Giant Size Scrap Pile #3

This Itty Bitty World

First off, if the picture isn't enough of a hint, this scenario was a loose adaptation of Fantastic Four #236 by John Byrne. I picked it because, after the long break, I figured it'd be a fun way to welcome everyone back.

I started the session in the middle of a fight with "The Purple Flush" a differently-tinted version of the Crazy Gang, promising to catch everyone up on continuity after this scene. It was going fairly well. There were some heroic team efforts and several Purplers went down. Then Tweedledope, who had been hanging back from the fight, hyuck-yucked his way forward and revealed his latest creation, a giant metal rabbit that kept reciting the days of the week over and over. The Rabbot stomped the team flat in no time, and then Disco woke up from his nightmare.

He wasn't Disco, though. He was Josiah (Josh) Stern, son of Dr. & Mrs. James Stern, of Pilgrim's Rest, Pennsylvania. He was an "A" college student and popular athlete. He found a picture of his girlfriend, Debbie, on the nightstand. There was no Scrap Pile and no Beta City. His teammates did seem familiar though. Torpedo was his swim coach, Dorian Chalice. Land Shark was football star Quint Brody. Magi was a weird guy he had seen at the park. He couldn't remember the name.

As he thought about his alter-ego, "Disco," Josh realized that it didn't even make sense. He had never heard of disco music or rock or jazz or anything like that. The closest thing he could think of was big band leader David S. Pumpkins' occasional forays into swing.

While Josh got over his disorientation and had an awkward conversation with his parents ("what if I dreamed I was a gay super-hero?"), Quint and Coach Chalice were meeting at Der Waffle Haus. Magi's alter-ego, on the other hand, was waking up to a different situation. Algernon Touchshriek worked in a disreputable shop downtown called "Vintage Cock," where he was employed for the purpose of building, modifying, and repairing sex toys for senior citizens. His hobbies included looking through windows for demons and watching children play in the park.

Yeah, we've seen the last of the Comics Code Authority for this title. From now on, The New Scrap Pile will have to go direct distribution only. Wave of the future, right?

So anyway, Josh eventually ended up at the cafe with Coach and Quint, and they started talking about how they had all been having weird dreams. The Coach had dreamed about underwater adventuring and synthezoid imposters, while Quint had dreamed about a weird sand-sailing vessel captained by an Ahab-like Algernon Touchshriek hunting a giant sand shark.

Touchshriek, wandering by and hearing this, stopped and told them all about his own dream, in which they had all been scientist-explorers who had been exterminated by giant insect people. Despite finding him generally objectionable, the three clean-cut college types continued to talk with Touchshriek about this topic (and about Touchshriek's message for Josh that, "your dad's special order is ready") before moving on to their daily lives.

There were some fairly awkward scenes with Josh and his girlfriend, and Dorian, trying to find out how long he could hold his breath under water, also discovered that he could only breathe air.

Meanwhile, Touchshriek went back to the store, wondering why he had so much trouble focusing on any one subject for more than a few minutes.  The postman, Carl, stopped by with a package and chatted with Touchshriek. The two speculated that the package was a final component for the machine Touchshriek's boss, Rex Quirk, was building.

Before they could check it out, Professor Quirk himself swooped in and snatched it away, sneering about how Touchshriek could never understand it. Touchshriek said something about imagining a world where he was a scientist and Quirk was repairing used dildos. This seemingly caught Quirk off guard, so he just stomped upstairs in a huff.

Speaking of huffs, Touchshriek decided to take a break by getting high on aerosol cleaning chemicals. In his stupor, he had another dream. He was part of the Scrap Pile, as in Josh's dream, but they were all recovering from a different fight, one involving a computer hive-mind, an insane psychic villain called Bedlam, and a lot of guest stars.

As the exhausted heroes started cleaning up, they heard a low-pitched, disorienting sound that quickly faded into just a disquieting sensation. Then their minds went blank, and they were led away by a shadowy figure. He wasn't really in shadow, but somehow Magi's mind was failing to register his face.

Finally, as they got into his vehicle, escorted by android guards, his features became plain. It was Doctor Righteous. More than that, though -- he was also James Stern, Josh's father in the Pilgrim's Rest version of reality.

