The Earth's mightiest heroes the Ultra League vanished without a trace some fifteen years ago. Their Headquarters the Ultra Hall was discovered to be under total lock-down and sealed with a time lock. The Hall's computer AI and major-domo Kirby would only respond to any questions with "This system does not recognized that command function - time lock elapse…” and a countdown.
For fifteen years the world has waited - Today the time lock reached zero. The Ultra Hall’s security shields dropped and the main entrance door opened.
The Player Characters are all Legacy characters connected to the Ultra League in some way (former sidekicks - offspring - namesake) They have gathered together on this fateful day to finally discover the fate of the Ultra League.
You will notice the by-line "The Animated Series". The idea behind this is to give a benchmark for the general style, level of "grim and grittiness", and over all themes of the campaign. Admittedly I am leaning more towards JLA/JLU, Batman Beyond & X-Men: Evolution then the Teen Titans or Legion of Superheroes. And while I love the noir of Batman: TAS, I find that The Batman new animated series is a better fit for what I hope to achieve. This also gives a good benchmark for Power Level as I like the fact that even Superman can take a beating.
Characters are built on the standard PL10/150 pp model. One last note: on the subject of Impervious protection High levels are NOT appropriate for the game, please keep this in mind. Otherwise all powers and abilities are open (with GM right to veto or ask to tone down those that might not fit the campaign). The setting is Freedom City sans it's supers and super history, but with all the same places, law enforcement agencies, maps, etc.
Also for Character Creation, I'll be using the Ultimate Powers book as well as the main rules, but no 'optional' rules from the Masterminds Manual for this game.
* This title will be changed to reflect the team name chosen by the characters once the game gets on its way.
Now without further ado, I present:
The ULTRA LEAGUE
US Avenger - Super-soldier
Roger Stevens, was born July 4, 1917, to poor Irish immigrant parents, and grew up a frail youth during the Great Depression. His father died when he was a child, and his mother died later when he was in his late teens. Horrified by newsreel footage of the Nazis in Europe, Rogers was inspired to enlist in the Army. However, because of his frailty and sickness, he was rejected. Overhearing the boy's earnest plea to be accepted, General Phillip Chester of the US Army offered Roger the opportunity to take part in a top-secret experiment called Project: Superman, as the military was trying to create an army of super men to use in WW2. Roger agreed and was taken to a secret laboratory in Washington, DC, where he was introduced to Dr Miles Booth , the creator of the Super-man Serum.
After weeks of tests, Roger was at last administered the Super-man Serum. Given part of the compound intravenously and another part orally, Roger was then bombarded by "vita-rays," a special combination of exotic (in 1941) wavelengths of radiation designed to accelerate and stabilize the serum's effect on his body. Roger emerged from the vita-ray chamber with a body as perfect as a body can be and still be human.
Roger was then put through an intensive physical and tactical training program, teaching him gymnastics, hand-to-hand combat, and military strategy. Three months later, he was given his first assignment, to stop the Nazi agent called the Iron Eagle. To help him become a symbolic counterpart to the Iron Eagle, Roger was given the red, white, and blue costume of US Avenger.
Then, during the final days of the war, on or before April 18, 1945, he was trying to stop a bomb-loaded drone-plane launched by Iron Eagle when the plane exploded, apparently killing him. At the last moment a mysterious figure “from the future” rescued him and brought him to the year 1984, where the time-displaced hero became a member of the Ultra League. The identity of the “future man” remains a mystery.
Justice Machine - Battlesuit
Blessed and cursed with extraordinary genius, Wayne Bruce is the son of inventor and defense contractor Thomas Bruce, and geneticist and educator Helen Bruce. Thomas met Helen while the two were working on an experimental biological agent that could work as body armor. The two fell in love and married. While Helen was pregnant she was bitten by a lab monkey and fatally infected with a regenerative virus. The virus mutated her unborn child, Wayne, growing additional "undifferentiated" neural tissue throughout his body, as if his whole body itself is a brain, which augmented his intelligence while causing chronic pain due to the over-stimulation of the neural cells that make up his skin. Helen died during childbirth, but Thomas saved Wayne by coating him in their bacterial bio-armor, which consumed ordinary skin but not Wayne’s constantly regenerating neural flesh.
