Adventure! RPG: Heroes of Our Time - The Heroes

[Alex Craft]

This thread plays host to the group's character sheets (see below links).

Further, if anyone wants to post any public background information, they may use this thread for that purpose. This can be anything: a concise history, newspaper clippings, and the like.

In order to keep things under control, please stop short of posting full blown fictions here. If you would like to do that, make use of N!Prime's Adventure Fiction forum. I'll keep a list of links to any fictions here with the character sheets (and will also award small amounts of experience for such material).

Adventure Characters:

Raphael Bradford

Mark Cobb

Regan McLachlan

Count Janos Rakozi Graf von Kadar

Mikhail Ivanovich Valyenko

Adventure Fiction:

Caught in the Middle

Black Blood / White Snow

Intersections

Janos in China

[jameson (ST)]

Dr. Raphael Gregory Bradford, ScD., PhD, MD. - Inspired

The great-grandson of Jameson Bradford, Raphael has adventuring in his blood. His parents and grandparents lived relatively quite and unassuming lives, and Raphael was brought up in a stable and loving family. As he grew older and began to understand that Jameson's yarns were not just tall tales to entertain the kids at family gatherings but actual events Raphael's insatiable curiosity was peaked.

Raphael himself appears to have been born inspired or have become inspired very young. His intellect is one of the greatest on the planet and his mastery of the sciences is nearly unmatched. By his mid 20's Raphael had earned multiple doctorates from some of the greatest engineering and medical schools in the world and founded what would become Advanced Technology Incorporated - ATI.

Leveraging the patents and profits of his inventions Raphael has created an empire of wealth well within the top 10 in the world. He continues to innovate, creating devices most would consider science fiction, and developing advancements on current technology that keeps ATI ahead of its competition.

Lately he has turned his formidable intellect, skills, and resources toward the betterment of mankind. He has allied with the Aeon Society and Clay Zorbo, a long time friend, to help stop and/or prevent those who wish to exploit others. Raphael is almost always seen with his close friend and bodyguard Misha Valyenko.

Physical appearance:

Raphael stands about 5'11" and could easily be described as "lean" though not very strong (or dextrous for that matter) he does keep in fit shape and has competed in the Boston Marathon for the past 5 years. His body reflects this with lean almost ropy muscles beneath his skin.

Deep blue eyes peer out from behind a pair of silver spectacles which he no longer needs to wear. A full head of blonde hair is kept short and neatly combed and he sports a trimmed moustache and goatee.

Raphael dresses for scuccess when not in the lab (where all bets are off if he has even showered recently). Armani suits and other custom tailored and fit clothing is common when out on the town or even relaxed at home.

[Mark J. Cobb]

Mark Cobb was born to Jason and Eleanor Cobb in 1975 in Virginia at the Army base hospital where is father was stationed at. They stayed in the area until 1980 when his sister, Julia, was born. Soon after, his father was transferred to a base in Illinois near the Chicago area. They bounced all across the country about every two years until 1990 when his mother got a position as a civilian researcher at a military facility in northern California. Where she worked until her death in an auto accident in 2005.

Schooling was difficult for Mark, even though he was tested at above average intelligence. He never really settled into his new environments, was rebellious, and sarcastic. Or, as his father would say, “His mouth wrote checks his body couldn’t cash.” Mark got into fights frequently and even though he didn’t usually ‘win,’ it was because it was three-to-one against although he had less damage than his opponents. It wasn’t until much later, either from reports from his sister or when Mark’s few acquaintances would look him up, did his parents discover that Mark actually provoked bullies away from the younger kids… Which got him pounded.

When he was 10 they were living in the Texas Pan-Handle and were invited to a family reunion on Eleanor’s side. That’s when he met Great Uncle Jameson. He was larger than life but playful and would tell the kids stories from his younger days. Mark didn’t believe half of them but he did notice how the other adults treated him. This Old Man was some sort of Hero. He was more than a little surprised when he sarcastically called him an Old Man to get a rise out of him, that he just laughed and said, “It beats the alternative, besides, maybe you’ll be this lucky.”

Even when they settled in California and his father became a recruiter while his mother worked at, what they called, “The Facility,” Mark never really settled. He was still fighting and rebellious but he managed to get decent enough grades to go to college. After a year he quite and enrolled in a tech school for security work. Although he missed ‘all the extra stuff’ and the college lifestyle he seemed to really enjoy the security training. About a year later he started to get bored. After seeing him lose focus, his father pulled him aside and said, “Son, if this is REALLY what you want to do, why don’t you do it someplace where you can make a difference.” At the age of 20 and looking for inspiration, Mark joined the US Army.

About halfway through boot camp Mark decided that his father didn’t like him much. Although he grumbled and complained, he also excelled. He also didn’t mind it when the younger kids called him Old Man. No ordinary grunt, Mark would pull off situations that would kill anyone else. (Like the time a mortar explosion threw him several hundred feet. He simply groaned, stood up, dusted himself off, and went back to work.) He just got a little battered. Mark was tough. While he always got the job done, his abrasive nature and clashes with authority got him a series of demotions, reprimands, and punishments. Although not good enough to be a solo operative, he did qualify for Special Forces. The teams he was a part of had unusually high success rates, with their commanders admitting that Mark was often the deciding factor. He would push them through and then carry them home (sometimes literally). As one officer commented in his evaluation: “He was to stubborn to fail even when he already lost.”

