Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest

[King crimson]

So this one was fairly tricky although I do think that I've done a decent job adapting it. I appreciate any and all attempts at remaking these villains. This is a ramblier post and it does show my thought process even if it isn't as clean as some of the others. Also fair warning, Iron Mask is initially suicidal so this is a good bit more risky than most other adaptations I have done up to this point and may make people uncomfortable. I do not want to alienate people and I understand that suicide can be a touchy subject but I wanted to try and go this direction when adapting the character. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to improve.

Adapting Iron Mask
Adapting Iron Mask is a tricky proposition. Iron Mask is an incredibly nebulous character. Furthermore merging him with other characters is tricky since there are a weirdly huge amount of villains with just the name "Mask". On top of that there is a minor Atom villain named Ion Mask who wears an iron mask and looks nearly identical to Iron Mask.

What are the core elements of Iron Mask? Essentially Iron Mask was a career criminal who got caught in an explosion which scarred his face. Iron Mask then faked his death hid his face behind a mask and then went on to pretend his civilian identity was dead while going on a crime spree. He was primarily a Doll Man enemy. While there is no Doll Man superficially there is another similar hero in the Atom (who fought the incredibly similar Ion Mask). So the core elements of his character are being defaced in some way and wanting to pretend to be someone who he is not and we have set him up as an adversary for a hero who can be tiny.

Now we have run out of source material to work with. Sure we could throw in more characters into the amalgamation but that could swiftly result in the character becoming a mess and I prefer to keep things simple and clean. As such now we begin looking at what we can derive original writing from. We know that Ion Mask was based out of Ivy town and that Iron Mask as an Atom villain will likely be the same. The most notable thing about Ivy Town is Ivy University which is where the Atom works in his civilian identity. So we've got an easy way to set up the scarring with a tried and true comics trope, a lab accident. So we have our setup for how he got scarred but we don't have the motivation for being a criminal. In both Ion Mask and the original Iron Mask's origins they became supervillains because they were criminals. In this adaption that doesn't work as cleanly since I have him in some way involve with Ivy University. I know that he wants to abandon his civilian identity so something about becoming a criminal must appeal to him over retaining his old life. And with that thought in mind I managed to come up with a rather unique interpretation for this character that I hope people find interesting and exciting.

William Jameson was a professor of chemistry at Ivy University. While he had a brilliant mind he was utterly and completely bored of his life. Everything felt meaningless to him. No matter what he achieved he was always overshadowed and insignificant. William slipped further and further into depression. He grew misanthropic and started actively despising those he had to teach as he felt they did not respect him and that everyone mocked him behind his back. His anger towards his students manifested as violent rants at how worthless his students were. Needless to say they didn't like him all that much. One day some of his students decided to sabotage William's lab equipment as a way to get back at him after he unfairly failed him out of the class. One fateful night William decided he had enough. His life was empty and unfulfilling, he was going to end it. As such William decided to commit suicide. However if he was going to die, he wanted people to remember him for it so that he would no longer be insignificant. William set up an explosive calculated to kill him. However because of the faulty lab equipment the explosion went off early and William actually survived the attempt. Volunteers came and saved people from the fire.

When William came to he found himself in the house of an amateur locksmith and paramedic. The hospital didn't have enough room to take care of everyone hurt in the explosion so William had to make do with what he got. The man couldn't recognize William and nobody knew what had happened. Willaim ended up confessing to the man that he set up the explosions. The man was horrified and struck William. In a moment of rage William struck back and killed the man. It was then that William realized something. The act of killing someone gave him joy. He could lash out at those that looked down on him and remake himself into something bigger than all of them. William made a crude metal mask to hide his face before burning down the man's house to hide what had happened.

William left that house and had renamed himself Daniel Vittorio and had gotten involved with the mob. His knowledge of chemistry and viciousness allowed him to swiftly rise up the ranks. He ended up as the right hand man of the leader of the mob and was known for always wearing a metal mask. However once the Atom showed up Daniel was once again overshadowed and was belittled by the boss when he couldn't stop him. Daniel had enough. He murdered the head of the mob and took control of the criminal element to form his own gang. Taking the name Iron Mask, he began a crime wave designed to draw out the Atom so he could go and kill him. Iron Mask soon found he enjoyed being a supervillain even more than being a criminal and that he could live in infamy even when he lost this way. Iron Mask soon realized that his mystique would be ruined if people knew who he really was so he burned off his finger prints and set about trying to kill everyone who might know his real identity. Atom eventually managed to deduce who Iron Mask really was and the two have only grown to hate each other more as time passes on with Iron Mask resenting Atom's refusal to let him become a symbol of terror and Atom finding Iron Mask to be a despicable human being.

I hope that this origin story is interesting. A lot is left open but I think it is a fun adaptation. Let me know your thoughts on what I've come up with.

 

[Simon_Jester]

...So.

Here's my tentative 'plan' for Turn 15.

NOTE that this plan tries to reserve as many Martial/Intrigue heroes as possible, and a solid Diplomacy team, for assorted unspecified actions to be taken against Intergang. These may be high-DC actions, with active interference from Intergang, and a high risk associated with failure. As such, I'm trying to economize on our need for heroes elsewhere, and avoid using assets that COULD be allocated to missions against Intergang (e.g. a Rose-Mercy teamup is a strong Learning partnership that could easily clear "Learn about the brain," but we're better off throwing them at Martial tasks).

---

First, the computer option. This is likely to be uncontroversial. A lot of us wanted this last turn anyway, but using the computer to go all Big Data on Intergang was too good to pass up. We lucked out and got a LOT of good information out of that, but in the long run, we need to upgrade. Basically, given the limits of our ability to assign heroes to the supercomputer (one hero only), we can't reasonably be confident of beating anything much above DC 35 or DC 40... and a lot of our action options are harder than that.

[ ] [Comp] Install a learning program into your supercomputer (DC 48, Lex with +31 gives effective DC 17)

Then, we need to recognize that we'll need to fight Intergang. That will consume an unknown number of actions and probably most of our Martial/Intrigue heroes. Even dual role heroes that are effective in other areas (like Poison Ivy) should probably NOT be pre-allocated, and we should probably not pick actions (like "study botany") that would tempt us to use those heroes at the risk of failure on an Intergang-facing task.

---

Let's look at a plausible hero breakdown before we get too involved in action picking:

OBVIOUSLY NOT FIGHTING INTERGANG

Ivo, Carol, Karl, Felicity

-Ivo, Karl, and Carol because their Martial, Intrigue, and Diplomacy are actively bad or at least not good.

-Felicity is terrible at Martial and only good at Intrigue if it involves hacking, whereas she is one of our best hero units for Stewardship and Learning. Pretty good at Diplomacy too.

...

OBVIOUSLY FIGHTING INTERGANG

Mercy, Pamela, Katherine, Rebecca, Roxanne, Mari, Jinx, Rose, (Talia?)

-In pretty much every case, the choice is made obvious by their stats. The only really iffy cases are Pamela, Rebecca, and Mari, all of whom are good enough in some other area (Diplomacy/Stewardship/Learning) that we MIGHT want them doing something other than fighting Intergang. On the other hand, even with eight heroine units stacked up against Intergang we may well have none too much firepower on our team.

-Pamela is a borderline case because she really is good at Diplomacy and Learning, but on the other hand she's also one of our strongest Martial assets and for an 'all hands on deck' operation I don't think we should ignore that. She has good or actively skill-amplifying co-op with some of our other Martial-ish characters, too (especially Katherine now, obviously, but also Mercy and Jinx)

...

BORDERLINE CASES

Oswald, Carl, Nygma, Dahl, Lex, Cassandra

-Oswald can do very well on a Diplomacy mission, but is terrible at Martial and Intrigue, so he's probably available for non-Intergang-facing actions

-Carl because his Martial isn't good, and his Stewardship IS genuinely good... but his Intrigue is good, so he might be useful for Intergang-facing actions.

-Nygma because he sucks at collaborations and because he only can perform certain specific types of actions

-Dahl because while her Intrigue is actually pretty good, she gets along well with Ivo and can apply a +10 to his die rolls, and also because she doesn't really get along with anyone except Lex and Ivo.

-Cassandra because on the one hand, she works well with Lex and we don't want her being deployed as a child soldier getting on the news... but on the other hand, Martial 22 Intrigue 18. And we can now actually communicate with her, so her Living Weapon maluses are a lot more manageable (-5 rather than -12).

-Lex is specifically very very good at Stewardship and Learning, but also Diplomacy. If there's a must-succeed Diplomacy action next turn he should go for it, but otherwise the only reason to put him on an Intergang-facing action is if we have a DC 150 project or something, and we want it to succeed by stacking like eight hero units on it. Since Lex has better co-op scores with most of our heroes than they do with each other, and since he gets a cumulative +5 for each hero on the teamup, that would be a very effective way for us to launch a 'Sunday punch' crit that blows the doors off our enemies.

