Roman

One Universe: World Of Heroes - A Marvel & DC Comics RPG

_{PREVIOUSLY...}

THE COFFIN WITCH

---

_{TWELVE FOR A DASTARDLY CURSE}

1: AMIDST THE BUTCHERY AND BEAKS

Eve stopped over in the first town with a bar. It wasn’t even a bar, really, nothing as modern as that; it felt more like some hick’s attempt to restore an old tavern in their garage - the decor reeked of 'Ye Olde Englishe', both aesthetically and in its actual odour. Tacky was the operative word, and seemed to be the unintentional theme. She sipped Bud Light from a murky pint glass, and tasted sour pipes. She was stunned. Not because the owner had spent most of his money on unnecessary draught taps; not because he’d then chosen to pump the cheapest beer on the market through it; not even because despite both of these facts, he then couldn’t even clean the needless system. She was stunned because she proceeded to finish her drink anyway.

Eve had a couple more after that, but not of the Bud Light - she instead chose the only canned drink in the building, some dollar-store brand with a generic name and a big star adorning the front - and then found she was exhausted. She’d been on the road a couple days now. Hitchhiking where she could, but walking mostly; her feet hurt and her clothes were dusty and speckled with mud and shit. Not many people stopped when she stuck her thumb out; she suspected those that had only did so because of the view from behind. Half of those good Samaritans quickly paled and sped off when they caught sight of her eye. Hell, the man behind the bar had been deliberately avoiding looking at her for every order after the first, as well as the time in between. It was an evil eye. Gave people the willies, at least. She spoke up again as the bartender whisked away her third empty can, crushing it in a slow, deliberate manner that required a lot of focused, intense staring at his hands.

“I need somewhere to stay the night.”
The bartender turned his back to her as he stretched out the three foot walk from his position to the trash can as long as humanly possible while he replied.
“Three blocks south and turn left; there’s a halfway house that rents empty rooms.”
Eve frowned.
“That the best this place has got?”
“It’s the best you’re going to get.” He replied, still not looking at her. Eve snarled.
“Fuck you.”
The bartender sniffed, and went back to rubbing dirty glasses with a dirty rag. Eve left.

Three blocks south and a left turn later Eve stood at the front door of a shanty house dressed up to look like a real building. Nestled in as the penultimate dwelling on a row of terraced housing, it sported discarded needles on the front steps and plywood across the windows; the otherwise run-down but intact residences that flanked it looked practically new by comparison. Eve could sense an old kind of rot eating away at this place: the psychic imprint of human suffering and despair. The people who stayed here often left in opaque bags, their final weeks and days and hours spent filling holes with temporary reprieves and covering pain with a different kind of pain. She could feel it in her bones - cold, hopeless, intrinsically sad. But the bartender was right: she wasn’t going to get anything better. She didn’t have the money, for a start. She raised a fist to knock, but found the door swung open eerily before she could make first contact.

The hallway was dark and empty, and a hollow draught drifted through that wrapped itself like grave-hands around Eve’s ankles. The exhalation of anguished ennui, every last breath drawn in and pushed out in these rooms swarming together for a final, extinguishing gasp. Eve nearly turned tail to run, but the dread was over as soon as it had begun, and all that was left was a house with empty rooms to rent and sad stories that it would sooner not tell. Eve approached the counter, but there was no one there; in lieu of staff, only a simple cardboard sign had been left, which read as such:

"IF NOT HERE:
PLS WRITE NAME + DATE UNDER RM# ON SHEET
$5/NIGHT COLLECTED EVERY MORNING
NO PAY = PIGS DRUGS = PIGS FIGHTS = PIGS
CROSS NAME OUT WHEN U LEAVE
SLEEP WELL!"

Eve wasn’t convinced she would. The sheet was present regardless; she wrote ‘EVE C.’ in the column for room five, beneath the crossed out name of ‘NATE’, and scribbled the day’s date in the margin, and then went searching. She found it soon enough. The door wasn’t locked, but it was stiff to open and stiff again to close. The room itself was bare: a stained mattress on the floor with a ragged pillow and thin sheet, a plastic chair next to the window - an old leather belt lay discarded close by - and a sink against the wall. Eve did what she could to get out the mud and dirt from her clothes beneath the pitiful water pressure of the tap, hanging her jeans and top over the back of the chair to dry, and then cupped a few handfuls of water over her face and hair to rinse out the sweat and muck as much she could. When her head finally hit the pillow, she was asleep within seconds.

-

Eve dreamt of storms and fire, of lightning and trees, and of blood and rot. Anger swirled around her, but it did not belong to her: it belonged to hundreds of faceless adjudicators, and it belonged to a single persecuted individual. It licked her fuzzy outline and whisked her spirit away. Eve was left alone beneath cold stone and uncaring wood.

-

She woke to a knock on the door. The sun was up, but it was cold, and she saw morning fog still drifting by, listless and dissipating slowly. Bleary-eyed, she turned her head to the room’s door; a blurred figure stood there expectantly, half-hidden. Eve rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, and the figure sharpened. Some nondescript old lady, sixty-plus, with a stony face that belied the subtle wildness in her eyes. Her hair was graying, but where the color held on it was a deep black. They made eye contact. The woman did not look away.

“Witches don’t get discounts.” She finally said, her voice low but firm. “Got me charms for the evil eye anyway.” She fished a necklace out from her bosom and held it aloft; a crudely-fashioned pendant, but one Eve was able to recognize regardless: the nazar. “Five dollars.”

Eve reached for her bag and dragged it across the floor towards the mattress, rooting around in it. She could feel the woman staring at her as she dipped her head to rummage.
“You don’t look Hindi.” Eve said. The woman snorted.
“Charm’s a charm. Evil Eye ain’t care where you’re from; charm ain’t care neither. If it works, it works. Five dollars, or I call the pigs.”
Eve found her money and fished out a five dollar bill, tossing it across the room where it drifted spinning to the ground. The woman crossed the doorway swiftly in a single step, stooping to collect the money, then retreated back to the precipice just as quickly.
“Gotta get out during the day. It’s when I clean.”
Eve guffawed. “You need more than just a day for this filth.”
The woman’s lip twitched, a snarling micro-expression flitting across her face. “Ungrateful bitch. You got gall to criticize - you got more than just dirt on you,” she retorted, and then turned to leave.

Eve sighed and stood up, letting the sheet fall off her body as she retrieved a top and jeans from her bag; dressed, she unhooked her jacket from the door and slung it around her shoulders. The clothes she’d ‘washed’ last night were still mildly damp to the touch, but Eve suspected anything left in the room might disappear forever. Besides, it was bad practice to leave personal belongings around where anyone could collect them. Eve didn’t trust anyone, and witchcraft could be practiced by many. She stuffed the clothes into her bag, and left the room.

Downstairs, she paused by the desk, the woman who’d collected her money not glancing up from behind her magazine. Eve steeled herself to ask her least favourite question.
“Where am I?”
“Crack den.” The woman responded.
“What town, I meant.”
The woman spared a quick glance up before returning to her magazine. “Petrified Copse.”
“That’s...unique.”
“It’s evil.” The woman said, and then she didn’t say anymore. Eve left.

