King Cosmos

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

“Anywhere out of the way is fine. Just clear the area for me please.”

The process of clearing out the crates went quickly and smoothly even with just Faye doing the work, the Fae’s teleportation magic making swift work of something that would take her much, much longer. Even with magic it would have taken Morgana a long time to move those crates, needing to create a separate ritual for each one, accounting for distance, position, weight and size; it would have been simpler to move everything by hand. But it was easy for Faye, in a way that was honestly quite vexing to witness; even more so when she confidently stated that she would be able to trace the teleportation ritual back to its source, since that was something that Morgana simply could not do. Magic or not.

So many advantages; Fae blood was exceedingly potent.

As was demonic.

When Amanda’s assistant, or whatever she was, arrived to perform her exorcism ritual Morgana couldn’t help but stop what she was doing to watch. The crime scene would still be there in a few minutes after all and it wasn’t every day that one got to see a demon open a door to the underworld. Morgana made sure to make a note of it all, even raising her glove to her eye again to witness the magic being woven together for a moment, before the sight of it began to make her throb in a painless but worrying manner. She wondered how much of the spectacle was truly necessary; the chanting, repeated three times, a magically significant number, the runes, not written in chalk or any other substance, but conjured into the air itself, the wine, cast to the ground as an offering to some higher power, perhaps a symbolic substitute for blood not unlike how it was used in Eucharist rites to symbolise the blood of Christ. It was a fascinatingly archaic display that Morgana found somewhat quaint.

Her own focus on research was often to remove such superstitions from the act of casting, or to determine how much they really mattered; were it a human casting in such a way she would have rolled her eyes at the waste of effort and a good vintage, but since it was a demon…

It was foolish to compared demonic rituals to that or human, as foolish as comparing her own magic to Faye’s or that of a dragon’s. The magic of demons tended to be somewhat theological in nature, the kind of practice that called somewhat on the power of a higher being in order to work; beyond that she didn’t know much more. Needless to say, Morgana didn’t spend much time researching that kind of magic; she was part of the department of heretical studies after all and higher beings such as these tended to be a little annoyed if you skipped out on the ceremonial aspects of casting.

Spoilsports.

Nonetheless, even if all of the effort involved was somewhat impractical it allowed the practitioners to call on that much more power than they would be able to with just their own strength; there was a benefit to it. But of course, even without that demon’s had enough natural magical strength to be able to cast greater magical rituals such as this without even the need to scribble a hasty circle around themselves. A demon like Madeleine would have been able to open a long distance teleportation spell given the correct knowledge, no doubt; such a creature would have been one of her candidates for who was responsible had they not found evidence of a human ritual.

Speaking of which; with the show over Morgana turned her attention back to proceedings, focusing her attention back on the remains of the teleportation ritual now that Faye had cleared out the crates for her. It was, as she had expected, partially destroyed. Not intentionally as far as she could tell, though she was sure whoever had run this place would have cleared everything away before they left had they the chance. No, the ritual was damaged simply because people had been dragging heavy crates along the floor, scuffing the chalk and wiping away faint traces of magical circles and patterns. It was enough for her to work with however, so she got to work pacing around the circle and examining what she could.

Whoever had drawn this seemed to mostly be drawing on European influences for their work, which was not surprising given where they were, but there were also some influences from other cultures thrown in their as well; particularly the Middle East, whose influence on mathematics during the Golden Age of Islam had introduced several significant additions to magical theory as well. Morgana was tempted to say that the combination spoke of an international group, or a particularly well educated individual among their number, but there was another clue as well. The European influences were specifically Greek in nature, old influences at that; there were some traces of more modern ritual formulas, particularly Germanic matrices in the stabilising elements, but the bulk of the work was Greek formulas from a time predating the rise of the Roman Empire. Whoever designed this was using old knowledge, primarily.

“Hmm.”

Beyond that the circle was not large, but that was due more to the compactness of the design than anything to do with the scale involved; the ritual patterns were drawn in layers, different formulas and calculations and stabilising elements piled on top of each other in a way that Morgana could not help but admire. Most of the fine detail was worn away, but she could still tell that the circle had spaces for seven practitioners to work in concert with each other; seven was another magically significant number, though with how many schools of thought there were in the world it was hard to find a number was wasn’t magically significant to someone or another. Three for the trinity in Europe, four for death in Japan, seven for luck in many cultures and eight for the same in China, nine simply because it was three times three and three, as she had already said, was the trinity; at those were just the ones off the top of her head.

“I have everything I need for now. I’ll need to do some more research later, but I don’t believe the person who designed this ritual had any kind of formalised education in magic; not one from this millennium at least.” What that meant for their investigation she didn’t know yet, which was why she needed to look into this more. She would need to do some digging into the history books, try and find an organisation or faction that eschewed modern teachings or who clung to the old ways. Alternatively they were looking for an individual who had been hired by this organisation to create this ritual, a freelancer who happened to specialise in ancient magics. “Faye, your turn to do whatever it is you do with that portal.”

