Raveled

... Graft is really a clever name, actually. That gets my vote.

http://rolz.org/embed?3559339

Warp and Jay both get a HP because just stunted! They also need to give me DC 20 Ref save for half/DC 20 Fort save vs. Visual Dazzle. http://rolz.org/embed?3559339 And with Evasion Jay actually makes it. Let me edit that post.

The officer clenched his jaw, and the silent blonde glanced between the heroines. After a moment he turned and gestured for everyone to follow him. Merneptah pushed away from the professor and started following the police officers, and Jay glanced at Warp, shrugged, and followed behind the group. They wound their way towards the front of the museum, and the officers paused on the steps. "There is just one question I'd like to ask you girls before we go any further," the male officer said. And then he exploded in a blazing ball of light, brighter than the noon-day sun. Some instinct hammered into Blue Jay at an early age caused her to squeeze her eyes shut and turn away, so she missed the brunt of the blast and her eyes were left clear. Merneptah roared in confusion as the male officer disappeared and the female officer's outfit melted, revealing a suit of, well, revealing purple tights and a face mask. "How in all the world did a pair of children take down Red Hand? He must be off his game."

GM "Ow. Owch. Forsooth. You wound me, good lady." Gethin hugged Cerys back with one hand, holding on to her for just a moment too long before stepping away. "It is good to see you back here, Cerys. I was starting to wonder if we'd ever see you again, if you'd gone native over there." "Cerys! Gethin!" The voice boomed out and both young people turned, to see one of their grey-haired teachers standing at the end of the hall. Cadoc was past sixty years old, but he was still hard and harsh as a rock; he taught most of the Far East languages and scripts, as well as a peculiar sort of open-hand martial arts that tended to leave students flying through the air. Perhaps the most important lesson he taught the young initiates was to never judge someone based on their age. Gethin stepped away from Cerys and stood upright while Cadoc marched towards them with his stiff-legged gait. He looked them both over, sniffing harshly before turning to the younger woman. "You have a date with the Council, young woman," he said. "And you," he added, turning to Gethin. "You have a test on Mandarin in twenty minutes, don't you? I suggest you study and prepare, young man, for there shall be no second chances!"

The ground fell farther away and Tona found herself creeping along the top of a granite outcropping. The trees grew thin, and though she could still hear the Legion's clanking she couldn't see anything, so Tona ended up bellying along the ground up to the cliff-face. Below her was a defile, a narrow cut in the rock. Things that had once been human but were now infested and adulterated with clockwork marched single-file through the pass; some were carrying brass rifles, others had swords and clubs in their hands and many-barreled weapons set in their chest or perched on their shoulder, and one grotesque specimen was a torso sitting on a spider-like walking frame bristling with pointed and serrated edges. Among the group, shackled and bedraggled, were humans. A few had poorly-bandaged wounds, while others walked with a limp or with the dazed, stumbling gait of someone whose brain was not entirely focused on what the body was doing. They were connected in a line, and they all walked with their heads hanging down. It was obvious they were due for the meat factories in a few days, and what would happen then didn't bear thinking about. There was no one else here to save them, just Tona... but that would be suicide, wouldn't it?

Ironclad Starlight Blue Jay GM

Heraldo's fist cracked the glass canopy and sent the Atlantean war-craft spiraling in towards the ocean. The other broke flight path and looped around, before arrowing in towards Heraldo. Lightning crackled and spat around him as the magical flying craft unleashed a barrage of mystic energy at the paragon, but none struck home. War was certainly joined between Atlantis and the Hero of Puerto Rico, though.

Heraldo is the first to get into combat! Hoo-ray! So he's facing an Atlantean air superiority fighter. Surprisingly, it has the exact same stats as the jet fighter in the book! Crazy, innit? +10 Attack, Def 20. Atlantean's attack vs. Heraldo's Def. DC 21 Tou + Autofire (1d20+10=12) Oh wow, no.

GM Gethin shrugged, grinning. "A young girl all on herself in the hoary Colonies? Who knows what sort of trouble you could be getting into?" He nudged her, the grin growing wider. "The grapevine even says you found a boyfriend in Freedom City. What, an honest Welsh boy not good enough for you, anymore?" He took a moment to flex a rather impressive physique; firing a Welsh longbow day after day wasn't for the feeble.