-

Eve wandered through the town for a while, eventually finding the main promenade, such as it was. It was still early, and the street was quiet, but the few businesses there were had begun opening - an old man setting out goods and stands in front of his general store, a younger couple carefully arranging seats and tables outside their coffee shop - although what drew Eve’s eye was a gentleman tenderly wafting incense across the fascia of his shopfront. He moved carefully and rhythmically, and when he finished his work he gave a curt nod to his reflection in the store window. Eve watched with growing curiosity as the man paused to stare at his mirrored self for what felt like a longer and longer amount of time; and then the man breathed, and went inside. Eve realized she had been holding her breath as well. She released the tightness in her chest and looked away, down the street ahead of her.

There was a magpie looking at her.
Eve couldn’t be sure, of course, but she was fairly certain. It was stood in the center of the street, body facing Eve and head cocked ever-so-slightly to put her in the bird’s cone of vision; Eve took a few steps to the right and the bird’s head seemed to follow her. It hopped back and forth a few feet at a time, but never got further away or closer to Eve. She frowned, and moved forward. The magpie stayed put, up until Eve got to within nearly five feet of it; then it crowed, once and pointedly, and then hopped away before stopping and looking back, crowing once more. Eve felt compelled - something from the depths of her subconscious moved her legs for her. She followed the magpie.

It took her to the town square, at the heart of which stood the remains of a splintered and shattered tree, resting in the soil undisturbed for centuries. The magpie stood at its base, and looked Eve in the eye. There was something about the gaze of the bird that unsettled Eve, something slightly too intelligent in the black beads that beheld her. She stretched an arm out to touch it, but it shrank away, pecking when she got too close, crowing again.
“What are you?” She asked, musing to herself for the most part. It chilled her when the bird responded.
“I AM JUST A MAGPIE.” The magpie said, in a voice that reverberated the earth and sent vibrations up Eve’s legs until she could feel her teeth rattling in her skull. She blinked, and the feeling was gone, and she was left bewildered.
“...what…?”
“Caw!” Said the magpie, perfectly mimicking what a magpie should sound like, before taking flight and suddenly turning mid-air to dive-bomb the ground.
Eve could hear the bones of the bird’s neck snap when it hit the stone cobbles. The magpie was dead on impact, wings splayed, skull askew at an unnatural angle.

Eve buried the magpie beneath the remains of the tree. From the far reaches of the town, beyond the streets and buildings, a young girl screamed, and was suddenly cut short.

Roman's Scrapbin

_{PREVIOUSLY...}

THE COFFIN WITCH

---

_{TWELVE FOR A DASTARDLY CURSE}

POST NAME

One Universe: World Of Heroes - A Marvel & DC Comics RPG

That’s the Signature Roman™️ Flavour, baby.

One Universe: World Of Heroes - A Marvel & DC Comics RPG

^{_{E V E C O F F I N ♦ W I T C H ♦ C O F F I N H I L L ♦ B L A C K M A G I C}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

---

^{”Some debts can never be repaid.”}

The Coffins, founders and original settlers of Coffin Hill, are an old family with their roots in Salem and their hands dipped in blood and muck. They have a history of power, wealth, and terrible secrets. Eve Coffin is the last living branch of her ancestral tree - and she is determined to let it end with her.

In 2009, at fifteen years old, Eve and her closest friends delved deep into the woods of Coffin Hill; they went in search of the fabled witch, seeking to strike a bargain. What Eve had failed to understand was that she was the Witch of Coffin Hill; in those woods lived only the creature that lived in servitude to the Coffin family, the source of their power and status. All they had accomplished with their ritual was untethering it from her bloodline.
Four girls had walked into that dark forest that day. Only Eve walked out, and she had been forever marked by what had transpired within the cradle of those trees.
She fled from Coffin Hill that night. Neither the town nor her parents would miss her.

Ten years later, she returns, discovering that the creature in the woods had hungered in her time away; that hunger and rot had spread to the town beyond the treeline. People had been going missing, nearly always reported near or travelling in the direction of the woods by those who’d seen them last. Only Eve knew the true culprit responsible for the horror that now befell the town more frequently than ever before. A decade to the day, she went back into those woods, ready to do battle.

She emerged three days later, not saying a word; Eve collected her things and left Coffin Hill forever, taking the curse of her family with her.

It’s been a year since she emerged again from those woods. Eve drifts now, haunted wherever she goes, too scared to stop moving in case she brings ruin and misery to stay with her. She is The Coffin Witch, the last one there will ever be, and she spends everyday repenting for the sins of her forebearers, carrying the burden of her family name with her.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

---

Eve's motivations are fairly straight-forward, even if the work involved isn't: use the witchcraft of her family to undo the damage her family has done, and protect the innocent from the malevolent beings of the occult world, and then eventually die alone with no children or legacy and let her family's sins die with her. She drifts from town to town, city to city, and does what she can to fight back against the ever-encroaching darkness as she travels.

My own goals are to use a new character that we haven't seen before in these games to write supernatural/occult mystery and drama stories. I read Coffin Hill a couple years ago, a friend's copy rather than one I picked up myself, and I liked the character of Eve and the horror-occult leanings of the story. As she travels she'll also be very open to crossover stories and community events, something I usually avoid in the endless iterations we churn through, and something that I feel might re-light the spark. If I want to write solo stories, I could just work away on googledocs; if I'm writing as part of a greater collaborative, then I should get involved. So let's get involved.

S A M P L E P O S T:

---

Coffin House was never Eve's home; merely the building she occupied - hesitantly, reluctantly. It had never felt cozy, inviting, or welcoming. It had never felt safe. Even when her parents were absent, and the air was lacking any ambient cruelty or emotional negligence, the sense of being unwanted pervaded every fibre of Eve's being. The House itself did not want Eve residing within; the feeling was mutual. Eve did little to alter the sense of being rejected by the very brick and mortar. Coffin House was built on bloody foundations, and blood only beget more blood. She stared up at the great oak doors to the manor for the final time, then slung her single bag over her shoulder and spat at the ground, a great glob of spit landing smack on the first step. There was an imperceptible shudder in the brickwork, and a large chunk of moss and mud and dead bugs loosed itself from the guttering and landed at Eve's feet.
That was that, then. Farewells made. Eve turned, and resisted the urge to look back. The House watched her go for as far as it could manage.

The rest of the town felt no less hostile, but not because of malevolent architecture: this was a far more mundane form of malice. No one in Coffin Hill had forgotten August 13th, 2009, the night Eve had taken 3 young girls into the Woods and never returned them. She had been a pariah ever since; branded a murderer, it was only the fear of retribution from the Coffin elders that saved Eve from vigilantism, or even lynching, in the few weeks that followed. After that, they couldn't reach her from outside the institution anyway. Now, though, as she walked down the main street of Coffin Hill towards the bus ranks, she felt eyes on her from every window, every corner, every car. She lowered her head and fixed her gaze on the cobbles, not daring to make eye contact with a single person. Had any of them even a fraction of the Coffin witchcraft, these hard stares would be enough to entomb her in the stone beneath her feet. As it was, the air was unnaturally cold, and she felt a baleful darkness nipping at her heels. She hastened along.

