Avenger Assembled

All right, everybody is there, you can see most everybody except Woodsman, the monster has done significant property damage, has nearly tripled in height, and has summoned a small horde of zombies. Feel free to take what IC or OOC actions your characters would do at this point.

Woodsman Woodsman pushed his engine hard and caught up with the monstrosity - how was something so damn big so fast! Even now he'd only caught it because it had stopped moving; he slammed on the brakes as he reached a broken wrought-iron fence and stared past at it. A flash of lightning illuminated the creature again; a gigantic, stumbling reptile now moving across open ground towards a church that Riley didn't immediately recognize. He stopped his bike, grabbed his shoulder bag with his gear - and watched as the crocodile-thing smashed into the side of the little old chapel at full tilt! Speed Demon and Torque You heard the vibrations and felt the tremors even as you worked to save the lives of the wounded civilians, but dropping them off at the hospital meant you got back here just in time to see it happen. The spire of the old Freeman's Church falls with a deafening roar, a century of history destroyed in an instant. It takes a moment to see what's happening though - but there it is, a tremendous bipedal alligator standing amid the ruins of the church and roaring against the sky in a howl like death itself. Immutable And whatever is going wrong is going wrong now, right now, in a way that at once is terrifyingly new and all-too-familiar. Sagrado Corazon And the Voice is shouting in your ear as Persephone lands your group on the scene not in words but in impressions: "ABOMINATION! ABOMINATION!" Cheval And whatever part of you was touched by a god knows your enemy as the creature howls in triumph. Persephone And beneath the driving winds and howling storm, whatever part of you is a plant is flinching in terror from what should not be - from the Anti-Life! Speed Demon, Torque, Immutable Betsy Brooks, Persephone, Cheval The great beast howls - and suddenly things begin to change, around the time the man on fire and the helicopter woman meet the god's spokesman, the god's champion, the plant woman, and run into the unbreakable one. Lines of eldritch power come erupting from the ground all around the ruined church, shimmering like spotlights in smoke through the driving rain, lines of power which intersect the great beast and make it grow! It grows and grows with impossible speed and the sound of unholy warping of flesh and bone. For this is no living being you can see now - even through the rain and winds, you can smell the scent of death and see the rotting flesh of this gargantuan abomination! It grows, and it grows until it towers above the church it once matched in size. It has more than doubled in size, now clearly visible above the far Weston skyline at what will later turn out to be a hundred and sixty-four feet tall! And at its feet, in one last flash of lightning, something new is happening - the ground is tearing open, and the honored dead of one hundred and fifty years of Vibora history are clawing their way to the surface.

Yeah more bears plz! typed Judy with a smiley. My washcloth should be done by then. She paused a moment, then sent a picture of an big, beaten-up old teddy bear next to her on the bed. Okie the Bear had been with her since he'd been bigger than her, but now sat comfortably on her lap. She smiled and started typing some more - and then there was a distinct pause while the typing animation on her end hung. And then Busted! ? But I can't sleep anyway! She looked up at Ashley, who probably wouldn't have looked so crabby if she was getting better sleep. and smiled winningly. "We should videochat them so they can see we're together. It'll make the story better," she whispered. "No it will not," whispered Ashley back, honestly wishing she hadn't bothered with the check-in at all. "Watchdog doesn't wear a suit and an earpiece when she's guarding her sister at an undisclosed location." But Judy had had a pretty rough week, and Ashley didn't want Lulu and Danica getting ideas. So what the other two eventually got was a zoomed in shot of Judy and Ashley leaning down together over the cameraphone, with nothing visible but Judy's smile and Ashley's scowl, and distinct glimpse of canopied bed and woodframed top above them. Ashley wants bears too!

