Post by dorkknight23 on Dec 22, 2018 10:15:31 GMT -5
“Kid, no -- Ahh! My back!” Peter yells as he lands flat on his apartment's sole table, which collapses immediately upon impact. He leaps back on his feet, looks around for the portal. No sign of it. Just as soon as his most recent dimension-crossing adventure had begun it had ended, all of the other world's Spiders had returned from where they'd come from, and he felt just as alone as he did when he had suddenly left it. He couldn't help but let out a small sad sigh to himself, only to hear his downstairs neighbor screaming to keep it down.
“Criminey, Parker! Keep it down or I swear to God I'm calling the cops this time!”
“Sorry, Mrs. Pataki, won't happen again!” Peter shook his head, grumbling, and slumped on to the couch, his Spider-Sense went off just faintly enough to help him avoid a small sharp object.
“The hell is this…?” It was a red and blue cube with a spider emblem on it. He had never seen it before, and as he examined it, his thumb rested for a brief moment on the emblem's abdomen. The cube unfolded and a holographic projector extended out of it, projecting the scene of a chair in what looked like Reed Richard's laboratory at the Baxter Building.
After a moment, Peter finds himself starting at an uncannily familiar mask and costume. If Peter had thought himself rid of his multiversal equivalents, he realized he was sorely mistaken.
The voice he heard come muffled out of the mask caused a lump to fill in Peter's throat and tears to well in his eyes. “No… It can't be…”
“Is this thing on? Reed, you're sure it's on?”
Reed Richard's voice off-screen: “I'm sure. Go ahead.”
The other Spider-Man took off his mask to reveal an old man, older than Peter, old enough to be his father, or his uncle, “Ok...Hey kiddo. Let's start from the beginning: my name is Ben Parker. I was bitten by a radioactive spider. I wanted to use my new powers to help people, but I didn't realize the price of that responsibility until it was too late. I made a lot of friends, and a lot of enemies, and one of them decided to try and hurt me by taking my wife and nephew away from me. That's why I had to send this to you, Peter, that's why I had to warn you.
“For a long time I thought I was alone, but I was wrong: there are more of us, with spider powers like mine, in worlds where things turned out differently than they did here. Reed says in some of them, most of them apparently, you got bitten instead of me, Peter. Not sure how I feel about that, honestly. I would never have asked this kind of responsibility of you.
“There are others too, twisted bunch of psychos calling themselves The Eight Legs. All of the power, none of the responsibility. They're hunting me, you, all of us. I'm not entirely sure why. Might even be just because they can for all I can tell. All I know… all I know is that I have a chance to warn you this time, or at least a version of you, and I'm going to take it. It's probably too late for me already by the time you get this, but you're smart, Kiddo, you'll figure something out. I'm sure of it.
“I have always loved you and wished I could have done more.”
Tears ran down Peter's face, “I love you too, Uncle Ben. Me too.”
Ben nods sadly, “Now go, before it's too late.” The message cuts out. Peter wiped his face with the cuff of his costume. He knew one thing in that moment, he needed to find that Ben, find out more about the Eight Legs.
Almost on cue his Spider-Sense flared, then went berserk as they came from the shadows. The first a furious grotesque creature more spider than man, his bristles bright red and blue, his six chitinous limbs clacking as furiously as his mandibles and his eight beady yellow eyes. The Man-Spider lunges for Peter claws, Peter tries to dodge but it grabs him by the scruff of his costume and holds him dangling like a kitten. It gripped like a vice and he struggled to wriggle his way out, “Whoa! What bit you, a radioactive tarantula?”
The Man-Spider shriek-hisses. Behind a woman wearing a black and neon green Spider mask alongside what to Peter's admittedly twist a mix of black bondage gear and a green HYDRA jumpsuit. “Where's Morales?!” She pointed a wrist at Peter, and a ball of webbing flew at mach speed missing Peter's head by bare inches.
“Hate to break it to you, lady, but I think he's too young for you.”
The HYDRA She-Wolf Spider sneered dryly at Peter, “Excellent. Continue resisting. I wanted an excuse to torture you further,” to the Man-Spider, “Eat his face.”
Peter races for the window, a spray of glass, a long fall down. THWIP! Peter’s heart was racing. All his previous plans, all his thoughts out the window. Miles. Got to find Miles.
They look to him escape, the Man-Spider screams and shrieks in size, until soon a puny angry spiteful version of Peter was all that was left, panting until he reaches in his pocket for an inhaler, “He...got away…”
They gripped their heads in a moment of pain as a voice echoed in their minds, Not for long. He will go looking for Benjamin, and in turn there he will lead us to him. Our reach is great and our venom burns bright.
