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Lore Help 1: Celestial Dragons, and My Latest RPC -Activates Bulgarex Signal-
locochoco
Posts: 328 Arc User
I need help examining a new concept for a body of fan fiction to determine if it's viable and if any part of it conflicts with established canon, how to correct this with minimum collateral damage to the core concept. I'm not one to marry myself to any one concept or any given aspect of it, but I do like this one.
So I'll give you a rundown:
I need to know how many celestial dragons exist in the Co universe (or our local one
), who they are and what they represent, as well as any major, significant personal dynamics and history they have. This knowledge is required to better finalize the lore surrounding a young hero named White Talon. I invented a celestial dragon for his backstory and powers to rival the one dragon I was aware of.
This is Hanlong's story:
In the time before known mortal history, when gods were emerging from the star dust to take shape (so to speak), Hanlong was the greatest of the Celestial Dragons. He represented order, justice and peace (what I had until stopping to confirm everything with experts). Hanlong kept order among the other dragons, preventing them from pursuing their own motives and ends at the cost of one another or mortals. This made many of the other dragons resentful and spiteful.
The dragon of death challenged him, the two engaging in combat. As Hanlong had a moment of weakness and vulnerability during the clash, other dragons joined the fight, almost as if willed by impulse alone, or perhaps pack mentality. Hanlong is struck down, but his spirit lingers, spending the entirety of recorded history bestowing mortals with gifts to champion against the mingling's of the other dragons, spread virtue and fight evil to forge peace one nail and hinge at a time.
Hi Pan discovers the lost knowledge of Hanlong through the legends of his Champions and their recent historical brushes with the Red Banner both in China and America. Hi Pan fought Hanlong's last Champion, hoping to secure his power from the Westside native and vigilante hero. Hanlong killed Wayne Jackson, who had been known by many names, but was unable to obtain Hanlong's power before Wayne gave it up willingly in order to let Hanlong return it to its hiding place within a stone statuette of Hanlong located on a ship bound for one of Millennium City's museums where Ricky Feng picks it up 16 months later during a heist Hi Pan sent him on looking for the relic.
This isn't about Ricky, it's about everything around him. Hi Pan hopes to obtain this gift of Hanlong's power by force, using his magic to not only stop Hanlong from taking it away from his grasp, but to "properly wield it" by amplifying it through arcane means. Hi Pan hopes to amplify this power so much, he can confront and defeat another Celestial Dragon with it, consuming more of their powers like a stack effect.
Part of Ricky's concept is to make Hi Pan and the Banner a potentially far more dangerous threat, and to way more than Ricky's beloved Westside.
Edit #2: I'm working on a final arc for Ricky where Hi Pan does obtain his power and amplifies it, becoming a sort of quasi-dragon spirit, dubbing himself Panlong the Conqueror before a group of heroes subdue him. But the process does result in Hi Pan essentially snuffing out the spirit of Hanlong. Ricky retains his knowledge and skill in wushu, but no longer has Hanlong's superhuman Chi and such.
So. . . How broken are we?
Edit: I am a lore-whore, so yes, it really, really does matter to me if it's a bad canonical fit. I will change everything before I develop/write a snowflake.
So I'll give you a rundown:
I need to know how many celestial dragons exist in the Co universe (or our local one
), who they are and what they represent, as well as any major, significant personal dynamics and history they have. This knowledge is required to better finalize the lore surrounding a young hero named White Talon. I invented a celestial dragon for his backstory and powers to rival the one dragon I was aware of.This is Hanlong's story:
In the time before known mortal history, when gods were emerging from the star dust to take shape (so to speak), Hanlong was the greatest of the Celestial Dragons. He represented order, justice and peace (what I had until stopping to confirm everything with experts). Hanlong kept order among the other dragons, preventing them from pursuing their own motives and ends at the cost of one another or mortals. This made many of the other dragons resentful and spiteful.
