Lets toss this in the right forum now. For those who want to read the first session report you can find it here:
http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php/topic,2023.0.htmlSession 2: Raising the StakesThe session started with them discussing what to do with the money they had left over after paying off their medical debt. Also they all got to have a little scene with their demon where they have a good dream and the demon fucks with it just a little bit. As their demons are implanted in them in a rather unusual way it also gives them a bit more power to manipulate in more subtle ways. They then all got some individual scenes before the real mayhem started.
AnnaFor some reason her favorite photographer wasn't calling her back. So she visited him, in person. He was avoiding her even when she was their and she obviously had made him uncomfortable some how. Oblivious to that she forced the issue by turning on the charm (read: Impossible Beauty). At that point he couldn't help but talk to her. He showed her the pictures and she could see it too..she looked beautiful..but...wrong.
The effect of her impossible beauty makes her look somewhat alien, with very exaggerated features, unnaturally long legs, massive almost inhuman eyes. Something that would enthrall someone in person but when captured looks unsettling.She pressured him into agreeing to take pictures, but passed it off to his secretary, who was equally dismissive, so she seduced her, even though she was older and came off straight. Its hard to resist someone with that much power.
PeleThe nicest member of our group, had tried to pressure her parents into leaving, she knew something was wrong and they wouldn't be safe.
KevinContinues to be frustrated with this new organ because its much harder to get drunk. Also had a few episodes where he forgets that impossible strength has its drawbacks, that mostly involve breaking things.
BenContinues to pursue his survivalist instincts by investing his money into property far out into the country. He also gets more active in his survivalist blog spreading terrible rumors about his fears of the end of the world, rumors his demon only feeds since corrupting ideas is its bread and butter.
Their enemy wasn't going to let them rest on their laurels though. He wants them to snap to push themselves to the limits of their evil, to feed the demons. So he escalates to the next level. He seeks out the most violent street gang in the city, and offers them a deal. In Exchange for unimaginable wealth, they will do a direct assault on 4 specific homes. They agree.
So each of them at home in the middle of the night gets hit by a very unexpected driveby.
Ben is the only one who sees it coming, he happens to be up working on a project and luckily lives alone so when he sees the SUVs come by and the guns appear he throws up ghost form and the bullets pass through him, only grazing him briefly before he can activate the power. Is able to put a drone into the air before they get away and gets some blurry shots of the plates. No one else is so lucky.
Pele is at home with her parents when they gunfire starts. She is only grazed, but her family isn't so lucky, her mother dies and her father is severely injured.
Anna is home with her seduced secretary, when the gunfire happens, she is injured but not severely but the secretary is killed immediately. She does a massive news interview and tries to seem very sad, but it is difficult when you are an emotionally bereft sociopath.
Kevin has the most active experience. He is out at a seedy bar with his drinking buddies when this happens. As the bar lets out the SUVs come by and open fire. He throws up his armor at the last minute avoiding some of the damage (his armor manifesting as bones that erupt from his skin and make a spikey and terrifying suit of medieval looking armor). He gives into the rage his demon demands and throws himself full force at the van, hitting it so hard that he drives it into the side of a building, killing all the passengers (6W9H attacks are ugly). As the building begins to come down he seems a homeless person in the alley under the collapse and throws him to safety as the building collapses under him. Armor protects him and he uses his impossible strength to fling himself from the building and far away before he transforms back well out of the sight of others. He becomes a media darling, with them not able to decide if he is a hero or a villain and a show talking about his appropriate name. The one that sticks the most seems to be "Murder Knight."
This incident is enough to convince
Pele's now widowed father to leave town, and go back to Hawaii. But they have some troubles at the airport as a new villain emerges. He threatens to blow up 3 random planes in the airport unless they pay him a Million Dollars. He calls himself "Your Impending Doom." (This is what happens when an Archdemon takes over an already egotistical doctor)
Unsurprisingly the airlines pay, but he has shown them that he exists, but also that specifically he is watching them.
They are all simply helpless at the skills for investigation (seriously none of them leaned on those stats). So they lean on their mentor The Coachman, who suggests they contact a hacker he knew. To get around in her supervillan identity which becomes Vanity, after a number of in and out of character jokes about it
Anna effectively turns an Uber driver into her private taxi, as she has no movement related powers. This hacker is able to get info about the sales of these brand new SUVs and is also able to get traffic cameras of likely vans and is able to narrow down the images.
They narrow down the neighborhood and track down the gang, and then debate the plan, and eventually decide to take out the SUVs which are parked on the street, and then run in abduct one of the leaders when they respond to the incident, and interrogate him. They escalate this threat by throwing a Molotov into one of the trucks. They manage to get a leader in the panic as
Kevin throws up Armor and Strength. But they don't get away so cleanly as both of the sports cars are still driving. As she is on foot
Pele is chased by some of the men on foot, and is able to take them out without having to call on any of her powers as she is a trained martial artist (seriously she also rolled amazingly). The car with the hostage in it is chased by the other sports car though. Kevin has to escalate again to fight them and throws up Armor and Impossible Strength and hits the car so hard he flips it and kills all of the passengers. He then makes sure the 2 that got flung from the car are dead by leaping over to each of them and smashing their heads. He is living up to the name Murder Knight
So getting him somewhere secure, and
Anna interrogates him. She surprises every one by torturing with nail repair tools (also a remarkably smart move since she's social focused, and she's pumped her Devious Corruption far too high, but her cruelty is very low). When they realize he's probably going to try to retaliate, with a similar callous disconnection Ben drags him from the warehouse and throws him in the river to drown to death.
Through all of this
Kevin desperately try's to hold on to what little humanity he has and starts seeing a counselor, someone with enough Insightful and Faith, who might actually be able to help him. Its going to be slow, but perhaps he can save some of his soul.
PlanThey are clearly going the Antihero direction rather than supervillain direction, so I am just going to run with that and have their villain continue to push them to escalate and react more violently to situations around them, and push their limits. I think I may use the zombie machine from No Soul Left Behind, or the Soul Swap event from "The Good the Bad and The Hunky"
LearningsI let them in their first session pay off all their debt, because I scaled up the money units far to high. I also gave them far less financial anxiety to worry about which is very much what concern can lead to the constantly money chase version of super villainy.
I didn't quite give them quite enough motivation to want to go supervillian, which is making it go a different direction than I expected but is not inherently bad.
Players will take the presense of a demon inside of them very differently, 2 of them embracing more of their evil and definably pushing their limits, one being cautiously deadly, and one of them retreating into her self and avoiding contact with her demon.
The player of
Pele is actually the hardest one because with the demon inside of her she's hiding from her anger issues and not really embracing it at the same level as the others.
Any suggestions are welcome.
