Cubist

So... we've got this guy who's been planting mysterious ultrasonic-emitting devices in sound systems, and has been kicked out of one band's crew for unacceptable behavior. The guy's physical resemblance to a known fan of supervillains in Europe is not comforting, nor is that European gent's evidently high level of technological/scientific expertise. First things first: Whatever the heck those mysterious devices are supposed to do, they don't friggin' belong here, so Jay will find and remove every last one of them. Since the devices emit that weird ultrasonic noise, Jay should have absolutely zero difficulty in locating every last one of them—all he needs to do is follow his ears. Okay... evidence that will stand up in court, just in case… When he's removing a device, Jay will begin by setting up video camera(s) for a permanent record of the removal. He'll use an X-acto knife with an insulated handle to scrape the devices off of whatever spots they're attached to, and once he extracts a device, he'll put it on the sticky side of a length of duct tape (ah, duct tape; is there nothing you can't do?), making sure there's no physical contact between the newly-placed device and any other devices he found and removed earlier. When the length of duct-tape has no more room for new devices, he'll stick it to a kevlar sheet (so that the devices have little or no chance of getting jostled loose) and wrap up the sheet in aluminum foil which should hopefully act as a Faraday cage to kill any signals which might otherwise be received and acted upon by the devices. I'm not entirely sure what sort of game-mechanics apply to the above plan of action, but hopefully Jay's Gadgets power will cover it.

'Almost outside (Jay's) hearing range'? This is unusual, since Jay has Ultrasonic Hearing. When's the last time he can recall hearing any sound like that 'nearly unnoticeable hum'? Also: Take 20 'rolls' on all four of Jay's Knowledge skills (those being Business; Current Events; Technology; and Theology & Philosophy) to see if Jay recognizes this 'Alfred Manderley' bloke. Yes, Take 20 on a skill roll normally takes 20* as much time to perform as a regular skill roll, but Jay has Quickness, so he can burn thru that 20* time real fast. His Take 20 'rolls' are Knowledge (Business), 28; Knowledge (Current Events), 28; Knowledge (Technology), 29; and Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy), 29. Likewise, Jay will examine some of Manderley's work with a Quickness-enhanced Take 20 'roll' on Notice, that 'roll' being 29. As well, Jay will inquire with the people who're running this festival, to see who hired this 'Manderley' guy and if they know what he's up to.

Jubatus isn't actually present at the start of this dance, but I guess I can make the roll in advance of need; thus, Jube's Initiative roll (1d20+31=35).

So the 'opening bid' (you should pardon the expression) is like so: Anything else the HQ should have, right from the beginning?

The Abnormals will need a headquarters, in the fullness of Time. They obviously won't have an HQ right off the bat, but there's nothing that says we players can't work up some of the details now, in advance of need, yes? So I'm going to get the discussion started with a wish list of stuff we might like to have… Toughness: 20 [3 pp] Size: Medium (i.e., warehouse) to Large (i.e., mansion or cave complex). [1-2 pp] Features: Power System [1 pp], Library [1 pp], Infirmary [1 pp], Computer [1 pp], Communications [1 pp], Pool [1 pp], Security System [1 pp], Living Space [1 pp], Fire Prevention System [1 pp], Laboratory [1 pp], Workshop [1 pp], Gym [1 pp], Dock [1 pp], Concealed [3 pp] I'm thinking that we start off small, point-wise. Toughness 20 (3 pp), Large size (2 pp), Computer (1 pp), Pool (for Wave-Eye -- 1 pp), Living Space (for Penitent -- 1 pp), and Concealed (3 pp). The rest of the wish list can take care of itself; we can add the rest of it piecemeal, as and when we see fit. Yes? No?

Something I ought to have thought of earlier: Jay Xavier's transformation into a superfast cat is the result of Grue bioengineering. So there might be a reason for the Meta-Grue to mess around with Jubatus' life… I've never given much thought to why the Grue decided to change a human into a supersonic predator, but they must have had some reason. One obvious candidate for such a reason: They were trying to create a living terror weapon. The plan might have been, turn a human into a terrifyingly lethal monster; let the other humans' natural xenophobia cause them to expel the 'monster' from human society; see how much damage the 'monster' does. If this is the plan, the Grue will want to make some follow-on observations to see how well Reality is following their projected script. They discover (much to their surprise) that the 'monster' (Jubatus) has not been expelled from human society, and furthermore, is not dispensing random carnage. Well, if the humans are suppressing their natural xenophobia, perhaps that xenophobia can be brought to the fore with the proper stimulus? Thus, the Meta-Grue's scheme.

