Kingdom City

[Drhoz]

Given the amount of posts in the Quote of the Week thread from the two campaigns, it's probably about time one of us compiled a background and history of them.

 

With Sundog's permission - the Kingdom City / Skeleton Crew campaign.

 

 

 

Kingdom City, straddling the Rebublican River, Nebraska, was in all obvious respects an entirely ordinary town - it certainly had none of the superhuman and subsequent insurance problems more notable urban centres endured.

 

Although, like so many others, it was one that suffered badly when the mines were played out, and employers moved elsewhere. Half the city soon became a decrepit pit of rusting factories and abandoned buildings as those who could afford to moved away.

 

The fortunes of the town changed, again, when titanium prices went through the roof, and all the spoil heaps outside town were suddenly big piles of money. Industry and investment returned - and along with them has come a seemingly endless procession of supervillians, invasions, mystic menaces, and other assorted headaches for the locals.

 

What most of the locals didn't know is that their city lies at the business end of an intercontinental geomantic cannon - one which has been charging up ever since the office tower/ ley capacitor complex was finished by its late & insane architect.

 

Worse, Kingdom City lies at a abnormal confluence of ley lines - one reason the afore-mentioned architect incorporated Nebraska into his design.

 

Worse yet, there sleeps, encysted beneath the river, a Great Old One - the cause of the abnormalities in the first place.

 

Thus, Kingdom City is a dimensional nexus point - and one that allows access to, by, and from an alarming range of realms and beings. Naturally, such a situation attracts the attention of anybody motivated by a quest for information and power - or simple, fatal, curiosity.

 

Not to mention anyone attracted to Kingdom City's new, if merely mundane, prosperity.

 

But it's not all bad news - even before all this new activity attracted unwanted attention, the city had two resident supers - Felicity, living inconspicuously with her sister in the rundown 'Skeleton City' half of town, and Malcolm Junker, an idiot savant and technological genius living alone in a scrapyard in the old industrial strip.

 

Further, the presence of such evil organisations as DEMON drew those individuals dedicated to opposing them, and new industrial development involved those associated with business and government.

 

After that it's just sort of snowballed - every action by one faction or another seems to attract or create more supers - all out for fame, wealth, test subjects, power, dimensional access, or simply trying to keep the rest of them under a modicum of control. It doesn't help when the 'good' guys are quite possibly the biggest threat to the city - and the planet - there...

 

So far the city has been subject to attacks by Eurostar, Istvatha V'han, Dr Destroyer, and others.

 

And that's just the ones that local 'superhero' Vitus of Clan Scorpion provoked.

 

There's also been plenty of instances that the resident team hope nobody else finds out about. Negotiations with two seperate Seelie Courts; a truce with the War Machine *and* VIPER; recruiting Firewing in an abortive attempt to sacrifice a Lovecraftian God; inviting Menton over for tea; cordial relations with Dr Lin Wu; rescuing Gravitar, and saving Mechanon.

 

Admittedly many of the above are the fault of Vitus, again ( his moral compass always has been slightly perpendicular ), but not all of them. When the local team has included superhumanly skilled hackers, multiple demonic entities, avatars of Outer Gods ( and typically destructive earthly ones ), and more-than-half-mad arch-mages, conflict resolution becomes more complex than a mere sock to the bad guys jaw.

[bubba smith]

Re: Kingdom City

 

very good

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Amongst the various arguably "on the side of good" superhumans that have turned up in Kingdom City - my two ( I'll let the other players describe theirs, if they want - half of them are on the board anyway ).

 

Malcolm Junker, autistic super-genius, lives alone in an abandoned factory and adjacent junkyard, in the badly run down 'Skeleton City' half of town.

 

But not a total loner - he recieved regular visits from clients seeking his brand of outsider tech - unique weapons, bizarre vehicles, and prototype robots all assembled from scrap and spare parts.

 

Unfortunately, the first time he overcame his aversion to company, to go out and test his Electrogravitic Spung-gun in person, he came face-to-face with a fire-based supervillian and forgot to turn his armour on.

 

Whilst he survived the experience, it only re-inforced his agoraphobia and he hasn't left his factory since.

 

Luckily - or not - for Kingdom City, he was promptly replaced by the plane-walking gnollish wizard Vitus of Clan Scorpion, who was quite annoyed to find himself in a DEMON summoning circle. The cultists had been trying to conjure up a murderous denizen of hell, and in many respects the ritual was a huge success. After the carnage was over, Vitus strolled out to learn why he had materialised here instead of on his beloved homeworld as expected, and has been stuck in the 'Earth' and adjacent subsets of reality ever since.

[Mark Rand]

Re: Kingdom City

 

This is great stuff. I may steal some of it.

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

I'm sure Sundog will be flattered - hopefully he'll post some of the campaign NPCs

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Given the amount of posts in the Quote of the Week thread from the two campaigns, it's probably about time one of us compiled a background and history of them.

 

With Sundog's permission - the Kingdom City / Skeleton Crew campaign.

 

 

 

Kingdom City, straddling the Rebublican River, Nebraska, was in all obvious respects an entirely ordinary town - it certainly had none of the superhuman and subsequent insurance problems more notable urban centres endured.

 

Although, like so many others, it was one that suffered badly when the mines were played out, and employers moved elsewhere. Half the city soon became a decrepit pit of rusting factories and abandoned buildings as those who could afford to moved away.

 

The fortunes of the town changed, again, when titanium prices went through the roof, and all the spoil heaps outside town were suddenly big piles of money. Industry and investment returned - and along with them has come a seemingly endless procession of supervillians, invasions, mystic menaces, and other assorted headaches for the locals.

