DocTachyon

DC Universe: Genesis - Justice For All

Maybe as a compromise, open Friday but count for inactivity as if we started Saturday? That way people who want to go in early can, and people who'd prefer to prepare still have their usual allotted amount of time.

DC Universe: Genesis - Justice For All

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

---

^{_{F A T H E R T I M E ♦ F R A N K E N S T E I N ♦
R A Y P A L M E R ♦}}

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

---

^{"It's a strange world out there. Let's keep it that way."}

Created under the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, S.H.A.D.E. has been operating in some form or another for decades. Initially only a metahuman covert ops team, the scope of S.H.A.D.E. has expanded to encompass a multitude of operations for the US Government, with a particular focus on the catalog and containment of metahumans, aliens, assorted magiks, and other paranormal phenomena.

Originally under the control of the spirit of Uncle Sam himself, S.H.A.D.E. would deploy codename "Freedom Fighter" team assets to observe and contain metahuman threats worldwide, as well as to counter enemy metahuman combatants at the various theaters of the United States' military agenda. Uncle Sam would eventually retire from his Director's Chair, passing the role onto Father Time sometime in the mid-80s. Time would retrofit the organization's technology, outlook, and approach in order to properly contend with what Time predicted would be the next great age of the metahuman.

Through liason with Checkmate, A.R.G.U.S., and even a close working relationship with Elijah Snow's Planetary, S.H.A.D.E. has established itself as a modern powerhouse of paranormal research, with less focus on active field agents that destabilize local governments, and more focus put on surviellance and containment. Thanks to the efforts of S.H.A.D.E. scientist Ray Palmer, the organization's current base of operations is The Ant Farm, a three-inch micro-city currently hovering a thousand miles over Manhattan, caught in an errant breeze.

Father Time, in his infinite wisdom (as he would call it), has long predicted the eventual rise of metahumans to the forefront of global culture. For now, his eyes watch the bays of CCTV monitors that make up the nerve center of the Ant Farm with great interest. Waiting for the next big thing, America's first official "Super-Man", and whatever threats he may bring along with him.

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:

---

To be completely frank: I'm more or less entirely new to these characters. I blitzed through Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. this week and have done all the reading I can on the gang across every wiki I could get my mitts on, but they're less than well documented. For me, this smacks of opportunity -- the ability to carve out my own little paranormal niche using a mostly clean slate.

This isn't to suggest that I'm going to serverely change how these characters are presented in the comics, but ideally I'll be expanding and deepening what these characters have been shown to do. As stated above, they've been in precious few books so far, but this is a team that really has legs, and I'd like to see them run.

Ideally, this will read like a rip-roaring Science-Fantasy adventure, steeped at once in the schlocky tropes of old monster movies and in the gothic horror of the darkest corners of the DC Universe. This run is cribbing a lot of notes from Planetary if I'm honest, but I think that S.H.A.D.E. has the breadth of organization that I'd need to accomplish my goals. We're gonna go a lot of places on this ride and meet everyone interesting I could find in DC's bargain bin -- think of S.H.A.D.E. as a toast to the D-List.

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

---

Cast

Father Time: A mysterious old man who finds himself reborn into a new form on each and every New Year's Day. Currently in the form of a domino-masked Japanese schoolgirl, Father Time maintains his position as Chairman and Director of S.H.A.D.E., a position he will defend zealously, oversight board be damned. Time likes to play things close to the vest, keeping secrets from even his closest allies. What does he have to hide?

Ray Palmer: A brilliant physicist and developer of cutting edge matter compression technology through application of White Dwarf Star material. Palmer is S.H.A.D.E.'s official UN Liason, though as time has gone on, Palmer has more and more found himself personally involved with the science team.

Frankenstein: A man out of time, searching for his purpose. Since his creation at Castle Frankenstein and the defeat of his creator, Victor, Frank has traveled the world, slaying all manner of monster and demon, and learning more than his fair share of Keats while he was at it.

Dr. Nina Mazursky: An expert biologist with an interest in gene-splicing. Mazursky has been a part of S.H.A.D.E. for some time, since the death of her unborn child and her husband's suicide. Within S.H.A.D.E. she is responsible for decoding the metahuman genome alongside Kirk Langstrom. For the past decade, the work, and nothing but, has been Mazursky's life.

Dr. Kirk Langstrom: A biologist and zoologist by trade, S.H.A.D.E. recruited Langstrom due to his ground breaking research on the combination of stem Cells and Chiroptera DNA. Though still looking to use his research to aid the blind and deaf, S.H.A.D.E. offers Langstorm as much wider array of resources to accomplish his goals, so long as he cooperates with their other efforts.

Science Agent Belroy: By all rights a complete madman, "Science Agent" Belroy is the only S.H.A.D.E. agent to hold the title. He actually has the longest tenure with S.H.A.D.E. of any active operative, having been in the organization since the days of Uncle Sam. Due to inefficent bookkeeping, Belroy is often the only one who recalls why certain pieces of S.H.A.D.E. tech function at all, or who can offer explanations for certain strange parts of The Ant Farm. it is this utility that lets him keep his tenure as S.H.A.D.E.'s only "Science Agent"... Whatever the hell that means.

