Aeon Campaign: S1E11 – Exercising and Exorcising

Dramatis Personae

• The Commander (Doug) – telekinetic super-soldier with a really angry dog (Yukio). The dog is a powerful ally (250-300 points) and very intelligent and very, very aggressive.
• Arc Light (Christian) – battlsuited gadgeteer with electrical powers
• The Rat Queen (Emily) – brick with super-perception; made of actual rats
• Eamon Finnegan (Kyle) – smooth talking gravity-master; Ultimate Fighting Lawyer, to borrow a phrase.
• Zephyr (Merlin) – Real name Murui; Shaolin Kung Fu expert and super-speedster. 

Exercising and Exorcising


We pick up from last game having decided that we actually need to exorcise the demon from the computer – Zephyr’s mother is apparently a powerful Taoist sorcerer. We make a few jokes about how she rips him in a horrible jewish/chinese/new york accent that how can a guy with super speed never manage to drop by and visit his mother?

Anyway, so we have a demon problem, she’s cncerned, and Zephyr really needs to eat more. No, no, I had some donuts yesterday. 

Oh, hell no. Thirty minutes later, Zephyr is on the case, eating a mountain of food that keeps on coming. We wonder if we just need to run McAmorth virus scan or something.

We check in with MAPS, too, and starting an hour ago – for no reason that’s apparent, but coinciding with when we stole the computer – there’s a huge uptick in metahuman activity.

Zephyr’s mother gives him some wadded up paper, some incense, and a blessing, good for an Exorcism bonus. Zephyr’s dad points out that Titivillus is a Christian demon, and he’s going after it with a Taoist ritual. Best of luck to us.

We go through the ritual practice, and manage to hit up Zephyr with Exoricsm at Will+2; literally burning the ritual into his brain.

He better come back after he’s done saving the world though. He cause her so much pain giving birth to her, etc.

Oy.

We need to put the oil where on the computer?


So, we have a ritual that may or may not work, but don’t worry, it’ll be flashy. 

We all chant in unison, and Zephyr make a Will+6 roll, and makes it by 7, which is nice. After three hours, the computer actually spits blood, pea soup comes out of the hard drive all over Zephyr (musta been a WD model), lights go on and off, the thing actually screams, and then funky visual effects come and go. 

We’re going to need some squeegies and a decon shower, but we think things are good.

Arc Light and Zephyr want samples. Oh, OK, Egon . . . here’s your mucus.

Arc Light checks the computer, powering it on fully. It does seem less glitchy.

Arc Light: “Vast . . . how do you feel?”
Vast: “I feel . . . alive.”

We seem to have healed a computer. 

The team asks Vast if he’ll help us. He says yes, and Markus walks over and holds out a ring, which glows. Code flows over his eyes, and all of a sudden Markus speaks with Vast’s voice. Turns out Markus was grown by Vast with a literal genetic algorithm, as a host body. Like a very sociopathic Ultron.

So, four hours elapsed time, and we’ve created Ultron. It’s about 10am, and it’s a busy day.

The mayor is getting nervous enough to push the button on martial law in NYC, and there’s a general State of Emergency in all of NYC. 

We also have a related Cortez issue.

But with all the demons and stuff, we’re out of our depth. But between Vast Markus and Zephyr, the two can chat with Cassie and maybe find something out. We also find out Amanda Smith’s real name: Alyssa Kerigan, who’s zeroed. 

Apparently this is the lesson you must learn when you go looking for a body to download a sentient computer into, who then goes out for a robotic booty call. 

We let the computer hook up to the news feeds, and get Adama, Cassie, Vast Markus inside the computer and as his body, and try and build a matrix of information to help us be proactive, rather than reactive, for once.

We have DIE ROLL PALOOZA with Intelligence analysis

Who: Cortez and project Aries. He’s using his resources to create a false emergency to enact marital law
Why: Power. The kind of power he could get by holding a city hostage for months
What: Using a series of hypnotic drugs to make those susceptible on Rikers to do his bidding. Lots of chaos and destruction, but not so much murder.
When: Planning dates back to Aries, but execution was the last thirty days.

