Dr Archeville

That all sounds completely copacetic.

Four PL bumps, and two new Bronze members of the Player Awards Club! Huzzah! Arranged by Player, it looks like this: alderwitch Bombshell: Phantom: Psyche: angrydurf Ouroboros: Partisan: Phalanx: Aoiroo is now Bronze status :clap: Changeling: 5pp Silhouette: 5pp Arichamus new! King of Suits: 0pp AvengerAssembled Avenger: NPC'd! Citizen: 3pp Edge: 2pp Fusion: 4pp Harrier: 4pp and is now PL 11 :clap: Burlap: (no posts since mid-October; archiving) Atomic Powered Man: --- Carces Creature Feature: 1pp cosmicarus new! Seventh Solider: 0pp Cubist Jubatus: 1pp Cyroa Dark Star: 1pp Hellion: 1pp Dariusprime Fulcrum: 2pp Darksider42 Lady Winter: 1pp Rift: 1pp Dr Archeville Dead Head: 5PP Dr. Archeville: 0PP (+5PP Veteran Rewards) Dream Shadow Man: 2pp Ecalsneerg Arrowhawk: 3pp Equinox: 1pp Geckoman: 1pp Electra Fleur de Joie: 6pp Miss Americana: 6pp Wander: 6pp (2pp brings her to max, 4 tracked for Veteran Awards) ex3lev3n Pax: 2pp Razoring: 1pp Faust no posts all month Breschau: --- Courier: --- Flare Knight Powerhouse: 6pp and is now PL 11 :clap: Fox is now Bronze :clap: Dragonfly: 6pp Gaian Knight: 4pp Geez3r no IC posts all month Atlas: 0pp Dynamo: 0pp Gizmo Jack of all Blades: 4pp Midnight (II): 5pp GranspearZX Arcturus: 3pp Heritage Gossamer: 2pp Grimalkin: 3pp JackgarPrime Victory: 5pp Kavos Daemon: 5pp KnightDisciple Cobalt Templar: 4pp Gabriel: 5pp and is now PL 12 :clap: Lone Star Kid Cthulhu/Warlock: 3pp Mad Dog: 1pp OmegaPlatinum: no posts all month Sparksmith: --- Quinn Push: 5pp Quotemyname Breakdown: 2pp Colt: 1pp Valkyrie: 3pp Raveled Ironclad: 4pp Robin Cross: NPC'd! Remedy no IC posts all month Remedy: --- Sandman XI Muse: 2pp and is PL 13 :clap: Wesley Knight: 4pp ShaentheBrain no IC posts all month The Scarab: 0pp Zephyr: 0pp Shift X new! Gibraltar: 0pp Shockwasp Calliope: 0pp Shockwasp: 1pp Sorus Sage: 1pp Supercape Rene de Saens: 9pp Slick: 4pp Supercape: 6pp trollthumper Cannonade: 2pp Nick Cimitiere: 4pp and is now PL 12 :clap: The 100+ Posts per Month Club Dragonfly (143)

Again, that's Illusion. You can hug an Illusionary person, and -- like that illusionary wall -- they'll feel real until & unless A) the hug-er have some reason to suspect the hug-ee is not real, and then the hug-er make the Will save against it.

Noodle incident

Tactile Illusion is exactly what you've requested, Sand.

I believe everyone's status has been appropriately updated.

The Character Awards have been slightly expanded and renamed; the new names will be edited in when we add in the monthly pp awards. The pertinent section of the Newbie Guide will be edited to reflect these, but here are the changes, [bg=#FFFF00]highlighted[/bg].

It should probably be treated as Variable (Multiple powers of a particular type or descriptor; Extras: Affects Others; Flaws: Action [Full], Limited [Only Others])

But it's in keeping with all the published NPCs, so it may actually be the intended rule.

Still need alderwitch angrydurf Darksider42 Lone Star

A smile spread across Archeville's face, and he squeezed her had and he leaned back into her. "," he switched back to English, "and I am most eager to hear them. You..." He twisted in her arms so he could look her in the eye, "Your love for me, and mine for you, has done much good for my soul. And all the ideas you have come up with, all the things you have shown me, the world you have introduced me to -- things I likely would never have thought of -- has not only enriched my life, but I think it keeps my Other a bit off-balance. I an eager and anxious and terrified at all the new things we will see together -- I know there is much more I wish to show you. to share with you..." He wrapped his arms around her neck and leaned in, first tentatively brushing his lips against hers then going in for a deep and passionate kiss. When the kiss finally broke, he sighed -- first contentedly, but with a twinge of sadness at the end. "Seventeen minutes and thirty-five seconds left..."

