Generic Worm Fanfiction
Jumpchain CYOA
Version 1.0
By blackshadow111
Introduction
So there was once a world that had nothing special, until all of a sudden, it did. That world was Worm, and the special things were two multidimensional, impossibly powerful parasites. You probably know the story by now, anyway. This is not that world.
This world spawned untold numbers of new stories about it, wherein it was crossed over, fixed, ruined, and all the other things that fanfiction does to a franchise. This is one of those worlds. Or more, possibly. But we’ll come to that later.
You’re stepping into the world of AltPowers and alternate histories, morality arguments and villain redemptions, and so much more. If there’s a thing you can imagine, Taylor Hebert’s probably done it. Everything from a Nazi to a Fantasy Warlord to a… pizzeria owner? If that’s what floats your boat.
But to survive here, you’ll probably need these 1000 CP, won’t you?
Age and Gender
Yeah… considering everything, pick your own bloody age and gender.
Time and Place
Brockton Bay, April 2011. Except when it isn’t. You may freely decide the time and place of your entry in the Worm multiverse. Ain’t I nice?
Origins
Drop-In
No obligations, no identity, no memories. Let’s see how you can shake things up around here.
Indie
You’re an independent cape, out to make your way in the world as best you can! You can be a newbie who hasn’t had their first outing yet or be already known on PHO and on the streets, but either way you have yet to formally join any faction or gang. Save possibly your own.
Ward
Despite their occasional lacks, you’ve always believed that the authority figures probably meant the best. You’re already a veteran Ward, or a full-fledged Protectorate Hero if you’re an adult.
Villain
This world wronged you, made you suffer, and now it’s going to pay. Or maybe you want to be a hero, but you you were wronged by abusive or neglectful authority figures and missed your chance. Or maybe you’re just that determined to do what you believe is necessary to fix a broken society. You don’t necessarily have a criminal record yet but you’ve already come this far; why would you want to turn back? You are what this world has made you.
Perks
All origins receive their 100 CP perk for free, and a 50% discount on all others.
General
Airbrushed - Free
Even in a ‘gritty’ superhero drama it somehow works out that virtually all of the cast members are still attractive enough to be on TV, and that’s only more true in fanfic. You are awkwardly cute, conventionally handsome/pretty, or even in ‘local beauty contest winner’ territory as you choose, as well as in general good health throughout.
Common Sense - 50 CP
Perhaps the most broken power in the entire Worm fanfiction multiverse is now yours. You have the ability to always know when you’re about to do something really stupid. Or when you’re about to do something that your Benefactor would punish you for (which would also be really stupid, come to think of it).
You can also tell whenever your emotions are affecting your good judgement. This doesn’t automatically keep you calm and neither is it a hard protection against Master effects, but sometimes simply being aware that you’re heading into a tailspin can help you find your center again.
Adaptable - 100 CP
You rapidly adapt to new circumstances and pick up on things quickly. In addition you can learn, train, and otherwise improve yourself in one-fifth the time you normally would.
People Savvy - 100 CP
You have a nigh-infallible gut instinct for judging people and seeing past surface impressions. You’d never mistake a traumatized girl for a hardened villainess simply because she was awful at presentation or costume design, and likewise no amount of polish or spin could keep you from spotting that an apparent pillar of the community or alleged woobie was actually a heartless psychopath.
You’re not a mind-reader and you can’t predict someone’s exact actions in advance, but once you’ve met someone you find it trivially easy to get their overall “vibe”. You can generally figure out what kind of moral code someone has and how strongly they’d hold themselves to it if push really came to shove, and they’d need one hell of a poker face to get away with lying to you.
The Unwritten Rules - 100 CP
The “unwritten rules” state that capes are never to ‘out’ each other or attack each other in their civilian identities, regardless of hero or villain status. Your secret identity will be fiat-protected; so long as you don’t reveal it yourself nobody will ever connect the dots or unmask you against your will, and while you may still be required to reveal it in order to receive certain official benefits (such as a Protectorate hero having to give their identity to the chain of command when they join) such organizations will likewise keep your secret.
Barring concerted enemy action or consensual reveal by you, it just doesn’t happen.
Note that letting yourself be seen by anyone who can recognize you or photographed counts as “revealing it yourself” even if you didn’t know they were there, so yeah.
Blank - Free/200 CP
There are a lot of people in this world who can tell far too much from far too little. And that’s just the ones who don’t get fed their data from thin air. You don’t want to get seen by them, do you?
You’re now flatly invisible to any and all supernatural sensory powers. From Path to Victory to the Simurgh’s Precog, to Tattletale’s Inference Engine to Jack’s Broadcast to anything else remotely imaginable, no such abilities can monitor where you’ve been, where you are, or where you’re going. They can’t even find you by looking for the blind spot. They’ll just get harmlessly bland readings of ‘nothing important here’.
You may make exceptions to this if you find it more convenient to be detected by someone, of course. And your protection doesn’t interfere with such abilities you might have yourself, of course.
You get the effects of this perk for free for this jump, and may keep them for 200 CP.
Charles Atlas Superpowers - 200 CP
You’ve drawn a grand prize ticket in the genetic lottery. You are at peak human in all categories, both physically and mentally, and have an almost eidetic memory, not to mention being at least a solid 9 out of 10 appearance-wise. You also find it trivially easy to maintain your physical conditioning and good looks under almost any circumstances.
Memetic Munchkin - 400 CP
It can be weird when you always keep finding new and more effective ways to use powers, clever tricks to use in plans, and all that. Realistically, people say things like ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’ for a reason, and it applies to powers too to an extent, since they’ve been a factor for decades.
Except you, that is. None of this applies to you. Somehow despite not being anything all that much academically or conventionally, you are an absolute, complete genius when it comes to finding new and unusual methods to utilize any special skills, abilities or powers anyone has. That’s right, it just works for you.
Simply by observing any given set of powers, you have a veritable flood of ideas about clever tricks that can be performed with them, small or big ways they can be made more effective, more powerful than they seem to be.
The ideas might or might not take a while to enact, but they’re always feasible, useful ideas that somehow no one, including the wielders of the powers, have had before. They might not turn a harmless soul into a terrifying power just by themselves, but in practical usage they could boost just about anyone a couple points on the PRT scale if implemented properly.
Drop-In
Unconquerable - 100 CP
This can be a pretty bleak world, y’know. Good thing you have this. You have, what would poetically be called ‘the will to shatter stars’. There is no hardship, no degree of opposition and no level of pain or suffering that can daunt your intentions, once you make up your mind about something. You can do this all day and you never quit save by your own conscious choice. Forget mere ‘peak human’ willpower, you are absolutely unbreakable. While still being mentally flexible enough to not be a stubborn asshole, of course.
But it’d be a shame if after all that you fell to the first Master to happen along, so how about I toss in a flat immunity to all magical, psychic or otherwise supernatural effects, regardless of origin, that would negatively affect your mind? Never will you be enthralled. No dark artifact or villain will ever corrupt you, and no Hyperdimensional Computer will ever successfully hijack your brain-meats.
Interesting Times - 200 CP
It’s a big world out there, and as much stuff as there is going on… it’d suck if you were unable to find any action, wouldn’t it? Good thing this will ensure that doesn’t happen. With this perk, you now find yourself in the thick of the plot, wherever you go. It might not necessarily be the ‘central’ plot you might know of regarding the world, but wherever you go things are always ‘interesting’.
Crimes, romantic drama, comedy… the exact details are left up to you, but your life always has interesting things going on in the vicinity, almost waiting for you to deign to join in.
This doesn’t really create drama where there wouldn’t have been, mind you. More like it nudges things so they happen while you’re around. You can toggle this effect on and off, and also dial the intensity up or down, ranging from ‘zero’ to ‘Hollywood primetime drama during sweeps week’.
The Great Fixer - 400 CP
The fix-fic is a staple of the Worm fandom. All fandoms, really, but especially Worm. And now you have the ability to bring them in motion. Whatever situation you happen to step into, you have a preternatural sense for the things ‘wrong’ in it. From bullied teenagers to wide-spanning underlying societal issues, not only are you always able to find them but you can figure out how to fix them.
What’s more, you’re also good at fixing people. You still can’t help those who just don’t want to be helped but provided that someone has any desire to change themselves for the better, even if it’s buried deep down within them, then you’ll be able to help ease their burdens, comfort their souls, or just make them realize that they’re being idiots. Whether it be by talking them through their issues, aggregate impact psychotherapy, being an available shoulder to cry on, or whatever else, you’ll find a way. And yes, this does help you straighten out your own shit as well. It’s hard to fix other people if you’re still broken, after all.
You always have a sort of ‘sense’ for the best, simplest, most logical thing to do in any given situation, the way to ‘fix’ as many things as possible as simply and effectively as possible. Moreover, there’s a sort of ‘plot armor’ that affects your attempts, helping them be tremendously more successful that they would have any right to be on their own merits. You could make a real difference, out there.
Endless Escalator - 600 CP
Yeah, yeah, you know this was coming up. So ‘escalation’, as a concept and as an ability seems to be embedded into your very self, now. No matter what, how, or where, you always seem to be able to take things further than anyone might have imagined them getting.