-

As the coach pulled away from the stand, Eve stole a final glance at Coffin Hill out the back window. To the far west, she saw the House standing atop the eponymous knoll, some inimical arbiter of the town; behind Coffin House itself, she could barely make out the treeline of the woods. The trees and the things that dwelled in them looked back.

Eve watched until the town faded away into the fog, then turned and nestled down in her seat. She could still feel it on the back of her neck, but when they crossed the county line, there was a snap sensation in the back of her mind, and she knew then that Coffin Hill was gone. She settled into a restless sleep, and dreamt unquietly of a town that never-was.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

---

TBC.

One Universe: World Of Heroes - A Marvel & DC Comics RPG

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

^{_{E V E C O F F I N ♦ W I T C H ♦ C O F F I N H I L L ♦ B L A C K M A G I C}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

---

^{”Some debts can never be repaid.”}

The Coffins, founders and original settlers of Coffin Hill, are an old family with their roots in Salem and their hands dipped in blood and muck. They have a history of power, wealth, and terrible secrets. Eve Coffin is the last living branch of her ancestral tree - and she is determined to let it end with her.

In 2009, at fifteen years old, Eve and her closest friends delved deep into the woods of Coffin Hill; they went in search of the fabled witch, seeking to strike a bargain. What Eve had failed to understand was that she was the Witch of Coffin Hill; in those woods lived only the creature that lived in servitude to the Coffin family, the source of their power and status. All they had accomplished with their ritual was untethering it from her bloodline.
Four girls had walked into that dark forest that day. Only Eve walked out, and she had been forever marked by what had transpired within the cradle of those trees.
She fled from Coffin Hill that night. Neither the town nor her parents would miss her.

Ten years later, she returns, discovering that the creature in the woods had hungered in her time away; that hunger and rot had spread to the town beyond the treeline. People had been going missing, nearly always reported near or travelling in the direction of the woods by those who’d seen them last. Only Eve knew the true culprit responsible for the horror that now befell the town more frequently than ever before. A decade to the day, she went back into those woods, ready to do battle.

She emerged three days later, not saying a word; Eve collected her things and left Coffin Hill forever, taking the curse of her family with her.

It’s been a year since she emerged again from those woods. Eve drifts now, haunted wherever she goes, too scared to stop moving in case she brings ruin and misery to stay with her. She is The Coffin Witch, the last one there will ever be, and she spends everyday repenting for the sins of her forebearers, carrying the burden of her family name with her.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

---

Eve's motivations are fairly straight-forward, even if the work involved isn't: use the witchcraft of her family to undo the damage her family has done, and protect the innocent from the malevolent beings of the occult world, and then eventually die alone with no children or legacy and let her family's sins die with her. She drifts from town to town, city to city, and does what she can to fight back against the ever-encroaching darkness as she travels.

My own goals are to use a new character that we haven't seen before in these games to write supernatural/occult mystery and drama stories. I read Coffin Hill a couple years ago, a friend's copy rather than one I picked up myself, and I liked the character of Eve and the horror-occult leanings of the story. As she travels she'll also be very open to crossover stories and community events, something I usually avoid in the endless iterations we churn through, and something that I feel might re-light the spark. If I want to write solo stories, I could just work away on googledocs; if I'm writing as part of a greater collaborative, then I should get involved. So let's get involved.

S A M P L E P O S T:

---

Coffin House was never Eve's home; merely the building she occupied - hesitantly, reluctantly. It had never felt cozy, inviting, or welcoming. It had never felt safe. Even when her parents were absent, and the air was lacking any ambient cruelty or emotional negligence, the sense of being unwanted pervaded every fibre of Eve's being. The House itself did not want Eve residing within; the feeling was mutual. Eve did little to alter the sense of being rejected by the very brick and mortar. Coffin House was built on bloody foundations, and blood only beget more blood. She stared up at the great oak doors to the manor for the final time, then slung her single bag over her shoulder and spat at the ground, a great glob of spit landing smack on the first step. There was an imperceptible shudder in the brickwork, and a large chunk of moss and mud and dead bugs loosed itself from the guttering and landed at Eve's feet.
That was that, then. Farewells made. Eve turned, and resisted the urge to look back. The House watched her go for as far as it could manage.

The rest of the town felt no less hostile, but not because of malevolent architecture: this was a far more mundane form of malice. No one in Coffin Hill had forgotten August 13th, 2009, the night Eve had taken 3 young girls into the Woods and never returned them. She had been a pariah ever since; branded a murderer, it was only the fear of retribution from the Coffin elders that saved Eve from vigilantism, or even lynching, in the few weeks that followed. After that, they couldn't reach her from outside the institution anyway. Now, though, as she walked down the main street of Coffin Hill towards the bus ranks, she felt eyes on her from every window, every corner, every car. She lowered her head and fixed her gaze on the cobbles, not daring to make eye contact with a single person. Had any of them even a fraction of the Coffin witchcraft, these hard stares would be enough to entomb her in the stone beneath her feet. As it was, the air was unnaturally cold, and she felt a baleful darkness nipping at her heels. She hastened along.

-

As the coach pulled away from the stand, Eve stole a final glance at Coffin Hill out the back window. To the far west, she saw the House standing atop the eponymous knoll, some inimical arbiter of the town; behind Coffin House itself, she could barely make out the treeline of the woods. The trees and the things that dwelled in them looked back.

Eve watched until the town faded away into the fog, then turned and nestled down in her seat. She could still feel it on the back of her neck, but when they crossed the county line, there was a snap sensation in the back of her mind, and she knew then that Coffin Hill was gone. She settled into a restless sleep, and dreamt unquietly of a town that never-was.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

---

TBC.

Roman's Scrapbin

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

^{_{E V E C O F F I N ♦ W I T C H ♦ C O F F I N H I L L ♦ B L A C K M A G I C}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

---

^{”Some debts can never be repaid.”}

The Coffins, founders and original settlers of Coffin Hill, are an old family with their roots in Salem and their hands dipped in blood and muck. They have a history of power, wealth, and terrible secrets. Eve Coffin is the last living branch of her ancestral tree - and she is determined to let it end with her.

In 2009, at fifteen years old, Eve and her closest friends delved deep into the woods of Coffin Hill; they went in search of the fabled witch, seeking to strike a bargain. What Eve had failed to understand was that she was the Witch of Coffin Hill; in those woods lived only the creature that lived in servitude to the Coffin family, the source of their power and status. All they had accomplished with their ritual was untethering it from her bloodline.
Four girls had walked into that dark forest that day. Only Eve walked out, and she had been forever marked by what had transpired within the cradle of those trees.
She fled from Coffin Hill that night. Neither the town nor her parents would miss her.

Ten years later, she returns, discovering that the creature in the woods had hungered in her time away; that hunger and rot had spread to the town beyond the treeline. People had been going missing, nearly always reported near or travelling in the direction of the woods by those who’d seen them last. Only Eve knew the true culprit responsible for the horror that now befell the town more frequently than ever before. A decade to the day, she went back into those woods, ready to do battle.

