[Shatterworld] - Out of Character Thread

[KerfuffleMach2]

Draxx, I want to congratulate you on creating the most random scenario I have ever come across. Wonderful job, there.

*applauds*

[Colesign]

Lots of things for me to respond to.

In response to Cracklord and Darkblade's remarks on the Alcatraz series...things worked out fairly interestingly anyways, and I had my share of fun.

And in response to Doliest...I'm glad to hear you're doing better. And I'm especially glad to hear from a good friend again.

[Colesign]

Additionally, read through the RP.

So many bits of foreshadowings that warm the cockles of my heart:

Mann Co., the Statosphere...Professor DuQuesne...

Given the spy/conspiracy themes of this game...has anyone read the Laundry Series by Charles Stross?

[Draxx]

'Fraid not. But yes, this owes as much to espionage as it does the superhero genre. Part of the fun, along with the mysterious conspiracies. However, most characters have a myth arc (well, kinda. It's there sandbox after all). Tommy, a la the seven samurai, must put together a crew to stop an ancient threat, while struggling to find his place in the world.
X-23 is undergoing a coming of age story, where she steps out of her fathers shadow and becomes her own person. And so on.
Hey Colesign? How come you never play a villain?

[Draxx]

Draxx, I want to congratulate you on creating the most random scenario I have ever come across. Wonderful job, there.

*applauds*

Wait until you see what you actually did. This is the highly necessary whimsical subplot, that Deadpool and Cable must wrestle through before they can attempt something more serious.

[KerfuffleMach2]

You know...I see "Somewhere in Nevada"...and I immediately think of the Madness series from Newgrounds.

Is this a coincidence? Or will there be a giant zombie clown named Tricky in Deadpool's future?

Stayed tuned!

[Draxx]

Nah, Hank killed him in an earlier game. Which reminds me, Deadpool should watch out for Blaxploitation characters. Should any of them meet him, they would be honor bound to kill him, due to his assassination of Black Dynamite.

For those who care, in this the order of St Dumas is an amalgamation of the Order of St Dumas from DC comics, Opus Dei as interpreted by Dan Brown, The Templars from Assassins Creed, and of course the Grail from Preacher. The whole Walt Disney was sending subliminal messages to force people to accept that Jesus had a kid was actually in the Da Vinci Code, and I thought that as an idea it is so ridiculous it had to be in here. The Order of St Dumas fears Disney because he created the corporation to foil the evil banking conspiracy that they have going.

[darkblade]

I think we both have very different ideas of where Tommy's arc has to take him. The way I see it is that he was a great Power Ranger, maybe one of the best but just as with all rangers that is temporary. It's been almost ten years since he lead a team into battle, twenty since his days as the Green Dragon Ranger. Every year since then a new team of Rangers has appeared either in the US or Japan (once in Thailand and once in France too) to keep on fighting. His inability to let go and stop fighting has cost him his fiance, his job and every other aspect of his normal life. He is tettering on the verge of becoming almost like Rorasach in his single-mindedness in his fight against evil at the cost of any normalcy.

Above anything else he needs something to kick him back into reality and show him that he is not the only person out there fighting to save the world and he does not need to do it himself.

[Draxx]

Ah. Sorry, got the wrong idea from you're opening post, and figured you wanted to play a power ranger as… well, a power ranger. So I wrote a vague outline involving a bad guy from the Voltron series attacking, and Tommy putting together a team of the five best power rangers out of all the teams ever to stop it, having to find them and convince them to combine their powers.

Well, awesome, in that case I can focus on the Kung fu.

[darkblade]

I'm okay with going that route as long as in the end he is forced to sacrifice his powers for good or make some other sacrifice that forces him to move away from his self-destructive obsession with being a hero.

The fact that it looks like Saban is going to ruin the twentieth anniversary specials by being super cheap is making the idea of doing a cross over team more appealing.

[Draxx]

Yeah, I can work with that, if it's what you want.

[Cracklord]

Slade should be creepy, if the people he's up against a below a certain age. Fundamental aspect of the character. However pedophilia is too obvious, and it's rather dull if everything comes down to sexual interest.

