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#ToProsperIsToFall

My Colony game is shaping up into this beautiful fusion of sci-fi domestic drama (a la Caprica I guess?) and spy-fi thriller.

In one scene we have the space dad Zeph talking to Academic Missionary about setting up an education plan for his 15yo daughter Miane, all because she just announced she’s signed on as a junior Engineer for a Class-1 ship’s 6-month trade circuit. Space dad is worried about his daughter’s future and Merit is a doctor, surely she can help!

Meanwhile elsewhere on the base, Jiro the spy is sticking a knife in his belt because the corporate spy he’s about to interrogate just woke up and has body slammed the doc making sure she was alive; the corpspy is probably about to get shanked, like a scene out of Bourne.

Gilmore Girls meets Jason Bourne is not at all a terrible game, let me tell you. I’m loving this game tons, Sean.

#ToProsperIsToFall #Part1

So, generally, I divide my PbP games into sessions on a weekly basis: Monday through Friday is game time, with weekends belonging to the players to do whatever things need their attention as adults. In real life, game length can vary widely between 2 hours all the way out to wild weekend long game-a-thons; online, the equivalent is more about user activity. Regardless: it works. That said, this is just a general idea… it falls apart if things get too busy in people’s lives, as they did for me and my play group. So, even though we started playing what feels like long ago, today marks the end of Session 1 of my game To Prosper is To Fall, haha. So, what follows is a big info dump and then a brief summary of the session. Enjoy!

Our Cast of Protagonists are:

• Dr. Merit Pantaleimon is an Academy Missionary (Productive/Academic/Explorer) with Loyalty to The Academy on Alexandria and indebted to them for her life, education, and status among them

• Zeph Athena Parthenon is an Ambassador (Galactic/Starfarer/Personality) with Loyalty to Hermes Corporation and indebted to them for his Class-2 starship “The New Horizon”

• Jiro “Marat” Kankkunen is a Turncoat Spy (Rigid/Clandestine/Outlaw) indebted to Acheron Securities for their gear/training/knowledge he stole when he went AWOL; Hermes Corp for smuggling him out of Acheron space; and the Void Confederation for pushing through his paperwork to get a new identity and colonist status somewhere on the frontier

Our game is a Colony game, and we came up with all this delightful information during game creation:

• The planet (unnamed except for a bureaucratic designation within the Void Confederation) is a world of intense and unreal mountain ranges so grand as to be visible from space. Water only makes up 30% of the surface, but underwater sources exist and are very difficult to find.

• The planet is dusty and craggy, described as one player as being like the Wild West, complete with miserable native scrub brush and regular dust storms. The atmosphere is breathable, it’s just perpetually full of particles that will scratch up your throat.

• The planet has been settled for something like three generations, 60 years or thereabouts. The original settlers were a cultural mix, but the predominant people were Pasoan Cardysts.

• Pasos is a planet whose natives are pretty friendly; they ritualistically tattoo their forearms to commemorate important life events

• Cardysm is a religious movement with elements of Taoism, Animism, and Amish or Puritan values. Cardysts pursue oneness between the individual and the universe, and follow a number of religious mores in the process. This includes constructing their geodesic domes a certain distance away from the main colony, facing magnetic north — the ritualized indulgence of specialized mind-altering hallucinogenics — and virtue-naming, where children are given titles meant to breed harmony with the universe.

• The Colony has long-held superstitions about creatures in the cliffs outside the community and the curses they can bring down on the colony and it’s people.

• ~60 years later, Cardysm now represents a minority within the Colony, although their values and some of their rites are practiced secularly by many of the non-devoted colonists.

• The Colony’s establishment was sponsored by the Void Confederation for two purposes: one, as a reminder to the the other corporate-backed worlds in this star system that they’re not too big for the Confederation; two, as a mining outpost for the metals in minting Void tinder and for prisellium ore, the raw form of Jump Drive fuel.

• Most Colonies are built on a natural landmark of some kind and this one is no different: original settlers cracked open the planet to discover an underground cistern, which has been tapped for a well, running water, and irrigation. On top of that, the colonists have settled on one of the planet’s few flat planes that stretch out uninterrupted by the world’s ubiquitous serpentine mountain ranges.

• The Colony’s main exports are minerals, jump drive fuel, metals (all of which go through the Confederation first for their cut); beyond this, the Colony also trades in quality computronic technology constructed out of the naturally conductive bone structures of local fauna.

•The Colony’s main imports are machine parts, supplementary food stuffs, luxuries like entertainment, and religious hallucinogenics; there also exists a thriving trade in bootlegged alcohol, bypassing Confederation tariffs that skyrocket the price.

