nato9

Re: Tropes Revisited: Beautiful Female Martial Artist. Ideas sought If you have to choose just one great look to represent "beautiful female martial artist", IMHO I think you'd really want to go with Chinese. There are many great martial arts from around the world, and of course anyone with time and talent can learn them. But probably the premiere one that most captures the trope would be China and Kung Fu. It's a whole movie industry! That's just if you're specifically trying to do a "trope". Which I think implies a little of archtype or cliche. Like a language of short-hands. Other ideas are awesome too, but the more unique you get, the less trope-ish it is. Along those lines, for the beautiful part the cheongsam or qipao dress looks fantastic. With slits for dramatic kicks, of course. A female in one of those, in a dramatic martial arts pose, conveys the trope right away. At least in a Hong Kong Theater kind of way, which is neat and fun. Just a thought.

Eurostar specifically could be an important link for your Cincy campaign I think I have some good ideas for Eurostar and beyond. This is long but I hope worth reading for your Cincinnati campaign. Please give it a chance. Say Dayton has no local hero team. Maybe they lost corporate funding when NCR left, or just never had a strong one to begin with. Nationally it's not important, but regionally everyone knows that there is a hero vacuum from Cincy to Columbus. Meanwhile, the Columbus Knights (or whoever) either have too bad a relationship with the law, or too good of one. They are used by the Governor as a kind of State wide police. They are constantly being sent to places like Toledo or Akron or Athens. When they do appear they are tired but imperious, acting more as arrogant rivals with a State level mandate. (Like the FBI sometimes on police TV shows) Or maybe they just can only barely handle Columbus itself, and can't help Dayton. So the nearest viable protectors for Dayton are: your team in Cincy. Fiacho wants Europe to pay. To burn. He wants it to be the divided, blood feuding, insoluble battleground he knows it to be. He wants Europe to be Balkanized, writ large. For him, Europe *is* a big Balkans. Only a few things (like the EU) are going to make Fiacho more frothing-at-the-mouth mad than the Dayton Peace Accords, which imperfectly but pretty successfully brought some peace to the Balkan war. If they can stop killing in *THE BALKANS* of all places... what does that say for the central conceit that defines and consumes Fiacho? "Dayton" must aggravate and eat at his mind badly. It might make no sense to anyone else, but it's exactly his version of derangement. So two possibilities. Fiacho may hate the idea of Dayton with such a passion that every once in a while he drops by with the team just to smash it. The rest of the team may think "what's Dayton?", but they're used to following Fiacho's strange but passionate plans; after all they have made Eurostar what it is. Besides, beating ugly Americans can have a nice "America get out of Europe" angle. Along that line, Europe and America do have a lot of economic and political links. Though the EU structure will always be the top target, to meet its goals, Eurostar absolutely has to break apart NATO somehow. It provides way too much security to get Europe squabbling and burning like Fiacho envisions it. So Eurostar may very occasionally have some reason to visit the US, especially New York City. Fiacho might think it worth the short flight over to come pay Dayton a visit rampage as a side goal. OR if you want more subtle: the peace plan was, of course, not perfect. It's still a very troubled area and still unstable. This dates him (maybe in your world the treaty happened later), but maybe when the peace deal was worked out, Fiacho was there! Realizing this deal was coming, he showed up in disguise. Using his diplomacy skills, he worked different sides, planting as much imperfection and seeds for conflict in the deal as he could. Maybe even some awful secret protocols still waiting to ignite southeastern Europe again. (Some of those sides were awful and needed no devil whispering in their ear; imagine what they would agree to, especially under Fiacho's powerful personal persuasion.) Somehow, your team gets wind of this and starts investigating, maybe with no clue where it leads. Fiacho gets tipped off and wants to keep this secret. He sends Pantera to stalk and assassinate the lead investigator in dramatic fashion. Your team has no idea why Pantera is here, of all places. When that fails, eventually all of Eurostar itself shows up in a brutal direct assault on the Cincy HQ. Maybe with a cover story, maybe not. It's up to the players to win and protect the peace accord and stop the ticking horrible secret agreements from happening. And of course, once badly foiled in any case, Eurostar won't need any excuses for attacking your team in the future. Some of these guys' primary super power is "Hold Grudge". Your heroes can use a new Hunted, right? So I think that is a very in-character way to get Eurostar to your team's turf. The Dayton-Balkans link is just a direct connection to the passions that drive Fiacho, and through him Eurostar. But it doesn't stop there. I have to mention Wright Patterson Air Force Base. This base has some real-life national fame (in UFO conspiracy stuff) as a place where alien technology and even grey aliens were stored. (I had a high school biology teacher that calmly swore he saw greys when he was based there, no kidding.) In a super hero world, with real aliens, this is a gold mine. Because there would really *be* alien technology and even bodies (either dead or living!) at Wright Pat. Tons of it. And since your team is based in Cincy, make it *the* big center for America's military response and studying of aliens. Vast secret labs and underground base, the whole thing. It's overgrown so much there's even branch labs in Cincinnati proper (sometimes you need to be in a big city). In this case, Area 51 is one of two things. It may be an alternate UFO area, which of course has to communicate and exchange things with Wright Pat. That could give lead ins for a trip to the Southwest. OR... Area 51 is a modern day FUSAG, a bodyguard of lies that keeps Wright Pat safe and unnoticed. There are no grey aliens; they are a military creation, short airmen in suits, to distract people from the real Tyrixx and Ecrotian tech at Dayton. This would be a fun mystery and secret to unravel and learn. And a moral dilemma about keeping it (and the quite real abductions that are actually for mutant DNA research) secret, for "national security" of course! So with Wright Pat as alien tech capital of the US, any villain with a high tech or especially extra-terrestial angle has plenty of reason to come to town. Even big name national-level ones. And with no Dayton or Columbus super heroes available, the Air Force base commander needs help and lots of it. Get your Cincy team on the top of the general's speed dial list and he could be providing tons of adventure hooks and leads. That's exactly what would happen if they, and no one else, saved the base from a Eurostar rampage... Because hey, Wright Pat is exactly where the Dayton Peace Accord was held!