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Tuesday, July 21

The Evil Stars: Introduction

This story hour is from “The Evil Stars” in Cthulhu Now by the late Keith Herber. You can read more about Delta Green at http://www.delta-green.com. Please note: This story hour contains spoilers!

Our cast of characters includes:

• Game Master: Michael Tresca (http://michael.tresca.net)
• Joseph “Archive” Fontaine (Dedicated Hero/Acolyte) played by Joe Lalumia
• Jim “Jim-Bean” Baxter (Charismatic Hero) played by Jeremy Ortiz (http://jeremyrobertortiz.blogspot.com)
• Kurtis “Hammer” Grange (Fast/Dedicated Hero/Gunslinger) played by George Webster

Despite the fact that I wrote scenarios months in advance, sometimes I get caught by surprise. And this session, the players finished the previous scenario faster than I anticipated. I had my notes, so we dove right into the next one. The challenge was that I knew we wouldn’t finish the second scenario, so I had to find a natural break. Fortunately, this scenario does just that.

The Evil Stars is a scenario loaded with cheese. It features an evil rock band who makes a deal with dark mythos forces in the most complicated way imaginable. God’s Lost Children, whom I introduced in a much earlier scenario, uses its tours across the U.S. to lead the crowd in a mystical chant that in turn empowers standing stones. The chant idea is actually pretty cool – the notion that a major death metal star is hiring cement trucks to build massive standing stones at each concert isn’t nearly as a cool. But far be it from me to shrink from a challenge. I can only go to this “heavy metal really is evil” well so many times, so I crammed it full of every cliché I could think of.

First, we actually start with the biker gang, Satan’s Sadists, as part of the At Your Door campaign. This is a nice introduction to the gang and gives the agents a reason to care what they’re up to. After the gang attempts (and fails) to steal the baby dark young they were transporting to a Majestic-12 front company, the agents get a lead on the gang. They’re not hard to follow, since they’re security for God’s Lost Children.

But I didn’t stop there. I shifted Star’s role to a much more important one, turned Billy into a killing machine, and created a narrative that took a page from Terminator: Star wants to snitch on Satan’s Sadists, but it’s up to the agents to retrieve her. And when Brianne (changed from Brian, because I have a rock star female figure) Lochnar of God’s Lost Children finds out, she calls in his Mythos favor to set Billy on her trail. What ensues is a long string of violent interludes that culminates in a battle of the bands. [MORE]

Labels: d20 modern

posted by Mike Tresca at 7:31 PM

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