THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN THE WORLD

T H E
G R I F T E R

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^{_{COLE ADAM CASH ♦ CON-MAN ♦ ON THE RUN ♦ TEAM SEVEN}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"A bullet is forever."}

You remember that New 52 run called 'The Grifter - Most Wanted"? No? Me neither.

This takes the bare bones of that concept and runs with it. Adapts it to my writing and I'll strive to tell some sort of military-on-the-run story with sci-fi elements and the ability to bring the entire world into chaos via alien invasion. Writing an action thriller that's about uncertainty and a guy who thinks he's playing everyone else for a fool. A cat and mouse game where nobody's sure who's the cat and who's the mouse.

Basically, a lot of shooting, spycraft and what it really means to be a psionic.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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To be frank, I've been wanting to play Grifter for as long as I've known about the character, and never had a story or even the faintest idea of what to do with him. After rewatching Mission Impossible, Shooter (both the movie and the TV-show) and reading his New 52 run, I realize he's the perfect vehicle for me to tell my military based stories I'd normally try to push onto an OC or some Frankenstein version of some other street hero like Red Hood or Punisher.

Due to his psionic connection, he allows for the weird and whacky to undercut the grimdark, bullets and explosions.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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Max Cash:
Younger Brother, Government Agent and massive pain in Cole's ass. Max played hard with the rules while Cole played loose. A decorated war hero and veteran, Max is one of the most esteemed soldiers America's produced in the past half century.

Rick Flag:
Cole's commanding officer before he joined Team Seven. Flag taught Cole everything he knows about being a soldier.

TEAM SEVEN:
His brothers in arms once upon a time. They've fallen out of touch with each other, but if there was one thing the military teaches you, it's how to rely on your new family.

Jeanette Tarkov:
(ex) Girlfriend and Partner in crime.

Franklin Clay:
A Burnt spy he met along the way.

Daemonites:
Freaky psychic aliens who are infiltrating mankind.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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"When you realize that kind of person you are, you know your path in life, right?" He began, taking out the cigarette from his mouth, putting the glass of whiskey against his lips instead, drinking deeply. "For some, it's when they catch that 50 yard throw and wins the homecoming game with a touchdown. For others, it's when they have to save someone who's drowning. When they first pick up a guitar, or when they drive their dads 69 Mustang for the first time." His words were dry, hanging in the air of the empty bar, only him and the barkeep who wasn't really paying any attention to him as he was closing up. Wiping the counter and hanging chairs upside down on it afterwards.

"For me. I thought it happened when I held a gun for the first time. Colt 1911, 40 caliber. We were hunting, and I had tracked down the deer. It got out of the way of the bullet from my rifle, but I chased him down when I heard it scream. By dumb luck, it had stepped on a beer trap that was laid out there in the forest. I was 13 when me and my dad found it, and he handed me his pistol and told me to put it out of it's misery." He took another whiff of his cigarette, filling his lungs with the black smoke, exhaling, playing with the liquid at the bottom of his glass.

"If I'm being honest. I was scared as hell. Firing the rifle was exciting. But a handgun? Looking into the scared deer's eyes as a pressed the metal barrel against it's skull, and how my hand shook till my dad put his hand on my shoulder and told me the advice I'd live my life by."

"I knew that that was my calling. The way of the gun. A hunter. A warrior." He scoffed. "Yet, these days, it seems like I'm the prey." His eyes peered into the TV in the corner of the room, reflecting the light from the news, showing how a man with long blonde hair, just like his, wearing the exact same black T-shirt he had on, fought and killed two Police Officers four blocks away, an hour ago.

The bartender caught a glimpse of the Newsshow, finally paying attention to what the patron was saying. His eyes grew wide with concern.
"Get out of here before I call the cops." He promised, his hand reaching behind the bar, grabbing the handle of the wooden bat. Cole could see his eyes were full of deceit, as his hand rested on his hip.

