[Supers] Enter the Shadowguard - a Marvel Reboot Story

[Otaku]

Kalzazz, since you're participating in this thread, I had a question earlier that I'd love an answer to:

Was your character at all inspired by Transformers?

That probably elicits a "Huh?" reaction, but due to my age and upbringing, as soon as I read "...a half-jet fighter being..." that is where my mind went. Oh, and if you do not wish to or cannot answer, I understand. I'm won't ask a third time barring extenuating circumstances.

A little more on topic... it sounds like these mini-sessions are paying off, allowing the players to get a real feel for their characters, and catching some early "misunderstandings" when they are easier to deal with (instead of in the middle of a full adventure). Oh, and should I be taking it light posting in this thread? I don't normally follow campaign progress threads, and I just occurred to me I could be "trashing" this place. >_<

[Kalzazz]

Actually the character wasn't, I think Transformers is cool (I had toys and watched the cartoon!), but the actually explanation is I described my character concept to to Phantasm 'a winged zappy thing, like Wasp or Bumblebee or Bloom or something'

I then promptly proceeded to have no further ideas, and Phantasm indicated that magical fairy girls were not suitable (I had not in fact thought of magical fairy girls before this, but naturally as soon as he brought this up of course all my ideas were magical fairy girls), and Phantasm was helping me with chargen by asking me even more questions I had no answer to, specifically 'so avian wings or insect wings?'

So I was stuck contemplating the nature of wings! What has wings? I then realized that the webcomic I had just read, Krakow (blame starslayer for pointing the webcomic to me, it is amusing) had a half plane character and planes had wings!

So after warning Phantasm it was a horrible idea and he goaded me on, I suggested I could have Plane Wings like Avril Arrow from Krakow the webcomic!

[Kalzazz]

I personally love to see people commenting in a forum thread and am happy to babble in a forum thread

[Phantasm]

I think my use of a double negative messed you up; I said they weren't unsuitable. I was actually looking at a pic of Dark Bloom at the time, too, IIRC.

[Kalzazz]

I seem to be having a horrible time of getting DM messages crossed up then, that and the uniform bit to

[Phantasm]

Mini-Session 7: Brief Flash Forward

There's reasons I won't get into where the players know roughly what will happen in the first real session. Suffice to say, I had an idea to get a second plot rolling, and despite not having the first real session yet decided to run a mini the day after the events of the first real fight as Avril, Ana, Chel, and Doc had a victory celebration at Chel's place.

So who should knock on the door but Agent Fred Duncan of the FBI's SHIELD unit. Despite an initial panic attack (Chel: "IT'S THE FEDS! EVERYONE OUT THE BACK DOOR!"), Agent Duncan managed to calm Chel down and introduced himself to the group, under the context of hiring them for a job.

According to Duncan, a string of murders across the nation involving superhumans have occurred, all tied to a genetics research project code-named "Project Rum-and-Coke". ("Who names these?" he asked no one in particular.) Among the victims were Evelyn Richards, wife of Dr. Nathaniel Richards and mother to (currently 7 year old) Reed Richards; Elizabeth Mace Ross, daughter of the Patriot and Golden Girl, wife of US Army Major Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, and mother of Elizabeth "Betty" Ross; and Shawn Bowen, who may or may not be related in some way to the future Tandy Bowen/Dagger (though the players didn't seem to catch the name drop). Each of the deceased was killed by a superhuman (possibly more than one): Mrs. Richards had her car rammed from the front by someone with superhuman strength and durability, then made to look like she'd rammed a tree; Mrs. Ross had been decapitated by a speedster; and Mr. Bowen had drowned in bed in his third story apartment with his wife sleeping next to him (she lived).

Also, this little tidbit, when Duncan kept using the full name for SHIELD:
<Ana_Nightingale> "You guys really need a better name, you know."
<Duncan> "We're working on it." He gives a wry grin.
<Doc> "Its a government agency, the more words it has the more worried you need to be."
<Chelsea> "I-- look, call it the FBI SHIELD. Save us all some time. Learn to love the acronym, man."
<Duncan> "That'd be admitting that Deputy Director Woo wanted our initials to spell out 'shield'." Another wry grin.
<Chelsea> "Ah. Well, we couldn't have that."

