XET Diaries, Part 3: Secrets of XET
May. 18th, 2006 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Welcome to yet another edition of The XET Diaries. This time, we’re stepping into the wayback machine… both right back to the beginning of the game, and way back into the past of XET itself. I’ll also discuss a bit of the Karotechia, and What’s Hiding in Xavier’s Brain?
The truth behind the MLF
We never actually met the true leader of the MLF, but it was the same person who organized Wolverine's pre-Black Prom team of mutants, and kept it insulated so nobody in the government actually knew mutants existed. His name was Emmett Proudhawk. The original character is from Psi-Force comics in the New Universe… he was a CIA agent with some telepathic powers who organized a list of paranormals that became the cast of the book. He died early on (in fact, in the first issue). In XET, Emmett is something of a mix between the original Emmett and John Rainbird from Stephen King’s Firestarter series. Basically, he’s a tough old bastard who worked for the government all his life. He has the ability to telepathically ‘push’ people into doing what he wants, and he also has telepathic visions of the future. In fact, he foretold the fall of the European Brotherhood in the scene where the Brotherhood snagged Caliban from the MLF.
Sometime between the Black Prom and the Symposium (log), when the government knew about but denied the existence of mutants, Emmett was retired, and raising his granddaughter, who was also a mutant. She drew the attention of government snoops who sent out Marcus, and in the ensuing chaos, the daughter was killed, which turned Emmett against the government. He got together with some people he trusted (John Proudstar, also a CIA agent who faked his death, and Naze, just a crazy old shaman) and using Emmett’s visions recruited the people who would become the MLF. Proudhawk mentally ‘pushed’ them into joining his cause, and input more detailed mental blocks in them. As time went on the mysticism half of the equation started to infect them more and more and he became more a tool of his visions than a user of them. He set up Fabian Cortez as his patsy, to pretend to lead the group. The real person who, aside from Proudhawk, Naze, and Proudstar (who very rarely interacted with the rank and file membership at all) was most in charge was Thomas Boyd, though he always played second fiddle so they could offer up the leader to someone else if necessary.
The MLF’s real goals were simply to cause chaos and strike back against the US government as a whole. Most of the members believed it was about fighting for mutant rights, but it was all really about one crazy man’s irrational desire for revenge against the US government as a whole.
Unfortunately they never really had much play beyond the initial arc and occasional random attack guest appearances. I’ve already detailed a couple of the other plans that they might have shown up in, in previous posts and I won’t go into them again. There was once an idea of having them kill the OMA director I believe, though, that we never got to do. Of course, they killed James Van Der Beek off panel and might have targetted other celebrities.
Xavier and the mind invasion
Ever since the Second Symposium plot in London, there were occasional references to Xavier having a headache, and of course a log where he told Moira that he felt his powers weakening. He attributed it to getting old, but the truth was somewhat darker. While in London, Xavier’s brain was infested by a Shan (not Karma, btw), a small insect like creature from outer space partially out of phase with normal reality. Typically they nest in the brain and inflict terrible visions on the host and inflicting pain, until the host begins to do exactly what the Shan wants. However, because X was a powerful telepath, something different happened... the Shan was trapped and powerless… X was unaware of it, but it was slowly gaining strength and more and more of Xavier’s mental power was diverted to fighting it.
Xavier’s powers would have continued to wane until he started relying on Cerebro to even do the basic tasks he used to do, and at this point the Shan would have learned enough to piggyback on Cerebro to afflict those at the X-Mansion. Starting with horrible nightmares, and eventually leading up to mental control and causing them to hurt each other and the like. It was one of those plots that was on a very slow burn, but could have been good in the long run.
Now that I’ve read it, I see it has some echoes of Xavier being infested by the Brood. I really like when that happens, echoes to previous storylines, so that woulda made it cooler. It also might have been the springboard for X to ‘go public’ and open his school to any mutant, sort of like how Cassandra Nova’s influence in the comics was behind it.
Asteroid M
Towards the end, Magneto was absent a lot, working on some ‘secret project’. The project was, eventually, going to be revealed as the capturing and modelling of Asteroid M as a new base, one that could be isolated from the rest of the world, their own country. Of course, the problem was that the Asteroid chosen was also full of secret n-dimensional metals craved by the Mi-Go who would become a problem for the Brotherhood. Still, it worked with some of the characters who had to disappear... Ororo had to leave the game to help Magneto? Well, he was trying to get her to learn how to regulate a self-contained atmosphere.
