I did several that I'm reasonably happy with this week.  Check these puppies out:

"A story about a promise"

Oathbound

By David Goodner

 

            Sir Markos stood on the ramparts on Ashday, watching the fighting below.  Fires raged in the city, particularly in the festering Carthian quarter, where the rebels had the strongest foothold.  The King’s Guard were outnumbered by the rioting peasants, but Markos had no doubt they would prevail.  He had trained them, after all.

            With a bit of regret, he realized they had probably started the fires.  Sir Borz, who now lead the Guard, was known as a pragmatic knight.  Markos might say “callous,” instead.  Setting fire to the wooden shacks near the edge of the outer wall would give the rebels something else to worry about, and the fire would be unlikely to spread to the better-constructed portions of the city, and certainly it would not spread to the castle itself.  King Yoland was not the man his father had been.  He seemed more concerned with his due as monarch than his responsibilities as steward and protector. 

The people chafed under his rule.  Where his father had been kind, Yoland was cruel.  Where his father had made sure his people always had enough to eat, Yoland cared only that their tributes filled his silos and coffers.  He took all his due and a little more. 

It turned Markos’ stomach, but the old Knight had sworn an oath.  He turned away and continued his inspection of the defenses.  Yoland had expanded and modernized the castle since he took the throne.  The work was still ongoing.

The fighting had spread throughout the city.  Not all of the rebels were peasants and townsmen.  Yoland had seized the holdings of several Carthian Lords for himself.  One, Baron Taelaad, had been Markos’ friend and a fellow member of the Royal Guard.  But Yoland did not trust Carthians, even though some of them had been in the Pyriades since before the Wars of the Lilly.

Taelaad did not submit lightly.  He’d fled his keep with a coffer of silver that he used to hire mercenaries and fund the rebellion.  And rumor said the man himself had been seen in the capital.  The Guard had been searching for him non-stop.  Other rumors said Taelaad had found Yistina, the king’s eldest, the Lost Princess.  If so, Yoland’s entire rule was illegitimate.

Markos climbed heavily down from the battlements to inspect the old wall.  The new wall for the expanded inner bailey was incomplete.  A temporary curtain closed it off, but with the Guard spread so thin, it was less secure than Markos would like.  Still, the old postern gate would probably keep the riff-raff out.  You’d have to know about the old gate to even know it was worth trying to breach the wall there at all.

Markos stood before the old gate, really almost a secret door.  It was too small to mount any kind of successful sally.  It was only really designed as an escape hatch.  Only the castle servants and a few key retainers really knew it was there.

The old knight stood for a long time.  He reached under his tunic, where his fingers closed on a sweat-stained parchment.  He read it by torchlight for the thousandth time.

 

Old friend,

On Ashday, three weeks hence, are all are hopes pinned. 

If you love this land more than its king, you know what you must do.

Taelaad’s badge of two lovebirds before a crescent moon decorated the bottom.

 

Markos held the parchment to the torch and let it burn.  Then he took an iron key from around his neck and opened the lock.

---------

"A story about something stolen"

The Water and the Wild

By David Goodner

 

            Jeremy wandered through the wood, wondering.  This, he decided, was a tulgy wood if ever he’d seen one.  In his eight years of life, he had seen many more in his dreams than in real life.  Pale light filtered through the leaves of strange trees.  Birds with songs more beautiful than real life flittered and sang.  Their plumage was jewel-colored.

            Jeremy liked the forest.  It was nice here, clean.  If his mother was here, she wouldn’t cry.  She wouldn’t need to drink.  She’d remember supper.  And shopping.

            “Hello, Jeremy.”

            The little boy turned, frightened.  No one else should be in the wood, not even a bandersnatch.

            There was a woman.  She had huge, green eyes and long, blond hair.  Her skin was smooth, and glowed in the moonlight.  She was a stranger, but she seemed nice.  She held an apple in slender, graceful fingers.

            “How do you know my name?”

            “I know everyone in my forest, Jeremy.”