The dragon of death challenged him, the two engaging in combat. As Hanlong had a moment of weakness and vulnerability during the clash, other dragons joined the fight, almost as if willed by impulse alone, or perhaps pack mentality. Hanlong is struck down, but his spirit lingers, spending the entirety of recorded history bestowing mortals with gifts to champion against the mingling's of the other dragons, spread virtue and fight evil to forge peace one nail and hinge at a time.
Hi Pan discovers the lost knowledge of Hanlong through the legends of his Champions and their recent historical brushes with the Red Banner both in China and America. Hi Pan fought Hanlong's last Champion, hoping to secure his power from the Westside native and vigilante hero. Hanlong killed Wayne Jackson, who had been known by many names, but was unable to obtain Hanlong's power before Wayne gave it up willingly in order to let Hanlong return it to its hiding place within a stone statuette of Hanlong located on a ship bound for one of Millennium City's museums where Ricky Feng picks it up 16 months later during a heist Hi Pan sent him on looking for the relic.
This isn't about Ricky, it's about everything around him. Hi Pan hopes to obtain this gift of Hanlong's power by force, using his magic to not only stop Hanlong from taking it away from his grasp, but to "properly wield it" by amplifying it through arcane means. Hi Pan hopes to amplify this power so much, he can confront and defeat another Celestial Dragon with it, consuming more of their powers like a stack effect.
Part of Ricky's concept is to make Hi Pan and the Banner a potentially far more dangerous threat, and to way more than Ricky's beloved Westside.
Edit #2: I'm working on a final arc for Ricky where Hi Pan does obtain his power and amplifies it, becoming a sort of quasi-dragon spirit, dubbing himself Panlong the Conqueror before a group of heroes subdue him. But the process does result in Hi Pan essentially snuffing out the spirit of Hanlong. Ricky retains his knowledge and skill in wushu, but no longer has Hanlong's superhuman Chi and such.
So. . . How broken are we?
Edit: I am a lore-whore, so yes, it really, really does matter to me if it's a bad canonical fit. I will change everything before I develop/write a snowflake.
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Comments
Hmm... Well, while very little of what you describe has been spelled out in Champions source books, it isn't wholly incompatible with what has been established. First of all, Oriental dragons exist in the Champions Universe, like every other mythic creature. The only named dragon of this type, Gulong, was assigned to guard the entrance to the hidden city of Agharti, home to powerful and malevolent mystic martial artists, to help keep them from escaping into the world to cause havoc.
As creatures of Chinese folk religion, dragons are part of the Celestial Bureaucracy of gods and spirits which runs the universe, so your Hanlong could have been given the task you describe. If you want to you can use your back story pretty much as you've written it; but some of the references you make, to the Cult of the Red Banner, the "dragon of death," and Hanlong empowering "champions," does raise some additional intriguing possibilities. Let me just run down the salient points, to see if any of them interest you and if you'd like to know more.
The Cult of the Red Banner worship a terrible entity they name Lung Wang "the Dragon King," but which their opponents prefer to call, Lung Siwang, "the Death Dragon." The wretched summoned creature going by that name which you fight in Chinatown can only be a minor avatar -- the true Death Dragon can slaughter whole armies. The DD was magically bound many centuries ago to keep it from rampaging across the world, but that spell of necessity had an out -- every sixty years the Death Dragon can manifest on Earth, and if it can win free past those who oppose it, it will rampage across the Earth for the next sixty years. However, if a chosen champion can defeat the Death Dragon, it remains bound for another six decades.
Every sixty years a great martial arts tournament, the Tournament of the Dragon, is held to find the greatest fighter in the world to stand against the DD. You could consider this the Champions analogue to Mortal Kombat.
For reference purposes, the Tournament of the Dragon is briefly outlined in Champions Universe. The Cult of the Red Banner is pretty extensively detailed in Martial Enemies Volume Two. Gulong and Agharti are described in Hidden Lands.
