Avenger Assembled

Sharl kissed Eliza, and kissed her, and would have gone on doing much more than that if her RA hadn't knocked on the common room door with a wink. "Hey, none of that in the TV room!" she said cheerfully before moving on, leaving the two startled heroes to collect themselves. "I, uh..." Sharl adjusted his jacket and set it aside, the long black coat fading away into nothingness as the projected hologram left the main pattern of his body. "I need to get back to Miss A. She's gonna need a lot of help tonight. Everybody is." He looked at Eliza, not certain for a moment where they stood with each other. "Thank you for everything you said...and did. Can I see you again?"

This is a Rank 5 Auditory Dazzle effect - So that's a DC 15 Reflex save to halve the damage And then a DC 15/12 Reflex save to avoid being hit And then a DC 15/12 Fort save to avoid losing your hearing. Feel free to run into the fleeing lizard pirate on your approach, Moon-Moth.

Kavorkin was doing his duty, blaster in hand and pressed flat against the far wall, but it was hard to tell if it was terror that had frozen him to the spot or simple conviction. After all, going down into that narrow tunnel would leave him at the mercy of whatever was waking here! The computers kept flashing in some mad pattern that no one in the room could follow, repeating speech in a dead language as the galaxy against the wall glowed more brightly - one of the indicated six spots on the map glowing with particular intensity. As it did so, suddenly the grey-skinned figure on the platform that Dragonid had noted sat bolt upright! He looked around at first like a man awakening from a dream - and at the sight of so many skeletons laid out alongside him, he screamed! The sound was a deafening cry that battered the room, sending bones flying everywhere and battering at the eardrums and bodies of all the Praetorians present! Slamming his helmet shut against the noise, for his part Kavorkin broke for the tunnels at this!

Nobody has any idea what those crazy computers are flashing, whee! Just a bunch of mixed up galactic maps and odd-looking humanoids speaking in a language none of you understand. Traveler - these bones have been here a long, long, long time - given the volume of dust in the room and the lack of decay bacteria and other organisms, these fragile-looking bones might have been here for upwards of a MILLION years. Which would certainly explain the charring that's visible in much of the room, as well as on the bones themselves. Could they have been here when the nova happened? Great space! On the wall there's a map of the galaxy, a carving, not an image on the screens, - it takes you a moment to make out the details, but it appears to be a slightly distorted version of the Milky Way - perhaps how the galaxy once looked four galactic rotations ago? There are six distinct spots marked on the map. Beneath them there is an image series - 1. A beam strikes a planetary surface covered in humanoid stick figures. 2. A stick figure rises above the others, bigger and taller than the rest, seeming to hover in the air. The third is obscured by ash. Dragonid: As you watch, one of the skeletons seems to shimmer and transform into a perfectly preserved humanoid - an odd-looking humanoid with grey skin and black hair, wearing a black and grey outfit and short black cape.

"Look at you," said Harridan, shaking his head as he looked Gargantua up and down sorrowfully. "What have they done to you, my brother? What have these ANIMALS done?" he growled, angrily but without the threat of violence in his tone, as he looked up at Gargantua. If Harridan and his soldiers outside were any guide, Gargantua was far larger than even a typical Gorilla Islander! It was a great trial, s-sir, thought Gargantua, who sounded very uncomfortable around the loud, boisterous black-furred gorilla. But I am grateful to you for coming to my rescue. And for these humans, he added, who have been my friends. "No matter," said Harridan dismissively. "Come, let us take you back to the island. The King will be _very_ interested in seeing what has become of our lost son in these miserable hellhole!" - So far the gorilla goons Harridan had brought with him weren't doing anything Velocity could see, but at the same time there was something shifty about them - their uniforms didn't quite seem to match and their weapons were oddly mismatched as well. They were a ragged bunch for professional soldiers in her estimation, if one could judge anything about gorillas with guns and uniforms.

