Avenger Assembled

Harrier: Super-Senses 3 (Terminus Awareness [mental], Detect Terminus 2 [visual]) [3 pp] Since Visual senses are Ranged by default, Ranged Visual Detect Terminus should just be 1PP. Doktor'd!

With his glasses and coat on, Sharl looked as anonymous as any other citizen on the street, but he didn't object to what was going on. "Yeah, I guess we'd better do that," he said, still a little breathless after his spectacular catch. Behind them Leroj was repairing the damage to the bus as the shocked people inside made a hasty evacuation onto the pedestrian walkway where Sharl had deposited them. "I can't believe I caught that whole thing," he said, looking back at the bus in shock. "It's so big!" He caught sight of Leroj, a question on his face, and the Tronik sysadmin introduced himself. When he learned that this was the man who'd called the Curator to save the city, Sharl hesitated just a moment, then shook his hand in a very Freedom City way. "Good to know I'm not alone here." And with that damage repaired, they were up in the air again!

"Yes," said Heyzel, shooting Nick a curious look, as if the discussion that his father was the embodiment of death itself meant nothing. "Did I never-no, I suppose I didn't. Yes, my father is the Malak al-Maut, He Who Has Four Faces and Four Thousand Wings, the all-conquering Angel of Death." He shrugged, looking at his father. "I never really thought it as special. It was his calling in the choir, and how I met my mother. I suppose I should introduce her as well, if I am not to look an ungrateful son! Fleur de Joie, Nick Cimitere, this is my mother Jeanne." The newly-healed angel nodded, holding her husband's hand, and said, "It is a pleasure. I would take your food," she added to Fleur, "as long as I do not leave your home, the power that keep my husband and I here will allow us your hospitality. Your pardon for the couch," she said as she followed Fleur into the kitchen, "I have not bled so in many centuries. The color will fade in a few hours, but the power of the relics will remain." "DOES IT SURPRISE YOU THAT I WOULD HAVE A WIFE AND SON, NICK?" asked the angel of death, his black wings folded behind him like a cape. "TO BE ALONE AMONG THE ANGELS IS A GATEWAY TO THE FALL." He eyed Nick and said, "YOU SHOULD TAKE A SPOUSE, NECROMANCER. TO LIVE ONLY IN DEATH IS UNHEALTHY FOR A MORTAL."

"THEIR MASTER HAS LAID SIEGE TO THE GATEWAYS OF HEAVEN," boomed the angel of death with a terrible finality. "THE WAR HAS BEEN DIFFICULT." As Jeanne D'Arc's wounds healed, she joined her husband and son in a prayer of thanks before she sat up, taking Fleur's hand. "Thank you, Fleur de Joie," she said, her accent now definitely sounding French. "I am grateful for your help." She laid a hand on Fleur's stomach for just a moment, then rose to confer with her husband in a language that wasn't. That left Heyzel to look to Fleur and Nick. "I was called away from my work in the Middle East to deal with that. It's been..." He rubbed his eyes. "Very difficult," he admitted, losing another feather behind him. "As much as defending Creation matters, losing the connection to the material world has been so hard. It's all brightness and purity there, but...this is where people actually live." He shrugged, looking a little helpless. "How have things been?"

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! The chimes were everywhere, violently interrupting the Tulink family reunion and Sharl's fantastic tales of another dimension. The face of the city's auto-militia came on the wallscreens as the exterior walls blanked to transparent, showing the citizens the disaster coming their way. AIRBUS COLLISION IMMINENT. PLEASE EVACUATE- "Oh no!" called Sharl over the sound of the alarms, "they'll never get the building empty in time!" His parents and sister, all looking at each other, knew that was much was true. "Sharl, your friends," said Aba, "can you call them? If they can change so much, can they catch it?" There was no point in running; they were waiting for the emergency elevator to form up on their floor so they could get away. "I...no," said Sharl decisively, "I'll never reach them in time. They're too far away. This is a job for me." And with that, the teenager took a running start and flying leap and flew right out the window. He was fast in the air, very fast, much more so than he'd been in Freedom City. He thought of Miss Americana, Gina, the other heroes of the city, as he turned and buried his shoulders in the onrushing plane. So heavy, so heavy, so heavy... He pushed as hard as he could, feeling the tremendous mass at his back slow and slow, even as the huge wall of the sector before him got closer and closer. Stronger here, so much stronger, got to catch it, got to BELIEVE in myself! Do what Miss A would do! And with that thought and one last outpouring of tremendous energy, the bus slowed to a stop behind him! He caught it before it could start to fall, his muscles screaming with the exertion, and began to lower it to the walkways far below, heedless of the city of cameras all watching their savior with electronic eyes...

