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...