Total War: Zephyr City

[Writtensanity]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1004933849492500521/1094133331488161862/Zephyr_Citizen1.png

"Good morning Zephyr City, this is Ashley Cyclone (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1004933849492500521/1094133997027737670/Writteninsanity_comic_art_of_a_beautiful_blonde_mo rning_radio_s_45085d23-5c5c-400b-af78-eecc4abeff43.png) coming at you live on a bright and lovely Monday morning here in the greatest city on the coast with the news and fun you need to make your commute down the I75 a little more bearable."

"Our top story, as it has been every day for the past two weeks is the Pulse, but that should be coming to an end soon. According to Professor Ivings of ZCU the Pulse is now waning, meaning if you were hoping to get powers this time around, it looks like you're out of luck. Reports say that most Empowered's abilities should have already revealed themselves and that it's unlikely we will see another spike until mid summer."

"This news comes alongside the confirmation that Bolting, the Queen of Zephyr City herself, is locked up and powerless in the Alphamax. The liberation parade is expected to happen next Friday with a speech from Mayor Tills. The ZPD has promised that they are going to ensure that it's a safe event for everyone to attend."

"But, and I'm going to be candid here listeners, I'm just waiting for what comes next. We all know that a lot of people in Zephyr City got powers and the only thing keeping us from ending up like West Gate was that Bolting kept everyone in line. She was a bitch - pardon, add that to the swear jar- but right now I'm just crossing my fingers and toes hoping that we don't get someone worse, now that there is room for someone worse."

"So, to anyone Empowered who's listening this morning, I'm gonna ask a favour. Please be better. I know that the next weeks are going to be defined by everyone figuring out who the top dog is, but there are people in the city who are just trying to get to work and figure out what they want for dinner."

"Hell, I'll even let the journalist in me talk for a second. You have a chance to make a name for yourself."

Be a name worth remembering


https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1004933849492500521/1094138134737989632/ZEPHYR_CITY2.png

Total War: Zephyr City is a Free form Faction Building and Territory Control game utilizing a modified version of a collaborative rule-set used in previous games like Hanrui, Principia, Sethannai, and Mandate of Heaven. Zephyr City aims to be a strategic and cutthroat environment to test your heroic, or villainous faction.

Though it is a free-form game in terms of roleplay, Total War has a detailed rule set that you MUST understand before playing. If you have questions about the ruleset, feel free to ask, but if you do not understand the way that factions work, you're simply not going to have fun as part of the game.

Click Here for the Ruleset (https://drive.google.com/file/d/19v9kaugP4AcPP6wSfX8O1uc_AwJc6Tqc/view?usp=share_link)

Welcome to Zephyr City -

Queue the theme music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqWjYvsWRxo)



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Once everyone is in here with their Faction data, we can get to revealing the map and choosing territories. Game is expected to begin THIS SATURDAY!

[Feathersnow]

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The Birdwatch


Defenders- We happy few guard the ignorant masses from the perils of the post-Pulse world! Just as sparrows gang up to protect the garden from hawks, so does Birdwatch protect the world.

Rebel- Ours is a thankless task, one without rules, save victory at any cost. The Crow does what he must, he is as free as a Bird, now, for he is a Bird you cannot change...

Secretive... The ways of Birdwatch are inscrutable to outsiders, and our actions are often cloaked in shadows. [[Something, something, like feathers, something, something noble birds]]

Strength 2-
Birds are not the strongest of beasts, sadly

Espionage 6-
Birds! We are everywhere, we see everything! Especially after Dr. Raptor invented genetically enhanced Bird Spies and released them into the wild, where their genes spread into the various songbird species in Zephyr City, making potentially any small Avian a potential fellow traveler with Birdwatch.

Economy 4
We have a decent nest egg, Dr. Raptor was wealthy and his Spies helped him to invest well

Weird 1
Our pulse powers are minimal, and our goals and methods are mundane by preference.

Specialist 6
Our flock is our strength! We are bolstered by our commitment to the cause of Birdwatch! Each member of Birdwatch is a hero in their own right, and together, they are far more!

Morale 5
We are the wings that shelter Zephyr City, and we are proud to brood over this precious nest!

Agent Hawk level 1 Strength
The mighty talons of Birdwatch, Agent Hawk is the greatest champion of the people! She was gifted by the pulse with the power to warp solid objects like soft clay in her hands. (This effect wears off after a few hours.)

Agent Swallow level 1 economy
The grasping beak of Birdwatch, Agent Sparrow guards the nest egg left by Doctor Raptor. His guesses are right one standard deviation more likely than conventional probability would dictate! This makes him a preternaturally powerful investor and manager. Also, he can heal any wound, and at an accelerated rate. After recovering from paralysis due to the pulse, he learned of his secondary pulse power playing Minesweeper on PC once he recovered enough to do so.

Agent Finch level 1 Specialist
The neice and heir of Doctor Raptor, Agent Finch is just generically awesome at everything, but not all at once. She can mutate to be more effective at a given task, but doing so resets her extant mutation.

VIP ability- a Birdwatch VIP doing something for which they have a bonus counts as also putting their value towards an investigation as they can multitask between that and interfacing with the network of bird spies

Faction Ability- Birdwatch gets temporary WRD and/or Esp whenever they complete a stage of a heist as useful knowledge is given them by bird spies.


Background:
Founded by the martyred Dr. Raptor, Birdwatch is a society devoted to defending the people. He had no powers, but he did have his racing pigeons! He used the power of Science! to make do. The genetically enriched rats with wings served to gather information that Birdwatch could use to leverage what little they had to the best advantage. Though Dr. Raptor died in a mission trying to take down a brutal empowered criminal, he rallied others to his side before he fell.

[Eldan]

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Quick summary:
Secret government project tries to communicate with alternate dimensions during a Pulse event and instead opens a portal to possibly hell. Most of the project personnel is offered as a blood sacrifice to save the lives of the project leadership and sign a pact for knowledge killed in a massive, accidental explosion, the rest goes MIA. They turn up months later, at the outskirts of Zephyr City, but they have changed…

Background snippets

From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Are you kidding me

Listen, Nate

You had your chance and you blew it. Training officer in Panama or liaison in Paris? That was the general throwing you a bone. And then you had to insult him to his face. So this is what you get. You’re going to Zephyr City and you’re going to babysit a house full of nerds for the rest of your career. You’re an old, fat **** with a useless leg, you’re never going back to the field and if you don’t shut up and take this, they are going to send you to the Vostok station drill project to watch for suspicious penguins.

Yours,
Emmet Turner

Eversion Project: Summary for Decision Makers
Since the turn of the century, it has become increasingly clear that the search for nonhuman intelligence in space is all but impossible with current technology. Though the number of discovered exoplanets numbers now in the tens of thousands (Quantum Leap & Jefferson 2019; Dr. Aperture 2021), the amount of information arriving on Earth from even a small slice of the sky is far beyond anything that can be analyzed for information content, even if all of Earth’s computers and computing metahumans were concentrated on the task (Double Blind 2005; Python 2006; Doctor Quadcore 2009). This means that even if another civilization in our galaxy were to send signals in our direction, it would simply be lost in the breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum and among the billions of stars visible to our telescopes.
However, there is another, much closer direction in which we can find other intelligences: as early as 2003, a teamup of M-Brain, Supersymmetor, Collapsar and Spooky Action - representing among them more than 60% of the total scientific output in theoretical physics of the United States - proved that Gravity, as well as at least one other fundamental force, must be acting in five-dimensional space. Ten years later, Strange Charm and Walk the Planck have shown the first theoretical outline for the Eversion Reactor, which forms the basis for…
The third eye has opened
https://i.ibb.co/R3tH5w7/Levy-Aftermath.png


VIP trait: The Indulgence
Dr. Levy’s newest research has a curious effect on the subjects, inducing what he calls “alternate cognitive states”, where one half is detached and logical, able to produce enormous amounts of complicated scientific research in a short timespan, while the other half is singularly reckless and bloodthirsty, to balance out the first. Any rumour that this is in fact “demonic possession” is silly superstition.
All Eversion Project VIPs are dual-classed and randomly choose each turn which of their classes apply. They level the same as single-classed VIPs. One side is defined as “demonic”, the other as “human”. Whenever the “demonic” side engages in an assault or heist, they also generate an amount of t.weird equal to their tier, which can only be used for LTPs.
The pact also leaves the subjects largely immune to the consequences of their risky actions: whenever they turn back to the "human" side from the "demonic" side, they heal all injuries.

Faction ability: Whe you gaze into the Abyss
Whenever Eversion is investigated, they are informed of who investigated them and may immediately investigate the investigator for free.

Faction traits:
Reckless: the creatures possessing Eversion personnel undergoing alternate states of consciousness know no breaks or boundaries. Not only are they fantastically bloodthirty, they also have no respect for the bodies they temporarily inhabit and will take enormous risks.

