Avenger Assembled
-
Posts
23,141 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Freedom City Guidebook
Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Avenger Assembled
-
"And we need to call the Interceptors too," said Sharl tentatively, knowing Miss Americana had a complicated relationship with that team at the best of times. "The princess I spoke to, she knew Terran superheroes, she wanted me to pass a message on to Jack of all Blades or Geckoman." Sharl had met the former only once and couldn't remember if he'd ever met the latter - but was more inclined to call his fellow Young Freedom veteran. "It was...I need to tell them she's all right." At least I think she is. Space was full of horrors for the unwary, as Sharl himself knew only too well after his recent trip to Lor-Van. He leaned back and ran his hands across his now-unmarred face, the wounds he'd taken in the battle with the Communion virii completely healed. "I guess everybody's going to need to know. What I saw wasn't going to stop with just one planet, even with Lor-Van."
-
Incursion: Meaning in Destruction (OOC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Archives
DC 20 Galactic Lore: Officially, the region around Kestevan 79 was declared a navigational hazard because of the radiation hazard from the magnetar and the nebula. But the mArttik Avata, with access to particularly ancient knowledge, were familiar with ancient myths about this place. Kestevan was, or so the story goes, home to a gruesomely described species that kidnapped the children of other races, devoured them, and replaced them with their own hideous offspring! But even in the ancient days of the Traveller's youth, those were particularly fanciful (albeit grim) legends - after all, the Kestevan supernova must have happened hundreds of thousands of years ago, while the magnetar itself is at least a million years old. DC 20 Technology: There must be some piece of technology on the planet itself that is keeping it habitable - and to be this intact, the planet itself must have either been behind an _extremely_ powerful shield (something that would have been the work of a whole interstellar civilization) during the supernova that destroyed the system, or been moved here afterwards. While it doesn't look terribly charming, it should be a frozen ball of irradiated ice at the temperature of interplanetary space given its location. From space, the outlines of ancient structures can just be seen through the heavy ice cover on most of the planet. There used to be a civilization here far greater than what's visible below. -
Incursion: Meaning in Destruction (OOC)
Avenger Assembled replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in Archives
An easy Physical Sciences check (that all of you can make) will reveal that this is ridiculous - there's no way a habitable planet could be here in a neutron star system, much less next to a magnetar spewing X-rays! Give me some History, Physical Sciences, Knowledge (Technology), or Galactic Lore checks - go ahead and start posting as you do! -
The OOC
-
Kestevan 79 Magnetar 23,000 LY from Terra November 2014 (Terran Calendar) Why are we here? It was a hard question not to ask as the Praetorians' starship approached the world Moon-Moth had designated as the next target of the Communion. Kestevan 79, and its companion magnetar were a long-dead supernova remnant - the nebula, the neutron star inside, and its magentar companion both had been classified as navigational hazards by the Delaztri and generally avoided by their fleets, something that as far as they could tell had remained the same for Lor and Grue both. After all, what could possibly live in the wash of gases and X-Rays produced by nebula and burning magnetar alike? But there was, as far as the Curator had been able to tell, life on the sole world orbiting Beta Kestevan - life that was by all accounts a target for the Communion. For his part, Solar Sentinel found conditions equally grim as he headed out into the remote space near the Kestevan system, a system so remote and so irradiated that it had remained largely unclaimed in all the space wars he had ever heard of. There was no debris in the system, no asteroids or other planets - just the invisible at this distance neutron star that was Beta Kestevan (for all that it howled like a dead god on the radio) and the single white orb beneath the brilliantly burning shape of the Kestevan nova that floated over the system like the ghost of a dead star. Kestevan I - the only life-bearing world for light-years. Kestevan I; the next target of the Communion. A small collection of older, disreputable-looking starships were in orbit as Sentinel and Praetorians took up their positions in the vast depths of space; the wash of radiation in the system making whatever signals they might be sending to each other impossible to read. The planet was cold and desolate even from space, frozen nearly from pole to pole. Down below, on the icy surface of Kestevan I, a small handful of city lights twinkled at the equator, the planet's only source of free water. They had no idea what was coming.