Round 1 1 minute to impact! I'll say the hoverbus weighs about 50 tons, requiring a total of STR 55 to hold it up. Using this sheet for Sharl, he could do that with extra-effort. But it's also traveling fast; let's say at Flight 5. Which means it's time for some countering. Move Action: At Flight 5, Sharl flies up to the thing and puts his back into it. Standard Action: Countering! 23 for Sharl vs. 21. OK, it's slowed to Flight 4. Round 2 Countering Check: 17 vs. 11 Sharl wins again, and it's slowed to Flight 3 Round 3 24 vs. 23 Sharl wins again, barely! Flight 2 Round 4 Disaster! It's going to be too close... Round 5 Whew, Sharl wins again with 15 to 8 Flight 1 Round 6 19 to 20, son of a guuun Round 7 Son of a... OK, Sharl spends his last HP and rerolls that check. He beats 12 automatically and catches the bus with seconds to spare! He switches his Array to Super-Strength 4, uses extra effort (becoming Fatigued) and lowers the bus slowly to the Earth.

Her eyes snapped open as she looked at Fleur, face white with suppressed pain. "Your child will meet a boy when she is but a girl," she hissed in a strange, heavy accent. "They will be in love, but not know it until they are much older. Do not trust him until he know he loves her!" She flinched at that, and fell silent, but was soothed by Stesha and her son' reassuring presence. "When we're not at war, my mother follows mothers and their daughters," said Heyzel, giving her a worried look. "She must have been...Never mind. Listen to Stesha," he told his mother with an angel' authority and a son's love, "You need to rest. You've fought the fight for Good, just as you always do." He nodded at Nick's arrival and gave him space as well, folding his wings tightly behind him. "The passage from Heaven cleansed the acid from her wound, but the damage had been done already."

The angel of death opened the door for Nick, black vulture wings spreading behind him, eyes flashing with the empty gaze of Eternity. At least until he saw Nick. "HELLO, NICK." Had he been quite so tall and buff the last time they'd met? "I DIDN'T THINK TO SEE YOU AGAIN SO SOON." Past the wings of the Great End, Nick could see Fleur and Freedom Angel bending over a badly-burned female angel on Fleur's couch, Heyzel slowly and gently undoing his mother's armor one clasp at a time. "She held off the Giallo Imperatore alone when he broke through our lines, I couldn't believe it," Heyzel was muttering to Stesha as the shockingly deep injuries were revealed. "Father and I had to cut her free of his tentacles. When nothing we could do helped, you were the first person I thought of. Ssh, it'll be all right..." As her armor came off, revealing the full extent of her deep wound, she hissed something that was probably untranslatable. "Fleur de Joie is the finest healer on Earth, and she's bringing life herself now. She'll fix this."

