BoloOfEarth

I ran a campaign arc involving psionic aliens trying to start a war with Earth. At the beginning of the arc, a particularly not-nice alien prince was captured and put into Stronghold. (He had "mind-raped" a high-ranking UNTIL officer and had sensitive top-secret info, so the powers-that-be didn't want to just let the prince go.) The PCs were called to assist when alien ships attacked the super-prison, ostensibly to rescue the prince but actually to let a bunch of prisoners free and mind control the most powerful and easily-duped supervillain they could find (in this case, Grond) to kill the prince, giving them justification to declare war with Earth. (The whole plan was concocted by a younger prince in an attempt to get his older brothers killed off to put him next in line for the throne.) By the time the heroes arrived at Stronghold, there were over a dozen supervillains loose inside the prison, along with alien troopers and heavily armed spaceships to contend with. It was a grand melee, with the PC mentalist the only one who knew, but couldn't prove, that Grond was mind-controlled by one of the aliens to kill the prince.

By challenging him to a fencing duel. (Different kind of foil! Ha!) NT: Against all odds and logic, Foxbat's next Master Plan has succeeds and he's now Extremely Cool Absolute Ruler of Earth! What is the first thing he does with his new-found fame and power?

I've never seen Smallville or Gotham. Only watched two full episodes of Arrow. One was the Flash crossover. And the other was the Secret Origin of Felicity Smoak. Because, y'know, Felicity Smoak.

A businessman is on a flight from LA to NYC, eager to get to a dinner meeting with an important client. About an hour into the flight the pilot reports over the intercom, "Folks, I wanted to inform you that we've been having a problem with one of our engines since takeoff, and we've decided to shut it down. However, this airliner has four engines, and can easily fly with only three engines, so we've decided to continue on to our destination. Unfortunately, we'll be moving slightly slower, so we'll be a half hour late to our destination. We apologize for the inconvenience." The businessman is upset, but knows there's nothing he can do, so he sits there and steams. A while later, the intercom comes back on. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot. We've just lost another engine. Don't worry, this airliner can stay aloft quite easily on two engines. We considered rerouting to a nearby airport, but the weather across the Midwest isn't very good right now, so we decided to continue on to New York. However, this will make us about an hour later than our scheduled arrival. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and be assured the airline will help with rescheduling any connecting flights." The businessman is even more upset, as he realizes he may be late for his dinner meeting. As the airliner is passing over Pennsylvania, the pilot comes back over the intercom. "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to say that we've just lost our third engine. Most of the airports in the region are completely snowed in except LaGuardia, so we're going to keep heading in. Don't worry folks, this is one of the best airliners around, it can still land safely with only one engine. However, we're going to be even later - I can't really give you an exact estimate on exactly when we'll land, but it may be an hour and a half past our scheduled arrival time." Meanwhile, the angry businessman sends a quick text to a colleague, telling him he'll likely miss the dinner meeting entirely. As the plane is nearing New Jersey, the intercom goes on again. "Folks, we just lost our last engine..." At this, the businessman screams in frustration. "THAT'S JUST GREAT! Now we're going to be up here all day!"

Now you're just trying to pi... Oh, cra... This whole thread is going down the toi... Never mind.

Be aware, that's the quality of joke you're going to get if you keep up with the puns.

