Ari

Understood. If he does need to speak/ do something should I play him or will you?

Well, I've only played PnP RPG's a few times, but each time it seemed I played something entirely unlike what I'd started out with, For example, , The game was Exalted, and I was a Solar, a re-incarnation of one of the demi-gods who handled most of the delegation of duties to other demi-gods, but with few magical abilities or much anything in the way of fighting prowess. What I could do, however, was talk to people, something my comrades-in-arms( a Lunar Exalted, and thus an incomparable bruiser, but lent to sudden rages, and another, bloodthirstier Solar with unbreakable bronze skin) weren't interested in doing, meaning I often had to go running between my suspicious and violent friends and the victim(s) of the day to prevent rampant homicide. It got the point where I was the only one in the entire party who thought that attacking the Mask of Winter(an evil entity Sauron himself would think a worthy adversary)was a bad plan, and thus was the only party member that ended up un-captured, and brokered a peace-treaty between the captors of my comrades(a gang of Lunar Exalted who didn't like my party stealing their kill) and the group of other Exalted I'd gotten in the good graces of. What I'd written up, however, was a lawyer, a man who had learned how to use his powers thanks to careful research of notes left by another Exalted who'd held his office before him. However, the GM was constantly urging me too fight, as he had decided that due to my character's being a bookworm, he must obviously be a wizard of some kind! so, after some pillaging of ancient ruins holding vast treasures, forging alliances with NPC groups and after my fellow party-members ran off to fight the Mask of Winters, I grudgingly agreed to spend some points to buy up a combat spell or two. Never used them, though.

King of Suits Habitat for Metahumanity +2 IC posts. (how not)To Catch a Thief +3 IC Posts Wayward Transit +6 IC posts GM (how not) To Catch a Thief +1 GM posts. Wayward Transit +6 GM post. TOTAL POSTS: 14 Extracurriculars Questionnaire June 2011 Vignette

Alrighty, then. Keep in mind this is just for flavor and not connected to the plot of this thread: Norman MacArthur is the fourth son of an organized crime boss in Connecticut, who had enjoyed a brief surge of success during the mid-to-late-1980's due to his adoption of a practice he called "Substitute Government". At its most basic level, the idea was that the more the mob acted to serve the legal and illegal needs of citizenry, they would enjoy heightened profits and customer loyalty, and due to this loyalty, their customers would be less likely to rat them out to the police. This ended badly after the F.O.R.C.E. Ops super-team(following a lead on a completely different crime family) attacked their operations in 1991(When Norman was 17), killing most of the mob members proper as well as dozens of their associates in crime. Only a few of the family survived the attack, including Norman, who swore off crime for the rest of his life and worked at odd jobs on a long sojourn south-east, where he ended up in Freedom in 1994. He stayed mostly to himself, not daring to step into the fore-front of anything until the car repair shop he worked at came under attack from a group of wanna-be super-villains wielding lightening guns and calling themselves 'The Electric Mayhem'. Although badly outnumbered and unarmed, Norman managed to defeat them without permanent injury, a feat that made him a local hero in the West End, and brought them in alive for the bounty placed on them, with which he bought himself an education. For a few years ran a taxi-cab company, eluding the efforts of the local mobs to cough up protection money all the while. In 2003, he sold the business to another entrepreneur and became a city bus driver, which he remains to this day.

