Entry tags:

game, rpgs

Episode Three: Battle for the Moon
When last we left our heroes, they were imprisoned in an alien dreadnought's brig, trapped in fields that nullified their powers, while a doomsday weapon was being readied to blow up Australia as an example to the rest of the world...

Except for Legacy, immortal ninja with invisibility power. As soon as Fleet Commander Galak (or "Captain Monologue", as the group lovingly called him) left, Legacy dropped from the ceiling, sliced through the computer terminal nearest a drone warrior to prevent said drone warrior from sounding an alarm, and promptly cut said drone warrior in half. A few more slashes at random wires, and the team was free.

After brief discussions about where to go (Crimson Cricket, the battlesuited wonder, really wanted to get his pants back), Sparks hacked into the terminal (or at least, the terminal's feed-line) and downloaded some ship schematics. The team determined that in order to take down the lunar synchronization field, they'd have to do three things:

1) Sabotage the dreadnought, either a little (meaning one big fight) or a lot (meaning two big fights) to stop it from augmenting the lunar synchronization field with its deflector shields.
2) Get back to the moonbase and order a reinitialization of the lunar synchronizer beam, so that the sabotage to the dreadnought's augmentation would come into play.
3) Kill Hanpa, the demon who had accidentally opened the moongate in the first place -- numbers 1 and 2 only dealt with the backup systems keeping the moongate open (and thus allowing the dreadnought to project itself into this star system); Hanpa's continued life was tied to the moongate, so if he didn't die, nothing else mattered.

The heroes then decided to go get Crimson Cricket's pants back.

Also, I received an award for infodumping that much information onto the players at once.

The Fight For Cricket's Pants: As so often happens, a fight that I thought would be a throwaway turned out to be ugly. 10 drones, plus a harrier, a heavy gunner, and the commander, against the team of 5 (Animalia, Sparks, Legacy, Aether, and Cricket minus his pants).

At this point, almost everyone in the damn party can go all stealthy, so they got the drop on the guards near the armory fairly nicely. Animalia paralyzed a bunch of bad guys with her lion's roar, Legacy dropped from the ceiling (see a trend, here?) and started chopping, and Aether arrived to blow things up. Cricket even leaped in with a few combat abilities that weren't tied to the suit.

And then everyone kinda started rolling for crap.

Aether took an ugly hit and actually lost consciousness due to a lousy Toughness save, Crimson Cricket spent three hero points to pull off a major attack and then whiffed on the attack roll, and Legacy spent half the fight trading blows with the drone commander in a fight that would have looked really good with choreography and not just low-rolled numbers... until he learned firsthand about the homing feature, and a missile that had missed him moments ago roared back and blasted him from behind.

At this point, Sparks the non-Stealthy arrived, and things got better. She blasted the heck out of the assembled masses, who couldn't get to her fast enough to stop her, and her attacks cut up the enemy ranks enough that the rest of the team could finish things off.

In the armory, the team found Cricket's pants, along with other items listed as being taken from Earth: a gun, belonging to some unknown person; a backpack belonging to Crimson Cricket's high-school nemesis; a suitcase belonging to Aether's human father; and a much more expensive briefcase belonging to "Lucius Drake, King of Australia", according to the computer.

There was a bit of head-shaking over the last one, since Lucius Drake, Respected Businessman and Not At All a Criminal Mastermind, was not previously known to be the king of Australia. The team hacked a few more computers, verified that the aliens at least believed Drake was King of the Kangaroos, and learned that he and all the prisoners were being held on the moonbase.

Engineering: The Super-Shark
The first sabotage attempt was an enormous chamber with a narrow sidewalk cutting through a deep pool of water. The team got about five feet inside before Legacy was promptly mind-controlled, at which point he hopped down, became visible, and exhorted people to come in, as it was perfectly safe.

Since Animalia's mystic animal sense somehow gave her the ability to hear the giant psychic fish-monster in the water giving Legacy commands, this plan did not go well. The fish monster promptly fell back on Plan B, and had Legacy attempt to push Animalia into the water.

What then occurred was, well, not good for anyone.

• Animalia took on the Aspect of the Hawk and leaped into the sky, out of range of Legacy.
• Legacy teleported onto her back and tried to drive her into the water. He rolled poorly, and Animalia threw him off, at which point he teleported back onto the platform.
• Crimson Cricket tackled Legacy and tried to pin him in place.
• Animalia dove to the ground, took on the Aspect of the Jellyfish, and attempted a paralyzing sting on Legacy... and missed, hitting Crimson Cricket instead, who promptly botched his save and slumped over.
• Legacy got to enjoy his brief moment of freedom right up until Aether used her suffocation ability to suck the air out of his lungs, rendering him promptly unconscious.
• Sparks shouted for everyone to get off the ground and away from the water, and she'd just lightning-bolt the entire pool. Aether grabbed Cricket (who shrank and hopped onto Aether's shoulder), Animalia grabbed Legacy, and Sparks blasted the water.
• The evil fish, royally ticked off by the lightning blast, threw out a mental bomb that injured everyone and stunned Cricket, at which point he fell off Aether's shoulder and into the water.
• Aether dove into the water in fire form to rescue Cricket, at which point the big fish whacked her and stunned her, leaving her helpless in the grip of the evil fish monster's tentacles.

