The World In The Aftermath (Formerly A World Less Magical)

[MacynSnow]

Oh i got that one! Scout Harding was my favorite side character and i hated you couldn't get her as a party member.

[Davies]

... ummmm ...

[MacynSnow]

Really? Then why does the pic look SO much like Harding?

[Davies]

You'd have to ask the artist.

[MacynSnow]

I may have to...Anywsy, onto more of your Awesome Builds!

[Davies]

The Brotherhood of the Wolf

(Art by Tony G. Campagna)

In 1992, a group of West German college and high school students, numbering thirteen, came together to perform a mystical ritual that one of them had discovered in a copy of the Book of the Great Scorpion -- or so he claimed. Amazingly, none of them were killed, and the process succeeded in transforming them into creatures similar, in many ways, to the legendary werewolves. With their new powers, this newborn 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' (der Wölfespakt) committed many crimes in their homeland and neighboring countries, initially in support of the faltering Pythonian Insurgency, and later out of greed, bloodlust, and a desire for power.

While the group has endured the past quarter of a century, with the magic that transformed them slowing their aging, they have suffered many losses. Two members quit, with one fleeing to East Asia and disappearing completely, and the other returning to Australia and being shot by a rancher who took him for a thylacine wolf. Four of the members have been killed by police or other security agencies. (While the official report on the various 'animal attacks' that have been committed in this part of the world is that they are the work of animal-controlling superpowers, enough officers have an understanding about what's actually going on to be able to respond appropriately.) And two others, including the group's founder, have been murdered by the group's current leader.

Josef Ferdinand Kemp -- he only answers to the name Fenris, or the title Fuhrer, now -- was seventeen years old when he became a werewolf, two years after his earliest known murder. Inordinately pleased that his transformation resulted in him becoming a wolf with white fur, he sought to learn more about the magic that had facilitated this, taking it for granted that it had to result from the runic magic of his forebears. Disgusted to learn that the Book of the Great Scorpion was apparently of Turkish origin, he promptly began undermining the group's original leader, eventually killing him in 2005, after winning a duel to determine who should run the Brotherhood. His greatest ambition would be for the group to commit terrorist murders in Israel, Russia or the United States.

Rudi Schulze, aka Glasgeher, is the group's technical expert. Initially, he was simply the only member of the Brotherhood who wasn't completely computer illiterate, but he has kept pace with developments and now views himself as being one of the most adept hackers in the world. (He's not even remotely, but none of these people are all that humble about their accomplishments.) Alone among the group, he has realized that the Hong Kong-based superpower known as Dú Láng is probably their former teammate, but has chosen not to reveal that datum to Fenris as yet. Unlike most of his teammates, he is only interested in money, and has no particular liking for murder or assault.

Arvin Böhm, aka Knochennäher, is regarded as an embarrassment by most of the group. While almost all of them could be considered spendthrifts (only Glasgeher has invested his share of their profits) Knochennäher deliberately lives as one of the homeless. Partially, this is a scheme to avoid attracting official attention, while part of it is a mildly paranoid distrust of his fellows. If they don't know where he's sleeping, they can't kill him in his sleep, after all. In the meanwhile, Knochennäher has probably the most extensive group of street contacts of any member of the Brotherhood.

Uwe Brandt, aka Rotekralle, claims that he hasn't resumed his human form since his transformation. While that's probably not true, he is the member of the group most committed to being a werewolf, and spends most of his time haunting national parks in wolf form. Because of this, Fenris considers him the least troublesome member of the group. What Fenris does not know is that Rotekralle has been thoroughly subverted by Dracula's organization, and is just waiting to be given the order to murder the rest of his teammates. Whether he can actually accomplish this, or if he's just intended to do damage to a rival, is not clear.

