It is slow, meticulous work, especially since in many cases, I don't actually know. But things are coming together, slowly but surely. Mind you. This work is just a prelude. I'm working out what is assigned to what tech, mostly so that I can make sure techs have the correct chronology and to see if there's any unnecessary techs that can be cut out to reduce on the clutter.
Right now, I have 9 wonders not assigned to techs (all middle ages ones, want to get that scenario to get them best placed), pretty much most small wonders not assigned to techs (I need to check on them to see if they even are assigned to techs; most I think are not), and 36 buildings not assigned to techs (mostly, government ones/made up ones and medieval ones).
Who the heck knows how many units I don't have assigned, but quite a number. Still, though, if I can actually nail down the exact contents and chronology of techs, then I'll be able to figure something out.
My goal here is more or less to see what techs are prerequisites for other techs, as well as to make sure both unit and building progressions continue correctly, as well as to appropriately time buildings/wonders as much as possible. (Given that wonders will be souped up to include "puts building in every city" for pretty much most.)
Documentation is, again, documentation rather than work, but all things considered, this is progressing amazingly quickly. Like, I was not expecting to be doing as well as I am with the tech tree; I was expecting it to be an absolute, complete and total nightmare, and while trimming the tech tree down so that it's any semblance of functional will be difficult, it's not altogether impossible thanks to what I'm doing now.
Also, ultimately, the tech tree doesn't need to be aesthetically pleasing. It can break the boundaries of the science window...so long as it is still functional when doing so. Techs overlapping by a pixel or two, techs with a pixel or two off the edge of the screen, techs with coordinates placing them in slightly obstructive spots, etc.
(Speaking of techs, I need to figure out how to get the science adviser to have commentary on each of them, another thing for the to-do list.)
As long as it can be figured out reasonably intuitively, that's all that matters. Since the arrowheads between techs were never going to be lined up anyway (that requires some sort of messing around in some sort of specialized program or something of that sort, the simple version of it is that it can't be done in just paint--the only program coming with the computer--so as far as I'm concerned that equates to not being able to do it at all), it was always going to be something which people would need to figure out on their own.
And I'm fairly certain the logical progression I have makes sense. At least it does to someone who's played both the vanilla game and all the scenarios, with an idea of what sort of things to expect.
With that out of the way.
It's early enough that I can talk about the idea I wanted to yesterday.
It's a superhero setting I'm dubbing with a working title of the Quadraverse, a superhero setting heavily inspired by the world of parahumans, the setting of Worm. (Three of the four main characters were more or less built with the idea of, "what could I do to make a fairly realistic cape for that setting?", with the fourth technically also fitting but having been created after I knew it'd be a different one.)
I'm not going to bother looking up if the name "quadraverse" is taken, because this is a story idea that I won't ever actually make. Given I won't actually make it, doesn't really matter if the name's taken; I'd have to change it if it were taken, sure, but since I'm not going to make it, not worth looking up to see if I need to.
Because all good superhero settings need a slang name for supes, this one uses the term "Duals". This name has three layers to it. The first is the obvious; duals have a dual identity, a civilian life and a life of crime, heroics, or whatnot. The second is in acknowledgement that no power has inherently one use. A stereotypically good power can be used by the worst of villains; a stereotypically evil power can be used by the most heroic of people; all powers thus have equal potential for good and evil.
But the true and final meaning of it: every human has a soul...but duals have a second soul, from which their power draws from. This second soul is what allows them to control their power; its link to the first soul, but separation from it, acts as a conduit, a control circuit. It allows people to not always have their power on, it allows people to have passive powers, it allows people to access their power and have an innate, inherent, instinctive control over it, safely, without the risk of being hurt by their own ability.
The story I invented revolves around the formation of the fourth iteration of a group, Heroes 4 Hire, which as the name suggests, has four members that are heroes, who perform heroics for a price...sort-of. Across all iterations of the group, they have held a common mandate in how they operate; they are genuinely heroic and altruistic, but also pragmatic and recognize that they're human and thus, can't always help everyone.
