Logs 66-86: Heroes Unlimited Part 4A: June of 2000

Disclaimer

I lost my detailed notes from these adventures years ago and I’m guessing for some of these details, but I want to provide a coherent story with these logs so I’m piecing it together as best as possible from my remaining notes.

Logs 66-86: Heroes Unlimited Part 4A: June of 2000

We played the next part of the RPG saga during my junior year of high school, which was real world time 1997-1998; the RPG in-game timeline started this part in June of the year 2000. With player characters scattered about different worlds with different agendas, the only main linking mechanism for most of these adventures was that they happened within the same month, though the end of that month led up to the fulfillment of a prophecy that required everyone to team together.

More people joined us. The players for Part 4 included: NH, BD, JS, BW, TV, AJ, RW, SS, LV, MS, DF, HJ, AC, DK, and JFP. AJ had been upset about Zah’s death so we brought him back to life through the power of the Cosmosians.

JerVerse Adventure 66: Olympus Returned

The starship Olympus returned to Earth; along the way, they had caught the attention of a space alien (the size of a spaceship) shaped like a hexagon. The heroes helped fight off the Hexagonal after getting the help of a space captain from another dimension (Captain Jer).

JerVerse Adventure 67: The Wedding of Feli & Bren

The wedding of Feli and Bren should have been a blissful moment of happiness, but their happiness was interrupted when enemies caused problems at their ceremony. The problem was dealt with, thanks to the heroics of the player characters. Side Note: Feli’s uncle Beliruse got into trouble and had to be rescued at some point.

JerVerse Adventure 68: Introducing Dante

Raven wanted to completely leave his old life behind; he accepted membership in Earth Force (a division of Tigerstar focused on protecting Earth Prime). With his new identity, Raven became Dante and underwent a mission in which he received a new body and mutations that gave him the ability to control plants.

JerVerse Adventure 69: Porthios in Africa

Porthios was also working with Tigerstar and Earth Force at this point. The infamous Lady Daine (not Verali Daine) was causing problems on Earth again so he went to Africa and put a stop to her evil plans.

JerVerse Adventure 70: Introducing Ghost

The secretly resurrected Zahadoom assumed a new identity as Ghost (the alias should have made it really obvious that he was the “Ghost” of his former self, but anyway...). Another Hexagonal alien came to our galaxy to find out what had happened to the previously killed Hexagonal; Ghost, Dante, and Doc Roc teamed up to stop the alien. They realized that the Hexagonals were living beings and not actual spaceships with crews inside. Ghost “died” when they blew up the ship; Dante and Doc Roc survived, but Zah decided to disappear again after faking Ghost’s death.

JerVerse Adventure 71: Introducing Mt. N

Doc Roc accepted a commission with Earth Force and took on a new identity as the hero “Mt. N” - so named because he was piloting a large mech unit that he said was “the size of a mountain.” Mt. N joined some Earth Force members and stopped some villains that were harming the environment.

JerVerse Adventure 72: Introducing Charr

BD felt his character Al had become too powerful and he wanted to play something different. I helped BD create a pyromancer named Charr. In his debut adventure, Charr fought some evil wizards and had fun burning down things along the way. He had NPC allies that resembled a standard D&D party. Due to his impressive success, Charr was recruited to join Team Tigerstar.

JerVerse Adventure 73: The Catfolk v. The Scalines

Team Tigerstar and Earth Force came to the aid of the Catfolk when they sent Gemini to notify them that the Scalines were trying to conquer the Catfolk homeworld. With the army of robots Gemini had been building and the coordinated efforts of the heroes, the good guys managed to win a battle against the powerful Scaline warriors.

JerVerse Adventure 74: Team Tigerstar v. Scalines

Greg Haylege from the Intergalactic Peace Corps (IPC) helped Gemini negotiate a peace treaty between the Catfolk and the Scaline Empire after the good guys achieved more victories against their alien warrior enemies. Of course, they didn’t realize this would only upset the Scalines and turn Earth Prime into the next target of the seriously aggressive empire (because the team from Earth Prime and their IPC allies were what was standing in the way of the Scalines achieving a victory against the Catfolk).

JerVerse Adventure 75: Introducing A-2000

AJ convinced his friend DK to join the game. DK had no idea what type of character to make so AJ suggested something that basically came down to a copy of the T-2000 character from the Terminator 2 movie. Thus A-2000 entered our game as a mutant from O-H-M Earth. We played through A-2000’s creation and escape from his captors.

JerVerse Adventure 76: Introducing Brent Jordan

Zahadoom’s new identity was that of Brent Jordan, a “businessman” on O-H-M Earth.  He decided to pursue a fortune and create a corporate empire that could take over his homeworld; instead of war and violence, he wanted to use capitalism to conquer the people. A-2000 joined Brent as his bodyguard/hitman. The “A” in A-2000 stood for assassin.

JerVerse Adventure 77: Brent Jordan’s Empire

The Brent Jorden Corporation actually relied on crime to build up its wealth and that ultimately backfired. Brent Jordan and A-2000 were running a drug empire and stealing what they needed. The government got involved and, after many disputes (and the “disappearance” of A-2000), Brent Jordan realized that, for his own safety, he needed to leave the planet and abandon this plan.

