Newly minted WormFic enjoyer here! I've finally gotten over my exhaustion from reading Ward and I'm ready to dive back into the setting. Specifically, a story involving the Three Blasphemies is calling to me (tentative title, "The Kindly Ones"). Viewpoint characters being one of the Three, then possibly also Alexandria and Dragon, all of whom would have interesting perspectives on each other, I think. Would also try to include at least some exploration of the European cape scene, the Meisters, the Suits, the King's Men, Gesellschaft, Red Gauntlet, etc. There's a lot of space for vaguely canon-compliant original stories over there!
I'd like to do a sanity check on some of my headcanon:
- When were the Blasphemies created, and what time period should I focus on?
I don't think there's a canon answer here, but I was looking at the timeline and 2002-2003 seems fun. The Simurgh's first two attacks were both in Western Europe, along with Behemoth's double-tap of Lyon (not that far from Lausanne). If I run with the headcanon that the "specific materials" required to create the Blasphemies were pieces of Endbringer crystal-flesh, and the very first Blasphemy-tinker was affected by the Simurgh's song in Lausanne or London, I think that could work. This would combine the "hijack" or "computer virus in the shards" theory of their origin with the Simurgh's plotting. Another powerful tool against Eidolon, another walking catastrophe.
Alternatively, the Blasphemies could be relatively old, as old as the Slaughterhouse 9 and the original Cauldron capes even, having been created in the 80s before Behemoth even emerged. This would make them more of a fixture, an institution, and their strange Simurgh-like plots and precise assassinations could even partially create the Europe-Bet we see in canon (e.g. fall of communism leading to cape-dominated politics in Eastern Europe). It would also have the story involve a much younger Triumvirate and Hero, and no Dragon.
- How OP should the Blasphemies be, and a corollary, how diminished should a single member of the Three be when she isn't coordinating with her sisters?
So far, I have a pretty extensive list of abilities that advanced synthetics like my version of the Blasphemies could have, entirely in realspace and more or less compliant with real physics. This would already give them several reasonable threat ratings, but wouldn't be anything groundbreaking. Pretty high Thinker (processing speed, sensors and perfect recall), minor Brute, minor Mover, minor Stranger.
On top of that, I'm designing a list of tinker specialties that they draw on from the shard network. The idea goes, the first thing each tinker creates when seized by the inspiration / Blasphemy-madness is a Core, a connection to their own shard, which the synthetic body is then built up around (and maybe the latter involves Endbringer crystal but the former doesn't, if I go with the 2003 origin). This has two implications. One, that each sister has their own unique power related to their creator's specialty, and two, that even the unfinished sisters could have been cannibalized for parts. This would give access to maybe three or four additional tinker specialties that can be swapped around between the three surviving sisters at will.
In terms of what they actually do with these tinker shards, I think regardless of the style of the original creator, the Blasphemies are fairly obvious self-enhancement tinkers. In my headcanon, they have modular hardware, replaceable parts, the ability to upload/download software directly to and from their cyberbrains, and they're known to be extremely dangerous in a fight without seeming to carry external equipment (?). Everything is a part of themselves, which I can tie into some of their powers. Supposedly, they've even challenged Eidolon, which I think has fueled a ton of the speculation about how powerful they must be.
One of the other vague hints that we get, though, is that they go through periods of intense, coordinated activity as a trio, separated by stretches of "uncoordinated" activity as individuals, where they aren't considered as dangerous. I'm slowly working out why this pattern occurs, and what the implications are for their powers, but I don't want a solo Blasphemy MC to be too OP. Trying to figure out how being uncoordinated stifles her in some way, keeps her on the back foot against powerful opponents.
- Related to the above, what happened to the tinkers who tried to create additional Blasphemies and were "stopped"? Were they quarantined? Killed? Snatched up by Cauldron? Is there room for my idea that some of the in-progress Blasphemies could have been cannibalized for parts by their sisters?
The successful ones, at least, could have been killed by their own creations, but nothing in canon actually says that. It doesn't say much of anything about these tinkers at all, other than them not being similar in their specialties.
If anyone has thoughts or ideas here, would love to hear them! As a last little question, are there any specific international capes / organizations (don't have to be European) who you think it would be interesting to explore?