Editing DOGFACES Campaign SPOILER PAGE (section)

==Hellship==
There is a quite dark short story "Thor vs Captain America", I think it is by David Brin. It isn't the comic book story you might think. Its about a version of world war 2 that is being won by the Nazis due to their having help from what appears to be the Norse pantheon.  The only supernatural help the Allies have is Loki, who isn't an awful lot of help, since he refuses to tell them anything about where these gods came from.  
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:::  '''Anyway - it turns out that the gods have been summoned by necromancy - the horror of the concentration camps was not random, but an attempt to harness dark energies for dark magics. It worked...
<br> The hero only finds this out when he is facing certain death (from which he doesn't escape, btw) as Loki is determined that the Allies will not find out the truth in case they decide that the only way to resist the Nazis is to turn to necromancy themselves.
<br> The only weapon Loki has, then is doubt - causing the Nazis and their supernatural allies to doubt their own powers and existence. He betrays a mission to destroy them with an atomic device, to ensure that the "hero" is captured. He has pre-primed the unwitting hero with a massive adrenal rush and hysterical strength, so that he can face his death fearlesssly and with a display of power that will show that these gods are not as all-powerful as they like to think they are. 


:  Its an exceedingly dark story, and well done. The reason I mention it is what if the hell-ships are not sentient as such, but are the means of summoning massively powerful dark magics from malevaleont sea demons.
:  Not only do the PCs have to defeat them, they also have to decide whether or not to tell the truth about what they found - do they trust their own command to not start trying to harness such dark powers themselves? Especially if the war isn't going well. If the Heroes pass on the whole truth, how long until US Hellships are cruising the pacific?



:  The Hellship doesn't exist just in and of itself, it is a goal.
::*  The spirits that animate the stone samurai must be created through suffering, and they burn out quickly (or more of them are needed, to increase the things power).
::*  Under such duress, superhumans may manifest, and the Axis wants to create and brainwash into service as many as they can. (A dumb plan, on the face of it, since they may just be creating powerful Allies who hate, hate, hate them with a burning desire to make them suffer in return...)
::*  Certain drugs, radiation treatments, arcane rituals, whatever have a chance of awakening superhuman potential in others, but they haven't refined the process yet, and don't have the manpower to waste their own people on such tests. Both the concentration camps of Europe and these hellships exist as testing centers to codify exactly how to craft their own superhuman agents, reliably, since they don't have to worry about a 99.9% failure rate during testing on POWs. Once they have tested the processes and gotten the success rate up, they can start working on their own people, empowering *thousands* of super-soldiers...
::*  Similar to A, the creation of suffering and despair is an end to itself, generating some sort of mystical / psychic 'fuel' or ectoplasm or whatever that can be used to work powerful magical or psionic feats.
::*  Some combination of the above. A and C work best, for me.



::  quick and dirty - what I'm thinking about is having my PCs wake up (they've just been captured) and looking around on this Japanese "Hellship"... Dark and scary they'll find some American (and other allies) prisoners, malnorished and afraid.
::  After exploring the ship once the Japs are aware they're active the SHIP itself will spawn "anti-bodies" to take care of the problem. (I need a more appropriate era name for anti-bodies!)
::  This makes the ship basically like "X-isle" from the Freedom City setting. These creatures are crude zombie-like minions of hate with only one goal - destroy the threat to their "mother"...
The ship is based on FEAR and is slowly absorbing their emotional turmoil. (this will effect them as a Drain - Wisdom) and with a telepathing view into their minds it will pull the means of their destruction... Similar in a way to the GHOSTBUSTER famous "Stay-Puffed Marshmellow Man"!!!
:::  '''the main idea''' is that these NPC villain/heroes are actually prisoners that are "changed" into these images, making it hard to "take out" the villains knowing that an innocent is in there!!
::  What I'm looking for are suggestions on WHO these "characters" would be... I'm thinking of having them be very base-level threats that are obviously NOT reality. Hence - no FDR-zombie...
::  But I also need/want icons and ideas that THEY would have in their minds. (I was thinking of having one of the GIs with a Action Comics issue). So here's what I've thought of so far...
::* Superman!! (duh! - but he'll be the last one THEY see)
::*   an American Cowboy (any specific? - maybe Lone Ranger?)
::*   Tarzan
::  that's the type...
::  I need a robot!
::  What OTHER pulp comic, literary, movie, etc... would be good??
::  Maybe pictures of magazine covers??



:  '''MOVIES'''
:*  The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
:*  The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
:*  the Machine (wo)Man (Maschinenmensch) from Metropolis (1927)
:*  Dracula (1931)
:*  Frankenstein (1931)
:*  The Mummy (1932)
:*  The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
:*  The Wolf Man (1941)
:*  robot from the film "Metropolis"

: '''RADIO'''
:*  The Lone Ranger (aired 1933)
:*  War of the Worlds

: '''COMIC STRIPS / PULPS'''
:*  Zorro (1919)
:*  Conan (1932)
:*  Dick Tracy (1931)
:*  Doc Savage (1933)
:*  Flash Gordon (1934)
:*  the Shadow (1937)
:*  Buck Rodgers (1938)
:*  Superman (1938)
:*  Batman (1939)
:*  The Phantom, "The Ghost Who Walks" (1936) 
:*  Popeye
:*  Mickey Mouse


: '''BOOKS'''
:*  Captain Nemo
:*  Allan Quartermain
:*  Jeckel/Mr. Hyde
:*  Tarzan and Cheeta (1914)
:*  Lovecraft??




:  I plan to CHOOSE from this list, not have them all... But I'd like to get MORE "realistic" not obvious ones, only having a few like Superman be obvious.
:  I'd rather find another Detective than Dick Tracy for example... And I'll only have one space adventurer (not both Flash and Buck), that type thing...