J.A.K.E.: One of the holdouts from the Uncle Sam Era, J.A.K.E. is the commander and sole surviving member of S.H.A.D.E.'s Robo-GI program. What GIs were not destroyed in battle were disassembled for parts and melted for scrap metal -- with the exception of J.A.K.E., who has begun to exhibit something that looks almost like sentience...

Elijah Snow: A man whose name can be heard echoed through all the corners of recent history, Elijah Snow heads up the Planetary organization. Planetary's mission objectives tend to align with S.H.A.D.E.'s current operational parameters more often that not, so Father Time and Elijah have developed something of a friendship.

Notes

-To all Batman players: I don't NEED Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat, but I would quite like him. Hopefully, we can work together with it, but otherwise, I defer control of him to you, of course.

S A M P L E P O S T:

---

Sample

S.H.A.D.E.

Issue 0

---

New York City, NY --- 1000 miles above Rudy’s Bar and Grill

---

High, high above the denizens of New York City, beyond the reach of the all but the most desperate skyscrapers, a three inch sphere meandered with the errant will of the breeze. By all appearances, a blip. An eye-floater to be blinked away. It simply could not be what it was: The Ant Farm, a diminutive city all on its own, floating out in its bubble to the farthest corners of the sky.

In all his years as acting chair of S.H.A.D.E., Father Time was certain he had never seen all of The Ant Farm. For every hallway he had hurriedly rushed down, for every bay jammed with personnel and impossible weaponry, and for each grease-stained, metal-choked vista within The Ant Farm’s swallowing walls the frequent misfires of the teleporter array sent him, he still had the inkling that parts of it eluded him. Like there were scores of closed-off passageways just out of reach.

Science Agent Belroy claimed he really had seen all of it, but Belroy claimed a lot of things: these days it was mostly mumbled certainties about green men from Mars or screeching, incoherent rants about aglets. To Father Time he sounded like that raging nutjob from down in Hub City, but at least Belroy got a government paycheck for it.

Father Time supposed Belroy would ultimately know about such things better than him, he’d headed up the committee for building The Ant Farm, after all. Then again, if Belroy really knew better than Father, then he would’ve been the one to weasel his way into the Director’s chair. Father had half a mind to fire the man, but Belroy had a better memory for past S.H.A.D.E. casework than every serverbank or wayward poindexter in the whole complex… Father needed better desk jockeys.

At any rate, of all the anomalous haunts that populated The Ant Farm, from the Project M Labs deep in the belly of the beast to each and every pop-up Bar chiseled into the machine work to support weary S.H.A.D.E. agents after hours, the Command Center was the place to be. Sutured at the very top of the structure as a gleaming dome, a white logo emblazoned on its surface that caught each shaft of sun filtering through the military-grade ballistic glass sphere that housed the city.

Inside was a nest of wires and monitors, casting the place in blue light at war with the yellow glow of overhanging fluorescents. There were budget swivel chairs appropriated after The Pentagon’s last upgrade, poised at silver-slick desks that seemed to have been called forth from the grand machine of The Ant Farm itself. The Command Center was a dance of labcoats and glowing personal palmtop computers all around its centerpiece -- a machine throne, awaiting its watchful king. But today his rightful seat would have to wait. Father Time expected a guest.

For anyone else Father Time would’ve gotten out the child size seats, the kind of chunky plastic chairs in garish colors that suited his current form, and watch his guest be forced to draw their knees to their chest as they squeezed into the seat and they worried about what to do with the rest of their gangly, oversized bodies. But Elijah Snow deserved at least a modicum of his respect, and he was one of the few that would wisely choose not to comment on Father’s booster seat.

Elijah entered The Ant Farm like no one else, without the thrumming noise of the teleporter array to announce his presence, no blips or beeps or secretaries fighting for Father’s attention. Just Elijah, stepping through the automatic door, all white suit and white hair framing the pale, weathered skin of a man just barely beyond time’s touch.

“World’s changing,” he said. A common refrain for whenever he found himself in Father Time’s office.

“As it always does.” Father Time gestured to the seat across from him, “how have you been keeping, Snow?”

“Busy.” Elijah grumbled. The man moved like an old machine, creaking bones aligning themselves as he steadied himself into his seat, bit by bit.

“Plenty to keep you that way, these days. More and more metahumans popping up. More and more headaches.” Father reached to adjust the pigtails on either side of his head, and reaffirm the seal of the domino mask to his eyes.

“More of a non-stop migraine.” Elijah leaned, resting against the whining seat back. His eyes closed and his thumbs went to his temples, trying to massage the lines of tension all over his face.

“That I can empathize with. The Pentagon’s been banging on my door, trying to find out if the The Superman is an alien or a meta or a walking Russian test tube. Or if he's real at all. Half my staff is tied up placating them.” Father said. Elijah nodded slow.

“And this is just the start of it. Things are going to get a whole lot stranger from here."

"What brings you my way, Elijah? I’m sure you have more important things to do than check up on old friends.”

Elijah's organization, Planetary, was a little like S.H.A.D.E., but it was older, narrower in purpose. It had always been Elijah at the helm, leading his organization forward by his own whims, chasing those leads he found the most interesting. No Government to appease. No messes to clean up from a previous Director.

