I need a super-power or two, stat!

I like your idea.

Pestilence -- seems to me you can't get around creating plagues with this one. But, what if she has real control over her power. Say, a plague that only infects people with blond hair or only those people who are in the room with her at the time. Maybe she can also control the disease once she gives it to you.

Pestilence could also be used for destroying food. She can make food spoil when she sits across from you. This power could be funny or serious.

Good luck.

How about awakening latent genetic diseases? Like, say somebody's a carrier for Parkinson's, or has the potential for heart trouble, but doesn't. Pestience gets too close and suddenly those genes switch on with a vengence.

You could have it work on plants, too. Some plants have genes capable of producing poison that are 'switched off' simply out of evolutionary quirks. Pestilence comes to call near a cornfield and suddenly you have toxic crops.

Those are excellent ideas guys. Thank you both =)

Pestilence could easily be a cause of disease, with the rate of infection up to your discretion. They could transmit this at short range either by touch or simply being in proximity to those they want to infect. As you don't want everyone wiped out at the get go, keep this radius down to a few feet.
Hope I'm not providing redundant info, and good luck.

oo, i like this. i'll have to read your excerpt later...

when you said pestilence i immediately thought of bugs, i don't know why. you know in the fellowship of the ring how the black riders make creepy crawlies emerge from the ground around them? what if your pestilence girl makes those around her get overtaken by a creature. centipedes, ants, spiders, crickets. something. of course you can do plagues, but can't you just make one person come down with "the plague" if you're mad at them? i'm imagining something like this.

"Now, you're making me angry." Pestilence narrowed her eyes. Steve felt his throat begin to swell.
"I'm not telling you anything." He said. His voice cracked, his eyes watered.
"You don't want to make me angry." The world swam before his eyes. Pain radiated from his stomach. His joints buckled.
"Ok, fine." His voice came out in a bare whisper.
"Excellent." The pain lifted. His ears rang.
"Tell me all you know."

i dunno. does that fit the bill? of course, a good character would never buckle that fast, but i don't have time to make it realistic. =)

2+2=5.
for large quantities of 2.

Hmm, for some reason I immediately thought of something more mental. What about a plague of fear, instead of an actual physical plague? Everyone who gets within a certain radius runs away screaming, and then is absolutely phobic about something-or-other for the rest of their lives. Something less immediately 'going to end the world', while not cutting down on the 'this could cause serious problems' idea.

Wow, you guys are really giving me a lot to think about!

I might just take some of everything, lol. I like the idea of Pestilence being a force that is just bad, rather than offensively dangerous like Death. The fear thing is great, because, as this takes place in a war zone, the greatest challenge for my three baddies would be going anywhere, even if they do have super powers. A projected fear would really keep any non-supers (read: everyone else) from challenging them meaningfully.

This is all finally starting to come together lol! Thanks again. =)

Well, perhaps your Pestilence can choose to either do the single-target on/off disease, or unleash a sort of lightning plague that would strike down everyone in a city block so fast it wouldn't have time to spread.

Of course, the other thing to bear in mind is that if your Death has done his reading, he'll know that Pestilence isn't one of the horsemen, those being Death, War, Famine and the Conqueror. The relevant verses are:

2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

4 And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

So, the Conqueror could have some power to bend the minds of others to her will, and/or a projectile attack (since the Conqueror has a bow). There again, given that last line in Verse 8, she could also have some kind of animal control power, summoning packs of dogs or swarms of rats to attack her enemies.

Five years of NaNo, first Frenzy.

My own super power is sleeping, at any hour in any circumstance. I don't imagine this heps,.

ok for me Deaths power should be the one on one power. He would be the one to interigate someone. He can bring on death slowly to torture someone.
Pestilence spreads disease in a wide burst, whether people in a city,or a crop field.

To battle them one would need Lifeforce or the light of life, and for pestilence, healing or health.

The names should match the abilities. War can promote anger and hate in people turning one person on another or starting riots.

Well, the way I have it now, War is actually the good guy (or girl, as it is, lol). She's a photographer embedded with an Army unit (I'm still trying to think up a suitable conflict, this takes place in the near future) and has no idea about her powers until they manifest themselves.

Death is the big bad. He's an ideological psycopath and obsessed with the Christian notion of the Apocolypse and Horsemen to boot. Bullets pass right through him and explosions have no effect on him. He doesn't neccessarily have any powers to help him kill (aside from boosted strength and speed from being a super-human), but he enjoys it, a lot, and the fact that nobody can hurt him back allows him to kill with impunity. He believes there will be four super-humans and that with him leading them they will usher in the final judgement of mankind; he only needs to find War now.

Pestilence was always a sickly child until her powers formed themselves within her. When she was young she was sick in the hospital, practically on her death bed when suddenly she got better and everyone in her ward died in the same night. An aura of fear surrounds her, no one can stand to look at her for long, let alone meet her gaze. Open sores cover her skin but she feels no pain and suffers no symptoms of illness. Because of the dozens of plagues that infect her her body is incredibly tough and she feels very little or no pain from any wounds that are inflicted on her. She can infect nearby people with any of the plagues that invest her body and can heal herself by stealing the life force from nearby victims. She loves Death and his continued obsession with War fuels a hatred for the budding super-heroine that burns in her diseased heart. (Is she too much? Death is the big bad, but Pestilence I think is going to be Sarah's [War] main opponent throughout the story)

Oh! And Pestilence is one of the Horsemen, but his (its?) power is associated with concquering, so it sometimes is referred to as that. (Bless Wikipedia, lol)

Famine, like I said is the weakling. He has no super strength or speed but he is a reader, so he can know just about anything within a given area. He is probably the character that I have the least fleshed out at this point. He's the youngest of the villains and Death and Pestilence are something of an adoptive (if crazy) family for him. He's plagued by the voices that echo in his head all the time and only by going mad has he been able to filter them into anything useful. Famine, in the Bible, was described as having a set of scales that (I presume) he used to judge whether someone was innocent or not. I'm still thinking of a way to work that bit in.

