Avenger Assembled

July 15, 2011 Freedom Hall While this was Dragonfly's first visit to Freedom Hall, Miss Americana had some familiarity here thanks to her work with the League's computers, particularly early in her career with Sharl. This particular visit, in response to an urgent summons by Star Knight, was more efficient than Miss A's earliest visits: once she and Dragonfly arrived from the Lab at the front doors of the centerpiece of Freedom City's heroic legacy, they were quickly whisked away by League staff to the elevators that took them up to one of the secure briefing rooms. In there, Star Knight II, the battlesuit-wearing heroine widely believed to be the daughter of the first Star Knight back in the 1960s, was waiting for them, along with a figure familiar to Miss A if not to her young associate. "Miss Americana. Dragonfly." Harrier was looking more relaxed than the last time Miss A had seen him, though with Harrier you never quite got completely relaxed. His grip was firm in hers and Dragonfly's as he shook his hands, his eyes steady even as his voice stayed in its usual low, nearly mechanical monotone. For Dragonfly, who hadn't seen the man before, Harrier was something of a mystery: his skin bearing a pattern of nearly organic lines over every inch of his exposed flesh, even on his bald head and one through his eyes, his grip solid and flesh a little clammy when he shook her hand. "We have not met before. I am Murdock." "I'm glad you all could make it," said Star Knight, sounding a little fatigued. "Forgive me," she said as she began tapping at the controls of the big plasma-v screen on the wall, pulling up an image of Earth's Moon. "I've been in space most of the last 72 hours and I'm close to crashing. But the needs of the planet come first, and that's where all of you come in. Do any of you have experience operating on Earth's Moon?" "...Yes," replied Murdock, not quite looking at any of the humans there.

"That's actually really reassuring," said Mark, who did indeed look like he'd relaxed under Supercape's tutelage. "I don't have a lot of chances to talk about this with my friends at school, because they wouldn't really understand. Some of them have a lot worse problems, some of them a lot less, but none are quite as personal as mine. They don't worry about becoming bad guys. At least, not in the same way. What's chaos theory?" Mark asked, who'd always done well at math, though nowadays he was smart enough to know that was a result of him getting lucky at test time.

"I'm going to have some kind of civilian job and be a professional superhero," said Sharl. "Where I'm from really needs heroes, and there aren't a lot of other alternatives if we don't let a lot of hackers in. The 'Net has to have some standards," he lied, getting used to telling this kind of story about himself. "I'll probably find work as a writer," he said, "blogging or being a journalist, maybe. I dunno. Before I started working for Miss A, I used to spend a lot of time hunting through message boards, usually looking for aliens and things. Who knew there was all this to see?" he asked, making a nervous little gesture to take in the whole lab.

Upstairs in the Lab, Sharl was pensive. His farewell to his parents had been a stressful occasion, for all that they'd accepted his plans for the future without any serious reservations beyond worrying about his safety. That his parents believed in him was reassuring, that they acknowledged without much argument the need for him to go almost impossibly far away raised his fears in his secret heart. This wasn't youthful hijinks or alien-chasing like he'd done when he was younger; this wasn't even just adventuring and heroing alongside Miss Americana and Gina when they were fighting bad guys. He was here to help save his people, his family, and his city from failing systems and declining hardware, not to mention a world that mostly saw them as nothing but computerized phantoms. And that duty came whatever the personal cost, all because he'd dared go further and faster than his friends. He was in a copy of the t-shirt and slacks that most kids in Freedom City wore, his costume and Tronik gear stowed in his pack for when he'd need them; its weight real enough to him but just another projected hologram to anyone else. As for this, leaving Gina (and Miss Americana) and going out into the world was a stressful thought: he'd always been with her when he'd gone any further than Freedom City, and even then they'd usually stuck together. Living on a new system, even one mostly built with Miss A's guidance, was almost like leaving home all over again. "I'll stay in touch on IR as much as I can," he was promising her, "and I can pop into your system whenever you need me. Once we're done with this, uh, school trip," he said, "I'll be back in the city." It was pretty obvious, even to Sharl he was reassuring himself much more than he was Gina, who after all was much smarter than he was and who had already planned all this out well in advance. He shifted his emitter from hand to hand, his advanced program keeping him from rolling around.

