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STORY ARC 2 |
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GM: WILYQUIXOTE |
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WilyQuixote / Jason Roche was the GM for the duration of this arc. |
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SETUP |
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A few weeks passed in real life as I recall, and players were
begging for more supers gaming. Meanwhile I set out to recruit
new players as I was really irritated with some of the ones I
had at the time. |
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In the end I recruited three new players, and put two others on hiatus. I
also decided to take a turn on the player side of the screen and try to
move things along in that fashion. So Rook's player took over GM'ing
for a while and I made a speedster character named Hype. |
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Before the other three players were recruited in the new GM ran
an encounter for just Hype and Gravitic to get his feet wet. After that session the
new players came on board over the course of a couple of
sessions, playing War-Man, Agent X and Major
Savage. |
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War-Man, played by Joe, would prove to be one of the greatest of
the Mill Men cast of characters. His friend Dain played Agent X
and was a lot of fun too (character and player both). Both Joe
and Dain were experienced Hero gamers that had answered an ad
posted on the HERO Boards and they fit right in from the word
go. |
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Unfortunately Dain was in the process of making life adjustments
and moved to MN soon after joining the group, which was a real
shame as we were all sorry to see him go. |
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Charles played Major Savage. He had posted to the HERO Boards
indicating that he wanted to run Star HERO but was a HERO System
noob and needed help understanding how the game worked. I
invited him to come out and play with us to get a first hand
experience of how it works. I helped him design Major Savage, a
character loosely based on a Starship Trooper (book version),
which was the sort of game he was thinking of running in Star
HERO. |
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Charles hung with us for a bit and was a fun player, but
suddenly dropped off the map on us later without so much as an
email. |
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FOCUS |
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The goal of this arc was to keep it simple and focus on fun. |
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LEARNING CURVE |
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Charles was the only noob at the table this time around, so the
learning curve was minimal. We did a couple of quickie
no-continuity combats for him just so he could get a feel for
how his character worked. Joe and Dain both clicked right in and
we got down to some serious playing. |
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LOG |
10th session, about a month in game time later
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GRAB took control of the MC Museum of Anthropology, and the Police
were stymied. Rather than their usual in and out tactics they were holding
hostages and stayed on site for a while.
Suddenly, in a streak, Hype was on scene. Roughly
simultaneously Gravitic was flying in as well.
After questioning the officer in charge about what was going down Hype
was off like a shot, entering the building from a side exit. Not to be
outdone Gravitic flew in the front door from another direction.
The two met in the middle for a knockdown-drag out of a fight with
Black Diamond and Blue Jay. Finally fighting their way thru the
formidable Black Diamond (with Gravitic nearly killing her in the
process), Hype ran upstairs just in time to see the other three members of
GRAB escape thru Cheshire Cat's gate. CC showed off an old stick in his
hand to the super fast Hype and smiled as the gate shut.
Meanwhile Gravitic took Black Diamond outside to get medical
attention for her after miscalculating how much of one of his Gravity
powers she could take.
Gravitic and Hype confered after the altercation and agreed that they
worked well together. Hype gives Gravitic his hotline phone number;
1-888-GET-HYPE and then speeds off.
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| This session was a blast. All three of
us had a lot of fun with it. Very simple, but very comic booky.
Gravitic's player Dr. Lucky had been really good at cheesing it
up with Gravitic since the beginning of the campaign, and was in
rare form during this session.
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| And I came out of the gate hard with
Hype, really defining the character from the word go. |
| The entire session could have been
transcribed directly into a comic book as is. |
11th session
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A few days later a general call
for help goes out; the Large Mammal area of the MC Zoo was in the grip
of a supervillain. The super-big Highrise was picking large animals out
of their enclosures and releasing them into the populated park!
Meanwhile, the mysterious Agent X had been wandering around the
zoo area
people-watching before the trouble broke out, and thanks to his finely honed
perception he got the idea that
something was up. Using his ability to alter his face and skin tone Agent X
easily got into a good position to observe things and determine what
was going down.Watching Highrise inexplicably free large animals, Agent X
also noticed a strange feral humanoid that was loitering on the
low down nearby.
Hype was first on the scene after the general call for superheroic
assistance went out, his superspeed allowing him to get there in
seconds. Taking stock of the situation he proceeded to clear civilians
lest they be trampled by the elephants, rhinos, and hippos already
loose.
The gleaming metal monolith known as War-Man, newly inhabiting
Mill City from Chicago, arrived shortly thereafter and used his pressor beams to
dissuade a pair of angry hippos from mauling a pack of girl scouts.
Finally Gravitic arrived and got Highrise's attention with his gravity
powers. Seeing the heroes arrive Agent X chipped in as well, but maintaining
cover, helping to
escort some innocents away from the danger zone.
