Expect a lot of these over the next few days, as I log my old Necessary Evil campaign on the blog...in time for us to hopefully resume it this weekend, in anticipation of seeing the Plot Point campaign through to the end!
These are largely straight forward cut-and-pastes, so references to time and stuff are not accurate, as these logs are now three-four years old.
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So I began the Necessary Evil Plot Point Campaign tonight.
WARNING: THERE WILL
BE SPOILERS!
TURN BACK NOW!
LAST CHANCE!
OKAY…You were warned.
The group is two PCs and three Wild Card allies (to make up
for the low number of players.)
Mindstorm – a telekinetic, weather controlling mutant, with
a forceful personality but also a superiority complex - (played by my friend
Kenny) is scraping by on the streets of Star City
Angel’s Bane (played by my friend Tommy) is a demon on
Earth, forming a cult due to people willing to latch onto anything in the face
of the alien invasion for aid and comfort, even a walking Hellbeast. An alien sweep wipes out his cult and subdues
him.
They are put on a transport with some other captured
criminals, including Belladona, a poisonous seductress, Bully, The Bull That
Walks Like A Man, and a mysterious Atlantean sorcerer.
The transport is zipping along Central Avenue , when it was violently
attacked! The transport flips end over
end, crashing to a halt…Earth’s most infamous villain, Dr. Destruction, enters
the craft and asks, simply: “You want to live?”
The PCs quickly agree, and board his transport. As the carrier heads north, Dr. Destruction
informs them that he wants them to become a new cell in his terrorist movement:
Omega. All they have to do is rescue an
imprisoned Omegan named Mindjack and bring him back to Dr. Destruction alive. Then he dumps them out of the carrier,
plummeting to the earth, with 7 seconds to tell him whether or not they wish to
join up. As they agree, their nullifiers
are obliterated. Both PCs can fly, and
Mindstorm rescues Belladonna from her fall.
Bully crashes through the roof of a prison guardhouse. The sorcerer floats to the ground, while
Angel’s Bane zips through the hole.
Inside, four drones – captives that have had all their will
subjugated by V’Sori implants and covered in armor – are taken completely by
surprise at the bold assault. Angel’s
Bane unleashes his Fear aura…except the drones are immune, and his own
teammates are not! Bully and Kale (The
Sorcerer) are unfazed, but Mindstorm is Shaken and Belladonna is so traumatized
that she gains a Minor Phobia from it!
Bully and Angel’s Bane close to attack in melee, while Kale and
Mindstorm unleash ranged attacks on the drones.
Unfortunately, nothing sticks and the next round, eight more drones join
the fray!
Belladonna hangs to the back, unable to use her poisonous
abilities on something covered head to toe.
One of the new drones misses Bully with an energy blast and blows a hole
in one of the drones fighting Bully, causing the first casualty. Kale decides to “borrow” some magical power
from the Elder God that grants him his abilities, to cause an electrical surge
to overload the drones…and instead overloads himself, gaining a level of
fatigue and losing access to his sorcery for a whole day!
Mindstorm takes his cue, however, and unloads with the
electrical surge on the group standing in the back firing, and rattling half of
them.
One well-placed shot nearly brings Bully down, giving him
three wounds, but sending him into a berserker rage! He gores one drone, ripping him apart, and
charges the group firing at them!
Angel’s Bane grips the face of one drone, causing the visor
to Decay away, while Mindstorm keeps zapping drones with electrical
bursts. Belladonna and Kale help Angel’s
Bane gang up on the drone he exposed, and she’s able to use her poisonous touch
to bring him down. Kale and Angel’s Bane
both get shot and wounded, but Mindstorm’s last surge wipes out the remaining
firing drones, and leaves the Omega cell hurt but standing.
Now deciding to look for Mindjack, they find his cell and
Mindstorm fruitlessly attempts to use Telekinesis to get the door open, when
Angel’s Bane finally laughs him off and rots the cage door down.
