Cat People Scientists and The Backrooms Rescue Squad

 

So after the big encounter at the Metroplex Mall with the York Industries sponsored supergroup "Safeguard,' it was time for another two-session arc that would intro the group to an elderly version of an old character of mine and take them on a wild ride into my version of the backrooms, the "Liminal Zones."

So a couple of days after the events at the mall, the group met at the office for a video meeting with Ms. Kyono to go over the encounter. She explains that in the past York Industries, much like she does, tended to occasionally sponsor meta humans (often created by them) to cause all kinds of problems for characters and other NPC's alike. It seems that Safeguard is the latest version of that. 

Seraph, Paladin, Igneous, and Nova, the new member.

During the meeting, a surprise visitor showed up at the office. It was the diminutive Yuri Heisen, also known as "Heisenbrain."

They now knew Heisen as the scientist leader of the "Redeemers," a team made up of runners up to the original Justice Incorporated auditions and the "battle of the bars" sessions. He was there to tell them that the shield and Vita-Ray empowerment projection ability of the weapons used by the mall "terrorists" (prior to Safeguard showing up) had the energy signature of technology he invented (and used on himself and some of his group during the nightclub encounter with Justice Inc a couple of arcs back) and that he already believed was formerly stolen by York Industries. And he told them that the ranged teleportation tech that whisked away the supposed terrorists as they got defeated was NOT his, but they might want to reach out to McAllister Scientific, quantum science specialists who are the foremost experts in teleport and portal tech. 

Kyono, from the wall screen, said that Manx McAllister, founder of McAllister Scientific (despite the unassuming name, it has worldwide fame, at least in the scientific community, as some of the greatest minds of our time) and an accidental cat-human hybrid, was a friend of her grandfather decades ago, but that she does know Manx's granddaughters, 25 years old twins Maxine and Tabitha, and actually saw them at an event just a few days before and even has pictures with them. 

A pair of "whooo!| girls, but also two of the 
greatest scientific minds on the planet. 

So a quick phone call and the group were on their way to "The City of Industry." an area of industry and research compounds some miles south of the city along the Southern Highway.

Sim City eat your heart out

The McAllister campus was made up of a large admin building, and several blocky research bunkers with underground portions spread throughout...

The group were led to the teleportation and portal research building, and within met Manx McAllister's granddaughters, the twins Maxine and Tabitha. See my last post for some info on cat hybrids. 

When first met, the twins were in lab coats in a high ceiling room and playing tag by popping in and out of mini portals projected from units that look like those overhead track lighting things, to the delight of a small crowd of research assistants.

I planned it out like this to show both the playfulness of the cat-human hybrids, at the same time leaving no doubt that these were also brilliant scientists. As it would turn out, though the sisters' great grandparents were pioneering teleport tech in the 1960's, they were sort of activists against pure teleportation tech. Not just because an accident involving it fused their grandpa with his pet cat as a child, but the theory that teleporters actually kill you and recreate a copy at the other end. 

Though the twins don't really seem to have
complaints about being legacy hybrids.

The twins consult with the group and do believe that York Industries in the past has tried to poach their tech, and the teleport technology used in the encounter at the Metroplex Mall may well have been their older tech they are not using much since they personally have been studying quantum portal tech as an alternative to classic teleportation. 

Just an aside, but I base some of these concepts on stuff  from the old Handbooks of the Marvel Universe issues I read way back (and still have actually...they are part of my "Box of Keepers" collection I have refrained from posting on Ebay over the years). I remember the Nightcrawler entry talking about his teleportation ability, and how it essentially is Kurt swiftly hopping in and out of a pocket dimension. Portal, right?  That feels righter than a teleporter just breaking down his being and reassembling it again and again. 

During the visit the girls got a call from the Liminal Zones research building. Apparently grampy Manx and a handful of researchers who were on a standard research hike in level zero (the endless maze of yellow wallpaper) and went off the rails to go down a few levels to the "Red City" where they heard from previously found lost folk in the mazes that a small community of Backrooms victims were holed up. This is known because one of the researchers, "Jenkins." showed up near the gateway into the zones in a near state of exhaustion and stress and said that they made it to the Red City, were chased by creatures including living art dummies (and found the way they came in blocked), and he ducked into a white doorway that sent him to appear near the research vestibule. 

The Twins declare they will be going in to save Manx and the scientists, and the Justice inc gang volunteers as the rescue squad. And since researcher Jenkins left his fiancée as part of the lost group, he insists on going in as well after getting some protein bars and energy drinks. So Maxine, Jenkins (both armed with pulse rifles), and the characters enter the Zones, while sister Tabitha maintains radio contact in the command center for as long as she can. So into the Backrooms they go. 

