Raveled

1d20+9=18 FAIL!

1d20+1=20 Ha! Flying while drunk, suck it! (That does pass, right?)

My original idea for a modular power suit came from two places. Firstly, a modular design, with pieces of the armor slotting onto an underlying structure, was easier than designing the suit all in one go; since it was my first major project, I wanted something fairly simply. The other idea I had was adaptability. Modular armor pieces could be swapped on the fly for different sets, specialized to different scenarios. About half-way through the fabrication process, when I weighed and sized the pieces, I realized that toting around a closet of armor sections just wasn't feasible. Still, I stand behind the concept of an adaptable, specialized suit. I think the key might be to design the suit so that the different components interlock in different ways, providing different functionality in each configuration. It'll be a heck of a lot more complicated than what I have now, but if I pull it off it should blow folks away. Device 12 (Multifunction Battlesuit; Technology; Hard to Lose; Feat: Accurate; 60 PP) [49 PP]

Robin laughed at the suggestion, a bright and cheery sound. "Stars and stones, no. I tried that once and it didn't go well. No, I run a magic shop a couple blocks off the campus, in the North End." she paused, suddenly unsure if she'd said too much. Freedom City saw more weird stuff in a week than mos urban centers did in a month, but it was still possible to weird folks out. Having someone fly overhead shooting lasers is one thing, sharing a cup of coffee with Laser Man is quite another.

Robin felt a laugh bubbling up as she imagined what the 'proverbs' actually meant. "Ah. Yes, very nice. Though, this," she added, pointing to a particular swirl on one of the letters, "shouldn't be there. It makes it something more like, 'May you squat in an attractive dog house.' Very nice work, though." She sat back again, taking another small drink of her coffee drink. "So you work in Riverside? Seems a pretty little neighborhood. I'm up by the university, myself."

Robin raised the coffee to her face, inhaling deeply before taking a small sip and setting it down. Her eyes stayed closed as she touched the gemstone at her throat, and for a moment she was very still. After a moment her hand dropped and she half-turned in her seat to face Wesley. "Body art," she said. "That's what they're calling tattoos these days, right?" Her eyes sparkled with curiosity and amusement as she asked, "Do your own work?"

Robin made a face like Dead Head had just suggested an unnatural sex act involving a sheep. "If you put a gun to my head, I wouldn't do a ritual with a hand of glory," she said. "Necromancy's necromancy, and messing with the boundary between life and death is something I avoid. No offense," she added, "but I was more hoping you knew of some graves that had been desecrated. Hanging victims aren't exactly common anymore."

Ironclad spun in the air, reeling from the attack while her suit's systems tried to compensate. Her mind was all a muddle; the only thing she could think was I've been shot, over and over again. Malcolm watched through his link, clutching the edge of his desk so hard that his knuckles went through white and back to a splotchy red. "Jessica," he shouted into the link. "You have to break out of it! She's still out there, you have to take her out!"

Toughness save 1d20+9=16 -.- Should've used the HP on that roll. Wouldn't even have hurt. Wonder how much falling damage she'll take.

Robin nodded along with Dead Head's assessment. "I've seen them used to open doors, too. According to some stories, they can even be used for a kind of teleportation. Powerful juju, and it starts with a dead man's hand. May people said you know what's happening among the dead men."

The bag contains a bottle of corner-store whiskey, a score of off-brand cigars, and the plastic-wrapped hand.

Robin wasn't taken aback by the revenant's impromptu Yorick impersonation; if anything she was intrigued. She'd never seen an undead who purposefully dismembered itself (save that zombie who mailed his parts separately and had a cohort reassemble them afterwards). Was the head ambulatory on its own? Could it bite as hard -- a lot of leverage came from the head being attached to a great big lever, a.k.a the spine. Would the joint be as strong as before after being reattached? Just how many vertebrae went with the skull, anyway? Robin pushed the desire to do a dissection -- autopsy? -- on Dead Head away, and took a step back to retrieve the brown paper bag from under the eaves of the crypt she'd been sheltering against. The sorceress pulled the mag light out and hung it through a loop on her jeans, then pushed the bag into Dead Head's cranium. "Let that rattle around in there," she said, folding her arms under her breasts. "If it bumps into anything interesting, let me know."

