Amelia

Mister Strix "No. I definitely don't know this piece of trash, and the world is probably better off without him. I just don't feel like I have the right to let him die. From what I've seen, you're faster than any of us, and definitely faster than any ambulance. Just keep pressure up on his wound, but not so much that you strangle him. And try to make it as smooth a ride as possible. No sudden stops or hard turns if you can avoid it. Take him to Downtown General. It's the closest one by far. We'll be right behind you, because if the kid's mom really is in a hospital, then I bet she's in that one, and not on account of any car accident." Strix threaded his arm under the wounded cop's legs and slowly, carefully lifted him up off the ground and into Lady Horus's waiting arms. He turned to glare with his black eyes at the younger cop, who was still more or less standing still in the kitchen. "You partner's last act in this world will probably be shaking down a parent for a bribe in their own home, with their kid in the next room. Think long and hard about whether you really want to follow in those footsteps." Then he ran upstairs.

GM The younger cop audibly gulped at Dead Head and dropped his gun. The pistol made a loud *THWACK* sound as the impact cut into the cheap fake tile on the kitchen floor. "Ssshhhould I radio for an ahhhmbulance, or...?" Esteban Delgado nodded to Mutt. "Okay. You look kinda weird too, but you're nice. Can you stay with me while I talk with your friend?" He turned toward his bedroom door and cupped his hand to his face, shouting "COME IN!" The little boy was startled at Dead Head's appearance, but Mutt and Lady Horus had purchased him enough credibility in advance that the child resisted the urge to flee in terror, and once Dead Head started talking, his jovial manner won the boy over. By the end of the conversation, the boy seemed to have forgotten that he was talking to a monster. His story revealed the threads of truth that his father had spun into lies. According to Esteban, his parents were active in their local church, Saint Romuald's, and often volunteered at the homeless shelter it ran near Ash Street, Saint Sebastian's. They usually took turns, one going to work while the other stayed with Esteban. Last week, Javier came home from a dinner shift at the shelter with a bandage on his neck. He claimed to have accidentally cut himself in the kitchen. After that, he started calling in sick to work and sleeping all day. A few days after that dinner shift, the Delgado family car had indeed been totaled, but Javier had neglected to mention the cause of the accident, which was not as severe as he made it out to be. Javier had been driving, with the entire family in the car with him, when he had suddenly let go of the steering wheel, letting the car crash while he mauled his wife's neck. The car crashed into a nearby lamppost, but not at a high speed. After biting his wife's throat and sucking some of her blood, Javier had exited the vehicle, picked it up off the ground, and smashed it into the lamppost hard enough to topple it. The family dog, Pacho, wouldn't stop barking at him, so Javier grabbed Pacho, pulled him out of the car, shoved his hand into the dog's chest with enough force to pierce its skin, and then flayed it open over the street. He licked his hands clean afterward. Javier then got back into the car, buckled up, and waited for emergency services to arrive. At this point, Esteban, his voice hoarse and his face blue from his terrified and bewildered screaming, had fainted. He woke up at home, where he was told that his mother was in the hospital. He's been having nightmares about his father murdering his dog ever since. Earlier this day, Javier had told him "Don't worry, Mijo, we'll wait for you to grow up before we make you like us." He didn't know what his father meant, but after that, and three days of nobody believing him about what he'd seen, he finally called the police.

Normally I'd activate Dead Head's appearance related complications for his interaction with the boy, but the boy has been primed by the big fluffy puppy and the magical fairy queen, so he's favorably inclined toward the zombie. Dead Head can take 10 on his Diplomacy check and get the kid to spill his guts about the guts his dad spilled.

The younger cop has Sense Motive +5, so he's only resisting that on a 19 or 20. Younger Cop's Sense Motive check: 14. Nope.