 

What most of the locals didn't know is that their city lies at the business end of an intercontinental geomantic cannon - one which has been charging up ever since the office tower/ ley capacitor complex was finished by its late & insane architect.

 

Worse, Kingdom City lies at a abnormal confluence of ley lines - one reason the afore-mentioned architect incorporated Nebraska into his design.

 

Worse yet, there sleeps, encysted beneath the river, a Great Old One - the cause of the abnormalities in the first place.

 

Thus, Kingdom City is a dimensional nexus point - and one that allows access to, by, and from an alarming range of realms and beings. Naturally, such a situation attracts the attention of anybody motivated by a quest for information and power - or simple, fatal, curiosity.

 

Not to mention anyone attracted to Kingdom City's new, if merely mundane, prosperity.

 

But it's not all bad news - even before all this new activity attracted unwanted attention, the city had two resident supers - Felicity, living inconspicuously with her sister in the rundown 'Skeleton City' half of town, and Malcolm Junker, an idiot savant and technological genius living alone in a scrapyard in the old industrial strip.

 

Further, the presence of such evil organisations as DEMON drew those individuals dedicated to opposing them, and new industrial development involved those associated with business and government.

 

After that it's just sort of snowballed - every action by one faction or another seems to attract or create more supers - all out for fame, wealth, test subjects, power, dimensional access, or simply trying to keep the rest of them under a modicum of control. It doesn't help when the 'good' guys are quite possibly the biggest threat to the city - and the planet - there...

 

So far the city has been subject to attacks by Eurostar, Istvatha V'han, Dr Destroyer, and others.

 

And that's just the ones that local 'superhero' Vitus of Clan Scorpion provoked.

 

There's also been plenty of instances that the resident team hope nobody else finds out about. Negotiations with two seperate Seelie Courts; a truce with the War Machine *and* VIPER; recruiting Firewing in an abortive attempt to sacrifice a Lovecraftian God; inviting Menton over for tea; cordial relations with Dr Lin Wu; rescuing Gravitar, and saving Mechanon.

 

Admittedly many of the above are the fault of Vitus, again ( his moral compass always has been slightly perpendicular ), but not all of them. When the local team has included superhumanly skilled hackers, multiple demonic entities, avatars of Outer Gods ( and typically destructive earthly ones ), and more-than-half-mad arch-mages, conflict resolution becomes more complex than a mere sock to the bad guys jaw.

 

 

About Vitus' moral compass being 'slightly perpendicular': based on everything

that I've ever seen posted regarding his misadventures, I'd have to say that

his moral compass is so skewed that the Hounds of Tindalos have to duck out

of the way on a regular basis, just to avoid being skewered by the pointer.

 

 

 

Major Tom

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

May as well take the oppurtunity to post some of the asides about Vitus and his home culture I wrote up for fun - after all, Vitus IS a signficant part of that campaign, and I'm still waiting for the other players to write up stuff about theirs.

 

Your typical gnoll, as per the Monster Manual, is a vicious, cunning, somewhat stupid, slave-keeping and cannibalistic bastard ( Vitus, admittedly, qualifies on all but the latter - as far as he knows his parents WERE actually life-mates ). But why so? Auran gnolls, and apparently those from Sulros that he heard rumours about, are intelligent, inventive, social, and don't make a habit of eating other intelligent races (or so Vitus would like to think. And he only ate Sprites once, ok?)

 

I propose that the cause of this difference is brain retardation from a shortage of essential fatty acids in the diet. And that using other intelligent species as slaves, sexual property, and food follows on from that (altho slaving/sexual property not so much - those two habits are variously efficient and/or fun. Hyena biology and the whole dominance thing and limits on who actually gets to reproduce might account more for some of that too)

 

One suggestion about human evolution and what enabled us to take off like we did was a change in diet. Humans, and other obligate carnivores including cats, require large amounts of the essential fatty acids arachidonic acid, and docosahexaenoic acid. They're absolutely vital to proper function of the cell membranes in neurons. They also lack all but the most limited ability to synthesise their own from other fatty acids. You can get them from flaxseed, soya, rapeseed, and hemp oil, chia, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, leafy vegetables, and walnuts, but none of those are particular good food sources for carnivores as you can probably guess. You can get some from any meat, too (including, of course, brain tissue). But by far the best source of these acids - also known as two of the Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids - is seafood - fish, and shellfish.

 

Fish is brain food

 

Gnolls in other D&D settings aren't well known for their fishing skills. Most live in otherwise uninhabited wasteland (possibly uninhabited because they've enslaved and eaten everybody else, I admit). But Auran gnolls have a diverse diet that included plant-derived fatty acids (for cooking). And Flax, to my startlement, is already in the Auran literature as a major crop. The Cliffdiver Clan were not only well-known for their brilliance but had also successfully pioneered steamships. And I'm willing to bet that the clan that made the perpetual motion Alchemical Clockwork engines lived on a river. And the entire Sulrosian civilisation was scattered across thousands of small islands where it would be difficult to find meat that WASN'T fish.

 

But the Scorpion Clan, with poor, aggressive, not very bright Vitus, lives in the middle of the desert. Hhmm....

 

So, did wild gnolls start keeping and eating other sentient life-forms for their large and juicy brains?