Then the trap was sprung. A sniper, Hypersonic, started taking
shots at War-Man from a high observation point while the power armored Pounder flew in
out of the cloud cover to do a full move thru on Gravitic. Finally some
kind of a cat-man, the strange person Agent X had noticed earlier, leaped around the area and seemed to be commanding a
pack of apes to attack innocent civilians as well.
War-Man was able to resist the sniper's cowardly attack and
returned fire from range, while Gravitic's gravity rooting easily
prevented him from budging and Pounder knocked himself out on impact,
AgentX fought the apes in hand to hand, and Hype ran around pushing
elephants back into their enclosures and maybe punching one or two of
them if they got froggy.
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11th session part 2
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Despite the initial successes of
the battle, Gravitic was subsequently staggered by Highrise, War-Man
lost the shoot-off with the sniper and fell into the Hippo pool, and
the monkeys were making a monkey out of Agent X via the mathematics of
superior numbers and simple attrition.
Hype however proved to be a match for a pack of elephants, and got
them all stuffed back into an enclosure. Realizing that he was the only
one still fully operational and that the persistently hovering Gravitic
was about to get pasted by Highrise, Hype leaped into action.
Running
up the back of Highrise and down his arm Hype snatched Gravitic out of
the air and then ran back down to the ground with him. Avoiding a few
shots from the sniper, Hype nikeled and dimed away at Highrise.
Then, having somewhat recovered beneath the water (thanks to not
needing to breathe), War Man flew up out of the water (thanks to having
"usable underwater" on his flight) and pasted Highrise with his most
powerful blast, finally knocking the titan over. The sniper quickly
returned War-Man to unconsciousness, but the tide had been turned.
Never one to let propriety get in his way and not willing
to take chances with all the other heroes down for the count,
Hype tossed the unconscious Highrise into the Hippo pool where
he began to drown.
Seizing the opportunity, Hype leaped 60+ feet into the air with the
still unconscious and hovering Gravitic (Gravitic has Persistent Flight), where in an acrobatic stunt
he released Gravitic in mid-air and used his hovering body as a springboard to
vault the distance to the sniper's position, piledriving the sniper into the
ground (nearly killing him) in one fell swoop.
Hype ran back down to the main enclosure with the badly
battered Hypersonic and fished Highrise out of the pond
before any permanent damage could be caused, and did his best to
wake up the other heroes.
Questioning of the supervillains afterwards revealed that they had all been hired
via a third party to set a trap for Hype and Gravitic. They didn't know
who the principal party was, but it was later discovered that the third
party that worked the deal was a firm called Enforcers Inc.
Agent X slipped away during the confusion.
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11th session part 3
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It was
unknown what had happened to Agent X or the strange cat-man that was
controlling the apes. However a frantic incoming call indicated that Bessy,
MC's prized mastodon, had been missed in the confusion and was half way
to the city proper. Hype and Gravitic rushed off to deal with that
while War-Man helped the authorities process the prisoners. Hype gave
War-Man his hotline number before leaving.
What the other heroes didn't realize at this time was that Agent X
had pursued the cat-man, but the cat-man fled. In the process
of doing this AgentX noticed some workmen oddly going about their
business loading something up into a van with a raging super
battle
going on not 100 feet away. Using his stealth he easily cornered one of
them and donned his outfit after knocking him out, morphing his
face to blend in.
As the other superheroes finished the battle Agent X was riding away with what were increasingly appearing to be bogus workmen.
Fortunately for him, in the battle previously War -Man had detected
a strange tell-tale given off by the odd fellow fighting the apes with
his High Range Radio sense (Agent X had a embedded radio transmitter Distinctive
Feature), and when War-Man went looking for Agent X after
finishing up with the cops he was able to pick up on it and tail the
van.
The van drove for about an hour to a rural farm house outside of
town. Agent X got out and started to help move the containers from the van into an
old barn. At an opportune moment he snuck off and started rooting
around for secrets.
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| This was a long session, but very very
fun. Joe and Dain were a blast and the entire thing ran so
smoothly you'd never suspect that they had literally just joined
the group. It's the difference between good players and great
players. |
| The real beauty of it is that Dain was
so effortless with Agent X that the rest of us literally didnt
know where he went or what was going on with him. He just
smoothly detected and infiltrated the bogus work men while the
rest of us were focused on The Big Fight. |
12th session
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War-Man followed and caught up with the fake work van,
following it out of the city and into a wooded rural area where
he lost visual on it. Unable to see what was going on through
the tree cover,
War Man descended and tried to sneak around the farm where the van ended up, but alerted someone inside
the barn with the noise.
