Tales from the Table: Brisbane Knights, part 5
A Plan is Formed & Staking out the Gala
The team gets together, pleasentries are shared & the team decides to split up the team in to two fronts, to stake out the Gala at the Brisbane Museum. The Owl & Gecko will go in their civilian identites, since they both have civilain identities that have a reason to be there. Liam (Omni) as a representative of Matthew Chance (who sadly could not make it) was invited to the gala, and Amy Drew (The Gecko) attended as his plus one.
Meanwhile The Owl, Aqua & the Blue Recluse took up spotters positions, around the building.
The plan, if you could call it a plan, was simply to stake out the event & hopefully spot the Felonious Five before they can act.
The Felonious Five Make their Play
An hour in to the Gala, the Five make their move, when the Blue Recluse who has snuck in to the security booth notices Mammoth, the fives resident power house & Gear the fives resident gadgetter trying to gain entry by the service entrance alone on the CCTV.
Ready to rumble The Owl & Aqua decide to engage, while everyone else stays put. The Mammoth & Gear make entry & the Blue Recluse is directing them to their location via the monitors, only to have them show up at where they should be, only to not find them. Somehow they've spoofed the video.
GM's Notes: Actually they didn't spoof the video, they spoofed the minds of everyone looking at that area with a mental illusion courtest of Echo, the Fives mentalist.
Meanwhile in the main event room, where the artifacts are on show, The Five make their move. They've been hiding under a mental illusion the entire time, moving in to position. Mammoth grabs the Mantle, hidden under an illusion, but it still trips the silent alarm, which the Blue Recluse is monitoring.
No longer trusting what he see's, but trusting the alarm sensor more than the videos, he tells the team that it's going down right now & Aqua & The Owl rush to the main event room.
Echo drops the illusion when she realises the plan has been rumbled already, revealing the entie Five.
Aura:
Echo:
Mammoth:
Gear:
Wraith:
Echo, having dropped the mental projection that had everyone see them as guests & covered their attempt to steal the Mantle of Bronze, swapped to a low level mind control blanketing field, causing everyone at the gala to fly in to a rage, trying to kill each other, with knives & broken chair legs, it's pure anarky & people are going to die.
Luckily none of the PC's were affected, it being much to low a level affect to effect them.
A Choice is Made & Living with the Consequences
The Vanguard now has a choice, try to stop the Five from stealing the artifact, or protect the people at the gala. They try to split the difference, which turned out to be the wrong choice. Aqua using her Aquakinesis, tries to put up a barrier to stop Mammoth from escaping with the artifact.
The fight goes poorly, with the Five being able to walk all over the PC's, since unlike the PC's their focus isn't split. Mammoth & Aura punch right through Aquas water wall with a combination of pure strength & extreme directed blasts of air, and she takes a hit from Wraith, who ghosted up behind her. So the PC's wisely change objective at Omni's command & decide to shift focus to protecting the civilians from each other, letting the Five Escape.
Between Aqua putting up water walls, Omni's raw strength, The Owls capture cables, combined with Gecko's & Blue Recluses combat prowess, they manage to mitigate any major injuries until Echo is far enough away, that her mind control powers suddenly lapse, leaving all the civilains wondering what the hell happened.
The Dive
Discouraged by their loss to the Five & the loss of the Mantle of Bronze & still with no clear idea why it was stolen, or for whom, but now certain that it was stolen for someone, they decide to shake down a slimy criminal fence by the name of James Quinn, a dealer in stolen antiquities.
And the Owl knows exactly where he'll be, this time of night. At "The Dive", a sleazy, riverside bar, frequented by the mundane criminal fraternity.
So the team goes in through the front door of the dive, suddenly the room goes quite, all eye's on the superheroes standing in the door. The Owl steps forward, "I'm going to ask once, where's James Quinn?"
All eyes, turn to a booth in the back.... Where a slimy individual, with slick black greasy hair, from to much product sits, drinking with associates.
"James Quinn, we would have a word with you."
You could cut the tension with a knife
"I won't ask again James"
That's when one of the punters chooses to hit Omni over the head with a pool cue, which snaps over his invulnerable head, not even phasing him. The guy realises he's done fucked up, looks at Omni, Omni looks back at him & then with a single finger flicks the guy across the room.
Suddenly the criminal scum of Brisbane are grabbing any weapons they can find, a fight is clearly about to begin & that's when i as the GM tap the Owls "Legacy of the Owl" complication, meaning that as the vigilante hero of Brisbane, who the criminal superstition is rooted in must fight this fight alone, lest he lose face.
The next 6 rounds of combat, are some of the most brutal rounds of combat i have ever seen in an M&M game... Just, bone shatteringly, unrelentless. Chaining together actions, thanks to two ranks in the takedown attack advantage & some very creative play, it ended up looking like one of those combat chains out of the Arkham Asylum series.
At the end of it, the only guy left standing is James, who tried to make for a back door to escape, only to have The Owl pin him to a wall with one of his Owl-Flachettes (think batarang, but owl shapped).
"So James, time to tell me whose in the market for the Ebon Armatice & the Mantle of Bronze, unless you want me to take you down town & hang you from the top of a tall building."
James, nearly terrified beyond words, admits that a business man, a successful day trader by the name of Sebastian Coal was asking around, trying to find out if someone could percure the items, no questions asked, maybe he's involved. But James doesn't know why he wants them, other than the fact Sebastian is a collector of ancient antiquities, especially those from the medieval period of English & French history.
The Vanguard left The Dive, looking up Sebastian Coal information on the Owl-Computers illegal backdoor in to the Federal Polices database. And over they speed in the dark of the night, to go ask Sebastian Coal some pressing questions.