You sure can! it's a check of Knowledge(Streetwise) DC 18

At the arrival of Zap, the crowd had gone wild at the sight, as they often did when one of their protectors showed themselves. Seeing the camaraderie between Zap and Wisp, there was some nudging and whispering, but isolated and soon gone. What took more removal was the fact that the crowd had gone over greet and congratulate the young heroine at the first opportunity, with all the regular requests for autographs, critiques of costume choice, queries about the origin of her powers and so on. They mostly just wanted to thank her, as it was a rare day a Freedonian forgot that they didn't 'own' their heroes, and that they took them for granted at their peril, as the dark age under Moore had shown. With a sudden growl of rubber over asphalt, the blue/golden chariot of the Freedom Transportation Authority came into view, the lull in gridlock allowing it ample room to slide smoothly up to the glittering stopping point, to its blazing gem of a waypoint on what was usually a dreary day of navigating the vast fleets of cars rushing about the city. The driver was a powerfully-built specimen, with a long and curly beard and immense muttonchops as black as night, that almost managed to distract from his monk-like balding head. The rest of him was Much less impressive, a mass of bulging muscle that he maintained by some ninja-esque technique of working out whenever nobody was looking, that made him look about eight inches shorter than he really was. He opened the doors to his wain of mass transport without a missing a beat as he slid the vehicle to a stop. He scanned the crowd, noting Zap and Jubatus with only a sigh of gloomy recognition, and waved the already-moving crowd to hurry up. Glancing at the road ahead he frowned as the weird figure from his comrade's rumor came back to his mind. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Well, Mr. Jubatus, I'm glad this is going to be more straightforward than I thought. There is one thing I need to know beforehand, though: how far can you extend the field? Knowing that in advance we can simply match, say, the temporal distortion caused by the tech Downtime uses and match that against the distortion you create, thus letting us know if the way you bend time is in any fundamental way different than the stolen tech" An annoyed look came over his face "I wish we could figure out how he keeps stealing it back from the A.S.T.R.O. Labs, at a tour my class took there once the place's janitor told me they only manage to get about four simulations of the suit's effects done before it's gone again" he shrugged it off " so, any places you definitely don't want wires placed? Like-oh!" his eyes, which had gone wandering off down the way the bus would soon be arriving, saw it come into view 'round the bend. "Well, sir, looks our ride's here. After you" and he stepped neatly to the side as the bus came to a halt a few feet from Jubatus.

Alright, I think that this is as good a time as any to let the bus get here, so we're going to have another two or so pages of idle(?) conversation and the....something will come up, I dare say.

So, do you want me to use more technobabble, or just look up physcics terms and insert them into his speech?My exposure to that field of science is rather slight.

Marceau was unaware of any dangers about the team of constructors, so he had been a bit more carefree than would have been advisable: "Me? oh, I can lift things many times my weight. Nothing really spectacular, compared to people like Mr. Push or Mz. Wisp. Got some slight training in combat, mostly wrestling holds, surprise attacks and basic small-group tactics, that sort of thing. Also, extreme temperatures don't affect me like they do most people, I think I'm just overexposed to them myself. Why? You think we're in danger of attack here?" He had in fact had a wonderful day, a peaceful, busy time where he didn't have to worry about the bakers dozens of vagrants back in Monkey Towers, where he knew Jackie wasn't likely to come dashing out from nowhere to ask him about the aliens living in her ears, and even his feelings of unease around the adjacent forest was ebbing. At Blueshift's query about his ability to go all day on a tropical island without needing to doff his armor, he had cheerfully declared that "Once you go through all the deserts in Asia without a bit of shade that isn't your camel, this is nothing."

Doktor'd I'd like to add the Complication Responsibility: Caring for the needy, especially his 'posse' of sundry homeless, harmless lunatics and underemployed vagrants who have latched onto him as their protector against street-gangs and minor organized criminals. If any threat comes against them, Marceau feels honor-bound to aid them. And the Complication Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: His nerve-wracking months in Cambodia have not failed to leave their mark on Marceau's psyche, sharp clashs of metal, gunfire, and just being near a forest can cause him to suffer flashbacks to those days, often causing him to act in an outwardly irrational manner. Also, I'd like to add this to the last paragraph of the History section: But first, he has to take care of the small crowd of homeless and disadvantaged who cling to him like limpets to a rock, and look to him as their sole guardian against the criminal element who would otherwise attack them with abandon. And I'd like to add/remove these to/from his Personality and Motivation section: Addition: Marceau's desire to be a worthy ruler, not to mention his travels through some of the poorest and most ill-managed regions in the world has born in him a passionate devotion to protecting the 'lower-class' first and foremost. He will actively speak on their behalf or challenge any real or imagined insults against them. Of a similar origin is a deep suspicion of conspiracies of any kind, seeing high-handed assumptions of "the ends justify the means" as insufferable. Remove: Take out the bit about him wanting justice done against the Januii. Pretty redundant. Doktor'd

