Key: red is strictly biological, yellow is piloted tech, green is robot tech using Leo’s ideas, blue is robot tech innovated by Newmans, and pink is “final stage” tech - the stuff of myth, or society-defining creations.
The “Super Humanoid” series begins with Otto. Otto, plus the Link Suit, gives you conventional mecha, or human-piloted giant robots, such as what he built for Mary. Beyond that, transformable modular piloted craft can be used for Thunderbirds-style rescue vehicles.
Going in another direction, Super Humanoids become self-replicating robots, starting with the Phoenix.
Aria works on developing minds for new robots. Her contribution to Phoenix was vital, but she also extends this to creating newborn human minds, combined from two or more donor minds, that can grow and learn just as any other child does. These are the Gen 6 Child Androids. An example would be Leo and Aria’s own children.
Summer’s fork from Pneuma saw her adopt a new holographic shell (with Leo’s begrudging acceptance). From there, she may innovate into other new shell tech, such as nanotechnology. This enables a self-healing (not just self-replicating) robot. This work also leads to the Gen 9 Von Newmen - androids who can heal just like a human being, and live and grow independently of complex machinery - and their cousins, the Gen 9 “Hero Herculoids”, who can regenerate battle damage as well as reproduce.
Meanwhile, Leo and Aria collaborate on an “EC” Robot, or “Ephemeral Cerberus”, a unit with its own mind (sentient or not) that can temporarily mind-meld with someone else. The EC robots act as partners, pets, guardians, or vehicles to sentient Newman robots. Leo can build an EC Robot partner for Summer, in the form of a predatory cat which can transform into a motorcycle and/or dock with her as exoskeletal armor. With nanotech shells, they too can self-heal, or more quickly heal a partner they’re docked with.
The final development of these technologies are the Genius Loci, or “living locations”, towns or villages or cities where the infrastructure is all robotic and controlled by empathic intelligence; the Gen 10 “Super Newmen”, with built-in superpowers and regeneration; and the “Guardian Gods”, or partner creatures who bring massive power or durability to their Newman partners.
None of this has any immediate significance, unless (for example) we get more visitors from another future. But I was inspired by the talk of the rotating Star Wars game - if this group ever jumped into a scifi game and wanted some world continuity, here’s one version of what the future might include.
author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/6712882
If we were sticklers for compliance with the game, and assumed “paragon of the city” meant “active superhero”, that’d be the Otto-Phoenix-(someone else…?) combination.