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Sunday, December 3, 2023 The pop-up shop hadn't been Winifred's idea. Conducting business entirely though correspondence hadn't been a foreign concept to her even before spending the better part of a decade acclimating to the 'future' and minimizing face-to-face interactions suited her just fine. Chrysopoeia had grown considerably as a company in the fast few years, however and both the marketing consultantation team she'd hired through AEON and her in-house 'social media' person had agreed that a physical presence was a must during the Yuletide season. Given the bespoke - and sometimes volatile - nature of her products that meant that Winifred herself needed to be on-hand. And so the petite Englishwoman paced about the polished wooden tables in the small Hanover storefront, the combination of warm tones and glassware evoking some idealized remembrance of the laboratories of her youth. She wore a pine green sleeveless turtleneck, leaving the sleeve tattoo on her left arm on display, metallic ink that caught the light to look like spun wire, along with loose black trousers. Her actual lab wear was in the consultation room behind her in an attempt to look more inviting, an affectation her imperious resting expression already made something of a challenge.

Face forward, true believers! In the spirit of Marvel Team-Up and The Brave and The Bold comes Freedom's Finest! Each month I'll be running a team-up adventure for a newer player character and one of my own characters at request! The idea is to give new players and established players with new characters a chance to dive into the world of Freedom City and beyond, letting them show their stuff and jumpstarting connections with existing heroes, just like those classic team-up comics! Naturally not every team-up idea will make it into a monthly installment of Freedom's Finest, with preference being given to players who have been active for less than a year and to pitches that spark my interest! What should a pitch look like? Something along these lines: "My super-serious dark avenger and the wise-cracking Jack of all Blades arrive to foil the same jewel heist and have to overcome their personality differences to work together and stop the thieves!" "My impetuous telepath is out patrolling after curfew and runs into Midnight. Realizing she can't read his mind, she mistakes the shadowy figure for a villain and leaps into action!" "My pyrokinetic character is a student at Joseph Clark High School. Maybe he could go to Wail for advice on whether to maintain a secret identity or go public, now that he's got powers?" In other words, post in this thread telling me a little about your character, which of my PCs you think they should team-up with and why! The idea can be combat-based or purely social, so long as it's interesting! Details can be worked out in private messages and ideas that aren't picked for the following month will still be up for consideration going forward! It bears mentioning that this is hardly the only way for a new player or new character to get involved in threads, it's merely one more opportunity - and a good way for my own characters to meet some fresh faces, too! So who's available for team-ups? Glad you asked! Jack of all Blades - This community-minded, acrobatic hero creates energy swords and leads the low-power, high-impact team The Interceptors! The only thing faster than his blade is his tongue; his confrontational style is amusing to some and aggravating to others! Jill O'Cure - Younger sister to Jack of all Blades, Jill is a part-time medical student, part-time EMT, full-time source of deadpan snark. She uses her force fields and healing powers in defence of the West End and her biokinetic attacks to bring villains to their knees! Midnight II - Grandson and heir to Freedom City's original mystery man, Midnight is a shadowy figure of few words. Unmatched on a motorcycle and with a gadget for every situation, he brings his tactical acumen to the Liberty League's fight against fascism across the multiverse. Wail - The last surviving member of the 70s super team 1-800-JUSTICE, today Keith LaMarr works as a civics teacher at Joseph Clark High School. That doesn't stop Lincoln's sonic shouting, super tough, brick house of a hero from teaching fools a lesson! Ghost Girl - A cold, lonely death in the forests outside Thunder Bay was the end of one story and the start of another! This teenage poltergeist is a ray of sunshine and the chill of the grave all wrapped up in one incorporeal, effervescent package, freezing evil in its tracks! Set - In the Silver Age, Set the Destroyer was one of the Freedom League's most dangerous foes but that was then and this is now! This social media savvy rogue is looking to rehabilitate his - and just as often her - tarnished image and to look good doing it! Sekhmet - Not everyone is so ready to believe that the reincarnated Set has reformed and this warrior goddess has been saddled with keeping and eye on the trickster's antics. While she's in the mortal realm She Before Whom Evil Trembles stands ever stalwart! Rock - The stoney strongman of Captain Eclipse's crew on the Horizon is a walking quarry for hire with a heart of gold and fists of granite! Bodyguard, treasure hunter, smuggler, freedom fighter and more, you don't want to get stuck between Rock and a hard place! Nae-Dae - Rock's four-armed, foul-tempered companion, this Irreran wrench monkey can fix anything with nuts and bolts and is liable to try stealing anything that isn't nailed down! Sticking up for an underdog, though, is when she brings out the big guns! Reagent - A concoction gone wrong encased this teenage alchemist in stone, taking her from Victorian England to modern day Freedom City! If the culture shock wasn't enough, when in danger she transforms into an unstoppable behemoth: the Alkahest! You'll find links to all of their sheets in my signature. So be brave! Be bold! Be counted among Freedom's Finest!