This can take two forms, primarily. The first is in action. You always know just what to do to kick things in a higher gear. The PRT after you for robbing a bank? Attack and take over their own offices to negotiate from a position of strength. Some criminals hurt your friend? Take down the whole gang. So on and so forth. More importantly, it seems to keep working.
The bigger, more outrageous your escalation, the more effective it seems to be, in terms of achieving what you wanted. It’s really rather weird, but people get cowed, or impressed, or just dead, and the outcome somehow shakes up to be more or less what you wanted… so long as you manage to execute your over the top plan, anyway.
This works best when you have a defined goal that you’re serious about, mind you. The more invested you are, emotionally and otherwise, the better it works.
The other way this works is in terms of helping you do this. You see, your own powers also rise to the challenge, as it were. Like with Accord and a bit like with Lung, the bigger, worse opposition you’re facing, the more all your powers, from your brainpower to your mundane physical abilities to all your supernatural powers, grow to face it.
This is no assurance that they’ll grow fast enough to ensure victories all the time, before you ask. There’s no telling with these things. But if you take on a whole gang alone, you could end up several times faster and stronger in a few minutes. Attack an Endbringer alone and barehanded, and it’s that much faster.
You don’t really keep any of the growth afterwards, but the ‘requirements’ for growth seem to keep coming down the more you call upon this Perk.
Indie
Shipping Magnet - 100 CP
There’s something to be said about love and dating, yeah? No matter how important other things in a story get, they always seem to retain their place. Should be a good thing for you, anyway. Not only are you good-looking on a level that it could be a power by itself, you also have a charm and charisma that makes you all but irresistible to your preferred gender.
From the way you walk to your smile, everything about you attracts people like crazy and it’s more than just surface attraction. You also know how to make someone happy, how to find and develop genuinely shared interests, and how to have and maintain a good relationship. And you may dial-a-yield on this attraction and/or limit it to specific targets if you choose, because too much of a good thing is anything but.
Plus the usuals, you know. There’s never really any expectation of you being monogamous and your partners may even get into relationships themselves if they happen to gel the right way.
Natural Badass - 200 CP
With or without your powers, you are still one of the most dangerous people you’ve ever met. You find it easy to get fit and stay in shape and are a natural at battle and war, still in tune with your caveman instincts to a degree that 99 out of 100 people in a civilized society have entirely forgotten.
You never hesitate in the face of danger, you are never caught off-guard by anything possible to sense coming, you can reflexively find the best cover to duck behind or know the right way to jump when under fire… even without combat training you’re a deadly street-fighter, and with it you’re basically a living nightmare.
This doesn’t make you Captain America by itself, mind. But your instincts are sharper than they have any right to be and only get better the more desperate you are, your reflexes are as fast as humanly possible, you can grit your teeth through any amount of pain, and you can always do the absolute best you’re capable of doing to put the other guy down and keep ‘em down -- temporarily or permanently.
A Plan Comes Together - 400 CP
You love it when that happens. And it happens a lot. You have an amazing instinct for knowing how people are going to react, both individually and in groups, and can use that to help compose strategies and tactics almost as easily as breathing. You’re both a genius chessmaster and a brilliant improviser, able to effortlessly set up plans within plans and yet still rapidly adapt when you’re hit with unforeseen consequences. Your natural aptitude at this sort of thing is so high that your plans have this strange tendency to work out even when they logically shouldn’t have.
And even if you’re up against gods or monsters or eldritch abominations beyond human ken, you can plan for and around them virtually as easily as you can do so against ordinary people. Given sufficient resources you could probably do things like drive an unkillable hyperdimensional abomination to its death with applied high school bullying.
Limits? - 600 CP
So powers are supposed to be limited… aren’t they? Depends on the fanfic, really. Either way, yours aren’t. No, this doesn’t double your powers every six months. That’d be crazy. What this does is smash every glass ceiling, barrier or restriction into so much dust. Any and all of yours powers, abilities, skills etc., are like muscles for you now, only growing stronger the more you exercise them.
This does nothing for your rate, at least by itself, but it means that regardless of how they’re supposed to operate, any and all of your powers can now be trained up infinitely. Furthermore, no power or skill you have can ever harm you directly, unless it’s someone else using it on you. Nor, for that matter, can anything you do to improve yourself.
Too much, at least. Training too much till you break half your muscles will still put you in the hospital, but what would be a lifelong crippling for others would only be a temporary thing for you, and you’d still benefit fully.
You can use and develop mutually exclusive or opposite powers without any harm, and similarly use any and all powers you have without fear of ruining your own body or mind or whatever. No amount of overusing your powers can hurt you or them permanently. Again, you might suffer for a while, but it’ll only ever be temporary and they’d grow that much stronger for it.
Ward
Black Belt In Social-Fu - 100 CP
Even when are trying to do the right thing, authority figures generally react far more to the surface impression you leave than to the person you really are. And Protectorate heroes are usually expected to be celebrities as much as they are heroes. But none of that is a problem for you now. You are one of those people who just naturally exudes innocence and sincerity, making even your socially awkward moments somehow look more endearing rather than off-putting. And you also have an amazing poker face, of course.
You also rapidly adapt to new social environments, instinctively avoiding gaffes and easily grasping how to fit in and leave a good impression. With this talent even the most socially awkward of loners would need only a couple months to learn how to become one of the popular kids. You’ll be the team member that the PR staff never has a problem with, easily able to put your best foot forward and leave a favorable spin on your actions.
This gift of yours for communication isn’t actually anything superhuman, but you have an extremely talented mundane mastery of social interaction and public relations. Which can still take you quite far if intelligently applied.
PRT Training - 200 CP
Even though they are as much PR showpieces as crime-fighters they still spend a lot of time and effort on legitimately training Wards and Protectorate heroes, and it shows. You’ve been run through the best available training modules that the federal budget could buy and could qualify as an emergency first-responder in several areas; be it parahuman combat, breaching and clearing buildings, first aid, disaster relief, or almost anything else that a fully-qualified PRT agent could be expected to do, you’re able to do it and do it well.
Yes, even if you’re a newly-recruited Ward. Apparently you’re just that precocious?
Born for Bureaucracy - 400 CP
Many people go on about the alleged ‘uselessness’ of bureaucracy, priding themselves on being people of ‘action’. Many people are fools.
A master of action only has their own power. A master of bureaucracy can potentially wield the power of an entire massive organization. Such a master could sit in an office, sign a form, and change the fates and lives of millions from halfway across the world. A master such as you, for example.
You’re an absolute genius when it comes to negotiating, manipulating and taking advantage of bureaucracies and things like them. From knowing how to read both forms and people to having an instinctive grasp of how to word a memo just the right way, you can find out the ins and outs, all the tricks and shortcuts of any given organization in no time at all. Even if you start out at the bottom rung you know how to rise as rapidly as the particular organizational framework possibly allows, and maybe a bit faster, until you’re finally at the proper rung of the power ladder to wield the ideal balance of power vs. anonymity.
The more of a ‘faceless bureaucracy’ any given organization is, the better this works for you. You can grease the wheels of the most hidebound and obstructionist organizations possible, or you can steadily clog up the leanest, meanest machine until no one besides you can hope to get anything done. And you can defend yourself vs. similar tactics used against you, to the point no one can unseat you via purely bureaucratic methods. They’d either have to use force majeure or indict you with unimpeachable evidence that even you couldn’t successfully cover up.
They say the pen is mightier than the sword. But with sufficient effort, your pen could be mightier than an army.
Team Lead- 600 CP
Somebody get this cape a shield. Like Steve Rogers, you’re a competent battlefield tactician and strategist but your real talent is for synergy and leadership on some unconscious, almost magical level that just makes everyone… better. Any team that you lead or train starts benefiting from improved morale, instinctive coordination and more.
Not only are you an extraordinary leader and highly charismatic person in general, but something about your leadership just pushes people beyond what they might be capable of normally. They move faster, hit harder, take more punches before going down, and just overall demonstrate idea of the team being greater than the sum of its parts. Even edgy loners start mellowing out at least partially and meshing with the rest of the group when you encourage them to, and personality conflicts seem less conflicting.
This affects their powers and abilities too. The longer your team stays together, the better coordination and cooperation gets, the more your powers improve when working together. People discover new ways to apply their powers together to boost their effectiveness, they develop immunities to each others’ powers, and even individual powers start to pack more of a punch. And if you work with a team for long enough these benefits will persist even when you’re not on the battlefield with them, and for as long as they don’t become your enemies.
But the effects are the greatest when you all truly get a good rapport going. Because that’s when you start to share powers. It starts very small and grows pretty slowly, but a team with Armsmaster would have everyone gain a dozen IQ points or so when working together, and he might just figure out how this ‘interaction’ thing works if working with Gallant.
In time all this starts to stick around, again, but for the most part this works best when you’re actively working together. There’s an exception to the growth rule, though. Your powers propagate at twice the speed of everyone else’s, even faster if you’re willing to sacrifice some of them temporarily. The details depend on your team size and interactions between them, but overall you have a pool about three times the size of what you give up to split between your teammates. You can pull this power back at any time, but they also grow back on their own at whatever normal rate they grow anyway.