[Colesign]

Whoah, someone took out the Nova Corps...again.

Who is this guy, if I might ask?

[Draxx]

I can't tell you without giving the game away, I'm afraid, but nonetheless he's part of the subplot you recommended (back when you going to give the game a go).

[darkblade]

Amazon once again shows the world they are evil geniuses. Kindle Worlds, a program through which they will publish fan fiction and give both the author and the original owners of the property part of the proceeds. Only three licences (only one of which is of even vague interest to these games) have been announced thus far but they are promising more to come.

[Draxx]

Oh good, I can pay money to look at what I can get on the internet for free. It's not even like they're going for the crème de la crème.

I mean, I looked, and while I see Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries, I don't see any copy of My Immortal, which is probably the best known fanfiction of all time.

[Colesign]

I can't tell you without giving the game away, I'm afraid, but nonetheless he's part of the subplot you recommended (back when you going to give the game a go).

Oh hell yes.

On a related note, I was working on a background story a long time ago that delved into the background details of why space travel keep getting sabotaged in the Shatterworld. I just dusted off what I'd written and put together an ending.

Here's the complete tale. What do you think?

Spoiler

Show

Berlin, February 1956

“I just want to go back into space.”

Mary Raven blurted out those words suddenly as she looked at the newspaper's headline, sinking back into the comfiest leather armchair in the lounge of the Berlin branch of the Explorer's Club, the honks, drones, and murmurs of cars and dirigibles leaking through the window from the busy metropolis outside.

“Your brandy, Mr. Crabb.” One of the waiters intoned quietly, handing the aforementioned swifter to the gentled-featured, indubitably British gentleman across the table from Mary Raven.

“Good man, Friedrich.” He replied in a soft voice, removing a corncob pipe from his lips and cradling it in his left hand. “Now, Mary: what has crawled up your arse and died today, gel?”

The young space pilot, whose temperament at this moment was indeed matching the color of her hair, crumbled the front pages of the newspaper in disgust.

“This. France just signed the Restriction Accord. No more space launch on French-controlled soil. Legal restrictions on uranium breeding and thorium reactors for all but government-backed corporations, metastable rocket fuel outlawed, no radium in private hands...”

She rolled her head back. “That's it. That's Europe closed off. Except for Britain, but that's all government-controlled.”

“It won't be long there, either, I'm afraid. There's talk in the corridors of back home about decommissioning the British Space Fleet.” Mr. Crabb replied with a helpless shrug.

“If they could shoot decent photos from orbit, we'd keep them around. But the cameras aren't good enough.”

He learned back and puffed on his pipe.

“My country's not a power anymore, y'see. It'd like to be, but it's not. No room in the budget of a country still trying to pay off a war to keep the Thunderbirds and XLs running...so best leave all the space malarky to the Americans and Russians...they have all the German technicians anyway...”

“Stolen technicians...” Mary replied, brows furrowed. “Dr. Zarkov built the first roving interplanetary ship in his backyard ten years ago and went all the way to Mongo and back...”

“And then there's this fellow in the news...a Yank named Cargraves...got nicked by state police for enlisting some juvenile delinquents in stuffing an old mail rocket full of thorium so he could zoom about up there...” Crabb added.”

“...and yet the U.S. has to spend millions and rely on a group of terror weapon makers to work their way up to a moon-shot.” Mary finished.

Sarcasm filled every contour of her voice. “A moon shot. Christ, can't this 'NASA' aim any higher?”

“To be fair, love.” Crabb intejected, puffing out a ring of smoke. “Lots of folks have made moon shots cheap and on the down-low...don't think anyone's ever made it back yet...”

Mary Raven frowned. “And yet I went to Mars and Venus by the time I was 19. Some people are calling it the Moon Curse. Hmph: Fancy way of saying no idea what happens to the folks who try.”

Mr. Crabb nodded gravely, puffing away.

”...well, that's spacefaring for you: wouldn't touch it with an atomic-powered stick. I'll stick to trawling seas for shipwrecks, thank you very much.”

Mary set the crumbled newspaper on the table and regarded her colleague with quiet eyes.