I switched Ironclad to the power station, Geez. Besides, seems bad form to have two of my characters in the same thread.

Malcolm's GI roll on Angel. 1d20+11=30 Ironclad's attack. Dunno what range she's at, so enjoy! 1d20+7=11 FAIL!

Jessica's suit automatically back-tracked the metal-tipped arrow back to its point of origin. Apparently it had come from... A girl, not much older than Jessica herself, with a freaking bow. "That's pretty impressive," she muttered, even as he suit tracked the angry woman's flight on her hoverboard. Safe in his apartment, Malcolm squinted at the display from the Ironclad suit. Something was tickling in his brain about this figure, and even while he watched the fight he brought up a new window and started searching. Floating above the city, Jessica's powersuit had finally calculated an optimal firing solution on the weaving Angel. She brought her arms together and released a paired blast from her sonic cannons; with luck, it would catch her attention and she could lead the drunkard away from the festivities.

Jessica leveled out half a mile above the city, police chatter in one ear and her grandfather's voice in the other. "You should keep a weather eye on the sky and the clouds." Jessica snorted. "Grandpa, I'd bet this suit against a lightning blast. I'm not worried about getting fried." "That's not the point. Right now you're a just-about invisible dot against the sky. If you fly in front of a cloud though, you'll be a dark spot on a bright background, perfectly outlined for an attack!" Jessica peered at the ground, the suit's visual enhancements making the street appear as if it was only a few feet in front of her instead of 3000 feet. "I don't think there's any AA guns in Freedom City, Grandpa. But I'll keep that in mind." A ping sounded in her other ear suddenly, and a warning appeared on her visor. The police were calling a code 5-78 in the Fens: a superpowered individual on a rampage. She didn't waste time telling Malcolm, he'd have seen it on his own display anyway. Instead, she banked into a turn and sped north.

I've been thinking of an experiment. Foci exist to help a practitioner cast complicated spells more quickly and easily, or as an anchor to help a set of spells last longer. Simple foci do one or two things, but even complicated foci with many spells run along a single, simple theme. Is it even possible then, to create a foci with many disparate effects? I don't think any of the metaphysical laws that govern magic outright forbid it, but it wouldn't be easy. The reason foci are designed around simple central themes is that they are an order of magnitude more difficult than merely casting a spell. You have to hold the entire structure in your head while you physically prepare the vessel. Holding such energy at bay is mentally draining and dangerous. That's why the creation of foci are spread over several days, even though it might take less than a dozen man-hours of work to craft the device. In fact, the more I think about it, the stupider and more dangerous this is looking. If my concentration slips for an instant, it could blow my lab and the building above it to flinders and leave a goodly-sized hole to Faerie behind. Eldrich or Seven would probably be able to close it double-quick, but I don't want to think about what would get through in the meantime. So, different tack. Many, many smaller, dedicated foci. Q, why are foci so large and unwieldy? A, to hold the spells in place and an energy source. A foci could be very small, if it only did one thing, but it would only work a few times before it was a useless trinket again. Hm. My shield bracelet doesn't have a power source. It simply holds the shape of the spell and I run power through that. Could I combine the two ideas, traditional foci and self-powered? I don't think it's impossible. Device 2 (Charm Bracelet; Magic; Hard to Lose; Feat: Restricted; 10 PP) [9 PP] Teleport 4 (Magic: 1 mile; Feat: Easy, Alternate Power; Extra: Portal; Flaws: Long-distance only, medium [Doors]) [10 PP] Healing 5 (Magic) [9 PP] Device 5 (Charm Bracelet; Magic; Hard to Lose; Feat: Restricted; 25 PP) [21 PP] BE: Dazzle 5 (Memory, magic, mental; All senses; Feats: Eidetic Memory, Well-Informed, Alternate Power 3; Extras: Alternate Save [Will/Will], Perception Range, Mental effect) [25 PP] AP: Healing 5 (Magic; Extras: Total, Restoration) [20 PP] AP: Nullify Technology 10 (Magic; Counter all technology effects) [20 PP] AP: Teleport 9 (Magic; Feat: Easy; Extra: Portal; Flaws: Long-Distance only, medium [Doors]) [19 PP]

