Wyldstorm
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| Wyldstorm | |
| Founder: Dr. Jean-Claude Gironde | |
| Basics | |
| Side: | Heroic |
|---|---|
| Motto: | ' |
| Leader(s): | the Commandant |
| Logo: | lightning bolt |
| Group Colours: | midnight blue and ochre |
| Playerbase | |
| Levels: | any |
| Play style: | plot devices |
| Roleplay: | heavy |
| Timezone(s): | any |
| Recruiting: | see Wyldfire |
| Contact: | @Jarissa |
| This SG is a plot device in an ongoing story arc, possibly open for use by other groups. | |
Wyldstorm is an alternate-universe version of Wyldfire, a main plot spun out of two secondary plots created by individual Wyldfire Agents back in the beginning of 2006. The Wyldstorm setting is much grittier than Wyldfire's: Wyldstorm agents aren't casual killers, but if they felt they had no choice about killing an opponent, they generally don't lose sleep over it, either. In that continuity, Screak and Skyburner wound up married -- a dismaying notion to the original characters in Wyldfire, and highly entertaining to the rest of the team; Iradium's wife Sara died early in the Arkangel Presidency, circumstances unspecified; and everyone's around ten years older than their Wyldfire counterparts. Some members of Wyldstorm made it across to Wyldfire's native dimension, some didn't.
Contents |
Cross-Dimensional Introduction
Wyldfire's Unknown Visitor
Once upon a time, the SuperGroup known as Wyldfire spent several months applying their relative specializations to investigate a possible villainous plot. As part of his contribution, Silver Valor made some rather unconventional -- and unauthorized -- use of the Portal Corps facilities, specifically an experimental portal generator, to help him accomplish some calculations at the maximum potential of his genius-given-superspeed brain. One side effect was that an older version of himself appeared in the current continuity.
What Thomas didn't realize at the time was that his older self was not just from a few years in the future, but also from another reality. In the process of figuring out how to get himself home, the visiting "Silver Valor" went to some pains to conceal his existence from most of Wyldfire by impersonating their own speedster. Thomas cooperated with his older self's efforts, but eventually did spill the beans shortly before the visitor managed to solve the equations and return home.
Uploaded Alternate Selves
Meanwhile, a Wyldfire Agent known as Black Omicron, a cyborg who'd been knocked backward in time more than two hundred fifty years by an alien invader's weapon malfunction, began assisting Portal Corps with investigations into other dimensions. They found a signal that seemed disturbingly similar to certain subroutines in Omi's cybernetic implants: perhaps one of his fellow cyborgs had also suffered from the same botched enemy attack? To his astonishment, he found that universe's version of himself being attacked by a third doppelganger -- an evil, power-mad world-destroyer called Entropy Omicron. Omicron's report later was too convoluted to ever determine exactly what happened, but somehow Entropy Omicron managed to all-but-destroy that dimension's Omicron, and was in turn badly damaged by the rescue team of that Omicron's allies, a supergroup called Wyldstorm. Severely injured, Wyldfire's Black Omicron found himself brusquely shoved back through the portal to our world, with instructions from Wyldstorm's officers to ensure that Portal Corps permanently severed the connection.
It was too late: Wyldstorm's Omicron had, with his dying action, uploaded his psyche into the Wyldfire Agent -- and piggybacking on that upload, Entropy Omicron implanted a daughter subroutine that should let him track Black Omicron back to his native dimension, and eventually take over his body. Black Omicron fought both incursions to a standstill, but could not drive out either "rider personality". Eventually the strain became so great that he was forced to retire from Wyldfire and give up his hero license.
Supergroup Origin
About twenty years ago, Dr. Jean-Claude Gironde had a vehement argument with a colleague about the historic Might for Right Act. Still indignant, he set out a plan that very evening to charter and fund a private superhero team, whose primary concern would be the training and safeguarding of "special needs" persons. Taking his cue for "what NOT to do" from a certain "soap opera" comic book series, he had the venture properly accredited as a military-style boarding school, with a specialization in children possessing nonmagical powers and/or unusual deformities. The draft-minded government of the day approved his plan with an unwritten assumption that Gironde's personnel would be teaching the future superpowered soldiers of the U.S. services. In fact, he intended to present whatever public front was legally necessary to permanently exempt all of the students, graduates, and teachers in his program from the Might for Right draft, preferably forming a sort of paramilitia unit to serve just causes unencumbered by political or government influences. Within ten years, he had the necessary elements in place, and began carefully recruiting instructors.
Political Complications
Power-Mad Portal Corps! Evidence Leads Arkangel to Presidency!
