Everytime At a Table: the Scrap Pile Prequel Begins

There are a couple of good things about doing superhero RPG every now and then. Well pulling my head out of Christmas, between the publishing thing's projects and my work partner's insistence on Christmas music, I forget that there's Turkey Day coming up. The writing and constructing the yarn is easy. The acts only requires like a paragraph to explain as to which villains show up somewhere and why are they there. I get fancy and add cut away scenes, after learning the trick from Robin (Peryton), to imply the tone of the scenario/campaign getting the PCs in the mood for the session. All that said, last night's "What Price Buffalo?" was hard starting.

Granting myself a late start time, which does work better, I was still having trouble getting my head into the GM thing as Charlie (Wylie Coyote), Curtis, and Peryton kept things amusing. Mostly talking about comic book TV, while Pery would start with her computer audio problems to not be annoying at all. I would force myself into the game mode by reading through the setting that the PCs should know. It is November 1999, the drug Mut-8, which has been around since WWI, is creating super-villains because of easing  federal pharmaceutical policies since the mid-80s. Costumed heroes have been on the rise over the last decade. They are still vigilantes and not working as Law Enforcement Officers yet, but the Special Abilities Act is before the Senate.  Then I list various known villains, and the most famous hero to date, Liberty Commando.  I'd do the Y2K escape from the FBI as they raided his software company finding out that he was a hacker to close out the verbal montage.

It being the 90s, Pery and Curtis, decided to do the 90s thing of creating baffling characters with vague and amorphous potential. Emudan is a being not of this dimension, but his 3rd dimension form is residing on the Earth for the time being, He might be an angel, might be a demon, might be sliced ham, who knows? And Wisp that instead of fixing a flat tire, she stared at a gibbous moon and her inner powers of supersonic flight and illusion awoke within her. Oh yeah, did I mention that that they are both immortal and don't need air or food or heat or... . It's like Rob Liefeld wrote Lobo teaming up with Azreal, but hey. But I could work with Wylie's Free Star, a one-time sidekick of Liberty Commando, easily enough.

Emo-Emudan

Not Bucky

No goth here

By the end of my world reading and getting to know the players' PCs, because no one can post details to me beforehand anymore, I had burnt off the first hour. The most time-consuming pot of coffee ever was finally ready. So using a random rogues gallery that I set-up to make the scenarios of this campaign fresher to me, mixing up NPCs really does help especially in superhero settings we waded, into the first act of the drama. I decided that the tone of the session would be the Characters first meeting each other. Peryton couldn't get that through her head for another forty minutes or so, but the humor in that was helping me get the kinks out of my head.

So a "military grade" armored vehicle was making its way past the coffee-shop where Emudan's human form was getting a coffee. Right next door above the 1/3 priced bookstore in her loft, Wisp was uploading her updates to her the Cure webpage on a Gateway computer. Overlooking the area from the top of Buffalo Bank and Trust towers, Free Star was on patrol. She spotted the flannel-hoodie clad, Hoodlum (evil Green Arrow) taking aim at the truck and swooped into action, using her amazingly ranged grapple gun. Taking the Robin Hood rip-off by surprise, she'd kick him clean off the building. He'd catch himself on the two-step balcony of Wisp's apartment. The startled woman would form the illusion that the iron work of her balcony had become shackles around Hood's wrists. Emudan (Emu-Man?) would step out of his place in line to come outside and see what all the ruckus was. He'd pull out his wings go help apprehend the man hanging from the balcony next door.

At the same time Hanoi Jane (evil Wonder Woman) would step out from a side alley in front of the truck, and stopping it with her super strength. Free Star would be taken unawares as the Crow (evil Black Canary), Hoodlum's g/f, would use her sonic powers to knock her off the roof with lyrics from Hole songs. Wisp seeing the super-strong woman in a one-piece bathing suit tearing out the bulletproof windshield of the truck and grabbing the driver, that was actively shooting her to minimal effect, pulled a stunt with her quality of (mumble, mumble, computer audio glitch) to provide a mass illusion of blue-helmeted body armor-wearing SWAT troops rappelling from black helicopters attacking her and her fellow bad guys.

Not that the Crow had time to notice. She and Free Star were in a kung-fu fight in the middle of the street, interspersed with weaponized Courtney Love lyrics echoing above the din. Meanwhile Hoodlum and Emudan, the cryptic, were in a wrestling match floating at roof-level above the fray below. The angel(?) would warn the hooded villain once to stop resisting, then the hoodie pulled back to reveal Steven Baldwin with blond dreadlocks, and that was too much. Purifying unholy(?) fire would bathe the two for just a touch too long. Somebody would start shooting shotgun-propelled beanbags at Wisp from a nearby rooftop, increasing her difficulty in maintaining the "freedom platoon"  keeping Hanoi Jane from wiping our heroes noses with their lunch bags.

Done with broiling Hoodlum, Emudan, noticed that the man's struggling had ceased, so he released his hold. Sending an injured man, in a hoodie and carrying a bow and quiver, to the street about 30-55 feet below. The landing stopped the burn victim's screaming at least. The Crow seeing her man now a smoldering pile of flannel shirt and burnt hair, on cold asphalt turned her back Free Star, to wail forlornly and run towards him. Wrong move, the combat boot to the back of her head knocked her out cold.  Emudan would see Hanoi Jane, a challenge worthy of his(?) physical form. The villainous juggernaut would still be fighting the illusion of an army platoon, see the pile of Hoodlum and his squeeze, and the approaching flaming winged man coming at her and decide to hop out of there. Literally, leaping like the Hulk away from the fray.

Wisp was still ducking for cover as the shotgun kept shooting some mean beanbags at her. She would see where the shooting was coming from. Here next illusion would be a fantastic light show of lightning and electricity all over the building she suspected where the sniper was. The shooter would focus on Free Star for a couple of shots, giving the chance for our super-illusionist to make her move.

Hanoi Jane and Emudan would have a race. Her Leap at 5 versus his Flight at 3 ( I think), she was able to shake him long enough to disappear into the wooded areas of a park area. Wisp would discover that her sniper was an automated device using the latest technologies of 1999 and remote control. Almost as if it was a distraction, she look up and see Wise Owl (evil Nightwing becoming Batman) getting into his "owl mobile" after closing the truck and driving away flipping her off.

The truck had been broken into and the guard inside incapacitated with sleep gas during all the action going on at the front of the truck.  Radiation warning signs were on the back of the swinging cargo doors of the vehicle. And there was a dead man and a woman with head trauma in the middle of the street along with three incapacitated armed guards. In true 90s fashion, Wisp and Freedom Star would take this moment to start a mutual-admiration society and pat themselves on the back for a job well done (Jim Lee couldn't have done it better). I had to tell them three times that police sirens were quickly approaching.

Emudan would return to scene just as the police would be responding in force. He'd come face-to-face with FBI agent Alice Hicks, and realize that she was not all that thankful for his efforts at maintaining order on her world's behalf. "I am done here." He'd intone. "Judgement has been fulfilled." He'd fly away despite calls from the beings behind him.

I'd end the session with a cut away to the Doomsday Brigade's Dome of Doom, somewhere on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Here Wise Owl would present Ringer (evil Green Lantern) with one of three containers. Ringer would complain of his growing hunger.
Wise Owl would chastise the other saying he needed the other two for "the project." Hanoi Jane would enter the room slightly bruised and definitely weary from the battle earlier. Y2K would speak up, appearing from the shadows, saying "I have a plan to feed you my friend and start clearing the way for our New World Order of Things."

The End of Session 1.