Avenger Assembled

Hanuman PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 70 pp STR 30 (+10) DEX 30 (+10) CON 30 (+10) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Melee) DEF: +10 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +10 Grapple: +20 Saves: 6 pp TOU +10 (+10 Con) FORT +10 (+10 Con) REF +10 (+10 Dex) WILL +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 72 r=18 pp Acrobatics 15 (+20) Bluff 12 (+15) Climb 5 (+15) Knowledge: Theology and Philosophy 5 (+5) Language 3 (English, Hindi, Tamil) (Base: Dravidian) Notice 12 (+15) Sense Motive 12 (+15) Stealth 5 (+15) Survival 5 (+7) Feats: 19 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 4 Challenge 2 (Fast Acrobatic Bluff, Fast Taunt) Dodge Focus 4 Evasion 2 Grappling Finesse Move-By Action Power Attack Takedown Attack Taunt Uncanny Dodge (olfactory) Powers: 13 pp Immunity 1 (aging) [1 pp] Leaping 1 (x2) [1 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Movement 4 (Slow Fall, Swinging, Wall-Crawling 2) [8 pp] Super-Senses 2 (Acute Scent, Low-Light Vision) [2 pp] costs abilities 70 + combat 24 + saves 6 + skills 18/72 + feats 19 powers 13 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: In something of a twist on both the Divine Champion and Animal Totem archetypes, here’s a merger of both: Hanuman, divine trickster of the Hindu pantheon! He’s strong, fast, and incredibly cunning, a trickster and feinter who can cleave through the bad guys with skill and determination; he has the powers you would expect from a god who incorporates the aspect of monkeys. Be careful with this one, historically some Hindu folks have not been amused at seeing their divinities turn up in Western pop fiction: Xena famously had to apologize in a post-episode disclaimer after using Hanuman and Rama as major characters in story arc. (After all, it’s only fictional gods who appear in fictional works.) Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with it: the use of one’s divinities as a superhero is an argument _for_ that religion rather than against it in my mind! But you, and your audience, may disagree! That said, I think you have a solid build here for a character who is at once god, trickster, and monkey. He doesn’t have a great potential for power-stunts, but he has enough abilities you should be able to do something. If you do want to give him the chance to do that, give him some Enhanced Attributes: I’ve gone with the idea that his strength, speed, and endurance are innate to his godly nature, and removing them a plot device rather than a Nullify effect. Why is he on Earth? Well, perhaps his tricks finally got the other gods angry enough to banish him to Earth for a while, or maybe he’s come below on a special mission to fight for justice on this plane: given Freedom City’s Pact, no doubt he lingered bodiless for a while until a devout Hindu called upon his aid only to find himself transformed into the avatar of the god himself! Note that there aren’t any Additional Limbs on this build, AA adds to forestall jokes: those depictions in traditional Hindu art are understood to be metaphorical. I think the best way to go with a character like this is make him Indian-American; let the character’s dual heritage reflect the dual nature of his powers. (Then again in my mind Donald Blake really should be from Minneapolis but that’s another matter...) But you could also do just as well with making this a ‘hero of India’, though it would certainly be a little odd given the current religious climate. OTOH, if you want to be a little Iron Agey about it, maybe he got tired of being used as a political football by Hinduvata factions back home, and decided to go to a land where he could be a hero first and a god second. He should definitely not be encouraging worshippers: though he may have less of a problem with this than Thor does in the Marvel universe, since he’s not as media-friendly in an American market. (Most people, of course, should assume he’s just a mutant with a Hindu theme, much to the ire of actual Hindus, indeed, perhaps you have a situation where the guy’s elderly devout aunt constantly laments about that evil, evil ‘Hanuman’, much to our hero’s chagrin. Or did she know it was him all along, and was she just playing along?)

"All my life," Sharl murmured in reply to Dragonfly, "I believed in aliens. Even when everyone in school, everyone I knew, said that we were far beyond where anyone could find us, I believed in worlds beyond ours where impossible things could happen, and where brave people didn't just live day-to-day, but instead fought for a better tomorrow." He brushed electric fingertips lightly against the computer, feeling a slight tingle as his magnetic field interacted with its, and hastily pulled back his touch. Instead he turned to Dragonfly and added, "And now, thanks to you, Miss Americana, and...everyone else I've met, I know those stories are true." He smiled. "Even if no one ever really believes me. The world you live in is beautiful. Treasure it." There was much to do after that, but fortunately between one thing and another there was plenty to occupy their attentions, even the formidable attentions of the various intellects there. The computer was indeed a standard Lor military computer, which made it orders of magnitude beyond anything on the market (outside a super-genius's lab anyway) on Earth. What made it special was less its capacity and functions, which Miss A or Dragonfly could have equalled with a few days work; what mattered was that the Lor could turn these out in trillion-unit quantities on assembly lines when they needed to. Its quantum storage capacity was tremendous, enough to hold vast libraries, but much of it was taken up with supporting the equally alien hard-drive that held the Tronik program. If they'd had one of the Curator's own computers handy, adding the memory would have been a snap, literally, but of course that ancient guardian parted with nothing without a fight to the death.

