Ari

Knave, Tro-Fi, Seven Sisters "I love Catgirl Reacts!" Her face was invisible, but Merry's voice was beaming, "Remember when you ate a whole-!" She stopped dead at the sequence of taps. For a moment only Merry's eye was visible through her kinky hair, staring out from the mirror at Neko and bringing to mind a Christmas-themed ghost. After a beat, the other girl tossed her hair back in place and turned to face the influencer, her eyes hard and face set. "So you were listening the whole time. Heard every word." "Okay, I admit it...I don't get the appeal of this stuff. I don't like the music, the venue, I don't think Bernadette's hot like Adele does, I'm just here for my friends. And I'm not going to have them for much longer, I've done the math and our social circles don't overlap at all. But right now they're happy, they're meeting other people, and I guess that's what's really important but I'd like us to do something I like to do at least once. We could be finding stars, or birdwatching, or checking out that cool shipwreck up the coast, or, exploring the giant forest right next door! But if I insist on any of that, they'll just say "nah", and then we won't do anything together at all." The Spice Girls cover pounded distantly through the walls, the beat subdued and vocals muffled into a monotonous chant. ---- The Spice Girls cover pulsed in the air, its invisible hand guiding unconscious movements throughout the crowd. Justin had wrangled Owain into a competition of seeing who could do a particularly high-stepping and high-intensity Cossack dance the longest, but sheepishly stopped when he nearly kicked Daniel in the face. Now doing a much more reserved hop-shrug, he suddenly took notice of the other boy's arms. "Hey, you do fencing, man?" he called over the music, "You ever been to that gym in West Side? I've heard the guy who runs it is a badass, some kind of sword-wizard. Been thinking I should step up my own sword-game." Adele hadn't been much for talking, smiling happily to herself as she swayed from foot to foot a little away from the rest.

Knave, Tro-Fi, Seven Sisters While Adele spun and kicked and Justin glided with abandon through Sam's hard-fought territory, Merry had blinked at Neko for an uncomprehending moment, then groaned and let her head briefly fall on the table. "Oh God, the green...it bled, didn't it? I asked de Pisa a million times-!" Rising quickly to her feet Merry grabbed her bag, put on a smile, and put a companionable arm around Neko's shoulder. Heading to the bathroom, she gave the other girl a more scrutinizing look. "Hey...you're a Claremont-enjoyer, right? How'd a gal like you end up at a place like that? Not that we've exactly got full control of our lives at St. Isidore's." Merry admitted, the pair swinging briefly to the side to let a group of other girls pass in the narrow hall, then passing through the swinging door to their mutual destination. Breaking away, Merry stepped in front of a mirror and threw her hair in front of her face, painstakingly beginning to comb through the braids. "Name's Mary-Angelica," she added, belatedly, "call me Merry. Now what do I call you, and how exactly can you help me?"

Knave, Tro-Fi, Seven Sisters In contrast to their earlier uproar, the North Bay Prep. table had become much more subdued, largely because Merry was trying to argue something. Starting with the mid-point of the second song, an increasingly-rapid cycle had begun: Merry would rapid-fire clack out something in Morse code on the table and look to Justin. Justin would glance back, tap something much slower, and look to Adele. Adele would look annoyed, clatter something back, and try to focus on the music. And in between there were a lot of meaningful looks. Sam getting to her feet seemed to break the spell of intensity settling over the table. "Yeah! let's dance!" Adele said, eagerly joining her and beaming hopefully at Iris and the rest of the Claremont crew, "I'm not very good, but Justin is *marvelous*, and Merry-!" "Nope." Merry didn't look around as she spoke. "Don't feel like it." Justin laughed good-naturedly. "MJ'll change her mind, let's go!"

