Avenger Assembled

Richard kept his own council on the subject of the President of the United States. Cahill hadn't been his candidate (really nobody from either political party had been his candidate for a long time) and he was not a fan of the idea of putting superheroes to work for the government. It reminded him too much of the bad old days of the 1980s and 1990s - not the parts he'd liked, but the parts where it seemed like the relationship between the super and the mundane were close to breaking down and might never heal themselves. But he certainly wasn't about to badmouth the President of the United States over a live microphone. Even if it didn't make it into the audio actually broadcast to the audience, some things were better left unrecorded. He let Hyperactive take the lead as they passed through Waco on their first leg, knowing better than to try and take the limelight away from a hometown hero. They were just leaving the borders of Texas for the return trip when something peculiar happened...

That does miss! Go ahead and post IC, then I'll get started on the javelin-shooting stuff.

Woodsman shoots it again. http://orokos.com/roll/521716 = 32 Nice! That's a crit, so that's a DC 26 Toughness save for the creature.

"Mm." When he had the apple eaten, Riley put the core away too. Cores made good compost. "Yeah. Lotta people here who've seen stuff. Lotta supers who've been around too." He folded up the knife and put it away on his belt. "Yeah, I do some home brewing on the side. Cider, that kinda thing. My friend Fred and I do all kindsa chemistry stuff." Leaning casually back against the tree, he inquired, "So, what's your angle?" he asked of Hannah and Corinne. "Invisible and, uh, stretching?" Damn, she really is tall! There were not a lot of people that tall where he was from - especially not girls.

Same for me!

"Hm." said Dimitri. "For pediatrics, would recommend young witch Seven for magic questions - Miss Americana more generally. Believe she handled birth of Fleur de Joie's child." He didn't bother saying that of course he'd be happy to handle Terry; Terry, the child of his greatest friend, born beneath the eyes of his patron goddess, marked with magic as clearly as if the child had been branded with a hot iron. For Erik, well - he is a young man in the prime of his life (though it's hard to tell with so many children about!) who is brave and true, and fights for his friends and his loves with courage, thus surely he will live a long and happy-Dimitri smiled tightly, restraining what might have been a laugh if he'd been thinking of a stranger instead of Talya's husband. "Oh, is Erik troubled?" he instead asked guilelessly. "They have treatments these days if hair has begun to recede..." he offered, turning to the swordsman with a wink as he reached to take Terry onto his lap.

E and I are in transit to summer vacation. Will be posting more at the end of the week.

"Yeah, I know," said Riley, "You weren't born in the dorm, though." Or was she? You never could tell with supers - and this version of Claremont was old enough that at least one alumni's kid was probably on the student body. After Corinne's explanation, he guessed that probably wasn't Hannah. "Make tea. Maybe vinegar. Could make wine, but nobody's gonna make wine at a high school, right?" He winked at Corinne, in between bites of the apple. As he spoke, he slipped the peel into his side pocket.

"Jussec." Once he had the rope down, Riley wrapped it up and hung it on his belt, then slid off his gauntlets. "Thanks." He took an apple, juicy and red, and pulled a small folding knife from his belt - the sort of thing that would probably get a boy in a lot of trouble at a regular high school. But here there was seemingly no issue, and he began to peel the red skin right off. "Riley. Didn't want to startle you," he said, pointing up to the tree to what had evidently been his perch. "People get jumpy." When he had the peel off, he slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt and began to eat the apple proper. "Been here a while. Where you from?"

"Comin' down." Riley dropped the line first - then slid down it to join the girls at ground level. He hadn't made his presence known when they'd approached the tree, not really caring who was underneath. Without comment, he tugged on the length of climbing rope he'd dropped down from the branch he'd occupied for most of the last half hour, a frown on his face, then began the slow, methodical process of winding it around his free hand. The new gauntlets were working out fine, the leather and tough ceramics around the fingers were enough to cut the friction of fast descents enough that he wouldn't burn his hands off. He shot a look at Hannah and Corinne, realized he had no idea who these girls were, shrugged, and went back to work. Riley looked out of place among the heroes of Claremont Academy - short and wiry, but with a muscular build that suggested much more intensive workouts than super-people typically got, he had on faded blue jeans and a loose, baggy denim shirt. Vaguely androgynous in the way some young men are, the strongest clue to his gender was the beginnings of a mustache and goatee on his darkly-complected face.

