The Sanguine Squad: The Janus

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Shrapnel the Janus

Identity

Real Name:
Ashley Bishop (always Ash)

Look:
Ambiguous, white, sad eyes, concealing fashion, damaged costume, intimidating mask.

Ash is female, but tends to dress in androgynous or tomboyish clothes. Her costume is black and silver, shiny metal armour pieces that she’s shaped with her powers over cloth. She got caught in an explosion on her first outing, and she decided she liked the battle-damaged look of her armour and kept it.

Images:
[Ash]
[Shrapnel's mask]

Abilities:
Ferrokinesis

Labels:

Current:
Danger +2
Freak +3
Saviour =0
Superior =0
Mundane =0

Starting:
Danger +2
Freak +1
Saviour -1
Superior =0
Mundane +1

Janus Moves:

The Mask: Once per session, you can affirm either your heroic or secret identity to switch your Mundane with your Danger. When you reveal your secret identity to someone who didn’t know it already, mark potential.

Mild-mannered: When you try to use your civilian identity to deceive, trick, or slip past someone, roll + Mundane. On a hit they buy your facade. On a 7-9, choose one: you’re still under observation, you leave something incriminating behind, you’re forced to make a fool of yourself to sell it. On a miss, one of your civilian obligations rears its ugly head.

Game face: When you commit yourself to save someone or defeat a terrible enemy, mark a condition and take +1 ongoing to all rolls in direct pursuit of that goal. At the end of any scene in which you don’t make progress towards that goal, mark a condition. When you fulfil your goal, mark potential.

Other Moves:

Do me a favour: When you go to an ordinary civilian you know for a favour, roll + Mundane. On a 10+, they’ll lend you a hand. On a 7-9, they need a promise up front. On a miss, you catch them up in your super-powered nonsense, and they suffer for it.

Team Moves:

When you share a triumphant celebration with someone, ask them if they see you as the person wearing the mask or the person underneath. If the former, mark potential and clear a condition. If the latter, take Influence over them if you reveal yourself.

When you share a vulnerability or weakness with someone, tell them a secret about who you really are. Give them Influence, and shift your Mundane up and your mask’s Label down.

Extras:

Obligations: When time passes, roll + your Mundane to see how you’re managing your obligations. On a hit, things are going pretty well—you have an opportunity or advantage thanks to one of your obligations. On a 7-9, you’ve lapsed on one obligation, your choice. On a miss, you haven’t given your normal life anywhere near the attention it deserves; the GM chooses two obligations that are going to bite you.

o Close Relative: Ellen Bishop, Ash's mom
o Schoolwork: College engineering course, with Dr Natembe as her tutor
o Best Friends: Arjun Rao and Jiali Zhang, fellow engineering students

Drives: When you fulfil a drive, cross it off, and choose one: mark potential, clear a condition, take Influence over someone involved. When your four drives are all crossed off, choose four new drives. When all drives are crossed off, change playbooks, retire from the life, or become a paragon of the city.

o make out with a teammate
o save a teammate’s life
o earn the respect of a hero you admire
o outperform an adult hero

- punch someone you probably shouldn’t
- take down a threat all on your own
- pull off a ridiculous stunt
- get drunk or high with a teammate
- drive a fantastical vehicle
- punch out a teammate
- break up with someone
- stop a fight with calm words
- tell someone your true feelings for them
- travel to an incredible place (or time)
- get a new costume
- get a new hero name
- kiss someone dangerous
- reject someone who tells you "you shouldn’t be here"

x lead the team successfully in battle
x help a teammate when they most need you

Moment of Truth:

x The mask is a lie, and some piece of you has always known that. Doesn’t matter if others can see it. You’re the one that can do the impossible. Mask off. Costume on. And you’re going to save the damn day. Of course, you better hope nobody nasty is watching…

Advancement:

o Take another move from your playbook
o Take another move from your playbook
o Take a move from another playbook
o Take a move from another playbook
o Someone permanently loses Influence over you; add +1 to a Label
o Change your mask's Label, and add +1 to the mask's new Label
o Unlock your Moment of Truth
x Take drives from the Beacon’s playbook

When you’ve taken five advances from the top list, you can take advances from the list below:

o Unlock your Moment of Truth after it’s been used once
x Change playbooks
o Take an adult move
o Take an adult move
o Lock a Label, and add +1 to a Label of your choice
o Retire from the life or become a paragon of the city

History:

  • A couple of years ago Ash was at a lab where her mom was working late when robots broke in to steal a container of alien smart metal.
  • Superhero team called Brute Force foiled the robbery. Enhanced Bronze-Gen vigilante types with names like Collateral and Overkill and Hardcase.
  • One of them destroyed the container rather than let it be stolen for nefarious purposes. Ash got a shard of the metal lodged in her spine.
  • Hospital found the shard couldn't be removed because it had partly bonded with her nervous system and the damage would continue to spread.
  • One night the Blacksmith turned up in hospital. He'd been the one behind the robbery, but he'd expected the lab to be empty and was mortified that anyone got hurt. He promised to make things right somehow.
  • He ended up visiting Ash several times as her condition worsened, sharing his plans and stories of his adventures. She never got so much as an apology from the superheroes involved.
  • Months later he found a way to fix the damage, not by removing the metal but instead by fully fusing it with her. It was risky, but by this point she was in a wheelchair and desperate enough to try.
  • It not only worked, it gave her control over metal. Under the guise of an apprenticeship, she learned how to control her new powers under the Blacksmith and became his sidekick.
  • After about a year of this, the Blacksmith was jailed by his nemesis the Silver Sentinel following an attempt to take over AEGIS defence tech. He told Shrapnel not to try to spring him, as he had plans in motion from the inside and didn’t want to risk her being locked up as well.
  • Shrapnel then spent several months operating on her own, taking increasingly bigger risks and with less of a plan beyond vengeance against the world of superheroes. Her last public outing was against the Sentinel, where she was hopelessly outclassed but managed to escape after hitting the Sentinel with a school bus.
  • It was Ambassador Bell who put Ash in contact with the team, approaching her in her civilian identity when she was wracked with doubts and putting her on a new path. Quite how Bell knows so much about her, and what exactly her intentions are, Shrapnel doesn’t know.

[Back To Sanguine Squad Main Page]
[Shrapnel's previous playbook page]