Examples:

[jk] Summarily obliterate Intergang with a single spleen-annihilating burst of maximum ultraviolence
(Martial, DC ??)
Lex+Mercy+Pamela+Rebecca+Katherine+Roxanne+Cassandra+Mari+Rose

Bonuses: (Lex Martial +12) + (Mercy Martial 19*1.85 = +35) + (Pamela Martial 21*1.75 = +38) +
(Rebecca Martial 16*0.9 = +14) + (Katherine Martial 17*1 = +17) + (Roxanne Martial (14+2)*1.7 = +27) +
(Cassandra Martial (23-5)*2 = +36) + (Mari Martial 22*1.3 = +29) + (Rose Martial 17*0.7 = 12) +
(Mercy Trait +10) + (Lex Trait +40)

=

Cumulative bonus +270

...

So yeah, a lot depends on whether our strategy for next turn revolves around doing really ridiculously well on ONE action, or doing merely pretty well on a larger number of separate actions.

---

---

OK, so with the above listing in mind:

NOT FIGHTING: Ivo, Carol, Karl, Felicity
SO FIGHTING: Mercy, Pamela, Katherine, Rebecca, Roxanne, Mari, Jinx, Rose, (Talia?)
BORDERLINE: Oswald, Carl, Nygma, Dahl, Lex, Cassandra

...

We need to pick 16 actions. We should make room for several Intergang-facing actions; we don't know what all of them will be because all the information we've obtained may change our options. New options that may arise include:

[] Attack Bruno Mannheim's Arctic lair (Martial)
[] Attack Whisper A'Daire in Markovia (Martial)
[] Attack Vincent Edge in Santa Prisca (Martial)
[] Assassinate Whisper/Vincent/maybe Bruno (Intrigue)
[] Coordinate with DOMA/Eiling/The League (Diplomacy)
[] Get US government permission to use your heavy weaponry (Diplomacy)

It's especially likely that the single "attack Intergang" action may have changed in character.

...

I'm going to tentatively budget FIVE action points for Intergang-facing actions, and try to keep most of our heroes free to ensure that those actions succeed in the face of Intergang opposition. If we choose to spend less than six actions fighting Intergang and rallying opposition against it, it's simple enough to just not push those actions so hard.

We'll also need to budget one action point for a 'Nygma action,' that is, "any job that involves investigation or acquiring a material." I don't know what the best choice there would be.

That leaves nine actions, with definitely Ivo, Carol, Karl, and Felicity, and maybe some of the 'BORDERLINE' hero units available. We should prioritize low-DC actions that have a good chance of success without assigning a lot of heropower, with at most maybe one or two things that we seriously intend to put a hero on.

Now, some new actions will likely become available, like "Build a kryptonite power plant" and "integrate kryptonite batteries into ???" and "research Captain Atom stuff" and "mass produce ??? with your swanky new production faciliies." We can't plan for those actions, we have no idea what the DC will be. Maybe low enough that we can try it, maybe high enough that we shouldn't. This is a 'war turn,' some things are going to have to wait no matter how much we want them (like that search engine, mmm)

...


OK, I'm looking for actions with DCs that are MOSTLY under 25 unless there is a very very good reason to take them. Here is a LONG list of actions with low DCs, many of them of doubtful utility to us.

Spoiler: Long List Is Long

MARTIAL
[] Hire more LexCorp security forces (DC 18)
[] Train up LexCorp forces (DC 20)
[] Train up the police (DC 10)
[] Fortify Metropolis (DC 22)
[] Patrol Metropolis with your security forces (DC 2)
[] Crush petty criminals (DC 14, removes obvious victories for Superman early in his career)
[] Summon demons (DC 19, DC -6 with Rebecca on task, can sic them on Intergang, would probably be outside context problem for Intergang)
[] Equip your forces with improved weapons (DC 23)
[] Arm the US government with your tech (DC 16)
[] Integrate hidden weapons system into exosuits (DC 5, ONLY hides weapons, does not upgrade the mechs)
[] The note 7 special (DC 4, turns cell phones into bombs, useful if Intergang keeps using phones)

DIPLOMACY
[] Meet with the League of Shadows (DC 10)
[] Donate to the police (DC 8)
[] Donate to guns rights groups (DC 9)
[] Give a gift (DC 0, result scales with die roll)
[] Take a trip to Gotham (DC 0, result scales with die roll)
[] Lexpo (DC 0, result scales with die roll)
[] Throw a party (DC 0, result scales with die roll)
[] Throw a company party (DC 0, result scales with die roll)
[] Buy art (DC 0, result scales with die roll)
[] Collaborate with S.T.A.R. Labs (DC 1)
[] Not a bribe (DC 10)
[] Have a meeting with Vicki Vale (DC 20)
[] Meet with Dinah Drake Lance in Star City (DC 12)
[] Run for mayor of Metropolis (DC 12)
[] Offer Lady Vic a loan (DC 8)
[] Establish friendly relations with Santa Prisca (DC 23, would help us go after Vincent Edge)
[] Establish friendly relations with Biyalia (DC 12)
[] Buy a sports team (DC 25)
[] Create a guideline for crime in Metropolis (DC 23, may be lower pending meeting with Whale)
[] Fund Whale's operations (DC 13, may be lower pending meeting)
[] Recruit skilled criminals (DC 20)
[] Make a PR statement (DC ???, variable)
[] Start advertising your construction company (DC 21)
[] Give bonuses to employees (DC 0, result scales with die roll)
[] Sell close to home (DC 9, sell to US government)
[] Sell to criminals (DC 15)
[] Meet with Lucy Lane to discuss future potential legal issues (DC 16)
[] Campaign to get the achievements of one of your workers recognized (DC ???, depends on achievement, may be alternate way to appease Ivo)
[] Public speaking tour (DC 15)
[] Call the DOMA (DC 26, may be necessary)
[] Hand the DOMA Woodrue's journal (DC 11)
[] Consult with the DOMA (DC 12, ditto)
[] Meet with General Eiling (DC 22, ditto)
[] Meet with the Metropolis police force (DC 3)
[] Head to the Oblivion Bar (DC 0, result scales with die roll)
[] Take a vacation (DC 0, result scales with die roll)
[] Have Jarret Parker meet with an employee (DC ???, Karl seems obvious choice)


STEWARDSHIP
NOTE: Many 'produce' actions may be lower DC with our new production facilities
[] Hire more workers (DC 12)
[] Hire Ex-Cons (DC 11)
[] Build a new LexCorp building (DC variable, as low as 16 in Kyoto, may be lower with translators)
[] Expand Ferris Aerospace (DC 22)
[] Expand McCabe Fashion (DC 5)
[] Improve your dedicated lab space (DC 24)
[] Improve Isley's living quarters (DC 20)
[] Build a panic room (DC 16)
[] Renovate your office (DC 14)
[] Buy a house (DC ???, effect scales with roll)
[] Build your own custom vehicle (DC 23 car, DC 26 plane is Carol bait)
[] Construct servers (DC 26, DC 6 with Felicity)

[] Invest in small businesses (DC ???, can't be that hard IMO)
[] Create a charity (DC 0, effect scales with die roll)
[] Create a grant (DC 0, effect scales with die roll)
[] Purchase real estate (DC 0, effect scales with die roll)
[] Invest in a startup (DC 0, effect scales with die roll)
[] Purchase the Earthmover 1 drill (DC 23, significantly improves tunneling and mining)
[] Develop a ride sharing service (DC 24, may want to avoid a weak success)
[] Develop an online encyclopedia (DC 35, 15 with Felicity)

[] Build a Sewer System (DC 15)
[] Build a sports stadium (DC 23)
[] Build a monument (DC 24)
[] Build a shopping mall (DC 12)
[] Build a university (DC 19)
[] Build a nightclub (DC 21)
[] Build a casino (DC 3)
[] Build a supermarket (DC 6)
[] Build an animal shelter (DC 6)
[] Restore old buildings (DC 21)
[] Build mining operations (DC 10)
[] Begin mining Kryptonite (DC 20)
[] Build a space building (DC 18, Carol bait)
[] Build affordable housing (DC 24)

