Ari

Well there's Rook of the Sentinels, who going by his stats is also a very determined but not terribly effective crime-fighter. (Obviously for different reasons. In our world, it's the systemic flaws and corporate reasons for criminality that lone vigilantes can't do much about. In Rook's, it's because a Batclone at PL10 is not going to hurt much of anything at or above its own weight class) Regarding 17, those are floating houses, those are not houseboats. I don't care that Americans don't know any better I refuse to be a part of this scam against the innocent. A houseboat is a boat that you live in like a house, partially modified at most for comfort but still capable of getting under way. Re. 25, I guess there's a member of the Cryptid Stone Clans who hides under bridges and eats cars. Turns to stone during the day so people think they're just some weird statue.

To explain: I think more of those events should be impacted by PCs. The whole theme of Emerald City Knights, after all, was the collapse of the old order and the chaos of a new one. I feel it would be much more interesting to run and play that kind of transition from a placid city ruled from the shadows by a sinister cabal to one shaken by superheroic action. The presented setup, while obvious much simpler and easier to use in the same way Freedom City is, isn't nearly as interesting since it's pretty much the same as every other superhero town.

Poll for EC's location is up here, so please vote and sound off there on that. One additional topic I'd like to raise is the timeline. I'd like to know if anyone else is interested in moving it back just a little, so that initial play will be in the time of the Chamber before its dissolution by old!Dragoneye's death and Max Mars' betrayal. Though of course that might be a little weird with having the Sentinels, likely including young"Dragoneye, at the same time as the organization vigorously suppressing super-activity in Emerald.

It shall be done. Once the general shape of what changes, if any, will be made, I'll send them as a PM to the Moderators.

Temporary poll to decide the location of our Emerald City, both are good. This will be moved to the Archives after five days.

That's very true, Shaen, so in that case I think it's best put directly to a vote: should this version of Emerald City be in the Northwest, or Southwest Pacific Coast? For my part I am thorougly undecided since I live in the Northwest and have an instinctive bias to that region, But the style and ethos we're going for is much more reminiscent of the SW metropolises, But much of the culture and mindset that makes up the city in the books is, as Shaen mentions, drawn as much from residual American language and adopted symbols as immigrant styles and assumptions, But that could easily be excused to make it just be in northern California and so on, and on. What do you folks think? (also, nomination to change its moniker from the City of Destiny to The Facet City, because things aren't how they seem and also Captain Shazam I guess)

GM "Gah! Ale-13505, stay back!" The man who had been talking so confidently over the intercom turned out to be remarkably tall and willowy now that he was out of whatever the white light had done, recoiling from the blazing former prisoner but only managing to corner himself in the observation window. Through it was a clear view of every lab below, all but the one with the electrical being empty. Holding out inhumanly skinny arms in a futile defensive gesture, the man began talking very, very quickly. Meanwhile, the other observers were already deserting their stations and running with all speed out of the room. "13505, think about this! Even if you kill me, disintegrate this lab, even if you fight your way through all the guards and burn your way to the surface, you can't burn off the psychic tag we have on you and Richard! Just give me a little time and I can get it off, but I need to be out of here and not have a flaming superbeing out and loose!" Failling to his knees and looking up beseechingly through his blank mask, the man said fervently "Let me get out of here so I can shut off the alarm, go back to the cell, in a quarter of an hour I'll have everything calmed down, released your brother and opened the way out for you three!" "If you don't, none of your family will be safe from the Ghostworks!" Meanwhile, Endeavor's work was paying off in spades, the platforms dropping from the ceiling in the outer corridors and audibly putting a stop to whatever dreams the security teams had of getting in. The hail of gunfire and crackle of force-fields reverberating through the ground and walls.

If you're fine with a little modification, Heritage, I have some ideas of how to spice that up. The actual Japanese Mob boss in Emerald City, the Steel Shogun, is a mutant with the power to turn himself and anything he's holding or wearing into that metal. Maybe this character is his other, younger daughter (or other relative)and in desperation he secretly imparts some of his transformed stem cells into her, with the result of activating her own mutation.