I quite like the flight system I developed for the Ironclad suit. Most power armor systems use noisy, dangerous jets, but I’ve something much better than that. The Earth has an anomalously high metal content, especially iron. The planet’s iron-nickel core spins at a steady rate, and the heat transfer between different layers of the mantle creates an electric charge. The whole process turns the planet into a 4000-mile tall bar magnet. As anyone knows, the north ends of two magnets repel each other. Sensors sample the local magnetic field and the suit creates a field that’s in opposition to it, lifting the entire suit. No muss, no fuss, and totally silent. It moves at an incredible speed, a few hundred MPH, and it feels like bodysurfing through the air. The biggest downside is that it’s the suit that lifts, no my body. It suit is mostly fitted to me, but there are still gaps where my limbs can press against the suit and edges can constrict blood flow. I tried a few different types of foam pads, but there was too much bulk. I eventually settled on strips of soft leather, reinforced and molded into gentler curves. It works pretty well; at least, I can fly a three hour patrol without my legs falling asleep.

Robin couldn't sense the spirits, except as a growing unease and the occasional sharp shiver as one drifted through her. It wasn't long, though, before she spotted a figure picking his way through the headstone. She held back, unsure if this was the person she wanted, but magic clung to him like a shroud; it smelled of funeral herbs, and tasted like salt and sweet wine. The sorceress stepped into the dim, diffuse light spread by the occluded moon and her thin candle. Her hands were held down by her sides and a little away from her body, palms turned towards Dead Head. The gesture might not mean much, especially if he recognized her as a practitioner, but it seemed important to start out on the right foot. Her mouth apparently didn't get the memo, though. "I hope you're Dead Head," it began without preamble. "Otherwise there's a seriously fashion-deprived necromancer out there."

Robin did a double-take at the empty seat, then gave him another smile, smaller but more genuine. "Thank you," she said, taking the offered seat. She ordered a cappuccino from the barista, specifying 'real' milk, before she turned back to Wesley. "My name's Robin. I take it you know the neighborhood well?"

The sorceress wasn’t much put off by her surroundings, despite the dark and the moon and the late hour, but the cemetery encompassed a fair chunk of land and it wasn’t laid out so things could be found easily. It took close to an hour of wandering for her to find the right spot. It was a narrow paved path between two mausoleums. Robin pulled out a black taper from the bag and set it before on the of the crypts, lighting it with a lick of spellfire. She retreated to the tomb opposite and set herself in the shadows, drawing her power about herself in an invisible shield. This Dead Head seemed to be on the side of the angels, but she wasn’t about to let her defenses down around the undead.

Ironclad's up for this. And hey, why not Robin, too? Ironclad can be just about anywhere, but if you want her 'off the clock,' best bet is Hanover or Lantern Hill. Robin mostly hangs out in North Freedom, but she can be elsewhere if it's required. Robin will be concentrating on Obj 1, while Ironclad helps at the power station.

I'm rather proud of my Zero-Point Generator. The Ironclad suit uses a tremendous amount of energy, much more than could be sustained by a conventional, non-nuclear source. The Generator searched the quantum foam, the micro-micro-microscopic turbulence between the Planck units, the mini-black holes. They generally evaporate into Hawking radiation in a few seconds, but with a powerful magnetic source a black hole can be caught, stabilized, and enlarged. At a certain threshold, antimatter begins leaking past the event horizon. The matter-antimatter reaction liberates 100% of the energy in the atoms, way more than even a nuclear reaction. Separate, dedicated magnetic fields capture the excess radiation and funnel it to capture sinks. Each sink lasts a few days, and once they're full I put them through another process to cleanse them and they're ready to use again.

OOC for this thread.

Date: May 30th, 2010 (Continued from here) By the time Robin got to the cemetery, the moon had already risen and was making a bright spot behind high, thin clouds. She had changed into a pair of dark slacks, a man's green button-down shirt, running shoes, and dark gloves. She had a paper bag in one hand, folded closed. The cemetery grounds were closed at night and surrounded by a brick wall that came up roughly to Robin's eye-level. She was forced to toss the bag over and hope the contents didn't break, then take a running leap herself. She still barely made it over and resolved, for the umpteenth time, to make a break for proper exercise. She landed awkwardly on the other side, cursing the darkness and scrambling for the bag. Once she had it in hand she pulled a mag light out and clicked it on, keeping the beam pointing towards the ground rather than be visible to anyone who happened to glance in her direction.