Book Review: A Call to Arms by Alan Dean Foster

Book Review!

Alan Dean Foster's Trilogy of the Damned greatly inspired my science-fiction superhero RPG saga:

Today I want to look at book one in the series: A Call to Arms...

I really enjoyed reading this book. I imagined the main character as Harry Connick, Jr. from when he was acting in the movie Independence Day since he is a cajun musician who ends up working with aliens. Alan Dean Foster stands out as one of my favorite writers because he successfully blends in philosophical elements to his sci-fi and fantasy works.

Overall I give the book an 8 out of 10 because it was good enough to inspire me to add more fun and interesting aliens/characters to my RPG adventures. My Saga's Evaew alliance was me taking the Weave alliance from this book (and spelling Weave backwards, LOL).

A Super RPG System Idea

An Idea

After typing up all the logs from my old superhero games, it got me thinking about the fact that I no longer play with the Rifts-based Heroes Unlimited rules system. Instead, I am a huge fan of the new Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (5E). I also like Vampire the Masquerade system’s use of experience points to buy new elements (skill points, stat points, abilities, etc.). I think my ideal RPG system might somehow combine all three of the major systems that I like.

My life keeps me too busy to work on this project, but I want to put a challenge on there. Someone should make a system that, at its core, mostly resembled D&D 5E but also includes super powers/abilities/mutations/bionics and allows for leveling options like the Vampire XP-purchasing system. It would require someone to untangle all of the class abilities in D&D 5E and assign values to them. The person would also have to create superhero abilities to mesh with D&D 5E and assign values to them. Then a purchasing system based on XP or something would need to incorporate the values in a “balanced” way.

Impossible task? Perhaps. But that’s my thoughts for today as I prepare to transition to discussing other old RPG games that I have played.

Peace.

P.S. Here’s a look at the druid character I currently play in a campaign, transformed into a bear while fighting a hydra. Someday I hope to give you the log report from this session.

Logs 225-300: Heroes Unlimited Part 9 & 10: Dragon Secret Society, Campaign for Earth, and Final Connections

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 225-300: Heroes Unlimited Part 9 & 10: Dragon Secret Society, Campaign for Earth, and Final Connections

I only agreed to GM again if I could scale everything back 1000%. Instead of the zany sci-fi adventures we were used to, I set our new game in the modern world with the players taking on the roles of college students who were recruited into a secret society.

Since I don’t have detailed session logs from these adventures, you’re going to get a summary log again. Our players for the first year of the secret society game included: NH, MW, LH, CF, AJ, LV, JFP, CW, AF, JP, JP’s friend Jessica, JW, and TV. The second year of the secret society game included: NH, CW, KG, LV, JFP, MR, MW, AR, JW, SD, and AJ; most of the time it was down to a core group of about 5-7 people.

JerVerse Adventure 225-263: Dragon Secret Society

The main characters included: Johnnye Morgan, Martina Jackson, Lawrence Pierce, Tristan Silver, Nathan Smith, Val MacLauren, Cami Wyrick, and several others (whose names have been lost over the years). The group’s characters were all students from “Ivy League” places like Yale or Harvard, but had been transferred to a seemingly normal state school in north Texas after joining into The Dragon Secret Society. Inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the Hellmouth, I made their new university a special place that attracted danger.

Their secret society sent them on missions. Sometimes they were investigating mysteries, sometimes they rescued people, and sometimes they were committing crimes. Since we used the real modern world as the basis for the setting I had fun setting up encounters in places we all knew. They were involved in car chases on the roads we use all the time; there was a shoot out at a gas station most of us used. They also went on special assignments to places like New Orleans. At one point I think they were dealing with a cult and weren’t sure if the enemies were actually vampires or just people who thought they were vampires.

Pop culture helped inspire some of the adventure sessions. I used famous people as secret members of their organization, or at least allies/assets. The bands Rage Against the Machine and Alien Ant Farm both got involved in plots. With Alien Ant Farm the group had to save a girl named Annie; they were “Smooth Criminals.” There were actual machines to rage against. I also really enjoyed using the internet and books/maps to turn real world locations into adventure encounter areas.

Through the course of the adventures, the characters developed special powers or found magic items that empowered them. They also continued making important friends and allies in the secret society and politics. Sometimes their networking resources were just as much, or more powerful, than their super powers.

JerVerse Adventure 264-300: Campaign for Earth and Final Connections

The second year of the secret society campaign turned into something much larger as the group had their characters take over global politics, deal with a threat to the entire planet, and they found out I had a twist surprise for the last part of the campaign; the secret society characters were actually connected to the larger RPG saga universe.

Johnnye Morgan, Martina Jackson, Lawrence Pierce, Nathan Smith (a.k.a. Deathstalker), Val MacLauren, and the others were joined by Luman Cross and Jack Tycho (a.k.a. Mephiston). The characters arranged to take over politics, with their secret society promoting its own people into the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States.

