Ideologue

An Ideologue is a Cape whose primary motivation is a philosophy or cause.

Modus operandi

It is rare for parahumans to move past the elements of their trigger event. Learning to trust again, getting into situations like what happened when traumatic event occurred. Some try to keep it from happening to someone else. All these can be motivators for uncompromising ideology.

If that ideology leads them they can easily become a figurehead of a political movement.

Structure

Dependent on the ideology espoused, could well be a cell structure<ref name="Fail">-The Fallen ( A gang of Endbringer cultists. I love the idea of a cult in the Wormverse)-

Similar to the Herren Clan, they're a group of families with some members having powers, based around the southern states. They figured out that people with powers tend to have kids with powers, and are making the most of it. This leads to families with strong threads of a particular power type running through them.
Coin toss as to whether a given member believes what the cult is saying or not, that humanity deserves to be wiped out, so-and-so deserved to die at the hands of Behemoth, or the world would be a paradise if the Simurgh were to achieve full influence, if we only let it. It's telling, perhaps, that they don't actively interfere when the Endbringers come rolling around, though they might celebrate from the sidelines and try to get media attention.
They're loosely based on the Westboro Baptist Church - they want attention and the Endbringers are a sore spot for the vast majority of people around the world, an easy target. Depending on the family and the area, the approach differs. One might commandeer a radio station and and spewing vitriol over the airwaves, praising the latest Endbringer attack for the casualties. Another might call in another family from another area, then raid a small town with two or so heroes (or bait out a hero) to kidnap the heroes and induct them into the family, so there's more powers running through the bloodline.
They're hard to stamp out, unpredictable, and tend to live on the fringes of society, where they're harder to track and heroes need to devote far more effort to squirreling them out. There's also a tendency to give more power to the lunatics and assholes, because it furthers their nebulous agenda. In a more abstract sense, shards love conflict, and the fallen are very good at feeding it, so the fallen get rewarded by the shards. Breadth and depth. - Comments by Wildbow on information regarding secondary characters


At this stage, PRT assets are tied up following the ramifications and ripple effects of the Echidna incident. Chicago is dealing with the loss of Myrddin, so can't really send people.

More like the PRT puts out the call, heroes volunteer, and heroes that are 'floating' (that is, not assigned to a department or office due to juggling of rosters) might well volunteer for the task.

That's the good news. Bad news? This kind of incident has happened before - so something like it could still happen in your campaign. Even with the PRT devoting resources & tons of public pressure, it was an uphill battle to find the kids. The Fallen are slippery, and the reason they haven't been wiped off the map is that they utilize a cell structure and have some cover from parahuman abilities. Valefor's mom in particular. A thinker doesn't want to go scanning tracts of rural/unpopulated area for missing kids if it means a chance of seeing her looking back at them. Because if they do, then they'll likely end up in a brief coma followed by a year and a half of something like being convinced the walls are bleeding spiders. She has kids with buds from the same shard and farms them out to other branches of the family in exchange for some muscle (Eligos being some of that). Not that same degree of punishment or screening, but stuff in that general vein.

If you set things earlier, then Myrddin still has stuff to deal with, and but it's liable to be a more organized team with more inherent teamwork, and higher expectations they'll be able to find the kids, before realizing it's tricky & there are traps in wait. As a GM, it would be left more up to the PCs as the larger groups run into stumbling blocks. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> or a fluid interchanging system with different leaders<ref name="II1.8 e1">He didn’t respond to that. He picked up a file, paging through it.

“Which one is that?”

“Ossuary. Why leave it out?”

“They’re back, or they will be soon,” I said. “Activist villains with a heavy focus on environment. They wouldn’t call themselves villains, I don’t think. Long list of really messy executions, longer list of leaders with very short tenures, who try to pull a very disparate group together, fail, and abdicate.”

“Were they the ones who used to call themselves Elephant Graveyard?”

“That’s the one. One of the early leaders pushed the name change along with a shift away from focusing on animals and animal welfare,” I said. “I liked Elephant Graveyard more, I think. Clunky, but clunky in a way that stands out, and it made for really good imagery, when they left a spray painted calling card.” - Excerpt from Daybreak 1.8</ref> or highly organized. The former are seen with two terrorist organizations that have proven difficult to stamp out while the latter two are organizations whose goals align with the authorities.

