Sunday, February 17, 2013

In Flanders' Fields

Question: So I noticed reading your Characters section that a lot of Scions got killed/captured then killed by the USA government. How were they able to do this? Were all the Scions Hero-level?

Alas... the unfortunate Strawberry Fields game. Its character roster is a military graveyard.

The game started with Ian Jupiter, Seamus McMann, Dierdre O'Riordan and Samuel Striker, a motley group of misfits who managed to clean up a few dangerous Titanspawn problems but were brought low by human military might. They were indeed Hero-level when they first ran into trouble with the law of the land, when their obviously augmented abilities and strange powers caught the attention of the United States government. In the first conflict between them, Sam was captured by overwhelming force and taken to a military hospital, where he was experimented upon in an attempt to figure out where his powers were coming from. The group then gained Amunet Ipi, Miles Laurent and Najarat Sekhar as they tried to heroically prevent the Titanspawn-fueled destruction of Las Vegas, but by then the government knew who half of them were and was mobilized in their direction. After a particularly spectacular battle in which Miles accidentally grew angel wings on live national newsfeeds, Najarat was killed in a tank-fight when he refused to submit to governmental authority, and Dierdre and Amunet were both captured and shipped off to the newly-created division at Langley Army Base dedicated to studying and containing magical phenomena.

Amunet died in captivity, having been thoroughly experimented on at the same time that her prophetic powers were exhausting and depleting her. Dierdre remained a prisoner for a long time; while she went up in Legend and became a Demigod in her own right, the government also had supernatural powers working for it, including Scions of equal power and carefully-placed Titanspawn agents, and she was unable to free herself alone.

Miles went underground to hide from the stir he'd accidentally caused, but Seamus, determined to rescue his cousin, rebuilt a new band of like-minded Celtic Scions to aid him after being instructed to do so in a prophecy from the Morrigan. He started with Alaina Bertrand, Jude Shriver, Luke Honre, Auggie MacDonough and Ignatius Rex, all of them now low-Legend Demigods, and they blazed a trail across the Americas looking for clues to where the captured Scions might have been taken. Luke was killed in the process, though by supernatural enemies instead of mortal ones, and was replaced by Killian Corvinus. They eventually figured out where she was being held and stormed the base in an attempt to free her.

As Legend 5 and 6 Demigods, the group of them could have succeeded fairly easily at storming a military base staffed only by mortals, but that wasn't what they were doing. There were at least four other opposing Scions in the base when they attacked it, not to mention several Titanspawn both inside and outside the containment areas. The attempt was a failure.

And future stories will talk about what exactly happened during that attempt and the events leading up to it, but so far nobody loves Seamus enough to vote him into the lead, so we'll all just have to wait. If you'd like to see a more detailed story about the problems of the Strawberry Fields gang, there are already a few fiction pieces up for them: start with All Good Things and then continue on through Troubled Waters, To Catch a Fallen Star, Angelfish and Man and Monster.

Shameless spoiler tease: the Strawberry Fields team, Seamus and Dierdre in particular, also have a future connection to the Skeins of Fate team, particularly Folkwardr, and being gone doesn't always mean you can't return. But that's a story for later!

2 comments:

  1. Was the Better Next Time band's deal with mortal authorities influenced by supernatural involvement as well? Or just the collective efforts of humans and unfortunate fatebonds?

    The players in my game got into a similar situation with police and military (of a single country, so far) and I'm having a hard time making it into a worthwhile challenge for them, and they're only Legend 4!

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    1. Yes, the BNT band also had quite a few problems with mortal authorities. Sangria was a member of the Mexican army's black ops division before going rogue after her Visitation and becoming an internationally wanted assassin. She was on the shortlist for most major world governments as well as the FBI, CIA and Interpol; if anyone identified her, the band was usually descended upon by army forces shortly thereafter. Military attacks by entire armies and SWAT forces; it wasn't pretty. They had a few narrow escapes as Heroes.

      Skeins had similar problems with the standing army of the Fourth Reich (Germany... had some problems in our game), though as Demigods they were only really threatened by the heavy artillery.

      Mortal police probably won't be able to do much to Hero-level Scions, you're right, unless they're in very large numbers or heavily geared SWAT teams. If they're not being challenged, do what the real military would do: up the ante. If guns don't hurt them, bazookas might, and if SWAT teams can't take them down, army platoons might. Even the most badass Heroes are going to have serious trouble with tanks, and if the mortal authorities are smart, they'll have realized they need the big guns to deal with them.

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