@Reverie I can see that potentially working though I'm not a big fan of it because I don't think Argo's brother would let it be a one off since he would try to use it to his advantage. I'm also not suggesting your character would try to control Argo just because his brother said so but more of him coming to Reverie saying "my brother needs help, I think you're the one to do it." So it would be less of a corporate grownup than a family member asking for her help.

That being said if that is not interesting the "saving someone important" connection can easily go to one of the others. The important person doesn't have to be a family member so maybe someone else on the team can offer an NPC to fill the role.

For the rivalry I am currently not seeing it not starting off on the best terms. The PC in question does try to control them and with what Argo has been through that's going to be a sore spot. Nothing hostile from him or anything but likely some cold shoulder at the start or unwilling to hear out that particular PC's plan. You know, typical Bull things.

@Argo. Hmm. Appealing to her inner-savior could work from the brother, especially if the brother was being sincere. I'm sort of playing around with the idea that one of the 'dangers' of telepathy for Reverie is being too willing to entertain the other side vs being too UNwilling to entertain the other side, so it could be a case where the brother is so convincing that she's like "Ack, okay, I will stop him from doing that thing he's doing, HEY ARGO I AM STOPPING YOU SEE?" I wouldn't mind Reverie's plans getting (insert Bull-pun involving stampede) on or a bit of cold-shoulder.

I shall mull over some interesting potential scenarios and I'll lay 'em out. Feel free to do the same. Even if the official connections wind up not working, we might still come up with cool backstory. :P

It's certainly feeling like I'm going to be taking the closed book approach and only handing out Influence to one person, presumably Reverie at this time. Doesn't seem at all likely that Artiana would be talking about her past too liberally if she's trying to keep any past connection to Argo under wraps, and I'd imagine she's got quite used to burying this stuff after stepping into something resembling a normal life.

Re: Where Argo and Ironheart crossed paths before. If it's up to me, I pick Morocco, at the intersection between the Corsair Network's main territory and the more violent frontier of its influence in West Africa. I do have a follow-up question: when did this happen? I don't think it would change much for Argo, but was this after La Reyna's "death" or before it?

Re: Harold Hess, Head of Research and Development at Dunamis Incorporated. His relationship with Argo is definitely something I'd like to explore. There is a fair amount of ambiguity in it: is he only helping his brother for selfish reasons, out of genuine personal concern, some combination of both? A mind-reader could cut right through that ambiguity, if she were both able and willing to probe that deeply.

Given Reverie's powerset, I think that possibility is already on the table regardless of what you decide for that Innocent relationship. (Although, she might go out of her way to avoid doing that, of course.) The relationship might make any such revelation happen sooner and would add more dramatic impact to it. I do think that any deeper probing should happen during play, if it happens at all, rather than at this stage.

In any case, I can definitely see Harold asking Reverie to keep an eye out for his brother. Whatever his motives, he is interested in his safety. He also knows how destructive and volatile Argo can be, based on the events around his breakout from Orthrus. I think he may be less than happy about Chasin joining a team after all his efforts to keep his brother a secret, whether for the sake of Chasin's own safety or for some other reason (and she may pick up on the genuine concern without seeing anything else yet?). Reverie's powers make her ideal for keeping an eye on Chasin and making sure his impetuousness doesn't get him into too much trouble. Also, she has already proven her competence and heroic mindset to Harold in the most direct way possible (assuming you go with the Innocent relationship of course).

Those are just my thoughts about the proposed relationship, though. Up to the players involved.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:02, Mon 09 Aug 2021.

Obviously this can be tweaked, but right now it'd have to be before. I have Artiana as being in Algiers on the return leg of the journey when the news came through - to write around the possibility of someone like Serpiente not letting her go - so I'd assume that means we're talking somewhere on the earlier side of 1998-99 (?).

One kinda neat thing about this particular connection is that it allows then-Artania to be like "I don't like how we're complicit in this and the way these people are treating someone like me, but at the same time it proves that I'm valued as a person rather than a tool. Clearly I'm not with the Bad People™" Then naturally it can be a point she can look back to in hindsight and recognise just how delusional and caught up in the need to make excuses for the evils of the Network (and herself) she was back then. That you'd do bad things on someone else's behalf was a failing in them, not in you.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:25, Mon 09 Aug 2021.