            “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

            “That’s okay,” she said.  “You’re probably not supposed to take food from them either, but you can have this apple if you want.  I promise it won’t hurt you.”

            Jeremy’s stomach rumbled.  His thoughts were troubled.  “My mama will want me home,” he said, or perhaps asked.

            The woman knelt down.  “Of course she will.  Mothers should take care of their sons.  But she’s asleep now, isn’t she?  And she forgot to make your supper.  Why don’t you come home with me?  It’s late.  It will be getting colder.  I can make you some supper, and if you want I’ll take you back to your mother when she wakes.”

            Her fingers were warm, maybe even hot, where they gently touched Jeremy’s face.  “You can have the apple either way.”

*          *          *

            Margo sat by her son’s bedside in the hospital, missing a shift at the factory, craving a drink.  But she couldn’t leave him.  She’d never leave him again, if only he’d wake up.  The coma had come out of nowhere.  The doctors still didn’t know what caused it.  And she hadn’t noticed for a whole day.  She’d been so lost in herself, drunk out of her mind, that her son had slept for a whole day and she didn’t realize.  And he slept still.

            “Baby, come back to me,” she begged.  “Momma is so sorry.  Just come back to me.”

------------

"A story about a wish"
I really liked the voice in this one.

Two Wishes

By David Goodner

 

            Here, on a lonely hill, stands the old chapel, a shrine left by forgotten priests, and maintained because no one wishes to offend the gods.  Though the ground nearby is fertile, no one furrows the soil with a plow, because this is a place where the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead grows thin.  Or so the old women say.

            The hill, with its little copse of trees, is a cemetery of sorts, for those who die near the village without kin to claim them.  With no one to say their names, the villagers think, perhaps it’s easier for their souls to find the way to the afterlife here than back in the village.  And if not, they’d rather the hill be haunted than their homes.

            The old women also say that if you come here on a moonless night and make an offering on the shrine, your wish will be granted.  But only a certain kind of wish.  Whatever god once lived in this shrine, he’s long gone.  The dead answer prayers here now, and there’s only one prayer the hungry dead can hear.

            And here comes Meg Willow, daughter of Bran Willow, who everyone knows as a good man.  Meg’s his good daughter, born before his son Little Bran.  She was always a bit of a wild one, sneaking out of the house at night to watch the stars or listen to the night birds.  And later, she came out to see Kemp MacAsher, son of the Laird.

            Kemp MacAsher was betrothed, just a moon past, to Bella MacRea.  Their marriage will make the Laird a little richer and tie the clans together so the MacRea boys will go east instead of west to steal sheep.  It’s good for everyone, they say.

            Meg has a bundle with her, thrown over her shoulder.  Inside are two rabbits, tied with twine.  The twine she spun with her own fingers, and the rabbits she raised in her own pens.  She’s taking nothing from her father that won’t be easily replaced.  In the bundle also are two scraps of aspen-tree bark.  Paper is too expensive, even if Meg crushed her own rags to make it.  Long before rags should be paper, they could be patches for a tunic, or batting in a quilt.

            Also she has a taper lamp, and a bundle of twigs and dried moss, and a cake of sheep’s dung. The old women say it’s bad luck to burn the wood from the hill.

            Meg reaches the shrine by the feeble light of her lamp.  The night is clear and dark.  To Meg, it seems that there’s too much space around her.  The familiar hills are invisible, and the night drinks in all the sounds.

            On the altar, she starts a fire.  She uses the lamp and kindling, and the dried sheep dung to keep it going.  And she pulls from her bundle the two rabbits, one for each wish.  She kills them and lets their blood decorate the altar, careful not to douse her fire.

            Does the fire change?  Does it now burn with ghost light?  Meg doesn’t know.  All her life, she’s stayed away from magic and faeries and anything that stinks of the veil.  But now she doesn’t know any other way forward. 

