Avenger Assembled

Having gotten what Sharl could tell them about Tronik's history, Daedalus filled in the blanks he could of the city's 'physical' history: the Centurion had rescued Tronik during a battle with the Curator in the depths, only a few years before his own death in 1993. "The Curator told him he'd be happier as stored data, just like the people of Tronik. So not only did the Centurion beat the Curator and rescue the space freighter he'd come to save, he also grabbed the Tronik harddrive and got out of there before the droneship could go into hyperdrive. So that left us with what to do..." Faced with a potentially unstable program full of millions of sentient minds, the Centurion had found Daedalus himself in deep space, and together they'd grafted the Tronik system onto a Lor military computer, the most compatible system that could be found on short notice. "We managed to save everything, thank science. A few seconds either way..." He shook his head. It wasn't long after that that the Centurion's Sanctum came into view, or rather, what little of it was visible through the Arctic pack ice so far north. The Arctic sun was impossibly clear and bright as their jet made their landing near the big impervium door that led into the Sanctum itself. (The Centurion had luckily been thoughtful enough to build his stronghold in an island beneath the pack ice: though the global warming that had become obvious since his time would one day do serious structural damage here, the Sanctum itself would survive anything short of a planet-cracking event in the general area. Outside, Daedalus led the way, using his passwords to get them inside; their brief glimpse of stark, sere nature outside as they trudged from plane to door quickly trumped by science gone wild. Even Sharl was fascinated by what he saw inside the Centurion's Sanctum, for all that none of it would have been out of place on Tronik. There were the statues of the Centurion's parents in their togas, the rocketship that had carried him from his distant home, and finally down a long corridor studded with trophies from the countless exploits of the Man of Adamant lay a secret door, and inside it...while Daedalus explained technical matters to the two scientists, telling them how a permanent powersupply had been installed to the Lor computer, and how signaling devices were in place to alert the League if anything should tamper with the program from the outside, and here were the interfaces they could use to send their consciousnesses directly into the system if they preferred not to use their powers...Sharl had eyes only for the computer itself. Sharl Tulink approached his world, his reality, his city with something like reverence, gently laying his hand against the gently humming tower that, if placed on the floor instead of on the low table, would have barely reached up to his thighs. Tronik, Neo, Bantam, and everything else he'd ever known fit inside a computer whose body could easily have fit in a small corner of Gina's basement. "Hi Mom and Dad," he whispered. "I've traveled so very far, but I finally made it home. 'It is not down on any map. True places never are.'"

