Who inspired your avatar?

[Spam]

Ah, Spam...

Originally, I wanted to make him some sort of computer geek with some sort of computer powers, but then I remembered that there was actually a product named SPAM... So, for some reason, I gave him flying powers, and the ability to shoot meat beams, and the ability to regenerate. And super strength. So, he's like a meaty version of Superman... but sorta stupid. =p

FORIAMSPAM!

[AfghanAnt]

My original idea was somewhere between Astroboy/Power Rangers/Classic Superhumans (Superman, Captain Marvel, etc). His name wasn't even originally Afghan Ant it was Hyperion, The Hyper-Man. He was going to have ridiculously useless powers based on my natural talents (like hyper-yelling and hyper-laziness). Eventually I had green lantern-like light powers than Dr Mike fleshed out my character in his Navigator mod, made him more Mar-Vell like and I was sold. As for the name, I'm not 100% sure how I came up with other than it is what people would call me in real life at the time. (I'm not from Afghanistan nor have I ever been).

[Tortuga]

To be honest though, the character really never came alive until I played CoH.

He was alive to me.  :(

Poor panda, he was to me too...just moreso in CoH.  I forgot to mention the little bit of development Tortuga had in the Dr. Manbot stuff near the end.  That really helped solidify a lot of how I roleplay Tortuga in CoH.

[Ephemeris]

The name came first.  We had recently bought or were in the process of purchasing a GPS survey system at work.  The word ephemeris came up in the planning of GPS surveys.  As explained during our equipment training, an ephemeris is a chart showing when and where satellites will be located overhead. 

I decided to look up the definition and found: "Ephemeris - 1. a table giving the computed positions of a heavenly body for every day of a given period.  2. an astronomical almanac containing such tables.  3. [Obs.] a calendar or diary." - Webster's New World Dictionary.

I thought, "that's pretty cool."  So being the internet n00b that I was (and still am), I rushed to MyFF and registered my forum name hoping I'd get it before anyone else..... :wacko:

Now I had a name, but no look to go with it.  Too shy to ask for a skin, I decided to research skinning and download any free photoshop-type program, which ended up being Gimp.  I quickly learned skinning was not my cup of tea.  Because of my skinning ineptitude, I started looking for some cool pictures I could photocrop into a skin.  I found a picture of a semi-hardened lava flow from Kilauea and cropped that image onto a skin.  Recolored the extremities black and I had myself a skin.

(IPS later made a great new skin for my avatar.  I refused to distribute the photocropped skin because the original image used was not mine.)

With both a name and skin in place, I needed a backstory and powers. 

Ephemeris' powers are a mixture of gravitational type powers and lava based projections.  Gravity powers were chosen because the name seemed to imply a knowledge of celestial objects and a relationship with those objects.  Lava projection was an obvious choice because of the image used to create him. 

His backstory was similar to Superman's in the fact that his homeworld was destroyed.  I tried to tie in a historical event on Earth, the 1908 Tunguska explosion, to Ephemeris' arrival.  Additionally, he draws on some local folk lore (the Dover Demon) and some of my own personal feelings.

-Eph