[M&M] Freedom City Rumble!

[ElCosoLoco]

Name: Emily Stenford
Codename: Mechanized

Concept: Mutant, transgender daughter of a wealthy family trying to prove her worth by fighting crime with her customized battlesuit.

Place of residence: While Emily has a home in downtown Freedom, she often spends the night at her base of operations.
Base of Operations: Emily's base of operations is Stenford Arms main production facility, in the industrial district.
Identity: Public
Birthplace: Freedom City
Occupation: Full time superheroine
Affiliations: Stenford Arms, Freedom City Police Department

Family:

- Emily's dad, Edgar Charles Stenford, 55, is a very dedicated man and father. He also loves to personally work on machines. He loves his daughters deeply and would go to great lengths for them. He never fully accepted Emily, not just because of her sexuality but also because he wished she would follow him into family business. Failing that he decided, as a father, to give her the best training and equipment he could muster to avoid her getting killed and as a businessman, he saw a chance to field-test his best tech for free and to advertise his company.

- Older sister: Jane Stenford, 23. Jane is studying Informatics in college, and apparently possesses her father's and sister's intellect. She's particularly good at hacking. She was the first person Emily came out to, and had a critical role in supporting her during her change as well as acting as a diplomat of sorts between Emily and her father. Her father is currently looking at her as his successor in guiding the family's firm. Emily is particularly close to Jane, who also takes care of her suit's software needs.

- Younger sister: Mary Stenford, 12. A little tomboish, very fond of her sisters, she wants to become a superhero too when she grows up.

- HAL: HAL is a small, white spherical robot the size of a basketball. It was built by Emily as a "pet project" - quite literally - and programmed by Jane. It behaves somehow like a dog and is roughly as smart. It is considered home's pet by the Stenfords and follows Emily around, playing with her and helping her in several tasks, including working on machines. It is completely useless in combat situations (Emily leaves him at home) and can deploy an array of weird looking tools with various purposes. In its name and shape it quotes some of Emily's favorite sci-fi. HAL can't talk, it communicates through beeps and flashing lights.

Description:
Age: 21
Gender: male to female transsexual
Ethnicity: undefined
Height: 5' 7"
Weight: 110 lbs
Eyes: silver
Hair: white

Emily is of average height and has a slender build. Her mutation gave her a very dark skin, an androgynous build and white hair, that she keeps long, usually in a braid. Together with years of hormones she now makes for a very natural looking girl. Emily has a thing for wearing overly girly clothes, but she has a bad taste in them, something her sister Jane is slowly trying to correct now that Emily is a public figure.

Power Descriptions:

Emily is a mutant, and her mutation gave her very odd looks and boosted her intellect to high levels. Her love of engineering, together with her new improved mind allowed her to build a customized battlesuit she calls a Mobile Combat Platform (MCP). When wearing the suit, Emily is a walking battle tank devoted on fighting evil.

The suit itself is large, bulky and painted matt black with the Stenford Arms logo on its shoulders, looking a lot like a MEC from X-Com Enemy Within. On its right arm it sports a prototype Force Cannon, on her left arm a Flamethrower and it has a grenade launcher on its back, usually loaded with flashbangs. Whether Emily uses an helmet or not, the suit sports an holographic HUD with an integrated combat software.

History:

Emily was born Edgar Charles Jr. in Boston, second child of Edgar Charles Stenford Sr, the owner of one of the most important military development firms in the USA. Her mother died in 2009 in a car crash. Introduced at an early age to the family's business, she developed a keen interest for engineering. However, the young Edgar also came to understand quite early that he wanted to be a girl, growing more and more envious of his older sister's Jane when she entered her teen ages and started to develop. When she was 12, her mutation developed, bumping her from "smart kid" to "teen genius", the mad scientist kind. At the same time, her looks changed in an odd way: her skin darkened and her build became very androgynous, something she's always been thankful for.

A few years later, Emily finally built up the courage to come out as a transsexual and start her transition. While her sister Jane, who had known about Emily's secret for some time now, was delighted, their father was quite upset at first. It took a lot of time and work for them to get close again, and the gap never completely closed. Also, since Emily was the daughter of an important public figure, it was impossible to keep her change from being known. The fact of being publicly out as a transsexual, as well as a mutant, in one of the best rated high schools in Freedom caused her endless nightmares during her teens.

