The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

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Glistam
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The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

Unread post by Glistam »

This weekend we had our final Heroes Unlimited game, capping almost two years of monthly Heroes gaming. Since I set the game in Century Station shortly before the "Bloody Monday" riots that shaped its recent history, our final game was the assault on the crime lord Iron Mike's compound. By the book, this assault results in a nuclear explosion that levels a ten block radius of the city and sparks a week's worth of riots and many deaths across the city.

As the city and numerous N.P.C.'s plotted the assault on Iron Mike's Ironworks, the P.C.'s and their team leader (a time traveling fugitive from the far future) infiltrated the compound to find and deal with this "nuclear bomb" in order to change history and save countless lives. After a few close calls the P.C.'s found themselves facing some past allies and foes, all controlled by a Time Cop intent on preserving history. The P.C.'s secret plan to distract their enemies and dispose of the bomb was wildly successful save for one small snag: The bomb wasn't active and couldn't possibly be the cause of the explosion. With the minutes ticking down to seconds before the fated event, the P.C.'s raced to confront Iron Mike himself.

Facing the destruction of his empire, Iron Mike was moments away from charging the approaching task force survivors and making his own last stand when the P.C.'s burst in on him. They demanded to know where the bomb was, but a new battle and confusion was their only response. The task force, meanwhile, began their final assault despite the P.C.'s insistence they stand down. The P.C.'s managed to subdue Iron Mike before the task force could gun him to death, forcing them to stop with the threat neutralized. A last ditch effort by the almost forgotten about Time Cop to kill Iron Mike at the moment zero was thwarted at the last second, and history was successfully changed!

In the aftermath the P.C.'s discovered that Iron Mike was actually a Gestalt of three other people, fused together by a mysterious material some years ago. Had he died or even ever separated, the energy released by that event would have been equivalent to a small nuclear explosion. The P.C.'s team leader, the fugitive historian from the far future, accepted his fate and willingly turned himself in to the Time Cop to be extradited back to their home time and face trial. He believed his punishment was nothing compared to the good he accomplished in this time, by saving the lives of all these heroes and civilians. The good they could go on to do would surely be worth whatever awaited him. He activates failsafes which remove all traces of his future tech as he surrenders.

An unknown future awaits Century Station and the remaining heroes of the Tomorrow Legion. Though the game is on hold I considered this last battle our Season Finalé, not our Series Finalé, and have already laid the foundation for the second season when/if we pick this back up.

Epilogue
On a dusty hill, far in the future, two oval shaped spatial distortions caused ripples in reality to mark the emergence of two men. One was a tall, handsome man in high tech restraints - the fugitive historian known as Frac Tal Hrix. Behind him was a slightly shorter man, older than the other by an indeterminate number of years. His stern, narrow features were marked by a prominent hooked nose. This was Æl Fric Prox, the commander of the Temporal Enforcers. Both of them looked bruised and beaten. As their senses quickly adapted to their arrival they showed surprise and began to look around in mute shock.

The landscape around them was only desolate, barren wasteland for as far as the eye could see. There were no signs of life of any kind; no people, no animals, and no vegetation. In the distance the remnants of an ancient civilization could just barely be made out. The gleaming towers and structures which once made up its massive cityscape had succumbed to the erosion of time. All that seemed to remain now were mounds of rubble reminiscent of grave markers, silently noting the site where this civilization once stood.

The pair finally cast their gaze to the sky and took notice of the dim blackness of perpetual twilight which emanated from all horizons and nowhere above. The darkened sky was devoid of the moon, stars or even clouds. The pair then looked at each other, both of them with an equally puzzled look on their faces. This was not what they expected to come back to, and they both knew something has gone terribly, cataclysmicly wrong.

Then a unexpected but successful skill roll by one of the P.C.'s capped off the game with this "after-credits scene:"

A long string of code scrolled down the screen of his visor, faster than the eye could read, as the program re-compiled. "Was I in time," Singularity wondered? The forced uninstallation of the Tomorrow Legion's A.I. which he had copied into his advanced suit took him by surprise, but he had immediately worked to try and counter it. He did what he could and then he set it to re-compile and re-load. Once that finished he would know if he succeeded or failed. After what seemed like an eternity the lines of code finally reached their end. Before it automatically tried to load Singularity could read the final line of the code: NOW LOADING A.R.C.H.I.E. II...... After a few more moments the program finished loading and the familiar, overly-cheerful voice spoke to him from the speakers in his helmet. "Heya boss, how can I help you?" Singularity simply smiled. He now knew that his frantic efforts were a success, and A.R.C.H.I.E. was here to stay.