Green Sharpshooter PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 30 pp STR 14 (+2) DEX 20 (+5) CON 16 (+3) INT 12 (+1) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 12 (+1) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+13 ranged) DEF: +13 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +9 Grapple: +10 Saves: 10 pp TOU +7 (+3 Con, +4 Protection) FORT +6 (+3 Con, +3) REF +10 (+5 Ref, +5) WILL +6 (+3 Wis, +3) Skills: 100 r=25 pp Acrobatics 15 (+20) Craft: Electronic 9 (+10) Knowledge: Current Events 14 (+15) Knowledge: History 7 (+8) Knowledge: Streetwise 9 (+10) Knowledge: Technology 9 (+10) Languages 4 (English, Galstandard, Grue, Spanish) (Base: Future English) Notice 12 (+15) Sense Motive 12 (+15) Stealth 10 (+15) Survival 5 (+8) Feats: 25 pp Accurate Attack Acrobatic Bluff All-Out Attack Attack Focus: Ranged (5) Challenge (Fast Acrobatic Bluff) Dodge Focus (5) Evasion Improved Initiative Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Precise Shot Quick Draw [Draw] Uncanny Dodge (mental) Powers: 29 pp Device 5 (Green Pistols) (Easy to Lose) [15 pp] -Blast 7 (Extra: Autofire) [21+4=25 pp] -AP: Damage 7 (Extras: Selective, Targeted Area [burst]) -AP: Snare 7 (Extra: Regenerating) -AP: Stun 7 (Extra: Ranged) -AP: Teleport 7 (200 miles) (Extra: Accurate, Affects Others) (Flaw: Long-Range Only) Feature 1 (Temporal Inertia) [1 pp] Protection 4 [4 pp] Super-Senses 4 (Precognition) [4 pp] Teleport 4 (400 ft/1 mile) (Flaw: Long-Range Only) [4 pp] costs abilities 30 + combat 32 + saves 10 + skills 25/100 + feats 25 + powers 29 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: In the far-off future of 2525, the Green Sharpshooter is a member of the Freedom Legion. Long an admirer of Earth's heroes, the young heiress had no powers of her own until she was spaceship-wrecked on a deserted colony world where she was forced by the rough conditions and lack of replicators to use her technical know-how to build for herself the humblest and most ancient of mankind's weapons: the gun! Training herself as one of the finest markswomen in the galaxy as she hunted food for a living, she made her debut as a hero defeating the space pirates who had first made their lair on the planet that had become her new home. Once on the outside, she paid for a few cybernetic enhancements; armor on her bones to make her tough and an implanted teleporter in case she needed to make a hasty exit, and made her debut on the galactic stage! But she made the future too hot to hold her; there were romantic entanglements along the way with pretty men in pretty outfits, vicious rivalries with other heroes that seemed to go in and out of fashion, an ever-changing roster of sidekicks with ever-more-trendy personal problems, and finally a good friend of hers went a little crazy and she decided the future wasn't all it was cracked up to be. So she acquired a time machine through certain deeds and traveled back to the past, hoping to make her mark as a hero in the age when everyone was packing heat. Unfortunately, she wasn't really a great student of history, and anyway the textbooks definitely did not get everything right. The Green Sharpshooter should be played as a high-energy, High Silver Age Green Arrow; she's a little crazy, there's no denying it. But she's also a really good shot and really competent at what she does, for all that her high-tech gadgetry may rub other heroes the wrong way. (i.e., play to their complications about heroes who carry firearms!) Her abilities are designed with that in mind; for all that she can blast with laser bursts just like Vigilante on JLU, her Teleport bullets will no doubt make a lot of heroes concerned when she goes around shooting unconscious bad guys, causing them to disappear in a flare of futuristic energy. But it's OK, really, they're in jail! Honest! I think she'd be a gas to play, honestly.

Elephant Hero PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 44 p STR 40 [30] (+15/+10) DEX 12 (+1) CON 40 [30] (+15/+10) INT 10 (+0) WIS 12 (+1) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 20 pp ATK: +5 DEF: +5 (+2 flat-footed) Init: +5 Grapple: +25 Saves: 10 pp TOU +15 (+15 Con) FORT +15 (+15 Con) REF +6 (+1 Dex, +5) WILL +6 (+1 Wis, +5) Skills: 40 r=10 pp Intimidate 10 (+10) Languages 3 (French, Hindi, Swahili) (Base: English) Notice 9 (+10) Sense Motive 9 (+10) Survival 9 (+10) Feats: 11 pp All-Out Attack Eidetic Memory Fast Overrun Improved Initiative Improved Overrun Luck Power Attack Startle Takedown Attack (2) Ultimate Save (TOU) Powers: 55 pp Additional Limb 1 [1 pp] Comprehend 2 (speak to and understand animals) (Flaw: Limited 2 [elephants]) [1 pp] Enhanced CON 10 [10 pp] Enhanced STR 10 [10 pp] Impervious TOU 10 [10 pp] Speed 3 (50 MPH) [3 pp] Super-Senses 8 (Accurate Extended Hearing, Accurate Acute Extended Tracking Scent) [8 pp] Super-Strength 5 (Heavy Load: 96 tons) (PFs: Groundstrike, Super-Breath) [12 pp] costs abilities 44 + combat 20 + saves 10 + skills 10/40 + feats 11 + powers 55 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: Here's a build inspired by Elephant Steve, perhaps the finest adult Marvel character of the new millennium. As you can see, he's an elephant totem with all the powers and abilities one might associate with the humble elephant. Who could have pictured a bulletproof elephant the size of a man, casually tossing around bad guys with his trunk, charging faster than a speeding car or tracking foes with his incredible sense of smell, or hunting them in the darkness thanks to his incredibly good hearing? Well, you can, right now! The elephant provides a unique blend of superpowers that's just tough to beat, and certainly a good twist on your usual totem-style build. No wussified spider here! Is he an elephant who thinks he's a man? Perhaps a freakish mutant with opposable thumbs who has realized the horror of a world where his people are beasts to be hunted and killed by cruel poachers, or perhaps he's the survivor of some distant civilization of sentient elephant-men from deep in the past of our recent geological age. Or maybe, just maybe, he's an elephant man from a future where the elephants have evolved from men? Can you explain that with your so-called science? No. Or maybe he's a man who thinks he's an elephant: a victim of cruel scientific experiments that merged his genes with that of the largest living land animal, creating a creature half-man, half-elephant, and all hero! Or maybe he's some kind of weird alien or something from the planet of the elephant men, coming from a distant star to investigate rumors of elephant-men right here on Earth! His code name should be Joseph Merrick, obviously. I trust I don't need to tell you why he has Eidetic Memory! (It's mostly fluff given his low mental abilities, but if you raise his INT and WIS a bit you can make him a formidable source of knowledge, especially if you add Beginner's Luck and Jack-of-all-Trades to the mix.) In combat he's a formidable trampling goonsweeper, charging into the thick of things and overrunning everyone he can't just beat up with his elephanty fists. You may want to think about the physics of the situation, since elephants don't really have great hands: take a drawback to explain that his trunk is actually his only manipulative digit? It's worth thinking about, muy frond! Perhaps a normal ID drawback is also in the cards.

