Wild Talents - White Knights, Black Hearts

White Knights, Black Hearts Wild Talents on the Mean Streets Written by Shane Ivey • Illustrated by Todd Shearer

“White Knights, Black Hearts” is a Wild Talents adventure for low- to moderately-powered superheroes in a setting with all the default character archetypes. Please read no further if you expect to go through this scenario as a player. This adventure brings the player characters—a loose group of third-rate, down-on-their-luck supers—into a mob war in the turbulent year 1975. As the adventure begins, the heroes find themselves squarely in the sights of the police, the Mafia, assorted superpowered criminals, and the city’s most famous superhero team. Only quick, streetwise thinking and a little superhuman luck will pull them through this adventure unscathed.

Which World?

“White Knights, Black Hearts” is not set in the “official” world of Wild Talents and GODLIKE. It’s a mix of the comics, movies and TV shows of the mid-1970s of our own real world. It’s about the sweat and grit of Streets of San Francisco and Shaft, with Bronze Age heroes and antiheroes working the streets far beneath the notice of more powerful Silver Age-style superheroes.

The Colors of Heroism How does the world of “White Knights, Black Hearts” look in terms of Wild Talents’ axes of superheroic world design? Red 2: Superhumans have had a significant but not overwhelming impact on this world. The city relies on an officially sanctioned superhero team to protect it from superhuman threats and superpowered factions are at play in the underworld, but the culture at large is recognizable as our own. Gold 3: Superhumans themselves are certainly not changeless, but their reputations change only slowly. Even those who don’t bother with secret identities find themselves “typecast” by a public more interested in what they can do than what they actually do or why.

Blue 2: Major supernatural forces are at work but are not commonly acknowledged as such. Sure, there’s a famous superhero called the Black Atlantean, and that’s a good schtick, but nobody really thinks he’s really an immortal from Plato’s mythical Atlantis. Black 3: Superpowers tend to clarify the differences between right and wrong and amplify the consequences of how we obtain and use power. On the streets of Red Shore law and order aren’t always the same as justice and truth—in fact most folks in this part of town hear “law and order” and think “oppression”—but anyone can see that superpowered murderers need to be stopped fast.

Pregenerated Characters Six pregenerated player characters—Jake “The Cannon” Crawford, Barry “Trouble Man” Brown, Carter “The Streak” Benke, Carl “Leatherneck” Anderson, Elias “Redshift” Brock and Rosie “Scorch” Williams—are included at the end of “White Knights, Black Hearts.” The pregenerated heroes were designed to fit the scenario and setting, but players should feel free to create their own characters. There are only a few core requirements. 250 Points: Each player character should be built on 250 Points. If they are more powerful than that, you may want to beef up the NPCs to keep the players from having an easy time of it. Put down by the Man: Each player character’s background should explain why and how he or she has been kept back from the mainstream acclaim and success that some superhumans enjoy. On the streets: The player characters should either be focused on making life better for the underside of the city or involved closely with such characters. It’s 1975: That means no Internet, no cell phones, not even much cable TV. Even microwave ovens are a novelty. Be sure the characters reflect the times.

Contents

The Black Atlantean . . . ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Which World? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Minute Man (349 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Welcome to Red Shore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

The Heroes of Red Shore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Why 1975? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Archetype: Pinioned (15 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

What’s Goin’ On? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The Cannon (250 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Scene 1: The Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Trouble Man (250 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Scene 2: Fugitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

The Streak (250 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Scene 3: The White Knights (or, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”) . . . . . 10

Leatherneck (250 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35

Typical Beat Cop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Redshift (250 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36

Typical Plainclothes Detective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Scorch (250 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Typical SWAT Team Specialist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Scene 4: The Morgue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Credits

Scene 5: On the Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

“White Knights, Black Hearts” is written by Shane Ivey, © 2010, and

Scene 6: The Crooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

illustrated by Todd Shearer, © 2006. The One-Roll Engine is © Greg

For the Players: Folks Around Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Stolze. Wild Talents is © Dennis Detwiller, Kenneth Hite, Shane Ivey

Scene 7: Investigating Babyface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

and Greg Stolze, © 2010. Special thanks to Joe Crowe and Kevin

Scene 8: Babyface and Crabbe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Pezzano, who came up with Trouble Man and The Cannon, respectively.

Scene 9: Crooked Talents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Published by Arc Dream Publishing. • Wild Talents is available to

Officer Crabbe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

gamers and game stores around the world from Arc Dream Publishing

Babyface Nestor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

and Cubicle 7 Entertainment. To order or to get more downloads and game resources, visit Wild Talents on the Web:

Scene 10: The Golden House Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Scene 11: Mob Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

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Scene 12: The Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Scene 13: The Purge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Kung Fu Fighting! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Scene 14: City Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Lt. Detective Tom Kelley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Sammy Sacchi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Mafia Goons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Meanwhile, At the Hall of Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Scene 15: Fredo’s Import Emporium Warehouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Wrapping Things Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Needle-Nose (200 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Two-Ton (200 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Joe Assissi (400 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Fenris (250 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Nocturne (250 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Joe Assisi’s Favorite Spells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 The White Knights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Whitelight (338 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Grailknight (437 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 The Black Atlantean (500 pts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Glimmer (250 points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

White Knights, Black Hearts

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“I Told Him We’ve Already Got One” Why 1975?

What’s that? Your players want to use characters from your existing Wild Talents campaign? Fair enough. Thrust them into the time and setting of “White Knights, Black Hearts.” Here are some tried and true possibilities. What if . . . : It’s a one-shot adventure exploring what life would be like if the characters were in different circumstances. Purely hypothetical and a favorite of comic books, the “What if . . . ” possibility allows the players and GM to have a good time and not worry about all the niggling little details like just how they got there or how they’ll get back. Alternate reality: Some powerful entity (a god, wizard, dimension-ripping Talent, or whatever) changes the world around the characters. They remember the way it was, but they have no idea how to get it back. In the meantime, this is their life. Come up with a reason for the characters to have been dumped into “White Knights, Black Hearts” (maybe it was a test of their powers or morality), and some conditions on which they will be returned to their own world, and you’re set. The quest to get back home might make a good sequel. Free your mind: The players think they’ve gotten trapped in an alternate reality, but it’s all a shared illusion. Whether it’s a full-sensory computer simulation or some monster telepath’s mind trip, the result is the same: they are trapped in this world until they find out how to make it stop. Let “White Knights, Black Hearts” be the interlude before they figure out what’s happening, or let the events in the scenario be tied into their means of escape. Time travel: Got a time machine? Go ahead and use it. As the GM, though, you’ll need to do a little fudging to make the characters fit the scenario; unlike the pre-generated characters, your time travelers won’t be known to the city and won’t have any vested interest in protecting it, apart from the need to clear their names so as to avoid trouble until they find their way back home. Maybe they can prevent a future tragedy by figuring out the real culprit in this case. Do whatever fits your campaign.

“White Knights, Black Hearts” is about trust, corruption, belonging and betrayal—with superheroes. Something about that mix just sounds right when set to a soundtrack of mid-’70s funk.

tremendous culture shock. Every level of official authority seemed riddled with abuse. The Watergate scandal rocked the White House and toppled the president. The Church Committee hearings exposed the CIA’s dirty secrets to the world. Serpico blew corruption in the NYPD wide open. The FBI admitted that it had kept secret files on its political enemies for decades. In 1975 the messy, humiliating retreat from the moral and military quagmire of Vietnam finally ended.

As the anomie spread, the empowerment movements of the late

1960s seemed often to degenerate into street gangs and terrorists, celebrity posers and noisily ineffective lobbyists. Mainstream youth culture slid from muddled idealism to nihilistic hedonism, while middle America struggled to carry on unaffected by it all.

Urban cop shows were ubiquitous in the ’70s, but the real-

world police were often as alien and detached from their crimeridden cities as a foreign occupying force. The ‘pigs’ had few ties to the communities they were entrusted to police, which were wracked by the sudden explosion of the drug trade and its violence, impoverishment, and waste.

The heroes and villains of “White Knights, Black Hearts” reflect

those divisions in society, amplified and exaggerated. The good guys are the underdogs, the poor, the third-rate, struggling to protect their own while the truly powerful remain far above and oblivious to the truth of the situation. When those two worlds collide, blood can spill.

As it so often did in 1975.

Red Shore docks at its armpit. The big city goes about its business uptown and downtown, but on the outskirts things are tough, the work is hard and underpaid (when any can be found at all), and the city’s official superhuman protectors have more important things to worry about. The player characters, street-level vigilantes trying to make it a day at a time, only do what they can to help. Like their adopted community, they have all been put down by The Man. The heroes are not the darlings of the media, the government, or the public. They may even be involved in some

Welcome to Red Shore

The action takes place in a run-down neighborhood called Red Shore, where the people trust heroes who live among them but turn warily away from the cops. Where exactly is Red Shore? That’s up to you. It could be in New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Pick your favorite seaside urban sprawl and you can find the White Knights, Black Hearts

But it’s more than that. In America, the 1970s were a time of

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What’s Goin’ On?

ert Altman’s Nashville capture a sense of hope-

continues, with former White House staffers

Want a snapshot of life in 1975? Well, that’s

less defiance in the remnants of the counter-

and officials regularly being deposed and ei-

too much for a quick note like this. But here’s

culture. Actors like Gene Hackman and Steve

ther heading to prison or just now getting out.

a little flavor.

McQueen star in muggy action thrillers like

In June, an Eastern Airlines 727 crashes at JFK

What do they watch on TV? Cop shows

Night Moves and last year’s Towering Inferno;

Airport, killing 113.

are everywhere! Television in the 1950s and

and comedies are as strange and varied as



’60s was ruled by Westerns, but these days it’s

Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Rocky

Prime Minister of Britain in February, the same

all detective shows and cops in squad cars:

Horror Picture Show, Shampoo, Tommy,

month the Attorney General admitted that the

Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, Streets of San Fran-

Young Frankenstein, and kids’ hits like Benji

FBI kept secret files on politicians’ private lives

cisco, The Rockford Files, Adam 12, Police

and the ongoing Herbie the Love Bug series.

for decades on the orders of J. Edgar Hoover.

Story, Mannix, Cannon; the list goes on and



on. Comedy hits include M*A*S*H, All in the

Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us

July 30 in Detroit.

Family, Maude, Happy Days, The Odd Couple,

Together” is Number One on the charts. Other



Sanford and Son, and The Carol Burnett Show.

hits include “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another

arrested trying to assassinate President Ford;

Little House on the Prairie, Kung Fu and Mar-

Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song”

in November, a Senate committee will report

cus Welby, M.D., round out dramas, and there

by B.J. Thomas, “The Hustle” by Van McCoy

that U.S. officials and the CIA had formed plots

are even a few sci-fi shows around, like Planet

& The Soul City Symphony, “Angie Baby” by

to assassinate foreign leaders; in December, a

of the Apes, Kolchak—The Night Stalker, and

Helen Reddy, and “Jive Talkin’” by the Bee-

bomb kills 11 and injures 75 at New York’s La-

the hit Six Million Dollar Man.

Gees. Want some atmosphere in your game?

Guardia Airport.



Download a few of these songs to play in the



ma, stark urban suspense, and oddball com-

background.

blazing, exhaust from window-mounted air

edy rule the box office. Kubrick’s period piece



What about politics? Ah, politics in

conditioners beats down, and sweaty men in

Barry Lyndon and Sean Connery’s The Man

1975. The U.S. withdraws from the war in

sleazy clubs make deals to ruin the lives of a

Who Would Be King take new looks at times

Vietnam as South Vietnam surrenders to the

few beleaguered, would-be heroes. . . .

past. Al Pacino’s Dog Day Afternoon and Rob-

communist North. The fallout of Watergate



What’s at the movies? Historical dra-

What’s on the radio? Believe it or not,

shady deals themselves, but mostly they try to do good and make life a little better for those around them. They are more concerned with the day to day lives of ordinary people, their friends and loved ones struggling to make ends meet, than supervillains’ ludicrous schemes to take over the world. After all, on the streets, even the small villains are usually too dangerous or too well-connected to be taken down once and for all—maybe a thug can’t kill you, but he can kill your sister, girlfriend, mother, or grocer. As the cops learned long ago, when you put one punk or gangster away there are always more to take his place. They keep the peace with street gangs, ragingly corrupt police precincts, and the mob, because keeping the peace is the only way to reign them all in. More often than not, cutting a deal with a criminal or a gang can keep the peace and stop something big from going down, even if it doesn’t put every bad guy in sight in the big house. White Knights, Black Hearts

Margaret Thatcher became the first female

Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa disappears on In September, two separate women will be

But for now it’s still summer. The sun is

Take Tony Sacchi, head of the Sacchi crime family. Sacchi keeps the worst drugs, the designer stuff that’ll kill an addict quick, off the streets, and he keeps his people from doing violence against ordinary shopkeepers and citizens. In return, he expects the cops and the local heroes to leave his people alone when it comes to the small stuff. Sacchi may move the occasional stolen truckload of merchandise into his warehouse, but that’s a small price to pay. Things could be much worse. Some folks say it would be better for the heroes to take on Tony Sacchi and his whole organization. Those folks don’t have to live in Red Shore.

Behind the Scenes: Power Play The adventure begins as the heroes become targets in a Mafia power play. Anthony Sacchi is boss of the Sacchi Family, but his nephew Sammy Sacchi wants to take his place. 5

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Sammy Sacchi and his allies want to toss out the informal deals that his uncle has made with law enforcement and superhuman vigilantes, the deals that keep the heroes out of the mob’s business (mostly) and the cops quiet and happy. Sammy Sacchi likes to think big—particularly of the big, big profits he’ll make in the drug trade once all his uncle’s “stupid rules” are gone. He tells his boys that his new product will take the city by storm, so fast the heroes and the cops won’t even have time to blink. Sammy and his allies are ready to move. He’s made deals with street thugs in Red Shore, guys who have been kept down by the city’s underworld heroes. They helped set things up, and Sammy brought in his own hired Talents to drive the heroes off or eliminate them for good. Two of these thugs—a killer named Jacob “Needle-Nose” Ward and a sorcerer named Joe Assissi—arrange a particularly heinous killing to pin on the heroes. Assissi creates illusions to make them look like two of the heroes and get away clean afterward; Needle-Nose does the dirty work. Sammy Sacchi fully expects to have the heroes under control by daybreak, but he’s no fool. If he thinks the heroes are likely to get to the bottom of things—and the cops and even other superheroes from downtown can’t stop them— he has potential witnesses killed off to keep them from talking, just in case. If the heroes want to solve this mystery and clear their names, they have to move fast.

