Emerald City Watchmen (IC)

[Herosyndrome]

This is a game set in Emerald City based off the Emerald City Knights adventures from Green Ronin. The tone is 4-color with modern sensibilities.

The OOC thread Emerald City Watchmen OOC.

The Players are
Unstoppable -- Silvercatmoonpaw
Rough Hide -- Walking Dad
Skylark -- Ysariel
7th Inning Stretch -- Mark Reuter
Midsummer -- Phantom Mouse
PsiKnight -- Chris 4172

GM Post

About Emerald City
Just for those of you who don't know...

Emerald City is a nice city somewhere between Seattle and Portland. It's a bit of a reputation for being somewhat of a Silicon Valley. New technology business are popping up all over the place. This is great for Emerald City as there was just a economic downturn that had folks struggling for awhile. The New business avenues have also lead to a resurgence of college activity in Emerald City; Folks are trying to get into college and work their way into one of the local companies.

The Yellow Brick row is in downtown Emerald City. It's a big out door mall with plenty to do and plenty of merchandizing and booths to attract visitors. There's a movie theater and everything you would expect to find. There also a strong Asian flair to the area thanks to the influence of Jade Town, Emerald City's Chinatown.

Also character should be on the periphery of the mall, and shouldn't be deep in the district.

The Yellow Brick Row

The sun is shining and everything seems alright. The yellow painted streets seem to glitter in the sunlight; the birds are chirping and sound inviting and comforting. The kind of bird chirping that you hear in movies, too perfect to be real. Mostly that's because expensive speakers attached to the three story buildings that make up the Yellow Brick Row mall are playing it. The stores and new and pristine. Everything around the mall makes you think you should be smelling fresh plastic. The big bay windows and modern architecture of the mall show off the new and expensive renovations. Next door the mall is a well-planned park complete with small pond and manufactured gorgeous streams rolling through the water ways.

Outside there are tables and chairs with umbrellas overhead, booths set up to sell sunglasses, cell phones and other knick knacks that no one would care for anywhere else. Music plays out from several shops, college students dressed in aprons and trendy clothes set out to sell drinks, display items or pass out filers for the trendy restaurants and bars. "Try out Smoothie!" "Try our Coffee!" "Our Cappuccino!" "You going to be at The Red Door tonight?!" "Come by tonight, we'll have drinks and open mic!"

Every one of you are at the Yellow Brick Row, for your own reasons. Exploring the mall, shopping, relaxing, or going to a second home to work out school or projects. You might be working in one of the shops, a comic book store, a coffee shop. You might be displaying a trendy clothing stores apparel using your unique looks to attract customers not used to seeing the strange sights like in Freedom City. The day seems perfect, the sun is shining, and everyone seems happy and blissful.

Okay, so feel free to post here. Explain why you are at the Yellow Brick Row, what your doing and we will move on from there.

A Note on Post Length: Word Economy is really still quite important to me. Three paragraphs is really what you should aim for, except here in your first introduction post. Feel free to embellish, but don't just stack paragraphs to try and be impressive. Good use of word economy is more impression then lengthy posts, sometimes less is more.

A Note on Dialogue: Do your best to maintain a realistic display of conversation. Most of the time, people don't talk in run on sentences, for paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Also most of the time people to wait to listen to someone rambling on and on. Just, don't overwhelm the post or the other players with lots of dialogue.

With that being said, Let's get started

[Ysariel]

Skylark
Condition: Normal / HP: 1


"Here's to getting into ECU!"

Their mugs clinked and Michelle watched Kristen with a smile as she sipped her coffee. "What major?"

"Haven't decided. Materials Science, maybe." Kristen's eyes were bright with excitement as she spoke. "I know ECU is doing some really cutting-edge stuff with carbon nanotube foams." She took another sip. "How about you?"

"Good question," Michelle admitted, sinking back into her chair. The Falcon was gone, Kristen was going to university, and Roland was hyped up on summer intern stuff at his father's company. People she had known all her life were moving on. She was the only one who hadn't figured out what to make of the rest of her life.

Kristen seemed to sense what she was thinking. "You don't have to decide right away," she said. "Take some time out. Make sure you're really happy with whatever it is you end up doing."

Michelle stirred her coffee, studying the foam of her cappucino. She had considered plenty of things before. Spend a year doing volunteer work abroad. Tidy up what was left of the Falcon's fortune and get a cancer research fund started. Move to Freedom City, even. There were lots of ways one could make a difference in a world of need and deprivation.

