Axis Mundi: less than unknown

Aka session times and such. Ken is on board, with PC done, and Caltak has had one session*.
For the remainder of this week sessions (defined as starting after 6 pm PST) can be: Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Possibly Sunday night as well.  Ideally one of those nights will be Ken's intro session on his own.
Next week: Tuesday, Wednesday, possibly Friday. After xmas I have the 27th and 28th entirely free, nights free after that.

Schedules in the new year can be determined by everyone and work from there. Ideally we should try for at least one session a week with the PCs together and such and figure stuff out from there. The PCs differing talents, skills and allies should ideally lead to them needing each other's help but we shall see how it all plays out :)

Axis Mundi clarification

A few clarifications on the setting:

The idea of the City (and by extension the world in general) is that the pretense of schools for Adepts is tossed right out the window: each adept masters different tricks, makes their own and few of them even consider their stuff the 'same' as that of someone else. Oh, the power might come from the same general impulse but the execution of it, the meaning of it, is what matters. Further to that, a lot of Avatar-touched people exist, ones who have Channelled something bigger than themselves at least once and fled it, never understood it, embraced it or so forth.

The New Inquisition and the like don't exist, as there is no one really In The Know. It's not much an Occult Underground as an Occult Ghetto with a lot of people with competing ideas and theories squirrelled away in their own lives. It takes the idea that no one knows what is really going on and ramps that up a notch: the people who understand how the markets really work aren't going to share those secrets with others, the person who has discovered that they can get more than just a good feeling when they cut themselves will hide it due to guilt and shame. And so on.

That government agencies have probably pieced some things together is inevitable -- though what, if anything, they do about it would be a question of time and budget.  Various religions have some idea what is going on in the world, at least as it applies to their limited paradigm and there is one npc group who have some small clue about avatars but know little about adepts as those worlds seldom interact directly.

Given the nature of PCs to learn and ferret out information, this can make the PCs pretty Important, if they so choose, or the knowledge can send them running away from the game entirely to become bee keepers in Peoria.

Proposed small UA Campaign

UA Campaign: axis mundi inveniendum

Premise: The world is weirder than we want to know.

The world is pretty strange. A casual look at the news can prove that, when you have political parties holding the global economy hostage, American Idol getting more votes than the last major election, random killing sprees, the inexplicable popularity of certain celebrities and so forth. The worst part about this is that the world is even weirder than that.

Because there's a kid who cut himself once and had the cuts talk to him, people who see auras, ways to masturbate and see the face of God, a babysitter who has never once had a kid back-talk her. Weird things, on the fringes of the world, that are somehow part of something that would be more comforting if it were alien. And this has touched you: perhaps you saw something once, or did something, or sometimes when no one is looking, you can make ice cream all fat-free.

As far as you know, it's just you. Oh, there's stories about other things, but the world is full of urban legends (not that you'd ever think yourself one) and for the most part your life is normal. Until other things happen, and you realize that there is a secret underbelly to the world, an odd place of power and will and desire so strong it can change reality. A world you can become part of, at a cost.

Theme: Life vs power.

You have a normal life, with normal friends, family, a job. And then there's this other world, where people can be more than people, where men and women can whistle up things from shadows or cut someone with a smile or sing songs that no human has ever known. It's not just weird, not at all: there's power to be found in symbols, in the real truth of the world, in the manipulation of reality and collective will. Magick exists, and gods within us all, but to become part of that, to be power in the world, might mean giving up all you hold dear.

Power requires a touch of madness to be genius, and the real world has little truck with this kind of genius.

GM Notes:

The basic concept is a slow-burn UA campaign where the PCs become aware of the deeper and wider world that exists within the one they've lived in all their lives. It offers glamour and power and glory, but all at terrible costs. You can get what you want, if you are willing to sacrifice everything else to get it. It's about how the PCs balance their normal life with this world, madness with sanity and how they try and keep it all from crumbling about around them.

Essentially, the PCs begin below Street Level, in UA terms. You're just people with some odd secret, the same as everyone else in the world. Until that secret becomes useful to people who have become more – or less – than people and their world begins to invade yours, full of alien omens and weird abilities and freaks who've become hypersane. It's about how the characters try to adjust to this and deal with the demands of the weird shit world and the normal world.

Imagine you tried your hand at reading tea leaves and managed some good BS about people's futures in it. Now imagine someone revealed that you weren't reading futures but making them and they had a specific future in mind for someone, a knife, and pointed out you didn't need all your fingers. You get away, in the end, but the world is no longer what it used to be, and you can't pretend it is: a veil has been ripped aside, you can see what the real powers and forces that shape the world are and some of them can see you as well. There's something in your eyes now, something deep and half-wild you have no words for and the ground under your feet never felt as unreal as it does now.

Final note: This is a UA game somewhat to the side of the normal rules, in that it's more about avatars than anything else. Not every avatar of the Mother will have the same power, not every adept will use a school of magick in the same way (or have access to the same tricks from it), and a lot of people have one foot into the weird and have to decide to jump in, tread water or get the hell out of dodge. You're one of these people.

Because you're a regular joe with friends, family and a life, and giving that all up can't be worth it. Can it?


Setting


The city, somewhere on east coast north america. It's cold, wet and raining when it's not freezing, the sun baking it brown for two months before more rain slides into the cold of winter once again. The kind of place that's full of promise that few ever kind and the rain never quite washes away all the grime from the streets, where it only takes a single block to walk from mansions to slums, where everyone is crowded together but no one knows their neighbours.

It can be cold and hard, at times, but the same is true of everywhere: the city has wild parks and subdivisions done up in varying styles, century-old hotels nestled next to condos built from an Ikea catalogue. The ice cream vans still come, the factories haven't all closed their jobs thanks to China and most of the kids play in the streets under the watchful eyes of parents It's not all bad, and not all good: like most places, the city is what you make of it and what it makes of you. 

AC: GM world notes

I figured it would be neat (if not useful) for players to see this. The vast majority of this was written pre-game, the stuff on law and courts during the game. There was more written on Omegas but I can't make heads or tails of what the hell it was about so it's not part of this post. 

GM AURORA CONSERGENS NOTES

The World

This is earth, only it's been nanny-run by the Illuminati for centuries and other conspiracies have grown and altered and changed it as the centuries went by. Despite their wish to not be a power in the world, the nature of how the Illuminati went about protecting it spawned many other conspiracies and secret organizations, often devoted to fighting it at some point in their existence. Which, given its nature, proved mostly futile.

But the Illuminati remained out of government and outside temporal power, which is where the other conspiracies flourished and moved the world from. The trilateral commission, CFR, and likely aspects of the UN fit into this. They were the powers behind the throne, the secret rulers who shaped and directed the world to a point.

In a lot of ways, world war 1 was a wakeup call to all of them: no one had planned it and though, arguably, they all benefited from it it did shake their faith in systems and their own control of them. The 20s did not help this, and the depression of the 30s was engineered to try and reign in a world slowly spiralling out of control. Alphas became more and more prevalent, and their inventions – as well as their genius pushing ordinary humans to new heights – led to the world changing in ways so great and vast almost no one remarks on them.

It does not help that the Illuminati's deep understanding of Omegas as 'demons' and 'angels' was falling apart slowly but steadily under the realities of DNA and evolution. As such, a faction of them tried to prove that such things were not possibly, by giving humans the abilities of Omegas via genetic tampering. AKA splices. They began their experiments in 1931 and quickly decided to use Germany and Nazis to cover it; a loud noise to hide their whispers, as it were.

But the various covert government agencies and conspiracies were getting better at their jobs and, wishing to keel Splices a shameful secret – and, probably, destroy them all – the Illuminati decided to distract everyone by having Germany invade Poland.  That this went belly-up beyond any expectations is an understatement. To this day, no one is aware the Illuminati caused world war 2. Some suspect, yes, but there is no proof. (There was an X badge, in the concentration camps: this never made history, and those were taken away to become splices. At some point, the Illuminati not only allowed the holocaust to occur -- or at least was complicit with it. No one knows this because they scoured it from their records and their own minds, but this was their Vietnam, the failure from which they never truly recovered.)

The cold war became a cover for Omega experimentation by many parties: Splicing was discovered by r2-45, the idea of Omegas as the new superpower emerged and nations began secretly trading them around, as if they each bad a baseball team. Bu the 70s, the amount of Omegas made this unworkable, and the lack of a Red Scare [echoes of the Red King?] to get people to comply let to many of those programs falling apart or simply failing to function.

Major problems began to arise with the news, with the Illuminati began to concern itself with too late: a telepath could not alter the image on a TV screen, after all. They did learn how to do this, but it took time and in the meantime they worked on brainwashing and controlling the media of the world, which worked until alphas began to rise up in ranks in said organizations. Killing off alphas was crude and, frankly, noticeable; most were bought off, or blackmailed, but there's always one principled idealist who won't be, and the idea of big media conspiracies became a cause célèbre with deep grains of truth buried in it.

Roswell, in 1978, pretty much created the modern conspiracy theory. Or at least the conspiracy theory as deeply flawed: in the end, it made it easy to dismiss people as nutters because it would be impossible to hide things the scale of, say, 9/11 from everyone and people figured that was obvious, since they had no clue about telepaths and the like. A lot of the 'old' (aka world war 1-2 era) conspiracies fell apart during this time, or had to restructure and re brand themselves in in light of the soon-to-end cold war. Most conspiracies were aware of the Illuminati, or at least that an organization that had been given that name did exist, but the actual age and depth and breadth of it was simply too big for them to believe.

In truth, beyond being composed of telepaths (which wasn't unique) and being able – at their height – to literally make everyone in the world forget things via the Eye, the Illuminati worked because they kept out of affairs not part of their limited plan: the hide the war between heaven and hell from the world. That was it. Once alpha began pushing the world into the insanity of the modern life ~100 years ago, they had to devote a lot of resources to keeping up with the world, finagling with it and trying to achieve their goals while working around alphas. Hence the gradual mistakes and eventual 'collapse' of the Illuminati.

Also, anyone who seriously thinks it did collapse should give their heads a shake.

The Event:

Seven years ago, Barry began to get openly pro-Omega rights. There were more of them in the world than ever, and he figured it was high time they got treated both at citizens and as equals to humanity. That Barry was outside the power of the Illuminati and could, in theory, make others the same made a confrontation almost unavoidable. Hence Sally as spy/telepath and the eventual mental assault from the entire Illuminati, the backlash of which killed many and actually hurt Barry.

That a nuber of people have put 2 and 2 together to figure out that the Illuminati's fracturing and Barry's  damage are related doesn't explain how 1 +1 = 2, namely why the Illuminati went after him and to what end. The real truth is, well, hideously simple. Barry hadn't gone off the rails, but he was worried about the possibility; it had been gnawing at him since he started the renaissance and had to watch the outcome of that, to try and balance the benefits of this world with the awful things it has led to. At least, that's what he told them, and they bought it. In truth, Barry was stuck. A person falls into habits over a lifetime, and over millennia he'd fallen into rather deep ones and become very, very predictable as a result of that. It was a chance, however small, to see the world with fresh eyes.

