X-Champions Issues

Issue #3 - Workin' In a Saltmine

As the police arrive on the scene they begin questioning the Troll, Sammy, and Hamlet.  Aela has already come and gone, rushing off to catch an almost-forgotten plane to a required trip to a dolphin study in Bermuda.  The uniformed officers gather routine information, but one of them (who later turns out to be one Officer Paddy "Red" O'Malley) gives the mutants a particularly hard time, accusing them of not assisting/informing the police.  The three simply laugh him off, making him more angry.

Detective Berger shows up and seems to be dismissive, simply asking Hamlet to put together a written statement and send it in.  Before leaving, though, he asks Sammy for his registration information as he's talked to bystanders and ascertained that Sammy is a mutant - something made even more apparent when Sammy gives his name as "Sammy or Sammuel S. Slime."  Sammy feigns ignorance of the mutant registration acts (or somehow is ignorant of them), arousing even more suspicion.  He takes Sammy aside and only some fast talking and phone calls by Hamlet and the Troll (who has overheard as his ear is in Sammy's pocket) save Sammy from going downtown and potentially being punished for noncompliance.  

Speaking of suspicion being aroused, Hamlet is equally suspicious of the off-handedness of Det. Berger to the crime.  But he returns to checking out the scene as best he can with the police around, finding traces of salt-rock on the shoes of the mobsters. 

The trio goes to Hamlet's car.  Sihn notices the back is considerably weighted down and Hamlet plays it off as some cement he needs to deliver.  

Meanwhile, The Captain catches Lisa Walters up on the basics of the case and the players.  She mentions she can get him on a special local television edition.  They agree to correspond and he flies her back, dropping her off at a cab stand where she catches a speeding cab away.

Back at Laughton-Davis' offices, Sihn quickly contacts Gere-Luce to assist in analyzing materials - Laughton has also handed over the disks for analysis .  Sammy is dropped off with Velda, who is supposed to arrange his registration.  She is confused upon his explanation that he's the same person who earlier resembled Elvis, but when he slips into an Elvis voice, she excitedly "realizes" that in fact this is the real Elvis and he somehow can change his identity, explaining his disappearance (not death) some 25 years ago.  She immediately confesses she truly is in love with him.  She swears herself to secrecy regarding his identity and begins to explain how she first fell in love with him, hearing his voice as a lonely teenager...

Earlier during this, Sihn comes upstairs and sees The Captain assisting Hamlet by pulling the stoned Sol into an office.  Sihn shakes his head and continues on his way, then determines to rejoin them to seek out the truth.  Laughton indicates that he did not kidnap Sol, rather he was "trying to escape" and it ended up this way.  Sihn knows better but accepts this convenient lie (all the better to keep his lab and funding) and they then decide on how best to interrogate Sol.  This results in Sol being taken to a bare room which may as well be in a back office of the cathedral, and Laughton then turns him back to normal.  They are shortly joined by Sammy, escaping what has become a monolog rather than a conversation with Velda.  

Sol is at first resistant, naturally, other than to indicate the Purple Gang's thirst for revenge of the mob.  He is left alone with the Troll, who literally begins to cannibalize him, eating a finger and part of an ear.  Sol does become slightly manic, revealing tidbits about his group's history and purpose.  The Captain enters, playing good cop, and Sol laughs at the "weak" hero and confirms in doing so that the group is underground as well as revealing more about his sustained efforts, including some sort of genetic engineering as well as his intent to bury the Combine, but he is still not terribly useful.  Laughton comes in to deliver the coup de grace as they both ridicule and torment Sol.  Sol finally indicates, almost raving, the names of possible successors to Levi, though they may be too young currently, as Josiah and Rachel. 

