Amelia

Drained - TA

Mister Strix

Please spend 1PP to add a new base power for the "Vampiric Power" array:

Base Power: [16PP]

Drain Constitution 8 (Extras: Linked [Nauseate], Flaws: Limited [Can only drain 1 rank per round], Requires Grapple, Feats: Insidious, Slow Fade 4 [1 hour], Subtle, Drawbacks: Power Loss [Daylight]) [8PP] (Blood Drain)

Nauseate 8 (Extras: Alternate Save [Will], Linked [Drain], Flaws: Requires Grapple) [8PP] (Euphoria)

(That "Limited" flaw was ripped directly from the vampire templates in the 3E Supernatural Handbook.)

Then please change the former base power (the Mind Reading + Nauseate + Postcog) to a new, separate alternate power, and retool it like so:

Alternate Power: [14PP]

Mind Reading 8 (Extras: Action [Standard], Linked [Nauseate], Flaws: Duration [Instant, Lasting], Range 2 [Touch], Requires Grapple, Feats: Insidious, Subtle, Drawbacks: Power Loss [Daylight]) [3PP] (Blood Divination)

Nauseate 8 (Extras: Alternate Save [Will], Linked [Mind Reading], Flaws: Requires Grapple) [8PP] (Euphoria)

Super-Senses 4 (Postcognition, Extras: Simultaneous, Flaws: Source [Blood], Drawbacks: Power Loss [Daylight]) [3PP] (Blood Divination)

Strix switches to the AP slot with the Autofire on his Strength.

He's All-Out Attacking for 2/2.

Attack roll (DC20): 23. That's +1 damage from Autofire.

DC24 Toughness save from Arrowhawk, then it's her turn. You can go ahead and make an IC post for her immediately, since my last one works for Strix's combat action (just not its result).

Strix has -2 Defense (DC16) until his next action.

The man in white glared into Thorne's eyes. "These filth don't get to murder children in my city. I'm seeing this through to the end."

He turned back to the girl. "But I don't have any safe places where you could hide out. If they do, I'll help you get there. Otherwise, you'll have to come with us."

Then he addressed Thorne and Judex. "Once she's safe, I'm stopping by that flop-house in Hardwick Park. I'm going to squeeze the middle-man to see what leaks out. And then I'm going to that warehouse, to inform the occupants that they are no longer welcome in my city."

Everybody roll Initiative.

Strix gets 17.

As the man in white spoke, his mouth suddenly seemed to double in size, while the rest of his head remained the same. There almost didn't seem to be enough room for it on his face. All four of his canine teeth elongated into fangs, and his eyes turned completely black.

"I thought it would take longer for me to show up on their radar. I underestimated how well The Family knows their city. Hiring talent from out of town to set a trap for me, that was a smart move. Murdering two people, just to bait that trap, that wasn't smart at all. Even for the Bedlam Mob, that was low. Whatever they paid you, it was too much."

The man in white roared exactly like a lion or a tiger as he lunged at Arrowhawk. He moved so fast he was a blur. His fists seemed to be in two or three places at once as they swung at her.

GM

The man in white didn't move a muscle as Arrowhawk loosed the shaft at his leg. Her arrow hit the man's kneecap with a loud *THUNK* and then bounced backward, flipping halfway over itself in the air before clattering onto the pavement a few feet away. At first, it seemed as though he might be wearing some kind of armor. The arrow hadn't drawn a single drop of blood. But it had torn the fabric over his knee, revealing that there was nothing between it and the man's unnaturally pale flesh. The arrow had broken his skin, but the that skin mended itself so quickly that the observers thought they might have imagined seeing it cut at all. The arrowhead was deformed, crushed like an empty aluminium can. It looked as though it had been fired at a brick wall.

The sad part is, without that crit, she wouldn't have cracked his Imperviousness.

Toughness save (DC24): 27. Hey, it's all good.