Becoming a wealthy celebrity and science prodigy, young Wayne founded multi-billion dollar design and manufacturing corporation Corsair International. He also became an infamous playboy, and womanizer.
When Wayne was taken hostage along with other civilians by Guatemalan guerrilla terrorists, their captors demanded Wayne's technology in exchange for the hostages' freedom. They killed one when Wayne refused to cooperate. Pretending to acquiesce, Wayne built makeshift armor and defeated the terrorists with it. Years later, Wayne used a new Justice Machine to save the President from an assassination attempt, becoming a bigger celebrity than ever, but refusing to sell or mass-produce his armor technology.
The Olympian - Paragon
Hercules is the son of Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, and Alcmene. Zeus seduced Alcmene in the guise of her husband, King Amphitryon of Troezen. Thanks to Zeus's enchantment, Hercules was born with the potential for extraordinary strength, which he first displayed before he was even one year old by strangling two serpents which attacked him. Hercules had many notable adventures in ancient times. He sailed with the Argonauts (with them he may have battled the Akaana), faced the Hydra, saw the death of Medusa, and defeated Antaeus.
As an adult, Hercules is best known for his celebrated Twelve Labors, which were performed in part to prove his worthiness for immortality to Zeus. In the course of these Labors, Hercules provoked the wrath of an immortal who remains his enemy to this day. In temporarily capturing Cerberus, the three-headed hound that serves as guardian to the Olympian underworld , Hercules offended Hades, the lord of that realm. Hercules was exiled from Olympus by Zeus as a means to keep peace with his brother Hades.
Hercules began to wander in search of new adventures. Like his father, Hercules is also notorious ladies' man. In modern times Hercules has chosen a superhero persona and was a founding member of the Ultra League.
Mr. Big - Size Changer (shape shifter)
Jim Gatling was born in Watts, Los Angeles, California. Biochemist Dr. Jim Gatlin worked in the Plans and Research Division for Wayne Bruce's Baltimore factory. He was hired to be the lab assistant of Dr. Hank Palmer (aka Captain Atlas). Palmer was stuck at the height of 10 feet for a time and Dr. Gatlin helped him find a cure to change his size back to normal.
Dr. Gatlin moved to the West Coast and at some point acquires the formula to "Atlas particles" which give him the ability to grow in size like his former employer. Taking the name Mr. Big, he helped US Avenger and Justice Machine fight the Crazy 8 and was offered membership into the Ultra League.
Little Lady - Totem insect w/shrinking
Jenny Nelson is the daughter of world-renowned scientist Vernon Nelson. Early in her life, she was a flighty, self-centered dilettante living resplendently on her father's fortune. When an alien brought to Earth during one of her father's experiments murdered the elder Nelson, Jenny contacted his colleague, Dr. Jim Gatling. She told Gatling of her resolve to bring her father's killer to justice. Gatling revealed his secret identity as Mr. Big, and Jenny underwent a Biochemical process involving his Atlas particles that killed the young woman. However, unknown to either, the intervention of a Totem of the Parliament of Eden saved her and allowed her to shrink to insectoid proportions and to grow wings. She can also generate a bio-electric sting which she discharges through her hands. She also sometimes eats bugs, forms larval nests and lays egg-like constructs, side-effects of her insectoid genetics.
As Little Lady, Jenny and Jim tracked down and defeated the murderous alien Ran-cor, banishing it to its home dimension. Gatling and Nelson gradually fell in love and became crime-fighting partners in their costumed identities.
