Raveled

Blue Jay Claremont Academy Sometime in 2012 The smartphone lay in the middle of the table, a rectangle of glass and high technology in the middle of a sea of dark wood and pre-industrial craftsmanship. Tona Baudin stared at it, distrustful but waiting. She had only spent a few days away from her home and the Silver Tree of the Furions, a few days away from the total oppression of the Terminus, a few days in this wonderous land of heroes and god-killers, and now she was being told that there was a kind of magic called a phone. Anne Gables sat across the table from this new stranger and surreptitiously checked the clock again. She had been sitting in this room for more than two hours now, trying to explain modern computing technology to someone who had never handled anything more complicated than a crossbow. When she had volunteered for extra credit to Mr. Archer, she hadn’t been expecting something like this. Still, she had volunteered… The girl took a deep breath and dove back into it. “See, something like this is called a smartphone, although older people call it a cellphone or a cell. My dad actually still calls his a cellular – but you don’t need to know all that.” Anne caught Tona’s uncomprehending look across the table and started to pare back her commentary. “You can learn to do a lot of things with a smartphone. It’s your window to the whole world, really!” Tona looked between the phone and Anne’s face, then slowly picked up the smartphone and held it up, at arm’s length. “I’ve seen windows,” she said slowly. “Windows are in walls.” She paused and added, “And you can see through them.” Anne sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “Okay, don’t worry about that. What most people use phones – use smartphone for is to talk to other people. You call them up and you have a chat.” Tona’s lips moved as she repeated the unfamiliar words for them. “I called you before,” she said, “when we were on other sides of the castle.” She kept referring to the Academy’s campus as ‘the castle,’ apparently fixated on the high walls and towers. “You always said I did not have to call, to yell at the phone.” Anne nodded slowly. “Right, right. You shouldn’t have to yell when using a smartphone. That’s because there’s… There’s like, tiny little demons inside.” Tona’s eyes lit up at that explanation and Anne felt a thrill, felt like she had made a connection with the stranger for the first time all day. “Little demons in your phone hear the message, and fly it over to my phone and tell the demons in my phone, and then I hear your message.” Tona held the smartphone in both hands, gazing down at it with a rapt expression and wide eyes. “There are demons in here?” she whispered. Anne gave an encouraging noise, waiting for the stranger to reply. Tona stared at the phone in silence for a long minute – then, she raised it above her head and brought it down hard on the edge of the table, snapping the glass and plastic casing clean in half. Anne gave a startled shriek at the sudden outburst of violence, as Tona prodded at the goo that seeped out of the broken screen. The Terminus native looked up at the Claremont student, eyes fierce and body coiled. “It’s bleeding,” she hissed. “We’ve wounded the demons, now we have to finish them off!"

