Master Bruce — Roleplayer Guild

- Reach arrived 10 years ago? Hung around for a bit before abductions and experiments were discovered. Then a war was fought for 5 years before Superman emerged and pushed them back; in their retreat they left the Meta-Bomb, transforming thousands across the US.@Roman

Correct!

5 years since they left entirely, and no Reach presence on/around Earth since Superman's intervention?

Correct!

Mutants have been around decades before the Reach arrived; however, are all meta-humans restricted to the timeline of Reach experimentation and ultimately the Meta-Bomb, or can there have been separate, specifically non-mutant super-powered individuals active prior to and/or without influence from/by The Reach? (Sheets like the FF and Superman would suggest non-mutant powered individuals don't have to be Reach related whatsoever but I want to double-check).

Superman and The FF I would consider "special cases", where their origins are tied to an outside factor. But if they were known about prior, they'd probably be mistaken for mutants. Metahumans are specifically tied to The Reach experiments and gene-bomb, a term coined by the media.

- Public sentiment of powered individuals was trending positively prior to the Reach crisis, but since the Reach War + amidst the Lord administration is now actively nosediving?

I wouldn't say they were ever popular. Legislation was introduced in the 70's to register mutants with the government with full public support, so there was always an anti-mutant sentiment. There were activists and supporters of mutant rights, of course, but they were drowned out by overall fear. That fear died down a little as mutants quieted or outright began hiding, but The Reach crisis  and the metahuman uptick reignited old prejudices and paranoia.

- Costumed, alias'd, and active superheroes have only existed since the emergence of Superman and the retreat of the Reach 5 years ago?

They existed before, but were unknown to the public at large. They existed more like cryptids or conspiracy theories. Superman was the first one that was definitively proven real with credible eyewitnesses and undoctored footage.

- Additionally, can I assume the answers to the above questions also apply to villains and rogue galleries? (this would appear to be the case taking the Batman sheet as an example and Bane appearing only after the emergence of Superman 5 years ago)

There were versions of costumed criminals before then, but they weren't a common thing. For instance, with Gotham, The Riddler would occasionally pop up to terrorize the public before the five years in which Batman began operating. Super-powered or enhanced individuals taking up costumes to act openly hostile were even rarer, which is what that refers to.

- What year is the IC set in?

2025. President Lord was elected November of 2024 for his first term.

 B A T M A N
B A T M A N

"As a symbol, I can be incorruptible. As a symbol, I can be everlasting."
 C H A R A C T E R   P O R T R A I T
C H A R A C T E R   P O R T R A I T 
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_________________________________________________________ C H A R A C T E R   S U M M A R Y
C H A R A C T E R   S U M M A R Y
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Bruce Wayne
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35   |   Single
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Wayne-Powers  |   American

 N O T A B L E   A B I L I T I E S   &   T O O L S
N O T A B L E   A B I L I T I E S   &   T O O L S
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   A B I L I T I E S
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Bruce lacks any superhuman powers, but he makes up for it with...-
   T O O L (S)
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◼ UTILITY BELT 
The primary tool in his arsenal, Wayne has hidden many gadgets within the band and buckle, in addition to the weapons within the pouches. These include the highly customizable Batarang shuriken, the grapple gun with lines that are interwoven with adamantium, smoke pellets, tear gas, a sonic emitter, a handheld torch, cuffs, a line-launcher, flash grenades, tracers, a forensics kit, explosive gel, a cryptographic sequencer, and EMP grenades.

◼ BATSUIT
 Originally built off of prototype armor developed by Lucius Fox for a military contract, Wayne's uniform is a tri-weave polymer made up of kevlar, carbon fiber, and injected titanium pockets. Sewn within it are several gadgets controlled via a button at the top of the gauntlet, including a rebreather, nightvision and infrared lenses, several thousand-volt tasers, electric billy clubs, and an electronic disruptor. Perhaps the most advanced element is the A.I. HUD embedded in the cowl, connected directly to a private satellite that allows for interaction with Bat-Drones.

◼ BAT-DRONES
The result of Wayne's military contract at work, these drones both resemble Batman's namesake and provide a key function in covertly monitoring Gotham from the skies. Capable of providing 3D mapping of a given area and feeding it directly into the suit's cowl, the drones are also equipped with highly sensitive microphones for eavesdropping, gadget delivery, biometric tracking, and even tear gas dispersal for riot control.

◼ THE BATMOBILE
Batman's vehicle of choice, the car has been upgraded significantly over the last five years, with heavier armor and a jet engine capable of reaching over 200 MPH in under twenty seconds. The tires are puncture-proof and able to withstand bullets, and there are many offensive capabilities built within, such as adamantium shielding, a flamethrower, flares, oil slick, an EMP canon, and a massive grapple wench. The most useful feature is the auto-nav computer, which can be activated with voice commands from several hundred feet away.