《 H.E.R.O. 2064 》

Richard Hoss - Forge

FORGE

"Heroes were a failed endeavour. It’s time to make way for the future."

[ NAME ]

Richard Hoss

[ HERO IDENTITY ]

Forge

[ NICKNAME/ALIAS ]

Rich

[ AGE ]

36

[ GENDER ]

Male

[ AFFILIATION ]

Villain/Vigilante; formerly a member of HERO

[ APPEARANCE ]

At 6’ 4” and 260lbs, combined with his broad shoulders and muscular build, Richard is an imposing individual; his height and his size, which includes a wide, barrel chest, thick arms and legs and large hands, give him a presence and physicality that is hard to ignore. His skin is a tanned bronze in colour, marred in places by the occasional pale scar, which complement his reddish brown hair and brown eyes.

Richard keeps his hair short on the sides but longer on top, letting the locks of hair fall as they may; his facial hair he pays more attention to, keeping his goatee neatly trimmed and in order. His face is as broad as the rest of his body, with a square face, broad nose and a strong, angular chin.

When it comes to his wardrobe Richard dressed plainly, but smartly, keeping to solid black or slate grey clothing. He will wear slacks or jeans, dress shirts or a sweater, depending on the occasion and the weather. Under his clothing he wears a bodysuit that covers his upper body and his lower half down to mid-thigh, black in colour; it is made of the same heat resistant and sturdy material that his old hero costume was made out of, capable of surviving him using his power without compromising his dignity.

[ PERSONALITY TRAITS ]

JADED

Richard wanted to change the world at one point. In a way he still does, but the hopeful and optimistic dream he once had as a young boy first donning a costume died a long time ago, snuffed out by repeated failures and the realisation that the world was not the way he thought it was. Richard is a cynical individual with little faith or trust left to put in people; he expects them to act in their own self-interest, nothing more, and treats them as such.

DRIVEN

The drive Richard had as a hero still exists; he has not given up on his goals, merely changed them. He never was the type to give up or turn away from a problem and he was never the type to let others keep him from doing what he felt needed to be done. In the past this meant fighting against villains or criminals, or standing up to the injustices he saw; now it’s the heroes who are standing in his way.

COMPOSED

Richard is not the type to wear his emotions on his sleeve, nor is he the type to let them dictate his actions. That is not to say that he doesn’t act based on his emotions at times, but instead that he is able to keep a level head even when under duress.

[ BIO ]

Richard comes from a family of heroes; he is third generation, with both his father and grandfather being heroes before him, and it was never really a question whether or not he would follow in their footsteps; not for them and not for him. His grandfather, Michael Hoss, became a hero in the 80’s during an era when heroes were just starting to reach the peak of their fame, with many becoming celebrities and household names in their own right. He operated in Texas, his home state, first as an independent hero and later on joining the hero company TEXAS. Although his grandfather, who went by the name Ironside, never managed to reach that level of notoriety himself his attitude and beliefs towards costumed heroes were shaped by his experiences in this time period; Michael held an idealised view of heroes, tinted by rose coloured glasses and later by nostalgia, believing that they were good and righteous people. Not that they should be good and righteous, but they that were be default just for being heroes.

Michael Hoss was a good man; too good, in a sense. Because he was a good man he couldn’t conceive of a hero who didn’t meet his ideal of what a hero should be and this blinded him to their faults. When his eldest son was born and began to display powers, he passed on his beliefs to him and began to train him as a hero; what he didn’t do was teach him how to be a good man. Because heroes were good by default he didn’t have to and so Richard’s father, Nathan, felt that he didn’t have to do anything to be good either; he just was. After spending a few years working at TEXAS with his father, under the name Thermal, he moved to Castleburg and signed up with HERO instead; a few years after that, he met his wife.

Nathan Hoss is not an evil man, he wasn’t even a particularly bad one; mostly he was just selfish, a little conceited and utterly lacking in self-awareness. When Richard was born and began to display his powers Nathan passed onto him the same beliefs that his father taught him, despite them being out-dated before he was even born. For a while, like his father, he even believed in those values; he believed in heroes, in his father, in HERO. That they were more. That they were better. That they were special. Once he turned eighteen he joined up with HERO himself, looking to continue his family’s legacy but unsure if a normal person like himself would ever be able to match up, and found that reality was not quite as he had been taught to believe. The heroes he met, the ones he worked alongside were… less than expected; arrogant and egotistical, petty, vain, overly concerned with their own fame and popularity, reckless and unapologetic about their mistakes. Even costly ones. They were, well, human; they were not the paragons that he had heard his father and grandfather talk about. Even his own father wasn’t immune; he just was blind to the man’s faults before seeing him in action.

