Ruby

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

So tempted to bring in a version of the Phantasm....

Oh hey @Ruby been a while!

@Xtreme

That would be really effin' cool!

Also, HI! How'veyoubeenImissedyou!!??

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

Right, so... Need to decide between either a female Robin OC using the Ame-Comi Robin's appearance, an OC that is basically Hit-Girl with the serial numbers filed off, or something off that big list Ruby so helpfully provided. XD Hmmm...

@Rin

Ame-Comi is way too cute! One day I'll get the bravery to use Ame-Comi Supergirl. One of these days, maybe. lol

Up to you. Obviously, if you go with a Robin that's not directly tied to the Bat-family, you have to then deal with their acceptance or denial, and of course, you'd have to deal with Bruce if he ever shows up in the game. (Which I'm, honestly, 50/50 split on at this point.) I would think that kinda drama would be fun writing, but that's me. ^_^

The New Frontier: A Marvel/DC One Universe RP

<Snipped quote by Ruby>

"The fine people of the Law Offices of Fitzwaller, Fitzwaller, Fitzwaller, Fitzwaller, & York care about keeping their high-priced and scumbag clientele in mint condition. AS for the OPD, they like gang wars. The bad guys kill each other and they sort the facts out afterwards."

DC thumbed through the files to see if he could catch anything. The victims all came from diverse backgrounds and specialties. Drug dealers. trigger men, pimps, smugglers. He thought about asking Jean for help. After all, she was supposed to be the psychic. He was just the talking, hyper-intelligent primate. Random chance was always a possibility. In this city, so much lead flew that it was bound to catch a few people who seemed connected.

"Shit," DC said as something caught his eye.

"I can't believe I missed it."

He hopped up on to his desk and rifled through the stacks of papers to find what he wanted.

"B&B Enterprises."

He slapped six documents on the desk in front of him.

"Same company bailed all six men out twenty-four hours before their deaths. It's a link."

@Byrd Man

"Funny thing about gang wars--all too often it's not the gangs doing the majority of the dying."

It was an aside, motivated by the bitter resentment from an open, loving, hearted woman. Jean understood collatoral damage; after Scott's mistake during the Brotherhood fight, anyone who wore an "X" understood collatoral damage now. The X-Men were child killers, and President savers. Didn't it just sound like the status quo of PMCs and black ops teams? The X-Men were neither of those things. The X-Men would never, ever, become either of those things. But right now they were a young team with a long road of redemption to walk.

If they stayed together, at all.

At the sudden dropping of the "Shit" bomb, Jean's body moved off the desk and came to a full stand, turning to face the desk...and the talking chimp that suddenly jumped onto the desk. He was more than a talking chimp--spend five minutes with him and that was clear. Touch his mind, even in the slightest way, and it became even more incredibly clear he was more than just a talking chimp. There was intellect and cunning in there that Jean could respect, even admire...but none of that kept her lips from smiling.

Or kept her right hand from sneaking into her jacket, and pulling out the overly encrypted smart phone. How does Jean not SnapChat a talking chimp jumping on his desk, and excitingly slapping down on papers in a classic "Ah ha!" moment? The short answer? She doesn't. She takes the quick video, and immediately allows SnapChat to have it. You know, for all the X-kids back at the Mansion wondering what Jean Grey was up to.

Resisting the urge to step forward, take the chimp in her arms, and squeeze-hug him for being possibly the cutest thing she'd seen in months? Was difficult, but she resisted; too real was the fear of the Chimp smacking her around like a pile of papers on a desk. That, and she didn't want to make a spectacle out of him. She didn't want him to feel like she saw him like that. Which was funny, she didn't see him like that. All he had to do was look into her mind to see that.

It could be hard for telepaths to do the careful dance of normal communication, playing to all those uncertainties and fears that telepaths could just breeze past because they knew better. Jean knew how she viewed the Chimp. And if he knew, really knew, she had a feeling he might even let her live if she grabbed and hugged him. But that was another day, and the Chimp was freaked out by her telepathy, not eager to see how it could change his life. So instead, her thumbs busied themselves by putting in the company name to Google Maps.

