Rise of Marvels: Year One -- Sign-Up/OOC Thread

I've been waiting on Mr. Lees to put up a new post for Mr. Quill, so that's why I haven't put anything up. I keep checking, but nothing so far. And this is not me being impatient, this is just me saying "don't kick me out for inactivity!"

 

Gotta touch up the formatting on that last one still... Can't do it here though.

 

I'll get a post up tonight, before I leave for a convention all weekend. (Oddly enough, an authors convention, hah.) School, work, planning for the convention, overall stressing out about money and moving have kind of eaten up my time.

 

So, to try and help shore up some more activity in this game I'm gonna pick up a second street-level character to concentrate focus in that terrain. If it's alright, can I hold onto Star-Lord enough to wrap up my current scene with him and leave him free for whoever else wants to pick him up down the line?

Age of Marvels: Character Application:

Character Name: Daredevil

Alignment (Hero, Villain, Walking the Line): Hero

Character Speech Color and Font (ex: Red Bold Veranda): Dark Red

Powers and Abilities:
Radioactive waste left Daredevil blind, but to compensate, his other four senses - hearing, smell, taste, touch - have been heightened to superhuman levels. He also has a "radar sense": a kind of 360 degree echolocation that acts as a substitute of sorts for his sight. In addition to these powers, Daredevil is a superb hand-to-hand combatant, a master martial artist and an Olympic-level acrobat and gymnast. His primary piece of equipment is his billy club, which can be used as a weapon and which also has a grapnel hook.

Character Origin/Backstory:
Matt Murdock was born and raised in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. After his mother left when he was just an infant, Matt was raised by his father, Jack Murdock. Jack was a fading boxer in the twilight years of an unremarkable career, and struggled to make ends meet for himself and his son. As such, he was forced to work as an enforcer for the mob. He wanted a better life for Matt, and so forced his son to spend all his free time studying, not letting him go out and play with the other local kids. This earned Matt the scornful nickname of "Daredevil" from local bullies who thought him a coward. The one brave, reckless thing young Matt did came when he was 9 years old, and saw an old blind man walking across the road, into the path of a speeding truck. Matt pushed the old man out of the way, but the swerving truck spilled radioactive waste on Matt, with some hitting his eyes and blinding him for life.

The accident left Matt with incredible heightened super-senses. At first these were overwhelming for the boy, causing him pain and terror, but in time he learned to control the sensory assault, and filter out some of the background noise. He also kept his gift a secret. The only person who knew young Matt's secret was Stick, an old blind man who became aware of Matt's gift and saw potential in him. He took Matt under his wing and, as the years passed, trained him to the peak of physical perfection and combat prowess, showing him how to make the most of his unique gifts. But tragedy struck again for Matt as a teenager. His father, Jack Murdock, had been enjoying what he thought was a comeback in his boxing career, building up to a fight for the heavyweight championship. But before the title fight, his mob employers revealed that his opponents had been paid to take a fall for him, and now he was being paid to take a fall for the champion. But Jack knew Matt would be in the crowd, and just once, he wanted to make his son proud. He refused to throw the fight, and ended up winning the match and the title. For a short time, he was the champion of the world. He was shot dead by gangsters as soon as he left the stadium.

Matt Murdock hunted down and brought to justice all those directly responsible for his father's death, and for a while he thought that would be the end of it. He followed his father's wishes, graduated from Harvard Law School at the top of his class and became an attorney, opening up a new practise with his college roommate Foggy Nelson. But there was something inside that would not be silenced, an obsession with righting the wrongs of the world around him so that no one else would had to suffer the way he had suffered. So now, by day Matt Murdock is an attorney, an advocate for the rule of law, and by night he takes the law into his own hands as the vigilante known as Daredevil.

Why this character?
One of the main reasons is practical. I love playing Star-Lord, but as a cosmic character he's pretty removed from the goings on of the wider RPG. And while The Kingpin can be a facilitator who can set stories in motion, the nature of that character also removes him from a certain degree of direct interaction. Playing as a street level hero like Daredevil lets me act out some of the stuff I'll be putting into motion as Kingpin, helping progress that storyline and moving it forward. It also hopefully gives me a chance to RP with a wider range of other players in the game, hero and villain alike. It also helps that I'm on a real Daredevil kick right now, what with recently getting into the Mark Waid/Chris Samnee run on the comic and with the Netflix series approaching next year. I thought it would be interesting to give the character a try.

Provide a sample post as your character, with at least three paragraphs and featuring at least one line of dialogue:

Picture New York City. It's a massive, sprawling metropolis, an assault on the senses, the greatest city on Earth. My home. Imagine now that you were tasked with learning its every nook and cranny by heart. No mean feat: most of the city's taxi drivers can't even manage it. But think of how you might do it. How you'd use various key landmarks around the city as your signposts, and span outward from each of them, thinking of the various navigations through streets and avenues to get you back to your markers. Then you'd note the other memorable visuals to let you know you were on the right track. And as you built outwards in these concentric circles as your confidence and familiarity with the city, you'd start to see different ways that all these areas overlapped and interconnected. You'd reach out from Manhattan and start getting to grips with Brooklyn, Queens, each of the five boroughs. By the end, it would be a vast amount of knowledge to try and keep in your head.