“According to my people, things are… Changing. In a subtler way than we’re giving it credit for. I don’t have the resources to investigate as thoroughly as I’d like.” Elijah leaned forward as he spoke, elbows on the table, casting a shadow over Father Time’s small form. Father pursed his lips.

“Expand. Changing?” He said. His voice almost cracked, small vocal chords struggling with the timbre of his voice.

“Little things. Changes in migration patterns, plant life, tiny shifts in the currents of the oceans. According to my people we’re even seeing changes in the machine world. Ripples across the internet.” Elijah explained.

“And this points to?” Father time cocked an eyebrow.

Elijah shrugged. “If I knew I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“Do we know it’s dangerous?” Father Time said. “I’ve got a lot on my plate here.”

“I was under the impression that it’s not your job to care whether it is.” Elijah cut back. “Think about it, at least.”

Father Time opened his mouth to speak, looking for a retort, something to tell Elijah that he’d look into it when it developed into a problem, that it wasn’t S.H.A.D.E.’s job to chase after Planetary’s fancy, but the door slid open on the far side of the room.

Something huge and green and mottled stood in the doorway, blocking the light from the outside. It was wrapped in blown-out Victorian clothes that might’ve been a size too small before the monster was forced into them.

“Father,” Frankenstein croaked, “where is my wife?”

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

---

Post Catalog

Issue 0 (NON-CANON)-- See above

Issue 1

DC Universe: Genesis - Justice For All

S.H.A.D.E. now officially has a sample. Enjoy!

DC Universe: Genesis - Justice For All

<Snipped quote by Morden Man>

Wait, wait, did I say ten? I clearly meant to say fifteen. You fucking people had better not make me do this.

@Morden Man

Pile on the likes, gang! We're almost there! Full steam ahead!

DC Universe: Genesis - Justice For All

She needs more than a handful of edits and a sample post, but to join the placeholder gang:

S.H.A.D.E.

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

---

^{_{F A T H E R T I M E ♦ F R A N K E N S T E I N ♦
R A Y P A L M E R ♦}}

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

---

^{"It's a strange world out there. Let's keep it that way."}

Created under the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, S.H.A.D.E. has been operating in some form or another for decades. Initially only a metahuman covert ops team, the scope of S.H.A.D.E. has expanded to encompass a multitude of operations for the US Government, with a particular focus on the catalog and containment of metahumans, aliens, assorted magiks, and other paranormal phenomena.

Originally under the control of the spirit of Uncle Sam himself, S.H.A.D.E. would deploy codename "Freedom Fighter" team assets to observe and contain metahuman threats worldwide, as well as to counter enemy metahuman combatants at the various theaters of the United States' military agenda. Uncle Sam would eventually retire from his Director's Chair, passing the role onto Father Time sometime in the mid-80s. Time would retrofit the organization's technology, outlook, and approach in order to properly contend with what Time predicted would be the next great age of the metahuman.

Through liason with Checkmate, A.R.G.U.S., and even a close working relationship with Elijah Snow's Planetary, S.H.A.D.E. has established itself as a modern powerhouse of paranormal research, with less focus on active field agents that destabilize local governments, and more focus put on surviellance and containment. Thanks to the efforts of S.H.A.D.E. scientist Ray Palmer, the organization's current base of operations is The Ant Farm, a three-inch micro-city currently hovering a thousand miles over Manhattan, caught in an errant breeze.

Father Time, in his infinite wisdom (as he would call it), has long predicted the eventual rise of metahumans to the forefront of global culture. For now, his eyes watch the bays of CCTV monitors that make up the nerve center of the Ant Farm with great interest. Waiting for the next big thing, America's first official "Super-Man", and whatever threats he may bring along with him.

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:

---

To be completely frank: I'm more or less entirely new to these characters. I blitzed through Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. this week and have done all the reading I can on the gang across every wiki I could get my mitts on, but they're less than well documented. For me, this smacks of opportunity -- the ability to carve out my own little paranormal niche using a mostly clean slate.

This isn't to suggest that I'm going to serverely change how these characters are presented in the comics, but ideally I'll be expanding and deepening what these characters have been shown to do. As stated above, they've been in precious few books so far, but this is a team that really has legs, and I'd like to see them run.

Ideally, this will read like a rip-roaring Science-Fantasy adventure, steeped at once in the schlocky tropes of old monster movies and in the gothic horror of the darkest corners of the DC Universe. This run is cribbing a lot of notes from Planetary if I'm honest, but I think that S.H.A.D.E. has the breadth of organization that I'd need to accomplish my goals. We're gonna go a lot of places on this ride and meet everyone interesting I could find in DC's bargain bin -- think of S.H.A.D.E. as a toast to the D-List.

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

---

Cast

Father Time: A mysterious old man who finds himself reborn into a new form on each and every New Year's Day. Currently in the form of a domino-masked Japanese schoolgirl, Father Time maintains his position as Chairman and Director of S.H.A.D.E., a position he will defend zealously, oversight board be damned. Time likes to play things close to the vest, keeping secrets from even his closest allies. What does he have to hide?

