Campaign Log: The J-Crew [Archive] - HERO Games Discussion Boards

bigdamnhero

Jul 14th, '06, 07:38 AM

I was going through some old stuff, and came across the log for my last campaign, which ran for six years and only ended when I moved out of state. Since my new campaign is having trouble getting off the ground (scheduling problems), I thought I would post some of the old campaign's log here for the entertainment and edification of whoever.

The campaign came to be known as the J-Crew (initially in jest, but the name kinda stuck) because all three PCs happened to pick names starting with "J." It was essentially a weird conspiracy/monster hunter game, set 20 years in the future; some vigilante elements, some horror bits, and some cyberpunkish overtones; one player described it as X-Files meets Cthulu, but with bigger guns. Those of you who remember GDW's old Dark Conspiracy setting may notice some familiar elements, tho I changed as many as I kept. It started out mostly episodic (although one episode could span several game sessions), but got more serial over time as the various sub-plots became more and more intertwined.

The three PCs started as 150-point characters, and all had low-level mental powers (although the characters didn't initially know they did); these powers started out in the 10-20 AP range, and eventually rose to the 30-50 AP range. To make them more mysterious, I handled all the mechanics for the mental powers, including the actual power write-ups; so the player would know that he had empathic Telepathy (for example), but wouldn't know exactly how many dice or exactly what Advs/Lims it had. We also used the Shock & Stress rules from Horror Hero (4 Ed), although the PCs had high enough EGOs to mostly avoid the more severe Call Of Cthulu-esque effects. (Some of the NPCs were not so fortunate!) So the Stress Level (aka "the weird****-o-meter") served mostly as a RP aid for me and the players to gauge "how freaked out you are."

Campaign setting:

Our story starts in 2026, 10 years after the global economy collapsed, plunging most of the world into "the Greater Depression." Scientific advancement over the last quarter-century has been mostly incremental, with no new major technology breakthroughs. (At least not publicly!) But then, most of the general public can barely afford late-twentieth-century level technology anyway. In the US (where the campaign is centered) the government does it's best to hold things together; but lack of revenue has severely limited what it can do, resulting in a much higher "anarchy level" than Americans are used to. Much of the interior has been all but abandoned to fend for itself. Cities have become largely balkanized along class and ethnic lines; many major cities have even privatized their law enforcement agencies, resulting in "neighborhood" police forces that are little more than gangs with badges. International megacorporations have gained in power (not quite to cyberpunk levels, but close); some have their own security forces that amount to private armies in all but name.

Following the rise of populist dictator Carlos Grijalba in Mexico, relations with that country have deteriorated so badly that the US-Mexican border has become an armed camp. However, most experts believe that the odds of open hostilities breaking out are remote. Relations with Russia are also quite strained, as a result of disagreements over US involvement in the Syrian invasion of Israel in 2012, and the Ukranian Civil War of 2017.

Meanwhile, for the last few years a new strain of kudzu vine has been spreading across the US. Dubbed "demon weed" by the popular press, it has proven extremely resistant to pesticides or other controls, and chokes out most other vegetation in the areas it infects. These areas -- commonly referred to as "demonground" -- have so far been concentrated primarily in remote parts of the interior. But even in the urban centers, there have been new strains of mosses and fungi appearing that bear many disturbing similarities to the demon vines. And rumors persist of strange creatures being sighted in and around patches of demongroundâ€¦

Behind the scenes, and initially unknown to the PCs, there has been a steep increase in psychic/mystic phenomena over the last 20-30 years. Learning about this and determining its cause was a major focus of the campaign.

bigdamnhero

Jul 14th, '06, 07:40 AM

Cast:

John Green: A former bodyguard and martial arts instructor, who ran a successful security company for several years until he was driven out of business by Iron Castle Security (a division of BCH Enterprises). A good fighter, both armed and unarmed, but with a tendency towards frontal assaults. Serious "Good Guy Syndrome," but can be quite vicious against evildoers. His arms dealer contacts keep the Crew well-supplied (when the Crew has money to pay them). Later starts having strange, prophetic dreams and develops other mental powers, mostly centered around boosting his martial skills. Tall and athletic with a commanding presence.

Joshua Davidson: Engineer, computer wizard, and Israeli Army veteran. A good sniper, tho relatively weak in hand-to-hand combat. But his real strength is in his technical skills, particularly his ability to reverse-engineer strange devices. Curious, and easily distracted by technical problems; also closely watched by the US government, who suspects he may be spying for Israel (he's not). Later develops mental powers, mostly centered around detecting and countering other people's mental powers; eventually, he develops the ability to open interdimensional portal with his mind. Powerfully built, but still basically geeky-looking.

Jeremy Fox: aka "The Fox," aka "Hollis Baker," aka "Ohmar Bradley," aka "Alex Nevsky," etc. An art thief, originally from Ukraine, currently on the run from the Russian Mafia. Sophisticated, stealthy, and somewhat more subtle than John & Joshua, but no slouch in a stand-up fight. His real identity & motivations remain rather obscure to his partners for much of the campaign. His mental powers were mostly used to boost his natural powers of conversation and persuasion (project emotion, etc). Slim, suave and dashing in a Eurotrash kind of way.

Key Recurring NPCs:

Kristin Woodson: The ultimate middle(wo)man; she knows everybody worth knowing, and helps fix people up with other people that they need or that need them. After her early encounters with the Crew, she retreats to her high-security apartment and never leaves, doing all her work over the Net. She becomes an important source of jobs and information for the Crew. Short, blonde and a little chubby with a prominent nose.

Liz Saravani: A pseudo-cop from Houston, who joins up with the Crew when she needs help getting out of the city in a hurry. She stays partly out of a genuine desire to help the Crew in their struggle, and partly because of a deepening relationship with John. Hot-tempered and impulsive, the stress of events makes her more and more unstable over the course of the campaign until she becomes known as "Crazy Liz" (but not to her face). She's fiercely protective of Aunt Jo. Tall, attractive, and athletic, with long white hair.

Aunt Jo: A wizened old mystic and friend of Liz; she accompanies Liz when she flees Houston, and subsequently becomes the Crew's tutor in the "empathic arts." Although far too old and weak to do much herself, she is an invaluable teacher and source of information. Small and wizened, but her green eyes are as sharp as ever.

Erica "Steve" Stevens: A former operative for BCH-Security, Steve suffers from total amnesia for most of the campaign. Most of her backstory is a mystery that is only gradually revealed throughout the campaign. While initially unsure of herself, as her self-confidence increases she begins to reveal an impressive level of combat proficiency, both armed and unarmed. She becomes attracted to Joshua, although he remains completely oblivious to her interest (in and out of character) almost until the end of the campaign. Breathtakingly beautiful, with short red hair and green eyes.

Emmanuelle St. Clair: A mysterious foreign beauty who may or may not be Jeremy's rival: another art thief known only as The Phantom. Loyal primarily to herself, she is the Crew's antagonist as often as their ally. Tall and slender, with long black hair and ice-blue eyes, of uncertain nationality.

BCH Enterprises: One of the world's largest megacorporations, founded in the US but headquartered on the tiny Caribbean island of St. Marie. Involved in everything from electronics to food supplements to weapons; also controls what may be the largest private security force in the world. John calls them "Evil Inc;" his comrades are initially skeptical, suspecting that he is just understandably bitter because BCH drove his company out of business. But as the campaign progresses, they come to suspect that BCH may be behind a lot of what's wrong with the world today.

bigdamnhero

Jul 14th, '06, 07:46 AM

Here's the first adventure. My notes were a little sketchy early on, but got more detailed as the campaign progressed. (Note that Jeremy didn't join until the 3rd adventure; for now it's just John & Joshua.) These notes were used primarily as recaps for the players (and myself), so they're written in the second person present tense. Assuming anyone finds them interesting, I'll try and post new adventures as I get them cleaned up. (The entire log is 64 pages!)

Episode 1: “The Ice Wyrm Cometh”

June, 2026: John and Joshua are traveling separately through Texas when a freak snowstorm hits. (Yes, in south Texas in June!) You meet up when you both seek shelter at the same hotel. Later, out the window you see what looks like a Yeti, and decide to investigate. You are unable to catch up with the creature, but save a woman named Kristin Woodson from a pack of arctic wolves (although not before the wolves kill Kristin's lover). Following the wolf and Yeti tracks leads you to an underground complex operated by some outfit called the Garland Corporation.

Sneaking past several Yeti and a number of corporate engineers and security guards, you explore the complex. At the center of the complex, you find a large room with what seems to be sort of high-tec teleportation device. You also see a strange, 3'-tall insectoid "Ice Wyrm" creature, which appears to be in charge of the whole show. It becomes apparent that the device is somehow responsible for the freak cold weather, and you find enough parts and equipment to convince yourselves that a whole series of the devices is planned. Shooting starts. The Ice Wyrm gets away, but a 30'-long ice dragon comes through the teleportation gate and starts smashing everything and everybody. You find a case of hand-grenades, and wind up collapsing the mountain on top of the big worm.

Once the complex is destroyed, the weather begins returning to normal. Sadly, you don't get to question any of the survivors so you have no idea what the Ice Wyrm was or what was really going on. Joshua attempts to report the incident to the FBI, but is met with skepticism and allegations of fraud. (The Garland Corporation subsequently declares bankruptcy and is later bought out by John's old nemesis, BCH.)

bigdamnhero

Jul 14th, '06, 09:31 AM

Episode 2: “Corpsicles”

Early July: You escort Kristin back home to Houston, while you all try to make sense of what just happened. Searching for information on other unexplained cold-related phenomena, you learn that several dead bodies appearing to have been freeze-dried have turned up lately in one of Houston's rougher neighborhoods. Related or not, it's weird so you figure you'll check it out.

The neighborhood pseudo-police are a little better than the typical gang-bangers with badges. Their Chief (a grim young man named Hondo) and Lieutenant Liz Saravani seem fairly decent in a tough-streets sort of way, but they don't have much use for you. With a little Streetwise work, you learn about a gang of violent nutcases called "the Children of Mother" that you suspect may be involved. You grab one of the punks for questioning, but you don't learn much and it's still not clear if they're behind the "corpsickles" or not. You sneak into the gang's HQ for a little recon. You don't find any evidence of corpse-freezing or other weirdness, but they do have a couple of captives: two female ~cops, who have obviously been badly mistreated.

You sneak out to plan your next move, but outside you find Liz waiting for you -- she'd been following you, and demands to know what you're up to. You tell her everything you've learned (tho nothing about Ice Worms and the like). She calls for backup and the ~cops raid the place. You aren't allowed to participate in the raid, but manage to get into the fighting anyway when a number of Children try and get past you to escape. Liz takes a couple rounds in the Kevlar and is stunned; you pull her to safety, which definitely scores you a few points. The ~cops kill all the Children and rescue the prisoners, but lose a few men in the process -- including Chief Hondo, who appears to have been shot in the back of the head. Everyone obviously suspects Captain Stu Helmers -- now the senior ~cop -- but nobody says so openly. Stu orders you out of "his" neighborhood.

Meanwhile, Kristin has gone missing. Liz offers to help you find Kristin if you get her out of the city afterwards. (Without Hondo's protection, she's not safe from Stu anymore.) Liz takes you to meet a friend of hers, an old mystic named Aunt Jo, who bears only a passing resemblance to Yoda and has much better grammar. She & Liz don't think the Children had anything to do with the corpsickles, and believe there is something else sinister and strange going on. Rumors are floating around about some strange, albino-like characters lurking in the shadows. Jo points you towards an abandoned post office building, where you might find them and hopefully Kristin.