"The cosmic bomb must be destroyed," said the injured Furion carefully as he watched and guided the teens in their work. "That much is certain. To save this dimension, it will be necessary to destroy most of what remains of Freedom City," said Red Falcon frankly. "If the towers are made to fall and the gateways inside them destroyed, the forces of the Terminus will be forced into retreat. By the time they return, this world will have drifted and no longer be the keystone of this axis. I had planned to use Redbird's city-busting weapons to do so, but with her damage..." "Redbird capable of destruction," said the bike a little defensively. "But not at full maximum without antimatter infusion." "I can destroy a city," said Edge, not quite looking at the others. "I know how tough Terminus metal is," he added, twisting a smartsteel wretch in his hands back and forth nervily, "But...yeah, yeah, I can destroy something the size of Freedom City." It was a bald statement from the reality warper, but it certainly fit what the others had seen of Mark's tremendous capabilities. "Like I did back on Anti-Earth, but on a bigger scale. If we can stop the bomb first, and destroy the Omegadrones and whatever else is guarding it, I can take the city itself out."

Here's a build for Fusion with her new powerset PL: 12 (176) Abilities: 28 pp STR 14 (+2) DEX 14 (+2) CON 18 (+4) INT 14 (+2) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Ranged) DEF: +10 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +3 Grapple: +8/+28 w/TK Saves: 14 pp TOU +14 (+4 Con, +10 Protection) FORT +7 (+3 Con, +4) REF +7 (+2 Dex, +4) WILL +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 16 pp=64 r Bluff 8 (+10) Concentration 8 (+10) Diplomacy 3 (+5) Gather Info 8 (+10) Intimidate 17 (+19) Knowledge: Pop Culture 3 (+5) Language 1 (Japanese) (Base: English) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 20 pp Attack Focus: Ranged (4) Challenge 1 (Fast Startle) Dodge Focus (4) Environmental Adaptation (Underwater) Fearless Move-By Action Luck Precise Shot Skill Mastery (Gather Info, Intimidate, Notice, Sense Motive) Startle Power Attack Ultimate Save (Will) Uncanny Dodge (tactile) Well-Informed Powers: 76 pp Psionic Fire Array [28+4=74 pp] Move Object 14 (Heavy Load: 200 tons) (Extra: Damaging) (Flaw: Feedback) ‘flaming tentacles’ AP: Damage 14 (Extra: Ranged) ‘fires of rage’ AP: Damage 12 (Extra: Area [shapeable]) (PFs: Reverse Progression on Area [4]) ‘tentacle strike’ AP: Dazzle 14 (visual) ‘ink’d!’ AP: Fire Control 14 Enhanced Feat 2 (Quick Change 2) [2 pp] Flight 3 (50 MPH) [6 pp] Immunity 9 (Life Support) [9 pp] Impervious TOU 12 [12 pp] Protection 10 [10 pp] Space Travel 1 (1c) [1 pp] Super-Senses 2 (Tremorsense) [2 pp] cost abilities 28 + combat 24 + saves 14 + skills 16/64 + feats 20 + powers 76 = 176 pts

Mad Scientist PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 32 pp STR 14 (+2) DEX 16 (+3) CON 16 (+3) INT 16 (+3) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Ranged) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +3 Grapple: +8 Saves: 14 pp TOU +8 (+3 Con, +5 Protection) FORT +8 (+3 Dex, +5) REF +6 (+3 Dex, +3) WILL +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 64 r=16 pp Bluff 12 (+15) Craft: Electronic 7 (+10) Craft: Mechanical 7 (+10) Knowledge: Behavioral Sciences 7 (+10) Knowledge: Technology 7 (+10) Medicine 3 (+5) Languages 5 (English, French, Greek, Hebrew, Russian) (Base: German) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 20 pp Attack Focus: Ranged (4) Distract (Bluff) Dodge Focus (6) Fascinate (Bluff) Inventor Luck (2) Power Attack Precise Shot (2) Taunt Uncanny Dodge (mental) Powers: 44 pp Immunity 1 (aging) [1 pp] Orgone Array 16 (32 pp; PFs: Alternate Power 4) [32+4=36 pp] BE: Damage 10 (Extras: Autofire, Range [Ranged]; PFs: Improved Crit, Reversible) AP: Emotion Control 10 (Extra: Autofire; Flaw: Range [Ranged]; PFs: Improved Crit 2) AP: Healing 10 (Extra: Range [Ranged]; PFs: Regrowth, Stabilize) AP: Nauseate 10 (Extra: Ranged) (PFs: Improved Crit, Reversible) AP: Nullify 10 (all technological effects; PFs: Improved Crit 2) AP: Weather Control 16 (100 mile radius, 32pp mix and match environments: Cold, Hamper Movement [icy or Wet Surfaces], Heat, Reduced Visibility [Rain]; Extra: Independent [+0]; PF: Slow Fade) Protection 5 [5 pp] costs abilities 32 + combat 24 + saves 14+ skills 16/64 + feats 20 + powers 44 = 150 pts ---------------------- Design Notes: Here's the greatest mad scientist of the 20th century, Dr. Wilhelm Reich, as a PL 10 starting PC. Reich led a colorful and exciting life; going from a colleague of Sigmund Freud to an eccentric refugee from the Nazis (that he was a Jewish Communist psychoanalyst and advocate of free love made him very high on their enemies list) to finally a quack doctor imprisoned for fraud with his books burned by a vengeful FDA who died in prison. Reich has been a superhero before, Alan Moore made a teenage Reich a member of the League of Infinity (the local Legion of Super-Heroes expies) in the pages of Supreme, but reading about Reich's remarkable life inspired me to recreate him here. Reich is a decent scientist and analyst, but his greatest strength is the gift of gab, letting him persuade all kinds of people about his ridiculous theories and how wonderful they were even against tremendous physical and scientific evidence to the contrary. Reich's work is still the subject of Internet fanboyism today, so here's a short summary. If you assume that Reich survived his 'death' in 1957, having absorbed enough orgone that it now powered his body, and went on to become a superhero, I think this build is a decent representation for him. Reich's theories were pretty nutty, but a universe with superheroes can accommodate them. He was no weirder than his contemporary William Marston, at least. If you don't like Reich, I could see this as any other mad scientist who managed to internalize the results of their work. Another way to take this is say that this man was once a deliberate con artist, taking the money of the gullible and too-rich through phony science. Realizing his mistake the first time his powers appeared, he decided to make a change in life and became a hero to make amends for all the people he'd wronged. Being a crazy scientist who got lucky is fun too, though!

