The Fifth Piller Report

General Summary

A large virtual face appears in the mostly undamaged vid-screen.   Good Afternoon...I am Socrates.   Well done! Thank you so much for listening and being open to my prompting. I have initiated the New Champions Protocol with some unfortunately necessary alterations.   The protocol was created by Defender in the unlikely case where the team because incapacitated or others mysteriously removed from effectiveness. In such a case each member had nominated a replacement for them. However circumstances are so dire that not only have the Champions been removed but replacements also been rendered unavailable.   Therefore after I became aware of the state of things I have been working every angle to extrapolate their wishes to determine who the would have picked from the current pool of candidates. Congratulations.   Together I hope we can find out what transpired at this Vanishing and fine a way to remove Dr Destroyer from power and restore law and order.   Thank you Socrates. While it is clear that we each agree with this goal, there are definitely some questions we each might want to resolve early on, if you are willing to share. I am intrigued to know how it came about that you were in the deep underground power station?   So Socrates, why did we have to shut down the dam? Were you trapped in there somehow? Could you be trapped again? Does Destroyer know you're... is alive the right word? Yeah, let's go with alive. Does Destroyer know you're alive? Does he know about this base?   The immediacy of the vanishing required me to take desperate measures to “hide” if you will. I fractured myself into as many holographic fractals as I could in the nanoseconds afforded me. I scattered myself into as many secured locations as possible.   Apparently in my exuberance I went a little far and found my primary core in a place I was not expecting to be vulnerable. But alas, some saw fit to archive the namespaces I occupied and apparently left me that way for a few years.   Luckily, someone apparently needed to restore the archive and I managed to remove myself from my predicament.   I have been piecing myself back together as quickly as possible. But I am afraid that my communications algorithms had been compromised and I have been strictly limited in how I could contact all of you. I did the best I could but I am glad you were all brilliant enough to understand   Some critical code was still in hot storage but behind an air gap at the power station. Thanks to your impeccable timing with power interruption, I was able to run my tandem operation while you handled my fractal’s rescue. And now I am virtually whole again.   Ummm, I understood about half of that but congratulations? But that was only half my questions. Does Destroyer know you're still around? Does he know about this place? I'll put it simply. Are we in danger sitting here or is this a safe haven right now?   Also, is there anything else we can do to help you? Something tells me having the Champions AI at full power will really help.   I have managed to construct a new firewall that is the most advanced the world has seen. Or perhaps never seen. Homestead is safe and undetectable.   You are now my favorite reconstructed artificial intelligence EVER! Tell me this place has coffee and I'll love you until the end of time!   I have engaged the "roombas" so the place should be shipshape in not time at all.   In a separate vein, can you confirm that our DarkR pillars are secure? I’m far from an expert at encryption, so I am a bit fearful that my rudimentary communication devices may be susceptible...though they served a purpose, we might want to reinforce them, if needed.   Indeed. And I strengthened a few weak areas and tied it into the main city matrix as well. The power outage was effective for making that connection undetectable. Now I have eyes and ears all over the city.   Very good. I will spend some time to build more FOBs. Surely there are other trustworthy heroes out there we need to recruit.   Indeed. I have been working on a list...   Opens a call to her production team. Ummm, Marvin, do you have a connection down here? I mean, can you record in this ultra secret, gonna get us all killed if Destroyer finds us base? Are you BROADCASTING from here?!?!   Hsssssss... There is nothing but static.   SOCRATES   Marvin is on a commercial break, in a manner of speaking...

Rewards Granted

Base Experience Points for being in a scenario 1 Adventure was difficult +1 Characters were heavily outnumbered +1 Characters solved a mystery +1 Adventure was a resounding success +1   5 XP for all. :)

Missions/Quests Completed

Socrates is now online and able to communicate clearly with all. Homestead is a bit of a fixer-upper, but it's theirs to use. Socrates told the heroes they were selected based on algorithms and extrapolated data from the New Champions Protocol, first created by Defender to help Socrates bring in replacements should anything happen to the original Champions.

Character(s) interacted with

The team encountered COIL including COIL agents, the villain Boomslang, and a couple of Destroyer's Black Talons. They discovered a secret base of sorts under the power station. The agents were apparently transporting blasters.