Monday Memories: Magni

Magni - drawn in pencil, and
colored in Photoshop by me.

It all started when my old gaming group, FUBAR, decided to do a Mutants & Masterminds campaign. My roommate Chris (who was also the resident DM/GM/referee for most of FUBAR’s games) and I were coming home from somewhere one evening, and we were discussing the upcoming game. I had been stuck for ideas, since I didn’t want to just recreate one of my old characters from other supers games. But I was kind of stuck on the idea of a mythological figure, like Hercules and Thor. That’s when Chris suggested I pull out his old 1e copy of Deities & Demigods, and see if anything struck my fancy.

Well, a lot of things there did, and I was having a hard time picking just one. Until, while browsing the Norse pantheon, I came across Magni and Modi. The twin sons of Thor, Magni was revered as the God of Strength, being even stronger than Thor himself, and Modi was the berserker god, which was cool, but didn’t appeal to me at the time. I was stuck on the God of Strength idea. So, Magni it was!

I made him as strong as possible for a PL10 character, of course. And he was extremely tough, being an Asgardian and all. One of the other elements outlined in the D&D book was that Magni had a supernatural ability that allowed him to catch and throw back any weapon or object thrown at him. That sounded cool, so I even built that power into the character.

We played a few adventures with these characters, and I recall practically begging Chris to put us up against giant robots. Well, he did. But the robot he threw at us was about the size of a Gundam. A bit bigger than I had been hoping for, and it was almost comical to watch Magni try to tackle an 80-foot robot. But, we won, and I found myself a new favorite character.

I would later write some vignettes about Magni, draw some pictures of him, and even made him as a character in City of Heroes. The funny thing is, in CoH, the name “Magni” was already taken (big surprise), so I named him Thomas Magni, as a sort of homage to my favorite 80’s PI TV show (though I didn’t give him the epic stache). Well, that name stuck in my head, and later became the name of a pulp-inspired sci fi hero that I started writing about. I have the first story about 75% done, and I plan to finish it ASAP.

I love the character. In my head, my Magni was the son of the Marvel Thor, but as he should have been, and not how he was portrayed briefly in the comics. Thor was sitting on the throne of Asgard, Odin having gone missing. Magni came to Midgard to learn about humility, teamwork, and maturity. As I lived in San Diego at the time, I decided that Heimdall had provided him with appropriate clothing, including a jersey for the Chargers' Center at the time.

And, because I like to reuse a lot of ideas, Magni will be one of the “iconics” for Mutants & Marvels.