In their new position of global power, the group learned of an alien threat to Earth. There was an unavoidable apocalypse coming with aliens planning to destroy the world. The group managed to use their resources to find a way to magically shield Earth and swap it out with a fake placeholder Earth. It was very complicated at the time, but they managed to achieve success with each part of the plan and the magic items worked for them.

What ended up happening though, was they put Earth into stasis and fooled the rest of the universe with their plan; some of the characters were in stasis, but others ended up being petrified and later restored to themselves. Their actions linked back into our RPG saga; Mephiston turned out to be the father of Darius Jobe. Johnnye Morgan was soulmates with the little fiend Quizanel (who was really the ancient god-being Bel). Martina Jackson was Femme; Femme’s long-lost memories were actually shielding her original existence as Martina. The Femme body, it turned out, was just a disguise.

The secret society version of Earth was removed from stasis in the RPG saga timeline’s year of 7,778. The secret society characters met up with the old RPG saga characters and we continued having adventures in the larger universe. They had more Universal Council meetings, they dealt with strange alien enemies (including a return of the Keymons), and they planned out the retirement of their characters.

Al, Feli, CM, and Xedus wanted to make sure the future would be safe from Zahadoom before they fully retired from adventuring; they worked with Temptrick to trick Zah. Since Zah had an immortal-fairy-cosmosian body, they tricked him into teleporting inside of somewhere; he was unknowingly stuck in the HI cylinder that he had once used to imprison Al. They convinced Zah that he was living in his own special universe (a third universe since two already existed), but it was really an HI simulation. To make sure the HI-cylinder would never be found and used to free the supervillain, Al tucked it away in the second universe and sealed off all connections from the first universe to the second one.

The End.

Reflections

Planning and running the secret society sessions was a breath of fresh air for me as a storyteller. In creative writing classes, instructors recommend using what you know; the realistic feel of the campaign made my job easier. Sometimes planning could be as simple as me being in line at the bank thinking about how I needed an idea for an encounter and looking around going, “They could be in this bank when someone tries to rob it.” Or I might be at a concert, with hundreds of people crowded around, and I would think - this would make for a challenging place to try to follow a suspect or enemy.

I was really relieved when my players liked the surprise twist - that our secret society adventures for two years actually linked back into the main RPG saga storyline. NH was especially happy to see how Femme’s returned memories played out. Remarkably, without knowing the plan, NH had planned Martina Jackson’s personality the same way she played Femme.

The RPG saga’s last session ended in August of 2003 because I felt I needed to move on. Back then I really didn’t think I’d have the free time or energy to run a game for the foreseeable future because I felt I needed to devote myself to my new career. I had enjoyed my decade-long RPG saga with all of players who came and went throughout the years, but I had to let it go (for a while).

Logs 196-224: Heroes Unlimited Part 8: The Universal Council and Judgment Day

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 196-224: Heroes Unlimited Part 8: The Universal Council and Judgment Day

Unfortunately, today’s log suffers from the same issues I faced yesterday. I know the number of sessions played, what days we played them, and who showed up for them, but I lack my notes about what specifically happened at each session so I’m going to provide an overview of this entire chapter of our saga. Players included: NH, AJ, BW, BD, MW, JFP, LH, MR, LV, and HJ.

JerVerse Adventure 196-224: The Universal Council and Judgment Day

The major player characters were back in action: Femme, Feli, Valas, Raven, Al, Charr, Thomas, Turlock, Nelor, Lott, Sledge, Goliath, and even Greg Haylege. The characters surveyed the environment in the year 7,777 and realized they needed to form alliances with the major ancient races and intergalactic organizations. Thus the group formed an intergalactic congress that they called the Universal Council. Essentially, they formed a one-universe UN-type assembly that tried to protect people and keep the peace.

Believe it or not, the players enjoyed spending many sessions debating intergalactic politics instead of just engaging in combat all the time. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of disputes came up that caused conflicts and combat; but when possible, the characters used diplomacy to resolve their issues. NPCs such as Mayhem, the Connected Meerkat, and Pyr were just as good at getting into trouble as helping the group solve problems. Villains attempted to bring back the Dark Ones and end the universe, but the heroes prevailed. I wish I could remember more details about the middle adventures, but I know some of the details and I have some typed files about the end events.
Along the way major threats came from Temptrick and Lady Temporanna (who had been the lover of Arcanus and mother to both Zah and his brother). With her time travelling powers, Lady Temporanna was able to go back to when The Dark Ones still existed and bring some of them into the current time to bother the players.

This is probably a good place to also mention that, somewhere along the way, the characters inadvertently created a second universe. They had dealt with dimensional counterparts from their own universe, but they ended up having to deal with universal counterparts as well. In the second universe Feli’s counterpart was Mar; Mar had a child with her version of Zahadoom named Maladoom. Lott’s counterpart was named Ttol. The universal counterparts were evil/opposites like the Mirror Universe in Star Trek.

