Logs 96-115: Heroes Unlimited Part 5A: Alien Alliances

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 96-115: Heroes Unlimited Part 5A: Alien Alliances

For most of the universe 28 years had gone by while the characters spent their 28 days in Draconias. That temporal difference allowed me to present a changed Earth Prime. While the player characters were gone, two different alien invasions had occurred and Earth Prime was conquered by the Evaew Alliance (which included the Hexagonals and several other alien races).

The Rifts Phase World book helped inspire some of the aliens and ships that we created. We also used the Cosmo-Knights from that book as a model for the Cosmic Knights we created for our multiverse. Players for part 5 of our RPG saga included: JS, AJ, SS, NH, BD, BW, RW, AC, JFP, TK, BK, and KG.

JerVerse Adventure 96: Introducing Androvine

One of the funniest situations in our gaming years, for me at least, happened with the creation of the new character for JS. The new character was Androvine and we had planned for his character to be one of the Wobleese aliens (purple-skinned giants) that were occupying Earth; the character was supposed to be a human sympathizer. Our plan was for JS to have his character betray his people and help the human insurrection. Instead, when JS was playing Androvine and had a chance to torture the human prisoners for information he found he actually enjoyed making them suffer.

JerVerse Adventure 97: Welcome to Earth 2028

When the team left Draconia and ended up back on Earth, they were not happy about the temporal difference and the alien invasion. Feli, Jinnai, Jarxen, Thomas, Linus, and Raven had to adapt to the new situation. They found themselves battling the alien oppressors and on the run, just trying to survive and hide on Earth.

JerVerse Adventure 98: Introducing Felix Amos

The team found an ally in RW’s new character, Felix Amos from the planet Cassia; Felix and his brother were human-like alien members of the Intergalactic Peace Corps (IPC) that were trying to help the humans organize their rebellion. In joining the team, Felix helped them take out an alien base on Earth - but only after Androvine helped him escape from the Evaew.

JerVerse Adventure 99: The Rebellion v. Sleep-Tech

Unfortunately, the Evaew Alliance had developed weapons that used Sleep-Tech (which was a GM invention I came up to help me railroad the story via alien stun guns; these weapons allowed the aliens to overcome the team’s super powers and capture them). Taken in by the enemy, the team had to escape imprisonment. Unfortunately, by the time they escaped from their holding cells and were ready to make their way back to the rebellion, they realized they were on an alien ship orbiting Earth.

JerVerse Adventure 100: Fleeing Earth Prime

Making the classic mistake of splitting the party, the team ended up in different locations. Al had also been an alien prisoner aboard the ship. The alien ship they were on was taking them away from Earth and the group ended up leaving in different ways. They had to accept that, for now, they didn’t have the resources to save Earth.

Al had gone up to the command bridge and had success taking out enemies there, but he ended up being seduced by a “sexy elf lady” named Karcinerell (who was from the planet Ficaria). The team managed to set the ship to self destruct and evacuate on different fighters/ships/escape pods.

JerVerse Adventure 101: Murdering Thomas

When Thomas, Androvine, and Raven ended up crashed on an alien world and stuck with each other they had to overcome many environmental factors and alien monsters. Raven couldn’t stand the annoying habits of Thomas and, in rage and frustration, killed the leprechaun! At that point we paused the game and I was like, “BW, what are you doing? Why did you kill another player character?” His response was just, “He really annoyed me.”

I said we couldn’t have players killing the characters of other players. As retribution for BW having his character kill JFP’s character, I introduced NPC Cosmic Knights that came after Raven; they were Knights of Universal Balance. Raven fought them, unsuccessfully, and they killed in to avenge the death of the leprechaun. After that series of unfortunate events, both BW and JFP needed new characters.

JerVerse Adventure 102: Introducing Nelor

JFP’s new character was an alien Aracnian (spiderfolk). Nelor was a proud warrior from the world of Aracnia who joined with Feli’s team to help fight off members of the Evaew that were trying to take over Nelor’s world. Nelor realized, to help his people, he needed to travel out into space with the team.

JerVerse Adventure 103: Introducing Celeron

BW created a really interesting new character named Celeron; he was considered a god being from the planet Ravel, but had lost most of his powers when his planet was destroyed by the Evaew. Celeron’s spirit was connected to a mystic staff that could reform a humanoid avatar for him. The team retrieved Celeron’s staff from space, watched him reform, and got to know him; they helped Celeron get vengeance against some Evaew ships.