He Knows! I need assistance! the bartenders true voice hissed in the other man's head. The smoker pulled his gun out, the same kind of gun he had talked about from when he was a kid. The .40 cal 1911. Leaping from his seat, Cole dodged under the swing of the bat, the bat colliding with the counter behind him, shattering the wooden counter, showing off the bartenders incredible strength. Cole hit him with the butt of his gun, stunning the bartender, Cole could now see the blue energy oozing off of the man. He aimed his pistol at the disoriented man and quoted the words his father had told him back in the forest that day.

"A bullet is forever."

BANG

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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Issue 1:
1.00 - Seventeeen

Hmm...

Nah. Nah, you don't pass.

Anyway, with Opposite Day festivities coming to an end...

Mistakes were made.

@Master Bruce

The way I’m looking at it is this:

We’ve got to combat interconnectivity. Even if we were in our own corners in past games, we had concurrent stuff being mentioned in other posts. Little bits of lore being referenced from other players and a lot of this came with players reading each other’s stuff. In Ultimate DC’s 2013 run you had micro-events like The Joker burning money in Robinson Park, Black Adam attacking a plaza in Star City, and stuff like that so maybe providing some GM interference would work.

Ultimately, we need to restore incentive to read and reference each other. For example, I’ll be applying for Looker once my application is done and as such she will be in Gotham which already has prolific actions with Batman and Huntress/Poison Ivy which determine effective lore. If anything happens that’d make national news, I’ll try to mention things like that. What can we do to get back where we used to be in these games as a community? I think that’s the question to ask.

Obviously, it goes without saying that the pandemic is affecting many facets of this, but we should still be able to figure out something that restores the spiritedness we had in these games. As for your questions, or I guess assertions, I would say I do not want a tabletop-esque system to adhere to nor do I think we need to reboot it when the game isn’t even in a state where it is needed. We just started this game at the beginning of Summer, after all. You cannot help that some people are having slow starts at any rate as we’ve had that issue when we don’t have a pandemic to deal with. I think you have to focus on the good—people who are active or semi-active and how to move forward.

We’ve got to combat inter-connectivity. Even if we were in our own corners in past games, we had concurrent stuff being mentioned in other posts. Little bits of lore being referenced from other players and a lot of this came with players reading each other’s stuff. In Ultimate DC’s 2013 run you had micro-events like The Joker burning money in Robinson Park, Black Adam attacking a plaza in Star City, and stuff like that so maybe providing some GM interference would work.

Not sure if this help or not? But I'll just say here I am intending to make a post where a few blocks of Gotham surrounding the Iceberg lounge with be mildly destroyed. The plan is to have that post up after the one I am (hopefully) posting this evening, likely early next week. If Gotham-based people would be interested saving people from wreckage and the such, I can give whatever details.

@Master Bruce
On the same note- while I don't think what I have planned steps on any toes, perhaps a concrete rule as to how much mayhem any individual can create could maybe inspire people to 'go big', or get more involved in large events already established?

yikes

I just went through a lot of personal/family stuff and I'm stressed the fuck out. So that post I was planning for today will be postponed until the weekend, probably. But still intending to 'catch up' on my posting schedule.

@Retired, I believe of all of the suggestions so far, you brought forth the best solution. I absolutely agree that the idea of events being spread out rather than kept solely to the middle and end of seasons could be a very fun experiment in driving up the game's interactivity. I've already discussed options with @Hillan regarding how we want to implement this as a system going forward, and he's on the same page. So, with that in mind, everyone should be ready to see an announcement in the next few days.

Also, I've decided on a new rule. In order to ease the more militant idea of strict posting deadlines, even though the rule will remain to post at least once every two weeks, I've decided that I'm going to replace the Weekly Post Check with The Bi-Weekly Post Check instead.

In conjunction, I will be utilizing the "expiration" method of roster duty to give players more of a chance to gather themselves in what are undoubtedly very troubled times in all of our outside lives. As such, the player characters in red on the roster will now indicate who is halfway to roster removal rather than who is past the point of character ownership. After a month in red, a character is removed. But in that month, players have the chance to resume at their convenience.

I hope this makes sense, and if there are any questions, feel free to ask. But I think this can help to both address the fact that this is a slower game getting off the ground and that circumstances are a bit different for everybody with COVID-19 heightening problems all around.

