Giant Size Scrap Pile #4

Due to a fire at the printer's warehouse, this anniversary issue was never formally released to the public. Supposedly, a few copies did escape and are high-dollar items on the collectors' market, but the authenticity of these has been called into question and the entire creative team is in hiding. In chronicling the adventure, therefore, we have only rumors to go on.

Dreadknight was involved, although some sources insist that he was actually a re-skinned B Team villain. Firefall was also there. Somehow those two were manipulated into luring the heroes back to the lair of a "Doctor Rachel Sweet" who turned out to be an old enemy from the previous anniversary special. She set the Destroyer loose on them and there was a great deal of mayhem. In the end they defeated the Destroyer but Sweet escaped.

Assault on IT

We played this session on October 2nd, which happens to be one day before the anniversary of our first session, so this issue was part one of the guest-star-filled anniversary special.

Besides doing everything I could to make it a blockbuster from the story side, I told everyone that any character they've played in this campaign or any of Tom's sessions was fair game and, just for this one, they could play two characters at once if they want. Also, any time one of their characters was damaged, they had the option to swap out for a surprise guest-star who pops in for vague comic-booky reasons to help out. It's turning out to be a two-parter because we couldn't get through everything I had planned, so the same rules will be in effect next time.

We started off with Doctor Zodiac on a rampage downtown, blasting things randomly and demanding that The Scrap Pile come out and face him. Eventually, they did, and he exploded, revealing that he was only a hollow Doctor-Zodiac-shaped bomb. After that, they were attacked from all sides by psybots. Whenever one of the androids zapped them with a mind blast, they had visions of webs spreading across the world from the antron hive, a black sphere floating in lava, or jaguar people manipulating or eating humans.

Deathbird showed up as the fight was ending, but she wasn't here to fight. Her team had been similarly ambushed and she was here to team up. (See? Guest stars!)

After some deliberation, they scooped up the robot parts and (with Deathbird) went back to their hideout. Magi and Torpedo built a super-hero android, Psyclone. They called in The B Team and found that Pork Chop's girlfriend, Bad Service, had been kidnapped by the psybots and taken to the Smoking Mirror. They sent Grave Bear and Psyclone to guard Morgana in case something similar was in the works for her. Then, abandoning their original plan to wait and see how their Angry Beet arrangements worked out, they went to rescue Bad Service and stop Interlocking Technologies.

The plan was for Ghost Lad to do some scouting first, but that fell apart right away. Land Shark followed Ghost Lad, while Pork Chop climbed up a fire escape into a back window. Magi, Torpedo, Disco, and Comet held back a bit.

Pork Chop found himself in a laboratory manned by Prince, Lemmy, and Muhammad Ali. Flavia (Doctor Gold) was also there. The three dead celebrities had been re-animated using hydraulic pumps and shoddy-locking electronic devices.

Ghost Lad found Blue Shift, Scarab, Scorpion, and Jellyfish guarding the restricted-access elevator to the hive. He attempted a gruesome plan to merge them into the floor by making it intangible, but failed, after which Scorpion was somehow able to determine and mark his location.

Pork Chop, tearing through zombies, found that he also had a super-human foe in Doctor Gold, as, cursing him for his meddling ("I will flay you and make a coat for Wesley Willis out of your skin!"), she raised her arms and morphed into a shiny Nebulon-like form. Magi leaped to the window to join him. When Prince's head was knocked off and landed at Disco's feet, someone quipped, "De-elevator brought him down."

The battle with the North Coast Guardians (minus Sideshow) was joined from various angles. Pork Chop and Magi took out the zombies and Doctor Gold, even after she changed into a giant acid-spitting worm thing. Scarab turned out to have darkness powers in addition to his agility. Nobody knew what Scorpion's powers were because Ghost Lad took her out with one shot early in the fight. Jellyfish turned out to be very difficult to hurt in her amorphous form, and covered with deadly poison spines.

There were lots of cool heroics and stunts and fights in multiple locations that nearly melted the Game Master's brain. Torpedo, thanks to an Atlantean prince retcon, was immune to this one particular type of jellyfish poison. Magi conjured a fire rune that was able to do psychic as well as physical damage. Land Shark endangered everyone by using the concrete floor as a weapon, but he did manage to slow the elusive Jellyfish down a bit. Deathbird was wounded and slipped away while no one was looking. Hey, she's still a villain.

Finally, the Scrap Pile triumphed. Pork Chop got them past the electronic lock and they prepared to move on to the sub-basement, where they expected to find Angry Beet, Bad Service, a bunch of antrons, and maybe more.

To be continued in the pages of The B Team -- on sale in two weeks!

Let's Go Crazy

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word, life. It means forever, and that's a mighty long time! But I'm here to tell you there's something else...

Back to the main Scrap Pile (minus Magi, who was off doing something else), the team had a chat with that hacker they borrowed from the Lizard Moll. The Angry Beet, by the way, had passed his first interview and was scheduled to go in for processing in a couple of days.

First off, the hacker reported that there was a whole section referred to as the "Bionet" which wasn't connected to anything outside the building and so out of her reach. She did have information on the people who worked there and much of the process. Subjects were given dimethyltryptamine and placed in special sensory deprivation tanks referred to as "hibernation couches." These were then plugged in to the Bionet, which somehow completed the process. From the description, it sounded like they were talking about the weird sub-basement Ghost Lad had found on his scouting mission.

They decided that they needed some more information, so they found the lab manager, Flavia Golden, and sent Disco out to "take one for the team." According to her credit card statements, Dr. Golden spent a lot of money at Evil Gnome Games, so Disco bleached his hair and started hanging out. Eventually, he did run into her and, after somewhat awkwardly convincing her that he was interested in both women and role-playing games, scored a date.

This led  to drinks and eventually back to her place, where Disco was able to distract Flavia by telling her he was really into "sciency stuff" and would love to hear more about her work. So she took him down to her basement, where, beyond a second locked door, a chamber of nightmares awaited.

First, there was a hideous walking corpse with vinyl-like skin which Flavia introduced as Wesley Willis. Wesley was supported by a framework of hydraulic pumps which hissed and spurted fluids as he moved. The rest of the room was filled with gurneys, tanks, and an assortment of medical and other electronic equipment. Two of the gurneys had bodies covered with sheets on them.

Flavia took Disco to the closest of these and asked him if he was into rock & roll. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled back the sheet, revealing that she had the corpse formerly known as Prince, dressed in full purple regalia, in her basement. She said she was just waiting for something called "Kilmer fluid" to soak in and toughen up his skin like Wesley's, before she started working on him.

Doing his best to disguise his horror, Disco got Flavia to come back upstairs and have a few more drinks. Finally, he got her talking about her job. The Bionet was actually a cybernetic hive mind generated by the antrons. By manipulating this network, they had been able to bring the whole hive under control. The conversion process simply plugged subjects into the hive, not so much controlling them as imprinting its priorities on them.

Having gathered the information he came for, Disco risked a lightshow to make Flavia sleepy. It worked and, while she muttered something about him being sparkly, she didn't seem to notice anything amiss. Disco left a fake phone number and made his escape.