I've Come to Avenge my Family (1)
A PC learns that Disturbing Past is a bad disadvantage to Min-Max With.
Bryce : hihabnabitmkiii : Hi.
Bryce : We had our game today. It went well. I had Josh's character beat to an inch of his life, which was both satisfying and justified by the plot. Works out well that way.
Bryce : But he was spared as the party got there just in time to rescue him, and also because he was being much better today.
habnabitmkiii : Was your game at his house again?
Bryce : Yes.
Bryce : Actually, apart from a few bouts of getting-up-and-leaving when it wasn't his thread being handled, he played very well.
Anyway, let's begin at the beginning. Long ago. During character creation... Josh (A.k.a. Captain Idiot, when he deserves it, but not presently) was working on his character. There is a large table of random advantages and disadvantages. A good one might give you free XP, a skill, a natural aptitude for something (e.g. you could get higher-than-species-normal max strength), etc. A bad one might be lowered maximum stats, poor starting items, or...
A DISTURBING PAST OF SERIAL KILLING.
...twice.
habnabitmkiii : But it was essential to the character?
Bryce : Well, it had apparently gone into "remission". He hadn't done any serial murdering for some time (about 8 years), so I guess "he got better". But not before he'd killed several humans and vulpinians on Dramidia, and made one enemy who had been hunting him for all this time.
Now I realize that people normally don't "get better" from being serial killers, but sometimes they go for a long time without doing it so I didn't press the issue and make him roll for "supressing murderous tendencies" once in a while.
habnabitmkiii : Haha.
Bryce : So, he was happily walking around on the station. The others kinda brushed off the whole hummingbird incident (or they actually bought that story, which - i'm sorry - HAD to be player knowledge. I mean, come on - "A hummingbird killed him" - I accept that stranger things have happened in this universe, but not often.)
Meanwhile, the others are checking out a surplus store. The Captain of the group (Biptetk - the rogue) shows his psitronic sword to the proprietor, trying to get it fixed. (It had been neutralized - destroying its psionic imprints - a while back on Gnomistan. Fixing it has been a priority for him.)
Did I ever tell you about the Sword of Awesome?
habnabitmkiii : You might've, but I might be thinking of a player-GM session.
Bryce : Hmm. It might have been before I started logging these for the website.
Anyway, as you may or may not recall, the Sword of Awesome is a psitronic device (a machine that uses psionics), which is highly illegal. Witchcraft-in-the-middle-ages illegal. Nazis-in-France illegal. Bomb-in-the-Whitehouse illegal.
He goes up and asks, "Can you fix my psitronic sword?"
Space Gnome had seen this coming and his character had been frantically attempting to indicate "NO BAD IDEA" to him, but he didn't get it. Now, the sword actually talks, and every time you unsheath it it says "You now wield the SWORD OF AWESOME, DUN DUN DUH DA!"
Which it proceeds to do, as it doesn't depend on its imprints for that. So the guy was freaked out, screaming "Abomination!!!!" at him as if he'd just asked if he had some toads and goat blood for a ritual offering of adorable kittens to the dark gods.
Outside, in the rest of the shop, Josh's character (Edward Elo) had been using the surplus stuff to build a hoverboard. Yes, a hoverboard, back-to-the-future style. Out of junk. He had good technical aptitude, so he actually succeeded, sort of.
So, while it wasn't quite up to spec, the hoverboard did manage to float in the air. He steps on to it... ... and rolls a two. Trip! The improvised hoverboard shoots backwards, knocks over Space Gnome, flys into the back of the shop, hits the Captain in the back of the leg (ouch), and finally hits the proprietor of the shop, who falls back and hits his head on a piece of equipment, knocking him out.
So (do I have to say it?) they made off with some stuff without paying, anyway. Actually, one of the party's character's paid - Triscuit the Trengar Survivalist, who joined a few sessions ago but hasn't done much yet. She's played by the real-life wife of the Captain.
Er, the players are married, the characters aren't. Ok, so, the others do stuff with their purloined surplus. Edward improved his hoverboard, Triscuit built a self-contained support device for the cloaking device she found, and Space Gnome...
Assembled a Tesla coil, some giant capacitors and various other parts into some kind of Death Ray. And, Sharpie marker in hand, christened it "DEATH STAR".
Space Gnome's fit of mad science was briefly interrupted by a mysterious figure (TM), who asked him if he knew a man named Edward Elo. The mysterious figure, a vigilante, was going after Edward because he killed some of his relatives years ago. Dun dun dun.
habnabitmkiii : How many times have your players looted shops now, anyway?
Bryce : Uh... I've kinda lost count. They got two on this station. (The owners having "accidents" in a sufficently subtle way that suspicion hasn't arisen, yet.)
The guy in this shop that got whacked by the hoverboard didn't actually die. He just was knocked out - but that's almost as good for looting purposes, since the shop was disorganized enough that he might not notice.
Anyhow, Space Gnome decided against selling out Edward, but not against taking the money offered. He made up some lies, locked the vigilante in the ship, and Ran Away Real Fast. (The door inside not being reasonably able to hold him long.)
So he had the money and it was Someone Else's Problem now. He decided to go tell the captain, though, who thought that this might be worth acting on after all. Meanwhile, one of the other players - Fizzy (another Trengar) - went off, with the guidance of his trusty talking space-rat Charelston, to explore some abandoned tunnels where the Space Gnome pet store owner Zhashanemmem had allegedly went. (Zhashanemmem provided the space rats to the group, but then went insane after being told his wooden leg had termites. Let's just say his mind was rather fragile to begin with.)
habnabitmkiii : Did you mention the pet store before?