“All hail the Eight Legs,” the two mumble thoughtlessly.
********
Elsewhere, Peter Porker closes the door behind him, “Aunt May? I’m home! Aunt May?” He looks around, scratches the back of his head, “Where could she have gone to? Bingo isn’t until Thursday...” He scruffles his snout and a large exclamation point pops over his head as he pulls the Spider-Ham mask off his face, revealing his particular porcine features. He finds a note and reads it aloud: “‘Dear Peter, Double-Date night with Anna Water-Buffalo-son, and Otto Octopus,’ (I never liked Otto, too handsy), ‘Don’t wait up, dinner’s in the oven, Love, Aunt May.’ Aww, she said love!“
Peter pulls the foil off his meatloaf and sets it on the table, “Well, Peter, you may be savior of universes plural now, but to the rest of the Zooniverse you’re still just a mild-mannered photographer for the Daily Beagle. Meat loaf, not again...” He takes a mouthful, gags, and spits out what looks like a small red and blue metallic box.
“Aunt May’s always trying new things in her meatloaf but this is ridiculous! What’s this...a spider?” His hoof clicks it open.
“Let's start from the beginning: my name is Ben Parker…”
“...Who the hell is Ben?”
*********
The multiverse is nigh-infinite in its variation, for want of a nail a shoe is lost, for want of a shoe a horse is lost, and so on, and the cascading effects of such possibilities lead to drastically different worlds. One thing that remains common from world to world is there are those often masked heroes who often fight alone from the shadows, trying to use their powers responsibly, taking on a familiar emblem: The Spider.
You have each had the strange misfortune of receiving a red and blue spider-emblemed hologram message from Ben Parker, eventually leading to joining up and working together to defeat a group of evil dimension-hopping spider-powered supervillains calling themselves The Eight Legs, among others. With your great powers together you will take on one of the gravest responsibilities of them all, if you’re up to the challenge.
Character Generation
I’ve given up on the idea of giving this a proper stone count, so I’m going for a holistic approach: basically use the 616 Spidey as a baseline and go nuts, sky’s the limit. My one request is your character somehow manifests the “proportional strength, agility, and speed of a spider”, and possess a Spider-Sense (read more about my changes to Prescience below). No other actions or modifiers are banned, but please focus on character and “responsibility” over power (if I smell what seems to be blatant munchkin cheese I will encourage you cut it out or submit something different). The Spider characters from Into the Spiderverse will be NPC’s if they appear at all (Peter B. Parker, Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Peter Porker, and Spider-Man Noir), not looking for submissions for any of them.
Spider-Man 2099 is very very ok. Spider-Man 1969 possibly slightly less so.
Some possible avenues to focus towards include: alternate versions of Peter Parker and his supporting characters given Spider powers (Mary Jane, Flash Thompson, JJ Jameson, &tc. &tc. &tc); other Marvel characters who are now somehow ‘spiderized’.
I know what your next question is, and no you can’t play as Spider-Aunt May and you’ll understand why later.
Another angle would be to make what I will generously call ‘Noiresque’ characters: Spider-Man reworked to represent a different genre, medium, or time period (i.e. Steampunk Spider-Man with mechanical legs, raygun gothic Martian-fighting Spider-Man, cyberpunk Spider, a Spider-Man particular to your own personal animated series adaptation, etc. etc. etc.) The only reason I don’t want to do “Japanese Spider-Man” is I worry about statting up Leopardon as something more than a GM plot device but if someone wanted to make up “Tokusatsu-style revival Henshin Hero Supaidaman” I am 100% down.Sidebar: Alterations to Prescience/The Spider-Sense
So here’s the elephant in the room: Prescience is a terrible modifier that works terribly in the game as is (although the only thing better/worse is Limited Prescience). In this game, Prescience scales and has a modifier number. It costs MN+2. In a post, you may add how you would plan to use stones already spent in alternate situations, shifting up to MN stones from either one action box to another action box (obeying the usual 2 actions/panel limit for non-PA characters) or from a single action box into Defense. It also can act as a detection/nullification towards actions that obscure other senses like Invisibility, Stealth, Create Illusions, etc. (GM’s discretion. Mysterio’s illusions usually explicitly take such a hit.)
In addition, all Spiders react to each other’s Spider-Sense. You’ll immediately know you’re alike in this way.
I’m estimating 616 Spider-Man has Prescience at MN 5, but I could see the case for MN 6.
Again, no stone count, but make all your power work towards the concept and not the concept work towards the powers. If you need a template or prompt to start your backgrounds, this is optional:
“Let’s start from the beginning: my name is _______, and I was bitten by a radioactive spider...”