Preview of My Upcoming Viking Death Squad Two-Shot

[Grimcleaver]

I have a fast approaching two-shot of Viking Death Squad and while I was typing out my journal notes for what I plan to do I thought I would copy and post them here, both in case it sparks some ideas for folks planning their own games, or in case anyone has any thoughts or ideas to offer to help flesh out this basic skeleton. Ideally I hope in this two shot to give the PCs a taste of each of the major factions: starting with some Screaming Skulls & Marauder tension, leading to an assault by the Infinitum, then a dungeon crawl with some ancient thing from the days before the world fell to the War Pigs, and eventually to work in some infernal and poison forest shenanigans as well:

The PCs are in a Black Market town that’s been making a name for itself. Growing itself in defiance of the grim reality that settlements that get noticed get crushed. The leaders are a bunch of burly marauder types who could care less. They think they’re invincible and are blinded by greed. Huge tension. Folks don’t want to feel like cowards and the town is becoming genuinely prosperous and pleasant–but everyone knows what’s next. Nobody wants to accept it. Hesitantly a plan is drawn up. There is a place nearby known as the Anvil. Once it was some kind of metal fortress but it has been absolutely smashed flat into congealed molten metal and cooled into a pockmarked slab. The Infinitum doesn’t go there because there’s weird radiation there that causes their tech to malfunction–it doesn’t SEEM to affect humans but because it’s solid metal nothing grows or lives there and with the burning sun the metal ground gets baking hot. The desperate play is when the forge walkers arrive to round people up and flee overground to the Anvil, those that can fight holding off the Infinitum as a rearguard. It’s known that there’s still intact tunnels under the Anvil but no one knows what’s in them–aside from that it’s something other than the enemy they KNOW will destroy them if they don’t leave. So then it’s a dungeon crawl beneath an ancient slagged settlement from the days of the ancients to try and find a way to survive the coming genocide.

[Grimcleaver]

A few more bits of added detail: I like the idea that the characters are the Immortals who crashed in the Warlands encounter on pg. 70 and were saved from the cannibals by a group of scavengers who opened their cryopods and hobbled them back to the settlement. I like the name Knife’s Edge for the settlement, which started as nothing more than a black market bazaar at the bottom of a glacial rift with a bunch of rope ladders leading traders down the slick ice walls. Now under the leadership of Knox, the big gang leader who sort of runs things together with a bunch of other townfolk, the town has grown dangerously, with multiple levels and a few shacks on the surface–and interior lights and heat. This will be the doom of the place. Everyone feels it but no one wants to admit it. Against that day a scavenger named Spreck, that the town has kind of adopted and made the local schoolteacher, has developed his crazy plan to head for the Anvil when it all goes up. He’s sorry it isn’t a better plan.

[Warhippo]

Looks good - I like the fact that there a lot of possibilities with where you and the players can take it. I ran a mini campaign a while back in a similar vein (ie ancient evil coming to destroy a town with some people staying behind to hold off the tide of horrors whilst the bulk of the innocent could flee to safety). The players had to roll up two characters each; one to stay and one to flee. The idea was that those who stayed were going to die - it was made clear that survival wasn’t an option, there was only the possibility of a glorious death saving countless. The players had a blast roleplaying their final moments and I rewarded the characters who fled based upon how well those who stayed accounted for themselves.

[Ezzerharden]

Love love love the ideas rolling around in notes.
I may have to use this on my players too… really good stuff.
Please keep us informed on how the adventure plays out.

Game On!

P.S. Your adventure needs a name… just sayin’

[Grimcleaver]

Adventure’s Name:
Doom at Knife’s Edge

Part 2:
The Titanium Legion

[Lon]

Sounds like a fun tale in the making!

[Grimcleaver]

So for folks who were interested in the unfolding story of our Viking Death Squad game we officially have characters in from everyone. We have a 'borged out human hijacker who fought combat flights as a brainwashed slave in the war front in the Canadian frontier between the demon hordes and the Infinitum. Once the main threat had abated and the bases were mothballed her brain control mechanism went dark one day, allowing her the opportunity to slip out. Now she works for the Screaming Skulls as part of the resistance with a cover job as a wandering scavenger.

Her crew went out when they saw what looked like a couple of Immortal cryopods, fighting through waves of cannibal weirdos who wanted to worship the Immortals by eating them. Once they were unthawed she took them back with her remaining three teammates and stayed behind to introduce them to the Screaming Skulls branch in the settlement of Knife’s Edge.