◼ BATCYCLE
A customised armored motorcycle with many of the same functions present in The Batmobile, The Batcycle is more easily hidden and capable of maneuvering much tighter spaces within Gotham. It can be slid into a hollow frame within The Batmobile itself and deployed when activated under emergency ejection.

◼ BATWING
A military stealth plane customized to resemble a giant Bat, The Batwing can achieve speeds far greater than The Batmobile or Batcycle while remaining entirely invisible at night. The twin engines are capable of soundless performance and the plane can hover without manual control, in addition to firing missiles and grenades for the purposes of a direct impact breach.

◼ BATBOAT
Stored within The Batcave's lowest level, Batman's aquatic rover is able to submerge to highly-pressurized depths and reach speeds of up to 150 MPH both above and beneath any given surface of water. A track connected to Gotham's sewer system exists connected to the cave for easy deployment.
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 N O T A B L E   S K I L L S   &   T A L E N T S
N O T A B L E   S K I L L S   &   T A L E N T S
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   S K I L L (S)
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◼ MARTIAL ARTS MASTERY
From within Ted Grant's gym in Chicago and Ricardo Diaz's compound in South America, to various others in London, Africa, India, and the masters across Asia, leading up to The League of Shadows under Ra's Al Ghul, Wayne studied for many years to become a highly adept combatant. He is skilled in over thirty-seven forms of martial arts picked up in some of the most desolate parts of the Earth, with the only combat teachings that completely eluded him belonging to a rumored mystical city hidden in the Himalayas.

◼ DETECTIVE
Taught by Detective Harvey Harris of Chicago, Dan Mallory of Manchester, and Henri Ducard of Paris, Wayne has developed an unparalleled deductive mind. And though he's able to pick up on hidden details of a crime freely, his lessons in satellite surveillance and forensic investigation have made him formidable by many standards.

◼ NINJA
Taught by Ra's Al Ghul and his followers during a brief stint with the League of Shadows, Wayne can disappear into the darkness as well as improvise effective distractions seamlessly. With enough training, he was also able to learn how to appear anywhere when fully hidden.

◼ MANHUNTER
Taught the tenants of rationing and preservation in addition to isolation tactics, desert survival, and all-terrain tracking in Saudi Arabia, Wayne's final stop on his worldwide tour was in Alaska, where the respected chief William Great Eagle furthered his skills in developing herbal medicine, using first-aid, creating traps, and camoflauging himself.

◼ PAIN TOLERANCE
Taught by the mercenary David Cain, Bruce can redirect all forms of pain, including physical torture, into the deepest recesses of his mind through intensive meditation, breathing conservation, disengaging his vitals, and other physiological techniques.
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   T A L E N T (S)
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◼ THIEF TACTICS 
Taught in France to become a master of wall-climbing, repelling, freerunning, pickpocketing, safe-cracking, and committing a breaking and entering, Wayne can make his way into most locked rooms aswell as steal whatever he needs to complete an objective, whether it be a keycard or a set of vehicle keys. However, he only practices these techniques when nessescary.

◼ WHEELMAN 
Taught under Santiago Vargas and the legendary car thief Don Miguel in South America, Wayne can operate standard and specialty cars aswell as motorcycles with professional racing levels of precision. His vehicle of choice is a custom souped-up military bridging vehicle decked out in bulletproof armor. Or as he's taken to calling it, The Batmobile.

◼ MASTERY OF THE AIR 
Taught in Munich to maintain and pilot an aircraft, Wayne also took up the sports of paragliding and skydiving in a bid to erase some lingering fears. To make himself appear more like his animal namesake, it was Lucius Fox's idea to employ an electrostatic exoskeleton in the cloak of his uniform, allowing him to glide considerable distances.
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 T H E   S T O R Y   S O   F A R...
T H E   S T O R Y   S O   F A R...
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When his parents were murdered by a mugger, Bruce Wayne stood to inherit a multi-billion-dollar empire. But upon learning about his family history, he also inherited something much darker. For over two hundred years ago, Gotham City's founding families were murdered in a black mass orchestrated by the deranged Deacon Joseph Blackfire. In a fit of religious mania, the madman believed that by summoning the Biblical bat-demon Barbatos, he and his acolytes would become immortal. Only through the intervention of local townsfolk did Blackfire's unholy ritual come to a brutal end, with the standoff resulting in the survival of the Deacon's accomplice, Amadeus Arkham - his disturbed mind manipulated to serve a dark master. After Arkham was sentenced to spend the rest of his days in chains, locked away in the bowels of his ancestral castle on Arkham Island, it was believed that he had scratched a sigil into the walls to enact a curse against Gotham itself - a curse that, for some, had led to the state of the city's rising tide of violence over the last hundred years. Amadeus was a distant ancestor of Dr. Martha Arkham-Wayne, and her son Bruce was now scarred with the knowledge that he had potentially inherited that same madness.

