frp

Date: December 19, 2014
Characters in attendance: 99, Quantum, Shimmer, Lady Paladin
Experience awarded: 2

The members of Rose City Five, plus the other-worldly heroes Shade and Thrall appear in a below-ground-level modern construction site, but are surrounded by a dozen tough-looking orcs, all holding surprisingly modern M-16 assault rifles. In addition, they see a chain-link fence pen sixty feet away containing two dozen Seattle citizens, and that pen is surrounded by another eight orcs. There is one obvious orc leader, Kranos, who announces to the group: “Surrender. Drop all weapons, armor, devices, and spells NOW, or people will die.”

At the same time, the heroes hear over their headsets in a mechanical voice, “Other transmitters detected on this frequency. Can you read us? Are you from our world?”

Lady Paladin announces to the group to stand down, and Thrall and Shade start removing their armor and weapons. Shimmer and 99 drop their weapons, but Hex hesitates, looking towards Lady Paladin for more guidance, and Quantum interprets the act as a ruse by Lady Paladin and flies in the air, getting in a defensive position.

Immediately an orc starts firing into the crowd of Seattle citizens, and three of them are hit, two are dying. Hex starts taking off his armor, and the orc leader demands that all useful items be removed (namely obvious foci). Quantum goes invisible and flies to a hidden position. Another orc fires on the crowd, and more people are injured and dying. Finally, the heroes are told to remove their masks; Lady Paladin pulls her mask off her face, but Hex is hesitant before he agrees to pull off his face covering to reveal… a normal-looking guy that nobody recognizes.

Kranos the orc leader sends an orc to fetch a drow warrior, so that they might locate the escaped hero, and sends a message that a group of heroes have been captured. Until the heroes can be taken to the Leader, they will be put into the pen with the Seattle citizens. The heroes' gear was placed in a card and taken to the Tinker for examination.

While in the pen, Lady Paladin and Hex begin performing first aid to the dying people, and were able to stop them from bleeding to death. Also, Lady Paladin is able to cobble together a radio from some old cell phone parts that the citizens had (since their headsets were taken with the rest of their gear) and gets back in communication with Quantum. The citizens bring the heroes up to speed; after the area was shifted to the other world, bands of orcs came through and collected all the technology they could locate, and rounded up all the citizens they encountered and placed them in holding pens. Any people resisting or fighting back were killed. The citizens also tell the heroes that the orcs have a weakness: they can't really tell the humans apart very well.

Meanwhile, Quantum is still hiding, and in communication with two other heroes, the members of the Seattle Six that were caught in the area: Super Star, a young female flying energy projector, and Ford, a humanoid robot. They told Quantum that they were trying to help rescue citizens where they could, but by themselves were not strong enough to do a frontal assault. They also tell him that they have observed cartloads of equipment and any kind of technology being taken to the Pacific Science Center , and believe that this mysterious “Tinker” is there.

The heroes come up with a plan. They will go willingly when they are taken to this “Leader”, but Shimmer will swap clothes with a regular citizen (a Seattle police officer) who will take Shimmer's place. Shimmer will then phase through the ground, and follow along at a safe distance. Quantum will follow along as well, and the Seattle heroes will wait for them atop a nearby building.

A cart comes to haul the heroes to the Leader's base: a tent located in the center of Denny Park a few blocks away. They travel in the cart to the park, and then are brought up to the tent, well guarded by orcs. A drow wizard emerges from the tent, looks at the heroes, and confers with somebody hidden in the tent. He says that he recognizes some of them as the Rose City Five, and asks which one of them is Shimmer. When the police officer answers, an orc starts firing at him. Luckily, Lady Paladin's efforts to shield him with her body are successful. At this point the figure hidden in the tent emerges. It is Marta Danzig, last seen in steam-powered armor with her Steam Knights in Portland (Game 13).

