After talking about incarceration, I was asked:
Why doesn't America just build a single super-villain prison and lock them all up there? Wouldn't it be better to consolidate all the anti-power technology, stronger cells, and trained guards in a single place?
There's several reasons why this isn't happening. Here they are, in no particular order.
Economic interest. Even Federal penitentiaries are located in one state or another. Congressional representatives get campaign contributions from the companies who make power-suppression drugs, from people who build prisons, and both private and public security companies who staff them. In general, the Congressmen want to keep the campaign contributions coming, but more importantly want to send pork to their state. So nobody wants to pick a single site, because there's got 50 smaller ones pouring slop into the trough. Thus, the necessary legislation won't be able to pass.
NIMBY. Short for "not in my back yard". This is the local legislature's answer to "hey can we put hundreds of dangerous demigods in your most populated city?" Seriously, there's been Congressional push-back against building wind farms in their states, because they're afraid of spoiling their view. Nobody wants a consolidated prison in their state for safety reasons, and they aren't making enough campaign contributions at the local level to sway anyone's opinion here.
Accidents and sabotage. That said, there is a legitimate argument about safety. For example, say that you're distributing 22 types of power suppressant to 100 inmates. One screw-up, one swapped bottle, one "accidentally" damaged dispenser or placebo introduced by a ringer, and a pissed-off and re-powered villain is going to rip your prison a new one.
Prison breaks. If someone put 100 villains together under a single roof, I promise the rest of us would blow the shit out of the walls and get those guys out - even if we didn't like them personally. Every active villain out there means less law enforcement resources to dedicate to you. If you do it right, those villains won't be competing with you or interfering with your capers. So overall, a stable and sizable population of free villains is compelling enough for the rest of us to take steps like this.
Thanks for the questions, and keep them coming!
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Villain incarceration and transportation
These days, the technology behind keeping supers imprisoned is pretty good. It wasn't always like that. In fact, "villains can escape from jail a week after capture" is such a persistent meme thanks to decades of poor understanding of super-biology and lack of experience.
Chemical restraints
The current state of the art in super incarceration is chemical restraint. These are drugs, either "generic" or tailored to an individual (or set of powers), that inhibit the use of one or more super-powers. Part of the goal of the Transhuman Capability Catalog was to track the specific mechanisms behind powers. Based on this information, companies like Persona and Pfizer are able to synthesize suppression drugs.
The use of these drugs has been evaluated for constitutionality in many of the circuit courts within the United States. No legal challenge has reached the Supreme Court as of yet, and it's doubtful that they would hear one - there's too much at stake to meddle with something that's working.
The actual administration of these drugs depends on the super. Some are ingested with food, others are injected, and others are delivered as an aerosol in the prisoner's cell. The drugs can take effect anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours after delivery, and could be effective for hours or days. The first and second generation of power suppressors are now off the market since it was proven that almost all supers would develop a tolerance and eventual immunity to their effects.
Occasionally a prison will experiment with attaching collars containing suppression drugs to their super-inmates. The goal is to create a system that maintained the suppression while also allowing the inmate to roam around the complex with less supervision.
Physical restraints
Supers who are unable to break out of a jail cell, one way or another, are pretty rare. That said, some do exist. Most prisons would prefer their existing cells to an expensive drug deal with Big Pharma, so there's a fair amount of competition for "easy" villains.
Prisoner transfers
When a villain needs to be moved - to another facility, or to stand trial, or something similar - it's a big deal. The cops keep the transfer route a secret, even from other departments, until almost the day of the transfer.
Here are a few ways that villain transfers have been detected and interfered with:
Chemical restraints
The current state of the art in super incarceration is chemical restraint. These are drugs, either "generic" or tailored to an individual (or set of powers), that inhibit the use of one or more super-powers. Part of the goal of the Transhuman Capability Catalog was to track the specific mechanisms behind powers. Based on this information, companies like Persona and Pfizer are able to synthesize suppression drugs.