Liz calls up a couple other ~cops (Lawrence and Van), and the five of you begin a search of the old post office building. The first floor seems deserted, but on the second floor you are jumped by some hulking, ogre-ish brute; you empty 32 Uzi rounds, five shotgun shells and a taser into the thing before it dies. Meanwhile, John gets jumped by two weird albinos with long, stringy white hair, who seems to be able to suck heat out of your body; fortunately, it only takes a couple shots to kill them. Lawrence unexpectedly runs away -- you later find his freeze-dried body.

Continuing to the third floor: you find Kristin and a few other captives, all weak and suffering from hypothermia. A few of the "captives" turn out to be more albinos playing possum. Joshua gets grabbed and partially heat-drained, and Van and Liz both get shot. And Joshua gets blinded by some sort of mental attack. You kill these two albinos, but when the mental attacks continue and some chemical spray starts shooting out of the next room, you decide you've had enough fun. Everyone empties their magazines, John throws a grenade into the next room, you grab the captives & wounded, and run (limp) away. Behind you, the chemical spray sets the building on fire and it eventually burns to the ground.

[GM's note: The irony is John's hand grenade killed the last bad guys, but they didn't wait around to find that out and under the circumstances I can't blame them a bit.]

Epilogue: Once again you have survived (once your ears stop ringing from all the gunfire, grenades, etc.), but again you have no bodies, no evidence, and very few answers to show for your troubles. Liz & Kristin both spend the night in the hospital, but are basically okay. Joshua again tries to report the incident to the FBI, forgetting all about the whole "They think I'm a spy" thing. Kristin moves into a new high-security apartment, which she says she has no intention of leaving -- ever. John, Joshua, Liz & Aunt Jo pack up the car and head for New York City, where Joshua lives.

RDU Neil

Jul 14th, '06, 09:43 AM

Totally over the top... and sounds like a hoot. These modern/sf/horror genre blends are a blast... especially with grenades! Always fun to read up on other's campaigns.

Good stuff.

Vassoom

Jul 17th, '06, 01:44 AM

Definitely sounds like fun. I especially appreciate the long-term story arcs you embedded regarding the "mysterious" plant life as well as the players' emerging mental powers.

Nice work.

- Vassoom

bigdamnhero

Jul 17th, '06, 06:06 AM

bigdamnhero

Jul 17th, '06, 06:28 AM

Episode 3: “One Flew Over The Empath’s Nest”

Late July: On the road in West Virginia, you are passed by an official-looking convoy of trucks & jeeps. John hears a telepathic call for help from a woman named Donna, who has been abducted and is a prisoner in one of the trucks, along with several others. You follow the convoy to a remote compound called the Bradley Psychiatric Center, which is much more secure than your typical mental hospital, complete with armed guards and response vehicles. You get a hotel room in town for Aunt Jo, and that night head back to the Bradley Center. You get inside the compound without being detected and sneak into the crawlspace under the hospital. From there, Joshua is able to tap into the security system and computer network.

You learn that the Bradley Center is doing experiments on people with mental powers. They are nominally a private facility, although you suspect their funding comes from covert government sources. After extended reconnaissance and planning, you sneak upstairs and catch the orderlies completely by surprise, freeing 25 "patients" including a man named Hollis Baker (aka Jeremy Fox). You arm those of the patients who seem up to it, and with help from Joshua controlling the compound’s security system you take over the guard force building, catching most of the guards sleeping. The guards on the fence give you more of a fight, but you take them out with only minor friendly casualties.

The guard force’s well-stocked arms room (advanced assault rifles, grenade launchers, secure radios, etc.) gets loaded into one of the trucks, and you lock the captured personnel in the arms room. You also take the Center’s computer files, and a supply of a drug called ST-424, which the hospital uses to block mental powers. As dawn approaches, the freed patients pile into whatever cars are available and you all take off, having sabotaged the guard force’s helicopter and other vehicles left behind. Many of the patients scatter, and some are recaptured, but a handful stays with you as you try and find a place to lay low until sunset.

[Notes: Frankly, I expected this to be a tougher fight, but the players came up with a good plan and executed it very well. (Plus, the guards blew a lot of PER rolls.) The PCs didn’t think anyone had gotten off a call for help, but elected not to wait around and find out -- a very good call, as heavy reinforcements were in fact on the way. For the gun nuts, the advanced assault rifles they seized were H&K G11s, which became the Crew’s weapon of choice for much of the rest of the campaign. And in case you’re curious, Jeremy had been picked up by the Bradley Center’s “recruiters” while hiding from some Russian mobsters he double-crossed; it made for an interesting way to introduce a new PC.]

RDU Neil

Jul 17th, '06, 09:03 AM

Thanks both of you - glad you're enjoying it! And yeah, I've always been a sucker for long-term story arcs: some planned ahead of time, and some figured out after the fact. There's a lot more of that sort of thing coming.

Re grenades: The player running John was fond of quoting Flora's line from Chronicles of Amber - "Would you like a hand grenade or two? I find they sometimes come in handy in this shadow." ;) I always hate those movies/stories where the protagonists encounter freaky monsters and don't immediately attempt to procure some Bigger Guns.

[Edit: BTW, sorry about all the weird formatting characters; not sure what happened, as I'm 99.9% sure they weren't there when I originally posted them. Something to do with the board software upgrade I assume?]

The weird symbols were not there originally. They seemed to have done some upgrades to the boards over the weekend (they were down Sunday morning) and it screwed up posts like yours and mine that were copied from Word. (The last two of my big Secret Worlds posts got screwed up.)

I think if you repost them, they should be fine. I'll try it on mine after work.

bigdamnhero

Jul 17th, '06, 10:24 AM

The weird symbols were not there originally. They seemed to have done some upgrades to the boards over the weekend (they were down Sunday morning) and it screwed up posts like yours and mine that were copied from Word. (The last two of my big Secret Worlds posts got screwed up.)

I think if you repost them, they should be fine. I'll try it on mine after work.
Yeah, new posts seem to be okay, it's just selected prior posts that have the problem.

Matt Frisbee

Jul 17th, '06, 10:20 PM

bigdamnhero

Jul 18th, '06, 08:38 AM

While it's not the sort of game I would run or play in, the campaign log for the J-Crew has made for an interesting read, so far. What inspired you to do this sort of genre and was it your idea or your players' to run with it?
Short answer: I picked up a copy of GDW's Dark Conspiracy and thought "Wow, great ideas! Uneven execution and the system sucks, but great ideas!" :D I just really enjoyed the mix of horror, alien invasion, and low-grade cyberpunk. I carried the idea around in my head for a few years before I had the right group to pitch it to.

The irony is that in many ways it was the most realistic campaign I've ever run. That is, you know, except for all the extreme weirdness ;) we tried to keep all the Real World bits as realistic as possible. I think the contrast made for more effective game.

bigdamnhero

Jul 18th, '06, 08:42 AM

Interlude: “Demonground”

Late July: Joshua and Liz go back to pick up Aunt Jo. Joshua calls the R&D firm he works for to say he’ll be a couple more days late, and is told some “government suits” have been talking to his boss. Meanwhile, John, Jeremy, and a handful of others spend the day hiding out in South Franklin, PA, an abandoned town overgrown with kudzu vines. [Note: the players managed to completely forget the stuff about “demon weed” in the campaign background material, so there was far less meta-game paranoia than there might’ve been.]

As the day progresses, weirder and weirder things start to happen. One of the freed patients nearly drowns trying to save a drowning woman that no one else saw. John keeps seeing some enormous dog out of the corner of his eye, but no one sees that either. Misshapen monkeys throw poo at you from the trees. Then Jeremy happens upon two locals, a brother and sister; the good news is that everyone can see them, the bad news is that they try to suck blood out of Jeremy's arm. After they get shot, they turn into weird mutated creatures…or did they always look like that, and you somehow just didn’t see it?

Deciding not to wait until nightfall after all, you pile into the vehicles and head out. The road out of town becomes a gauntlet of all manner of weird creepy nasties. Bees and other stinging insects swarm the vehicles, a monkey jumps onto the jeep and bites one of the patients, something unseen keeps dropping rocks on the top of the truck, and John’s still the only one who sees the huge dog chasing them. You make it out relatively unscathed, although the patient with the monkey bite later contracts a malaria-like disease and dies. You all vow never to go near kudzu again.

Epilogue: Several ex-patients tell their stories to the press, backed up the computer records you swiped. It becomes quite the scandal, as the records do in fact indicate CIA funding, although it’s never definitively established how much the CIA knew about the methods being used. The head of the CIA is forced to resign, and the director of the Bradley Center commits suicide. The patients you freed manage to keep you out of the story, and the government doesn’t want to talk about it, so you dodge the press bullet.

RDU Neil

Jul 18th, '06, 10:25 AM

bigdamnhero

Jul 19th, '06, 12:15 PM

Episode 4: “This Old (Haunted) House”

Late July: You reach New York to find out that Joshua has been fired from his job -- allegedly for too many extended absences, but it’s obvious they think you’ve become a security risk. The five of you (Joshua, John, Jeremy, Liz and Aunt Jo) all try to fit into Joshua's one-bedroom apartment, and look for ways to establish yourself as “weird **** investigators.”

Early August: You learn of a supposedly-haunted house in Westchester, NY, where several people have supposedly disappeared; frankly it sounds pretty bogus, but you don’t have anything else going on so you decide to check it out anyway. The house is appropriately Gothic, and a number of spooky-but-explainable things happen to you. Just as you’ve convinced yourself the whole thing is a hoax, Liz disappears!

More serious now, you resume your search of the house. You find a secret panel leading to a series of hidden rooms and meet Dicky Reingold, a harmless-looking old hermit who claims he was just trying to scare people away so he could be left alone. He has cameras and equipment throughout the house that explain all the phenomena you encountered -- except for Liz’s disappearance, which Dicky claims to know nothing about.

Dicky shows you some tunnels underneath the house which he says he’s never explored; at your insistence, he reluctantly agrees to accompany you. Rats swarm all over the place, but you make some torches to keep them at bay. After crawling through a long series of tunnels, you find a large underground chamber with many tunnels branching off from it. In the center of the chamber you find Liz: naked, barely conscious, and partly buried under a large mound of wet clay. You start to dig her out -- when all sorts of creatures start charging out of the various side tunnels: Yeti, ice wolves, ogres, albinos, misshapen monkeys, every weird beastie you’ve encountered over the past month!

Much ammunition is expended. You manage to hold them off while you dig Liz out, but they keep coming. Dicky seems as freaked out as you are -- until John (semi)accidentally elbows him to get him out of the line of fire, and as Dicky hits the ground all the other creatures suddenly disappear before your eyes! Deducing that Dicky is projecting some sort of mental illusion, everyone empties their magazines into the “harmless old man.” He breathes one last word (“Eve”) before he expires. Sure enough, no more monsters. Checking his body, he seems to be human except for an additional joint in his thumbs and only three molars on each side in his mouth.

Epilogue: Since Dicky’s house was legally listed as abandoned, you move in and claim squatters rights. In the house you find an extensive library of books on mysticism and the occult; also a few thousand dollars worth of jewelry, including a locket on Dicky’s bedside with an old-fashioned portrait of some beautiful blond woman. You also find a strange device that looks like a conch shell stuck on the end of a stick; rubbing the stick causes a strange mucous-ey substance to spray out of the shell, causing near-uncontrollable vomiting in anyone it hits. What’s that about?! (Joshua’s just frustrated that he can’t figure out how it works.)

