Welcome to Gaia! ::

This is Certainly Well thought out and i enjoyed reading it... I like that the founder was almost super human.

This is great. A rich, well thought-out history and a real pleasure to read, as well. I especially like the name of the city.

Have you written anything more? I know you want it to be a collaborative effort, but the more people are responsible for something, the less gets done. I think it's best when we're given something to agree (or disagree) on. It's terrible that one person has to do all that, but it seems the only way we can get the ball rolling.

That was extremely well done and creative. But honestly like Callida said you should not have had to do this alone. Maybe we should have at least two more moderators to help out.

I wouldn't mind helping out a little bit more since I let One bad doctor purchase the guild.

Hey, thanks. I'm touched.

Unfortunately, I am a lowly crew member, and I can't promote people to moderator status. I can ban you, but that wouldn't be very helpful. I just wish I knew what has become of our founder; it would be nice to have some more folks on the staff team, but right now only he can put them there.

I have written something more, in another 4+ hour effort that hasn't yet brought it to completion. Here's the first half of the "power groups" section, with friends and foes alike! Well, mostly foes. The city map and district descriptions will follow once I finish the other half. Again, feedback is welcome! I'm willing to change anything I've written to better fit your conception of the setting, since you all are the main players and there's no RP without you.

Now, I'm going to go outside and see if the sun still shines in this world. I'll be back a little later.



CCPD: The Citadel Creek Police Department is the most advanced in the world, with access to powerful nonlethal weapons and an unparalleled ability to track targets through the city they protect. In these dangerous times, even basic patrolmen are equipped with kevlar vests and the famed web grenades, which hold foes in position as the sticky substance they spew hardens over those trapped in it. Their trademark sidearm, the Thunderstorm Subdual and Personal Defense Weapon, fires powerful and long-range gel bullets that shatter like paintballs on impact; each is filled with a numbing agent that quickly brings perps to the ground. The weapon's stun gun and flashlight attachments have also served the city's finest well.

Handcuffs have also been updated in this new approach to Law Enforcement. Rather than costly metal handcuffs or zip-ties, which cannot be reused, super-scientists working with the government developed a carbon fiber alternative resistant to heat and cold, nonconductive, and five times stronger than steel. To deal with restraining metahumans in the short term, other scientists added the "buzzer", a little device that, when attached to the handcuffs, vibrates at a high frequency to create interference in the mental processes of its wearer. This makes it difficult for them to use their powers. Squad cars got an update as well; ironically, they are now constructed of the same material as the handcuffs, to avoid exploding when the car is zapped with fire or electricity and to shed bullets more easily.

Of course, there are problems in Citadel Creek that ordinary patrolmen, however advanced, simply cannot handle. That's where the SWAT teams come in. Equipped to handle hostage situations, bomb threats, and sting operations, these men and women are some of the best trained in the city. Armored in layered kevlar and ballistic gel, they are capable of surviving several shots of direct handgun fire. In order to combat greater threats, they are armed with both web grenades and grenades that exude an unconsciousness-inducing gas. Their rifles are similar to the Thunderstorm pistols which they carry as sidearms, but rather than containing the numbing agent the gel bullets hold the same gas as is found in the grenades. Each SWAT member is, of course, equipped with a gas mask to avoid succumbing to their own projectiles, and carries several clips of hollow-point bullets for extreme situations where being nonlethal isn't an option.

SWAT entry teams are supported by one to three snipers, but despite their lethal name and incredible accuracy they rarely kill unless necessary. Their default ammunition consists of balls of water contained in a thin membrane, but by the time the ball has left the gun it's going so fast that even water can knock down perps, or kill them if incorrectly aimed. In addition to the most intensive training of any police unit in the nation, snipers are outfitted with high-tech scopes for their rifles that allow them to see on the infared spectrum to track targets that have moved behind walls. Able to magnify nearly 500 times in addition to this feature, the scopes also have an unpowered mode that prevents them from being rendered entirely useless by an electricity-powered criminal. Like all SWAT members, they carry several clips of deadly hollow-point bullets for situations that demand lethal force.

SWAT teams are the toughest examples of non-powered Humans in the city, but they cannot be everywhere at once, and are targeted at containing small situations before they spiral out of control. When things get really big, the Riot Police are called in. Riding in carbon-armored amphibious crawlers, these men and women are armed with the ultimate in crowd dispersal technology: microwave projectors. Far more effective and far less wasteful than the water cannons of old, few can stand in the path of a microwave projector for more than a second or two. If foes prove resistant to this tactic, the Riot Police have access to web cannons as well, rapidly sticking criminals to the road beneath them. If forced into non-vehicle combat, they are armed as normal patrolmen, but also granted a thick plastic riot shield with the front covered in electrified wires. Not only can the shield stop a bullet, but it also delivers an electric shock to anyone who touches the front without proper insulation.

