Avenger Assembled

7 Midnight (who's taken his turn) The robot (who's taken her turn) Gabriel Fleur Fusion

"They return. They always return." Harrier might have been looking at Victory; under the former drone's featureless faceplate, it was hard to tell. "I had hoped that this world among any others was free of the agents of the Terminus. But such a place as this will always have enemies. Always." The setting sun glinted off his armor, the Terminus metal having taken a solid beating in the fight. "We must find where he came from, and make sure that no more like that are coming. You understand, Victory, about those who changed you? A world that thinks to harness the Terminus might as well die by their own hand en masse. It would be a kinder fate."

Golden Age Hero PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 20 pp STR 34 [14] (+12/+2) DEX 20 (+5) CON 34 [14] (+12/+2) INT 14 (+2) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 20 pp ATK: +4 (+8 Unarmed) DEF: +8 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +9 Grapple: +21 Saves: 9 pp TOU +12 (+12 Con) FORT +12 (+12 Con) REF +8 (+5 Dex, +3) WILL +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 8 pp=32 r Diplomacy 4 (+6) Gather Info 4 (+6) Intimidate 4 (+6) Notice 6 (+8) Search 4 (+6) Sense Motive 6 (+8) Stealth 4 (+9) Feats: 14 pp All-Out Attack Attack Specialization: Unarmed 2 Contacts, Dodge Focus 2, Evasion, Improved Initiative, Interpose, Move-By Action, Power Attack, Takedown Attack, Ultimate Effort (Toughness Checks), Well-Informed Powers: 79 pp Enhanced CON 20 [20 pp] Enhanced STR 20 [20 pp] Impervious TOU 9 [9 pp] Immunity 7 (disease, all environmental conditions, poison) [7 pp] Immunity 5 (aging, starvation and thirst, sleep, suffocation) (Flaw: Limited [Half Effect]) [3 pp] Leaping 5 (x50) [5+1=6 pp] AP: Speed 5 (250 MPH) Quickness 4 (x25) (Flaw: Physical Tasks Only) [2 pp] Super-Strength 5 (Heavy Load: 45 tons) (PFs: Countering Punch, Super-Breath) [12 pp] costs abilities 20 + combat 20 + saves 9 + skills 8/32 + feats 14 + powers 79 = 150 pts --- Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! I think I’ve managed to cover most of the basics with this character: she can break the sound barrier by moving all-out, lift a locomotive over her head, nothing short of a bursting shell can pierce her skin (I know Impervious 9 makes the Knockback math tough, but hey, waddya gonna do), and leap tall buildings in a single bound. She’s also got a super-charged internal anatomy that keeps her from suffering the slings and arrows of the world, shrugging off everything from poison gas to getting splattered with molten metal. (Though she should maybe use her cape for that one.) She's not a great hand-to-hand combatant; she punches people right in the face and lets that do the trick! Is she the last daughter of an alien world, empowered by the yellow sunlight of our solar system, or is she from an advanced culture of super-evolved humans, where everyone has her amazing physical prowess? She’s got the usual powerhouse tricks like Interpose and Ultimate Toughness, though you can certainly shift that over to Ultimate Strength: it’s just that Toughness comes up so much more often! I went with the assumption that this character has just debuted, maybe as a mild-mannered reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper, but a little tweaking will give you a version of this character that’s been around for a long time: give her full immunity to aging, or go with the idea that she looks fifty when she’s actually closer to 90 given her half-immunity to aging. She's a decent investigator, though certainly no costumed adventurer, good enough to track down racketeers and fifth columnists and hurt them real bad! Golden Age and Golden Age-influenced characters (maybe split the difference and say she’s been stuck somewhere for a few decades) often have some serious conflicts with contemporary superheroic morality. Sometimes that’s played for ‘drama’, as when yet another writer decides to say “The 1940s were actually really racist and sexist!”, but I think we can move past that a little bit with a PC: keep stuff like that to a bare, bare minimum, maybe throwing in an Old Shame where she appeared in a “Let’s Get Back to the Kitchen, Girls!” newsreel in the late 40s or summat. I think it’s more fun to just talk about the divide between generations and the different standards in place, not worry so much about rubbing everyone’s nose in how much the past sucked and how the people who lived there are dumb.

I need initiative from Fleur, Fusion, and Gabriel, with the assumption that they'll be teleporting in to help Midnight.

The robot hissed and whirled around, her tentacles seeming to snap at the air, the metallic tips moving so fast they actually cracked like whips. "That's a pretty good trick," she purred, sounding for all the world like Otaku had ripped the voicebox out of the Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp. "But I've got one of my own that I think you'll like..." And suddenly she whirled around, vomiting a thick, black wad of ink from her mouth that splattered all around the room. "You can't run forever, you coward!" she taunted.