-
"No, nothing. I don't even know for sure what happened to Lor-Van," he added grimly. "But I saw the numbers on that big planet killer - and once those Star Knights were gone, there wasn't anything to stop them. The last thing I saw was the big gun going off again, and then I was back in the network. I was totally out the whole way there," he added, "and back again." He held out his hand, not to Miss A, but as if touching someone who wasn't there - someone he would never be able to touch, or see again. "It wasn't even a war, or a battle. It was a freaking MASSACRE!" he cried in a moment's despair. "They had no warning, no time to mobilize anything...the Star Knights must have warped in themselves only to fly right into the teeth of that damned...thing." His head came up. "You said you worked with one in our sector - Cavalier, right? Do you have his contact information?"
-
"They called themselves...the Communion." At Sharl's words, the face of Star-Khan appeared in his memories (albeit horribly changed). "Their leader looked like Star-Khan, but he looked altered, like somebody who'd been forcibly cyborged. Not like Murdock was," he went on, "he could still talk, and think, but he was theirs. They said that surrender didn't matter, that resistance didn't matter, that they were going to take the whole planet and turn it into raw material for themselves." He rubbed his eyes. "We made it to the Vox and the refugees started pulling out. I went into the system to stop cyber-infiltration and these horrible...things were in there waiting for me. If I wasn't me, if I was any other sentient software I've met, they'd have torn me apart and turned me into one of them." He fell silent again as his memories progressed. "We got everybody out we could, but it still wasn't enough. Even the Lor can't evacuate a whole planet that fast. I remember how excited everyone was when the Star Knights arrived - people actually turned around and started taking holos!" he exclaimed, pain raw in his voice. "I didn't see what happened but there was this big ship in the sky, it looked as big as Terra's moon. It had enough energy to crack open a planetary crust, and the Star Knights took the brunt of the first attack. They just flared up...and then they were gone."
-
Sharl fell silent, and as his wounds healed Gina could see his mind working - literally and figuratively. "It had started before I got there," he finally said. "I remember people talking about rumors from the edges of Lor space. Refugees on the move, fleeing something. But I wasn't really paying attention," he confessed. "I was so focused on the presentation, and everything they were showing me..." He shook his head. "And then, uh, they interrupted my presentation, my escorts did, because an unknown fleet had entered the Lor system. Somehow they just made it past the outer defenses without triggering anything." As he spoke, it was a simple enough matter for Miss Americana to pull up the information stored in his active memory. Visual and auditory records of everything. "They started evacuating right away - sending everyone to the orbital cities. It's to minimize, uh, civilian casualties..." He looked away for a moment, images of a wild aerial melee playing as Miss Americana watched. "But this wasn't like other attacks, this wasn't the Grue, or anything like that. They jammed the planet's computer systems like they were nothing - they crumpled the most powerful computers in Lor space like tinfoil! I managed to restart the traffic computer on the craft I was on, and we made it to the Vox with as many refugees as we could carry." He swallowed hard. "But not before the ships started hitting. They slowed down just enough that they weren't relativistic, just enough that we could see them coming before they hit! They didn't even bother with missiles or energy weapons, they just rammed arcologies and sent them crashing into each other like those wooden blocks of Eira's! I must have seen...tens of thousands of people, just..." He waved his hand, and for a moment he couldn't speak.
-
Sharl was already there, his sunglasses off and his eyes wide. At the sight of Miss Americana, the traumatized program jumped to his feet and hugged her like the big sister she'd always been - his magnetically-charged field humming across Gina's mental connection. "It was just so, so fast! I didn't...I didn't think I was going to make it back, by the end," he admitted. "But Rex, the head Lor scientist in the Vox, he stayed at his post and he transmitted me back even though he knew he was going to die." He scrubbed his eyes. "The last thing I saw was the people who couldn't make it to the ships in time, looking at me, and wanting me to save them, but I couldn't! I couldn't even touch them!"
-
Steve kept his own counsel as Gina talked on the phone, his face hidden by the near-darkness of the room. "What?! No! I-" Images swarmed behind Sharl's eyes for a moment, the names and faces of people who were surely dead by now. "Something bad happened! To me, to the Science Ministry, to the whole planet! Lor-Van...I think it's gone!" Knowing that Gina was probably in bed with her boyfriend was all that kept him from jumping right through the cell system and out to her side. "It was Star-Khan, but he was some kind of cyborg monster, and there was this fleet of ships!" She could hear him breathing over the phone, a half-sob in his voice. "You've got to come over here, right away!"
