Aberrant RPG - Miracleman in Aberrant

[metaphysician]

Okay, for those of us here that have read, or at least know something about, Alan Moore's Miracleman. What would Miracleman think of the Aberrant world?? What would he do, if you dropped him, the other Gods of New Olympus, and their resources into the Aberrant world?? How would the world respond to him??

Most importantly, what would happen if Divis Mal and Miracleman talked about their respective ideals, goals, and achievements: what would they think of each other??

[Quantum Promise]

Not sure, I was only ever able to get my hands on #2 of the Miracleman run. Could you give us a breakdown of the character (motives, powers, personality, etc.)?

[metaphysician]

http://www.aric-dacia.com/miracleman.htm

This RPG write-up includes a decent summary of everything Miracleman learned about his past in the first 4 issues of the run.

http://www.disappearhere.org/_marvelman/

And this site has the entire rest of the Moore run.

Enjoy.

[Gideon]

Okay I know this line was "dead" but I finally caught it, and wanted to add my two cents.

First: Metaphysician, thank you. I had completely missed the MiracleMan stories, and yet I call myself an Alan Moore fan...*sigh*

I have now done my homework and read all I could find on him and the history links between the Marvel family, the miracle family ad the Supreme family...

Of the three it was the Miracle Family I knew the least about.

I think that MiracleMan hghlites one of the criticle flaws in Divis Mal's plans, and that is the permitting of the baseline governemnts to maintain their stock of nuclear devices. If Divis had waited until the end of WWII and the decline of the Adventure Era heroes, he could have secretly moved to destroy all of the nuclear devices with his superpowers and abilities. Even if he waited until the 1980s he could have quickly removed the greatest weapon of the baselines and rose up as a unconquerable dictator.

Now, before everyone rises up to decry this act as something Divis would NEVER do. I would like to establish a couple points (then everyone can decry my conclusion! ::hehe )

Warning possible cannon and metaplot spoilers!!

?SPOILERS?

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?SPOILERS?

Divis has stated on multiple occasions that he desires "equals" (Aberrant: Teragen [A:Tg]).

Divis has also stated that baselines are not the equals of novas (in the Null Manifesto excerpts).

Divis has also stated that most of the Teragen membership are not his equals (A:Tg).

One may infer then that Divis is looking not for other novas to share eternity with, but an evolved form of nova with comparable mental and physical abilities.

Now a quick side-line about concepts of Power.

Divis is the most powerful nova/quantum entity on earth (perhaps the universe). He apparently arranges for the quantum levels to raise accross the earth thus creating more potential peers, BUT he does this before he attempts to consolidate the quantum-powered individualss already in existance. (Yes, he meets with a few potent novas, but he hardly consolidates a majority)

PoliSci theory states that hoarding of power allows greater control of a population, but that sharing of power increases its capabilities. The odd thing about Divis' actions is that Divis "shares" the power before he has shaped the population to an optimal state.

This is where MiracleMan and Divis diverge philosophically.

MiracleMan and his cohorts take control of the world before they give their power to the world. to make a world "without gods" (i.e. everyone is super-powered).

Divis decides to give the power to the world and attempts to deal only with those who ascend into nova-hood. the problem is, the established power structure opposes his plans. Even an adolescent Vampire player knows that the "elders" will confound and oppose the young blood, even if the young blood is more powerful in direct conflict, so why does Divis over-look this?

I honestly think that Divis is naive and selfish to think that he can ignore the facts of the situation and chose to only focus on a globally significant, but small population of entities. If he REALLY wanted his brotherhood of novas he would have spent more time collaborating before 98 gathering ALL the novas he could, and then consolidating the breeding stock, removing crime, war and poverty. Once he removed strife from the baseline population he would have an ideal breeding population for his novas. Yes, he would have had to dealt with a few individual novas, but as he showed in WorldWide 2 he can handle ANY direct nova threat.

This make much more sense than empowering the world randomly and seeing what falls out. I think Avirel (Ms Miracle) would have had more than a few choice words for Divis (MiracleMan would be a little out of his depth in the Aberrant world).