When things become too tough for even SWAT teams and the Riot Police to handle, and it has happened before, the city has one last trick up its sleeve. A crack military unit known as the Ghosts, who rounded up the most troublesome supers in the years in which their activities were illegal, can arrive at any location within the city in ten minutes via chinook. Their training is the toughest of any military unit in the world, and not everyone who tries their hand at the career survives; even fewer are accepted. Equipped with stealth and surveillance technologies, the Ghosts can literally tap into the phones, emails, and bank accounts of anyone in the city. With an order, they can black out any city block, impound any vehicle, and arrest anyone they see as a threat. They have the blueprints of every building in the city, and an expansive database that includes every official resident's fingerprints, criminal record, and more. They're no slouches in combat, either; very few devices are beyond their reach, from battlesuits to tanks to rifles that fire gamma rays.

The main problem facing the CCPD is that they simply aren't numerous enough to patrol the entire city in which they are based. They've been forced to divide the city into districts, and assign each a color. In Green districts, the police patrol regularly, and crime is very low. Of the twenty districts in the city, only five are Green, and they are generally key governmental sites or tourist attractions. In Yellow districts crime is low to moderate, but the police still do their best to patrol the area. They do not have major bases in these districts, and often call for metahumans to aid them; these zones are usually an aspiring hero's first stop. There are eight Yellow districts out of twenty total. Finally, there are Red districts. In these areas, the police dare not patrol due to the high crime rate. They might as well be miniature cities of their own, with their petty governments and gang armies plotting to chew up yet more of the city. Only experienced heroes dare venture here. There are seven Red districts of twenty total.

The Bomb Squad: Rumored to be led by the son of the famed F. C. Kelvin who burned down City Hall back in the late sixties, The Bomb Squad is an anarchist gang which specializes in arson and illegal weapons sales. Too widely spread out to take a Red district for themselves, they lurk in the Yellow districts of the city, spreading anti-government propaganda, spraying graffiti on everything within reach, and building custom explosives. They've recently gotten very good at placing firebombs along police patrol routes and escaping raids on their hideouts, and some suspect that they have agents inside the police department feeding them information.

The Bomb Squad, first and foremost, is dedicated to blowing things up. The homes of government workers, the offices of corporations that take government contracts, and libraries (apparently just for the hell of it) are all common targets. Police informants report that their attacks follow almost the same pattern every time they occur. First, a few members of the gang stake out the location, make note of all entrances and exits, and over several days find out the time when the most people are in the building. The day before the attack, another gang member goes in covertly and sabotages the fire alarm, while others graffiti adjacent buildings with their gang slogans. On the day of the attack, small firebombs are placed at particularly flammable locations, at doors and windows, and on fire escapes. When a large number of people have entered the building, the gang detonates the bombs and flees the scene.

The Squad's other forte is arms dealing, and they've made many a situation worse by providing powerful weapons to angry souls. Exactly how they get their guns and components is unknown, but evidence leads the police to believe that they have a tunnel network leading from warehouses in the northern docks to gang safehouses in other districts. No gang members have ever been apprehended while transporting weapons, which indicates that they are wealthy enough to be able to dump the goods into the river if the police get too close. Once the gang has the weapons in their safehouses, they employ skilled tinkerers to work on them, commonly enhancing their stopping power at the cost of range. The modified weapons are loaded into vans and driven to hidden spots in the city; the same spot is never used twice in a month. While the gang members selling the weapons are unarmed, snipers on nearby rooftops make sure no one tries any funny business. Everything from the ever-popular AK-47 to military-grade grenade launchers is sold.

Very little is known about the gang's leadership; police informants who were instructed to actively seek promotion were found dead in various alleyways within a week. Some suspect that this means there are telepaths in the upper ranks, but most dismiss this as foolishness, claiming that any fanatical organization can easily weed out those who don't share their goals to the maximum. Those informants who have managed to infiltrate the lower levels report that "Firebugs" preside over safehouses and lead the gang's day to day affairs, reporting to members of the "Bonefire Pact" who in turn report to "the Chaos Boss". This "Chaos Boss" is probably a metahuman by merit of technology, and according to rumor may be the son of F. C. Kelvin, who had no powers but did possess a stash of dangerous technologies that were stolen from private labs. Despite Kelvin's apprehension and later death of a heart attack while in Deepwind Penitentiary, several of his most powerful devices were never recovered, and may be in the gang leader's possession.

