Countdown to Campaign - 1 Week

[This refers to The Bold and The Determined and was originally posted 6 September 2009 on Obsidian Portal.]

Recent Timeline - Public [Player] Knowledge

1999 – March

The Guardian Incident happens in California. Due to the massive amount of press involved and the nascent Internet, PRIMUS is unable to contain the story and it becomes a major news story globally.

1999 – April

Jayme Penna declares in a press conference that she is secretly Guardians girlfriend and pregnant with his child. Guardian makes no comment other than to deny ever meeting Ms. Penna. The story makes all the gossip magazines.

1999 – May

Lord Synthetic kills Jayme Penna when she appears on the Today show as revenge for his defeat by Guardian. The New York City Coroner is able to run a paternity test on the dead fetus and prove the true father of the child was Jayme’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Dale Brogan.

Both Dale and Guardian appear in a press conference denouncing Lord Synthetic as a vile coward. Lord Synthetic of course attacks and Guardian is again able to capture him.

1999 – August

Lord Synthetic escapes from the James A. Thomas Maximum Security Facility on Riker’s Island, despite extensive measures taken to prevent such a thing from happening.

1999 – November

Margo Albin becomes Miss Teen Maryland

2001

Lord Synthetic attempts to seize control of the Florida Keys. He is stopped by Guardian and a team of local superheroes he assembled. Lord Synthetic escapes jail within two months of being captured.

2002 – April

Brick and Trent are shot in an altercation with a street gang. Brick survives, Trent does not. Brick leaves town the night after the funeral.

2002 – June

Margo Albin becomes Miss Capitol City

2003

Lord Synthetic seizes control of Hoover Dam and demands $5 billion dollars or he will destroy the dam and all of its power generating capacity. Once again he is stopped by Guardian and a team of superheroes from the nearby states.

After extensive preparations to keep Lord Synthetic imprisoned, he escapes four months later with outside help.

2004

Rumors of mysterious “Gene Cops” arise in several major metropolitan areas in the Americas. The stories all claim that a number of people are “arrested” and taken away, never to be heard from again. All inquiries with all levels of law enforcement draw blanks.

2004 – March

Maryland forms the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Special Unit One – the first government-sponsored team of superheroes.

2004 – June

Lord Synthetic attacks the island of Anguilla with an army of Synthwarriors and several other supervillains assisting, seizing control of the island. He declares the island an independent nation with himself as head of state. The British are not amused.

2004 – July

The British consult with Guardian. Later in the month Anguilla is retaken by British SAS troopers along with several British superheroes. Lord Synthetic is sent to a British maximum security prison where “he will be kept locked up tight, unlike in American prisons.”

2004 – August

Lord Synthetic escapes from prison and Britain. As a side effect of his actions, 75% of the other prisoners in the same facility are also freed and British authorities spend the next two years actively hunting them all down.

2004 – August

Margo Albin becomes Miss Maryland 2004

2005

Cape-KRAKEN War happens.

2005 – April

PRIMUS is dragged into the light by a concerted effort by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the DIA, all of whom are unhappy about being repeatedly targeted by lawsuits and Congressional inquiries (not to mention loss of black book funding). PRIMUS narrowly avoids being dissolved and prosecuted for criminal acts of oppression. The agency is demilitarized and reorganized as part of the Department of Justice. The public is barely appeased and the agency is hit with a flurry of Freedom of Information Act information requests.

2005 – May

First VIPER attack televised. Speculation about the involvement of Lord Synthetic runs high until PRIMUS releases data showing VIPER has been active in the United States for nearly 10 years.

2005 – July

Brick leaves NYC when the hack group she was with (the Atlantean War Swarm) starts to go violent and perform actual terror activities.

2005 – August

Margo Albin becomes Miss Maryland 2005

2005 – October

Lara Malone is arrested when the evidence seized at the end of the Cape-KRAKEN War shows the Malone Investment Group has been funding major criminal enterprises for KRAKEN and engaging in insider trading and industrial espionage through Malone Investment Solutions, reaping tremendous profits in the process.

