Avenger Assembled

"To see children at play, free of worry and fear, is always a fine thing. To see such unusual children, whose coming must have been so difficult, is even finer. This is the beginning of something remarkable, especially if others are resettling here." Caradoc nodded. "You will have a fine place for your child to grow up," said Caradoc, looking over at Fleur. She could just make out eyes through the slits in his helmet, but from what she'd seen of his Omegadrone armor, they were probably not his. "Will you raise your children here?" he asked her, "or remain in Freedom City?"

Luckily the security lockout in the militia meant that there were no panics on the street; the remarkable events in the oxygen factory were being handled by the military for the moment and not being broadcast to the civilian population. The ride on the hoverbus went smoothly enough, though the quiet Tronik commuters were somewhat roused to life when what looked like the local version of a soap opera was interrupted by a flicker across the wallscreens. But even that brief interruption didn't last long, and soon enough the two spectral programmers found themselves at their second destination: the hoverbus had taken them all the way to the edge of the island proper, where they could actually make out the alien green sky overhead and the curve of the red sun that forever sat at the horizon. Their target was a warehouse near the edge of the verdigris sea, its boxy shape just like one on Earth, for all that it loomed large enough to hold a supertanker. Inside, sure enough, once past the militia guards outside, there was a gigantic ship hovering in the grip of powerful magnets. No wonder they'd moved the boat away from the water: it was inside out! The entire structure, as large as a supertanker on Earth, had been completely and almost perfectly inverted by a flip in the structural matrix of its code, leaving it looking like something between an abstract sculpture and a Look Inside drawing. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, there was no sign of any mutant people: whether they weren't here yet, or had been and gone, there were no damaged people running around. Before they could go to work repairing the ship (since the program fault that had caused the inversion could easily spread through the 'magnetic field' and into the buildings around, it had to be done), something surprising happened: the doors slammed shut behind them. No, not shut: they were gone.

"When I was lost, Miss Americana found me," said Citizen, only needing to prevaricate a little. "She took me in, talked to me, and saved me, when it would have been so easy to just delete me, or rewrite me, or do any of the other things she could have done since under your laws I'm not even a person. When I was in the crucible, she pulled me out of the fire." He nodded at that sentiment, something he'd pulled out of one of the books he'd found online. "She built a house to live in in her computer and everything. She's really awesome. And yeah, she is...she's that pretty in person, too. Wow."

Behind his armor, Caradoc laughed, and he really meant it when confronted by these adorable little thing. "Yes, you are all very beautiful bees! Never have I seen creatures like you before!" And in a lifetime of horror and pain, encountering creatures with whom he had no unpleasant associations was a very pleasant thing. "Are they all like this?" he asked Fleur. "So full of joy at new things? Or is it only the children? Either way..." To the giant bee, he said, "Your children have been raised very well. You must be very proud of your hive!" Insect culture, at least, was one thing he knew well, though it sounded like these bees had adopted the human custom of their leader.

Harrier made sure to leave his contact information with the other heroes before departing, turning himself into Caradoc and then turning himself invisible before he roared off into the night sky to collect his thoughts. The ghosts of the past had risen up tonight in more ways than one, and the experience had been a deeply unsettling one. He flew for hours, higher and higher, until finally he could look below and see the curvature of the Earth below. How many times had he gazed below at burning planets and burning cities, and known only joy at Omega's will? I am no longer what I was. He thought, reminding himself of that over and over again. I am my own man, my own thing. But the ghosts of the past are not as quiet as I might have hoped. I can only hope I can be as strong next time.

With their weapons gone and the mutants seemingly cured, the militia guards suddenly didn't seem to know what to do with themselves. While one with uniform markings that probably made him a leader frantically placed a call to headquarters to explain the situation, one suddenly tore off his helmet, staring at the woman who'd until recently had completely transparent skin. "...Mom!?!" Heedless of the others and the shocked response from his own side, he suddenly ran to his mother, weeping, and embraced her; the search for rational explanations and fear of the unknown lost in the joy of the moment. That seemed to break the dam, and suddenly the militiamen were offering rations and help to the recent mutants, all staring in wonder at the reshaped world all around them.