Backstage at a rock concert can get weird. Backstage when the rocker in question is a known superhero can get weirder. But even the most burned-out roadie would have to do a double-take at the sight of a furry, tailed predator at a mixing board. Jay Xavier suspected he knew why the festival organizers had asked him to help out with Warren 'Riff' Wilder's crew; since superheroes had a peculiar tendency to attract unwanted attention from supervillains, it made sense to put all the targets in one place, so that everyone else would be that much more likely to be overlooked. Fortunately for Xavier's piece of mind, all of the regulars in Wilder's crew had gotten the holy crap, it's a cheetah!! out of their systems in less than an hour, once they started working with him: "…check Mic 15, I think we're getting some interference from a loose connection," Xavier said to Korgo, one of the full-time roadies, just before he fed a CD into a player and routed the signal to a pair of amplifier stacks. "Hey, anyone who's free, I need an ear—I think I got the balance right between stacks 1 and 2, but I'd be happier with a second opinion on that—can someone gimme an ear on it?" Once upon a time, Xavier had been a damn good musician, a vocalist with seven self-published CDs to his credit. But that was before he gained an unremovable fur coat, lost his old voice plus a non-trivial chunk of his manual dexterity, and figured out how to force a comprehensible approximation of human speech out of a 100% non-human vocal tract. He just couldn't sing… It had been some time since Xavier did any serious sound engineering, but he found that the old skills were still there, still usable. He wasn't sure how he felt about that; it was as if there were two arguing voices in the back of his head, one of them dreading the inevitable re-opening of emotional wounds, and the other very happy because hey, music! Well, it wasn't like it'd be him up on stage. Not now, and not ever again. But at least Xavier could help someone else make the music happen…

Apparently, the not-a-Viking's reflexes were quicker than Jubatus thought: In the short time it took Jube to offer advice to the Mysterious Flying Super, the horny guy dropped his chunk of concrete and grabbed for the feline's ankles! Fortunately, Jube managed to upshift and avoid the not-a-Viking's lumbering limbs. Closer than I like, Jube thought, but not close enough. That's what I get for downshifting within reach of the enemy's hands. Okay… Jeeves said there's a good chance of this hat being magic, which would explain why the damn thing didn't want to come off when I pulled on it. Wonder-friggin'-ful. But if it is magic… hmmm… Jubatus didn't much care for magic. The only rules magic followed were its own; it was a big, gaping, festering sore of an asterisk in modern science's consensus model of Reality. While the feline had very little hands-on experience, he suspected that dealing with magic was strongly analogous to debugging a program that was written in an unknown language, to run under an unknown OS. Of course, a buggy chunk of computer code wouldn't turn you into a newt if you poked at it the wrong way. And from what Jube had read, the same was not true of magic… Fine, whatever. Treat it as buggy software. It works by sheer logical extensions from its underlying premises, whatever those may be. But it's a damn good bet that those premises don't include scientific physical laws. We know the hat doesn't want to move off his head, but that doesn't mean it won't move on his head… Just then an idea occurred to Jube. He wasn't at all sure he could do it; even if he could do it, the consequences he desired might not occur. But even so, he judged it was worth a shot. Still upshifted to a tempo of 40, Jubatus resumed his position standing on the not-a-Viking's shoulders… he got a firm grip on the helmet's horns, one in each forepaw… and he twisted the helmet around, so that its wearer's vision was fully obstructed by the helmet's opaque backside! Crottled greeps! That worked!? Jube thought to himself—then he blurred off the not-a-Viking's back, and downshifted just long enough to say, "Hit him while he's blinded!"

[accidentally managed to post this to the IC thread, when it should really have gone here… sigh…] Groovy. Jube's next trick: Grab hold of the helmet's horns, and (try to) turn it 180°, so that HG can't see. Since Jube isn't trying to remove the helmet this time, hopefully the weird magical hoo-hah that resisted Jube the last time won't apply here.