Once he came to this realisation Richard began to question why people were okay with letting heroes act the way they did; if there was nothing separating heroes from regular people other than their power, if they were as flawed and imperfect as everyone else, then why were the hero companies allowed to act with as much freedom as they did? There were no qualifications to become a hero, he knew that for a fact since he was one; anyone walking in off of the street could become a hero, so why were they as respected and trusted as they were? His previous fear, that a normal person like himself could not match up to the lofty goal of becoming as good as the other heroes became the fear that they weren’t any better than him. And when some heroes held as much power as they did, power to ruin an entire city single-handedly, wasn’t that a terrifying thought?

Richard spent the next several years trying to become the best hero he could be; rather than be defeated by the shattering of his worldview, he sought to fix it instead, thinking that if he could become the kind of hero that he originally wanted to be and even inspire others to do the same, then things would be okay. Along the way he encountered a disappointing level of resistance and criticisms from those around him; most didn’t see any problem with the way they did things so long as the villains were caught and the disasters prevented, others were more blatant about the fact they just didn’t care, while a few even accused him of trying to upstage them and make other heroes look bad with his “crusade”. After five years of this he gave up and Richard quit HERO, instead deciding to become an independent hero and vigilante while also publically advocating for changes to laws regarding hero companies and heroes themselves. This approach didn’t make him many friends among the hero community, but he never had many of those to begin with.

When the e-Police were first introduced and heroes began to decline in popularity, he understood why. It seemed that the general public was finally starting to catch on to the idea that heroes were more trouble than they were worth. Why wouldn’t the public put more trust in a robot, than the heroes who were a constant source of collateral damage because “it was necessary”? Heroes who were nothing more than flawed individuals with too much power and not enough culpability. Heroes who were no better trained, sometimes even less trained, than the police but given far more leeway. The robots weren’t perfect, of course, and likely never would be; there would always be threats that required a person with powers to intervene, but if the heroes were starting to experience a decline then it meant people were starting to realise that occasionally needing a “hero” didn’t mean having to put up with the hero companies or the hero culture. If the heroes couldn’t recover from this set back and restore public opinion, then didn’t that mean it was fair that they were replaced?

Richard hopes that the current situation will be enough for the heroes to change their ways or for the hero companies to disband entirely, but he is not hopeful. If things are going to change then he will need to lend proceedings a helping hand and put the final nail in the coffin of the heroes.

| MISCELLANEOUS |

During his time as a hero working for, well, HERO, Richard always hid or chose not to use certain aspects of his power due to it being too dangerous or destructive to bystanders or the surroundings. This has made it easier for the company to disavow the fact that he used to work for them before becoming a villain by highlighting the fact that he has since started using abilities that he had never shown as a hero before, stating that he has either undergone some change or was hiding information about himself and was always planning to betray them. This is further help but the fact that his relation to his father and grandfather were also kept a secret while he was a hero, at his own request.

Abilities

[ RANKING ]

A

[ POWERS ]

Molten Metal Generation

Richard Hoss has a power which appears straight forward at first, but is surprisingly multi-faceted in reality. He has strength and durability beyond that of a normal human, which by himself would make him an effective hero or villain, but in addition to this he is able to produce molten metal from his body at will; the substance he produces is atomically identical to high-grade steel and its temperature is high enough to remain fluid. Richard does not have any direct control over the movement of this metal, aside from his ability to keep producing more of it, but it will remain heated so long as he is in contact with it and so long as he will it; it will cool naturally should it leave contact with him.

He is also able to instantly cool any of the metal that is in contact with him, solidifying and hardening it into solid steel at a moment’s notice. He uses this defensively, to quickly coat himself in a layer of armour to protect against attacks or offensively to harder a part of his body for an attack. However, even when solid he still does not have any direct control over the shape of the metal and his body will be sealed inside the hardened shell, unable to move. That being said, he is not trapped forever as Richard is able to remove the metal from his body by shattering and propelling it away from his body like a burst of shrapnel.

[ PHYSICAL STRENGTH ]

■■■■■■■□□□

7/10 – Richard physical strength is greatly enhanced, being able to easily lift several tons of mass with his bare hands.

[ AGILITY ]

■■■■□□□□□□

4/10 – Richard has no enhanced ability to speak of, but his strength allows him to move faster than a normal person by using great, leaping bounds to cover ground quickly.

[ INTELLIGENCE ]

■■■■■□□□□□

5/10 – Though many assume that he is a dumb brute due to his power or his way of fighting, Richard is a surprisingly well educated individual. He is no genius, but he is intelligent and well spoken.

[ DESTRUCTIVENESS ]

■■■■■■■□□□

7/10 – His strength combined with the molten metal he leaves in his wake and the explosive shrapnel he produces mean that Richard has a great capacity for destruction whether he wants to or not. This was a limitation for him as a hero and made it so he needed to hold back or limit himself when fighting, but since leaving that path he is no longer fettered so.

[ LETHALITY ]

■■■■■■■■□□

8/10 – With destruction comes lethality. The carnage he can cause to his surroundings can also be visited on his opponents and the hazardous nature of his powers mean even bystanders are not safe when he is fighting his hardest.