“You've never gone up there?”

“Me? Christ no.” Crabb said with a shudder.

“Fraulein Raven.” A voice spoke up, said voice being the Maitre De returning with a slip of paper on the tray. “Telegram from New York City.”

Another letter from Mother, urging me to give up my space jamming sinful ways like the Leadfooted Luddite she is? Or maybe one where she gloated about how the government confiscated the 'Teatime' from me? Mary wondered, opening up the slip of paper.

This was when things changed.

The telegraph read.

M. Raven:

The World Has Gone Wrong.

The Future is being Bent.

If you are willing to trust me, then meet me at the Gun Club.


2|
+

(+)

The Future is being Bent? The Gun Club?

“What is it, gel? Bad news?” Mr. Crabb asked.

Mary Raven peered at the solar system map intently.

Was it asking her to go to distant point in the solar system? Fat chance with her rocketship on it's way to the scrapyard. Unless, if those symbols meant what she thought they...

“No.” she replied finally, folding up the telegram. “Just someone with enough money and no enough sense pulling a stupid prank. No way am I going to check it out.”

%%%

She checked it out, of course.

The solar system map turned out to be a code: things were skewed in an odd way, specifically the positions of Earth and Jupiter. When you measured their orbital periods, coordinates popped out.

Longitude and Latitude. A spot right in the center of the swamps of Florida.

She took the personal Aerocopter, 'The Flying Pigeon' out to the location, stopping overnight in Chile to rest on a lonely beach, cockpit open to feel the gentle sea breeze.

It was cloudy when she set down on the flat dirt, a mile-wide patch of solid ground in the midst of swamp, bramble, and brush.

She set her ship down as softly as a thistle on a ray of light, and popped the cockpit, sliding out, raising her flight goggles and dropping to the ground, a hand sliding to the ray gun at her side as she straightened up form a crouch.

She blew a piece of stray hair poking out from her pilot cap, and scanned the area for lodgings or men in trenchcoats or ambushes or other such things.

And she saw a small pillar of smoke rising upward, from the opposite side of the grove next to her.

She unbuckled her holster strap and set off.

It took a bit of time for her to make her way through the thick grove, and on the way, the local variety of bloodsucking hostile native live came after her.

She was have tempted to turn her Lewiston model ray gun on the benighted critters when she stumbled out and into a large clearing.

She noted several things about it: there was an old beaten pathway, wide enough for carts and cars to travel on. There were the rusted remains of several tools and the rotten frame of a cart nearby.

There was a very, very, very large tarp, covering a large stretch of the ground.

And there was a man tending to the fire, throwing a fresh set of fuel onto it. He was wearing pilot gear: goggles, jacket, pilot cap, and an emergency respirator stashed on one side, with a piece holstered on his other.

He stood up as she revealed herself, hand falling to his iron.

She stood still, mirroring his actions.

They stared at each other like wolves: not spoiling for a fight, but utterly prepared to to spill blood if it had to be done.

“Clear skies.” The man said quietly, moving his hands away from his belts and holding them up.

Mary Raven's eyes narrowed for a moment.

“Hot jets.” She replied, and relaxed.

“Please come on over.” The man replied, motioning her over. “The skeeters in this neck of the woods are downright lethal, and I think they can bite right through spacer leather. Smoke drives them off just fine, though.”

Mary Raven restrained the urge to sigh in relief, and sat on the nearest log bench, getting a closer look at the fellow. Scruffy, strong jawed, and good looking, with a piercing intelligent gaze figuring out the world around him.

So either a good, keen-eyed man like daddy...or an arrogant brat.

“Thank you for coming, Ms. Raven, and thank you for trusting me to have something worth saying.”

“It was a bit of a leap of faith.” Raven replied. “I still can stand and walk right out if I think you're toying with me, Mr...”

“Yeager. Jack Yeager.” The man replied. “Aerospace engineer. Been an independent contractor for a few years: more recently, I was an ex-member of Project Vanguard.”

“Project Vanguard.” Raven repeated, a heft amount of disgust in her tone.

Yeager held up a hand. “Emphasis on ex-member. Walked out rather quickly.”

