Between Mark's unerring direction sense and Spiro's persuasive abilities, the pair make their way quickly to the examination room, where they find the Doctors and Jasper wrapping up and leaving. Words are exchanged, presumably free of violence, and the band manages to variously arrange their way through the turmoil and out of the hospital.
A short walk to the north, aided by Jasper and Mark, arrives comfortably our of the way of the rapidly growing ring of police and emergency vehicles surrounding the hospital, leaving the band standing by an empty parking lot. A short buzz and the sound of midi music alert Mark to the stolen phone in his pocket, which has begun ringing. The screen displays a phone number and the name "Kaz".
@Mark: Mark saw the Divine Doctors head to the elevators with the body, but they seem to be out of range of his scent at the moment.
Spiro's method of crowd control might be unconventional, but it's certainly no less effective for it. People calm down and line up without even realizing what they're doing, and the staff herd them in the appropriate directions. A couple of the paramedics pause to throw thumbs-up Spiro's direction, and while some of the other staff seem less amused they go about their much easier duties.
Ah, my apologies, I had initially read that as a proposed plan rather than an action.
Mark and Spiro find their conversation rudely interrupted as the speakers blare throughout the building. "All Staff be advised, Code Black on Floor Four. Repeat, Code Black on Floor Four." The Emergency Room grows even more chaotic as newly arrived police try to herd patients and staff, frequently in directly opposite directions of the efforts of Hospital employees. Mark and Spiro find themselves quickly ushered outside if they don't try to stop it, meanwhile Jasper and the Doctors find themselves apparently abandoned in the exam room.
Nice. Should be five successes, 10s count for two. She put her phone in her purse, but Mark can easily lift it with that roll if he wants, and without her noticing.
She leaps back a step as Mark bumps her, expression wide-eyed and wild for an instant before composing herself again. She nods, "Yes, I'm fine... Excuse me." Unless stopped, she steps past Mark and hurries out the door.
"Er, thank you... and no, I was just here running an errand, actually. And I should be getting back, I'll probably be late as it is. It was very nice meeting you, Spiro." She finishes the last few words quickly, while turning, and steps swiftly toward the doors.
Though the corpse is little more than charred bones, Tocal manages to salvage a number of details. The victim looks to have been a male in his early thirties, malnourished but not unhealthy. The right radius appears to have been scraped with a needle at some point. Francis, while collecting his samples, also discovers an intact titanium stud, likely part of a piece of jewelry at one point. The fractures are numerous but old, save for a fracture of the left zygomatic bone that appears to have occurred quite recently, the older fractures are also quite minor for the most part.
The woman shakes her head slightly but takes Spiro's hand, giving a surprisingly firm handshake. "I don't think so? I would remember, I think. I'm Dae..."
I took the liberty of making that roll for Jasper. Six successes on seven dice, apparently he sounds incredibly official. <g>
Jasper slices very efficiently through the red tape. Within half an hour he, Tocal, and Francis have been left alone in a brightly lit room with the remains, and the ER lobby has been cordoned off with lots of hazard tape and signs, causing a bit of a traffic jam in the lobby as staff work to get patients rerouted.
The girl blinks at Spiro, her eyes focusing away from the scene and onto him, a smile tugging nervously at her lips. "Er... yes. Very exciting morning. Um..." She straightens and squares her shoulders, slipping her phone back into her purse. "I'm sorry... you are..?" She appears to have made up her mind not to run at the moment, but Mark can easily make his way to the entrance behind her if he wishes. Security has just started to filter in and take charge of directing people, but with so many pressing them with stories and questions and explanations in half a dozen languages it seems unlikely the scene will be fully under control until the police arrive.
For stage performances, probably Charisma. I could be persuaded Dexterity if you're attempting to impress with technical precision rather than showmanship, but generally I'd say Charisma.
As Spiro's vision focuses again and he scans the room, a few things stand out brightly. Foremost are the visible thread of Fate wound around the other Scions, showing them instantly for what they are. Beyond that, though faint, the kanji on the charred scapula flickers with a dull flame. Scanning the room he spots another glow, even dimmer, a faint tracery of flame around the neckline of the Asian girl near the entrance.
Ah, cool. I had somehow missed that he was in this book. Thank you.
Mike winces slightly at the joke and chuckles, taking the cooler and looking at the tag on it before tearing off part of the invoice and signing it. "Man, what a day, huh?"