Okay... I got a hero point to play with. I'm thinking it gets burned to provide the "heroic feat" (pg 121, Core rulebook) of Alternate Power, and the AP is applied to the Enhanced STR in Jube's Timeshift container. He is, after all, going to be exerting his full Strength to swivel the friggin' helmet around, right? So the AP is Dazzle. And… hmm. "Visual senses count as two sense types" (pg 81, Core book). So it's 2 pts per rank. But Dazzle is a ranged power, and this attack ain't got no range at all, so there's a -1 Flaw; this, Jube has 12 ranks in Dazzle, for this purpose. So. First: Roll to see if it hits at all. Jube's attack roll for 'dazzle' (1d20+12=23) means this is very much a success. Second: Horny Guy needs to make a Reflex save now. If he makes this save, the Dazzle doesn't work. Otherwise, HG can't see. Every round after this, HG gets to make a Fortitude save to recover from the Dazzle, with +1 added to this save every round after the first round. On the first round after he makes his FORT save, he gets -1 on all rolls involving visual senses; this penalty goes away on the second round after he makes his FORT save. Since HG's FORT save is +11, this means he's probably going to recover real fast. We'll just need to take him out quickly…

Fortunately, the House Rules on combat explain the Grapple rules rather more clearly than does the Core Book [pg 156-7]. What we got here is, a Grapple-vs-Grapple opposed check, and Jube's Grapple is +16. Since Jube needs to exceed HG's roll of 29 (because ties go to the highest bonus), he needs a 30 or better, which means rolling 14 or more. Not the best situation, but also not hopeless. And… Jube's Grapple roll (1d20+16=26) doesn't quite make it. Fine—I'll burn a Hero Point for a re-roll (pg 121 in the Core Book). Since a die-roll of 1-10 gets 10 added to it, a re-rolled die is effectively 1D10+10, not 1D20. And Jube's Grapple re-roll (1d10 + 10 + 16=32) is a success, yay for the good guys!

A museum exhibit of audioanimatronic dinosaurs: Jay Xavier learned about this rather earlier than most members of the general public, because he was on the Hunter Museum's short list of candidates to play on-call troubleshooter, just in case their robot animals went haywire. They ultimately chose someone else—even his lowest rates just couldn't fit into the budget for this exhibit—and Xavier didn't give the exhibit another thought until now, when it was finally opening. Xavier made a point of being nowhere near the Hunter Museum for this particular opening. Dinosaurs? He liked them as much as any other red-blooded male. The crowds of screaming children that were sure to fill the Hunter for the exhibit's first several days? Not his cup of tea. Xavier had the acute senses of the cheetah he resembled, and the noise and stench of N hundred happily shrieking grade-school kiddies crammed into overly-close proximity to one another… That, he could do without.

[Capt. Piccard voice] "Make it so."

Hmmm... some ideas, not all of which are necessarily going to pass muster 'as is': The Muses could grant you superhuman insight into human psychology, hence you can know what buttons to push in order to yield any given emotional/intellectual reaction. This could manifest as Confuse, Mind Control, Emotion Control, etc. Likewise, your psychological insights could grant you the ability to make exceptionally accurate judgements regarding what's going thru someone's head at any given time; i.e., Telepathy. Mental Quickness seems appropriate here. Postcognition, thanks to Clio (History). Snare with the SFX "target is helpless with uncontrollable laughter". courtesy of Thalia (Comedy). Weaponized jokes can ramp up to Suffocate (laugh so hard you can't breathe), Nauseate (ditto), or even Blast (laugh even harder, thus cracking a rib). Comprehend 5, i.e., the whole package. Terpsichore (Dance) could be the source of movement-related powers—Spinning, Speed, Leaping, Sure-Footed, Slow Fall, etc—and even physical attacks, since you'll have excellent reflexes, body control, and yada yada yada. Thus, Strike, Stun, Nauseate, and so on.

On the bright side, it's a great name for a villain, eh? Possibly the arch-nemesis of the Native American weather-controller?