List of all super-criminals and associates presently captured and imprisoned at Blackstone Penitentiary or other means of confinement, along with the thread, the date, and who collared the crook(s). Only counting finished threads. Using a modified version of Rocketlord's Canon Character Status listing. Canon Villains The Crime League Black Star: ... Devil Ray: ... Dr. Simian: ... Dr. Stratos: ... Hiroshima Shadow: ... The Maestro: ... Medea: ... Orion the Hunter: ... Wildcard: ... The Factor Four Professor Fathom: ... Granite: ... Pyre: ... Sylph: ... Larceny, Inc. Get-Away: ... Grab: ... Smash: ... Trap Door: ... The Power Corps The Psions Professor Psion: ... Empath: ... Ember: ... Jump: ... Aura: ... Argent: ... SHADOW Overshadow: ... Solo Villains Argo the Ultimate Android: ... Baron Samedi: ... Captain Kraken: Now Admiral Kraken The Collective: ... Conundrum: ... Doc Otaku: ... Dr. Sin: ... Downtime: ... Fear-Master: Captured October 2019 by Veronica Danger, Artificer, Thunderbird, Octoman, Chelone and Ms. Thursday (Reptile Brain) Gamma, the Atom-Smasher: ... The Green Man: ... The Hellqueen: ... Jack-a-Knives: ... Lady Lunar: ... Lady Tarot: ... Magpie: ... Mastermind: ... Megalodon: ... The Meta-Grue: ... Mr. Mist: ... Nacht-Krieger: ... Rant & Rave: ... The Silencer: ... Silver Scream: ... Superior: ... Terra-King: ... Toy Boy: ... Warden: ... White Knight: ... [3E villains to be added from Threat Report, Emerald City Secrets, Freedom City 3E, Atlas of Earth-Prime, and Rogues Gallery as needed] Mindfire: Captured Dec 11, 2012 by Velocity and Voltage (Date with Destruction), broken out of custody, recaptured on February 4, 2013 by Velocity and Young Britannia (Street Fighting (wo)Man) Non-Canon Villains Bonebreaker: Captured Dec 11, 2012 by Velocity and Voltage (Date with Destruction), broken out of custody, recaptured on February 4, 2013 by Velocity and Young Britannia (Street Fighting (wo)Man) Raditron: Captured on February 4, 2013 by Velocity and Young Britannia (Street Fighting (wo)Man) Snowblind: Captured on January 18, 2013 by Velocity and Warp (Life Moves Pretty Fast)

Knave, Tro-Fi, Seven Sisters The North Bay Prep trio had joined in the obnoxious hooting and hollering as first Neko and then Multiplicity answered their prayers and emerged to start the set, but rapidly fell silent as the song actually began, the teenagers watching and listening intently to Bernadette and her band. From their demeanour it was obvious that this wasn't anything they were used to, with only Merry able to split her attention between the virtuosic performance and scribbling short notes she passed to Justin in a slowly-growing pile. The longest was written just after the fourth verse. Justin, relaxed and smiling moments before, had transformed into a pillar with a pair of wide, staring eyes pointed at the band but seeing none of them, nodding fractionally along to the litany of woes the song recounted. Adele was similarly transfixed, her slender hands twisting slowly together into a tight knot. The very stars on her dress seemed to dim, largely thanks to a subtle readjustment of the house lights to better illuminate the stage. At the close of the song she suddenly let out a breath, coughed a little and smiled awkwardly at Iris. "Wow. It's so much more...powerful in person. Oh! So sorry, I'll give you your seat back." Seeing the other students approaching she'd got smoothly back to her feet and rejoined her schoolmates. The fading chords seemed to startle Justin back to life, and he clapped his powerful hands together with gusto, pausing only to let out a whistle. Applauding with him and stomping one of her heeled boots on the floor for emphasis, Merry regarded the back line with a sudden interest.

Knave, Tro-Fi, Seven Sisters "Oh it's wonderful, don't mind my complaining," Adele assured Iris, "it's a bold red brick complex on 40 acres of green grass southwest of the nuclear plant. Everything's indoors, except the gardens and the harbour, and they teach us absolutely everything! Mathematics, literature, history, practical science, self-defence, even some criminal l-" "You'd better show us on a map after the show," Merry advised Michael, "we don't have phones, per school rules." Despite her best efforts, she smirked a little "Well, the new rules." "I thought it was funny, M.J.," Justin said kindly. To the Claremont boys he added "I'm up for anything! Especially if we get to explore, I've heard all kinds of crazy ghost stories about Cla-" Sam's outburst drowned out the rest of what Adele and Justin said, and while the starry girl looked annoyed, Justin and Merry were delighted. "MUL-TI-PLICI-TY! MUL-TI-PLICI-TY! MUL-TI-PLICI-TY!" Justin and Merry eagerly joined in Sam's chant, pounding their fists in time with Sam's table-stomping, "MUL-TI-PLICI-TY! MUL-TI-PLICI-TY! MUL-TI-PLICI-TY!" Shooting her schoolmates an irritated look, Adele scooted over to the Claremont table where she went on pleasantly "I love boxing! Kickboxing's best, but the other's good too! What styles do you prefer?"