June, 2010 Freedom City, New Jersey The day had been sweltering warm, but with the sun on the horizon there was a chill in the air that promised a cooler night. Asli Saddik stood in her tiny living room, working by the light of the setting sun. She was surrounded by books and weird markings on the shag carpet. Since drawing on the carpet was out, the starving artist had bought several rolls of painter’s tape and used that to create a pair of overlapping triangles, a hexagon, and a few other significantly occult markings. She held a leather-bound journal in her hands, lips moving as she considered the last few words of the spell carefully. Finally, convinced that she was ready after months of preparation, she put the journal on the couch and stepped into the hexagon. She big woman closed her eyes and breathed deep, then exhaled while counting to five. A few more meditative breaths put her in the right frame of mind, and then she spoke the words under her breath. “Tempus fugit and Hermes rising,” she whispered. “Speed be mine at time of sun’s dying. By ancient words and to my last gasp, spell slow them down and make me fast!” There wasn’t any rolling thunder or bright flash of light, there wasn’t any sulfurous smoke or sinister laughter, there wasn’t even any distant chiming of ethereal bells. All Asli felt was a tingling in her toes and fingers, like the beginnings of pins and needles. She opened her eyes and looked around the apartment, but nothing was different; her tentative steps outside of the circle were like any other steps she took into her kitchen. There was something, though, something that pressed on her ears and tugged at the edge of her mind. She finally realized it when she was kneeling at the edge of the kitchen sink, watching a drop of water fall in slow motion; it was silence. The whole city was quiet, all the noise and bustle of an urban center the size of Freedom City quiet now for maybe the first time in history, as it was frozen in this timeless moment. She giggled, a distinctly odd sound coming from someone of her size, and poked the water droplet, watching it shatter into dozens of reflective spheres, spalling away from the point of impact. Asli did it – she had just cast a magic spell. Of course she wasn’t going to just leave it at that. In a few moments she was climbing out onto the fire escape, reveling in the fact that the iron grating wasn’t shaking under her boots. As she descended towards street level, she slowly realized that the sound wasn’t entirely gone, but it all sounded muffled and distorted, like it was all happening at the other end of a long tunnel. Finally, she was bouncing her toes on the sidewalk, checking carefully that the road was clear. There was another component to the spell that she couldn’t test in a one-bedroom apartment. She picked her direction and started to run, and after a moment she ran. This wasn’t like anything she’d tried before, with her heavy boots slamming into the ground with each stride and her chest heaving to get enough air into her lungs and her jacket hanging off her shoulders like a ton of weights. With the magic she was light, she was quick; it was like someone was behind her pushing, or like she was riding some kind of moving sidewalk exclusive to her. Her vision narrowed and her awareness expanded, letting her see a traffic jam blocks ahead and deciding how she would get around it. She slowed with a thought and stepped around the crowd on the streets, imagining their shock as someone ran past them faster than thought. She laughed as she sped up again – this was magic, this was power, this was freedom. This was everything she had worked towards for months. And she kept running, until something stopped her cold. Asli was somewhere in the Fens, staring at an alleyway, watching a person in silver spandex beating a thin man in ratty clothes. There was another person in the alley, indeterminate in their big jacket, laying in a pool of blood and not moving. Something gripped her heart right and she stepped forward, grabbing the silver man’s arm; she felt another electric surge go through her, this one almost painful in its intensity, but she braced against his arm and let everything go fast again. The silver man lurched as there was a sudden weight on his arm, holding him back. He glanced back, surprised to see a big woman in a hoodie holding his fist back. “Let me go, citizen,” his voice booming like something out of a newsreel. “I’m in the middle of punishing these criminals!” Asli let his arm go and moved to interpose herself between the man in silver and the man in tatters. “I think you’ve done enough punishing tonight,” she said, glancing at the bloody figure. “This guy isn’t going to hurt anyone else, are you?” “Nuh, nuh, nuh, no, no I won’t!” The man in the worn clothes did his best to scramble away from the man in silver, covering his face. “I juh, juh, just wanted buh, buy some junk! I don’t wanna hurt anyone!” The man in silver gave a dismissive snort. “Degenerates like those,” he said, pointing a finger past Asli at the sniveling man on the ground, “is the reason scum like that can thrive.” He jerked a thumb back at the motionless figure. Then he leaned in close, dropping the announcer voice and speaking to Asli in a voice that sounded halfway between a cop and a used-car salesman. “Listen, chick, I’ll lay it out real simple-like for you. If there aren’t any drug users, then there won’t be any drug dealers. I’m just handling the root of the problem, you understand?” Asli felt the tightness in her chest, the tingling in her fingers and her toes, and a heat rising in her throat that spread to her head and pounded in her ears. “I understand just fine,” she hissed. “I think you’ve done enough here. Just go home, Captain TV Dinner.” The silver man’s eyes widened and he took a step back. “You know what? I was raised not to hit a lady, but I think I’ll make an exception for you.” He drew his fist back, a nimbus of energy growing around it, and Asli willed everything besides her to go slow. The whole tableau froze in front of her, giving the woman time to consider. She couldn’t run away, or this wanna-be superhero would probably beat the user to death. She didn’t give two shits about the dealer, but a couple years ago that druggie could have been her. With a couple years of help and rehab, who knew what this person could achieve with their life? She couldn’t let them be another nameless casualty of the street, couldn’t let them die because someone who ran around in spandex decided that they were ‘part of the problem.’ She only had a few moments to work out how to save them, though. To everyone else, it happened in the span of a few blinks; silver man pulled back to swing, then the street went dark and he was surrounded by the stench of rotting things. He tried to swing, but he couldn’t get up any distance; he tried to blast, but something was siphoning his electricity away. “Where’d everyone go,” he shouted, running forward. Asli smiled and stuck out a leg, tripping the man over. There was a thunderous cacophony as he fell, the tin trash can that pinned his hands to his side (and neatly grounded any electrical superpowers) denting as he fell against it. She kicked the can, sending him rolling down the sidewalk, caterwauling as he went. Satisfied, Asli turned back to the sniveling drug-user as he watched the trash can bounce and roll down the street. She helped him to his feet, dusting him off and fixing his jacket up as best she could. “What’s your name,” she asked him, feeling the heat and tension drain out of her. He stared at her like she had just grown a second head. “Puh, people call me Jack.” He paused and added, “Muh, my mom used to call me Johnny, though. You can call me that if you want to.” Asli took a hard look at the man; drugs always made it hard to tell, but he couldn’t have been older than thirty. If he’d been using for awhile, he might not even be twenty. A different kind of pain grew in her chest and she had a suddenly instinct to go kick the dealer a few more times, but Johnny needed her attention right now. “Okay, Johnny,” she said, keeping her tone gentle. “Let’s go get you a sandwich. I think we need to talk.”