The three computer experts spent quite some time talking about the problems of Tronik, taking the time out to straighten up the inverted super-freighter as they worked. With Leroj's help, what might have been the work of hours was only going to take a few minutes: they'd have Tronik straightened out and have plenty of time to join Sharl's family for supper before leaving him in his home. The old man was incredibly grateful to have someone with which to share his burdens, and full of the ideas he'd been powerless to act on for the decades of Tronik's confinement. Just as they were making their plans to integrate the expanded memory into Tronik, which would then be followed up by the creation of the 'island' there, suddenly Leroj's head jerked up. "Oh no! I've been so focused on the allocation that I missed-" And then the others felt it too, just a step behind the man with a permanent connection to the program: something was going wrong. He pulled up an image in the 'air' to show them the ongoing disaster: a large hoverbus, big as a jet back on Freedom City, was heading towards the massive silver bulk of a sector, and heading there fast. "There's a microfault in the programming of the engines, but it's spreading fast. If it strikes thewall, it'll spread directly into Sector 30 and the hundreds of thousand of people there. Oh no, oh no..." Suddenly, on the screen, the situation changed: a black dot, rapidly resolving into a humanoid figure, flew straight out of the sector wall and made a beeline for the out-of-control hoverbus!

Caradoc spent hours in Sanctuary, and was amazed at just how happy he felt. Flying around without fear of people below, joined in the air by baby bees as far as the edge of the clearing, it was all so wonderful inside his shiny suit of armor made by Miss Americana. At first his nerve failed him when he flew over the little village of survivors, but at the sight of a flying man in a knight's armor, all of the people below came out to stare and cheer! It was more than he could resist. There was only so much he could do to help, but between taking a few children too young to be working for rides and cutting down one very large tree, his visit there went well also. And then another flight with eagerly laughing beelings, until finally the sun was setting and they were headed for bed. He took that as his cue to fly back to Stesha's house.

She knew Freedom Angel well enough; Heyzel looking unusually stressed. From the feathers on the floor of her apartment, he'd shed a few in his worry. The other people there were new: the muscular, barrel-chested man in black in the corner, giving worried looks to the badly-injured woman on Stesha's couch. No, not a man and not a woman: the man's wings were as black as Heyzel's were white, looking more like great vulture wings than dove's, while both wore the sort of Romanesque armor that she associated with her friend the angel. "It's my mother," said Heyzel, taking her hand. "She was...she was wounded in a battle elsewhere," he explained as he led the healer to her side. "And none of our arts could cure her." The short, compact brunette was obviously in pain, and no wonder: it looked as though something made of acid had reached out and burned into her ribcage, right through metal armor. "Oh, you're a mother...Father?" The barrel-chested angel took a step back, carefully avoiding the near-presence of Fleur, and said snappishly, in a voice like the rumbling of thunder, "I DO KNOW MY WORK, BOY. IF YOUR FRIEND CAN HELP, LET HER HELP."

5/16/2011 Midtown His mother didn't complain, of course she didn't. There was no hiding the extent of her wound, though; the long, deep gouge of burning acid that had cut across her armor and into angelic flesh beneath, inflicting a wound terrible enough that surely any mortal would have died of shock at least. As it was, she simply bit her lip and stared wordlessly at father and son, the harsh reality of the material plane both dulling the agony of her wound and making its treatment all the more urgent. "CALL YOUR FRIEND," said Heyzel's father in that deep, booming voice he used in the material world. "BEFORE WE HAVE TO GO EVEN FURTHER BELOW TO FIND SUCCOR." For his part, the angel of Freedom was worried. He hadn't expected to find the place nearly deserted! Fleur de Joie was on patrol, or at least garden patrol, when her phone rang. Things had been quiet for the League in the last few months, quite a blessing with her baby growing closer and closer to fruition, and calls on her special League line hadn't come in that often. What was really peculiar, though was the caller ID that told her the call was coming from her own apartment. "Hello, Fleur? It's Heyzel." The Angel of Freedom had been out of town for much of the last few months, but she'd caught occasional glimpses of him on the international news. "I'm sorry to call you," he said, urgency in his rich, warm voice, "but I have a wounded soul who needs your help. Please come back to your apartment as soon as you can."

"It is a good place for growing," agreed Murdock. "Human, insect, or otherwise." He felt more confident on this world than he had on his own, or rather, his adopted planet, and his voice came with more authority. "I am sorry I could not help you more with your dilemma," he added, "but I am glad I could tell you what did not happen. This place has seen enough that it deserves to be free of the taint of the Terminus." Though he supposed the question made him a hypocrite, he asked, "How long may I stay?"