"I shall recover," the Prince insisted. "Aye, that's a good 'un," the cop said. "In the meantime, I should have a few questions for you. Why don't you just follow me out to the car?" Blue Jay stepped in between Merneptah and the police officer, who fairly jumped back from the archer. "We should stay with the Prince," she said, keeping one eye on the quiet female cop. "We don't know why Red wanted to attack him. He might've been paid to." The older officer scowled at the younger woman. "Don't you tell us how to do our job. We'll keep him safer than any cape!"

For once the room was almost entirely silent. Sure, there was the sound of the pirates outside and the ticking of cooling metal where the engines had rested, but the omnipresent throb of vast stores of energy was gone, and slowly all the whirring and buzzing and humming that indicated a working industrial complex of any size vanished into near-silence. Jay almost had time to enjoy it, before the ship fell out of the sky. Of course no one would build a ship designed to travel the stars and land on planets without thinking about what would happen if it were to crash on a planet. Jay just had time to open her mouth and breath in for a scream when a crash field popped up everywhere in the ship, holding every thing and every occupant in a bubble of thick air, slowing their movements down to a crawl and making any potential hard knocks into vague pokes. Though the antiquated archer didn't know that; she just knew that she was being held in the air by something that was all around her and holding every strand of hair individually and in her mouth and down her throat and oh god oh god ohgod ohgod -- It didn't last a minute before the ship settled into the embrace of the huge, leafy tentacles Sanctuary had used to tether it in place, and once the ship registered a lack of sudden downward movement the crash field snapped off, letting Jay and a million other things crash to the ground. The young heroine struggled to her feet, coughing, trying to rid herself of the feeling of having a pressure without mass or heat or form down her throat. She nocked an arrow with sharp, jerky motions, glaring at the doors. Her adrenaline was up and this trip was getting on last nerve. "Alright," she said. "Let 'em come. I could use some violence right about now." Fleur, however, had different problems to worry about. Through her plants all around the outside, she was able to watch as a number of giant dragon bees applied their most obvious feature to the hull of the ship, opening a hole and beginning to widen it. It would be a few minutes before the opening was big enough to allow even a small GDB to enter the ship, but would they be as interested in taking prisoners as Fleur was?

Blue Jay had chosen the south-bound team because they made her feel less on-edge than the northward team. Now the world seemed to be mocking her for her choice, by having her sit right next to Edge the Mighty. The vehicles had pulled out of camp and she had taken to staring out the window, trying to desperately think up something to say to the man that wouldn't sour his opinion of her. It wasn't just that he was one of the Companions who slew Omega -- the Furions tales painted him as almost apocalyptically powerful, and she didn't want to offend him. Time took care of the problem for her, as the convoy pulled up outside the first village on their path without a word being exchanged between the heroes. She popped the door and jumped out, far more comfortable surveying the scene of wreckage and devastation than she had been sitting in an air-conditioned car. This sort of thing was almost familiar ground for her; granted, nothing was on fire and she didn't have to worry about a follow-up attack, but she knew what it was like to see a place you thought of as your home be destroyed. Jay didn't wait around for orders, making a beeline for the nearest collapsed structure. She peered into the wreckage, trying to see if there were any wounded individuals or intact containers underneath the rubble. After a minute or so she realized she was being watched and glanced up, making eye contact with one of the villagers. She remembered something about French being fairly prevalent in Africa, so she tossed out a "Bonjour" before going back to her examination.

The forest was quiet and dim, daylight filtered through the canopy many, many feet above Tona's head. This was the world she was used to, twilight and the smell of green, growing things all around her. The tree cover and the strange properties of her homeworld's plant life would shield her from any overflights, and she would pit herself against any foe on foot. Still, the lack of any living thing in sight was setting her on edge. Some instinct told her to go west, and so she did. The ground started to separate, the south sloping away from the north, and by inclination Tona stayed to higher ground. Before long she began hearing the tell-tale hiss of steam and latter of iron that preceded the Legions of Steel & Steam. She drew and nocked an arrow and crept forward, moving slowly and carefully.

