Marvel RPG - "What Price Three Souls to Save?"

 

So, this couple of session arc would be of the supernatural variety. When I give people a quick description of my setting and what I like to do with it, I call it "Supers/Cyberpunk/Future Noir/Future Supernatural." The Pacific island nation of Haven was not just historically a "weirdness magnet" but the post WW3 refugee crisis brought folk from all over the globe here, along with whatever folklore and myth they brought with them. So especially in the older, lower income parts of the city, I like to imagine there are lots of supernatural goings on. Western Euro, Pacific Islander, Caribbean, etc.

And in my old Champions games, specifically for the then street level Justice Incorporated characters, I created Sister Mary Alice, or "Malice." Sister Mary Alice was a nun at the big catholic church downtown, "Our Lady of Constant Sorrow," made in part of brick and stained glass imported from an old European cathedral in the 1950's. In stands still smack dab in the Eastern District of City Center, with much of the city built around it.

Some decades before, Sister Mary was assaulted and killed by violent gang members and entombed at the church. But Sister Mary's spirit was taken over by a spirit of vengeance, turning the soul of Mary Alice into a Revenant. Every some odd years the possessed spirit of Sister Mary would invade the body of a fit, mostly random, young woman to take on the vigilante mantle and go out seeking violent men to kill. 

Mary Alice could bestow upon her vessel the ability to levitate, pass through objects and produce ancient weaponry (favoring swords, axes, and maces). The possessed woman's body would be imbued with extra strength and stamina (of the max human potential variety). She was perfect for those running battles on rainy nighttime rooftops and alleyways. 

For this recent Rank 3 Justice Inc games, I needed to upgrade her a bit, mostly adding the ability to teleport and also a level of Mighty and Sturdy for the mortal form. Made her Rank 4 as well, which makes her more than a match for any of the characters individually. 

I also brought in a bit of a protege for Sister Mary, a young Latina girl in Day of the Dead makeup who was using her grandfather's heirloom military pistols to go out and blast violent gang members at night in the form of "Devota." The urban legend of Malice and the new, mortal vigilante were out at night taking care of business. Sister Mary Alice mostly being near to help her if she got in trouble and let her do most of the killing. Still, dead criminals were being found with both sword and gunshot wounds. 

Several sessions ago I had decided to start having a 15- or 20-minute encounter a character could face solo every session or two, just so they can have their own moments. The character "Ghost" was on patrol and ran into Devota taking on a gang on a rooftop, with Malice on hand to make sure it went well. You can read the sad tale about how all that went down for me here. I will probably not be mentioning it again in the foreseeable future. 

But this encounter would finish up this little dangling plotline. I won't go into deep detail, but the two-session arc would take place essentially on two maps, the ground floor of an enclosed parking lot, and a section of the roof of Our Lady of Sorrow.

I would bring in one of the members of the group "The Redeemers" who have been around since the very first session of the campaign (the runners up for a job with Justice Incorporated) and also appeared in the "Bar Wars" arc. 

Pretty much like most of the Redeemers characters I came up with Count Carl on the spot when I was practicing creating characters in Demiplane for my hoped for eventual Marvel Multiverse campaign. I really didn't have him all that fleshed out. He was going to be a non-evil vampire who hunts evil vampires. In his first appearance I meant for him to be German or Romanian, but I somehow just started doing a Cockney accent for him when he appeared in game. By his second appearance I decided, based in large part of the image, that he became a vampire in 1960's swinging London and I would basically just do an Austin Powers impression. That stuck. Vampire hunter, monster hunter, and most of all a detective of all things supernatural. He was a chain smoker and before he appears the smell of smoke would proceed him. 

He appeared in the morning in the Safehouse Paladin is living in. Pally woke up smelling ciggy smoke and hearing the news on. Going into the living space there was Count Carl floating in front of the big wall TV, smoking and waiting for him. 

Their previous encounter having been a brief hand to hand (Paladin handled him then no problem, though Carl's heart was not really into that encounter), the blunt and no-nonsense Paladin told him to go back outside and ring the doorbell. When he reentered, Carl asked that Paladins team members be summoned. When they arrived, he told them of the Revenant influencing the spirit of Mary Alice, possessing and innocent girls' body, and at least to some degree encouraging Yanet "Devota" Inez to be a criminal killer. He said that his friend, the blind elderly Dominican priest of Our Lady of Constant Sorrow, can create an area at the church that he can trap Malice in, and that as an experienced Exorcist (in the real world the Dominican Republic seems to have big history with that) can expunge the Revenant and bring peace to the soul of Mary Alice and free the unknown girl being possessed. 

Carl says that he predicts Mary Alice and Devota will appear the next evening to attack youths who will be doing a violent teen takeover of a parking lot near a theater multiplex. He wants the characters to be there to try and stop any violence they can, but to let Devota escape. The young girl apparently goes to the church after each appearance as the vigilante to pray (and that Carl knows most of this from being in contact with her only close living relative, her grandmother who has been going to the church for decades). The father will have an area of the roof blessed and prepared with candles and incense and will eventually lead young Yanet up to the roof, where Sister Mary Alice will no doubt appear to help her. At that point they can stop Mary Alice and the father will perform the exorcism. 

Part of my philosophy when running games, whatever the genre like DnD or whatever, is to provide different locations to do action in. I think that is especially important for a genre like this, as streets and office building rooftops can get a bit repetitive. So, an indoor parking structure and a cathedral roof section seems to fit the bill of keeping things fresh. 

So once the characters staked the place out, the youths soon arrived to cause a fuss among people going to their cars after a movie or dinner. They were prepared with bats and knives, and as soon as they started fanning out to mug and menace folks, the characters dug in. Paladin and Seraph beating on some of them, Nova trapping some in an energy cage, and Igneous generally menacing them with his giant size pretty much had them in check. But then Sister Mary Alice and Devota appeared. Yanet was hesitant to kill teens, though when a couple of the gang members accidentally knocked down an old couple while fleeing from Paladin she did shoot one of the youths in the leg. But she then took off, as did Mary Alice, but not before producing a mace to smash in the head of one of the teens.

Then off to the church roof, where they met Father Dom who eventually brought up Yanet who had removed her makeup to pray. They disarmed her, and Mary Alice appeared to fight them. I don't have to go into detail, but at rank 4 she could put up a decent fight and dish out some damage with whatever weapon she produced. I even had given her the power to animate a couple of the roof gargoyles to make it more of an interesting fight. But they were finally able to put Malice down, and father Dom freed the possessed body, and Sister Mary's soul from the influence of the revenant spirit. 

Sister Mary Alice's soul was seen rising into a shaft of light, and it seemed like she was finally free. 

The unconscious Yanet was flown by Seraph to the apartment where she lives with her grandmother. With granny being a devout Catholic, she of course thought Seraph was an angel at first. 

Some thoughts: At some point during this 2-session arc, Seraph declared to the others (while on the church roof I think) that this may be the most important thing they ever do. Not sure if they agree, but strong stoic type Paladin seems to be a religious warrior (a session after this he would give an NPC a bible), but he does not advertise it. Also, Igneous' player missed the second part where the roof fight was. Iggy's player misses a session now and again. Since he can grow up to 100 feet tall, he is always conspicuous by his absence.

Anyway, that nicely wrapped up the supernatural vigilante angle. A nice detour from the more science related stuff of previous sessions. But there will be more supernatural based foes in the future. Gotta keep mixing things up. 

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