Corbin wound up getting forwarded right to Duncan Summers. The headmaster's voice was, as ever, dry and thoughtful. "Mm. I've been expecting to hear from Sharl's employer for some time. Give him the outside tour. Nothing inside student housing, or that reveals a student's identity. Including your own," he added, his voice stern but not unfriendly. "I'll expect a full report from you afterwards." Nearby, Sharl floated in midair, the slight breeze not so much as ruffling his hair. If he could hear the call, he gave no sign of it.

Harrier floated there in mid-air for a moment, lost in his memories. When he spoke, he said simply, "Burn it to the ground. The taint of such abominations can linger long after their destruction." It sounded like he spoke from experience, and indeed he did. A moment later, less brutally, he added, "Dr. Metropolis may be able to restore the building from its original blueprints. If the taint in this building survives, it will spread like a cancer. Whatever actions we take, we must take them quickly, lest all be threatened by the thing we slayed tonight. Even in its death."

The Toon Gang wasn't thrilled at being captured, of course, but a fair fight and a good beating seemed to play to their understanding of the world. Lucky even emptied his pockets before arrest, dumping out everything from a huge oversized pistol to a copy of the Toontown Gazette, circa 1935 to a card with a picture of a wood screw and baseball on it. Toons, it seemed, had ample capacity. "Lousy coppas," he muttered as they were led outside to wait for the cops. "If Mistah R were here, he'd..." He seemed to think better of what was on his mind, and clammed up.

Though she'd gone into this with the best of intentions, it was getting harder and harder for Joan to keep her mouth shut. All these scientific resources, and how much were they actually accomplishing? She knew heroes like Miss Americana did charity work on the side, but with all these high technology, why couldn't they cure more diseases, fix more cancers? Why didn't everyone with a missing limb have an artificial leg already? "So what does your Lab actually do here?" Joan asked as they finished the simulation. "Beyond the hard science, I mean; what do they do for the community?"

DC 28 Tou save

"This is no world of cowering slaves and mindless serfs!" said Harrier, shouting to be heard over the inhuman roar of his flaming jets. Omegadrone though he was, his every move a nightmarish legacy of the past, there was no doubt whose side he was on. "This is a world of free men and women, of heroes who have proved the lie of power and shattered the bonds of entropy as no other could before them! You are a jackal sniffing at the heels of what a lion could not slay and I cast you down into the Coil which spawned you. May the foul decay that is your mother DRAG YOU BACK INTO HER WOMB!" And with that, he drove the end of his pike, the tip crackling with unholy Terminus energy, straight into the belly of the beast. Straight into...I do this in your name, January, and in what we made and lost together.

"Tronik looks very different than Freedom City. Tronik feels much less empty, but the sky is a lot harder to see. Down deep enough in the sectors or even at ground level, sometimes the only light is artificial." Sharl shrugged a little; what might have sounded like a hellish industrial cityscape to some was home to him. "If people really want to see the outside, they can sign up for the plankton fleet. Some people can't take the isolation of just being on a ship with a hundred other people at a time, but if you can make it a year out in the ocean, you can come back and live on that for years afterwards. That's how we supplement our artificial proteins. Or, I guess, that's how we make it look..." He shifted, looking a little uncomfortable, and confessed, "I'm still not sure what I should tell my family."

