Difference between revisions of "Halcyon Rising"

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(Stellar)
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* Savior +1
 
* Savior +1
 
* Superior 0
 
* Superior 0
Mundane 0
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* Mundane 0
  
 
===Moves===
 
===Moves===

Revision as of 11:22, 15 October 2016

Halcyon Rising is a PbP game using the RPG Masks.

Setup

Initial Hook

A time-space anomaly appear over the sky of Halcyon City, 19 months ago. It slowly grew to dominate the entire sky. During that time, the Heroes of Halcyon City discovered that it was created by Dr Vorhees when his research on wormhole technology went horribly wrong. It was possible it could have been handled safely, but it was taken over by Vortex, who was able to integrate their own time-space powers with the rending energies of The Turning. He became very powerful, hiring misinformed mercenaries to keep the heroes at bay as he mastered its power. By the time the heroes arrived at his lair, he was able to summon monstrosities from beyond. Vortex was now quite mad, and was convinced he must conquer all of earth, beginning with Halcyon City.

Destruction rained down on the city, and heroes from across the globe joined the fight. Then, suddenly, the Turning collapsed in on itself and disappeared. Vortex, his key followers, and many of the heroes vanished within the Turning. Most assume the heroes sacrificed themselves to save the city, but few know the details of what happened within the Humetech Towers that night.

Now, Halcyon must rebuild. Old heroes must find new ways. New heroes must renew old paths. And the city... the city knows both hope and fear.

Plot Points from Chargen

  • Halcyon City is rebuilding after a (big summer crossover) event called The Turning, where the Exemplars saved the city and reality from a dimensional rift and the villain Vortex, who became unimaginably more powerful and deranged as the rift grew.
  • The Exemplars main members have disappeared. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to The Conundrum, Blade Queen, Rook, The Muskateer, Black Shogun, and the Flying Fox. Many of these heroes had mentored the PCs to some degree.
  • The team came together when they all independently began trying to contain a gang war that erupted during the climax of the Turning.
  • The villain Solace was masterminding the gang violence for their personal gain.
  • One of the teen metahumans who was involved in that fight, Starlight, died, in part because Reboot chose to save innocents.
  • The team formed more or less officially after the conflict was over, an ambulance was saved, and Starlight was pronounced dead. They were all at the hospital at the time.
  • Sonic energy manipulator and hero Bang was impressed by the heroes, and tried to help them deal as a team with what had happened.
  • In the aftermath of the Turning, the executor of Rook's will, Mr. Scale, helped bankroll the creation of a new school near the blighted areas of Halcyon. This is theGuidewell School.
  • Some of the PCs were able to attend because of their academic excellence, and others because of living nearby. Either way, however, guidance counselor (and former Exemplar associate) Ibrahim Aboubacar made sure they all were attending the school.
  • Guidewell is run under the rigid but academically focused administration of Principal Dr Lauren Frost and Vice Principle Moreau.

Player Characters

Amaterasu

Reboot

Ronin

Seed

Stellar

Real Name: Chris Ravenel / Amari Player: Wyzard

  • Look
    • Shifting sex/gender
    • Neon Body
    • Metallic Eyes
    • Practical
  • Abilities
    • Flying
    • Durable
    • Radical Shapeshifting
    • Telepathy & Mind blasts

Labels

  • Danger -1
  • Freak +2
  • Savior +1
  • Superior 0
  • Mundane 0

Moves

  • Alien tech:
    • When you alter a human device with your alien technology, roll + Freak. On a hit, you create a device that can do something impossible once and then fzzle. When you roll a 10+, choose one:
      • It works exceptionally well
      • You get an additional use out of it
    • On a miss, the device works, but it has a completely unintended side effect that the GM will reveal when you use it
  • Kirby-craft:
    • You have a vehicle, something from your home. Detail its look, and choose two strengths and two weaknesses. When you are flying your ship, you can use it to unleash your powers, directly engage a threat, or defend someone using Superior.
    • Strengths
      • Chameleon plating
      • Dimension-shifting
    • Weaknesses
      • Unarmed
      • Diffcult to repair
  • Not so different after all:
    • When you talk about your home, roll + Freak. On a 10+, choose two. On a 7-9, choose one. During the conversation, you:
      • confess a flaw of your home; add 1 Team to the pool
      • mislead them about your home; take Influence over them
      • describe the glories of your home; clear a condition
    • On a miss, you inadvertently reveal more about yourself than you planned; tell them a secret or vulnerability you haven’t shared with Earthlings before no