The GBN building, a place all the heroes had visited many times, was a horror. The lobby was filled with more corpses, these primarily of city animals like cats, dogs, and pigeons, stacked in careless heaps and practically writhing with gigantic houseflies and their maggoty young, a sight to make even the hardened Andrew Daniels almost immediately vomit. "Birthing ground," commented Frost without a trace of levity in his posture, the omnipresent decay freezing over to ice with every cold step. The doors were too small for the giant bees to enter, leaving Super-Bee and her escorts to take up a watchful position at ground level, nearly filling the ruined avenue outside. They were close enough, and the bees big enough, that surely _someone_ in the skyscraper had seen their approach - but so far the monstrous insects inside the building had taken no notice of them. Despite the horror all around, the TV monitors in the building were live, playing the same soothing pap that had briefly appeared in the electronics store near where they'd first arrived. A filth-streaked map on the lobby wall, amid all the carnage, showed where they needed to go - the studio was on the 87th floor of GBN. "Suggest we take the stairs," said Frost expressionlessly. "Would not trust an elevator in this place."

"Unless we find him and end him, right now!" Ember fired back, her fiery aura dialing down a fraction to a cooler, merciless red. "God, he must have been planning this for years! All the times I told him he had to kick Josh's ass for running out on the family and he told me to mind my own place...he was just waiting till Josh was old enough he wouldn't get carded anymore! I don't care if I get a backlash from it, I will burn him down to his bones for what he did to us!" "But Josh is still in there!" Aura was still stone, albeit visibly 'thawing', but an illusory version of the Eurasian telepath had joined the conversation, standing alongside her frozen self. "If you kill the body, you kill Josh too!" It took a palpable effort by Richard to slip past the others and head inside the cockpit to find the radio, as he very much did not want to leave his wife's side in the middle of this confrontation with her family. But he did so anyway, unlocking the cockpit door and briefly introducing himself to the startled pilots before taking up a seat at the aviation radio. "Atomcraft, Atomcraft, this is Skyair 314, Fast-Forward speaking. Your target is Jump Psion, repeat, Jump Psion - his body is being puppeteered by Professor Psion. Capture him, do not kill him..." He tried again, and again, as Ember spoke again. "Don't you see, dammit, it could have been you! Or me! This could have happened to any one of us!" It was hard to tell how much she believed her next words. "Josh wouldn't want to live like that. Better to end it fast - and end HIM for good." She looked at Paige. "It was bad for you then, but look at you now! And that was when he was alive!" ~They're not picking up, honey,~ said Richard tersely over his mental link with Paige. ~Not even sure if they have normal radios in those damned things...and I barely made it up here from ground-level. I can _try_ the magic two-step over there...~ - On the upper tier, Stronghold suddenly heard a cry of sudden pain in her mind, the unmistakable voice of Chase Atom - and then silence.

Let's call it two, Exaccus, you'll need them later. Go ahead and post. I need Notice Investigate Knowledge (Physical Sciences) Knowledge (Galactic Lore) and/or Computers checks for the people down inside the vault!

Climbing down into the Ossuary was indeed a claustrophobic experience - the tunnel, its walls braced by spaceship scrap, was small enough that Kavorkin and his escorts had to crawl on hands and knees for a few yards. The tunnel's walls were dry and there was no sign of underground insects or other life - further proof that only the long-gone remnants of advanced terraforming had kept this planet habitable. "Captain hersself dug thesse tunnelss. Yearss ago," commented Kavorkin as they headed through the darkened passageway. Just when the rudely-built walls were indeed looking dangerously close around everyone's heads, they finally reached an opening. "Here we are. Turn on torchess if you have them, becausse thiss placce is...WHAT?!" Their serpentine escort, who had crawled out ahead of them, gave a startled cry as they all emerged - in particular as Sitara did so, because suddenly the lights came on. "Thiss hass never happened before!" The illuminated vault revealed a grim scene - they were in a room layered with that glassy dust like what lay on the surface and row after row of humanoid skeletons! The dust was thick down here, and complex with the burnt remnants of other things - and on the walls lay long, long, long dead computer banks - that were slowly beginning to come back to life! - The pirate village was a scene of riot as Moon-Moth started his work, but Hunger was everywhere - barking orders and shouting, physically shoving and driving her people into position, even at one point grabbing a particularly large male and biting his throat until the grey-furred wolfman whimpered and took up a position inside Moon-Moth's construct. "There, the first fifty!" she called when a motley group of cubs, wolf-creatures of her still-unnamed species, and environmental-suited humanoids. "Test with these! If it works, the rest will come!" In other parts of the settlement, there were fights going on and near-riots, and Moon-Moth was almost certain he'd observed at least one mating ritual down a particular alley, but Hunger and her allies didn't seem bothered by the chaos around them. "If not, I eat your face!" she called in a serious, almost dry warning.