Ray Palmer: A brilliant physicist and developer of cutting edge matter compression technology through application of White Dwarf Star material. Palmer is S.H.A.D.E.'s official UN Liason, though as time has gone on, Palmer has more and more found himself personally involved with the science team.

Frankenstein: A man out of time, searching for his purpose. Since his creation at Castle Frankenstein and the defeat of his creator, Victor, Frank has traveled the world, slaying all manner of monster and demon, and learning more than his fair share of Keats while he was at it.

Dr. Nina Mazursky: An expert biologist with an interest in gene-splicing. Mazursky has been a part of S.H.A.D.E. for some time, since the death of her unborn child and her husband's suicide. Within S.H.A.D.E. she is responsible for decoding the metahuman genome alongside Kirk Langstrom. For the past decade, the work, and nothing but, has been Mazursky's life.

Dr. Kirk Langstrom: A biologist and zoologist by trade, S.H.A.D.E. recruited Langstrom due to his ground breaking research on the combination of stem Cells and Chiroptera DNA. Though still looking to use his research to aid the blind and deaf, S.H.A.D.E. offers Langstorm as much wider array of resources to accomplish his goals, so long as he cooperates with their other efforts.

Science Agent Belroy: By all rights a complete madman, "Science Agent" Belroy is the only S.H.A.D.E. agent to hold the title. He actually has the longest tenure with S.H.A.D.E. of any active operative, having been in the organization since the days of Uncle Sam. Due to inefficent bookkeeping, Belroy is often the only one who recalls why certain pieces of S.H.A.D.E. tech function at all, or who can offer explanations for certain strange parts of The Ant Farm. it is this utility that lets him keep his tenure as S.H.A.D.E.'s only "Science Agent"... Whatever the hell that means.

J.A.K.E.: One of the holdouts from the Uncle Sam Era, J.A.K.E. is the commander and sole surviving member of S.H.A.D.E.'s Robo-GI program. What GIs were not destroyed in battle were disassembled for parts and melted for scrap metal -- with the exception of J.A.K.E., who has begun to exhibit something that looks almost like sentience...

Elijah Snow: A man whose name can be heard echoed through all the corners of recent history, Elijah Snow heads up the Planetary organization. Planetary's mission objectives tend to align with S.H.A.D.E.'s current operational parameters more often that not, so Father Time and Elijah have developed something of a friendship.

Notes

-To all Batman players: I don't NEED Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat, but I would quite like him. Hopefully, we can work together with it, but otherwise, I defer control of him to you, of course.

S A M P L E P O S T:

---

Sample

S.H.A.D.E.

Issue 0

---

New York City, NY --- 1000 miles above Rudy’s Bar and Grill

---

High, high above the denizens of New York City, beyond the reach of the all but the most desperate skyscrapers, a three inch sphere meandered with the errant will of the breeze. By all appearances, a blip. An eye-floater to be blinked away. It simply could not be what it was: The Ant Farm, a diminutive city all on its own, floating out in its bubble to the farthest corners of the sky.

In all his years as acting chair of S.H.A.D.E., Father Time was certain he had never seen all of The Ant Farm. For every hallway he had hurriedly rushed down, for every bay jammed with personnel and impossible weaponry, and for each grease-stained, metal-choked vista within The Ant Farm’s swallowing walls the frequent misfires of the teleporter array sent him, he still had the inkling that parts of it eluded him. Like there were scores of closed-off passageways just out of reach.

Science Agent Belroy claimed he really had seen all of it, but Belroy claimed a lot of things: these days it was mostly mumbled certainties about green men from Mars or screeching, incoherent rants about aglets. To Father Time he sounded like that raging nutjob from down in Hub City, but at least Belroy got a government paycheck for it.

Father Time supposed Belroy would ultimately know about such things better than him, he’d headed up the committee for building The Ant Farm, after all. Then again, if Belroy really knew better than Father, then he would’ve been the one to weasel his way into the Director’s chair. Father had half a mind to fire the man, but Belroy had a better memory for past S.H.A.D.E. casework than every serverbank or wayward poindexter in the whole complex… Father needed better desk jockeys.

At any rate, of all the anomalous haunts that populated The Ant Farm, from the Project M Labs deep in the belly of the beast to each and every pop-up Bar chiseled into the machine work to support weary S.H.A.D.E. agents after hours, the Command Center was the place to be. Sutured at the very top of the structure as a gleaming dome, a white logo emblazoned on its surface that caught each shaft of sun filtering through the military-grade ballistic glass sphere that housed the city.

Inside was a nest of wires and monitors, casting the place in blue light at war with the yellow glow of overhanging fluorescents. There were budget swivel chairs appropriated after The Pentagon’s last upgrade, poised at silver-slick desks that seemed to have been called forth from the grand machine of The Ant Farm itself. The Command Center was a dance of labcoats and glowing personal palmtop computers all around its centerpiece -- a machine throne, awaiting its watchful king. But today his rightful seat would have to wait. Father Time expected a guest.