Unexpectedly two Haitian-looking fellows came out to
investigate and proceeded to work
War-Man over with strange mystical powers; one up close with powerful melee
abilities, and the other from afar with elemental powers. After rendering
War-Man unconscious, they chained him to a tractor.
Meanwhile Agent X had been rooting around in the farmhouse and checking out
the grounds on the low down, and eventually saw War-Man chained
to the tractor. Unable to free War-Man himself, he instead
heckeled and irritated him to the point War-Man got so irritated
he was able to break himself loose (helped War-Man justify a
push).
Unfortunately the noise alerted the
vodouns who came out again and attacked both of them. Though they fought
valiantly and almost made it, the two heroes were finally beaten.
Meanwhile, a space time distortion, a rift to another time and
place, was briefly torn open and a futuristic one man attack craft
screamed thru it at terminal velocity. Unable to correct his course,
the pilot jettisoned a large ruggedized gear box from the rear fuselage
and ejected. The craft plummeted into a small lake and the pilot,
encased in a futuristic flight suit, was able to brake his descent.
Major Robert Savage, Terran Marine Corps, had arrived into our
timeline all unbeknownst as to his fate. Quite naturally thinking he was
still in his own timeline he first scanned a number of frequencies, but
picked up all manner of strange broadcasts. However running through the
freq's he found a signal similar to a Terran Marine distress beacon
nearby. Homing in on that signal he soon arrived at the farmhouse and
entered the barn.
Simultaneously, War Man and Agent X woke up to discover they were inside the
barn, trapped inside some kind of salt encrusted pentacle that
gave off an eerie orange light. Oh, and the barn was full of
Zombies that seemed to only be held in check but the salt sigil!
The Zombies began to attack Major Savage instead, who though taken aback proceeded to blast
his way to the intrepid heroes and eventually managed to free them from the
eerie paralyzing light by
scuffing up the salt pentacle.
Meanwhile War Man called Hype's hotline via
his built in HRRT.
All three heroes got back to back and fought off the tight horde of
relentless zombies but despite having all three heroes in the fight the Zombies
were starting to have an effect just by sheer press of numbers.
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| I was helping my wife buy her first car
and only got back for the very end of this session, so I sat it
out. I enjoyed watching the final phases of the zombie fight
however. From what I gathered from the other players, it was a
really fun session. |
Session Lucky 13
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Finally Hype's call service got
around to calling him, a pokey 15 seconds later. Patrolling the city as
was his habit, Hype immediately streaked out of the city and made his
way to the farmhouse in seconds. Arriving on the scene he ran through
the wall of the barn and proceeded to plow thru Zombies like a black and red
freight train, sending them
flying with enormous kinetic force. And just in time! War-Man, Savage, and
Agent X were on their last legs, exhausted by the long fight
with the tireless, painless, and seemingly endless throng of
zombies.
Hype bounced around like a hyperactive wrecking ball on two
legs, smashing zombies, sending body parts flying, and shaping
the remaining ones into a pile.
With the tide of battle turning the other three battered heroes
retreated outside of the barn while Hype herded the remaining Zombies, and once
they were packed sufficiently to satisfy him, Hype ran back
outside and bulldozed a large propane tank into
the mix. At his urging Major Savage shot the tank, blowing it up and
catching the entire mess of putrid animated flesh on fire.
The thread of the zombies neutralized, the group investigated the farmhouse.
Agent X grimly demonstrated the sick things he had found on his
previous reconnaisance. The heroes were dismayed to find a grisly,
bloody mess;
the farmer and his family had been sacrificed in a ghoulish fashion in
the basement. Agent X directed their attention to some plans indicating an plot to
attack a gala being held by a wealthy man in the Grosse Point area at
the end of the week!
Hype in particular was in a fury, for he recognized the work of
Papa Zombie, a foul vodoun he had faced several time while heroing in
Vibora Bay with the super team known as NewGen. Papa Zombie always managed to evade capture, and Hype was
eager to break his streak.
Reporting the location to the police, the group also tried to
puzzle out the mystery of Major Savage, who was extremely baffled by this
strange old world he had found himself in and was secretly
wondering if he had really crashed on entry and was in some sort
of painkiller induced hallucinatory dream, but to no avail.
Hype was of the
opinion that Savage was just a garden variety self-delusional, but War Man
took him seriously. With all the discussion about Savage and Papa
Zombie, no one noticed when AgentX ghosted away before the police
arrived.
Hype departed, promising to meet up at the end of the week to stop the
Zombie attack on the gala. War Man helped Major Savage recover
his gear box from the forest, and then got him set up in a
hostel back in the city.