"I've seen bad things happen before. The people we lost in Tronik when the Curator attacked. That other vibrational dimension with the National Socialists, what they did to that Tronik - but this was just the end. A whole world dead, and they barely knew why." He hugged Eliza tight, his energized holographic flesh tingling to the touch. "Miss A is calling the heroes of Earth to try and rally the defenses. I think we'll probably pull it off. We beat the Curator, right?" Not for the first time, he remembered watching that battle from the outside, wondering at what thoughts had been going through his head the day he died. He laughed unhappily. "Billions of people gone...and I just keep remembering them reaching for me, begging for me to save them, and I couldn't. The system was wrong there for my emulator, I...couldn't even touch them."

He cannot make that save! Nor can he pass that Tou save with the Autofire + Sneak Attac bonus - so the only question is how much does it hurt. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4719039/= unconscious!

"Screw this noise, I'm outta here!" declared Wildcard. "I hope you like this next number, it has a KICK to it!" He did a backflip over Stronghold's attack and snapped his leg out in a perfect sidekick, catching the orange ringbearer directly over the temple. "Lights out, honey-...hey, ow!" he declared as his foot bounced off her force field and left the teenager completely unhurt. "Oh come on!" he called out to the unfair world all around!

Wildcard tries kicking Stronghold in the head! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4719026/ And succeeds! DC 20 Tou save.

Of course, Frances hadn't been raised nearly as well as Paige's actual kids. "Screw you!" Frances yelled at Paige, but peering down through the hole psychically Hologram could see that her erstwhile niece was indeed making a beeline for her tumbling husband - who had separated himself from the stony form of her father but was tumbling almost out of control! Frances was even kind enough to dial back her flaming aura as she grabbed onto the speedster. Paige could feel Richard's fear settle down to anger, a feeling that was very common among the waking occupants of the plane! As she moved on to other matters, Paige could find no sign of her father wherever she scanned - given Josh's teleportation range, he might have fled the scene altogether. That seemed out-of-character for her father when family matters were at stake - but then this had been a day for learning her father was willing to do all sorts of things she'd never have believed possible. Just before she pulled back to concentrate her attention on handcuffing Aura into place, the girl's stony skin beginning to soften already, she distinctly caught sight of an uncannily familiar shape forming below - an Atomcraft dropping a cloaking device! "There, here he is!" Ember practically dropped Richard on the deck. "Sorry!" she added sulkily. "What are you...hey, let Aura go! We have to get out of here before the pigs wake up! Or before he comes back!"

Sharl gave Eliza a wide-eyed look of frank relief. "I've had a really bad day," he told her, his voice tight with what sounded like the aftermath of crying. "And I know it's stupid, but I just thought, well, I wanted to see you." He ran his hand through his thick black hair, his projected body looking solid under the bright artificial lights of the common room. The words, when they came, came pouring out. "I finished the project. I went to Lor-Van to make my pitch, and...and..." He swallowed hard before going on. "And then the planet blew up. A group called the Communion showed up, and they just...they just blew it up! I barely made it back here before they fried the biosphere, and now a whole planet with dozens of billions of people is just..gone! There was nothing anybody could do; even the Star Knights were just speed bumps. It was terrible and I keep...the people I was with, at the end, they knew I was the only one that would make it! They asked me to remember their names and their faces!"

APPROVED

An interesting concept! Not sure why it would be Japanese she learns of all terrestrial languages. It would be helpful to write up what you've done with Alpha Centauri so that we can have it for the wiki. I will be back here when TV gives you that first approval!