Consequentialist: Eversion believes they are working for a good cause, that no matter the prize they pay, the knowledge gained will make it worthwhile in the end.

Inconsistent: It is difficult to have anything like a consistent policy if at any moment, half the project leadership might be ripped out of their bodies enter alternate states of consciousness and be replaced by demons trying to kill each other for fun. distracted.

STR 1
The Eversion Project was always small and secretive, but after losing most of their personel in the accident that destroyed their former compound and the internal downsizing that followed, there are only a few handfuls of field agents left. They are terrifying in combat, with a bewildering array of minor powers, but they can not hope to hold and control territory by conventional means.

ESP 5
The agents who survived Eversion's conception in its current form were drawn together from a half-dozen alphabet agencies and the internal restructuring of the last year has weeded out any but the best of the best. And while they may not always be in total control of their actions, and considerably less subtle than they used to be, all their skills and knowledge of tradecraft are still in there, no matter who is in the driver's seat.

ECO 1
Once well-founded, Eversion lost most of their physical assets, including their labs and equipment in the accident that wiped out their compound a year ago. They are now off the grid, located in some dingy safehouse at the city limits. While this does have the advantage of no government surveillance, it also has the disadvantage of no government funding. Or any other kind of revenue stream.

WEIRD 8
The remaining Eversion scientists have their minds divided, making them ruthless, coldly logical and endlessly pragmatic. When they leave their bodies, their minds ascend to distant planes of pure logical and mathematical constructs, making incredible leaps of science possible.

SPEC 5
The project’s field agents are not only trained fighters, but as long as they are accompanying one of their superpowered leaders, they seem to exhibit matching minor powers themselves, as well as being utterly fearless. This makes them extraordinarily dangerous in direct clashes.

MORALE 4
Though they are originally a secret government research project, with all the secrecy that entails, according to reports, discipline has all but broken down inside their headquarters and fights and violent outbursts are a daily occurence. The simple fact of the matter is that when you can't be sure who is currently in the body you are facing, it is very difficult to trust anyone.

VIPs:
Seth Levy/”Astaroth”: Weird 2/Specialist 2
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Even before he took over the project after the vanishing of its former project lead, Dr. Levy was hailed as one of the finest scientists of his generation, though his reclusiveness and the esoteric nature of his work - his PhD thesis was titled “A model of reciprocal supergravity in hyperbolic Polchinski-Witten spacetime”, and it only got more impenetrable from there - have largely kept him out of the public eye.

When Eversion's organisational structure quite literally imploded, then deputy project lead Levy and his new female-presenting alternate consciousness "Astaroth" quickly seized power. They took charge of the survivors not by any kind of charisma, but by sheer force of their newfound powers and the fact that they were the only one with a plan. Instead of waiting for cleanup and the likely shutdown of the project for good, they fled the city for the suburbs, where, together with Hartley, they could quickly establish total control over the survivors and -after some culling - implement a new project structure to ensure their work could be continued.

Levy is assumed to now score between a 3.4 and a 3.9 on the Demir-Spada Altered Mind scale, while his alter ego/possible possessing entity Astaroth shows several distinct powers organized around the principle of "shadows": short-distance teleportation through, manifestation of physical objects (witness evidence confirms claws, sharp points and grasping arms) out of shadows, enhanced speed and toughness and possibly minor illusions.


Nathan Hartley/”Furcas”: Espionage 1/Specialist 1

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Agent Hartley had been pulled off field duty at his agency five years ago, “promoted” to chief of security at the Eversion Project after being heavily injured on a foreign assignment. He has hated the job from the beginning, and made everyone at the project well aware of it. His alternate cognitive state goes by Furcas, or “the Knight”. As far as anyone can tell, he is exactly the same, except for always carrying several long knives.

[Let'sGetKraken]

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Faction Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UphXer3BHY)

"We trust that time is linear. That it proceeds eternally, uniformly. Into infinity. But the distinction between past, present and future is nothing but an illusion. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are not consecutive, they are connected in a never-ending circle. Everything is connected." - the Stranger, Dark


One man, given the power to intervene in the past by the Pulse and armed with months of dedicated research on the events of the 21st century & as much military-grade 29th century tech as he could carry. Chronarch is on his own, up against an enemy more insidious than a hundred Boltings – time itself. He knows where he needs to intervene to save the future – 2023, 780 years before his birth. But as his presence changes the future with every action and the timelines rapidly diverge, will his meddling save the future – or make it even worse?

Faction Ability: Correct the Timestream. Stats lost to conquest or assault are put into an untouchable pool for one turn. A successful assault the following turn against the faction responsible for the loss returns them to the Chronal Imperative.

VIP:

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Chronarch (Spec/Esp 3): Chronarch’s – real name Tryler Skyirnaed – only power is the ability to travel through time – but there is a catch. He can only travel from his present (2823), or return to the present from the past. As such, he has no superpowers to draw on in this time. This, to most, would seem like an almost insurmountable disadvantage. However, Chronarch has two distinct advantages. First, he spent months in the future researching the events of the 21st century – and while the course of history will rapidly change based on his intervention, he has partial forewarning of events and individual actors in the coming conflict. Secondly, he is absolutely loaded with 29th-century tech, up to an including military hardware. Executor drones, plasma cannons, emp grenades, chameleon cloaks, retrograde blasters, dreadbore lances – if it’s impossible to imagine, he has it. Armed with ARTEMIS, his pocket artificial intelligence, he is determined to make the future better by any means possible.

Vip Ability: I Can Change It: Chronarch counts as twice his tier for the purposes of local and world heists. On turns without a World Heist, Chronarch is given access to a local heist from one of the factions that possess higher than the median VP. The affected faction is forewarned that this ability has targeted them, but does not specify which local heist.

Stats

Note: Since he is only a single man, stat damage to the Chronal Imperative will likely be represented as damage to Chronarch’s tech, fluff-wise. If he is killed, it will be autonomous AI carrying out his mission less effectively than under his direction.

Strength 5: While Chronarch has access to an enormous amount of firepower, he’s only one man. Fortunately, he’s one man with a medium-range teleporter. You don’t need a ton of boots on the ground when you can defend a territory with ten seconds’ notice – but he’s also guaranteed to be outnumbered in almost every conflict.

Esp 3: Chronarch has access to every record, archive, and signed police confession that he could get his hands on. While he doesn’t have access to perfect information – how much do we have in the way of records from 200 years ago, let alone 800 – he has a certain amount of forewarning about the actions of other factions and Supers by virtue of his research.

Econ 1: Turns out not having a birth certificate makes it hard to open a bank account. Who would have guessed? Any money that Chronarch obtains goes towards maintaining his gear – a challenging and expensive endeavor.

Weird 1: While Chronarch has access to an extraordinary amount of future tech that most would be salivating to get their hands on, there is a massive difference between having technology and being able to build that technology. He has an advantage due to 800 years of general accumulated science knowledge, but he’s no engineer. He’s barely a mechanic.

Specialist 8: Chronarch almost literally has the tool for every job. His array of future tech and weaponry is extensive, especially since it was specifically chosen to combat some of the more notable Empowered operating in 2023. He is a one-man arsenal, and while he can only be in one place at a time, he makes for a terrifyingly competent opponent.

Morale 6: Even with his high-tech defenses, Chronarch is only one man. While he has no minions to bribe and few loyal to him, he can certainly still be outnumbered or outplanned.

Traits:

Informed: Chronarch knows where he needs to be each turn to intervene to help improve the future. If it doesn’t threaten his health and mission overall, he prefers to intervene based on this knowledge, either from the future or gathered in the present.

Decisive: When Chronarch takes actions, he commits to them – no half-measures. Once he’s settled into the present, Chronarch will typically commit to a single large action each turn without worrying about the consequences.

On A Mission: Chronarch will not let petty grudges get in the way of things. While he will pursue threats to his existence or his mission, he is willing to let bygones be bygones over smaller slights.

[3SecondCultist]

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The Assembly of Free Radical-Liberal Futurists
aka 'The Freedom Assembly' (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1phS3K1LmoM0Knn8lOu_aGPxm_aMPb8jbrzMg7duh9co/edit?usp=sharing)

"'I clearly remember the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure.

Many of them said, 'Thank God that son of a bitch is dead.'"
- John Steinbeck, East of Eden


Reputation Traits

Aggressive - The Freedom Assembly in its current form is made up of people who believe that to be free from corporate oligarchy, one must take drastic action. Advancing social and economic justice isn’t something that can be discussed in classrooms or park benches. The lesson of the Pulse is simple: justice cannot be awaited; it has to be taken, by force if necessary.

Builders - Anyone who knows the history of the Assembly can trace its origins to Zephyr City University's applied STEM campus and its cohort of brilliant scientists who have inspired hundreds to join the cause. Inventors, artists, and creators of all types thrive among the ranks of the Freedom Assembly, whether or not they’re Empowered.