Temporal Conqueror The Qajarite Shah is a mystery. To students of Freedom City’s history, his story is a familiar one: God of Gods and King of Kings, the Shah is lord and master of the galaxy in the year 4000! Dissatisfied with the mere mastery of stars and planets, the Shah has set himself the mighty goal of conquering Time! Itself! Again and again, the Shah and his mighty armies of power-suited, genetically engineered warriors have tossed themselves against the heroes of Freedom City. Possessing mighty weapons like plasma cannons, antigrav troop carriers, and warriors wielding everything from flaming swords to whirling chain-swords, the Shah and his armies have been a formidable threat at every appearance: in his powersuit, the Shah was the equal of the Centurion himself (though not, as the Man of Adamant graphically demonstrated to the Shah, his superior), while the mightiest of his personal guard, the Immortals, can fight most superheroes on even terms. The Shah is not a particularly imaginative conqueror: a direct ground invasion was defeated in the 1940s, an attempt to conquer the Earth from space in the early 1960s was subverted by the genius of Alexander Atom, a strike against the Lor defeated by Daedalus in the 1980s, and most recently the time-traveling Freedom League teamed up with the Patriot Regiment to crush the Shah’s invasion of the 1860s, Each time he has been outsmarted, outgeneraled, or simply crushed by the weight of superior power. Despite all this, he is a potent threat, particularly since his era (which he describes as simply “the time of LIGHT that came after the time of DARKNESS”, focal point for his “CRUSADE THROUGH TIME”) lies so far beyond the era of even the Freedom Legion that his technology is largely a ‘black box’ even to Freedom’s finest sciences. But why hasn’t he killed us all yet? It’s a logical question: surely someone with regular access to time travel and a galactic empire could simply pour never-ending waves of Space Warriors into the past, burying Freedom’s heroes in unstoppable waves of supermen and women from millennia in the future. Why hasn’t he dumped a nanite plague in the past to devour people with super-genes, or sent agents back to strangle the Centurion in his rocket, or any number of other simple, logical things that anyone with a time machine and no morals could do if they sought to crush their enemies in the womb? Granted, there have been collapses of civilization between our day and the Shah’s, but surely he could use his command of time travel to find out something. When directly confronted by these contradictions, he grows visibly enraged, booming that the “WEAK and FEEBLE” minds of the past could never understand a 10th-level intellect such as himself. With his combination of great power and complete lack of strategic forethought, he is a frustrating enigma for hero and villain alike. (Indeed, both Mastermind and Overshadow have sought the Shah out with feelers for an alliance over the decades, planning to steal and subvert his power for their own: the Shah, however, notably does not share his resources with others). Too, that our grandchildren’s distant descendants are evidently enslaved by a world-conquering tyrant, and an inept one at that, is certainly a depressing thought for any optimist about the nature of the human condition. The truth about the Shah is at once much better, and much worse, than anyone in Freedom City knows. The Qajarite Shah is no king, no god, particularly in his own era. In an age of universal prosperity and peace, where men, women, and the rest from a thousand different species live together in brotherhood across the Milky Way, the Shah is a freak: socially stunted and given to intellectual obsessions, the Shah lives in the lower dimensional reaches noosphere where he was born, still sharing space with the ancestral members of his birth plurality. Unable to function in ‘modern’ society, he turned his attention to the grim violence of the past, a dark era where there was only conflict and bloodshed! Deciding he could make himself a king in those past worlds, he used cloning banks and nanite fabricators to build himself an army of toy warriors, and again and again has used a temporal generator with access to the past of an alternate dimension (thee are fairly common for household use in the 4000s, given how easy they make waste disposal) to assault the past for the pleasure of his hindbrain. His legion of concubines are synthetic faux-intelligences that are the only members of the opposite sex who have ever shown any interest in him; his armies are so many toys created by the impossible super-science of the future, his ‘playing’ with them making him the subject of scorn and derision by his peers. The Shah of Shahs and King of Kings, like many so-called great conquerors, is ultimately a small, petty man in control of something much larger and more important than himself. If ever he came truly close to victory, the Shah would have no idea what to do with himself. The best lasting way to defeat the Shah near-permanently would be to send agents forward into the future to speak directly to the locals: true, the local authorities would do nothing to help inhabitants of an alternate world's past, but the Shah's embarrassing antics pose a serious problem for his birth-plurality in a culture where social esteem and tolerance are very important: one young man's obsession with violent imagery and conflict makes everyone involved look bad. The evidence for this will be easy to find: the Shah proudly boasts of his 'conquests' to his fellow social deviants, living for their praise and worship being one of the few things that gives his life meaning,. If the heroes can manage the trip to the distant future and navigate the bizarre, alien world of humanity at the cusp of the technological and social Singularity, they can end the Shah's campaign of terror with the man himself near-tears as the elders of his plurality take away his cloning vats and his temporal projector, all the while lamenting to each other about where they went wrong with this one. Oh, he'll storm and fuss about how this isn't over: one day he'll get out of his home noosphere and be his own man, one day he'll get his revenge on the past by leading an unstoppable army of warriors to crush all that lie before him and become a god! But in the end, he'll come up with excuse after excuse not to leave the noosphere, and he'll ultimately sink into the haze of virtual realities and hallucinogens that mark the typical deviants of the world of 4011.