“Launching tennis balls into space not cutting it for you?” Raven drawled.

“Don't knock satellites, Raven.” Yeager said quietly, but very firmly. “They'll be able to go places and do things that we can't...but you're right: yet another crashlanding of another beeping tin ball just wasn't cutting it...”

He shrugged and off-handedly added:

“...but that's how it is these days. It's not a good time to be a space traveler.”

Raven snorted.

“There's no need to be coy, 'Mr. Yeager'. It's a goddamn ****ty time to be a space traveler. After we saved the Earth a thousand times, fought off the second Martian invasion, stopped Ming and the Radar Men and Goddamned Kharg the Killer...the government and big business decided to **** us right up the ass!”

She raised her index and middle fingers and crooked them.

“ 'It's not safe to have crazy backwoods scientists building spaceships in their backyards with scrap metal and animal hair!'...so they're making our livelihoods illegal...they took the Teatime from me, and handed it off to the World Steel Corporation to break it down for scrap.' “

She looked up at the sky, blinking. “You said in your telegram that 'The World has Gone Wrong' and that the future's been bent out of shape...Amen to that. I'm 26 years old. I've been to Mars, and Venus, and the moons of Saturn. I met strange creatures and civilizations, and watched them dwindling and dying. I've slept with asteroid gypsies, broken sloats to the saddle, fought with the eighth insurgency on Forest.”

With a sudden burst of rage, she kicked at the fire with a boot-clad foot, sending sparks flying.

“I shot a man on Khargu because he needed to die more than any I've ever met. I repaired three rocket tubes with a wrench and a knife while hanging upside down over Titan during the syzygy. I'm 26 years old and my life is over now.”

She turned and regarded Jack Yeager with narrowed eyes. “So direct me please to the men who did this to me and my friends, and bum me some fresh power-packs to blast them to bits, for I have business to attend to before I lay down in my grave. Unless you sent that cryptic telegram to me just so we could form an oldsters club and bitch about the times.”

Jack Yeager smiled faintly, and held out a gloved hand. “Congratulations. Welcome to the club.”

Mary Raven regarded the grizzled aerospace engineer.

Then she laughed and clasped hands with him.

“But seriously, you better have a good reason for dragging me out to this arse-end of the countryside.” She added.

Yeager nodded. “There's a group I'm part of. Like-minded individuals who are mighty sore about having their wings taken away. We're trying to do something about it: asking questions, gathering resources, operating under the radar.”

He turned around, and walked over to the section of ground covered by a huge canvas tarp. “And we've connected the dots on a few things. Secret events, players moving in the shadows. It all adds up to something nasty. But I could have told you about all of that elsewhere. We're here so I can show you something. Something that'll show you just how long this grand tale has been going on.”

He leaned down, pulled at the strings keeping the tarp in place, and then tried to pull the entire thing off.

Due to the size of the tarp, it actually wound up falling down into the gigantic, echoing hole in the ground, ten feet in diameter, and completely lined with an unbroken mold of thick cast iron.

As Mary Raven gazed into the echoing pits, she noticed scores of rust trails running down the surface of the cavern like vines, the pitted rough nature of the molded metal, and some very impressive char marks around the inner circumference of the iron-wrapped hole.

“What is this?” She asked breathlessly.

“This...is the Columbiad.” Jack Yeager intoned, his voice taking on the characteristics of a sonorous priest. He brought out a leatherbound journal from the interior of his jacket, a cracked, scorched thing with the gilded name 'I. Barbicane' on it. “The world's largest cannon, constructed in the Year of Our Lord 1866 by the Americian Gun Club.

This...is the sight of the first moon shot.”

%%%

“The Columbiad is just the tip of the iceburg.” Jack Yeager explained to Mary Raven later, the both of them having gone over Barbicane's old journal, sitting right next to the ancient venerable space gun.

Mary Raven was still in a state of shock. “A Civil War era space expedition...that's....that's...”

Yeager waited patiently.

“...That's so cool.”

Yeager allowed himself a quiet grin. “I know.”

Mary grimaced.

“Why didn't they teach us about this in high school?!”