Looks good!

Weekend Man: 24 Hyperactive: 20 Outlaw Leader: 14 Outlaws (5): 9

All right, kids - sounds like it's initiative time! Outlaw Leader: 14 Outlaws (5): 9

Devil, Singularity and Miss Grue going to Blackstone while Miracle Girl and Terrifica go to the lab - okay, if this is our arrangement, it sounds good to me.

"Uh, well..." From the reaction of the boy and the wizard, Richard guessed that flatscan wasn't a good word to use here. I guess the other guys are in charge here, he thought. Better play it cool. "The helmet's to keep out psychic attacks," he said to Paige, concentrating on what was almost a familiar face. "We have a problem with those where I'm from." He took a shot in the dark. "I don't know what things are like here, but in the world where I'm from, Parker Psion's one of the most powerful men in America - and he's a real bad guy. If you want to stay out from under his thumb, you either bulk up your brain or you know psychics. Thanks to my Paige, I did a little a'both." Even through the clear covering of the helmet, Paige knew her husband's face when he wasn't giving her the whole truth. He knew how smart Paige was, and how powerful she was, and how worried she had to be about her Richard. He decided to leave the helmet on for now. "I can take you right where I changed over - I could tell right away something was off. Why don't we all go?" he suggested.

Unspent Power Points: 3 - fix that part! And also, APPROVED

Earth-Bicentennial On July 4, 1976, an atomic bomb detonated in Freedom City during the city’s Bicentennial Celebration. The blast, centered at Freedom Hall, killed most of the Freedom League - along with a visiting President Gerald Ford. The subsequent Twelve-Hour War with the Soviet Union was far less deadly than many might have predicted - but still killed tens of millions of people and eliminated many of the surviving metahumans of North America. The winter was cold, and hard - and people starved to death in the streets. In the chaos of the year that followed, the largest single group of surviving metahumans turned out to be the Crime League - and between their command of hidden caches of resources, their fantastic powers, and their organization, they were able to assume leadership first of the recovery efforts - then of the entire United States. On July 4, 1978, the Last Amendment to the Constitution divided up the territories of the former United States among the members of the League: and the era of Neo-Feudalism began. The decades since have been a period of consolidation - some realms have fallen and others have grown, consolidating the fallen territories of other League members, conquering the occasional free state, or giving way to the rise of a newcomer. In 2017, the borders of North America can be found on any map... but they are also in flux... The Dinosaur Coast: Capital: The Emerald Cities The newest member of the League, Cerberus Rex controls much of what used to be the west coast of the United States and Canada. His techno-dinosaurid empire arose only in the last half-decade, conquering what had been a variety of independent baronies. His human subjects dislike their second-class citizen status under his rule - but they have few likely champions. Visuals: Towers of glass and steel, cyborg raptors with laser guns, loyal humans branded with a CR living in ‘gated communities’ - disloyal ones living wild in the hills and sometimes hunted. The Shadow Lands: Capital: Salt Lake City, Utah Though technically a collection of independent baronies ruled by various members of the Penumbra, everyone knows that the real master of the Shadow Lands is Overshadow himself, who from his seat of power in Salt Lake City (it amused him to take the Salt Lake Temple as his own) is the lord and master (albeit by proxy) of territory stretching from the Sierra Nevadas to the Rocky Mountains. Visuals: Brutalist mid-century architecture, identical helmeted patrollers on the streets, symbols of Overshadow in churches, schools, etc. New Humanity: Capital: Topeka, Kansas Now occupying a new, vital clone body, Parker Psion sits at the top of the New Humanity - a transformed human race where everyone is equal from the Dakotas to the Mexican border. Never mind the fates of those whose bodies rejected the uplifts - the lucky ones assigned to remote oil wells and other installations out of public view, never mind the mass graves of those who died of it. Never mind the fates of those whose genes were not simply weak but outright inferior - never mind the mass graves, never mind the camps! Parker Psion and his scions will ensure that you only mind what you should. Visuals: High-tech architecture, beautiful people of all races and colors, people in Psion colors flying in the skies, etc. Children smiling as wrongthink books are burned. The Clockwork Kingdom: Capital: Bedlam City, Wisconsin Under pressure from the expansionists to their west, the Clockwork Kingdom has been in the process of transition. What was once a “let the good times roll” hive of scum and villany under the indifferent, nay, negligent rule of Anna Cline and her son Richard has become more organized in recent years, recruiting other metas and reorganizing to give them the forces they need to keep their independence. Richard Cline’s wife Paige is the one of the few defectors from the Psion inner circle - and may be the most powerful psychic in North America not conditioned to loyalty to her father. VIsuals: Decaying 1970s Rust Belt architecture, a general feeling of shabbiness. Troops drilling on the streets, armed baselines and metas alike, frequent anti-infiltrator drills. Golden statues of Clock Queen and Tempus Fugitive that no one has bothered to polish in a few years. Great Heliopolis: Capital: Memphis, TN It was all going to be so beautiful! Horus in chains, his mortal allies dead (or even better, fled) and the Southeastern United States belonging to Set the Destroyer to reshape in his image, millions to make into a new class of nobles and peasants! It amused Set even to set her capital in Memphis, a river city with a pyramid. And things were beautiful, at first! But the gates of Heliopolis remain closed to him and Horus, in his prison, remains stubbornly unbroken. There was a resistance movement for a while but now it is largely broken - and Set sits on her throne still. Visuals: Neo-Egyptian architecture and clothing mixed with high technology, convict labor on plantations, temples to Set in her many aspects everywhere, a desert gradually spreading outwards from Memphis. New Lemuria: Capital: New Orleans, LA The Serpent People and Deep Ones who control the Gulf Coast of North America keep to themselves - having expelled or killed most of the humans who live in their new territory, they can afford to do so. Their focus is on the sea, and the ever-present war with the remaining forces of Atlantis in the Gulf of Mexico. But a new generation, born after the Bicentennial, has come of age recently and makes new arguments and sings new songs of Dagon and Hydra - perhaps their chosen home is on the land that they seek to reclaim, not beneath the waves? Visuals: Cyclopean architecture built over the ruins of human cities, rhythmic guttural chanting, obscene rituals, happy frog and serpent children, blood sacrifice, flooded streets and valleys that never seem to get dry. The smell of raw meat. 01: Capital: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania At the far edge of North America, Talos is sitting pretty - his machine empire has found that trading with the surviving nations of Europe is as profitable as trading with his erstwhile North American allies. (After all, aren’t all organics the same on the inside when you get down to it?) He’s even opened his doors to the stars and turned his little corner of the globe into a free port - profitable indeed now that the Grue and Lor have warred each other to near-mutual extinction and the laws of space aren’t as enforced as they once were. It’s good to be the king. Visual: Armies of skeletal robot troopers, automated gunships flying overhead - humans living wild in hills and forests. Aliens in the large cities, mostly those who are distinctly non-human, and exotic goods and devices. The head of Daedalus, still living, atop Talos’s scepter.

