Tag: Brandon Paul

Alpine Academy Session 5-6

Session 5

Cross’ villain, a religious fanatic named Crusader, captured Cross (because the player was late) in a church on Sunday. He also captured Lotus, who is Serena’s older sister. Fiona uses her fear-based powers to crowd control most of the room, but a battle still breaks out. Cross is freed and helps everyone escape. It turns out Crusader is working with a mysterious Dark Angel named Apostate who has similar powers to Cross. However, while Cross uses healing magic…Apostate causes psychological harm which dampens powers (ie: the hopeless condition). His powers have no effect on Fiona however because she is already dark in nature as the Doomed. Specter, the ghost-mutant is the main one to confront the Angel. Having lost his powers, he is forced to punch at the new villain. His hands are bloody in the aftermath and the Angel escapes after a sword clash with Cross. Crusader is detained by the group and the media arrives, finding the group for the first time. Specter gets frustrated, assaulting the media and leaving. The group doesn’t really make a strong showing, but they did save civilians from being hurt in the collateral damage (even though the religious zealots all hate and fear them.)

Scene 1

Cyerna is in class asleep (because her player was busy moving). The rest of the class does some combat drills to establish what their combat styles are like. Ignition uses dirty fighting and small objects like nails. Fiona mostly avoids combat by dancing around it. Specter fights basically by using boxing, weaving, and punching and hitting soft spots.

Scene 2

Madame Butterfly (one of the teachers in the school) comes into the room and asks them to check on Cyerna.

Butterfly makes several announcements to the students about current events. All electronics are going to be monitored due to a security breach which may include a virus.

Lotus, Cyrena’s sister, an independent hero with plant powers, has been hired as a full-time teacher to keep her close and teach about local plants/wildlife.

Specter and Fiona get called into the office because they appeared on TV in the last session. Specter punched a cameraman, so Butterfly urges him to keep a low profile. At least he was wearing a mask, Fiona’s face had to be blurred in the broadcast to protect her identity

Scene 3

It turns out Cyerna isn’t waking up so Cross (an Angel PC) uses healing power to wake her up. They realize some magic influence is affecting her and bring in Ninfu to investigate. Ninfu gets a 2 on the dice, so she ends up getting possessed by an unknown entity and going insane.

She lashes out against the students and Cross fails to capture her. She makes it outside of the school, but Ignition is able to restrain her. Butterfly uses her power to produce sleep gas and Ninfu is detained. The teachers are worried the magical influence is contagious so she sends the students away.

Scene 4

After dealing with Ninfu, ignition goes to her black market dealer for help with this magic problem. She gets some cold-iron knuckles to use.

The rest of the group splits up to find information on the magical entity. Cross finds a cult who tells him a prophecy from Revelations (because they think he’s speaking from god). They mention a figure like an antichrist who speaks for the devil, which Cross interprets as meaning that this entity might need a host or messenger.

Scene 5

Specter visits the underworld and speaks to an insane ghost girl about what happened. She killed herself after being possessed by the same entity. She says there is only One who is chosen that is the correct match. Specter then escapes the underworld after getting chewed out by his boss for being late for his pizza delivery job.

Fiona is the last to do research. She finds several articles talking about missing and kidnapped children. She immediately thinks of Changeling because she’s the type to do White Wolf LARPs. Fiona knows this is the work of a powerful faerie. Even the force in her head, a being of pure fear, is afraid of what is to come.

Alpine Academy, Session 3, Scene 1

So, I ran our third session of Masks the other night, and things went pretty well. Two of the characters were absent, but they were actually split from the party so we’re just going to run their scene another time. For now, I’ll explain that we started with Wispy. She’s a pink haired hetrochromic girl who has connections to the Fae, she’s basically a magical-hero in the vein of Doctor Strange, but her focus is mental magic. She uses telepathy and illusions and such. Last session she was hinting at the fact that she was being followed, so we started with that. She takes the bus home from the Hero school she attends (which pretends to be a regular private school and is mostly cloaked). When she arrives at the outskirts of the city, she notices strange noises coming from nearby. A group of goblins appear to be following her, magical creatures that only she can see. She detects them, but everyone else thinks she stares at air. She uses an illusion to give them the slip and moves around the back of her house. The goblins appear to be weakened and slightly blinded by the sunlight, so they don’t see her.

