oh golly oh gee I sure hope this suspicious bot is not from the one planet that could easily outrace me oh gosh golly
conjoint there’s no way you’ve ever seen the wizard of oz what are you referencing
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I’m tempted to have Seraphicon show up to talk with Axis for a minute.
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I’ve got no problem with Seraphicon making a brief appearance, personally. If you want him to stick around long-term, though, you’ll need to write up a character sheet for him.
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Of course.
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My activity will be diminished today.
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Seraphicon
Angelicon
From TOTGA: he has served as an archeologist and general help in the Basilica and his order, refusing any nominations to the Council of Fathers so he can be a servant of the people without the politics.
(Below is his TOTGA page)
Note: nowadays, Angelicons have been venturing to worlds beyond Cybertron, visiting colonies or just being tourists on other worlds but they are still, mostly, on Cybertron; old habits die hard.
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Seraphicon is accepted. I will add him to the roster later- I am not in place with reliable internet right now.
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Name: Grenadier-32
Gender: Male
Factions: Insecticon
Alt-Mode: Beetle Bombardier
Weapons: very large bulbous rotating grenade launcher. Fits six shots before it needs to vent/recharge. Each grenade fits a mess of energy gnats. These gnats can be shot out and will auto seek a target to know at for a duration of five seconds before dissipating. When the pill is launched straight into a target the impact is enough to chew through the shielding and armor and begin to gnaw at the more juicy bits of the target’s systems. Furthermore, the bits of the target being consumed are exhumed as a sticky toxic waste that clings to the target and is incredibly poisonous.
Special Ability: His hands exude two unique chemicals and with a swift auto-combination he can create an explosive vaporizing chemical combination right in front of him that is incredibly fatal to anything in front of him.
Insecticon Abilities: Cloning - If she has enough scrap metal and resources she can easily create clones of herself to help her with her goals. Said clones become ineffective when the energy beam controlling them is disrupted. His skill in cloning allows for him to also create other insecticon copies.
Other Abilities: Tactics - The most intelligent of the mistake Insecticons, and with his abilities, he’s able to form complex strategies and plans with poor resources and the like.
Personality: His personality is more of a silent gruff type with a heavy insistence on competence. He is a devious fellow and has a tendency to try and trick his combatants into doing his work for him in one way or another.
Appearance: He is more of a short fellow with heavy armor specifically adapted for the explosions he creates. His armor feels a lot more like the designs of Hearts of Iron than of previous Insecticons. This is of course natural as the mistake trio weren’t made at the same time and were instead the survivors of past experiments.
His alt mode is that of a bombardier beetle, with his hands folding the rear to be the combat section. his weapon also folds under the shell as well.
Origins: While his origins are similar to the other two, his differ in one way. The other two stayed trapped in their pods. He did not. When his colonization plans were sent into chaos and his ship crashed he started working on his planet.
He buried deep into the ground, taking every resource he could with him. With this in mind, he started to use the technology he still had to gather more resources and build an underground hive of insecticon clones. With said clones, he was able to extend his lifespan by replacing parts as they died.
His logic modules have been running for years, although his personality module has been fairly asleep for the past thousand or so years.
Now his hive has been found out, and they go to war against the new world’s Prime.
Name: Apacritia
Gender: Female
Faction: Insecticon
Alt-Mode: Wasp
Weapons: Two guns attach to her arms that allow for jagged harpoons to be fired off. They can be attached with cords that allow for her victims to be pulled back in or can be fired dry with no such recoil. Both have the option to have venom charged through the tips, and when connected to the cords they can be channeled with electricity. Due to their hooked and jagged tips, they are incredibly hard to remove and tend to tear out flesh and circuitry alike.
Special Ability: She has jaws with sedative fangs that are sharp enough to puncture through heavy armor.
Insecticon Abilities: Cloning - If she has enough scrap metal and resources she can easily create clones of herself to help her with her goals. Said clones become ineffective when the energy beam controlling them is disrupted. However, she is known to not do this due to having issues with concentration.
Other Abilities: Violence - She’s very adapt at violence and has a high tolerance for pain. She’s also got a very high level of grit as well.
Personality: Vain and Violent. Violence is not just the answer it’s a lifestyle. Granted with her recent history she’s drifted away from being evil and is pretty much just violent.
Appearance: She is a yellow and dark purple Insecticon of old. Her appearance is very much in the style of the older Insecticons with a lot of heavy translucent yellow, black, and dark purple everywhere. Her actual body is not the thin of most insecticons, she’s a lot more muscular and taller than the rest of her long-dead kin. Her face has a mouthplate that flips up not unlike Bee’s mask from the latest film to reveal a more normal Cybertronian design.
