New Gladiators #22a: The Pentacle Plot

[jkcarrier]

Episode 22a:
"The Pentacle Plot"
Played on 4/27/2024

Roll Call:
Arcane Ice
Claw Master
The Dude (with Donny Kerabatsos)
Hulk
Sonic Boom
Walter Sobchak
Weather Wizard

Resources used:
Pentacle Plot - Villains & Vigilantes module by Stefan Jones, Jill Thompson, Mark Nelson, and Patrick Zircher
Devil's Domain - V&V module by Troy Christensen, Dave Gifford, and Jeff Dee

The Gladiators were at their headquarters, interviewing a potential new member named Arcane Ice. Suddenly, the lights flickered. Their backup generator kicked in, but they soon learned that the whole city was blacked out. A call came in from the local power company -- they had traced the problem to a particular substation in Newtown, but the crew they sent to investigate had not reported in. They feared foul play was involved.

Taking Arcane Ice along for a "field test", the team raced to the scene, only to find a tank-like vehicle, and several suspicious men in stylized armor messing with the power equipment. The unconscious forms of the power workers were scattered all around.

M5Q TANK
[Armor, Disintegration Ray, Flame Blast, Force Field, Speed]

KNIGHT OF PENTACLES
[Armor, Heightened Strength, Life Support, Power Blast]

PAGE OF PENTACLES
[Armor, Flight, Heightened Senses, Power Blast]

PENTACLE WARRIORS
[Armor, Laser, Special Weapon]

A couple of team members squared off against the Knight and the Page, while the rest concentrated on taking out the Tank. The resulting explosion knocked a couple of the heroes back, and likewise scattered the crew inside, but none were seriously hurt [low damage roll]. With their big "equalizer" out of the picture, the Pentacles were no match for the Gladiators, and were soon subdued.

[Loot Drops: Page of Pentacles' Jetpack (Flight), Pentacle Warriors' Disk (Special Weapon)]

The power outage had been caused by the Pentacles trying to charge up a couple of oversized batteries. The batteries were marked "Property of the U.S. Army", and a call to their military contacts revealed that a pair of top-secret prototype M5Q Tanks had been stolen a few days ago. One of those tanks had just been reduced to smoking fragments, but where was the other? Interrogation of the Pentacle Warriors revealed that they had a home base at an estate in Loveland.

Apparently expecting trouble, the rest of the so-called "Pentacle Suite" were waiting for the heroes when they arrived.

DIABLO
[Flame Abilities (Flame Blast, Flame Aura, Fiery Flight), Heightened Strength, Invulnerability (Energy)]

MOONFLASH
[Electrical Bolt (with Paralysis Ray contact), Emotion Control, Flight, Regeneration, Special Requirement (Nighttime)]

PRIESTESS
[Death Touch, Invulnerability (Kinetic), Willpower (Fortitude)]

TOWER
[Density Increase, Size Change, Sonic Blast]

KING OF PENTACLES
[Flight, Gravity Decrease, Invulnerability (Kinetic), Power Blast]

QUEEN OF PENTACLES
[Force Field, Power Blast]

The heroes demonstrated to Arcane Ice how they prioritized their targets: Moonflash's mind-whammy made her target #1, followed by Priestess with her deadly touch. The King's gravity gun managed to launch Weather Wizard into low orbit, but the hero managed a relatively safe landing [another low damage roll]. Tower was built to withstand a lot of punishment, and the Queen's force field protected her for a while, but eventually they all fell.

[Loot Drops: Diablo's Suit (Invulnerability - Energy), Priestess' Staff (Death Touch)]

Inquiring about the whereabouts of the second Tank, the team learned that the Pentacles had discovered an alternate dimension. Their initial probes revealed a wealth of mineral resources (including diamonds), but every time they sent personnel to investigate, they never came back. They stole the M5Q Trucks in the hope they could use them to safely explore the other world.