I remember creating a long-term (though subtly introduced) plot with the concept of the 4-Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Over the course of many adventures, certain characters were brought into the plan to destroy the universe and bring about the ultimate apocalypse. Good ol’ Dr. Lane was possessed by the ancient goddess of thievery Vanesli and became Pestilence. Jinnai was brought back to life to serve as War. Dread had been calling himself Death and was the obvious choice to take on that role. Someone else represented Famine. As per the mythology, the “horsemen” arrived one at a time. If all four of them came to a world, it would be destroyed.
The end events came to a head with a predetermined “Judgment Day” (from the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse) that the characters had to prevent. After they saved the day, we concluded our story with Turlock’s wedding to his NPC love interest Lady Ashley. For his reception, Turlock hosted a tournament and promised a special reward to the winner [side note: the player LH came up with this idea, but it worked great for ending the RPG saga adventures since we liked having tournaments].
AJ’s character Valas won the tournament, but everyone was shocked (and disappointed) when LH announced that the reward Turlock was giving the winner of the tournament was the chance to face Turlock in combat. For months LH had his character quest to get an ancient Shaper body and had his soul put into it; the ancient Shaper being could steal the powers/abilities of anyone he fought. It turned out LH wanted to see who was the most powerful and then steal that person’s powers. What he didn’t realize was that AJ’s character Valas had a soul-swapping ability. AJ asked LH three times if he was sure he really wanted to have Turlock and Valas fight. When LH insisted they battle, AJ won initiative and used his soul-swapping powers to steal Turlock’s Shaper body; Valas teleported out and Turlock was stuck with a powerless body.
Turlock tried to convince his family (everyone related to Draconias) to go to war with Valas and the rest of the Vemniriscotts, but they refused his request. The rest of the main characters in the story were very happy that they had achieved peace in the universe and they were not willing to sacrifice that accomplishment for a personal vendetta.
Reflections

Ending with a wedding, a tournament, and player v. player shenanigans gave our RPG saga the special send off that it deserved. At that point in my life, I was finished with my RPG multiverse. I enjoyed wrapping up all of the storylines and ending the saga. Within a month though, I found myself running a one-off session for friends; I used the Heroes Unlimited system, but gave my friends (NH, BD, AJ, BW, and JP) character sheets to play themselves in a modern setting. We had a lot of fun with that RPG session and my friends spent months talking me into starting up a new game.

Six months later we were making RPG characters who were in college, as part of a secret society...

Log 155-195: Heroes Unlimited Part 7: His Power & The Forgotten Ones

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.

Log 155-195: Heroes Unlimited Part 7: His Power & The Forgotten Ones

I really messed up my game when I took time off during the summer between my first and second years of college. I was working a lot and I decided to write a novella to progress the story. I had no idea how devastating my two month break from the game and my novella would be for my players because I failed to consider the ramifications of removing so much player agency while moving the story along in the direction I wanted. We also entered a time in our lives in which everyone was working and/or going to college. Schedules were much busier and, once they had fallen out of the routine of regularly meeting to roleplay and hang out, it wasn’t easy to get my players back.

JerVerse Adventure 155: His Power

I wrote a 117-page (62,610 word) novella that I titled His Power to detail new events in the RPG saga. While I absolutely loved planning and writing the story, I must admit when I look back at the work that it clearly was written only for an audience of my players. As an epic sci-fi fantasy novel, the book contained so many characters and references to our gaming universe’s events that someone unfamiliar with our stories would surely be lost trying to make sense of the plot.

The story focused on the secret return of Zahadoom and his rise to power as he found a way to attempt to become Ruler of the Universe so he could achieve god-like omnipotent power. I wrote Zah as the ruthless, conniving villain that I know AJ always wanted him to be. In fact, out of all of my friends who read the book, AJ liked the story the most. The rest of my players rightfully complained about how I portrayed their characters. Mostly, they were bothered with how Raven betrayed the Scaline Empire to assist Zah and how easily Al and Feli were tricked by Zah. The good heroes were all sidelined: some of them were imprisoned in an HI cylinder, some of them were petrified/turned into statues, some were distracted by a mission to a “Forgotten” part of the universe, some of them were put into stasis in a mystic painting, and others were killed off.

The book also contained a subplot in which Draconias was secretly helping Zah in exchange for the children of the adventurers. When the good guys were all sidelined, Draconias and Meli took their children and raised them in the temporally-different dimension that Draconias owned. When I was writing the book, I intended for this to allow for a new generation of characters to be able to come to the forefront of the story. But why did I do that? Looking back now, I realize I should have asked my players about this. Did they want the children of their characters to take over the story? Apparently not. Oops.