For anyone else Father Time would’ve gotten out the child size seats, the kind of chunky plastic chairs in garish colors that suited his current form, and watch his guest be forced to draw their knees to their chest as they squeezed into the seat and they worried about what to do with the rest of their gangly, oversized bodies. But Elijah Snow deserved at least a modicum of his respect, and he was one of the few that would wisely choose not to comment on Father’s booster seat.

Elijah entered The Ant Farm like no one else, without the thrumming noise of the teleporter array to announce his presence, no blips or beeps or secretaries fighting for Father’s attention. Just Elijah, stepping through the automatic door, all white suit and white hair framing the pale, weathered skin of a man just barely beyond time’s touch.

“World’s changing,” he said. A common refrain for whenever he found himself in Father Time’s office.

“As it always does.” Father Time gestured to the seat across from him, “how have you been keeping, Snow?”

“Busy.” Elijah grumbled. The man moved like an old machine, creaking bones aligning themselves as he steadied himself into his seat, bit by bit.

“Plenty to keep you that way, these days. More and more metahumans popping up. More and more headaches.” Father reached to adjust the pigtails on either side of his head, and reaffirm the seal of the domino mask to his eyes.

“More of a non-stop migraine.” Elijah leaned, resting against the whining seat back. His eyes closed and his thumbs went to his temples, trying to massage the lines of tension all over his face.

“That I can empathize with. The Pentagon’s been banging on my door, trying to find out if the The Superman is an alien or a meta or a walking Russian test tube. Or if he's real at all. Half my staff is tied up placating them.” Father said. Elijah nodded slow.

“And this is just the start of it. Things are going to get a whole lot stranger from here."

"What brings you my way, Elijah? I’m sure you have more important things to do than check up on old friends.”

Planetary was a little like S.H.A.D.E., but it was older, narrower in purpose. It had always been Elijah at the helm, leading his organization forward by his own whims, chasing those leads he found the most interesting. No Government to appease. No messes to clean up from a previous Director.

“According to my people, things are… Changing. In a subtler way than we’re giving it credit for. I don’t have the resources to investigate as thoroughly as I’d like.” Elijah leaned forward as he spoke, elbows on the table, casting a shadow over Father Time’s small form. Father pursed his lips.

“Expand. Changing?” He said. His voice almost cracked, small vocal chords struggling with the timbre of his voice.

“Little things. Changes in migration patterns, plant life, tiny shifts in the currents of the oceans. According to my people we’re even seeing changes in the machine world. Ripples across the internet.” Elijah explained.

“And this points to?” Father time cocked an eyebrow.

Elijah shrugged. “If I knew I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“Do we know it’s dangerous?” Father Time said. “I’ve got a lot on my plate here.”

“I was under the impression that it’s not your job to care whether it is.” Elijah cut back. “Think about it, at least.”

Father Time opened his mouth to speak, looking for a retort, something to tell Elijah that he’d look into it when it developed into a problem, that it wasn’t S.H.A.D.E.’s job to chase after Planetary’s fancy, but the door slid open on the far side of the room.

Something huge and green and mottled stood in the doorway, blocking the light from the outside. It was wrapped in blown-out Victorian clothes that might’ve been a size too small before the monster was forced into them.

“Father,” Frankenstein croaked, “where is my wife?”

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

---

A list linking to your IC posts as they're created. This can be used for a reference guide to your character or to summarize completed arcs and stories.

Three DC Comics RPGs, one game. Which moves forward? You decide!

<Snipped quote by Master Bruce>
Somebody's bound to ask these questions sooner or later, so I may as well as ask them now.

1. Say Player 1 had an accepted Hal Jordan character sheet. A little later, Player 2 submits a Guy Gardner sheet. While Guy is a legacy character, he isn't normally seen as a sidekick. Would the Guy Gardner sheet approval be totally up to the GMs or would Player 1 also have a say in the character's approval?

2a. What if a player wants to apply for a character in the future? Could Player 1 play as Bruce Wayne's Batman in the present time while Player 2 plays as Terry McGinnis' Batman in the future?
2b. What if a player wants to apply for a character from a different Earth? Could Player 3 play as Barry Allen's Flash on Earth-1 (or Earth-0, Earth Prime, or whatever) while Player 4 plays as Jay Garrick's Flash on Earth-2?

@Raistlin Majere

Not to step on MB's toes or nothing, the way things tend to work in this sort of comic games that he runs;

1. Usually it'd be Player 2's responsibility to go to Player 1 and try to work something out with regards to how to handle the possibility of a shared GL role. This means agreeing about how Lanterns function in this universe, and what degree of involvement Hal and Guy have with each other, if any at all. But, usually, the first one to stake a given corner of the universe gets a final say on its inhabitants. So if they rolled, say, a Hal who is the only Green Lantern, they could veto a Guy concept.

2a and 2b. Barring flashbacks and temporary jaunts to Alternate Universes, I think we broadly try to develop one continuity/timeline. So, everything more or less will occur at around the same time within the same universe.

Hope that makes sense! And ofc maybe I'm talking out of my ass and MB will swing by to tell me I'm wrong.

Doc's Chop Shop

S.H.A.D.E.

