Champions : Return To Edge City : Xenophobia
A Situation Has Arisen - it turns out the aliens we were beating up really had a good reason to be here.
Hero Shrew: We probably should have realised something was up when we saw that the security guards were unconscious and stacked against a wall, instead of splattered all over it.
Of course now we have to patch up the seriously hurt pilot and one of the other aliens, before we can do anything else. She was connected to the computers when we came in blasting.
Hardlight: I may have just accidentally screwed that up. What am I talking about, I did it on purpose, and I’m superbly embarrassed.
It’s also not easy to get a straight answer from the aliens about how much time before the invisible starship re-enters, or exactly why they needed to commandeer half the satellite fleet, but most of that is the result of half-arsed translation software.
The Magus OoC: It’s got a huge STOP sign in the rulebook so I need to ask the GM first, but can I please invent a Universal Translator spell so we stop having this problem?
Apparently the reason they had to abandon the ship was because of serious damage to the power systems by a stowaway and saboteur.
Fireflash: And which one are you?
Alien Business-demon: *indignantly* I am Captain!
The ship will probably also self-destruct now, if it detects anybody boarding it without proper protocols, so teleporting to it probably isn’t going to work. Hardlight uses his civilian ID and business community connections to ask if we can use WorldSat’s primary server farm to try and connect to the alien ship before it craters Edge City. One hopes they’ll be agreeable. And answer their phones promptly.
Hardlight: *texting everybody while simultaneously frantically talking on his phone* Hey everybody? Ask for Forgiveness.
At least we can teleport into the main server farm instead of knocking down more walls.
Hero Shrew: Hey Flux, Hardlight, how long would it take to make the Qruiser space-capable?
Alien Hacker: Ship Is Translating With Ports Open! This Is Not Good! Not Good!
Apparently one of the aliens - their magic user apparently - recognises SOMETHING about the Magus’ teleport spell, and recoils with abject horror after the jump.
The Magus: Don’t worry about it, I’m reformed.
Fux: I don’t believe a word of it.
Hardlight: All I know is that his Teleports hurt.
Fux: You should try it with your Third Eye open.
Hero Shrew: Did I miss something? Seemed like an ordinary teleport to me.
Hardlight: You just used ‘ordinary’ ‘and ‘teleport’ in one sentence.
Hero Shrew: Sure. It wasn’t destructive at that end and we didn’t get reconstituted from a pool of blood at this end. Or did we?
Fux: We’ll never know.
Their hacker can’t stop the ship from crashing. Or redirect it away from the city. And self-destructing it will be very bad given the Dark Matter engine. And it’s already entering the exosphere.
Hero Shrew: Hey Magus, can you open some kind of portal in front of it so it becomes somebody else's problem???
Instead, Magus hurried invents a Flying Belt, slaps it onto Hero Shrew, and the Moreau finally gets to use his Stronger Than a Locomotive power.
Hardlight: Scooter, this is your big ‘Superman Saves The Plane’ moment.
The aliens turn off the ship's cloaking device, and Fireflash grabs the shrew and flies off at top speed to intercept.
The Magus: OK, Scooter, the Flight Belt will obey your thoughts. Actually that’s a terrible idea, Scooter has a lot of stray thoughts. Ok, now it follows what’s in your heart.
Fux: Just make it so he points where he wants to go.
The open pod ports are the only thing Scooter can get a grip on (and the only thing that was blazing on re-entry) given the frictionless metal. Then it turns invisible again, to Scooter’s shock. Thankfully it’s just the cloaking device being turned back on.
Fireflash: OK, I’ll direct Scooter to that wrecked and empty lot.
Hero Shrew: Wow, this spaceship is really slippery.
Fireflash: Well don’t drop it, we’ll never find it again.
Hardlight: Oh look, he’s flying over an orphanage.