Basically, they operate as a group with a separation from any governing entity; they are independent from the government, albeit having a partnership with them. The main reason for this is for personal freedom; no bosses, no rules, no regulations, no need for PR, no need to obey commands, no need to do things they don't want to, no need to follow things by-the-book at the cost of doing the right thing, no need to be burdened by the law, no need to be under control of people who don't know how the world works, no need to be influenced by corrupt politics, no need to be bossed around by people whose motives are disconnected from heroics.
Heroics done the way they want heroics to be done...and done when they want to. Flexible rather than rigid schedules. The right to choose not to save people, the ability to decline without consequence, simply because they are not obligated to accept a job. They can take breaks, they can rest, they can do things at times other heroes are indisposed, they can do things other heroes can't.
And yet--while they do aim for personal gain, they can take jobs for free, if they want to. Doing good on the street just for the sake of doing good, not because they were ordered to. Just because doing good was the right thing to do. Yet they reserve that right to take jobs for personal gain, to earn money, to make a profit, to actually make significant money off of their efforts.
The group isn't quite full-time, but is so dedicated to it that they basically are anyway; the things they do outside of their hero work are mostly passions/hobbies of theirs. (Even if said passions/hobbies involve a profession where they can make money.) Heroics is their life's work, their job, and as a proper job, they need to get paid enough in wages to at least make do, but preferably live a little luxuriously.
The group has received flak for this, the group has had trouble because of this, the governments partnered with them receive criticism for allowing a group with no oversight to effectively act with the same authority as groups with oversight, but they live care-free enough to not be that concerned about it.
The first iteration of Heroes 4 Hire had the following members (mind you, these weren't the ones who I got the inspiration for the setting from; that's the current iteration):
Spear-It, the team leader, had (well, has, he's retired but still alive) an ability to summon a "spirit" form. Said spirit form would function almost entirely the same way a normal human would; he could see through their eyes, smell through nose, hear through ears, etc. He could do this without distraction, able to fully control his own body naturally and his spirit form separately. Said spirit form was entirely invisible, not so much as a single piece of evidence it existed, and utterly intangible in all regards (aside from his ability to sense via touch through it).
There was no visible link between him and his spirit. There was also no known range to his spirit. The spirit could function even when he was unconscious. The spear part comes in the form of the spirit form being able to summon an unlimited supply of phantom spears, which were the only part of the spirit able to affect the physical world...and could do so tremendously effectively, puncturing through just about anything with ease.
He was the big guns of the team, handling most of their offense.
...After he announced his name to be Spear-it, the rest of the team (originally planning to let him name them) wisely decided that they'd pick their own names and not leave it to him as originally intended.
Ribcage, who shared the second-in-command position on the team, was (well, still is) a tecchie (read: tinker; this setting's slang for technology-based heroes) who specialized in creating bars, usually used for entrapment. (Spear-it's proposed name for him was Bar-ier.) He handled containment and served as the team's defense.
Chain Link, the other second-in-command of the team, was a person with the power to see how all things are connected to one another. (This is a power which you see used on occasion quite effectively.) This basically made him an invincible combatant, able to perfectly chain things to have the exact desired outcome he wanted, but in spite of his combat potential, he usually acted as, in tandem with Ribcage, the team smarts, coordinating their efforts to maximize their effect.
He retired at the same time the rest of his team did, but came out of retirement to fight in the event that would later become known as the Fall of London, and like most heroes who fought there, died in the wake of the disaster. However, he'd later be revived by the antagonist Horseman. (See below for more details there.)
Spear-it's proposed name for him was Ball-swing (off of the idea of a newton's cradle).
