OhGodItsHimRun
Newbie
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.
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.