[ ENDURANCE ]

■■■■■■■■□□

8/10 – Richard’s body is hardy even without activating his full powers, but when coated in molten metal or a layer of solid armour he becomes even harder to hurt.

[ EFFICACY ]

■■■■■■■□□□

7/10 – Though straightforward, Richard’s power is surprisingly complex. Even so, he has had years to practice using it and in a way the fact that he used to hold himself in check as a hero has made him even more proficient than he would have been otherwise.

[ SKILLS ]

Kickboxing/Wrestling – Rather than just rely on his size and power to win fights, Richard has spent several years learning to fight both on his feet and on the ground in order to be able to deal with a variety of opponents.

Public Speaking – A side-effect of being someone in the public eye first as a hero then as a grass-roots activist, Richard is confident and capable of addressing large audiences while getting his point across.

[ EQUIPMENT ]

N/A

《 H.E.R.O. 2064 》

Richard Hoss - Forge

FORGE

"Heroes were a failed endeavour. It’s time to make way for the future."

[ NAME ]

Richard Hoss

[ HERO IDENTITY ]

Forge

[ NICKNAME/ALIAS ]

Rich

[ AGE ]

36

[ GENDER ]

Male

[ AFFILIATION ]

Villain/Vigilante; formerly a member of HERO

[ APPEARANCE ]

At 6’ 4” and 260lbs, combined with his broad shoulders and muscular build, Richard is an imposing individual; his height and his size, which includes a wide, barrel chest, thick arms and legs and large hands, give him a presence and physicality that is hard to ignore. His skin is a tanned bronze in colour, marred in places by the occasional pale scar, which complement his reddish brown hair and brown eyes.

Richard keeps his hair short on the sides but longer on top, letting the locks of hair fall as they may; his facial hair he pays more attention to, keeping his goatee neatly trimmed and in order. His face is as broad as the rest of his body, with a square face, broad nose and a strong, angular chin.

When it comes to his wardrobe Richard dressed plainly, but smartly, keeping to solid black or slate grey clothing. He will wear slacks or jeans, dress shirts or a sweater, depending on the occasion and the weather. Under his clothing he wears a bodysuit that covers his upper body and his lower half down to mid-thigh, black in colour; it is made of the same heat resistant and sturdy material that his old hero costume was made out of, capable of surviving him using his power without compromising his dignity.

[ PERSONALITY TRAITS ]

JADED

Richard wanted to change the world at one point. In a way he still does, but the hopeful and optimistic dream he once had as a young boy first donning a costume died a long time ago, snuffed out by repeated failures and the realisation that the world was not the way he thought it was. Richard is a cynical individual with little faith or trust left to put in people; he expects them to act in their own self-interest, nothing more, and treats them as such.

DRIVEN

The drive Richard had as a hero still exists; he has not given up on his goals, merely changed them. He never was the type to give up or turn away from a problem and he was never the type to let others keep him from doing what he felt needed to be done. In the past this meant fighting against villains or criminals, or standing up to the injustices he saw; now it’s the heroes who are standing in his way.

COMPOSED

Richard is not the type to wear his emotions on his sleeve, nor is he the type to let them dictate his actions. That is not to say that he doesn’t act based on his emotions at times, but instead that he is able to keep a level head even when under duress.

[ BIO ]

Richard comes from a family of heroes; he is third generation, with both his father and grandfather being heroes before him, and it was never really a question whether or not he would follow in their footsteps; not for them and not for him. His grandfather, Michael Hoss, became a hero in the 80’s during an era when heroes were just starting to reach the peak of their fame, with many becoming celebrities and household names in their own right. He operated in Texas, his home state, first as an independent hero and later on joining the hero company TEXAS. Although his grandfather, who went by the name Ironside, never managed to reach that level of notoriety himself his attitude and beliefs towards costumed heroes were shaped by his experiences in this time period; Michael held an idealised view of heroes, tinted by rose coloured glasses and later by nostalgia, believing that they were good and righteous people. Not that they should be good and righteous, but they that were be default just for being heroes.

Michael Hoss was a good man; too good, in a sense. Because he was a good man he couldn’t conceive of a hero who didn’t meet his ideal of what a hero should be and this blinded him to their faults. When his eldest son was born and began to display powers, he passed on his beliefs to him and began to train him as a hero; what he didn’t do was teach him how to be a good man. Because heroes were good by default he didn’t have to and so Richard’s father, Nathan, felt that he didn’t have to do anything to be good either; he just was. After spending a few years working at TEXAS with his father, under the name Thermal, he moved to Castleburg and signed up with HERO instead; a few years after that, he met his wife.

