This is here to discuss what the Windy City Knights will be doing now that they're an official City-defender team. Just in time for some of the most troubling events in the aberrant world, too.

So, what do you guys envision happenning now?

I think someone mentioned an Avengers-style changing cast, with characters leaving and joining the group as their own stories play out.

I like that a lot - particularly in the scope of our environment here. Further, it would work well to think of the group as a rotating cast, more than a single group. We have, what? Six members, so far? It seems like most of our material would be best done with fragments of the larger group - two, three members working on a certain project. This would give us a little more flexibility, and would hopefully cut that tendency of large fictions to bog down and sputter out.

Really, I think out OOC goal for this should be to keep a long-term presence in the OpNet world. This means keeping up a reasonably steady stream of fictions, just to stay alive as a concept. Maybe we should also try to keep an 'online' presence as well - y'know, a little recruiting or something.

Whatever we do, it should be clear to all that the WCK is open to anyone who can provide a rational for joining. We particularly should keep in mind newcomers, since that would be where most of the new meat would come from, if we really stick to the idea of the WCK being a shifting roster of characters.

There is the potential problem of newcomers joining up but quickly dropping off the boards. We could do something like create an OOC waiting period for getting in, if that kind of thing bothers anyone. However, I'm not sure that this is a problem - if someone disappears on us, we can always give them some time, then just mention in some post sometime that "The Black Lotus left the team a while back in order to pursue his private research without interruption." Or whatever.

As long as we maintain a core membership the rotating cast idea allows us to absord a fair amount of this kind of thing. And, really, there is the point of view that if we accept as many members as possible, at least a percentage of them will stick around for a while, right? ( ;

In the short term, however ... let's just get some material out there. We've had some background threads up, but now that the Knights are officially active, let's see some action.

Anyone want to get a fiction going? Any ideas?

All I was thinking about a few boring Jager stories.

But, I was wondering about problems/opposition?

How does Utopia feel about the WCK? The Teragen? The Directive?

For a while I planned on collaborating with Sam Grey on the nova-based drug story. That never worked out, but the Knights could do their own investigation into the Chicago drug trade.

Other ideas for fiction off the top of my head:
An elementary school class field trip through the HQ, when the tour guide is called to active duty;

An outbreak of Ebola in central Chicago;

A known Terat is seen in Indianapolis, and the Knights are given babysitting duty to make sure he or she isn't up to anything (we could get an outside collaborator on that one);

At the grand opening of a new Divis Mall, the Knights are asked to put on an exhibition match (and incidentally keep an eye on the terrorists);

Someone (baseline or nova) hacks into the power grid and blows out every circuit in the midwest;

Our intelligence department starts to wonder why so many "situations" are happening within the first few months of Opening Day, when nothing happened before that;

Intel also wonders who would be crazy enough to fund Nova Reality, who their backers are, and what would motivate them to spend so much money for "public servants."

Something I've been playing around with, by way of a decent villain for at least a couple stories:

A new/old nova (M-Int/Man specialist, Strategic/Tactical Prodigy, maybe a couple supplementary powers) starts working with the Megasyndicate in Chicago not long after the WCK's initiation. He really isn't terribly subtle about this (openly associates with the big names in the local mob), but his talents make it nigh impossible to actually pin anything on him.

This boy is gradually becoming the de facto leader of the local underworld, and his strategic ability means that Megasyndicate operations are beginning to move up to a whole new league. In cooperation with the CPD, at least a couple of the Knights are put on trying to find some way to bring this guy down. Given their status, the Knights can't exactly waltz in and just off the guy, so it is down to getting some shred of evidence solid enough to warrant federal (that is, Directive) involvement.

Unfortunately, they are sitting right in the public eye, and they have to contend with a reasonable slice of their affairs being broadcast to the world. The mastermind is able to work out much of their off-screen activities by extrapolating from what is visible, and his contacts in the police have insured that he is aware of the threat from the get go.

