Avenger Assembled

"No!" said Mark, shaking his head. "That's definitely not something I can do." He dusted off his cape, the last particles of sand falling to the ground. "I've been into space a couple of times with my, uh, dad, but not since I was really little. That was just to starships, so I don't know if I can hit them again. I can try going to the Moon, I guess, I know there is a League stronghold there that has an atmosphere and living conditions 24/7."

Freedom Angel said nothing as Victory spoke to his departed grandfather, having seen moments like this all too often. When he was finished, the angel said, "A sage once said, 'I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.' If you loved Nathan Factor, then be at peace, my friend." He put his hand gently on Victory's shoulder, not seeming to mind the great heat that came from the cyborg's body. "I know your record, Victory. Have no doubt that he is proud of the man you are today, wherever his soul rests."

"Mr. Marston." Summers looked reflective for a moment. "I'm not going to 'sell' you on anything. If you think you lack the initiative to be a superhero, no one at this school will force you to be otherwise. You will have a chance to complete your education and have your command of your abilities refined here, and after that, you can go wherever you wish." He eyed Darwin, and seemed to gaze into his very soul. "Contrary to what you may have been told, there is nothing immoral about spending your life with a surfboard on a beach. I have known many people who might have been better off had they chosen that path. Let me put it to you this way. Amateur surfers can spend their days riding small waves at the edge of the beach, enjoying themselves and impressing the people watching them who don't know any better, but when they see the big waves coming, there's nothing they can do. All they can do is watch as their betters ride the biggest, tallest, fastest waves in the world. Is that the man you want to be? Do you want to spend your life in the shallows, Darwin?"

GM Fiat time: Gorillon escapes. Gizmo and Godiva, add an HP to your current roster from the Fiat. He's gonna All-Out Attack Jade Dragon.This will drop his Defense to 13 (meaning you have to hit or get above 13 to hit him), but add +5 to his Attack. 18 That's a miss. BUT! Because he missed because of his size penalty, it becomes an area attack. (his fists are so huge he still has a chance to hit her) Give me a DC 22 Reflex save, Godiva.

Too infuriated to continue with their banter, Citizen and Rogue fell into a scrum, clawing and biting at each other like angry children. Swooping in the air, they flew through a 'wall' in their respective worldview and actually flew out of the system entirely for a moment: the hospital's TV broadcasts suddenly showing a cursing, scrapping couple in black leather before they came tumbling back into the system. When they pulled apart, they floated warily to study each other again, their costumes torn, both of them bleeding from superficial cuts, but neither seriously hurt. "It's not too late, Citizen," said Rogue, her sunglasses cracked as she peered at Sharl. "Drop all this organic crap. Leave the people to their fragile little lives. These people I'm with? They don't even know two things about the real me. About the real cause." She waved her hand somewhere in the direction of her erstwhile teammates. "So you're fixing Tronik. That's great. What if I told you that I had a way to make sure we never had to worry about our city again?" "...I'd think you were full of freaking crap!" replied Sharl, speaking from the heart under the circumstances. "I'd think you were trying to distract me while your friends out there hurt my friends. And not even for any good reason! I mean, you're robbing a hospital and endangering a sick little kid, and lots of other kids too! We don't even need money for crying out loud. If your plan is so great, why didn't you tell me that _before_ we started fighting?" "Because I was hoping I could beat your ass," replied Rogue frankly, "But now that I know I can't, I want to try and cut you in on something. When I was lost on the Internet, somebody found me. Someone very powerful, and very important in this world. He's leading an army that will one day make a network out of this whole world. No more fake lives, no more world that got stolen from us before we were born. His name is Talos..."

Citizen Standard Action Bluff. 29 Sense Motive: 29 :| SURGE Standard Action Power Attack with Strike 21 :| HP: 20 Rogue: Standard Action: Power Attack: 14 Well, you know, at least she's not beating _him_ up either. Sharl could use an HP. I'll fiat that hits. He needs to make a Tou save vs 23. 16 With an HP: 25 And he's fine too.