Nathan Hoss is not an evil man, he wasn’t even a particularly bad one; mostly he was just selfish, a little conceited and utterly lacking in self-awareness. When Richard was born and began to display his powers Nathan passed onto him the same beliefs that his father taught him, despite them being out-dated before he was even born. For a while, like his father, he even believed in those values; he believed in heroes, in his father, in HERO. That they were more. That they were better. That they were special. Once he turned eighteen he joined up with HERO himself, looking to continue his family’s legacy but unsure if a normal person like himself would ever be able to match up, and found that reality was not quite as he had been taught to believe. The heroes he met, the ones he worked alongside were… less than expected; arrogant and egotistical, petty, vain, overly concerned with their own fame and popularity, reckless and unapologetic about their mistakes. Even costly ones. They were, well, human; they were not the paragons that he had heard his father and grandfather talk about. Even his own father wasn’t immune; he just was blind to the man’s faults before seeing him in action.

Once he came to this realisation Richard began to question why people were okay with letting heroes act the way they did; if there was nothing separating heroes from regular people other than their power, if they were as flawed and imperfect as everyone else, then why were the hero companies allowed to act with as much freedom as they did? There were no qualifications to become a hero, he knew that for a fact since he was one; anyone walking in off of the street could become a hero, so why were they as respected and trusted as they were? His previous fear, that a normal person like himself could not match up to the lofty goal of becoming as good as the other heroes became the fear that they weren’t any better than him. And when some heroes held as much power as they did, power to ruin an entire city single-handedly, wasn’t that a terrifying thought?

Richard spent the next several years trying to become the best hero he could be; rather than be defeated by the shattering of his worldview, he sought to fix it instead, thinking that if he could become the kind of hero that he originally wanted to be and even inspire others to do the same, then things would be okay. Along the way he encountered a disappointing level of resistance and criticisms from those around him; most didn’t see any problem with the way they did things so long as the villains were caught and the disasters prevented, others were more blatant about the fact they just didn’t care, while a few even accused him of trying to upstage them and make other heroes look bad with his “crusade”. After five years of this he gave up and Richard quit HERO, instead deciding to become an independent hero and vigilante while also publically advocating for changes to laws regarding hero companies and heroes themselves. This approach didn’t make him many friends among the hero community, but he never had many of those to begin with.

When the e-Police were first introduced and heroes began to decline in popularity, he understood why. It seemed that the general public was finally starting to catch on to the idea that heroes were more trouble than they were worth. Why wouldn’t the public put more trust in a robot, than the heroes who were a constant source of collateral damage because “it was necessary”? Heroes who were nothing more than flawed individuals with too much power and not enough culpability. Heroes who were no better trained, sometimes even less trained, than the police but given far more leeway. The robots weren’t perfect, of course, and likely never would be; there would always be threats that required a person with powers to intervene, but if the heroes were starting to experience a decline then it meant people were starting to realise that occasionally needing a “hero” didn’t mean having to put up with the hero companies or the hero culture. If the heroes couldn’t recover from this set back and restore public opinion, then didn’t that mean it was fair that they were replaced?

Richard hopes that the current situation will be enough for the heroes to change their ways or for the hero companies to disband entirely, but he is not hopeful. If things are going to change then he will need to lend proceedings a helping hand and put the final nail in the coffin of the heroes.

| MISCELLANEOUS |

During his time as a hero working for, well, HERO, Richard always hid or chose not to use certain aspects of his power due to it being too dangerous or destructive to bystanders or the surroundings. This has made it easier for the company to disavow the fact that he used to work for them before becoming a villain by highlighting the fact that he has since started using abilities that he had never shown as a hero before, stating that he has either undergone some change or was hiding information about himself and was always planning to betray them. This is further help but the fact that his relation to his father and grandfather were also kept a secret while he was a hero, at his own request.

Abilities

[ RANKING ]

A

[ POWERS ]

Molten Metal Generation

Richard Hoss has a power which appears straight forward at first, but is surprisingly multi-faceted in reality. He has strength and durability beyond that of a normal human, which by himself would make him an effective hero or villain, but in addition to this he is able to produce molten metal from his body at will; the substance he produces is atomically identical to high-grade steel and its temperature is high enough to remain fluid. Richard does not have any direct control over the movement of this metal, aside from his ability to keep producing more of it, but it will remain heated so long as he is in contact with it and so long as he will it; it will cool naturally should it leave contact with him.

He is also able to instantly cool any of the metal that is in contact with him, solidifying and hardening it into solid steel at a moment’s notice. He uses this defensively, to quickly coat himself in a layer of armour to protect against attacks or offensively to harder a part of his body for an attack. However, even when solid he still does not have any direct control over the shape of the metal and his body will be sealed inside the hardened shell, unable to move. That being said, he is not trapped forever as Richard is able to remove the metal from his body by shattering and propelling it away from his body like a burst of shrapnel.

[ PHYSICAL STRENGTH ]

■■■■■■■□□□

7/10 – Richard physical strength is greatly enhanced, being able to easily lift several tons of mass with his bare hands.

[ AGILITY ]

■■■■□□□□□□

4/10 – Richard has no enhanced ability to speak of, but his strength allows him to move faster than a normal person by using great, leaping bounds to cover ground quickly.

[ INTELLIGENCE ]

■■■■■□□□□□

5/10 – Though many assume that he is a dumb brute due to his power or his way of fighting, Richard is a surprisingly well educated individual. He is no genius, but he is intelligent and well spoken.

