Quinn Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 Player’s Name: Quinn Character’s Name: Chain Gang Power Level: 8 (120/120) Tradeoffs: None Unspent PP: 0 Progress to Bronze Status: 0/30 In Brief: A gentle giant with friends and a bar, infused with power from a bungled ritual. Alternate Identities: Douglas Tree Identity: Public Birthplace: Freedom City Occupation: Hero, bartender, owner of Three Olde Kegs Bar & Grill. Affiliation: Fifth Street Family. Family: Herbert and Mary Tree (parents, deceased) Age: 30 (D.O.B Apr. 20, 1981) Apparent Age: N/A Gender: Male Ethnicity: Caucasian Height: 6’4†Weight: 180 lbs Eyes: Green Hair: Bald Description: Doug’s transformation was, sadly, not kind to his physical appearance. He’s a monster of a man, built like a football linebacker; huge shoulders, ham-sized fists with claw-esque fingers, slightly over-long arms, and thick, strong legs. His visage was changed drastically as well, to a monstrous face with sharp teeth, a wide grin, and clever green eyes instead of his former baby blues. The fact that his skin is also a somewhat dull green doesn’t help much either. He usually skips the costume route, given that it’s hard to really hide who he is, and goes around in his regular outfit of a plain white undershirt and old blue jeans, with the chain of his name wrapped around his waist like an ersatz belt. Other than the obvious markers, he’s also chosen to get a few tribal-esque tattoos done up his arms, with Fifth Street Family in fancy letters across his back shoulderblades. History: Douglas Tree was a nice guy. Everybody knew it down in The Fens, everyone who’d spend an evening shooting the breeze at the Three Olde Kegs, a quiet hole-in-the-wall bar where the drinks were cheap, the pool tables comfortably ragged, and the other customers had a friendly ear. Anyone was welcome at the Kegs, so long as they paid for a single round for the house, and gave their keys to the bartender when they ordered their third drink, and there was a standing rule; all heroes ate and drank free (not that any really showed up to take advantage of it, but nobody’d ever think of taking that sign down from above the bar). Douglas owned that bar, a bartender, bouncer, cook, and ersatz therapist all in one. Some of the customers thought it should be called Doug’s Place, but he always met those comments with a big ol’ grin and a mug of something cool and frothy, or a slab of grill-seared meat and potatoes. Frank O’Dell’s marriage was on the rocks, and Tree gave him a couch to crash on until he made up with his wife. Nicky Lynch’s car broke down in front of the bar, and Tree got the boys together to push that sucker off the road. Jack Martin’s dojo was having trouble earning enough cash to stay solvent, and it was the boys from the Kegs who got together and held a big fundraising barbecue. Bob Ball’s repair shop was having trouble thanks to some local gangers, and it was Tree and the guys who put together a neighbourhood watch that soon saw those jerks behind bars. The boys from the Kegs were a close-knit community, and Doug always saw them as sort of a family. Douglas Tree was a tough guy, too. Anyone running a business in The Fens’d have to be. More often than not he’d have to be a bit rough with some rowdies from whatever gang’d decide to show up for a beer and a bash, though he was always careful that they could leave under their own power. Once he even ran a drunk supervillain out of the Kegs, although the guy was a gadgeteer whose toys had recently been busted in a failed job, and the cops were mighty grateful when they arrived to find the dude tied upside-down to a lamppost right outside the rather cheery joint. A couple of times bad guys’d be causing trouble in the Fens, or their minions’d be trying to take over the whole city, and it’d be the Three Olde Kegs that’d be a bastion of safety as Doug and the regulars took in as many people as could fit, guarding it as best they could. Still, even if you had a rep as a nice guy and a tough guy, that didn’t exactly mean you were immune to the nasty business that could happen in Freedom City to its citizens from time to time. For Douglas Tree, that came when he was walking to a convenience store in the wee hours of the morning, and everything went black as he passed an alleyway a few blocks from his bar. The bartender woke up chained to a slab of rock in a decrepit warehouse, an orb of acrid green energy being formed over his chest as men in purple robes surrounded him, chanting. A small group of occultists, trying their very first ritual, had been lucky enough (debatable, in Doug’s