Octoman: Standard Action: He finishes up his Recovery, and automatically passes the check because it's DC10 and his bonus is +9. He loses his Disabled condition. Move Action: None. He doesn't get one, since he's Staggered. Josef Bankowski: No actions, since he's spending the round Dazed. I could Fiat it away, but I'm not gonna. Octoman: 16, Bruised, Injured, Staggered, Prone, 2HP Josef Bankowski: 13, Bruised x9, Injured, Staggered, Dazed, Prone Bombshell: 12, Bruised, Injured, 2HP Bombshell is up again. I assume she's going to burn another HP to avoid the fatigue from the second Surge, so I already deducted it from her total.

Octoman Octoman tried to yell after Bombshell while she fired her baton's swingline at a nearby building and pulled herself over to Josef Bankowski, but it sounded more like a whimper. "HEYYY! I SAID 'I have a PLAN'! Thought you were a TEAM PLAYER! I-*COUGH*" He spit more purple blood onto the sidewalk. "I got this. Really. Gonna stand up any second now..." Since she was fifty feet away with her back to him, Octoman had no idea what Bombshell had said to Bankowski, or even that she had said anything at all. But he definitely saw her baton smash into the man's jaw, and he saw the man go flying up off of his feet. He saw the man fall down, and, at least for the moment, not get back up again. "...I mean, sure, that works too."

GM Motorists were still honking and swerving and skidding around the melee in the middle of the street. Bombshell's baton strike caught Josef Bankowski completely off-guard and knocked him up off of his feet. He landed back onto the street with an audible crack as his back struck the asphalt and his ribs fractured. He wasn't screaming anymore, just moaning and gasping for breath. Bombshell hadn't knocked him out, but she'd knocked the wind out of him. For at least a few blessed seconds, she'd shut him up.

Thanks for the reminder. I just did another IC post for Strix. Let me know if you want to get one more IC post in for Dead Head, or if I should follow up with a GM post to move things forward.

Mister Strix "Right. The dog. Easy to forget about him when you can't see him. He's been with us the whole time? I think his sense of smell's even better than mine. If I can pick up this stench, and believe me, I can, then he should be able to." "When someone wants to join the Lodge, I don't ask for a blood sample because I'm thirsty. You're a necromancer, right? So I don't need to tell you that blood has power. It soaks up psychic resonance like a sponge. Everything that happens to a person, everything they do, everything they feel, it leaves echoes in their blood. When I get a taste, I can look into their past, like how Mutt here can smell what a mortal had for dinner last night. When I approve someone for membership, it's because I looked at the worst thing they've ever done and I decided it wasn't terrible enough to exclude them. And when I sink my fangs into this 'Woodchuck Man', as much as I'm dreading putting my face that close to the fur that left this stench behind, I'll find out exactly what 'motivates' him."

Mister Strix The man in white had just dropped down from the ceiling, and was reaching to grab Javier from behind, when Lady Horus came flying through the door and chopped his head off. With the immediately threat over, he turned to the wounded cop. As he knelt down beside the dying man, he tore off a strip from his own cape, which he then pressed against the man's throat to staunch the worst of the bleeding. He started barking orders, to no one in particular. "We need to get this man to a hospital now! Trauma surgery's the only chance he's got and even that's a slim one. Someone raid the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Get me gauze and tape, or anything like it. Get the kid in here. He's got some questions to answer." While he worked, he growled dismissively at the younger cop. "And someone take his gun or knock him out or do something before the idiot shoots someone."

GM As soon as Lady Horus's ankh cleaved Javier Delgado's head from his shoulders, his entire body, both halves of it, crumbled into ash. The older cop was bleeding heavily from the gashes in his neck, staring unfocused at the ceiling while he gurgled and gasped and choked on his own blood. He was still alive, for the moment, but obviously teetering on the edge of a knife. The younger cop started walking backwards, toward the back door in the kitchen, while trembling and moving his gun back and forth to point it at everyone in rapid succession. "WHAT...OH GOD...HOW...OH GOD..." Outside, Little Esteban buried his face in Mutt's fur and held him close, blissfully ignorant of his father's destruction.

