Tag: Alexi Sargeant

Last night’s Masks RPG was a wild ride. Panic (The Delinquent) reached out to her creepy doppelgänger to establish a new rapport. It kind of worked? The doppelgänger acquired the name Sapphire.

Sonia (The Bull) returned to Capstone City by riding inside of a giant Darkhavian golem-spider, launched from Castle Devastation like a rocket. She then investigated an abandoned theater and took a beating at the hands of vengeful Vaudvillains with a new paint-spattered look.

Torque (The Outsider) hearing Sonia’s distress call, invoked his Moment of Truth: a fleet of ships from his homeworld arrived to defeat the spider and its spiderlings, impressing the Crimebuster Legendaria and helping Torque finally acquire the Time Sloth for his people.

By the time Torque brought his fleet into the theater, the others had overawed the Vaudvillains and knocked out their leader, the speedy Spatterdash. Halfpenny (The Protégé) tripped the artsy villain up with a barrage of pennies from heaven, and then handed her over to F.A.T.E.

So how did Masks go last night? Well, the whole team present got arrested by F.A.T.E. (the Federal Agency for Tackling the Extranormal). Fortunately, Torque (The Outsider) knows a good lawyer, the well-travelled Peter Kristofferson.

The feral scrapper Porpentine ran amok in the F.A.T.E. base, and Halfpenny (The Protégé) led the team to take him down. He got through the fight with no conditions, but praise from his villainous side mentor Quartermaster left him angry and guilty.

Panic (The Delinquent) was the team’s emotional center this week, dealing with her own emotional wreckage from the last adventure, but also comforting Halfpenny and Torque. Plus, she sparred with her worried guardian, Uncle Cas. [Check out Claire’s emo Panic cosplay!]

Oh, and in the end, Halfpenny went to therapy with Lady Hurricane, a retired superhero and psychiatric specialist in trauma related to superheroics. He unlocked the power of empathy!

Our two-part Masks RPG adventure ended with a bang. Trying to escape the dungeons of Darkhavia, Captain Bowmaster (The Beacon) fought/kissed the supervillainess Red Cent and rescued his dad, Bart Loxley—without his mask, so Bart has questions.

Sonia (The Bull) showed up to help with Bowmaster, but declined rescue herself. She wants to learn to wield her powers with the Forge. She did put her fiery fists in Catapoltergeist’s ghostly face!

Halfpenny (The Protégé) recruited a swarm of giant bats to help the team. And, when Baron Devastation appeared, Halfpenny dared to shed the blood of the rightful ruler of Darkhavia with a razor quarter, and then tried to make peace by comforting him.

Panic (The Delinquent) directly engaged a threat for the first time, calling on her crystal ring to attack Devastation with solid illusion doppelgängers. Her shadowy patron, Mr. Hunt, then appeared, and Devastation flung the team away.

As the team left, the castle was shaking from the confrontation between Devastation and Hunt. Torque (The Outsider) had enough, and developed a new alien power in order to crush the ring to dust in his hand. The Salvatores (sans Sonia) return home, with many lingering questions.

Last night in our campaign some serious stuff went down. Sonia (The Bull) confronted a Forge-controlled Aislin. She saved the girl, at the cost of agreeing to join the Forge herself. Leah Libresco, who plays Sonia, cosplayed this development.

Halfpenny (The Protégé) fought F.A.T.E. so his villainous side-mentor Quartermaster could evade capture—and crashed a helicopter in the process! His original heroic-ish mentor Penny Dreadnought showed up, but HP brokered a postponement of the penny vs. quarter match.

Panic (The Delinquent) and Torque (The Outsider) got to know Torque’s new alien supervisee Twist and turned to the mysterious Mr. Hunt for help to treat a grievously wounded ally. Brian Lagoda, who plays Torque, also provided this snazzy custom Captain Invincible dice box.

Next stop, saving Captain Bowmaster (The Beacon) from Darkhavia. What could go wrong? (Also, team mainstay Kevin finally got an illustration.)