"Heeey, looky there: the internet seemes to have an Opal City location for this B&B Enterprises." Green eyes illuminated in the glow of the phone's LEDs peeked over the top of the smartphone, across the desk of sudden mess to the chimp, and reflected the way the smile on her lips had slipped into a grin. "Care for a walk, my dear Detective?"

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

Oh man. Ooooooh man. I so wish I wasn't already spreading myself too thin. Seriously. The chance to play Dick Grayson, coming back home after Bruce's disappearance, is so juicy. And now I'm sad.

@ProPro

I know that pain. ^_^

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

Finished, for now. A little bare bones but I'll get a chance to fill it out later.

The OOC is up.

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

Name: Helena Bertinelli
Age: Mid-20s
Alias: Don Bertinelli, the Huntress
Skills/Abilities:

Helena Bertinelli is an Olympic level athlete, tall and athletically built. Her training regiment remains extreme, and the equal of anything the NFL or Navy SEALs can offer.

She is one of the premiere marksmen in the world.

With an extensive and often times merciless martial arts training record, Helena has forged herself into an incredible martial artist.

On the surface a Technohobbyist, behind the scenes a technician, mechanic, and engineer that has been trained from the start to create her own tools and equipment, to depend on no one. Still room to improve as a hacker, and has no experience with hyper-advanced technology.

After a long campaign to successfully embed herself within the American Mafia, on top of her Sicilian upbringing, Helena holds all the resources and power of a Mafia Don without many realizing it. Thus far the Huntress has primarily used this as an intelligence resource.

Weaknesses:

The Tight Rope - Helena lives a life not even Bruce Wayne would live. While she is the vigilante Huntress at night, there is no break in intensity or danger with her day time persona: as Don Bertinelli, danger is always around her. One misstep, and everything falls apart. And if the Mafia ever found out Don Bertinelli was truly the Huntress...

Helena...Wayne? - According to Jim Gordon, the member of the Batfamily most similar to Batman in terms of personality is the Huntress. And that's not a good thing. Obsessed with her mission to the point of dehumanizing herself, it can be nearly impossible to get close to the Huntress, or Helena.

History:

Helena Bertinelli was born a princess in a Mafia Empire she blissfully knew nothing of. She knew her parents loved her, and her family loved to get together at her father's house. They would descend their home in Gotham Heights to see musicals in the city, or go to the zoo, or the circus, or the museums to see the dinosaur bones.

It was a happy childhood, until the day cruel men in black masks kidnapped her right after school ended at Saint Sebestation's in the Heights.

What exactly happened to Helena is hard to work out. Police reports suggest various mental and physical traumas, but Don Bertinelli pulled whatever strings necessary to ensure no one would examine his baby girl and put that filth on a report any of his enemies could pay some clerk to get ahold of. Her father told her to put it behind her, that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", and encouraged her not to speak of it again.

Not even a year later, a van full of masked gunmen burst into the Bertinelli estate in Gotham Heights, and murdered every living member of the Gotham City Bertinelli family. All except the little girl too numb to be scared; without fear little Helena could think, slipping under the corpse of a still bleeding out uncle, allowing her to escape the gunmen and live.

Immediately after Helena was returned to the Sicilian Bertinelli clan, the "mother clan." There was talk of marrying Helena off to a distant cousin, or a rapid riser in the Sicilian scene. It was then one of the greatest assassins of the early 20th century, Giovanni Bertinelli, took Helena with him one early morning to hunt fowl.

Giovanni would later admit perhaps he was pushing himself to find something when he took the girl hunting that morning. His own parents had been murdered in a war within the Cosa Nostra. He knew that drive for vengeance. Just as much as he knew a natural born killer when he saw one; and in Helena, he saw it in spades.

Helena Bertinelli had no childhood after that day. Her training began immediately and unrestricted. She holds a degree in Corporate Communications from the Sorbonne, and both a masters and PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics. She achieved this by the age of 22 while receiving training in secret from Giovanni and Lady Shiva.

