Ari
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Freedom City Guidebook
Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
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Dol-Druth was more than happy to answer questions, both because it gave the locals time to get into position and was a relief after weeks and months of only being able to tell the terrestrials about the wider universe through the interviews. He made sure not to tell too much about the repercussions of the Incursion, or the newly-awakened Unity and Khanate efforts to reclaim territory and expand beyond their old borders in the turmoil of so many lost worlds. One massive threat at a time. At least soon he would be able to venture abroad. Freedom City was hospitable and largely clean, but somehow stifling. At last, after making sure that this "Press" had enough material to run for days of op-eds and special reports and ruminations of pretty faces with little real understanding, he started asking questions of his own. "Who on this world could control such things?" "Where would they get the bones?" "What might they be after?" "Where would they be likely to strike next?"
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It was hard to tell, but at the mention of 'steak' the alien grew even paler. Coughing lightly and adjusting his tie, Dol-Druth nodded affirmative. "Yes, we eat and drink to absorb nutrients and store energy. Though your planet's cuisine is somewhat unique. Almost, we would say, singular." "Your fermented fruit concentrates aren't right for our digestion, but your liquid oxygen and hydrogen alone is perfectly suited. A pitcher of ice water and plenty of fungi-that is, mushrooms, with the steak, the meat well-done and well-sauced-" so I won't have to taste whatever poor thing you're serving me "-and a great many of those stalkéd vegetables, what do you call them, aspargiagos?" "Sir is the proper term, Sir Card," the planet inspector added to their host with a gracious look that was lost somewhat in the cold depths of his black eyes. "Dotrae has no strictly-defined genders, but we...I am approximately masculine. We appreciate the guide and shall make no trouble for them." "So," Dol-Druth looked at Bubble Pink and hefted the small bag of complimentary chips, absurdly small in his massive hand "what do you suggest we use these for first?"
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Alright. Pick which rolls you want to negate(you have two HP, after all) or reroll all of them individually and make this a do-over.
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Ex, it really works better if you make each save individually, since then it's simpler to track. As I see it that puts Alex as Staggered, Dazed and Bruised(x5), with the Ablative Flaw reducing your Toughness to +3. Additionally, you could use Extra Effort to temporarily buy the Ultimate Toughness Feat and shrug off the volley. Or we could just go with Alex getting bad busted and actually needing Volt's help for more than mopping up. And yes, I know Extra Effort is supposed to be limited to the hero's action.
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And an HP awarded for taking the risk and helping the rookiee hero. Calypso's roll: 22. They get the boat to shore with no problems! With the exception of the poor sailor Volcanic is helping, everyone is now safe on land. "Finally..." Captain Wong can be heard to mutter.
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Angrydurf, as Calypso/Jane wait the water crontroller is called BROOKE. I honestly never saw that until now. God damn. Anyway, Jane needs to make a DC20 power check to maintain control of her water powers, as she doesn't have Precise and has Damaging. Kimo can split his attention between helping Jane and propelling the Ascension to shore, but will then need to make a DC15 Concentration check in exchange for cutting Jane's check to DC15 as well. Alderwitch, still need that DC10 Strength check to free the sailor.
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GM Endeavor Without needing any more encouragement, Volt bolted off to fight some of the people had kept it locked up, leaving a stink of ozone and a strong light impression on the back of the girl genius' eyes. From her vantage point, it was simplicity itself to set up the cataclysm that would unseat this place of warped science and find out what they had been doing. From the looks of things, this was some kind of stop-over facility for preliminary examinations and temporary holding, most 'subjects' moving on to EC-OR or SALO-CA. She and Alex had been the only human captives, but there were a number of sentient life-forms(including a contingent of augmented dogs and super-smart rats) and none of them had been treated better than negligently. The whole thing was thoroughly inside-baseball, with no kind of context besides a single mention of just who these people were: the isolated name "Ghostworks". What they were after, who they worked for(if anyone), all of that was entirely absent. The place had started operation sometime in 2005 and held exabytes of information. Bafflingly, nothing was password-protected or encrypted. Facsimile "My God. That quip was...You're goin' down just for THAT!" The squad hurried to put more distance between themselves and the lumbering iced teen. None of them seemed that put out that the easy way hadn't worked. At least now they wouldn't be in danger of being burned alive. With practiced speed they discarded the now-useless icers and drew more standard blaster pistols, letting loose a barrage of (mostly) well-aimed shots that slammed into Alex like burning hail. From up ahead, a faint humming, crackling noise was quickly resolving itself into a voice. "...zzzxkkkKRAAASHGHOSTSSZZK!"