So she pulls out her little scrolls of tree bark.  The old women in the village say that if you make a sacrifice and write the name of a person and burn it in a fire on the altar of the shrine on the lonely hill, the keepers of the dead will take the person who’s name you wrote, and they’ll dwell in the land of the dead forever.

The first scroll has a name scratched out in charcoal, “Kemp MacAsher.”

The second one says “Meg Willow.”

-------

Tune in next week for more.  Unless they all suck so bad I won't post any.

Welcome to another semi-regular feature.  My legions of fans from my days as a podcaster will no doubt remember the "Hey, Look at This" segments from Radio Free Hommlet.  I'm not podcasting right now, but I still see cool stuff I want to talk about from time to time.

This is one of those times.  Yesterday, I clicked on an RPG.net banner ad for a cool-sounding product.  Based on a look at the website, it's an actually cool product.

http://www.dungeonmorphs.com/

Basically, a set of map tiles designed so they'll all fit together in any orientation.  You can get them on dice to randomly roll up a dungeon, or on cards, or on geomorph tiles, or as a font so you could just type up a dungeon.  (Reminds me of Sparks! from S. John Ross, of which I have a few sets)

If I had some money to blow right now, I'd buy the whole set.  Unfortunately, I can't quite justify the expense since I'm not running anything where I need large, random dungeons.  But still, very cool.  If you're a dice fetishist like me, I totally suggest you buy a set.  And if you're looking to buy a gift for a former podcaster and occasional blogger...

This is not the only story I've written since "The Lie," but it's the only good one.  I'm aiming to do one every day M-F, but I'm only going to post the ones that don't suck here.  I also didn't write this in five minutes.  It was closer to twenty.  If I get a good start and feel like the story will be worth the effort, I don't mind going over my time limit.

What I'm trying to learn to do is write on demand, and get stuff down quickly without agonizing over it.

A Small Boat on a Dark Night

By David Goodner

 

 

            Billy Todd pulled his hood lower, again.  Working the oars made his shoulders start rolling it back, again.  So the rain dripped in his eyes, again.  He tried to think more about the three silver pennies in his neck pouch and less about warm broth, fresh bread, and roast sea bass in his cozy, dry, cottage by the dockside.

            For three silver coins, he’d row further, and with much more cargo than a spindly old man with a bent back and a crooked staff.  His passenger was so old and wrinkled that his eyes were almost invisible beneath the lines of his face and the bushy eyebrows.  The rest of his hair was wispy, like something an artist had barely sketched in.  And his nearly toothless mouth lent a mushy sound and a bit of spittle to every word he said.  He wore no cloak against the chill or the rain, just a tattered robe in a style Billy didn’t know.

            “More to the right,” the man said.  “And faster.  If we’re not there, we’ll miss it.”

            “Starboard, Codger.  If you want to go faster, take an oar,” Billy said.

            “Bah!  Mind your elders.  If we get there on time, it’s another penny for you.  Hell, if we get there on time I’ll not be needing coins at all.”

            “On time for what?”

            “For the conjunction, of course.”  The old man said.  “The day and the hour, the place and the time.  Stars, moon, and sea are perfectly aligned, as they haven’t been for twenty years and won’t be for another twenty.  I missed the last one, but I won’t miss this one.

            He pointed with his stick, to something over Billy’s shoulder.  Billy half-turned to see, but there was only dark sky covered by thick clouds through which the moon barely shown as a slightly lighter smudge.

            “Moon and stars?  There are none.  Try not to make me feel like more of a damn fool than I already am for being out in this mess.”  But Billy knew those three silver pennies would see him in fish and ale for several days.  Hells, he might buy pork or mutton.

            “You can’t see them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there, stupid boy.  Just like the faeries, and the Isle of the Young.”

            “The Isle of… Satan’s shit!   You’ve dragged me out here to find the Isle of the Young!  It’s just a stupid legend, and anyway it’s supposed to appear on clear nights once each seven years off the coast of Mahnn.”

            “I went.  Legend was wrong.”  The old man spat off the side of the boat.  “But the Isle is real.  I lived there once.  Fell in love with a mortal girl and followed her here.”