So here is a rough writeup of my prompt. I'm not fully onboard with it since I think it can be improved though I also did not want to write a ton since mine is the first in line and the more details I put down the more I potentially take from the rest of the players. Also I really have been going hard into the Greek myth references s

We defeated a dangerous enemy. Who or what was it?

Char and Scy, their real names are Charles D. Bis and Synthia Cate though people are more familiar with their aliases. These two are… Bad doesn’t even begin to cover this pair. They’re usual M.O. is stealing whatever is nearby and causing as much damage as possible in the process. The latter is rather easy thanks to their powers. Char is a pyrokinetic who likes creating vortexes of fire to burn every thing in the area. Scy can control her hair with each strand being insanely dense or light depending on what she wants it to be. The same goes with their length along with if any are either soft like regular hair or razor sharp. Even worse she can remove strands and still control them so she is rather fond of leaving her hair in places as a means to set traps. Mostly though she prefers to cut her victims up close and personal. Like they have been hacked up by a bunch of scythes. What a psycho. They were running amok, terrorizing the city and no heroes in sight. That’s when we showed up…

@Ironheart the GM's suggestion works for me though if any of it needs to be changed that's also fine with me. If I did my math correctly Argo was held captive by Orthrus for around thirty years though most of that won't matter in terms of affecting when the other PCs have been active.

I do like this connection from how Ironheart can see it as well as how it can affect Argo. Depending on how long it takes for the truth to come to light his reaction will vary. Even more so if during Ironheart helping to capture him again she noticed that instead of being a raging monster/weapon she noticed he was more afraid than anything. It might not have clicked for her right then but maybe later when she reflected on it. Regardless I like the connection.

@Reverie I think this all comes down to how Harold interacts with your character. Say instead of doing the PR event he asks her privately to keep an eye on his brother as a favor to him. Maybe by saying something that makes her think he means well. Such as "I can't protect but at least if I know you're looking out for him I won't worry as much" or something along those lines. Then there's also Argo would be grateful to Reverie for rescuing his brother, the only connection to the past he currently has. I think as long as Harold doesn't make a spectacle of trying to make  PR stunt with Reverie there should not be any misplaced feelings from Argo. There's also the opportunity of her being his love along with them being the two who are from the past.

That's the current idea at least since I was looking over who could be Argo's love. As funny as making Ironheart the love would be to me I think that would be even more awkward for them two especially Ironheart if he tried to be all buddy buddy with her. Harbinger knows about Leech's past and I think that would be too much for one character to have to deal with knowing both of their troubled pasts. Same with Leech since he is also an experiment Argo would probably not want to open up to him about it since Leech went through a similar ordeal and would not want to pick at the scab as it were for either of them by bringing that up. Cyclone could work though I'm having a difficult time trying to make that connection work but I'm open to any suggestions about who Argo's love could be as well as the rival.

Okay, so a thought that comes to mind for: We fought a terrible enemy from my old life. Who was it, and what did they take from me?

Like I've said before, my intention for this is to go with Ash, a pyrokene who Artiana worked with during some of her time in West Africa. What makes Ash a little unusual as a pyrokene is that their powers lie wholly in manipulation rather than creation and the way they express them is instead by taking fire, smoke and burning material and binding it to their body. They can go full Human Torch, cover their skin in a protective shell of thick ash and soot, trail smoke etc. before weaponising and releasing them later, but in all cases they need a fuel source to work with. It's something that's always made them insecure and spiteful, the sense that all that power is locked behind this limitation that makes them less useful than someone with a gun if they're not given prep time.

I can see Ash eventually having a falling out with their people, going rogue to find greener pastures (to burn) in New Atlantis, and perhaps falling in with Char and Scy for the obvious synergy between their powers and Char's, being more a junior partner and hired thug than a third top-tier threat. That doesn't need to be a thing though, and we could keep them totally separate without it hurting anything.

