Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Printable Version
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Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Tindome - 12-15-2014
DUE TO HIGH LEVELS OF INTEREST here is a worldbuilding thread for Las Ballenas. Here is all the informal stuff I have going on in my brainmeats:
<ul type="disc]<li>I based it on San Diego and the Inland Empire and the name is an Anchorman joke because I am insufferable
</li><li>Much like Valesport, I like it to be slightly self-contained just to avoid any wide-reaching implications. Those kinds of things (far-reaching governmental and world politics changes etc) make for interesting novels but hella heavy lore for a roleplay. I prefer to keep lore light in general just to make things easier for newbs to jump in? So outside Las Ballenas the craziness of it is probably widely considered to be exaggerated.
</li><li>"TV rules" might be a better explanation for it, with Valesport analogous to Supernatural and Las Ballenas analogous to Eureka. Did anyone else watch Eureka? Whatever idc you get what I mean here probably</li><li>'Somebody Else's Problem Field' is another good way to think about the valley, although I haven't decided if there is actual fuckery in place or just human nature
</li><li>Any good comic has way more villains than heroes so that's probably true here as well</li><li>I have seriously not put very much thought into this at all aside from "it's a lot like my hometown but some of those assholes have superstrength"
</li></ul>
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - sir - 12-15-2014
I absolutely do not qualify as high levels of interest, although possibly me and Dani do in conjunction?
Anyways here is the crap I wanted to dump in here:
<ul type="disc]
<li>I was completely serious when I said I wanted the mayor to be a huge brain who projects the SEP field.</li>
<li>I had an idea about early superheroes in the area being mostly vigilantes and also mostly growing out of high-crime, low-income areas with a strong immigrant population. As more powerful metahumans gravitate to the city, particularly the Stark/Reed types, it's entirely possible there's a culture clash with those older 'Guerreros'. </li>
<li>I mostly want to talk more about the superhero college thing, so I am calling out Tinnyface to post all her characters that I KNOW she has for it and then I will post some stuff riffing on it maybe.</li>
<li>I also had this old idea about superheroes mostly being organized into groups/teams/leagues with the league itself holding legal responsibility for each of its members, as a sort of explanation for how you allow vigilantism without it going super crazy.</li>
<li>I also have some vague ideas about evil organizations (The Eos Collective is the one I have a name for) that I may discuss later.</li>
</ul>
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Tindome - 12-15-2014
Ahaha, none of my college professors are actually superheroes, though! There's just Nadine's parents (who you know all about), and I guess the vampire who teaches history and uses immortality as a way to learn all the things. And that last guy is kind of up in the air, I might do it but I might not (I'm mostly amused by him living in fear of Nadia because she'll straight up stab him in the eye with a silver knitting needle she dgaf).
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Tindome - 12-15-2014
And for other Las Ballenas characters I have the couriers for ???? ??????? and people that Nadine knew when she was young but dassit (there is some overlap in these groups)
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - sir - 12-15-2014
You don't necessarily have to be a superhero to to teach superheroes, though?
Although I guess you might want superhero faculty.
Anyways I also just want your general thoughts about it, anything you've got really because I would like to see it happen.
Also I was trying to get a workable version of an idea I liked, which is that there's some organization that deliberately goes out and tries to get a hold of metahumans that have bad home lives and sort of adopts them and tries to make them into these principled heroic types?
And they're generally well-meaning and not deliberately murderous or necessarily bad people, but at the same time they do go out and take kids. And they do raise them in this creche environment, and try to inculcate values, which are not bad values but are subjective ones.
Is this stupid Y/N
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Kat - 12-15-2014
So, Vance is likely not good - but this doesn't make him a powerhouse villain; more like a merciless vigilante type?
Mild mannered and a bit eccentric, but most people don't know:
a) what he's up to in his lab
b) how Noel died
c) why he takes extended absences from time to time
d) why he frequents certain locations in the city with an almost religious conviction
People he worked with at the potential college would know he /had/ a wife, or they assume he still /has/ a wife, but they don't talk about it with him for fear of his response.
also, yes, Vance is a kind of Mr. Freeze based character - villain for personal reasons, driven by love and desperation vs money, power, or fame.
Has a suit, wears it when he's doing bad things.
Obviously no one knows he's Cryo - which is the laziest name ever for a Cryomancer character, but zz.
Maybe it'll change.
Also, I lived in San Diego for a long time if you ever need info for reference. c:
I like how our settings are based on places I lived. o wo
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Tindome - 12-15-2014
Haha, it's a weird coincidence because I mostly wanted to base them on places that I'd lived!
