This week I saw an ad for a new PBEM involving Marvel’s Avengers, Called Avengers Uprising. Based loosely on the plots arising from The Heroic Age, the game was to focus on both established Marvel characters as well as new ones. I was excited when I saw the game and based on the rules presented to me I thought I would be able to enjoy this game.
Then a guy named Calvin submitted this character, Mongon:
Residency: Interdimensional traveller.
Internetal plain home: areacode 315
Name: "Mongon" Calvin Merlini
Alias: Mongon/ Matrix of the Dead/ Jack Jester/
Code name: Mongon
Gender: male
Age: looks 18 but well over 1,000
Affiliation:(Hero,Villain,or Other)Friends to the Fantastic four, member to one of the X-teams [X-Squad...different rpg], Dr. Strange
Appearance:
Hair: electric blue , hair cut is normal cut
Eyes: yellow glowing without contacts
with contacts hazel
Skin: light blue
Height: 5'6"
Physique: slender muscular
Other:(Scars,Tattoos,etc.)
Costume:(Appearance in costume)Navy blue trenchcoat with patches from places, dimensions, etc 's he's visited! Under it he keeps his original X-men suit as it once belonged to the team back in the 60's. Footwear is none other the black converse and fingerless gloves for his hands.
Equipment/Tools:(Any Weapons,Tools, or Magicial Armament at his/her disposal) One of Merlin's Staff's, cellphone, and a miniture stargate
Personality: Happy go lucky
Skill/Powers: over the years Mongon has developed many abilities due to his internetal abilities as well as his magic ones.
Internetal
Traveling: Can turn into electricity go into the internetal plain and travel through phones, wires, cellphone waves, and television waves.
Communications: Can travel inside computers and dirrectly communicate with other program and negotiate what he needs. This can lead to rigging slot machines for money/ peeking at security camera's/ or my favorite "switching a Sentinel's objective" hehehehe
Home: Has a internetal home that he has linked to his cellphone and at any point he can dial home to relax.
Magical Abilities
The weird and yet cool thing about magic is where ever you go it's there to learn and similars spells can be diverse as well as slightly different with twists in different lands.
Also unlike mutant powers, spells can backfire for good and for bad! For these two reasons Im not listing the spells what I will say is this "In different places will spark his memory and unlock things he might had known 500 years ago."
The Freak power
Portholes: His internetals and magic abilities clashed together in a chatoic manner opening portholes to different dimensions. These holes would suck him up alone and close leaving him stranded in the strangest places.
This would happen anywhere from 20 days to 20 years and always at random! However recently the ancient egyptians had given him a small coin like stargate that has helped him gain the ability to come and go as he pleases.
Strengths: Age- due to being on the internetal plains and being the son of Merlin and Morrigan he doesnt age
Illness- Cannot get sick due to human virus's but can die to a computer virus!!!
Vulnerabilties: Computer virus's, spell miscalculations, and the freak power.
Secrets: can sing and can play over 500 different musical instruments.
Background: After living over a 1,000 years its hard to write up his whole origin here. To shorten it.
Calvin was adopted into a home but as he got older he became obsessed with video games until he was sucked into the internetal plains after usng an illegal password.
On the internetal plains he found out there way of life was in chains as a monopolistic Artifical Intelligence program known as the SKULL wanted world domination and figured it could start it out by dominating the computers the human's made. Anyone who was deemed a threat was sucked into the internetal plains and forced to work for him..or her!
He quickly joined in the rebellion and using the computer knowledge he had of video games and java codes he smoked out the SKULL. The SKULL challenged him to a dual one on one. The challlenge contested of 6 computer games. Before going out to fight he go a kiss for good luck from the beautiful program known as Jeannie. Little did he know she was the Game Geannie! Taking it out all 6 games he had freed the internetal plains from domination!!!!
When asked for his name he gave them his last name... Mongon! From then on there he was known as Mongon! He was freed to return home but given an internetal key to come back any time. Before he could leave on his own the freak power began and he was sucked into a different dimension.
He landed in professor xaviers school for gifted youngsters. His skin and hair was now blue and his eyes were glowing yellow. He landed in the right place to help. When Xavier disovered a bit of magic in his abilities he sent him to Dr. Strange for help...but before he could go Excalibur had come to visit the school and with them was Merlin.
It was there Merlin came out and explained that Mongon was his son and took him to his magical home to meet his mother Morrigan Aensland the Succubi Queen. He also met his sister. He trained with his family as they taught him what they mostly knew.
Upon coming back to the school he found Juggernaut there using magical attacks. Quickly Mongon jumped in and countered some of the spells and set up a few of his own! This action spooked Juggernaut as noone had revally used magic back on him... possibly ever! He took a mad dash for it running over sabertooth!
Over the years Mongon has visited many other dimensions, seen other cultures and has even had the luck to live very different lives and learn many things. It's time he return back to the marvel universe where he once got his spark.
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There's always going to be weird questions on Mongon but thats what makes it fun. He's a character who's been used for 13 years now so things are always changing.
I will post up of his past in the future.
For the record, Calvin might be the nicest guy in the world. But when it comes to creating characters he is totally out of control. What we have here is a classic case of Mary Sue-dom. His character is a thousand years old, giving him maybe thirty times more life times worth of experiences than other players (add to that he looks eighteen, so he can easily flirt with the ladies and his potential enemies would under estimate him, not realizing they were dealing with a veteran). His powers are all over the map and he wrote up his origin so that he is friends with the X-Men and Fantastic Four both. He makes himself the son of Merlin, then defeats the Juggernaut. But as bad as this character is, what makes it worse it there was a GM who green lit it.
The GM, Chris, let Calvin run this character. Why? Good question. Perhaps Chris is an inexperienced GM and has no idea how to say “no”. Perhaps Chris and Calvin are friends in real life and he wants to be nice. Perhaps Chris has poor judgment. Certainly one aspect of poor judgment is to no adhere to your own rules. One of Chris’ is:
Also no power is invincible to get around, these are young heroes not experience meaning you won't be tossing airplanes at each other like baseballs anytime soon or at least not in the beginning :p
Hmmm. So why is he letting someone play a character who is an experienced hero, a former X-Man?
Here is something that was amusing, in a sad way. When I asked him for clarification regarding powers he had this to say:
As far as the original character are concerned most if not all will not be as Strong as Thor believe me when I say thats a recipe for Godmodding. But that doesn't mean they themselves won't be significantly powerful in their own right, its hard for me too really give a scale you can focus around since most Comic character seem to be all over the place as power is concerned but let say they could take on a guy like the Rhino by themselves just fine but they need some help against the Juggernaut.
And yet Mongon defeated The Juggernaut single handedly.
If you are going to be a GM consistency is key. Do not tell one player one thing then contradict yourself with another. Do not create rules and then ignore them. Do not be afraid to tell a player “no” when it comes to a character submission.
NOTE: Calvin posted a more complete bio of Mongon here and it is even worse, where he makes himself a member of the West Coast Avengers and a student of Doctor Strange. You know who this reminds me of? Sentry. Sentry, for those of you who do not know, is a Marvel Comics character created by Paul Jenkins who was forcibly retconned into Marvel history so he was known and loved by everyone. He was everyone's friend, the only guy who could calm The Hulk. Heck, he even took Rogue's virginity because he was the only guy who could touch her.
The more I look at Mongon, the gladder I am I dodged this bullet...
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