When this incident all went down they decided to take advantage of the chaos, and a brief to make a mess, to go settle past scores and hunt down Artiana on her own turf, maybe knowing her location through Vigilance's machinations/connections if that fits and makes any kind of sense. They brought the firestorm to part of Downtown where she'd made connections, baited her out, and started a brawl very much on their terms. Some or all of the team got involved (perhaps on their way to the main trouble with Char and Scy) and together we took Ash down before moving on to the real danger.

In this case the taking can be literal - property damage and loss of life in a district where Artiana had tentatively set down roots - or metaphorical, instead referring to the loss of that distance from her old life and self. Even if they failed to find some kind of vengeance, Ash still succeeded at taking from Artiana the sense that she could ever truly put her past behind her.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:30, Tue 10 Aug 2021.

Unfortunately, my time is going to be a little limited this next week, so my plotty posts might be hastier than otherwise! But here goes.

Re: Age

Although specifics probably aren’t needed, I think I have settled on 16-17 in 1984, which is when the teleporter malfunctioned Reverie into 2001 and the scary shadow of her ominous future.

Re: Ironheart

Digging the thoughtful character-building, Ironheart. Hyped to play with Artiana. (Also hyped to play with all, of course.)

Re: The Hess Twins and Reverie

Thanks for the helpful input, GM! With that in mind here are some ifs for comment.

If Reverie saves Harold during the big when the team first came together mess, and Harold afterward asked Reverie to keep an eye on Argo, it sounds like it could potentially lead to some very interesting story. I tend to think Reverie would avoid probing Harold’s mind too deeply, but she would probe a little. Because she’s a teenager and thus at least a little self-involved, she might be alarmed that he’s asking her because he thinks she’s a discount Vigilance and want to assure herself that’s not the case as well as that he really has Argo’s safety in mind, so if she picks up on genuine concern, I bet she’d be satisfied at this point in time. Of course, she’ll feel pretty bad if later on it turns out Harold’s motivations aren’t great, but guilt feeds the story soul.

Argo: Ah! I don’t think I quite understood earlier that you were thinking Harold would ask Reverie to watch out for Argo in a Public Media sort of way. I believe I like it better as a private ask. Also, if it would make Argo unhappy/angry, I think the more interesting story has the ask coming out in the worst possible way at the worst possible time when the team needs to be united and they’ve already been through some Hell and then here’s this little social dynamic thing that shouldn’t necessarily seem that bad but BOOM. Or something. (grin) Bulls are fun.

If Reverie saves Harold for the Innocent relationship (I'm putting that down for now!), I do think the spirit of the relationship lends itself better to adding to the love (“biggest defender”) than the rival, not that filling in one means the other also has to be filled in. Bonding over how weird the future will no doubt occur at some point regardless! So I'm 100% down to be the friend, but it's up to you!

Re: How We Came Together Prompts

Will comment tomorrow evening, or at least to give a more proper “rough writeup” for mine. Fading fast tonight, alas.

Random Curiosity

What Time Zone are we all in? EST, myself.

Thankies :)

We'll have to see how much of it actually comes through in the game...


I'm on BST. Not that you'd ever guess.

We still need to hear from two players, so I wouldn't worry too much about the speed at this point.

It occurs to me that the wording in this prompt: "I saved someone important to __________________; they’re now my biggest defender." might have caused some confusion. Since the relationships are aimed at player charcters, I interpret it as meaning that it would be Chasin, not Harold, who would be Reverie's biggest defender. So while Harold would probably also be grateful and potentially helpful, it's not necessary for him to give Reverie any public support at this point. Instead, the assumption is that Argo would be especially motivated to defend Reverie because of it. Which can certainly work with the Rival role. It would be a bit tangled, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Are Char and Scy basically meant to be local freelance supervillains? Either making trouble on their own or sometimes being hired/wrangled into lending their firepower to someone with a bigger plan. That would leave plenty of ways to connect them with any of the previously suggested hooks or other threats, if you wish.

As a possibility, perhaps Ash simply seized upon a firestorm as an opportunity? Then again, they may have set up that opportunity by manipulating the duo into attacking the target Ash was after, like a place where Ash knew Artiana was working. Which may have just happened to be a Dunamis-affilited warehouse or located next to a Dunamis facility, if you want to keep that idea. And of course thanks to Vigilance that much might not be a coincidence...