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Round 3 Volt easily makes it there in time for next round: 20. So Ghost-Punchers: Unharmed(x6)-GM Facsimile: Unharmed, 2HP Very smartly, they switch to their sidearms, Blaster Pistols from the Core Rules but at rank 6 rather than five because of GHOST SCIENCE. Their rolls: four out of six hit, so four DC21 Toughness saves, please. I do beg your pardon. That Tradeoff in the Iron Form means that's five hits.
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Congrats, Nick! 35 and counting! Glad the birthday game turned out so smashing, ave Orioles!
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...I even looked at the name like three times because I had made that mistake, corrected it, made it again, "fixed" that, then did it again this time. I blame the last few days of little sleep hours. Anyway fixed, sorry Cape!
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OOC for this thread. There's some problems with companies...sabotage...insider flummox... @Supercape [X-FILES THEME]
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GM July 5th, Tuesday, 3.45PM, 2016 4027 Tower St., Emerald City, WA, USA Downtown on the Emerald City riverfront was like being in another world. Voices and faces from dozens of other countries filled the streets, the sharp sea breeze lent a salty tang to the smells of streetside vendors selling the cuisine from dozens more and the sleek, pristine skyscrapers rearing above bore the richest names on Earth in at least ten languages. In particular was the soaring crystal-green Emerald Tower, the corporate center of world-famous MarsTech, one of the several new corporations in the super-technology industry and already a household name. The Tower was the hub for its own micro-universe, the eye of a financial, legal and technological hurricane, a block in each cardinal direction devoted to its needs and those of its sky-dwelling inhabitants. Public involvement with superhumans was considered passé, a kind of cheating, so there was little surprise when Prof. Erasmus Bolt was contacted about one of his newest inventions and invited to a meeting with the head of MarsTech, the flamboyant and vibrant plutocract Maximilian Mars. Although he has made a name for himself as someone with the city's best interests at heart, nobody doubts that Mars is chiefly concerned with Number One. For whatever reason, Erasmus had not yet entered the Tower. "Bolt!" A harsh, cold voice hissed from behind him, which turned out to hail from a very dour-looking man cloistered in a pitch-black limosuine, a rarity in downtown Emerald which prides itself on its mass-transit system. The man glared out at Bolt, then up at the Emerald Tower "Come to see Mars, hn? When you're done, come see me. I'm Kessler, Arwin Kessler, KessKorp. Unlike Mars, I won't lie to you. My card." Thrusting his lean hand out with a well-produced rectangle of laminated plastic pinched between thumb and forefinger, Kessler waited with an air of impatience for Bolt to take it.
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Endeavor can make both the Computers and Knowledge(Tech) rolls that would fit, so let's just say she does it automatically. Does she tell Volt to do anything? Security cameras are picking up the fight with Facsimile and the guards, by the way.
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Sailor: the VTOL craft does seem to be the general goal of a bunch of the scientist people, but nobody has reached the hanger yet. Fire suppression is a smothering gel. Exaccus: Yeah that sounds about right, go for it. Wih the addition of Immunity 5(Ice effects) and the Ablative Flaw on the Toughness, I'll say.