A Latina
woman in another cage introduces herself as Valerie Ramirez and says she can
make it worth their while to get her free, but Angel’s Bane has no interest in
doing anything other than what he agreed to, and flies out of the complex with
Mindjack. Mindstorm and Bully work
Valerie’s cage door over, until Mindstorm finally shocks the lock free. Other prisoners begin screaming for release,
but Mindstorm ignores them and leads Kale, Bully, Belladonna and Valerie out of
the prison.
Dr. Destruction returns to them as promised, and scoffs at
the extra passenger, but allows her aboard.
His carrier drops them off at Southtown, a rough
neighborhood largely free of V’Sori activities…and informs them that they are
now an Omega cell, whether they like it or not…and that he’ll be in touch.
Mindstorm, making the best of things, starts kicking around
team names, suggesting “The Evil Sideliners” in an in-joke nod to our Marvel
SAGA game (Mindstorm here is an evil version of Kenny’s character from that
game)…while Angel’s Bane shakes his head and walks away. Bully offers up “Bully and His Bad Boys”, to
which Mindstorm and Belladonna react in bewilderment, and head in their own
direction. Bully is left fairly
oblivious in the street as the new cell all head their own ways.
Notes: This was Kenny’s first session with Savage Worlds and
he was quite pleased with it. Tommy and
I had been playing it the last two Sundays, and have a pretty good hang of things. There were a handful of times over the course
of the fight that things looked scary for the Omega cell…but when Mindstorm
started unloading with Electrical bursts, things got ugly fast for the drone. Tommy has decided that Angel’s Bane needs a
bit of refocusing, first when his Fear had no effect on the drones and then
when he couldn’t get a drone to fail the Vigor roll to take a wound from
Decay…so he’s thinking something big and scythe-y now. Tommy has also assured me that Angel’s Bane’s
refusal to cooperate is all in the spirit of the game and not
passive-aggressive sabotage, as he and Kenny had a grand ol’ time playing
villains instead of white hats for a change.
Kenny and Tommy have latched onto Belladonna and Bully already, which
surprised me.
Kenny is notoriously hard to get to try new things, so I was
surprised at his complete buy-in for the game, even providing boxes of HeroClix
minis and maps for gameplay. Both guys
(and myself) are looking forward to next session…with anywhere from 1-3 more
players POSSIBLY joining the mix.
Session 2!
Though the team basically scattered at the end of the last
session, when they all found the commlinks Dr. Destruction gave them upon
dropping them off, and he came a-calling with news that he needed them to find
the villain Terron’s secret lair, and to take a power relay at the warehouse he
left them at with them, they all convened on their drop-off spot.
Angel’s Bane toyed with Belladonna some more, and they
discovered that only Bully was strong enough to carry the massive relay. Dr. Destruction had told them at the
Undergrounders living below the city probably knew where Terron’s lair was at,
and Angel’s Bane recalled an abandoned pump station on the coast of the South
Point that had a sewer entry large enough to bring the relay.
The squad (dubbed Buster Squad 5 by Mindstorm) headed
underground, and wandered aimlessly in the sewers for an hour and a half before
Mindstorm found a passageway into some underground caverns that had been poorly
hidden…little did they know, but they barely missed a roaming pack of G’roks,
these mutated lizards the V’Sori unleashed into the sewers years ago.
The villains made their way into their caverns and were
quickly spotted by The Undergrounders, and ten of them met the villains,
offering to take them to their leader.
The villains, on their guard because of how easy this was, were
surprised to find the leader of the Undergrounders was Valerie Ramirez, whom
Mindstorm released from a cell during the Mindjack jailbreak!
Crediting them for the fact that she’s back with her people,
Ramirez dispatched scouts to take the villains to Terron’s lair! As they prepared to leave, a young child was met by Angel’s Bane and got greeted with a fang-filled smile, but impressed the heck
out of Angel’s Bane by not flinching! (Aced the heck out of a spirit roll to
resist Intimidation!) They arrived at a
drainage pipe that feeds out from the lair…which was large enough for them to
enter, but too small for the relay! Upon
hearing about other collapsed entrances to the lair, the squad decided to
leave Belladonna to guard the relay while they entered the lair.
