Spin The Wheel

Mean Streets of Steel City

@Omega Man Alright, there we go. A bit brief and no pictures, because I'm bad at finding em. Have a look and tell me what you think.

Murphy

Name: Murphy Montgomery

Alias: The Magnificent Mothman

Age: 22

Appearance: With short, messy black hair and blue eyes, Murphy takes on the appearance of a classical English youth. He's of average height and build, and wears wire rim glasses. He doesn't have many outfits, usually wearing a cheap suit or some kind of archeological uniform. In his guise as the Magnificent Mothman his body is obscured in shadow, as if he's wearing a full black body suit. His eyes become massive, and a pair of moth wings sprout from his back.

Power/Skills: The legacy of the ancient Moth God granted Murphy mysterious powers. When crisis comes, Obscurity's Veil wraps Murphy like a coat, turning the timid post-graduate into the Magnificent Mothman! His body, face and voice become shrouded in shadow, and the moth's wings sprout from the back of the veil allowing him to glide through the air. The Mothman is a messenger of disaster, and thus he has an almost prophetic sense for danger. He will be there before disaster strikes, and his Hipnotic Gaze allows him to lead civilians to safety, moving them with their own two feet outside the danger zone. His gaze can of course be used against his opponents, but those aware of his power are can guard themselves against it. Aside from his mystical moth powers, Murphy is gifted with a sharp mind and keen observation skills, allowing him to quickly glean clues and chase leads.

Equipment: A notebook

Personality: Murphy is timid by nature, a young man still unsure of his place in his world. But he is also endlessly curious, and has a strong sense of justice. He is usually more at home by himself, poring over some old map or reading an ancient book, and is rarely in the company of others. His guise as the Mothman gives him courage, however, courage to face the dangers that lurk in the shadows. Rather than fighting enemies directly, he likes to outrun or outwit them. Bait them into other enemies, or into environmental hazards. Murphy is not a potent fighter on his own, but shines in disrupting the enemy, and putting together the pieces of a mystery.

Brief Bio: A freshly graduated student with big dreams, Murphy became an anthropologist, focusing on the history and culture of Native America. Based on some clues he found in an old explorer's journal, Murphy planned an expedition through Native American land in search of new discoveries. And discover he did. He happened on the Lost Idol of the Moth God and was imbued with is powers, becoming its champion. The Moth God's whispers have led him to Steel City, where newly emerged superheroes and supervillains sow discord in the streets. Murphy believes that all of this is a symptom of a greater threat, and it's his duty to uncover and defeat it, whatever form it takes.

The Six Crystals

Mougin's hands paused. Not being well versed in the ettiquette of using cutlery, he had opted to use his tongue to carefully sample each dish. He would usually go at it hands and all, but that would probably be rude. Each dish was quite delectable, regardless of how he ate it. But he still ate carefully. Food didn't come from nowhere, and it required effort to make. Thus, there was an unspoken desire for reciprocation. A return for their efforts. Mougin suspected that his man was the same.

The man's request was suspect. It was in what he said, or rather, what he hadn't said. 30 coins were earned for a hard day's work, and this man claimed that he could let Mougin do the same work for a lesser amount of time, with the same amount of pay. The math didn't add up. It was true that things would be harder after the sun went down. As everyone knew, mana came from the sun. Living beings absorbed mana from the sun's rays during the day, and when the sun went away at night, the flow stopped. It wasn't as if the mana was gone all together, though. Perhaps the tiny trickle that seeped in through the night came from the moon. Or the stars. Mougin wouldn't know, he was no astrologer.

In any case, the minotaur had regained a healthy stock of mana over the sunset period. Tired as he was, he never forgot to save some his resources for an emergency. With that stockpile he should be able to complete the task fairly easly. That was what made the man's request suspicious. Even so, the man had treated him to dinner.
"Very well." Mougin said, getting up from his seat. "In return for the meal, I will cooperate."
Effort for effort. Goodwill should be reciprocated, even to the most suspicious people.

Mean Streets of Steel City

Still room for one more? Looking for to make someone with a Mothman theme. Not exactly the right time period, but nevermind.

