The Good, The Bad and The Spandex: Discussion Thread

I'm going to switch out to Virgil. Who wants to interact with a Jazz Loving Roboticist who wants to rule the world?

Also, got the first of his minions designed. Basically Sniper Joes.◊

edited 11th Sep '16 6:32:40 PM by EchoingSilence

Noted.

Have a thing. I guess I should give it a title. Ahem

The Outside

As a nerve needs a myelin sheath, and a car needs a crumple zone, the world needs a heat sink for all of its vented emotions and thoughts. That's where the Outside comes in. Created less by design and more as a logical consequence of the "leakage" of emotion from the universe into the space of creation, the Outside is effectively the place you go to if you slip through the threads of the universe (although it is unlikely to be the only place). Its form is a canvas, not a landscape; over time, it formed into what it had received, namely an enormous unconscious mind, giving its terrain and atmosphere the properties of fever dreams and their ilk.

Over time, certain ideas and emotions begin strengthening in the Outside, and coalesce into condensed forms, known as Virtues. These Virtues are their namesakes taken to extremes, and all they feel is an extraordinary passion for their origins; for example, the Virtue of Honesty takes unrelenting glee in uncovering the truth, thus its curious nature and ability to infiltrate the minds of some of the only beings capable of deception.

The denizens of the Outside generally ignore each other as irrelevant, but as passage back from the Outside to the material world is extraordinarily difficult, they occasionally share ideas and take turns indulging each other, although their patience for things outside of their comfort zones is limited.

When a Virtue enters the material world, it has little strength, and is incapable of significantly influencing humanity. As such, they naturally seek out their sources of power: humans. Humans are effectively mixtures between feeding grounds and catalysts for power, but being temperamental beasts, they need something to keep them in line. Thus, all Virtues are capable of the creation of Contracts that bind them to service in exchange for receiving a host. All Virtues seek to create Contracts that allow them to spread their ingrained idea, and so making a contract with the Virtue of Justice to go kill a random person that did nothing wrong is a bad idea, although nearly everything that you could want a Virtue for has a Virtue that's willing to help with it.

As knowing a Virtue's true name gives you significant power over it (it no longer needs to accept your summons; instead, it is forced to move to your location. Additionally, you may give it limited orders without forcing a contract), most of them adopt aliases, which generally leads to them being recorded in occult texts and occasionally religious ones as demons. For example, the Virtue of Honesty is known to nearly all humans as the Keeper of Secrets, and the Virtue of Justice is known as the Eater of Hatred.

The Knights Of The United Nations
The United Knights

A U.N. sponsored super team charged with tackling certain emergencies that have crossed too many international borders and is too overt to be quietly handled by the espionage oriented TALOS. Their exact jurisdiction is a matter of diplomacy, politics and the needs of the moment.

Each member is picked from one of the inhabited continents of the globe and one more from the "Atlanteans". As an unspoken rule put into place since the team's inception, the U.S. does not provide a hero for North America, stepping back to give one of its neighbors a time to shine. Generally, very powerful supers are selected and a team is formed based on the effectiveness of their collaborating abilities and personalities. Political, diplomatic and P.R. factors are also take into consideration. It is a committee that sits and meets to discuss the matters of the Knights.

Now or in the past, the Knights have had an Atlantean sorcerer, an Australian nephilim, an Asian energy shaper, a European Badass Normal, a North American Flying Brick with lasers, a South American telekinetic and never, ever had they had an African speedster.

Just no.

The Outside goes well with the Narrative Mythos.

I like United Knights, I was in fact thinking of making something like this. But what are your problems with it? Do you want to avoid the use of stereotypical characters, or having it turned into a Justice League clone?

In any case: both approved.

It tries to be the Justice League is what I'm thinking and kind of succeeds. It's team is purposefully built out of whomever applies for the job*. Strategic concerns are taken into account, such as raw power, type coverage and personality meshing, which must compete with public relations concerns, such as appearance, personal history and politics.

*If it is this world's version of the League, than I imagine that it must be a prestigious and lucrative position.

I guess we should just let the players fit the Knights into their backgrounds if they want, eg. both Emerald and Warcrime (before turning evil) might have been members.

Emerald, maybe. Blood Hound had been a PR nightmare, he was a Punisher type a anti-hero.

I'm sorta waiting for a reply from Misty. Got a very funny scene in mind.

Who wants to help me introduce Virgil?

Wait a post or two, I have something coming up that may help.

Okay then.

There! OK the plan is this: Minuteman should hear the alarm and run ito Mindseye and The Bear. Their conflict in turn, might draw Virgil's interest if you feel it does. Maybe Superior hired him for security?

Probably hired him to BUILD security. It'll give me a chance to introduce a mass legion of his robot footsoldiers.

Since when was the Minuteman extremist? Well, save for tear-gassing Woodstock that one time.

Hey, buddy, Echoingsilence, I'm gonna call that an autohit for the mooks to just grab Sanders, who is behind a desk, while he's held hostage, with The Bear ready to fuck him up.

Sorry but I must agree, please edit your post to say the attempt failed. Sanders is still a hostage (need that to happen for story reasons.)

That's fair. They are crude, truth be told Virgil kinda wants Sanders maimed so he can run experimental cybernetics on him.

Umm, you still haven't edited your post to say Sanders is still a prisoner, Silence?

Ah. Whoops. I'll fix that right away.

Btw I want to take the chance to make something clear.

Just because there's an event going doesn't mean everybody should jump in.

For example, I was trying to have Mindseye learn Superior's secrets from Sanders. I don't mind Minuteman or the robots showing up but you should have waited until that happened.

Admittedly, it's my fault for not making that clear. My apologies, now let's see if we can fix this.

Oh and what I usually do, is have multiple events going on at the same time so players can then choose which to join. I have others planned that will begin soon. Wait for them!

@Major Problem: When Mindseye uses purple text, she's talking telepathically. So she can only be heard by whomever she wants, Bear in this case.

Also, you didn't have a psionic grenade listed in your character sheet, so you cannot use it. You can substitute a smoke or flash grenade.

Please edit.

edited 12th Sep '16 5:37:38 PM by Sijo

Communicating in issues on posts is a lot easier in spoiler text. Anyway, I'll be gone for a few hours, so no posts for a while.

edited 12th Sep '16 5:57:31 PM by MajorProblem

@Silence: The grenade has been edited out, please edit its reference out of your post. Say instead they could not endanger Sanders.

Done, and Virgil is already thinking about the Power Vacuum.