The use of these drugs has been evaluated for constitutionality in many of the circuit courts within the United States. No legal challenge has reached the Supreme Court as of yet, and it's doubtful that they would hear one - there's too much at stake to meddle with something that's working.
The actual administration of these drugs depends on the super. Some are ingested with food, others are injected, and others are delivered as an aerosol in the prisoner's cell. The drugs can take effect anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours after delivery, and could be effective for hours or days. The first and second generation of power suppressors are now off the market since it was proven that almost all supers would develop a tolerance and eventual immunity to their effects.
Occasionally a prison will experiment with attaching collars containing suppression drugs to their super-inmates. The goal is to create a system that maintained the suppression while also allowing the inmate to roam around the complex with less supervision.
Physical restraints
Supers who are unable to break out of a jail cell, one way or another, are pretty rare. That said, some do exist. Most prisons would prefer their existing cells to an expensive drug deal with Big Pharma, so there's a fair amount of competition for "easy" villains.
Prisoner transfers
When a villain needs to be moved - to another facility, or to stand trial, or something similar - it's a big deal. The cops keep the transfer route a secret, even from other departments, until almost the day of the transfer.
Here are a few ways that villain transfers have been detected and interfered with:
- Prison financial records indicated a cancellation of the power suppression drug order, along with a requisition for vehicles.
- Suppression drugs were replaced with a placebo by an insider.
- A prison placed orders for a tailored suppression drug despite not having the prisoner for which they were tailored.
- Guards or other police officers took a bribe to reveal the details of the route.
ACTION is pretty good about providing security for this work these days, so most prison-break scenarios for villains require a fair amount of inside information. Acquiring insider assets, keeping them paid, and getting actual useful information from them are all big challenges for villains who want to take care of their fellows. But if you do break another villain out of the slam, you can and should expect plenty of gratitude. The value of this cannot be overstated.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
How to take over the world, ocean style
After writing about taking over the world, several of you wrote in with a suggestion for how to deal with the world's largest powers. I want to summarize the various points made.
Like I said in my post about super-swimming, Earth is 70% water, but the interesting things happen on the other 30%. That said, it's not like it's empty. For example, here's a short list of things which we've dredged up from the sea.
Like I said in my post about super-swimming, Earth is 70% water, but the interesting things happen on the other 30%. That said, it's not like it's empty. For example, here's a short list of things which we've dredged up from the sea.
- A colossal squid, 43 feet long, and around 900 pounds.
- A Portuguese man-of-war, that can reach 30-150 feet with its tentacles.
- A fin whale, 80-90 feet long and weighing tons.
During World War II, the US Navy did experiments, along with the New Zealand military, into creating a "tsunami bomb" under the name Project Seal. The goal was to devastate coastal cities - which frankly is most of the important ones. Humans may not live in water, but we live near it. As Magma pointed out to me once, "there's been a city at the mouth of the Tiber for the last 10,000 years".
The program revealed that a line of explosives, about 8 megatons and 5 miles off the coast, could indeed create a tsunami. Most of the energy would be wasted hitting the continental shelf, so it was considered inefficient. But hey, you got a better idea?
The United States' Ohio-class submarines (fourteen currently active) carry Trident missiles, with eight W88 warheads. Each of these has a yield of 475 kt, so you need two such missiles to reach 8 megatons. More missiles means more explosions, and each Ohio carries 24 Trident IIs.
Remember what I was saying about giant sea monsters underwater? How hard do you think it would be for someone like Sea-czar to find and take control of an Ohio-class sub with his army of aquatic minions? The real barrier at this point is a knowledge of submarines, nuclear engineering, and hydrodynamics. But once you can do that, a single submarine lets you threaten every city in America, simultaneously, staged from depths that'd prevent anyone but the Navy from acting against you. And even they'd have a rough time.
So yeah, I'm just going to say this one more time: respect aquatic supers.
