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: 8175376" data-attributes="member: 30538">The Meteor<img src="https://photos.smugmug.com/My-First-Gallery/i-bgsfw5Q/0/57ed5fd4/S/UAiqRZuP_290319212352lola-S.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />To those who first witnessed him rescuing the Enterprise, a prototype supersonic transport constructed by Lockheed, in 1960, he must have seemed like the American Dream of that Space Age come to life -- a square-jawed, steely-eyed hero, quick to smile and quicker on the draw with his high-tech shooting iron. And, on top of all that, he was the brilliant creator of his own space ship, the living embodiment of the idea that simple human ingenuity would take everyone to the stars. To many, the Meteor seemed almost too good to be true.They were right; he was. Even at the start, there were those who saw holes in his story, most notably the civilian name he gave -- Richard Swift -- and his absolute refusal to let anyone examine his spaceship. One of these early skeptics, Lieutenant Jerry Lawson, would plague Meteor throughout his career in the 90s, and it was with some hopes of vindicating his father that Lawson's son, Richard, began studying the history of the first age of heroes and publishing his research on the subject. He was never able to solve the riddle that Meteor posed, but his speculations came surprisingly close to the truth.His real name was Bzz Tirgal (a family name which does, coincidentally, derive from a word for 'lightyear') and he was born on the planet Chirab sometime in the early 1920s. Chirab is a world whose best days are far behind it, and many of its children leave each year to seek their fortunes out among the stars. Bzz was one such, finding his way into a career as a self-employed scout shortly after he saw his twentieth year*, making money through the discovery of resources and the sale of the rights to same to organizations better equipped to exploit them. In the course of these adventures, he became an excellent pilot and proficient hand with an electrolaser, or zap gun.The costs of his operation were greatly reduced when he discovered, on one planet, a dying space traveler who passed him the Power Prism that the latter had used, urging him to use it to good purpose. Not fully trusting the Prism, he used it as an inexhaustible fuel supply for his ship instead of as a weapon and armor. His reluctance to employ it as it was meant to be employed was mostly caused by his knowledge that it hadn't saved its previous owner, and he expected that using it in that way would just attract unwelcome attention. That said, he often found himself feeling guilty that he was using such a wonder for such a banal purpose.The nearest his journey was supposed to take him to Earth was a pass through what Terran astronomers know as the Alpha Centauri star system, which he visited in what Terran historians knew as 1958 -- just as the hyperspace wave front from an event, roughly two years in the past, moved through it and disrupted many of his ship's systems. Surviving and making repairs, Bzz decided to investigate what had caused the event, out of curiosity and a sense of self-preservation, as well as some concern for the welfare of whatever life might be found in the system that had produced it.He arrived in the Sol system not long before a second event occurred with a comparable disturbance to hyperspace. This time he was prepared, though, and better able to analyze the phenomenon. Something had arrived in the orbit around the third planet of the star, and Bzz decided to take a closer look at that planet. (His focus was on the planet, and so did not at that time discover the other alien spacecraft in hiding around Earth's moon.) Bzz was startled to find a species much like his own; it was almost like looking through a time-viewer at Chirab's past, for better or worse. A lot of what he saw disturbed him, and he was surprised to feel a sensation that he'd never felt when considering alien life -- sympathy.And so, he joined the nascent paranormal culture, posing as a brilliant rocket scientist of Terrestrial origin, who'd invented his own space ship, and naturally set out to use this wonder to overcome criminals, as one apparently did. Most of his colleagues in the Institute suspected that he must not be telling the whole truth, but their apparent belief was that he had been hired to act as the public representative for the actual inventor of his ship. Regardless, he was well-respected by the general public, especially after he assisted in dealing with the earliest Martian raids, and even more so after he handed the Soviets a black eye by defeating their super-soldier, Chelovek-Meteor ("Meteor Man") and forcing (actually just persuading) him to change his alias to Krasnaya-Kometa ("The Red Comet".) The Meteor never told anyone that his name was actually a pun, as the word 'miitiyar' in the language he grew up speaking actually mean 'crazy individual'.Never chosen as the leader of the Institute due to the suspicions about him, the Meteor nonetheless served as one of its mainstays right up until the end. He didn't directly confront Stardust during the Battle of Vietnam, instead using his ship to ferry as many civilians as possible out of the mad titan's way. In the aftermath, his critics had a field day with asking why he hadn't used his ship's weaponry to assault Stardust, and his responses seemed poorly considered and inadequate. His popularity at an all-time low, Bzz ultimately chose to leave the system, ostensibly to pursue Stardust.Just what happened in the next quarter of a century remains a mystery in space. Sometime in the late 90s, his ship returned to Earth, without being detected, and came to rest in the Amazon jungle, where it would eventually be found by Victor Furtado. Ironically, just as Bzz Tirgal used it in a different way than its previous owner, so too did Victor choose to use it in a way different from Bzz's use -- in both cases, because it didn't seem to have worked out all that well for them.The Meteor -- PL 9Abilities:STR 2 | STA 3 | AGL 4 | DEX 5 | FGT 6 | INT 2 | AWE 2 | PRE 2Powers:Born Spacer: Movement 1 (environmental adaptation [zero-g]) - 2 pointsSpace Suit: Radio Communication 3; Flight 5 (120 MPH); Enhanced Flight 4 (1000 MPH), Only in microgravity; Immunity 10 (life support); Impervious Protection 6; Senses 5 (direction sense, distance sense, infravision, radio, ultravision); Removable (-10 points) - 38 pointsTranslator Circuit: Comprehend Languages 2 - 6 pointsZap Gun: Array (12 points); Easily Removable (-5 points)<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Blaster Setting: Ranged Damage 6 - 12 points</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Stunner Setting: Ranged Affliction 6 (Resisted by Fortitude; Dazed, Stunned, Incapacitated) - 1 point</li> </ul>Advantages:Defensive Attack, Equipment 18, Evasion, Improved Defense, Improved Initiative, Precise Shot 2 (Ranged/Concealment & Cover), Quick Draw, Ranged Attack 3, Set-Up.Equipment:9 points of equipment as needed.Spaceship: Size Huge; Strength 10; Speed 13 (air/space); Defense 8; Toughness 10; Powers: Arsenal (20 point Array: Ranged Damage 10, Move Object 10); Radio Communication 3; Concealment 2 (radio); Movement 2 (space travel 2) - 81 pointsSkills:Acrobatics 3 (+7), Athletics 5 (+7), Close Combat: Unarmed 2 (+8), Deception 8 (+10), Expertise: Galactic 6 (+8), Perception 9 (+11), Ranged Combat: Zap Gun 4 (+9), Technology 4 (+6), Vehicles 7 (+12).Offense:Initiative +8Unarmed +8 (Close Damage 2)Blaster Setting +12 (Ranged Damage 6)Stunner Setting +12 (Ranged Fortitude 6)Defense:Dodge 9, Parry 9, Fortitude 5, Toughness 9/3, Will 6.Totals:Abilities 52 + Powers 54 + Advantages 29 + Skills 24 + Defenses 14 = 173 pointsComplications:Responsibility--Motivation. Power Loss (Zap Gun, must be periodically recharged in spaceship); Secret (alien.)</blockquote>

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