Avenger Assembled

Sharl did just as Miss A said, not even bothering with the switches: sticking his hand in the row of police scanners in Archetech quickly gave them the confused reports coming out of the civilian and military police there about a "Code 11961," an earthquake, and someone attacking Star Island! Given that a Code 11961 referred to a "Large Unknown Creature-Underground Subtype", it wasn't hard to put two and two together and realize what was going on. Sure enough, her live satellite feed confirmed their fears. The island that Miss Americana and Sharl had last visited together while it was overrun by a mind-controlling alien's minions was now a scene of wild melee again as a huge shiny black insect, easily twice as big as the light tanks scrambling on the other side of the island, was sliding back into a tremendous sinkhole in the middle of the parking lot next to Dr. Rao's building, which was damaged on one side as if a giant limb had punched in the window!

November 3, 2011 The Liberty League deals with neo-Nazis.

November 3, 2011 Somewhere in the Wharton State Forest Mark Lucas hated Nazis, which made it all the more awkward to be here in the middle of a growing crowd of them. His long-sleeved "Don't Tread On Me" T-shirt hid his lack of white supremacist tattoos, but his blonde hair cut very short let him look very much like an Aryan poster boy. This was not really reassuring to Mark, but this was the sort of thing you did when you took up the legacy of the greatest Nazi fighters in the world. He tried to remember his conversation with Cannonade that had brought them all there: Greta Ratner, aka the Aryan Angel, or as his UNISON file had described her "Britney Spears meets Eva Braun" was one of the most famous neo-Nazis in the country: there weren't many beautiful blonde eighteen-year-olds willing to shake their booty in the name of racial purity. But Greta had, through her own channels, approached Cannonade (the very face of skinhead superheroes) and asked for help: she was worried that her latest concert was going to be attacked by her many enemies, and that meant she needed a superhero to help. Of course it was a trap. You couldn't trust Nazis, even if they were hot blondes from the Midwest. Which meant instead of just one hero, the Liberty League was out in force! Even if Cannonade would be the only one the Nazis would be able to see in uniform. Hmming, sipping his Coke, Mark walked around the gathering crowd, looking for familiar faces.

November 4, 2011 Friday afternoon Since he didn't need to take the elevator after Mr. Summers had given him a partial systems key, Sharl popped right down to the underground entrance to the Doom Room when he got his instructions for an afternoon's training with two of his teammembers. He was a little antsy, both because it was Friday after lunch and because he was looking forward to the weekend, and because he was interested in doing training besides combat! Being a hologram inside someone else's simulation was a strange experience, especially since his powers functioned so differently while inside a computer system: he could either lug around a projector that sometimes went on the fritz while inside other projectors, or he could fight like a flying tank and not learn anything helpful about how to work alongside his solid teammates in the 'real world'. For this mission, it seemed they'd fixed the issue with his systems, or at least it wasn't going to be an issue. Instead, he flitted back and forth, peeking at the Next-Gen trophies on the wall, while he waited for Corbin and Koshiro to arrive.

November 4, 2011 Papercut, Citizen, and Cobalt Templar debate the morality of a gritty, realistic, real-world situation: namely a planet where APES evolved from MEN!

November 5, 2011 Hanover The fifth of November was a holiday in some cultures and a Saturday in Freedom City in 2011, which meant Sharl had the day off. For once, that meant he wasn't stuck on campus training or on restriction: he got to go visit his mentor Miss Americana at Archetech, her brand-new digs! (And Gina at her house, but of course he hadn't gone there yet today!) There was plenty to do around the Lab while Miss A teleconferenced with Dr. Ayesha Rao, a colleague of hers who worked at the ASTRO Labs facility out at Star Island. Dr. Rao was working on Prospector, a robot designed to dig under the Martian ice caps and permafrost for possible signs of life, which made her a valued colleague for Miss Americana's work in artificial limbs and long-distance computer control of said digits. Sharl had spent a lot of time exploring the new building in the guise of helping Miss Americana, and had obviously been very impressed. It was evening, and the adults were getting ready to turn in for the evening. Dr. Rao was even brushing her hair while she and Miss A wrapped up a conversation about control wave transmission through soil, having explained somewhat awkwardly that she had a date that evening, one who was coming to pick her up straight from work. With her thick glasses and heavy-set frame, the doctor probably didn't get a whole lot of dates. "So if I think we pick this up on Monday, Miss Americana, I should have a working model to demonstrate for you. If you can adapt the control surfaces, it..." Sharl glanced over from the computer where he was working as the image of Dr. Rao seemed to vibrate: it took him a moment to realize what Miss A already had; the vibration was no signal artifact but was actually happening! There was noise outside at Star Island, people shouting and gunfire from the military guards. Startled, Rao rose and looked out the window of her lab. "What in the name of...Oh my God!" she exclaimed, turning wide-eyed to the screen before suddenly another vibration, bigger this time, shook the whole room and the transmission went black!

