And none taken. I mean--thanks and all that, but if I was particularly thin-skinned, I couldn't enjoy these discussions the way I do.
Summed up otherly: I am the eldest of thirteen siblings. I don't have any feelings left!
Yep. Just had a minute to double check (I keep a copy of 2e Champions and 3e's Fantasy Hero in my phone. I had forgotten they were there).
You are correct. Though 2e doesn't offer the example (space/layout issues?) and is less precise about taking additional damage.
I expect so, and we've been using it so long-- it was in play from my original GM-- that I hadn't given it much thought until I read the detailed entry in 4e.
We just sort of focused on the "without medical attention" part: no doctor? No first aid? You're out.
I enjoy these things: you never know what you don't know until someone else points it out.
My apologies for taking so long to respond to questions — real life snuck up on me and got in a Surprise attacking, Knocking me Out for several Segments until I could recover. I can't promise it won't happen again, but I'll try to Dive For Cover next time.
I very well may have owned this once, but that was long ago and my memory just isn't THAT good. Having said that, take a look at https://www.rpggeek.com/rpgitem/67115/gamemasters-screen-champions-2nd-edition - it has a picture of the "cover" of the screen showing the same "2nd Edition" splash and the "HER005" stock number. It also references that it was made up of two 2-panel sections. I also have a couple other info sources: one is an old web page from the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20120413095739/http://www.sysabend.org/champions/HERO_System_Products_List.html) where if you scroll down a ways to the section for the original Hero Games stuff, it lists both 1st & 2nd edition versions of the GM screen as stock # 005. The entry for the 2nd edition screen does mention "Revised Edition" rather than "2nd Edition" which both yours and the image at the link above show, but that may very well be a mistake. The other info source isn't something I can give a link for, but there's a capsule review of the product in issue #51 of Space Gamer magazine (written by Aaron Allston) that mentions that the screen is 'two 17" x 11" screens folded in half'. (For the curious, Aaron's conclusion of this 4-paragraph review is "GMs who really want a good-looking cardstock screen should pick this up; misers (like me) will improvise.")
That certainly doesn't address any of your observations about the print job, but it DOES seem like the form factor and details are right, at least. If it is a knockoff, then it at least seems to be a well-made one...?
3) Any titles you have and where they were granted
The Virile: Koloth have eleventeen wives, some his own. Have tens and tens of childs.
Deathbringer: former village in the hills
Iron Doom: Gatekeeper at former fortification before hill village
The Sapper: numerous walled cities other side of hills
Rat bastard: guy who cheats at dice
4) Place of birth
On horseback. Mom plenty tough
5) What is your reason for visiting our fair city?
Look around. Find wives. Study walls.
6) Education
Know wenching, math to seven. Also architecture and which pot for drinking, which pot for peeing. Good sapper.
7) List your previous three jobs
Break walls a fortification before hill village
Break walls at hill village
This job here
8 ) List of references (preferably at least one within the city)
Good article about Koloth in Sapper Monthly. Let me in; I show you.
9) Preferred religion
Big fan of statues with battle axe. Battle axe means best god.
10) Any outstanding tax debts
Owe nothing to any currently-standing village, city, or kingdom.
11) Any outstanding bounties and the circumstances of why a bounty has been placed upon you
Bounties on Koloth all based on poor survival skills of someone with too much coin. No bounty on Koloth by any living person.
12) Declare all dangerous companions and all dangerous items in your possession
Koloth peaceful traveller. Have only shovels, axes and scrolls on "how to sap" for barbarians.
13) Declare whether you are possessed
Koloth possessed of great strength, great stamina, and cool hat made from skull of ogre war chief.
14) Do you eat carrots?
Sweetens rice dishes and removes gaminess from orc stew. Also makes roast bear taste like food.
15) Emergency contact information
Deity who owes you best favor. Contact now.
16) Are you literate?
No; parents married.
17) Do you have a horse or other livestock which you are bringing into the city?
only horse for riding and two horses for eating. Horse for carrying potions of fireball way in back.
18) Are they literate?
Yes. Horse parents never married. All horses literate.
Giving false information on this form is punishable by fines, imprisonment, and/or execution as deemed necessary by the local magistrate and such punishments may be inflicted in any order.
Koloth not lie, but amenable to perform executions and inflict punishments for local master gate when current job over.