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Initially, the sudden jarring shock of a metal man landing on the sidewalk almost had the Salmon darting away into the streets. Luckily, he managed to master himself and peeked out to see the weird man in the coat who had been flying around ECN the last few months. Letting out a sigh of inexpressible relief that, at least for today, he was spared having to tangle with either the jocular and super-dense Anvil or the Steel Shogun himself, and wondering vaguely why he'd thought either would be sent out just for this, the masked man figured he might as well try and capitalize on the reversal. There was a split-second roar of motion, then there was a slender man in a black and green costume standing heroically beside Citizen, head thrown back and arms akimbo. "Give it up, scumbags! This rogue tide won't let you go! Come on out with your hands up and we won't just come in and get ya!" Please don't recognize me under the mask, that would be nice too.
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Dr. Chandler leaned back in his chair, crossing his long legs and staring up at the high ceiling, almost lost in the gloom. "Sweden" he murmured at last, a wry smile stretching his lips fitfully "well, I've been there, Ais-Nah would certainly fit in. Though they may be a little less blond than they used to, five hundred years ago. I regret to say, Robin," Chandler lowered his head to face his nominal patient "that your mother was not entirely forthcoming." "Hyperborea is, so we have discovered, a fragment of what is now the Swedish coast that a great cataclysm pulled free many thousands of years ago. It is where an advanced civilization which calls itself the Ultima, heirs to Drowned Atlantis, has taken refuge to find tranquility, peace, understanding and a great many more fine, positive words. Your mother had powers even greater than yours. Or mine." Chandler turned to look at his sundered desk, his eyes blazing with blue light as the air thrummed. Before Robin's eyes, the table neatly rebuilt itself, until not even fragments could be seen. "Our mastery of the vril makes us faster, stronger, nearly immortal. But such as your mother could enclose that power entirely within herself, and be as any other human..." There was a heavy silence. Chandler hesitated, steeled himself, and spoke again. "I can help you uncover more about your gifts. Will you allow it?"
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Son of a bastard I'm sorry Sailor, that was my mixed-up brain at work. Anyway, considering an EMP is just a burst of electromagnetic energy, setting off a surge by overloading one or all of the fuel cells should leave the place pretty useless.
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GM Well that was awkward. Anyway, we can safely assume the following: 1. Upon reaching the core, the expedition discovered that Halluel was a living thing, part of an obscure facet of the Infraverse ecosystem that fed on the regular exchange of life throughout the scattered worlds, in addition to being the Bee's 'mother'. The ship and planet enjoyed a brief reunion thanks to Daphne before Halluel disperesed into thousands of micro-worlds that sped into the red reaches. 2. As well, they learned that at least some of Princess Ana's story was true, about the expansionist and genocidal ambitions of the Emperor and the location of the Scourge Barrier behind which were the so-beleagured worlds. 3. En route, Velocity's week ran out, and she safely returned to Earth-Prime...but through another portal, in a mountain overlooking San Francisco, with a note by a control panel from somebody called "Bounce" apologizing for "that weirdness". 4. Getting to the Seventeen Worlds, the expedition at first found nothing but a weirdly archaic and advanced civilization at perfect peace, which of course led to an attempted ambush and fight to Konteel, where Tristan was forced to transform, though luckily away from the others. 5. They discovered that Councilor Bylar was NOT the source of the evil, but the disembodied soul of a space wizard named Z'yx summoned by the magical dabblings of queen Variste and willingly accepted by the greedy king Rylon. In the course of dispelling the spirit it, Rylon and Variste are cast into the Infraverse's afterlife, the Deadzone. 6. Stricken by the loss of her parents but in denial of what they were, Princess Ezlaya tries to continue the fight but is talked down by her friend Princess Ana, and the two are wed to formally unite the Seventeen Worlds in peace, the warriors and warbeasts returning to Konteel. 7. Val and Tesla Atom are tight-lipped about where they were in the first couple of days after the grueling battles. 8. The next week is rather uneventful, with samples being gathered, safer passage through the Barrier being prepared, and character interaction happening. Peaceful and semi-cordial relations between the Seventeen Worlds and Earth-Prime are tentatively established. 9. The last week is spent chasing clues to stopping a catastrophic breach in space-time, which ended with a meeting and question-answer session with the Primal Questor. 10. The return was uneventful, though the Bee was sorry to see them all go, and Jack Wolf agreed to stay and keep them company for a while.