[ DESTRUCTIVENESS ]

■■■■■■■□□□

7/10 – His strength combined with the molten metal he leaves in his wake and the explosive shrapnel he produces mean that Richard has a great capacity for destruction whether he wants to or not. This was a limitation for him as a hero and made it so he needed to hold back or limit himself when fighting, but since leaving that path he is no longer fettered so.

[ LETHALITY ]

■■■■■■■■□□

8/10 – With destruction comes lethality. The carnage he can cause to his surroundings can also be visited on his opponents and the hazardous nature of his powers mean even bystanders are not safe when he is fighting his hardest.

[ ENDURANCE ]

■■■■■■■■□□

8/10 – Richard’s body is hardy even without activating his full powers, but when coated in molten metal or a layer of solid armour he becomes even harder to hurt.

[ EFFICACY ]

■■■■■■■□□□

7/10 – Though straightforward, Richard’s power is surprisingly complex. Even so, he has had years to practice using it and in a way the fact that he used to hold himself in check as a hero has made him even more proficient than he would have been otherwise.

[ SKILLS ]

Kickboxing/Wrestling – Rather than just rely on his size and power to win fights, Richard has spent several years learning to fight both on his feet and on the ground in order to be able to deal with a variety of opponents.

Public Speaking – A side-effect of being someone in the public eye first as a hero then as a grass-roots activist, Richard is confident and capable of addressing large audiences while getting his point across.

[ EQUIPMENT ]

N/A

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

“Knowledge that can’t be taught or put into practice is useless; or at least useless to anyone other than the person who has it, which is practically the same thing.” Knowledge hoarded was knowledge wasted, as was knowledge lost because it wasn’t passed on or recorded. And knowledge wasted was oh so very hard to get back. The history of magic was a treasure trove of information that would likely never see the light of day ever again. “All the more reason why we need to bridge that gap, do away with out-dated modes of thinking and make magic as accessible as we can. But I digress; we’re not here to discuss academics.”

Not that she was having much success at what they were here for. This particular part of the warehouse didn’t seem to have any traces of magic that she could detect with her enhanced sight and Faye presumably had not found anything either or else she would have said something. Morgana let her hands fall from her face, the illuminated design fading as she broke the circle.

“The glove won’t work if the wearer doesn’t have magic; it’s not just a power supply issue, but a control one. For simple workings something like a magical battery might be sufficient, but this array is too complex and delicate to simple shove magic into.” She’d had some success with creating lamps and heating elements powered by magic, just as a proof of concept, but anything more complicated than that tended to fail, break or worse. “Besides, there has always been the issue that magic circles and rituals tend to function better when you create them yourself; it’s just one of those little things that we haven’t been able to get around. I could create another glove and give it to someone, but it will never work as effectively for them as it would have had they made it themselves.”

Something to do with either a person’s understanding of a ritual’s intended effect having an influence on said effect, or the simple fact that people had more confidence in something they had a hand in creating versus something given to them. Further study was required.

“Let’s see what our daring leader has found, in any case.”

Quite a lot, as it turned out. The portal, or former portal in this case, was ‘sizeable’ just as Amanda had said; certainly large enough to accommodate the dozens and dozens of crates that must have passed through it before being shipped elsewhere by more mundane methods. She peered at it through her glove, holding the circle of her thumb and forefinger before her eye again as she examined the magical imprint left in the fabric of space. “It’s a tunnel. The ritual was performed at both ends of the spell, meaning we’re looking at a large number of moderately skilled practitioners rather than a small number of very skilled ones. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if that’s good or bad news. There’ll be a circle around here somewhere.”

Teleportation wasn’t a particularly difficult spell to perform, contrary to popular opinion. The formulas had existed for centuries after all and almost all civilisations and cultures had developed their own method for it at one point or another; the procedure had been refined almost to an art since then. It was complicated, certainly, not to mention prohibitively expensive and arduous for those involved, but any large organisation or even a particularly dedicated group of amateurs could open a portal over short distances. The issue was in scale and distance; this portal had the scale and if she could examine their methodology then she might be able to figure out the distance as well.

“Let’s move all of these crates out of the way. If they were interrupted before they could finish here then maybe they didn’t have time to clear all of their ritual preparations away. Assuming you didn’t blow up all the evidence on your way in, of course.”

@Kumbaris@13org@BigPapaBelial

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

It was to be small talk then. Morgana had been afraid that was going to happen when she was paired up with the talkative girl and it seemed she had been right to be; don’t get her wrong, she had nothing against getting to know her co-workers, no matter how many of them tried to call her a bitch, but there was a time and place for being personable and it was not while she was trying to concentrate on the magic remnants in the warehouse.