Touchshriek woke up, but he wasn't just Algernon Touchshriek anymore. His head was clear. He had all Magi's memories and skills, although, since Magi's super-powers mostly depended on his technology, he didn't have those yet. And he knew the key to restoring the rest of the Scrap Pile: getting them to snort dangerous psychoactive inhalants.

He was able to "wake up" Disco fairly easily. Land Shark was somewhat more difficult, and Torpedo put up quite a struggle, but eventually they were all huffing their way to enlightenment. They didn't, however, get their powers back, and they weren't sure why. There was some discussion of doing even more awful things to catalyze that process, but in the end they decided to go to the one person who they knew had some answers.

Everybody popped over to the Stern household, where Josh's mom, Faith, answered the door and was immediately punched out by Torpedo. Doctor Righteous, realizing they knew at least a significant portion of the truth, agreed to tell them what was going on.

They were in artificial bodies in a town built specifically for this purpose. Most of the townspeople were robots, but he and the Scrap Pile were inhabiting synthe-clone bodies.

He had devised this entire scheme because Disco looked just like his son in the 80sVerse. The real Josiah had been lost to sex, drugs, and rock'n roll. He had even joined one of those D&D cults and eventually committed suicide. "I just wanted my son back," Righteous sobbed. Torpedo punched him.

Magi wondered how Doctor Righteous was able to pull off all this mind transfer clonebot stuff. They hadn't seen anything close to the technology needed in the 80sVerse. Righteous said he had found a partner who could help him. When he didn't elaborate, they prodded him for the name.

A booming voice from above said, "Surely, that is not so difficult to deduce." Running outside, they saw a ridiculously huge figure blotting out the entire sky. "Who else could have taken the childish plot of Doctor Righteous and crafted it into the perfect vengeance against his most hated enemies? Who but THE WARMASTER?" It was Qth-raq. He ranted on a bit about how they were prisoners in his tiny village while their real bodies were helpless and then said he was off to regain his rightful position.

Magi took the opportunity to remind everyone that this was the guy they had all been so eager to cozy up to in Dimension Q. He kept saying, "Yeah, let's team up with him! He's a great guy!" When they discovered that Righteous was trapped here as well, Magi said, "Wait, you mean you worked with Qth-raq and he turned on you? Whoa! That's so weird! Who could have predicted that something like this could happen?"

Anyway, they eventually worked out a plan involving the machine Rex Quirk (who Magi had just recognized as Qth-raq with hair) had been building and a horrible assortment of spare parts from the store. Using his magical mechanic skills, and driven by his hatred of Qth-raq, Magi was able to adapt the machine to send them back to their real bodies.

They found themselves in a small building with the tiny town, lots of tech, and not much else. Magi snatched several of the synthe-clones and used them to stage mock arguments in which his teammates defended Qth-raq. Outside, they saw that they were on an island in the ocean and Qth-raq was speeding off to another island on some kind of evil jet-ski thing.

Torpedo, finally able to use his salt water-based powers, launched himself across and smashed Qth-raq into the wall of the building he had been heading for. The others followed. A tech-enhanced Tar Pit came out to help. More fighting. The Warmaster had some nifty new gadgets in his armor. Magi pumped up his flames as much as he could and let loose on Qth-raq, incinerating him and then stepping on his charred skull. Tar Pit surrendered at the sight of that and explained that he was helping Warmaster on behalf of the Unbeholden.

Disco and Torpedo told Magi they were going to have to arrest him for killing Qth-raq. In response, Magi announced that he was quitting the Scrap Pile and bounded away to the evil jet-ski. Torpedo was confident that he could catch him, but chose not to pursue.

One Microscopic Cog

(We started with a cut scene from the opening of "The Man Comes Around" just to give me an excuse to wave Stars, Specters, and Super-Powers in front of people again.)

Looking into their new rivals in the North Coast Guardians, the team found out from Carl Caravel that Interlocking Technologies was owned by Concord Holdings, which also owned a number other companies (Aspera Charter Schools, Covenant Transport, Advanced Idea Mechanics, and a think tank called the Friedman Foundation).

