Once again, our mutants receive a call for help from another village. Pyr, a mutant groundhog, had come to seek the help of our heroes to find a cure for a deadly disease that had afflicted his village. The symptoms of the disease was documented in the records of the village, along with where the cure might be found. Seekers from the village had gone to search for a cure, but none had return.
At Pyr's advice our heroes followed him to the site mentioned in the record instead of heading to the village, to avoid catching the infection themselves.
When they arrived at the site, they saw only a field of tall grass and no building. Flying overhead, Tom (see PC profiles here) saw the dead body of a mutant goat (which they later identified as Koln, a seeker from the village), but was attacked by a giant owl, which our heroes managed to chase off. Exploring further, they found a hatch which led to an long flight of stairs that led deep underground. Leaving Pyr at the surface, our heroes ventured in.
At the foot of the stairs our heroes came upon an open door. Beside the door was a plan of the facility, although our mutants could not understand the symbols on the plan. Entering the facility, they saw two sets of footprints: one reptilian and one crustacean, corresponding to Prokk and Voov, the crab and alligator mutants from the village. They decided to make a systematic search of the facility to find the cure for the disease, which the records would bear certain symbols (a copy of which was given to them by Pyr)
They followed the footprints to a door, and realised that while two sets of footprints entered the room, on one set (the reptilian one) exited it. The room turned out to be a cryogenic chamber holding a number of mutants. One of the cryogenic chambers had broken open, and a large black slime organism hiding on the ceiling dropped down on Batte and began to digest him. Rex and Tom attacked the slime with fire, driving it off Batte, before the trio beat a hasty retreat out of the room.
Exploring further, our mutants found a lab containing several glass-fronted storage cupboard full of chemicals, including one with the symbol Pyr had shown them! Stuffing their bags full of the chemical, our heroes continued exploring the facility, following the reptilian footprint, they found that it led to a place in the corridor where there were signs of a struggle, and from there on the footprint appeared different.
The altered footprints led the quarters of the staff who once lived there. There, they found a dead alligator on one of the beds. The alligator was in animal form, but was clad in humanoid clothing that obviously did not fit it. Searching through the clothing, our mutants realised that the alligator was Voov, but "demutated".
The mystery of what attacked Voov and demutated him was soon solved, as our heroes were attacked by a security droid that grabbed Tom and injected him with a solution. Our mutants disabled the droid and broke it open, and found that the needle which the droid used to inject Tom was connected to a vial that bore the same symbols - DNAX - as the cure Pyr told them to find! At the same time, Tom realised that he had lost his mental mutation power!
Our heroes went on to explore the final room in the facility, which turned out to be the infirmary. Here, they encountered a medical droid, and questioned it. It turned out that the facility was a medical research lab, and DNAX was one of the compounds created by the scientists to reverse mutation. Our heroes described the symptoms of the illness to the droid, who told them that no cure to the disease had been made yet, but the droid was able to isolate the virus from Voov's body and synthesise a cure.
Our heroes emerged from the infirmary to see another security droid headed their way. The fled back to the lab, and for a while considered destroying the stock of DNAX in case they fell into the wrong hands, but eventually decided against it.
Returning to the surface, they were met by an eager Pyr, who was overjoyed that they had found DNAX, and asked that they be handed to him so he could teleport back to the village to save lives immediately. Our mutants were suspicious of Pyr by now, and when Pyr became agitated Batte injected him with a vial of DNAX. Pyr turned into a groundhog before their eyes, and scurried into the tall grass.
Our mutants made their way to the village, and found that there had indeed been an infection, which the medicine they brought cured. Their mission completed, our heroes reevaluated the situation, and decided to return to the facility and destroy the remaining stock of DNAX. But when they arrived, they found that someone else had been there and taken away a number of vials while they were away. Dejected, they destroyed the remaining samples, and then concealed the entrance to the facility as best they could, and returned home.
Prepping and Running the Game
This session was based on the MCC module Phage from Below.
As with the other modules, the original plot was too complicated for me. I decided to substitute it with one of my own that would link the other NPCs and the villain of the series to a plot that will culminate in the finale.
Jaffar, as it turned out, was hired by Proteus - the villain from our previous season and now head of "Humanity's Restoration"- to recover DNAX from a the facility. Jaffar then colluded with Pyr to release a virus into the village to compel them to send their seekers to go into the facility - the bit about the ancient records were all made up by Pyr. When the seekers all died in their quest, Jaffar suggested that Pyr approach our PCs to get the job done. I imagined that Jaffar was waiting nearby when the PCs had their confrontation with Pyr, and that he afterwards sneaked into the facility and grabbed whatever DNAX he could carry.
I am not sure why my players decided against destroying all the DNAX once they realised something was off, but it does allow me to use that as a plot point for the finale.
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