Mister Strix makes a Medicine check (DC15) to stabilize the older cop: 22. He's stable.

Older Cop's Fortitude save (DC10): 13. Well, whatta ya know, the old guy's a fighter. He's not stabilized, he's still Dying, but he's got another hour before has to save again. In that case, I'll go ahead and have him make his first saving throw against the linked Disease Transform effect. Fortitude save (DC19): 18. So close. One more day until his next save (if he's still alive by then).

Nothing wrong with any of that. Even if flying through the front door and stabbing him from behind didn't catch him flat-footed, his Defense is only +9, so that hits regardless. Toughness save (DC34): 23. He fails by 11, which would normally be enough to Disable him. He's a vampire, she's using a holy relic, and she scored a critical hit. That's checking off every box for beheading him or staking him through the heart (I also would have accepted a Power Attack), whichever descriptor you'd prefer. But he's done, regardless. As I'll describe in the GM post following your IC post, his body is going to instantly crumble into ash.

Strix's olfactory Notice check with his Analytical Tracking smell/taste: 17, good enough to pick up the Woodchuck Man's trail. I'm just gonna say none of these PL0-3 bystanders can make the Will save to break through Strix's Phantasm Concealment. Strix's Notice check for the blood-based Postcognition: 24. I'm giving him the Feedback flaw on his Postcognition as a Complication. I'll call it a rank 8 Damage effect with Alternate Save (Will). Strix's Toughness save (DC23): 17. He fails by 6, so he's Injured and Dazed for a round. He's not in combat, so he's got time to let the Dazed condition clear, and the Injured condition is going to go away in a few seconds. But it keeps him from spoiling the whole plot up-front, so I'll still call it a setback and give him a Hero Point.

Mister Strix "No, not common at all. Mad science wouldn't be sustainable here. They'd find plenty of potential test subjects no one would miss, but none of the other resources they'd need. And there just aren't that many metahumans in a city like Bedlam, period. Our personal experiences aren't the typical sample set." "I don't care where he came from, just where he went after he took her." "Feel free to conduct whatever investigation you see fit. But when I said I wanted to come here to 'pick up the scent', I wasn't speaking metaphorically." The man in white sniffed at the air, then gagged. "ACK. UGH." He nodded. "Yes, there it is. I'll be able to follow the trail out of here. But first, I want to collect a sample of Ms. Fairchild's blood from that table. Mind if I borrow that shovel?" He crept up to the restaurant's outdoor seating area, clouding the minds of those around him almost by reflex. He wedged the shovel's blade between two of the outermost wooden beams making up the table, then heaved, snapping off a piece of wood about a foot and a half long. The loud crack drew everyone's attention for a moment, but after a few seconds of silent staring, they returned to what they'd been doing before. Strix brought the chunk of wood back to their hiding place, handing the shovel back to Dead Head. He licked the dried blood caked onto the wood. The blackness at the center of his eyes expanded like a cloud of ink to fill each entire eyeball. He stared off into space for a few moments. Then his head started violently jerking in seemingly random directions. Bones in his face started breaking. Cuts appeared in his skin, though as usual, they didn't bleed. He dropped the wooden block and fell down to a sitting position. The spontaneous wounds on his face started healing while he spoke, almost as quickly as they'd appeared. "Pain. Terror. Nothing we didn't already know from looking at her. Someone beat her within half an inch of her life. I might get more by digging deeper, later, if I have to..."

