Avenger Assembled

"That's me," said the blue and gold-clad man, reaching over to pump the teenager's hand with a firm politician's grip. For a half a moment, Mark remembered being sixteen - four years, a lifetime earlier. Geez, are all the new Claremont kids this young? "Listen, do you have time to talk?" They were high up, and Edge lacked the flight that kept Boreas up, but seemed utterly unafraid as he stood high above the river below. He made a little gesture, like shaking something off his hand, and the megaphone he'd been holding neatly faded into nothingness as it if had never been there at all. "I have an interest in people who go to my, er, alma mater." Not for the first time, he wished Claremont had had a sports team. Marcie probably had it much easier in conversations like this, with her involvement in the cheer squad. "And I might have a part-time job for you."

August 25, 2013 Pramas Bridge Between Riverside and Bayview It was probably a good day to be a weather controller, Edge decided. It was sunny, but not too sunny; warm, but not too warm. Hopefully that meant the guy he was there to meet would be interested in a little field trip. Standing fearlessly on top of the bridge's tallest super-structure, blue and gold cape fluttering in the breeze, Edge raised a megaphone to his lips and shouted up at the flying man overhead. "Hey! Boreas! Hello! Come on down!" He waved his free hand vigorously, heedless of the tremendous drop to the busy roadway below. It was a beautiful day; what could happen. Looking down, Boreas could clearly see Edge, the famous young hero with the good reputation and somewhat ill-defined superpowers, standing on top of a bridge piling hundreds of feet above the roadway below and trying to get his attention.

All around town, the weeping quieted. A moment later, there was talking - shouts, exclamations of fear and joy, but from the sound and look of things whatever hold Peter Evans had had over the people of Blackwater (and surrounding parts of Cooper County) had been lifted. By the bridge, Stormchaser and Casey Jones paused in mid-confrontation with Cavalier and Cobalt Templar. Experienced heroes that they were, they seemed to understand the situation without it having to be explained to them. Their first thought was not for themselves, but for their teammate. "Aw, jeez, Thresher!" exclaimed Stormchaser, shooting a wild look at Casey Jones. "They were right on top of him when we-" She did indeed have an accent much less thick than the locals here in rural Missouri. "He'll be fine," said Casey Jones reassuringly, "that young man has a lot of spark in him." He turned to Cavalier and Cobalt Templar and said, "Thank you, both, for making sure we didn't do any further damage." He smiled thinly. "This isn't the first time this has happened, but it never gets any easier. My colleague and I are going to reassure the townspeople that everything's all right now." And with that, he and Stormbreaker took off, heading for Blackwater's small city hall where they could more easily be seen by the crowd on the street. ----- The scene was much the same at the Evans house; people seeming to awaken from a light sleep with dreams of what they'd done, adults hugging their kids and each other as they took stock of the changed circumstances, kids happily embracing their restored parents. Tears and all, it was a happier scene than most of those that Gina had seen in her childhood. A startled Irons looked at Miss A then said, his eyes wide, "I...I gave a pretty heavy barbituate dose to the Evans parents. I'd better go check on their condition," said the doctor, grabbing protectively at the little black bag he'd been carrying before turning and almost running inside the crowded house. It was about that time that Steve's familiar voice came over Miss A's radio, broadcasting again through the plane. "The affliction has released who it held on the plane. And Peter Evans has awakened."

"You know what? I'm not interested in exploring whatever twisted world these people have made for themselves. Let's get in there and kick their butts. As far as I'm concerned, they sold their soul to the Devil and now they're sore because the place smells like sulfur. Grab on, everybody." Normally Mark wasn't quite so dogmatic, but these were Nazis and really powerful, earth-shakingly powerful Nazis to boot. He reached over and took Cannonade's hand, waiting until everyone had grabbed on before suddenly they were elsewhere - in this case, directly before the gate of that flickering castle, the air briefly crackling with a surge of wild magical energy like a massive lightning strike. "Hey!" Mark yelled. "I'm here to fumigate!"