So after much discussion in Char, it's been decided that we'll instead be importing Emerald City more or less in its entirety, besides the slight tonal and aesthetic change. What's there and not will be decided in play, or case by case bases. Me and Sailor will be playing there to start with.

GM "The Service was thinking more along the lines of regular updates on how the land was being used, information on anything you collect that gives off energy that could affect the forest, cooperating with AEGIS if they operate in this area, that sort of thing." Fussing with her briefcase was the perfect excuse to not make eye contact, so Violet did that as she spoke, rustling and shuffling about ten times as much as she strictly needed to. Withdrawing the necessary paperwork for establishing the superhero's base in the bureaucracy, the IRS agent said "Unfortunately, heroic deeds that preserve our way of life and reality as we understand it are considered implicit preconditions for this agreement. They are not explicitly required, but we understand that saving the hypothesized 'multiverse' is of personal benefit to both us and to yourself, so much that asking you to keep doing that would be thoroughly pointless. It's just expected, like that we won't harrass you later if you agree." Shrugging as she adjusted her tie, Violet said briskly "Sorry, sir. I don't make the rules." "The bit about how I found this place is fairly simple." Turning around and raising the hair at the back of her neck, Violet revealed several smooth shards of some amethyst-like gemstone embedded in the base of her skull, the skin around them marked with geometric purple lines. "These got into me when I was eleven, they let me...find things, see things others can't." Turning back to face Cobalt Templar, the young woman smiled wrily "And I heard about the Nightstone because Zefir asked me to be at his trial. He wanted me to see him accepting the consequences of his actions, and not just running like he's always done. He's serving ten years for aggravated psychic assault and forced memory alteration. He's not an American citizen, so it'll be in Spain. Had a long talk with him, he mentioned you and the others, what happened to the magic rock his father gave him." Folding her arms and squinting up at the fortress, the agent fell silent for a moment. Suddenly her dark eyes swiveled back to the wall of blue fire "I think I can show you I can handle it, and won't abuse its power. I want it to remember him by." She looked at the ground "I threw away everything he or Mom gave me as a kid, sir."

Unless we make that its deal, I say we skirt the Silver Storm, at least for now(maybe something to do in threads) given how tied up it is with the Emerald City Knights campaign which in turn relies on a bunch of space stuff which frankly doesn't fit with this site's canon. Point taken about the state choice not being just Washington or Oregon, Cali has a bigger population than Canada, after all, and a massive amount of American technology and culture comes from there. I'd still rather it were more northern, but if other folks think California's a better pick I'm fine with that. Anyway, does anyone have any thoughts on its super-scene?

GM The response, to the mystery hosts' credit, was all but immediate. Security doors and heavy blast shields slammed down into place, cutting off physical movement throughout the laboratory's lower floor as red lights in the outer hallway and hidden claxons started to resound. Luckily the people above her had not the faintest idea of Endeavor's infiltration. But that just meant she had to act quickly before her window closed. Already a security team was hurrying to the rescue, and someone was accessing the platform controls to try and get the sudden ignition of 'shifting assimian: high risk' in 13505under control. In the lab, the man's voice barked "Subject 13505! Resume the crystalline form at once! I don't have to remind you we have your brother, do I? We haven't hurt him, do you want to give me a reason?" "And this doesn't need to turn violent. None of us want to fight. Just give us what we want, and nobody gets hurt and you and Richard go back to your lives." "What good can that form do you?"

"People of Earth!" Dol-Druth's voice thundered over the rumble of the assorted journalists, reporters and the Freedonians edging back into the street. Striding forward like a misshapen god over the broken asphalt, bits of splintered concrete and banging his foot against a stray car door, the planet inspector intercepted the humans and raised a pudgy hand larger than the heads of most of the people there. His antennae twitched and flittered at both the stress and the jarring pain in his foot, but he mustered quickly and bellowed. "I am Dol-Druth, Seaking for Dotrae, inspector of this planet for the Lor Republic, and I have something vital to say, something all of you must hear! This attack alone, and the identities of your aggressors, are as nothing before what I must reveal!" With the bright spring sun blazing off of his white skin and iridescent beige suit, its letters reforming into English, Spanish, French and half a dozen other languages intelligible to those looking on, Dol-Druth looked remarkably grand, imposing and strange.

