NECESSARY EVIL in Freedom City SPOILER PAGE

CONTROLS of the NE Setting

Necessary Evil probably has the best set of controls:

• a powerful boss to command them
• an occupying military force to keep them from just running roughshod over every bank in the area
• a threat big enough to give them a vested interest in stopping it

Some of the powers in the NE rules appear to be tailored towards the setting specifically-

• its easy to go underwater if one tries
• and hard to go to space.

This lets you face of against the aquatic aliens in a variety of environments and prevents the possibility of your villains becoming space pirates... though that might be a neat expanded setting now that I think about it.

IDEAS TO USE

• SUGGESTION - putting in an article on the Khanate performing some sort of atrocity, like gathering up 200 civilians in New Orleans and shooting them, or tearing up some huge portion of the Amazon Rainforest, or stealing the brains from children to use in biocomputers - something that has already happened, that we can't stop - will bring the WSAR tone down right quick.
• The MEGAS is a very powerful weapon. Surely, if the invaders were able to retrieve any of it, they'd want to analyze it.
• Farside City sells out to earth, making lady lunar their rep to the khanate. the twist, well, when all hell broke loose chase made it to farside, and got in a psi-war with aunty. now, one of them is functionally lobotomized, while nobody's quite sure if the smart one's mind is lunar's, chase's, or some machiavellian hybrid of the two. this gives the pc's the "do we trust them or not" Npc, somebody the khan knows could cause trouble, but could equally be more trouble than it's worth to simply remove them
• Lady liberty went down swining, but she was most certainly killed. and then an hour later she died again. two conflicting reports of her death came 15 minutes apart. even now, after the invasion's shattering success, there are reports of a powered terran female aiding the resistance, no matter how many times they kill her. the spirit of freedom lives on, despite the sisyphean task before the latest martyr to be... the Spirit of Freedom thing could be cool... in fact... given the Earth's scenario... it wouldn't be too unlikely for the Spirit to possess a female villainess. After seeing her brother (Rant) die fighting the Star Khan's forces... Rave becomes the new Lady Liberty... Lady Liberty is in many ways the personification of freedom and liberty. So what happens if she's locked in an alien super-prison? If you allow the possibility of some sort of sympathetic magic going on (like a voodoo doll writ large) then maybe the very concept of freedom itself is going to take a hit. Perfect for creating an alien controlled dictatorship. Lady Liberty is, essentially, the spirit of freedom and liberty. If you confine the spirit of freedom, he is saying that freedom at large would suffer. Pretty much spot on. It's a touch metaphysical I know, but it makes sense in a comic-book sort of way. A symbol of a thing can be used to influence the original thing itself (like a voodoo doll can influence the person it represents). So while Liberty is in chains, people are less likely to rise up and free themselves, more willing to accept the domination of the alien police-state and knuckle under. The very concept of being free is somehow harder for most people to grasp, less important. Nasty, Necessary Evil type thought: If the still living body* of Beth Walton-Wright is being held captive in order to enslave the Spirit of Liberty. then freeing her would be a coup for the resistance. But there's more than one way to ... free the spirit, so to speak. If Beth is killed, the spirit could be released (to posess others as another poster has suggested), but presenting such a stark choice to PCs who are on the verge of turning from villains into heroes could be an interesting opportunity for roleplaying. (*"still living body" could mean anything from a completely intact young woman to a brain in a jar, depending on how dark you want to be.)
• Dr Metropolis meanwhile is the embodied spirit of Freedom City itself. So what happens if he's brainwashed and kept under alien control? Applying the same principles, maybe Freedom City starts getting a little darker, roads & infrastructure aren't repaired as quickly as they used to be and everything is getting a little run down. (Interesting side point, could Doc Metro actually be killed while the city exists? Or when his current incarnation died would his replacement be spawned somewhere hidden in the city. Again finding the newly reborn Doc Metro could make an excellent plot point, especially if he was feral or childlike in his new incarnation requiring the PCs to help him develop an actual personality & sense of self.)
• Foreshadow, it would be really cool if he's left messages for them in the form of recordings, or videos, or Cd Roms, or something. Kind of like how an X-men team is searching for the "Books of Destiny"
• Villains Against Tyranny a scenario, the Mindmaster sends a few broken and beaten heroes of his world through a portal in an effort to retrieve their more ruthless counterparts. The Mindmaster implores them to work with him, but also makes sure to have the threat of dimensional abandonment on his side. Maybe one member of the Tyranny Syndicate has lost interest in ruling and wishes instead to do something that may destroy the world in the process- maybe gain ultimate power, maybe just make a sacrifice to Mr. Infamy, maybe looking to conquer the world next door after wiping it clean of life. Perhaps the Tyranny Syndicate is raising in army in preparation to invade Earth Prime. Something big enough that the players feel motivated to stop it.
• Centurion DIES: Centurion and Omega are locked in mortal combat. Each of these super-powered beings exchanging punch for punch. Each fist-fall sounds like thunder echoing through the buildings of Freedom City.
  Each pugilist fights back fatigue and pain to continue the violent dance. Centurion finally starts to get the upper hand. He manages to throw Omega into the side of a building. The building collapses and Omega is pinned... but not for long. Centurion catches his breathe and readies himself for what he knows is coming. Omega slowly rises from the rubble. The battle has obviously taken its toll. Both of the titans square off against each other for what they each know will be a final confrontation.
  They charge towards each other. They clash... windows blow out and concrete cracks as their struggle is renewed.
  In the end, Omega is defeated and his smashed body is hurled back into the Terminus by Centurion.
  The rift between the two worlds had to be closed. Centurion, realizing that if the rift was not closed, another invasion would be a certainty, flies up to the opening and in a heroic gesture uses the remaining energy in his body to seal the rift. As the last of the rift blinks out of existance, Centurion relaxes knowing that he has stopped the invasion. With that, his epic battle takes its toll and Centurion falls from the sky. On impact he creates a small crater. Centurion, slips free from the restraints of the mortal realm and journeys beyond.
  to beat Omega, centurion literally tore him out of his armor
  the Sentry Statue (the big one) was erected where he fell, but his actual gravesite is a closely guarded secret, to prevent desecration by the really spiteful bad guys. he probably was buried in Freedom City but odds are most heros/villains think his body's in Ultima Thule