Our prime intelligence gatherers run into problems early on - unless someone is playing with something in the neighborhood of M-Int 4/5 and Strategic Prodigy, we are poorly suited to fencing with an antagonist of this type. Bandwidth has trouble with all of the mastermind's 'recommendations' made off grid, leaving it to footwork and observation. Perhaps Jager gets smoothly redirected elsewhere, forcing the team to use their less freakishly supernatural members for this purpose - at least until the mastermind has altered his operations enough to withstand scrutiny.

While all this is going on, retaliation is quietly occurring. Subtle, no-strings traps hit the weaker members of the field team (April/Digi) and Bandwidth and Damanor get hit with petitions to place monitors on their activities - fun stuff like requiring a judge to check off in advance on every single computer Bandwidth attempts to access.

Back these games up with an attempt to cause public disapproval, and maybe cut the newborn team off at the knees before it really gets going. Thus, a number of large incidents crop up (sort of like what Damanor is talking about above), and the team's performance is judged very critically after a few key media men have lunch with our mega-manipulative mastermind.

Etc - you get the idea. In the end the heroes are triumphant, but it's a hell of a lot of work. I like this type of villain for our first days because a more direct foe wouldn't be able to compete against six novas of varying power. Instead, we get an experienced, but not too ridiculously powerful (50-60 np, tops) enemy - reasonable to have in context, but still serious trouble. In the end, the group would need to overcome the barrage of incidents while maintaining a good public opinion, and eventually coax the mastermind into giving them enough rope to hang him by.

I do like several of Damanor's ideas (though the ebola outbreak seems a wee bit extreme). In particular, some of them could be handily worked into the above concept - some could be the mastermind's fault, others would just get nudged to go as bad as is physically possible (imagine how bad the Terat scenario and the Divis Mal scenario could get with a little skillful manipulation). ( :

Sorry; I was rapid-fire brainstorming, and a TV special on the CDC had been on earlier that day.



I like your ideas about a Mastermind or would-be Sphinx playing around behind the scenes. It ties things together, instead of simply having a bunch of unconnected problems.

Thing that is interesting, is that Digi still has those CoMA thugs looking for him.

We could add a twist that they aren't CoMAs, but people looking to get some payback for one of Didge's past busts during his days with Interpol.

Now that he's a public figure, there's sure to be some thug looking to settle an old score. Enough of a score to sacrifice their body to MITE.

This may sound shady, but if the Windy City Knights aren't doing too well, Billy's not above "spicing up" the "show". I mean he's in a perfect place since the cameras and some of the funding came through him (as well as being "involved" himself). So if it gets going and fades a bit Billy may end up inviting or even out-right hiring people to make Chicago more "exciting" in the Nova sense of the word.

My god that sounds evil.

Oh and for what it's worth Billy's back in Cali until he hears that the Chicago thing is actually going to happen. Then He'll decide what's going on.

The Chicago thing IS actually hapenning. Maybe it's time to start a new thread, though...

I like Alex's idea. How about we post a 'War Room' thread where we discuss the 'problems' we've been having tracking down the local crime rings. (They've been disappearing just before the police raid them, and even Jager can't find them after that.)

Oh, and while I like the subtle mastermind idea, I think we should make him a warper or a stealth nova. Just so we can't kill him/his operations too easily.

Oh I was suggesting the less-than-sublte mastermind, but I can dig it.

If I get a bit of free time over the next couple days or week, I might try and get a couple threads going. Might not happen though (busy as hell), so if someone else want to grab the ball ... no need to wait up.

Beyond that, my thoughts on power build for mastermind:

No M-Physicals, weak M-Man and M-Wits, decent M-Per, and strong M-Int. Int enhancements focus on tactical and financial abilities, with Investigative Prodigy to help him cover his tracks. Other enhancements tend to be taken from the more subtle options, and he probably doesn't have too many.

He could have secondary psychic abilities - mostly just one or two dots, with power determined more by their Attribute pools than by power ratings.

Domination (Telepathic) and Telepathy (Telepathic Channeling) are both easy choices, and they could make an unpleasant combination. However, we should probably assume that these are weak enough that anyone in the group can resist (barring plot intention). The trouble would be more in the potential for NPCs to be manipulated against the WCK.

