Your favorite origin stories, for those who bother to write them

My avatar is just me, with super powers, so I don't have an origin story - but I like reading what other people have come up with - especially the not so serious ones

My Kat/Energy Stalker, Rustblight is a renegade survivor of Dr. Vahzilok's Eidolon process. How he maintained his mind is unknown... and why the ability to rust all corrode-able metasl in his immediate area manifested as opposed to one of the more mundane sets of abilities possessed by other Eidolon's of the twisted doctor is yet another mystery.

Here is a pic and his in-game bio:

There are some really nice Bio's here. I kinda found it hard to keep writing bios for my toons because of the limited space, and once severe altitis kicked in, it was over. I still have bio's for most of my 50's, but they are not written down.

This was my first one, for my main. A Fire/Fire tank.

One of my favorites is for my 'Alien Goo from outer space' Goo girl character (Think humanoid Gelatinous Cube, in that it can devour everything but metal) called Gelatinous Ruse.

She is known simply as 'Goo' because that is one of the few words she can speak, which was taken after These adverts we had in the UK

I'm not feeling egotistical enough to post any of my own origins here, but of all the people I've played with, I think the favourite origin/background I saw was that of an ex-member of my Villain Group, Black Mercy (played by @RPAngel1). She's a Pain Corruptor whose power manifests by amplifying her own attributes the more pain she was in.

I won't repost it all here, because it was several posts long, but the story essentially boiled down to the discovery of her powers, a "doctor" who wished to "study" them, and the twisted, horrible asylum she spent the next several years of her life in as the doctor tortured her more and more to see how far her powers could go (eventually, she was tortured to such an extent that she was able to wreak bloody revenge, obviously). It was such a perfect villain power and such a perfect villain origin; I haven't seen its match.

Karma Kincaid

Karma's misfortune began days after being born when her mother, an aspiring hero, od'd on Supes while trying to get powers. From there she was bounced from orphanage, to foster family, to the streets and back again.

Wherever she went someone was always trying to put her down. But Karma was resilient, if she was anything. Tomboy, brawler, trouble-maker: you name it, she was called it. Karma refused to let life beat her down, and in return it tried that much harder.

But karma is all about balance, and turnabout is fair play after all. On her nineteenth birthday, Karma walked into City Hall and registered as a hero. She's tired of being karma's only *****.

Time to spread the joy.

I aim for concision with my character bios, so there's usually no room to dwell on their beginnings. For my Peacemaker, Djet, I decided that the character's mental ordeal of bonding with an alien entity was an occasion to riff on the confusion that multiple retcons bring to origin stories, e.g. D.C.'s Hawkman.

I get many good comments from this one:

Cinnammon (note the 2 m's, which is the incorrect spelling)

My favourite (of the derided "Joke character") is Fortunate Daughter, who is a valley-girl Fortunata. She pretty much treats working for Arachnos as one would do working for any major corporation.

I don't tend to focus much on backstories, more on costumes and concept.

Hail Striker: Was born into an ancient clan of onmyouji in Japan. When she was young, a terrible demon mustered forces to protect it as it cast a long and powerful spell that would plunge the world into apoctalyptic storms forever. A great battle was fought against it, but the demon couldn't be defeated, only weakened, and the spell neared completion. In a last-ditch effort, the elders of her clan decided to use an ancient demon-binding ritual, which required a human body in which the demon could be imprisoned. She was chosen.

The ritual worked, capturing the demon in her body a mere few syllables from completing his spell. The girl was covered in binding tattoos to make sure he could never escape and reducing his influence over her mind. Since it was impossible to completely ensure that he could never influence her, though, the girl's tongue was also cut out, so that the demon couldn't finish its spell even if it took her body over entirely.

On the upside, she learned to draw on the power of the almost-completed spell to manifest storm and ice, and later, on the demon's own power to tap into the netherworld. She fights crime in Paragon with these powers, and still refrains from any sort of explicit communication with other people, just in case the demon might take her over for a moment and tempt somebody into completing the spell for it.

(Storm/Archery/Dark Defender, with the Archery RP'd as her shooting icicles and lightning bolts from her bow. About the closest she ever gets to talking to people is facial expressions and the occasional impromptu ice sculpture.)

Sorrow-Weave: Was born in the Shadow Shard near the climax of the battles between Ruladak and Faathim. She's a mutant, able to channel destructive energy, but more importantly, also slightly telepathic in an unconventional manner. She feels the emotions of the people around her, but reversed. Being around happy people makes her feel angry or sad, being around sad people makes her feel good, and being around people in pain makes her feel goooood.

This obviously made her have some problems growing up, and the rest of her community started whispering that the girl must be Ruladak's daughter, somehow tainted by him in the womb when his war raged across the land. She soon enough grew to embrace this, taking what she wanted and ruling through strength alone, and when Primal Earth came into contact with the Shadow Shard, she just saw another target. These days, she rampages across the Rogue Isles, trying to prove herself worthy of her 'father's' strength and find a way to free him for good.

Hmmmm...

One for the first Stalker I had in mind - when they were announced on COV's Release. Pared down to its essence for the bio-

See my Guides and Tutorials

This is my latest Praetorian's... took me forever to whittle it down to fit in the in-game biography field. The full story is on the drawing board for a future project.