Six years before an accident temporarily stranded Advanced Technology Instructor "Silver Valor" in an alternate dimension, biotechnology inventor Simon Arkangel shocked the world by producing evidence that several of the Portal Corps experiments had been conducted without failsafes properly in place, leading the Rikti back for the Second Rikti War. Riding on the surge of indignation of the United States' citizenry against any "superscience" that would knowingly endanger everyone's safety, Arkangel went from private citizenship directly to President of the most militarily powerful nation on the planet. During his campaign, Dr. Gironde attempted to return from an overseas trip with evidence of Arkangel's foreign nationality; the moment his jet entered U.S. airspace, a strange energy attacked the passenger compartment, killing most aboard and putting Wyldstorm's sponsor into a probably-terminal coma. Wyldstorm agents barely managed to extract Gironde's body from the scene before official military responders arrived. With no other recourse, Iradium and Screak placed Gironde in a life-support capsule previously "appropriated" from Crey Biotech.
Arkangel's first State of the Union Address included a Presidential Order to effectively restore the Might for Right Act, nationalizing all supergroups and enlisting any superpowered individual of any age into a new division of Homeland Security. Many of the more famous heroes in Paragon City politely declined, and some not so politely. The debate in Congress took several months, but eventually Arkangel won a majority of support for his program. Paragon City soon had been placed under indefinite martial law.
Independent Investigators Uncover Super Plot! Scofflaws Implicated!
Conditions continued to deteriorate over the course of the next several years. Arachnos leaked "evidence" of a massive plot by the most established Paragon-based supergroups to support an entire dimension's population in migrating to the United States, in return for their assistance against the Rikti. Homeland Security, Meta Division found itself in the unenviable position of being ordered to rearrange the Paragon War Walls to convert Paragon City into a containment zone while Congressional inquiries ensued. All international supergroups were ordered to remove themselves from US territories on pain of detainment.
Wyldstorm Insurgency Neutralization Personal, Says Pres
Of all the supergroups left completely trapped inside Paragon City, Wyldstorm had the best training to resist President Arkangel's illegal programs, using guerilla tactics to thwart street-level dragnets while smuggling civilians and fellow heroes out with Internet-ready videos and propaganda. Their greatest weakness, especially after the loss of Black Omicron to the "Entropy Omicron" assault, was an inability to communicate with supergroups outside the War Walls. Even Silver Valor, newly returned from his dimensional jaunt, couldn't get around the electromagnetic shielding of the War Walls. Resources and supplies ran low inside the Walls, while Arkangel seemed to have an unlimited supply of gadgets, allies, and mercenary "operatives" to throw at the city. He won re-election on the promise that he would personally see the Wyldstorm "insurgent leadership" neutralized using his family's resources, rather than strain the taxpayers' budget.
Portal Corps had been all but destroyed; but Silver Valor casually mentioned during one air raid that he thought he'd managed to create a working prototype. Wyldstorm could escape to an alternate dimension, one where Arkangel hadn't turned the common citizen against them; they could recover, improve their equipment, and come back strong enough to finish this fight. The only problem was that the portal wasn't particularly stable -- it might dump them in the future, or the past, or in separate "alternate realities" entirely.
Events in Portal Corps' Native Dimension
The escaping Wyldstorm members definitely didn't arrive at the same point in the timestream. Iradium found himself in Paragon City in the summer of 2006, a time when he wasn't engaged. Silver Valor arrived in Florida just in time to watch Discovery touch down on July 17, 2006. Meanwhile, sometime in early August of that same year, Wyldstorm's Commandant found herself partially phased into reality in the Azores, a mid-Atlantic small collection of islands, originally colonized by Portugal -- and due to President Arkangel's efforts to prevent their escape, not only was she stuck halfway into this dimension, but she still had to keep fighting off Arkangel's shock troops, pouring through the portal as it finished breaking apart. Both she and the troops kept skipping bits and pieces of time. Eventually the troops ran out, or got lost between dimensions, as the portal finished disintegrating; she managed to get a message to her Silver Valor, who jury-rigged a means of relocating her to Wyldstorm's new hideout in Paragon City. No one is quite sure when Alan arrived, or where, but it was certainly after his wife showed up. Screak never explained where she'd been, or for how long: what she found more important was a radio SOS from an obviously drugged Skyburner, calling in backup, only guessing he had been in a Council base for a "long time". Unfortunately for Wyldstorm's immediate rescue operation, this was the Skyburner from Wyldfire. Wyldstorm's Augren Grind hasn't been seen. Silver Valor hypothesizes that he may be significantly further forward in the timestream, Auroren physiology being so very different from Terrans'.