Scene by Scene “White Knights, Black Hearts” features a large number of nonplayer characters and possible events. This breakdown should help you make sense of it all. Scene 1: The Setup. The heroes are framed for a brutal murder and must get away from the cops or spend the rest of the adventure in lock-up. From here the heroes are most likely to interact with the authorities (scenes 2 and 4), the White Knights (scene 3), local civilians (scene 5), and/or the criminal element (scenes 6 and 9). Scene 2: Fugitives. The heroes have sources among the police that they can tap for information on the case—but some of those sources aren’t at all trustworthy. Scene 3: The White Knights. The city’s official superhero team shows up to help the police deal with these “rogue superhumans” wanted for murder. They can potentially be useful allies for the heroes, but at first they are dangerous adversaries. White Knights, Black Hearts

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Scene 1: The Setup

Scene 4: The Morgue. One obvious source of clues is the body of the murder victim. Scene 5: On the Town. The heroes have a number of friends and potential witnesses to interview, if they’re careful enough to not tip off the police. Scene 6: The Crooks. Red Shore is loaded with criminals, from street hoods to powerful gangsters, and many of them suspect the gang war that’s about to go down. Scene 7: Investigating Babyface. The heroes may try to track down a thug who bragged to a couple of mafia goons about how he was going to help take down the local superheroes. Scene 8: Babyface and Crabbe. The thug and his partner, a crooked cop, can point the way to the real killers—if the heroes find them in time. Scene 9: Crooked Talents. The heroes may suspect superhuman involvement and want to question some local Talents who live outside the law. Two of these are deeply involved in the events in Red Shore—but they are nowhere to be found. Scene 10: The Golden House Club. The most likely culprit in the murder is a thug and wannabe assassin who earns his living at a pit-fighting club. The heroes may go there looking for him. Scene 11: Mob Rules. The heroes may go to Tony Sacchi, the mob boss with whom they have a tacit truce, to find out what he and especially his closest rival are up to. Scene 12: The Press. The cops aren’t the only ones looking for the heroes. . . . Scene 13: The Purge. As the heroes close in on the truth, mastermind Sammy Sacchi decides to cut his losses—opening his move against his uncle with a murderous purge of everyone involved in the frame-up of the heroes. Scene 14: City Hall. The heroes may finally confront Sammy Sacchi and his allies, high in the city government, at City Hall itself. This is one possible climactic scene for the adventure. Scene 15: Fredo’s Import Emporium Warehouse. In another possible climax, the heroes may confront Sammy Sacchi and his allies and superpowered goons on his own turf.

White Knights, Black Hearts

The streets of Red Shore, nearly midnight. One or two of the player characters are out for a stroll, keeping an eye out for trouble. They find it. The heroes spy the corpse of a little girl in a dead-end alley. It’s the body of a local named Tonya Serrano, obviously very recently killed and horribly mutilated. There are footprints and fingerprints in the blood—but the players barely have time to look at the scene when a shriek sounds out from a fire escape overhead, and a few people come cautiously to their windows to see. An old woman points accusingly at the heroes. “I saw ’em! I saw ’em! They killed Tonya!” It is 11:47 p.m. Then they hear the sirens. It’s all happening too quickly—has that old woman really had time and the inclination to call the cops?—but the police are coming fast, only a couple of blocks away. The heroes have four rounds to do whatever they want to do, and onlookers at their windows will watch every second of it. At first only one squad car shows up, but as soon as they see and recognize the heroes one cop will be on the radio calling for backup while the other aims a shotgun and shouts at the heroes to put their hands on their heads and hit the pavement. More sirens are very close. Other squad cars will show up in only five rounds. Getting away shouldn’t be too hard, unless the heroes make themselves good targets and the cops get lucky. They can shimmy up the fire escapes for the roof, head into one of the buildings, or even push right past the cops if they aren’t afraid of gunfire. But they should know to be careful. Being spotted at the scene of a murder is one thing. If they kill or badly hurt a cop, they lose every last chance of credibility with the authorities.

Scene 2: Fugitives

If the heroes keep their heads down, they may be able to talk to a few people and get to the bottom of things. It’s one of the few nice things about living in the shady part of town: Most people still talk to you when you’re on the run. That doesn’t mean the heroes have an easy ride. The cops and the downtown super-team, the White Knights, are out for blood, and the press wants pictures of it. As soon as the word goes out that superhumans are suspects, the city’s heavily armed SWAT team rolls out of headquarters down7

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RED SHORE

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town and waits at the local precinct house for a chance to take them down. The heroes should have plenty of chances for encounters with police, and there’s room for variety. They might spot a patrol car coming around the corner, or a beat cop in a café window, or an unmarked car (Brains+Streetwise or an equivalent skill will recognize it) parked on a corner with a pair of sweaty detectives sitting on watch. The more people they talk to in Red Shore, the more frequently the cops should show up. Sooner or later, the cops and the White Knights will spot a pattern in sightings of the heroes, set some bait—“I heard something you oughta know. Come meet me at 23rd and Fish Avenue!”—and land on them with both feet. If the players aren’t very careful, eventually they’ll have to fight to get away. Unofficially, there are a few cops in the area who’ll talk to them without trying to slap on the cuffs. Maybe they know the heroes and don’t believe they would have done such a heinous crime, or maybe they’re willing to pretend as much for the right incentive. It varies from cop to cop and from hero to hero. The players have to be careful—apart from the cops they know, most call in the SWAT team as soon as the heroes show themselves. No cops know about Sammy Sacchi’s plot against the heroes.

he learns about the heroes, he’ll report to Sammy Sacchi. But Sacchi has told him nothing about the plot against the heroes.

The Dispatcher Geraldine McLaughlin is a no-nonsense dispatcher with a clean record, working her way through college. An anonymous call came in at 11:40 P.M.; a woman’s voice saying the heroes had been seen carrying a body (which appeared to be a child’s body), into the alley where they found Tonya. McLaughlin was dubious, but the woman named the heroes specifically and described what they were wearing. She reported it to a squad car on patrol nearby.

Officer Gwen Harold Gwen, a beat cop, is nervous about everything. He’s heard rumors the Sacchi family is getting shaken up from the inside, that the boss’ nephew is looking to squeeze out all the boss’ soldiers and the cops who won’t play ball with the new regime. Gwen doesn’t like what he’s heard about the nephew— he likes things nice and peaceful, like they are now—but he’s afraid to rock the boat. He doesn’t want to talk to the heroes or get involved in anything controversial, and he doesn’t know anything about the case except what he hears on the radio.

Officer Miller Another beat cop, Dick Miller always chases down violent troublemakers, but he largely leaves street-level vice alone. He’s not on the take with Sacchi or anybody else, but he is willing to look the other way if Sammy Sacchi takes over and steps up the family’s operations in Red Shore, as long as things don’t get too nasty. He doesn’t know anything about the murder. If the heroes confront him, he gets on the radio to report as soon as the heroes are away and he is safe.

Lt. Kelley Lieutenant Detective Tom Kelley is in charge of investigations in this precinct. He knows the heroes, and can be “convinced” that they are innocent and will try not to turn them in. (He knows full well that they didn’t do it, but he’ll put on a show of slowly coming over to their side.) He offers to keep an eye on things and keep them in the loop if they will do the same. He heard the dispatch go out at 11:44 P.M., three minutes before the heroes found Tonya’s body. A witness (Miriam Wilson; see below) saw them carrying the body onto the scene, and their fingerprints and footprints (whatever might be on file—it’s your call as GM) were all over the place. Secretly, Kelley works for Sammy Sacchi, and has been in-

Officer Conner A beat cop with some bad, bad habits, Jerry Conner is a gambler and a shakedown artist. Always desperate for cash to pay his debts from the tables, he beats and threatens donations out of the punks on the street, intimidates other cops to keep them quiet, and sends enough kickbacks upstairs to keep himself safe from investigation. He has been

strumental in recruiting police to work for the upstart mobster. He has tried to keep Sammy’s people from targeting cops who don’t want to play ball—but he could only shake his head and look the other way the time or two when a prospective recruit took dumb risks to fight Sammy and paid the price. Anything White Knights, Black Hearts

on the Sacchi payroll for a long time, but he doesn’t really care who is running the show. As long as Sammy Sacchi lets him bet and lets him do what he must to pay up, he’ll be happy. He doesn’t know a thing about the plot against the heroes. 9

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Scene 3: The White Knights (or, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”)

Typical Beat Cop Body 3d

Coordination 2d

Sense 2d

Mind 2d

Charm 2d

Command 3d

Base Will 5 Skills: Athletics 1d (4d), Brawling 2d (5d), Driving: Car 2d (4d),

Squad cars won’t be the only response to the cops’ call for help. Within half an hour, the White Knights—the city’s official superpowered champions—arrive in Red Shore, looking for the “renegade” Talents and ready for a fight. If they find them, the White Knights request that the heroes come in quietly so they can get to the bottom of the murder—if they’re innocent, after all, the truth will come out. As with the cops, the heroes are better off trying to escape without a fight. Obnoxious as they are, the White Knights may be useful allies later on, and they’ll certainly be tough enemies. If they kept in touch with Detective Kelley, he’s probably the first to warn the heroes that the White Knights are on their trail. With every passing hour they look more like they’re out for blood. They think the heroes are out of control, a danger to the community and the police, and Kelley says they’re looking to put them under lock and key—or on a slab, if necessary. Just a friendly warning. If the heroes have been open with him, Kelley will lead the White Knights right to them. He doesn’t need much information; only enough for Grailknight’s massive intellect to spot the patterns and guess where they’ll show up next. Kelley feeds the heroes enough genuine-sounding clues warnings to keep them in touch until the White Knights are ready to jump on them. As vigilantes go, the White Knights are publicity-conscious and genuinely worried about civilians, and they are wary of excessive risk to bystanders. This might give the heroes an opening to get away without anyone getting hurt or killed. Grailknight keeps watch on the witness, Miriam Wilson, and on Tonya Serrano’s home. If the heroes go to one or the other after the White Knights have come on the scene, Grailknight will be there; but not both, unless there’s some clue that you think he needs to impart to the heroes. Grailknight moves cautiously after taking some time to observe the heroes’ behavior, attempting to sneak up on a lone character, incapacitate and arrest him (or her) and haul the hero off for questioning. Grailknight is alert, smarter than

Empathy 1d (3d), Intimidation 2d (5d), Knowledge: Criminology 1d (3d), Lie 1d (3d), Melee Weapon: Nightstick 2d (5d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 2d (4d), Ranged Weapon: Shotgun 1d (3d), Stability 2d (5d), Streetwise 1d (3d)

Weapons .38 revolver (Cap. 6, Damage: width in Shock, width+1 in Killing) 12-gauge shotgun (Cap. 5, Spray 3, Damage: width+1 in Shock and Killing) Nightstick (Damage: width+1 in Shock) Bulletproof vest (LAR 2 for hit locations 7–9)

Typical Plainclothes Detective Body 3d

Coordination 2d

Sense 2d

Mind 2d

Charm 2d

Command 3d

Base Will 5 Skills: Athletics 1d (4d), Brawling 2d (5d), Driving: Car 2d (4d), Empathy 2d (4d), Interrogation 2d (4d), Intimidation 2d (5d), Knowledge: Criminology 3d (5d), Lie 3d (5d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 2d (4d), Scrutinize 2d (4d), Stability 2d (5d), Streetwise 2d (4d)

Weapons .38 revolver (Cap. 6, Damage: width in Shock, width+1 in Killing) Bulletproof vest (LAR 2 for hit locations 7–9)

Typical SWAT Team Specialist Body 3d

Coordination 3d

Sense 2d

Mind 2d

Charm 2d

Command 3d

Base Will 5 Skills: Athletics 3d (6d), Brawling 3d (6d), Driving: Car 2d (4d), Intimidation 3d (6d), Knowledge: Criminology 2d (4d), Lie 2d (4d), Ranged Weapon: Grenade 2d (5d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 3d (6d), Ranged Weapon: Rifle 3d (6d), Stability 3d (6d), Streetwise 1d (3d)

Weapons .45 pistol (Cap. 7, Damage: width+1 in Shock and Killing) M-16 assault rifle (Cap. 30, Spray 4, Damage: width+2 in Shock and Killing) .308 sniper rifle (Cap. 8, Damage: width+2 in Shock and width+3 in Killing) Bulletproof vest and helmet (LAR 2 for hit locations 7–10)

White Knights, Black Hearts

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any real human who ever lived, and very difficult to trick or corner. Whitelight spends most of his time patrolling over the city, watching for trouble, and acting as his team’s go-between with the police. He occasionally checks in with the cops, swooping down like a falling star, getting an update, and flying off again. If there’s a report that the heroes have been spotted somewhere, Whitelight is the first to investigate. If the heroes are found in an abandoned or mafiaowned building, he crashes in straight through the walls and demands their surrender. The Black Atlantean keeps a vigil at the waterfront, interrogating workers and night watchmen and watching for signs of trouble or indications of the fugitives. By the middle of the day after the murder he has the local longshoremen doing his bidding, and he instructs them to bring word if there is any news of the heroes. Like Whitelight, he charges in by the most direct route available when the heroes are spotted and commands immediate surrender. He pulls his punches to avoid killing the suspects outright . . . unless one of them manages to genuinely hurt him or kills a bystander. Minute Man and Glimmer work as a team; they have a strange, sometimes tense father-daughter dynamic, but they work well together. They usually stay close to the police precinct, but they move quickly ahead of the cops if the heroes are sighted. In an encounter, Minute Man charges ahead to freeze all that he can while Glimmer watches for stragglers and sends a signal skyward for Whitelight and the others to see.

breaking the law, just add it to the charges against them. The preliminary report indicates no sign of sexual molestation; no ligature marks on Tonya’s hands or throat; and no defense wounds—meaning she wasn’t tied up and she didn’t try to keep herself from being killed. Cause of death was severe blunt trauma to the head and torso. The report is inconclusive as to the instrument(s) used to kill her but, based on the shape and angle of the wounds, the examiner determines that there were several blunt metal implements used of varying shapes: some seemed to cause narrow contusions like a crowbar, others broader trauma like an aluminum baseball bat. Tonya’s flesh and bones are too badly damaged for any more conclusive judgment of the shape or size of the murder weapon.

Scene 5: On the Town

In Red Shore, not many people believe the heroes actually killed Tonya Serrano. The cops and the White Knights are on the prowl and have been asking around, but many locals are willing to talk to the heroes—if they are circumspect enough that it won’t draw another visit by the authorities. If the heroes walk up to somebody’s front door in broad daylight, they pretend nobody’s home; if they approach on the sly they’ll spare a few minutes without yelling for help.

Tonya’s Parents Did I say most people don’t believe the heroes did it? Well, Tonya’s parents are the exception. Al and Sonya Serrano are devastated, and they grab any chance at explanation and blame and cling to it tenaciously. The word is a witness saw the heroes murder their little girl, and that’s all they need to know. If the heroes show up at their door, Al gets his .357 Python from the nightstand. Things could get bloody fast if the heroes don’t show some discretion. He has an attack roll of 4d.