Some one started paying attention to Mark’s record and looked into his background. He was transferred from Special Forces into something simply called “The Elite.” The Elite was a specialized group of people who were known to Inspired on some level (mostly low level stalwarts and daredevils). Mark lasted less than a year and got himself kicked out to a Standard Front Line Infantry unit. He hated the Elite. To him they were a bunch of “fake hero wannabes who blindly follow the orders of people who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the bottom.”

Mark cashiered himself out of the Army the year after the terror attacks hit the US. When his angry father asked him why he left when they needed men like him the most, his reply was along the lines of, “Even if that’s true, they’re going to muck it up and I’m going to be the one holding the bloody bag.”

He didn’t stay away completely. He did several mercenary runs in those areas. He also did a lot of security work for the UN (usually when his sister asked) and escorted reporters from varies news corps along with corporate leaders to their business holdings. That’s when he met his occasional girlfriend, Tammy Yates. She was the front-end receptionist for the local K.I.S. affiliate, which he did some low-level security work for. Her biggest responsibility, besides answering the phones, was to hand out the checks every two weeks to the private contractors (exterminators, cleaners, and night watchmen like Mark).

In 2005, Mark’s mother died in a car crash coming home late from work. At the Wake everyone showed up including Great Uncle Jameson (whom everyone assumed was dead). After giving his condolences he pulled Mark aside and chatted with him a bit. Not much was said but people did hear snatches of the Old Man saying things like not to get “pissy” when the world gets dark, some things you do because of who you are, and that people are made up of the choices the do make and of the ones they don’t. Leaving Mark he talked to a few other people then said his farewells and left.

Soon after, Mark walked away from all of his little jobs and moved to the city. He got a job as a taxi driver and seemed to just exist. His father gritted his teeth and his sister rolled her eyes and they both just left him be. That all changed towards the end of 2009 when Mark walked into his favorite convenient store, Mr. Fengs, to get a soda for his evening shift,

The thug holding his gun to Mr. Feng’s head tried to turn it on Mark as he entered but he never had a chance. Mark plowed into him, driving him through a display of chips, and practically burying him in the pizza cooler. The thug had two friends. One with a bat, tried to beat him. Said bat broke. Mark broke the thug. The remaining hooligan had a pistol and fired two rounds in Marks direction. To this day no one is sure where those shots went. Mark helped him leave by pitching him through the plate glass window. When the police arrived, Mark and Mr. Feng were enjoying a beer while bruised Mark held an icepack to his eye.

About a week later, the local paper ran a full-page article on Mark calling him the “Southside Hero.” Either it was a slow news week or the reporter was an anally thorough guy, because someone did their homework on Mark. This wasn’t the first incident with Mr. Cobb. There was the time he ran 8 blocks to catch a purse-snatcher. After catching him, Mark carried the now unconscious man to the scene of the crime and the waiting police officers. There was the rescuing people from the burning homeless shelter and the uncovering of three small marijuana growers. Since he moved to the bad side of town in 2005, he has called in no less then 50 emergency calls that have resulted in arrests and/or lives saved and Mark’s cab as been to the ER at least monthly with a pregnant woman or crime victim. Runaways often find themselves in his cab heading back to their home (his cab was seen as far away as Colorado) or, if the family was uncertain, to the local social services department.

The only quote they managed to get from Mark was, “I ain’t no hero.” Taking that spin the article closed with, “Mark Cobb is a regular guy who, in his own way, is tirelessly making this corner of the world better for us all.”

A few months later Mark received a phone call. It was Great Uncle Jameson. After all this time, he was the one who figured out how to get Mark going in the best direction. Not by telling him, but by asking him… “I saw the paper. I wonder if you could do me a favor…”

=

Mark is a rugged looking man who appears to be in his late 20s (he's older than that) with dark brown hair, green eyes and a sarcastic smile.

He ususually wears jeans, t-shirs, and leather jackets but he has been known to don army camo and 'cleans up well' when he puts on a suit.

He stands just under 6 feet tall and has a muscular but not blocky build.

[Regan McLachlan]

Regan McLachlan, PhD (Anthropology), PhD (Humanities), Assoc. Prof. (Smithsonian)

Inspired

Regan McLachlan is an average-sized woman with blonde good looks and a figure that supermodels would kill for and rich men want parading on their arms at all the big events. Her attributes are normally showcased in tight but supple clothing that gives her a full range of movement and she can pull off any outfit from jeans and a t-shirt to a leather catsuit to full-blown evening wear.

To look at her, most people couldn't even guess she was one of the finest academic minds in the world.

She was destined for brilliance from birth as the granddaughter of legendary Australian Dr. Samuel 'Doc Lock' McLachlan - and destined to be opinionated when her first word at the age of three was, 'Idiot,' to one of her mother's lecturers.

Since then, she's fulfilled both destinies, becoming renowned in academia for the depth and breadth of her knowledge in the fields of anthropology and humanities - and the ability to perform skilful egoectomies on her more pompous colleagues. By the time she finished her education, she had racked up two PhDs and a list of enemies as long as her arm, all of whom admired her as much as they hated her forthright attitude. Of course, undergrads and other students adored her frankness and ego-shredding.

These days, she is a member of the Aeon Society noted for the sheer amount of contacts she has around the world. She disdains no source of knowledge, from bikie UFO experts to Catholic exorcists to serious academics. Her travels in search of information for the Society have taken her all over the world to places that only legends speak of.

Yet she is unable to merely settle for the title of 'observer'. Knowledge is nothing unless it is used.

So she has become involved with Clay Zorbo and his movement to proactively use her Inspired abilities for everyone's benefit. She has recruited for them as she has for the Society, often inviting people to join them both.

If this will cause a conflict of interests... only time will tell.