It was then that the idea of becoming a real superheroine, a mere fantasy before, took hold in the girl's mind, maybe because it would give her a real shot at changing a world she felt was uncaring and cruel, or maybe to show her father that she was still worth his love. Night after night she tinkered in her father's workshop, slowly making her combat exoskeleton a reality. When she graduated from high school, she set out to bring the fight to evil...

Being the genius, transsexual, mutant daughter of a multimillionaire makes Emily a gossip magnet. Publicly, her father backs her in an effort to improve his popularity, but in private he's still ashamed of her. While other people would relish in it, Emily hates the "celebrity" side of her life.

Personality & Motivation:

Emily always had two goals in life: becoming a woman, and becoming a superheroine. She's close enough to achieving the first and she's going for the second. As much as she would have loved to, having turned out quite good looking didn't make Emily less of a socially inept, hopeless nerd. Together with having been a long time target for discrimination, this makes her difficult to interact with at first. Once she builds up trust in someone, however, she can be warm and very friendly (although in a weird aching-for-company way).

Emily is also currently in a low phase in her love life: she never had troubles finding casual dates, but nobody appears to be interested in committing to a serious relationship with a freak, and dating a superheroine that owns a battle armor tends to be (unsurprisingly) devastating to a man's ego.
Despite the tensions between her father and her having eased up in the latest years, she never completely got over his disappointment when he discovered his only son wanted in fact to be a girl, and cares a lot for his opinion about her. She's driven to be a superheroine by two reasons: the first is to help the world become a better place, and the second is the fact it constantly pushes her to work harder on her inventions.

Powers & Tactics:

Having grown up in a military minded environment, Em is a firm believer in the tenant that a well planned and executed attack on a key enemy position can win an entire conflict. She applies the same principle to fighting crime: first, she finds out a weakness in her opponent's plan, then she equips her suit to best exploit it, and then she strikes with overwhelming force.
While her battlesuit is her preferred tool, she knows how to defend herself on foot and is no stranger to leaving the armor behind if the tactical situation calls for it.

Complications:

Prejudice: She's a transsexual mutant. What do you expect?
Fame: She's the daughter of a public figure and her father acts as her sponsor. Plus, she can't exactly go around unnoticed. As a result, she's been under the media's spotlight for some time now.
Motivation: The Sky is the Limit: Emily is constantly out to test her limits and pit her skill and smarts against the hardest of challenges, seeing every problem as a puzzle to overcome using her ingenuity and refining her skill in the process. New things excite her to no end and she finds it hard to back away from an intellectual challenge.
Motivation: Look at me, Daddy! Emily's greatest weakness is probably her inability to get past her father's initial rejection. While their relationship eased out somehow, she still feels she needs to prove him her worth, by any mean necessary. Whenever possible, she will try to please him and make him proud of her efforts.

Hooks Emily has a sworn enemy: Steampunk, a former engineer at Stenford Arms who was fired for stealing equipment. He turned into a supervillain adopting a steampunk style, and at some point he fled to Earth Victoriana where he learned the art of building steam powered robots. He holds a grudge against Emily because he thinks he's better than her, and that the sole reason she has access to Stenford Arms tech is her family connection. Emily beat him a couple of times alread, and the grudge got even more personal for him. He's not meant to be a proprer nemesis, more like a recurring nuisance. Emily loves her family and would do anything for them. If she has an Achille's heel, that's it.

[GleefulNihilism]

Well, I'm up for a gamble I suppose. Let's see what you got, Avenger.

Name: Jeremiah "Blackjack" Crimshaw
Age: 29, though he was actually born in 1848. This is possible due to time travel.

Concept: The Chrono-Ranger. The Paradox Rider. The Outlaw of History. Time's Bounty Hunter. "Blackjack" Crimshaw was an outlaw from the old west that history says died in a gunfight with lawmen that has been given a second chance to redeem himself, with history itself as what he has to protect. Jeremiah has no internal powers but he has access to weapons, technology, and knowledge from up and down human history to use to his advantage.