HINTS to upcoming events

• "CULT of the ATOM" (p100 NE), hint that Centurion is possible with Chase Atom being a young tech/zombie thing following this NE storyline...
  • Centurion is actually being made nito a zombie thing by the Khanate! He'll burst out when the power goes down.
• Other SHADOW cells being slaughtered.
  • the Sleeper invades from within (p101 NE)
  • Hammer of Justice is killing Shadow Cells (p104 NE) he also has human gang to back him. (Golden Marvel?)
  • Serial Killings 30+ that the authorities know of. The killer is a hybrid killing human resistance cells and traitors alike.
• Khanate shut down Liberty Park to begin digging excavations. They're looking for rumor of an Omega giant Cosmic Robot from the Terminus Invasion.
• FIGHT CLUB... the Khan Darb and 10 other Khan run this secret operation in Southpoint.
• Talos in the monestary (p102 NE)
• Fin Revolution: Sugot (Grue) and his squad of 15 elite Grue are peeved for never being rewarded. Sugot apparently will be taking some. (p123 NE)
• Fire from the Sky (p109 NE) an orbital death ray, hinting at space/satelite and the Lighthouse crashed on the moon.

WSAR News

• "International Shoe. International Shoe."
• "The canary wants in the coal mine. The canary wants in the coal mine."

UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

• update Overshadow's speech
• find an image for the array
• sewer system map
• G'roks [1-4]
• Valerie Ramirez leads a group of human/moleoids.
• Terminal Chamber
  • in the sewer system, impossible to find without Ramirez's help.
  • guarding the relay array is an 8' Tall guardian robot (fearless, scythes, Weakness: deactivation diable device after grappled)
• AFTERMATH off camera
  • the Freedom League computers come online, as do the computers on their Lighthouse (now crashed on the moon).
  • Overshadow "pings" the dimensional appature that leads to the Terminus
  • from this he learns that their is an appature located in FC and one in the satelite!
    • Dr. Sin has the device at Claremont Academy where he's taken up leadership.

WHERE

• where is the jail the PCs busted people out of?
• where is the compound the PCs attacked?

AUTHORITIES

SOCorp

Mayor created law enforcement of Khan rule within the city.

