Sunday, March 31, 2013

Buster Squad 5: A Necessary Evil Actual Play Volume 14



The Omega Contingency



A week late, but better than nuthin’, right?

We left off last week, jumping ahead a year into the future, when Dr. Destruction left the team a prerecorded message, telling them how to find The Overmind, to launch one final assault against him. This led directly into the team reuniting, with Steve the Atlantean in tow, to plan their attack.

Talos got right to work on repairing an Atlantean Teleport Tube to transport them to the V’Sori homeworld, and Bully marched through first, with Mindstorm right behind him. As the team entered one by one, they emerged in the bizarre mediation room of the Overmind, who sneered that he had planned for this eventuality, before unleashing three V’Sori/K’tharen hybrid bodyguards on the team, as well as drawing forth manifestations of the team from their own subconscious minds to torment them.

Socks wasted little time in shredding the demons of his teammates. In fact, the Twisted Talos was the only one who really did much of note, as the team made short work of their duplicates. The bodyguards, on the other hand, inflicted a lot of damage. The Overmind’s force field shorted out quickly (due to an Adventure Deck card), and Steve kept opening fire on him, but couldn’t see for sure that it was having an effect. Bully went into a rage and killed one of the bodyguards, but Kale was badly wounded in the fight. Talos also suffered injuries at the hands of the hybrid bodyguards, but the combined might of the team took the remaining bodyguards down and Bully marched to the Overmind, hurtling him from his stand and splattering him against the wall. The team thought they had won.

The roof tore open and the Omega Contingency revealed itself: A 50’ Drone body with the Overmind’s face on it! The Overmind had been transferring his consciousness into the body and was attacking wildly! Talos tried to hold it in place magnetically and failed, so Mindstorm tried Telekinesis instead!

Socks had Bully throw him at the face of the Overmind, and he began to hack and tear, trying to claw inside of its head! Talos sprang up to join him, but had less success! Talos and Mindstorm also tried to literally disarm the Overmind, but had no luck with that, either, and it repeatedly smashed at Socks with a massive vibrosword. Steve fired multiple deadshots at the Overmind, with minimal effect. Socks burrowed into the head of the Overmind and began looking for something to destroy inside…when a new plan emerged: Kale ran ahead of Bully and began casting a spell…as Bully charged in a rage…and Kale grabbed him, teleporting the two of them eye to eye with the Overmind…sending Bully crashing right through the head of the Overmind, disabling his robot body and destroying his transferred mind!

As V’Sori entered the meditation chamber to see what had happened, the team was surprised at what happened next: The revelation that the V’Sori had been being influenced by the Overmind for untold years…and that many of them were now shaking that influence, though there were plenty of others who bought into the V’Sori way fully and completely. The team saw what was coming…a V’Sori Civil War…and they immediately made a decision: They would stay and help the peaceful and repentant V’Sori fight for their lives and their culture. Talos pointed out that they could lay low and escape back to Earth with the V’Sori neutralized, but Mindstorm and Socks both agreed that this just one more necessary step in finishing the war that they had been fighting…but that they needed to send communications back to Earth to direct their organization regarding what would happen next.

NOTES: I shouldn’t have waited a week to type this up. It was fun, and satisfying, but after the deeply personal moments in the Battle of Star City and the previous conflict against Leviathan, we may have set the bar too high. That said, I was honestly kind of surprised at how willing the team was to help the “good” V’Sori. Heroes indeed.

If real life weren’t ending this group, we could EASILY have continued on from the end of the Plot Point Campaign (for starters, I would have stretched out the Leviathan plot), despite entering Legendary.

I gave each member of the crew a unique Legendary Edge that I wrote up for that character, taking an element of each and amping it up just a bit. I want to do more Legendary.

And lastly…I lied again. The current plan is that when Mindstorm’s player returns to visit (first scheduled visit is in November), we will pick up the campaign in shorter mega-adventures, the first of which will be The V’Sori Civil War.

Best campaign ever indeed.

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