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

---

^{_{F A T H E R T I M E ♦ F R A N K E N S T E I N ♦
R A Y P A L M E R ♦}}

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

---

^{"It's a strange world out there. Let's keep it that way."}

Created under the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, S.H.A.D.E. has been operating in some form or another for decades. Initially only a metahuman covert ops team, the scope of S.H.A.D.E. has expanded to encompass a multitude of operations for the US Government, with a particular focus on the catalog and containment of metahumans, aliens, assorted magiks, and other paranormal phenomena.

Originally under the control of the spirit of Uncle Sam himself, S.H.A.D.E. would deploy codename "Freedom Fighter" team assets to observe and contain metahuman threats worldwide, as well as to counter enemy metahuman combatants at the various theaters of the United States' military agenda. Uncle Sam would eventually retire from his Director's Chair, passing the role onto Father Time sometime in the mid-80s. Time would retrofit the organization's technology, outlook, and approach in order to properly contend with what Time predicted would be the next great age of the metahuman.

Through liason with Checkmate, A.R.G.U.S., and even a close working relationship with Elijah Snow's Planetary, S.H.A.D.E. has established itself as a modern powerhouse of paranormal research, with less focus on active field agents that destabilize local governments, and more focus put on surviellance and containment. Thanks to the efforts of S.H.A.D.E. scientist Ray Palmer, the organization's current base of operations is The Ant Farm, a three-inch micro-city currently hovering a thousand miles over Manhattan, caught in an errant breeze.

Father Time, in his infinite wisdom (as he would call it), has long predicted the eventual rise of metahumans to the forefront of global culture. For now, his eyes watch the bays of CCTV monitors that make up the nerve center of the Ant Farm with great interest. Waiting for the next big thing, America's first official "Super-Man", and whatever threats he may bring along with him.

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 completely frank: I'm more or less entirely new to these characters. I blitzed through Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. this week and have done all the reading I can on the gang across every wiki I could get my mitts on, but they're less than well documented. For me, this smacks of opportunity -- the ability to carve out my own little paranormal niche using a mostly clean slate.

This isn't to suggest that I'm going to serverely change how these characters are presented in the comics, but ideally I'll be expanding and deepening what these characters have been shown to do. As stated above, they've been in precious few books so far, but this is a team that really has legs, and I'd like to see them run.

Ideally, this will read like a rip-roaring Science-Fantasy adventure, steeped at once in the schlocky tropes of old monster movies and in the gothic horror of the darkest corners of the DC Universe. This run is cribbing a lot of notes from Planetary if I'm honest, but I think that S.H.A.D.E. has the breadth of organization that I'd need to accomplish my goals. We're gonna go a lot of places on this ride and meet everyone interesting I could find in DC's bargain bin -- think of S.H.A.D.E. as a toast to the D-List.

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

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Cast

Father Time: A mysterious old man who finds himself reborn into a new form on each and every New Year's Day. Currently in the form of a domino-masked Japanese schoolgirl, Father Time maintains his position as Chairman and Director of S.H.A.D.E., a position he will defend zealously, oversight board be damned. Time likes to play things close to the vest, keeping secrets from even his closest allies. What does he have to hide?

Ray Palmer: A brilliant physicist and developer of cutting edge matter compression technology through application of White Dwarf Star material. Palmer is S.H.A.D.E.'s official UN Liason, though as time has gone on, Palmer has more and more found himself personally involved with the science team.

Frankenstein: A man out of time, searching for his purpose. Since his creation at Castle Frankenstein and the defeat of his creator, Victor, Frank has traveled the world, slaying all manner of monster and demon, and learning more than his fair share of Keats while he was at it.

Dr. Nina Mazursky: An expert biologist with an interest in gene-splicing. Mazursky has been a part of S.H.A.D.E. for some time, since the death of her unborn child and her husband's suicide. Within S.H.A.D.E. she is responsible for decoding the metahuman genome alongside Kirk Langstrom. For the past decade, the work, and nothing but, has been Mazursky's life.

Dr. Kirk Langstrom: A biologist and zoologist by trade, S.H.A.D.E. recruited Langstrom due to his ground breaking research on the combination of Steam Cells and Chiroptera DNA. Though still looking to use his research to aid the blind and deaf, S.H.A.D.E. offers Langstorm as much wider array of resources to accomplish his goals, so long as he cooperates with their other efforts.

Science Agent Belroy: By all rights a complete madman, "Science Agent" Belroy is the only S.H.A.D.E. agent to hold the title. He actually has the longest tenure with S.H.A.D.E. of any active operative, having been in the organization since the days of Uncle Sam. Due to inefficent bookkeeping, Belroy is often the only one who recalls why certain pieces of S.H.A.D.E. tech function at all, or who can offer explanations for certain strange parts of The Ant Farm. it is this utility that lets him keep his tenure as S.H.A.D.E.'s only "Science Agent"... Whatever the hell that means.

J.A.K.E.: One of the holdouts from the Uncle Sam Era, J.A.K.E. is the commander and sole surviving member of S.H.A.D.E.'s Robo-GI program. What GIs were not destroyed in battle were disassembled for parts and melted for scrap metal -- with the exception of J.A.K.E., who has begun to exhibit something that looks almost like sentience...