Before you decide on the name "Stormfront", you might want to google that word…

Name of the hero group: hmmm... "Prairie Protectors"? Names of the members: Weather controller: "Thunderbird" is the obvious choice for a weather-controlling USAF pilot who's also a Native American—the name has significance on both the N.A, side and on the military side. Also, "Cyclone". "Hailstorm". Luck controller: "Lucky Jim". "Chance". "Coinflipper". Fire Controller: "Hotspell". "Hotstuff". "King of Flame". Earth Controller: "Hillock". "Trenchmaker". "Tremor". Water Controller: "Deluge". "Cloudbuster". "Waterhammer". Plant Controller: "Harvest". "Cornfed" (ignore this one if it runs afoul of the "honor, nor mock" guideline). "Lady Flora". Cowl: "Pursuivant". "The Inspector". "The Guardian".

Have tweaked the 'e'-looking 'a' in the Type A version of the proposed logo. Have hopefully reduced the tweaked letterform's resemblance to an 'e' that the confusion will be minimized. Jube as the catalyst for this team: Why, if Jube asks other heroes to band together with him as a team, is he only getting monster-type heroes? I'm thinking it's a combination of Jube (a) knowing the limits of his financial resources, and ( wanting to focus on 'freaks' like himself, who would be likely to be overlooked by the existing support structures for heroes. Or it could be the luck of the draw -- for whatever reason, those guys just happen to be the only ones who did say 'yes'. Media campaign: It's worth noting that the setting already has a pre-defined "newspaper that slags on heroes", that being the Daily Herald. From pg. 44 of the Freedom City sourcebook: So. We have the Herald, a media outlet with no qualms about slamming 'good guys' who aren't the right kind of good guys—and I do mean RIGHT kind of good guys. We have Jubatus, a very undiplomatic soul who looks like a friggin' animal and is, among other things, an unapologetic atheist. Since Ms. Loeb is already defined as hatin' on gays (i.e., Johnny Rocket) and poor people (i.e., the 'lawless vigilantes' of Southside, a neighborhood with a high level of poverty and etc), it would seem very much in character for her to get personally torqued off at 'that Godless freak' Jubatus. She could have regarded Jube as ignorable when he was just another independent hero, but when he becomes part of a team of heroes… particularly a team whose membership also includes a demon and a fish monster… Yes? No?

The logo: [evil grin] It's an upside-down "e". So it ends up becoming a funny-looking "a"… Getting the team together: Could be Jube's fault. He's rich, so the question of "what do I do with the bucks?" naturally arises. So he spreads the word that he's looking for other heroes to work with, and the few who actually respond are Wave-Eye and etc?

Have worked up two different logo designs for "the Abnormals". If we decide to run with a different name, I can use these as templates for designs which use that different name. Type A (w/ 'a' tweaked for clarity) Type B Preferences? Comments? Desired changes?

Are you sure you didn't have Jubatus specifically in mind when you and Arichamus came up with this concept for a hero group, Shofet? Monstrous appearance: Check. In brute physical terms, Jube is largely indistinguishable from a large hunting cat. A dark past they're trying to atone for: Check. Part of the reason Jube became a hero is because of an incident that occured not long after he took delivery on the permanent fur coat, an incident in which he thrashed the living bejeezus out of five thugs; at least one of said thugs came real close to dying in hospital… Have some sort of moral fibre and are not totally psychotic: Check. Jube strives to avoid violence, has the proverbial Code Versus Killing, yada yada yada. One thing Jube brings to the table, over and above the qualifications listed above, is that he's wealthy. He's no Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne, to be sure. But as one of the relatively few characters who even has the feat Benefit: Wealth, Jube is well suited to fund the needs of a small hero group. What to call this group… hmm… let me offer up a few candidate names… The Menagerie (this would be Jube's first choice) Legion Étrangère The Weird Ones The Abnormals You like? You no like?