Ecal, as far as I'm concerned, Arrowhawk had a Ready action to put an arrow into Mister Strix, so anytime you want to take that action, feel free.

The man in white flinched when he heard the archer's voice behind him and the pull of her bowstring. When the man in the trenchcoat followed up with a greeting, the man in white gritted his teeth and cringed.

I'm relying too much on the hypnotism. Most people's minds are weak. But too many of them aren't. I'm already getting complacent. Sloppy.

While the man in white still had his back turned to the other two vigilantes, a noise echoed from his throat that sounded exactly like the growl of a tiger, the type of noise a human shouldn't be able to make. He slowly turned around to face Arrowhawk. His skin was so pale, she had to concentrate to see the seams where the mask ended and his face began. It didn't look like he moved from the spot where he stood, but it was difficult to tell with the massive white cape flowing around him.

His voice had the same deep echo as the growl. "It doesn't look like these men were killed with arrows. That buys you three seconds to point the bow somewhere else."

GM

Once they got closer to the car, Arrowhawk and the Tattered Man could both clearly see the two dead bodies. The man in the passenger seat wore a leather jacket over a polo shirt and dark khakis. His right hand was shoved under the left breast of his jacket, and he had a hole in his forehead about the right size for a person to stick their finger into. Most of the top half of the passenger side window was broken. The man curled up on the ground behind the driver side door wore a dark blue tracksuit. He had his hands pulled tightly behind his back, and he was covered in blood and bruises. Arrowhawk recognized them both immediately. The man on the ground was Mike Donaghy, and the man in the car was his "business associate," Jimmy Burke.

It wasn't raining at the moment, but it had rained on and off throughout the day. Both Arrowhawk and the Tattered Man could tell that it hadn't rained since before these men were killed, because the blood pooled on the ground hadn't washed away. But it had rained recently enough that the ground was still wet, and every gutter and pothole still contained a puddle. When they approached the car, they both felt a chill, and they could see that all the puddles near the car were frozen solid, unlike their counterparts even a block away in any direction. The windows and windshield of the car were completely fogged up.

Let's just assume mutual ignorance and move on so we can finally get a first IC post out of Tattered Man.

I haven't made a rep table for Strix yet, and he doesn't have much of a rep.

I just checked the rep thread, and it doesn't look like Ecal's made one for the new Arrowhawk either.

So...

The trio returned to the church to find the unconscious thugs still draped over the pews like wet sheets on a backyard clothesline, though they'd been moved around in the intervening minutes. The man in white was still there too, standing with his back against a side wall. With him there, it still felt colder inside the church than it did out in the rainy night. There were a few new spots of blood here and there, and the thugs looked noticeably paler than when the trio had left for the diner, but there were no fresh wounds beyond the existing bruises from the earlier brawl.

When they entered, he pointed at one of the two used garbage bags he'd scavenged and emptied from the back alley. "Money. Your friend the preacher can put it to better use than they would." Then he pointed to the other. "Weapons." His deep voice still echoed with an unnatural resonance from a fanged mouth still far too large for its face. "Destroyed beyond repair, but you should still find somewhere else to throw them away. If someone found them in the preacher's trash, he might face questions he doesn't have answers for."

His black eyes turned to stare straight at the girl. "They," he pointed at the sleeping gangsters, "were hired to kill you, and your little brother, to keep you quiet. They were going to burn down your entire apartment building, just to cover it up. They got the job from their Hardwick Park drug dealer, but he's just a middle-man. They were supposed to meet up at a warehouse near the Rook Island Terminal after, to get paid. But they don't know who they're really working for. They don't care. They just want their next fix."

I can relate.

"But you already knew all that." He turned to the others. "Did she fill in the gaps?"

Both of your absurdly high Will saves beat the DC18 to see through Mister Strix's concealment power.

Mister Strix gets a decent but inadequate Notice with 20. He is completely oblivious to the presence of all other PCs at this scene.

