Avenger Assembled

"She's not on her own, she's with me in my new place." Jack debated exactly what to tell Stesha, glancing over at Taylor, and reluctantly did what was probably the heroic thing. "If you want to come over, I can give you directions. She'd probably appreciate the company?" he asked, hazarding a question Taylor's way as they talked. This was a bad idea. Stupid ethics.

"An insane religious zealot, targeting anyone with magic. We beat him together," he said gallantly, "but he was powerful, and dangerous. She was hurt, but now she's recovering. As far as we know the zealot didn't have any friends with him, but people like him are like terrorists; one may not know what the other is doing even though they're both taking orders from higher up. Their memories may not even be true. If you see a teenage boy with dark hair wielding any sort of magic whip, especially wearing religious iconography, you should get out of there right away."

This looks good to me. APPROVED

"He had weaknesses. Weak as anything in hand-to-hand combat if you take him unawares." Jack leaned against the wall, coming up with his version of events quickly. That reminded him, he'd need to call Taylor's brother when they were done. "Stesha, it's Jack. Taylor's been attacked and I'm checking up on all her friends. She's okay, but we're worried her friends might be in danger. Are you all right?" he asked her. His voice was brusque, but not unfeeling, though he certainly didn't hesitate to let her speak as he rattled through his short little speech.

"He hadn't tried this with anyone else, I know," said Jack reassuringly, calling through the water as he watched her bathe. "So we're safe as far as anyone else being tracked down through the Knights." He debated for a few moments, thought about the unhappy woman he'd only actually met a few times, and decided to take a chance. "I'll give her a quick call. Ace may not think to call her before he talks to the rest of the Knights, and Stesha's a lot weaker than any of us." He used the cordless phone to call Stesha from the bathroom door, so Taylor could half-hear him on the phone.

I like this. Shadow Academy doesn't have any leader archetypes that I'm aware of, so Meryl will have a good venue to do his thing. You might want to write in the heavy load for his Magnetic Control (3,200 tons) His hyperfocus on skills will make things problematic for him, but they seem like the sort of thing that someone with his background would actually have. (And his background isn't all grim, gritty child-soldiery either. At worst he's an evil-alinged X-23) He's what, sixteen, seventeen?

With Ace finished, Jack decided to be boyfriend enough to join Taylor in the bathroom to give her the news. He stepped in loudly so she wouldn't jump at his approach, as familiar with how to be noticed as he was with never being seen at all. "Hey, Taylor! Ace has the word, he's passing it along to the other Knights." He watched her through the fog on the side of the translucent shower door. "You think he'll call Stesha?"

"Taylor's all right," said Jack, opening up a little despite himself. "She's resting with me now." He didn't like Ace, not even after this, but he was Taylor's friend too and deserved to know she was all right. "And you're right about the Inquisition. The last cell I heard about operating in the area got chased away when they tried tangling with Siren..." After we redirected them that way "but that was months ago. Harrow didn't know enough to steer me towards his handlers; he may have been an independent madman."

"The man who attacked Taylor is Victor Harrow. A teenager with a magical weapon, associated with the Inquisition." Jack was not going to get into a lot of detail with Ace. "I did things to him. I doubt he'll be a threat tonight, but his organization may have sent him with friends. He's targeting magically oriented people in particular, so you and Stesha need to be especially careful since you associate with her. Not that I think people like that will look too closely when it comes to things like Scarab's psychic abilities or Dark Star's gravity powers, but you can't be too careful."

"Taylor's been attacked." Jack was trying to be cold, but Ace was sensitive enough to hear the emotion in his voice. "I've dealt with her attacker, but it's not safe to go by her apartment tonight. There may be someone else after her, or after the other Knights. She asked me to tell you, because she knows you know how to find everybody. She's all right now."

I'll look over this one tonight. Some initial thoughts: Why does a character who can't initiate mental grapples have Improved Mental Grapple? Put aside what you may have heard about arraying your offensive power and your defensive power. Putting your Blast and Force Field in the same array is hanging a sign around your neck saying "Please! Punch me in the face when my forcefield is down!" His Defense is off (and not acceptable under our PL rules as written) His Favored Opponent breaks his PL caps. His Favored Environment breaks his PL caps. You're better off putting that rank of Fearsome Presence to work elsewhere; it's no good. We don't allow a flawed (just for the leadership-oriented feats) Luck construction. Equipment doesn't stack with powers; his Force Field Toughness can't stack with the boost he gets from his suit. An interesting background!

