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Mystery Inc.
Submitted by Joseph Kubinski on the Marvel SAGA Mailing List


MURPHY
(Patrick Murphy)

Strength   7C
Agility   7A
Intellect   6C
Willpower   8A

Edge:   2
Hand:   4(25)

Calling   Guardian

Hindrances:
  • Lack of Social Graces. Hero has a zero willpower when interacting with people in any other way than trying to intimidate them.
  • Dependants: Murphy helps support his mother and five siblings. Periodically one of the kids will show up in DC to learn to be a superhero like big brother Padraig, to serve as a hostage, etc. The expense of supporting these children means that Murphy is pretty broke all the time. For example, he' the only member of Mystery Inc. without his own car.
  • Professional: Murphy supports himself as a private eye. If he refuses to take a case, he's dead broke until the next case comes along. This is a really good way to drag the players into adventures.
SKILLS:
Climbing, Wrestling
Driving, Marksmanship, Martial Arts, Thievery
Demolitions, Electronics
Photography, Street Wisdom, Survival, Tracking

POWERS:
Luck Control   15
   Limit: Bad luck only
   Stunt: Luck missile
"Jinx"   6
   Jinx is the ability to make machinery stop functioning. Highly experimental technology will stop working on an Easy (4) Jinx (vs. Inventor's Intellect) action. Proven, reliable technology will require a Challenging (12) Jinx to bollix. It is a superhuman (24) Jinx to damage something with no moving parts.
Enhanced vision   4
   Stunts: Penetration vision, True sight

EQUIPMENT:
Bulletproof Trench Coat (+5 armor vs. bullets only)
Big Gun (exact type varies. +5 damage)

Appearance:   A large, burly Irishman with a crew cut and a U.S. Marines Special Forces tattoo on his right bicep.

Personality:   Murphy views himself as a professional, and the rest of Mystery Inc. as amateurs who are lucky to have a Marine around to watch over them. He's bossy, a very careful methodological planner who takes the time to develop a contingency plan for every possibility before he acts. The fact that these plans rarely survive contact with the enemy has not yet deterred him from this line of thought. Any reference to his dating history will cause him to blush.

Catchphrases:   "Not bad. Now let's see how you do against a professional."
    "Put that gun down before you hurt yourself."

History:

Murphy is the oldest of four brothers and two sisters. His father deserted the family when Murphy was six. None of the other men in his mother's life stayed around, and life has been hard. Murphy joined the Marines at 17. His MOS was military intelligence. He was trained to infiltrate far into enemy territory, the most dangerous type of military intelligence gathering. While in training, he realized that he had the power to "hex" people and machines.

In the service, he met his best friend, "Mother." "Mother" was an electronics whiz, no inventor but able to fix anything electrical.  His lifelong fascination with surveillance devices was encouraged. Murphy met him at a demonstration of night vision equipment, and the two have remained friends despite "Mother's" obsession with conspiracy theories that verges on paranoia.

When he was discharged, he decided to put his training and abilities to work as a private detective. However, there wasn't much call for an elint specialist in the world of private detectives, so Murphy has been supporting himself bounty hunting. He sees Mystery Inc. as a chance to gain some publicity for himself and his detective agency.

What Murphy doesn't know is that he is not a mutant. His absent father is one of the Dragon Lords of Elfland, who fathered Murphy to fulfill an ancient promise to his bloodline. His strange abilities come from his half- human heritage. Someday his father will return to him, and instruct him to his duties to the Elflands.

Of course, Murphy may have other ideas...



Halo
(Jennifer DuPree)

Strength   6X
Agility   6C
Intellect   7D
Willpower   7C

Edge:   2
Hand:   4 (25)

Calling   Idealist

Hindrances:
  • Blind while wearing suit: However, she sees through her Halo (see powers below).
  • Hunted: When the narrator's card is a five or less of Doom, some bad guys have heard of the price BBI (Bonk Business International) is paying for Halo's suit, and they've come to collect.
  • Lawful: Halo will not break the law. A real pain when everyone else wants to do a little B & E to look for evidence.
  • Triggered powerless: Pulling Halo through her ring removes the suit, the source of all her powers. Her Agility and Strength then both drop to 2.
SKILLS:
Contingent Attack, Martial Arts
Law
Law Enforcement, Observation

POWERS:
Halo's powers are derived from the suit she wears.
Additional Limb (The Halo)   12
   Stunts: Constriction, Detachable, Shrinking
Additional Sensor (The Halo)   6
   Stunts: Wandering eye, Circular Vision (same as the Enhanced Senses stunt)
Flight   7
Force Field   12
   Limit: Visible field
Blinding   6
   Limit: Four uses/day
Life Support   15

Appearance:   White, glowing bodysuit, without eyeholes. Gloves, boots, cap on top of head are all gold. A gold stripe running down her side connects the golden areas. The border between the white and yellow areas is not a straight line, but a complex fractal pattern. A golden ring, her halo, zips around her. It can grow from an inch to twelve feet in diameter.