“I don’t put much stock in instinct. Not to say I doubt you of course, the fae’s innate talent for magic is well documented, but I find that people who rely on instinct or genius or anything of the sort have a difficult time explaining why something is in a way that makes sense to anyone but themselves.” Morgana stopped walking, staring at a nondescript part of the floor for a few seconds before continuing to walk again. “Genius that can’t be explained to others is no genius at all; it’s useless.”

The list of things Faye knew about magic that Morgana didn’t was probably innumerable and apparently included how to create a short range, personal teleportation spell with the snap of her fingers, but most likely she wouldn’t be able to explain any of it to her in a way that she could comprehend. ‘Like trying to breathe with her face on a pillow’; she’d be better off trying to explain sound to a deaf person. Such a shortcoming would make her useless in the lab environment Morgana was used to, but it shouldn’t be as much of an issue at a crime scene.

“My glove… think of magic like electricity; by itself it’s nothing, raw energy, a lightning bolt alone has no purpose but it can be harnessed and used to power things, produce heat or light or sound. Usually this is a practitioner’s role, to shape that energy into spells and to guide it towards a specific purpose. But I’ve created a… circuitry to handle that shaping for me, allowing me to focus on other things while I simply provide the magic.” It was a little more complicated than that, but such an explanation usually sufficed when people were curious about her etchings. The markings on her glove gave the magic shape but it was her act of looking through the ring of her thumb and forefinger that brought the effect to life; her desire to ‘see’ something through the pretend lens of her digits, like a child playing make-believe, gave the magic intent. There was a significance to small actions assigned with a meaning.

“Theoretically anyone could put on this glove and have it work the same way, regardless of it they know how it works of not. In theory at least.”

@13org

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

Ah, field work. Not something she approached with relish, but Morgana would admit that it was a necessary evil at times; some things just couldn’t be studied in a lab after all and even if they could, the first step towards discovery would often be taken elsewhere. Today her work didn’t take her to the burial site of an ancient artefact though, nor a conflux of leylines turned ritual grounds; it was a drab warehouse complex on the outskirts of Frankfurt that she was taken to.

Lovely.

While the android dealt with the local police, Morgana turned her eye towards the warehouse itself. It was mundane in every way that mattered to her, though if this was being used as a place to store weapons then at some point magic must have been used in their transport and a working of such magnitude was likely to leave traces. How much of a trace would depend on the method used, namely whether it was a tunnel or a gateway that had been formed; a tunnel would mean a ritual being performed at both the departure point and the destination, performed in concert with each other, to link the two locations together, while a gateway would mean a single, larger ritual performed at the departure point only with just a target destination in mind; perhaps with a sympathetic link to this location to refine the accuracy with regards to the placement of the gateways aperture. Both were workings of a higher order, but the latter was the more difficult and costly of the two; the latter would also allow for greater flexibility in where they could teleport to however and the ritual could be reused multiple times if it was well made while a tunnel would need setting up anew each time.

This was assuming they were using rituals at all however, since she still hadn’t ruled out any other methodology. It was simply the most likely one.

While she had been distracted the android, Amanda, had finished her business and was now assigning them tasks. Morgana, as expected, was to look for the teleportation’s ‘origin point’, though that term was possibly a misnomer depending on her findings. She was to be paired up with the fae girl as well who, although she didn’t come across as someone particularly knowledgeable about magic, did seem to have a natural affinity for this particular kind of thing.

“Fine. Let’s get started shall we?”

Walking into the warehouse without waiting for a reply, Morgana reached into a pocket and pulled out a black leather glove before sliding it onto her right hand. She formed a circle with her thumb and her index finger while also allowing some of her mana to leak into the glove itself, the barely perceptible markings on the outside of the glove beginning to glow faintly as her gesture closed the magic circle and allowed the spell she had sunk into the item to come to life. The heretic held the glove up to her eye, peering through the ring formed by her hand and seeing much more than her mundane eyes could ever see by themselves.

If there was any magic to be found in the warehouse she would find it, especially if the shaman’s ritual brought it to the surface.

@Kumbaris@13org

Just Another Hero

Dietrich Konig - Aegis

Rolling his shoulders, Dietrich stepped forward, loosening his muscles as he prepared to take a swing at one of Japan’s top heroes. If he was afraid at the prospect then he didn’t show it, if anything he looked eager.

He didn’t bother changing into his costume as he approached; it was barebones to begin with and didn’t offer anything that would help him in this little test. Mostly it was designed to cover for the few things his Quirk didn’t already protect him against, mostly airborne substances and temperature, neither of which applied in his fight since as far as he could tell his opponent’s Quirk wasn’t either of those. Decay. Dietrich honestly wasn’t sure if his barrier would protect him against however that worked; only that it was debilitating and occasionally fatal to those it was used on.

Would she go that far in a fight like this, against her own students? Would she cripple them, or even kill them, on their first day? She’d talked a lot of talk about pushing them to their limits, about how they’d come out of here better than Zeal or not at all; didn’t mean she was serious about it or that she’d get away with it if she was. There had to be limits to what even this country would allow its top heroes to get away with, right? Then again…

Dietrich smirked, all teeth and no humour. Yeah, she just might go that far. He’d agreed to train under a real piece of work hadn’t he?