Q&A: Taking over the world edition
My observations on taking over the world (or at least a country) sparked some feedback. First, thanks for everyone who got in on the conversation.
Dr. Frogge points out: Of course any world domination scheme with a decent chance of success will be held tightly to the chest - I’m not about to release MY plans until it’s all over.
I'd expect so! Like any good caper, secrets and specifics are for you and you alone. Like anything else in this guide, my goal is to get aspiring supervillains to start thinking in certain ways about the topics important to their chosen field.
"Ambitious in Alberta" says: Between peak oil, global climate change, international unrest, and open civil war, we supervillains don't have to do anything. When the world breaks, we can come in and pick up the pieces.
Yeah - you and everyone else. I wanted to leave it implicit in the post, and I went as far as mentioning the heroes, but any world conquest plan must necessarily take your fellow supervillains into account. All it takes is for any 3-5 villains of your power level to team up and take you down, and I guarantee you there's that many for every would-be conqueror.
There, I said it. If the world falls apart, it will mean a villain civil war. Some villains will decide they liked the good life of civilization enough to protect what's left of it. Others will decide that a larger slice of this very big pie is worth a few former friends. You can bet that the long planners and clear thinkers in the villain community are looking at the scenarios you talk about and have taken plenty of steps, so if your hope is to be on the top of the food chain, you better be one of those people.
"Mexican Megalomaniac" says: Who in your opinion has come closest to world conquest, or at least world destruction?
Sore wa himitsu desu.
"Eyepatch of Power" says: Aside from the difficulties in destroying threats to your power, you sound pretty down on world conquest. What else don't you like about it?
I think running the world is the antithesis of the villain ethic. Actually keeping a world running well enough to enforce your will is a lot of work. You have to learn a lot of skills, you have to interact with a lot of people, and you're going to be tied down, making decisions, answering peoples' bullshit questions because they can't think for themselves, and just generally managing shit. You don't have time for you, because you'll be too busy.
Don't believe me? Look at before-and-after pictures of any US president, especially a two-termer. The job turns those poor bastards gray and carves deep grooves in their faces. Early in his campaign, the president who led us into Iraq (the first time) looked like your friendly grandfather. Midway through the actual war, he looked like Death warmed over. The office of the president is one of the most powerful positions on Earth, and it sucks the life out of anyone who gets close to it. Now, multiply that by 200-odd countries.
Basically, if I wanted a busy, stressful day job, I'd go get one.
Dr. Frogge points out: Of course any world domination scheme with a decent chance of success will be held tightly to the chest - I’m not about to release MY plans until it’s all over.
I'd expect so! Like any good caper, secrets and specifics are for you and you alone. Like anything else in this guide, my goal is to get aspiring supervillains to start thinking in certain ways about the topics important to their chosen field.
"Ambitious in Alberta" says: Between peak oil, global climate change, international unrest, and open civil war, we supervillains don't have to do anything. When the world breaks, we can come in and pick up the pieces.
Yeah - you and everyone else. I wanted to leave it implicit in the post, and I went as far as mentioning the heroes, but any world conquest plan must necessarily take your fellow supervillains into account. All it takes is for any 3-5 villains of your power level to team up and take you down, and I guarantee you there's that many for every would-be conqueror.
There, I said it. If the world falls apart, it will mean a villain civil war. Some villains will decide they liked the good life of civilization enough to protect what's left of it. Others will decide that a larger slice of this very big pie is worth a few former friends. You can bet that the long planners and clear thinkers in the villain community are looking at the scenarios you talk about and have taken plenty of steps, so if your hope is to be on the top of the food chain, you better be one of those people.
"Mexican Megalomaniac" says: Who in your opinion has come closest to world conquest, or at least world destruction?
Sore wa himitsu desu.
"Eyepatch of Power" says: Aside from the difficulties in destroying threats to your power, you sound pretty down on world conquest. What else don't you like about it?