• The biggest benefit of the Colony’s placement are the cliffs in the east that act as a windbreak; in the cover of the ridge, the colonists maintain a field of crops that they are trying to biologically adapt to the planet’s alien soil and atmosphere.

• The biggest threat to the Colony are the semi-regular dust storms that blanket the whole area. On the good days, it’s dirty and everything mechanical gets gummed up and needs a really backbreaking maintenance cycle; on the bad days, the winds get so vicious that the particles will cut open flesh inside and out, choking those without masks on their own throat lining and blood. On top of that, the metallic particles abundant in the soil and atmosphere act as an electromagnet when carried aloft by the alien storms, creating immense and deadly lightning discharges between air currents.

• In true Cardyst fashion, the Colony’s name is Prosper.

Since this is a Colony game, they assigned their ‘work spaces’ as locations in the Colony.

• Merit’s workspace was an Academy clinic that she and other Academics had constructed for the colony to use.

• Zeph’s workspace was NavCon, a tower to the west that hooks up to a set of satellites in orbit to monitor the terrible dust storms of the planet and guide space/air traffic for the colony.

• Jiro’s workspace was a set of secret tunnels, crawlspaces, and cubbies in the crater to the south where some living quarters and his workplace existed; they’re meant to be used if Acheron ever comes looking for him.

For our Jump Point, I kept in mind this was a Colony game — our scope is larger than a ship, and the threats can be broader. I established three separate scenes, placing the characters accordingly:

Zeph was aboard the New Horizon with his daughter and a hired pilot returning from an Acquisition with (what I later found out were) machine parts for the mine; they were in the process of re-entering the atmosphere.

Merit was in the fields with her research assistants, collecting soil and crop samples to analyze, trying to unlock why yet another season of crops had been rejected by the planet.

Jiro was at his day job bartending, splitting his attention listening to his underworld-dabbling boss fail to cut a deal with some off-world smugglers, and to his unwitting informant rattle off details about the Prosper’s administration’s inner-workings.

The Jump Point kicked off immediately when I introduced a dust storm to end all dust storms, this colossal blow-out of a tempest complete with flesh-scouring dirt and sky-igniting lightning.

Merit and her Crew — and their vital research — were out and exposed to the elements; Zeph and co. were caught by the storm part way down, without enough fuel to ascend, forced to fight their way to a landing; Jiro’s patrons and his boss were trapped in this tin can of a bar that the storm was infiltrating (while realizing that there’s no way the Colony’s satellite tower could have missed a storm this monstrous without interference…)

Short and to the point breakdown of the action this session:

• Merit tried to organize her researchers and the fieldworkers with a Command, getting them to all move to the cliffs for safety; she flubbed that royally, as some ran for cover, but others panicked, and others turned and ran into the heart of the storm to find and protect their families.

• Merit tried to quickly get to cover with her prize student, Prosperity-Cometh-Not-Before-Harmony, but he had failed to secure his research kit and lost a ton of tools… Including a sample of one of the only plants that had taken root and grown strong! Merit braved the storm and went back for it.

• Merit saved one of the fieldworkers who was lost in the storm; we earlier established that this worker was convinced missionaries from The Academy were magic, and he was kneeling in the storm praying for Merit to find him.

• Finally in cover with her students and a bunch of fieldworkers, Merit was trying to save the life of one of them who had been exposed to the storm for too long. It was gross and bloody and pretty heinous, and it was hard. First, Merit didn’t have a medkit, so she had to cobble one together out of what things in a research kit could pull double duty. Second — and worse!! — she had to sacrifice the only living plant sample they had from the field, grinding it up to create a medicine needed to save her patient!

• Zeph ordered his NPC pilot Liv to try and land the New Horizon despite the storm; I warned that would mean flying right in… It could be tried, but it would earn the ship a Malfunction from Clogged Intakes. Zeph said do it!

• Zeph handled the shields while Liv handled trying to pilot the New Horizon down through the storm. Sadly, a failed roll saw the shields completely go offline and the cargo hold suffered a Severe Breakage! Additionally, the coolant pipes throughout the ship suffered a leak as pressure built up! The Engine room was being flooded with the poisonous gas!

• Zeph crawled his way into the belly of the engine room to get his tools on the main coolant tank, holding his breath through the gas long enough to clamp down the pressure and stop the leakage throughout the ship. Sadly, the ship was still filled with this toxic fog.

• So, Zeph blew the maintenance hatches of the engine room wide open as the ship came to a sudden (and kind of chaotic) landing in the middle of the storm. Zeph figured letting the storm in a little was better than bottling up the noxious fumes, so he opened the hatches to the outside world and let the air rush out into the storm.

