Describe your last RPG session in more than 5 words.

[Golden Bee]

Emperor of Tomorrow
(Baron Korga created by Michael B. Lee. Opening influenced by Paul W-W Williams's The Muramasa Curse.)

From far and wide and light years away/
The one force of nature they call by name/
I came from tomorrow to take back today/
I am the future.

Winter. A cave in the Changbai Mountains. The adventurers had dealt with traps, puzzles and literal pitfalls, all to get the Disc of Sacred Memory. Four inches wide, trapped in the mouth of a carved stone dragon.

Luckily, Thaza O'Rourke was there. The expert cat burglar, along with her smuggler pal Ivo Kochev, replaced the disc with a bent shovelhead covered in wax paper. The acid spray was neutralized, at least temporarily, and detective JP Diamond was able to lift the portcullis. Freedom! For at least a few feet. Waiting on a ledge outside was Lieutenant General Tanaka and 25 of his best soldiers.

Chinese supremacist Xiao Yun embodied 4000 years of history. There was no way she was going to give the artifact to a Japanese officer. While she locked blades in furious anger, the rest of the group was more practical. Especially Ivo, who upon seeing the duel was at a standstill, snuck above and started an avalanche.

The group made their way down the mountain, some more gracefully than others. At the water’s edge was their old buddy “Typhoon” Mike McGinnity! The captain of the Salamander, wary of side effects of the memory stone, reminded them of their mission: as a symbol of cooperation between the Chinese Communists and the Russian ones, they had promised to liberate the artifact and bring it to Science City Four. (He noted that it had a reputation of being gorgeous, with a great dining scene, but was a holding ground for scientific kooks.)

At Nukeograd четыре, the group ran into their fellow Ziegler Security specialist Clara, and their liaison, Dr. Stern. Stern was a war veteran, and she had a theory: with the help of relived memories, Communism could learn from its greatest warriors and instructors at any time. And since the group was there, it would be her honor to show them her memories of the Russian Civil War. (The machine had a nasal uplink, because scent is so deeply tied to memory.)

The Battle of Kazan started normally. But none of the Russians knew that JP Diamond’s trips beyond the vale of tears had made him particularly potent against futuristic technology. The battlefield wasn't just Dr. Stern's memory; it soon became Verdūn.

The group fought to reenact the battle(s), struggling but eventually succeeding. But instead of going back to reality, the group found itself on the island of Borneo, which was half Appalachia. Clara and Thaza were subconsciously battling for control!

Xiao, whose mind was like a still pond, found herself on the deck of a tramp steamer. Nearby were Ivo and Naomi O'Rourke. Originally there to smuggle great apes, they saw a human woman on the skyline, and O'Rourke wanted her.

Elsewhere/nearby, JP followed Clara as she reenacted her harsh and hungry past. Unable to make tree bark stew, she turned to JP, desperate.

On the boat, Xiao used her focus to rewrite collective memory, helping Thaza and Ivo remember how they met. Memory successful.

JP, unable to calm down Clara, ordered his parrot to tear off her nose-connector. Clara pulled the plug: Experiment over.

Breathing hard, JP thought back to the memory. He recognized someone familiar in Kazan, who was nearly blown up but actually evacuated from the battle. Someone very close to him, indirectly… His fiancée's first love, Ulyana Demedov. If Stern's memory was accurate, she was alive!

The group politely snuck out of the city, and begin tracking down leads. The investigation was tough, because they only had a face and a military patch to go off of. The library wouldn’t help: It was time for a trip to the underworld.
***
Their first contact was Csaba the Smiler, Kingpin of Sochi. He had some information, and he would gladly share it with his "friend" Ivo: all they had to do was silence his neighbor's annoying yappy dog.

Although the group was split on how to do it (Ivo suggested “poison, dog flavored”), calmer heads prevailed.

The group led the dog astray. According to Xiao's medical training, Pancake the Pekingese had strep throat. They gave the dog to Ivo, the only one with both ‘a working understanding of the local language’ and ‘any money’ . He bought the medicine fine, and was coming around the corner when he heard a pistol leave its holster.

“Hello Mr. Kochek. Put the dog down. You and I are going to take a little trip to Geneva.”

Turns out being a smuggler wasn't all fun and games. Especially not to Maja Małgorzo, Inspector of the League of Nations police force!

