Avenger Assembled

"I will bring the knitting bag," said Caradoc, turning and heading for the back bedroom. He rarely ventured into the family quarters of the school, but this was certainly an occasion that called for it. "And message Miss Americana that we have departed." Gina liked to know things like that - and he preferred to make sure they were done. "Do you require anything else?" "A missing bag..." Dimitri snapped his fingers and looked around for a moment before settling on Ellie. "Ellie, would you be so kind as to fetch my red leather bag from table in downstairs? It has, ah, important supplies for once birthing is finished." He paused barely a beat. "Yes it is indeed vodka and cigars but they are top quality and people in Sanctuary will be delighted! I would go myself, but you know, a physician and his patient, eh?" He winked.

"And if she doesn't like it, hm? If I am just old pervert with foul notions." He poured himself a shot, smooth as butter, and turned on a burner on the stove to let it warm. "Then I have abused trust of young woman in my care for no cause." He placed his hands on the burner as it warmed, toying with his lighter with his free hand. "The teaching of young people is a sacred trust. She is no child, but she is still in my care. If she made pass at me today, I would have to turn her down. You have worn these shoes."

"It is unsuitable, Kimber," said Dimitri without a trace of levity in his voice - but with emotion there all the same. He was hardly about to deny his feelings when Kimber had been so honest with him about her own romantic life. "She is not a dragon who can smite me if I cross her, Leilani is a young woman in my guardianship, even if she could shake the city to its core if she was so moved." He smiled faintly. "I am a century old, you know, and I have been older than most I know for some time. She is not the first young flame in my care who has lit my old heart for a while." He shrugged slightly, then turned to begin searching through her cabinets for vodka.

As intact as they should be for comedy purposes! The idea is that they're still tough, though, - just puppets.

"Archetech was felt to be unsuitable," commented Caradoc laconically, the armored tech-knight already in full holographic regalia for the trip to Sanctuary. With the threats that so often came this family's way when children were in the offing, he was taking no chances. Which was why he'd pushed quietly for a birth in the most secure facility he knew of in Freedom City - but the decision was not his to make. And surely, he had conceded, a whole other dimension was safe enough from all but the threats that he himself was uniquely prepared to fight. "Ah, you're better off without German engineering!" declared Comrade Frost, a bright smile on his face as he stood protectively alongside Talya. With his black leather doctor's bag under one arm neatly fastened, he looked ready for anything. He'd avoided his usual banter with Fleur de Joie, instead focusing in closely on his best friend in the world and her imminent delivery. "And center was so nice, better than cold sheets and cold doctor's hands, eh?" Joke or not, Dimitri was rather glad Talya was giving birth in a place with midwives and women all about her - he knew it was an attitude of a certain generation, but he still had no desire to be physically present when his friend was in labor. "You have best companions in world here - and soon best in that world as well."

Okay, the current plan is to have the forum for EC up and rolling by August 1. Feel free to start putting a Guidebook page up for it.

Any thoughts folks have here? It's gonna go live in about two weeks. Now's the time to offer some player input.

All right - my current plan is to get Bedlam up forum-wise by August 1. But we should have the backstory stuff up by then. Kaige - you have my official permission to start getting a Guidebook page up! Do you need any help with the logistics of that? I'd be happy to get you in touch with someone like Electra who has more experience with doing that. Are there any other Bedlam thoughts people have?

"I will be, until I am no longer. It is the way of things." Tomorrow hummed again, matching the music of the datasphere in which they were embedded, perhaps the vastest work of human beings Gina could perceive. "You need not justify yourself to me, Gina Evans. I know what you have done - in all your guises. You have built the future you see before you. It is sufficient." That seemed to be, from the tone of that electronic 'voice', high praise. "Your future is unfinished. Build in it - as you have."

Comrade Frost shook his head and said, not unsympathetically, "Not with so many witnesses, child." He pointed to the patrons inside the cafe, then the people on the street. Ah, to be young and have so few sins to regret! "What brought you to this place?" he inquired curiously. As he spoke, he circled casually to one side, making sure that there would be no escape further down the street. If he did let the young woman run, it would be on his own terms - though perhaps Volcanic would have to distract the young fellow who had just appeared. Young heroes can be so self-righteous! "Coffee is all right," he opined, "though I must admit I never actually tasted of it..."