"We are not WEAK!" Hunger detonated, grief and fury bringing a tone to her voice that was at once growl and whine. She was a head shorter than Dragonid, but showed no fear of getting within arms reach of him to glare up at his scaly face. "When Homeworld turned to...peace...and...love, it was we who took to the stars to live as we always had! We clawed and scraped and fought to carve a world for ourselves in depths of cold space!" She spat on the icy ground. "And we lived, and we hunted, and we fed, and it was good. And now all is swept away by bigger hunters. It is the death of what should have been." She turned to Moon-Moth and said "Yes, yes, do what you can! Leave no more pups to starve in own filth until slain by enemies." She signaled a few more pirates to join Moon-Moth, sending their erstwhile Lor ally to join them. "Take him to village! Give him what he needs. We will be leaving system soonest. With all we can carry." Composing herself, she finished turning and said, "I will supervise evacuation. Kavorkin, you take them to vaults. Show them what we have found - perhaps the Ossuary." She turned and stalked off, taking a few steps as a humanoid before dropping to all fours and running like the canine creature she was. Kavorkin, a humanoid with a polarized faceplate over his environmental suit's helmet, coughed before hissing in a sibilant voice. "Right thiss way, gentlebeingss. We have many vaultss of the passt in this placce." He led the group he was accompanying to a rude trench dug in the hard-packed soil of the planet - a soil that on closer inspection looked like glassy sand. "Are any of you fearful of enclossed ssspacess?"

I really like this concept, gankun, as well as the mechanics here - as soon as thevshi has signed off on the math, we'll see what we can do about this.

The Super-Senses on the first sheet, with our new house rules, should probably look something like Super-Senses 4 (infravision, Enhancements: Analytical, Tracking 2 [half-speed]) [4PP] Can you explain the math on the powers in the second sheet?

Yes!

A decision made, Sharl stood up and adjusting his outfit, letting the glowing symbol on his chest die away. She's probably still got the emitter in her room, he thought, she said she could use it to play video games or watch movies. She'll want to see me. We didn't break up that hard. 'I'm going out for a little while,' he told Miss Americana by flashing holo-signals in the air while she spoke on the phone. 'Just call me if you need more info.' As soon as she gave him the go-ahead, Sharl stepped away and into the kludgy network of Terra - or at least the kludgy network outside of Miss Americana's, Dragonfly's, or Claremont's network. Inside the system, he flew high above the 'city' of Freedom City's network, most of his view obscured by the patchy fog where the system couldn't keep up with his perceptions. It wasn't long before he reached his destination - and dived low! Hang on, I wonder if Eliza's still awake...

"Really!" said Frost as he listened to the other Leaguers explain what they had seen in space. "I wonder why they would do such a thing purely to Lor-Van." He steepled his fingers. "Purely to strike fear? Is that more valuable to them than what they could have looted from the planet itself? They could have gained secrets from prisoners, seized military assets...there must be some reason why they destroyed planet itself. Is Russian law of drama, you see, if gun goes off at beginning of play it must be important to the plot!" Those looking closely could see diagrams, notes, comments as he went. "Russian government will be happy to cooperate with Freedom League and US government in any matter that involves the welfare of the planet," he added with a wave of his hand. "Suggest we tell the public the truth. They are barely aware there ARE Lor, much less the details of their civilization. Let it seem like some normal story of distant apocalypse rather than a disaster to be unearthed and feared."

"Not enough," replied Hunger, a growl at the edge of her canine voice. "And nearest habitable planet is three nights away - all the rest were purged when star went long ago!" she added with a gesture to the sky. "Whole of neighboring systems dead planets and burnt buildings. And this deadest of all!" She looked around. "This was settlement. Den to be ours when home from hunts - not a place to simply leave like whipped mangy curs! It was dead world!" she declared, half to the coldly glowing sky overhead, the nebula like an eternal aurora overhead, "Nothing but bones and ruins, and radiation beyond reach of hairless suidae Lor and monstrous red vermin Grue. Even suidae Star Knights did not come to this place. None wanted it. None could even find it." She turned to her crew and began, quite literally, barking orders. "Greed, Famine, Voracious!" she called to three of her own species. "Head into settlement and begin rounding up all mothers still suckling pups and take them aboard flagship. Ra'chem, Zhorag, Erasmus," she added to three in suits - the middle of which, from his name and his general bearing, appeared to be Za'akian! "Take the white-collared males first - then the youngest from there. Use them to control the others as you round them up." She looked at the Praetorians as she began to head down towards the pirate settlement. "If you are friends you say, you will help us save those who cannot save themselves!"