Rebellious - In many ways, the Freedom Assembly defines itself in its opposition to the powers that be within Zephyr City. The members of the mainstream media, the police forces, and most organized officials in the city limits are on a list of tyrants to be overthrown in favour of the people. The Assembly will not rest until it has achieved this goal.


"Nature created neither servant nor master;
I seek neither to rule nor to serve.
And its hands would weave the entrails of the priest,
For the lack of a cord with which to strangle kings."
- Denis Diderot


Rise of the Freedom Assembly

The Freedom Assembly comes not from some Super-PAC or traditional political interest; its humble beginnings can be found in a group of friends in university housing. Devon Jones, Sam Eastmore, and Maria Fuentes were all among a cohort of twenty-six like minded students at Zephyr City University. Despite its affiliation with the sciences, the city's ivy league STEM school also had a well-established reputation for student politics, which extended to a number of unions and alliances defending and advocating for the rights of young people. But for some, that was not enough - the university's administration was always beholden to wealthy donors, to grant boards, to the science-industrial pipeline. No change they enacted really seemed to matter. What was the point of all of their cutting-edge inventions in school if they weren't being built in a just and equitable world?

And so, in the dorm rooms of a class of graduate students, the Free Zephyr City movement was conceived. Taking their activism to the streets in public demonstrations, the movement was designed as an organization to hold the elected government of Zephyr City accountable for its many concessions to supervillains over the common people. Although the original cohort began just shy of thirty, they found traction in many demographics, particularly young people under the age of 25 whose social and financial futures were becoming increasingly jeopardized by a corrupt bureaucracy.

Nonviolent protests were non-negotiable for the original architects of Free Zephyr City; they believed that if they did not escalate their tactics to riots, the ZPD and its affiliates would refrain from doing the same. For a while, this prediction held true: each day, crowds would gather in public parks and cafes, holding meetings and discussions over the various failings of the social offices and the so-called heroes of Zephyr City. There were as many proposals in the movement as there were members, but one of the most common was removing administrative bloat and replacing it with a single panel of civilian oversight, comprised of a true cross-section of races and socio-economic backgrounds. This idea was met with enthusiasm from the majority of the movement and quickly became one of their most trotted-out slogans. They were becoming a force to be reckoned with.

But everything changed on the night of the Pulse. Free Zephyr City was out in force at City Hall, pitching a 'sunset rally' to peacefully disrupt commuter transit from the metropolis' administrative center at the end of the work-day. Their demand: for the mayor’s office to cut all financial ties between municipal government and Empowered villains. All twenty-six of the original cohort were in the front ranks of the masses, Devon leading the cry in their unmistakable favourite purple hoodie. The ZPD had set up a cordon to hold them in, but after an hour the resistance began to wane. When the police officers began to retreat indoors, many of the protestors believed that their victory was imminent.

Then Bolting arrived. The city's de facto ruling villain had of course heard of Free Zephyr City, but this sunset rally was the first instance of the organization becoming a genuine threat. In a great and terrible display of her power - one of her last, if the news is to be believed - she unleashed wave after wave of lightning into the ranks of the assembled activists. Most died instantly, flesh and clothes alchemized together into piles of charred matter. Those on the edge of the conflagration fled, all thought of resistance gone. Of the original cohort of twenty-six, only three managed to survive… and none of them were the same.

Devon, Sam, and Maria were among those rushed to the city hospital. Each of them had sustained heavy electrical burns, their bodies scarred for the rest of their lives, and each of them was in various states of critical condition. They had also lost loved ones, friends, and they were driven to the hospital cuffed to their gurneys as ringleaders of a disruptive riot, dangerous terrorists who had supposedly blown up a power grid to cripple downtown (though of course none of them knew it at the time, being unconscious).

When the Pulse occurred that night, it found the three future leaders in different scenarios. Maria - about to die on the table - was being defibrillated by AED. Sam, who was the least badly burned, had been sent to the overflow ward next to the cloning transplant center. And Devon was hooked up to an experimental 3-D printing skingraft machine. The Pulse tore through the hospital, and a new generation of Empowered were born. Devon was the first to wake up, gathering their people and escaping the facility wearing the same charred sweatshirt that had been fused to their skin when Bolting attacked.

Word of the Sunset Rally spread like wildfire. Local news covered the rally itself, but just as popular was the footage of the Free Zephyr City leaders being caught on camera fleeing a nearby hospital, heavily burned and wearing blackened clothes. The images were shared online and were plastered all over social media, leading to countless questions and theories. An arrest warrant for Jones, Fuentes, and Eastmore was posted less than 48 hours later, along with an official warning that the trio was considered to be dangerous and for no civilian to approach them without an Empowered or law enforcement officers present.

This, predictably, only made them even more popular. When all three reappeared in a video appearance to make an announcement, the livestream hit over a hundred thousand views within an hour. Each of them had donned a copy of the purple hoodie, faces hidden behind stylized gas-masks. Their voices were modulated, and they now wore body armor. Free Zephyr City, they announced, was dead, all hope of peaceful protest buried. But Bolting had failed to kill them, and she had been arrested. The rest of Zephyr City - the cops that had retreated to let the villain cut them down, the lawyers who had spun it against the victims, and the city that had stood by and watched it happen - would not get off so easy. It would need to account for its sins.

Arsenal, Dyad, and Surge, they called themselves, the first members of the Freedom Assembly. They were looking for volunteers. Their mission: to save Zephyr City from itself.

"We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough."
- Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower


Primary Stats

Strength 8 - The present-day Assembly is, first and foremost, an army. The weeks since the Pulse have been dedicated to training up the remaining partisans who survived the Sunset Rally and heavily recruiting among the young and the lower classes of the city. Nothing galvanizes sympathy faster than a martyr, and an entire host of them - killed in a high publicity event by Zephyr City’s most notorious villain - draws a lot of attention. The ranks of the Assembly have swelled with volunteers, and their drive to free the city from greed and hypocrisy is stronger than ever. Sometimes, all it takes to change the world is to be the crowd shouting the loudest.

Espionage 2 - A crucial aspect of the late Free Zephyr City movement was its operational transparency, one which the Freedom Assembly has largely inherited. For a grassroots community movement that prioritized peaceful intervention and wanted to stay above board, this transparency was a core strength. For a nascent army now embroiled in the world of Empowered crime, it is distinctly the opposite. While the trio has invested in some agents provocateur, their specialities remain force of arms as well as their technological advantage.

Economy 1 - Neither the Free Zephyr City or Freedom Assembly have much in the way of liquid capital or any asset holdings of note. This can hardly be considered a surprise, given that the average wealth of both groups is hovering somewhere near the poverty line. This is a selling point for recruitment - the Assembly is made up of the 'have nots', not the 'haves', and is looking for radical wealth redistribution to lower income inequality - but it unfortunately does not help with campaign logistics or strategy. They make do, for now.

Morale 6 - The second currency of the Assembly movement is their staunch, unwavering willingness to tear the old world down in service to their new one. The video announcement that restarted the fight after the Sunset Rally was the spark, and volunteers of all types have flocked to the banner of the people. There is no shortage of willingness to sacrifice, from people old and young who have been downtrodden, hurt by the powers that be and believe that now - with the new Empowered on the rise - is the time to get some true street justice. They will not stop until they get what they’ve been promised, and they’ve been promised a reckoning.

Weird 6 - Science and technology has been in the DNA of the Assembly from its inception. Three Empowered, all of whom work with or interact with machines, spearhead its forces on the ground and come up with strategy. They are not, however, its only creative resources. A host of chemists, engineers, doctors, and artists of all kinds have rallied around Arsenal, Dyad, and Surge, complementing their designs with inventions of their own. Every week, there are rumours of some new creation whose specs are uploaded online - when information is truly democratized, a good deal becomes possible which before was only theoretical.

Specialists 1 - As one might imagine, a group of radical liberals with a distinct focus on fighting gang wars against law enforcement and enacting all manner of overtly illicit crime - led by a trio who were considered for a time to be actual terrorists, though this is of course malicious propaganda - does not lend itself to a subtle reputation. Furthermore, the Assembly has little use for thieves in the dark or mission specialists. They are fighting wars to liberate the people at large, not looking to make a quick score and get themselves richer. If wealth and prestige were what they wanted, the Empowered of the Assembly would be in the wrong racket.


https://i.ibb.co/FWQVb8F/VIPs.png

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
- Alan Moore, V for Vendetta


VIPs

Arsenal (Str 1 / Wrd 1) - Devon Jones is the oldest of the trio of superpowered 'leaders' of the Assembly. In their life before Free Zephyr City, Jones was on scholarship at ZCU getting a master's in mechanical engineering in the prestigious hypergeometric program, though they also held a degree in political philosophy. A consummate scholar, they were top of their class but always kept their cool, preferring to work with others than be cast out as just another poorly-adjusted genius. They were a frequent collaborator in activist programs and student unions throughout Zephyr City, where they were a vocal advocate for consensus-based democratic solutions.