Here below are Google Doc links to some of the write-ups I did for the N.P.C.'s leading into the fight. We also have an Obsidian Portal campaign page, where setting information, older adventure logs, and older N.P.C. and P.C. pages can be found. It hasn't been updated in a little while but hopefully with the game now on hiatus I can get it all caught up and better organized over time.
Zerebus: "I like MDC. MDC is a hundred times better than SDC."

kiralon: "...the best way to kill an old one is to crash a moon into it."

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Temporal Wizard O.C.C. update 0.8 | Rifts random encounters
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Grim Gulf, the Nightlands version of Century Station

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Shadowknight
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Re: The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

Unread post by Shadowknight »

Time travel is tricky stuff, there's nothing that says another time cop as a back up couldn't have appeared 1 second after your hero left an set a nuclear hand grenade the explosion would mirror what history said happen. As far as anyone who wasn't at ground zero, it was Iron Mike who set it off just 1 second later than it was suppose to happen. History stays the same, and the future isn't changed. There's also the Grandfather Paradox if you could travel back in time to kill your Grandfather before your father was conceived, how were you born to even go back in time and kill your grandfather. The answer is either when you go back in the future you created an alternate timeline were you never existed and cease to exist the minute you appear or you create a alternative timeline where you never went back into the past to kill your grandfather or your grandfather was never really your grandfather either your grandmother cheated on him and told him a lie about your father or ( like nature hating a vacuum, timeline resist change) in the new timeline he now had an identical twin brother who now marries your grandmother has his children and the timeline continues as before.

All I'm basically saying don't believe you really changed anything or for that manner someone else can't go back and undo what you did.
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Glistam
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Re: The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

Unread post by Glistam »

As the Epilogue shows, there is no more future. So when Æl Fric Prox failed to stop Frac Tal Hrix from changing time, there was no more backup. Stopping Bloody Monday destroyed the future. How? Why? The clues were put out there but ultimately that's what future games will unveil and address.
Zerebus: "I like MDC. MDC is a hundred times better than SDC."

kiralon: "...the best way to kill an old one is to crash a moon into it."

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Temporal Wizard O.C.C. update 0.8 | Rifts random encounters
New Fire magic | New Temporal magic
Grim Gulf, the Nightlands version of Century Station

Let Chaos Magic flow in your campaigns.
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Sir_Spirit
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Re: The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

Unread post by Sir_Spirit »

Shadowknight wrote:Time travel is tricky stuff, there's nothing that says another time cop as a back up couldn't have appeared 1 second after your hero left an set a nuclear hand grenade the explosion would mirror what history said happen..


Except that they don't have a future to come from. Even ignoring an apocalypse, the "Trial" would depend solely on the two peoples word that a crime happened. As, for the Time Police of that Era there has never been a Nuke or Bloody Monday to enforce.



Of course, there is a problem. The Dark has an interest in Earth!
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Snuffy
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Re: The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

Unread post by Snuffy »

Virgil waits till the time is right to break free in prison to find Iron mike. Punches Iron Mike so hard the future is reset. :)
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Glistam
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Re: The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

Unread post by Glistam »

Snuffy wrote:Virgil waits till the time is right to break free in prison to find Iron mike. Punches Iron Mike so hard the future is reset. :)

If only it was that easy... :P
Zerebus: "I like MDC. MDC is a hundred times better than SDC."

kiralon: "...the best way to kill an old one is to crash a moon into it."

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Temporal Wizard O.C.C. update 0.8 | Rifts random encounters
New Fire magic | New Temporal magic
Grim Gulf, the Nightlands version of Century Station

Let Chaos Magic flow in your campaigns.
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Glistam
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Re: The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

Unread post by Glistam »

Sir_Spirit wrote:
Shadowknight wrote:Time travel is tricky stuff, there's nothing that says another time cop as a back up couldn't have appeared 1 second after your hero left an set a nuclear hand grenade the explosion would mirror what history said happen..


Except that they don't have a future to come from. Even ignoring an apocalypse, the "Trial" would depend solely on the two peoples word that a crime happened. As, for the Time Police of that Era there has never been a Nuke or Bloody Monday to enforce.


I addressed this in a very early log I put up on the site; the technology the time travelers have available allows them to record and save temporal events - as long as the temporal events don't wipe out the creation of the agency itself (which is what happened when Bloody Monday failed to occur). This story was the reward for an epic between-game RP session I had with one of the players through e-mail.

