Ms. Curious

Cats are more in tune with the supernatural side of the world than humans are. And the especially intelligent cats can be downright experts in the field. Ms. Curious is the world’s foremost paranormal investigator. Avoiding notice from the humans, she seeks out stories of haunted houses or monster sightings and looks into them. If anything truly out of the ordinary is happening, she will do what she can to help. She’ll help ghosts find their rest and, if necessary, she’ll bring down monsters whatever it takes.

I can’t draw cats even more than I generally can’t draw things. Still, I like the idea of a cat out there solving problems that humans don’t even realize are going on.

Epic Bro

Tyler Watson is straight up trippin’, dawg. He got the mad skills. He be punchin’, he be running, he be fuckin’ shit up. You know he’s bomb, ’cause he’s Epic Bro.

Okay, look, I can’t write “bro” lingo. It is beyond me. I can’t fathom it. But still, what we have here is a superhero character who embodies that type of attitude. I figure Tyler here was about sixteen when he developed supernatural powers, not knowing that he inherited them from a father he never met, and, while he does try to do “heroic” things, he’s also the kind of young idiotic person that cares more about style than substance. It is not uncommon for him to attempt his heroics while in an impaired state (Say, if a crime happens while he was at a kegger). And worse, he’d the type who things it is important to prove himself in a fight. If I did a story about him, I’d try not to paint him as a bad guy, but he’d have to grow up to be a real hero.

Both of today’s characters are from the cast of the Hateful King, one of the things that has come out of Super Sunday that I most want to write. Apart from the original post of the guy, other members of his cast can be seen here.

To recap: The Hateful King is a demonic ruler who is trying to conquer a contemporary European nation called Thrakodacia, ruled by the noble King Balus.

The Duelist

Mystically endowed with extra limbs, the man who goes only by “the Duelist” is the Hateful King’s official assassin. Skilled with all manner of weaponry, but especially swords. Though he uses this skill in service of a particularly leader ruler, he considers himself a man of decency and ethics. Where most assassins would consider stealth and subtlety a positive, the Duelist would not dream of killing someone who doesn’t know he is there for them. When confronting a target, he will declare openly his intentions and the fact that the Hateful King wants them dead. Even with this moment of advance warning, the targets are rarely able to change the fact of their oncoming demise.

This guy got the baldness thing going. And not even a nice baldness. I feel like most of the Noble Sword Guys in fiction are classically handsome, so I didn’t want to go that way. Sure, it also annoys me when bad guys have to be uglier than good guys, but I can’t solve every individual problem with every character, can I?

Alina the Eagle

Alina is the leader of King Balus’s special forces unit, the Knights of Thrakodacia. Though they are, in most ways, a contemporary military unit, there is an element of the supernatural to them as there is in all things in Thraokodacia. In the case of Alina, it is the magic flying carpet she owns. Giving her the power of flight, and thus the ability to strike from the sky, the carpet has earned her the nickname “the Eagle”. Leading the Knights, she is responsible for holding off the Hateful King’s forces and advising her King on the best strategies for opposing the villain.

Those who know me will know that I’m into magic carpets. I don’t even know why. But because of that, the idea of a modern soldier riding on a magic carpet was one of the very first ideas I had when I mentally put together the whole Hateful King thing. Alina herself would have been in the first Supporting Cast thing, if I were more comfortable drawing a magic carpet. One can only hope that if I ever told these stories for real, I’d have an artist who can do them justice.

The Efmons were, as I have mentioned before, a family of evil monster people who lost a war and fled to other dimensions.

Thenner Efmon

When the Efmons had to flee, they left behind the rest of their species. Sure, they look human (moreso before their mutation ritual admittedly), but they’re actually a humanlike species that comes from a fantasy universe. This means that they aren’t biologically compatible with the humans on any of the alternate Earths they come across. If they want to have their family line continue, they need to figure how to solve that. Thenner Efmon is in charge of the family’s mystical genetics project. Using the technology they found on one of the alien worlds they’ve conquered, Thenner has begun cloning and gene-splicing experiments that, when combined with the Mutation Ritual that the family already used, could create a horde of Efmon Super Soldiers that would definitely be a bad thing for everyone else.