Ivo put the dog down… and sprinted in the other direction! The inspector fired, which alerted the rest of the team, who effected a rescue, tripping up the detective with debris before pulling Ivo onto a nearby rooftop.

Pancake was fine.
***
The case continued across the Black Sea, eventually leading to Istanbul, and former ZSS member Prof. Hemet Hazoul. He pointed the players towards the malefactor behind everything, the urbane and charming Baron Korga! Not a charming aristocrat, he was actually a Hungarian mercenary who had profiteered off the Russian Civil War.

The group used that fact to their advantage, drawing his remaining soldiers off his private island and into a red Russian ambush.

The players faked their way onto the island and into Castle Korga. The trick nearly worked, until Ulyana got involved. Decades in Korga’s employ had divided her loyalties. She might’ve been convinced to leave peacefully, until she found out not only was her girlfriend alive… JP intended to marry her!

(Korga, ever a gentleman, had the servants move the table aside before engaging in gunplay.)

This battle did not go our heroes’ way. Ulyana, filled with rage, pinned JP to the floor. The Baron, strolling to cover, slashed a massive hole in Ivo. Thaza was busy with Korga’s second in command, and Xiao Yun was outnumbered by the Baron’s deathless automatons. It was time to retreat!

The group barely escaped with their lives, closing the portcullis, finding an old goat trail, and taking it down to the sea. Choking on gas, they had barely laid a scratch on their opponents. Who knew their identities.

Then again, any ambush on a remote island in the Aegean you can walk away from…

 

[Golden Bee]

Lion’s Pride, worldwide
“Hey Jasper,” said Ivo, surveying last night’s damage, “I have a molotov cocktail, may I just leave it in the cloakroom?”

A good kid sidekick is a dangerous thing (as you’ll see at the end of this adventure). This time, ‘Big Bucks’ Devika Velyapur was joined by her staff, detective JP Diamond, advertiser/brawler Bonnie Tuttle, and smuggler Ivan “Ivo” Kochev. The group was in the Motor City, checking in on a paramour of Bonnie’s, Jasper Crocus (last seen in Château of the Colossus). He owned a jazz club in the heavily redlined Black Bottom neighborhood, and some recent mysterious deaths were being blamed on African Americans in aggregate.

In fact, the club was firebombed by the Black Legion (who in this case were an anti-black legion of white people).

The ZSS, in this configuration, is a well-oiled mystery-solving machine. But as they dug up dirt on the black and white sides of town, the puzzle pieces didn't fit together. Allegedly, a one-eyed red devil called the Nain Rouge was terrorizing white transgressors. And there were a lot of transgressors; the local Klan was not hurting for membership. But was it an actual mystical devil, or a vigilante? And what did the ‘Lion Cleaning Service’ have to do with it?

(Unlike the adults, Devi saw plenty of time to have fun while solving crimes. A fact-finding mission to the local roller rink was a perfect opportunity to find leads, by showing up the best skater in the place. The fact the skater was the daughter of an important local figure was part of Devi’s methodology, not just a lucky coincidence. And the trip to the newspaper to place ads and borrow fabric samples? That was… a chance to talk to the crime reporters. And of course, there’s no better place to talk to witnesses than the best soul food restaurants in town. Hurray for expense accounts!)

The investigators got the better of the hooded klowns, and finally got the drop on the Nain Rouge. Bonnie, instead of chasing the fleeing figure, decided to taunt him. She wove together carney insults, case facts, and some choice swear words until he all but led the players back to Jasper‘s jazz club.

Turns out Nain was Jasper's cousin, a mechanical engineer who had made a variety of powerful technological weapons. The group was willing to cover for him protecting the block, but JP saw terrible things in the Great War, and despite Devi’s protestations, smashed all the equipment. Bad news for Big Bucks. It was one thing for the group to disagree. But it made the girl furious to have an employee defy her in front of a paying client.

The case continued, with the out-of-towners learning the lion kult was holed up in the world's largest Masonic Lodge. Since none of their colleagues spoke French, Devi and JP were able to argue during an elevator ride.

“I think, Miss Velyapur, I saw some things in the war that you simply can't fathom.”
“You know what I saw? It was my name cosigning for your house.”

