WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

[EverKnight]

Here's a situation that should involve heroes ranging from street level to epic. It is an entirely original creation and has nothing to do with a movie I watched the other day; after all my version has superheroes running around.

 

You're in Chicago for whatever reason. Over the past couple of weeks you've been hearing reports of unusually severe weather that has surprised the experts. They have had trouble predicting some of it and warnings have failed to go out. Some say that global warning has caused a change in weather patterns while others are blaming a villainous source.

 

And now a category 5 hurricane has formed in Canada and is heading south down Lake Michigan towards Chicago. In the meantime an F5 tornado is travelling north, also towards Chicago. They are both expected to hit at the same time.

 

To make matters worse the city has lost power. The grid has shut down and the best guess is as a result of a hacker breaking into the computer systems that control the power grid. The authorities suspect a terrorist incident.

 

The loss of power has meant that the majority of the inhabitants have not received warnings about the impending storms. Only battery powered TV's and radios work; the mobile phone system is not operational. Emergency services are stretched as they deal with accidents, looting, fires, people trapped in lifts and so forth plus the first effects of the approaching storms.

 

To make matters worse any DNPC the character may have is somewhere in the city and you have lost contact with only a sketchy idea where they might be.

 

There is only a few hours left until the storms hit. Anyone that has not found shelter by then will likely die.

 

So what does you character do?

[Outsider]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Most of my characters dont have the ability to do much more against a hurricane than the average person, and so would likely just rescue as many individuals as possible, and gain a new psych lim if one of those individuals wasnt my DNPC.

 

I do have one character who might be able to protect an entire city from the storms, though, depending on if the GM would allow it. He has a large VPP usable to create any effect based on Teleportation. Usable as an Attack, Area Effect Radius, Megascale. He should be able to teleport the storms entirely. The best option would probably be to not really teleport them very far (vacuum on the earth's surface over several 10s or 100s of kms radius would be bad) but to pick them up and reorient them to be heading another direction. This would depend on if a UAA AoE Teleport effects everything in the area individually, or if it effects everything in the area as a whole. (ie if there are 61 people standing in a 7 hex diameter circle (1 per hex) and I throw a 7 hex diameted UAA AoE Teleport with a 100kg limit, does it teleport all targets in the area that are individually 100kg or less, moving everyone, or does it teleport any number of targets in the area that total up, all together to 100kg or less? Would I need to buy the mass limit up to 6400kg to move them all?)

[Chuckg]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Starguard -- stop the hurricane. And then the tornado. (And then pass out from exhaustion.)

 

Dr. Pain -- wonder HTF a Cat-6 hurricane is existing /on Lake Michigan/. Prepare to operate as an overmuscled rescue worker after the hammer falls.

 

Baron von Darien -- is busy looking for a villainous weather controller to give a spinectomy.

[assault]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Assault consults with local weather experts to confirm that this situation is actually as improbable as it appears. He then starts to investigate anybody who might possibly be capable of and has a motive for destroying Chicago in this way. Obviously this would involve talking to local authorities to see if they have received ransom demands and so on.

 

If nothing is too obvious on this front, the attack on the power system is another potential avenue of investigation.

 

If it isn't possible to find out who is playing with the weather in time to stop Chicago from being destroyed, well, Assault can always be a useful rescue worker.

 

Then again, he might also start looking for his DNPC. Chances are that she has stumbled on the bad guys' headquarters... There's a reason why he took a Lois Lane homage as a DNPC.

[McCoy]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Millennium would start with Sears Tower, help evacuate everyone from the upper stories to shelters. Then go on to the next tallest building. Backstop the first responders as best he can.

 

Cheeta finds an old hand-cranked memeo machine, prepares a handbill explaining the problem and what civilians need to do to stay safe, and starts passing them out at super-speed.

 

Iron Will concentrates on getting the power back on.

 

Snow Leopard is the daughter of Storm. She knows that hurricanes do not naturally form in Canada, nor do tornados last for hours. She has very limited weather powers, nothing able to neutralize a tornado, but perhapse enough to track back whatever is controling it. And when she finds who's causing this, she's also Wolverine's daughter.