At least the Dark Matter engines would probably have survived the crash without exploding, even if we hadn’t brought it down safely. The alien captain is more concerned about losing her charter thanks to accidental contact with a pre-Warp civilization. Scooter is mostly pleased that he got to show off his muscles.
Hero Shrew: So is that stowaway still on board?
Alien Captain: No. He was in the other pod.
The Team: …
Hero Shrew: Oh. I was going to ask about that.
Hardlight: Aaaaand it’s right about now that I finally get through to the business council.
It doesn’t help that the aliens have no idea what their stowaway looked like.
Hero Shrew: It didn’t have acid for blood did it?
Hardlight’s Player: I really must play Alien: Isolation in VR sometime.
Flux’s Player: Not while I live in the same house.
Hero Shrew: Do you want me to tell that UNTIL guy what happened? I’m sure I remember all the details.
Fireflash: .... no, I think I’ll handle that.
The Aliens aren’t particularly encouraged by the fact that Earth has had other alien visitors in the past, and are utterly horrified to discover that one of those other aliens was an Elder Worm.
Alien Mage: They All Dead! They ALL Dead!
The Magus: Well, he should be.
Alien Mage: Then Make It!!!! They Make Your People Into More Worms!
The Magus: He’s tried a few times but got his ass kicked.
Alien Mage: Kill Them And All Of Them! Burn Them To Ash And Scatter The Ashes!
Hero Shrew: You’re lucky you didn’t come here in 70 years ago, you probably would have been autopsied.
UNTIL Rep: To be fair most of them were autopsied because they were already dead.
The Magus: Crashes will do that. With the exception of Ironclad who basically walked it off.
Hero Shrew: If we do find a way to get you home, will you be in trouble?
Alien Captain: Probably not, given the unusual circumstances. But the situation with the stowaway has me most concerned. The stowaway was aggressive, and technologically proficient, and we don’t know where it is. It did something with our drive that should not have been possible. It made a correspondence point.
So this stowaway, which they picked up on a derelict ship they were salvaging, somehow knew enough to take the alien ship straight to Earth and then sabotaged the safety systems in such a way to force the launch of all escape pods and crew towards the nearest inhabitable planet. They have a picture of the derelict - and it’s a classic Flying Saucer. Little Green Men from Mars, or rather Sirians that used Mars as an invasion staging point in the 30s.
GM: Little Green Men, but usually Grey - only 15% of them are green.
But the alien’s lifeforce detector should have picked up any Sirians on the wreck, and it didn’t. Maybe the Magus and Flux can track it down after examining the wreckage it was hiding in to get aboard the other ship. Or at least have a look at exactly what the lifeforce detector DID detect.
It’s one of HG Well’s Martians, although the upper part of the body-head really looks like a Sirian’s head.
GM: Although the tentacles are a bit spindly.
Fux: It just got out of a cold shower.
Fireflash: Is there anywhere around here that’s storing Sirian tech?
UNTIL Rep: You do understand that whether there is or not my answer will be no?
Fireflash: If this thing gets its tentacles on Sirian tech we may have a problem
UNTIL Rep: … I’ll kick it up the chain.
GM: If you really want to understand where the Sirians sit in the Champions Universe, think of them as the Daleks But With Even More Fail.
Fireflash uses her Retrocognition to figure out what the Sirian Tree Octopus was doing aboard the alien’s ship as it snuck around, which included siphoning off some of the dark matter to power its modifications to the systems. The aliens aren’t happy about having Fireflash aboard their ship, but since the Magus has already scanned most of it with Magesight they reluctantly let her get on with it.
Between their various researches and study of the Sirian wreckage, the smarter members of the team come to an alarming conclusion - the thing that came to Earth in the sixth pod was an experimental Sirian Warrior, a specially designed and self-improving biomechanoid supersoldier. It was supposed to be part of the last Sirian invasion.
GM: Oh F***, I’ve just realised - this is Invader Zim only competent.
The Magus OoC: Just lacking supplies.
Flux OoC: Have you seen this planet? That’s easily rectified.