"Wait a second wait a second, so getting past all that supernatural mumbo-jumbo you just threw down, you put your headquarters in a place where you can't even turn off the security system?" Wadjet looked at Dead Head, was still not sure how to read that guy's facial expressions, then looked back at Strix. Am I the only sane one? Except for the dog, he's all right. "Well okay, this mindwiping crap isn't happening to me, so we're gonna figure out how to stop that." She supposed the vampire plague attacking the city was also potentially relevant - and the more Strix talked, the more she had to admit his story sounded familiar. All right. Be a good team player. Do what Anna would-no. "We've got a sarcophagus back at our place, but I don't know how strong it actually is - silver chains, holy stuff, I can probably, heh, borrow it...As for your vampire plague, sounds like we need to flash-fry all the bloodsuckers at once, then take out your head guy. Lady Horus can hit a whole city at once, especially if it's light out. Then we can go hunting for the king vampire. I've been getting ready for that for a while now."

You get it out, but you rip through the roof - it's no longer stuck in the ditch, but now it's a convertible?

In honour of the launch of our new city the theme for this vignettes is Beginnings and Endings. Beginnings covers those first of your career, though not you actual origin as that's already covered, the first nights patrol or you first arrest, meeting or a significant ally or joining a particular group. Or maybe the characters personal life, a first date or a first born, engagement or marriages with there significant other. Or maybe they've decided on a clean break and move state, country or even planet (people make new starts in Space as well). New beginnings often start with something else ending however, so you could choose the flip side of any of the above, or something of your own, and show how something comes to an end. And as it would be a massive coincidence that this all happens over the next few months your not limited on when these Beginnings and end happened. If you want to cover the ultimate end of your character we won't hold you to it, after all thats the making or excellent what-if's and imaginary stories... As a reminder, vignettes follow the same general rules as posts in terms of content, player character limits, and so on. You may have only one vignette per player character. Each vignette should be at least one page (~500 words) in length; if posted in your thread counts at the end of the month, it is worth 1pp for the associated character. An especially long vignette, 1000 words or more, may be worth up to 2pp. Multiple players can collaborate on a single vignette - we recommend Google Docs for this, it's very useful - but the vignette should be about one page per participating player. ) Please post them here by October 31.

In order to make sure the Refs accurately count all your IC posts and award you the due amount of power points, please post with a list of all the threads in which your player character, NPC or sidekick posted IC this month (including the News forum). This topic will automatically close on the seventh day of the following month at Midnight EST. Also list any threads which you are GMing. GM posts count as double and can be assigned to whichever of your characters needs a 'push'. When you make your list, post a link to your first post for the month for each IC thread so we can jump right to it. When you start a thread, make sure IC is the first tag and topic prefix of the In Character thread, and OOC is in the first tag and topic prefix of the Out Of Character thread. It's not required, but additional tags including the major players and locations are viewed as a courtesy. Please list your threads in alphabetical order. Please clearly note any threads in which you are both player and GM/running an NPC. Please list your threads in a timely manner. Extending the deadline one week into the following month is already a grace period. If you've done any "extracurriculars" -- artwork, HellQ, 20 Questions, NPC, vignettes, guidebook pages, etc. -- please be sure to list them along with your active threads. For more information on ways to earn power points, see Character Advancement and Awards in the House Rules section of the Guide. Post counts should be formatted similar to the following: To make clear how many posts from rollover and GM posts ar assigned to each character. Failure to comply with these guidelines may result in your post counts being postponed or skipped completely. If you missed the deadline, see this thread.

Between Persephone's symbiotic life form telling her something's amiss over in far Weston, the radio signal to Torque, and anyone else listening on police bands, that should let everyone head in the general direction of the monster, if you are so inclined.