            Convinced his passenger was crazy, Billy rolled his eyes.  He had the coins.  He could turn back.  “Did you?” he asked.  “So you was a fairy?  Then why don’t you just fly to the damn island?”

            “Idiot!  Nay.  I’m a man as true-born as you.  Stolen from my cradle as a child.  I stayed on the island and aged only a day every year.  But out here time took what it’d been robbed of.  And once I left the island, I knew no way back.

            “But I was smart, wasn’t I?  I listened.  I learned.  I read books.”

            Billy couldn’t even read his own name.  But he could see that the cold and the wet was doing the ancient man no good.

            “I learned to follow the stars and the moon.  I learned about conjunctions, like tonight, when the moon comes near to the earth and the ways open.  I’ll go back.  You’ll take me there.  And the faeries will restore my youth, and never again will I be so stupid as to touch mortal soil.  Never aga…”

            The old man didn’t finish.  He keeled straight over the side of the boat in the space of a word.  Billy reached for him, but the dark sea was hungry, and the light of their one lantern wasn’t even enough to reflect off the surface.

*          *          *

            So in the end, Billy’d rowed out past the harbor lights for naught but three pennies.  He wasn’t going swimming to find the rest.  But he had a story to tell.

            For true and sure, as he was rowing back for home and hearth, he saw an island appear out of the gloom, shining silver and bright.  He fancied that he might have seen a few people on the shore, but he didn’t look too close.  There were things a wise man didn’t poke at.  One was ant hills.  Another was sleeping bears.  A third was anything to do with faeries.

            Billy decided he’d spring for a meal of mutton and a bottle of good wine.

I just picked up a book called Fast Fiction from Half-Price Books.  The basic idea is to use the story-seeds it provides to write little five-minute stories.

I've decided to do at least one a day until I get bored or find something else to do.  Since anything worth doing is worth doing in public so you can be humiliated if you fail, I've decided to post them here.

The first inspiration on the list is "tell a story about a lie."

The Lie
By David Goodner

“Come, Jimmy, it’s time to go,” said mother.

“To meet Daddy?” the boy asked.  Only just awakened, his eyes were cloudy and his voice still quiet.

"He’s waiting for us at the restaurant,” mother said.  “He gets angry when we're late.”

She helped the boy out of his bed, found his shoes from where he’d kicked them before his nap, took up his favorite bear, which had fallen aside while he slept.

He insisted upon tying his own shoes.  She tried not to fret, not to interfere.  The boy took such pride in these small accomplishments.

“Hurry, now,” she said.  “And get your jacket.”

The bear, Mr. Muffles, she stuffed into a knapsack.  It barely fit into the top.  While Jimmy found his jacket, she put the bag next to another, larger one by the door.  Both knapsacks rested against a larger suitcase.  She put her own coat on, turned up the collar, felt the large plastic sunglasses in the pocket.

Jimmy had trouble with his jacket sleeves, the jacket being a hand-me-down from a larger cousin.

“Here, let me help you,” his mother said.  She sorted out the too-large garment, and couldn’t resist hugging the boy tight.

“I love you, mommy,” he said.  “I love daddy, too.”

“... That’s good.  Now get your bag.  We’ll be late if we don’t hurry.”

“Why do I need my bag?”

“Just in case, baby.  You never know what can happen.  Now it’s time for us to get gone.”

The second unscheduled interruption has finally ended.  This one was all my fault.  I'll try to get back to regular updates as soon as I can think of something cool to post.

This unscheduled interruption has finally ended.  I'll try to get back on regular updates next week.

Thanks, Tim.

For today's update nobody really cares about, here's my character origin for the Emerald City game we'll be starting shortly.  I spend way too much time on these things.  This one takes the form of a fluff piece in a local magazine.  I used a Seattle skyline since I didn't have an Emerald City one.  Close enough.

As usual for me, there are tons of subtle little pop culture references, and at least one reference you'll only get if you live in my town.

