Elegy

GM "Receiving you, Ironclad," Commander Volkland replied, raising a hand to her ear. "We've taken a few hits, but we're out of range now, so you should be clear to take on the spill. Keep us updated; we'll help any way we can. Volkland out." Turning to the heroes assembled on the deck of the Perseverance, she gave a businesslike nod as further suggestions rolled in. "Very good. Tsunami and Ironclad can work on keeping this mess from spreading while you two teleporters find out what's going on with the ship's crew." Taking up a pair of binoculars, she stared at the cargo ship's shadowy outline. "I'll get a boarding party ready; it'll help to be able to get them aboard without having to move our vessel into their kill zone again." She offered the three heroes a crisp salute. "Good luck. And thank you."

Figuratively rolling up his sleeves to deal with this bizarre misuse of the arcane, Seth was surprised to find himself suddenly surrounded by a colorful group of men and women. The Twilight Angel had filled him with knowledge of these "superheroes," but it was still strange to see them in action! As he understood it, they were like an auxiliary town watch (or police department, in modern terminology), but with incredible powers of diverse origin and effect. It was good to see them respond so swiftly to this sudden crisis! The Russian in the thick blue coat, first on the scene, put the young mage ill at ease. He did not merely feel the cold on him, he saw it in him, a dead, roiling winter that clashed with the autumn of his own power. Could this man really be a hero with power such as this? "Thank you," he cautiously replied to the man's words of welcome. The winter mage was polite, and seemed to be on the side of right, but the opposed natures of their energies made him feel queasy if he looked too long. Fortunately, the arrival of two more heroes tore his mind from the matter. The rather young woman in purple and white seemed earnest enough, though she was younger even than he, and he could not help but notice that she was rather pretty. The other youth, of his own age if he did not miss his guess, wore the flowing cloak and dark, mysterious clothes of a mage, but Seth could see no magic on him. He made some confusing comment about a dance that the dusk mage pretended to understand, nodding his head. "I am called Gloaming," he said with a formal half-bow, "and I would welcome your aid." He wondered what on Earth these modern people must think of the youth with seventeenth century clothes, an eyepatch, and a glowing gaze, but concluded that their own costumes were bizarre enough that they had little room to judge. Their entrance into the mad scene within the bank momentarily forestalled conversation. Devices whose names Seth only vaguely knew, and which he had never seen before, ripped themselves from walls and ceilings to lurch at them, a deadly tide of metal and plastic! As Amelyth and the cloaked youth laid into the twining carpets, Seth cast around for the most immediate threat. His eyes settled on the heavy filing cabinet bearing down on Comrade Frost. Reaching out, he twisted his hands through an arcane pattern, brow furrowed in concentration. The cabinet, scooting and rolling across the floor with bone-crushing momentum, was borne into the air mid-spin, seized by invisible hands. Seth, struggling to hold the object as it rippled and writhed in his ethereal grip, cast his gaze over to the bags and ATMs. In his day paper money was a newfangled thing used only in the Massachusetts Bay colony and a few places on the Continent, but he knew that it was now both widespread and valuable. Whoever the perpetrator of this mystic affront was, it was clear what they were after. "I was under the impression that guilds ceased to exist quite some time ago," the confused mage replied, entirely missing the point of Foreshadow's banter. Worried that he was already showing himself to be hopelessly ignorant, he did not ask what "speed dial" was. With a flick of his wrist, Seth sent the filing cabinet flying at the bag closest to the entrance of the bank, tipping it and spilling the notes inside. More cash cascaded from the ATM, striking the side of the cabinet and scattering over the floor as the animated metal struggled to right itself. But the dent he'd put in the object, and the scattering of the paper files within, made him rethink his triumphant smile. "If at all possible," he said with a guilty grimace, "we should try to avoid undue damage to these objects. They are someone's livelihood." He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye: another superhero had arrived outside, but was being menace by yet more animated objects, one of them large enough to squash her flat! Thinking quickly, Seth opened one of his deep orange portals, bending space and time between where the young woman in the web-like costume stood and the spot where Amelyth had just shredded one of the rugs so thoroughly it could not rise again. "Milady, beware!" He couldn't be sure his shout would reach her through the thick glass doors. Then again, she'd probably been doing this a lot longer than he had. Whether or not she trusted the offer of his portal, he was certain she was competent enough to survive this. Whether or not he would prove to be was another matter entirely, he reflected, as the standing lamp bore down on him with a vicious swing of its lightbulb...