As Arsenal, they are the senior member of a trio of Empowered officers in the army of the Freedom Assembly. They wear a face-fitting set of lenses and mask under a scorched purple hoodie and body armor to cover their features - the original sweater from the Sunset Rally, which has now spawned hundreds of imitations. Their power is a key cornerstone of the Assembly's ability to strike back at a city that has hurt them: they can create any animate object, pulling its matter from a random interstitial dimension. The limitation of this power is a closely held secret: they can only create each object once. So far, Arsenal has used this power to create heavy artillery and other weapons for the Assembly.


Dyad (Str 1 / Wrd 1) - Sam Eastmore was born on 'the wrong side of the tracks', and learned from a young age that just because something isn't fair doesn’t mean it won't kick the crap out of you if you look at it wrong. The most pugnacious and aggressive of the three, his brother and girlfriend were killed by Bolting at the Sunset Rally. He wants more than anything to lash out at Zephyr City. Both Devon and Maria are catching onto the fact that Sam cares more about burning the existing systems of power to the ground than replacing them with anything of substance - but his power is too useful to discard.

Dyad is capable of cloning inanimate objects that he can see, though the larger and more complex the object, the more physically taxing it is on him. He has been able to duplicate 'conjured' objects that Arsenal has made, turning a one-off trick into something far more potent. It is believed that Dyad needs to fully understand an object before even attempting to clone it, or else the resulting copy will end up with potentially deadly defects. Furthermore, these copies never last more than a day or two before degrading into a lightly corrosive grey proto-ooze. The Assembly has made use of this side-effect to arm operatives with weapons capable of self-disposal in the event of capture by authorities.


Surge (Str 1 / Wrd 1) - Maria Fuentes was born to immigrant parents, and was fortunate that they saved money to get her enrolled at ZCU. She was a brilliant biochemist and just as committed to the fight for racial and economic equality, which drove her right into the Free Zephyr City movement with her closest companions. Her graduate project was using the Human Genome Project to try and map people who were more likely to become Empowered. It is a work that she continues now, even though she - like the rest of her surviving friends - is no longer technically a student of anything at ZCU.

Surge wears the same uniform as every other Freedom Assembly member: a charred purple hoodie with a gas-mask, a voice-modulator, and body armor. However, she can be identified on the field by the bursts of electric energy she produces. As Surge, she has the power to act as a living battery, either investing or draining power into anything with an electric charge with prolonged touch. She can also discharge any leftover energy in the form of dangerous bolts, though she prefers to overclock incendiary devices to do the damage for her.


VIP Ability - We Can Rebuild Them

Historically, technology leaps forward in discrete stages, advances giving way to new discoveries in a linear fashion. For the minds behind the Assembly, that timetable isn't fast enough. Humankind needs emancipation now, not tomorrow, and the triumvirate of criminal inventors is looking to push the envelope of what is possible. And they'll need all the help they can get. That comes in the form of cybernetics labs, artificial limbs, and all of the cutting edge strange-science of the Assembly needs to keep its de facto leaders alive in the increasingly dangerous landscape that is Zephyr City.

Each time the Freedom Assembly successfully conquers a territory, it effectively stores Tiers of VIP injury recovery to keep in reserve in the form of advanced cybernetics and specially prepared solutions to protect their admittedly mortal, frail human bodies. Each neutral territory conquest provides 1/2 a Tier of automatic recovery, while each player-held territory conquest provides 1 Tier. The Tiers stack, and are effectively banked over multiple turns. Whenever a Freedom Assembly VIP suffers an injury without being killed outright, these Tiers are used up to recover them to full fighting strength at the start of the next turn.


"Everything is theoretically impossible until it is done."
- Robert A. Heinlein


Faction Ability - Field Testing

Discovery requires experimentation, and what better way for a growing civilian army to test out its new toys than in the field? The brave young people of the Assembly put their lives on the line to find out new ways to break the shackles that tie down Zephyr City. And every single time they do, Arsenal, Dyad, and Surge take careful notes; innovating, iterating, designing, and improving their devices to work better the next time around. They are still scientists, after all.

Each successful neutral territory conquest immediately gives the Assembly 3 temporary Weird, which can only be used for Long-Term Projects or to increase the Weird stat. Furthermore, each attempted conquest of another player's territory adds 1/3 of the stats invested into the invasion (rounded down) in temporary Weird at the start of the next turn.

[GameOfChampions]

The Bloodborn


https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1065715470054993960/1094796944079077497/GameOfChampions_red_mist_covering_a_city_in_downto wn_from_above_92489c33-42ac-421a-82f6-4cf072e0edfa.png?width=612&height=612

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed with from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” - Thomas Jefferson

History:

The Bloodborn are led by their paradoxical leader Miasma who started the Bloodborn on one dark night the year before when Bolting’s Crew had been fighting against Vanguard in the neighborhoods that make up their home. Bolting had robbed the other cape but his escape had not been clean, when Vanguard caught up a brutal fight broke out among the capes and their crews. The surrounding neighborhoods got caught up in the fight and while many called the ZPD for aid the police only set up containment and waited it out. Houses were destroyed and lives snuffed out.

At the time Miasma was just Ryan, a young adult desperately marshaling his friends and neighbors to rescue the trapped and injured. The fight ended and an hour after it started the first responders started to respond to the incident. For many though it was too late.

Ryan led his community in a protest against the cities handling of the capes in the city, protesting first responder policy and lacking city programs to aid in rebuilding and recovery. Despite hundreds turning out the city just ignored them, placing them all in the box of unhappy lower class always protesting about one thing or another. With many the movement stopped there, doing protests and reaching out to council members and state officials to try and enact change.

With some though that was not enough.

Shortly after the failed protest and lack of assistance a series of raids and robberies started to erupt all over the city, targeting either cape groups, pro cape groups, or city associated groups. A police precinct evidence room emptied, a city bank robbed of tens of thousands, a vigilante group robbed after taking down a tough group of criminals, a villain safehouse collapsed on a dozen henchmen.

Ryan and many of the younger angrier members of his community joined him in these actions, keeping some of the proceeds but giving most back to their community. The next year when a pulse came through the city and Ryan, along with one of the other members, gained powers they finally emerged onto the scene and took a name based on their leader.

Traits:

“Blood alone moves the wheels of history” - Martin Luther

Defiant: The Bloodborn fight against the mighty in Zephyr city, they did not bend to the mighty capes and city government attempting to hush them up. The Bloodborn will stand up to any demands or ultimatums.

Warrior: Fighters to the last Bloodborn members are all trained and ready to throw down at any moment. They spar and practice every day so that they can fight for their cause.

Rebel: The Bloodborn are always fighting the ‘man’. Screwed over by the city, the powerful cape groups, and left alone they realized the city is flawed and they fight to take it and mold into what it should be.

VIPs:

“We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language” - Joyce Carol Oates

Miasma/Ryan Verglace(Str 2 VIP): The young man empowered by the pulse was given a suite of abilities that work as one together. Miasma can create a fog made of blood that can cover a block in an instant and slowly grow to cover an entire football stadium or further if given time. Within the fog any who bleed never stop and feed the growth of the fog, Miasma can sense the location of those bleeding in his fog, Miasma gains regeneration that grows greater the more bleeding in his fog, and finally damage that Miasma deals is more impactful.

https://scontent-lga3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/340411662_905461904045124_3620512719138189974_n.pn g?_nc_cat=100&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_ohc=ymqoX_q782kAX__PEA9&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-2.xx&oh=03_AdR5eMNN3Iq2bjbPdunyOG90cldBBfN3oFY2aOOkwWJa 7g&oe=645A4651

Aspect/Jade Xiao Ling(Spec 1 VIP): The young women who grew up beside Miasma and joined the Bloodborn from the start gained an adaptable power that changes and grows. When she deals with those other powered around her for long periods of time she gains powers depending on the type of relationship. If the relationship is positive and beneficial then the power complements the other capes power, if the relationship is antagonistic then the power works well against the cape. As of now her one power is to copy minor versions of single pieces of Miasma’s power suite and grant them to unpowered or herself.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1085693323026649108/1094818913616932874/GameOfChampions_young_asian_women_superhero_fighti ng_crime_with_3a4a972b-fa7d-4e95-8fb7-aed018797f8f.png?width=350&height=437

Abilities:

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and, sweat” - Winston Churchill

VIP Ability (Ballroom Blitz): When a single chosen Bloodborn VIP that turn take a Risk action they draw in other VIPs from other factions taking Risk actions within 2 territory range for a brawl before the actions take place

Faction Ability (Fight the Power): Members of Bloodborn territories are inspired by the actions of the gang and when they pull off a successful Conquest/Assault action the locals clear a level of a local heist the Bloodborn has. They cannot complete third floors of local heists. If there is no local heist with first or second floors to clear then the locals generate one.