Even Barry had no idea what the backlash would do, but the real movers and shakers in the Illuminati did, or at least took advantage of it. They used that to wipe out a lot of dead wood and cast the weak telepaths aside [as the Choir], left the more morally-minded as the Illuminati [Artie et. al] and have re-branded themselves as Dynamic Solutions Inc., an 'old fashioned think tank' whose offices are old stone buildings with gas lighting and typewriters. Old-fashioned feel, successful hiding from Trevor. Their goal is to offer 'advice' that allows them to shape the entire world from behind the scenes, not the limited stuff the Illuminati did, but hard-core changing of society itself.

To this end, they need the Eye to shut down and put something Other in place while it repairs itself. Their 'genius' in this is to use something that mimics the Red King, and divert suspicion from themselves. Their lack of understanding about the Red King, however, and how he'll feel about it, is the major chink in their current plans.

Now:

The world is run by conspiracies. This has pretty much become fact. Whether it was the unconscious knowledge the Illuminati existed, or simply the realization that one can get more things done from behind the curtains than on the stage, secrecy has become the rule of the game, and real secrets – like the existence of an Illuminati – can he kept by waving them in plain sight.

"See? Area 51 can't be a secret base if everyone knows about it," people say, while above them the real Area 51 floats in the clouds, a giant refitted alien spaceship crammed with alien prisoners and some Omegas unable to convince the government they weren't human. Of course, by government I mean the real movers and shakers, people whose levels of security clearance go far beyond that of the president. Which isn't to say the law, congress and the president don't exist but that, at the real levels of power and influence, they simply don't matter. Omegas are a paradigm-changing event for the world, capable of insane and powerful things, and management and response to them is the real concern of the secret world.

The Law

Laws are odd beasts, often flailing behind the times. That most of the Omega Laws are signed into being without public knowledge doesn't help, but they do exist. They existence of Omegas is, to the government at large (and by government I mean the president, joint chiefs, CIA, FBI and the non-secret branches) only about 5 years old.

Omega Rights: None. Once you are an Omega, who lose the right to attorney and the jails cqan hold you as long as they wish, by any means deemed necessary, should one prove a danger to themselves or the public. The latter is Important, but the extent to which it is used or abused depends largely on situations. This is considered a desperate stop-gap until Omegas police and other services can be made to help keep a lid on things, but has probably made a lot of resentments worse than it should.

Hospitals have underground wards, police stations the same with cells and it's very costly (most of the official blacks ops budget has been sunk into this and keeps a LOT of alphas happily employed devising cells and restraints for Omegas) but frankly the authorities see no other way of stopping Omega crimes. Most SAFE-like groups that have set up have found themselves destroyed quickly by the more organized criminal Omegas who obviously have no desire to be policed.

The fact that the cells and segregation of Omegas is a short step from Camps and the like is NOT lost on a lot of people, which means a fair number really don't like it but are also lost for better solutions for those that need to be locked up. The big problem is conventional prisons are not about reform of Learning A Lesson as much as producing a better class of thug. And trying to set something up that is more relaxed, yet can keep Omegas locked in a location, is pretty much not possible. People are looking for alternatives, but they just aren't finding any barring rewriting personalities and other such charming 'options'.

The police themselves tend to use excessive force, often because they have no clue how much force to use, or how to stop Omegas and they're often shit scared of this freaky weird thing. (Omega police can be the same way, mind.) All of which tends to lead to the healed Omega being brought up, battered and shaken and likely with a deep distrust of The Man, before the courts.

The Courts

The courts are a little further ahead than the jails: being an Omega is not automatically a crime to a judge, desite what the police an authorities tell people, and killing someone with said abilities does not equate a life sentence. A lot of paid psychiatrists are making good money going on about temporary insanity and the 'horror' of becoming an Omega, which does get clients off the book but the end result also stains the image of Omegas in the eyes of judges cleared to hear such cases.

The fact remains that most Omegas who do not kill themselves out of shock and confusion adjust to their new life surprisingly quickly from an outside (human) point of view. The period of WTF? And accidental deaths varies a lot, depending on upbringing, the nature of the change, and the situation the new Omega is in at the time. Presenting this to courts is, however, boring. And given the variety of Omegas, hard to justify as a blanket statement in any event. Overall, the courts tend to look at Omega crimes as acts of opportunity – if you could walk through walls, you'd rob at least one bank – rather than the makings of a career criminal. The police don't see it like that, but they have to arrest said Omegas and deal with inferiority vs. them, lack of weapons and general 'Oh, my god, this 13 year old boy could kill a swat team' levels of fear and distrust that leads to extreme responses at times.

Overall, the system of laws is one of checks and balances, and it's hard to check Omegas and far harder to balance things against them. Official Omega branches of police forces and the like are cropping up, but tend to have the problem of being considered separate from the other branches and contain echoes of segregation and second-class citizenship. That people are aware of this and some want to find a better way is one of the underlying themes to counter the 'ism' aspect.


Omegas

Omegas exist to protect the earth from invasion from other earths and dimensions. Not every world has them, not every world needs them, but they basically exist as the immune system for Life, allowing it to flourish at the cost of their own lives. Other worlds invade, they stop it and so forth. Asteroid falling? Ditto. In this world, few Omegas advance beyond being city-level threats, and most begin at about a block or more, mostly because Omegas never really caught on in this world until cities did. Oh, Barry has been around for ages and there's some old and deep Omegas out and about, but for the most part the rise of civilization led to the need for them. More people means more Omegas, and the skyrocketing population of the last century crossed a threshold in this regard.

Aurora Consurgens: Massive Character List

GIANT AURORA CONSURGENS CHARACTER LIST (with police and villains added)

Kami Sturges (Chaos)
Probabilities (4), Telepathy (6), Costume making (2), Lead singer/guitar (3)

Malikai Neff Arius
I can see time (4), George (4), Tech and Shit (3), ,  Instrumentalist (3)

Mason Everheart (Caltak)
Spider-Monkey (5), Overclocked Brain (4), Versatile Keyboardist (3), Jury-Rigger (2), Daredevil (2)

Temperance Forsythe (Lunchie)
Sympathy (4) Invulnerability (4), (3) Antique Bookstore Owner in Training, (3) Make  Crafts

Teresa Numbers
Omnicommunication (2), "All is One" (3), God Fist (4), Waitress (2)

NPCS

Heather Sturges (mother). Haro Sturges (father, left in 2001)

Tommy Nash (Alpha (unknown to him) insurance claims adjustor/bandmate.
Jack of all Trades (4), Play instruments (4)+3, Perfect Memory (4)
Note: Chronically lazy. GF is named Marsha

Jerry Welker (Barista/bandmate) (Omega)
Hide (4), Play the guitar (4), Magic tricks (3), Hide People (4)
Hide: Jerry can hide stuff, via making things vanish, not be noticed, teleporting them and so forth. He has a pocket dimension in his stomach he can store thngs in.
Hide People: Instinctive; he hides other mutants from discovery, and himself as well. Powerful ones put a strain on it and give him a headache.
Tells: Always wears gloves, since he has no fingerprints. If he strains his abilities, he becomes invisible and can’t return to ‘normal’ for some time.
NOTE: Bf is named Alan and is with Greenpeace, currently fighting pirates in Somalia.

Elenora Arius (Malik’s mom), Father Hector
I was thinking somewhere 'upstate' which is basically like, a 2 hour trip away
likely by bus
Father used to be a pricinpal for a school, mother worked on the board. Upper-middle class, had the pull to insist their son be in regular schooling. Your father is the more distant of the pair, perhaps because he felt his son couldn’t accomplish all the things a father wishes for a son, though he has got in some nasty arguements with school teachers over the years;
he cares, deeply, but comes from the old school where father’s never show that. Your mom, of course, is far more hurt by the the fact that you felt you had to keep this a secret from them thab anything else, at present.

Shen (r2-45 member, spy)
Captain American Awesomeness (4), Gun-fu (4), Spec Ops (2), Guitar Hero (2)

Beau Bradford  (Pizza and cab driver)
Would-be BF. Normal.  Note: has a horrible taste in ‘good’ movies, such as suggesting Dead Vixens II for a date.

Nattie St. Germain (aspiring actress, Starbucks barista. Now an Omega ...)
Actress Wannabe (3), Starbucks Barista (2), Sunlight Becomes Her (4), Mist Form (5), Self-Delusion (3)
Self: Nattie is GOOD at lying to herself, better than most people are. It’s not always useful.
Sunlight: Direct sunlight heals her of wounds and brings her back to life, if dead. She can also give off a blinding burst of sunlight, when she has to.
Mist Form: She can turn into a pale mist and float through things, also take people with her.
Tell: 1) her canines are twice as long as they should be, also paler skin and a little taller. Hair is now a pale blond.
2) During the day her skin glows, motes of light dancing about her like firecrackers or fire flies. It is quite noticeable but a bit less so in direct sunlight.

Vince Nevels: Band manager (inept), normal 30something who sells ad-space for a magazine.
Walter Markowski IV  (Manager at work, entirely normal)

Josef Amsel (died in 1901-1964)
Nazi officer attached to Unit 731 in Japan and a personal friend of Mengele.
Ivan Koshchey: his Illuminati contact. Worked on the Prodigy Project.
Professor Amy Henwick - experimented on the twins after Project was over.

Toby Sykes
Security guard tossed through the air by mutant, has gone on to join anti-freak rights group. Has guns, will travel.

Phoenix Jones (22) (Human)
Friendly Psycho (4), I am vengeance! I am the night! .... please? (4), Spoiled and Rich (3)
Friendly: He’s insane, but he hides it well.
Vengeance: Attempt to become a batmanesque figure; a couple of broken bones later he began to rethink it and read about Omegas, and the theory that being near them increases the chance to become one ....
Rich: Moneys! Because, really, that’s the best power ever.
Human ‘superhero’ who, cheated by fate out of being an Alpha, wants to become an Omega. Hence finding them, stalking them, trying to show up at battles, hanging around them. Kidnapping them and eating them ... anything to attempt the change.

Raymond Terril (Ltd.) (42, Alpha)
Raymond is sherlock holmes :) Except without the cocaine.

Wendy Tiede (26) (Police officer)
She runs Special Division, which deals with Code X stuff.

R2-45

Sullivan Willoughby (Splice, spy), 16. - http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/067/c/2/My_Manself_revisited_by_guineapig37.png
Forget This (4), Dream/Sleep for me (3), Martial Artist (4), Hair Dresser (2), Other Splices (2)
Forget: He can make people forget things just by looking at them/thinking of them. Tiring, but almost always works.
Dream/Sleep: Put people to sleep. Useful and handy.
Martial Artist: Trained in this.
Hair dresser: He likes hair, and having fun with it, cutting it. He’s just miffed that people would think he was gay.
Other splices: Healing (exhausts badly), TK )Hard push of visible energy), Sense mutants (as ‘ripples’), aided by tech implanted in his brain.
Tell: Huge, wide golden eyes. Wears shades.
NOTE: When ‘reprimanded’, the nature of his eyes changes, to seeing x-ray, or auras. Normally they are, for all their odd appearance, just eyes.