Stack this with Hypnosis (RQC). Since that die pool is Intelligence-based, he'd be very good at Hypnosis, and Reduced Quantum Cost makes it free - letting him hypnotize literally everyone he meets (weaker against groups, since he'd be making multiple actions).

Given the limitations of Hypnosis, that wouldn't be enough to stop any of us in our tracks, but he could still mess around with the more impressionable team members when they're within a close range. It would also be pretty effective when sent through Telepathic Channeling (or used directly) to influence NPCs more subtly than through Domination.

Of course, he'd have some kind of Psychic Shield/Invulnerability (is anyone on the team psychic?). Also, he might be able to pull out a couple of ace cards from time to time as they be needed - for instance, a psychic variation of Disrupt that is resisted by Willpower. Since Disrupt is powered by Int, that'd also would be quite effective.

"Oh, and while I like the subtle mastermind idea, I think we should make him a warper or a stealth nova."

Didn't forget. With the above build, he could max Dominate to temporarily add Parasitic Possession and just jump into the mind of a lieutenant/random shmuck across town. This won't let him pop back and forth regularly, but it will let him make a fast escape when he gets backed up against a wall (and would be all the more surprising when he does it).

"With the above build, he could max Dominate to temporarily add Parasitic Possession and just jump into the mind of a lieutenant/random shmuck across town."

Love it. That fits the theme better, and it's pure evil genius.

If I start a fiction story as one of the Knights, would it be better here or in the fiction section?

Seems like it would make more sense here, but I wasn't sure.

Also, assuming I start it I'd like all the help I can get; I'm lousy when it comes to descriptions, fight scenes, and most other elements of actual storytelling.

I think we're keeping everything together in this forum - at least, all of our other IC stuff is here.

If you start something (and leave room for April), I'll participate. It takes me forever to get something started, but I can do backup just fine. Alchemist and I should have a new fiction going up soon, as well. Basically, April (as one of the weakest members of the team) gets ambushed and wounded in a first direct attack on the team by our mysterious antagonist.

If you have something, maybe we could have those fics running either simultaneously or with yours just after in chronology - with the ambush a distraction for the main event. Of course, that would depend on what you had in mind for content.

I can go with simultaneous fics or just following yours, whatever you prefer.

My general story idea is to have our mastermind manipulating the Chicago drug trade behind the scenes to gain power in the Chicago underworld. It's set up so that no matter how the Knights react, the mastermind comes out ahead, either by strengthening his own power base or eliminating his rivals. If anybody's interested in participating, PM me and I'll send you the details.

At what point in your story will April be injured? I'm planning on bringing a civilian into the infirmary in Scene 2 of my story, and if April will be there, we could have one of those cameo crossover shots that they used to have in Marvel all the time. It's also possible for the civilian to be present when (or if) April arrives there.

While I'm thinking about it, who's our resident Medtech? Is it just Joe Random, M.D., or does anyone have any good medical skills?

This fic sets up with a little backstory, followed by April waking up in the WCK's on-site medical facility. As I understand (Alchemist might have plans), it then opens up to general activity.

I suppose simultaneity might not roll so well there, so perhaps yours could be following close on the heels of this smaller incident. April would still be wounded, though I believe her enhanced stamina should let her be functional for that.

No idea who our doctor is. If nobody has any medical skills, we should probably go ahead and create an NPC to consistently fill that role - be good to have a recurring cast operating around us.

No, that sounds about right. I didn't have any plans to actively participate before you get to the base's hospital.

I'm the doctor. Med 5 (specialty in biochem, of course), but I know enough for general practice and light surgery.

There you go then. I should be posting up tonight - tomorrow at latest.

I'll leave details of April's condition/surroundings to you, Alchemist - it's your place, after all. Incidently, I think April's already killed her jumpsuit. ( :

This isn't an exclusive thread in anyway, but anyone interested in jumping in should probably wait for Alchemist to provide context.