Gumshoe PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 0 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 16 (+3) CON n/a (-) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+12 ranged/+14 pistol) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +3 Grapple: +6 Saves: 7 pp TOU +8 (+8 Protection) FORT n/a REF +6 (+3 Dex, +3) WILL +6 (+2 Wis, +4) Skills: 13 pp=52 r Bluff 10 (+10) Gather Info 5 (+5) Intimidate 5 (+5) Investigate 5 (+5) Knowledge: Streetwise 5 (+5) Language 1 (Italian) (Base: English) Notice 8 (+10) Search 5 (+5) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 19 pp Attack Focus: Ranged 6, Attack Specialization: Pistol Dodge Focus 6, Fearless, Luck, Power Attack, Precise Shot, Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 93 pp Flight 1 (10 MPH) [2 pp] Immunity 40 (Fortitude Saves, Mental Effects) [40 pp] Insubstantial 3 (Extra: Duration [Default] [+0]) (PF: Innate) [16 pp] Noir Array [18+1=19 pp] Blast 6 (Extra: Autofire) ‘pistol’ AP: Dimensional Movement 2 (any dimension with a ‘picture’ descriptor) Protection 8 [8 pp] Regeneration 5 (Recovery Bonus +0) (PF: Regrowth) [6 pp] Super-Senses 4 (Postcognition) (Limited: Medium [images]) [2 pp] Drawbacks: -6 pp Weakness (magnetic fields; Uncommon, Major [-1 all physical ability scores], per 1 minute, potentially lethal; -6pp) costs abilities 0 + combat 24 + saves 7 + skills 13/52 + feats 19 + powers 93 - drawbacks 6 = 150 pts ----------------- Design Notes: The detective was in the middle of doing his usual work, shaking down a few skells for information on what Nicky the Nose was doing in Canarsie the night the old man took a header into his own mansion's swimming pool, when suddenly there was a great flash of light and noise and he was elsewhere: standing in a darkened movie theater while gunsels in shiny union suits and dames with great gams battled it out right in front of him with crazy powers like something from a kiddie comic book, or even the Liberty League! Luckily he recognized Lady Liberty and figured out what was going on, and he pulled out his trusty .45 and put two slugs in what turned out to be a creation of some lowlife freak named Toy Boy and his Toon Gang. It was only later, when he sat down to talk with the heroes, that they got a good long look at him and realized something very, very strange was going on. Here's my build for the Gumshoe archetype from Instant Superheroes, a classic character from pulp comics who has been grafted onto superhero stories with mixed success. The idea here, based on Film Noir, one of my favorite characters from the Algernon Files, is that the Gumshoe is indeed a fictional private eye from a film serial from the 1940s (one that luckily included a mention of the Liberty League to give him a frame of reference) that got pulled into the real world thanks to the mighty magic of the mysterious being known as Quirk. (And yes, he is in black and white and sees the world that way too; treat his colorblindness as a Complication) As this is a little beyond the resources of even your typical super-scientist, the Gumshoe has been let loose on the streets to do what he does best: fight crime! Hey, it turns out you don't need Affects Corporeal on a Blast with Insubstantial 3. Always having to fight the urge to narrate his activities is probably a complication too, really. So the idea is that he is a movie image brought to life: he can shoot people with his gun (which hurts despite being made of some kind of crazy movie energy) and do some decent low-level PI work. Real bullets pass right through him, since he's just made of a flickering image that really should be on a screen there. He's conscious of his true 'nature' and can use it to his advantage: talking to images on the wall to see if they saw a guy pass through here just a few minutes ago, or duck into pictures on the wall for cover! (You could depict that last one as Concealment, depending on exactly how you want to play with the many points available in the array.) He's a sucker for a sob story or a dame with great gams, and maybe likes a little whiskey now and again. He's not Batman, but Batman isn't a living image straight off a movie screen, either!

Protean Paragon Abilities: 30 pp STR 30 [16] (+10/+3) DEX 14 (+2) CON 30 [16] (+10/+3) INT 10 (+0) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 18 (+4) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Melee) DEF: +10 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +2 Grapple: +21 Saves: 8 pp TOU +10 (+10 Con) FORT +10 (+10 Con) REF +5 (+2 Dex, +3) WILL +8 (+3 Wis, +5) Skills: 32 r=8 pp Bluff 6 (+10) Concentration 5 (+8) Disguise 0 (+4/+39) Language 1 (Russian) (Base: English) Perform (clarinet) 6 (+10) Notice 2 (+5) Sense Motive 7 (+10) Stealth 5 (+7) Feats: 13 pp Attack Focus: Melee 4 Dodge Focus 4 Move-By Action Power Attack Quick Change Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (mental) Powers: 67 pp Enhanced CON 14 [14 pp] Enhanced STR 14 [14 pp] Flight 1 (10 MPH) [2 pp] Immunity 9 (Life Support) [9 pp] Sneaky Array [23+3=26 pp] Drain Wisdom 10 (Extra: Vampiric) (PFs: Precise, Reversible, Slow Fade) AP: Illusion 4 (all senses) (Extras: Duration [sustained], Selective) (Flaw: Phantasms) (PFs: Progression 2 [25 ft], Precise) AP: Insubstantial 4 (Extra: Progressive [+0]) AP: Morph 7 (same mass) (PFs: Covers Scent, Precise) Super-Strength 1 (Heavy Load: 1.5 tons) [2 pp] costs abilities 30 + combat 24 + saves 8 + skills 8/32 + feats 13 + powers 67 = 150 pts ---------------------------------------------------------------- Design Notes: Remember when Grimalkin kissed Atlas? Sure, we all do. Anyway, here's the child that was born as a result of that union. Fairies and Grue shouldn't mix, kids. But when they do, they make pretty OK babies! The Protean Paragon here flies around, bashing people in the face like her dad, but she's also got the incredible sneaky powers she inherited from her mom. She's really, really good at catching people flat-footed: her massive Morph lets her turn into anything and be damn near impossible to detect even for Notice specialists at her PL, while her Illusion is so good she can keep it up while in combat. (Sure, the DC to see through it isn't that high, but a well-placed Illusion is one you never even try to make the roll to avoid. You should never quite know who or what you're dealing with when interacting with the Protean Paragon, which is all for the best given the dual deceptions: Grue AND fae, at the very heart of her nature. If sorely pressed, she can fall back on her Grue heritage and grab you by the head to suck your brain energy out! It'll grow back, eventually, but in the meantime a foe with no WIS is an unconscious foe, and even if he stays on his feet, a guy with low WIS is one who'll have a much harder time seeing through all those Illusions and other tricks. Her Stealth is relatively low, she's more a deceiver than a sneak. Her skills in general could be higher, but I've gone with the idea that she has a lot of potential to grow; this is her quite early in her career! (Hence the fact that she's adventuring in her Claremont uniform, presumably...) If you want to get her more points, add a vulnerability or two: I could see her with a fae allergy to cold iron, or a Grue's potential problem with fire. You could combine the two, I guess, but really most people have a vulnerability to red-hot iron pressed against their flesh. Have her hang out with my Meta-Grue build upthread as sisters in Grueness, who know all about being judged by appearances. Luckily with her Morph and Illusion powers, her appearance can be just about whatever she wants! Grue-influenced PCs naturally have a lot of Enemies, both among humans and among their relatives in the stars. Grue may be Acceptable Targets, kind of, but those who carry their blood are just victims of circumstance. Such Complications make for great HP fonts: I can't stress enough how helpful those are to have in play! Stand up for the oppressed people and fight the power. Heck, maybe you could work up a plot of people with Grue blood in them running around and facing (entirely reasonable, but still bad) prejudice from the man on the street...

