The Initiatives
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Heroes. Metahumans, supers, spandexers, the Tights and Capes crowd. These are the heroes you see on the nightly news. The heroes that saved the day during the Praetorian War and the Rikti Invasion. The superheroes that fly the skies of the Rikti War Zone, or travel to other dimensions or via Ourobos, saving the world.
These are the heroes that take on Arachnos, Emperor Cole’s minions, super-paramilitary groups or vast monsters and villains of incalculable powers and dangers. These are the Icons that the citizens see, admire, and look up and point to as they fly, walk or speed by. Supergroups like Freedom Force, Longbow, and any of hundred of such organizations.
And then, there are the Initiatives. The Initiatives are not that sort of hero.
Most heroes have in the last few years moved on to greater threats than gangs, bank robberies or convenience store crashing. They have bigger fish to fry than street muggings, domestic violence and simple organized crime. Certainly, they attend to such threats early in their careers, but ever notice how they “grow out of” that sort of thing? And after a while, as they become incarnates, or perhaps just that strong, it all becomes really rather beneath them.
While others save the world, the Initiatives save their neighborhood. While other groups have flyers, rocket packs and cutting edge technologies, the Initiative make do with junk they can salvage and cobble together, use public transportation and, when they really need to get somewhere in a hurry fall back on their 1985 Yugo.
No bright and shiny bases for them! The Initiatives squat in an abandoned factory, having taken it by force from the Outcasts that previously lived there. Sure, its dingy, the floors flood when it rains, and has to be periodically defended in the ongoing turf wars with the local gangs – but its theirs, and they are perversely proud of the fact they owe absolutely nobody for it.
The Initiatives are unsanctioned, and while they work with PPD from time to time, they are fiercely independent, disdaining the superhero crowd with a chip on their shoulder the size of a 2x4. Their only mission? To fight crime, and defend their turf on their terms. Save the world? They are interested in saving their neighborhood – so that anyone can walk the streets again safely.
After all, who else will?
The Initiatives are not bright and shiny heroes, in tights and capes – they are Lost, street kids and social outcasts, local metas or just plain folks that want their little corner of the world to be what it can be. And they do it with whatever they can scrounge, beg, borrow or steal!
Contents |
Initiatives History
A recently formed group, the Initiatives are only a few months old having formed in November 2011 and aside from their ongoing rivalry with the local street gangs ( who regard them as a gang of metas, rather than a super group) they have had little impact on the city in a significant way as yet. However, they are beginning to get a name for themselves in Kings Row and as a major thorn in the side of the gang population, as well as the Vazhilok to a lesser degree.
They cooperate with the local police precincts, but only grudgingly, and the local PPD for new regards them as a useful but somewhat unpredictable ally. PPD estimation is that while they have similar goals they have deep issues with authority figures, a theory that's very accurate. Officer Berkly is attempting to liaison with the PPD and the The Initiatives ( and is also acting not only as an undercover but as a discreet means of keeping them in line when they stray from acceptable protocol,which is frequently enough to exacerbate any ulcers he's nursing)
Locations
The Initiatives base their operations, if their activities could be graced with the term, primarily in Kings Row, Independence Port and Skyway City. While they engage in a number of actions elsewhere, these are the parts of Paragon City they can be typically found. However, of them all, its Kings Row they call home.
And, in Kings Row, home is the long abandoned Cockrum-Claremont Paint and Plating factory. Formerly a plating facility that applied zinc, chromium and other plating processes to automobile and aircraft parts, over half the plant was also devoted to paint and other industrial anti - corrosion products. It had been evacuated in the first Rikti Invasion, and when the smoke had cleared the factory had suffered extensive damage. Never rebuilt, the company moved its operations elsewhere and the building and machinery lay in ruins, an eyesore that was both too expensive for them to clean up and too large to justify rebuilding. Most of the factory floors are flooded every time it rains, a soup of old industrial chemicals mixing into a toxic mess, the rest of the building filled with massive machinery, chemical mixing pots, holding tanks and banks of control systems that are slowly moldering into rust. Since then its lain empty aside from squatting gangs and occasional Clockwork scrounging the old factories machinery for parts.
The Initiatives claimed the old plant as their base by the simple means of going in and chasing out the gang currently squatting there ( at the time, a local chapter of Outcasts) and they still periodically find themselves defending the place against the Clockwork and neighborhood gangs. They live in squatter fashion, living quarters contrived from the old offices, and atop machine spaces and catwalks. Flooded toxic lakes are avoided by stacked desks, creating makeshift walkways and causeways of old office furnishings, crates, and chairs. Their common areas would be familiar to any Lost that wandered in, and the base really resembles little more than a hobo's camp.