An animated car, being a bulky hulk of metal, is not particularly agile, and Silver manages to gum up its workings before the flailing metal can mangle her. It seems to possess fairly serious strength just by merit of its bulk, though, and will probably break free next round to menace the heroine once more! Gloaming reaches out with his telekinesis to grapple the filing cabinet bearing down on Comrade Frost (the cabinet fails the opposed check), then tosses it at one of the bags the ATMs are filling. He then turns and, as a free action, opens a portal next to Silver Spider and on top of the rug that Amelyth just shredded, offering Silver a way out of the line of fire of the attacking parking meters. That leaves just Comrade Frost and our animated foes this round!

Gloaming ?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>Automated Withdrawal (1) ?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>The Void Mansion (9) ?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>No Tern Unstoned (2) >Patriotism Vignette (+1PP) >Origin Story (+1PP>??) >Interview (+1PP) >Hell Q (+1PP) >Reputation (+1PP) GM ?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>Automated Withdrawal (2) ?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>The Void Mansion (8) ?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>No Tern Unstoned (2)

Gloaming/Seth Syme

Reputation

Hell Q

No worries! Hope everything is working out well at your new house! Amelyth utterly shreds one of the rugs, leaving it in inanimate tatters.

Interview

Timeline

Origin Story

Gloaming, Mage of the Cosmic Dusk "Old loves, they die hard. Old lies, they die harder." -Nightwish, "Wish I had an Angel" Hearken and ye shall find herein the adventures of Gloaming, Mage of the Cosmic Dusk. The young Seth Syme, manipulated by one he loved, suffered a terrible betrayal that left him dead. But to some powerful entities death itself is not immutable, and the inscrutable Twilight Angel granted Seth not only increased power but a second chance at life. More than three hundred years after his birth, Gloaming was forced to navigate a time and place alien to him in order to right that betrayal and save his very soul. Contents >Origin Story >Timeline >Interview >Hell Q >Reputation

Space to Be July 19th, 2013 9:00 PM "So," Seth murmured to himself, "we're not British any more." He closed the heavy history textbook with a heavier sigh, returning it to its shelf; he would have stayed longer, but the library was closing and one of the guards was breathing down his neck. He offered the man a smile, got a tired nod in return, and made for the door, thoughts whirling through his head at terrible speed. It only got worse as he stepped out of the main branch and into the bustle of city center, still going strong in spite of the time of night; it was a Friday, and for many the night was only just beginning. He stared up at the Federal Building, taller than he could have imagined anything could be until yesterday, and sighed again. Everything was different; everything he had known was gone. His house was warped almost beyond recognition, his city had grown in every direction and squashed what he remembered being where it stood, and his people were all long dead. Only the unmarked grave he'd dug himself out of had been unchanged, the saddest of familiarities. What was left for him in this time and place? He'd gone to court that morning; not only was his house standing on what was now someone else's land, his public defender had explained as she tried to wrap her head around the most bizarre case she'd ever been assigned, but he was actually an illegal alien. He laughed at the memory, not a little bitterly. "Will they deport me? I'd like to see how." Here he was, broke and unclaimed by any nation, with only the few facts about the modern world that the Twilight Angel had considered important to guide him. Yet Seth had to admit that there had been gains in the time he'd been gone, gains that far, far outweighed the losses of one man. The vile institution of slavery had been abolished, and progress had been made against racial prejudice. Men and women were equal in the eyes of the law (and usually in practice). People even in the lowest class regularly lived past fifty. Science, medicine, industry, all had made unimaginable progress; they even had those confusing card-catalog computer machines in the library now, and what a library! And then there was Seth Syme, Gloaming, a man truly out of time. He stood there in fashions three hundred years out of date, staring up in awe at a tower that everyone here took for granted. He cast ancient magics where others used equally mighty technologies to accomplish the same goals. He prayed to a God whose worship was in worldwide fragmentation and decline, and whose most vocal followers remaining were the ones preaching the message most at odds with Christ: hate. Where could he fit in this age? But he had read about this United States of America now. He was not certain about the efficacy of democracy, and he was not ready to give any country his allegiance; he never had before, even in his own day. But what he had read told a story, a story about diverse groups of people coming together in one space and learning, over the centuries, how to live together. That process was continuing, however slowly. People still came looking for a place to be who they were without fear, and America continued to struggle to be that place. Perhaps, in such a nation, there was space even for Seth Syme.