The team gets together, pleasentries are shared & the team decides to split up the team in to two fronts, to stake out the Gala at the Brisbane Museum. The Owl & Gecko will go in their civilian identites, since they both have civilain identities that have a reason to be there. Liam (Omni) as a representative of Matthew Chance (who sadly could not make it) was invited to the gala, and Amy Drew (The Gecko) attended as his plus one.
Meanwhile The Owl, Aqua & the Blue Recluse took up spotters positions, around the building.
The plan, if you could call it a plan, was simply to stake out the event & hopefully spot the Felonious Five before they can act.
The Felonious Five Make their Play
An hour in to the Gala, the Five make their move, when the Blue Recluse who has snuck in to the security booth notices Mammoth, the fives resident power house & Gear the fives resident gadgetter trying to gain entry by the service entrance alone on the CCTV.
Ready to rumble The Owl & Aqua decide to engage, while everyone else stays put. The Mammoth & Gear make entry & the Blue Recluse is directing them to their location via the monitors, only to have them show up at where they should be, only to not find them. Somehow they've spoofed the video.
GM's Notes: Actually they didn't spoof the video, they spoofed the minds of everyone looking at that area with a mental illusion courtest of Echo, the Fives mentalist.
Meanwhile in the main event room, where the artifacts are on show, The Five make their move. They've been hiding under a mental illusion the entire time, moving in to position. Mammoth grabs the Mantle, hidden under an illusion, but it still trips the silent alarm, which the Blue Recluse is monitoring.
No longer trusting what he see's, but trusting the alarm sensor more than the videos, he tells the team that it's going down right now & Aqua & The Owl rush to the main event room.
Echo drops the illusion when she realises the plan has been rumbled already, revealing the entie Five.
Aura:
Echo:
Mammoth:
Gear:
Wraith:
Echo, having dropped the mental projection that had everyone see them as guests & covered their attempt to steal the Mantle of Bronze, swapped to a low level mind control blanketing field, causing everyone at the gala to fly in to a rage, trying to kill each other, with knives & broken chair legs, it's pure anarky & people are going to die.
Luckily none of the PC's were affected, it being much to low a level affect to effect them.
A Choice is Made & Living with the Consequences
The Vanguard now has a choice, try to stop the Five from stealing the artifact, or protect the people at the gala. They try to split the difference, which turned out to be the wrong choice. Aqua using her Aquakinesis, tries to put up a barrier to stop Mammoth from escaping with the artifact.
The fight goes poorly, with the Five being able to walk all over the PC's, since unlike the PC's their focus isn't split. Mammoth & Aura punch right through Aquas water wall with a combination of pure strength & extreme directed blasts of air, and she takes a hit from Wraith, who ghosted up behind her. So the PC's wisely change objective at Omni's command & decide to shift focus to protecting the civilians from each other, letting the Five Escape.
Between Aqua putting up water walls, Omni's raw strength, The Owls capture cables, combined with Gecko's & Blue Recluses combat prowess, they manage to mitigate any major injuries until Echo is far enough away, that her mind control powers suddenly lapse, leaving all the civilains wondering what the hell happened.
The Dive
Discouraged by their loss to the Five & the loss of the Mantle of Bronze & still with no clear idea why it was stolen, or for whom, but now certain that it was stolen for someone, they decide to shake down a slimy criminal fence by the name of James Quinn, a dealer in stolen antiquities.
And the Owl knows exactly where he'll be, this time of night. At "The Dive", a sleazy, riverside bar, frequented by the mundane criminal fraternity.
So the team goes in through the front door of the dive, suddenly the room goes quite, all eye's on the superheroes standing in the door. The Owl steps forward, "I'm going to ask once, where's James Quinn?"
All eyes, turn to a booth in the back.... Where a slimy individual, with slick black greasy hair, from to much product sits, drinking with associates.
"James Quinn, we would have a word with you."
You could cut the tension with a knife
"I won't ask again James"
That's when one of the punters chooses to hit Omni over the head with a pool cue, which snaps over his invulnerable head, not even phasing him. The guy realises he's done fucked up, looks at Omni, Omni looks back at him & then with a single finger flicks the guy across the room.
Suddenly the criminal scum of Brisbane are grabbing any weapons they can find, a fight is clearly about to begin & that's when i as the GM tap the Owls "Legacy of the Owl" complication, meaning that as the vigilante hero of Brisbane, who the criminal superstition is rooted in must fight this fight alone, lest he lose face.
The next 6 rounds of combat, are some of the most brutal rounds of combat i have ever seen in an M&M game... Just, bone shatteringly, unrelentless. Chaining together actions, thanks to two ranks in the takedown attack advantage & some very creative play, it ended up looking like one of those combat chains out of the Arkham Asylum series.
At the end of it, the only guy left standing is James, who tried to make for a back door to escape, only to have The Owl pin him to a wall with one of his Owl-Flachettes (think batarang, but owl shapped).
"So James, time to tell me whose in the market for the Ebon Armatice & the Mantle of Bronze, unless you want me to take you down town & hang you from the top of a tall building."
James, nearly terrified beyond words, admits that a business man, a successful day trader by the name of Sebastian Coal was asking around, trying to find out if someone could percure the items, no questions asked, maybe he's involved. But James doesn't know why he wants them, other than the fact Sebastian is a collector of ancient antiquities, especially those from the medieval period of English & French history.
The Vanguard left The Dive, looking up Sebastian Coal information on the Owl-Computers illegal backdoor in to the Federal Polices database. And over they speed in the dark of the night, to go ask Sebastian Coal some pressing questions.