Avenger Assembled

Street God Abilities: 42 pp STR 24 (+7) DEX 16 (+3) CON 30 [24] (+10/+7) INT 12 (+1) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 18 [12] (+4/+1) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+7 melee/+10 Blast) DEF: +7 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +3 Grapple: +17 Saves: 8 pp TOU +13 (+7 Con, +3 Enhanced Con, +3 Protection) FORT +10/+7 (+7 Con, +3 Enhanced Con) REF +7 (+3 Dex, +4) WILL +6 (+2 Wis, +4) Skills: 40 r=10 pp Bluff 4 (+5/+8) Intimidate 9 (+10/+13) Knowledge: Streetwise 4 (+5) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 7 (+10) Feats: 9 pp Attack Focus: Melee Challenge (Fast Startle) Dodge Focus Evasion Move-By Action Power Attack Startle Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 59 pp Device 11 (Divine Hammer) (Hard to Lose) (PF: Restricted [Worthy]) [45 pp] -Divine Array [22+2=24 pp] -Blast 10 (PFs: Accurate 2) 'thrown hammer -AP: Damage 5 (PFs: Improved Crit 2, Knockback 4 (DMG 17), Mighty) and Flight 5 (250 MPH) -AP: Damage 10 (Extras: Selective, Targeted Area [shapeable]; PFs: Indirect 2) 'lightning bolts' -Enhanced Constitution 6 (to 30 [+10]) [6 pp] -Enhanced Feats 5 (Fearless, Interpose, Master Plan 2, Ultimate Save [Toughness]) [5 pp] -Enhanced Skills 16 (Knowledge [History] 4 (+5), Knowledge [Tactics] 4 (+5), Knowledge [Theology and Philosophy] 4 (+5), Languages 4 [Danish, Old Norse, Norwegian, Swedish]) [4 pp] -Enhanced Charisma 6 (to 18 [+4]) [6 pp] -Immunity 3 (aging, disease, poison) [3 pp] -Protection 3 (Extra: Impervious 4) [7 pp] Impervious TOU 6 [6 pp] Leaping 1 (x2) [1 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Strength 3 (Heavy Load: ~3 tons) [6] costs abilities 42 + combat 24 + saves 8 + skills 10/40 + feats 9 + powers 59 = 150 pts -------------- Design Notes: So there you were, a tough, streetwise defender of the common man. While there were plenty of stronger, tougher guys out there, you were the toughest guy on your block: no-selling assault rifles thanks to your iron-tough skin, leaping over cars and running as fast as a motorcycle on your city streets, and fighting well enough to hold your own against lots of common thugs and street-level bad guys alike. Your already-crazy life took a turn for the wild, though, the night you followed a falling star and found a giant hammer sticking out of the ground. When you reached down to pick it up, suddenly you were infused with the mighty power of the ancient gods! Now you defend your people with supernatural strength and power, your command of thunder and lightning, mighty hammer blows, and bulletproof skin making you even more formidable than you once were. But now that you’ve chosen to step up and be something more than the baddest man on the block, you’ve got responsibilities you never could have imagined before. OK, so it’s Luke Cage as the Mighty Thor! (In Freedom City, you’re probably better off picking a different pantheon, given the association between Nazis and the Asgardians; the Egyptian pantheon or the voudon makes a lot of sense given the way magic in the setting works. OTOH, that same association with the Asgardians make a black man wielding the power of the Norse gods all the more awesome!) He’s a balanced PL 7 without the hammer, the sort of man who could be the deadliest man alive in a world of thugs and machine guns: with it he’s a powerful PL 10, throwing his hammer hard enough to blast through walls, summoning the lightning to smite his enemies, or just engaging people in melee with gigantic blows that could knock them across the city! The hammer makes him tougher and more imposing, but it also makes him smarter, infusing him with some of the memories of the hammer’s wielder, giving him visions of a divine world beyond this one, as well as showing him ancient battles that make him a smarter fighter. This would work just fine as a heroic PC here once you figure out what pantheon has empowered him, or maybe as a street-level enemy jacked up on divine power and thus a serious threat to the PL 7 PCs that used to be his major opponents. His divine abilities are pretty generic as written; you can pump them up easily enough with earned PP, it all depends on what sort of divine being you decide he is representing. As it is, his hammer is a hard to lose device: if you made it easy to lose, meaning he could have it wrenched out of his hand and lose its abilities, you could get a lot of points back to improve his native abilities or make the hammer itself more awesome. I didn’t give him a normal ID drawback since he’s got powers in his normal form, but if you make him, say, an iron-fisted martial artist, maybe you could make him just a normal guy (if a badass one) in his natural identity. On the other side of things, if you want to improve his natural abilities at the expense of the hammer, you could easily make this a more super man with a hammer...

