Grrl Power IV: Constantly Expanded Universe

[Radar]

You know he could actually pull of rocket jumps or enter somewhere fast by being shoot out of a cannon. But yeah explosives aren't bystander friendly. Getting at least a gun would increase his offensive potential a bit though.

There should be something that can make use of not having to worry about its wielders health. Like if he wants to horrifically burn his enemies he can wear plate armor and heat it to be white hot immediately before. He can use gas attacks and not be hampered by it himself.

But something that is useful against serious supers and not a hazard to others is not easy.

He is an ideal person for hazmat containment (they can even clean him off with thermite or heavy radiation) and any rescue operations. This is an area of expertise he can excell at. He is just not that much of a fighter as we would expect from a super.

[Keltest]

He is an ideal person for hazmat containment (they can even clean him off with thermite or heavy radiation) and any rescue operations. This is an area of expertise he can excell at. He is just not that much of a fighter as we would expect from a super.

And that was Archon's intended purpose, as I recall, supervillain attacks notwithstanding.

[Radar]

And that was Archon's intended purpose, as I recall, supervillain attacks notwithstanding.

Exactly: it is simply not something that was shown in the comics yet. I am actually wondering, what would the alien scans say about Achilles, since his invulnerability seems to be absolute - whatever makes it happen should be either making all the sensors ping with panic or unable to penetrate Achilles at all.

[-D-]

I am actually wondering, what would the alien scans say about Achilles, since his invulnerability seems to be absolute

Throw him in Black Hole. He still needs to breathe and he can't escape its pull.

[lord_khaine]

I am actually wondering, what would the alien scans say about Achilles, since his invulnerability seems to be absolute

Throw him in Black Hole. He still needs to breathe and he can't escape its pull.

Im 100 % certain you wont find -any- alien scanners who says that!

Also its wrong. He does not need to eat or breathe.
He is impossible to hurt physically.

[Traab]

He mentioned eating super ebola to save some place once. So he has been used for hazmat containment in the past. That was back during the mouth feel and portlanida level hipster comic.

[Rogar Demonblud]

It seems Dave has finally made a check to not spend forever on the obvious.

edit: and it looks like Scorpia had some kind of touch intoxication power.

[tomandtish]

Your wrong according to the cast page.
Achilles has a -litteral- defence score on that.
And he scores 6 on a scale of 1 to 5.
So he is indeed unbeatable when it comes to defence score.

I'm looking for a legend... is that a defense score or a toughness score? after all, if it is how well you expect someone to do on defense, then Halo should have one as well. Instead, it appears they've broken it into categories. The one you see for Achilles, Max, etc. seems to be a personal toughness score. Halo gets a shield score. And if Dave decides that the symbol is an overall defense score than I'll cheerfully disagree with his assessment. Achilles is tough, not a good defender.

Incidentally, realized I never posted my answer to my own question.

1) Dabbler - Extremely tough and versatile. The "Jill of all Trades" designation she's been given applies here.

2) Max - Even if she csn't bring all her power to bear, super speed counts for a lot.

3) Halo - Not a versatile as Dabbler (yet) but still has a wide range of options.

4) Jiggawatt - Fast enough to effectively function as short-range teleportation. Can stun or kill as needed.

5) Harem - Teleportation, and multiple bodies mean you get up to 5 defenders for the price of 1.

Achilles would literally be the last one I'd take. Even "powerless" Peggy is more valuable.

[Traab]

Im not sure that jiggawatt can teleport indoors. Out in an open field she can hop all over the place sure, but indoors, or inside a cave? Im not so certain.

[lord_khaine]

I'm looking for a legend... is that a defense score or a toughness score? after all, if it is how well you expect someone to do on defense, then Halo should have one as well. Instead, it appears they've broken it into categories. The one you see for Achilles, Max, etc. seems to be a personal toughness score. Halo gets a shield score. And if Dave decides that the symbol is an overall defense score than I'll cheerfully disagree with his assessment. Achilles is tough, not a good defender.

Except.. noone called it defenDER score.
Meanwhile, defenCE has been the name of the stat that dictate how well your handling physical damage in i dont know how many different types of media.

So.. combined with how utterly impossible to make an actual defenDER score for anyone.
In part because its almost impossible to define what that is. And in part because it would be super subjective.