JerVerse Adventure 104: Introducing Darius Jobe

Feli, Jarxen, Felix, Nelor, Celeron, and the NPCs met up with humans that were fighting against aliens on a bug planet. Our friend KG (whom we had been playing D&D with) modeled Darius Jobe after the soldiers from Starship Troopers, thus I was happy to give him an army of evil bug aliens to fight. Darius joined the team.

Eventually the team took out the bug hive mother and put an end to the invading bug armies. At the end of their mission, the team members found themselves teleported onto a hostile alien ship...

JerVerse Adventure 105: The Navicular

The team members were trapped in a simulated reality when they were teleported onto an alien ship; a simulation of a Rakshasa alien called The Game Master had used ancient powers combined with technology to create Holographic-Intelligence (HI) cylinders [these functioned similar to the holodeck on Star Trek, but with more enhancements - such as reading the minds of the people inside]. The team had to break out of the HI simulation by killing themselves [BTW, many years later the movie Inception somehow totally stole this idea from me] and kill the alien running the program (who wasn’t The Game Master).

They found themselves on a yacht-style pleasure cruiser ship called The Navicular. Little did they know, there was still someone else onboard...

JerVerse Adventure 106: The Mee Assassin

In a horror-suspense session, the characters explored their newly acquired ship The Navicular while a cloaked alien Mee assassin killed them off one at a time (starting with the NPCs, of course). After a while the group realized that splitting into teams of 2 and searching the ship was just getting them all killed. They formed one large group, trapped the assassin, and killed him.

JerVerse Adventure 107: Bravo Squad

A mercenary team called Bravo Squad arrived in a small ship; they tried to take over the Navicular and capture the group, but they failed; Feli, Nelor, Darius, and the others successfully defended their new ship. After the rest of his team was killed, the group leader Bravo agreed to work for the player characters.

JerVerse Adventure 108: HI Zaha-Battles

Having figured out how to use the Navicular to teleport to different dimensions, the team took the ship to their former enemies/allies in the Scaline Empire. Feli came up with the plan of sharing the HI cylinder technology with the Scaline warriors to help them vent their warrior aggression. Using the HI’s mind-reading abilities, the Scalines created an HI version of Zahadoom for warriors to fight in HI combat.

Darius earned the new title “Zaha” from the Scalines after killing the HI Zah in honorable combat. Gemini found himself in an odd situation when he accidentally killed the Scaline’s new king. The Scalines declared Gemini their new king, but he realized the Scaline Empire currently lacked the resources to fight off the Evaew alliance. He used his knowledge to start manufacturing Robo-Scalines to prepare for a future assault.

JerVerse Adventure 109: Introducing Xoq poX

BK wanted to join our game so I helped him create a mysterious alien from “parts unknown” named Xoq poX; Xoq was a humanoid who could survive in space and, in fact, had been floating around in space for a long time. Xoq had the ability to mimic other people’s powers and gave off an appearance as a “reflection” of whoever was looking at him. The team on The Navicular rescued Xoq from space and he helped them to battle a group of Mee invaders.

JerVerse Adventure 110: Trouble on Buggaria

The team responded to a distress call from the peaceful little bug people of Buggaria. Several of the guys volunteered when the people of Buggaria said they needed more offspring; “Bug-Man” explained that there was a mystic cave that could temporarily turn anyone who went inside into a bug-person. Thus children were born from Nelor (his son Ahrack), Zaha-Darius (twin sons Zahaha & Zahahdee), Jarxen (sons Parxen & Vinny and daughter Sarxen), and Xoq pox (sons Sock and Pock). Note: the player characters did not name their children; the bug ladies gave them names.

JerVerse Adventure 111: Introducing Nova Kaine

Another new player, TK, joined us. He really wanted to play D&D, not Heroes Unlimited so we converted D&D wizard spells to work with the Rifts rules. That allowed TK to play the elf wizard Nova Kaine, a noble from the isolationist planet Eurtharia. The elves of that planet used special powers to make their world invisible.

Nova’s mother, the ruling queen of Eurtharia, was very upset when the team accidentally found their planet. She saw the group as a threat and wanted to destroy The Navicular (killing off the crew along with the ship), but Xoq and the others managed to befriend Nova. He used his influence to convince the rest of the elves not to kill the team.

