(Yeah I know, but I wanted an excuse to illustrate a timeline of information) :-p
Oh! It occurs to me that Anon knew where the hole had gone, but just so Shadow has the same information, it looks like the bottom of the bunker collapsed into a Rustside subway tunnel.
Sure you don't wanna make this easy and make it temporary or unstable?
No, I get to RP with Kay and B.... Hmmmm
I'm doing this from memory at 1 am, please don't nerd-crucify me for the details....
I promise that any comments have nothing to do with pedantry, and only to do with clarifying how that all went down in the Bron/Bran-verse :-D
(And thanks for the opportunity to fill in some of that!)
Oh, I'm looking forward to Bran explaining, and Effy justifying his actions.
Yeah, interesting that Bran's staying quiet...
Wing and I are working on a 'Later That Night' scene, but in the meantime, would folk prefer if just we got everyone home and fed? I don't want to fast-forward past scenes (especially since it's not like Bronwyn at least doesn't kinda **need** to have some chats with folk, even if it's not right now), but also don't want y'all to feel like you have to do a beat-by-beat if it's not feeling interesting/important.
Oh hey, speaking of prophets - there was a time-gap between setting up the plan and the ambush/meeting itself. Is it okay if I assume that Alexandra mentioned the Watis/Seer that she'd been getting visions of at some point during that?
Alexis currently has nowhere to go aside from following Bronwyn. They're hungry enough to agree to go back to the penthouse, if just to clean up and get fed. They will be squirrelly about spending too much time there. And will start to get anxious about not having their armor.
Absolutely okay. Kinda missed that we didn't see them in all the excitement.
So I'm wondering if we should discuss what we should think about doing for the next arc? I know things are probably difficult for everyone this month, and I hope that everyone is doing as best as they can.
Wingblade's got an upcoming story arc, but there's room for something to come between the big Balor story, such as the fallout and anything else someone wants to explore.
After some consideration, it seems appropriate that school would be cancelled on Tuesday after the big Balorina offensive Monday night. Some school districts get snow days; Halcyon school districts get supervillain days.
Well, for Alexis, potential scenes include:
-More conversations with Bronwyn about having her face;
-Getting in touch with Kaoru and getting their armor back;
-Figuring out a new place to live they feel comfortable in.
If there's anything else people want to do with Alexis, let me know so we can work something out!
I can run something if people want. It would make sense to have it coincide with ending the month-long mandatory trial period.
Though one thing that I have on my mind is the upcoming holidays; between Thanksgiving, Chrisma-Chanu-Kwanizka, and New Years, pbps tend to slow down immensely near this time of year. As such, it seems to me like it might make sense to postpone starting a new arc/stay in general freeform mode until after the IRL holidays.
I'm also in favor of the "Tuesday is a day off" idea. I've got a couple of K things/errands to do, and if K has the day off of school, it's easier to push forward on them.
I'm struggling with figuring out how to transition Alexis to a new scene at the moment. Mostly waiting on others to contact her for the Tuesday off. If anyone has a suggestion I would be open to it.
Planning on syncing up with Alexis soon, but also wanted to check in on a uh, dangling detail. What did Alexandra do with Bran's head once Bron and Alexis were gone?
Possible details left out when Shayera was briefing Whip:
- Identity of Camila being Efnysien's host
- Fact that Camila still is Efnysien's host
- Bran being beheaded
- Bronwyn becoming her own superhero persona
- Alexis' rebirth/who she looks like now
- Kaoru's supercar
- Alexandra's near-death sickness
Any thoughts/preferences on whether any of this (or anything else I might have overlooked) remains a secret?
I had honestly thought she had handed over Carnwennan and Bran's head over...but I think if not, she forgot he was in her bag, and is currently under a towel in her room, so as not to give her mother a heart attack.
I don't think Alexis would want Wingblade to lie to Whip about them. It's necessary to them that people know who they are, at least in the inner circle.
I assume Whip will know of the Triakosia's involvement, or at least Wingblade will confirm their role in the events.
So, I 100% laid out those tarot cards because I couldn't decide which ones I liked best for the traditional Magic "ask 900 questions". and it legit had The Tower at the centre. Isn't life funny.
Camila as Efnysien's host seems like it should go in. Still being his host? Maybe omitted...
Bran being beheaded and Bronwyn planning on caping as herself should definitely be disclosed though.
I'm not sure if Shayera will be able to stay quiet on the fact that Efnysien and Camila are still merged. She still feels responsible for that, and will seek to have it undone ASAP. She'd be telling Whippoorwill to call in her mystical contacts to get ready for an exorcism.