Port, the final member of the team, had (well, has) the ability to shoot from his fingers, stretching out as far as he wants, portals to wherever he thinks of. Since he can open as many portals as he has fingers, and these portals need not be directly in front of the fingers (the portals, oval-like, are connected to his fingers with an energy-string; this string can be all bendy, like this ~, to vary their exact location).
Since they could extend as far as he wanted them to, and could be to anywhere he wanted them to, and each portal was as large as he wanted them to be (within reason; the minimum size was that of a finger and the maximum size about twice the size/width of a person), and he wasn't limited to just one, he was quite effective as a method of transporation, especially since as long as he kept the portals open, they were two-way.
Spear-it's proposed name for him was Fingerport.
Eventually, the first generation of Heroes 4 Hire decided to pass the torch on to the next generation, giving their blessing for a group of young upstart kids looking to get into the heroics business to make use of it, as long as they strived towards the same goals as they had.
This group was comprised of the following:
Streamline, the leader of the group, was a genius tecchie, whose work pretty much allowed for the existence of other tecchies (Ribcage included!). As a young kid, he make three pivotal breakthroughs, paving the way for the inventions tecchies would make use of: the Graviton Manipulator Field (allowing for easy flight), the Light Loop (a way to make a continuous loop of pure light), and the Space Compactor (a way to have things unfold from a compact form).
To the modern day, as a tecchie, he is world famous for said breakthroughs, and is well-known as the creator of ten technologies making use of these inventions:
The Lancenet (a compact weapon which extends out a long distance, with the aim to capture and control), LightBlade (basically a lightsaber), LightClaws (a blade below the shoulder, essentially, mounted on the hands from the wrist below, acting both as a personal shield/defense system and as a powerful hacking weapon at close range), Ringboard (a hoverboard that's ring-shaped), Spearboard (same basic design, only unfolded to not be a ring), Triboard (basically combining the benefits of the spearboard and ringboard), Wheelboard (basically a souped-up, compact, motorcycle; you grab onto the handle, and two gigantic wheels unfold from it that you can then steer; a bubble encases you and you move at a maximum speed of ~400 mph, which doubles up as, when in its compact form, a really effective staff weapon), Medboard (a better stretcher/backboard that can also serve as a restraint, with a built-in system capable of both analyzing the person strapped in and putting them in stasis if need be, useful not only for saving people but containing criminals for transporation), Stun Cannonboard (a stun gun with a wide beam that has no recoil and can travel in the air), and Stun Gunboard (aside from the Wheelboard, the only 'board' not capable of being airborne, a gun version of the stun cannonboard which comes equipped with various tools, like scans, scopes, etc.).
To this day, the group is able to function from the profits of the patents he got on them. Many of those things are in high demand, in both the private sector and the government. Medboards, stun gunboards, and wheelboards most famously, for their sheer versatility as tools.
He was the older brother of Webster.
In spite of being world-famous for his breakthroughs and his inventions, his career as an actual hero is relatively obscure.
Timewarp, similarly to Ribcage, held status as being shared second-in-command. His power was to shift people forward or backward in time--they'd stay in the same spot, but they'd be in a different time. If he sent people forward in time, they would disappear in the interim time altogether. If he sent people backwards in time, their past self would vanish from existence. As a result, he could only send people backwards in time a maximum of 24 hours, but forward in time as much as he'd like.
He mostly used his power as a form of recon, as well as a way of controlling the environment; his ability wasn't limited to just people, and could be anything. Good at search and rescue. If a person was dead or in too bad of shape, simply shift someone back in time to a spot where they'd be able to help avert the disaster in the first place.
Gridlock, the other second-in-command, had the power of creating geometrically-based constructs out of something not quite hard light but not quite pure energy, in-between. Think forcefields, made out of methodical mathematical precision, except not limited to just forcefields; he could make lines, he could make spheres, he could make anything he could think of, so long as it followed a basic abstract form/shape. So no meticulously creating, sayyyy, a car, or the types of things you'd see a green lantern make.