Background on 'The Insulted and the Injured:'

The WCK is working with the CPD to break up CZ syndicate drug trafficking. With police help, we'd identified the warehouse as a distribution hub, and Digi scouted the place out. He confirmed, got some details, and noted that the opposition was light.

We got permission for a raid, and April went in alone (should have been well within her ability to handle). The building blew up - destroying the evidence, killing the guard April disabled, and badly injuring April.

April isn't near death or anything (she developed a dot of M-Sta and Durability while training with Project U before the WCK came together), but she was knocked unconscious. She has a number of broken/shattered bones, as well as a spread of cuts, contusions, etc. In game terms, she overflowed on Bashing, which started converting to Lethal.

Someone (probably Jager) retrieved her and got her back to the WCK med center where she could be taken care of by Alchemist. I'm not sure how long she would've been out - leave that to Alchemist.

Jager came and got her ... and he is not a happy camper.

Random details:

It was about 9 or 10 at night when the warehouse blew up.

I was figuring that Our Mysterious Antagonist had a contact on the police force notify him that a WCK member was waiting for the police to arrive at the warehouse, and sent the detonation signal then - so nobody would have actually been on site who could make a connection with Antagonist.

Mind if I come in? And what exactly you have planned? Unless we need to play off of your story.

I believe the Insulted and the Injured is open to all. Jump in if you like - Alchemist might have another event or so to bring along, but the fic is pretty much about how we all respond to the first serious attempt at taking one of us out, so it's pretty freeform at this point.

OK, I left the thread open. Hope April's not claustrophobic.

Just so you know, only lethal damage and agg damage that get through soak will damage the suit. Overflowing bashing damage won't hurt it.

I built them to last.

I'll have to remember that in a fist fight.

"Hope April's not claustrophobic"

Heh, uh - actually, she is a bit. And hyperactive. The whole flying speedster thing.

Actually, on the suit, the explosion presumably would have been lethal damage (I think, though I don't have my books with me) - its April's Durability that turned it into bashing overflow. Still, we could assume that it just barely 'survived.'

Anyone mind if Rose just shows up offering her help?

Showing up to pay Jager in person?

Yeah, I suppose it comes down to having a rationale for Rose to show up in Chicago and offer to help the team/join the team. It seems like an odd course of action to just occur to her without something to suggest it.

Of course, it could just be something as causal as her happening to be in the area (to pay Jager or otherwise) and getting caught up in things. Or, if she's consciously looking for a new job, she might have done some poking around and figured that the WCK is a solid, ethical organization with some need for nova personnel and just decided to see if they would bring her on.

Yes. Rose is pretty honourable like that.

She's currently freelancing with the Argus Agency and could help out in this situation - her contract doesn't finish until the end of March - therefore impressing the team enough to be offered a place. Her rationale for joining would be to 'get away from my kids!' - she loves them, but five teenage and young adult offspring when you've just discovered you're going to live for ages can drive a person nuts. She'd send them money of course, but start encouraging them to become independent.

So just drop Rose into the story?

I'm game. Any objections?

Go right ahead.

Dun't seem to be any complaints.

No objections here, as long as it makes sense in the story context. Welcome to the Knights.

Re: The Insulted and The Injured
If any of our television viewers haven't picked up on this by now , Damanor doesn't like the Camparelli-Zukhov Megasyndicate, and he really doesn't like the drug-dealing side of their operations.

I'm thinking Greg Frist is probably off doing his own thing right now - it has to be around 11p or midnight right now, right? Unless April was out all night, in which case he'd probably be about to show up.

Everything in the room would have been recorded by the base's built in cameras (living in a reality show, after all), and a cameraman would be here just to get better angles. I'd assume that they already have a camera crew at the warehouse for context shots and (they hope) some footage of camera-shy Jager in action.

Incidentally, the exact extent of April's recent improvements to her senses aren't entirely known to the team. She went from 5 Per to 1 M-Per right around when she joined the team, and the team probably is reasonably aware of the fact that she started see heat and the like (Electromagnetic Vision).