"You will do well," Dimitri was assuring Leilani. "Your mastery of your abilities is remarkable, and your adjustment to Freedom City is-" His head went around at the noise outside - and his hood came up when the rock crashed through the window. His bluish skin and white hair had attracted attention before, but now as the temperature near him dropped enough to freeze the surface layer on his second cup of not-actually-drunk coffee, there was no doubt this was Comrade Frost, member of the Freedom League. "Pardon a moment." He winked at Leilani, trusting her to handle this situation without prompting. "Must deal with troublesome youths outside." Turning, he headed straight for the door, the air around him practically crackling with the sudden cold. "Children! What are you doing making troubles on such a fine day as this?"

The OOC.

"I will fade from existence," said Tomorrow, its artificial voice not wavering, "as will all things of all natures, in time. I am more and less than biological. I was made for a purpose, and that purpose is ended. But I will visit my works before my dissolution, here on this planet and out among the stars. I am pleased with your doings, Gina Evans. Your mind is unbroken by your gifts, and you have sought to free others rather than bind them to your will." Gina knew perfectly well that the former had not always happened - and it was easy to imagine how someone with her power, especially on an advanced world that lacked heroes, might. "

Bluebird appeared to Leilani and the others in a form that the cybernetic intelligence must have assumed would make their visitor more comfortable - as a towering projection over six feet in height, wearing a one-piece bathing suit adorned with brightly colored flowers on the spandex, long black hair streaming down her back, and holographic feet bare against the carpet. "Greetings, fair visitor, and welcome to the Castle DuTemps!" declared the Furion machine intelligence grandly. "Come, let me show you our history and great purpose." Hair streaming behind her in an invisible breeze, Bluebird led the way out of the 'living room' and down the corridor. "What would you see? The battlements, the museum? All but the most secret places are open to one who comes as companion to Kimber's teacher." - In the kitchen, Dimitri watched them go, then coughed slightly, a deliberate affectation given that he was after all a frozen corpse. "Well! I am sure Bluebird will give her tour she will not soon forget. What did you need of me, Kimber?"

"This is a shadow of what will be - a vision of commonalities among the manifold universes that survive into eternity." The emissary from the impossibly distant future hummed with satisfaction, seeming to cast its gaze on the planet below them without having a head, or eyes, to look that way. "After the end of your time; before the beginning of mine. The Great Work for which I was built in the last days of humanity has finished.The highwater mark of the Communion has come and gone. With the failure of their last great Incursion, in no probable future from now will they overrun the Milky Way."

Summer 2016 In bed next to Steve, Gina Evans dreamed, blue sparks playing over her body in circuit board patterns from time to time as her powers hummed along at low levels. She was floating in space in low Earth orbit, somewhere over North America, - but Earth was vastly transformed. The green-brown of deep forests stretched across eastern North America, deep and rich as it must have been before the arrival of Europeans, but this was no primordial vision. The silvery glow of cities stretched up and down the coast and inland as far as the Appalachians, the towering bulk of what must have been vast arcologies holding hundreds of millions in spaces that had once held a tenth that. The calculations, given a basic grasp of geometry, were easy for her. This North America had a population perhaps twice that of her own, but the cities were self-contained, tucked away amid a carefully-built-to-be-untouched natural splendor like so many jewels. Silvery lines connected the cities, and stretched across a vast blue Atlantic, and everywhere was the hum of a worldnet that sang and crashed like the music of an ocean. The Moon was changed too, as she saw looking upwards, dotted with domes like Farside City rebuilt a dozen-fold, scattered across the Lunar surface like so many jewels. She fancied she could just make out the blue of water beneath the largest of them. Turning her head, she found herself joined in space by a flickering form of multicolored electrical sparks - a form she'd met twice, and seen in the flesh only once. "Greetings, Gina Evans. I show you the works of humanity."

Th' Pope is one of Bedlam's native supervillains - he's basically the Burgess Meredith Penguin if he hung out with more ladies dressed like sexy kickboxing nuns.

At least in theory, the idea is that: Freedom City looks pretty nice, and is pretty nice. Emerald City looks pretty nice, but has a dark and rotten core from decades of clandestine supervillain activity. Bedlam City is America's armpit.