She emerged three days later, not saying a word; her collected her things and left Coffin Hill forever, taking the curse of her family with her.

It’s been a year since she returned to those woods. Eve drifts now, haunted wherever she goes, too scared to stop moving in case she brings ruin and misery to stay with her. She is The Coffin Witch, the last one there will ever be, and she spends everyday repenting for the sins of her forebearers, carrying the burden of her family name with her.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

---

Eve's motivations are fairly straight-forward, even if the work involved isn't; use the witchcraft of her family to undo the damage her family has done, and protect the innocent from the malevolent beings of the occult world, and then eventually die alone with no children or legacy and let her family's sins die with her. She drifts from town to town, city to city, and does what she can to fight back against the ever-encroaching darkness as she travels.

My own goals are to use a new character that we haven't seen before in these games to write supernatural/occult mystery and drama stories. I read Coffin Hill a couple years ago, a friend's copy rather than one I picked up myself, and I liked the character of Eve and the horror-occult leanings of the story. As she travels she'll also be very open to crossover stories and community events, something I usually avoid in the endless iterations we churn through, and something that I feel might re-light the spark. If I want to write solo stories, I could just work away on googledocs; if I'm writing as part of a greater collaborative, then I should get involved. So let's get involved.

S A M P L E P O S T:

---

Coffin House was never Eve's home; merely the building she occupied - hesitantly, reluctantly. It had never felt cozy, inviting, or welcoming. It had never felt safe. Even when her parents were absent, and the air was lacking any ambient cruelty or emotional negligence, the sense of being unwanted pervaded every fibre of Eve's being. The House itself did not want Eve residing within; the feeling was mutual. Eve did little to alter the sense of being rejected by the very brick and mortar. Coffin House was built on bloody foundations, and blood only beget more blood. She stared up at the great oak doors to the manor for the final time, then slung her single bag over her shoulder and spat at the ground, a great glob of spit landing smack on the first step. There was an imperceptible shudder in the brickwork, and a large chunk of moss and mud and dead bugs loosed itself from the guttering and landed at Eve's feet.
That was that, then. Farewells made. Eve turned, and resisted the urge to look back. The House watched her go for as far as it could manage.

The rest of the town felt no less hostile, but not because of malevolent architecture: this was a far more mundane form of malice. No one in Coffin Hill had forgotten August 13th, 2009, the night Eve had taken 3 young girls into the Woods and never returned them. She had been a pariah ever since; branded a murderer, it was only the fear of retribution from the Coffin elders that saved Eve from vigilantism, or even lynching, in the few weeks that followed. After that, they couldn't reach her from outside the institution anyway. Now, though, as she walked down the main street of Coffin Hill towards the bus ranks, she felt eyes on her from every window, every corner, every car. She lowered her head and fixed her gaze on the cobbles, not daring to make eye contact with a single person. Had any of them even a fraction of the Coffin witchcraft, these hard stares would be enough to entomb her in the stone beneath her feet. As it was, the air was unnaturally cold, and she felt a baleful darkness nipping at her heels. She hastened along.

-

As the coach pulled away from the stand, Eve stole a final glance at Coffin Hill out the back window. To the far west, she saw the House standing atop the eponymous knoll, some inimical arbiter of the town; behind Coffin House itself, she could barely make out the treeline of the woods. The trees and the things that dwelled in them looked back.

Eve watched until the town faded away into the fog, then turned and nestled down in her seat. She could still feel it on the back of her neck, but when they crossed the county line, there was a snap sensation in the back of her mind, and she knew then that Coffin Hill was gone. She settled into a restless sleep, and dreamt unquietly of a town that never-was.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

---

TBC.

One Universe: World Of Heroes - A Marvel & DC Comics RPG

Congrats, Doc; in fairness, I thought your sheet fit the game’s setting better than mine anyway. Well chosen, GMs. It stings, but that’s the rub.

Gonna take a step back and think about some other picks, or IF there are other picks; this might be a sign that I need to take a break completely. Looking forward to reading some of these stories regardless, though.

One Universe: World Of Heroes - A Marvel & DC Comics RPG

I want to thank @DocTachyon for his sterling chivalry in allowing me an extension to getting my competing sheet in, despite my insistence he needn't bother. I also want to thank @Master Bruce, @HenryJonesJr, and @Hillan for allowing such an extension to pass.

Now, without further ado:

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

T H E B A T M A N

---

^{_{B R U C E W A Y N E ♦ V I G I L A N T E / P H I L A N T H R O P I S T ♦ G O T H A M C I T Y ♦ G O T H A M}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

---

^{"Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot."}

Bruce Wayne was born to two loving parents on a cold night in September, 1988. Bruce Wayne died beside his parents on a cold night in November, 1996. He was eight. He was never mourned.

The child is dead; what remains is a paracausal being of zealotry, rage, and willpower. This unnatural creature spends twelve years inhabiting the body of Bruce Wayne, seizing every new day as a fresh opportunity to push itself towards some as-yet-unknown goal. Alfred, the guardian, secretly fears this changeling child, in his worst moments pining for the bubbling, gleeful boy that left the manor with his parents that fateful November night, and never returned. At twenty-one years old, the skin-walker leaves Gotham, and Alfred allows some dark corner of himself to believe that the City has been spared an unknowable evil.

Gotham festered for three years. Corruption and crime, previously a slowly-growing problem, somehow rapidly became the new normal, infesting every corner of Gotham's infrastructure. The mayor, the police, the judges - all are mere tokens, figureheads to placate the public; the Gotham crime families - Falcone, Maroni, Gilzean, Cobblepot - are the new authority. Not a decision is made without their knowledge or involvement. The city loses hope, and with it, the citizens feel a light leave their lives.

On the sixteenth anniversary of his parent’s brutal, senseless murder, the prodigal Wayne son returns to his city, anger tamed and zealotry focused, and he brings with him a singular purpose: to rid his beloved Gotham of the corruption that threatens to swallow it whole. He dons a mantle of fear, and begins a war.

Bruce is now thirty-two; he has spent eight years pushing back the wave of filth that once washed through his home. His mind and body at the very brink of human potential, he has become a ruthless and effective weapon against those that would prey on the weak, and he has turned fear against the monsters that seek to inflict it upon the innocent. But the nature of the world is changing, and with it, the nature of evil; Gotham is plagued less by corruption and greed, and instead is ever-increasingly victim to sadism, megalomania, and terrorism. The war has never ceased, but it has shifted, and Bruce has amassed allies over the course of his long campaign. Now more than ever, he needs those allies: the face of his city is about to shift again.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

---

I’ve always loved Batman. I may not be as overt about it as others, but Batman, alongside Spider-Man and Sonic the Hedgehog, laid the foundation of my early youth, and to this day remains a core passion; it’s one of those things that gets in early, and immerses you completely, and then as you grow older and more aloof maybe you don’t shout it from the rooftops, but you still love the character and the story. Sure, as you grow up you encounter more and more stories and properties and you broaden your taste - hell, you learn what your taste is - and you start a growing list of franchises you hold in esteem; but that foundation is still there, those core characters that you latched onto inexplicably as a child, and undoubtedly will carry with you to the grave. Spider-Man. Sonic the Hedgehog. Batman.