Citizen was obviously not a very fast flier; the cars on the street below were going faster than they were when Corbin slowed to keep up with him, though both young men were still easily outpacing a walk. He didn't seem to be getting tired, though, or be showing much sign of strain at all as they went. "It still amazes me how much sky you have here," he commented to Corbin as they flew, looking not at the city below but at what looked like a moderately cloudy day to Cobalt Templar's eyes. "And it's just...just so blue!"

"Terminus energy is the anti-creation. The destruction of all that is. Even that which decays dies. Even that which destroys dies. And there at the end of all things, lies the awesome power of entropy." Harrier seemed to realize how that grim intonment sounded, hesitating a moment behind his faceless armor. When he spoke again, it was with more animation. "If fire is for some reason unacceptable...magnetism, or the nuclear forces. Something that rearranges the basic building blocks of matter to remove the taint of decay without destroying the essence of what is being saved. Sorcery is...orthogonal to that which is Entropy. It may help. It may do nothing. It may make things worse."

29

Octopus Hero PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 30 pp STR 30 [14] (+10/+2) DEX 16 (+3) CON 20 (+5) INT 12 (+1) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+4) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Melee) DEF: +10 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple:+24/+28/+32 Saves: 9 pp TOU +10 (+5 Con, +5 Protection) FORT +7 (+5 Con, +2) REF +6 (+3 Dex, +3) WILL +6 (+2 Wis, +4) Skills: 44r=11 pp Bluff 8 (+10) Diplomacy 2 (+4) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 12 (+15) Survival 3 (+5) Swim 3 (+13) Feats: 18 pp All-Out Attack Attack Focus: Melee 4 Dodge Focus 4 Environmental Adaptation (underwater) Improved Initiative Hide in Plain Sight Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (tactile) Powers: 58 pp Additional Limbs 4 ‘tentacles’ (PFs: Innate, Subtle) [6 pp] Elongation 4 (25 ft) (Flaw: Tentacles Only) [2 pp] Enhanced STR 16 [16 pp] Immunity 3 (environmental cold, drowning, pressure) [3 pp] Protection 5 [5 pp] Regeneration 0 (PFs: Persistent, Regrowth) [2 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Movement 4 (Slow Fall, Swinging, Wall-Crawling 2) [8+2=10 pp] AP: Concealment 2 (normal vision) (Flaw: Blending) and Insubstantial 1 (fluid body) (PF: Subtle) AP: Swimming 8 (500 MPH) Super-Senses 4 (Darkvision, Tremorsense) [4 pp] Super-Strength 4 (Heavy Load: 12 tons) (PF: INK’D!) [9 pp] costs abilities 30 + combat 24 + saves 9 + skills 11/44 + feats 18 + powers 58 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: Here’s my build for an octopus-themed hero, much like Freedom City’s own Fusion. Octopi have a great number of different abilities, given the fantastic variety of different species and the many tricks they can pull off. This lady can swing around on long tentacley arms, swim on powerful underwater jets (much faster than a real octopus, of course, but enough to keep up with her fellow aquatic supers), regrow tentacles if they are torn off, and change colors to render herself invisible to normal vision so long as she moves slowly enough to adjust: with her nigh-boneless body, she can squeeze through any space! (I figure the Insub is in an array because she naturally has bones like a humanoid, but can soften them enough to get around wherever she needs to go.) Her Super-Strength PF is of my own devising: she sprays a cone of ink out in front of her as a full-round action (fluffing that it’s her fantastic strength that lets her do so), blinding anyone in front of her who fails their Reflex saves: it’s a full-round action, since Visual Dazzle costs 2 per rank naturally. Her high Stealth is a supplement from her Concealment, she really is just that sneaky. She has my standard package of immunities and Environmental Adaptation for underwater characters: she’s just as good on land as she is underwater, but underwater her opponents are generally much worse off. She’s really a fantastic grappler, her combination of Additional Limbs, Elongation, and Super-Strength making her nigh-inescapable. If she has the Insubstantial active, she’s even more threatening, as she can grapple without risk of being grappled herself. Note that as written, her limbs are probably going to be Permanent: you might be able to justify Sustained Innate tentacles, but Refs may find that questionable. Her Elongation is _not_ Permanent, however, so she can shrink the tentacles down to a manageable size and have her go about her business. She probably has a silhouette very different than your average superhero, but that’s OK: you can do everything from someone strong and confident in their freakish appearance, or someone who’s got some serious angst about their body issues. Either way, it’s great character fodder. Luckily Freedom City is on the coast, so she can get around at great speed underwater, then swing onto land and kick some butt! Consider the usual origins; mutated human, mutated octopus? Maybe she's an alien from a planet of octopi, or perhaps her powers are a result of a family connection to the Great Old Ones.