"Miss Americana gave me the day off," said Citizen with a little shrug. "So I thought I'd come out and see more of the city. I've gone walking around some, and flying, but I always seem to be doing something." He put his hands in his pockets, looking around. "I was telling Cobalt Templar that I don't have a lot of experience with schools like this one, and so he offered to take me on a tour. It's very impressive! I can't believe how much space you have," he marveled. "Wings do make a good stabilizer, especially beautiful ones. As for her size, personally, I think if I put the two of you together and divided by two, you'd add up to one normal-sized person." he added teasingly.

As the building began warping and changing around them, everyone began screaming! As well they might, really. It was all a wild confusion of the guards shouting at the mutants to stop, the mutants themselves pleading their innocence, even as the building began warping its way right back to normal all around them. Despite their fear, the militia guards weren't far gone enough to open fire on civilians, even mutants, pleading innocence: instead they watched as the building rearranged itself back to normal around the programs inside. At least until they began to change too...

"I do not have any flowers for you," admitted Harrier, "but..." He concentrated, and for a moment Fleur was worried he was about to carry out his graphic transformation right in front of poor fragile Bay-Bee! But instead, he turned into something else: in a showy flash of light, Murdock the man became a shining, gleaming knight! Fleur recognized Caradoc from stories she'd seen about the small population of heroes active outside Freedom City. "I can be a knight! And I can fly!" he added, the dragonshead on his back roaring to life. "Can you fly fast?"

"That I am allowed to live is a source of fascination for me," said Harrier, that flat look softened a little by honest wonder. "I bear the mark of the greatest enemy of humanity. Of all the humanities. And I am unique. Though records exist of other Omegadrones freed from the grip of the Coil, there are none who retain such indelible connections to what we once were." He ran his fingers lightly over the lines that ran over even his fingertips. "I am shown a mercy that I doubt very much I would ever have shown myself, and it fills me with wonder." At Fulcrum's words, he looked out over the arcadian picnic around them and replied with genuine honesty. "I look at this place and I imagine it as a charnel pit. I know how best to terrify the proles over there. I can imagine which would be the most effective to destroy to cow the others into submission." He struggled for words for a moment, then added, "It is a beautiful day. The food is good, and the company is pleasant. I feel happy."

World Devourer (For comparison) The Gorgon is the last great terrible work of the Preservers. Built as that mighty race was slipping towards the inevitable decay that comes to all empires, the Gorgon is perhaps best understood as the end of the cultural journey that began with scattering the humanities among the stars, then moved towards collecting the humanities (and much else beside) under the watchful, paranoid eye of the all-powerful Curator. (She has poor relations with the Curator, who has ‘poached’ her of several planets, but the two have united against pan-galactic threats that have threatened the great work of the Preservers.) The Gorgon thinks of herself as the ultimate Preserver (and indeed, that’s what she calls herself), traveling the universe and preserving planets, civilizations, whole stars from the ever-encroaching ravages of entropy. She is a famous enemy of the Terminus, one of the few entities in the multiverse who Omega genuinely...well, not fears, but one of the few entities whose potential actions he must be concerned with as he goes about his affairs. She loathes the touch of entropy, and will attack any planet showing its taint. Indeed, her near-miss with Earth in the mid-1960s helped alert the Freedom League to the threat posed by Omega. But the Gorgon, of course, poses a tremendous threat in her own right. She is called ‘destroyer of worlds’ in a hundred space-born languages, her terrifying visage a figure in space-monster stories across the Milky Way and beyond. She takes the form of a gigantic humanoid head cast in steel, her green-eyed visage and protruding rear horn perhaps a clue to what the Preservers themselves looked like, a gigantic head the size of the planet Earth itself. Surrounded by lashing ‘serpents’ as long as continents, she flies through space powered by a gravitic drive [which also help cut down on the tidal stresses caused by her passage] that lets her open wormholes to jump from star system to star system in an instant. When she arrives in orbit above a suitable planet (i.e., one that carries sentient life of a suitably advanced degree), she extends her serpents into the atmosphere and fires a package of powerful nanites. The ‘grey plague’ sweeps across the planetary surface within hours, transforming all life into a grey, unbreakable metal harder even than impervium, and within days the planet’s surface changes to that same grey substance as even the atmosphere is hardened into a nigh-unbreakable shell to preserve the specimens within. And then the Gorgon moves on, hunting for another planet to transform and preserve. How many planets has she transformed in this way? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Leaving behind only spheres of grey goo in her wake (spheres which, incidentally, swallow pirates and those who seek to plunder those 'preserved' worlds: she has very little tolerance for those who would lay hands upon her collection) where once green and brown orbs spun. The Gorgon is, as you might imagine, a formidable opponent. She has survived multiple space battles with the fleets of the various interstellar empires over the millennia, having fought in recent centuries the Grue, the Lor, and the Stellar Khanate in turn. (Indeed, her destruction of the Rhodian fleet off Lalande 21185 helped play a major role in the military and political shift between the First and Second Lor Republics, but that’s a story for another time.) She has been defeated on (very rare occasion), and each time retreats to lick her wounds somewhere her enemies cannot follow: perhaps the heart of a red giant. Each time the nanites at her core repair her wounds, each time she goes back out into space to continue her work: planets that have repulsed her before can expect to have her show a renewed interest in them. After all, any place that has such great power surely should be Preserved against the forces of the Terminus! Her last encounter with Earth came in 1964, when an encounter with the Silver Age Freedom League in the asteroid belt persuaded her to delay her plans for the Preservation of Sol's third planet. Said conversation remains off the record even today, but friends do remember that Daedalus began drawing up plans for a personal space vessel not long after sharing the true history of humanity with the grey monster of space. In addition to her powerful nanite packages, incredible energy reserves (though overheating forced her to retreat, a few centuries ago she absorbed, and was actually able to counter, the channelled power of an entire globular cluster by the local civilization), and formidable defenses (as mentioned above, she has fought and won battles against multiple space armadas, sometimes simultaneously), the Gorgon also has ‘children’. Honeycombed with passageways that possess Earth-normal gravity and oxygen atmospheres, the Gorgon is home to a uniquely mixed population made up of the descendants of refugees from multiple destroyed worlds. Having absorbed the beliefs of their mother, the people living in the Gorgon have come to believe that their mother is a savior of endangered worlds, and that those who seek to harm her enemies of the galaxy! They will defend her to the utmost, and they have access to high technology (force fields, energy weapons, and the more exotic things added to the mix over the centuries) in order to do so. In recent years, with the Khanate becoming active again and the Lor in a period of expansion (as well as growing conflicts with the Grue), the Gorgon has been considering a change of strategy: no small thing for a creature of so many milennia! Perhaps she needs help with her endless search, a herald to cross the universe for her and find the worlds that need Preserving (or destroying), thus allowing her to concentrate on her all-important great work. She has shared her knowledge with humanoids in the past when they had something to offer her in return; perhaps this relationship can be expanded on to make life better for everyone. For her, an aide and counsel, for them, unspeakable technological power! From a resting place deep in the heart of white-hot Sirus, while her children work to repair the damage recently inflicted by a major battle with the Grue Arcane near the galactic core, her sensors scan the cosmos for a suitable sentient for that great and terrible work. When she finds him or her, a bombardment of nanites shall change that being to the core, reshaping it to her mighty vassal and pawn to go forth and assist her with her task. But whether said herald succeeds or fails, the Gorgon will endure. The Gorgon is, the Gorgon was, and ever shall the Gorgon be! -