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| This was a good roleplaying and
investigatory game. Hype really shined again as well, literally
dismantling the zombies in proper speedster fashion. In the end
not as much concrete accomplishment, but the character building
was really good. I think everyone must have had at least 45
minutes of character defining screen time each, and the
interaction was good -- we were all supporting each others
dialogue and tangents. Good improv type stuff. |
| Charles did really well here; he did a
good job of making Major Savage stand out and defined his
character very well. |
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THE GROUP FINALLY GETS A NAME |
14th Session
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The next day Hype and Gravitic
responded to a general call put out by the police that Riptide and Ogre
were causing problems at the docks.
Hype easily handled Ogre, though the brute did get in a single good
hit when Hype underestimated him a tad. In retaliation Hype kicked him
80 some odd feet and through a CONNEX box, putting him into a coma.
Meanwhile Gravitic dealt with Riptide, eventually trapping her. He
couldn't hurt her directly, but was able to get her into a standoff.
After kicking Ogre into oblivion Hype vented at Riptide a bit, and she ran
off in a terror.
After the fight the media were eager to pester...er...question the
two heroes with a variety of questions about the zoo incident the day
before, and also asked Gravitic where his previous companions Rook and
Chitin were.
Gravitic pleaded ignorance, but when asked if there was some kind
of team or formal arrangement between the collection of superhumans
that had been working with Gravitic, Hype butted in and said yes, there
was, as of now.
When asked what to call this putative group, Hype indicated that
they would be called The Millennial Men in honor of the city they
protected. He further indicated that War-Man and Agent X were invited,
as well as the other heroes that Gravitic had worked with in the past.
And thus the Millennial Men were christened.
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| I can't recall the circumstances, but
the three new players all couldnt play this weekend. I think it
may have been a holiday. Anyway, Hype and Gravitic had a fun
little encounter, and at the end of it I had a chance to finally
pull the damn trigger and name the group. No one else was in a
hurry to do it, and I was tired of calling it "the supers
campaign". |
Session 15
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A few days later Hype showed up at
the appointed place and time to stop the gala attack. Agent X and War
Man didn't make it, but Major Savage showed up in his stead...and John
Wrath was there too, all duded out in new duds, with a new CyberEye
and engraved pistol courtesy of PRIMUS; "retirement gifts" the R & D
boys called them. (They didn't mention that the gun was functional to
the management.) No longer Silver Avenger John Wrath, Agent of PRIMUS --
it was now John Wrath, Solo Avenger. Chitin showed up a little later as
well.
Wrath also claimed to have been working the case from another angle
and said he had talked to War-Man about it.
Wrath and Hype got on like a house on fire from the word go, and by
the time the menagerie creaked up to the gates of the estate the gala
was being held at, the excitable Hype was in a state of high agitation.
The meeting with the owner of the estate didn't go well, due largely to
Hype immediately suspecting that something was fishy about the owners
son and fianc. Wrath and the estate owner argued against it, and
finally Hype stormed off after accusing one or both of the son and
fianc of being in on it.
Savage and Wrath rubbed elbows during the event while Chitin
loitered, and when the ensuing Zombie attack came the three of them
were narrowly able to fight it off.
Wrath dealt with the Vodoun's
working for Papa Zombie and finally killed Papa Zombie himself with a single
shot to the head (after a couple of Find Weaknesses). Apparently he forgot that his license to kill had
been revoked when he was fired from PRIMUS. Luckily for him Papa
Zombie's body turned into unidentifiable ash.
Wrath also broke the stick
stolen from the Museum of Anthropology the previous week, which turned
out to be some kind of priceless African artifact, but he wisely blamed
it on Papa Zombie.
Of course it was revealed that the estate owner's son had been in
on it, and the fianc was the target of Papa Zombies attack, being some
kind of ideal subject for a sacrifice. Egg in yer face, rich guy.
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| I think I was having a bad day or
something for this session. Hype acted on the suspicion that the
son and or daughter were involved which was totally in
character, but it didnt go over well with the GM and it ended up
escalating to the point that I removed myself from play and sat
the session out, which was a shame since Hype was the only
character that had been part of the entire arcs continuity. |
| We went into the game with an argument
floating, which exacerbated the situation. The players I had
bumped wanted to come back and prevailed upon the acting GM to
let them back, and meanwhile Dain was moving that weekend and
Joe was helping him so neither could make it. Due to scheduling
conflicts revloving around college finals it just couldnt be
jigsawed together neatly so the GM decided to press on. |
| My opinion was we should just run a
couple more one offs in between and hold the finale for when War
Man, Hype, and Major Savage could be there since with Agent X
out of the equation due to moving that was the closest we could
get to the group that had started the scenario. |
| We did not see eye to eye on it in short
and were already kind of irritated with each other. All very
silly in retrospect. |
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