-
Through the vines, Stesha could see confusion on the faces of the ragged group that had opened fire on her - at least for a moment. "Bullcrap! Nobody wants to hear what you have to say, you skeletal freak! You-" The bearded man in the torn brown beret who was the group's evident leader was interrupted by a younger man in sunglasses - perhaps a subordinate? "Hey, hang on!" the younger man called. "Iron maidens don't just travel alone, right? If she's one of them, they should be swarming us right now. Maybe she's some kind of...defector, or something!" "They're monsters, Junior! Don't you get it!" Stesha could hear the fear in their voices, barely restrained - and see the even worse panic on the faces of wide-eyed children clinging to their parents. But they weren't firing now. "There's no negotiating with them!" "Then why is she negotiating with us? She didn't even kill anyone with those vines!" - "Hmm." For his part, Frost kept his own council as he walked away from the dying television, carefully picking his way through the sea of corpses that surrounded them, trying to avoid the attention of the wary ring of watchful giant bees that surrounded their little group. Only the icy footsteps he left behind showed his distraction. "With this in streets and skies, Russia _would_ have destroyed city with nuclear weapons if global threat was posed. If there is Russia left...Or ever was one." He turned and looked back at the others. "Greater measures are within our power that we must consider." Must be careful about this! "They are insect swarm. Like locusts. If we allow swarm to expand, they will again seek to feed. Just as they did on Sanctuary." He snapped his fingers and turned, looking back at the ruined skyscrapers of Freedom City before he picked one out. "There! That was GBN News, and there is GBN Tower!" As they spoke, distant black shapes crawled visibly on the glassy surface of the building. "That was no holdover broadcast."
-
November 10, 2014 A hyperlight signal crossed the vast interstellar network, ricocheting off Lor communications stations a moment before the stations were deluged by word of the apocalypse that had befallen the homeworld. Further and further out into the Orion Arm it went, passing by the populated worlds of the galaxy as it headed into a remote galactic backwater that held one insignificant yellow dwarf and a small system of eight planets. It hit the unmanned station the Lor had left in Pluto orbit decades earlier and headed in one last burst for Earth, passing by the Lighthouse and heading straight for its source - Archetech. In a darkened laboratory, Sharl Tulink arrived on his hands and knees, screaming. "NO!" Instinctively, he reached out mentally into the surrounding network, both the building's power grid and the computers all around him. The lights flared up at his command and the computers came to life, the primitive technology and raw naturalism of Terra a sharp contrast to the sterile, doomed world he'd left behind him. As the Terran computers booted up, Sharl fought the natural urge to dive directly into their systems and not stop running through that primitive wireless network until he reached the familiar confines of Tronik - but of course that wouldn't really solve anything, would it? Instead, he raised his head and got up off the floor - though of course being a holographic projection he'd only barely been on it in the first place. He reached out into the surrounding network of the city and called a familiar number. "Gina!" he called, remembering old distress signals easily enough. "Code 404!"
-
"Knock me on my ass, will you? said Wildcard as he quickly hauled himself to his feet. "Well, we'll see whose ass in trouble here, you buttheads!" he added with a laugh, recovering his good humor as he aimed his gigantic cannon at the teenager with the power ring. "I'll blast you right in that ass!" declared Wildcard, firing another screaming burst of sound directly at Stronghold! But this time the gun jerked wild and hit the metal above her head as it pulled up and to the right, digging a visible groove in the metal of the plane (and making both structures shake ominously) but without actually hitting either of the two heroes. "Whoops!" he added, looking startled at his own miss for a moment before he said with a tentative smile, "Wellll...call it a draw?"
-
Wildcard tries to stand up as a free action http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4710284/= and fails! So instead he stands as a move action Wildcard blasts Stronghold! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4710283/= 18 And with an HP - whew! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4710284/= 17 He misses! Foreshadow is up inside the plane
-
When the Professor turned back, Fast-Forward was frantically tracing glowing sigils in the air, a desperate arcane throw that turned into a malignant glow! Staring in surprise at the shape, Psion felt his limbs begin to stiffen - looking down at his body, he saw his hard-won flesh suddenly transforming into cold grey stone! "What?I This can't be happening! How can you-" But his jaw was already stiffening and his body growing immobile, even as he heard Aura's abortive cry behind him. "Because I'm the fastest man alive, dumbass!" yelled Fast-Forward as the cursed light of Algol shone over Jump and Aura alike, transforming the both of them into solid stone statues. "That's not gonna hold a telepath long, honey!" he called to Paige. "Take him out fast and hard!"