Shaen, it's a well-written, exciting thread introducing a dynamic new character! The surprise would be if people weren't reading it. Anyhow, my apologies as well for misunderstanding your intent. Go about your business!

Now that the timing all works out, I am interested in running Freedom Angel here.

"I guess that's true," said Citizen, a little discomfitted yet at the thought of being subject to artificial lifeform laws at all. "Do you guys have any synthetic students at the school? Like robots, or something? I know there aren't a lot of sentient programs out there, and most of them...most of them aren't very nice. I work with Protectron at the Lab," he said, "I dunno if you guys know him, he's a gold robot from space or something. We don't really know! But he's nice. He bakes a lot of cookies and makes sandwiches for the people who work there."

Leroj did his best to help, but it wasn't easy. The computer architecture with which he was familiar was very different than what Miss Americana and Dragonfly had worked with: as they'd seen, computers on Tronik were substantially different than their earthly varieties. But he wasn't just a teenager like Sharl, he was, or had been, one of the city's leading scientists, and of course he was talking to two women who were vast geniuses in their own right. His ideas for improving Tronik's systems were largely internal: he proposed that the new memory capacity be used to generate a 'habitat' to be discovered in the ocean by the plankton fleet; perhaps a crashed 'alien' starship or an undiscovered island. A largely empty, if habitable environment, would be the subject of much study, and then gradually colonized as population pressures in the city grew. In particular, an island that lacked the mass of complex 'technology' on Tronik itself would be much easier to build. "It will be a mystery to solve...but from what you've said, my people are more interested in those mysteries than I've believed." He was open to suggestions, though, and looked almost pathetically grateful for new ideas. He'd been without an ally or confidant here for a long, long time.

APPROVED

"I have full administrator access," replied Leroj. "I can rewrite any part of it I wish, though I have learned from bitter experience that I must be careful. I am a man, not a computer, and a programming error would be...has been disastrous. I live in fear of making a mistake I cannot repair, or of making the growing disasters all around here even worse. I know about the problems you've mentioned and I've done my best to correct them, but I'm alone and there are so many of them these days, I..." He rubbed his eyes again. "My own program is one I cannot change; I am not part of the Tronik software package itself. I can only be awake so long, and work so hard. But never mind me. You have more memory for the system? How is this possible? The Centurion told me that the mainframe running the Tronik program was more advanced than any on his home world, and impossible for your science to improve on."

"I am part of the Freedom League's oral history project," replied Harrier to the first. "It is a special project of Lady Liberty's," he clarified. "Those who are the last to remember something, or among the few who were there at some great and secret moment, tell their tale to a recorder, so that it may be stored in memory. The idea of building something that lasts, even if it was only a monument of stories, had much appeal to me." At her question, he gave her an implacable look. "There is much to tell. You would find much of it distressing. Very little of it is...pleasant to hear for those who have not seen it. What would you know?"