My current youth group is the only time I've _ever_ had issues getting someone to comprehend tracking END, and even then it's just the younger ones. I mean, players have no problem tracking STUN, BODY, and until this one group, track END. It's not like it's totally foreign if you can track the other two, right? My suspicion is the "youth" part: they're in a hurry to do amazing things in their magical new world.
My solution was this:
Combined with this:
Yes, as an American deep in rural farm country, I was startled to find a dozen 45 cm plastic rulers in my local office supply store (I mean local; the nearest chain place is ninety miles from me). The ones I found were wider and thinner than the one pictured, and they had a narrow little slot running down almost the full length (presumably some sort of cutting guide?) At any rate, I tucked A paper rivet through each slot and folded one tab one toward the center and the other tab toward and up around the edge of the centimeter side, making something of a pointer. I explained to them that they put the pointer on their starting END (mercifully, the highest END was dead-on 45) and when they did anything, they slid the pointer down to indicate their current END score.
Not only did it work, but they want one for tracking STUN, too.
I don't think the math bothered them; I don't think that they were unaware that things cost END. I think they got wrapped up and forgot to stop and do it. This, being a bit more in-your-face, seems to have stopped the problem cold. They have taken to moving the counter as if it were the most important part of the game. Unexpected bonus: I can tell at a casual glance about where anyone's END is at any given moment.
It looks like I missed an entire page of responses. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.
I have ave the speed chart laminated, a couple of pages from the books like the skills list and combat maneuvers and modifiers, and a lot of stuff from the downloads page, such as combat summaries, the quick roll reference chart that shows all the rolls needed for a range of OCV vs. DCV, stuff like that.
Tying these two thoughts together, what about a laminated card divided into halves by a line down the middle, with one half labeled "OCV" and the other half "DCV", and then each player could write down their current modifiers in the appropriate section? When they reach their next phase and their modifiers change, they can erase and rewrite. Eventually the players would (hopefully) get better at keeping this information in their heads and no longer need the card, but it might help out in the beginning.
That said, I have to ask: what sort of laminated playing aids have you put into use? (Inquiring minds want to know )
Now I've got to get Jason's attention and get it to him.
Then it's on to the next one: I reckon I'll start with the first few Adventurers Clubs that a forum member was kind enough to loan me before deciding where to go next. Star HERO (pet project) and Cyber HERO got back-burnered now that there are actual scans of those products in existence (though really: they could be a lot better. ).
I'm going to tell you straight-up that there is a thing in the Western HERO final version that bugs me: The spine and the rear cover don't align quite properly. However, I'm done. I'm just done. I've been using my precious and rare spare time on this, wedging it in here and there-- sometimes working on it _literally_ less than five minutes at a time, and what? Since November last year?
I'm done. I'm including the covers and spine as separate elements for anyone wishing to make corrections on their own. I know it was a labor of love, but I just can't look at it any more...... Birdy's got to get the hell out of this nest!
Another point that isn't being addressed is this: Hero has no book that you can call a GM's guide. Yes the main books are long but Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete prove that much of that word count is examples and side notes. The actual rules on character creation and combat aren't much longer than the Player's Handbook. Advice and Guidelines for GM's are given their own section but are nowhere near the depth and detail needed to run the game without experience. Separate that out and expand upon it in a GM only book(maybe with all the almanac optional rules) and you'd take a big step toward getting Hero out again.
The rest we know. Military discipline and rationing had allowed the crew of the shuttle to survive for nearly twenty-one weeks, the first eighteen of which they had spent traveling toward the Gate at the laughable (on a cosmic scale) speed that Martin had imparted to their ship. Coincidence --Divine Providence?-- guided them almost perfectly through the Gate, and once in Earth's system their broadcasts had been received by a science ship recently commissioned to study Neptune and its unusual orbit. Within a week of passing through the Gate, they had been picked up and put in tow. Three weeks after that, they were taking a ferry down to earth.
The world has been without Martin Power for a few years now, and-- well, it's difficult to explain to the children born after he walked among us, but even after all this time, it's still palpable: the world actually _feels different_ without him. Even those who had never met him and believe (sometimes incorrectly) that their lives were never touched by him have mourned his loss. The skies have the slightest bit more gray these past few years. The chill has more bite. Even laughter seems to end with a soft sigh. It is as if the one thing that allowed the human race to believe that tomorrow would always be safe, always be better-- is gone. Few talk about it anymore, outside of his sister, who is still doing everything she can to find her way back to the stars, but it's as if everyone alive when the news of his loss broke were all aerialists, and has suddenly realized that their safety net was gone. They may never have needed it, but simply knowing that it was no longer there---
Well, if you lived through it, then you know what I am trying to say; there simply are no words to express it. If you are one of the unfortunate new generations who will never have had this unbelievable man in your universe, then there is simply no way to really make you understand, and for that, I am somehow even more sorry than I am for his loss.
