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Good morning, afternoon, or evening ladies and gentlemen, androids, extraterrestrials, and anyone else who may be present! Allow me to introduce myself: I’m Lord Captain Megavolt, a sci-fi and fantasy nerd who can’t draw humanoids or other living things. Thus, when I discovered HeroMachine, I did the only sensible thing and spent several days faffing around trying to work out how in tarnation the editor worked.
Now, after all of the aforementioned faffing around, I hereby introduce myself and my probable future failures and shenanigans on this forum, and bring my first crack at making something good with HeroMachine:
Allow me to proudly present the first complete thing I ever made in HeroMachine, the cover for Chapter 1 of Phantom Star, a nonexistent sci-fi comic book I made up because reasons:
I dunno who the alien lady is yet, but I kinda whacked a design together as I went along, and I think I like the results.
Opinions?
Allow me to present, somewhat belatedly, my second creation, the Harvester of Gods, from the same universe as the alien from my first post:
(Recommended accompaniment: https://youtu.be/-Kk3z0bbtW0)
The year is 14,761. Humanity has spread far across the stars, and, united under the monolithic Galactic Consortium, has conquered worlds far and wide. Now, with resources running dry, and pressed in on all sides by alien powers millions of years older, the Consortium turns its hungry gaze upon unsuspecting independent worlds across the galaxy. Millions of ships were sent across the Drift to new frontiers, spewing forth unending legions of mass-manufactured synthetic soldiers and titanic war machines on unsuspecting worlds. Adapting to the new forms of resistance they encounter as they go, the Consortium begins to re-purpose the very technology that brought them to these new worlds as fearsome weapons. The pinnacle of their current development is the Harvester of Gods. Properly known as the Shadowstar Corporation J-2000 “Godslayer” mobile planetary siege platform, the Harvester is an immense quadromech war machine, bristling with all the latest and greatest Consortium weapons and defense technology. Equipped with its horrifying twin Armageddon Riftstorm Projectors, weaponized Drift-drives capable of consuming all life and energy, the J-2000 -series of Titan-class war machines are among the most fearsome forces the Consortium has at its disposal. None have yet withstood its might, but the universe is a big place…
I plan on expanding on this universe as I go along, probably with the common thread of future characters being that they come from a world invaded by the Galactic Consortium.
P.S. Sorry about the right side of the image; for some reason HeroMachine clipped off the right 1/2 centimeter on export no matter what I did.
Three months later, I’m back(ish), with two more Galactic Consortium units!
(sorry about hiatus, college happened)
The Galactic Consortium does not use normal human troops. Rather, their legions are almost entirely composed of Synths, lab-grown supersoldiers manufactured by the billions. Synths are fundamentally derived from human DNA, but have been extensively gene-tailored and cybernetically enhanced. Superficially, Synths resemble ordinary humans, but are distinguished by their unnaturally pale skin and pure white hair, bright red eyes, and massive size, towering over even the largest of regular humans at an average of 8 feet tall. However, below the surface they are radically different, having been redesigned on the cellular level for one purpose: war. Their notable features include carbotanium-nanopolymer reinforced cells, rendering them totally bulletproof to ordinary weapons and very difficult to harm; polyspectral eyesight with thermal, gamma, and even Drift-wave vision; completely redesigned muscle tissue with organic molecular actuators giving them the strength to effortlessly crush stone and steel with their bare hands; respiratory membrane-filters to protect them from even the most hostile of atmospheres; hyperefficient internal air bladders allowing them to survive unaided in deep space for days at a time; impact-dampening tissues to dissipate blunt-force trauma; multiple redundant backup organs; implanted sensors to allow for inhumanly precise perception and fast reaction; and a neural-implant comm relay enabling them to communicate rapidly with any other Consortium units over an entire planet so long as a Consortium ship or satellite relay is in orbit. Contrary to popular myth, Synths are not mindless drones with no free will, and in fact have almost as much personality as an ordinary human. Rather, they are controlled simply by a fundamental indoctrination starting at “birth” – in essence, their personalities are hardcoded to be unswervingly patriotic and loyal to the Consortium.