History:

While hiking in the Rockies, Jennifer DuPree fell into a deep crevasse. She was saved from a slow death at the bottom by her discovery of a glowing ring. When she touched it, it slowly moved up her arm, coating it with a strange costume as it went. When it covered her eyes, she realized the she was seeing from the perspective of the ring. She flew home, and ever since has defended the law as Halo and in her capacity as a prosecutor.

BBI tried to convince Halo that her suit was stolen property and rightfully belonged to them. However, she has recently learned that her suit may have come from the alien Zzrulian empire. There may or my not be a connection between them and Bonk Business Inc.



Mr. Coffee
(John Brown)

Strength   4X
Agility   10D
Intellect   8D
Willpower   7D

Edge:   2
Hand:   4 (25)

Calling   Thrill-seeker

SKILLS:
Fast Exit
Insurance
"Here, hold this" (With a daunting Willpower (vs. Willpower or Intellect, whichever is higher) Mr. Coffee can hand someone something, and they will take it if they have a free hand. He usually hands them a rope, and then runs' round and 'round them.)

POWERS:
Lightning Speed   24
   Limit: Mr. Coffee must drink coffee or other caffeinated beverage to activate his Lightning Speed. Every two rounds he must make a Willpower action to avoid "caffeine crash," which drops all his abilities to zero. The Willpower action begins at average, climbs to Challenging the second time, daunting the third, etc.
   Stunts: Mach Control, Power Slam, Waterwalking
Reality Warping   15
   Mr. Coffee must actually do something to warp reality, i.e. the wall wouldn't suffer "Property Damage" and fall down unless it was already damaged and he gave it a good shove. This isn't a power per se. It's more due to a lifetime in the insurance business giving him some idea where accidents are most likely to happen coupled with a natural ability to cause chaos.

EQUIPMENT:
Titanium Briefcase   +3 armor vs. collisions due to power slam only

Personality:   Manic, cheerful, conspiracy theorist, loves to shoot guns.

Appearance:   A real drab looking guy in a brown suit

History:

John Brown knew the doctor had told him he was hypersensitive to caffeine, and should stay away from it. But being a insurance actuary was so boring, he desperately needed something to stay awake.  The first coffee tasted good. REAL good. Now, they won't let him work more than five hours a week. He makes everyone else look bad.

Now he had superpowers! He could be a superhero! That would be a lot more interesting than calculating insurance risks!



Steelrose
(Unknown)

Strength   17B
Agility   7D
Intellect   4X
Willpower   4D

Edge:   2
Hand:   4 (25)

Calling   Thrill-seeker

Hindrance:   Cyborg (She's heavier than water and she requires expensive maintenance every six months or her cyborg parts stop working)

SKILLS:
Improvised Weapons, Sonic Slams, Wrestling
Flinging
Singing

POWERS:
Leaping   8
Computer Link   3

Personality:   Happy-go-lucky, rock musician, amnesiac who doesn't remember anything before three years ago.

Appearance:   Dig out your Shadowrun adventures. Find "Mercurial." She looks like that.

History:

She doesn't remember anything before three years ago. Her first memories are of throwing around some guys who tried to push around an old lady. Eventually she went to work as a bouncer at a nightclub. A manager of one of the acts thought that her strange but cute appearance would make her a hit if she could only sing. She could, and she's on her way to stardom.