[] Begin production of energy wands (DC 22)
[] Create robot animals (DC 20)
[] Create combat planes (DC 12, Carol bait)
[] Create commercial planes (DC 7, Carol bait)
[] Design and produce small combat drones (DC 25, Carol bait)
[] Design and produce spy drones (DC 20, Carol bait)
[] Begin producing children's television (DC 10, Oswald bait)
[] Begin producing video games (DC 24)
[] Begin producing news (DC 35, manageable IF Oswald assigned because of his trait)
[] Build food production facilities (DC 12)
[] Restore damaged environments (DC 20)
[] Create Vegan meat substitute (DC 10)
[] Create farmland (DC 15)
[] Use rapid growth formula to increase speed of testing cycles (DC 12)
[] Create and sell bulletproof formalwear (DC 24)
[] Develop and sell low fashion clothing (DC 12)
[] Develop and sell a new police uniform (DC 21)
[] Begin producing hologram technology (DC 14)
[] Begin production of auto-kitchen (DC 22)
[] Begin Production of Service Robots (DC 23)

INTRIGUE
[] Search for hidden artifacts (DC 134, DC 60 with Nygma, only worth it to keep Nygma busy)
[] Hire Deathstroke for a job (DC 32, may be lower with Rose on-side, may not, he may be the guy Intergang hired, if not would be good to have on-side against Intergang)
[] Bribe Bradford Sackett (DC 15)
[] Frame Bradford Sackett (DC 10)
[] Investigate what Faulkner hit in his demonstration (DC 21)
[] Hire Lady Vic for a job (DC 6)
[] Investigate Rose Wilson (DC 13)
[] Compile a blackmail file (DC 19 on Sapphire Stagg, DC 2 on General Eiling)
[] Hide the Sword of Beowulf (DC 7)
[] Sabotage a rival company (DC 3 for Stagg Enterprises, DC 3 for S.T.A.R. Labs)
[] Run background checks (DC 10-16 for various people including Pamela, the Lanes, and Katherine)
[] Acquire test subjects for Helfern (DC 25, failed last time)
[] Kidnap a member of Intergang (DC 18 last time, may be harder this time)
[] Investigate Kobra (DC 10)

LEARNING
[] Improve bone growth formula (DC 115, 85 with Helfern, minus ?? for experiments)
[] The A.M.A.Z.O. project (DC 180, 105 with Ivo, minus ?? for AI research)
[] Learn about the brain (DC 22)
[] Learn more about engineering (DC 18)
[] Learn about military strategy (DC 14)
[] Learn more about space (DC 10)
[] Learn about computers (DC 25, 14 with Felicity)
[] Learn about flight (magical) (DC 13)
[] Improve wards (DC 19)
[] Improve phones (DC 17)
[] Test improved bone growth formula ??
[] Improve poisons (DC 12)
[] Improve weapons (DC 9)
[] Improve armor (DC 21)
[] Improve tracking chips (DC 17)
[] Develop combat robots (DC 21)
[] Test to see who can wield the Sword of Beowulf (DC 0, would be useful for future fighting actions)
[] Learn about the Sword of Beowulf (DC 18)

...


Let's boil this down to... not nine, but a short list of things that are specifically sensible on a war turn where we're going to have to reach out and project power. Defending Metropolis proper may not be our top priority- though we MIGHT be hit by an assassin here, be warned. Still, I have to trim the list somehow.

These are actions that make sense in context, either because they help us fight Intergang, because they help one of our not-fighting-Intergang goals, or because they're just a cheap action that we can probably do reasonably well on with no hero unit or one of the few heroes we can spare.

A lot of actions would seem to be kind of a distraction or security risk under 'war turn' circumstances, so I'm skipping them. And some others are effectively "Intergang-facing" like working with DOMA/Eiling/the League, so likewise.

Spoiler: Less Long List is Less Long

MARTIAL
[] Hire more LexCorp security forces (DC 18)
[] Train up LexCorp forces (DC 20)
[] Crush petty criminals (DC 14, removes obvious victories for Superman early in his career)
[] Summon demons (DC 19, DC -6 with Rebecca on task, can sic them on Intergang, would probably be outside context problem for Intergang)
[] Equip your forces with improved weapons (DC 23)
[] Arm the US government with your tech (DC 16)
[] The note 7 special (DC 4, turns cell phones into bombs, useful if Intergang keeps using phones)

DIPLOMACY
[] Collaborate with S.T.A.R. Labs (DC 1)
[] Meet with Dinah Drake Lance in Star City (DC 12)
[] Offer Lady Vic a loan (DC 8)
[] Establish friendly relations with Santa Prisca (DC 23, would help us go after Vincent Edge)
[] Create a guideline for crime in Metropolis (DC 23, may be lower pending meeting with Whale)
[] Recruit skilled criminals (DC 20)
[] Sell close to home (DC 9, sell to US government)
[] Meet with Lucy Lane to discuss future potential legal issues (DC 16)
[] Campaign to get the achievements of one of your workers recognized (DC ???, depends on achievement, may be alternate way to appease Ivo)
[] Have Jarret Parker meet with an employee (DC ???, Karl seems obvious choice)

STEWARDSHIP
NOTE: Many 'produce' actions may be lower DC with our new production facilities
[] Hire more workers (DC 12)
[] Hire Ex-Cons (DC 11)
[] Build a new LexCorp building (DC variable, as low as 16 in Kyoto, may be lower with translators)
[] Expand McCabe Fashion (DC 5)
[] Build a panic room (DC 16, good if we anticipate attack)
[] Renovate your office (DC 14)

[] Build a university (DC 19)
[] Build a casino (DC 3)
[] Build a supermarket (DC 6)
[] Build an animal shelter (DC 6)
[] Build mining operations (DC 10)
[] Begin mining Kryptonite (DC 20)
[] Build a space building (DC 18, Carol bait)

[] Create robot animals (DC 20)
[] Create combat planes (DC 12, Carol bait)
[] Create commercial planes (DC 7, Carol bait)
[] Design and produce small combat drones (DC 25, Carol bait)
[] Design and produce spy drones (DC 20, Carol bait)
[] Begin producing children's television (DC 10, Oswald bait)
[] Begin producing news (DC 35, manageable IF Oswald assigned because of his trait)
[] Use rapid growth formula to increase speed of testing cycles (DC 12, helps with Gingo fruit et al)
[] Develop and sell low fashion clothing (DC 12)
[] Begin producing hologram technology (DC 14)

INTRIGUE
[] Search for hidden artifacts (DC 134, DC 60 with Nygma, only worth it to keep Nygma busy)
[] Hire Deathstroke for a job (DC 32, may be lower with Rose on-side, may not, he may be the guy Intergang hired, if not would be good to have on-side against Intergang)
[] Investigate what Faulkner hit in his demonstration (DC 21, keeps Nygma busy with high success chance)
[] Hire Lady Vic for a job (DC 6, no shortage of targets)
[] Hide the Sword of Beowulf (DC 7)
[] Acquire test subjects for Helfern (DC 25, failed last time)
[] Kidnap a member of Intergang (DC 18 last time, may be harder this time)

LEARNING
[] Improve bone growth formula (DC 115, 85 with Helfern, minus ?? for experiments)
[] The A.M.A.Z.O. project (DC 180, 105 with Ivo, minus ?? for AI research)
[] Learn about the brain (DC 22)
[] Learn about military strategy (DC 14)
[] Learn more about space (DC 10)
[] Learn about computers (DC 25, 14 with Felicity)
[] Test improved bone growth formula (DC ??)
[] Improve weapons (DC 9)
[] Develop combat robots (DC 21)
[] Test to see who can wield the Sword of Beowulf (DC 0, would be useful for future fighting actions)

And now to actually pin this down to something REMOTELY manageable to dig through

Spoiler: Only 31 flavors, I promise

MARTIAL
[] Hire more LexCorp security forces (DC 18)
[] Train up LexCorp forces (DC 20)
[] Summon demons (DC 19, DC -6 with Rebecca on task, can sic them on Intergang, would probably be outside context problem for Intergang)
[] Equip your forces with improved weapons (DC 23)
[] Arm the US government with your tech (DC 16)

DIPLOMACY
[] Collaborate with S.T.A.R. Labs (DC 1)
[] Meet with Dinah Drake Lance in Star City (DC 12)
[] Establish friendly relations with Santa Prisca (DC 23, would help us go after Vincent Edge)
[] Sell close to home (DC 9, sell to US government)
[] Meet with Lucy Lane to discuss future potential legal issues (DC 16)
[] Campaign to get the achievements of one of your workers recognized (DC ???, depends on achievement, may be alternate way to appease Ivo)
[] Have Jarret Parker meet with an employee (DC ???, Karl seems obvious choice)