GM: It’s the alien version of ‘Dude, You’re Screwed’.
Hero Shrew: We probably should have realised something was up when we saw that the security guards were unconscious and stacked against a wall, instead of splattered all over it.
Of course now we have to patch up the seriously hurt pilot and one of the other aliens, before we can do anything else. She was connected to the computers when we came in blasting.
Hardlight: I may have just accidentally screwed that up. What am I talking about, I did it on purpose, and I’m superbly embarrassed.
It’s also not easy to get a straight answer from the aliens about how much time before the invisible starship re-enters, or exactly why they needed to commandeer half the satellite fleet, but most of that is the result of half-arsed translation software.
The Magus OoC: It’s got a huge STOP sign in the rulebook so I need to ask the GM first, but can I please invent a Universal Translator spell so we stop having this problem?
Apparently the reason they had to abandon the ship was because of serious damage to the power systems by a stowaway and saboteur.
Fireflash: And which one are you?
Alien Business-demon: *indignantly* I am Captain!
The ship will probably also self-destruct now, if it detects anybody boarding it without proper protocols, so teleporting to it probably isn’t going to work. Hardlight uses his civilian ID and business community connections to ask if we can use WorldSat’s primary server farm to try and connect to the alien ship before it craters Edge City. One hopes they’ll be agreeable. And answer their phones promptly.
Hardlight: *texting everybody while simultaneously frantically talking on his phone* Hey everybody? Ask for Forgiveness.
At least we can teleport into the main server farm instead of knocking down more walls.
Hero Shrew: Hey Flux, Hardlight, how long would it take to make the Qruiser space-capable?
Alien Hacker: Ship Is Translating With Ports Open! This Is Not Good! Not Good!
Apparently one of the aliens - their magic user apparently - recognises SOMETHING about the Magus’ teleport spell, and recoils with abject horror after the jump.
The Magus: Don’t worry about it, I’m reformed.
Fux: I don’t believe a word of it.
Hardlight: All I know is that his Teleports hurt.
Fux: You should try it with your Third Eye open.
Hero Shrew: Did I miss something? Seemed like an ordinary teleport to me.
Hardlight: You just used ‘ordinary’ ‘and ‘teleport’ in one sentence.
Hero Shrew: Sure. It wasn’t destructive at that end and we didn’t get reconstituted from a pool of blood at this end. Or did we?
Fux: We’ll never know.
Their hacker can’t stop the ship from crashing. Or redirect it away from the city. And self-destructing it will be very bad given the Dark Matter engine. And it’s already entering the exosphere.
Hero Shrew: Hey Magus, can you open some kind of portal in front of it so it becomes somebody else's problem???
Instead, Magus hurried invents a Flying Belt, slaps it onto Hero Shrew, and the Moreau finally gets to use his Stronger Than a Locomotive power.
Hardlight: Scooter, this is your big ‘Superman Saves The Plane’ moment.
The aliens turn off the ship's cloaking device, and Fireflash grabs the shrew and flies off at top speed to intercept.
The Magus: OK, Scooter, the Flight Belt will obey your thoughts. Actually that’s a terrible idea, Scooter has a lot of stray thoughts. Ok, now it follows what’s in your heart.
Fux: Just make it so he points where he wants to go.
The open pod ports are the only thing Scooter can get a grip on (and the only thing that was blazing on re-entry) given the frictionless metal. Then it turns invisible again, to Scooter’s shock. Thankfully it’s just the cloaking device being turned back on.
Fireflash: OK, I’ll direct Scooter to that wrecked and empty lot.
Hero Shrew: Wow, this spaceship is really slippery.
Fireflash: Well don’t drop it, we’ll never find it again.
Hardlight: Oh look, he’s flying over an orphanage.
At least the Dark Matter engines would probably have survived the crash without exploding, even if we hadn’t brought it down safely. The alien captain is more concerned about losing her charter thanks to accidental contact with a pre-Warp civilization. Scooter is mostly pleased that he got to show off his muscles.