----------------------------------------------
Martin Power was more than just a Para; he was more than the most powerful Para that ever lived. Martin Power managed to somehow blend power, personality, morality, dignity, and love of his fellow man into some kind of unstoppable force of nature. He was beyond definition. He was liked-- often loved-- by almost everyone who ever met him. Even those that did not fall victim to the charm of his honesty and Boy Scout-like wholesomeness respected him, and most of them admired him.
Even though he managed to avoid the typical life of a costumed Para, and most of his heroics will never see the light of day, even with such ambitious projects at this book, it is safe to say that there isn't a soul on earth who didn't instantly recognize his image, and know who he was. But he was more than a "superhero." He was, in a very bizarre way, the ultimate everyman, wanting nothing more than the joy of time with his family and the peace of privacy. Beyond his small career as a spokesperson and commercial actor, he never used his tremendous abilities for his own ends-- he preferred not to use them at all, if he could help it-- but when he did, it was almost always for the sake of others. More than his physical prowess, the threat of his power was his most-used tool, and even then-- never for any cause that didn't in some way benefit every citizen of his country; every man woman and child on earth.
Life was sacred to Martin Power, as was the right of an individual to determine his own life and to be safe to live it. His covert career as an unwilling super-agent and a war machine among the stars and his rare foray into unintentional crime fighting were all driven by those ideals. In that way, Martin Power was most of all a catalyst. He was single-handedly responsible for more of the world that the public knows today than is any other human being alive, perhaps more than any man in history. Government is now more closely-watched, and less powerful, than at any time in hundreds of years. Martin Power gave us that. Paras and Metas are free to live their lives without fear of exposure or even the existence of a Registry. Martin Power gave us that, too.
But most of all, Martin Power gave us the stars. He gave us the knowledge of the Frontier Corps, and with their becoming public, the funding and support of an entire planet. He gave us space travel, and life beyond the visible stars. He gave us impossibly clean energy in unimaginable abundance through the gavitic ore. Without Martin Power, it's most likely that we would never have had any of these miracles.
FILE ADDENDUM: I am an agent of a top-secret black agency. I cannot tell you who I am or who I work for. I feel it is important that, should this book come to see the light of day, I add this note. The author is not at this time aware of this note, and should Power's body never be discovered, he never will be aware of it. However, given the good that Martin Power has done in his life, and given the inevitable blame and scorn his memory will take for not using himself as a professional hero, I feel obligated to reveal what was perhaps his greatest secret. I have surreptitiously placed it into this work after it has been studied and analyzed by the agency. There is little chance of them revising this work, so I feel safe to present it here. It would perhaps be more prudent to let this secret die with me, but I feel that not only does it explain Power's aversion to "professional" heroics, but speaks volumes as to who he was as a person, and the strength of his attachments to those he loved. You see, I have been privileged to know what perhaps no other human being has ever known: the reason Martin Power never became a Registered Para or, even after the demise of the Registry, a professional hero.
As the author has noted, Martin Power did an extensive amount of research prior to his decision to remain a private citizen, ignore his abilities, and avoid being a professional hero at all costs. The conspiracy theories that abound are completely off-base. The real reason is shockingly simple.
I was assigned as a "handler" for Martin Power. This means that it was my job to use any means necessary to get compliance from Martin Power whenever the government judged his intervention to be necessary. I am not proud of what I did, but I am proud of the reasons I did it.