The goal of all this? Unknown. And that’s weird. Someone like Cortez don’t take a dump without a plan. 

We discuss how to bring Cortez to us for a while. We get nowhere as we argue everything to death. 

Fortunately for us and the plot, there’s a terrorist incident caused by a bunch of guys running around in black uniforms that are oddly reminiscent of the Aries guys.

Cortez has played his final card, going all in on the ultra-violence. Technically, this means we “got him where we want him,” but it seems messier than that.

We set up a plan anyway – we tunnel under the bad guys, who have air-dropped in four turreted railguns on motion sensors. We have mastered the under-ground, they have not. Arc Light tries to spend his time taking control of the guns, but fails. We put SEALs and me on two of the guns, Eamon on another, and Rat Queen on the fourth. The C4/Monroe-effect charges from the SEALs take out two of the guns in the first second of the fight. Eamon lifts up guns and soldiers alike, slamming them all into the ground, taking out gun #3. Rat Queen digs a 4-yard hole underneath the final gun, tunneling up, biting into wires and sensors and power cords and stuff. She spends a FP for extra super strength and enables her armor piercing bitey teeth of death.  She swarms up through the ground, targeting chinks, with AD (2) as well . . . 38 damage and AD (4).

Tokugawa has meanwhile dashed out and taken out two soldiers, lickety-split, while they weren’t looking.

Phase 1 complete – and fully successful.

Bystander Evac (“Does saving bystanders include a life of rat-infested nightmares?”)


Phase 2 is to get the bystanders out. Zephyr burns fatigue to pull his ATR on, and evacuates a bystander in one swift move. 

General Legend throws a police car at an Aries trooper. Yukio starts to savage one trooper, and The Commander decapitates another nearby.

My SEALs are moving towards one of them. Rat Queen grabs a bystander with her tail and does a run-by grapple, hauling another about halfway out of danger.

Arc Light sees aircraft inbound, looking like they’re on a bombing run. He decides to mirror-ball their targeting systems with the VERTOL, using an Ambush/Foresight instance to ensure we had that planned out. We blank out targeting in a 2 mile radius. 

Markus screws the helicopters on various buildings – no one is going anywhere.

Someone disrupts the ARIES troopers’ camouflage, and they start exchanging fire with the SEAL team. I figure it’s Lady Legend, whom we know has super-good chameleon stealthiness. Eamon searches using his gravity sense; there is something funky going on in the far south of the map, down by the police officers. Perhaps that’s her.

We continue to evac bystanders. General Legend freaking LEAPS at the plane, and goes full-on Avengers Hulk mode. He downs the jet.

I activate my super move, sprint 18 yards and flank ’em. Three shots from my explosive ultra tech ammo go into the center of the group . . . and take out all eight. Yow. Granted, it was 100 points of damage. The explosion is kinda techno-magical, so it lances through armor even on the bystanders.

A few seconds later, we clear the last bystanders.

A rich female voice says “Cortez has gone to the top of the building; he’s waiting for an extraction that isn’t coming. Shall I take him out?”

“Negative. I want that m***ther f****er alive.”
“I never get to have any fun.”

We all gather and prepare to have Eamon bring us up. We buff the hell out of Yukio, who is always bad news. We head up. Fast. We cover the 60 story building in a few seconds.

New Tactics roll, and I wind up with only a single reroll. Eamon gets nine “points” to place us. I get a very successful Stealth roll and wind up hidden behind some HVAC equipment. 

The Commander sweeps his first target, and moves through to swing at Cortez himself. His deceptive attack to Cortez’s head . . . is dodged. Alas.

Zephyr dashes in and snatches away one of the bad guys guns – these were significantly nasty guns too. The guy jumps back, panicked.

Yukio the uberdog grabs a guy and starts using him as a chew toy, while trapping another behind him.

The commander takes another swipe at Cortez, who is forced to dodge away (successfully), and then he takes his 4-yard step behind the HVAC and makes his stealth roll by 22, eating a -10 and still critically succeeding. He’s basically Batman. He’s gone.

Cortez pulls something from his side, drops it on the ground, and it explodes all over and begins to pulse. He shouts “Billy! Do the thing!”