This would, however, be the first time that she's mentioned hearing radio signals. In fact, her recent progression (both into new areas and in the development of existing abilities) has been suspiciously quick. Someone might need to sit down and have the 'birds and the taint-buttered freaks' talk with her some day soon. (c;

The cell phone thing - seems like a good way to detonate the bomb from a distance, and it can work for Our Mysterious Antagonist. Damanor has some stuff in the works regarding a local competitor for Antagonist, and it would be pretty cool if Antagonist had arranged everything so that the loose ends from this all end at his competitor.

In this case, the warehouse could be distantly owned by the competitor, and the cell phone that sent the call to the bomb could be owned by one of his lieutenants (who dies in prison or something before we can interrogate him). The cell could be tricky to trace - the phone that sent the call could have been illegally tumbled so that it and its number don't appear in any records - and the warehouse registry would probably be through a number of fronts.

We probably wouldn't fully follow through on these leads until during or after Damanor's tale (when we presumably eliminate the competitor for his dastardly deeds), but once we did we would have every reason to believe that we had already taken care of our antagonist, instead of being diverted to someone other than the true Antagonist.

Right off the bat, Jager would be suspicious of the obvious leads. Such a dramatic hit doesn't sit well with him and his beliefs on how the Syndicate works. It isn't that they are not brutal and vicious, but this kind of action only opens them up to retaliation.

Still, for the present, it makes sense to play along.

I'll try to start The Optimal Solution some time this weekend or early next week. It starts off with a public appearance at a local Mall, so anybody who wants to join in can do so. That's just a prelude to the real story, though, so please keep it brief. Maybe one or two posts each after the "situation" starts, with different people trying to protect the crowd or deal with a crazed (sort of) mitoid.

Will April be at the public appearance, or will she be in the infirmary when I bring in the 'victim'?

Jager, if you want to discuss the follow-up investigation not-on-camera, you should probably start a new thread. Or else post a segue where you move the investigators to the crime scene. (Actually, I think that would work better)

I think I will name the new thread "Breaking down Bricks", if that's okay.

I would like it to be a quick scene of the characters investigating the blast sight. Then we could split up (we're novas, after all) and check out the morgue (for the identity of the guard and any leads that way), track the movements of the guys who left (Jager has Bloodhound and a really sharp set of senses), and tracking down the call.

While as players, we all know this will run down to either dead ends, or the CZM, I would like to do this to see us "on the streets". Also, during this time, Damanor can head off for "personal business", bringing him up to the events at the start of "The Optimal Solution".

I was hoping Digi could take the morgue detail (morgues are almost his second home ) then follow up on the street-end of talking to the dead man's former associates.

Damanor could follow up on the phone call, which leads to a dead lieutenent in the CMZ (how convenient and further cementing his personal problems with the CMZ - especially if it looks like Damanor murdered the guy).
What if the 'poisoning' of Damanor's sister looks like payback?

Jager will follow up (if he can) on the guys who were supposedly in the site, but I need April to let me know what I find and were the trail dead ends.

Bandwidth can both run down the numbers and start backtracking everything about the warehouse. Who owned it, who was shipping in and out of the area, and anything else he can think of. Maybe looking into Chicago Transits network of highway cameras might help. Then there are other on-line security camera systems and ATMs.

Rose can go with whomever she feels most comfortable with. Any one of the investigators could end up in a fight against non-superpowered but lethally armed foes), so help could be needed anywere. Also, there is a matter of complimenting the skill sets of the various members. At some point, intimidation, rapport, streetwise, investigation, and bureacracy are all going to be needed.
Also, lets not forget Rose's abiltiy to sense imminent danger. Jager can do that as well, but I don't know if anyone else can.
If Rose ends up going with Damanor, this could also lead her to a tie-in with "The Optimal Solution" as she would have to stick with Damanor since she has no authority on her own (tricky how that works out).

Sound good?

Heh. starting to sound like CSI: Windy City Knights now.

I'm loving this. I'll do exactly what was prescribed. Might be a little odd seeing the WCK's resident dead-man sniffing around the Morgue, before heading off to the streets.

I would assume the "dead man" in qustion is the security guard offed in the explosion, no?