STEWARDSHIP
NOTE: Many 'produce' actions may be lower DC with our new production facilities
[] Hire more workers (DC 12)
[] Build a new LexCorp building (DC variable, as low as 16 in Kyoto, may be lower with translators)
[] Build a panic room (DC 16, good if we anticipate attack)
[] Begin mining Kryptonite (DC 20)
[] Build a space building (DC 18, Carol bait)
[] Design and produce spy drones (DC 20, Carol bait)
[] Begin producing children's television (DC 10, Oswald bait, expands on existing TV content)
[] Use rapid growth formula to increase speed of testing cycles (DC 12, helps with Gingo fruit et al)
[] Begin producing hologram technology (DC 14)

INTRIGUE
[] Hire Deathstroke for a job (DC 32, may be lower with Rose on-side, may not, he may be the guy Intergang hired, if not would be good to have on-side against Intergang)
[] Investigate what Faulkner hit in his demonstration (DC 21, keeps Nygma busy with high success chance)
[] Hire Lady Vic for a job (DC 6, no shortage of targets)
[] Hide the Sword of Beowulf (DC 7)
[] Acquire test subjects for Helfern (DC 25, failed last time)
[] Kidnap a member of Intergang (DC 18 last time, may be harder this time)

LEARNING
[] Improve bone growth formula (DC 115, 85 with Helfern, minus ?? for experiments)
[] Test improved bone growth formula (DC ??)
[] The A.M.A.Z.O. project (DC 180, 105 with Ivo, minus ?? for AI research)
[] Learn about the brain (DC 22)
[] Learn about military strategy (DC 14)
[] Learn more about space (DC 10)
[] Learn about computers (DC 25, 14 with Felicity)
[] Improve weapons (DC 9)
[] Test to see who can wield the Sword of Beowulf (DC 0, would be useful for future fighting actions)

 

[Simon_Jester]

So, two rough plans for what to do with ten actions, one of them a Nygma action.

One with A.M.A.Z.O. This uses Lex and Ivo+Marie to combine for a bonus of 36+17+11+10+7 = +81. Swapping Marie out for Cassandra would be a nice upgrade, but we may want Cassandra on a 'commando' team fighting Intergang, preferably one led by Mercy, Roxanne, or Rose...

@King crimson, questions:

1) If we put Cassandra on, say, a Martial teamup where she is highest Martial, can she lead the team, or does the 'Child' trait prevent that?
2) If we summon demons, can we immediately sic them on an enemy like Intergang?

[] Find Time To Amaze List
-[] The A.M.A.Z.O. project (DC 105-??): Lex+Ivo+Marie
-[] Summon demons (DC 19, DC -6 with Rebecca on task): Rebecca
-[] Test to see who can wield the Sword of Beowulf (DC 0)
-[] Learn about computers (DC 14): Felicity
-[] Design and produce spy drones (DC 20): Carol
-[] Learn about military strategy (DC 14)
-[] Investigate what Faulkner hit in his demonstration (DC 21): Nygma
-[] Hire Lady Vic for a job (DC 6, no shortage of targets)
-[] Have Jarret Parker meet with an employee (DC ???): Karl Helfern, Jarret Parker
-[] Build a panic room (DC 16)

And one that gives Karl a serious collaboration attempt with Lex (36+15 = +51 on the die roll)

[] Bone Deep List
-[] Acquire test subjects for Helfern (DC 25, failed last time)
OR
-[] Kidnap a member of Intergang (DC 18 last time, may be harder this time)
-[] Improve bone growth formula (DC 85-??): Lex+Karl
OR
-[] Test improved bone growth formula (DC ??): Lex+Karl
AND
-[] Campaign to get Dr. Ives' achievements in developing the universal translator recognized (DC ??)
-[] Learn about military strategy (DC 14)
-[] Learn about the brain (DC 22): Ivo+Marie
-[] Learn about computers (DC 14): Felicity
-[] Design and produce spy drones (DC 20): Carol
-[] Test to see who can wield the Sword of Beowulf (DC 0)
-[] Build a panic room (DC 16)
-[] Investigate what Faulkner hit in his demonstration (DC 21): Nygma

 

[King crimson]

Vote will be closed at 9 with an update at 10

@King crimson, questions:

1) If we put Cassandra on, say, a Martial teamup where she is highest Martial, can she lead the team, or does the 'Child' trait prevent that?
2) If we summon demons, can we immediately sic them on an enemy like Intergang?

Click to shrink...

She cannot lead teamups at this point I will add that to the child notes.

They'd still have to travel to Intergang and there is no guarantee they won't find some way to screw with you but you can do that yes.

 

[Thanatosra]

They'd still have to travel to Intergang and there is no guarantee they won't find some way to screw with you but you can do that yes.

Click to shrink...

Well we could always summon demons in the general area of an intergang cell

 

[Simon_Jester]

They'd still have to travel to Intergang and there is no guarantee they won't find some way to screw with you but you can do that yes.

Click to shrink...

I mean, I figure that giving them instructions to "shout, revel, and kill those fuckers over there" will probably be better received by a pack of demons than most other things we could do. Because at least they get to throw a party?

On the other hand, you're not wrong, and we've avoided studying demonology.

However, it IS an option we could consider, assigning Rebecca to it would give us a negative DC and thus hopefully assurance of success of some kind, and it is one of the few things we could throw at Intergang that would surprise them at this point.

So, it bears considering, especially since it's likely to be more 'punch' than we could get just by assigning Rebecca to a Martial teamup. Though she DOES have good synergy with Mari; a Mari-Roxy-Rebecca-Jinx teamup on Martial is pretty strong, though anyone else we added to it probably wouldn't perform very well on the team.

Hm. We could put together two martial teams under:

War Plan Lex's Angels:

Team Magic Rocket Ride
(Mari's Martial 23) + (Roxy's Martial 16*1.1 = 18) + (Rebecca's Martial 16*1.5 = 24) + (Jinx's Martial 12*1.0 = 12) = +77

Team Birds of Prey
(Pamela's Martial 21) + (Mercy's Martial 19*1.0 = 19) + (Katherine's Martial 17*1.2 = 20) + (Mercy's Trait 10) = +70

[Jinx actually contributes a bit more to Birds of Prey because she has higher co-op with Pamela than with Mari if I'm reading the chart rightly. The problem is, Magic Rocket Ride is a bit understrength otherwise, because Mercy's like a teammate and a half due to her bonus.

EDIT: Hm.

We could also throw in Rose+Cassandra...

Team Call CPS
(Rose's Martial 17) + (Cassandra's Martial 1.2*(23-5) = 22) = +39

Which is quite respectable if we're going all-out. Or, for a significant improvement:

Team Field Trip
(Lex's Martial 12) + (Rose's Martial 17*0.7 = 12) + (Cassandra's Martial 2*(23-5) = 36) + (Lex's Trait 10) = +70

...

So yeah, in contrast to the +270 megacollaboration on a single Martial project I suggested earlier, we can get a +77 and two +70s. Smaller total bonus, but better if we have multiple Martial actions that need to succeed, all of them at 'reasonable' DCs of, well... 70 or less.

 

[Erumpet]

Hey @King crimson i got another question about the endless. So you mentioned that they are second to the source itself. Does that mean that they could beat a the specter at his full power. I am only wondering due to him he's known sometimes as the embodiment of god's (aka the source) wrath

 

[King crimson]

Hey @King crimson i got another question about the endless. So you mentioned that they are second to the source itself. Does that mean that they could beat a the specter at his full power. I am only wondering due to him he's known sometimes as the embodiment of god's (aka the source) wrath

Click to shrink...

It's more like they'd be locked in an eternal stalemate for most of them. The Spectre cannot reliably permenantly put any of them down (they'd just shift to a new form). Furthermore the Spectre is subject to all of their realms. If he dreams Dream could mess with them, Despair, Desire and Destruction could cripple him or make him ineffective. Most Endless could not directly kill him either as they lack the means to directly do so but unless the Presence directly interferes Death can nullify all attempts at killing an individual and can potentially kill the Spectre.

TLDR: they all endlessly stalemate except Death who outright wins when up against anything that is not explicitly the Presence and is capable of dying (which the Spectre is)

Hope that answers your question. Keep in mind that this is not a measure of power. The Endless are more or less equal in strength it is just that Death and Destruction have the sphere of influence most directly applicable to combat. All of the Endless are more powerful than the Spectre but only one can definitely put him down (Destruction maybe can depending on the exact nature of the Spectre as an extension of the Presence).

 

[King crimson]

Vote is closed expect an update at 10:30

 

[Simon_Jester]

@King crimson

Is that an 'outcome' update, or the actual Turn 15 update? Since it would seem there's still a bit more for us to learn about what's going on this turn, in particular our interactions with some of our new characters and with Whale. And it would certainly be nice to know how factions like the League of Shadows, DOMA, and General Eiling's command react to the information we've voted to give them.

