Dramatis Personae

• Allissa “Lisa” J. Zamarripa aka Dreamweaver (NPC): Annoyingly mysterious. Poet laureate. Sees the future Power: Dream Control. Tagline: “I had a dream about you.”
• Carol W. Pfeifer aka Burn (NPC): Pyrokinetic. Linguist. Very intense person. Power: Fire Control. Tagline: “I’ll show you how I burn.”
• Felicity E. “Flit” Chou (NPC): Talks to fast. Hopeless romantic. Musician. Loves to skateboard. Power: Teleportation. Tagline: “Here. There. Everywhere.”
• Lynne C. Duane (NPC): Holder of Bachler’s degree in neurobiology Daughter of a famed neurosurgeon. Athletically gifted. Withdrawn and not herself. Power: Telepathy. Tagline: “…”
• Raymond J. Parrish aka Raybeam (NPC): TBA. Power: Hyper-Intelligence and Technopathy. Tagline: “This is going to be great. Look what I made?!”
• Tabitha E. “Tabbs” de Orellana (NPC): Latina from the Bronx. Aptitudes for mechanical engineering, chemistry, and materials science. Speaks her mind. Bossy and cocky, but not arrogant. Powers: Hyper-Intelligence and Kyberic Energy Control. Tagline: “No me respondas.”
• Warren P. Clark (NPC): Computer and electronics nerd. Very tall for his age (over 6′) and big. Powers: Hyper-Strength and Technopathy. Tagline: “Oh. What does this button do?”

Previously . . .

Over the past three years, the group has spent time training, working, and at school while trying to keep being good people.

One of the many things that the group discovered after the debacle with the bank is that when Tabitha tried to heal Jamie after the bank, something went wrong and withdrew for a while and acted strange until some time down the line he explained that he wasn’t from there and eventually said that he missed his gear and everything. He came from a world with rigid walled dirigibles that could speed along and seeing them missing in the sky was disconcerting. They were at the same sort of school though and going through similar programs except for a different history. Some other things that he revealed was that his world was a bit less advanced, medically, but a little more advanced in terms of materials and otherwise. But he’s not sure how much he can share without possibly harming their timelines. The people he’s with are also quite similar, with the exception that Raymond had been sorted into Cabin C while Warren went into Cabin C.

Tabitha has no idea how to return JJ, as he prefers to be called, to his body. He’s accepted it for now and has been remaking his gear with the help of Ray since they’re both working on battlesuits.

They also started a band over the past several years, with Harlowe working on lyrics with backup harmonic. Benjamin and Tabitha on guitar. JJ on bass guitar. Harvey on drums. Fiona on vocals and keyboard.

They’ve still been training and working and honing their powers and there’s probably some resentment with Ulrich as they keep asking when they’re going to be using their powers in real life, especially with JJ and Benjamin. But still, they keep going to their training after school and then school itself is becoming more and more intense as they start their first year of high school, but are still doing college level curriculum. They get full access to Meraki Labs and some resources of larger universities nearby. When school ends, Camp Nightwatch begins and vice versa. It’s been just enough that their advisor, Steve, has kept up their course load without having them burn out. Treating it like a job where if they need to take time off then that’s fine.

The aftermath of the bank robbery has Jennifer and Cody going to jail, but Cody disappears from his cell shortly afterwards. Jennifer seems to be placed in solitary confinement though and it appears that whatever happened in the accident has removed the use of her abilities. Looking at her shows dead eyes, as she’s not even pretending to not be a psychopath anymore. Grudge, meanwhile, has just seemed to have dropped off the face of the planet.

Not too long ago, in September, there was a televised fight between The Commander and The Combustible Man along with Sentry helping with Hurricane Katrina aftermath with open use of powers putting it all out up in the open. There’s plenty of discussion around the political stages about how to deal with these people considering telepaths, invisible people, shapeshifters. There’s some capes and costumes on the stage now with the case of Sentry.