@Retired, I believe of all of the suggestions so far, you brought forth the best solution. I absolutely agree that the idea of events being spread out rather than kept solely to the middle and end of seasons could be a very fun experiment in driving up the game's interactivity. I've already discussed options with @Hillan regarding how we want to implement this as a system going forward, and he's on the same page. So, with that in mind, everyone should be ready to see an announcement in the next few days.

Also, I've decided on a new rule. In order to ease the more militant idea of strict posting deadlines, even though the rule will remain to post at least once every two weeks, I've decided that I'm going to replace the Weekly Post Check with The Bi-Weekly Post Check instead.

In conjunction, I will be utilizing the "expiration" method of roster duty to give players more of a chance to gather themselves in what are undoubtedly very troubled times in all of our outside lives. As such, the player characters in red on the roster will now indicate who is halfway to roster removal rather than who is past the point of character ownership. After a month in red, a character is removed. But in that month, players have the chance to resume at their convenience.

I hope this makes sense, and if there are any questions, feel free to ask. But I think this can help to both address the fact that this is a slower game getting off the ground and that circumstances are a bit different for everybody with COVID-19 heightening problems all around.

good post king :thumbsup:

@Master Bruce
On the same note- while I don't think what I have planned steps on any toes, perhaps a concrete rule as to how much mayhem any individual can create could maybe inspire people to 'go big', or get more involved in large events already established?

Outside of dropping a nuke on an entire city or something, sky's pretty much the limit. All I ask is that you know which characters are gonna be affected and give them a head's up if you intend to do major damage.

@Master Bruce I'm glad to see these changes being accepted. I don't expect to see an exact replica of what I suggested, but either way I'm looking forward to what does come. It'll be a revitalization, I think, for how these games go. Which can only be beneficial.

Yeah, I admit to feeling a bit creatively stuck. I think optional macroevents are a great suggestion. The opportunity to interact with the larger universe and perhaps other players is a big part of this game's appeal to me.

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L


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Bartholomew Henry Allen ♦ Forensic Analyst♦ Central City ♦ CCPD

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:
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“Always Move Forward”

When Barry grew up in a loving household and when he was a young boy, at the tender and imagination filled age of ten, he witnessed a sight that no mere human would find remotely possible. At first came the lightning INSIDE their suburban home that awoke Barry in the middle of the night and forced him downstairs to see his mother begging for her life to a man in a blue parka with a huge gun. Parka Man noticed Barry and then looked at his watch and nodded in the lightning storm, then a woman in a gold jumpsuit appeared through the dining room wall and approached his mother, placing her hand on her temples and Barry heard the worst sound he would ever hear in that scream and cry of pain, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing.

Seconds passed before a giant black gorilla smashed through their front door, he and Barry exchanged a look before Henry, Barry’s father came down in the commotion and the ape stared at him and his father pulled out his personal service weapon from the war and walked down the steps towards his pained wife. At this same time, a man in a blue and yellow jester costume waltzed in and Barry for a second hoped beyond hope that he was dreaming as Jester Guy set down a small Jack In The Box and plopped down in one of the dining room chairs, exchanging a look with Parka Man. Then it was as if Barry couldn’t move any muscles in his body save for his eyes and neither could anybody else as an old man wearing a turtle neck and sporting a walking cane slowly and then Barry saw what was in the yellow and red lightning. Two men were fighting, one dressed in a black and red jumpsuit, the other was in yellow, red and black and it looked like the red guy was losing horribly.

That was fifteen years ago, and nobody believed Barry for years that all that had happened, they just know that for some unknown reason Henry had broken their front door in a fit of rage and shot his begging wife in the head execution style. Now he was facing life in prison without parole, while Barry had grown up running from foster home to foster home until he was eighteen and out on his own. Barry always thought that he didn’t want anybody else to go through what he did that night, so he went to school for forensic sciences and got a job as an analyst to try and understand the science of that night and how to prevent those attackers from striking again, but they had hired him under the condition that he see a therapist.