Petti Kraus, aka Artemiz, aka Schwartzorn, wasn't always the only female member of the group. Originally, she worked fairly closely with Erdetochter, and claimed to share the older wiffwolf's ecological and primitivist agenda. After they had a falling out in 2007, however, she arranged for her former friend to suffer a fatal police ambush. It's since become clear to her fellows that any political goals that Schwartzorn might claim are cover for her actual goal of inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible on anyone who has the misfortune of crossing her path. She has often gotten so involved in the pleasure of hurting someone that she forgets that she's supposed to be killing them, justifying her behavior with the idea that she's been divinely appointed to do this sort of thing.

Brotherhood of the Wolf -- PL 9

Abilities:
STR 6 | STA 6 | AGL 4 | DEX 1 | FGT 9 | INT 1 | AWE 3 | PRE 1

Powers:
Loping Movement: Enhanced Advantages 5 (Defensive Roll, Evasion, Improved Initiative 2, Uncanny Dodge); Leaping 2 (30 feet); Speed 3 (16 MPH) - 10 points
Semblances: Array (5 points)

• Homid: Morph 1 (completely human form) - 5 points
• Lupus: Morph 1 (wolf form) - 1 point

Song of the Wolf Pack: Auditory Perception Area Affliction 9 (Resisted by Will; Dazed and Impaired, Disabled and Stunned), Extra Condition, Limited Degree - 18 points
Thick-Skinned: Protection 3, Impervious 9 - 12 points
Wolf Senses: Senses 5 (danger sense, low-light vision, acute tracking olfactory, ultrahearing) - 5 points

Advantages:
Close Attack 2, Defensive Roll, Evasion, Improved Initiative 2, Power Attack, Uncanny Dodge.

Skills:
Deception 8 (+9), Expertise: Criminal 7 (+8), Intimidation 8 (+9), Investigation 5 (+6), Perception 4 (+7), Stealth 6 (+10).

Offense:
Initiative +12
Unarmed +11 (Close Damage 6)
Song of the Wolf Pack -- (Perception Area Will 9)

Defense:
Dodge 8, Parry 9, Fortitude 9, Toughness 9, Will 7

Totals:
Abilities 70 + Powers 53 + Advantages 7 + Skills 22 + Defenses 18 = 170 points

Complications:
Variable--Motivation. Power Loss (Thick Skinned, against silver weaponry.) Secret Identity.

Fenris has STR 7, Expertise: Survival 6 (+7), Intimidation 10 (+11), Unfazeable (Immunity 5 [interaction skills]), Power as a Motivation and Intolerance (pretty much everybody).

Glasgeher has INT 2, Technology 6 (+8), Language 2 (Japanese, others), Nethead (make Gather Information checks with Technology), Greed as a Motivation and Delusion (I am the most 1334 of all.)

Knochennäher has Contacts, Great Endurance, Expertise: Streetwise 6 (+7), Feature (Iron stomach), Survival as a Motivation and Prejudice (homeless).

Rotekralle has All-out Attack, Close Attack 3, Improved Initiative, Expertise: Survival 6 (+7), Utter Misanthropy as a Motivation and Secret (traitor.)

Schwarzorn has Attractive, Defensive Attack, Expertise: Magic (INT-based) 6 (+7), Investigation 7 (+8), Perception 6 (+9), Sadism as a Motivation and Delusion (I am the chosen of Hecate).

[Voltron64]

Glasgehe and Knochennäher are clearly the weak links of the five and thus with the right deals and words, willing to turn against the other three.

While Fenris is simply doing everything he can to seal his inevitable fate as a fur rug.

[Davies]

Severus


To Petra Iraklidis, alias Moment, he is 'that jerk'. In full, 'that jerk who made a mess of my Christmas shopping last year.' She didn't learn the name that he's using until their second conflict, in Feburary of the following year, and assumes that it's an alias. She isn't exactly blind to the implications of him having gravity controlling powers to her own, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary, she's assuming that it's just a big coincidence, and that he's motivated by something understandable, like a desire to show off his own much greater power.