ALIENS & FRIENDS

the Dregs

• human gang on drugs to give them power "EZ"

Southpoint Slashers

• earned Khan acceptance by ratting out any supers
• in return they get weapons
• they carve out their area on the streets

KHAN BASES

the Aquarium

• Khan rest and relaxation spot
• "the Aquarium Project" - Khan scientists taking unrestricted experiments on humans to creat a new hybrid of aquatic slave race.

Conversion Camp=

• Drone making camp
• in a remote country side campus
• airfield

the Doghouse

• secret Khan laboratory
• focus on genetically engineered canines (other animals?)
• Canines: sniff out super energy signatures

Hybrobase 11

• p. 103
• a Khan Naval facility

Innov-8 Research

• A'Den a Khan scientist who wants out of the Khan regime. Doesn't believe in the Khan plans.

Rolling Hills Country Club

• Warlord Grypon's home
• secret remains of Cosmic Robot (p. 112)

RESISTANCE

East Point Insurgents

• Richard Lyons
• Khan fear if they kill him after having waited so long Eastpoint will explode in rebellion as a martyr.
• Benny's Pub & Pool: a secret meeting place of the Eastpoint Insurgents.

Cult of the Red Moon

• an Atlantean cult
• ritual spilling of blood of enemies to raise the Red God
• Red God is a spirit of vengence to clense the earth of alien
• led by an insane powerful Atlantean Magician called Samor
• Overshadow wants to examine him for possible use
• main contact is through: FC Library - Donald Wentworth
• there is also a hidden base under the Nautical Museaum

Neighborhood Watch

• in Tempest
• a minor super Jenna Jakes "the Watcher" leads and protects them
• "the Inventor", secret aka. Overshadow

the FAMILY

• Murder Man
• they "own" southpoint
• stockpiled with pre-alien Weapons
• they've had their fill of supers

RED CROSS

• Hippocratic Oath: a hospical that secretly helps aid the rebellion and injured supers

FARMER'S MARKET

• near the docks, fresh shipments
• Willy the Fish: smuggler of Farmer's Market is secretly a Grue that came to Earth long ago.
• Fish is the most prolific smuggler in FC
• Fish's office is hidden in a literal maze of docks, equipment, boxes, etc...
• deals have been cut with the Mayor and Khan Warlords to get by easy
• Hardcore: female superhuman enforcer for Fish. Black Marketeer and occasional Freedom Fighter

the Handyman store

• owned and operated by Dorthy Summers
• the store aids rebels with supplies, weapons, explosives, and captured alien technology
• "the Handyman" store: Dorthy's trademark is the S.H.A.D.O.W. communication systems

Heroes

• Mitch Powers, aka. "Hippocratic Oath" a one time super hero, now crippled.

Chick's Cafe

• Chick Abel runs this club
• neutral to customers
• allows resistance to meet but does NOT allow contraband trade

Trading Post

• the downtown Black Market
• ran by Morrie Smalls

SUPERS

the Hammer of Justice

• 1993 (??), trapped in the Terminus by Overshadow
• went insane / psychotic
• just got free a few months ago
• blames villains for the alien take over
• hunts and kills Super Villains and S.H.A.D.O.W. Cells
• has a group of fanatics that follow him

the American Anvil

• former sidekick of the Hammer
• now old and retired in a highrise living on his stock portfolio

the Watcher

• a minor super Jenna Jakes "the Watcher" of the Neighborhood Watch, leads and protects them

the Sleeper

• a double agent traitor
• aka. Edwin Rawls
• aka. the Chameleon former villain
• aka. the Shifter
• Longarm & Glaive (Cutter) were once in a S.H.A.D.O.W. Cell, when the cell was wiped out by Sleeper

Colonel Clone

• former villain
• in his secret identity he is a slumlord with an underground lair in his apt building

Longarm & Glaive

• Glaive, aka. the Cutter
• they are mercenary supers
• Longarm & Glaive (Cutter) were once in a S.H.A.D.O.W. Cell, when the cell was wiped out by Sleeper

Hardcore and the Fish

• Willy the Fish: smuggler of Farmer's Market is secretly a Grue that came to Earth long ago.
• Hardcore: female superhuman enforcer for Fish. Black Marketeer and occasional Freedom Fighter

Hippocratic Oath

• Mitch Powers, aka. "Hippocratic Oath" a one time super hero, now crippled.