I think running the world is the antithesis of the villain ethic. Actually keeping a world running well enough to enforce your will is a lot of work. You have to learn a lot of skills, you have to interact with a lot of people, and you're going to be tied down, making decisions, answering peoples' bullshit questions because they can't think for themselves, and just generally managing shit. You don't have time for you, because you'll be too busy.
Don't believe me? Look at before-and-after pictures of any US president, especially a two-termer. The job turns those poor bastards gray and carves deep grooves in their faces. Early in his campaign, the president who led us into Iraq (the first time) looked like your friendly grandfather. Midway through the actual war, he looked like Death warmed over. The office of the president is one of the most powerful positions on Earth, and it sucks the life out of anyone who gets close to it. Now, multiply that by 200-odd countries.
Basically, if I wanted a busy, stressful day job, I'd go get one.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
How to take over a country
Since "how to take over the world" seems too lofty an ambition for any single supervillain at this time, let's talk about how to take over a country. My dog-eared copy of "The Prince" is a great book, but Machiavelli's writing style can be purple, so let me condense the important lessons down, and add a few of my own from observing people like Faduma.
Conquest of a state requires some mixture of ability, fortune, and opportunity. If this sounds like the standard of "means, motive, and opportunity" in United States criminal law, that's not accidental. Taking over power in a state is inherently an extralegal sort of thing, and it's how things got done in the United States, Israel, and the Soviet Union.
Ability here means far more than a strong super-power. It means having the skills necessary to lead large groups of people; coordinating complex plans and devise plans with sufficient contingency to cover most outcomes; successfully predicting the results of your most likely actions; and understanding the numerous perspectives that are present in any big group. If you are the sort of person who can do these things, you probably already realize it.
Fortune, these days called "luck", is just being in the right place at the right time. You can't just say "well I'll take over a country today". Circumstances have to be such that you are the best choice for that job, and that a good candidate country, with favorable political conditions, actually exists.
Opportunity means that some country exists where your particular combination of skills, powers, background, and motivation make it possible for you to step into a leadership role. Machiavelli illustrates this by saying "it was necessary to Moses that he should find the people of Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians". You don't take over a prosperous and contented group of people. You take over a group of people who are being hard done by, and promise to fix their shitty situation. Of course, this also applies to people like Adolf Hitler - the Weimar Republic was practically begging for a man like him, and Europe collectively reaped what they had sown through the Treaty of Versailles.
So what are the ingredients for conquest?
Conquest of a state requires some mixture of ability, fortune, and opportunity. If this sounds like the standard of "means, motive, and opportunity" in United States criminal law, that's not accidental. Taking over power in a state is inherently an extralegal sort of thing, and it's how things got done in the United States, Israel, and the Soviet Union.
Ability here means far more than a strong super-power. It means having the skills necessary to lead large groups of people; coordinating complex plans and devise plans with sufficient contingency to cover most outcomes; successfully predicting the results of your most likely actions; and understanding the numerous perspectives that are present in any big group. If you are the sort of person who can do these things, you probably already realize it.
Fortune, these days called "luck", is just being in the right place at the right time. You can't just say "well I'll take over a country today". Circumstances have to be such that you are the best choice for that job, and that a good candidate country, with favorable political conditions, actually exists.
Opportunity means that some country exists where your particular combination of skills, powers, background, and motivation make it possible for you to step into a leadership role. Machiavelli illustrates this by saying "it was necessary to Moses that he should find the people of Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians". You don't take over a prosperous and contented group of people. You take over a group of people who are being hard done by, and promise to fix their shitty situation. Of course, this also applies to people like Adolf Hitler - the Weimar Republic was practically begging for a man like him, and Europe collectively reaped what they had sown through the Treaty of Versailles.
So what are the ingredients for conquest?
- You need a country where times are tough.
- You need people who are ready and willing to listen to someone - possibly an outsider, if you aren't a native of the region.