Seth hit the floor of the library with a gasp, his impact with the cold stone driving the wind from his lungs. But the angry buzz-hiss of spirits not far away drove him back to his feet; he knew he didn't have long. He'd been lucky to end up here, he reflected, given how much the layout of the house had been changed. But this was the place he needed to be, for his one chance at cleansing all of these unwelcome guests lay somewhere within. But the library, once a small room toward the back of the house with a few shelves, was now a vast and cavernous space! In his day books had been a precious and expensive commodity, and his voracious hunger for knowledge had been sated only one volume at a time. But now the huge arched room contained dozens of long mahogany shelves, each loaded to bursting with heavy tomes. Gilded spines with crimson lettering stared out at him in the dim light of the cold blue candelabras that lit the space, glittering mockingly as he tried to search through them. It took him only a moment to realize that the search was entirely hopeless; he could spend hours just reading all the titles. From memory, then; the angry buzz was getting louder, telling him that time was running out. Casting around, he withdrew a candle from one of the candelabras and mushed the wax into the floor in the rough shape of a pentagram (he'd never been much of an artist). Then he reached up to the cuts on his cheek, smearing his fingers with blood, and added circular daubs of it to a few of the cells within the wax. That was the easy part. He cast back to the arcane texts he'd been shown three hundred years earlier, trying to remember what to say and how to move. All the while, the angry voices of the spirits grew louder...

GM The energy burst from Seth in a wild, roiling mass, huge strands of autumn-colored energy that wrapped around his captors and pulled tight against their limbs. The Succubus danced away, her lithe form more agile than incorporeal spirits were accustomed to needing to be, but her servants were held fast. And then, with another flick of his hand, the young wizard opened a portal and leapt through, leaving his bound and seething enemies behind. The Succubus hissed in frustration. "He can't have left the house. Find him, all of you, and tear him apart!" Ignoring the three servants that had failed her, she abandoned the bedroom for the tall railing outside it, spreading leathery wings from her back as she prepared to launch herself to whatever floor the wizard had chosen. "All of you!" she screamed, and slowly, reluctantly, the spirits took notice, seething through the walls as they combed Havenglen House for its would-be master...

Gloaming earns a hero point for resisting sore temptation, and promptly uses it to manifest an alternate power of magic (an affects incorporeal burst area snare). The spirits and succubus must make DC20 reflex saves. The succubus succeeds, but all three spirits fail by five or more, causing them to become immobilized. Gloaming then creates a portal as a free action and steps through. 28 on a Knowledge (Arcane Lore) check to perform a ritual, modified a further +2 for Seth's familiarity with and partial mastery of the house, which creates a 30 and a success.