Masks last night was wild. The team fought Lifehacker and her menagerie (including an octophant, a thunderbird, and bat-winged hyenas spewing acid-bees from their mouths). Sonia (The Bull) used her Moment of Truth to put on a display of pyrotechnic prowess and then fall unconscious. Professor Hurricane helped revive her. Torque (The Outsider) began angling to get F.A.T.E. to extradite Lifehacker to his home planet. Panic (The Delinquent) went dress shopping for homecoming, leading to a trying-on-dresses montage with all three team members. We ended on triple cliffhangers: Someone from Torque’s homeworld arrives to assist him, Panic gets word Captain Bowmaster has been captured in Darkhavia, and Sonia gets a call from Dr. Nix saying she and the Forge have captured ten-year-old Aislin!

To be continued…

Here is a love letter I wrote for a player (Sonia, the Bull) who was checking into a F.A.T.E. facility to see if they can help her build safeguards against her mental programming from the sinister organization that gave her powers. F.A.T.E. is the equivalent organization in our universe to S.H.I.E.L.D. or A.E.G.I.S.

___

Dear Sonia,

Time to meet F.A.T.E. Hope you survive the experience.

Agent Kimura—close-cropped hair, businesslike, familiar from the Titanfall Meadow adventure—escorts you to a F.A.T.E. facility nicknamed “The Dorm.” It’s housed in an old Art Deco train station that looks something like this (https://media.cntraveler.com/photos/54e76199560f0bf2218e5c35/master/w_820,c_limit/9-cincinatti-courtesy-cincinatti-museum-central.jpg). As far as the public knows, the building has been repurposed as a boring postal service processing and distribution center, but that’s just a front. This place houses battalions of F.A.T.E. agents, as well as superpowered individuals who’ve entered F.A.T.E. custody for special observation, training, or their own protection.

Para-militarism, macho posturing, grim humor—some parts of this remind you of the gang back in Central America. The bureaucracy here is less familiar, and more grating. Seems like you can indeed sign out, but you have to give the support staff on duty a reason for leaving and an ETR. “Just to get some fucking space” doesn’t count as a reason, but the Salvatores do. You wonder if that’s just because the team made a very public debut and is having a moment in both the news cycle and in celebrity coverage (mostly speculation about whether Adonis is dating any of you). Could they be waiting to “disappear” you till your team is out of the limelight?

You’re assigned a bottom bunk in a barracks. You eat in a mess hall with a large swath of Dorm occupants. You have sessions on alternating days with scientists and psychics investigating the Forge programming. And yes, in those sessions, there’s a rookie F.A.T.E. trainee standing by with a fire extinguisher in case things go badly. Outside of that, you have access to training rooms like the pool, the gym, and a special room for testing heavy weaponry where you can specifically practice your powers.

How well is life going for you here? Let’s find out. You’re here to pave the way for Aislin to be deprogrammed more safely and swiftly. You think of your time here as a sacrifice. Role +Savior, that is, +1.

On 10+, choose two perks and one complication.

On a 7–9, choose two perks and two complications.

On a Miss, mark potential, choose one perk, and two complications.

Perks:

*You bond with and/or find sympathy from a F.A.T.E. overseer. Tell us about him/her, including name, rank, and why he or she is invested in Sonia.

*With help from F.A.T.E. scientists and psychics, you develop a mantra that should (hypothetically) give you some protection against Forge trigger words. What is the mantra? What’s one of its limitations?

*F.A.T.E. considers it it’s job to keep tabs on all extranormal phenomena: heroes, villains, unaligned supers, etc. By chatting up F.A.T.E. personnel, you learn something about another character Sonia has encountered. What do you learn? Take +1 forward against that character.

Complications:

*You manage to antagonize one of the scientists or psychics working with you. Tell us who, how, and in what petty payback they take.

*During one of your deprogramming sessions, a traumatic flashback reveals some new memory of time with the Forge. Tell us about the memory (which may still be a bit scattered and uncertain). Mark an appropriate condition.

*F.A.T.E. gives you an onerous rule or restriction that you must abide by. This could be a subdermal chip, or could be more of a behavioral restriction. What is it?

Whew! A F.A.T.E.-full time at The Dorm. Godspeed, Sonia.

Off, off to adventure,

Your Gamemaster

Went back to illustrate the split-party adventure we had in Masks: The one where the boys (Captain Bowmaster, Torque, Halfpenny—Beacon, Outsider, Protégé) go to a rave to investigate dealers of superpower-granting drugs, and the girls (Sonia, Panic—Bull, Delinquent) go to a foreign embassy to interrogate a prisoner—the wily Viscount Consternation.