Hooookay. Lemme just crack my knuckles here and we'll get started...
So, it's been a while since I posted any of this self-indulgent tripe. So I've got plenty to add! Wrapped up another arc of Rhapsody of Blood, and started a
Masks: A New Generation campaign. Teenage Superheroes! Featuring an actual honest-to-god Teenager! Yeah, one of my players is 17. I ... think he may be one of the more mature players. Definitely has the most manly voice, jeebus. This might just be Dan's secret lovechild...
The Setting: Vindication, a city fully encompassing an artificial Island in the lake where Chicago used to be. Where's Chicago? Gone. Near the end of WW2, a supervillain held it hostage, and didn't appeased or stopped due to distractions from the war. So he ... unmade it. A circular area encompassing Chicago, a significant amount of the ground under it, and the air above it were simply destroyed. Utterly. As in, destruction of matter and energy. That thing that physicists say is impossible. The following implosion caused some pretty horrific devastation too, let me tell ya.
... Basically, I don't like the default setting of Halcyon City, the "greatest city in the world!" which has all the hallmarks of Metropolis combined with Marvel New York. Blech. Too clean, too happy, too many heroes. Vindication is more like Bludhaven and 70's NYC had a baby and Detroit raised it. It
suuuuuucks. The most active, skilled, dedicated, powerful and obviously heroic figure is also a former member of the American Nazi Party. ... I say former, because the group changed its name. He's still part of the current group. Openly.
Our Dramatis Personae:
Jackson "Crash" Taurus - The Bull: The guy who always plays a beefy tank made ... a beefy tank. SHOCKING! He's new, I'll let it slide ... for now. The first thing Jackson remembers is a year ago, when he as being injected with something by some organized criminals, followed immediately by a horrific car accident. Believes he was injected with mutant lizard DNA, which gave him near-instant regeneration, enhanced strength, and the ability to shift his muscle mass down to grossly gaunt levels or massive, disgustingly swollen levels, with wildly disproportionate increases in strength. He's actually been subjected to step one of a three-step process to turn him into a demon/human hybrid by one of the major crime families run by an Exiled Sidhe.
Luca "Voidwalker" Balotelli - The Delinquent: Son of an old Bronze-Age superhero from the last Hero Team Vindication had before now. His father was killed, allegedly by his rival Dr. Displacement, when Luca was just six, and the team killed him in retaliation, then broke up shortly after. Has reason to believe they killed the wrong man, which they all refuse to accept. He's a bit of an anti-authoritarian punk (as befits the delinquent), metal-head, graffiti artist, and total Mama's boy. For her part, she figured out he had gotten into heroing and doesn't
approve, but accepts, that this is what he needs to do, just like his father. Unlike his father, it isn't because he's a big ball of barely-contained violence that
needs to take it out on someone so it doesn't turn on his family. That'll happen when you're an artificially-created life-form meant to replace someone stolen by faeries and not intended to survive long-term ... but its creator was a bit of a perfectionist, so it survived into its thirties
and proved capable of reproducing, something that shouldn't be possible. He's got the ability to make portals and nullify super powers.
Julia "Omega" Livingstone - The Nova: Born with powerful telepathic and telekinetic powers (imagine, if you will, a baby that could
cry inside your brain, and pity her poor parents), she's, well ... got some self-control issues. Her parents are mildly afraid of her, only willing to take a stand on anything over the phone, she's lived her life basically free to do as she pleased, but thankfully so far what she's pleased has mostly been trying not to frighten her parents even worse. Even though she's basically Jean Grey and could break and fix their minds more or less at will.
Cera "Spectra" Williams - The Newborn: A biological android created by the genius Dr. Albert Williams, formerly known as the tech hero "Proton." She's just under 500 days old. In a manner of speaking. Truth is, every time she's seriously injured or spontaneously mutates a new power (an ongoing issue), the Doctor takes a backup of her mind and uploads it into a new body, then studies and (eventually) kills the last one. She's very eager to please, to learn everything about the normal world, to make friends, and prove herself a worthy hero. Since one of the lessons she was imprinted with at creation was "A hero should value the lives of all others over their own." she's a very ... self-sacrificing sort. Has unfortunately picked up the lesson "Never let Morals stand in the way of Justice" from Julia. Usually serves as the peacekeeper of the team. Or tries to. She has nanotech turbo-hacking and hard-light projection abilities.
These four were brought together (and in one case outright created) by Dr. Albert Williams, a genius inventor and ex-hero, who decided he could live longer and more usefully by focusing on his inventing and selling the patents to large corporations rather than fighting villains, as a way to get more useful technology out into the public without having to handle manufacturing or business stuff himself.
He brought the group together to both help clean up Vindication and serve as an inspiration to others. And to deflect attention away from Overman, the goddamn Neo-Nazi that is currently the city's most effective hero. He hates that guy. Probably because Albert is actually Albrecht Weisinger, a scientist and former head of the Superhuman Empowerment Research Division ... in Nazi Germany. As a reformed
actual Nazi, he doesn't much care for these newfangled Neo-Nazi whippersnappers. Truth be told, his ultimate goal is twofold: "Make people better." and "Make better people." The team is him working toward the first, Cera is him working toward the second. He's a heartless sociopath who's gotten very good at pretending to be a caring and trustworthy person, especially with his "eccentric inventor" status to fall back on when he slips up. People just think he's a little kooky, like all geniuses!
Eh, that's all I feel like doing for now. I'll get into what's actually going on later.