Players receive a text message from Busybody: “New mission from Marrowmar – meet 7 PM @Starbucks in shopping ctr where Acme is.”
The team arrives before Morumbar and has a few minutes to chat.
BB: “I’m back to being able to divide into my other mes again. My husband is really happy about it.”
Vinny: “Because all those extra hands are really useful around the house?”
BB: <Blushes> “Um… yeah, could be that, too…” <looks away>
Morumbar arrives, along with a tall woman dressed in white and glowing softly. He introduces her as his teammate Lumina.
Lumina starts: “We ran a wide search for references to the term ‘Deus Rex’ you reported hearing from those nuns you fought. Public sources and the dark web didn’t turn up anything, but we did find a single off-hand reference in a subscription-only scholarly journal. The term came up in a 2015 analysis of some documents found in an archeological dig on the island of Sicily about 40 years ago.”
“We contacted the researcher who’d written the paper. She said she’d seen the term mentioned in a number of documents from around the northern Mediterranean region dating back 300 to 600 years. It referred to a rumored group inside of the Roman Catholic Church, dedicated to the idea that their God was also supposed to be the literal king of the world – the king’s wishes to be defined and carried out by themselves, of course – and that their duty was to enforce his will by any means necessary, even if it meant delving into dark magics and pagan rituals that the rest of the church found taboo. Basically an end-justify-the-means sub-cult. But it was never taken seriously by scholars, because even the few pieces of writing they had about it all dismissed it as a silly legend – a medieval conspiracy theory, if you will.”
Mor: “Now bear with us because this will seem like a tangent at first, but there’s reason to suspect a connection between these events. Six weeks ago, according to statements he made in his more coherent moments during his hospital stay, a dredge operator on the C&D canal noticed as he came ashore at the end of his shift an unusual item in his spoils pile. He investigated and found what appeared to be a native American ceremonial headdress, intricate and perfectly preserved in spite of just having been pulled up from the silt at the bottom of the canal. Probably an artifact of the Lenni-Lenape tribe who used to roam this region.”
“The next day a neighbor heard screaming and found the man writhing in agony on the floor in front of his bathroom mirror with the discarded headdress next to him. He had simply tried it on. He was rushed to the hospital where doctors were baffled for several days, ordering every medical test they could think of to find out what was wrong. A DNA swab produced indeterminate results that would normally be associated with a contaminated sample, so they tried again. And again. And again. Contamination every time, but also different results each time. They brought in a specialist who’d developed a new, pinpoint-accuracy DNA test and discovered that his genetic code was going through a process of rewriting itself over and over.”
Lumina: “The night after their discovery, he apparently got up and exited his room by way of the third story window he shattered on his way out. His whereabouts remain unknown, but interestingly enough the ICU nurses recalled a single visitor who came to see him before he vanished: his pastor, one Charles Coughlin. Mister Coughlin was later seen by neighbors visiting the man’s apartment to “bring a change of clothes to the hospital for him”. Paramedics who’d shown up on the scene later said they’d noticed the headdress on the floor and left it there… but it’s gone now.”
“So we have a missing relic of some unknown unknown power, a missing priest with ties to a mythical organization that would be expected to covet such items, and whose daughter recently tried to sell something referred to as “the object” to the highest bidder, probably against her father’s wishes.”
Mor: “And now we come to yesterday’s events. When Parks & Rec employees showed up to ride the ferry out to Fort Delaware, they found it sunk in its moorings. Boats on a course toward Peapatch Island started experiencing hull ruptures and taking on water – Coast Guard rescue teams had a busy day.”
“Satellite photos of the island show it has been occupied by a force of armed individuals – armed with tridents, that is, so we assume them to be Atlanteans from one of the many factions of that realm’s survivors. There’s also a single boat docked at the island… registered to,you guessed it, Stephen Coughlin. Our working theory is that Coughlin is in possession of the relic and is either attempting to sell it to the Atlanteans, or has worked out a deal for them to help him find out how to use it. The latter would make sense because many Atlanteans practice a form of animistic magic similar to what the tribal shamans native to this area might have used in their time.”
Lumina: “The military is monitoring the situation – after all, a hostile foreign force is currently occupying US territory – but naturally they want to avoid calling attention to the problem by dropping bombs on a national monument.”
“This is where we come in. The rest of our team is overseas dealing with the latest plot from Captain Generica’s nemesis, The Crimson Cranium, so Morand I were instructed to gather the local talent – that’s you –and try to recover the item. It’s hoped that if the headdress is recovered, the Atlanteans will have no valid reason to continue holding the fort and will simply swim home.”
Mor: “There’s a significant Atlantean military presence on the island, so Lumina and I will provide a distraction by attacking the garrison at the docks on the south side. Hopefully it will draw most of the them away from the fort and since we can fly and Atlanteans typically can’t, we’ll try to get them bogged down chasing us across the, er, bog.”
“We’ve borrowed a chopper which should have sufficient stealth capability“ – <pulls out a key fob, presses a button, and with a “bleep-BLEEP!” a black copter appears on the grassy area nearby> – “to get you there undetected under cover of night.” (Looks pointedly at Aria) “No, you can’t keep the copter after we’re done. Your task will be to penetrate the fortress by way of a small culvert along the northern side as marked on this map. It turns out the fort was the site of the first flush toilet in a government building in the US, and the plumbing for it was… overbuilt. There’s room enough to walk single-file at a crouch all the way into the fort. Don’t worry, the toilet was removed in the 1920s and the bars blocking the culvert entrance are rusted out and have been scheduled for replacement – pending adequate funding – since 1978.”