-
Fast-Forward tries to freeze Professor Psion! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4710239/= 17 The effect is still halved thanks to his Evasion 2, ugh But OTOH, his Fort save is still crap. http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4710240/= 16 Aura Reflex vs 22 http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4710246/ Fort vs 22 http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4710248/ Welp!
-
Aura turned from her position by the door, her mind evidently made up. "Where's my sister!" she demanded. "You said she'd be on this plane! You said she was getting her mind twisted like Paige!" She put her hand to her temple and concentrated, glaring at Josh Psion intently - and then gasped, staggering backwards until her back hit the cockpit door as blood began pouring from her nose. "Augh! What did you-" "You think I didn't learn the lesson of the last generation?" demanded Professor Psion. "I have made sure that each and every one of you have mental blocks against raising your powers against me! Even in this body!" His jaw was set, his eyes flashing. "When this is done, these lessons can be unlearned and you can return to being loyal soldiers in the war to come. The family will come first! The family will survive!"
-
Aura tries to Mental Blast her cousin. Mental Blast 5 - but learns her grandpa put in a few failsafes! http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4710211/= 12 She takes a Bruised!
-
"Galaxy's too big for you to go together," said VINCE, more seriously than most of what had come out of the Lor's mouth. He walked into the holographic galaxy map they were studying - and as he did so, passed through the panels and directly into the map itself. An instant later, he was visible again - this time hovering above the galaxy like a tiny holographic colossus! "Why don't some of you go here, and some of you go here, and some of you visit this little number?" he asked, his avatars popping up over each possible site and his voices blending together into a chorus for a moment. He finished, and reconstituted himself, hovering over the barren world Moon-Moth had identified as the possible location of the next wormhole. "If it's a ride you want, the kid has got about a million ships in the hangar - I think he even still has your old digs around there somewhere. Believe me," he added, a surprising amount of pathos in his inch-high voice, "I know it's tempting to stick together and try and defend one spot. But that...well, sometimes that just doesn't work. Anyway, kid's fixing up some ships for you now."
-
From our House Rules -
-
Electra All excess points to Hologram (since she's the only one who isn't maxed out!) Wander >Until You've Crossed >Midnight Dynasty Fleur de Joie >Mission of Mercy: Aftermath >Mission of Mercy >Firestorm >What's Eating You Hologram >Great Apes >Death, Crime, Rage of a Beast >Everybody's Fool Miss Americana >The Spirit of Revolution
-
All Ref posts and any excess GM posts to Edge Note that I was naughty about marking GM posts - if there's any doubt in the mind of the counter, just let it ride. GMing >Midnight Dynasty >Can't Change Time >Great Apes >Necklace of Ropes >Incursion: Prologue Fast-Forward >Back in the Day >Everybody's Fool >Death, Crime, Rage of a Beast Comrade Frost >What's Eating You Harrier/Caradoc >The Spirit of Revolution Edge >Until You've Crossed
-
Praetorians headquarters and space craft
Avenger Assembled replied to Thevshi's topic in Character Building
Story-wise, VINCE will be happy to give you guys something from the Curator's collection. "But where did the original owners go?" "Hahaha, so many questions! See you later, alligators!" -
He fails that check and is hit - as for the Trip http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4707724/= 10 He is tripped! I will have him keep HP handy - he may need them!
-
"How DARE you!" Wildcard threw a wild kick at Foreshadow, launched without any sort of finesse or evident training, that nonetheless nearly hit him right in the nose. "Ohhhh, I see how it is! Just an innocent prison break for somebody's little cousin and you so-called heroes come along and burgle my stealth jet when I'm just trying to watch the game! Well, we'll see whose goodies get ransacked, you no-good do-gooders," he sneered. It was hard to tell, between the bruises on his face and the way he was clutching his ribs, how much he meant his words - but he certainly seemed to be putting his heart and soul into them. "What did you do, fly here in your Foreshadowjet?" he taunted Foreshadow as he began to bring the big cannon over his shoulder to bear. "Well, I bet a lucky shot can take you down!"