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

Do I have a thing for anime Cat Girls lately?

 

I grew up with dogs. My family always had dogs. One or two at most. But cats were not something we had as kids. I think it might be a Scottish thing. My dad, and my uncles, all seemed to hate cats. I did have a cat when I was around 18. A black tailless Manx. I don't remember how I got him. Maybe a relative (they are originally from Scotland). I named him Salem, after Sabrina the Teenage Witches cat in the comics. I got him right after a bad breakup with my high school sweetheart. Salem barely made it out of kittenhood when I got home from a weekend trip and got told by my parents he got smooshed by a car. Knowing my parents, there was probably a 50/50 chance they just didn't want a cat around the house. Or since they were Scottish, I should say "hoose."  It was a period in my life I thought the world was trying to get me to off myself. And since I was raised by European immigrant Catholics, I thought God was too. Man, we sure had it easy as teens, eh? But anyway, I never had another cat. 

I did like cat things though. I remember using Cat Lord for one campaign or another back in the day. I think as some tie in with Lovecraft's Cats of Ulthar or whatever it was. Of all the cool things in MM2 he might have been my favorite entry at one time. 

Dogs had a superpower or two, but to me cats were off the charts. The flexibility, the agility. When they got stuck in a tree I was all like "you're Spider-Man. Just climb down!"

Yeah, for most of my life I occasionally had cat things pretty much just in games. In the 80's I played in some sessions on and off of the supers rpg "Supergame" over a couple of years, being a part of initial play testing at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica as a kid, and a couple or three years after that a few times at the home of some friends of Aero owner Gary Switzer. (look here for some tidbits on my youthful Aero days). It used Supergame as the system, since they were all friends with the creators. I remember almost nothing. Well, two things. One, when I scribbled a pic of my character (I am no artist), one of the "ladies" declared that Aimee, the co-creator and artist of the game had "nothing to worry about." 

Her work was so groundbreaking,
everybody should have worried

The other thing I remember is my character Manx. I don't think I had an origin, he was simply a young cat human hybrid. A year or two later, when we were doing V and V or Champs, one of my buddies tried his hand at some sessions, and I used Manx for them. That would be it for Manx for several decades. He left my gaming zeitgeist. 

Until summer last year, that is. I was getting in on a handful of games to learn the system. One of them was set in Marvel 1980 (two guys from this would form the beginning of my current group). It was an eager effort by the GM, who was new to it as well but giving it a go. The games were OK, but the three or so session we had only occurred every month or so. The guy had young kids and school or something. Also it was based on stuff going on in the comics, and our characters to me felt like sidekicks to existing ones. 

But what came out of it was me using Manx again after all these many years. I gave him a last name: McAllister. And a full origin. Manx had a Scottish Father and a German mother. The dad was a physicist, and she a bio-chemist. World renown, and pioneers in Quantum science. They had built prototype teleport pods in the late 1960's. As a kid Manx and his pet cat went inside a pod and it got activated. Boom, catman. 

Yep. 

At 21 years old Manx McAllister was a child of rich and famous scientists, and going to college in New York, himself a brilliant scientist. I reconsidered his look, which back in the day was a black manx (like my old cat Salem) covered in fur. For this I considered a look akin to Fritz the Cat.

Yeah. No. 

I settled on a far more human look. I yoinked the appearance of Manx from a character from another pornographic source, an old funny animal comic Omaha The Cat Dancer. 

I will post deets about those Manx related sessions of the current campaign next, but during the games last year I was already planning to use Manx, and his family, for this campaign. But its 2046, so Manx McAllister is 86 years old. 

Got a little more human looking in old age.

For me the fun was not just revisiting Manx, but was in creating his family. Manx was CEO of McAllister Scientific, a research compound that are pioneers in Quantum engineering. I conceived of his son Manx jr, who I decided would be a biologist like his grandmother. He only appeared on a view screen in the sessions at Manx's birthday party, as I had him doing research in The Savage Land (hopefully to be a place visited in future sessions), but I imagined him as a bit of a hedonist and ladies man.

"Hello, laaaaadies..."

But now we get to the Cat Girls thing I promised in the post title. I needed Manx to have grandkids. I looked back and remembered two of my first cat girl crushes from way back. The were named Una Puma and Ana Puma, from an anime called "Tank Police".

