional team Equity Concord of America (based in the city of Freshport, on the southern shore of Lake Mishugami, state of Wabash, in the Allied Confederation of American States, which is the Chicago analog in their universe) is Minute Hand. Minute Hand is a superheroine who gained her powers from exposure to the radium-coated hands on her wrist watch. (Perhaps this very weak radioactivity mutated the genes in a single cell, in such a way that that specific cell began introducing the new genetic structure into the cells around it, and the mutation spread throughout her body...)
Although she no longer has the watch, the theory is that it was somehow different from the millions of other watches which used radium-based paint, perhaps a different combinations of isotopes in the paint? We'll probably never know unless someone tells the story! (Maybe she liked watches so much she sometimes wore more than one on each wrist, and one day, two or three of them she put on the same wrist each from a different famous expensive watchmaker each used different formulations of paint, and that specific combination on that specific day caused the original mutation?)
She may have relatively weak time-related powers, or other powers related to her name (by concentration, she can charge her hands with super power for exactly a minute?), or she might even have a scar on her wrist where she used to wear the radioactive watch?
So, any idea what her power set would be? Where is she from? What is her identity? What does she look like, what does her costume look like?
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Post by dans on Mar 25, 2023 21:09:34 GMT
Don't want to create another new thread, so if you have read this far, here's another question... what kind of emblem should Sturdiman have on his chest?
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Post by dans on Apr 4, 2023 13:24:36 GMT
It suddenly dawned on me that Gulfstream, who comes from a nomadic civilization that lives on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and Sirocco, who comes from a nomadic society in the Sahara Desert, are both not likely to have grown up with much technology... So I'm going to have to show that unfamiliarity somehow in the story. I think that when each of the young ladies was banished from her society, they both went to live in America, so they have a few years exposure to the day-to-day miracles of technology, but both are still adapting.
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Post by redsycorax on Apr 5, 2023 0:52:33 GMT
It'd make sense to have Gulfstream and Sirocco stationed in US states whose predominant environments reflected their power and skill sets. So I suspect that Sirocco would feel more comfortable in an arid, predominantly desert state (Arizona or Nevada, perhaps?) while Gulfstream might find eastern coastal maritime states more convivial because they're more adjacent to her birthplace and she's familiar with the coastal littoral zone already due to her upbringing in the Atlantic.
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Post by dans on Apr 5, 2023 23:53:06 GMT
Really good points, thanks!
So another question for everyone... Gulfstream's people follow the Gulfstream around the North Atlantic. I'm not exactly sure why, except that it might be easier to 'go with the flow' than to build a home where every time you forgot to fasten something down, it gets swept away with the current... and they have done it forever, so they keep doing it...
I think they generally have a fairly easy existence - the ecosystem of the Gulfstream is pretty abundant. (as opposed to a migrant clan in the Sahara Desert, which must be constantly hunting and perhaps farming their current oasis...) What kind of hardships might the underwater clan encounter? Other than predators...
Thanks for your thoughts, all!
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 6, 2023 0:18:25 GMT
Is it just me, or does "Equity Concord" sound like a financial institution, not a hero team?
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Post by dans on Apr 6, 2023 0:33:59 GMT
Hope it is just you! The Citadel of Concordance sounds like something you might find on the grounds of a supersonic airplane manufacturer, too...
The Equity Concord started out as a metafictional team. the characters on Other Earth read comic books about the ECA. And I hope there's a little humor in their story - two of the members are the White Rabbit and the Chimney Sweep. and Margo's most deadly nemesis goes by the title of "Countess Zenobia Dalton, the Merciless Green Sorceress of Zoom" and she has another foe named Zebra Girl...
Doc, apparently at least 1 AI agrees with you. I entered this as the prompt: "superhero team named the Equity Concord of America" and below are 2 of the images I got. The AI is not real great with faces, but you can see what it was thinking...
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