Well... if you want a non-mundane reason for Jube to exit a fight without warning, here's an idea I've been toying with: Jubatus makes Time speed up and slow down. In other words, he's messing with the fabric of the space/time continuum. Since Jube is, therefore, a person with the (very much unrealized!) potential to rip the Universe into tiny, unlivable shreds, it's possible that one of those vaguely-defined Guardian-of-Reality NPCs has Jube under surveillance, 25/8/366. And said NPC could, at any arbitrary moment, choose to zap Jube off to another dimension for some sort of Test Of Character/Responsibility, the better to reassure said NPC that Jube will continue not to do anything that would end up mangling the Universe. So Jube can be zipping along, when all of a sudden -- no warning whatsoever -- he's surrounded by weird, multidimensional SFX which hurt the eye to look at, and he just plain disappears. And at whatever later time, the weird, multidimensional SFX re-occur, and Jube emerges from this 'vortex' to get on with… whatever storyline he was part of at the time. You like? You no like?

Like the vast majority of all other scientists, Highfollower proved to be more than happy to talk about his work to anyone who might be able to appreciate it; Jubatus had asked in hopes of gaining some information that was relevant to the question of Who Made The Meta-Virus. Unfortunately, Highfollower really had done nothing more than speculate about the possibility of a meta-virus, and so his words, however fascinating they were to Jubatus, were basically irrevelant to the case that the cheetah and Young Britannia were investigating. At least we've got some assurance that Highfollower himself isn't involved, Jube told himself. And now we do have a lead, namely, Vincent MacBride at FCU. "…parity of the amino acid moieties," the academician said, finishing up his impromptu information-dense mini-lecture on theoretical bioengineering. "Interesting," Jubatus replied. "I think we've heard all we need to, Dr. Highfollower. Once all the mysteries are solved, I'm going to make a point of keeping you in the loop." To Young Britannia: "Let's regroup back at FCU; I want to check with the registrar about Vincent MacBride." Returning his attention to Highfollower: "Good-bye, sir, and thank you very much for being so generous with your time." And with that, Jubatus upshifted and was blurring down the highway back to Freedom City…

Jube is 6 feet tall and 100 pounds—in other words, he's a spindly little freak whose primary defense is Not Getting Hit, and he knows it. Accordingly, he's not even going to try to grapple/pin a guy who's strong enough to tear concrete slabs loose from benches. Pull the horny hat off of the guy's head, yes; pin him like in wrestling, no. Okay... dude is using TT's Berserker sheet. So he's pretty tough as is, and he gets worse in the 'alternate form' of his berserker rage. So. Jube's going for a Disarm, and if he succeeds, he'll have the horny hat in his forepaws. Jube thinks it should be fairly eaqsy, because how much effort does it take to pull the hat off of someone's head, you know? Jube's Hit roll for Disarm (1d20+12=31) exceeds the living crap out of Horny guy's Defense, so that's a hit; now Jube needs to do an Opposed Check, his attack's damage vs the target's Strength. Jube's 'attack', in this case, is his unarmed strike, so he's rolling against HG's Strength of… 24 (it it's just HG's base STR) or 30 {if HG's got his berserk on). Looking at the Opposed Check rules (pg 9 of the Core Book), Jube's 'damage' roll must exceed HG's Strength of 24 in order to successfully pull the friggin' hat off HG's head. And since this is 1d20 plus Jube's own STR bonus of +4… yeah. Well, there might be a +2 bonus from Conditional Modifiers (pg. 10), as Jube's feet are on HG's shoulders and he's pulling the hat upwards? What the heck; the Disarm 'damage' roll (1d20+4=10)… is a complete and utter failure. So now Jube is aware that much, much more than the simple force of gravity is keeping the helmet on HG's head, a fact that was not evident to him before.

An audioanimatronic robot is a multi-ton piece of machinery. It needs motors that generate a nontrivial quantity of horsepower, just to be able to move in the first place—but at the same time, those motors are necessarily powerful enough that the robot could do a heck of a lot of damage if it went haywire. Therefore, when faced with a malfunctioning audioanimatron, the host museum probably wants (a) someone with technical expertise to ID, and fix, the bugs in the system; ( someone who's free/willing to do this kind of work; and © a superhero to protect the public and the rest of the museum, just in case the malfunctioning robot ends up going berserk. I give you Jay 'Jubatus' Xavier, who qualifies on all three counts. Point (a): He's a highly skilled troubleshooter with a rep for high-quality work. Point (: He's freelance, meaning he actively seeks out this kind of contract. Point ©: He's publicly known to be the superspeedy hero Jubatus.