As part of my job, almost every conversation I ever had with Martin Power was, without his knowledge, recorded for psychological analysis with the goal of learning better and more effective methods of motivating him. The following is a transcript of the one time that he explained to me why he would never, under any circumstances, become a professional hero. Until this moment, this conversation has always been my own confidence; it went unreported even to my superiors for fear that the very scenario laid out in this conversation might become attractive in times of desperation. For reasons I cannot divulge, my participation and certain referential portions of his own participation have been omitted. What remains, however, is an Occam-like simplicity that explains the motivation under which Martin Power lived the bulk of his life:
"It's simple, Rags. It's very simple. It's you guys-- all you costumed nutjobs. Sure, when I was a kid, it all seemed so amazing. Superheroes saving the city from bad guys; saving the world from powerful individuals bent on domination or destruction. Even the alien thing was pretty cool, and until I met you I was like the rest of the world: I was certain there was just no such thing. Still, as a kid, it really was something to aspire to. I mean, who doesn't want to be the person who saves all the good and kind people of the world? Who doesn't want to be that one person who makes the difference between success and failure?
"I know a lot of folks want to be that person. There are an _awful_ lot of Paras out there-- Metas too-- registered and fully-supported as professional heroes. There are lots of people out there who really have the kind of power to make a real difference, and I mean on a _big_ scale. Even the little guys-- those guys who don't have much more than an edge or a gimmick-- even they want to do something, something good. It might not be much, but they want to be the guy doing it. Frankly, I think it's commendable. I think it's wonderful. I think it's probably the greatest thing that a person can ever do: give their lives over to the greater good, to help ensure the safety and security of others.
"But I've done something that you haven't. I've done something that I think a lot of them haven't. I've gotten myself stuck between the ultimate rock and a hard place. I don't know who you are, Rags. Seriously. I mean, I know _you_, the costumed tatterdemalion that stands here in front of me, representing law and order and peace and justice and all that good stuff. But when you leave, when your mission is over, you go home, don't you? You go home and take that costume off. You take off that mask, and you're some else entirely.
"I can't do that. From Day One, people have known who I am. That first day at the bank, years ago, my name was the first thing in the headline. Not that it matters. I mean, I'm nearly eight feet tall, Rags. I weigh a half a ton. Who else am I going to be? I can't walk down any street in the world without someone knowing who I am. I have guys like you sitting in my living room every other week, pitching me some spiel about why I need to save the world. I will never, ever be anyone except Martin Power, and there's nothing I can do about that.
"That's the rock. Here's the hard place:
"Now bear with me, Rags, because here's what makes being a pro a hard place, at least for me: think about the things I've done, and done without even breaking a sweat. I ripped a supercarrier in half and didn't even break my stride to do it. I dug a tunnel through a mountain to rescue the President. I did it with my _bare hands_, and did it in under an hour. I shielded Easter Island from a nuclear explosion just by picking up the bomb and holding it up to my chest while it went off! Yeah, don't you think for a second that I'll ever forget that. The blast shot me nearly eighty-seven miles!
"A few years ago you hauled me further across the galaxy than I ever thought it was possible to go. Why? I was the only weapon you had to offer an alien race in a war that might spill our way. How long did it take me to destroy the military might of an entire empire? How long were we gone? Eight months? And just how many thousands of ships did I destroy for you? If you recall, the only 'weapon' I had was that little radio you gave me.
"Have you thought about the power level required to drop me? Think about the sort of person that you-- or anyone else-- would need to take me out, permanently. Who is that powerful? Who can take me down? I mean take me down and _keep_ me down? Who do you have on tap that could just walk in here and drop me if someone absolutely had to?
"Yeah; that's what I thought: no one. That person simply doesn't exist. There are no Paras even close to my level. I'm not just at the top, Rags; I'm so far up that I have to treat even the baddest Bricks in the world like they're made of eggshells and glass. When I realized that, it was the first time in my life that I wanted to be anything-- _anything!_ -- but the best.
"No; not even the Psis. You know as well as I do that even if the entire Opal network took aim at me, I would outlast them. They'd get tired, and I wouldn't. Eventually, I'd get back up.
"Have you ever noticed that pro heroes draw some real sickos? I mean big-time. Some of these guys seem to become life-long threats twosome poor pro, showing up over and over. If the pro can defeat him, take him in, get him locked up, that's great. But when he gets out, he'll come back.
"That's it. That's the hard place.
"Like I said, Rags, there is no one more powerful than me. We've been up and down the galaxy together, and you know it's true. If there was someone more powerful than me, you guys would be bothering _him_, wouldn't you? But you're not. You're bothering me. And I can't be anyone _but_ Martin Power: Immovable Object; Unstoppable Force.