Since you're using your standard action to feint, you're actually Bluffing at the full +20, so you get 30. He needs a natural 20 to see through that. Sense Motive check: 17. He doesn't get it. Bankowski is flat-footed, so his Defense is +5, DC15, so 18 hits. Strength +3, Mighty Damage 4, +2 from Sneak Attack, another +2 from Power Attack, that's Damage 11, DC26, your math checks out. With 8 Bruises, Bankowski's got -8 to his +10 Toughness, leaving him at +2. Bankowski's Toughness save (DC26): 14. He fails by 12. So he's not Unconscious yet, but he takes a ninth Bruise, and now he's also Staggered, and he's Dazed for one round. Wow, this guy will just not go down. EDIT: Forgot, since he failed by 5+, he suffers knockback. Crits don't generally count for that, so I'm gonna say Sneak Attack doesn't either, but the Power Attack does. So that's Damage 9, minus 5 (half his +10 Toughness) = 4. 4 steps up the Progression table is 10, so he gets knocked back up to ten feet. You can choose not to send him back that far if you want. If I were you, I'd just knock him down instead of back, so you're still in melee and you don't have to move again. If he's still Prone by your next round, you'll get an extra +4 to hit him. Octoman: 16, Bruised, Injured, Staggered, Disabled, Prone, 2HP Josef Bankowski: 13, Bruised x9, Injured, Staggered, Dazed, Prone Bombshell: 12, Bruised, Injured, 3HP

Notice check for Octoman to read Bomshell's lips (DC20): 30. Still catching every word. This'll be a much shorter OOC post and combat round. Octoman lays there, and Bankowski stands there. Octoman: Reaction: He spends a Hero Point to clear his Dazed condition. Reaction: He spends another Hero Point to make a Recovery action for his worst damage condition, Disabled. Standard Action: He begins the Recover action. He's Staggered, so he's limited to a single Standard or Move action each round, but Recovery is a Full action, so it'll take him two rounds. Bankowski: He's Dazed, so he can't take any actions. Forgot to give Bombshell a Hero Point for taking that bullet, so her total goes up. Also forgot to list her one wound. Point of order, the description of the wound closing is fine, but Bombshell's injury hasn't actually gone away yet, because she has to heal the worst conditions first, and it looks like it takes one full round of rest for her to get rid of an Injury (after which point the Bruise will just instantly go away). Octoman: 16, Bruised, Injured, Staggered, Disabled, Prone, 2HP Josef Bankowski: 13, Bruised x8, Injured, Dazed Bombshell: 12, Bruised, Injured, 4HP Bombshell is up again. Also, side note, while there aren't any power ranks listed, I think her Regen cost is wrong. Recovering from Bruised with no action is 3 ranks. Recovering from Injured after 1 round of rest is 4 ranks. Recovering from Staggered with no action is 6 ranks. Recovering from Disabled in 5 minutes is 4 ranks. Resurrecting in 5 minutes is 6 ranks. Regrowth is 1PP. That's 23 ranks, 24PP.

GM Josef Bankowski started screaming more of his intoxicated and unhinged rants at Bombshell. But while he yelled, he also started looking around, above and behind, somehow even more wide-eyed than he was before. He had taken a couple of steps toward her, but once she mentioned the impending arrival of her teammates, he hesitated, and no amount of bravado could obscure how scared he clearly was of taking on the entire team. "OH, YOU WANNA DANCE, LITTLE GIRL?! YOU THINK I NEED THAT GUN TO SHOW YOU WHO'S BOSS LIKE YOUR MAN SHOULDA DONE ALREADY?! AIN'T NUTHIN' WRONG WITH YOU I CAN'T FIX WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS! WOULDN'T BE FLASHIN' YER STUFF AROUND SHAKIN' YOUR BOOTY IN EVERYONE'S FACES IF YOU WERE WITH A GUY ALPHA ENOUGH TO GIVE YOU A GOOD SLAP WHENEVER YOU GOT OUTTA LINE LIKE YOU SECRETLY WANT HIM TO NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU WHINE ABOUT IT AFTER! YOU FEMALES ARE ALL THE SAME, JUST LIKE MY WIFE, ALL OF YOU WITH ONE FOOT OUT THE DOOR, ALWAYS LOOKIN' FOR THE BIGGER BETTER DEAL, CAN'T WAIT TO JUMP BACK ON THE CAROUSEL WITH TYRONE OVER THERE AS SOON AS SHE'S GOT ALL MY MONEY!"