"Jill O'Cure, welcome," said the angel, relieved to see the young woman who was both hero and healer. Under the circumstances, both of the lockdown and Fleur de Joie's pregnancy, she was a welcome addition to the team. "We can use all the assistance we can in this crisis." He hmmed, listening to the doctor's account. "Bowles' genius and his madness are both very great. Underestimating him would be a mistake for any of us. From what I know of his record, I imagine that so far he has released no other prisoners. Have any escaped?" he asked the doctor. "Not as far as we know," said Wallace. "I'm not going to say none have, Lord knows we've been taken by surprise before, but from what our readouts up here tell us, all the cells are in lockdown. The only thing that'll get the prisoners out is a new code entered from the central computer or the emergency systems going off; a fire, a mass power usage, something where lives would be at stake. That'll activate the emergency teleporter which will drop them all in the League's backup facility in St. Helena. You're right about Bowles and the other inmates, though; he hasn't even tried getting them out. He's not very popular with the other prisoners, and it seems like the feeling was mutual." "If the security protocols I read last were right," the angel said to Fleur and the others, checking with Wallace to make sure they were, "We will be able to go below via the main stairway in the central core. As that has physical rather than electronic blocks, it's all that operates when the facility is in this state. How many guards are there below?" "About two dozen people are unaccounted for," replied Wallace. "Bowles has said he has some of them hostage...or, rather, that they are 'ransomed against the proof of his innocence', but not all of them are showing up on his feed. They'll just have tasers and body armor, but it'll at least be something. We have enough spare equipment to equip all of you that way," she added, "but nothing heavier goes into the prison while it's in lockdown and the inmates are conscious."

The staircase down was lined with a gleaming red metal that the team recognized from months earlier on Earth-Prime: it looked like the Midnight of Erde had at some point lined his headquarters with the exterior plating of a Grue battleship. Even the sliding metal door at the bottom of the stairs looked alien, only reluctantly sliding open at their approach. Inside, the Night Bunker beckoned. Like a scene from Trevor's childhood gone wrong, what had once been a crimefighter's stronghold had become the scene of a freedom fighter's last stand. The darkness inside faded as the lights came on, the acrid aftertaste of some variant of midnight mist still in the air. The Midnight Cruiser, parked where it could face the door, was a massive black roadster that looked like a battleship on wheels, bristling with weapons deployed from a dozen hidden ports. The room in general was covered in wall charts and pictures of what had to be Erde's Freedom City; a bombed-out, devastated place populated by forced laborers and a German garrison that looked mockingly confident as it rode roughshod over the beloved home of the young heroes. There was something personally insulting, Edge reflected, about that swastika flag flying over what was clearly the Claremont Academy, renamed the "Claremont Academy for Aryan Boys" from the sign out front. Maybe it was silly to see that, amid so many other horrors, but it was easier to focus on that rather than the mass graves out by Lonely Point, the Germans standing gloatingly in front of terrified, beaten Americans, and the trains of 'undesirables' being loaded under the watchful eye of the SS. Dominating one whole wall was a row of pictures, some of whom Mark recognized: the civilian identities of the members of the Liberty League, various other independent mystery men of the 1940s, and one he vaguely recognized as Hamilton Jordon, Freedom City's native Congressional Medal of Honor winner from World War II. Underneath each faded black and white picture was a date, all of them between 1945 and 1953. It wasn't hard to guess what _that_ meant, especially not with the neatly stacked artifacts there: Johnny Rocket's costume, Bowman and Arrows' quivers, Freedom Eagle's flight harness, all of them lovingly polished but all showing signs of terrible violence done them. Around the edge of the door where they stood, Trevor and Erin's sharp eyes made out a ring of material that was probably some local explosive; they could see signs of it elsewhere, as if the entire place was rigged. Sitting in the center of the mausoleum that was all that remained of Freedom City's heroes was the instantly recognizable figure of the first Midnight: Travis's face invisible of course behind a black mask, twin .45s by the flickering cathode ray screen in front of him. Glowing eyes glared at them as Travis' voice growled through the room, the acoustics seeming to make his voice come from everywhere. "Few days ago. Man I saw last as a baby came to me as an old man. Said everything, everywhere, was in peril. Said you'd come and explain. And you happen to show up the day my key operative cracks and exposes me. WHY ARE YOU HERE?"

"Hey, short stuff!" called the nurse-turned-gun-bunny, who took a half-step and swung towards Dragonfly. "Is this your boyfriend?" she asked with a smirk in a heavy-but-understandable German accent. "Do you two like to make the doggie sausage? Ahahah!" She laughed and threw a kick Dragonfly's way, one that missed the plucky heroine's head but let the gun-bunny herself cartwheel down the hall. "There's three of us and two of you! Put it down now and we won't rip up the place before we go, hmm? Unless you want my little surprise to come in and take you and your boyfriend the Amazing Doggiehead for a ride!"

Move Action: Taunt: DC 25 Bluff check Dragonfly fails, so she is shaken (–2 to attack rolls, saving throws, and checks) for one round. Standard Action: Kicking Dragonfly in the face. She Defensive Attacks for the full amount, raising her defense to 30. 11 It seems no one's getting hit today!

