emerald city Emerald City Crime Wave!

[Raveled]

Reading through the Emerald Knights campaign has given me an idea for an adventure within Emerald City. The short version is that one or another supervillain -- likely FOE or the Chessmaster -- is going on a recruiting drive. That means a lot of petty and not-so petty crime popping up in Emerald as various supercriminals are given auditions. Ideally this would start with a number of solo or semi-solo threads as individual PCs stop individual groups, then track them back to some common mastermind. At the climax the PCs can come together to face this foe and strike a blow for, uh, peace and justice and apple pie and all that.

Edited January 25, 2017 by Raveled

[Avenger Assembled]

Sign me up! 

[Tiffany Korta]

Are you going to be able to handle different PL levels? Because this seems like the kind of thing that Emerald Spider would get involved with.

[Raveled]

4 minutes ago, Tiffany Korta said:

Are you going to be able to handle different PL levels? Because this seems like the kind of thing that Emerald Spider would get involved with.

 

Me handle this? What happened to Ari?

 

Speaking seriously, I don't think that should be a problem. Spider would likely be breaking up a mundane bank robbery or the like instead of a kidnapper fleeing across the city skyline, but there should be room for everyone.

[olopi]

Crime?! In Sha'ir's city?!

 

He cannot stand for this!

Sign me up

[Brown Dynamite]

Rav's sort of reading Ari and my mind in some of our plans, so I says go for broke man!

[TheAbsurdist]

Asad can go coast to coast.

[Curious Key]

I've told Ari about my hopes to get Warp involved with, entangled with, and eventually move to the Emerald Cities before. That still stands.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Curious Key

[KnightDisciple]

I would definitely like to get Sun Walker involved in something a bit meatier, if for no other reason than to try and stretch myself a bit. 

[Raveled]

Alright, let's get some details nailed down. so far we have

• Edge/Citizen
• Blue Jay
• Emerald Spider
• Sha'ir
• Sun Walker

With Asad and Warp as maybes. AA, which character specifically are you going to use? And everyone else, can you think of a good challenge for your PCs? KD, i sort of have an image of a descendant of Sha Wujing causing problems in the harbor, while Sun Walker bounces around on his staff to beat him. olopi, obviously someone is stealing something from WestRock, but what? Tiff, what about something like a duplicator burgling an entire mall at once; it would give plenty of opportunities to strain the Spider Rig. Jay, of course, is probably facing a something in the forest, something like illegal logging or mining. Asad is probably there for business things, so let's say someone -- a starlet, because it's Asad -- is being kidnapped. Warp, well, why is Warp out in EC? She's a student, but what is she studying?

Edited January 26, 2017 by Raveled

[olopi]

Hm, I’m not entirely sure what one would steal from WestRock directly. If anything, it’d probably be some software they’re currently developing, and that would probably happen through some sort of hacking. Which could show off some interesting things about Sha’ir, but that’s up to you.

Something that sounds more like it would fit into the Crime Wave would be WestRock’s dispatch team being attacked to some degree while they’re working on the software in some place, an office building, warehouse or laboratory perhaps?

[Raveled]

Then the question is, who would WestRock be developing software for? Who are their big clients and what kind of software do they make?

[Tiffany Korta]

Spdr there's no "e" it just happens to resemble the name of an arachnid . But being pushed to the limit's and just making it through is the spider way so sounds good to me!

[KnightDisciple]

14 hours ago, Raveled said:

Alright, let's get some details nailed down. so far we have

• Edge/Citizen
• Blue Jay
• Emerald Spider
• Sha'ir
• Sun Walker

With Asad and Warp as maybes. AA, which character specifically are you going to use? And everyone else, can you think of a good challenge for your PCs? KD, i sort of have an image of a descendant of Sha Wujing causing problems in the harbor, while Sun Walker bounces around on his staff to beat him. olopi, obviously someone is stealing something from WestRock, but what? Tiff, what about something like a duplicator burgling an entire mall at once; it would give plenty of opportunities to strain the Spider Rig. Jay, of course, is probably facing a something in the forest, something like illegal logging or mining. Asad is probably there for business things, so let's say someone -- a starlet, because it's Asad -- is being kidnapped. Warp, well, why is Warp out in EC? She's a student, but what is she studying?

 

Well, the main problem is that Sun Walker has no staff at this time. He fights with only his fists and feet and tail! 

[Avenger Assembled]

Citizen is my only EC character - so he's the one I'd be using. 

