Hello, it’s that time again. Before we get started, I seem to have taken to some kind of stomach bug. Went to bed after the session last night but then about half an hour or so after that started having issues. Spent a fun night not really sleeping as a result, and I’m still not feeling all that good. Going to try to relay a lot of horror adventure stuff with that going on while it’s still fresh in the memory. There will probably be errors, sorry in advance.
Ok.
We were down Inquiry this time. Out of Character the player was working on moving as I understand it and wasn’t able to get away to get on with us. In character, since that characters girlfriend had a psychotic break and her alternate personality took over, we ruled that she’s handling the fall out of that.
We opened on Zebraspider, my character, going to have a chat with the Sivana family to try and warn Georgia Sivana off of the concert that Dr. Entropy and Buccaneer had decided he must take her too for there own amusement at this being forced on him. I really don’t accept the other reasoning anymore for reasons I’ll get into later. Since Morgana La Fey is going to be pulling an attempt to completely reset the timeline so it’s under her and her son’s boot forever, he wanted to see if she’d agree to reschedule the date so that he could deal with that first. She agreed, though, since she thinks La Fey won’t hurt her and this is a great chance to get knowledge how La Fey’s rituals work, that she’ll be involved anyway, along with her brother, her brothers Fiance Dr. Hayfish (the one who’s a magi-tech-specialist.), running around studying it.
The moment I mentioned he was going to do this before he showed up at the Manor to meet with the team for the sessions actual Mission, Dr. Entropy made it a point to inject himself in and try to give the Sivana’s a phone call to push and ensure that I was saddled with the date no matter how much danger it out the timeline in to make me juggle it right that instant.
He was only foiled by the dice roller giving him a roll in the upper end of the natural 90’s (96 or 97, forget which for that one.), which caused him to get Dr. Hayfish, who was more interested in studying it herself than she was in talking to the rest of the family to get them to make the date happen.
Anyway, got into base after that was settled, having agreed that after Morgana La Fey’s loose ends were tied up I’d talk to her about scheduling and such. Dr. Sorrow’s sister was 3 hands deep into a winning streak with Yev at Poker, Nanosecond was up to his eyes in I think it was a book if I remember right, Dr. Entropy was meditating and basically making himself dead to the world (Remember that, will need it later.), and buccaneer was mucking with a little note book. On a lark I rolled stealth and got an insanely good role to not be noticed entering the room, coming up behind Buccaneer, and looking over his shoulder at the book he’s righting in.
It’s full of names of various super villains. Some of which have notes. (Most especially notable was that he had Volcana with hearts with a fire effect drawn all around her name.). The big thrust of the notes however, was that he seems to be actively making a project of trying to reform all the one’s on the list. As he has Cicada, who he’s already gotten place with I believe it was Justice League Great Planes, marked as already taken care of or something too that general effect. Zebraspider decided not to make a scene of this since it’s not technically his business after all and Buccaneer doesn’t much care for him. So he quietly backed up too the door way and knocked on the door frame to announce himself as though he had just gotten too the room and was just walking in.
Buccanner put up the note book, some minor discussion was had of weather Sarah Sorrow cheats at cards or not and in character establishment of were’s inquiry, and review of what we were going to do tonight.
What we were going to do was A visit to Santa Land to look into what was going on under there, if how it seems to connect to Metahuman trafficking. We got print outs of a map and pens to try and help us keep track of exploring under a section of the park that was built for expansion then abandoned due to budget issues 20 years prior and that is thus an underground network of tunnels no one uses. This made noise that annoyed Dr. Entropy. I tried to communicate that we were going to be heading out. I was thinking we’d be driving up there like the first time, but evidently the part took it that I was telling Dr. Entropy to teleport us. Dr. Entropy took this as Zebraspider being rude too him and tried to use his magic to teleport Zebraspider into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Only stopped by another not great roll on the die roller. (When Zebraspider had issues with other people he wasn’t allowed to none lethally do things too them, but it seems when Dr. Entropy does shit it’s totally ok. I’m not a fan but then, by now, I’m not a fan of Dr. Entropy or his player at all.).