When asked if he had a lead on the next target, since the party would be tangling with super-human serial killers, Duncan admitted he had a possibility: either Kurt Marko or his wife Sharon Xavier Marko. He then hired the group to protect the Markos and their two boys from prior marriages: Cain Marko and Charles Xavier. Duncan also mentioned that he had specifically been ordered not to pursue the matter, nor what Rum-and-Coke was up to, by his superior, Senior Agent Gyrich. (Yes, that Gyrich.)

This sparked a discussion between Chelsea and Ana on how to approach the Markos, and whether anyone showing up at the Westchester County estate (in civvies) would alert the assassins that someone was onto them.

As the girls debated how to approach the Markos and their boys, Doc wandered outside for a smoke, as he didn't see himself as a hero and didn't want to get roped into it. He also had an unhealthy dislike of Feds, after his experiences at the end of the Vietnam War. (Honestly, can't say I blame him.) Duncan found him outside and joined him for a smoke, relating how his own father had served over in 'Nam, ultimately being declared "missing, presumed dead" in '70, with less than a month to go in his tour. Duncan said that he understood Doc's resentment toward the Feds, but that at least one Fed was on Doc's side and just doing his best inside the system to protect people. The two parted with what looked like a cautious agreement.


----


Yes, I did a lot of name-dropping. :) I had always intended to use Fred Duncan, the X-Men's FBI liaison in the mid to late '60s, as the team's government contact, and this gave me a good way to introduce him. I was also able to flesh out Duncan a bit more than the comics ever did, which I liked.

Spoilers behind Project Rum-and-Coke is really the Black Womb project. You can probably guess who I have in mind as the BBEG of this particular plot-line. fnords.

I think I've identified one issue with Ana's player: no disconnect between IC and OOC. Something for us to work on with him.

Anyway, HOPEFULLY this weekend or next we'll see the full team together for the first time.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

So I was stuck contemplating the nature of wings! What has wings? I then realized that the webcomic I had just read, Krakow (blame starslayer for pointing the webcomic to me, it is amusing) had a half plane character and planes had wings!

So after warning Phantasm it was a horrible idea and he goaded me on, I suggested I could have Plane Wings like Avril Arrow from Krakow the webcomic!

A one-third-plane creature: https://funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures...Birdplane+man/

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

So after warning Phantasm it was a horrible idea and he goaded me on, I suggested I could have Plane Wings like Avril Arrow from Krakow the webcomic!

Finally taking a moment to look her up she... reminds me of some Transformers cosplay. XD Not quite "running joke level", but far too many airplane-based TF's basically are a humanoid robot that tucks itself under a jet.

I'll try not to bring it up again unless your campaign needs to "borrow" some looks for other produced by the program. ;)

[Phantasm]

Last night, we had the first official session! XP handed to everyone and everything! :)

----

Session 1: Who Liberates the Liberators?

It was a clear day in late April '87. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing in off the Hudson (or the East River for those in Brooklyn and Queens), and there was a Communist Nazi giant robot, a 50' tall humanoid robot all in red with the Soviet hammer-and-sickle insignia which had a green "H" painted over it, erupting from underneath Rockefeller Center . . . .

Wait, what? The police on site called for backup, putting out a "Code 666", which is (Marvel-canon, at least of New Warriors v1 #1) the code for "trouble too great for" the NYPD "to handle." Clearly, a call to the National Guard was in order, but that could take time. And with the First Line going MIA (presumed dead) six months prior, the only hero the police had on-call is Avril Aero. Fortunately, she was not alone.

Jim was in three different places in the city, one of them being his basement watching the local news. Meatshield was in East Harlem on the north end of Manhattan. Ana was in a coffee house in Greenwich Village with a bunch of blueprints sprawled over the table. Chelsea was in her office in Brooklyn. And Doc was over in Jersey. (Part of the reason Doc was over there is because his player missed the session, and I was giving him some leeway in case he showed up late.)