"That wouldn't be a bad hobby to take up," said Sharl thoughtfully, "but I don't think I could make a career out of it. Not where I live, anyway." He hmmed, turning the conversation back to Cole, "What about you, what do you think you're going to do when you get out of school? People as smart as you and Dragonfly probably don't have to spend much time in the classrooms, so I bet you'll get out faster. What are you going to do then, be a scientist?" He didn't compare Cole to Miss A; while he was sure the other teen was smart, certainly smarter than he was, no one he'd ever met was as smart as Miss A!

Quickchange PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 48 pp STR 30 [22] (+10/+6) DEX 16 (+3) CON 24 [20] (+7/+5) INT 20 (+5) WIS 20 (+5) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 [+9 melee/+11 Unarmed] (+5 w/Growth, +8 Melee, +10 Unarmed) DEF: +11 [+6 flat-footed) (+5 w/Growth, +10) Init: +11 Grapple: +15/+20 Saves: 6 pp TOU +10 (+7 Con, +3 Protection [8]) FORT +7 (+7 Con [5]) REF +7 (+3 Dex, +4) WILL +7 (+5 Wis, +2) Skills: 80 r=20 pp Concentration 5 (+10) Craft (Electronic) 10 (+15) Craft (Mechanical) 10 (+15) Intimidate 14 (+14/+15) Knowledge: Technology 15 (+20) Notice 10 (+15) Sense Motive 5 (+10) Stealth 11 (+14/+10) Feats: 17 pp Attack Focus: Melee 3 Attack Specialization: Unarmed Dodge Focus 5 Evasion Inventor Master Plan Move-By Action Startle Power Attack Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (olfactory) Powers: 35 pp Enhanced Feats 5 (Improved Crit, Improved Initiative 2, Incurable, Stunning Attack) [5 pp] Growth 4 (Extra: Duration (Sustained) [+0]) [12 pp] Power Reserve 5 (10 pp reserve; Quickness (to Quickness 11 (x5000) and Speed [to Speed 11 (25,000 MPH)]) [10 pp] Protection 3 [3 pp] Quickness 1 (x2) [1 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Movement 3 (Wall-Crawling 2, Water-Walking) (Flaw: Only While Moving) [3 pp] costs abilities 48 + combat 24 + saves 6 + skills 20/80 + feats 17 + powers 35 = 150 pts -------------- Design Notes: Here's Quickchange, an Amalgam mashup of Atlas and Dynamo. He's an interesting character, a speedster who has the power to turn himself into a gigantic rampaging powerhouse! It's not often you see an eight-foot-tall musclebound giant running straight up the side of a building at you, but I imagine the sight would be suitably memorable. He has some limited lightning powers, enough to clothe his fists in sparking electricity when he punches and to augment his already formidable fighting talents. While he needs to be a giant to meet his caps, he's still effective in or out of a fight without it: he's a savvy gadgeteer and scientist (which may be how he wound up with these powers and this monsterism thing in the first place) as well as a decently capable (if lower-PL fighter). He'd make a fine addition to any team, and could probably get by for a while (assuming they don't get into a lot of life-or-death brawls) without them ever-knowing about the beast inside him. He's a lot scarier than most speedsters even without his powers, and so can function in combat roles that his jokier brethren can't really handle. He's in really good shape with no powers at all, either as a result of internalized speed radiation permanently augmenting his body, or just as a result of being in really, really good shape before becoming a scientist. My idea here is that his mutation is the product of exposure to speed energy from the dawn of time and the end of history simultaneously, transforming him into a creature that hearkens back to man's primitive past even as he might open a doorway into the future. It's quite a surprise for people expecting Zippy the Speedhead as their opponent, especially since he can take a hit much better than his typical speedster fellows. He doesn't have the options for stunting that those guys do, but he has least has his lightning fists to play with...and anyway, those speedier guys can't lift a car, or stunt off their Speed and Quickness to pull off all kinds of tremendous feats. With Power Reserve (which works a bit like dynamic arrays) he can put points into Speed and Quickness both, shifting them around as a free action: since he's got some outside his array, he will never be as slow physically or mentally as a normal human being unless you do something to his powers. He's a really good person to have on a team, filling the speedster roles and gadgeteer roles and also having at least a decent contribution towards powerhouse. (If you want to play up his STR, save up and buy Super-Strength as part of his Power Reserve, thus letting him carry great weight at the cost of being slower on his feet. Which makes a lot of sense when you t think about it! Picture and fluff aside, he's actually at full INT and WIS while jacked up on super-speed giantism. He's a really great great goonsweeper with his Takedown Attack, Speed, reach, and his damage, as you'd expect a supersonic giant to be. He has a much lower init than most PL 10 Speedsters, but OTOH his massive TOU means he'll able to take any surprise round hits much better than those shrimpy guys...