Upon entering the lair, they spied the power source…saw a
pile of dead g’roks…and were attacked by the robot guardian left behind by
Terron!
Bully went straight into battle with it, while Kale,
Mindstorm and Angel’s Bane launched attacks from afar. Kale had a spellcasting slip-up that left him
shaken, while Mindstorm’s lightning and Angel’s Bane’s fire left the thing
unscathed. The guardian drove its
massive scythes into Bully, gashing him open and leaving him very, very hurt.
Angel’s Bane launched fireballs at the legs of the robot
while Mindstorm shot lightning at its head, but again the robot was
undeterred. Kale got desperate and
tapped into darker powers, teleporting behind the robot, grabbing it and
teleporting it outside one of the collapsed entryways.
Having neutralized the guardian, the team was still left to
figure out how to hook up the relay…so Angel’s Bane began decaying the tunnel,
widening it out. When it was wide
enough, Bully hauled the relay up and they hooked it up, completing the
mission.
And then things went south.
Angel’s Bane decided he needed a weapon, and wanted to remove the
scythes from the robot guardian…so he used his Decay power on the collapsed
entryway…Bully, wounded bad enough, bailed out on this, while Mindstorm (with
the Loyal hindrance) grudgingly stuck around.
Kale hung back, watching on.
Angel’s Bane and the robot were immediately locked into
melee, while Mindstorm tried to use electrical control to drain the robot, but
only succeeded at small shortages. Kale
cast Malfunction and disabled it for a moment, but it recovered…so he summoned
the earth to surround it, only to have it break free.
Kale, deciding the whole thing was quite idiotic, bailed
out, joining Bully and Belladonna…while Mindstorm and Angel’s Bane continued
fighting. Angel’s Bane gut gutted by the
robot, and it chased Mindstorm down, nearly getting him as well!
Angel’s Bane rolled a critical failure on his stabilization
roll…and died alone on the floor, near the g’roks in Terron’s lair.
This led to a break in the game session, as Tommy (Angel’s
Bane) took a smoke break and brainstormed a new character, and we whipped him
up…a human-badger nicknamed Socks (because of the white fur on his limbs). We quickly devise a back story that actually
dovetails nicely with the next adventure I have planned, and viola!
Dr. Destruction informed Buster Squad 5 of the news that the
power source had worked, and that he had tapped into Alpha Force’s (think JLA
or Avengers) computers!
A few days later, Dr. Destruction drops off a “Sorry About
Your Dead Demon” card for the poor recovering villains.
They receive a communication from the Doctor, informing them
that the V’Sori are breeding a new form of hybrid somewhere in Southpoint,
Warhounds that can track superhuman energy signatures!
He then introduces them to Socks, who is being dropped off
at their warehouse by his minions, a human-badger experiment that escaped from
the V’Sori. Then he issues his next
order: Find their lab, codenamed The Dog House, kill everything inside, and
burn it down.
Quick introductions are made, and Buster Squad 5 depart,
with Socks attempting to track his own movements back to the Dog House.
The villains discover they are being followed…and being
sized up by a hyper-drugged gang! The
gang decides that Bully’s the only real threat, so they emerge and announce
that they are members of the Southpoint Slashers. Socks immediately recognizes them as a street
gang known for snitching out supers to the V’sori, in exchanges for better
weapons such as vibroblades! Combat
begins, with Bully quickly goring one, and Mindstorm calling down lighting on
another. Kale disorients himself with a
spell gone wrong, while Socks burrows into the concrete and emerges with a
brutal sneak attack on a third! The
fourth is quickly smashed and the fifth runs for it, outpacing Socks…but can’t
outrun the lighting as Mindstorm strikes him down.
Mindstorm takes two vibroknives for his trouble, as
Belladonna quietly retrieves a vibrosword from the leader.