Blue Jay dug the metal plate out of the skeleton and brought it back to the other heroes. This sort of tracking, gathering evidence and piecing them together to determine what people had done, that was not what she did well. The archer was more than willing to stand back and listen quietly, as the rest of the group talked about the Coleman Museum. "If the skeletons came from the museum," she said, "we should go there next. Whoever did this might still be around." She noticed the reporters getting closer and scowled behind her mask. "We should go there quickly, before anyone beats us there." She hauled back and threw the metal plate off the boardwalk, deep over the water and into the bay. Certain that there wouldn't be any reporters waiting for them at the museum, the archer snapped out a length of blue energy that wrapped around a nearby lamppost, then quickly retracted, sending her flying into the sky. Another blue whip caught a protruding building corner, then a flagpole, and then another obstruction. With agility and ease she turned north and began making her way to the museum.

So we have to break in. Okay.

Is the museum open today?

I think I'll go with Warren for his first name. I like the sound of it, and there can be a gag where a visiting alien or something shortens his name to "War Locke." He's not going to have Comprehension because he doesn't have Cypher's powers; he just has a body that's been augmented with a load of alien nanotech. I get what you're saying about buying up CON directly, and lowering Regen/Protection/Fort as a consequence, however if I boost his CON to offset that it'll end up at CON 20, which I feel is a bit anomalous next to the rest of his abilities.

The Stranger knelt and ran his hands down the bodies, feeling their cold skin and examining them closely. He did it with a detached air, apparently unconcerned that he was handling a dead body that had been attacking him mere moments ago. He checked the their foreheads, their fingers, he even rooted around in their mouths. Finally he put one body on its back and ripped open its neat Oxford shirt, buttons flying everywhere. One of the police officers finally stepped forward to stop the macabre show, but the Stranger stood up suddenly, smiling. "A skull," he said, then turned to Blue. "There's a skull burned into the chest, about the size of my thumb. I think there's a good chance we're not dealing with a real magus, but just someone using a convenient ritual or magical device. Someone who doesn't know much about what they're doing." His tone was satisfied, even happy, a stark contrast to his ghoulish work.

This character probably wouldn't refer to himself as "we," no. He would see himself as an individual, as unique as any other. Warlock might not be the best reference point for this character, but neither is Medic, I think. It might be closest to something like Extremis-era Tony Stark, if the Extremis was made from a Venom symbiote or similar. This is a kid who was empowered by the remains of an intergalactic threat; he didn't choose to be empowered this way or ask for it, but now he's trying to make the best of the situation.

If the weapons and the suit are required to work together, if you can't use one without the other, why not making them the same Device? Why split them up if they can't work separately?

I'm planning a new Claremont character, based mostly off TT's Douglock build. The story is that an AEGIS scientist/officer has a kid with insert-traumatic-illness-here (I'm leaning towards MS) and he stages a villain attack during a military demo/parade/something that shows off the base. He uses the cover of this to grab the Communion nanites stashed at the base and 'infects' his son, which leads to Douglockness. I'm making this thread to crowd-source some of the details and flesh out the concept a little more. I'm flirting with the idea that the kid is 'out' about being super -- he has crazy Tron-lines all over his body, it's hard to hide those. So he won't have a secret identity, but I'm not sure how this works with keeping Claremont's secret. He's not going to go around blabbing about the Wreck Room, but at the same time anyone looking at him is going to know that he's not entirely human anymore. The second thing I need to work on is his name. I'm honestly leaning towards Douglas Locke as his birth name. I like the connection with John Locke's philosophy, but it feels like it's a bit too heavy-handed of a reference. At the same time I need a supername for him. A big part of the character is his joy at being able to get around and explore after a lifetime of being confined to a bed. A name that refers to adventure and physical movement would work as well as a name about being a computer-man.

~Dream a little dream of him.~

The Stranger is going to give the bodies a good pat-down and see if he can find what kind of artifact animated them. Results 1d20+1: 21 [1d20=20]

Blue Jay's going to use Search on a bone pile. +15 and Skill Mastery means she gets a 25 on her check.

