arcane amusements

As all deluded paranoid fascists know, the world is secretly manipulated at the highest levels of power by a species of shape-shifting alien lizard people.

Since the reptiloids are only attested and maligned by authoritarian garbage people, I have to assume they must be pretty progressive and empathetic folks. So it's only natural that I created this superhero in CoH.

He's a Mind Control/Psionic dominator (of course). The Monitor Duty badge works double duty since he's ostensibly monitoring the human species, but also: monitor lizards!

The first two looks are standard sci-fi: a spacesuit and high-tech combat armor.

The next two lean into a favorite comedy trope of mine, which is the guy in a transparently awful disguise who's convinced he's pulling it off. I'm especially happy with the garish color choices on the plain clothes, and blond hair that is the exact wrong shade of yellow:

To punch the "bad disguise" idea further, the description text reflects what a lizard might think that a mammal species expects to hear from another of their kind.

(Side-note: I cracked myself up *badly* when the "live young" joke popped into my head, while my spouse was more amused at my uncontrollable laughing than at the joke itself.)

Now, what do the lizard people wear on their home planet? I'm assuming this guy is a member of the Reptiloid High Council or whatever, so I gave him some formal robes for coucil meetings.

I can rarely resist making the traditional spandex-and-cape interpretation of a character, especially when it's completely inappropriate. I'm remarkably happy with how this one turned out. Note the eye-in-pyramid motif to imply an Illuminati connection.

WarGPT started out as a character named M4A7 Sherman. It was a Mastermind (the pet class) with the Mercenaries and Force Field power sets.

The idea was that the character was an army tank re-imagined as an android who protects troops as they push across a battlefield. He was bulky and heavily-armored. He wore a standard military helmet with mirrored shades and a cigar to add a vague WWII-commander aesthetic.

I liked the reversal of the trope where a human commands an army of robots. Still, this wasn't one of my favorite characters to play until a final creative piece fell into place.

I watched a video on YouTube summarizing an AI doomsday scenario laid out in the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. My morbid techie imagination was immediately gripped by the concept.

I renamed the character to WarGPT and changed its alignment to Villain. The character history basically wrote itself, with the soldiers' loyalty being nod to the many AI psychosis stories that have appeared in the news. A visual redesign soon followed.

And then some more visual redesigns followed! I had costume slots that needed filling!

Stealth form:

Air strike form:

And of course, Terminator T-800 homage:

On the Terminator theme, I always use the "Energy Morph" costume transition for this character, as it's very reminiscent of the Terminator's arrival from the future.

Now, I'm constitutionally incapable of not naming a pet when the game gives me the option, and City of Heroes lets you name any and all pets. For whatever reason, when I imagined a commander shouting a soldier's last name over a field radio, the first thing that popped in my head was "Skimbleshanks! Get the the hell outta there!!"

Thus Jellicle Squad was born:

From left to right: Mistoffelees, Bustopher, Pouncival, Macavity, Skimbleshanks, and Carbucketty