- Ben: Don, aka "The Drifter"
- Chad: Jack Carter
- John: Freedom Ranger (William Washington)
- Kat: Kay Cormick
- Liz: Doris
- Micheal: Sergei Ivankov
- Tim: Sidrophael
Rules Tweaks:
- We're going to simplify Sidrophael's 'Host Body' power. Rather than making him roll every time, which is cumbersome, I will give him 3 cards, one for each Host property. He will arrange them as he likes before I explain where he is, and what might be useful.
Choice Quotes:
"I'm pretty sure I know what murder sounds like, so try to make it not sound like that." - Freedom Ranger
"You may attempt to dodge (any further participation) in the campaign at this time." - GM
Don: "You broke it." (his scanner)
Doris: "What'd I do?"
Sidrophael: "You were."
Doris: "I'm sorry?"
Sidrophael: "Never apologize for being."
"Can you get him to sign it? I can't imagine how valuable that would be, on some worlds!" - Don, referring to Freedom Ranger and Freedom Ranger #79.Events:
~~~
Location: Earth with Secrets, Seattle
Jack woke up with strange writing on his bathroom wall and mirror, in his own handwriting. Most of it was incomprehensible, but it included the address of a prominent Seattle bar, ("Oliver's"). His business - chartered flights and flying lessons - was based out of
He decided to go there and check it out.
Meanwhile, Doris was working as a bartender at Oliver's. It was a slow day, very few customers, so she started to go through the lost and found bin to try and track down any identifying marks on lost items. She found a set of keys with a strange black fob that was cold to the touch. It had a strange character or glyph on it, and no condensation. She started examining it.
As she did so, the bar changed: her boss was there, but he had a scar across one cheek, and he berated her for not paying attention to the customers. She looked up and saw a full bar. She began to madly wait tables and take orders, trying to catch up... but she put the mysterious keys in her pocket.
A strange old man grabbed her arm. Doris pulled away. He demanded she return his keys... and then, she was returned to her own bar, a tray of drinks in hand and no customers. Her boss, sans scar, demanded to know what was going on. She said she was 'practicing making drinks.'
He shrugged it off.
Jack walked into the bar, and ordered a drink... then asked Doris why she had the key to a small alien space fighter in her possession. (He didn't explain what he was referring to, but asked about the space fighter by name. I can't find my note for what that was, so am arbitrarily referring to it as an 'Yraku Stinger.')
~~~~
Location: Tunguska Parallel, Alaskan hinterlands
Sergei was searching for the Stones of Yel'Em'Ver, an artifact of the lost civilization of Lemuria purported to contain records of the civilization's destruction. The item was in the wilds of Alaska. Lacking the legal ability to enter the U.S. in a timely fashion, Her Majesty's Secret Service dropped Sergei off in a small plane, near the location of the ruins.
He made his way through the ice and snow, only to find that someone had beaten him to the caves he sought. They had a truck, and some guards with Tommy guns.
Sergei lured the guards away with a well timed flare, and snuck into the caves while they were looking for him outside. Lacking a better way to find the correct path, he used a scanner tuned to the energies emitted by Lemurian artifacts to find his way.
As he approached, he heard a scream in German, and realized it might be one of his long time rivals, a fellow Russian archaeologist, now in the service of Germany.
He drew his neural stunner and ran for the noise.
~~~~
Location: Tunguska Parallel, deep in the Caverns of Yel'Em'Ver
Don was going down his list of functional Raxomacrux technology that he needed to deactivate to close spatial rifts cropping up throughout human-inhabited worlds. His people had been destroyed by a great and terrible enemy from beyond known space, one he has little knowledge of besides the fact that it is attracted to the remnants of their old tech.
He knew that one of their warning beacons had been left over from their destruction of the Lemurian people, so he went to go find it. He found the Stones easily enough... but when Cosmic Coffee landed in the cave and he stepped out, there were three dead bodies on the ground, torn to pieces.
Don realized that meant trouble. He turned around to find himself toe-to-toe with a horrifying monster. The beast was 8' tall, with bug eyes, great talons and chitinous plating. Despite his vast experience with parallel worlds, he had no idea what it was.
He threw his cup of coffee in the creature's face.
~~~~
Location: Tunguska Parallel, anytown U.S.A.
Sidrophael was contacted by his superior, a deadly angel of War in the host body of a harmless grandma, who sent him looking for a trans-physical artifact weapon called the Akashic Amplifier. It was last seen in the possession of a tribe of Inuit people, being passed from parent to child by the shamans of the tribe to keep them safe.
The angels had been letting that go, as it was harmless in such a small population, one with no designs on world conquest. Now that it had gone missing, though, Sidrophael's supervisor feared that the weapon might have been taken by demons. He revealed that the armies of Hell were marshaling, gathering their forces for some unknown offensive.
Sidrophael took his host to the wilds of Alaska.
It took him some time to find the village - everyone there was dead, and their spirits clamored and screamed incoherently. As he stood among the corpses, he was attacked by a monster very like the one confronting Don.
Sidrophael did not recognize the monster.
The beast killed his host with one ferocious blow.
~~~~
Location: Earth with Secrets, Pacific Northwest
Kay was at her 18th birthday party, but she decided it was lame and snuck out. She had possessed - for about two weeks - rapidly burgeoning telekinetic powers, and she didn't want to be eating snacks, she wanted to be raising hell.
So she hopped in her car and drove into Seattle, letting her GPS pick a bar.
She ended up at Oliver's, right after Jack asked Doris about the keys. Kay sensed that the keys had power of some kind, so she immediately claimed they belonged to her.
Doris was skeptical, and demanded Kay tell her details about them, but Kay was unable to. Kay demanded a drink, and produced a fake ID to back up her request.
Doris didn't believe the ID either, and went to make Kay something non-alcoholic.
Jack was informed by his aliens that Kay was armed with a trans-physical weapon of terrible power, 'operating at 113% efficiency.' He didn't comment on it.
~~~~
Location: Tunguska Parallel, deep in the Caverns of Yel'Em'Ver
Sergei came upon the monster attacking Don. The beast shrugged off hot coffee to the face, but that distracted it while Sergei shot it in the back with his his neural stunner.
The shot dazed the beast briefly. Don warned him that they couldn't kill it with the tools at hand - the beast was more than a match for native guns. However, rather than going for Cosmic Coffee, Don produced a stapler and began stapling empty air, to deactivate the Raxomacrux beacon and seal the rift.
Sergei grabbed one of four Stones of Yel'Em'Ver.
The two of them got into Cosmic Coffee and Don set the ship to leave.
Sergei expressed relief at obtaining the Stone, but Don was dismissive of the paltry Lemurian technology. He revealed the device was 'merely a data archive.' Sergei explained that was why he cared about it so much, as he feared that the apocalypse that claimed the Lemurians was coming to doom his civilization as well.
Don, familiar with the Lemurians - a casualty of the Raxomacrux - casually assured Sergei that the two events were completely unrelated, but did not explain.
Sidrophael sensed a tear in reality and flew from his location, so many miles away, 'hitching a ride' in Cosmic Coffee's transdimensional wake.
~~~~
Location: Four Color Parallel, the Mediterranean
Freedom Ranger was sent to stop the latest nefarious machinations of Gottlieb Hertz. He was air dropped over the ocean without a parachute, and swam to the fortified ruins where the mad doctor was working.
Freedom Ranger slaughtered the outer guards easily, managing to do so swiftly enough to avoid raising any alarm. He then snuck into the compound and found Gottlieb's lab in the center of it.
Gottlieb was guarded by sentry robots with built-in machineguns, and had a giant machine that crackled with power. Gottlieb told Freedom Ranger that he was a fool, and too late.
Freedom Ranger bounded past the robots before they could open fire and kicked Gottlieb into the control panel of the device. Lightning arced all over, frying the robots. One of the robots opened fire accidentally, lighting some part of the machine on fire. Gottlieb let out a big, "Noooo!"
Five of the chitinous horrors stepped from the lightning in the center of the chamber. Freedom Ranger drew Liberty and jumped to dispatch one, but to his shock, the creature raised its arm and deflected the blow in a shower of sparks.
Gottlieb collapsed to his knees and warned Freedom Ranger that 'the fool had doomed them all.' Then, Gottlieb pressed a remote control, and the world went blinding white.
~~~~
Location: Meteor Apocalypse #173 Parallel, Oliver's
As Doris handed Kay a non-alcoholic beverage, the two of them and Jack all found themselves in a burnt out version of Oliver's, most of the windows smashed, tables ruined.
Sidrophael took the son of the bar's owner, now cowering behind the bar, as a host.