Then the conclusion should have been its defence/toughness/resilience/invulnerability/hardness thats symbolised by the shield symbol at the cast page.
And the further conclusion that all this stuff about being a good defender is because you wont admit you made a mistake.

[-D-]

Im 100 % certain you wont find -any- alien scanners who says that!

Also its wrong. He does not need to eat or breathe.
He is impossible to hurt physically.

That is because all of them are broken :P

Ok. But can he move faster than light? No. Then the black hole is a solitary confinement that will last until end of universe.

Seriously any non FTL capable entity should get dumped there.

[Honest Tiefling]

edit: and it looks like Scorpia had some kind of touch intoxication power.

I think she's supposed to be dead...Since the woman's name and tattoo would indicate the zodiac sign of Scorpio, aka, the scorpion. (According to google translate, escropion or alácran would mean scorpion, but I think the tattoo makes it clear that some poison stuff is at play here.)

Or have people been licking scorpions to get high? Wouldn't surprise me.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Scorpion is the kind of thing some wannabe tough girl living in the desert would call themselves.

The woman at the counter got glassy-eyed at her touch, her speech bubbles radically shifted, and Dave made an explicit reference to college kids. Who are known for getting wasted.

[tyckspoon]

Scorpion is the kind of thing some wannabe tough girl living in the desert would call themselves.

The woman at the counter got glassy-eyed at her touch, her speech bubbles radically shifted, and Dave made an explicit reference to college kids. Who are known for getting wasted.

Wonder if the nickname came before or after discovering the poison-touch power..

[Honest Tiefling]

The woman at the counter got glassy-eyed at her touch, her speech bubbles radically shifted, and Dave made an explicit reference to college kids. Who are known for getting wasted.

I missed that. Still, not entirely sure who is licking scorpions to get high, but maybe I am just out of touch with the young whippersnappers of today. In my day, we just smoked plants.

Wonder if the nickname came before or after discovering the poison-touch power..

I feel like the idea that it is just a name for a tough girl living in the desert isn't at all inaccurate, since last I knew, most scorpions aren't venomous to the touch, but it's not like I go around petting them.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Scorpions are chitinous, so there are no pores for the poison to ooze out of. The nickname has nothing to do with the power.

[Traab]

Depending on how deep it goes meaning wise, it could also be talking about her nature. The scorpion and the frog. Basically, she is a back stabber by nature and cant help herself. This is further backed by how we are introduced to her. She robbed that guy blind and set the cartels after them

[Honest Tiefling]

Depending on how deep it goes meaning wise, it could also be talking about her nature. The scorpion and the frog. Basically, she is a back stabber by nature and cant help herself. This is further backed by how we are introduced to her. She robbed that guy blind and set the cartels after them

I'm pretty sure most versions of that tale don't have the Scorpion waving a neon sign saying 'I WILL BACKSTAB YOU' and doing a little dance while singing a song of how evil they are. It does usually pretend that it wouldn't, and the point of the tale is usually not that the scorpion is a jerk, but one that ensured mutual destruction of both scorpion and frog. Why she would both advertise her own dishonesty and incompetence?

So if it is a reference to the tale, it's a pretty poor one but then again, I don't really expect low level thugs to have the best literary background or even decision making skills.

[Traab]

I'm pretty sure most versions of that tale don't have the Scorpion waving a neon sign saying 'I WILL BACKSTAB YOU' and doing a little dance while singing a song of how evil they are. It does usually pretend that it wouldn't, and the point of the tale is usually not that the scorpion is a jerk, but one that ensured mutual destruction of both scorpion and frog. Why she would both advertise her own dishonesty and incompetence?

So if it is a reference to the tale, it's a pretty poor one but then again, I don't really expect low level thugs to have the best literary background or even decision making skills.

That might not be the name she chose but what the people call her. And a scorpion doesnt need a neon sign advertising that it will backstab you, its very nature tells us that it will do it. As for why work with her? "What kind of an idiot would backstab the cartels? Sure she did this sort of thing to make her way through the ranks, but surely she knows better than to try it on people like us." As we clearly see from her very short intro before sciona takes over, thats exactly what she did.