She's much mistaken in several ways. Severus Meusz, born 1972, is her older half-brother, one of the younger legitimate children of her biological father, Gordion Meusz. Severus regards the fact that he's been forced to make a spectacle of himself while cleaning up another one of his father's messes with extreme annoyance, and the notion of wearing a costume or using some sort of nonsensical alias would just make the whole situation that much worse in his view.

Severus discovered the existence of Petra Iraklidis a few months after the formation of the Minor League. He might try to portray this discovery as the result of a careful and constant search for information about the activities of potential scions of the hidden families; to be fair, he does do that. But the fact is that one of his younger half-brothers caught a TV broadcast about the team and, noting that the cute Greek girl was doing stuff that he'd seen Serverus do, brought it to his attention, as he would have otherwise have missed it entirely, dismissing the activities of the tights-and-mask crowd as utterly irrelevant.

While Severus has put a fair amount of effort into developing his abilities -- more than his father or any of his siblings, full or half -- he's never remotely felt any inclination towards a life of heroism or one of spectacular criminality. He's certainly not an honest man, but his share of the family fortune is large enough that his schemes to get more are largely directed at other members of his family, rather than outsiders. He views those unfortunate enough to lack powers as little better than animals -- they shouldn't be killed needlessly, but if they have to die to satisfy the needs of their betters, there's no sense in shedding any tears about it.

However, among his father's more annoying habits is to keep right on fathering more and more children, even though the old goat is now in his seventies. In and of itself, this would not be an issue. However, he also tends to adopt and legitimize those of his bastardy that demonstrate powers, especially the family lineage of gravity control, and fully intends to divide his estate equally between all of his children, rather than reserving the lion's share for those who are most deserving. This, in Severus' view, consists of exactly one person, but he could put up with dividing it ten ways. The fact that he's going to have to put up with dividing it twenty-one ways, or twenty-two if his father decides to accept Moment as yet another heir, does not sit well with him at all.

So he came to Philadelphia to try and clean up the mess, and was prevented from doing so the first time by the girl's allies in the Minor League. He escaped capture, and has since made arrangements to purchase a property from the House of Ashe, as well as soliciting their assistance in dealing with this continuing problem. So far, at least, he's managed to keep his father from finding out about any of this, and counts that as something of a success.

He has never even considered the possibility that Petra would, if informed that someone who sexually assaulted her mother wanted to give her money, refuse it without a second thought.

Severus -- PL 10

Abilities:
STR 1 | STA 2 | AGL 2 | DEX 3 | FGT 2 | INT 3 | AWE 2 | PRE 2

Powers:
Anti-Gravity: Flight 6 (120 MPH), Subtle - 13 points
Deflector Field: Linked Enhanced Defenses 12 (Dodge 6, Parry 6); Linked Sustained Protection 8; Subtle - 21 points
Gravity Control: Array (24 points)

• Concussive Blast: Ranged Damage 11, Accurate 2 - 24 points
• Concussive Burst: Burst Area 2 Damage 8 - 1 point
• Crushing Gravity Field: Damaging Burst Area Move Object 8, Limited to Moving Downwards - 1 point
• Null Gravity Field: Burst Area Move Object 12, Limited to Moving Upwards - 1 point

Advantages:
Assessment, Benefit 5 (multimillionaire, status), Connected, Contacts, Ranged Attack 2, Well-informed.

Skills:
Deception 8 (+10), Expertise: Business 8 (+11), Expertise: High Society 10 (+13), Insight 10 (+12), Intimidation 6 (+8), Investigation 6 (+9), Perception 8 (+10), Persuasion 8 (+10).

Offense:
Unarmed +2 (Close Damage 1)
Concussive Blast +9 (Ranged Damage 11)
Concussive Burst -- (Burst Area Damage 8)
Crushing Gravity Field -- (Damaging Burst Area Move Object 8)

Defense:
Dodge 10/4, Parry 8/2, Fortitude 5, Toughness 10/2, Will 7

Totals:
Abilities 34 + Powers 61 + Advantages 11 + Skills 32 + Defense 10 = 148 points

Complications:
Entitlement--Motivation. Intolerance (non-mutants.) Secret (powers.)

