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

I think Gilligan's Island helped inspire my Superhero Setting

 

I mentioned once or twice that my Futuristic supers/cyberpunk setting HAVEN was based in large part on the Pacific island techno nation described in Superhero 2044. But there are plenty of inspirations, and why I like it to be a pastiche of genres. Comics (both superhero and otherwise), cyberpunk, future noir, supernatural, etc. 

It may not be pretty, but I can't
stop displaying it..

But it's that weirdness magnet nature of it. A place of magic and intermittent gateways to and from other places. The kind of stuff that for centuries gave it a haunted reputation that kept pacific islanders or adjacent Asian countries from inhabiting it for extended periods. Which meant that the United States could colonize it with no shame.

Though many Karens and Darrens may disagree

There were two weirdness attracting locations in my childhood TV time that caught my attention. One was a show called Green Acres (existing in the same continuity with other hick shows produced by Paul Hennig such as Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction). 

Hennig with our favorite
 (and most feared) TV Granny 

Starring old timey character actors Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. Two New York socialites move to a rural dump of a farm, and tons of surreal and fourth wall breaking things start to happen. The husband is baffled, and the wife is clueless (it kind of felt like everybody was in on a conspiracy to drive Mr. Douglas insane). I don't think there were ever aliens or anything, but clearly there were odd things going on in Hooterville. As I got older, I was convinced a cult was at play in the county. 

As an aside, when I eventually watched reruns post puberty,
I was convinced everybody was sleeping with Mrs. Douglas.
I had weird fantasies I guess😇

The other weird show was Gilligan's Island. And a strong case for weirdness magnet. That pacific island often seemed small in the distance shots. 

But in general, depending on the particular episode sometimes, it would have to be much bigger. The Gilligan fandom wiki describes it at between 200 to 400 square miles. That is between the sizes of San Francisco and Rhode Island. Fairly sizable. But like anything in that show it was changeable. Sometimes it just had a volcano. Sometimes it also had a mountain range. And though the castaways sometimes found washed up crates of supplies, it clearly had enough food sources to keep everybody healthy, and the Skipper plump. Freshwater sources, and even natural gas. But it seemed changeable. And maybe part of its magic was it actually changes sometimes. 

And totally a taboo place. It is large enough to surely have been able to support at least a small population. But was never settled, even though it has multiple nearby islands, presumedly smaller, that supported natives. Not just that, but secluded, often hostile tribes. By the 1960's there should not have been much of that in the pacific. So if Gilligan's Island is at least partially part of some extra dimensional space (like The Isle of Dread is in some later editions of DnD), some other nearby islands may be as well. Some of those natives also practice what seems like a form or Caribbean Voodoo. 

The island also has, at times, chimps, and even a gorilla. Not species native to the Pacific. One could say they were part of a ships cargo that got wrecked in the past. But maybe also interdimensional gateways. Also in one episode a spider the size of a dinner table, though of course that could be from radiation, but hey, still weird. 

It's kind of jacked up and crippled looking, so 
the radiation thing makes sense. 

In the past, I have had monsters on the island of my setting Haven and will likely in this campaign. For example, keeping with the Pacific supernatural themes, am planning to have the group have to face an evil, anti-colonial shaman controlling a giant animated totem. 

Kind of racist, maybe potentially?

So lots of other weirdness. A jungle boy shows up. An advanced robot. A surfer who somehow surfs in on a tsunami from Hawaii...which the wiki says is over 200 miles away. Yeah. There is something to this island. 

When a young Kurt Russell decided the acting
life was for him. Hubba hubba. 

When the stuntman in the suit decided
the acting life was for him. 

OK, yeah, so these poor chumps were stranded on a magical, maybe cursed island. It was sort of the Twin Peaks of the Pacific. As a kid I thought it was all pretty funny. As an adult, it makes me think. But I am a gamer so it damn will should. It's all about imagination. And the show and its elements sure tapped into it. 

I will admit, when I was a kid and was altering the Pacific island nation setting from Superhero 2044 into my own vision, Gilligan's Island was probably not always on my mind. But over those early campaigns and the ones well into adulthood (crossing three decades) it no doubt got mentioned. But I am sure my young mind was informed by its elements. Without the show, for me the Pacific would have been being a Southern Californian surfer growing up and being exposed to Pacific Island people and culture, and otherwise what I saw in old war movies. Not all that weird. 

But the touches of weirdness are not all Pacific Ocean in flavor. The worldwide crisis of WW3 around 40 years ago caused the biggest migration crisis in known history, and Haven has very diverse populations. Caribbean, Russian, Latin American, and others reside in Haven. And in certain enclaves in New America City. The southernmost part of the city, "The Bottoms," comes up against swamp land, and the beliefs of groups like Caribbeans and Creole bring some of the mystique in their history to the proceedings. Old Town and The Bottoms is steeped in a certain amount of mystery. Old buildings. Think the Bradbury Building in Bladerunner. 

One of the characters for sure keeps things Weird. He is Ra Ta, a little alien who flies around in a small UFO. His player is an 18-year-old with school and work, so he pops in for an hour or two here and there. So I just assume he comes in and out of a liminal space. He and the player are pretty funny, so I don't mind. 

But yeah, bottom line, I like my weirdness whatever the genre. And I get my inspiration wherever I find it. Just as it should be. YMMV.

Cheers

The late Lou Zocchi - who knew?

 

I have not been known to write about game designers and other such personalities on this blog. The one exception is probably Paul/Janelle Jaquays, who was a big influence on my childhood rpg mindset. You can search Paul Jaquays in this blogs search function for several related posts, but maybe my most significant post about her was here almost 15 years ago. 

But today I read about this guy who passed away last week, Lou Zocchi. In my mind in recent years, I only knew of the guy as a dice designer. But looking a bit into his history, it is a safe bet that I have heard the name since I was a kid. And it rings dim memories from the deep past. Probably saw the name a hundred times in old gaming periodicals. 

Since I am posting about my Superhero gaming of past and present lately, including the first one Superhero 2044, I must have known at some point that Zocchi published the second, full color cover version of Superhero 2044 in 1977. Damn, that should be pretty important to me since that game inspired a lot of my future comic book gaming. 

And as a kid, before I got into rpgs, I had an elementary school buddy, a Korean kid named Michael Yim, who loved Avalon hill wargames, and Zocchi was involved in that early on. And including Star Trek related stuff, he has his hands in various ways in my precious Judges Guild, including printing some of their out-of-print material, which was likely most of what I got my hands on in the 80's. That shit inspired my campaigns for my entire life. 

And of course I knew the name Game Science. Mostly known for dice, he was an advocate for proper dice that truly rolled randomly. I mean, even as kids we suspected dice of being uneven. We all had dice we swore by. That D20 that seemed to get a natural "20" a third of the time. 

He also invented the D100, and I remember how blown away I was by it back in the day. I was still recovering from the D30. He also was the first to make D3, D14, etc. 

I remember we used to joke about what
a D1000 would look like. It would 
probably just roll off the table and 
phase thorough a wall into Liminal Space

So yeah, a revolutionary to be sure. Oh, he also blunted the D4..

I never owned one. I am sure it is less painful. Yeah,
admit it. You have stepped on the regular one
like a hundred times. Like me. 

So glad to read a bit about him, even though its after he is gone. The guy lived to a ripe 97 years old, so good on him!

Cheers!