I can't help but think that a short-sighted and destructive thug who can make fire would find someone who can use it but can't make it kind of pathetic and useless. On the other hand, Ash might be able to offer the two something else, like information or connections.

BST=British Summer Time? I'm on YEKT (GMT+5) myself, though the actual time when I'm active can be all over the place.
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:15, Tue 10 Aug 2021.

I've been thinking about my prompt. It states that we paid a terrible price, so the price has to be something that we'd all care about. That's a bit tricky since it's our origin story and we don't have much in the way of collective assets yet.

One thing that did leap out at me was the idea that Vigilance was taking advantage of the chaos to be up to some kind of shenigans, and we stopped her as well. Maybe the US government wasn't happy that we foiled their scheme, and ended up slandering us in the world press as a bunch of bumblers who'd if anything made Scy and Char's damage worse. Not sure if that goes against the premise assumption that we are neither famous nor infamous when the game starts, though.



GMT+1.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:14, Tue 10 Aug 2021.

That's the one.

Very good point RE: Ash; I was only thinking of things from their perspective. As useful as a minion you have inherent leverage over might be, it's probably not ideal for a supervillain to have a henchman who is near-exclusively of real use when they're working in close quarters to you. Probably best to leave them as an opportunist in this scenario (and give them at least some weak innate powers). Definitely feel as though it makes sense to keep them as a bit of a secondary threat if we're taking down three different targets on our first time having anything to do with each other.

@GM, I don’t think there was any confusion on the prompt concerning one of the Innocent’s relationship prompts. When the idea of Harold being pitched the one who is saved that would make Argo being the defender but I also mentioned Harold would make a PR stunt out of it and be a vocal supporter of Reverie. This is something I saw happening from Harold since he would not pass up the chance for damage control either if Dunamis Incorporated was the place attacked.That in turn would grind Argo’s gears since his brother wants to keep quiet about him but is not above standing there taking a photo with another teenage hero. That’s why the rival relationship was the one I first pitched because the love one did not feel like a good fit. Also why I said it might be better for Reverie to consider an NPC connected to another teammate. Something I’m still encouraging since we have not heard from two of the players and I don’t want them or anyone for that matter to feel left out. Currently though we reworked it Argo is more thankful since it fits better overall.

I’ve also put some thought into who the rival can be. I think out of the remaining PCs Harbinger would be a good fit. She is a scientist type and since Argo does not like those type ever since being experimented on that’s one reason for him to be guarded around. Plus with her wanting to change the future in other words control it sort of makes sense she would be fine trying to rein Argo in at some point. For the others I thought Ironheart would have been a little too much since there’s the connection of her being part of the reason he was taken back to Orthrus so no need to add more drama there. Leech I don’t see either since he vaguely sees Argo as an older brother figure so him trying to control the bull as a connection doesn’t feel as likely though not saying it could not have happened. Cyclone could also work though that’s one I’m finding more difficult to get a clear idea on.

@Reverie I didn’t mean Harold would ask her to do that publicly since that would not make much sense when he doesn’t want the connection between Argo and him known yet. I’m even thinking that Argo has not even told the team about his brother yet. Not so much because he wants to keep it a secret for the reasons his brother does but more he really doesn’t know how to approach the subject yet. I also meant with my original suggestion he would endorse Reverie publicly as a PR stunt as a means of damage control. If Dunamis Incorporated is attacked he would try to put a spin on it and take focus away by focusing on the one who saved him. That being said the idea is scrapped for now and unless a better option presents itself we’ll go with he thanked her (along with the rest of the team) and then privately asked her to look out for Argo at some point after the fact. Whether his intentions are purely good or not that’s to be seen but it should be interesting. So I’ll make Reverie his love and with that she knows all about his time spent with Orthus.

Char and Scy, these two I see as freelance villains but also make a habit of going out on their own since sometimes villains want to rob a bank because that’s what those types do. They get a certain level enjoyment out of it, so they’re more than happy to team up or take almost any job since it means they get to go out and do what they love.

I’ll also say if those two characters do not work overall for when the team first came together I can do a rewrite. I have a few more I came up with but decided on those two.

Sorry about the radio silence, folks. Life got crazy and I had a series of bad brain days, but I'm back now and catching up as best I can.