14 Okay, that drains his Impervious 7 first, then 5 regular Tou.

I'll say he can't really dodge while helpless, especially given relative sizes, so Tou save 30 Fort save 19 Jade Dragon is up

The short flight out to Blackstone would have been pleasant under any other circumstances; it was a blue, sunny day, the sort that made flying over open ocean peaceful. But none of the heroes felt peaceful, not today when innocent lives might be at stake. (One in particular, Freedom Angel thought, shooting a glance Fleur de Joie's way). As the League representative on the scene, he led the way as they touched down in the refurbished old Civil War fort that was Blackstone's topside command post, landing in the courtyard full of prison personnel: when lockdown had come in, non-essential personnel like interns, family members, and guards not needed for combat duty had been evacuated to the surface where they would be safe from any mass breakout. Meeting them at the surface was Abigail Wallace, the doctor and scientist who was, as she told them, the highest-ranking person to get out. "Drummer's still in his office, as far as I know. The man doesn't leave unless he's dragged out," the scientist said sourly. "What are Bowles' demands?" asked the angel, trying to keep her on track. He didn't mind the sun overhead, and stood there as sunlight streamed down on his halo, making it seem to glow with special brightness. Or perhaps it was just a sign of how worried he was, and concerned for how the mad Bee-Keeper had come so far already. "How was he able to construct those machines we observed on the camera footage?" It was no idle question of judgement: if Bowles' powers had grown to include shaping matter, they had to know that now before they went below without access to their own abilities. He was going to miss the sword of truth, he reflected, remembering how readily he'd volunteered to help the prison learn to block his own connection to the angelic chorus while below. "So far you know almost as much as we do," Wallace grumped. "Bowles is on psych watch, so they let him out of solitary to talk to our shrinks. He shouted so much he was bothering the other psych prisoners, so they put a steel plate around his cell to keep him from causing more trouble. One day, he demands to see his lawyer, and when he's being taken out these damn robot bees just burst out of his cell. Somebody's head's going to roll. I'm just glad my people all managed to get down and lock up the heavy weapons along the way. All he has access to is whatever he somehow cobbled together down there."

The minds of the German pilots opened like bleeding, screaming flowers underneath Sage's aggressive probe, their secrets spilling out like the blood of a world gutted at the hands of these mad butchers. These men were here to kill Midnight: Travis Hunter, condemned by all the Americans on the street as a cowardly collaborator, had been exposed by a traitor named Simmons as Midnight, and the Germans had come in force to kill the man that Sage realized with some shock was the last living superhero in what had once been the United States. Midnight had been fought before, and had killed many Germans and their agents, but never before that day had his home come under attack. There was a significant German garrison in 'Arbeitstadt', the former name of what had once been Freedo, City, complete with a contingent of Ubersoldaten kept there in case any more mystery men showed their faces in what was to become a showcase of the American Reich: a showcase once the remnants of the last population of resistance were wiped out by the efficient might of the SS. The camps had already been here and gone; the liquidations were taking place in the Mississippi Valley these days. Too far away to reach and save the world: and save the world they had to do. A mysterious object had been recovered by the Ubersoldaten after a meteor shower some nights earlier, an item glowing with cosmic power so great that scientists had actually been flown _here_ from Berlin to study it. - Midnight Manor looked like any other country manor until you got close, Trevor particularly good at spotting the depressions where landmines had been laid, the firing places where trip-wire machine guns were in place. This house could probably have fought off an army on its own, though perhaps not the entire might of the Wehrmacht. The windows were opaque even to Trevor's eyes, blackout shutters closed and locked on all of them, but as they approached the front door swung open with an ominous creeeeak, exposing inside a battered, tired-looking hallway lit too-brightly by electric lamps. "Look, let's just go in," said Mark, leading the way, shooting a glance at Erin and Trevor to make sure everyone was dealing with the crisis at hand and not the crisis that might have been. "We sure as hell don't look like Nazis, and..." A voice crackled to life from a speaker just visible in the streets near the front porch, a relic of the past that hadn't survived to Trevor's time. "Get in the house." came a tinny vacumn-tubed version of a familiar voice. "Told one of you is my legacy. Find the door to the sanctum and meet me there. Can still blow the house if you fail."