Left with the choice between calling one of the most dangerous people he knew and the woman who he'd dumped and treated like a heel, Jack opted to call the dangerous antagonist without much hesitation. He left the shower behind as he heard Taylor step in, picking up his phone and dialing the contact number he'd acquired for Ace Danger. "Danger. It's Jack Faretti."

"Jackson," Jack agreed, "I'll call him." He thought fast, the lies coming with remarkable speed and accuracy. "I'll tell him I surprised you with a weekend up in Wharton and got you distracted enough you weren't paying attention ot the clock or the calendar. And our phones didn't work up there. Anything," he added in response to her second question. "Just tell me."

"No, it doesn't," agreed Jack with a small smile. Relieved to see her smiling too, he didn't so much relax as remove another layer of worry from around what passed for his soul. "And we will fool around in here...when you're feeling better." He reached down to stroke his hand along her cheek, then turned to run the shower. Hot water was soon cascading out of the high silver-cast metal, steam rapidly rising in the room. Jack evidently preferred his showers exceedingly hot. "I have the utmost faith in your capacity to recover. Even from...from all this." He turned and looked her way. "Does your family know you were missing? Do I need to call them while you're in here?"

Looks like Ronin is finally up. :)

Edge fatigues himself to power-stunt Nullify 11 (all Concealment effects) (Extras: Burst Area, Duration [sustained]) (Flaws: Full-Round Action) He spends an HP on the Nullify power check for a total of 22. Spends HP as necessary to make Zoe's Reflex save and Concealment check come in underneath that. The descriptor for this particular Nullify is "Luckily for the assembled heroes, Zoe forgot to keep making herself invisible!"

Edge tensed at the sight of the man threatening Alex, but then gasped as first Tech Kid went down thanks to an invisible bombardment and then his friends collapsed like puppets with the strings cut. "Psyche!" He ran to her side, his arms going around her as he looked around for their invisible antagonist. Had something showed up that was after Young Freedom and their enemies alike? He wouldn't let that happen; whoever was there was going to reveal their secrets, dang it!"Stop it!" he shouted aloud. "Show yourself!"

Treason! :shock: :o

What if we restricted killing to NPC villains? With the caveat that NPC villains shouldn't expect to reappear after the story where they appear, barring an exceedingly appropriate reason. (i.e., when they go away, they stay away) (I haven't been perfect about this, but arguably the insane cultist wielding the magical artifact is more a tragic figure than a monstrous one.) That way we can justify PC villains escaping with slightly more ease than most (at least at first), after all, they're not as big a priority to the cops as the _real_ bad guys. And characters like Malice and Knievel can tell themselves, "I'm not a bad guy, that's points to Stabby McGee, serving ten life sentences he won't escape from a bad guy."

While I can't speak for Doc, Shaen, that thread was several months ago on a board with a different culture than the one we have now. While I've not been paying perfect attention, I haven't seen Belphegor or Doc's NPC baddies going on any killing sprees lately. You can't expect people, even people with the best of intentions, to have perfect consistency all the time here on our hobby site that we're involved in for our spare time. What we're trying to do now in this thread is hammer out some player-and-Ref expectations so that we don't have any further problems like that.

Inspire, giving +5 next round on most everything to all my allies who can hear me. Who should be all of them, so far.

"Kick his butt!" called Edge loudly, having run over to join the struggling duo as fast as he could. His big, heavy sunglasses provided a disguise for his face in the same way the flash goggles on his costume did; he was in disguise, though Mystic Force would be able to tell which hero he was. "Well well well, it looks like your luck's run out, buddy boy! I hope you were using that computer to email your lawyer!"

14

19 Init 7 Edge don't see nothin not no how! If I'm still using my old sheet, that's a 13 and 11, respectively.

"Yes," Jack said agreeably, reaching down automatically to put his hand on her arm and guide her towards the bathroom. Hmm, I should do something about the fridge. She can look into it even with the lights off and the door locked. "It's right this way." His bathroom turned out to be a fairly lush place, all black marble and silver-plated faucets. Perhaps surprisingly, he'd bothered with a mirror, or hadn't had the original replaced.