2006 – January

Margo Albin becomes Miss America 2006. Almost immediately, rumors start spreading that Margo is a mutant and/or used some sort of mind powers on the judges.

2006 – April

After months of slander and false charges, Margo decides to step down as Miss America, convinced she can do more good elsewhere. Once again, almost immediately the rumors disappear. Quiet speculation starts to surface that the smear job against Margo was done on behalf of Jessica Jackson, Miss Virginia and First Runner-up, who inherited the crown when Margo stepped down. As Jessica’s father is Senator Lee Jackson of Virginia, a powerful man in Washington D.C., these rumors stay quiet.

2007

Debate on creating a new facility designed to specifically contain supervillains starts in various committees in Congress. It has become apparent that regular prisons are not able to hold all supervillains.

2008

Rumors of mysterious “Gene Cops” resurface. Gene Cops seem to be targeting known and potential metahumans. They are stopped in a few cases. Afterwards, police have no records of the incidents and all collected evidence disappeared.

2009 – February

Brick arrives in Capitol City and starts making contacts. She eventually falls in with a determined group seeking to fight the criminal organizations ruling Capitol City behind the scenes.

2009 – March

Campaign starts.

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Countdown to Campaign - 5 Weeks

[This refers to The Bold and The Determined and was originally posted 9 August 2009 on Obsidian Portal.]

The starting date for the campaign has been set for September 12. It will likely be a short role-playing session as we finalize everyone’s characters, including backstory links, prior to actual play.

This entry will also be included in the [Obsidian Portal Campaign] wiki with additional information as it becomes necessary.

The Guardian Incident

The Guardian Incident is the first recognized, public appearance of a metahuman in history. Prior to this event, rumors had circulated about those who could do things normal people could not, but most were believed to be urban myths or tabloid fodder. However, due to the highly publicized nature of this event, the truth could not be denied.

In fact, the Guardian Incident is the appearance of the first two recognized metahumans.

At what was supposed to be a minor public appearance at a children’s hospital, California Governor Gray Davis, his entourage, and many children were seized by a group of people armed with high-tech weaponry and lead by a man calling himself Lord Synthetic. Lord Synthetic demanded $10 billion be transferred to a Swiss account and that he be granted sole domain over the Channel Islands off the California coast.

The event immediately made the national news. The initial assault by LA SWAT against Lord Synthetic was blocked from broadcast. Lord Synthetic and his Synth-Troopers used their superior fire-power, including Lord Synthetic’s ability to throw bolts of energy from his hands, to drive back and kill the SWAT teams involved. This part of the action was broadcast live to the world, which reacted with shock to what it saw. Immediately, Los Angeles was the target destination for US special forces units and the world press.

During the following week, Lord Synthetic repeated his demands and personally blasted any military unit that he felt was getting too close. This led to the US government getting desperate for options that would not also kill all the hostages. On the eighth day, Lord Synthetic decided to remind the US government what was at stake. He dragged the governor to the fountain area in front of the hospital where the world press could clearly see what was happening and prepared to execute the governor.

Lord Synthetic was interrupted by a glowing man who flew out of the sky under his own power and slugged Lord Synthetic across the courtyard. The glowing man pointed the governor to some waiting troops in the door of a nearby building and then turned to fight Lord Synthetic. The governor escaped during the ensuing fight, during which Lord Synthetic called in his Synth-Troopers. The glowing man shrugged off shots that easily killed members of SWAT and Special Forces. The beams from Lord Synthetic’s hands took a toll, but the glowing man fought on in full view of the world.

Eventually, the glowing man won the fight, defeating Lord Synthetic in front of the world press. Elite troops from the US military had snuck in and secured the rest of the hostages, taking advantage of the unexpected distraction presented by the fight.