Woodsman Think. Woodsman stood before the smashed police cars and the bodies of the dead, his face partially obscured by nightvision gear. Think. Smarter than the bear. Sixty-four feet was goddamned impressive when the thing was looming over you but the shadow of its footprints hadn't been that big - yet it had stepped on the police cars perfectly. It killed the cops on purpose. It doesn't want anyone to know it's here. And it stunk - it stunk bad, like rotting meat. What the Hell? He climbed back on his bike, gunning the motor as he did and setting it to run silent. Most men wouldn't have tried riding their bike with nightvision gear on under their helmet, but most of them didn't have his practice. Okay you sonofabitch, let's see how fast you are. He sped down the road, slowed himself by the rain that turned most of the road into deep puddles that at any moment could have stopped his bike and sent him tumbling painfully to the asphalt. The monster was moving at a good clip, the vibrations it set up making the road tremble ever so slightly, but as far as Woodsman could tell he was the only thing after it in the world. And no wonder; the power was still out and the rain thick, and the nice houses and apartment complexes beginning to pop up on either side were still dark, the people inside battened down against the storm. Can't do this alone. He'd taken something from the wrecked cars, a belt radio that had somehow escaped the destruction. He turned it on, one-handed, and yelled into it, "This is Woodsman!" He didn't know the VB police codes the way he'd learned in Freedom City, so he didn't bother. "There is a creature in Far Weston! Large, reptilian, a killer!" He slowed down to find an address. "Can anyone hear this?" In Freedom City, it might have gotten him the Freedom League - in Vibora Bay, there was a police operator yelling at him to get off this frequency immediately. Disgustedly, he hung up - and sped up after his prey.

As it turned out, there was no finishing his patrol - at least, not quite the way he'd intended. "Coming..." The father of the family, a bearded white man with blood covered his smashed face, whispered "Coming..." so quietly it was almost inaudible over the sound of his weeping children, who seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to hug the flaming speedster. There was suddenly a distinct vibration in the water of the drainage ditch; and Speed Demon felt something tug at the powers inside him too, as if they were listening to the sound of a tune being played he couldn't quite hear. Over the sound of rain, and thunder, Speed Demon felt another vibration, this one through his feet. He couldn't see anything down the road, though, not through the thick and driving rain and the city cast into darkness by the power outage.

Speed Demon's search of the city showed him many people in need of help - but perhaps the most serious was the car accident up in northern Far Weston, not far from the campus of UFVB. A car had come down, speeding down from San Sebastien Swamp, and run off the road into a drainage ditch at a T-junction. The accident must have just happened; Speed Demon could see the car filling up with water, hear the screams of children on the inside. If he didn't act fact, people were going to die! From her aerial position, Torque had seen the crash in Far Weston too - too far away to intervene, but not too far away to get there to help. She'd seen the car speed off towards the Swamp - then come roaring back down the road and crash into the hill. It was near the missing police cars she'd heard about. What the hell was going on over there?

What's his Quickness?

The city is dark and silent - it looks like power is out as far as you can see, which isn't far with rain sheeting down in buckets everywhere. It wasn't an EMP effect as such; you didn't feel anything and you can see people getting around with their phones and flashlights. Nothing has happened on the radio but you are able to get reports of two police cars near the university that aren't checking in after the outage.

Heritage: That's fine. Persephone: You can see something moving off towards the northern part of town down by the edge of the swamp - you can't quite make it out through the driving rain and darkness. The darndest thing is - you're pretty sure you're not seeing it at all, but somehow your plant symbiote is! You are also pretty sure that some of the people on the street spotted what you just did, even if they didn't spot you directly.

Betsy - holy cow! A huge and I do mean huge signature just appeared on your mental radar at the same moment the lights went out. There is a giant monster somewhere nearby, maybe closer than you think.

I'm going to say Cheval and Sagrado Corazon don't get a good look at Persephone but they do see the tree rising into the air with the lady inside. (just to make it easier for PCs to find each other) Everybody can feel a distant vibration, not quite an earthquake but something like a distant rumble of thunder that's not quite going away. Zombie-Croc is still technically in San Sebastien, but is going to come out on the major street between Hollings Hill and Far Weston. We'll call it Fortune Street. If anybody has a vibration-related or magic-detecting super-sense, now would be a great time to roll Notice to figure out exactly what's happening.