Personality: Jeremiah Blackjack Crimshaw is not a good man. He's a thief, a murderer, a traitor, a deserter, a liar, a cheat, and an all-around bastard. He's trying to be a better person though, he really is. In a fight he has few qualms with doing whatever it takes to win, no matter how dirty or low the tactic seems to be. He'll gladly bring a gun to a knife fight, two if he can hide the second real good. Blackjack Crimshaw isn't a hero, he knows it and he's honest with himself at least. He knows what he really is - he's a desperado with a gun and a time machine, hoping to one day become a better man.


Background: Jeremiah Crimshaw was born in 1848 in the foothills of his beloved Virginia. The hills and wilderness were good to him, he learned to fish, trap, and most of all he learned to shoot. Today we'd call his father a horrifically abusive alcoholic, back then they just called him a son of a bitch. Jeremiah considers the one thing the old man did right by him was that he taught him how to shoot a pistol properly. After that Jeremiah himself also became a real son of a bitch. That part he agrees with how history judged him completely.

The rest was dime store novel stuff, stories made up by men trying to sell papers. Most the rest he'll tell you was exaggerated at best and a lot of it completely untrue, the details of it at least. History says one day he stole his father's gun and killed his family with it, he admits that he killed his father only because the man tried to kill him first like he had already done with his mother and sister. History says he joined the Confederate Army, robbed his unit's paymaster, then deserted and ran West. He says he did sign on, early he might add, to defend his beloved Virginia but as the war went on and the issue of Slavery became more prominent he left when he couldn't reconcile his love of Virginia with his hatred of Slavery. One of the few good points of Crimshaw is an unwavering belief that nobody has the right to own the sweat of another man's brow.

He did go out west, that's true. History says he'd rob banks, trains, stage-coaches, ranches - anyone he could take money from at the end of a gun. History even goes as far as to say that he once bragged in a saloon that he'd "killed 40 men - and that ain't not counting women, injuns, and negroes". He says he never did that, but he doesn't deny that he's robbed people at gun point and put some others in the ground, he'll even admit that he's put some men in the ground that didn't deserve it. He isn't claiming that he was a good man, just that he wasn't a monster either. He was just a man, if one that the power at the trigger of a gun and the tides of history both ran away with.

History also said that he died in a gunfight with a whole posse of lawmen. Story goes that he killed every single one of them but he took some gut shot in the process, and only lived long enough to crawl off somewhere to die. Nobody ever found the body of Jeremiah "Blackjack" Crimshaw, stories of the outlaw that brought with him the smell of gunpowder and the hate of hell still are passed around by ranch hands too this day. The truth is, however, stranger then history.

In a distant future, a tyrant known only as the Time Commander rules with an iron fist. A master strategist that uses time travel technology to manipulate history to his advantage, one of his strategies is to recruit "agents", other villains grabbed moments before their deaths from throughout history to fix and do his bidding. "Blackjack" Crimshaw was one such "Agent", pulled out of his fated moment to die and healed so that the Time Commander could use his guns to kill his enemies and enslave the survivors.

It's then that Jeremiah "Blackjack" Crimshaw did something nobody expected, he blinked. Seeing the evil of his legacy and the horrors the Time Commander was making him do, especially the enslavement of entire galaxies and time periods, caused him to decide to stand up to the Time Commander. Managing to steal one of the Time Commander's smaller time-ships, Jeremiah "Blackjack" Crimshaw set out to do something no Hero in any time period had ever succeeded in doing and stop the Time Commander, possibly before he even started.

That was two years ago, in Jeremiah's personal timeline. He's spent those two years travelling up and down the timeline. He's been gathering weapons, he's been acquiring tools, he's been collecting knowledge, and he's been making little changes to history to try make small improvements in hopes that it will shift things away from the Time Commander's advantage. He even tries to keep it subtle too, riding the line between preventing the Time Commander's paradoxes and causing his own. The lucky break that gets the serial killer caught? The accident that makes someone miss their doomed flight? The equipment failure that hits the villain's superweapon at the best possible moment? The broken pipeline that accidentally exposes and fixes a much deadlier gasline break? The sniper's bullet that mysteriously misses? The data that goes missing mysteriously, or is found by just the right person just as mysteriously?