 

[King crimson]

@King crimson

Is that an 'outcome' update, or the actual Turn 15 update? Since it would seem there's still a bit more for us to learn about what's going on this turn, in particular our interactions with some of our new characters and with Whale. And it would certainly be nice to know how factions like the League of Shadows, DOMA, and General Eiling's command react to the information we've voted to give them.

Click to shrink...

It is an outcome update. I've still got a bitore to get through before I can work on action phase 15

 

[Simon_Jester]

Gotcha.

Oh hey, @King crimson , I had an idea for a write-in.

In case the Sword of Beowulf is discovered, could we:

[] Make a duplicate forgery of the Sword of Beowulf

That way, we could return the nonmagical duplicate (and be shocked, shocked to learn that it was stolen property!), while keeping the real thing for ourselves.

 

[Lockheart]

Gotcha.

Oh hey, @King crimson , I had an idea for a write-in.

In case the Sword of Beowulf is discovered, could we:

[] Make a duplicate forgery of the Sword of Beowulf

That way, we could return the nonmagical duplicate (and be shocked, shocked to learn that it was stolen property!), while keeping the real thing for ourselves.

Click to shrink...

Didn't Nygma already do that? It would just draw unwanted attention

 

[Simon_Jester]

Didn't Nygma already do that? It would just draw unwanted attention

Click to shrink...

Yes... and no.

Nygma DID leave a fake sword in the museum collection, and hopefully no one will investigate that, realize the deception, and track the missing sword to us. Given that it's not known to be an artifact of any special historical interest to the scholarly community at large, the odds are good that the crime will go undetected and uninvestigated.

But in the unlikely event that someone does come looking for the sword, and doesn't believe us when we say we haven't got it... Well, we don't want to give up a magical sword that makes the wielder unbeatable in combat. We can deploy our alibi (and truthfully add that Nygma was under orders to procure that specific sword legally), hand over the duplicate sword (and Nygma, who will look like a goof if he rants about how it's a magic sword from the days of Camelot), and have done with it...

IF we can make a very very good duplicate of the Sword, one more likely to pass inspection than the forgery Nygma already used. So come to think of it, it wouldn't be easy.

 

[Erumpet]

thanks @King crimson for answering my question. I got another one this time about Superman.
So in most universe's I think it's safe to say that superman is the strongest Kryptonian on earth, my question is why. If other Kryptonian's (Superboy, Supergirl, General Zod) gain their powers from the same source (the sun) why is that superman is always the strongest around. My only theory is that since Superman has lived on earth for so much longer then most other Kryptonian's his powers have had a longer time to develop. Is that it or am I missing something?

 

[King crimson]

So I accidentally uploaded part of this update early. For those of you who came early you all got to read a part of my drafting process for writing interludes. Some parts are a little sparse as it is mostly reaction stuff but it should give you a bead on what is going to happen and there is plenty of pertinent information. I'll do more bookkeeping tomorrow (Adding Cerise to the character sheet and putting all of the actors into the other encountered characters part as well as adding their stuff to the birthdays and compatibility with transhumanist stuff) and I hope to get the next meeting with Whale up tomorrow. Enjoy!

Interlude: Making Connections
Rebecca Carstairs
So apparently a new magic user had approached Lex with the desire to gain employment. Rebecca was fine with that. She was a bit wary of how the individual in question learned that Lex knew about magic but that wasn't her department.

No, she was just here to test some of Cerise's other claims. The man sent to question her had found no contradictions in her story. All the information that she gave of being a practitioner based out of Gotham with no real family. She had a working history as an accountant and they were able to dig up drivers licenses and old yearbook photos. Apparently she was on the up and up on that end.

Cerise managed to make it effortlessly past the wards. That meant she held no intention to harm LexCorp so far so good. Then Rebecca questioned Cerise on the wards placed around the tower.

"Oh, that is weird. Like all these things do is get rid of anyone with bad intentions. I've seen old Egypt curses that would polymorph or set you on fire if you violated the conditions."

Rebecca didn't know what to make of that. She then showed Cerise an anti-scrying ward. Cerise was unable to properly identify it. She could tell that it was a ward that did something to block sight but the exact mechanics of how it worked were apparently a little beyond her. Rebecca was alright with those answers. Nothing suspicious had come up and when asked to replicate the wards Cerise was able to create similar wards with near identical functions albeit her anti bad intent wards caused crippling pain to anyone who held bad intent and passed through them and her sight blocking ward didn't block scrying so much as it blocked any attempt to directly view the object making it not show up on cameras.

Rebecca was fine with it. Cerise had stated that her specialty fell more under identifying how things work and producing minor enchantments than ward based stuff. She was polite enough and seemingly a little skittish. She did refuse to give a biological sample to LexCorp and when others attempted to covertly gather it through forensic means they were unable to do so. It was an interesting puzzle. Rebecca figured she would be alright working with Cerise. Granted she'd be on her own for a bit but if Cerise wasn't a spy like Orin it would be nice to have another magic user to talk shop with.

Still no use in daydreaming. Rebecca had to go and get ready for filming of Knights of Camelot. This was her return to acting and it was nice to once again engage in her craft. Playing Morgaine Lefay did feel a little odd considering that she was an actual flying, hellfire using magic wielder but it helped cut down on the budget and Oswald was happy with the way things were going.

Lisa Snart
And Lenny said her career as a skater would go nowhere. Hah! Lisa sure showed him. Admittedly she hadn't made it big as a figure skater but her work there put her in contact with some people and taught her some skills so when she auditioned for the part of one of the main leads of some show that was being developed by Lightyear Entertainment she ended up getting the part. It wasn't exactly glamorous Hollywood, hanging out in Metropolis but at least she was going somewhere in the world.

She had ended up meeting a lot of people involved in show-biz and more. Apparently Oswald Loomis, the main writer and director of the tv show managed to pull some strings and get some big names involved. Anthony Romulus showed up on set for a bit, Hudson Pyle was around and more.

Lisa knew that this was a good gig. LexCorp, the parent company paid well so long as when they told you to jump you said how high. Lisa could get used to things being a little more cushy. Heck, she could probably be her own boss if she played her cards right. Admittedly she probably wanted to keep her juvenile record buried deep in the past but she had overcome all of that. Lenny and Dad could stay two bit crooks. Lisa was going to go for the gold while she still could. Just because she was making money legally didn't mean she wasn't going to be competitive. Lisa was not going to lose no matter what.

Hudson Pyle
Working on the Mask of Zorro tv show was a bit of a passion project for Hudson. He was a big name in Hollywood and had been popular in several leading man roles. Still he never would have ended up as successful as he did if the old Zorro movies hadn't inspired him to take up acting. So when Oswald Loomis, a name he recognized from the mans special effects work, approached him on potentially being cast as the lead Hudson was intrigued. Then he read the script.

From that point Hudson was hooked. Oswald genuinely got the character. While the plots were rather cliché the character interactions and dynamics were a lot of fun. It impressed Hudson enough to want to bring in his all for the part.

When the cast met to begin filming, Hudson made sure to give 110% on everything. Daphne Dean, another big name star who was enticed to take the role by the writing played the main romantic lead and was an absolute joy to work with. Hudson invigorated many of the actors to work as hard as they could on this project. The energy was infectious. While the effects and the set weren't spectacular everyone had a lot of fun filming it an Hudson was confident that they had managed to capture the spirit of Zorro. As a fan of the old serials that was all Hudson could ask for. Oswald didn't have the money to compete with big budget Hollywood productions but he ran an excellent show and ensured that everyone involved was enjoying themselves and contributing to the final product.

Wade Eiling
Wade always knew that Intergang was going to be trouble. A bunch of terrorist scum like that needed to be wiped off the face of the earth. Thankfully Luthor was working with him. Most people wouldn't understand why Wade was so willing to commit to extreme actions to defend his country. Most people were civilians who didn't get the real danger the USA was in. If you were soft the snakes would sneak into your institution and poison it from the inside out. Intergang had done so. They were still pulling the rot out of various places and now Wade found out that Intergang was both selling weapons to that shit-heap of a country, Santa Prisca, and planning to threaten some kind of mutually assured destruction using alien technology? Not on his watch. The first thing Wade was going to do was push for an out and out invasion of Santa Prisca. No one would object to that.

Then if Intergang reacted like a cornered viper he'd get the go ahead to crush them in Markovia regardless of the country's alleged neutrality. If they were going to shelter alien terrorists then they deserved to be destroyed. The president and the limp-dicked suits he surrounded himself with would probably try and negotiate. When that inevitably broke down and failed Eiling would be able to say "I told you so" and step up to save his country.