Space Monkey Mafia, 2011 The general public believes that Albert II, the first monkey in space, died on June 14, 1949 after his parachute failed during re-entry. This is a fiction. The truth is that when Albert was recovered alive in his capsule, he looked up at the Air Force guys and thought desperately: “Help meeeeee...” The exposure to unfiltered solar radiation had _changed_ the little rhesus monkey, giving him both sentience and low-level telepathy. The changes to the monkey bred true, and proved easy to duplicate on subsequent rocket launches, and soon the Air Force had itself a colony of sentient, telepathic rhesus monkeys in Nevada. Unfortunately things didn’t go that well. The head of the program was a German scientist swept up by Operation Paperclip, a man whose ethics were as weak as his drive to prove himself to his new masters was strong. The little monkeys endured a terrible existence under his rule, subject to horrible experiments at his whim: but though he was a monster, he was more genius than he knew. After over a decade of breeding and multiple experiments, the rhesus colony at White Sands wasn’t just sentient and telepathic. It was, when sorely pressed, _one mind_, and a mind far more powerful than its handlers realized. One night in 1961, under the leadership of a rhesus named Albert X, the monkeys escaped their tormentor (after mind-controlling him into performing certain experiments on his own frontal lobe) and fled into the desert. The trip through the Nevada desert was a difficult journey for the little monkeys, many of who died of thirst, exposure, or Ford pickup along the way. Albert himself died on that journey, but his successor Victoria led them to the promised land: a recently abandoned nuclear testing ground near the Utah border. A local oasis and a lack of people meant the monkeys had all the food and drink they wanted, while the altitude gave them the climate and weather they preferred. Under cover of isolation and government secrecy, they grew, and they thrived. Using long-range telepathic probes, they began exploring their world and found a grim situation indeed. Despite the distant civilization of Gorilla Island, the space monkeys were the only sentients of their kind on Earth: their little colony could easily have been stamped out by humans if they so wished it: all their telepathic powers couldn’t have stopped an IRBM fired at their settlement, not to mention the ever-growing threat of superheroes. Gradually Victoria and her successors began to send out physical scouts to infiltrate the world of Man. Sentient monkeys good at play-acting were natural agents to infiltrate the simian-happy world of the 1960s and 1970s. Innocent, happy-looking monkeys who appeared on television and movies throughout the era all were secretly reporting back all they saw and heard to their colony back in the desert. After discovery of their Soviet counterparts in the mid-1970s, cautious feelers were sent out to the canine settlements in Siberia, but the two cultures proved ultimately unable to cooperate even in secret, though they remain in quiet contact. As the years went by, and generations of space monkeys grew up ‘abroad’, gradually the leadership of the Nevada colony took a stronger and stronger interest in the world of men. Where once they had been slaves, now they would be masters. Where once they had had nothing, now they would have everything. They began sending out special agents to infiltrate the soft, criminal underbelly of humanity: so what if that gangster had no papers for his monkey, or if his behavior should change suddenly one day? A man like that wouldn’t buy an animal legally, and surely it was the drugs who made him change, not the telepathic influence of the curious little monkey running around beneath his feet. Gradually the monkeys of Nevada began sinking their little hands into organized crime across the world: drugs, contraband, fine cars, anything that could be enjoyed in style by a monkey was shipped through dummy corporations to pickup spots in Nevada, where drivers with other hands controlling theirs delivered to the monkeys all they wanted. They made contact with Dr. Simian a few years ago and struck up a cordial working relationship despite his ape nature, and he provides them with super-technology in return for easy access to human organized crime bosses. Anyone who wants to deal with the space monkey mafia had better be prepared for a fight; the monkeys have had many years to place their agents across the United States, and they have been building their secret defense network around their homebase since the day they arrived. Having been taught that human beings want nothing more than to lobotomize their children and cook them for meat, these monkeys will not go down without a fight if it comes down to a battle in the Nevada desert.