"It was not us," said Frost, feeling an unaccustomed flicker of guilt. What was it about the woman that made her so maternal even when she was so many decades his junior? Feh. "He simply...murdered himself. The fool." He wasn't that worried by the accusations; even Fleur wouldn't think he'd break a corpse's neck instead of freezing it, and Tiamat would surely have smashed the body to ribbons if she'd been suitably wroth. Hmm, now there was an image. He looked disgustedly at the corpse, then said to the others, "In any event, one of us needs to be on the surface to see what is happening. I will go." With that, he billowed as a white cloud up the tunnel Gaian Knight had dug up towards the surface where Fleur had come from. He couldn't fly particularly fast, as he knew from long experience, but he could certainly outpace even a running man. Within a minute, perhaps two, he had boiled up onto the surface to see what was what, solidifying again so he could use his communicator.

I have no beef with the font! APPROVED

APPROVED

Sorry for the delay - using Environmental Control to make it uncomfortably (i.e., Fort save uncomfortably) cold - this is intense cold, which I believe is a DC 10 Fort save to avoid 1 point of temporary Con damage. A non-bystander will probably make that save easily, but OTOH it will probably be uncomfortable and might provoke them!

Frost walked into the room with a signal to the other heroes to wait outside, his misty body forming up again into the parka-clad Russian hero. "If you are in here, you should come out," he said out loud as he began to pace the perimeter of the room, the air in the room beginning to get colder and colder, until the breath of the warm-blooded heroes outside began to steam up in billowing clouds. "I can freeze so cold that your feet will slip on ice and your lungs will fill with frost...if you have any lungs, that is," he said with a red-eyed wink. "Otherwise I shall simply freeze and freeze until you are all ice and snow and blow away on the wind..." He wasn't sure if his strategy would work; he'd fought a great number of entities that were depressingly immune to his powers. If this one was, well, he was tough, hard to embarrass, and old to boot, and would come through just fine.

Once everyone was inside the white circle, an animated Thinks-and-Eats called out "Ready to go!" What followed was something novel. The universe, or at least the portions of it that were the sky, the parking lot, and the surrounding visitors center, seemed to stretch as if it were taffy being pulled by invisible hands, pulled so tight that everything outside the chalk circle took on the appearance of first stretched taffy, then spaghetti-like distortions stretching off into infinity, before there was a sudden SNAP - When there was light again, their little asphalt circle had moved to the center of a high-tech laboratory very much like one at HAX, some rooms in the Midnight Manor, or like some of the many labs Wail had seen over his long career. None of the heroes who'd come along on the mission were technicians themselves, but they could tell there was something 'retro' about this laboratory - there were crackling Jacob's Ladders and flasks of colored liquid labeled with curly, unreadable writing, and instead of computers there were electric typewriters surrounded by columns of paper. The room was big, but low-ceilinged, small enough that it "Hello there, hello there!" came a hissing voice from the other side of the big room, and from behind a tower of wired-together transitors covered with push-button switches came Thinks-and-Eats. The raptor padded up to the group, keeping his head pointed down as he made his approach. "You made it, hooray! I knew I could do it!" He made a hissing sound that was a laugh, peeking up with a cocked head like a bird. Up close the dinosaur was a little shabbier-looking than the proud warriors they'd seen before, smaller and a little plumper, with a rear leg that dragged behind him slightly as he skittered about the circle. "You are all here! Good good, good good!" Outside, through a thick curved window, the heroes could see a red clay road winding down a narrow hill towards a city in the distance, the yellow sun and blue sky looking just like Earth. Only a faint purple cast to the distant buildings, as if a skyscraper had been lightly painted royal colors, suggested they weren't in Kansas anymore. They looked to be about as far from the city as they had been from Freedom back home. What looked like a waterless hovercraft was sitting on a rocky hillside just outside the window, and the round door built into the wall next to it. When he stopped in front of Wail, he was about the size of one of Keith's younger students. "Let's go! I have a cargo hovercar that I can drive!"