“Unknown. Barbicane and the Gun Club disappeared in 1889 in the Arctic, after having made plans to, and I quote, 'Fire off a cannon at the north pole which would straighten out the earth's axis and bring an end to all unpleasant variations in the earth's seasons.' “

Yeager looked at Mary's expression. “I know. But listen, there's more. If you looked through library archives and dig through records, you can find evidence of many other attempted moon shots, far before Zarkov and Goddard and Oberth's early rocket projects. A scientist named Cavor who created a material that was repelled by gravity and built a airtight craft around it...which took off from the London countryside, and returned several months later...empty. A fleet of 1000 electric spaceships commissioned by Thomas Edison and Lord Kelvin after the First Martian Invasion and sent off to the Red Planet on a 'Mission of Retaliation'. A government scientist who according to accounts of his colleagues, discovered a substance that could convert copper into pure energy, built a spaceship capable of interstellar flight...and then disappeared on the verge of opening a series of worldwide power plants. There was even an early chemical rocket designed by Oberth and sent by the old Weimar Republic to look for water on the moon, launched 9 years before Zarkov's first flight. The re-entry capsule never made it back, of course.”

“It's the Moon Curse.” Mary Raven remarked automatically.

“'Curse' is a just a word we use when we don't know what's happening–“ Yeager instinctively retorted.

“–And can't be bothered to find out.” Raven finished. “Still damned mysterious, isn't it?”

“You could say that.” Yeager replied. He tossed a pebble into the yawning chasm of the Columbiad, and listening to the 'tink-tink' noise as it bounced off of the cast iron walls and struck the cannon's base deep down. “The unearthing of the Columbiad was what first brought the League–that's the name of our group–together...it's almost like a Mecca to us now, a reminder.”

He waited for Mary Raven to make the natural reply. Mary did nothing of the sort, and merely arched a thin eyebrow.

Jack sighed. “To remind us that the world is far stranger than we can possibly imagine. That men have been reaching for the stars for far longer than we ever could have dreamed of, even farther back than the last century, and beyond! It can only mean that there's this drive to explore space isn't a mere whimsy of the moment...it's practically destiny.”

Jack Yeager turned to face Mary Raven.

“So what's gone wrong? What's bent the future out of shape? What's holding back mankind from bursting out into the stars? We came together and formed the League to figure out what. That's the name of our group. The League. And we'd like you to join us...”

There was a 'cracking' noise, the sound of a twig snapping.

Yeager froze.

“...because it looks like we're going to have to fight a war to find out.”

He snatched up the canvas cover and dropped it onto the fire, stamping out the flames and cursing as sparks flew everywhere. Then quickly, he whipped out his piece, a strange hybrid of revolver and a standard ray weapon, and dragged Mary down behind the large log.

Mary let out a noise of protest and aborted it partway. She grew quiet, and began slowly reaching for her Lewiston.

From behind the log, she could hear a sharp noise, like the hum of a tesla-coil and the whine of a tele-screen left on for too long. She slowly slid out her brass-trimmed raygun from it's holster and gazed at Yeager's tense drawn, face, a face that told her they were both in terrible danger.
When? She mouthed.

Yeager held up a hand. Though the fire had gone out, she could make out several light sources nearby, their harsh glare making it's way over the barrier of the log, growing slowly brighter. The harsh whiff of ozone entered her nostrils. She held her breath.

Then Yeager moved like a greased glass deer in Titan's gravity, whipping out his piece and opening fire with rapid blasts of harsh, cold light.

Mary rose up from the other side of the log and depressed the firing stud on her Lewiston.

The film serials Republic had made of her fellow traveler's exploits portrayed ray gun blasts as clean and neat, either causing legions of ill-clad mooks to glow and disappear or fall down to the ground without a single mark on them.

Real ray guns weren't as neat as that. More often they'd take out the wall behind their target, cause them to horribly melt, get set afire, explode, get sliced in half, or a gruesome variety of all three.

Her first blast enveloped what looked like a man-shaped outline of cold white light, crackling around the edges with static electricity.

What?