A Guidebook entry is definitely the plan, Avenger. I don't know much about Bedlam, so I'd better leave that to folks who do. Anyway, now that we have a general tone and theme, the local goodies and baddies. I'm still partial to there being only one hero with multiple enemies, based around one specific theme, preferably something taken from the setting book. At least at first, we can build on it over threads. The flannel-over-jumpsuits can be the local AEGIS style, both to punish the animators by making them deal with plaid and to give the government agents an easy way to tell each other apart in the thick of things. Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions besides what I have above? Obviously they could just as easily be, say, a more grown-up 1337 from Claremont, six years is a long time after all, but I'd prefer something more specific to that book. We have the Dragoneye legacy(of mostly badmens, but so were most of the Reach's Scarabs or the Darkhawks), the Battlesuit-Named-After-Battleship-Classes (Ironclad's sucessor, Dreadnought of the Victory Squadron) legacy, which could be fitted to Ultramarine of the can't-be-there Sentinels. With the Silver Storm out of the picture as an origin point, we could still draw from the character of tech-guru Maximilian Mars and his past as the adaptive battlesuited supervillain Commander, do some Batman Beyond/Natasha Irons stuff. Or just go full-Hardware and have Mars as a stand-in for Edwin Alva, and Emerald's hero as one of his employees. If not him, Kessler of KessCorp is already canonically crooked, and the hero could be a renegade of the Cybertribe who's taken a broader view. We could do a thing where the local hero is "sponsored" by a major corporation, beholden to them for equipment or resources but otherwise their own, and part of a long line of such mascots. The Cryptid Clans living just outside Emerald are another possibility, as they could easily supply any number of both villains(from alien infiltrators to mystical destroyers) and heroes. No obvious legacies there, though, unless, say, Xeno of Rulu is one of them in this Earth-Prime, and whatever a Manhunter of her species is. I'm still partial to Dragoneye and an elemental theme, what do you folks think?

I'm with Raveled on this. While it would be a suitable irony for a city named after a shiny gem to be a blaring, sodden mess it does clash with some of the setting's core conceits. It's awkward enough having Freedom be Metropolis and Gotham-on-good-days at once. For reference, here's how James Robinson and Tony Harris characterized Opal City: Opal. But Emerald as a more high-tech version of Seattle, maybe built in the Japanese style that mitigates damage to tall structures by earthquakes, could be a good start.

That'd be better for the adaption of San Angelo, Raveled. The point of this is to condense Emerald, not expand it. Right now it's at the intersection of a whole mess of stuff, and finding and picking a theme is, from my perspective, necessary for making it more than just "the not-Freedom City". That's why I suggested Dragoneye and the Mafiya, Triad and Yakuza interests as the central focus. For example we could go with the Eastern "elements" and have the various players be aligned (metaphorically) with them, say with Dragoneye being air, Koschei the Deathless being void, the Steel Samurai being metal and so on. Emerald could also be where the Crimson Katana has set up shop and is fighting the Katanarchists and their occult masters there. Or maybe the city is the site of covert alien immigration and there's some line of extraterrestrial defenders fighting in the shadows.

Dol-Druth's Bluff check to get the Earthpress' attention: 20.

Since the moderators have made abundantly clear that they have little interest in the Emerald City setting-expansion as-is and since it might be a good time, I'd like to offer the following: we should make Emerald City here what Opal City is to the DCU. A quirky, off-beat town with a long history protected by the latest incarnation of a line of superheroic guardians. It already is on the record as being named after the mineral wealth that created it. That way, it preserves both the use of Emerald City as a landmark while making it more of its own thing and less a replacement for Freedom as the Generic Chosen Locale. It also removes the need to address, even out of character, the lack of a Silver Storm or other events tied to that side of the canon. Aside from the obvious dragon and Wizard of Oz themes, Emerald could also be rooted in the immigration of Chinese and other Asians to the Pacific states during the Gold Rush and other industry booms. A specific ethnic and cultural identity would go a long way to making it both more memorable and more versatile since it'd mean fitting plots to the theme and region instead of treating the city like a shapeless, tasteless American Jello that has to be compressed into the story. It already has a legacy hero(ish) in Dragoneye and appropriate nemeses in the city's semi-mundane criminal underworld, but we could easily figure on something else if that's too Captain Ethnic-y.