Jim immediately contacted Chelsea/Spellbinder via her emergency telepathic contact cards, letting her know of the news reports of the giant robot, while at the same time he had two other bodies of his head over to fight the robot. In turn, Chel contacted the others using the cards she'd handed out earlier. It took a bit of doing, but she used the cards as anchors to link everyone telepathically.

The whole time, the robot, which declared itself "the Liberator", marched down 6th before taking Broadway, declaring its intention: "DO NOT BE ALARMED! THE LIBERATORS HAVE COME TO THIS AND OTHER AMERICAN CITIES TO FREE THE PROLETARIAT FROM THEIR CAPITALIST OVERLORDS! HAIL HYDRA!"

Ana, being closest, opened fire at it with her M-16, using AP rounds against a weld on its chest. It was a bad weld, apparently, as the armor plate came loose, though it was still attached.

As soon as roughly everyone was gathered, the combat started in earnest. Ana switched from M-16 to readying a bomb she was carrying on her. Aero distracted the robot as Spellbinder carried Ana and her bomb to the robot's shoulder, while Meatshield charged it from behind, leaping and slamming into the back of its knee, causing it to fall into a crouching position. Jim1, having changed his outfit to one decorated in gaudy reflective stars (hence becoming Starman), shifted his omni-tool to become an EMP carbine, then later fired it at the robot to little effect. The Liberator, however, didn't care for Spellbinder and Ana on its shoulder and attempted to blast them with heat rays from its eyes; Spellbinder managed to get her energy shield up in time to block the blasts, though the heat from them was apparent.

Ana then tossed the bomb into the rend in the Liberator's armor, which blew a hole in the inner armor layer while blowing the outer layer outward, crushing more than a few parked cars in the process. Hey, it's a superhero vs giant robo fight; gotta have at least some collateral damage! Aero swooped around and fired a rocket from her hardpoint pod into the hole, which blew off the Liberator's right arm, revealing its pneumatic and electronic workings. Meatshield leapt into the robot and started tearing it apart from inside, paralyzing it from the waist down by tearing out the controls in its spine.

Spellbinder used her Matter and Energy Realms together to fuse the robot's neck solid, causing it to face one way only. It still managed to bring an arm up to pepper the party (other than Meatshield) with its integral AKM. Aero and Starman failed to dodge; Aero thankfully was designed to withstand this, but Starman took enough damage to force a death check. Oops. Fortunately he passed the death check, but he failed to stay conscious. Also fortunately, there were still two other Jims active, one continuing to watch the news. Jim2 contacted Spellbinder, to her confusion, and told her to gather up his body before the local EMTs could, for reasons to do with him being an alien bioroid.

At this point, as it was getting late, I had Doc show up in his deuce-and-a-half, leaning out the window to fire a rocket launcher at the Liberator. The Liberator lost its head. In truth, he hit the neck, doing enough damage to separate the head from the body. However, he failed his Driving skill and rolled the truck onto its passenger side. Meatshield, still inside the Liberator, was not pleased with the explosion.

The Liberator's last words were ominous: "LIBERATION ... FAILED. CANNOT .... CONTACT OTHER ....LIBERATORS. CAPITALISM ... HAS BEEN ... OUTLAWED. MISSILE ... LAUNCH ... IN TEN ... MINUTES. HAIL ... HY...DRA."

Dropping out of combat time, the group quickly searched the robot's remains, discovering that the only radio it had on it was a really short-range one; it did not have a missile anywhere on it, and Jim2 assured the party that the news proclaimed that no other Liberator robots had been spotted anywhere.

The fight had crowds of spectators behind police barricades who cheered at the team's defeat of the robot. And then the party noticed the news choppers and vans. Defeating the robot was easy; handling the press, on the other hand, may be a bit of a challenge....

----

And at that point it was getting close to 12:30am Eastern time, and we were winding down, so we called it there for the night.

[Kalzazz]

Sounds like it was fun, glad Avril was able to show up