If asked the United States would tell you they don't have an "official" hero, and if you want to help, join MERIT. Any citizen would tell you, without a second thought, Truth and Justice are just that, and they have a following as impressive as any sports team... while not as personally powerful as the global guardians, it is perhaps their lack of those obscene personal powers that lets them relate so well to the public. People across the country cheer for their victories, and on those occasions that they fall, the country mourns with them. More than their power it's their effort and drive that pushes them, and with them MERIT. to victory after victory against all of their foes.
MERIT was founded as a branch of the FBI in 1957 as a response to the threats leveled against the United States by Dr. Damien Structo (Dr. D-Structo for short), in particular the giant squid that rampaged down the eastern seaboard during that summer. Since its founding MERIT has tried to curtail most meta-human threats to the US public, and with limited funding and limited personal they have done a stellar job.
Morsamare deserves most of the credit for the charcter concepts and pictures, as well as the MERIT description and history. I wrote up the stats and helped by bouncing ideas around.
Heh, not much of a player, I'm usually the sounding board he bounces ideas off... that and I'm a bit better and putting costumes together. These really came around cause I was playing with the software and ended up with a blind hero... a patriotic theme later and well as they say "Justice is blind"... Truth came later when Michael asked for an actual patriotic team.
Overall the looks I think came out okay, conceptually I can claim them, but he did all the heavy lifting putting the characters together.
First Hammer and Sickle. They started as Soviet heroes in World War II and are now freelance with the collapse.
Hammer -
Eriks Ivanov was once a brave Soviet soldier. Moscow decided to volunteer him for human experimentation, since he had shown too much charisma and skill on the battlefield. Eriks found himself at the tender mercies of Dr. Olga Morozova and her experiments on human enhancement. After undergoing an EXTENSIVE steriod regime along with 99 other volunteers, the once brilliant officer was gone, leaving only a hulking brute, Hammer, the Soviet Union's response to Kid Dynamo.
Sickle -
Dr. Olga Morozova was a Soviet researcher studying the effects of steroids and other drugs on the human body and how better to influence their effects. Following her astounding success with Hammer, the doctor was allowed to continue her research on herself. Using what she had learned, Dr. Morozova remade her once tired and weak frame into an agile and powerful body capable of fighting alongside and commanding her erstwhile test subject. Put in command of the two of them, she left her research to others, and reveled in the thrill of her new power. Luckily they were unable to duplicate her successes and claimed her work as a fluke. She never corrected them, enjoying her new superpowered existance too much to wind up back in a lab.
Last edited by Michael on Sun Feb 12, 2012 11:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
As a young man, Dieter Ehrlichmann joined the military to help Germany recover its once proud standing. Things were going well until on his third big assignment to contain a chemical spill, the villain Der Jaegger cast Dieter into the pooling waste. Months later, Dieter awoke, his athletic frame replaced by a near giants form, his shoulders and chest had swelled. Upon seeing himself Dieter couldn't help but murmer, "I'm as big as a tank!" and very shorty found himself nearly as strong as one. Once cleared, he immediately resumed active duty, eager and proud to serve his country. As Panzer, the tank.
El Meurte is a mystery, his origin is shrouded in a haze of rumors and half truths. One tale claims El Muerte is death given flesh to stalk the night, another that he is a drunken hasbeen wrestler that took up a magical mask to fight the forces of evil. What is known is that El Muerte is a terror in the ring, has only faced defeat twice, and only then when he had left the ring mid bout for more pressing concerns. Many people tell the tale of how El Meurte saved them on a dark night from monsters. A few... may even be true. But when asked El Muerte simply grunts, and heads off to his next match, be it man or beast.
Last edited by Michael on Sun Feb 12, 2012 11:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thank you, I appreciate the compliment. Morsamare deserves much of the credit also since we worked out the concepts together and he created the character pictures.
Last edited by Michael on Mon May 23, 2011 6:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
And Le Mime, a villain to add to the group. His motivations are a secret, but he seems to enjoy crime as a challenge and to humiliate heroes more than for gain.
A man of many talents, Antonio Ferrari enjoyed putting his skills to use saving people. With more time and experience, Renaissance Man is now more serious, constantly trying to protect the people of Italy from supervillain criminals, while keeping his young daughter safe from harm.
Conjuring is a very useful power as he can make binoculars and devices to aid in investigations in addition to weapons. I haven't quite decided on what happened to Renaissance Man's wife, but I'm leaning towards her getting killed by some of his enemies.
Last edited by Michael on Sat Jun 04, 2011 8:15 am, edited 4 times in total.