Scene 4: The Morgue

The victim’s body is being examined at the morgue. A preliminary report on Tonya Serrano’s death will be ready 12 hours after the body is found, and it should not be too difficult to obtain if the players are reasonably smart and sneaky. The morgue is in the basement of a major uptown hospital, in another part of the city far from Red Shore. A good disguise and fake credentials as a visiting doctor or medical student might do the trick, although the medical examiners stay fairly close to their “guests” during the visit; the players need to come up with a good way to shake their

The Witness Miriam Wilson is an elderly woman living alone in a thirdfloor apartment overlooking the alley where Tonya’s body was found. If the heroes confront her directly, she screams for help and causes all kinds of commotion. They need to find some way to talk to her without alarming her.

babysitters. The heroes might also try to simply break into the place, but this is easier said than done. The morgue doesn’t close, and there is always a medical examiner on duty, plus at least two cops in the hospital upstairs. If the heroes get spotted White Knights, Black Hearts

Wilson saw the heroes go into the alley carrying something in a big bag, a few minutes before the sirens. She left the window and went back to minding her own business, because she thought the heroes must’ve been doing some good. When she peeked a few minutes later and saw them standing there over 11

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For the Players: Folks Around Town

Dick Miller: A local beat cop. Gung-ho

tougher and stronger he gets. Has kept a low

against violent troublemakers, but mostly

profile since serving time for a bungled bank

Not all of these locals are friends, but not all of

leaves street vice alone.

job.

them are enemies, either. When you’re working

Jerry Conner: A local beat cop. Tough and

Needle-Nose: Jacob “Needle-Nose” Ward.

the streets caution is the key.

intimidating. Word has it he shakes down the

Skin and bones are hard as steel. Got out of jail

pimps and pushers regularly to feed a gam-

from a juvenile manslaughter charge a year ago.

bling habit.

Nape: Henry “Nape” Ranson. A deranged

Tonya Serrano: The victim. Eight years old

Carl Crabbe: A local beat cop. Big and ugly,

homeless veteran who bleeds liquid fire. Reg-

and brutally murdered.

with a career that stalled twenty years ago. Fa-

ularly jailed for arson, vagrancy, and assault.

Cecelia “CC” Walton: A local girl who’s

vors the local hookers and strip clubs.

The Street

been working the streets for 10 of her 25 rough

The White Knights

years. Knows everybody.

The Mob

Cedricks Moore: CC’s pimp. Strictly small-

Tony Sacchi: Head of the Sacchi family,

too brightly to see.

time.

whose territory includes Red Shore.

Grailknight: A mysterious armored avenger.

Chuckie Gooche: A pawnbroker and fence.

Giorgio Mans: A representative of Tony Sac-

Glimmer: A girl who reflects and amplifies

Well-connected and tight-lipped.

chi in Red Shore. Runs Georgie’s Place.

light like a walking mirror.

The King Road Disciples: The biggest

Danny Miller: A representative of Tony Sac-

Minute Man: An aging veteran of WW2 who

street gang in the area. Into car theft and dope.

chi in Red Shore. Usually found in Georgie’s

can freeze time for short periods.

Led by Larry Martin.

Place.

The Black Atlantean: The exiled, immortal

The Law

Crooked Talents

Whitelight: A flying powerhouse who glows

Lt. Det. Tom Kelley: In charge of investiga-

Booster: Gregory G. “Booster” Embry. Ampli-

tions in the Red Shore precinct. Canny but not

fies sound. A small-timer who spies on people

crooked. Has dealt straight with you before.

with his superpower for a living.

Harold Gwen: A local beat cop. Quiet, unas-

Two-Ton: Karl “Two-Ton” Kuhn. Increases his

suming, mild-mannered.

weight and strength. The heavier he gets, the

Tonya’s body, she screamed, and the police came before she even got a chance to call them. If the heroes have some way of telling, Wilson is telling the truth—she saw all of this with her own eyes.

the body was found; she didn’t know anything was wrong until she heard the screaming (and gunshots, if there were any) outside. Her son, Francois, is a high school student who was up late that night with his headphones on, listening to James Brown albums. His stoutly barred window is right next to the alley, but he didn’t hear or see anything, either.

The Old Man Jesse Otis is an old man who lives alone on the second floor, across the alley from Miriam Wilson’s window. He keeps heavy bars over his window and a heavy lock on his door, and his apartment smells like old cat food. He didn’t see nothin’, didn’t hear nothin’, don’t know nothin’, and don’t

Scene 6: The Crooks

The heroes may decide to comb the underworld for clues as to who is trying to set them up. It may in fact save them a lot of time and trouble—going through the cops tells them

want nothin’. (Again, the truth.)

a little about the turmoil in the mob, but it won’t tell them a thing about their own situation. Keep track of what the heroes tell Lt. Kelley. As soon as he hears they are looking for Babyface Nestor, he’ll report it to Sammy Sacchi, and Sacchi will start having witnesses

The Single Mom and Her Son LeeLee Miller is a middle-aged mother whose husband left years ago. She works two jobs and was sound asleep when White Knights, Black Hearts

king of a lost proto-African civilization.

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murdered before (or after) they can talk. See “Scene 13: The Purge,” on page 17.

doesn’t want anything to do with any murder or any cops or any gangsters. He asks the heroes to stay clear until this thing blows over.

Giorgio Mans and Danny Miller

Ronnie Martin: The Dealer

These local mafia hoods represent Sacchi in the area. They work out of Georgie’s Place, a “family”-owned restaurant on the outskirts of Red Shore. They don’t know anything about Tonya Serrano. Usually gregarious, now they’re none too talkative. If pressed, they warn the heroes to keep their heads down. Sammy Sacchi is making a play for the family, and everybody knows he doesn’t like Don Sacchi’s truce with the cops and vigilantes. Plus, they overheard a local punk, “Babyface” Nestor (his first name is Bailey, and he’ll pick a fight with anyone who uses it), talking up how he had a plan to get rid of the heroes. Nestor comes around a lot trying to get in good with the mob, trying to score some kind of deal for his gang, talking tough. They don’t know where Nestor can be found now, but he runs with the King Road Disciples. But what do the heroes have to worry about from a lowlife hood?

A street corner dope dealer and low-level gangster with the King Road Disciples, Martin doesn’t know anything about the murder. He does know Babyface Nestor; he thinks Nestor’s stupid. He thinks cops are stupid, too. And mobsters. And superheroes. And pretty much everyone except Ronnie Martin. Martin doesn’t know much about what Babyface has been up to lately, but he knows he’s been meeting regularly the past couple of weeks with a local cop, Carl Crabbe. Ronnie figured Babyface was trying to get on Crabbe’s good side for some reason, but that’s just stupid. Crabbe is too big and stupid to do anything anyhow.

The King Road Disciples The Disciples (their symbol: an “X” with two descending slashes, topped by a crown) are led by Larry Martin (no relation to Ronnie), a tough 26-year-old who has been in and out of city jails since he was 13. His gang mainly deals in drugs and turf wars with other gangs. They know the mob works out of the docks only a few blocks away, but they keep their distance and figure the Sacchis will return the favor. So far, that’s worked. Larry has heard rumors that there’s a shake-up in the Sacchi family, with some new guy looking to take over, but he doesn’t pay it much attention. Martin is derisive of Babyface Nestor, who spent a couple of years acting like he was going to be the new man in charge of the Disciples until Martin put him in his place. All it took was a good beating; Babyface didn’t get himself killed. But Babyface is always looking for some big score. Lately he’s been seen with Carl Crabbe, a lunkhead of a cop on the take. Crabbe spends most shifts at the Fancy Lady, a nightclub as dirty as he is.

C.C. Walton: A Working Girl With a Heart of . . . Well, a Working Girl Walton has been working the streets of Red Shore for 10 of her 25 years, and it’s worn her out. She doesn’t know anything about Tonya’s death or the Sacchi plot, but she is always looking for her big break. As soon as the heroes leave, she gets on the a payphone to her pimp, Cedricks Moore, to tell him everything they said.

Cedricks Moore: The Pimp Moore is C.C.’s “manager,” as he calls it, and he’s been watching for a way to get in good with the Sacchi family. This might be his day. He looks up Officer Conner to pass along any news about the heroes’ actions, embellishing just enough (“ . . . and they took C.C. for a ride and didn’t pay a nickel. And you know I can’t collect on that!”) to keep it interesting. Conner reports to Sacchi. If Sacchi thinks the heroes are on to him or Babyface, he starts the purge (see page 17).

Scene 7: Investigating Babyface

The heroes can get plenty on Babyface Nestor on the street.

Chuckie Gooch: The Pawnbroker

Babyface’s Parents

Charles “Chuckie” Gooch, local fence and pawnshop owner, is not a bad sort. He pays his bills and minds his own business. He’s probably on good terms with the heroes, but he White Knights, Black Hearts

Joe and Jackie Nestor live on the quieter outskirts of Red Shore. Not abjectly poor but constantly struggling, they 13

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tried to raise Bailey as a hard-working son and seem baffled at all the trouble he gets into. “Deep down, he’s a good boy.” They haven’t seen him in a couple of months. A few years ago they thought his girlfriend, Nanette, would settle him down, but they don’t think he’s seeing her anymore.

If the heroes talk her into sharing or ransack her place thoroughly, they find a piece of notepaper that Babyface left at her apartment last week. The paper isn’t labeled with his name, but his atrocious handwriting is easily recognizable if they have something to compare with it. It reads “Toreci, Grasado” in sloppy, choppy letters. Cammy says she doesn’t know what it means exactly, but Babyface said it was his ticket to the big time. Then he forgot to take it with him.

The Ex-Girlfriend Nanette Rodriguez is Babyface Nestor’s ex-girlfriend. They dated for a long time when they both were teenagers, just before he fell in with the King Road Disciples and started getting in trouble. That was when he started cheating on her with “that two-bit slut” Cammy Johnson, over on Cedar Street.

The Parole Officer Daniel Aldred is Bailey Nestor’s parole officer. Badly overworked, he has so many clients to keep track of that it doesn’t bother him to let one hopeless recidivist like Nestor out of his sights. According to Aldred’s reports, he’s met with Nestor once a week as scheduled. In reality, if the heroes get the truth out of him, he speaks with Nestor on the phone maybe twice a month and fudges the rest. He hasn’t actually seen Babyface in over two months and has no idea what he’s really up to.

The Two-Bit Slut Cammy Johnson has dated Babyface, and many others in the neighborhood, off and on for the past couple of years. She knows he’s been trying to score points with the King Road Disciples, but the other guys don’t trust him. Babyface says a lot but doesn’t get much done.

White Knights, Black Hearts

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Scene 8: Babyface and Crabbe

Officer Crabbe

Officer Crabbe is currently on duty, busily getting drunk at the Fancy Lady strip club with money he earned from Sammy Sacchi by reporting some of the heroes’ favorite haunts and patrols. His new partner in crime, Babyface Nestor, is in back with one of the girls. Carl Crabbe, 47, is a lifer on the beat, unlikely to ever get promoted but too well-connected to get fired or prosecuted. He’s always ready to lend a hand when a kneecap needs busting. He’s been 20 years on the take with the Sacchis. If sufficiently . . . motivated, Crabbe admits to a deal with Joe Torresi and Art Graziadio, two mafia goons working for Sammy Sacchi. Reporting on the heroes was just the start. Babyface is going to work the gangs from the inside, and Crabbe is going to watch the cops, and both are going to report to Sacchi’s men when they start bringing in their new drugs. He might let even more slip out of stupid bravado: “Ain’t nothin’ you can do about it! This goes all the way to the TOP, baby! And you can’t prove NOTHIN’.” But it takes a lot of coercion to get Crabbe to explain further: “The top” means Assistant Deputy Mayor Andrew Kincaid, Sacchi’s man in City Hall. Kincaid’s got it all set up for Sacchi, Crabbe says, top to bottom. The heroes better skip town before they get theirs. Crabbe doesn’t know anything about Tonya’s death and couldn’t care less. Sadly, when they finally track Babyface Nestor down, he doesn’t have much to say. He recently showed a couple of Sacchi’s men around so they could find the heroes and “talk to them,” and in return he’s going to be the distribution man for new drugs that the mob is bringing into town. The men he showed around were introduced by Torresi and Graziadio; he’d never seen them before. One was a young white guy in a cheap leisure suit, the other an older white guy in a nice black coat and tie, like a banker. When he asked their names, the young guy told him to “shut the hell up.” He looked like a killer, and he was obviously too well-connected for Babyface to pay him back for his lip. Babyface doesn’t know anything about Tonya, and can’t be convinced that her murder had anything to do with his deal with Sammy Sacchi. Babyface is looking to get rich, sure; but what happened to that girl was just plain wrong.

White Knights, Black Hearts

Body 4d

Coordination 3d

Sense 2d

Mind 1d

Charm 1d

Command 3d

Base Will 4 Skills: Lie 3d (4d), Brawling 3d (7d), Knowledge: Criminology 1d (2d), Driving: Car 2d (5d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 2d (5d), Interrogation 2d (5d), Intimidation 3d (7d), Stability 2d (5d), Empathy 1d (3d), Streetwise 2d (3d).

Weapons .38 revolver (Cap. 6, Damage: width in Shock, width+1 in Killing) Nightstick (Damage: width+1 in Shock) Bulletproof vest (LAR 2 for hit locations 7–9)

Babyface Nestor Body 3d

Coordination 3d

Sense 2d

Mind 1d

Charm 3d

Command 2d

Base Will 5 Skills: Athletics 2d (5d), Lie 2d (5d), Brawling 2d (5d), Driving Car 1d (4d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 1d (4d), Intimidation 2d (4d), Melee Weapon (Knife) 2d (5d), Streetwise 4d (5d).

Weapons 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistol (Cap. 13, Damage: width in Shock and width+1 in Killing) Switchblade (Damage: width in Shock + 1 Killing)

Scene 9: Crooked Talents

The heroes might want to question a couple of known criminal supers to see if they’re involved or know anyone who might be using superpowered killers. The White Knights have done a good job of running most supervillains out of town, but there are still a few the heroes can look up without (much) trouble. Just one of them is available—the heroes can scare up only rumors of the others.