They also found out that the North Coast Guardians were formed under the auspices of a radical new rehabilitation program called The Smoking Mirror Project. Supervillains were offered early release contingent on their participation in some sort of new therapy program. Sideshow, Scarab, and Blue Shift were known participants in this program. Another villain, Gamma (who the Scrap Pile fought in space once) had run away after apparently having an adverse reaction to the treatment.

The team split up. Disco wanted to check out a Covenant Transport warehouse just outside Beta City. Torpedo, Magi, and Land Shark went to the wilderness on the south side of Lightfoot Island, where Caravel believed Gamma was heading.

After some flirting in the office in his civilian identity, Disco went back outside to see a smallish object flying away in the distance. He suited up (spinning like Wonder Woman to change into his costume) and flew after it.

Magi and Land Shark cooked up a search method which involved a lot of tunneling and leaping and fire. Torpedo swam out to search the lake. While Magi and Land Shark dealt with an avalanche, Torpedo spotted an air-filled underwater cave with lots of cheap camping gear and fast food wrappers scattered about. After letting Land Shark and Magi know what he was doing, he hid nearby and watched the entrance.

Eventually, a pair of somewhat shoddy-looking cyborgs flew into the area, checked some sort of scanning instrument they were carrying, and plunged into the water. They were followed shortly by Disco, who first took a moment to change into his aquatic costume (a silver speed-o with suspenders). The cyborgs looked around the cave, took some readings, and were preparing to leave when Torpedo and Disco attacked. The cybogs went down fairly quickly, although one of them did manage to temporarily nullify Disco's powers first.

They were able to determine that the cyborgs were cobbled together from a combination of Dimension Q technology and tech scavenged from Karza's soldiers. They had successfully identified Gamma's energy signature and had been about to follow her trail when the Scrap Pile stopped them. They did, however, have a legitimate Hero Corps operating license. Despite this, Magi sabotaged their jets so the Scrap Pile could get to Gamma first.

Swimming, flying, and Scrap-Boating off to the west, the group found an island with some dilapidated houses, shops, and a faux-castle Mexican restaurant. Gamma was in an old motel near the castle. Both Magi and Torpedo went down in the fight. Torpedo was so badly wounded that he had to be hospitalized. Magi had been driving the boat, so his unconsciousness led to a crash. Disco tried the diplomatic approach. Gamma agreed to talk over lunch at the castle as long as Disco gave his word that they wouldn't try to take her in.

Gamma revealed that Smoking Mirror was actually a cyber-brain scavenged from the Karza War. IT had adapted it to ESPer technology so they could use it to brainwash people. Something about Gamma's powers had protected her from its effects, giving her the chance to flee. She believed that Sideshow, who was formerly known as The Clown, was also immune and was trying to get ahold of the brain for his own nefarious purposes.

Gamma revealed that Sideshow had once mentioned a contact called "Warmaster" and that neither Scorpio nor Jellyfish were known criminals. Jellyfish's powers had come from exposure to alien technology during the Karza War.

Magi took the opportunity to point out that they never should have made a deal with Qth-raq, and a few other old arguments resurfaced, but everyone had a nice dinner in the intensive care unit with the carry-out Disco brought from the Castillo Grande.

In the End, There Will Always Be Karza

Reunited, they made it to the door of Karza's sanctum without much more in the way of trouble. Once there, Magi was able to gadget up the electronic door lock/intercom system to give them a look inside. The room was dominated by the ESP core, a central column ringed with ESPer chairs. The top of the ESP core had been fitted with huge, shimmering crystals. The chairs were occupied by emaciated but living psychics. There were two pharoids (like the creature from which they had rescued Torpedo) standing against the far wall, unmoving, with their arms crossed tomb-style. Four Gauntlet soldiers stood around the room. Karza was ranting at one of the psychics. There was no sound over the improvised monitor, but his body language suggested that he was pretty pleased with himself.

Since Magi had also gained access to the alarm system, they decided that the best thing to do would be to set off an alarm at a lower level, then hide around the corner and wait for the guards to head downstairs. After trying this once, they found that two of the Gauntlets had moved to stand outside the door, but not much else had happened. They fought the Gauntlets. R'yl lurked uselessly in the back, but the Scrap Pile was still easily victorious. They decided to try again, hoping to continue picking off enemies the same way.

