Street Level NYC heros

[hooligan x]

I am running a vigilante murder sub-plot for Team F-up. So far, they haven't really run into any street level heros. They know the New Challengers, who are my Avengers, but no solo guys. My question is how many freelancers typically operate in a huge city like NYC? It's set in 2056, but that shouldn't make much of a difference. How many Marvel guys are based out of NYC?

 

In town right now are:

 

La Pistolera- Dark Champs style crime fighter. Think El Mariachi as a woman.

 

American Spider- 2 Marvel ripoffs in one!

 

Madelyn Belmont- Monster hunter, in town for the hunt. Has met the PCs and is related to a former member of Team F-up.

 

Do I need more to flesh out the town?

[MitchellS]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

I would say Marvel New York has around 20 heroes in it. Shroud, Moonknight, Daredevil, Nighthawk, and Falcon are just a few of the normal heroes in the city.

[Kyle A.]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

The X-Men, Spider-Man, the Avengers.

[Speedball]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

The X-Men' date=' Spider-Man, the Avengers.[/quote']

 

I'm not sure any of those qualify as "street level," exactly.

 

But I'd go as high as 50 or 75, given NYC's current population of 8.25 million. By the year of your campaign, the population should reach 10 million easily. 50 or 75 street level heroes among a population that large doesn't seem excessive to me, (about one every 130,000 people) especially given the targets available for villains to attack.

[Kyle A.]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

No none of them even remotely qualify as street level, I was just listing some of the other heroes Marvel has stationed in NY. There's so many you can't spit off the Empire State building without hitting at least one hero.

[garou]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

I'd say that only 50-75 is actually very low. If you are talking about the number of low-powered heroes (and talented normal types), then there are probably several hundred, possibly close to a thousand.

 

Spidey can web all over town, and home in on trouble with his Spidey sense, but "Mad Guns Malone" is limited to patrolling twice a week, in his old Chevy, listening to his police scanner and hoping to come across crime.

 

It's times like this that I really feel the need for a massive character archive, with hundreds of characters.

[hooligan x]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

It's times like this that I really feel the need for a massive character archive' date=' with hundreds of characters.[/quote']

 

Well, If everyone posts five names and basic info, we'll have a good start. No points, just description, major powers, and motive. Gimme a few minutes and I'll post my five.

[MitchellS]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

Well Dark Champions: the Animated Series contains: The Answer, Dark Angel, Trickshot, Cape and Cowl Investigations [Hawkshaw & Heavy-Hitter], and Scarlet. Their descriptions can be found in the DC forum.

[hooligan x]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

La Pistolera Rumored to be the vengeful spirit of a murdered woman, La Pistolera stalks the streets of NYC, bringing justice to those who’s money and connections have kept them above man’s law. Dressed in black, she appears only to those she hunts. Her silver revolvers speak for her.

 

Madelyn Belmont She was ten when she found out her family trade. Vampire hunting. For centuries, the oldest son was trained and equipped to fight the undead. As the daughter , she was expected to marry one of her cousins and have sons. When she was fourteen, she left the estate, travelling the world, training and fighting the terrors of the dark. In China, she learned Ghost Dragon Kung Fu to fight spirits. In Romania she learned to track and kill the werewolf In New York, she learned not all monsters have claws and fangs.

Madelyn usually dresses in dark green or black leather. She carries twin Colt 1911s with specialty ammunition and two swords made of iron and silver.

 

Fracture Blessed or cursed with the ability to turn anything to glass, Mac Foster was recruited by the mob to help open a few vaults. All he had to do was break down some doors and his kids would be all right. Of course, the mob doesn’t hire the most reliable “daycare” and accidents will happen. It was weeks before they told him about the fire in the rattrap apartment his daughter died in. They meant to shoot him and tie up loose ends. That was when he found out he could turn flesh to glass too. Now the city’s mob bosses are disappearing, replaced by amazing glass statues. Some beautiful and whole, others shattered.

 

Maggie the Damned Dead at 18, damned for all eternity, Maggie suffered in chains and flame. When Hell’s armies invaded Washington DC, Earth’s superheroes struck deep into hell, seeking to close the portal. One impulsive hero broke her chains in exchange for directions to the infernal city. As they brought the fight to the Queen of Hell, Maggie quietly slipped through the portal to the land of the living. Hitching a ride to New York, she found little had changed in the sixty years she had been dead. The kids still flocked to the city to find acceptance, frequently finding exploitation and addiction as she had. She decided to beat the pimps and pushers to the new arrivals, finding them on the streets and in the bus stations. She now is “mom” to dozens of runaways, squatting in disused subway tunnels. When she comes in conflict with those who prey on her charges, they finds the dead are hard to kill and the chains she brought back from Hell have become deadly weapons.