Booster Gregory G. “Booster” Embry has the power to amplify sound. He lives in a seedy loft in a different part of the city. He’s a lowlife at heart, too lazy to stick with any legitimate pursuit for long. He once tried bodyguard work, protecting an executive who was cutting his shady partners out of the company, but it didn’t last long: He quickly got bored, 15

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started listening to a couple making love in an apartment a few stories above the street, and completely missed the gunman who shot his employer dead. Booster usually makes a living working freelance for local mobsters (Sacchi among them), spying on cops, lawyers, and businessmen. Despite that, he doesn’t know what’s going on with the dead child and—unless the players are stumped and need a clue—he can’t shed any light on Sacchi; he makes it a rule to never, ever spy on the mob. He’s lazy, not stupid. Booster avoids combat. His power amplifies sound but doesn’t make him immune to it. If he were to boost sound enough to deafen or kill someone it would deafen or kill him, too.

Needle-Nose

Nape

The players can find one of those rumored pit-fighting clubs if they ask around, but the cops and the White Knights dog their trail if they’re careless. The Golden House Club is downtown in the business district, beneath a ground-floor Chinese restaurant. The restaurant’s cellar has a row of full-size refrigerators running wall to wall, some plugged in and some not, each of them big enough to hold three full-grown men. One of the broken refrigerators has a false back which pushes open to reveal a passage through the wall behind it. This passage leads to the club, a two-story room with catwalks and railings for the audience, above, and a cement pit twenty feet in diameter, below, with a simple drain in the bottom to help with cleanup. Patrons show up at 1:30 A.M. on fight nights (usually Thursday and Friday), give a password at the restaurant upstairs, and are escorted into the club. The restaurant staff and club owners don’t know anything useful about Needle-Nose, only that he hasn’t been around in a while. However, one of the other fighters, a Talent with regenerative powers—Iggy “The Iguana” Eddleston—talked to Needle-Nose just before he disappeared. “He said something’ about getting’ a job with the mob,” says the Iguana. “Just like he always wanted. He always talked about being some kind of super hit man, but they never wanted him. I guess somebody changed his mind.” Iggy doesn’t know exactly which mob Needle-Nose might have joined. Like Two-Ton, Needle-Nose has fallen in with Sammy Sacchi, finally getting his wish. For his first assignment, he did the dirty work in the murder of Tonya Serrano, and he was happy to find it didn’t bother him a bit. For most of the scenario, he’s holed up with Two-Ton and Sacchi’s other hired Talents, waiting for their next move.

Jacob “Needle-Nose” Ward did time as a teenager for manslaughter after killing a biker in a bar fight, but he’s been out of jail for a couple of years. He lives in an apartment on the outskirts of Red Shore, but his apartment is now empty and he hasn’t been seen for a few weeks. A neighbor and occasional drinking buddy knows Needle-Nose has been earning his keep in secret pit fighting rings in illegal uptown cellar clubs.

Scene 10: The Golden House Club

Henry “Nape” Johnson is nowhere to be found. If the players insist on tracking him down and have some foolproof means of doing so (“Detect Henry Johnson 4hd” or something), feel free to wing it. He is mentally unstable and his blood and bodily fluids burn dangerously in open air. Handle with care.

Two-Ton Karl “Two-Ton” Kuhn earned his nickname when a two-ton steel girder fell on him and he lifted it off, unhurt. By all accounts, Two-Ton has kept out of trouble for a while. He’s on parole from a lengthy prison sentence for attempted larceny, assault, vandalism, and other charges after an attempt to rob a bank ended in a knockdown fight with the White Knights. Two-Ton lives in a grungy apartment near the Red Shore docks, but his landlord hasn’t seen him in a few days, and neither have the regulars at the blue-collar bar he frequents. If the players are properly diplomatic, some of Two-Ton’s friends tell them that he has a sweet deal going with mafia boss “Vino” Spumoni: Vino pays him a few thousand dollars every month, and Two-Ton, in return, doesn’t level Vino’s favorite sculpture museum on 15th Avenue, downtown. Spumoni doesn’t know where Two-Ton can be found; he’s happy to pay chump change to keep the big lug happy, on the off chance that he can get a favor out of him sometime if he needs it. As it happens, that favor came quicker than Two-Ton expected: Sammy Sacchi came to Vino asking for Two-Ton’s help with a problem—he didn’t say what, and Vino didn’t ask—and Vino passed word along to TwoTon. He hasn’t seen or heard from him since. Two-Ton is holed up at Sacchi’s headquarters, waiting for orders. The players probably won’t figure that out before the big finish. White Knights, Black Hearts

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Scene 11: Mob Rules

always accurate) coverage of superhumans. Anne is a bulldog. If she tracks the heroes down, she promises anything to get them to sit still for an exclusive. She will tell their side. She will let the city know that the charges are all lies. She will put Tonya’s family at ease that the real murderers will be found, and that these wrongfully accused heroes will do everything to see justice done. In reality, of course, she will do nothing of the sort. The next day’s paper features a lurid story that only occasionally borrows the heroes’ words, taken carefully out of context to make them look guilty as hell and proud of it.

The players might go to Tony Sacchi for help or information. Tony doesn’t want to see them. They can go to his favorite haunt, a posh midtown nightclub with his offices in the back, but they’ll have to talk or fight their way past bouncers in the front and gunsels in the back to get to him. Tony knows that Sammy is making a move on him, and he’s busy calling in markers from his underlings to see who’s loyal and who’s going to turn on him. He heard about the murder in Red Shore, but has no reason to connect it with his nephew’s bid to take over the Family. If the heroes seem desperate enough, Tony offers to make a deal: If they help him, he’ll help them. Maybe they can spy on Sammy Sacchi and get the names of which “soldiers” are in his pocket, or maybe they can even rub Sammy out altogether; in return, Tony will pull strings to get the cops off the heroes’ case and get them whatever evidence is out there so they can find the real killer. Unfortunately, the evidence he provides is slim; he gets the medical examiner’s report from the morgue and reports whatever evidence the White Knights have provided to the cops. If the heroes want help getting into City Hall, Tony Sacchi can provide fake ID cards that will get them in. He has two conditions: He wants Sammy brought to him alive, and he wants Deputy Mayor Kincaid left healthy enough for the cops to arrest. As for the others, he couldn’t care less. And no, of course he won’t ask anything else of the heroes. The thought would never cross his mind. Never.

Reginald Stuart and Tim Simons, the Times Reggie is a writer with the [insert city name here] Times, on the scene with Tim Simons, a freelance photographer. Reggie tries to do things right. He doesn’t promise the heroes exoneration, only honesty. He’s as good as his word, too; the Times is a straight newspaper, and Reggie’s article gives the facts and the heroes’ statements without embellishment. (Whether this helps them or hurts them depends entirely on what they say and do.)

Scene 13: The Purge

The case gets more urgent once the players start getting to the bottom of things. Their witnesses start dying. Only by moving fast can they get the whole story in time to stop Sammy Sacchi, catch the killers and clear their names. The purge begins when Sammy decides the heroes are close to figuring out his play and the cops and White Knights can’t seem to stop them. Keep track of what the NPCs know about the players’ actions, and start the purge when it looks like Sacchi should figure it out. He starts cutting off his underlings in Red Shore from the bottom up to cover his own backtrail. He figures eventually the White Knights will catch the heroes and they’ll get a hardened cell—either for killing Tonya or for resisting arrest and assaulting police officers. Either one will do the job. When the purge starts, the police band goes crazy. A new death is called in every couple of hours.

Scene 12: The Press

The police and the White Knights aren’t the only intrepid investigators looking for the heroes. When word gets out that Talents have been accused of a gruesome child murder, the press is quickly on the scene. Television crews with their bulky equipment mostly camp in vans, but newspaper reporters and photographers are hard to avoid. After several hours, when old photographs of the heroes circulate among the media and they know exactly whom to look for, two reporters are likely to nail them down. Neither goes to the police for fear that their notes, tapes and photos will be seized as evidence.

Harold Gwen is found dead in his squad car, apparently a suicide with a self-inflicted gunshot wound (in the back of the head, but nobody mentions that outside the morgue). Giorgio Mans and Danny Miller vanish after a firefight at their bar.

Anne Hennessy, The City Star Hennessy is a writer-photographer for The City Star, a weekly tabloid that prides itself on its comprehensive (if not White Knights, Black Hearts

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Crabbe and Babyface wind up dead in custody if they spilled the beans and the heroes turned them over to the cops; otherwise Crabbe is found beaten to death in an alley and Babyface is found dead near Cammy Johnson’s apartment building, apparently having jumped from the roof.

my’s lawyer Ed Goldfarb, Joe Torresi, Art Graziadio, and Sammy’s bodyguards—the Talents he hired to flush out and get rid of the heroes. Kincaid won’t call the White Knights for help against the heroes, for obvious reasons. But if there’s any external sign of a super-powered fight, somebody downstairs will get on the radio and the White Knights come to investigate. Along with about a thousand cops, who show up in less than a half an hour—so the players better have their stories straight and their evidence ready.

Kung Fu Fighting!

Eventually, clues will lead the heroes to Sammy Sacchi and Deputy Mayor Kincaid. Confronting one of them should be the last big showdown of the scenario. Either run the scene at City Hall or the scene at Sacchi’s place, wherever the heroes’ wind up first; but not both. If they go to Sacchi’s headquarters his hired Talents are there, waiting for orders. If the heroes go to City Hall to roust Kincaid, Sacchi is there with his goons, hammering out the last details of their arrangement. Either way, that scene is the big finish. Everything else is just mopping up. There should be no more than one hostile Talent per hero: Needle-Nose, Joe Assisi, Two-Ton, Fenris and then Nocturne. See page 21. Then there’s Detective Tom Kelley, the heroes’ erstwhile friend, who’s been heading things up for Sammy in the precinct house. Kelley is phlegmatic if confronted: “What can I say, boys? It’s just business, and business is good.”

Lt. Detective Tom Kelley Coordination 2d

Sense 2d

Mind 3d

Charm 3d

Command 3d

Skills: Lie 4d (7d), Brawling 2d (5d), Driving: Car 2d (4d), Interrogation 3d (6d), Intimidation 3d (6d), Knowledge: Criminology 3d (6d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 3d (5d), Streetwise 3d (6d).

Weapons .38 revolver (Cap. 6, Damage: width in Shock, width+1 in Killing) .32 revolver—concealed hold-out (Cap. 5, Damage: width in Shock and Killing) Bulletproof vest (LAR 2 for hit locations 7–9)

Sammy Sacchi

Scene 14: City Hall

Body 2d

Coordination 2d

Sense 2d

Mind 3d

Charm 4d

Command 3d

Base Will 7

City Hall is in the heart of the city, far from Red Shore, right across the street from police headquarters and staring across a manicured plaza at the federal building. It’s not an easy place to get into by foot. There are metal detectors in the entrances and the place is swarming with cops. The heroes’ best bet is to change their look, walk like they belong there, and not spend much time in front of any one person. Breaking and entering might work. The windows have alarm tape but the system is down for maintenance. The heroes can go in through a window if they can get to it without being spotted. Going in on a lower floor is tougher. Cops are plentiful and most of the building is quiet at night. Call for a Stealth roll

Skills: Lie 4d (8d), Brawling 3d (5d), Driving: Car 2d (4d), Intimidation 4d (7d), Melee Weapon: Knife 2d (4d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 2d (4d), Ranged Weapon: Submachine Gun 2d (4d), Stability 3d (6d), Stealth 2d (4d), Streetwise 3d (6d).

Mafia Goons Body 3d

Coordination 2d

Sense 2d

Mind 1d

Command 2d

Charm 2d

Base Will 4 Skills: Lie 2d (4d), Brawling 1d (4d), Driving: Car 2d (4d), Intimidation 2d (4d), Melee Weapon: Knife 1d (4d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 2d (4d), Ranged Weapon: Submachine Gun 1d (3d), Stability 1d (3d), Streetwise 3d (4d).

Weapons

every other floor to get past cops near the elevators and stairs. On Kincaid’s floor—the 13th—there are two cops in the hall station and two on duty outside his office. Hand-picked by Kincaid himself, they shoot early and ignore Sacchi’s people. Kincaid is in his office with Sammy Sacchi himself, SamWhite Knights, Black Hearts

Body 3d

.38 revolver (Cap. 6, Damage: width in Shock, width+1 in Killing) Uzi submachine gun (Cap. 30, Spray 4, Damage: width in Shock, width+1 in Killing)

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City Hall (Thirteenth Floor) Board Room

Deputy Mayor’s Office

Roof

Council Chamber

Corridor

Roof

Elevator Desk Interior Wall Exterior Wall

City Clerk

Column Copper Roof

Meanwhile, At the Hall of Heroes

Scene 15: Fredo’s Import Emporium Warehouse

“The Hall of Heroes” is what the city-planning commissioner put on the building permit, but the White Knights just call it “HQ” or “The Hall.” It’s their headquarters, residence, and gymnasium, a reinforced slab of a building jammed into a block of busy high-rises across the street from City Hall. Ideally, the heroes will try to give the White Knights some proof of innocence. Whether they succeed depends on which White Knight they deal with and how they have acted in the scenario. Solid evidence presented to Grailknight by a hero who has demonstrably tried to keep innocents safe goes a lot farther than a cop-killer’s empty words to the more inflexible Black Atlantean. If the heroes can’t get the White Knights on their side, they’ll just have to beat the bad guys before they show up—or hope they can keep from getting into anything deadly with the White Knights before they can come up with exculpatory evidence.

Fredo’s Import Emporium is a citywide chain of shops specializing in imported goods, operated from offices at a warehouse in a sparse, heavily industrial part of Red Shore. It’s also a convenient front for Sammy Sacchi’s faction of the mob. Sacchi keeps his headquarters at the warehouse, where half a dozen mafia gunsels can be found in daylight hours and a dozen or more at night. The warehouse is a half-block edifice, five stories high and filled with shelves and pallets stacked high with heavy crates and boxes. There are massive loading doors on two sides, smaller doors elsewhere along the street, and wide skylights overhead. The offices take up about half of one wall of the place. At night, with no workers around, the guards carry shotguns, talking and smoking to pass the time. In the daytime they are more circumspect, mostly staying in Sacchi’s offices while workers go about the warehouse’s legitimate business.

Sammy can be found in his office with Goldfarb, Torresi, Graziadio, Detective Kelley, and the hired Talents.

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Joe Assisi uses his powers to warn him when he is being observed. Kincaid will not be found at the warehouse; the heroes can learn his role in things in after-action interrogations, and you can describe his arrest as the scenario wraps up. (After the big fight in the warehouse, playing out a confrontation with the crooked politician would be a little anticlimactic.) The White Knights show up at Sacchi’s warehouse only if the situation demands it. If there have earlier signs that the mob was involved, Grailknight might have planted bugs to listen for any clues. If the White Knights will liven things up, throw them in; if not, have them show up only after the action. Either way, don’t let them upstage the players.