Things were progressing steadily along these lines until Animalia, realizing that she could hear the monster, leaped into the water and tried to communicate with it using her Comprehend Animals ability. A few moments of Diplomacy did what battle had not -- the super-shark, more formally known as Shohothoth the Gentle, was the last of his race, who had sworn to serve Kynar to protect his people. He took pity upon the team and let them go in peace, and the team wished him well.

Until they learned that the reason that he was the last of his race and was serving Kynar to protect his people was that he, the king of his people, had psychically burned the sentience out of his entire race so that none of them would know that they lived in servitude, and now they swam through the waters of their world as simple animals, which made Shohothoth a bit less of a sympathetic figure. The team decided not to dwell on that.

Weapons Room: The NInjas
The team hit the main weapons control station next -- the plan, as I the GM vaguely remember it, was that they used engineering to introduce a feedback wave into the deflector shields, which would slowly sabotage the augmentation... but if they triggered an unexpected energy surge in the weapon grid, it would actually override the deflector shields completely, forcing them to reinitialize, at which point the sabotage would take place immediately, not slowly over time.

In any event, the weapons room was a multi-level room filled with criss-crossing pipes, along with three insectile ninjas. The ninjas were Body (Fortitude save powers), Mind (Reflex save powers), and Spirit (Will save powers), and they worked best as a team. As long as Body was conscious, all three ninjas regenerated. As long as Mind was conscious, they were immune to an energy form of their choice. As long as Spirit was conscious, they had all the Super-senses they could ever want, and couldn't be surprised.

This fight went much better for the heroes. The Body Ninja basically showed up, delivered a punch, went, "Aha, I am--" and then got flattened by Animalia and finished off by Sparks. Cricket distracted the Mind Ninja until Aether could body-slam it while in her Earth form, and the Spirit Ninja fell to Cricket and Animalia as a pair. Legacy took a nose-dive off some high-level pipes, sadly, and spent most of the fight unconscious (which is becoming a trend).

Finale:
The heroes used an incredibly plot-convenient teleporter (bear in mind, the game was supposed to run from 2PM to 6PM, and it was now 8PM) to teleport over to the moonbase, whereupon they hacked into a terminal and checked out the main control room, which had been delicately put forward as "the room where everyone you care about or want to beat up is located".

In the room were:

• Kynar the Magnificent, trying to decide whether to blow up Australia, spare Australia, or blow up the entire Earth.
• Fleet Commander Galak, urging Kynar to blow up the Earth.
• A bunch of drones.
• Cricket's high-school jocky buddy, Aether's father, and Legacy's assistant, all in an energy prison cell.
• Astral Knight, trapped in a power-nullifying chair (referred to henceforth as the Pike-chair -- ahh, geeks).
• Hanpa the demon, trapped in a power-nullifying chair.
• Lucius Drake, ostensible king of Australia, trapped in a power-nullifying chair.

As the heroes listened, Galak urged Kynar to blow up Earth and be done with it. Lucius Drake offered the much more sensible alternative: kill the captured superheroes, freeing Earth from their vile oppression, and then declare that this had all been a test, and humanity was not yet worthy of joining the Elagarian Empire and gaining the vast technological advancements that would surely come from such a movement. Humanity, according to Drake, would never let itself be beaten, but it would always let itself be sold, and with Drake serving as "territorial ambassador", Earth would be served to Kynar on a silver platter. The heroes were somehow unimpressed with Lucius Drake's selfless plan to save Australia. You just can't please some people.

The heroes couldn't free people from the chairs remotely, but they could hack into the chair's power system and modify the electronic surges in order to create a synthesized voice, and speak very quietly to the people in the chairs. On a fun level, Hanpa the demon, the person who accidentally caused the moongate to open and the dreadnought to come out in the first place, turned to the hacked security camera and winked as they zoomed in on him. The heroes spent some time wondering exactly what that meant (one guy flat-out said, "He winked. I like him. I say we free him and see what happens," while others were concerned about, you know, the evil), and then chatted with Hanpa, who hacked the security camera to talk back to the heroes. The conversation went something like this:

