Lacking Natural Simplicity

Attending

Clockwise round the table, starting with the GM:

• M.A.H. — GM

• C.A.H. — playing Force Caster.

• T.K.B. — playing Raum, a vaguely demonic creature.

• B.MC. — playing The Stygian Veil.

NPCs

• Quilik — Our Fin?

Pregame

Raum gets +1 XP for session #12 writeup.

Actual Play

We block off unused tunnels in our headquarters.

Raum hears voices from far away down unexplored tunnels — a commander giving instructions to troops — it sounds like Dr. D!

“Need to get V'Sori separatist at lab in docks area, he'll lie on the floor as soon as trouble starts, he's expecting you. Here's a map.”

Stygian Veil makes a Knowledge (Engineering) roll and knows that we can't be heard by them.

We search for info about Dr. Aiden online. He is a member of the Association of V'Sori Scientists. They have a lab near the docks, but the location is classified.

We try to follow voices down the tunnels, but can't find them.

Chow's restaurant is closed down — the whole city is a war zone.

Docks had Farmers' Market, a V'Sori naval outpost, and is area run by the Longshoremen (a band of criminals).

We call Mr. Fixit, who gives us the address of the V'Sori weapons facility that includes Aiden's lab; it's well protected and very secure.

We take one of our panel vans (from our time near the University motor pool). Our Fin is riding in the passenger seat and Force Caster is driving.

We are stopped by a V'Sori patrol and Stygian Veil tries Mind Control, but fails. Raum tries Persuasion (thank goodness for Gifted) and gets two raises: “we've got a vital shipment of lab equipment”, and gets the ok to continue.

We come to a bombed out road, and are forced to take an alternate route. Bunches of V'Sori and Neptune Guard's jump out from opposite sides of the road to attack each other as we drive by, and we are caught in the crossfire. (Most of the V'Sori are drones.) We are interrogated by some V'Sori and then attacked, they blow holes in the sides of our van. Our Fin jumps out of the van to protect us, attacking the V'Sori. We retaliate, and Force Caster takes us through an intersection, leaving dead bodies in our wake. When we stop we are interrogated by some of the Neptune Guard, who recognize us and start to attack, but we kill them, and the last of the V'Sori flee. Our Fin catches up and gets back in the van.

We are finally outside the Center for |VS| Weapons Research — it is an unmarked building surrounded by a security fence with guard towers, a couple of blocks from the actual docks.

We got miniaturized and into vials that Stygian Veil carried, then Stygian Veil threw fusion grenades at the guards on the towers, and teleported into the building. The first room was a loading area, and probably had a few war spheres. There is a second room, with more war spheres. The third room is absolutely filled with war spheres; Stygian Veil dropped fusion grenades and teleported to the next room, where we finally found four V'Sori scientists and one human (apparently a janitor). All the V'Sori scientists were lying on the floor. We ask who “Aiden” is, the other scientists point him out, and Stygian Veil tries to Mind Control him [???] and fails. Aiden Mind Control's Stygian Veil; we eventually figure out that something is definitely wrong because Stygian Veil talking and acting odd, but we're still in vials and can't do anything. Eventually Stygian Veil overcomes the Mind Control (because Aiden keeps asking for the location of our base), hits him with the shrink ray, captures him in a vial, and shakes him unconscious.

Somebody ([Who???]) killed the janitor during this. I presume we killed the other V'Sori scientists once we knew who was who.

As all this was going on we heard a heavy weight bash into the roof of the building, and the ceilings of some of the other rooms collapse. When we get to a position to see, it turns out that an Atlantean sub had been lifted into the air with Telekinesis and was hovering over the building. Heroes were leaving the sub, climbing down into the weapons facility on ropes. We must have dropped some fusion grenades near some of the heroes. We saw Mechnoman climb up on the roof to see who was dropping the fusion grenades. At the same time Stygian Veil was struggling with Aiden so that we could destroy the Atlantean sub with more fusion grenades. Eventually we do, and leave the area in our van.

We headed back across the war-torn city. After about 2 miles, we run into what appears to be a Longshoremen-manned check point where they are stopping every vehicle, inspecting the occupiers and vehicle, and then waving them on into a warehouse. There must be some other exit, because we've seen too many vehicles go into the building. On approaching our vehicle the Longshoremen take our picture to “check against their database”, then tells us to exit the vehicle. Stygian Veil teleports out, drop the Fin and Raum, and Force Caster jumps out. Raum jumps into the middle of a group of Longshoremen and attacks. Eventually we kill all but two of the Longshoremen and then the leader — Willy the Fin [???] puts up his hands and says that they can help us.

