by Setothes » Sat Oct 28, 2006 2:10 am
The Battlesuit picture on M&M 2e p. 17 strikes me as looking as much arcane as technological. Alchemically-strengthened jade, and Atlantean orichalcum, powered by the Philosopher's Stone at it's heart, this armor is powered by transmutation. It can become harder and heavier than any metal, or as light and insubstantial as air. It can seep choking poisonous gases, or generate and throw fearsome balls of alchemical fire that burn hotter than rocket fuel.
It's the Battlesuit, for the Arcane Age.
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The Alchemist (Dr. Jeffrey Sanderson)
PL 10 (143 pp)
Abilities: Str 12, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 12 [20 pp]
Attack: Melee +4, Ranged +4 [8 pp]
Defense: +2 (+1 flat-footed) [4 pp]
Initiative: +2
Damage +1 hand to hand
Saves: Toughness +2/+17 in armor (15 Impervious), Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +7 [5 pp]
Skills: Bluff 0 (+1), Climb 1 (+1), Computers 2 (+4), Concentration 0 (+2), Craft (artistic) 2 (+4), Craft (chemical) 10 (+12), Diplomacy 2 (+3), Disable Device 2 (+4), Disguise 0 (+1), Drive 0 (+2), Escape Artist 0 (+2), Gather Information 2 (+3), Handle Animal 0 (+1), Intimidate 0 (+1), Investigate 4 (+6), Knowledge (arcane lore) 8 (+10), Knowledge (theology & philosophy) 4 (+6), Knowledge (history) 4 (+6), Knowledge (technology) 2 (+4), Knowledge (physical sciences) 4 (+6), Knowledge (life sciences) 2 (+4), Knowledge (earth sciences) 4 (+6), Language (English, native), Language (Latin), Medicine 2 (+4), Notice 4 (+6), Profession (teacher) 6 (+8), Search 4 (+6), Sense Motive 0 (+2), Stealth 4 (+6), Survival 2 (+4), Swim 2 (+2)
[22 pp, 88 ranks in skills]
Feats: Artificer, Benefit 5 (wealth 5), Favored Environment (flying) 2, Quick Change 1, Ritualist
[10 pp]
Powers:
Device 17 (The Skin of Gold and Jade, hard to lose, Protection 15 (Extra: Impervious, Power Feat: Alternate Power – Insubstantial 4 (form of wind) *and* Concealment 3 (visual and scent) *and* Flight +2 (100 MPH)), Flight 2 (25 MPH, Power Feat: Alternate Power - Immovable 4 (+16 to checks)), Enhanced Strength 30 (Power Feat: Alternate Power – Blast 15 (bright green fireballs), Alternate Power – Suffocate 15 (choking yellow sulfurous mists), Alternate Power – Transform 7 (any element into any other element, Extra: Continuous, Flaw: Touch, Power Feat: Progression 2 (500 lbs))), Immunity 14 (life support, aging, hunger & thirst, need for sleep, critical hits), Environmental Adaptation (underwater), Features: Indestructible, Restricted (only those with the Magic power or having activated it through the Ritualist feat)) [68]
Super-Senses 3 (Detect (magic, ranged, free action)) [3]
[71 pp]
Abilities 20 + Combat 16 + Saves 5 + Skills 22 + Feats 10 + Powers 71 = 143 pp
Jeffrey Sanderson grew up heir to a fortune, only to have his father indicted on charges of insurance fraud in his teen years, to be unceremoniously yanked out of his expensive preparatory academy, where he likes to remember himself as having been ‘lord of the manor’ (even if the reality of his popularity fell far short of this), to be stuck in public schools with the rest of the ‘unwashed masses.’
While not a proponent of hard work, he was willing to swallow any amount of school work to get the hell away from these people and into a good college, which would require a, shudder, *scholarship,* since his mother certainly had no money to send him to any reputable school, and forcing him to have to work for some form of handout. He found his applications denied time and again, since his dad was technically a millionaire, even if the family fortune had already been spread out in settlements, or hauled away by the lawyers who failed to keep him out of jail…
And so he ended up in the Coast Guard, having been frightened off by the various other military choices he had considered, hoping against hope that by becoming an officer of some sort, he could start working on recapturing the life that had been promised to him. It was in the Coast Guard that he located a most unusual scam. Several of the men he worked with seemed to have a source of money, and he couldn’t account for how they always had such nice cars, and could flash so much money at their poker games, tossing $1000 bills around like they were going out of style. So he arranged for some distracting situations, and rifled their stuff, no stranger to searching through fellow students bunks for embarrassing or incriminating ‘evidence’ from prep school. Hidden away, he found that several of them had squirreled away gold coins of ancient make, and had apparently been pawning them slowly, over time so as not to arouse suspicion, and using them to fund their extravagant lifestyles. He carefully charted their movements and found that they traveled together, one night a month, to a set of grid coordinates, and apparently dove into the ocean to pillage coins from their secret hoard. At this point, he grew bold, and arranged to confront the conspirators at the scene of their rendezvous, revealing that he knew all about their little arrangement, and demanding to be cut in.