Avenger: Inside Out House Calls House on The Hill Edge: Rusty Cage IC and GM Brit Machine Kill a Man IC and GM New Kid Heroes of Our Past Fusion: White Saturday mixing IC and GM Walked Alone Entangling Alliances Champagne Shenanigans Harrier: Starve Free Vanquish and Vitriol The Good Earth Gming Bee Okay

On one side of the building, a tentacled monstrosity peeled her way out of the shadows to give a smile to Midnight that might have been seductive if he had no personal life, or if he found undersea monsters personally interesting. "Well well well, if it isn't Midnight-san," she hissed in an East Asian accent that was obnoxiously stereotypical for the product of a Japanese programmer: Otaku really did have some weird fetishes. "Perhaps you would like me to give you a grip?" She flexed her tentacles, the suckers gleaming with the metal beneath. "Because when I grip you, you know you've been gripped!" - Across the building, Fleur de Joie finally found Midnight, the teen hero facing off against a tentacled monstrosity that looked exactly like Fusion! Except maybe bigger around the bust.

"You deserve it," the king told Phalanx gravely. "All of you do, for everything you've done for yourselves, and for the world. And for me," the king added with a smile. "Hmm, I'd hoped to wait for Hellion," said the White Lion thoughtfully, "but I'm sure he'll be able to catch up with us. He had quite an evening," he added. "In any event," he said, shaking off the moment as he walked out to the center of the courtyard, "we have an expedition ahead of us!" He gestured to the top of the mountain and said, "At the top of this mountain lies the gateway to the Heart of Dakana. Only a few brave outsiders have dared venture into its confines, and today you shall all be lucky enough to do so in the company of a king!" He pointed to a just-visible trail that wound its way around the long, round slope of the mountain. "We shall climb the mountain on foot as our ancestors did, as befits the place, and by early afternoon you shall see the great secret of Dakanan kings." He grew more serious as they all gathered together for the trip up, surprising Mark by taking him to his side. "Yessir?" Mark gulped as the team headed out, a trifle nervous at taking the lead in the company of a hero so famous as the White Lion, even if this was a man he'd known since childhood. Things were different with the masks off. "Tell me what you told my agricultural secretary." "Well sir," said Mark as the two reached the trail, a surprisingly easy slope if you didn't look down the far side to the long, long tumble down the mountainside. "I was talking to her about a job possibility I have in southern Africa, and I was asking her what relationship Dakana had with UNISON..." the half-heard conversation continued, Mark getting out of breath, as the kids headed up the mountain.

There was dead silence from the bees, except of course for the deafening sound of their drumming wings, before the queen shouted. "ITZ HER! ITZ HER! WE WILL BEE FREEEE!" And then the bees began a raucous celebration, dancing and singing giant bee songs that made the teeth rattle to hear them, swinging around each other in mad pirouettes that might have squashed any unwary normal humans around, looking as pleased as only sixty-foot insects can be. "WHEN DO WE LEAVE? AND WHAT...WHAT WILL YOU DO WIZ THAT ONE?" One of the bees pointed to the curl of leaves on the floor. "ZHE IZ A ZTRANGE BEEPED."

The bees, as bees will, buzzed. "BBBUTT..." "QUIET!" roared the great queen bee, a gargantuan monstrosity of apian size and feminity who might have been the mother of a billion bees. Seriously, she might be, except the Bee-Keeper's lair didn't look that large. She couldn't rise, at least not without compromising her weighty dignity, so instead she gestured with one massive leg for the others to come closer. "IF ZZZZHE IZZZZ THE FLEUR DE JOIE," the queen buzzed in a voice like an insectoid pipe organ, "WE MAY GO. THIZZ IZZ A TERRIBLE PRIZON!" she expostulated. "BUT MY QUEEN!" buzzed a nearby bee, "WHAT OF THE MAZTER! HE WARNED UZ OF HER TRICKY WAYZ!" "HMM..." She stroked her mouthparts with a foreleg. "INDEED! HOW DO WE KNOW YOU ARE NOT MAD?"

The robot is bound and helpless Go ahead and post

Harrier turned and brought his blade down with a slashing ferocity, the energy bonds around his ally sparking just once as the sheer power channeled by his armor and pike tore through Vanquisher's power. Turning to face the monster, Harrier pumped his weapon, the tip whining as it channeled the power of destruction itself. "When you return," he said with the surety of one who knew enough about enemies to expect that, "We will be ready! Now begone!"