Immortal Adventurer PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 48 pp STR 20 (+5) DEX 18 (+4) CON 20 (+5) INT 16 (+3) WIS 20 (+5) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+9 Melee/+15 Unarmed) DEF: +15 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +4 Grapple: +14 Saves: 7 pp TOU +5 (+5 Con) FORT +7 (+5 Con, +2) REF +7 (+4 Dex, +3) WILL +7 (+5 Wis, +2) Skills: 80 r=20 pp Climb 1 (+6) Drive 1 (+5) Knowledge (History) 12 (+15) Knowledge (Streetwise) 7 (+10) Knowledge (Tactics) 12 (+15) Intimidate 13 (+15) Notice 10 (+15) Sense Motive 10 (+15) Ride 1 (+5) Swim 1 (+6) Stealth 11 (+15) Survival 1 (+6) Feats: 20 pp Attack Focus: Melee Attack Specialization: Unarmed 3 Beginner’s Luck Dodge Focus 7 Eidetic Memory Jack of all Trades Master Plan 2 Power Attack Startle Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 24 pp Comprehend 3 (speak, read, and understand any language at once) [6 pp] Immunity 3 (aging, disease, poison) [3 pp] Regeneration 13 (Recovery Bonus +9 [4], Disabled 6 [standard action], Resurrection 3 [five hours]) (PFs: Persistent, Regrowth) [15 pp] costs abilities 48 + combat 32 + saves 7 + skills 20/80 + feats 20 + powers 24 = 150 pts ------------- Design Notes: OK, here's a concept I loosely define as "Immortal Batman", modeled on my favorite character from the 90s Gargoyles series, Macbeth. Macbeth the character actually was the historical king of Scotland, and, well...go find a place where you can watch it! It was very good, and he was voiced memorably by John Rhys-Davies. He doesn't have the bells and whistles he demonstrated on the show: his Wealth, Equipment, and Devices (the last two were usually flying bikes to give him competitiveness with the flying Gargoyles and swords, blaster pistols, and body armor to fight them on even terms) should be purchased with PP or be the product of him as an NPC if you choose to make him an antagonist in your game. Obviously you don't have to make this the historical Macbeth if you play him, the build works for any sort of PC that stays loyal to the character's core concept. An NPC build would probably have base Attack and Defense right up to PL maximum, but stuff like that is prohibitively expensive with a PC: he's best with his fists, at home when stripped of all weapons and with only his immortal wits to back him up. He's a man, just a man, who happens to have lived forever: no special powers, no particular special abilities beyond an inability to age and a return even from the grave, along with a command of all the languages he's acquired in the centuries of his lifespan. All he has are his wits, his fists, and centuries of experience to get by in a fight. With Beginner's Luck, Eidetic Memory, and Jack of all Trades ( a must for any immortal PC defined by their centuries of life), and his high base attributes, he can do almost anything with some competence, and with his 2 ranks of Master Plan and tremendous Tactics, he's an unparalleled planner: if Daedalus is an immortal Iron Man, this is an immortal Batman, drawing on his centuries of life experience to hold his own in almost any field. I gave him the fast Disabled recovery because of how Regeneration works in Mutants and Masterminds: since he recovers from the Disabled after the Resurrection, without Disabled Regen he'd just lay there and groan (or otherwise be in a very bad way) after coming back from the dead. I wasn't a fan of that; if you look at how these immortal characters usually work, though death may slow them down, when they recover they tend to spring right back up and be ready to fight. Another way to emulate that would be to give him a Personal Limited Healing that he can use to heal his injuries whenever he's alive, perhaps one distracting enough that he can't effectively use it in combat. He's got a lot of low-level skills to represent having lived through the early modern period; don't forget you can use Beginner's Luck to make him even more of an expert in things like climbing and riding to reflect drawing on his centuries of life.

