Bloodfeather Portraits

Ah-ha! These would be the long-promised portraits of Aylon the Bloodfeather, her not-to-loyal companion Hard Luck the Drake, and former mentor/current adversary Edercy the Tracker.
Aylon, you will notice, carries her bow, quiver of arrows, pair of daggers, and a selection of sedative darts for use with a blowpipe hung from the quiver. I hope you also take notice of her visible ear and eyes - both of which will be details that feature later in her tales.
Edercy also wields a fearsome selection of weaponry. His curved spear (very common in more mountainous regions), longsword, throwing daggers, and those stabbing daggers tucked into his boots. All three of them host a wide selection of scars from old battles, as well. Aylon and Edercy have burn marks on their shoulders from an occasion when some scared townspeople set fire to the inn they were staying at. Hard Luck's scars come from two main sources: his years of captivity and the original battle with Aylon. What captivity was this, you ask? Stay tuned, and maybe I'll tell you sometime...

Enjoy!
-Triscribe

Math Again... But with Magic

This seems to be a recurring theme of mine. It's not like I intentionally set out to intertwine mathematics into my stories, but things sort of end up that way.
Anywho, this time we've got the formulas used by the ancient Mages of Quetl, a group of elves who arrived in the world of Sarant several thousands of years ago. Unfortunately for them, the actions of one enterprising young mage and her half-elf sons resulted in their extinction, though there are a few people in the modern age who still use their method of spell craft.
The basic formula: Life force of ingredients multiplied by Astral energy summoned by willpower equals the energy effect. My bright idea, thanks to pre-calculus homework the other night, was to use matrices for combining the values that go into an ingredient's life force.
                        [Ingredient Type
Astral energy (   Substance Grade    x    [Classification  Part  Amount] )
                         Freshness]

The values multiply into a 3 by 3 matrix, which is added to the matrices of any other ingredients, then multiplied by the coefficient of the astral energy. Then we take the determinant of that matrix, leaving us with a single number which, divided by 100, equals the lasting energy effect of the spell.

...

Awful lot of work for something I could just as easily do without, isn't it? Oh well, as long as I've got it, I'll find a use for it, in one of the twenty-odd books that will go into this series...
Good luck with your own musings,
-Triscribe

Hard Luck

Nothing raised Aylon's spirit like a walk through the forest. All around her, life flourished, from the mushroom-covered logs on the ground to the squirrel families leaping through the treetops. The woman knew all too well how hard pressed one could be to survive in this place, but the sheer beauty of the natural landscape more than made up for it.
Moving silently along the faint pathways she had made over the years, Aylon soon neared her hidden home. It had been a sweet victory, sending her former mentor Edercy on his way, but she knew he would be back at some point.
Preparations needed to be made.
Just as she stepped into the clearing around the ancient oak tree, though, Aylon sensed the approach of a large creature. She froze with a grin on her face, waiting for the ambush that always accompanied her return. A bellow of rage deafened her as a behemoth erupted from the foliage to her left. Flexing her legs, Aylon leaped away, twisting through air so as to come down facing the creature.
As large as a horse and twice a heavily muscled, the drake slid to a stop, changing his tactics to slowly circle the woman. Admiring, as she always did, the way her opponent's orange hide rippled with the cautious movement, Aylon held her hands ready over the daggers secured to her belt. When the drake finally charged again, she jumped again, straight up into the air, then came down on the beast's neck as he passed under her. Throwing her arms around his head, Aylon carefully pressed her daggers against the underside of the drake's jaw, at the soft spot where one jab wold go up through his mouth and brain.
Stopping immediately, the beast did something she wasn't expecting - he rolled over. Aylon scrambled to not be crushed under the monster's bulk. Rather than retreat and begin again, though, she instead got in close to the drake's underbelly. There, even as he tried to right himself, she was able to hold a dagger in the hollows between each of his front legs and chest. Realizing the danger to his heart and other vital organs, the drake became still.
"Done yet?" Aylon asked sweetly. Huffing, the beast shook his scales out, the signal for surrender. Aylon removed her weapons with a laugh.
"You almost got me that time, Hard Luck." She said. "Someday you may actually win our contest." The drake looked her straight in the eye with his usual glare.
Aylon remembered the first time the monster had looked at her like that. It had been after their first fight, a few years back, when each of them had sustained heavy injuries from the other. As the two top predators in the forest, competing with one another would only lead to both of their deaths. It was then that Aylon had struck a bargain with the intelligent drake - if one day he could beat her in a fair fight, the woman would leave his forest. Until then, they wouldn't interfere with one another's business.
She'd never imagined that the deal would lead to a grudging respect for one another, or that the drake would gradually shift his den closer and closer to hers, until the two shared the same home. Aylon suspected that her wild companion had begun to be less earnest in his attempts to best and get rid of her, but there was no way he would ever admit to that.
"Did you catch anything for dinner?" Aylon asked as she re-sheathed her daggers. Tossing his head to the treeline, Hard Luck (as Aylon had come to call him) indicated a kill he'd made a short while ago.
That evening, after she had skinned, butchered and cooked the stag, Aylon began constructing more trip-line crossbows as Hard Luck munched on his portion of the meal beside her.