 

Only one way to find out *puts a few cookbooks aside for Vitus*

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Vitus isn't the brightest of souls. This may be due to dietary deficiencies as I've discussed previously, or simply because he's the mental runt of the litter, but it's nonetheless remarkable that he was accepted into the school of conjurors at all. He was definitely a borderline case, but sheer bloodymindedness saw him thru and now his understanding of Auraflow Theory is more than adequate.

 

But ever since he's been stuck on Earth, Vitus been striving to understand why it's so difficult to perform simple magics, but relatively easy to bugger up the laws of metaphysics on a vast scale. A simple industrial spell such as Heat Metal, easily performed by any master brassworker on Aura, seems to be next to impossible to cast on Earth (Admittedly this might explain a lot about the deficiencies of Earth culture, but it's still bloody annoying). Conversely, there's no shortage of morons buzzing around the place in shiny capes and domino masks, spraying monstrously powerful spell-like abilities with gay abandon - something that gets Vitus's goat no end, given how hard he strove to achieve his own understand of Higher Physics.

 

In any normal universe, mastering simple spells would take a Talented individual no more than a decades study. The principles are straightforward enough to anybody with a good grasp of anti-imaginary numbers, Quantum Metaphysics, and the Fours Laws of Thaumodynamics. Almost any real magic (and by real I of course mean the kind of spell Vitus can cast) is a product of, or can be derived from, these. They're so basic that they can even be utilised by essentially stupid organisms - i.e.. magical beasts, demons, sorcerers from any school of magic other than Vitus's...

 

For example - the natural ability of a Displacer Beast is both macroquantum - the Displacer Beast is both over there AND over here - and Second Law "the perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum" - in that the Displacer Beast you can see over there is always the one currently clawing your throat out over here.

 

Whilst such combinations of basic metaphysical laws can be complicated, they are also the fundamental basis of most really sophisticated schools of magic - such as those discussed in Maxwell's Demonology. But it is the aforementioned Second Law of Thaumodynamics that is most often utilised in classic and novel spells.

 

Careful application of the principle can make magical effects of almost any magnitude possible - as long as someone, somewhere, is seriously inconvenienced as a result.

 

Yet whenever Vitus tries to explain all this to people, they look at him as if he's talking utter gibberish.

[bubba smith]

Re: Kingdom City

 

so in effect this vitus is somewhat like orko from masters of the universe , a mystic no longer able to control or even USE his full power but unlike orko he's not comic relief

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

That's what has him puzzled - some spells are much *more* effective. And he hasn't dared use his own plane-walking spells until he's resolved the whole Auran Restoration, and Punching Big Holes In Champions Reality problems.

[Weldun]

Re: Kingdom City

 

That's what has him puzzled - some spells are much *more* effective.

Such as colour spray inflicting damage.

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Amongst the many incidents the Skeleton Crew has been involved in ( or responsible for - the line is very thin ) are such otherwise inexplicable events as Eurostar taking a break from political terrorism in the EU to come kick seven kinds of snot from an obscure Nebraskan super team.

 

It began with the capture, albeit temporary, of Gravitar. She'd been passing through the area and noticed the large mass anomaly underneath the river. Naturally she stopped to dig it up. The first the team knew about this was the earthquake as she yanked a small-mountain-sized chunk of bedrock out from the middle of the river. This was pretty obviously a Bad Thing, even before we learnt it was the tomb of a Great Old One, so Vitus waved her down to ask if she intended to give the city time to evacuate first.

 

She didn't, so Vitus shot her in the face with a point-blank magical javelin, and the other team members punched her out of the state. Of course, she headed straight back, pausing only to shred a few fighter planes, but that was all the time we needed for PRIMUS to show up and together take her down in two phases.

 

Which is when the real problems started. For one thing Orca and Leatherback had swum down to investigate why the rock was so special and found an eye the size of a Buick staring back at them. And the PRIMUS team wouldn't let Vitus cut Gravitar's throat while they had her down ( something they no doubt regretted later when Vitus discovered that Teleios had smuggled her out of Stronghold for research purposes, and let her go - it was no skin off Vitus's nose anymore ). So instead Vitus stomped off, spotted the press pack, and gleefully answered all their questions. Making himself look good, and thanking PRIMUS for their 'assistance', of course.

 

Unfortunately one of the questions so "Since you managed to arrest Gravitar, does that mean you could stop Eurostar too?" too which Vitus replied with a puzzled "Yes, probably - who is that?" After all, he'd never heard of them. Heck, there's a very good chance he'd never heard of Europe.

 

So when he recieved a phonecall the next day asking "So, think you could beat Eurostar do you?" he replied "Yes. Are they anyone important?" completely oblivious of the fact he'd just mortally offended Fiacho.

 

Vitus didn't even have the common courtesy to be available to have his arse kicked when Eurostar came looking for him ( he was off at a nude photo shoot for some people claiming to work for Playgirl). So Eurostar beat up the rest of the team and told them to hand him over, or else - something the team was by now happy to do, and debated only how intact a state they should hand him over in. Thus Vitus was bound, gagged and glued upside-down to a door with whale-vomit, by his colleagues in the Skeleton Crew. Two members were absent for the debate - one was off planning to destroy Vitus's reputation, and public image forever with a range of obscene collectibles, and the other fully intended to kill Vitus herself if Eurostar can't do it first.

 

Naturally, Vitus got a bit upset about all this...

 

And managed to turn the tables on Eurostar, the Skeleton Crew, Kingdom City and Earth with ONE WORD. Quite possibly his finest moment, and that includes helping overdose an Illithid Elder Brain on magic mushrooms.