Emerald City’s favored son, Jon Clark Nedor has long been loved from afar, traveling the world, frequently alone, sometimes assisting parties as varied as Doctors without Borders, Books without Frontiers, and the U.S. State Department.  He’s often known as the Renaissance Man of the new Millennium: a true polymath, scholar, and inventor.  Recently, he has returned to the city of his birth

EC caught up with Jon, who the press has dubbed Mister Amazing, for an interview.

EC: Thank you for your time, Mr. Nedor.  Lots of people want to know more about you.  Pardon the humor, but you’re pretty amazing.

JCN: It’s my pleasure.  Ask me anything.  I might even know the answer.

EC: Since you’re known as the seventh smartest man alive, I certainly hope so.

JCN: <laughs> That was totally a joke, and now it follows me everywhere.  I don’t really know where I stand, or even if you could really make up a list that wouldn’t just be “my favorite geniuses.”

EC: Well, you’re our favorite genius.  And a certified one.  Besides multiple advanced degrees, three well-received books, and a Centurion prize, you’ve developed some really impressive technology.  Of your inventions, which is your favorite?

JCN: They’re all my favorite, at the time.  I mostly build things I see a need for, and once I have it I move on to the next challenge.  I guess my favorite is the skybike.  I mean, seriously, it’s a flying bike.  Who wouldn’t love that?  The core of them all, of course, is the Deep Energy Converter, which remains held up in litigation with the Department of Energy.  I have a Congressional dispensation to build them for my own use, but not to distribute them or use them for “public provision of energy.”

EC: But you’re not bitter, right?

JCN: I’m pretty solidly bitter.  Deep Energy stands to free the world from its fossil fuel addiction, reduce pollution, and improve quality of life for billions of people.  But instead, I have four converters, one running my home, one in the skybike, a little one for my force pistol, and one for emergencies.

EC: What can you tell us about the case?

JCN: I can’t really discuss pending litigation, and I won’t express an opinion of the merits of the case, scientific or legal.  The scientific literature on Deep Energy speaks for itself, and anyone with an internet connection can find out all they need to know about the legal case.

EC: You’ve been abroad for over twenty years.  For quite a bit of that, you were completely off the grid.  What were you up to, and why did you come back now?

JCN: My father always pushed me to excel, not in an adversarial way, but he encouraged me.  He gave me the tools.  He paid for the best tutors, made sure I had the best opportunities.  He never made things easy for me, but he always told me I could do anything I put my mind to, and he’d be there to catch me if I fell.

When I was eighteen, I felt like I’d reached the highest point I could reach at home and it was time to go see more of the world, and it was time to see how I could do without my dad there to back me up.  I sort of went on walkabout.  I studied for a few years at a monastery in Tibet, and spent about a year as a fugitive of the Chinese government.  I traveled to the Middle East and Africa.  I attended Oxford.  I did a fellowship at CERN.  Mostly, I just went wherever I felt like and did whatever seemed to need doing.  I tried, as much as I could, to avoid dropping my dad’s name or use his connections.  It didn’t always work out that way.  Several times, people who were connected with my dad needed my help.

Eventually, I figured out that dad would always be a part of me, but that didn’t mean I was letting him carry me.  Then, in the past year or so, I came back home a few times, more and more often.  Last month I decided to stay.  Dad loves this city, and so do I.  I thought it was time to give something back to the city that has done so much for our family.

Wow, all that sounds really self-aggrandizing.  I don’t want people to think I was running around like some kind of superhero who needs no one and nothing.  I had a lot of help at every turn.  I wouldn’t be here today without the aid and sacrifices of many good people.

For that matter, I’ve met a few superheroes, and they don’t need no one and nothing either.  They’re people with some really stressful jobs.

EC: Now that you’re back in town, what are you going to do?

JCN: I’m starting a consultancy, bringing unique perspective and expertise to unusual problems.  It’s probably not really the kind of thing you can make a living at without a multi-million dollar trust fund.