Archeville held up one and, palm facing outward, and spoke in (what he calculated to be) a soothing voice. "it is alright, Powerhouse, you do not need to be so apologetic! Fuzzy memories are a perfectly normal side-effect of traumas such as this; in truth, your recollections have been quite good! Most would not be able to remember the color of the eyes of an animal that attacked them! As for transformation reversal, well," he grinned and chuckled, "it would appear that you are living proof that at least a partial, incomplete transformation can be reversed!" "So," he held up one finger, "there was the wolf-man, and," he held up a second finger, "the doctor, he was the one with the fake wig and beard, right? And," he held up a third finger, "the woman they were after, right? What do you remember of her?"

[bg=#000000]"I know a few folks that ight disagree with ya on that viewpoint,"[/bg] the disembodied head chuckled, [bg=#000000]"but I'm far from qualified t'make any sort'a debate on it."[/bg] [bg=#000000]"Never did get tested fer metahuman ability,"[/bg] he said as he continued to pass his head from hand to hand. [bg=#000000]"I'm from a small town -- the local hospital ain't even got a maternity ward -- so we'd have t'drive an hour t'get to the nearest hospital what could do a CAT scans or MRIs for my migraines. I never heard the docs say anythin' 'bout gettin' me tested fer metahuman powers... but...."[/bg] The headless body shrugged, [bg=#000000]"it's possible the docs did suggest it to mah folks, but they never went fer it. Probably figurin' I had enough t'worry about without addin' in bein' a superhuman. Knowin' the pressures that woulda put on me, not wantin' me ta have that t'shoulder on top'a everythin' else. Not like I can really ask 'em now, though."[/bg]

It was not difficult at all. Between Gabriel's near-divine levels of disarming persuasiveness with the people up front, and Dead Head and Mutt bringing unholy terror to the few in the back who tried running, the two heroes had the organ leggers neatly tied up (or patiently sitting in the lobby) when the police arrived. (Fortunately for the couple in the back, it was Gabriel who interrupted them, not Dead Head.) The Revoltin' Revenant let Gabriel do the talking with the officers. "Thanks a heap!," he said as he emerged from a small discarded crate in the back. "Havin' ya here t'explain thing's goes tons quicker'n me leavin' a note fer the cops!" Gabe felt, but did not see, a dog licking his hand.

I've cleaned up the formatting some. And... :approved:

That should be on its own NPC sheet/thread, not mixed in with your PC sheet/thread.

I'd let her spend one of her 3 unspent pps for Super-Senses 2 (Darkvision [Drawback: Noticeable]), sure.

Archived due to inactivity.

Still need alderwitch (?) angrydurf (?) Arichamus AvengerAssembled cosmicarus Dariusprime Darksider42 Ecalsneerg Lone Star Remedy Shaen (?) Shift X Shockwasp

Dok will be there! Will Evil!Dok? Who knows! (No, I leave that totally up to Electra.)

Cannonade -- Laces and Braces (Masks Vignette) Nick Cimitiere -- "Teenage Death Songs" (Musical Vignette) Cobalt Templar -- Do You Fear Death? (Unbalanced/Oct 2010) Doktor Archeville -- "Poor Superstitious Fools" (Musical Vignette) Dragonfly -- "Too Much Blood on My Hands" (Musical Vignette) Fleur de Joie -- New Year, New Life (New Year's Vignette) Fusion -- "Don't Pollute!" (PSA) Gabriel -- Anti-Gang PSA Gaian Knight -- "Be Your Own Hero" (PSA) Harrier -- Masks Vignette Jack of all Blades -- "Who Will You Choose To Be?" (PSA) Midnight (II) -- Not Even Human (Bloody Valentine Vignette) Miss Americana -- Prototypical (House of L Revisited) Powerhouse -- Birthday Vignette Push -- A Pushy Tune (Musical Vignette) Rene de Saens -- Le Revenant (Unbalanced/Oct 2010) Shadow Man -- The Masks We Wear Slick -- "Just Say No!" (PSA Vignette) Supercape -- Radiation is Safe! (PSA) Victory -- The Masks We Wear Wander -- The Everlasting Light (Masks Vignette) Great job, all :applaud:

