Finally returning to our Champions campaign recap (before talking about something else completely different - I've got gamer ADD, get over it), we find the heroes, both PC and NPC alike, summoned, organized and positioned by lab-research-scientist-suddenly-turned-emergency-operations-field-leader Professor N (Ray), ready to receive a glowing, green extradimensional entity who is just now heading for a less-then-graceful crash landing into a Sunday School in Arkansas.
As noted, our semiconscious, unintended guest was not alone as he careened toward the innocent edifice. A gaggle of salmon-pink imp creatures, surrounded by sparks and crackles of similarly hued energy, chased him or clung to his form.
As he burst into our dimension and zoomed through the clouds on a rapid collision course with Sister Nadine and her young charges, Professor N had NPC hero The Messenger, local hero and evangelist, direct everyone in the school to safety and personally fly stragglers out of the building (such as a janitor and a school bus driver getting coffee).
Using his teleportation powers, 'anti-grav walking' and 'Nth Blade' (he has the ability to extend a blade shaped area of N-Space out from a piece of debris that was part of the experiment that gave him his powers - whew!), Professor N appeared in the air high above the crowd of heroes in an attempt to attack the creatures clinging to and pursuing the mysterious interdimensional entity. The being and the small creeps attached to him past by the Professor too fast for him to get a good shot at them but he was able to fend off two others that were in pursuit.
Arcane (Lee), managed to alter the gravity in the area to slow the entity's descent, while simultaneously creating a spatial warp/distortion designed to hurl the imps back into the air. Silver Sun (Dave) flew into the air and went after the imps all up close and personal, hitting one of them so hard with a move through that he sent it back to its home dimension (or the dimension it most recently came from a least). True to form, Dave played the wide-eyed young hero as pretty impressed with himself.
"Did you guys see that? I punched a guy so hard he went to another dimension! Damn, that was cool."
Eventually, the combination of Professor N's Nth Blade, Arcane's gravity/space manipulation and Silver Sun's solar powered beat downs got rid of the imp-like invaders. They disappeared back into the flotsam and jetsam of quantum reality and alternate universes. Nice.
Messenger, having taken care of the civilians, flew back and actually caught the emerald entity with the help of Arcane and NPC mystic Lady Sapphire.
The entity, finally identified as The Wanderer, is a member of a group of cosmic beings known collectively as The Extrastentials. They include but are not limited to: The Wanderer, The Examiner, The Warlord, The Architect (sometimes called The Builder) and The Dreamer. These individuals are similar in scope to Marvel's Galactus, Watcher, Shaper of Worlds and Elders of the Universe
or DC's Endless (Death, Dream, Destiny, etc.).
The Wanderer explains (in a sort of riddle filled, hippie-speak) that the other entity the heroes originally detected (and which he, The Wanderer, attempted to intercept) is none other than Ishtara Dys'Dayn* (the latter part pronounced as 'Disdain'), the self-proclaimed 'Empress of a Billion Dimensions', a reality invading villainess who's tried to conquer this Earth's dimension on several occasions. Apparently she is searching for the villain Dark Seraph*, who was trapped in The Abyss by the heroes of Project: UNITY approximately two years ago (give or take).
Dark Seraph is bad, bad news himself, a fallen angel bent on conquering Heaven, Hell and Earth. It seems that Dys'Dayn, learning of Dark Seraph and his boundless hate and ambition, has become completely enamoured with him. She believes herself to be in love with (or at least in lust and intrigued by) him and seeks to free him from his imprisonment in the Abyss and make him her Emperor.
Not. Good.
More to come,
AD
Barking Alien
*Several of the classic villains of the Champions RPG 'canon' appear in this campaign but significantly altered or retconned. Dark Seraph is very different from his traditional appearance and write up in the Champions villain books. Likewise Ishtara Dys'Dayn was heavily inspired by Istvatha V'Han but is certainly not the exact same character.
I'm glad you've found an interesting way to use the Empress. I've always figured that with a billion worlds she wouldn't be interested in infiltration type efforts - if she took an interest in earth it would be Zentraefi-level invasion time. You've found a way to involve her without that, which is very nice.
ReplyDeleteIn my mind (and in the story/game), she is essentially bored to (near-literally) death with the endless plundering and conquering of infinite parallel realities. It's sort of lost its thrill and its meaning.
ReplyDeleteIn (our campaign's version of) Dark Seraph, she sees something she has never seen before - A being who originated in one of the parallel Earth dimensions (although technically he originated in our Earth's Heaven and not on the planet itself) but with no apparent alternate selves, who is her equal. She is at first attracted by the sheer novelty of him. On further investigation she finds him to be powerful, noble (in a twisted way), ridiculously ambitious and more than a tad frightening.
See, chicks always fall for the bad boy.