Okay, Zap is bound and helpless...for now! She is an electrical controller in melee combat with a robot, hmm hmm. Round 2 Wisp is up

Before she could get up, a figure in a white shirt with glowing red eyes appeared right next to her in a ripple of air, a malevolent smile on his face. "Oh, don't get up on my account, girl!" A malevolent grin on his face, Blackfire stamped down on Zap's chest, pinning her to the ground with a strength and weight much greater than human. This was no man, the teen quickly realized; this was a machine in a human's skin. "Listen to me!" he called to the other heroes. "My name is Blackfire, and your friend here is my prisoner. One little step, and I can put my foot right through her rib cage. Surrender now, and you can give our demands to the pigs outside." Sure enough, there were sirens coming, but now that they had costumes and power, the teen heroes were supposed to help the cops, not the other way around!

Midnight Witch PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 40 pp STR 20 (+5) DEX 20 (+5) CON 20 (+5) INT 10 (+0) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+13 Melee/+15 Unarmed) DEF: +12 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +9 Grapple: +18 Saves: 8 pp TOU +8 (+5 Con, +3 Protection) FORT +7 (+5 Con, +2) REF +7 (+5 Dex, +2) WILL +7 (+3 Wis, +4) Skills: 23 pp=92 r Acrobatics 15 (+20) Bluff 4 (+6/+10) Diplomacy 4 (+6/+10) Intimidate 13 (+15) Investigate 5 (+5) Knowledge: Arcane Lore 10 (+10) Knowledge: History 5 (+5) Languages 2 (Arabic, Greek) (Base: English) Notice 7 (+10) Perform (torch singing) 5 (+7) Search 5 (+5) Sense Motive 7 (+10) Stealth 10 (+15) Feats: 20 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 5 Attack Specialization: Unarmed Attractive Challenge: Fast Acrobatic Bluff Dodge Focus 4 Evasion Improved Initiative Move-By Action Power Attack Ritualist Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (mental) Powers: 27 pp Immunity 2 (aging, own powers) [2 pp] Magic Array [12+3=15 pp] Autofire and Penetrating on Unarmed and Enhanced Feats 2 (Affects Insubstantial 2 [unarmed]) AP: Obscure 4 (50 ft) (mental and visual) 'Medean Mist' AP: Teleport 4 (1 mile) (Extra: Accurate) (shadow step) Protection 3 [3 pp] Super-Senses 7 (Darkvision, Magic Awareness (Extended 2 (x100) [3] [mental]) [7 pp] costs abilities 40 + combat 32 + saves 8 + skills 23/92 + feats 21 + powers 27 = 150 pts -------------------------------------- Design Notes: Picture it! Freedom City, 1946. Midnight I is going about his business on the streets when Medea appears! He draws his gas gun, ready for battle, when she presents him to his surprise with an infant girl wrapped in a blanket. "It's yours!" the immortal witch announces imperiously, giving him a look to melt the face off a statue. "...but we never-" "No backsies! First rule of magic!" Medea rebutted, and then disappeared into the night, leaving Travis Hunter with a little girl as his ward. She grew up learning both magic and the martial arts from her costumed detective teacher; it helped that he had friends all over the world who could teach her how to use magic. When she was old enough to go out on her own, she did so, leaving Travis to start his own family with his eventual partner. OK, so this is my attempt at magic Batman. Not too bad, I think! Her magic is a supplement to her formidable martial arts training, not a replacement; she's perfectly badass with no spells cast at all. But the spells do help, whether they're letting her walk through doors or across town, disappear in a cloud of magic mist, or just augment her punches with powerful magical blows. Acrobatics and such tricks are languages that go beyond fooling and persuasion. Even elder gods can be distracted by a well-placed backflip! She can also be very scary when she wants to be: she's not just Midnight's magical successor, after all, she's also the daughter of Medea. (As for Medea herself, well, it's probably best she doesn't take an interest in her daughter's life. Medea knows she's not really cut out to be a mother. She remembers what happened the last time she made a serious go of it) She's a good investigator, though not quite as smart as she thinks she is. Experienced magicians never are, really. If you don't want the immortal magic investigator schtick, drop the aging immunity and the Midnight connection and just make her magic Batman, period. I could easily see a young witch who's a variant of the Combat Magician upthread, using physical training to compensate for any 'lack' brought about by her relatively weak powers, and finding ultimately that the ability to blow an HP for Stunning Attack and beat the crap out of your wussier fellow mystics before they can get their force fields up is a very fine thing indeed. Give her a drawback where she needs her hands free to cast spells for more points, but this seemed like the kind of lady who has learned to use magic while tied up at the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes you have to get a little rough here...