Knave, Tro-Fi, Seven Sisters "Michael, Ryan, Sam, Owain, Daniel, Iris, It's wonderful to meet you! After the show, maybe you can introduce me!" Adele politely accepted and distributed the discount cards, looking at them with the fascination of a truly new thing. She grinned happily at the twins, the gems on her dress seeming to shine brighter to match her. Glancing down at herself she laughed self-consciously, "I know I'm maybe overdoing it, but at school we have to wear the uniform all year 'round. I got this last year, and this is the first chance I've had to wear it! Or to meet, well, anyone new." "Sports" said both Merry and Justin at once, sharing a quick fist-bump, Justin shifting around to better give the other boy an admiring look. "That cross ain't just for show, huh? Glad to meet a real Catholic around here, felt like a jerk when I had to tell the faculty the big statue they'd had for over a hundred years was of the wrong Spanish St. Isidore. I mean, patron of the ploughman's not a bad choice. Especially not for Bay Prep, they keep us busy in and out of the classroom." "I"m on the regular and robot soccer teams, di Pisa's first love is martial arts, and this fine specimen's into swimming...and everything else." Merry patted Justin on a powerful shoulder. "The Heroes and Rayguns have been after this guy since before his voice changed." Coughing meaningfully and shooting Merry a polite but firm raised eyebrow, Justin said "By the way, Owain? uh...like we said, we don't get out much, but we're getting a spring break this year. Good performance in the...competitions, y'know? So uh...after the concert, if you have any ideas of what else we can, y'know, do for fun, that'd be sweet."

Knave, Tro-Fi, Seven Sisters Owain felt a sudden bump against the circular sofa, followed by a sheepish "Whoops! Sorry, man, my bad." The cause, a dark-skinned, and powerfully-built boy with a shaved head, what the squire now knew to be a Hawai'ian accent and well-fitted black suit, smiled awkwardly down at the other boy as he turned more fully sideways to maneuver through the dense seating. Close behind were two girls, one tanned, dark-eyed and dark-haired in a way that reminded him of a visitation to Arthur's court from Rome, in a floor-length black dress lined with gems that flashed like stars; the other girl was Black, almost as dark as the boy, but with braided kinky hair dyed red and green to match the diamond patterns on her jacket and skirt. Both smiled politely and murmured apologies as they settled around a neighbouring table, a placard declaring it to be reserved for "St. Isidore's North Bay Preparatory." "Are you fans too?" asked the girl in the starry dress, talking to the Claremont table in general but looking curiously between Iris and Sam, "I just heard about Multiplicity last month, but I love their drummer! I'm Adele, he's Justin and she's Merry," she added, gesturing to her two friends before beaming hopefully at the Claremont students, "what are your names?" "Careful, Butterfly di Pisa," the girl identified as 'Merry' smiled a little more thinly, "we don't wanna advertise how little we get outta school." "To be fair M.J., for all we know they might have it even harder than us," Justin pointed out mildly, easing into the sofa like he was worried about falling in.

Thread begun, with Star-Squire, Sever, Neoo & Owain. IC thread here OOC thread here

OOC thread for this thread. The ultimate thrillride, a mall-centered melee, a clash between rival schools! @EmpressValerian96 @Thunder King @Avenger Assembled Empress, Miriam's armor has been occasionally 'ping'-ing her since she got to the mall, for no immediately-apparent reason and inaudbly to the other heroes.

GM March 16th, 2024, 1.13PM Millennium Mall, Bayview, Freedom City It was winding towards the end of a nice, relaxing, post-school day. The quartet of young incognito heroes sitting in the food court had wandered the echoing halls of the vast shopping mall and gotten more or less what they'd wanted out of the experience. Plus, there was some of Doctor Metropolis' new art on display. The presence of the strange, quiet city-spirit was normally an unseen one. As an expression of Freedom City as a whole he didn't favour any areas or inahbitants over any others, unlike the mysteriously-vanished ghost Lantern Jack whose hauntings had rarely gone beyond Lantern Hill. And, similar to how people rarely notice good roads but can't ignore bad ones, his most visible role had been as a healer of civic wounds and shepherd of missing persons. Brief, purposeful, unsettling, Doctor Metropolis was in some ways less approachable than the space aliens and living dead that had served with the Freedom League. However, while a tireless repair-man, the city-spirit was also a "born" artist. His canvas was the layouts, structure and material of buildings, and places with high concentrations of citizens could look forward to something new and unexpected. Today, the ceiling skylight rippled like a watery surface, while tiles on the floor and walls schooled in dazzling rainbows or loomed in grey enormity. Out the main door, a number of plaques had appeared dedicated to the lives lost in Freedom City's long-gone fishing industry. Most of this was lost on the shoppers, who had their own lives to worry about. Especially the busy lives of teenaged superheroes.