"Look, it's getting late, and this is something I don't even like to think about, so let me just get this off my chest so we can turn in. Going to be a big day tomorrow. Just promise me this is the last time we go into space, okay? While it's great knowing I can survive in total vacuum, the actual experience is kind of creepy. You know I love peace and quiet, but being outside, exposed to space... The cold... the impossible quiet... It's like opening your eyes and waking up in a tomb.
"I've never had much family. I don't know who my actual blood family is. I had two adopted parents, and I still have a father and a sister. Those two people mean more to me than anything else in all of Creation.
"Suppose I finally give in to you jackasses? Suppose I go pro? From everything I've seen, no Para has ever had any real nutjob problems until he decided to go pro. It's like throwing your hat into the ring or something; I don't know. But suppose I go pro? You think that given who I am and what I can do, all this worrying is completely ridiculous. I'm the Indestructible Man, right? Drop me in the Mariana Trench, and a month later I walk out of the ocean and up onto the beach in California. Blast me out of the space station and an hour later I walked out of the great big crater I made when I hit the ground. Make me hug a nuclear warhead, and the only thing that happens when it goes off is I'm naked and thirsty! Nothing does much more than slow me down as it is, and according to your science guys, every time I actually _use_ my strength or my indestructibility is put to the test-- whatever I end up doing, I just gets stronger and stronger! So why not go pro? What do I have to worry about?
"Let me paint it a little closer to home. Let's look at what _you_ do, Rags. I'm not stupid. We've been knowing each other long enough that I know the gist of your story. You're not just an agent that comes calling, trying to convince me to save the world every now and again. Somehow, you're in charge of making sure I do it. I don't know what it is exactly that you do, but you rarely have a pitch that you can't sell me. So once all the cards are exposed, I agree. You do things the right way, and that flies pretty well with me.
"Let's look at the guy who isn't interested in doing it the right way. Let's look at the guy who just wants it done, period. You know: the usual kind of screwball the pro heroes draw like magnets. These are the ones that scare me the most, okay? Don't look all shocked, Rags. Yes; there are things I'm scared of. Of those things, this is the one I fear the most, okay? Let's say that some two-bit minor-league psycho comes to the surface long enough to see that I'm in the game. He can't do even a tenth of what I can do-- he can't do one one-hundredth of what I can do. He doesn't have to. If he's smart enough, he can get me to do it for him.
"Rags, you are really thick sometimes, you know it? How many guys do you know that can use a gun? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Sure, anyone with hands. All it takes is motive. Suppose that motive is using me as a personal weapon. Would that be enough, you suppose, for some lunatic to put a gun to my sister's head? Suppose one day I come home and there's nothing in my father's chair but a note with a list of demands? When that happens, what do you think I'm going to do? That's right: whatever he wants. They're not just all I have, Rags; they are the most important things in the world to me. If it meant keeping them safe, I'd crush you to paste and never look back. I'd rip every spec of life off this planet and hurl it into the sun. Don't think it's funny, Rags, because you know good and well that I can do it, and that there isn't a force you can muster that could stop me.
"Sorry, Rags. I didn't mean to worry you. Though really, you ought to know that already. Think about how easy it would be, though. I'm Martin Power, every day of the week, and everyone knows who Martin Power is. Everyone knows he has a family. It would take all of five seconds to know their names, and ten minutes to know where they are.
"So you tell me, Rags: are you guys going to keep pestering me to go pro? Or are you going to let this lay?
"Get to bed. We've got to be at Kennedy tomorrow night for that search and rescue, and it's a long trip."
Jennifer Curtis gave one last interview to this author before disappearing, evidently from the face of the earth. Her whereabouts have been a mystery for two years at the time of this writing. She had attempted to to join the Frontier Corps, desperate to go back to space and look for her brother, but her criminal record kept her out. She made no secret of the fact that she wanted to find a way into space, hoping to recover her brother's body. Those closest to her agree that she never completely accepted his death, claiming that were he truly dead, "I'd know it."
Just a few weeks after her adopted father's death, Jennifer Curtis disappeared forever. Perhaps the loss drove her over the edge. Perhaps she simply felt there was nothing left to anchor her outside her more illicit life, and has submerged herself fully into it. If I may be allowed to speculate, I find it more likely, given what I learned of her during the research and writing of this book, that she used the considerable fortune left to her as the sole heir of the estates of Martin Power and Jeff Curtis, combined it with her own, and bought her way into space via the program of another nation, or perhaps one of the few private concerns. Clearly, wherever she is, she doesn't want anyone to find her.