"I understand," said Harrier. And when he thought about it, maybe he did, as much as he could understand anything about this cheerful, colorful world. "When you have been...burned by dealings with people, it can be very difficult to see them as anything other than a threat. Particularly when your differences are so obvious. It is a very good thing that you have been able to give them this place, with the peace and isolation to make their own choices. And with few enough people that both have space, even if one side needs..." he eyed the giant bees. "A great deal more space than the others."

Psychic Adventurer PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 26 pp STR 26 [16] (+8/+3) DEX 26 [16] (+8/+3) CON 26 [16] (+8/+3) INT 12 (+1) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 12 (+1) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+12 Unarmed) DEF: +12 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +12 Grapple: +16 Saves: 5 pp TOU +8 (+8 Con) FORT +8 (+8 Con) REF +8 (+8 Dex) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 52 r=13 pp Acrobatics 7 (+15) Gather Info 4 (+5) Intimidate 9 (+10) Investigate 4 (+5) Knowledge: Streetwise 4 (+5) Languges 2 (French, German) (Base: English) Notice 8 (+10) Perform (beatboxing) 4 (+5) Search 4 (+5) Sense Motive 3 (+5) Stealth 2 (+10) Feats: 18 pp Acrobatic Bluff, Attack Specialization: Unarmed 2, Dodge Focus 4, Evasion, Improved Initiative, Leadership, Luck, Move-By Action, Power Attack, Takedown Attack 2, Ultimate Save (Will), Well-Informed Powers: 56 pp Enhanced CON 10 [10 pp] Enhanced DEX 10 [10 pp] Enhanced STR 10 [10 pp] Immunity 1 (own powers) [1 pp] Leaping 1 (x2) [1 pp] Mind Reading 10 (Flaw: Duration (Instant/Lasting) (PF: Subtle) [6+1=7 pp] AP: Concealment 10 (all senses) (Flaws: Blending, Phantasm) (PF: Selective) Obscure 2 (10 ft) (visual and olfactory) ‘midnight mist’ [6 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Senses 10 (Accurate Hearing, Danger Sense (Mental), Darkvision, Precognition, Uncanny Dodge [Mental]) [10 pp] ----- Design Notes: Here's the offspring of Trevor Hunter and Eve Martel from Earth-Paragons. I figure a few year down the line, his parents are both celebrities, and so he's definitely grown up in the media spotlight. Good thing he's so sneaky! He has his father's enhanced physiology and his mother's incredible acrobatic training; he's more inclined to be fast, silent, and deadly than full of threats like his dad. (And probably has a less active mental sex life than his mom, if only because when he was about sixteen he realized she could hear what he was thinking... :| ) Between his father's command of midnight mist and his mother's psychic sneakiness, he's a very stealthy ninja dude indeed. (That's one reason why his Stealth is relatively low; with Concealment and Obscure, he usually doesn't have to roll!) With his high Super-Senses, he'll be pretty tough to catch flat-footed in return. I took Shaen's (Instant/Lasting) for this guy's Mind Reading, which I think makes a lot of sense. He can't just bust his way into someone's mind, he has to make his way in every time. Having to have a little finesse in his Mind Reading seemed to fit someone who's basically a sneak and tricker like this. He's got the Leadership because I figure he's done some adventuring with his parents at this point: Trevor and Eve seemed media-savvy enough to create some kind of Midnight-brand they could market. (Well, once they got a little older and grew out of their obnoxious teen rebellious phase: they both come from money and you've got to do some work to have even more money to pass down to your sneaky little kid...) As I usually do, I didn't flaw his Precog: if you can't see the future at some point in the adventure, let the GM give you phat HP for the Complication! A psychic detective is a fun build. Paragons-style heroes are pretty grating on Earth-Freedom, but I think if you were very careful about it and a good writer, you could probably get away with it: maybe this is a guy who's been cut off by his rich family if you play him on Earth-Prime, and he needs to have a little hero-related merch in order to pay the bills. He doesn't have a lot of skills beyond beating people up and finding people to beat up, but that's OK, those are the sorts of things superheroes are supposed to do. He uses his scant spare time to practice the mad rhymes and dope beats of the all-American professional beat-boxer!