Davis Jones (aka the Oracle) (10)
Most days. Davis still thinks he’s at school writing his blog. Only sometimes he’s doing it when teachers talk, right in the middle of class, and no one says a thing. And his friends are all a bit .... dull, these days, and his family never really talks to him and he hasn’t played a new computer game in *weeks*. But still, most days he never sees the man in suits, or really hears their questions. He’s been writing an awful lot of entries, too, but strangely no one comments with spam, as if they’re never on the net. And when he thinks about that, he can almost feel someone watching him, as if the internet was somehow aware of him, looking for him, but Davis knows thats pretty silly.
He does think it would be neat for his stories, even if they are getting confusing now and  sometimes he thinks his parents aren’t talking to him because he’s in a hospital, and stuff is dripping into him like in a bad sci-fi tv show. Sometimes it feels like that, that the men and women watching him are doctors and he’s not even in schoolm at all anymore, but that’s so big and scary a thought he’s never dared to blog it at all.
Note: Davis is going to be pretty miffed that the government asshats have had him locked up for weeks AND he hasn’t lost a single pound when his parents have been trying to get him to lose weight for years. That the government haven’t taken steps to reduce his weight (and chances of future heart attacks etc.) won’t strike him as at all worrying until someone else points that out.

Percy McWillians II (41) (Omega)
Reflect (6), Neural Shock (4), Secret Agent Man (4), Art Critic (2)
Reflect: Any harm to him is turned back on the user. Read mind = read your own, blast = hurt self. Counts as 4 dice vs guns, fists etc.
Shock: He can shoot a bolt that zaps people unconscious.
Note: Right arm is artificial. (If it comes up, his arm was removed to provide necessary tissue samples for splices of his powers.)

Andrea
Living Teddy Bear (3), Create Barriers (6), Spec Ops (4)
TB: She is one, but can eat, drink etc. if and when she wants. She dies if all her stuffing is destroyed.
Barriers: On minds, walls, people etc. She can make amazing ones, though they’re stronger in proximity to her. She can also remove barriers others have made.
Note: while she can eat real food etc., she is now in a teddy bear and the only actual nourishment she gets is from hugs.

?
Member whose ability involves taking the mind of foes and tossing it into something else. Like, another person. Or stuffed animal.


S.A.F.E (Safeguarding Against Future Exploitation)

Kim Li (Professor at Freement University-College)
See Genetic Codes (3), PhD in Philisophy and Bioethics (6, Use Mace (3), High-Tech Weapons (2). Mental Shields (2)
The latter are via Trevor. She acts as the front of S.A.F.E while he is the real founder.
Note: Having been born with her ability (as near as she can remember) she may be something other than alpha, or omega.

Trevor (Founder, Omega who looks to be 16 but has far older eyes.)
One With The Machines (6), Clone Body (4). Genius Geek (3), Look Nerdy (2)
Machines: Trevor IS the internet, among other things. He’s human and an AI and terribly good at what he does.
Clone: He got tired of being old (30), so cloned himself a new body. He has six other clones, just in case this one gets damaged and he updates the memories every few hours, so if he does die, his next clone won’t quite know the details. All the clones are alpha-class, body wise. Trevor is GOOD at faking being an alpha.
Look Nerdy: Thick glasses, braces, suspenders, messy hair. He makes it so very easy to underestimate him ....
Tell: None; it is a clone body after all, though if it ever comes up he’s sexually ‘inert’ because he ‘couldn’t be bothered with all that’.
Plot bits: His wife, from before the cloning, should show up with his kid(s)? at some point.
Goal: Originally, he wanted to somehow arrange things so everyone thought they’d won. Realizing this is impossible, he wishes to exterminate the remnants of the Illuminati as a threat to both omegas and humans.
Note: Wednesday December 31, 1969 is the date Trevor tossed aside his original body to become the internet.

Allies:
Ally: Quentin Witherspoon (40)
Looks: Webbed hands, feed, gills, blue=-green skin and sounds as if he’s always gargling. Gills on chest.
Abilities: Breathe/travel underwater, heal fish, repair oceans. (Cannot speak to fish)
Note: Nut about how Omegas should fix the oceans.

Ally: Rosa Bedard (21)
Plump girl with caffeine tremors drinking way too much coffee
Abilities: When she sleeps, astrally sees other worlds/places. It’s not fun.
Tell: None

Ally: Marcia (Agent of the Choir, 30) [dead]
Average-looking woman with electricity crackling about hr skin; forms into wings when needed.
Abilties: Fry people, fly, telepathy (2)
Marcia is here to hunt demons. Really nice and simple.

Bruno Dietrich (German Omega, 65: member of the guild) [dead]
Older white-haired man in good shape.
Abilities: Can fly.  (He can carry people, if they’re light)
Tell: Feet never quite touch the ground.

SEE (State of EnlightEnment)

The Most Ancient One (aka Barry Jameson, looks to be 25, tall, good looking)
Stupidly Immortal (no dice needed), Charismatic Handsome Dude (3)
Tell: Covered in tattoos of swirling shapes over all his body, no hair.
Barry is old. Even he doesn’t know how old; someone or something of immense power ripped his mind to pieces 10 years ago and let scraps of vague knowledge behind. In reality, he is 25 but is immortal. Nothing hurts him, all attacks that could miss and so forth. Exactly how a telepath managed to fuck with him, and why, are unknown. It is known that he can permit a power to affect him to a limited extent, so that may have something to do with it.
Goal: Rights for Omegas. He’s huge on this, being one himself. Only he looks entirely normal, which ticks him off. So he has his ally, Carla, use her power in his skin and make a ‘tell’. So yeah, he’s very much screwed in the head but also, in his own way, terribly powerful.

Ally: Carla Vasquez. spanish-american punk (21)
Skingraft (4), Cosmetic Surgery (1), Punk aesthetics (3), Keep Calm (4)
Skingraft: She is able to mark people’s skin and hurt them, essentially branding them. Basically energy net, squeezes tight, can burn right down to the bone. At full strength, all it does is give Bobby tattoos. She has enough sense to want to learn more about the talent and use it to help people via corrective surgeries and the like, but is only just learning about that.
Tell: Her skin constantly changes colour according to her mood, from light tones to dark.

Ally: Damien Vallon (15) - http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/147/1/c/icecreams_by_hellodingo.jpg
Vanish Things (5), Quick (3), Street Kid Smarts/Martial arts (4), Double Agent (2), Play keyboard (2)
Vanish Things; Damien can look at things and make them vanish. Even he isn’t sure where they go, but he uses it daily on Bobby’s hair. Upper limit to it is unknown, but he has to know the nature of the thing he’s using it on, so using it on an empty building is fine, but if people are in it he has to know how many before it works. (This limit may be self-imposed). As he has no idea what his limits are, he’s rather scared he could look at the sun, it would vanish, and the world find out ~8 minutes later.
Double Agent: Damien actually works for the Black Chamer, a covert US think tank who have taught him martial arts and so forth. His job is to keep Bobby sane(ish) and find how how and why the kids mind got torqued.
Tell:  Uh. Obvious.
Note: Older brother (Ethan) was in a Boston band called Sarcastic Tornado.

Ally: Thelma Bates (72) (Omega Healer)
First do not harm (4) Then do harm (3), Best granny ever (3) Spy for her age (3)
Do no harm: Healing others. Limited to physical wounds, but she can mend and fix most anything in about ten minutes. Even when not healing, she has x-ray eyes.
Do harm: If someone hurts her, the pain gets traferred back to them.
Spry: Despite being 72, she moves as though half her age and has no arthritis or grey hairs.
Tell: Her eyes turn white and her hands glow when healing others.
Daughter (Mary) can cause diseses.
tell: Pale, dirty, covered in yellowish warts that scream ‘unclean!’

Ally: Alan Moore (17) (Irish,Omega)
Create boquet of flowers (4), Track & Field (3), Emit foul odour (4), Don’t Die In a Fight (3)
T&F: Obvious, was his thing while normal.
Flowers: He can create a boquet of lillies (which appears in his hand) at will. Eventaully he can expand this to other flowers, none of which hurt him to hold/smell.
Note: This makes him plant-like, in a weird way. When he dies, he sprouts up again in time.
Odour: His body can emit a sick smell to drive away others, threats, preadators etc. He has little control over it but delivering a mortal wound does disable it.
Tell: Green skin and bumps all over his body. Though unaware of it, a bump temporarily vanishes every time he makes a boquet of flowers.
Note: Eventually, he’ll be able to turn into a tree. Which is awesomely useless. Oddly, creating boquets of flowers will become more ‘useful’ once he discovers it doesn’t have to be in his hands and could be, say, in the middle of someone’s body or, say, out of their skin.

Ally: Sally Jenkins (aka Oculus. 25, Omega)
Eyes See You (6), Share Power (3), Artist (2), Mind Shield (3)
Share power: She can share her eyes senses with others and also share their own power if they allow it.
Artist: She paints.
Mind Shields:  Leftover from her telepathic friend; strong but degrading yearly.
Eyes See You: Sally has 30+ eyes that float about and do her bidding. She can see and hear  through them and even fire energy beams (about the strength of a punch). She can also tranfer wounds to herself to an eye, which then dies. It takes her 9 months to grow a new batch of eyes, much like any baby. The size depends on need.
Tell: The floating eyeballs, naturally. She always has at least ten around her and sees through them, keeping her normal eyes wrapped in cloth under long dark hair. She can use them, but doesn’t like to


Black Chamber

Claire - Member who alters phermones to incite events that lead to Omegas needing/wanting to join the Chamber .... she is the minder for Griffin and Damien.

Griffin Dumont (22) http://th04.deviantart.net/fs51/PRE/i/2009/293/6/5/Cold_by_King_of_the_nobodies.jpg
Talk to Dead Men (4), NDE (4),  Janitorial Services (2)
Talk to dead men: He can listen to and hear the voices of the dead. This is not exactly fun.
NDE: He can cause others to have a near-death experience. To a small extent, this ability is always on so he can’t be near the dying.
Janitor: HS stuff, was going to go through college to be a plumber for the money.
Tell: skeletal, to the point of painful absurdity. Also carries about him the cold of the grave and the smell of a tomb.

The Untamed King (674)
Living Stone (5), The Gift (?)
Living stone: She’s 10’, made of stone and as such will live a long, long time barring, say, insane uses of jackhammers and such. HJas worked for BC for over 70 years and is native to north america, which is why most of the Hidden Places are on this continent.
The Gift: The ability to bestow privacy on people and places. Originally used to hide misshapen Omegas from the world (her children apparently counted) in mordern times it makes an Omega touched by it invisible to any camera, satellite and so forth. Humans using them pick up nothing and it does no seen unusual at all.  It cannot be undone, even by her.
When used on places, it hides them from prying eyes and creates sancutaries for Omegas. gthis ability isn’t as strong as the first, and sufficient interest/pressure (and telling people about it) will open ways into the underground palces she makes safe. She believes that to a tame a thing is to kill it, and Omegas should be free and unfettered in places just for themselves.
The ability also hides her from those wishing to harm her; BC stumbled onto her by pure change, as it were.