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Kat - 12-15-2014
Did you grow up military? o:
Long story short, I've always lived within x distance of a military base because
a) dad was army, but he was a recruiter in San Diego - we lived elsewhere as well, and I was back in San Diego when ex and I split-
b) husband was navy before he and I split, and we were in Connecticut initially for the sub base, and we stayed in Boston because Mass. is ridiculously close and Groton/New London was awful
3) I was actually born overseas in Germany. c:
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Tindome - 12-15-2014
Hee, my parents met when my mom was in the Navy and my dad was a Marine but that's actually unrelated, since they both got out when I was little little :3 Dad's side of the family lived in Weymouth, Mom's side lived all over Michigan, and when I was seven or so my dad moved to California because he knew some people (when I was born they were in California for military biz). I just moved between all those places a lot for divorce reasons. Lots of road trips~
I never actually lived in San Diego or Boston though, just... near there. And visited a lot. My family generally likes living in the middle of nowhere so I always live in bumfuck. So when it comes to actual cities with skyscrapers and shit I am awful, I have no idea what it would be like to live there. owo
INCIDENTALLY andrew I like your idea for a shadowy quasi-governmental agency or what have you, I think it is an idea with potentials
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Kat - 12-15-2014
That sounds interesting, Tindome.
That's a good life story to work out, if you ever felt the inkling to do that sort of thing.
Lives with lots of travel and transit always seem so interesting to me, which is likely why half my characters are just glorified nomadic bums. :B
I did a lot of moving around but no one appreciates their own story as much as someone elses, right?
All the weird shit I've got to show for it isn't weird to me, so. :c
Annnnd that sounds like a good idea.
I've been toying with a concept I used in the writing prompt thread back on Tentacl; there's a registered coalition of heroes who's secret identities are kept top secret to the general public, but in the case they plan to go totally off the deep end, they can be acknowledged for what they are, and be tracked by registration. Not every meta would be part of this, but this would be how the overall government knew who was 'on their side', so it would have the Supermans of the world setting under it's employ.
In turn, there would be small pockets of criminals, varying from shady crime syndicates to gang banger level thugs, and their crime would be human level - but widespread?
And then, I'm sure there's some small pact of big baddies in whatever manner they happen to be organized. They would be the sort of Magneto mofos one would expect of a Super Villain archetype.
Buuuuuuuuut idk. The setting is pretty open to whatever direction seems most appealing to everyone.
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - danixiewrites - 12-15-2014
ZOMFG I loved Eureka. LOVED. <3333
.........And now I want to make Skybux sentient. Orsomeotherlocalethisisaterribleideastopme!
The college staff probably has a crapton of geniuses who think they've got all the biology figured out. And then also some superheroes on hand, both for classes in specific skillsets--and for when if turns out the former definitely don't have it figured out.
But yes--lots of geniuses. Lots of science. Lots of experiments (and attempts to figure out superhero/villain-ness, of course). Lots of ways for things to go wrong.
Huzzah for the foster cult, and lots of hero v villain angst. So is LB as a whole enclosed, then?
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - danixiewrites - 12-15-2014
A hero registration! *flails* There be lots of awesome ideas up in here :D
It works both scenarios too, if metas wind up more public in the LB setting--that clandestine group could be more the "undercover" superheroes who haven't been outed, and then useless to their agency/thegovernment if they are?
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Tindome - 12-15-2014
I figure the college is mostly going to end up being mad-science-central. As for the rest, any worldbuilding I've done has sort of been a side effect of Nadine's backstory (which in turn was a tongue-in-cheek effort to look at what it would be like to grow up as a normal human person in a place like Gaia where it seems like everyone is born setting shit on fire with their brains or whatever). So most of my imaginings are things like, there are special schools for metas and special no-metas-allowed schools but most of the public schools are mixed.
I wouldn't say it's enclosed, but certain people prefer to stay while others are 'encouraged'. If you've got crazy superpowers out the wazoo it is probably clear to you that you can get away with more in Las Ballenas, unlike somewhere like Valesport where you'd have to go incognito.
I tend never to think about big picture because I'm mostly interested in little people doing little things @w@;;;
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - sir - 12-16-2014
What if it's not just mad science, but all sorts of madness, in competition?
The school could be the result of a merger of several previously-competing institutions: magically empowered metas had a coven, mad science/gadgeteer types had an institute, and mutants and similar had a 'school for the gifted'. That worked fine for a while, but now that the population in Las Ballenas is so dense with supers, they needed to centralize to be competitive and to deal with the volume.
So you have this fun kind of patchwork campus; the history and english departments skew magical and use a lot of gothic arches, the engineering and applied sciences building is a gleaming geodesic dome, and the biology and physical education portion of the campus is red-brick buildings in a near-constant state of being demolished and rebuilt (because learning to control your mutant powers is hard).
Faculty meetings tend to be somewhat fraught and rivalry is still present, but these days usually non-fatal. Classes on the proper use and ethics of powers are central to the curriculum. Various members of the faculty are also quietly known to maintain 'outside ties' to various organizations- heroic, villainous, and governmental- and one of the school's unspoken purposes is to provide a large sample size for data regarding metahumans.
The dean is The Ubiquity Collective, consisting of 200 flickering dimensional variations of the same person: their dimension-hopping is a natural mutation activated by a magical device augmented by super-science, so they bridge most of the gaps.
Las Ballenas Worldbuilding - Tindome - 12-16-2014
:eee: