"Enter - Safeguard" I start actually challenging the characters

So in this two-part session (both talked about here..most sessions I am running seem to go across a two session arc), I would finally get the chance to hit the characters with some actual power. Not just a handful of Rank 3 "terrorists" but also with a new Supergroup of Rank 4 potential foes. As a reminder, the characters are Rank 3. There is a decent difference in those numbers. But all in all, the party did not get in as big a punch-up with them as I would like. But getting the characters out to a public place to face foes with high tech weapons, and foes with strong powers, was something I was working towards. 

After the Night Clubs scenario, the PC's had a about a week to do their own thing. Which included moving out of the Justice Incorporated offices. Ultimately they had a choice between a small but luxury apartment in a Kyono owned corporate residential skyscraper.  Or a larger single building to stay at and consider a safe house. Seraph was the only one opting for a nice private studio unit.

Kind of the perfect crib for a flying girl, and better than the 
old warehouse she was crashing at before this 

Meanwhile a small shipping and receiving building in "Japan Town" (ethnic neighborhoods and tourist area), at the end of a short street between a Japanese restaurant and a tailors building, had some of its small office converted to bedrooms, and stocked with TV, fridge, and other living essentials. The Paladin player Andrew whipped up a map for it between these couple of sessions as Paladin and Igneous moved in.

I started calling him "Iggy" because
I keep calling him Ignacius rather than Igneous

At some point during the week, Seraph was flying above the city like she is want to do. I had her spot another flyer, which you don't see that often in the city (except maybe above mutie town). It was a young Japanese woman in ancient traditional dress, and she was flying on a giant white feather the size of a canoe.

The woman did not notice at first when Seraph followed, but she did at some point and used a Japanese fan to summon huge blades of wind that shot towards Seraph. She backed off as the woman disappeared among the skyscrapers. 

Kagura is from the anime Unuyasha, which I posted about last year.  She is my favorite character on that show, and I created her in Demiplane last year while I was practicing making NPC's and decided I could use her for this. She woke up in this era and fell in with Boliver York of York Industries, and his sponsored superteam "Safeguard."

I found some cosplay/AI of her and I 
may start using these for her tokens

I pushed to have this little solo encounter not take a long time (lf you have read a couple posts back then you might understand why I would be concerned about things like this taking more than 15 minutes). 

So Friday came around and Kyono asked for a meeting at the Justice Inc. offices (more often than not she showed up on a video screen conference call). She said that her data monitoring department has gotten rumor of a possible violent attack possibly occurring Friday night at the Metroplex Mall, the second largest indoor/outdoor mall (largest I guess is in Japan). 

With little other info, the group hung about in the corner of the mall where things were maybe going to go down. Yeah, I know. Easy set up. Indeterminate occurrence at so and so time. Not every set up has to be complicated in comics!

The "terrorists" who do eventually show up on the scene are using advanced tech personal weapons, either rifles of some type or melee-based weapon.

The weapons also projected a light personal force field (Sturdy 2, but dropped to 1 after first hit of more than 10 points health) and also fortified the body with Mighty 1 and some extra health. So two of each, bo staff guys, armored arms guys, and laser rifle guys. 

Also this was where we introduced a new player. He was brought in by player Will (Iggy) so unvetted by me but turned out to be a good guy. He is running a Nova corps member. Calling himself Nova, because, well he's a Nova. With all those good powers such as flight, hard skin, and some pretty heavy energy blast stuff. This battle is where he would meet the other characters. In the heat of combat. 

A little Nova in the comics background. I have no idea what goes on with Nova stuff in recent decades. As a kid I collected a comic called Nova. He could fly, was hard to hurt, and had energy blasts. 

He was basically an attempt to recreate the success of Spider Man. A teenager gets powers out of the blue and has to deal with that and his new heroic life. I remember little else. 

But this new Nova is a bit different. Same power set. Fly, energy abilities, some Sturdy. He is also kind of dances to his own beat. 

He likes to decorate his military helmet,
kind of like the marines in Aliens. 

The party dealt with the terrorists fairly well. Iggy had grown to giant size (though not full size because of the close packed stores) but managed to take a couple of heavy hits from the laser rifle guys. Paladin really mixed it up with them. 

The couple that got knocked out were teleported away somehow, along with the couple of others when "Safeguard" showed up. 