Can't remember if I've told this one here, and with the Search disabled I can't check, so I'll assume not. A man walks into a bar, walks up to the bartender, and says, "I'll bet you a beer I can bite my left eye." It's a slow day and the bartender's bored, so he shrugs and says, "Sure, why not?" And the man takes his glass eye out and bites it, then wipes it and puts it back in. The bartender laughs and pours him a beer. The man takes a drink and says, "Okay, now I'll bet you $50 I can bit my right eye." The bartender pauses before answering. The man walked in on his own, didn't seem blind, and looking close it certainly looks like a real eye. Finally, he says, "Okay, fine. Let's see you try." And the guy takes out his false teeth and uses them to "bite" his right eye. "Okay, fine, you tricked me," says the bartender as he hands the guy the money. The man thanks him, takes his beer, and has a seat. He uses some of the money to buy a round of drinks for the few people there, then strikes up a conversation with the four guys at the table next to his. After about a half hour, the man walks back up to the bartender. "How'd you like a chance to win back your money, and then some?" The bartender cautiously asks, "How?" "Well, I have incredible control of my ability to pee. In fact, I'll bet you $100 I can stand on that end of the bar, and you could stand on the other end with a shot glass, and I can pee and get every drop in the glass." The bartender looks incredulous. The bar is over 20 feet long, and he's sure nobody's ever pissed that far, let alone with any accuracy. But he'd been burned by this guy before, so he figures there's some trick to it. "No deal. You've got some trick up your sleeve." The guy chuckles. "It's not my sleeve the trick's up, believe me. Tell you what, we'll up it to $200 and you can move the glass any way you like to try keeping me from getting any in it." The bartender thinks long and hard about it, but he can't see any way the guy can trick him. So finally he says, "All right, you've got a bet." So the man climbs onto the bar, and the bartender moves to the other end with a shot glass. The man unzips his fly and begins to pee. At first, the bartender starts moving the glass, but the guy isn't even coming close. After a moment, the man say, "Okay, fine, you win," zips up his fly, and climbs down. He hands the bartender $200, which gets tucked into a pocket before the bartender grabs a towel and begins cleaning off the bar. Chuckling and shaking his head, the bartender says, "You had to know you couldn't do it. Why'd you make that bet?"

As I mentioned, I've only featured them in my games a few times. Mostly they're background noise - a news item here or there, mostly for comic relief. However, I am starting a new Champions campaign. One of the (female) PCs is in a band, and another one owns a bar/night club where that band frequently performs. All of the NPC members of the band have (relatively minor) powers. So you can bet Road Kill is going to put in an appearance, purely to be irritating. (cracks knuckles) Looks like I need to write some more Road Kill lyrics. How does You Make Me Wanna Hurl sound as a song title? Or how about Bite Me, You Skank? (Yeah, I know those both sound punk rather than heavy metal. See my prior comment on Road Kill not even getting the concept of heavy metal right.) Many thanks, rjd59, for updating them. I'll likely make changes so they can more properly irritate my players, but even so this saves me a ton of work.

Heh. What you see as a bug, I see as a feature. Y'see, I always portrayed Road Kill as a group of powered-up losers, so them not even being able to get the basic concept of a heavy metal band correct actually works for me. Funny you should mention Weird Al. One of the few times an adventure in my games featured Road Kill, they were going after Weird Al for doing a parody of one of their songs. (I know he always asks permission first, so I figured the band's manager gave Al permission without asking the band.) The players thought it incredibly cool that their PCs not only got to meet Weird Al, but that they ended up with a Favor from him after saving his life.

When the Crimson Cosmonaut tried to mind control the United States from his lunar base back in the late 1970s, he might have succeeded if not for the quick actions of the newly-formed hero team Near Earth Orbit. However, while CC's lunar base and most of his lunar satellites were destroyed by the heroes, one satellite was damaged but survived. It housed a device that broadcast a special empowering energy, keyed to CC's physiology. The NEO heroes were never able to figure out why the Cosmonaut grew in power during the night; they simply locked him in a special cell and didn't think much about it. The chance that someone else would share a close enough physiology to be affected by his Empowering Beam is pretty slim: about one in a few billion. Stacy Keenan is that lucky individual. As soon as the lunar satellite rises over the horizon, she becomes much stronger, agile, faster, and tougher than normal. It also affects the brain in odd ways, making her very happy-go-lucky and fun-loving. (She's like a manic brick-speedster.) As soon as the satellite's beam is blocked, however, the effect fades and Stacy is soon back to normal. The satellite is orbiting the moon in such a way that the Earth is in the Empowering Beam's path from about midnight to 9 am, so that is pretty much Stacy's window of operation. She decided to become a superheroine after one of the Daytimers saved her from a burning building. Taking the name Luna-Tic, she joined the Night Shift to get training and experience in becoming a superheroine before she eventually strikes out on her own.