Murdock had nothing to add now that they'd 'sealed the deal,' he was not one to make promises for the future when they were not requested, nor was he one to praise himself and his deeds. If it was necessary for him to understand the work beyond its utility for defeating any further incursions by the Terminus, he would be told as much. He was curious why Wander had not hired any of her former allies, but he supposed he would learn that fact with time. "It has been a very busy summer," he finally commented when their meal was nearly done. "I hope that we shall have more peaceful times now."

Murdock listened carefully, comparing what Erin was saying to what he had heard from his various life skills classes taught through the Freedom League. "That would mean considerably more time and income than I have now. The work sounds rewarding." He ate even as he spoke, obviously not one to miss a scrap of food. For a moment, she thought he wasn't going to say anything else before he added, "Yes. I will accept the work that you have offered me. With the permission, of course, of your employer. I would like to be hired by her for my own abilities."

"A job? As a guard?" Murdock cocked his head, looking curiously at Wander. "I am familiar with Dragonfly. She is a colleague of a friend of mine. She is aware even of my true nature. She is unlikely to work with me in a desire to learn about the technology of the Terminus." He blinked. "I was not aware she thought it likely she would face significant superhuman opposition." He was silent for a moment. "I have enjoyed my months at Champions. I have done honest work and worked alongside other free men and women. But I have recently begun to understand that it was a step on the road of my life, not an end to its journey. What rewards would there be for this work?"

Unbidden, Murdock's mind went back to his conversation with Fulcrum, and how differently she had understood the talk that he had given to Wander. "To gaze into the Terminus is to gaze into the face of Death, terrible and ever-lasting. Even those who have survived many Earthly horrors can rarely comprehend it. I can describe Nihilor to anyone. I have done so again and again, for heroes and scholars interested in what lies inside the Terminus. But there are few who could hear my words and understand them, as you did. To stand with you, even when I was not there, is...good." He nodded at that, seeming satisfied with what he'd said. That she was so much younger than he was was no issue: the fires of the Terminus had forged them both into what they were. "The work continues. I have been engaged," he confessed, "in the education of a small group of young people who were taken and altered as I was. The League has been educating them at their polar base, but I believe they will be free to leave there in a few years. They are regaining the lives that were taken from them. Your former classmate Prometheus is among them."

Murdock missed the implication of her response, delighted as he was to have both the food and at the images in his mind. Yes, whatever had befallen the Terminus, the absence of Omega and the Physician was a positive good. Indeed, the distraction that must have imposed on Steelgrave and the others who commanded the swarms of drones made it far more likely that Mona Teymourian had (for the moment) survived her incursion there. "This is a good day. And a good year for all life," he said decisively. "I would have sought you out before the cosmic incursion this month, but I was occupied. My...nature meant I could only be in certain places as the fatal day came." He studied Erin, then said, "I am grateful for the chance to discuss that with you. But it is not why you called me here."

He stared at her. "Do...do you think it means nothing?" he asked, something like hastily suppressed shock on his face as he tried to avoid attracting attention. "Erin, do you know all the suffering you and your allies ended that day? By destroying the Physician alone, you saved tens of millions from a thousand torments you cannot possibly imagine: even if his Nightmare Nurses should pull him from the Rebirthing Vaults again, he will be occupied with rebuilding his position and not with maintaining his Hospice, and even reconstituting him for that will take time, every instant of which will be another prisoner freed. And with Omega's body destroyed and his armor gone, his lieutenants will have to wait for his return rather than simply summoning him again. They will fight amongst themselves at that, cosmic jackals that they are, and their wars against each other will mean that the nest of virus-vultures that is the Terminus will be consuming itself rather than consuming uncounted billions of lives." He fell silent, looking a little embarrassed for his outburst, then added, "The news will have been spread on Nihilor, as it was after your Centurion's defeat of Omega twenty years ago. You and yours will have brought joy to the Black Ghetto of Nihilor, Erin White. Few beings can claim such an honor."