Where her father was a quick minded and ruthless businessman and Don, Helena had become a true master in the art and science of international business. Applying such radical approaches to business as the Theory of Constraints, Lean theory, and Six Sigma, Helena bought failing and crumbling business after failing and crumbling business only to turn downsize, raise product quality, and worker efficiency...and in turn cost efficiency of the bottom line. Sometimes called a 'corporate terrorist', the result was nearly inevitable, what businesses would assist her the most in her ultimate goals were kept while all others were sold off piece by piece to the highest bidder.

When Helena Bertinelli returned to Gotham City it was on the cover of Business Week and being covered by Bloomberg and CNN. Using the ultimate power broker of money, Helena used to the fact that she could make more of it than anyone else available to usher her return to not only the Gotham Mafia, but to the American Mafia as a whole.

Now the majority owner but never direct manager of multi corporations, Helena has turned her focus squarely on Gotham City's Mafia...and her quest to ruin it from the inside-out. Taking on the mission given to her by God the day she played dead under the corpse of an uncle, Helena has decided a theatrical method of hitting the Mafia from the outside while secretly exposing and bleeding them from the inside by taking on the mantle of a former feared and dangerous enemy of the Gotham City Mafia: The Huntress.

Her revenge would leave a bloody trail across Gotham City, until the Batman finally caught up to her. Even he wasn't able to keep her from killing her final target, though the fallout between Batman and the new vigilante was intense, and would lead to Helena leaving the city. She'd return in secret to visit family graves, and pay respects. Instead she found herself caught into the Cataclysm--an earthquake that left Gotham City in ruin and cut off from the rest of the world. For reasons unknown to her, all of the Batfamily was out of the city when it happened; leaving the Bat mantle to her, and her alone.

When Bruce finally returned, he found her with a self made Bat suit, spray painting Bat signals, and chasing the Joker. He would return to Gotham as Batman during it's hour of greatest need, but in part out of respect for her efforts, and in part because he had no better options, Batman brought Huntress into the Cave and formally made her part of the Batfamily.

After Cataclysm, Helena would leave once again, taking the Huntress on an international crusade agaist organized crime, with a focus on human trafficking. Though she would accept an invitation to the Justice League, the Huntress wouldn't stay with the team long. Her latest return to Gotham City is not secret.

Despite her ties to the Batfamily, Helena is neither villain nor hero, merely a very dangerous and resourceful young woman on a fanatical quest to kill the Gotham Mafia for once and for all. A quest that can only end in her own death or the death of the Gotham City Mafia as it is known, or had ever been known. A fact she has willingly accepted.

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

Bruce Wayne, The Mother Fuckin' Batman - GM NPC

Hope Sandoval, GCPD - Fabricant451

Kuroko Rayne, "Robin" - Rin

Dick Grayson, Nightwing - ProPro

Charlie Williamson, Bastian - smarty0114

Anton Bolton, Razor Bat - Psyga315

Damian Wayne, Robin - Dblade26

Tim Drake, Red Robin - HalfOfLancelot

Katherine Kane, Batwoman - Lost Cause

Slam Bradley, "Bullets, booze, and broads" - Byrd Man

Vincent Costello, Tommy Gun Tom - Catchphrase

Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress - Ruby

Jonathan Crane, Scarecrow - LePouvantail

Talia al Ghul, Mistress of the League of Assassins - Jinny

William Cobb, Talon - Xtreme

Edward Nigma, the Riddler - Roosan

Shousei Kougami, Lord Death Man - clanjos

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

WIP

Reserved.

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

"That's what you have to hold on to. All of us are what we are because we lost something we thought we couldn't live without, and were proven wrong. We can survive without parents and without walking and even without always being able to protect the people we love. But we can't survive without knowing in our bones that we're not like them, not like the ones who stole from us."