Early November Gaian Knight, Miss Americana, and Citizen go underground to break up a royal wedding!

Ugh, sorry for the delay here, Bishop. (Electra and I have been preparing for, then taking, a cross-country car trip). What you're asking for is fine. Melvin will be more than willing to be teleported; he's a smart kid.

A secret: A good grapple gun needs: Super-Movement 3 (Slow Fall, Swinging, Wall-Crawling) [6 pp] That lets you stop a fall, swing on a line, or winch yourself up like Adam West.

All right, this is a great improvement over your previous character attempts. APPROVED

The country's name is Rwanda. His stats don't go in spoiler tags. Sneak Attack 4 is a waste of points, Sneak Attack is only useful at the first rank. He has no need for the Drawback, and it doesn't work mechanically for NPCs since he has no HP to spend to cancel the fatigue.

I like this idea a lot, but I think it needs to be tied more closely to the Terminus. In particular, Providence is almost certainly an Annihilist, knowingly or otherwise.

Given how the setting works, Providence is almost certainly an Annihilist, whether he knows it or not.

Please note where he has Skill Mastery.

Autofire 2 is no longer legal under our house rules.

Put her Leaping distance and Speed time in, please.

Fix the HTML, please. Why the high saves?

She's got some wasted points with 14 ranks of Autofire 1. Is that deliberate?

Would you mind fixing up the HTML here?

Electra and I will be traveling extensively over the next two weeks (and not together, either!) While we'll have access almost all the time, our posting times and access will be unpredictable.

A wartime picture

"It's the perfect place," said Sharl, ticking points off on his fingers. "You have a reputation as a troublemaker, so teachers will buy that you come here to get centered, plus there's the ethnocultural thing which will help with idiots, Indira's known to be religious, and I'm a laptop somebody forgot under the bench." He grinned a little, then added seriously, "I know it's too early for us to go out yet, but we'd be crazy to go out into the city without making some kind of plan. Now, I've been to several different areas around the city with Miss A, so I've got a pretty good grasp of local geography." As he talked, little maps showing the Fens, Lincoln, and the Waterfront popped up on the screen around his talking head. "These are the three most promising areas for, uh, adventuring I've found. I did some checking, and we want to avoid Greenbank. There are a surprising number of tech-savvy people there, and the last thing we want to do is trigger a supervillain alarm or something."

