Alright Ladies and Gentlemen, we are back! After a long pause due to various scheduling issues, re return to the DC Universe.
So, we open on Dr. Fate from the prior session being wrong, and the cult not making there move the following day. One Week has instead passed. This is relevant becuase in between end of last session and the following day, Zebraspider had a little outing with Kat Grant in an effort to make peace, in which he put to bed her concerns on were he get’s money being some kind of insurance scam. She was, still not impressed with the trick of handing mobsters over too a licensed bounty hunter for a split of the rewards, insisting it was only a temporary option because Crime is evidently a finite resource, but she admitted it wasn’t as bad as she’d at first assumed. She suggested when the funds could be cobbled Together putting a fund in place for damages and such, which Zebraspider is at least considering talking too the league about once the league are Nazi Robot Free. She did also put forward that, on balance and all things taken into consideration, Zebraspider was actually doing good work for he most part. Not perfect, not as good as Superman Or Flash Or Captian Marvel, but good. That she still intended to be hard on him going forward, but that it wasn’t about tearing him down or taking revenge anymore. It was just about reminding him that for all his power, he was not god and would have to answer too someone. Which, Zebraspiders ok with. He also went over some things with her for when we get the Cult of Kekui dealt with and move to try and deal with Ra’s Al Ghouls various infiltrators. Set up work that will pay off later.
Anyway, a week goes buy. During that time, Dr. Entropy spent most of it hanging around his Sanctum and “mourning”, Nanosecond spent it just focusing down time and effort on his business, Inquiry split it with Dr. Sorrow, and Buccaneer. The later stopping Zombies from running drugs from Jamaca to Miami, Miami Vice Style.
This resulted in Buccaneer giving Inquiry another vision. This one of Buccaneer in a room with most of the figures cast in shadow by the lights, as Batman makes his pitch too them to install Miguel, Buccaneer’s real name, in the Justice League Out Reach Program’s Miami division as a test of his idea ot use it to try to reform the less severe supervillians. We Found out the way Batman got on his trail was that Aquaman found out about Buccaneer dealing with Merlin when Buccaneer helped Aquaman stop OceanMaster one time, and put Batman on that trail, as unbeknownst to Buccaneer, all of this was an elaborate plot orchestrated by Count Vertigo to assassinate his niece and take the throne of his ancestral nation in the Balkens. I say Unbeknownst because Buccaneer even at his worst doesn’t do child murder and that point did get raised.
There is a considerable amount of debating, Batman, Wonder Woman John Stuarts Green Lantern and Aquaman come down in favor. Hawkgirl, Green Arrow, Black Canary and Martian Manhunter come down against. Superman got the tie breaker vote, and opts to vote in favor of giving him a chance to make good. All of this is done from Buccaneers POV, so, he’s thoroughly intimidated the entire time. Afterwords the hero’s that voted in favor, shake hands and do some introductions, along with a couple of other hero’s, most Notable Captain Marvel, who takes the time to give Buccaneer the tour afterwords. Including the Mess Hall, which as New Genesis Tech that basically works like Star Trek Replicators, that Batman got as a bonus while doing an op to trick Kalabak into letting him get spy equipment on Apocalypse to monitor for Darkseid making major pushes for earth or New Genesis or other allied planets, in a sort of “early warning.” system.
John Stuart also explains that Hal Jordan was the Green Lantern before him. This is humorous as Hal Jordan was Buccaneers next door neighbor and he never caught on that Hal Jordan was Green Lantern.
This also means Inquiry now knows as well. And that Buccaneer and Zebraspider have something in common now.
In that they’ve both had an episode of “What, who?” related too that super hero’s civilian identity.
It should be noted that it turns out in this Continuity, Zatara the Magician, a character that debuted in Action Comics alongside Superman back in the golden age, and the father of the more popularly know character these days, Zatana, He’s in his 80’s, but he’s still around. Justice League Dark have assigned members to Bogart all of Coshka’s family members that would make suitable sacrifices for the cult of Kekui’s ritual. Or at least they think they have.
And Yev has taken to carrying the family heirloom, the one that’s a chaos artifact, around and loaded in a holster while trying to lock down what Metahuman ability’s the cultists might have as we know they have some but we don’t know what. He was largely unsuccessful here.
Zebraspider, his errand at the start of the week aside, has been burning the candle at both ends. He can get by with no or almost no sleep, and he’s been pushing it via that method. One of those “this isn’t good long term but short term it’ll help.” sort of things. He’s logged a bit of time at his day job, keeping up appearances and getting a project torn through well under the time estimate. Thought the entire time one of his coworkers was talking about how the government are going to use Nazi Robots from all these Justice League Regional teams to assassinate, replace and take control of all the super hero’s, and that Zebraspider was gonna be used for this purpose to take out Superman.
Zebraspider in civilian ID could not help but be a bit, dismissive, of this. Thought he did grant him that there’s a far better than there should be chance of Lex Luthors involvement in the plan. He was however not sold that Louisiana in a base shaped vaguely like a skull is were Luthor would hole up for such a scheme.
The Humor of that aside, he’s also been spending a lot of time in a sort of encrypted computer chat as Mr. S, talking too a Ms. O, planning, something vague. In the Business, we call this Foreshadowing, and it will come to pay off later.
IT’s worth noting Yev has helped some with the computer stuff.
He’s also been doing some randomized patrols to keep the street crime in Miami from getting the idea that we are letting up on them. Stop a mugging here, stop a convince store robbery there, that kinda thing.
