OOOH! And I'd forgotten all about Jackie and PCHammer.

I'm not sure about Mace and Neo, though. The tricky thing is, in Giant Robo, sometimes the difference between one of the big players (Big Nine, Magificent Ten) and the 'flunkies' is kinda blurry.

Hell, the only two members of the Big Nine you even get to see are Chief Chujo and Taiso. And for all that Ko-Enshaku is one of the scariest members of Big Fire, he's merely a flunky.

Well... sort of. It's true that Ko-Enshaku isn't a member of the Magnificent Ten; but if he's a "mere flunky," he's Lord Big Fire's mere flunky. His position in the Big Fire Organization's hierarchy is above the Ten (and also above Shokatsu Komei). He's the #2... man? spirit? being? in the entire outfit, responsible for making certain that the infighting among the Ten never gets so far out of hand as to jeopardize the full organization (and punish those responsible if it does).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And as I mentioned before, this is Giant Robo, where the line between 'flunky' and 'Big Nine' was kinda blurry to begin with...as best evidenced by watching the last episode and seeing some of the godlike stunts some of the 'flunky' Experts of Justice pull off.

Damn, I need to go track my DVDs down now.

From deeper in Chan Kong Sang's BPGD file:

Gryphon: "The Nine Great Kings of Heaven are, in mid-2406, Gryphon, MegaZone, Kei, Yuri, Jackie Chan, Gojira Nakajima, Alita Ironheart, Mace Windu, and Martin Rose. Like the membership of the Magnificent Ten, the roster of the IPO agents the Ten consider to be their ultimate opposite numbers changes from time to time."

Peter Eng
--
I'm only a Charter Member because of the DCForum upgrade, and because there's no rank below "Clueless F!wit."

Somehow, post Blades, I think Rei Ayanami made the list, as well as Juniper.

---
RCW # X-91873

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

* what? It says that in their recruiting literature!

---
RCW # X-91873

*If any of the above fails to make sense, feel free to smack me with a trout. 24 hours sans sleep does not make for really cohesive thought patterns.

I admittedly havn't seen Giant Robo myself, but what makes these guys significantly more of a threat than J. Random Psicop, or a Dark Jedi, or whatever? I get that they all have these wierd unique abilities, but it doesn't seem to help them much against the IPO people, who mostly have wierd abilities too, and apparently better ones as well.

The Big Fire flunkies seem to actually get more done than their leaders; they're at least able to make giant robots appear and cause property damage in Zeta Cygni.

>The Big Fire flunkies seem to actually get more done than their
>leaders; they're at least able to make giant robots appear and cause
>property damage in Zeta Cygni.

Well, we readers spend most of our time hanging out with the top fraction-of-one-percent of people in the universe. I suspect that, when Big Fire's top echelon shows up without a Major Character in the vicinity, there's very little that can stop them--or even keep them busy until help can arrive.

(Think about a typical group of Imperial stormtroopers from the Star Wars universe. They have a proud, 20-year-plus tradition of defending the Empire against all enemies foreign and domestic. But the camera crews don't show up until they get posted to Endor...) :)

I also get the impression that what makes Big Fire so dangerous is indeed not the individuals, but the masses. Somehow, this organization has gained galactic scope, and has "branch offices" just about everywhere. In terms of overall power, they're not a gang; they're a hostile stellar empire that just happens to share your homeworlds.

So for your average policeman, Shockwave Alberto isn't Big Fire. Big Fire is the 300 thugs with laser pistols that have taken over the city.

Stepping down below that, you have the ubiquitous Black Hoods and rank and file police of all stripes (hereafter goons) that, for the most part, are on a parity with each other. To be honest, this really IS what makes Big Fire so dangerous. They have the organization and support structure that you normally only see in a star empire. The local level cells are generally well-led (if only because of a ruthlessly Darwinian selection process), and they have access to resources that's generally as good or better than what the cops have.

But yes, I think you have it. The Nine Great Kings and the Magnificent Ten are the creme de la creme of their organizations, and not due to sheer power. Most of them have a great deal of experience in their field, have a level of skill most people can't hope to surpass, and THEN the sheer power to throw at a situation. Jackie Chan, for example, is really just a Detianized human, giving him extended endurance in a fight; the real difference between him and your average martial artist is the depth AND breadth of skill he has, which allows him to do things which surpass his human form.

