GURPs superheroes - session 2

[eveglass]

Session 2! Our Heroes (tm) formally join up as a team with a full-on training montage. But on their very first investigation, they discover some disturbing implications...


[Richard Harvest offers to sponsor the PCs as a formal superhero team.]
Vector: "Aren't there already ten million superheroes in New York?"
Richard Harvest: "Well, ten million and five sounds even better!"

[Harvest is somewhat vague about his previous history as a superhero.]
Julie: "Look at how restrained I'm being -- I'm not reading his mind!"

[Our headquarters shall be an abandoned warehouse.]
Richard Harvest: "There was another team using the warehouse before you."
Vector: "What happened to them?"
Richard Harvest: "It doesn't matter."
Neon Knight: "It might."

[A superhero is only as respected as his outfit.]
Richard Harvest: *pulls out super-suits* "I'm not going to train you unless you have basic protection."
Robert: "I thought he was gonna say, 'I'm not going to train you if you're wearing jeans.'"

[Those of us who do not already have superhero aliases shall require some. Of course, some of us have a different sense of what makes an appropriate alias from others.]
Laurie O'Donnell: "Can you just call me another name? How about Daisy? Daisy's a nice name."

[We pilfer through the items in the warehouse for useable goods.]
Richard Harvest: "The team who was here before had a member named Baton. He had all sorts of trick batons."
Vector: "Really?"
Fortunate Son: "Better than poodles."

[More of the same.]
Richard Harvest: "Every hero has their..."
Neon Knight: "Eccentricity."
Richard Harvest: "Signature."

[Alicia Keyes, now known as Cortex, gets some advice from Harvest.]
Richard Harvest: "Just be careful. You never know when you might read the wrong mind."
Eric: "That doesn't sound ominous at all!"

[We find out that there are some odd and as-yet-uninvestigated murders in a bad part of town.]
Fortunate Son: "How did you get this? Is this a police scanner?"
Richard Harvest: "I don't want to talk about it."

[We go to the bad part of town to investigate. We are not harassed.]
Stuart the GM: "This is a world of superheroes. The street thugs know not to make fun of people in costumes."

[As we're investigating, we hear sounds of fighting nearby.]
Sabina: "Let us run to the sounds of struggle!"

[Neon Knight and Vector are able to fly above the maze of alleyways. The rest of us, not so much.]
Eric: "I begin moving faster than the group."
Stuart the GM: "Are you sure you want to do that?"
Eric: "Yes."

[We approach the scene of the struggle.]
Stuart the GM: "You see a 50-foot humanoid whose fist is descending on you."
Robert: "Well, that escalated quickly."

[Neon Knight manages to hold off the first attack, which is good because it probably would have crushed most of us. But the fight is not yet over!]
Stuart the GM: "He looks like he's ready to attack again. What do you do?"
Daisy: "This is all a misunderstanding!"

[We see some other meta-humans approaching from behind the 50-foot-tall man.]
Sabina: "I have honesty!"
Julie: "Is that a skill?"
Eric: "It's a drawback."

[Cortex decides to take a different tack.]
Julie: "I read the mind of the big guy."
Stuart the GM: "He has a thought: CRUSH!!!"

[Neon Knight prepares to engage with the big guy again.]
Eric: (annoyed) "All right, fine. I will try not to cause property damage."
Martin: "But we're superheroes!"

[It turns out the big guy and all the people behind him are part of the superhero team Tomorrow Project. Mostly they're a bunch of teenagers. Stuart the GM is annoyed that our initial conflict did not go on longer.]
Martin: "They're a bunch of kids, so it would look bad if we beat them up."

[More of the same.]
Stuart the GM: "All superheroes fight when they first meet."
Eric: "They have to -- it's in their contract."

[Introductions are made all around with the Tomorrow Project.]
Starlight: "Vector, cool name. You're gonna be trending in five minutes."
Vector: "...Great."
Fortunate Son: "Do you want to be trending?"
Vector: "I don't have a choice, do I?"

[Daisy uses her psychometry to find out about the most recent murder victim. Turns out he was some sort of lizard creature, who was killed by a person dressed all in rags.]
Robert: "Well, that's one question answered."
Julie: "And many more raised!"

[We try to make sense of Daisy's vision.]
Eric: "Step 1: Is there an equivalent of superhero wikipedia?"

[The police finally arrive and take our statements.]
Eric: "I describe how I came on the scene. I leave out my details about nearly getting into a fight with kids."

[With the Big Guy now back to a more normal size, we move to the site of another murder victim.]
Stuart the GM: "The Tomorrow Project all pull out cameraphones."
Eric: "I'm only disappointed that they're not unrealistic enough."

[The Tomorrow Project are famous on social media.]
Big Guy: "I had to buy a whole new condo a few weeks ago. But I was attacked! It wasn't my fault!"
Martin: "That's the thing about having a social media presence -- you make more money."
Eric: "And get attacked more."

[Tensions are raised between the two superhero teams.]
Big Guy: "Who are you to judge me?!"
Neon Knight: "A former police officer."
Fortunate Son: "Someone you almost killed."
Neon Knight: "That's a better answer."

[More of the same.]
Eric: "I stare and wait for him to process what he's saying."
Stuart the GM: "He doesn't seem to be in a processing mood."

[We realize that the element linking all the murders is the sewer system.]
Fortunate Son: "Sewer crawl!"
Vector: (annoyed) "Oh, good."

[Our team and the Tomorrow Project decide to do independent investigations.]
Vector: "Nice kids."
Daisy: (excited) "They've been to a party with Shakira!"