Murdock closed his eyes for a moment, thinking about what she must have been seeing. "Yes. He would have intended to burn through to the planet's core and from there pull it and all else in that universe into the Coil. Omega can survive the destruction of a planet and the fires of the Coil. Few others can." He was silent, thinking about all the heroic last stands, the final last-ditch charges by rag-tag teams of champions, that he had seen brutally and hopelessly defeated. That he himself had helped defeat. But that hadn't happened this time. "And you destroyed his corporeal form with the cosmic channeling rods from the Warper Bombs?" asked Murdock intently, hands steepled in front of his face as he studied her. "Yes. Yes, those would have destroyed his ability to manifest. He would have been forcibly expelled from that reality and all others. And it would have kept him from rallying to destroy all of you." He was silent for a moment, and then, almost unhappily, "It is likely he will be able to recover."

"I am well," replied Murdock in the same flat tone he'd have discussed a triumph or a disaster. "I was fortunate to retain my employment during my absence in the last month. I had feared that being on the evacuation list would anger my fellow workers." He had not actually gone to Sanctuary, but he wasn't comfortable discussing the former Omegadrones, and the battle in Antarctica, that had been his experience of the incursion of Cosmic Entity 31966. "I observed your encounter with the Asgardian entity on the news. Your team handled that incident with success." He stared at her, something clearly on his mind, indeed, one of the major reasons he'd agreed to the meeting at all, before he finally said, "Describe your battle with Omega to me. Please."

"No." Murdock paused, almost visibly sorting out what you were supposed to say in social situations. "I thought it would be more polite to wait until you had arrived." He studied the menu. "I have heard that the food here is of a good quality." Sure enough, the waitress came by almost immediately now that both of them were there, giving Erin just enough time to decide what she wanted. Harrier wound up ordering the appetizer sampler, splitting the difference between his desire not to impose on others financially and his desire to get a lot of food to eat.

October 14, 2011 Madden's was normally outside of Murdock's price range except for special occasions. He'd studied the marketing strategies of places like this while working at Champions (which had a very similar style, save they used superheroic garb rather than football and sports to distinguish themselves) and had a pretty good idea of why that was. The "family-friendly sports eatery" priced its huge meals and mighty appetizers with the idea that groups would eat there, and the ever-solitary Murdock had no such option. But this afternoon he had no such obstacles, and so he sat at a reserved booth, peering into the menu adorned with triumphant-looking sports figures, while he waited for his dinner companion to arrive. He had arrived early, as was his wont, and had luckily managed to secure a table far from the crowd near the big screen television. It helped that with his slightly off-putting presence and laconic manner, few people would want to sit near him if they could afford it otherwise. He was on his third glass of water.

Early October, 2011 Harrier and Wander meet and greet about a potential new job

So where's he headed, JP? All right, so now that Nichtuberall is powered up, what's next on the agenda?