Regarding age, I think Harbinger is between sixteen and eighteen, probably closer to eighteen, but she's bitter and angry at the world enough that she probably acts a lot older.

Wherever she lives, Harbinger probably has a whole room devoted to a crazy hologram string theory diagram plotting out how she thinks the timeline goes from present to future, and how she thinks the future can be altered. She probably has a photo (or drawing, or other representation) for everyone somewhere in the diagram, so she can try to nudge things along as and when she remembers what the original Plan was supposed to be. Specifically:


From what I can see, Argo's got what it takes to step right up to danger, without having to go through the whole process of thinking and planning and preparing that Harbinger finds so tedious, so he's always been one of her favorites. Of course, now they've met and she can't actually say that, because he seems to think this is a rivalry thing (I am absolutely on board for everything you laid out there, Argo), and he's not a big fan of scientist types, and hooo boy, is he going to be annoyed if she has to nudge him any harder in the direction she needs him to go, so best to keep the whole "childhood hero" thing to herself.


This one's more difficult. Obvious choice is Ironheart, because Harbinger doesn't really believe in reform, per se, but I'm happy to entertain other ideas if anyone's got 'em.

I'd be willing. Hell, my character is under tremendous pressure, and he's literally a clone of a deranged megalomaniac, I'm sure he's one day away from a psychotic break at the best of times. :D If the clock was running out for him, he might have done something like blow up an entire city just because Atrocious was hiding in it. Or he might have rejoined Atrocious in return for a way to stabilise his powers so he could, y'know, not die.

Just able to pop on for a brief moment, but Leech - neat potential road to villainy.

Leech/Harbinger - as viewing audience, if you decide to slot Leech into that relationship, it does seem like it's a pretty nice echo. Leech confides his Doom to Harbinger hoping she can help/feeling she similarly knows what it's like not to have a future; Harbinger literally knows Leech's future/that he becomes a supervillain in an effort to avoid his Doom. Heck, maybe given how Harbinger's brain is, she remembers (or thinks she does) what he's like in the future because he confided in her...

...I'm appreciative that some of the big emerging themes of this team seems to be secrets, destiny, free will, etc.

Yup, we're seeing a lot of that classic teen/YA theme of characters who are/were 'supposed' to become something pushing back and trying to decide their own future.


I'm kinda curious about this idea if you'll indulge me: Harbinger thinks it's fair game to try and change the timeline to fix her own mistake but doesn't believe that other people deserve second chances?
This message was last edited by the player at 21:52, Thu 12 Aug 2021.

It's not so much that she thinks no one deserves a second chance, and more that she doesn't believe anyone's got the moral fortitude to make the reform stick. Except herself, of course, because she's got the sort of personality/ability combo that leads to grandiose pronouncements about how "they said I was mad!" but soon, she'll "show them all," and makes all her laughter sound sort of cackle-ish.

The time travel plot she doesn't think of as a second chance, instead she keeps telling herself that she's working for a better world for everyone, not just herself. Making sure Kate doesn't die is her primary goal, of course, but she's going to try to do that by making the world a better place, rather than installing herself as god-empress for life. Everyone wins, she just has to be the one in the driver's seat for editing the timeline, because someone else might get it wrong, whereas she won't let herself believe that she could be so fallible.

In short, she's on a long road to Villain Town herself, and her opinions on the subjects of redemption and second chances should all be considered suspect.

Leaning toward Leech for the "destined to go bad" slot now, incidentally.

I see. Thanks for the explanation :)

First of all, I'm very glad to hear from Harbinger. I've already heard from Cyclone Burst's player by PM, so we can consider the team composition confirmed. I wouldn't worry about being slow to respond. What I wrote about the posting rate (i.e. try to post at least once a week and warn us if you can't - it's nice if we can go faster, but not mandatory) pretty much applies here too. This set-up is important, so it's better not to rush it anyway.