And she would probably end up doing some or all of those eventually, except the last. In the end, Emerald City was home, and if there was anyplace she would defend, it was here.

Michelle put her mug down. Kristen was right, she decided. She had plenty of time to come to a decision. "Talk about that later. Let's go for a movie after this - I know there's a great superhero flick showing now."

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Unstoppable
HP: 1

If it had ever occurred to Unstoppable that her desire to be noticed meant she put the thoughts of others above her own she never let on. Especially not a day like today when her agent Sammy had booked her a modeling gig for the sportswear company that was currently Unstoppable's best courter.

The job was elegant in its simplicity: there was a display area in front of the store for her to lounge around and do "sporty" stuff in. If a customer asked to see an outfit Unstoppable's speed meant she was in the changing rooms and back before any of them could even blink. The gig paid well, and with her ears and tail Unstoppable was the guaranteed center of attention.

Best of all there weren't any emergencies to interrupt, although her current bosses might be more forgiving about her "charity activities" than her regular job at Super Express.

[Chris4172]

PsiKnight
HP: 1
Condition: Normal

Cutting through a corner of the Golden Row on his way to work Michael decides he has a few extra minutes before he has to head off to work and decides to hang out nearby and engage in a little people watching.

Getting a hot pretzel and a bottle of coke he leans against a nearby wall to enjoy his snack and the beautiful day before he has to spend the rest of it and most of the night behind a cash register. It doesn't take him long to notice the unusual looking cat-girl (woman?) modeling sports wear across the street.

[Phantom Mouse]

Midsummer

Adam sat at a table in the cafe reading one of his scripts of Midsummer's Night Dream.

"If we shadows offended..." Adam inflicted under his breath, trying to improve his inflection of summarized apology, and watched the people milling by as he did.

[Walking Dad]

Rough-Hide
Rough Hide - HP: 1

Jeremy was anything but non-suspiciousness. A guy of his frame and he was wearing a broad hat, a scarf and a long coat despite the weather above the bandages to hide his appearance. He had hoped for rain but couldn't afford to wait any longer.
He had his new fake identity with him and was on the way to one of the coffee shops with free Internet access to check some more local firms whose latest discoveries would provide a good reason for his "mutation".
This seems to be the right place, he thinks as he notices the cat like woman, taking only a short moment that this kind of appearance is not normal for this place...

[Mark Reuter]

Seventh Inning Stretch
HP: 1
Condition: good

Nicholas was behind the counter of the Comic Shoppe when suddenly all of the customers were heading out of the store to look at something. Curiosity got the better of him. Suddenly, he saw what it was. Apparently a cosplay cat girl was in the midst of a photo shoot. Looks like business is going to be slow till she's done.

[Herosyndrome]

GM Post

There is a sense of utter stillness in the air. Flowing through the out door mall. A small gust of wind and then finally, a moment that seems to be silent. Everything seems to slow down, the hairs on the back of your necks stand on end. The sensation of goosebumps rolls over your skin, and suddenly the moment of stillness is over.

Over the horizon of buildings a shock wave rolls through the Yellow Brick Row, glass shatters, speakers blow out, everything shakes and rolling out into the mall is clouds of silver, and sparks of blue and purple lightning flashing through the buildings. Screams start ringing out all over--everyone is in a panic, people are running, with no sense of direction.

The center of the mall has become rubble, shattered glass, and clouds of silver smoke, people are running away form it, or calling for help.

Skylark
The explosion rocks the Yellow Brick Row while Kristen and yourself are headed out to see then new superhero flick, its a re-boot, but what the hell it's a lovable superhero. As you're walking you feel a sudden sensation, like someone with cold breath breathing on the back of your neck and then the storm rolls over you and the shockwave sends Kristen flying against a nearby wall, she's hit her head, and it looks bad.

Things are worse all around though. As you look around the Mall you see citizens screaming for help, running for their lives, bound to do stupid things.

Unstoppable
Things are always slow for you. These earthlings, they move around at mind numbingly slow paces. They talk slow, they think slow. You feel as though you have to slow down your speech as if you were talking to a child. Even still the storm shocks you. You see it in a series of slow snap shots, the burst of the storm clouds, the flashes of lightning, the buildings exploding, glass shattering around you, people fleeing in terror.

The time for action is now. Your training kicks in, like a reflex. This is a crisis zone, it's time to avert it.

PsiKnight
When the explosion hits, the shock wave sends you flying, your head hits something and you feel a sharp warm pain and then everything goes dark.

