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 Withdrawn and not herself.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 . . .

The group has done some modest prep work overnight, swapping up the halon system with knockout gas. JJ has infiltrated by himself, checked out the location for himself for future signs of criminality and survey the grounds for tactical superiority. Hamilton has also directed his precognitive powers that allowed them to know that there’s going to be nearly two dozen armed opponents plus at least a darkness manipulator.

Get On Your War Paint

Fiona, Hamilton, Harlowe, Harvey, and JJ
The British Museum
Wednesday August 13th, 2008, 1200 hours 
The British Museum, Great Russell St, London WC1E 7JW, United Kingdom

Since they group doesn’t have an exact time for when this is going to happen, the group bows out from the tour that day and goes the library around noon into the reading room. Multiple people rain down into the room through the skylights wearing futuristic grey-black helmets and armor with what looks like IR goggles integrated into the helmets and futuristic weaponry to match, one of which is fairly small with brown hair and bright reddish eyes. The soldiers are looking around various exhibits in the room, looking for something specific, knocking things off the shelves while Harvey sneaks his goggles on to look around at the people to identify those with powers. There is a familiar face, though in terms of Grudge, who they spot throwing out orders to the other soldiers.

There’s several of the soldiers yelling at them in German which Harlowe identifies as them demanding them to get down on their knees and their hands up to which Fiona response by aggressively summoning a wave of water. Harlowe, annoyed at Fiona going off half-cocked again, covers himself with force armor and shield and then drops several waves of force at Gore, watching him avoid the first one by dropping into a pile of viscera and then reforming yards away only to get hit before Harlowe forms a force wall between them. Hamilton readies his mask and bow while Benjamin rips up the floor of the museum up and shores up the force field wall, blocking their view and Flit starts teleporting bystanders out. Gore, meanwhile, rips blood from Harlowe as the group gets slammed by Grudge’s area attack. Fiona starts riding waves, knocking one soldier over a bookcase. Ray attempts to talk down Grudge, calling her by her real name where she screams back that her name is Grudge. Harvey uses his arm mounted weapon to fire a power damper dart at Grudge, managing to get through her armor and actually knock out her TK abilities and then fires at the soldier next to him, knocking him out with the knockout solution. JJ flies out of the chair into the air to go invisible. Tabitha activates her powers and conjures an icicle to throw it at one of the soldiers, taking out the soldier’s knee as another runs up and starts spraying fire at the table only for Harlowe to bring up a force field to block it as more soldiers come in for them with Fiona being attacked by a soldier that she passed, taking only some moderate damage as the bullets ripple through her while Harvey takes multiple bullets to protect Tabitha behind him. Burn, meanwhile, causes some traumatic burning damage to knees, causing several to fall to the ground in agonizing pain. Dreamweaver casts a spell of sleeping, taking down several opponents as Lynn stabs someone in their mind unsuccessfully. Warren throws a glue grenade at some soldiers that weren’t able to dodge out of the way.

Harlowe, his options limited, knocks the soldier that fired at Fiona to the ground with a force wave to the back of his head knocking him out, knocks down another fully into the glue grenade, and then misses binding one of his soldiers. Hamilton jumps onto a table and fires an arrow at Gore who gets hit, but doesn’t seem to affect him before tendrils of red liquid draw the arrow into him where it dissolves. Benjamin pushes his rock wall through the force field, pushing the unconscious soldiers out of the way. Gore turns to a red liquid that oozes up and across a bookcase as Darktide kills the light inside the reading room. Fiona flows again, knocking one opponent into the glue and then knocking more soldiers into each other. Ray throws another glue grenade, hitting two more opponents and Grudge. Harvey shouts at Fiona to come fight Gore, liquid versus liquid before firing full on against Gore with knockout darts who simply oozes around them before he draws a grenade and throws it at Gore who doesn’t manage to dodge, but also seems unaffected. JJ, floating in the air, fires several stun rounds at his opponents, knocking some on their bums. Tabitha uses her control over ice to freeze Gore, incapacitating him by turning him to a Goresicle. Several of the soldiers struggle to break free from the glue to no avail, excepting one, as several more move in closer. One, however, gets too close to Fiona’s wave transit and gets knocked into a glue grenade as another throws a grenade at Fiona who blasts it out of the air with a water blast, causing it to explode and injuring the librarians while a second grenade is also exploded to no effect. Dreamweaver finally knocks out Gore while Lynn continues to be uneffective at stabbing people in the mind. Warren whips up a gizmo.