Game Brief:

• Batman first began to appear 15 years ago.
• The Joker recently died in the chaos of one of his own schemes.
• Jim Gordon effectively retires as Commissioner of the GCPD following Joker's death.
• Batman hasn't been seen for nearly three days.
• Will take place in Gotham City.
• Street level characters only.
• High Casual standards. One post a week requirement.

OOC Information

Welcome to Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat. This is a street level focused Gotham City centric game, shooting for a High Casual standard. The game will consist of a general 'sandbox' style, but with large game spanning storylines thrown in. The ending resolution to these game spanning storylines isn't predetermined; and careful how you resolve these stories--as your actions might very well come back to haunt you. In the end the fate of Gotham City is in the hands of those who show up, and fight for it.

As mentioned in the interest check, I'm happy to pull the curtain back and share my storytelling plans. I invite those interested to offer any ideas, twists, revisions, or even tweaks they might have. At the moment I'm the only GM for the game, though I'm open to the idea of a co-GM with the right person, or even having a co-GM specifically for the run of a certain large storyline, or just someone who's interested in writing villain NPCs in general. Lot of options there, and I'm in no rush on that.

For now, though, direct the chaos at me.

The large storylines will come as "episodes"--expect each "episode" to last about a month, give or take time for whatever speed and pace the IC settles on once it really gets going. So far I have two planned. Got an idea, or just something you wanna see featured? Drop me a PM. Door is always open.

Right now, all players are limited to one character each. That character can be a canon character of DC comics, or original creation. I'll be a little strict on keeping all the characters 'street level'--so just keep that in mind during the character sheet review process. You can play a hero, a villain, someone inbetween the two, a cop, a mafioso, a reporter, or even a politician if you're the political wonk type. Take a canon character and recreate them according to your creative whims if you want, even. I encourage creativity.

A few notes on who you can't apply for: if they could be a Justice Leaguer in their own right, they're probably off limits. If you want, you can always ask, though. Joker is dead, and not coming back. Ra's al-Ghul is off limits, and may or may not be alive. Batman is off limits, and may or may not be alive as well. Other than that I can't think of anyone else that needs to be offlimits, but I always reserve the right to judge on a case by case basis as GM.

Post unapproved Character Sheets in the OOC tab. Only approved Character Sheets in the Characters tab. Thanks.

To start with I'll ask for one post once a week. Everyone who joins is assumed to be adult enough, so please act it. I'm all for differing opinions and being blunt and honest, but if it's going to get testy, PM the other person. Don't get petty in the OOC, take arguments and drama to private channels. This is as close as I get to a rules list. By joining the game, I'll assume you've read it.

IC Information:

A note on Gotham City itself: we won't be using any one map for it. Gotham City tends to morph over time, but certain landmarks remain constant. If you're looking for a list of those landmarks, I'll see if I can put one together, but for now I do believe one of the wikis out there has a decent enough list. Feel free to get creative with Gotham City, and don't worry about "getting it right." Right can be whatever you put in your post. If something is egregiously off, I'll PM you and we can get it fixed--but I'm not really worried about it.

Batman has been active for nearly 15 years, though only public for the last ten or so.

When the game begins, Batman has been missing just long enough for Alfred to get worried and send a general SOS to the Bat family. He may or may not be dead, no one in Gotham seems to know, but once the worst elements of Gotham realize the Batman is gone it's likely only a matter of time until a new sort of chaos erupts on the streets. Both hero, villain, and inbetween will likely have heard rumors and gossip.

The Joker lies dead, the victim of illness and poison, though he died after a confrontation with the Bat--so all those loyal to the Joker, or just those that hate the Bat, blame the Dark Knight for it. Some even call it murder; those that weren't present. Only Batman and Harley Quinn know for sure what happened; as well as those who've seen it through Batman's cowl video feed. Quinn herself seems to have disappeared, leaving the remnants of Joker's large, twisted, gang to battle amongst themselves for power.

The survivors have come to tag their small territory around an old foundry by their new moniker: The Jokerz, a man known only as the Jester said to be their current leader.