Fleur de Joie: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> > Wander: > > Miss A: >

Comrade Frost: > > Harrier: > '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> Edge: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

Harrier: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> > Edge: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> Comrade Frost: > > GMing: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

Miss Americana: > Wander: > > > > Fleur de Joie: >

"Without my father, people will riot and dehydrate in the streets. They will-" Mark shot Nina a hard look; he knew better than the others just what kind of stress this event put on his girlfriend but that didn't mean throwing away her allies was a smart move. At Mark's look, Nina ratcheted back the prickly edge that has rolled into her accented voice and said, "So naturally, we need all the help we can get, hah-hah." She smiled politely. "We would be honored to accept your assistance, Mademoiselle Renarde." As she flew up to show Eve the best place to apply her telekinesis, Mark took a moment to wonder if this is what normal couples were like, communicating with each other without using words in a crisis. Studying the corpse, though, he decided that this was really not what you could call normal. Eve wound up on a jetty a little ways down the harbor, directing her power alongside a middle-aged man in an ill-fitting black suit. Given to paunch and with a greying mustache, he had the look of a man who had once been handsome before letting himself go to seed many years earlier. "Bonjour, my fair lady," he said in French, winking a bloodshot eye at Renarde Blue. "I didn't know we were going to be bringing in pretty girls-" "Durian al-Darsah, you shut your fat drug-addled face in front of guests in our kingdom!" Nina and the older man had a rapid-fire conversation in Soqotri that ended with Durian turning back to his watery support with a scowl. The princess turned back to Eve and said sharply, "Listen, if he says anything else unbecoming a prince of Socotra, or tries to take any drugs in front of you, just destroy his feeble mind, all right? I can't deal with this right now!" She jetted off there, leaving Eve to her work - propping up the corpse was no small feat, but precisely-applied telekinesis, working with the rest of the royals, was enough to help keep it out of the water. --- Edge joined in down at the docks, acting as usual as the velvet glove around Midnight's fist as they talked with people. (Wander was, naturally, the bat in that fist, which had once led to a very strange conversation around Midnight Manor that Mark was no hurry to remember). Most people down by the harbor hadn't seen much, or at least not much they thought was significant - it had been the usual cloudless summer day in Socotra in this time of year when suddenly the sky had darkened, clouds had formed, and then "there it was, big as...that!" said one man with a wave at the great corpse floating in the harbor. No one had heard anything about Typhoon's disappearance, but they were all nervously sure that he would "be out at any moment" to help the nation handle this particularly great crisis. "The palace guards might know something more," Mark murmured, "or one of the royals if we can catch them. I think all of them on the island but Nina were actually there in the palace when the sky opened up and when Typhoon went away..." Smearing menthol under his nose (luckily, Mark hadn't yet noticed the scent), Edge went to help Midnight with the autopsy, a deeply unpleasant task. But at least they could do it quickly, and between his ability to warp space and Wander's mobility, they were able to help Trevor get a much faster look at the giant corpse than if he'd actually had to climb around on it himself. The exact cause of death was readily apparant - the city-block-sized heart of the fallen giant wasn't damaged, it wasn't destroyed, it was _gone_, with marks that it hadn't simply been cut out but had in fact been ripped out from the inside, as if some great force had simply acted right through oddly resilient, shiny flesh and bone to rip the watery organ free and then do...something with it? There was no sign of a heart that would have been taller than many of Freedom City's skyscrapers. A more detailed autopsy might have revealed more, but it wasn't bad for the work of some minutes.

That'll be enough to make sure there are no attacks launched by the two superhumans, TT.