 

All it took was a few seconds preparation, a ruthless disregard for life and property, getting somebody so angry they couldn't move let alone speak, and incredibly unwise abuse of a highly powerful magical item. Nothing Vitus hasn't had a lot of experience with in the past...

 

I record here what may have been Vitus's final words, if the plan hadn't worked.

 

 

Fiacho, infamously touchy leader of Eurostar, launches into his obligatory gloat, as I present myself at the intersection, under a suitably dramatic thunderstorm.

 

Fiacho

: So, you -

 

Vitus

: Shut up.

(other PCs and players whimper)

You come halfway across the world to kill me over some imagined slight, so I expect the common courtesy to let me me a have a few last words

 

( Fiacho amazingly manages to keep his temper)

 

Fiacho

: Go ahead - I am nothing if not a gentleman.

(pacing the street, glaring at Eurostar from under my cloud of white-hot fury and contempt)

 

Vitus

: So you're Eurostar. I can't say I'm impressed.

( I notice Scorpia, Eurostar's martial-arts combat monster)

Although at least some of you have some taste... but you still don't frighten me. Grond is dangerous.. Mindflayers are frightening.. the Apparatus is terrifying... but you? You're not even in, as I believe the local phrase goes, my Top Ten

(more whimpering from ex-colleagues, who had been hoping to come out of this alive).

 

Before I came to this... wretched world, every friend I've ever had was dead, or worse. My familiar, part of my soul, was burnt alive by a vampire. When that Dark Power I will not name came to my home to consume it, I spat in the face of his agents as they had me CRUCIFIED.

 

And you think you can frighten ME?

 

You and your kind

(deliberately looking over my former colleagues as well at this point)

wield power to rival GODS... you INFEST this this .. ungrateful world.. and all you can do is meddle in POLITICS???

 

I was right

(rolling up sleeves and retrieving a certain device concealed there when my captors let me go for 5 minutes, having been glued upside-down for 12 hours and clearly needing some alone time. Players start going "whua?", GM starts to grin)

... you ARE fools

 

(cupping the Keystone in one hand as it starts to glow)

I am Vitus of Clan Scorpion - and I have had ENOUGH

(then glaring down at a dimensional gate device we've been guarding unused since the start of the campaign, GM is grinning and twitching, and players and characters panic because they didn't see this trick coming AT ALL)

 

OPEN

 

****

 

It worked quite well. PCs and villains sucked into a dimensional gate with no destination programmed in... scattered across the multiversal plenum with no way of getting back to Earth.

 

The other players had mixed feelings - giving me kudos for a neat con, but a tad upset that their characters have been scattered across time and space with only supervillains for company.

 

Of course it all turned to ashes in Vitus's mouth, since it lead directly to the final dissolution of Aura, the murder of his adopted son by Scorpia, and catastrophic upheaval of the multiversal gate network across 8-to-the-72nd-power dimensional links.

 

But for a few hours, Vitus was actually happy.

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Current events in the Kingdom City Comics Skeleton Crew title seem to be heading towards a collision of story arcs that have been brewing for months.

 

For one thing, the demonological cult D.E.M.O.N. involved in quite a few of our 'origin stories' is making its move. Starting out with an all-out attack on, and nuclear assassination of, Dr Lin Wu, a supervillian Vitus esteems highly. The battle is quite possibly the first time someone has used dragons to deliver a thermonuclear pay-load.

 

Probably related, the Great Old One underneath Kingdom City is stirring - the ley-line loop around *it* would certainly have resonated when the nuke went off inside the loop around Lin Wu's fortress.

 

Similarly, the way the Champions universe reacted adversely to Vitus's presence accelerated after he set off that D-bomb at his own feet - a full sized universe trying to reform as one a few million miles across. Unable to take the strain, the Champions Universe pulled free of many of it's dimensional connections, falling across the super-geometric lattice, broken links hemorrhaging behind it, and leaving multiple worlds including 3's homeworld and 24th Century Brittania open to invasion behind it.

 

Fortunately all is not lost - we still have a plan up our sleeve. Well, two plans - the first, excising Vitus from time until he can safely be brought back - to which Vitus replied "Over your dead body."; and jury-rigging a truckful of alien hyper-nukes to power that geomantic cannon running into Nebraska - the recoil of which should stop the local reality's drift across the plenum, AND weld shut the worst of the Lovecraftian fissures in other worlds. Wouldn't do anything to solve the local problems. And there's no gaurentee that the bodged-together mix of geomancy, dimensional engineering, and alien weapons tech will do anything more than boil way half the planet we're standing on.

 

Being excised from Time begins to look appealing.

[Hagadorn]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Sounds like the 'Skeleton Crew' got their Just Desserts.

 

Bravo Vitus.

[Weldun]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Sounds like the 'Skeleton Crew' got their Just Desserts.

 

Bravo Vitus.

What did WE do?!

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Eh, If I was honest I'ld have to say Vitus deserved everything the Skeleton Crew did to him.

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Amongst the many incidents the Skeleton Crew has been involved in ( or responsible for - the line is very thin ) are such otherwise inexplicable events as Eurostar taking a break from political terrorism in the EU to come kick seven kinds of snot from an obscure Nebraskan super team.

 

It began with the capture, albeit temporary, of Gravitar. She'd been passing through the area and noticed the large mass anomaly underneath the river. Naturally she stopped to dig it up. The first the team knew about this was the earthquake as she yanked a small-mountain-sized chunk of bedrock out from the middle of the river. This was pretty obviously a Bad Thing, even before we learnt it was the tomb of a Great Old One, so Vitus waved her down to ask if she intended to give the city time to evacuate first.