Before the argument could go any further, the elevator opened. The heads of the konspiracy were trying to pull a lion from the Gardens of Paradise into Detroit. Bonnie took names and not prisoners, smashing through the hooded Legionaires. JP absorbed a burst of machine gun fire to little effect, barely bleeding due to his deathless physiology. This rattled the main Heavy, especially when Ivo convinced him that magic had made everyone in the group bulletproof!

Normally, kid mystic Devika would use her psychic powers and melt the brains of the conspirators. But they seemed mystically attuned and effortlessly powerful. so she looked through the dimensional portal… and mentally dominated the lion! Being a creature of paradise, it was happy to comply… But its mood turned when it went from mythology to Motown. Freed from Eden, the lion resorted to its base nature… turning the villainous racists into kuisine.

Their opposition defeated, the group tabled its intrapersonal drama and came up with a childlike plan. Leave the lion in the room, lock the door, and use their press contacts to blame everything on the dead racists. Some things require an international detective agency. Some are really more a job for Animal Control.

 

[Golden Bee]

In the Year 2000 / Saint Andre’s Fire (based on A Matter of Trust)^
Captain Ivanova smirked. “I’m going to put your name on a stone, with today as one of the numbers.”

In the first part of today’s session, the players found a portal to the future in the tomb of Konshu from the Uncanny Curse of Sekhmet. They stumbled into Sky City Seven, a retro-futuristic paradise. But tinpot tyrants are the same anywhen, and this one (Dr. Heliopolis) fell to the savage insults of Captain Ivanova and the angry sword of Xiao Yun. Too bad nobody used their pistol: it would've been a blast from the past.

***
Back in 1935, Devi was peeved about the disobedience in Detroit. So she sent JP two "helpful" assistants: Thaza O'Rourke and the Yale Navy man, Duke Van Der Pol. But they turned out to be perfect complements. Duke used his charm to find a client, Phillipe St Andre. Thaza rifled through Phillipe’s coat, discovering that he had deep gambling debts. With some more ‘digging’, they found out that he didn't really want his wife rescued: he wanted credible witnesses to say she was a junkie, so he could cut her off from her own Trust! Josiah Patrick Diamond was an ace investigator, easily chasing down each lead. but when it came time to dole out the dollars or get polite introductions, Duke was the one who could do it.

Of course, the square-jawed Yalie needed to be reminded that while he could buy drinks for everyone in a dive bar, it was a great way to have his face remembered. and subtly was the friend of an investigator.

The trail for St. Andre’s wife soon crossed paths with a human trafficker known as the Dauphin. The nocturnal playboy loved women, especially ones with track marks. And while he was naturally suspicious, Thaza’s stealth skills kept the group from being discovered. Instead of being found, they found something distressing: a freshly buried body outside the Dauphin’s mansion. The grave was a useful place to hide though, as Phillipe arrived… picking up his wife and paying off the trafficker!

Our heroic trio followed their client back to his place, snuck in, and confronted him in the kitchen. JP and Thaza, not wanting to combine trespassing and criminal threat, cut carrots very thinly as a means of intimidation. It worked.They got Mme St. Andre to the hospital, and pulled favors in the police department to get the Dauphin’s yard exhumed. But they didn't find one body. They found dozens. Some relatively fresh, some going back decades. Enough corpses to turn their frenemy police sergeant Bart into a bona fide pal.

With that, they had the pull to get Philippe arrested. Case complete! They threw a celebration dinner at their local orphanage. (Loyal readers will remember that this is Devi/Ava's place, the Astor House for Sunkissed Girls.)

After the orphans’ bedtime, the trio headed to the great hall for cognac and repartee. Sadly, before they could get properly soused, their doorway was darkened by the Dauphin! He was out for blood, literally. The predator was preternaturally fast, nearly opening Thaza’s veins before JP lured him into the kitchen. Duke, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, instead found the silver knives and began flinging them. The drunken ferocity of the investigators was more than the leech could take. He tried turning into gaseous form… but was slain when trapped in a jar of garlic.

All this to say: it is wise to have clients pay you in advance.

^Possible authors: John “Night Rain” Goff, Shane “the Hack” Hensley, Clint “Fade to” Black, Sean “Pistol Whip” Preston

 

[John Dallman]

AD&D1.2e, Avalon campaign:

Player back after heart surgery.

Triple bypass surgery on Tuesday morning. Listening to the Discord+Roll 20 session today. That's dedication!