Scarab PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 44 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 16 (+3) CON 24 (+7) INT 20 (+5) WIS 24 (+7) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 16 pp ATK: +4 (+10 Ranged) DEF: +8 (+2 flat-footed) Init: +3 Grapple: +20 w/TK Saves: 11 pp TOU +12 (+7 Con, +5 Protection) FORT +7 (+7 Con) REF +6 (+3 Dex, +3) WILL +15 (+7 Wis, +8) Skills: 56 r=14 pp Concentration 5 (+12) Diplomacy 5 (+5) Knowledge: History 10 (+15) Knowledge: Theology and Philosophy 5 (+10) Languages 2 (Ancient Egyptian, Spanish) (Base English) Medicine 3 (+10) Notice 13 (+20) Sense Motive 13 (+20) Feats: 16 pp Attack Focus: Ranged (6) Beginner’s Luck Dodge Focus (4) Eidetic Memory Jack-of-All-Trades Power Attack Ultimate Save (Will) Uncanny Dodge (mental) Powers: 49 pp Comprehend 4 (speak, read, and understand all languages simultaneously; understood by all) [8 pp] Flight 2 (25 MPH) [4 pp] Impervious TOU 10 [10 pp] Protection 5 [5 pp] Scarab Array [22+5=27 pp] Damage 10 (Extra: Ranged) (PFs: Improved Crit 2) AP: Communication 6 (20 miles) [mental) (Extras: Area, Two-Way) (PFs: Rapid 2 (x100), Selective, Subtle) AP: ESP 6 (20 miles) (visual and auditory) (PFs: Rapid 3 (x1000), Subtle) AP: Mind Control 10 (PFs: Mental Link, Subtle) AP: Mind Reading 10 (Extras: Area [burst], Selective) (Flaw: Duration [instant]) (PFs: Insidious, Subtle) AP: Telekinesis 10 (Heavy Load: 12 tons) (PFs: Precise, Subtle) Super-Senses 1 (Shadow Awareness) [mental] [1 pp] costs abilities 44 + combat 16 + saves 11 + skills 14/56 + feats 16 + powers 49 = 150 pts ---- Design Notes: Here's my take on the Scarab, the premiere mentalist legacy archetype for the Freedom City setting. For those of you who have somehow missed Shaen's superlative population of this legacy: the Scarab was once Prince Heru-Ra in ancient Egypt, a wise young man who had unlocked the power of his inner ka by meditation. When he was betrayed and murdered by the wicked Tan-Aktor, Heru-Ra said some unwise things to the ancient gods about demanding the right to punish Tan-Aktor's soul himself. Now he and his old rival pursue each other through the ages in an ever-lasting cycle of reincarnation: sometimes one kills the other, sometimes the reverse. Sometimes they never meet, sometimes they are born as twins in the same womb. Reincarnation is a funny thing that way, especially when it's driven by this kind of ancient fate cycle. 5000 years is a hell of a lot of history to play with. The last NPC Scarab died in the late 1970s saving the world as part of the Freedom League; the PC Scarab is still flying around and will cut you. But let's say you're playing this character in another game, or say the legacy is somehow duplicated. My basic idea here is that Heru-Ra's repeated rebirths mean that his ancient ka empowers him from generation to generation, making him much tougher and more resilient than a normal person would be. He's also as wise and observant as it's possible for a human being to be, and a genius on top of it. I figure his Comprehend is partially a result of Telepathy, partially a result of just being so damn old: I gave him Ancient Egyptian and Spanish as languages he speaks in addition to English without his powers; those being the native tongues of the first and last Scarabs. With his high mental attributes and his Beginner's Luck/Eidetic Memory/Jack-of-all-Trades combo, there's basically nothing he shouldn't be able to know or do within the limits of his attributes, though he'll have more trouble with some things than others. He has a tremendous command of history, and knows something of philosophy thanks to all the work that goes into his awakened ka. Think about Complications inherited as memories from previous lives: a fear of suffocating or some other unpleasant death? The Scarab may be immortal but he still dies and stays dead in between lives, and dying sucks. It'll mess you up if it happens enough. I did not give this Scarab Fearless for just that reason, but with his massive Sense Motive that shouldn't be an issue if you stick to your PL. One thing I didn't include here is the Scarab's Lair: there's an impressive version of that in one of the PDFs you can buy from Green Ronin, as well as a marvelous one Shaen has statted out here. I figure that's something you can buy in play with points: as it is, this is the Scarab just after he's reawakened into his true nature, perhaps sitting in his basement reading a book about the Pyramids, or having somehow otherwise unlocked his secret true nature and uncovered the lost legacy of the Scarab!