Most of the gang's arson squads are young punks looking to rebel; with their relatively careful planning and armament of handguns, knives, and molotov cocktails, they can provide a challenge for inexperienced metahumans, but can usually be handled by the police. Those supervising weapons modification and dealing, setting fire to government buildings, and organizing police ambushes are usually tougher; they may have access to rocket propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, and improvised explosive devices, and are capable of giving supers a run for their money and providing the cops with serious trouble. Members of the Bonefire Pact and their guards are tough to find and tougher to bring down, with access to proximity mines, armored vehicles, plastic explosives, flamethrowers, and more. Tracking down the Chaos Boss himself would be an epic venture indeed, and defeating him would earn the good graces of the CCPD or considerable respect from the criminal underworld.

The Ghasts: The ghosts of the Bannock Indians, disturbed by the settlers of Citadel Creek, were said to haunt the town for many years, but all reports of their supposed activity faded away by the beginning of the twentieth century. A few ambitious reporters with nothing better to do interviewed those who were old enough to have seen the hauntings and searched for the burial ground, but were all were unable to find it. The stories were almost entirely forgotten until, during the rebuilding in the aftermath of the rain of Kallam fleet debris, workers attempting to mend broken sewer pipes mysteriously went missing. The police were stumped; no bodies emerged, nor any ransom notes. The victims were both male and female, of all races and varied ages. It was eventually concluded that a demented serial killer haunted the area and somehow evaded all searches, disposing of the bodies by cremation or something similar.

Workers were placed under armed guard, and the attacks stopped. All was soon forgotten, and reconstruction efforts went on. Six months later, however, a store owned by a man of native American ancestry was burglarized. The police responded quickly, and two of the culprits, covered from head to toe in newspaper with holes for sight and wielding bits of rebar and pipe, were apprehended. Both, when unmasked, looked around blearily and replied that they had no idea where they were or how they had gotten there. When their histories were checked, it was revealed that both were workers who had gone missing in the reconstruction incident. The police, suspecting some sort of new mind control drug, kept an eye out for similar burglaries, and were rewarded for their patience a week later. This time, however, a softly shining figure accompanied the newspaper-clad robbers. As the police revealed themselves, instructing their cornered quarries to drop their weapons and surrender, the shining figure slipped into the ground and vanished. The spot was examined; no sewer tunnels ran beneath it, and the ground was intact.

All five of those captured had been sewer workers, like the first two, and all had no memory of what had happened. In a press interview, one of the victims remarked that it had all been a "ghastly experience", and the media ran with it, calling the mysterious gang "The Ghasts". The story soon dropped when nothing happened for two months, but resurged when an area at the eastern edge of Citadel Creek a ways north of the Elk River, classified as a Yellow district and under reconstruction, suddenly suffered a massive ghostly onslaught. The district, which had been razed almost entirely to the ground by the fall of the Kallam fleet, was inhabited by hundreds of volunteer and professional workers, who looked up to see a vast group of iridescent Indians out of a wild west film marching toward them. The Indians paid no heed to the volunteers or any of the obstructions, and instead set up ghostly teepees among the ruins. Every one of the workers suddenly sought out newspaper and clothed themselves in it before setting up an encampment of their own among the ruins.

Since no one lived in the district at the time, the only victims were the workers, but they were still innocent people. This, combined with a lack of police manpower and reluctance to call the military in so close to a populated area, has kept the area (now a Red district called Bannock Grove) from being overrun by the forces of the law. The newspaper-clad workers fiercely defend their territory's borders with a twenty four-hour guard and handcrafted bows and arrows. Though not trained to fight, the same force controlling them seems to bolster their strength and aim, making them moderate opponents that can keep police intrusions back. Occasionally they head out from their territory in small hunting parties, burglarizing stores that sell Bannock artifacts as well as museums that display them. Those who manage to penetrate the Ghast defensive line find a far deadlier foe than brainwashed workers awaiting them; the ghosts of the Bannock will pause in their hunting of ghostly deer and cooking of ghostly meat to unleash powerful nature magics upon their foes, wrapping them in vines or striking them with lightning. These powers, along with their invulnerability to almost everything, make them highly dangerous opponents.

Besides attempting to steal artifacts and occasionally kidnapping someone to bring into their fold, the Ghasts also make sorties to seek out feral dog packs. The animals, banding together on the mean streets after abandonment by their owners, attack without mercy and have been known to kill and eat incautious tourists that walk down the wrong alley, but around the Ghasts they are quiet and submissive, meekly returning to Bannock Grove with them. The dog packs are often unleashed as a distraction during a burglary or as a second line of defense if perimeter sentries are being defeated. All of this collected evidence points to a single consciousness controlling dogs, men, and ghosts alike; this being's exact goals are unknown, but it is clearly powerful. Some suggest that it is The Dominator, whose body was never found after his supposed death in 1969, while others suspect a much more primal, ancient, and terrible force.