[Ari]

Knight, Sun Wukong's staff was formerly held, as you well know, by a dragon. And the local Triad, the Golden Dragon Society, has an interest in mystic artifacts. What I am saying is that there's a binding tie here. 

[KnightDisciple]

48 minutes ago, Ari said:

Knight, Sun Wukong's staff was formerly held, as you well know, by a dragon. And the local Triad, the Golden Dragon Society, has an interest in mystic artifacts. What I am saying is that there's a binding tie here. 

Fair enough, and I'm willing to work in the angle, I just don't have the points for it, and haven't yet written a story around him getting a staff or the like. 

I also generally envision that Sun Wukong still has his own artifacts and powers. 

[Ari]

Well in the stories it was impossibly heavy. The Dragon Society may have just stolen it in the staff's needle form and Monkey needs his heir to get it back so nobody else knows he lost it.

 

Just because he's more powerful than Pun-Pun doesn't mean he can't lose things in the wash!

[Curious Key]

Gonna quote a convo I had with Ari

 

Quote

 

I was wondering about hooks because I wanted to take part in the Emerald City Crime Wave, right? And here I was, thinking about possible links that could draw Kat to the Emerald City. You said that there was a connection between Cerberus Rex and Professor Zed? Is that a thing that can be used to draw Kat's attention to the city?

 

Quote

 

Easily. Zediker's specialty is physics, with a particular interest in multiverse experiments. His gig was to con Rex into giving him powers and access to the Omniverse, in return for which he'd strand Raul on Earth. Instead he creates the superhuman known as Vortex, a trust-fund baby working as a nightwatchman at the wrong lab at the right time.

 

So suggestion:

 

A.S.T.R.O. Labs in Emerald City, having heard that somebody from FCU helped foil an abortive dinosaur robot invasion, hopes lightning strikes twice and arranges a school trip at the Parker Sciences Building when Prof. Zed unveils HIS new portal technology. Which is promptly attacked in a "hostage-taking" conducted by painfully-obvious(to a semi-Freedomite like Lily) supervillains masquerading as mundane crooks, to prove they can work undercover.

 

Kat manages to bust them without blowing her own cover and her heroic ID is approached by the grateful Lab to keep an eye on the ECU.

 

 

Personally speaking, I like this plan.

 

Edited January 27, 2017 by Curious Key

[Raveled]

Alright, then if Sun Walker doesn't have a staff and it's Citizen out here, I say the atheist robot fights the watery demigod. Instead, Sun Walker can handle a good old-fashioned armored car heist. And Professor Zed is stealing something from ASTRO Labs. That all works out well. TA, do you agree to Asad's part in this, foiling a kidnapping at a high-society function?

[olopi]

Okay, a few ideas:

 

WestRock has been working on a cargo tracking system using a bunch of new technology, that’s bound to speed up to process. Maybe the dispatch team is out working at a warehouse/cargo train station as that, or the thing carrying the next delivery, gets attacked. This would allow for a wide range of things to potentially get stolen, while still directly including WestRock.

 

They’ve also been using the same database for a GPS tracking system that allows for really fine tracking, which is currently in early testing, but something that looks to be a big potential source of income. This, for a variety of reasons, could attract somebody that wants to steal it, or slightly change the sourcecode to include some sort of backdoor.

 

Other than that, their other software, mostly for organizing things, is used by a variety of small and medium businesses around the city, so each one of those also is a potential hook.

 

Of course, the idea of a hacker also works.

 

Or you could have him show up in a thread with somebody else, or maybe you have other plans, I dunno

[Raveled]

Hm. He has Immunity (Suffocation); that probably won't let him survive in low Earth orbit... Well I can think of a couple fun things to do, regardless. Now I just have to figure out what Blue Jay does!

[olopi]

That alone won't.

That + his magic, might!

Unless Magic works like in Shadowrun, in which case .... eh, he can probably whip up something.

[KnightDisciple]

20 hours ago, Ari said:

Well in the stories it was impossibly heavy. The Dragon Society may have just stolen it in the staff's needle form and Monkey needs his heir to get it back so nobody else knows he lost it.

 

Just because he's more powerful than Pun-Pun doesn't mean he can't lose things in the wash!

Oh, I actually like that idea! And maybe it could end up all being a "test" by Sun Wukong! 

[Raveled]

I really want to stay away from anyone's metaplot for this. The overarching story is supposed to be about FOE trying folks out; if the story is also about Sun Walker doing stuff for Sun Wukong, then I have to explain why FOE and Sun Wukong's goals align.