TED-M 3
The Greatest Game
Summertime, and the livin' is easy
but not on Murder World! The survivors of TED-Meta have built a pykrete dome near the eastern shore of Nomanisan South, under the many different trees of this strange island. Night fell, the only food gathered so far is coconut, and many of the civilians have difficulty sleeping in these harsh conditions.Even more so, when Arcade's announcement played across the island on hidden loudspeakers!An event of some sort is in progress. There is a "bag limit" per guest. People in white jumpsuits are not valid targets. Opportunities exist in the lake country of the northwest, or there's a "challenge" available on the south central peninsula.Arcade must mean the unexpected Wyldfire members of the TED-Meta conference!Does that mean the woman with the net -- the one who looks a little like MMA fighter Katya Kavaleva -- is on her way for a rematch against the "Orinson"?When Silverwing pushes himself, for a few seconds he can sprint at 1704600 miles per hour. That is over two hundred twenty-two times the speed of sound. That is more than six thousand times the speed of non-metahuman thought. But then, his comfortable running speed is already over Mach 2!He has run to the northwest corner of the island, where he searches for the potential targets of this announced event. He plans to bring any he finds back to the conference group. Hopefully then, everyone can work together to move the civilians to a safer location, and defend each other from whatever may be coming.Wyldfire members know that when Silverwing stops running after this heroic exertion, he is going to be in rough shape. He will need food, a lot of calories, and a chance to rest. If he has to fight, he may be more susceptible to injury.
- How are you preparing for the new allies?
- How are you moving the civilians to a more defensible location?
- Is anyone making preparations for the moment when Silverwing stops moving?
Run, Silverwing, Run!
There are 30 total "valid target" people that Silverwing might find. Of those, 15 are potentially useful in a fight or for information, 15 are mostly being hidden. The ones mostly being hidden will have skills for group survival, low level or specialized ways to confuse Arcade's camera system, or are simply too messed up for Arcade to keep them alive.
Meet some Contestants
Contestants are spreading out over the island in the wake of the recent storm, looking to score points in this round.
- The Astrologer and his Zodiac minions are the slowest-traveling contestants, but the Astrologer is determined to sweep the contest round. For one thing, he has figured out how to replace other Contestants' "tags" with his own. He hopes to find their caches and reprogram the results in the scanners (which are disguised in some of the fake trees). He has laid out a plan for his minions to surround all avenues of maneuver if he can just get the action localized to one of the peninsulas. Depending on what happens, he may not show up this session.
- Freon is going to tag enough results up in the lake country to be listed on the board and then go back in early. He is doing well in this Contest. He is not too worried about his ranking for the Arena round, he wants to get more sleep.
- Vicious is in the middle of the road as far as Contestant ranking goes, and it's absolutely because she operates on impulse. She wishes Pistolera had come on this trip with her, but Bunny went to some boring gun show instead. And not the, you know, {flex} kind of "gun show"!
- She has throwing knives and a high Dex and less of a fear instinct than Parker. She may recognize Thunderstrike as a biker gang dude who got arrested and never turned back up. That should be surprising for everybody.
- http://www.writeups.org/vicious-dc-comics-birds-prey/#stats
- Killer Croc feels like his standing as a Villain is in question here. He wishes he had some Gotham Rogues around to remind the others that any Theme Rogue who takes on the Bat is better than a black mask who avoids bat country.
- If he does badly enough, Arcade plans to conscript him as a future target.
- He is, indeed, doing very badly. His point limit is the lowest of all current contestants.
- He is desperate to win the prize money because he wants to buy a dilapidated old manor house and grounds in the bayou north of Vibora Bay and convert the whole thing into a conclave for some nearly-homeless people he fell in with. He wants to get them out of Gotham City, out of the reach of the Bat, out of the northeastern U.S. area entirely -- he thinks they'll do well if they have milder seasons, no need to move around or worry about attackers, and a renovation project to give them some self-worth.
- He will cheerfully talk about eating people. He is not, in fact, a cannibal. He is playing to the stereotypes about himself to keep trouble at a respectful distance. He will not expect the heroes to see through it, or treat him decently.
Cast Members: "Prey"
- Smear:
- Gerd Frank, older Danish woman who does not speak English
- Carsten Frank, teenage son of Gerd
- They can separately create blurry effects in air in a 3 AP dome as if the air is lightly smeared with petroleum jelly (-2 CS to AV), or can work together to cover a 6 AP area with a more intense distortion (-5 CS to AV). This does not actually STOP or DEFLECT an energy beam, but might bend it or diffuse it.
- Gerd has heard the myths of Ran from her grandparents but remembers very little in the way of details. Gerd has been a gardener since she was young and has mostly organized the few herbs and crops that the "prey" harvest from the jungle or grow for their own survival purposes.
- Carsten speaks English better than his mom. Their native language is Danish.
- Arcade bills Carsten as "Smear" and does not advertise Gerd on the posters.
- Mirabelle Sinjin
- Gray catgirl, college student, daughter of Tafey Anne Sinjin-Gironde who disappeared February 5th, 2006.
- Kidnapped by Catastrophe on contract. Lex Luthor meant to wind up with her but Simon Kincaid instead did a quick auction of her and some other meta prisoners. Arcade eventually picked her up to be one of his jungle-themed attractions. He did not expect the daughter of a biochemist to be trained by Vigilante in dirty fighting. She has been careful to appear like a soft target and use lots of traps and environmental hazards to prevent "contestants" from ever getting near her, without drawing attention to how hard she is to find.