One of the two Immortals is a Visagoth (mechanically, she’s actually a Pict from Scotland who was a good part of the reason the Romans decided to build Hadrian’s Wall back in the day). In those ancient days she not only fought on the front lines as one of the greatest Pictish warriors the world had ever seen, but was also a scholar and bard, playing her wardrums and learning the ways of the strange Roman invaders. Now that she’s awake in the blasted warlands of the far future, little has changed. She still plays her drum, studies the enemy, and wears her battle trophy Centurion helmet ripped from the head of her most worthy foe.

The other Immortal is ancient as well from the vantage point of 10,191–but not really what you’d call a Viking. He’s a elite Berzerker soldier from the War Era in the 4150s. He’s a Gunslinger with his Iron Blaster as well as a Whirlwind warrior with a big Gravity Hammer. In big suit of armor and sniper goggles you can almost hear the Doom music playing.

Such a great group of characters. Can’t wait to get the game started in earnest next week. I’ve got the overarching structure down, but I’m trying to keep the details open for discovery. To that end I’ve been doing some test draws from my Runehammer Idea Deck and if the results are as tasty on game night as they were in those three-card pulls–it’ll be a fun one.

[The_Merlitron]

A settlement knowing that there prosperity is also the harbinger of their inevitable doom feels very true to life.

[Grimcleaver]

SESSION 1 Campaign Report: Doom at Knife’s Edge.

We just finished our first session of Viking Death Squad. The Immortals got saved from the cannibal Immortal worshipping cult, strapped onto a salver hovertruck and carted back to town by the Can Kicker Salvage Gang–but at great cost, four died fighting the teeming cultist hordes. They awake in the Screaming Skulls headquarters and meet Arc, a PC who’s one of the Can Kickers that evac’ed them and Mavin, the NPC leader of the local Skulls. They bring the Immortals up to speed, who the War Pigs are, what they’ve been turned into, the grave situation at Knife’s Edge. Then the sound of panic outside and a low bass rumble. The Infinitum is attacking! And it’s a rout–all the town’s defenders are dead or fleeing.

They run up the catwalks to the surface to find Infinitum transports dropping off Forge Walkers–two so far, three more inbound. The Pictish Immortal Cerriduen stands atop a mound of rubble and bodies and picks out the leader of the borgs, a hefty borg commander with a beam cannon arm, who spots her and fires it’s cannon at her–but when the smoke cloud clears she’s untouched, iron hauberk glowing hot but undamaged. The Splintered States era Immortal, Timberwolf-11 charges forward and slams the borg commander with his gravity hammer, leaping up onto its chest, but it grabs his leg and starts slamming the marine around like a doll. Meanwhile Cerriduen cleans up the lesser borgs with her warspear, pounding out an inspiring rythm on her wardrum that causes the cowering defenders to pick up their weapons and start fighting again.

Arc, the human hijacker, runs up to the Forge Walker and after some difficulty trying to up the leg and around the outer armor to try and find her way inside, falls off and lands amid a marching column of debarking drone borgs. Just that moment though, Timberwolf-11, held aloft by the borg commander who’s lining up a beam canon shot at point blank range next turn GOES CRITICAL! He rips the gun arm off the commander, drops to his feet and with his free turn swings his gravity hammer right into the spot where the armor had already been knocked off, crushing the undead creature within! It staggers and collapses in a heap! The next round everyone’s initiative rolls are insane and the enemies roll is terrible, so I rule that for a moment all the drones are stunned by their commander going offline.

Arc scrabbles up the interior of the forge to the sealed pilot hatch and starts cutting in with a plasma cutter. Meanwhile the NPC human defenders are starting to turn the tide, the Screaming Skulls trudging up to the surface and setting up a ramshackle chaingun. Two gravbikes come zooming to the surface, jumping a ramp–the gangers in charge of Knife’s Edge, Knox and his Lieutenant, blasting away with big sidecar cannons.

Arc goes in and finds two enslaved pilot humans, much like her before she freed herself. Rather than kill them she uses her mechanic skill and is able to disconnect them both safely and sends them both off in the direction of town. Then she plugs herself back into the pilot console, taking control of the Forge Walker. She wades through the columns of borg drones, scooping them up the ramp into the forge and ripping them apart with the heavy crane arms inside, pounding them and dropping them into the crucible of molten metal within. Some of the borgs snap out of their stupor to see the big Forge Walker charging at them and try to run, but get swooped up anyway.