(note: I refrained from using the term "Backrooms" and stuck mostly to "Liminal Zones." The movie had just come out, and since this was my version of the creepy pasta I did not want to stress the name it is known of in our media. Urban myth enthusiasts in the Haven setting might refer to the Backrooms, but to the McAllister's its Liminal Zones and that's that)

Aw, the Backrooms. That moist carpet. That 
moldy smell. Those odd sounds in the distance. 

The first encounter with local Fauna is "Still Life." Mockeries of humanity. If you saw the backrooms film, the creatures in that, including giant Captain Carl, are basically Still life. I gave them not much else other than Mighty 1 for a little oomph in combat. Tabitha detected them on remote cameras set up in level zero and were able to warn the group of them incoming on mass. 

One problem the party experienced in the Zones was my oddly lucky rolls for the foe attacks. Not just here, but all the way to the end of the scenario. Still life was not really all that tough, but they got a bit of damage in. 

A large, old staircase led away from the level and down towards the next territory. The Mall. 

In a narrow hall in the mall the party encountered the "Mall Maven." Basically a 10-foot-tall creature similar to Still Life, but with Mighty 2 and some Sturdy. And big claws.

This ended up being their toughest battle so far in the campaign. At one point Mall Maven was able to hit all three heroes in front of her with a single claw swipe. I got an "ultimate success" which meant a ton of damage but also put the "bleed conditions" on them. Meaning take 5 health damage per round until healed or spend a turn treating the wound. We had to end the session there with them destroying her on the next round, which gave us all time to soak in the encounter for a week. 

(just a note on "health," which is the hit points in this, you have to take double your max amount in order to be killed. But if you have a couple points above zero, and your round goes by without removing the bleed condition, I think that can kill you outright as well. 

When we returned the next week it was no big deal. Looking at the rules (yes we are all still learning as we go) it turned out that having levels of Sturdy countered bleed condition. That and being able to use focus points for some on the spot healing (especially if you have the power "I can do this all day") can save you in a pinch. So, shake it off and onwards down to the Red City

Seems big, but in reality, I had my version of the place be just a few city blocks. So with fliers like Seraph and Nova in the party, they were able to see Manx McAllister and the scientists out on the street, fighting off living, wooden art mannequins. Kind of another form of still life, and though their flame throwers and pulse rifles were pretty much depleted, they were swinging them as clubs while old man Manx was using his claws. 

He's old, but he can still claw you up.

The characters helped Manx and the researchers clean up the mannequins pretty quick, but as the gave a sigh of relief, a giant spider creature with laser eyes climbed over a building towards them.

Reseacher Jenkings knew the White Door was near and pointed it out for the others to head towards. As the team engaged the laser spider, Igneous grew to giant size to carry the exhausted scientists to the doorway.  

Paladin and Seraph engaged the big spider, but it was Nova, the newest member of Justice Inc, who flew up and tapped into his energy powers, beefing them up by basically using all of his Focus (the score you use for energy related powers) to super-blast the bug. He did a huge amount of damage, close to a couple hundred (that is a lot. Average damages for energy stuff is around 40) and blasting its head off. Everybody made it through the White Door and appeared in the level zero vestibule near the gateway. 

Everybody got medical treatment, protein bars, and coffee. The twins alternated between shaking and yelling at grampa Manx (for going off the rails in their research hike in the Zones) and showering him with kisses for being alive, then all the characters got a storm of face smooches from the grateful girls for helping save everybody. 

We can only dream.

This won't be the last time we hear from the McAllister's.  Its Manx's 86th birthday party the following week, and you just know the characters are going to get invited. With a big party thrown by quantum scientists, you just know there are going to be surprises! Stay tooned.

Cheers

Justice Inc - the Campaign Continues (and an autistic player freaks out during an encounter)

 (note: halfway through this session I would have an interesting, and kind of troubling situation with one of the players. Most of the first half of the session was a meeting where a new players character was introduced. A mutant college girl with electrical abilities. The group doing the usual role play razzle dazzle. It was great. But the last hour or so of the night was not. Stay tuned.)  

So leaving off from last week, the characters had taken part in "auditions" for an unknown potential employer and met all kinds of weirdos (or at least maybe weirder than them). They passed the audition, informed by "Wilmington" of such, and piled into a couple of self-driving luxury limo vans to head to a meeting point. 

Meanwhile, some of the runners up of the auditions event had met in the parking lot and suggested to group together for their mutual benefit (they would eventually call themselves "The Redeemers"). I would be using them soon enough, but not in this session. But the sooner I start doing up challenges for the characters the better.

So they go to the venerable old Winston Bldg downtown. As I mentioned I used this building for the old Justice Incorporated games. In it were the JI offices (on a floor number and suite I never write down so probably different every time I mention it over the years).