[Note: In some ways this may have been my favorite scenario of the whole campaign! I really wanted to do a “reverse Scooby-Doo ending” but wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull it off. But for once the script played exactly as written; every time they thought they’d figured out what was going on, I had another rug to pull out from under their feet. The players were kept guessing right up to the very end and loved every minute of it.]

RDU Neil

Jul 19th, '06, 01:44 PM

bigdamnhero

Jul 20th, '06, 08:53 AM

Poor Dickey. The GM in me wonders if he might have had more to say... maybe not so malevolent that he required to have multilple clips emptied into him... but hey... :ugly:

(The way your wrote it up, he sounds like he may have been more screwed up than truly evil... but I could be reading that wrong.)
That's just what he wanted you to think. :eg: But naw, he was evil to the core. Honestly not sure how much the players picked up on that, and how much they were just being paranoid. The "battle" against the illusionary monsters was quite a bit more tense than I probably made it sound, and the stress meter was fairly high by that point, so being a little trigger-happy seemed in character under the circumstances. Also, John was already starting to get rather protective of Liz. (We did have a few discussions throughout the campaign about whether some of the PCs - particularly John - should have "Shoots first and asks questions rarely" as a Disad.)

As for Dicky having more to say... you bet! He actually had quite the backstory. Frankly I was kinda relieved that they killed him, because if they'd captured him and found a way to make him talk it could've cut two years off the campaign. I was eventually able to work most of his backstory in, so you haven't heard the last of him. (But you have *seen* the last of him - no resurrections in this game.)

bigdamnhero

Jul 20th, '06, 09:02 AM

In case anyone’s curious, here’s a peek at the Crew’s weapons & equipment list at this point in the game:

John
H&K G11 Assault Rifle (4.7mm caseless)
7.62mm Sniper Rifle (sometimes used by Joshua)
Desert Eagle .44M pistol
Glock 27 .40 pistol (compact & concealable)
Taser pistol
Night Vision Opera Glasses (fictional High-Tec, highly compact)
Secure radio (frequency-hopping, coded)
Light Kevlar (concealable under clothing)
Knife
Medic's Bag

Joshua
H&K G11 Assault Rifle (4.7mm caseless)
Galil 5.56mm Assault Rifle (seldom carried once they got the G11s)
Sig P229 .40 pistol
PVS-7 Night Vision Goggles
Secure radio (frequency-hopping, coded)
Light Kevlar (concealable under clothing)
Knife
Handheld Computer
Electrician’s Bag

Jeremy (at this point still using the name Hollis)
H&K G11 Assault Rifle (4.7mm caseless)
Sig P228 9mm pistol
“Barf Gun” (the Dark-Tec device described in Episode 4)
PVS-7 Night Vision Goggles
Secure radio (frequency-hopping, coded)
Light Kevlar (concealable under clothing)
Knife
Burglar Tools

Liz
M16 Assault Rifle with M203 Grenade Launcher
H&K MP5 10mm Submachine gun
Glock 34 9mm pistol
PVS-7 Night Vision Goggles
Secure radio (frequency-hopping, coded)
Light Kevlar (concealable under clothing)
Collapsible baton

Normally, they each carried two fragmentation hand grenades, but at this point, they were out.
Shortly after this they invested in some heavier “tactical” body armor.

Vehicles (all fictional 2026 models)
Jeep CS (Joshua’s: basically a next-model Grand Cherokee)
Zil Tovarisch (the cheapest Yugo knock-off on the market – did I mention John’s Poor Disad?)

bigdamnhero

Jul 27th, '06, 01:24 PM

Episode 5: “Our Gang/Your Gang” (Part One)

Late August: You spend a couple weeks working on your new house and getting set up. Having heard stories of “the dead walking the streets” of Centerville, West Virginia, you send a query letter to the Centerville Police Chief, offering to review his security systems and procedures and hinting that you’re prepared to handle weird and unusual situations. No immediate answer.

Meanwhile, John & Liz take temp jobs as bodyguards for industrialist Randall Irons. After a few days, Irons mentions being very concerned about his daughter Alex. Apparently, there is some bad gang activity at her college: several students have been attacked, including three of her friends, and several several have died. It doesn't seem weird enough for you to investigate… until that night, John has an unusually-vivid dream in which Alex Irons and a bunch of other college kids dance as marionettes, like in an old-time puppet show; you can’t see who’s pulling the strings, but you get an impression of dark beings looming over the scene. The next day, you offer to go check things out. Irons puts you all on the payroll, and you head north to Ithaca, New York.

In Ithaca, Jeremy makes friends with the college museum curator, who gets him a temporary visitor’s pass to campus. Joshua hacks into the city police’s computer and college personnel computer (tho amusingly, is unable to get into the campus police system!). You download several reports of attacks on students, both male and female, and start analyzing them for patterns. Meanwhile, John & Liz work the streets and make a few contacts with the local street gangs; according to them, the violence is the result of warfare between two newly-formed gangs, one composed of female students, and the other of male students. The "regular" gangs try to act dismissive of these "Yuppie-kidkid gang-banger wannabees" but you get the distinct impression they're really a little scared of them.

You identify a few of the most recent female victims and shadow them. They lead you to a walled compound a few blocks off campus; a private residence belonging to one Dennis Coldwell, according to records. That night several groups of girls exit the compound, dressed for trouble; you again follow them. John gets spotted, but manages to evade them; however, as Jeremy tries to come to John’s aid he winds up running smack into one of the groups of girls and gets attacked. He Judo-throws two of them into some trash cans before getting kicked in the balls and knocked out. Fortunately, at that point John & Liz arrive; warning shots don’t seem to faze the gang-girls, but you shoot a couple girls in the arms & legs and they withdraw.

The next day, you set up electronic surveillance of the Coldwell compound. Jeremy chats up two of the gang-girls in the SUB, under the pretense of looking for his missing dog; the girls flirt back and hint that they are involved in something serious, but he’s unable to get any details out of them. That night, a group of gang-girls nearly clashes with a group of gang-boys, but you spoil the ambush by firing a few rounds in the air. Jeremy attempts to defuse the situation by walking in between the two rival gangs and calling for his lost dog; he is the only one surprised when he gets shot at, but he manages to escape with only an arm wound.

You do manage to capture two gang-girls (including Irons’ daughter) and question them, but get very little information; their demeanor and fanatical loyalty to Dennis leaves you with the impression they’re under some form of brainwashing or mind control. Meanwhile, you tail the gang-boys to a luxury apartment building a few miles away; a records check shows that the penthouse suite is being rented by a woman named “Denise Cauldwell.”

[Can I just say: this really wasn’t Jeremy’s best adventure ever, as Suave Art Thief Guy somehow morphed into Bumbling Comic Relief Guy for several sessions. The phrase “I’m looking for my dog!” remains a sure-fire laugh line for all of us to this day. :snicker:]

bigdamnhero

Jul 27th, '06, 01:42 PM

Episode 5: “Our Gang/Your Gang” (Part Two)

After a day of planning and preparation, you cause several “false alarms” at Dennis’ compound, and impersonate the alarm company repairmen they call for. (Stealing a van from John’s old nemesis, Iron Castle Security, is an added bonus.) Once inside the compound, Joshua rigs several security cameras up on dubbed loops, and programs the rear gate to open by remote. The next morning, you execute your Trojan Horse programs and sneak inside. Your preparations and reconnaissance pay off: you taser, tranquilize or just plain knock-out everyone inside before anyone can sound any kind of alarm. Your prisoners are four more gang-girls and Dennis, a short man with swarthy skin and very dark eyes; you check, but he does not have the extra thumb and missing molars that Dicky did (see Episode 3).

You spend several hours questioning Dennis, who is defiant and uncooperative. Throughout the day, additional gang-girls arrive at the compound in ones & twos and are added to your collection. Dennis eventually tells you that he and Denise (his sister) are Tashakan, a race of cobra-men from Indian mythology; you figure out that their tongues inject a venom that allows them to mind control people, but only works against humans of the opposite sex. After several hours, John gets tired of “playing games” and puts a bullet in Dennis’ brainpan. All the girls scream and go comatose; when they eventually wake up, they remember little of the last few months. But Denise slips out of town and disappears before you can mount an assault on her apartment.

Epilogue: All the gang members – boys and girls – go through a few weeks of painful withdrawal, but are basically okay in the end. All your attempts to track Denise hit dead ends. Searching Dicky’s library later, you find a reference in Indian mythology to an Indian noble named Tashaka. According to legend, Tashaka somehow offended the god Indra and was transformed into a cobra as punishment; after many years as a snake, he was able to trick a passing wise man into releasing him, but instead of becoming a normal human Tashaka became a cobra-man.

[Notes: This was, we all agreed, the weakest adventure of the whole campaign; a real disappointment after the success of the previous story. In hindsight, I think I was so busy creating all this detail surrounding the Villains and the Victims that I never really thought through what I wanted/expected the Heroes to do – a classic case of writing the episode around the guest stars rather than the regulars. :( As a result, the whole story had a meandering, unfocused feel to it, as if no one knew quite what they were supposed to be doing, including the GM. Frankly, I think the John player executed Dennis at least partly to put the scenario out of its misery. (And not a moment too soon!) On the bright side, the actual assault on Dennis’ compound was very well planned and flawlessly executed. ]

Vassoom

Jul 27th, '06, 09:07 PM

In hindsight, I think I was so busy creating all this detail surrounding the Villains and the Victims that I never really thought through what I wanted/expected the Heroes to do – a classic case of writing the episode around the guest stars rather than the regulars. :(

Yup. Been there, done that. Happens to all of us, both as GMs and players. At least you recognized it right away...I've been in games before where the entire campaign was like that! :tsk:

- Vassoom

bigdamnhero

Jul 28th, '06, 06:39 AM

Yup. Been there, done that. Happens to all of us, both as GMs and players. At least you recognized it right away...I've been in games before where the entire campaign was like that! :tsk:
:) I try not to make the same mistake twice - there are too many new and interesting mistakes waiting to be made.

bigdamnhero

Jul 28th, '06, 03:03 PM

Interlude: “Keepsakes & Mementos”

Back at the house in Westchester, Aunt Jo has been sorting through Dicky’s library. Most of the books are blatant nonsense, but there are several interesting and useful volumes tucked here and there; you suspect that Dicky may have collected all the “junk” books just to camouflage the few serious ones. One book she shows you is obviously very old, and hand-written in a language none of you recognize. Tucked inside the book is an equally-old letter, apparently written in the same unknown language. The handwriting is different, tho: the book’s writing looks masculine, while that in the letter seems more feminine.

Joshua compares the letter to the locket you had found previously on Dicky’s bedside. As he holds the two of them, he gets a sudden vision of a breathtaking blond woman throwing the locket at him in a furious rage. It fades in an instant, but he is pretty sure the woman pictured in the locket is the same one from his vision.

Joshua scans the letter and runs it through several translation programs; while some individual words seem to resemble Old English and/or Gaelic, the computer is unable to translate any actual phrases. Kristin puts you in touch with Dr. Kenneth Michaels, a Professor of Ancient Languages at Miskatonic University.* He seems very interested, so you send him the book and letter for analysis and translation.

* (I just really couldn’t resist.)

Matt Frisbee

Jul 29th, '06, 03:52 AM

Excellent work on this summary, bigdamnhero! You should be repped and commended. Looks like I've already done the latter and I'll try to do the former after I post this! Keep 'em coming!