Resources
Most super groups have a wide variety of sources of income and resources to draw from - the Initiatives do not, and often take a sort of perverse pride in their lack of such things. They make do with what they can get and their self reliance is a common factor among all their members. They beg,borrow and flat out steal much of what they have, but they are on the whole legitimate, if creative.
Food is provided by the neighborhood shops and food banks, and they get regular if varied and not always fresh supplies from the local farmers market in exchange for chasing off shoplifters and gangs. While they won't rob people, if they break up a gang drug deal or take down a rage lab and find the dealers stash of money, well....the police won't find it on the crime scene when they arrive!
These monies seldom go by way of the police department. The Initiatives will put some aside for expenses, and the remainder usually gets anonymously delivered to either the local Salvation Army, the local church or the food bank donation box. But they aren't angels, and sometimes some of the money goes astray, into a party here or a food feast there. Occasionally ransoms or bribes are paid - the Initiatives are all about what works at the street level and by the book crime fighting isn't in their game plan. As such, they find themselves cut off from more legitimate sources of funding, and so they collect anything they can.
They do not have access to the latest in technologies or teleporters ( their base has none), and aside from individual powers their only means of transportation aside from the trams is an old, long abused but still running 20 seat school bus of questionable provenance and a 1985 Yugo decades past its prime.
Members
Cirrocco Jones
Cirrocco Jones is a expatriate London girl, a cockney East Ender through and through. Earlier this year she came to America on holiday. She was in Paragon City in the most mundane of pastimes – a tourist, seeing the sights after visiting New York. She had always wanted to see the City of Heroes, and was in a tour bus in Steel Canyon when the Praetorian Invasion began. Stranded in the US without a current visa ( and after losing her parents in the Praetorian attack on London) she fell through the cracks of homeland security and Immigration Control, and with nothing to go home to and no money to speak of, she became an involuntary resident.
Now she lives in, and fights for Kings Row, her adopted home. She formed the Initiatives, gathering around her anyone in similar circumstances or simply a like mind, and while she’d be the last to admit it fiercely plays mother hen to her wayward chicks. Fiercely protective of her new family, she has a marked inability to communicate well and may be brittle, abrasive and often foul mouthed, but she is their staunchest defender.
Akiko
Akiko Hara keeps her last name hidden from the rest of the group, preferring to be called "Aki" instead. She'll say that she's been in Orphanages and in and out of homes for so long that she no longer remembers her birth families name. This is not so.
Reasons aside, she isn't lying. She did spend a lot of time -in- orphanages, but not necessarily on the roster for adoption. And the homes she was in were more temporary houses. She ended up spending more time on the streets than indoors, and this lead to a rowdy reputation. But she kept a watchful eye out for any sudden changes, because as soon as they popped up, she disappeared. Not one quite knows what she's running from. Just that if they catch up to her, her whole life goes to the hellhole.
Gerry Maher
While young and egotistical, Gerry has proven himself as a skilled combatant in both ranged and melee combat. The Metahuman son to a Provisional IRA figurehead, Gerry had been trained since childhood to enter and, ideally, become the lead of a special meta-powered division of the IRA in its development stages.
While what caused Gerry to defect from his father and the IRA as a whole remains unclear, Gerry has made it a point to show his former "Allies" that he intends to use his powers to stop them and anyone like them from causing any further harm.
Moira O'Flaherty
The daughter of an Irish immigrant and something of a figurehead--and target--of a mysterious cult, Moira is a friendly and chatty individual when not in harsh circumstances. She's rather nonchalant about her magical abilities--blessings from the goddess of the cult she escaped from, which she shares with her older fraternal twin brother, Galvin. A relatively recent arrival to Paragon City, at just over a year, she's still adjusting to the streets, but has already found an interesting kinship with the Initiatives that her previous "sisterhood" lacked.
Galvin O'Flaherty
The Fraternal twin of Moira O'Flaherty, Galvin embodies the power of the same goddess that has blessed Moira since birth. Galvin's powers, while similar to his sisters, are more focused on his physical capabilities, allowing him to enshroud himself in darkness to terrorize and confuse his enemies while at the same time enhancing his physical strength and agility to highly elevated levels.
While blunt and straightforward, Galvin can be a brave fighter on the field and often puts others before himself in order to assure the safety of others. Rarely the chatty type, Galvin is happy to let his louder sister to do the talking while he lets his actions say everything he needs to get across.
John "Hunter" Berkeley
A former Praetorian police officer now working with the PPD, John took interest in the Initiatives after investigating strange activity in what was originally thought to be an abandoned warehouse. Curiosity and pity piqued by what he found, he set up an undercover investigation to keep an eye on them.