JerVerse Adventure 112: Trouble on Eurtharia

The royal family on Eurtharia was glad they hadn’t killed off the team of heroes because the team helped deal with a civil war that erupted on the planet. Nova, Xoq, Feli, and the others saved Nova’s aunt and helped negotiate peace for the people of Eurtharia. Nova disappointed his family when he told them he wanted to go off into the universe adventuring with the team from The Navicular.

JerVerse Adventure 113: Breaking the Ancient Barrier

Long ago the Knights of Universal Balance and their allies had worked to imprison the ancient beings behind a barrier in space so that the “lesser beings” would have a chance to evolve in the universe. Their plan had worked and that was why so few ancient beings had been roaming about the universe (just the ones that escaped being captured or killed off).

Cassandra and Bran rejoined their friends when they found The Navicular. Bran Fox tricked the characters into destroying the ancient barrier; thus the team released more powerful beings/threats into the universe. Unfortunately, Celeron was killed/destroyed/lost when the team fled from the ancient enemies coming out from behind the ancient barrier.

JerVerse Adventure 114: Introducing Sir Cromwell

Raven was resurrected as a Cosmic Knight, sworn to fight for good in the universe. And he couldn’t have come back at a better time because the team was under attack by powerful ancient beasts. Raven and some of his fellow Knights of Universal Balance teleported in and helped The Navicular crew survive. In doing so, Raven reconnected with the team and decided to stick with them for awhile.

JerVerse Adventure 115: The Ruler of the Universe

The secret reason Bran wanted the Ancient Barrier destroyed had been because he had researched the lore about the ancient being known as “He” or “Him” (who was basically considered the god of the universal; a.k.a. Ao from the D&D Forgotten Realms lore). Supposedly this god being ruled the universe from a place called the Universal Throne Room by sitting on the Universal Throne. Bran thought that if he could get to the throne and sit on it, he could ascend to become the Ruler of the Universe.

The team fought Bran Fox, but failed to stop him from getting to the Universal Throne Room; Bran became the Ruler of the Universe. Cassandra begged him to step down because the ultimate power was driving him crazy; the Connected Meerkat (CM) took over the throne when Bran told them all he would step down. CM created some universe-altering changes and, for his good friend Feli, he even brought Bren back to life. And yet, as CM got to know his powers even better, he realized there were some limitations to his abilities.

Reflections As a storyteller, I used the Universal Throne  storyline to justify changing up some of our house rules for how we played the game. In my mind, the game was at a high point. My friends seemed to all be getting along and enjoying their new adventures. The alien alliances and ancient beings allowed me to continue to come up with creative surprises; new worlds, powers, and technology provided fun variety in the game.

Logs 87-95: Heroes Unlimited Part 4B: Draconia

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 87-95: Heroes Unlimited Part 4B: Draconia

At this point, my parents had grown comfortable with the idea of roleplaying games and had even given me permission to play Dungeons & Dragons (which I will talk about more in the future). From my time getting to know D&D, I found myself inspired to created my own D&D-style world for the Heroes Unlimited characters to explore. As a gaming group we had evolved beyond the gaming books we had and were making a lot of customized abilities and powers; we didn’t use the word homebrew back then, but that’s what we were doing. JerVerse Adventure 87: Welcome to Draconia

The characters were spread out on a fantasy planet (mostly all in a valley), inside the imprisonment dimension called Draconia. Feli was most concerned about finding Bren, but along the way met up with several of the other team members. Al and Verali were also both missing. The team members who were able to find each other heard from some of the local villagers that there was a powerful lizardman who could help them so they went off to find the wonderful lizard of Om... JerVerse Adventure 88: Introducing Jinnai Fujisawa

BD wanted to play a new character. He had been inspired by some anime and came up with a bizarre combination of powers. Jinnai was made up of bio-nano technology and could alter his form into different people. He was a robot, a person, and an avatar of the god-being War. He had been part of the Earth Defense Forces and ended up trapped in Draconia like the others. Jinnai joined the team and helped them fight off some monsters.

JerVerse Adventure 89: Introducing Thomas the Leprechaun

Our friend and D&D DM JFP decided to join our Heroes Unlimited game. He showed me the leprechaun from the D&D 2E Monster Manual and we created him a character with very similar abilities. Thomas the Leprechaun joined the team when he heard they were seeking the lizard of OM and hoping to escape from the imprisonment dimension. The small leprechaun greatly contrasted the giant named Waldorf who fought with (and then helped) the group along their way.