He can't take credit for all of them, but sometimes - some times...

Power Breakdown Primary Power-Set: Technological Collective. Jeremiah "Blackjack" Crimshaw has collected a wide array of weapons and technology from up and down the timeline. Plundered from various historical periods and areas; items range from Ancient Egyptian Daggers and Roman Cestus Gloves to AR-15 Assault Rifles and Renraki Ceramic Body Armor from the Corporate Wars to Alcubierre Space-Warp Rifles and a (GM Controlled) Time-Ship direct from the Time Commander's fleet. "Blackjack" Crimshaw tries to play things subtle, and largely succeeds to a handy bit of translation technology that happens to project a "someone else's problem" field. Don't ask him how it works, he just knows that most people don't notice an anachronistic cowboy in their midst as anything more than an average Joe. You still see him of course, you just don't notice anything unusual until he lets you. When it's working properly anyway. Secondary Power-Set: Advanced Recon Jeremiah "Blackjack" Crimshaw has access too some knowledge of future events. There's nothing supernatural about this, he simply has some limited access to databases and informational collectives that exist further ahead on the timeline. This information is often not entirely accurate or unfortunately vague, usually of no better quality than a wikipedia article. This isn't great but it is better than nothing. Tertiary Skill: Dirty, Sneaky Bastard Crimshaw isn't in the habit of giving a fair fight, and has become something of an expert of using improvised and often morally questionable but effective tactics to achieve his goals.

Hooks The Time Commander Saga, in the far future there's a villain that's far better at time travel and manipulation then anything Crimshaw could hope to accomplish, ready to squish him like a bug. The Tick-Tock Men, mysterious multidimensional beings that take offense to the creation of Temporal Paradoxes. If Crimshaw gets too fast and loose with time travel and the creation of temporal paradoxes they may have to step in. Crimshaw's knows the truth, that he's the inequities of the selfish and the tyrannies of evil men. But he's trying to be a Shepherd, he really is. Technically, there is no statute of limitations for murder, even if it was over 100 years ago. Technically, he's still an outlaw that needs to be brought to justice, even if someone has to bend history to do it.

[GleefulNihilism]

Also, Comments/Critique are welcome. :P

[JagerBlonde]

Originally Posted by GleefulNihilism

Also, Comments/Critique are welcome. :P

Love the background and history for your character. Makes me feel like my app is substandard. Hope to get to RP beside him with my character.

[GleefulNihilism]

Originally Posted by JagerBlonde

Love the background and history for your character. Makes me feel like my app is substandard. Hope to get to RP beside him with my character.

Aw, shucks.

[ElCosoLoco]

I love this guy, GleefulNihilism

[Ravage_mk2]

Similar to Aximus, that's a character Gleeful has applied with a few times before. I hope you get through this time Gleeful

Btw Aximus, blood as (a source of) power is not *that* new of a concept. A few religions worked with blood sacrifices and such.

If you ever need a bit of inspiration for your blood powers, might be worth watching Deadman Wonderland.
I must warn you, it does seem to be a rather dark and twisted work from what I've seen.

Might toss in an application myself, perhaps an alchemist.

Any specific origins or power you'd rather not see on the applications?
Just to make sure I don't invest time in stuff which will get rejected by default anyway, it's happened on occasion :P

[Archaon]

Hmmm, HolyAvenger hasn't been online since the 12th. I don't know if something happened or if he just doesn't come online very often. Either way, I'm getting a bit wary now.

Switching to something completely different: Great work on all the applications so far! Looks like I'll have to step up my game if I want to get even close to some of the things I'm seeing. And I can already see a few easy tie-ins between the concept I had in mind and Jager's character. With a bit of effort I could even come up with a few links to Aximus' or ElCosoLoco's characters as well. Although I think that those would feel a bit more forced.

