Our Villains:
- MEGASTRIKE - Strong, radioactive Russian mobster brick. Played by Paladin Steve. A returning character from the prior attempts at this campaign.
- LEGION - Demonic leader of a criminal organization. Face with a sidekick and a lot of resources. Played by Grognard Mike.
- NIGHT BLADE - Sword-for-hire, a mix of melee offense and melee defense. Played by Shootist Will, another returning character.
- NIGHT TERROR - Intangible assassin, stealthy with a side order of ranged combat capability. Played by Variable Dave and yet another returning character.
- Y2K BUG - AI in a stolen robot body. Tech-guy and mainly good at ranged combat, not terribly strong or tough - for now. Played by Battletech Terry.
- THE MIGHTY XYZZIFAX - Wizard who traveled here from another world. Ranged combatant, heavy defense, and a lot of flexibility. Played by Blaster - a character returning from a completely different game!
- PHANTOM BLADE - Yet another sword-guy who eventually broke out of the same prison camp and followed them to the warehouse. Whole bunch of melee offense, not a ton of defense - but he can self-heal. Played by Invisible Paddy.
We begin with MegaStrike stealing a house. Half-jokingly. He's not really strong enough to carry a house - at least not very far. He's the only one staying in the warehouse at the moment as everyone else relocated to Legion's much cushier safehouse. He decides a mostly empty place is not good and so starts stealing furniture and decor (and possibly a house) to brighten the place up.
At the safehouse Legion is busy analyzing and judging the other escapees and reaching out to various contacts to figure out how badly damaged her organization is after she was arrested. Night Blade is doing katas or some other sword guy thing, Bug is checking out the internet connections, Night Mist is calling some contacts as well while Xyzzifax starts trying to figure out how this world works.
Dr. Destruction soon calls with a "request" - he needs the team to grab that heavy box in the warehouse (guess who will be carrying that) and head down into the sewers to find another villain's secret lair and plug it in to a power source there. Looking for a suitable entrance - the box won't fit through a regular manhole - they believe one can be found in Miner's Hill a neighborhood a short distance away. The group makes some preparations, gathers again at the warehouse, appreciated the new decor, and heads out.
Getting into the sewers is a simple enough task but finding a secret entrance to a villain's lair is not and so it takes a couple of hours of sloshing around to find a likely passage and it happens to be full of G'roks! These are an alien creature, sort of a gator-hound monster, that the V'Sori dumped into the sewers recently to thin out the resistance that keeps using the sewers to move around.
These things are fairly tough and Phantom Blade, leading the attack, is chomped-on pretty well by several of the beasts. Then the strange wizard demonstrates the power of fireball in any universe and blows most of them away with a massive detonation. Phantom Blade uses his mystical meditation powers to recover from his brief experience as a chew-toy and the party begins examining the dead-end passage.
They soon discover that a) there is a concealed door here and b) they have been followed for some time by members of the Underground. There is a brief conversation in person between the resistance members and the villains and via radio with their leaders but it all works out and they then travel through a maze of caverns and tunnels that are not part of the sewer to make their way to an Undergrounder outpost.
The leader they meet is ... Valerie Ramirez, the woman they helped bring out from the prison. Nightmist had been thinking they might have a bit of a thing before she left that day so he especially is thrilled to reconnect with her. After some discussion about what they are trying to accomplish Valerie agrees to have her people guide them to Terron's old base. Yes, they do know where it is but no, they are not going to enter it - they lost people when they found it and she's not interested in losing more.
Two of the Undergrounders lead the party through a maze of yet more tunnels to a passage that ramps up into a lighted room. The guides will go no further so it's time for the villains to take the lead. Phantom Blade leaps on up, Legion (and bodyguard) fly up, as do Megastrike and Bug. The space is limited to a single room and not a huge one so they spot the power generator right away. They also spot the mean-looking robots spaced around the room, plugged into the walls - especially when their eyes light up and they begin moving towards the group!
 |
| The visual on these is "metallic robot with swords instead of hands so I'm going with some Necrons here. |
Phantom Blade once again takes a serious beating (4 wounds!) and the bodyguard is injured as well but the villains are no pushovers themselves and while it does take more time than the g'rok fight - and they suffer more injuries - the villains do eventually wreck Terron's robot guardians with magic, swords, and guns. MegaStrike manages to do little during this, missing his swings, and this earns him some grief from the others. PB also takes some grief for both his performance in the fights and his attitude in general and decides to change his name to "Edge Lord" - might as well own it.
After the fight MegaStrike and Y2K Bug connect the device to the generator and call it in to Dr. D who congratulates them on getting it done.
GM Notes
This was a good run with the players settling into their characters more and more and everyone getting more comfortable with the rules - including me. During the session (for any game) I jot down any rules questions that come up and then look them up before the next session so I knew where our rough spots had been in Session 1. We all know Savage Worlds pretty well but it can still take a session or three before it's instinctive again.
Structure-wise I'm starting off every session with some time for the players to do what they want. It's been an indeterminate number of days since the prior run, what has your character been doing, what are you doing today, is there a project you are working on, etc. I feel it's especially important here because this campaign is very much built as "NPC gives missions and PC's go do them" and I want them to feel like they have options. They are, after all, super-powered individuals of some capability living in a modern high-tech city. Even though it's living under alien occupation they can pursue or investigate ideas or schemes of their own so I'm trying to ensure there is room for it every session. Now some of my players don't care that much about it but some do and I'm hoping they pull the others along. I'd like them to develop enough contacts, rivalries, and familiar locations to make it feel like a living place - we shall see.
No comments:
Post a Comment