Some disagreement later over this we get to Santa Land and decide to go in disguised. After insisting he couldn’t do it before when asked too, Dr. Entropy suddenly has no issues making illusions on all of us to make us not recognized as we buy tickets (by we I mean Zebraspider since Dr. Entropy doesn’t carry currency that the universe he’s actually in uses, and we are trying to keep a low profile at first.). Of note here, is that Dr. Entropy uses the same illusion of the Fabio Looking Saxaphone Player that he used to help Buccaneer run interference on the Livewire Date a Session or two sessions or so prior. Zebraspider, did notice this. (Kind of hard not too.). Nothing was said at the time, but, he noticed it. We go in, find what we need to. Dr. Entropy botches a roll to turn a fan inside a felt mascot suit back on for someone. Meanwhile Buccaneer Aces rolls to distract a dude flirting with him,
And then give him a literal Vulcan Nerve Pinch with I think a nat 1, harmlessly and silently making the dude sleep so we could get buy. Both Nanosecond and Zebraspider had to just stair at him for that one, and he excuses it with “I watch a lot of Star Trek.”. Humorous because out of character he doesn’t but a few other people in the group do.
We get in, Entropy makes Nanosecond invisible, we poke around some. Checking for anything important in the locker rooms, we come across a boy and a girl, teenagers working at the place who are discussing weekend plans and getting out of mascot attire. Nanosecond accidentally spooks them and they get stuck sticking part way out of open lockers. We, decided to let them be since they might get out of it on there own, and we didn’t want to risk tipping our hand that we were doing stuff yet. After a while a Mutated human with Lovecraftian tenticals for arms and no higher brain functions left to speak of showed up, and attacks Nanosecond and Buccaneer. Fight ensues, I forget who dropped it but I know it was either Nanosecond or Dr. Entropy, doing a lot more damage than Zebraspider can even on his best heavy attack on a red in a single hit.
So, I’ll just get this out of the way now. During this, Dr. Freak, an OC villain of Buccaneer’s, is taunting us the whole time with CCTV’s and occasional TV streams to close circet broadcast himself too. First time he does it, we open up a door to a room with the TV in it. And for Zebraspider, a familiar face.
Bot, a member of his personal local rouges gallery. Bot is a Rich Super Genius kid who makes drones and robots and such to pull very childish pranks, and has a knack for managing to get himself not actually blamed for what the Robots do. Bot is also 10 years old. And looks starved and utterly terrified, chained down in the middle of the room, wearing what the GM described as a Bane Mask. I tried to rip the things on him off but because I did not specify Zebraspider starting with the mask, the mask gassed him and caused him to go through a body horror transformation into a floating tentacle head bio-organic-machine that feeds on electricity, is in constant uncontrollable agony, and has lost it’s higher brain functions and wants only to stop hurting and feed. On us, of course.
Fight ensues. Zebraspider doesn’t do much because during the transformation he got shocked badly and it left him stunned for a turn on the first round, and it was a short fight. Whichever one of Nanosecond and Dr. Entropy didn’t drop the last one, did drop this one in a decisive blow that far out strips Zebraspiders Damage output potential.
Dr. Entropy insists he can do nothing for these people to reverse or reset it except kill them and put them out of there Misery, so we have to press on. (Remember that. You’ll need it later.). We go through a very obviously horror movie inspired set of tunnels and have to split up. (The GM, it’s worth noting, planned this to be a thing we tackled around last IRL Halloween. It didn’t work out that way of course.) So Buccaneer goes down one Corridor with Dr. Entropy, Nanosecond and Zebraspider go down another.
And then Dr. Freak show’s he’s got some new tricks. Necromacy. We get to fight ghosts from our past and they are confirmed by Zebraspider to not be illusions.
GM started with Zebraspider and Anarchy this time. Zebraspidrs already got a bit of a thousand yard stair before this from what happened with Bot, and the man who he blamed himself for the death of for months and was only just now starting to entertain the idea he might not of been able to save, coming back with a massive impairment wound, still on his chest, to state in no uncertain terms that no, it was Zebraspiders fault, and now he’s gonna kill Zebraspider to get back to life, didn’t help. Zebraspider almost but not quite during the fight convinced himself it was just a trick.
But almost get’s you almost sometimes.
Of note is that there was some kind of demon sword anarchy was using during the fight with Zebraspider.