Mutant Murder Mystery
Another plot that never really materialized, this time all on me due to lack of follow-through, but went way back to the early days of XET. Eagle-eyed players might have noticed a character Simone/Mindspider. Well, that was me. The idea was to masquerade a plot as a character. She’d be introduced, pretend to be a normal player, interact, get a few things going, and then wind up being murdered, hopefully as a surprise to everyone who thought it was a player rather than an NPC, and then have a plot surrounding her associates as they try to find out who did it. Her power was to give telepathic illusions of anything she chose, which she usually sold as a ‘make your fantasies come true’ type experience. Never got it far enough to determine the killer, but always did like the character and kinda sad I never managed to do the plot. But really I just didn’t have the time to play the character full time and didn’t really get response to my first tentative feelers for the ‘your dreams come true’ part of the plot.
The Karotechia
The Karotechia were a group introduced in Delta Green… basically a bunch of former nazi officers obsessed with the occult, who believe they worship the divinely ascended spirit of Hitler. In XET of course, they target Mutants. There was (to my recollection) only one set of scenes with him, the Florida ones where the X-Men looked into mutant disappearances and Wolverine went up against John Galt (SS officer kept eternally young through regular cannibalism)
Now, even though their first interaction was with the X-Men, I always thought they’d be a good long-term nemesis for the Brotherhood. Because the Brotherhood likes nazi-smashing, and they’re nazis, and the Karotechia does lots of nasty things to mutants.
There was that opening plot where the Brotherhood were forced to take shelter with the X-Men temporarily when they were sneak attacked, possibly by the Karotechia.
The Karotechia was also a natural way to introduce an XET-ized version of The Red Skull. Never even got started on that, but I imagine if we continued it would have happened, and perhaps it would have been the resurrection of someone Steve Rogers killed in WWII. I never saw the Karotechia as a whole as a major target for the Ultimates, but maybe the Red Skull would lead a splinter group or invade a small country or something.
That’s enough for this post, I think. In the next one, I’ll be talking about the plots we had for the Dreamlands, and a little something I like to call Mojo Madness! Plus a few other assorted plots.
The truth behind the MLF
We never actually met the true leader of the MLF, but it was the same person who organized Wolverine's pre-Black Prom team of mutants, and kept it insulated so nobody in the government actually knew mutants existed. His name was Emmett Proudhawk. The original character is from Psi-Force comics in the New Universe… he was a CIA agent with some telepathic powers who organized a list of paranormals that became the cast of the book. He died early on (in fact, in the first issue). In XET, Emmett is something of a mix between the original Emmett and John Rainbird from Stephen King’s Firestarter series. Basically, he’s a tough old bastard who worked for the government all his life. He has the ability to telepathically ‘push’ people into doing what he wants, and he also has telepathic visions of the future. In fact, he foretold the fall of the European Brotherhood in the scene where the Brotherhood snagged Caliban from the MLF.
Sometime between the Black Prom and the Symposium (log), when the government knew about but denied the existence of mutants, Emmett was retired, and raising his granddaughter, who was also a mutant. She drew the attention of government snoops who sent out Marcus, and in the ensuing chaos, the daughter was killed, which turned Emmett against the government. He got together with some people he trusted (John Proudstar, also a CIA agent who faked his death, and Naze, just a crazy old shaman) and using Emmett’s visions recruited the people who would become the MLF. Proudhawk mentally ‘pushed’ them into joining his cause, and input more detailed mental blocks in them. As time went on the mysticism half of the equation started to infect them more and more and he became more a tool of his visions than a user of them. He set up Fabian Cortez as his patsy, to pretend to lead the group. The real person who, aside from Proudhawk, Naze, and Proudstar (who very rarely interacted with the rank and file membership at all) was most in charge was Thomas Boyd, though he always played second fiddle so they could offer up the leader to someone else if necessary.
The MLF’s real goals were simply to cause chaos and strike back against the US government as a whole. Most of the members believed it was about fighting for mutant rights, but it was all really about one crazy man’s irrational desire for revenge against the US government as a whole.