Which brings me to the last concept: Gleeful, I have to say that I absolutely adore the idea you've put forth. An anachronistic outlaw that hops between eras and is actually perfectly 'normal' apart from the odd collection of assorted weapons he's picked up is positively brilliant. But as much as I like it, I can't help but feel that it's a bit too exotic compared to the vibe I'm getting from the advert and other applications. Time travel and sci-fi tech from future civilizations are pretty high-tier as far as powers go. And the implications that arise from it tend to quickly outgrow the scope of the actual conflict. I'd sooner expect it in a game with a galactic (or at least global) threat, than one limited to a single city with just a suped-up crime boss and some A meaningless term. But by which I simply mean people that have a superhuman attribute and the odd power or two.'regular' superhumans. Just ask yourself this: If Blackjack's masking field ever fizzles, how many nations would go to war for the mere chance to look at his Time-Ship? Then again, the setting we've been provided is rather minimalistic to say the least. So for all we know, Blackjack might be a perfect fit after all. And I might just be a bit biased because my own idea is so horribly mundane by comparison that it wouldn't even be worth playing in the same game.

Anyhow, keep up the great work guys! In the mean time I'll get working on my own concept. I just hope that our DM makes an appearance sometime soon.

[AximusLokar]

Originally Posted by Ravage_mk2

Btw Aximus, blood as (a source of) power is not *that* new of a concept. A few religions worked with blood sacrifices and such.

Oh I know, in fact you'll note that blood is the medium for him working Rituals. That's not unintentional.

Originally Posted by Ravage_mk2

If you ever need a bit of inspiration for your blood powers, might be worth watching Deadman Wonderland.
I must warn you, it does seem to be a rather dark and twisted work from what I've seen.

I actually have seen it. It is, and the manga is even more so(though the anime has the advantage of making what dark elements they use more visceral). Alot of people bring up that series when I mention my blood user, though to be honest I see it as more closely related to the water techniques of Naruto and Avatar.

[GleefulNihilism]

I imagine damn near all of them, which I should include as a hook.

I will say of the DM declares that Blackjack won't work for the setting I have a back-up idea.

[Judgement of God]

One does not simply actuelly run an M&M game on RPG crossing from start to finish. One could not do this with 10,000 GMs!

Its crazy the amount of great apps that are always spawned on this site for mutants and masterminds games, even for a GM with even less experience than me, and even shorter a advertisement blurb than most of mine (thats not hit to you, I'm no paragon of excellence, holy avenger).

[Archaon]

Well guys, I'd hate to prematurely declare this advert as dead. But by now our GM hasn't posted anything for over a week. Not only that, but it turns out that HolyAvenger did the same thing with his last advert as well (link). It seems like he has a bit of a habit for starting the application process and then bailing out without another word, leaving all the excited players scratching their heads and being thoroughly bummed out.

I could be completely misreading this and be forced to apologise if he suddenly returns with some fantastical explanation. But in the mean time: Would anyone be interested in taking up the GM-ing position?

[zevonian]

As one of the site Moderators, let me go ahead and mention that if someone else wants to GM a M&M game, that person would want to submit a new Game Request for sake of creating a forum for it and having GM/DM folder creation abilities.
-zev

[Judgement of God]

Originally Posted by Archaon

Well guys, I'd hate to prematurely declare this advert as dead. But by now our GM hasn't posted anything for over a week. Not only that, but it turns out that HolyAvenger did the same thing with his last advert as well (link). It seems like he has a bit of a habit for starting the application process and then bailing out without another word, leaving all the excited players scratching their heads and being thoroughly bummed out.

I could be completely misreading this and be forced to apologise if he suddenly returns with some fantastical explanation. But in the mean time: Would anyone be interested in taking up the GM-ing position?

Due to real life happenings, my games have also had a tendancy to die rather prematurely...But I did just take the oath of Sangus, and have yet to put it to the test. If I do make a game though, it will be of my own making, which should be fine, because I dont see any charecters in here that seem very constrained to the setting.

[Ravage_mk2]

Besides, having heroes drop into settings they aren't supposed to can be quite fun.

Isn't that why superhero crossovers/teamups are so popular?

One (japanese) game franchise I quite like is based on that sort of thing, only with mecha anime series instead of superheroes.
It leads to some....unusual...situations at times.