"I make no claims to character," replied Murdock with that same serious tone. "I chose to live, and act for good, only because it is better to be alive than to be dead, and better to act for good than to simply be alive." He looked back at Keith, close enough for Wail to see that the other man lacked even eyelashes, and had hairline scars along his corneas to match those on his skin. When he spoke again, it was with real emotion in that all-too-human voice. "And it has been good. I have walked the streets of a free world, and seen children at play and young people in love, and seen stars and a sun in a sky untroubled by red." He'd also gotten a job and a girlfriend, but that wasn't anything Wail necessarily needed to hear about. "Amid the depths of the multiverse, this world and those like it are a paradise. To walk its streets, and to live as other men do...I am more grateful than I can say. I am...glad you came here today."

"Listen, Thresher, I am not an agent of any outside force," Caradoc was saying, "I am-" but suddenly Steve's explanation was interrupted by a sound he heard before, a sound he knew in his own way only too well. An entire town, screaming at once in one voice. The words, however, were very different, and he and Thresher wheeled wildly on the crowd in the plane as perhaps half the medical staff joined the distant chorus echoing from the tower, on the radio, everywhere either man could hear at once. "...Ah just wanted a normal family!" Miss A could hear it too, a voice speaking through Dr. Irons and all the adults inside the house, sending the children inside into tears, a voice that did indeed sounded like her brother Peter speaking through hundreds of throats all at once. "I could hear them in my bed, fightin' and carryin' on just like always! Ah was maybe dyin, and my baby was cryin, and they were just tearin' at each other like cats! A just wanted us to be happy for once, for once!" Tears were in "Irons" eyes. "But it didn't even work on them! It worked on everybody else, but not my own flesh and blood! It was all for nothin'!" "But ah couldn't stop," Stormchaser was screaming at Cobalt Templar and Cavalier, joined in a eerie chorus by Casey Jones and (they could distantly hear) the people of the nearby town. "Ah couldn't just turn it off! It just got bigger and bigger, every time ah touched somebody! Ah thought if ah could get the family together again, even my poor runaway Sissy, that would fix it, but ah couldn't find her anywhere! And then ah thought if we made it to Freedom City, maybe it could get fixed, and mebbe then they'd just stop fightin' and be a family for once!" Casey Jones, nearly weeping, was leaning on Cobalt Templar. "Was that really so much to ask? Just that we could all be happy and not be all broken-up inside one time?"