- Arcade bills her as "The Panther".
Relocate and Debrief
Information the new people can provide:
- Clue 5/5: The island moves. Not really fast, but it does move. It's almost always overcast/foggy/medium to heavy rain when the island is moving.
- Clue 8/8: People have described the kind of frost damage that suggests this island has spent more than a week at a time in arctic or near-arctic waters. Or maybe that's antarctic?
- Clue 10/10: Control of population is managed through control of food. Mirabelle and some of the other "targets" have collaborated on alternate means of food, because if they have to go to Murder World Official Supply Stations then they can be caught pretty easily.
- Clue 15/15: Gerd insists that these plants do not belong together (see "Environmental Clues"). She says she at one time worked as part of the landscaping crew, hand-planting bushes and vines from a shrink-wrapped shipment in accordance with a very precisely drawn plot. She says every root ball had a RFID chip in it so the supervisor could quickly scan that things had been placed in correct locations. She says other people on the work crew spent time carefully winding vines into the environment, or transferring insects into premade nests, to make the whole thing into a functioning ecosystem. Gerd says maybe eight people in the world would have the expertise to design and implement this kind of work. Whoever it is must really hate that the island does not stay in one zone.
The Plan for Next Session:
The heroes of Wyldfire want to relocate everyone, including the pykrete dome which the scientists constructed out of available materials, to the southwest peninsula -- specifically to one of those tiny islands in the arch. They feel that will be most defensible for the "Drivers" and the most skilled former "Prey" to manage while Wyldfire heads into the smaller "volcano" as a route to the engines of this giant vessel.
Relations
Protagonists
Neutrals/Bystanders
Convention attendees/hostages/kidnap victims:
- John Evans, MD
- Doctors Without Borders
- Had a cousin named Jack who disappeared a few years back while on a DWB trip. Now part of the CCC crowd.
- Bitsy Klein, Convention Organizer
- Doug Miller, Palmer Tech Representative
- Doug Miller is the head of Applied Sciences for Palmer Technologies.
- He is not an engineer. He is not a scientist. He is a Public Relations flack. He looks like he is ready to invent a laser gun out of coconuts, using sheer determination and motivational speech to make it happen.
- Smear:
- Gerd Frank, older Danish woman who does not speak English
- Carsten Frank, teenage son of Gerd
- They can separately create blurry effects in air in a 3 AP dome as if the air is lightly smeared with petroleum jelly (-2 CS to AV), or can work together to cover a 6 AP area with a more intense distortion (-5 CS to AV). This does not actually STOP or DEFLECT an energy beam, but might bend it or diffuse it.
- Gerd has heard the myths of Ran from her grandparents but remembers very little in the way of details. Gerd has been a gardener since she was young and has mostly organized the few herbs and crops that the "prey" harvest from the jungle or grow for their own survival purposes.
- Carsten speaks English better than his mom. Their native language is Danish.
- Arcade bills Carsten as "Smear" and does not advertise Gerd on the posters.
- Mirabelle Sinjin
- Gray catgirl, college student, daughter of Tafey Anne Sinjin-Gironde who disappeared February 5th, 2006.
- Kidnapped by Catastrophe on contract. Lex Luthor meant to wind up with her but Simon Kincaid instead did a quick auction of her and some other meta prisoners. Arcade picked her up to be one of his jungle-themed attractions. He did not expect the daughter of a biochemist to be trained by Vigilante in dirty fighting. She has been careful to appear like a soft target and use lots of traps and environmental hazards to prevent "contestants" from ever getting near her, without drawing attention to how hard she is to find.
- Arcade bills her as "The Panther".
- Jaqstones
- Comanche
- Shades
- Callisto
- Mazikeen
- Vicious
- She has throwing knives and a high Dex and less of a fear instinct than Parker. She may recognize Thunderstrike as a biker gang dude who got arrested and never turned back up. That should be surprising for everybody.
- http://www.writeups.org/vicious-dc-comics-birds-prey/#stats
- Killer Croc
- If he does badly enough, Arcade plans to conscript him as a future target.
- He is, indeed, doing very badly. His point limit is the lowest of all current contestants.
- He is desperate to win the prize money because he wants to buy a dilapidated old manor house and grounds in the bayou north of Vibora Bay and convert the whole thing into a conclave for some nearly-homeless people he fell in with. He wants to get them out of Gotham City, out of the reach of the Bat, out of the northeastern U.S. area entirely -- he thinks they'll do well if they have milder seasons, no need to move around or worry about attackers, and a renovation project to give them some self-worth.
- He will cheerfully talk about eating people. He is not, in fact, a cannibal. He is playing to the stereotypes about himself to keep trouble at a respectful distance. He will not expect the heroes to see through it, or treat him decently.
Competitors
- The Astrologer and his Zodiac minions
- See darkc_animated page 39.
- In our version, he's a gadget-blaster. He has a staff that does stuff. He used to be a toymaker, so traps and stuff should be a good option.
- He also has goons wearing black bodysuits with stars on them, named after the astrological signs, with the sign on the chest in silver.
- Freon
Backdrops
Locations
Plot type
Chapter 3: we're fighting WHO?!?
Parent Plot
Related Characters
Related Organizations
Related Locations
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