Woodsman Considering his options, Riley decided to make for the swamp. He kicked on his headlight and flicked a switch on his motor, then roared through the darkened campus with an engine loud enough that people could easily hear him coming. That maneuver got him off-campus, but much to his disgust was too little too late - Vibora City police were already on hand at the small metal bridge that let onto the many dirt roads leading into San Sebastian. Riley was stuck. "What the hell?" he called. "Why can't we get through?" "All the surface streets down there are mud!" yelled the Vibora Bay cop from the relative protection of his squad car. "You get off the bridge, you'll be bogged down in mud in ten seconds, and then the waters'll drag you down! Especially with the power-" And then he said nothing, because a gigantic foot came down on the two squad cars and squashed them flat with a horrendous crush of metal, stone, and flesh. Riley looked up and was honestly too surprised to panic, watching with his fist shoved into his mouth as a tremendous bulk moved between him and the sky above, a bulk illuminated by flashes of lightning that showed reptilian flesh and rotting meat, a bipedal form some sixty feet tall that passed over him without so much as a downward look, its strides making the old railroad bridge shake with every step. As it made its ponderous way towards the downtown, Riley gunned his bike forward and looked at the mashed cars and the crater of a footstep, a crater that had no antecedent. He didn't let himself believe he was sane until he'd reached down and touched what the creature left behind.

Okay: Don't forget for setting purposes that Vibora Bay was devastated by Hurricane Michael a year ago - it was the worst natural disaster a VB native had ever experienced. (So just keep that in mind!) Let's establish a map: Woodsman is on the campus of UFVB in Far Weston near inner Weston. Sagrado Corazon is at St. Paul's in inner Weston. Speed Demon is in ??? Persephone is at a shelter in Weston - I'm going to say she's at St. Paul's in inner Weston too, if that's okay, @Grumblefloof? Betsy Brooks is in ??? Torque is in ??? Cheval is dropping people off at a shelter - do you mind if I put you at St. Paul's too, @RocketLord Speed Demon, Betsy, and Torque, you can say if you're in inner Weston too if you like. Okay! Persephone, give me a Notice check, DC 20.

With a distinct shriek of metal music, Fast-Forward and Archer reappeared. Fast-Forward considered explaining that they'd maybe just blown up Adrian's house but decided that could wait till later. "Couple of goons were closing in on us," he said, finding a seat close to Paige and plopping himself down on it. "One speedster, didn't catch the other one. Jeez, what a day. Hey there," he said with a wave at Rachel. "So people are closing in on us, huh? That's rough." He scrubbed his hand across his mouth and said, "We got a plan? No matter how fast loudmouth back there is, it's gonna take them a minute to figure out where we are and get back here - especially since she can't do magic."

"Hello - woah!" declared Fast-Forward as he arrived amid explosions and a vibrating building. He grabbed Archer by the back of the head. "Low bridge!" and a moment later they were traveling through something else. It was clear this wasn't super-speed, or if it was it was nothing like what they'd experienced with Fast-Forward before. Instead they were running on a starry highway against a black background and bizarrely enough there was distinctly music playing as they went. "It's the magic of the Behenian stars!" Fast-Forward said cheerfully. "Picked it up as a hobby a few years back, it's pretty handy!"

Xyles's work turned out to be helpful enough for his son's efforts to gather more information about what had happened at this secret facility - though not pleasant for it. The machine that he'd been assigned to work on had clearly been a particular source of ire for the Deep Ones - smashed and broken, with what were distinct traces of blood and alchemical reagents rubbed all over it. There were more arcane signs here that showed the presence of Deep Ones too, proclaiming all manners of victory for their dread gods, and justice for the thieves of spawn. The machine was a large metallic frame that looked like several bedframes strapped together and connected by thin tubes engraved with alchemical symbols of transformation in markings so fine Artificer had to peer closely to make them out, the tubes themselves now hanging free from whatever central reservoir they'd once held, drops of fluid leaking out occasionally. It did indeed look like the machine could be repaired, with time.

Suddenly a starry shape a little like the Big Dipper appeared glowing in mid-air just behind Hologram. There was a sudden eruption of arcane energy - and Fast-Forward arrived in the company of someone only Heather had seen before. "Hey kids," he said. "Hey honey," he said to Paige, "we've got trouble. Be right back." And then he disappeared again through the starry shape on the wall, then re-emerged with Corona. "Almost got it!" he said before disappearing again.