Venus Fly-Trap PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 20 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 14 (+2) CON 16 (+3) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Vampire Plants) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +6 Grapple: +6 Saves: 13 pp TOU +8 (+3 Con, +5 Protection) FORT +7 (+3 Con, +4) REF +6 (+2 Dex, +4) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 44 r=11 pp Bluff 7 (+10) Knowledge: Arcane Lore 5 (+5) Intimidate 7 (+10) Notice 3 (+5) Perform (violin) 2 (+5) Profession (florist) 4 (+7) Sense Motive 3 (+5) Stealth 12 (+15) Feats: 13 pp All-Out Attack Distract (Bluff) Dodge Focus 6 Improved Initiative Move-By Action Power Attack Precise Shot Uncanny Dodge (olfactory) Powers: 72 pp Immunity 12 (aging, life support, starvation and thirst, sleep) [12 pp] Impervious TOU 8 [8 pp] Vampire Plant Array [22+3=25 pp] Damage 10 (Extra: Vampiric) (PFs: Accurate 2) AP: Drain Strength 10 (Extra: Ranged) (PFs: Accurate 2) AP: Snare 10 (PFs: Accurate 2) AP: Teleport 6 (600 ft/20 miles) (Extra: Accurate) (PFs: Easy, Progression 2 [500 lbs], Turnabout) Protection 5 [5 pp] Regeneration 9 (+6 Recovery Bonus [total +9], Resurrection 3 (1 per 5 hours)) (PF: Regrowth) [10 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Movement 3 (Slow Fall, Wall-Crawling 2) [6 pp] Super-Senses 5 (Acute Scent, Darkvision, Tremorsense) [5 pp] Drawbacks: Vulnerable (holy) (uncommon, major) [-3 pp] costs abilities 20 + combat 24 + saves 13 + skills 11/44 + feats 13 + powers 72 -drawbacks 3= 150 pts -- Design Notes: From a universe where Avenger didn't ruin his date with Fleur de Joie, but instead the two hit it off most marvelously, I give you the lovely, deadly Venus Fly-Trap. She's proof that not all plant controllers are nice people; she's a master of carnivorous plants, and indeed uses them for her own benefit as her vampire heritage interacts with her plant-controlling powers to give her a surprising edge in combat. I figure her Ranged Drain is thorny vines like a mutant mistletoe that wrap around their targets and feast on their energy, draining their life away and making them weak and helpless: the vampiric melee damage is directly sinking those thorns in and enriching herself from the life's blood of her targets. Scary, yes, but it can still be done non-lethally in the right hands. Between her vampire heritage and her plant heritage, she can shrug off most forms of harm; she's very tough and she's immune to most mortal concerns. She's probably happiest under moonlight, enjoying the nightglow as it settles into her skin. (Why the Venus flytrap pic above? Because vampire-themed lady superhero tends to get you people who dress like a prostitute, and I don't think Fleur's kid would run around doing that!) With her ability to climb up walls like a spider and sniff out her enemies, she really is proof that plants aren't just passive victims of animals anymore. If you don't like the supernatural aspect, this would make a pretty good build for some kind of eco-terrorist plant controller, albeit one with decidedly spooky, supernatural powers. As mentioned above, she makes a nice antidote to people worried that plant controllers are just boring hippies. She also puts quite a twist on the vamp archetype: she doesn't need fangs to really mess up your day. She's the sort of lady who has one of those hella Gothy graveyard headquarters by night, perhaps a haunted mansion complete with ghosts, but on the other hand she's got a mom who gave her a strong work ethic. Maybe she runs a floral shop specializing in gothic floral arrangements? Season to taste, pardon the pun, particularly if you don't go with the unusual backstory angle. There's a lot of source material on vampires, of course, not to mention a whole host of really weird plants so you've got plenty of ground to make any kind of vampire plant' character you want; anything from the victim of a blood-destroying plague to a damned soul risen from the grave. Feel free to tweak those as necessary: None of that 'die in 10 rounds' in sunlight drawback; that doesn't make much sense for a plant! As mentioned above, you can just drop the vampire angle all together and just say this is the result of an accident involving a radioactive carnifern...

"I couldn't tell them anything. For 2000 years, they were digital bits in the Curator's mainframe. And so was I, except when the Curator wished it, I was conscious and aware of all that was going on." The old man looked away. "He picked me out of them all, he said he wanted to digitize other worlds, other peoples, and experiment on them to his heart's content, but he needed sentients inside the programs to be his agents. Not only were my people going to become his toys, his pawns, but our enslavement was going to be the gateway to the enslavement of billions more." Running his hands through scraggly white hair, he said, "He showed me things, terrible things, that he had in his memory banks; plagues and monsters and devils, that he wanted to introduce to Tronik. I lied to him as long as I could, I pled for more time, asked to see more data, until finally..." A faint, faint smile crossed his lips. "The Curator caught something. Not just an alien: a super-alien. He took the Centurion to his homeworld and tried to use him to digitize Earth as Tronik had been dignitized. But the Centurion could do things I couldn't. Be something, I couldn't. I managed to upload myself into Tronik's program just before the Centurion tore the hard data away. And I was waiting here, when he came to see us, to tell him what had happened to us, and what we had once been." Pulling out of his ramble, he seemed to force himself to answer Miss A's question. "I can't...I can't face them. To be a computer program, to have been a man and to know I am now just a toy for programmers to manipulate at their will...I couldn't tell my people what I'd done to them! They don't even think I'm alive, I couldn't face them as their hero knowing I was their ultimate betrayer! How can we hope to be worth anything when we're nothing but computer programs in a lab?"

