Avenger Assembled

Hmm - Here's my thought. Before we get these guys on the board, we need to figure out what they're for. They're a team of NPCs, doing something interesting. What role will they serve in stories, which are centered on PCs? I personally would rather the government team be filled with PCs - but I know that would make things difficult, especially since that team will need someone watching it pretty closely in a GM capacity...

Init: http://orokos.com/roll/530804 = 26!

Aquaria nodded her upper body solemnly. For a world where Jessie had been happy, where she had been needed, she would do much - for a world where she'd had all this to go with it, there was little she would not do. "We will help," she promised the Surfacers. "Tell us what we can do." And if my voyages end here, upon these shores, then it is your will, Great Dagon and Hydra. Aquaria cast her eyes to the seas below, then laid one slimy, cold, three-fingered hand on Jessie's. "We swim together," she promised her, before releasing her gentle grip. It didn't do to hang on too long, not when Jessie's body heat was so easily stolen. She fixed her goggly gaze on the others.

"I didn't really think you'd give up," admitted Stephen. "There's a team forming to take the fight to the things before they can overrun another afterlife. But baby, this isn't like the other invasions. This isn't some army, this is...the end." He closed his eyes, then opened them. "But whatever happens, I know you'll want to fight it." He told her where to find the growing team, a rooftop in the Fens where even as he spoke, Volcanic, Vita Nexus, and Comrade Frost were discussing strategy. "Just make sure you win this one," Stephen told her seriously. "I know I don't have a claim on you or your life anymore. But I want to see what you make of it - and if those things win, no one will make anything anymore."

TM, would you like one of us to run the thread for you? I'll be happy to get it started and shoot you the link - let me know!

You do, gimmie a roll!

Nina is spending a 19 on her Notice there! It helps that she's familiar with this kind of power. Y'all are up.

Ren looked over not at Lynn, but at Gretchen. "They said it was something you'd seen before, when they leaked over from the mundane world where they'd died. A world not of heroes, but of Feral monsters." - "There is a war in the heavens," said Comrade Frost carefully, translating Hel's words for the boy as best he could, careful to keep his distance lest their too-similar powers cancel each other out with dangerous results. "Monsters have overrun one realm of the dead, and now seek to bridge the gaps into all others. The dead have, in some places, come forth to call upon champions such as us. Will you stand with us, Vita Nexus? The road ahead may be worse than death." He shot a guilty look at Volcanic as they spoke - but he already knew Leilani's character and would not think to suggest she step away. Especially not when the stakes were so high!

Fixed it, I think.