Surprise round! You guys are up.

Fusion put her finger to her lips, tentacles writhing about her body as if she was feeling the movements of the very air around them, her posture tense but determined. "He's using some kind of drug or mental agent," she said, shooting hard looks at the others to make sure they weren't affected. "I felt it when I came in. He's told everyone here to just lie down, and so they have." That otherwordly whisper she'd been using earlier sounded angry. "I lost Midnight. I think he was scouting around the edge, but if he went in...I don't know what would have happened to him. We need some way to search the whole building, and fast."

I need a DC 20 Will save from Fleur and Gabriel.

"I might be able to get us home," said Mark, sitting all by himself as he stared up at the starry night sky overhead. He'd pulled back his mask, giving the older hero a chance to see the young man's face. "But I don't know how much we should do here..." He looked up at the stars and said suddenly, "Jimmy Lucas dies of lung cancer about forty-five years from now. Those stupid cigarettes, he...he thought they made him look cool and smart, like FDR. But instead he just died in an oxygen tent with my dad and my grandma there. The Centurion came to visit a couple of times, but he couldn't even come to Freedom City back in the bad old days of the 90s." He set his hands. "And...and then he's just a joke, you know? Jimmy Lucas, the idiot with the genie, the man with phenomenal cosmic power who couldn't even see what was...what was happening under his nose. And now I see him, and I miss my dad so much, and he's gone too..."Mark wiped his eyes, embarrassed at nearly breaking down in front of a stranger. "All they are is jokes now! Jokes to idiots who think that having superpowers and flashy costumes is what makes them a hero. Well it's not! It's NOT!" Behind the angry teenager, Cannonade could see the trees vibrate at his last shout, as if in sympathy.

Supercape, I know Edge's sheet is tough to read if you're new to the game, but I did have several possible actions left before you moved on to Heritage, all without mentioning to me that you planned to do so. Please make sure to let players know that you're skipping them in combat rounds before you do so. Thanks.

Hi all. This is the final project for my graduate teaching practicum. This is not the syllabus of a real class, it's of one I'd like to teach in the future. It's an imaginary story. Aren't they all?

Atlantean Abilities: 74 pp STR: 30 (+10) DEX: 22 (+6) CON: 24 (+7) INT: 16 (+3) WIS: 24 (+7) CHA: 18 (+4) Saves: 3 pp TOU: +10 (+10 Con) FORT: +8 (+7 Con, +1) REF: +7 (+6 Dex, +1) WILL:+8 (+7 Wis, +1) Skills: 16 pp=64 r Diplomacy 2 (+6) Handle Animal 6 (+10), Intimidate 11 (+15), Knowledge (tactics) 12 (+15), Knowledge (theology and philosophy) 4 (+7), Language 1 (English) (Base: Atlantean), Notice 8 (+15), Ride 4 (+10), Sense Motive 3 (+10) Survival 3 (+10), Swim 10 (+20) Feats: 17 pp Animal Empathy, Attack Focus (melee) 3 Blind-Fight, Cult Hero (Atlanteans), Defensive Attack, Dodge Focus 3, Environmental Adaptation (underwater), Master Plan 2, Power Attack, Startle, Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 17 pp Immunity 4 (environmental cold, high pressure, breathe underwater) [4 pp] Protection 3 [3 pp] Super-Senses 2 (Tremorsense) [2 pp] Super-Strength 1 (Heavy Load: 1.5 tons) [2 pp] Swimming 6 (100 MPH) [6+1=7 pp] AP: Leaping 3 (x10) and Speed 3 (50 MPH) Combat: 28 pp Attack +7 (+10 melee), Grapple +21, Defense +10 (+3 flat-footed), Knockback –5, Initiative +6 Drawbacks: -5 pp Weakness (-1 Con per hour without water immersion, can kill) [5 pp] -- Design Notes: This is a somewhat tweaked repost of my earlier Atlantean build, a more standard version of the archetype I played with while constructing my Deep One build. This character is a skilled, powerful warrior of the seas, a champion of Atlantis and perhaps the finest soldier in its armies, now an ambassador to the surface world and a warrior on the surface as well. She doesn't have Favored Environment (underwater); Favored Environment is a mistake to give a PC build. Rather, she just has Environmental Adaptation for underwater survival: that way she doesn't take the heavy penalties that regular PCs take for underwater movement and combat. That way she's just as competent as they are on the surface, but is the original Atlantean Murder Machine below. No talking to fish, no Animal Summoning powers: drop her massive attributes and combat skills some if you want those. She actually has very few powers as such; I figure that an Atlantean isn't going to have Enhanced STR so much as she's naturally going to be stronger and tougher than any human being. She's got the Cult Hero feat from Silver Age which works like a mutant Attractive: you get bonuses to social rolls with people from or friendly to your group, but take a penalty when dealing with people particularly hostile to your group. She probably doesn't get along at all well with polluters and such: she's like Captain Planet if he hurt people. Like real bad, like with elbow-strikes and such. You can play characters like this anyway you want: the nice Silver Age ambassador who occasionally shouts at people because she's used to talking underwater and who has to explain that yes, of course she eats fish, what do people expect Atlanteans to eat, or the tough, no-nonsense Bronze Age champion of the oceans and enemy of polluters and thugs elsewhere. If she's at all influenced by the late 1980s, she needs some whale buddies: perhaps there was an incident with a whaling ship and some time travelers back then? Oceanic environmentalism is a _bit_ dated today, but it's still very much a contentious issue that's still well worth addressing with a character.