Origins: Having been sealed away during the War of the Autobots and Decepticons in a stasis pod the ship that was meant to spread her to another world to repopulate with clones and take over…exploded. The debris landed on the Beast Wars Planet, and eventually in recent years was discovered.
Her pod was unearthed and opened, and due to a couple of rogue scientists it was assumed she was a product of those debacles and her true nature was never discovered.
Thanks to this development she became one of the fierce and violent gladiators who moved to crush her foes with fiendish glee. This became her primal joy in life, specifically the power of being a key piece in politics and how things were declared. The amount of food she now had access to satisfied her cravings quite well, and due to her popularity, she decided to not make clones. Her reasoning was that if she revealed that she could fewer people would need her to do her new job.
With the destruction of this system, she was very upset and distraught. Some suggested she take up the sport as just that, a sport. However, her self-worth was purely built on solving the problems and being a champion in the ring she no longer had that. Not to mention all of the new rules that were practically made to spite her.
Since the key reason, this occurred was the new Prime. She decided she was going to go beat up Axis Prime. She’s now boarded a ship to go do just that.
Name: Headbite
Gender: Female
Faction: Insecticon
Alt-Mode: Mantis
Weapons: Two incredibly sharp machete-style blades.
Special Ability: Iron Jaw - She can dislodge her jaw to latch on to a victim/scrap metal and use tremendous force to shatter or cleave through it without any issues ignoring heavy armor and energy protections.
Insecticon Abilities: Cloning - If she has enough scrap metal and resources she can easily create clones of herself to help her with her goals. Said clones become ineffective when the energy beam controlling them is disrupted.
Other Abilities: Stealth - She has the ability to blend into shadows, however, she has to be in dim light and can’t pull off such a feat if there isn’t enough cover for her armor to match with.
Personality: She is quite well described as amoral. While not an evil creature she isn’t a good one either. She’s right in the grey. Her core personality is quite bubbly, but she falls into her nature quite easily with no remorse. Her justification is that she was made this way, so there’s no point in ignoring one’s true nature. She eats what she likes, but shows a particular love of copper. She has no qualms with eating the dead, although she has developed self-restraint to not attack the living. Seeing as she’s had this restraint for years upon years it’s baked into her habits now.
She is also quite color blind, being under the belief that she is green and not purple. No one has challenged her on this belief yet.
Appearance (Robot Mode): She’s very tall and lanky, her alt-mode legs folding up into tall spindly legs that allow her to tower over minions, small bots, and look taller bots in the eyes. Her arms contain her blades folded inside to which she can flip them out quite quickly.
She has two facial heads she can use in combination or separately. One is a strictly beast mode head which has full mandibles and a full reveal of the mouth with her visor down to cover her eyes. The other has a vented mouthpiece that covers her mandibles and allows for her visor to be flipped back to reveal her eyes if she so chooses.
Description (Alt Mode): Her alternative mode is that of a purple Mantis with glowing light blue eyes and slight yellow energon accents. Her machetes fall into place quite nicely as her frontward claws and her beast mode face is quite obvious in this mode.
Origins: Emerging with the Insecticons Pre-War she was used as disposal services, and with the war, before the war of the Cons and Bots she was used to cleaning the dying and dead with the rest of her kin. During this time she developed a twisted sense of empathy. She doesn’t like to see or hear things in pain, so she is quite sure to make sure her meals are dead before she starts.
During the Great War, she was typically kept in the role of a Scout. Her lithe form and quick speed allowed her to wriggle into dangerous spots with ease and get valuable intel. During the entirety of the war, she had two kills to her name, the faces of Hubcap and Suppressor when on two separate instances she was spotted and attacked. Both bodies were disposed of accordingly and were not found by the Autobots.
All of her time spying on Autobots and scouting led her to develop a certain fascination with them, especially with such types that were involved in engineering. She spent quite some time watching on those from murky shadows and the like. One point saw her purposefully injuring one of her legs to avoid a potentially lethal confrontation with one of them that would have led to their swift demise.
Her last and final mission involved her being sent out to colonate and prepare a new Decepticon base, due to Autobot interference. Her ship was taken down and crashed, but her pod was found and put on display in a museum on Cybertron as a relic of the war. For no one wishes for Insecticons to roam about, for good reason.
Alright, so this is my Insecticon team. I’ve been filled in a little about the going’s on of this RP and I’ve tailored some of my characters here to suit. The wasp is going to move out with my human to join Roaster and the rest of the group, with a build-up to a fight with the Prime happening at a later point. The Bombardier will be the reason for the swarm of Insecticons that the current Prime is off to deal with, and finally the last one, the Mantis is available as a plot point for the main plot if needed.