Making a grid was his signature move, thus his name, one which was utterly unbreakable.
Webster, the younger brother of Streamline, is the only member to be in all three iterations except for the first, and thus, I'll be discussing his power when I talk about the rest of his current team. However, I'll say that at the time, he was the rookie of the team, the youngest member.
As a whole, the second iteration of Heroes 4 Hire were a group of close-knit friends. The first iteration were loose associates, who over the course of their career bonded; the second iteration were bonded before their career in heroics started. They started as soon as they were legally old enough to begin (which was years after Streamline had made his breakthroughs, although he hadn't made all his inventions at that time), and not long after earned the respect of the first iteration, who carried their blessings on to be worthy successors.
However, while they had many successes in their career, eventually, they took on a job they shouldn't have--at the behest of Chain Link's desperate request, they helped out in the event that'd become known as the Fall of London. All but Webster were killed in this encounter, like most that participated. Having gotten in well over their heads, they were simply outclassed.
Gridlock and Timewarp would later be revived by Horseman (see below).
The third iteration of Heroes 4 Hire, led by the shellshocked Webster, were based largely around replacing his lost teammates.
Canvas, his replacement for Gridlock, had the ability to paint reality in front of him.
Rigger, his replacement for his brother Streamline, was a tecchie with a specialty in jury-rigging devices together; he would connect things, devices, technologies, that were otherwise unrelated, to create a hodgepodge of various useful devices, albeit haphazard and prone to malfunctions. This power was more versatile, able to make anything from anything, but more unreliable, because the things created weren't guaranteed to work.
Spacewarp, his replacement for Timewarp, didn't exactly warp space--instead, he created the vacuum of space, surrounding him. As in. It literally was like anything surrounding him in a ten-foot radius was physically transported to outer space, with all the effects that would entail. No gravity, no air, really cold, etc.
However, Webster in his inexperience as a leader made a mistake when recruiting them; they were focused too much on the 'Hire' and not enough on the 'Heroes'. Eventually, all three of them at once turned traitor on him, out of pure, sheer, unadulterated greed; not satisfied with their earnings, they betrayed Webster and allied with a villain in order to seize more money than Webster could ever hope to offer them.
For their trouble, Webster killed them all.
However, undaunted, he eventually succeeded in recruiting two new members, and eventually, managed to recruit a fourth and final member for the fourth iteration. (The story would follow the fourth member as the protagonist, in spite of Webster being the main character. He joins a month or so after the other two are recruited.)
Which leads to a team comprised of:
Gong has a fairly lame-sounding set of abilities. His skin turns into a metallic brass-colored substance. In this form, he is pretty much indestructible. He doesn't need to breathe (though he can't eat or drink in this form, meaning he does need to exit it), he is resistant to most powers, has some heat resistance in particular, things that pierce or slash will bounce off harmlessly, etc.
However, his main power is in the absorbing of kinetic energy and soundwaves...which, at will, he can unleash in the form of an omnidirectional, audible, blastwave, emanating a series one after another of shockwaves. He is, quite literally, what you'd expect a gong in human shape to be.
Yet this power has some added benefits. His footsteps are absolutely silent, making him good at being unheard, and they allow him to run at an increased speed, giving a limited form of superspeed. Yet by far the most intimidating factor about him isn't what power he has, but what he's like without it; he stands at a quite tall 6'6", and has an absolutely ripped physique, lined with muscles, solidly a wall of pure strength.
That's not a power, by the way. That's just a result of gifted genetics plus a hard workout regiment he stuck to long enough to produce those results. Yet in tandem with his power, they make him utterly unstoppable. He's indestructible, but he packs a mean punch, which can be augmented by unleashing his shockwave. He's a lightning bruiser, fast, implacable (you can't knock him down), invincible (you can't hurt him), and yet strong enough to hit hard.