My Batman here is nothing special, no wild reinvention or AU interpretation. He’s Bruce Wayne, and we all know Bruce Wayne’s story. At 32, he’s 8 years into his career: several of his protégés have already trained under him, become disillusioned, and left to pursue their own missions. The organised crime families of Gotham have been mostly disassembled, with the family heads still evading the law and attempting to claw back some of the empire they have had torn away from under them. Most of his Rogues Gallery are established, with a few exceptions, and have changed the face of Gotham forever.

I’m not looking to portray any revolutionary introspection of Bruce himself; what I am interested in is using Batman as a vehicle to explore his Rogues Gallery and the relationship each individual villain shares with Bruce. Batman’s enemies define him more so than any other hero, and these are the characters and dynamics that drew me to Batman in the first place; through them, a Batman that will be recognisably Mine will be carved out, and a new entry into the Mythos we all share and adore will be born.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

---

//SUPPORTING CAST:

▼ ALLIES

◼ DICK GRAYSON | Ex-Robin. Current Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
◼ JAMES 'JIM' GORDON | GCPD Commissioner
◼ HARVEY BULLOCK | GCPD's most senior Detective
◼ ALFRED PENNYWORTH | Wayne Manor Housekeeper. Appointed legal guardian to Bruce Wayne
◼ HARVEY DENT | Gotham City District Attorney

S A M P L E P O S T:

---

Set the scene.

Gotham docks. Off-stage, yet his presence felt: ‘The Penguin’. Deposed heir to the Cobblepot crime family; now destitute, he grows desperate and ruthless in pursuit of the empire he’s lost.
The empire I have ripped away from him.

Tonight he brings drugs into my city, balaclava-clad men hauling wooden crates off of shipping containers and loading them into trucks. The cargo and containers are unmarked, but I have already seen the shipping manifesto; these crates may have come from overseas, but their purchase has been made through holding companies and shell corps that one can, when looking in the right places, trace back to a property development and construction contracting company based in New York City.
Fisk is attempting to purchase a stake of Gotham using Cobblepot as a figurehead. They will both be disappointed.

From my vantage point I can see eleven men.
Three loading crates; they are strong, but fatigued, and the hard work on a humid night has aggravated them; they demand help from the others, but are ignored. Tempers flare.
One in the truck cab; he is overweight and chain-smoking. His windows are closed and the stereo is loud.
Four dock workers, all paid off. Whether by Cobblepot or Fisk doesn't matter; what does is three of them are concealing light firearms, judging by their uneven gaits. The other is young and nervous, and wraps his hand around a single set of brass knuckles in his jacket pocket.
Two security guards, once again paid off. One guards the entrance to this pier - he's jumpy, and carries his hands together, awkwardly low and in front of him: he is holding what is likely to be a shotgun. The other is casually patrolling; he is openly carrying a pistol, with a heavy torch in the other hand. The patrolling guard is not jumpy, and he grips his pistol loosely. Carelessly.
The last man is the lookout; he is stationed atop the gantry crane assigned to this pier. He is holding an automatic rifle and has binoculars, an open-broadcast two-way radio, and has even been equipped with night-vision goggles, because he is here to look for me, and I operate from the dark.

He will not find me. I am above him. I was on this gantry crane first.

I begin tonight's work.

-

'Eyes' is a dumb nickname, Eyes thinks, but these are dumb men and it is simple and effective and makes his role in the operation clear. They are obviously expecting interference tonight - but that is why he is here. His radio crackles - the voice coming through is filled with static, and is loud and grating. Ten minute check-in.
"[WALKER TO EYES. CHECK IN]"
"Eyes to Walker. Eyes clear."
"[WALKER TO EYES. OARLESS CANOE.]"
"Eyes to Walker. Western Fjord."
The radio crackles again and falls silent. Check-in clear. Eyes thinks he'll take another walk around the crane; the lights of Gotham's business district over the dock-water on a clear night is oddly beautiful. There's a good view of Wayne Tower too, the imposing skyscraper with its iconic 'W' fascia nestled among bank and media logos. He can lean over the railing and gaze out over the pier for five minutes, then walk back around for the next check.

Eyes barely has time to register what little noise comes from behind him before his forehead hits the metal railing and he bounces back, reeling - but not before his leg is kicked into the lower set of railings and his kneecap shatters. He would scream in pain, but as he twists around in his fall, the jagged, black shape that towers above him lashes out with one of its uncountable limbs and strikes him across the throat, silencing him as he sinks to the floor. Eyes' has one last sight before he fades out; terrible, inhuman horns, sitting atop a snarling black face, blasphemously haloed by demonic wings.

-

I have nine minutes and forty seconds before the lookout fails to report at the next check-in and the men are alerted to my arrival. The guard at the entrance to the pier is sequestered in his booth, too far from the operation to be useful; the driver is not the fighting type. That leaves me a little over a minute to incapacitate each man.
Doable.
I leap from the crane, gliding softly towards the patrolman who has entered the furthest section of his route.

-

Walker’s name is actually Walker, although he hasn’t let anyone know - to do so would be to defy the point of the codenames in the first place. William Walker. William after his father; he knows that much of the man, but little else. He spent much of his youth fighting ‘Willy Junior’ as a nickname, but eventually, gracefully, Bill stuck. Bill’s trying to be a better dad to his kid than William Senior was - not hard, as Bill’s mere existence in his son’s life is a step above the standard the old man set.

Bill’s a security guard at the docks, has been for 4 years. He knew what kind of world he was stepping into when he took the job - record turnovers, Gotham Docks, for all manner of reasons both sinister and benign - but there was little else in his skill set he was suitable for, and the job paid well for what it demanded of him. Tonight was the first time he’d been involved in anything explicitly illicit. The first time he’d been actively involved, at least, approached by a man in a suit with a roll of bills that totalled 3 months wage. 3 months wage for one night protecting whatever was coming off those containers - cargo that would have been coming in anyway, Bill thought, cargo that’s probably come in unawares on many of his shifts over his career. A quarter-year of pay for one night’s overtime. He could pay off his son’s braces with some left over for a real knock-out birthday present with what he was earning tonight. He felt good. A little dirty, but good.

There was a noise in the shadows to his left and Bill snapped out of his ruminations and whipped around, torch held out first and his pistol low and close to his body. He’d not fired a gun once in his four years on the docks, and didn’t even own the one he was holding now.
“W-Who’s there? Show yourself!”

There was another sound, behind him. He whipped around again, swearing under his breath and shaking a little. Still nothing. He took a few steps forward.

A quiet, sharp little noise rushed through the air towards him and something pierced his hand, forcing him to drop the pistol. It clattered to the ground, but Bill paid no attention; even before he’d yelled out in shock, there had been another small noise and a gummy, viscous substance had splashed across his mouth and nose, muffling his shout and blocking his air. He slowly sunk to the ground, losing consciousness, back against a shipping container as his legs gave way beneath him.

Ten feet away, across the path, the shadows shift and split and some cursed figure melts into reality; Bill can recognise a head connected to shoulders, but the rest of the body is an inhuman mass that bleeds into the floor, no limbs or torso or recognisably human features to speak of.