• With the New Horizon now safe (albeit with a Severe Breakage, a Filter Clog, and Disabled Shields…) Zeph checked on his daughter (who was okay) and reunited with pilot Liv in the cargo bay to discover that Prosper’s new drill parts had been ruined in the unshielded lightning strike… well, shit

• Liv and Zeph almost had words… she hates him in general, and it doesn’t help that his decision to set down in the storm rather than find some better place to set down destroyed their cargo…

• At the bar, Jiro was trying to seal up the joint, get the windows closed to keep the storm out and keep the patrons safe; they were already starting to wheeze and gasp and cough up blood

• In the process, Jiro spotted two shapes moving around outside, trying to get in and he recognized one of them was Reason, the Void Confederation spy who undermined Acheron and helped him relocate here

• Getting them inside was a hazardous maneuver, as it involved opening the place back up to the storm — in the process Jiro got his face raked by the storm and was injured not-too-badly for it, but he got his friend and a strange woman inside.

• It turned out that the woman was a suspicious person of import… Reason had caught them fussing around with the Navigation Tower’s power relays; they were using an insidious control terminal that can manipulate computer systems — likely, it is responsible for why the colony was hit by this storm with no forewarning!

• Upon examination, Jiro discovered a marking beneath the woman’s ear: it was a sign that she worked for Acheron in their Field Projects division!

—–

And that’s where we are, going into Part II. A lot of problems got kicked up around Prosper just by playing out a storm and seeing where they went.

We know that there’s some big project to construct a new mining drill — so what’s up with that? Probably part of whatever agreement has the Confederation sponsoring this colony, so how are they going to react when they find out the parts were ruined?

And a field worker who already thinks Academics are magic was just saved by one, so how is that going to go over with the religious Cardyst minority? And what about how Merit destroyed the only living plant that the colony had cultivated? And that colonist who Merit saved, but who is now horribly scarred?

And Liv is pissed with Zeph, so how is that gonna go? She’s the best pilot in Prosper, but if they won’t work together anymore, then what? And oh god the ship, Severe Breakage, clogged intakes, and busted shields, how’s that gonna shake out?

And now apparently Acheron is messing with Prosper? Does that mean they know Jiro is there, or is this coincidence? What will Mr. Vandikar and The Gerant — Jiro’s illicit employers — want to do about Acheron threatening the security of their dirty business? And what about Reason and by extension his spymasters at the Confederation? Hell, what will Jiro himself do to stay under the radar?

Meanwhile, there’s also some stuff floating around about how the colony needs additional generators built and the Confederation is SUPPOSED to foot the bill for those (but probably won’t after this drill disaster), and how Vandikar is trying to line up new importers of Cardyst drugs, and booze…

Extremely fun game so far, with so much going on already.

I’ve included a link to the slide deck we’re using for our game, with character sheets and so forth. You should be able to scroll through below, or open it in a new window by clicking the Google Slides icon.

#ToProsperIsToFall

In my game of Uncharted Worlds, our Missionary just made the choice to save the life of a colonist who was dying from wounds incurred during a terrible flesh-rending sandstorm. The only way to save the patient, though, was to grind up this plant the Missionary was carrying around into the needed medicine.

The plant was the only living sample of crops in the colony that had grown and taken root in the planet’s alien soil; everything else always, always withers and dies and without the plant for study, the Colony’s agriculture (and by extension, growth and self-sufficiency) will be pushed back who knows how long. A full growing season’s effort and hard work wasted, all of it gone.

It’s a pretty great game.

I was reading over Malfunctions and Patch-Up today while running my PbP game, and a few things occurred to me, and I…

I was reading over Malfunctions and Patch-Up today while running my PbP game, and a few things occurred to me, and I was curious what they were going to look like in the final cut, Sean Gomes.

For one, right now, it’s a little inconvenient looking at the very small section on Malfunctions in starships and then realizing that the more in depth info is in a completely different chapter, Vehicles. Is this info still going to be split this way? Will the relevant information be copied in both sections with an obligatory “I know I already said this in the other chapter, but you’ll thank me later” type thing?

Secondly, I see that according to Malfunctions section in the Vehicles chapter, Malfunctions only come in one variety — they’re neither minor nor major, unlike Debilities. So, does this mean the Patch Up text has gotten a revamp, so that treating a Major Malfunction is no longer an option?

Just some thing I noticed, and I’m curious! We’re enjoying our game so far!

