What would your heroes do about this...?

[Polaris]

Greetings,

 

In a superhero game I played in a while ago, our heroes were confronted by an alien that pointed out that our ambitious attempts at fighting 'crimes against humanity' was limited to the crimes being committed by other nations (not our own). One of the characters was European, so she did not have much difficulty accepting that our heroes ignored crimes done by the US.

 

Please note that this thread is *not* meant to be about who is to blame or the politics of what happened at the Iraqi prison, but as I saw the news it reminded me of that game story.

 

I am curious as to whether your characters would give more slack (allow the US to conduct its own investigation and trust that justice will be served, or to ignore it all together) because the acts were done by the US and/or UK compared to if the torture had been done by Saddam Hussein, or someone outside of the government (such as EuroStar or Dr. Destroyer)?

 

For my part, prior to that game story, I would say my character would have 'given more slack' to the US. This is not because the character is nationalistic (he is of average patriotism I would say), but rather it is just so much easier to instinctively see acts of other governments as 'crimes', while the acts of the US as "necessary evils". It also seems that our group saw it as reasonable to have the US take care of investigating and punishing its own crimes (something we would have never done with Iraq, Iran or North Korea--the 'axis of evil').

 

As I *love* stories that cause characters to question their basic beliefs, that story was a very fun game to play in, and my character grew a lot as a hero (and I did as a role player).

 

Polaris

[Blue]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Uncle Slam is an employee of the U.S. government; he's a super-powered liason to civilian super-teams, currently on assignment to THE KEEP, superprison to re-engineer their security following a break in (by the campaign's super-team).

 

After many years and many wars, he is at a place where he feels that only evil can come from standing by and letting your allies or your country perform evil. Liberty is liberty for EVERYONE, not just for us. If he found a scandal or crime, he'd handle it.

 

Anthem is on such a small scale that it would never come up. But if innocent people being hurt were involved, you can bet she'd step in.

 

Audra Blue would leak such information to the press, make sure that everyone was kept on their best behavior.

[ZootSoot]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Armando: Is a citizen of Costa Rica. If Costa Rica commits crimes against humanity he would be all over the investigation.

 

Sword Dancer: Given her family's experience in Korea she would never ignore the crimes of her own country.

 

Crimson Tide: Isn't going to sweat about crimes against humanity unless he is specifically drawn into it. It isn't a field that worries him regardless of who is doing it.

 

Gangway: Would be as concerned about such crimes, but she doesn't make distinctions between types of violent crime. She doesn't care if she is looking at assault or an instance of government sanctioned genocide, she's going to stop the particular act she has witnessed.

 

Luna's grandfather was a Nazi party member and an officer at an extermination camp. No one gets any slack from her (Luna is little like her world's Jenny Sparks).

[Mentor]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Cyberknight is a power armored industrialist/scientist in the USAF reserves until recently activated for Bosnia peacekeeping duty, but since returned stateside. He is a total idealist and would cut no slack whatsoever to protect crimes by the US.

 

Prodigy is a 900 year old Psionic and one of the founders of the Knights Templar. Following the atrocities of the Crusades, some commited by himself, he has renounced killing absolutely. He feels no more affiliation to the US than to the no longer existent Outremer of his birth, and while not a killer, has happily been involved in manipulation of governments for centuries to further the cause of good. He is almost as cynical as Cyberknight is idealistic. Thus crimes by the US would be as readily dealt with as crimes by Nigeria or Bulgaria.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

I don't think any of my characters would cut their nation of origin any slack about crimes against humanity. Evil's evil.

[ChuckB]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Usually, in the comics , when a govt. is comitting an atrocity, it's usually some secret project or dept. with an excess of money, free time and not enough oversight (like Project: Wideawake or International Operations from Wildstorm) and it's usually busted up by superheroes with that same governments blessing.

 

The exceptions are the the Axis powers in golden-age comics and silver-age

iron curtain countries or analog countries where the respective governments were portrayed as evil (and rightly so).

