tags Emerald City metaplot

[Ari]

Since Freedom City and Bedlam City don't really benefit from having a metaplot/coordinated direction, but Emerald does by nature of its more open and vague arrangement, I say it should have one.

 

Preliminary suggested outline:

 

Early threads(1-2) where they're just starting out. Who? Makes no odds to me. They get more or less established to the public and are initially just random curiosities fighting random mundane crooks/disasters or helping people with random problems.

 

A collective one where they face Emerald City's first public supervillain: Faster Pussycat, who debuts stealing some outlandishly sensitive information leading to the revelation that Emerald City South's District Attorney, Stanley Everett, is in the pocket of organized crime and has been lightening sentences for people in the gang that's been blackmailing him. This gives the local police a lengthy list of suspects and leads which springboards the new heroes into a very asymmetric fight against the Malakov Mafiya and the Chamber.

 

At first Koschei the Deathless and his comrades in crime are content to just make the south shore heroes look bad, arrange for crimebusting debacles, meddling in their private lives and doing all they can to make getting involved personally painful and difficult. This escalates into attempts on their lives, those of their families and a gradual influx of super-crooks. The few times they do get anything done the local AEGIS branch is always there to mess things up. Meanwhile public interest runs out of control with rampant speculation and a flood of attention and intense scrutiny over anything the heroes do in the open.

 

Complicating matters further is the Ascension Event, where humans and Morlocks twisted by a monster living underneath Emerald City burst out and attack the upper world. The discovery of how the Emerald City government has been shunting homeless people into the subterranean Undercity for decades, creating the circumstances leading to the Ascension, creates a national scandal. The heroes are simultaneously blamed by city leadership for this black mark on the Emerald's reputation and transformed into celebrities for resolving the crisis. The local AEGIS branch, weakened and bloated by years of top-level corruption, performs disgracefully badly, so badly that Nat. Dir. Powers and newly-promoted Director Calpurnia Maddox finally have the excuse they need to totally restructure the agency. Maddox formally apologizes for the harm AEGIS has done and henceforth agents turn from obscurantist bureaucratic MIBs to some of the best help a superhero could want.  

 

Meanwhile the enigmatic Nightwatch, a tight-knit unit of powerful vigilantes who fight the fights nobody else will in the dark places nobody else can go, arrive in the Emeralds. Their first act is to obliterate all trace of the local Blood Brothers vampire clan, a mere prelude to their private and hard-hitting war on crime. They mostly keep their operations out of the way of lighter, less experienced heroes. Mostly. That they're a bunch of bloodthirsty opportunists using the hand-tying heroes to keep attention and pressure off themselves while working under the self-constricted Chamber's nose is ideally something that takes a very long time to unravel.

 

The major companies in Emerald City start to capitalize on the hero craze. Those that can't get the new heroes to sign on with them import some from across the Pacific Rim, bringing an eclectic bunch of hyper-competitive corporate-logoed professional heroes who aren't the least shy about trying to steal the "local's" thunder. Across the river several members of Project: Safeguard are called in to help deal with the influx of supercrime and to protect the dangerous secrets at Joint Base Clark-Gordon. And the nuclear weapons at Fort Brewer. Despite their differences, the largely unaffiliated supers, dubbed the 'Emerald City Knights' by the press, are able to combine their strengths and save the city from destruction at the hands of the meta-supremacists of MEDUSA.

 

Things take a very dramatic turn when the Emeralds'  next 'official' villain appears: the enigmatic Commander, an armored, secretive genius who controls people through nanotechnology and quickly shows a mastery of misdirection and infiltration. Initially just hired help for the Chamber to reassert control she soon starts on a project of her own to control every last one of the Knights and, like everything else, is soon off the rails.

 

There's more, but I feel this is more than enough for a start. Thoughts, concerns?

[Raveled]

Do we have enough PCs based out of EC to have a metaplot, yet?

[Ari]

Of course not. But so far as I'm concerned >1=good enough.

[The Sailor]

I'm sorry I've been lax on the character end of things. I'll try to get something done this week.

[Avenger Assembled]

This looks very good to me, Ari. How can we help you put this into practice?

[April]

Small (micro?) events to set tone or EC specific vignettes to set tone?

[Ari]

Probably? I don't know. The closest we've done so far to something like this is the Incursion Event. And work is sapping all my energy this week so my brain can't brain good.

 

Suppose one option, taking from your suggestion, Nick, is sort of interactive events. Where a Thing happens and the players do mini-threads about how it effects them(if applicable).

 

But yeah I actually have no idea until the weekend, sorry.

[Ari]

That and very very close coordinating with the other players. The only way something like that can actually be any good is if everyone has something to do and some stake in it to keep it going.

[Avenger Assembled]

Okay, this sounds pretty great - nice job, Ari! 

 

Is there anything else that needs to be done?

[Avenger Assembled]

Okay, it looks like the first thread that needs to be run is the one vs. Faster Pussycat. 

 

Ari, is that something you wanted to run, or should I line up a different Guide/volunteer for it?

[Ari]

No, I will do it. I have recovered sufficiently and will resume regular posting starting tomorrow. 

 

And to the earlier question,  I can't accurately predict what we'll need,  we'll just have to see.