Octoman As he lay on the sidewalk, Octoman weakly yelled back at Bankowski, in between coughing up more of his thick purple blood, "Don't go *cough* strapping on your mud boots *ack* just yet, Cowboy." He struggled to raise one arm and defiantly pointed at the sky. "I have not yet *cough* BEGUN to get punched in the face!" The arm dropped back down onto the sidewalk. More quietly, he muttered "Seriously, though, after this, they should give me a DEGREE in Getting Punched In The Face. I should teach a MASTER CLASS. At least write a thinkpiece..." He limply waved a tentacle in Bombshell's direction as she rolled up to him. "Hey, Beautiful!" he croaked out. "Sorry about ditching you back there. Glad you made it." Then he whispered "HEY. I got a PLAN. Let him get in close. I still got one ace up my sleeve." An unusual bulge briefly expanded from one side of his neck, and then the other, before receding again.

Oh hey, looks like I wasn't subscribed to this thread. Sorry. Strix has Darkvision, Microscopic Vision (the first rank, dust-sized objects), Analytical smell/taste, and just good vision and hearing overall, so he can pick up stuff that a normal person couldn't. As for "stuff he's looking for", that was basically the content of his last IC post. Notice: 14. Search: 13. Yeesh. ...If you wanna count those as DC10 Aid checks to give Dead Head a +2 bonus, I'd be OK with it. >_> <_<

@Dr Archeville Feel free to make the first IC post at your leisure.

GM To the north lay Scarlet Hill, a name no one in Bedlam City used anymore, instead referring to both the hill and the mansions turned sub-sub-divided-apartments surrounding it by reference to the Country Club which sat atop it, looming over the south-eastern parts of the city. Both were saturated with diesel exhaust from the Rook Island port at the mouth of the Manitowoc River. To the south lay the freezing waters and hard-packed, littered sands of Graves End Beach. And between north and south lay Bedlam City's answer to Skid Row, the neighborhood known for its most famous boulevard, "Ash Street". Sitting at the foot of the hill, it was not quite as drowned in smog as the Country Club, the trees and grass, not quite as withered and lifeless. At least two out of every three buildings sat empty and abandoned. Homeless people were everywhere, taking shelter in every nook and collecting cans and bottles almost as soon as they were discarded. The only businesses seemed to be invariably overcrowded homeless shelters, thrift stores, and the odd convenience store. Even the check cashing and payday loan storefronts with their neon "We Buy Gold and Silver" signs that seemed to be on every third block in Wolverton and Hardwick Park were too extravagant for Ash Street. The odds seemed long, but the local fast food chain, Wunder-Chuk, was betting that there was an untapped market on Ash Street and in the Country Club. The grand opening of their new branch on Storch Avenue had kicked off earlier in the evening. Everything seemed to go smoothly until the "Clash of The Woodchucks". The local press managed to get their hands on the surveillance footage immediately, and had edited together and spread it like wildfire within an hour. On one side of the restaurant, the employee who had drawn the short straw and had to wear the Wally Woodchuck mascot costume walked up to the wrong little girl, mistakenly thinking he would make her laugh. Instead, she started bawling. On the other side of the restaurant, a true monster had appeared. Some sort of humanoid rodent, like a man with the head of a chipmunk, wearing a trenchcoat and wide-brimmed hat as a comically ineffective ineffective disguise, had walked up to the outdoor seating area carrying a battered, bloody young woman in his arms. He laid her down on one of the unoccupied tables, tore a diamond necklace from her neck, and turned to leave before the young girl's sobbing seemed to get his attention. He ran up to the mascot, slashed at him with bear-like claws, scooped up the little girl, since identified as "Emily Petrovic", age six, and ran off with her. The mascot attacked by the "Woodchuck Man" was admitted to Downtown General with multiple lacerations, but nothing serious. He was being kept at the hospital while the doctors ran tests for any infectious diseases, but they expected to discharge him within the next couple of days. The battered young woman the "Woodchuck Man" had left behind, meanwhile, had been identified as Ashley Fairchild, age 21, a student at Belchner College. She was supposed to be starting her senior year in the fall, and she was engaged to marry her boyfriend, meat packing heir and fellow student Ethan Pfeffner. Now she lay in a coma at the Beth-El Hospital near Stone Ridge, and the doctors couldn't say if she'd ever wake up. Ethan had spoken with reporters, imploring anyone with information relevant to the investigation into his fiancee's assault to come forward. He made special mention of the diamond necklace the creature had stolen, stating that it was an heirloom passed down through five generations of his family. His grandparents offered a $10,000 reward for its safe return. The police were technically searching for the girl and the "Woodchuck Man", but the most and of the Ash Street residents saw of their efforts was a patrol car creeping by maybe once every half-hour. Even that was an unprecedented level of police presence in the area, but it was unlikely to yield any tangible results. As soon as they learned of the incident, Dead Head and Mister Strix had taken it upon themselves to investigate. Their first stop was the restaurant itself, now closed and mostly deserted, save for a single patrol car in the parking lot, and a couple of reporters and unpaid gawkers milling about.

