See, page title comes from Maxima being shown at three different ages there across the bottom of the page. Granted, the older version is a bit speculative. And sure, there’s more than just the three ages. Maybe 9 year old Maximillia got up to some interesting adventures. Like she was some sort of neighborhood pre-teen Nancy Drew, solving the mystery of the missing cookies, the missing homework, the dog that had a lot of paper in its poop, stuff like that. I’m not saying that’s the case, just that Maxima probably had some “ages” before she got gilded.
I vaguely remember in D&D… I think 3rd edition, possibly others, haste potions were supposed to age your character a year every time you used one. Which is a terrible trade off considering they only lasted 10 rounds. So for 60 seconds, you get one extra attack and can run twice as fast. And in exchange you lose a year of life? Granted, a speed potion could definitely be the deciding factor in a life or death fight, but unless you’re an elf or a dragon (or possibly a vampire, not sure about that one) that’s definitely a tactic of last resort. (Dragons become more powerful with age, so it actually benefits them. Vampires probably have to be feeding regularly to benefit from age, but since humans don’t starve to death after using a haste potion, I assume it has no detrimental effect on a vampire.)
I think they changed the after-effect to losing a round to exhaustion, because otherwise, that’s a little terrifying. A few year-sucking potions could cut decades from a human adventurer’s career, and I think halflings and half-orcs have shorter average lifespans than humans. In “realistic” superhero novels and some of the more grim comics, super speed is one of those powers with such terrible drawbacks that as soon as you realize you’re aging faster, you’d basically stop using it. Granted, judicious use of super speed wouldn’t really add up to all that much. You get into a fight, use super speed for 10 seconds of your local time, and win the day, easy peasy. The problem comes from when the super speed character runs across the country, or reads every book in the library to find the clue. Running east to west coast across the US took one ultramarathon runner 42 days. Reading every book in a library could potentially take months, or possibly centuries, if they have a comprehensive copy of the Tax Code, or any book they asked us to read in high school. Seriously, Bleak House, go fuck yourself. I mean, it’s called Bleak House. I could barely get through the cliff notes.
Anyway, if the super speedster experiences time in real time local to him no matter what speed he’s going, and Batman says I have to run across the country to get the disarming key to a Joker bomb in time, I would quit the team. Okay, I’d probably go and disarm the bomb, but I’d steal a bicycle, and that’s assuming my powers can’t be extended to cover the Batmobile, cause if they could, I’d fucking steal that. But then I’d quit.
Finally, here we go! I took the suggestion that I just use an existing panel for a starting point, thinking it would save time… I guess it technically did, but a 5 character vote incentive just isn’t the way to go.
Patreon, of course, has actual topless version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.







![The Lost Fleet: Dauntless by [Jack Campbell]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51p-qaYLuvL.jpg)


