tkdguy

A tribute to those who could not be here--
 
 
 

The stick, in Kendo, is the firts, preferred, and most enjoyable resort.

This should be in the fortune cookie thread.

It's only the second week of my weight loss program, and my clothes already fit better. 

Good for you.   When all else fails...hit ‘em with a stick! 

The Government's misdeeds
As you can see, the government is kind of the overarching villain of the setting. They are indeed quite villainous, but it's only a limited, secret branch, and for instance cops aren't as anti-rogues as the rest.
 
Since Rafael's apparition, the government created the ASHRRaD, the Agency for Super Human Regulation, Research a Development. While it was initially thought as an organisation aimed at peacefully regulating superhumans and helping superheroes (and some branches, like the ASCF, the Anti Super-Criminality Force, still do just that) it was quickly turned into a corrupt, power-hungry agency.
 
In 2026, the ASHRRaD planned Excalibur's murder and worked with Vanguard to get him into the Guardians as a replacement. In 2034, the faked Thomas Parn's death. In 2038, they tested a theory and unlocking funds by preying on Gauss's weak sanity and pushing her to the limit by kidnapping all her superhero team. The same year, following the Induction Incident, they kickstarted the Constellation Program, aiming at turning Galaxy Rush's flesh, blood, bone marrow and cerebral fluids into a super-soldier serum. They used it to create the Constellation Squad, a super-secret squad of brainwashed super-soldier boosted with the Constellation serum and used to kidnap rogues and assassinate important targets. They are incredibly quick, extremely agile, insanely strong and have elite trainings. They can also regenerate at insane rates.
 
In 2045, the setting present day, the ASHRRaD is still abducting female soldiers with good combat records (female because the Constellation Serum kills XY chromosome individuals by destroying their DNA) to put them in the Constellation Squad. They recently started investigating on a big group of rogues, the one the players are going to meet.

Hey, I'm the newbee who wondered what a Champions campaign was supposed to look like, and at some point I said I needed some feedback on my setting. I went homebrew because I'm simply better at homebrewing things than at following a pre-made thing, but I wont throw using premade thing like factions out the window either.
 
This setting is very highly inspired by the web-novel "Worm", by Civil War and by the Incredibles. In short, heroes are outlawed unless chaperoned by the government. Rogue heroes are untrusted by the general populace and form a very underground, close knit and street culture. The government secretly kidnaps young rogues to make experiments on superheroes and develop super-soldier serums, weapons and turn them into brainwashed hounds to get more test subjects.
 
Overall History (more info in the World Anvil Timeline here : https://www.worldanvil.com/w/earth-2045-tryskhell/t/global-earth-2045-history-timeline?preview=1 )
It is set in 2045. Up to 2020, our history is identical, but the 19 September 2020, a meteor crashes into a building, killing nearly everyone. A man named Charles Brook touches it and the glassed rock cracks, revealing an orb of light that enters his heart, turning him into the first -and certainly not the last- super-human. He becomes a super-hero with the moniker Rafael and founds the Guardians with four other super-heroes : Galaxy Rush (High-level energy projector/brick), The Mind (basically Iron Man), Heart Overdrive (can control masses of people and emotions) and Escalibur (he gains super-human abilities when he holds his sword. He dies and is replaced with Vanguard, basically Superman).
 
In 2034, he accidentally kills a young boy called Thomas Parn, and the government create the Thomas Part Act, making super-heroes illegal if they don't obey their orders. Rafael and Heart Overdrive disappear, The Mind and Galaxy Rush give themselves in and Vanguard takes over the Guardians, turning it into the Vanguard Corps, a squad of super-heroes under the thumb of the government. Heroes have the choice of declaring their powers to the government and working for them or becoming rogues.
 
In 2038, a young low-level rogue nicknamed Gauss turns crazy and becomes the supe-rvillain Induction. For 10 hours, she lays destruction on a district of New-Manhattan (the fictional city built after the destruction of Manhattan by super-villains). No one seems able to stop her, not even Vanguard. In the end, at around 3 in the morning, the military drops a seismic bomb directly onto her. It is unknown what exactly happened to her, but a 60 meter radius sphere is turned into plasma and explodes, destroying the whole district. Nobody knows where she is, if she is alive, and the whole district has been black-sited by the government. 
This is called the Induction Incident, and made everyone very wary of rogues, since they could all be ticking bombs.