Who: Thread for 3 PCs, one of which is @EmpressValerian96's Star-Squire. Newer ones preferred. What: Combat-focused, with some imperiling of innocents requiring Skill/Power checks. Opponents will be three NPCs of PL10-8 Where: Millennium Mall, Bayview. When: Mid-March, 2024 Why: For some Claremont students to have a smaller scene and face lighter but significant challenges.

Okay, @Spacefurry @Supercape, sorry for the absurd delay there. Turns out school can be hard and take up time/energy.

GM "What he said! Nice to meet you, Cosmic-Man!" Blaze hollered over the howling, strengthening wind, "Good luck, dude!" she added as Christopher launched towards the night-black yacht. Its lifeboats were regimentally sweeping towards the oncoming rescue tug but still lay dangerously close to the mothership. From his vantage point the mage could see that the monster's heading wasn't as straight as it had been before. Its blunt head turned between the lifeboats and the Shadowcaster, as if confused and uncertain, though its speed didn't drop for an instant. An odd, hard-eyed figure standing with one foot on the main deck's rail had a fast-growing pile of crude spears at their side. Meanwhile, Blaze hurriedly filled in Captain Cosmos as they followed the great fish "We're here on a job from Brande Management Ltd., trying to calm down the fishmen. Ain't going well! We're trying to avoid any other ugliness, so we need to hit the big thing without hurting any of the little guys. Otherwise we'll never get that undersea probe back. Do you have super-strength or something, maybe lift part of that thing out of the sea? I could do some real damage then!"