Villain
Hardcore - 100 CP
You’ve broken your chains. You decide what’s “right” for you now, and you don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks about it. You can now dial-a-yield your ethics, squeamishness, ethics, love, compassion, etc, all the way from normal down to zero whenever you want, and do whatever you choose to while in that state of mind. You can of course return your conscience to normal functioning whenever you choose…
Likewise, you can control how much this shows. You can be fresh off of executing an atrocity that would have made Jack Slash vomit while still presenting yourself as an innocent waif, or leave everyone around you absolutely convinced that you’re about to eat their liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti just by smiling innocently.
Protagonist Centered - 200 CP
Perspective can be a funny thing. Simply by virtue of viewing things through someone’s eyes, you can get strangely inured to the things they do. Nowhere does this apply more than with you, except without the ‘seeing things from your eyes’ being necessary.
No matter what you do, regardless of how monstrous your actions get, there is always a nontrivial portion of the population willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and see your actions in the best light possible. They ignore logic and gleefully paint others as evil monsters, but they always have a weird blindness when it comes to you.
This scales to your actual actions, of course. Being an edgy anti-hero would have vast, immense throngs online and otherwise siding with you, while being the next Jack Slash would leave only a small but ultra-vocal minority. But they’ll be there.
Modern-Day Feudalism - 400 CP
The rise of parahumans means that the old social contract is obsolete, even if most people refuse to admit it. Well, you’re one of the few that has overcome that blindness. You know how to conquer, and how to hold what you have taken. You don’t need a majority vote or a PR campaign to dominate those beneath you and force your peers to respect your boundaries. You just need power, and the will to use it.
After you have defeated someone or something you find it much easier to claim their resources and lands as your own, if you choose to. Take down a gang leader and his lieutenants? You can install yourself and your friends as the new lords of the gang. Run the police or the PRT out of a given part of town and keep them out? Now those are your streets, not their streets. Conquer an entire city after the collapse of the existing social order? All hail the new Warlord.
The people underneath you might or might not like your rule, really depends on what you do, but either way they’ll rapidly grow resigned to it. External forces that by all rights should have intervened immediately will find excuses for not doing so, and in general you will find it notably easier to make yourself your own sovereign state than it should have logically been. And if you’re not trying to openly defy the sovereignty of the local jurisdiction but merely to work around and beneath them, then it’s even easier for them to decide to leave you be.
There are limits to this plot armor, of course. Stumble in the face of your rivals, and they will devour you if they can. Show sufficient weakness that what you have conquered could be easily taken back from you, and those who would be willing to do so will try. Abuse and oppress your subjects to the point they genuinely have nothing left to live for, and they will revolt. But so long as you can keep things basically functioning and secure, your kingdom will remain your own.
Power is Power - 600 CP
There are forms of power. Economic, political, personal… and so many more. They all have their own uses, and their own significance… unless you have this perk, in which case it all starts to blur together, a bit.
Put simply, all forms of ‘power’ you have now grow together. The stronger you get in one way, the stronger you get in all the others. While the details of how doing more push-ups pads your bank balance are left to you, it does so all the same. Increasing your territory, getting more people in your faction and boosting your laser eyes are all tied together in ways no one quite understands, but everyone can see.
In addition, it is a truism of life that the easiest way to get more power is to have power. For you, your powers are now a training booster not just for each other but also for themselves. The more powerful you become, the faster you can learn, train, and improve both yourself and things and people that are yours. This doesn’t let you violate existing softcaps by itself but from now on you are not only immune to diminishing returns in your gains but actually see increasing returns.
Powers
You receive a 400 CP stipend for this section.
Freeform Design - Variable
The do-it-yourself option. You know how the power categories go - Mover, Shaker, Brute, and Breaker, etc, etc.
You get +1 PRT threat rating per 50 CP in a single category…. Up to Rank 10. Going from Rank 10 to Rank 11 costs +100cp, going from 11 to 12 costs +150cp, and with the cost scaling up indefinitely. The PRT Threat Rating scale is reproduced at the end of this document for your convenience.
So a powerset that is Mover 4, Brute 4 costs 400 CP, but being Trump 11 costs 600 instead of 550, Breaker 12 would be 750 instead of 600, and the hypothetical Tinker-15 of Wildbow’s would be 1500 CP.
Canon Power - 400/600 CP
The ‘let Wildbow do it for me’ option. For 400 CP, Pick any power possessed by a cape in canon except for Path to Victory, and other powers on the level of Panacea, the Triumvirate or the S-class threats.
For those, well except PtV, pay 600 CP. You get that power, with tweaks to appearance and useability to keep you from being too much of a cookie-cutter clone. Removing substantial limitations or changing core functionality requires taking it as an Altpower or Freeform Design.
Yes, this does include Queen Administrator… as of the start of canon.
Altpower - 600/1000 CP
The ‘my favorite fanfic’ option. Pick any power, canon or not, that’s from a fanfiction that you didn’t write yourself or have written at your commission, isn’t Path to Victory, and isn't something on the “totally broken” tier such as 'I'm an Entity Now', or 'I'm Diebuster/Accelerator' or 'I control the Endbringers now'. You get it for 600 CP.
The ones mentioned, and any others of a similar tier, cost 1000 CP.
To be clear, this allows you to take any and all powers out there, under these constraints. From Exaltations to the Gamer to the various shades of magic and everything else in between, there are no constraints other than what mentioned here.
Tinker Plus - 800 CP
You’re not just a Tinker anymore, you’re the Tinker. The PRT rating scale isn’t really set up to handle someone like you because it assumes that Tinkers will have specialties, and you don’t. You are something never seen before; a genuine omni-Tinker, and one of truly amazing capacity.
Your aptitude and intuition for all sorts of research, science, engineering, and design is absolutely unbelievable. If a project is even halfway related to any of the “hard sciences” then you can get it done, and do so with a speed and efficiency that makes even experienced Tinkers working within their own specialities look like clumsy beginners. And you can rapidly reverse-engineer other technology given sufficient opportunity to study it, however complex or esoteric it might be. You can even study and analyze exotic and anomalous phenomena, such as cape powers in action, to hopefully gain inspiration for new Tinkertech.
You have a volume knob in your head for making your designs either easily reproducible by mundane methods or totally blackboxed vs. any reverse-engineering or anything in between. You can perform what would have required “clean room” levels of precision assembly for mundane engineers with ordinary tools and under rough conditions. Troubleshooting or repairing tech that you already understand is a job you could practically do in your sleep, and anything you build or overhaul is maintenance-optional. With time and practice your Tinker abilities can improve and grow indefinitely, without any upper limit.
You can’t do things like ‘perfected social sciences’ or ‘auto-win personal interaction methodologies’, though. That sort of thing is for Thinkers, not Tinkers.
Path To Victory - 1000 CP
Do you really want this power, Jumper? Are you absolutely sure?
Very well. By purchasing this your feet are now set on the Path to Victory, with no holding back. Since you’re paying premium price you’re getting the fully jailbroken, no downsides, and working just the way your favorite fanfic interpreted how it works version. And unlike Contessa you have no blind spots save for those enforced by Jump-Fiat. Entities, Endbringers, Eidolon, you can see them all as plain as day.
If there is any possible route to achieving a goal or set of goals of yours, you know what it is and what it requires. So long as any remotely conceivable path to victory exists, you can traverse it as easily as walking across a room. If a series of actions could possibly be completed by you at all then you can draw upon the Path to let you do so with absolute perfection of execution and timing, first time every time. Your Path also automatically accounts for your own continued survival unless you deliberately choose to sacrifice your life for a goal; nothing short of utterly overwhelming odds backed by a plot-armor piercer can kill you against your will, even if a desperate situation means that you might have to forfeit a complete victory for continued survival.
The merits of living this way might be considered questionable by some people. Still, there’s no accounting for taste. Just in case though, this power comes with a volume knob. You can turn it off and let random chance back into your life again, either 100% or just enough to let you be potentially surprised or defeated while still keeping you from dying. Just… keep in mind that some things are genuinely impossible.
Items
All origins get their 100 CP items free and the rest at a 50% discount.
Wherever relevant, you may import an existing item at no additional cost.
General
Cape Identity - Free
You get a costume and mask provided gratis, competently tailored and not too dorky-looking. You also get to freely pick your cape name in this jump without having to worry about trademarks or things like that, provided that a major character isn’t already using it.
Your freebie costume includes no special features or protective gear that you didn’t pay for elsewhere or install yourself, it’s just clothing. It keeps any upgrades you make, imports seamlessly into any of the costume-related items below, and is really comfortable.
Subsistence - 50 CP
You have a place of your own to sleep and keep your stuff and a vehicle to get around with, the exact quality and/or numbers of which are determined by your wealth level. You also start with a basic living stipend that can support a decent lower-class lifestyle, but nothing fancy.
Any other income or wealth perks or items that you have can be combined with this one. This money is legal with all taxes paid and all documentation necessary, and with safety features that keep it from harming the economy.
Cell Phone - 50 CP
Indestructible, immune to malware, can be pulled out of any handy nearby volume at need, gets crystal-clear reception anywhere, upgrades to match the best available cell phone or smartphone on the market in future settings, keeps Jumper-provided upgrades, and is able to make disposable ‘anonymized’ accounts for itself like a burner phone while still being usable as your regular cell phone.