Clockwise from top left is "The Wind Sorceress," "Mastodon," "Spider-Max," "Blackwolf," and "Aegis." 

So quick history lesson. Back in the day (and in the setting currently between 12-20 years ago overall) I had two major global industrial organizations in Haven called "York Industries" and "Kyono International." 

York Industries was the company of Bolivar York. I had a great mini for him back in the day. I might still have it. It was a David Bowie Goblin king mini. Since I had Bolivar be a Hellfire Club lord much like Marvel Comics Sebastian Shaw I had painted it to look a bit like him in terms of clothing he wore behind the scenes.

Was not this, but similar

York was the evil company. Sort of a Lex Luthor thing. He used tech, and people he swayed, for all kings of mayhem. Characters in The Protectors and Justice Incorporated (and maybe the Future X-Men thing I did for a while but forget if they met him).

Patricia Kyono and her corp were the good business. She put together Justice Inc and often interacted and helped the Protectors. After some years of various campaigns (and an alien invasion that I think I am going to retcon away in this new thing) , they all managed to prove Yorks's crimes and get him a lifetime in prison. 

For this new era, I have it that York's son, Boliver jr., has taken over the company. And of course he has evil intent, especially to those who harmed his father and the corp. He is a handsome, well educated chad with charisma, and often when he says his father was framed by the Protectors, Justice Inc, Kyono, and the Science Police, some people listen. 

Business in front, party in back

 a more casual look I have yet to use

So in the 10 years or so there has not been super groups around or heroes in geneal in public, Bolivar jr. put together his own superteam that has recently been seen out and about stopping crime, and BY has had a press conference or two about them, with them in attendance. He called them "Strike Force." And of course they will be used to his evil ends. 

A yokai sorceress from feudal days
who has powers over wind.

Mastodon is part of an ancient race the remnants of live
in a city of science in the south pole. He is Mighty 3 and 
can grow up to 100 feet. I created him to go against Iggy.

I got the idea from a Red Letter Media/Noiselund video...

Spider Max is a 15-year-old with Spider Powers. And orphan. Have not
decided yet if he is a Peter parker clone, or a clone of Bolivar sr. with
Parker DNA in him. 

he is a Canadian hipster who can turn
into a large super wolf. 

Aegis. Power armor with many functions.
Secretly Boliver jr (he will be in there 
sometimes and sometimes it will be
a Life Model Replicant of him.

Tank built by Mastodon. He usually drives.

We did not a get a big fight between the group. Wind Sorceress swooped into the courtyard to attack Nova out of the blue with her Crescent Wind attack. 

Spider Max webbed up Seraph in mid air, causing her to fall from 50 feet. The kid realized she was heading for the fall, and swung in to get her to the ground gently. "Sorry lady." So maybe these are not bad guys?

Seraph has already been nabbed in a net
by her arch foe Blimpkrieg two times. So
that's three nettings in several sessions. 

I forget if any more attacks went down. I really wanted Iggy and Mastodon to grow huge and go all Kaiju fight. But Paladin was yelling at Aegis that they were not the enemy, and Aegis, who was on top of the tank, was forced (cameras and possible film crews are always around) to talk it out. 

That was it for possible violence. I did get to introduce an NPC from the old days I used for comedic value. He was a police lieutenant back then, but now he is a police captain. His name is Louie DePalma, a name you might recognize if you like old sitcoms. I had him be an asshole back in the day and hate superheroes, and now at probably 69 years old he's grumpier than ever. Characters always hated him, and I think these new ones do too. 

Back in the day I remember a player came up with a song about him. They started singing it when he showed up on the table (I think I used a hobbit mini that had a hat). It was sung to the tune of the old song "Louie Louie" and I think some it went:

Loo-ee loo-i

Oh whoa every where he goes

Soo-per-he-rows

Loo-ee loo-ay

Oh whoa every where he goes

they both-er him

Same actor in the role.

Science Police also showed up. Both groups had reason for being here. Because both Kyono and York had lawyers nearby ready to intervene when shit quieted down. 

Here's the thing. Safeguard claims to be employed officially as security for York Industries. the Kyono lawyers argue that Justice Inc, as private contractors working in security and investigative capacity for Kyono International. With some of the properties in the Metroplex Mall being owned or its product related to these companies, their security forces have a right to intervene in terrorist situations. 