Superpowers
Superpowers initially come from meteors that crash down from space, but they mysteriously cannot be detected until they are too close to be intercepted. In total, there is 4 ways to get superpowers :
- Originals : Touch a meteor. This is how brand new powers enter the pool of possibilities. These powers tend to depend on the circumstances of the crash, what was destroyed, the personality of the one who got the powers and the people who were killed by the crash. In quite a grim fashion, the more people died, the stronger the power.
- Birth Rights : Be the children of a super-human, and you get similar powers. If both parents are super, you might get one, the other, both, or an original combination.
- Legacy : If a super-human gives you an object linked to their powers (if Iron Man were to give you his suit, for instance) and you use it for an extended amount of time, you could end up getting similar powers.
- Exposure : If you are exposed to a super-human's powers, you have a small chance of getting similar powers. The stronger, more violent, and/or more frequent the exposure, the higher the chance you get those powers. For instance, Excalibur was impaled by Mordred (a super-villain who's power is summoning swords and making them levitate) and survived miraculously. After the event, each time he held the sword, he was able to make it fly in various direction for limited amounts of time.
 
Super-powers are classified by the government with a tool called the Frizzell's Scale. It gives a general understanding of their type and power-level. The power level goes from 0 to 2000, 0 being no powers at all (and not even human abilities) and 2000 being Rafael's level. As you can guess, this is the number of character points used in a character's creation. There is also 15 types of powers, Brick, Acrobat, Mystic, Breakout, Husher... I've made the full list on World Anvil, right here : https://www.worldanvil.com/w/earth-2045-tryskhell/a/power-type-list-article?preview=1

Most supers have a score bellow 1000 (a thousand being called the "Godhood threshold"). Officially, Rafael is the most powerful, but there's rumors that Induction's score was above 3000.

I think this thread is the appropriate place to post this PSA considering all the drone videos that are here.
 
 
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

That's why I avoid the radio at this time of year. 

Deleted
 

Barking back at the dog in the car in the other lane confuses the driver more than the dog.  
 
The dog will, however be disappointed at being stood up the next afternoon.

I've stopped shopping at several stores, including game stores, because of the employees' attitudes. I generally shop online nowadays, especially if there's a particular product I want.

"Dark humor is like food. Not everyone gets it."
~Josef Stalin

His last significant hit.  I bought the 45 of this when it came out.

Reminds me of a shop near me that never has my business.  The owner is a [BLEEP] and the place looks like a fire hazard.

Logan's Run: The TV Series: A short-lived series that followed Logan and Jessica as they ran about having adventures while looking for Sanctuary. Francis is sent after them by a secret cabal of over-30s who actually run the City of Domes. They are joined by the android Rem in the first episode, who helps them escape from a bunch of robots who want to take care of them forever (they have to disable one robot named Siri in the process). The show was highly episodic, and the quality of the stories varies from good (for 1970s TV Sci-Fi) to horrible (an episode about a haunted house). (DVD) 

Brighton... It's like Santa Cruz, only colder. 

Monday morning (US time) there is a transit of Mercury.  Where I am, it will be in progress at sunrise and continue until about 10AM.
 
Transits of Mercury are problematic.  The angular size of Mercury is too small for you to be able to see it with the unaided eye.  But this event is Mercury passing in the front of the Sun from our point of view.  Put those together and that means that in order to see it, you need to stare at the Sun through a telescope, which I DO NOT RECOMMEND.
 
(Never look at the Sun through any magnifying or light-collecting apparatus, unless it's been set up by a professional.  Even then, make the pro look first before you try it.)
 
There are several ways to see this event safely, but it takes significant safety precautions and continuous attention.  This can be done, but if you haven't done it before, you are taking an unwarranted risk.  I have been in the dome with a telescope pointed at the Sun, when the heat melted the cement in the eyepiece and parts of the lens fell on the floor.  Fortunately, no one was looking through it at the time.  If you're really interested in this event, see if a local museum or educational institution is hosting a viewing session for it; those are much more likely to have the requisite equipment and expertise.
 
Transits of Mercury are uncommon (very roughly several years to a decade between them), but occur much more often than the less-than-once-a-lifetime frequency that transits of Venus have.  The next transit of Mercury after Monday is in 2032.

Thousands of rare 'ice eggs' found on beach in Finland