April 25, 2011 To Tronik!

April 25, 2011 It hadn't been easy for Miss Americana to get clearance to visit the Sanctum: explaining why a non-League member had access to its computers was one thing, explaining how a citizen of Tronik had found his way onto her hard drive was a tough act to follow. But her spotless reputation, enormous popularity, forceful personality, and close ties with League member Dr. Archeville helped overcome any doubts about her. It didn't hurt, of course, that she'd recently saved the entire city, and perhaps the world, from the Conquering Mind! And so Miss Americana, Dragonfly, and Sharl Tulink got clearance to visit the Sanctum and get access to Tronik's hard drive, bringing with them as an escort the famous Daniel Daedalus. To his credit, Daedalus had been nothing but helpful in organizing the project, sharing with Miss Americana complete files on his efforts to maintain the Tronik hard drive from the outside, as well as what the League itself had observed from within during their various missions over the years. Like Miss Americana and Dragonfly, the League was worried about Tronik: the city's society was becoming as strained as its harddrive thanks to the glitches and instability hanging at the back of the program. A lone metropolis, even an advanced alien one, was under a great deal of social pressure even with economic self-sufficiency. Though Daedalus had managed to repair the hardware after several serious glitches (one of which corresponded to Sharl's childhood memories of a massive hurricane that had locked the city down for weeks), the program itself was becoming more unstable, and the efforts to fix it had been like building a dam rather than actually stopping the flood: Daedalus was an engineer, not a computer guy, for all his genius. They'd all had plenty of time to study it, because there were enough worries about the integrity of Sharl's program going through a matter transmitter (even while inside another hard drive) that they'd taken one of the League's fast planes up to the Sanctum, the incredible speed of the anti-grav-driven jump jet turning the thousands of miles to Greenland into a trip of barely two hours. Sharl had stopped pacing early in the flight as they flew, and was instead focused on pulling out every detail he could remember from his home city for the benefit of the others: he was really nervous about going home, and doing his best to hide it as he sat at the plane's small conference table. "Neo is tidally locked in orbit around Bantam, so it doesn't rotate," he added unnecessarily. "Neo's as big as Earth, but most of it's uninhabitable: the desert on the sunward side is too hot and empty, and you can't pass the ice mountains on the spaceward side. Tronik Island is the biggest landmass people can live on, it's about the size of your island of Greenland. We only live in Tronik itself, though, which is only about a hundred and fifty square miles. At the last census," he said like reciting something from school, which he was, "there were fifty million people living there."

"And with...oh, we did it? Great! Nice work, everybody." Edge pulled down the top of his costume, sorting his mind out. Had his effort to make psychic static helped Midnight's efforts to block out Pathos' signal, or had he just...? Surely not! "Let's move," he agreed, everyone quickly heading out the door carved open by Caryatid. "Better not risk using our powers in case they have an energy grid working upstairs," he said quickly. "Let's hustle."

"You think you can haunt me with the memory of a dead face!?!" Harrier was shouting, righteous fury, rage, and grief making his hands shake, boiling, all-too-human emotion burning in his blood. "I have seen love burn to ash a thousand times! I have been the destroyer of youth, of joy, of beauty...but no more!" He brought his pike up, its tip crackling with power, and slashed it across the fiend's face in an arc of black ichor. "No more will I cower before the nightmares of the past! Go back to the pits which spawned you!"

Harrier is going to land and make a melee attack with his staff. it hits, woo-hoo! That's a DC 28 TOU save for the Terminus Creature. That's not enough to trigger the Autofire on Harrier's strike, but he should be able to at least force a save. Let me know how that goes.

