June 15th - Waterloo!
Busy throwing screwed up post-it notes at the only Frenchman in the office. He knows better than to retaliate, but I can sense the simmering rage...
The Kazakhs don't understand it which, as I'm still sitting on the banks of the Caspian Sea, surrounded by other Brits, is leading to some odd conversations.
Ugh. Macro photography is HARD. really hard. I saw this beautiful Bold Jumping Spider (seriously, Bold is part of the name) on my stairs. Big as a dime, which is a lot when you aren't padding out your size with spindly legs. Anyway, I tried taking his picture, and I could. not. get. him. focused.
Sorry for the moaning. I'm sharing the pictures anyway.
I forgot to bring my dice to the Champions game I ran last night, so I had to borrow a set of lesser-used dice from a player.
GM (to dice): Now, you're going to be good to me, right? (listens to dice) Yes, that's good, but remember, if you kill more than one of their characters, the players get ever so cross...
The player for Circe was out last time I ran, so I had stated that Circe was out of town for most of the adventure, including the big battle with the New Gods. Unfortunately, I forgot that when I wrote up the news articles and needed a quote to reporters from one of the heroes.
Circe (reading aloud from article): "According to Circe, speaking on behalf of the superhero team, the New Gods were apparently being directed by a scientist who blamed PRIMUS for his sibling’s death." I must have rushed back from the island just to make that press conference!
Pops: Well, you do like being in the spotlight.
Circe (continues reading) "Circe refused to name the scientist or provide further details to the press." Yeah, because I really didn't know his name or any other details, since I wasn't even there!
The heroes subscribe to the Heronet Herald, an (obviously) superhero-centric weekly news sheet, which shows up each Monday morning somewhere near wherever a subscriber happens to be and is generally tailored for that subscriber. Nobody has seen it actually appear or get delivered. (I use it to recap the prior adventure, often provide some background on the current adventure, and sometimes foreshadow coming events.)
GM: It's rumored that they have a precog on staff. Used to work for the Psychic Friends Network, but he left just before they went under. He's the only one who saw that coming.
After the players have finished reading the news:
Dr. Reuel (Malarky's mentor and magic instructor, texting to Malarky): Thanks for the paper. Quite interesting. And kudos on an excellent Veil. I never even knew you were there.
Malarky: Ummmm... What paper? I never sent him a paper, did I? (GM shakes his head) I text him back: "Caution!"
Last adventure, the heroes visited the volcano lair island base of a hero team (the Millennium City Protectors, who all went missing in the Cross-Rip) to borrow a piece of unique equipment. Maker and Pops go back there to return it, and Maker notices that MCP hero Pack Rat had left three different blaster weapons and a grenade each disassembled on a workbench. For some reason, Pack Rat had listed various MCP members' names next to each weapon.
Maker: (looking at character sheet) I have "Cannot Resist Tinkering With Machines", so I start putting them back together.
GM: (after Maker makes a near-critical-success roll on Electronics) After you finish the first one, you probably say, "I'm gonna do the next one blindfolded!"
While Maker is doing that (and noticing that despite the weapons being from different criminal groups and of different designs, all had the same beam focusing mechanism), Pops is rolling his eyes and walking around Pack Rat's lab. He notices that for some reason, there's a huge (2m tall, 1.5m wide) solid chunk of basalt standing in room, and a glass-fronted wardrobe-style cabinet contains another such chunk of basalt.
Maker: Why would he put a huge chunk of basalt in a cabinet? Pops: I don't think he put it there. I think it... appeared there.
Maker quickly builds an x-ray viewer and verifies that nobody / nothing is trapped within the basalt. Since much of the rock around the MCP underground volcano lair is also basalt, she compared the chunks to the rock surrounding the lab and notices that not only is it basically the same; she sees veins of material in the surrounding basalt that basically skip the intervening open space to run through the basalt chunks in the lab.
Pops: So these chunks were probably pulled to this dimension from another dimension during the Cross-Rip.
Maker: But why the one in the cabinet?
GM: (to Shadowboxer's character, who also played Pack Rat in the prior campaign) Pack Rat had a battlesuit, didn't he? (player nods) And when he's working in the lab, he's probably not wearing the battlesuit all the time, right? He's probably have someplace to hang it...
Shadowboxer: (OOC) Like a glass-fronted wardrobe... (the coin drops) Oh, crap! And the other chunk is probably where Pack Rat was! He appeared in the other dimension underground, not in his battlesuit!
GM: But Argent is a teleporter, and Possum could tunnel through the rock. One way or another, they probably got him out.
A quick tour of the rest of the MCP base reveals a similar chunk of basalt replaced most of Argent's bed, and another chunk is in the middle of the kitchen.
Malarky, Shadowboxer, and Nexus: (almost simultaneously at hearing about the chunk in the kitchen) Possum!
Honey Badger: (who was Possum's player) Well, I did love me some snacks...
Maker: (who played Mosquito) Are there any teeny-tiny chunks of basalt lying around in the base?
Shadowboxer: I wouldn't worry too much. If Seal and Mosquito were on the island at the time, you can be pretty sure they were sunning themselves on the beach.
On to the meat of the adventure. One news item was a joint PRIMUS / UNTIL alert about a new and particularly murderous villain group known as the Corrupted. Their latest activity was attacking a US Army base and stealing a prototype battlesuit being tested there.
Pops: Why does the military even bother making battlesuits? All they're really doing is providing supervillain origins anyway.
Maker: I want the schematics on the battlesuit they stole.
GM: Suuuure. You just call up the Army and say, "That top-secret project of yours -- can I have the specs and schematics? Y'know, just in case I happen to run across it...
Honey Badger: Well, the cat's out of the bag now. They might as well make all the details public knowledge, just to mess with the supervillains who took it.
Maker tries getting info about the battlesuit from the internet, and makes a really bad Research roll.
GM: The general consensus is that it's built using alien tech, allows the user to mind control the masses, and occasionally causes peoples' clothing to teleport three meters to the right.
Honey Badger: That's not a bug, that's a feature. Honey Badger wants one of those.
GM: It also makes the wearer impotent.
Honey Badger: Never mind.
death tribble reacted to tkdguy in "Neat" Pictures
death tribble got a reaction from Cancer in Musings on Random Musings
death tribble got a reaction from urbwar in Superhero Images