Yes.

GM Endeavor Endeavor's "sight" was soon in the realm of cyber-space, the tangled web of interlocking digital systems rolling like rivers of infinitesimal boulders of information. It was connected most strongly to a series of integrated platforms containing a dizzying array of power systems and storage containers. Most of them were obviously lethal, or at leat horribly dangerous, except for one that simply projected a high-frequency beam of some kind. Luckily, being in the security system also gave readouts for what was in the labs, and whatever was in there was listed as "Harmless".

Sailor, that is indeed possible, and in using that part of the system learn that there are several other "turrets" with various effects in the other chambers. Only one other is active, maintaining a stasis field around some kind of energy life-form dubbed "Subject 00002". Exaccus, the Full Power Drawback is disallowed by House Rules, so instead I decree that it has Inaccurate(-2 to Attack rolls). Both of you get a HP for getting this far with minimal alert-causing. GM post shortly.

OOC for this thread.

306582.6 Galactic Time, mid-evening Lor Republic core space, G'Nüzz system, G'Nüzz II, Ahri-Bodhi Megaplex The Black Hole would have looked pretty good to the average Terrestrian, with its gleaming silver furnishings, high ceiling, low volume of music and talk, generously-stocked bar, energetic staff, sections with varied lighting and entire sealed compartments for differently-atmosphered patrons. To the Voidrunners it looked like an utter dump. The bar's liquids were a subtly unhealthy shade(its gases and solids were no better), the low volume was on account of the crowd of various beings carrying out business of various legalities. The staff had the telltale signs of being blissed out of their minds and likely on their third consecutive all-diurnal shift. But the hygenic needs of hundreds of varying life-forms meant that even the worst places had a spotless santitation record. Anyone trying to buy their way to one was tragically never seen again. Universal health care was a deserved point of pride in the Republic, but nobody wanted to take any chances. However, the Voidrunners were here specifically to take a chance. Which did not include not taking a secluded booth. "...So, that's the story. Near as I can tell, it's here, got it?" Her tail lashing restlessly behind her, Loma Slife pointed to the lonely cluster at the fringe of civilized space. Even in the generous dimensions of the bar, the rogue Chorna had to stoop a little, but was no less a looming, menacing sight. With her bulging muscles and vicious spines and thick hide, it was easy to forget that she needed weapons at all, let alone that she could summon them to her side with a thought. Slumping back into the seat and propping up her legs on the foursome's table, her feet resting on the next one, the fearsome bounty hunter inspected her massive hands "This thing, officials call it the "Visitor", far as I know it's not got much punch. Just gets around everything, can hide anywhere, and hitting it is a s*n' **k and a half. So I say we team up, go in, flush the thing out and I help bag it, get the picture?" Swiping Ruby's mug, Loma downed half of it, paused, and spat its contents on the floor. Grimacing, the bounty hunter went on "Since this thing is from the Swarm, no non-mentato but me's ever made a dent in that nano-cloud 'o mystery, and everyone ELSE is after it too, I think it's only fair I get half of the ः120 billion credit reward, while you Voidies split the sixty billion amongst yourselves. Dunno what bills you got, but that should pay 'em off pretty nicely, know what I'm sayin'?" Her hands busy supporting her crested head, her spiny tail reached out to each of the Voidrunners in turn.

In case you need a handy example/reminder of how the Zigan/Romani are treated. The Pata Rat slum.

Going to try and find out more on this "Coleman Naturals": Switching to the Tourist configuration of his Variable Skills, using the Personal Computer to make the Gather Information skill with. Gather Information: 14 Knowledge: Streetwise: 26 Knowledge: Current Events: 26 That last is a natural 1.