Lastly, and most importantly short term, he has, with Zatara’s help, been running a training program really, really hard. One specifically designed to mimick the sorts of effects the Cult of Kekui are able to throw at us and to practice dealing with them, as well as practice spotting and disarming artifacts there using, and either different mystic or martial tactics or techniques needed to counteract them. Zatara did caution him about burning at both ends and the need to actually be up for the job when the cult do start raising hell. Which, ended up leading into like a 15 minute aside about Superhero’s and them taking time off, and who does and who doesn’t and why and how that was very amusing.
Anyway, we get called to the briefing room on base by Zatara, and we start mulling over how the Cult operate. During which, while justice league dark are skilled and experienced one and all, there also exhausted as the cult has been making it a point to run them all ragged for months. And in that exhaustion, Dr. Entropy and Inquiry realize they’ve made a fatal mistake. They’ve overlooked not just the blood closeness requirement, but that it has personality and personal history requirements that most of the family members there shadowing don’t meet. And that Yev may actually be the best mark for them.
We also establish that there mid to long range teleport’s are connected via water ways, which is part of what makes them so hard to pin down and deal with. This is due to Egyptian magic being heavily tied in with the Nile river.
It’s worth noting, we know there starting to move as it starts raining frogs outside. Were getting out own 10 plagues light in Miami.
We start discussing were the most secure place we can move Yev too is, Atlantis, Fortress of Solitude Vault or Dr. Entropy’s Sanctum, due to the water trick, we work out it’s Dr Entropy’s Sanctum, but get attacked before we can do anything to act on that information.
The cult opens up with one of there sorceresses overclocking the Metahuman ability’s of another to screw with how everyone interacts with The Speed Force. This results in turning all the none speedster magic users into speedsters temporarily, but because were all speedsters it evens out. Does at first keep Inquiry and Buccaneer out of the fight.
The cult also throws a dagger at Zatara and Makes a sort of mystically telekinetic grab for Yev. Nanosecond, being a speedster himself, barely manages to keep Zatara from getting killed by this and makes the dagger miss. Zebraspider, being able to do some magic of his own and having a danger sense in a split second decision, grabs Yev. I will note he could of tried to grab the cultist, and that might of saved the cultists life, as the overclocking of there metahuman ability would kill them by the end of this fight, but he decided he couldn’t risk it as even if he broke the sorceress/male cultist connection, he knew that the guy would likely keep coming and may well get to Yev anyway, so instead he grabbed Yev and jumped clear.
Dr. Entropy manages to lock one of the Cultists down form probability manipulating early on, and get’s Inquiry into the fight. Zebraspider get’s buccaneer into the fight and plays keep away with the sorceress, stopping her from getting ahold of Yev and hauling off to preform ritual human sacrifice with him as the sacrifice.
Inquiry in a flash of brilliance, since were doing speedster logic, moves the thrown artifact dagger so that when the sorceress comes chasing Zebraspider she’ll impale herself on it, which she does for a red hit.
Buccaneer does a good chunk of heavy lifting dealing with the 2 male cultists, and Nanosecond finishes one in full Juan Claude Van Damn Splits and not shots style.
Aside form that, Inquiry does in the fighting take a nasty hit as one of them tackles her. Not fatal but she’s feeling that one.
And Zebraspider took several hits like that keeping Yev from the sorceress. Once she landed and failed like, her 3rd or 4th attempt to grab Yev Zebraspider quips at her that she might want to take a BJJ class cause she sucks at Grappling. She responded in that nasily high pitched mock voice repeating it back to him, so, he just punched her out and webbed her up.
Which, Inquiry went for the finisher. It ended up juuuuuuuuuuust so happening that while normally this would of immobilized her safely so she didn’t fall, because of the speed effects keeping the adhesive from grabbing on fast enough, it didn’t, so she took a big fall, through a heavy wood table, that then flipped and landed on her head for good measure, knocking her out. At which point Zebraspider looked at her and asked what her favorite loony toon was because he’s convinced now she’s just pulling shit from that. Not that he doesn’t approve you understand.
That wrapped up the fight and that’s about were we ended the actual session, Yev alive but not feeling great and Zatara feeling like he pulled a muscle but also alive, and hey, that’s more than the GM expected, so, that actually get’s us some brownie points that Zatana’s dad didn’t die on our watch.
I almost forgot, we had 2 other Inquiry visions during the session.
Both with Dr. Sorrow.
One was of Magpie with Snakey Doyle and his crew, using her to identify an Artifact for the cult as legitimate. During this she swiped the coin off of them that would later come up in the Morgana La Fey Camelot plot-line from earlier in the game. And she did rough them up a good bit, but she got beat down and talked about like a piece of meat a fair bit in the process.
It’s a good thing that group are already dealt with because Inquiry might just of killed the lot of them if we’d faced them after she saw that.
The other was an episode at Arkham were she almost broke out, got as far as getting her stuff form the lockers, but then Batman who was up there to lock someone else up came and and subdued her. This is of note because she would of gotten away, but she stopped to take the bullets out of the guards guns because they were shiny. They didn’t retrieve all the bullets once they were subdued. Also of note was that it as a Dr. Harleen Quenzell who got her keys swiped allowing this to happen.
One has to wonder how they let her get promoted to working with The Joker after this.
Oh, and Magpie was cell mates at one point with Poison Ivy.
Other visions were had with these two but there incredibly mundane. Making breakfast, things like that.
There was some bits of banter that was cut for sake of sanity, and some irrelevant asides like discussing glasses prescriptions vs contact lenses of all things. Due to how much sorting I’m doing there, if I missed anything, I apologize.
Well, that’s all for this session. Have a good day, and will be back, next time, hopefully in 2 weeks!
Archon Notes that he once again, quite enjoyed the update for this session. 