Meanwhile, Nanosecond got to fight himself. His Pre-Character-Development, Alchohaulic-Abandoned-by-his-wife-and-mother, Abused-by-his-father-that-then-killed-himself, Self. Fighting and arguments ensue.
At the end Zebraspider and Nanosecond won. We got the hell sword Anarchy left behind, so, that might matter later. Didn’t find out this session. Both of them came out with thousand yard stairs and Spiders was noticeably worse. Suffice it to say it’s gonna be awhile before either one of them is fully right after all of that.
And then it was the other pairs turn. Buccaneer, got to fight Mongol. The guy that blew up Coast City and killed everyone he’d ever known before he went off the rails and became Buccaneer. And he took him out, got his revenge. He, wasn’t as fulfilled as he expected he’d be after it though. As noted in some conversation that happens later. But on the whole, he probably made out the best of the bunch from this segment.
Not that Dr. Entropy made out bad. Because, see, out of character? We learned something about Dr. Entropy. He’s not actually a fully reformed and repentant former Nazi Officer who’s realized what a horrible person he was and that all the things he was doing were wrong.
He’s a Nazi Officer who think’s at worst 98% of what he did including literal instances of child murder is 100% A-OK. He’s a fucking super-villain who’s working with us because it helps him pursue his goals. And we know this because he lectures the 13 year old sorcereress he killed for the crime of being a soviet when the Nazi’s in his world invaded the USSR that tried to protect herself and her family (He tried to justify it by effectively pretending the Nazi’s did nothing wrong at all and also if the government is communist even the kids must all die.) about this while happily killing her again. He makes it crystal clear in his dialog.
Buccaneer doesn’t know this because he doesn’t speak Russian or German. And by this point for Horror Movie Ascetics, our comes were not working, so, in character, we don’t know this. But I know out of character. If I seem like I’m not happy about the character who’s a literally unrepentant Nazi Mass Murderer who justifies everything he ever did as valid lecturing my guy about morality to murder hobo, enslave and maim as he pleases with impunity, it’s only because I’m not.
After learning this I think it’s safe to note that while I will continue games in this timeline for as long as I can keep it at a Simmer, I will not be likely to play with Dr. Entropy’s player ever again from now on.
So, we move forward, I try to not let the bad guy Monolog by just kicking down the next door with out breaking step after we’ve regrouped. We get into a room similar to the situation we were in with Zebraspiders sister. 30 people, in glass vats, ready to be put through what we saw done to Bot with there Metagene’s being activated. And get warned there’s a reagent to make them shift if we don’t just fucking leave them there. Dr. Entropy is fine just leaving them there, all he wants is to kill the bad guy, never mind the civilians.
So Dr. Freak plays another card so to speak, and a Nazi-Magitech-Robot form Dr. Entropy’s universe comes out. With the severed long dead head, and bound and tortured soul, of his fiance powering it. His Fiance, we know out of character and Zebraspider has reason to suspect in character, was his universes Supergirl. Who was also an unrepentant Nazi in his universe. So, we fight, we try not to kill her so that he can try to save her because, when the person is a fellow Nazi War Criminal who’s not repentant but that his character fancies, it’s totally different rules and we have to all figure out how to not kill her. This is different from when Zebraspider doesn’t want to murder people because he set so you see.
(Remember that one, you’ll need it soon too.)
Once he establishes that right now he can’t save her after we beat the robot, he decides to enlist us for the long term project of trying to bring her back. Just to make that clear, he wants us, to help bring back, a dead, 100% unrepentant (and we know dead people are un-repentant because the 2 dead bad guys we just freaking fought less than 30 minutes ago in game were 100000% unrepentant about what they did and eager to go right back too it.), Nazi War Criminal with all the powers of Superman at her disposal, because his character use to bang her and he wants to do so again, be damn the consequences to the multiverse. And were all stuck along for that ride.
Anyway, we go after Dr. Freaks Panic Room.
I had earlier on, before we left base, mentioned to Buccaneer in character that Florida, the state all this is in, is a death penalty state and we technically have law enforcement powers. That there is nothing stopping us from handing him off too the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s office and he’ll be tried and executed. Buccaneer however wants to kill the guy himself, and Dr. Entropy does as well because of course he does. He’d try to claim he wasn’t starting that way and that Freak deserves it, but let’s be real here, the man is an unrepentant literal Nazi War Criminal who has mass murdered and literally slaughtered children and still asserts he was in the right to do so. So, no, I don’t buy that.