[Honest Tiefling]

That might not be the name she chose but what the people call her. And a scorpion doesnt need a neon sign advertising that it will backstab you, its very nature tells us that it will do it. As for why work with her? "What kind of an idiot would backstab the cartels? Sure she did this sort of thing to make her way through the ranks, but surely she knows better than to try it on people like us." As we clearly see from her very short intro before sciona takes over, thats exactly what she did.

So...Criminals basically have the same impulse control as toddlers. Not saying you are wrong, but I really hope this cartel doesn't become a major villainous power in the future...

[Traab]

So...Criminals basically have the same impulse control as toddlers. Not saying you are wrong, but I really hope this cartel doesn't become a major villainous power in the future...

Well THIS criminal did, apparently. As for the cartel, i doubt it. I get the feeling it was just used as a background story for why things went the way they did. Some traitorous woman stole from them, and was being killed for it. Sciona took over the dead body and killed the other two. Now it might depend on if the cartel shows up before sciona and crew get situated. I can kinda see them doing "Yay, free hosts!" And now we have a "cartel" thats entirely the worst of the alari people, but other than that I doubt it will play much of a role, if any.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Well, a cartel-controlled town will probably have a plentiful supply of freshly killed bodies for the Alari to take up residence in.

[halfeye]

Well, a cartel-controlled town will probably have a plentiful supply of freshly killed bodies for the Alari to take up residence in.

Eh? why? if there were two cartels having a war in a town, then yeah, corpses galore, but just the one cartel? Why would they destroy their own property?

[Max_Killjoy]

Eh? why? if there were two cartels having a war in a town, then yeah, corpses galore, but just the one cartel? Why would they destroy their own property?

Look up the murder rates in some Mexican towns that only have one cartel in control.

[Honest Tiefling]

Eh? why? if there were two cartels having a war in a town, then yeah, corpses galore, but just the one cartel? Why would they destroy their own property?

1) If a singular cartel is in control, they might just dump bodies there from other regions since the police aren't going to investigate, and you usually need that for most murder investigations. Se mató!

2) There still might be upstarts or uppity people that need to be taught a lesson now and again. The ol' whip an old person as the heroes march into town cliche.

3) If the cartel is really incompetent, they might just be killing the locals to get rid of anyone unneeded for their operation. Successful criminal organizations do sometimes flourish by NOT murdering everything in eyesight, but that is assuming that the cartel that hired the Scorpion has intelligence. Or maybe her name really is just Scorpio, like the zodiac sign, and someone was super big into astrology.

4) They might be handling some assassination on the side.

5) Could be that the bodies are the police, there are plenty of reasons that the police just can't write off a region of Mexico and not go there.

6) Organ harvesting might be a thing. Not typically the MO of the Mexican cartels to my knowledge, but with supers running around you definitely have a new market for super organs and a change in the geo-political fabric of the setting.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Or the violence is internal as different factions in the cartel fight for dominance or just plain empire building. To say nothing of the fun times that happens when the kids start trying to figure out who is getting what slice of daddy's pie (look what happened with the Sublime Porte).

[Rogar Demonblud]

Oh, and following random links led me to the post-Council meeting battle wrap up where Sydney is talking the meaning of names with Gunnhildr, so I went looking for translations of a few. Xuriel could be either the minor biblical character whose name means My Rock is God or a genus of spiders (which I lean towards, given her number of limbs was formerly 8 given the two prehensile tails deleted because they were impossible to draw and her mating habits include sucking the male dry). And Maxima's family name of Oleander is a type of very poisonous shrub, made all the more deadly because it is rather pretty to look at so people aren't very careful.

Just a few interesting tidbits of info.

[Traab]

Ok so at least now we get to see that sydney indeed is having a rough time coping with all this. Not that anyone could blame her, I mean, that sort of thing is a bit outside the expectations of even fully trained arcswat members. But at least they would have their training and experience to fall back on while sydney basically has "Ok, according to comics and gaming logic, I should try this and see if it helps"

[HandofShadows]

And Maxima's family name of Oleander is a type of very poisonous shrub, made all the more deadly because it is rather pretty to look at so people aren't very careful.

Nice research. I think Max's last name fit perfectly for her. She's lovely to look at, but don't get her mad at you.

[Rogar Demonblud]

It's also the city flower of Hiroshima, since it was the first thing to come back after the bomb in '45. Which may be the reference, given the mushroom clouds on her blasts.