 

She didn't, so Vitus shot her in the face with a point-blank magical javelin, and the other team members punched her out of the state. Of course, she headed straight back, pausing only to shred a few fighter planes, but that was all the time we needed for PRIMUS to show up and together take her down in two phases.

 

Which is when the real problems started. For one thing Orca and Leatherback had swum down to investigate why the rock was so special and found an eye the size of a Buick staring back at them. And the PRIMUS team wouldn't let Vitus cut Gravitar's throat while they had her down ( something they no doubt regretted later when Vitus discovered that Teleios had smuggled her out of Stronghold for research purposes, and let her go - it was no skin off Vitus's nose anymore ). So instead Vitus stomped off, spotted the press pack, and gleefully answered all their questions. Making himself look good, and thanking PRIMUS for their 'assistance', of course.

 

Unfortunately one of the questions so "Since you managed to arrest Gravitar, does that mean you could stop Eurostar too?" too which Vitus replied with a puzzled "Yes, probably - who is that?" After all, he'd never heard of them. Heck, there's a very good chance he'd never heard of Europe.

 

So when he recieved a phonecall the next day asking "So, think you could beat Eurostar do you?" he replied "Yes. Are they anyone important?" completely oblivious of the fact he'd just mortally offended Fiacho.

 

Vitus didn't even have the common courtesy to be available to have his arse kicked when Eurostar came looking for him ( he was off at a nude photo shoot for some people claiming to work for Playgirl). So Eurostar beat up the rest of the team and told them to hand him over, or else - something the team was by now happy to do, and debated only how intact a state they should hand him over in. Thus Vitus was bound, gagged and glued upside-down to a door with whale-vomit, by his colleagues in the Skeleton Crew. Two members were absent for the debate - one was off planning to destroy Vitus's reputation, and public image forever with a range of obscene collectibles, and the other fully intended to kill Vitus herself if Eurostar can't do it first.

 

Naturally, Vitus got a bit upset about all this...

 

And managed to turn the tables on Eurostar, the Skeleton Crew, Kingdom City and Earth with ONE WORD. Quite possibly his finest moment, and that includes helping overdose an Illithid Elder Brain on magic mushrooms.

 

All it took was a few seconds preparation, a ruthless disregard for life and property, getting somebody so angry they couldn't move let alone speak, and incredibly unwise abuse of a highly powerful magical item. Nothing Vitus hasn't had a lot of experience with in the past...

 

I record here what may have been Vitus's final words, if the plan hadn't worked.

 

 

Fiacho, infamously touchy leader of Eurostar, launches into his obligatory gloat, as I present myself at the intersection, under a suitably dramatic thunderstorm.

 

Fiacho

: So, you -

 

Vitus

: Shut up.

(other PCs and players whimper)

You come halfway across the world to kill me over some imagined slight, so I expect the common courtesy to let me me a have a few last words

 

( Fiacho amazingly manages to keep his temper)

 

Fiacho

: Go ahead - I am nothing if not a gentleman.

(pacing the street, glaring at Eurostar from under my cloud of white-hot fury and contempt)

 

Vitus

: So you're Eurostar. I can't say I'm impressed.

( I notice Scorpia, Eurostar's martial-arts combat monster)

Although at least some of you have some taste... but you still don't frighten me. Grond is dangerous.. Mindflayers are frightening.. the Apparatus is terrifying... but you? You're not even in, as I believe the local phrase goes, my Top Ten

(more whimpering from ex-colleagues, who had been hoping to come out of this alive).

 

Before I came to this... wretched world, every friend I've ever had was dead, or worse. My familiar, part of my soul, was burnt alive by a vampire. When that Dark Power I will not name came to my home to consume it, I spat in the face of his agents as they had me CRUCIFIED.

 

And you think you can frighten ME?

 

You and your kind

(deliberately looking over my former colleagues as well at this point)

wield power to rival GODS... you INFEST this this .. ungrateful world.. and all you can do is meddle in POLITICS???

 

I was right

(rolling up sleeves and retrieving a certain device concealed there when my captors let me go for 5 minutes, having been glued upside-down for 12 hours and clearly needing some alone time. Players start going "whua?", GM starts to grin)

... you ARE fools

 

(cupping the Keystone in one hand as it starts to glow)

I am Vitus of Clan Scorpion - and I have had ENOUGH

(then glaring down at a dimensional gate device we've been guarding unused since the start of the campaign, GM is grinning and twitching, and players and characters panic because they didn't see this trick coming AT ALL)

 

OPEN

 

****

 

It worked quite well. PCs and villains sucked into a dimensional gate with no destination programmed in... scattered across the multiversal plenum with no way of getting back to Earth.

 

The other players had mixed feelings - giving me kudos for a neat con, but a tad upset that their characters have been scattered across time and space with only supervillains for company.

 

Of course it all turned to ashes in Vitus's mouth, since it lead directly to the final dissolution of Aura, the murder of his adopted son by Scorpia, and catastrophic upheaval of the multiversal gate network across 8-to-the-72nd-power dimensional links.

 

But for a few hours, Vitus was actually happy.

 

 

 

I'd almost think that Vitus had, at some point in time, read the "Phil & Dixie"

strip in Dragon Magazine -- the one in which the benefits of role-play-

ing games were discussed, and which had the following line:

 

"I've been tortured by demons, damned by demigods -- and you think that

I'm going to knuckle under just because you're threatening to FIRE ME?!"

 

(That may not be the line in its entirety, but it's fairly close.)