Maggie looks like a teenage punk rocker with pink hair, ripped tee shirt and mini skirt. She carries the chain that once bound her in Hell as a weapon.

 

American Spider Carlos was raised on God, Country and comic books. His abuelo had come to New York and found prosperity. He taught the ideas of duty and service to Carlos. Carlos served his country in Honduras and returned to New York . When that mysterious man gave him a strange spider shaped amulet that gave him odd powers, he did what any good American would: he dressed in the flag and fought crime!

American Spider wears a white body suit with red and blue webbing. He covers his face with a blue domino mask.

[Iuz the Evil]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

Pulse - Devin Bergstrauss was born near Dusseldorf, Germany in 1921 where he grew to adulthood. Drafted into service during World War II, Devin found himself wounded in northern France in 1943, and fleeing the allied forces. Stumbling into a ruined monastary, he was tended by the monks who concealed him during the final days of the conflict. Devin spent several years with these kindly men, who invested the disillusioned warrior with their sense of purpose, faith, and devotion to the cause of good. He left them in the early 1950s, beginning travels across Europe and northern Africa as a “gentleman adventurer” and scholar.

 

During his travels Devin studied archaeology and occult lore, clashed with the predecessors of DEMON and other forces of darkness, and discovered a damaged Lyonessan powerstone in a crumbling temple in Egypt. Recognizing the latent power of this discovery, Devin returned to the monks for advice on how to proceed. Dark followers of the long banished Lords of Edom trailed him to the hidden monastary, and the ensuing conflict slew several of the monks and badly injured Devin’s mind. The surviving monks used the energies of the powerstone in order to save his life, an arrangement that provided Devin several fortuitous but unexpected side effects. Now linked to the stone, he has ceased to age appreciably (perhaps one year for the passage of a thousand is his best estimate), and may tap into it’s diminished energies to produce a variety of startling mystical effects. In the decades since then, he has traveled many lands, adopting several identities (during the cold war he fought alongside several “Silver Age” superheroes in Europe as Sonnenstern, then dropped from sight for a decade only to return stateside as Liberator in the late 1970s). Devin owns a small brownstone and runs an antique shop in New York. Currently, he has adopted the name of Pulse, and in this fresh persona continues his unending battle against evil on the streets of his adopted city.

 

Zephyr - Bill Renvold grew up in San Diego, where his parents still live. He did well enough at school, graduating with a degree in Business Administration from NYU. Bill was coasting through life, moving into a position with the human resources department of a Manhattan publishing company... most people thought things were looking pretty decent for Bill. Except for the fact he was bored to death.

 

Bill’s latent mutant powers had kicked in during those college years, and events around him now moved with the speed of molasses in winter. Waiting in line at a grocery store was an excercise in patience, while the Department of Motor Vehicles was now something he avoided at all costs. He adopted the identity of Zephyr shortly after moving to the west Bay Area, and has fought crime all over the state of New York since doing so. Early in his career, Zephyr rescued the wife of a wealthy industrialist, who gifted him with the bullet-roof “speed suit” he now wears (and who continues to provide for regular maintenance of it as well). Zephyr is having the time of his life, and cannot imagine doing anything else!

 

Gorgon - Carole Reihms had always dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps and becoming a law enforcement officer. Her dad was a good cop, a great father, and she and her sister were both stunned and traumatized when he was killed in the line of duty during a drug store robbery while she was in high school. Carole grew increasingly determined to “make a difference”, and went to CSU, Sacramento where she majored in Criminology. After a stint with the Sacramento County Sherriff’s Department, she was wounded in a shootout while busting a meth lab. Carole realized that she would need more than a badge to truly impact the criminals who had killed her father and continued to terrorize innocent people. She began to evaluate what would be necessary for her to make a difference in the shadows, as a vigilante.

 

Five more long years passed, and Carole had greatly expanded her repertoire of skills, had acquired some equipment through black market channels and crafted some as well, and had transferred to the New York Police Department where she’d been promoted to the rank of Detective. Now she was ready to take the battle to the streets in a new identity, as a creature of legend whose name would evoke terror in the superstitious criminals of the city... as Gorgon!

 

Singularity - Dr. David Somner is considered one of the leading minds in the study of astrophysics, especially in the area of experimental models in the field of quantum mechanics. By age 25 he had achieved his second doctorate, he had post-doctorate work widely published and became a tenured Professor at Princeton by 32. Dr. Somner has numerous awards, several unique patents, and is a generally famed and respected member of the scientific community. Dr. Somner has a secret.