As he scans the crowd, Mark takes note of a woman watching from near the entrance doors; paying close, nervous attention to the Doctors looking over the burned man, as if waiting for something. She's short, with the build of a dancer, and features that might be korean or hmong. She clutches a cell phone in both hands, almost as if she's forgotten it's existence.
As he opens his senses to the Overworld there's a rather dizzying sensation as the scents and mental cues align with their targets. The two Doctors standing over the charred remains, the official but unobtrusive appearing man behind the desk... quite a bit of divine blood in one place here!
@Tocal:
Spoiler:
You have it with you, then, being here on "official" business you weren't searched.
Neither Francis nor Tocal recognize the man the newly charred remains belong to.
Mark easily makes his way through the crowd, particularly once they calm down and sort themselves into lines. A large man in Harley-Davidson emblazoned scrubs whose nametag identifies him as a RN name "Mike" spots him and walks over, shaking his head a little and looking at the cooler in Mark's hands. "Delivery, huh? Surgery or lunch?"
Francis mostly manages to spread the soot around with the blanket, though the film of water covering anything at least prevents the particulate from becoming airborne. A quick evaluation of the bones reveals little odd about their structure besides a few old, healed fractures. Sorting through them, however, something does catch Francis's eye: a mark on the scapula, faded blue like old tattoo ink, in the shape of a Japanese kanji.
Mark, Francis, and Tocal may all make Perception+Awareness rolls if they wish.
Up to you. It's an odd thing to carry around, but you're probably aware that the need to use it can pop up anytime.
The crowd falls silent almost instantly at the first word from Francis, unconsciously falling into orderly lines and following the nurse out toward the main entrance. He easily makes his way through the rapidly clearing space to the fallen remains of the man, still burning fiercely despite the torrent of water from above, charring a neatly human-shaped patch into the carpet, leaving only blackened bones and a faint scent like iron and cherry blossoms.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles. It's a bright, warm afternoon, and already the waiting area of the emergency room is crowded. Conversations in at least half a dozen different languages fill the air with a tense, confused tangle of words. Off toward the windows, a thin, shaky young man jumps to his feet suddenly, drawing little attention from the visitors near him... at least until a moment later, when with a whooshing, cracking sound he bursts into flame. The scents of ozone and burning flesh mix sickeningly with the antiseptic hospital smell, screams fill the air as visitors scatter away from the contained, human inferno, toppling over chairs and shoving at one another to get away. A couple of nurses rush out from the station on one side of the room, but appear paralyzed by the sight, a sturdy paramedic steps in front of some of the crowd trying to calm them and gets overrun almost immediately. The chaos is literally but not figuratively dampened a moment later as the fire alarm sounds and the sprinklers turn on.
And at your legend, you're not completely surprised to be dropped into ridiculous situations. <g>
Tocal and Francis:
Spoiler:
You've been in town a couple days, attending a medical conference you've been invited to. You just finished a long morning watching a new heart valve replacement procedure.
Jasper:
Spoiler:
You've come to LA, and subsequently to the hospital, trying to track down a former associate of yours, an FBI agent by the name of John Longfellow who left you a particularly cryptic voice mail last week. Your trail seems to have run cold here, and you were on your way out...
Spiro:
Spoiler:
You've just arrived at the hospital, looking for an errant roadie of yours whom you were told might be here. He's a fairly new hire, so it wouldn't be terrible if he dropped out and vanished, except he has the keys to all the equipment lockers...
Mark:
Spoiler:
Even in the mortal world, you seem to get the strangest deliveries. Working a few temp jobs after coming to LA to drop off a birthright for a daughter of Hephaestus, and this morning's job fell into your lap. A cooler full of hearts doesn't usually travel by bike messenger, but when the transport truck gets in a 32 car pileup on the freeway... and so you find yourself at Cedars-Sinai trying to navigate your way to someone who can help take this off your hands and sign for it.
We seem to have pretty solid characters, I'll try to get a starting post up tomorrow night if everyone is alright with that. Shouldn't be much mechanical stuff immediately, you're not being dropped straight into a combat and PBPs move at a fairly glacial pace, so should easily be time to polish characters before numbers matter much.