 

 

 

Major Tom

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

It's long been obvious that the Vitus & 3 ( now Jasmine, although Vitus would rather bite off his own tongue than use it ) was not a case of "happily ever after".

 

As my wife has pointed out, this could be because 3 went from a luxurious palace with lots of lower-ranking slaves, and plenty of other harem-members and guests to entertain, to becoming the property of a gnolls who doesn't own anything he can't carry, who is too jealous to let her entertain anybody else ( even with just her dancing ), and who is too busy to respond to most of her skills.

 

Actually getting more money together was difficult - teaching magic was out of the question, at least at first, because the only person to ask regarded it as utter gibberish less that 3 minutes into her first lesson ( She still turns up to the lessons he gives the students he has *now* - and falls asleep I class). Any income possible thru selling little Vitus Action Figures (Comes With Own Can Of Kickass!) has been monopolised by the Storm Lord's human alter-ego, who is using it to happily tarnish Vitus's reputation ( not that Vitus has noticed ). The photoshoot for Playgirl was never published. His teammates won't let him do unsupervised interviews, and even regretted letting him answer the press at the team's post-Destroyer conference. He's not a member of any unions and is unlikely on purely bureaucratic grounds to become one. He's received no money, no goods, insufficient kudos and until the Destroyer thing not even the Keys To Kingdom City for all the times he's risked his hide protecting Nebraska and occasionally New Orleans from various abnormal threats.

 

The other members of the Skeleton Crew offered him money, but he's far too proud to accept it gracefully. Eventually he had to accept it off Felicity - the one who laughed in his face at his descriptions of how magic works, before wandering off to pick up another half-dozen spell-like abilities for no effort.

 

Even after the funds became available there were endless delays, what with the declaration of martial law and so on, before he could refit one floor of the tenement into something more pleasant than a bare and peeling room with a mattress in one corner (Vitus is used to travelling rough)

 

Also, Vitus was reluctant to let her out of his sight, because he knows just how many animals roam this planet protected by "trial by jury" and "presumption of innocence" and similar idiotic ideas. The sheer number of telescopes and binoculars that sprout from the buildings opposite their own every time 3 is exercising on the Uneven Bars, in the nude, being a case in point.

 

So he spent a considerable amount of time he could have spent paying more attention to 3, instead devising a weapon that can reduce anybody suicidal enough to upset 3, to a small charcoal briquette. Power - elemental, local, fierce. Side-effects - fries civilians like bacon. 3, funnily enough, didn't appreciate this effort.

 

Nor did being interrupted, repeatedly, on one of the rare occasions he did pay her the attention she's used to. At least the supervillain Firewing replaced the Picasso he destroyed coming thru the wall. Also 3 will have some explaining to do if anybody finds out that the major art museum theft Firewing carried out was to replace a 5 dollar print.

 

Now even more desperate to make 3 safe, and earn her and everybody else's respect, Vitus set out to perform even more powerful magic - the global scale mutilation spell Summon Gonads aka Conjuration of Global Justice. Power : A selective Trasform, global, & crippling. Side-effect : Requires ritual murder of a human.

 

Discussion of how this led to an alliance with VIPER isn't relevant here, but lets just say it didn't help the levels of trust in the party. And 3 had moved out by the time he was discharged from hospital. Leaving him alone in a nearly empty room again. So was it any surprise that Vitus's next move was to make the same mistake AGAIN, planning an even bigger spell, requiring an even more horrendous sacrifice, and willingly allying himself with an even worse power to do it?

 

Oh, and Vitus found out where 3 had been, too. Willingly ****ing the brains out of a supervillain. For two hours. She claimed she was 'distracting' him. Someone was going to die, probably El Puma, and not from sexual exhaustion.

 

He needn't have bothered getting worked up - El Puma died horribly of total organ failure soon afterwards, to Vitus's immense satisfaction.

 

The ongoing efforts by the rest of the team to persuade 3 to take advantage of Earth's emancipated culture in no way helped.

 

Then it culminated with the Marielle ( a student ), and 3, successfully seducing The Specter, taping the resulting marathon session that would make a tantric yoga master blush, and releasing the Skeleton Crew Sex Tape to the world.

 

Result : The slap, punch, attempted murder, dishonourable emancipation, and all the subsequent poisonous sniping at each other.

 

Vitus thinks it's all quite unfair - it's not as if he carries an interdimensional palace around in his pockets as he travels from world to world.

 

And although the tenement he was living in on Earth may have been bare, it certainly wasn't filthy - a quick clense cantrip and unseen servants solved all that.

 

And why should he let 3 get a job pole-dancing? There was no way of means-testing the audience - what satisfaction for Vitus would there be in making nobodies jealous?

 

He wouldn't even have objected to her entertaining the Skeleton Crew members - those for who he has a modicum of respect anyway. He even explicitly sent her to help Felicity relax! How is Vitus to blame if Orca, The Specter, and Felicity didn't want to accept the gift?

 

He wasn't even angry with 3 about her involvement in the sex tape, when the Specter eventually caved in. He was slightly annoyed with 3 doing so without his explicit permission, and irritated with Marielle for posting the video, but he forgave all involved. At least until 3 blew up.

 

He would have cautiously admitted he lacks the skills of a good master, but he can *never* forgive 3 for saying he was no wizard.

 

As for neglect, Vitus has several million people, 4 civilisations, and multiple intelligent species depending on him! Did 3 honestly expect him to stop calculating ways to restore his homeworld Aura and it's people of Samuria, Vind, Godsmountain, and the refugees from Solros, just because she was feeling a bit unused? Not going to happen - his homeworld is always going to take priority, from sheer numbers at very least. Vitus may be unethical, but he's not selfish. Not VERY selfish anyway.