Matt "I-love-this-stuff" Frisbee

bigdamnhero

Jul 31st, '06, 01:32 PM

Episode 6: “Dead Guys Walking”

September: You get a response from Centerville Police Chief Gilbert Onate, accepting your offer to do a city-wide security consultation. Joshua hacks into their computer system and downloads all recent police reports, so you have something to read on the drive down; in the past three months, there have been six unexplained disappearances and seven reported sightings of people known or believed to be dead. (See attachment.)

[Note: Centerville is something called a “Citadel” in my world -- a walled town of a few thousand people. The idea is that gated communities have been extended to a civic scale: why just keep “undesirables” out of your neighborhood when you can keep them out of town altogether? (I’m not advocating this, obviously.) Like most Citadels, Centerville has a very small police force because the whole point is that it’s supposed to be crime-free, right?]

In Centerville, you meet with Chief Onate and Lieutenant Nurit Leeds, who between them constitute the entire Centerville Police Department. It turns out Onate has heard the rumors BCH spread about John to put him out of business, so they are rather wary of you. You are allowed to check out the sites of the disappearances and generally explore the town, but are not allowed to carry your guns. (Jeremy pockets a pistol anyway.)

That night you go out on patrol, accompanied by Lt. Leeds. Passing a small park, you are jumped by a half-dozen…well, zombies is really the only word that fits, isn’t it? They prove hard to fight hand-to-hand, since they are abnormally strong and seem to feel no pain. When Jeremy and Lt. Leeds shoot them, they die, although their bodies release a terrible stench that causes vomiting in everyone nearby.) You eventually destroy all of them, and Lt. Leeds identifies them as various missing or dead townsfolk.

The next day, you appear before the civic counsel and attempt to explain the situation as you see it. While several members would prefer to keep their heads in the sand, you manage to convince enough of them to hire you as security consultants (ie - monster hunters). You also get approval to exhume the graves of the dead guys you fought last night. Sure enough, their coffins are empty; but underneath is a wet, clay substance. Digging through a foot or so of clay, you break through into a series of tunnels under the town. Onate and Leeds provide gas masks -- and your guns -- and accompany you down into the tunnels.

The tunnels are low, cramped, and not entirely stable. When more zombies attack, you shoot several and drive off the rest, but the noise causes a cave-in and several of you are nearly buried. Proceeding on, you make your way to a large central cavern. Even more zombies attack, and a hideous blob of fused corpses bursts up through the ground and starts trying to grab and bite anyone it can. Lt. Leeds gets badly acid-burned, and shooting the blob seems to have little effect. Then Liz pumps a couple white phosphorous grenades into it from her M203 and it burns up -- you scramble out of the tunnels before they collapse altogether.

Epilogue: Back in the library, you find an Indian myth about Bhuta, the Devourer of the Dead, which matches the description of the Centerville Blob; the legend states that Bhuta could create walking corpse “children” called dharbas.

[Note: I had intended the beasties in this campaign to be a mish-mash of several different cultures and mythologies from around the world. Doing two Indian-themed monsters back-to-back was completely accidental on my part, but I think led the players to believe they were in an Hindu mythology-themed game. For many months afterwards, they tried to interpret everything they saw in terms of Hindu myth. Oh well; kept them guessing.]

Vassoom

Jul 31st, '06, 01:47 PM

MMmmmm...Brains vindaloo! :p

Btw, I also enjoy your episode titles. Very clever!

- Vassoom

bigdamnhero

Aug 1st, '06, 02:21 PM

MMmmmm...Brains vindaloo! :p

Btw, I also enjoy your episode titles. Very clever!
Thanks, glad you're enjoying them. No brains vindaloo, tho - sorry. :( While many of the monsters in this campaign are similar in some ways to "pop culture" monsters, they've all been tweaked so the players wouldn't know exactly what to expect and exactly how to kill them. So while the dharbas/zombies had many features in common with traditional zombies, they didn’t eat brains (they dragged their victims underground to be merged with the Bhuta), headshots weren’t required to kill them (although they could take a lot of damage), and when their skin was punctured it released a nauseating gas. Not saying my zombies are better than George Romero’s, just different.

BTW, I went back and added some brief physical descriptions to the character sketches in post #2, which I realized I had left out.

bigdamnhero

Aug 2nd, '06, 12:51 PM

Sidebar: Mental Powers

At this point in the campaign, the PCs’ mental powers had started to reach the point where they were getting more play, so I should probably say a few words about that. To clarify, “mental powers” here refers to any power with mental sfx, not just those listed as Mental Powers in 5ER. At low levels, they tended to have a very Pulpish feel; at more powerful levels (such as certain villains & creatures we'll be meeting) they start to resemble magic.

As a general guideline, I divided them up into five “schools,” although they weren’t mutually exclusive and there was typically a lot of overlap between them. The categories were mostly for me to use when building NPCs:

Mysticism: Affecting your own mind, body, and spirit
-- Clairsentience, Precognition, Astral Projection, Possession, “Invulnerability” (Armor)

Mentalism: Affecting someone else’s mind
-- Telepathy, Mind Control, Mental Illusions, Mind Flash, Psionic Surgery

Neuropathy: Affecting someone else’s body and nervous system
-- EGO Attack, Mental Paralysis, Aid, Willpower Drain, Psychic Vampirism

Psionics: Affecting the surrounding world
-- Telekinesis, Psychometry (Detect “Auras”), Pyrokinesis, Cryokinesis

Sorcery: Affecting the boundaries between dimensions
-- Dimension Door (EDM) and related powers

I made several changes to the way mental powers work in order to get the feel I wanted. Mentalists do not get mental awareness for free, and it generally is not automatic (ie – the character must consciously use it), but is otherwise considered a passive sense. All Characters get Mental Defense equal to (INT/5) for free.

People who are familiar with mental powers (whether or not they themselves have any) will generally know if they have been targeted by mental powers unless the attacker reached the +20 effect level. If the power fails, they may become aware of it right away; if it succeeds, they will normally only become aware after the effect has ended. Those unfamiliar with mental powers will know something odd has happened, but will probably not understand what and will often tend to rationalize it away.

Mind Control (and similar powers) use the "Coercion" rules from 4ed Ultimate Mentalist by default. To simplify: if the attacker fails to acheive his desired effect level, he may still be able to affect the user at a lower level; but conversely, if the target fails his Breakout Roll but makes a simple EGO Roll, he may be able to resist the control in subtle ways. It's a little more subjective, but helps alleviate the "all-or-nothing" feeling mental powers often have.

Mental powers generally leave behind a trace or aura, and mentalists can use Telepathy to detect this. To novices, it may seem like some kind of mental instability or conflicting impulses; an experienced telepath will be able to identify it as a mental powers trace. Mental perception modifiers such as prior knowledge, time, power, etc. may apply. Psychometry can also be used to detect auras, although it generally cannot provide detailed information about the nature of the power used.

I also used the Mental Combat maneuvers from 4ed TUM, but because the players were largely in the dark about how mentalism worked, the maneuvers didn’t get as much play as I might have wanted. (Which is really pretty obvious in hindsight, isn’t it?)

I didn’t keep every iteration of the PC’s character sheets, but IIRC here’s roughly what they each had at this point in the campaign:

John:
Detect Minds: (limited range)
Foreboding (Precognitive Clairvoyance, NCC, “Vague and Unclear Visions”)
Danger Sense (in combat only)
+2(?) Mental Defense (Concentration & Full Phase to Activate)
+1 CSL with Martial Arts (sfx: telepathy/precognition)

Joshua:
Mental Awareness
Psychometry: Detect “auras” left behind by the use of mental powers
+2(?) Mental Defense (Concentration & Full Phase to Activate)
+1 CSL with Small Arms (sfx: telepathy)

Jeremy:
Empathy (~4d6 Telepathy, Emotions Only, Eye Contact, RSR)
Project Emotion (~4d6 Mind Control, Emotions Only, Eye Contact, RSR)
+2(?) Mental Defense (Concentration & Full Phase to Activate)

Except for the CSLs, most of these had a stack of Limitations, such as Concentrate, Extra Time, Increased END, etcetera, which made them mostly useful in non-combat situations. Most also had a a “Not Fully Understood” Limitation to reflect the fact that the players didn’t actually have the write-ups for their powers and so had to guess at some of the mechanics.

bigdamnhero

Aug 3rd, '06, 10:37 AM

Episode 7: “New Friends, Old Enemies”

Early October: Kristin tells you about a supposed alien landing site in Minnesota. You drive up to check it out, but it turns out to be a hoax. On the way home, you stop at an abandoned hot springs to unwind, and are jumped by a band of local thugs. Fortunately, they weren’t expecting you to have automatic weapons with you in the pools! It takes all of 5 seconds to kill a couple of them and drive the rest off. There were five kids at the springs, too, one of whom has a rich daddy: Anthony Racond, who runs a bio-tech firm. He's very grateful to you for saving his son, and tells you that if you ever need anything – “anything at all” – to call him.

Back at the house, Kristin sends you a half-melted dog tag belonging to a woman in Miami suffering from amnesia. The Good Samaritan that found her has been calling her “Steve,” as that is the only legible word on the dog tag. But Joshua manages to retrieve some of the computer files embedded in the tag: enough to identify her as Erica Stevens, a helicopter pilot with BCH Security. A little checking reveals that she is listed as presumed dead following a helicopter crash a couple of months ago.

When armed men gun down the Good Samaritan, Steve narrowly escapes and contacts Kristin. Not knowing what else to do, Kristin gets her on a northbound bus, and asks you to meet her. Jeremy is otherwise occupied, but John, Joshua and Liz drive down to meet Steve in Philadelphia. (If she is being followed, you don’t want them knowing where you live.)

You meet Steve at the Philadelphia bus station; also there to greet her is a five-person Strike Team from BCH Security. A running fight ensues: John punches out a couple of them, Joshua and Liz shoot a couple more, and you whisk Steve away to safety – but not before Liz takes a round in the stomach that cuts right through her vest. She needs immediate medical attention, but you know they’ll be checking all the local hospitals. Fortunately, John’s paramedic work keeps her alive until you can get her to a hospital a few towns over, and a couple of greased palms inspires the hospital staff to “misplace” the report for a couple days until after she can be discharged.

Steve is very grateful for your help. But even after you show her the information you’ve recovered about her past, she has no memories before about a month ago. She’s more than a little troubled by the idea that she used to work for “Evil Inc” – a company that is now trying to kill her – and asks you to keep calling her Steve, rather than Erica.

[Notes: The alien landing site hoax was narrated out-of-game; I wanted to establish that some weird things really do turn out to be bogus after all, but I didn’t want to waste a whole session on it. The fight with the BCH Strike Team was another one that should’ve been harder, but good player tactics (and a few good rolls) nearly made it a cakewalk…until Liz got tagged. By the way, John & Liz are officially a couple at this point – I think they got together around Episode 5 or 6 IIRC.]

bigdamnhero

Aug 8th, '06, 06:06 AM

Episode 8: “Art and Artifice”

[A word or two about Jeremy is in order at this point. Unbeknownst to the other PCs (tho suspected by the other players) Jeremy is actually a notorious art thief known as The Fox. Part of his shtick is to steal Russian/Ukrainian artifacts and help repatriate them to the mother country. (For a profit, of course: “Doing well while doing good,” as they say.) He has a rival, another art thief known as The Phantom, with whom he communicates only by posting cryptic taunts on an internet forum.]

