{"id":2475,"date":"2014-05-15T07:00:37","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T13:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/?p=2475"},"modified":"2014-05-05T15:07:59","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T21:07:59","slug":"better-angels-the-cat-o-nine-tails-vessel-of-the-villainous-nine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcdream.com\/home\/2014\/05\/better-angels-the-cat-o-nine-tails-vessel-of-the-villainous-nine\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Angels: The Cat O\u2019 Nine Tails, Vessel of the Villainous Nine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cat-o-Nine-Tails\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Written by Greg Stolze and illustrated by Kurt Komoda, \u00a9 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n

The air\/land\/sea assault craft of the notorious Villainous Nine is a vaguely feline black-and-purple vessel roughly the size and shape of one of those ridiculous stretch Hummer limo-SUVs.\u00a0 The four-foot-tall tires under the stylized wheel wells that look like the limbs of a cat poised to strike propel it at rates of up to 100 mph on the road, and a respectable 65 over rough terrain like, probably, your home.\u00a0 Those same wheels rotate downward to house jet turbines that can lift it, let it hover, or send it through the skies at a top speed of 200 mph.\u00a0 On the water, the tires ratchet outwards and up while pontoons descend and let it skate along looking, for all the world, like a cat recoiling from a puddle. But cats on puddles don\u2019t run at 150 mph.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s the \u2018cat\u2019 element.\u00a0 What about the nine tails?\u00a0 Well, one of them, in the middle, is the rear jet port that provides forward thrust.\u00a0 The other eight are articulated tentacles, four on each side of the jet, tipped with grasping pincers and, often, with some kind of ordinary machine gun or cannon mounted. The Villainous Nine change the weapons up quite often, depending on the needs of the heist\/score\/atrocity.<\/p>\n

So far, it just gets the Nine where they\u2019re going (albeit in style), with weapons turrets that aren\u2019t anything much more complicated than the snake-like robots being built at Carnegie Melon University.\u00a0 The unholy devilishness<\/em> of the device is that it\u2019s actually cheaper to maintain than a house cat.\u00a0 It runs on water and doesn\u2019t even need a cat box.\u00a0 Moreover, it gets almost fifty miles to the gallon, flying, driving or sailing the seas.\u00a0 Any oil exec would tell you this is clearly, clearly<\/em> the work of Hell itself.<\/p>\n

Statted up as a device, the Cat O\u2019 Nine Tails is a Major Environmental Change, so it cost its maker (Brian \u201cBrains\u201d Ornichowski) 3 Generosity.\u00a0 It mimics normal vehicles (which would be minor) except for the fueling gimmick, which pushes it up to Major.\u00a0 Its flaw is one level of \u201cBulky,\u201d making it big enough for all nine to travel in it. (Ornichowski drives, usually making Sly <\/strong>Cowardice <\/em>or Endurance <\/em>rolls.) The guns and tentacles are really just chrome for ordinary technology, usually offering +3 weapon Advantage to Sly <\/strong>Cruelty <\/em>rolls. Each passenger has access to one armed \u2018tail.\u2019<\/p>\n

Activation<\/strong>:<\/em> Sly <\/strong>Cowardice<\/em> or Endurance<\/em><\/p>\n

Effects<\/strong>:<\/em><\/p>\n