Seth nodded as the other heroes arrived, somewhat surprised that there wasn't more of a reaction; in his day, the appearance of someone with any of the abilities that had just been demonstrated would have been cause for great wonder - or, as he knew all too well, a witch hunt. He did not recognize any of these heroes, but that hardly surprised him; the Twilight Angel had given him general knowledge at most, and he had been in the city only a week. Still, they had already displayed formidable abilities, and he could not deny that he was impressed. For a moment he considered leaving; the situation was clearly well in hand if so many of these capable individuals had responded so quickly, and every moment he went without finding the mask could mean the loss of his very soul. But he had no idea what might happen aboard that massive steel beast of a ship, and his abilities were well-suited to helping. Besides, what good, honest, God-fearing man could see such distress and not stop to offer aid, even if only as part of a greater whole? No sense in clinging to pride. "Ladies," he said, making a formal half-bow at the waist, "it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance." For a moment he worried that his eyepatch and strange garb would unnerve them, but as the thought percolated through his head he nearly laughed aloud. The formidable-looking young women, clearly more experienced than he in the business of helping people despite their tender age, had probably seen far stranger sights; in addition, he found it vaguely amusing that he still had the vanity to ponder the question. He could not help but notice that both were rather lovely, the Cathayan girl rising out of the water like a petite, bright almond-eyed Birth of Venus and the other (an Albino?) with a cascade of lustrous white hair to frame her pretty face and match her curves. And they were not much younger than he... Seth coughed politely behind his hand, banishing the flush from his cheeks and making sure to look them both respectfully in the eye. He was here on a mission, he reminded himself, and had a truly awful track record with the ladies (well, a lady, but losing his soul left rather a large impression) to boot; these two were powerful people who could make a difference in a bad situation, and he would not allow himself to see them as anything else. "I am but a newcomer here," he said, "little versed in the way of things in this place and time. How do you suggest we proceed?"

GM It was a testament partly to Commander Volkland's unflappable nature and partly to the ubiquity of superheroes in and around Freedom City that the veteran officer did not even blink as three superhumans arrived on the scene, two materializing out of thin air and another rising out of the ocean while a glimmering trail in the night sky hinted at the imminent arrival of yet another. She paid no heed to the seagull, one of many taking wing that night, and simply turned to the new arrivals to offer a crisp salute. "Tsunami, Wisp..." "Gloaming," the last one offered, and she nodded. "I'm Commander Volkland of the USS Providence. It's good to have you here. We've got an ugly situation, and it's only getting uglier." She walked over to the ship's port rail, silhouetted against the water below by the high-power spotlights glaring past her, and gestured at the container ship they were trained on, still broadcasting so that the incoming hero could also hear. "We have no idea what this ship is even called, much less what it's doing here. They ran aground two hours or so ago, and we moved in to try and help." She pointed to the divots in her bulletproof vest and the bandage around her shoulder with a grimace. "They weren't looking for help; the minute we got close, they opened up on us. We backed off to wait for help, but now there's something leaking from the bottom of the ship. I don't know if it's oil or what, but I'm willing to bet it's not something we want getting washed up on the beaches. If you could help with either problem, we'd be grateful; we're not equipped for this, and our reinforcements are still an hour out." Sure enough, the strange purplish cloud beneath the container ship was beginning to spread further into the water... The Inspector:

Sounds good! Foreshadow smashes the rug down to the ground for the round, but it's unlikely to stay there beyond that; aside from having the dust knocked out of it and losing its momentum, it's undamaged.

No worries, AA! Guess he's not staying frosty, har har. That puts our friend Foreshadow up first! Amelyth and Gloaming are tied, but to save time I'm just going to have Gloaming opt to go after her. Initiative Order: Foreshadow Amelyth Gloaming Silver Spider Animated Objects Comrade Frost

Once per day per thread is fine with me!

Sure, Shaen! Feel free to drop on in. >OOC >IC

A week in the city, and still no sign of the mask. Seth Syme stepped out of one of his dusky portals, letting it snap shut behind him, and surveyed the horizon with his glowing gaze. It was dark now, dark enough that his human vision was near-blind away from the streetlights of Freedom proper, but that had no effect on his Second Sight, the more important of the two at the moment. After a moment of turning in a slow circle, squinting hard (even though that didn't actually help at all), he sighed. Another of God knew how many sweeps that left him in the same place he started. It wasn't that his time here had been wasted; he'd done some good in the city already, and he was certainly glad to have been able to do so. It was that he had no idea how long the Twilight Angel was going to let him keep his new life if he didn't produce results. The creature wasn't evil, but it wasn't good either. Pragmatism ruled it, and if he tested its patience too far it would probably cut its losses and take his soul back. An involuntary shudder ran down his spine. The thought of true eternity in the void chilled him like nothing else. Then a light on the water caught his eye, the large but mundane kind. What was it doing so far out from the harbor? Summoning another portal, he came closer, and soon it was clear. A sleek metal cutter bobbed in the dark waters, shining searchlights on the hull of a container ship with a crumpled front and multiple gouges further down its hull. The uniformed men and women aboard the smaller ship had rifles trained on the apparent derelict, their faces guarded. Something was going on, something bad. A blast of loudspeaker noise confirmed it. "Unidentified vessel," came a strong, assertive voice, clearly female. "This is the U.S. Coast Guard. I suggest you thrown down your weapons and come down to the beach with your hands on your heads; further attacks will be met with deadly force." Seth frowned; the Coast Guard under attack by a beached ship? Still, deadly force was not something he wanted to have happen on either side here. With one final portal conjuring he arrived on the deck of the ship, ready to offer his assistance in disarming the ugly situation.