Cosmic Robot

• Rolling Hills Country Club: Warlord Grypon's home
• secret remains of the Cosmic Robot are here

the Revenger

• maintains a network of resistance fighters on the FCU college campus

OTHER

Fight Club

• Alien Bloodsport
• illegal in Khan eyes
• Warlord D'arb created this low powered supers arena
• "Inside Man" is a double agent helping the Khan, working for S.H.A.D.O.W.

LOCATIONS

• Benny's Pub & Pool: a secret meeting place of the Eastpoint Insurgents.
• Warehouse 23: on a little used pier, it houses a pair of mothballed Atlantean mini-submarines.

S.H.A.D.O.W.

• Overshadow is really: Dr. Atom or Daedelus (??)
• "the Inventor", secret aka. Overshadow
• Ching Cho's Chinese Restaraunt: a secret entrance to the SHADOW complex
• "Inside Man" is a double agent helping the Khan, working for S.H.A.D.O.W. with the Fight Club
• Longarm & Glaive (Cutter) were once in a S.H.A.D.O.W. Cell, when the cell was wiped out by Sleeper
• "the Handyman" store: Dorthy's trademark is the S.H.A.D.O.W. communication systems

Star Knight DIES

The Star Knight, called to the Star Knight homeworld, could only watch helplessly as the Star Khan pierced Earth's defenses.
"We are sorry MariaMontoya-star-knight-initiate, but he has the right," Mentor said, his words of comfort useless to Maria.
" I should be helping them!" she screamed.
"Star Knights are bound not intefere. Star Khan has legitimate grievances with Earth and its inhbitants. He has broken no intergalactic sanctions in his actions," repeated Mentor.
"Then Damn your laws! And Damn You! Send me back!" she cried.
"Very well," said Mentor sadly.
Maria Montoya found herself back on earth and made her way to the freedom league headquarters. She didn't have star knight armour anymore but she was still a crack shot and Bowman elected her his second in command. She was by his side, her rifle empty and plinking away uselessly at a Nova-class assualt rig with her pistol when the final plasma blast came.

TYRANY LEAGUE of another Dimension

the Star Lords

What the 'Star Knight' of the Tyranny Syndicate's Anti-Earth would look like …

Somewhere in the galaxy, a dozen races worked together to design a super-computer named Mentor. Meant to be a benevolent coordinating system for their newly-forged multi-system interstellar rebublic, it turned malignant and seized control, ruthlessly supressing dissent with it's armored 'Star Lords' (each of which was assigned a different planet to oversee / police in it's name). After centuries of rule, a rebellion arose against Mentor, led ironically by it's armored enforcers (who were sick of ruling in *it's* name, and wanted to rule in their own...). Mentor struck out viciously, killing the current Star Lords via cyberneural viruses from within their armor, but was also horribly damaged in the initial attack, and similarly fell into a vicious feedback loop, repeating only it's last command, to kill the rebels, *all* of them...

Automated drones continued to be manufactured and sent out, and within a matter of days every planet in the Empire was sterilized of life, while the computer system finally burned out. Mentor 'died' without ever seeing his victory, and a dozen worlds became lifeless burnt-out husks.

A thousand years later, a motley crew of composed of crooks on the run, occasional space pirates, and other scum of space, landed on the home-world, finding that the planet was a lifeless (and mildy radioactive, and toxic) mess, but held the remains of fantastic technology. The automated drones had long since run out of power, as they functioned on broadcast power from stations that had fallen silent, and the opportunistic explorers soon found the remains of the Star Lord armor-suits, fallen in various areas around the central city, where their wearers had succumbed to he cyber-virus. The armors also functioned on broadcast power, and with the failure of Mentor, only one suit, that 'native' to this planet, still functioned. It seemed that each suit had an independent power-source, capable of beaming it power at fantastic ranges (not just anywhere on the planet, but anywhere in the same star system!). But these power-sources were located on the home-worlds of the various Star Lords, and their internal reserves only lasted a single day without this power-source.

The captain took the 'native' suit for himself, and his favored crew-men took the others, and searched the local systems until they located the power-sources to activate their power. Not wanting to remain 'Lords' of a dead set of systems, they excavated the concealed power-batteries from their armored bunkers, and transported them to the worlds that they wished to conquer...