Famine Abilities: 22 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 10 (+0) CON 24 (+7) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 14 pp ATK: +3 (+5 Swarm) DEF: +5 (+2 flat-footed) Init: +4 Grapple: +3/+20 Saves: 13 pp TOU +15 (+7 Con, +8 Protection) FORT +7 (+7 Con) REF +5 (+0 Ref, +5) WILL +10 (+2 Wis, +8) Skills: 13 pp=52 r Concentration 13 (+15) Intimidate 12 (+14) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 10 (+10) Language 1 (Swahili) (Base: English) Medicine 8 (+10) Notice 3 (+5) Sense Motive 3 (+5) Feats: 11 pp All-Out Attack Dodge Focus Fearless Improved Initiative Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Precise Shot Startle Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 79 pp Flight 1 (10 MPH) [2 pp] Immunity 10 (aging, anything consumed, critical hits, disease, poison) [10 pp] Insubstantial 2 (swarm form) [10 pp] Obscure 1 (5 feet) (all senses) (Extra: Selective; Flaw: Range [Touch]) [4 pp] 'swarm' Protection 8 [8 pp] Regeneration 1 (Resurrection 1/week) (PFs: Persistent, Regrowth) [3 pp] Super-Senses 7 (Acute Scent, Darkvision, Radius Sight, Tremorsense) [7 pp] Swarm Array [32+3=35 pp] Damage 10 (Extras: Area [shapeable], Selective; PFs: Progression on Area 2) ‘famine’ AP: Damage 15 (Extra: Ranged; PFs: Accurate, Precise) ‘swarmblast’ AP: ESP 6 (20 miles) (all senses) (Extra: Simultaneous; PFs: Rapid (x10), Subtle) ‘ten billion eyes’ AP: Move Object 15 (Heavy Load: 180 tons) (Extra: Affects Corporeal; Flaw: Feedback; PFs: Accurate, Precise) ‘swarmgrapple’ costs abilities 22+ combat 14 + saves 13 + skills 13/52 + feats 9 + powers 79= 150 pts -------------- Design Notes: Here’s Famine, the rider on the black horse, as a PL 10 starting character. My idea is that he’s a living swarm of mystic locusts (note that actual locusts are no more dangerous to people than any other grasshoppers, i.e., the only real risk is getting buried under or blinded by them) with the abilities you’d expect: he can scour an area of living and unliving matter or target his swarm to lift heavy objects (requiring enough focus that he can be attacked through them) or simply rip them apart with a billion tiny pincers. He’s also partially obscured by the billions of insects surrounding him, making it tougher to target him with attacks, and can send out smaller swarms to scout the surrounding area. Since so much of him is made up of bugs, and he always has a few around him, he’s very difficult to sneak up on. He’s got no Impervious, but with Insubstantial 2 he can take just about any one-on-one physical punishment that can be dished out on him. His only real weakness is area attacks (which destroy millions of insects at once) as well as energy attacks that do the same thing; that said, with his massive toughness he’s going to take a lot of those okay. He can eat _anything_, and is fully capable of devouring a nuclear bomb, payload and all, or chemical waste and any other poison heroes might try throwing at him to try and slow him down. (Though a nuke will hurt him as much as it wold any other character). He can’t be permanently killed, however, since my assumption is that at least one locust always escapes to reconstitute the swarm. Locusts are an embodiment of famine across many cultures, that swarm from the skies having spelled doom for millions over the centuries. I’ve gone with the idea that this fellow was once a missionary doctor working in Africa before being forcibly transformed into an embodiment of everything he’d spent his life fighting. (Ah, angst!) The most famous Horsemen of the Apocalypse in superhero comics are those mutants kidnapped and altered by Apocalypse in the Marvel universe; Angel the most famous in the core universe, Wolverine from some terrible What Ifs, and Thunderbird from the excellent Exiles. In Freedom City, things are different; Mastermind, the local Apocalypse expy, doesn’t use a lot of religious imagery in his work. So how do you explain this guy? Well, maybe he was caught by some local warlords (or multinational mercenaries) while investigating the source of illegal dumping and was fed to some radioactive locusts, only to have his mind dominate theirs and embody the swarm itself: or maybe he was a victim of a foolish deal with Mr. Infamy. “Sign on the dotted line, and superheroes will be able to fight famine directly. Don’t worry, you’ll get power out of the deal too!” In any event, he had the self-will to not be a monster and instead to use his new powers for good! It’s up to you whether or not he’s always a swarm of insects; if he’s scientifically based, it probably makes more sense to have him like Marvel’s Swarm and forever be a man of bugs; if he’s mystically based, it makes more sense to have him able to turn off the all-devouring insects all around him. (Yes, I know, it’s a little weird to get into what’s believable when you’re talking about a guy made of locusts, but bear with me.) Note that he is quite deliberately not immune to starvation; he’s got to eat something. He’s pretty slow in the air, since locusts aren’t terribly fast fliers. His immunity is a reskinned version of Matter Eater. I would rule that he does need the Feedback flaw on that Move Object to afford it as written, since he needs Affects Corporeal to have any effective STR with Insubstantial 2. If you’re interested in building a team of four, my Death and Doc’s Pestilence will serve you pretty well. As for War, well, watch this space in the future!

"The Crime League attacked," said Citizen, sounding scared even through the armor as he helped Miss Americana set the ball down in a safe spot where it wouldn't roll onto the citizenry below. "Blackstar, Hiroshima Shadow, and Dr. Stratos. We caught Blackstar, and chased off Hiroshima Shadow, but..." He leaned close to Miss Americana and whispered as much as his mechanical body allowed. "Stratos took out the computer systems with an EMP charge. I just managed to jump into the suit. When we fought with him, he seemed to recognize us. All of us. And in the end, in the end it wasn't Stratos! It was a Curator drone!"

Nice job! OK: Bishop: 23 (1 HP) Caradoc: 21 (3 HP) Robot C: 18 Miss Americana: 16 (5 HP) Robot A: 16 Robot D: 16 Robot B: 12 Bishop is up.