Launch Code 7
Themes
pressure
Structure
Exposition
One after one by the star dogged moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang
And cursed me with his eye
Four times fifty living men
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
What's the best tuna? CHICKEN OF THE SEA!
Nine in the morning approaches on a late winter’s day in New Jersey. On the shoreline a short way north of Blüdhaven, the brightening sky is mildly overcast. The tide is coming in.
The masked mystery men are going to go down, down, down…..
Relations
Protagonists
Neutrals/Bystanders
- Summon
Competitors
Adversaries
- PPZ a.k.a. Psi Phi Zeta
- and particularly Bob Megalos from PPZ
- and quite possibly Adam Roderick from PPZ who would like to be from AIM
- Blockbuster
Backdrops
Locations
The actual facility is buried in the seabed. Sahara traveled a quarter mile through a curved heat exhaust tube, which involves some wide looping he did not notice, but he was always descending to some extent.
We are looking at the New York Bight. See also http://njscuba.net/biology/misc_bottom.php
The ocean floor here is clay-and-sandstone sediment. There are shipwrecks in this general region, but not within sight. (If there used to be any, they were cleared out by the Strategic Scientific Reserve so there’d be no treasure-hunting excuse to dive near the secret base.)
((Seabright NJ might be the equivalent right spot in the real world)).
So instead of working their way through the base from shore, they’re using the back door! Down through the fake boulder, into a tight ladder/hatch/ladder/hatch series. Each hatch has to be held open by somebody on the wheel while the rest go through, then someone grabs the wheel just below the hatch and holds it while the first person moves. Let go of the wheel, and the hatch closes IMMEDIATELY. If someone is in the way, the door mechanism has Str 15 and the door itself is Bod 15.
Any time the hatch is allowed to slam shut, the bang reverberates all the way up and down the shaft. This is a clue that all sections do have air! But also it alerts the NPCs that something is in the shaft.
Things are dark. There’s no emergency lighting. Occasionally there are a few small portholes, with triple-pane glass, showing the silty ocean.
What do I see out the porthole?
Roll vs Perception (Int/Will or perception Power modified by Sharp Eye or whatever)- No RAPs: It’s too grime-covered to see through. (X-Ray: either the light is bad, or there’s some weird barnacles.)
- At least 1 RAP vs 6/6: The water around here is pretty cloudy, full of silt. You can see a little bit of greenish light from the surface, backlighting some seaweed. Given the light cloud cover above, you can’t be down too far.
- At least 1 RAP vs 10/10: Lots of little bubbles.
- At least 5 RAPs vs 10/10: You think maybe, in the distance, you spotted a tiny twinkling light from the sea base below you. It was sort of green.
- Full RAPs on 10/10: If you understand the layout of the original missile silo, and you have not gotten turned around, that light is in the wrong direction to be part of the sea base.
- Full RAPs vs 15/15: There’s a small vehicle swimming away. You catch a very brief glimpse of it. See Player Secret!
Player Secret
You see something far away in the water, for the briefest second: a very small underwater vehicle, departing the area. It looks like the one on the viewer’s right at http://www.seamagine.com/img/personal-submarine-b3.jpg but the lights have been covered in green-tinted cellophane or something.
As soon as it registers in your perception, it vanishes into the silty void.
Who's down here?
Thirty nerdy fraternity lads are present in this underwater base. Their ages range from barely eighteen to their "Alumnus Counselor" Robert Y. "Bob" Megalos, postgraduate student, secretly a beneficiary of Project Chrysalis on the Eureka Settlement, aged 25 or so.
If the PCs got the clue about the submersible, then they have reason to guess that someone was just dropped off. If they give me a good basis for further deduction, they might get some sort of cause to suspect that the "landing point" for that submersible is directly connected to this "back door" shaft into the secret base!
Even if they did not get it: Blockbuster has just arrived. PPZ expected one of Blockbuster's lieutenants to come by to finalize the deal for supplies and base, and to take the material goods portion of the payoff away while Robert "Bob" Megalos arranges the final electronic transfer of payment. PPZ did not expect "the big boss" for whom their contacts were fronting ... they were not expecting this absolute ogre of a man ... they did not expect actual evil to sneer at their uncouth pretenses toward civilization.
The last two Ryder trucks full of nineteen Psi Phi Zeta fraternity brothers are arriving with the last batch of supplies. They have Summon with them.
You know how Ryder trucks have traditionally been yellow in color?
It's like a trademark?
It's AIM's trademark?
Adam Roderick, one of the sophomore members of the PPZ, is the guy who figured out how to stabilize Silent Dreams into Star Gate, a lower-risk and reversible form of Red Skull's old mutagenic drug cocktail. Oh, he got a lot of assistance from his fellow bright minds in the nerdy fraternity ... but he has been using this entire project as his application to join AIM. He still has four five-ounce Terrigen Crystals hidden where they should be safe no matter what chaos happens in New York City over the next months, even if Fraternity Row completely burns down.
So, of course: AIM is here. They plan to steal those missiles once the lads had finished repairing and upgrading them.
Also: Card Shark is here, and their leader himself might be on the scene.
Past Events
((OOC note from the GM:
CONGRATULATIONS, gentlemen!
You have once again skipped an entire 2 chapters of my notes, and caused me to slightly rewrite the remainder of the adventure. In the process, you may have made Saving The City a little more possible for this band of Masked Mystery Men!
This will definitely be reflected in the number of Standard Awards included at the end of the adventure.))
Plot type
Chapter 7: all the stakes are coming together
Parent Plot
Related Characters
Related Organizations
Related Locations
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