Hades et al.

Hades (mid-thirties)
Make Omega (6), Evil is my food (5), Trivia (3)
Make omega: Hades can make alphas into Omegas. He can also do it to ordinary people, but those results tend to be non-viable. In theory, he might be able to make Omegas human again, but if so all he’s ever done with that is wave it over them as temptation to get them to work for him.His blood, turned into capsules, can prevent Omega powers from working, as long as the omega in question isn’t that powerful.
Evil is my food: The more ‘evil’ acts done around him/by him, the stronger he gets. Increases life span, general strength, toughness, destroy a thing by touching it and can pull secrets out of people’s minds to tempt them with. This is an extremely broad power, but actually pretty limited since the ‘supply’ is never study and he has to ration out what he does and why. Using it to promote more evil directly only results in evil-lite, in terms of energy.
Note: Conversely, ‘good’ people are like a toothache all the time. He also can’t enter holy places, though this is probably something the Illuminati did to him. It does mean that, if placed inside one, he can’t leave without aid.
Trivia: he pretends to be centuries-old, despite being 42.

Ally: Rakasha (aka Jaladhi Dev. Hindi, 22)  (Pic:http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/049/6/b/ariel_is_troubled_by_madcarrot-d39tusv.jpg )
I has claws (3), Drain Health (4), I eat people (3)
Claws: Fighting, quick, dangerous. The usual.
Drain health: Not quite a psychic vampire, he drains physical strength from others just by being around them. Hades helps keep this in check, obviously.
I eat people: Hey, everyone has hobbies.

Ally: Leo Dowell (15) (Pic: http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs26/i/2008/031/9/3/Grumpy_by_Amelie_ami_chan.jpg ) (Alpha Omega)
Alpha Awesomeness - Ninja (4), Learns Hella Fast (3), I am the storm, said he (4), Body of Water (3)
Ninja: Alphas are good at stuff; he’s quick, sneaky, fast and dangerous. Not insanely strong, no, but that’s okay.
Learn: he learns things at an insanely quick rate. Hence, boredom.He’s 15, just finished HS and is seriously, seriously bored.
I am the storm: He can call up very localized storms, soak people, zap them with lightning and, when really made, shoot energy from his body that makes them want to kill themselves, in theory.
Body of water: His entire body, clothign and all, is actually made up of water. as such, he drinks a lot of water and, if heated sufficiently, would actually become a puddle and presumably die. His body doesn’t let him avoid damage or shape itself around blows (yet) but if hit hard enough to lose cohesion he just reforms.
Note:Omega for 2 months, is with Hades because it is not boring.

Illuminati

Artie Fleetwood: *(Pic: http://th06.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2011/005/2/c/leather_jacket_by_kristollini-d36ixu9.jpg )
Telepathy (10 dice, at least)

Eye, the: The Eye.

Dillon Matus
Mental Bolt (4+3), Mind Shield (7 [Special]), Redneck Hick (4)
Mental Bolt: He can blast minds with serious, insane levels of force.
Shield: He isn;t a telepath anymore; he can’t read minds, and the touch of another’s mind is pure agony. As such, all his telepathy and shields have gone into a shield of immense strength.
Redneck: In so many ways.

The Normalities
The pro-normal human faction(s).

Toby Sykes: Ex-security guard, lost his job to fishy guy throwing him across a grocery store.
Clyde Dales: Anti-alpha librarian, of all things, whose battles against ‘alphas’ tend to centre on anyone smarter than he is. But he did find access to a ‘book of spells’ in the school library, and has been able to use whatever it really is against those who piss him off. He and Toby are in the same support group.
Tanya Richiusa: Formed the ‘Defense of Humanity” Support group. People who’ve lives have been damanaged by Omegas (and Alphas) and basically need to talk and bitch to each other. She has wider Political goals and isn’t entirely aware she is an Omega, since her ability is pretty odd.
Aalim Jabar: Seriously, major anti-alpha dude. Tends to references to ‘jihad’ and is so over the top no one thinks he is anything more than offensive to his own culture. He seriously believes Alphas are the nephilim and an insult to God (and that all Omegas are fallen angels, but currently his focus is on Alphas). He’s the source of the exotic weapons he gives out to other weapons, and has so far avoided Tanya figuring him out.
Karlos Vandemeer (32). Worked at Mount Rosen bakery. was Aalim’s contact with the Red King cult.
Chris: A skinhead whose idea of Humanity is, basically, white people with Omegas in camps.
Bruce and Wanda: Elderly couple who would agree with Chris openly if they could.

Independants

Jillian Connor (pic: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/067/6/2/blue_torrent_by_dreamofinsanity-d3b7qbx.jpg ) (22)
Fine Arts (3), ‘Elecricity’ (4), See currents (3), Self-defense classes (3), Stalk Cute Boys (2)
Elecricity: This is her term for it, but it’s really the ability to expend a power that looks a lot like electricty from her body, in the form of burst of energy from her hands or electric-blue wings. The bolts do feel like an electric jolt, however, that harm the self/soul rather than the actual body. IN other words, each bolt can take off a chunk of someone’s essence until they drop dead, or kill that all at once by overloading them. She is unable to turn it off, so touching peole becomes rather difficult and it defends her mind, soul and body all at once.
Note: Zapping peole basically rips energy from them. Directing her power with more focus overloads the soul of the other person and kills them dead.
See currents: She can see energy: electrical, and presumably others with time. She can see ‘auras’ around people and eventually into the microscopic. It has no real practical use but is quite pretty and she can spot omegas because they auras are unusual and, based on fluxxes in it when they use powers, hazzard vague guesses about powers (mind lit up so mind-based, etc.)
Fine arts: She draws portraits, mostly, and realistic ones at that.
Plot notes: electric storm person (Marcia) dies, she becomes an omega a day later; the link shouldn’t be lost on pcs.
Stalk: her relations with previous boyfriends leave something to be desired.
Tell: White hair, pure white eyes that have an unnerving intensity to to them and, sometimes, electricity about her, plus zapping peole who touch her.

Shelby Smythe, aka Nightmare (Pic: http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs46/f/2009/233/8/8/Love_Feels_Weird__by_NocturneRising.png )
Show Nightmares (4), Run like a rabbit (3), Super Strength (3), Fight Like a Girl (2)
Show nightmares: when he meets people’s gaze, they see a terrible nightmare and can’t break free of. It can kill people or drive them insane, depending on how long he meets their gaze.
Strength: He’s stronger and tougher than most; he can juggle cars, punch through steel etc.
Note: His little sister, Frances, is 8 and without ‘drugs’ she suffers horrible seizures every time she has a vision; the drugs weaken her talent.

Calrion de Flores (45, passes for early 30s) (Omega)
God of the Flowering (3/5), The acrobat of your dreams (4), The language of flowers (2), Seduction of the Innocent (3)
God of the flowering: Calrion can do *anything* with flowers. He can summon, create, alter them, give special smells, transport himself via them and so forth. He can also use abilities of flowers (such as, say, thorns, or tricking predators with pheromones) and even restore lost virginity, in theory. He also uses this power as little as possible, because it’s frankly rather silly.
Acrobat: Spider-man style stuff, can use swords and so forth. He’s quite, efficient and adept at derring-do. Also handy in the bedroom, and not just for swinging from chandeliers.
Language of flowers: He knows a LOT about flowers, often via osmosis and is probably a PHD in such a field, if he could be bothered to waste his time on such academic interests. He may be able to literally speak to flowers.
Seduction: Also good for publicity and his winning smile. He is very much a glory hound and also very much a ladies man., I doubt it will ever come up, but he is bisexual and has no desire to flaunt that, given his talent with flowers and the assumptions silly people make. Not that he minds those assumptions, and plays camp to drive people nuts.. and have them convince themselves he’d never sleep with their wives.
Note: ‘Flowering’ is often at 3, since he seldom wants to use it. When he does, he’s actually scary and can possibly extend it to most any plant at all, if he felt he had to.

Nicky (Nicholas) Christmas (15, Omega) [Prodigy Project]
Pull Gifts From Bag (4), The Magic Of Christmas (3/5), Other Nick (5), Befriend the homeless (2)
Gifts: Nick can tell if someone is naughty or nice at a glance. The talent favours the nice end of a spectrum and sums up the entire life of a person, rather than just present actions (though those have more weight to the skill). Using it, he then pulls gifts from a handy conainer, of presents or coal, to give to someone else. All the gifts are non-brand name, oddly, and attempts to sell them for cash or steal them go poorly, though Nick is unaware of the latter.
Magic: The closer it is to christmas (or when near someone with christmas in their heart), Nick is protected from harm, to an extent. As long as he gives out at least a gift a month, the power will keep him safe fromharm in theory. If Nick tries to abuse it (say, use the 24th to get a LOT of school reading don) it deserts him entirely save in mortal peril. The more he uses it properly, the less weight be gains.
Other Nick: Old Nick. The dark myths, of Sinister Claus and the Devil, are also part of him, and he could become a terrible, evil thing in theory. Close to a split personality, this is the dark side of the dream of Christmas and nothing he’s used consciously, or recalled.
Befriend: He’s good with people. A fat, jolly kid with a twinkle in his eye who can make friends easily and not pass judgement.
Tell: When he can grow a beard, it’s going to be white.
Note: 5’6", 210lbs
Nick: "I'm not any kind of evil thing," with a glare and ..... thins out, in an eyewatering blur, the hair heavy with a fannt smell of rancid meat as Nick smiles, his teeth sharp, skin darkening to the colour of coal and is thin, a shade taller than you, with long clawed fingers and a whip-like tail. "Naughty children," he says, voice light and airy. 

Blake Brensen (20? Depends on how old Teresa is)
Lies that make the world go round (7), Get the fuck out of dodge (4), Schmooze Easily (3), Gamble Poorly (1)
Lies: In a very specific way, Blake is the most powerful person on the planet: he can lie to ANYONE convincingly. People with truth powers, telepaths, the Illuminati ... no one, yet, has been able to get through his bullshit when he starts going, and he can con people into most anything if deperate enough. The downside is that he gets carried away and there are people out there thinking he is a high priest vatican assassin warlock, that he has tiger blood, that he’s an alpha, an omega AND the antichrist and a lot of women convinced he owes them child support. And sometimes, when he’s really desperate and tells a huge whopper of an excuse that impossibly works, he gets the feeling of soemthing huge and vast seeking him, as the Truth Itself was offended by his very existence.
Get out of dodge: There are limits, even to excuses, once people compare notes and the same excuse never works twice, so eventually he knows when to get the hell away, and he’s pretty damn good at doing that. As a side effect, he looks so ordinary people tend to forget having met him after a few months, or can’t be sure he is that guy....
Schmooze: He can make friends with most anyone, easily. Alpha, Omega, walking pile of garbage? Doesn’t matter. This is probably the closest thing he has to a redeeming quality.
Gamble: He loves doing it, but never, ever wins. And the less said about the time in Vegas he tried to excuse it away with the apocalypse and started a riot the better, you know?
Note: Blake doesn’t change actual reality, just convinces people his story is utterly right and they convince themselves of that, to a point. The con will break down, faster unless it’s *really* implausible (“There’s no way anyone would make THAT up!” etc.).