 

Dolphin will concentrate on getting the homeless and other people on the streets to safety, starting at the lake and working south. He has enough life support and strength he doesn't need to take shelter himself, will stay out in the storm seeing if anyone needs rescue and discouraging looters.

[ghost-angel]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Clean up after the city is turned into rubble?

 

Actually, both my characters would attempt to track the source since a Hurricane formed not only that far north but that close to land is nigh impossible. Find Source - Smash Device - Hopefully Artificial Hurricane Dissipates, taking Tornado with it.

 

Edit- Note a Cat5 is several hundred miles across, if it formed in Canada and heading south the idea of evacuating the majority of the population is pretty hopeless. Thus, the above plan.

 

If that fails. Plan A - clean up after the city is reduced to rubble.

[Whitewings]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

I have exactly one character would could actually do something in this situation, and she'd go after the hurricane first, long before it started moving south toward the Ontario heartland (forgot about that, didn't you? Chicago isn't the only major city in such a hurricane's path). Cat 5s are huge, but she can create mega-scale force walls that are tougher than anything this side of tank armour. Hurricanes can't stay put, they have to move to continue to exist. If she can use the +1/2 level on Mega Scale, she can probably surround the hurricane ontirely, cutting it off from external air flow and thus stopping it - or at least dropping it from "hurricane" to "massive windstorm." The tornado's even easier, it's a lot smaller: Put up a wall and let it blow itself out. Tornadoes are *very* transient events. Then contact her other high-powered friends, and try to find the little barfbag responsible for this and beat him up real good.

[dbsousa]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Golden Eagle would consult with meteorologists on his suit radio to confirm that his idea was "just so crazy it might work." He would then dive to the bottom of Lake Michigan and build a device to circulate the water at the bottom to the top (Change Enviroment 5 hex radius, 5 Temp Levels, Megascale 10km hexes, 60 points). Hopefully this would lower the air temperature enough to siphon off most of the heat energy from both hurricanes.

[Zed-F]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Cerulean: Magic VPP says Suppress Weather Powers, xd6, Continuous, Megascale. It'll probably drain most of his magic reserves to contain both of them, but we have the power. Meanwhile the rest of the team can figure out how the heck this happened in the first place, since a hurricane in inland Canada is for all intents and purposes impossible.

 

Soulbarb: has got nothin'. Would have to be on vacation with Mom to be anywhere near Chicago anyway. Now Mom is not the most practical of people, but one would think that having lived in Texas for a number of years would mean she'd know enough to take cover when threatened by hurricanes or tornadoes. She'll do what she can to help while staying in secret ID. (Forunately she still has access to many of her powers in secret ID, she just has to be careful about how she uses them.)

[Guest HeroPink!]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Here's a situation that should involve heroes ranging from street level to epic. It is an entirely original creation and has nothing to do with a movie I watched the other day; after all my version has superheroes running around.

 

You're in Chicago for whatever reason. Over the past couple of weeks you've been hearing reports of unusually severe weather that has surprised the experts. They have had trouble predicting some of it and warnings have failed to go out. Some say that global warning has caused a change in weather patterns while others are blaming a villainous source.

 

And now a category 5 hurricane has formed in Canada and is heading south down Lake Michigan towards Chicago. In the meantime an F5 tornado is travelling north, also towards Chicago. They are both expected to hit at the same time.

 

To make matters worse the city has lost power. The grid has shut down and the best guess is as a result of a hacker breaking into the computer systems that control the power grid. The authorities suspect a terrorist incident.

 

The loss of power has meant that the majority of the inhabitants have not received warnings about the impending storms. Only battery powered TV's and radios work; the mobile phone system is not operational. Emergency services are stretched as they deal with accidents, looting, fires, people trapped in lifts and so forth plus the first effects of the approaching storms.

 

To make matters worse any DNPC the character may have is somewhere in the city and you have lost contact with only a sketchy idea where they might be.