The two Immortals charge the second Forge Walker while all this mess is going on, and as its ramp descends they run into a big centauroid commander on four mechanical legs, surrounded by drones. Timberwolf-11 slams into it, while Cerriduen slides underneath, pushing her iron warspear, using it as a lever to flip the big cyborg on its side and tearing a big rent in it’s thinner underbody armor. The Immortals each take turns trying to take advantage of the prone commander, but are kicked away or driven back by gunfire from the drones, but eventually Timberwolf-11 gets the final hit, causing it to overload, it’s beam cannon discharging randomly and hitting the pilot cockpit of the Forge Walker above it! The entire walker leans to the side, collapse and explodes as the Immortals stride away as silhouettes in the flames. The remaining Forge Walkers are airlifted away so the War Pigs can re-evaluate their attack plans. The humans cheer and the Immortals and ally are invited back for drinks at Knox’s gang’s bar.

It’s a glory moment, but as they go in, they notice there’s a big hole in the floor that drops down into the icy rift under the city, and they have this skinny guy held by his heel over the hole. Arc rolls to see if she knows what’s going on and goes critical. She knows the whole deal: The guy is Spreck, a former trader and genius tinkerer adopted by the town as a local science teacher for the kids–very caring but tends to get too attached. There’s a girl in his class, Nada, who was playing down in the off limits areas at the very bottom of the rift and got sick, so Spreck took her home and started trying to heal her, using all his money to buy medical spellstones hoping something would work, but nothing did. He couldn’t just quit though, so he started sneaking in and stealing more. Then the gang caught him. What’s worse, since Arc is knows a fair bit of Infernal Lore, she can tell from the symptoms…the girl isn’t sick–she’s possessed! And if anyone in town is going to be able to exorcise the demon, it’s gonna’ have to be Arc.

So they strike a deal with the gang. The Immortals, now famous, will fight in Knox’s gladiator pits to earn the money back that Spreck owes them, fighting a giant Tardigrade Beast Knox has been able to acquire from the poison forests. Meanwhile Arc takes the badly beaten Spreck back home to try and deal with the sick girl, but when they go inside, she’s gone FULL DEADITE!!

[Ezzerharden]

That is how you play Viking Death Squad! … nice… please keep us up to date on the story.

Game On!

[skuk]

For any system anywhere - this is some awesome action, awesome narration.

[Grimcleaver]

SESSION 2 Campaign Report: The Black Blood Scourge.

We just wrapped up our Viking Death Squad introductory two-shot. The Immortals decide to follow their human friend Arc back to the teacher’s house to see if she needs help, waiting on the gladiatorial fight until things are wrapped up there.

Arc enters with the teacher, Spreck, to take a look at the girl he’s been trying to treat and sees she’s thrashing on the bed. He says she’s having another of her attacks and rushes to comfort her. She turns and looks at Arc, her face demonic, eyes pure white, and sinks her claws into Spreck, levitating with him up into the air. He starts to scream as she floats around singing sing-songy tunes about how she’s going to eat his soul. She tries to grab him down but ends up with just his boot–the demon-girl is fast! Arc runs to make sure the demon can’t fly out the door with Spreck, but just then Timberwolf-11, hearing commotion and screams inside, kicks in the door, blasting Arc across the room, dazed and prone. He and the pictish Immortal Cerriduen bust into the room, grabbing for the girl as she dances just out of reach of them both. She makes another try for the door and Arc barely gets there in time to slam it shut. The demon…does an Exorcist all over her, a digestive breath weapon as it were, and Arc feels herself overcome with demonic voices–but manages to fight them off. Timberwolf-11 makes the hard choice to end the girl rather than let her escape into the city, and hits her in the back with his gravity hammer. The unarmored little girl is just destroyed.

As everyone stares, jaws agape in horror, a wind whistles through the room and the demon’s invisible form rushes out into Knife’s Edge, tossing folks and stacks of supplies flying through the air and over the railing into the icy crevasse that runs through the town. The characters rush out to help who they can. Timberwolf-11 using his rocket boots to get ahead of the entity and braces to hold it back. It ends up going right into him. He suddenly feels sick, black veins spreading over his skin, his mind filling with ancient blasphemous memories of alien creatures sacrificing unspeakable things at unholy altars, strange languages begin spilling from his mouth. As he resists, Arc does the only thing she can imagine and with her full weight, judo tosses him over the railing and down into the fissure!

He falls for what feels like ages, levels of city whistling past him then deep blue ice, then pwoom! Superhero landing. Immortals aren’t damaged by falls. A shockwave of ice dust blasts out.

The demon in his head introduces itself as Aliaster, since they’re going to be spending so much time together. Timberwolf-11 through gritted teeth tells the demon he’s made a mistake, just giving him an easier to aim at target, takes out his molten iron gun and starts shooting himself in the face. The iron freaks the demon out, forcing it to crawl out of his big skull holes as he falls face first in a pool of molten iron and rolls his respawn die. Four rounds. His wounds begin to knit.