Archie Rocco (Omega)
Mason's eccentric artist roommate. Now also an Omega ...
Animate (4), Artist (5), Deep River (3), Floating hands (4)
Animate objects: He can bring small things to life, like paintbrushes, and make them do things for him.
Deep River: Artie is an artist through and through, and that includes a poets understanding of human nature.
Floating hands: His hands (at the wrist) operate independantly of his body. Range is unknown at present, but at rest they press against his arm.
Tell: Hands are seperate from body.

Carter Slade II (~30) (So Alpha it hurts. Has clone bodies.)
Torture Porn (5), Just plain bad-add (5), Batman Fanboy (2)
He only likes one thing in life: hurting people. It pretty much the only time he feels anything (that being pleasure). Being a complete and utter sociopath, he’s gathered together alphas (and \convinced’ omegas to work for him) to keep the world a better place via fear and intimidation. Step out of line, his people kill you. Figures alphas should rule the world, omegas be exterminated.

David Holmes (15)
Wind Powers (4), Flight [3 - via drugs]. Storm Mastery [4 - drugs, can throw lightning], Arcitecture Buff (3)
Tell: Was translucent, hair always blowing in a wind no one else felt.

Beckett Holmes (14)
Create Shields (4), Stone Skin (4), Anime Fan (2)
Shields: Multicolour spheres, often around himself or other things. Tough.
Stone Skin: Skin is made of stone, very tough. In reality, his entire body is stone and movews about to fix wounds, heal damage etc until he’s a hollow shell that can be cracked and broken. Eats stone to survive.
Tell: Skin the colour of stone.
Bio: Two brothers, one given drugs by Doctor D, the oter not. David goes nuts, tries to kill his own brother for ‘standing in t he way of the future’. David’s jealous of his little brother is gone with Power and he goes nuts.

Vincent O’Toole (Formerly 40, now ball of light)
Ball of light (3), Illusions (4), Public Speaking (3), Irish (2)
Vincent is a living ball of small, yellow light; few Omegas have changed as much as he did, and no one knows WHY­.
Illusions: Sensory (visual) illusions, though he can fool all senses if he strains himself. Visual in his case includes all werd visionary powers. He can affect up to a city block and give people a permanent piece of himself as an illusion to hide behind.

Artie Fleetwood (22) Illuminati Telepath - http://th06.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2011/005/2/c/leather_jacket_by_kristollini-d36ixu9.jpg
Telepathy (5), TK (2), Secret Agent Man (4), Thinks he is a Master of Intricate Plots (3)
Tell: You can see his skull through his skin when he uses telepathy.

Maxx Quilovax (30) (teleporting guild rep)
Teleport (4), Synasthesia (3), Guild Politics (2), Sense Danger (3)
Tell: Cloven hooves as feet. As such, he teleports rather than walking and all his moments tend to be short bursts of teleportation so he always looks a little ‘off’.

Roland Drake (18) (omega at the starbucks)
Charm People (3), Beauty Beyond Bearing (4), Work crap jobs and like it (2), Trust Fund Brat (2) Gorgeous (4)
Charm: People do what he asks, agree with what he says etc. Basically like a charm person, all the time, on everyone.
Gorgeous: He is. He’s pretty much Hollywood-icon style impossibly handsome.
Beauty: He can cause traffic accidents, physically hurt people and if he shuns someone they may well kill themselves.
Tell: he is far, far too handsome.
Note: His talent is weird, since all of it meshes together into a whole. As such, it charms people into not noticing what he is, finding him cute, liking him and so forth. As such, his mind is a lovely trap for telepaths, people who would sense his talent are so charmed by him they don’t. It won’t stop machines from detecting him, but would influence people using the machines and so forth.

Misha (of the kuma) (5, ?) (Omega, shadow-being)
Shadow Being (4), Telepathic Projection (2 [inate]), Alternate History (2), Push at the world (3)
Russian kid who has got himself lost. Sibling, Alexis, possibly lost as well.
Shadow Being: Misha is a shadow, and sunlight/bright light *hurts* and dissolves parts of him. It can flee into shadows  easily, however, and ‘heal’ in moments. If passing through someone, can hurt them via intense cold.
TP: How Misha talks to the other shadow-people. Can talk aloud, but has a high-pitched voice in russian accent, so prefers to chat in people’s heads. TP is limited to close range (unless a telepath hears/wishes to chat), and the other party can block at will. It’s communication only, one-sided unless the other person has TP-like powers.
Push: Misha’s possibly unique ability, to press on thing places of the world and make doors to other worlds. Misha has to be solid to do this, and doesn’t like being solid, so will ideally do it at night without much light around. Can be done to people, if need be, but proves fatal.

Emily Parker (22)
Telekinetic (3). Mistress of the Building (4/5), Music skills of the dead (3)
TK: Large-scale only: she can toss around cars, people, but not pick up a pen, say.
Mistress: This one is weird. The longer she remains in one building, the more control she has over it. In some respects, it’s akin to uber-TK with a building, to the point of energy manipulation: she can rip holes into other dimensions, draw on the building for energy in lieu of food, alter the environment to suit her mood and probably anything else she put her mind to. Of course, as no one knows their own mind and we often sabotage ourselves, the end result is far from some perfect control or mastery, but if you are in a building she has, and tick her off, you are basically very much dead.
Note: this talent works far better on homes than office buildings or apartments thought she could rein it in to one apartment, if she had to. Also, her power is over the building, not the inhabitants per se: so she can do haunting stuff, kill someone with the building and the like, but she couldn’t read minds, heal wounds and so forth. Speaking to the ‘dead’ seems to be an offshoot of the energies from ripping a hole in the world as much as anything else or man act of desperation.
Note 2: At the upper end of things, she can create a sanctuary (or possibly multiple ones) and basically turn a building into an HQ for those in need.
Tell: None, unless speaking to buildings as though they were people counts. And no, they don’t speak back.  In realirty, her tell is within her, and insanity. Hence the first sanctuary going belly-up.

Aaron Dupree (17, Omega) [dead]
Create Duplicate (4), Dwarf (4), Thief (3)
Omega with the ability to make duplicates of himself out of other substances. Via Doctor D, he makes over 5000 that go on a stealing rampage throught the city.
Tell: When using power, original body is rooted into the earth and can't move. As he is a dwarf (3'9", all the duplicates are the same height and so on.) Smells of earth and soil, even when clean.

Starchild (Stella Windchaser-Borko)
What the stars sing of in dreams and nightmares (10)
Starchild is a living star, burning with impossible heat. Void might manipulate energy, but she IS energy and terribly, terribly powerful.
Tell: Fire burns and dances about her at all times; her internal body temperature can melt lead.
Void (Arthur Borko)
The whole electro-magnetic spectrum. Yeah. (10)
EMS: most people with this are electric dudes, or magnetism. Almost none realize “Hey, whole SPECTRUM, man.” He can have fun with electricity, magnetism, radiation, visible light, gamma rays. If he put his mind to it, there isn’t that much Void can’t do, if it involves energy.
Tell: He’s a walking void/black hole.
A couple. Possibly from another universe, but no one is sure. they are, probably, the most powerful superhumans in the world at present and haven’t been ‘suicided’ simply because no one is sure WHAT would happen if you tried to kill a star or black hole. Getting someone like Damien to vanish them is theoretically possible (assuming they aren’t too big for his talent), but no one knows where he vanishes things to for one thing. For the most part, they are left very much alone to pretend to be human under illusions Void generates. Some say they are hiding from time itself, but no one knows. No one wants to. They’re just left to be alone, and harm no one. Until the divorce.

Kaegan Maher (11 - 12 in 2 months!) (Omega)
Control Insects (3-4), Insectoid Fun! (4), Pass Classes (2), Sneak (3)
Sneak: Get out of the house to visit friends, usual kid stuff. He’s just really good at it, having learned from his older brother. (And yeah, it extends to locks and cars. He knows how to do the latter, hasn’t done it.)
Control Insects: He can summon them, easiest with just one type, in a several block radius. He can also see what they see and listen through them, if he wants to.
Insectoid: Climb walls, leap high (over 10 stories) and through the air, quick. He can push himself to avoiding bullets, but it turns his eyes faceted and his parents do not approve.
Tell: Antennae on his forehead, but he can comb them back into his hair most times. If he pushes himself, his eyes become faceted. So far, they’ve returned to normal within a day, but his parents are looking into contacts :)
Note: Younger brother is Tully Maher, 10. (superhero name, ‘Biffy’). Older brother, Liam, is 15, into drugs and stuff, and told Tully the ‘weed’ comment figuring his little brother wouldn’t find someone to sell it to him and it’d be funny.
Note 2: He’s been the one beating up all the muggers and tends to quite cheerfully go out and find Bad Guys to stop. Serious problems with authority and he’s hoping be develops webs of some kind eventually, because that would be the coolest! He’s pretty much out to be a superhero, curfew and laws be darned.

Ronald McGee (20s). (Omega?)
Ronald can give Omegas powerz! 2d6, 12 or 2. 2 is a bad power :) 11 or 3 can can give some minor power.

Doctor Vincent Gorsky (Ancient) (Vampire)
Vampire (6), Doctor of Medinces (4), Soduku (3), Seduce Pretty Women (3)
Vampire: Impossibly fast at night, stronger than humans, mild mesmeric powers. Drinking blood heals wounds, prolongs life span. (Omega blood is foul.) Sunlight robs him of powers,. but does nothing else.
Doctor: He thinks a good shepherd (as he sees himself) should take good care of the sheep)
Note: His goth assistance (actually daughter) is named Mina. Both are vampires from another earth.

Ally: Olin Truong
Gaseous Entitity (4), High School Student (3), Phased (4), Carpentry (2)
Gas: Olin is now a gas, in appearance. He seems to be a humanoid with head, arms, and fading away at the torso into vague gas. He can invent/create gasses at will and invade lungs etc. to poison people, put them unconscious, be visible (sort of) and so forth. He can pull oxygen out of the air and the like if need be.
Phased: He is in a permanent phase-shift. While he appears to be a gas, he couldn’t be sucked up in a vacuum, for example, while the gas he creates/manipulates could.

