Dramatis Personae

Previously . . .

We pick up back in Cork, Ireland where they’re trying to get things set up to take down Cosgrove. Doctor Thanatos has caught a Jetstream to join them.  He’s already bored and wondering when the Commander is going to be done training the SAS while stuck in the hotel (Jurys Inn). They might be somewhat posh, but they still have the minibar with extraordinarily expensive booze. Now they weren’t specifically told to keep a low profile, but it might end up being a bad idea.

FIGHT! POW! BAM!

Doctor Thantos, Iron Sikh, Marduk, and Nyx
MAPS Headquarters
Tuesday, March 21st, 2017, 5:00 pm (GMT+1)
19 Parnell Pl, Centre, Cork, Ireland

Still, most of the team decides that laying low is for suckers, they want to find druids and brews while Nyx reluctantly follows along having the majority of the bankroll. Telling the group tales of druids and naked people and animal farms right up to the moment where a woman turns him around and smacks him square in the face. He’s not quite sure that he deserves that, and while she may be somewhat familiar to him, he still has to ask for a name.

Her name is Maeve, and she looks at Thanatos trying to decide if she’s going to kill him or not. Apparently they spent the first forty years of his unlife together and was the person that turned him into an energy vampire to begin with. Thinking it was an Irish game, Marduk joins in and slaps Thanatos himself. It proceeds to devolve into about 20 minutes of arguments before Thanatos asks her about Cosgrove. Apparently she thought about sending Cosgrove after him a few times. Thanatos and Marduk head to the bar and discuss women and order drinks as Thanatos explain women to Marduk. Apparently Marduk tends to take things literally.

Rafe decides to look for a friendly game around the tavern, finding one with a rather high buy in, not that he cares since Cosgrove will be bankrolling them. Thanatos keeps his banter up and reading the other players at the table while Rafe cheats his arse off through sleight of hand. The first hand is won and Thanatos just throws his money back into the pot, not caring as he talks down to the players. They manage to run the table for a sum of $12,000 causing the other players to quit in disgust. Rafe is rather suitably disappointed as he wanted more of their money.

Thanatos, leaving the table, goes back to Marduk. A few verbal slips later and Marduk is saying that he heard that the Irish isles are rife with STDs which angers a man that, upon reiterating the facts. He’s throwing punches at Marduk while Marduk dodges them as though they were nothing and continues to speak with Thanatos about what to do with the angry man. Amar takes one of the punches while the rest of the bar has stood up to face them. Apparently they hate brits even moreso than Americans and Thanatos isn’t much happier with them either, throwing insults at the group.

Thanatos wants a fight, he’s getting a fight.

Thanatos moves to whack the first man with enough force to smash a man’s arm while Marduk shocks the heck out of the man swinging at him. Rafe slips under the table and into his shadow form in case something goes bad. Amar, in the meantime, offers himself up as free hits and isn’t even remotely harmed by the attacks, but instead Amar starts to grow stronger from the hits with eight of the men dogpiling him. Thanatos, no longer interested in the fight, walks away from the fight and Marduk sits down to watch as well while Rafe waits to see if anything needs to be done. A minute later and men are on the ground exhausted and Amar is quite swollen from power.

Thanatos goes to set the man’s arm and explain to Marduk that before saying that someone is diseased, they should wait until the diagnosis is confirmed. They discuss things as the men lay exhausted on the floor and Rafe crawls back out from under the table. They’re wondering what to do now that the brawl is over and it’s noon, and they still have some time to kill. They decide to get some foods and visit the Blarney Stone. Marduk is quite pleased, he’s even showing teeth. They discuss what sort of disease they might get from kissing the blarney stone and where the legend comes from. Thanatos is quite disappointed with the look of the castle.