I also advanced the universe over 5,000 years (though the people in the “Forgotten” space only experienced weeks and the people in Draconias only experienced about 15 years). The plot culminated with Zah and his brother Temptrick relying on Al’s son Kenshin, who had been raised by Draconias, to help Zah activate a special artifact that would shift his soul into it and allow him to ascend to godhood. The Connected Meerkat tried to stop Zah and Kenshin pulled off a special three-way soul swap that caused Kenshin to be the one to become Him (the Ruler of the Universe) while putting CM in Zah’s body and Zah in Kenshin’s (half-elf/immortal-fairy-cosmosian) body.

JerVerse Adventures 156-195: The Forgotten Ones

At this point, I need to share some bad news. Even though I no longer have my detailed notes from the campaign adventures, up to this point, I have been able to rely on general summaries, old NPC notes, and character sheets to piece together the details of the adventure sessions. Going forward, I have the opposite. Instead of those types of notes, all I have are the lists from my daily planner that I kept back then that show what days we gamed on and who was in attendance at each session.

For this part of the RPG saga I need to just provide more general summaries instead of session by session reports about the adventures. We played these sessions during my second year of college. Players included: NH, LH, BD, AC, MW, JFP, BK, TK, AJ, and BW - but initially, for about 3 months, the sessions were just NH and LH with me as the storyteller.

Femme, Scrarr, Sarxen, Pyr, and Turlock went on a mission in a portal that was said to go to a “forgotten place” in the universe because their friend the Connected Meerkat (CM) had gone in there looking for some sort of secret ancient artifact. Even though CM ran off without asking for their help, the group wanted to pursue him and find out what he was up to; the Scaline High Priest approved their mission and wished them luck. Thus they left Posnarah and the normal universe behind…

When people entered through the portal to the forgotten place, they were given a new body -  except for Femme. She found out this was because something about herself was shielding her body, protecting it from changing. She also found out that she had a bunch of forgotten memories and the NPCs of the forgotten place encouraged her to find them. Since CM had come through before the group, the "new bodies" issue meant he could be anyone.

The group explored a fantasy world with farms, where Turlock took ownership over a vampiric cow named Norman and tried to romance a witch. When Turlock and the witch argued with each other, she cursed him to temporarily leave the forgotten place (but he soon came back). When Turlock was back in the normal universe, he realized there was a time differential going on such that each day they experienced in the forgotten space was happening at the same rate as a month going by in the outside universe. Femme and the rest of the team couldn’t worry about that. They had their quests to complete.

On the trail of CM, Femme and Turlock’s team encounter ancient beings. They fought against and later befriended Mayhem and Chaos (an ancient dragon and bat duo). They found the missing Cassandra Fox and teamed up with her to solve some of her problems.

When Scaline Special Forces sent more people into the portal Femme met up with Charr, Thomas, Xoq pox, and Nova Kaine. Femme’s team discovered a “forgotten” race of ancient beings caleld the Vemniriscotts. One of the Vemniriscotts, a man named Valas, joined them for some adventures. Valas also enjoyed going on several side missions on his own.

When Lott and other members of Scaline Special Forces showed up, Femme grew more concerned about the urgency of her mission. They brought news about problems back in the Scaline Empire and the suspicion that CM was seeking an artifact that could allow him to retake the universal throne and attain absolute power. When the team found CM they realized he had been difficult to find because his body in this place was that of a woman. CM also took the time to have a child with Pyr, not because they were romantically in love, but because they wanted to help repopulate the fairy race.

The team worked together to help CM find the artifact he needed, but CM and Sarxen ran off with the item before the group could stop them. By the time the rest of their team escaped the forgotten place, they were far into the future: 5,737 years had gone by in the outside universe. It was the year 7,777 and Femme still didn’t have her forgotten memories back. They found out about how both CM and Zahadoom were thwarted in their quests to take over the universe by Al’s son Kenshin (who used his abilities to perform a triple soul swap, leaving CM in Zah’s old body (the Maximus body) and Zah in Kenshin’s body.

Due to an agreement between Temptrick and the heroes of the Scaline Empire, Temptrick took Zah 2 billion years into the future so he couldn’t hurt anyone in the present timeline.

Reflections

For a game that goes on for years and years, I think it’s important to change up the setting every once in awhile. That’s why every six months to a year I would try to send the team to a new place or a new time to have new people and places to meet and explore. I originally called the "forgotten place" the Forgotten Realms, but later realized it was confusing since D&D's planet Toril was referred to as the Forgotten Realms setting.

While I realized after the fact, based on the reactions of my players, that I shouldn’t have written the book as part of the RPG story, I really enjoyed the process of writing. Even just reading back over the book to write this log has made me want to write a new book (one that won’t impact any of my current D&D games). Hmm...