Re: the price you paid. Good point, Leech. I do wonder whether there may be something else you all have in common... like ties to the Downtown, maybe? Perhaps the price can be related to that. Otherwise, though, it will have to be the team. Reputational damage may work. You still won't be hated per se, but some individuals and groups may be leery of working with you, both because you may be seen as incompetent and because the more clued-in people will be wary of crossing the Americans and Vigilance, who evidently have it in for you guys. I'd suggest that making an enemy of her could be a price in its own right, but I think Reverie's relationship with her more or less ensures that anyway.

Re: the incident. I think Char and Scy would work well. There are plenty of morally-dubious masterminds on the board already. We need dumb muscle to balance them out. Ash is good too. I am fine with them taking away Artiana's sense of successfully escaping from her old life. It may be a little abstract, but it works. Perhaps they made sure to call out Artiana by name, so that the people she worked with would know who is "to blame" for the attack there?

Without wishing to step on Reverie's toes, it occurs to me that there may have been a chain of puppet-mastery here. Vigilance could have used subtle psychic influence to manipulate Ash, letting them know where Artiana can be found. Ash, in turn, could have manipulated Char and Scy by suggesting or luring them towards a good target. Char and Scy are after carnage and whatever they can grab; Ash is after revenge; and Vigilance has something else in mind, but is content to let the catspaws think they're all acting on their own goals. Your call, though.

Also, are you guys sticking with the idea of attacking a Dunamis facility? No one has a question that obviously relates to the target of the attack, so I guess you can decide it by group consensus. The corporation is bound to be a presence anyway due to Argo's connections, so personally I'd recommend it. I think it would also make sense for Dunamis to conduct superpowers-related research - and for Vigilance to crack down on that for any number of reasons.

Re: relationships. Interesting discussion. I'll hold off for now, however, except to point out that somebody should probably give a relationship to Cyclone Burst. Maybe it would be easier to decide once he posts here, though.

(Also: "Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."?)

Re: themes. Well, I did pick those team members for a reason. :P I'd say an Innocent and a Harbinger are bound to put fate on the table, even more so than the others do.

Oh definitely. I'm not going to claim to have ever locked in a 100% certain sense of how things played out but there's always been a very vindictive element there. Ash is hunting down Artiana with the intention of taking every part of the new life she's tried to make for herself, and it's very much in their nature to want to rub salt in her wounds for no reason than spite alone. I can definitely see them deliberately going out of their way to give an audience some idea of their history - the good ol' tense standoff and mid-fight villain monologue - and dragging things out to cause more damage, perhaps giving the team the time they need to get on the scene.

Artiana's definitely falling in the don't talk about your past camp so it's very possible this could be the first time some of her friends and associates get any real sense of who she was before. Between being confronted by a ghost from her past, the sense of responsibility for everything going wrong, and maybe an off-hand jab about Ash not being the only one who knows she's here, I can certainly see Artiana feeling like all those efforts to hide away her pre-New Atlantis self have come to nothing. She isn't allowed a fresh start and maybe all this pain and suffering is the result her selfish belief that she could yet deserve one.

---

I'm floating a relationship question but was hoping to get a better understanding of everyone before deciding who fit it best:


I'm still not totally sure who that'd suit, so maybe that could be Cyclone Burst? Hard to make any kind of judgement right now.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:54, Fri 13 Aug 2021.

@Harbinger glad you are on board for being the rival and I really dig the relationship you're considering for Argo. It could go a lot of ways with one being "never meet you heroes" or her maybe pushing him to be the hero she always saw him as only for him to take it differently because of the whole rival perspective. I will mention for the rival relationship Harbinger does try to control Argo at a crucial point so we should hash out what that exactly so it can be referenced as needed.

For the price paid prompt maybe it was someone was injured or worse. Say a resident superhero the public loved who is no longer able to perform their duties due to being injured while rescuing the team. That or maybe there was a young hero hoping to put a team together and was scouting some of us because they believed we had potential only for them to die so their death is part of the reason we all banded together. I know it basically makes an NPC a Phil Coulson but I thought I would throw the idea out there.

Some thoughts on Leech’s prompt/what we all care about.





Keeping in mind that in the end I'm pretty good with whatever you decide, I do kinda feel like the team’s relationship with Vigilance is already sort-of baked in and that kind of broad reputational damage doesn’t necessarily feel like a new terrible price to me (I don't think Reverie cares very much about her reputation, for instance, as long as it isn't "you're awfully like that American hero, aren't you? Twins!"). And slandered in the world press does sound a little too well-known for how we're supposed to start off, though if the GM doesn't mind...

