Giant Size Scrap Pile #2

In the midst of a heated battle with the villainous Time Lincoln, Land Shark and Magi were joined by a new hero called Ghost Lad. After wrapping up the fight and turning the evildoer in, The heroes got word that a silent alarm had been tripped at the newly-renovated Beta City Museum of... I don't remember. Doesn't matter. History or something.

Checking it out, they found the museum being burgled by a dude in a ski mask. When confronted, he announced that their defeat was written in the stars, then summoned four zodiac avatars and vanished in a flash of light. Fighting Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn with an incredibly small amount of property damage (for the Scrap Pile), the team watched their foes turn to smoke and disperse.

They found that the burglar had made off with an ancient Babylonian breastplate that had four gems attached to it, and space for eight more. The display, it turned out, was new, just opening to the public, and the missing items were loaned to the museum by a Dr. Karl Caravel, a local collector of antiquities. The display was set to open tomorrow. Caravel was hosting a fundraiser event on his yacht, the Silver Eel, the next night.

The team decided to attend the party incognito. Ghost Lad had connections who were able to get last-minute invitations for all of them. Ghost Lad scouted the area while Magi and Land Shark grilled Caravel for information. Well, Magi grilled him. Land Shark mostly just made cryptic remarks about watchful sharks until Caravel finally said, "You're that clever shark, aren't you?"

Ghost Lad found the burglar, along with Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, breaking into the safe. He overheard the burglar saying, "Damn that Caravel! Where is the moonstone?" He did his best to hold them up with intangibility stunts while Land Shark headed below to help. Magi stayed to keep an eye on Caravel.

Once Land Shark arrived, the burglar teleported to up to Caravel, where he was able to wrest the moonstone ring Caravel was wearing away. In the struggle (aided by Magi), Caravel pulled off the burglar's mask and exclaimed, "Zodius!" just before the villain sucker punched him. Zodius laughed villainously as the zodiac avatars below disappeared. He bragged about the stars again, summoned a giant tidal wave, and teleported away with one of Caravel's guests.

Stopping a tidal wave was a bit much for this group. The adventure offered another option, but I wanted to see what they'd do with this one anyway. They did manage to come up with a determination-point-draining blend of earthworks, boat-phasing, and fire that saved the boat and only flooded the shoreline instead of trashing the whole city, so it was worth it.

Caravel revealed that the man who had been causing trouble for the heroes all night was Dr. Lemuel Zodius, a former astronomer with the city observatory run by the university. (Under some pressure from Magi, he also admitted to having hired Zodius to research the gems and tell him how to use them. Apparently Zodius had decided he'd rather keep them for himself.) Zodius had been dismissed from his position due to psychological issues, a nervous breakdown or some such. The man he abducted is Dr. Gordon Lyton, the director of the observatory, who was responsible for his dismissal. Before they vanished, Caravel heard Zodius tell Dr. Lyton, "Now it begins anew where it ended!"

The observatory was out on an island in Lake Mohawk. Once there, they sneaked (sort of) past some more zodiac avatars (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces) and saw Zodius completing a ritual to fuse all the gems onto the breastplate and give himself all their powers. Big fight, punch blast grab, etc., and Doctor Zodiac finally went down. The zodiac gems were inert and seemingly drained. The observatory was trashed. The team turned Doctor Zodiac over to the police and resolved to keep an eye on Caravel in the future.

This adventure came from The Sidereal Schemes of Dr. Zodiac, by Steve Kenson. Well, most of it did.

I picked it because it's easy to run and the zodiac gems conveniently tie in to another storyline that's been creeping along in the background. Luckily, my players never read the write-ups, so I don't have to worry about them seeing this note.

Deathwing!

With a giant shadow-pterodactyl between them and the Nexus (see last session), the Scrap Pile dove in and attacked.

It didn't take long to figure out that, being made of darkness, Deathwing was really hard to hurt with physical attacks (like Land Shark's fists) but was vulnerable to light. Disco was all set. Magi took a moment to adapt his flame vents to burn brighter in the visible spectrum at the expense of heat.

As they dodged beak-strikes and continued to wear away at the creature, Professor Hemm was drained by a tail-swipe and seriously injured. As he lost consciousness, he was transformed into a fiendish yellow and green man-beast who spoke in rhyme, the Goblin. Luckily, Goblin was formidable in hand-to-hand combat and proceeded to tear into Deathwing. Disco finally cranked up his searing aura and flew directly into Deathwing's heart, dispersing it.

The shadowy remnants of Deathwing's body reformed into human-sized shadow mantas, which renewed their attacks, but the team was able to eventually destroy these as well.

This left them in charge of the undefended Nexus, but Professor Hemm, who was carrying the Pillar of Universes and had been expected to activate it, was gone. In his place was unpredictably violent Goblin. It took some cajoling and some Disco-magic (which almost backfired because Goblin had his own ideas about how you treat people you like) to get the Pillar away from him.

Magi then had to improvise a ritual, but succeeded spectacularly with a rhyme of his own. The Nexus was sealed. The inter-dimensional war had, for the most part, been cooled to suspicious animosity and the portal through which their misdirected energies were passing was closed. Except for the small matter of Baron Karza being in charge of a space station orbiting Earth, the day was saved.

Oh, and we played on Tom's (Capt. Scrappy/Torpedo/Goblin) birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY/ELVISMAS, TOM!

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.

House Rules

We added a couple of house rules this time (session write-up coming soon) that seem to be working well.

Multiple Dodges: The first one is that you can keep dodging attacks, but you get progressively worse as the page goes on. Your first dodge is a normal roll, but after that penalties start stacking up. Minus one on the next dodge, minus two on the one after that, minus three on the one after that, and so on.

Free Activations: The other one is that everybody gets a free activation of each of their three qualities once per session. This was mainly because nobody in this group (including the GM) is used to the whole playing for determination points thing where you penalize your own character to get the bonus later. Also, I tend to forget to hand out the points for doing cool stuff, which, unfortunately, encouraged hoarding.