The Six Crystals

Mougin snorted. Well, he couldn't exactly say no to that, could he? Not with his current financial situation.
"Lead the way, and I will listen." He said to the man.
It wouldn't hurt to hear what he had to say afterwards, surely.

The Return of Magic - An intro

Elio felt the burn in his body. He considered letting it out, letting it breathe. It would be easy, effortless even. All he had to was let it flow, follow the channels, and project it out of his open palms... But he quickly crushed his desires into his fist. It had taken him some time to arrive at this mansion, and for a good portion of that, he had been walking. With nothing better to do, he had practised his new 'ability'. He wanted to know what it was, how it worked. He wanted to control it, so that he wouldn't burn anymore of his belongings. His progress was... disappointing.

The chief issue was its frustrating inconsistency. Sometimes, things would go fine. He would think of a form for it, and it would come out more less like he wanted it too. As for every other time, well. Elio had mostly been travelling in the wilderness with no one around, and that had proven to be a wise decision. His parents' book had helped, or maybe it hadn't. Sometimes, before he released the energy, he could feel whether it would be good or bad for him. He still didn't know how it would end up, and it didn't work all the time, but sometimes he would have a bad feeling, and every time he released his magic with that bad feeling, bad things happened. A pretty clear and obvious association, but he couldn't help but be frustrated at the vagueness of it all. How much of it was because of the book, and how much of it was his own intuition?

"Do you think this is the time for that?" Elio asked, turning his head to scan the surroundings. "It feels a bit... ominous around here."
Ominous, that was a good word for it. Whether it was the chill wind blowing in, or the feeling of being watched from the windows, something felt off. He had a pretty good instinct about these kinds of things, but nothing looked out of place. Was it just him being nervous from meeting with strangers? Was it because his nerves had been worn down by the journey? Or could it have been some magical sense he had been newly awoken to?

Whatever it was, he would probably only find out after it happened. That was how things usually ended up for Elio.

The Six Crystals

"...No." Mougin said, after a pause. "I am hungry."
To be frank, he wasn't. He was tired, hungry, and worried about his savings. One and a half times what he had yesterday. If wealth was enough to attract predators, then more wealth was surely more attractive. Unfortunately for him, he still had to travel back to his lodgings to eat. The food there was... well, it was at least edible. He could have gotten something to eat with his money, but he wanted to save every penny he could. He didn't know what he would need it for.

Mougin sighed and began trudging away. He didn't really have the energy spare to think of anything other than dinner.

The Six Crystals

Talking with people in Tempum city had quickly made obvious a fact that Mougin had suspected long before he arrived there; his grasp of human language was lacking. Bombarded with terms he didn't understand, it was clear that even a child could talk circles around the poor beastman. He and his master had prepared for this, of course, and they had done what they could with what little time they had. But it had always been an upward struggle - they were, at the beginning, a human who did not speak the beastman's tongue very well, and a beastman who had no knowledge of the human tongue. It wasn't as if Mougin was a master of his native language either, though no one on the continent could really sat they were. While there was, technically, a central language that all of the beastmen on Numgam spoke, understanding was far from universal.

How could a stubborn and thickheaded Giantfoot clansman understand the bleating of the goat-like Mountainfoot cliff hoppers? What member of the fast and flighty galloping Longlegs would even have the patience to hear them out as they raced through the hilly plains? To say nothing of the angry and irreverant One-horn tribe, even more stubborn and belligerent than the minotaurs of the Mountain. A dozen different cultures created dozens of tiny differences, and time tangled the knot even further. It was all but impossible for one tribe to communicate with each other in speech and not have some strange misunderstanding or mistranslation occur. That was why, instead of words, the prideful tribes of Numgam put more value on actions. That was why, rather than offending Mougin, the gruff supervisor's response put the minotaur at ease. Finally, someone in this city he could understand.

The supervisor's tone was dismissive, practically annoyed. He didn't much care for his presence, but he had nonetheless given him permission to work. He didn't really care about his identity, he didn't care about his real skill, he didn't care much for where he went. There was work everywhere, and not enough hands to do it. The golden furred beastman nodded and sauntered off towards the ships. The supervisor had no idea about his strength, and had sent him to the closest ship. Machines unloaded crates onto the dock and workers delivered the crates to a warehouse. The larger crates were picked up by 2 men, or loaded onto wheeled machines that ferried them over. But there were too few machines for the increasing number of large crates. No time for words, then.