The glowing pale white...thing went flying, slammed to the ground by her Lewiston's beam. Another went down to Yeager's less spectacular blasts, while another raised it's hand and sent an arc of lightning hurling right past Mary Raven's shoulders.

She turned and rayed the creature, swatting it down to the ground again, but not, to her intense displeasure, killing it. She saw the first creature getting back up, and rayed it again, pushing it down like fireman would knock someone off their feet with a firehose.

“Goddamn Extraterrestrial Whack-a-moles!” She shouted between clenched teeth as she kept firing.

Yeager turned and shot the two prone glowing creatures, the bolts from his gun actually doing damage to the humanoids.

Mary turned to shoot down another of the assailants

And then a Martian War Tripod crashed through the small patch of forest and into the clearing. It's mechanical tentacles flailed about madly, snatching up trees at random and hurling them about, some of them rebounding and bouncing off of it's thick metal cockpit. One pair of tendrils lifted up a large cylinder that resembled an incredibly complex lantern or searchlight.

“Oh, twenty thousand ****ers beyond the stratosphere.” Mary whispered to herself. “Move!!!”

The nightmare of survivors of many an interplanetary war engaged it's Heat Ray and began setting the clearing on fire.

“Dickless ****-for brains!!!!” Mary snarled. While running as fast as she could, she opened the aperture of her Lewiston and opened fire on the Tripod's cockpit.

The metal carpace bent and warped under the strain of her ray gun...but held. The impact point glowed a dull red as it swept the lurid ray of destruction back and forth, soot and ash and cinder wafting up from the scorched earth, paying no mind to it's smaller compatriots, and occasionally even batting them aside impatiently.

“Yeager!” She shouted, as she swapped out a freshly drained power pack. “Can your pea-shooter–“

“Lumierie!” Yeager clarified, gunning down one of the glowing creature before it could hurl lightning.

“Whatever! Can it dent that thing's hull!”

Yeager responded by raising his gun and pulling the trigger again and again.

The shots dented and seared the Tripod's cockpit. And little else.

“Not really!” He replied.

“Soddit...”

Mary tore off her flight cap in frustration (a hot thing to wear in the summer, let alone in a clearing on fire), and hurled it to the side.

She'd met some Martians, and gotten along dandily with them. Especially the ones with lots of arms. But the Warmakers...they could piss themselves to try and put out their own fires in hell for all she–

There was a 'thunk' as her flight cap reached the bottom of the Columbiad.

“Well dress me in petticoats and call me Molly.” She whispered. “Yeager!” She shouted

Yeager was stuffing what looked like glowing bullets into his Lumierie. “Busy!”

“The Hole! Dump the Tripod down it!”

Yeager blinked, then nodded. “Got it!”

He snapped his gun shut, then raised his piece and opened fire on the Tripod's viewports, falling back as he did his best to blind the metal beast-machine from another world. Sparks and gouts of energy flew off the mechanical monstrosity's carapace, and it's segmented limbs flew into a fresh spasm of rage.

Amidst this rage, one limb lashed out and struck Mary Raven in the stomach.

The young space pilot flew through the air and landed a shallow swamp puddle, splashing fetid water everywhere. Her leather clothing had protected her from some of the blow, but the experience still felt like getting walloped by a mighty brachiosaurus in mating season.

It took time for Raven's vision to stop swimming and the pain in her chest to diminish to merely agonizing. She managed to roll out of the offending puddle, every absorbent piece of clothing she wore squelching, and raised herself up on one arm, her vision clearing just in time to see the young aerospace engineer placing a game of keep away with the Tripod, dashing back and forth, keeping too close to it's legs to be struck down by the sheer inhumane destructiveness of the Heat Ray, and running too fast to be bludgeoned by a wayword tentacle whip as she had been.

The Tripod drifted closer to the hole. Closer, closer...

“Gah!” Jack howled, as a tentacle arm whipped in from below and wrapped around his waist. It lifted him up and shook him like a dog shakes a seized bit of prey. The engineer's Lumiere flew from his grip and into the bowels of the Columbiad.

The Tripod was at it's edge. Right at the edge of it, it's forward leg digging into the soft dirt right in front of the Tellus-fricking hole! Right at the edge!