Giordano Bruno - Giordano Bruno Abilities: 0 + 0 + 0 + 10 + 2 + 4 = 16PP STR: 10 (+0) DEX: 10 (+0) CON: 20/10 (+5/+0) INT: 20 (+5) WIS: 12 (+1) CHA: 14 (+2) Combat: 8 + 8 = 16PP ATK: +4 DEF: +7 (+2 Dodge, +1 Shield, +4 Base, +2 Flat-Footed) Init: +0 Grapple: +6/+20 w/Move Object Knockback: -6/-4/-2/-0 Saves: 5 + 5 + 6 = 16PP TOU: +13/+9/+5/+4/+0 (+0 Con, +4 Defensive Roll, +4 Protection, +5 Enhanced Con) FORT: +10/+5 (+0 Con, +5, +5 Enhanced Con) REF: +5 (+0 Dex, +5) WIS: +7 (+1 Wis, +6) Skills: 56 r = 14PP Bluff 4 (+6) Concentration 9 (+10) Craft (Electronic) 5 (+10) Craft (Mechanical) 5 (+10) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 5 (+10) Knowledge (Physical Sciences) 5 (+10) Knowledge (Technology) 5 (+10) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 5 (+10) Languages 4 (English, Greek, Latin, Lor, Base [italian]) Notice 4 (+5) Sense Motive 4 (+5) Feats: 9PP Beginner's Luck Dodge Focus 2 Eidetic Memory Fearless Inventor Jack of all Trades Luck Ritualist Powers: 45 + 2 + 19 + 3 + 4 + 6 = 79PP Device 11 (Hermetic Power Armor, Flaw: Hard to Lose, PF: Mentalists]) [45PP] Comprehend 3 (speak, read, and understand all languages) [6PP] Enhanced Constitution 10 (to CON 20/+5) [10DP] Enhanced Hermetic Mentalism 8 (16 PP, PFs: Alternate Powers 3) [19DP] Feature 1 (Library) [1DP] Flight 3 (50 MPH/500 fpm, PFs: Move-By Action) [7DP] Immunity 10 (Life Support, Starvation and Thirst) [10DP] Shield 1 [1DP] Super-Senses 1 (Radio) [1DP] Enhanced Feats 2 (Defensive Roll 2) [2PP] Hermetic Mentalism Array 8 (16 PP, PFs: Alternate Powers 3) [19PP] BE: Astral Form 3 (100 ft, PF: Subtle) {16/16} AP: Communication 6 (20 miles, [Two-Way, Mental], PF: Subtle) {13/16} AP: ESP 5 (5 miles, visual and auditory, PF: Subtle) {16/16} AP: Mind Reading 10 (Extras: Mental, Penetrating, Flaw: Duration [instant], PFs: Insidious, Subtle) {12/16} Immunity 3 (aging, disease, poison) [3PP] Protection 4 [4PP] Super-Senses 8 (Danger Sense [Mental], Precognition [Flaw: Unreliable], Psionic Awareness 2, Uncanny Dodge [Mental]) [6PP] Abilities (16) + Combat (16) + Saves (16) + Skills (14) + Feats (9) + Powers (79) = 150PP ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Design Notes: OK, here's another historical character built. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was a friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer famous for his philosophical arguments that took the then-new theories of Copernicus one step further. It was Bruno who was the first to argue for an infinite universe with no real center, and that the other stars in the sky might be suns as well, and that they too might have planets - perhaps even life! Unfortunately for Bruno his radical cosmological theories came with radical theological notions that challenged the power of a Catholic Church going through a reactionary phase. A poor politician (a bad trait in a scholar, especially in those days), Bruno was kicked out of city after city for speaking out in public too loudly before finally being arrested by the Inquisition. Refusing to recant his heresies, the man who believed in life among the stars at a time when his peers barely believed in heliocentrism was burned at the stake "with his tongue imprisoned" on February 17, 1600. So that's a grim story in the history of science! This build takes Bruno the natural philosopher and lecturer on the arts of memory and makes him a low-level mentalist, one who was able to use his powers to escape the Inquisition and finally contact someone from those other worlds he'd spent so much time dreaming about and writing about! His alien friends hooked him up with advanced medical technology, halting his aging and protecting him against the ravages of space, and he used his formidable genius to build himself a suit of armor suitable for traveling the distant realms of space! Bruno's academic career falls in the nexus of science, religion, and mathematics so I went ahead and made him pretty good at all those things! Like many an immortal, he has knowledge enough to be at least a little good at most fields. The circuits built into his armor help him talk to everybody, but he still has some issues with being nice...