It has been a long standing question that you ask at parties. "If you could have any single super power what would it be?" Statistically the top choices are Flight, Invisibility, and some variation of Omniscience (ie. Know what women want, read the stockmarket, Be the world's greatest detective). My friends being what they are, the actual answers I've gotten tend to range a little further afield than that. The poll on the front page of this site reflects some of the variation from the last time I asked that question.

Being the lazy guy that I am, my answer has usually been some variation on teleportation. Today however while I was out for a walk during lunch, I came up with an interesting(to me at least) thought. I've played a number of RPGs over the years and had a variety of characters. There are two however who have had extended longevity. Kiern, my Gangrel vampire who I played for around 3 years up at Umass and Prime, my superhero who I am currently playing. What both of these characters have in common is a tendency to die and come back to life changed from what they were before.

In the case of Kiern, the character died at least 4 different 'deaths'. There was obviously the first where he went from being a human to a vampire. At one point I wrote a story justifying his connection to the spirit world that involved him 'dieing' somewhere north of Boston. It was a lovely piece of fiction. He later died in game when a muppet of a vampire destroyed him with acid filled water balloons. About a year later he was resurrected when the game moved and he clawed his charred and warped remains out of the sewer complete with amnesia. I even had a little wiggle of a story in the back of my head about him thinking he was really a fallen angel. The nice thing about Kiern was that I could justify just about anything with him when the storyteller's asked if an event actually happened by saying "Well, he thinks it did." I admit, I played vampire as superheroes with fangs.

I've already written about Prime's penchant for transformative 'deaths'. I don't think until today I would ever have said that my favorite power was immortality.. or I guess more resurrection/reincarnation. Mostly this is because it isn't really a 'power'. It is the side effect of being a protaganist. As long as you still have a story to be told, you will always come back and survive no matter what. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and the Hulk all have this power but you'll never see it on any writeup describing their abilities. They are the leads of the story.. they can't die.

I've always said that I wouldn't want to live forever because it would get boring. Forever is a long long time. What I really want, is to live until my story is over and to grow and change with each tiny 'death' that transforms me.