My story is going to start out as a war story, with Sarah and the unit she's embedded with trying to make sense of their situation, which, when the bad guys show up, is going to spiral more and more out of control. When their true plans are revealed Sarah has to decide between using her newfound powers to protect the men and women she's been living and working with for months or fighting for the greater good. Of course, it wouldn't be a super-hero story if she chose one or the other, so she's going to suffer as she struggles to do both. Oh my yes, this will be fun!

Thank you again all!

"Oh! And Pestilence is one of the Horsemen, but his (its?) power is associated with concquering, so it sometimes is referred to as that. (Bless Wikipedia, lol)"

That would probably be more accurate in reverse: The first horseman's power is conquest, but it's sometimes called Pestilence. Aside from Death, the whole matter of names is debatable, but certainly the only Horseman with powers based on disease would be Death (who kills with death and rides a horse the colour of sickness; I've also seen Pestilence given as the name of the pale horse). I wonder who did first call it Pestilence? Probably Durer or some such.

Famine's scales represent the weighing out and rationing of food in a time of great need. "A measure of wheat for a penny," was pretty steep for the time; Famine represents the lack of plenty, hunger and desolation, perhaps in the wake of war. I like your 'weighing in the balance' notion, only it doesn't sound as though Death would have much time for this whole 'innocence' lark. Although I suppose if Famine's power could winkle out any sin and somehow use it to destroy the sinner, he could be swinging and 'everyone's guilty of something' vibe.

Well, anyway, there are enough interpretations that you can do what you like with it and you seem to have got your Pestilence sorted out now.

You did also ask if she was a bit much, so here's my honest: Probably.

Actually, this goes for all of the villains as stated (and I realise that you've only given a brief summary): They are very black and white bad; perhaps too black and white bad and, especially in the case of Pestilence, hideous and suppurating with it. As a general statement of principles, if they want to destroy the world, they don't need to eat puppies or look like the back end of a bus to prove they're bad and the ugly villainess who longs for the big bad to love her, but, oh calamity, he likes the pretty heroine, is a bit of a cliche.

How much more scary would Death be if he didn't enjoy killing, but saw it as his divinely inspired duty so he does it anyway? Which is more chilling, a malevolent grin or a beatific smile?

What if Pestilence were beautiful (or at least decent looking, without the sores), just horribly creepy (you've already said that the aura of fear means people can't bear to look at her; she feels unwholesome without the need for outward manifestations of disease)? Well, then she meets Death, who can look at her, because he's a fanatic and isn't afraid of anything except failure. In fact, he thinks she's a bloody marvel so of course she thinks he's wonderful. Only once he's won her over and they've picked up this weirdo wunderkind to be their surrogate son, it turns out that the fourth horseman isn't going to be the little girl Pestilence was imagining, but a fully grown woman, and a reporter damnit, whom millions of people look at and admire every single day without even one of them turning away in horror. And now Death's after her as well! Oh the indignity!

So that's just my twopenn'th (which is a measure of wheat and a three of barley to you, and see thou hurt not the wine or the oil).

Five years of NaNo, first Frenzy.

You raise some excellent points (again =) ) Mr Prophet, thank you. I think I'm going to re-evaluate some of my character designs. This is exactly what my story needed.

Glad to help.

There was another point that occurred to me. You were saying that War is a reporter in a conflict that you haven't specified yet. It struck me that if Death is looking for War to appear, and if he's living his own Apocalyptic fantasy, he might well have started a war (there are plenty of potential troublespots out there) in order to bring her out of the woodwork.

Five years of NaNo, first Frenzy.

Yeah that's actually what I've been thinking.

Cool. I'm curious to see how you get on with this now. Do you mind if I add you as a writing buddy?

Five years of NaNo, first Frenzy.

Not at all! So long as you don't mind me doing the same =)

This sounds awesome.

Actually I have a character who is kind of similar to your Death, in that he has delusions of being a biblical figure or else wants people to think he is said figure (haven't figured out yet). And in that he's one of the villains. But it's not Death. And his powers are rather different.

BFS 2008 Participant.
Learning Japanese, writing more, submitting work, editing a novel, writing a script, practicing French, getting a summer job, getting more sleep and exercise, applying for JET.

Hey

Reading the other threads, you probably have your answers already but what about Pestilence's powers extending to corruption? By that I mean corruption of the heart/ soul as well as spreading disease. Might be an interesting take?

Nikita

The story I'm writing uses similar characters (called the Riders, and serve who they consider to be the end of the world), and Pestilence was able to make others suffer the effects of diseases, at an accelerated rate. A slow strain of flesh eating disease, with the use of his ability, would quickly kill the infected.