No More Question Marks

For those of you who don't know or don't remember (...I'm guessing that's most of you, as there are very few people I'm still in contact with from the time period when these characters and concepts were originally made up), back in the day I had a set of characters known as the "Question Marks," mainly because I didn't ever come up with a "real" name for them as a group and I wrote their names using nothing but question marks (so, say, one's name could be ??? and another would be ???? and yet another would be ???????), only coming up with regular names for a few of them later.  After a while the name stuck.

The Seventh Question Mark, one of the few
to end up with an "armored" design rather than
the "pale-colored baggy clothes" type that most had.

Anyway, the Question Marks were aliens (who looked pretty much like humans, but actually belonged to three different species: the Kaa'ans, the Iklaians, and the Rhogavians) who were the result of some experiment that caused the powers of past aliens (their ancestors maybe? it was never made clear, though the past Question Marks usually looked a lot like the present generation) to be infused into a bunch of newborns over a period of time, and most but not all of those newborns ended up sent off to various other planets (but mostly Earth) to grow up, with the goal of the experiment apparently being... just to see how that would turn out.  Some mad scientist stuff right there.  Some of the Question Marks ended up being good guys, others ended up evil, and still others ended up being such minor characters that it was hard to guess which side they'd have been on if they'd gotten anything more than a passing mention (one was captured and killed by Master Fartbean so that his powers could be extracted and given to Fartbean's second cloned "daughter," for example.)  Their powers were kind of random early on, but in later versions they ended up with a standard list of powers with only so much room for variation among the individuals; eye beams were a universal thing, almost all could create an energy weapon of some sort (with the possibility of upgrading it to a solid form by condensing the energy down introduced in the late 2000s) and generate protective barriers, and they all had some degree of superhuman strength and other standard superpowers like flight and enhanced speed.  Most of them had at least one unique "thing" they could do that the others couldn't -- the Third Question Mark's energy absorption and electrified barrier, the Seventh Question Mark's attacks (and barrier) having mirror/reflective properties, the Tenth Question Mark's paralysis-inducing blue goop, the Fourth Question Mark's ability to transform into a giant mutated purple cat, and so on.

Kat's barrier, which hurts anything that touches it.

 The Question Mark concept can be traced back to the character of Kat Yuzan, originally just "?" in a really old RPG Maker 2000 game titled "Crappy RPG."  Shortly after that she became "???," and after the high school years I referred to her interchangeably as both ??? and Kat (her last name came years later as the result of a dream, where an old man lying in a hospital bed kept saying "her last name is Yuzan.")  Around 2002 I came up with several other Question Mark characters, namely the Fourth (also known as Kara) and the Ninth and Tenth (who never had "real" names.)  Toward the end of the high school years I added the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Question Marks, who also never got real names -- the Fifth specifically was stated to not even have another identity, while the Seventh kept her personal life and Question Mark activities separate and as a result never revealed her other name to anyone.  At some point I ended up drawing all of the Ten Question Marks, but only those mentioned above ever had any real role in any of my stories.  Of those who were important in one story or another, only the Tenth Question Mark was male.  All of the remaining (unimportant) Question Marks were also guys -- the Eighth was the one that Master Fartbean captured, while the First and Second only ever showed up in random drawings.

An old drawing of the full group -- though when drawing it
I apparently used the Eighth's design for the First, the First's for the Second,
and the Second's for the Eighth.  Whoops!

Several of them were major characters in the Crappy World: Zyorudenu comics I came up with in the later high school years; the Third and Fourth Question Marks were recurring characters on the good guys' side (though never really the focus of any storyline), while the Ninth and Tenth were villains of one story arc... though now that I think about it, I can't remember for sure if the battle with the Ninth Question Mark was actually shown or if it happened off-screen while something else was happening elsewhere while other (non-Question Mark) characters were in focus.  The Fifth Question Mark would've been the villain of a later story planned for the Crappy World series, which I can only vaguely remember any details of at this point.

...

Skip ahead to 2016, and... yeah, I've pretty much decided to throw all of that stuff out.  The whole Question Mark concept will no longer be present in the 40 Nherbis as they currently exist in my head (and in various stories/games set in them, such as Okédoké and Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School.)