So the characters finally got into a little conflict with another group. I really wanted to see more of them mixing with them. See how they do with Rank 4 foes. But Safeguard is playing at being good guys and have to watch their step. I sort of fantasize about a full fight at some point and hopefully the Rank 4 Safeguard beat the hell out of the Rank 3 Justice Inc. Then have a training montage and JI comes back Rank 4 for payback. 

Just a word on the Science Police. The concept goes back to Superhero 2044 where they primarily started as nuclear watchdogs after WW3, eventually moving in the future to overwatching strong or illegal science, and meta humans. During the heyday of my campaigns, with the Protectors, whoever was in Justice Inc, and Kyono would fight against frequent York Industries agents and schemes. Whatever it was, for those years the SP was an important agency and often involved in the meta human chaos (though usually show up after a fight). Now, with a decade or so of peace and few super powered beings causing trouble, they have less staff and agents than they used too and mostly monitor mutant issues (mutantgs have a large neighborhood of low income and HUD housing). The SP being a bit weaker these days will be a running theme in upcoming games. 

So Seraph went after Nova and invited him to the office, where he met everybody and of course got a job offer. Rather than go to the safehouse, Serapah invited him to stay at her small apartment. I would have some fun with that. But that is a story for another day! Stay tooned. Cheers.

Justice Incorporated - "The Battle of the Bars" or "Pain Don't Hurt"

 

Back in the day I ran a session for a couple of my Champions players for their street level characters. In it, they spent a week being bouncers at a run down bar, the "kind of place where they sweep up teeth and glass eyes at night." It was called "Bronco Bills Bustin Beer hall," and if you ever saw a certain violent 80's actioner about philosophical bouncers, you can summon an image up in your manly mind...

"The Double Douche..."

Will also accept whatever that country bar in
the Blues Brothers was called.

In that session (it may have been two. I'm talking like 30 years ago) dealing with drunk bar bullies was how it started, then for the final fight some ninja's or some shit were brought in by the owners enemy to deal with the super bouncers. It was a fun rip off of one of my favorite 80's head cracking flicks. 

I did touch on the place in sessions back in the day, cleaned up and just called "Bronco Bill's" but not for fights. I recall it did pop up as a meeting place or something. I think maybe a detective character followed somebody there or something. 

Anyway, not long ago I finally saw the old John Travolta movie "Urban Cowboy." Pretty boring movie, but it did give me an idea. I was still in the low combat phase of this campaign, with the players role playing like crazy and doing character development and stuff. But I was purposefully going slow on that. I still wanted to indulge in some low-stakes chickenshit and surreal/silly sort of set ups before I started doing classic hero stuff. So I decided to sort of go 80's crazy and do a Roadhouse/Urban Cowboy mashup. 

The salad days of Vinnie Barbarino. Before Xenu
got his aliens claws on him

So I had Bronco Bills continue in success, to the point where the once run down shopping area it sat in was undergoing gentrification (and yes, I was purposefully interjecting commentary on that subject, with both good and bad coming in with it). 

The outside entrance had all this neon and a 30' tall digital screen above that constantly showed scenes from old cowboy movies, shows, and commercials...

Welcome to flavor country

Other high end business had appeared on courtyard. A multilevel Asian American restaurant, a couple of cleaned up parking structures, and another bar "Club Future."

"The Courtyard." Upper left corner is the Club Future front entrance. Bronco Bills on the upper right. Parking structures on the middle and lower left, and lower right is the big Asian restaurant. The middle of the map reprsents the center of the courtyard with a fountain, trees, benches, and a foodtruck that showed up on weekend nights.

I like this roach coach because it looks like its from 
a Mobius story in Heavy Metal magazine

Bronco Bills has been owned for a couple years or so by Shelly West, who is from a rich horse ranch family.

 Also she happens to be the aunt of Juniper "Cowgal" West from the first sessions auditions scenario. This will be important. My conceit here that Bronco Bills is very popular with the popular Urban Cowboy scene, where folk dress up in western gear and hang out drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and listening to Country Rock (it made a big comeback). 

The new bar on the corner, Club Future, caters to a sort of Future Traditionalist scene, young folk in to vintage 1980's new wave and cosplay. Geeks. It is owned by a young girl in her early 20's named Ginger Jones.