JerVerse Adventure 90: Introducing Goliath the Gargoyle

LV also wanted a new character; he said he wanted to play a living gargoyle. I helped him come up with appropriate powers from the book. His character’s background involved being a protector of the kingdom Thistle. King Donelli of Thistle sent Goliath with the group when they agreed to help rescue his kidnapped daughter. The team encountered trolls that could turn people into stone, petrifying them. Everyone failed their saves and it would have been a total party kill, except the players argued that Goliath and Doc Roc couldn’t be turned to stone because Goliath was already made of rock and Doc Roc was using his stoneskin ability. They had a good point. After Goliath and Doc Roc killed the trolls, they de-petrified the rest of the group.

JerVerse Adventure 91: The Genie in a Bottle

Zahadoom had been wandering around looting villagers and putting everything he took into a wheelbarrow that he was carting around the valley. When he met back up with the others they laughed at how silly he looked carrying his treasure around like that. Zah freed a genie from a bottle, but instead of getting wishes, the group had to defend themselves from being killed by the genie. The bottle came in handy when an immortal spirit attacked the group; Zah used his quick-thinking skills to trap the spirit in the bottle.

JerVerse Adventure 92: King Roc

The group rescued the princess of Thistle, who fell in love with Doc Roc for saving her. King Donelli agreed to marry his daughter and Doc Roc with a quick wedding. After that, monsters attacked and killed the king. The princess became queen and Doc Roc became the king of Thistle. The group also finally made their way to the lizard of Om, who turned out to be a Knowledge Master (the same ancient race as The Quiz Master they had faced in the past). The lizard gave them lore about a Rakshasa known as The Game Master, but he also answered their questions. He told them where to find Bren Fox, that Draconias was led by the immortal named Draconia, and how to get to the dimensional control palace.

JerVerse Adventure 93: Death Cave

Bren had been injured and was hiding in a cave. Zah, wanting to fulfill his original vendetta against the Fox family, went after Bren to kill him. Feli was hot on his trail. Zah killed the annoying fairy Pyr and managed to kill Bren before Feli showed up. Feli killed Zahadoom. The group looted Zah’s treasure and continued on their way to find Draconias.

JerVerse Adventure 94: Introducing Jarxen Roulin

AJ created a new character named Jarxen Roulin who had electro-mystic bolts and a special protective electro-mystic shield he could activate to protect himself. He joined the group in their effort to escape from Draconia, helping them kill more trolls that were sent to stop them from getting into the palace that had the escape portal.

JerVerse Adventure 95: Escaping Draconia

When the group fought past the guards and confronted Draconias, he pointed out that he was an ancient immortal and nothing they could do would kill him. The team remembered that Zah had imprisoned the spirit in the bottle; they released the spirit to fight Draconias, assuming the two would be left in a never-ending battle for all of eternity, while they ducked out of the room and made their way to the command area with the escape portal. When it was time to go, Doc Roc announced that he would be staying to continue on as the King of Thistle.

The team also found out that Al and Verali Daine had not been held as prisoners here because they were secretly children of Draconias. Al had been left behind at Earth when the others arrived. According to the computer files, Daine had been immediately brought to Draconias and freed. The team left through a portal to Earth Prime after having been in Draconias for about 28 days and they were about to find out that for every day that went by in this imprisonment dimension that a year went by in the outside universe...

Reflections

Zah killed Bren. That was really my bad. As a storyteller I should have set things up differently. But it happened. And then Feli killed Zah and it was all over very quickly. After that, I told my players that I really wanted to avoid conflicts in the future. I suppose I should have been more clear about not wanting player characters to kill other player characters, but like I said, Feli killing Zah was completely justified.

As a big positive, I was really proud of JS roleplaying Doc Roc into a retirement story; even though he loved playing his character and knew he wouldn’t be able to play him anymore by leaving him behind in the temporally-different dimension, he did what he felt was right for his character. That meant he needed a new character; the one we created was hilarious...

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…

Logs 51-65: Heroes Unlimited Part 3B: Peace on O-H-M Earth

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 51-65: Heroes Unlimited Part 3B: Peace on O-H-M Earth

In some ways our RPG saga functioned as a superhero soap opera just as much as an action-adventure game. Slowly but surely, I hoped to repair the relationships of my players. I worked at moving the plot so the players could end the war on O-H-M and deal with more common enemies.