So, Leech, what if the reputational damage was more localized, to an area we all valued a lot, sorta like the GM suggested? That might also give us good cause to stick together/something to hang a team name on. We all seem to be sort’ve fish out of water types, none of us are from New Atlantis originally, so it would probably really hurt if we had to abandon a spot/person that/who made us feel comfortable. Could we all have shared an ally who gets hurt, like Argo suggested, or simply loses trust in us/decides we're not welcome anymore because of the chaos of the battle? Is there the implication that this is punishment for going against Vigilance/the American interests?

Maybe in order to do everything we need to do the terrible price is a deal we make with ...somebody on the Soviet side or Guiding Light side or Still Another Side... A Damocles-sword type geasa/favor yet to be cashed?

Darn, it IS rather tricky to figure out a terrible price when we're just figuring out our origins. Could we have had to destroy somebody's life work/research?

Re: Cyclone Burst!

Hooray, I'm glad they are confirmed for the team roster! Rather than a relationship slot, I was leaning toward giving Cyclone Burst an influence point, just to spread the social tie wealth around - but it will be easier to say once we hear from them, especially as to what kind of protege they're going to be playing, business or playful.

Re: Other Things

Still thinking about proper write-up of Vigilance's plans and the thwarting there-of. This whole weekend is a bit of a mess (I know there's no hurry; just addressing why I'm not addressing it in-depth here yet :P).

But GM, no toes are stepped on with: Vigilance could have used subtle psychic influence to manipulate Ash, letting them know where Artiana can be found. Ash, in turn, could have manipulated Char and Scy by suggesting or luring them towards a good target.

That's sort of where I was going to go with it, though your write up is much cleaner
.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:08, Fri 13 Aug 2021.

Hmm, I agree that it would probably be better if we lost an ally - perhaps he was also the person who brought us all together in the first place? If he then died in the fighting, it might lend a lot of pathos to the team, since we're going on in his memory.

What sort of person should it be, though? Leech probably has the scientific parts of his crusde covered (at least once he brings Harbinger on board), so what he needs is mainly intel. So... some kind of master spy type, like an experienced CIA agent or something?

Re: price paid.

The "world news" bit did strike me as a bit incongruous, but local reputational damage seems more appropriate. I also agree that it seems like a pretty low price at first glance - but if it causes problems for the team, then I think it would work fine. Reverie may not care about her reputation, but it may still do some appreciable harm in some scenarios.

I would like it if you came up with a weightier price that works for everyone, though. If you're going with the ally option, then that brings us back to my question about the premise. Was there some person who could reach out to all of you and get you working together? Or did you all just seize the chance to be heroes, gladly or not?

It's your choice, of course. However, having some master spy bring you together to deal with the rampage seems a bit... I don't know, contrived. Especially if it's someone who only existed in the backstory long enough to bring you all together and then die. There are ways to make it work, I think. For instance, maybe it was an American intelligence operative who knew about but decided to go against Vigilance's plans? But personally, I'd probably go for something else.

Maybe instead it could be someone important to that particular corner of the Downtown? A respected member of the local community, or maybe the owner of a hangout where you may have met before. I don't want to force some variant of the Downtown angle on you, but there are definitely some character links to the area:
 - Ironheart will have worked there as part of the Rebirth Program;
 - An abandoned warehouse like the one Leech is squatting in is most likely to be down there;
 - Reverie's backstory features a couple of locations from the Downtown, and I would guess she spends a lot of time there;
 - Ithaca Apartments where Argo is staying might be down there too. Not as sure about it as the warehouse (and in any case you can both contradict me on those if you have something different in mind), but if the point is for him to stay under the radar, it would make a lot of sense for it to be in a Downtown apartment.

With that in mind, I think it could make sense to have some locale there get destroyed in the flames and/or an important and sympathetic local killed - or better yet, badly injured - in the crossfire. That place, or that person, may well have helped bring you together in some more mundane way, before or during the fight. Anyway, your call, but they don't all have to be super spies.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:03, Sat 14 Aug 2021.