"Normally I wouldn't be able to interact with the solid world at all, but Miss A programmed me an emulator so I can taste food the same way I see things. They don't make a lot of taste sensors for computers," he admitted. "At least, not here. It's really novel, there are so many different kinds of food here! It's amazing. I guess it's because there are so many kinds of animals and plants, you're not limited to just a few different kinds of, uh, food." He'd almost mentioned protein packs, but that would have given away too much about where he came from. "Did you know they can get four different kinds of meat out of just a pig? And they're all delicious!"

Looking a little more comfortable when they weren't contemplating the ethical complications of his existence, Sharl replied, "Oh, lots of stuff! I fly around and explore, or just hang around surfing the 'Net. You'd be surprised how much you can see when you fly through walls or look through cameras. I can't eat," he admitted, "at least, not unless I'm really careful. The food here just goes right through me if I eat then try and phase through everything. Can you fly?" he asked Cole curiously. "I know most people with powersuits can, at least ones they probably made themselves."

"It's just me," Sharl reassured him quickly. "I mean, if I was doing that, I'd have died the first time I came on the 'Net and..." Well, that didn't bear thinking about. "I have subjective continuity the whole time," he added, borrowing a description he'd heard from Miss A, "so that's the best evidence I have that it's still me, and not just a really smart copy on the other end." He shrugged. "As for copies...well, I don't know, I'm sure Miss A has copies of my memories around here somewhere. But no one's ever talked about replacing me before." It was a disquieting thought!

Edge Earth Died Screaming Chaos Principle Leaves from the Vine Familiar Faces End of the Beginning Worn-Out Places Harrier +Vignette Freedom Angel +Vignette The Great Escape The Angel of Victory Citizen +Vignette Supersonic, Superhuman, Supernatural Are You Ready All Things GMing Summerstime Going Ape Three of a Kind Please put all my GMing points towards Edge.

"See you soon, Midnight," said Edge with a little nod. Once he had something close to the address in hand, he waved his hands, dropping the usual cheerful theater he used at moments like this, and Trevor disappeared from sight as if he'd ducked around a corner, reappearing within eyeshot of Erin and her house. For his part, Mark rubbed his eyes tiredly, focusing on the others and said, "All right, let's get to fixing this bike!" He had no idea how to do that, of course, but he could follow along, and it seemed like Red Falcon, Sage, and even Cobalt Templar had some idea what they were doing. Redbird was full of chatter as well, eager to help herself get repaired and back into the fight against Omega. Gradually, they began getting the antigravs online again, one after another with little chunka-chunkas.

Mark spends an HP And now she is only Fatigued!