Brick Ninja Abilities: 64 pp STR 30 (+10) DEX 30 (+10) CON 30 (+10) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +4 (+10 Melee) DEF: +10 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +14 Grapple: +20 Saves: 4 pp TOU +10 (+10 Con) FORT +10 (+10 Con) REF +10 (+10 Dex) WILL (+12 vs mental effects) +6 (+2 Wis, +4, +6 Mind Shield) Skills: 48r=12 pp Acrobatics 15 (+25) Language 1 (English) (Base: French) Notice 6 (+8) Perform (mime) 5 (+5) Sense Motive 6 (+8) Stealth 15 (+25) Feats: 16 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee (6) Evasion, Dodge Focus 2, Fearless, Hide in Plain Sight, Luck, Move-By Action, Power Attack, Takedown Attack 2 Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 30 pp Autofire on Unarmed Damage [10 pp] Concealment 6 (all visual, auditory, olfactory) (Flaw: Phantasm) [6 pp] Leaping 1 (x2) [1 pp] Mind Shield 6 [6 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Movement 3 (Slow Fall, Wall-Crawling 2) [6 pp] costs abilities 64 + combat 24 + saves 4 + skills 12/48 + feats 16 + powers 30 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: Remember back when Wander and Sage had that wrestling match? Well, just suppose that Sage had been a little crazy, stolen some of Wander's DNA, and used it to impregnate herself. What, it could happen! Or maybe this is a product of a fling between Sage and the Aaron White of Earth-XX, or any number of other possible origins. (Perhaps she's from a universe where gymnasts reproduce via parthenogenesis! We did have a lot of them floating around not too long ago). Anyway, the idea is that this fine lady has been raised by certain secret organizations associated with the French government (or maybe just the Martel family) as the deadliest mime in France! She's a fast, lethal fighter who psychically hides from everyone around her, runs up walls, and throws down a volley of punches that hit harder and faster than a helicopter's minigun, all the while invisible! I didn't give her Concealment vs. mental or radio because it seemed like a psychic should be able to see another hiding psychic, while radio is usually a mechanical sense and she's got Phantasm on his Concealment anyway. Luckily, Sage's wealth makes it unlikely she's going to sue for child support, especially since there are some pretty touchy legal issues at work. The mime is, of course, a good way to make use of her family abilities to get close to her target: what could be more trustworthy than that silent lady dressed like Marcel Marceau. If you don't like the unlikely origin, I think this lady works just fine as a variant on the Living Weapon archetype. There's really very little that can stop her; she's faster than a normal person, stronger too, and has Concealment and Speed enough to evade most of the powerhouses who could be a serious threat to her. Who's to say an Evil Organization wouldn't want to mix their pet psychics with their pet bricks to produce a powerhouse ninja? You could make her a magic-oriented type, I suppose, but this really does seem like a well-built psychic lady: her powerful mental shields also keep her friend the Wheelchair Mentalist from unlocking the terrible secret of her origins! (Did I mention how great amnesia is as a Complication for your typical Living Weapon? Nyyyes) With that Concealment, Stealth, and Acrobatics, not to mention her various ways of getting around, this lady should basically never have any issues with catching her opponents flat-footed. So Power Attack all you like and cleave through their ranks like the unstoppable powerhouse you are: they'll have a very hard time indeed hitting you if you stay on the move and keep using your powers and abilities in useful ways. Sure she's a bit one-dimensional, but she doesn't have to be. She's got a lot to stunt from. Maybe if she's on her own and no longer being forced to work as the Deadliest Mime Alive, she can start uncovering more of her abilities: a fast, strong lady like this who can also read minds would be pretty cool! And maybe one day, one day, she'll be able to reach inside her mind and find the biologically unlikely story of her past!