Midnight Bear PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 36 pp STR 30 [22] (+10/+6) DEX 16 (+3) CON 20 [16] (+5/+3) INT 14 (+2) WIS 20 (+5) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +5 w/Growth (+6 melee/+10 unarmed) DEF: +10 (+2 flat-footed w/Growth) Init: +3 Grapple: +20 Saves: 10 pp TOU +10 (+5 Con, +5 Protection) FORT +8 (+5 Con, +3) REF +5 (+3 Dex, +1) WILL +10 (+5 Wis, +5) Skills: 52 r=13 pp Climb 4 (+10)* Gather Info 5 (+7) Intimidate 10 (+12/+13 w/size)* Investigate 4 (+6) Language 1 (Russian) (Base: English) Notice 5 (+10)* Perform (harmonica) 3 (+5) Sense Motive 10 (+15)* Stealth 5 (+8/+7 w/Growth) Survival 5 (+10) Feats: 15 pp Attack Focus: Melee 1, Attack Specialization: Unarmed 2, Challenge (Accelerated Climb) Dodge Focus 5, Move-By Action, Power Attack, Skill Mastery (Climb, Intimidate, Notice, Sense Motive) Startle Takedown Attack, Uncanny Dodge (olfactory) Powers: 38 pp Comprehend 2 (speak to and understand bears) (PF: Innate) [3 pp] Growth 4 (Extra: Duration (Permanent) [+0]) (PF: Innate) [13 pp] Immunity 1 (own powers) [1 pp] Obscure 3 (25 feet) (visual and olfactory) [9 pp] ‘midnight mist’ Protection 5 [5 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Senses 6 (Acute Accurate Tracking Scent, Darkvision) [6 pp] ------ Design Notes: This is Midnight as a bear. Yeah, I went there. I've left it open whether or not this is the Trevor Hunter of Ani-Earth, a young bear raised by his grouchy old grandsire to carry on the family legacy of defending the city, or whether or not this is perhaps Midnight III brought to life through some unlikely chain of events (or even ones planned on by the redoubtably brilliant Midnight II) to protect the things the Hunter family hold most dear. If a costumed adventurer were a bear, he would probably look a lot like this: he's big, he's strong, and he's as scary as a gigantic black bear with glowing red eyes and its own cloud of smoke can be. Which is pretty scary, honestly. He's a great climber, going right up walls with the help of his gigantic claws (which as usual I didn't stat) and doing it darn fast. That's why you don't climb a tree to get away from a bear: bears can climb faster than you. He's a really good tracker, capable of following his nose all the way across town, and it's unlikely he wants any of your honey. If for some reason you're some kind of monster and don't want to play a teddy bear brought to life or a dimensional refugee, I think this works fine as a Russian costumed adventurer who fell foul of the Labyrinth, was dropped in a DNAscendant machine and managed to escape just before his soul could be destroyed. He's probably a pretty grouchy guy, just as you'd expect a bear in a world of people to be. He doesn't have any good way to disguise himself, and he's not that sneaky: that sort of thing just isn't a good trait for bears. He's better off making frequent use of his midnight mist as a disguise; sure a walking smoke cloud is decidedly odd, but it might attract a bit less attention than a bear on the loose in a black costume with adventure on his mind. He doesn't have a motorcycle: get him one! If you want him to have one, that is. Harmonica seemed like the kind of music a bear would probably play, all sitting in the woods in costume, or maybe on stakeout, perhaps a campfire burning nearby. Remember, though, that grumpy bear or not, you don't want to be That Guy and make this dude an angsty loner who nobody wants to talk to: 'it's my character' is a nice way of saying 'I don't get why no one ever wants to talk to me.' Just because you're not a people person (or, you know, a person) doesn't mean you can't be around people at all. Luckily with this guy's strong personality and musical talent, he fits in just fine around people!

Diehard is stunned. He'll heal his Bruised condition this round and be fine next round. Blackfire: Blackfire drops his Visual Concealment. He attacks Zap. 16. As she's currently flat-footed from her stun, that hits. He grapples her: 27 She is not able to beat that, but I'll say that impossible saves applies for grapples here. Go ahead and roll, LS.

"You may call me whatever you prefer," said Murdock. "I find that I prefer to use my last name when dealing with others. My super-identities should not be spoken in public, Mona." He knew that much about superheroes, at least. Turning that thousand-yard gaze on her, he said evenly, "Yes, my transformation and liberation have made me an object of fascination for many, and revulsion for others. Earth-Prime has many who are intrigued by what a free Omegadrone represents, just as there are many who would gladly destroy me for what I am. Only by maintaining my double-secrecy have I been able to survive."

"Well..." Sharl prevaricated briefly, the slight breeze that was blowing not ruffling his hand in the slightest. "I am intelligent, I guess, and I am made of coherent magnetic fields with a shaped-light overlay." He'd learned that jargon from Miss A, particularly since it was important in case anything ever interrupted his projection. "So I guess that's pretty artificial? I dunno." He smiled. "And Miss A is really great. I wouldn't be here today if not for her. And she's really great to work for." He studied Eve as she gestured, unfamiliar with sign language, but too polite to comment on someone's evident disability.

