Los Angeles
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|[[File:Blank US Map (states only).png{{#if:||thumb}}|{{#if:300|300|400}}px{{#ifeq:http://worm.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Map_PRT_Dep_US%7CFile:%7C%7C%7Clink=http://worm.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Map_PRT_Dep_US}}%7Calt=A map of PRT departments in the US, with quarantine zones in red.|]]
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{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|New York=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Los Angeles=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Houston=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Chicago=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Philadelphia=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Phoenix=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|San Antonio=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|San Diego=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|San Jose=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Austin=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|San Francisco=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Detroit=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Seattle=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Washington=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Boston=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Baltimore=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Las Vegas=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Raleigh=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Minneapolis=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Anchorage=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Brockton Bay=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Qzone=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Qzone=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Qzone=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Qzone|Ellisburg=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Qzone=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Qzone=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All|Qzone=|}}{{#switch:Los Angeles|All=|}}Los Angeles is a major city on the West coast of the United States of America.
Description
Like New York, Los Angeles' cape culture has a focus on destructive might, with parahumans who can take down buildings considered the heavy hitters.<ref>“And it’s required. Vegas is one of the worst cities for sheer number of villains,” Rime said. Her entire demeanor was rigid, which maybe fit in a way with her ice powers. “Vegas employs a group of unsponsored thinkers and tinkers to monitor the venues, much like the PRT does with the economy, ensuring that everything is above-board, that everything is being conducted fairly and that the numbers add up. Vegas changed as a result, developed a different cape dynamic. In Los Angeles or New York, it’s the people who can blow down buildings that are seen as true ‘heavy hitters’. Here, they’re trying to game the system, and the heroes are trying to game them. In Vegas, it’s thinkers, tinkers and strangers who rule the underworld.” - Excerpt from Drone 23.2</ref> Unlike New York, Los Angeles provides very little elbow room for local villains: Large amounts of visiting heroes, the iron grip of the Elite, and the hard-hitting Protectorate teams under Alexandria's command leave very little room to maneuver. As such, villains active in Los Angeles are either insignificant, extremely careful, or spend only a small amount of their time within the city.<ref name="itinerant">As a setting, between Alexandria's hard-hitting teams, vast numbers of visiting heroes going out to stretch their legs, and the general iron grip of the Elite, LA provides very little elbow room for local villains. The ones that do exist are such small fry that they barely count, are very successful and very careful (to the extent you probably wouldn't know about them until you'd been around for a few years) or are itinerants who only spend 1/20th or less of their time in LA and are only considered LA villains because they're so rooted in the villain ratings game and flash and pizazz. - reddit comment by Wildbow.</ref>
After the Endbringer attack in 2013,<ref name="endbringer_date"/> Santa Fe Springs and neighboring districts were pronounced uninhabitable due to the traps riddling it.<ref>They’d figured out how to fight Tohu and Bohu during the Los Angeles attack. The trick was responding quickly, stopping them before Tohu had her masks and Bohu managed her influence. They’d won, for lack of a better term, managing the fight without the casualties they’d seen in the prior attack, but they’d still lost a chunk of the city in the time it took them to beat and batter the towering Bohu into submission. Now Santa Fe Springs and all of the neighboring districts were uninhabitable, due to the traps that riddled it, the way the infrastructure had been completely and totally compromised. - Excerpt from Interlude 26a</ref>
Role in the story
On the 17th of May, 2013, Los Angels was attack by Tohu and Bohu, were Tohu made use of the powers of Alexandria, Phir Sē and Lung. The Endbringers were driven back by Eidolon and the Guild,<ref name="endbringer_date">Los Angeles, May 17th, 2013 // Tohu Bohu
Notes: Victory by Eidolon/The Guild. Tohu selects Alexandria, Phir Se, Lung.
Target/Consequence: unknown. - Excerpt from Scarab 25.6</ref> with the use of some sort weapons similar to the one used in New Delhi.<ref>“A pre-emptive attack,” Narwhal said, her voice quiet. “If it provokes them to lash out, well, at least it’s not a coordinated attack, and at least it’s at a point in time when Scion’s busy elsewhere. The Simurgh is standing still. We could hit her with something like what we used in New Delhi or Los Angeles.” - Excerpt from Cockroaches 28.3</ref> This attack set the stage for Jack Slash, who traveled to the area warped by Bohu with some of the Slaughterhouse Nine-Thousand.<ref>“And the last group headed to Los Angeles.”
“Jack’s group?” Golem asked.
“Yes,” Weaver said. “He brought the Siberian, Hookwolf, Gray Boy, all eight Harbingers, and there are Psychosomas and Nyxes. One or two others I didn’t place.”
