COMING SOON! -- The Awfully Cheerful Engine on Kickstarter! An action comedy RPG inspired by cheerful tabletop games of the 80s! With a foreword by Sandy 'Ghostbusters' Petersen, and VTT support!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Davies" data-source="post: 8166489" data-attributes="member: 30538">The Iconoclast<img src="https://photos.smugmug.com/My-First-Gallery/i-HHGZbLn/0/9d868a44/S/Madcap_%2528Earth-616%2529_from_Deadpool_Annual_Vol_3_1_001-S.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />Bursting onto the scene in San Francisco of 1963, the Iconoclast quickly established himself as an unconventional eccentric who marched to the beat of a different drummer, while nonetheless being an extremely effective crime fighter. He battled against a collection of would-be criminal masterminds who were every bit as bizarre as himself with a stream of patter and extraordinary agility, overcoming them all. Despite the skepticism of some of the more conservative members of the Institute, he was quickly invited to join the group, and unhesitatingly revealed his secret identity to them.Behind the mask, he was one Andrew Lewis, a wealthy young gentleman who claimed to have been born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. His talents had been cultivated through a somewhat misspent youth, touring India and China. He claimed to have developed the identity of the Iconoclast after seeing how much fun the other early superheroes were having, and deciding to join in. None of this did anything to allay the doubts of certain of his new teammates, but the Iconoclast soon took his place as one of their most well-regarded members.Perhaps those doubts should have been given more heed. In 1993, long after it was all over, journalist Richard Lawson discovered the minutes of a secret society called the Golden Mean, apparently established in 1919 despite an internal mythology that put its formation a century or so earlier. Their goal was to achieve the transformation of the American government into a technocratic state, run by themselves, and eventually the installation of a technocratic world government. And those minutes revealed that, in 1947, the nineteen-year-old Andrew Lewis had been recruited by the Golden Mean, trained by them as an operative, and eventually -- some sixteen years later -- assigned to infiltrate the Institute.What those minutes did not reveal was that, despite this sinister origin, Lewis had never really had much interest in the Golden Mean's goals. He had joined the group largely on a lark, not taking it -- or anything else -- all that seriously. The thrill of being a secret operator, and later the greater excitement of being a famous superhero, were what he'd sought, though he also came to find genuine enjoyment in the good deeds that the Iconoclast performed. Furthermore, whatever loyalty Lewis might have notionally felt for the Golden Mean was utterly destroyed when one of its leaders tried to blackmail him into becoming his personal agent through threats to reveal the other major secrets that he was keeping -- his homosexuality and his occasional recreational drug use. That, he took seriously. He promptly retaliated against this threat, secretly eliminating that senior member of the society and a few others whose activities had offended him, all without ever exposing himself to either the other members of the Golden Mean or his teammates on the Institute.During the Battle of Vietnam, the Iconoclast was apparently the author of the strategy that successfully injured Stardust and prompted his retreat, though he was demonstrably horrified by the cost of the victory. He met his own fate after Stardust's disappearance, when a helicopter carrying him and several American servicemen suffered an equipment failure and crashed in the jungle. By the time that a rescue operation was mounted, there was no one alive at the crash site, though the Iconoclast's body was never actually recovered.The exact cause of this incident has never been formally demonstrated. Lawson speculated that the Golden Mean had decided to end their agent's activities and faked the crash to extract him, or possibly to eliminate him. Others have noted that one of the Iconoclast's recurring enemies, the Soviet super-soldier Remontnik, had been in the area before the helicopter took flight, and that he might have sabotaged it, either of his own volition or as part of an assignment. In 1988, Kevin Hazzard, who had also been on the helicopter, reported to JSOT that the Iconoclast had been killed saving his life in the crash, and that he'd buried him before going AWOL. He had no more idea of what had caused the crash than anyone else, but believed it to have been a genuine accident.Regardless, the Golden Mean endured only a few more years after this, before dissolving acrimoniously in 1977. Some of its members and agents wound up as part of the Pythonian Insurgency, while others disappeared completely in 1981. Its legacy, and that of the Iconoclast, would seem to be the later career of Hazard, and all that came from it.The Iconoclast -- PL 8Abilities: STR 3 | STA 3 | AGL 4 | DEX 4 | FGT 6 | INT 7 | AWE 5 | PRE 5Powers:Striking Strength: Strength-based Damage 2 - 2 pointsEquipment:Throwing Discs (Ranged Damage 3), and 14 points of equipment as necessary.Advantages: Agile Feint, Assessment, Benefit 3 (Millionaire), Connected, Contacts, Defensive Roll, Equipment 4, Improved Hold, Improved Initiative, Improved Trip, Jack-of-all-Trades, Languages 3 (several), Power Attack, Redirect, Set-up, Taunt, Uncanny Dodge, Well-Informed.Skills: Acrobatics 6 (+10), Athletics 6 (+9), Close Combat: Unarmed 3 (+9), Deception 7 (+12), Expertise: High Society 4 (+11), Insight 6 (+11), Intimidation 6 (+11), Investigation 6 (+13), Perception 7 (+12), Persuasion 6 (+11), Ranged Combat: Throwing Discs 5 (+9), Sleight of Hand 6 (+10), Stealth 6 (+10), Technology 4 (+11), Treatment 4 (+11), Vehicles 6 (+10).Offense: Initiative +12 Unarmed +9 (Close Damage 5)Throwing Discs +9 (Ranged Damage 3).Defense: Dodge 8, Parry 8, Fortitude 6, Toughness 6/4, Will 7.Totals: Abilities 74 + Powers 2 + Advantages 25 + Skills 44 + Defenses 13 = 158 pointsComplications: Thrills--Motivation. Fame. Secrets (association with the Golden Mean, drug use, homosexual.)</blockquote>

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