opinion) to catch Tree walking home, and had their very own human shell to use for their ethereal lord and master. Said lord and master, some eldritch abomination with an unintelligible name, was going to use Doug as a conduit into the world he knew, to wreak havoc and conquer as was it’s wont. Doug, quite reasonably, took a rather dim view of this idea, particularly the realization that he’d be stuck with his body as a time-share, and struggled against his bonds to no avail. The energy sank lower and lower towards him, and as he struggled further he could feel his body changing and morphing as tendrils of it began connecting to it here and there… Then the cavalry arrived. A band of regulars from the Three Olde Kegs came crashing through the door of the warehouse, quite literally with an old pickup truck. Jimmy Tin had been nursing a headache by leaning on his bedroom window and enjoying the night air when he’d seen Doug get jumped, and it hadn’t taken him very long to call the cops and round up a few of the boys for a search party. The cops did their best, but it was the regulars who’d picked up the trail first. Frank O’Dell jumped off of the back of the truck, tackling three of the cultists to the ground before they could complete their parts in the spell. Nicky Lynch swung an aluminum bat with aplomb, catching the leader of the cultists in the gut and causing him to double-over, mis-speaking the final words of the ritual. Jack Martin punched here, there, and everywhere, holding the robed men back while Bob Ball hauled out a blowtorch to cut Tree loose. And everyone helped haul the poor guy out before an unearthly scream from the ether and unleashed ritual energy from the botched spell caused the whole place to collapse. The band got back to the Kegs around midnight, and huddled over a lot of bottles while they looked over the now-transformed Douglas. The voice was the same, fortunately, and he didn’t feel that different, save that he seemed a lot heavier, and a hell of a lot tougher. He could move faster, catch the distinct scents of every bottle of alcohol behind the bar, and put a fist through concrete with ease. On a bet, he went outside and lifted up the pickup they’d used to escape the warehouse, both his and the regulars’ eyes going buggy as he hefted it, grunting with exertion. The band of regulars sat about after that, drinks all but forgotten, into the wee hours of the evening, and came to a resolution. They’d done their best to keep their neighbourhood safe as citizens, but now their good friend and, well, leader had been, for lack of a better word, changed. He’d become more than he was before, he was stronger, faster, hardier. Like…a hero. Admittedly, an extremely ugly one (a roll flew through the air to bounce off of the head of the guy who said that comment), but this was a golden opportunity to start taking back the streets like they’d always wanted to. To act instead of just react. The five men made a pact in that bar, right at sunrise. They’d always acted like a community and family before, for people that needed it. And now they’d act like a community and family for the whole city. They’d go up against the gangs and the crime syndicates, fight back against things that would snatch people in alleyways, stand up against the supervillains that’d try and threaten the little guy. They’d be the Fifth Street Family, named for the street the Kegs were on. And Douglas, the big man himself, wrapped the chain he’d carried all the way from the warehouse around his waist, still thrumming with strange energy, and cracked his knuckles. Cause with his new family backing him up, no way he’d let ‘em down. He took the name Chain Gang (the group wasn’t entirely sober at the time when they came up with the name, unfortunately), and when more regulars showed up, they raised a cheer and signed on too, until practically everyone who walked into that bar gleefully signed on, knowing they’d do anything to help out on this grand endeavour. In a haze of camaraderie and good cheer, they swore they’d rock the underworld, no matter what. Evil beware, Chain Gang and the Fifth Street Family were on the job! Personality and Motivations: Douglas Tree’s motivation has always been to help others, one of his favourite sayings being that “his momma raised him rightâ€. When he runs the Kegs, he’s a barside therapist, listening to people’s problems, offering advice, dispensing wisdom along with pints. As a hero, he’s a crusader for the little guy, diving headfirst into the first problem he comes across on his patrols, and equally as willing to thrash a drug dealer’s operation