Southriver Assassins: Concentrated in the docks south of the Elk River, now considered a Red district, the Southriver Assassins are not, in fact, assassins. Their bug business is drug pushing, particularly their home-brewed drug "deathspike", a highly addictive compound that causes catastrophic damage to the frontal lobe of the brain. Since the frontal lobe controls judgement, it becomes almost impossible to resist becoming addicted after even a single dose, and addicts are lobotomized for the rest of their lives whether they manage to stay clean or not. Predictably, the Assassins do not care; every victim can easily become a source of steady cash flow or, if out of money, criminal favors. Though poorly armed by comparison to many other gangs, their experimentation with illegal compounds has created unstable minor metahumans to ensure that they are more than strong enough to defend their turf.

The drug running business that is the heart of the Assassins' enterprise is run entirely out of their turf in the southern docks. Within battered old warehouses they use their secret formula to create deathspike, then move their cargo by boat or truck to yellow zones across the city. It is unloaded in gang safehouses and given out to individual dealers, who are allowed to keep a mere fifteen percent of the sales and shot if they keep more, encouraging them to sell as much as possible. Each dealer is accompanied by two armed bodyguards, whose visible presence usually discourages other gangs from trying to attack the dealers unless they can do so in force. At the end of the shift, the dealers head back to the safehouses and surrender the money, then are given their cut. Many are addicts themselves, and elect to take their payments in the form of deathspike; their superiors are only too happy to oblige.

The Assassins have a stranglehold on the drug trade in Citadel Creek, and it earns them no friends. They occasionally deal with the Bomb Squad in order to get access to superior weaponry, but the Bomb Squad sees the southern docks as an ideal base of operations for their illegal gun modifications, and relationships between the two groups are tense. Most other gangs simply attack the Assassins wherever and whenever possible. Because of this, the gang turned to a bizarre but effective tactic; modifying deathspike to give to their own men. The results that survived the transformation became stronger and tougher, but their brain activities were almost entirely suspended; they had to be told to walk, to shoot, and sometimes to breathe if they forgot. These "skullcrushers", accompanied by a handler to direct them, defend the Assassins' turf fiercely and are sometimes hired out as mercenaries.

The leadership of the Southriver Assassins is no secret; a man called The Alchemist, responsible for the creation of deathspike and its modified form, has publicly admitted to leading the gang and even taunted their police with their inability to reach him. Safe in his fortified house in the southern docks, guarded by skullcrushers wielding chainguns and five and a half foot swords, The Alchemist plots new ways to expand his power and continue his proclaimed quest to seek immortal life. Police informants report that he is undeniably insane, but with a dangerous cunning that makes him a terrible foe indeed. Bringing him down would either cripple the drug trade in Citadel Creek or allow whoever defeated him to seize control of it...

Basic members of the Southriver Assassins are mere punks armed with handguns and switchblades. They are commonly assigned to protect dealers, and are not likely to pose much of a threat to metahumans. Metas may meet their match in the skullcrushers, however, for though they have become impossibly stupid they can lift cars and are capable of slicing through concrete with the massive swords they carry. It is suspected that The Alchemist has even more bizarre and sinister creations that he can unleash upon those who begin to target his operations, but this cannot be confirmed, as none who have gotten so close have survived. The Alchemist himself, if confronted, is powerful even without his armies of mutated goons; his chemical flasks can have many effects upon a target, and none are pretty.

The Danger Outfit: The Danger Outfit isn't a gang; it's a business. It supplies criminals and the police alike with one simple service: metahuman hunting. Established in 1991 by disgruntled KGB agents after the official fall of the Soviet Union, the organization made a beeline for the city where supers were illegal and bolstered its ranks with the discontent. They turned versatility into their main weapon; if a situation demands magic, they have sorcerous adepts. If a situation demands technology, they can field it from a vast and customizable stockpile of expensive goods. They have official permits to operate in Yellow districts so long as they don't target government-authorized metahumans, and often take contracts in the Red districts, where they can do just that without any legal ramifications due to a cleverly-worded agreement with the government. Like many hunters, they live for the thrill of the hunt; and the pile of cash in exchange for a body bag that comes afterward, of course.