Consciousness fades. The darkness descends. The figure envelopes him; and then Bill cannot keep his eyes open any longer.

-

The patrolman had been at odds with the job since the night began; I’d checked his record, and for a docks guard, it was as clean as they came. A little history, to be expected. But this was his first time being bought. He’d taken to it all too easily. They all do.

I lean over him and lightly wave a small bottle of solvent beneath his nose; the glue blocking his nostrils melts away, and I hear him subconsciously take a full breath, but he doesn’t wake up. He won’t for at least half-an-hour; the glue includes chloroform in its makeup to sedate the victim. I bind his hands behind his back, retrieving the batarang, and then head inwards towards the truck.

There are seven men left: the three loaders, and the four dock workers. The loaders are unarmed, but the workers aren’t, and the three with concealed pistols need to be tackled first. They’re mostly milling around, but one wanders away to urinate. I take him out first; emerging from the dark like a beast of the nine circles, enveloping him in terror’s embrace and smothering him until he stops struggling. I set him down and bind his hands, too, and then I take the pistol from the belt of his trousers. Well made. American. Probably Fisk again; Oswald’s no arms dealer, and doesn’t have the underworld clout to source firearms like these. I disassemble it easily enough, regardless of its manufacturer.

The pieces go clattering around the corner towards the remaining men; everyone ceases their tasks to watch as the sections of pistol slide in their direction from where their comrade had rounded the corner mere seconds ago. They all freeze; every single man on the pier tonight now knows their operation has ended, but none want to say it aloud. Instead, the two workers wielding pistols draw them and hold them tight and outstretched, and then heckle the worker with the dusters to investigate. He protests, meekly, then does what is demanded of him, slipping the brass knuckles over his fist as he approaches my corner.

He rounds it and see his colleague unconscious. He does not see me. I reach out and seize his wrist, bringing my elbow down across the top of his forearm, breaking his elbow sharply; he screams and I let him. I want them to hear his pain. I want them to fear the pain they are about to feel. I slip the dusters off his fingers as he whimpers, cradling his broken arm, and then deliver them to the side of his face; he slumps over, out cold, gums bleeding. I toss the dusters towards the remaining men too; now I hear them shouting. The shake and inflection in their voices indicates panic.

Five left. Two armed. Terror beginning to strangle their minds and cloud their judgement. Time to end things.

I launch a smoke capsule at the ground in front of me; gas explodes forth and lays down cover; I step into the fog, unseen, and then carefully approach the outer edge of the cloud, allowing the men to barely glimpse my form; I hear one shout and know I've been spotted, and immediately back away, invisible again, before dropping prone to the ground. Shots puncture the gas as bullets whip past above me. The two with pistols are aiming torso-level. They both miss; then they pause to reload. I stand and step forward again, in one smooth motion parting my cloak and flinging two batarangs out; they both find their marks, cutting across the hands of the workers as they're scrambling to load a second clip. Both pistols are dropped, and the men let their fear get the better of them. They turn and run. I throw out my other arm; bolos fly forth and ensnare their ankles. they hit the ground head-first and hard.

Three left. I step out of the smoke completely, letting my cloak cover me again. They stare; I wait. I let the tension build.

Finally, one snaps and charges me; he throws a wide fist, too much wind up, too slow to connect; I sidestep and jab the wrist, breaking it easily, and then drive my other arm into his ribs; he folds around my fist, winded, and a follow up to his kidney has him wheezing and stumbling. I spin and bring my leg around; my greaves connect with his ear and he goes flying.

Two left. They rush me at the same time.

-

Larry McCoy has driven nearly anything that’s been built with a wheel and two pedals. Never drove stick, but never needed to; never had a licence neither, but never needed one. With an auto all you needed was a foot for ‘go’, a foot for ‘stop’, and hand for ‘where’. Larry had all those, and he made do just swell. Tractors early on - ploughing fields and harvesting crops. Taxi for a while, tried buses too, although eventually he pined for the quiet solitude he’d enjoyed in the cab of heavy farming machinery; he’d long left corn behind him, but found long-haul lorry driving suited him just fine. There was something comforting about a long road in front of him and a radio that was just a fraction static, where the only things that existed were Larry, the cargo he was hauling, and the journey that took from where he came from and where he was going.

That’s why he hated nights and jobs like these; no mystique, no romance, no subtle beauty. Here, the ugliness was laid bare, and he had to dip his hands deep into the muck. After jobs like these, Larry didn’t feel clean for days. But Larry’s wife had cancer, and hospital bills don’t pay themselves. So he played the music loud and stayed in the cab. That was his condition; he’d drive, and he’d drive whatever they wanted, and he’d do it better and sometimes cheaper than most. But he stayed in the cab.

So when Larry saw The Batman, a creature he believed was just Gotham urban legend - fuck, to Larry, the Batman may as well have been the Jersey Devil - appear out of darkness and smog, having done some unseen, unspeakable horror to at least three men, more likely eight, and then proceed to effortlessly incapacitate three more, seemingly untouchable, ethereal, intangible...

Larry got out the cab and ran as fast as his legs could carry him.

-

The driver ran. I’d anticipated it; he didn’t have the look of a fighter. By the time he reached the guard booth at the entrance to the pier and pointed frantically down the way towards me, I’d already set the charges on the crates; as the last guard sprinted towards me, I melted back into the shadows of the docks, and triggered the explosives.

By the time the guard picked himself up off the floor, Fisk and Penguin’s budding enterprise was cinders, and I was gone; another story of the night.

The evening was yet young. There was much work to be done.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

---

TBC.

One Universe: World Of Heroes - A Marvel Comics / DC Comics Crossover RPG!

I'm listed in the OP, but for legitimacy, I am interested and will be fighting Doc for Batman.

Roman's Scrapbin

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

T H E B A T M A N

---

^{_{B R U C E W A Y N E ♦ V I G I L A N T E / P H I L A N T H R O P I S T ♦ G O T H A M C I T Y ♦ G O T H A M}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

---

^{"Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot."}

Bruce Wayne was born to two loving parents on a cold night in September, 1988. Bruce Wayne died beside his parents on a cold night in November, 1996. He was eight. He was never mourned.

The child is dead; what remains is a paracausal being of zealotry, rage, and willpower. This unnatural creature spends twelve years inhabiting the body of Bruce Wayne, seizing every new day as a fresh opportunity to push itself towards some as-yet-unknown goal. Alfred, the guardian, secretly fears this changeling child, in his worst moments pining for the bubbling, gleeful boy that left the manor with his parents that fateful November night, and never returned. At twenty-one years old, the skin-walker leaves Gotham, and Alfred allows some dark corner of himself to believe that the City has been spared an unknowable evil.

Gotham festered for three years. Corruption and crime, previously a slowly-growing problem, somehow rapidly became the new normal, infesting every corner of Gotham's infrastructure. The mayor, the police, the judges - all are mere tokens, figureheads to placate the public; the Gotham crime families - Falcone, Maroni, Gilzean, Cobblepot - are the new authority. Not a decision is made without their knowledge or involvement. The city loses hope, and with it, the citizens feel a light leave their lives.