Luthor was a godsend in that way. If he wasn't so firmly entrenched in America Eiling might have been worried. But despite his recent expansion into the Japs territory Luthor was firmly entrenched in American politics. And history had shown that Luthor's were always on the side of America. Eiling was glad to have found such a potentially powerful ally. The USA would stay safe under his watch.

Ra's al Ghul
Ra's was concerned. Intergang had turned out to be quite the danger. Luthor ended up informing him of what was going to happen. Unfortunately he did not have exact locations for all of them. He also let Ra's know that he had contacted authorities. That was fine with Ra's. The sooner the dragon of Intergang was put down the sooner he could get to accomplishing his true goals. Luthor had held his end of the bargain, now the League would do theirs. It wouldn't come quickly but Ra's would murder each and every last member of Intergang. However he couldn't be rash. He sent a handful of his best operatives to observe Markovia and attempt to steal Whisper A'Daire's doomsday device.

He could not afford any mistakes. He recalled Talia from LexCorp. He'd let others stir up the pot while he weakened their enemies by removing their trump card from play. Then when Intergang was displaced and disarmed the League of Shadows would cut them down like the mongrels they were. Ra's would not tolerate interlopers on his planet.

Diana Prince
When Luthor contacted her, Diana was concerned. Intergang had proven to be an absolutely massive deal. However she couldn't do anything about it just yet. While she would happily try and solve the problem with violence she first needed to inform her colleagues and superiors of what was going on. The fallout from this had the potential to be immense but Diana believed that the world would come together in the face of a threat like this. Man's world was so much stronger than many gave it credit for.


Meeting with Whale subvote
You have agreed to have a subordinate meet with Tobias Whale at a place of your choosing to discuss your relationship going forward. Please select one option of each type. Any votes in plan format will be discounted (this is approval voting). There is a one hour moratorium on voting.

[ ] [Whale Location] Meet with Whale at LexCorp Tower
[ ] [Whale Location] Meet with Whale at the Ahab Bar
[ ] [Whale Location] Meet with Whale at the Ace o'Clubs
[ ] [Whale Location] Meet with Whale at Centennial Park
[ ] [Whale Location] Write in
[ ] [Subordinate] Send Pamela to the meeting
[ ] [Subordinate] Send Mercy to the meeting
[ ] [Subordinate] Send Roxanne to the meeting
[ ] [Subordinate] Write in (can be a combination of multiple individuals including those not listed)
[ ] [Cross] Bring guards with your subordinate
[ ] [Cross] Have your subordinate come alone
[ ] [Cross] Betray Whale and send the police to arrest him
[ ] [Cross] Betray Whale and attempt to kill all of his men
[ ] [Cross] Attempt to use the pheromone spray on Whale
[ ] [Cross] Write in

 

[King crimson]

Gotcha.

Oh hey, @King crimson , I had an idea for a write-in.

In case the Sword of Beowulf is discovered, could we:

[] Make a duplicate forgery of the Sword of Beowulf

That way, we could return the nonmagical duplicate (and be shocked, shocked to learn that it was stolen property!), while keeping the real thing for ourselves.

Click to shrink...

The write-in is rejected you need to study the sword a bit to make a better fake then Nygma's. I already had a route planned for that action

thanks @King crimson for answering my question. I got another one this time about Superman.
So in most universe's I think it's safe to say that superman is the strongest Kryptonian on earth, my question is why. If other Kryptonian's (Superboy, Supergirl, General Zod) gain their powers from the same source (the sun) why is that superman is always the strongest around. My only theory is that since Superman has lived on earth for so much longer then most other Kryptonian's his powers have had a longer time to develop. Is that it or am I missing something?

Click to shrink...

So I do not have a good comics or other related media explanation. You have hit the nail on the head with the traditional explanation (also Superboy is half Kryptonian so he is weaker than full blooded Kryptonians). My explanation is a little different (at least for this quest). Superman isn't the strongest. General Zod would actually be the strongest (greatest natural strength plus sun enhancement) although they are all incredibly close in strength. What Superman is the best at is leveraging his strength and fighting in an optimal way. Fighting with flight and with super strength and laser eyes and so on is immensely different from normal fighting on the ground. How you leverage force is different and the tactics you engage in are different. Unlike all other full blooded Kryptonians Superman has never had to unlearn how to fight without powers in order to more effectively fight with powers. For him having powers is completely normal. All other Kryptonians have to constantly not second guess themselves or adjust their method of combat to adapt to leveraging their powers. As such Superman is not stronger than any other Kryptonian but is way better at effectively applying his strength to a situation since for him it is normal and intuitive. However the reverse is true. Superman is not used to not having his powers so when depowered other Kryptonians can more effectively fight and utilize their strength as that is what they developed with and what comes intuitively to them.

Does that answer your question? As far as I am aware there is no official answer but that is what I headcanon the solution as and thus what will appear in this quest and I hope it is satisfactory.

 

[Simon_Jester]

So apparently a new magic user had approached Lex with the desire to gain employment. Rebecca was fine with that. She was a bit wary of how the individual in question learned that Lex knew about magic but that wasn't her department.

No, she was just here to test some of Cerise's other claims. The man sent to question her had found no contradictions in her story. All the information that she gave of being a practitioner based out of Gotham with no real family. She had a working history as an accountant and they were able to dig up drivers licenses and old yearbook photos. Apparently she was on the up and up on that end.

Click to shrink...

Hmm. Not beyond the ability of a powerful magician to fake, most likely by simply assuming the identity of a random Gothamite who wouldn't be missed, up to and including glamouring up with her appearance and possibly reading her memories. The real Cerise Orielle may be dead or locked up in a heavily warded basement somewhere.

Cerise managed to make it effortlessly past the wards. That meant she held no intention to harm LexCorp so far so good.

Click to shrink...

That's a good sign. A very skilled magician might well be able to spoof our wards. Firstly they might be using superior knowledge of magic, or secondly they may have some kind of internal mind manipulation that lets them compartmentalize and 'seal away' their own awareness of their intent to harm us until they're comfortably inside our wards.

But even given that such things are possible, it would take considerable skill and effort to do achieve those results. Which is at least minor evidence that Cerise isn't planning to harm US.

Then Rebecca questioned Cerise on the wards placed around the tower.

"Oh, that is weird. Like all these things do is get rid of anyone with bad intentions. I've seen old Egypt curses that would polymorph or set you on fire if you violated the conditions."

Rebecca didn't know what to make of that.

Click to shrink...

Heh. To be fair we probably could have that kind of ward with a bit of R&D, but it might cause problems if random people walking into the tower meaning us harm spontaneously combusted or turned into toads on our doorstep. Ancient Egyptian priest-kings who were known to be powerful magicians probably didn't have that kind of difficulty.

She then showed Cerise an anti-scrying ward. Cerise was unable to properly identify it. She could tell that it was a ward that did something to block sight but the exact mechanics of how it worked were apparently a little beyond her. Rebecca was alright with those answers. Nothing suspicious had come up and when asked to replicate the wards Cerise was able to create similar wards with near identical functions albeit her anti bad intent wards caused crippling pain to anyone who held bad intent and passed through them and her sight blocking ward didn't block scrying so much as it blocked any attempt to directly view the object making it not show up on cameras.

Click to shrink...

Hm. The pain ward could have tactical utility, the "anti-scrying" ward appears to be more of an invisibility spell... and I suspect that to some extent Cerise is sandbagging, hiding the full extent of what she knows. I could be paranoid though.

( @King crimson , does it render the user invisible to direct naked eye observation, and will we get an action option to test out this spell? Invisibility magic can be very useful if you've planned ahead for it better than those Confederate spies who did in our great-great-great-great-grandpa Lucius did)

Rebecca was fine with it. Cerise had stated that her specialty fell more under identifying how things work and producing minor enchantments than ward based stuff. She was polite enough and seemingly a little skittish. She did refuse to give a biological sample to LexCorp and when others attempted to covertly gather it through forensic means they were unable to do so.

Click to shrink...

IN-teresting.

You'd think that pretty much anyone who works in an office for any length of time would leave traces of hair and skin cells. Either our investigators aren't talented enough and we need to put hero units on it, or Cerise has some kind of very interesting magic masking traces of her presence. It'd be useful and obvious magic to develop, since rival practitioners can use hair and skin and so on to work magic against oneself... but it speaks to considerable sophistication, and preparation.

Of course, if we could convince her to share THAT magic, assuming it exists, that would be wonderful- because it would let us enchant our agents to be much harder to identify using forensic traces such as fingerprints, hair, and skin cells, in case we had them committing crimes and didn't want anyone going all CSI on us.