The lights rose on the television set to reveal a pair of figures, one sitting on the whitewashed, asymmetrical platforms, the other standing slightly behind him. Although each was dressed in fanciful garb of royal blue and crimson respectively, a sombre stillness somehow robbed the costumes of their usual jaunty mischief and in its absence gave them the weight of a uniform. The seated figured regarded the camera through his bandanna mask with a set jaw, wrists wresting on his knees. “Making friends can be tough for anybody, no matter who you are,” he noted, tilting his head to one side. “Sometimes you’re going to feel like you’d do anything to fit in. To join the group. You might feel like you have to do things you wouldn’t normally do.” “Sometimes that can be good,” the young woman behind him clarified, stepping around to her brother’s side as the camera shifted its focus to her. “Joining a sports team, getting involved in the community or just trying new things can be great ways to enrich your life and make new friends all at once.” Leaning back slightly, Jack of all Blades crossed his arms over his chest. “Gangs aren’t about making friends. They’ll say you have to act like them to fit in, but they just want to use you.” His tone was that of stating simple fact, honest but unrelenting. “Stealing, doing drugs, hurting people?” Jill O’Cure shook her head slightly as she placed a gloved hand on her elder sibling’s shoulder while continuing to address the camera, dark blue eyes piercing beneath unruly black bangs and framed by her deep red mask. “That’s not right, and it’s not you.” “There are people out there who are going to like you for who you really are,” Jack continued, a small grin pulling at one corner of the swordsman’s unusually serious face. “Those are the people who are real friends. But you’re never going to get to meet them if you throw everything away first.” With one hand still of Jack’s shoulder, Jill gestured openly with the other. “It gets better. It really does,” the young woman promised, smiling broadly in spite of herself. “But you’ve got to hang in there until it does.” “It’s not going to be easy. The world doesn’t owe you anything and it’s not going to be handed to you on a silver plater,” Jack told the camera sternly, raising one eyebrow as if to stifle any interruptions. “So this is the part where you earn it. Where you show the world who you really are and the good you can do.” “You’re not alone, and you’re a lot stronger than you know.” Jill took a seat on another platform, placing her hands in her jacket as her grin pulled back to a small, reassuring smile. Jack pointed jauntily at the camera. “Just fitting in isn’t what makes you cool. The choices you make are. So.” Pulling his hand back, the fencer jerked his chin upward, waiting for a response. “Who will you choose to be?”

Trevor Hunter paced back and forth is hurried stops and spurts, tugging forcefully at the collar of a dress shirt that didn’t fit very well. Despite having access to custom tailored clothes, the wealthy fifteen year old was all too aware that his tall, gangly frame made it difficult to craft garments he was truly comfortable in. His growth spurt over the last few year or so had put him the better part of a foot above most of his classmates, but with his width lagging behind, the dark haired teen gave the impression of being made largely of elbows. It wasn’t the clothes that had Trevor upset, even as he threw his tie to the floor of his grandfather’s estate on the outskirts of Freedom City. His grandfather, who had once been the hero known as Midnight, the shadowy mystery man armed with a pistol full of obscuring mist of his own chemical design. His grandfather, who, until minutes ago, had been the only person who knew the effect his prolonged exposure to the gas had ultimately had on his grandson. An effect made evident by the twin wisps of inky vapour rising from the corners of the boy’s eyes where tears should have been welling up. Rubbing futilely at his face with the back of one sleeve, Trevor made a low, inarticulate sound in the back of his throat. The normally reserved youth had no way of knowing if this particular change had been part of his mutation all along of if it was an example of yet further changes to his body. The mist didn’t sting his eyes, but it did block his vision, forcing him to jerk back and forth to avoid the cloud trailing from them, even as he felt a dull, childish shame for the show of weakness. â€Not even human...†he coughed out darkly, a voice recently descended into a rich baritone made thready and uneven by his fitful breathing. â€Freak,†he spat, a guttural syllable filled with bitter disgust. That was what she’d called him, and as taken aback as he’d been, Trevor was hard pressed to argue the point. â€Broken thing.†That assessment was all his own, as the same frustration he felt when a mechanism he was tinkering with just wouldn’t work crashed angrily back and forth against his naturally stoic demeanour. He felt so foolish for telling her, for trusting her, even as he despaired at losing his best friend and scorned his own naivety in turn. He knew he was smart, at least; he should have known better. Should have... With a grimace that pulled his thing, pale lips back from bared teeth, the teen punched the nearest wall, clattering the portraits hanging on it and bruising his knuckles. Ignoring the pain, he stood still for a beat, then another, as the cloud of mist wrapped around him and his breathing slowed to a steadier rhythm. Slowly, he backed up against the wall he’d struck and slid down to the floor, wrapping his lean arms around his knees. There was a soft, shuddering intake of breath from the little ball of light consuming darkness, then even more quietly a voice. â€...why, Maeg?†After that, the long, darkened hallway was silent for a very long time.