Logs 126-154: Heroes Unlimited Part 6: The Scaline Empire v. The Dark Ones

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 126-154: Heroes Unlimited Part 6: The Scaline Empire v. The Dark Ones

During my first year of college several more people wanted to join our RPG saga. Our story’s original characters had advanced so much over the years that I had to find ways to balance their powers and abilities with the new characters. I felt somewhat bad for people who joined us unaware of all of the previous adventures and inside jokes we had going on, but most of the new players quickly adapted. I also needed powerful threats to challenge the high-level characters, thus I continued creating new aliens and ancient foes.

We established the Scaline homeworld Posnarah as a base of operations so that teams of characters could teleport out or fly out in spaceships for missions and then regroup with whomever was available for the next RPG session. That way we didn’t have to worry as much about people coming and going from the adventures. The main threat that held this part of our saga together was that the ancient Dark Ones were angry about having their plans foiled so they were on a rampage, destroying worlds and causing problems.
Players during Part 6 of our RPG saga included: BD, AJ, NH, BW, JFP, KG, SS, MW, MR, LH, BK, SO, and JS.
JerVerse Adventure 126: Home Sweet Posnarah

The active characters were recruited as members of Scaline Special Forces and provided with housing by the government of Posnarah. The characters setup homes on the Scaline Empire’s capitol planet Posnarah; Feli and Bren had twin children (a boy named Tristan and a girl named Sancha) while Al and Karcinerell had a son (named Kenshin). Charr and Rajanna were also living together. King Gemini and the High Priest were ruling the Empire, but Raven also had a claim to leadership from the past. Together, the leaders sent Scaline Special Forces on missions to protect the interests of the Scaline Empire.

JerVerse Adventure 127: The Negotiator

King Gemini didn’t want to war with Raven over leadership of the empire so he funded a massive warship for Raven called The Negotiator. When aliens threatened the Scalines all they had to do was send in The Negotiator and it deployed an entire space armada from its ship bays. Raven tested out his ship and its resources on some of the aliens that had been problems in the past. His ship and crew proved very successful at eliminating problems or forcing enemies to negotiate terms of surrender.

JerVerse Adventure 128: Introducing Lott

We worked together to help our friend MW create his character. MacLain Lott was a powerful psionicist from the world of Camaas, a world the Scaline Empire was interested in negotiating with for a treaty. When the team went to Camaas for the negotiations, they met Lott. Scaline Special Forces recruited Lott, who happily joined them on The Negotiator.

JerVerse Adventure 129: The Return of Doc Roc

When Draconias’ imprisonment dimension was threatened by the Dark Ones, Raven and Lott helped Doc Roc magically teleport Roc’s kingdom’s people to safety and hid them on a planet near Posnarah. The Scaline High Priest was able to put up special shielding so no one would be able to detect the isolationist people of Thistle. Raven and Doc Roc enjoyed one last adventure together as they fought some ancient beasts with Lott and other Scaline Special Forces members at their side. Meanwhile Draconias managed to make some sort of agreement with the Dark Ones so that they wouldn’t destroy his dimension.

JerVerse Adventure 130: Threats from the Dark Ones

The ancient beings known as The Dark Ones continued threatening and destroying worlds with their destructive powers. The team failed tried to save several worlds and realized they needed a new plan to combat the Dark Ones, who would announce to worlds that they only had a short time to evacuate before their planet would be eradicated by the Dark Ones.

JerVerse Adventure 131: Introducing Captain Sledge

MW’s friend MR also joined us. His character was quite similar to Han Solo or Capt. Reynolds from Firefly. Captain Sledge had his own ship that he used as a mercenary and smuggler in some of the less populated regions of space. When Scaline Special Forces found Sledge, they rescued him as his ship was destroyed by aliens. Sledge joined the team and decided to work with them to defeat their common alien enemies.

JerVerse Adventure 132: Introducing Turlock

Our friend LH was the next person to create a character and join our game. For his backstory, I decided to link him to several of our other characters. Draconias sired several children (not just Al and Verali); one of the lost children of Draconias was a dragon named Turlock who ended up trapped in the body of a 12-year old. Turlock’s main superpower was called multiplicity and allowed him to create numerous copies of himself. Turlock’s recruitment mission for Scaline Special Forces allowed him a chance to test out his abilities fighting ancient beasts.

JerVerse Adventure 133: Team Negotiator v. the Keymons

Monkey-like men from the planet Keymon threatened the team onboard The Negotiator. Scaline Special Forces and the crew had to fight the aliens and convince them to surrender.

JerVerse Adventure 134: The Insane Psi

The ancient race known as the Psi were the original psionicists of the universe. Their mental abilities were so powerful that if one of their people went insane, that person could alter reality across an entire planet; due to interference by the Dark Ones, a Psi went insane on a world that had Feli, Nelor, Raven, and several of the others visiting. The insane Psi’s powers fed off the fears of the characters and caused their worst fears to come to life. This tragic event brought Zahadoom back to life as a result of the reality-altering powers. The team finally eliminated the threat by curing the ancient Psi’s insanity. Nelor used his sword to decapitate the resurrected Zahadoom, thus gaining the respect of the Scaline people.