Socks is confronted by a crazy old bag lady who is
complaining that her dog Wolf was stolen by the blue men in the flying car,
points to the south west, and disappears into a wall. Socks picks up the trail and guides the team
to the old Hazel Cannery, which has been converted to a lab!
Socks darts straight into the building…which is loaded down
with V’sori scientists, Fin soldiers, a dozen drones and a pair of Warhounds!
The scientists immediately headed for a Barracuda transport
outside, but Socks popped up on one of them and gutted him. Bully wiped out a drone, while Mindstorm
zipped into the cannery and unleashed an electrical burst on a cluster of men. Belladonna surprised her teammates by
striding into the building with the vibrosword and beheading a drone herself!
Kale teleported into the cannery and took a defensive
position as he began to subtly glow and hum with energy!
A Warhound stalked Socks but, as it tried to pounce, a drone
attempted to fire pointblank at Socks and Socks redirected his cannon…blowing
the Warhound’s head off!
Mindstorm hung back, popping off burst after burst, while
Kale exploded…to unfortunately little effect.
He did take out a V’sori scientist, and Mindstorm got one himself with
another electrical burst.
One scientist made it to the transport…but Socks burrowed
under the building and popped up on another that almost made it, tearing him
apart before he could get there.
The drones had a disastrous round of combat, accidentally
killing a handful of their own number as well as a Fin!
Kale got gutted by a Fin, and went down hard…while Bully
crushed one Fin himself. Mindstorm
unleashed a powerful burst on the cluster near Kale and wiped out another
scientist, as well as two Fins.
The second warhound attacked Socks on the transport…but
couldn’t breach his parry and got killed just as the last scientist bordered
the transport!
Belladonna nearly had a mishap with a fusion grenade taken
from a dead fin, but it exploded out of the way instead of between her and
Bully.
The last scientist recognized Socks as V’sori handiwork, and
spat that the inferior freak could not stop him…unleashing a mental blast! Socks held firm! The scientist attacked again…but Socks shook
it off and tore him apart!
Inside the building, Bully, Mindstorm and Belladonna
finished breaking the drones, while Kale lapsed into a coma.
The crew looked over the building and their options…and
Bully, of all people, figured out the weak points of the building and placed 9
fusion grenades…and Mindstorm unleashed the worst lightning strikes he could
muster, exploding the grenades and bringing the building down into a fiery
heap!
Kale recovered from his coma, severely injured, at the end
of the week…about the time Dr. Destruction congratulated the cell on their work
in obliterating the Warhound project and ominously informing him that he would
be in touch soon.
Notes: I think Tommy
(Angel’s Bane and Socks) was dissatisfied with his first character and
sabotaged himself against the robot guardian in the first adventure, getting
himself killed.
Now, Necessary Evil has much less lethal rules than Savage
Worlds, but I let Angel’s Bane die for two reasons: 1) the sheer stupidity of
going after an enemy that they had not hurt for something as silly as a trophy
and 2) he did roll a critical failure on his recovery roll.
That said, he’s much happier with the new character, which
had impressive debut in the big battle at the Doghouse.
That brings me to my next point: The Doghouse battle. 5 Wildcards (2 PCs and 3 NPCs) vs 5 V’Sori
scientists, 5 Fins, 2 Warhounds and 12 drones…and man it played so smooooth. 29 minis on the map and the whole thing just
keeped moving at such an even clip…it impressed the Hell out of me.
I’m saddened by the loss of the storyline potential of
Angel’s Bane’s death…the eventual betrayal between him and Belladonna (whoever
turned on who) was going to be fun, and now will not happen…but I think “Socks”
is going to work out lovely for Tommy and that’s what matters. Similarly, I was going to work that
Undergrounder kid that was unintimidated by Angel’s Bane back in, but that
would be a bit of a stretch now.
Second session was quite successful, with the realities of
the resistance sinking in, after burying one member of the cell and two more
coming dangerously close to dying…(under normal Savage Worlds rules, Kale would
be dead, instead of spending nearly a week Incapacitated with a permanent
injury).
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