The League of Adventurers (Inactive)

Game Master Vrog Skyreaver

"She doesn't need to trust us. Lobotomy remember..." Simile steps out into the cold with a shiver.

In a blur outrun is clothed in his old green and white uniform and running shoes, he lowers his goggles over his eyes and follows the woman into the blizzard.

"Or, you know... maybe they have our entire files, know exactly what we were in for and what we would and wouldn't be capable of," Cowboy points out, taking some time to strap on his heavy kevlar armor before following.

The woman waits impatiently for people to change into the adventurer garb, surfing her phone and unlike most people, she seems to have mastered the art of the swipe feature that most smartphones have these days.

"By all means, take your time getting changed. Let's stay in a secret prison run by adventurers who are getting paid to keep people here." she says without looking up.

Hypatia elects to remain in her prisoner uniform for the time being, it's warmer than the pleated culottes and blouse combination she used to customarily wear when out on the streets.

"I always thought that they were paid to keep specific people here." Hypatia remarked. "If I'd known that they were just interested in keeping people in general here ..."

Simile doesn't bother getting changed either, prison-clothes don't bother her.

"And here I thought we were supposed to be doing things quietly," Jason replied, "Leaving in prison clothes seems a bit more conspicuous."

"conspicuous I can handle. It's speed that's a factor. I don't think the protector knows we're here, but we will want to make sure he doesn't come back for the rest of you."

Once you finish being reacquainted with your posessions, she leads you out into the blizzard, and into a fixed-wing vehicle that takes off as soon as you are all inside. There are seats for a dozen people, and she walks to the front to speak to what is presumably the pilot. As you take to the air, there is a wave of subtle magic that washes over each of you, and then the plane disappears from your point of view, allowing you to see...through both the body of the plane and the blizzard. Rapidly approaching you see someone wearing a suit of powered armor, and as you speed off, you see a portal rip through the fabric of space/time and a man step through.

The trip takes the better part of a day, but you finally land in a private airport on the outskirts of Stockton, CA. once your plane is in the hangar, the magic ends and it becomes visible again. You are all then ushered out of the hanger, and the woman begins briefing your group: "Welcome to Stockton. Your initial month's wages have been uploaded to your personal accounts, as I know you will need to acquire some stuff to get set up. Do as little as possible to draw attention to yourself. On that note, prisoner 333442334243, I have a prototype for you: it's a watch that casts an incredibly comvincing illusion. As you might be known on sight in certain circles, this watch will allow you to blend in with the crowd. The battery has an 8 hour duration, and requires some of your inherent magic to recharge."

"You will find dossiers on each of the escaped prisoners, including their powersets and personal quirks. I will give you what you need to succeed, within reason, but remember that this is a goal driven organization. Repeated failure will lead to something not so nice."

As she finished up her speech, a black Chrysler sedan drives up, and the man in the front passenger seat gets out and opens the door for her. "Do your best, and your debt to society will be cleared. Screw up, and I end you." with that final message, she gets into the car and it speeds away, much faster than is legal.

"Don't draw attention?" Cowboy attempts to scowl through the tinted glass of his riot helmet. "I'm a f***ing superhero. This is gonna suck."

And, looking around. "Right. Do we get a car, or am I gonna have to summon one? And where are we actually going?"

are we currently still at the private airport, do we have access to any buildings there? or have we been given another facility to work out of - or are we expected to find our own accommodations.

"I suppose we had better get to work. Assuming the deal is legitimate, I'd rather start working off my sentence as soon as possible.
From what I see, we need to be monitoring the news channels for any leads, checking these files out and making any preparations we need to?
Does anyone require any supplies?"

"I'm good." Outrun replies. "But yeah we need to find these guys pronto."

""I would like about an hour in order to get my book. I would also like a piece of cake. I suggest we find somewhere with cake and look over the files. Also does anyone know why we are in Stockton of all places?"

Oops Didn't post using my alias and left it too late to edit

Seth calmly collects the device from the woman. Looking her straight in the face in a deadpan manner, he replies simply, "My name is Seth." He then looks away, puts on the watch and turns it on, unconcerned with woman as she drives away.

The mirage thrown up by the watch had reshaped his face significantly, but one thing it does not seem to affect are his eyes, which look just as aged and haunted as ever.