Heroes: Hey, so, um, hi. How's it going?
Hanpa: Ahhh, Diwata, I knew our paths would cross again.
Heroes: Yeah, she's not actually here right now.
Hanpa: Really?
Heroes: So, you're in the chair?
Hanpa: Indeed. Apparently, when I theorized that gaining control of the gates of the moon was a metaphor for time travel, I may have been slightly mistaken. Now I am held prisoner so that I cannot end my own life.
Heroes: Gosh. You think? What was your first clue, Sherlock?
Hanpa: ... Is there some way that I could speak to Diwata instead?
Heroes: Look, the thing is, we want to help you, but in order to close that moongate, you have to, um, die.
Hanpa: Not a problem.
Heroes: Wow. Really?
Hanpa: Please. I am a demon. If slain, my immortal essence simply returns to an alternate plane of existence until such time as I am summoned again.
Heroes: Score! Okay, we'll be right there to kill you. Er, help you. Er, you know what I mean.

The team chatted with Astral Knight, too, but he couldn't talk back. Finally, the heroes moved in, with everyone except Sparks stealthy in some capacity (invisible, air-form, chameleon-aspect, or very very tiny). One of the heroes disabled Astral Knight's confinement chair, and the not-at-all-Green-Lantern-ripoff-with-different-color slowly said to Kynar, "You know, Emperor, you're extremely powerful, what with all that cosmic energy and all. Why, the only thing that can stand up against cosmic energy..." And he burst out of the chair. "Is more cosmic energy."

And a moment later, there was a shiiiing noise, and a blur of white where Astral Knight had been, and a hole in the wall where Astral Knight had slammed into Kynar and blown both of them out into space to duke it out mano-a-mano.

At which point the heroes decided that they might actually have a chance.

(Note: Not entirely a machina from which a deus was extracted. The heroes had learned earlier that cosmic energy is pretty much the end-all and be-all of energies. Sufficient cosmic energy can punch through any barrier, and nothing can completely protect a target from cosmic energy... except cosmic energy itself. In game terms, this means that nothing is Impervious to cosmic energy -- cosmic energy forces a Toughness save no matter how much protection the target has. The only people allowed to have Immunity:Cosmic Energy are people who wield cosmic energy themselves. Since Astral Knight wields it, he's immune to Kynar's blasts, and he and the Elagarian Emperor ended up grappling in space, trading punches because neither could blast the other in any meaningful way.)

The heroes then launched an assault on Galak. When Aether's flame-blast was deflected, Galak called out in defiance, "Fools! Did you think I got my rank because of my power? I got my rank because of my skill. I got my power because of my rank!" And then he hurled some cosmic energy of his own.

This line sounded so much better in my head. It became the line that was mocked for the rest of the evening. Still, memorable villain and all that -- Darkseid cum Worf, more or less. Picture Darkseid, but with a cape covering his body, which he tossed aside to reveal that he had an acidic membrane covering most of him. He used a hammer infused with cosmic energy, that could blast people or serve as a melee weapon.

And what followed, over the next eight rounds or so, was a whoopin'.

I don't know if I played Galak badly. I don't know if my heroes really are that powerful. What I do know is that the drones were flavor -- something for people with nothing else to do to blast for fun. Aether and Sparks pretty much traded rounds, blasting them away. (I had another wave show up three rounds after the fighting began.)

The party learned the lesson I'd taught them with Hanpa, and they ganged up mercilessly to put the hurt on my big bad villain. (Hanpa himself disappeared as soon as he was freed -- he teleported away to stop the big energy weapon from destroying Australia, and died in the process, which made everyone happy.)

I don't believe Galak actually did more than bruise anybody, though. People were throwing Hero Points like there was no tomorrow, both on Toughness saves and on attack rolls, so that even when Galak was using Expertise to improve his Defense up to 27, people were still clocking him right and left. In terms of general contributions:

• Cricket wiped out drones, protected the humans, and drew some of Galak's fire (at which point Cricket's defense came in nice and handy)
• Animalia tanked like a madwoman, taking Galak on toe-to-toe as the bear aspect on the ground, and then as the hawk aspect in the air
• Aether took out drones and kept the heat on Galak (literally) -- she also absorbed some nasty shots but stayed on her feet
• Sparks pretty much blasted, like Aether, taking out drones and joining in on group attacks -- and she took two critical rounds to disable the lunar synchronizer
• And finally, Legacy actually delivered the shot that took Galak down

It ended with Galak getting back to his feet in a surprise move, taking Animalia by the throat... and then shimmering out of existence as the moongate closed and the Elagarian dreadnought vanished back to its home system. Galak got out half of an ominous threat before going.

With the dreadnought gone, Earth was safe. The moonbase has, through an AI verification protocol, declared itself as belonging to the team (primarily Cricket, who rolled well on the Charisma check). The team has decided to join forces to help each other against big threats that they can't handle on their own.

Sadly, they insist on calling themselves The Moon Unit. I will still be referring to them as the Justice Pals.