October: Meanwhile, Jeremy has been scoping out the target of his next big theft: mega-rich Elliott Ramsey, former CEO of a prominent software company, currently playing Hugh Hefner on his own private island in Boston Harbor. Among other items in Ramsey’s extensive art collection are not one but two priceless Faberge Eggs. Searching for a way to convince the rest of the Crew to aid him, Jeremy uncovers rumors that Ramsey is into the Black Arts – although they’re mostly just speculation along the lines of “How else could a geek like him get such gorgeous women?” He also owns a number of ancient Scythian artifacts, some of which are rumored to have mystic powers; chief among these is the Sword of St. Eisel, which according to legend has the power to slay demons.

Jeremy (under an alias) finagles an invitation to one of Ramsey’s parties, attended by movers & shakers from around the country. Ramsey’s art collection is every bit as impressive as advertised, and the man himself is as much of a jerk as expected; yet the many beautiful women at the party fawn over him like he’s some kind of rock star. Jeremy meets the local Police Chief, a surprisingly young and attractive woman named Chris Orlando who allegedly owes much of her political success to Ramsey’s patronage. After some time in the hot tub with her, Jeremy becomes convinced that Ramsey is using some sort of mind control on her and the other women. After leaving the party, Jeremy is accosted and questioned by two of Ramsey’s female bodyguards, who are suspicious of Jeremy’s behavior at the party. He has to use his own empathic powers to convince them that he is just another geeky art collector.

A few days later, Jeremy gives a carefully-edited version of these events to the rest of the Crew, stressing Ramsey’s use of mental powers and the rumored mystic powers of some of the Scythian artifacts in Ramsey’s collection. The rest of you aren’t entirely convinced. But that night, John has another Foreboding dream, mostly vague images concerning Ramsey and his house, and some sort of shadowy spider extending its webs across Boston. It’s not clear from the dream whether Ramsey is actually the spider or not, but it’s enough to convince you to check him out more thoroughly. And the more you learn, the more convinced you become that the guy is dirty in one way or another.

You spend a week or two scoping out the security systems on Ramsey’s island, which are quite good. But you identify a spot where the foliage has grown out a bit, blocking the cameras’ view of a small section of beach. You wait until Ramsey (and his bodyguards) are out of town. Steve and the still-recovering Liz take a small boat past the island and stage their own little “Girls Gone Wild” diversion, while the guys slip ashore in a rubber raft. You make it past the other security systems and guards and sneak into the mansion, which is largely deserted. Joshua senses psychic auras around the Sword of St. Eisel, a book of “summoning spells,” and a small silver pendant, so you grab those. (Plus, obviously, the Faberge Eggs.)

In the library, you find a concealed staircase leading to a hidden basement. There you find a naked woman – beautiful if you don’t mind the horns, the fangs, and the bat-wings – standing in the middle of a pentagram. She calls herself Lisa, and says quite matter-of-factly that she is a demon from hell and is under Ramsey's control. She tries to get you to free her and take her with you, but you’re not feeling that gullible today. After several minutes of talking, she seems to get bored with the conversation – at which point all the lights in the room suddenly go out (including your flashlights) and Lisa attacks!

It quickly becomes apparent that she is not, in fact, restrained by the pentagram on the floor. She is also fast, enormously strong, and exhibits abilities way in excess of any mental powers you've yet seen. You all get slapped around pretty good, and John and Joshua both get hit with some sort of flame strike. Finally, Jeremy manages to get her in a head lock while Joshua chops her up with the Sword of St. Eisel. Since the building is now on fire (from Lisa’s flame strikes), you run for it. Fortunately, the guards and staff are more worried about putting out the fire than looking for fleeing burglars, so you make it to your raft and away.

Epilogue: John & Joshua both spend a week in the hospital’s burn ward. You stay on guard for a while, but there are no signs that you are being tracked. Ramsey offers a ten-million-dollar reward for the stolen Eggs, as well as a priceless Rembrandt painting that he claims was also stolen. Afterwards, Ramsey’s public approval rating takes a sharp drop, with a lot of “What were we thinking?” and “Who decided this guy was cool?” type of commentaries. You deduce that without Lisa his mental hold over Boston has been broken, or at least severally weakened. Jeremy stashes the Eggs under his bed until he can find a buyer. Meanwhile, when he posts a message for the Phantom bragging about stealing the Eggs, he gets a message back making it clear it was The Phantom that stole Ramsey’s Rembrandt!

[Notes: Yes, you read that right; Jeremy stashed two priceless Faberge Eggs…in a box under his bed. His thinking was that in case Ramsey had some way to track them, he wanted to be there to defend them. What can I say?]

[The whole time they were on the island, I kept waiting for them to bump into The Phantom, who was there to one-up Jeremy by stealing the Rembrandt out from under him. I had pre-plotted The Phantom’s actions, and they kept just missing one another; which in the end turned out to be far funnier when Jeremy realized what must’ve happened. As for Lisa, yes she was a Succubus for all practical purposes, although she came from another dimension, not “hell” in any Judeo-Christian sense of the word. The sfx behind the flame strikes was that she could open pinhole-sized dimensional portals and pull energy through them. One of my goals with this scenario was to show them some of the kinds of things that truly-powerful mentalists could accomplish, although it was much later before they started to figure out how such things were done.]

graiae66

Aug 8th, '06, 04:22 PM

I'm loving this, especially (as Vasoom said), the episode titles. Are you Joss Whedon slumming? The blend is pretty unique. I'll definitely keep reading.

dee

bigdamnhero

Aug 9th, '06, 06:07 AM

Are you Joss Whedon slumming?
:jawdrop: Wow, I think that is the single coolest compliment I've ever received in my life! Thanks! :celebrate

Vassoom

Aug 9th, '06, 10:36 PM

I'm loving this, especially (as Vasoom said), the episode titles. Are you Joss Whedon slumming?:jawdrop: Wow, I think that is the single coolest compliment I've ever received in my life! Thanks! :celebrateI agree...that's high praise, indeed! :cool:

- Vassoom

graiae66

Aug 10th, '06, 04:29 PM

Well, it has the right Whedonesque feel. So this is a defunct campaign? Too bad. What sorts of things are you running these days?

bigdamnhero

Aug 14th, '06, 07:45 AM

Well, it has the right Whedonesque feel. So this is a defunct campaign? Too bad. What sorts of things are you running these days?
Ya, der campaign ist kaput. Ran for six years or so until I moved away a couple years ago. Currently I'm trying to get a Champions campaign going, but we keep having scheduling problems. :( Thanks again for the compliments!

bigdamnhero

Aug 16th, '06, 12:00 PM

[You may or may not notice a slight change in the tone of the postings from here on out. The original notes for the previous adventures were lost in a computer crash, so the logs you’ve been reading were re-created after the fact. The logs from this point on are from my original notes, and are a bit more detailed.]

Episode 9: "For The Children"

12/10/26 – After a month of badly-needed rest and recovery, you’re all finally fit enough to return to duty. Kristin arranges a meeting with Alexander “Sasha” Lobov, who owns a small import-export business. Lobov's niece, Annya Feodorovna Makasheva, is missing (since 12/6) and he suspects something “weird” is involved. Annya had moved to New York from Russia six months ago, and was working as a scrub nurse at the Roosevelt Island Children's Hospital (RICH). One of Annya’s roommates, another Russian émigré named Marya “Mary” Trubina, was also a nurse at RICH. But Mary was killed 12/2, ostensibly in a mugging that went too far. Four days later, Annya disappeared without a trace. Lobov hired a PI to look for her, but he came up with nothing (and appears to have done only a cursory job).

12/11: Basic investigation. You talk to the PI that Lobov had hired, but get nothing other than the distinct impression that he’s scared of something. You learn that RICH is owned by your old pals at BCH, and seems to have a lot of financing from other indeterminate sources. You obtain blueprints for the hospital, which show old underground steam tunnels connecting the buildings. You scout out the hospital itself, which seems to have a fairly typical security setup. Except one of the buildings -- Ward 7, a recovery ward for sick orphans awaiting adoption -- seems to have its own separate guard force for no apparent reason. Records show that Mary had been working in Ward 7 for a month before her death. (Annya worked in Ward 10.) You manage to obtain the pass code for general hospital access, and can fake up some ID cards; but Ward 7 has a separate code, and you are unable to get it.

12/12: You contact Annya's semi-boyfriend Viktor Vaselevich Danilenko, who works as the hospital's computer sysop. Viktor is not an overly brave man (especially since his green card is dependent on his RICH employment), but he obviously cared for Annya and agrees to help you where he can. He tells you that Mary had started having nightmares shortly after she was transferred to Ward 7, had gotten progressively more moody and withdrawn over the last month, and had gotten in a shouting match with the head nurse the day before she was killed. Viktor says Annya was convinced that Mary's death was somehow connected to the hospital. She had him pull up the name of a couple who had recently adopted a "Ward 7 baby." She called him that night, furious, saying that she had gone to talk to the couple but they claimed to know nothing about RICH and had never adopted anyone. That was the last he heard from Annya.

Jeremy goes to interview the couple, Frank and Judy Flyte, who deny knowing anything about either Annya or the hospital. Curiously, Jeremy can't sense any emotions coming from either of them, but he’s not yet confident enough in his empathic abilities to say for sure what’s wrong.

That night, Liz and Steve create a distraction while the guys climb over the fence and break into the hospital warehouse. Once inside, you locate and unseal the old steam tunnel vent, and make your way through the tunnels to Ward 7's basement. You hide from an orderly pushing a cartload of silver cases, and knock out the security guard before he can call for help; unfortunately you miss a security camera, and the alarm is sounded. With additional guards on the way, you chase the orderly (the one with the cart) into a room that turns out to have a tunnel leading out of it. You follow him down the tunnel.

After ~1/2 mile, the tunnel dead-ends at some kind of control room. In the center of the room surrounded by electronic devices and power lines stands a black cube, 10’ per side, somehow looking oddly insubstantial. The orderly (and his cart) are gone, but two guard dogs with strange snake-like stingers growing out of their necks attack you. Joshua gets stung, leaving him feeling a little lightheaded, before you manage to kill the two dogs. Examining the cube, you realize it looks a lot like the teleportation device used by the Ice Wyrm (Episode 1). Rather than fight your way back up the tunnel, you jump through the cube. A powerful feeling of disorientation and vertigo seizes you, but it only lasts an instant before you walk out the other side of the cube…

…and find yourself in a warehouse, daylight shining through the windows. Nearby, several uniformed men with AK-47s (not the RICH guards) are talking to the terrified orderly. They turn at your arrival, obviously surprised, and start asking you questions.

In Russian.

(To Be Continued)

bigdamnhero

Oct 6th, '06, 10:31 AM

[Sorry to have neglected this log for so long; got caught up with other projects. We now rejoin our story, already in progress.]

Episode 10: “To Russia, With Confusion”

December 13, 2026: Daylight streams through the warehouse windows, even though it was the middle of the night when you stepped into the cube. The guards bark orders at you -- in Russian. The orderly you chased points at you and yammers something fearful. Overall, not the friendliest reception ever. You all dive for cover and return fire on the guards. You’re all still a little disoriented from the trip through the energy-cube-gate-thing; plus Joshua is woozy from getting stung by the medusa-dogs. You’re forced to resort to grenades, which kill several of the guards and convince the others to run away. Unfortunately, you also take out one of the control panels for the cube device, and the cube collapses into nothingness. You grab one of the silver boxes from the cart the orderly had been pushing, and some data storage drives from the control panel. You also find a woman's white shoe that might have been Annya’s. Then you run like hell as Russian police start arriving (in armored personnel carriers).