Everyone in school is talking about it and Cabin C and the remainder of Cabin C talk about what they can do in case someone catches them. Ulrich tells them that they need to keep things under wraps, that people fear things they don’t understand, that it feels like the atmosphere back in the 1930s when things started going sour. There’re people claiming to have powers that don’t, others are claiming to do things while no one has been on the talk circuit yet while Sentry is a group that the government really wants to. . . speak with as they appear to be doing whatever they want. This scares the government as they seem to have the ability to mess with matter, weather, and many others terrifying things. There also seems to be a network/cult setting itself up as well that’s very odd, believing in Sentry and emblazing “We are Sentry”, which is part of Sentry’s catchphrase, on various places. They do seem to working against criminal and anti-societal enterprises.

Just Another Manic Monday

Benjamin, Fiona, Harlowe, Harvey, and JJ
Meraki Institute for the Gifted
Monday October 24th, 2005, 0900 hours
605 E 9th St, New York, NY 10009

They find themselves in the residence at Meraki. JJ, Harvey, Warren, and Ray at all working on their battlesuits. Lisa, Tabitha, and Lynn are in the corner trying to calm Lynn down from a severe anxiety attack that Fiona joins in on. Lynn has been getting some training from Ulrich to help with her powers but she’s still a passive receiver and hasn’t been able to control it yet. Fiona suggests, once again to Harvey and the rest to build something to block out thoughts. Lynn’s father noticed that she was hearing things and got her put on many different medications like anti-psychotics and anti-depressants which has also messed her up in addition to not helping her at all.

They haven’t had much of an idea of how to actually start. Perhaps with scans, cat scans, MRI scans. Mount Sinai is one of the few places they could get into with little effort with Lynn’s family having made some massive donations. Borrowing what they can there, Harvey and JJ can work on diagnosing her. There’s definitely something going on there with the scans she’s had taken over the years. They’d probably need to make something that is of a finer grain to give them a better idea of what to do which the Techheads run headlong towards.

They check out things, there’s no one doing something currently but they’re aware of some experiments several decades back where they were testing the transmission of thoughts. Some say that it was a successful experiment that was occluded. It’s suggested that thoughts are electric transmissions that only need to be decoded properly.

Aftermath

Other things going on the news is someone on a talk show with masked voice and face claiming that he can control dairy products. Some minutes later, there’s a small made of cheese doing a song and dance bit on the show much to the amazement of the talk show hosts before cutting to another segment and they shut the TV off. There’s people claiming that metahumans will ruin their sports.

Everything seems to be going fine otherwise.

After Action Report (GM)

We did a lot of discussing after the session on various things, one of which was to engineer a gadget to help Lynn with her telepathic woes. Being as the team has FIVE gadgeteers (Harvey, JJ, Raymond, Tabbs, and Warren) should be something they can figure out. And I’m going to let that happen, but one of the conceits of AEON is that powers are not well understood even in the current year (which is 2019). This is 14 years before that. Only one PC has created a universal power damper and it was BUGGY as hell. Not even the authorities will admit to having stable power dampers. “But Christopher,” you say, “How do they incarcerate the powered?” Well, at first it was purely chemical restraints. Then they figured out some people could nullify powers and that WAS there power. To put it simply, they pay a lot of money to people with those abilities to be prison guards at one of two facilities (Riker’s and Alcatraz). Then they put a crap ton of well-trained folks there to assist. The most dangerous criminals are either kept in comas or have had specialty power dampers made for them. Something that CAN be done and is still hard, but not as hard.

Rolls were made, stuff designed. I also decided to just make all PCs and close NPCs (those listed above) were going to purchase “Unusual Background (Gadgeteer Friend) [15]” because it was obvious the gadgeteers WERE going to equip the others. And that’s fine. But they are paying for that right.

I also shared this idea I had about Ulrich talking to the kids and doing what was right. A code they could live by. A Promise. It’s a bit heady and the PCs seemed to like the idea a lot (some more than others) and that too made me happy. I play TTRPGs to escape this crapsack world and be inspired to do my work. When I’m vibing with a group who feels the same it’s amazing.

Regardless of it being short it WAS a good session and I really enjoyed it.

Other Notes

Fred F. joined us for the first time this session. Game had to be cut short as I was called away to assist my family with something.

Soundtrack

“Manic Monday” by the Bangles
“I’m So Sick (t-virus remix)” by Flyleaf vs. The Legion Of Doom
“Ghost (Acoustic)” by Badflower