Bouncy Hero PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 10 pp STR 24 [10] (+7/+0) DEX 24 [10] (+7/+0) CON 24 [10] (+7/+0) INT 14 (+2) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 12 (+1) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+13 melee) DEF: +13 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +28 Saves: 4 pp TOU +7 (+7 Con) FORT +7 (+7 Con) REF +7 (+7 Dex) WILL +6 (+2 Wis, +4) Skills: 60 r=15 pp Acrobatics 8 (+15) Bluff 9 (+10) Climb 8 (+15) Knowledge: Streetwise 8 (+10) Languages 3 (German, Kashubian, Polish) (Base: English) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 8 (+15) Feats: 19 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 5 Challenge (Fast Acrobatic Bluff) Dodge Focus 5 Evasion Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 70 pp Enhanced CON 14 [14 pp] Enhanced DEX 14 [14 pp] Enhanced STR 14 [14 pp] Immunity 5 (falling damage) [5 pp] Kinetic Array [16+1+2+2=21 pp] Autofire and Penetrating on Unarmed [Dynamic] DAP: Leaping 16 (x250,000) [Dynamic] DAP: Super-Strength 8 (Heavy Load: ~180 tons) Super-Movement 1 (Wall-Crawling) [2 pp] costs abilities 10 + combat 32 + saves 4 + skills 15/60 + feats 19 + powers 70 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: Here's my attempt at a Bouncy Hero: this character has the bouncing ability, but not the Bouncing power. (Which is not that great, and honestly breaks caps pretty badly) The idea is that she's a kinetic controller; in addition to enhancing her physique, her powers let her leap ridiculous distances (with Leaping 16 and STR 24, there's really nowhere you can't get in an urban environment, though it may take you a while), lift very heavy weights (not incidentally, that massive Super-STR means that she's a really, really good grappler, or hit really hard and fast with channeled kinetic damage. She can fall any distance and be unhurt, and leap back up without hesitation at the end of it: she can even fall while unconscious and her natural kinetic absorbing abilities will do just fine. I made her your standard high-Dex dodge monkey, as is fairly common for your quippy, bluffy, urban sort of hero. (She actually could pull off a leap from the suburbs to the city, but she loses a lot of the cool visuals of bounding and rebounding off skyscrapers to work up a really big hit if you do that) Another way to do this character would be to make her really physically tough, the way Cannonball is in Marvel. To do that, swap her Dodge Focus for Protection and maybe scrape up some Impervious, perhaps as a DAP built into her big array. You could make her significantly Damage-shifted if you wanted by shifting her tradeoffs around a bit, making that Autofire into a Strike or Enhanced STR in its own right. OTOH, Autofire has turned out to be a pretty effective way of being 'damage-shifted' with an Attack tradeoff. What the hell is Kashubian? Use Google, chums! I realized I was being a little too dull in the language choices I gave her, so I mixed it up a bit with one of Europe's more obscure languages: as written, this is a Polish girl (perhaps a hero of Chicago or a immigrant) who probably takes her clothes to the laundry to 'warsh' them and whose grandpa was probably a huge Richard Daley fan. There are ethnic groups beside Irish and Italian even in 'white' people in comics, and it doesn't do to forget that! Yes yes, no doubt she'll go build a screen door on a submarine. If you're interested in modeling her distant descendant in the future, give her some Growth and some Impervious to make a real Bouncing Hero...

Luckily, Mind-Master was an old hand enough to signal his approach in the shadowy tunnels lest he spook the superpowered teens; with a low whistle came the flying immortal champion, followed close behind by Caryatid's family. They stuck close to their daughter, who stuck close to them; a child made a leader before her time. Mind-Master gave Singularity a quick, wary look before focusing on the teens. "Talos sends his regrets. He is occupied with ensuring that the masters of the world are heedless of what goes on beneath their feet." To Trevor, he added, "He thanks you again for your aid. Should you find yourself battling his counterpart in the near-future, he asks you to strike true in his name." To the others, he went on, "Time is short. Talos and I have clouded minds and computers above as best we can. Caryatid," he added, "and I have already said our goodbyes. Is your transportation close at hand?"

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.