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GM "Well...eighty-three trials with our Stage 7 prototypes. I wanted to do a full hundred, but Mr. Trafford, the CEO, he said we could if we didn't mind cutting our salary to make room in the budget. The test vehicles and other special gear wasn't cheap. Most supervillains don't really know what "budget limits" or "safety regulations" mean, and nobody walked or did anything crazy, so maybe we're alright?" The younger man shifted awkwardly "We don't get many super people in the Emeralds." "The field that most people will actually find useful is pretty small, so the price could be well under a thousand dollars. Maybe as little as a third or so, but I don't know what Mr. Trafford or Mr. Mars will be able to swing vis a vis marketing, that's not really my area. I just know what the component cost was for us. It wasn't much, part of why we were able to get this far." Lavernius shrugged apologetically and glanced at Monday, who cleared his throat and offered "Cost of manufacture will be offset by partnership with an automated factory in China, overseen by safety officials and our own technicians. So long as we get the initial funding, that is. And the economy being what it is, people will want to protect what they've got as much as possible. This is still the land of the automobile after all, Mr. al-Misri."
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GM Violet shook her head "No, I have nothing to hide and we can't be too careful." Taking another sip of water, she swished it around her mouth before swallowing to add "If there is something in me that'll make having the Nightstone dangerous, better to know rigt away. I just want to have it, I'm not planning to go out blasting people. Flying would be pretty nice, though..." Drifting into silence, the young woman absent-mindedly looked at the forbidding stack of paperwork on the table. "We can do this after you've checked in with your expert associates, sir. Really..
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"The weight of exceptionals on every society which tries to integrate them is like a neutron star. We and our superiors are always wary about the effect they have on a culture, but yours do not even have some similar attribute or point of origin, like our mentats, to create a steadying effect. Yours can do, in theory...anything. We are afraid." Resting his chins on his chest, Dol-Druth considered the fate of Zultas' mentally-gifted. That was an almost unheard-of anomaly. Here they stood in judgement over practically all life on the planet. "We well understand your concern, number one. On most worlds we visit our intentions are suspected and our motives scrutinized. Some alien comes from the stars and starts asking questions about the people who protect you from other aliens. 'Do you trust them? What are your weaknesses?' Who could not be suspicious of that? They want you to trust them but can offer nothing, only vague promises. It was only recently that we were allowed to ask for permission to protect others." "It is our custom to go from the bottom and work our way up. But we must, again, have permission. So far we are confined to this city, in time the rest of your world will be open to us. The League is trusted almost everywhere, because everyone knows they do not want to change the world, but whatever we bring back will soon be known to others, and your leaders know they will want to change the Earth." "By necessity and law I cannot and should not try to "smooth over" such understandable worries. This is not final. If your people do not now want to join us, there is a very long time before that is likely to trouble anyone in your lifetimes. The sole practical purpose of our visit is to observe the changes in your civilization, find out what you think, take it back to my superiors and let them figure out when the next visit should be. If any should be made."
