Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="anonystu" data-source="post: 954292" data-attributes="member: 10897">IRON DM Summer 2003 - Round 1 - anonystuIngredients:sacrificial alter (using the initial misspelling)pleasant villainsane mentor claustrophobic mind flayersinking ship empty chestCustody Battles: a d20 modern adventure for characters of low-mid level.Summary: When two married agents' relationship hits the skids, who gets to keep the kid mind flayers?Briefing:The PC's are briefed by their usual Department-7 contact. They are briefed about Mariana and Jamison D'Essis, a married couple in Miami,Florida. Both work for D7:  Jamison as an ops team leader, and Mariana as one of our research specialists, having done major work in trying to reform the illithid population through genetic and behaviorial therapy. Their beach house villa conceals Mariana's lab, where she does her work for us. Last night, that lab was attacked by as yet unknown forces using psionics: Mariana had her mind damaged in the attack, and her lab was ransacked, her subjects stolen. Police came by shortly after, and Mariana was taken off to the psychiatric ward of the local hospital for safe keeping. Jamison has requested a team to free her from the ward, so he can get to the bottom of who attacked his wife. End official story. The next part is considered black : our very high ranking agents (which includes Mariana, but not Jamison), have mental protections on them to prevent critical data from getting out: one of these scrambles a person's mental functions, and transports them to a safe place if they are psionically threatened. Also, along with this, we've noticed a very suspicious string of transactions coming in and out of an offshore account Jamison was hiding: we think he's most likely compromised. Your mission is to free Mariana, protect her from whatever forces are at work, find those forces, and recover the subjects.Overview:The PC's then proceed to attempt to free Mariana from the hospital. The plan given is that they are not to recover Mariana, but rather are to make a switch, giving the recovery van a clone, while they recover to an alternate point  the real Mariana. If the PC's follow up what happens to the clone Mariana, the van is hijacked by thugs: following them leads to a safe house. Waiting this out leads to an agent  from (insert overarching real evil organization from your campaign(OREO)) attempting to unscramble Mariana, and realizing the switch. Interrogating the thugs discovers that some of them worked on the attack: they locked the subjects in lead chests, and transferred them onto a ship. All those lead chests are here, and empty.If the PC's do not follow what happens to the clone, they can proceed back to the Villa, both to gather evidence of what happened, explore her labs, and try and figure out what Jamison is up to. Mariana's mind (if the PC's successfully got her to the secondary dropoff) is soon unscrambled by D7, and by phone tells the PC's: she activated the mind scrambling procedure herself to avoid interrogation by her husband. She helps them recover (hopefully without Jamison noticing) evidence (hidden surveillance tapes) of what happened. If the PC's don't confront Jamison (who will at first, protest innonence, but will soon give up the facade), he will confront them when he gets word that that the Mariana rescued was a clone. Through his revealing (cackling laughter optional), or the information from the safe house, the master plan is revealed: illithids who have been genetically altered towards good tend to be the opposite in many respects: one being that instead of thriving in caves and undergrounds, they are in fact quite claustrophobic: exposure to severe claustrophobia can drive them insane, and set their psionic powers wild. Some of the illithids are currently stored aboard a cruise ship (that has various important people), already driven insane from their confined time in the chests. When the signal arrives, they will be let loose from their holding area, and will drive both the guests, and the crew of the ship insane: the ship will be lost to what appears to be a crash.The PC's, after defeating Jamison, or if he more likely escapes, or coming from the safe house, high tail it to the cruise ship (where Mariana joins them). OREO has noted that it's mission may have been compromised, and so has already let them loose: the PC's, inserted by helicopter, must fight a desperate running battle, trying to stop the ship before it runs aground and starts to sink (which is likely to happen unless the PC's are skilled sailors), protect the guests that already have been infected, find the traitors (and they or Mariana fight Jamison), and subdue the illithids if possible (Mariana is quite insistent that they could be reformed, and so protests at any use of lethal force), all the while avoiding the insane illithids (who wander randomly, constantly mind blasting in random directions, and sucking brains if they're nearby). In the end though, they notice that many of the mind flayers are still unaccounted for...NPC quick hits:Mariana: 47, Allegiances: Department-7, her mind flayers, her husband.Personality: tender, determined, unbridled rage at her husbandJamison: 52, Allegiances: self-preservation, money, OREO. Personality: charismatic, unflappable, unbridled mirth at his deceived wife Ingredients recap:sacrificial alter (Mariana scrambling her brain)pleasant villa (Mariana and Jamison's house/lab)insane mentor (Mariana's been the mentor and teacher to the...)claustrophobic mind flayer(s) (stolen and being used as weapons on the...)sinking ship (where the climax takes place)empty chest(s) (the evidence in the safehouse that reveals the plot)Random Notes:Inspiration at 3am, check.Extensive editing/cutting to make the overview fit to page and a half in word, check. Checking to see if d20 modern illithids have mind blast, not really, since my modern core book mysteriously disappeared (glares at Nemmerle <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) . If this is not the case, it'd be easy to adapt. Furthermore, it seems easy to adapt the psionics involved to magic if your d20 modern campaign doesn't support it.</blockquote>

Verification