Still no use in daydreaming. Rebecca had to go and get ready for filming of Knights of Camelot. This was her return to acting and it was nice to once again engage in her craft. Playing Morgaine Lefay did feel a little odd considering that she was an actual flying, hellfire using magic wielder but it helped cut down on the budget and Oswald was happy with the way things were going.

Click to shrink...

Hmm, I imagine we strap her up with ten pounds of special equipment artfully concealed under her gown and tell any 'not in the know' people on the show's staff that it's an advanced LexCorp prototype on loan for the show.

The special equipment doesn't do anything, of course.

Lisa knew that this was a good gig. LexCorp, the parent company paid well so long as when they told you to jump you said how high. Lisa could get used to things being a little more cushy. Heck, she could probably be her own boss if she played her cards right. Admittedly she probably wanted to keep her juvenile record buried deep in the past but she had overcome all of that. Lenny and Dad could stay two bit crooks. Lisa was going to go for the gold while she still could. Just because she was making money legally didn't mean she wasn't going to be competitive. Lisa was not going to lose no matter what.

Click to shrink...

Hmm, nice. This indicates, by the way, that if we want to learn more about what Captain Cold (her brother, Lenny Snart) is up to, our entry point is an investigation into Lisa's background. We have a "do a background check" action option, and I doubt it'd be that hard to do on Lisa. One mid-ranking Intrigue hero (e.g. Marie Dahl) should be able to handle it.

Hudson Pyle
Working on the Mask of Zorro tv show was a bit of a passion project for Hudson. He was a big name in Hollywood and had been popular in several leading man roles. Still he never would have ended up as successful as he did if the old Zorro movies hadn't inspired him to take up acting. So when Oswald Loomis, a name he recognized from the mans special effects work, approached him on potentially being cast as the lead Hudson was intrigued. Then he read the script.

From that point Hudson was hooked. Oswald genuinely got the character. While the plots were rather cliché the character interactions and dynamics were a lot of fun. It impressed Hudson enough to want to bring in his all for the part.

When the cast met to begin filming, Hudson made sure to give 110% on everything. Daphne Dean, another big name star who was enticed to take the role by the writing played the main romantic lead and was an absolute joy to work with...

Click to shrink...

Oh, nice. Our investment in the writing and bringing in a very well-cast lead (Hudson can probably play Zorro as well as any man in Hollywood since Errol Flynn) brought in Daphne Dean (worth 6 points in her own right) as a side-effect.

Dean is Barry Allen's childhood sweetheart; this is to the Flash what having Lana Lang on our payroll would be to Superman, as I understand it. She's not a metahuman (yet?), but she's a Person of Interest. Between this and Snart, we may want to take "The Case Of the Disappearing L-Phone" soon and get a bit more involved with the Flash's sphere of interest.

Especially since thanks to our wards, we may actually have a defense capable of keeping the speedy little bastard out, which is a rare advantage against a guy like him.

So I accidentally uploaded part of this update early. For those of you who came early you all got to read a part of my drafting process for writing interludes. Some parts are a little sparse as it is mostly reaction stuff but it should give you a bead on what is going to happen and there is plenty of pertinent information. I'll do more bookkeeping tomorrow (Adding Cerise to the character sheet and putting all of the actors into the other encountered characters part as well as adding their stuff to the birthdays and compatibility with transhumanist stuff) and I hope to get the next meeting with Whale up tomorrow. Enjoy!

Click to shrink...

Hmm...

How do we know Cerise's transhuman compatibilities if we don't have any biological samples? Presumably we'd have to do a pretty thorough physical, complete with blood work or something, to evaluate whether she can take the plant formula or cybernetic implants or something.

Wade Eiling
Wade always knew that Intergang was going to be trouble. A bunch of terrorist scum like that needed to be wiped of the face of the earth. Thankfully Luthor was working with him.

Click to shrink...

True. LexCorp: siccing Big Data on terrorists for the military-industrial complex since 199X.

Most people wouldn't understand why Wade was so willing to commit to extreme actions to defend his country. Most people were civilians who didn't get the real danger the USA was in. If you were soft the snakes would sneak into your institution and poison it from the inside out. Intergang had done so. They were still pulling the rot out of various places and now Wade found out that Intergang was both selling weapons to that shit-heap of a country, Santa Prisca, and planning to threaten some kind of mutually assured destruction using alien technology? Not on his watch. The first thing Wade was going to do was push for an out and out invasion of Santa Prisca. No one would object to that.

Then if Intergang reacted like a cornered viper he'd get the go ahead to crush them in Markovia regardless of the country's alleged neutrality. If they were going to shelter alien terrorists then they deserved to be destroyed. The president and the limp-dicked suits he surrounded himself with would probably try and negotiate. When that inevitably broke down and failed Eiling would be able to say "I told you so" and step up to save his country.

Click to shrink...

Ra's al Ghul
Ra's was concerned. Intergang had turned out to be quite the danger. Luthor ended up informing him of what was going to happen. Unfortunately he did not have exact locations for all of them. He also let Ra's know that he had contacted authorities. That was fine with Ra's. The sooner the dragon of Intergang was put down the sooner he could get to accomplishing his true goals. Luthor had held his end of the bargain, now the League would do theirs. It wouldn't come quickly but Ra's would murder each and every last member of Intergang. However he couldn't be rash. He sent a handful of his best operatives to observe Markovia and attempt to steal Whisper A'Daire's doomsday device.

Click to shrink...

Ahh, DOUBLE crapbakets.

Diana Prince
When Luthor contacted her, Diana was concerned. Intergang had proven to be an absolutely massive deal. However she couldn't do anything about it just yet. While she would happily try and solve the problem with violence she first needed to inform her colleagues and superiors of what was going on. The fallout from this had the potential to be immense but Diana believed that the world would come together in the face of a threat like this. Man's world was so much stronger than many gave it credit for.

Click to shrink...

Well, things are coming together all right, but this looks like more of a "four car pileup" come together than an "alliance" come together.

The problems we have here are:

1) A big brute squad from General Eiling invading Santa Prisca to capture Vincent Edge is going to go a lot like the US invading Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden, only with less popular support for actually finding the guy because Vincent Edge hasn't personally ordered 3,000 Americans killed even if he's tied to the people who are tied to Ignition (who HAS killed hundreds, though not thousands, of Americans). This will cause problems for the US in the long run.

2) If Eiling succeeds, he will then invade Markovia, a neutral European country, causing even more problems.

3) Meanwhile, the League of Shadows, an organization far more subtle than Eiling's war machine, is trying to steal whatever mechanism Whisper A'Daire has as a weapon of global mass destruction. And the worst part is, depending on exactly how it works, Ra's al Ghul is crazy enough to use the damn thing! If it's a plague bomb or something, he might just pull the trigger on the bomb himself. Oh, and Talia has been recalled. Fuuuu-

4) To make matters worse, Diana Prince, the only one of our allies who is approximately sane and not going completely off the plot here, appears to be tied up in enough red tape to struggle to act quickly.

This is... darkly hilarious. I guess we need to learn the first rule of demonology:

Do not call up that which you lack the strength to put down.

...

OK, so our biggest priority is making sure Ra's doesn't get his hands on that doomsday weapon. Which is only going to help if we get an action option like

[] Steal Whisper A'Daire's doomsday device for yourself

@King crimson , is that an option we can/will have next turn? You may have planned for it anyway so it may not count as a write-in, but still.

Anyway, that's likely to be an Intrigue action, and a very very tough one, so we may want to consider what we can do for an Intrigue megaproject led by Lex (almost by default).

Other options might be

[] Convince the Markovians to expel Whisper A'Daire

Which would force her to move out from where Ra's has his agents after her, if nothing else. Also easier said than done, probably a high-DC diplomacy check given how isolationist Markovia is.

...

Meanwhile, no one is paying much mind to Bruno Mannheim in the Arctic. He may actually be a relatively easy target for our Martial efforts.

[ ] [Whale Location] Meet with Whale at LexCorp Tower
[ ] [Whale Location] Meet with Whale at the Ahab Bar
[ ] [Whale Location] Meet with Whale at the Ace o'Clubs
[ ] [Whale Location] Meet with Whale at Centennial Park

Click to shrink...

LexCorp Tower is waaay too conspicuous. Centennial Park, likewise; someone with a cell phone camera will snap a picture and it will be all our own fault.

I don't even know where or what the Ahab Bar is; the Ace o'Clubs is owned by a random longshoreman type who is probably destined to become Superman's biggest fan. I see no reason to prefer one of those locations over the other, but they're at least reasonably private.