Wrapping Things Up

If the heroes play it right they can get the White Knights on their side. Grailknight is smart enough to put it all together without too great a show of evidence—especially after seeing some of the tricks Joe Assisi can do. If that happens, the White Knights help round up the cops known to be working for Sammy Sacchi and get testimony out of folks inside Sacchi’s organization to prove that the heroes were set up. Of course, if they grab Sammy Sacchi it may be hard to hand him over to Tony Sacchi. . . . Without the White Knights’ help it will be harder for the heroes to clear their names, but not impossible. They might get help from Tony Sacchi. They might take Assisi into custody long enough to let police officers or other upstanding citizens see some of his tricks. They might well trick Needle-Nose into bragging about killing the girl and pinning it on the heroes; he’s not the sharpest tack in the drawer, whatever his nickname. They might decide to lean on the right cops to get the reports “corrected.” And so on. With superpowers—and the right connections—anything can happen on the streets.

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Needle-Nose (200 pts)

Two-Ton (200 pts)

Joe Assissi (400 pts)

Jacob “Needle-Nose” Ward’s only goal in life is

Karl “Two-Ton” Kuhn changes his mass and

Assisi is a member of the Nameless, a centuries-

to be a hit man. Unfortunately, nobody wants him.

strength. If someone tries to move Two-Ton he

old Sicilian mystic secret society. The group is co-

With skin and bones as hard as steel, he can kill

weighs as much as his Size Shift indicates, but he

vert, organized and dangerous, with members in

with a punch. But the crime lords seem to worry

weighs his normal 260 lbs on a surface: He won’t

virtually every city of the world acting as advisors

that using the same M.O. every time will get him

crash through a floor. He’s smarter than he looks,

and assassins. Ruthless and sneaky, its members

and them caught quick.

and in a pinch he gets very creative.

fade into the woodwork after achieving their goals

Archetype (5 pts)

Archetype (5 pts)

Blade, a curved knife with a disquieting aura, is

Mutant

Mutant

mystically bound to Assisi and will not serve an-

Stats (75 pts)

Stats (88 pts)

and commit suicide if captured. The Blooded

other. Its corrosive cuts inflcit width in Shock +

Body 3d

Coordination 4d

Body 5d+

Coordination 3d

Sense 2d

Mind 1d

Sense 2d

Mind 2d

Charm 2d

Command 3d

Charm 2d

Command 3d

7 Killing damage. When the Nameless die their signature knives char away into ash.

Archetype (21 pts)

Base Will 5

Base Will 6

Loyalty: Needle-Nose (2)

Loyalty: Two-Ton (2)

Passion: Being recognized as a pro (3)

Passion: Easy money (4)

Body 2d

Coordination 2d

Skills (40 pts)

Skills (22 pts)

Sense 4d

Mind 4d

Brawling 4d (7d), Driving (Car) 1d (5d), Intimi-

Brawling 2d (7d+), Driving (Car) 1d (4d), In-

Charm 3d

Command 3d

dation 2d (5d), Lie 3d (5d), Perception 2d (4d),

timidation 3d (6d), Lie 1d (3d), Stability 1d (4d),

Base Will 17

Ranged Weapon (Pistol) 1d (5d), Stability 3d (6d),

Streetwise 1d (3d), Tactics 2d (4d).

Loyalty: The Nameless (8)

Mystic

Stealth 2d (6d), Streetwise 2d (3d).

Superpowers (85 pts)

Stats (123 pts)

Passion: Accomplishing the mission (9)

Superpowers (80 pts)

Size Shift 5HD (10 pts)

Skills (48 pts)

Extra Tough 2HD (20 pts)

Useful (+2): Duration (+2), If/Then: only for mass

Dodge 3d (5d), Knowledge (Forgery) 2d (6d), Me-

As in Wild Talents. Needle-Nose has two extra

(-1), No Physics (+1), Self Only (-3).

lee Weapon (Knife) 4d (6d), Perception 2d (6d),

Wound Boxes on each hit location.

Research 2d (6d), Scrutiny 2d (6d), Stability 4d Extra Tough 5HD (20 pts)

(7d), Stealth 4d (6d), Streetwise 1d (5d).

Heavy Armor 3HD (42 pts)

As in Wild Talents but with Attached to Size Shift

As in Wild Talents but Permanent instead of End-

(-2) and If/Then: Width is limited to Width of Size

Superpowers (171 pts)

less. He has HAR 3.

Shift (-1). For each level of Size Shift he gains one

Sorcery 5d+1wd (171 pts)

extra Wound Box on each hit location.

As Cosmic Power in Wild Talents.

+2 Attacks levels (+2), Deadly (+1), Penetration 3

Heavy Armor 5HD (30 pts)

(+3).

Defends (+2): Attached to Size Shift (-2), If/Then:

Blooded Blade of Ashashan (37 pts)

Extras for Body 3d (18 pts)

HAR is limited to width of Size Shift (-1), Permanent (+4).

Melee Weapon (Knife) +4d (16 pts) Hyperskill (+1): +6 Attacks levels (+6), Deadly +1, If/Then: Cannot add to regular Skill dice (-1), Ir-

Hyperbody 5d (25 pts) Hyperstat (+4): +3 Attacks levels (+3), Attached to Size Shift (-2), If/Then: Limited to +1d per width of Size Shift (-1), Penetration 1 (+1).

replaceable Focus (-3). Teleportation 7d (21 pts) As in Wild Talents but with the following on each of its three power qualities: Go First 1 (+1), Irreplaceable Focus (-3), Subtle (+1).

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Fenris (250 pts)

Nocturne (250 pts)

Harald “Fenris” Müller is the vicious, charismatic

Once a mortal woman, Nocturne was twisted by

As in Wild Talents, but its Useful and Defends

young heir apparent of the Nazi villain Kriegsma-

sorcery into something else. Now she is a tattered

power qualities have the Endless (+3) Extra.

rine, on loan to Sammy Sacchi as a favor to the

apparition who no longer knows her own name or

Nameless (in the person of Joe Assisi). He wears

history. Her appearance shifts from cold beauty

Regeneration 2HD (12 pts)

an immaculate SS uniform, including the dagger

to fearsome hideousness, and she drains warmth

As in Wild Talents, but Attached to Chill Touch

(Width in Shock + 1 Killing). His favorite tactic is

and life. She comes at the behest of Joe Assisi, her

(-2). She recovers one point each of Shock and

to simply teleport an enemy into the sky. (Leave him

sometimes lover. (Leave her out if you have fewer

Killing damage for each point of damage that she

out if you have fewer than four players.)

than six players.)

inflicts.

Archetype (15 pts)

Archetype (7 pts)

Human+

Inhuman+ (as Human+ but with the Inhuman In-

Insubstantiality 2HD (48 pts)

trinsic)

Stats (113 pts) Body 4d

Coordination 3d

Stats (61 pts)

Sense 3d

Mind 2d

Body 2d

Coordination 2d

Charm 3d

Command 7d

Sense 2d

Mind 2d

Base Will 11

Charm 1d

Command 3d

Loyalty: Kriegsmarine (5)

Base Will 6

Passion: Proving Aryan Superiority (6)

Loyalty: Joe Assissi (2) Passion: Instilling terror (4)

Skills (48 pts) Athletics 3d (7d), Brawling 3d (7d), Dodge 2d

Skills (54 pts)

(5d), Endurance 3d (7d), Intimidation 2d (9d),

Empathy 2d (4d), Intimidation 3d (6d), Knowl-

Leadership 1d (8d), Melee Weapon: SS Dagger

edge: Witchcraft 4d (6d), Perception 2d (4d),

1d (5d), Navigation 3d (5d), Perception 1d (4d),

Persuasion 4d (5d), Scrutiny 4d (6d), Stability 3d

Stability 1d (8d), Stealth 2d (5d), Tactics 2d (4d).

(6d), Stealth 5d (7d).

Superpowers (72 pts)

Superpowers (128 pts)

Immunity to Water and the Ocean Depths

Chill Touch 4d (8 pts)

2HD (24 pts)

Attacks (+2): Daze (+1), Limited Damage: Shock

As in Wild Talents. Water is one Useful quality, the

only (-1), Non-Physical (+2), Touch Only (-2).

pressures and cold of the deep is another.

Note: This attack ignores armor but can be resisted with an Endurance roll.

Teleport 8d (48 pts) As in Wild Talents with these exceptions. The Use-

Elasticity 4d (8 pts)

ful quality has Power Capacity (Range), so he can

As in Wild Talents.

teleport things without even touching them, and an Extra called Blind Teleport (+3), which automati-

Flight 6d (24 pts)

cally moves Fenris or whatever he teleports to the

As in Wild Talents.

nearest safe space even if he can’t see the destination. It also has Willpower Cost (-2) as a Flaw.

Immunity to the Needs of Life 2HD (28 pts)

Each of the three power qualities has Obvious (-1)

As in Wild Talents but with Variable Effect. She

as a Flaw—when Fenris uses his power it leaves a

ignores cold, thirst, suffocation, age and suffoca-

thunderclap in his wake.

tion.

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Whitelight (338 pts)

Joe Assisi’s Favorite Spells

Name: Whitelight; true name unknown Nationality: Apparently American Political Affiliation: None Education: Unknown Occupation: Government-sanctioned superhero Criminal Record: Unknown DOB: Unknown; probably around 1940 Known Parahuman Abilities: Whitelight is tremendously strong and resilient and flies at great speeds. He can survive the depths of the ocean or the vacuum of space, and can even heal others of grievous wounds. He is enveloped at all times in a brilliant white glow, too bright for any of his features to be made out. The glow seems to shine on every wavelength, strongest when he exerts himself. Scientists have attempted to use cameras sensitive to X rays, infrared light, ultraviolet light, and every other slice of the spectrum to divine his true features, with no success. What Whitelight really looks like remains unknown. History: Whitelight appeared in the city in 1966, a superpowered cipher with no memory of who or what he was. He knew the language and culture, but his personal background and identity were a complete mystery. He knew only that he wanted to do good, and he had the power to make it happen. Whitelight is often the most visible of the White Knights—in every sense—but he leaves leadership and planning to Grailknight. Subtlety is not his strong suit. Whitelight is a powerhouse, always ready to act, preferably in the most direct manner possible. Dependents: None. Appearance: A tall, powerful man enveloped in a brilliant white glow. His features are impossible to see, though examination of his hair and blood (based on a spit test; his skin is far too strong to puncture with an ordinary needle) indicate that he is Caucasian. He has a strong voice and a commanding presence, but sometimes he seems to be selfconsciously acting the part of the hero.

• Control Noise: “Perfect Peace of Poruul” • Dead Ringer: “Semblance of Santakito” • Elasticity: “Phaeron’s Florid Flaccidity” • Harm: “Heavy Hand of Herodotus” • Heavy Armor: “Hardiness of Horoon” • Illusions: “Astley’s Apparitions” • Insubstantiality: “Mists of Mendoza” • Invisibility: “Vehlm’s Vanishing” • Nullify: “Nestor’s Nullity” • Perceive Observation: “Accam’s Acute Awareness” (detects when others are aware of your actions) • Regeneration: “Rary’s Rapid Recuperation” • Telekinesis: “Gauntlets of Garax”

The White Knights

The White Knights are the city’s officially sanctioned superheroes. They have a mandate from the government; they have funding; they have costumes; they even have an armored headquarters. When there’s a high-profile case that the police can’t solve, or a rogue Talent on the loose, the White Knights fly in and do their part; but they’re usually far too busy with Big Events to worry about local neighborhoods or street crime. They know about the Red Shore heroes and regard them with wary neutrality—to the White Knights, unsanctioned vigilantes are potential criminals, nothing more. The White Knights were founded by Grail-knight and Whitelight, partners responsible for several spectacularly high-profile adventures After saving the U.N. from terrorists, foiling a murderous plot of the nefarious Nazi villain Kriegsmarine, and talking the Mad Talent Nuke out of detonating himself beneath Crown Tower, the federal government chipped in to give them official recognition and funding—and the oversight that comes with it. Grailknight and Whitelight recruited a few more publicity-friendly heroes to fill out the team. Aging war hero Minute Man was the first to join, followed by the youthful Glimmer. They hoped to recruit Leatherneck, but the AllAmerican Marine seemingly self-destructed at the height of his popularity and sank into the streets. The Black Atlantean is their most recent member.

White Knights, Black Hearts

Archetype (15 pts) Human+

Stats (115 pts) Body 10d Mind 2d Base Will 7 23

Coordination 2d Sense 2d Charm 3d Command 4d

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Loyalty: The White Knights (3) Passion: Protecting the innocent (4)

holic, her father abusive, both consumed in a cycle of need, desperation and resentment. Their only child, Gail turned her attentions outward toward school and inward to her own mind. She sped through every advanced course and tutor the public schools could give her. Other children invented make-believe friends; Gail invented new selves. She learned to copy the personalities of those around her and understand them intimately; she was far too young to consider this a violation. When her mother died of cancer, Gail found a ghost of her within her own mind. She even learned to understand and pity her violent, domineering father. But she never learned to hate him any less. The day she left home for college—at age 12—her father shot himself with a shotgun borrowed from a neighbor. No one but Gail would ever know that the seeds for his death had been planted over slow years as she prepared to leave her childhood behind, but she was shocked to experience a reaction that she didn’t invent—remorse. At times she found herself confronting his avatar in her mind, and slowly she saw him change; or, rather, she saw the potential for change that was forever lost. By the time she finished her first degrees in college, her plan was in place, a crusade to protect others and exorcise her own guilt. She raced through courses with impossible intuition and comprehension, supported by every scholarship that came her way. She developed new personas and new lives, burying her old self and creating a presence through which she could act in the world without turning power over to governments fractured by factional need and fear. She patented inventions, channeled the profits into easily pliable accounts, and never allowed the fame of any one name to interfere with the plan. By age 25 she had millions of dollars pouring into her accounts in a byzantine, untraceable network of arrangements and partnerships. It was time to act. She built the tools, undertook the training, and began to establish the name by which it would be implemented. The Holy Grail would be her emblem, a knight’s armor her disguise. Her quest would be just as noble and Quixotic as any knight’s. Justice; healing; protection; salvation. Impossible for the

Skills (24 pts) Leadership 3d (7d), Navigation 4d (6d), Perception 3d (5d), Stability 2d (6d).

Superpowers (184 pts) Body Extras on 10d (60 pts) +4 Attacks levels (+4), Booster (+1), Obvious: bright glow (-1), Penetrating (+2). Heavy Armor 4HD (48 pts) As in Wild Talents, but Permanent and with Obvious: bright glow (-1). Immunity to All Hostile Environments 2HD (24 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Variable Effect (+4) and Obvious: bright glow (-1). Healing 2HD (4 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Engulf (+2), Obvious: bright glow (-1), and only a single Useful power quality level. Flight 6d (18 pts) Defends (+2): Obvious: bright glow (-1). Useful (+2): Booster (+1), Obvious: bright glow (-1) Create Light 5d (30 pts) As in Wild Talents.