Mostly, this is because having the Kaa'ans, Iklaians, and Rhogavians all out there means three entire species of aliens who just... look like humans, sometimes with wacky-colored hair.  I already removed one species of "human aliens" in the past couple years by deciding that the Zwoobans were in fact not another species, but actual Earth humans that had ended up on the planet Zwoobah around 10,000 years ago (they had fled from Earth through a Num Warp portal in order to keep themselves from falling under the influence of the ancient Lord of Moronism named Ma-Du Veyaddhu.)  The idea of aliens that pretty much just look like humans doesn't really fit with the rest of the 40 Nherbis, so I'm trimming a few out here and there.

Here's what's changing, at least as of right now:

1. No more Question Marks.  The characters who were formerly Question Marks may or may not end up being reused in one way or another.
   
   • Third Question Mark -- Kat Yuzan would be a pretty big empty space to fill, and I've had more than a few dreams where she ends up with a design change or new power of some sort, so I figure she's more likely to stick around than the others.  I'll probably stick with the idea of her stumbling across Kukabo (the Ninja Cockroach) and training with him, but as a human she couldn't really learn Kukaru-style ninjutsu too well (its special techniques rely on Kihlah, which humans do not have), so... not sure how that'll go.  Her weapon of choice was always an energy-sword, so maybe her using an actual-sword could work.  Of course, if I ended up making her a Zwooban (or part-Zwooban) rather than standard Earth-variety human, then she would have Kihlah energy inside her and Kukabo might be able to teach her a few things...
   • Fourth Question Mark -- Kara will still be present in FYS:AHS as a random NPC early on (and optional boss battle later, when her transformation into a giant mutant cat is triggered), but it's likely that she will rapidly fade away from importance after that rather than popping back up here and there.  She'll probably never meet Kat since both of them being Question Marks is the whole reason they ever interacted at all before.
   • Fifth Question Mark -- No idea what I might do with her.  Her entire storyline in the Crappy World comics revolved around Question Mark lore, so to keep her around at all I'd probably have to change things up pretty drastically.
   • Seventh Question Mark -- As much as I like her design and powers, I've really never done anything with this one!  I think she was planned to show up in a later series of Crappy World comics, but I never actually got to those.  Not sure what'll happen to her.
   • All the rest -- Extremely unlikely to ever make a reappearance, though I suppose I could always reuse their designs for a completely unrelated character...
2. No more Kaa'ans or Rhogavians period.  The planet Iklai has built up its own significance over the years (it's the base of the internherbi Council of Iklai, which monitors the activities of various dangerous elements such as the Lords of the Great Duh, the Rupoo, and their followers), but I literally never came up with any details on Kaa'a or Rhogav.  Their species were pretty much interchangeable too, with the only difference being that Rhogavians tended to be taller and Kaa'ans tended to have weird hair colors like red and blue.  The Iklaians and their planet will remain, but...
3. ...Iklaians are now kitties.  Their true forms are kitties, to be specific.  I'm basically mashing the Iklaians together with the Uoo-Harasan cats, which were oddly-colored cat aliens that had psychic powers and the ability to take on a human form (though they would involuntarily revert to cat form if exposed to moonlight or certain forms of radiation.)  Iklaians now have pointed ears and slit-shaped pupils when in human form.  Now any Iklaian could end up in a "giant mutant cat" form, rather than that being a special Fourth Question Mark thing... though that would only happen if they end up with a pair of Radioactive Kitty Ears on their head, of course.
4. Iklai now has two moons.  It has to have at least one moon for the Iklaians being forced into cat-form by moonlight to make any sense, after all.  These moons' names will be Kaa'a and Rhogav, so the old planet names will still end up being good for something after all.
5. Uoo-Harasa is now an Iklaian city.  Originally the "Uoo-Harasan cats" were named so because they lived in the city of Uoo-Harasa on some unknown distant planet.  Might as well reuse the name for an Iklaian city, right? Not sure whether to make it their current capital city or an ancient-ruins type place, but either way kinda works.