- You need a message - something more detailed than "I will lift you up out of bondage". Find out what their biggest problems are and find something that sounds like a solution.
- You need a way to communicate your message to them in a way that doesn't get the existing authorities to come crush your movement.
- You need to distribute this message and build your support to a critical mass.
- You need a tipping point - a disaster, an assassination, something - that will force people on the fence to come down on one side or another, preferably your side.
- You need a core group of loyal followers to pick up the pieces from your tipping point and carry forward the momentum of your new order.
Let's look at Faduma and what she's doing in Somalia. Basically, the vampire queen is repeating this process in successively larger and larger circles. First her village, then her region, and eventually the whole country. She got her family together, organized them into a paramilitary squad, and ran off bandits and thieves. She fed and sheltered anyone who came to her village for aid, turned them into lesser vampires, and used them to build a base of support. She took that program to the larger region. Today she's helping deal with larger issues like qat addiction and land degradation due to poor agricultural practices.
Her people are her family, friends, and fellow Somalians, so she's got an advantage there. Her message is one of loyalty and independence. She's used targeted assassinations and vampiric conversion to great effect when dealing with the opposition. While some think that she's crazy for attacking UN troops instead of making nice to receive UN humanitarian benefits, rejecting outside aid actually raises her esteem in the locals' eyes (for complex cultural reasons). While it does mean some extra suffering, it basically solidifies her control over her people.
She is very strict on thieves - no matter who stole from who. That said, she is perfectly fine with claiming the spoils of war from anyone who attacks her, and has amassed a decent fortune in doing so. She's been using this to buy arms on the international black market. Rather than enriching herself, she's treating such income more like a long-term investment, so clearly she has a bigger vision than just making herself feel good.
Ultimately, whether Faduma becomes Somalia's ruler or not, she's got what it takes to do the job. Her example is one that I'd recommend to any aspiring super-conqueror.
Monday, August 18, 2014
How to take over the world
I've talked several times with a villainous colleague, Dark Aleph, about taking over the world. It's not something I plan to do, but she has some very specific ideas - usually centered around bio-terrorism. I don't think she can succeed, but I humor her. That said, I do think it'd be helpful for new villains to understand why taking over the world isn't something that supers can easily do. Then I'll talk about a group that disagrees with me.
What it means
"Taking over the world" means two things from a practical perspective: eliminating sources of opposition, and guaranteeing compliance with your agenda.
Eliminating sources of opposition requires that you basically destroy the command and control centers of every major world power. And the first step of that process means total nuclear disarmament.
You start with the sovereigns, aka the "nuclear club": the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, the United Kingdom, and France. Nukes are also stored in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Italy. Just to be safe, you want to sweep the former Soviet republics. Theoretically these were all transferred back to Russia, but to believe that you'd have to trust the Russians. You also have to scrub Germany, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, Taiwan, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Canada, all of whom are the proverbial screwdriver's turn away from having nukes.
Why nukes? Because no super has survived the blast of a multi-megaton detonation, and it's very likely that no conceivable super could do so. I know one who survived a kiloton blast, and she was intensely unhappy with the experience. If you really become a global tyrant, someone will find a way to get a suitcase nuke to go off in your face, and that's the end of that. So: no nukes.
Any country on that list is also a country that could mount a significant military opposition to your plans, so at that point you're done. After that, you mostly worry about the intelligence services of Russia and Israel, and the special forces of Germany, Britain, and South Africa.
Oh, and while you're at it, you have to kill every significant superhero out there. Good luck with that.
Guaranteeing compliance with your agenda requires that you subvert the dominant political groups active in a region, or change the culture enough that people will accept you as monarch. The former is far easier in a democracy - you take over the Parliament or the Congress or whatever, install a figurehead from the local population, and go to work. The latter is very difficult; cultural changes happen over generations, not years or months. So my advice is to follow the example of the Romans, who put local leaders in charge and just rolled in once a year to collect taxes.