Marcus Wampler (21) (Omega)
Apple Geek (3), Apps of Power (4), Time Freeze (3), Avoid Bullies (3)
Avoid Bullies: Dodge attacks, in essense.
Apps: He can create iphone/pad/pod apps at will to Do Things. The apps can be permanent additions to the phone, which is beyond broken. The upper limit of this is unknown but attempts at truly silly things tend to turn the phone to slag. Apps made for other applications are half as effective, if they are at all.
Time freeze: If he needs to make an app on the spot, he can stop time, code it, and start time again. It is exhausting depending on if he just slows time or actually stops it, or just goes into a stasis field he can’t get harmed in. Said apps vanish from the phone within the hour, at the latest.
Tell: Has the apple logo branded on his chest. It glows cherry red when he makes an app. has smaller ones (hands etc.) that glow when using the apps.
Note: has hearing aids.

Trent Windle (21) (Omega)
Camouflage (4), English major (3). Gravity Manipulation (3)
Camoflage: He blends into surroundings, all the time. Unable to turn it off, visible when he moves.
Gravity: Increase, decrease weight of things, flight.

Basil Manning (14) (Omega)
Quills (3), Pyro [self and things he touches] (3), Homeless (2)
Tell: Body covered in short, porcupine-like quills he can lanch. When he sets himelf on fire he can lanch them as burning quills
Parents: Susan and David

Lambert Duchall (Omega, Choir member)
Firey Crosses/Shield of the Lord (4), Mind Shield/Telepath (2)
Firey Crosses: He can throw one of her 666 crosses of energy at foes to burn them with the fire of the Lord. (Harms souls, not bodies.)
Shield: The crosses are always around him, thogh she can make them small and hard to see: block attacks
Telepath: He can find sinners.

Simone Duchall-St. Laurence  (Omnega, Choir member)
All Have Sinned/Telepathy (3), Will of the lord (3)d
Sinned: She can read the deepest, ugliest secrets of someone at a glance, their sins visiible to her without effort. She has not torn her eyes out, but it is only a matter of time.
Will: Can command sinners. Mind control, basically. Does not work on Omegas, who are demons.
Tell: halo of intense light burns about her head.

Diego Perez (22) (Omega)
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs14/i/2007/074/b/4/a_bush__freedom_grafitti_artis_by_PIGSunit3d.jpg
Teleportation (3), The Flesh is the Word (4), Grafitti art (4), Budding Anarchist (2), Scrap Fighting (2)

Speakers. the

Brother Andre Duceppe (41, Omega)
Andre was normal, until he met Christopher Tamel. Chris was 23, could fly on wings made of song and nothing evil could bear his presence. He was the mesisah come to the world, and then he ascended bodily to heaven [Drugs via Dr. D]. and ever since, Andre has spread the Word. (Chris’s word was, simply, ‘We should care for and love each other.’ Trying to seriously spread that tends to be difficult.)
Healing (5), Preach the Word (3), See Demons (3), Decent pastry chef (3)
Healing: Andre can heal like no one’s business. He can’t fix long term illness, but recent stuff (up to a week, at best, and including death if within a day) can be fixed by his power. He doesn’t like raising the dead, since he can’t shake the feeling that everyone he returns is, somehow, wrong, but he does it anyway to spread the Message.
Preach: He’s pretty convincing and good at the job.
See Demons: he can sometimes see the base desires that drive people as demons, though he lacks the power to cast them out.
Tell: a faint nimbus of light surrounds him at all times.
Note: Andre is due to encounter a certain rabbit soon.

Thingy (used to be Benjamin Odett) (17, Omega and bodyguard)
http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/046/5/c/west_virginia_toes_by_facerot-d39mpma.jpg
First Move (4)+3, Hurt You Up Bad (4), Jockey (3)
First move: He’s *fast*; he generally acts before anyone else in fights and such, protecting Andre.
Hurt You: Strength. His weird body is inhumanly strong: he can break bones without trying, and further he can hurt people by making them feel soiled, sickened inside and like Ick.
Tell: Obvious. he believes omega appearances are ‘the face we all deserve’ and the loss of his best friend (Chris) has driven him so far from sanity it’s not even funny.

Jackie Manchester (21, Alpha)
An alpha who manages the day to day of the Speakers, she is basically akin to batman, if he went into PR for a church.
Tough As Nails (4), Planning (4), Enviro. Science major (3), Trust Fund (4)
Planning: Given time, she can figure out how to take out anyone.


Craig Ensley (23, Student at Mason’s school,Omega)
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/182/3/3/chubby_punk_by_Beechs.jpg
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs51/f/2009/305/6/7/6719df41c296ffe99de1d6d80a6e7469.jpg
Make Screwy Art (2), Incubus (2/4), Fissure (5)
Incubus: he’s an emotional vampire, and tries to control it as best he can. If he gets too stressed or wound up, he changed into something not remotely human and has trouble controlling the power. He can inspire lust in others with a smile, without ever trying to and via a musky smell/his presence make guys fall for him. asa  result, he tends to smoke a lot to try and mask it since he doesn’t much like making people call for him. It was cool the first three years or so, now it’s not.
Fissure: He can see the weak points of things at a glance, and break them along those fault lines with a touch. And yeah, this can include people.
Note: He cannot use both abilities at once.
Note2: He has a slight stutter that vanishes once in incubus form.

Prof. Ignatius Hanrahan (54, alpha prof at Sutherland University)
He wants his students to be The Best They Can Be; applied to work at this uni. because it wasn’t rated highly, then Lien  came along and changed everything.

Colleen Tew (23, PP ex-member, Omega)
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/047/f/6/the_hooded_gown_by_temperate_sage-d39po5s.jpg
Gate (4): She can make portals into other dimensions at will and take others through with her. The portal can be visible to others or not (using a dimension with no life and a door as a portal is a fun trick to get rid of people) and she can shove other people into one and close it as well, if need be. That she can survive in any atmosphere or lack thereof is also part of the talent. She can, with effort and concentration, make gates to places she’s been before but the talent is otherwise set on random.
Since heading off on her own, she has developed the ability to make gates within the same universe, but it tends to be very exhausting.
Rotating Door (5): She can unconsciously teleport parts of herself, so bullets pass through her as she phases out of reality and so forth. It’s this as much as making gates that lets her survive deep space, worlds made of fire and so forth. The downside is that while out of sync she can’t interact with the world proper, though she can make a gate. Its passive environmental protection is always active, vs. attacks and such works with concentration and if she slips, she does get hurt.
Seasoned Traveller (5):  She knows how to use alien tech and equipment as well as undersand alien languages.
This needs fixing up (2): A gift from Meghan at her death; it’s Meghan’s power at a very minute level, so Colleen can feel when something is wrong/off in an area, but not how to fix it alas.
Tell: red eyes with black pupils.
Note: Has a left leg made of an unknown silvery substance that is partly alive and can flow over the rest of her into armour (at the expense of one leg) if needed. Not cybernetic as much as organic technology from very far away. Her lower left arm is cybernetic and currently broken, hence wrapped in bandages. She also scars has on her torso and a secret cache of various other dimensional and alien weapons; the past  few years haven’t been exactly without incident.
Of course, once certain parties find out her weapons cache includes strangelet nukes, hiding out back on earth won’t be without incident either.
Note: Colleen HAS met Malik. Or been on a george-dimension world populated only by Malik, at least.

Sonya Everheart (14, Omega)
Hair of the gods (3-4): her hair can change colour, grow and move of her own will, becoming as strong as steel if need be and extending up to 100’ easily, and 30’ to engulf an entire room, growing back whenever damaged. To wrap others up in it, she of course needs to brace herself in place and so forth but that’s not that difficult.
Student (2): She is one, though not a very good one.
Rose-coloured glasses (3): Sonya is capable of seeing the best side to *anything*. There’s always a silver lining or a cloud less dark in her world and making lemonade from lemons only makes sense.
Self-defence classes (2): S.e. Also not very good at it, mostly because of her seeing the good in other people even if it isn’t there.
My precious! My precious (2 to start with): Sonya is now fascinated by hair. She wants to touch yours, feel it, caresss it. If you have great hair, she’ll trust you. And want it for herself. Given the opportunity, she will scalp others for their hair and make it into a wig, and steals wigs from department stores, thrift stores, off the heads of old men in broad daylight. She can resist it on a high roll, but with visible effort and the desire for hair will eventually overwhelm her. Just think how much Mason has :)
Tell: Living hair, which is sometimes noticed if it grows/changes unconsciously. The bigger one is her mental issues above.
Future cliches: Hairdressing and possibly voddoo (which doesnn’t work, but hey)
Plot: She becomes an Omega after she gets home, so Mason’s parents get his frantic ‘OMG! Your sister!’ calls and such, with them unaware he isn’t human himself.

Animus Members [Group symbol: http://0.tqn.com/d/altreligion/1/0/C/Q/2/valknut.jpg]

Sinjin Smythe (20) (Omega, telepath) [Now a minion for Teresa]
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs43/i/2009/087/9/0/Draining_the_life_from_me__by_Em_j_akahana.jpg
Telepathy (4), TK on body (4). Mope (3), Refuse Limits (3)
TP: Short range, a block or two at best (3 to another telepath), but very strong within that range. Manipulate bodies, read minds. Fun!
TK: Generally only his own body. Shield, float etc. He can do other things, but they tire and he loses control of his body. He can use TK to seal his own wounds etc.. Using it on the world/others tires him out fast.
Mope: He is a good little sulker. Can posibly use this to drive someone to suicide.
Refuse: He hated his body betraying him and can use this to force himself to do things he shouldn’t be able to, briefly.
Note: Had ALS, all better now. Well, technically. In theory.
Tell: mismatched eyes glow bright when using power, floating/odd gait.

 Kelly Fisher (?)
Telepathic Projection (2), Transmute (4) [works on objects, flesh....]
Looks to be a 4’ grey alien, sans missing mouth (was born female)
Ability: project thought-images with a touch, transmutation (can make crop circles :))
Tell: Obvious.
Kelly makes a living working for a pro-alien people and being a sighting. Really.
"Oh my gosh, was that you in 'Invaders from the Mushroom Planet'?"

Zoe Byrd (35)
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/086/c/1/troll_creature_by_vshen-d3cm394.jpg
It’s a monster! (4), Telepathic cloak (4), Trophy wife (3)
Monster: Strong, claws, fast, in that order.
Cloak; She projects a ‘no one is here’ field. It’s not invisibility (she shows up on cameras etc.)
Trophy: She was marrying her husband, Howard Roark (architect and bastard) and changed on wedding night. He leapt out the window in shock and died.

Patrick Vargus (19)
Possession (5),  Host Skills (3), Escape Bonds (4)
Patrick ‘died’ 4 months ago in a car crash and has jumped from body to body ever since.

Judah Menzies (24)
Psychometry (4), Party Trick (4), Perpetual Student [open university] (3)
Psychometry: he can read the past and future of objects with a touch. With effort, this can include people (though reading their future is far harder).
Party Trick: Comes back from the dead, sometimes drops dead without warning. He believes he’s building up an immunity to death.
Tell: Looks like a zombie, grey-skinned and listless.

Possible members:  Raymond Terril (Ltd.), Dillon Matus, Pope Blake?