I’d say the Wasp is probably going to be in the group as a Barbarian type, not very high in intelligence. The Mantis is a very nervous jittery scout, and the Bombardier Beetle is just dangerous. So that’s a good TLDR. Here’s the Human profile below to separate him from the above three.
If you’ve noticed a distinct lack of synergy with this team it’s on purpose. The idea is these were the rejects of the creation of the original insecticons. So they weren’t made or written at the same time.
Name: Calvin Heimer
Species: Human
Gender: Male
Weapons: A very, very effective shotgun. Loaded with incidentally rounds, best used against literally anything that could be found in the wilds of space farming on Mars.
Appearance: Typically he keeps a very good white spaceman suit, with orange highlights and a golden chrome visor. When he is out of his spacesuit he looks quite a bit different, to state the obvious. He’s got sandy blonde hair, and he likes to wear a well-kept straw hat on his head with a red ribbon tied neatly around it. A simple white buttoned-up ■■■■■ with a crisp collar and long sleeves. His pants are simple jeans but well kept. He wears a pair of sturdy dark green boots.
Equipment: He has a very efficient jetpack with flapped-out wings that allow him to both fly and glide.
Personality: He’s fairly observant, and has a knack for attracting people that are highly unusual or unstable. Either or. Although this is probably a disadvantage. Furthermore, he’s quite good at his old job and isn’t a bad cook despite any formal training. He’s quite impatient and has a low tolerance for stupidity. He prefers people to be quick and concise in their words and actions and will get visibly annoyed by people that ramble on or can’t get to a point.
Backstory: Calvin has spent a lot of his time growing up in the opportunity mill that was the Mar’s Expeditions. His background is mostly farmwork and other related activities. Due to being able to sell his investment for a lovely sum, he decided to go to a more populated planet where all of the technical repair skills he learned would be useful. Seeing it as somewhat of a vacation, he decided to move to Cybertron on the way to one of the moons, if only to look around. After all, giant robots are giant robots. Who wouldn’t want to marvel?
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I think only one of the insecticons should have a cloning ability, and that there should be a hard limit on the number of clones that they can create. In general, I see that the insecticons all have very powerful weapons and abilities, and I believe that they need to be toned down across the board. I’m willing to have a discussion with you on how that can be done.
I also want to be sure that I have their backstory right. So, these insecticons are from the war era, and were sent out into space by the Decepticons to colonize another planet for their empire- is that right? But the ship was destroyed, and Apacritia and Grenadier-32 wound up on Eukaris. They were awoken from stasis relatively recently, and were chilling on Eukaris until the reunification- so now they’re on their way to Cybertron to start beef with Axis Prime. Headbite, however, was kept in her stasis pod and taken back to Cybertron to be a museum piece- where she’ll probably be woken up somehow so she can join the story, I imagine. Is all of this more-or-less correct?
Calvin Heimer’s A-okay, and I’ll accept him once we’ve ironed-out the insecticons. I’m going to sleep now, unfortunately, but I didn’t want to leave you hanging all night without replying to you at least once.
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Oh, the reason the Insecticons have the cloning ability is that its canon. It’s one of those abilities that was a legit strategy during some of the older episodes. However, it required mass amounts of energy to do it on a large scale. The more energy, the more clones, so the limit was typically how much was consumed. It also took time to actually create clones, so there was a heavy delay. Also, the way each Insecticon uses its powers is a hint at the personalities of each. 32 actually does his job. Apacriticia doesn’t want anything to compete with herself. Headbite uses them to replace body parts she loses, and she doesn’t like looking at them.
As for their abilities, I really just meant to detail them. Transformers as a general rule have a unique ability to each of them that makes them unique. So, I was clear to add these things when I created them. Each Insecticon’s ability is a reference to the bug they transform into. Headbite is a powerful blade but is practically just glass in every other way. Apacritia is a dangerous fighter, but due to the heavy amounts of ego and low wisdom she’s more likely to challenge someone she shouldn’t. Her weapons are damaging, but I don’t really think they would do too much to a combatant equal or mostly to herself. Her weapons are built for pain, like any encounter with a Wasp is. 32 is a tank, pretty much a grenade launching calculating soldier. Not really immortal though. I just over designed some of the weapons for the fun of it really. The amount of impact a grenade has should be detailed so when it occurs other players know how they work instead of the generic big boom do big thing. Grenades should hurt.