Sihn receives a call from Terwilliger, who indicates that Sammy seems to be wanted by ABC Corporation.  While they can't legally detain a sentient being, they seem to have the law looking for a slime that can shape-shift, claiming it is simply parroting things around it.  In any case, Terwilliger thinks it unwise to tip them off about Sammy's whereabouts and not a good time to register him.  He indicates they should be able to keep him out of the law's hands.  Sammy acknowledges this to Sihn, indicating that he came out of a freezer at ABC Corp and they are trying to get him back.  Terwilliger reveals Sammy's name from ABC is X2783.

Jimmy Caruthers comes in just as the interrogation is winding down.  Laughton tells Caruthers the sounds are just coming from a TV show.  At first indignant, he calms down and attempts to be respectful of Laughton's authority, still warning him that it's financially unsound to employ Velda on a Sunday and that the firm has previously had legal problems.  Caruthers tells Laughton he just wants him to benefit from his own experience/failures.  The Captain then introduces himself to Jimmy, who is rather confused at Marty's attempt to obfuscate his identity, then asks Laughton if he reports to Davis - to which he gets an empathic "NO!"  Caruthers goes off to his office. 

Sammy, having gone back to discussion with Velda, hears a radio report that the Devil's Night Gang, Bogeyman's crowd (with Mocker, Bud Girl, Mosquito, and Slayer), has just robbed a bank downtown.  He rushes to tell the others.  They then decide to ignore the fait accompli and find an entrance to the salt mines.  Velda, who apparently knows Detroit almost as well as Elvis, indicates several possible entrances to the long-defunct operations.

Thus the team is finally off.  They drop off Sol at the rear of the police station but as they speed off Sammy's sensitive hearing picks up gunshots back there.  As they turn around a car speeds past them, and they quickly pursue it, Laughton keeping up with it.  Sihn contacts his friend Buick Rogers who, as luck would have it, is right in-town and cuts off the offending vehicle.  The driver tries to shoot himself but is stopped by the leaping Troll.  Buick exchanges pleasantries before speeding off, and very shortly thereafter a couple police cars come upon the scene.  They take the bad guy away, and a call which can be overheard by Sammy to be from Det. Berger tells them to disregard this group.  A policeman winks at them knowingly and indicates their secret is safe with him.

After a brief shopping trip to procure some items which may combat the Devil's Night Gang, they enter through a distant suburban vein, carefully but expeditiously looking around.  At a fork near some suspicious boulders, they discover the right fork looks like it was conceived to have appeared to have been used more than it actually is, so they proceed straight.  To be careful, Sammy transforms into a rabbit and goes ahead of the group.  But, with earplugs in and defenses up per The Captain's concern about the ego-shattering commands of Bogeyman and Mocker, he fails to hear the quiet whirring of a nearby camera.  Laughton sees the concealed camera as he passes it, too late to avoid being sighted.  They forge ahead to what appears to be a door which is locked tight, concealed as stone.  As they attempt to find a way in, they hear a creaking reverberating and a slamming sound.  

They go back to check it out.  As they go down that right fork, Sammy in the lead still as a rabbit, they narrowly avoid falling down a trap door as Laughton spots the concealment.  The Troll leaps over it and The Captain flies over it with Laughton.  Sammy got over it just before them, bouncing twice on the ground.  It turns out they are mostly lucky; as the Troll touches ground he triggers a mine.  His defenses easily absorb the blow and they become more cautious.  Laughton turns into Rodin, but now revealing his ability to shift shapes when he turns to that form, becoming a giant wheel.  The Captain rolls him forcefully down the cave and he blazes a path, triggering a few explosives which do no damage.   They explore a dead end alcove then, finding nothing more than the likelihood that something is on the other side of the thick rock.

They resolve to go back to the door they earlier found.  They are almost ambushed but the quick-witted heroes notice several thugs behind the boulders on the way back.  A brief battle ensues and the heroes are hardly harmed as they mop up the Purple Hat Gang's agents.  An interrogation by Laughton, assisted with the now-expected terror of the Troll, completely demoralizes one of the usually tough gang members [GM note - a 3 was rolled here!] and he reveals the rest of the gang of this cell is escaping through the "real" sewer exit.  He also reveals the door cannot be opened from this side, only from within.