Yeager screamed as the tentacles constricted.

And lying there, covered in mud, Mary Raven knew there wasn't anything she could d–

“**** that!” She snarled, and dove for her discarded Lewiston. She raised it and fired.

The lurid orange beam of light tore through the air like liquid metal–and blasted right through the tentacle holding Yeager.

She twisted a dial and opened the aperture and fired one more time, draining the entire battery in one shot...

And wrecking the Tripod's forward leg...along with the ground it stood on.

Jack fell and rolled to the right.

And the Tripod stumbled forward and tipped over into the depths of the Columbiad. It's remaining legs dugs for purchase in vain, and it's cockpit plumeted downward...and smashed itself against the great cannon's lip.

Silence fell once again across the clearing, broken only by the patchwork fires that had wafted up here and there amongst the scrub and brush.

“Okay,” Mary Raven said finally, walking over, and helping Jack Yeager up to his feet. “What the ****ing goddamn slart **** was that?”

“I'd guess...” Jack wheezed, taking Raven's hand with his left and clutching at his cracked ribs with his right. “...it was a group of assassins. Sent to kill us.”

Mary narrowed her eyes. “Do you want me to burn off your arm for cheekiness? Because I've heard that the Callistans can graft some top of the line robotic arms onto people.”

“The First Men...” Jack Yeager replied after a moment. “The Men of Mercury, beings of pure condensed light. Those...” He waved a hand at the dissolving puddles of light around them, still giving off the harsh whiff of ozone. “...were their foot soldiers at least. But digging up an actual Tripod to wipe us out...THEY must be upping the ante. Hold on...”

He walked over to the Columbiad, the crumbled top of the Martian war machine still visible. The latch of one of the hatches was shattered: Yeager grimaced, then lifted it open.

Steam poured out of the cockpit.

“Betcha ten Space Bucks it's a Martian Warmaker.” Mary Raven said.

“They're supposed to be extinct.” Yeager replied, frowning. “And there's no such thing as a Space Buck.”

The steam cleared. If there was such a think as Space Bucks, Mary would have had to ante up. It wasn't a Martian Warmaker. It was ot an amorphous bearlike thing with two tentacles, no digestive system, and a giant ear in the top of it's skull.

Nor was it one of the Mercury Men, nor one of the natives of moons of Saturn, nor any of the other barrel-chested hominid varieties of Martians.

No, the mysterious pilot of the war Tripod, nestled within a cocoon of wires braces, and plugs, floating within a clear glass container filled with a cocktails of fluids and electrodes, was none other...THAN A BRAIN!

Jack Yeager, a man Mary Raven had noted to be of a truly unflappable nature, actually gaped for the briefest of moments!

“I have no idea how I'm going to hustle this guy for information.” He said finally.

There was a crackle of warped acoustics. Raven hefted her Lewiston, waiting for some attack or electrical arc or sonic ray to fly at them, before she realized that it was a warped, distorted attempt at speech:

Your...your victory here is...e-ephemeral. Know this, Mary Raven daughter of Rock Raven, and Jack Yeager son of Charles Yeager, for you will soon be removed from the-the Earth Design.

“Earth Design...” Yeager muttered. “What the hell are you talking about.”

“Elaborate.” Mary Raven replied, leveling her piece. “Or I'll give your little grey cells cancer.”

Bubbles swirled about the interior of the Brain Case.

My continued existence...and further d-d-divulgence of information is an un-unecessary risk to the Chief Designer's p-p-plan. This dialogue...shall end.

“End?” Mary snarled, tapping the glass case with the aperture of her Lewiston. “This ain't ending until...”

A beeping noise came from the bowels of the Tripod.

“****!” Yeager exclaimed, and pulled on Mary's arm, dragging her away from the shattered Martian Fighting Machine.

Naturally, there was an explosion. The barrel of the Columbiad that the Tripod had partially fallen in channeled the blast upward, and for a brief period, it looked as if the old cannon was shooting a space capsule up towards the gleaming moon once again.

As debris rain down, both Mary Raven and Jack Yeager picked themselves up again.