Mougin crouched down by one of the boxes. The crate was almost as large as he was, and no doubt just as heavy. The minotaur breated deep. He felt the strength of the solid stone underneath his feet and made it rise into his body. He sighed in satisfaction as it rushed into his limbs, granting him with immense power, before simply plucking the crate up off the floor. Originally a technique created to push errant trees and boulders away from their settlements, the Strength of the Earth was a versatile spell that magnified the Giantfoot tribe's prodgious strength to terrifying levels. But the true strength of the technique lay in endurance - as long as the sun shone in the sky and the beastman's feet were braced on natural ground, the earth would continue to bless its stubborn children. Or so the elders said. The young Minotaur, brought up in peaceful times, had never lived to see the truth of it.

It seemed that he would have to test that theory today.

After a few false starts of putting crates in the wrong places, Mougin worked continuously, moving crates one after another. It seemed like whenever he finished a pile, he would be directed to another. When he ran out of large crates, he stacked smaller crates together. The dock had been cleared at one point and the workers sat down where they were for a well deserved break, only to watch in horror as another ship arrived. The minotaur was taken in by the fervor, rushing to and fro, shutting out everything except for the hectic world of crates and warehouses.

With a start, Mougin was shaken out of his reverie. Fireworks exploded in the dark sky. Before he noticed, it had become night. He was sitting on the stone floor, panting heavily. There were no more ships in the harbor, no more crates on the dock. He was exhausted, but somehow in a good mood. He slowly stood up onto his feet, and his stomach rumbled. He was also hungry, apparently.

The Six Crystals

That hadn't really been the answer he'd hoped for.
"Thank you." He said, nonetheless.

Mougin quickly exited the bank. It may have been rude for him to think, but there was something off about the teller. His limited experience of humans aside, there was a stiffness to their actions that was just barely noticeable enough to bother. And that light in their eyes... If he asked the person in question he might get an answer, but he decided to leave it as another mystery. He would ask next time he came around.

The minotaur stared at the docks for a time. The dock was extremely busy, despite the festive mood in the rest of the city. People walked to and from warehouses, unloading crates from ships and dropping them down. Compared to what he had seen on the city streets the docks were under a far more hectic mood. He had heard that no one had to work on a holiday, but that didn't seem to be the case here.

Mougin sighed and rose to his feet. As his master said, it was better to strike while the iron was hot. This was what he wanted; to experience life in a city was to be a spoke on the wheel as it turned. As for the money in his pocket, he would have to take that risk. Surely he wouldn't be targetted again today. The minotaur carefully inched around the myriad moving humans as he walked towards one of the supervisors he had identified previously.
"Hello. I wish to obtain work." He said to the man.

The Six Crystals

Mougin was quickly disoriented as he was assaulted by unknown terms. Confused as he was, his brain performed an analysis regardless. Whatever this being meant by a 'disk' (perhaps the coins were also disks), the issue was that he could not open an account. Somewhat unfamiliar with the word, it took him a moment to recall what it meant.

An account was a record. It was supposed to be a record of his finances, then? That was indeed what he wanted. He needed an ID for this, whatever that was. Sensors... Related to senses perhaps, therefore what this man used to sense things. A strange way of speaking, not that he could throw stones in that department, but also, it wasn't very relevant to his current issue. Well then.
"What is this ID you speak of?" The minotaur asked.

That seemed to be the most petinent question at the moment. The rest would have to wait for later.

The Six Crystals

Mougin stared at the worker. There was something off about this... man. He found it hard to pin down. He was somewhat different to all the people he'd met up to this point. Though, he supposed he couldn't throw stones in that department. He was a stranger in a strange land, it wasn't exactly his right to pry into the affairs of others. It wasn't as if he wasn't curious, though.

Ultimately, he pushed his thoughts aside and decided to go about his business.
"I wish to deposit my currency." He said, still holding the coins in his hand. "I currently possess 15 golden coins."