In a short statement to the press afterwards, the glowing man said “My name isn’t important, I’m just a guardian.” He was immediately labeled “Guardian” by the press and the rest is now history.

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Countdown to Campaign - ~6 weeks

[This refers to The Bold and The Determined and was originally posted 26 July 2009 on Obsidian Portal.]

As we were not able to run the Pathfinder game today (missing player), we did work on the Champions game. Here is what we have now:

The Bold:

The White Shade – one-time Miss America, forced to return her crown due to allegations of using “mental powers” in order to win (Mentalist)

“Mars” Gordon – pro-wrestler turned superhero (Brick)

Flux – early hero suffering from amnesia and power malfunction (Blaster) [this changed by the time the campaign started to Sentinel, an Iron Man type character]

? – dotcom millionaire and team founder (Trained Normal)

The Determined:

Brick – gang-hater with strong gun-fu skills (Brick)

Dart – ex-ganger, seeks the “Gene Cops” who killed his sufi (Martial Artist/Speedster)

The Priest – ex-communicated monster hunter with a holy shotgun (Blaster)

? – (Undecided)

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Countdown to Campaign - ~7 Weeks

[This refers to The Bold and The Determined and was originally posted 17 July 2009 on Obsidian Portal.]

Some thoughts on the villains and villain agencies.

The whole villain schtick is not fully developed yet. High tech weaponry is not as wide-spread as a standard superhero campaign/comic book. Bad guys operate on a more local scale. VIPER cells have finite resources and threaten cities, not nations (except maybe Lichtenstein or some of the smaller microstates, but never Singapore). The mad scientists are aiming to conquer the world in one fell swoop.

I don’t plan on making the villains common criminals, even when they’re robbing a bank. If they’re there in broad daylight, there’s a reason and it usually has to do with picking a fight with a “superhero”. If nasty things happen, they’ll probably happen off-stage and for a specific story reason, never randomly.

Rivalries will happen on both sides. Good guys can fall, but bad guys can be redeemed. There will be cases of mistaken identity.

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Countdown to Campaign - Two Months

[This refers to The Bold and The Determined and was originally posted 12 July 2009 on Obsidian Portal.]

The campaign is in the planning stage. I have yet to set points for character creation (although I know one group will be 100+ points more than the other) and some other basic stuff. I am currently thinking about legalities.

The campaign is set in Maryland where, 3-5 years before the campaign starts, the State of Maryland started an official team of heroes to work towards the betterment of the citizens of Maryland. The team was the Maryland Department of Natural Resources – Special Unit 1. With minimal direct guidance and a matching budget (read: tiny), Special Unit 1 became involved in a variety of situations that were beyond the ability of standard law enforcement. They gradually worked out a set of protocols for arresting super-powered criminals and officially dealing with the unusual situations they faced.

Over time, it became obvious that Special Unit 1 could not be everywhere, even in a relatively small state like Maryland, and the Maryland Congress would not increase the budget (in fact, much of the team equipment was purchased or developed by members of the team using their own resources). To allow for more “superheroes” to be active, but to avoid absolute chaos, Maryland decided to start issuing licenses to superheroes who registered with the state.

Up until this point, defense lawyers hired by criminals stopped by masked superheroes without extensive video footage could easily get the charges dropped when the heroes would not remove their masks in the courtroom. Able to create a reasonable doubt as to who, exactly, was giving witness, most juries would not convict. Special Unit 1 was exempt from this as the State of Maryland vouched for their identity without revealing it, using similar laws in use for undercover police officers. The handful of times the heroes un-masked in court, family and friends immediately became targets of the criminals being prosecuted. By requiring heroes to register with the state, the state could vouch for them in court, allowing credible eye-witness testimony to be given without family and friends becoming targets.