Authorities Response

Dependent on whether their goals align, otherwise Protectorate members will drop in to check in on cooperative groups, to touch base if nothing else.<ref>Contact - Ties into Patrols. Not all capes out there are heroes and villains. If you've got a group of teenage anarchist women's rights activist capes who hang around the College, the PRT is going to want to keep tabs, so they send a hero around once in a while, to watch, talk to one of the capes, check there aren't any problems. Same for other ideologues, mercenaries, rogues, the naive kid capes who don't know how to cape and end up fumbling around, the corporate teams, the monsters and dregs. - Wildbow on reddit</ref>

Notable Examples

• Dryad Project 3 (Environment)
• The Fallen<ref name="Fail"/> (Doomsday cult)
  • Allied groups<ref>Chevalier said [...] “You’re right about this. We knew something was stirring, but we didn’t have the impression it was this bad. I’ve been keeping updated on the Fallen, I can’t promise it’s accurate, but you should know the families interact. There may be one or more of the Crowley sub-branches present. They also associate with various biker gangs, the various racist factions, and other religious villain groups and ideologues. Be prepared for any of them.” - Excerpt from Shadow 5.6</ref>
• Haven (Religious)
• New Wave (Cape accountability and integration)
• Ossuary<ref name="II1.8 e1"/> (Environment)
• Toybox<ref>Cell 22.2</ref> (Intellectual Freedom) (arguably)
• The Yàngbǎn (Totalitarianism)
• Moonwalkers<ref>Warrior Princess Kaguya (WPK) - Striker/Shaker 7. Produces duplicates across battlefield, spaced out in rows and columns of 5'. Simultaneously awareness and movement of all duplicates. Tagged: Ideologue (Moon), Mercenary, Leader, PR. 484 ASK. - Excerpt from PHO Sunday, Capeball Breakdown: Moonwalkers v. Lich Five</ref> (Lunar Colonisation)
• Lich Five<ref>Crosswise (Cw) - Brute (sub: Master-Shaker) 4. Can mark a location. If he dies in said location, fills the area with violent twisted flesh, as well as cross and angel iconography. Gains swiftly increasing awareness and control over the mutated flesh and angels before being born from the mass, after which point it all dies. Tagged: Leader, mercenary, hero, ideologue (life extension). - Excerpt from PHO Sunday, Capeball Breakdown: Moonwalkers v. Lich Five</ref> (Life Extension)

History

Background

A parahuman powers swiftly translated into political power for any group they were part of.<ref name="Sv1">It's worth stating that one of the underling ideas driving the formation of groups and ideological factions in the Wormverse is the notion that some people get a voice where they otherwise wouldn't. Give an immense amount of power to a (relatively) random section of the population and you'll see certain shifts in the overlying sentiments.

All the more so when you think that a parahuman with aspirations might latch on to an idea, concept, or group to get reputation, resources, and contacts. - Comment by Wildbow on Sufficient Velocity</ref> This led to a shake up in countries around the world.<ref>Europe saw political upheaval, Russia enlisted parahumans into its military and started hunting down those who wouldn’t enlist, activists across the United States were emboldened by leaders with powers. - Excerpt from Interlude 14.z II</ref>

Trivia

• Group philosophies, mission statements or principles for team functionality and operational focus isn't a qualifier.<ref>More news articles. Some capes were taking on roles as icons and iconoclasts for the various movements in the civilian sectors. Four hero teams led the ‘icon’ groups. Advance Guard, Foresight, the Shepherds and the Attendant.
  
  The first two were aimed at pushing forward. New approaches, doing things right this time. The opinions on what that way forward looked like it differed, feeding into the division between the two groups.
  
  Things were changing. The Shepherds and Attendant had been groups divided along similar lines, but the Shepherds were self-combusting, and the remaining members were folding into the Attendant. There was some debate over what the name of the resulting team would be.
  
  And then there were three, I thought.
  
  I idly browsed, caught between liking the Shepherd’s aesthetic and icons better while liking the Attendant’s mindset of moving slowly, with caution. I was suspicious it might end up being the opposite. As it was, the Attendant’s approach tacked on a bit too much ‘remember what we lost’ for my liking, clinging to the past, being defined by it, but - Excerpt from Daybreak 1.8</ref> There must be a common belief or goal, often political, that unites and motivates the group for it to receive this label.

References

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