Now imagine doing all that with your eyes closed.

Back when I could see, my New York City was very small, confined to a small chunk of Manhattan stretching from 34th to 59th Street and spanning from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River. These days many refer to it diplomatically as Midtown West. But for me it'll always be Hell's Kitchen. But when radioactive waste took away my sight as a boy, I got other things to compensate. My four remaining senses were enhanced to a superhuman degree, and my sight was replaced with a kind of 360 degree echolocation I've taken to calling my "radar sense", which I use to make out shapes and contours all around me. I can navigate through pretty much anywhere in New York City with reasonable confidence, but my picture of New York City is likely very different from your picture of New York City.

I can tell which part of Brooklyn I'm in by feeling the texture of the brownstone under my fingertips. The air in Queens has its own distinct smell and taste that sets it apart from the air on Staten Island. And the iconic Manhattan skyline is shaped out like an intricate, comforting grid by my radar sense. my unique perspective making its rooftops and flagpoles a far easier, more serene route of travel than its bustling, noisy streets.

My current resting spot is on top of a modestly sized 14-storey office building at West 44th Street and 9th Avenue. I like this little nook of the city. 9th Avenue is known for some of its great eateries, and there's a French place called Marseilles and Five Napkin Burger both on the ground floor of this building, not to mention a couple of pizza places across the road. The smells coming from them are mouth-watering. And while this building is reasonably high up for this area of Manhattan, it's hardly a skyscraper, meaning I'm not too far removed from the people roaming the streets on this brisk but thankfully dry New York City evening. I've trained enough to cope with it, but rain has more of an impact on my abilities than the inconvenience of getting my tights wet. From here, I can sit still, and listen to the city share its song with me, my ears attuned to pick up certain lyrics...

"...that'll be four dollars and seventy-five..."
"...watch where you're going you..."
"...not you, it's me, I..."
"...TAXI! TAXI..."
"...then I told him that if he's gonna act like..."
"Help me!"

Help me. A woman's voice, about 8 blocks down. I leap from rooftop to rooftop, headed in the direction of the screams, using the grapnel hook in my billy club to assist in the longer jumps. When I'm almost directly above the scene of the crime, in a densely packed back alley, I stop. A man and a woman are struggling. The man is average height, wears snakeskin leather shoes. Judging by his stink, he regularly uses chewing tobacco. But I'm more interested in the woman. She is screaming for help, and she certainly sounds scared, but her heartbeat tells a different story. Steady, only slightly elevated from exertion. Not the mad, spiking rhythm you'd expect from somebody fearing for their safety. So, an actress then. I scan the area and pick out two other men, believing themselves concealed behind a dumpster. One is short, with a very slender build. They reek of cheap cologne, the kind of watered-down bootleg junk that was probably sold as a brand name before it got watered down with other chemicals. With his nose he might not even know the difference, but to me the noxious fumes roll off him in waves like formaldehyde. Next to him is a giant of a man, nearly 7 foot tall, who judging by his body odour hasn't showered in at least two days.

This is quite clearly a trap. I smile at the thought that they've gone to all this effort for me.

Now that I'm aware of the set-up, it would be very easy to get the jump on them and end this quick. But then they might not be so talkative. My gut tells me I'll be able to find out more from them if they think they have the upper hand. But that depends on the assumption that this trap involves them sending a message rather than just quietly killing me, and they won't just try to put a bullet in my head the second my feet hit the ground. My radar sense tells me that Cheap Cologne and Chewing Tobacco are both carrying guns, but they were holstered, and Cheap Cologne was clutching a blunt instrument around the size of a crowbar. Seems like their plan is to take their time and beat to death. Yeah, good luck with that.

Of course, all this is speculation. They could still open fire once I show my face. I smile to myself. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I descend into the alleyway, leaping willingly into the trap that awaits.

 

Am considering re-telling my Felicia Hardy stories but that requires the Kingpin to set the pieces in play. Also need to know Peter's age (and re-read everything here) so I make Felicia the same relatively speaking. Not sure if I should PM or not...

 

I forgot, but no Marvel imprints like the Icon one Marvel has (or had) right?

 

I'm happy for Kingpin to interact with anyone as required.

 

Time to get my Nemesis on...

Also, Mr. Lees look this over and make sure it's copacetic with you.


Character Name: Tracy Lawless

Alignment: Villain

Character Speech Color and Font: Arial and black

Powers and Abilities: No powers, but Tracy is a former Army special forces operator and has all the skills and abilities that come with that job. In addition, Tracy is extremely street smart and is an expert criminal.