Trinity Hospital June 28, 2017 "Another one?" Ellie Espadas asked, watching as a weakly groaning man in multiple layers of worn clothing was wheeled past on a stretcher. Behind the check-in desk Joanne simply hummed an affirmation, focusing on the data she was entering. Ellie couldn't blame her for her laissez-faire attitude. This had to make at least a dozen similar cases over the past few days: people left weak and drifting in and out of consciousness. If this case matched the others after a night's sleep with an IV he'd be up and about with full-body aches and hangover-like symptoms for his troubles that would gradually subside over the course of the day. The prevailing assumption among the staff was that a new recreational drug was to blame, though so far none of the blood work had shown any evidence to support the theory. It didn't help that several of the sufferers had turned out to have warrants out ranging from petty theft to assault; one of them had reportedly collapsed in the middle of an attempted mugging. With the look of a man getting off of a double shift, Hernandez wandered over to join the so-far one-sided conversation, fingers laced behind his bald head. "Picked that one up outside a convenience store. Owner found him in a heap while he was taking out the trash, said something about it being dark or seeing a big shadow? I dunno, guy's English wasn't great in the first place and he was shook over the whole thing, yeah?" The big man rubbed his face and leaned heavily against the wall. "Had a baseball bat next to him so I'm guessing armed robbery. Braugher's all 'don't assume' but what, he's a Comets fan? C'mon." It was Ellie's turn to make a vague murmur in reply, eyes narrowing slightly as she watched the supposed robber disappear behind a pair of double doors. A junkie collapsing in the middle of trying to get money for another hit was a tidy enough story but the patients she'd seen didn't seem like they were going through withdrawal, they seemed... drained. There were stranger things than designer drugs in Freedom City. "Where was that convenience store, again...?" "Hm? Oh, y'know, the one a block down from St. Sebastians, on the corner with the yellow sign. I hear they found a few more like that over in Greenbank, too. Who knows how many that makes now." Hernandez realized a little belatedly that he was talking largely to himself and a still disinterested Joanne as Ellie had already begun to stride purposefully toward the door.

April 1, 2017 It wasn't that Winifred Wei wasn't allowed into the city by herself, per se, rather everyone involved agreed that given her condition it would have been monumentally unwise. Still, prudence had never ranked high among her gifts and the restriction chafed. Browsing the breathtaking wealth of information available via the Academy's computer lab kept her reasonably occupied but while picking through the bibliography of references on a poorly maintained page the displaced Victorian was surprised to come across the title of a long out-of-print book written by one Heinrich Schreiber. What Winifred knew which the site's amateur scholar could not have was the Schreiber was the pen name of one Nika Azadeh Sharifi, one of London's famous 'rogue scientists' - famous, at least, in her own day. Old Madar Nika had been wizened by the time Winifred had met her, only half coherent, though that had still placed her among the more reliable in that community of peers. She'd never heard of the older woman having had any of her work published in earnest, only the occasional pamphlet but as she began researching in earnest she learned that 'Properties of Humours and Tinctures Thereof' had been complied well after its author had passed away, complied from recovered notebooks as an oddity more than serious research. She had known, of course, that in the century and a half she'd spent transmuted into a statue anyone she had ever known had surely passed away but it was still a sobering thought. Further digging and several phone calls later the young alchemist had learned that against all odds a shop in Freedom City's West End had a copy of the book on its shelves. The sensible thing to do would have been to explain the situation to one of her friends and plan a day out; the book was unlikely to disappear within the week, after all. Instead she called upon skills learned from watching the cagier of her circle to slip away in the early hours of the weekend, intent on holding Madar Nika's work in her own hands without delay.

September 16, 2016 With the summer months come and gone sundown was coming earlier to Freedom City with each passing day. Even in the dim dusk the lamps flanking the monorail track cast stark shadows on the cement ravine below, the pillars that held the track aloft creating even bars of light and darkness. Marring that pattern came a pair of headlights, accompanied by screeching tires and unmistakable bursts of gunfire. The rust red sedan crashed through the steel link fence, hanging in the air briefly before slamming down onto the sloped cement with a great crash and screech of protesting metal. Almost lost in that cacophony was the whisper quiet purr of the inky black motorcycle in pursuit. Clad similarly in black its rider practically melted into the bike's silhouette in the dim light, a crimson wing pattern up its sides the only detail separating it from a black brushstroke across the scene. It easily followed through the path opened in the fence and sped after the sedan, wearing back and forth to avoid the increasingly panicked fire from the car's occupants.

The first thing John Blake was aware of as he awoke was that he was most certainly not in his bed. The metal floor below him was cold and unyielding while the harsh blue light and background buzz of electricity surrounding him wasn't doing anything to relieve his pounding headache. The sight that greeted him as he forced open his eyes wasn't any more comforting. The teenager found himself sitting at the base of a cone of crackling blue energy the projected down from above him, trapping him in a circle of space no more than seven or eight feet across. The room outside his unorthodox cell was dark and details were difficult to make out but he could see that his cone was one of many in a long row stretching out into the distance. The wall behind him curved slightly, giving him the impression of a hull, which would have explained the faint vibration he felt through the drool-damp cheek resting against the deck plating. Getting to his feet John discovered that he was still in the sleep clothes he'd put on the night before and that he was not alone. Standing in the cone to his left was a pile of stones in the rough shape of a humanoid figure, rough edges fitted tougher to form thick limbs and hulking shoulders topped by a squat, lantern-jawed head. For a moment the human mistook it for a statue until it turned its gaze upon him, two wells of burning red where eyes might have been. After a moment the creature raised a hand in affable greeting and said, "Rock."