Nodding to Hypatia, he adds on. "We need a base to work from. I can create ... tears in the dimensional spaces to find them, but it is best if we can do it from somewhere that is discreet." Seth appears quite cogent now, unlike earlier. Until he suddenly turns to his side, and exclaims apparently to the floor, "No, not now."

Simile's features shift, her body becoming less statuesque, hair fades to brown from the brilliant platinum it was before and her clothes shift to a simple T-shirt and jeans combo.

"Thought I'd slip into something that doesn't stand out as much. I suppose you can't call me Simile if we're under cover. How about you call me Emily for now."

"I have all I need on my back. I'll eventually need to change outfits as if I become human again, I'm wearing the dress of the cage we were in."

Yes, you are all still at the airport. She did not provide any transportation for you, cause she's a not-nice person like that. It looks like you are expected to find your own base of operations.

Having gone through your posessions, you see that all of your magical implements are here.

What is the plan going forward?

"So, did you say you can er? Summon a car?" 'Emily' asks timidly.

"A crap, I need to change. I'm pretty noticeable in my gear right now. I'll berightbaaa..." Outrun says as he runs of in a strobing blur towards the closest set of doors.

There's a glimpse of him standing at a clothing store handing a credit card over with a wink then pocketing it and less than two minutes later he's standing in cargo pants, t-shirt and denim jacket with his duffel bag over his shoulder and looking on his cellphone through social media for any news about the supervillains that had escaped.

"Checking twitter now for any news on the escapees." he says not even looking up.

Hypatia looks through her bag of belongings and selects a rather old-fashioned looking blue dress to change into.

"So... Car, cake, computers? Anything else we need?"

"On it," Cowboy replies. "Maybe watch the parking lot? I don't want too many people seeing this."

And, pulling a large tablet out of the back of his shield, he begins paging through a collection of vehicle schematics, eyes reading numbers and dimensions, as his hands trace glowing lines through the air that gradually solidify into axles and pistons.

Several minutes later, he's standing in front of a large white van. "Angel Security Solutions" is painted along the side, along with two clip-art angels. On the inside, it's your standard FBI surveillance vans; a dozen screens and radios, though these are currently tuned to various TV stations or GPS and weather readouts. A single seating bench is fitted into the wall, with additional cramped bucket seats growing out of the floor at various angles.

"Right, then," he announces. "This is the Cyber-Van. Not used to seating seven, so I had to make some adjustments. [b]"Faster than she looks; self-driving software run by a trickster spirit, which means zero to sixty in about four seconds, though the handling isn't great for highway chases. So, where are we going? I haven't exactly paid rent on my place for a few months..."

"Oh, and there should be wi-fi in the back, which means y'all can read up on those prisoner files during the drive."

"Nice ability you have there. No accounting for taste though." Outrun says then looks inside the van. "Well the tech in here more than makes up for that." he says as he gets in the back.

"I've got a few passengers—you'd rather I summon a motorcycle? Then somebody think up a destination so we can get outta here."

Kailynn shifts back to human once inside the van and oblivious to the others, started changing clothes into something befitting a wild man. Horns on his head and a ripped tunic and pants both adorned with vines.

'Emily' climbs into the van.

"Ummm, shouldn't you try and blend in a bit more, while I can dig the nature asthetic, it'll make you memorable."

"Maybe just find a cheap hotel, or motel or something, until we get our bearings. Don't want to set up anything semi-permanent until we know where our targets have fled to."

"This is what I've always worn, is there something wrong with it?" Kailynn asked quite curious as to the nature of the comment.

Cowboy points to the riot shield he's carrying, onto which the word "COWBOY" has been spray-painted, as well as the full suit of chrome-and-black kevlar combat armor he's wearing. "Not a lot of cargo space in the van. Probably better to just wear everything, we'll ditch as soon as we have somewhere to ditch it."

Seth nods at Simile. "Yes, I would need some quiet place to work my ... magic. To find the escapees."

Post coming this evening. I was sick this weekend.

Sorry, I had started posting the info on the escapees in the game info tab, but it looks like Paizo was hungry. I'll get them re-written and posted tomorrow. Until then, get to know each other.