There they meet Japanese Irish corporate CEO industrialist (and one of the richest people on the planet) Patricia Elizabeth Kyono in person. 

So they are informed of the history of her side thing Justice Incorporated. Once a street level organization, helping the downtrodden and higher-level people alike who find themselves victims of some unjust situation. With the organization in limbo for almost 10 years (in the setting), she wants to bring it back, this time with a group that has more power to it, similar to a typical superhero team situation. With an offer to maintain secret identity's if necessary, a place to stay if needed, and a few grand a month, she gets them to agree and gives them a special debit card, that can be used to withdraw cash, use as a bank card (Kyono owned bank of course), and even as a communication device and keycard to use the buildings private elevator and roof access. 

With the characters agreeing for now, they get introduced to Rachel, the offices receptionist and assistant. 

While permanent, off site accommodations are being looked into for the characters who need it, most of them crash at the offices which has three small bed chambers (not made for permanent stays) and a reception couch. Even with them staying there, and Rachel always being available, nobody has realized yet that she is a Life Model Replicant assistant model, produced by Kyono International. 

I am not exactly sure where Paladin came from 
(the Middle East maybe, the player said he came 
to have on a plane to attend the auditions, so he 
had no place to stay).

Seraph is a being from another dimension who had
been living in an abandoned warehouse, so she 
crashed at the office as well.

Igneous is a descendant of Titans who just wanders
the Earth. So he crashed there. 

Living in a professional workspace can be...
problematic to a certain degree

So not everybody had to live there. But the space is all appointed, with a main office, conference room, kitchenette and gym with small sauna. 

So yeah, most of the characters did go ahead and just start living there. And with the characters having got to know each other a bit, they went about their week. Seraph, the winged girl, actually trained a bit; some combat basics with paladin in the office, and with Igneous. He took her to an abandoned part of the railyard in town and had her fly around dodging big rocks he would throw. 

OK, so during that week of in game downtime I wanted to try something out. In my old campaigns, I would sometimes like to throw a quick encounter at a character solo. Like something designed to be quick, like 20 minutes max. Stop some muggers or something. 

I will call the player I did this with "C." He is a young dude in his late 20's I think, and I was fairly jazzed to get him on board originally because he has streamed probably at least 100 hours of running the Marvel Multiverse RPG online. Sessions with 4 or 5 players that went over four hours in some cases. I will admit I had only watched a few minutes of it here and there. Most of the videos have less than 5 views. I do not want to point him or his streams out, because as it turns out he clearly has some form of emotional issues and out of at least some compassion for it I do not want to identify him. 

But you don't have to look too deeply to find multiple instances of him identifying as neurodivergent in his videos. Like, totally embracing it. To me, using that term, is kind of broad. Forrest Gump and his chocolate box level of variety is what I think is under that umbrella. OK, cool. I always like to say "we are rpg players...we are all autistic." 

He seemed like a cool guy and I like him. It seemed a big surprise to him that I was calling for unique characters to be created. Like most others it seems who play this system, he prefers existing Marvel characters. Everybody is playing an X -Man character.  I was like, no, we get to be creative in my space. He came up with a character who was a Daredevil legacy character. His mentor was Matt Murdock in his 70's. The character was blind as well, but had Daredevil-like senses, but even more advanced. To the point he sort of had powers that gave him visions of possible future outcomes, and he could "see" down to the molecular level. Interesting. 

He was the one character in the group invested in crime fighting. That and C's experience running the game seemed a no brainer to try this.

OK, so back in the day I had this vigilante NPC I used for some Justice Incorporated stuff. Her name was "Sister Mary Alice," or "Malice." She was a revenant, a young nun who decades ago had been assaulted and killed and returned for vengeance. She would appear every few years for a time, having possessed the body of a young woman to use for her activities. 

Sister Mary could imbue her vessel with enhanced strength and resistance, and she could levitate, phase through matter, and teleport. She could also produce most any archaic weapon she wanted; swords, axes, spears, etc. Back in my old Justice Inc. campaigns she would commit murders that the characters would try to stop. I have her as Rank 4 in this system, which for sure made her a strong foe for any Rank 3 character. It's the strongest I ever had her in the history of my games. 

So, I would introduce her with this quick solo encounter. 

Also for this I created another female vigilante, "Devota," a young Latina woman in Day of the Dead makeup who was on a similar quest for vengeance as Mary's, but since she was mortal was using the pistols of her late Green Beret grandfather to take out men of violence. 

I actually had a T shirt long ago with a day of the dead lady on it, and back then I thought she might make a nice gritty vigilante character who was wronged by men and was taking her vengeance on them. I thought she would make an interesting indie comic book character. A wronged Catholic girl who brought justice to the hood. 