Blue Jay stepped up to the edge of the building and scanned the road again, as the gigantic skeleton crumbled into dust and debris. The other monsters were being handled, and even as she watched the last of them were crushed and disposed of. She hopped off the building, a blue line anchoring to a nearby flagpole to slow her fall, and stepped lightly back onto street level. The archer walked towards where an inhumanly tall figure with a weird helmet was talking to a young man with fiery-red hair. As she neared them, she realized that the tall individual didn't have a weird helmet -- there were things coming directly out of his head! Blue Jay did her best not to stare as she spoke up. "They don't come from this city," she said. "And they didn't appear from nothing. Someone had to send them, so we have to find that person." She walked over to the nearest pile of bones and began sifting through it, looking for something that seemed out of place.

Asli stood at the back of the hall, watching Valerie Cain's performance. She intended to stay objective, to dissect the performance and try to extract and absorb something for her own work, but by the end she was stomping her feet and clapping with the rest of the crowd. Cain really did have a a knack for firing up her audience, and with a brief supercharge the big woman strolled out into the atrium, moving from table to table and talking excitedly to everyone there. Which is how she ended up arguing politics with a city councilman. "Sure, they were put up by a movie studio," she admitted, "but if someone made a movie about the Gita and tried to put a statue of Lrishna in front of a city building, folks would go ballistic. You don't... Sorry, did you just hear something?" Asli stepped away from the conversation and looked towards the street and the open doors. The councilman took his opportunity to disappear into the crowds, but her attention was already elsewhere. Trouble was raising her hackles, and she kept her eye on the front door while maneuvering to get a better view. Which is how she bumped into and nearly toppled a much younger man in glasses. "Oh, *@)#!" She grabbed the man and made sure he wasn't going to fall. "Sorry, I guess I didn't see you there."

I'd post, but JAy was already the last one to post.

The Stranger has no Search, but he does have +15 Know/Arcane Lore and Skill Mastery. That's a roll of 25 to know anything about the magic that could be ascertained from the corpses, keeping in mind that the Stranger has no magic S-Senses.

"Two corpses have disappeared and now two corpses have turned up," the Stranger mused. "It seems likely that they are connected. And if they're not, then someone is lying." He returned to the corpses and looked down at them, considering the situation. The bodies had been brutalized by the short fight in the bank lobby, but before that they had been touched by fell magics. The Stranger landed again and knelt by the corpses, feeling their cold skin with none of the reserve the living normally treated their dead with. He had been working magic, he had been of magic, for longer than human history; if the necromancer had left any clues behind, the Stranger would find it.

You can spread it out over several threads. There's at least one active PC that started out homeless, got an apartment in one thread, a job in another, and so forth. Another thing to consider is that Cassandra's powers allow her to live in situations that other people would find intolerable; she might not like living in a place without heat, but she won't freeze to death in the winter. Last, some of this can be handwaved. If Cassandra's just going to have a job at 7-11 or Macy's, we don't necessarily need a thread about that.

Do you actually want a thread about Cassandra getting a roof over her head, getting a job, etc, or do you just want a quick introductory adventure to get experience with the system and let the character get some connection to other PCs?

The floating man regarded the building as it knitted itself back together, noting the power with an internal distaste. He waved the police off, rotating in mid-air to consider to man in blue. "I am a stranger," he said, "but even I would look twice at a dead man walking through the streets. People are not as jaded as comedians would tell you, so someone should have seen something." He glanced down at the bodies. "At the extremity, these bodies should be returned to their resting places. Their relatives will probably appreciate the gesture," he added dryly. The man in the tattered suit floated over to the foremost police officer. "Officer," he said. "I need to know if anyone has seen a dead man walking through the city, or if someone has been digging up graves."

2 ranks of Strike would keep it at caps, yes. It also makes that power only cost 7 or so PP, meaning you have ~10 PP unused in that 'slot'. You could shave some points by putting something like Takedown Attack in there as Power Feats and using those points elsewhere.

There's a big problem with the Strike: with Mighty and the listed Str bonus, that's a Rank 14 effect with a +10 Attack bonus. That breaks caps. You could drop the attack bonus to +6 or drop the rank to 10.

Ta~ag.

Asli Saddik stood in the crowd, listening to the worthy and the wealthy talk. Everyone thought that being a musician was an easy job, everyone thought that it was about sitting back and dreaming up songs, but music took energy. A professional song writer could produce on demand -- that was what being a professional was all about, after all -- but to make something that she would be proud to put her name to, Asli needed to have the right energy. When she ran out, she had to go out into the city and find the energy, soak it up and recharge. She had walked out her apartment and taken to wandering around the neighborhod, secure in her own powers and her own ability to project a mean attitude. Asli wasn't worried about being attacked on the streets, even if the streets were Lincoln, but that didn't mean she was looking for trouble. When her wandering feet brought her near a place with open doors and cheery voices, she walked inside and started soaking up the energy.