Jim Gordon has retired as Commissioned of the GCPD, though there is talk that it came as a result of direct pressure from the Mayor's office. For now the Bat symbol remains atop several GCPD buildings, the most prominent the one atop the MCU building in historic Old Gotham. The interim Commissioner is a long time Gordon lieutenant, and Gotham City lifer, Wilson Burrows. Few in the political "know" of Gotham City expect Burrows to be the man the Mayor picks, although certain members of the City Council talk of making the Commissioner an electable office, instead of an appointed one.

Organized Crime has been on the rise, even the Mob seems to be making a slow return to the city they were unceremoniously kicked out of by the Bat soon after rumors of him first started to be heard around Gotham streets. There is an ongoing turf war between Black Mask and Two-Face, though their turf is a rather limited part of Gotham's worst, and oldest, areas.

Most the recent talk seems to center on the Nykawa Center; a complex of oriental inspired neo-modernist buildings behind a large and formidable privacy wall on all sides--and an even more formidable high tech and heavily armed security system. Those with informants in the right circles are certain to hear that a big bad group, a few even claim the League of Assassins, have taken up office at the Nykawa Center--but what they want or what they might be planning to do so far seems to be a complete mystery.

Game Staff

GMs

GM: Ruby

Co-GM: Jinny

Storytellers

Night of Owls ST: Xtreme

Villains ST: LePouvantail

Alfred Pennyworth ST: Roosan

State of Things

State of the overall Verse:

Smooth on the surface, but dangers lurk underneath. Or, rather, far from Earth orbit. There is chatter among select circles of Green Lanterns going dark in certain far outposts. On Earth itself the Justice League and it's allies have managed to defend the citizens of the planet There is a growing sentiment of anti-metahumanism among the world populace, and has begun to be reflected in far right wing politics.

State of Gotham City:

Shock. The Joker is no more and Batman didn't kill him. A story some believe, and some don't. Regardless of version of the tale, they all agree that the Joker is gone. Harley Quinn disappeared, presumably in grief, leaving behind a large gang built up with care over time with a grand plan in mind--a plan that got the Joker dead. Then Jim Gordon retired, rumors are due to pressure from a rising political star Mayor. Aside from a small turf war (over a favorite handful of warehouses between Two-Face and Black Mask) the city is experiencing a rare calm.

Lifers aren't enjoying it, expecting the storm they're sure that will follow.

State of the streets:

The game keeps on keeping on; dealers deal, buyers buy, gangsters and thugs and even rogues dueling it out. The cops are more protective of certain (affluent) areas of the city, and there's been a noticeable uptick in citizen justice. The clowns calling themselves Jokerz are affecting the street gangs more than the organized crime henchmen and their bosses, but even they seem increasingly concerned. None of "the Watchers" have reported Batman sightings for five days. No one person or entity runs these streets, though the Mob seems to be making a come back.

State of GCPD:

Gordon's retirement came at the best moment it could have; during a relative lull in major crime and after the Joker's demise. It all might have seemed downright natural, had the Commissioner, his Deputy, and the Director of MCU not seemingly swept out together as a regime change dictated from above their heads. The department has become a hornet's nest of locker room politics and shifting alliances. The assassination of the sergeant over the Traffic division has an already tense situation to the point of boiling.

Character Sheet

For a complete roster, check the initial post under the Characters tab--once enough people get accepted to begin a proper roster with at least.

And once again, please post unapproved Character Sheets into the OOC tab. Only approved Character Sheets got posted under the Characters tab.

Name:
Age:
Alias:
Appearance: (For text. Place your images where you like.)
Skills/Abilities:
Weaknesses:
History:

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

<Snipped quote by Ultimate Spidey>

Niiiiiice!

Also, I would love to be a part of your roleplay, @Ruby. At the moment, I don't know what I'd like to play yet but it's not going to be difficult to come up with something so put me in your roster!

@Rey

Need any help, let me know. <3

Probably have enough interest to warrant an OOC, so I'll start working on it.