So here is the setup. Shelly West the Bronco Bill's owner is fairly unaware of it, but the Urban Cowboys had been picking on the Club Future patrons who come into the courtyard where the Urbans like to drink and smoke. Nobody put in the hospital yet or anything, but it is perhaps impacting Club Future. 

Ginger happens to be the goddaughter or Patricia Kyono. The daughter of her old college best friend. That was the "in" for the adventure. Kyono asks the group to go to Club Future for a weekend evening and act like security (which Ginger so far has woefully little of) and hamper down any violent or threatening antics from the UC's. 

When the PC's entered the scene, it was early in the day and ginger showed up to open the club. She always showed up before other staff. She showed them around. Pointed out a small back lounge to use as a green room, and as staff showed up they were introduced to the couple of servers, and also the couple of bartenders. One was sort of a celebrity DJ/Mixologist names "DJ Drinkypoo." He both spun the discs and made high end cocktails at the same time. And there was the one security guy, "Clive Alive." This guy secretly had Might 1 and regeneration, and both him and Drinkypoo and their salaries is one reason the financials for Club Future were on the margins. 

The cowboy club  also operated as a regular bar, so they opened early in the day. So by the time some Future Trads arrived to dance at Club Future, there were already some drunk UC's in the courtyard ready to bully any lingering Trads, but a couple of the characters showed up to shut it down. 

Then arriving on a loud Harley was June "Cowgal" west. The interloper who caused some chaos for clicks at the first session Auditions scenario. 

Juniper West honestly grew up on a horse ranch, and after her teens started streaming videos of her riding but also popular for modeling and makeup tips. Rich to begin with, her modeling and streaming got her a decent following. And in more recent times she fully adopted the Urban Cowboy scene and is very popular in that. 

As Bronco Bill's owners favorite niece, Cowgal is big in that scene, and when she shows up and finds out that some of these people from the Justice Inc auditions were around, she went out in the courtyard and caused a fuss. "you're threatening my people!"

In tow was "Glen." an Urban Cowboy wanna be tough guy (as Rank 2, he could actually give a normal person a hard time, but any of the characters would flatten him unless he got lucky shots in). Glen fancied himself as dating Cowgal, but he is basically just a simp. He gets in Paladins face "why you wearing a mask, coward?" Paladin decided not to thump the dude. Honestly, I keep giving the characters opportunity for violence, but they often just stay chill. 

He's also Glen in the movie Urban Cowboy. BTW
played by the guy who was FBI director on Xfiles.

But more significantly was the presence of Wyatt Winchester. Now in his 50's, he was one of the first members of the old Justice Incorporated as "The Marshall" two decades before. I decided that for a few years he was involved with bar owner Shelly West and had given her niece Cowgal training in fighting and other performative cowboy skills in recent years. Even though he was also a bouncer manager at his girlfriend's Western club, he was only mildly aware of the bullying going on in the courtyards, so he backed up Cowgal and was even ready to throw some hands. 

this is probably not the last time I
will dip into the old characters of 
people I never see again

Cowgal and company huffed away, but she immediately got on the horn. That Ginger lady is bringing in these metahuman types to threaten her people? Fuck that. She made a call to Yuri "Heisenbrain" Heisen whom she met with some of the rejects in the parking lot after the auditions sessions. Heisenbrain had already gotten them together during the week to form a group called The Redeemers, and coming toot sweet to help Juniper West's aunt and the Urban Cowboys on this evening. 

So Heisen middle left, above him is Schnoz, to his right is Count Carl. Below him is 
Savio Totalpackage, down again is Sally Strong, and her left is Ragdoll. 

Later that night, it happened fast. Heisenbrain, a workshop scientist inventor who has different portable tech in each appearance. Here he brought shield projector belt for some protection, a collapsable concussive force rifle, a device that deadens electricity and disrupts wireless enough not to turn down the lights of music, but to scramble cameras and handheld devices. The main item he wanted to try in the field was his Enhancement ray pistol, where he can give somebody with normal strength and stamina a good enough boost to add 30 to their health and give Mighty 1 and Sturdy 1 to them. His plan with that was to enhance the normals Ragdoll and Savio when the time was right. 