Psionic Vampire Abilities: 0 pp STR 24 [10] (+7/+0) DEX 20 [10] (+5/+0) CON - INT 12 (+1) WIS 12 (+1) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 16 pp ATK: +4 (+7 melee/+10 psychic powers) DEF: +7 (+3 Dodge, +2 flat-footed) Grapple: +14/+20 Init: +5 Saving Throws: 6 pp TOU: +13 (+7 Protection, +6 Force Field) FORT: - REF: +5 (+5 Dex) WILL: +7 (+1 Wis, +6) Skills: 32 r=8 pp Bluff 7 (+10) Concentration 4 (+5) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 4 (+5) Knowledge (History) 4 (+5) Notice 4 (+5) Sense Motive 4 (+5) Stealth 5 (+10) Feats: 8 pp Attack Focus: Melee 3 Dodge Focus 3 Fascinate (Bluff) Second Chance (Concentration checks to maintain powers) Powers: 115 pp Psionic Powers Container 9 (Extra: Duration [sustained]) [45 pp] Enhanced Feat 1 (Ultimate Save [Will]) [1] Flight 2 (25 MPH) (PF: Move-By Action) [5] Force Field 6 (Extra: Impervious 4) [10] Psionic Array [23+6=29] Concealment 10 (all senses) (Extra: Affects Others; Flaw: Phantasm; PFs: Progression 2 [5], Selective) 'psychic invisibility' AP: Damage 10 (Extra Ranged; PFs: Accurate 3) 'TK blast' AP: Emotion Control 10 (PFs: Insidious, Selective, Subtle) AP: ESP 6 (visual and auditory senses) (PFs: Rapid 4 [x1000], Subtle) AP: Mind Reading 10 (Extras: Area [burst], Selective; Flaw: Duration [instant/Lasting]) (PFs: Insidious, Rapid, Subtle) AP: Mind Control 10 (PFs: Insidious, Mental Link, Subtle) AP: Move Object 10 (Heavy Load: 12 tons) (PFs: Accurate 3) Vampiric Physiology Container 14 (Extra: Duration [Permanent]) [70 pp] Drain Con 2 (Flaw: Requires Grapple) [1] Enhanced DEX 10 [10] Enhanced STR 14 [14] Immunity 30 (Fortitude saves) [30] Impervious TOU 6 (Flaw: Not Vs. Magic/Silver/Holy) [3] Protection 7 [7] Regeneration 6 (Recovery Bonus +0, Resurrection 1/week) (Flaw: Source [blood]) [3] Super-Senses 2 (Darkvision) [2] Drawbacks: -3 pp Weakness (repelled by crosses; stunned by holy symbols via Charisma check) (-3 pp) Abilities 0 + Skills 8 + Feats 8 + Powers 115 + Combat 16 + Saves 6 -Drawbacks 3= Total 150 ------------------------- Design Notes: Once there was a super-team, a gritty street-level group of outsiders who handled the crimes the law couldn’t touch and the supervillains who slipped below the radar of the big superteams. Finally, a few years ago, they fought their last great battle against a powerful vampire who was in the process of building an army of vampire slaves in their home city. They died in that fight, destroying the vampire lord at the cost of their own lives. But there was one survivor of that battle all the same, the team psychic who recovered from multiple vampire bites thanks to her innate strength of will: she was, however, much changed. Yes, here’s a build for a psychic vampire, modeled on DC’s Looker. (Hence the picture). The combination of psychic powers and vampiric physiology makes her extremely dangerous: she’s fast, she’s strong, and she’s also extremely good at using her powers to fool and manipulate people. She can fly around invisibly, blast people with Telekinesis or throw them around, read the minds of her opponents [using Shaen’s Mind Reading structure], and mentally scan an entire area. She can take much more punishment than most vampires with her Force Field up, and between that and her undead nature she can take much more punishment than your typical frail comic book psychic. She doesn’t have particularly high skills or saves for a psychic, but then again she has her own ways of dealing with people fighting her “on her own level.” Without her psychic powers, she’s a nice normal PL 7 vampire. Without her vampiric physiology, she’s a nice straightforward PL 7 psychic. (Note that if you recast her psychic abilities as perception range and assume a former Con of 12 (+1), she functions just fine as a PL 7 psychic if you want to do any flashbacks). Note that I did not give her a sunlight-related drawback. While that makes sense for device-based vampires, I think it works less for people who are using their own abilities to protect themselves against sunlight. Borrowing a concept from the Looker writeup, my general take is that she uses a invisible telekinetic force field, one that’s active even when she’s not paying attention, to screen herself from the sun’s rays. That way, if you do want to hit her with a psychic nullifier while she’s walking around at high noon and she has to duck into shadows to avoid being incinerated, she gets an HP for it, an HP she would probably really like to have at that juncture! She could use more vampiric weaknesses if you want to go for more points, as it is her force field and other psychic powers help shield her from the worst effects of things like holy weapons and fire, though being confronted with actual symbols of the divine is still a serious threat to her undead nature. If you don’t like the ‘transformed superhero’ angle, this could just as easily be a vampire who has cultivated the psychic abilities of some of her kind at the expense of the more overtly physical stuff. Perhaps it was learning to read minds reliably that reawakened her humanity, teaching her that her prey had thoughts and feelings just as she did, and that the inner nature of her fellow predators was too inhumane to bear on closer inspection. Obviously, if used as a bad guy, this character would be an extremely serious threat, capable of manipulating large numbers of people in order to feed on their delicious blood!

The angel of Freedom continued his work as he fell among the armed thugs, sweeping his way through them like the wrath of an angry god. His flaming sword cut through the heavy rifle one carried like cutting through the air, then he reversed the blade and smashed it, pommel-first, directly into the gunman's face, then on the backswing he brought the blade around and struck down the armed soldier behind him, taking down the gunman before he could shoot the angel in the back. "All you are doing is ensuring your defeat will come with shame and pain! End your struggles now and go to honorable jail!"

"That is true," confessed Caradoc. "But if the mechanoids could feel and think, then taking one's head as a trophy would have been an abomination, and not an act worthy of a superhero or of a human being." Harrier knew that much, anyway! "As for their maker, if he is angered enough to concentrate his attacks on me, that will free you and Ironclad, who understand science and technology better than I, to disable whatever terrible machines he has as his guards and to undo whatever damage he has done to the fission reactor. I am a knight of Camelot! I am no technician. My greatest service can be to absorb his blasts and blows while you do your work. If I enrage him in the same deed, then he has met the fate he deserves."

