Halcyon B-Team S01E04 – Idle Hands Are The Devil’s Playthings

Dramatis Personae

  • Jacob “Duke” Gage, Tier-3 Psychometabolic psi (played by +Douglas Cole): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.”
  • Levi Bassault, Tier-3 Psychokinetic (telekinetic) psi (player by +Christian G.): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.”
  • Murph Waters, Tier-2 Telepathic psi (played by +Christopher D.): A former office drone turned conspiracy theorist that knows too much. Currently moonlights as an amateur telepathic switchboard, thief, and fugitive. Tagline: “I ain’t saying it’s lizard people, but it probably isn’t Ichthyosis they’re suffering from.”
  • Menzi, Tier-2 Psychokinetic (sonokintic) psi (played by +Merlin A.): TBA. Tagline: “TBA”
  • Jeanne J. Proffitt, Tier-2 Cyberpsychic (NPC): Younger black woman, 5’6” tall, weighs 163 lbs. and has brown hair, and hazel eyes. Tagline: “I can hack it!”
  • Virginia J. Bryant, Tier-3 ESPer psi (NPC): Octogernian with a bad mouth. Ginny is 5’2” tall, weighs 106 lbs., and has snowy-white hair with brown streaks, and light blue eyes. Well preserved. Tagline: “What the [Expletive] is this [Expletive]?!”

Previously . . .

Coming back to the session, the boys are on the road after getting their new IDs, however there’s a small problem in that they have been found and they are now in the middle of a chase sequence.

A Good Ol Fashioned Chase Scene

Duke, Levi, Murph, and Menzi
US-157
Tuesday, August 31st, 2016, 11:00 am
Las Vegas, NV 89130

Menzi is in the driver’s seat going for a fast move. Unfortunately the men in black are hot on their trail and try to shoot out the tires. It looked like one might be aimed straight for a tire despite the expert driving and Levi’s PK Shield protects the back while Murphy’s luck keeps things from getting too bad.

In reaction, Levi telekinetically blasts Duke out the back of the vehicle for him to land on the following SUV successfully and then immediately grabs hold of another vehicle’s wheel with his TK and has it hook straight to the right while Duke tries to grab a firearm from a MIB passenger. Murph, in the meantime, has nothing that he can do while Menzi tries to keep them out of trouble by dropping his speed and keeping within range. Instead the MIB drive up closer and manage to fire off some rounds from rifles, blowing out both rear tires but Menzi manages to keep it upright, but the car is completely crippled and the SUV is surrounded.

Amid shouts for everyone to get out of the vehicle, Duke reluctantly hands the handgun back to the MIBs. Menzi recognizes James Wallace, a rather large angry black man that bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain cartoon character. Not exactly someone that works at Black Rock, but he was still sent out to track down Menzi. Levi, not going down the easy way, uses pyrokinesis to start raising the local temperature while the MIBs try to taze him. A successful defense later, he instead gets hit by psibomb blackout. Unfortunately, while Murph is still the only person that stays up from the blow and tries to act unconscious, Wallace isn’t fooled and instead shoves a syringe full of something into his neck.

 

Zombie Apocalypse Now?

Duke, Levi, Murph, and Menzi
Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center
Friday, December 23rd, 2016, 10:00 am
3100 Channing Way, Idaho Falls, ID 83404

The group wakes up inside an internal room with their arms full of IVs, the boys that didn’t have a heart attack waking up first. Menzi listens to the exterior of the room, hearing it full of animals while a nurse alerts Wallace that some of the group may be awake and they quickly sedate them again. The group wakes up again, Murph barely managing to wriggle out of the restraints, dislocating his wrist in the attempt. Levi, in the meantime, simply uses TK powers to get out of the cuffs and the two eventually gets everyone else out of the restraints.

They search for some charts to find some sort of information on how long they’ve been out. Apparently it’s now December and things are going to hell outside the doors. Locked and barricaded from the outside, hints of blood and maybe a body behind the glass. Levi breaks into a crash cart and grabs medication, pain pills, epi-pens, whatever they can find while Menzi tests out bathrooms for water pressure, there but fairly faint. Menzi uses some sonokinesis to get an idea of where things outside are.

The boys decide to break out as California Dreaming pipes up over the PA system for a few moments and then cuts off abruptly. Levi manages to get the board out while Duke manages to get the lock open with. Murph, on the other hand, finds it decidedly quiet within in head, a bad sign or a good sign, it’s up for grabs at this moment. For a moment, Murphy’s luck gets invoked, and Menzi manages to notice some sort of corpse that shifts and moves, a decidedly bloated male nurse, and backs away from it.

Duke steps up and bashes it with the 2×4 that barred the door, though it barely makes a dent. Murph doesn’t have much that he can do, so Levi instead throws a nearly bit of debris right into the corpse’s face. There is no face left and both Mennzi and Duke end up getting covered with goo while Levi bashes the rest of the wriggling head in and then extracts it with his TK and sticks it into a nearby available stool sample container.

Aftermath

Murph suggests grabbing one of the beds from the room and using it as a mobile barricade to keep between them and anything else, eventually making their way to an emergency exit, breaking through the door the blinding cold light of winter greets them and Murph only silently screams as his eyes burn out of his head. It’s already cold in the hospital gowns, but the outside winter just makes it worse. The area immediately surrounding the exit is fairly clear but it’s obvious that things have gone horrible. To the side, a growth seems to be moving slowly up the wall, avoiding the sunlight as it grows upwards. It triggers almost everyone’s uncanny valley sense. Looking for something they could use, they spot an old RV sitting in the parking lot, it seems suspiciously clean of anything and the keys are hanging from the ignition, there’s still gas in there and it starts easily. The group pile on in as the session ends.

After Action Report (GM)

Ughhh. The dice gods were cruel to the players this session. I was expecting an awesome hour or so of using the Chase rules from GURPS Action 2: Exploits. What I got was about 5 minutes, 3 critical hits on the PCs, and a stalled game session. I had to think on my feet and the thinking took several minutes. All of this was compounded by the fact that I thought I wanted a zombie apocalypse. I’m not so sure about that now. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to split the two ideas (psi spies/troubleshooters and zombie apocalypse now) into separate campaigns. This is annoying because I really want to run BOTH games. Pausing in the middle of the campaign to think about where to go was annoying and that was compounded by the fact that I wanted to go in two directions, and really, I can’t. Sigh.

Footnotes

None.

Soundtrack

Peter Gunn Theme” by Henry Mancini (Opening Song)
California Dreaming” by The Mamas and the Papas
I Fought The Law (And the Law Won)” by The Clash
How Bizarre”  by OMC
Zombie” by The Cranberries (Closing Song)

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