Our last interview was on a Sunday, and as was the habit she shared with Jeff, Sundays consisted of morning church service and then an early afternoon picnic at the grave markers for Martin Power and his adopted mother. Jeff worried at first that perhaps Jennifer was in danger psychologically, but calmed when it became clear that she wasn't. She simply hadn't let go of her brother, and likely never would. When Jeff died, up until she disappeared, she continued to spend Sunday afternoons "talking" to her brother.
ME: I see there has been some construction since I was last here.
Jennifer: Destruction.
ME: Destruction?
Jennifer: Remember when the President announced 'Martin Power Day?'
ME: I do.
Jennifer: Stupid government came in here and tried to build a great big memorial-- like some kind of shrine. It didn't belong here. This is a family place-- lots of families are here. All of my family is here. Martin would have hated it. Me and Dad fought it for weeks. They finally pulled it all down a couple of weeks ago. Broke his headstone doing it. Jackasses. Anything for a vote and a picture.
ME: The headstone seems fine.
Jennifer: That's the new one. Dad left it up to me.
ME (Reading): Martin Power. Taken too soon. In his forty-four years, he never swore.
Is that true? I remember a couple of other people mentioning that they had never heard him say anything in rage--
Jennifer: Oh, he got mad. He got _plenty_ mad sometimes. But he never swore. Not once.
ME: rather unusual for an American today, isn't it?
Jennifer: it was important to him. He was like --...
ME: Yes?
Jennifer: Well, I was going to say he was like a Boy Scout, but he really wasn't. He was just like everyone else at heart. He was just a good guy, a really, really good guy. He'd hate it if he knew I told you that. [laughs]
ME: So he was proud that he never swore?
Jennifer: No; I don't think he ever really thought about it. He never mentioned it. I just noticed it one day, and just sort of kept an ear out from then on. He never swore. Not once.
ME: Seems sort of unusual, doesn't it? I mean, to immortalize a man for something that he never really thought much about....
Jennifer: That was my idea. I just-- well, you have no idea how much Big Brother means to me. You have no idea how unique, how special he was. I want the whole world to know what a special person he was.
ME: The whole world _does_ know. He was undeniably the most powerful mortal being ever to live, perhaps the most powerful who ever will live.
Jennifer: It's not that. I didn't want to put that up: "Martin Power, the World's Strongest Man." or "The Indestructible Martin Power." He never made a really big deal about his power. It always bothered him that when people met him, the first thing they thought was "the Amazing Man." It made him feel like a circus freak.
ME: So why "he never swore?"
Jennifer: Because it tells a little tiny bit about who he was as a person, not just a freak of nature. [grins and giggles a laugh clearly not directed at me. For a moment, she is playing to her brother: at this instant, he is very much here, at least for her] And because when people read it, most of them are going to think "that's amazing!" [more laughter, and it becomes clear that I am, to her, no longer here.]
ME: I suppose he would like that.
Jennifer [as if noticing me for the first time]: No! He would have _hated_ that! [pause, as she returns to some moment shared with her brother] And he would know that I picked it, and that I picked it just to get under his skin a bit. _That_, he would have loved.
During his life, Martin Power fought long and hard against ever doing anything but living his life in relative quiet. He never wanted to be a hero of any sort, save perhaps to his family, or a few charity causes that were important to him. Still, in spite of himself, he was called to use his fantastic abilities time and time again for the good of humanity. One can only wonder what reasons he might have had for not doing as so many far less powerful than him have done, and don the mantle of professional hero full time. The things he could have achieved, the suffering he might have saved-- given that all tests demonstrated that he might live for hundreds of years, there is no real limit to the good he could have done. We will never know, as he never stepped into the professional arena. He will never again have the opportunity to change his mind. Mostly, we will never know what kept him from becoming a registered Para and a professional hero, as he appears to have been the only man with the answers to those questions, and he has taken those answers with him to the grave.
Copyright D.E. "Duke" Oliver, 2019
That's it, folks.
Thank you for bearing with me.
If you really hated having to wade through something that long, blame Chris. He suggested that this one be next.
Going to take a break for a couple of days before posting the next one. There's only a couple left, and one I posted years and years ago, so I think I'll do my favorite next. And hey! It's a villain!
At first, he thought it was yet another in a long list of remains to be gathered and await the hopeless chance to be identified through some record: fingerprints, blood type, DNA....