JerVerse Adventure 135: Trapped in Space

Raven took a team on The Negotiator to explore a strange anomaly in space (due to a trick by the Dark Ones), but the ship was pulled in and trapped there - cut off from the rest of the universe. Femme, Turlock, Sledge, and Lott were part of the team onboard. Together, they faced several alien foes.

JerVerse Adventure 136: The Scaline Gods

Raven and his team were still missing. Back on Posnarah the High Priest alerted Feli, Nelor, and Darius that the ancient beings known as the Scaline gods (of Might, Honor, and Wisdom) had returned to wrestle control of the planet from the new aliens leading them [the player characters]; the High Priest suspected the Dark Ones had sent the ancient ones there because the Scaline gods had abandoned the world long ago.

Feli killed the ancient being calling himself the god of Honor, Nelor killed the one of Wisdom, and Darius killed the one of Might. The Scalines declared this trio their new triumvirate since they each consumed a yellow “god essence” from the beings they killed; the group had to figure out how they were going to share power with King Gemini and the High Priest.
JerVerse Adventure 137: Meli & Draconias in Love

Feli had to deal with family drama when she found out her mother had fallen madly in love with the immortal Draconias (after he had fled from the destruction of his pocket dimension). Feli also found out about Cassandra and Bran’s son Charlie Fox, who had been to a temporally-altered dimension and grown up super fast.

JerVerse Adventure 138: The Great Spider One

Nelor took his son Ahrack to their homeworld when Ding (whose real name was Trevor Maxwell) revealed a quest to Nelor to recover an ancient artifact that was the necklace of “The Great Spider One.” By completing the mission, Nelor became the leader of his people and integrated them into the Scaline Empire.

JerVerse Adventure 139: More Negotiator Missions

The team on The Negotiator completed more missions while trapped in the galaxy within the space anomaly.

JerVerse Adventure 140: Escaping the Anomaly.

The Negotiator’s crew finally defeated the enemies within the anomaly that were preventing them from escaping. They returned to the Scaline Empire and had to deal with the political changes. Gemini, respecting Raven, abdicating the throne so that Raven could continue to exercise legitimate political power in the Empire as King Raven. Gemini decided to train under the High Priest.

JerVerse Adventure 141: Agent of the Dark Ones

The Dark Ones wanted a new agent that could annoy and distract their enemies in the Scaline Empire so they resurrected Zahadoom. The team of heroes came together and defeated their enemy once more, but they didn’t realize that The Dark Ones had given him the power of coming back to life each time he died; thus, when the group left his body dead in space, Zah kept coming back to life and went insane.

JerVerse Adventure 142: Introducing Starface

Charlie Fox had grown up and gone insane as well (due to his crazy parents Cassandra and Bran); Charlie took the form of a constellation that was antagonizing Al and called himself Starface (since he looked like a face made out of stars). Al sprayed out an insanity cure on that sector of space, rescuing Charlie. He agreed to adopt the young man since Cassandra and Bran were MIA.

JerVerse Adventure 143: Introducing Akira Maximus

What Al didn’t realize though was that the insane Zahadoom was also in the part of space where he cured Charlie. The insanity cure also worked on Zah, who transformed himself into Akira Maximus and donned a new costume with a mask. The Dark Ones insisted Maximus continue working for them, but he went on missions dealing with ancient beings that were a threat to his new masters.

JerVerse Adventure 144: Feli’s Family Trouble

Feli’s children and husband were always getting in trouble and in need of rescue of some kind. If not them, then her mother would be in danger. After getting her friends to help her rescue her family over and over again, Feli grew tired of the threats against them. She decided they all needed to stay at home on Posnarah. She also realized she was pregnant with another child.

JerVerse Adventure 145: Ficaria v. The Dark Ones

The Dark Ones threatened the homeworld of Al’s wife Karcinerell. Unfortunately, despite the team’s best efforts, they were unable to save the planet.

JerVerse Adventure 146: Camaas v. The Dark Ones

Lott asked the rest of Scaline Special Forces to help him when The Dark Ones threatened his homeworld Camaas. Finally, the team scored a victory over the Dark Ones when they stopped their ancient foes from destroying a world.

JerVerse Adventure 147: Maximus v. Arcanus

In helping the Dark Ones, Maximus (a.k.a. Zah) also tracked down more information about the ancient wizard Arcanus that he had feuded with back on O-H-M Earth. Arcanus claimed to be Zah’s true father and said that Zah was adopted by the parents he had back on his home planet. Unsure if Arcanus was messing with him to gain control over him, Zah decided not to ally with the ancient wizard; that meant Maximus missed out on learning how Arcanus was linked with the Dark Ones and what secret ritual that they were planning.