Stats:

“Blood will have Blood” - William Shakespere

Strength 8: Among the Bloodborn the ability to fight and fight well is highly prized. If you want to join you need to prove you can duke it out with the experienced members and, if not win, at least put up a good fight. The members are all experienced fighters who have gone on raids, robberies, or violent protests with their leader and even practice fighting alongside their cape commanders.

Espionage 1: The Bloodborn are insular and don’t trust many outsiders which in turn makes it difficult to gather information throughout the city. The Bloodborn prioritize strength over subtlety and that makes it difficult to infiltrate many other groups, the many large red themed tattoos don’t help either.

Economy 4: Though the Bloodborn pull many raids and robberies all over the city they do give their communities some of the resources to help recover and aid the struggling. Their income comes from a series of small donations from supportive community members and groups and from frequent raids on massive corrupt government organizations or cape/criminal groups. Since they started a proper group they made the split more evenly and keep more resources to fund their members with proper gear and resources.

Weird 1: There are not many in the crew that have special abilities or technological ability beyond the norm. The crew places more emphasis on physical ability and training. There are a few members that have developed minor strange blood based abilities from repeated exposure to Miasmas powers.

Specialist 5: A byproduct of their continued missions and training the Bloodborn have many who are experienced with capes in both working with or against. Their constant raids and missions against cape groups have seen many fight against capes while many also tend to train against the two Bloodborn capes to gain even more experience in working with the strange capes leading them.

Morale 5: The crew has a good rapport with both their leaders and their community. They are driven by a shared goal they all hold dear to themselves, tearing down the mighty who care only for themselves. As such the crew is fairly able to withstand infiltration and attacks on their holdings.

[St. Justicar]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/478404791278764032/1097768222947807312/ORCHESTRA.png (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A_dAfkEdH8iGlRBcCCfaaNUJCMYVp6_dxxaaUi94sYU/edit)

[n0ble]

Happy Cairns Funeral Home & Hospice Services, The Zephyr City Graveyard, Mourn's People


“I remember damage. Then escape.”
- Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Background: Founded roughly following the first Pulse to hit Zephyr City, Happy Cairns did not so much purge the Zephyr City graveyard of evil as it did redeem it. Since its inception under new leadership-the stalwart presence of the heroine known only as Mourn-the Happy Cairns Funerary Home & Hospice Services has risen to become a stalwart backbone of damage control, clean up and prevention in Zephyr City at-large. This is helped in no small part by the utterly unjudgmental attitude offered towards heroes and villains, with Mourn offering use of her power to both to go along with use ZC’s graveyard space (to say nothing of the ad hoc hospital also run for civilians in the graveyard). What’s emerged is a resilient service which is doing its best to hold the city together while, if it can rally enough, stem the tide of destruction and death to follow with the Pulses.

Characteristics

"You gotta be one of the good guys son. 'Cause theres way too many of the bad."
- Garth Ennis, Preacher #9
Heroic: In an age of atomic super laser and reactors powered by whatever belief is in vogue at the moment, the people of Happy Cairns have decided to use whatever power has been granted to them in service of others. To give people the death they want and all the comfort that entails. To heal the beaten and the broken. This is the true mark of a hero. Not gods with magic hammers or red white and blue soldiers espousing cliches about a nation no longer representative of them. Just the little people, sacrificing in all their small, ugly, unpretty ways for one another.


"I spent my life saving information, knowledge and experience. And I'm going to save Ambrose. Its what I do."
-Warren Ellis, Planetary #24
Defenders: Unlike their early day heroics which largely argued for a defence of status-quo, Happy Cairn's stance on defending people first has largely kept pace with times effect on public sentiment toward heroes. Whats emerged is an institution that puts people and their wellbeing first-the concept of "personhood" being fairly loose here in terms of who is prescribed aid, with HC and Mourn more often than not falling on the side of giving people the benefit of the doubt. Regardless, whether it be disenfranchised parahumans or youths on the verge of being chewed up by the City's various institutions, the Graveyard crew stands for everyone.


"All men are not created equal. This was the reality I learned about society at the age of four. And that was my first and last setback."
- Kōhei Horikoshi, My Hero Academia Vol. 1
Charitable: While often mistaken for defence, the charity inherent to working with and within Happy Cairns has gone a long, long way to ensuring the institution persists. As one of the core tenets/beliefs, Mourn's people can always be expected to put the needs of others before their own, often to the detriment of Happy Cairns itself. The thing is, its working. Or working about as well as a relationship founded on a skewed concept of reciprocation could operate in a world of capes and tights.

Faction Special Rule: The Spirit of Cooperation
Fiction:
Mechanics: When Happy Cairns contributes relevant stats to an LTP, one they control or not, other factions may contribute a maximum of their own relevant stats to the same LTP equal to Happy Cairn's highest Level VIP (3, currently). Those factions that do gain a bonus to their Morale equal to the amount of stats they contributed.
Theme: Hang on to Each Other (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwmPZvHkdv0&ab_channel=SilverMtZion-Topic) by Silver Mt. Zion


“Then she told me everyone can know everything Destiny knows. And more than that. She said we all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.”
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives
Espionage 2: People who work for work for Happy Cairns know where the bodies are buried. This is not a figurative statement. Any Happy Cairns employee knows where any numbers of bodies are buried in the cemetery and who they are at any given time. While functionally useless as a source of information on the surface level, things actually run a bit deeper than it might appear at first glance. For example, knowing which graves are filled allows the Hospice servicepersons to cross-check their records of burial plots against the who are currently “alive” in the city-superhuman or otherwise. Or to see if any pesky villains have faked their deaths to escape custody.

Some of the friendly-ish spirits have, for whatever purpose, aligned themselves with Happy Cairns. Each could be considered a minor power were it not for the fact that they are well and truly intangible, to the point that only the strongest wiled can concentrate to manifest enough corporeality for light to reflect from them. Being personifications of the dead’s grief like they are, these are the ghosts that have out and out refused Mourn’s services (and, given how tenacious they’ve been in maintaining said grief, are fundamentally unlikely to yield to said services anytime soon). Nevertheless, the uneasy treaty that exists between Happy Cairns and these more affable specters provides some respite for the would be threats: the more affable among extant ghost-kind get sanctuary from the city at large, and pass on info from “accidentally straying abroad” upon return from adventuring into the city.

Finally, while they are by and large a selfless lot, the employees of Happy Cairns (from the humble gravedigger to the highest regarded palliative surgeon) have a tendency to gossip. While its all kept in-house and never done in front of outsiders, the fact remains and it remains an ulgy one that Mourn would probably expunge if she were ever party to it. The sole upshot to this is that all the internal chatter has made for relative ease of dissemination amongst the organization as a whole, and is more or less the result of underfunded stressed out caregivers stretched too thin in their duties than it is actual maliciousness.


“ Man or machine, each agent knows his mission. Stem the loss of life.”
- Mark Waid & Alex Ross, Kingdom Come #4
Specialists 3: The experts amongst the Happy Cairns staff are some of the best disaster relief in Zephyr City. Each person at Happy Cairns has a rudimentary amount of training in life saving (basic CPR), with options and packages to side-grade or upgrade in more esoteric, more parahuman adjacent life saving competencies. For example, several low grade villain operations have been foiled through the virtues of applied conflict mediation since Happy Cairn’s inception, or at least a decent amount of time stalled until the Hospice Services more active conflict elements can arrive.

Unsurprisingly, Happy Cairns contains a number of ex-relief and disaster workers, from all walks of life. The current head of this department is a former parahuman: John "Faults" Falkner once had the power to see the weakness in any system. While by no means a big time villain, Fault could have been had his power not completely interfered with the function of basic living. Being able to see the weaknesses and flaws in everything will have that effect. Whatever actually happened in the ensuing conflict with Happy Cairns-rumours persist to this day that Mourn removed the man from his powers-Faults emerged depowered and director of the crisis responders and poster boy for Happy Cairns capacity to redeem the "villainous" in Zephyr City.

In keeping with this penchant for recruiting them, a number of former parahumans (all having one way or another been depowered) have found their way to Happy Cairns. While they've all an inconsistent and varying level of experience, each of them does bring at least a baseline amount of applicable knowledge on parahumanity, be it knowing the experience of the pulse or empathy for ex-superhumans with power-induced traumas that make it particularly difficult to adjust to life in modern society.