Grailknight (437 pts)

Name: Gail Hanson AKA “Grailknight” Nationality: American Political Affiliation: None Education: Many doctorates in several distinct identities Occupation: Inventor, government-sanctioned superhero. Criminal Record: None DOB: November 2, 1941 Known Parahuman Abilities: Grailknight is superhumanly intelligent, with preternatural gifts of memory, intuition, and technological innovation. History: To paraphrase a famous line, you could say the greatest trick that Grailknight ever pulled was convincing the world that he existed. Gail Hanson was born dirt poor. Her mother was alcoWhite Knights, Black Hearts

world, critical for each individual, these became the watchwords of the Grailknight. Dependents: None. Description: Grailknight wears powered armor of a quasimedieval style and carries a long, heavy sword but rarely at24

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tacks with it. Outside the White Knights, everybody believes Grailknight is a man. Outside the armor Gail Hanson is 5’8” tall with an average build, strong and healthy but rather plain, with a gaze that is occasionally unsettling. She often sports a charismatic and knowing smile.

Archetype (21 pts) Anachronist (plus One Power: Hypermind)

Stats (221 pts) Body 3d Coordination 5d Sense 4d Brains 7d+1WD Charm 4d Command 4d Base Will 20 Loyalty: The White Knights (4). Passions: Justice (4), bringing peace and healing to those harmed by crime (4), protecting the innocent (4), saving lives (4).

Skills (88 pts) Athletics 3d (6d), Brawling 5d (8d), Dodge 4d (9d), Empathy 4d (8d), Interrogation 3d (7d), Intimidation 4d (8d), Lie 5d (9d), Melee Weapon: Sword 4d (7d), Perception 3d (7d), Stability 4d (8d), Stealth 3d (7d), Streetwise 2d (9d+1WD).

Knowledge Skills (12 pts) Chemistry 1d (8d+1WD), Criminology 2d (9d+1WD), Electronics 1d (8d+1WD), Metallurgy 1d (8d+1WD), Physics 1d (8d+1WD).

Foreign Language Skills (14 pts) Arabic 1d (8d+1WD), Chinese 1d (8d+1WD), French 1d (8d+1WD), German 1d (8d+1WD), Japanese 1d (8d+1WD), Russian 1d (8d+1WD), Spanish 1d (8d+1WD).

Grailknight’s Armor (78 pts) Hyperbody +3d (9 pts) Hyperstat (+4): Focus: Powered superstructure (-1). Heavy Armor 2HD (12 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Attached to Hyperbody (-2) and Focus: Armored suit (-1).

Extra Tough 4HD (8 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Attached to Heavy Armor (-2) and Focus: Reinforced titanite understructure (-1). White Knights, Black Hearts

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Immunity to Blinding Lights 2HD (8 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Focus: Flash screen (-1).

great speeds and pass through water or any barrier as easily as thin air. History: Plato was right—almost. Gadeirus was a prince of Atlantis, descendent and heir of the second son of Poseidon by the mortal woman Cleito, whose ten sons formed the ruling houses of what was, for a time, the world’s mightiest empire. Gadeirus was born into a time of turmoil. The princes of Atlantis, reveling in their vast dominions, thought themselves as high as the gods. The king decreed that sacrifices were to be made in his name rather than Poseidon’s—for was he not of the blood of the gods? Many princes followed suit. Only two princes balked. Violating the new law, they burned the traditional sacrifices to the gods to beg favor and wisdom; and violating the oldest of laws, they took up arms against their cousins. The war was fierce but short and the rebels soon were captured. Diaprepes, the prince who had followed Gadeirus into war, was sacrificed and slain, an offering of the king to himself. Gadeirus was spared for the worse fate: eternal exile from the glories of Atlantis, knowing that his allies and his House would perish for his crime. Gadeirus was bound on a ship with all his trappings of office, and set on a course for the vast savannahs of his mother’s homeland. As Atlantis quaked and thundered, Gadeirus’ captors flung themselves into the churning sea in despair. Bound fast, Gadeirus could only watch. Envoys of the gods came to him when it was done. The last Atlantean, Gadeirus would go free forever upon the earth, never to die, never to be held against his will, never to regain the glory which his people had in their arrogance thrown away. For an age Gadeirus assailed Olympus for an audience with Zeus. And then it simply faded away, vanishing with the people’s failing faith in its gods, leaving a barren mountaintop. The world moved on, relegating its mightiest ancient kingdom to a philosopher’s footnote and thinking its pale colonies—Greece, Babylon, Persia, Rome, Egypt, all the kingdoms of the Americas—to be the true foundations of Western history. Gadeirus entered the public eye in the middle of the 20th

Invisibility 2HD (8 pts) As in Wild Talents but each power quality has Attached to Heavy Armor (-2) and Focus: Multi-spectrum adaptive “chameleon” refractors (-1). Immunity to Hostile Environments 2HD (16 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Variable Effect (+4), Attached to Heavy Armor (-2),  and Focus: Omni-environmental life support system (-1). Flight 1d+1WD (5 pts) As in Wild Talents but without the Defends quality. The Useful quality has Attached to Heavy Armor (-2), Booster (+2), and Focus: Gravitometric efficiency system (-1). Perceive: Infrared Spectrum 3HD (6 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Focus: Night-vision visor (-1). Harm 3HD (6 pts) As in Wild Talents but with +1 Attacks quality level, Focus: Ion-beam electroshock stunner (-1) and Limited Damage: Shock only (-1).

Weapons Knight’s Sword (Damage: Width + 3 in Killing damage [Width + 2 when not in armor], HAR 1, 6 wound boxes).

The Black Atlantean (500 pts)

Name: Gadeirus AKA “The Black Atlantean” Nationality: Atlantean Political Affiliation: Self Education: Extensive tutoring in the arts of governance and Atlantean science (now all but forgotten) Occupation: Immortal exiled prince of a long-dead civilization Criminal Record: None DOB: Exact date unknown, ~9,400 B.C. Known Parahuman Abilities: The Black Atlantean is immensely strong, difficult to harm, and impossible to truly kill. Carrying his orichalcum Spear of Kings, he can fly at White Knights, Black Hearts

century when, wandering lost ruins of the Pacific, he stumbled into the war between America and Japan. At first he remained unconcerned with the mortals’ war. Then he saw something that offended him: He saw one of Atlantis’ oldest emblems used as a decoration by a bitter faction of a quar26

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To an immortal in a changing world, it is a worthy cause. Dependents: None. Gadeirus occasionally takes a mortal consort, but his curse prevents him from siring children. Description: The “Black Atlantean” is a tall man with African features, tremendously muscular and powerful, with glittering brown-black eyes, high sharp cheekbones, closecropped hair, and a sometimes cruel mouth framed by a neatly trimmed beard. He wears loose, rather revealing robes out of ancient tradition, the sort popular in Greek statuary; he is wholly unconcerned with modesty. They were his raiment upon his exile from Atlantis, the azure robes of state replaced by the black robes of banishment, and they remain as changeless and indestructible as the Spear of Kings, with its shaft of black wood and gleaming head of coppery-red orichalcum, the last known to the living world.

Archetype (20 pts) Godling

Stats (175 pts) Body 8d+1WD Coordination 3d Sense 3d Mind 3d Charm 7d Command 7d Base Will 14 Loyalty: The White Knights (4); America, his adopted home (5) Passion: Thwarting hubris (5)

Skills (84 pts) Brawling 1d (9d+1WD), Dodge 5d (8d), Intimidation 2d (9d), Leadership 1d (8d), Melee Weapon: Spear 5d (13d+1WD), Navigation 5d (8d), Perception 2d (5d), Ranged Weapon: Bow 4d (7d), Ranged Weapon: Spear 3d (7d), Stability 3d (10d), Stealth 3d (6d), Survival 3d (6d), Tactics 5d (8d).

relsome tribe, descendents of a minor clan which had paid its meager furs and meat in tribute to Atlantis of old. To the world the swastika was a fearsome symbol of Nazi might; to Gadeirus it was an affront. He swept into the European war. The American press dubbed him “the Black Atlantean” and his new legend was born. When the war ended, Gadeirus faded from the public eye again. He reappeared only recently after learning that superhumans had banded together to defend their country, now one of the greatest in the world. He hopes to help keep it from sinking into the mire of corruption, arrogance, and tyranny that has been the fate of so many great powers.

Foreign Language Skills (46 pts) Ancient Egyptian 1d (4d), Ancient Greek 3d (6d), English 2d (5d), French 1d (4d), German 1d (4d), Japanese 1d (4d), Latin 2d (5d), Mayan 1d (4d), Muvian 1d (4d), another 10 obscure dialects 1d (4d)

Gadeirus will never regain Atlantis, but he can, perhaps, save its unknowing descendents from folly. For a time, anyway. When another thousand years pass who knows what will be lost? Perhaps, if the struggle is true, not everything of worth. White Knights, Black Hearts

Superpowers (92 pts) Medium Armor 3HD (36 pts) As Heavy Armor in Wild Talents but with a Flaw that it reduces Shock and Killing damage rather than Width (-1). It’s Permanent (+4) instead of Endless. 27

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Insubstantiality 2HD (8 pts) As in Wild Talents but use these power qualities. Attacks (+2): +1 Attacks quality level (+1), Immutable, Irreplaceable, Indestructible Focus: Spear of Kings (-2), NonPhysical (+2), Touch Only (-2). Useful (+2): Endless (+3), Immutable, Irreplaceable, Indestructible Focus: Spear of Kings (-2), Touch Only (-2).

The Black Atlantean . . . ? This is the 1970s, remember?

In the ’70s mainstream comics made efforts to express racial

awareness, but they were—how shall we say it?—a little heavyhanded. They rarely got the hang of treating minority supers as simply superheroes. So we got Black Mamba, Black Lightning (re-

Glimmer (250 points)

named Black Vulcan for television), Black Panther, Black Goliath, Brother Voodoo (with a name like that, the “black” could go un-

Name: Donna Kay Fletcher AKA “Glimmer” Nationality: American Political Affiliation: None Education: High school; some college at City University Occupation: College student, government-sanctioned superhero Criminal Record: None DOB: March 20, 1955 Known Parahuman Abilities: Glimmer can turn herself into “living light,” teleporting—“gleaming,” as she calls it—from place to place within line of sight. She also controls light. She cannot generate it, but she can reflect, amplify, or reduce light around her and even create holographic mirages. History: Donna Kay was always an obsessive girl. A thin, pretty teenager, she was a fan of the superhero Whitelight the way most girls were fans of the Beatles or Shaun Cassidy: She knew in her heart that someday she would be the one to see the man inside the nimbus. She collected photos, kept watch for him from her townhouse window, and was rebuffed countless times trying to get into the Hall of Heroes to ask for his autograph. She was eighteen when she finally saw him, and the experience changed her life—in many ways. She was in a car with her parents, driving across one of the bridges leading into the city from the suburbs, when the bridge shuddered and rocked. The Nazi villain Kriegsmarine had churned the waters of the river and bay into massive waves, stirring terrific winds on the bridges and across the city. The bridge snapped. Dozens of cars plummeted to the roiling water. Donna Kay and her parents screamed—then she began to glow, or the car around her began to darken, or both. A second before the car hit the water, Whitelight literally yanked her out of the back seat; and to her

said). . . . We were lucky X-Men icon Ororo Munroe didn’t get stuck with “Black Storm” or a certain obscure 1970s vampire hunter (and late 1990s action hero) didn’t get appear as “Black Blade.” As for Power Man, presumably “Black Power Man” would have been a little too politically charged.

How Black Cat and Black Canary got away with being white and

blonde, we’ll probably never know.

The Black Atlantean is a nod to that silly era.

Immunity to Age, Disease, Water and the Ocean Depths 2HD (24 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Variable Effect (+4) and If/ Then: Limited effects (-1), so it applies to aging, disease, suffocation, drowning and the deeps but not, say, deadly radiation or cyanide. Regeneration 2HD (12 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Delayed Effect (-2). Perceive Spear of Kings 10d (20 pts) Useful (+2): Booster (+1), If/Then: Only Spear of Kings (-1).

The Spear of Kings (83 pts) Hyperskill: Melee Weapon (Spear) 5d (35 pts) Hyperskill (+1): +3 Attacks quality levels (+3), Immutable, Irreplaceable, Indestructible Focus: Spear of Kings (-2), Penetrating (+5). Note: Use the lower of his native skill or the Hyperskill. It does Width + 7 in Killing damage (Width + 5 if the wielder has merely human strength) with Penetration 5.

surprise, she saw that her glow and his were not quite the same. She reflected his light, but also the blue reflection of the sea and the grey of the sky. Looking around, she saw the world in impossible new colors, spectra never seen by the naked human eye. But she still could not see through Whitelight’s glow.

Flight 2WD (40 pts) Useful (+2): Booster (+2), Endless (+3), Immutable, Irreplaceable, Indestructible Focus: Spear of Kings (-2).

White Knights, Black Hearts

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Donna Kay’s parents did not survive. Seeing her power, Grailknight invited Donna to live with the White Knights, for her own protection and to explore her abilities. She gladly accepted. She became like an adopted daughter to the team, especially Minute Man, and within two years she was joining them in the field. Whitelight is as much an enigma now as ever. And she still has never seen his face. Dependents: None Description: Donna is 5’6” tall, 105 lbs, with wavy, light brown hair, brown eyes and delicate features. She usually wears tight jeans and a puffy blouse. When her powers are “on,” Glimmer looks like a walking mirror reflecting everything around her. She often appears a couple of feet from where she’s actually standing. Glimmer is always a hit at the disco.

Teleportation 8d (24 pts) As in Wild Talents, but each quality has Go First (+1), a Flaw called Line of Sight (-1), meaning she can only go in an unbroken line like a laser, and Obvious: Bright glow (-1). Illusions 8d (16 pts) As in Wild Talents but without Attacks. Each quality has If/ Then: Can only duplicate something within line of sight or change its apparent location, can’t create original illusions (-1).

Titanite Blouse and Hood (30 pts) Medium Armor 3HD (30 pts) As Heavy Armor in Wild Talents but with a Flaw that it reduces Shock and Killing damage rather than Width (-1). It’s Permanent (+4) instead of Endless, and has Secret Focus: Titanite weave blouse and hood (+0) and Limited Coverage: Arms, torso and head only (-1). The armor was created by Grailknight. It stops 3 Shock and 3 Killing damage from attacks that hit locations 3 through 10.

