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August 15, 2013 The messages arrived in different ways for different heroes - Cannonade and Wander had theirs delivered to one of the anonymous tip drop boxes the Liberty League used to collect correspondance, Wail had his delivered by standard mail to Keith LaMarr's home address, while Willow's came via a scanned copy emailed directly to Vince. They were instantly recognizable as odd - the envelopes weren't paper but vellum, some sort of processed animal skin, and the stamps affixed to them were wildly overpaid, as if someone had bought a chunk of postage and slapped it on an envelope without knowing how the value of postage actually worked. Inside the envelopes lay a simple message written in thick, heavy block printing - again on vellum, albeit by something that looked more like a pencil. HELLO YOU ARE INVITED TO THE ADULTED HOOD CELEBRATION OF RUNS-WITH-FANGS-BARED. PLEASE COME TO BATSTO VISITOR CENTER AT SUNSET TOMORROW IF YOU WANT TO COME. WITNESS MIGHTS OF WITH-FANGS-BARED CLAN AND RAPTOR EMPIRE. A quick trip to Google found the Batsto Vistor Center easily enough; a historic "living history" village deep in the heart of the Wharton State Forest. Heroes who remember the encounter with emissaries of the Raptor Empire will recall Runs-With-Fangs-Bared, the teenage daughter of the raptor commander who learned a lesson about not calling humans apes all the time.

May 22, 2011 9 AM Lincoln The Church of the Eternal Rock of Justice is the oldest traditionally black church in Freedom City. The congregation dates back to the 1850s when the first large black communities began in the city, while the building itself is a magnificent Romanesque cathedral rebuilt and refurbished in the 1920s thanks to lavish donations from a wealthy parishioner turned beauty shop tycoon. Chester Brown, the Bluesman, once sang in the choir here, at least before he decided to take his magnificent vocal talents, and his fists, to juke joints rather than choir. (The acoustics are still magnificent.) Back in the 1960s, 'the Rock' was a centerpiece of Freedom City's civil rights movement: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke here in 1966, back when today's senior pastor Reverend Thaddeus Q. Stone was just another fervent young believer in the crowd. Now in his mid-60s, Stone is famous for rejecting the support of larger religious organizations who make their financial aid dependent on adopting regressive social politics he and his congregants reject: the Rock, as it has so often in the past, stands for integrity and compassion. Numbers of parishoners are falling these days, as they are in most churches, but it remains a centerpiece of Freedom City's community. Parishioners are running out the door; screaming. "There are dragons in the church! There are dragons in the church!" And sure enough, if one looked past the frightened older woman clinging to the rail as she heads down and away, inside the sanctuary is a scene from a science fiction film: six gigantic reptilians, each as tall as a man with a tail whipping behind them as long as they were tall, paced the hallways as those parishioners who hadn't been able to run cowered in their seats or slipped away where they hoped the new arrivals couldn't find them. Today was children's choir! Standing behind his podium, secure in his faith (if not, if he was honest, his ability to live through the next few minutes,) the Reverend Stone faced down fearlessly the largest of the beasts as it stalked down the aisle towards him. No, not a beast... On closer inspection, all the new arrivals were wearing harnesses and carrying gear, their clawed hands working with an unnatural dexterity. And so it was that as the lizard-thing approached him, the Reverend asked, "How can I help you, Brother?" The thing hissed a reply in English that sounded inside the Reverend's head, its foul breath like rotten meat blasting in his face. "<Monkeys! Where are your leaders!>"