JerVerse Adventure 148: Children of Draconias

Draconias asked for help from his children Al, Verali, and Turlock when he found himself in danger. That meant Scaline Special Forces had to come in and save the day. Some of Turlock’s brothers were also involved in the adventure [though their names were meant as puns: Dread was Dreadlock and there was also a brother named Gladlock].

JerVerse Adventure 149: Turlock in Hell

In a quest to retrieve a powerful magic item, Turlock ventured into a Hell dimension. While inside, he located the previously-thought deceased Thomas the Leprechaun. Thomas had been trapped in the Hell Dimension ever since Raven killed him. Together, Turlock and Thomas escaped the Hell dimension with plenty of gold/treasure after they defeated a greed demon.

JerVerse Adventure 150: The Golden One

The members of Scaline Special Forces convinced Thomas not to seek vengeance against Raven, explaining that Raven was a changed man dedicated to justice in the universe. Instead, Thomas (being the greedy ancient leprechaun he was) got their help in a quest for more treasure. As a result of the success of the mission, Thomas became “The Golden One.”

JerVerse Adventure 151: Ancient Blade

Trevor Maxwell helped Linus go on a mission to retrieve the special ancient mystic sword that had been stolen from him. After Linus re-acquired the mystic sword, he found out that it could cut through the special armor of The Dark Ones; Linus successfully teamed up with ShadowAngel and fought multiple groups of Dark Ones.

JerVerse Adventure 152: Destroying the Dark Ones

The characters teamed up on a mission to retrieve a secret ancient artifact linked to powerful universal chaos energy that could be used to eliminate The Dark Ones. The heroes debated this issue, but ultimately decided to use the ancient energy to destroy the Dark Ones; some of them ended up feeling guilty about committing genocide against an entire species, but felt that the actions of the Dark Ones demanded their annihilation.

JerVerse Adventure 153: 3rd RPG Tournament: Part 1

The Arena invited the characters together to again test their skills against one another in a simulated combat tournament. The players who opted to play in the tournament competed in the preliminary elimination rounds. Darius and his sons, all of whom opted out of the tournament, were attacked by ancient beasts and killed. Raven showed up in time to slay the beasts and recover the “god essence” of Might and consume it (thus joining Feli and Nelor in the ruling Scaline Triumvirate).

JerVerse Adventure 154: 3rd RPG Tournament: Part 2

We finished up the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals of the tournament hosted by the Arena. Feli won the competition this time. As a reward for being the Arena’s new champion, the Arena announced to Feli that he felt the universe no longer needed him, but he was giving her a special gift that included the ability to summon the Arena back into existence if a crisis demanded his attention.

Reflections

During this part of the RPG saga I played several former player characters as NPCs for various reasons - they had gone insane or been possessed or were mainly involved in downtime activities. I also struggled with the fact that several of our players were just showing up whenever they wanted and missing sessions without giving prior notice when I had planned out huge storyline possibilities that depended on them being their and getting their characters to react/make decisions.

I understood that life could get in the way with work, college, and family but I had to adapt to the changing priorities of some of the players. We also had a couple of people who showed up but seemed like they wanted to purposefully avoid the adventure hooks and/or cause problems for the group. My core group of players were still great and there most of the time, but my frustrations were growing.

Logs 116-125: Heroes Unlimited Part 5B: Ancient Connections

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 116-125: Heroes Unlimited Part 5B: Ancient Connections

Some of the long-term players in our game had multiple characters at this point. We usually avoided them playing more than one character at a time because that tended to annoy them; NH had a scene in which Feli and Femme had to have an argument with each other and it was fun (for me, as the GM) to hear her roleplay the situation. BD switched off playing Al, Charr, and Jinnai.

I enjoyed creating the lore of the ancient beings, providing more mysterious elements for the characters to discover. Some of the elements I planned ahead of time, but I also just randomly created plenty of aliens and ancient beings on the spot based on the zany adventures the players chose to go on. Sometimes I felt I could predict their every move, but other times I really had to admit I had no idea what my players were thinking.

JerVerse Adventure 116: The Arena’s Tournament

An ancient being known as the Arena (who was the one in charge of “universal balance” and the Cosmic Knights) offered up a mystic sword as a reward for the winner of a tournament. Similar to the fairy tournament, the Arena controlled reality inside his own walls and would make sure no one truly died as a result of the combat; unlike the first tournament that featured one-on-one matches, this time the groups fought in teams. The winning team was forced to fight one another to determine the final victor.

While the others were involved in the tournament, Xoq and Verali were off having a cruise (setup by Draconias, who wanted the two to fall in love and produce him some more grandchildren for him). They were onboard the ship Cuboid, which was very similar to The Navicular.