GM: "Nothing very strenuous for you" assured the undergrad, who seemed only slightly startled by the strange voice Jubatus had, "it'll be me and four other students, as well as a temporal physicist from A.S.T.R.O. to keep an eye on us. What the experiments will consist of is a short series of trials examining the ways your abilities affect the world around you. For example, the first one I'm going to set up(provided you agree of course) will be an attempt to scatter a LASER's light by having you stand in front of it and activate your, ah, power, for lack of a better term, when it reaches you. The idea is that if you can alter the flow of time about your person, it may well be possible to figure out how you do so, based on its effects on exterior objects." he looked a bit sheepish for a moment before adding "a slightly tenuous base for such a hypothesis, yes, but if it's possible to determine what a boulder is made of by how much water it displaces, I think it within the bounds of reason to assume a similar rationale for the time/space continuum" he shrugged, "your call, sir. I understand metas are often leery of investigation or third-party use of their abilities" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Nadhodka? right next to the border? you've traveled far, son" the old lady said, smiling cheerfully at Sam. "My uncle does live east-coast, still lives, thank God! he's a fisherman in the Bering Sea" she leaned against the side of the bus stop uncluttered with all that many ads. "I'm going to fly and visit him today, in fact, been years since I saw him last" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ IC: "You're off in one respect, actually, I'm French myself. An emigrant though, so" Marceau shrugged and leaned back onto his heels, letting his toes leave the ground "Me and that wacko have something in common" To Sam he added "Oui, mon grand frere, the wretched plight of the Haitians as of late was indeed the impetus of the trip"

No fear of that, though I'd say let the other three get a post in before we go again.

The thieves tensed themselves as Marceau began his declaration of their doom, their hands tightening on the wieghtless hilts of their shimmering purple blades, most of them leaning as though for a sudden spring forward. When he finished, Marceau watched their faces with great care, his left hand slipping into a fold in his cloak to retrieve a smoke-card. It proved unnecessary. The group of thugs relaxed, glanced at each other, extinguished their mystic blades, and lay prostrate on the ground with their hands on their heads. Filled with a rush of relief, Marceau jumped to the floor while simultaneously whipping several pairs of handcuffs from his cloak's inside pockets. After shackling them (including Wolfgang) to a conveniently heavy shelving unit, placing the microphone on top of a pile of the I'll-gotten gains for easier finding,, Marceau stood before them. "Now then, please be reasonable once again, and tell me who set you up for this job. I want everything you can tell me about them, name, race, accent, height, phone number, anything and everything" he demanded. They were only too happy to oblige him. It turned out the mastermind the thefts was a wizard who called himself 'The Contrarian', due to his talent for reversing attacks with magical shields. He was five foot ten inches, covered himself in white-checkered-with-black robes to conceal his appearance, and he lived in a pocket dimension none of them had figured out how to enter on their own(except Wolfgang, thought Marceau). This discovered, The King of Suits heard the approaching wail of police sirens, and thanking the thieves for their help, went out to meet the officers of the law he had called.

Intimidate check to get the gang to tell Kingy who hired them for the job. (20+5)= 25 Thug's collective Will save: (7)= 7 Success! They inform Kingy of their emplyer's name and nature, but not location due to their not knowing where he is(except Wolfgang that is).

"My name is Marceau Suvou" Came the hurried reply, How exactly does one go about forgetting to introduce themselves right when they've been asked their name? he wondered in irritation, "As for the building houses part, that was mostly due to volunteering for Habitat for Humanity" he explained.

Raising himself to his feet with all the speed he could muster, Marceau surveyed his opponents with care. His plan had gone awry much earlier than he had hoped, yet less badly than he had feared. The thieves weren't running, were directly before him, and were possibly rattled by the suddenness of the attack. Then again, they may also have gauged him to be a rookie with little capacity to harm them. If he fought, he knew, it would be on their terms, and the clock ticked on...why fight? Figuring he could do worse than try, he stood to his full height, pointed one arm dramatically at them and declared: "I know exactly who you are and why you are here. Your crimes will soon be answered for, as the police have received word of you and your misdeeds tonight. In a little under five minutes, you'll hear their sirens approach, and I can easily keep you all here if you try to run. Surrender now and I'll be kinder in how I restrain you all." He was quite aware that some especially hardened criminals would be effectively immune to reason, but he gambled that a display of forethought would make them think twice about trying to either escape or fight. He wondered what would happen if it took longer than five minutes for the police to arrive...

Edit: Nevermind, issue raised non-existent.

Marceau had decided to retain his armor(which he usually slept in anyway)for working in the next day, assuming that the hot Haitian sun wouldn't prove much of an issue to him, an assumption in which he was correct. Unfortunately, the Haitian sand proved much more of a problem, and he had had to take advantage of the outhouse breaks to periodically clean the grit from the armored jumpsuit, which thankfully only took about eight minutes. Now he relaxed in the quiet and darkness, only slightly stiff from the exertions of the day, and nearly half-asleep. "Great job everybody!" he called out to the general assembly, "At this rate, we're likely to run out of wood before our time's up". Turning to Push he added cheerfully : "By the way, Push, That is one fine hammer you've got there. Did you make it?"