as get a kitten from a tree. The problem being that his visage can often cause people to see him as a bad guy, which has resulted in more than a few unnecessary delays as he explains his status, or distrust from people he’s actually trying to help. He feels a great deal of responsibility towards the Fifth Street Family, viewing them as equal parts his own family and a support network for helping even more people. He knows full well that if one of them got in danger, he’d drop everything to get them out of trouble, and worries constantly that some bad guy might take advantage of that, too. Power Descriptions: Doug’s abilities have all stemmed from the same source, the strange otherworldly energy that warped his being in anticipation of becoming a proper vessel for an eldritch abomination. Luckily, he escaped before it truly affected his mind, leaving himself only partly warped, and his physical abilities increased nearly tenfold; incredible resilience, whipcord muscles on lengthened arms, fingers that can almost double as claws when he wishes them to, a remarkably sensitive nose that can scent the strangest things, from the natural to the supernatural, and the ability to shrug off even the most debilitating illness or disease. Powers & Tactics: Doug’s new powers didn’t exactly make him a huge bruiser or powerhouse like the kind he’d seen fighting in the City proper, or in the comics. In fact, all the mutations granted him were the ability to take a bit more abuse, move a bit faster, and dish out a lot more damage. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t use them, and he chose to adapt these augmented skills to what he already knew best. Chain Gang’s fighting style is heavily reminiscent of what you’d see in a bar brawl, unsurprisingly. Fast moving, hard strikes, meant to put an opponent down as fast as possible and move on to the next. He’s a solid grappler if he can get a good hold, and against large numbers of thugs he’s hell on wheels, charging in with fists pumping. Still, sometimes he can get a little crazy (most of the Family suspects this is due to whatever eldritch nasty caused his transformation), and he does sometimes demonstrate a somewhat disconcerting joy when diving into the fray, far more than he used to just ejecting rowdies from the Kegs. Complications: Fearsome Visage – Douglas may be one of the sweetest guys you’d ever meet, but the fact that he’s built like a Jager crossed with a linebacker can result in problems if people don’t know he’s actually trying to help. Doug’s Place – Three Olde Kegs is his home and business, and he loves that old building dearly; if it comes in danger, or, heaven forbid, be destroyed, it’d hurt the poor guy horribly. Fifth Street Family – A great deal of Doug’s resources are tied up with the Family, and they’re spread all over Freedom City; he feels a lot of responsibility towards them since they help him so much, and would drop everything in a heartbeat if one of them is in trouble or needs help. Big Sweetheart – For all of his mass and looks, Doug really is a big softie, and while that’s often endearing, it can also be troublesome; he tends to believe the better of people, even if it opens him up to a sucker punch, and a villain who takes advantage of that… Eldrich Mutations – Chain Gang’s power comes from a strange and otherworldly force that has infused his very being, and it can sometimes affect him in very strange and unexpected ways, and at the oddest times. Abilities: 8 + 10 + 12 + 0 + 4 + 0 = 34 pp STR 26/18 (+8/+4) DEX 20 (+5) CON 22 (+6) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 12 + 12 = 24 pp ATK: +6 (+8 melee) DEF: +8 (+6, +2 Dodge Focus) (+3 flat-footed) Grapple: +15 Initiative: +9 Saves: 2 + 2 + 2 = 6 pp TOU +8 (+6 Con, +2 Density) (2/0 Impervious) FORT +8 (+6 Con, +2) REF +7 (+5 Dex, +2) WILL +4 (+2 Wis, +2) Skills: 48 r=12 pp Intimidate 12 (+12) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Diplomacy 10 (+10) Gather Information 10 (+10) Feats: 18 pp All-Out Attack, Attack Focus: Melee 2 Dodge Focus 2, Connected, Contacts, Evasion 2, Fearless, Improved Initiative, Luck, Move-By Action, Power Attack, Startle, Takedown Attack 2, Uncanny Dodge (olfactory) Powers: 26 pp Density 4 (Extra: Duration (Permanent) [+0]) (PFs: Buoyant, Innate) [14 pp] Immunity 3 (aging, disease, poison) [3 pp] Penetrating Unarmed Damage 4 [4 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Senses 4 (Acute Accurate Tracking Olfactory) [4 pp] costs abilities 34 + combat 24 + saves 6 + skills 12/48+ feats 18 + powers 26 = 120/120 pts
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