Serpent Hero PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 38 pp STR 26 (+8) DEX 14 (+2) CON 20 (+5) INT 14 (+2) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+12 Melee) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +2 Grapple: +20 Saves: 15 pp TOU +8 (+5 Con, +3 Protection) FORT +8 (+5 Con, +3) REF +8 (+2 Ref, +6) WILL +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 17 pp=68 r Climb 2 (+10) Intimidate 15 (+15) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 13 (+15) Languages 2 (English, German) (Base: Lithuanian) Notice 13 (+15) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 13 (+15) Survival 2 (+4) Feats: 18 pp Attack Focus: Melee 6, Dodge Focus 6, Power Attack Prone Fighting, Ritualist, Startle, Takedown Attack, Uncanny Dodge (tactile) Powers: 42 pp Concealment 1 (Infravision) (Extra: Duration [Permanent] (+0)) [2 pp] Insubstantial 1 (snaky body) [5 pp] Protection 3 [3 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Movement 4 (Slithering, Slow Fall, Wall-Crawling 2) [8 pp] Super-Senses 3 (Infravision, Tremorsense) [3 pp] Venom Array [18+2=20 pp] Drain All Ability Scores 8 (PFs: Extended Reach, Improved Crit) AP: Paralyze 8 (PFs: Extended Reach, Improved Crit) AP: Stun 8 (PFs: Extended Reach, Improved Crit) Drawbacks: -3 pp Vulnerable (vs. cold) (uncommon, major) [-3 pp] costs abilities 38+ combat 24 + saves 15 + skills 17/68 + feats 18+ powers 42 -drawbacks 3= 150 pts ---------- Design Notes: I've always been fascinated by Baltic mythology. Forget your Victorian Celtic fanboys and your Norse stuff; Baltic paganism survived historically intact in many places up until the early 18th century. There were snake cults within a horseback ride of the first Enlightenment-era universities in Prussia and Lithuania, and that's pretty boss. The idea here is that this character is empowered by those ancient legends and their focus on snakes to summon a snaky body for herself, giving her a reptilian physiology and a powerful poisonous bite with a variety of effects she can change up at will. As the picture shows, she's got legs, I just couldn't wrap my head around the image of a humanoid snake without lower limbs. So she's a humanoid snake with normal limbs, with all the powers and abilities you would expect from that. I figure that since she's the avatar of snakes, or maybe a snake goddess, rather than a snake herself, she can change up the effects of her venom: she also can spit it like a spitting cobra! With her Ritualist feat, she can summon up some useful magical powers for herself. I got to thinking about mythological heroes in a Soviet setting as I was working on Ymir upthread, and potentially (if her backers are willing to acknowledge her) she could easily be a counter to Ymir: if not, or in a modern game, she makes a fine pagan-inspired local hero for Lithuania or elsewhere on the Baltic. If you don't like the tie-in to Baltic legend, this could be someone using Serpent People sorcery. In fact, she could actually _be_ a Serpent Person, a rare heroic variety of a people often corrupted by dark magic. (Heck, put the two together; perhaps the snake-focus of Lithuanian and other legends is a result of beneficent Serpent People being chased out of the underground by their relatives and worshiped as divine for a while by the people of the eastern Baltic.) Serpent People are mistrusted across the cosmos given how many of them tend to be Unspeakable One cultists, so that (plus the fact that she's a snake-woman!) will be a natural source of complications for her. She's cold-blooded! Hence the vulnerability and the Concealment vs. infravision, and she's got a scaly hide. Debate whether or not she's stuck in snake-person form all the time or if she can change back and forth like the Hulk, probably buying some Quick Change to go with it. Snakey urges in general are something best left to Complications; does she want to bask in the sun, brood over some eggs, or maybe hunt down and eat some mice? (With her Survival skills and strong athleticism, she could do both of those things quite easily.) Depending on how serpent she is in general, she may have larger or lesser issues with socializing with mammals in general: there are certainly some physical issues to work out before anything romantic is attempted.

"I'm all digital all the time," said Sharl with a little shrug. "I go in, I send myself places, I pop out the other side, or just onto a screen if there are no projectors around. I really wish I could email my portable projector along with the rest of me," he added with a little smile. "But I can't take anything with me that isn't a digitized program like I am. Miss A makes things specially for me to carry around, and I can do some things like that on my own. Anyway, yeah, it's sort of like I'm flying through the system. It looks like instantaneous on the outside, but I have full perceptions of traveling through the system itself."

"Oh man, you can email yourself places?" Caught up in the excitement, Sharl almost forgot about the consequences of organic downloading he lived with every day. "That's really awesome. And you can do it non-destructively?" he asked curiously. "So it's actually digitizing your bits and reconstituting them, it's not just dissolving you and building a perfect copy that thinks it's you somewhere else?" He was of several minds about the ethics of teleporting, probably because he wasn't sure what implications it had for him personally.