“You? Outmatch me? Don’t be conceited.”

Deserve. Interesting choice of words for something that wasn’t a reward in his eyes, but instead a burden, a calling. Worthy would have been the better term, as far as he was concerned. Being a hero wasn’t a privilege to be doled out, not even by one of the few who called themselves the pillars; you either were or you weren’t.

Was he worthy?

He would be. Or he would fail.

Aegis didn’t fail.

He raised a hand and pointed at Snake-Eyes, index finger extended. “Fall.” Aegis’ barrier, always active and invisible to the naked eye, extended from the tip of his finger as fast as he could make it move. It wasn’t a killing blow, for all that she had told him to come at her with intent to kill that just wasn’t his style, but it would strike a solid blow if it hit.

@Blizz

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

Morgana had to admit that she had been rather curious was all of this was about, before this meeting. Although summoned, she had been purposefully kept in the dark regarding the details of this assignment aside from being told that it would involve fieldwork and a trip to Germany; it wouldn’t be the first time, the OMR did enjoy keeping its secrets at times. She had thought it would be some kind of new project; something cutting edge and top secret, given the lack of details, or perhaps something anomalous had been found and they needed her expertise.

Finding out that instead she was to assist in what was essentially a criminal investigation was… disappointing.

Her remit was that of research, not investigation and although they both might be concerned with the matter of finding answers they had little in common with each other in practice. There was little use she could see for her skills here, which meant this whole endeavour was going to be a waste of her valuable time. The mundane and non-magical nature of the crimes in question only made things worse; arms shipments and terrorist cells were no concern of hers. The only point of interest in this whole thing was the possible use of teleportation magic to transport the illicit materials. Long distance teleportation was always a tricky prospect, though not impossible, and the difficulty only increased with the amount of matter being transported and the distances involved; if they were using such methods to move their shipments around then that suggested the group had someone particularly talented in the use of teleportation rituals, a being of immense magical power in their employ, or something else entirely. Any one of which would be interesting.

It was a bare thread, but one she’d have to cling to for now.

“Aside from the teleportation spell, are there any other cases of them using magic?”

𝔸 / 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐘

Sarah Lillian Whitlock

Strangely enough the explanation Mr Reid gave them didn’t really, well, explain anything. Anima Fluxx? Reality chips? The pulp sci-fi feeling wasn’t getting any less intense the more she heard about this place, though she was at least starting to get the impression that this place was inter-dimensional rather than interstellar. It would go some way towards explaining why everything looked so uncanny; the televisions and the news show didn’t exactly scream aliens to her, they were human. Just… inhumanly so.

Before Sarah could dwell on what any of that might mean for them however, the TV with Mr Reid cut out and another TV suddenly turned out. There was a whirring sound, high pitched and eerie, before the machine spat out something rectangular onto the floor. Sarah barely had time to glance at it though before the whole pillar lit up all at once, every television except for the two that had been on before screaming out and vying for her attention, all of them displaying shows with that same inhumanly human feeling.

When the electricity began to arc and the two televisions lurched forward Sarah was ready to turn and run away from this place. The whole thing looked like it was about to explode, the purple lightning and the vibrations the final death throes of the pillar, but she forced herself to stand her ground and, after a moment’s hesitation, even to rush forward and grab one of the exposed televisions. There was so little she understood about this place, so little information to go on, that she couldn’t just leave behind the one thing or person or whatever this was that had tried to explain things so far.

Sarah quickly disconnected the television from its housing, removing the wires from the back before she stumbled back from the pillar with the device held in her arms. She ran from the electricity, ran towards the only thing that wasn’t completely unknown to her in this place, which just so happened to be Zionne.

“I think we should leave.”

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

There was a standard method to arriving late to an important meeting, one tailored towards making as little fuss as possible while also showing everyone how contrite you were. Open the door as little as possible while squeezing yourself through the gap, close it behind you as quietly as you can before looking over your shoulder to see if anyone was looking at you; everyone was looking at you. Smile sheepishly and mouth an apology before tiptoeing over to an empty chair at the back of the room and hide your shame by slouching as far down in your seat as possible.

It was just the done thing.

Morgana, however, didn’t do any of that. One didn’t become a researcher in a department which specialised in challenging the preconceived notions of the world by doing the done thing after all. The door of the meeting room swung open as she strode in, the brim of her oversized witches hat bouncing with each step.

“Sorry I’m late, did I miss anything important? No? Great.”

The researcher walked further into the room, ignoring everyone else for the time being as she claimed a chair for herself, only turning her attention to everyone else once that was done. It seemed they had gathered quite the eclectic group for this mission, people are all colours and creeds and walks of life; it must have been some problem they were being called in to deal with. The fact they had bothered to call in a lab rat like herself was interesting enough, but the layers and layers of wards and magical circles on her person were practically abuzz at the amount of magical energy present in this room.

No small timers these. How interesting.