Beth Witherspoon, 54, Omega (divorced)
Many tentacles (6).
Extra arms, mouth etc. at need that eat anything organic and make it taste good. She empties garbage bins for free to help the environment.

THE POLICE

The police station is  large, modern building of steel and glass (the windows shatterproof and quite, quite thick) with a huge gate to prevent entrance and egress, a large wall around it and several police cars, poublic parking and even two SWAT vans parked around back.

Aina Saari (Fiinish): often the woman on duty at the front desk.
( You drive your car to the police HQ without incident. It's a solid modern building of glass and steel that tries, too hard, not to look like a prison despite barred windows and the police cars inside the yard. The police officer on duty at the desk is a woman, a little shorter than you, with short blond hair and a watchful air about her, as if she is debating what crimes you've committed just by entering the building. She looks to be about your age, with a nametag reading 'Saari')

Special Branch

This is the branch of the police of Freemont who deal with any and all weird shit. Ostensibly based out of room 418 (a hole) in the police office, their actual base of operations is a subbasement 300' below the surface, where they keep Omega criminals and so forth.

Wendy Tiede: Tough, no-nonsense, In Charge. She's not an alpha, omega, or psychic but she does have access to an alien gun of unknown origin that claims it can kill anything. Often via falling anvils, by choice. Despite her general attitude to the world, she prefers to talk down Omegas rather than do a 'hit first, ask questions later' mentality. Her predecessor did that, and they've yet to find the body of Milo Tinasky.

Breaker, the: An Omega in his 30s who answers to no other name. Immensely tough (3) he absorbs energy from blows and, if he lives, gets back up enough tougher than before though said toughness wears off after a few hours. His primary ability is the 'force bolt' (4), which is a beam of raw force he can send from any part of his body. It hits, and you don't get back up.
Tell: Positively decorated in scars, many of which look like they should have been fatal.

Fiona Baskin: (19)
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs35/f/2008/297/f/9/Smoke_Crows_by_MaGLIL.jpg
real: http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs49/f/2009/184/c/3/Marcel_the_Werecrow_by_astercrow.jpg (basically, has a crow’s head)
Fiona became an Omega following an encounter with Breaker. She ended up following him to HQ and demanded answers, ending up with a job instead. She is frequently overwhelmed since going from a McJob to being a police officer in the space of a few months is insane.
She has the ability to create and sustain illusions over the space of at least a city block, more if less senses are involved. When only using it on herself, her true form is hidden from everyone save Malik. She can also talk to crows and ravens, but she keeps that to herself. Mostly paired with Breaker to keep him less visible.
Tel: Head of a crow, hidden under illusions.

Bradley Johnson, aka The Force (27): A police officer who can change places with any normal human at will. They see a crime, think 'where is a police officer?" and they appear where he is, he appears where they are and arrests the perpetrator. Generally lasts 10 minutes.
Tell: Appareance changes from week to week

Ryan Mitchell (Omega, 32): Ryan used to be in the army but left because only the 'best' (aka alphas) advance. He's lucky (4) and can beat the odds (4), the latter letting him figure out if a plan can work.
Note: missing his left arm. His tell was that when he used his talent ,dive appeared about his left hand and danced.

The Twins: Twin brothers rescued from a mad scientist who look to be about 10. Rather grave, odd and mostly only Hurt speaks. They tend to communicate wordlessly with each other and feel each other's pain. Hurt does most of the eating for both of them as well. Neither sleeps.
Hurt: thinner, with electric blue eyes. Can disrupt people, things, places with a touch. Essentially, the entropic principle walking around.
Hole: chubby, black, empty holes for eyes. Can absorb people, energy ... things. A black hole, but with a nice personality.
Note: actually one being split into two by Experiments, known as the Prodigy Project. Hole is the 'real' one.

Jane Ceil (Alpha): Jane is a short, friendly mad scientist full of bustling energy and always on her meds (really!) who helps figure out how to deal with prisoners and so forth. The twins keep clear of her and she tries to study everyone and everything, often multiple times.

Kirk Watson: 45, civil worker. Tough, angry man whose daughter Cecilly died five years ago (age 13). Some thing stumbled into his house, covered in fur and bleeding acid and he grabbed the gun in the bedroom .... and doesn't use guns, or weapon, now. Divorced, bitter, driven to understand why this is happening and how the world doesn't know, he's become the city Weird liason. Recently became aware of SAFE, but knows no details.

Fixer, the (aka Bert Manning, 45): Alpha who fixes stuff via inventions, invents casts and so forth. Figures out how stuff works, and where it comes from and so forth. Uses low-tech stuff because 'the internet watches us'.

Vance MacDonell: Telepath, died 5 years ago in the illuminati war.

PRISONERS IN CELLS

Calculator, The: Aka Noel Mandelson III (62)  (Omega)
An aged poet who gained the ability to add and subtract things from the world. memories, limbs, oxygen .... limited to a 10’ area around him, but still very dangerous.

Speedo, aka Joel Hammling (15) (Omega)
Superspeeding kid who robbed 5 banks before the police caught him, via Breaker hitting him mid-run. The hid fell, hard, and his broken leg healed too fast, limited him with a bum leg. In cells until they arrange for proper surgery, and presumably incarneration.

Robert Smith, (23) (Alpha)
Omega sniper who, on released from the marines (for excessive force) became a hit man for hire.

Matthew Midas (42) (Omega)
Technical prisoner shipped between various cities depending on budgets; everything he touches turns into gold.

Karnena Durvosky (20) (Alpha)
Russian weapons genius whose desire to make anti-matter weapons and time travel machines put her on piles of watch lists.

Quinn (21) (Omega)
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs9/i/2006/064/8/d/_Spirit_of_Ice__by_AkitoMaru.jpg
An asexual hermaphrodite (before becoming an Omega...) who can turn things into ice, make  a sword of ice and wings. Forehead is marked by an O on it, though someone has added a half-moon tattoo around the branding. Casually turns people into ice, breasks said ice. Was branded by a human-’rights’ group Quinn subsequently exterminated.

Brett Joad
Speed (4) / TK (4),  Copy Skill (3), Emo Boy (3)
Speed: Brett is FAST when he has to be.
TK: Se. Large scale, destructive. Can use TK OR speed, but not both at once. No shield aspect.
Copy skill: He can copy skills of any human he’s close to. Doesn’t work on alphas or omegas, which helps him detect them if needed.
Emo: He wiped out his town. You’d have Issues too. (Note: Dare I name the town Drimdage? :)
Background: Massacred a town when his TK manifested.


Villains

Ze Gang!  Basically, a loose knit gang of villains who answered Randal's want ads in various papers advertising money, adventure and so forth. That they answered means they aren't the brightest bulbs, to some, but really it's more an issue of trust than anything else - and he isn't really conning them.

The gang will begin with small robberies, quick tests, send a few members in, rest as backup and so forth. They first test the waters of the police and SAFE, establish unofficial lines not to cross and become media darlings, like the famous bank robber sof the era.

Claudio Schlosser
The conscience of the group, by and large. A poet who yearns for poetry to be in the world again, to be a force again, to make people Feel and Love and Yearn. His method for this is living terrorism. Like tough love, but with using terror and confusion to draw people together and remind them that the only things that matter are each other.
The senses are so sweet (5): He can make people Sleep, Waken, fall into traces and such at will. He can affect entire buildings, though alphas are immune and Omegas can resist; he is, however, aware of those resisting and their locations.
The poets d.r.e.a.m. (3): He has a Vision, and he can share it with others in a blinding ecstasy of love. It functions a little like Temperance, if with darker purpose.
Tell (5): He mimics anyone, and has their fighting skill as well vs. them. Can be easily disoriented by multiple foes at once.
Tell: Everyone who looks at him sees themself instead. (Sort of an echo of the Vision power)

Kimberly Wimberly
Insanely, bitterly bored with the world. She's seen all it has it to offer (rich, travelled everywhere, lost all the money to lawyers after parents died) and becoming an Omega was almost a curse for her, one she resents and takes out on the world.
Drawn to danger (4): Kim is drawn to dangerous situations and people. If none exist, the universe seems obligated to make them happen, or give her the tools to make such danger herself. She can pretty much figure out how big a threat any Omega or person is at a glance, and has a party with said person.
Dance with my death (6)+3: She is poetry in motion, a ballerina of death who moves about, testing her own death and trying to feel anything, at all, ever again. She has a positively ludicrous level of regeneration, to the point that Damien could vanish her and she's be pretty much fine. It also prevents her from feeling pain and heals telepathic attempts to alter her mind.
Insane Strength (5): S.e.
Tell: Her skin is devoid of any blemish, body as perfect as a barbie dolls except for the desperate, sad eyes yearning for exquisite joy of death.

Randal Albritton
The power at the back of all they do. An alpha who makes use of magic, alien tech and pure brilliance, he plans out heists and co-ordinates the fragile egos he's gathered together as the first of many such experiments. To him, the measure of a man - Omega or otherwise - is how they break, and if they get stronger in the broken places.
BS Planning: He does plan, but his real talent is convincing everyone, including himself, that what happens IS what he planned. He is terribly good at this, probably to the point of multiple personalities. He has the natural charisma of cult leaders.
Self Control: Even for an alpha, his control over himself is legendary. He only loses his cool when he wants to, in order ot make a point, and things such as feelings, pain, and loss only affect him to the extent he allows them to, though he's very good at mimicking them to appear normal.
Tricks and Traps: He knows brawn beats brain. History teaches this in ugly, bitter lessons with each barbarian that slays a wizard. So he has access to alien weapons, tech, odd military-grade weapons and knows how to use them; he's physically nothing to look at, and takes perverse pride in considering his body merely a vessel for the genius that will outlive it.

Lexia Rubin [part of Prodigy Project]
The dark, ugly core of the group. If Claudio is  a poet, she is anti-poetry, free verse, rap music. Not the 'do this because it freaks out parents' but 'kill them and you don't have to give a shit about that stuff. To her, the conscience is  a noose people tie around their necks.
Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor (5): She needs pain to live, She can't eat food, drink anything: it all comes back up. But pain? Pain is her life's blood, her chocolate éclair, a night of passionate brutal sex like rutting beasts in the mud screaming their existence to the universe to make it know they are Real. To this extent, she can influence others to harm her, but they have to have the desire in them to hurt another at some level for it to work.
Hit me baby one more time (5): She needs to hurt others to get more, to find that delicious  meal that keeps going and going. [If Kim could feel pain, she'd be the best food ever.] She knows how to hurt, and is very good at it, but never to kill: a dead person can't give anything at all.
Tell: her hands drip blood, like some fairytale monster, but only when she wants them to, eyes also glow blood red.

Caryn Whitlow
Caryn is a new age wicca loving girl who thinks that, because they gang doesn't kill, they're Good People.
Rose coloured glasses(4): She sees the best in her friends, and even a telepath can't change that.
Neither created not destroyed (5): If something is broken, she can make something new to replace it. The more irreplaceable it is, the more power she has to work with, and it need not have been a material thing. As the authorities tend to be destructive, she becomes terribly useful.
Free as a bird (3): karma/sin and all that just don't stick to her: charges don't get pressed, angels don't get angry, that kind of thing. She shares this with the rest of the gang to some unspecified degree.
Tell: Has a halo, and is very embarrassed about it.