Correct. He was the guy that April spotted outside before she went in. I assume he was killed in the explosion.

By the time we get to the blast scene, he has probably already been taken away by the coroner. I also am assuming that the fire department has also already departed as the explosion was designed to implode the building and not to rain down much rubble in a wide area. I still figure their are over a hundred cops on the scene.

Damanor and Digi, there may even be a few mobsters in the crowd, trying to figure out what happened here. Just a thought.

Rose will go with Damanor, as everyone else seems to have protective capabilities.

The guard at the warehouse might even be relatively intact. Dead, but intact. April dropped him into a dumpster to get him out of view, so he could have been sheltered a bit when the concrete blocks started raining out of the sky. Cause of death would probably be massive blunt trauma from when the dumpster got thrown by the explosion.

Tracking the men on site and whatnot could work out one of two ways, depending on how careful Our Mysterious Antagonist was on this:

If he was pretty careful, the men would probably be various thugs hired through a number of intermediaries. In this case, they could be tracked down and brought it. Working out who was actually responsible from that point would require going through several layers of middlemen, but could actually bear fruit.

In this case, we'd eventually work out that the person who is our Antagonist was probably responsible, but the connection would be so distant and well-buffered that we wouldn't be able to prove it. He would effectively be showing off - letting us know who is responsible while knowing that we can't really do anything about it. At least, not legally, and our public presence makes anything else very, very dicey.

However, if he was being really careful, he could have no connection whatsoever to the crime. He picks a competitor and arranges for information to be leaked about this competitor's distribution network. After setting up a target, he goes in and fixes up the entire operation on a no-hands basis.

He takes whoever is in charge of this chunk of the distribution network and takes the guy over - either with Telepathic Channeling and Dominate/Hypnosis or straight-up maxing for Parasitic Possession. He arranges everything in the ranks below, and implants simple (and thus nearly undetectable) memories in the ranks above in which they recall passing down the order. He gets the explosives from a contact of his, but the only person in the organization who could identify the dealer is himself.

Once everything is done, he arranges for his tool to be killed and implants memories in the higher ranks about passing that down as an order too (in order to insure that the warehouse explosion never gets back to them). Even if we get a telepath on the case, only two very simple memories have been implanted in anyone, and they were carefully reinforced over a period of time so as to be nearly invisible.

In this case, we get an idea for what organization is responsible (and are wrong, if we believe what we discover). No strings lead to anyone else because everything was done within this competitor organization. Later, we go through 'The Optimal Solution' and clean up the organization we believe is responsible. We interrogate some people, and they believe they were responsible, if only through proxy.

All is well for Antagonist, and we don't even know that he exists. At best, we are wondering about how a random lieutentant managed to pull off such a masterful scheme. Some things don't add up, but we can't put any connections to them for the time being.

Oh, and April might as well be still in the infirmary at the beginning of 'The Optimal Solution.' That's about the right timing for her being done, and she might prevail upon Alchemist to let her get get up and help now that something's come up.

At "Breaking Bricks", Didge is going to break off and follow an angle. See if he can't take a side-door to finding out some info.

Particularly, he'll be searching for residual evidence. Enought o figure out the type of C4 used. Might narrow down possibilities.

Anybody object to my invoking a cliche to explain how our bomber(s) swapped the drugs with explosives and got out without being seen? The only ways I could figure out were a warper (seems unlikely, but possible) and an underground tunnel (so ridiculous it might work - and nobody would seriously expect it). Of course, if we go with the tunnel, all is not as it appears...

It's a warehouse - the simple explanation is just that they switched cargoes around. Officially, a front company stored Product A for a few days. In fact, Product A got switched with the drugs, and was still sitting around the warehouse when it blew (bobble-headed dolls or something - doesn't matter). Then, the explosives came in labeled as Product B. They later blew up.

It wouldn't be legal to search the contents of the containers without a warrant, so there isn't any way the cops could check cargos to make sure they are what the manifests say. Since a short-term storage warehouse has stuff coming in and out every day, it would be child's play to move drugs/explosives in and out without question.