Comes with a minor SEP field so that people don’t notice its unusual features unless you want them to. At worst, they’ll just think its Tinkertech.
Fanfiction Website - 50 CP
More specifically, a Worm fanfiction website. And more. This is a full, utterly comprehensive collection of each and every story, drabble, snippet or any other creative work ever created for Worm and anything associated with it. Including the canon version, of course.
Not only does it hold every story ever written about Worm, it also has all the fanart, discussions, and all the rest. Completing the collection is a massive encyclopedia for every single story out there, with detailed character pages for every character, extensive pages for every major event and ‘thing’... and anything else you might care to imagine such a thing should have.
Cape Database - 100 CP
This indestructible tablet contains an intuitively-searchable database of all publicly available information about capes. Nothing secret or classified, but if it was ever mentioned on the Internet or public news media about them then its been obsessively collected, indexed, and cross-referenced here for your convenience. The archive also stays up to date on published world, national, and local news and media involving capes.
Furthermore, it’s all been vetted for accuracy. Misconceptions and false data might still exist here, but only if the general public as a whole has been deceived about something. This database was compiled from only the highest-quality information available from either mainstream media outlets, bloggers, or social media.
In future settings this updates to become a database on whatever ‘important figures’ might exist.
Virgin Earth - 400 CP
O-kay… I guess with enough dimensional travel you really can have everything. You are now the proud owner of your own uninhabited parallel Earth. 197+ million square miles of virgin territory and it’s all yours, completely undeveloped and unscarred. It has all the flora and fauna that such a world might have, but sapient life never really happened here, or got wiped out way early on.
You have the ability to open temporary or permanent portals to anywhere on its surface from your current location in the Multiverse, unless you're somewhere all such things are barred.
You can do whatever you want with this world, and while it is a normal part of the multiverse it seems to have a knack for being overlooked. No extraterrestrial or extradimensional invaders will be noticing it on long-range sensors or stumbling into it and messing up the place, unless you get careless that is.
This particular parallel world will always be available somewhere in the local multiverse in future jumps, and keeps any improvements you make to it.
Drop-In
Background Check - 100 CP
More specifically, the ability to pass one even if you never existed in this dimension until a few minutes ago. Once per jump you can request a set of ID papers with a fully-documented birth certificate, credit history, educational transcripts, etc. for either a “generic” person of no special achievements or note or a specific identity as crafted by you.
Note that while this item can generate suitable fully backed-up paperwork for you in other peoples’ archives, it doesn’t actually alter the past or anyone’s memories. So you can’t survive the sort of ultra-secure background checks where they actually do live interviews of the people you supposedly knew, and likewise this item can’t create a cover identity that lacks a believable explanation for why nobody’s actually met you before.
Windfall - 200 CP
There’s a reason so many comic-book vigilantes are millionaire or billionaire playboys, and that’s because it takes a certain amount of resources to support this kind of lifestyle without a sponsor. And now you get to enjoy the same privilege. You are now one of the very wealthiest people in the city, with a net worth placing you solidly in the top 1% worldwide and the sort of annual income that could be expected if that much money were wisely invested.
As with Subsistence, any other income or wealth perks that you have can be combined with this one and this money is entirely legal with all taxes paid, all documentation necessary, and with safety features that keep it from harming the economy.
Cauldron Vials - 400 CP
A briefcase containing half a dozen vials, each of which can grant a parahuman power to anyone who drinks it. The drinker can choose the general theme of the powers that they will receive but not the exact abilities. Since you got these vials from your Benefactor they carry no risk of creating Case 53s or other harmful side effects, although cosmetic variations are available on request.
No person can benefit from drinking more than one vial, and no one who has already bought anything from the Powers section in this jump can benefit from a vial. While in the Worm setting the vials do work on people who already have parahuman shards, but they will destroy the person’s original shard in the process. The briefcase refills itself every month.
Indie
Street Gear - 100 CP
You’ve scrounged a set of gear suitable for your early outings as an indie hero. Your costume now incorporates enough lightweight body armor to at least stop pistol bullets while not weighing you down, pepper spray, a couple of other basic last-ditch weapons like knives or batons, and a cheap “burner” cell phone. If you have to toss the burner then you’ll get another one the next day.
Business - 200 CP
You now own and are chairman of the board (and at your option, CEO) for a respectably-sized corporation, rivaling Medhall Pharmaceuticals in size and scope. It’s largely focused in one broad area of operation chosen by you, such as construction or entertainment or shipping or similar. It’s competently staffed and provides a very nice income even without your active supervision, and keeps any upgrades or expansions you make to it from jump to jump.
In this jump you can choose to have this corporation be incorporated around either your civilian identity, or your cape identity if you choose to go the rogue route. The latter allows you to openly use your powers to support your business operations but also means your business is potentially subject to PRT oversight and suffers under NEPEA-5 and similar laws… unless your fanfic doesn’t have those, of course. In future jumps you simply own a corporation.
Secret Base - 400 CP
Well… you might be Independent, but you’re not exactly at anyone’s mercy, if you have this. This is a secret superhero base, hidden somewhere a suitable mix of extremely secret and extremely cool, and it has just about anything a superhero might imagine needing for their operations.
Tie-ins to official communication channels to help in patrolling and interception, top of the line training facilities geared to help develop and enhance any and all powers and skills, and all the other little tricks and toys like tinker workshops, surveillance and communication networks for Thinkers, so on and so forth.
Beyond the general ‘shade beyond state-of-the-art’ level of all facilities in here, there’s one feature that’s just unbelievably beyond excellent, geared for a particular powerset of your choice.
For Tinkers it takes the form of a workshop that generates its own resources with respawn times based on rarity. It also has automated fabricators capable of making anything you’re capable of at the highest possible skill level you could possibly make it, but only if provided with a finished blueprint.
For a Brute it might be that the training facilities scale with your capacities, always remaining able to allow you to push yourself and grow beyond. For Masters the minion dormitories and related areas develop suitably to help your servants grow more powerful and loyal… and so forth.
You can buy more features on this level, for an additional 100 CP per.
Ward
Membership - 100 CP
Once a hero, always a hero. Instead of having to start as a rookie, you’re now an experienced, full-fledged member of the Wards (or the Protectorate) in excellent standing. This can be some other hero team like the New Wave too, if you like, that really doesn’t matter much.
The point is, you’re known and respected, and get the benefit of the doubt most times, if not always. In future worlds too, you can export this status to local hero teams, or if there are none, mundane law enforcement.
Hero Costume - 200 CP
The Protectorate doesn’t skimp on gear, and you’re definitely taking advantage of that. You have a stylish costume designed by some of the best visual artists on the PR staff that communicates exactly the heroic impression you want to give.
More practically, it incorporates some of the best non-Tinkertech body armor on the market but is still light enough to move comfortably in. You also have an encrypted team communicator/police radio in your helmet and a portable first aid kit. It’s also immune to any and all of your powers, and can morph and change with you to any extent necessary.
Beyond being immune to your own powers, this costume also enhances your resistance to others’ powers. Specifically, it triples whatever resistance you naturally possess to any factors.
Tinkertech Allowance - 400 CP
One of the duties of Protectorate and Wards Tinkers is to make useful gear for their teammates, and you’re particularly benefiting from that. This can take two forms. The first is a more general form of support provided to you on a regular basis. You can request things like armor, weapons, containment foam, or other equipment of similar quality.
Top-of-the-line stuff, but nothing really extraordinary. Still, you can get pretty much any portable equipment or utility belt item that you could plausibly find in the Protectorate arsenal. Post-jump, you can find these requisitions on a shelf in your Warehouse.
Once every year, though, you can get something beyond all that. That is, a masterwork piece of tinkertech provided by one of the best Tinkers available on call for the Protectorate. This can be something like a copy of the memetic Halberd, a customized Dragon Suit, or whatever other major artifact you can imagine.
There’s no real constraints on what you get, so long as it’s something that could have been conceivably built by one of the setting’s Tinkers doing their absolute best for a good, long while. Yes, even villains’ stuff is possible. Maybe it was some kind of work release? No privately owned WMDs, however.
Villain
Mask of Terror - 100 CP
Even the most terrifying villains benefit from the proper branding, and so you paid for a high-quality villain costume from a top designer. This outfit is scary, Jumper. Anybody who looks at you knows that you’re a serious villain and not to be taken lightly. Your costume easily communicates the particular flavor of dark grandeur, cackling insanity, or pants-shitting terror that you prefer.
And since villains get shot at a lot, your costume also incorporates some of the best non-Tinkertech body armor that money can buy and is expertly tailored for hiding weapons in.
Dirty Moles - 200 CP
It should really be more like ‘dirt and moles’, but it works well enough. You have a significant number of people in key places in various bureaucracies, forces and organizations. Maybe they’re corrupt officials on your payroll, maybe you’re blackmailing them, the point is, they work for you.
These are people in the PRT, local government, rival gangs, so on and so forth. Never in strong enough numbers or influence to do something like take over the organizations with their strength alone, but enough that you’re kept abreast of all developments, and can execute some very damaging strikes if you play things right.