Archetype (5 pts) Mutant

Stats (55 pts)

Minute Man (349 pts)

Body 1d Coordination 2d Sense 2d Mind 2d Charm 3d Command 1d Base Will 4 Loyalty: Minute Man (2) Passion: Whitelight (2)

Name: Bill Lemons AKA “Minute Man” Nationality: American Political Affiliation: Republican Education: High School Occupation: Government-sanctioned superhero Criminal Record: None DOB: December 26, 1922 Known Parahuman Abilities: Minute Man can freeze time, affecting everything in about a 100-yard radius around him for up to one minute. While the “freeze” is in effect, unaffected objects or people can enter the area without being frozen, but nothing that is frozen can be damaged or changed in any way. However, his power also manifests in smaller, unconscious ways: It causes attacks against him to “freeze” almost imperceptibly, just long enough for him to get out of the way, and when under stress he seems to “stutter” in and out of existence while handling tasks outside of time. He has learned to be careful, though. After using his power, Minute Man is often incapacitated by the strain of “catching up” with time.

Skills (26 pts) Athletics 2d (3d), Brawling 1d (2d), Dodge 2d (4d), Driving: Car 1d (3d), First Aid 2d (4d), Perception 2d (4d), Persuasion 2d (5d), Stealth 1d (3d)

Superpowers (164 pts) Control Light 4d+2WD (40 pts) As in Wild Talents, but each power quality has Obvious: bright glow (-1) and Attacks has +2 power quality levels (+2). It does Width + 2 in Shock and Killing damage. Invisibility 2HD (20 pts) As in Wild Talents. Immunity to Bright Light 3HD (18 pts) As in Wild Talents.

History: Bill Lemons was a typical city kid in World War II, born and raised in New York City, drafted into the Navy at 19, and shipped out on U.S.S. Lexington. Lemons was a tall, tough-talking, terrified youth, like most of them. The Lexington starred in the Battle of the Coral Sea,

Perceive All Spectra of Light 4d (16 pts) As in Wild Talents, with Variable Effect (+4) and If/Then: Applies only to spectra of light (-2). White Knights, Black Hearts

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squaring off against Japanese ships in a brutal engagement. First the Americans heard that their bombers had sunk a Japanese carrier, the first of the war; then Japanese planes roared in for revenge, and the sky was choked with bombers and fighters and anti-aircraft fire. Lemons was in the thick of it, pounding the sky from his turret, filthy, deaf and desperate, when he saw a Japanese bomber drift overhead, too high to target. A bomb dropped away from the plane like a squat metal egg and drifted down toward him. The bomb came closer and he knew everything was over. And then the bomb stopped in mid-air, still as a photograph. In the distance he saw the waves still cresting, distant planes still diving and rising, but all around him was perfectly still. He took one last look at that bomb, hanging so close overhead, and then ran as fast as his legs could take him. Within a minute the world returned to normal. The bomb blew his gun emplacement to a gaping hole in the deck. Another landed and then torpedoes hit, one after the other, and the Lexington was crippled. But when the order came to abandon her, Bill Lemons was one of the survivors. Lemons went joined other superhumans in the war, going on missions around the world. By the war’s end he had a Medal of Honor to his name. And he found it hard to leave the missions behind. He failed miserably at marriage, leaving an ex-wife and two kids in the Midwest. He went to Korea, then Berlin with the CIA, then Vietnam. By 1965 he was finally edged out by CIA superiors who had no use for parahumans. Back home, he took the best route left: He became a private contractor. He spent eight years taking home a sizeable wage to use his powers on behalf of private companies. But industrial espionage was less than satisfying. In 1971 he was already feeling his age. When Grailknight sent an invitation to join the newly formed White Knights, he was glad to sign on. Dependents: Two grown children living in Iowa. Description: Unlike his fellow White Knights, Bill “Minute Man” Lemons never stands out in a crowd. He has short black hair gone mostly grey and hard green eyes in an aging, weathered face. He is broad-shouldered and fit for 53, with

Archetype (5 pts) Mutant

Stats (107 pts) Body 3d Coordination 3d Sense 2d Mind 2d Charm 4d Command 4d Base Will 12 Loyalty: The White Knights (2), Glimmer (4) Passion: Honor and glory (6)

Skills (90 pts) Athletics 2d (5d), Brawling 4d (7d), Driving: Car 2d (5d), Empathy 2d (4d), First Aid 2d (4d), Interrogation 2d (6d), Lie 2d (6d), Melee Weapon: Knife 5d (8d), Navigation 3d (5d), Perception 3d (5d), Pilot (Boat) 1d (4d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 3d (6d), Scrutiny 2d (4d), Stability 3d (7d), Stealth 4d (7d), Streetwise 2d (4d), Tactics 3d (5d).

Foreign Language Skills (24 pts) Burmese 1d (3d), Chinese 1d (3d), French 2d (4d), German 3d (5d), Japanese 1d (3d), Korean 1d (3d), Russian 2d (4d), Vietnamese 1d (3d).

Superpowers (123 pts) Time Fugue 2HD (80 pts) As in Wild Talents, but its Useful quality has Booster (+4), Go First (+1), Loopy (-2), Mental Strain (-2) and Radius (+8). Multiple Actions 6HD (24 pts) As in Wild Talents. Minute Man gains +6d to any dice pool when he attempts multiple actions. Block 4HD (16 pts) As in Wild Talents. Modifiers on Body 3d (3 pts) Booster (+1), Go First (+3), If/Then: Booster applies only to speed (-1), Willpower Cost (-2).

Weapons

wide, calloused hands. He usually wears a grey business suit cut for a loose fit over the holster of a big pistol, but he never looks comfortable wearing it—more like a mechanic at Sunday school than a businessman at work. He is never without a pack of Lucky Strikes. White Knights, Black Hearts

Desert Eagle .44 magnum pistol (Capacity: 7, Damage: width in Shock, with + 2 in Killing, Penetration 3) Commando knife (Damage: width in Killing)

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The Heroes of Red Shore

Use these pregenerated player characters to start play immediately, as allies if the players need help or as replacements if player characters get hurt or killed. See “I Told Him We’ve Already Got One,” page 4, for tips on using your own characters instead. The Red Shore Six include: • Jake Crawford, aka The Cannon. • Barry T. Brown, aka Trouble Man. • Carl Anderson, aka Leatherneck. • Carter Benke, aka The Streak. • Elias Brock, aka Redshift. • Rosie Williams, aka Scorch.

Archetype: Pinioned (15 pts) Source: Technological Permission: Power Theme Intrinsics: Mutable, No Willpower No Way

This is the archetype for characters who came out of the U.S.

government’s defunct, top-secret “super soldier” program, Project PINION. It aimed to create superhumans like mutants but built to specification. It didn’t always work out like that. Only a handful of subjects survived with their bodies and minds intact.

A character with this archetype has a set of superpowers that

are typically related to each other or to some core theme or concept, and usually that concept is tied somehow to the character’s self-image. Sometimes that self-image is private, and sometimes it’s subconscious, not even known to the character. Since psyche and Talent are so closely linked, the powers sometimes change and evolve. But by the same token, when these characters are at their emotional worst their powers fail them entirely.

White Knights, Black Hearts

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The Cannon (250 pts)

people—but takes every chance he gets to stick it to The Man. Dependents: None. Appearance: “The Cannon” is a tall, tough-looking white guy, 6’1” tall and 200 lbs, with big, curly brown hair. He favors soft leather coats, wide-collar shirts, bell-bottom polyester trousers and earth tones. He sometimes carries a few ball bearings (HAR 1, one Wound Box) in his pocket.

Name: Jake Crawford AKA “The Cannon” Nationality: American Political Affiliation: None Education: Some high school Occupation: Vigilante, freelance Mob enforcer. Criminal Record: Assault, destruction of public property, attempted escape (six years in Vickers Correctional Institution, 1966 to 1972). DOB: May 10, 1946 Known Parahuman Abilities: Jake Crawford can make inanimate objects spontaneously explode. The larger the object, the larger the blast. History: Jake “The Cannon” Crawford was a typical street punk, all attitude and no prospects. His life changed when he and some friends got caught brazenly stripping a car for parts. The owner came out with a pistol and an attitude of his own. Jake stared down the barrel of that gun, sure he was about to die . . . and then, somehow, he made it explode. He ran while the gunman nursed shrapnel wounds. Jake dreamed of being a superhero, but when he was 19 a corrupt detective pinned a murder on him. At the trial Jake snapped. He blew up the witness stand underneath the detective’s stooge and blew up the bailiffs’ nightsticks and pistols when they tried to stop him. Miraculously nobody was killed, but the police added a laundry list of new charges to his record. The next day the “witness” admitted to lying about the whole thing. The murder charge was dropped, but not Jake’s adventure in the courtroom. Before he knew it, he was in a state correctional facility for ten to twenty. Three years in, he was recruited into Project PINION, a top-secret government super-soldier program. Parahumans from the military and from prisons were subjected to experiments meant to boost their powers. Jake was lucky—many died or went insane. After two years PINION was disbanded as a waste of money and the prisoners went back to finish their terms. Jake spent a final year in the joint quietly, with a well of bitterness rising. Since getting out, Jake’s prospects have not improved. He doesn’t want a life of crime but he has to pay the bills. He does freelance work for the mob on occasion, demolishing a stray mafioso’s new Cadillac or blowing open a locked door. Jake is often torn between compassion for his neighbors and his resentment of the law. He likes to help ordinary

White Knights, Black Hearts

Archetype (15 pts) Pinioned

Stats (85 pts) Body 3d Coordination 4d Sense 2d Mind 2d Charm 3d Command 3d Base Will 6 Loyalty: Trouble Man (2), Red Shore (2) Passion: Revenge against the system (2)

Skills (54 pts) Brawling 5d (8d), Dodge 2d (6d), Drive: Car 2d (6d), Intimidation 1d (4d), Knowledge: Forgery 2d (4d), Knowledge: Car Mechanics 2d (4d), Lie 3d (6d), Melee Weapon: Knife 2d (5d), Persuasion 2d (5d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 2d (6d), Stability 1d (4d), Stealth 1d (5d), Streetwise 2d (4d).

Superpowers (96 pts) Harm (Small Blast) 6d (24 pts) Attacks (+2): He can make the air itself explode. Defends (+2): A blast can throw off a projectile or the aim of an attacker. Harm (Big Blast) 2HD (72 pts) Attacks (+2): +10 Attacks quality levels (+10), Area 10 (+10), If/Then: Can only target inanimate objects (-2), Penetration 2 (+2), If/Then: Area activates only if the target object is destroyed (-2), If/Then: Area rating is limited to the total Wound Boxes and armor of the destroyed target (-2). This does 12 Shock and Killing damage with Penetration 2 to an inanimate object. If it destroys the object, it explodes with an Area rating equal to the total armor rating and Wound Boxes of the object. If he detonates a motorcycle that has LAR 2 and two locations with four Would Boxes each, that’s Area 10.

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Trouble Man (250 pts)

caught and people whisper, “Trouble Man did that!” Even when you don’t know it, Trouble Man is there. Dependents: None. Appearance: In his natural form Trouble Man is a huge black man, 6’8” tall and 300 lbs of muscle. On the streets he wears black jeans and a black leather jacket, and a black T-shirt underneath with a big white “T” printed across the front. As “Barry T. White” he is a skinny white man with glasses, a nervous academic struggling in a troubled urban school.

Name: Barry T. Brown AKA “Trouble Man” Nationality: American Political Affiliation: Democrat Education: Master’s degree in education, Red Shore College (as Barry T. White) Occupation: School teacher Criminal Record: Assault (five years in Vickers Correctional Institution, 1967 to 1972) DOB: January 13, 1946 Known Parahuman Abilities: Trouble Man can assume the form of any human or animal that he has touched. He also heals with amazing speed. History: Barry T. Brown was a heavyweight boxer with a future in the Golden Gloves. Born poor in Red Shore, he learned to fight as a way to keep the local hoodlums and street gangs off his case, and it worked. With his size and quick fists nobody gave him much trouble. He wanted more than Red Shore could offer, and boxing was his ticket out. In 1966 that ticket vanished. A racketeer told Barry to throw a fight. There was plenty of money in it for him if he cooperated, but he could see his future evaporating with an unearned loss on his record. He refused. Local toughs picked a bloody fight with him, and a cop in the racketeer’s pocket pinned the blame on Barry. He got six years in state prison. In prison Barry befriended Jake “The Cannon” Crawford, and when government agents recruited Jake into Project PINION, the super-soldier program, they grabbed Barry too. He didn’t know why. Terrified of the bizarre experiments, Barry found himself changing. He became an exact duplicate of a doctor in the lab. He became a big friendly dog he had known on the streets. He became all kinds of things, and PINION was there to observe. Like Jake, he came out with his body and sanity intact; not all did. Also like Jake, he was cut loose when the government cancelled the project. When he got out of prison he went home. Barry set out to clean up the town. He created a new face for himself, a new identity, and used it to get an education and a license: As Barry T. White, a skinny Caucasian school teacher, he teaches at Red Shore High School. As Trouble Man, he keeps the streets a little safer than they were before. “Trouble Man” has become an urban legend in Red Shore. Nobody knows who he is. All they know is that when things get bad, somebody manages to fix them. Bad guys get

White Knights, Black Hearts

Archetype (15 pts) Pinioned

Stats (95 pts) Body 5d Coordination 2d Sense 2d Mind 3d Charm 3d Command 4d Base Will 7 Loyalty: Red Shore (3) Passion: Keeping his people safe (4)

Skills (42 pts) Brawling 5d (10d), Dodge 3d (5d), First Aid 1d (4d), Intimidation 3d (7d), Knowledge: Education 3d (6d), Knowledge: Forgery 1d (4d), Leadership 2d (6d), Stability 1d (5d), Streetwise 2d (5d)

Superpowers (98 pts) Dead Ringer 1d+1WD (18 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Slow (-2) and If/Then: Must touch a subject and spend Willpower or Base Will to “remember” the exact appearance later (-2). That memory is good for one day for a point of Willpower, or it’s permanent for a point of Base Will. He has “Barry T. White” memorized permanently for a cost of 3 Points. Alternate Forms 2d+1HD+1WD (72 pts) As in Wild Talents, but each power quality has If/Then: Only for animal shapes and abilities (-1) and If/Then: Must touch animal and spend Willpower or Base Will to “remember” it later (-2; see notes in Dead Ringer). Regeneration 2HD (8 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Limited Width (-1) and Slow (-2). He recovers 1 Shock and 1 Killing per hit location every other round. 33

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The Streak (250 pts)

White was back to normal—but he told Carter how important it was to keep what he’d seen a secret. The whole scene was way too cool to say no. Now, whenever Trouble Man needs help Carter is there. Dependents: Grandmother (his legal guardian until he reached adulthood). Appearance: Carter is a wiry white kid, 18 years old, with a slouch, long hair and a goofy grin. He wears ratty old Tshirts, bell-bottom jeans and sandals, but he’s gotten good at shedding them fast if he needs to run (Coordination + Dodge roll, taking 5 – width rounds).