Note: While Severus is married with two children of his own, neither his wife nor children have ever featured in his activities, and so he doesn't yet have them as a Family complication.

[MacynSnow]

Severus remind's me of an Ernest Hemingway quote
"Sometimes there's nothing worse than a Family Feud, as noone truly win's them ..."

[Davies]

Dynamick

(Art by Dyana Wang)

Michael MacDougall was a fairly normal young man, by all accounts, despite demonstrating a few minor super abilities from his birth. He always knew, down to the second, what time it was, and once someone explained how to solve a mathematical equation to him, he was able to solve it extremely quickly. But he wasn't particularly intellectually gifted beyond that, and so he didn't end up in one of the Think Tanks; not that it would have mattered, for they were on their last legs as his adolescence began. In any event, Michael generally kept his head down and didn't seek to draw attention to himself.

And then, when he was seventeen, another facet of his power manifested itself, as he discovered that he could cause explosions by touching things. It wasn't a situation where everything he touched blew up, as he had complete control over what happened. But not only could he make objects emit a destructive pulse of force through a simple touch, usually wrecking them in the process, he could cause that pulse to occur at any time after he'd touched the object, as though it was a timed explosive. (This had its downside, for although he was strangely immune to the pulses that he caused spontaneously, those which where delayed would affect him normally.)

Fascinated by this development, Michael spent most of his senior year trying to decide what he ought to do with this strange power. He briefly considered using it for material gain, but decided that this was a pathetic and contemptible goal. Instead, he should use it for the benefit of humanity. Unfortunately, he'd also spent that time reading anarchist literature, specifically some of the writings of the illegalists. Perhaps it was inevitable that someone who could blow things up at will would feel drawn towards a philosophy which held that criminal acts (like, say, blowing things up without permission) should be embraced.

Thus, Dynamick has become something of a criminal performance artist, causing wide-scale destruction but generally trying to avoid hurting people, in the belief that doing so will liberate people from their attachment to the concepts of property and ownership. When he engages in bank robbery, for example, he will normally destroy his share of the ill-gotten gains at the first opportunity. His minions for these operations are usually actors recruited to pose as criminals, and Dynamick generally pays them fairly.

However, he also seems to attract a certain type of partner in the process, a woman -- typically middle-class and well-educated -- who might initially believe that they can reform him while looking for a little danger in their lives. As Dynamick is not actually insane, just odd in his motivations, he's quite happy to accept these attentions until these would-be femme fatales become frustrated at their lack of success in changing him and move on. That actually takes a while in some cases, because, as one of them admitted to the police after her capture, "He's a bad bad man with a dynamite touch."

Dynamick -- PL 9

Abilities:
STR 1 | STA 2 | AGL 4 | DEX 4 | FGT 6 | INT 3 | AWE 3 | PRE 5

Powers:
Dynamite Touch: Array (18 points); Variable Trigger 5 - 6 points

• Basic Explosion: Burst Area Damage 9 - 18 points
• Loud Explosion: Linked Burst Area Damage 3; Linked Perception Area Affliction 6 (Resisted by Fortitude; Dazed and Hearing Impaired, Stunned and Hearing Disabled), Extra Condition, Limited Degree - 1 point
• Shaped Explosion: Cone Area Damage 9 - 1 point

Lightning Calculator: Quickness 3, Limited to mathematics - 1 point
Time Sense: Senses 1 (time sense) - 1 point

Advantages:
Daze (Deception), Defensive Roll 2, Equipment 4, Evasion 2, Favored Environment (planned situations), Grabbing Finesse, Improved Initiative, Redirect, Taunt, Uncanny Dodge.

Equipment:
20 points as needed for any given caper, often a vehicle.