In the Center a small alarm light began to blink. The technician monitoring the sensors quickly noticed and called out, “Over here!” A thin, wiry man rushed over from another area of the facility. He was met with and soon flanked by two other technicians trying to keep up with him.

“What is it? Have we found him?” Asked the wiry man.

“I am not sure yet,” the first technician responded. He was loading up data on the photon displays and cycling through archaic digital documents. “I am isolating the cause of the temporal anomaly now.”

“Well hurry up,” the wiry man brusquely demanded. “We only have minutes before the temporal wave hits and the stream realigns. We have to capture this now while we can detect it.”

The technician to the right of the wiry man was squinting at the display, trying to figure something out. He spoke up. “Is that… 20418, E.C.E.? Is that where he is hiding?”

The wiry man shot a pained look of acknowledgement and understanding at the questioning technician. “It seems likely, but let us hope not.” he thoughtfully answered. “Though I must confess, given the fugitive’s understanding of history it was one of the more likely times for him to flee into.”

“I got it!” The first technician shouted.

“Let me see, what are we looking at here?”

“It is a memorial statue,” the first technician blandly stated. “According to this, a statue commemorating sacrifices during an event called ‘Bloody Monday’ has shifted location by a large margin.”

“Hmm…” the wiry man thoughtfully mused. “This is exactly the sort of high-level change we have been looking for. Have you isolated the cause?”

“Yes sir, and I have already transposed the records for comparison. I am projecting it onto the main display now.”

The wiry man walked closer to the main display, his nose almost touching the photons. The point of divergence – two newspaper headlines with their main articles overlapping phased into view. Behind them the cascading series of increasingly different events, built upon the events in these articles, appeared and culminated in the statue’s location change. A seemingly small temporal event, but with large enough ramifications that they could detect it. The technician did his job well – each alteration from the original time was clearly isolated and annotated in the three dimensions. The original headline and article detailed an out of control fire that leveled a full city block. As a point of divergence, the ‘new’ headline and article instead detailed the actions of a group of tomorrow legion heroes preventing the fire’s spread and saving the block.

The technicians flanking him reviewed the projected data as well. The one on his left dismissed it. “That is not him. He is not mentioned in the new article.” The technician on the right declared, “20418 was the birth of this technology. There are bound to be numerous false positives during that chaotic time.”

“No,” the wiry man decided. “He may not be in the articles but this has his dataprints all over it. I am sure he is behind this.” He addressed the first technician. “Compress all this into stasis to preserve it against the coming temporal wave. This is his trail – I am sure of it.”

The technician on the right spoke up again. “Sir, the fugitive was a Rank SS Historian who was fully aware of the limits to our technology. There is no way he would be behind such a significant temporal event.”

The wiry man scowled angrily at the technician. “Of course not you sorquetwith! He knows better than that. Which is why we must focus on the outliers surrounding him. They will eventually lead us to him, and once we catch him we will have enough evidence to ice him for thousands of cycles!”

The room began to shake as if by an earthquake, but the Center was not tethered to earth in any meaningful way. “The wave is here. Remember your training,” the wiry man said to the group. As if on cue, all four of them focused and entered a meditative state designed to protect their recent memories. The wiry man smiled as the wave passed through them. “We will catch you yet, Frac-Tal,” he thought to himself. “You will not escape justice.” Then everything changed; and everything was as it should be.
Zerebus: "I like MDC. MDC is a hundred times better than SDC."

kiralon: "...the best way to kill an old one is to crash a moon into it."

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Temporal Wizard O.C.C. update 0.8 | Rifts random encounters
New Fire magic | New Temporal magic
Grim Gulf, the Nightlands version of Century Station

Let Chaos Magic flow in your campaigns.
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Re: The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

Unread post by jlm2924 »

What's the SDC damage of a Nuclear bomb, and would it affect an Invulnerable character?
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Glistam
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Re: The conclusion of my Heroes Unlimited Campaign!

Unread post by Glistam »

Not sure, in this scenario there was no character with invulnerability so I wasn't worried about it.
Zerebus: "I like MDC. MDC is a hundred times better than SDC."

kiralon: "...the best way to kill an old one is to crash a moon into it."

Image

Temporal Wizard O.C.C. update 0.8 | Rifts random encounters
New Fire magic | New Temporal magic
Grim Gulf, the Nightlands version of Century Station

Let Chaos Magic flow in your campaigns.
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