The Bold and The Determined - Session 1: First Steps

[This was originally posted 14 September 2009 on Obsidian Portal.]

Player Characters

SABRE

Max Power – Team lead, Billionaire with an agenda

Mars – Ex-pro-wrestler brining The Pain™ to villains everywhere

The White Shade – Mentalist and crowd control

Sentinel – Battlesuitist utility man

The Determined

The Priest – Monster hunter

Dart – Ex-ganger seeking revenge for the death of his sifu

Bruiser – Seeks revenge against those who made him a Bear-Man hybrid

Brick – Gangers killed her love and now it’s time for some payback

News Report at 10:00 PM

New supergroup SABRE foiled the robbery of a private bank by Sparkler and hired henchmen mid-afternoon today. While Sparkler was captured, three of her men escaped with ~$9 million in bearer bonds. Additionally, nearly $900,000.00 was lost when the bank robbers dumped nearly all the cash in the bank off the 10th floor balcony to crowds on the streets below. The CCPD believe the money drop was a distraction designed to obscure the thieves’ escape plan. The potential rioting the money drop could have caused was avoided by the efforts of Max Powers (of Futuretech Systems and leader of SABRE).

In similar news, The Capitol City Museum of History may have been the sight of a conflict between two violent cults. Approximately 30 minutes before the Museum was scheduled to close, violence broke out in the Meso-American exhibit hall. Two Museum employees and one of the cultists died during the altercation. The CCPD announced the arrest of four cultists at the scene, but have not provided any information about who was actually involved. It was later found that the Museum’s digital footage had been tampered with and identification of the second group of cultists is at a standstill.

The Real Story

SABRE

Alerted by Max Power’s second-in-command, Fletcher Davis, to a robbery in progress of the Imperial Brokers private bank in Downtown by Sparkler, SABRE debuted to the Public. With the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Special Unit One in Baltimore, there was an excellent opportunity for SABRE to capture Sparkler and establish their reputation.

As SABRE was arriving, the CCPD chopper circling the building was shot and started to crash land. Sentinel and Mars were able to work together and set the damaged helicopter down safely.

White Shade arrived at the bank first and was nearly knocked cross-eyed by Sparkler’s initial attack. Mars quickly joined the fight on the 10th floor balcony of the building, and nearly as quickly was shot off the building by two henchmen with blaster assault rifles. Other than leaving a Mars-sized crater in the cement, Mars was unhurt. He was in the perfect position to catch the falling Sentinel, who was stunned by an autofire fireworks attack from Sparkler and fell to the ground. Shaking clear his head, Sentinel regained his senses in time for Mars to throw him back towards the 10th floor, regaining flight stability at the level of the 8th floor. 

With the two heroes on the ground and White Shade no where to be seen (she was covering the far side of the building where two henchmen were dumping literally millions of dollars in cash to the streets below), Sparkler decided it was time to leave. She and the two hirelings there shouldered backpacks full of bearer bonds and donned gliderwings. Sparkler left first and was immediately pursued by Mars and Sentinel.

Meanwhile, White Shade had used her mental powers to convince one of the remaining henchmen to go back in for more cash to drop. He and his cohort went back inside, allowing her to land and follow. Inside the bank she used a mental entangle to paralyze one of them. The other had moved out of her view, so she blocked the perception of her from sight [invisibility only versus people she is aware of] and pursued the remaining henchman. She found him just in time to see him finish donning a set of gliderwings and leap over the balcony. She made a last ditch attempt to mind control him, but did not get the desired effect.

By this point, Mars and Sentinel captured the blinded Sparkler (from a flash attack by Sentinel). They saw the three henchmen escaping with via gliderwings, but were too far away to capture them before they landed and escaped.

Max Power arrived with a SABRE Response Team and was able to disperse the crowd grabbing the falling money. The crowd left with full pockets, but what could have been a full on riot was averted. Max then proceeded up the emergency stairs to the 7th floor where the CCPD were hacking away at a blob of hardened foam that was blocking the top three flights of stairs. Max was able to mix up a solvent to clear the stairs in minutes instead of hours, allowing those on the 8th and 9th floors to evacuate.