Character Origin/Backstory:

Tracy Lawless' early life was rough. He and his brother Ricky were constantly abused by their drunken criminal father, Teeg Lawless. Teeg acted as an enforcer for NYC crime boss Rigoletto. While Tracy took the abuse and quietly hated his father, Rick loved and admired Teeg to the point that it made Tracy sick and made him hate his little brother. Tracy and Rick were arrested for auto theft when Tracy was 18 and Rick was 15. Rick went to Juvie while Tracy got the choice to go to prison or join the army. Tracy took the army as his chance to escape New York and his father.

Lawless excelled in the army, so much so that he became a candidate for special forces training. His covert work in the Yugoslav Wars led to the slaughter of an entire village in Bosnia. In Iraq, Tracy was arrested after killing four US Army officers for their mistreatment of an Iraqi family. The army hushed up the crime and deemed Lawless too valuable to send to jail or kick out of the service. After a year in a military prison, Tracy was released to continue working for special forces. Shortly after he found out his brother Rick had been killed. Tracy escaped from the military base and went AWOL back home to New York.

Once home, Tracy infiltrated Rick's crew and began to figure out who killed his brother while helping the crew on the score. Tracy stole cash from a Kingpin courier upon his arrival back home. Fisk's people watched from afar as Tracy killed Rick's old crew in revenge. After discovering the true nature of his brother's murder and the pointlessness of revenge, Tracy was brought to the man himself. There Fisk made him an offer: Tracy would work for him as an enforcer or the Kingpin would kill the few people left in the world Tracy cared about. With no other option, Tracy accepted and the son became the father.


Why this character?

I love crime stories, and I think the Lawless character gives me a unique way to be a street level criminal instead of a hero.

Provide a sample post as your character, with at least three paragraphs and featuring at least one line of dialogue:


Queens

Tracy sat stock-still in the front seat of the car. He left the Charger at home for a generic looking sedan he saw on a side street downtown. Three seconds to get into the car with his slim jim, and another thirty to jam the screwdriver into the ignition just the right way to start the car. The Charger was the best getaway car out there in Tracy's opinion, but out here in Queens he needed something that didn't stand out in the land of minivans and SUVs.

Three in the morning and there was only one house that still had more than one light on. It was the same house Tracy had been watching for eighteen hours now. Two days ago he followed a guy from the Marcy Projects all the way here. The same guy had been pointed out to Tracy by one of Leroy's many lookouts he had in that part of town. The kid said the guy had been strutting around the past few weeks, flashing a lot of cash. He wasn't affiliated with any of Leroy's stash crews of dealers, which was bad news. Nobody in that part of town had that kind of money without slinging, robbing, or getting some kind of settlement check.

A stick-up crew had been roaming around the projects for a month now, ripping off Leroy's stashes and dealers for cash and dope. The stick-up crew had made the worst mistake they would ever make in their lives because Leroy worked for Fisk, and when someone stole from Fisk he sent Tracy to make sure they could never steal anything again. Tracy found the man they were selling the drugs to, an independent slinger by the name of Marcus. Tracy broke both his hands as a warning to buy only from Leroy from now on. It was through Leroy's lookouts and the fence that Tracy was able to work it back to this house. Almost an entire day watching the house and he saw three men coming and going. Eyewitnesses had said it was a three man crew robbing Leroy's people. That was all Tracy needed.

Twenty minutes later and the lights went out in the house. Tracy waited another two hours after that. If there was one thing the Army taught him, it was how to wait. He once waited in a wadi in Iraq for two straight days, looking through a rifle scope and waiting for some ISIL mother****er to sit down and take a crap before he could pop him in the back of the head from a half mile away. Waiting in this car, pissing in a coffee thermos, and watching these morons who were too ****ed up on dope to spot a stake out was too easy.

He pulled his piece out of the glove compartment box and checked it out of habit. Five in the morning on a Sunday, nobody on the block would be up and he would have cover of darkness for another forty minutes or so. Tracy slowly got out the car and tucked the gun into his waistband as he walked down the street towards the house.

 

That all reads good to me, Byrd! And thanks, Carnage. I don't know if three will be too many to juggle, but I'll see how long I can keep it up!

 

Finally...

Hopefully that's just the dam breaking and we'll just see a ton of clear posting on this end now, since I should have the means to keep pace.

 

Post made pending formatting, which I'll get to later.

 

I keep on forgetting I'm writing Daredevil. I keep catching myself about to write a description of Daredevil seeing something only to remember he's blind. Or just there, I looked back at one of my old posts and saw a reference to Daredevil knocking a gun aside and it firing skywards, and I had to edit that out because a gunshot would hurt Daredevil with his super-hearing.

 

Gotta remember "no colours" when writing from Daredevil's perspective. Pretty much anything else you can justify via radar sense, but colours basically don't exist.

Should have a busy weekend on all RPGs. Bringing in the old computer to work.

 

Can I just say, Byrd, that last Lawless post was a stunner. Pure, hard-boiled noir. We need to have Tracy and Fisk meet up soon.

 

Thank you, and I'm free to have a run in as soon as you are.

 

Oops, I missed out "And then Fisk pisses on the carpet to mark his territory" at the end of that last post, better go edit.

 

...with no regard to the way that rug tied the room together.

 

Ooooooooooooh just saw Byrd's reply.