This is the OOC thread for No Tern Unstoned, an aquatic expedition against OVERTHROW! Featuring: Elegy, Thevshi, Azuth65, and Raveled! A map of the crash site (10 foot squares, because ships are huge): The ship on the right is the Coast Guard cutter, while the crashed container ship is visible on the left.

GM July 25th, 2013 10:30 PM Commander Alice Volkland of the U.S. Coast Guard was not having a good night. It had all started out innocently enough; heavy winds and lashing rain throughout the day had driven any number of ships off course, and one more report of the same phenomenon was hardly surprising. That the ship had ended up in restricted waters had complicated matters; that it was a container ship that had run aground had made things downright nasty. The crew of the cutter USS Perseverance had been resigned to a long night of working with local tugs to get the vessel free, assuming it could still float. But Commander Volkland, who had the experience to back up her rank, had immediately recognized an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, one that was almost always right. Investigating on the way to the scene, she couldn't find a registration number or even a name on the beached ship, let alone any reason it would've come close to restricted waters. And the storm, while it blew all around, shouldn't have put any vessel that far off in that particular direction. Then there was the fact that the vessel's crew had never called for help. As it turned out, her seemingly paranoid order to get everyone into combat gear had saved several lives, including her own. The men on the deck of the cargo ship had opened up with small arms the minute the Perseverance had come into range, putting two rounds in her vest and two crewmen in sickbay. She'd pulled back immediately, deploying snipers to watch the deck, and radioed for backup. Whatever this was, it was bigger and nastier than her crew could take on alone. And what was that purple stuff spewing out of the ship's ruptured underbelly? "This is Commander Volkland of the USS Perseverance, broadcasting on all emergency channels. We are under attack by the crew of a beached container ship on the south side of Lonely Point, and require immediate assistance. The enemy appears to be paramilitary, well trained and armed, and the ship appears to be leaking an unknown contaminant..." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Keep them at a distance," ordered Agent Sixty-Two, his voice oddly distorted by his gas mask. Though he maintained a firm grip on his submachine gun and kept any quaver from his tone, his mind reeled with panic. Everything had been going so well at first; they'd been within miles of Blackstone Island, their terrifying cargo secure and ready for deployment, when the storm had torn all their delicate plans to shreds. The ship was going nowhere, the Coast Guard was shining searchlights right in his face, and (worst of all) the canisters in the hold had ruptured. The purple mist seeping up through the corners of the cargo doors reminded him constantly of that fact, and that the gas masks had perhaps a half hour left now before the filters were thoroughly contaminated. When that happened, they would all go mad and kill each other. If he left the ship and tried to get to a safehouse, he would almost certainly be arrested and dealt with in prison to keep him from talking. If he managed to reach the safehouse, he would be executed for spectacular failure. He was all out of options. To top it all off, the gas (which had always reacted unpredictably with water) would soon spread into the ocean and scatter on the wind, driving sharks and sea birds and everything in-between to madness. And, of course, leaving behind samples to be analyzed and counteracted, rendering the long years spent developing and perfecting this new weapon worthless. That much, at least, he still had the power to prevent. He would keep the formula out of enemy hands at all costs. "Ensign," Sixty-Two grimly ordered, "initiate Protocol Scorch."