The data is currently kept in facilities designed by members of Special Unit 1 and maintained by bonded staff. Even so, not all heroes register as there is a certain skepticism about the security of the information in an age where even the Defense Department is not completely safe. Those heroes who are not registered have started using the CrimeTippers program to report the location of captured villains and supporting evidence. Court cases using this information has been a mixed success as not all juries are willing to accept it.

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Four Summoners - Thoughts on the Missing 3rd Session

Here's the thing - I kind of remember at least one more session of this campaign despite having no notes to back that memory up.  I remember a new player joining the group with his character, Mr. Goralac, a demon with two forms - Alec Baldwin (with some powers) and a Balrog.  Mr. Goralac appears in the fiction I wrote after the campaign ended and I would not have done that if the player in question had not created the character.  I cannot ask that player what he remembers as he passed away 10+ years ago from aggressive skin cancer.  [He was the youngest member of the group, only in his mid-30s when the rest of us were already in our 40s.]

It is possible that the missing third session became the bank robbery in the fiction I wrote.  I honestly no longer remember.  I've talked with one of the other members of that group and he vaguely recalls Mr. Goralac and him looking like Alec Baldwin and the use of the line "I went disguised as that guy in Lord of the Rings" and my character responding "I didn't know Alec Baldwin was in Lord of the Rings."  [Appears in the fiction, which won't get posted for a while.]  So that may answer the mystery.

Instead of posting the Four Summoners fiction next, I have the Obsidian Portal posts on The Bold and The Determined queued up for the next three weeks of posts at 3 posts per week.  I did this as I had time and it did not require me to port the notes into Word first and then onto Blogger.  Plus I could work on it on my Day Job laptop when I had down time.  I will go back and post the fiction later, but that's all on my personal Laptop, which is a bit of a pain to access during the work day, downtime or not.

Finally, you might have noticed that the Four Summoners campaign is now listed on the landing page ahead of The Bold and The Determined campaign.  I noticed while I was porting over the content that The Bold and The Determined timeline included a reference to the Cape-Kraken War happening before the campaign started.  That was a direct reference to a plan our villains in Four Summoner were formulating but never got a chance to initiate.  To assist in Summoners' take over of Capitol City (and avoid having to do all the heavy lifting themselves), Summoner was going to foment a grudge and war between Kraken and the superheroes (the capes) operating in Maryland and surrounding states.  For it to appear in the pre-campaign history document means that it was formulated before the new campaign, placing Four Summoners as the earlier campaign.  To represent that, I re-organized the landing page so things are listed in chronological order.

If anyone is interested in learning why the Four Summoners campaign was called that, drop a message in the comments and I'll share.

Four Summoners - Snatching TURTLEs

Player Characters

Professor Demigauss - A mad scientist bent on world domination, specializes in robotics and force field technologies

Menagerie - a well-known hunter of endangered species, Sheila Masters was cursed by a witchdoctor to “live in the skins of those animals she had killed” 

Cannonade - A flying explosion looking for somewhere to happen, enhanced by Professor Demigauss

Doctor Zarathustra - a three-in-one entity seeking to corrupt and collect souls

The Set-up

While Cannonade slowly recovered from his case of acute allergic reaction to bullets, the rest of Summoner assisted in the completion of their new base, Summoner 1.  They also attended to their living quarters (unpacking all the boxes took forever) and discussing what they would do next.  It was decided that with a base of operations secured, Summoner next needed troops.

Knowing that their troops would need to stand against the police, Kraken troops, and possibly heroes, it was decided that the troops would need powered armor suits of some sort.  Not having immediate access to an armory or a mass fabrication unit, Professor Demigauss decided to take a short-cut and steal some powered armor.

The team used their contacts and “research skills” to track down a shipment of TURTLE armor being shipped to a MARS (Military Advanced Research Systems) test range in Virginia.  Professor Demigauss’s contact in the Bardalucci crime family was only able to confirm that MARS was using non-union drivers for the convoy.  After a field trip to the Federal Department of Transportation, Charity was able to find a bureaucrat who had access to the information needed.  Using her Mind Control power, she was able to secure the route of the shipment and the number of trucks in the convoy (two), but nothing about what kind of security was being used.