Blind Precog -John Keats PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 8 + 16 + 8 + 2 + 16 + 0 = 50 pp STR 18 (+4) DEX 26 (+8) CON 18 (+4) INT 12 (+1) WIS 26 (+8) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 16 + 16 = 32 pp ATK: +8 (+14 melee) DEF: +14 (+6 Dodge Focus, +8 Base, +4 Flat-Footed) Init: +12 Grapple: +22 Knockback: -3/-2 Saves: 2 + 4 + 0 = 6 pp TOU +6 (+4 Con, +2 Defensive Roll) FORT +6 (+4 Con, +2) REF +12 (+8 Dex, +4) WILL +8 (+8 Wis) Skills: 6 pp=36 r Climb 1 (+5) Escape Artist 2 (+10) Gather Info 4 (+5) Intimidate 10 (+10) Investigate 4 (+5) Languages 1 (Braille) (Base: English) Medicine 2 (+10) Feats: 5 pp Blind-Fight Defensive Roll Grappling Finesse Improved Initiative Quick Draw [draw] Powers: 7 + 24 + 12 + 10 = 53 pp Device 2 (Baton, Flaw: Easy to Lose, PF: Subtle [collapsible]) [7PP] Damage 2 (PFs: Extended Reach 1 [10 ft], Improved Crit, Mighty, Variable Descriptor 1 [bludgeoning/piercing/slashing]) [4DP] Super-Movement 3 (Slow Fall, Swinging, Wall-Crawling) [6DP] Enhanced Feats 24 (Acrobatic Bluff, Attack Focus: Melee (6), Challenge (Fast Acrobatic Bluff), Defensive Attack, Dodge Focus (6), Evasion (2), Hide in Plain Sight, Move-By Action, Power Attack, Skill Mastery (Acrobatics, Notice, Sense Motive, Stealth), Takedown Attack (2), Uncanny Dodge (mental) [24PP] Enhanced Skills 48 (Acrobatics 12, Notice 12, Sense Motive 12, Stealth 12) [12PP] Super-Senses 10 (Accurate Acute Analytical Radius Ranged [6] Mental Sense, Precognition (Flaw: Uncontrolled)) [8PP] Drawbacks: 2 pp Blind (common, minor) [-2PP] costs abilities 50 + combat 32 + saves 6 + skills 6/36 + feats 5 + powers 53 - drawback 2 = 150 pts ------ Design Notes: Precognition is a common power in comics, but pretty problematic in game terms. Here's my attempt at a build that tries to use precognition to build a strong, savvy character - a disabled Daredevil-style acrobat who uses her precognitive abilities to make her a formidable character! (The blind prophet is a classic stock character, naturally, and we've had a few short-lived PCs with similar powersets) She's almost impossible to fool, since after all she knows what you're going to do before you do it, and very hard to hit for the same reason. Secrets are easy for her to penetrate, since she sees you revealing them already. She can hide because she knows exactly where you'll look! She has a melee weapon like Daredevil that lets her get around as well as more than hold her own in a fight, a baton that snaps open into a weapon that she can clobber, slice, or stab with at will. Her uncontrolled Precognition goes off whenever the GM wants it to; making it a perfect plot device for stories without making it a potential gamebreaker. Note that she actually is pretty impaired by her disability, which is why it's a drawback - she can't read printed text or what's on a computer screen, for example. If you'd rather just treat her blindness as a complication (and explain that she can do things like drive and read by using human conduits), there's room here to cut down her build. But as everyone's favorite disabled hero Toph shows, there's plenty of room for a character who has partially, but not entirely, overcome her disability thanks to her superpowers. Since she is blind with her powers negated (and suffers the penalty thereto), her PL does drop quite a bit - PL 6.5 offensively (with her baton), PL 5 defensively, but that's still not bad for a blind woman, and will be one heck of a surprise for mooks with power-nullifying gear.

Tou vs 32 http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4186344/ 26 Bruised and Dazed!

Comrade Frost kept the look of approval off his face, not wanting to fill the dragon with shame. "Hmm." He rubbed his chin and peered up at the rocky ceiling, then suggested, "God has died, or is at least sleeping. Let us find Fleur de Joie, and investigate welfare of His people." While he could have dug his own way to freedom, it was far faster to ride with Gaian Knight, so instead he pointed up at the 'cave' floor above their heads and shot an inquiring look at the geokinetic. "I have been in situation before and must be handled with kid gloves. Would be best to give local citizens some surety about fate of Green Man and their own future. Would not do to have them come looking for slayers of divine one in next generation."

CT is up

The two heroes moved onto the attack, focusing for reasons of their own on the easily recognizable Star Knight over the flaming ring-bearer. Casey Jones swung a wild punch at Cavalier, something seeming to slow the veteran hero's reactions long enough to let the spaceborne Star Knight dodge the blow. The same could not be said, however, for Stormchaser, who swarmed in and hammered him with a rapid-fire series of blows that came down like the fists of an angry Fourth-Dimension ratatat. "Just shut up and let me think, damnit!" she yelled at him in an even heavier Southern accent as she landed a blow across his jaw that knocked him back a step. "Ah'm tryin' to think and everyone's jawin' at me!"