That is about right yup. The only thing off is that there were three ships. The ships were sabotaged by Autobots and one went off course, that being Headbite’s. The other two crashed on Eukaris but on different sides. 32’s opened first, thus the preparation of an army over the years. Apacritia’s however opened thousands of years later and she blended into the other Beastformers with her more smooth design and became the gladiator.
Calvin is the foil to Apacritia, essentially the opposite character-wise to balance out her violence.
Thanks for the late reply!
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I understand that insecticons have cloning abilities in canon. This is a different universe, though, and so the rules aren’t exactly the same. In the interest of ensuring that your characters don’t massively outperform the other PCs, I would like it if only one of the insecticons could make clones, and if there was a hard limit on how many clones that insecticon could make at a time, along with other limitations to the ability (like how long the clones live, how intelligent they are, etc.). I understand that it’s already limited by available materials and time, but I don’t feel like that’s enough.
I like the weapons your characters have; I think they’re very creative and it’s cool that they tie into the insects they transform into. I just think they’re too powerful as they are now, and that they need to be re-written so that they do less. Headbite can bite through just about any material, for example- I think that’s overpowered, frankly. Grenadier-32’s gnat grenades are awesome (seriously, I love the concept), but I think it would be better if the gnats only lasted a short time- as in, they’d attach to a target, chew that target up a bit and coat them in that toxic sludge, and then dissipate like they would if they couldn’t immediately find a target. Apacritia’s harpoons tear up their targets with their barbs, and they can inject venom into their targets, and they can electrocute their targets, and they can be attached to cords that Apacritia can use to pull her enemies closer to her- that’s a heck of a lot for one weapon, I feel like some of those abilities need to be toned down or removed.
I’m glad I got their backstory mostly right. I like it, but I would also like to talk about it some more after we’ve come to an agreement on how to rewrite their weapons and powers. I wouldn’t want to try juggling two conversations at once.
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Fair fair, the key point of the insecticons is mostly to produce mass infantry. In fact, it’s the whole reason they’d be in play now. Since they were sent away to make armies and bases they would all need that cloning ability to some extent. It’s not an infinite issue however, they always need resources and energy and unless they go tearing up a city it’s not like they’ll be able to make armies. The only reason I was planning on using an army was to tie into the current plot. I was basically planning on barely using the Headbite and Apacritia’s cloning abilities due to their own personalities. So, I’d imagine due to lack of practice in using them they wouldn’t be adapt at producing large armies, or even more than three if that. Furthermore, it’s implied that to control them they have to be concentrated on them. The drones themselves are implied not have sentience, at least not for the duration they are kept alive.
Headbite sounds overpowered until you realize she’s pretty much without any major defense outside of her jaws. She doesn’t have armor. So while yes she can chew through anything, she can’t exactly always get close enough to do this. She’s designed very much as a glass canon.
I concede on 32’s modifications to the launchers those details seem quite reasonable to add.
I just really went into detail with the harpoons. They’re very jack of all trades weapons. They only charge with electricity as to mimic a sting when they are attached to the cords as the powerbanks are in her arms. Probably should have elaborated on that. The venom is also meant to mimic the sting of a wasp, but unlike if I was doing a bee…well wasps stings just are awful. That and I imagined her getting some upgrades in her fighting years. See these are dual use tools, when detached from their cords they act as smaller spears. When used as grapple tools they keep the charge. Frankly, the blades themselves are just like any other transformer weapon except I specifically designed them to be more practical. A lot of the swords used by transformers are typically barbed or have funky handles…or are impractical but hey
Cool, cool.
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I understand the narrative justification behind all three of the insecticons having cloning abilities, but from an RP perspective, I would really prefer that only one of them can make clones. I mean, why give such powers to all three of these characters if two of them won’t be making use of that ability? Why not make cloning part of Grenadier-32’s schitck, since he’s the one you say would be using it the most anyway, and then really double down on Headbite’s glass cannon fighting style and Apacritia’s ruthlessness?
I like the idea of the clones not being sentient, and their creator needing to concentrate in order to control them. But again, I would also like it if there was a definite limit on the number of clones that could be active at one time- like three or four, as you mentioned.
For Headbite, I understand the high-risk/high-reward thing your going for with her jaws. However, a weapon that’s practically guaranteed to destroy whoever/whatever it hits is not something I would allow for PCs in this setting. I’m cool with her bite being exceptionally powerful, but not to that extent.
For Apacritia’s harpoons, could we remove their venom-injecting capabilities? Her fangs can also inject venom, so having two weapons with that ability just seems redundant to me. Everything else about the harpoons seems fine to me, especially since you clarified that they can only electrocute people when they’re attached to their cords.