At first, not much seemed to happen. Then the whole station started to vibrate and manifest multi-colored double images of itself. They decided that something big was happening and they needed to stop it right away.

Inside, they each picked a target. Disco drew the Gauntlets away and fought them. Torpedo and R'yl attacked Karza, hoping not so much to defeat him as to keep him busy while Magi shut down the machine. Land Shark investigated the pharoids.

As "The Magical Mechanic," Magi found that he was uniquely qualified to decipher the sorcerous super-science of Karza's machine. It was engaged in attempting to bring a planet-sized mass of unknown composition forward from the mysterious "Bright Cosmos." Land Shark prodded the pharoids and they remained inert, so he decided not to bother with them any further.

R'yl blasted Karza to no benefit. Torpedo was barely able to harm him, but still got in some powerful blows that dented his armor. A couple of times, Torpedo hurled Karza into instrument panels and enraged him to the point of ranting. They were able to wear him down and keep him occupied (and sometimes even off-balance) this way. Disco continued to fight the Gauntlets. Land Shark jumped across the room to try and smash the crystals on the ESPer core. Magi was working on making the machine feed back on itself so that it would send its Bright Cosmos object back, overload, and destroy itself.

Magi (with some help from Land Shark) succeeded in stopping the machine and making it really hard for anyone else to start again. R'yl left Torpedo to fight Karza alone because he wanted to dash off and grab a gauntlet from one of the soldiers Disco took down. As the peripheral enemies fell, however, more of the Scrap Pilers were able to join the fight against Karza. In the final minutes of the battle, R'yl accidentally released a burst of Karza's energy essence from his cracked armor and apparently disintegrated himself.

Prodded by Magi, Karza monologued a bit about how he was an amalgamation of minds that were drawn together to give voice to the sentient energy of the Bright Cosmos. Since one of these was the former teacher Magi remembered, he tried (unsuccessfully) to reach that mind and bring it to the surface. Karza still went down though. As Kirby-cracklin' energy rose from the ruined suit and started to drift around the room, the team looked for something they could use to contain it and found Karza's helmet. Torpedo attempted to overcome Karza's will and force it into the vessel, but couldn't pull it off at first. Magi added some mystic runes to enhance the binding spell and gave it a shot on his own, which also failed. Together, though, they were able to trap Karza's life force in his own helmet. The pharoids disappeared.

The team returned home to find that the larger Scrap Pile organization had been bought out by Interlocking Technologies, and the Tripod City team and all subsidiaries had been disbanded. The Beta City team (which would be our guys) and their base had been off the record, so they were overlooked. But that's a story for the next issue.

Epilogue (narrated to the players as a cut-scene)

A burning figure crashes into the ground. As he staggers to his feet, we can see that it's R'yl, and he has fallen to Earth somewhere in the ostrich-blighted wastes of Ontario. His armor, especially his helmet, is battered and sparking in several places. Tearing off the overheating headgear, R'yl shows his face for the first time. He is Warmaster Qth-raq.

A tall woman in a dark coat approaches.‭ ‬Qth-raq takes a shot,‭ ‬which is intercepted by shadows which swirl around her and settle back down in the folds of her cloak.‭ ‬She gestures and black tentacles spring out of the ground to hold him.‭ ‬She‭ ‬says, ‭"‬Poor Qth-raq.‭ ‬Command center destroyed,‭ ‬soldiers‭ ‬scattered,‭ ‬and‭ ‬here you are,‭ ‬stranded on an alien world in a barely‭ ‬functional suit of armor.‭"

Qth-raq‭ ‬growls that he still has a few tricks left and ‬manages to get an energy blade working to slice away the shadows.‭ The dark woman snaps her fingers and‭ ‬a group of‭ ‬zombies claw their way out of the earth‭ ‬between them.‭

She laughs. "Tsk.‭ ‬Once‭ ‬a soldier,‭ ‬always a soldier,‭ ‬eh,‭ ‬Qth-raq‭? ‬You needn't worry,‭ ‬though.‭ ‬I‭ ‬believe you and I‭ ‬could be great friends,‭ ‬actually.‭ ‬You may not think you have much right now,‭ ‬but‭ ‬you don't need your rooks to become powerful‭ ‬again.‭ ‬This world offers all manner of‭ ‬opportunities ‬for those of us who are‭…‬ Unbeholden.‭"

Torpedo Tubes

As Topedo was fidgeting with the reactor controls, an alarm suddenly went off. Light shimmered around him and he vanished. The screen said, "Unauthorized Access Detected: Intruder Transported to Containment 3."