#ToProsperIsToFall

Minor update to my last post about the PBP I’m starting up. We made Factions! Since there are four of us, with 3 PCs, we decided to go with 4 Factions total, giving some wiggle room and some options for the characters about how to handle the uneasy alliances in space.

As a reminder, the PCs are:

> Zeph Athena Parthenon, an Ambassador (Galactic/Personality/Starfarer)

> Jiro “Marat” Kankkunen, a Turncoat Spy (Regimented/Clandestine/Scoundrel)

> Dr. Merit Pantaleimon, an Academy Missionary (Productive/Academic/Explorer)

A set of summaries, relatively simplistic, for our Factions follow:

• The Academy is a star-spanning “vocational orthodoxy” that has enshrined study and the communication of knowledge as quasi-religious tenets. Their Might comes in the form of cultural inertia surrounding the sanctity of The Academy, the political clout of Academy-educated individuals throughout space, the economic relief they can offer needy worlds, and (on some level) the kind of technology they will level against you if they must. Their Reach manifests as Missionaries sent into the galaxy to spread the good word and in the form of Universities set up to educate the masses. Their Structure is that of several specialized “colleges” that elect representatives to a Council that thereafter elects its own Head; terms are for-life unless a Counselor is ousted. Their Ideology is the simple and immortal creed: “Knowledge Wants To Be Free.”

(Merit was born and raised on The Academy homeworld of Alexandria, educated in their Universities, and a Missionary in their name. She has been sent to the Colony of our game to educate the settlers on medicine and chemistry and offer her services tending to the needy. She, as you would expect, is Allied with The Academy and has 3-Debt/1-Favor with this Faction).

• Acheron Securities LTD. is a slimy and duplicitous ouroboros of private military industry selling its services not to the highest bidder — but to every bidder. Their Might comes in the form of political inscrutability (there are so many shell and holding companies separating every facet and facade of Acheron that it is nigh impossible to prove their direct involvement), in addition to the sheer volume of soldiers and war-machines at their disposal, and the economic ham-handedness one might expect from such business. Their Reach includes numerous corporate headquarters and retreats, training facilities, support networks of offices and hospitals, and proprietary factories/laboratories run in-house to develop and construct new ways of killing people. Their Structure is convoluted, isolating every front company from every other, allowing the people at the top to throw the bodies of their employees against one another until bloody money falls out. Numerous middle-managers try to go unnoticed, following the orders from a shady Board of Directors answering to a CEO. Their Ideology is the pragmatic and self-fulfilling: “There Will Always Be A War To Profit From.”

(Jiro was born and raised on the world of Indra, a world so tightly and maddeningly entwined with Acheron’s industry that for all intents and purposes Acheron might as well BE the world government. He was trained and modified by them before getting the hell out… he has their stuff, their knowledge, their skills, and their interest. That’s 1-Debt.)

• Hermes Corporation is the guild that has managed, against all odds, to monopolize and privatize travel between the stars. Their Might exists in the form of a complete legal stranglehold over their ship and ship-material patents, their fleet’s “trade secret” knowledge of the best Jump Lane headings, the sheer number of ships in their fleet capable of normalizing their control of mass transit, and the technical knowledge they exploit to make their services a necessity in constructing and operating your own Hermes Corp starship. Their Reach extends to space stations, shipyards, their numerous fleets themselves, the associated service/support structures that maintain the above, and the very void itself between worlds over which they have positioned themselves as “experts.” Their Structure is hybrid of corporate bureaucracy maintaining the fleets and guildlike exclusion to turn the fleets into a shield that protects the company; a fleet’s board of captains and commanders settle internal disputes, passing larger concerns up to the Corporation’s Council, overseen by an Admiral who possesses veto power to forbid any particular course of action. Their Ideology is the reclusive and manipulative: “Our Way, or No Way.”

(Zeph was born on Parthenon Station and raised in the Athena Fleet of the Hermes Corporation; he lived he loved he married and raised a daughter in the cold future-steel embrace of their transport vessels. Course, he’s since been framed for stealing Jump Lane trade secrets and his wife has disappeared into the stars. He was lucky enough to sent away with a ship and his daughter, and not brought to trial or vented into space. Zeph is still Allied with Hermes Corp but the ship used up his last Favor — 3-Debt).

(Jiro managed to escape Indra and Acheron only by begging and bartering for passage on Hermes Corp transports. They got him to freedom — that’s 1-Debt).