“The mechanistic clockwork of reality hinging on a precious impossible defiance of entropy, on life. And the clockwork doesn't care. It's like - Like it's all just us, in here together. We're all we've got.”
- Grant Morrison, All-Star Superman #12
Weird 5:


“You get what anyone gets-a lifetime.”
- Neil Gaiman, The Sandman Vol l: Preludes & Nocturnes
Cash 2: Recently slashed bugdet and stretched thin resources being damaging as they are, Mourn's People still retain a twin set of economic bulwarks against complete and utter destitution (in the institutional sense). The first of these is what remains of Happy Cairns budget for services, having been able to weather the worst of the budget slashes owing to its fundamental necessity to Zephyr City. This budget supplys basic, free education on topics such as parahumans, fiscal responsibility and basic first aid, to say nothing of the small amount of funding it allocates to community recreational & engagement projects. While they might not be specialists in these topics in and of themselves, the accountants at Happy Cairns are at least competent enough to ensure that the proper amount of funding is allocated to these services proportional to their need while ensuring that enough is retained by Happy Cairns as to prevent a declaration of bankruptcy-a dangerous edge on which Happy Cairns is currently balanced.

The second source of revenue for Happy Cairns is goodwill-specifically expressed is the form of donations. Somewhere in the esoteric spaces of the 'Yard-nobody is too sure where, but you can find it if you look for it-there lies a garden that Mourn's People use to grow and give out food. Largely confined to foodbank donations as a means of export, the food has a surprisingly long shelf life compared to its "normal" counterparts. The fact that it and many other acts of charity are given completely freely by Happy Cairns has gone a long way towards people recognizing the genuine nature of these acts, something which is reflected by the un-petitioned for, nickel & dime donations that are heaped upon Happy Cairns by ZC citizenry.


“In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian, nothing ever ends.”
Alan Moore, Watchmen #12
Muscle 4: It is an ignorant person who goes to conflict unarmed to properly address it. And it is an idiot who thinks that words alone are enough to carry the day. There are points where pacifism and words fail. Where bones break and sinew tears. Sometimes your mustache twirling supervillains need a good bonk on the head. Or a contusion imparted by touch.


“All will be well.”
- Geoff Johns, Green Lantern vl. 4 #36
Mor 8: Dont worry. You've got this.



“Is home.”
- Grant Morrison, WE3 #3
The Zephyr City Graveyard:



https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=261cbe78e9&attid=0.1&permmsgid=msg-f:1762698321579548614&th=18765cc8c7ed1fc6&view=fimg&disp=thd&attbid=ANGjdJ9nAAQhTFTnSn9RFxW5e7kP9eQ2JU0niict295 bgFQ3QNtpeUfxj8jtl8Xj-hZnRTalhJb-28Glilgzy0gUsDVk3FegfRCaYXOLvPIhLBYfwI4u-PAzQPASf9s&ats=2524608000000&sz=w1443-h738
“We all come back!”
- Tom King, A Once Crowded Sky

Mourn (Lvl. 3 Mor. VIP): One of the first parahumans to come onto the scene in Zephyr City, Happy Cairns leader and sole living parahuman occupant of the ZCG has endured much like her institution: with fatalistically good humor. In keeping with the Service’s policy of accountability and openness, Mourn has told the same story about how she got Pulsed since people would ask it to listen: dying on her back of hypoxia, the woman received two powers. The first of these is the ability to take away or give any injury via touch, at the expense of physically manifesting that on Mourn’s figure. The second power synergizes with this: some of the most potent regeneration this side of Zephyr City, which counteracts the negative effects of Morns first power until she manifests an injury to (temporarily impart) during moments of conflict. More often than not she’d much just rather talk or, if it really comes down to it, take away the offended party’s pain.

Despite her veterancy in the cape community, Mourn has never seen the need to explore past the limits of her main, touch based superpower. Hard limits that have been discovered so far include: the aforementioned need to manifest injuries on her body while having them withdrawn, doesn’t work on the dead and does not work on inanimate objects. Her regeneration has thus far found no limit to injuries it heals from, though she theorizes that full disintegrations (already notably slower than other wounds to heal from), getting gibbed to pink mist or something similar might actually kill her-and its true. The other limit, of course, is that outside of her spectacular regeneration & injury-finicking powers, mourn possess no more physical strength than a peak human being in excellent shape for their age. When there is an absolute need for combat Mourn uses an unorthodox fighting style that involves self injury: there's a famous newsreel from her early days where the parahuman purposefully broke her knees to dodge a blow from the Vivisector while utilizing parts of her own severed anatomy as an ad-hoc utility belt/arsenal.

Mourn typically garbs herself in a white cowl-bodysuit. This outfit does not self clean. Her appearance fluctuates as her regeneration manifest injuries. When not clothing herself in eschar against pyrokinetics or keloids to better resist blows, Mourn has the appearance of a white woman in her thirties. The general degree of injury Morn exhibits at any given time are inversely proportional to her level of optimism. Particular low points in Zephyr City's Parahuman History can be synchronized with her exhibiting a walking pile of broken bones, torn meat and ruptured viscera.

Rule:The Power of the Heart
Mechanics: Happy Cairns may spend up to their highest Lvl. VIP in morale as supportive stats when taking territories.
Theme: Sweet Dreams (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zh9cAGo-zs&ab_channel=KensukeUshio-Topic) by Kensuke Ushio

[bladescape]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/478404791278764032/1097768221488189502/Avante_Guarde.png

"We fight for the people, by the people. Too long have the Empowered done as they like to tread on the boots of mortals who are not so lucky as them.
Powers by chance have created too much imbalance, it's time to give some choice back to the people!"
- Aleksi Garde - Founder

https://i.imgur.com/fggY3Id.png
Focus: WEI/SPEC

Builders - Avante Guarde believes the city, and the people, deserve more and deserve better. They are invested in increasing the infrastructure to prevent the rampages of yesteryear from being repeated.

Defenders - "By the people, for the people." is not an idle phrase to drum up support. Avante Guarde is dedicated to the defense of people against threats from the superpowered.

Loyal - Aleksi Garde and Jaskir Garde have long held that trust begets trust. You put your trust in AG and they will do their best to give it back. You have to cross some very clear lines for them to rescind this understanding.

https://i.imgur.com/c087swv.png

Avante Guarde is a foundation that was created to try and build protections and defenses to allow people to have normal lives whilst the madness of the empowered raged above them. The two Garde brothers who first came up with this were not empowered themselves. In fact, until the last pulse, none of the members of the company were Empowered at all.

There was, in fact, some pride in the fact. However, with the last pulse, a few of the employees now show signs of power. Rather than reject these members, the two brothers (unfortunately neither were given powers as well.) instead decided to embrace it. Outside looking in had provided a struggle to do any real good.

But what if they were the ones with power? They could ensure that no further pulses could seriously hurt the populace in the same manner.

(Idealistic, reaching for somewhat unrealistic goals, they intend to reach for the stars to protect those they once walked side-by-side with.)

Faction Ability: Proactive Heroism
Avante Guarde does not wait for evil to come to them. They refuse to be passive and let people come to harm before action. Instead, they seek out plots that would harm the populace and attempt to cut them off before they bear fruit. Empowered actively outside their lands who are trying to stop villains find that both the locals are on their side and that their own people are putting in twice the effort.

(When invading a "villainous" local heist in another faction's territory, Empowered count as twice their normal power.)

https://i.imgur.com/ZGKuyZA.png

Str 3 - Avante Guarde recognises the need to claim and control where it has to, but its primary goal is about defending those in need, which makes its focus on this fairly low in the grand scheme of things

Esp 4 - Subtlety is for people trying to hide things. AG is trying its best to make sure people know what's going on. Most of their information network is dedicated to seeking out villains and getting info to stop their plans before they can hurt people.

Economy 1 - You'd be amazed to find out that charity-based work cannot be the most useful for a strong economic basis. Avant Guarde is not the most flush with cash, and unless they have a boost from their new Empowered, it likely will be a continuing issue as they spend every coin they get on doing the work they do.

Weird 5 - There's a certain invention that comes with desperation. And when Avante Guarde had no Empowered, they were desperate all right. It's been overshadowed by the people now on the posters for them, but their dedicated set of analysts in the background still plug away as best they can.

Specialist 7 - Avante Guarde's entire basis was stopping Empowered without having any of their own. Unsurprisingly, the entire basis of their organisation is still exactly that. They have more people capable of minimising the risk Empowered show than most other groups in the city, and they know how to train more. It doesn't entirely bridge the gap between normal and Empowered, but it certainly does a damn good job of keeping people safe.

Morale 4 - Facing Empowered as a normal person is a harrowing task. To be honest, Avante Guarde has had issues with it in the past. Having Empowered on their side for once definitely helps, but the cracks aren't entirely gone. But doing things for the people and having the power to do it now certainly helps.

https://i.imgur.com/xREI3Qs.png

VIP Bonus: The People's Heroes
As one of the few groups of Empowered with a history and habit of helping people, the common people are willing to do their part to help in return. Empowered actively in the field will find the common people willing to hide and shelter, or even provide emergency medical aid on occasion.