That's not to say it's impossible to win against him, of course. In terms of superpowers, this is basically just B-list, if that. He's just smart enough to pick and choose his battles such that he never encounters an enemy who could puncture through his power. (Which would be possible; his own teammate might be able to, and it was the 'might' which was enough to cause him to back down from attacking said eventual-teammate. He was in no rush to test the theory out.)
He used these skills to become a freelance bodyguard/bouncer/enforcer, and picked up the skills you might expect from this. Again, these are trained skills, not from a power, but he's quite excellent at picking up on deceptions (both from people and from facts), is a skilled chef, knows how to mix many drinks, and is well-versed in the culture of music (and is respectable good as a deejay).
He ended up working for Webster after fighting Overload in their first encounter, which Webster intervened in and offered them the deal--one which he decided to take, since the pay was decent enough and the cause was something he could support.
He's by far the oldest of the group, being around 27, give or take a few years.
Overload has a fairly restricted power as well. He's got an incredibly limited form of dynakinesis. He can trap energy of most forms (particularly, light/heat/sound), and then cause it to build up, charging up, until it has built up into a bomb. He can then unleash this charged up energy in one of two forms: an omnidirectional blast, or a directed-from-his-palm beam.
If he's knocked unconscious while charging, he'll default to unleashing the omnidirectional version. This ability is only as strong as the combination of "strength of the energy captured * time energy has been building". He is limited in how much energy he can catch to as much as will fit in his right hand (the only way he can use his ability, in fact).
So if he's literally just grabbing air, and stirring it around in his hand, to build up a charge, it will eventually be deadly, but takes a long time to get there. Whereas if he's grabbing a shockwave, then it doesn't take much time at all for him to charge up a lethal strike. Another restriction is that once he starts charging, he can't start charging something else without first discharging what he's got.
The omnidirectional version is weaker and limited in range, whereas the beam version is very easily predicted. Prior to working for Webster, he did not use his powers much, pretty much only using them for self-defense. He followed his older brother into the life of a petty criminal in fact--picking up skills like pickpocketing, lockpicking, hotwiring, hacking, general thievery stuff like optimal ways to break and enter, the like.
Webster incentivized him to stay by appealing to his inner good nature, his ability to secure their future financially and legally, and most of all, by using his connections to get Overload's brother out of the trouble he was in (Gong was hired by people looking to collect a debt), so that they'd be able to clean up their act and use his power for good.
The new recruit, protagonist character, joining after this event by some small amount of time, is Emblaze.
Emblaze, simply, has the power to see and manipulate (to some extent) the souls of those around him. When he is closing his eyes, he can sense the souls of everyone within him (and manipulate them) within 350 feet.
When his eyes are open, he can see and manipulate the souls of anyone he has visual contact with--this contact can be miles away (say, through binoculars), or even through a video feed from a monitor. Heck, he can see (but for obvious reasons, not manipulate) the soul of someone from a recording.
This manipulation is not unlimited. He basically can sense the emotions and intentions of a soul, and can either amplify or dampen them, giving him a limited form of mind control. He can't make an angry person not be angry at all, but he can make the anger turn to hatred (intensifying it), or lessen it to its smallest amount--and because people usually feel more than one emotion at a time, he can cause a different emotion that was present to become larger, achieving much the same effect.
This is a power he uses with extreme caution. Prior to joining up, he was a con artist, scamming people, but used his power to make sure that they were blissfully, happily, unaware of the scam--and if they found out, they'd end up with their lives enriched from the experience rather than ruined. (He picked his victims well, so that at the end of the day, if the con was found out, they'd have a good laugh, learn from it, enjoy it, and move on with their lives.)
That was the extent he was comfortable using it, though after a disaster struck, he went out to help people--being able to sense where they were, he could locate them, and sensing their emotions, he was able to subtly manipulate said emotions so that things like fear were lessened to more manageable levels, lessening pain, lessening panic, basically working as a rescue worker, to relieve them, and that got him interested in being more altruistic.