Side Note: My notes don’t show who won this tournament, but I think it was Nelor this time. I know that eventually Linus ended up with an ancient mystic sword, but Nelor also had a powerful sword so this is probably how he got his.

JerVerse Adventure 117: Destroying the Universal Throne

CM realized he wasn’t really the “Ruler of the Universe” because there were so many things he just couldn’t do/change in the universe. The group figured out that Bran had lied and had been just using CM as a puppet. Bran went insane (as any “lesser being” would while trying to know/wield that much knowledge and power); the group had to destroy the Universal Throne to remove Bran from power. Unfortunately, Jarxen had died in his own attempt to take over the throne.

JerVerse Adventure 118: The Trial of the Century

Feli ended up with a second character, a short red-haired and blue-skinned Litlarian alien from the Intergalactic Peace Corps named Femme. Femme and Greg Haylege were asked to represent one of their friends when he was put on trial by the IPC. Unfortunately, their defense witnesses were people like CM and Pyr, who sounded crazy to ordinary people. Through investigation and argumentation, Femme’s team showed how their friend had been framed for a murder.

JerVerse Adventure 119: Al’s Imprisonment Dimension

For the sake of balance and justice, the Arena recruited Al to create an imprisonment dimension to hold the dangerous ancient beings that were running around harming the younger creatures of the universe. The Arena granted his agents the ability to capture the ancient beings.

JerVerse Adventure 120: Introducing ShadowAngel

AJ’s new character was an agent of the Arena; we worked together to craft a background that millions of years ago the Arena created even more powerful beings than the Cosmic Knights - the Angels of the Arena. One of those ancient warriors was ShadowAngel. We played out an adventure in ancient times when the Angels trapped ancient beings behind the ancient barrier. ShadowAngel and several others had been put into stasis.

In the current RPG timeline the Arena took ShadowAngel out of stasis and gave him the ability to imprison people in Al’s imprisonment dimension, with the directive to get to work protecting the “lesser beings” from the ancient threats.

JerVerse Adventure 121: Charr v. Evil Wizards

Charr had some blocked memories that finally came forward, revealing that an evil wizard had stolen his love interest Rajanna. Charr’s buddy Darn the dwarf helped him with his mission to rescue his lost love. Together, Charr and Darn joined up with the ShadowAngel and they all were able to rescue Rajanna.

JerVerse Adventure 122: Capturing Ancient Beings

ShadowAngel was joined by the others in his missions to capture dangerous ancient beings. Even Pyr and CM became Knights of the Arena to help with the mission. The team battled several ancient threats. Meanwhile, Al had been captured by the Evaew alliance.

JerVerse Adventure 123: The Game Master

The ancient Rakshasa called the Game Master (who had invented the HI cylinders) threatened the group when he heard they had been capturing his ancient allies. For a while, the Game Master managed to capture the group. When the group defeated the GM, his assistant surrendered to them and they were able to obtain more HI cylinders. They also gained the knowledge of creating the special HI shielding that was used inside the HI chambers.

JerVerse Adventure 124: The Evaew Defense Shield

The team focused on going back to rescue Earth Prime from the alien occupiers. They had to infiltrate the enemy to figure out how they were powering the new shield they used to protect their forces. They found out the aliens had captured Al and were using his fairy-energy as a type of mystic battery. Jinnai and Winter sacrificed themselves to free Al, who had been weakened after being used as a battery for so long.

JerVerse Adventure 125: Liberating Earth Prime

King Gemini’s Scaline resources were used to create enough Robo-Scalines to join the real Scalines and strike out against the alien alliances that had been occupying Earth. The team finally liberated Earth Prime from the alien threats by commanding different Scaline fleets and wiping out the main forces of the Evaew and LSW (though leaving Earth Prime rather scarred from the battles there). With the team’s success, the Scaline Empire ended up as the major intergalactic and interdimensional power in the universe.

Reflections

Part of my inspiration for the Evaew was the enemy alien alliance in Alan Dean Foster’s The Damned Trilogy (A Call to Arms, The False Mirror, and The Spoils of War), which I highly recommend as a great science-fiction read. I took the word Weave and spelled it backwards, as I was often prone to do. In fact, my players got so used to my word scrambles for names that - any time I introduced a new character or race or planet - they started writing down the word and seeing what they could make out of rearranging the letters.

To this day The Navicular remains one of my favorite creations as well. For that starship I researched actual yachts and based the layout of the ship on something I found on the internet. I also really liked the word that my mind made up to name the ship: Navicular.

I did my best to never miss a pun opportunity. I had created the aliens The Mee just so I could make jokes like “Shoot at Mee!” or “Whatever happens, kill Mee!” The meta-humor of having the team take on The Game Master also amused me because I trapped the characters in a simulated environment that they had to escape by killing the programmer/manipulator of their reality.