Glimmerin

Glimmeren never liked to draw attention to herself. A tinkerer known for efficiency, reliability, and - most importantly- silence, she spent her day fixing whatever was brought to her, reverse engineering missing parts, slicing stolen hardware, making timers for... well, nevermind.

She rarely left her workshop- preferring to focus on whatever new toys fell her way- clockwork parts, damaged tesla gloves, a partially-restored 77 Chevy Cordoba- stuff that won't notice her scars or ask about her missing arm. Stuff that won't make her recap the story behind the blast. Stuff that won't ask whose fault it was.

That was before her last batch of scrap and the strange power source that she's wired into her clockwork-prosthetic. She's putting it to use on the streets-- driven, it seems, by info recovered on its salvaged data chip. Silent as ever, though, she's not saying what she found.

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She's a kinetic-melee/shield. I'd considered a scrapper, but decided she's got a good deal of inner rage that she's just starting to unleash... so brute.

Her (modified) resistance gauntlet provides the shield. The Kinetic melee part is a result of the power supply venting plasma out the palm of her prosthetic arm. The KM gestures and magnets in the fingertips help her contain and "form" the plasma ball before releasing it. It's a prosthetic, not a cybernetic. It's worn as a harness. An AI controls its action, either through anticipating her needs or taking commands she sub-vocalizes via the jaw piece. Sometimes, she can be heard arguing with it.

I tend to create characters with only vague ideas of their backgrounds, and over time develop them. Sometimes this leads to trouble, especially when I chose an origin that is hard to fit... and also when I say... picked a silly nonsense word as a name. But despite apparently doing my best to make only terrible characters (ex: Atomic Lizard-Donkey), a few of them have grown into really interesting characters that I'm quite proud of.

Explomadoza (Empathy/Electric/Power Defender): My first level 50. Xavier Paloma was born in the south Pacific, near a nuclear test site. His parents were humanitarian aid workers who came there to care for the mistreated natives. As he grew up (often in the care of relatives, as his parents were off in some faraway war-torn country), he wanted to follow in his parents' footsteps, and went to medical school to get the training to help save lives. He was working in an emergency room on a particularly terrible case when he got word that his parents had been killed in a volcanic eruption. His grief caused his mutant powers to finally manifest into something he desperately wanted, the ability to heal and save people. Over time, he learned many odd quirks of his powers, notably that he could sap energy from people who threatened others, that he could in times of great stress remove someone from harm in other ways (making them invisible or even teleporting them away from danger), and in these moments of strain he could boost his healing powers as well. He joined a U.N. peacekeeping force and fought in the Rikti War when it came to Kuala Lumpur.

Dr. Fejwol (Stone/Stone/Earth Tanker): Professor Jefferson Lowell was born in Kings Row, and from an early age it was clear that he was brilliant. He entered college by the age of 16 and quickly proved to be a highly skilled nanotechnologist. After graduating, he joined the faculty at Paragon University and assisted many tech-based heroes as a contact. One young hero he counseled ended up turning to villainy, and although Lowell wasn't as fault for that, he felt some sense of guilt about it. When the Rikti came, he couldn't just stand by and watch the heroes he'd befriended go off alone, so he constructed a rough rock armor with his nanites and joined the fight. Today, he manages to find time to not only teach at the university and work as a contact with fledgling heroes, but works as a hero himself.

Particle Accelerator (Energy/Energy Stalker): The son of a mechanic, Particle Accelerator grew up around machines, and also reading as many books about physics as he could find... although he could have gotten a scholarship with his aptitude for science, he opted to go into the family business when his father died. In his free time, he tinkered around and eventually managed to build various energy field emitters. Wanting to do something more with his life, he fitted them into a set of power gloves and registered as a hero. However, he felt lost among the thousands of other heroes in Paragon... and one day while working with a contact named Professor Lowell, he went to a warehouse to arrest some thugs, when another hero stormed in and oblivious to his presence, blasted everything away. Particle Accelerator was badly injured, and combined with the fact that his business was failing, a growing sense of resentment and anger built within him. He used an invisibility field he has been working on to sneak into a bank and rob it without being detected. And it worked! However, when he tried a second time, he was caught, arrested, convicted, and sent to the Zig. Any second thoughts he had were overridden by his rage at the good he had tried to do having been ignored, and when Arachnos staged a jailbreak, he jumped at the chance.

Bill Bowman (Trick Arrow/Archery Defender): William Bowman III spent his entire life living in Atlas Park. His father ran a hardware store, and after retirement left it to Bill. Living in a City of Heroes, he heard jokes several times that he name made him sound like some sort of archery-based hero. He laughed them off for years, but one day after seeing an ad for an archery class, he decided to try it out on a whim. He actually was rather good at it. His mundane life continued until the Rikti invaded. He huddled inside his apartment above the hardware store as battles raged outside. However, when he looked outside he saw a remarkable thing: the hero Manticore fighting off the aliens without having any powers, just a bow and arrow. Bill felt a responsibility to protect his home. He grabbed his bow, quiver, and some various scraps from around his store, and walked outside. He only fought a few Rikti himself, but when the war was over, he decided to register as a hero. He now runs a small supergroup with some other lower-powered heroes in his neighborhood, and they work to keep Atlas Park safe.