Hey it was your list :-p
And, (in my head, anyway), the list was, Shayera either tells Whip that Effy possessed Camila and is still in her, or she says that Effy possessed someone and is still in them.
So, you've probably worked out by now that I'm pulling the trigger, and retiring Alexandra. I've deliberated a long time on this, but, while she's been fun, but honestly the constant negativity was starting to be draining back in spring..
Which means, we need to replace her. I have 3 replacements in varying tones, depending on how we wanna push the game.
Dark tone
Riley Jensen, The Harbinger (Telekinesis and Telepathy)
"I'm from a rough temporal neighborhood"
Halcyon city, 2091: the city, and in fact the entire eastern seaboard, suffers under the reign of spectacle, super-terrorist who became the de-facto rulers. They and their supporters, subservient parahumans, live in luxury, and want for nothing, while most citizens live in fear of crossing, irritating, or catching the eye of a super. The United Nations has conceded they are insuffiently powerful to intervene, and the united states east of the Mississippi, and Canada East of Manitoba, have been accepted as a sovereign state, the world's first parahuman neo-Feudal Monarchy. The Spectacle were unassailable.
But now there's a chance! A resistance movement including a super-Genius has developed a form of time travel that can correct for paradox. It was bulky, temporally, and only accurate to a year, but equipped on an agent, it could take them to the one place the Spectacle could be beaten: Halcyon City, 2019!
Pros:
* I like the idea of considering dark/Victorious/(adjective) timelines for our characters, and the Harbinger lets us do that
* Fish out of water is fun, and she would be in the sense of learning to live in the past.
* C’mon, don’t tell me you can’t see our characters accidentally creating a big ol’ international incident ooopsie that kicks off the bad timeline.
Cons:
* This game needs a new storyline like it needs amateur trepanning.
* difficult to integrate quickly (maybe not)
Neutral tone
Madeleine Roux The Nova (Also Telepathy and TK
“And I only got $100 for it too!”
Maddie Was a pretty normal kid, by halcyon standards. She has a 13.6 kg telekinesis, and a short range though-scan, but was registered as having such (After getting caught cheating, but, you know…) and took her tests in the telepath room. She had a nice life, an older brother who really wished his sister wasn’t the one sticking up for him most of the time, honors level classes that were surprisingly easy if you could hear the other students processing it parallel to your brain,
But that changed earlier tonight, when she answered a reaver-tech ad, asking for psychics to participate in a test of a new tele-kill alloy (items to reduce telepathy and precognition were massively important in the international intelligence community, and in Vegas. Maddie could use the easy cash, so she agreed… and of course, this being Reaver, it was a lie, and a front for a trial of a power-enhancing drug. They took trials as a baseline, and injected her with the agent, their intention hidden behind a very good telekill headset.
It seems to have worked a little too well…
Pros
* Already established character (ish)
* Keys off existing storylines
* fish out of water is fun, and she’s completely new to heroine-ing
* a character with a family! And a house! Cause Wing’s penthouse is getting crowded!
Cons:
* keying off Alexis/Shayera’s storyline could be a negative
* the most generic of the three
Light tone
Lady Acrasia of the Autumnal Court/ Eábha The Outsider (Stunning Beauty, Radical shapeshifting)
“That’s neat!”
Once, upon another continent, the Tuatha De Danann ruled as kings of the most beautiful isle in this world. After driving the Fomor to the seas, and taking control of the isles of Avalon and the beautiful far and near realm of Tir Na Nog, They lived alongside the humans thence. And as long as those people remembered them, they provided for the humans.
But time is to the memory of mortals, as the sea is to shore. It erodes and smooths and eventually, they faded from knowledge, into legend, and then to myth. They joined the Olympians, and Tiamat and Astarte, not forgotten, but not able to be real.
Until one of them, one who had been young when they were replaced, felt something, near and yet across the seas. A little tug of the magic so familiar to them, a path through the hedge, and into the world so long denied to them. There must have been a great outpouring of energie from some survivor of the great forgetting. Eábha stepped through, Sidhe feet touching true earth for the first time in centuries, in a desolated battlefield, desecrated by horrible and violent magiks, The fomor were in this world too. But that was little concern, Eábha was here, and it was time to have some fun…
Pros:
* I like the idea of a character whose primary trait is wonder
* Fish out of water are fun, and this is someone who was last on earth in the late fifth century
* we’ve had Welsh and Scottish, so let’s complete the trifecta
Cons:
* might bite into the mythology thing B has
* it’s a friggin Fairy!