But it moved. It moved up _over_ the cliff. He was fascinated in an almost abstract way. The hand was enormous. It was moving up... up...
There was an arm directly under it. The fingers turned inward, claw-like, and the arm tensed. Almost faster than he could see, the hand shot toward the surface in front of him, smashing through the rock and burying itself deeply within.
The men cheered, screaming shouts of absolute elation, clapping each other on the back. As the colonel stepped from the car, another hand appeared, the opposite of the first. It, too, clawed into the ground, closer than the first. Then the arms flexed, and pulled a massive set of shoulders into view. There was nothing really to give any sense of scale to what he saw; there was simply something about the way the arms and shoulders moved that suggested an unnatural size. He stared on, transfixed by the impossible thing he was seeing.
Then a head rotated up, looking for the next handhold.
The major gaped in astonishment. "Holy shit!" he exploded. "That-- that's Martin Power!"
Over the next few minutes, the ordered medics and vehicles had arrived. Men had rushed forward to offer their hands in hauling the giant over the cliff, but he had waved them all away with shakes of his head. If he relied on them instead of the stone, it would have all been for nothing. Everyone would be gone, just like that, so close to the end. He had hauled himself out of the ravine completely, still punching handholds into the rock, still crawling on his stomach, propelling himself slowly, painfully cautiously, by secure handholds and footholds rooted deep into the crust of the strange glassy rock. He moved only one limb at a time, not moving at all until he was certain that at least three of his holds were completely secure.
Once he had crawled some thirty yards or so from the edge, Power began to rip and claw at the stone, digging a large hollow behind a sharp edge in the earth. He dragged himself forward, moving carefully so as not to lift himself from the earth. In twenty minutes, he had moved barely a hundred yards. For the first time, the major noticed the cables tied around the giant's chest and shoulders. Power continued to root deeper and deeper, increasing the bulk of the earth berm he was creating behind himself, then he dragged himself past the recess he had carved, and braced his feet against it. Cautiously, he rolled onto his back and seized the cables in his hands. Slowly, carefully, he worked the cables hand-over-hand, pulling them over the stone edge of the abyss. They sang shrilly under the tension. Men ran forward, grabbing the cables and pulling. There was nothing they could contribute to the effort, of course, but there was an urgent need to do something, anything. They had found the first, and possibly only, survivor of the Pit, and they were overjoyed.
The colonel had just gotten his mind wrapped around the idea that someone had been through the hellish onslaught, the indescribable destruction, and lived. He had just adjusted to that idea, and began to bark redundant orders to the medics when the setting sun reflected a glint of metal. As he watched, the bunched threads of the elevator cables drew an enormous bucket up from the abyss. No. Not a bucket. An... an _airplane_?! The entire fuselage of an airplane slowly ground its way into view, climbing up above the men, then slowly tipping toward the earth. As the collected soldiers stared in amazement, the badly-battered fuselage of an Airbus A300 was pulled onto the flat ground before them by an assortment of cable and rope run through dozens of holes punctured through the structure. No one could speak.
"Almost there!" Martin hollered toward the fuselage, tension evident in his voice. It wasn't physical exhaustion as it had been throughout the entirety of his ordeal.. This time it was fatigue of the mind and spirit brought on by the endless worrying about the people in the plane as it dangled from him by spidery threads, swaying out over the abyss and scraping against the cliff. Every beat of his heart reminded him of the lives he held in his hands. Now it was over. Now he could rest.
He gave one final great heave on the cables, sending the plane skittering forward toward the trucks behind him. He stood and walked toward the plane. "All ashore! Last stop." He tried to keep his spirits high. "Do... something with your tray tables or whatever...." was the best he could manage before he crumpled into a heap, sitting in the shade of the plane. Jennifer and the boys had been the last ones off the plane, the boys yammering non-stop about the adventure as if it had been a movie. Of course, many of the others were doing the same. Perhaps it was simply a way to cope.
Jennifer fell into his lap and kissed his cheek. "You did it, Big Brother. Just like Sister said you would." Then she, too, gave in to the exhaustion induced by the harrowing ride up the cliff, and fell on top of him, instantly asleep.
“Welcome home, Kid.” Martin sighed as he kissed her head.
copyright D.E. "Duke" Oliver, 2019
rravenwood got a reaction from Duke Bushido in This thing looks too good
rravenwood got a reaction from Brian Stanfield in Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?