 

There is only a few hours left until the storms hit. Anyone that has not found shelter by then will likely die.

 

So what does you character do?

Glarg: His team will tell him what to do, which will be shoring up before, rescue during, cleanup after.

 

Panweesio: One of three things:

#1---shrug and leave Chi town pronto.

#2---try to find the thingy making the storms, and go after it; hurricane first cause it's much more a problem.

#3---Get a battery radio, head to a safe place (big building basement?), listen, and use MegaAoE Images to Hearing to repeat useful shtuff from the radio. But make sure no-one knows who was the Mystery Voice.

 

Thena: Apport as much cold air as possible into the eye of the hurricane. That'll kill it; hurricane's depend on warm air. Do the same to the tornado; it creates less damage, so it's second. Once it's down, join whoever's trying to find out the creator of the hurricane and tornado.

 

Lana van Hoom: Set up a fund to pay out $$$ to Red Cross, Sally Ann, etc.; set up ahead of time. Get associates, friends, etc., to put money into it. If the current "other" has useful powers, flip over to it and head to Chicago; even if the other's powers are useful only for tracking the creator of the storms.

[TheRavenIs]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Traveller: Dimensional Travel/Teleport @ 105 active cost power leelm and 105 pt. Magic VPP. Create as much weather control powers as he could and then use it vs the storms. As has been said, steal heat energy: power of storm goes down. Cat 6, no matter he does lots of people are going to die and damage in the trillions.

 

Storm Shard: Ice powered mutant, 60 active cost point level, with megascale change envirnoment. She would try to slow the storm, but as for stopping it...not possiable for her power level.

 

Flame: Fire powered mutant, 15 yr old, 40 active cost powers. He would help with evac. Do what he could to help but this is out of he's power level.

 

Bearcat: Wolverine type, 60 point active cost level. Chicago is he's home town. He'd help evac people, get them ready to clean up after. He's great in a fight but vs things like this.....forget it. Now after the storm, find the villian, beat villian, try not to kill villian....nope....kill villian.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Dr. Anomaly would be taken aback; even though he's never tried weather-related stuff before, he knows these are not natural/possible storms (though he'd check with the experts just to make sure).

 

Though he lacks the raw power to try and stop the storms by direct opposition, there are several routes available to him. First, acting on the assumption there is some kind of force actively maintaining these impossible weather conditions, he'll cobble together a device and/or a spell (probably both) to try and determine what is maintaining them and where it's coming from. Assuming he can do that (and that's a very good bet) then he'd ask his team mates Scarab and Sentinel to go deal with the source of the storms (though he'd likely need Scarab back as soon as possible). In case they can't deal with the source/person responsible, or if dealing with the source won't stop the storms in time, he'd move on as quickly as possible to the next step. (75 pt. Gadget pool, 35 pt. Magic pool, both changeable as a Zero-Phase action. Though he normally takes more time than that [to reduce the -7 Skill Roll penalty when changing out a big device in his Gadget pool], if time is of the essence...)

 

Second, assuming he's detected some kind of energy or force maintaining and directing the storms...create either a device or a spell to deal with that. (If the source is magical, make a device; if it's technological, create a spell -- the originator is less likely to be able to compensate if the source of interference is not in his normal area of expertise.) Knowing that often times it's enough to stop/divert the energy acting as a catalyst to create an effect, rather than trying to fight the much larger amount of energy tied up in the effect itself, Dr. Anomaly's device or spell would create a wide-area disruption of the engery/signal being transmitted to the storms (a MegaScaled Continuous Supress vs. the appropriate Power or SFX) and leave that to run. (He's going to assume it won't be enough, or won't work in time. In other words, hedge his bets.)