Let me know if you'd like more info on any of the above, or if you're looking for something different.
I'm loving all of this, and really would like to know more.
I love this tournament and the winner fighting the Death Dragon. I'm smitten already.
The Tournament of the Dragon is held in a hidden temple in the mountains of China, conducted by a small but eclectic group of warriors, wizards, and scholars called the Watchers of the Dragon, dedicated to keeping the Death Dragon out of this world. The Watchers invite the known greatest fighters from around the world to attend, although the most knowledgeable martial artists may learn of it themselves and come uninvited. If they can win past the Tournament's guards, that's considered proof of their qualifications. The fighters compete in five arenas based on the five traditional Chinese elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Wood, and Metal), each designed to test their skills in different ways.
The Watchers have no particular bias for or against true superhumans competing, they just want the best fighter. However, the Dragon's defenses are much stronger against attacks employing advanced technology, i.e. firearms and up, so only fighters employing more traditional methods are accepted. Moreover, the Death Dragon can steal the life-force of other beings and add that to its own strength, and the more beings it can steal from the stronger it gets, so opposing it with numbers is a recipe for disaster.
The senior Watcher of the Dragon is Dr. Yin Wu, the great Chinese sorcerer and would-be conqueror. In most quarters he's considered a villain, but he no more wants the world to be devastated by the Death Dragon than anyone else. For this reason he and the Cult of the Red Banner are deadly enemies, and their forces have clashed many times over the centuries.
There's an additional incentive for someone to compete in the Tournament besides the glory of saving the world. If a champion defeats the Death Dragon, the gods bless not only him/her with several benefits, but also their home country so that it becomes the preeminent nation on Earth for the next sixty years.
The Tournament of the Dragon and the Watchers are thoroughly described in a book for Fourth Edition Hero System (the game mechanics for tabletop Champions) titled Watchers of the Dragon. Although that book was written for an earlier incarnation of the Champions Universe, its author, Steve Long, became the Hero Games Line Developer supervising the creation of the current official setting, and references suggest most of the info in that book should still apply.
Unknown to all but the wisest of mystics, the Death Dragon is itself merely an avatar of The Dragon, an immensely-powerful entity that's the embodiment of all the most evil impulses in the human psyche. In fact it's imprisoned within the collective subconsciousness of all humanity, although when and how that happened is unknown. From there it prompts humans to commit evil acts. The Dragon has been known by terrible draconian/ophidian names around the world throughout history: Tiamat, Apep, Vritra, Ahriman, Typhon, Jormungandr, Satan... it's all of them and more. Several cults besides the Red Banner revere the Dragon under one of these guises.
OTOH the Dragon is opposed by mysterious serpentine mystics of great magical knowledge, known as the Nagas. The Nagas have walked in human disguise among humanity for millennia, teaching, guiding, and warning. The Nagas don't oppose the Dragon with force, they assist or even manipulate humans into fighting its schemes. The Dragon, its followers, and the Nagas are extensively detailed in The Mystic World, the premier source book for the supernatural side of the CU.
I just noticed the implications of this comment, and thought I should address it, because information on the Cult of the Red Banner was greatly expanded since Cryptic Studios created Hi Pan (a pun on the name of the main villain in the movie Big Trouble in Little China, Lo Pan). Lore-wise the Cult has an international scope, and is far more dangerous to everyone than what's been seen in CO.
Most of the Cult's worshipers are divided between the Chongbai Zhe ("Those Who Worship"), who support the Red Banner in various ways that don't involve fighting, and the Zhandouji ("Those Who Fight"), their combat agents. The best of the Zhandouji are given additional training in both traditional and modern weapons, plus the Red Banner's unique kung fu style, and form the elite Legion of the Red Banner. The Cult's dark magics can also create Dragon Warriors, superhuman reptilian humanoids. Some other cults to the Dragon can also do this.