Marta tells them the plan: she and others have succeeded in using the Nexus of Power to swap chunks of these two worlds, and certain powerful people in this world can collect and use all of the technology that they can grab. In return, Marta will gain more help in her magic, giving her the ultimate combination of magic and technology. She is well aquainted with Shimmer, and is willing to wait however long it takes until he shows up. Until then, the heroes will be held as prisoners.

The heroes make plans. They realize that they are in a weakened state, since all of their gear is gone, and the best plan of action is to escape, and to make their way to the Tinker. The ultra-fast flyer Super Star can pick up a couple of team members, but they still need some sort of diversion to escape. Shade and Thrall tell them that they can provide that, and immediately spring into action: Shade turns invisible, and an M-16 suddenly jumps out of an orc's hand and starts spraying bullets into the tent. Thrall wades into the fray and starts attacking orcs with a ferocity not seen before. The last thing the heroes see as they leave is Thrall and Shade in the middle of a huge fight, telling them, “Don't worry about us; just do what you have to do.”

Super Star helps Quantum fly the team to the roof of the Pacific Science Center, but heads back to the park, to find Ford and to see if they can help Shade and Thrall. The team locates the Tinker; an excited young man surrounded by piles of hardware collected by the orcs. Lady Paladin tears a big hole in the roof, and Quantum uses his telekinesis to pull the cart of the heroes' equipment onto the roof. As Hex starts donning his gear, the rest of the team goes down to confront the Tinker.

The Tinker (who introduces himself as Nicodemus) is beside himself with excitement over the technology he now has, and is very busy taking notes in a small notebook with a peculiar symbol on the cover; the same type of notebook that the Cabalist used. He must be the Cabalist's analogue, they realize. They try to convince him to help them set things right, but he is too enamored by the technology to want to help. He is a genius with technology, but never had access to anything like this. When certain powerful people came to him and asked him to learn about this technology and help them, he was ready.

But Lady Paladin said something that had an effect: “Is it worth all of the death?” The Tinker is taken aback, and says that the violence was minimal, people weren't being hurt. Quantum took the opportunity to show a video of the orcs gunning down the Seattle normals when the team was captured, and the Tinker is dumbstruck. It takes little convincing after that to get him to help, and he gathers some equipment in a backpack and is ready to go with the team to set things right.

This was a difficult game to run. I had a good discussion with JoAnn, and we realized a few things. First, we couldn't have the entire Seattle Six around, because they would have been too successful in defeating orcs, so I rewrote it that only a couple of them were around. Second, I needed something to let the characters know that they had found the Cabalist's analogue, and that was the reason for the tiny notebooks (that incidentally have thousands of pages; they're “bigger on the inside”).

I wanted to capture the characters, and take away their foci and secret IDs. I always liked the trope of capturing the heroes and taking away their gear, and letting them figure a way to escape. Besides, I figured it was time to pay for those focus limitations and Secret ID complications. But I wanted to give them a choice, instead of just telling them that they were captured. I hit upon using normals as bargaining chips, having them gunned down every time the characters don't give up (I guess it is a dark four-color campaign). But I messed up. I ran it too much like a combat, going phase by phase, and rolling for damage to the normals. Some of the characters were convinced that it was going to be a real combat instead of a hopeless situation, and rolling the damage to the normals resulted in them not immediately dying. If more of the normals had died, the situation would have seemed more dire.

My other mistake was a big one. I try to never assume what the players are going to do; since I always get it wrong. But I assumed that as soon as they escaped the orcs, they would head to the Tinker, to get their gear back. But they didn't; they went willingly to see the Leader. I already knew that it was Marta Dansik, but wasn't expecting to reveal her until the next game. So I scramble around and set up the encounter with her. Luckily I had all the parts, and it turned out really well.

I was really proud of the way that the players convinced the Tinker to help them. I left it open that the characters could convince him, or threaten him or force him. But they came up with wonderful convincing arguments that worked on the Tinker's morality. To top it off, Jim had Quantum show a video on his chest (something we had always joked about) of normals being shot by orcs was, in my mind, a perfect use of a special effect.