What I hope is that my experiences will let me see things other people don’t see and my skills will let me do things that might otherwise take a host of separate experts.  At the same time, I want to help with the Nedor Foundation and volunteer with some local charities to help them make the most of resources and opportunities.

EC: Is there anything you don’t do?

JCN: I can’t make a soufflé to save my life.  My teacher at La Cordon Bleu despaired of me.

And really, there are a lot of things I can’t do.  People hear that I’m skilled in multiple disciplines and think I’m omnipotent.  I’m really not.  If I’m more skilled than other people, it’s because I’ve had more opportunities, and I’ve always been very focused on learning whatever the world could teach me.

EC: People do say you could do anything.  They say if you turned your hand to politics, you could be state governor in the next election and President in no more than twelve years.  You’re not just a celebrity, you’re a voice for change and unlike a lot of celebrity spokespeople, you really know what you’re talking about.  Experts in the causes you champion acknowledge your expertise.  If you wanted, you could be JFK, Bill Gates, Lee Iacocca, maybe all three at once.

JCN: But I don’t really want any of those things.  I enjoy helping people.  I love learning.  I thrive on solving problems.  Power comes with responsibility, or it should.  And money is just a tool to get what you want.  I pretty much have all the responsibility I can handle, and I have all the stuff I’ll ever need.

EC: Tell us more about these problems you solve.  Like the job you did for the State Department in the Congo.

JCN: I carried out negotiations, and when those failed a rescue mission of some hostages from the Sons of the Dark Earth.  That was pretty intense.  Despite what people think, I’m not usually an international man of mystery.  It got even more interesting when the SDE called up something called a Dark Totem.  The Freedom League even got involved to put the thing down.  Captain Thunder really is awesome to behold.  That was the first time I used a force gun.  I had cobbled one together as a proof of concept.  It was kind of big and failure prone.

While the Freedom League fought the Dark Totem, I helped rescue the hostages from the SDE compound.

EC: Was your life in danger?

JCN: Not really, although it was pretty scary at the time.  The Totem was at a temple several miles away, and there were only a few guards left at the compound.  And it turns out that other than all their crazy magical stuff, the SDE didn’t have much in the way of weapons – they were on patrol with AK-47s with just a few bullets each.

I’m still trying to figure out what the Dark Totem really was, maybe an energy-based alien trapped in a matrix of Element X, and the latent psychic energy from the terrorists was enough to free it.

EC: And what kind of problems do you solve now?

JCN: I hope less dangerous ones, although a little excitement is good once in a while.  Right now I’m working with a company that owns the old Forum Imperial mall and a group of Suquamish merchants and craftspeople, along with some Chinese Americans and an artists’ collective to revamp the mall into a cultural center.  They all really want the same thing, but they don’t always know how to communicate with each other.  I can’t talk a lot about specific details, but if we can iron out the kinks, it’ll make a lot of money for some people who really need it.  It’ll help revitalize a part of the city that’s currently suffering economic decline.  And it’ll be cool.

Since the alternative is that the mall where I saw all three Star Wars movies gets bulldozed and turned into warehouses or something, I think something cool is a much better alternative.

I’m also consulting with PrimaTech on a new aerosat design that will be able to help rescue workers in isolated areas and improve communications in the third world.

Before you ask, an aerosat is an ultra-high altitude dirigible with minimal payload that uses solar power and storage batteries.  Put one up, and it’s good for about a week to bounce data.  I’m helping them improve their batteries and power efficiency so they can stay up a little longer and have slightly more powerful engines so they’ll be more stable.

EC: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  What do you do for fun?

JCN: Work is fun for me.  Otherwise I’d do something else.  But I try to find some time every day to relax.  I like live music.  Emerald City is great for that.  On Thursday nights, I play jazz and blues with some guys at Sachmo’s down on Byrne and Claremont sometimes.  It’s kind of an informal jam session.

I like to build new stuff and test it out.  Sometimes I’ll do some surfing or diving.