Elijah Snow: A man whose name can be heard echoed through all the corners of recent history, Elijah Snow heads up the Planetary organization. Planetary's mission objectives tend to align with S.H.A.D.E.'s current operational parameters more often that not, so Father Time and Elijah have developed something of a friendship.

Notes

-To all Batman players: I don't NEED Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat, but I would quite like him. Hopefully, we can work together with it, but otherwise, I defer control of him to you, of course.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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A sample post that can be used in the IC if you so desire upon acceptance. This post should provide an example of your vision for the desired character. This sample post should meet all standards outline in the rules and additionally include dialogue, mannerisms and other actions representative of your intended portrayal.

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

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A list linking to your IC posts as they're created. This can be used for a reference guide to your character or to summarize completed arcs and stories.

Three DC Comics RPGs, one game. Which moves forward? You decide!

I'd be super down for 2 or 3, if you'd take my two cents on it.

Doc's Chop Shop

Eddy 1

The problem was Eddy's magic word, surely. Alakazam didn't hit drunken High Schoolers the same way it did whatever wayward school kids wandered into the Magic Shop on a free Sunday. Then again, maybe it was his mistake in the first place, expecting the guy that had done six shots of Tito's in the last six minutes to keep track of his goddamn card. He'd forced the same one at least three times but apparently holding "Three" and "of" and "Clubs" in your head all at once was just too much.

He would have deprived the goober of his watch and the contents of his wallet, but he'd promised Vanessa there'd be no thievery, scams, deceit, or any other assorted tomfoolery. And Eddy was a man of his word, mostly, even when it came to drunken slobs who almost vomited on his brand new pack of Bicycles after missing the trick three times... Well, maybe he could take the watch. Could have, anyway, if what meager crowd he'd assembled hadn't fled like rats from a sinking ship once they realized Eddy was not actually trying to set up a round of Hold 'Em.

That left Eddy to wander the party and watch the assembled mass of Mather's kids plow through every last drop of booze he'd scraped together at Vanessa's request. It seemed like the liquid courage was working his magic among the throngs of people, social groups mixed like cocktails, preps and populars shoulder to shoulder with burnouts and wild children, jocks mingling with nerds (if only for a precious few moments).

An unfortunate draft

"Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, you are about to behold: The Human Jack O'Lantern. Hold on to your pants." Eddy brought the matchbox close to his face. It was packet of the Wendy's ones, copped from some drawer or another in Vanessa's house. Shit. There was always something up with the sulfur on these, something that stuck in his lungs and his mouth days after the trick. Then again, he'd probably be inhaling more than his fair share of smoke anyway from pack-a-day-RJ... Aw, what the hell.

The match struck against the phosphorous strip and the smoke swelled up, rushing through Eddy's sinuses and deep down to his lungs as the fire surged from a mote into a tiny blaze. It went back, in a practiced motion over his lips to settle on his front teeth. Then, the breath, suck in just a little more and...

"Tough crowd," Eddy wheezed.

"You know how to entertain."

"My Mom did always say I have a glowing smile."

The Curse of Crestwood Hollow - A Hyperhuman Story [CLOSED]

Eddy Walsh

EDDY WALSH

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CONNECTION TO VANESSA:
At first, Eddy knew her no more than any of the other schmucks he runs booze for, connected by a friend-of-a-friend or whatever other arbitrary connections get a highschooler their liquor hookup. To Eddy, she was just another smiling face mumbling pleasantries and handing him a wad of twenties in exchange for a few handles of Tito's Vodka. Eventually, booze running became idle chatter became real talks became drunken nights around Crestwood Hollow, forming inebriated half-memories with Vanessa and her friends that Eddy wouldn't trade for the world. And then, as quickly as it had started, it was gone. She was gone. Eddy finds himself spending a lot of time in the local Magic Shop lately, looking for that one secret trick, covered in cobwebs and tucked behind all the other boxes, the one thing oozing with real magic. The one trick that could cheat Death himself.

PERSONALITY:
Eddy is a trickster, a charlatan, a no-good piece of work. If you highlighted every infraction on his behavioral assessment it'd look like a goddamn Christmas tree. He doesn't mean anything by it. Really, he doesn't, but he figures that scheming John-What's-His-Face out of some pocket change never really hurt anybody, right? He always leaves them with enough for the bus fare home anyhow, and the lunch ladies would never let a kid go hungry, right?

He tries to sell a brand of disaffected youth, someone tired of the 'system' and the people that live in it. He wants to be a leather-clad cool guy riding his cherry red motorbike around the quietest, queerest parts of the Hollow, preaching the words of Jimi Hendrix and Woodie Guthrie like the word of God, mixing with older kids and street rats and showing them some nebulous truth that the world and the system are designed to get them, man.

In reality, Eddy's more of a wonderstruck goober with a two-speed bike that's been banged up a few too many times, looking for whatever little bits of magic he can squeeze out of the good old Hollow. He's always looking for some new trick or a new angle, something he can say or an illusion he can pull with his hands that'll make somebody's eyes light up. Maybe something about this same-old town that'll make his eyes light up, too. In some part of his heart, he believes that there's real magic out there. Something ephemeral that flows through all the out of the way, reedy creeks in the world, and in kid's hearts when they see something that honestly and truly fools them.