Side Note: Years later the TV show Heroes aired and I swore the creators/writers of the show must have been using a Heroes Unlimited book and/or were somehow stealing ideas from my old campaign. My main complaint with the show was that they spent too much time with the characters separated out; the show would have worked better as a hero team-up show. Funny enough, I had plenty of problems with my players not always coming together as a team as well...

JerVerse Adventure 51: Introducing Wolf

My cousin AF’s new character was named Wolf; he could turn invisible and put magic armor over himself. A Magi, Wolf fit in much better with Magi Special Forces than Swoosh had in the past. Wolf completed some easy combat scenarios before joining up with Zah’s squad.

JerVerse Adventure 52: Zah & Wolf v. Outas Ambassador

Magi Special Forces had done enough damage to the Outas organization that they were ready to negotiate a peace treaty. Before the dust settled, Azul wanted one more assassination completed to pressure the Outas to settle for the terms asked of from the Magi leadership. Zah and Wolf sneaked in, killed their target, and returned to base. When they came home, Zah got in an argument with Azul and decided to overthrow his leader; Wolf was killed in the battle, but Zah killed his commander and went rogue.

JerVerse Adventure 53: For the Love of Sarah

Tigerstar Special Forces and former Magi Special Forces agents Raven and Doc Roc teamed up when a woman named Sarah was kidnapped. Both Earshot and Raven were in love with Sarah, though they each loved a different dimensional counterpart of Sarah. The woman they rescued turned out to be a third Sarah, who found herself falling in love with both Earshot and Raven.

JerVerse Adventure 54: Introducing Cassandra

My buddy AC wanted something different. We found the insanity tables in the Heroes Unlimited book and he rolled for multiple personalities. Cassandra was the daughter of the assassinated Aniece Long and one of her personalities wanted vengeance. Another personality saw fairy creatures (that weren’t really there) telling her to do strange things. As an Outas whose family was friends with Feli’s family, Cassandra was familiar with many of the characters from our story. One of her personalities was in love with Bren (which transferred to her being in love with his twin brother Bran); when Bren interacted with Cassandra and realized this, he took her to Space Station Tigerstar in hopes of keeping her safe. At the station, Cassandra joined the hero team and got to know the people there.

JerVerse Adventure 55: Team Tigerstar v. Evil Fairies

When Tiger decided to retire, Quazi was promoted to command Space Station Tigerstar. Feli, Al, Earshot, Cassandra, and Jim went on a mission to stop a group of evil fairies that were causing problems. One of the evil fairies was named Pyr, but the group talked to him and realized he was only “evil” because of his birthmark; they helped him join the good fairies and work against the evil fairy team of Knee, Ash, Bats, Sting, and Jester.

JerVerse Adventure 56: Team Zah v. The Fairies

Winter, the ancient mystical white tiger, had been trapped in an amulet (by the powerful ancient being known as Cinoma) and forced to follow the commands of whomever held the magic item; Zah ended up with the item and made a deal with Cinoma to become a fairy slayer. Zah began teleporting from place to place killing fairies. Zah left his former teammates Raven and Doc Roc behind and they got bored sitting around doing nothing.

For sport, Raven and Doc Roc decided to start shooting and destroying trees; little did they know, a fairy was disguised as one of those trees (because he had been spying on them); their actions brought them up against the “Fairy Review Board” who “sanctioned them” and told them they could never harm a living thing again. Raven and Doc Roc fell for the deception for a while, thinking they had been cursed by this group of fairies. Eventually they accidentally hurt someone and laughed to themselves for being gullible enough to believe the tricksters.

JerVerse Adventure 57: Zah v. Karag

The good fairy king was named Errius and the evil fairy king was named Karag. Cinoma wanted Zah to kill all the fairies for her, but first he went after Karag’s forces because Winter didn’t want to kill the good fairies and Zah wanted the mystic white tiger to stop resisting helping him. Zah found himself caught up in fairy politics when he discovered Xem was actually the bastard child of Errius (and younger brother to The Mighty Xedus), who had been working with the evil fairies to thwart his own father and brother. Zah didn’t really care about fairy politics so he killed as many evil fairies as he could before escaping their base.

JerVerse Adventure 58: Team Tigerstar v. Karag

Tigerstar Special Forces members Verali Daine, Val, and Olivia had been kidnapped by the evil fairies. The rest of the team from Space Station Tigerstar went to rescue their agents and were surprised to find Zah working with them when he returned to defeat Karag. Together, they accomplished their goals.