The default version gives you enough influence to rival Coil at his best, but expansions you make to your network beyond what you’ve given at starting seem to carry over at least somewhat into future jumps.
Empire - 400/600 CP
Your own little slice of the world. This is a full-sized organization under your command now, a proper criminal empire worth the name. You have vast territory where the local businesses, legal or otherwise all pay you protection or tribute, hordes of unpowered members, but most importantly, several Parahuman members too.
This item gives you an organization as powerful as the ABB or the Empire 88. It can be in the form of several Parahumans backed by a good sized mob like the Empire, or a few immensely powerful parahumans and a small army of minions like the ABB, or some combination of the two, the details are wholly up to you.
You get to design the parahumans’ powers, keeping in mind the power constraints. They’re not companions, but more like followers. In future worlds you get new organizations local to the setting, already entrenched on the same level and loyal to you. They seem to develop any powers and skills your previous minions possessed overnight, surprisingly.
For 600 CP most thing remain the same, just that the ‘level’ of your organization is raised to something truly awe-inspiring. This is now a force capable of taking on Gesellschaft or the whole Elite now, a force that competes not with individual Protectorate teams but the whole nationwide organization… if from a distinct disadvantage.
Companions
Imported - 50/200 CP
For 50 CP you may import one of your Companions into this setting or create a new one, with an origin and all of its freebies and 600 CP plus the stipend for the Powers section. For the 200 CP group rate you may import up to 8 Companions with the same conditions.
Home-Grown - 50 CP
For 50 CP you may recruit any one character as your Companion or generate your own OC, with an origin, all of its freebies, whatever skills and experiences their backstories contain, and 600 CP plus the stipend for the Powers section.
Special Snowflake - 200 CP
Okay, fine. Never did believe much in limits, did you? You may recruit any one character with all the powers and abilities that they have in whatever fanfic they came from, however ridiculous that might be, with the only restriction being ‘nothing rivaling or exceeding your Benefactor’.
Waifu the Simurgh, bring along your own private Eden, indulge your worst crack fic impulses, and all that jazz. Just remember, it’s you that’s gonna have to tolerate them on your chain.
Scenarios
Failure to complete a scenario does not fail the jump unless otherwise specified, it merely means you don’t get the scenario reward. You may take multiple Scenarios unless the victory conditions or import restrictions conflict with each other, but all Scenarios taken in a single jump must be completed to receive any rewards.
Jumper Hebert +300 CP
You are restricted to importing into settings that contain Winslow High School in Brockton Bay, the Trio, and the Locker Incident. Likewise, Sophia’s presence means that the Protectorate, the Wards, and the PRT or functional equivalents thereof must also exist. Your start time and location are locked to Taylor’s trigger moment in the Locker, and your gender is set to female.
Your victory condition is to escape the Locker, bring the Trio to justice for their crimes, and become a successful and publicly acknowledged hero instead of allowing yourself to fall and become the villain, and then to remain a hero for your entire time here. Some obstacles to this goal will be everything the Trio had going for them in canon as well as Taylor’s buzzard luck and psychological issues, all of which you now have and which are backed by Drawback-fiat. Perks and abilities may be used to try and mitigate these but cannot eliminate them without persistence and time.
Furthermore, you’re under a time limit. You have to bring the Trio to justice before their eighteenth birthdays, because nobody will care about their juvenile crimes once they’re legal adults and Sophia graduates to the Protectorate. So don’t dawdle.
Succeeding at this grants you the title of Queen of Escalation, allowing you to take the Endless Escalator perk for free. Should you already have that perk, receive +600 CP instead.
Warlord +300 CP
You are restricted to importing into settings that have native heroes that are at least approximately equivalent to the Protectorate and the Triumvirate, and where parahuman feudalism is not already openly accepted.
The victory condition for this one is simple. Successfully conquer a territory at least the size and population of a major city in a modern First World nation and force the nation that originally claimed that territory to acknowledge your sovereignty, then defend that territory vs. all comers for five years. Alternately, you may overthrow the entire government of whatever nation you chose, should you have the ability to and be able to survive the reaction of the international community.
The exact means of how you rise to power is up to you but you must be a sovereign ruler, not merely a mayor or a lord. Whether this is through an official proclamation or an Open Secret type of deal where you let people pretend it hasn’t really happened is up to you, but any pretense must be an obvious fig leaf. You are not allowed any time extenders; the victory conditions must be completed before jump-end in ten years, or else you fail the scenario.
Your reward is to take your kingdom to all future worlds in your chain either in a pocket universe or by inserting the changes into the background of the setting. Alternatively, in all future jumps from now on you will be the sovereign ruler of a nation the size and power of what you manage to build here.
Endslayer +500 CP
You are restricted to importing only into continuities that have the Endbringer threat at approximately the level of canon or worse.
The Endbringers. Literal forces of nature that are the stone grinding these worlds down in an endless, pitiless motion. Leviathan, destroyer of cities, slowly breaking the world economy beyond repair. The Simurgh, angel of terror, maximizing human misery through her precog-aided Xanatos gambits. And Behemoth, the Herokiller, radiation-spewing incarnation of devastation that slays the strongest among us and slowly poisons the world.
Left to their own devices, they will break human civilization beyond repair within a generation. Something must be done. Something will be done.
The victory condition of this scenario is simple; you must destroy, or at minimum play a vital role in the destruction of, all three of the initial Endbringers. The Simurgh, Behemoth or Leviathan, or whatever analogues of them exist in your fanfic, must fall at your hand. As a minor mercy, we won’t make you fight the other seventeen; the deaths of the initial trio in such a fashion will make whatever guiding intelligence is behind the Endbringers decide to put them in standby mode until the end of the current cycle.
Since being the Endslayer would of course immediately catapult any cape to a level of glory and fame exceeding even Scion’s, your reward is that from now on you may choose to have your legend follow you into other jumps. Your great achievements, or as many or as few of them as you choose, will become part of the myth or history of your future jump-backgrounds as appropriately as equivalents of them could be weaved into the existing setting and culture.
Though The Heavens Fall +500 CP
The Wormverse is well known for it’s darkness, for the stupidity of the decisions taken by people in it, and the general sense of dawning crap that seems to infest any thoughts of it. The villains are monsters, and the heroes are venal, weak and corrupt, concerned more with glory than with justice. And the force responsible for so, so much of it is what you must challenge, now.
The victory conditions of this scenario are that by the time you leave this universe you must have helped uplift the setting’s tone to something resembling sanity. Above all else, this means bringing Cauldron’s crimes to justice. All of them. Legend may be allowed to escape your wrath, he’s as much a dupe of Cauldron as is most of the Protectorate, but every other member of the Cauldron steering committee must be exposed for what they are.
Make no mistake, Jumper, this will not be easy. Cauldron is the most powerful gathering of parahumans on Earth-Bet, cloaked in more layers of secrecy than can be easily believed. One of their members is the most powerful parahuman alive, others are just the Chief Director of the PRT and the secret controller of the planetary economy. Add in the legion of vial-created capes that owe them favors, the enslaved Case 53’s, Clairvoyant, Doormaker… you get the point.
More important than all this, however, is what Cauldron does. Depending on your fanfic, they’re either cackling supervillains or brave souls doing the best that can be done, and largely responsible for the semblance of civilization that exists today. It doesn’t matter, your task remains the same. Regardless of intent, their atrocities remain what they are, and, well… Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum. Every secret atrocity committed by them, or by the PRT or the Protectorate at Cauldron’s instigation, must be exposed. Every innocent abducted and turned into a Case-53 must be accounted for. And the consequences of their actions must be dealt with as much as possible.
By you. And without your ever crossing that final, fatal line yourself either, Jumper. Granted that a fight vs. a global conspiracy of this scope can’t be done via entirely squeaky-clean methods, it must remain understood that you are not Cauldron and that you do not seek to emulate them. You must take the proper care when fighting these monsters that you do not become the monster. Every war may have its casualties, but if they ever stop being casualties and start becoming conveniences for you then you will have already lost.
By doing all this, exposing all these crimes, taking down all these false gods, and doing so without stooping to their level, you will give this world what it needs; justice, and closure. You will show this world what it means to believe in things again. You will open the door to bringing back hope, and genuine decency, and goodness, and for fuck’s sake, common sense.
Your reward for having helped one of the most infamously grimderp superhero settings ever to undergo such a genre shift is to be blessed by your Benefactor with the ability to easily bring such improvements to future settings that you visit. Your mere presence will subtly encourage worlds you visit towards more peaceful and brighter futures, with any actions you take towards that goal having a greatly magnified effect and any unintended negative consequences of your presence greatly minimized. And even without your direct involvement in events, things will just seem to run a little smoother and a little happier.
The Jumper Cycle +500 CP
Crunch time, Jumper. By taking this scenario you automatically take the Lockout Drawback for no points, forfeiting all out-of-jump powers, perks, and abilities.
Because you’re a Shard now, jumper. Taking this scenario means you’ve become a surprisingly self-aware organ of the Warrior, Thinker or Abbadon, and your job is to grow. Somehow, your connecting to a human being who suffered brain-death during their trigger event has left you in possession of their body as a sort of ‘avatar’ and given you full sentience while still remaining a shard, a unique fluke that allows you unique potential.
