Avenger Assembled

And _that_ was a Bluff check to see if Belphegor can tell if the "good guys" are on to him.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Avenger spat back as he slammed the book shut with a sound like a gun going off. "You obnoxious little punk, coming in here and trying to tell us how to do our job!" Despite his angry words, he very clearly nodded at Dark Star, then at the floor-level ventilation duct that he'd come out of himself. No use drawing attention to that little fact, though, since in all the excitement he'd neglected to unscrew the blessed thing. He held up his fingers in a silent countdown as he walked towards the vent, three, two, one, then kicked the thing in.

Belphegor is indeed the terrible intelligence being sensed. (This time! :twisted: )I did actually give him a pretty heavy circumstance bonus given where he is and his current shape, but them's the breaks.

Hmm. So do neither of you guys have any idea what the monster down below is, then?

Outside of Scarab's vision, Avenger had divided his attention between watching Scarab and finding the vault's manifest. He paged through it slowly, carefully, muttering black, growly curses as he went. That left Dark Star, left temporarily without a job, to feel the terrible prickers on the back of his neck of some terrible alien intelligence gazing upon them from some unknown corner of the room.

'Sokay, just hope I take this guy down this guy down this time. ;)

Hot dog, nat 20 on my Arcane Lore! I await word from the Masta. :P

"She wants you, O'Ren, and she's willing to pay you well for it. Melinda can reward her friends very...very grandly." He fell silent as they approached the corpse. Jack walked up to the body with only a faint look of disgust on his barely visible face as he looked over the corpse in the dripping gloom. "I've seen things like this before," he muttered almost inaudibly as he cracked open a flashlight to shine around the darkened tunnel. "All cities feed on themselves, one way or another. Freedom just has its own way of doing things. Listen, if either of you have any weird freaky super-senses, now the's time to tell me."

Yeah, you might wanna fix that one, Cy. ;)

Hmm. I'm assuming that you mean 18, since 15 is the usual Toughness modifier. If that's the case, Avenger is currently at Injured (x1).

A fantastically lucky shot by Wolfe actually struck home, cutting into Avenger's dead flesh and bringing a cry of rage from him! "Arrr!" With his flesh unmarred by the blade's magical powers, Avenger avoided further taunts and moved to action. He grabbed the man by the shoulders and brutally head-butted him, slamming skull into skull hard enough to actually crack his own hockey mask!

"Help? Yes. Help." Avenger glared at his prisoner, who'd been shooting profoundly grateful look at Nightrival ever since his feet touched the ground. "Acceptable. Gratitude." He hit Spaleni again, but softer this time, more of a gentle tap to the face. "Friends selling underneath Route 4 and Route 6. Unconscious. This one escaped. Can talk. Believe mob connection." "He's crazy, man!" Spaleni gasped in reply, waving his arms futiley as he tried to get Nightrival's attention. "He's gonna snap my neck as soon as you're gone! He turned my...I mean, that whole crew into jello!" "He's not on your side, scum," spat Avenger. "Your crew shouldn't use guns if they can't shoot."

Avenger turned his head as Nightrival came down, his icy-blue eyes glimmering with irritation. A little belatedly, Jack remembered that most humans aren't strong enough to hold up a full-grown man one-handed. He slowly slid his prisoner down the wall until his feet touched the filthy alley floor beneath without releasing his iron-clad grip on his collar. Crap! If it was the Raven, I'd at least be able to enjoy the show. "Your territory. Apologies." The words were cold and flat, picked out of Jack's idea of what a crazy, creepy vigilante would say. "Friends been selling zombie powder. Unacceptable. Will interrogate him elsewhere."

And Avenger is going to Bluff poorly! Which, y'know, makes sense, given that he's only doing it reflexively. Avenger's attack bonus is considerably lower than Nightrival's. His Defense bonus is slightly lower.

Not a great roll from Avenger, either. We'll give StB a bit more time before I post again.

Okay, let's have Notice checks from our non-demon PCs, along with a Stealth check and a Knowledge: Pop Culture or Streetwise from the demon.

Eventually Scarab got the door open and entered the vault, leaving the three heroes glowering at each other for a few moments before Avenger spoke. "Introductions. Avenger. You? He showed his face now that Scarab had arrived, a grim, menacing figure as he crouched amid the broken debris on the floor. "Suggest we search. Manifest?"

OK, I've posted a specific set of questions Avenger is trying to answer so you can be explicit about what he can and cannot find.

As Avenger's long, busy night went on, he took careful note of the questions he hoped to answer: "What do the markings that summon the demon actually mean? Is there any way to know what kind of demon it was, either by them or the hairs he's found?" "Are there any demons currently active in Freedom City, or infernalists, that are known to the vampire underground? If so, where can they be found? What activities do they generally undertake?" "What was this demon's name? How do you kill a demon?"

Moira and a pit-fighter, heading into the dark against a monster. Muttering a curse inside his mind, Jack began heading after O'Ren down into the pit below. Having made his decision, something in his demeanor changed; his eyes hardening and his footsteps growing lighter. Tired, blotchy club-hopper or not, Jack seemed to know what he was doing.

Perhaps they'll send Slamdance on that part of the investigation. 8-) In any event, I'll move this thread further along tonight.

Jack peered into the gloom, the darkness a welcome relief from the oppressive light outside. "Maybe we should call the police," he said doubtfully. "Or the Freedom League. If whatever's down there did that kind of damage, we don't want to be the only ones looking for it. There are some pretty terrible monsters in this city." He took off his sunglasses in the dark, peering after Moira.

Jack's cab ride seemed to stretch on forever, every stab of sunlight through the windows an unwelcome intrusion into his peace and quiet. Maybe he could walk in the sunlight without burning the way other vampires couldn't, but the harsh light of the Sun was like a constant, grating presence at the edge of his perception, holding his body in place and burning away the edges of his supernatural power like the curling edges of burning paper. Somebody had better be dead, he thought grimly as they made their way to where Moira had called him. He stepped outside and paid the cab driver well, watching the man through his sunglasses for a moment before he blearily wandered over in the direction where he thought he'd find Moira and O'Ren. It didn't take him long at all to find where he was going; not with the smell of blood in the air. He stumbled over the rise looking like a man who'd had a little too much to drink the night before; his sunglasses hiding his eyes, his skin a blotchy pink and white. Jack saw the scene of slaughter below, and suddenly felt very bad about his earlier wish. "Oh my god! What happened here?" There was no one around to tell him that, though, and precious few clues visible in that damnable blinding light from overhead. Tired and sore, he followed the bloody trail down the beach, supremely glad when he finally stumbled on O'Ren and Moira at the tunnel mouth. "What's going on? What happened?" he exclaimed.

The character's on the other side of town; I thought you guys might do something other than stare at the thing till he got there. :)

This is the OOC thread for Avenger's confrontation with Nightrival.