Freedom Angel is going to continue goon-sweeping, starting on 11 SWAT 3 -- Uninjured -- Minion and working his way down the minion initiative order. He'll Power Attack for +4 and take 10, so he'll hit all the minions automatically. That'll be a DC 29 Tou save for as many as he can hit with Takedown Attack.

Did you want to handle describing the interior, Doc?

"I'm tired of this," said Edge as he glared up at the writhing god at the end of Midnight's rope, Donar looking as though he was in the process of tearing his way free any second despite the sound beating he was taking. "I'm tired of your stupid religion, I'm tired of your stupid pantheon, and I'm tired of you constantly coming down to this planet and starting this crap! We have outgrown you! We have outgrown you, and your stupid wars, and everything else about you, you petty fascist in god's clothing. I don't care if you're just the German aspect of a real Norse god. GO AWAY!" And with his words, a giant rockspire erupted from the ground and cracked across Donar's back, bending the god double with a howl. "LEAVE!" Badly hurt, the god began to fall, just catching himself before he crashed to Earth.

Move Action: DC 25 Bluff vs. Sense Motive 27 Welp, should have rolled after all! (Since he's no longer demoralized; though he is entangled, prone, and bruised!) Standard Action: Blasting him: Power Attacking for 5, that hits Dazed and staggered, what a country Ace is up

"Yes. Yes, we shall talk." Murdock wasn't at all sure he'd communicated anything worthwhile to Archeville, but frankly he wasn't sure about how most conversations he'd been part of had actually turned out. He'd told the truth and done all he could to help. In Freedom City, surely that would be adequate. "Good day, Viktor Archeville." As the cell door closed behind him, Harrier let out a soft sigh. Was it so much to hope that all he had learned, that all that had happened to him, could help another? Or perhaps he had simply distracted Archeville from his own guilt with learning of an even stranger case. At least I gave him something more exciting than his own pain, thought the former drone ruefully. There is a world more exciting than the one inside his cell.

Murdock was silent for a moment, sensing that perhaps he had opened up a little too much. Finally deciding that honesty was truer, more humane than simply changing the subject, he said, "I tell you this because as you have opened with me, I shall open with you. There is a future out there for you, Viktor Archeville, whatever crimes you have committed. I have reason to know this better than anyone." Whatever deeds Viktor Archeville had committed, whatever tortures had been done in his name, he knew the blood on his own hands in green and grey and so much red stained far deeper than anything on the German scientist's. Archeville was still looking at him. "Well. I think we have had a productive talk, Viktor. I will send send you pictures of Fulcrum's kitty. Shall we converse later?"

For his own part, Caradoc found himself wool-gathering, or at least as much as he ever let himself do when he wasn't keeping a close eye out on the situation all around them. After all, he was no scientist to understand the offer of employment, and honestly he understood little enough about the relationship between parent and child on this world that both Bishop and Miss Americana had made sense to him. He remembered his own mother well enough, but her desperate efforts to keep their family alive in the Black Ghetto of Nihilor were so very far away now, especially in this place where the greatest hazard was to Miss Americana's dignity. He stayed quiet in the background, with a presence that would have been vaguely unsettling if not for Melvin's concentration on Miss Americana and Bishop. They took Melvin out past Principal Werthers, where the boy's profound (though perhaps a touch insincere, as most children's would have been under the circumstances) apologies were enough to get them all out of the school and past a cheering crowd of students for the flight over to Melvin's mother's place. The Thackerys turned out to live in a single-family dwelling, a rarity in the heavily-urbanized Fens, with the large scrapyard across the street perhaps a clue why the real estate prices were low in the neighborhood. The Thackery house, a small prefab place, was locked tight at their approach, bars on the windows with shutters closed, but Melvin was sure his mom was home.

Tripped and knocked back!

With the nanites in tow, they made their way out of the Gorgon and to the surface, where in a twinkling of Supercape's eye they reached the secret fortress of Dr. Viktor Archeville: Nichtuberall. The asteroid base looked like any other stony-iron asteroid tumbling through the void, but then, what else would a secret asteroid base look like? For all that most of the geeks there had grown up with an appreciation for Star Wars, the depths of interplanetary space were a yawning gulf even here in the very heart of the asteroid belt: there were only a few other asteroids visible for those among the heroic number with the keenest long-distance vision. They were very, very far from any other human beings. One lifeform was still visible, though. Even at a billion and more miles distance, the Gorgon was just large enough to be a disk in the sky. If you stared long enough, you could even see it grow.