Unfortunately they never really had much play beyond the initial arc and occasional random attack guest appearances. I’ve already detailed a couple of the other plans that they might have shown up in, in previous posts and I won’t go into them again. There was once an idea of having them kill the OMA director I believe, though, that we never got to do. Of course, they killed James Van Der Beek off panel and might have targetted other celebrities.
Xavier and the mind invasion
Ever since the Second Symposium plot in London, there were occasional references to Xavier having a headache, and of course a log where he told Moira that he felt his powers weakening. He attributed it to getting old, but the truth was somewhat darker. While in London, Xavier’s brain was infested by a Shan (not Karma, btw), a small insect like creature from outer space partially out of phase with normal reality. Typically they nest in the brain and inflict terrible visions on the host and inflicting pain, until the host begins to do exactly what the Shan wants. However, because X was a powerful telepath, something different happened... the Shan was trapped and powerless… X was unaware of it, but it was slowly gaining strength and more and more of Xavier’s mental power was diverted to fighting it.
Xavier’s powers would have continued to wane until he started relying on Cerebro to even do the basic tasks he used to do, and at this point the Shan would have learned enough to piggyback on Cerebro to afflict those at the X-Mansion. Starting with horrible nightmares, and eventually leading up to mental control and causing them to hurt each other and the like. It was one of those plots that was on a very slow burn, but could have been good in the long run.
Now that I’ve read it, I see it has some echoes of Xavier being infested by the Brood. I really like when that happens, echoes to previous storylines, so that woulda made it cooler. It also might have been the springboard for X to ‘go public’ and open his school to any mutant, sort of like how Cassandra Nova’s influence in the comics was behind it.
Asteroid M
Towards the end, Magneto was absent a lot, working on some ‘secret project’. The project was, eventually, going to be revealed as the capturing and modelling of Asteroid M as a new base, one that could be isolated from the rest of the world, their own country. Of course, the problem was that the Asteroid chosen was also full of secret n-dimensional metals craved by the Mi-Go who would become a problem for the Brotherhood. Still, it worked with some of the characters who had to disappear... Ororo had to leave the game to help Magneto? Well, he was trying to get her to learn how to regulate a self-contained atmosphere.
Mutant Murder Mystery
Another plot that never really materialized, this time all on me due to lack of follow-through, but went way back to the early days of XET. Eagle-eyed players might have noticed a character Simone/Mindspider. Well, that was me. The idea was to masquerade a plot as a character. She’d be introduced, pretend to be a normal player, interact, get a few things going, and then wind up being murdered, hopefully as a surprise to everyone who thought it was a player rather than an NPC, and then have a plot surrounding her associates as they try to find out who did it. Her power was to give telepathic illusions of anything she chose, which she usually sold as a ‘make your fantasies come true’ type experience. Never got it far enough to determine the killer, but always did like the character and kinda sad I never managed to do the plot. But really I just didn’t have the time to play the character full time and didn’t really get response to my first tentative feelers for the ‘your dreams come true’ part of the plot.
The Karotechia
The Karotechia were a group introduced in Delta Green… basically a bunch of former nazi officers obsessed with the occult, who believe they worship the divinely ascended spirit of Hitler. In XET of course, they target Mutants. There was (to my recollection) only one set of scenes with him, the Florida ones where the X-Men looked into mutant disappearances and Wolverine went up against John Galt (SS officer kept eternally young through regular cannibalism)
Now, even though their first interaction was with the X-Men, I always thought they’d be a good long-term nemesis for the Brotherhood. Because the Brotherhood likes nazi-smashing, and they’re nazis, and the Karotechia does lots of nasty things to mutants.
There was that opening plot where the Brotherhood were forced to take shelter with the X-Men temporarily when they were sneak attacked, possibly by the Karotechia.
The Karotechia was also a natural way to introduce an XET-ized version of The Red Skull. Never even got started on that, but I imagine if we continued it would have happened, and perhaps it would have been the resurrection of someone Steve Rogers killed in WWII. I never saw the Karotechia as a whole as a major target for the Ultimates, but maybe the Red Skull would lead a splinter group or invade a small country or something.
That’s enough for this post, I think. In the next one, I’ll be talking about the plots we had for the Dreamlands, and a little something I like to call Mojo Madness! Plus a few other assorted plots.