When you look through the files on the escapees, you see that there are more people here than there were cottages in your "village". You also note that there are floor numbers next to each of their names. It would appear that (including the poeple who were on your floor) there were 51 total escapees. You do not find any files on the black ooze, the being of plasma, or the little girl, nor the other two inhabitants of the secured cages.

It is worth noting, however, that the protector seemed to know one of them personally...

You manage to find a no-tell motel near the airport that will rent to you cheaply. What do each of you want to do from here?

"Well, there's a lot more to do here than I thought. Are we doubling up on rooms? Might draw less attention than renting half the motel?"

First batch of files on the criminals is up.

During the ride to the motel, Outrun goes through the documents on the convicts and as they arrive and start getting out the van he says "They're not messing around. We're lightweights compared to the guys we're meant to catch. We're gonna have to work for our sentence."

"Well, sure. I'd rather not have a roommate, if it's all the same. Maybe someone can fish around on Craigslist, see if they can find a nice big house we can rent, or a few adjacent flats—but I should probably see what kind of net presence we can work with on this sort of thing, see if we can recruit any eyes in the underground power-fan community, that sort of thing."

"It's just a matter of time before one of these loons does something out in public. But I'd rather get at them before they endanger any lives."

"Given my age it would be very unusual for me to have a room to myself. Would you mind sharing with me 'Emily'?" Hypatia asks.

Glancing over the files while devouring a chocolate bar Hypatia adds
"I might be able to get us a hint where one of the convicts is going to show up but I'll need some incense and some shinies to sacrifice. Who should we try to find first? Fermi might be fairly easy to deal with but is unlikely to do much damage in the meantime. Slingshot may not have as many toys as normal if we go after him quickly and Geist, Shoot, and Rachnid sound like the most dangerous of the ones I've looked over. What do you think?"

"Well, I see now why they weren't too concerned to give us time off our sentance, sooner or later one of these will get the drop on us and it'll cost at least some of our lives." Simile sighs.

She smiles down at Hypatia "Sure, lets be roomies!" "I vote we try and target those likely to cause more chaos. If we don't walk free at the end of this I'd like to think we did something meaningful before they get the better of us."

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but each file does include a picture of the target as well.

Edit: also, I added a few more adventurers, and I made them a bit easier to read. Some of them I'm still creating, but I should get the other 7 I have created posted up by tomorrow.

Just checking in. Did you guys have a particular person in mind as your first target?

"It sounds like Slingshot is the prey then." Kailynn replies.

"Sounds like a plan, we can keep an eye out for general mayhem they're causing anyway."

"Slingshot it is then. I'll go shopping for shinies to sacrifice tomorrow then try to find where he is. $250 is a reasonable expense for this information isn't it?"

Later that evening:

Slingshot it is then.

The rest of the evening passes uneventfully, other than the occasional sounds one might expect to hear in a no-tell motel. Dawn breaks and a new day begins. For each of you, this is the first morning that you haven't been incarcerated, and are more or less free.

Okay, let me know what each of you would like to do and we'll go from there.

Outrun gets up a little earlier than the others and gets dressed and heads outside. If the motel has a diner attached he head in and has several cups of coffee and double breakfasts. Enjoying the sun and his freedom. Watching the news in the diner and bowling social media on his phone for any activity that looks like it could be caused by the convicts they're looking for.

Haha, treason? Okay then.

Jason spends some of the evening on the dark web. If there's one community he knows how to fit into, it's conspiracy rumors, and so he lurks around the Adventurer-watcher forums for a few hours, dropping stories of "hacked documents" and "confidential whistleblowers" telling a story of a rogue group of government agents working to duplicate the notorious Slingshot's technology to perform some sort of copycat CIA assassinations. It's a thin story, but maybe someone watching the right feeds will drop a rumor of their own if the same sort of power armor shows up in a traffic feed or local news story—and it's the sort of information-gathering that's best to start early.

Investigation?: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (18) + 9 = 27

The next morning Hypatia is exuberantly cheerful, practically bouncing to the attached diner, and manages to work her way through most of a bottle of syrup with her breakfast. As she eats she reads up on the history and science of powered suits on her phone.

Being still caged after a fashion, Kailynn goes to bed frustrated that he can't patrol the city the way he used to.