Grim of all Blades Abilities: 32 pp STR 14 (+2) DEX 18 (+4) CON 18 (+4) INT 10 (+0) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 30 pp ATK: +7 (+13 Melee) (+15 Sword) DEF: +13 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +8 Grapple: +15 Saves: 10 pp TOU +7 (+4 Con, +3 Protection) FORT +7 (+4 Con, +3) REF +7 (+4 Con, +3) WILL +7 (+3 Wis, +4) Skills: 18 pp=72 r Acrobatics 11 (+15) Bluff 12 (+15) Knowledge: History 5 (+5) Knowledge: Streetwise 5 (+5) Languages 5 (Celtic, German, Hebrew, French, Spanish) (Base: English) Notice 7 (+10) Perform (bagpipes) 2 (+5) Sense Motive 12 (+15) Stealth 11 (+15) Survival 3 (+5) Feats: 24 pp Accurate Attack Acrobatic Bluff All-Out Attack Attack Focus: Melee 6 Attack Specialization: Sword Challenge (Fast Taunt) Defensive Attack Dodge Focus 5 Improved Initiative Move-By Action Power Attack Quick Draw [draw] Takedown Attack Taunt Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 36 pp Damage 3 (PFs: Improved Crit, Mighty) (Extras: Autofire and Penetrating on Strength and Strike) [11 pp] 'fae sword' Protection 3 [3 pp] Super-Senses 10 (True Sight) [10 pp] Teleport 4 (400 ft/1 mile) (Extra: Accurate) ‘fae step’ [12 pp] costs abilities 32 + combat 30 + saves 10 + skills 18/72 + feats 24 + powers 36 = 150 pts - Design Notes: So Grimalkin and Jack of all Blades went on an adventure to Las Vegas together where maybe they partied a lot and ended the fight really hammered after getting drunk on the casino's tab (the price of saving the place from bad guys!) and nine months later she had a baby who could summon a magic sword. Look, who can say how these things happen? Anyway, Grim of all Blades here is a badass fae swordswoman with a lot of cool tricks: she can step through a wall and come out a mile away, summon a mystic blade from nowhere that'll cut through almost anything, and with her formidable fae powers of observation she can see through any trickery or illusion, mortal or otherwise. She can still be fooled by a particularly talented human liar, though: deception from the heart is always the toughest to see through. She's also one of the deadliest fighters on the planet, trained to be a skilled and daring fighter by her uncle, Jack of all Blades. Whaaat? Anyway, she's a skilled athlete and equally at home in her mother's Avalon or her father's Freedom City; she can fight in a forest as well as on a skyscraper. There have been some worries that True Sight is overpowered, and indeed it is quite a powerful ability. Consider using it not as a mystery-killer, but as a mystery-finder: there are some enigmas that she'll be the only one with the capacity to even notice, leaving it up to her to use the remainder of her formidable abilities to track down the bad guy. That said, if you do think True Sight is overrpowered, feel free to cut it down to something more manageable. Another bit of flavor you might want to add is giving her the Transmit flaw on her Teleport: maybe give her a fae-friendly medium like plants, mirrors, or water. Flavor her swords however you want; she has a generic super-sharp, super-fast rapier right now that you could mix up however you like. Concealment would make another reasonable power for a fae-inspired character, as would pixie wings like her half-cross-universe brother Sundance upthread. If you don't like the connection to PCs (or if the players in question are somewhat put off by this possibility), this would be just fine as a human being with fae powers: perhaps she's Oberon and Titania's answer to Captain Marvel? Keep in mind as you play this character that this is not a fantasy site: your superhero doesn't need to care what the fairies think about her and what she does. The Avalon-or-whatever flavor here is just that, flavor; it' not what your character should be about. Superheroes are about breaking old mystic pacts and punching elder things in the face, not dancing to their sprightly jig.