Cal Orbach was your normal couch potato gamer dude, playing with his XBox and Wii and Playstation all day and night. His atrocious appetite and complete lack of exercise led to him becoming grossly, morbidly obese. And his constant game playing, only interacting with others online and most often in PvP, led to his utter lack of social skills. Needless to say, he also has horrid hygeine; that, plus his odious personal habits, make him repulsive to be around for any length of time. Cal would have continued in this mode if not for a freak lightning storm. A surge of electricity blew out his game consoles and flowed through the controller into Cal, causing an amazing transformation. Cal discovered that, by simply holding a game cartridge, he could gain the powers and abilities of any character in the game (yes, even opposing NPCs, though he can only take on the mantle of a "boss" character if he has defeated that character in a game). Nobody knows how a 400+ pound man can do incredible martial arts stunts as if he was in peak athletic trim, but somehow he can. He can also summon weapons, equipment, and even vehicles from the game. (Actually, they're psychokinetic constructs, but Cal insists he "summons 'em from the game.") It takes Cal a bit of extra time to switch characters, and even longer to switch games, so he typically stays as one of a select few favorite characters, but in a pinch he can switch to an obscure character, especially if that character has an unusual power set that Cal requires. After spending maybe 5 seconds considering becoming a superhero, Cal decided to embark on a life of crime as Gamer Dude. His first run-in with a superhero led him to seek out Tons of Fun. As long as the crimes don't interfere with his gaming (especially after a new game release), he's perfectly happy to use his powers to help out.

He drives over you the next time you ask him whether he's the guy that created the Chrysler Lebaron. NT: Stan Lee's surprising cameo in an upcoming Marvel movie (Ant Man, Age of Ultron, Dr. Strange, etc.)

All the music in your ad is provided by William Shatner. NT: The people at Marvel go completely, mind-bogglingly insane, and announce a completely new movie lineup for the next few years. Which... unusual characters do the movies feature? [bonus points if you provide a movie name, like "The No-So-Amazing-But-We-Have-The-Rights-To-Him-So-What-The-Heck Stilt-Man"]

He's not using a balloon with a face drawn on it as a disguise to get into your base.

I think Marcus was talking about the story before that, where the off-duty cop attacked a NYC subway conductor.

Brad Holcroft used to tease his little sister Tessa mercilessly, especially about her collection of stuffed animals. Unfortunately for Brad, he didn't know that little Tessa was a mutant who could transform others into anything she wished. One day, she got sick of Brad's teasing and turned him into a giant unicorn (covered with pink fur instead of hair). Brad freaked out and gored his sister to death with his horn (not considering that she was the only one who could change him back). Now trapped as a big pink unicorn, he takes his anger out on anybody unlucky enough to cross his path. His attempts to have others bleach or dye his fur and make it anything but pink have only had limited success. The best he can do is make parts of it a garish purple; mostly, all various dye treadments do is make his fur stand on end in wild spikes. He's even tried having it shaved off, but it grows back amazingly fast. Angry at the world, he joined the Fluffies, taking the name Punk Unicorn.

The President rubbed his eyes tiredly. "These aliens make no sense at all! Even though they speak perfect English, communicating with them is like chewing tinfoil attached to a car battery! Who can we possibly make the new Earth ambassador to their planet? I mean, the Queegla are completely delusional, and their logic is as twisted and loopy as..." "...Foxbat's Master Plan?" the Secretary of State asked. "Yeah. They're as loony as Foxbat." The President's eyes met those of his Secretary of State, and both of them began to smile. "Bill, I think we found our new ambassador to Queegla."

Night Mind enjoyed chatting with Steven Spaulding, the Night Shift's liaison with the Daytimers. Though a normal (unpowered) person, Spaulding understood the complexities of superhero life since his mother had been a solo superheroine in Los Angeles before Steven's birth. "So, I heard you have a theory on why your psionics don't work during the daytime," Spaulding said. "Neutrinos," Night Mind replied. "The sun emits neutrinos constantly. They're subatomic particles that pass through normal matter unimpeded. I think the psionic energy I project somehow reacts negatively with neutrinos, kind of like shining a light through heavy rain. And since neutrinos pass through buildings and the ground like they're not even there, they disperse my psionic energy and disrupt my powers even when I'm not in direct sunlight." Spaulding considered what the mentalist had said. "But if neutrinos pass through matter easily, wouldn't you still have problems with the neutrinos passing through the earth from wherever the sun is shining?" Night Mind nodded. "I thought of that too. Perhaps the amount of mass being passed through can cause a very, very minor but significant enough change to the neutrinos to keep them from interfering with my powers. The more mass, the less interference I get. It would explain why the strength of my powers fades as sunrise approaches, and grows after sunset." He shrugged. "The exact cause is pretty much academic anyway. Regardless of the exact reason why, during the daytime my mental blasts only cause headaches, my mental illusions are ghostly images, and my mind-lock barely makes someone hesitate." "Yeah, Doc, but during the night you can rock someone's world. I loved how you mind-controlled Foxbat to do the whole 'I'm a Little Teacup' thing while the rest of Night Shift took out Exoskeleton Man and the others." Night Mind laughed along with the liaison, then checked his watch. "Well, Steve, it's getting about time for us to get briefed by Hallsinger on what the Daytimers have been up to before he climbs into his hidey-hole. Let's get the rest of the Night Shift moving."