Comrade Frost Power Level: 10/13 (various) (211/214PP) Trade-Offs: +2DMG/-2ATK, +2TOU/-2DMG Unspent PP: 3 Alternate Identity: Dr. Dimitri Ivanovitch Peshkov, the "Ice Commissar" Identity: Public, though the fact that he is a vampire is not known to the general public Birthplace: Moscow, Russia Occupation: Liaison between People's Heroes and Freedom League Affiliations: People's Heroes, Freedom League Family: No blood relatives living In Brief: Ex-Soviet cryokinetic vampire supersoldier turned occult investigator Age: 104 (Born August 1, 1913) Apparent Age: 30 Gender: Male Ethnicity: Caucasian [turns extremely white when using his powers] Height: 5'8" Weight: 150 lbs Eyes: Light blue [pink when using his powers] Hair: Light blond [white when using his powers] Physical Description: Comrade Frost these days dresses in a blue, white fur-lined parka over a dapper white suit. He wears a blue domino mask with black eyepieces and usually keeps the hood up, and white gloves in situations where he knows he'll need to use his powers (using them for any length of time generally makes his hands very cold to the touch). His skin turns extremely white while using his powers. In more formal occasions, he loses the parka and mask and simply rocks the suit. In very formal occasions, he'll don the modified blue and white uniform he wore as a zampolit in World War II. That's also the only time you'll see him wear his medals, and between one thing and another he's got a lot of those. Power Descriptions: Comrade Frost is a cold manipulator only, unlike many other cryokinetics who can summon large amounts of ice and snow. He can drain the heat out of large groups or individuals, as well as brittly freezing solid objects or paralyzing someone's muscles with a touch. He can heal his own injuries by draining the heat from the environment around him, but only when he focuses his attention on a single target: otherwise the heat becomes lost to him. He can fly by transforming himself into icy fog; he can make himself tougher by freezing himself solid. His eyes turn an albino's pink when he's actively using his powers, and his hair frosts white like snow. Personality and Motivations: Surprisingly warm for a century-old Communist vampire, Comrade Frost has an avuncular relationship with young people, especially young heroes. He's ultimately a gentle man who enjoys a joke, even one at his own expense, and is only really roused to anger by Nazis, pseudonatural creatures, and other unholy monsters. His decades of unlife have taught him to respect magic, but he fears it in the wrong hands, and won't be afraid to utterly destroy some mystic artifact rather than let it fall into the hands of evil. History: Born in a small town outside Moscow in 1913, Dimitri Peshkov was not an attractive man in life. A bright student, he grew up lazy and a little jaded, convinced of his own intellectual superiority over his fellow students in high school and college. He became a veterinarian, tending to the animals in collective farms, out of a mild interest in helping those less fortunate but mostly for the chance to be the smartest and best-educated man in the room. When war threatened his country in 1941, he joined the NKVD, not the Red Army, not out of a special patriotism, but because he thought it would keep him away from the battlefield. He was wrong; and that would be the death of him. The old Dr. Dimitri Peshkov died beneath the sacrificial blade of the Thule Society in the spring of 1942. The NKVD doctor had been captured on the Arctic front during the defense of Murmansk and had, under the Commissar Decree, been handed over by the Wehrmacht to the SS for execution. He might simply have been shot, but a passing group of Thule mystics needed him for a special task. Operating in the far north under Kantor's commnd, the Thule circle had found an ancient Norse altar, consecrated to Hel and her father Loki, and had learned they needed human blood to open the gateway to another world. And so they did. But as Peshkov fell into darkness, a voice came to him. The life-long atheist found himself floating before Hel, the guardian of Niflheim and ruler of the Norse underworld, one of the first new arrivals in her realm in a long time. Hel explained to Peshkov, as one would to a child, that she could not be summoned to Earth by such powers the Nazis had. In the heart of the greatest war the world had ever known, Death already stalked the land, and no wizard could hope to control it. But she had seen the capture of her haughty uncle Donar, and knew the plans of the Thule Society for the world of men, and she loathed them for the blasphemers they were. So she offered Peshkov a choice. He was a descendent of Rurik and had died at the hands of her enemies; if he stayed in Niflheim in her palace, he could have a place at her side to tell her about the world above, and perhaps as master of those few Thule sorcerors who had fallen into her hands when they had died of disease or accident after taking up the worship of the Asgardians. Or he could walk the Earth again as a draugr, a being of great power and might, with the heart taken from him by the Nazis replaced by a gateway to the icy realm of Niflheim. Given the choice, Peshkov chose to live. If you could call it living. Dimitri awoke on the altar and froze his captors solid, burning their shrine down behind him and feeding on the heat within as he began the long, painful walk back to Soviet lines. He learned how to control his powers and feed from the heat of the sun, from burning fires and life's heat rather than life's blood, and when he arrived back among his own people (and immediately, wonderfully, was plunged into a hot bath...that he immediately froze solid), Dimitri Peshkov was ready to begin his new identity: Comrade Frost, costumed defender of the Soviet Union! But of course it wasn't that easy. Dimitri was the only one of his allies familiar with magic, something which his own government denied the existence of. Comrade Frost rapidly became the Peoples' Heroes' magic expert, a role he had to play very subtly. He took every chance he could to team up with the Allies of Freedom and the Liberty League, desperately trying to pool his resources with those better-connected and better-educated in these matters as he tried to stave off the threat of magical darkness at home. And there was the war, grim and terrible. Comrade Frost was one of the first Soviet super soldiers into Berlin, and was there for the last great convulsion of the Reich. His superiors denied his request to join the hunt for Kantor, and so he wasn't there when