Thanks! Was worried this would just drift into the ether.

GM: At The arrival of Jubatus, there had been a noticeable hush as the small crowd took in the approach of the anthropomorph. The average Freedonian would quickly assure anyone who asked that they had no issue with any race, creed or religion so long as it didn't involve being a super villain, yet they still were human, and therefore needed a brief time to adjust to changes like seeing bipedal cheetahs. To their credit the Freedonians acclimatized to the new arrival with slightly greater speed than someone unused to a constant expectation of the extraordinary around every corner, and after about ten seconds of peace a neatly-dressed young man who looked to be in his late twenties came up to him and politely asked if he would be agreeable to an experiment in the bending oF the space-time continuum, which, he said, was a required study for his Master's thesis, and certain to get him a recommendation for entry into A.S.T.R.O. Labs., if successful. Sam was a fairly ordinary-looking human, so nobody paid much attention at first. After his light jab about Russian Reversal jokes, however, which got several chuckles from the older citizens there, an elderly woman sitting on a small pile of luggage cheerfully asked: "Tell me, son, whereabouts in Russia might you be from? You sound like my uncle, an East-Coast man." Fortuitously, the clogged intersection had been briefly unclogged, and Norman MacArthur was accelerating down the road to his next stop, his grim mind abuzz with questions. His friend(Uriah Casseivy) had mentioned seeing a strange shape along the road last night, like a man reflected as in a mirror, but on pavement, while a creature black as pitch had stood silently staring at it. Brusquely pushing the exchange from his mind with all the force he could muster, he focussed solely on the road before hum, carefully making his way past cars innumerable, and began planning how he would approach the next atop on his route, which he knew from long experience was difficult to get right up against without bumping the curb and scratching the bus.

Glad you could make it! Alright, game plan is as follows: I'd say two-three pages at the bus stop should be plenty, another two pages of thoughts/hijinks/conversation on the bus proper, and then...we'll see. Please do not hesitate to post suggestions or point out mistakes I've made!

As he listened to the litany of scholastic woes, Marceau felt a slight gloom beginning to grow in the back of his mind: When the last time I was like that? When my worst problems came from schoolwork? A slight crease grew on his high forehead By St. Xenia, why did I ever think taking vengeance into my own hands was a good idea? That's hundreds for a one-way ticket I know I'll never buy!. When Brian held out his hand, he shook it warmly A L'enfer with it! Jackie needs her blasted crazy-pills and I need to get a better job, Freedom College may turn out to a den of iniquity, but at least it's something. In answer to Brian's request for an introduction, he was happy to oblige. Turning to Victoria, gestured to her and said "Brian, this is Mz. VIctoria Knight, an acquaintance of mine I met in Haiti where both of us worked on building houses to replace those destroyed last year. Mz. Knight, Brian, a" He thought for a second and shrugged "young man in scholastic distress. I believe you two are of contemporary age, so perhaps you, Mz. Knight, might be able to help Brian with his problems with focusing in class?"

The days of the week are difficult to keep track of in fiction. The reasons why Tolkien's writing was so genius include the fact that he actually cared about the passage of time in his stories. Cubist: Good point, again, after several minutes of close(in relative terms) proximity they would definitely relax about the anthropomorphic cheetah, maybe ask in a clumsily casual fashion if they could get a paw-print, or something? Azuth65: Wait a moment, are we assuming that Marceau knows Wisp and Victoria are the same person?

Good point, and I apologize for failing to take that into account. I'll make sure to keep the renown of the various heroes in mind.

"Good to see you again, Mz. Knight! Been well since Haiti, I hope?" rumbled Marceau, beaming genially at the familiar face and voice, and was about to follow up with a veiled compliment for her actions on the island nation when the newly arrived young man chimed in with his reservations on the day being especially good, then hurriedly apologized for the supposed intrusion. "Not at all, sir, not at all! No need to be sorry in the least! What in particular is the problem, if I may be so bold?" It was then that he caught sight of Jubatus, and noticing the generally standoffish air the he emitted, simply waved discretely at him and smiled quickly.