Suddenly, two black-skinned figures erupted from the building's windows, falling a good three stories before they rolled and came to picture-perfect landings! Having already looked very disturbing over the cameras, the Fusion-Angel Androids were even more horrible up close: still clearly wearing their schoolgirl outfits, now cut to allow their writhing, wriggling robotic tentacles free access to wave around their bodies as one hissed: "We will punish you for disrespecting the great Doctor Otaku!" She snapped and snarled, her tentacles clinking like steel chains. The other took a more sinous pose, twisting her body around itself as she cartwheeled towards the heroes. "Yes, punish you with our powerful tentacles of powers!" Around the side of the building, Midnight slowly made his way past quiet, peaceful office after quiet, peaceful office, the people inside laying down with an eerie serenity that was frankly difficult to look at for long. Luckily for his calm, it wasn't long before the teen adventurer came upon his goal: the broadcast studio for the morning show had evidently been the site of Otaku's first arrival. Inside he could see a slumped-over crew and a thrumming, glowing cylinder as large as he was, its red-ribbed sides radiating a mental energy he could feel even with his shields on, like a man in a wetsuit sticking his hand in a river. This was the place!

The OOC thread, one day after Kill a Man

The next morning, after a suitable opportunity to sleep off the tremendous feast and partying from the night before, Young Freedom was assembled for the trip up the mountain! Mark had actually been out most of the night talking to Niobe D'bko, his friend from the Agriculture Council, and had just barely managed to get enough sleep in the palatial king-sized bed in his part of the suite he shared with Mike before the alarm woke him. He called his mom to tell her they'd gotten there safely when Mike was in the shower, showered off himself, and joined his friends for the walk out to the courtyard where the king and his party were waiting for them. Mark had come in costume, naturally, and was relieved to see that the King and his fellows had done the same, the Dakanans dressed in the ceremonial garb of the Lion...and also carrying fully modern climbing equipment and supplies. They were religious, not foolhardy, a distinction Mark appreciated thoroughly as the King greeted everyone. Man, when I did start worrying about ropes and stuff like that? Mark thought as he exchanged a good morning with the monarch. Oh yeah. When I started having to call Mom every morning to let her know I was OK...

Fusion hmmed, seriously debating what to do as she studied the fallen people inside. Well, she decided, I can't just leave those people in there. If they're in trouble, they need help, particularly if that creep Otaku is using some kind of perverted knockout gas or sleep ray on them. Trusting to what sounded like a very impressive distraction to keep Otaku's attention, the invisible octopus slipped under the fire door into the loading dock, muttering a curse as she squeezed into the building. That was a very narrow opening! She was just about to move on when she felt a strange tugging at her mind, a faint urge to...NO! Writhing, she clutched the floor till the urge passed, and when it had she was on her feet, moving quickly and invisibly through the corridors. She was going to find Otaku and smash his face into his mind control machine till he stopped moving.

That was a little much even for Mark. But he took a deep breath, thought about his own absent father, and said, "You may think you can buy your father's love with carnage and strife! But that's no way for a son to live, giving Dad half a life! Because what you need is love! All you need is love!" Behind him the music swelled as a wall of speakers grew up from behind him like a metastasizing sound system. "All you need is love...your dad just needs some heat! Or you'll end up on the street!" Getting into the rhythm, he gestured to the crowd. "Dads were made for loving you! You weren't made for using him as a weapon to freeze the British Empire!"

Edge currently has six HP, I believe. On his turn, he's going to roll to counter the Russian's cold-manipulating abilities with his own Create Object: 30 It's going to be a hot time in the old town tonight!