Hero Shrew: So is that stowaway still on board?
Alien Captain: No. He was in the other pod.
The Team: …
Hero Shrew: Oh. I was going to ask about that.
Hardlight: Aaaaand it’s right about now that I finally get through to the business council.
It doesn’t help that the aliens have no idea what their stowaway looked like.
Hero Shrew: It didn’t have acid for blood did it?
Hardlight’s Player: I really must play Alien: Isolation in VR sometime.
Flux’s Player: Not while I live in the same house.
Hero Shrew: Do you want me to tell that UNTIL guy what happened? I’m sure I remember all the details.
Fireflash: .... no, I think I’ll handle that.
The Aliens aren’t particularly encouraged by the fact that Earth has had other alien visitors in the past, and are utterly horrified to discover that one of those other aliens was an Elder Worm.
Alien Mage: They All Dead! They ALL Dead!
The Magus: Well, he should be.
Alien Mage: Then Make It!!!! They Make Your People Into More Worms!
The Magus: He’s tried a few times but got his ass kicked.
Alien Mage: Kill Them And All Of Them! Burn Them To Ash And Scatter The Ashes!
Hero Shrew: You’re lucky you didn’t come here in 70 years ago, you probably would have been autopsied.
UNTIL Rep: To be fair most of them were autopsied because they were already dead.
The Magus: Crashes will do that. With the exception of Ironclad who basically walked it off.
Hero Shrew: If we do find a way to get you home, will you be in trouble?
Alien Captain: Probably not, given the unusual circumstances. But the situation with the stowaway has me most concerned. The stowaway was aggressive, and technologically proficient, and we don’t know where it is. It did something with our drive that should not have been possible. It made a correspondence point.
So this stowaway, which they picked up on a derelict ship they were salvaging, somehow knew enough to take the alien ship straight to Earth and then sabotaged the safety systems in such a way to force the launch of all escape pods and crew towards the nearest inhabitable planet. They have a picture of the derelict - and it’s a classic Flying Saucer. Little Green Men from Mars, or rather Sirians that used Mars as an invasion staging point in the 30s.
GM: Little Green Men, but usually Grey - only 15% of them are green.
But the alien’s lifeforce detector should have picked up any Sirians on the wreck, and it didn’t. Maybe the Magus and Flux can track it down after examining the wreckage it was hiding in to get aboard the other ship. Or at least have a look at exactly what the lifeforce detector DID detect.
It’s one of HG Well’s Martians, although the upper part of the body-head really looks like a Sirian’s head.
GM: Although the tentacles are a bit spindly.
Fux: It just got out of a cold shower.
Fireflash: Is there anywhere around here that’s storing Sirian tech?
UNTIL Rep: You do understand that whether there is or not my answer will be no?
Fireflash: If this thing gets its tentacles on Sirian tech we may have a problem
UNTIL Rep: … I’ll kick it up the chain.
GM: If you really want to understand where the Sirians sit in the Champions Universe, think of them as the Daleks But With Even More Fail.
Fireflash uses her Retrocognition to figure out what the Sirian Tree Octopus was doing aboard the alien’s ship as it snuck around, which included siphoning off some of the dark matter to power its modifications to the systems. The aliens aren’t happy about having Fireflash aboard their ship, but since the Magus has already scanned most of it with Magesight they reluctantly let her get on with it.
Between their various researches and study of the Sirian wreckage, the smarter members of the team come to an alarming conclusion - the thing that came to Earth in the sixth pod was an experimental Sirian Warrior, a specially designed and self-improving biomechanoid supersoldier. It was supposed to be part of the last Sirian invasion.
GM: Oh F***, I’ve just realised - this is Invader Zim only competent.
The Magus OoC: Just lacking supplies.
Flux OoC: Have you seen this planet? That’s easily rectified.
GM: It’s the alien version of ‘Dude, You’re Screwed’.