The first shot misses... But what better time for an HP? Which also misses (Since the creature's total Defense is at +15, rather than its to-hit number being 15) Ah well. 26 for Init

Caradoc's body seemed to shiver in the air as his shining armor and sword faded away as everyone watched, revealing beneath the false shell the all-too-real thing within. The cold light of the darkened theater reflected eerie shadows against the gunmetal-grey armor of the Omegadrone; its faceless shell expressionless as it looked down at the terrible thing beneath it. When Harrier spoke, this time Wander, Jack, and Gabriel recognized the tinny, metallic voice of the Omegadrone they'd all gotten to know. To Jack's senses in particular, as glowing black dots began to form at the tip of Harrier's pike, what he felt wasn't the rotten stink of a Terminus baby or what he felt when Mona's powers erupted: the waves of energy practically radiating from the infuriated Omegadrone were like something else: if Terminus babies smelled of decaying fruit, Harrier smelled like that fruit burning. And screaming. "I KNOW YOU FOR WHAT YOU ARE, MONSTER!" boomed Harrier. "THIS IS A CREATURE OF THE TERMINUS!" he shouted aloud, heedless of his own monstrous appearance. "IT MUST BE DESTROYED!" And with that he fired, his pike screaming to life with that sound so terribly familiar to all superheroes, as the raw power of entropy lashed from him and tore into the creature beneath.

"...no. No, I cannot allow you to have their faces." Caradoc pointed his sword at the thing in the chair, seeing in his mind bodies burning in the trash pits of Nihilor, the red sky overhead burning with the cold, eternal flame of the Doom Coil. He smelled burning flesh, and felt the pain of tightly-gripped sharp metal in his hands as he'd watched them burn. So long gone now. Alive, even for too brief a moment, in my memory. Unbidden, the thought came to him: What would you think of me now, my January, if you could see what I have become? The tip of his mystic sword began glowing with energy. "Show me your true face, monster, and I will show you mine," he said, his voice growing flat and tinny inside his armor.

Could she have snuck up on me, up on us all, with all of us in this terrible place? Caradoc dismissed that possibility quickly enough. But at the same time...If she is mad, or mind-controlled, to attack her would be a crime. "I see someone over there. If my actions appear guided by illusion, warn me before I can harm anyone." Roaring into the air on a column of black-tinged fire, Caradoc flew up and hovered in the air in front of the red-haired woman, blocking her view of the screen. "Who are you?"

Citizen gave Cobalt Templar a look through his sunglasses, reminding himself that he couldn't expect people who didn't know him to know what he was all about. "I've already gone a lot further than most teenagers ever do," he said. "And I was part of that thing the other week with the alien mental domination." Hands in his holographic pockets, he decided to drop the pin. "Do you think I could see Claremont?" he asked Cobalt Templar curiously. "I mean, I know I'm not a student, but I might be if I finish my education here. And I already work with a superhero, so I won't tell anyone about what I see."

"I...It's Pathos!" Mark called out, even though the voices were surely in everyone's head. "She's in our minds!" Mark always made sure to describe what was going on in case no one else was paying attention. Honestly, he wished more people were that thoughtful in crisis situations. "You think you can tempt me with casual evil sex!?" he shouted aloud. "Welll...for the record, I don't need to sleep with an evil psychopath in order to find personal fulfillment! I've done it with...." And then, horribly, he began to shout names out loud, each time filling his mind with images of what were really an absurdly long list of sexual encounters, drowning out the voice in his head. "And Zarana again, and myself, and then..."

Citizen 7 pp to spend! (and now PL 11, I believe) +2 Base Attack [4 pp] 2 ranks of Dodge Focus [2 pp] 1 rank of Luck [1 pp] Doktor'd

For Harrier: 4 pp to spend Add Second Chance (vs. Fear) [1 pp] Add 2 to his Charisma (raising it to 14 (+2) and his Intimidate modifier to 15 (+17) [2 pp] Add 1 rank of Luck [1 pp] Doktor'd

For Fusion: 6 pp to spend 2 points in base CON (making it 32 [16] (+11/+3) [2 pp] +8 ranks in Gather Info [2 pp] +8 ranks in Intimidate [2 pp] Doktor'd

For Edge: 13 pp to spend! 5 ranks in Protection, raising his TOU to a total of +15 [5 pp] Buy his Charisma up to 24 (+7) [2 pp] +12 ranks in Bluff [3 pp] +12 ranks in Diplomacy [3 pp] Drop the Attractive feat [-1 pp] Use it to buy Languages 4 (French, German, Japanese, Swahili) [1 pp] Doktor'd