(Externally deployed heroes cannot be removed from the following turn's actions via injury.)


https://i.imgur.com/xt8EhNI.png

Remi had already been an agent in the "Empowered Diffusion Forces" before the Pulse. He'd been trained in the best ways to handle or at least reduce the impact of Empowered. He'd even been one of their best agents. This put him in a position where he could've easily struck out on his own, but sticking to his beliefs and his agreements with Avante Guarde he's stuck around and now leads the squad alongside his former commander. A generally quiet man, Remi is friendly enough but tends to not engage heavily socially beyond basic pleasantries. He has a far-off look in his eyes at the best of times and tends to care more about the next step than the current one.

His training in handling powers and undermining people based on the powers shown has grown even stronger with the addition of a trump card to his deck, the ability to swap between positions quickly based on playing cards that he has infused with his essence. It helps that the cards now also serve as a strong projectile, and he doesn't need to activate them immediately. This creates a very strong but limited scope ability, but one that handily helps his ability to deal with a lot of Empowered. Perhaps a little less skilled in handling defensive types, he never-the-less tries his hardest to do his job even when faced against hard odds. As he did before the Pulse.


https://i.imgur.com/q1KXdWZ.jpeg

Tachi was a weirdo, always. Someone who preferred to mess around with things and remixes the classes made people as angry as much as it made them impressed. It just so happened that Aleksi met her when she was still struggling to find her place and managed to convince her to join his cause, and ever since Tachi has been the backbone behind Avante Guarde's technical prowess and the trinkets that have helped them keep up even slightly with lesser groups. Obsessed with technical knowledge, she was happy to experiment on herself and now walks around with half a dozen more mods than most.

Despite her oddities, Tachi happily spends time with anyone who will give her a moment and is relatively more charming than one might imagine to anyone who could realistically claim a right to 'mad scientist' as a title. Though don't show off new tech around her, she will pull it apart unless you can keep her hands off it. This was only made worse by her new ability, 'Consumption' as she called it. Combining her love of food with her love of tech, Tachi can now eat tech to gain a greater understanding of it. A new facet that she has embraced with... perhaps too much gusto, as she now developed a face mask with teeth outlining her lips to give no one any doubt as to how much she enjoys her new power.


https://i.imgur.com/JUGxIZ4.jpeg

Irman is an investigator. He wasn't a member of Avante Guarde strictly before the Pulse. Instead, he was just a man who liked to discover the details of crimes, and when it came to AG's zone he liked forwarding things to them. They did good work, and he respected their chutzpah. But now he had powers, and now he had reason to help prop them up. That he wasn't the only Empowered on the team definitely helped him feel like he'd made the right choice, and following the Garde brothers made him feel like he had something to work towards. Irman preferred data to people and continues to do so, and the organisation has been happy to indulge this preference.

Irman still works and prefers to do investigations rather than anything cloak and dagger, and his ability to organise information extracted from bodies and machines is now more than just mortal. Still, his skills and knowledge being what they may be, he of course has picked up some ways to help hide things from sight. Though it's likely he'd riot if AG spent all his time this way.



One of the two brothers that founded Avante Guarde, Aleksi is a charismatic and garrulous man, happy in the presence of many and best when put in front of a crowd. Aleksi is an idealist, someone who sees the downtrodden and has to stand up and try and get in the way. This actually would've killed him a long time ago except that his brother was always there to help. Tall, blond, and handsome, he's very well looked up to in the public sphere.

And in AG he's considered a good friend of most people in the organisation. Part of the reason they've stuck around despite being so outmatched is the work that Aleksi puts in on the ground and his obvious belief in his ideals. He inspires those around him to keep going even when the outcome looks grim. Behind the confident and charismatic face, however, is a man who forges into the unknown barely knowing how he's going to get through it. Normally he'd have experienced far more failure before this, but Aleksi has always had his brother on hand, and therefore the man insists on pushing further into the depths to meet his ideals. He's often not entirely sure on the technical or procedural time, and has perhaps gotten a little lazy about the details on how he's going to achieve things.

Where his brother is the shining light of Avante Guarde, Jaskir is the quiet shadow. Preferring few people's company, and seeking out even fewer, Jaskir sits in the background and moves the organisation to fulfil his brother's will. Most would expect such a position to rouse some sort of envy or jealousy, but Jaskir likes it this way. He can foist every public facing appearance or thing that requires a bright smile to his brother, and get his fingers stuck into the how and when's. A very practical man, Jaskir is the cynic of the two, who believes the challenge in facing odds against expectation is more why he's here than his brother's idyllic world. But there's also some strong belief in helping his brother, even if he doesn't entirely believe what Aleksi desires is even possible.

Despite the Garde brothers being the founders is well known, few in AG can comfortably say they even know the reclusive administrator, and it is only Tachi of the newly empowered that even has dealt with him a lot. And will likely continue to deal with him. The others just know that whenever Aleksi points them at a target, there's a figure in the shadows who works out supply lines and acquisitions and arranges Aleksi to talk to people so it gets done.

No one needs to know anything more in Jaskir's mind.




The Freedom Assembly:
Avante Guarde was a huge fan of the old assembly. And had great respect for its leaders. Aleksi Garde had even met them briefly, and often they had made plans involving protecting a protest or doing their best to try and ensure that the members were safe. There was a set of agents at the final protest to try and ensure safety. They are now on the deceased with honour plaque, as no one in AG could hope to hold a candle to Bolting before she was apprehended.

Now? Now they are lashing out in anger, and Avante Guarde can't condone or assist in that. Not when citizens are in danger.

???? MORE TO COME SOON.

[neriractor]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1073360769556693023/1098063518542090300/Bone_Rattlers.png?width=960&height=144


Johnny Gunn and The Bone Rattlers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbCjOKZYvuA&list=OLAK5uy_nmrXVfwIBpkRGuejXhN6gSyVGUXXlb7pg&index=13)

The Gunn family had long been an established and well respected part of the city’s underground, working gambling, smuggling, racketeering and other such jobs that the city’s big lawbreakers can’t be bothered with, making a dishonest profit and giving back to the community.

The relative anonymity of such services served Jonathan Gun senior perfectly, for 50+ years he spread their influence to every nook and cranny of the city’s underground, hiring heroes and/or villains as the job required and allying with the others when one got too uppity.

Bolting was one such, but unlike many times she didn’t bite too much, the city was too small for her mouth instead and the Gunn’s business suffered loss after loss now that the top dog was passively hostile to them, culminating in the death of Jhonatan 8 years ago.

Natural causes (though who can say), and with the old man’s iron grip gone, everything else tethered on the balance, the family fractured into a thousand tiny street gangs and unaffiliated groups carving their own niche.

5 years ago Johnny Gunn, one of the surviving heir apparents and leader of a tiny gang around his mother’s maiden house finally caught a break, joining up with two similarly down on their luck groups to found the bone rattlers, making a name and carving up a piece of city through arduous shows of power (in the mundane sense).

In the last pulse Johnny Gunn caught a second break, Bolting was out of commission at last and many of the bone rattlers were empowered, allowing for 5 further years of progress in the span of a week, and letting his street level power struggles reach the city’s stage with a bang.



Stats

Strength (3): The Bone rattlers are real good shots, not scared to throw hands and scrappy to the core, with ranks swelled from absorbing rival gangs. All but the last of these traits tend to cause attrition on enemies and allies, and as the new face of the Gunn family by right of conquest the bone rattlers spent the last 8 years essentially fighting themselves.

Espionage (8): Some think it's just a rumor, some kiss the hand and others spit at the mention, but everybody knows the name Gunn, and Gunn knows everyone worth knowing too. And everyone they know as well.

Economy (1): Wars are costly and terrible for business, when the guy giving your orders killed your buddy last week is unlikely you’ll be a model employee and while Jhonatan might have been a savvy businessman and a man of great taste, Johnny is only one of the two, and it is the pricier one.

Weird (1): ‘Who you callin’ weird with that ugly mug, Ay?’

Specialists (8): The amount of empowered within the loyal Bonerattlers is a statistical anomaly if there ever was one, while most powers are very tame, variety is king and Johnny’s folk are true royalty.

To explain the upsurge Mama Gunn insists her soup oughta have had a good effect on the boys, while the boys all agree the aftertaste of radioactive waste must be similar enough.

Morale (3): The family is closely knit enough, even after the years of infighting, but some grumbling can always be heard and security systems are just not up to snuff when you consider the competition are proper lawman, mad scientists and the likes of Mourn (god bless her soul).


VIPs

Johnny Gunn (Esp 1/spec 1): The don himself, Johnny was a product of Jhonatan’s third marriage, and the last one, as such he enjoyed the luxury but lacked the training his older brothers and sisters (of higher priority for accidents) received.