One night while working late in the lab and watching a live report of the STAR Labs Particle Accelerator unveiling, Barry went to open up the skylight to get some air. As if he was a magnet for the weird and unexplained a lightning storm started to brew in the city and at the exact second that the particle accelerator blew up and released a wave of energy particles through the city, an errant bolt of lightning struck him down. To those that found him, they thought that he was comatose and brought him to the hospital. In truth his mind and body had accelerated to a previously thought speed that was considered a crackpot theory in theoretical physics by a reclusive scientist named Darwin Elias, the same Director of the Star Labs facility when the particle accelerator blew up. The speed at which his mind and body had travelled propelled him into a world composed of the kinetic energy of everything that is, was, and will come to be. It was a time between time, as Barry travelled through it, he heard the voice of his mother telling him to keep moving forward, no matter the cost, and that in due to time all will be explained. All of this happened in less than an xentojiffy (the hypothetical time it takes for light to travel the area of a fermi), and when Barry awoke a months later in the hospital he found that his mind and body had been changed… in a Flash. his city on the other hand had turned into something else entirely.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:
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I would like to play this character because in another to I’m playing a speedster and I was doing a lot of research in the areas of kinetic energy and different speeds and found it to be very interesting, and so I would greatly enjoy writing a Flash story in as realistic way as possible. The desire came to me one day and it was an itch that I couldn’t scratch or get rid of, so I thought why not roleplay it. The driving motivation for Barry Allen currently is find the individuals (Who will be dubbed later as The Legion Of Zoom) who killed his mother and bring them to justice so that his father could go free.

As time passes and he meets more metahumans both criminal and heroic, the more he wants to be a hero himself. I hope to accomplish a challenge for myself as I’ve never written a Flash story and want to see how far I can run with it, so to speak. I would like to take Barry from his very beginning and have him approach situations both heroic and civilian as a young man with a lot to learn and a lot on his plate both mentally and activity wise and see how far he bends before I inevitably break him (I love stories where the bad guy wins).

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:
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The Speed Force In my depiction of the story is the kinetic energy of everything in existence and everything that will be and was in existence of the Multiverse combined to an unimaginable level, and gained sentience, but speedsters who enter it see the Force’s sentient form differently depending on who is in it. So if Barry’s in it, he sees his mother for example, but this will be explained further in the story.

Supporting Characters:
Captain Frye: Chief of Police in the CCPD, he has a distaste for metahumans in his city, whether they be heroic or villainous
Cecile Horton: Henry Allen’s court appointed lawyer

Charles: a bartender in Central City who unwillingly listens to some of Barry’s problems whenever Barry needs a drink, he is a man of few words

Daphne Dean: one Barry’s ex-foster sisters who grew up to be a famous movie star, she was one of only a few people who tried to get to know Barry, and the two still keep in touch

Darwin Elias: a theoretical physicist who was shunned by his community long before he turned on the particle accelerator and created a city of metahumans

David Singh: Barry’s boss in the forensics lab at CCPD, he’s sympathetic towards Barry and the things he’s gone through, but inwardly thinks he’s crazy until metahumans start popping up

Detective Burns: a crime scene detective in Central City who often gets Barry as a evidence collector

Detective Morrow: Detective Burns partner and boyfriend

Henry Allen: Barry’s loving father who puts on a brave face for his son, but internally he hates himself for being weak enough to be mind controlled into shooting his wife. He is serving a life sentence for her death

Rebecca Janus: Barry’s therapist who helps him cope with daily life

More To Come As The Story Progresses

S A M P L E P O S T:
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“My name is Barry Allen, and all my life I’ve searched for the impossible, never knowing that I would become the impossible”

10:25am On A Tuesday

Barry was sitting in the stiff brown sofa seat in Rebecca Janus’ office, unfortunately he had been running late for the appointment that the CCPD set up for him, and he was trying to find something to say other than what was really going on with him, because nobody in their right mind would believe it unless they saw it.

“I’m sorry I was late, I kind of slept through my alarm.” He finally said, his eyes darting to the ticking clock on the wall, watching the seconds slowly go by before looking back at Rebecca, who was actually quite a looker in her purple skirt suit and mocha colored skin.
“That’s okay, Barry, did you sleep well?” she asked, with a business tone of voice, and Barry closed his eyes for what felt like a second and when he opened them time had slowed down to grounded halt and Rebecca was frozen and in mid motion of putting her pen to her notepad.