First draft: Baile Dealain ("Electric City", formerly Suthertoun and more formerly the towns Brora and Golspie) The shell of a once-thriving industrial centre, surrounded by sinkholes and abandoned mines, Baile Dealain is a city of both enduring and desperate people working with what little the past has left them, menaced by a creeping underworld it unknowingly awakened. Baile Dealain sprawls across the wide eastern shore of Sutherland, on the more gentle southern side of the Scottish Highlands, with its northern border at the broad River Brora that supplies most of its water and bears most of the surviving business, including a busy seaport and an international airport. Its southern reaches aren't as well-defined, but encompass the old town of Golspie by the majestic seat of Clan Sutherland, Dunrobin Castle, petering out into the dense Benvraggie Forest cloaking the hills looming over the city. Littering the land between the shoreline, where most of the people live, and the hills are the remnants of the coal mining and white sandstone quarrying that helped build Baile Dealain, including decaying collieries, sinkholes, collapsing warehouses, mountains of coal waste and gaping quarries. The city centre is additionally divided by the railways once used to carry goods, with districts, neighbourhoods and even single buildings standing as islands among crisscrossing tracks. A huge statue of George Leveson-Gower, former Duke of Sutherland and notorious figure in Highland farmer evictions in the 1800s, stands on Ben Bhraggie Hill above the city's south; the statue is so frequently vandalized that vandals often have to repair the plinth to keep it from toppling. History: Golspie and Brora, a small fishing village and Renaissance-era coal-mining village respectively, were the subjects of a sudden burst of activity in the early 1800s as part of a planned economic revitalization of the Highlands by Elizabeth Sutherland and her husband George Leveson-Gower. Golspie was intended to become a new deep-water harbour for fishing boats to challenge Dutch supremacy in the North Sea, while the centuries-old coal mine in Brora had revealed vast additional seams and plentiful deposits of sandstone. Inland farmers evicted from their homes were to supply the needed manpower, and the Sutherland's vast new wealth from George's inheritance of Francis Egerton's estate as Duke of Bridgewater would supply the capital to fund the daunting task of industrializing the region. But then news came that the Brora coalfield's seams were far bigger than initially reported. In fact, they stretched throughout the nearby hills clear down to Golspie, and were accompanied by high-quality sources of white sandstone. With the easy access to the coast and plans already in place to build a a harbour, the plan rapidly changed from simply expanding the economic profile of two villages into a far more ambitious project: the great City of Sutherland, Suthertoun! Soon the new mines and ports opened, and people flooded into the area from both Scotland and abroad seeking the opportunities Suthertoun offered. The economic boom brought electricity to the far north for the first time, locals bestowing the name "Electric City" to the pale-bricked, smoking metropolis that had sprung up to bring new fortunes to Scotland. Even the appearance of venomous snakes from the mines, a subterranean breed called "greenbacks" unknown anywhere else on Earth, seemed like a good omen as birds of prey also began flocking the region to hunt them. The area wasn't free of trouble. Aggressive mining brought collapses, people mysteriously vanished, sinkholes opened up as the groundwater was used for washing coal and rifts began to grow between the centre city that did most of the mining, the north city that did the transporting, and the south city that did the selling and entertaining. To make matters worse while the coal and sandstone were bountiful, they were finite, and the industries expected to replace them or at least offset decline failed to pay off. Even the early 1900's herring boom that benefitted Scotland so much elsewhere never made it into Suthertoun nets, and when the coal finally ran out in 1974 that was just one of many closing doors on the city's once sandstone-bright future. Busy factories closed, and became nests for the greenbacks, the snakes gradually spreading even into the hills. Now renamed Electric City in an ironic echo of old optimism, Baile Dealain faces an uphill battle against urban decay, rampant unemployment and organized crime. The latter is of great concern to both city leadership and the townspeople, thanks to a sharp increase in the city's use as part of human trafficking networks. Efforts to clean up the town and make it a tourist destination have had mixed success, as its various caves, mines and sinkholes have proven popular for both amateur and experienced spelunkers while bringing considerable risk due to mysterious disappearances and attacks on locals and visitors alike by the growing greenback population. The sudden establishment of a Ministry of Powers branch in Old Golspie has only added to concerns that the worst is yet to come. Secret History: Over 100,000 years ago, the Serpent People of Lemuria sought weapons of war that could answer the problem of Atlantis. For that, they turned to Shash-Vathu, the great City of Secrets. Creations of alche-mysticism, cosmic grafting, and even terrible automata lurched from its gargantuan gates to bring terror to the lives of humans across the planet, and it was one of the great victories of Naran the Wise, Master Mage, that saw the Metropolis of Monsters banished to the depths of the Earth. For a time. Like many other realms of the Serpents, Shash-Vathu came to rest in Sub-Terra, the great underworld dimension. Like many others, the city was torn apart by strife between various factions, the survivors unable to comprehend, let alone use, the machinery and magic at their clawtips. Unlike many others, however, the humans in 19th Century Suthertoun dug right down to them. The miners were killed, the mine collapsed, and the damage done. Since then, the Serpents of Shash-Vathu have watched the changing fortunes of the surface city, snatching, experimenting and replacing all they can as they slowly relearned about Earth, their great heritage and their greater destiny. The greenback snakes are their eyes and ears, slithering throughout the city and environs to keep careful watch on the unsuspecting humans. The surge in organized crime has been a great boon to them, allowing disguised Serpents to travel the world and bring back subjects with nobody the wiser. However, the Serpents are far from all-powerful even underground. The industrious Morlocks long worked in tandem with humans, a quasi-partnership developing between the two peoples as the Morlocks guided or protected the miners and the miners traded tools and alcohol to the Morlocks. The increasing boldness of the Serpents hasn't gone unnoticed, and the two species frequently wrestle for control of the countless doors between Earth-Prime and Sub-Terra below the city. In addition, while the defeat of Shash-Vathu was great, many ancient weapons or monsters linger below the surface, and the Ministry has rushed to the area in part thanks to the discovery of what can only be described as a fiery giant lying dormant 100 meters below Dunrobin Castle. What To Do: The primary struggle of Baile Dealain is against the forces of poverty and corruption. The cops are on the take, there's often not enough to go around, and services are stretched thin. The shapeshifting snake people from prehistory, swarms of deadly reptiles, or howitzers that fire souls of the damned are a secondary concern, augmenting "real" problems faced by ordinary people, or a lighter backdrop for visitors to deal with that gets complicated by more mundane issues they didn't expect. In addition there could be cryptids living in the hills a monster-hunter might need to deal with, a crimefighting detective can chase down kidnappers, and an aquatic-themed hero can tangle with menaces from a colder and wilder time.