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GM Endeavor The trip to Operations was a breeze, what with everyone running to keep away from the man made of napalm and everything. Volt kept up a steady pace, despite darting off to drain eletricity from various objects they passed."StraaostoldmekzzZzz TAKE THE DATA, ddothejobuuuuuuubutfor..." the strange crackling monster looked adoringly at Endeavor "...VvvvvVolszzz new friend." At Operations, the air was thick with frantic cries "More power! We have to break through the Silence Shroud!" "No good! The cells can't take it!" "Take from the defense grid! Rerouting from life support on subjects 13504 through 12002!" "Pleaseworkpleaseworkpleasework Oh god I don't wanna die..." They were so engrossed in their wrestling with obsolete control boards and more advanced gear stapled to old, busted tech that they didn't even notice Endeavor and Volt. The lightning thief grinned and tensed. Within about twenty seconds the room was all theirs, bootsteps hammering into the distance. Facsimile While those two had snuck around, Alex found his flight very suddenly interrupted as he turned a corner and found himself face to face with a small group of people in what looked like armored variants of this "Ghostworks" normal uniform. The guards barely flinched, one slamming a bulky disk onto the ground, yelling "Try'n melt outta this, assimian!" The walls thrummed and shuddered as they were sheathed in orange energy, just before the barrage. As one, the guards stepped back, aimed squat, weirdly gaudy guns at the transitive teen and opened up with a hail of ice, thick streams splashing and hardening around him into a crystal prison!
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Facsimile, an HP for the deck-stacking. Next round, the Ghost-Touchers move to surround Alex and layer on the Snare, making it Toughness 17.
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From here Sakurako can sabotage the fuel cells, prepare a very nice looking amphibious VTOL aircraft for launch, and set it all so there's no guessing when the place comes down. She also realizes that places like this often needed access to nearby urban areas, and the readouts have what look like a very old map of the area, which has a small city on it labeled "BED-WIS". This thing is right under Bedlam City, Wisconsin. If she destroys the place entirely then there's the risk she'll do real damage to the city above. But the map could be so out of date that this isn't a factor. And if she doesn't obliterate the place completely, these people might just come back and rebuild all over again, no matter what safeguards are put up to stop them.
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The space outside the front doors twisted, a column of shimmering golden light lanced down from the stars, and in the familiar flash of the Freedom League's Lighthouse transport system a massive figure hove into view. Corpse-pale flesh seethed and trembled from where it protruded from a suit so black it was hard to perceive, and from the hairless, looming head with its two abyss-like black eyes distended a pair of slender antennae. Folding his arms behind his bloated back, the alien bowed slightly to the startled door attendants. "Dol-Druth, Speaking for Dotrae. The League has given their invitation to me." he introduced himself flatly, holding out a slim holographic rectangle whose alien script shifted to vouch for the identity of the holder. With the other he held out a small, colorful thing that looked like an electric razor with no blades "My frazz-that is, my neural-phrase disruptor. Please be careful with it. Adjusting his more conventionally black tie, whose relative visibility stood out dramatically from the rest of his attire, the planet inspector ducked through the cramped doors and into the strange, archaic building aflame with yellow light. Pausing to look over his surroundings and to take stock of the people he was going to interact with, Dol-Druth noted with inarticulate distaste everything the establishment represented. Here was, even more than its exceptionals, the core of his fear of what terrestrials would do if they ever entered the Republic or became a galactic power. The harsh, arbitrary cultural divisions even between their sexes, the inherent exclusion and fear that ruled the dominant societal ideals, the worship of individual power. It was enough to make even one of Dotrae wonder if maybe the Grue weren't all that bad...but the Grue were ruled by the Meta-Mind, even the ones who had broken free or never heard its voice were warped by that all-encompassing stamp...maybe there was no hope, maybe this was the future, writ small and primi- Striding across the carpet on legs that looked almost truncated against his bulk, the ambassador harrumphed to get the man's attention from his other guests. It was a struggle, but he resolutely kept his eyes off of the athletic blond man who'd so entranced Phar-Gult. "Sir Card? We are Dol-Druth, Speaker of Dotrae of the Lor Allied Republican Plurality of Systems, the League has recieved your invitation, but thought it best that I make use of it, to broaden my and my government's understanding of your world. They intend no disrespect." He bowed again, to the host and to the others gathered nearby.