It turns out that Ricky Six-Fingers and his gang moved out of Southpoint after Dr. D's revelation into a headquarters in Tempest, and the Longshoremen know where it is and are planning to hit it in a couple of days. The Longshoremen tell us that they've heard that Vince volunteered to do the hit on us and has disappeared [???] while he's working on it. The Longshoremen offer us a police car to replace our transportation, but Raum has noticed police cars getting attacked and asks for other transportation options. They have a couple of motorcycles, and we take them.

Willy the Fin gives us a communicator and tells us we can contact them on channel 6. He tells us not to use the regular comm system because the V'Sori have gotten real sophisticated in exploiting the regular system.

We head out and get back to our area without any further mishaps.

Raum asks our minion, Frank, to work on the comms issue, starting by checking the Longshoremen comm for surprises. He finds out that it has an inactive tracking device which can be turned on remotely, but he is able to remove it, and we can keep it in a Faraday cage. He also says he can work out a secure method of communication for us.

We work to figure out how to interrogate Aiden without letting him keep attempting to Mind Control us. Our Fin says that the Vince don't like cold: 30℉ makes them very uncomfortable, and we determine that will be enough to keep him from concentrating hard enough to Mind Control us. Joe's Pizza is nearby and closed for the war, so we go there and interrogate Aiden.

Aiden wants to defect to those who oppose the V'Sori. It turns out that the V'Sori are split — some want to leave earth, thinking that they are doing more harm than good. He designed the satellite system to control the V'Sori drones. He could stand down all the drones worldwide. It can't be done remotely, it has to be done on the space station. Dr. D keeps a space vessel in a warehouse in the Tempest district. Aiden contacted Dr. D by telepathically broadcasting message to him — they have met before, so distance is no object. Each drone has an auto-destruct function that can be triggered from the satellite. Updated battle plans can also be downloaded into the drones. The satellite is very heavily defended. It is manned by technicians responsible for software maintenance and by Fins, ware drones, and Super Fins. The V'Sori Overmind commanded the V'Sori to attack Earth at this time. Several think it was unwise, but when the Overmind says something it must be done. Aiden opposes because Overmind has gone mad and resents the Atlantean overthrow of the Vince here on Earth. The Overmind has an unreasonable fear of Earth, and has put off the attack several times, has spent centuries scouting and manipulating behind the scenes — the Overmind assisted the Nazis, for instance. Aiden hopes that if the V'Sori fail this time the Overmind will give up.

The V'Sori have new technology, advanced bio-mechanical manipulation that allows them to (non-reversibly) change a earthling's biology to V'Sori biology without affecting any super powers. (Much improved from the things along this line that we've seen before.) Many of the V'Sori we've seen were former prisoners, mind-wiped. They mind-wipe the prisoners, load up a standard V'Sori mind profile, perform the conversion process, and the former prisoner wakes up a V'Sori in mind and body!

They make drones from former prisoners who are too badly damaged to make into V'Sori — war spheres are made from those who are the most badly damaged. Hyper drones are cybernetic — they look more like the dead. Hyper drones are also controlled by programs from the satellites. Anvil tells us issuing the “shutdown” or “auto-destruct” command to all drones is a simple process.

[¿¿¿I have something here about “protect Tempest district”???]

Those who change to V'Sori gain the Aquatic and Telepathy racial abilities, same as Atlantean as far as stats go, but look like V'Sori. One ingests the agent and the transformation takes place over a week. Don't know if it works on Atlantean. Some Atlantean have passed for V'Sori (at least to look at).

The team that was to get Aiden was planning to get the stuff to make the change so they could sneak in. His team was Lucky and 4-Star and Mechnoman.

Ricky Six-Fingers is thought to be a legend, one of those criminal bosses that most people don't think really exist.

Aiden has sophisticated neural package they us on new V'Sori. (Force Caster says that's why they invaded: that and revenge on the Atlantean.) V'Sori have native psionic abilities that make it difficult to mind-wipe one once it has been transformed.

Atlantean do reproduce biologically.

The drone control satellite is armored heavily — nothing but it own core exploding can damage the satellite.

Five software technicians to correct faulty programs. Fins can get things through DNA scanner (We could go in under skin — scanner only checks the very outside of the epidermis). Drones have a safety feature — they can't attack V'Sori, alas.

Aftermath

We each got +3 XP.