Harlowe steps up into the air and starts slowly moving, knocking back one of the soldiers that he has previously missed, knocking him into a bookshelf where he knocks his head and slumps to the ground before setting up force fields between bystanders and yet another rogue, Cyclonic. Hamilton arcs a shot, hitting Cyclonic in the face with a taser arrow, to no avail as it gets swatted away with a bit of wind. Benjamin moves his rock wall while Flit moves more Bystanders. Cyclonic takes off and moves into the air as a whisp of air starts to rotate on the ground, forming a tornado as Darktide grapples at Fiona with shadowy tendrils, with no avail as Fiona continues to zoom around on her wave of water. Ray and Warren continue to work on the gizmo together as Harvey steps forwards and fires a power dampner at Cyclonic who blows the dart away before firing some plasma at him which gets reflected back, which Harlowe protects him against mostly with another force field. JJ fires into the cluster of soldiers around Cyclonic but misses. Tabitha attempts to take control of the twister via freezing it, subverting it somehow. One of the soldiers is rather suspicious about where JJ is firing from, since he hasn’t moved, tries to spot him. Unsure about that now, the soldiers fires instead at Fiona, placing more bullets through her. Burn moves to melt some firearms as Dreamweaver hits Cyclonic with a sleep spell, knocking him to the ground unconscious, breaking his arm. Lynn finally mindstabs one of the soldiers firing at Fiona, taking him out. Warren and Ray continue to create their gizmo.

Harlowe moves towards two people still upright, knocking them back with his force waves before setting up another forcefield between the soldiers and Fiona. Hamilton fires another taser arrow at Darktide, knocking them out. Benjamin moves his wall as Flit finishes evacuating the bystanders. Fiona, injured, moves backwards to get away from the men with firearms. Harvey climbs onto a table and fires with a plasma caster, setting him on fire. JJ fires some more stun rounds, knocking out one of the soldiers. Tabitha moves the cyclone straight onto one of the soldiers giving him a really bad day.  One of the soldiers behind Fiona fires at her only for Harlowe’s forcefield to stop it. As the soldiers move in closer, Burn stunts her power to strike multiple soldiers at once, giving them heat stroke. Dreamweaver attempts to knock out even more soldiers to great effect as Lynn psychically stabs the last standing soldier.

Aftermath

Harlowe immediately moves to commanding the others as the sounds of sirens get close. Funnel them with the fire doors to other entrances, then getting the group to plant a tracker on the helicopters circling above, grab Grudge and take her with them, have Fiona and Harvey cover their tracks by unsubverting the halon system. Hamilton is told to go where they store Jeraki’s materials and grab whatever his intuition tells him would be most useful while JJ grabs one of their rifles, sticks it into an isolation bag, and flies out of the shattered dome. They manage to avoid being detected and get back to the hotel.

After Action Report (GM)

Today I was in a pretty bad mood – but I still ran the game. It was good. The players played heroic and did the right thing as much as possible. The combat was not as challenging as I would have liked, but it was still trying to the PCs and overall, I liked it. The PCs neutralized the powered folks fast enough that I really need to consider how I might come at them with powered folks. Four powered NPCs and they took them down FAST. Of course, there were plenty of NPC allies to do stuff like rescue bystanders, keep the NPCs from pincering them, and so on.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“The Ballroom Blitz” by Sweet
“Still Standing” by Elton John