On the sixteenth anniversary of his parent’s brutal, senseless murder, the prodigal Wayne son returns to his city, anger tamed and zealotry focused, and he brings with him a singular purpose: to rid his beloved Gotham of the corruption that threatens to swallow it whole. He dons a mantle of fear, and begins a war.

Bruce is now thirty-two; he has spent eight years pushing back the wave of filth that once washed through his home. His mind and body at the very brink of human potential, he has become a ruthless and effective weapon against those that would prey on the weak, and he has turned fear against the monsters that seek to inflict it upon the innocent. But the nature of the world is changing, and with it, the nature of evil; Gotham is plagued less by corruption and greed, and instead is ever-increasingly victim to sadism, megalomania, and terrorism. The war has never ceased, but it has shifted, and Bruce has amassed allies over the course of his long campaign. Now more than ever, he needs those allies: the face of his city is about to shift again.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

---

I’ve always loved Batman. I may not be as overt about it as others, but Batman, alongside Spider-Man and Sonic the Hedgehog, laid the foundation of my early youth, and to this day remains a core passion; it’s one of those things that gets in early, and immerses you completely, and then as you grow older and more aloof maybe you don’t shout it from the rooftops, but you still love the character and the story. Sure, as you grow up you encounter more and more stories and properties and you broaden your taste - hell, you learn what your taste is - and you start a growing list of franchises you hold in esteem; but that foundation is still there, those core characters that you latched onto inexplicably as a child, and undoubtedly will carry with you to the grave. Spider-Man. Sonic the Hedgehog. Batman.

My Batman here is nothing special, no wild reinvention or AU interpretation. He’s Bruce Wayne, and we all know Bruce Wayne’s story. At 32, he’s 8 years into his career: several of his protégés have already trained under him, become disillusioned, and left to pursue their own missions. The organised crime families of Gotham have been mostly disassembled, with the family heads still evading the law and attempting to claw back some of the empire they have had torn away from under them. Most of his Rogues Gallery are established, with a few exceptions, and have changed the face of Gotham forever.

I’m not looking to portray any revolutionary introspection of Bruce himself; what I am interested in is using Batman as a vehicle to explore his Rogues Gallery and the relationship each individual villain shares with Bruce. Batman’s enemies define him more so than any other hero, and these are the characters and dynamics that drew me to Batman in the first place; through them, a Batman that will be recognisably Mine will be carved out, and a new entry into the Mythos we all share and adore will be born.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

---

//SUPPORTING CAST:

▼ ALLIES

◼ DICK GRAYSON | Ex-Robin. Current Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
◼ JAMES 'JIM' GORDON | GCPD Commissioner
◼ HARVEY BULLOCK | GCPD's most senior Detective
◼ ALFRED PENNYWORTH | Wayne Manor Housekeeper. Appointed legal guardian to Bruce Wayne
◼ HARVEY DENT | Gotham City District Attorney

S A M P L E P O S T:

---

Set the scene.

Gotham docks. Off-stage, yet his presence felt: ‘The Penguin’. Deposed heir to the Cobblepot crime family; now destitute, he grows desperate and ruthless in pursuit of the empire he’s lost.
The empire I have ripped away from him.

Tonight he brings drugs into my city, balaclava-clad men hauling wooden crates off of shipping containers and loading them into trucks. The cargo and containers are unmarked, but I have already seen the shipping manifesto; these crates may have come from overseas, but their purchase has been made through holding companies and shell corps that one can, when looking in the right places, trace back to a property development and construction contracting company based in New York City.
Fisk is attempting to purchase a stake of Gotham using Cobblepot as a figurehead. They will both be disappointed.

From my vantage point I can see eleven men.
Three loading crates; they are strong, but fatigued, and the hard work on a humid night has aggravated them; they demand help from the others, but are ignored. Tempers flare.
One in the truck cab; he is overweight and chain-smoking. His windows are closed and the stereo is loud.
Four dock workers, all paid off. Whether by Cobblepot or Fisk doesn't matter; what does is three of them are concealing light firearms, judging by their uneven gaits. The other is young and nervous, and wraps his hand around a single set of brass knuckles in his jacket pocket.
Two security guards, once again paid off. One guards the entrance to this pier - he's jumpy, and carries his hands together, awkwardly low and in front of him: he is holding what is likely to be a shotgun. The other is casually patrolling; he is openly carrying a pistol, with a heavy torch in the other hand. The patrolling guard is not jumpy, and he grips his pistol loosely. Carelessly.
The last man is the lookout; he is stationed atop the gantry crane assigned to this pier. He is holding an automatic rifle and has binoculars, an open-broadcast two-way radio, and has even been equipped with night-vision goggles, because he is here to look for me, and I operate from the dark.

He will not find me. I am above him. I was on this gantry crane first.

I begin tonight's work.

-

'Eyes' is a dumb nickname, Eyes thinks, but these are dumb men and it is simple and effective and makes his role in the operation clear. They are obviously expecting interference tonight - but that is why he is here. His radio crackles - the voice coming through is filled with static, and is loud and grating. Ten minute check-in.
"[WALKER TO EYES. CHECK IN]"
"Eyes to Walker. Eyes clear."
"[WALKER TO EYES. OARLESS CANOE.]"
"Eyes to Walker. Western Fjord."
The radio crackles again and falls silent. Check-in clear. Eyes thinks he'll take another walk around the crane; the lights of Gotham's business district over the dock-water on a clear night is oddly beautiful. There's a good view of Wayne Tower too, the imposing skyscraper with its iconic 'W' fascia nestled among bank and media logos. He can lean over the railing and gaze out over the pier for five minutes, then walk back around for the next check.

Eyes barely has time to register what little noise comes from behind him before his forehead hits the metal railing and he bounces back, reeling - but not before his leg is kicked into the lower set of railings and his kneecap shatters. He would scream in pain, but as he twists around in his fall, the jagged, black shape that towers above him lashes out with one of its uncountable limbs and strikes him across the throat, silencing him as he sinks to the floor. Eyes' has one last sight before he fades out; terrible, inhuman horns, sitting atop a snarling black face, blasphemously haloed by demonic wings.

-

I have nine minutes and forty seconds before the lookout fails to report at the next check-in and the men are alerted to my arrival. The guard at the entrance to the pier is sequestered in his booth, too far from the operation to be useful; the driver is not the fighting type. That leaves me a little over a minute to incapacitate each man.
Doable.
I leap from the crane, gliding softly towards the patrolman who has entered the furthest section of his route.

-

Walker’s name is actually Walker, although he hasn’t let anyone know - to do so would be to defy the point of the codenames in the first place. William Walker. William after his father; he knows that much of the man, but little else. He spent much of his youth fighting ‘Willy Junior’ as a nickname, but eventually, gracefully, Bill stuck. Bill’s trying to be a better dad to his kid than William Senior was - not hard, as Bill’s mere existence in his son’s life is a step above the standard the old man set.