When she finds her mom in the kitchen cooking, she tells her about the goblins out in the front doorway, which is hanging open. It was made known that Wispy’s mother has red hair and her eyes are gold, whereas Wispy only has one golden eye. Wispy’s mom plays along, knowing about her daughter’s supernatural gifts, and pretends to scare away the goblins with her iron cooking pan. It actually works and they skitter away. Wispy goes to her room.

Scene 2

We see the anti-hero Dancing Shadow work out her stress from her previous battles in her own way. She shows off her ‘costume’ for the first time. She wears a black ballerina leotard (no tutu) and an old halloween costume that makes her look like a hooded phantom. She returns to the scene of her previous battle with some villain henchmen at night. As a consequence of the battle, a building was destroyed and there is debris everywhere. Shadow uses her mental powers (which mostly influence fear and darkness, but she also has telekinesis) to scare some kids who are poking around the site. Her powers come out almost too potent, because she has little control over them. A tornado of dust and rocks soon forms around the children and all the nearby PCs come to see what is happening.

Ninfu, (a modern alchemist/magical scientist) and Specter (an adrogenous ghost-mutant who works as a pizza boy) arrive on the scene. Wispy also teleports there, able to see the dust from her house.

Scene 3

Wispy reads Shadow’s mind and determines that something is wrong with her. Her powers are controlled by some dark force within her mind, and the fae becomes determined to discover it. She pulls the nearby heroes into an astral space within Shadow’s mind, much to the annoyance of Specter and even Shadow herself. Specter was in the middle of a job, and in his astral form he appears as a more feminine boy with different features in a sci-fi outfit. Ninfu glows with radiant light in the astral world. Wispy represents a more insectoid fae form, with curled legs and fairy wings.

Scene 4

For the first time, the teen heroes have a leader outside of their normal teacher’s aid in Wispy. She does her best to organize and unify the group, but Shadow refuses to help directly and warns them to leave. As they ignore her and enter the darkness, their fears come to life.

Ninfu’s power stems from the fact that she creates magical formula. One in particular involves using unicorn horn powder to preserve herself as a childish (loli) girl. She is extremely worried that if others found out about the formula they would hunt down unicorns to extinction. The fear manifests itself directly and the party is now in a forest illusion where poachers hunt unicorns in the backdrop. Arrows fly overhead.

Specter attempts to catch the arrow, but finds that the illusions cause real pain. His transparent form begins leaking blood. Ninfu manifests a magical philosopher’s stone within the mental space that allows her to focus her mental energy. She uses this mental energy to urge Specter to heal.

Scene 5

After the poachers fade away, Specter feels dejected because of the pain and stress and strangeness of the situation. His fear of being a burden and being mocked socially come into play. He sees illusions of his comrades mocking him (the PCs didn’t really jump in to act things out, so i just described that he was being treated badly) and he is isolated by the darkness.

Meanwhile, Wispy’s fear (which is not directly shown) begins to swallow her up as well. Ninfu reacts quickly and shoves the magical stone into the cocoon of darkness. The shell is destroyed and the darkness is forced back. Everyone is shunted out of Shadow’s mind.

Scene 6

Back in the real world, Specter and Shadow flee to return to their lives. They fall apart from the group and are unhappy with Wispy’s choice to invade the astral space. Ninfu, by contrast, grows closer to Wispy due to the battle and decides to go home with her. We end on sort of a bookend, with Ninfu being introduced to Wispy’s mother and sleeping over for the night. Wispy is happy she has somehow made a new (abnormal) friend.