Bryce : Hmm. Maybe I didn't.
habnabitmkiii : I think you did, but I keep confusing your sessions and the player-GM sessions.
habnabitmkiii : Oh, yeah, you did.
Bryce : Ah. Had space rats, various poisonous pets? That one?
habnabitmkiii : You only mentioned the rats, their predisposition to ethanol, and the drugs you sold the players.
Bryce : Heh, yeah. The drugs got used again, hehe, but no bad trips yet.
Anyway, there were some other "pets" there, which I'll get to a little while later. It actually happened before but I don't want to interrupt this suspenseful part :)
So. The group was split up - Fizzy went into the tunnels and the rest of the party went to the ship to find this bad guy. They found him. There was some fighting. Space Gnome apparently can turn invisible now (why do I give him XP?) among other things, and the bounty hunter didn't seem like he had much of a chance - Except for his anti-psionic mace. Which he used to some effect against Space Gnome before she (the character is a female, the player is male) also telekinetically removed the mace from his posession.
However, the mace, being an anti-psionic device being pulled with a PSIONIC FIELD, overloaded and exploded. I got a bit carried away with the damage dice for "flying supersonic incandescent particles of anti-psionic mace", and everyone - including the bounty hunter - was knocked out and increased one wound level.
habnabitmkiii : Ha! Did the rest of the party find them?
Bryce : The "rest of the party" at this point consisted of drunken cowardly rodentia and Fizzy, who was exploring the tunnels looking for the crazy pet store guy.
Any rodents nearby were also unconcious, of course, and Fizzy had no idea this was happening (in character).
So, it was mainly a question of who would wake up first. I decided we'd all roll d20 for it. The person with the highest number would wake up first.
Now obviously this is pretty good odds in favor of the players, since they have three PCs there and a friendly NPC, whereas the bounty hunter is one guy. But sometimes things just work out in a funny way... none of them (or the friendly NPC) rolled higher than 11. I rolled a 20 for the bounty hunter.
habnabitmkiii : Your players encounter some very strange luck, it seems.
Bryce : Yes, yes indeed. So, the bounty hunter woke up first. When the rest of the (remaining) players got up, of course, Edward and the hunter were gone.
So naturally they went to look for him. They had some psionists with life-detection skills in the party (Olivia, the friendly NPC, and Space Gnome, who was out of psipoints thanks to being hit by the Anti-Psionic Mace twice and using so much telekinesis), it wasn't hard to find the general direction.
They headed that way. Meanwhile, Fizzy explored the tunnels. It was spooky. I think I got him -slightly- creeped out, but not as much as I'd hoped.
So, he hears some muffled screams of pain.
He goes to investigate...
Makes a little noise...
AND RUNS STRAIGHT INTO THE BOUNTY HUNTER!!!
habnabitmkiii : Oh wow, hahah.
Bryce : Heh, by going down those tunnels he gave me a nice opportunity to regroup the party. So it worked out. He ran away of course, down a mining tunnel. The bounty hunter threw a bomb down there, which didn't kill Fizzy but did seal him in. Then the bounty hunter went back to the task that was keeping him busy - slowly beating the life out of Edward with his "backup mace".
( Me: "... and he's beating him with his mace."
Players: "What mace?"
Me: (opps) "Uh... his backup mace."
I made my plausable-plot-patch roll, but just barely...)
He had Edward tied up and gagged, and with a psionic inhibitor on his head. (Be prepared, you don't get far in the bounty hunter biz without preparation...) The others, meanwhile, are heading down the tunnels, and come to a branch in the path. Olivia attempts to sense life. The PCs know that Edward is a psionist, and psionists are easier to detect, so they ask her to detect psionists. She does so - says there is either one or two to the left and two ahead.
There is some brief confusion among the players about this, as they work feverishly to launder the player-knowledge that behind one of these passages is Fizzy - in no great danger - and behind the other one is Edward, in serious need of saving. Then they remember that Fizzy, as a Trengar, is also a psionist. But - what, how can there be two down one way? Maybe the rat is a psionist?
I decided to switch to Fizzy's thread at this point. Fizzy was alone in the dark, since she had broken her flashlight in the fall (being knocked over by the pressure wave from the explosion that sealed the tunnel with a rock fall.)
The rat was getting a bit panicky. Then... they found Zhashamemnem!
He was "not right". In fact his tiny shred of remaining sanity had apparently been taken him. He spouted off some babble that implied that he had seen Edward and the bounty hunter, but he blamed the whole thing on the "gerbil confederacy".
So. Edward is getting beaten, and four of the players are standing outside the branch in the path, deciding to go left on account of the rocks they ran into when they went straight. Oh, yes, and the occasional muffled scream from the left.
Zhashamemnem, meanwhile, is getting a little more crazy. He shoots off an energy bolt down the mine. "What, HOW IS HE A PSIONIST?" Josh asks. "He's a space gnome..." Space Gnome explains - what more reason does he need? Space gnomes are, of course, the master race, fount of awesome, etc etc.
The others suggest out of character that Fizzy should get Zhashamemnem to move the rocks. He did, discovering that Zhashanemmem got "that way" by overusing a psionic power called "Pyromania", which gives the user awesome fire powers, but makes them insane.
It does an amount of damage that is multiplied by the user's insanity points, actually. So it keeps getting more powerful, but you go crazy. The particular nature of this insanity is, naturally, a desire to Burn Things. (muahahah)
(Continued in Part 2)
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