Amateur writer seeking superheroic character imagery

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There's a novella I've been trying to write for the better part of a year now. A superhero setting with a Renaissance-fantasy backdrop, with its central protagonist being this world's equivalent to Lex Luthor. And I want the superheroes standing in his way to have more in common with the old-school "Warriors of Light" motifs than they do with the Justice League (not to discount the Marvel characters or their imagery, but referencing Lex Luthor puts me into a DC metaphor by default).

My villain-protagonist is a very old and very scary vampire, who left home for a few centuries, came back, and has taken it quite personally that these heroes are living in his father's citadel. Bear in mind, this WILL NOT be one of those vampires who spends years at a time moaning about how terrible it is to be young and beautiful forever, with at least half a dozen different superpowers to choose from in response to any given problem. To dip into FF Tactics / FF 5 parlance, he's a fully mastered Dark Knight, as well as being most of the way mastered as a Geomancer and Monk, and he's a decent enough Necromancer, with a hold of the basics as a Beastmaster (not so much with the mesmerism elsewise); in short, this vampire is neither afraid nor ashamed to be awesome.

But a direct confrontation against multiple people with unknown varieties of magically-powered combat prowess didn't work out that well for him the first time around, so he moved himself into a position to take over control of the city's organized crime networks, thereby gaining an army willing to go to war with the heroes, when he has the strategic plan properly in place.

I've got the villain-protagonist; I've got the narrating private investigator he'll be hiring, and the murder mystery he'll want an impartial investigation of before the city's vampiric community draws superheroic attention to themselves and disrupts his decades-long planning.

But I don't have the superheroes yet. The force which will be standing in his way as he makes his move to retake his father's house (and the city with it).

This is probably because I haven't actually played the FF games in roughly 20 years. And there's only so much I can absorb from wiki-reading.

I am looking for suggestions of character imagery that would be both in keeping with the old-school (before MMOs or PVP became a thing) iconic Jobs of the Final Fantasy franchise, and suitable for superheroic action, in a city whose military technology and tactics would be at home in the world of The Three Musketeers.

For reference: Single-shot flintlocks make wonderful weapons for holding people at bay in an ambush, but most of a soldier's killing is done with his sword. That is, before superheroic capabilities (AKA Job features) get into it.

I don't want there to be any Necromancer or Dark Knight among the heroes, because battle scenes between characters with basically-identical powers are very boring to write. But any other notions that anyone has will be greatly appreciated (including any composite imagery drawing from multiple Jobs at once). This story's been taunting me for many months, and I am hoping that this forum's deeper pool of inspiration will be just the thing for my conundrum.

Thank you for your consideration.
 
There are lots of recurring job roles / character archetypes which Final Fantasy returns to from time to time.

Here’s a job which you might consider to get this started:

Summoner.
This job allows the character to summon a monster / magical godlike beings. In Final Fantasy there are a number of staples which get reused (such as Ifrit, Shiva, Bahamut, Leviathan and Ramuh). The summoned creatures are either bestial or humanoid deities, and they often have elemental affinities. The cost for summoning them is usually much higher than a standard magic spell, and they are much more powerful. In FFXV the summoned beings are more literal gods and are truly colossal in size, but in most other games they are at least small enough to fit on the screen.

Sometimes the summoned creatures serve a role in the plot. There's a recurring theme where a particular summon lies dormant in an area already familiar to the player ready to surprise the player at a plot-relevant moment and save the day.

In the FF series the summoners themselves have taken a number of different forms. The early summoners tended to wear robes (green and yellow robes would be standard) and they also had horns on their forehead. For the most part the horn concept was abandoned (although it saw a revival with FFIX's summoner Eiko). They usually use a rod, staff or wand as a weapon.

Here are some images of summoners of note relevant to the aesthetics of your preferred time period:

(I do apologise for the size of some of the following images - they are all I could find in a hurry )

FF5-Summoner.png
(Galuf, Faris, Bartz, Reina/Lenna and Krile from FFV)

latest

(Rydia from FFIV)

latest


(Eiko from FFIX)

latest


(Garnet from FFIX)

cg-07.jpg

(Terra from FFVI - not always classed as a summoner as all characters can summon in that game. However Terra is the character with the closest connection to summons / Espers in the game)

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More vaguely the standard Final Fantasy job classes have been Warrior, Monk, White Mage and Black Mage.

These are standard RPG roles with the Warrior using heavy weapons, the monk using fists or claws (etc), and the White Mage and Black Mage using white or black magic respectively.
 
I remember Rydia well from FF4, but I am quite certain that I'd rather avoid Summoners as a skillset, for two reasons.

First and foremost, they suffer from what I think of as the Voltron problem. Ninety percent of the potential for dramatic conflict evaporates the instant the embodiment of overwhelming force arrives on the stage. Which doesn't make for good superhero storycrafting. Superheroes need to put themselves in harm's way and make a stand there on their own capabilities; so the ability to summon a friendly Godzilla is overkill.

A Beastmaster with a magical warbeast of some sort would still be entirely valid, as long as the scale was low enough to not invalidate the human half of the partnership. Sense making?

The second part of the reason why I'm not keen on Summoners for these heroes is that I'm working in an original setting, weaving in narrative elements from superhero comics/cartoons, The Three Musketeers, John Carter Of Mars, Warhammer Fantasy (primarily the requirements for making new vampires), and of course the Final Fantasy franchise. So I'm wary of dipping too deeply into any one source; the creation myth I've developed is mostly reflecting the origins of the many races of Barsom; with a hint of Babylonian mythology for the cycle of mythic ages...

Let's just say that either folding in Efreet + Shiva + Indra / Ramuh or coming up with new godlike Esper-beings would be a lot of mythology at cross purposes with what I have for the Dragons and the Storms, the Svsh and Eyavaa and Hogh'raal and P'dthihl, the Humans and Kohveyr and Grikkik and Nuahot.

...I've got a whole bunch of mythology already (grins). And I want to keep this an original work, drawing on the nostalgia, without going near the copyrights.

Sense making?
 
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