 

If restoring Aura required slowly dismembering 3 alive, than he would probably have done it. And that was back when he was still infatuated with her. He'ld certainly do it now.

 

Which is why it's occured to me that this all may be a convoluted plan by a certain Prince of Hell, to regain what he lost when Aura vanished.

 

Consider the evidence - when That Dark Power invaded Aura, and was repulsed, he lost his Staff, a symbol and aspect of much of his power. When Aura was erased from reality, the demon was even further weakened, which makes his attempted invasion of 3's homeworld now seem slightly peculiar, even if it was Vitus's screwing around with interdimensional doorways that opened the gate to the Abyss in the first place.

 

To regain his Staff, Orcus is going to need somebody who escaped the erasure, somebody with a strong link to and desperate desire to retore his homeworld, at any price. Who has seen the murder of his adopted son, and witnessed the dissolution of the last remnant of Aura. Someone easy to manipulate, and stupid enough to make a deal with the devil even though he *knows* what a bad idea that is...

 

Someone now very, very close to breaking point.

 

Having 3 along as a magical relay at the front lines against the demonic invasion may have been a very bad idea...

[Weldun]

Re: Kingdom City

 

It's at this point that I feel I should mention how The Spectre feels about Jasmine's and Vitus' situation. The Spectre blames the Ka, the ruler of the Tanashim. You see, the Ka gifted Jasmine (then Third Daughter of the Previous Ka's Second Favorite Concubine, or Three for short) to Vitus in thanks for his efforts for saving his dimension from an invasion by the Undead Demon-Prince, Orcus. This was despite the fact that the rest of the Skeleton Crew had made it quite clear that they came from a world which had outlawed slavery. He also did this knowing that Vitus had no other slaves, and was in fact (too his credit) aghast that a powerful wizard like Vitus was in such a situation. And yet the Ka was keenly aware of the emancipation issues, as evidenced by the fact that he asked The Spectre to remain behind and council him on how to move his people through the difficult transition from slavery to emancipation, as the Spectre is an immortal that has lived through just such a change in his own world.

 

Even after he returned to Kingdom City, to find that nowhere near as much time had passed for everyone else as it had for him, he often counselled Jasmine through her troubles with Vitus, not only out of a discomfort with the situation altogether, but also because he saw just how much attention Vitus did try to give her. Even The Spectre hasn't forgotten her degradation of his Wizardly abilities, and is uncertain as to how he will react if Jasmine makes such a remark again. He has nothing but the greatest respect for Vitus' abilities, it's just the Gnoll's methodology that he detests. Still, he has appointed the SkyCastle (his Zeppelin) as palatially as weight will allow (Marble panels rather than solid marble, and all that), and fully plans on getting her a job and a reputable gentlemans club as a singer. He even gave her a name, as "Three" was a name of property, rather than a person.

[Weldun]

Re: Kingdom City

 

And now some background on The Spectre. (I had posted this elsewhere, but this thread is now being used to collate, so...

 

The Spectre

 

The Spectre is a mutant who was born George L. (Louis) Burgess, in Kentucky, 1844. He enlisted in the Confederate army during the 2nd American Revolution (D Company, 1st Kentucky Infantry), and during this, he discovered his amazing ability to suppress his fear response. He also began to note that he was needing less food, water and sleep than his fellow soldiers, an ability that is the present day means that his daily biological needs are now weekly. During the period immediately following the war, he began to face off against bandits and renegade soldiers as a masked man that the journalists dubbed the Spectre, the fearless man. His exploits included chasing notorious Gunfighter, Alex

"Tombstone'" Tubbs, later known as "The Tombstone Kid".

In a twist of irony, he married Sue Hamilton in 1873, the very girl who rejected Tubbs. after a few years, to escape her brother's increasing problems with alcohol, Burgess and his wife move to Kingdom City, Nebraska. However, all was not to be happily ever after. As the years went on, Sue began to notice how youthful George seemed to remain, and townsfolk would be scandalized in the streets by what appeared to be a woman with a much younger man. Their son and one of his two daughters had noticed as well, especially Felicity, the eldest daughter. George had no choice in his mind but to tell the truth. They were, of course, shocked and Sue went so far as to mumble things about being "a demon's bride." Fortunately, his children were better educated and less prone to superstition, but the next few years brought resentment into their eyes, as it became clear that the gift had not been passed onto them.

George decided that he had to move on, that closure was a natural and necessary part of life. With the help of his son, Able, he was able to forge documents for a new identity. In 1897, he faked his death by collapsing a local mine that he made a point of claiming still had something left in it. In general, the townsfolk accepted it, and for the most part, the ruse held. Although he never saw his family again, with the one notable exception, he moved to New York and worked as a boilermaker in the rail yards.

Over the decades, he has discovered that he has the ability to manipulate his metabolism in various ways, starting at the turn of the 20th century, when he found that he could regenerate. His regenerative abilities would prove most useful after this, as the great war had started in Europe with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. But before America became caught up in the European problem, he met an enchanting young widow in a market near Queens. The two began to court one anther and very nearly consummated their love when George found out Patricia Stanton's maiden name. Burgess. The surprise at discovering that he was entering the bed of his own daughter stunned even the normally calm man, and he babbled out his identity to her. She realized the truth of it immediately, despite having only been 6 when he left, and fled screaming into the streets where she stumbled into a stranger. This chance encounter haunts George to this day, as the stranger was a vampire hunter by the name of Helena Schreuber nee Van Helsing, granddaughter of the famous Abraham Van Helsing. Understanding only some of Patricia's rambling about her long dead father and fornication, Schreuber could only guess and the poor woman's problem. Then George came out into the street after Patricia, causing her to shriek in terror. Now Helena understood. This poor girl's father had returned as one of the undead, and a powerful one at that, for he was out during the day. Faced with a skilled huntress, George was forced to flee. The Schruebers continue the Van Helsing tradition to this day and The Spectre has been of particular interest to them since 1978, when the 90 year of Helena and her grandson Nigel caught up with him in California and made the connection between the Vampire Burgess and The Spectre.

