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 26-35: Heroes Unlimited Part 2B: Freeing the Fairies
The Heroes Unlimited system provided an amazing set of inspirational powers and abilities. I disliked that different character types used different experience point (XP) charts so I created my own unified chart and let my players know, moving forward, everyone would use that chart. My players let me type up character sheets with a text-based program on the computer and, when they leveled, we printed out updated versions of their characters. Thankfully, over the years, I managed to save some of those files on a harddrive and then a thumbdrive, and ultimately to my Dropbox RPG folders; thus I still own easily printable digital copies of many of the old characters.
JerVerse Adventure 26: Introducing Verali Daine
NH and I worked with our friend DF to create her character Verali Daine (who was not related to the previous villain Lady Daine). DF chose to make a psionic character, similar to Feli, but with pyrokinesis abilities instead of hydrokinesis. Her character also suffered from amnesia that caused her to forget most of her origin story, which DF requested to make herself more comfortable playing a character in our strange adventures.
The other players joined us and I told the group the characters had been sucked into an alternative reality/imprisonment dimension and asked if anyone wanted to guest-GM for a session to create a different/interesting setting. NH volunteered and her imagination inserted some mysterious, playful fairy creatures that toyed with the characters as they explored the forests and got to know Verali, who had also ended up there as a result of an energy explosion. Some of the fairies tested the characters by manipulating them into situations and seeing how they responded. The fairies used these scenarios to judge the characters.
JerVerse Adventure 27: The Mighty Xedus
No one else wanted to guest-GM so I retook my role in the game and expanded on the fairy imprisonment dimension. I created some weird alien birdfolk that often, like an uncontrolled Turrets-reaction, yelled “Squaw!” The violent birdfolk also dive-bombed out of the sky, attacking the characters. As the characters befriended some of the good fairies (including Prince Xedus, who called himself “The Mighty Xedus”), they learned lore about the ancient fairies: apparently all ancient fairies were born with a birthmark on one of their feet and that mark determined whether the fairy would end up a good fairy or an evil fairy; technically this mark had nothing to do with the family line. The team discouraged the court of the good fairies from judging one another or the evil fairies based on their birthmarks.
JerVerse Adventure 28: Trapped with Evil Fairies
The evil fairies, including Olivia, attacked the group. Olivia’s wand was taken from her; thus the group learned that fairies thought they got their powers from their wands. Olivia believed herself powerless without her wand (thought that was just brainwashing from the fairy society, just like the good/evil birthmark issue). She tried to trick the team into giving her the wand back, but the group saw past her tricks. The team defeated that group of evil fairies and made their way toward the control room for the imprisonment dimension.
JerVerse Adventure 29: Escaping the Fairy Dimension
The team worked together to help the army of good fairies assault the high-tech command room inside the imprisonment dimension. The evil fairies had already taken out their alien captors. With the group’s help, the good fairies gained control. Unfortunately, the controls would not allow any of the fairies to teleport out without the Cosmic Key. They found files in the computer that would allow the group to leave and thus the fairies teleported Team Cherry to a world that they thought had clues to finding the Cosmic Key in exchange for the group agreeing to trying to find a way to free them from imprisonment. The team debated the issue since releasing the good fairies would also release the evil fairies, but they needed to escape so they accepted the deal.
JerVerse Adventure 30: Revealing Alicon’s Identity
The team ended up on an alternate version of Earth with someone who resembled the Red Baron character from the Cherry Research Institute, but he was calling himself Alexander. Through their investigation, the team realized that Alexander/Red Baron was actually Alicon Arc. Alicon was a Guardian of Htrae. This alternate reality version of Alicon told the team about the legend of the Cosmic Key (being a magic item created by joining the mystic red battlaxe with the mystic blue battlaxe).
JerVerse Adventure 31: The Return of Bren Fox
Still unsure how to get home, the group found their answer when Bren Fox showed up to rescue Feli. He professed his love for her and explained how he found out about the portals that his father and brother had been working on; he used a portal to find the Cherry Research Institute and, with the help of Gemini (who had gone to Earth Prime looking for the team), used a combination of magic, technology, and luck to interdimensionally locate Feli.
Bren brought the group to Earth Prime, where the team spoke with the true Alicon Arc and worked together to find the mystic magic battleaxe. Gemini gave the group a robot he called Robo-Jim so that he and the 16-year old Jim could stay out of danger for awhile. With the blue battleaxe, Bren was able to teleport the team to Htrae...
JerVerse Adventure 32: Introducing Niles Nivek
My buddy KL wanted to join in on our RPG adventures. We created the character Niles Nivek (Nivek is his first name Kevin backwards). For his background story, we had the character working for the evil General Divinitii (who was the younger brother of Divinity, the character that attacked Jay and Argonia’s team when they arrived on Htrae). Niles grew tired of working for his evil master and split off on his own, to oppose Divinitii, causing some battles (that Niles easily escaped from since he could fly and turn invisible).
JerVerse Adventure 33: Team Cherry v. Divinitii
Even though Bren had teleported Team Cherry to Htrae, the group lacked the knowledge of where to go for the ancient temple with the mystic red battleaxe that they needed to use to combine with the blue axe and create the Cosmic Key to free the fairies. In their search, they joined forces with Niles Nivek and warred with Divinitii’s army.
JerVerse Adventure 34: Joining the Olympus Crew
I synched up the timeline so that Team Cherry had a chance to interact with Jay, Mysto, and Argonia (whose mind was now trapped in the spaceship Olympus). This caused Part I of the RPG saga to come full circle with our current adventures. With their combined new team, the heroes were able to squash a new assault from Emperor Divinity’s people.
JerVerse Adventure 35: The Temple on Htrae
Jay, Mysto, and Argonia provided assisstance from Olympus while Team Cherry went into the ancient temple on Htrae; Team Cherry defeated Emperor Divinity one last time and united the mystic battleaxes that formed the Cosmic Key. They freed all of the fairies from their ancient imprisonment dimension. The group on Olympus offered them a ride home, but the trip through space would take 6 months; instead, Bren opened a portal that took the team (and some invisible fairies with them) back to Earth Prime. Niles stayed behind with plans to help lead Htrae into a better future.
Reflections
I realize, looking back at these early adventures, that I allowed an extreme Star Wars-level of cosmic coincidences to work out in the favor of the group so that they all reunited and accomplished their goals. But sometimes stories need those coincidences so the pacing doesn’t drag out forever. Bren Fox, an element of Feli’s backstory, provided the McGuffin I needed to start wrapping up the plot. I also relied on the lore I had made in the past with the mystic red battleaxe, but I built upon that with the Cosmic Key element.
I congratulated myself on wrapping up the campaign from our sophomore year of high school and considered my work finished. But my players asked, “When are we going to play this summer?” And word of our fun adventures spread; I soon found more people asking to join my RPG table. Luckily I had a lot of free time coming up. Tomorrow I plan to write about the summer campaign that took place between my sophomore and junior years of high school...
No comments:
Post a Comment