Their most iconic scene was this (NOT work safe):

They were murderous criminals. My McAllister twins would be brilliant quantum scientist outside of party-happy "woo girls" the world's foremost physicists, and actual good girls. 

Party time.

Science time. 

I just wanted interesting relatives of Manx, was not necessarily going for the sexy. But this may have been when I started realizing, though no furry I, that I might like cat chicks. 

And as the fates would have it, weeks later I discovered Chainsmoker Cat. 

She's not the sexy one on the show. 

from the Wiki:

Set in a modern-day world where cat-people, known as "beastfolks", co-exist with humans, the series follows the daily misadventures of Yaniko, a catgirl who lives in a small apartment building in Nyagamihara (based on Sagamihara), Japan, and is addicted to smoking, regardless of the damage to her environment, her psyche, or her family. As the series progresses, Yaniko's friends and other troubled catgirls with their own issues are introduced, along with their human landlord, who tolerates their antics.

That's it. I watched a ton of youtube clips before watching a couple episodes (its on Netflix, but I watched elsewhere). But the opening titles I saw on youtube had me hooked right off the jump.

Despite being about addiction, poverty, and opression, the show is funny as hell. Yaniko cares about nothing but smoking ciggies. As the title would suggest. She cannot go more than a few minutes without lighting up. It is her one true joy. 

The addiction: Yani's entire life is cigarettes. I have never seen a ciggy addict like her. Heavy smokers have stinky house from the smoke, but otherwise normal people with a life and job etc. But I think Yaniko is also chronically lazy. And very Gen Z. She gets anxious to the point of being sick from the thought of having to clean her place and take a bath so her sister can visit (which young, put together sis does. While wearing a hazmat suit). 

The poverty: Yani can't keep a job because she can't go very long without a smoke. "When I smoke I forget my worries" she says. Most of the other cat girls, addicts or now, can keep themselves together. But none of them make much money when they do work because...

Opression: Maybe the most interesting thing about the setting, a normal Japanese working class neighborhood, but apparently in this Japan there are "Beastfolk," and they are an underclass. They can have jobs, but only menial labor. They go to school with humans, live with humans, go to bars with humans, but in one scene where Yani plays soccer with some kinds (these scenes happen on the way home from a ciggy run), and a couple of cops put an end to it. And there are rules about cross marriage. 

So the beastmen, or "Anthros" which I think is the in setting scientific name for them, often dress well and try to fit in. I'm only like three sessions in, so not sure if their are different drinking fountains, bus and train sections, and race specific diners. But I don't think so. It's just sort of a part of life. The cat girls are second class like its just the nature of things. I have yet to see human on anthro violence. But there was a mention that the cats can jump 8 meters. They have fangs. So maybe the humans are just keeping them down enough to not get killed by them.

Over episodes new cat friends appear, some living in Yani's building. Most have their own addictions going on. Alcohol, drugs, video games. I assume later episodes have sex and other addictions. 

The show is super controversial right now. In Japan for sure. "Freeters" are looked down upon like the cat girls in that world, and there is fear it is glorifying a "nothing" lifestyle. In the US Netflix is getting hit by complaints about the show. Can you imagine? All the shit Netflix gets up to. 

OK, I don't think I have a cat lady thing. No more than other things. I mean, a cat girl is better than a dog girl, I love dogs, but. Sort of unclean. A couple of cat girls in an old anime, Maxine and Tabetha McAllister in the game, then discovering this show is a coinkydink. I like a lot of anime girls. Female images in real life or in art are appealing to me. Nothing wrong with that. And the thing is, looking at aime versions is where its OK to stare. 

I grew up in Los Angeles. Downtown. Hollywood. My native Venice Beach. So I have seen and know people like on this show. Folk with demons. Maybe like us.  If you live in a big town or a city then you know. I can handle it and think its funny to see how Yani fails. You prob can too. But farts, poops, vomit (oddly always rainbow colored) are the order of the day. But Ren and Stimpy prepared us for that stuff, eh?

Next post will be about the session where I introduce the group to the McAllister Family and the scientist shenanigans they get up to. My version of "The Backrooms" is involved. Its where the first real bloody combats goes down, with some characters getting severely injured. They got tested hard. 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