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Oh, because I get to explain why the other two don’t use them, or use them poorly. Headbite uses her clones for spare parts and that should arise issues on morals for her new companions. She also doesn’t have good concentration. Apacritia wants to be the center of attention and keep everyone appreciating her. So she actively hates the idea of diverting that attention away from herself and onto some clone. So I get to use these abilities as a way to explain the characters more. Headbite is a very nervous scout, and Apacritia is just a violent bot, although I wouldn’t say ruthless.
That would be the general idea. I suspect if you keep a clone going for years, like 32 has been doing they’d be smarter and more bug like. So you could imply the fact that they could develop a personality with a thousand or so years…that would be an interesting bit of writing for judging Headbite’s method of part replacement.
I guess I don’t know how to explain how good she is in that department if I don’t have a solid material to explain it with. See with Bionicle we have like three metals or so, but here we have…I don’t even know what the canon for metal is.
Ah, see there is a point to that. Her fangs are the head of the alt-mode, while her blades form the stinger in alt-mode. So the poison is mimicking both forms of the real-life insect.
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That could be cool in another setting, but it wouldn’t fit the kind of tone/atmosphere I’m shooting for in this RP, unfortunately. Not for the heroes/PCs, anyway. Let’s save that kind of morally-questionable stuff for the villains, please.
We don’t really need to concern ourselves with concrete statistics or whatever fictional metals exist in TF lore (because there are a ton of them and they pretty much all do the same thing). Meep and I had a similar discussion to this one back in April, and this is what I told them:
The main problem I have currently is that you’ve written that Headbite can bite through just about anything with minimal effort, including heavy armor, energy shields, and the like. The weapon needs limitations of some kind, and right now it doesn’t have any as it is currently written.
Alright, but if the harpoons form her alt-mode’s stingers, what if they could only inject venom when she’s in her alt-mode, then? You could write that that’s when they’re connected to whatever mechanism in her body manufactures the venom. What does the venom even do to its victims? The secretions from her fangs sedate Apacritia’s victims, but what effects do you want the venom from her harpoons/stingers to have?
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Seems you figured correctly…
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That might be a problem. I mean for the way I was planning on writing all three of these was to be morally questionable. Not bad exactly, but with incredibly concerning habits to break. Heroes aren’t just built perfect, and it’s a lot better of a tale of the hero starts out a mess of problems before the resolution at the end.
Ah, I mean if you say so, but that does put a grinder on how I would write the character if I don’t know what she can cut through.
See the thing is she is the weapon. Her head can’t be removed and used by someone else without Frankstein-like results. She is fragile, and that’s the downside to having dangerous jaws. It’s not like it’s a blade, it’s a jaw, and that won’t be able to cut through everything quickly. Different tool so less quick.
That could work, however the residue of the venom would remain in the blades logically. It’s not like it would just retract without warning when transformation occurs.
As for the venom’s effects, I was simply thinking of headaches, pain, and nausia. This all of course depending on how much is exposed, smaller doses would just have a numb feeling.
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Being former Decepticons sent to conquer alien worlds is enough of a grey area for heroes to start in for the kind of tone I want to set for the RP. Hacking up clones that may-or-may-not have the potential to become sentient beings for spare parts is too dark.
I understand that Headbite’s jaws/head can’t be removed- I’m saying that they’re still overpowered. Please rewrite her to have a slightly less powerful bite, and then maybe you could make her tougher to compensate or something.
Let’s say that it does. We’re not exactly shooting for a strict adherence to realism here.
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I mean, they are Decepticons. This was par of the course in pretty much every canon for them to be doing sketchy stuff. The Insecticons are typically barely considered Cybertronain in almost every canon they are in. I’m not going to be writing evil characters, just characters with some personality traits that need ironing out.
I guess I just have nothing to judge her bite on. Like I can’t tell someone how much it will do because I have no bearing on what there is. Also making her glass in a sense was the balance because most people wouldn’t just let her come up and bite them.
I guess? I don’t know it just seems like a solution that doesn’t make sense is all.
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Again: this is a different universe. I’m okay with flawed PCs, but that is too dark for this setting.
All you really need to write is that Headbite has powerful jaws that can chew up her enemies, but that her bite is less effective against energy shields or exceptionally well-armored targets. Or something like that- just give it some kind of limitation along those lines. And no, I don’t believe that Headbite being a “glass cannon” is enough to balance it out as it is written right now. I have said that already.
As the harpoons are written right now, they are way too powerful. Giving them different abilities depending on what form Apacritia’s in is a way of balancing them out. If you have a way of balancing them that makes more sense to you, you can pitch it to me.
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