Dragonfly knew two things: first, that she was really, really annoyed; second, that whatever this little crystal pendant was, it wasn’t hers. That latter bit was importantly mostly because she’d found it in one of ‘her’ cases - the foam-lined steel or black plastic security cases that usually held things of hers that had gotten shipped or sold to ne’er-do-wells around the country. This one, apparently, had been emptied out and the foam replaced to hold... something. Maybe a foot long, pure crystal as near as she could tell, and certainly nothing she’d ever made. Picking the thing up, she tilted her head and scowled. It tingled a little to the touch. “Bad enough I have to track these down. Bad enough there are always more to find. Too much to ask for it to be what I’m actually looking for... too much to ask. Far, far too much to my mind--“ She slapped a hand over her mouth. what - was THAT She glanced around her warehouse but there was no one around; a quick query to her security system said that there was nobody within almost a block, and no strange anything in her warehouse...except for an energy spike from the crystal. Which she’d just touched. Bare-handed. fantastic - stupid stupid stupid - don’t even know what it does - hate magic The longer she kept her hand over her mouth the more she felt like pressure was welling up inside of her, and when she finally couldn’t stand it anymore and removed the hand the music came back unbidden and in full force. “Thought I was free, thought I’d made my mistakes, Though the mistakes that were made were not mine; Somebody else inside of my head, Somebody with worms in my mind; “And you cannot escape, you cannot run away, No places to scurry or hide, The sins of your past or the weight of the years, The oceans of tears that you’ve cried. “You can work, you can fight, you can toil You can build justice from wire and foil, Put the criminals away, shed some blood, save the day, But it won’t tip the scales, It can’t lessen your guilt, It all simply pales Next to the pain that you’ve built - The mark lasts forever, as if burned with hot brands, There’s so much blood on your hands....” The building pitch of the song left her, and she sank down to the floor with legs up against her chest and her head down, voice cracking as the pace slowed and the last line echoed in the warehouse, almost a whisper. “..... there’s too much blood on my hands....”

30th December 2010 “Just say no†Slick looked the picture of health. Whilst Slick actually was superhumanly robust (at least normally), it was the look that was important today. He was filming a public service announcement warning the kids of drugs. A knock came on his dressing room door. “5 minutes to filming, errr… Mr…err… Slick†came the muffled voice of the crewman. For now, he was quite alone, having politely shown out the quite needless hair and makeup artists. He practiced for a moment in front of the mirror. With some effort, he could limit the oil when changing, at least on his face, and that was what they wanted. What little was left could be air-brushed out with fancy computer technology, so he was told. Nothing wrong with trying to do your best “naturally†was his view. Dressed in unnaturally smart “street†wear (the sociologists and educational experts had deemed this the best way to connect with the “youthâ€) Slick strode confidently towards the camera crew. This was the first time he had done public speaking on this scale, if one could indeed call it public speaking. He wasn’t short on confidence, and he had plenty of experience of life under his belt, so he greeted this new experience with more excitement than anxiety. He wasn’t particularly enamoured with the street wear. In his experience, the more one tried to connect with teenagers as teenagers, the more one made a fool of oneself. However, he hadn’t made much of an argument. After all, what was he going to wear? a suit? The best bet might have been to wear nothing at all. Sex sells, so he had heard from the numerous advertising agents he had to deal with over the years. They were probably right, too. He looked into the blazing studio lights as the countdown began, giving a smile and a thumbs up to the crew that he could hardly see. “Kids… Just say no!†came the booming intro. Cue Slick! Roll Autocue! “Hi kids, my name is Slick. You may know me from my crime-fighting escapades across Freedom City. I am here to tell you, honestly and frankly, about drugsâ€. “You may know people, or even have friends, that think drugs are cool and can make you cool too. Maybe somebody you know even takes drugs, and tells you how good it makes them feel, or how confident or how full of energy. “ “But I am here to tell you that to be healthy, happy, and cool, you don’t need drugs. I never took drugs and that’s why I am still in fighting form today. But what would happen if I did?†Slicks face started to turn more wan, hollow, and drawn as he spoke. His eyes became bloodshot and bags appeared under his eyes. His hair become thin and broken, and his face broke out in broken blood vessels and spots. “I wouldn’t be healthy or happy at all. I would start to get irritable, angry, and unwell. Definitely NOT cool. All I could think about would be the drugs, taking more and more. I would forget about my friends, my family, my life, everything but drugs. “ By the end of the talk his face looked more like a grinning skull with skin stretched over it than an actual human face. “I would probably turn to crime, and if lucky get arrested and put in prison. If I was unlucky, I wouldn’t be alive to tell the tale!†He paused, letting the impact of his horrible face seep in. “So kids, if somebody comes up to you, telling you that drugs are cool, and you think you want to try. Remember what even one taste can do to you. Remember… Drugs aren’t cool!†He gave a horrible skull-like grin to the zooming camera to emphasise the point. It seemed to be effective, some of the crew looked rather perturbed by his face. “Cut. Nice work Mr… Slick†said the director. “May have to edit the last shot to get it through the censors, but I should say that will go down nicely, get the message across that kind of thing. Gotta keep our kids off the drugs, keep our streets clean. No place for drugs in this society. “ He paused to light a cigarette. “That’s a wrap folk, back to the bar for a celebratory brew!†he proclaimed as the crew started to pack up.