#140
Pre-Game E-mail
Before the first Forte 2000 ran, I sent out this e-mail to all the players, just to let them know what's happening in the Seattle they're going to be playing in, drop some story points, etc. Wow, we didn't have this handy e-mail thing back when we were playing the first Forte!
It's early October. Big
surprise, it's raining a lot in Seattle. The dockworker's strike is still going on
on the west coast, with cargo being held up all the way from San Diego to Seattle while
they try to come to a labor agreement. Those oranges just aren't going to keep!
Captain Compass, good pal of the latest Forte team, has been
patrolling the waterfront area to make sure no one's trying to swipe any goods. So,
too, is Compass' wannabe sidekick. Some guy in speed boat calling himself Coast
Guardian is trying to follow in the Captain's footsteps, and has been seen
tooling around the Sound. His foiled-a-crime to got-in-the-way-and-annoyed-everyone
ratio is about even.
Dyna Girl, the daughter of Electro Man, has recently
moved back to Seattle and has been hanging around with Forte. She started using her
powers a while back (long story), but chose to move away from Seattle while she got her
hero career going. She signed up with Armor Security in L.A., and
has made quite a name for herself that way. She's extremely popular, and the people
of Seattle are very excited to see her hanging around their maritime town. While
with Armor, she became good pals with Samantha Parker, a.k.a. Nightsable,
who spent a lot of time around Armor when she was dating Franklin Richards
(who doesn't actually work for them, but hangs around them a lot because they work out of
the Baxter Building).
After the recent tragic events surrounding Forte (see "The Storm"), Seahawk
has taken a leave of absence from the team, and is currently off in Boston with his
ex-wife and son, as his son is seeing a specialist while recovering from his injuries.
Mayor Cuccia is enjoying his second term as Seattle's leading politician.
He'll be the master of ceremonies for an upcoming salute to Forte, another chance
for the city to thank its hero team (the people of Seattle never seem to get tired of
doing so). Electro Man, former Forte member and current curator of the Forte Museum,
has organized the event, and hopes to get as many surviving Forte members together as
possible for the big media event. Didn't they all just have to see each other at Vanguard's
wedding?
Forte has recently found itself in the middle of an escalating mob war. Things are
getting ugly, as rival families are beginning to hire on villains to make their hits that
much bigger and more spectacular...which is starting to leave a lot of innocents hurt and
killed in the crossfire.
Jack Parker—Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editor and best-selling
author (for "Invasion", the definitive work on the Saoshyant attack on Earth,
and "For a Day or a Lifetime: The Forte Story", the highly renowned
super-team biography)—has made a lot of enemies with has latest book, "Foreign
and Domestic", an eye-opening expose on the American intelligence community and its
involvement with dark plots, super-villains and rogue agencies over the years. He's
been seen on many news programs defending his work and his person.
The WB's Tuesday night action show, "Forte", created and produced by Joss
Whedon, just keeps soaring in the ratings. Its fictionalized exploits
(based loosely on real events) of popular Forte heroes is immensely popular. A
big-screen version is being discussed. Meanwhile, Tom Hanks has
made mention of wanting to bring the real Forte story to television, and has plans for a
12-part mini-series to be produced for HBO, based on the Jack Parker book.