Skills:
Acrobatics 6 (+10), Athletics 6 (+7), Deception 8 (+13), Expertise: Science 6 (+9), Expertise: Streetwise 8 (+11), Insight 8 (+11), Sleight of Hand 8 (+12), Stealth 8 (+12), Technology 6 (+9), Vehicles 4 (+8).

Offense:
Initiative +8
Unarmed +6 (Close Damage 1)
Basic Explosion -- (Burst Area Damage 9)
Loud Explosion -- (Burst Area Damage 3 and Perception Area Fortitude 6
Shaped Explosion -- (Cone Area Damage 9)

Defense:
Dodge 9, Parry 7, Fortitude 6, Toughness 7/2, Will 8.

Totals:
Abilities 56 + Powers 28 + Advantages 15 + Skills 34 + Defenses 15 = 148 points

Complications:
Anarchy--Motivation. Once You Pull the Pin, Mr. Grenade is No Longer Your Friend (does not have any immunity to own Area Effects that are Triggered.)

"It's good to be bad."

[MacynSnow]

So Dynamick's a nice guy version of the Unabomber?

[Davies]

... eh. He's not anti-technology, but, wellllll ...

[Davies]

Blossom


Supposedly, there was a school of thought that held that an assassin should learn to use a rifle first, because it let them keep their distance from what was referred to as 'the client'. The closer one got to becoming a professional, the closer one would be able to get to the client, with the knife being the last tool to be learned. Of course, that curriculum ignored the possibility that there could be people fully able to service the client without any weapons at all.

Nevertheless, that training process was followed by those who sculpted Rachel Allen into an assassin, starting when she was fourteen years old. Or was she thirteen? She's often suspected that the birthdate that was entered into the system for her in Hong Kong's foster care system was a child was either a mistake or a lie. It's not really important to her, and it certainly wasn't important to the people who trained her. In any event, after two years, they deemed her ready to carry out her first hit.

For whatever reason, her mentors decided to make sure that she understood the reason for the hit. (She thinks maybe they'd heard too many stories about Koschei the Deathless.) There was this rich idiot in England who'd screwed over a different rich idiot in Japan, and the fact that the first rich idiot was in prison now didn't soothe any hurt feelings. So she was going to rub out the first rich idiot's daughter and get paid for doing so by the second rich idiot. Rachel didn't really give a crap about any of this, of course.

So she took up a sniper position and waited for the client to take a walk through a public park. It was a bit of a surprise that the client wasn't alone, but rather accompanied by an older woman. Apparently, it was perfectly okay for there to be witnesses. Go fig! Rachel lined up the shot, and waited for the perfect moment, watching the two women talking with each other ... and then something went wrong. Just as her finger was tightening on the trigger, the older woman tensed up, as though somehow aware of what was happening, but before Rachel could stop pulling the trigger, the old woman threw herself in front of the client, so that the bullet that shot forth from the rifle's barrel took her in the chest, instead of the target.

Rachel managed to keep enough of her wits about her to make her exfiltration and get picked up, fully expecting to be punished for this screw-up even though it wasn't her fault. To her surprise, the mentors were okay with how it had worked out. Turned out that killing the first rich idiot's ex-mistress would send just as good of a message. Huh, she thought. So that was her mom. Her mom took the bullet for her.

Why'd she do that, though?

That bewildering question stayed with her through all the years of much more satisfactory operations, as she grew better and better at killing people. Never in all that time did she ever see anyone deliberately and consciously choose death on behalf of someone else. People sometimes begged for their lives, and sometimes they even begged for other people to be spared. (That usually amused her, particularly when those other people weren't part of the contract, but mostly it was just annoying.)

When she and her first client, now calling herself Megan Excalibur, met again, it was almost an accident. She'd been hired for bodyguard duty for the first time, and her client -- heh -- was being haunted, and had enough pull to get the Ghost Sweepers called in to sweep up the ghost. Blossom, as she was now calling herself, recognized the other woman despite how much Excalibur had changed her look over the last five years, but the reverse was not true. She found herself antagonizing Excalibur all the same, enjoying her ignorance.