Cosmic Coffee appeared in the center of the room, Sergei and Don still inside.
Freedom Ranger and one of the chitinous horrors appeared on the far side of Cosmic Coffee, still inside the ruined husk of Oliver's.
Action ensued:
- Freedom Ranger attacked the monster more cautiously, attempting to take its measure. ("Create An Advantage" tactic.) He learned that the creature was almost certainly intended - by design - to kill humans. Creatures in nature tended to have specialized hunting techniques, and instinctive responses to prey. This one was able to anticipate humans, and was armored against modern weaponry.
- The creature attempted to flee for unknown reasons.
- Doris dove behind the bar, where she found Sidrophael. She recognized the bar owner's son, but remembered him as a loser. Sid explained that his host body had never done 'the drugs.'
- Kay attempted to harm the creature with her telekinesis. She was able to injure it through its defenses, and stop it at the window. When she exercised her power, Doris recognized her as 'interesting.' Sidrophael recognized the weapon as the Akashic Amplifier, now irreversibly bonded to Kay's essence.
- Sergei fired his neural stunner at the creature, further impairing it.
- Jack grabbed a bar stool and ran into the street. He threw the bar stool at a parked construction vehicle, causing a piece of rebar to come loose and smack the creature in the head. When he did this, Don recognized the ability as belonging to an ancient enemy of the Raxomacrux - a sort of 'chaos math kung-fu,' unseen in his domain in thousands of years. (Don't comment: "Well, he might've been frozen!")
- Don set Cosmic Coffee's travel field wide to try and catch the people in Oliver's, and asked Jack to get back inside over his external microphone.
- Sidrophael revealed the the monster had the Aspect 'Implacable Killing Machine,' and that Kay wielded the Akashic Amplifier, but he remained under cover.
- Freedom Ranger attempted to decapitate the monster again. He hurt it, but not enough.
- The monster fled.
- Don asked Jack to get back inside, and that Freedom Ranger not chase the beast, claiming that this was a trick to trap him in this hell-realm.
- Jack and Freedom Ranger stayed in range, and the group left.
Location: Unspoiled Earth #89 Parallel, Pacific Northwest
Don got the group to safety in a wooded glade, and the group had time to talk. Sid rejoined the group as a local hunter.
Important points learned:
- Sidrophael and Don were familiar with each others' races.
Don knew about the angels. The Raxomacrux considered their claims of angelic status delusional, reasoning that they were a parallel evolution: fellow beings of pure energy, able to take impromptu hosts instead of prepared vessels.
- Comic books of Freedom Ranger exist in many modern Earth parallels.
Kay saw a 'shitty reboot' of his story on the big screen, in her own world.
Neither Sid nor Don knew about Freedom Ranger's world being real, though both had seen the comic books. Both were surprised he was there.
- Doris is a walking source of Rift energy.
- Freedom Ranger believes he's in an extended hallucination.
- Jack is subject to fugue states, and possibly in communication with mysterious alien forces.
The group decided their next moves should include:
- Figuring out where Freedom Ranger's world is, in order to return him.
- Fixing Don's scanner so they could do anything at all.
- Checking on Sergei's world.
~~~~
Location: Tunguska Parallel, outskirts of Seattle
Sergei went looking for a newspaper, and Doris went with him out of sheer fascination. He discovered that the world was not under mass attack by the chitinous horrors. Sergei reported back to Britain - in code - that he had one of the stones, but that the location was too dangerous for further operations. He promised to send more intel when he could.
Sid took a fresh local host, and gave a terse report to the angels. He simply said that the Akashic Amplifier was no longer on this world, but that he was pursuing it.
They returned, then Don gave everyone shopping lists, and the group broke into teams to try and get the materials needed to fix the scanner.
Teams:
- Sid and Kay. Sid's plan is to use his Cheat Codes of the Universe power to more easily obtain what Don needs.
- Don and Doris.
- Freedom Ranger has gone off alone to try and get a message to 'the future.' (The group attempted to explain that they weren't really in the past, merely a world that resembled the past of his world, but the distinction was lost on him. Partially because he's still halfway convinced they're all figments.)
- Sergei and Jack remained behind to hold down the fort at Cosmic Coffee.
... and that is where the session left off.
To-Do:
- Update character sheets and tally costs, to determine unspent points available to various characters.
I approve of this session.
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