Prons:
* the shapeshifting and accompanying gender weirdness originally would have probably irritated Kay and Alexis (irritating Kay is a feature, not a bug) but right now, it might interrupt the whole “unexpected sex change” thing
So, I’m looking for feedback and thoughts and the like. It’ll be a hot second before I officially hang up the Shadow’s hat, but I’d like to start the convo now.
I think I like the Harbinger idea the most. I don't see how you can say it'd be hard to integrate. A person from the future sent back to change bad outcomes generally means you just drop in out of nowhere.
-I'd often wondered about what Wingblade's future could be like, and what she could become -- especially in a dark future. I like the thought of her being around, some sort of dark enforcer... called "Broken Wing" or something like that.
-It's dark, definitely, but there's always room for levity.
My close number two would be the Outsider. It depends on how Bron feels, but I don't think it's too close to the other myths we've already dealt with -- in fact, it seems to me like a natural progression of the various myths we've already had show up. (Remember, we've also had Thor Girl in this game).
-I'm most lukewarm on the Nova, just because we've had a *lot* of Novas in this game with fair to middling success. (Granted, we've had a lot of Outsiders, too.)
Yeah, I think I put that badly. Basically, she comes from out of the blue, and she kinda has no "real" life, and that would taek a while, and until then, she's all super... that could be fun, but we kinda just did that with Lex.
I figured wing and Mercy would still be around (just on the assumption that regenerators don't tend to age). though, to my mind, Broken Wing is the revolution-member who failed to stop the SPectacle, maybe eve was left alive as Cruel Mercy. Evil wing would have a more victorious name, after all, the spectacle are the heroes of the narrative they live in.
Well, yeah. no such thing as no jokes.
I do remember Thor girl. Our tenures briefly overlapped (back when there was 1 GM). I was trying to kinda have a different version of her. Eabha would have, for example, Alien tech, Alien ways, and Either The best of them or Not so different, and have no contact with the rest of the Sidhe to start with
Yeah, the Nova is probably the most Generic, which is a boon and a curse, she fits into our world easily, but it means she adds less.
I think the intro scenarios would be, respectively:
"Wingblade, Two hours ago, Foresight started having a migraine he has yet to recover from, and 3 minutes ago, our database was hit by something almost impossible, that breezed right through Matrix's encryption. Be on the lookout, it's likely that a rogue agent from another time or reality is active in the city"
"Wingblade, one minute twenty six seconds ago, we received a phone call on the defenders public line. it claimed to be a young super who is experiencing a loss of control of her powers. she expresses concern she migth hurt somebody... and you are closer than we are. it's at {address}, she reports standard psychic array 2 as her power set."
"Kaoru, our system has pinged a number of Strange calls to HCPD. it would seem that a UNY Hancyon party has been going on for some 3 days. normally this would be just another day, but 26 separate police vehicles have been unable to find this party, and 4 officers have disappeared after going to investigate. Your team in plainclothes will be more able to investigate without tipping off whoever is behind this."
My preference would be for Outsider then Nova then Harbinger, chosen solely because of tone. It's not that I can't handle a dark tone; it's just not a direction I'm personally interested in engaging in.
I also wouldn't worry about stepping on the sex change thing; the majority of the things I'm interested in exploring are internal struggles. As such, it's very much going to be a plot around how Kaoru feels about suddenly being male. Other people changing sex is kind of irrelevant to it.
My playing Eábha (pronounced Ava) would be contingent upon Cwethan being cool with it. but she does seem fun.
I'm good for Eábha :-) (And generally have the same priority queue as Anon)
I will say that one of the assumptions I've been working with is that there really **aren't** a lot of gods wandering around, and that they've largely been shut away from the mortal realm for quite a while.
So far all of the Bran-band (and Circe too actually) has been about either figuring out a cheaty way to stay alive through millennia (Circe), or trying very hard to find a way of sneaking past that barrier. (Balor's possession stuff, Bran and his predecessors passing on [Whatever it turns out is involved in Bronwyn's Mantle] but not being able to easily stick around themselves.
Thor Girl fits into this weirdly, but she was also a sufficiently-advanced-alien kind of god (mostly), so she didn't really conflict with the vibe of "The gods aren't just hanging around, and it's hard now for them to do stuff here."
Buuuuut we just had a whole arc where Balor did his absolute best to break a bunch of the rules that are supposed to help prevent that so he could have his very own Efnysien-assassin. Which if that means the gates are open wider now...
Well it opens up a lot of stories, and also helps make sure that Eábha has full on Outsider status too if it's been a long time since anyone from their neck of the woods was around here.