He was also a gambler, using his ill-gotten goods to "waste" the money earned. Quotation marks, because for any game with a human element, he could use his power to subtly cheat. Mostly, he did it for a good time, though, and made it so that his opponents were having the time of their lives. Upping their feelings of tension, suspense, the like, and rewarding them on occasion with a thrill of the game, even as he swindled their money slowly.
His power also has a nice side-effect: remember how I described powered people as duals, because their powers come from a second soul? Guess what he can sense...and manipulate. He can't make powers disappear, so he's not a power nullifier, but he can act as a power dampener, bringing powers down...or as a power amplifier, increasing their potency.
Because he visually sees souls as flames, this is where his namesake comes from; he fans the flames of the second fire in powered people. This power also serves as a radar for incoming threats, allowing him to detect danger from any direction, and allowing him to understand the general nature of a person's powers.
Every soul has a unique signature, powers no different, and yet, similar souls have similar signatures, so if he's seen a soul of a certain power, he can generally put a ballpark on what sort of power an individual possesses. This power was how he was able to realize Webster in his introduction to the team was using a body double. (Webster, after his second team betrayed him, notably became a bit paranoid.)
He's the youngest of the group, at only 16.
Webster, the leader of the group, is the second-youngest, physically 17 and technically only 18. (Overload's also 18, but with a birthday a few months earlier.) Timewarp saved him by sending him a year into the future, documenting it, and he happened to survive the process.
He can be summed up as "two parts Taylor Hebert, one part Spider Man, one part every character using string-manipulation abilities including Razor Floss and antics like Doflamingo". His power comes in two parts. The first, at a linear rate, is an ability to generate an unlimited quality of silk.
This silk can take on whatever properties he wants it to. Sticky, not sticky; thin, thick; flexible, rigid; insulates from heat/electricity somewhat, etc. Already this is a very powerful ability, but if he just created the silk without a method of manipulating it, it wouldn't make him leader-worthy.
The second part of the ability: as long as a strand of silk he created has a direct link to his body, he has complete and total control over everything about it, a high-level form of telekinesis which serves to make the already-durable material nigh-invincible. (It's almost an immovable object, but sufficiently gamebreaking powers can penetrate through.)
Keep in mind that the strand of silk could be thinner than can be seen by the eye at the point of contact on the body...but there's no limit to how long the strand can be, so down the line it can unfold to create a gigantic construct out of silk. He can be miles away, and then create a clone a mile away...because of a single thread, which spirals out to create a fully humanoid shape, out of nothing but silk.
Indestructible silk, which can be razor-sharp.
What's more--because controlling this silk to such a fine degree requires him to basically "understand" what's happening to the silk, he has the ability to feel and hear through his silk (as long as the silk's still connected to him). (No taste, smell, or sight, though.) Everything his silk touches, he will feel with a perfect understanding and hear with a perfect level of knowledge as to sounds going on.
And he has been weaving silk into everything, for everywhere, for years now. This gives him a limited form of combat clairvoyance; if something is so much as nearby his silk (and his silk is everywhere), he'll know where it is, what it's doing, etc.
He wraps silk around everything, and this serves three purposes. One, it allows for him to call upon reserves of silk faster than he can generate them. He can still generate silk fairly fast, mind you, but in a pinch, he could need more than that amount, and if he's covered an area in silk, he can call upon it at will. Two, it allows for him to sense everything, everywhere.
And three? By creating a solid layer of silk covering something, he gains an understanding of said something...allowing him to make a fully functional copy of said something out of silk. Granted, said silk copy will only work as intended while he's got a connection to it, most of the time (unless the different properties between silk and said something are such that it doesn't matter that it's made of silk and not the material(s) of said something; a chair's probably still gonna work as silk even when cut off, but a helicopter sure wouldn't), but once he's copied an object once, he can create it from memory.