Groups of local cultists are based around a simiao, or temple, led by one of the Bai Changpo Mushi, or “White-Robed Priests” (or more poetically, the “White Robes”). These priests are always martial artists but may also be sorcerers. Hi Pan is almost certainly one of them. The White Robes report directly to the Cult's leader, Bai Daochang (the “High Priest in White”), powerful in both martial arts and sorcery.
The Red Banner has several other super-class operatives. You've probably already met Iron and Gold playing CO. Others include, but are not limited to, Deathforce, who channels a fraction of the Death Dragon's anti-life energy; Na-Leng the Mad (although never called that to his face), whose heart was replaced with a symbiote with horrific powers; and Sodeptan ("Skullcrusher"), a skilled and superhumanly strong fighter.
Iron is also secretly the leader of the Red Arms gang, an international Chinese criminal group involved in theft, drug smuggling, and murder. The rest of the group are unaware that they actually serve the Red Banner. The Cult also control the Sekihara clan of Japan, who appear to be a fairly typical yakuza crime family, although they're unusual in employing ninjas. But the Sekihara know they belong to the Red Banner, and worship Doragon Kingu the Dragon King. Their ninjas are trained in mystic disciplines that give them the equivalent of several super powers.
A bit about the Cult of the Red Banner's overall motivations: the Cult is explicitly dedicated to promoting evil, although not all cultists fully understand that. That's not just performing evil acts. The Red Banner attempt to spread hatred, greed, envy, despair, and other negative emotions, believing that increasing the evil in the world increases the power of the Dragon King. Their most powerful members have sold their souls to the Dragon King, and become as deeply corrupt and malevolent as is humanly possible. The cultists believe they can assist the Dragon King to seize control of the world entirely, and as its faithful servants they will be the rulers of mankind.
The goal was to make Hi Pan a threat to celestial dragons themselves. It sort of lost weight if it was just another man vs evil dragon thing. CO's video game nature often results in these "EPIC SCALE DANGER!" scenarios that end very quickly with a ragtag group of misfit heroes taking them down regardless of power ensembles, etc.
With all of my novella fan fiction works I want to bring a structure and tone of story telling less "MMO mission" in nature, as I know the PnP source material has to be.
Rather than Hi Pan being some mutty servant of the death dragon who he wants to allow it to destroy himself and his world for some reason? Why not seek to wield that power for yourself, like any good, self respecting human natured villain would. Nothing is more flawed than a person in a position of power with human goals, motives and investments who is okay with the world being literally destroyed.
I liked HI Pan, but as a devout servant of his own undoing, I don't know that HE is what's going to work here. That's Red Lotus's role; the loyal lapdog.
For fan fiction surrounding a scheme as epic as what you describe, it would be entirely appropriate to bring Bai Daochang himself to Millennium City to steal Hanlong's spirit, particularly if Hi Pan's attempts to do so fail. That would also be appropriate if Hi Pan does try to seize the power for himself -- Bai Daochang will brook no rivals, or servants stepping beyond their bounds. You could also start with another of the Red Banner's super-class operatives before bringing in the High Priest in White.
BTW the 19-page PDF describing the Cult of the Red Banner can be downloaded for a mere $3.00 US: https://www.herogames.com/store/product/550-martial-enemies-vol-2-the-cult-of-the-red-banner-pdf/
Because Hanlong was strengthened by other celestial dragons, his spirit may retain the ability to absorb their strength when they die. And that collective power could be the key to loosing the spells on the Death Dragon permanently.
(I agree that just being a devoted slave can be boring, but pursuing power for the sake of power is also an overdone supervillain motivation. Pursuing power in service to one's god kinda splits the difference.)
I'm trying to draw a line between using CO as the baseline, but keep things to where they can get that nod of approval from source material any time they glance over in a moment of doubt.