Given the two separate engine housings in back, I figure the middle section is larger than it appears from this POV. If you consider the cockpit is actually to the right side of the front end rather than centered, the vehicle is wider (and overall much larger) than it appears from this perspective. Going by the stats in the book, the Moccasin is nearly twice as long and nearly twice as wide as the Chimera. Also, since the Moccasin is able to run underwater for up to 5 hours, I'm pretty sure the center section isn't open. Personally, I'd have a hatch/ramp located between the two engine housings for loading and unloading troops. As to the front of the ship, I'd look at it like a B-24 nose: gunner down low where the bombardier would be in a bomber, probably accessing his spot via a crawlspace, with the pilot and copilot raised up. Maybe a navigator/sonar operator sitting behind the pilot and copilot. Here's a cutaway of a B-24 model for reference: All of that said, I've really enjoyed all the colored artwork, and I'd love to see what you'd do with the Mech-Viper. (If you're, y'know, taking requests or anything. )

Do they have to be bears? If not, I have another idea. But for now, here's a bear-based one: Pain-da Bear looks like a fully-grown giant panda (6 feet long, 3 feet tall at the shoulder), but with fangs and sharper claws than a normal panda. It was a supervillain's genetic experiment gone slightly awry - though it was intelligent as a human and could teleport at will, it didn't have above-human intelligence as the villain planned, so he drugged it and dumped it in a city park just for fun. When it was found, the unconscious animal was taken to the local zoo, where workers thought it was a normal panda that had gotten loose after someone had smuggled it into the country for a personal collection. When Pain-da awoke, he quickly escaped, mauling four zoo workers and two security guards in the process. He took the guards' gun belts and pistols, which he combined to wear around his waist in a two-gun rig. Pain-da loves three things: taking a bite out of someone (much more carnivorous than other pandas, he particularly enjoys human flesh), blazing away with his guns (he's getting to be a pretty fair shot), and then teleporting away as chaos ensues. [bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.]

Q: How many lawyer jokes are there? A: Three. The rest are true stories.

(Tongue firmly in cheek) Eccentric scientist Dr. Penny Hym, who discovered the mysterious "Hym Particles" than can change the size of objects and people, was not a happy person. Her friends and colleagues had laughed at her idea of becoming a superhero and especially at her suggested name: Ms. Mite. "How the heck is becoming really, really small a superpower?" they scoffed. "Sounds more like an anti-superpower. Anti... get it?" Things might have gone a different route if a superbattle hadn't erupted in her neighborhood between Termite Man and SuperLogger (the mutant lumberjack hero who could grow to six stories tall; he used to be able to grow seven stories tall, but that's another story). The battle completely trashed her home (along with many others) and destroyed most of her cherished possessions. She blamed SuperLogger almost exclusively for the damage. (After all, it was his body that fell on her house.) Such wanton destruction by a so-called superhero could not be tolerated. She would show them. So Dr. Hym created a battlesuit that used Hym Particles to allow her to shrink and return to normal size. (She considered finding some way to control mites, ants, gnats, and other small insects but really, how useful could that be?) She also created a "Hym Particle Projector" that can shrink others for up to an hour, and she particularly enjoys using it on giants to "bring them back down to size."

You see Foxbat everywhere. (After seeing the trailer for Ant-Man) NT: Better names for Ant-Man than, y'know, Ant-Man.

As a GM, I always liked the Chimera. I've designed VIPER Nests with a main hallway wide enough and tall enough, and with big enough doors from the Motor Pool, that a Chimera could move around inside. Put one at an intersection and you have full coverage. Nasty surprise for invading superheroes.

Nope, Icarus (the son) is the one who flew too high, causing the wax holding the wings to soften, leading to his fall into the ocean. As to the OP, I'm enjoying the color images, though I agree the green on the aircraft (is that the Quetzalcoatl?) is too bright. And the canard wings are a nice touch.