And he's been copying objects for years.
He's also used his power to its fullest multitasking degree, listening to every audiobook, music album, video, film, tv show, video game, etc. that he could (granted, lacking the visuals to go with the audio), effectively allowing him to have memorized every aspect of pop culture in existence and be insanely knowledgeable about everything.
And, yes, as a hobby, he does read the dictionary. He's also studying engineering and art, to make better use of his power, because studying those two fields is directly correlated to his usefulness. He can tie people up ridiculously easily, bind them, trap them, and whatnot, but also makes use of massive walls of silk, shields, and weapons. Swords, staves, even an automatic harpoon gun. Blunted or sharp. Whips, razor floss that cuts through everything, not to mention, creating light as a feather body armor for teammates.
He fights a lot using swarms of silk clones, and competently at that, because he can receive the memory of training from dozens of clones. (Think Naruto's shadow clones; he basically makes a ton of clones, has them attend multiple martial arts schools, and learns everything he can from them.) Also, he's learned how to manipulate his silk to create vibrations enough where he can talk through the silk as well.
And he's quite aware he's only scratched the surface of his power. He reads up on a lot of fiction to see how powers work in other settings, he reads a lot online about how powers work in his setting (which gives a bonus of making him familiar with those he's likely to encounter), drawing inspiration from everything. And anything related to powers he deems useful which he can't get a full appreciation from just sound, he'll obtain and watch/play in his real body so he can see it in person.
I feel like I'm not properly explaining many of these peoples' powers, especially the latest generation of Heroes 4 Hire, but it's time to move onto the antagonists of the story.
A group deliberately made as a mockery of Heroes 4 Hire, called Villains 4 Hire. They are, quite deliberately, structured in a way meant to antagonize Webster in every way, as they oppose him on every level. Including how their members' abilities work.
Spread, their leader, has a power that's basically Canvas's--this is through no coincidence, and is deliberately something meant to torment Webster about his past failure.
Executioner, their second in command, continues the trend as having a power that's basically Rigger's.
Void, continuing the trend even further, has a power that's basically Spacewarp's.
Horseman, their final member, has the ability to revive up to four individuals--said individuals revived are revived with absolutely no memories, no free will, no personality, but retain all their skills, including powers. (This does have the side-effect of not working on tecchies, though.)
He can only resurrect an individual once, but a resurrected individual can continue functioning until destroyed beyond the ability to...well, function. Lop off the head, no problem; cut off an arm, no issue, still works. While there are far more effective uses of the power (imagine reviving a kaiju-like opponent, e.g. reviving something like whatever kind of entity in this setting would be akin to an endbringer), for maximum psychological torturing of Webster, the three revived are the three that he saw killed before him, making a mockery of their deeds as heroes; Chain Link, Gridlock, and Timewarp.
Mind you, just because there's theoretically better uses of the power doesn't mean that the revived individuals are by any means weak; Gridlock's power is nigh-invincible, Chain Link's power still functions (and Chain Link can still speak; the revived aren't mindless, meaning he still serves as mission control...just for the villains now), and Timewarp is a useful scout to have and can cause confrontations to literally disappear from existence.
Why only three?
Horseman can use his power on people who aren't dead, but are on the brink of death, and by that, I mean, life support, would die if taken off it, individuals. However, if he uses his power on someone who isn't dead, they retain their memories, free will, personality, and such, while also retaining their status as being quite alive. Since he has no control over someone revived this way, he can only use it on an ally.
In this case, Void's being supported by this method, as Void--prior to being recruited by the Villains 4 Hire--was on life support, and needs Horseman's power to still function; if Horseman removed his support, Void would fall catatonic instantly.
That's about all I got, and is about all I will get, because the idea's as matured as it can get.
Soyeah, that was my setting idea I talked about yesterday.
Now I've been writing this blog for three hours; I need to eat, then attend to whatever I have time for before bed.