Both Ragdoll and Count Carl had gotten into Club Future without any trouble. Ragdoll was on the dance floor and Count Carl was at the main bar, floating a couple feet off the ground, enjoying a cocktail.  

While Ragdoll was just sort of a Harley Quinn clone, Count Carl was a little more interesting. When I was creating NPC's to practice the system a year ago, I was calling him "Carl Cleric" for some reason. By now he was count. Originally from the 1960's, he was a vampire who hunted other vampires and monsters and such. Armed mostly with a mallet and stakes, he had Mighty 1 and could fly and phase through walls as well as other things. I originally was going to have him be German, but for some reason I started talking as him with a cockney accent. That maybe goes with his swinging 60's look I guess. 

This was around the time we knocked off for the night, and continue this the following week. Amber did not make the first part of the session, so when we started again I had her flying in the neighborhood sort of spying for incoming trouble. She did see someone over the club area. Her old nemesis from the very first session, the young inventor Blimpkrieg. 

Though he was updated a bit during the week by Heisenbrain, he was not really a match for Seraph as she flew into and through him and got a high damage number, knocking him out. He floated unconscious as she swooped down to the clubs. 

Unseen during the entire encounter was Schnozz, the street tough with a giant nose and Mighty 1, he was watching the back door. 

Heisenbrain used his enhancement ray to boost up both Ragdoll and Savio a bit. It did not matter much... even with her agility and martial arts skill Paladin smacked Ragdoll away, realizing even with Mighty 1 now, she was still no match for him. He was basically all about melee skills. He hits hard and is hard to hit. Regenerator as well, though that would not really enter into things until a bloodbath a couple sessions later. 

In the very first session of the campaign, I was calling her "Raggedy Ann.
But realized I didn't need another reference that aged me. So Now its Ragdoll.

Count Carl was not really into the fight, but he went ahead and took out his mallet and attacked Paladin. The man in black punched him hard and knocked him for a loop. 

Meanwhile, Igneous was taking on the muscle woman Sally Strong in the lobby. 

Both Sally and Iggy have Mighty 2 and some Sturdy 1 and 2 respectively. Also, Savio got hit with the enhancement ray ("hit me with the juice, old man!") but when he say Iggy was manhandling Sally, putting a crushing bear hug on her, Savio, who is smarter than he acts, went to the club bouncer Clive Alive, who was coming out of being knocked out by some kind of device from Heisenbrain, and asked if he could bum a cigarette. Savio stood out the rest of the encounter having a smoke.

Seraph showed up in the courtyard and saw both Cowboy bar owner Shelly and her boyfriend Wyatt Winchester, and asked them why they were victimizing Club Future. Shelly and Wyatt had no idea about the Redeemers coming in to cause trouble. They grabbed Cowgal and marched her into Club Future to put an end to the fight, and she did, yelling at Heisenbrain to call it off. 

The aggressors were told to leave (Cowgal promising they would get paid), and Cowgal made to apologize to owner Ginger. Going so far as to have Paladin escort Ginger into Bronco Bill's so Shelly could introduce her to the crowd, and to tell them they should be grateful for other businesses coming in to the area and to stop bothering patrons in the courtyard. 

Just as an aside, but I had an image I used for portrait a of Juniper West that her auntie had put up in the bar. It showed Juniper as a teen, in pre Cowgal days, actually working her families horse ranch. I wanted to humanize her a bit, because you can bet I will keep having her show up to stir the shit.

Before Cowgal, there was just Juniper West

The Redeemers were not much of a threat for the characters, Sally Strong maybe being the most effective of them besides Heisenbrain. And Yuri Heisen is not a villain really. He just liked chances to field test his inventions. But really, this group of kind of losers was just a taste of group combat for the characters. Bigger challenges were upcoming. 

But this was a couple of nice sessions to get the taste of the "neurodivergent situation" of the previous session out of my mouth.  Doing something a bit outside the typical comic book stuff such as the Bar Fight scenario was sort of fascinating the players. I mean, you come into a superhero game you expect to be right out in the streets slugging it out with real villains. That would be coming soon, but no rush. I like the chill speed things are going. But for sure these guys would need bigger challenges. It's going to come. 

Next time, the characters get places to live outside the office, and head towards their first big public fight. Stay tooned. 

Cheers