As a unit of mercenaries, The Danger Outfit doesn't control any sort of criminal trade; it doesn't need to. Instead, it sends out its agents to infiltrate as many of the power groups in the city as possible, and meets directly with those it fails to infiltrate. They wait for a metahuman to cause trouble for the group, then offer their services for a massive fee. If this is refused, and it usually is, they begin perpetrating crimes of their own and cleverly passing them off as the work of the troublesome super. They return, and demand even more money, by which point the group is usually forced to accept. At the scene of the meta's next attack, the Outfit attacks with everything they have to avoid looking weak in front of their employers, and this massive assault usually brings the meta down. If it does not, they track the meta covertly, digging up as much information as possible and striking whenever their target is most vulnerable. To date, no meta has ever escaped the follow-up strike except by leaving Citadel Creek entirely.

Smart groups have learned to seek the Outfit before the Outfit comes to them, and pay the first price they are offered, but most are slow in that regard. The reputation of the mercenaries preceeds them even in the most curious of places; they remain the only group to have made non-hostile contact with The Ghasts. The greatest problem heroes face when fighting these mercs is that they simply cannot be arrested; the terms of their agreement with the government effectively put them above the law while operating against metahumans in Citadel Creek, and even if confronted with overwhelming evidence of illegal contract-taking the Outfit has one of the best teams of lawyers in the United States. They also have a powerhouse of a propaganda program; heroes and villains alike that target them or are targeted by them are suddenly portrayed in posters across the city, radio announcements, and television news as public menaces that citizens should be willing to sacrifice anything to destroy.

The group is not led by a single individual, but by three rugged survivors of the original KGB founders. The first, Ana Chausova, is an accomplished battlemage who draws power from the void between world and forces the terrible emptiness into frigid pillars of ice to hurl at her enemies. Her job is simple; when a meta takes on the Outfit and has some success, she hunts down and kills that meta without mercy. The second, Ivan Kiritskov, is an accomplished scryer who uses both his magical talent and his ability to tap into government databases to oversee and direct the Outfit's network of spies and infiltrators. The third, Oriel Seputzk, wields a high-tech alloyed sword that crackles with electric current and wears a prototype "probability sheath" that turns certain hits into near misses but overloads after more than a few minutes of use. He prefers to get up close and stare into the fading eyes of his prey as he guts them, and rarely takes interest in the affairs of the company as a whole. All three are highly dangerous and protected by law, making them very deadly enemies to have.

The Outfit doesn't exactly have footsoldiers; they have no territory to patrol save their heavily-guarded downtown offices. When deployed to hunt a meta, their basic troops are like more lethal police; armored in kevlar and equipped with rifles that fire orbs containing concentrated sulfuric acid. These men and women are supported by two types of specialists. First comes the adepts, whose job is to counterspell the magical attacks of foes that possess them and use darts of nether energy to pound those that do not. Also armored in kevlar, they are unarmed, using their magic in place of a conventional weapon. The other specialist type, the "circuit breakers", wear kevlar and wield rifles that overload electronics, rendering technological devices useless. Against non-technological foes, the jolt delivered by the rifles can be incapacitating or even lethal. Though these three make a good team against most threats, the mercenaries recognize that metas are clever and may be able to defeat or circumvent these troops types. Like SWAT, they employ crack snipers to provide cover fire, but with only hollow-point bullets for maximum damage. They also bring in air support via modified Blackhawk gunships and ground support via technicals (pickup trucks with mounted machine guns or missile launchers in the truck bed).

If you look at all that's going on with the Pd vs. the 3 Gangs..and their will probably be more appearing gang wise i see it as very equal force here . Thank you Big P for your work on these gangs.





The Brawlers: A Group of Underground Fighters that have an agenda to Fight the best of the best. There Leader is thought to be an Ex-hero. They are more of the grey side of the law...nothing has been proved that they have done anything illegal but that might change anyday now for they seem to have been more Visisous on there recruiting of memebers having large Brawls in bars. Usually you can tell one is a Brawler by a Claw Mark Tattoos under there eyes. The Brawlers usually have fights chargeing commission to enter and watch to normal civilians, they have been known to be hired to be body guards to diffrent indviduals..for they are for hire to anyone and everyone, just so they might find a good fight.

This is an idea and can be elborated on.........

Also I forgot to mention whether or not the Academy is going to be around in present time . That would be very interesting to add to the Roleplay if they are still active. ninja

I was relying on the fact that only 1/4 of the city is regularly patrolled by the police, and that there's one police faction and nine factions that are against them, but if people feel that they're still overpowered, I'm willing to scale them back.

The Academy is still around; they'll be detailed when I get to writing up the city map and district descriptions.