I should of mentioned the thing about bringing him in to be arrested and tried and executed, but, I forgot until just now, and it’s important context for what comes next. Anyway, we get in there.
Zebraspider wants to get the information out of Dr. Freak to fix/save the people he’s kidnapped. I am having to play him completely out of character to appease Dr. Entropy’s player in this because all he wants is the hostages safe and back to normal and in one piece, and they can kill Freak. Dr. Entropy refuses to be appeased and goes on to tell me off for not letting him kill Dr. Freak, which is again, not what I’m doing because I’m already forcing myself to metagame and not play the character true to character for no other reason than to let the murder hobo be a shitty murderhobo.
At one point, Entropy lights Freak on Fire, and Buccaneer puts him out because Buccaneer actually also does want to save the hostages first. And Dr. Entropy proceeds to immediately blame me for this as though I have real world long range telepathic control over Buccaneer’s player. He then lies about having a vast list of people who can save all the hostages after so we don’t need freak and lights him on fire again.
Buccaneer cuts a hand off freak, in case Inquiry needs to do a Psychometric reading on him later after all. After a few minutes however, Dr. Entropy’s plan wasn’t actually having the desired effect. Did some magic knowledge rolls and found out that He’d Made a Pact with one of the 3 rulers of hell, Lady Blaze. So Dr. Entropy takes it upon himself to contact her to cut a deal with the devil, literally, in which he expects the Devil will not cheat and he’ll be able to out smart the Devil. (Remember that this player said my character was a Mary Sue for having fast reaction times in combat and being good at punching and wrestling, but not listing Kryptonite or the color yellow or some such as taking all my powers away.)
And he cuts a deal in which, when we do go back in time at some point to deal with Morgana La Fey’s shit, we have to give her younger self a gem from Lady Blaze.
This will almost certainly do something terrible like make us directly and singularly responsible for the fall of Camelot (yes, THAT Camelot.). But Dr. Entropy doesn’t care who dies as long as he get’s his kill so, agrees on our behalf. And because, again, no PVP and he will blame me for what other players do that i’m somehow being unreasonable, I can’t interfere. I even had to point this out too the GM at one point that I couldn’t stop Dr. Entropy lighting a man on fire, because of this.
So we are stuck with this as well. Then Dr. Entropy goes to the 1 person he can try to talk too to see if he might maybe be able to enlist help for the kidnapping victims. But only after he firsts asks more important favors of that person. Namely, helping him get out of shit creek that he just got himself stuck in by cutting a deal with the devil. Leaving the rest of us to figure out how to actually salvage the victims, with the guy Dr. Entropy could of drug the info out of the head of but refused to do so for now dead.
The last hour of the game is winding down. We quit the area, and find those Teenagers still partially stuck in the locker room, so Zebraspider, largely out of fucks to give, goes in and gets them out. For which at least they are grateful. Turned out he saved the boy about a year prior. He’d been in a car accident and got stuck under a fuel truck on fire, unable to force the doors on his car. I managed to barely pull him out in time before the whole thing blew up.
The girl, turned out, was in the building next door too the one the Government Institute of learning was using as a front. So, nearly at ground zero of getting nuked and we barely managed to prevent that. She ends up giving everyone Dipping Dots and they sort of try to lift spirits.
Meanwhile, we call Professor Bubbles, of Miami University and Gorilla City, and get him to come down and start helping to figure out how to help the victims. We also get Dr. Hayfish now that we know magic’s a factor. And because after looking at Bot, Professor Bubbles says he can reverse it on him, but, he can’t give him anesthetics while he does, and the process would be the same level of nervous system pain as having a layer of flesh ripped off all over his body. Hayfish consults and works out a that a numbing spell would be able to make that more bearable. She and her fiance and Bubbles are now also looking around and working on the rest of the hostages as of when we faded out, and Zebraspider, using a Burner phone, put a call into Bots parents and told them there was a medical emergency with there son and were to call back too to talk to him.