The Star Lord of Earth is a third-generation space-vermin, wearing thousand year old armor (that thankfully is self-repairing, since they never figured out how to tinker with it) and having hidden his armors 'power-battery' deep within Earth's moon (having blasted a deep chasm on the dark side to hold it, and then sealed it over with lunar regolith, burying it from sight).

But the above? Just a prequel. I never cared for one sentence in the Anti-Earth write up, the sentence stating that 'the only real hero on Anti-Earth is Mind-Master.'

the 'heroes' of Anti-Earth, the League of Order .

Devil Ray

Carl Mattus worked in an experimental dome-complex under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, mostly as a grunt for his wife, the complex’s no-nonsense designer (seen the movie, the Abyss? Same deal.).

His first contact with the Tyranny Syndicate was when the evil Siren decided that the undersea complex was an affront to her sensibilities, an intrusion of filthy man and their cold stinking blasphemous technologies into the serene world of Les Invisibles. Calling up storms, she battered surface ships attempting to supply the station, while tormenting it’s occupants with controlled sea life for over a week as they died one by one, primarily from CO2 build-up and suffocation, with the assorted violent incidents from her attacks on the facility.

Dr. Mattus was one of the first casualties, caught outside on a repair mission when a school of sharks tore through the workers, with her husband trapped inside forced to watch through the even on external cameras.

Carl tried to rally the others and get a signal out, but no help came, and he watched the others succumb, while his diver’s lungs allowed him to be the last survivor. As the CO2 levels reached toxic, an item retrieved on the teams last expedition, a strange suit, not crafted of any technology known to man, beeped, and he reached for it and pulled it’s hood over his head, only to discover that the air’s deteriorating quality had triggered the suits automatic O2 scrubber, and that it’s mask now fed him a stream of clean breathable air. Other systems came online, in the until-now dormant suit, and while he could not make heads or tails of the strange instructions that flashed before his eyes, or the weird piping language that sang in his ears, he soon learned to ignore them and figured out the suit’s major functions by the age old method of ‘trying stuff.’

He’s never been a leader, and he knew that he didn’t have the first chance in hell of defeating Siren and getting revenge for the loss of his wife and co-workers, but he did know of Radio Freedom, and that there were others who opposed Siren and her Syndicate allies, and after some ‘freelance’ work, he got their attention and joined the Order.

Dr. Simian

A group of highly-paid (and quite immoral) weapons-system-designers were paid to develop a technique to download the mind and fighting skills of an aging and partially-disabled special ops ‘volunteer’ into the strong young body of a mountain gorilla, hoping to create a covert operative unlike any other. (Their benefactor had many uses for this technology, if successful, including downloading the minds of minions who had failed him into fallow deer and releasing them into his tiger-pens...)

A power-surge instead suffused all of the occupants of the room in a shimmering net of neuroelectrical forces that drained the researchers (and the commando) of their memories and intellectual abilities, and fed them into the restrained simian. The ape that now calls himself Dr. Simian awakened to consciousness to find himself in a room full of lab-coated humans, all scratching themselves, flinging coffee and howling in ape-like confusion. He freed himself (with newly-discovered commando-like escape skills), and using his vast new knowledge and memories of what his captors had been doing, pillaged their bank accounts before vanishing, with his group of six now permanently ape-minded ‘sidekicks.’

He keeps these former scientists safely tucked away in a hidden base, as, even knowing what they had planned, and what sorts of people they were in life, he cannot bring himself to kill them, or let them run free and get themselves hurt.

Combining knowledges from many fields of study, as well as some measure of combat-training from the former special forces assassin, Dr. Simian has constructed a battlesuit that augments his already noticeable gorilla strength, and allows him to fend off the attacks by the research-teams secret financial backer, Dr. Sin, and his grand-daughter, the Raven! It was during a futile attempt to resist an attack by the Tyranny Syndicate (manipulated into doing so by the Raven), that Dr. Simian was rescued by other members of the Order, and joined this underground collection of heroes, working in secret to foil the Syndicate’s schemes.

Dr. Stratos

Left for dead by his unscrupulous test-pilot, Ray Garder, the man who would become Captain Thunder, Dr. Sebastian Stratos did actually die, for a few moments, before an electrical discharge flared through his ruined machinery and restarted his heart.