Afterwards:

Max had his people work with the CCPD to collect evidence, including tracking down the serial numbers of many of the missing bearer bonds (a number of which belonged to Max’s company, Futuretech Systems). Most of the equipment used in the robbery was commercially available. The gliderwings were high-end sporting equipment (which investigation showed were paid for in cash), the foaming agent is used by airports to slow landing aircraft in distress (stolen from the Warren G. Harding International Airport two days earlier), and the elevator cables were cut with commercial cable cutters (also purchased with cash). The blaster assault rifles were another matter. Max had materials experts in his employ assist the police in examining the captured blaster assault rifle. They had no identifying marks whatsoever.

Max and Sentinel are researching what materials would be necessary to manufacture the blaster rifles. They plan on using this information to track down potential manufacturing sites of these highly illegal weapons. Max is also interested in getting Micronetics (a nanotech research firm) to perform R&D on a better solvent, one that can be programmed to a specific substance. He will offer to fund the research and claim only partial ownership of the research results.

The Determined

Tipped off at nearly the last minute that DEMON was targeting the Capitol City Museum of History (CCMoH) for a theft, The Determined headed to the Museum [in street clothes] to stop DEMON. The Priest identified the Meso-American exhibit, “Ceremony – 4000 Years of Religion”, as the likely target. He purchased tickets for all four team members and they headed up to the 3rd floor to see the exhibit.

Brick moved through the exhibit quickly, looking for trouble and identifying the security set up. The Priest moved through a bit slower, checking the items on display for auras indicating supernatural possession. Dart and Bruiser used the available headsets to view the displays. Shortly after Brick completed her initial pass through the exhibit, five robed and hooded individuals stepped through a concealed door from the employees section of the building. The security guard in the room questioned their appearance. He was told they were an inventory crew and it was OK for them to be there. The hairs on the back of The Priest’s neck rose, indicating magic was in use. Viewing the speaker through his Guisemann Lenses, The Priest saw that the man was possessed by a demon, granting infernal power. He relayed this information to the rest of the team via headset communicator.

While the team was trying to decide if now was the time for action, two of the robed men advanced on one of the displayed and smashed it open. This upset the guard again, and he nearly shook off the magics affecting him. He was hit by a blast from a wand by one of the robed figures for his troubles, killing the guard instantly. This blatant use of deadly magic was all the Determined needed and they sprung to the attack.

In the ensuing fight, Dart was seriously wounded, took down many of the goons with his martial arts, and was eventually mind controlled to attack Bruiser to minimal effect. The possessed man used the unholy magics at his disposal to make life painful for Bruiser. Brick lost her temper with the last goon standing when he took a hostage and shot the goon twice and the hostage once (not necessarily in that order). After the goon killed the hostage, Dart ran by the goon and martial threw him into a display case, killing the goon and ending the fight.

Afterwards:

The Priest and Brick emptied the goons pockets and took their magical implements, including an obsidian knife the goons had lifted from the display case they broke open. The team left the building via the emergency stairs with the last of the bystanders. Outside they quickly left the area.

Brick remotely hacked the CCMoH security systems and altered their digital tapes to obscure the ID of the Determined, but leave the rest clear to see. She also obscured her electronic tracks to make it difficult to trace the intrusion back to her (-2 to track back for investigators). The Priest’s occult bookstore owner contact, Ray, successfully ID’d the Obsidian Blade and the two other items DEMON will need to complete a ritual to contact the Mayan Lords of Death through a book written by the Portuguese scholar Calado in the late 1600’s. The first item is the Grolier Codex, which is currently on loan in Baltimore. The other item is a stela from Copan mentioned in Calado’s book. Ray is trying to track down the stela as it “disappeared” in the late 1800’s, which usually indicates it was stolen and sold to a private collector. The Priest also contacted Bishop Compagnoni [of the local diocese] to inform him what was going on. Finally, The Priest made photocopies of the wallet contents of the goons and sent the originals to his contact on the CCPD.

Brick contacted Uncle Vin, a long time friend and “person who knows people”, to track down an art forger to create an exact replica of the Obsidian Blade. The plan is to return the duplicate and hide the original someplace safe to keep it out of DEMON’s hands. Brick also heard through the CC underground that VIPER stole equipment necessary to create/duplicate very high end security passes. That theft happened at exactly the same time as the private bank job earlier in the day. She made note of the information, not having any other use for it.

End of Session.

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[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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[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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[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.