Big Fire's organization is the key to its danger. More than the Nazis and the Church of Man amongst humans, they are harder to infiltrate due to that. This is why one of the biggest things my avatar brought to the table was information on their organization - information the IPO didn't have, which in a few ways helped balance things (see what happened on Zardon, for example). Most of the branches of Big Fire are different from a lot of the other big bad organizations in that they take care of their people - they demand 'Allegiance or Death', but as we've seen in the case of Clarissa, if you work hard, you get the rewards. They don't have a lot of defectors - they lost Geoff Depew due to a miscalculation in their psych profile, for example.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

Um, did you argue with the author about the motivations of his own, self-identified character?

But let's leave that aside. You're arguing that that UF-Geoff would have happily taken out a lovely Angel if he hadn't suddenly felt guilty about killing an innocent bystander.

You miss the point - he felt guilty about killing an innocent bystander. In the Big Fire training, your concern about non-Big Fire (or lower level Big Fire) people is supposed to be 'nil. They want to create psychopaths who don't care about anyone. They thought they'd done that with UF-Geoff, but they were wrong. He was capable of feeling remorse, and that's exactly what Big Fire indoctrination tries to crush.

So not a fluke - but a long, unaddressed trauma that needed a catalyst. If it was dumb luck UF-Geoff would have gone back to killing the innocent without a qualm after he found a way to resolve his brief, uncharacteristic, bout of conscience.

my two cents,
t.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." - HST

Yes, indeed. He was a loyal member of Big Fire, in line with the indoctrination, and then one hit that just didn't fit the others - cleaning up a witness, in the way it happened (as we saw back in "Locard's Exchange" - upset his stacks, causing a flaw in the BF worldview he had. (I'm sure if there was a telepath poking around it, they'd have found the amount of brainwashing he'd had to be too much.) Then they said 'go kill your childhood crush' and, well, damage to the load-bearing brainwave became too much.

I'm tempted to go back and do a prequel story, showing how very broken he was at that point before turning up on Barsaan, but I'm not sure how to address it.

>So not a fluke - but a long, unaddressed trauma that needed a
>catalyst. If it was dumb luck UF-Geoff would have gone back to
>killing the innocent without a qualm after he found a way to resolve
>his brief, uncharacteristic, bout of conscience.

The catalyst here is simple: all his other hits had been from a distance, or with the subject unaware. The woman he killed that set off his concience was the first time he had to face, unadorned, just what he was doing. If they hadn't tried to send him on another mission so soon, he might have gotten over it.

Instead, he now spends his days dodging bullets and sometimes failing, kicking arse in the name of the Lord, doing the job of an SA7 agent. It's very similar, except that every day he's happy to wake up and face it, because Big Fire is, as noted, very cutthroat, and the IPO has given him collegues, friends, and in a way a sibling (well, not really, but Konoko has a Daodan, so they have that in common genetically). It's a better life.

(Now I need to work on the new story some more. At which point a piece of art a friend of mine did can be released.)

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

>You miss the point - he felt guilty about killing an innocent
>bystander. In the Big Fire training, your concern about non-Big
>Fire (or lower level Big Fire) people is supposed to be 'nil.

I dunno if I agree with you. At least in UF Geoff's case, he seems to portray their brainwashing as "Be nice to the peons unless they get in our way, as these will be your subjects once you rule the galaxy"... which also makes sense in a sick, pavlovian way. Again, My interpretation of Geoff's words.

I bow to your perspicacity. It's just that the idea of "dumb luck" and "flaw in the psych profile" don't mesh in my world. He would have cracked eventually, it was only a question of when.

>I dunno if I agree with you. At least in UF Geoff's case, he seems to
portray their brainwashing as "Be nice to the peons unless they get in
>our way, as these will be your subjects once you rule the galaxy"...
>which also makes sense in a sick, pavlovian way. Again, My
>interpretation of Geoff's words.

I think that's a very generous interpretation of UF-Geoff's world view when he was with Big Fire. It's certainly not how Big Fire views the world. After all, you'd either with them or dead.

yours,
t.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." - HST

While that may well be true, using a very generous interpretation would be a great way to get people who otherwise would -never- join your cause to feel good about joining your cause.

-Droken

You covered the major points, but there's other concerns.

First off, strategic and tactical skills are probably more valuable on the Magnificent Ten/Nine Great Kings level than they are for enforcers/special agents.

That's not to say that somebody on the level of Agent A has no skills with strategy or tactics, but all other things being equal, an agent with a better record in that area is probably considered the better choice for the Magnificent Ten.

There's also leadership ability, which is a different thing. Some people can get other people to follow them, through force of personality, or an understanding of what motivates people, or whatever. I'd consider this a notable portion of what makes Gryphon so highly ranked. It might even overshadow his combat abilities in Big Fire's calculations.

Peter Eng
--
I'm only a Charter Member because of the DCForum upgrade, and because there's no rank below "Clueless F!wit."