Fast-Forward considered that for a second. "Let me have the phone," he said, putting it off speaker and putting it to his ear. "Hey, is this Roadkill? You sound like a little brat, honey, didn't anybody ever put you over their knee and spank you?" Rather than taunting, he sounded distracted on the phone. While he spoke, he was hastily flipping through something he pulled out of his jacket pocket - it looked a little bit like a vintage leatherbound journal with neat, precise pencil drawings and sketches inside. "Marker?" he asked Adrian, putting the phone down for a moment. When he got one, he took it and began drawing on the wall at super-speed - an image that vaguely resembled the Big Dipper but clearly was not. He drew quickly, stopping to glance down at his notebook repeatedly as he went, maintaining a one-sided trashtalk all the way. "Oh yeah, make fun of my wife, that's real original, honey. I hope you like getting smacked around by old people, because you're gonna get caned tonight." As he worked, the sketches he was making on the wall began glowing with a distinct, twinkling glow like stars viewed on a clear and moonless night in the heart of the countryside. "If you're so fast, why would you even need to melt my legs off? That doesn't even make any sense. Listen, do you have a manager I could talk to, because you are just failing at your job entirely here." He did what was obviously an eenie-meenie-mine-mo with the other heroes, then took Adrian by the back of the head. "Whiplash," he said apologetically, an instant before he and Kombat made a dead run at the stars on the wall and disappeared entirely. A second later, he was back, "Who's next?

Post 'em if ya got 'em

September 4, 2019 Vibora Bay, Florida 11PM It's a dark and stormy night. This sort of thing happens a lot in Florida. As Dorian rolled up on the east coast of Florida like God's own judgement, the people of Vibora Bay remembered Michael last year and took action. Some people left, some people stayed home, and everyone mourned all those lovely tourist dollars that _could_ have come the city's way during the ruined Labor Day weekend. As it is, by all accounts Vibora is going to come through this one better than people feared. Having spent his wrath against the east coast, Dorian is rain, lightning, and high winds, but not the near-apocalypse that was last fall's city-wrecking storm. On the other hand, that's bad enough! Six inches of rain and high winds closed the schools and universities today, and most businesses shut down too. Mayor Barker (who weathered the last storm with flying colors) was on Channel 7 last night to tell the citizens of Vibora to be ready for anything. They have to be, because nobody's going anywhere with all this rain. The traffic's always bad in the Panhandle though, especially on the spur that takes you up to the big west-east Interstate 10, so people in Walton County have a lot of experience with sheltering in place. People facing floods have moved into city-run shelters - many public buildings are full of people. Red Cross workers and other volunteers are on the scene - though most of them are actually out of town helping with the aftereffects of Dorian further east. Many streets are impassable, the beaches are closed, and rescue crews and emergency personnel are on high alert. Things are bad - but not quite hero bad. The last you heard, Siren went east to help with the aftermath of the storm there - it's just the hometown heroes on the scene today. Around 11 o'clock at night, just as trusty local weatherman Tom Bonilla appeared on your screens to give you the latest tracking information on Dorian, there's a tremendous flash of lightning and clap of thunder that booms across the metropolis - and from Seagrove to Rosemary Beach, the city's power goes dark. - The University of Florida - Vibora Bay Outside Gibbs Residence Hall "Go to Hell!" In the rain and lightning, two men were yelling at each other in the shelter of the brick patio in front of the old residence hall. "So you've been down here this whole time, spying on me!?" Riley was shouting at his double, heedless in his anger of the other's physical prowess. "I told you before - I do not need your help! I never will!" "...fine." Riley didn't shout back at his double, he didn't even punch him in the face. He turned and walked away, pulling up his poncho as sheets of rain cascaded down onto him, the winds so strong he felt them buffet him as he walked out onto the campus parking lot where he'd stashed his bike. It wasn't good biking weather but if you knew what you were doing and could see in the dark, you could get through fine - even dodge the cops if you took the backroads. Good thing the roads to the swamp hadn't actually flooded yet. Riley got on his bike, grabbed the handlebars - and closed his eyes for a long, hard moment. No. No, hell, no, I am not going to do that. He opened them again and revved his engine with a rumble so deep he could feel it between his legs far more than he heard it. If he was going to get back home, he needed to leave right now. He clicked on his headlamp - and suddenly, there was a flash of light in the sky, and a deep boom, and the campus streetlights winked out. Adjusting his shoulder bag, Riley permitted himself a sigh.