Name: Carter Benke AKA “The Streak” Nationality: American Political Affiliation: None Education: Some high school Occupation: Slacker, fast food cook Criminal Record: None (yet) DOB: August 2, 1956 Known Parahuman Abilities: The Streak can move faster than the eye can see—but only if he is completely nude. Wearing clothes he moves at normal speed. At his flat-out fastest the Streak runs about 80 times the speed of sound and can make a running broad jump of 11 miles. History: Carter Benke was an ordinary kid of a lower class home, a shaggy-haired stoner in Led Zeppelin shirts and threadbare jeans, lazy but harmless. That didn’t stop a gang of school bullies, of course, from regularly waking Carter out of a chemically-induced stupor to shake him down for cash and beat the hell out of him when he had none. One day Carter was wide awake when the gang showed up. Wide awake and wet, in the showers after gym class. They stole his clothes, found no cash, and came for Carter. Something deep in his brain and body clicked, and when Carter ran for it, heedless of his nudity and the inevitable laughter of schoolhall kids—he actually kind of dug being out there in front of everybody—he really ran for it. In the blink of an eye he ran a mile. He stopped, shocked, in the middle of the street in a completely different neighborhood. A car honked as it nearly slammed into him, and he ducked out of the way—and wound up by the river, three miles away. Carter devoted a little time to humiliating the punks who had made his life miserable, but he didn’t have any more direction in life than before. You can only terrorize bullies for a while before it’s not much fun anymore. Sure, he could run faster than anybody; but where would he go? He quit school and devoted his life to cooling out, smoking (regular cigarettes, now; he’s afraid the other stuff will make him forget how to use his power), and occasionally flipping burgers at the local grease pit to pay his way. Once in a while, Carter finds himself helping other parahumans in the neighborhood. While blazing around school one day he saw one of his teachers, Mr. White, transform into a massive black man with a “T” on his shirt. Carter slammed into a wall in surprise. When he came around, Mr.

White Knights, Black Hearts

Archetype (5 pts) Mutant

Stats (71 pts) Body 2d Coordination 3d Sense 2d Mind 2d Charm 3d Command 1d Base Will 6 Loyalty: Trouble Man (3) Passion: Hanging loose and keeping things cool (3)

Skills (22 pts) Brawling 3d (5d), Dodge 2d (5d), Knowledge: Fast Food Preparation 1d (3d), Lie 2d (6d), Stealth 3d (6d).

Superpowers (152 pts) Hyperbody 10d (60 pts) Hyperstat (+4): Booster x1,000 (+3), If/Then: Only for speed (-2), If/Then: Only when naked (-1), No Physics (+2) Block 4HD (24 pts) Defends (+2): Duration (+2), If/Then: Only when naked (-1) Invisibility 2HD (20 pts) As in Wild Talents, but the Useful quality has No Dusting (+2), meaning he can’t be made visible by coating him in flour or paint, and both qualities have If/Then: Not when immobile or in tight spaces (-1). He moves too fast to be seen, but only when he has room to move. Multiple Actions 4HD (48 pts) As in Wild Talents, but each quality has Permanent (+4) rather than Duration. The Streak adds four bonus dice to any roll when he attempts multiple actions. 34

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Leatherneck (250 pts)

tion painkiller—and avoids people who tell him there’s more he ought to be doing with his life. Dependents: None. Appearance: Though tall and wirily powerful, Leatherneck is unrecognizable as the clean-cut Marine who impressed so many politicians a decade ago. His fair hair is shaggy, his handsome face is covered with a filthy beard and his addiction has left him pale and drawn. All that’s left of his uniform is a soiled fatigue jacket with a peace symbol painted on the back. He usually has an old backpack with the necessities: canteen, lighter, spoon, needles, tubing and drugs (destroyed if hit in location 8 from behind).

Nationality: American Political Affiliation: None Education: Annapolis Naval Academy; USMC Officer Candidate School Occupation: Former All-American super-soldier turned vagrant and reluctant activist Criminal Record: Multiple minor drug arrests DOB: August 4, 1940 Known Parahuman Abilities: Leatherneck has a preternatural mastery of skills learned by training and casual observation, as well as perfect control of his physical abilities and amazing powers of recuperation. Unfortunately he has been an opiate addict for years, and his abilities fall apart when he’s in withdrawal or “Jonesing”. He must get a fix at least once per day, and is considered dazed (–2d to all rolls) for two hours after getting it. History: Carl Anderson was a patriot. In the Naval Academy and the Marines he was marked for great things. Then he gambled on a super-soldier program called PINION, created to manipulate and enhance parahuman abilities and train them for military and intelligence work. PINION’s procedures failed on most, but his abilities soared to amazing new levels and he began healing far more quickly than normal. Anderson was the first PINION graduate to reach the field, and he remained its poster boy for several years. Whenever politicians wondered where the money was going, they would fly in “Leatherneck,” the ultimate Marine, to put on a show. Anderson went to Vietnam in 1967. He led a cadre of parahumans that played hell with the enemy. Anderson was wounded badly and often. He always recovered; but he picked up a habit, too. But it wasn’t the physical pain he needed to dull. Pain and death were everywhere. They were his stock in trade—and they never did anyone any good. Leatherneck lost his faith. In 1974 Anderson quit. PINION had been shut down for years, Vietnam was grinding down and he no longer wanted any of it. He left the Marines, all but ignored, and found himself on the streets. He heard there were some PINION survivors in a neighborhood called Red Shore. When he found them he settled down, for a while at least. Sometimes he does a little good. He does what he can to make amends. But mostly he just looks for the next fix—methadone, heroin, morphine or some prescrip-

White Knights, Black Hearts

Archetype (15 pts) Pinioned

Stats (182 pts) Body 4d+1WD (2d) Coordination 4d+1WD (2d) Sense 5d (1d) Mind 3d (1d) Charm 4d (1d) Command 5d (1d) Base Will 13 (6) Loyalty: The Downtrodden (5) Passion: Heroin (8)

Skills (0 pts) Special. See his Super Skilled power.

Superpowers (53 pts) Flaw on Body 2d+1WD, Coordination 2d+1WD, Sense 4d, Mind 2d, Charm 3d and Command 4d (-25 pts) Not when in heroin withdrawal (-1). Super Skilled 3d+2WD (66 pts) Hyperskill (+1): If/Then: Must observe a Skill or have been trained in it (-1), If/Then: Not when in heroin withdrawal (-1), Permanent (+4), Variable Effect (+4). If Leatherneck has been trained in a Skill before (this mainly applies to skills from his commando days and from his recent time on the streets) or has a few minutes to see it in action, he has 3d+2WD in it. If there’s any doubt, the GM has the final say. Regeneration 2HD (12 pts) As in Wild Talents but with Limited Width (-1) and If/ Then: Not when in heroin withdrawal (-1). He recovers 1 Shock and 1 Killing per hit location per round. 35

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Redshift (250 pts)

the oppressors of the people of Red Shore. Soon he forgot that either face was false. As Redshift he has no memory of his life as Elias Brock. As Brock he knows Redshift only as a Commie vigilante stirring up trouble. In neither persona does he consciously notice those missing hours. He has spent nearly 20 years on the police force, most of it in Red Shore, and 20 years as the Soviet hero. Somehow neither life has crossed the other . . . yet. Dependents: None. Appearance: Tall, broad-shouldered, Caucasian, with stony blue eyes and short brown hair. As Redshift he wears all black, a greatcoat over a black shirt emblazoned with a brilliant crimson star, with bright red eyes gleaming from a dark mask.

Name: Lt. Elias Brock, City Police Department AKA “Redshift” Nationality: American Political Affiliation: (As Brock) Republican; (as Redshift) Communist Education: Bachelor’s degree in criminology Occupation: Police officer Criminal Record: None DOB: May 3, 1931 Known Parahuman Abilities: Redshift can telekinetically manipulate and transform anything “built by the hand of man.” That is, anything which has been constructed by other human beings. His power does not affect raw, unworked materials. He can cause a stretch of asphalt to soften and flow like cold pitch, or open a hole in a street or the floor of a building, but he cannot force a boulder to split or a tree to attack an enemy. History: The man who would become Redshift was born to urban intellectual socialists in a modestly upscale home in New York City. He was Arnie Golden, whose parents who ran in pro-Soviet circles from the Depression onward. Arnie was an idealistic malcontent in 1950, interested in machines but frustrated with college, when he was drafted for service in Korea. His unit was ambushed and Arnie crawled in panic. Then he felt his hand descend on a metallic button. In his mind’s eye he saw the shape of the mine beneath his hand, every curve of its simple machine—and refused to accept it. The mine, the war, reality itself. The mine failed to detonate. And he felt the world change, splinter, shatter around him. Arnie survived in a catatonic stupor. His parents came to the hospital, and they begged him to speak. Arnie never stirred. Then, one night in 1956, he understood the course his life must take. Arnie dissolved the door to his room into sawdust. He sealed orderlies in barely-ventilated traps of plaster and cement. He reduced the hospital files to pulp. He erased every record of his life. Arnie Golden was just a memory. In his place was Redshift, Champion of the People and secret emissary of the international Soviet. So secret, in fact, that he’s never actually met a real emissary of the U.S.S.R. Redshift needed access to circles that an avowed communist could never enter, so he created a new identity for himself: Elias Brock, city police officer. But at night he wears the mask of Redshift, the charismatic revolutionary who humiliates White Knights, Black Hearts

Archetype (5 pts) Mutant

Stats (99 pts) Body 3d Coordination 3d Sense 2d Mind 3d Charm 3d Command 4d Base Will 10 Loyalty (as Lt. Brock): The Precinct (5). Passion (as Lt. Brock): Advancement (3), Women (2). Loyalty (as Redshift): The People (5). Passion (as Redshift): Communism (5).

Skills (98 pts) Athletics 3d (6d), Brawling 3d (6d), Dodge 2d (5d), Driving: Car 2d (5d), Empathy 2d (5d), First Aid 2d (5d), Knowledge: Criminology 2d (5d), Knowledge: Forgery 2d (5d), Leadership 2d (6d), Lie 5d (8d), Melee Weapon: Nightstick 3d (6d), Parachuting 2d (5d), Perception 2d (4d), Persuasion 4d (7d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 3d (6d), Scrutiny 3d (5d), Stability 2d (6d), Stealth 2d (5d), Streetwise 3d (6d).

Superpowers (48 pts) Control Man-Made Things 8d+1WD (36 pts) As in Wild Talents, but each power quality has If/Then: Not when in “Lt. Brock” identity (-1). Light Armor 2HD (12 pts) As in Wild Talents, but with Hardened Defense (+2), If/ Then: Must be wearing clothes (-1) and If/Then: Not when in “Lt. Brock” identity (-1). Thanks to his instinctive power Redshift’s costume has Hardened LAR 2. 36

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Scorch (250 pts)

to deliver the ransom for their kidnapped baby and keep the police out of it. The baby came home safe, the kidnappers got away clean, and the family paid Rosie well. She sent half the money to her mom and used the rest to buy the loft that she uses as home and the office of Williams Investigations. Business is sparse and the glory days front-page snapshots are long past, but Rosie struggles on. Dependents: Mother in Florida. Appearance: Rosie is 5’6” tall, thin and athletic, with a light brown complexion, wavy black-brown hair, and a wide, if infrequent, smile. She usually wears a wide-collared tan leather jacket, a burgundy shirt, brown slacks and elegant leather boots.

Name: Rosie Williams AKA “Scorch” Nationality: American Political Affiliation: Democrat Education: High school diploma Occupation: Private investigator Criminal Record: None DOB: February 17, 1947 Known Parahuman Abilities: Scorch’s body absorbs kinetic energy, turning it to vastly increased physical strength and releasing it in bright, fiery bursts. History: You remember Lefty the Lifter, right? Linda “Lefty” Gibson, the homefront heroine who showed up in all those World War II propaganda posters, lifting tank turrets into place with her bare hands and smiling for the camera? No? Well, no surprise. The papers dropped her quick after she married Will Williams, her black sweetheart, when he came home from the Pacific. Lefty and Will bought a small house in Red Shore and he worked on the docks. Life wasn’t easy but they managed. Lefty didn’t make the newsreels anymore, but certainly nobody in the neighborhood wanted to get on her bad side. They named their only child Rosie after that other poster-girl for wartime pluck. They could tell right away that Rosie had some of her mother’s power—the rigors of labor put a doctor and two nurses in the hospital but the baby came through without a scratch. Rosie’s superhuman powers slowly grew, and as a young adult she wanted to do some good. At 20 she signed up with the city police, over the objections of her conservative mother and cops throughout the ranks. But with the civilrights struggle raging, the city’s progressive administration considered it a coup to have a mixed-race woman with superpowers on the force. She put on the badge in early 1968. Rosie got the cold shoulder from many cops, but she didn’t much mind. The papers nicknamed her “Scorch” after her fiery powers shrugged off a robber’s shotgun blast. She made enemies without even trying. In 1970, a Red Shore street gang decided it wanted Rosie out of the way. They kidnapped her father. She and her mother charged to the rescue, demolished the gang from top to bottom—and found Will Williams dead. Rosie and her mother have barely spoken since then. Lefty moved to Florida. Rosie was fired. Now she works as a private investigator. She made a big score a couple of years ago, when a wealthy family hired her White Knights, Black Hearts

Archetype (5 pts) Mutant

Stats (127 pts) Body 3d (6d) Coordination 4d Sense 4d Mind 3d Charm 4d Command 5d Base Will 13 Loyalty: Red Shore (3); The Red Shore Six (4); Clients (2). Passion: Overcoming Crime and Corruption (4).

Skills (46 pts) Brawling 4d (10d), Driving: Car 1d (5d), Empathy 2d (6d), First Aid 1d (4d), Interrogation 1d (6d), Intimidation 2d (7d), Knowledge: Criminology 1d (4d), Knowledge: Photography 2d (5d), Lie 1d (5d), Ranged Weapon: Pistol 1d (5d), Security Systems 2d (5d), Stability 1d (6d), Stealth 1d (5d), Streetwise 3d (6d).

Superpowers (72 pts) Hardened Medium Armor 3HD (42 pts) Defends (+2): If/Then: Interference reduces Shock and Killing damage rather than Width (-1), Interference (+3), Obvious: bright fiery nimbus (-1), Permanent (+4). All attacks against Rosie have their Shock and Killing damage reduced by 3. Penetration does not reduce this armor. Hyperstat: Body +3d (12 pts) Hyperstat (+4)

Extras and Flaws on Body 6d (18 pts) Burn (+2), No Upward Limit (+2), Obvious: Bright fiery nimbus (-1). 37

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