JerVerse Adventure 78: The Wedding of Cassandra & Bran

Cassandra was madly in love with Bran Fox. For Bran the wedding was not only a symbol of his love for Cassandra, but also a chance for him to try to fool everyone into thinking he had given up his villainous ways. As usual, shenanigans happened when everyone got together for the special occasion. In the end, Feli warned Cassandra she was marrying a selfish/evil man, but Cassandra went through with it anyway.

JerVerse Adventure 79: The Quiz Master

The Knowledge Masters were ancient beings that had survived out in the universe. One of them, The Quiz Master, captured the heroes and pitted them in a quiz game that threatened to kill off the losers. Luckily they were able to work in teams and the heroes survived, able to return to their lives.

Side Note: Many years later I saw an episode of Doctor Who that eerily reminded me of this incident (when The Doctor, Rose, and Jack were on a space station that had a quiz game that seemed to kill off the losers).

JerVerse Adventure 80: Introducing Copycat

Zah’s latest fake identity was Vincent Jordan, who auditioned for Earth Force under the superhero name Copycat. After completing some recruitment missions, Copycat was accepted to the team. He was actually infiltrating the organization to find out the identities of the superheroes while also trying to enhance his own powers.

JerVerse Adventure 81: Team Copycat

Copycat used the computers at Earth Force to get the info he wanted and figured out the identities of the different heroes. He decided to get the old group back together again, recruiting Dante (Raven), Mt. N (Doc Roc), Porthios, and Whirlwind to help him with a mission. He had fun fighting villains with them.

JerVerse Adventure 82: Team Tigerstar v. The Doe Corp

Tigerstar Special Forces, with some of their Earth Force allies, battled powerful enemies sent from Techno-Dimension’s Doe Corporation (which was led by the dimensional counterpart of Exo-Man/Jay). In the end, the team stopped the enemy agents and saved the day. This mission also provided Copycat (Zah) a chance to work with his former enemies from Tigerstar.

JerVerse Adventure 83: Team Tigerstar v. Scalines

Tigerstar Special Forces sent a team with Feli, Charr, Dante, and Copycat to help deal with their greatest threat: the Scaline Empire. A prophecy foretold that on June 30, 2000 an alien threat would assault Earth Prime and try to destroy the world. With the Scaline Empire as the most obvious alien threat out there, Tigerstar Special Forces put together a team to negotiate a non-aggression pact with them. The team infiltrated the Scaline King’s warship and made their way to his quarters with a peace treaty, hoping to convince him to sign it. Once they got face to face with the leader of the Scalines, Zah surprised everyone by revealing himself and killing the Scaline King! Zah declared, as per Scaline law, that he was now the rightful king of the empire. The rest of the team teleported away after Zah agreed not to attack Earth Prime. In effect, they had achieved their goal. Side note: years later I was surprised when I watched the Vin Diesel movie The Chronicles of Riddick and watched a very similar scene play out at the end of the film. JerVerse Adventure 84: Scaline Civil War

The Tigerstar Special Forces team had to decide whether or not to try to stop Zahadoom from marrying the Scaline queen in his attempt to avert the Scaline Civil War that was about to happen as a result of him killing the Scaline king. Half of the Scaline population supported their queen as their new leader because Zah was an alien; the other half of the population accepted Zah’s claim. Zah was pursuing the easy option of bringing the people together by marrying the queen. Charr, Feli, and some of the others showed up at the wedding and caused a scene. Greg Haylege performed the wedding and pronounced Zah the new husband to the queen. JerVerse Adventure 85: Zah’s Scaline Triumvirate

As the confirmed leader of the Scaline Empire, Zah realized he disliked having to be in charge of everything. Technically the Scaline High Priest helped run the day-to-day operations, but Zah decided to bring in Raven and Doc Roc to join him as a ruling Triumvirate Council. The three of them used their fleets of spaceships to go fight some alien enemies and conquer some planets. JerVerse Adventure 86: Earth Prime v. The Hexagonals

It turned out the prophecy about Earth Prime being assaulted by aliens involved an invasion by The Hexagonals, not the Scalines; when the Tigerstar and Earth Defense Forces were outnumbered by the Hexagonals (on June 30, 2000), the Scaline Empire showed up to help. We played out an intense space battle until the Hexagonals setup their huge energy beam weapon that engulfed most of the remaining defenders in a huge energy explosion (that blew up the defending ships, but allowed an ancient being to capture the characters in an imprisonment dimension)... Reflections

When AJ had had his character Zah take over the Scaline Empire we were all in shock. As a GM I wasn’t sure what to do at first. My game suddenly felt horribly unbalanced with the power dynamics of different characters. I let them play it out for a bit, but I realized I needed a new plan. And that meant some railroading to try to rebalance the power in the game. Looking back, I probably should have just said, “Let’s retire Zahadoom.” In my attempt to correct the course of my game, I decided to make some big changes. We were about to go from an extreme science-fiction setting to a fantasy setting…