Pacifist Monk PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 42 pp STR 24 (+7) DEX 16 (+3) CON 24 (+7) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+9 Melee, +13 Unarmed) DEF: +13 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +20 Saves: 10 pp TOU +7 (+7 Con) FORT +8 (+7 Con, +1) REF +7 (+3 Dex, +4) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 16 pp=64 r Acrobatics 12 (+15) Concentration 8 (+10) Diplomacy 8 (+10) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 5 (+5) Languages 3 (Chinese, Japanese, Latin) (Base: English) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 12 (+14) Stealth 8 (+10) Feats: 16 pp Acrobatic Bluff, Attack Focus: Melee, Attack Spec: Unarmed 2, Dodge Focus 5, Evasion, Improved Throw, Improved Trip Interpose, Luck, Power Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 36 pp PaciFIST Array [35+1=36 pp] Autofire Unarmed Damage (Extras: Aura [+3], Selective) AP: Trip 7 (Extras: Aura [+3], Knockback, Selective) (Flaw: Range [Touch]) abilities 42 + combat 32 + saves 8 + skills 16/64 + feats 14 + powers 36 = 150 pt -------------------------------------------------------- Design Notes: Here's my build for a peace-loving martial artist, a Shaolin monk who Walks the Earth on a never-ending quest to battle for justice. He doesn't seek out fights, indeed, he does his best to stop them when they start. But they have a way of seeking him out anyway, as is often the problem for this sort of hero. Luckily, he has ways of dealing with that. His incredible martial arts training means that the moment someone actually attacks him (or thank to Interpose, tries to attack an innocent through him), he can go to town with a formidable array of flying fists and flashing feet: the lesser bad guys get knocked to the ground and given a stern lecture about the Way and the Path, while the real baddies get beaten senseless and have a chance to think about their karma in the spiritual confines of jail. But what's that you say, AA, I don't want to play a passive fighter? Well, a pacifist doesn't have to be a passive guy! He can go out and teach martial arts as a means of discipline and self-control to adorable moppets and housewives alike, and then he can walk the streets to try and talk the kids out of gang violence. Perhaps he shows up to super-battles and spends an action trying to talk the rampaging monsters down? (i.e., gets an HP for the Complication of being a peacemaker!) His holier-than-thou attitude may rub his allies the wrong way, but in his defense, he is holier than they are...anyway, be a missionary for peace and muscular non-violence by your actions, not your words, and let your friends make the choices they want to make. People who are ultimately good will learn the right path, and you can teach them by example. In Freedom City, this guy may well have come from Shamballa Vale, the mystic land in the Himalayas where martial artists learn their secret arts. Or maybe he's just a well-trained monk from a monastery somewhere, Walking the Earth to find his own path to inner peace. I've written him with the assumption that he's an Asian-influenced character, but it would be an interesting subversion to make him a Catholic or Orthodox monk. There's been enough Dan Brown-esque stuff done in recent years that it's not so crazy to imagine a secret monastery of Irish monks off somewhere learning martial arts against the inevitable day of judgement (or to fight off the Protestant Reformation)!

Pixie Cowboy Abilities: 30 pp STR 18 (+4) DEX 16 (+3) CON 22 (+6) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+14 vs. Medium-sized) DEF: +6 (+14 vs. Medium-sized) Init: +3 Grapple: -4 vs Medium Saves: 9 pp TOU +6 (+6 Con) FORT +7 (+6 Con, +1) REF +7 (+3 Dex, +4) WILL +6 (+2 Wis, +4) Skills: 56 r=14 pp Bluff 5 (+5) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 5 (+5) Notice 8 (+10) Perform (accordion) 10 (+10) Ride 7 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 10 (+13/+30) Survival 3 (+5) Feats: 9 pp Evasion Fearless Hide In Plain Sight Move-By-Action Power Attack Precise Shot Second Chance (Reflex save vs. being stepped on) Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 56 pp Device 1 (Teeny Sword) (easy to lose) (PF: Restricted ) [4 pp] Strike 2 (PFs: Improved Crit, Mighty, Precise) [5] Device 3 (Teeny Pistols) (hard to lose) (PF: Restricted) [13 pp] Blast 6 (PFs: Improved Crit 2, Precise) [15] Flight 2 (25 MPH) 'pixie wings' [4 pp] Shrinking 16 (Extras: Duration [Permanent] (+0), Normal Strength, PFs: Innate, Normal Movement, Normal Toughness) [35 pp] costs abilities 30 + combat 32 + saves 9 + skills 14/56 + feats 9+ powers 56 = 150 pts ------------- Design Notes: When Colt and Grimalkin finally had that baby, magical complications (the thing you have to understand is that there are alway magical complications) forced them to relocate to Fairyland for a while so the baby could be born. Much to their surprise, they learned that the relocation to Fairyland meant that their son was part of the fae! Luckily they were able to leave with him, but the magical influence on his birth meant that he never grew more than three inches high, complete with an adorable pair of sparkly pixie wings on his back that let him fly like a hummingbird. His parents chose to run with this, however, and they taught him all the things a young pixie cowboy should know. With a fairy sword on his back and teeny-tiny pistols at his hip (manufactured by a visibly inebriated Viktor Archeville), the young man was ready to seek his fortune in the wide world, podnas. The thing of it is, this build actually holds up pretty well. If you don't want the connection to PCs here, my advice is to make this an action figure brought to life: how does Pixie Cowboy deal with the knowledge that his entire life was just a phantom on the pages of a storybook, or perhaps a CGI animated movie? Perhaps he's seeking a way to restore his friends to the real world just as he was, or maybe he's content to let them have their fictional lives and never learn that they're simply the creations of another being's mind. Or maybe they're just part of another dimension, and said storybook or movie writers simply tapped into that dimension's history unconsciously. It's comics, a whole lot of things can happen when you get right down to it. Normally I'm not a fan of PCs with guns, but I think a three-inch-tall cowboy can probably get by without raising any eyebrows. At least, not because he has real working guns! Given his size and the massive Stealth bonuses therefrom, the Pixie Cowboy can probably catch just about anybody flat-footed with his sword or his pistols. He's an OK melee fighter and ranged fighter both, as a cowboy really ought to be; one of the advantages of Shrinking is that it gives bonuses to both! He's also a pretty effective opponent against foes closer to his own size, a helpful thing when he finds a job pigeon-wrangling for the city, or just gets away from it all to live on squirrel in the park for a while. With his Precise Shot and the Precise on his pistols, he can easily plunk one of those slow, giant targets all around him even if they're in melee. He plays a mean accordion, and luckily has had one custom-made in just his size.