Overall, you'll find this a very hard sell in democracies where the culture of freedom is strong, like America. Natives of the US will violently resist any outside attempts to control them. You find similar veins of strong nationalism in the UK (look up "euroscepticism" sometime for examples) and elsewhere.
Why it won't work
Essentially, there are too many moving parts in a real government, much less a dozen or more of them. One nuke, one assassin, one crucial betrayal, and it's all over.
Some hardcore bad guys prefer the simplicity of the alternative: depopulation. Kill 90% of the planet, they reason, and you've eliminated 90% of the opposition. Ethical considerations aside, the remaining 10% will include the leaders of government and heads of the military and intelligence apparatus, who have been planning for exactly this sort of attack for years.
The US recently released details of "Project Cycle", a set of operations that were put together between 1962 and 1972 as contingencies against a superhuman uprising. Their planning has certainly gotten better since then, and there's no unclassified reports post-1972 to figure out just what they have up their sleeves.
Even assuming you also killed off every hero that's out there - somehow - it's not like new heroes aren't being born daily. Down the road, you'll be facing someone younger and more determined than you, and possibly tougher.
Who's trying it anyway
Persistent rumors in the villain community talk about an organization known as "the Pact". These guys supposedly are working on a plan for world domination, and they have an unbeatable selling point. "Work with us," they say, "and we'll make you immortal". Don't scoff - according to the rumors, the Pact has some sort of way to resurrect the dead, provided they've been through some sort of initiation process. Even if you commit suicide in a jail cell, they say, the Pact could bring you back.
If true - and frankly, it's so incredible I don't see how it could be - then they represent probably the only group capable of true world domination. But again, it's just a rumor.
What it means
"Taking over the world" means two things from a practical perspective: eliminating sources of opposition, and guaranteeing compliance with your agenda.
Eliminating sources of opposition requires that you basically destroy the command and control centers of every major world power. And the first step of that process means total nuclear disarmament.
You start with the sovereigns, aka the "nuclear club": the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, the United Kingdom, and France. Nukes are also stored in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Italy. Just to be safe, you want to sweep the former Soviet republics. Theoretically these were all transferred back to Russia, but to believe that you'd have to trust the Russians. You also have to scrub Germany, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, Taiwan, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Canada, all of whom are the proverbial screwdriver's turn away from having nukes.
Why nukes? Because no super has survived the blast of a multi-megaton detonation, and it's very likely that no conceivable super could do so. I know one who survived a kiloton blast, and she was intensely unhappy with the experience. If you really become a global tyrant, someone will find a way to get a suitcase nuke to go off in your face, and that's the end of that. So: no nukes.
Any country on that list is also a country that could mount a significant military opposition to your plans, so at that point you're done. After that, you mostly worry about the intelligence services of Russia and Israel, and the special forces of Germany, Britain, and South Africa.
Oh, and while you're at it, you have to kill every significant superhero out there. Good luck with that.
Guaranteeing compliance with your agenda requires that you subvert the dominant political groups active in a region, or change the culture enough that people will accept you as monarch. The former is far easier in a democracy - you take over the Parliament or the Congress or whatever, install a figurehead from the local population, and go to work. The latter is very difficult; cultural changes happen over generations, not years or months. So my advice is to follow the example of the Romans, who put local leaders in charge and just rolled in once a year to collect taxes.
Overall, you'll find this a very hard sell in democracies where the culture of freedom is strong, like America. Natives of the US will violently resist any outside attempts to control them. You find similar veins of strong nationalism in the UK (look up "euroscepticism" sometime for examples) and elsewhere.
Why it won't work
Essentially, there are too many moving parts in a real government, much less a dozen or more of them. One nuke, one assassin, one crucial betrayal, and it's all over.
