Accord
<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Accord</default></title>
<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>
<label>Status</label><format><label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox> Accord is the leader of the Ambassadors.
Reputation
To the public at large Accord is a crime boss within the wealthier part of Boston. To people with an ear to cape business and politics he is much more than that. He provides plans and outlines for numerous groups and organizations to make sure things run smoothly.
This and his violent attitude were known to the PRT.
Personality
Accord's power affects his behavior. Specifically it makes him hyper-aware to disorder and things that are "out of place", so much so that even minor details can drive him to homicidal rage, though he recognizes this in himself and does actively try to contain the urges his power gives where it would be inconvenient to act upon.
It is unknown how much of his original personality was subsumed by his power. Though it has left him with an appreciation of the dramatic flair.<ref name="20.3c1">Is a secret door (hell, maybe with a batpole or slide) completely impractical? Yes. But that’s Accord’s cup of tea. - comment by Wildbow on Chrysalis 20.3</ref> He further diverts resources to maintaining his professional mastermind image.<ref name="R2 e1"/> He believed that it was a waste of reasources to participate in Endbringer battles.<ref>"You would have me risk good help on fruitless fights against immortal killing machines," Accord said. - Excerpt from Interlude 20</ref>
Appearance
Accord is a short man. Barely standing over five feet<ref name="Cast1">Accord – A thinker of short (five foot) stature, with an ornate metal mask. Hails from Boston. Gets smarter as scenarios get more complicated. Likes order. - Cast (spoiler free)</ref><ref name="17.8 e1">Accord wasn’t the most influential figure in Boston. That was why Trickster had approached him. He didn’t even look like a supervillain. He looked like a CEO. Only an ornate mask with curling, overlapping bands of dark metal trimmed in silver marked him as anything more. His hair was oiled and neatly parted, and his white suit had been brushed clean with immaculate care. Trickster doubted there was even a fingerprint or a glimmer of tarnish on Accord’s silver tie pin. For all his presence, Accord was barely over five feet in height. - Excerpt from Migration 17.8</ref> — and tends to dress more like a Businessman or mob boss than like a cape. The one concession he makes to his nature is an ornate handmade wood-and-silver mask, that goes with his tailored white suits and walking cane. The Mask is articulated so that people can tell what expressions he makes behind it.<ref name="17.8 e1"/><ref name="Cast2"/>
Equipment
Accord's walking cane contains a hidden folded blade. Given time many of his residences will have furniture specifically crafted by him.
Abilities and Powers
Accord is a Thinker whose intelligence is believed to increase in relation to the size and scope of the problems presented to him; therefore the greater the problem he's given, the faster he can find a solution to it.<ref>Accord was a thinker, and the running theory on his power was that he got naturally smarter as the problems he was addressing got more complex. It gave him an intuitive understanding of groupthink, politics, and convoluted designs. - Excerpt from Migration 17.8</ref> This applies to a wide range of applications.<ref name="Cast2">Accord – A thinker who is suspected to have intelligence that scales proportionately with the size and complexity of a problem, is a masterful counterattaker fond of elaborate traps, a skilled designer and a cunning policitican. Driven to find order by the rigors of his power, he is ruthless and unyielding when confronting any rulebreakers or anyone who might cause chaos and disorder. A onetime associate of Coil. Accord is short in stature – barely over five feet in height, and wears a neat white suit and a complicated mask of overlapping threads of metal that mimics his facial expressions. - Cast (in depth)</ref> As a test of his abilities, he devised a solution to world hunger using only a telephone and the internet in less than six and a half hours and in a further nine typed it up into a concise 150 page document outlining how to implement it. His plans are often so complicated, however, that only Taylor Hebert and Cauldron seriously considered using them.<ref name="20.y e1">Accord nodded, once. “As well as we might hope. We lost Coil, but the Undersiders may serve as a model in his absence.”
“Good to know. I’ll inform the Doctor.”
The gateway closed. Accord sat down on the end of the bed, then lay back, staring at the ceiling.
Coil had been the focus of the test, unaware. The man had also been Accord’s friend, the one who’d sold him the PRT databases. His death had been a tragic thing, on many levels. There were few men Accord considered worthy of being his friend.
Now it hinged on the Undersiders. They’d taken up Coil’s legacy, after a fashion, and just like Coil, their ambitions fell in line with Cauldron’s. The organization’s hopes rode on them and their decisions. Accord’s hopes rode on them: his twenty-three year plan, saving the world from the worst kind of disorder. In the end, they were responsible for billions. - Excerpt from Chrysalis 20.y (Interlude; Accord)</ref>
Accord also has a minor sub-talent for creating objects with multiple interlocking parts and a sense of aesthetic harmony. He personally creates all the costumes and masks for each of the Ambassadors, even making the The Travelers costumes. His own mask is made of multiple pieces that shift in response to his facial expressions. Similarly he has created furniture that automatically adjusts itself to the user's weight and posture for maximum comfort, with apparently no electronics involved.<ref name="I20.y e6"/> This is not a tinker talent however as these are essentially cleverly designed pieces using mundane materials with no input from the shard.<ref name="R3">Accord is not a tinker.
It varies from tinker to tinker. In the tinker's handbook, I break tinkers down into types. Every approach changes in little ways. By and large, however, it's a case where you get inspiration like any creative or engineer might, and as you decide to put it into action, the ideas fall into place in your head.
Some tinkers might tune out at some point in the process, they might get into the zone, black out, or lose track of time. Other stay lucid but might only do certain things at different points in the project because they 'feel right' or because of ideas in their heads about wanting things to stay balanced or to maintain a seemingly logical flow of A to B to C, conveniently skipping why it was seemingly logical in the first place - if pressed they would have a hard time explaining.
[...]