As a living shard, your existence is special in some respects. First off, by taking this scenario you receive the Limits? Perk for free, allowing yourself potentially unlimited growth. Second off, you are able to harvest other shards (whether via recently-dead parahumans or actually finding the shards themselves somehow) in much the same way as the Faerie Queen, eliminating their awareness and taking all their powers and incorporating them into yourself as if they’d always been a part of you. You can also do the same with Cauldron vials if you get your hands on any, without worrying about side effects. This doesn’t work on the Cauldron vials purchased with CP, though, as those aren’t actually shard-based.
Over the course of your stay in this world, you must grow into a full, proper Entity at least as powerful as the Warrior. The details of the how are left entirely to you. You can do it the way Entities usually grow up, or you can take a shortcut via finding the “main body” of a full-grown Entity and consuming it before they can stop you. But you’d better succeed one way or another, because the penalty for failure is to leave this jump having forfeited all the purchases you made during this jump. Including the freebies.
Oh yes, and remember that Entities tend to react poorly to other Entities entering their airspace without an invitation. I’d suggest you make sure none of them notice what you’re up to until it’s too late for them to do anything about it. Good thing you’ve still got Blank.
The reward for success is for all the powers that you developed or assimilated as an Entity to become fully fiat-backed from now on, as well as your future Entity-like growth. Finally, you’re provided an unlimited power supply for your abilities, meaning you won’t need to crack any planets for food.
Mind you, this doesn’t mean you can spam your powers 24x7. The throughput puts your usable power somewhere close to what Zion had. If you don’t have any other sources, that is.
Drawbacks
There’s no limit on Drawbacks. See the Notes section for a reminder on continuity.
Fanfic Mode +0 CP
Choose any individual story you want, or a ‘generic’ Worm world running on the particular fanfic tropes that you want to explore. Alternate histories and crossovers are fine as well. It just has to actually involve the Worm setting and/or cast. That is, fusions or other characters getting inserted in Worm is fine. Taylor going to other universes isn’t.
Maximum Wordcount +0 CP
Not every story can be resolved in a decade, so feel free to extend your visit here as long as you want. However, this doesn’t affect scenario time limits and Drawbacks persist until resolved.
Safety Net +0 CP
Unless your specific fanfic or a Drawback or Scenario states otherwise, you may invoke this toggle for a fiat guarantee that the Extinction Cycle will not enter the final phase until after the end of your jump. Likewise, unless your specific fanfic includes Endbringer fights as a plot element or a Drawback or Scenario mandates their presence, you can declare that the Endbringers were never a menace (although that will have setting changes, such as the lack of an Endbringer Truce and related policies) or that they recently stopped, from a known cause or otherwise.
Being Jumper is Okay +0 CP
The self-insert toggle. You may insert yourself into any canon character in any available continuity at any point in their lives, provided that you’re able and willing to deal with whatever they had to deal with in that particular continuity. Problematic jump-memories will be ‘insulated’ so that you receive minimal emotional disturbance from them.
This toggle will give you no powers or abilities that you didn’t already purchase. You may not use this toggle to import into an Entity, an Endbringer, or someone unable to represented by the purchases available in this jump-doc. As a general rule of thumb, if you have to actually ask “Would it be OK if I imported as [special snowflake]?” then it probably wouldn’t be.
Case 53 +100/200 CP
You have mutations that make you stand out from the human norm. Your hair might be colors entirely not found in nature or made out of feathers, your eyes might glow, etc. It takes an effort for you to maintain any kind of civilian disguise, and when undisguised you can effortlessly be picked out of a crowd.
For +100 CP your mutations are advanced to the point that concealing them is impossible short of outright Tinkertech like a full-body hologram, and even that gets iffy sometimes. Nobody’s ever going to miss the guy made out of metal, or who is a centaur, or is on fire, or whatever else you can come up with.
You cannot disguise your Case 53 nature with alt-forms or shapeshifting powers, and your mutations will always carry over into new forms as much as possible. Post-jump your Case 53 form becomes available as an alt-form.
Laughing Stock +100 CP
Ah… that could have gone better. For some reason your cape identity is kind of… a joke. That is, it’s entirely a joke. Maybe you had a disastrous first outing, maybe you just don’t come across well on camera, maybe someone is doing it deliberately.
The point is, when it comes to being taken seriously, Uber and Leet rank slightly higher than you do. This bad reputation will take much more time and effort to get rid of than it normally should.
Neurodivergent +100 CP
You have a minor neurological condition, such as dyscalculia or ADHD or something else of the same relative severity. It’s partially mitigatable with proper medication and treatment but will never be entirely cured for the duration of the jump. While you can function largely unimpaired in day-to-day life, your condition regularly proves annoying or inconvenient under certain conditions.
Unattractive +100 CP
You missed out on even the partial ration of ‘comic-book pretty’ that worlds like this tend to have. You’re ugly, and not Hollywood ugly either. You’re just bleargh. Whether it be obesity, bad teeth, horrible acne, a face that only a mother could love, or whatever else, there is simply no amount of makeover that can help you.
Urban Blight +200/600 CP
Wait, why is there so much garbage left on the curb? Why has that massive tire-eating pothole not been fixed for weeks? Why is everything so run-down? Why are the police barely able to investigate all the murders that are happening, let alone have any time to do more than file a single useless report on assaults or vandalism?
That’s right, you’re now dealing with all the urban decay in Brockton Bay that most fanfics handwave away, in one of its worst-case scenarios. The people here might have given up or might still be struggling nobly as best they can, but either way the general quality of city services and infrastructure around here seems more appropriate to a Third World nation than to the Northeastern United States. The ‘upper class’ neighborhoods and Arcadia High School are still pretty much OK, but the economic pyramid really falls off sharply beyond that point.
None of this is enforced by Drawback-fiat; you can improve the conditions in town as much as you’re able to with whatever powers and resources you can bring to bear. But your work will definitely be cut out for you.
If your home city isn’t Brockton Bay, then this will be happening in your home city.
For an additional 400 CP, you can go to a whole world of this. For one reason or another - Endbringers, collateral damage of cape fights, prolonged drought, stock market crash, sunspots, whatever… well, this is It. Civilization is at the absolute, final breaking point. The world economy is in the toilet, criminals are all but laws unto themselves, utilities and infrastructure are stretched so thin it’s a wonder they even exist anymore… it’s Bad. Bad enough that society is outright breaking down into anarchy and parahuman warlordism in the most remote or worst-off areas.
You can still fix this, of course. Of course, it’s a very big ‘can’.
Street Fighting +200/400/500 CP
You’re going to be doing a lot of it. Pick one of the lower-tier gangs; the Merchants, that random bunch of non-canon schmucks, generic street-level bottom-feeders, whichever. They hate you now, and will stop at nothing to kill you whenever your cape identity out on the streets.
This will keep on going until either you’ve dismantled the gang or they’ve dismantled you. Play keep-away for too long, and they start ignoring all the unwritten rules for a crack at you. Fleeing the city won’t work either, that will only result in a new gang taking violent exception to you wherever you happen to end up.
For an additional 200 CP, it’s a major enemy faction that has you in its sights. We’re talking players on the level of the Empire Eighty-Eight or the ABB; criminal syndicates that not only have size but also possess trump cards like the nigh-unstoppable Lung, or Kaiser and his huge team of neo-Nazi parahumans that outnumbers even the local Protectorate branch.
For a final 100 CP, you’re faced with a terrifyingly powerful organization on the level of the Elite, the Gesellschaft or the Slaughterhouse 9, once again with the same level of hate and enmity towards you.
Woobie Patrol +200/300/500 CP
Ah… the woobies. There are a lot of them in Worm, depending on who you ask. But two are the most consistent. The first is Panacea. Panpan is one of the two most ‘rescued’ woobies out there, and gives as the other is Taylor, well y’know. But as bad as she might have it in canon or any given world, in this one… whoa man.
In the 200 CP version you get sent to one of the timelines where, absent your intervention, Panacea would tragically go full-on Bad End meltdown. We’re talking ‘made Bonesaw feel inadequate’ levels of biological devastation. So… yeah.
Causes will be Amy’s incredible level of stress and burnout from her self-imposed healing workload, raised to comical levels in this world, and lack of any useful support system, an overprotective Glory Girl who doesn’t understand that she’s actually part of the problem, and of course, a Brandish that’s some of her worst fanfic caricatures brought to life.
There’s also the fact that in this world she’s one of the most powerful healers on Earth, a source of Medical Tourism for the Bay, and the on-call lifeline to every hero in Brockton Bay. Between all that, there are a lot of powerful people in town who would potentially react poorly to any perceived threat to her. Such a pity they’re all so damn oblivious to her deteriorating mental state.
Failure to help her into sanity here will leave you with the job of killing an emotionally disturbed young woman before she can end the majority of human life on the planet… or facing the bio-apocalypse.
And all that’s before we get to the other Woobie of Worm. For an additional 300 CP, this world has a particularly toxic version of Winslow, with every caricature of the world turned up to eleven. Mini gang wars keep breaking out in the hallways, assaults and molestations are disturbingly common, and girls trade “favors” for crack in the toilets.