It doesn’t take long to confirm that you’ve somehow been transported to Moscow; good thing Jeremy speaks fluent Russian. You find a cheap hotel that doesn’t ask questions, and regroup. Joshua reads the “empathic aura” of the shoe you found, and is pretty sure it belonged to the missing Annya. The data disks contain technical data on how to control and direct interdimensional portals, though they appear to be missing the section on how to open such portals in the first place. And the silver box turns out to be a heavily insulated metal case, labeled BPX. (Possibly pronounced “VRKh” if they're Russian letters.) Inside the case are what can only be the brain(s) of one or more small children, neatly sliced up like lunchmeat!

You check a nearby hospital, but none of the wounded guards from the warehouse fight are there. But Joshua gets treated for his “snakebite” and feels much better. You go back by the warehouse, which seems to have been cleared out; several suits in a “Metro-1” car are hanging around the place. You try and phone home to Liz, as well as Lobov (your client), but can’t get through.

12/14: The next day, you finally get through to Lobov; he’s understandably puzzled about what you’re doing in Moscow, but suggests that you contact a friend of his: Major Vladimir Samsonov at the Customs & Immigration Bureau. You meet with Samsonov and tell him a creatively-edited version of what happened. You’re pretty sure he doesn’t entirely believe your story, but he says he’ll do what he can to help. Samsonov assigns you two guides/babysitters: Karl and Kara. You spend the rest of the day researching Metro-1, a private firm restoring the decrepit Moscow subway system; Metro-1 is owned by a holding company called BPX. That evening, over much vodka, it is revealed that Karl and Kara are part of a local demon-hunting group called Spaseteli (The Saviors); Samsonov is their government contact. (“You guys have a government contact? How come we don’t have a government contact?!”)

12/15-17: You go back to see Major Samsonov and tell him the whole story; you also give him copies of the portal device data. You explore a few Metro tunnel sections, trying to learn what BPX/Metro-1 is really up to. As you get closer to the central "Phase II" section of tunnels, you detect traces of empathic powers having been used. But you also find pockets of carbon monoxide; you are forced to withdraw and sleep off your CO-induced headaches while Samsonov tries to round up some CO-breather masks. And you finally get through to Liz, Steve & Aunt Jo, who are relieved to learn you aren’t dead after all.

12/18: You scope out Yeltsinskaya Square, the center of Metro-1's operation. You watch as a Metro-1 van pulls up and delivers a dozen silver brain-boxes. You follow the van back to an abandoned theater guarded by 12 punks. You sneak in, cut the power, and start busting heads. Night vision goggles give you a definite advantage and the fight is going all your way, until some big shaggy ape-like creature (called a Leshy) emerges from the basement and crushes Kara to death. You burn through a lot of ammo, but you manage to kill the Leshy before it can grab any more of you.

Locked in a closet in the basement, you find Annya: cold, wet and terrified but basically intact. She tells you that she had snuck into Ward-7's basement to find out what was going on, followed some orderlies through the portal, and was captured by the BPX guards at the warehouse.

Your captives call themselves "the Children of the Steel Angel," and say they were paid to watch the theater, guard Annya, and store the empty "cryoboxes" until they are needed. Their contact is Katya Vistula, a beautiful white-haired woman you noticed earlier at Yeltsinskaya Square. You turn the captives over to Major Samsonov, who agrees to keep them incommunicado for a few days. He also arranges care for Annya.

12/19: Armed with CO-proof masks, and joined by the remaining Saviors -- Karl, Dmeitri, Kiril, Olga & Bat -- you re-enter the Metro. You use tear gas to drive away a swarm of jumbo sewer rats. The closer you get to the “Phase II” tunnels, the weirder things get. Dmeitri nearly drowns trying to save a phantom drowning woman. Farther on, you are all beset by visions of people from your past – people you had failed to save in one way or another. Most of you are eventually able to drive off your “ghosts” through force of will, although Kiril blacks out and can’t be revived; you pause while the other Saviors take him topside and rejoin you.

Outside the start of the Phase II tunnels, the way is blocked by what looks like concrete but turns out to be some kind of wood pulp; Jeremy finally gets to use that chainsaw he's been dragging around! Two BPX guards come to investigate the noise, but you take them out with silenced pistols. Inside, the whole tunnel is covered in some sort of organic resin, apparently secreted by a number of strange insect-like beings that ignore your presence. Joshua detects some mental powers in use farther up the tunnel, so you continue on.

Halfway to Yeltsinskaya Station you are engaged by two BPX guards with AK-47s; the alarm now raised, you shoot the two guards and push on to Yeltsinskaya. The central platform is clogged with resin secretions and weird artery-like tendrils; in the center stands some massive construct resembling a pile of giant-sized organs encased in mucus. Unarmed workers flee as you trade AK rounds with a dozen armed guards; Bat is killed, and Dmeitri takes a bad leg wound. Some Floating Energy Ball Thing shoots bursts of electricity your way, knocking Olga out; John & Joshua manage to hit the acorn-sized metal sphere at the ball’s center (nice shooting!), and it blows up. Katya -- the white-haired woman you saw before -- stuns Jeremy with some kind of sonic weapon. Then John blows up the construct with a well-placed grenade; Katya and the remaining guards start to withdraw upstairs. You toss your last grenade up after them, then assault the stairs before they can regain their balance. The last guards fall to your sudden blitz; you shoot Katya in the leg and knock her unconscious.

More guards are coming up the other tunnels behind you and you hear sirens approaching, so you grab Katya and run out into Yeltsinskaya Square. Joshua quickly hot-wires a car; you throw your prisoner in with the wounded Saviors, and they take off. But before the rest of you can make your escape, Russian Police APCs pour into the square. Out of grenades and low on ammo, you (wisely) decide not to take them on; John, Joshua and Jeremy are arrested.

(To Be Continued)

bigdamnhero

Oct 18th, '06, 05:44 AM

Interlude: “Question & Answer”

Questioned separately, you each conclude that at this point you may as well tell the truth. Fortunately the police commander, Captain Andrea Bagramyan, seems to believe you; she has seen a few weird things herself. Also, the search of Yeltsinskaya Station seems to back up your story. You are held in jail over night, but treated surprisingly decently. (Partly thanks to Major Samsonov’s intervention.)

The next day, you are called to testify before the Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland, the closest thing to a ruling body Russia has these days. Major Samsonov and Captain Bagramyan testify on your behalf, which lends credibility to your story. After several hours of questioning, you manage to convince a slim majority of the Committee that something dark and sinister is in fact afoot, and that you are in fact the good guys. They vote not to charge you criminally, but deadlock on whether to allow you to leave the country; you are stuck until the seventh Committee member returns from a trip abroad.

The Committee releases you to Major Samsonov’s and Captain Bagramyan’s custody. You spend most of the next day being debriefed by various government and military officials. You also spend several hours with Committee member Patriarch Mikhail, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who is deeply interested in everything you have seen and learned.

Meanwhile, your friend Karl gets the following information out of the prisoner Katya:
She works for someone called “The Deathless One,” who is incredibly powerful, has always been here, always will be here, etc. She implies that this Deathless One owns Metro-1/BPX.
The construct in the Metro was an “empathic resonator,” designed to pick up, magnify and re-broadcast negative emotions and psychic trauma to the whole city. When asked “Why?” she acts as if spreading misery in Moscow is an end in itself, rather than a means to some ultimate objective.
The connection with Roosevelt Island Children's Hospital was just a business deal – the Hospital sold them the brain slices they needed to make the empathic resonator work. They use babies’ brains because they just work better.
The “Children of the Steel Angel” she describes as canon fodder; The Deathless One and the Steel Angel are NOT the same individual, but the relationship between them is unclear.
The Deathless One has some kind of “camp” near the city of Kazan, and they did some early experiments there.
He also notes that Katya has an extra thumb joint, slightly slanted eyes, and lobeless ears not unlike your old pal Dicky (Episode 4). But when Karl leaves her alone for a few minutes, she disappears from a locked closet. When Joshua checks the closet later, he detects a residual aura not dissimilar to that generated by the portal device, though much weaker.

Samsonov learns that a large number of the arrested Metro-1 workers come from Kazan, which you figure can’t be a coincidence. Since all the Saviors are sidelined, you volunteer to go to Kazan and check things out. Since the Committee never said you couldn't leave Moscow, Samsonov agrees, as long as Captain Bagramyan accompanies you.

bigdamnhero

Nov 4th, '06, 09:12 AM

Episode 11: “Death To The Deathless!”

12/22: The day-long train ride to Kazan is cold and uncomfortable, but at least Joshua gets a chance to play with the sonic stunner weapon you took from Katya. This device – which looks more like a palm pilot with a directional antenna than it does an actual weapon – seems to temporarily incapacitate people by overloading their nervous system. Joshua jury-rigs a recharge for the drained battery, although he's not sure how long it'll last.

12/23-24: You move into the Kazan Police barracks, and brief Police Colonel Gordov on your mission. He’s none too thrilled about having "Amerikanski Ghostbusters" running around his city; but he agrees to let you do your thing as long as you don't get in the way of the "real" police work. He assigns somnambulistic Sergeant Oleg Titov to keep an eye on you.

You learn there have been over a hundred disappearances in the past six months, with no apparent pattern. There have also been several reported attacks by what witnesses describe as Oboroten (wolfmen). Also all the historical & genealogical records from the Kazan Historical Museum were stolen six months ago, and found a few weeks later dumped in the mud outside town. Joshua cross-references the missing persons reports with the museum records, and learns that most (possibly all?) of those missing are descendants of people who were Gulag prisoners during the Stalin era.

Learning of an old Gulag camp not far outside Kazan, you try to go check it out; but your rented Volga gets stuck in the mud and snow. While trying to free it, you are attacked by several Oboroten. You kill 5 and capture 1 (using the sonic stunner), tho Andrea gets a nasty bite on the arm. Returning to town, you take Andrea to the hospital, and turn the Oboroten over to the Kazan Police.

[The bite Andrea got from the wolfman was actually completely harmless (apart from the bite damage itself); but I had a lot of fun watching the players worry over whether or not she was going to turn into a wolfman!]

12/25: Merry Christmas! John wakes up at 2 am (from a dream that he was a Gulag prisoner) to the sounds of a disturbance downstairs. As you all quickly dress and gear up, you hear gunfire and begin to smell smoke. Making your way downstairs, you find the station is on fire; there are several Oboroten loose in the building; the exit doors have been chained shut from the outside; and the building is surrounded by perhaps 40 gunmen, who shoot anyone trying to escape the fire!

You manage to force a door open, and using ballistic shields for protection you get yourselves and several officers out into the parking lot. But once there you are pinned down by snipers on the surrounding buildings. Several other cops are jumping out of upper-story windows, but between the pavement and the snipers few of them make it to cover. You’re able to take out several of the snipers, but all of you receive minor gunshot wounds to your arms & shoulders. Then Joshua detects mental powers in use on an opposing rooftop, and John hits it with another perfect grenade toss. Demoralized, the rest of the snipers withdraw, and the remaining cops are able to get out of the building safely. On the opposing rooftop you find your former captive Katya, bleeding and unconscious from John’s grenade.

When the smoke clears, there are about two dozen dead bad guys; at least one of whom you recognize as a BPX worker from the Moscow metro. You also have 6 wounded prisoners, including Katya (who is in bad shape and may not survive). The other prisoners identify themselves as more Children of the Steel Angel. You learn that the Steel Angel is a reference to Stalin, who they revere as some kind of religious figure supposedly sent by God to cull the weak and reward the strong, etc. Their leader is the Deathless One, who they name Koshchey the Undying: an evil, immortal bogey-man figure from Russian folklore. They also claim Koshchey used to be Stalin's right-hand man Lavrenty Beria, the architect of the Gulag system.