Super Anti-Climatic Smack Down

Doctor Thantos, Iron Sikh, Marduk, Nyx, and the Commander
Outside of the City Limits
Tuesday, March 21st, 2017, 6:00 pm (GMT+1)
Cork, Ireland

The deal has been set up to contact Cosgrove, the location was set up for an old ruined church. He wants the payment and then he’ll get set up to kill the Commander. He’s picking the site and Nyx is let out of the car about a half mile away. When the rest arrive, they find him standing on the walls of the ruined abby, he’s a nice looking man dressed to the nines and floating just barely above the brickwork, standing, smoking a cigarette and waiting. Commander scouts the area, setting up and circling around observing the target and stealthing along. As far as the Commander can tell, the man is quite confident with no backup and no car. It looks like Cosgrove flew there.

Thanatos approaches Cosgrove alongside Amar and Marduk. Thanatos already has the setup and the moneybag. He floats over to them, telling him to drop the bag of money on the ground and the job will be done by morning. Thanatos tries to keep him talking, asking how to make contact later as a million and a half is quite a lot of money. Cosgrove reveals that he knows where the Commander is. Accepting that, he tries to give him a handshake. Accepting the handshake, Thanatos tries to drain Cosgrove but fails twice. The Commander appears from behind and fires a shot at Cosgrove’s back with his PKE rifle.

The Commander hits him in the head from 35 feet away, nailing him and knocking the hell out of him. He just crumples onto the ground. Thanatos checks the man’s condition, the back of his head has a rather large dent in it. He’s at least mostly stable. Thanatos decides to neutralize him by stealing his power, Rafe makes sure that he’s down for good and shadow binds him before coalescing from shadows and arriving on the scene. Making sure that Cosgrove is alive, Thanatos healing him by transferring life from the Commander to Cosgrove. It’s rather ironic, killing the Commander to save Cosgrove.

Aftermath

The Project Vanguard VTOL comes in to recover Cosgrove, asking what happened with him. The group insist that he fell down the stairs and bumped his head on the ground to explain the dent in his head. And the fact that he wasn’t dead meant that he was still alive, technically. Having to deal with that, they load everyone into the VTOL, not giving Rafe enough time to warp back to Cosgrove’s house and steal the remaining 40% of the hitman’s money. Rafe started to almost visibly tear up even in his shadow form. Marduk consoles the shadow man, telling him that they’ll go to more exotic locations in the future.

After Action Report (GM)

I knew the previous night that Doug wasn’t going to be available till a little later and I planned the night accordingly. I figured I could fill 90 minutes with a bit of a side quest and let the players have their character’s hair down. That part worked perfectly. The players entertained themselves and me and fun was had by all. We took a break once (something we rarely do) around the time Doug was supposed to get on and then I set up a battle map since the PCs were trying to capture a powerful metahuman there was no way he was going quietly. I expected the combat to basically require the PCs to be inventive and push their abilities.

That is not what happened. What happened was a player (Doug) with the right character/gear (The Commander with a psychokinetic rifle) rolled a critical hit (a 4) on an aimed attack to the skull. This was compounded by another critical success on the Critical Head Roll chart (a 5). This turned the DR 72 of Cosgrove (a density-controlling metahuman) into DR 37 and then he had to deal with 55 crushing double knockback double blunt trauma from the PKE rifle. Leaving a mere 18 damage to the skull or 72 to his head total. He made all three death checks, failed the knock down roll, failed the stunning roll, and went unconscious.

It was one of the most brutal things I’ve ever seen in a game. This was a 2400 point superhuman with scads of physical abilities and he was just . . . f’ed in the a. After that I was at a loss on what to do next so we puttered around a bit. Usually takes a bit to mess with my gammastering – I’m a pantser by nature but supers stuff requires a little homework (character creation for baddies). Overall, it was a good session, I just really wanted my PCs to stretch their abilities some so they could start getting used to doing that. Ah well, next session maybe.

Other Notes

Douglas didn’t make it to the first half of the game, so I improvised.

Soundtrack

“The Party’s Over” by Willie Nelson
“Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba (Ironically during the brief combat scene)
“Jet Airliner” by Steve Miller Band (Closing Song)