• The Void Confederation has been the properly authorized and broadly respected unifying governmental body of nearly all settled space for thousands of years, and it is showing its age. Their Might exists in the form of popular cultural inertia – the people respect the Confederation’s ways, and the hundreds of adherent-worlds to its Treaty know that to contravene the Confederation is opening the door to retaliation from others; furthermore, they act through numerous lesser corporate bodies that hold contracts to fulfill many governmental roles; the Confederation’s main strength comes from the Treaty’s agreed upon currency, making this august body an incidental banking powerhouse. Their Reach extends into every Treasury Office and every Mint on every world important enough to hold one, and into every bureaucratic office tasked with maintaining the economy. Their Structure starts at the Premier and flows down into their cabinet and subordinate cabinet staffs tasked with maintaining interstellar relations and trade; parallel to this are numerous Confederated offices for policing, defense, and more — many of whom are so bogged down in millenia of redtape that they farm out work to minor private companies. Their Ideology is the provocative: “Control the Credit, Control the Void.”

(As the legitimate unifying government in space, the Void Confederation is responsible for Jiro’s new identity, credit, and life in the Colony. Meanwhile, they’re very interested in his history with Acheron — that’s 1-Debt).

A very clear focus on economics developed when our first two Factions were an interstellar NGO and the most villainous war-profiteers ever. The third player decided that all space travel was monopolized by evil uber in space and it was clear to me that I needed to create a Faction representing the fiscal interests of the Powers-that-Be.

#ToProsperIsToFall

My group is going through campaign set-up for a play-by-post game of Uncharted Worlds right now, and we’re all pretty excited about it. We’re going with the Colony setting framework, but enough interest was expressed about a Starship game that I’m putting a bog-standard starship in their “possession” with significant Faction-entanglement to make it just enough of a hassle to be fun. The stars of our little space opera are:

> Zeph, an Ambassador (Galactic/Personality/Starfarer) from a stellar society who has laid down roots on our little colony for a change of pace

> Marat, a Turncoat Spy (Regimented/Clandestine/Scoundrel) who was groomed for espionage and assassination on a militant homeworld before he fled

> Merit, an Academy Missionary (Productive/Academic/Explorer) who was raised by an almost-religious order of knowledge-keepers and craftsmen

We know that Merit has been directed to the Colony and has set-up a clinic, providing medical and chemical education on the frontiers of space. We know that Marat has come here to get away, and that he has his own set of warrens and boltholes in place to avoid the notice of anyone who comes knocking for him. We know that Zeph and his daughter have come here to get away from his old life and has taken up the role of colony spokesperson with the outside world.

We’ll figure out more as we go, but that’s what we’ve got so far! Character creation and campaign creation have been pretty smooth so far, although Asset creation can be a little tricky. Nothing too bad, though.

We’ve talked about adding the “Implanted” Tag to the Assets chapter, for those who want quick and simple cybernetic or biological implants.

I’m looking at the preview chapters, specifically Sector 02 – Departures, and I’ve got something thats nagging at my…

I’m looking at the preview chapters, specifically Sector 02 – Departures, and I’ve got something thats nagging at my brain.

Why is choosing a Setting after character creation, and Faction-making? I’ve been thinking about this all day, and I can’t see a reason for it. I mean, you’re expected to make your character first — and there are obviously certain character types that work better in some settings versus others — and you have to choose your workspace before you even know how it will manifest, and then you create Factions… which, again, I feel like they could be strongly informed by the setting you choose. Only after these steps do you then pick a Setting, which comes with several campaign assumptions that characters may not fit.

Of course, the intention might be to pick Setting first (and I really think it should go first, personally), but Sector 02 – Departures doesn’t list the steps in that order, which can complicate things for someone just going through the book and hitting the steps as listed.

So, yeah, I’m just wondering: is there a thought process I’m missing, or is this just a case of ‘editing will tweak things’?

I’ve got a question about the special move Gather Intel. On a 7-9, the result is:

“your first-choice method comes up dry, you must enlist the aid of another PC or choose a different method.”

My question is what, exactly, do these options mean. Enlist the aid of another PC seems straightforward enough: put an obstacle between the intel gatherer and the answer they want and make that obstacle best suited to another PC — put them in a team-up. Is that right?

The second, though: Choose a different method. Is this something with purely fictional ramifications? OR! Are they expected to roll again for this different method?

I mean lets say they roll +Investigate to examine some explosive debris, get a 7-9, I set them up by revealing a different method would work better. Something like ‘the explosive is totally used up, not even enough of a chemical trace to analyze — but after some clean-up, you see the casing fragment you recovered has a ChemTex model number… you know, that plant used by the Bloody Eye Gang?” I’m trying to set him up by saying he needs to go knock some Bloody Eyes around.

Should we then we just narrate over the action parts in-between (as this is still just Gather Intel) and give them their info? Or should I prompt them to roll again? I would imagine I don’t make them roll again, but I wanted to check.