You convince the police to join you in an immediate attack on the Gulag camp. Nearly forty cops assault the camp in jeeps, trucks and armored cars. A few cars are disabled by RPG rounds, but you crash the gate. Charging into the compound, you trade shots with a number of guards in WWII-era Soviet army uniforms. Jeremy gets shot in the chest; his vest barely saves his life. You make your way into the HQ building, shooting more guards and wolfmen, and begin receiving various mental attacks. Andrea is paralyzed by projected emotions (terror) while Sgt. Titov is incapacitated by a sudden migraine.

In the last room, you find... Patriarch Mikhail! (Committee member and Head of the Russian Orthodox Church; see previous post.) But there’s something incorporeal about him: bullets go right through him, nor does the grenade you explode at his feet disturb him in the least. He tosses you around telekinetically and hits you with various other mental assaults. Then Joshua nails him with the sonic stunner, which seems to break his concentration and turn him corporeal again. A hand-to-hand fight ensues, but the old man turns out to be tougher than he looks. Jeremy, weakened from his previous wound, gets kicked in the head and knocked out. Finally, you manage to shoot Mikhail/Koshchey a couple times, which at least gets his attention. He attempts to open a portal and escape, but a face full of grenade fragments stuns him. You empty your magazines into him, killing him.

Aftermath: You wind up with another 25 dead "Children" and 10 more prisoners. There were also 6 more wolfmen, all of whom were killed. The police suffered 8 killed and 10 wounded. All of the Children appear to be human, as does Mihail/Koshchey/Beria/whoever he was. You liberate 68 men, women and children from the camp. They're all malnourished, physically exhausted and a few of them got caught in the crossfire, but they should live. Tho oddly, they all seem to think the year is 1938.

In Koshchey’s room you find a large metal chair attached to a strange device that seems half organic -- brain slices, human organs, etc -- and half electronic. Your best guess is that it's a smaller experimental version of the "empathic resonator" from the Moscow metro. Joshua studies it closely and takes a lot of pictures, but you haven't the faintest clue how it all works.

[Notes: This adventure tied up most of the loose ends from the Moscow story, tho they were still left wondering exactly who & what Mikhail/Koshchey was. One of the purposes of sending them to Russia was to say, “You think things are bad in the US?” and give them a taste of what America could be like if things continue to deteriorate. Tho it’s ironic that they ended up having a better relationship with the Russian government that with the US government.]

[It took the PCs awhile to work out the sfx behind Koshchey’s Desolid power, but I may as well explain it here. Essentially, he could open an EDM portal and balance himself halfway between dimensions; that way he was not physically in either dimension, but could attack into either mentally. Sonic attacks destabilized the portal, thus snapping him fully into our world.]

bigdamnhero

Nov 9th, '06, 08:58 AM

Interlude: “Can We Go Home Now?”

12/26-28: You spend a couple days in the Kazan hospital before the doctors feel you're fit to travel. The doctors try to save Katya, but her injuries are too severe. But before she dies, Jeremy interrogates her with the aid of his emotion projection ability. Many of her answers are unclear – she's pretty out of it – but she claims that she is a Sidhe, another name for the Fey Folk of Celtic myth. Her people feed off of human suffering, and are "everywhere." She came here to work for Koshchey because "he is an artist." The autopsy after her death shows that she appears human, but with a high number of minor oddities: rare blood type, reversed stomach, etc. None of them are remarkable individually, but it's very unusual to see so many of them in one person.

12/29-1/2/2027: Finally, you take the long, cold train ride back to Moscow. With Patriarch Mikhael's "disappearance" the balance of power on the Committee has shifted, allowing you to go home. You spend a quiet New Years with Major Samsonov and what's left of the Saviors, while arrangements are made to smuggle you back to the US. Meanwhile, you get a call from Liz & Steve that the children's hospital back home (where this whole mess started) has pulled up stakes and disappeared overnight.

1/3/27: Samsonov has arrange to smuggle you back to the states aboard a cargo plane; unfortunately, he made the arrangements through the Russian Mafia! Jeremy recognizes them moments before they recognize him, and shooting ensues. You all escape unscathed, `tho Samsonov is a bit pissed that no one told him the mob was after you. (So are John & Joshua, for that matter.) He proceeds to make other arrangements.

1/8-1/24: Finally you take a train to St. Petersburg, where you board a cargo ship bound for Virginia. You spend the next couple weeks freezing your butts off as the ship crosses the North Atlantic. But at least you have time to finish healing all your wounds.

As you approach the Eastern seaboard (and cell coverage), Joshua is able to catch up on his email; there’s a note from Steve reporting suspicious cold-weather patterns in southern New Mexico, and saying she and Liz were going to go check it out. There’s also a letter from Professor Michaels, who has been studying the book & letter you found in Dicky’s House.

bigdamnhero

Dec 16th, '06, 08:46 PM

Episode 12: “It’s Great To Be Home…OK, Back In The Car”

[Below is the email Our Heroes received earlier from Liz & Steve in New Mexico]

It’s January 25th when your ship docks in Norfolk, Virginia. A couple well-greased palms get you through Customs, and Aunt Jo is there to pick you up. Unfortunately, she hasn’t heard from Liz & Steve for nearly a week, and fears something may have happened to them. Then on your way out of Norfolk, you are attacked by two carloads of Cambodians (working, you deduce, for the Russian Mafia). Joshua's Jeep sprouts a couple bullet holes – as does Joshua. Good thing Aunt Jo brought your weapons! Superior firepower wins the day, and you continue home by a roundabout route.

By the time you finally make it home to Westchester, it’s the wee hours of the night. Understandably cautious, you sneak up on the house; sure enough, you spot two men watching the place, and manage to capture them. The house itself has been ransacked. Not surprisingly, Jeremy's Eggs are gone [Jeremy says: “DOH!!”]; but at least they didn't find the caves underneath the house, where you had stashed your armory and most of your other valuables.

From your captives, you learn:
• They are members of "The Law," Liz's old pseudo-police gang (see Episode 2),
• Stu (the new Chief) has contracted them out to provide some muscle for Trans-Global Technologies (TGT), the company Liz & Steve were investigating in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico,
• Liz & Steve have in fact been captured by other Lawmen in “T or C,”
• Stu and some other "Lawmen" came out to ransack your house,
• These two schmucks were supposed to watch the house until you showed up and then call a cell phone number for their Sergeant, “Gordo,” in T or C.

You load up the cars (including Joshua’s new M60 machine gun) and hit the road for New Mexico. On the way, Joshua hacks into Gordo's cell phone records, which includes several calls to a Domino's Pizza in T or C; hacking into Domino's records provides an address. You also stop to break into a pharmacy for some illicit narcotics, and call Annya (the Russian nurse you rescued last episode) to consult about dosages.

Two days later, you arrive in snowpacked T or C, tap into the Domino's computer and wait for your targets to order out. When they finally call in an order the next day, you intercept the pizzas, soak them with the drugs, and then deliver them to Gordo’s cabin. When you assault the cabin a couple hours later, several of the Lawmen are half-asleep, and the others are definitely impaired. In short order, 3 Lawmen are dead, and 4 more are your prisoners. Unfortunately, Stu is not here and Gordo is one of the dead. The survivors say Stu is at “the Mountain,” Trans-Global’s base 15 kilometers east of town near the border of White Sands Missile Range. Liz & Steve are probably there as well, tho your captives aren’t sure; their orders were simply to watch Liz & Steve's old hotel room until you showed up, and then notify Trans-Global at the Mountain.

The next day you rent snowmobiles and head for the Mountain, leaving your prisoners well tied up. Halfway there the road passes through the ghost town of Engle; you stop for a recon and spot a roadblock manned by more Lawmen. You also spot three other heavily-armed people spying on the roadblock. It’s obvious they’re not Lawmen, so you cautiously make contact with them, and all six of you back away to compare notes. Meet Clark, Sam & Lisa, members of "The Contemporary Order of Poor Knights of the Temple" (aka the New Templers), a Christian group dedicated to fighting "the minions of Satan" that are walking the earth. While obviously quite devout and fundamentalist, it doesn't appear to bother them that you aren’t; you quickly agree to join forces. The six of you quietly and efficiently capture the 12 Lawmen at the roadblock.

Shortly after 1 am, you approach the perimeter of Trans-Global’s base, built into the side of a mountain. Dressed up in the Lawmen’s uniforms, and with John & Joshua bundled up as frostbite victims, you drive right up to the gate and request medical treatment. You are escorted to the infirmary, where you quickly bushwhack the medics and a couple guards. Joshua takes over the base security cameras, and guides John, Jeremy and the Templers as you make your way methodically through the base capturing people in their sleep and forcing others to surrender at gunpoint.

By sunrise, all 30 personnel are your prisoners. You lock them up and finish exploring the complex. An air lock leads to a series of caves very much like the Ice Wyrm’s Garland Corporation base (Episode 1), complete with Yeti and Ice Wolves. But the creatures prove no match for 6 experienced fighters with automatic weapons and grenades, and in fairly short order you control the tunnel complex too. You find no trace of Liz, Steve or Stu, but one cavern contains a dimensional portal device like the one from the Garland site, only slightly smaller.

(A little later, the Lawmen you captured back in town show up, having finally freed themselves and come back to the mountain for new orders; they’re pretty depressed about getting captured again!)

After grabbing a few hours of much-need sleep, Joshua starts trying to decipher the portal controls, while the rest of you question a few prisoners. All of them know about the "Technical Advisor" they call Icey. Most believe him to be some sort of extra-terrestrial who is providing them with advanced technology. The stated purpose of their project is to counteract global warming by lowering the temperature a few degrees world-wide; you get the impression that most of them suspect there's more to it than that, but aren't interested in asking questions. A handful imply that they all stand to make a fortune, since Trans Global has invested heavily in oceanic kelp farms, cold-weather gear manufacturers, and so forth. A few admit having seen Liz & Steve, and believe Icey took them through the portal.

Using the information he got from the Moscow portal device, Joshua figures out how to activate this one. Having done everything you can do on this side, you fire up the controls -- a shimmering, translucent gateway forms. Clark, Sam and Lisa agree to accompany you. Weapons at the ready, you jump through the portal…

(To Be Continued)

[Notes: The whole time the PCs were running around in Russia, I’d been amusing myself keeping track of all that was going on back home. The truth is, I hadn’t really counted on them getting stuck in Russia for quite as long as they did, so there were a number of sub-plots already in motion, including the return of Icey, Stu, et. al. By the way, Joshua’s M60 wasn’t really new; they had taken it away from the Bradley Center’s security force way back in Episode 3. But Joshua hadn’t bought Weapon Familiarity: Machine Guns until just before the side-trip to Russia, and was quite upset that he hadn’t taken it along.]

[Edit: By the way, I had a whole bunch of stuff planned in town: witnesses to interview, clues to find, bad guys to evade, etc. Never occurred to me they would just pull cell phone records and get the bad guys’ address from Domino’s. Oh well.]

bigdamnhero

Dec 27th, '06, 06:46 PM

Episode 13: “Walking in a Winter ****ing Wonderland”

Accompanied by the the three Templers, you jump through the portal… and find yourselves rolling down a steep hillside, coming to rest in a snow bank. Looking around, you find yourselves surrounded by low, craggy hills covered with permafrost and the occasional dead tree. A full moon hangs directly overhead. The temperature is about -50°F. By the time any of you can climb back up the hillside, the portal is gone.

