[Slipstream] Mayhem on Cerebro-9!
For my second Slipstream (Savage Worlds RPG) one-shot on the 18th, we had two players who have also been in my Pirates game (as "Habib" and "Sir Ian") -- and we had Marshal Bravestarr and Professor Froschmeister as our heroes, with Astronaut Duke Jones and Android ALF-24 as their sidekicks, respectively. I just thought I'd share a few snapshots of the "action" from the game.
Asteroid Field Battle with Primals and Warbots:
For the start of the game, we had another gratuitous rocketship battle and chase, as the heroes were responding to a distress call from a research base on the planetoid Cerebro-9, which was under attack by the gorilla-like Primals and emotionless Warbots in service to the tyrant space-queen Anathraxa. We had a short but eventful battle where the heroes fought off enemy rocketships and sought refuge in a debris field in order to evade the torpedo-like Warbot drill-ships (which, if they reached the heroes' ship, would clamp onto the side and fill it with KILLER WARBOTS -- something best to be avoided). With skillful maneuvering by Duke Jones, a bit of a boost to the systems from Professor Froschmeister in engineering, computational assistance from ALF-24, and sharp marksmanship by Space Marshal Bravestarr, our heroes were able to defeat the Primals and Warbots, and make it through the debris field safely.
Radio Zombies of Planetoid Cerebro-9:
Queen Anathraxa, being evil, and an avid collector of ancient and forbidden alien technologies, is fond of equipping her minions with all sorts of devious special weaponry. One new ray that the Primals had been using in their assault on the research base was a Radio-Animation Ray that would fry anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the open, and then resurrect their dead forms as radio-zombies that would feast upon the living, driving further chaos into the ranks of the defenders. Our heroes, having landed on the planetoid, had to finish off these poor monsters and finally put them to rest, before they could get into the base. Professor Froschmeister was particularly helpful with his chemical expertise, as he quickly figured out the weakness of these creatures, and made "chemical cocktails" that dissolved their protoplasmic forms on contact.
Deserted Research Station:
After dealing with a surprise attack by a loading crane gone berserk, our heroes made their way into the station, finding signs of conflict, and chancing upon a Primal party that was trying to take over the station's central computers. Some unstable power packs made for an improvised explosive device chucked into the computer room just in time to catch the space-apes off guard. Unfortunately, the resulting explosion also fried the delicate computer systems, meaning that the heroes would be on their own to try to figure out what to do next.
Cerebrotron!
In the course of exploring the base, and finding the remains of its staff, the heroes pieced together that some rather shady experiments were going on here, and Cerebro-9 was chosen because of naturally-occurring Mento-Rays on the planetoid. (Yes, this is Slipstream, so we just make that sort of stuff up as we go.) After a crash of a Primal raider craft in the nearby debris field, and recovery of the vessel, the research head, Dr. Ubermensch, had started conducting experiments upon the comatose Primals. He had removed their brains from their bodies, putting them in suspension jars, and attached mechanisms to their bodies to keep them alive in the absence of the brains. In the course of his experimentation, Dr. Ubermensch seemed confident that he had discovered the "next step in evolution," and when there just weren't enough Primals to go around, started experimenting on his fellow researchers, programming the cargo crane on the main elevator to "discourage" any of his would-be subjects from leaving. The Primals and Warbots were there to retrieve their lost ship, and found evidence of tampering, assuming (correctly) that the nearby research base had something to do with it -- hence the attack that the heroes interrupted.
The trouble is, now that the heroes had arrived, Dr. Ubermensch was just trying to lead them in further, so that he could get more research subjects. One of his creations, "Cerebrotron" (a brain in a suspension-jar attached to a robot body) was intended to facilitate their capture.
Fortunately, our heroes did a spectacular job of blowing it up, real good.
Doctor Ubermensch and the Cryo-Drones:
Our heroes had a final showdown with Dr. Ubermensch, who had used his various "brain-enhancing" experiments to undergo a final transformation, his brain finally escaping the need to be housed within a "confining" body. Several station crew who had been placed in cryo-suspension tanks were brought out and turned into mindless drones by the Uber-Brain, used as fanatical bodyguards (leaping in the way of any incoming attacks). The Uber-Brain further complicated things by projecting mental illusions, creating the risk that anyone who attacked it would accidentally attack an ally (or himself!) instead, although ALF-24 the android was immune to such antics (and hence the primary target of the Uber-Brain's ire). Astronaut Duke Jones eventually figured out that the safest way to fight the Uber-Brain (once all the Cryo-Drones were neutralized) was to go mano-a-braino with his FISTS OF FURY, because if he was momentarily distracted by an illusion, he couldn't very well accidentally punch someone who was out of reach (whereas a mis-aimed gun could be quite dangerous to anyone even some distance away).
And so, yet again, evil is defeated with a good one-two punch to the cranium!
I can't say that it was a terribly deep story by any means, but I had a couple of great players and really got into the cheesy, pulpy "rocketships-and-rayguns" spirit of things, often coming up with quips and "William Shatner moments" to add to the mood. =D