You feel like it might have only been for a second, because you sit up and all around you people are running and screaming, you can smell smoke tickling your nose, worse, there's something else. You can feel everyone, feel panic, minds running around in full flight or fight mode. At first it's overwhelming.

You breath for a few seconds and find control comes naturally. You feel something like a new muscle in the back of your brain, while the muscle is new, it seems to almost communicate to you how it can be used. You realize that something must have happened to you, but there isn't any time to think about it now, people need someone to step up.

Mid-Summer
If we shadows offended... the last thing you here, whispered in your ear, right before the blast hits, you look out the big bay window and see the silver glittering smoke rolling through, colors of blue and purple and silver dancing through the air, the window shatters into a million little pieces of glittering colors. Everything goes out of you.

You see visions. A strange man with the legs of a goat is laughing at you, your face is covered with wine. He has horns and a large brown beard. You think you might have asked what you were doing there, but everything seems wobbly, and there are colors dancing in front of you. "You died you fool! But fear not! You'll return to the land of the living, just with rather strange carry-on-bag."

You awaken. Though you do feel strange. Everyone around you is screaming and running, but your so full of mirth you can't stand it. You'll show them it's just a minor set back, you've been gifted with some delightful magic, and it won't be hard to help put things right again.

Rough-Hide
The blast doesn't knock you out, but man, it came as a shock. You nearly fell over and crushed the poor people behind you. Glass shatters all around you, and suddenly everyone is running in every which direction, trying to get away from the blast. You can see the utter decimation from where the storm came. You can't help but wonder why it was silver at all.

Still if you were trying to get in good with the local folks...this might be a good time to give it a shot. You could always claim you came in from Freedom City.

Seventh Inning Stretch
You find yourself staring at the bunny girl, wondering what kind of superhero she might be, watching her zoom in and out of the shop in different attire seemed strange. You know she's been around Emerald City for awhile at least.

The hairs on the back of your hands and arms stands on end suddenly, and you see over the horizon a cloud of silver smoke then you crash and fly into the door of your own comic shop, landing in a pile of glass. Something hits your lungs, your not sure if it's from the fall, but you start coughing and try to stand up, and something like a lightning bolt coming off the strange storm comes flying into the shop and on reflex you snap out of the way.

You blink a few times, and try to stretch or snap again, and you do. Something very strange is going on, and of course people are suffering, but you suddenly realize that this is like the beginning of an indie comic book.

Okay, so there is a crisis going on all around the rubble and debris. Your all relatively close to one another so you can react, or team up. Right now this is a chance for you to show off some of your heroic abilities, cool snippets will get a hero point. Also I might have scared people a little with the word count rules. Three paragraphs is the goal...if you do two that's fine, if you do four that's fine, but try not to hit like five or six.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Unstoppable
HP: 1

The time for action is now. Your training kicks in, like a reflex. This is a crisis zone, it's time to avert it.

And yet all Unstoppable can think is Publicity opportunity! Cha-ching!

It was trivially easy to change into her "working outfit": to any of the slo-mos watching it would look like she simply threw off what she was wearing to emerge fully dressed in dark teal body armor and sunglass-goggles. It was a more flamboyant version of her old standard issue commando suit which she'd custom-ordered as soon as she'd had the money. Whatever those tight-asses at Lor HQ thought about getting a job done they did have some taste.

The way Unstoppable moved when she ran wasn't like the blurry, windy passage most Earthlings associated with speedsters: she simply seemed to arrive somewhere like a TV camera trick. And anything she did was just as fast: she could catch falling debris before it hit cowering shoppers, move rubble in one blur of motion.

But there were some things you couldn't do faster than a blink. Fortunately that's where soldier training came in: evacuate the civilians, then find the source of the problem and shut it down.

"Everyone, listen up! I need you all to calm down and move away from the source of the blast in an orderly manner. Help any wounded evacuate as well. Signal of you need any assistance."

Persuasion (entire crowd): 1d20+9=22

[Ysariel]

Skylark
Condition: Normal / HP: 1

Michelle sat up, shaking her head to clear it; she was standing between a comic vendor and a sportswear shop, and among the debris on the floor was Kristen. "No. Kristen, no!" she yelled, scrambling over broken glass and plastic to get to the girl. Kneeling beside her friend, she checked for a clear airway, steady breathing, and pulse. She was wounded, but how badly? Michelle checked for spinal injuries, to see if she could be moved safely.