The Plot

1. Ghost will infiltrate the trucks and uses EGO drain and Mind Control to program the drivers.  The drivers are to take a minor exit off I-95, without radioing in, and pull into an abandoned gas station, believing it to be a scheduled rest stop.  Ghost will start with the lead truck and then get the second truck.  While moving between trucks, he will pass through the lead truck's trailer to verify that there are no surprises inside.
2. Cannonade will observe the trucks turning off the Interstate and start a radio blackout [large scale Darkness vs. Radio].  He will check for any security vehicles with the trucks.  If he spots any, he and Menagerie will quickly eliminate the security vehicles.
3. When the trucks stop at the abandoned gas station, Charity will use her (much stronger) Mind Control to get the drivers out of the trucks, wipe their memories of the entire event, and put them to sleep.
4. The team will verify the goods are in the trucks, replace the drivers with our own (hired through the temp agency, T&T), and disable any lo-jak or tracking systems.
5. Our drivers will drive the truck to a second location where we have “clean” trucks waiting.  Summoner will follow them in the Summoner Shuttle to avoid any “complicating incidents”.  The cargo will be transferred from one set of trucks to the other.
6. The “clean” trucks will drive the cargo back to Summoner 1 [the team's base].  The stolen trucks will be destroyed with an excessive amount of dynamite.

Resolution

Summoner set up at the abandoned gas station, with Cannonade and Menagerie hidden in some trees near the highway intersection.  Ghost intercepted the trucks ten minutes down the road and used Mind Control to get the drivers to talk.  In each truck he found two men and when they talked, he learned that they did not know what was inside the cargo trailers, but that there was a Hummer with two security guys following the trucks.  Ghost relayed this information to the team.

When Ghost tried to investigate the trailers, he discovered that they were impervious to his ability to move through solid objects.  This convinced Professor Demigauss that the bulk of the security was inside the trailers and he redeployed Menagerie to support the team opening the trailers instead dealing with the security vehicle.

The trucks took the exit and made the turn down the side road.  At this point Cannonade initiated his radio jamming.  When the security Hummer came around the corner, Cannonade attacked.  He stopped the vehicle, but not the occupants.  The occupants exited the vehicle and activated force field devices.  Cannonade put down one of them before the other hit him twice with a goop gun of some sort.  Professor Demigauss directed Doctor Zarathustra to move in and support Cannonade.

The second hit from the goop gun blocked most of Cannonade’s senses, but, as he had been flying when initially hit, he was still mobile.  He activated his radar ability to get his bearings and started heading towards the rest of the team.  Unfortunately, the stress and effort of activating the radar power knocked Cannonade unconscious, turning off his radio jamming but not his flight power [it was Persistent].  At this point Doctor Zarathustra arrived and put down the remaining security person.  Cannonade revived and resumed radio jamming.

At the abandoned gas station, the trucks pulled up in front of the building and stopped.  They were in the covered parking where Summoner wanted them, so Menagerie started moving to a position where she could cover the rear of the trailers while the truck drivers exited the trucks.  Charity used her superior Mind Control to move the drivers away from the trucks and put them to sleep.

Just as Doctor Zarathustra and Cannonade rejoined the rest of Summoner at the abandoned gas station, the back doors of the trailers flung open and security agents deployed into defensive positions around the tail ends of the trucks – four with force fields, four in TURTLE armor.

Doctor Zarathustra attempted to immediately take down one of the agents with his sword, but was rebuffed by the agent’s force field and hit by an experimental flamer weapon with a 26 m cone of effect.  This incidentally hit Menagerie, triggering an uncontrolled shift into her form, first to a gorilla, then into a crocodile.  She charged the agent as a crocodile [she was Enraged] but failed to reach him before Doctor Zarathustra sent the agent flying with a return swing of his sword.  This allowed her to regain control of her senses and she dropped and rolled to put herself out.