Oh, and starting equipment/resources is whatever fits for your character. Money can be useful to have in the World now and then, but the amount it can help against the kind of problems Scions have is limited. Even if a Scion is rich enough to field a private army, Fate is going to make sure the final battle comes down to him vs. the monster.
@Valegrim: Gotcha. Scions need item Birthrights to use their Purviews. One point birthright=access to one Purview. It'd be another point for the one-dot Sun boon, so you'd need to free up another point somewhere. The follower dots are pretty flexible, if it is just one soldier he'd be an extraordinarily skilled and powerful one, but there's nothing wrong with that, would save him from getting eaten immediately if he encounters Titanspawn.
@Valegrim: Characters who didn't grow up in a wealthy country probably didn't go to school or drive. <g> However, you're children of the Gods, and unless you do so yourself for RP purposes you'll never have to worry about mundane things. You roll the dice when you want to do something Epic. Of course, the point of Scion is generally to be trying to do something Epic...
Jasper looks good, the only thing I see offhand is that you don't have a Birthright down for your Sun purview. Also, are the three dots of Follower just for Scott, or is it a unit?
We are. Hoping to start sometime this coming week. And glad you can make it, if it were just the two Doctors I'd have to rework the game as an Epic medical drama. <g>
@fraust: Sounds fun. You'll likely be starting off in the U.S., though it'll likely be a fairly globe-trotting game.
@beckett: Supernatural happenings and Scions are not so common yet as to be public knowledge, though with the Titans free strange things have certainly picked up. Most Scions will have had Fatebinding explained during their visitation, it's up to them how public they make their powers but most currently active Scions try to avoid too much attention.
The Legend of 3 does not come out of your bonus points, and Legend cannot be bought with bonus points or XP. Legend will be awarded through deeds ingame, in my experience it just works alot better that way.
Any of you who want can decide you know each other beforehand, if Fate has pulled you together before the game starts all the better. If not, it will shortly do so, so no worries. You can decide how much of the supernatural world you've seen/had explained to you, though the Occult ability will likely be the roll for random knowledge ingame.
And a fairly comedic character is fine, plenty of comic relief in mythology. Especially Thor!
@Tocal: Looks like we have a couple of Doctors, that should make for interesting roleplaying, considering their backgrounds. Fun!
@LackofFocus: Sounds fun, and looks like lots of stuff the group could use.
@Scranford: Either one would fit in. Haven't seen any character sheets yet besides feytharn's, but it looks like both might add some things the group is short on.
@feytharn: Sounds good. And you can just note what languages you know, it's pretty much FX.
Partial text of page 63 of Hero: "A God cannot adopt a mortal and make him a Scion in this way. Only a being whose body contains mortal flesh and divine ichor-regardless of whose divine ichor it is-can be adopted thus." Further text there: "The Gods can't simply poach each other's offspring, however, even when one divine parent is unaware of a child's existence. In order for the adoption to be formal and binding, the child's true parent must first formally disinherit them him in the Overworld, utterly renouncing his filial connection and responsibility. After that, any God or Goddess who has a mind to can claim the child-the culmination of which is a Visitation and the bestowal of birthrights."
@Valegrim: I'm unfamiliar with Burn Notice, but I like the concept. There's an Epic Intelligence knack called Language Mastery that'd let him be the ultimate translator. Especially fitting if he worked in that capacity before getting his divine powers.
@Feytharn: Looks good to me. Only problem I see offhand is that Heku doesn't require a birthright, so you've got an extra point to play with there.
Spoiler:
I'd guess that Osiris hasn't told him that he's actually the child of a God, so as to seem all the more generous for "adopting" him?
All Companion stuff is fine with the exception of the WWII pantheons. I might be persuaded to allow a Scion from one if you have a really cool idea, but generally I don't like them. Yazata is on the table as well if anyone wants to go that route. Also, the Gods and Purviews from Ragnarok are allowed.
@Valegrim: Cheerful sneaky types abound in Scion, you could easily pull one out of any Pantheon. It's worth noting that Scion is not WoD, either in setting or game mechanics, so not knowing the nWoD stuff isn't a bad thing.
You've already received your visitations and birthrights and such ( I love playing out visitations, but I don't think it's good for this format), and you've probably been asked by your Pantheon or allies to go take care of a problem or two before. Personality types... I'm mostly concerned about the group functioning together. Tension within the party is fine, violence within the party should be avoided. Criminally insane types alongside crusaders for Justice should likely be avoided, though either would be fine in the right group.