Pattern Juggler
(Peter Sinfield)

Strength   5D
Agility   7B
Intellect   4C
Willpower   5C

Edge:   2
Hand:   4(25)

Calling   Peace of Mind

Hindrance:   Susceptible to Illusion

SKILLS:
Flinging, Acrobatics, Martial Arts
Occult, Dimensional Geography
Climbing
Art, Observation

POWERS:
Illusion   8
Hypnosis   8
   Stunts: Multiple Targets, Vertigo
Disintegration   4
   Limit: Temporary disintegration. This leaves behind a ghostly image of the object disintegrated.
Reintegration   4
   Limit: PJ must first disintegrate something to reintegrate it. These powers represent PJ's ability to drain the reality out of one object and transfer it to another.
Astral Projection/Dimensional Travel   12
   Pattern Juggler can also create patterns that can send an individual's spirit to The Halfworlds. The pattern takes hours to construct, can only transport a willing subject, and leaves the subject's body behind, possibly to be abused by enemies.


The Court of the Crimson King
by McDonald & Sinfield

The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun.
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun.
The purple piper plays his tune,
The choir softly sing;
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
For the court of the crimson king.

The keeper of the city keys
Put shutters on the dreams.
I wait outside the pilgrim's door
With insufficient schemes.
The black queen chants the funeral march,
The cracked brass bell will ring;
To summon back the fire witch
To the court of the crimson king.

The gardener plants an evergreen
Whilst trampling on a flower.
I chase the wind of a prism ship
To taste the sweet and sour.
The pattern juggler lifts his hand;
The orchestra begin.
As slowly turns the grinding wheel
In the court of the crimson king.

On soft gray mornings widows cry,
The wise men share a joke;
I run to grasp divining signs
To satisfy the hoax.
The yellow jester does not play
But gently pulls the strings
And smiles as the puppets dance
In the court of the crimson king.


The Strange Origin of the Pattern Juggler

Peter Sinfield was artistically sensitive from childhood, and frequently off in worlds of his own. His family lived in Richmond and he showed great promise to become an illustrator, with all the vivid pictures he continuously produced and then left lying about.

At age 14 he was immobilized with a fever that gave him delirious visions for about a week. He was a juggler in a fantastic medieval court, a place of unbelievable magic, dazzling wonders, Byzantine intrigues, and terrifying barbarity. He had the power to manipulate small illusions, and desperately hoped to distract the courtiers and nobles from their other amusements of torturing prisoners and terrorizing commoners. The dream seemed to last for months, and included the haunting vision of the "Moonchild" playing hide and seek with the ghosts of dawn, as well as the terrible Crimson King he had to serve, and the heart-stopping Fire Witch and other intense surreal characters. Working at the court was a painful compromise which afforded luxury and the possibility of tempering the royal madness, but meant condoning all manner of atrocities.

He finally resolved to flee the court when he determined he could not reform or distract them any further. It was like talking to the wind. He crawled the cracked and broken path, crept along the wall on which the prophets wrote, and was noticed sneaking out the iron gates of fate and an alarm went up- when he returned to the waking world drenched in sweat and no longer sure what was real.

This sense of ambivalence stayed with him through adolescence, as he continued to see images from dreams as he walked down the street in broad daylight, and had a nagging sense that the Crimson Court and its nightmare empire were still out there waiting for him, even though he'd resigned in no uncertain terms.

Richmond is a rough place, and one day Peter was mugged on his way home from school. Instinctively, he manifested illusion copies of the mugger's knife tumbling through the air all around them, and his attacker fled. This demonstration of actual abilities was not really shocking, but rather a confirmation of Peter's worst fears. With power comes responsibility. He wouldn't be preyed upon, and he couldn't let these predators go after others.

Peter breezed through a commercial art curriculum at VCU. He could generate picture perfect illusions (especially of patterns and textures) and draw, paint or photoprint them directly. There was so much crime in Richmond which he felt obliged to fight that he'd begun wearing a disguise when he went out at night to scare off the dealers and muggers. He told himself this vigilante behavior had nothing to do with the dream life, and soon he would graduate, move away, and settle down anonymously. He eventually moved to Alexandria.

Taking a job in Alexandria was an attempt to run away from this part of his life, but it only came back again. He began to have dreams of Crimson Guards pursuing him, of the Black Queen chanting her terrible song, of the iron-clawed Neurosurgeon screaming at his door which he'd covered with the paranoid poisons. Soon the black ships would dock on the Potomac and siege engines would roll up King Street, blasting innocents with medieval napalm... No! The Fire Witch...

Going out as The Pattern Juggler and fighting crime seemed to be the only way to appease his subconscious and sense of duty, and keep the dreams at bay (if they were dreams). And it became necessary to construct a suit of scraps of patterned cloth, in a harlequin diamond format, in order to have enough samples from which to project.