10:25:05 And A Decasecond (one tenth of a second)

“Oh just the usual dream of watching my mom get murdered over and over again by a giant gorilla, a clown, an eskimo, an elderly man, a woman made of gold, and the man in the yellow suit.”

10:25:06am

As time resumed itself, Barry opened his mouth to speak of an excuse but his work cell phone rang and he had to answer it, he was already in deep with his boss Detective Singh, whom Barry felt like he had it in for him. “Excuse me for just a second,”
Barry told Rebecca politely before answering the phone.
“Hello, Mr. Singh, what’s up?”

On the other end Barry thought that he had heard a sigh come out of his boss’s mouth, “Barry, where are you? There’s been a homicide on Fox street, I need you here, like yesterday. Didn’t you get my messages?”

Barry’s eyes widened and he looked through his phone, indeed finding several text messages from Singh about the murder, each one getting angrier than the last. Though he noticed something else too, his cell phone screen had a light purple hue, something he would have to take to the phone store to get checked out later, if he ever had the time. He looked at Rebecca with a look that said ‘at this point, what else is new?’ and then returned his attention to his boss.

“I’m really sorry, sir I was running late to my therapy session I had scheduled, I didn’t see the texts,” Barry said honestly, but before he could speak again, Singh cut him off.

“Barry, do you know I’ve been waiting an hour in front of a dead body with Detectives Burns and Morrow? I don’t care if you have to cut your session short, get here now!”

Then the call ended and Barry felt a pang of anger rise up in him, and an imperceptible spark of yellow electricity flowed through his eyes. Rebecca noticed the anger in him, and set down her pen on her desk, taking a moment to try and help Barry through the situation, “Do you want to talk about that?” she asked him, but he got up quickly and pocketed his cell phone.

“No thanks, but I really have to go, work called, I’m late. Oh God, I’m always late. With everything on, how could I be late?” Barry started to hyperventilate, and just like that time slowed down once more, but this time it was unintentional.

10:27:25:001

Yellow electricity started to swirl around Barry as his emotional flare up confused his body for the need for a fight or flight response, “Oh great!” Barry exclaimed, “why can’t anything go right today?!” and as time began to accelerate back to normal, an errant bolt of electrical energy struck the clock on the wall, making it stop ticking forward.

10:27:26

“I’m sorry, you can bill my insurance, right?” Barry asked as he grabbed his jacket to meet the chilly morning air, but he didn’t wait for a response as he started to dart out of the office and when there was nobody who could possibly watch him, he disappeared in a cloud of yellow electrical energy.

10:27:51:0001

As Barry ran down the hall at an incredible and superhuman pace, a man in a yellow and black body suit emerged from within the hallway wall. His face was obscured through vibrational energy, but it was easy to tell that this extremely fast man was smiling mischievously.
“I’ll see you soon, Barry Allen…”

This section reserved for IC posts to keep track of them

ANOTHER ANNOUNCEMENT!

@HenryJonesJr has generously accepted the position of Co-GM alongside myself and @Hillan, and will be the architect for the upcoming-and-completely-optional mini-events that we intend to implement in the IC. Henry's proven himself as a capable GM in his own right many times over, a fantastic writer and an all-around great guy, so his expanded contributions to the game are sure to make things alot more exciting.

ANOTHER ANNOUNCEMENT!

@HenryJonesJr has generously accepted the position of Co-GM alongside myself and @Hillan, and will be the architect for the upcoming-and-completely-optional mini-events that we intend to implement in the IC. Henry's proven himself as a capable GM in his own right many times over, a fantastic writer and an all-around great guy, so his expanded contributions to the game are sure to make things alot more exciting.

I look forward to torturing your characters

Just wanted to check in and assure you I'm at work on a post and will hopefully have something up within the next day or two.

So that was shorter than I was hoping my next post would be, but it was technically already late and if I saw myself in the post check-in again I'd prolly cry. Hoping to get the next leg of Stephanie's j o u r n e y up in the next few days!