Bill’s a security guard at the docks, has been for 4 years. He knew what kind of world he was stepping into when he took the job - record turnovers, Gotham Docks, for all manner of reasons both sinister and benign - but there was little else in his skill set he was suitable for, and the job paid well for what it demanded of him. Tonight was the first time he’d been involved in anything explicitly illicit. The first time he’d been actively involved, at least, approached by a man in a suit with a roll of bills that totalled 3 months wage. 3 months wage for one night protecting whatever was coming off those containers - cargo that would have been coming in anyway, Bill thought, cargo that’s probably come in unawares on many of his shifts over his career. A quarter-year of pay for one night’s overtime. He could pay off his son’s braces with some left over for a real knock-out birthday present with what he was earning tonight. He felt good. A little dirty, but good.

There was a noise in the shadows to his left and Bill snapped out of his ruminations and whipped around, torch held out first and his pistol low and close to his body. He’d not fired a gun once in his four years on the docks, and didn’t even own the one he was holding now.
“W-Who’s there? Show yourself!”

There was another sound, behind him. He whipped around again, swearing under his breath and shaking a little. Still nothing. He took a few steps forward.

A quiet, sharp little noise rushed through the air towards him and something pierced his hand, forcing him to drop the pistol. It clattered to the ground, but Bill paid no attention; even before he’d yelled out in shock, there had been another small noise and a gummy, viscous substance had splashed across his mouth and nose, muffling his shout and blocking his air. He slowly sunk to the ground, losing consciousness, back against a shipping container as his legs gave way beneath him.

Ten feet away, across the path, the shadows shift and split and some cursed figure melts into reality; Bill can recognise a head connected to shoulders, but the rest of the body is an inhuman mass that bleeds into the floor, no limbs or torso or recognisably human features to speak of.

Consciousness fades. The darkness descends. The figure envelopes him; and then Bill cannot keep his eyes open any longer.

-

The patrolman had been at odds with the job since the night began; I’d checked his record, and for a docks guard, it was as clean as they came. A little history, to be expected. But this was his first time being bought. He’d taken to it all too easily. They all do.

I lean over him and lightly wave a small bottle of solvent beneath his nose; the glue blocking his nostrils melts away, and I hear him subconsciously take a full breath, but he doesn’t wake up. He won’t for at least half-an-hour; the glue includes chloroform in its makeup to sedate the victim. I bind his hands behind his back, retrieving the batarang, and then head inwards towards the truck.

There are seven men left: the three loaders, and the four dock workers. The loaders are unarmed, but the workers aren’t, and the three with concealed pistols need to be tackled first. They’re mostly milling around, but one wanders away to urinate. I take him out first; emerging from the dark like a beast of the nine circles, enveloping him in terror’s embrace and smothering him until he stops struggling. I set him down and bind his hands, too, and then I take the pistol from the belt of his trousers. Well made. American. Probably Fisk again; Oswald’s no arms dealer, and doesn’t have the underworld clout to source firearms like these. I disassemble it easily enough, regardless of its manufacturer.

The pieces go clattering around the corner towards the remaining men; everyone ceases their tasks to watch as the sections of pistol slide in their direction from where their comrade had rounded the corner mere seconds ago. They all freeze; every single man on the pier tonight now knows their operation has ended, but none want to say it aloud. Instead, the two workers wielding pistols draw them and hold them tight and outstretched, and then heckle the worker with the dusters to investigate. He protests, meekly, then does what is demanded of him, slipping the brass knuckles over his fist as he approaches my corner.

He rounds it and see his colleague unconscious. He does not see me. I reach out and seize his wrist, bringing my elbow down across the top of his forearm, breaking his elbow sharply; he screams and I let him. I want them to hear his pain. I want them to fear the pain they are about to feel. I slip the dusters off his fingers as he whimpers, cradling his broken arm, and then deliver them to the side of his face; he slumps over, out cold, gums bleeding. I toss the dusters towards the remaining men too; now I hear them shouting. The shake and inflection in their voices indicates panic.

Five left. Two armed. Terror beginning to strangle their minds and cloud their judgement. Time to end things.

I launch a smoke capsule at the ground in front of me; gas explodes forth and lays down cover; I step into the fog, unseen, and then carefully approach the outer edge of the cloud, allowing the men to barely glimpse my form; I hear one shout and know I've been spotted, and immediately back away, invisible again, before dropping prone to the ground. Shots puncture the gas as bullets whip past above me. The two with pistols are aiming torso-level. They both miss; then they pause to reload. I stand and step forward again, in one smooth motion parting my cloak and flinging two batarangs out; they both find their marks, cutting across the hands of the workers as they're scrambling to load a second clip. Both pistols are dropped, and the men let their fear get the better of them. They turn and run. I throw out my other arm; bolos fly forth and ensnare their ankles. they hit the ground head-first and hard.

Three left. I step out of the smoke completely, letting my cloak cover me again. They stare; I wait. I let the tension build.

Finally, one snaps and charges me; he throws a wide fist, too much wind up, too slow to connect; I sidestep and jab the wrist, breaking it easily, and then drive my other arm into his ribs; he folds around my fist, winded, and a follow up to his kidney has him wheezing and stumbling. I spin and bring my leg around; my greaves connect with his ear and he goes flying.

Two left. They rush me at the same time.

-

Larry McCoy has driven nearly anything that’s been built with a wheel and two pedals. Never drove stick, but never needed to; never had a licence neither, but never needed one. With an auto all you needed was a foot for ‘go’, a foot for ‘stop’, and hand for ‘where’. Larry had all those, and he made do just swell. Tractors early on - ploughing fields and harvesting crops. Taxi for a while, tried buses too, although eventually he pined for the quiet solitude he’d enjoyed in the cab of heavy farming machinery; he’d long left corn behind him, but found long-haul lorry driving suited him just fine. There was something comforting about a long road in front of him and a radio that was just a fraction static, where the only things that existed were Larry, the cargo he was hauling, and the journey that took from where he came from and where he was going.

That’s why he hated nights and jobs like these; no mystique, no romance, no subtle beauty. Here, the ugliness was laid bare, and he had to dip his hands deep into the muck. After jobs like these, Larry didn’t feel clean for days. But Larry’s wife had cancer, and hospital bills don’t pay themselves. So he played the music loud and stayed in the cab. That was his condition; he’d drive, and he’d drive whatever they wanted, and he’d do it better and sometimes cheaper than most. But he stayed in the cab.

So when Larry saw The Batman, a creature he believed was just Gotham urban legend - fuck, to Larry, the Batman may as well have been the Jersey Devil - appear out of darkness and smog, having done some unseen, unspeakable horror to at least three men, more likely eight, and then proceed to effortlessly incapacitate three more, seemingly untouchable, ethereal, intangible...

Larry got out the cab and ran as fast as his legs could carry him.

-

The driver ran. I’d anticipated it; he didn’t have the look of a fighter. By the time he reached the guard booth at the entrance to the pier and pointed frantically down the way towards me, I’d already set the charges on the crates; as the last guard sprinted towards me, I melted back into the shadows of the docks, and triggered the explosives.

By the time the guard picked himself up off the floor, Fisk and Penguin’s budding enterprise was cinders, and I was gone; another story of the night.

The evening was yet young. There was much work to be done.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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TBC.