“Penetrate the fortress. Find and acquire the headdress as quickly and with as little confrontation as possible. Then get back to chopper and get out – there’s a communicator on board you can use to signal us to let us know you’re out.”
<Lumina starts eating a special brownie she needs for her powers to work…>
“Oh, and please don’t be stupid enough to put the headdress on…”
<Let characters decide on the map where to land – probably near the culvert entrance. When they’re near a body of water a 6-man Atlantean patrol will rise up and attack them. These need to be defeated quickly & not shown where the entrance is that the team is looking for. If any of this patrol get away, Warlord Gyrus and a full team of soldiers will be watching & waiting to ambush the players when they reach the fort.>
<Going through tunnel takes PCs to the main floor of the office building on the north side of the fort. From there they can see 4 Nunjas up on the opposite stone building guarding a magical ritual in progress near the cannon emplacements. Coughlin in priest vestments and wearing headdress is levitated a few feet of the ground in the center of a circle formed by 3 Sea Magi and 3 Crosserors, all in the process of spellcasting with hands and eyes glowing and a waviness to the air inside the circle. (mages’ shields are all up and 1 charge used). Coughlin is surrounded by a shield the players won’t be able to penetrate for now.>
<Below is a crude map of the layout where the final battle will take place. C = Coughlin, M = Sea (M)age, S = Cro(s)seror, A = Atlantean. Note: During gameplay I decided to add a Nunja paired with each Atlantean soldier because it seemed like the team could handle it.>
<Warlord Gyrus will show up behind characters once fighting is started. Add more Atlanteans with him as necessary depending on characters’ state at the time.
Mages will not fight no matter what until the ritual is finished or interrupted. Eliminating one of each type of mage will break up the ritual, at which point Coughlin will fall to the ground (still inside his force field). “The bonding is not complete – but close enough! I need time to recover and learn.” Flies away.
Magi can now join battle albeit at 1/3 power and with few spells ready.
On 4th round of fight after Coughlin flees, Mor & Lum show up to help – Atlanteans abandoned the island when they saw the headdress wearer fly away. They’re tattered, at 1/3 power and 2/3 health, but will still assist.>
Aftermath:
Mor says he’s now more than willing to sponsor them for registration. Lumina agrees, and also invites them to officially join the MP auxiliary corps – means they get paid a small monthly stipend to be on call, and could be asked to join in for missions along other parts of ECP’s territory.
Vinny: “Woohoo! So we’re like the B-list Mighty Protectors now!”
Lumina: “Actually the ECP is sort of the B list in comparison to the original group out of Chicago. Then there’s the specialists we keep on staff for special assignments – you know, your dimension travelers, your oracles, that sort of thing – they’d be the “C” list. So to be fair, you’re probably at “D” level.
Vinny: “D List is still a list! I’ll take it! We’re the D-Listers!”
Notes
This scenario was fun to set up because it pulled in a lot of local sites and history… right down to the bit about the first flush toilet in a government building. My brother-in-law has done historical restoration work at the fort and has actually crawled around in the drainage system that said toilet would have flushed into. There’s no escape tunnel leading under the moat and out to the river, of course. (He also did repair work on the cannons there, discovering that one of them was a model that was believed not to even exist anymore. Then there was the time my family accidentally almost hit the ferry with a shot fired from a Civil War era mortar…)
The inspiration for the native headdress dredged up from the canal is also from my own experience. The spoils piles of soil and other material from the dredging of the canal are dumped in a big field at a state park where fossil enthusiasts can comb through them and find the well-preserved pointy ends of squid-like creatures called belemnites in large quantities, along with some assorted shellfish and other oddities. Once on a fossil-gathering expedition I found instead a stone arrowhead, presumably from a member of one of the many tribes who apparently used to trade up and down this coast.
The Crosserors and Sea Mages were essentially partially-developed 100-point characters, with a small set of powers that were lightly modified versions of the spell book powers described in one of BK Adams’ Arsenal tutorials.
How It Played Out
Velocimancer‘s superior Saurid running speed saved the day when one of the Atlantean patrol tried to run for it.
I don’t know what Atlanteans are supposed to look like in the MP universe, so I allowed that they were human-like enough that Circe‘s shape-shifting, combined with a uniform taken from one of the patrollers, would allow her to look enough like a woman among the defeated patrol that she could pass as her from a distance. While Vinny and the other PCs snuck around behind the side building on the overhead shot above, Circe ran out of the office building entrance and called to the guards around Coughlin, “They’re coming up from under the building! We need help!” A randomly-picked leader among them failed an intelligence save and sent half his contingent down into the office building where Circe and the Busybodies kept them busy.
The rest of the team was able to quickly take down the diminished resistance up on the battlements, and Gyrus’ arrival did little to turn the tide.
Lessons Learned
Realized too late, but learned nonetheless: Non-Atlantean player characters probably shouldn’t be able to speak unaccented Atlantean…