A metahuman flies up and around and starts tossing fireballs at Arc Light. He gets hit with a 10d6 fireball (!!) for 21 damage (a poor roll) and he takes 18 points to his armor. Fragments spew everywhere, but no one else is injured.

The Rat Queen sends her rat swarm after some of the soldiers, at least one of whom just runs like hell. She runs around and overruns one soldier on her way to beat on Vortex a bit. The only thing scarier than a swarm of rats running after you is a 1,500-lb. rat running you over. He’s KO’d, and she continues to slam into Vortex, who is currently SM +1 to Rat Queen’s SM +3. She does 10d+20 slam damage for 57 points of slam damage. He is broken.

Rat Queen gets shot at, but is moving at 50mph, so she gets missed.

The soldier tries to grab his gun back from Zephyr because he’s stupid. Zephyr rolls a retreating parry to throw the gun over the edge. He succeeds. 

Arc Light flies after the fireball-flinging somethign or other, and doesn’t connect, but does get power blocked, and kncked back one hex.

“Hey, you can’t take my buddy’s gun!” says the guy as he steps to shoot Zephyr, who steps in and parries the blow. He snatches that gun too. “Gimme that, you fool!”

Rat Queen is forced to do an acrobatic dodge against gunfire. 

Eamon grabs Drake with a TK grab, and tries to fling him into Cortez – one Ready maneuver grabs him with a crit. He’s grappled, and will have to fly away or break free. His ST is 59, so good luck with that.

Zephyr casually tosses the gun over the side, pulls out the magic dagger, evades the guy in front of him, and stabs the gun of a third guy. Talk about Gun Fu. He has to make a Will roll at -10 to avoid attacking the guy . . . as the dagger talks to him, urges him to stab him in the heart several times. A Karma point is spent . . . he auto-succeeds.

He cuts the gun in half. He tries to quip “Was that your gun?” but it comes out “I WILL FEAST ON YOUR SOUL, PUNY SQUIRMING THING!”

The Commander dashes past Cortez, striking for the back of the head again – he’s forced to spend Doom to turn that into a (critical) success. One of the troops rolls a 3, but no one else does. 

Cortez calls the Commander a coward. So long as Cortez is occupied and not giving orders or controlling the battle, mission accomplished. 

Arc Light gets flung vertically in the air by a cyclone that forms out of nowhere – gets elevated by 200yds. 

Someone shoots (and misses) Rat Queen. Someone tries to hand-plant a sticky bomb on him, and “YOU WANT TO DRINK HIS BLOOD!” Zephyr does an aggressive parry through the hand with he psychotic cursed knife. The blood flows into the knife . . . then flows into Zephyr. It feels so . . . goood. He’s now full up on both long-term and short-term fatigue. 
He starts screaming, really, really loud.

Arc Light whips up an orbital insertion booster as a gizmo, and rockets down at Drake. He covers the 200yds in 1 sec, and rolls 300d damage for 1057 points of damage, doing more than 66xHT. Pink mist doesn’t even describe it. In return, Arc Light takes 11xHP . . . his suit is thrashed. 

Eamon tries to catch Arc Light – success – and will set him down safely. Over in murderer row, Zephyr really, really want to stab some more folks. A lot.  

The Commander fires three shots at the guys who were shooting at me, blowing them up real good. He then spends a FP to heroic charge, then drawing a sword for a rapid strike on the legs of both a mook and Cortez. I hit (barely) on the mook, removing both of his legs, and I roll a natural 3 on Cortez, cutting off his leg too .

And that winds down the combat, as the only thing left to do is have The Commander talk Zephyr out of his murderous rage.

We’ve played for 4+ hours, it’s 11:20pm . . . we call it there.

Arc Light’s armor is shattered again. He adds broken bones – lots of them – to injury list. 

Zephyr: “That was . . . Arc Light . . . the most amazing thing! You just vaporized the dude! That was so cool! But you’re totally going to jail.”

General Legend takes over to clean up, arrest people (not us; turns out Drake was a Chinese mercenary, plus there’s the fact that between the fireballs and the cyclone, he was attacked by a powerful metahuman. So gets off on a technicality.)