El Heraldo flew on bareheaded, and soon he left land behind and started flying over open water. Not long after that, he was surrounded by ocean on all sides. Off in the distance he noticed something glittering in the sky; as he flew on it got bigger and separated into two. Even as the two things approached it was hard to make them out. It looked like glass-blown orbs, but three or four meters across and with a man seated inside! It didn't take long for Heraldo to realize that the men seated inside these devices were wearing the same armor as the Atlantean invaders on CNN. Just as he realized he was looking at the Atlantean equivalent of an air force, an imperious voice spoke in his mind. "You are entering Atlantean air space," it said. "Land and be searched or depart immediately. There will be no second warning."

GM The castle of the Defenders of the ancient hero's legacy was an old, sweating pile of Norman stone, hundreds of years old and designed for defense rather than aesthetics. The environment didn't change much when Cerys passed through the stout doors and into the castle proper; if anything it simply got colder and damper, like stepping into a deep, underground cave. The walls of the castle were hung with ancient tapestries depicting medieval battles, and if one had the eye and the know-how one could see agents of Amddiffynnwr O Lleu Llaw Gyffes in the background of every event depicted there. carefully protecting Wales and Welsh interests throughout history. Most of them had died bloodily, Cerys realized, and far from home; it wasn't a heartening thought. "Cerys!" A bright voice cut through the chill of the air and the young girl looked around to see a young man about her age jogging down the castle corridor towards her. She recognized him almost at once at Gethin, another one of the Defender's young trainees. He was holding an old Welsh-style longbow in one hand, and waving the other. "Cerys, I didn't expect to see you until holidays! What's up?"

GM An AEGIS agent put his hand on Sam's shoulder, squeezing gently. "There was a traffic accident," he said quietly. "If it helps, she didn't have time to feel any pain." After a moment she was led out of the morgue, back out to the waiting room. Everyone sat down and pulled their chairs into a circle, making Sam's world a little space of ugly, uncomfortable police station chairs. The AEGIS agents exchanged a glance before one spoke up. "Samantha, I'm sorry that you have to go through with all of this today. But Talia made sure that if something happened you would be taken care of. She and AEGIS had already agreed on another guardian for you. It's been decided that you two should meet as soon as possible." The agent paused for a moment. "Are you okay to meet him, Samantha?"

Kraken made an admirable pantomime of a man chewing an unpleasant dish, despite the fact that he probably didn't have teeth, as he considered Fleur's offer. Finally he held up one squidy hand and with the other pulled what looked to be a faithful reproduction of a flintlock pistol from his wide belt. "Ye won, lassie. I'll tell the lads to disarm, but first, let's get this tub on the ground." He approached the huge engines under Jay's watchful eye, quickly veering to one side before he came in vine-range of the netted generators. He operated a wall panel and extracted a yellow-painted cylinder, holding both ends of it. "This here's the little jewel that let us invade this dimension, by the way. Experimental Lor drive. With this, a soul can travel to any dimension they want to!" He paused and added, "Good-bye." Kraken pressed a button on the drive, there was an explosion of coruscating light and a pressure wave that knocked Jay and Fleur to the ground. When they had picked themselves up again, Kraken was gone. Jay looked at the doors, where they could hear the sounds of angry pirates manning up to attack. She nocked an arrow and drew. "Any other plans," she said to Fleur, "I'd suggest trying them out."

Time to split up! This is the part that shows I'm clinically insane, BTW. Blod gets to choose between Kit gets to meet her El Heraldo gets to have a decent And Blue Jay gets an unscheduled walk through the

Tona Baudin awoke with a jerk. She was high up in a tree, nestled in between two branches, and tied to a third by a tough rope. She was dressed in as rough-spun tunic, leather pants, and high boots with pointed toes. There was a recurve bow and a quiver of arrows hanging from a branch. There was no Claremont dorm in sight, no buildings or other people at all in fact, because becasusr because because she had never been at Claremont in the first place. A world that had wounded, and later destroyed, Omega? And they had wanted her to come and help them? It was a laughable idea, though it had been a good fantasy while it lasted. The Day of Wrath should have clued her in; the sensible side of her had been trying to tell the rest of her that she didn't fit in that world, but like a fool she had resisted. So her dream turned against her and became horrible. Tona grabbed her bow and quiver and slipped down the tree, crouching in the bracken at the base of it and peering around intently. She was back where she belonged, but where were all the people?