Troubleshooter - Archer (weapons master)
A former Olympic archer, James Day became a U.S. intelligence agent over a decade ago. Active around the world, he was present for the liberations of Kosovo and Afghanistan, as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall. He became a close friend and frequent collegue of fellow agent Harry Powers, and the two operatives were key founders of the modern intelligence agency A.E.G.I.S. Both rose thru the ranks until Powers became the agency's director and Day (code-named Troubleshooter) became an elite agent of A.E.G.I.S.'s black ops division, often partnered with ex-KGB espionage operative Illyana Romanov (code-named Nightlynx). Troubleshooter and Nightlynx were assigned to membership in the new celebrity superhero team, the Ultra League, complete with newly falsified backgrounds to make them more acceptable public figures. The League members are aware of their ties to A.E.G.I.S. and the two have proven themselves time and again.
Silver Streak - Speedster
Scott McDonald is the son of the genetic terrorist known as Hyperion, and brother to the hex-casting Gypsy Rose (the two were separated as babies and raised without knowledge of the others existence). Eager to prove himself to Hyperion since he was a child, Scott only received his father’s constant criticism, ridicule and resentment.
When Hyperion attacked Washington, D.C., with a fleet of reprogrammed Centurian robots, it was Scott who surreptitiously removed his father's helmet -- enabling the mystic hero Gypsy Rose to transform their father into a living super-nova. His actions proved his worth as a hero. He was invited into the Ultra League, where he was re-united with his sister.
Gypsy Rose - Mystic
Sabrina Stevens is the daughter of Hyperion and the sister of Silver Streak. At first she believed she was just a energy manipulating mutant. As she became more adept in her power's use, Sabrina did not realize that she was tapping into genuine magic. Until she was approached by Madam Monarch (the sorceress supreme of Earth) and spend several years under her tutelage. Training with Monarch increased Sabrina's control of her 'chaos magic.' Taking the name Gypsy Rose, she became one of the founding members of the Ultra League.
Oni - Bulk (powerhouse)
Patricia Ichiki is the second generation child of her family born in America. Her grand parents immigrated to the States after WWII, both where child survivors of the Hiroshima bombing. Unknown to Patricia she was born with a dormant meta-gene from her father’s side.
Patricia Ichiki grew up to become a meek and mousy lawyer, the daughter of Police Chief Jon Ichiki. Agents of Nicholas Oliverti, a crime boss who had crossed paths with her father, shot and seriously wounded her on a day when her grandfather was in town. Pappa Ichiki gave her a blood transfusion, as no other donors of her blood type were available at the time; the radioactive blood mutated Patricia transforming her into the she hulk, Oni.
Nightlynx - Costumed detective
As Illyana Romanov grew and matured, she proved to be an amazing athlete and scholar, while gaining distinction in the USSR as a ballerina. Eventually, she married Alexi Gregov, a distinguished Soviet test pilot.
Soviet government intelligence (KGB), decided that the skill set of this couple would make them superb special operatives, and split them up while Alexi was away on a mission. Trained as the Red Star, Alexi became the Soviet Union’s answer to the United States’ US Avenger of WWII.
Natasha was told that her husband died in an experimental rocket crash, and was drafted into the KGB. She became their best operative from being trained in the infamous Red Room Academy, becoming excellent at fighting and information gathering. It was here she was first dubbed the “Nightlynx.”
Nightlynx’s first field assignment was to assassinate Professor Anton Rasputin for defecting from their country by infiltrating Corsair Industries in America. Wayne Bruce, the Justice Machine, continually foiled her schemes against Corsair Industries. She even attempted to use Troubleshooter , posing as a criminal at the time, to help her in her schemes.
Her final mission to the U.S. was a momentous one. Not only was it the first time she operated in costume, but it was the first time that she felt her love for Troubleshooter weakening her loyalty to her country. Soon, she would seek amnesty in the A.E.G.I.S. organization. She was originally part of their covert operations ("black ops") team, but was subsequently moved to public status and assigned to the Ultra League after a publicly acceptable background was written for her.