 

Third, he'd be uncomfortable trying to directly influence the weather, so for the hurricane he'd approach it from a slightly different angle. Given that hurricanes feed on heat, he'd cut that off and replace the air that's feeding it with extremely cold air. One of Dr. Anomaly's usually-carried gadgets is one of his favorite "weapons": the Klein-Minkowski Field Effect Generator. What it does is tie a localized area of spacetime into a knot, creating a continuous loop. What he normally does is locate the area of effect under an opponent, who falls into the effect -- gets teleported above the effect -- falls into the effect -- repeat endlessly. (It's great for taking someone out of the fight quickly if they don't have the ability to fly, teleport, control gravity or warp space in some fashion). He's familiar enough with it that it would be no problem to scale it up, increase both the area of effect and the range (distance between the points in space being stitched together). Because it's the first time he's done this, he'd probably create two units, one to anchor each "end" of the Einstein-Rosen bridge. He'd then ask his team mate Balrog to drop one at the North Pole and take the other into the eye of the hurricane. Fortunately Balrog is both a long-range telporter and quite capable of withstanding the storm's conditions without getting hurt. Opening that shunt will flood the area of the hurricane with arctic air, which should stop the hurricane pretty much dead in its tracks.

 

For the tornado...I honestly don't know. He'd hope that Scarab & Sentinel could turn it off at the source, or that his signal disruptor would do the trick. If not, he'd try to get hold of Scarab and have her return, because in her aspect as the avatar of Thoth he could probably whip up a large enough spell to deal with the tornado himself. At least, Dr. Anomaly hopes so!

 

Assuming that all of the above fails...

 

If the storms aren't stopped, the damage will be unbelievable and the loss of life unimaginable. Though he'd be scared practically out of his wits at the possibility of what would happen with a catastrophic failure of his machine, Dr. Anomaly does have one last wildcard he could play. He's quite capable of constructing a dimensional shunt large enough to shift the entire city of Chicago into another dimension until the storms have passed; what scares him is that the last time he tried something like this (on a much smaller scale!) things did not work as planned, and there were some very bad consequences. Though he's since learned that it wasn't his device or theory that was flawed and hence responsible for the failure (deliberate outside influence was the cause of things going haywire) he remembers the consequences all too well to consider doing that as anything but a last resort. Assuming that it comes down to that, though...he'd do it, and hope and pray that he'd be able to put the city & its inhabitants back where they belonged afterwards, or at least untangle the mess if someing unforseen happens.

[Pogo]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Because it's the first time he's done this' date=' he'd probably create two units, one to anchor each "end" of the Einstein-Rosen bridge. [/quote']

 

Ask not for whom J.S. Bell tolls. He tolls for thee.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Ask not for whom J.S. Bell tolls. He tolls for thee.

 

 

( )

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Ballistic would first use his magic to repair/heal whatever went wrong with the electrical systems, and then warn everyone what was coming (after getting evacuation stuff going). Then he would try and deal with one of the two storms - his pool is fairly big (80 or so) so he could likely tone down the power of whichever one he was dealing with.

 

Blackcat would run to a interdimensional friend who she has done favors for and call in some markers and get some extra dimensional help ... this help would be severe heavy hitters that could help calm down/ dissipate the storm. What are friends for?

 

Terminal Velocity would use his Megascale running to get out his DNPCs then whoever else he could.

 

Meeb couldn't really do much, so he would hook up with some other supers and take orders on helping.

 

 

All of them would be there and helping in the recovery - that would be where Meeb would shine - he is a gelatinous amoeba with shapeshift, stretching, a tricks MP and a 50 strength - about the perfect thing you could use in rescue work.

[Arkham]

Re: WWYCD: Category 6 Storm

 

Dr. Damascus would contact his mentor, Dr. Djinn. And then Dr. Djinn would ask the Air Lords to take their abberant weather effects back. Then both of them would hunt down whoever made it.

 

If Dr. Djinn was not available, Dr. Damascus would have to talk to the storm directly. Everything listens to Dr. Damascus. "Pardon me, Mr. Hurricane sir? Yes, sir. Would you please be so kind as to divert your attentions to this nice little spot at the polar cap? It would truely be much appreciated. Thank you sir."

Granted he would have to first do a great deal of research into how hurricanes respond to certain types of speech...