I'll forgo a Stealth check for Mister Strix so that this doesn't turn into a parody.

Arrowhawk and Tattered Man both see Mister Strix, but they don't notice each other.

Both of you can post IC now.

Mister Strix inspected the stationary vehicle as closely as he could without touching anything. The black discs at the center of each of his eyes expanded slightly when the sweet smell of blood filled his nostrils.

As he almost always did while prowling the nighttime streets of Bedlam City, he broadcast a psychic command forcing anyone around him to ignore his presence. It wasn't as powerful as the complete control he could seize of a victim's mind by looking directly into their eyes, but it was usually effective. Usually, but not always.

Both Arrowhawk and The Tattered Man felt a gentle nudge when they observed the scene, as though whenever they looked in a certain spot, an invisible hand grasped the backs of their heads and pushed it an inch or two to the left or right. They pushed back against that force, and started to hear a whisper.

Do not see me.

At first, they couldn't make out the words, but as they continued to resist the invisible hand, it grew louder.

Do not see me.

Still, they looked in those places It didn't want them to look, and the deep voice took on an echo. They both started to feel a headache.

Do not see me.

Finally, a vague, spectral suggestion of a face, with furious black eyes appeared in the air in front of each of their faces.

DO NOT SEE ME.

But still they defied It's command. With those final words, the face vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Their headaches disappeared with it. Now they could both see a man in white they somehow hadn't noticed a few seconds ago, creeping around the parked Camaro.

IC is here: https://www.freedomplaybypost.com/topic/10841-to-serve-and-protect-ic/

Please do not post in the IC thread until I give the go-ahead.

In the meantime, both of you please make a Notice check and a Will save before you make your first IC post.

If you intend to be sneaky with your approach, please also make a Stealth check.

GM

John Smith's most recent job had run well past sundown, and the closest bus had still dropped him ten blocks away from his shabby Downtown motel. Five blocks into his hike, he spotted a yellow Chevy Camaro 5G with its driver-side door hanging open. It was parked on the right side of the street, facing him head-on, a couple blocks away. The passenger door was adjacent to the sidewalk, but closed. He thought he could see someone in the passenger seat, but the driver seat was empty. There was some kind of dark lump sitting on the street behind the open driver door.

Twenty stories above Smith, Arrowhawk perched atop the crumbling faux-Gothic stone facade of a half-empty tower. Even with half the lights burned out on this street, her eagle-eyes could read the license plate, confirming that the Camaro belonged to Mike Donaghy, the Scarpia family associate she'd been stalking for the last few weeks. He extorted protection money from several lower-tier businesses in the worse parts of Downtown, and she'd planned to intercept him along his usual pick-up route. One of those businesses was a convenience store a few blocks away. She'd doubled back on the most likely route when he didn't show. From above, she had a much more clear view of the situation. It was obvious to her that the lump in the street behind the car door was a person, halfway into the fetal position but unmoving.

 out of

Your werewolf + my vampire = ?

Heh. Nevermind. I came up with something to post after all.

Using Extra Effort to power-stunt Super-Strength 9 as a temporary alternate power on the main array.

Quote

BREAKING OBJECTS
If you want to attack an object that you have in-hand or that no one is preventing you from attacking, such as smashing down a door, bending a metal bar, snapping bonds, or cutting through a wall with a Blast power, you can apply force more effectively. This requires a full-round action. Instead of rolling, assume the object’s Toughness save result is equal to (5 + Toughness). Super-Strength adds +1 per rank to your normal Strength bonus for damaging objects in this way (and only in this way). If your damage bonus is equal to the object’s Toughness, you break it, 5 or more than the object’s Toughness, you destroy it automatically.

(Str +8) + (Super-Str 1) + (Stunted Super-Str 9) = 18

Steel is Toughness 10.

18 is "5 or more" than 10, so he's temporarily got what he needs to destroy beyond repair every weapon he can find on the gang.