That already sounds like where you're thinking of heading, but I figured with us leaning into more mythic stuff, at least touching base on what assumptions I'm working from would be good :-)
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I remembered. In my head, the gods that don't bodyhop (cause... Circe, Balor, even Bran all did that) become... not real. They still exist, unless they're forgotten, but they can't be in this world. (I've been listening to American gods while consigned to paperwork at work). You'd never specified what happened to the gods who didn't cheat, but it felt in line with the elsewhere scenes.
I tried to say it in the blurb, but that was a lot, but it was explicitly the events of that night that let Eabha (I need to find a key for the little accent on the a) escape that unreality into ours, though I was going to leave it ambiguous if that was Effy being summoned or Bron's Moment of Truth.
Okay, so strong contender in The Outsider. Gonna wait on Alexis
Altering my Bran plans a bit since Alexandra's leaving the team. You mind if his head is in the duffle?
By all means.
Okay, so I've got a few scenes on the To-Do-between-arcs list, and figured I'd toss 'em up. Seems easier to make sure they happen, and make sure we aren't kinda meandering through what would happen next in a strict chronology.
Legacy stuff:
What's Going on with Bran's Head?
Oh God What's Camila Doing Now?
Bronwyn Forges her Armor.
Loved Ones stuff:
How did Mary-Beth get away from the Balorinas?
Moving in with the Hernandezes.
Oh God What's Camila Doing Now?
Wingblade stuff:
Recognizing Vulnerability - Mending a Broken Wing
Recognizing Vulnerability - "You should really learn how to fight."
Alexis stuff:
Twinsies! "So your hair still grows really fast, right?"
[Housing stuff? I don't know if you have plans here.]
Kaoru stuff:
"Is he mad at me?" "Oh, he is definitely mad at me."
But maybe forging a sword?
Maybe having Chloe mediate from afar?
Scenes involving the introduction of Eábha.
Possibly the return of NPC-Hex
I don't think Alexandra is Quite done, as that seems a very sad note to leave on, but I had a basic idea for Eábha's intro, whenever the villain-day is over.
On the villain-day, while Eábha explores the new world, she meets a group of people roughly her age (for best team-collision course, Ronnie, Marco, Kyle, Portia, Renae, or some combination thereof) and has used her glamour to seem human, because they seem fun. Bron can, of course, see through glamour, and the others might spot the threads on what is wrong with her disguise and story.
notes?
I like the Outsider, it's a fun character to play with and the lightness makes a nice contrast to Alexandra's departing noir cynicism.
Exploring the twin angle with Bronwyn will be important, as Alexis 100% struggles with identity issues and now becoming someone they knows, even imperfectly is weird as heck.
I think that they'll concede to stay at the penthouse now, considering that since the Triakosia know they're with the team anyways, it's better to face them somewhere as reinforced as Shayera's place than, say, the burnt out remnants of Bronwyn's family home. Seeing the sheer amount of collateral damage that they were responsible for the previous day, this would make sense to them.
As for Kaoru, Alexis still needs to get their armor back from him. Though, if Kaoru wanted to probe Alexis on any of the gender stuff, I'm game for a scene like that.
I'd like to get Wingblade back to talking with others. It feels like it had been a long time since she talked with anyone besides Bronwyn for a long scene (the one with Alexandra was nice, if sad). So I'm hopeful for some scenes with Alexis and Kaoru at some point (and our new Outsider, of course).
I've got a couple scenes in mind between Shayera and Whippoorwill, her father, and her sisters that will set up some stuff going forward, but those I have to spread out some.
Altering my Bran plans a bit since Alexandra's leaving the team. You mind if his head is in the duffle?
I meant I had imagined the duffel on the table... don't know if I explicitly said where it was... Just though the head being on the table was funnier
We cool with a crossfade to the junkyard?
Very
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From the East coast, welcome to 2021, and a blessed f*** off to 2020
Hear! Hear!
On the villain-day, while Eábha explores the new world, she meets a group of people roughly her age (for best team-collision course, Ronnie, Marco, Kyle, Portia, Renae, or some combination thereof) and has used her glamour to seem human, because they seem fun. Bron can, of course, see through glamour, and the others might spot the threads on what is wrong with her disguise and story.
If the group grows there at the ice cream shop, would you like to include Yu Hiu, since she's taken a liking to Marco? Maybe they could show up later?
Yeah, makes sense. Was mostly just doing an intro so that when we hit tomorrow, we kinda know where she is.
Cool. Quick reminder, "Ronnie" is actually short for Veronica.
And Kyle is gay, the eyes staring is a result of having "Stunning beauty" in her powerset. She's not empathetic enough to understand why she shouldn't walk around with it constantly up.
I'm ready to move forward to Tuesday whenever you all are.