What always stuck out most in Bruce's mind was the etching that was supposedly left in the walls of Amadeus' cell: incantations in Latin written in a pattern, joining into the shape of a massive, monstrous Bat. But his need to heal from the traumatic event that forever altered the path of his life forced Wayne to push the nightmarish image away. His mental anguish consoled by Martha's closest friend, Leslie Thompkins, Bruce was placed under the guardianship of his considerably irresponsible uncle Phillip, who sent the boy to receive his education overseas rather than make any attempt at parenthood. 

With maturity, Bruce had quickly made his way across the world. From Africa to Asia and eventually the whole of Europe, he had earned more than enough education to prepare himself for a law degree, modelling a prospective career after his father, District Attorney Thomas Wayne. But the trauma of his parents' murders loomed large over his every decision, plaguing him with recurring nightmares of a man with a gun and monstrous bat-demons. Returning to Gotham in a bid to reconnect with his roots, Bruce sought out an old family friend: Detective James Gordon, a man whom Thomas Wayne had entrusted with his life on more than one occasion. Gordon was low on the totem pole within the GCPD, but he was the one beacon in a sea of dishonesty. As Bruce looked to the Detective for guidance, Gordon instead advised him to stay as far away from law as possible. Every branch of the city's government had become hopelessly corrupt, and he didn't want Bruce to succumb to a system weighed so heavily against the innocent. 

Disillusioned, Wayne realized that to save the city from itself, he'd have to circumvent the law. Using his many overseas contacts, he sought out teachers and mentors of a wildly different sort. And within days, he'd left Gotham a second time to begin his true education. Under the tutelage of the world's masters, Bruce made himself into a weapon. He honed his mind and body, becoming a skilled detective in addition to a seasoned warrior. By the time he was twenty-nine, Bruce finally returned to Gotham City for good as a completely changed man. One willing to bring the fight directly to those who preyed on the desperate, taking up a mask and body armor as an amateur vigilante. But one brutal fight after another led to considerable defeat and, eventually, a near-death experience. 

It wasn't just the petty thieves, the mob, and corrupt politicians anymore. Now there were those with unusual abilities - "metahumans", as the world had christened them. And some had come to Gotham to feed off of its suffering - particularly a behemoth known as Bane, who'd quite literally broken Carmine Falcone's mob outfit in half and placed himself at the top.

Bruce needed to meet this evolution of criminality on their level. He needed to utilize extreme methods to strike fear into the worst of them, to become an extension of Gotham's own righteous vengeance. A living, breathing symbol that could effectively mount a revolt against the enemies of justice, no matter how powerful. With that in mind, the symbol that Wayne desired became apparent, having haunted him for most of his waking years. The symbol had been etched in stone as an intended curse. He would use that curse as his shield, acting as a Dark Knight to defend the city from its evils. Bruce Wayne would become a Bat.

But The Gotham Bat, or The Batman as he'd become known, knew that he couldn't fight a battle to save the city alone - he'd need soldiers. Drawn to the same sort of victims of crime that he had once been, Wayne began to seek out like-minded individuals to make up an army of informants. He wouldn't place them in the field, preferring to take on the fighting himself, but he would train them to survive. Soon, the wayward youths of Gotham like Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Cassandra Cain, and Duke Thomas would find themselves drawn into his mission. 

They would be the hidden weapon of The Batman's arsenal - with them at his side, Bane and his forces would rue the day that they tried to seize the city for themselves.

 P L O T ( S )   &   G O A L ( S )
P L O T ( S )   &   G O A L ( S )
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I think the why of me playing this character is apparent, but my motivation is that I always have a decent amount of ideas to reinvent both Batman's world and his rogues gallery for a game like this. It's been a couple of years since I've stepped into the cape and cowl, and I feel like the time is right to seize it again. The motivation of Batman is the same as it's always been, but I'm altering the details. For one, this isn't a version that's keen on throwing children into colorful costumes and sending them into battle against adults with guns. He didn't grow up with a butler father figure or live in a mansion on the outskirts of town. His father was an attorney instead of a doctor, and Gordon is an old family friend. His playboy persona is less of an old-money layabout and more of a modern-day social media figure that seems to spend as much as he makes. And perhaps most crucially, his appearance in Gotham didn't inspire his enemies to escalate things - their presence inspired him to up his game.

Sidenote, but I know that by claiming the Robins as his personal network, I'm limiting the amount of interaction I can readily have. I have a plan to address that, but these games in the past have become rather Gotham-centric at the expense of other corners of a DC and Marvel world. This is both my attempt to explore a concept inspired by Dark Knights of Steel comic and give the other big names some breathing room.

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