When the U.S. entered the war in response to U-boats sinking American ships 1 year later, he enlisted again. In the 1st and 2nd world wars, his adrenal boost ability let him lift over a ton and in both these wars he served in Europe, not only as a soldier, but also as The Spectre. This is the only period that The Spectre was seen out of formal attire, (although he returned to it between wars), and on several occasions during the WWII, his squad mates nearly discovered his mask and handkerchiefs. While history generally accepts that the Spectre was a U.S. soldier, the fact that he would appear in an undershirt made it difficult to identify which unit he was with, especially as George went out of his way to take advantage of times when he had been separated from his unit. He continued fighting in the Pacific, and even fought the Golden Samurai all across the pacific islands. After the war, he studied Okinawan Karate from his old foe, both men having discovered that both found the slaughter that signified the closing months of the war to be abhorrent. Indeed, the had become good friends, and George was able to help many people in Okinawa come to terms with the shock of having lost the war.

In 1968, one hundred years after his first appearance, he returned from Okinawa with a firm mastery of Karate. He battled the likes of Dr. Macabre and even received an invitation to join the Sentinels, but he turned them down in light of their political connections. His "failure" to appear in Vietnam had him labeled a "hippie", despite his distaste for the movement's views. During this period, he battled the likes of VIPER, the Guru and Jack Flash. Then came California, March 5th, 1975. Dr. Destroyer made his explosive debut into the world and nearly conquered the state. The Spectre lost his good friend Kid Chameleon that day and discovered that the world had begun to leave him by. Despite the protests of his only remaining friend and fellow immortal, Diamond, he retired from super heroics.

In 1992, after the near destruction of Detroit, he resurfaced there to help in the reconstruction. This time, he had developed a "Hyper-boost" ability that allowed him to run at speeds of over 70 kph. This Spectre had also invested some Kevlar lining for his suits. In 1996, he retired once more after Herman Schreuber came too close to getting an image of him without a beard. Now it is 2006, and George has returned to Kingdom City as The Spectre, in response the sudden increase in metahuman activity there. And this time, he plans to stay

 

Costume: Contemporary formal wear, black leather gloves, and a red hood with black diamonds over eyes. Compulsively leaves a white handkerchief, which has an S embroidered on a corner with silver thread.

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Made a somewhat jaw-dropping realisation during yesterday's evening game.

 

In Kabbalistic mysticism, 'Kings of Edom' is the coded name for entities surviving from previous versions of Creation. And yes, as Purrdence realised, these qlippoths are also the inspiration for the ghosts etc in The Matrix trilogy, where they are holdovers from Matrix.01 to .07.

 

In Champions, The Kings of Edom and lesser qlippoths are the Lovecraftian gods - beings not just baleful but so appalling that Heaven and Hell will work together against them.

 

Despite that, groups such as DEMON are actively trying to bring them back - they're not merely demonologists.

 

So I was rather startled to realise that *Vitus himself is Qlippothic*

 

1) He really is a holdover from a previous reality, long since over-written, with different physical laws. ( AD&D to HERO, admittedly, but it still counts )

 

2) The DEMON cell that summoned him would have trying to summon Qlippoths - getting Vitus means they were even more successful than we've previously thought.

 

3) Aura not just being erased from the current reality, but never being a part of the current Creation at all, explains why even races that map dimensions for a living have never heard of it as more than a rumour.

 

4) It *certainly* explains why his mere presence is changing reality, and why major players like Dr Destroyer and Ist'Vatha Vhan attempted - and failed - to deal with him.

 

Of course, Vitus is not going to be happy when he figures all this out...

[bubba smith]

Re: Kingdom City

 

i doubt he would be,

being kidnapped would make a normal guy turn sour think how a mystic or super-humam would react

my advice RUN LIKE HELL LITERALY

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

Current situation in Sundog's Kingdom City campaign -

 

The group are trying to rope in as much assistance as possible for the fight against the Outer Gods.

 

This includes bribing the UN with disaster relief, and calling in every dodgy favour and supervillain we can.

 

Vitus, for example, wants to call in the VIPER, the War Machine, Menton, the Circle of the Scarlet Moon, Firewing, and Gravitar.

 

The Specter is contacting his various fellow immortals, and being put in touch with supervillains from the old days who are now living quietly as financial puppet-masters.

 

The Gunney is using his diplomatic and business contacts in a complicated plan to help the UN and UNITY cope with a major cyclone in Bangladesh, in order to secure their assistance with the rebuilding and defense of a geomantic cannon spanning two continents.

 

The team successfully drove off one Lovecraftian god but still have the one stirring under the river to deal with. Could wake up next week, could be waking up *now*.

 

Quotes here

[Egyptoid]

Re: Kingdom City

 

I read the whole thread but missed the cat-girls.

[Drhoz]

Re: Kingdom City

 

I read the whole thread but missed the cat-girls.

 

what cat-girls?