Looking for help mapping out your super hero city? Consider using Mapbox if you want some structure!

https://www.mapbox.com/

Go ahead and select the Pencil filter while viewing whatever city you want to inspire your game world — it will strip the map of all location names, and leave you a rather simple white-and-graphite map of things. You can then drop in Pins to represent heroes’ hideouts, homes, relatives — and use polyline tools to delineate the neighborhoods of your own personal Gotham or Metropolis!

You need to make an account to hold on to your changes, but I made one in 30 seconds and it seems harmless so far. I’m already elbow deep in customizing my own version of Chicago for my web campaign.

There was a request by Stacie Winters to see the character builds that my players put together for our “The…

There was a request by Stacie Winters to see the character builds that my players put together for our “The Outsiders” campaign. So, here they are as they current stand: you’ll notice their bonds and power profiles don’t conform to starting characters, but that’s because we’ve been playing for a couple weeks. Most recently, Sprite and Scope were caught on the news (accidentally) destroying public property and (politely) facing down the cops, so they’ve each got -1 bond with the people of Windy City. Whoops!

For context: the premise of our game follows the four remaining members of the short-lived team “The Outsiders.” They were a party of 6 socially conscious college students who made plans to come together and put their powers to use bringing down woefully corrupt and completely untouchable billionaire industrialist Benjamin Nero. But, they screwed up – they didn’t get Nero – their team leader was killed – they left another team member for dead – and in a world where super heroics are federally regulated, these well-intentioned vigilantes are now on the run.

———

Secret ID: Aksels Balodis

CODENAME: Codec

LOOK/OUTLOOK: Twitchy, Baltic, messy hair, dark rings under eyes

COSTUME: short coat with hood sewn into the collar, bandana over lower half of my face, compression-style pants

MANEUVER: 1

INVESTIGATE: 2

PROTECT: 0

INFLUENCE: 1

SMASH: -1

ORIGIN: What I Carry

Working Toward: Redeeming Myself (Your actions, or an outside force, destroys a Bond you hold dear and you blame yourself for it.)

NEMESIS: Agent Steel

POWER SUMMARY: Can tune into/broadcast over different frequencies: Radio, electronic, mental, otherworldly, deathly

SIMPLE

Listen in on a local frequency; Pull information from a wireless device.

DIFFICULT

Broadcast into a local frequency; Collapse a signal by projecting its inverse.

BORDERLINE

Overload someone’s mind with psychic static (“mind blast”).

POSSIBLE: Convert one type of frequency into another.

IMPOSSIBLE: Broadcast a signal over the entire globe.

LIMITATIONS: Headaches around strong electrical pulses; Often distracted; Paranoiac tendencies. Occasionally Difficult.

BONDS (Threshold: 9)

CITY 0

LAW 0

Sprite 2 (Understand each other)

Coyote 3 (Good friend)

Scope 2 (Complementary)

Windy City U. 2 (Social butterfly)

Origin: What I Carry

Whatever you’ve got, everybody else wants it. Whether you did it to yourself or had it done to you, whatever gave you your powers is something that can, or at least could be theoretically, replicated again. There are a number of agencies, organizations or people after you so they can do just that.

✎ The thing I’ve got that everybody else wants is the psy-crystals embedded in my body — in my wrists and at the base of my neck.

✎ To the best of my knowledge, the people that want it are the Institute for Psychic Research, Utopia Now, and a vague-yet-menacing government agency.

“I’m Aksels Balodis, aka Codec. I’m the first generation son of Latvian immigrants. Because of this, I tend to be a bit oversensitive about fitting in and trying to act ‘American,’ whatever that might mean. Fortunately, I’ve got other things to worry about nowadays. About a year ago, while scouting out a location for a film project, I came across these weird, ochre-gray crystals. I picked them up to figure out what they were, and they just started burrowing into my skin. And as horrifying as that was, soon after I started hearing things. At first I thought I was going crazy, but with some practice and research I figured out how to hone my new psychic power to listen in over the various frequencies surrounding us: I can hear the radio, phone conversations, people’s thoughts, ghosts… It’s a noisy world, turns out.”

“I worry though. One of the reasons I’m so twitchy is because I’m pretty sure I’m being stalked or something. Because of some indiscretions when I was first figuring out my powers, there are several groups who know about me and are interested in these psychic crystals. The Institute for Psychic Research, for one. They’re mainly scientists who are trying to figure out how all this superpower nonsense fits in with physics and the like. There’s also a weird tech startup called Utopia Now. They’ve built some useful machines, but their beliefs are kind of odd–they legitimately think cryptocurrency is the way of the future, for instance.”