“So,” Mary said finally, swatting at some mosquitos that buzzed at her ears. “Think that a secret alien conspiracy led by a Chief Designer is impeding space travel?”

“Starting to sound more likely...Ma'am.” Jack replied, wincing and clutching at his ribs.

“Well...” Mary concluded, holstering her Lewiston and snapping shut the flap. “We'd better inform the rest of the League.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “You in, then?”

Mary hooked her arm through Jack's and helped him limp his way away from the scene. “Depend on one question. Did you guys manage to hide away some spaceships from the G-men and World Steel scrapper's hands? Spaceships that could, perhaps, use a pilot?”

Jack grinned a ****-eating grin. “Yep.”

“**** yes, I'm in.”

[Draxx]

I'd like to apologize for my three week long vanishing act. First exams, then a more personal issue. Regardless, I should have given some sort of notification to you all, and I apologize for that.
Anyway, I m back now, so if anyone is still interested in keeping this game going, then I'll do what I can to keep running it.

[AnimeKid]

I'm interested. You might have to pm the others though.

[Draxx]

Thank you for your support. And yes, I probably will.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Yay! You're back!

I'll probably be getting something up tonight.

[Draxx]

Yes I am. Again, sorry.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Hey, no problem. Stuff happens.

And on that note, my post will have to wait until tomorrow, anyways. A nine hour day of work today and a twelve hour shift tomorrows means I got nothing tonight. But, tomorrow, there will be postings!

[Cracklord]

I'm still around. Give me a reason to stay on the forum other then complain about the new Superman movie and talk about webcomics.

And I like the update, Colesign (if you are still here).

[nanobot_swarm]

Greetings fellows, it has been some time since last we spoke. How goes your roleplaying endeavors?
And since I see you need support for this game, I will gladly aid thee in you Giant superhero moshpit of death. Seriously Draxx, I read that giant history and back-story you wrote for the setting, hot damn, that works together too well, and it makes more sense than the established comic book universes you based it off of haha

[Draxx]

They've hit a bit of a dry spell to be honest, but I'm hoping things will pick up, and with Doliest and you both making triumphant returns they just might yet. Welcome back, any ideas for characters?

[nanobot_swarm]

Damn, well hopefully things turn around indeed, the good times must continue to roll.
As for a character, I thought of a fun idea for a villain-type dude. Essentially he'd be one of the last of an ancient civilization of intelligent dinosaur-men, who has now awakened from cryogenic sleep. Seeing mammals now rule the Earth angers him to no end, so now he plans to try and engineer a way to warm up the earth so he can repopulate it with dinosaurs and his people the Saurians, with humanity ending up either extinct or enslaved in the process.
Since I read you wanted a Silver Age theme, I thought he'd fit that well.

[Draxx]

Ah. Well, I can think of a few of that style of character.

There is Dr Dinosaur, created for Atomic Robo by the incomparable Brian Clevinger, a velociraptor capable of human speech with an appropriately nonsensical backstory. He's not quite what you are looking for, given that that he's probably a lab-experiment rather then an actual velociraptor (he looks like a Jurassic Park version, not the real thing, and no matter how smart a velocivaptor would not be able to speak English, physically).

Or Dr Stegron, an obscure Spider-Man villain (it never made sense to me why he never achieved the fame and popularity he deserved), though he's a guy transformed into a dinosaur rather then an actual dinosaur.

And of course, the numerous vaguely defined snake-people from Conan and King Kul. Of course, they're more disposed to vague magic then science. Any of those suit you?

[nanobot_swarm]

Well if we can bring Conan into this....
Perhaps I could bring in Thoth-Amon of the Ring into the fold. Resurrected by the Serpent God Set to bring about his will into the modern world
Or if we want to go full Eldritch horror, I could be Pius Augustus from Eternal Darkness, and undead Roman Legionaire turned sorcerer working behind the scenes to bring about the summoning of one of the Ancients (think Lovecraftian horror)

[Draxx]

Awesome. And approved (very approved). I'll see what I can do about putting the gang back together, but if you write up a character sheet I'll see what I can do.