Backstory

  • Where do you come from?
    • A highly advanced civilization called the Cynosure, near the galactic core
  • Why did you come to Earth?
    • My Tarriance, a rite of passage and attempt to develop / intensify my persona.
    • The Tarriance works as such. The person is forked into 20-or-so identical copies. Like, twenty clones with identical memories and personalities. They might mod themselves to have different powers or whatever. They all pick places to go. When the Tarriance is over, the forks are merged back into one personality. The strongest personality* dominates and survives as the "real" version, but they gain the memories and experiences of the loser. Therefore, the Tarriance is a way for each shard or fork to try and become a stronger and more intense personality, by having the most exciting experiences, experiences and memories that hone themselves. If a fork spends their time taking naps, then their personality will die and even their individual memories might be too boring to be preserved in the eventual merged super-personality.
    • It's relatively freeform [how one selects the location of one's Tarriance]. Individuals might pick a bunch of candidates before forking, or after. Or they might wander around and stop someplace that looks interesting, or wander the galaxy doing stuff and seeing lots of places instead of staying anywhere. Your Tarriance is your own responsibility, and if yours is lame then some of your other forks will do better. Sucks to be you. Briefly. 
    • Earth was this fork's first choice, once it made one. This fork didn't know where to go, and was working its way down to trading stations owned by lower-tech civs in search of a plot hook (Go into a space-tavern! Get a quest from a space-wizard!) Stellar met a prophet that predicted (in a way that is wholly cryptic and only really interpretable after the fact) the Turning and pointed out Earth. Stellar couldn't find any ships going that way that it could hitch a ride on (see below), so it traded a bauble for the Runabout and made the trip itself.
  • What is Earth's Reputation?
    • "What the fuck is Earth? They named their planet after dirt?" Total backwater. There are an unlimited quantity of weird, violent, uncontacted civs out there. Earth is a weird outlier in terms of producing unpatterned super-beings, but that's not yet caught the attention of much of anyone in the wider galaxy. Like, take Captain America. Most civs around Earth's tech level might have developed the super-soldier syrum, but then they'd have thousands of them and almost no other types. OR they'd have a mystical martial arts tradition or mighty psychic potential or something. But the point is the vast majority of their superbeings would be according to a pattern. Earth doesn't have profoundly more supers than any other civ, but it has a freakishly broad assortment.
  • Why do you want to stay here (for now at least)?
    • Developing civs are chaotic! It's healthy for me to be here.
  • As a member of an extremely advanced race of extreme shapeshifters, human customs must seem absolutely bizarre to Stellar. Which ones do they understand, which ones do they not get at all, and which are in between (either they forget them half the time, or they almost get them)?

(Telepathy, and to a lesser degree Shapeshifting, are somewhat inherent to Stellar's race, but this fork of Stellar has developed and weaponized those abilities to an unusual degree. Like, in their culture, Stellar's telepathic skills are viewed sort of like a Beacon's martial arts & acrobatics skills would be viewed on Earth. Other versions of Stellar might be relying on gadgets or cosmic forces or who-knows-what.)

    • The Cynosure is passionate about names. Stellar probably actually had over a dozen before forking, and by now each of the forks has a few of their own. Names are context-dependent and also there are unspoken rules about who can use them. Stellar is often upset that its friends expect it to use the same name that any classmate does, the one their parents do, the one they sign on papers. It makes it both too intimate and not intimate enough at the same time, or contextually weird, et cetera. However, Stellar hasn't been able to get humans to follow its name-rules in a way that isn't patronizing or confused. At least super-people have super-names separate from their everyday names, so that's somewhat comforting. Nicknames, street names, fake names on facebook, pseudonyms for writing...Stellar likes that because they remind it of home a little.
    • Stellar can be cruel, but it's intentional. It doesn't understand unintentional cruelty, or cruelty towards loved ones. Abusive family or romantic relationships are crazy to Stellar, but being polite or considerate to one's enemies is equally bizarre. 
    • The Cynosure isn't a post-scarcity utopia. There are social hierarchies, social capital/reputation economies, and different forms of rationing of intentionally or unintentionally scarce resources. However, money as practiced by humans is nonsensical and confusing, and so is the fact that you can actually own big chunks of real estate. In the Cynosure you can own yourself, own modded-in-powers, own all kinds of personalty, own slaves (other species or manufactured), own a ship, own a rep, be owed favors...but owning a house on big grounds, or owning "stock" in a "company," or own a huge quantity of universal credits? That's weird.
    • Reputation economies make perfect sense to Stellar, and it's casually proficient in them to a degree borderline unnatural to humans. As such, it could probably be a groundbreaking genius marketing executive if it gave a fuck about the job and somebody gave it the position. Like, "Double Apple's sales within a year" genius.
    • Human attitudes towards death and each other (particularly as to "othering" different races/cultures/genders) are both bizarre and hilarious to Stellar. Its tendencies to treat these as jokes is going to cause trouble eventually.
    • Stellar enthusiastically participates in human sexual behavior without really understanding or respecting human conventions terrifically well. 
  • Why do your people want you to come home?
    • When I'm done adventuring, I have to merge.
  • Why do you care about the team?
    • I'm highly social in this phase of my life, and they're my friends.
  • Did any other members of the Cynosure have any contact with Earth before Cynosure arrived? With Halcyon City or any of its denizens? Was Cynosure around for the Event, and if so, what did she experience?
    • Maybe, probably? I'll let you decide whichever is more interesting. Stellar doesn't *know* of any Cynosure people who have been to Earth. 
    • Stellar was there for the Event, lost the Earth mentor it had acquired, and basically thought it was pretty awesome. The prophecy was real! Lots of exciting things happened! Stellar lived and racked up intense experiences!
  • How does "family life" work as far as the school and other human officials perceive things? Is she a foreign exchange student? Does she have holographic parents?
    • See above re robot parents. They're less shitty than Zim's, but not a LOT less shitty. They're good enough to fool the people at a PTA meeting mostly.

Voight-Kampf