JerVerse Adventure 59: Team Tigerstar v. Bran Fox

Bran Fox had tricked Feli into thinking he was Bren Fox so he could spend some romantic time with her. When she found out, she went ballistic. Tigerstar Special Forces went after Bran Fox at his lair, only to discover several tricks and traps. Bran Fox escaped their clutches after threatening to kill Jim. The team saved Jim, but was unable to pursue Bran after he disappeared through a secret portal.

JerVerse Adventure 60: Introducing Whirlwind

I had played some Star Wars RPG sessions with AJ’s friend LV. LV decided to join in on our RPG saga sessions so AJ and I helped him create a character that would easily fit in with Zah’s current plot of killing the fairies. LV created Whirlwind, who basically looked like a gnome with a pudgy belly and green hair; he was an electrician with wind powers that had been tortured by the evil fairies. Zah saved Whirlwind from his fairy oppressors and asked him to join the new team he was forming. Together, they killed several evil fairies before moving on.

JerVerse Adventure 61: Introducing Porthios

LV’s brother TV was also available and wanted to try playing our game. We helped him make the character Porthios. We arranged the background story for Porthios so that he was a Magi that had been sent to Techno-Earth and was operating as a pizza delivery guy/spy/double-agent. We had Zah and Whirlwind travel to Techno-Earth to get the former Magi agent Porthios to join Zah’s new team. The three of them got into some shenanigans on Techno-Earth before pursuing their other recruits...

JerVerse Adventure 62: Team Zah v. Bran Fox

Porthios, Whirlwind, Raven, and Doc Roc joined up with Zah for a mission hunting down rogue magi Bran Fox, whose family Zah still felt a vendetta against. Much like Tigerstar Special Forces, this team had to deal with Bran’s annoying tricks and traps only to end up with the powerful Magi escaping their grasp.

JerVerse Adventure 63: Everyone v. The Evil One

In an unexpected twist of events, Bran Fox learned of a powerful evil that wanted to destroy the universe (knowns as The Evil One) and went to his two greatest enemies (Feli/Tempest and Zah) to ask them to stop it from happening. The Evil One was trying to use ancient energy to disrupt time and space. Convinced of the seriousness of the threat, both Tigerstar Special Forces and Zah’s new team joined together and saved the universe just in time.

JerVerse Adventure 64: The Fairy Tournament

After saving the universe, the characters found themselves invited (by the fairies) to participate in a special tournament; they would be fighting against one another (in one-on-one elimination matches, randomly placed into a bracket), with a prize to be given to the winner. Due to the special magical energies used to create the location, none of them would actually die when they died during the tournament battles; instead of dying, they would be teleported out to the audience to watch the rest of the matches.

Out of game, we rolled randomly to determine the brackets for the fights and played out preliminary rounds, quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals. The players who didn’t want their characters to compete either had someone else control them as an NPC for the day or opted out of the tournament and just watched in the audience. The finals round ended up with Al v. Cassandra; Cassandra used her new secret powers to win (she had been possessed by the evil Cosmosian Cinoma).

JerVerse Adventure 65: The Post-Tournament Epilogue

Al was actually part-fairy and part-Cosmosian, which was all revealed with the epic conclusion to this part of our story; Al’s fairy mother Quassara had been possessed by Danara, who was a Cosmosian and enemy to the evil Cosmosian Cinoma. Al’s fairy-DNA/powers only activated after he received his wand. The Cosmosians had creation energy/powers and were the ones who could create new dimensions and new worlds.

With this realization and the fairy wand, Al evolved into a much more powerful being. Cinoma and Danara engaged in an epic space battle in which Zah tried to interfere and was killed; Winter the mystic white tiger was freed from the amulet that controlled him.

Reflections

Along the way AJ had found ways to manipulate the rules to make killing characters easier than it should have been. Zah would break people’s necks or grab people and teleport them into walls or teleport way up in the sky and drop people to their deaths. I had no intention of running that type of game but, at the time, I was unsure how to deal with it; unfortunately, he often challenged the other players and tried to bully the table to get what his character wanted. I decided I had to talk to him about it outside of the game. That seemed to help some, which was part of why we had put his character on the new quest to kill the evil fairies.

I came to realize different people wanted different things out of their RPG experiences. Players like NH, MS, DF, etc. enjoyed exploring and engaging in politics and relationships with NPCs. Players like BW and JS enjoyed killing enemies and blowing up targets. Players like AJ and RW wanted to act as alphas at the table. Balancing game time to satisfy different expectations of different players became another part of my session prep list.