[knave]

honestly think that Divis is naive and selfish to think that he can ignore the facts of the situation and chose to only focus on a globally significant, but small population of entities. If he REALLY wanted his brotherhood of novas he would have spent more time collaborating before 98 gathering ALL the novas he could, and then consolidating the breeding stock, removing crime, war and poverty. Once he removed strife from the baseline population he would have an ideal breeding population for his novas. Yes, he would have had to dealt with a few individual novas, but as he showed in WorldWide 2 he can handle ANY direct nova threat.

You're assuming that certain things are even possible. Put it this way, last time I heard, it was possible to wipe out famine NOW by shifting global defence budgets into global hunger and education budgets...

So - suppose that Divis has come to believe, during his hundred or so years of life, that the nature of homo sapiens sapiens is to be divided and should anything challenge that divide, it will reinstate itself through violence... He grows upset. He wants to start again. He figures out a power that will cause others to start expressing Nova powers. He possibly believes that this new species will be like him - will see that the only way to prosper is to co-operate. Some of them prove to be so and some of them don't. However, he will not force his views on anyone - humans or novas. He sees human attempts to impose laws on Novas as hypocritical and unjust because he doesn't want to believe that Nova society is as inherently flawed as human society is. He doesn't believe that humans and novas should mix because he feels that Novas who associate with humans are becoming involved human politics - which he sees as unfair, and because it will lead to jealous hatred from the unwashed masses who haven't got the advantages that novas do.

Everything Divis did seems perfectly reasonable - except the UN massacre... he should have taken all the novas and left long before that.

[Alex Green]

The UN thing was only one guy. You can call it murder, but not a massacre.

And I think the thing most people miss is that Divis is nuts. Both of the high level Mental aberrations in the core book describe him. Megalomania (he thinks he is god) and Schizophrenia (he is dealing with his own reality and not the real world's). I've always felt that, and then I re-read the Teragen book the other night and came across a reference where Sofia was wondering why Divis was so removed from reality.

Yes, he has a 10 Willpower, and Taint Resistance, and this helps a lot. But that just means that he is somewhat functional.

On a side note, by the Trinity era he has supposedly left the Earth by creating his own universe. No one has raised the issue of theme for this action, but what if is was *really* in theme? He created his own universe, because he had already created his own universe.

[Gideon]

Ouch! ::wacko I thinkI just had an epiphiwhat.

Bad Alex, you are not supposed to turn the entire setting into dream sequence! ::laugh

I mean just thinking about how the entire setting is Divis' subconscious reaction to the explosion, thus shunting him to his own universe...*shivers* I mean then is he REALLY creating a new universe or returning to his original to replay the last two centuries with some foreknowledge? ::confused

Well, I guess MiracleMan could appreciate a fellow whos lived their entire life in a dream (or alternate universe). And I have to agree I figure he has a bit of Taint, considering it probably took him a while to figure out the Chrysalise technique. Though the system does have a way to convert mental aberrations to physical ones. Of course one has to recognize that they even have a mental aberration...

fun fun.

[Alex Green]

Assuming the "he" here is Divis, then I'm not sure he does have taint. The only reason for him to develop and enter Chrys was to reduce his taint. He certainly doesn't need (or presumably use) it for the reduced cost for experience. But the guy MUST have aberrations.

If you assume that he has Mega-Int 8 + Taint Resist + Willpower 10, then choosing mental aberrations makes a great deal of sense.

He went through Chry 4 times. If you assume he had Chr=6 each time, then he must have picked up 16 levels of aberrations (in addition to what ever taint ones he has). Minor = 1 level. Medium = 2. Major = 4. 4x(1+1+2).

Try these for size:

Glowing Eyes. (1)

Anima Banner:Flame. (1)

Unearthly Beauty (1)

Obsession: His social theories (2)

Obsession: Q Development (2)

Megalomania (4)

Schizophrenia (4)

And that is 12 levels right there (the Glowing Eyes I assume is from taint).

The other hint we have aberration wise is that his presense (or power) is called addictive or something (Bounty refered to this while he was in Chry in the Teragen book). If we call that major then we have 16 levels right there. Other possibilities are a vulnerability magnetics and/or a feeding requirement.