 

Aside from his academic achievements, his fulfilling home life with his wife Rebecca (a professor in the Geosciences department) and precocious daughter Yvette, and the regular public speaking engagements, David has discovered something else that struck him as something of a surprise. He’s a superhero. When developing a prototype spectral analysis device for measuring the gas readings of distant astronomical structures, there was an accident... the device drew amazing amounts of power from the electrical grid of the entire northeastern portion of the United States, collapsing in on itself in a wild conflagration that enveloped David and hurled him across the room. The specific “distant astronomical structure” being measured was what is suspected to be a “supermassive black hole”, and somehow a linkage developed between David Somner and this distant cosmic force. He found himself able to increase his specific mass, become diffuse and intangible, and sense or manipulate the mass of other objects at range. Taking a sabbatical (something the other faculty considered long overdue), he spent some time at the family’s Appalachian lodge (having multiple patents pays rather nicely) to develop control over these abilities. David has achieved much in his life, but now is surprised at the pleasure his direct actions give him as Singularity.

 

Prism - A crystalline lifeform from another world, gifted with amazing powers over the light spectrum, Prism has befriended a small group of youth in Brooklyn during his exile to Earth. At their urging, he battles crime while attempting to learn more about the strange creatures he now lives among.

 

I've got 350 point writeups for all of them but Prism (he's 372, and is a 4ed write up) if you end up wanting any. Just PM me.

[hooligan x]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

quote=Iuz the Evil]Devin owns a small brownstone and runs an antique shop in New York. Currently, he has adopted the name of Pulse, and in this fresh persona continues his unending battle against evil on the streets of his adopted city

 

Wow, so does one of my PCs! Perhaps Devin and Dr. Benedict are neighbors.

 

Oh, and YOINK!

[urbwar]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

Not five, but a few from old campaigns I ran:

 

Lawgiver: Inspired by too much weed and Judge Dredd comics, Lawgiver wields twin custom Mac-10's in his never ending quest to rid the streets of all it's criminal scum. He drives around in a custom Chevy Malibu (armored and with a few weapons built in), and tends to leave mayhem in his wake.

 

Snake: Champion of Chinatown. Snake is a low-level mutant (30 strength, high dex/speed, some regeneration) with a large array of martial arts training. He tends to just use his fists and feet to dispense justice, but sometimes carries a pair of nunchucks.

 

Spector: A former special effects expert whose family was killed in a home invasion by a Vietnamiese gang, Spector now uses his skills to battle crime on the streets. He has a few gadgets (a gliding cloak, gas gun, smole grenades), and carries a .44 magnum as a backup piece for when the gas gun just doesn't cut it (he tends to use the magnum on the more vile criminals, like serial killers and the like. Common crooks get gassed and left for the police). In a Feng Shui campagin, Spector was a ghostly vigilante, using a ghostly gun to dispense justice on criminals.

[SKJAM!]

Re: Street Level NYC heros

 

Lavender Rose: See the posting I did a while back. Essentially, he's an amnesiac with a magic crossbow (or an ordinary crossbow in Dark Champions) who can sense other people's flashbacks, and uses his abilities to aid victims of crime.

 

Preacher Man: Once a happy, successful and bleeding heart liberal pastor for a suburban church, Reverend Kramden lost every member of his family one by one to crime and sin. He had a nervous breakdown and became obsessed with punishment of sinners and criminals; the chuch elders relieved him of his pastorate. Reverend Kramden drifted to the worst part of the inner city, where he is now a familiar sight, preaching on street corners about brimstone and damnation. What almost no one knows is that late at night, the preacher man enters the dens of criminals he has uncovered, and kills all the sinners within, sparing only the "innocent." His specialty is using the weapons he found at his last attack to kill the next batch of sinners. He has an uncanny ability to conceal an entire arsenal in his well-worn clerical garb.

 

Spook: An actor/singer attacked and left for dead for gangsters, his only actual power is turning intangible, but he carries various gadgets that allow him to simulate being a ghost. His preferred tactic is to terrify criminals into running to the police for the protection of jail.

 

Bobcat: Actually fraternal twins whose mutant powers kicked in early. They have astounding agility and leaping ability, can see in the dark, and wear costumes with built-in claws. Once they hit puberty and the intensive training starts really showing results, they're going to be fearsome indeed. They switch off using the costume to confuse both criminals and their parents.

 

The Amazing Pigeon-Man: An eccentric inventor who's created a flying suit. He's not really that effective a crimefighter, but is so pleasant and square-jawed heroic in persona that the neighborhood loves him anyway.