He woke up tied and gagged, on a boat. The conspirators were indeed taking him along with them, but had no intention on being blackmailed, or adding any new members to their select fraternity… He struggled uselessly as they donned scuba gear, and then seized him up and tossed him overboard. He somehow managed to stay afloat in the freezing water, but as they dove into the water, the grabbed the dangling ends of rope attached to him and dragged him under the water, intending to secure him to the seafloor, near their cache of ancient gold.
The depths played tricks on his eyes, and he saw something glowing in the darkness, and he knew that he had to be suffering from hallucinations as his brain starved. Somehow he stayed conscious all the way down, and then one of the divers shoved an oxygen mask over his face, and allowed him to take several deep shuddering breathes of oxygen, before stripping it away from him again. The others showed off the chest, letting gold slip through their fingers, playing game show host before the doomed man, but he barely noticed, his attention focused on the glowing figure rising behind them like an avenging angel of jade, limned in golden fire.
To this day, he has no idea what happened. He woke up cold and shivering on the boat, with no sign of his captors. Intending to turn the boat to land, he encountered the ‘angel,’ a mysterious suit of armor composed of cold stone and warm metal unlike any he had seen before. It stood in the boats cabin, looking out over the captains’ wheel, but when he worked up the nerve to touch it, it just fell over, empty and lifeless. Returning to shore, he removed all evidence that he’d been present, by setting the boat on fire, after wrestling the strange suit of armor into the spacious trunk of his beat-up chevy. Four of his men didn’t report for duty, and their cars were located at the sign of a mysterious boat-fire on the docks, a matter which complicated his work, and kept him busy for some months with their replacements, as well as short-handed.
And yet, every day, he was visiting libraries, and making inter-library loans, in the name of one of his dead crewmen, perusing hundreds of texts to find the source of his mysterious benefactor, and to decipher the strange runes upon the armor. He could fit into the suit, but while it seemed warmer than expected, it proved too heavy for him to move around in, and he knew that there was *something* that had to be done, some way to make it work, that it was not just some lifeless hunk of stone and metal. The materials proved unbreakable, and he could not remove sections to text, but had to bring materials to bear directly on the surface of the armor itself, looking for color changes or chemical reactions. It took months before he determined that the dark green stone components were a form of jade, but composed unlike any naturally forming jade, arranged under a microscope in complex fractal patterns that seemed to flex to absorb and dissipate the force of a blow, rendering the once brittle stone impervious to harm. The metal proved to be unlike any other, and remained warm in any conditions, even after he suspended a portion in liquid nitrogen, it was safe to touch as quickly as it was removed.
Ironically, in the two years it took him to decipher the writings on the armor, and to develop the skills necessary to unlock its secrets, Jeffrey Sanderson had mastered far more than he would have at any of the Ivy League schools he had once dreamt of attending. From occult texts, he learned of the warm ruddy metal orichalcum, said to be Atlantean in origin, and he quickly searched up every scrap of Atlantean lore he could, as well as spending his money as fast as he made it on alchemical supplies and texts, from historical treatises on the subject to more exotic books, that he had to pay to even look at briefly, and never unsupervised.
It was in the 24th month, on the very anniversary of his dramatic baptism and rebirth, that he removed his clothing and sat in the chalk-drawn circle, smelling of myrrh and bathed in consecrated oils. He intoned the chants in Latin, which he had learned for this singular purpose, and the armor shuddered beneath his touch as golden fire and greenish radiance filled the room.
Jeff Sanderson has retired from the Coast Guard, after only five years of service, and now works as a teacher, under an assumed name (as he lacks even a rudimentary college education, officially, and despite his undeniable skills, could never be hired for such a job under his own name). By day, he seems a somewhat aloof new professor of sciences at HIT, by night, the Alchemist flies the night skies, reveling in his new gifts. With a thought, he can command the philosopher’s stone that lies within the breastplate to cause the armor to become harder than steel, or lighter than air, or generate blasts of alchemical fire that burn hotter than phosphorus. By transmuting elements, such as the traditional lead to gold, he has ensured that he will never again want for money, and works only because it suits his ego to now teach at one of the many universities that would not have him as student (and, admittedly, he finds the library access first-rate, and enjoys no longer having to trawl antiquarian book-stores and haggle with extremely disreputable individuals just to further his education).
He has not yet used his powers actively, and is by no means a ‘hero’ by inclination. There is little doubt that he could prove to be a potent villain, out to prove his superiority, and make the world regret denying him a chance. Or perhaps not, it is a decision-point he has not reached yet, not even considered, truly, and perhaps the world may discover a new hero, transmuted from a bitter and resentful failed child of privilege to a new man, reforged by the attainment of his life’s dreams into a selfless champion of those whose dreams are similarly threatened.
