The New Champions - Who's Who Part I

Here's a look at what we have for the 'Official Handbook of Champions Earth Alpha Delta-1' (such as it is) so far. I haven't included actual write-ups yet as I want to rework the numbers and for display purposes I am looking toward getting the much recommended Hero Designer, if only to double check my math and because the print out is clean and clear.

Let's start with our...HEROES
More specifically the Player Characters...

Night Knight

The most polished and experienced hero among the PC's has been active for a few months now. The initial character concept was, "What if the Batman character DID have superpowers." This eventually evolved into a super-soldier hero with gadgets, detective skills, low level super strength, speed, endurance, agility and heightened senses (sight and hearing). Since his hearing is especially acute, he is especially vulnerable to sound based attacks.

Here's the twist...
In his secret identity, Night Knight is a cop and an army reserve member. Apparently PRIMUS (the underhanded SHIELD of our game) gave his unit a super soldier serum disguised as standard shots, vitamins and rations. The formula remains dormant however until an 'activator' serum is injected into the individual.

Through a higher ranking fellow cop and reservist who has a few ex-PRIMUS friends (this guy is both a Contact and a DNPC for you Champions fans), Night Knight learns about the project and that he has the super soldier serum in him. He proceeds to bust a bunch of hoods trafficking a street drug version of the serum, called Cyberline. Modified a bit, this activates his heightened abilities but causes him to crash something awful after twenty-four hours.

Now Night Knight has to...um...confiscate, try to synthesize or otherwise obtain (often illegally) the activator or Cyberline in order to stay super and fight crime. It's quite the moral quandary but the player is eager to hook up with the established NPC heroes in hopes that they have easier access to the super juice.

In addition to physical abilities, martial arts (Aikido), detective skills, etc., Night Knight uses knock out gas and smoke screen grenades, a tricked out motorcycle, grapnel gun and line and body armor. His armor and his bike both have the ability to cloak with a camouflage field (think Predator) and become completely silent. He loves to drop sleep gas and swing or drive away going, "Night niigghht..."

Since his own morality is a bit gray, Night Knight doesn't take the hard line approach of a Batman. He will sometimes try to negotiate or even work with a villain who doesn't appear to be straight up crazy or evil. He has his limits but so far he's a bit more flexible in his thinking than I anticipated.

Night Knight is an African American male in his early thirties, about 6 ft., 240 lbs. His outfit looks light a cross between Marvel's Night Thrasher (especially this redesign by artist Corey Walker) and Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe.

'J'

Without a code name or costume of any kind, 'J' is by far the least typical of the supers in attitude and style. He comes off as just batshit crazy to be honest. The player is one of my best and his idea is that a lot of what 'J' does is for show but he's also a character with the mindset of, "I have superpowers. I can do whatever I want. I just happen to want to fight crime." Lucky us.

'J' has the power to absorb any form of energy and convert it into any other form of energy and then release it. For example he can absorb a sonic blast and release electricity or suck the heat from a fireplace and shoot kinetic force.

Most often he releases energy blasts but he has various effects he can pull off that do other things like create a force field, manipulate the energy, recover/recharge, etc. To supplement this power (since he needs to absorb before he can do anything at all), 'J' has taken to...'indefinitely borrowing' weapons and equipment from crooks and cops alike (in the latter case a bunch of cops got blasted fighting a villain and 'J' helped himself to some of the gear in their cars after moving them to safety).

He overdoes this last bit a tad. After taking a riot shotgun, a rifle, ammo, a bullet proof vest and a few other items, the third hero in our group remarked, "You think you got enough?" Many of the NPC authorities, including other heroes, are not sure what to make of 'J' and whose side he's really on.

'J' is a 6' 4", 260 lbs. light skinned Jamaican male in his late twenties or early thirties. He mostly wears black hooded sweatshirts, black cargo pants and a motorcycle helmet he obtained to try and hide his identity.

Marcus

Like 'J', Marcus hasn't been doing this superhero thing long. We considered establishing his first outing in our second issue/session was his first public appearance.

Undecided as to a superhero name, Marcus does have a costume, albeit as homebrewed one. According to the player, his character's sister designs costumes for TV shows and movies and so designed his outfit. It was his grandmother (whom he lives with) who sewed it for him. It was a reoccurring gag on how homespun the costume looked and how his grandma would yell, "Didn't I tell you not to get plasma burns on your costume boy? You know how hard it is to get those out!"

Marcus' powers are fun. He has telekinesis with no real range. That is, he needs to touch things to lift them telekinetically. The resulting tactile telekinesis (similar to Conner Kent/Superboy in modern DC Comics) gives people the impression he's a Superman like powerhouse when in truth it's all psychic powers. He can lift and hurl himself telekinetically (Superspeed and Superleap), create a skin tight TK Shield (Invulnerability) and with a larger than normal expenditure of Endurance, lift himself into the air with his TK (Flight).

Marcus is also African American, about 5' 10", roughly 220-240 (hadn't decided) and in his late twenties (youngest character in the group). His costume is, as noted, bargain basement but resembles a variant of the classic paragon look of Superman with Icon, the Superman of Milestone Comics.

So far that's all I have as far as players and information. We've only had two sessions so far. Actually, the session recaps themselves will give you a bit more insight into these guys than straight forward descriptions will I'll wager.

A forth player is coming in for our next session. He describes his character as 'Green Lantern like'. Not sure what that means yet but I look forward to finding out.

Look for NPC heroes and then villains, coming soon to the Barking Alien blog nearest you.

AD
Barking Alien