Oscar Petrov
The best front man for a gang ever; his job is to give away a chunk of their earnings to poor people in oder to cement good will.
It’s bright in here (4):  He can create light by dissolving parts of his body into light at will, which can be used to blind people, blast them or shield them. (He can’t do more than one at once, however.) The more of his body he dissolves, the stronger the power. Additionally, he bleeds light from cuts. As it can take time for dissolved parts to form again, he normally limits it to a thin layer of skin or a hand, for example. He tries to avoid any kind of fight simnce he has no idea how much of himself he can lose before, say, dying.
Sunlight and rainbows (3): He’s light made flesh; Oscar has no need to eat, sleep or anything like that though his body does need solar energy to keep him happy and peppy. He will die/starve if locked away from any light for more than a few days.
Boxing in younger days (3)
University Studies and Grants (3): As a student in his 30s, Oscar has learned how to maximize grants and loans and scholarships and is philosophically behind the goals of the gang. (Money for us, some for other people, as he sees it.)
Tell: Golden skin, hair and eyes.

NOTE: Samson has been hired by them to make sure Oscar is OK.

Weird West: some sample NPC ideas

Weird West Sample NPCs

Douglas "Mad Dog" McRae

Doug used to be like every other bounty hunter until he lost a leg trying to catch the Mad Trapper of Arroyo Creek. Since bountying was all he knew, he took to training dogs to hunt for him and do all the dirty work, which they tend to be alarmingly good at. He might always get his man, but now Doug and his pack of wild dogs don't always bring that much back of them and them's he hunts have taken to calling them a wild hunt and swear blind that the dogs keep coming even when they should have dropped and died like nature intended.

Path: Adventurer
Level: 6
Fighting: 2 "Sometimes you're the trap, sometimes you're the bait."
Grit: 6 "I ain't about to quit now."
Magic: 2 "Raising a pup is just like raising a kid; you gotta make 'em tough."
Skill: 3 "All being older means is you get sharper than them new kids."

Stamina: 30
Defence: 3 (2 if someone takes advantage of wooden leg)

Weapons:
Shotgun: 1d8 (2-handed, d10 in close combat.) (2 shots)
Dogs: 1d6. (6-8 dogs)

Magic & Weird Stuff:
Dog Howler: 1. Dogs and wolves do what he wants, his pack an extension of his will.
" Get em, boys!": 1. His dogs attack any target he sets them on, with Fighting 3, Skill 1 and 8 Stamina. At 0 stamina the Fighting drops to 1, Skill to 0 and a 1d6 is rolled: if the result is 1-3, the dogs dies, if not it somehow keeps going.


Madame

Madame goes by no other name: it could be a title, her first name, her last. She doesn't much care what anyone thinks and is as famous for that as for the red dresses she always wears as for the harsh justice she meets out on those who harm her girls. Her brothel is a clean, welcoming place where the girls are nice and friendly and heaven help you if you try to take advantage of anyone. No one knows anything about her past, or how she came to own the brothel now called Madame's but she's tough as nails and handier with a gun than many men who live or die by it.

Path: Fighter
Level: 4

Fighting: 4 "You fight for what's yours or you find you have nothing to fight for."
Grit: 4 "Wits are as important as any gun."
Magic: 0 "A woman doesn't need magic to get any man."
Skill: 3 "There's no luck in gambling that that a little skill won't help along."

Stamina: 23
Defence: 3

Weapons:
Handgun: 1d8 (6 shots)


Joerie The Amazing!

A travelling magician currently devoid of assistance (and his bow for cutting people in half, which explains the lack of an assistant), Joerie is never without his coach, or at least his coat filled with wondrous objects and amazements sure to wow the whole family. Or at least the kids: he's not all that picky and getting a good job is hard to come by these days.

Path: Gifted
Level: 4

Fighting: 2 "Sometimes even a coward can't always run away."
Grit: 3 "Except when he can."
Magic: 1 "Desperation is the mother of invention."
Skill: 5 "Now you see it, now you don't!"

Stamina: 20
Defence: 5

Weapons:
Slingshot: d2 (non-lethal weapon)

Magic & Weird Stuff:
Illusions: 1. Sometimes his tricks are so good they fool anyone and he doesn't even use his trick bag! He is is deep denial about this. Difficult Task.

AC: GM Notes

The Shadowland

It's sociologically interesting, though scary, that you can be inside an evil system and be somehow unaware of it.
- Actor Anthony Sher on growing up in apartheid-South Africa, interviewed by John Walsh, The Independent, 1 May, 2000

For much of its history, this world functioned much like ours, with humans and Omegas existing, the latter often considered gods for much of that history, recorded or otherwise. Unlike Earth-PC, it had no Illuminati or alphas develop and many Omega regimes in areas destroyed others as they were born, whenever they could. (Greece, with the 'titans' replaced by the 'olympians', served as a warning about allowing other factions of Omegas into ones own area.) History blundered on, until the Romanov's of Russia.

Russia wasn't much in 1000 CE but the family made a name for themselves swiftly and may have been responsible for the empire before them (the Ruriks) about whom history records little. By 1600, the Romanov's had become a family of shadow people and shortly after claimed Russia as their own, the family expanding in both power and influence down the centuries, deftly avoiding the traps of the renaissance and enlightenment as tricks/memes by other Omegas. Thanks to their influence in trade and resources, the industrial revolution was not as forceful as it might have been, but to forestall the influence of other nations, the Romanov's did .... something.

A ritual or act of will, or science, or something else altogether than murdered the sun and put the world in perpetual twilight at the best of times. (This was about 1905.)  Freed from the sun harming them, they spread their borders and moved outward into the world, trigger world war one against them. Germany led the war, which lasted four years and crippled the economy of the world, leading to stalemate; Russia had Germany for a time as spoils, but lost it due to civil uprisings and the Great Depression that followed. An attempted coup of the Romanov's by a group known as Bolshevik's (aka Omegas) failed near the end of the war.

(Some say, in dark corners of the world, that the house of Rurik existed to ensure the sun did, and was a house of light, and that the Romanov's murdered the last of that line to achieve their effect on the sun but no one knows. It is also possible that the Einstein of this world helped them, given the time line but for the most part it doesn't matter that much.)

Russia's crippling sanctions on Europe paved the way for the rhetoric of Churchill and Hitler that led to world war two in the 1940s. The USA reluctantly joined late, against the Russian ally of Japan, but it did not matter, Despite the attempted magic of the German regime and the combined will of the Omegas on the side of the Allies, the Axis Mundi that was the house of Romanov won, shattering Europe and the world.

In the 60 years that have followed, the house of Romanov has grown from strength to strength, destroying pogroms (mobs of humans, aka cattle) and Bolshevik's (aka omegas), the end of war war two seeing the Great Cleanse that wiped most magicians from the world, and the few telepaths as well.

Where things are at: The world is largely under the rule of the Romanov's at present. Obey, and things are fine, you're kept in your communes and do world they need 'solids' for, which mostly involves gladiator sports and building palaces, because even shadow people like a good palace to live in. Disobey, and they destroy you utterly along with your family, friends and whatever town you come from.

The discovery of other worlds in the 1970s had led to an increase in Romanov population in preparation for conquering other worlds, though the influence of suns and such has limited their plans thus far. In the USA, a few enclaves of humans exist who believe themselves hidden, with 1950s era technology [minus computers and nukes] who allow the truly dissatisfied a place to hide and the Romanov's get to watch them curiously and see what happens in those zoos.  Travel is done via zeppelin through the shadow-cities of the ruling family and australia doesn’t exist in this world, having been destroyed to remove it’s Hurt and Hole analogues from existence.

The world can be considered an absolute monarchy at top, communism (we all live like shit) at the bottom with the various culls and slaughters of Omegas and the like echoes of nazi fascism. For all intents, they have destroyed the other Omegas of the world and the Romanov's rule supreme. Glory to  the Shadowland.


The Romanovs: As living shadows, they can hide in shadows, listen to thoughts/conversations and communicate with each other via shadow-speak. As well, some (or all) can make dimensional doorways while making their bodies solid, though it is very exhausting. Since they can attack via shadows, and free/kill with unearthly cold, they are rather hard to stop or defeat. Lastly, some can use the shadow dimension for magic of one kind or another.

All the shadow people are sexless at 'birth'. Each shadow person can make progeny when old/strong enough but it costs less energy if two make it together. So the royal line itself has actual heirs with a mother and father, as members of the House can choose a sex with age and service to the Crown, but most other members have just one parent and often never get to have a sex [which is really a self-chosen title], which is largely a status thing. In other words, reproduction via a pair costs each less energy and is important since if you are too weak, someone else might come for your position or status.

(They do reproduce often, for numbers are necessary for an invasion. After the age of 10, each produces 1 child every 1-2 years and it is not as if they die of old age...)  It has been noted that they have coquered at least six other worlds and consider the dimension Nattie used as a shadow-dimension and, therefore, theirs. The full extent of their power over it remains unknown, but they have managed to make the sun of their own world work via cold fusion and the like and can be considered very, very dangerous as a whole: centuries of breeding and being The Power of a world do that to do you.

Misha: A very young member of a cadet line of the family, Misha dragged its older sibling (Alexis) through the shadow dimension largely by accident. Alexis was lost on another world, Misha ended up here. Due to PC and NPC accidents, the Shadowland is now aware of this world but wasn't prepared to invade so deputized Misha to 'prepare the world for invasion' rather than lose face. And for amusement.
To Misha, anyone with telepathy is a potential shadow power and Misha can, in theory, be 'adopted' by them and thus gain parents, AND a sex, and status, but this is more a desire than current goal. Game-wise, Misha is an interesting example of a kid raised in a terrible and evil regime who is entirely oblivious to how bad it is.

FYI, the overall plan for the Shadowland involved Misha (Or Alexis) learning about alphas, and since the alphas are nature's response to the Illuminati, then hunmanity on their world would evolve humans imune to shadows and the cold. the logical plan is to murder the rest of humanity to prevent that problem from occuring :P

Note: Misha has revealed that shadow-people are taught to believe in reincarnation: everyone comes back, so life and death don’t truly matter. You lose this body, yes, but you get another. A Shadow-body is the best kind, because they’re so tough and good and can last a long time. (Which suggests that the shadow people have ways to retard or limit the aging process,) This is, thematically, hinduism (without the ‘human life = best’ bias) used as a justification for murder. Being a shadow-person is obviously best since solids die so very easily.

Flaws: The death of others of their kind doesn’t truly anger them (since a shadow-being is the best possibly incarnation, any shadow-being that died after finishing a Duty returns as one, or so they believe). Obviously, younger ones (esp. those who are kin) tend to be more inclined to friendship.