 

Maybe it stems from political correctness, but you never see evil governments anymore unless they're fictitious (Latveira, Genosha, Bialya, etc).

[Trebuchet]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Zl'f fled post-communist Russia in 2000 because she would not be forced to become a government super-agent. While she is proud of her Russian heritage, she holds herself to an ideal of justice that supercedes the realpolitik of any modern nation-state although she has helped Russia deal with crises at least twice. (Of course, she has helped the authorities of over a score of other nations as well.)

[McCoy]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Millennium sees himself as the current incarnation of the Hero With a Thousand Faces, and sees his responsability to set an example for Humanity, not just Americans. He has been involved in busting "Black Ops" and bad cops before.

 

Iron Will and Cheetah are both pragmitist. While neither would seek out American crimes against humanity, neither would they turn a blind eye if they came accross them.

 

Dolphin and Snow Leopard are more concerned with crimes against ecology than humanity, and cut Americans no slack. (British either, Snow Leopard is a subject of the British Commonwealth as well as an American citizen).

[assault]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Assault is Australian, not American, but his response would be the same.

 

Basically, he is more concerned with what "his own" government does than what others do. This extends to closely allied governments like those of the USA and the UK.

 

This, incidentally, is why he would fight against any heroes that decided to pull an Authority.

[Vex]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Adrenaline would use the media to highlight the issue at hand, same as he would in a foreign country.

 

Rift, being a peace officer would take the perps down, same as any other criminal. Maybe even worse if it were another crime fighter or law enforcement agent.

 

Hecabus would probably be behind the corruption, but he would have a good reason for it. Definately an "end justifies the means" kind of guy.

[st barbara]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

"St Barbara" is Danish, and proud of it ! The LAST people she would cut any slack if they were commiting "crimes against humanity" (especially if it involved harming women or children) is her own government ! She would be just as unlikely to let the U S A get away with anything as she is a believer in the concept of the United Nations and before she gained super powers worked for UNICEF. The contempt shown by George W for the U N of late would be very likely to get her angry, so any U S "superpatriot" who gave her a hard time would get short shrift ! Let's just say that "St Barbara" TRIES to be reasonable, but has a passionate nature with all together too many "triggers" which can set her off !

[Vorsch]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Revealing goverment corruption that could bring down an administration is I think more likely to be done against foriegn Govs than your own. Would you really completely f*** your own country or would you be more open to compromise.

 

Realisticaly most of my characters would cut there own gov some slack.

[Chuckg]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

If my character found "crimes against humanity" being committed by an individual or individuals within the US government(*), she would act out against them in the full assurance that the due process of law would back her up, as America holds its own accountable for their crimes.

 

If I found out that in the campaign world, America was actually secretly rotten as a whole, and the DM fully intended to run some type of Earth-Wildstorm thing where the US was secretly the bad guys or had moral rot and hypocrisy running all the way up to the top, I'd walk from the campaign. I play this game for fun, and if it stops being fun, then I'm outta there. And yet another dumb-ass "everybody is corrupt, [insert current President's name here] is really Hitler" plot would be *NOT FUN*.

 

 

(*) She's not actually a US citizen, but she's also got amnesia, and given that she was found in Millennium City and speaks American-accented English, everyone's operating on the presumption that she's native. Actually, she's Canadian.

 

And if you think that this is making it nigh-impossible to track down any records of her, what with everyone looking in the wrong place, then you're landed exactly upon why I wrote that part in.

[farik]

Re: What would your heroes do about this...?

 

Husky would pretend he heard nothing of it. His world is black and white good and evil and he avoids any murky issues of morality versus patriotism. He's going to pretend nothing happened unless he's drawn in on a very personal level and then he's going to act like the bravado infused unstoppable brick he is. He'll stop the people who are hurting others but he's not going to do anything like go looking for atrocities or even check up on the people he stopped.

 

Kenneth would agaonize over the intellectual arguement and then take a dose of Husky serum to get away from his conflicted overactive mind.