[ ] [Subordinate] Send Pamlea to the meeting
[ ] [Subordinate] Send Mercy to the meeting
[ ] [Subordinate] Send Roxanne to the meeting
[ ] [Subordinate] Write in (can be a combination of multiple individuals including those not listed)

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Hm. I nominate Roxy or Mercy. Pamela is getting national attention and we're kind of trying to associate her more with the 'clean' side of the company. Mercy's probably the best choice if we're not trying to sweet-talk Whale; Roxy's more winsome and diplomatic.

She's also, when you get right down to it, reasonably expendable.

[ ] [Cross] Bring guards with your subordinate
[ ] [Cross] Have your subordinate come alone
[ ] [Cross] Betray Whale and send the police to arrest him
[ ] [Cross] Betray Whale and attempt to kill all of his men
[ ] [Cross] Attempt to use the pheromone spray on Whale
[ ] [Cross] Write in

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Hm. Roxy can handle herself in a fight, so unless Whale makes a concerted effort to kidnap her she should be safe. If he does, well... we made him, we can break him. After we've got Intergang out of the way.

So I do not have a good comics or other related media explanation. You have hit the nail on the head with the traditional explanation (also Superboy is half Kryptonian so he is weaker than full blooded Kryptonians). My explanation is a little different (at least for this quest. Superman isn't the strongest. General Zod would actually be the strongest (greatest natural strength plus sun enhancement) although they are all incredibly close in strength. What Superman is the best at is leveraging his strength and fighting in an optimal way. Fighting with flight and with super strength and laser eyes and so on is immensely different from normal fighting on the ground. How you leverage force is different and the tactics you engage in are different. Unlike all other full blooded Kryptonians Superman has never had to unlearn how to fight without powers in order to more effectively fight with powers. For him having powers is completely normal. All other Kryptonians have to constantly not second guess themselves or adjust their method of combat to adapt to leveraging their powers. As such Superman is not stronger than any other Kryptonian but is way better at effectively applying his strength to a situation since for him it is normal and intuitive. However the reverse is true. Superman is not used to not having his powers so when depowered other Kryptonians can more effectively fight and utilize their strength as that is what they developed with and what comes intuitively to them.

Does that answer your question? As far as I am aware there is no official answer but that is what I headcanon the solution as and thus what will appear in this quest and I hope it is satisfactory.

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That... is a good explanation. Very good. The only caveat I have is that he probably also suffers from World of Cardboard syndrome; he's had a lifetime of being very restrained with how he uses his powers even at the same time that he's very experienced with them. Against someone like Zod (if Zod were manifest on the Earth with his full Kryptonian physiology and all its advantages), that might cancel out. On the one hand, Superman is more experienced in moving and (eventually) fighting with his powers. On the other, Zod doesn't give a shit about collateral damage, and isn't constantly looking over his own shoulder to avoid it.

 

[King crimson]

( @King crimson , does it render the user invisible to direct naked eye observation, and will we get an action option to test out this spell? Invisibility magic can be very useful if you've planned ahead for it better than those Confederate spies who did in our great-great-great-great-grandpa Lucius did)

Click to shrink...

It doesn't affect naked eye observation. It only affects indirect observation. It cannot be seen in mirrors or on cameras. However if you took a picture of the object you could then directly see the picture even if you couldn't see the object while taking the picture. It's odd but it isn't invisibility. The not showing up on camera thing seems to be an odd side effect of the spell (rather than anti-scrying it is anti-indirect sight)

[] Steal Whisper A'Daire's doomsday device for yourself

@King crimson , is that an option we can/will have next turn? You may have planned for it anyway so it may not count as a write-in, but still.

Click to shrink...

You'll get a shot at it (though the option will be called infiltrate Markobia and requires a huge roll to successfully allow you to steal the device)

I don't even know where or what the Ahab Bar is

Click to shrink...

The Ahab Bar doesn't exist as far as I am aware. I made it up as one of Tobias Whale's favorite dives (Ahab pursued a white whale for the pun bonus). It is essentially having you meet in a similar way to last time.

The only caveat I have is that he probably also suffers from World of Cardboard syndrome; he's had a lifetime of being very restrained with how he uses his powers even at the same time that he's very experienced with them. Against someone like Zod (if Zod were manifest on the Earth with his full Kryptonian physiology and all its advantages), that might cancel out. On the one hand, Superman is more experienced in moving and (eventually) fighting with his powers. On the other, Zod doesn't give a shit about collateral damage, and isn't constantly looking over his own shoulder to avoid it.

Click to shrink...

I agree with this assessment. On a fight between Superman and Zod, Zod is less skilled but is able to exploit Superman's fear of collateral damage to force him to get hit. Likewise Superman's first priority when fighting Zod is to get him away from a place with a lot of people so that Superman can fight unrestrained.

A battle between the two doesn't actually come down to the physical elements all that much. Rather it's decided by who can control the battlefield. If Zod can hit soft targets and force Superman into difficult positions through collateral damage then he wins. If Superman can keep Zod away from others he can harm than Superman wins. Crowd control and maneuverability are more important than raw strength in a fight between those two.

 

[King crimson]

The vote is now open

 

[Simon_Jester]

It doesn't affect naked eye observation. It only affects indirect observation. It cannot be seen in mirrors or on cameras. However if you took a picture of the object you could then directly see the picture even if you couldn't see the object while taking the picture. It's odd but it isn't invisibility. The not showing up on camera thing seems to be an odd side effect of the spell (rather than anti-scrying it is anti-indirect sight)

Click to shrink...

Hmmm. We may be able to exploit that anyway (perhaps it makes the subject invisible to robots?), but yeah, that's less promising than I'd imagined.

You'll get a shot at it (though the option will be called infiltrate Markobia and requires a huge roll to successfully allow you to steal the device)

The Ahab Bar doesn't exist as far as I am aware. I made it up as one of Tobias Whale's favorite dives (Ahab pursued a white whale for the pun bonus). It is essentially having you meet in a similar way to last time.

Click to shrink...

That's my favorite then. Roxy going to a bar is pretty deniable.

 

[Sena Kumo]

Who wants to make a Game of Thrones series fucking done right here? Because I am all-in for that.

 

[Negation]

Rebecca was fine with it. Cerise had stated that her specialty fell more under identifying how things work and producing minor enchantments than ward based stuff. She was polite enough and seemingly a little skittish. She did refuse to give a biological sample to LexCorp and when others attempted to covertly gather it through forensic means they were unable to do so.

Click to shrink...

IN-teresting.

You'd think that pretty much anyone who works in an office for any length of time would leave traces of hair and skin cells. Either our investigators aren't talented enough and we need to put hero units on it, or Cerise has some kind of very interesting magic masking traces of her presence. It'd be useful and obvious magic to develop, since rival practitioners can use hair and skin and so on to work magic against oneself... but it speaks to considerable sophistication, and preparation.

Of course, if we could convince her to share THAT magic, assuming it exists, that would be wonderful- because it would let us enchant our agents to be much harder to identify using forensic traces such as fingerprints, hair, and skin cells, in case we had them committing crimes a

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This is the one that has me worried that she's not what what her records show her to be.

Still no use in daydreaming. Rebecca had to go and get ready for filming of Knights of Camelot. This was her return to acting and it was nice to once again engage in her craft. Playing Morgaine Lefay did feel a little odd considering that she was an actual flying, hellfire using magic wielder but it helped cut down on the budget and Oswald was happy with the way things were going.

Click to shrink...

I'm half expecting the real Morgaine Lefay to show up complaining about her portrayal on the show if it hits GoT levels of popularity.

 

[Negation]

1) A big brute squad from General Eiling invading Santa Prisca to capture Vincent Edge is going to go a lot like the US invading Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden, only with less popular support for actually finding the guy because Vincent Edge hasn't personally ordered 3,000 Americans killed even if he's tied to the people who are tied to Ignition (who HAS killed hundreds, though not thousands, of Americans). This will cause problems for the US in the long run.

2) If Eiling succeeds, he will then invade Markovia, a neutral European country, causing even more problems.

Click to shrink...

Santa Prisca should be ok, we can throw weapons at Eiling and his troops and ask for user feedback so our engineers can do better. It's flag waving patriotic.

Markovia...we can maybe ask him to let us handle diplomacy? LexCorp to invest in the Markovian economy by opening a LexCorp branch & factories hiring locals in return for some diplomatic concessions? Quid pro Quo?

Speaking of diplomacy, should we send Pamela to Bialya to establish contact with Queen Bee? Human experimentation in a middle eastern dictatorship would be so much more convenient.

 

[Erumpet]

[X] [Whale Location] Meet with Whale at the Ahab Bar
[X] [Subordinate] Send Roxanne to the meeting
[X] [Cross] Bring guards with your subordinate

never know when a petty crime lord gets to big for is breeches. and with white whale that is a pretty impressive feat
Btw king crimson your superman headcannon did answer my question.