Short Answer: Yes. Bombshell is roughly 200ft from Octoman and 250ft from Bankowski. The rank 1 Speed power in her baton lets her move 10MPH, which is 100ft per move action. She's got two actions by default, which she can use on two back-to-back move actions to just barely clear the 200ft and land adjacent to Octoman. If you want her to take another move or standard action after that, then you can take a free action to use Extra Effort for a Surge. On her next action, 1 round from now, she'll become Fatigued. At that time or any time after, as a Reaction, she can burn a Hero Point to get rid of that Fatigued condition. So she can Surge to Distract as a standard action in the same round, on top of her two move actions. Her Distract works off of Bluff, with which she has +20 and Skill Mastery, so she can Take 10 and hit 30. Bankowski will only resist that on a natural 20. Bankowski's Sense Motive check: 17. Not even close. Bankowski is Dazed for 1 round. Octoman: 16, Bruised, Injured, Staggered, Disabled, Dazed, Prone, 4HP Josef Bankowski: 13, Bruised x8, Injured, Dazed Bombshell: 12, Unharmed, 3HP Go ahead and post in the IC.

GM: 42 x2 = 84 GM posts Everyone Is From Somewhere (13) Members Only (2) Octoman: Close To Home (7) Red Death Redemption (19) Siren Song of The Void (1) 84 GM posts: 18 Mister Strix 38 Octoman 23 Persephone 5 unused Dirge: 1 IC post = 1PP Kill Team (1) Mister Strix: 32 IC posts + 18 GM posts = 50 IC posts = 4PP, +1 Extras = 5PP Bedlam Burning: Beauty & The Beasts (3) Everyone Is From Somewhere (9) Golgotha Tenement Blues (2) Ink (1) Red Death Redemption (16) Siren Song of The Void (1) Extras: Reputation Tables (at the bottom of the Guidebook page) (1PP) Octoman: 12 IC posts + 38 GM posts = 50 IC posts = 4PP, +3 (+4?) Extras = 7PP (8PP?) Octoman: Close To Home (11) Extras: Guidebook Page (1PP) Reputation Tables (at the bottom of the in-progress Guidebook page) (1PP) Guide (1PP) NPC: Webmaster (1PP?) Persephone: 2 IC posts + 23 GM posts = 25 IC posts = 3PP, +3 Extras = 6PP Storm of The Century (2) Extras: ErosUnlimited Profile (1PP) Guidebook Page (1PP) Reputation Tables (at the bottom of the Guidebook page) (1PP)