[We inform Mr. Harvest that we've met up with the Tomorrow Project, which is why there was a sudden spike in social media traffic about us.]
Richard Harvest: "I wasn't ready for this."
Neon Knight: "So much the better -- we're literally going underground."

[Mr. Harvest is unable to get us any sort of layout for the sewers.]
Vector: "So we are going in blind?"
Fortunate Son: "Let's do it!"

[We enter the sewers.]
Stuart the GM: "Conveniently, you weren't that far away in the first place."
Sabina: "Far from what?"
Stuart the GM: "Ah!"

[We find ourselves near a metal wall with a door in it. We open it though the expedience of Neon Knight's laser-torch.]
Stuart the GM: "You hear a 'clunk' as the piece of metal falls inward."
Martin: "Well, we just knocked."

[We find ourselves in a moderately appointed living room.]
Eric: "I feel stupid but I have to ask: any sets of pictures with red Xs across some of the faces?"

[We take a moment to discuss the Neon Knight's suit of armor, and why he can fly better in moderate light than full light.]
Neon Knight: "The way they explained it to me, it flies on light waves, and when there's too much of them, it can't latch on."
Vector: "That's... very weird scientifically, but I still want to take a look at it."

[Moving further forward, we come to a room lined with cages.]
Voice: "Help... please..."
Daisy: "Oh, my God, it's a person! ...Is it a person?"
Stuart the GM: "Yes."

[We investigate the cage-lined room.]
Stuart the GM: "What looked like a large shadow is a large shadow, but it's also a pit."

[More of the same.]
Eric: "I look in the pit."
Stuart the GM: "Your first thought is, 'It smells like something died down there.' Your second thought is, 'Something died down there.'"
Neon Knight: "It's precisely as bad as it looks!"

[As we're investigating, we hear someone approaching from the only corridor connecting to the room.]
Man: "I'd like to say tis isn't what it looks like. It wouldn't be true, but I'd like to say it."

[We parley for a moment, with the man in the hallway and us in the cage-lined room.]
Daisy: "We've called the cops on you! ...Have we called the cops on him?"
Neon Knight: "No."

[More parley...]
Man: "I'm happy to talk with you if you promise not to resort to violence."
Cortex: "We'd like to say that..."

[All the people in the cages have some sort of 'plague', or at least so says our interlocutor.]
Neon Knight: "Where did the plague come from?"
Man: "There are any number of possibilities."
Neon Knight: "Did you cause it?"
Man: "No."
Julie: "Detect lies."

[The conversation sort of stalls out.]
Daisy: "How long should we listen to him?"
Neon Knight: "Until we think of a better plan?"

[Combat ensues, as was inevitable, when the man sics his two guard 'dogs' -- actually modified, feral humans -- on us, but does not engage himself.]
Robert: "I kinda want to chase this guy."
Eric: "If he had more guards, they'd be attacking us already."

[We all have our areas of specialization. For some of us, that is not combat.]
Stuart the GM: "Daisy is 15 yards away."
Sabina: "That's probably not enough to do much unless I want to use the punch baton."
Eric: "Which, of course, you do."

[Fortunate Son has gone into the hallway where the man is.]
Stuart the GM: "Something is flying toward you. It is very bright."
Eric: "Like a sickly green light?"
Stuart the GM: "More like a glowy fiery orange light."
Eric: "It might be fire."

[It is, in fact, fire. Some sort of fire that continues burning even after hitting wet ground.]
Robert: "Well, I got him to light his house on fire."
Sabina: "We're still in his house."

[Cortex tries to mind-control the 'dogs' but is taking penalties both from the number of people around and from the distance to the targets.]
Julie: "Stupid penalties."
Stuart the GM: "It's about to get a lot easier in a moment."
Julie: "That's not a good thing."

[Neon Knight takes out one of the two 'dogs'.]
Eric: "I learned how to fight among Nigerian soccer hooligans!"

[Meanwhile, Fortunate Son has closed with the man in rags.]
Stuart the GM: "He tries to poke you with a stick."
Julie: "Is it a pointéd stick?"
Stuart the GM: "Yes!"

[We manage to take down the two 'dogs' and subdue the man in rags.]
Stuart the GM: "Conveniently enough, there are all sorts of restraints on the surgical tables."

[How you can be both a pacifist and a mad scientist...]
Stuart the GM: "He's very much against bodily harm when it applies to himself."

[We negotiate. For certain values of 'negotiate' that sound a lot like 'threaten.']
Man: "If you let me free, I'll share my notes."
Cortex: "You'll share your notes anyway."
Man: "I don't think so."
Vector: "Bodily harm!"

[What we have here is a failure to communicate.]
Fortunate Son: "The thing I'm most judging you about isn't the randomness of your kidnappings."
Man: "You think they should have been controlled?"
Cortex: "He thinks they shouldn't have happened at all."

[It turns out the man is not a man at all, but a member of an alien race called the Xect, who absolutely should not be on Earth. We leave the sewers to turn him over to the authorities, only to find ourselves swarmed by paparazzi. Neon Knight takes the spotlight long enough for the rest of us to slip away. He's not great at it, though.]
Neon Knight: "The world is wonderful. God bless something. You get the idea."

[Neon Knight continues to speak to the press.]
Eric: "I'm honestly not sure if thanking the Tomorrow Project for their help will help or hurt us."

[We return to HQ.]
Richard Harvest: "In any event, success! And you know what that means!"
Eric: "XP?"
Richard Harvest: "Dinner's on me!"