the Allies of Freedom were betrayed and murdered by the forces of darkness. It was a hard blow for the super-soldier and he slipped into a deep depression after the war. Only a battle against the snake-cultists of Lithuania roused him from his funk in 1948, the mystic-trained hero recognizing the cultists of Yig for what they were! If the cultists of the Unspeakable One and his dread allies had come to the Soviet Union, there were urgent matters to deal with indeed. His war wasn't over. Comrade Frost was not one of the better-known Soviet super-soldiers to the general public; he was just there in the various engagements with American heroes, German holdouts, Baba Yaga, and the other famous battles of the Peoples' Heroes but he was well-known to superheroes. Sometimes he was an enemy to mystic heroes in the United States and elsewhere, stealing mystic artifacts out from under their noses for the Soviet Union's use but for the most part he was an ally: a fellow enemy of darkness who could always recognize that there were threats to the universe as deadly as any nuclear missile. Briefly imprisoned in 1953, he was freed after Stalin's death. He was a busy man in the 1960s as Stalinist controls lapsed and the world of magic became more and more powerful in the Soviet Union, taking time out to fight Superior in Cuba in 1962 and war against the forces of Baba Yaga in the 1970s. Dispatched to Afghanistan in the late 1970s to help battle undead warriors summoned to life there by Muslim clerics, Peshkov was horrified at the violence and pointless waste of yet another war; when he returned home in the 1980s, he let others take over his role as magical champion while working to support Gorbachev's reforms. With the fall of the Soviet Union, Peshkov resumed his work as a defender of the world against magical threats, for the first time working regularly in countries besides the land of his birth now that he was free to travel. There was a whole world out there! Peshkov is currently assigned to Freedom City to act as the liaison between the Peoples' Heroes and the Freedom League, as well as deal with the worrisome reports he's heard about magical activity in Freedom City. Barriers he helped erect many, many years ago now are beginning to melt. Complications: Is very old [a hundred year old Russian]Is an Ice Vampire [a terrible ice monster, albeit one who can pass for men]Has made a lot of enemies over the years [has fought a lot of terrible monsters from beyond space] Has made friends - and would die for most of themThe ladies (can't touch this!) [very solicitous towards women whose powers might let them actually have a relationship with him, though he is capable of dimming his cold aura]Niflheim's Champion [What else does Hel want with him?] Abilities: 0 + 0 - 10 + 10 + 6 + 12 = 18PP Strength: 24/10 (+7/+0) Dexterity: 10 (+0) Constitution: --- Intelligence: 20 (+5) Wisdom: 16 (+3) Charisma: 22 (+6) Combat: 12 + 12 = 24PP Initiative: +8 Attack: +6, +8 Unarmed, +8 w/ Thermovore Array Grapple: +6, +13 w/ Icy Body Defense: +8 (+6 Base, +2 Dodge Focus), +3 Flat-Footed Knockback: -6, -11 w/ Icy Armor -4, -7 w/ Icy Armor vs. blessed/holy, magic, or silver Saving Throws: 6 + 5 = 11PP Toughness: +12 (Imp 10 w/ Icy Armor) +8 (Imp 6 w/ Icy Armor) vs. blessed/holy, magic, or silver Fortitude: --- Reflex: +6 (+0 Dex, +6) Will: +8 (+3 Wis, +5) Skills: 68 ranks = 17PP Bluff 7 (+13) Skill Mastery Concentration 3 (+6) Intimidate 7 (+13) Handle Animal 2 (+5) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 5 (+10)Skill Mastery Knowledge (History) 5 (+10) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 5 (+10) Languages 8 (Danish, English, German, French, Old Norse, Old Slavonic, Japanese, Spanish, Base: Russian) Medicine 2 (+5)Skill Mastery Notice 7 (+10)Skill Mastery Sense Motive 7 (+10) Stealth 10 (+10) Feats: 13PP Attack Specialization (Unarmed) 1 Beginner's Luck Benefit 2 (Status [Freedom League Reservist, People's Heroes]) Dodge Focus 2 Eidetic Memory Improved Initiative 2 Jack of all Trades Ritualist Skill Mastery (Bluff, Knowledge (Arcane Lore), Medicine, Notice) Uncanny Dodge (visual) Powers: 1 + 3 + 21 + 5 + 21 + 30 + 8 + 4 + 3 + 4 + 3 + 29 = 132PP Drain Constitution 2 (blood drain; Flaw: Requires Grapple) [1PP] Environmental Control 2 (cold 2 [extreme], 10 feet; Extra: Duration [Base, +0], Range [Touch], PF: Precise) [3PP] Gadgets 3 (Assorted Devices; 15PP Variable Power, Any Power, Multiple Powers At Once; Extras: Duration [Continuous]; Flaws: Hard-To-Lose) [21PP] Sample Allocation: Greatcoat (Protection 4 (Extra: Impervious 3)) {7/15} Hel's Eye (Enhanced Thermovore Array 4) {8/15} Healing 1 (thermovore; Extras: Action 4 [Reaction], Total; Flaws: Personal, Source [Fire/Heat Attacks]) [5PP] Icy Body 10 (20 points; PF: Alternate Power) [21PP] BE: Enhanced STR 14 (to STR 24/+7) {14} + Impervious Toughness 6 (icy armor; note: Active Sustained effect) {6} {14+6=20/20} AP: Flight 4 (100 MPH/1000FPM, PFs: Move-By Action, Subtle) {10} + Insubstantial 2 (icy fog) {10} {10+10=20/20] Immunity 30 (Fortitude effects) [30PP] Protection 8 (icy flesh) [8PP] Protection 4 (vampiric flesh; Extra: Impervious; Flaw: Limited [not against blessed/holy, magic, or silver]) [4PP] Regeneration 6 (Recovery 5 [+0 total], Resurrection 1 [1 week]; Flaw: Source [blood or heat over 37oC/98oF]) [3PP] Super-Senses 3 (infravision [enhancement: tracking 3 [full-speed]]) [4PP] Super-Senses 3 (Magic Awareness 3 [visual]) [3PP] Thermovore Array 12 (24 points; PFs: Accurate, Alternate Power 4) [29PP] BE: Damage 12 (thermovorous touch; Extra: Vampiric) {24/24} AP: Drain Toughness 12 (brittle cold; Extras: Affects Objects, Penetrating; Flaw: Limited [Objects Only]) {24/24} AP: Paralyze 12 (Extra: Alternate Save [Fortitude]) (icy grasp) {24/24} AP: Damage 12 (thermovorous touch 2.0; Extra: Alternate Save [Fortitude]) {24/24} AP: Damage 12 (thermovorous storm, Extras: Alternate Save [Fortitude], Area [General, Cylinder], Flaw: Action [Full]) {24/24} Drawbacks: -4PP Vulnerable (Cold [common], major [x2]) [4PP] DC Block: ATTACK RANGE SAVE EFFECT Unarmed Touch DC 15 Toughness (Staged) Damage (Physical) Unarmed Touch DC 22 Toughness (Staged) Damage (Physical) Brittle Cold Touch DC 22 Fort (Staged) Drain Toughness Paralyze Touch DC 22 Fort (Staged) Snare Thermovorus Touch Touch DC 27 Toughness (Staged) Damage (Physical) Damage Touch DC 27 Fortitude Save Damage (Physical) Damage Touch DC 22 Reflex Save/ DC 27 Fortitude Save Damage (Physical) Totals: Abilities (18) + Combat (24) + Saving Throws (11) + Skills (17) + Feats (13) + Powers (132) - Drawbacks (4) = 2011/214 Power Points