I've always said CO is a sub-par setting for the genre - only because it was born of PnP - which has less of a cohesive, consolidated creative process behind it all. For a PnP RP property, it's actually quite good.
I will read up tonight and reply again.
That said, I respectfully disagree with you on a couple of points. I personally agree that CO is a sub-par setting for the genre, but that's because it doesn't take full advantage of the PnP-derived material, which is the broadest, deepest and most coherent of any supers setting outside of the Big Two comics companies, and in certain aspects exceeds even them. When the pre-Cryptic owners of the IP rebooted the Champions setting to its current state in 2002, they set out to weave together what was already two decades of published material, plus elements from their own campaign histories, into a single detailed, unified time line stretching back tens of thousands of years into the past, and a thousand years into the future. The book entitled, appropriately enough, Champions Universe, lays out this timeline, and also covers the current geo-political state of Champions Earth, including lands and peoples unique to it; the major organizations and individual power players; the effect of supers on society and culture, i.e. transportation and communications, medicine, the economy, law, media and entertainment, religion, the environment, the military, and more; the overall "astro-politics" of aliens in the Milky Way galaxy; the structure and diversity of the infinite "multiverse" of alternate and parallel universes, and higher planes of existence. Subsequent published books, brought out under the same oversight with the same mandate over more than a decade, expanded on many of these topics, and there are literally dozens of them.
You are absolutely right that Champions/Hero Games books are not currently on the shelves of major bookstores. There are online game retailers who have some of them, but not all, not all in pristine condition, and they're often quite expensive. The Hero Games website store also has a limited supply of hard copies, but they also rendered nearly everything ever published for Champions, and their other game lines, since 1981 into PDFs, less expensive than their hard copy form, and dramatically so for some books for the current official setting. These are downloadable from the Hero Games website as well as various other online retailers. I never go beyond reasonable boundaries of Fair Use when relating published lore on an open forum like this, but I am at least able to point anyone to where the full info on a subject can be found.
EDIT: There is a very fine free Champions Online lore primer PDF, created by someone with impeccable credentials for the job, which outlines and contextualizes this info, and updates the timeline with events in CO through 2017. TBH it only skims the surface of extant lore, but gives a decent overview of who's who and what's what.
A good PnP shouldn't try to emulate that "ball of rando concepts force atop one another!" format to ensure that it's containable and approachable by players as a PnP body. But that's just where I came from on that point, as a PnP universe. If they were making comics vs exposition catalogs, I would start purchasing them to keep up.
Reading now.
If I were to further develop the plot surrounding him, he'd just be a stronger dragon, able to linger in some capacity after the death of his corporeal form. I don't think the other dragons would aid in his slaying just to turn around and save him. That may not suit their nature. The death dragon could just defeat him, forcing the other dragons to take action, sealing him away. They then begin to host this tournament in order to find the strongest fighter to fight him. This gives the perfect origin and motive for Hanlong's champions.
Knowing of the tournament's existence, Hanlong begins bestowing mortals with his trademark gifts: Superhuman chi, knowledge and master level skill of every Chinese martial art discipline dating back to the Shaolin Monastery, hoping they will enter the tournament every 60 years and defeat the death dragon in his stead and succeed in protecting Earth where he had failed.
It all lines up, Hi Pan just has to take a few steps down from center arc.
The result of that may be my own pocket of fan-canon where I basically do a retelling of what bare bones game lore is there. I'm against profiteering in role playing, almost at all, which is the only reason I hesitate to get into the books just to read about what informed the game's version of the setting and history.
I might just take the lore primer and try to consolidate some of what's there over the story arcs of a few characters whilst fleshing it out with color and detail of my own. I'd really like to form a group, and wading through both layers of lore is what most newcomers with a robust repertoire of experience like myself find exhausting.
Let me know if there's more information you need.
I reconciled it, built Shaolin Kid's mythos around it. I was curious on a timeline for the Tournament of the Dragon. When did the last and when will the next take place?