GM El Heraldo was flying. That in and of itself wasn't too odd, bur he was flying high enough in the air that all he could see were clouds. A moment later he flew out of the cloud bank, looked down, and realized he was miles above the ground, and moving fast! All he could see below him was a lonely line of highway paralleling a ribbon of coastline. A quick fly-by confirmed that he was heading south -- and in South Carolina! Why in the world would he be flying so high and so fast due south? because because because He had been sitting with Cerys in the common room in the dorms, theoretically studying but in fact cuddling like, well, like a couple of teenagers. The big TV had been on and tuned to CNN, but it wasn't he heard "attack on the Caribbean islands," that he paid it any attention. Frightening images of troops in strange armor marching out of the accompanied running commentary on "a surprise Atlantean invasion of the Caribbean, under the claim of eminent domain." A particularly chilling moment was a native reporter, his face streaked with smoke, huddling in a building and speaking about "the siege of San Juan." Which wad why El Heraldo, the Herald of Victory and defender of Puerto Rico, was heading home.

GM Samantha Vance knew what the inside of police stations looked like. The institutional wallpaper, the thin, colorless carpet, and the fluorescent lighting that seemed to flicker just at the edge of perception -- this was a police station waiting room straight out of the catalog. And Sam was sitting here because because because because some AEGIS agents had come to Claremont to collect her. She was used to dealing with authority figures, but this time she was off her game because they were so darned polite. They had politely collected her, and politely driven her downtown, and politely put her in this waiting room. Now they were reentering with a uniformed police officer and politely escorting her deeper into the building. The whole situation was creepy, like the moments in a slasher movie before the hillbilly family reveals that they're cannibals. They came to an elevator and went down, below the lobby and into the basements and sub-basements. They came out in a chilly corridor and Sam was politely herded towards a pair of swinging metal doors. Through the door was more shining steel implements and tables, a man in surgical scrubs, and a shrouded form on a metal table. All of a sudden Sam realized she was standing in a morgue. The doctor looked at the police officer, who nodded back. He folded back the sheet, revealing a face that Sam knew all too well. After all it was the woman who had shared her name with the thief and enrolled her in Claremont. An AEGIS agent cleared his throat and spoke. "Ms. Vance," he said politely, "can you identify the deceased?"

GM Cerys Pfer stood before the sweating stone castle that had dominated her life before Claremont. The headquarters of Amddiffynnwr O Lleu Llaw Gyffes was still imposing, and now Cerys found herself called back here because because because she had received a letter from the head of the order. It had been full of code words and phrases, designed to defeat detection by whoever might read it besides Cerys, which really meant Headmaster Summers. The letter had talked about Cerys's 'sick cousin,' and how things were looking 'very grim' for the poor child, how the doctors were 'uniform in their opinion.' It was enough to get Cerys on a plane for Gatwick Airport without raising too much suspicion. Only the young ninja was aware that she was being recalled for a dangerous mission; that she would be briefed by a member of the ruling council; and that the mission would be against someone her own age, someone she knew. Now that she was here, the only thing to do was to find out who.

If Tona remembered to charge her phone more than once a week, she might have gotten the text, too. As it was she just managed to convince herself that Cerys had totally slept through her greeting. She stepped up to the window and made sure the blinds were drawn so she'd wake up to the sun. Tona stared out the window for a minute, over the moonlit Claremont campus and the twinkling city lights beyond. She had a sudden, wild impulse to run away and leave it all behind her -- the crazy school, the incomprehensible city, the depressing funk she fell into whenever one of her friends came into view. It only lasted for a moment though, and then she turned back to her bed and her computronium-tipped arrow and her daguerreotypes of her parents. Running away was an idea that could wait, at least for another day. Instead she crawled into bed and wrapped herself in her blanket, and tried to fall asleep.

Blue Jay had stayed quiet as they unloaded the medical supplies, partly because of fatigue and partly because she had learned that the best way to understand a new situation was to watch people who were already acclimated to it. Her few questions had centered around things like powder disinfectants, UV emitting bandages, and hand scanners that were all borderline miraculous to her. Now they were planning to move pout, separating into groups. Jay glanced at Edge, feeling distinctly that she wanted to be in whichever group he was a part of, while at the same time feeling she would only be a hindrance to the Mighty. She blew out a breath and spoke up. "I'll go on the south bank," she said. There wasn't any tactical reason to go one way or the other, but most of the people from Freedom City seemed to be going south and she felt vaguely more at ease around them.