The team considered their options for a bit, and then heard clicking and scuttling noises outside. Land Shark peeked around the corner and was shot in the face by a rocket lance. There were two bug people crawling around outside. They had trouble hitting the bugs at first, but Magi came up with a way to split his fire blast into a bunch of tiny blasts to get them to hop right into the path of Land Shark's fists.

Making their way up to "Containment 3," the team found a man(ish) in a weird techno-Egyptian outfit working at the controls of a bank of cyrogenic tanks, two of which were occupied. Magi remembered stories from Dimension Q in which beings like this were responsible for something similar to Earth's alien abduction phenomenon. They first attempted to chat him up, discovering when he turned around that his face was nothing but blank silvery skin. Magi toyed with the idea that this might be an enemy of Qth-raq and therefore a potential friend.

Eventually, Disco made a grab for the module around his waist and its large greenish stone. The creature fended him off with an energy shield and responded by blasting him with green energy. While he was doing that, Land Shark decked him and knocked him out, after which he vanished in a silvery mist. Disco lamented the lost opportunity to pick up a piece of glowy bling.

Opening the tubes, they found Torpedo and a beat-up rook (still in armor, but wingless) from Dimension Q who offered to help them out in exchange for freeing him. After a few stammers, possibly owing to his recent defrosting, the rook introduced himself as "R'yl."

Putting Out the Fire

(...with gasoline)

Magi's mega-fireball (last issue) blasted a hole in the Warmaster's tower, melting antennae and equipment and setting the top floors ablaze. A swarm of Qthraqi rooks mobilized immediately, so Magi dove for the cover of the entrance he had just created.

Blue Shift and her Ultra Agents took advantage of the chaos to mount their own assault. The other Scrap Pilers, apprised of the situation by Disco, were none too pleased. Disco wasn't far behind Magi, but it was far enough that, when he got there, the clashing forces of Ultra and the Warmaster were between him and the burning tower. Land Shark, following Magi's suggestion, began tunneling his way there. Professor Hemm prepared to teleport directly to Qth-raq.

Magi was finding his way down to where the Warmaster was coordinating the evacuation and rallying his troops. Disco used a light show to bring the spirit of love to several of the clashing troops around him. Land Shark was tearing up the streets. Magi found his enemy with only a few guards and the two squared off, but the fight was interrupted by the Professor's force field. Magi, not to be deterred from his long-awaited revenge, phased into another dimension with the intention of returning directly beside Qth-raq.

The Professor, having seen Magi use this stunt before, teleported himself and the Warmaster back to Kilroy's camp and continued to make the case that they were all being manipulated by the Azrak cult, partly by having Kilroy describe the attack on his world that had brought him here, including the fake Qthraqi rooks. Kilroy also confirmed that they had nothing like the samurai robots seen stomping Houston.

Land Shark, meanwhile, had just arrived at Qth-raq's tower when Magi returned from his dimension jump. Finding no sign of the Warmaster, Magi convinced the somewhat simple-minded Land Shark that the best thing to do would be to dig a tunnel under the tower. This, of course, collapsed the entire thing. The rest of the team found Magi and Land Shark taking selfies on the rubble. Disco was so mad that he threatened to leave the team unless Magi was expelled.

After breaking up a fight and getting everyone to agree to work together long enough to stop the war, Professor Hemm brought the Scrap Pile back to Earth to make sure nobody invaded the 80sVerse because of the robot stuff and to help liberate Houston. As Torpedo trashed the robot HQ and the army prepared to move in, they heard Kilroy's "rock and roll!" battlecry as a portal opened and neo-roboto units poured through to help destroy the samurai robots. In fairly short order, the remains of Houston were returned to human control.

