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Wednesday, February 9, 2022

I is for Indigo Montana in the 2022 Campaign Creation Challenge

Indigo Montana was born in Haven, but moved to her namesake state when she was young, and from there mastered all the arts of the cattle ranch. When she learned her full ancestry – that her father came from an illegitimate child of the Colt family – that general interest focused to guns. She became one of the world's best  sharpshooters, making the US Olympic team for rifle and pistol at an early age. She competed in the Rio Olympics and placed 5th, but the more she learned about the Colt family legacy, the more she wanted to make sure that the guns went back to making everyone equal, not letting people dominate one another with fear.



She threw herself into the skills she thought she'd need for her crusade – detective work, custom firearm manufacturing, vehicle design – and moving back to Haven where it all began. Originally, she had planned to be a costumed hero under the name "Colt" but on her first case a few things happened: she uncovered a conspiracy of the city's criminals and elites set to take total control of the city. In fighting them she befriended a Yale Medical bioscientist August Adler, who gave her a treatment that increased her endurance to superhuman, nearly regenerative levels. This was ultimately the thing that saved her life in the explosive final confrontation.

Her being pulled from the wreckage and feted as a hero kind of did for the secret identity, and now she's just Indigo Montana, a licensed private investigator and bounty hunter. The experimental process that boosted her endurance has partially worn off, so that she's tougher than she was before but no longer superhuman. Having taken that the Olympics are off limits for her from now on, but that's ok. She's found something better than gold medals.

Creation Notes

Woke up and decided I wanted to make a super-archer, and remembered that as a kid I had won one of those plastic bow sets for selling enough copies of OAT magazine and practiced day and night (that’s right, one whole day and one whole night, I was dedicated) to be the Indigo Arrow, since the bow was blue. Plus it would be a good way to showcase how V&V could mold random rolls to a concept rather than vice versa. The dice were super kind with well above average stats and two (TWO!) rolls to roll twice again on the backgrounds chart, so I had everything I needed for a two fisted adventurer before I even touched the powers dice. Solid skill rolls with a better than normal Heightened Endurance and the very versatile Heightened Senses that became an ad hoc Heightened Expertise, and a somewhat pathetic Speed Bonus that I vowed to get rid of.  Her weakness of Reduced Endurance was more than compensated for by the Heightened Endurance, but I liked the idea of working in that she as actual superhuman endurance for a time and is now merely top of human potential.

The device tables gifted me with Devitalization Ray and Vibratory Powers, both of which had enough options to give me an array of specialized arrowheads, dropping the 'move through solids' aspect off the power. That left Animated Servant which… just didn't fit. I kept coming up with possible robots or android companions, maybe a MCU Falcon style drone, but I've already had a lot of vehicles and allies and support staff in this. But that Speed Bonus as a grapnel (my second favorite add from the Mighty Protectors set) is just classic street level hero, and giving her that 5 story high vertical 'leap' looked a lot better than any robot companion. So welcome back Speed Bonus.

The problem was that there weren't any setting hooks for an archer in my Haven outline. But I also have a fondness for Western gimmick super heroes, and waaaay back in the misty realm of 1989 I had a bounty hunter NPC named Indigo Montana in a short-lived game. Seeing her with a contemporary design Colt revolving rifle and six shooters, with lots of specialized bullets? That worked. And so we have our 3rd hero in the Haven environs.

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