Now, Synths come in multiple varieties, each suited specifically for a different task. As clones, all Synths of a single class look almost identical, but for subtle random genetic variations, and any personal changes an individual Synth chooses to adopt to distinguish themselves. At birth, Synths have no name, only an alphanumeric serial number, but they almost invariably pick up a nickname in the field which becomes their de facto name.
Now, with that
bit of lorewall of text out of the way, allow me to present my first two Synthtrooper designs:Assault Trooper:
Assault Troopers are the outriders of the Consortium’s forces, the lightning-fast shock troops that descend from orbit to make hit-and-run strikes on enemy fortifications and deployments, softening them up for the main assault while simultaneously garnering vital reconnaissance data. Clad in heavy sealed power armor and equipped with massive jetpacks, Assault Trooper fireteams are dropped directly from the launch bays of orbiting Consortium supercarriers onto an unsuspecting world below, burning across the sky at hypersonic velocities before suddenly decelerating, landing in the midst of the enemy lines, wreaking havoc, and retreating. Armaments vary based upon deployment, but the Assault Troopers’ archetypical weapon is the Krieger-Buzinsky MR-558 ‘Nidhogg’ fusion driver, a fearsome man-portable plasma shotgun ideal for devastating enemy troops at close range.
The Assault Trooper seen here is presently in the midst of maneuvering during an orbital descent.
Slayer:
Galactic Consortium Slayers are among the rare elite grade of the sprawling Synth armies, rarely deployed in large numbers due to how deadly even a single one is. Slayers feature a different augment package than most Synthtroopers, specifically tailored to their unique battlefield role. They have an unsurpassable femtosecond reaction time, tremendous strength and speed, and local ESP systems, and a Drift-powered contrivance known as an Acceleron, which enables them to perform hypersonic “dashes” across short distances, demolishing everything in their path with a wavefront of destructive energy. Slayers are armed with two colossal 7 foot long carbotanium greatswords with power-fielded edges, which they swing with effortless ease despite their massive size and weight, cutting swaths of destruction through enemy fortifications faster than a normal human mind can reasonably comprehend. It’s extraordinarily rare for more than a single Slayer to ever be deployed to a single conflict at once, and for good reason: Slayers have been known to defeat entire armies singlehandedly without being hit even once.
Here a Slayer stands victorious over an unseen foe on the scorched, war-torn crags of a planet under all-out Consortium siege, as bomber craft cruise past above and plasma beams lance down from orbit. Seems whoever owns this planet royally pissed the Consortium off, to warrant this treatment.
Okay, enough from the Consortium for now. Let’s see who some of their enemies are…
Navigator:
Name: Lewis Baxter
Alias: Navigator
Species: Terran
Planet of Origin: Tordan Eta
Occupation: Bounty hunter, private courier, pilot
Special Notes: Possesses limited precognition of movement and trajectory, I.e. he knows whether any vector of movement will hit it’s target or not. Thus, he has seemingly-perfect aim, improbable dodging skills, and a seemingly-supernatural gift for piloting and navigation, hence his nickname. Left-handed.
Bio: Lewis Baxter was born with a bizarre genetic anomaly that made his brain extraordinarily receptive to specific wavefront-disturbances in the Drift, giving him what essentially amounted to limited precognition of movement around him. Plagued by constant visions of all moving objects around him since a young age, he eventually received help in the form of a cybernetic implant that regulated his ‘extra sense’, as it were. Baxter soon discovered that his ability enabled him to almost perfectly know where a projectile would land before firing it, or where a spacecraft would go after a gravity-slingshot, and so on. He joined a local courier service as a pilot and served with them for several years, until the Galactic Consortium besieged and annexed Tordan Eta, putting him out of a home and a job. Since then, he has wandered the Frontier in his courier ship, now upgraded with aftermarket mods, hiring himself out as an independent courier, bounty hunter, pilot, and even sometimes spy to make a living. Somewhere along the line, the Consortium caught up to him after he smuggled liquid quadrium fuel across their borders, and it was here his ability was first put to the test wholesale. A full squad of Consortium troopers cornered him in a bazaar on Hifk II, only for him to slip between their bullets and put a few shots squarely into each one’s eyes. He’s never seen without his trademark custom Krieger-Buzinsky VX-99 “Falcon” plasma pistol, which, thanks to his mutation, he virtually never misses with.
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