AEGIS Assemble?

[souffle_girl]

OK, I'm starting to think my character Nano Angel would fare well as an AEGIS agent, considering they're the one who saved her from being a lab rat in the first place, so I'm wondering: is there a team of AEGIS aligned heroes, something along the line of the Avengers? And if there's nothing like that, why not set it up?

[Ari]

Souffle_girl, there are several reasons why AEGIS does not have a superheroic arm, and just a handful of powered agents.

1. Thanks to the Patriot's reports on his comrades' missions being released to and used by the Communist witch-hunter Senator Joeseph McCarthy, back in the 1950s, AEGIS(founded, remember, by the Patriot after he left superheroing) still has a certain unpleasant atmosphere regarding superheroes. It's sometimes seen by the more free-spirited heroes as the very thing Jack Simmons wanted to avoid, a blindly-loyal extension of the US government that wants to get every super's real identity on file and into its service.

2. Related to the above, most superheroes just want to do their stuff without government oversight or involvement. They follow and enforce their country's laws, but don't want to be bound by obligation and regulation to a higher power.

3. The Avengers movie wasn't out yet when the setting was created.

4. A lot of the backing and support the agency provides is easily replicable by a super-team NOT funded by the governmental body of the local landmass. It's a job, not really a vocation or grand calling like joining the Freedom League, especially since SHADOW has been lying low and gathering its strength out of sight for decades.

5. Government-backed superhero teams are almost invariably corrupt or evil or both or just plain incompetent. Most people playing superheroes, as evidenced by our own PCs, prefer for them to be freer-ranging and without anyone to answer to or tell them what is to be done.

6. It's a S.H.I.E.L.D.-style agency. Normal people doing extranormal this with the right technology, training and information. It having superheroes either crowds out the agents or else makes them largely redundant.

[Raveled]

6. It's a S.H.I.E.L.D.-style agency. Normal people doing extranormal this with the right technology, training and information. It having superheroes either crowds out the agents or else makes them largely redundant.

... That being said, there have been at least two different AEGIS superheroes in the past. I think the real issue is that there's never been a lot of AEGIS PCs, and certainly never enough that had the correct mix of personalities to make a successful team.

[Ari]

That is very true. There just isn't enough volume of agency-affiliated PCs to make up a "proper" team, and summoning random supers from thin air to make up the difference is kludgy and contrived at best.