Treatment to diagnose what's wrong (1d20+6=10)

Around her, the walkways were awash with panic, with shattered glass and with the wounded. Michelle pulled her phone from her pocket and dialled 911. "There's been an explosion," she said, and quickly gave the address of the mall. Once she was done, she carefully lifted Kirsten, carrying the wounded girl like a backpack and started moving carefully towards the nearest exit. She knew she shouldn't move the injured, but there was no telling if any further danger was present.

Michelle gently laid Kirsten down on the floor by a roadside cafe where some of the wounded had gathered; more injured were streaming out of the mall, some of them on their own feet, others leaning on or being carried by others. "Anyone who needs help, move over here," she yelled. Michelle always kept her crimefighting gear and costume in her backpack, and now she was glad for the fact and for the Falcon's triage lessons. She pulled the medikit from her utility belt, opened it and set to work treating the civilians.

Treatment to provide care for the injured (1d20+6=25)

I'm hoping I can make just one roll for Kristen and the bystanders (not least because it's a really, really good one).

[Chris4172]

PsiKnight
HP: 1
Condition: Normal

Coming to after the hit to the head the first thing Michael realizes is that physically he feels better than he ever has before, which is odd considering the blow to the head he just received. The next is the voices in his head screaming in fear and pain. Taking a moment to center himself he gets all of the sensory overload under control and looks around.

Instinctively he reaches out to the minds of the scattered heroes responding to the chaos, they hear 'If we work together we can help more effectively'

As he attempts to communicate with the other responders, Michael see a building damaged in the explosion begin to topple he reacts nearly without thought reaching out with his new found ability to grasp the wall before it tumbles onto the panicked bystanders.

[Phantom Mouse]

Adam stood up, the remnants of the window falling off of him. Despite himself, despite the carnage around him, and almost unawares he smiles as he dusts himself off.

"What fools these gathered be, see they not the heroes about?" Adam thinks, or more accurately thinks he thinks.

As he hears the cries from the heroine to gather those that need help, he starts to walk towards her, only to half-way think of a quicker way and ends up instantly beside her, "Lads and ladies, your ear if you would, cast aside worry and doubt, cast aside any such dark notions, and take heart! Your heroes are emerging, and we will see you all through this darkness."

After a brief pause, Adam mutters under his breath, "Why did I just say that?"

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Unstoppable
HP: 1

'If we work together we can help more effectively'

Unstoppable stops so fast she almost trips. What? A telepath? Stay the fung out of my head, psi-spy!

"Lads and ladies, your ear if you would, cast aside worry and doubt, cast aside any such dark notions, and take heart! Your heroes are emerging, and we will see you all through this darkness."

"Less chatter, more doing!"

[Walking Dad]

Rough-Hide
Rough Hide - HP: 1

"What the ..." Are the last things Jeremy can say before the pressure wave and glass hit. He nearly stumbled and crashed the two people behind him. People he just saved as his massive frame shielded them from the shrapnel. For him it was only inconvenient that it cut his dis guise to shreds.
And the heroes seemed already springing to action. And thy got a telepath...
Not wanting to get blamed for something he didn't, this seemed the perfect time to start his her career. Removing the last vestiges of clothes from his upper body he calls:
"No fear, Rough-Hide is here!"

As he attempts to communicate with the other responders, Michael see a building damaged in the explosion begin to topple he reacts nearly without thought reaching out with his new found ability to grasp the wall before it tumbles onto the panicked bystanders.

While this was a good temporary solution, Rough-Hide quickly bends two lampposts to act as improvised support poles for the wall.

[Mark Reuter]

Seventh Inning Stretch
HP: 1
Condition: malleable

One moment, Nicholas was watching a cute cosplay girl doing a photo shoot. The next moment a pressure wave hits the mall and knocks Nicholas back through the door of the Comic Shoppe. "Did I just stretch and snap back?" He tries it again, and, to his amazement, he is able to do it again. "Cool" Seeing the mall in ruins and injured people lying about amidst the chaos and panic, Nicholas responds quickly. He grabs one of the hero costumes that the shop normally carries. The Masked Avenger, your basic black bodysuit with black cowl mask and gloves. He dons the costume and then steps out, ready for action.

Looking around at the chaos, Nicholas isn't sure where to begin. Then suddenly he hears a scream! "Help me! I can't hang on much longer." He looks up to the third tier of the mall and sees a young boy hanging onto the railing. Stretching his body to impossible lengths, Nicholas reaches the boy and says, "I didn't know that kids still hung out at the mall. Let's see if we can't get you down." He takes hold of the lad and gently deposits him on the ground. He then begins to help clear the third tier of the mall.