In Eddy's mind, real connections are for rubes and lovesick idiots. They're avenues for people to make you buy whatever they're selling and for them to turn your whole world around before you even have an inkling of what's coming. Unfortunately, Eddy finds himself the rube more often than not. He falls in fast and hard for those relationships that he believes in, those kids that seem genuinely interested in him and the art and practice of his grift, but he finds himself burned more often than not. An over-excitable tool that gets way too jazzed about Hindu Shuffles or Sy Stebbins Order or whatever the fuck he's babbling about today. This burn has happened with more people than Eddy likes to think about, misreading the pleasantries and how-do-you-dos that you have with your beer hookup as something real.

BACKGROUND:
Eddy's grandfather died before he was born, summoning what dregs of the Walsh clan there were back to the grip of Crestwood Hollow. Eddy's dad always said the town was it's own little whirlpool, always sucking them back, no matter what misfortune befell them. That left Walsh Liquors in the hands of Eddy's Dad and his then-girlfriend from out of town, to keep the store and to fight off whatever squabbling arguments the siblings had over the pittance of an inheritance dear old Dad had left for them.

Eddy was born on a grey, unremarkable day, as the sole child to a quickly failing shotgun marriage. Growing up, Eddy tried not to let the on-again-off-again nature of his parents 'marriage' bother him. Sometimes you stay with Dad, sometimes you stay with Mom, and sometimes, special times, they'd all have a spell together. And this was the way of things, squeezed together in a two-bedroom apartment over the Liquor store, leaving Eddy in his free time to watch the traffic roll by on their little stretch of pavement and dream about what adventures The Hollow might hold for him beyond it.

Eddy's days mostly found themself filled up by TV, most other parents weren't interested in having their kid around that much alcohol that early on. Didn't want to leave a bad impression on their little brats, of course. That left Eddy to books and Dad's old Hendrix stuff, plus whatever re-runs of Doug Henning or The Amazing Randi the TV deigned to show. Eddy found himself absorbed by it, always wandering down to the local Magic Shop, murmuring the words to 'Foxy Lady' while he perused an endless selection of tricks, gags, and illusions.

By now Eddy found himself master of the Magic Shop, beyond whatever tricks and parlances it could offer him, beyond the convenience of a nice part-time job, when he wasn't pulling duty at the family store, anyway. More and more his Dad has kept him there, encouraging him to keep his head down and focus on school, so he could escape this dead-end town one day.

Eddy was never so much concerned with escaping it. He always wondered after it, exploring what nooks and crannies and out of the way vistas he could discover. Small town magic. But that aside, if there was anything that his time in the liqour store has taught him, it was the value of liquid charisma, and just how bad High Schoolers want to get it. With his parents none the wiser, Eddy has set himself up as the principal distributor of all manner of liqours, wines, spirits and beers to the general population of Mather Memorial. No matter what little tricks he pulls, suspensions he earns, or social flubs he commits, that at least will always find him work.

HYPER-HUMAN ABILITIES:
Pocket Dimensions (or, as Eddy will like to call it, The Doors). Eddy has an innate connection to another, well, space in spacetime, which Eddy will think of as his own personal clubhouse. It is a white, featureless room, about the size of a studio apartment, with no apparent way in or out. With a touch, Eddy can manifest portals to and from his clubhouse at his leisure. He can establish up to three of these portals at a given time, each the size of a standard doorway. Further, Eddy can activate and deactivate these portals at will.

In terms of applications, Eddy could theoretically use his portals to travel great distances by, say, establishing a portal in Tijuana and another in his bedroom, and then taking a short jaunt through his clubhouse. Further, he can use his clubhouse to store all manner of things. Once he discovers this ability, he will likely begin populating it with assorted lawn furniture, as gas generator, and liberal amounts of alcohol.

As far as potential goes, Eddy may find himself able to increase the size of his room, and modify the size of his portals to his liking, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, or big enough to squeeze a car through. Additionally, he may also be able to subdivide this space, separating the room out into multiple sub-rooms or 'sub-dimensions' he could use for various purposes.

In terms of weaknesses, establishing a new portal takes a burst of concentration. Eventually, he could likely overcome this weakness with sufficient practice, but at the moment, he couldn't portal himself out of sticky situations unless he'd established a door in advance. Additionally, Eddy is only human. For whatever cute tricks of movement or quirky items he might produce from his room, Eddy is a vaguely out of shape teen who could be bested by a pack of middle schoolers.

SKILLS AND TALENTS: A trickster, thief, and all-around bastard, Eddy is very skilled with his hands. Since he was young he's had a fascination in magic -- stage illusions, ball-and-cup trickery, cardistry, and even run of the mill scams have piqued his interest. As a result of endless hours of study, Eddy is supremely gifted in all manner of sleight of hand and pickpocketing, not to mention that he's got a hearty helping of guile. He has a real way of misleading you, cheating you out of everything in your wallet, and making you walk away thinking you were the real winner there. He has familiarity with just about every brand of scam in the book, from Three Card Monte on, and he more than knows how to make you see one thing while something else entirely is going on.