Still, Johnny triest his best, dapper in a waistcoat, with a proper fedora, and an actual coat to hide the old rattler for when the going gets tough, Johnny styles himself a gentleman of his father’s caliber, his people commit no excesses, though the definition of what an excess is changes depending on how many excesses the other side has committed, with a drunk Johnny loudly describing how bolting has it too good in prison, and what proper justice would be performed if they can buy someone in the prison.

For his powers, they allow him to manipulate Bee-es particles, so named for Bee’s ability to fly, allowing him to manipulate the relative density of objects around him, he is still on the job, but things like flight, cat-like tread and insanely heavy bullets are all within the current ballpark.

Dashing Dynamo (spec 1):
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/393497791273369601/1098257189921112074/Eldan_masked_woman_red_suit_curly_hair_fedora_fc85 819a-f7d5-41d0-ae61-a78c3e788a2c.png

Leader of the firewatch, Dona Gunn is a third cousin on the side, and an engineer on paper, splitting from the family after a conflict with the east-side branch, the firewatch used to run hits on local stores of notoriously crooked multinational companies, seeing it the best way to not pick a fight with anyone who cared while supporting local business at the same time.

As the pressure began to mount on their group, defended by a sole super in Bela four hands (rest in peace), Dona chose to start them clean, moving from the east side and nearer to the Gunn’s heart, where she partnered with Johnny Gunn for the legitimacy and lucked out when many of their folks got empowered.

Her own powers are minor precognition and Photomancy, which she can manipulate in an area around her, taking it away, brightening up the place or granting it a semblance of solidity. A favorite trick being to snuff all lights and relying on her precognition to grant her an advantage over the unseen foe who can’t see either.

Mighty Minotaur (Str 1):

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/393497791273369601/1097627613914214400/Minotaur.png?width=599&height=600

Adopted by Mama Gunn and Jhonathan as a young teen, khalid had been fighting in illegal pits almost all his life with the scars to prove it, while she tried to keep him from the family business, Khazid couldn’t help but help, and unlike other members of the family, who used their wealth to party or grow more wealth, he hired the best martial artists to train him.

Leading the Timbers while running a small gym, Khalid never really looked for trouble against other members of the family, specially Jhonny, just holding a few streets and making sure they were clear enough of trouble to bring him a steady income on the side. When Johnny started going big he’d provide back up on occasion, so long as whatever he did wasn’t going to bring undue attention to his people and eventually they had consolidated enough around them that founding the Bonerattlers seemed a natural step.

The pulse granted him strength, durability and an excuse to wear a tight leotard with a horned helmet in public settings, but the skills are all his.


Abilities

*Dangerous games (stats): The bone rattlers are used to taking over businesses and establishments, to rough codes of deference and loose organization, tools that are not ideal for taking over a city directly, but have an use all their own. As the law is pushed out and the power vacuum is filled as an afterthought, The local usual suspects scramble to earn Jhonny’s favor, with good old Jhonny making sure all who did before get a piece of the pie.

Newly acquired neutral territories start unstable regardless of investment and will take two turns to become stable.

1st turn they give a random permanent stat and a random t.stat of the same type.
2nd turn they give a t.stat of the previous type and a fluid t.stat, representing putting pressure on a particular element as they consolidate.
3rd turn the territory is finally stable, giving a permanent stat of the type the fluid stat was last turn, and a permanent stat of the Bonerattler's highest.

PVP conquest works as usual.

*Our (My) time to shine (VIP): The Bone rattler leaders are strong, young and out to prove themselves, to the world and when compared to each other, consequences and damage be damned.

When they take an injury, they heal it to one stage lesser (Major to Minor, Minor to None), as they shrug it off/act tough for the men.
For every risk action they succeed in, points equal to their level are invested towards a local heist as spec.

Neither effect works for VIPs working together in the same action.


Faction Traits

expansionist: There is a big shadow for the Gunn’s, and some major shoes to fill, but they are nouveau super, in control and ready for the city, the only real question is whether the city is ready for them.

Defiant - Screw Bolting and her little sycophants, now scurried to the shadows, screw those that stabbed the old man in the back until there was no more back left, screw the pretenders and those who seeked to stamp them out, is the Bone rattler’s turn, and screw anyone who stands in their way.

Mercenary - The trio might not be the greatest economic masterminds in the city, but they know how to fight and get paid for it, and given the massive increase experts predict for the throwing hands share of the market, that may be just enough.

[kaio999]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/478404791278764032/1097768224151576716/Sky_Cavalry.png

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/85/b9/8b/85b98bc6a969430e5f553cd6f6d1bbd2.jpg
Imperatrix


History: What happened after the pulse was terrifying. No one is sure who Intervallum is but in his single interview to the public he briefly explained his life. He said he was a man of unimpressive means. He claimed in his interview he was a scientist of only moderate value on projects surrounding the pulse. They had not gotten very far figuring out the phenomenon. He was content with his ordinary life however and so when the pulse chose him to have gifts it was not expected. He understood the core precepts but could never have comprehended what it meant to be someone with power. His first realization came when he took a step and instead of ending up bringing his foot down on the same floor he had walked for years he instead ended up in what he claims was space.

Intervallum claimed he thought he was going to die right there looking around he found himself around the endless ruins of destroyed ships. While his blood froze he hovered and managed by mere luck to end up among these ruins. Focusing desperately he brought those ruined ships with him returning to earth and using those broken pieces he built the grand void ship known as Imperatrix. The AI technology was also supposedly his creation as well. All of it came to him as sparks of brilliance piecing together fragmented knowledge suddenly perfectly. This super genius transformed his world and bursting forth from his hideout he and his ship rose over Zephyr city ready to change the world.

What followed the rise of these events was the beginnings of the hero worship surrounding this enigmatic figure and his ship. No one knows who the first one was but eventually someone made it aboard the ship and rather than be destroyed he swore utter allegiance to the cause of a brighter tomorrow and declared himself a member of the sky cavalry. This term has never been used by Intervallum and is instead the name chosen by his unique group of worshipers who he gifts with weapons and the ability to fly.



https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a6/2b/3d/a62b3d16037608f28ae4aaac6637de94.jpg

Stats

Strength (STR): 4 - The Sky cavalry speak for themselves flying jet pack riding bad asses who inhabit a desire to do good and are driven by the promise of a brighter future do to their enigmatic leader.

Espionage (ESP): 1 - The Sky cavalry are obsessively open about their actions and the bombastic open display of power by the group makes it difficult for them to hide much of anything.

Economy (ECO): 4 - They have brought technologies to market accessible from their super genius leader. While not quite as cutting edge as what protects Intervallum and Imperatrix it remains an incredibly impressive array.

Weird (WRD): 5 - At the center of their operation is the magnificent ship Imperatrix a bizarre void ship said to be run by an AI developed by Intervallum. He speaks to the machine lovingly and they design their many strange experiments together baring their technological children for the sake of a better world.

Specialist (SPEC): 4 - frontline warriors lead to an impressive array of specialists able to defeat those who move against poor and downtrodden communities.

Morale (MOR): 6 - Imperatrix and the sky cavalry are viewed as recent saviors. Their ship is a universal symbol of righteous idealism in a difficult world. This has brought a deeply intense passion for all those part of this heroic faction.

Faction Ability:
Imperatrix: Morale goes up +2 for the sky cavalry wherever Imperatrix is located and it takes a free action to move the void ship from 1 territory directly across from it to another. Imperatrix can only move to 1 territory per turn and they cannot use the ability until they are in the territory. LTPs can be placed on Imperatrix as opposed to stored in a location.



https://i.pinimg.com/564x/d2/bf/23/d2bf2365366eb4b13983ed6aee04ddd7.jpg
Intervallum

VIP
Intervallum: 3 WRD
A super genius he seems capable to teleport himself, and equipment into a space he calls the void. Any attempt to transport organic matter without some sort of suit or equipment to buffer leads to failure he seems incapable of moving people even if all forms of metal woods and plastics have moved fine. Even plants remain immune to his ability. This makes the ability almost completely useless for combat but it is incredibly useful for evasion and self preservation while also allowing him to build and transform anything designed as a void ship moving through this transcendent space protected at least in part by forces on earth such as time, gravity etc.

Since his transformation he also seems to be innately aware of designs which aid him in the creation of these strange void machines. He is now a foremost inventor and a cutting edge scientist gaining everything he wanted from when he was still a simple man.


VIP Ability:
Void Engineer: 'When a VIP from this Faction works on a project, they instantly add 2 points to each stat required for the project.
(Ex: If a project needed WRD, SPC & STR, he would add 2 of each, each time a vip works on it)

Traits:

Heart of Gold- Still a mercenary but will take jobs on the cheap for the down trodden wont accept work from evil

Leader- Intervallum is the heart of the group and worshiped as the single source of all crime fighting granting the gift of flight to his followers.

Brighter tomorrow– its not good enough to help individuals we need to give Zephyr city and the world a future to believe in.