June 8th, 2015 The citizens of Freedom City tended to be a politically active sort, as keen to hold protests as rallies, to throw parades and circulate petitions. There was something about taking to the streets to make a spectacular demonstration that was simply baked into the city's core. Even so, there was only so much of the specific mechanics of actual government that the average citizen was honestly willing to wrap their head around so it would be understandable if the name Stewart Bench didn't ring any immediate bells. If he'd emerged with surprising speed as the front runner to be the new city councilman for one of the western wards in the next election, well, who had really heard of any of the candidates before the campaign signs started going up? If his poll numbers indicated a noticeably higher voter turnout rate than previous terms, well, it was just nice to see the youth of today exercising their democratic rights. It had only taken Ellie Stein a little bit of digging to realize that those numbers simply didn't add up and while creative use of statistics might have been a way of life for politicians it was enough to convince her to investigate further. The more she looked into Bench, the less she like what she found. Eventually it was the blue and silver clad heroine Echo who peered down at his campaign offices, the lights still on at this late hour, ready for some more hands-on research...

July 12, 2015 "Bequeath all of thy paltry trinkets unto my satchel or face the wrath my master!" the armored figure shouted at the terrified sales clerk from behind a gold and sapphire hued helmet styled to be reminiscent of a baboon. The plasma cannons built into his gauntlets, used moments before to blast sizable holes in the lavish skylights of the jewelry store, said that the armor was cutting edge while the style and decoration were obviously nods to a much older aesthetic. Behind him another five brigands in similarly ancient Egyptian themed power armor were busying themselves smashing into glass displays and cowing patrons and employees alike into silence. One stood at the doorway, wielding a massive spear that on a second glance was tipped with an intimidating barrel rather than a pointed blade and making it clear to mall security and good samaritans alike that they would do better to simply wait for the robbery to be over. Already the normally busy walkway of the shopping center's second floor had been deserted by civilians. Licking his lips, the shop's manager, a well dressed man with a shaved head and impeccable goatee, looked at the sack being held in front of him and nodded jerkily. "O-of course. Let me just--" Left hand inches from the silent alarm trigger below the display he abruptly found his field of view dominated by that same wrist mounted blaster, the heat from its first discharge still radiating from it like the hot breath of a predator. "Test not the patience of a servant to the gods, mortal!" the thief snarled, towering almost a full head over his victim. "The jewels! Now!"

April 4th, 2015 The door to the convenience store swung open with a chime from the bells hung above it and the resounding impact of the boot smashing into it. "Hey! I need a hand over here!" In her customary crimson and black, Jill O'Cure burst into the store in enough of a hurry to almost knock a rack of corn chips over, a boy of about ten or eleven unconscious in her arms. The heroine set the child down of the counter in front of the shocked cashier, unceremoniously sweeping a display of novelty butane lighters to the ground. "He got hit with some sort of fever," she explained, losing patience as the teenager behind the counter stared at her blankly, mouth agape. "Hey! Pay attention! I've got him stable and he shouldn't be contagious but he needs water and an ambulance, got it?" "Ah, r-right, I'll call for one right now, right," the cashier stammered, snapping her mouth shut over braces and reaching for the yellowing corded phone with chipped nails. She took a second look at Jill and worked up the courage to blurt, "Is this, like... a super thing?" The masked EMT-B paused for a moment, her shoulders dropping slightly in her dark red jacket. "...not sure. Maybe. This is the fifth case I've run into tonight and the symptoms are getting worse." She looked down at the unconscious boy for a moment before heading back for the door. "I need to get back out there. Take care of him, alright?" The teenager nodded more resolutely this time and Jill was out the door again in a sprint.

May 25, 2015 "...thanks to the selfless commitment and bravery all those who..." It wasn't that the sentiment wasn't heartfelt but the halting, uneven delivery by teenaged grandson of one of the veterans in gathered in the small park next to the VFW building did nothing to breathe new life into the paint-by-numbers speech and after growing up on military base after military base it was nothing Vicki Adams couldn't have recited even without the cue cards the kid was relying upon. As Memorial Day ceremonies went it was on the more solemn side, attended mainly by aging veterans and their family members but the promise of bingo and a raffle with an ArcheTech tablet as the grand prize robbed it of a little of it gravitas. More than anything it was a welcome opportunity to gather generations together and consider how lucky they were to be there together. The small cemetery on the other side of the park, its ornate fence lying just past the folding table holding the punch bowl and bingo hopper, was a sobering reminder of that. Looking serene as the bright sunlight shone over neat, well maintained rows of gravestones it was a quiet oasis next to the sounds of squeaking metal chairs, buzz from an inexpertly deployed sound system and intermittent coughing.