The good times never last, though. She ended up taking a shot at the guy who was faking the haunting with her rifle, and this time another one of Excalibur's allies prevented the shot from hitting home. When Blossom complained about it, all the pieces finally fell into place for Excalibur. They ended up fighting what could perhaps be called a duel, Excalibur with that damned long sword of hers, Blossom with just her bare hands.

When it ended, Blossom was on her back, staring up at the other woman who had nothing but murder in her eyes. But when Excalibur demanded to know why she'd murdered her mother, all that Blossom could do was laugh, then tell her client the truth, and, in what she expected to be her final act, asked why her mother had saved her like that. Excalibur stared at her. "She was my mother," she said.

"What's that got to do with anything?" Blossom nearly howled. It was the same irrelevancy that she'd been told the first time she'd asked, for crying out loud!

A long moment passed, then Excalibur put her sword away and turned her back on her opponent. "I won't kill you," she said without looking back. "It would neither bring back my mother, nor anyone else you've killed. It wouldn't even spare those you might kill in the future, for your employers would just find someone else to do the job. And, ultimately, you're already dead in every way that matters."

Frustrated, and now out of a job because of the way that she'd witnessed her employer's humiliation, Blossom has refused to let that be the end of it all. One way or another, she's going to force a different conclusion to the story of the two of them. She has clashed with Megan Excalibur and the Ghost Sweepers twice since then, constantly trying to get Excalibur to fight with the deadly intent that she showed that first time. Or any emotion other than the disgust and contempt she always displays when Blossom shows up.

But really, even that is more than she's ever gotten from anyone else.

Blossom -- PL 8

Abilities:
STR 2 | STA 2 | AGL 3 | DEX 3 | FGT 6 | INT 1 | AWE 2 | PRE 3

Powers:
Striking Strength: Strength-based Damage 1 - 1 point

Advantages:
Accurate Attack, Assessment, Benefit (Alternate Identity), Close Attack 2, Defensive Attack, Defensive Roll, Equipment 6, Evasion 2, Fast Grab, Improved Aim, Improved Critical (sniper rifle), Improved Critical (unarmed), Improved Initiative, Language 3 (Cantonese, Japanese, Spanish, others), Power Attack, Precise Attack 4 (Close and Ranged; Cover and Concealment), Ranged Attack 2, Takedown, Uncanny Dodge.

Equipment:
Sniper Rifle (Ranged Damage 5, Accurate, Improved Critical) and 18 points of equipment as neeeded.

Skills:
Acrobatics 6 (+9), Athletics 5 (+7), Close Combat: Unarmed 4 (+10), Deception 5 (+8), Expertise: Criminal 5 (+6), Expertise: Streetwise 7 (+8), Insight 4 (+6), Intimidation 6 (+9), Perception 8 (+10), Ranged Combat: Guns 4 (+7), Stealth 8 (+11), Technology 5 (+6), Vehicles 5 (+8).

Offense:
Initiative +7
Unarmed +12 (Close Damage 3, Crit 19-20)
Sniper Rifle +11 (Ranged Damage 5, Crit 18-20)

Defense:
Dodge 11, Parry 10, Fortitude 5, Toughness 4/2, Will 7

Totals:
Abilities 44 + Powers 1 + Advantages 32 + Skills 36 + Defenses 20 = 133 points

Complications:
Psychopathy--Motivation. Obsession (Megan Excalibur.)

[MacynSnow]

Intresting take on the Assassin. She was trained a little too well by her Employer's i think. Due to her lack of Empathy(or at least the Understanding of it), she can't figure out what Excalibur was referencing and it's eating her alive.

[Davies]

She has almost worked through the idea that it's normal for someone to sacrifice their life to save someone with whom they have a connection. But she's seen too many abusive parents (and abusive adult children) to imagine that it's normal for a parent to feel that connection for a child, so she's still far away from getting the message.