Stålkvinnan PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 48 pp STR 30 (+10) DEX 14 (+2) CON 30 (+10) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 16 pp ATK: +4 (+10 Melee) DEF: +10 (+2 flat-footed) Init: +6 Grapple: +20 Saves: 8 pp TOU +10 (+10 Con) FORT +10 (+10 Con) REF +6 (+2 Dex, +4) WILL +6 (+2 Wis, +4) Skills: 52 r=13 pp Craft (electronic) 5 (+5) Craft (mechanical) 4 (+4) Computers 15 (+15) Knowledge (Technology) 10 (+10) Languages 2 (English, Galstandard) (Base: Swedish) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 18 pp Attack Focus: Melee 6 Dodge Focus 6 Evasion Fearless Move-By Action Power Attack Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (radio) Powers: 47 pp Datalink 1 (100 ft) [radio] (PF: Subtle) [2 pp] Enhanced Feats 2 (Eidetic Memory, Online Research) [2 pp] Impervious TOU 10 [10 pp] Immunity 22 (aging, life support, mental effects, sleep, starvation and thirst) [22 pp] Leaping 1 (x2) [1 pp] Quickness 6 (x100) (Flaw: Mental Tasks Only) [3 pp] Regeneration 1 (Resurrection 1/week) [1 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Senses 5 (Accurate Analytical Extended Radio Sense) [5 pp] costs abilities 48 + combat 16 + saves 8 + skills 13/52 + feats 18 + powers 47 = 150 pts ----------- Design Notes: Here's little Eira, Fenris' terminally ill niece uploaded into a robot body at the age of eight by Miss Americana, Dragonfly, and Sharl, in her full-sized adult body that she'll 'grow' into in a few years. I figure she was just an ordinary kid when she went in, so she's not particularly smart or wise, and years in a robot's body have left her with some issues with relating to people. But OTOH, she's also got a really nice robot body! It's a 'living robot' body that lets her pass for human, enough that she has self-repair systems and has all the normal biological functions. A lot of them are feigned, though; so she has very few human weaknesses. Being cybercized has made her mind unreadable to telepaths: they can tell her 'mental energy' is there, but they can't read or otherwise alter the 1s and 0s that make up her brain these days. She's got built-in radar so she can see in the dark, and she can talk to computers. She's bulletproof, faster and stronger than any human, thinks as fast as a computer, and has a permanent connection to the Internet that lets her always stay in the know. Her Resurrection, incidentally, referred to downloading from stored backups; feel free to give it whatever drawbacks or complications reflect the unreliable nature of whenever the last time was she went in and had her mind copied onto whatever form of harddisc they're using in the mid-21st century. Her name, loosely translated, means "Woman of Steel", which I think is a good choice for describing Sweden's first native cyborg heroine. She's not a great fighter, but she can fake it with her Super-Senses and +10 Melee Attack. She's not trained to fight, after all, she just happens to be in a robot body that's very, very good at it. She doesn't have any mechanical drawbacks or flaws (get it?) so she's not going to be knocked down by electrical charges or water getting inside her armor. Adding those things would certainly be viable sources of PP for you, or HP if you want to make them Complications. She's got no Enhanced STR or Enhanced CON, since all her abilities are a natural part of her robotic body, rather than being particularly boosted. If you need to stunt for her, do it off her radar or her datalink. I think this works just fine as a build for a full-body cyborg, particularly one in a high-tech future, but I could easily see this character running around on the streets of Freedom City now. You'll want to up her INT if you want her to be the author of her fortune; creator of her own body, unless you want to do something depressing like Silver Age Sentinels' Iron Duke. (Don't do that!) She could be a 'living robot' who was never an organic being as well, or maybe she's a military-grade cyborg that decided to go off the reservation when some shenanigans were going down. But I rather like the idea of a woman who has spent her whole life inside machines going off to save human beings with her powers!

Truthfully, Sharl didn't look that bothered by his own state. "It's not easy doing both, but not so bad. When my system's in a program I'm compatible with, it all looks real. So I can float down wi-fi connections, read files on computers, all kinds of things. The wi-fi thing is actually where I get..." He concentrated a moment, and across his chest there appeared a glowing series of light blue lines that Cole recognized as the wi-fi symbol. "That's actually where I get my chest symbol. It seemed appropriate, since that's basically my thing."