After turning the Pentacles over to the authorities, the Gladiators activated the dimension gate (hidden in the estate's garage), and marched through. What they stepped into was a vast alien landscape, with fine slivers of crystalline "grass" beneath their feet, rivers of superheated plasma flowing nearby, and a large forest seemingly made of coral in the distance. Three identical towers, or pylons, lay in different directions, and a large metallic crimson orb hovered over the coral forest.

Following the obvious tank tracks in the crystal grasslands, the heroes headed north, towards one of the Pylons. Along the way, they were assaulted by a mob of chimp-like creatures:

GOXEK
[Emotion Control (Rage), Heightened Defense, Natural Weaponry]

Making short work of the savage apes, the team continued walking for several hours until they reached the Pylon. More weird monsters were there, standing guard:

GHOUL
[Density Increase, Size Change (4.5' Tall), Natural Weaponry (with Poison/Venom carrier)]

HORROR
[Armor, Poison/Venom]

SLIME
[Chemical Body, Natural Weaponry, Stretching Abilities (Elongation, Oozing, Plasticity)]

After triumphing over the guards, the team turned their attention to the Pylon. They learned that it was a giant machine, apparently drawing plasma from yet another dimension and pouring it into the river. They weren't sure what the purpose of this was, but they were pretty sure it was bad, so they messed with the mechanism and figured out how to turn it off. That section of the plasma river began to dry up.

In response, the image of an evil-looking face filled the sky, and a mocking voice told them that their efforts were in vain. He challenged them to come visit him at the Crimson Orb, and "Meet the future ruler of the Multiverse!" Unimpressed, the heroes decided to travel to the other Pylons and deactivate them, as well.

Back outside, the team found the missing M5Q Tank. All the external weapons had been torn off, and the battery was about half-depleted, but the vehicle was otherwise intact. Glad to be able to take a load off after all that walking, they piled into the Tank and continued their journey.

Arriving at the second Pylon, the heroes found more of the Ghouls, Horrors, and Slimes. Now that they were more familiar with the creatures, they made short work of them. After they were dispatched, a trio of seemingly-friendly beings emerged from behind one of the crystal formations.

GORG

Activating a translator device on it's belt, one of the Gorg was able to communicate, albeit in somewhat broken English. They came from one of the dimensions that the Pylons were drawing plasma from, investigating the breach of their homeworld. They considered the face in the sky a "very bad man", but as relatively weak beings (and pacifists to boot), they couldn't do much about him. They were able to provide the heroes with a little bit of healing, though, and wished them luck.

Moving on to the third and final Pylon, the team faced an even larger group of monster guards, but were still able to triumph. With all the Pylons deactivated, the river of plasma completely dried up. Pausing a moment to rest, the Gladiators pondered their next move...
[To be continued...]

[The characters received 3 Character Points, giving them each a total of 181]

NOTES:
* Arcane Ice [Flight, Ice Abilities, Invulnerability (Psychic), Special Weapon (Ice Spear), Special Requirement (Amulet)] was run by an old pal who hasn't played with us for a while. He happened to have some time this weekend and popped by to say hi. Luckily, I found an old character of his from a previous campaign that was around the right power level, so he was able to drop in for a session. I'll have to figure out an excuse for his character to disappear next week...

* I liked the set-up in the "Pentacle Plot" module, but the alternate world on the other side of the gate was only sketched out in very broad terms, requiring either a lot of fleshing out, or a lot of improvising, and I wasn't in the mood for either. "Devil's Domain", on the other hand, had a simple but pretty interesting world, but I wasn't crazy about the set-up ("zombie apocalypse", meh). So mashing them together was a natural.

* The players were very amused by Moonflash's name. When she tried to use her Emotion Control power, they joked that she was "flashing" them. For the rest of the session, whenever someone messed up or seemed distracted, they would say, "Sorry, I was still thinking about Moonflash's boobs".

* As the characters traveled through the other dimension, I was checking for random monster encounters, like an old-fashioned D&D hex-crawl. For each group they defeated (as well as the guards at the Pylons), they got one charge of an ability, sort of a mini-loot drop. So far, they've found: Demon's Blood (Healing), Demon's Tail (Poison carrier), and Demon's Wings (Flight). More will drop as they explore more of the environment.