Convening with a circle of occult academics from all around the Beta-Tripod metropolitan region, Professor Hemm and Magi determined that the best way to reinforce the frayed dimensional barriers would be to construct a "Pillar of Universes" artifact, complete with guardian homunculi, and activate it at a central nexus in subspace, creating a kind of space wall to shore up the cosmic infrastructure.

Plunging back into subspace, the Scrap Pile made their way to the nexus, only to find circle of cowled "dire sorcerers" defending it.

The sorcerers pooled their powers to create an enormous pterodactyl made of solid shadow. Terrified of their own creation, they shouted, "abandon the Nexus now or face Deathwing, the Devourer of Souls," cast another spell, and disappeared.

Earthlings on Fire

"I don't want knowledge; I want certainty!"

Materializing from Subspace in Dimension Q, the heroes found themselves in between clashing armies of centaurian cyborgs and some oddly familiar robots. Magi, recognizing the centaurs as Warmaster Qth-raq's shock troops, immediately chose the opposite side. Disco fired up a light show and made most of the soldiers run away, but the robots were unaffected. It turned out, however, that they didn't have to fight the robots, because they were modified "Roboto" drones under the control of their old friend Kilroy from the 80sVerse.

Kilroy explained that Qthraqi troops had invaded his world and the new government was striking back to prevent further incursions. Further questioning revealed that there was, in fact, something off about the invading Q Troops compared to the ones here. It seemed that the 80sVerse was also part of the Azrak cult's plan (as previously revealed by Gamma) to start an inter-dimensional war. Magi, eager to get revenge on the man who murdered his family, argued strenuously in favor of preventing the war by taking down Warmaster Qth-raq.

They decided instead to split up. Professor Hemm was able to cook up magical disguises so that Magi, Landshark, and Kilroy could infiltrate the city. Disco and the Prof, meanwhile, would approach openly and attempt to explain the situation to Qth-raq, hoping to shut down the war before it could really get started.

While the diplomatic team worked its way through functionaries, the infiltrators explored the streets. Passing through one of several bombed-out neighborhoods, they were attacked by a woman in a tech-accented super-hero costume and two silver-armored men shouting, "Die, Qthraqi scum!" After exchanging a few blows, they quickly realized they were all on the same side. The woman introduced herself as Blue Shift, an agent of Ultra. She had teleportation/dimension shifting powers of her own and was here from Beta City, responding to Qthraqi incursions at home, and said she had troops in place and would soon be ready to take down the Warmaster's entire command structure.

The diplomats, meanwhile, eventually got their audience with the Warmaster, a heavily scarred man who apparently liked to wear armor to diplomatic functions. Qth-raq said he was only fighting defensively (like everyone else) and was eager to get the coordinates for the Capitol so he could negotiate directly with Earth Prime's leaders. Really, really eager.

What followed was a lot of phone-calling and debate. Professor Hemm even returned to Beta City for a bit. While he was there, he found out that, while there had been a super-hero named Blue Shift who matched this one's description, there was no record of an organization called Ultra and no sign that there had been any official sanction for Blue Shift's mission. Also, samurai robots had taken over Houston and the surrounding area.

Magi, refusing to trust the Warmaster, was unmovable from his position that Blue Shift's plan was still the best. Disco tried to calm him down with a light show, but failed to overcome Magi's mental defenses. Magi, outraged at this betrayal, flamed on and jumped away, pursued by Disco. Making his way to the Warmaster's tower, Magi pumped his flame aura up as hot as he could and hurled the resulting fireball directly into Qth-raq's headquarters.

To be continued.

Sideways Through Subspace

First, let's talk a bit about Subspace. I came up with this by grooving on a bit of Fantastic Four trivia. When it was first introduced (FF #51), the Negative Zone was called Subspace. Consistent with conventional sci-fi usage, Lee & Kirby's Subspace was a between dimensions kinda place, a means of getting somewhere, or at least that's what Reed was hoping. Somewhat less conventionally, although entirely sensible, was the fact that it was a weird and terrifying place.

Marvel never really developed Subspace as a means of getting anywhere else, though. Before long, it was the Negative Zone, more a cosmic ghetto for psychotic aliens than the funky hyperspace it started out as. That being the case, I thought it would be fun to take some of the elements of Subspace as it was originally presented, give it my own spin (more of that below), and feed the Scrap Pile to it.