Haunter PL: 10 (150) Abilities: -6 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 10 (+0) CON n/a INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+12 melee) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Grapple: +13 Init: +0 Saves: 13 pp TOU +8 (- Con, +8 Protection) FORT n/a REF +5 (+0 Dex, +5) WILL +10 (+2 Wis, +8) Skills: 40 r=10 pp Concentration 8 (+10) Disguise 0 (+0/+15) Intimidate 10 (+10) Notice 6 (+8) Sense Motive 6 (+8) Stealth 10 (+10) Feats: 18 pp Attack Focus: Melee 6 Dodge Focus 6 Fearless Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (mental) Powers: 91 pp Flight 1 (10 MPH) [2 pp] Ghost Array [16+4=20 pp] Concealment 8 (all visual, all auditory, all radio) AP: Damage 8 (Extra: Affects Corporeal) AP: Emotion Control 10 (Flaw: Sense-Dependent [visual]) and Morph 3 (any humanoid) AP: Illusion 4 (all senses) AP: Possession 8 (Flaw: Feedback) Immunity 30 (Fortitude saves) [30 pp] Insubstantial 4 (ectoplasm) (Extra: Duration [Default]) (PF: Innate) [21 pp] Protection 8 [8 pp] Regeneration 6 (Recovery Bonus +0 [5], Resurrection 1 [week]) (PFs: Persistent, Regrowth) [8 pp] Super-Senses 2 (Darkvision) [2 pp] costs abilities -6 + combat 24 + saves 13 + skills 10/40 + feats 18 +powers 91 = 150 pts ------ Design Notes: I did a Kitty Pryde-style 'ghost' build upthread, this one's a little different: here's a build for a ghost who is really and truly dead, man, inspired by Gizmo's recent Kimber build. He flies around and is invisible most of the time, create realistic illusions, and he can hurt things with a touch. He can also warp people's minds, terrifying them or luring them in, all while disguising himself as some other person. I gave him visual, auditory, and radio concealment because I like the idea of psychics growing concerned at the terrible knowledge that there is _someone_ there in the room with them, not to mention dogs and cats howling and hissing at the _thing_ they can sense somewhere near them. With the Default on his Insubstantial, his default is to have a ghostly body. An easy way out for his Insubstantial vulnerability is to make him vulnerable to whatever killed him in life, or maybe the OPPOSITE of that: i.e., a freezing victim who is vulnerable to fire. If you don't like that, you can always just make him vulnerable to magic. Ghosts are going to be running around trying to solve the problems they couldn't in life, or perhaps they're under the influence of some Tibetan deity and helping others in similar shoes before they themselves move onto the great Hereafter. Now, if that depresses you, you don't have to be stuck playing the walking (or rather, floating dead). If you don't like the idea of playing a walking ghost, another idea is to take a page from Orpheus and make him a 'sleeper'; say he is currently cryogenically frozen (having gone in alive or dead), and his projected self is the product of his organic brain being turned into a superconducter by its supercooled state. He does have a body to go back to, it's just not good for anything and is a plot device as far as people launching attacks against it. Putting him in a coma would also work just as well, though that might be a little too Fridge Horror for some people. As written, this guy doesn't have a lot going on: his skills are pretty thin, though he's a pretty good fighter. He probably wasn't anyone special like an acrobat before his death...but you can change that with points expenditure! Being a ghost is expensive, maaan. Note that you do need the Affects Corporeal extra on Damage with Insub 4 while you don't at 3. He's a really good sneak and infiltrator, though, and really good at catching people flat-footed or just sending them running with his powers. He's a good person to have on a team, and he may You could save points by dropping his STR to 0 and making his Insubstantial permanent, but goldangit I want my ghost to be able to be solid and hang around bothering people, or to be able to win a wrestling mask with other ghosts. (Of course, he'll need to pick up Affects Insubstantial on his Unarmed for that...)

"They're not going to build emitters for me all over the world," said Sharl, his smile twisting a little. "And even if they could cover the world as well as they do the Lab..." He reached over and put his hand flat on the wall, making a small sound doing it so Cole could know he was solid. "I can do this. I can make myself solid, and feel this surface, or I can pass through it..." He put his hand through the wall, "But it doesn't really feel _real_ to me, you know?" He pulled his hand back effortlessly. "I have never had an organic body. I never will...and besides, I've got the 'Net waiting for me when I graduate! There's a whole world out there online, and it needs a superhero too."

"It's not what I ever saw myself doing," said Sharl with a teenage boy's shrug, "but you know, it's pretty fun. Well, not the danger part, or people getting hurt, that's awful, but saving people, really helping, that's what matters. I heard something about us going into space later this summer, and that'd be pretty cool." He looked up at the sky. "I always wanted to see new places and meet new people, maybe even aliens. I've done some of that now, and it turns out people are alike all over. Whatever they're made of," he added with a little grin.

"It was actually just one big alien," said Sharl, making gestures with his hands like he'd just caught a fish. "It called itself the Conquering Mind, and it put this weird telepathic whammy on almost everyone in the city. Some people it took control of with these weird starfish probes, even superheroes. Miss A, Dragonfly, and our friend Protectron the s...robot were the only people not affected. We just barely managed to put the Mind down and save the whole city. There was a parade and everything." It hadn't gotten a lot of attention afterwards, since for their own reasons all the heroes involved weren't much for the big-time limelight, but it had been a lot of fun. "It just used biological technology. I think Miss A has a sample around here somewhere..."