Yes, but if he is PL 11, the sheet should say so. Spend those last 3 PP?

APPROVED

You can do so!

"This is awesome!" yelled the manager, looking around with wide, half-frightened eyes. The look on his face reminded Hyperactive a little bit of a child not quite old enough for the haunted house he'd been taken to - excited but frightened at the same time. Suddenly looking abashed, he clapped his hands over his mouth and looked around wildly. "I've, uh, never seen anything like this-Oh crap, are we still live? Sorry if I ruined the take," he added, "you guys are great! This is my first time doing this." - The man Weekend Man had pointed out didn't seem to see them - he was focused on 'shouting' into a large hand-held radio, gesturing animatedly with his free hand. Inside the bank, the outlaw leader was issuing a proclamation of her own, her voice echoing by means of an old-fashioned megaphone, and coming through the bank's public address system at the same time. "All right, yew varmints! You've got ten minutes to clear a path for us, or we'll blow this bank vault all to hell and take our chances!" That seemed unlikely to Weekend Man, with his technical knowledge, - even that much old-fashioned dynamite wouldn't take down a modern bank vault door - but it would certainly hurt the people in the bank.

APPROVED

Hum - it's tetchy, I know, but Equipment doesn't stack with powers - needs a different way to hit your Toughness cap. She also appears to be PL 11 rather than PL 10.

Some ideas: You probably want Selective on that Area attack. Maybe add the Action Flaw? I like the thought of another speedster from Texas! Breakneck and Hyperactive seem like they'd have some fun times together. Would you mind putting in his Speed and Quickness numbers? Specify what senses his Concealment (i.e., Invisibility) affects. Other than that, I take no real issue here - looks like a fun character!