 I still love to travel and see new things, so even though Emerald City is my home again, I think I’ll move around a bit, at least to visit friends.

For now, I’m trying to get reacquainted with my home.  I’ve been away too long.

--EC.

Next month, I'm going to be playing in an Emerald City M&M game.  So I've been in a supers mood lately, and have been playing with Fabrica de Herois again.

Yesterday, I got the idea of seeing how close to some published supers I could get.  I did three yesterday in amongst several original designs.

Captain America came out fairly well.  One big disappointment was that as far as I can tell, Fabrica 2010 doesn't have a shield you can use anywhere.  I would have settled for the kite shield design, but I couldn't find one at all.  I guess I could have put a round shield on his back by abusing the circular symbol, but I didn't think of that until just now.  But I managed to get the wings on his helmet by abusing a set of pointed ears, so I'm reasonably pleased.

The striped midriff was really tricky, by the way.
EDIT: And I just now noticed I forgot to put the scales on Cap's uniform.  Darn.



Spider-Man was remarkably easy.  I wish I'd used the option for a thinner body  But there was no challenge in the costume panels or the chest emblem.  His eyes aren't quite right.  I could have messed around a little more to get the black rings around the white lenses if I'd wanted to take the trouble.



And to represent DC a little, here's Captain Marvel.  He was dead easy, other than the cape.  There's not really a way to get the cape Captain Marvel really wears.  It's a very complicated half-cape worn across one shoulder.  I settled for the one you see here, which at least has the nifty gold cord.

And as a last treat for the day, here's the costume I'm probably going to use for my character in the M&M game: Mister Amazing!  (The "!" is part of his name.)



Mister Amazing is a pulp-type hero who's amazingly (heh) good at all kinds of stuff.  His mind and body are at the upper limits of human ability.  He's the master of dozens of esoteric disciplines, and inventor of new technologies.  Now he's turned his abilities to protecting his adopted home of Emerald City.

I've actually had the image, the text, and the stats since Monday.  I'm just now getting around to bringing them all together in one place.  This guy is a Novice level character, and pretty straight forward.  He flies around, hurts people, and breaks things.  Leveled up, I'd probably throw some more damage and modifiers into his attack, primarily.

Rattletrap
Agility d8, Smarts d4, Spirit d4, Strength d8, Vigor d6

Charisma 0, Pace 6, Parry 6,Toughness 5

Skills:
Driving d4, Fighting d8, Intimidation d4, Notice d6, Piloting d8, Shooting d8, Stealth d6, Taunt d4

Hinderances:
Gloator (Major), Vengeful, Greedy

Edges:
Arcane Background (Superpowers), Deadshot, Power

Powers:
Armor 6 (requires activation)
Attack (ranged) AE 1, Knockback
Flight 12"
Earthquake

Small-time thug Bruno Maltese was one of several criminals involved in a raid on an experimental technology lab.  The job was to smash the place up and engage in a little good-natured arson to teach the squints what happens if you don't pay your protection money.

Bruno was merily smashing his way through a robotic assembly station when he found the suit - an advanced prototype power armor built around a unique microreactor.  He decided to take it as a souvenier.  And he really hit the jackpot when it turned out the damn thing worked.  The suit was made out of light-weight, very strong ceramic and carbon-fiber materials, and was a platform for a unique vibration weapon.  It could project waves of force or tear up the ground.

 Bruno decided to go into business for himself as an enforcer for hire.  Mostly, he still does contract work for his old boss, but he'll hire out to anyone who needs people hurt and stuff broken.  With the suit, Bruno could be a major threat, but he still has the mentality of a small-time thug.  Left to his own devices, he'd knock over banks or something, and swiftly end up in Dankwell.  As it is, he frequently has to work for employers who have the means to repair his suit and recharge its power source.  What loot he doesn't waste on booze and hookers generally gets sunk into black-market technology.  But he still dreams of the big score that will set him up for life.

He absolutely hates the name "Rattletrap," but can't decide on another one.