Spider-Woman and
The Books of Doom
Some background: my friend Jenn Wu and I recently both found ourselves members of a yahoo group featuring superheroine stories. She had been working for a while on the idea of a character based on Marvel Comcs' Spider-Woman (they've actually had several). This would be her own version, though, with similar costume and powers, but a completely different identity and characterization. I dusted off couple of villains I'd been using in online roleplay, and suggested we put them together into a story. The results have been entertaining enough for us that we thought we'd share it.
The process has been similar to my earlier story The Perils of Lianni: Jenn and I exchange story sections via email, then kind of weave the results into something hopefully cohesive. As you read it, you may recognize that there are some bits that are all Jenn's, some that are all mine, and some that are a pretty complete mixture of the two.
We're still working on the story, and at this point I honestly don't know exactly when or how it's going to end. But we hope you enjoy reading it as much as we're enjoying writing it.
UPDATE NOVEMBER 2009: Not really an "update," just an acknowledgement that Jenn evidently lost interest in the story some time ago. I might decide to continue it myself at some point, but so much of its tone was geared toward her interests that I doubt I'd get that much enjoyment out of it. Never say never, though.
Anyway, there's still quite a bit of story here, even if it does end on a cliffhanger. Hopefully, you'll enjoy it.
Name: Spider-Woman
Real name: Sophea R. Murdock
Powers: As with other heroines to go by the moniker of Spider-Woman, Sophea has the usual superhuman strength, endurance, and speed. She can also focus her 'bioelectric' energy into what she refers to as "Venom" blasts, and, spider-like, can adhere to almost any surface with the tips of her fingers and toes. In addition, her metabolism generates pheromones which attract human females and repulse males.
Appearance (costume etc): Overall, Sophea stands at 5'8", and boasts an attractively svelte figure. Her costume is the traditional super being's staple look - tight fitting cloth resembling spandex in a full body jumpsuit-style outfit, mostly red, with black trim and a goldenrod stripe down the center beginning at the chest area, along with a similarly colored triangle just above it. She also dons tall goldenrod boots and long matching gloves, as well as a red mask bearing white 'eyes' to conceal her secret identity. Despite the mask, her long, silky raven locks flow freely, unhindered by her costume. The sleeves of her costume are connected to the main body by a special material designed to look like webbing: in actuality, they serve as 'wings', allowing her to fly via air currents.
Origin: Sophea Murdock is the heiress to the fortune of her father, one Warren Murdock, a leading chemist and military scientist. His company, DefenseCorp, remains a leading supplier of equipment and biological weapons development in the Western Hemisphere. Military/Government contracts made him a rich man, and a quarter of that wealth goes to his beloved daughter. Needless to say, she lived very comfortably in her early years, but fate held a cruel trick in store for her.
One day, while touring a lab with her father, there was a bizarre accident. Their group was exposed to a potentially lethal amount of uranium radiation, and all fell ill. While she and her father both grow deathly ill, he had a treatment he thought might just save his little girl. On his instructions, Sophea was injected with a highly experimental 'spider serum'. While he gradually deteriorated in health, his daughter made a miraculous recovery. By the time she was fully healthy again, she had no traces of the radiation left in her body. Rather, she seemed in even better shape than she had before the incident. Her father's condition continued to grow worse, and he eventually died at home.
After his Vice President of Operations (his brother) took over, Sophea was given a hefty sum of cash to basically 'stay out of the way', and also granted part-ownership through stock options. Rather than bother with her father's company, she seemed content to live off his money and pen steamy lesbian romance novels in her spare time under an assumed name. Her personal life was full of excitement for a while too, as she clandestinely dated seemingly a new girl every week. At the same time, she began to discover her powers.
Over a few years, she learned to control her powers, including her 'venom' beams, though she wasn't sure how to use them. Then, she learned by accident that the radiation 'accident' that took her father's life had been intentionally set up by someone in the company. Taking matters into her own hands, she became a crime-fighter: Spider-Woman. The police wouldn't investigate the matter, so she rooted the man out herself, and found he had connections to organized crime. Her fight against one man's corruption became an all-out fight against evil-doers and criminals after that. She continues to live the high life as Sophea, but she also defends the citizens of San Francisco from the darkness evil doers would seek to impose upon her city.
Other Comments: Sophea is completely lesbian in the romantic/sexual sense, in part thanks to her pheromone ability repulsing males. Kind of hard to date men when they can't stand to be near you. That, and she simply finds other women far more enjoyable to be with.
Creator: Jenn (bountyhunterwu06@yahoo.com)
Our Villains:
Kane and Mab
Brother and sister, Kane and Mab are the latest in a millennia-old line of mystically-powered human-appearing creatures of demonic power. Both have a wide range of sorcerous abilities.
Their lineage means that the elder of the two, Mab, should ascend to leadership of The Order, an alliance of dark forces that threatens to engulf the world in a never-ending night of evil.
Unfortunately, there's a slight hitch: Mab is nuts. She's capable of acting rationally for periods of time, then instantly becoming a dangerous, raving paranoid. Her unpredictable mental state is a principal reason that The Order's dreams of conquest remain unfulfilled, as often even their best-laid plans come to naught when Mab goes off the rails (she's often so caught up in the idea of defeating and humiliating a particular foe that she loses sight of the "big picture").
Her brother, Kane, a powerful wizard and brilliant strategist, would be far better suited to leadership, but The Order's rules are clear: Mab is the older (by mere microseconds) and The Order will remain leaderless and disorganized until she is capable of controlling herself and taking charge.
For all the time Kane spends cleaning up in the wake of disasters of his sister's making, he is deeply devoted to her, and has begun to despair of her ever being able to lead The Order. Instead, he's begun to focus his energies on the acquisition of earthly pleasures: wealth, power, and women. While those first two things could naturally gain him plenty of the third, he's not interested in impressing women with his wealth: he much prefers forcing a strong woman to submit to his physical charms: nothing arouses him more than the sight of a captive heroine responding to his evilly sensual touch, against her will (or at least against her better judgement).
Mab, too, finds sexual stimulation in forcing the powerful to submit; even more than her brother, she savors the humiliation and debasement of her prey, and is equally happy to dominate women and men. The sex act means almost nothing to her-- the exercise of power over others is her true stimulation (again, something that often results in a well-laid plan going awry when she gets too caught up in toying with her prey).
Both Kane and Mab look human (beautifully so, in fact), with a bronzed, almost Oriental cast to their features. Kane is tall, well over six feet, broad-shouldered, with thick black hair and piercing green eyes. Mab barely tops five feet, willowy and slender, with long, lustrous black hair-- one of her powers, in fact, is the ability to control her prehensile hair, allowing it to instantly grow to prodigious length, to grasp or bind her prey. Both tend to dress in simple, if expensive, generally black clothing (Mab's wardrobe can shift from tailored suit to full-out S&M gear at the slightest whim).
Their weaknesses: Mab's, of course, is her madness. At any given time, she can become distracted or irrational, allowing a foe (even a captured or defeated one) an opening. She's physically strong, but not much use as a fighter, though her prehensile hair has bailed her out of danger more than once.
Kane's weakness is his love for his sister, and his weariness with the futility of having her ascend to leadership of The Order. He's lost interest in large-scale plans, and more and more seeks only immediate forms of gratification. Inhumanly strong, and a dangerous fighter, his growing dissatisfaction with The Order and their rules means that his mystical powers are growing rusty and unpredictable.
Creator: Jeb (jebdel@yahoo.com)
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