He surged to life coursing with newfound vigor, and found that he could now control the weather directly, without recourse to his demolished machinery! He attempts to use his powers for the good of mankind, but finds himself often having to repel attacks from Captain Thunder, who seeks to steal the rest of his power, despite having turned his own powers only to selfish and destructive pursuits.

Of the Order, Dr. Stratos is most likely to be found working alone, trying to improve crop yields over the midwest, or tame flooding in coastal regions, but since being lured into a trap by his former employee (with the assistance of his Syndicate teammate Siren), Dr. Stratos has grown quite bitter, as he finds that Gardner's schemes are impeding even his own abilities to use his powers to help others.

Hiroshima Shadow

On Anti-Earth, the Second World War ended with Japan’s surrender, engineered by the expediment of dropping a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki. Surrender came only hours later, but the forces in control of this brutish version of America did not find this sufficient, and so they dropped a second bomb on Hiroshima, not just to further cow the Japanese spirit, but more importantly to prove to the rest of the watching world that the first bomb was not a fluke, that this could happen again, to *anyone.*

The people of Japan in the modern day are ghosts of the people they once were, most shuffling through their lives, veritable second-class citizens in their own nation (administrated by China, as part of an ‘arrangement’ made between the Allies, who had no interest in directly administering a place so far from their own interests, when they urgently wanted to focus on annexing Europe).

Growing up in this world, the young man who is know known only as Hiroshima Shadow watched his father snap under a disciplinary review, and, as they say in Asia, ‘ran amok,’ pushing over a Chinese policeman, seizing his weapon and shooting randomly until he was brought down in a hail of gunfire. After months of intense questioning by Chinese authorities, the eight year old boy was finally allowed to go free, only to find that his mother remained imprisoned, and his home had been allotted to new people, who had no room for a stray boy off the streets, who claimed that he had lived there only that spring.

The boy ended up wandering into the no man’s land of Hiroshima, fenced off haphazardly (but not guarded, since the Chinese knew it only as a place where ‘undesirables’ could go and never be seen again, presumably killed by the toxic levels of radiation and pollution remaining in the never-cleaned area).

None know what happened next, but years later, the boy returned, as the energy being that calls itself Hiroshima Shadow. Unlike his father, he has not ‘run amok.’ He knows that no amount of random destruction, no amount of flailing about and killing Chinese occupiers will matter in the long run. The source of poison that has broken the spirits of his people is in America, where the weapons came from, and his goal is nothing less than the destruction of the American nuclear arsenal!

His first attempt at this, a direct approach, barely more sophisticated than his fathers futile last act, led to a stinging defeat at the hands of the Tyranny Syndicate, and he only barely escaped alive, a fact that would surely not have occurred if the Syndicate had realized how hard he was to kill. He was saved and nursed back to health by members of the Order, and now recognizes that allies in this battle are a necessity, that a suicide mission will accomplish nothing for his people.

The Maestro

Believing that only in a return to the arts, can mankind regain the nobility of lost days, Basil Fatherton creates music to inspire the bold, and bring low the savage beast.

He attempts to preserve all forms of artistic expression, and even considers spray-painted graffiti tags in the burned-out shell of a building to be a sign of hope for mankind’s future, an expression of art and of defiance in the face of the urban squalor, callous destruction and tyrannical rules imposed by the Syndicate.

But his true love is music, and he is constantly setting up ‘Radio Freedom’ substations around the city, until the Syndicate or the so-called Police working for them can home in on them and shut them down. He’s gotten quite skilled at bouncing signals, and making them hard to find, so that even Daedalus now finds it more trouble than it’s worth to try and keep up, and has taken to jamming every frequency not already in use with white noise, and then sending out Johnny Speed to 'search every signal-source' until they find the transmitter, a task which Johnny relishes, since he and the Maestro have tangled multiple times (Johnny trashed several museums, in a playful mood, defacing thousands of priceless artworks in mere moments, and the Maestro has taken a special interest in producing songs that portray him as a bitterly unhappy, and somewhat pitiable, young man full of impotent anger at the world, which, predictably, fills Johnny with anger...).

While Dr. Simian is undoubtedly the ‘brain’ of the operations, most would agree that the Maestro is it’s soul, and as Medea has pointed out, it’s the Maestro that reminds them to stop and remember what they are fighting *for,* the very soul of what it means to be human, not just mindless opposition of the tyrants of the Syndicate.