Okay, I think we're looking for a GM post in the prison before we start asking questions.

"We are your liberators," croaked Sea Devil, hopping beside Miracle Girl and shoving her trident through the side of the cage. She kept her faceplate opaque this time, the better not to alarm the Surfacer inside the cage. "You have been taken by beings from beyond, oooh!" she said as she carved a hole big enough for the man to exit through. "But we will return you to the world of your birth. You may see strange things in the land beyond," she added as a final caution. Hopping aside to let the man free, she croaked, "We seek your captor's soft white belly. Have you seen him?" I am a diplomat to creatures from other planes! What a great day this is! she thought pleasantly to herself.

"Fascinating!" chirruped the ship's voice to Gabriel, but didn't press him as the ship came in for a landing. The pilot, or whatever was guiding the ship, was certainly considerate, responding politely (albeit effusively) to Fleur de Joie's directions as she helped guide the ship in for a landing, the ship moving with a slow, nearly inertialess efficiency that bespoke a high technology indeed. Overhead, the vessel's engines made a distinct thrum-thrum-thrum noise like distant machinery but none of the heroes were specialists in the sort of interstellar sciences that would have told them what they were dealing with. After a slow final approach that took about twenty minutes (luckily, Sanctuary locals were a sensible bunch and put up no serious argument about temporarily taking shelter while they wanted to see the character of the new arrivals), the saucer landed on its hastily-erected rocky base without so much as a groan of complaint from the stone beneath. Gaian Knight's architecture had held! From the ship came another message - this time from loudspeakers on the hull. It was the same female voice inside, though slightly different over speaker than radio. "EXCUSE US! WE ARE PREPARING YOUR GIFTS!"

Okay, Mafia Whale, you're up!

Sparkler has: http://orokos.com/roll/530152 = 28 on her Bluff http://orokos.com/roll/530153 = 14 on her Diplomacy http://orokos.com/roll/530154 = 19 on her Notice Merlin's Skill Masteries are impressive! His dierolls are below http://orokos.com/roll/530155 = 25 on his Notice! http://orokos.com/roll/530156 = 29 on his Search!