A bit of a rewind from last session: Our heroes weren't hurled directly into Dimension Q. Instead, they found themselves floating in the void. Torpedo, who had gone back to Earth to deliver Deathbird to the authorities, wasn't with them. There was no sign of the space station or any of the ships or supervillains that had been around it. The Earth glowed with searingly bright blues and greens, casting weird colors on the surrounding objects. The sun was a black sphere surrounded by a corona of dark tendrils.

Not far away, they saw Professor Hemm (or, as Disco said, "that guy with the bad hair"), who they had previously consulted on extra-dimensional issues, poking around without a space suit. The Professor flew over to them and explained that they were in Subspace. Any object with a large gravity well, like the Earth or even the Moon, would tear them apart because of the way gravity from the material universe interacts with Subspace and because their bodies here were adapted to occupy hyperspatial dimensions.

Subspace was peppered with asteroids, though, many of which were occupied by strange and deadly life forms that had found their way here from material space and somehow managed to survive. Orbiting closer to the deadly echo of Earth (and, presumably, other bodies with a gravity field strong enough to reach into Subspace) was a belt of xenoliths, transdimensional stone extrusions of other realities. The Professor had made his way into Subspace through one of these, and, with Magi's help, could probably locate one that could take them to Dimension Q.

Deciding to spread out to avoid missing anything, they got out a long rope and split into two teams. Disco and Land Shark took one end of the rope while Magi and Hemm took the other. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? As they floated carefully toward the Xenolith Belt, Disco and Land Shark saw a cool-looking asteroid off to the side, with domes and tubes connecting it to smaller asteroids, and something flying around it. Disco flashed a rainbow strobe at their teammates and the two of them let go of the rope to check it out.

A little closer, and they saw spotlights waving around in the dark, one of which found its way to them. Shortly after, a group of winged figures (and one with a rocket pack of some kind) started to head for them. Calling Magi and the Professor to help, they got ready to fight. Their enemies were four reptilian creatures with cybernetic enhancements (reptovors) and one borged-up guy bristling with weapons (a devastator). The Scrap Pile's opening move was for Disco to try a "fastball special" using his flight to accelerate Land Shark at their opponents. That didn't work out as well as it might have. Still, Disco was the only one who got knocked out in the fight, and they did eventually defeat the aliens. Or natives, I guess. Whatever.

Down at the Xenolith Belt, they found their portal rock, snagged it, and hopped on. Once there, they found a group of three hooded figures chanting over a cluster of crystals growing out of the rock. Professor Hemm recognized the chant as ancient black magic used by a half-forgotten cult known only as Dire Sorcerers.

Disco, already back in action, flew around and cranked up his light show to eleven, mesmerizing the sorcerers into a dazed reverence. The only information they provided was that they were trying to wear down the dimensional barriers. Then Disco introduced them to his friends and fellow deities, the rest of the Scrap Pile. Overcome with terror at the presence of so many gods, the sorcerers cringed and vanished.

That left our heroes free to move on to Dimension Q, which they did.

Groove is in the Heart

In space, no one can hear your soundtrack.

After taking some time to hone their skills and, in Magi's case, work on deciphering some of the dimension-jumping technology he had been gathering over several previous adventures, they talked to some contacts about Dimension Q and found out that there was a space station where technologically enhanced psychics were peering into other worlds, one of which appeared to be what they were looking for.

While they waited for their custom Scrap Pile space suits to be modified by the parent company (operations services had recently been bought out by Interlocking Technologies) the Angry Beet attacked with two strange ant-like henchmen. Apparently, he had been tipped off that the Scrap Pile was here and, confusing them with the Tripod City branch, come to settle old scores. Before long, Beet and his beet buddies were shipped off to Gladstone.

Out in space, as they neared the dimensional interface, Magi's mind shield power grew into a kind of telepathy. And their shuttle blew up. Torpedo and Disco were unconscious, but, miraculously, no one was otherwise hurt. Well, except the pilots. They probably died. The team was rescued by Freefall Brawler and Starbryte of the space-based branch of the team, Orbital Scrap. That's another two characters I need to put in the "supporting cast" thing, isn't it? Anyway, Disco was jealous of Starbryte's sparkly solid light powers and perfect hair.