Medea

Medea remembers the old days, and she knows quite well that many of the heroes of legend had their warts and their feet of clay, but still, heroes there were, and she once walked with them (and even stood against them, at times). She weeps for a day that lacks such inspirations, and seeks to change all that by joining an unlikely alliance and find (or make!) a new heroic age.

She is saddened in particular by the dark turn taken by her old friend Daedalus, whom she remembers falling like an angel from the sky when the wings he made failed him. In these days, she feels that he has fallen even further than ever before, missing the lesson the gods meant for him to learn that fateful day, and insisting instead that man was not meant to fly, even if he must now be the one to smite them from the skies…

Orion the Hunter

The O'Ryan family was politically powerful, but they ended up on the wrong end of the 'new administration,' and his wealthy family’s assets were seized and properties ‘secured’ by the Syndicate after the Jack's father was ‘found guilty’ of some unspecified acts of treason (which, ‘for matters of national security,’ were never publicly detailed).

The young man known as Orion is very nearly the least ‘heroic’ of the Order, seeking only to prove that there is room for humans in this world, that ‘mere mortals’ can take back what super-powered thugs like the Syndicate have taken from humanity, not just in cash and lands, but in pride and confidence and self-worth.

His motivations run from revenge over his own personal losses to a fanatical need to prove that, even as a ‘normal man,’ he can bring these super-powered freaks low. To some degree, he knows that his family will never regain their fortune, that he cannot avenge their losses, but he still runs on a cold fury, and if he can bring down one of the smug bastards who floated above his family home and smashed it into flaming ruin with their powers, he will view his life as complete.

Wild Card

Jake Wallace always roots for the underdog, and so, as Wild Card, he has chosen the losing side of this war.

His motivations remain unknown, and he seems to thrive on the conflict and the competition more than anything, not really caring about doing good deeds or beating the bad-guys. Even less trustworthy than the Hunter, Wild Card is always walking a fine line, and even Orion considers him a risk, since he lacks any tangible motivation to work with the rest of the Order. The thought that he could be working for the Tyranny Syndicate is never far from his team-mates thoughts, and Dr. Simian is convinced that if the Order ever does gain the upper hand over the Tyranny Syndicate, Wild Card will turn again, at the least convenient moment...

But for now, it is agreed that he can be relied upon, in the short term.

Blackstar

Rojan Lhar was kicked out of the Star Lords when he was found to be shepherding and *training* the inhabitants of his assigned world, instead of ‘lording’ it properly (and more treacherously, advancing their understanding of technology to the point that they may have someday been able to upgrade, or even duplicate, his armor!).

And so 'Blackstar' was stripped of his armor and forced to watch the culture he’d advanced from bows and arrows to steam and airships reduced in turn to smoldering rubble.

Left to die on this now lifeless world, he discovered a strange thing indeed, a mystical relic of bygone days concealed even from him in an unassuming temple. These bracers of golden crystal channeled the power of light, and soon he found that he could fly, generate fields of light or fire destructive laser attacks. He recognizes the irony that at any time his ‘serfs’ could have raised up a champion to oppose him with these items, but apparently chose not to.

He has traveled to the nearest other Star Lord influenced world, Earth, to begin what he hopes to be a long chain of successful defeats of his former allies using these last relics of a destroyed people who once welcomed him as one of their own.

Mr. Destiny

an occult being of inexplicable power, Mr. Destiny has long been a denizen of Anti-Earth, freely granting the wishes of anyone who enters his 'shop', so long as their wish brings some measure of joy into other people's lives. but, following the "time of crisis" (when extra-dimensional beings unseated the Syndicate, however breifly), Mr. Destiny has begun to step up his activities, to the point where he has begun to imbue superpowers on those that truly deserve them, such as...

the White Knight

growing up amidst followers of Nazi rhetoric, it would have been easy for Daniel foreman to have become a xenophobic bigot like he did on so many other realities. but something clicked in his mind. He still preaches the values of fascism and less radical concepts of nazism, he never subscribed to the ideology of the master race, having lived under the yoke of the 'overman' (the syndicate) for his entire life. granted powers by Mr. Destiny, he became the white knight, an example to others to live their lives with dignity and strength.

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NECESSARY EVIL in FREEDOM CITY