The conversation in the diner across the street gave Mister Strix ample time to do his work.

As he took a drink from each of the gangsters, he also rifled through their pockets. He threw any weapons he found into a pile with the ones he'd already collected from outside. If he found any money, he threw that in a second pile. Finally, if he found any identification, then he made sure to match it to the person whose blood he was consuming.

I have you. I have your name. Your scent. Your taste. When you do this again, I'll know you. I'll remember.

Once each thug had been thoroughly searched and his belly was full, Mister Strix closed his eyes and clenched every muscle in his body. With a moment of concentration, he literally burned off excess blood, feeling a slight warmth inside his dead organs as it evaporated into steam and then quickly dissipated. His muscles bulged slightly, imbued for a few minutes with the strength of The Devil himself. Then he turned to the pile of weapons and used his newfound strength to methodically destroy them. He emptied clips from guns and thumbed individual rounds free from clips. He twisted and crushed every gun. He pinched every lead slug and its casing into flat discs between his fingers. He bent and blunted every blade, even if it was merely a foldable pocketknife.

These things will never be used again. They won't be sold, or traded, or "lost." They won't hurt anyone anymore. You're the last people who will bleed for them.

I think the three of you can go ahead and keep talking amongst yourselves. I kinda doubled-up on posts last "round" as it was, and I think I'm outta stuff to talk about until you get back. So don't wait on me, just keep posting!

The man in white didn't need to breathe, but he forced several deep breaths in and out of what was left of his shriveled lungs, a ritual effort to calm himself down. Then he poked his own tongue with one of his fangs, lifted the gang leader's neck to his mouth, and transferred the blood with a quick lick to the puncture marks he'd left in the man's neck. His blood sealed them shut, removing any traces of his feeding.

Mister Strix wasn't about to follow Judex or Thorne or anyone else into a diner. Even if his costume wouldn't attract too much attention from the other diners, his presence would probably terrify the girl, and no one would appreciate watching their food turn into mold on their plate. They'll need a few minutes to help her catch her breath before she sees me again. But she will see me again. She needs to answer some questions.

While awaiting the return of the girl and the other paranormals, Mister Strix drifted between the other gangsters in the main room, biting necks and wrists to take brief gulps of their blood. Spread it out. The more of them I drink from, the less I need to drink from any one of them...the less chance I'll get carried away and wake up with a dead body in my arms...again.

Once Judex and Thorne had ushered the girl out the office, the man in white crept inside, with the gang leader hanging limply his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He dropped the thug onto the ground with less regard than he would have given to an actual sack of potatoes. The couple of drops he'd licked up in the main room had inflamed his thirst. He lifted the thug up into the air, turned him to face away, then pulled him close, one hand clasped over his mouth in case he woke up, the other wrapped around his torso, pressing their bodies together. He sunk his eager fangs into the man's neck, and started sucking the blood out. He did not breathe, but he sighed. He growled. His whole body quivered.

The first bite of a perfectly cooked steak after a whole day without food. The first sip of water after running a marathon. A hot shower after hiking through the snow.

As the blood hit his tongue, he closed his eyes and let the psychic resonance bound up in the blood wash over his mind. He felt his own mind sink into the thug's, like a body sinking beneath the surface of a lake. He saw the yearbook pictures of the girl and her brother. He heard the name of the drug dealing middle-man who hired the junkie gangsters to murder children. He smelled the gasoline they would use to burn their corpses, their home, their neighbors...

Drink more. A child-murderer. Evil. There's so much more. An aspiring child-murderer. Evil and pathetic. Drink it all. No one would miss him. More blood more blood MORE BLO-

He jerked the thug's neck away from his face, dropped the man back onto the ground, and roared up at the sky. Then he smashed his fist through the nearest piece of furniture.

7) What's the significance of the warehouse near the Rook Island Terminal?