Our heroes rush to break down the door and then quickly locate both the fake sewer entrance and the hastily concealed real one.  They catch up to the mobsters who had expected to get further and decide to surrender, trapped as they are in the sewers and knowing their first guard was easily subdued and/or killed.   However, the heroes' victory is not so complete as one of the duct-taped captives abruptly dies.  It turns out he was the mission leader and had a suicide capsule in a back tooth, apparently with a very quick-acting and unobvious poison.  A quick taste (literally) of him by the Troll reveals the poison is quite noxious and even makes the Troll slightly ill.

A subsequent interrogation, involving a fanciful but successful ruse where they pretend to bring the mission leader back from the dead (with Sammy as the mission lead), reveals that the Purple Hat Gang has basically become a terrorist organization formed by individual cells, each one head by a leader who is their sole contact to the parent organization.  Their Mission Leader, Isaac, was contacted once in a while by someone who was their only link; this mysterious visitor once in a great while would drop by at Temple where they originally met, and, when they moved into this base, also dropped by once, two weeks ago.  It also comes out that Slayer is a family member who supposedly was created from the family's genes in some specialized laboratory process.  The agent has heard rumors indicating that he was created by Dr. Magnus (of Metal Men fame) or ABC Corp or Stark Industries.  He also indicates that rumor has it that Bogeyman was dissociated from the Purple Hat Gang for his unprofessional approach, though they don't understand why Slayer still works with him.  In fact, they only knew of the Bogeyman through Slayer.  The Troll terrorizes the agent revealing this beyond the breaking point as he appears to eat "Isaac".   This informant then hastily shouts that there's supposed to be some "holy" spot that escaped or desperate Purple Hat members can meet the parent organization at, though he does not understand what it is as it's always referred to as "holy" with a laugh proceeding that.  He does not know if it's the cathedral when the heroes mention it.  This poor slob is finally terrorized into complete catatonia as "Isaac's" heart is cannibalized.  Subsequent investigation finds a calendar simply marked with a star and an "L" two weeks ago, with a "?" marked two weeks forward and four weeks after that. 

The agents are turned into the police as they do have a sizeable cache of illegal weaponry.  When the police arrive they are accompanied by Det. Berger, who is generally uninterested in this but is interested in the Devil's Night Gang.  He asks the heroes about them and the bank job, bringing up that bystanders heard Bogeyman go on about the power and magic of "five".  Their last heist was five days earlier and there are five in the gang, so it's expected their next strike will be, of course, in five days.  The heroes don't share much with Det. Berger and all go on their own way.

They resolve to check out the church with Sammy appearing as Isaac, seeing if anyone shows up.  Also, Sihn consults with Gere-Luce to develop a device to find Bud Girl.  As is his standard custom, Gere-Luce builds in a self-destruct device...

[Game Mechanics - Points Awarded...

Drawing against an inferior opponent - for getting some info from Sol but getting him killed, yet catching the killer - +0 RPs for all, +0 XPs for all

Winning against an inferior opponent - for general investigative work/interrogations - +.375 RPs for all, +.025 XPs for all

Winning against an inferior opponent - for defeating gang in the salt mine - +.375 RPs for all, +.025 XPs for all

Session play - +2.25 RPs for Rodin, +.75 XPs  for Rodin
- +3 RPs for The Captain, Sammy, Troll, +1 XP for The Captain, Sammy, Troll

Totals:

The Captain +3.75 RPs, +1.05 XPs
Sammy the Slime +3.75 RPs, +1.05 XPs
Troll +3.75 RPs, +1.05 XPs
Rodin +3 RPs, +.8 XPs

Totals to Date:

The Captain 121.5 RPs, 11.125 XPs
Mermaid 85.875 RPs, 8.5375 XPs
Sammy the Slime 102.75 RPs, 8.2625 XPs
Troll 117 RPs, 11.5 XPs
Rodin 120.75 RPs, 10.875 XPs]