Oh yeah, and stuff happened. They found out that it had been Azrak cultists (we talked about them, right?) who blew up their ship, and the same cultists were flying around stopping anyone from getting to the space station. FFB and Starbryte pointed out that the Azrak ship was coming back and they could take it over and use it to get to the space station. In the course of taking over the ship, they fought a bunch of the Gauntlet dudes and Gamma, a woman in glowing green armor who radiated deadly... uh... radioactivity.

In the cockpit, they found their old enemy Deathbird. This fight was considerably less humiliating than the last one, partly because Deathbird was confined to close quarters and couldn't maneuver as well. In the end, they took her down and the only casualty was the Gauntlet soldier Disco had brainwashed, skewered by one of Deathbird's spears.

Torpedo went with the Orbital Scrap team to take Deathbird to jail while the others moved on to the space station. By the way, it had at some earlier point become apparent that the Azrak cult had been maneuvering Qth-Raq and the human super-heroes into fighting each other because they wanted an inter-dimensional war to weaken the walls between universes and open the way to the Bright Cosmos.

The station was flooded with psychic screams coming from the ESP stations. The team was only able to proceed because of Magi's newly expanded shielding ability. Inside, they found some zonked-out telepaths ranting about stuff.

Then Baron Karza, who seemed to know Magi (even though Magi only had a vague memory of a bald guy who used to teach science) popped up and drained all the extra power that Magi had been collecting. Everybody got hurled into Dimension Q for reasons that weren't entirely clear. But that was where they were originally headed anyway, so I guess it's all good.

Worst write-up ever. Sorry.

Mayhem on Mount Galahad

Following up on the lead from their seance, the team took the Scrap Van south and arrived at Mount Galahad State Park early in the afternoon. In the parking lot, they noticed a family of four (two adults, two kids), all apparently blind, each with their own doberman to lead them. Instead of taking the trail, the family wandered off into the woods. After a quick aerial reconnaissance by Disco, revealing only the bald stone mountain and the thick canopy of trees around it, the Scrap Pile decided to be thorough and take the trail.

Along the way, Magi sensed something otherworldly and, eccentric recluse that he is, just wandered off without telling anyone. By the time the rest of the team noticed, he was long gone, so they split up to look for him, leaving Land Shark on the trail as a reference point.

Magi followed his nose (metaphorically speaking) towards the dimensional interface he had sensed. Before he got there, he spotted the blind family picking their way through the trees, still guided by their doberman companions. When they stopped moving, he froze and tried to stay quiet, but it soon became clear that they had detected him. Turning their eyeless faces his way, the form of each hiker blurred and merged into that of its canine counterpart, finally settling on the image of the wraith hounds the Scrap Pile fought in Ontario.

Magi fought the hounds, aided soon by Disco and then the rest of the team. Of the newly deforested battlefield, Land Shark said, "They needed picnic grounds."

As they moved on to the mountain, it became apparent that the entire area was sparkling with windows to other worlds, no doubt accounting for many of the UFO sightings and other legends surrounding Mount Galahad. At the mountain, they found two armored super-humans blasting a wraith hound to ash. Each wore a glowing crystal. After some conversation, it came out that one of them, now called Bludgeon, used be Grasshopper. He and his compatriot, Scalpel, had been rescued and saved from their impending dissolution by "a great man" known as Covenant.

Image borrowed from The Great Game - Click to Check it Out

Hiding their skepticism, Magi and Land Shark joined the two Covenant fans in opening and exploring one of the mountain's many portals to search a crashed space ship for equipment that was supposed to help them become fully human. Magi quickly determined that the equipment they were looking for was actually more portal-access equipment. Magi surveyed the bizarre crash site and then asked Land Shark to trash it.

Meanwhile, Disco and Torpedo watched two winged men in black armor swoop onto the scene and demand that they vacate the area because they had claimed this mountain in the name of Warmaster Qth-raq.

The fight at the crash site moved outside as well, and, in the free-for-all, Bludgeon and Scalpel escaped while the two winged legionnaires both went down, partly because of Magi's berserk assault.

Magi, not much cheered by the victory, gathered up a number of components and went to work on some secret project.