“Besides all that though, I’m working right now on trying to redeem myself, in my own eyes and also in the eyes of my teammates. Especially Santiago. I feel like if I had tried harder to get through to Jason, he’d still be alive. I don’t know why he suddenly cut off communication. Sometimes I listen in to the voices of the dead, but I’ve yet to hear his.”

————-

Secret ID: Katerina Tuvi

CODENAME: Sprite

LOOK/OUTLOOK: Blonde, curvy, timid, green eyes, trying to keep it all together

COSTUME: red skirted costume with a low-cut top and high collar, red boots, and red domino mask accented with blue pauldrons, a blue belt, blue wrist wraps, and blue crests on her boots.

MANEUVER: 1

INVESTIGATE: 2

PROTECT: 1

INFLUENCE: 0

SMASH: -1

ORIGIN: An Accident

Working Toward: Understanding (Your greatest failure and what allowed you to get past it comes up in play.)

NEMESIS: None… Yet

POWER SUMMARY: Manipulation of ambient electrical currents within herself and her general area

SIMPLE

Manipulate a taser-like electrical charge from the inside-out; Overclock my brain to run like a computer

DIFFICULT

Fly using ion wind; Drain electricity from a machine to charge up my powers

BORDERLINE

Create a charged shield that would reflect projectiles or blasts

POSSIBLE: Create an electromagnetic field around her to interfere with and manipulate electronics

IMPOSSIBLE: Creating a storm

LIMITATIONS: Cannot touch people/go swimming with people, Stutters, Must release electrical build up every 24-48 hours. Frequently Difficult.

BONDS (Threshold: 8)

CITY -1

LAW 0

Mom 2 (Always close)

Codec 2 (Understand Each other)

Scope 1 (Unnerved but wants to understand her)

Coyote 1 (Scares her and she’s uncertain about him)

Daniel 2 (BFF’s from middle school but have grown distant)

Dad 0 (He’s selfish and a user)

Officer Doug Drake 1 (Sprite saved him!)

ORIGIN: An Accident

Changes: You got your powers as a result of a mistake, freak accident or experiment on yourself you hadn’t seen coming. It was a traumatic experience and your memories of it are confusing and disorienting. Your powers might change or your body itself might change overtime as a result of the incident. Write down how the experiment changed you, how it still might change you in the future and who else was affected by it.

✎ The accident changed me when I was 16. My mother and I were hiking, and struck by a freak lightning bolt from a distant storm. My mother had some resulting nerve damage and muscle damage, but is mostly okay. After that, my brain kicked into overdrive and I graduated high school early. I entered college with a large scholarship, and now I’m a sophomore at 18. My electrical powers developed around a year afterward and have been getting slowly stronger. I became a superhero to cope with the sense of loss and confusion after the accident. My mother doesn’t hike anymore, and my father is usually stressed out because of work and personal life issues.

✎ The future effects on my body is still unknown but what could happen is, I could wear a constant aura of electricity; massively interfere with most technologies; drain electrical devices without conscious thought; develop speed powers as the charge builds; leave my body behind and become a being of electrical energy; or cook my body as I transition into an elemental state.

✎ An enemy I made because of the accident is unknown… For now

“I’m Katerina Tuvi, and I was in a freak accident that gave me the power to control electricity, including the bioelectricity in my brain to increase my intelligence. I’m of average height, curvaceous, with short-ish blonde hair and green eyes. I stutter when I speak because the electricity sometimes gets my brain going faster than my mouth can keep up. I’m shy outside of costume as Sprite, and have a hard time talking to people in general.”

“I’m upset about Jason’s death because I feel like if I had been a little smarter, I could have calculated the probability of that happening and at least we would have had some warning. But I also realize that’s a dumb thing to be guilty about, so I just end up with tons of guilt and nowhere for it to go.”

———-

Secret ID: Manuel Montoya

CODENAME: Coyote Kid

COSTUME: yellow and gray in geometric patterns, complete bare arms, a red sash belt, and a coyote mask that covers part of my face

MANEUVER: 0

INVESTIGATE: -1

PROTECT: 1

INFLUENCE: 1

SMASH: 2

ORIGIN: The Monster Within

Working Toward: Proving Myself (Another character goes out on a limb for you, knowing all the while they’ll suffer fallout because of it.)

NEMESIS: Owl (cannibal/killer spirit inhabiting a man’s body)

POWER SUMMARY: Can take on the attributes, skills, and appearance of a coyote thanks to a jerk god in my head.