Woodsman's advice, at their rooftop rendezvous, was simple. "Nothing fancy. Let's go in the back way there," he said, pointing at the roof line Nevermore had spotted, "and hit anybody who tries to stop us on the way in. Spread out like that, they're not gonna be expectin' gettin' sniped or choked out," he opined, chewing on a toothpick. "And we're a lot quieter 'n some dumbass with a gun, even a silent one. We do it without fightin', I can 't least set off some bombs from far off as we go in - get 'em lookin' the wrong way. Doesn't matter if they're alert if they're all screwin' around chasin' a fire arrow." He was relaxed and confident on the roof, carefully out of eyesight of the people below behind a convenient air-conditioning vent. The low hum of the machinery helped cut the sound of their conversation, too.

On August 1, 2016, heroes across Freedom City and the world wake up as small felt and velcro puppets! While this transformation lasts only about twenty-four hours, it's a startling one indeed as heroes drop down to the size and consistency of Sesame Street characters (with the occasional marionette) - albeit one with superpowers. It's a chaotic day across Freedom City and other centers of superheroic activity as heroes aren't the only ones transformed - thousands of civilians are altered as well by this strange metamorphosis! While an unlikely team of heroes deals with the father of this crisis (the young demigod Quirk), the heroes of Freedom and beyond have to deal with a crisis that is certainly the strangest in recent memory. Yes, it's a more light-hearted adventure to go with the grimmer story we had back in April - an adventure in the mold of the Angel episode "Smile Time" or of the recent sitewide musical episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zUkT9YAPDY - think this! The usual vignette rules - and rewards, apply. Make sure to have all vignettes posted by the end of August. (NOTE: Feel free to ask questions and make suggestions below about what we might do/incorporate into the vignette. The vignette will go 'live' on August 1 - as will the thread of heroes directly combating the source of puppetization)

Kaige where have you been all my life! This is awesome.

APPROVED

Whilst Peri has managed to hide her identity as Emerald City - WOAH PLOT TWIST

I actually like very much the comic evil tone of many of Bedlam's villains - not the gross ones like Smashface, but fellows like the Pope and the like. Bedlam would just be sad and awful if it was _too_ gritty and realistic - and the relatively high PL of villains like the Hammer of Justice means that characters will need to team up if they want to fight him. I think the blank spots on the villain roster are designed to encourage PC development of antagonists, which is a great idea. Kaige, you are AWESOME - is there anything more we can do to support your endeavors? So it seems like we're thinking a near-neighbor to Green Bay is the best place for Bedlam? Where were you thinking, Kaige, some place like the site of Sturgeon Bay?

Fast-Forward watched as the divine magic flowed into his wife's mind - feeling an absurd moment of spousal satisfaction amid all the stress of the world-devouring demon beyond the hospital room door. He didn't know Phalanx hardly at all, or the wizard Nick Cimiterie for that matter - but the news that his wife was the one among them who deserved a divine blessing came as no surprise to him. Paige had always been better than him - and most people he knew. "We beat demons before," he said, more for the sake of the younger heroes in the room than Paige, "this one's just bigger. Let's go kick his ass." But on the way in, he squeezed her hand, just for a moment. It had been a long, long time since they were both cocky kids, convinced of their own immortality. - Inside the hospital room, August Roman lay in his hospital bed, a pale shadow of wrinkled pale skin and bleached white hair, looking like death warmed over beneath the terrible light of the thing that had formed at his bedside. Roman fixed his eyes on the heroes, the only mobile things in his slack old face, and whispered in a cracked voice, "It's too late for me." The thing by the side of the bed turned to them, ash caked on a bloody face, ash and blood and bone that nonethless glowed with a white light of almost blasphemous purity. The cold, terrible beauty in its form and voice was like entering a shining, perfect cathedral blasphemed with human sacrifice and infernal markings. Ash was passing from its form to Roman's, his skin slowly but definitely beginning to turn grey and ashy to match the demon-angel before them. At the sight of the heroes, it spread raven-black wings and spoke - "You come among me at last. Phalanx, Hologram, Fast-Forward, Cimiterie - and the Renegade. We need not be adversaries. When Roman's body dies, I will be free to choose a new host. And then we can-" And Phalanx saw power enough to bathe the world in a fire that burned away hate and fear And Renegade saw power enough to guard the soul of every human on Earth And Nick Cimiterie saw power enough to end every unfairness in death And Hologram saw power enough to rip her father's soul from her nephew's body and restore her family name And Fast-Forward saw power enough to make sure he would never see another hair on his wife's head turn grey