Kallis Efmon

When Kallis underwent his mutation ritual and turned into a powerful dinosaur-looking guy, he was thrilled. If Thalamaya had deemed him worthy to recieve such power, it must mean that he was destined for great victories in battle. But then the War was fought and the tide turned against Thalamaya’s forces. Kallis took this pretty hard. It seemed like his destiny had been taken away. Still, his service in the war left Kallis a respected member of the family, and he is given a vote in family decisions. Whenever any such decision arises, Kallis always sides with the choice that will lead the family to new battles and new conquests. Even when others were conviced it would be better for the family to slow down and build up their strength, Kallis wants nothing more than to find new worlds to rule, so that he can achieve the destiny he wants more than anything else.

The Devaluer of Souls

Most devils are into getting souls, everyone knows that. But a lot of humans don’t want to sell their souls. They consider them pretty valuable or whatever. That’s where the Devaluer of Souls comes in. It’s his job to drive down the value that people have for their souls. There’s a lot of ways that can be done. In the past, he’s tried to start philosophical movements that encourage people to think of human life as a worthless, meaningless affair, so why not sell your soul? He’s obfuscated the idea of eternity in people’s minds, so that they won’t understand or appreciate the commitment that selling ones soul really signifies. But suppose some enterprising devil wants the soul of some particular person. That’s when the Devaluer is sent in to do his best work. He will haunt his target, insulting and terrifying them until they think their lives are things from which to escape. When he does his work, people can’t sell their souls fast enough.

But if he’s not the one buying the souls, what does the Devaluer get out of the deal? Why would he do this for all the other devils? He may not get souls, but they pay him in the next best thing: Cash Money! The Devaluer likes to spend his free time lounging in vacation resorts on Earth, and he needs money to keep relaxing in style.

Second-Hand Simmons

Don’t point out that it’s actually a third hand. She’s heard it before and she is getting annoyed with it.

Corrine Simmons has a strange hand-like energy construct that she can control with the skill and dexterity as though it were her natural limb. This secondary right hand, which appeared for no reason known to Simmons (but which may involve certain Space Gods), can stretch to a length of dozens of feet and can lift a car with ease. Unfortunately, Simmons has decided to use this gift for crime. When you can pick up ATMs and carry them away, who is going to stop you? Well, Natalie Archibald‘s police task force, that’s who.

It wasn’t intentional when I started that the vast majority of human characters in the Valia/Space Gods portion of my character creation would be black, but I’m gonna roll with it. If a lot of white characters had accumulated together in a superhero story, barely anyone would notice. In an ideal world, that could happen with a black cast too.

There has to be some good guys in the timestream right? Someone who isn’t using time travel for their own wants at the risk of reality itself?

Inspector Lacuna

Inspector Lacuna is the head of a precinct of Time-travel Cops who police history to make prevent temporal infractions from tearing the universe apart. This is, of course, a pretty noble goal. Unfortunately for her, the team she has assembled isn’t particularly well suited for the task.

Detective Muhandae

Detective Muhandae has seen it all. He’s a world weary gumshoe who has been solving time travel-related crimes since before he was born (because of time travel, you see). He was a good man, once. Young and strong. But as he gets older, he’s getting tired. It’s become a lot easier to accept a bribe than book a perp, easier to turn a blind eye than follow a lead. He’s not really a bad guy, but he sure doesn’t care as much as he should.

Agent 12:00

Agent 12:00 is a genetically enhanced supersoldier from the future. There’s no worry about her getting too tired to do the job. She will pursue a temporal fugitive like a machine. Unfortunately, she is also as ruthless and uncaring as a machine. She doesn’t care about the good her job does so much as catching the bad guys and she’s perfectly happy to run over civilians that get in her way.

Tobias Tock

Constable Tobias Tock really is a genuinely nice guy. He’s brave and noble and kind. Sadly, he’s also dumber than a truck. Even having worked on the job for decades, he still gets confused about how time travel works. On more than one occasion he has had to stop and ask a criminal to explain the crime to him, which usually gives the chance for the bad guys to just lie and get away. Still, his heart is in the right place. Maybe that counts for something.

Time Venturer

So, if the Time-Travel Cops aren’t good enough, maybe someone from outside the organization can do a better job. How about a superhero? The Time Venturer dedicated his life to holding the timeline together and stopping time-villains from messing things up. But he died. In a time explosion. And his paraphernalia was scattered throughout history and ironically wound up providing a lot of those villains with the very means they needed to travel through time in the first place.

It’s like this: the timeline is screwed. You’ll probably want to be getting out of there.