Professor Demigauss unleashed his newly re-programmed Van der Botz (v1.1) with orders to take down the agents.  The Van der Botz charged around the building as a unit and set up a firing line to attack the agents.  The agents reacted by concentrating fire upon the Van der Botz, deactivating two of them before the remaining two triggered their Atomic Burster flash attacks, blinding the agents.

Cannonade fired a shaped arc of energy to soften up the agents without damaging the trucks as Ghost EGO-drained them and Professor Demigauss flew to a better position on top of the trucks.  In short order, the blinded agents were quickly dispatched with minimal damage to the goods.

The bodies of all the agents were placed into the abandoned gas station while the TURTLE armor was reloaded back into the trucks.  Professor Demigauss disabled the security systems on the trucks.  Afterwards, the drivers Summoner hired through the temp agency, T&T, climbed into the trucks and drove the trucks to the secondary location.

At the secondary location, Menagerie transformed into an elephant and moved the cargo crates into the clean trucks.  The drivers transferred to the clean trucks and freighted the cargo to Summoner 1.  The stolen trucks were destroyed with an abundance of dynamite set by Cannonade.

Once the cargo was unloaded at Summoner 1, the drivers were paid and Charity changed their memories so they believed they had performed a simple driving job in Delaware.  This left the drivers available for later jobs, but without leaving any evidence or reason for them to contact the police.  [Summoner secretly owned the temp agency and planned to make recurring use of them in the future.]

The local news that night covered the attack and robbery of the shipment by parties unknown.  Professor Demigauss noticed that the news reported the drivers and security people were murdered, despite Summoner leaving them alive.  It also revealed that the TURTLE armor was going to the MARS facility for upgrades prior to resell.

New Report

CAPITAL CITY – Eight suits of TURTLE Armor en route to the Military Advanced Research Systems (MARS) Facility in Capital City were hijacked from a convoy, less than 20 miles from the Virginia-Maryland border.

The escort vehicle was found destroyed near an exit ramp off the main highway.  The burned-out hulls of the trucks and their murdered crews were found over 20 miles from the escort vehicle wreckage.  The charred remains of the slain crews have not been identified.

The Armor was on its way to the MARS facility in Capital City for system upgrades.  Recently the federal government made it possible for municipalities to purchase advanced technology for law-enforcement use.

"This represents a significant setback to the authorities of this city.  The upgraded TURTLE Armor was going to be deployed in the ever-escalating fight against super-powered crime," said Lt. Powers, spokesman for the Capital City Police Department.  "Whether the suits were stolen for resale or if they were stolen for more sinister purposes remains to be seen."  Each of the TURTLE Armor suits is worth approximately $500,000.

FBI forensics teams are currently studying the evidence and have not ruled out super-human involvement.  The escort vehicle was pierced multiple times by some unknown energy weapon.

Officials at MARS could not be reached for comment.

Commentary

[And that is it for the Four Summoner campaign, at least the part that I have notes for.  Half the group wasn’t really interested in playing villains and the rest of us discovered we played naughty, not evil.  As a group we also realized that a villain campaign actually increases the work the GM needs to do ahead of time, not decrease it.  Or maybe we were still stuck in reaction mode like heroes and not in initiate action-mode like villains need to be.]

[I wasn’t entirely done with Professor Demigauss and wrote a little bit of additional fiction after the campaign stopped, which I will post later.  I liked the interaction between the Professor and Dr. Zarathustra and wrote another bit with them later in Africa accidentally starting a zombie apocalypse as a test of a new power that Dr. Zarathustra developed, but I cannot find it now.  If I do, I will post it.]

Capitol City - The Landing Page for Superhero Campaigns

Four Summoners

Last Session: Bitburg Beatdown

Next: Fiction 1 – Summoner Leaves Base [Posted later, next in line for session notes is The Bold and The Determined]