SIMPLE

Changing into a coyote of various sizes, wreath my tail in flames

DIFFICULT

Using enhanced senses of smell and hearing or claws/teeth while remaining human-looking

BORDERLINE

Expand and compact earth and stone

POSSIBLE: Going full godbeast (running a loop around the world and raising mountains, taking out the organs of other creatures without immediately killing them, myth stuff)

IMPOSSIBLE: Interact with the spirit world – physically, speech, et al

LIMITATIONS: God Coyote has a Mind of His Own, and It’s A Really Stupid Mind. Occasionally Difficult.

BONDS (Threshold: 9)

CITY 0

LAW 0

Codec 3 (we have each other’s back)

Scope 2 (comfortable speaking up)

Sprite 1 (I don’t have a problem, she has a problem)

Grandpa Montoya 2 (always knows just what to say)

Girlfriend 1 (strained romance)

ORIGIN: The Beast Inside

Trigger: You have a beast living inside of you that takes over whenever an emotional state is triggered. Define what triggers your beast taking over and how you change when your beast takes over. Your beast also has goals that do not match your own and when your beast is unleashed, they pursue those goals until the conditions or state that unleashed your beast are done away with.

✎ My beast takes over when I am hopeless, afraid.

✎ The goals or instincts of my beast are to engage in hedonism at the cost of anything and everything; petty vengeance, sexual excess; casual willingness to kill; incredible gluttony.

“I’m Manuel Montoya, and I am the unlucky inheritor of an ancient feud between Coyote and Owl. I’m tall but angular, on the lightweight wrestling team, with short, thick hair and brown, open eyes.”

“Coyote takes over when I’m afraid. Recently, the things that have made me most afraid are the Owl attack and the incident with Jason.”

———–

Secret ID: Sang-mi Kim

CODENAME: Scope

COSTUME: Black body suit from head to toe with openings for her eyes and her hair to spill out, red pacing up and down the arms and red flexible material running up and down the sides, a silver belt of chakrams/discs/the like

MANEUVER: 2

INVESTIGATE: -1

PROTECT: 0

INFLUENCE: 1

SMASH: 1

ORIGIN: A Freak

Working Toward: Starting Anew (build, discover, or occupy a new location worth fighting for.)

NEMESIS: None… Yet.

POWER SUMMARY: Superhuman visual acuity and associated mental processing – telescopic, microscopic, spatial reasoning, etc

SIMPLE

perfect recognition of visual tells, disabling a team of trained fighters whose moves I can observe, strike a human-sized target out of arm’s reach that I can make out distinctly

DIFFICULT

seeing with perfect 20/20 clarity out to a distance of 10 miles/on the level of microbes, strike a human-sized target out of arm’s reach who could hear me if I shouted, react faster than a speeding bullet

BORDERLINE

seeing with perfect 20/20 clarity out to a distance of 100 miles/on the level of atoms

POSSIBLE: seeing on other frequencies

IMPOSSIBLE: seeing subatomically/out of the solar system

LIMITATIONS: Intimately aware of every lie and half truth aimed at her; Strongly distrustful of others; Germ phobia. Almost Impossible to fit in.

ADVANTAGES: a collection of throwing discs, chakrams, etc of various sizes and weights

BONDS (Threshold: 6)

CITY -1

LAW 0

Coyote 2 (Trustworthy)

Codec 1 (Feeling transparent is unnerving… but not bad?)

Sprite 1 (I like her but she’s frustrating)

Nick Nulty 2 (personal trainer, confidante, make him proud)

ORIGIN: A Freak

Feared: People hate and fear that which they don’t understand and, unfortunately for you, you fall into that category. People know you are different just by looking at you, write down what makes you noticeably different from others that produces a negative reaction most places you go so it affects your everyday, mundane life.

✎ I am feared and feel like I don’t belong because I pre-empt the actions and speech of the people around me and dissect their lies, while radiating weirdness in my every action.

✎ My everyday, mundane life consists of isolation, judgment, and petty reprisals for imagined social transgressions.

“I’m Sang-mi Kim, and I was born with the ability to see incredible distances and discern movement on an impossibly close scale. It’s a secret that’s held me apart from people my entire life – from classmates who can’t understand how I know so much about them, to my own family. I’ve grown up seeing them try to hide how frightened they are by what I can do.”

“I’m a little taller than average, with long, dark hair. I avoid direct eye contact with people I don’t know – my eyes are light brown, but the way they move is strange and unsettling. I train in boxing with an ex-almost-champion who treats my abilities like an asset instead of a curse.”

“I’ve been more closed off since the accident. It’s not that I blame myself, exactly – I just don’t know how I failed to prevent it, when I should have seen it coming.”