Will heard something, an impossibly-fast pitter-patter of feet, and suddenly Richard was yelling "Friendlies! Friendlies!" And then the other person on the beach stopped running. Her face was hidden by a helmet too, one that seemed to match Richard's, but her jumpsuit was black with red insets - no, her jumpsuit was red and the black, inky writhing energy moving across her body and into the one-handed sword she wore in her left hand was clearly entropic radiation. "You could be contaminated." Her voice wasn't Holly's through the helmet, too old and too throaty, but she could have been her sister. "Clone Mom, fry your brain, send you in to take us all." "Even Parker's not that fast, honey. And if yer suspicious, the best thing to do is take us back to yer mom so she can scan us, right? And where's Parker gonna get a magic lady who doesn't dress like an Egyptian hooker," said Richard patiently, who really did sound like their Richard trying to talk Holly down from one of her Ideas. "You had another me here, right? C'mon, he told you what happened..." "Oh, he's telling Mom everything," said the girl defiantly, but she lowered her blade. "He's not being tortured," she added after a moment's hesitation, taking the measure of the other group. "We just had to be sure. You scared the Hell out of everybody." As she stepped around the group, careful to stay out of reach, the sand sizzled where she walked, and looking backwards the others could see a trail of glassy footprints where she'd been running. "Phantom, Hologram, Thoughtspeed, this is Adze - she's our youngest. And these people came a long way to get here, so let's take them to their Richard and get 'em outta here, huh?" Adze, for her part, was staring fixatedly at Paige, evidently taking seriously the reality that this was another universe's version of her mother.

Sounds good.

I'll volunteer Fast-Forward here!

Fixed it!

"Yeah, well, you ain't my kid either," said Richard, putting his helmet back on with a brief, odd look of what was almost grief on his face. "We gonna do this thing, or what?" - The other reality was indeed quite different from the one they'd left. The lake looked off, its waters slightly discolored in a way that reminded Paige of what the Great Lakes had looked like before decades of pollution control on her own world. The nearby buildings of Green Bay looked the same; not as if they'd traveled back in time but as if people had simply stopped building new buildings sometime in the past. Behind them, the unmistakable, albeit slightly tarnished face of Anna Cline in her Clock Queen days looked down on them from the beach's public access way. The sign for the beach now said "WELCOME TO CLINE BEACH - YOU BETTER LEAVE IT LOOKING NICE!" Which was, come to think of it, exactly what Anna told Will about the guest room at her house when he was staying over. The magic here was off, in a way that wasn't exactly unsettling for Phantom but was certainly unwholesome. Someone was protecting this dimension - and they weren't doing it in a nice way, or a good way, or a way that wasn't stained with blood. If this universe had a Master Mage, it sure as hell wasn't Adrian Eldritch. The walls were patchy, as if said guardian had gotten sloppy - or had never been terribly good at paying attention.

"Go away," hissed Woodsman, glaring over at the office worker. Because they were on a mission from the headmistress, he neither called the man an idiot nor said anything about how he should kiss his ass. Taking that firm command as all that needed to be said, he stalked to the edges of the crime scene and began to look it over, careful not to step on anything that might be spoor or other kinds of evidence. "Came here from a burglary," he commented to one of the cops. "Whatcha think happened here?"

The man dropped to the floor when Asli released the spell - and dropped all the way. Blood was in his eyes and coming out his ears, and by the time Mark Lucas reached his side, there was only one thing to say. "He's dead." Mark looked up at Joe, communicating without words, or so he hoped. "He's dead!" yelled the guy with the Southern accent. "What, he had to _die_ because he wasn't politically correct enough for y'all? Is that how it is around here?" "Hell no!" yelled a big guy about Mark's height in a weird all-white outfit that made him look like...oh, okay, he's a supervillain. Well that makes sense! Nobody dressed that color-coordinated with good intentions in Mark's experience. "Goddamned killers, that's what they all are!" "Oh, are we?" asked Nina al-Darsah, whose pregnancy didn't seem to be holding her back a bit as she landed on the floor next to her husband - having flown there right over the heads of the crowd. "How interesting." She looked down at the corpse and her eyes widened for just a moment before she said, "I...he was killed by hydrostatic pressure. Look at all the blood in his face, Mark," she went on, carefully not singling out Joe. "Someone ripped open the blood vessels in his head."

Okay, I'll handwave the need to counter the Snare with more magic.

"...is this the famous Fleur de Joie?!" asked a faintly starstruck voice on the other end. "Er, ah, standing by, Terra." The bees reported that the ship had indeed come to a stop above the town - hovering at an altitude where it was clearly visible in the sky. It looked about as big as a commercial airliner, which given its vast bulk meant it had to be substantially higher up than that! It was hovering high and steady in the air, making a thrumming sound that seemed to resonate with the apian machines. Upon his approach to the ship, Gabriel got a message too - a faintly tinny feminine voice that said, "Greetings to the holy one, Gabriel of Terra! I am delighted to see you. While we wait to make a landing, would you like to discuss your gods?"

There are cameras in all public places except bathrooms. There are no bombs. There's an old Victorian mansion on San Antonio Street with the words "The Director's Residence" embossed on the front door in gold. The doors are all sealed and the windows too, they're opaque so you can't see inside.