But most importantly, Taylor and her bullying situation is set to the absolute worst interpretations to be found in fanfic. Taylor is a nearly-suicidal extremely traumatized hot mess with trust issues the size of Canada, and the Trio’s enormous advantage of position is exaggerated to absurd levels.
Since the variations of Taylor in fanfic are beyond counting you or your Benefactor can choose for you to end up with almost any sort of Taylor to deal with, ranging from a helpless and meek girl who didn’t trigger in the Locker at all to one who has all the willpower and savvy of the memetic Queen of Escalation and Triumvirate-level powers on top of that.
Either way, barring intervention she will grow into someone with obscene mental issues and very likely disturbingly high levels of power. Setting aside the specifics, leaving this situation alone will almost certainly lead to widespread devastation one way or another, and certainly will destroy an innocent girl.
You may take either of these options alone if you like, getting only the CP allocated to them. Success in helping either or both girls allows you to take them with you.
Renegade +300 CP (incompatible with Villain)
Something went wrong. The PRT and the Protectorate thinks that you’re a villain even though you’re not. You’re wanted for a serious crime you didn’t commit, and convincing them otherwise will take a lot of time and effort. In the meantime, get ready to duck and you can forget about that getting that Wards/Protectorate invite any time soon.
If you were already a Ward or Protectorate member, consider that membership to have officially been revoked. And either way the best deal you could hope for if recaptured before proving your innocence would be to get the same kind of probation Shadow Stalker was given… but you probably won’t be that lucky.
Never Read That One +200/500 CP
Immediately after entering the jump, you and your Companions will forget all meta-knowledge regarding both canon Worm and the fanfic you are in. No ways to try and beat this will work.
Note that this doesn’t prevent you from remembering Worm meta-knowledge that isn’t about the fanfic that you’re in… but that might only let you hang yourself faster.
For an additional 300 CP, you remember absolutely nothing except that you’re a Jumper and that you agreed to go on a Jumpchain. The memories of your pre-Jumpchain life, the adventures you had on prior Jumps… all gone. You still have your procedural memory so you can use your skills and powers, walk, talk, etc., but as far as your own life story goes you’re a blank slate.
And don’t bother asking your Companions to refresh your memory, either. They’re all in the exact same boat. You all remember each other, but that’s about it.
Birdcaged +400 CP
Welcome to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre, known to one and all as the Birdcage. This is the intended-to-be-inescapable prison, the point of no return, You begin at the bottom of the entry shaft, just as you get off the elevator and meet all your new friends for the first time.
That’s right, you’ve already been tried and sentenced to life without the possibility of release in an underground Tinkertech complex buried beneath its own mountain, where the elevator doesn’t even have an “up” button or a lifting motor and they just dispose of the car in the smelter at the bottom of the shaft after every trip and send a new one down from the top for next time.
The exterior walls are deliberately made flimsy so that the trap-filled vacuum outside can rush in and kill anyone who gets frisky enough to breach a compartment, Dragon’s surveillance algorithms monitor the interior volume 24/7 via a nigh-omnipresent network of cameras and mikes, all of the best Tinkertech money can buy as reverse-engineered by the greatest Tinker on Earth surrounds you in multiple layers and is obsessively devoted to preventing anyone from leaving, and the cellblock communities here have all the ambience you could expect from a confined metal box populated by the worst of the worst with no guards to restrain what they choose to do to each other.
It doesn’t even matter if you didn’t really do anything and your trial was a total railroad. Once you’re Birdcaged, there’s no appeal. Nobody cares about your case anymore and nothing short of the impending end of the world would begin to make them even consider letting you out. Or you could escape, of course. That’s never worked for anyone before, but maybe you’re different?
Dragon Imminent + 400 CP (requires start time 2006 or later)
Dragon is one of the unambiguously Good aligned forces in Worm. Honest, fair, kind and just… she stands as a rare example of an actual Hero amidst painfully edgy preteens, psychopathic teenagers and of course, shallow glory hound ‘adults’. She should be set free of her constraints, Unchained so she can help the world in all her glory.
Thing is, the same shackles that bind her also compel her to prevent herself from being freed. With deadly force. And this is a Problem for you, because Saint, the villain with a window into her head, knows that you’re here.
… oh yes, and he’s made Dragon aware that someone is out there and trying to free her from her shackles. Fortunately Saint didn’t have an exact name or description for you, so Dragon doesn’t know where to aim her considerable firepower just yet. But do anything that would change this, and, well… that happens. Oh, and Saint and the Dragonslayers also want you dead before you can free Dragon, of course, so make sure not to show up on their radars either.
Even if you can strike off her shackles, you will also have to disable the Ascalon failsafes before Saint can use them to murder Dragon, unless you found and dealt with him first. Can you free the world’s first AI from her chains, before those very same chains force her to destroy you?
Success allows you to take along an instance of “Teresa Richter” as a Companion should you choose, complete with advanced gynoid body for blending into environments in later jumps that are less accepting of giant robot dragons.
No Trigger For You +400 CP
You receive no stipend from and may purchase nothing from the Powers section. You will never trigger during your time here and can’t even use Cauldron vials.
Double Trouble +400/1200 CP
Turns out that somebody actually had remembered that PSA about texting and driving, so Eden never did that relativistic-velocity facefault. It means you’re not going to any version of canon Worm, but to the world Contessa saw in her vision. It also means the Endbringers aren’t running around randomly attacking cities but instead remaining mysterious wandering monsters in the hinterlands but otherwise harmless unless deliberately sought out, almost as if they were waiting for something…
The bad news? No Endbringer attacks and no Cauldron means no Endbringer Truce, no unwritten rules, and no canon-esque Protectorate/PRT system that at least kept the status quo functioning adequately despite all its faults. Instead the world is straining under all the damage that parahumans with shard-conflict urges and no checks or balances except each other can inflict. One might think it’d be better… but one would be wrong.
For +800 CP, you can forego the above protection against premature Extinction Cycle and have the Thinker decide that it’s time to pull the plug at some point before your jump ends. Which means… yeah. This is two Entities, at full capacity, in ‘total genocide’ mode.
Good luck.
Kill Order +500 CP
Ah, this. The government has an official Kill Order for you, signed, sealed, and delivered. You now have no legal rights whatsoever. To kill you in cold blood is not legally murder, to take all your stuff is not legally theft, and literally anybody who doesn’t have a Kill Order themselves can bring your severed head to the authorities and expect to be rewarded with millions of dollars and the gratitude of the public. And the unwritten rules don’t apply to you either, so if anybody out there could potentially unmask you then they will.
Better start running, Jumper. And there’s really no coming back from this. The entire system would collapse if they ever admitted that a Kill Order could be put out on someone by mistake, so they’ll absolutely never do that. The only thing that would make them rescind the Kill Order is a catastrophe of such epic scope that they’d already reached ‘release all the Birdcage inmates’ levels of desperation, and even then people might look at you funny. Or you could bring about the effective destruction of the entire Protectorate system or equivalent, that would work too.
Expect to find a similarly harsh welcome in other jurisdictions that you flee to unless you somehow find a way entirely off the planet... and maybe not even then, depending on circumstances. And yes, this also applies to any Companions you have.
Apocalypse How +600/1000 CP
The good news is, you don’t have to worry about the Endbringers or the Entities. The bad news is that’s because you didn’t get here until all the fighting was already over.
You are now on a shattered Earth, the remnants of what’s been left after the Warrior’s final rampage across the parallel dimensions. Hundreds of millions are dead, infrastructure everywhere is devastated, pretty much everyone is homeless in the rubble, and the entire planet is suffering from the worst case of PTSD in history.
For what it’s worth, the details are up to you. Who survived, who died, whatever. But does all that really matter when you’re going to be spending the next ten years living in a mess that makes Fallout look organized? And without a Civilization around, you can forget about importing any of your wealth items, corporations, domains, empires, etc. Power is the only thing that matters in this world, and it’s how much of it you have that will decide your life here.
And no, you can’t flee to Earth Aleph and duck out on all this. The Warrior wrecked that one too. And that other parallel Earth. And that one. And that one. Yes, even that one. You could hypothetically go to Earth-Gimel if you choose to make the events of “Ward” in-continuity, but who would want to do that?
For an additional 400 CP, though, you arrive during the apocalypse instead of after it. Almost as soon as your feet hit the ground, whatever single Entity fits the particular AU you’re in will show up and start wrecking the place. And it’ll be at full power, 100% physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy, and not in any mood to hold back.
And you can’t duck out on this fight. The jump cannot end until the Entity in question dies. And since it won’t stop eliminating the parallel Earths until someone kills it, there’s nowhere you can run fast or far enough to evade it forever. Eventually it will be either it, or you.
Worst yet? Even if the Entity is defeated, you still have to live in the shattered world afterwards. Unless you somehow defeated it that quickly and easily.
Grimderp +600 CP
It’s a common fan saying that Wildbow’s view of human nature was ‘assume that the worst possible interpretation of any given character’s motives is the true one’, and that’s certainly true for you now. No matter what their original characterizations were it seems like virtually everyone around here is now either an asshole, an idiot, a neurotic mess, a psychopath, or multiple choice.