While their reasons for doing so might vary from altruism/heroism to a sense of duty to just a desire to not have their divine toys taken away, the characters should be willing to go solve problems and fight titanspawn and save the world.
Discussion thread up. Feel free to throw character ideas and such around in there, interested to see what people have.
@Beckett: I've never noticed a huge issue with Dex. Untouchable Opponent was very broken, and Dodge had issues. It'd be hard to do real damage with only a high Dex and no Strength unless you're fighting relatively fragile titanspawn. My issue with Stamina is that it doesn't do much at Hero level.
All characters start with a Legend of 3, Legend may not be bought with bonus points.
If a Scion has a single Follower, Creature, or Guide, it has a Legend score equal to the Scion's Legend minus two. If the Scion has two to five Followers, Creatures, or Guides, they each have Legend equal to her Legend score minus three. Scions with more than five Followers, Creatures, and Guides find that those companions have Legend equal to her own Legend score minus four.
Remove Legend from the Dodge DV formula. Die adders do not increase DV.
The Untouchable opponent knack now allows a Scion to spend one Legend whenever they are attacked to add their Epic Dexterity dots to their DV.
Firearms add Perception and Epic Perception to weapon damage.
Knockback and knockdown apply to anything that seems reasonable. The Cat's Grace knack prevents knockdown, but not knockback.
Seems to be enough interest to get off the ground. I'll put up an OOC thread tonight. All characters start with a Legend of 3, Legend may not be bought with bonus points. Should we ever get out of Hero level, Creatures and Followers will gain power with you, so as not to be a complete waste of points. Only a couple of house rules beyond that, I'll have the full list in the discussion thread.
Excellent, looks like we may have a few people. I'd probably want to shoot for a post a day, if that seems reasonable. My work gives me a bizarre and unpredictable schedule, so unfortunately my own posts are likely to be in the middle of the night for U.S. time zones.
Salutations! Something a little different, I'm interested in running a pbp of White Wolf's Scion. Any fans of the game wandering around here who'd be interested in playing?
I think what I'm taking away from this is your experience with APs is going to be quite different based on the people you're playing with. Which of course is true for roleplaying in general, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I'm midway through running Council of Thieves right now and it's been an absolute blast, the players have really gotten invested in Westcrown and the NPCs (as well as alot of other NPCs I've had to make up for them). I've been able to keep a very sandboxy feel to the game, and generally let people do what they want without killing the mods, which is really neat, and it's been very easy to write engaging sidequests for them. We had an abortive RotR game a long while back, people just weren't interested, though I've recently started another shot at it as a player, so we'll see.
Looking through other APs, I think my group would really dig Kingmaker, and that may be next on my plate. I expect they'd lose interest in Second Darkness midway through, but I've been in groups that would absolutely love it. The APs in general seem to succeed quite admirably in giving something for everybody. I'm looking forward to Carrion Crown as well, I think I can get my players interested in some gothic horror pretty quickly.
Just started Burnt Offerings. Short session, but lots of fun.
The party thus far:
Tosca: CN Female H-Orc Druid. Adopted daughter of a Sandpoint farming family. Greatly admires Ameiko, and had finally worked up the courage to pack up her things and her pet boar Abeka and go adventuring... just as soon as the Festival was over. Is so far rather delighted that adventure seems to have come to her instead.
Emaleth: CN Female Human (Varisian) Rogue. Sandpoint native, recently returned from a couple years in the big city. A rather brutal fighter, she racked up the most dead goblins during the raid. Further endeared herself to the already smitten Aldern by scoring the kill during the boar hunt as well.
Soren: CG Male H-Elf Barbarian. A haunted, piratical youth from Riddleport, in Sandpoint trying to track down his absentee Elven father. Possibly Tsuto's half-brother. Cynical, but the most altruistic of the band.
Tragh: N Female H-Orc Oracle. Raised in an orc tribe, has followed frustratingly vague visions to Sandpoint. Uncertain about human culture and uncomfortable around all but Tosca. Appears as an old crone despite her young age due to her Wasting curse. Proved surprisingly good with children during the Festival.
It's been a fun group so far. Looking forward to seeing what kind of havoc the mod wreaks on us next time.