Some hardcore bad guys prefer the simplicity of the alternative: depopulation. Kill 90% of the planet, they reason, and you've eliminated 90% of the opposition. Ethical considerations aside, the remaining 10% will include the leaders of government and heads of the military and intelligence apparatus, who have been planning for exactly this sort of attack for years.
The US recently released details of "Project Cycle", a set of operations that were put together between 1962 and 1972 as contingencies against a superhuman uprising. Their planning has certainly gotten better since then, and there's no unclassified reports post-1972 to figure out just what they have up their sleeves.
Even assuming you also killed off every hero that's out there - somehow - it's not like new heroes aren't being born daily. Down the road, you'll be facing someone younger and more determined than you, and possibly tougher.
Who's trying it anyway
Persistent rumors in the villain community talk about an organization known as "the Pact". These guys supposedly are working on a plan for world domination, and they have an unbeatable selling point. "Work with us," they say, "and we'll make you immortal". Don't scoff - according to the rumors, the Pact has some sort of way to resurrect the dead, provided they've been through some sort of initiation process. Even if you commit suicide in a jail cell, they say, the Pact could bring you back.
If true - and frankly, it's so incredible I don't see how it could be - then they represent probably the only group capable of true world domination. But again, it's just a rumor.
Werewolves
Short version: yeah, they're real, just like vampires.
Some junior villains felt like I pissed in their Wheaties by talking about chi powers like they aren't a real thing. I'll throw those guys a bone and talk about something that is legitimate - even if it's not what they expected. Most of what I know about werewolves comes from two sources. The first is the supervillain Wolf 359, who is one. The second is the genetic testing of the remains of a guy named Jack Gamble, buried in Providence.
Interview With a Werewolf
First, here's Wolf 359's take on lycanthropy:
Jack Gamble had been locked away in Rhode Island after accusations of witchcraft, but he died before the case could be heard by a judge. Unlike Salem, there wasn't a huge witch scare, so it didn't get much press. But there was enough evidence of interest that a parabiologist named Steve Hodgson received permission from the town of Providence to excavate Gamble's grave. He published his findings, which suggested that Gamble's body had both human and lupine genes. Though actual evidence of super-potential will have long since decayed, he had enough for a hypothesis.
Essentially, Hodgson speculated that Gamble was a super, and that his power let him change his body's gene expression. Only about 9% of all human DNA has meaningful gene sequences, allowing for two or three other alternate forms and the possibility of hybridization between them. Hodgson's hypothesis was later tested on DNA taken from Wolf 359, and accepted for inclusion in the TCC.
How did Jack Gamble become a werewolf? In legend, you'll find stories like people being given a magic belt by the devil. A werewolf's bite is reputed to be contagious as well. Like vampires, it's said that the victim of a werewolf attack can become a werewolf. In practice, we're not sure of the reality of this - Wolf 359 either can't or won't create more werewolves, and he's not talking about the process. I couldn't get anything else about it from him, even speculation.
The Beast of Gévaudan, in France, is widely considered to be an attack by regular wolves, not actual werewolves.
The Transformation
Do you become a monster on the full moon? Apparently not. Hodgson interviewed folklorists and historians, who suggested that peasant superstition attributed occult significance to the full moon. Anything that would make someone fearful - the night, the full moon, Friday the 13th, having your ex-wife meet your mistress - would tend to trigger the transformation.
The transformation is apparently physically painful - the super's body changes its default gene expression to either full wolf or hybrid man-wolf, and then triggers a rapid regeneration cycle.
Werewolves may or may not retain their full consciousness. Because the genes being expressed can include those affecting the glands, a human brain can be overwhelmed with foreign neurochemistry.
Vulnerabilities
Pseudaconitine, the toxin which is derived from Aconitum or "wolfsbane", is a poison no matter who gets it. That said, it apparently interacts with the receptors present in a werewolf's body and not only reverts their hybrid transformation in large doses, but also interferes with the normal super's healing factor. It's been used successfully to hunt and trap Wolf 359.