So, I should mention as well I guess, for when the GM’s reading this. The 13 year old Sorceress that Dr. Entropy was happy to kill twice, and wiped out the kid siblings of the first time, was Dr. Entropy’s universe’s version of Coshka. There, I didn’t forget it, just didn’t want to make it all about that.
Oh, and Buccaneer makes it very clear he’s feeling increasingly remorseful for what he’s done and how he’s been. Dr. Entroy tries to talk him into brushing that off. Because of course he does. Nanosecond has a good moment with him though, so, I’m hoping his character development won’t be stunted by all this. Particularly since he was receptive too at least helping people first and then killing them this time, and in light of the note book moment toward the start of the session.
Nanosecond is left feeling like he’s really got some shit to work through.
Dr. Entropy is totally satisfied except for wanting to get out of the monkey’s paw he’s forged for himself by literally cutting deals with the devil and wanting to get his Unrepentant Nazi War Criminal Kryptonian Waifu back.
And Zebraspider is left now convinced that no, his earlier thought that maybe just possible Anarchy’s death wasn’t his fault was just wishful thinking on Zebraspiders part, and that really he’d be doing everyone a favor by hanging the costume up because he’s probably ultimately not making much actual difference. If he hadn’t immediately been faced with a couple of kids he was either directly or partially responsible for saving within minutes of all this he might well be utterly convinced of this at this point.
Notes:
Alright, so this is where the game noticeably hit the point of being absolutely miserable to think about between sessions a significant amount of the time. It was discussed in the Forums that all the things Dr. Entropy did and his player did, including stuff that wasn’t part like the session such as going too a 3rd party discord server we were both in to publicly berate me for defending Ascendant as a system. (The player having verbally stated that the only 2 systems that ever needed to exist in all of RPG’s are Savage Worlds and Open D6 because they do everything better than every other system. A position having since tried Savage Worlds at his insistence I find absolutely detached form reality.) This public berating was done to force me to nerf Zebraspider, because, unknown too me, for multiple sessions, everyone had not been upgrading there characters, so I was somewhat over-preforming. He used that to twist it to get me to nerf myself first, to make sure that he could then bully me in character for the rest of the campaign. Which as you will see in future posts, he did continue to do.
There’s going to be a lot of displeasure with Dr. Entropy and his crap expressed form this point forward in the logs. And everyone in Autarch’s Discord recognized it, but the GM did ultimately I feel drag his feet and not handle it even remotely well. Now, there are some mitigating circumstance’s I will get into at the end of the campaign log whenever that happens. But that’s for later, and at the time these log posts were happening, it was information I did not have.
I will for now remind GM’s that this game will be showing off a lot of the dangers of tweaking things because you want them to be narrative and not simulationist. For example: Had the GM sucked it up and done a simulationist read on Zebraspiders powers instead of insisting on carving out exceptions every time the GM wanted the story to take a turn that Zebraspiders powers for inconvenient for, Zebraspider would of had an immunity to some of the crap Dr. Entropy pulled and would keep pulling. Zebraspider would also have been able to address a number of situations fast enough to keep Dr. Entropy in check, had the GM not artificially inflated the health totals and DV’s of basically every minor mook even when they were suppose to be vanilla human, just to minimize characters getting 1 shot knock outs in fights because it hurt narrative tension if the guy who can bench press 50 tones can knock out Bob the random punk with a gun in one hit. Had the GM also enforced his no PVP rule evenly, which, to be blunt, the GM was terrible about, he’d bring the hammer down on me in an instant and did so but then refused to do so repeatedly for Dr Entropy and even when the GM did act, he gave Entropy’s player a kid gloves treatment instead, but had he just brought the hammer down early on on Dr. Entropy, this problem could of been kept form escalating too the point it did.
I will also remind GM’s that it is Paramount every single time you give points to make sure you force your players no matter how busy they are, to get there freaking sheets and characters updated. If points are not expressly being earmarked for a specific thing that is named with a set amount needed already established, they must be spent. Because otherwise you get minor disparity’s that shitty players will abuse like what was done too me by Dr. Entropy’s player.
Again, there are some Mitidaging circumstance, but I had to go about a year with out learning of them and nearly had to walk away from the game twice to get the GM to finally cough those details up. So I won’t get into them now becuase for the posts to follow, I didn’t have those details.