It seems incomplete because it is an incomplete process. In the background, the shards themselves are taking a hand in things, supplying an extradimensional limb to hold something in place that the tinker isn't wholly aware of, or a power-driven equivalent to a screwdriver in another reality that connects the aforementioned A to B. This is why tinkers have such a terrible time trying to teach others how to build their tech, and why another person can't just sit down at a table and copy everything the tinker does.
The shards are helping to put ideas in the tinker's head or round out ideas as the tinker has them, supplying blueprints or outlines, or giving them a 'feel' as to how easy it will be to put something together. When the tinker pulls out a tricorder-like device and scans a power signature, the shard helps supply the language and interpretation for the tinker. During the build process, the shard itself supplies a helping hand, or outright takes over at a given period of time, during which time the tinker isn't wholly there (blacked out, in the zone, lost in their work) and the shard is doing the work. Sometimes this is pronounced to the point that the tinker isn't wholly sure what they'll end up with. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>
His plans have more direct utility. When he personally directs his ambassadors they 'always win'. Further he can accordinate plans to take out certain individuals.<ref name="R2.?">It is definitely possible to avoid the hit. That's not really the problem.
The problem is that he's thorough and he acoordinated four or five independent hits against you, while pulling in favors with people who you'd normally turn to for help or sanctuary.
Getting on Accord's side is like getting a lesser Kill Order. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> Being able to create elaborate physical and social traps.<ref name="R2 e1">Accord has resources, a long reach, and on the smaller scale, he's a trapmaster. He's much like Coil in some ways, but surrounds himself with capable, ambitious parahumans instead of mercenaries, and plays up the 'trip hidden switch, open pitfall trap' angle.
When he makes it one of his ongoing plans to remove you from the picture, things get really, really bad for you. He's perfectly willing to pull out all the stops to clean up a mess, to kill without any hesitation, and because it's so integral to his reputation that he conveys this image, he is very committed to seeing it through. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>
History
Background
Accord originally worked in WEDGDG,<ref name="R1">The Watchdog group is the group Accord belonged to. Parahuman thinkers and investigative bodies keeping an eye on economy, politics and other possible shenanigans behind the scenes. - Excerpt from a comment by Wildbow on Reddit</ref> an office handling economic oversight within the Parahuman Response Team. He took an afternoon off one day to solve world hunger and devised a plan that would solve it. He turned the sum of his work over to his employer who barely looked at it before demanding that he get back to work. He began siphoning and redistributing funds from his department but failed to account for the other Thinker that worked there. He was caught, imprisoned, and then broken out by a jailbreak specialist.<ref name="I20.y e6">It was only one imbalance, one irregularity, but it had been an important one. It had nagged at him, demanded resolution. He had to prove it was possible.
So he’d siphoned the very funds that his department was managing. It hadn’t been hard to redistribute some of the wealth that the villains and rogues were trying to manipulate. One ambiguous evil for the sake of an undeniable good. He covered his tracks flawlessly.
In the process, he failed to account for the full breadth of his newest coworker’s talents. Thinker powers interfered with one another, and despite his ability to work with that particular drawback, even help them to work in concert, the clairvoyant had found him out. He’d been caught, jailed, and subsequently freed by the jailbreak specialist he’d contacted well in advance. - Excerpt from Interlude 20</ref>
Nobody that Accord contacted took up his ideas. Government after government failed to read the documents he sent them while no one raised the subject of his work to the United Nations or any major political body.<ref name="I20.y e6"/>
Accord later decided that he would take the slow, steady path to victory. He amassed contacts, wealth, expanded upon his plans, and spent half an hour each morning to ensure that everything was up to date.<ref name="I20.y e6"/>
Story Start
He had dealings with the Travelers, hiring them to attack Blasto's Lab. When Sundancer interrupted the initial meeting he claimed he would have to have the girl killed. Trickster was able to convince him otherwise by offering up the 'true' person responsible for the interruption.
Before they moved to Brockton Bay Accord outfitted the Travelers with their matching red and black costumes.<ref name="17.8">Migration 17.8</ref>
Post-Slaughterhouse Nine
In order to push out the newly arrived members of Fenrir's Chosen, Accord called a truce with Blasto so that he could construct a powerful creature that would send the neo-nazi's out of town.<ref name="19.x">Interlude 19.x</ref> Accord's Ambassadors were attacked in the building they were stationed in, hampering the plan to turn on the Plant-tinker once he had completed his project, as the tinker was kidnapped by Bonesaw for her own ends.<ref name="19.xC1">In Accord’s defense, he was planning on framing Blasto, and not letting the tinker get to the point where he really finished a dangerous project; let him start working, get caught up in things, and then disappear, leaving a message for the heroes so they can stumble on the guy with piles of classified material and a possible Endbringer-in progress (note how the place is nice, but it’s not Accord’s real headquarters, as they were described in the last chapter of Migration).
I was going to have something like that in there, but couldn’t find a place for it at the end that wouldn’t kill the tempo. - comment by Wildbow on Interlude 19.x</ref> As a consequence of the Slaughterhouse Nine coming to Boston Accord lost all but two of his current Ambassadors.
Post-Echidna
Accord and his organization would travel to Brockton Bay where they came under the aegis of The Undersiders.
New Delhi
As per the agreement with the Undersiders Accord attended the endbringer fight in India. Where he met his doom.
Accord was killed by Cody a former member of the Travelers who had been sold to the Yangban by Accord. Cody was the reason Accord's meeting with the Travelers had been interrupted when they visited Boston prior to the Travelers moving to Brockton Bay.
During the New Delhi attack, Cody rebelled against the Yangban, killing Accord and wounding Chevalier and Tattletale.
Gold Morning
Accord's plans benefited the global populace well past his death.
References
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