I was always fascinated by these. Growing up 
in Los Angeles I saw plenty of this over the decades.

You see the Dead Girl imagery a lot
on slot machines 

For this I would have Mary Alice raising from the grave once more and possessing some random young woman, in order to assist and protect this new, unpowered killer who was on a similar quest as hers. Local news reports spoke of dead gang members being found with both bullet and sword wounds. 

I had even had characters who moved around the city notice graphitti of Devota in rough parts of town, where she was already becoming an urban legend much like Malice was. 

So I had C's character on patrol in the bad part of town encounter her on the hunt. Actually, it was her disguised in trench coat and blond wig, luring several gang members to an alleyway then up on to a rooftop, before she revealed herself and started blasting. 

For the gang I used Baseball Furies from The Warriors

C's character showed up on the roof to confront it all. He seemed OK, until Devota started blasting on the gang members. This is where he started to have his apparent doubts. Sister Mary Alice rose up out of the rooftop as an apparition, created a sword, and ran it through one of the gangsters, at the same time telling Ghost not to interfere. At this point C was getting flustered, muttering "I don't know what to do!" and then "my neurodivergence!"

C was kind of paralyzed it seemed. Continuing to state things like "what should I do?"  I was all like "what do you want to do? What would this character do?"  I mean, this was a character based on Daredevil. And we know what he would do. Start punching faces maybe. 

It turned into a surreal situation. This guy ran over a hundred hours of this system online for a handful of people. I thought if anybody could help me make this a quick 15 minute encounter, it would be him. But I was I guess putting him on the spot. But it surprised me. I did stuff like this in all the genres I ever ran, something happen to a character while alone. Champions. Call of Cthulhu. Even Runequest. I think just a few minutes of that really gives a character some personal agency. Not all the time, but especially for a comic book thing. All the Avengers etc do some things alone. I have probably had people hesitate now and again. My past players were often friends of mine I had outside DnD. But this sort of gob smacked me. And I have the other players just hanging out while 10 minutes turned into 45. 

I finally coerced him to attack Mary Alice, and he did, but found his attack only did minimal damage. I told him she had great "Sturdy" and was a Rank 4 foe and he freaked out more. Again with the "but my neurodivergence!"  C had clearly decided at some point in his life that he would declare his neurodivergence at any opportunity. I had never encountered this before. If this was somebody new to rpg's you could expect some not knowing what to do. But I thought he would be perfect for this. Was meant to be the short showcase of the session but to me was a disaster. A failed experiment. 

I had the gang members scatter, and Devota took off down a fire escape, and Malice vanished as well.  I had the other players sitting there all that time just watching this play out. Not good. The teenager playing Ra-Ta the alien had checked out for the night. But I carried on for a bit to try and finish up the session.

C's character had called in the other characters Ghost to help search the area, but all the foes were long gone. 

I followed up with Kyono calling a meeting the next day to talk about a friend of hers, a goddaughter, who was running a night club and was having some trouble with the other nightclub across the street. We would get into the in the next session. But the waste of the better part of an hour and the seeming failure or doing little solo missions, left a bad taste in my mouth. 

We did not hear from C for several sessions, though he was still a member of the Discord. I think he was not there for the last 20 minutes or so of that session with the quiet freak out. At some point later, he messaged the group, just the other week "sorry guys, have been having some health issues." He did not mention neurodivergence there, but I am guessing yeah, he is dealing with issues. 

 It has been several sessions since that night, and I maybe should have tried to reach out. But I just gave him space. I hope it had nothing to do with a fairly gritty encounter. Guns and vengeance girls out of a Tarentiono movie. But shit, Quenten is one of my inspiration muses for style in my games (yes, even DnD) along with Sam Raimi and James Cameron. And Haven is, as I constantly stress, a kitchen sink. A pastiche world. Inspired by standard comics, cyberpunk, superhero deconstruction, gritty supernatural, future noir, anime, and 80's action movies. And I'm running for adults here.  Its going to be PG and sometimes its going to be rated R.

What're you gonna do. I could have handled it differently. I guess? I mean I was calm and kind during the encounter he was having a bad time with. Nobody else had much to say, maybe some being miffed by the wasted time.  Safe to say I am unlikely to try the "solo 20 minutes" things again. But maybe will have some split the party moments in the future that would be kind of like that. Anyway, as of today we are several sessions past that night, and I worked hard to present some fun stuff to make up for it, and it seems to be paying offing. Campaign is at the moment going well. 

Next I post on this, I will cover the following session that I based on two old movies, Roadhouse and Urban Cowboy. I called it "A night at Club Future." Cheers.