The only life you can see are two large ravens perched on a nearby dead tree; one of them flies off shortly thereafter. For lack of a better idea, you decide to follow it. You spend perhaps an hour trudging through snowdrifts, over one hill after another. There are no landmarks to speak of, and the moon seems to be fixed directly overhead -- which is pretty disconcerting in its own right. You try to keep your weapons warm by sticking them inside your coats, but the cold penetrates the thickest clothing. Most of your electronic gear is freezing up, too.

A couple hours later, you spot a number of robed figures heading your way, and decide to wait for them. They spread out to encircle you, then rush to attack: ghoulish creatures, with grayish skin hanging from too-long bones, stringy hair and dull gray eyes. Your guns, half-frozen, jam repeatedly; but you manage to fight the ghouls off, killing over a dozen and capturing one alive. Your captive doesn't seem to speak any language; he just hisses at you. Another raven flies overhead.

You back-track the ghouls' footprints: several more hours trudging through bitter-cold air and harsh, unvarying terrain. The ghouls' tracks become fainter and more difficult to follow. You spot a pack of ~10 wolves, who may have been following the ghouls' tracks, but you shoot one from a distance and the rest scatter.

You keep moving; everyone's starting to feel the effects of the extreme cold, especially Lisa (who, she reveals, has had frostbite before). Finally, you spot the first definable terrain feature you've seen in hours: a rocky, black ridgeline perhaps 100’ high. As you approach, you notice a robed figure standing atop the ridge, seemingly watching you. Joshua senses some strong mental powers in use. You get closer, then set up the rifles and open fire. You think you hit the figure, which drops out of view behind the ridge. As you charge the hill, the weather suddenly starts to go completely to hell; by the time you reach the crest, you're in the middle of a full-blown blizzard and the figure is nowhere in sight.

You seek shelter in a cave, which turns out to be inhabited by a tribe of strange creatures: roughly humanoid, with wide, squarish bodies and long, impossibly-skinny limbs that make them resemble stick figures. You manage to make friends with the "Sticks," trading a watch and a knife for some food and a small campfire. Later that night, the cave is invaded by a horde of enormous, shaggy rats; but gunfire scares them off – and impresses the Sticks.

You stay with the Sticks for a couple days, going out with them to explore, hunt, and gather wood. Through sign language and picture drawing, you learn that the Sticks know about Icey and are afraid of him. They seem to indicate that Icey controls the Yeti, wolves, and Ice Dragon (and possibly the ravens?), but not the ghouls, rats, or the robed weather-guy. Attempts to explain the concept of mapping to them fail, however.

One day while out exploring with the Sticks, you are attacked by a large group of wolves and Yeti. You manage to shoot most of the wolves, but of course your guns are still unreliable. By the time the Yeti close, it's mostly hand-to-hand. 2 Sticks are killed and 2 wounded before the last Yeti falls, but the humans take only minimal damage: Jeremy gets a minor wolf-bite, and Clark & Lisa both get knocked around but take no lasting damage. The Sticks are impressed enough with your fighting ability that they agree to lead you to Icey.

[Notes: The players had assumed that the portals could lead to other planets, but they hadn’t considered the possibility they might lead to completely different dimensions. It caused them to seriously re-think some assumptions they had made about the nature of the threat. Making friends with the “Sticks” was also a watershed moment because, as John put it: “We’ve never met anyone before who didn’t try to kill us!”]

bigdamnhero

Jan 2nd, '07, 12:46 PM

Episode 14: “Battle On...Make that In The Ice”

It takes a couple days to get everything ready. The Sticks have some sort of pet slug the size of a large dog, which they use to eat a new exit tunnel. (You infer that Icey’s tunnels in Texas and New Mexico had been dug by similar creatures.) The Sticks also explain you need to wait for a storm to cover you, so the ravens won’t observe your movement and report it to Icey.

Finally you set out, accompanied by eleven Sticks. The Robed Guy is back atop the ridgeline; at the Stick's direction, you shoot at him – sure enough, a big storm blows up. You spend perhaps 8 hours trudging through a blizzard, although it's mostly blown itself out by the time you reach your destination: a large ice palace 20 stories high, that looks like a bunch of giant snowflakes stacked one atop the other. You hunker down in an arroyo out back and wait. Lisa is pretty-much useless from hypothermia, and your guns are all covered in ice.

After another couple hours, a hidden door in the arroyo wall opens, and out come 2 Stick slaves pushing barrels, guarded by 2 Yeti. You kill the Yeti and pass through the door into a tunnel heading towards the palace. You spend several minutes de-icing your weapons (and Lisa), then head inward, leaving the door partly ajar. You find yourself in a series of corridors & rooms sealed by metal-bound wooden doors. You kill a couple more Yeti and several wrinkly dwarf-guys. You free several Stick slaves, who point you towards a corridor that leads upstairs.

A spiral ramp leads up to the ground floor. At the top, it empties into a room and you see "Icey" standing near the top. Everyone opens fire, killing it instantly. But the room (a 16-pointed star 80' across) turns out to be filled with 20 more just like him, along with more Yeti, wrinkle-dwarves, and a handful of Stick slaves. There are also 2 large ice sculptures of dragons, some large grotesque creature chained to one wall, and a pile of furs that turns out to contain Liz & Steve (also chained).

Bullets & grenades fly. The Ice Wyrms mostly run like hell, but Yeti reinforcements start arriving. The "large grotesque creature" breaks loose and disembowels a Stick before you manage to kill it. Joshua blows apart one of the ice sculptures, just to be sure, but nothing happens. Then several ghouls rush into the room and join the fight. Clark gets pummeled by a Yeti, then bitten (and poisoned) by a ghoul. Joshua gets impaled by some charging horned yeti-esque beast, but his vest saves his life. John throws his pistol to Liz, who immediately shoots…John! John's vest saves him, and he and Steve eventually wrestle the gun away from Liz. Then the second dragon sculpture comes to life and things get really interesting. The dragon tears Clark in half, and does the same to a couple Sticks, before Joshua’s M60 finally puts it down for good.

Meanwhile, Jeremy mows down a corridor full of ghouls. Sam collapses from cryokinesis-induced hypothermia, and Jeremy almost does before he's able to push his mental defenses and break the link. More reinforcements, including wolves, are arriving, but Joshua keeps hosing the entrance corridor with the M60 and keeps them under control, until he finally runs out of ammo and switches to the G11. John succeeds in tracking and killing the real Icey, despite a last-ditch mental illusion. The rest of you finish off the last remaining Yeti, wolves, ghouls, horned beasts and whatever else.

Aftermath: The half-dozen Sticks that survived run through the palace freeing slaves and butchering all the Ice Wyrms they can corner. Total (approximate) body count:
• 30-40 Ice Wyrms (only one of which exhibited any mental powers),
• 20 Yeti,
• 20 Wolves,
• 12 wrinkle-dwarves,
• 10 ghouls,
• 4 big horned guys,
• 2 ice dragons, and
• 1 "large grotesque creature."

Of the 11 Sticks that accompanied you only 5 survived, and all of them are wounded; but you freed over a dozen Stick slaves. Sam's barely conscious from severe hypothermia, Lisa has a nasty concussion, and Clark is dead. Jeremy's half-frozen but recovering. Joshua has an unpleasant but not fatal gut wound. And John somehow came through without a scratch.

Liz passes out, and when she wakes up she seems fine; but when John leaves an unloaded gun nearby as a test, she grabs it and immediately starts trying to shoot you all. This pattern repeats itself a few times – she seems fine until she tries to kill you. At least Steve appears to be her normal self, but she is unable to explain Liz’ condition.

Exploring the dungeon, you find some weird humanoid-octopus guy locked in a small cell. Though obviously intelligent, it doesn’t seem to have any spoken language. After some experimentation, Jeremy manages to communicate with it telepathically, although it’s thoughts don't seem to make much sense.

Meanwhile, Joshua locates several residual auras he believes to be left behind from portals. After quite a bit of trial and error, he manages to use his own empathic abilities to reopen two of them, although he can only hold them open for a few seconds at a time. Anything poked through an open portal gets sheared off when you try to pull it back, and you lose contact with the transmitter you toss through. A few bullets fall out of one portal, as if someone had shot through it but the bullets had lost all forward velocity in translation.

Eventually, John decides he feels lucky, and jumps through one portal. (Not the one the bullets came out of.) He finds himself in a tunnel complex in what turns out to be the Alaskan wilderness, similar to the complex in New Mexico but uninhabited. You wave goodbye to squid-guy, and the seven humans* pass through. Outside the cave, you find a Trans-Global storage shed with some snowmobiles; you pile onboard and head for town. You've been gone for 12 days.

* In case you’ve lost track: John, Joshua, Jeremy, Liz(?), Steve, Sam & Lisa.

[Notes: At the time, this was by far the largest RPG battle I’d ever run: over a dozen NPC allies and well over 100 enemies all told. Obviously they weren’t all on the battlemat at the same time -- I didn’t have the minis to do that if I’d wanted to -- but still an awful lot of moving parts. The PC’s tactical challenge was not just to kill monsters, but to do so fast enough to stay ahead of the reinforcement curve; fortunately, they seemed to understand that right off, and resisted the urge to get bogged down in details. Fun stuff.]

[For me, the high point humor-wise was Joshua taking the time to shoot up one ice dragon “before it comes to life and attacks us,” but then deciding it was just a statue after all and ignoring the second one. Until it came to life and attacked them, that is. :D ]

[One minor rant. Squid Guy?? Only the biggest freakin’ plot hook of the entire freakin’ campaign, that’s all. And they just waved good bye and left him behind. Players -- what are you gonna do, eh?]

bigdamnhero

Jan 17th, '07, 11:16 AM

Interlude: “No, Seriously… Can We Go Home Now!?”

February 12, 2027

The snowmobiles get you to Fort Yukon, Alaska, and you find a hospital. (Thank God the GPS survived your visit to Ice World!) Sam loses a couple toes to frostbite, but will live. Everyone else will recover well enough.

After all you’ve been through, you’d think getting home from Alaska would be a snap, right? Oh, except for that thing where Alaska seceded from the US back in 2020, and the US has a ban on travel to and from The Alaskan Republic. That complicates things a bit.

[Note: This actually had been established in the campaign back-history; I just haven’t mentioned it here before now. The intent was to reinforce the idea that things are falling apart, and underscore the Government’s inability to control its own territory. I had some other Republic Of Alaska story ideas in my mind, but as it happened this was the only time it came up.]

Lisa contacts her Templar friends -- she’s a little cagy about just how many of them there are -- and arranges to smuggle you back to the US. She also gives John a recruiting pitch; he’s non-committal about joining the Templars, but trades contact info for future use.

Meanwhile, Jeremy decides he just doesn't trust the Templar “fanatics.” He works a few of his own contacts, and spends a great deal of money to have himself smuggled back home. Lisa's friends sneak the rest of you into Canada, and then truck you down to Seattle, where you're able to catch a flight home. It takes both groups about a week to get home.

Since your "safe house" isn't so safe anymore, you move into a temporary apartment; Kristin looks for something more permanent. You also ask Kristin to find some sort of psychiatric arrangement for Liz, who still seems relatively normal when she's not trying to kill you; John notices that Liz seems to be missing a few scars and there are a couple other minor physical differences in addition to her personality being "off" somehow. The word “clone” gets tossed about…

You also get another letter from Prof. Michaels, regarding his efforts to translate Dicky's book and letter; the book seems to be some kind of history of the homeland of the Sidhe, while the letter is a love letter. Sadly, you learn that Prof. Michaels was killed in a tragic car accident a few weeks after his findings were published. [Oh yeah, that’s a coincidence!]