Despite high hopes from Pyrepower and other young villains, apparently there is not a secret war going on between vampires and werewolves. Pyrepower also assures me that she's a member of Team Edward.
Some junior villains felt like I pissed in their Wheaties by talking about chi powers like they aren't a real thing. I'll throw those guys a bone and talk about something that is legitimate - even if it's not what they expected. Most of what I know about werewolves comes from two sources. The first is the supervillain Wolf 359, who is one. The second is the genetic testing of the remains of a guy named Jack Gamble, buried in Providence.
Interview With a Werewolf
First, here's Wolf 359's take on lycanthropy:
Lycanthropy is the condition wherein a human becomes a wolf - or a hybrid between man and wolf. This section of the Transhuman Capability Catalog will be revised in the next edition, but currently lycanthropy is in under TCC T - adoption of animal traits. Other forms of shape-shifting exist under the blanket term "therianthropy". It is surmised that the most common animal observed is the wolf, due to the wolf's proximity to early human settlements, the fear of the wolf by the most widespread members of then-contemporary culture (farmers, ranchers, and woodsmen), and the relative merits of the wolf form versus others.
Therianthropes are Stage 3 or higher human beings. TCC T forensics indicate that animal attack is a factor in adoption of this power. The body adapts to the attacker's physical characteristics and activates savage instincts suitable for an immediate counterattack. A fascinating, if unverified, data point is that every Stage 2 who has been attacked by a therianthrope became one as well. Could this attack vector override the normal Hashmal process of power selection?Historical Werewolves
Jack Gamble had been locked away in Rhode Island after accusations of witchcraft, but he died before the case could be heard by a judge. Unlike Salem, there wasn't a huge witch scare, so it didn't get much press. But there was enough evidence of interest that a parabiologist named Steve Hodgson received permission from the town of Providence to excavate Gamble's grave. He published his findings, which suggested that Gamble's body had both human and lupine genes. Though actual evidence of super-potential will have long since decayed, he had enough for a hypothesis.
Essentially, Hodgson speculated that Gamble was a super, and that his power let him change his body's gene expression. Only about 9% of all human DNA has meaningful gene sequences, allowing for two or three other alternate forms and the possibility of hybridization between them. Hodgson's hypothesis was later tested on DNA taken from Wolf 359, and accepted for inclusion in the TCC.
How did Jack Gamble become a werewolf? In legend, you'll find stories like people being given a magic belt by the devil. A werewolf's bite is reputed to be contagious as well. Like vampires, it's said that the victim of a werewolf attack can become a werewolf. In practice, we're not sure of the reality of this - Wolf 359 either can't or won't create more werewolves, and he's not talking about the process. I couldn't get anything else about it from him, even speculation.
The Beast of Gévaudan, in France, is widely considered to be an attack by regular wolves, not actual werewolves.
The Transformation
Do you become a monster on the full moon? Apparently not. Hodgson interviewed folklorists and historians, who suggested that peasant superstition attributed occult significance to the full moon. Anything that would make someone fearful - the night, the full moon, Friday the 13th, having your ex-wife meet your mistress - would tend to trigger the transformation.
The transformation is apparently physically painful - the super's body changes its default gene expression to either full wolf or hybrid man-wolf, and then triggers a rapid regeneration cycle.
Werewolves may or may not retain their full consciousness. Because the genes being expressed can include those affecting the glands, a human brain can be overwhelmed with foreign neurochemistry.
Vulnerabilities
Pseudaconitine, the toxin which is derived from Aconitum or "wolfsbane", is a poison no matter who gets it. That said, it apparently interacts with the receptors present in a werewolf's body and not only reverts their hybrid transformation in large doses, but also interferes with the normal super's healing factor. It's been used successfully to hunt and trap Wolf 359.
Despite high hopes from Pyrepower and other young villains, apparently there is not a secret war going on between vampires and werewolves. Pyrepower also assures me that she's a member of Team Edward.
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