Introducing one of my favorites for this series, I'll add an illustration of Hard Luck and Aylon at some point.
-Triscribe

World's Hero Organization

The Council:

• The Board (Each new member selects a successor when they join, who is only known among the other members)
• Shinjitsu - Can sense when someone is lying, and discern the real truth
• Detention Agents - Operate and manage the various prisons and detention facilities for villainous and delinquent anotas
• Vulcan - Magma elemental
• Disaster Agents - Prevent or restrict the effects of natural disasters
• Dynata - Explosive touch, heat vision, knack for insults
• Combat Agents - The typical fighters of supervillains
• Spirit Seeker - Interacts with the spirits of the dead
• Mystic Agents - Those who deal with matters of the supernatural
• Digi-gal - Mind melds with electronics
• Intelligence Agents - All manner of spies and infiltrators who gather information before striking a blow
• The Circle (When a member passes away or retires, their position is filled by the next eligible person from that field)
• Miss Merry - Frost elemental with an inexplicable sense of style
• Public Administrators - Masters of media, artists of advertising
• Orb - Purplish, floating orb that can gather, interpret and act upon data from dozens of sources at once
• Global Administrators - Watchers and monitors who are responsible for recording all the facts needed by just about everyone else
• Sylver - Silver tongue, calms/soothes people’s minds
• Business Administrators - Manage the monetary aspects of the organization
• Kuikku - Short, line of sight teleports
• Inner Administrators - Paperwork workers, communications creators, and all-around organization organizers
• Ringside - No anota abilities
• Trainers - Responsible for preparing all new recruits for whatever field they’ve been brought in for
• The Arc (When a new member is needed, the employees in that field vote for a suitable replacement)
• Bedrock - Turns rocks into rubble
• Underground Constructors - Create and reinforce the tunnel systems and bases used by the organization
• Apoyo - Super strong, titanium skin form
• Urban Constructors - Builders and managers of every major city Center
• Plow Hand - Creates massive chunks of telekinetic energy capable of moving earth, people and buildings
• Rural Constructors - Builders and managers of every Center outside of a city
• Stardancer - Flies, and doesn’t need to breath
• Non-terran Constructors - Set up bases in the hard-to-reach-places, such as aquatic, aerial and in space
• Wormhole - Tears rifts to the Weir Web and can travel along the paths, from one side of the planet to the other
• Transportation Constructors - Run the important task of maintaining modes of travel in-between the organization’s Centers and bases

Formed over eighty years ago by the first team of Anota superheroes, the organization has grown to a global scale in a relatively short amount of time, training and helping super-powered people all over the world. (Anotas coming from the Greek word anoteros, or superior.) Now, with career options for practically every kind of superpower, as well as many for those who do without, W.H.O is the ultimate global organization. They have representatives in almost every country around the world, and at least one Center in every region where the population percentage of anotas comes above 5% (with varying amounts of resources, of course, but always with the means for control training and quick teleportation to larger locations).

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For lack of a better post, I hope this at least proves interesting. Most of these details don't actually feature in the comicbook series I've planned out (at least, not the first 45-issue story arc), but it's still important to work out the background stuff ahead of time. Not to mention, it's always fun coming up with unique looks/names/powers.

Hope the weather is tolerable where you are,

-Triscribe