“Los Angeles?” Chevalier asked. “What area?”
“That area,” Defiant answered, looking at the computer. - Excerpt from Interlude 26a</ref> He was defeated and put in time-loop by Gray Boy,<ref>The Siberian leaped out of the fissure, then paced towards Jack.
Her hand stopped an inch away from him. She lowered it.
Jack had turned gray. Trapped, looped.
“Pathetic,” Gray Boy said. “Stupid, useless. I thought you’d do something interesting, but you made yourself prey, instead of the predator. If you’re going to be prey, I want you to be my prey.”
It dawned on Golem. Gray Boy froze him.
Foil’s screams continued, and were soon joined by Jack’s, as Gray Boy started using his knife, reaching within the field. - Excerpt from Interlude 26b</ref> but still managed to talk to Scion.<ref>“…I always hated the blank… slates,” Jack groaned the last word. His utterances were finding an odd cadence or rhythm between the gasps of pain, the fresh wounds that were actively criss-crossing his body, opening his stomach, his intestine being gripped and pulled through the wound as if by an invisible force.
The foam weighed him down, and in the midst of the complete and total darkness, he stared skyward.
“…Never that interesting…” He grunted. “Never created art, never… created variation... you’re worse than… most…”
High above, the entity listened. - Excerpt from Interlude 26</ref>
Government and heroic organizations
PRT
Los Angeles houses PRT Department 2,<ref>The largest 65 cities in the United States host individual departments as of 2012. They are numbered accordingly, in order of decreasing size.
2 LA - PRT Master Reference</ref> which is the second largest PRT department.<ref name="branding">Los Angeles is Alexandria's city, and is the second largest department. It features the largest branding department of the PRT, and serves/administrates countless other branding departments and offices across the country. For just about half of the towns and cities in the US that don't have their own branding department, the LA office will get the photos, notes on powers, names and other details and will have teams handle the costume and projection of the individual. There's a constant stream of people coming and people going just for the seminars and classes and rehabilitation on the branding front. LA is a machine on this front. - reddit comment by Wildbow.</ref> As one the top departments, it has a dedicated role: it's responsible for branding:<ref>The PRT is big, and being big, it has an awful lot of places to stow the more problematic capes. The top departments have individualized roles where they focus on a specific dimension of PRT activities, whether it's overall administration (New York), branding (LA), or training (Houston). - reddit comment by Wildbow.</ref> not only does Los Angeles have the largest branding department, it also serves and administrates countless other branding departments and offices across the United States. For about half of the towns and cities in the US that don't have a branding department, Los Angeles will get the photos, notes on powers, names and other details and will have teams handle the costume and projection of the individual. There's a constant stream of people coming going for the seminars, classes and rehabilitation on the branding front.<ref name="branding"/> It's headed by director Knox.<ref name="Knox_Flambe">Director Knox, Note:
Auroch’s grades are slipping, necessitating that I send staff to the school, and oversight is starting to take note. Psych sessions are not helping as much as I hoped. We had an incident with a patrol, where Auroch second guessed her initial orders and agreed to move forward with an aggressive play as Flambé was arguing for. To say this is an error in judgement is putting it lightly; Flambé’s reckless tendencies and peculiar mental state are so well known that even the nine year old on our team would ignore his advice. Nobody was hurt, but I’ve suspended Auroch from her position as leader of the second LA Wards’ team. - PRT Quest (Anchorage)</ref>
The Protectorate
The second-largest Protectorate team in America,<ref name="Rime"/> large enough to have several teams covering different areas of the city, all administrated in a general sense by Alexandria.<ref>It's large enough that it has several Protectorate teams to cover different areas of the city, all administrated in a general sense by Alexandria. - reddit comment by Wildbow.</ref>