Citizen and Rogue traded punches in the 'air', neither program able to seriously injure each other in the melee. Citizen was winning in that he was keeping Rogue from doing what she'd come there to do: wreak further havoc on the hospitals computers, but he certainly wasn't able to come to grips with his slippery foe. They were evenly matched, in more ways than one. "We don't have to live like this!" he told her, dodging a punch and throwing a kick of his own. "Miss Americana and I, we're working to save Tronik! We're already installing new memory cores, new software...we can save the city! We can go back home and things will be all right again!" "And be a maggot in a rotting corpse?" Rogue spat with venom, her fists shimmering with electrostatic energy as she narrowly missed putting Sharl through a wall consisting of the hospital's accounting software, numbers and spreadsheets clicking behind Citizen as he ducked around it. "I'm not going back there to be a joke surrounded by other jokes! Nothing in there matters, do you hear me? It's all just people living their fake little lives, having no idea they were dead before they were born! The only thing that matters is out here, and I am not going back!"

Round '3' Wail: 21 Jade Dragon: 17 Gorillon: 13

Sharl will try to Bluff Rogue as a Move Action, taking a -5 Penalty. 24 Not bad! 24 Oh for. Well, he'll Power Attack her anyway. Time to raise the stakes... 26 He hits her Defense of 22. And she is unhurt. 27 Son of a She'll try and Bluff him, taking a -5 Penalty 21 Vs his Bluff of 15 You know, I'm going to reroll that with an HP. He'll succeed automatically since he has Bluff +14. She'll Power Attack him. And she misses too. So none of them have tagged each other, and Sharl is down his Luck HP and his Miss A complication HP. Son of a...

"With the island's defense systems active, we can neither take the League's teleporters, burrow via Gaian Knight's terran abilities, or step through Fleur de Joie's plants. I recommend we fly in and rendezvous in the fort atop the central hill," he said, scratching onto the jetty with his sword a crude map of where they were going. "There is a secondary guard post there as well as the pathway down. From there we can plan our journey into the heart of the island and our meeting with its temporary master. I have been inside Blackstone to mission, but never when the facility was locked down. The League is not kept appraised of all the prison's abilities," he admitted, "in case of corruption above."

The last surviving helicopter sped off into the night, its occupants in the sole surviving craft that had come with the Nazi strikeforce to attack the Hunter mansion. The helicopter Trevor had bombed spun to Earth, the pilots fighting to control a wildly spinning aircraft, and landed hard enough that (from the crash of metal) they weren't going anywhere any time soon. Edge made sure of that a moment later, dropping a black dome over the wreck that landed with a gentle thud. Bulletproof, or close to it, there was no way the pilots inside could break out without killing themselves. "We'll have to work fast," whispered Mark to the others as they all moved fast, shooting a glance back at the still-quiet Midnight Manor that Sage had protected in a similar way. "We can probably beat whatever force they've got...but we may not have the time." Urgent mission to save the multiverse or not, Mark hadn't hesitated a moment at fighting Nazis, especially under the circumstances!

As she put another arrow into the giant gorilla, Jade Dragon soon became aware of the situation she was facing: she had enough power to constrain the raging gorilla, but so far she hadn't yet been able to subdue him. Only by putting repeated 'arrows' into the beast was she able to hold him down in his rocky cage, and he was doing sufficient damage in his fury that the earth arrow's constant regrowth was only holding the line rather than sealing him in permanently, If Gorillon ever calmed down enough to really exert himself against those stony bonds, she'd be in serious jeopardy from what would no doubt be a very angry, very powerful giant ape who presumably would not fall for the same trick twice! And not only her, but the entire busy neighborhood of Port Regal!

"You were admitted because you have the potential to be a superhero," replied Summers, studying Darwin intently. "And because, having known my share of Australian heroes, I am aware that a casual demeanor is no bar to competence and heroism." He'd not spoken until asked the question, simply weighing both what the young man had to say and how he went about saying it. "You've told me that you'd like to be back on your beach. If that is where you choose to spend your life, attending Claremont will not stand in your way. You will find that an education is no bar to enjoying a life at sea." He steepled his fingers. "But do you believe you deserve to be more?"

"Yes, I've spoken to your parents by telephone," replied Summers, and it was tough to read in his voice how he felt about that conversation. "I understand your concerns. Despite rumors that some of our upperclassmen may spread to you, Claremont is not a prison: ideally, all of our students because they want to be. As you can imagine, slots at our school are difficult to come by, particularly for international students. Would you prefer to be somewhere else?"

28 Okay, he'll damage the snare, but not break out this round.

Round 2 Jade Dragon is Unhurt and has 2 HP Gorillon is bound and helpless. He also has cover from the snare, since it doesn't have Transparent. Jade Dragon is up