Escape from Coventry Pre-gen Ideas [IW]

[Flyndaran]

A world jumper has been "paying" for cosmic to punch through the void separating Coventry from the other same quantum realities.
What may exist in that void is anybody's guess.

[Dr. Beckenstein]

My version of Coventry more or less follows the books.
It is timeline in quantum 3 that is only accessible by a projector-supported transporter from Homeline.
It has 20,000+ inhabitants, most of them survivors from timelines that where destroyed by nuclear wars, zombie plagues, manaclysms etc. They are glad to be alive and very thankfull towards Infinity and keep an eye on the other, less happy inhabitants.
The people there are divided in three colonys, located at the areas of Shanghai, Marseille and San Diego.
Every colony is made up of a small town, surrounded by fields and plantations. The center of each town is a dome that contains a small, but up-to-date hospital that is accesscible to every colonist, and the bureaus and monitoring stations of the guards.
The dome is TL8, the rest of the colony is TL 5.

Coventrys Australia is special case. The area around Sidney is Infinitys version of a POW camp. Here are most prisoners from Centrum collected. They live here like the people in the other colonys, by farming and fishing. They have acces to the same technology (TL5) as the other inhabitants, except that their colony is plastered with hidden cameras and listening devices.
At the location of Alice Springs, the patrol supports its prison. Here, at "the hole", the patrol contains people that are to dangerous or annoying for the other colonys or pose to great risk to Infinity itself. In a prison, build up by standards of a Homeline supermax, the patrol keeps people like ordinary criminals, drug lords, Centrum unattached agents, serial killers and war criminals. (They have two Hitlers here. They do not get along.)
Some of these inmates have chance to be relesed to one of the other colonys - if they really behave themselves for a few years.

Infinty ships in the goods the colonies can't make themselve (steel, coal, etc) and rotates the guards out on regualr terms - usually, a guard stays for three months on Coventry. It is made clear that Coventry is no punishment duty for a guard, and that every agent of Infinty can count that he will "do his term" there at least few times during his career. To enhance security, the guards are alloted randomly and only informed of their new missions a few hours before they go.
Without support on Homeline, an inhabitant on Coventry simply can't get out. In theory, someone on homeline could bribe or blackmail a guard before he goes over, but so far this has not happened - at least Infinty claims that.
The only knwon almost succesfull liberation attempt happened a few months ago, when an - still unidentified - group on Homeline wanted for unknown reasons to free a convicted serial killer. The group convinced a human rights group to start a campaign to "give a mentally disturbed individual that needs help, not hard times" a chance for a fair trial in a Homeline court.
The campaign was succesfull, UNIC ordered that the convict had to be brought to Homeline. The conspiritors managed to slip a computer virus into the transporters systems, so when it came back from Coventry, it jumped immediatly from Homeline to Attilas Australia, where it was expected by a group of heavyly armed Homeline mercs.
It did nor work. After a short firefight, a misjump and the discovery of a new timeline, the mercernaries were dead or captured, and the serial killer was back in his cell.

The people behind this incident are still unknown.

[somecallmetim]

I always thouht it would be fun to run Coventry as the Village from GURPS Prisoner. I-Cops (or I-SWAT) as warders, experimental tech used for experimentation/security, and constant attempts to "turn" useful out-timers. A Number 6 style agent who tries to investigate apparent corruption might trip over Centrum infiltrators and need to be disappeared. Of course, it would imply that Infinity has some rather nasty sorts in it (or is a front for such.)

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Your fleet of airships on patrol? They’ll need maintenance, which involves shipping maintenance personnel to Coventry or shipping the airships due for maintenance back from Coventry; either of these creates a potential loophole that inmates can try to exploit.

Actually, the maintenance would be low. And getting to live in a private Hawaii, with large, inexpensive, beach-front, homes, would attract a good supply of workers. You could pick the elites.

[Rocket Man]

Hmmm, maybe having Van Zandt on Coventry is a more useful plot device than I thought. After all, if there is a hole in Convetry's defenses that the Patrol hasn't seen, who would be more likely to discover it?

Of course, it must be a hole that requires the actions of more than one person or else Paul would have been long since gone. Enter the PCs ...

[dcarson]

Van Zandt can design a device to boost a conveyer so it works on Coventry. He would still need people to get the parts to build it from and to capture a conveyer.

[DAT]

A group of 5 swagman Jumpers

- A Master Thief (The Leader/Investigator),

- A con-woman (The Faceman),

- An artificer/inventor (The Wirerat/Hacker),

- A Gunman (The Shooter), and

- A psionic healer and telepath (The Mediic).

and an otherwise ordinary appearing human cab driver* ... who has cosmic Warp ability to warp any vehicle he is traveling in (The Wheelman).

* - for a back story, the I-Cops got a genetic test him and mistakenly believed he was a Reich mule.

[arconom]

I almost think it would be easiest to escape Coventry as a group of children. I doubt ICops would shoot kids.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by DAT

A group of 5 swagman Jumpers

- A Master Thief (The Leader/Investigator),

- A con-woman (The Faceman),

- An artificer/inventor (The Wirerat/Hacker),

- A Gunman (The Shooter), and

- A psionic healer and telepath (The Mediic).

and an otherwise ordinary appearing human cab driver* ... who has cosmic Warp ability to warp any vehicle he is traveling in (The Wheelman).

* - for a back story, the I-Cops got a genetic test him and mistakenly believed he was a Reich mule.

I guess they got sent to coventry for a crime they did not commit :)

If you make them a former Infinity team, they may benefit for inside help, or have served on coventry before.

Faking their death (and disabling the implanted tracking devices that they know about due to being former infinity, hiking/sailing across the world toward the base (fighting dinosaur along the way for added fun ...), and hickjacking the transport that just brought the team investigating their dissapearance... it could make for a nice game.
Giving serendipity on some of the pre-gen is almost a necessity for the last part!
If you truly want hyper-efficient Infinity/I-cops, their escape was monitored and there is a welcoming comittee waiting for them with new marching order... It was either a test or I-Swat need a covert team.

Celjabba

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by DAT

[snip] and an otherwise ordinary appearing human cab driver* ... who has cosmic Warp ability to warp any vehicle he is traveling in (The Wheelman).

* - for a back story, the I-Cops got a genetic test him and mistakenly believed he was a Reich mule.

Alternate Suggestion: The Very-Cinematic But-Not-Super Mid-TL Cabbie Who Can Drive Anything. Nothing extraordinary for somebody based off the Action Wheelman template, except for additional (possibly Aspected) Luck, lots of the Drive! Wildcard skill, Serendipity, Enhanced Dodge (Vehicular), etc.