His dream self has given him a superior sense of balance, coordination, and poise; as well as abilities in tumbling, juggling, physical manipulation, and a touch of mesmerism. He can "make the puppets dance" for brief periods with spirals or seductive patterns of light and movement. All this comes with a price of uncertainty about the underpinnings of reality, and some trouble with moral quandaries. So far he has not been caught between the Scylla and Charebdis of humanity and desperation, and will not deal well with such a crisis when it comes. So far he has never had to deal with any illusions other than his own, and may be as susceptible or even more than the average person.

Peter Sinfield lives in Old Town Alexandria and does freelance commercial art and video effects for a number of clients in the greater DC area, sometimes Baltimore. This gives him the freedom of movement of not punching a daily clock, as long as he keeps up with the work. Forming an alliance with other heroes seems to be a necessary good, as he is physically vulnerable and limited in his scope as an individual.

He generally likes his quirky companions, especially Halo and Mr. Coffee. They make a good support group for what used to be a lonely and difficult vocation.


TRAVELLER
(Alexander Brighton, Alskandar Brightly Shining)

Strength   5X
Agility   6X
Intellect   5D
Willpower   6X

Edge:   2
Hand:   4(25)

Calling   Gloryhound

Hindrances:
  • Alien:   Traveller is largely unfamiliar with aspects of 20th century culture.
  • Guilt ridden:   All abilities drop to zero if he allows the timestream to be damaged.
SKILLS:
Time Machinery
Traveller has other skills, but none are useful in the 20th century.

POWERS:
None.

EQUIPMENT:
Battlesuit   15
   Energy Blast, CPU, Force Field, Instant Change, Life Support, Teleport, Worthiness
   The way the suit works is that the total of his battlesuit powers adds up to 15. He may have Blast 7 an Teleport 8 at the same time, or Blast, Force field and Life Support all at 5.
   Instant change means that the battlesuit can change into any outfit.
   Traveller's CPU is stocked with a lot of erroneous data on modern times and scientific data.

Appearance:   Traveller is a tall man with brown hair. His outfit is always changing, but retains a large white "T" on his chest.

Catchphrases:   "I had a girlfriend, but she broke the circle, and i wasn't pink any more, so I decided to go active."
   "I'm not insane. I'm not."
   "Great. That's what T stands for. Target."

History:

Traveller has at various times claimed to be an immortal roaming the earth in search of adventure and a time traveler sent back to protect his future. Evidence has been found that he is neither of those, but just some nut that found a suit with powers. You be the judge.


CARTER BRAXTON III

Strength   4X
Agility   3C
Intellect   7B
Willpower   12B

Edge:   3
Hand:   5(30)

Calling   World Domination
SKILLS:
Equestrian, Skiing
Journalism, Sociology, Finance
Manipulation, Observation, Politics

POWERS:
Danger Sense   14
Telepathy   14
   Limit: Mental probe only
   Stunt: Braxton has such skill in his probes that the subject suffers no strain due to mental probe. Unless they are looking for it or are sensitive to such powers, the target may not even notice the probe.
NOTE: The Observation Skill reduces the difficult level by one for both of these powers.

Personality:   Carter Braxton thinks that the USA is the greatest country in the world and could be even greater with the right person running things, steering us back to traditional American values. Obviously, this Clinton fellow is not suitable and will have to go.

Catchphrases:   "You, suh, are no gentleman."
   "Ah do not care if you do have thu power cosmic. That behavior is simpluh unacceptable."

History:

Carter Braxton is heir to one of the wealthier families in Virginia. He is a famous political columnist and a McLaughlin Group regular. He joins Mystery Inc. in the field only occasionally, preferring to remain behind the scenes as a financier, researcher, and occasionally, tactician. The rest of the group is beginning to realize that he is not as altruistic as he seemed.


(NARRATOR NOTES:   Carter is best introduced slowly, as a wealthy philanthropist. He asks the player heroes for help, say, against a conspiracy of powerful men that he says is siphoning money from one of his charities. Slowly they come to realize that he is not bent on destroying the conspiracy, but in having the heroes remove competition for leadership of the conspiracy. By the time they realize this, and move against him, he will be ready for them. His mind probe will have ferreted out their weaknesses and desires. He is much more likely to hold some sort of economic consequences over the players heads (like having their friends and families fired, etc.) rather than attacking them. He is careful to do nothing illegal in his machinations, so if the players come after him, they may have to deal with the police!)