Mimic PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 4 + 4 = 16PP STR: 22 [12] (+6/+1) DEX: 22 [12] (+6/+1) CON: 22 [12] (+6/+1) INT: 12 (+1) WIS: 14 (+2) CHA: 14 (+2) Combat: 12 + 12 = 24PP ATK: +6 (+8 Melee, +14 Mimic/Unarmed) DEF: +14 (+8 Dodge Focus, +6 Base, +3 flat-footed) Init: +6/+1 Grapple: +14 Knockback: -3 Saves: 2 + 2 + 6 = 10 pp TOU: +6 (+6 Con) FORT: +8 (+6 Con, +2) REF: +8 (+6 Dex, +2) WILL: +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 56 r=14 pp Acrobatics 6 (+12, SM) Bluff 8 (+10, SM) Concentration 8 (+10) Craft (Chemical) 4 (+5) Knowledge (Life Sciences) 4 (+5) Language 1 (Spanish, Base: English) Medicine 8 (+10, SM) Notice 3 (+5) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 6 (+12, SM) Feats: 20 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 2 Attack Specialization: Unarmed 3 Dodge Focus 8 Evasion Power Attack Second Chance (Concentration checks) Skill Mastery (Acrobatics, Bluff, Medicine, Stealth) Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 34 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 64 pp Mimic 6 (all powers, Extras: Range 2 [Perception], Flaw: Tainted, PFs: Accurate 4) [34PP] Enhanced CON 10 (to CON 22/+6) [10PP] Enhanced DEX 10 (to DEX 22/+6) [10PP] Enhanced STR 10 (to STR 22/+6) [10PP] costs abilities 16 + combat 24 + saves 10 + skills 14/56 + feats 20 + powers 64 = 150 pts ------------------ Design Notes: Mimicking is a power often associated with villains in comics, but plenty of heroes (like the above-pictured Calvin Rankin [who has also been a villain; ah, the multiverse]) have used it as well. It's potentially an _extremely_ powerful ability, one that naturally comes with a high cost. I've chosen to build this fellow with relatively low levels of Mimic; he has 30 PP to spend on the power, and depending on your personal house rules on Variable Powers can't give himself more than 6 ranks of any particular power gained through his skills. He'd better be careful, because he also gets all the drawbacks that go with those powers too! How does he solve his icing problem, indeed. 30 pp may not seem like much, but it's actually quite a lot - it's enough to fly in space, throw fireballs, and otherwise imitate the abilities of other heroes or villains exactly. Most of the Kenson-influenced builds with Variable Powers have very high ranks, but that's generally not actually necessary. I've given him enhanced strength, speed, and durability to reflect powers he's permanently copied; enough that he's a Captain America-level athlete even without his powers. With his broad descriptors, you could easily justify him investing in whatever abilities you want! Remember that he can copy _anything_, but may not understand it - imitating the powers of a villain such as Malador or Omega could get him in hot water fast! (Plus, a lot of those guys are immune to their own powers, so watch out) With his skill, he might be a scientist who got lucky in inventing the ultimate superpowered serum (or maybe he stole it from sinister employers when he realized what they were going to do with it!) Or maybe he's just a particularly powerful mutant who has studied the biological arts to try and understand his own fantastic abilities. You could save points by cutting down on his very broad descriptors - maybe buying more skills and feats, or buying a higher rank of a narrower Mimic!

"Miss Americana? There's somebody attacking the plane!" came an alarmed voice over her radio. "A costumed agent in a mask with a staff. But Caradoc," Archetech employees had certainly seen lots of the armored hero, especially once his secret identity had started 'dating' the boss. "appeared out of nowhere and he's fighting him off!" The vibrations evidently hadn't been bad enough to disturb Gina in her rest aboard said plane, but they had to be close if she was actually getting a distress call. Following close, Dr. Irons offered with concern in his accented voice. "That fella sounds dangerous. We gotta get him out of that plane so we can get Peter and the family where they need to go!" He didn't seem to have noticed Miss A's slip; in fact, in his alarm he seemed to be agreeing with it automatically! The adults in the room behind seemed to agree, but it was tough to tell with the kids, who seemed to be moving around enough to try and keep the beautiful superheroine who'd come to save them in view.