Cerriduen was behind the others and saw Arc throw Timberwolf-11 over the edge but couldn’t tell why, and picks her up by the shirt half expecting her to be the demon. But once the human cyborg explains, she’s like: hold on…and jumps down the ice rift. They whistle down, snow billowing through their hair and land with a thud. Timberwolf-11 is still regenerating, a blood trail and what look like hoof marks lead off into the blue darkness, then scraping and a dull red glow. Aliaster appears, a floating, shrunken fetuslike thing with a skull head. It starts taunting them and goes to fling Cerriduen with it’s telekinetic powers, but just then Timberwolf-11’s regeneration is done and the three of them descend on the newly incarnate demon and rip it to gory bits. Before it’s spirit form can get free, Arc consults her skull slave, a broken undead servant of Hell she rescued in her backstory and asks how to keep it from flying off. It suggests they surround it with some kind of circle of an element that binds demons: holy water, salt, iron, or the like. They use Timberwolf-11’s molten iron gun to make a solid ring of liquid iron around the demon.

It very quickly loses all of its bravado and looks to cut a deal, offering to tell them about an artifact that will allow them to control demons, a demonic army camped nearby including the name of the demon in charge of them, and a rift back to Hell. It offers them that if they allow it to return to Hell rather than leaving it trapped. Uneasy, they agree to the deal.

It turns out Knife’s Edge is atop a glacier that has covered the ruins of the Illinois Megacity, and that in ancient days a secret society of Gnostic Demonbinders had found the artifact known as the Black Blood Scourge, which in addition to being a powerful infernal weapon was accepted as a badge of domination over lesser demon lords and all their kin. The army is mostly slain and flamebeasts and led by a two headed ogre demon named Zhorloth. They buy a spellstone of banishment and allow Aliaster to be pulled back to Hell.

From there they go to their gladiatorial match. It’s a venue called Knox’s Meat Locker, a huge cage built into the ice with seats around for onlookers and a big cage elevator to take fighters in and out.

In the center is a large knotted blob of what looks like dirty crystal or resin? All around are scattered skeletons growing weird green mushrooms. There’s a weird funk in the air that stings their lungs and makes them itch inside. A big drill probe arm injects fluid into the big crystalline blob and it begins to grow and unfurl into a massive tardigrade beast, massive clawed paws and a snout filled with a ring of teeth! They rush in to fight it and it starts shredding their armor, taking hits and unleashing waves of spores. Because effects like these can’t kill Immortals, they don’t fall but eventually the same weird green mushrooms begin to grow all over them. They notice the tardigrade becomes much more passive, cringing away from them and only fighting to defend itself. Whatever these mushrooms are haven’t killed them, but they’ve made the tardigrade register them as allies. They jump up on the tardigrade beast’s back, ride it up the wall of the arena, tear through the cage and out into the audience area, grabbing the marauder leader, Knox in their new pet’s big paws and messily devouring him.

They sit for a while deciding what to call him. Timberwolf-11 puts a hand on his side: “Spore.” And that settles it. They ride him back down the rift and through the ice tunnels into the ruins of the megacity. There’s skeleton hordes wandering the dark megacity streets and weird ghosts wreathed in the chains of their old sins. Eventually they get to the Gnostic Temple, split down the middle by a geologic shift that apparently broke whatever rune glyphs were containing the evil within. The brass doors at the front are bubbly and warped and as they pry them open they come upon a huge fight, a massive flame beast overlord set as a guardian of the Scourge. Eventually they win the fight and descend the stairs down to the vault where the scourge is kept. Timberwolf-11 takes it from it’s onyx stand, made of strange leather and bones and covered in runes. As he touches it the runes work up his arm and make his eyes light with red fire beneath his sniper goggles. As they go down further into the basement they discover at the very bottom, a swirling magical gateway leading into Hell.

He convinces the others to use symbols from around the temple to craft a summoning circle and using their discovery of Zhorloth’s name, summon him and use the Scourge to subjugate him, having him call down his army. Then Timberwolf-11 takes his new army and abandons the party, charging with them down into Hell. A roar emanates from the portal and the temple begins to collapse around them. The remaining party are able to crawl their way back out to the street just ahead of the catastrophe wave behind them. The temple implodes and tumbles into a pile of rubble.

Cerriduen keeps Spore as her steed. Arc, together with the other Screaming Skulls, take charge of Knife’s Edge. Somewhere deep in the eternal battlegrounds of Hell, Timberwolf-11 takes his first steps of conquest toward becoming a new infernal baron.

END OF TWO-SHOT.

[Ezzerharden]

“Hail the Immortal for he shall not fall amongst his enemies. “ ~an old viking saying

Game On