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Alexandria | Leader of the Los Angeles team and member of The Triumvirate, while also second in command of the Protectorate as a whole.<ref>Alexandria – Second in command of the Protectorate. Flies and has enhanced strength, a virtually invincible body, eidetic memory, and senses emotions. The triad of flight, strength and invincibility recurs often enough, in enough variations, that it’s often referred to as ‘the Alexandria package’. Runs the team based in Los Angeles. Member of the now-disbanded Triumvirate. - Cast (In Depth)</ref> She was treated for cancer as Rebecca Costa-Brown in Los Angeles, where she was approached by Doctor Mother,<ref>Tears had been harder to come by since the chemo had started. Most days, her eyes were red and itchy, her vision blurry, too dry to cry. But it seemed this occasion deserved them. For a long time, she lay on her side, staring out the window at the cityscape of Los Angeles, tears running sideways down her face, across the bridge of her nose and down to her ear, soaking her pillow. There was a sign that caught her eye, because it was so bright a yellow against its immediate background of blues and dusky purples. The classic logo of a fast food restaurant. - Excerpt from Interlude 15 (Donation Bonus #3)</ref> she became active as an independent hero in Los Angeles afterward.<ref>“She’s also one of my best yet,” the Doctor said. “I’ve heard of her,” Hero said. “Los Angeles?” Alexandria nodded. “You took down Strongarm and Mongler. It was impressive,” he said. “Thank you.” - Excerpt from Interlude 15 (Donation Bonus #3)</ref> |
| Rime | Appointed leader after the Echidna incident. Previously worked under Chevalier.<ref name="Rime">“Rime, team leader of Los Angeles,” Defiant said. Taking over for Alexandria, I thought. A cape with black hair in a blue skin-tight costume with fur. I recognized her from the Echidna event, the cape who made ice crystals. I remembered how she’d been following Chevalier’s orders. His second in command? It made sense he’d promote someone he knew to the second largest team in America. - Excerpt from Drone 23.1</ref> |
| Arbiter | Accompanied Rime to Las Vegas.<ref name="underlings"/> |
| Usher | Accompanied Rime to Las Vegas.<ref name="underlings"/> |
The Wards
Not much is known about the Los Angeles Wards, but they have at least two teams.<ref name="Knox_Flambe"/>
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Vantage | Team captain.<ref>“You may recognize some of the captains of the respective Wards teams. Jouster from New York, Vantage from Los Angeles, Tecton from Chicago and Hoyden from Austin. You know Clockblocker.” - Excerpt from Drone 23.1</ref> |
| Auroch | |
| Flambé | Known for his reckless tendencies and peculiar mental state.<ref name="Knox_Flambe"/> |
| Leister | A teenager in lightweight silver armor with blue cloth underneath, with wave-like designs.<ref name="trident">Leister was a teenager in lightweight silver armor with the edges molded into wave-like forms. Beneath the armor was blue cloth with a similar wave-like design embroidered on it. He held a trident, as ornate as his armor. As lightweight and sprightly as Prefab was a veritable tank. - Excerpt from Drone 23.2</ref> Wields an ornate trident,<ref name="trident"/> which he can stretch using his power.<ref>The others were helpless to assist me, due to the peculiarities of the Prince’s power, but they could direct their focus to Bambina and Starlet. Leister thrust out his trident, and it distorted, stretching the distance between himself and the two kid villains on the wall. He struck Starlet in the face with the shaft of the trident. - Excerpt from Drone 23.2</ref> Accompanied Vantage to Las Vegas.<ref name="underlings">“Counting coup?” Leister asked. He was the sole subordinate that Vantage had brought along. Rime, by contrast, had brought Usher and Arbiter from her team. Prefab from San Diego had shown up as well. - Excerpt from Drone 23.2</ref> |
| Unnamed nine year old | Mentioned by Knox to be smart enough to disregard Flambé's advice.<ref name="Knox_Flambe"/> |
Villainous organizations
The Elite
- Main article: The Elite
The Elite are active in Los Angeles, and keep little room for local villains,<ref name="itinerant"/> although their exact methods are unknown.<ref>Being on the West Coast, LA is caught up with the Elite, which is the second largest cape group in the US and the largest villain group, though it's villainy is ambiguous. I won't say much more, but they appear in brief in Worm. Long story short is that they snap up all of the rogues (ie. if Brockton Bay were on the west coast, Parian would be leveraged into joining one of the Elite's subsidiaries) and they control a lot of corporate 'hero' teams from behind the scenes. They're organized crime with an emphasis on organized and a varying emphasis on crime, depending on the city. - reddit comment by Wildbow.</ref>
Individuals
Bambina
- Main article: Bambina
Bambina spends less than five percent of her time in Los Angeles, but is rooted in the villain ratings game.<ref name="itinerant"/> She tries to grab ratings and rankings on top villain lists by taking action and showing off in other cities, and leverages the notability for back-alley sponsorship deals and merchandising.<ref name="bambina"/> She returns to Los Angeles in between her episodes, spending her money on training, counseling, and living a life of luxury.<ref name="bambina">Bambina is an example of an itinerant: she hits other cities to make a splash, she shows off, and she tries to grab ratings and rankings on top villain lists that she can then leverage into back-alley sponsorship deals and merchandising. Between her episodes, she returns to LA, lives a life of luxury, and gets spends good money on training and counseling in (villain) branding and kicking ass. - reddit comment by Wildbow.</ref>
References
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