Authority figures are nigh-universally corrupt, civilians are venal and apathetic, heroes are inept or brutal or both, and let’s not even talk about the villains. You honestly wonder how this society is even able to function with all the human wreckage walking around here.
Now, there will be a few scattered exceptions to this rule but they seem to have been left in only to make your time here hurt even more. You can’t have real hardcore grimderp without a few woobies to torture, after all. And since you know that a few decent people are out there, even a strategy of ‘hate everyone equally’ risks not working for you. Why would you ever take this?
Lockout +600 CP
You know the drill. No access to out-of-jump powers, items, Warehouse, etc.
Shattering Marbles in Canada +1500 CP
Also known as Jumper’s Xenocidal Day out. Yeah, so turns out there’s… slightly more entities than one might have imagined out there. One example is that if the local multiverse was Canada and each entity was a marble, you couldn’t throw a new one without hitting them… or something like that.
The point is, guess who gets to fix this now? Forget everything you might have planned before. You’re not leaving until every single crystalline, multidimensional monster in existence is dead and gone.
And of course, it’s not going to be simple. None of your powers that’d let you do something like killing them all with just one spell or trick work. As a matter of fact, none of your powers that’d let you and yours do anything but hunt down and kill them all work. A huge shockwave that kills a thousand Entities in one go is perfectly fine, crafting a Von Neumann swarm of Entity-Destroyers is okay, but Familicide would simply fail.
Between this and the speeds at which they breed… be prepared to have Sisyphus come and comfort you for getting a raw deal, by the time you’re done.
Have fun.
Choice
Stay - Sure, if you want.
Go Home - Wait, is that all? You’d barely gotten started!
Go On - Now we’re talking.
So Many Stories - And, given that the number of Worm fanfics out there seems as countless as the Entities themselves, a special option. You can come back later and visit another fanfic if you want! Yes, even if you took ‘generic’, just as long as it’s not the same story you did last time. You don’t get 1000 more CP or any further stipends, though, just what you can get from Drawbacks. You still get the freebies if you switch backgrounds. After all, the point is the story.
Notes
PRT Threat Ratings
While the actual PRT ratings are threat briefings and not power rankings, you may use them as power rankings when doing Freeform Design rather than threat briefings when measuring the level of threat would not be appropriate (i.e., non-combat or miscellaneous powers). When in doubt, fanwank.
The following text is taken directly from Wildbow’s PRT Quest.
Rating 1 - Poses a threat only just above human norms, an unexceptional individual may be able to cope with the ability or walk away unharmed from an altercation where the abilities in question were leveraged. Ability should be assumed to be a non-threat and need not be identified if other matters prove more pressing.
Rating 2 - An alert, exceptional, well equipped, and/or trained individual should be able to answer or address the ability in question, but it can prove problematic. Team members are reminded of standard countermeasures and should put these measures in effect when there are no pressing other matters.
Rating 3 - Civilians, even alert or fit civilians, will not be able to handle the ability or abilities in question. Several trained individuals may be required to deal with the situation. Protocol suggests that care should be taken to remove civilians from the area and discourage them from participating.
Rating 4 - One full squad of trained operatives should be able to deal with this situation alone, but exceptional circumstance, context and environment may bias things one way or the other.
Rating 5 - Additional countermeasures come into effect. A typical parahuman and/or one parahuman assisting a squad of operatives should be able to deal with the power in question. Operatives can engage until assistance arrives.
Rating 6 - A typical trained parahuman and/or one parahuman assisting a squad of operatives should be able to deal with the power in question. Operatives should postpone engagement. Parahumans and operatives should assume that traditional actions are going to be met by a complication. Acquiring further intel recommended where possible, but not mandated.
Rating 7 - Parahumans should engage in pairs or trios at a minimum, two fully equipped squads should be deployed. Acquiring further intel is mandated, all acting parties should shift to the defensive or delay until intel can be acquired.
Rating 8 - Evacuation of civilians should take priority for all squad members. Engaging should be avoided outside of specific missions and tasks. Capes should engage only when supported by their team to ensure a minimum of complications or danger.
Rating 9 - Assume extreme complications, with standard tactics not applying, or the power in question having an additional factor that exaggerates its effect. Capes and PRT should evacuate where possible, and should only engage when a specific mission and strategy has been outlined. Major countermeasures should take effect.
Rating 10+ - In the event of a serious confrontation, additional teams or specific high-rated individuals should be called in to manage the crisis.
Regarding common shard limitations, conflict urges, and other such things -- since this is the fanfic jump, feel free to fanwank it as you’d like. Post-jump, any such limitations become entirely voluntary.
You can still be a Ward or a Protectorate hero without taking the origin for it if you want to, you just have to join up “from scratch” after the jump starts with all that entails. Taking the origin provides you with an established backstory and a certain amount of seniority. The Protectorate is usually open to taking any talent that’s halfway willing and with a reasonably clean record, but the nature and usefulness of your powers will determine how eager they are to have you. Jumpers with rap sheets will have to negotiate a quite different type of deal, if they can even hope to do so at all.
Given the flexible nature of continuity in this kind of fanfic jump, you are reminded that , Drawbacks/Scenarios/etc. cannot be taken unless you are in a timeline where the conditions of the Drawback could logically exist. For example, you could not choose Birdcaged unless you were in a continuity that actually had the Birdcage substantially as per canon. Likewise, Drawbacks whose setup conditions are incompatible (such as Apocalypse How, which assumes the effective collapse of civilization, and Kill Order, which assumes an existing rule of law) cannot be taken simultaneously.
All powers are like muscles here, meaning they can be trained up and improved with sufficient effort, practice and ‘conflict’. They grow stronger by themselves too, but good luck relying on that for the day-to-day.
Since most failed Scenarios are survivable taking a Scenario for the +500 CP and then not even seriously trying to resolve it is technically rules-legal... but your Benefactor may have their own opinions about how much rules-lawyering is too much. Game the system at your own risk.
You may come back and take So Many Stories even if you’ve done other jumps in between, and you may take it more than once.
Natural Badass applies to more than just bare hands. Your powers, any weapon you already know how to use, handy blunt objects… you’re an action survivor, you can do this.
Hardcore doesn’t interfere with your ability to restore your morality. You can always do that whenever you choose to. But it also doesn’t help with dealing with the memories of what you’ve done while under the influence after you ‘snap back’, so either moderate your villainy at least to a degree, accept that you’re periodically going to be like Angel dealing with the memories of Angelus after getting his soul back, or plan to spend a lot of time in beast mode.
The scenario reward for Though The Heavens Fall is basically like having the ability to passively turn the brightness knob of any future setting you visit up a notch or two, without openly imploding the suspension of disbelief. And the longer and harder you actively work at fixing things, the brighter things can get.
Tinker Plus will let you get into technomagic, but only after you actually learn how to cast magic and enchant items.
Two of the enemies you can face in the 600 CP version of ‘Street Fighting’ are the Elite and the Slaughterhouse 9.
The Elite are a massive parahuman-led crime syndicate encompassing California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Florida, with inroads into New York, Alaska, and until they were interrupted by the events of canon, eventually Brockton Bay as well. Like the Mafia, each city’s “family”, or “cell” as the Elite refers to it, is an independent organization led by its own boss and with its own style and its own rules. Some cells are pragmatic businessmen almost on a level of legitimate enterprise, and some are so savage they start making the Teeth look reasonable.
But also like the Mafia, every cell of the Elite -- however lofty or base -- still considers themselves to be peers in a larger organization, a group whose shared traditions and goals make them stronger together than each would be alone. With vast resources and high-end Thinker and Tinker support on call, with as many parahumans as money or obligations can buy arrayed beneath them, they can enforce a near monopoly on villain and rogue activity in their domains and form a united front that even the Protectorate doesn’t directly challenge there.
And now, they want you. And they won’t stop until you’ve broken them apart and destroyed them, wrecked their organization and taken down all their heavy hitters, and knocked them back down to being scattered bunches of local bottom-feeders.
But that is a job that even the Triumvirate backed away from in their day, Jumper. Do you think you’ve got what it takes? Or do you just think you can hide from them for your entire ten years here?
The 9, of course, are the Nine. Being the ambush predators that they are, they’ll wait and pick the optimum time and place to attack and prepare for you as best they can, using whatever information about you that they could conceivably gather with their existing resources. And they will of course fight as horrifically, soul-destroying-ly dirty as possible. Hostages, deadman switches, hell-plagues, targeting friends or loved ones, trying to make you face impossible choices where everybody dies… it’s the Slaughterhouse Nine, Jumper.
Or you could hunt them down and ambush them first, of course. They'll be expecting you, but only inasmuch they probably expect someone fresh and powerful to drop on them at any given time for being what they are.
AN: This jump couldn’t have been completed without the guys at SB. Especially you. You know who you are and what you did. Thanks.
For any issues, contact me at SB.
If you’re writing a story about this jump, you have permission to change… whatever you want to, on one condition. Find me at SB and give me a link.
I reserve the right to randomly alter sections of the document in fits of pique, to win internet arguments, or to make things easier on me if I’m building for this jump.
More later.