Progenitor: The Battle of San Francisco

2 pm Progenitor: The Battle of San Francisco

GM: Greg Stolze

Greg gave a fairly detailed overview of the Progenitor world. In brief, Amanda was the Progenitor, the first and most powerful superhero in the world, and roughly the first ten people she used her powers on or near became tier twos. They created, probably mostly inadvertently, tier threes, and so on.

But, Amanda was still the most powerful person in the entire world, and that much power does something to a person. In 1970, she became the most beautiful woman in the world. This was irrelevant to the afternoon's game, but raised fascinating philosophical questions. Had Amanda become the ideal of human beauty? Had she inserted herself into the wiring of humanity's brains so that she was perceived as such?

The world had almost come to nuclear war, but one of Amanda's friends, a Tier 3 supergenius, called her, reminding her that they had come up with a plan for exactly this situation. Amanda turned all of the radioactive elements to something else, ossium, I think, and then told her friend that she was going back to sleep, as that had taken a lot out of her.

But, time moved on, and Amanda got weirder. I'm still a little vague on the Atlantis incident, but I gather that some folks pulled an island out of the city and decided to create a paradise for themselves, making it their own country. I think Amanda made the island sink, but also made sure that everyone could get off in time. I may have the details wrong, and I'm currently vague on what problem she had with the Atlanteans, as they came to be called. I suspect that when I read my copy of Progenitor, I'll understand.

It was now 1999, and Amanda had decided to visit San Francisco. She wanted to make some kind of speech. San Francisco's authorities had told her, very politely, that they did not want her in their city.

There was now a two hundred foot tall Amanda on the Golden Gate Bridge. Amanda, the Progenitor, was a Tier 1 superhero.

The PCs were Tier 10 superheroes.

GM: So, you guys aren't going to fight her, cuz that would just be Dumb.

Amanda and several Tier 2 or 3s were facing off against her friend, the supergenius Tier 3 and his allies, and state and federal forces were involved as well.

The PCs were not going to be taking place in the Battle of San Francisco on the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead, they were going to try to keep their beloved city from being destroyed by the battle and its inevitable consequences.

• Andrew: The Moment, a man who can drain inertia and discharge it as energy, fr'ex in the form of superstrength. This doesn't last for very long, but often, it doesn't have to.
• ???: Quickstrong: A strong, fast Atlantean superhero, widely respected in the Atlantean community
• Me: Peacemaker: Can calm people down so that they're not capable of violence
• ???: The Spectacle: A big glowing ball of energy, known for humiliating criminals it captures.
• ???: Roadkill: Can bring the dead back to live as mindless zombies. She usually does this with animals, like squirrels. The others weren't entirely sure whether she was a hero or a villain. This had less to do with the necromantic powers and more to do with the way she straddled the line of the law.
• Joshua Banner (played Oliver in Todd Furler's "Ashes of Innocence" the previous night): Misty Laten: Greg only made five PCs, but he could take a sixth player. Misty Laten is from the Progenitor book, a woman who can pretty much do anything perfectly. This is an easy character to add to any group.

There was a timeline of events that would happen if the PCs did nothing, as well as notes about what would happen given various permutations of PC action. I think this is enough information that I could run the scenario, at least if I got a little more comfortable with ORE or had someone running the actual mechanics.

The group of heroes split in half, with Quickstrong, Misty, and Roadkill going to the Atlantino part of town and Peacemaker, Spectacle, and The Moment going to help people trying to leave the city by way of the Bay Bridge.

I have a lot of disconnected quotes.

GM: You are gonna head butt the jet fighter? (Shakes player's hand)

I forget what that was about.

At one point, when Roadkill was driving through a rather nasty area, the GM pointed out to the player that there certainly were a lot of corpses around.

Roadkill: Yeah, but I don wanna die!

Someone (possibly the Spectacle?): Party? I guess I'm late to the party?

GM (perhaps suggesting advice to give to fleeing drivers): Do not run people down -- they will be caught in your tires and slow you down?

Roadkill offered one of the others a lift.

GM: Jump in the back with a bunch a bunch of dead animals.

Player (I forget which one): I'll ride on top.

Roadkill: I promise they won't bite -- hard. That much.

Quote whose context I forget: The lights tell me to face forward.

At the bridge, cars were blocked by some kind of incident. The GM called for a perception roll.

Me: I have no idea what my perception is.

GM (checking my character sheet): Wow, it's crap! Roll 2 dice.

The problem was that at the Bay Bridge on ramp, there was a battle with five people on one side, and three on the other. In other words, there was a bloody gang war going on blocking the evacuation.

Peacemaker focused on making the people nearest him throw down their weapons while his comrades dealt with whatever the largest threat was at any given moment. At one point, one of the gang members escalated, pulling a rocket launcher from the trunk of a car.

GM: And where did he get a rocket launcher? And then you remember. After the apocalypse, they were All Over the Place.

GM (I think, referring to the gangster with the Rocket Launcher?): Brains of 2! Bridges and rocket launchers go together!

Someone (possibly me): No! No!

I think the bridge group managed to deal with the gang war and calm the fleeing mob down to the point where they were Resigned, although Peacemaker did get shot up, despite having body armor. His companions did some first aid, which helped.

Meanwhile, Misty was driving Roadkill and Quickstrong to Little Atlantis. She drove as she did everything else, perfectly. Sure, there was a lot of traffic, but, as if in a slow motion car ballet, Misty steered their vehicle through openings that hadn't been there an instant ago, looked too small, were just wide enough, and weren't there once they'd passed.

GM: You lucky folks have reached the riot!

At this point, I went to the bathroom, so I missed a lot of what went down in Little Atlantis. When I came in, one of the cops was on the megaphone.

Cop: The snipers must disarm themselves!

Someone (possibly the GM): You can make a shooter's blind out of an _HVAC_ box?

Quickstrong managed to get to one of the snipers and asked him to disarm.

Sniper: If it were anyone but you! (hands rifle over)

Quickstrong: Why, thank you.

Sniper: Don't turn me into the cops.

He left, and Quickstrong felt no need to turn him over to anyone.

GM: You now have a sniper rifle!

Quickstrong threw it over the edge, then returned to his companions. Roadkill had set her zombie squirrels on the remaining sniper who was now quite ready to surrender.

Roadkill: Don't hurt my squirrels!

Misty: Aren't they already dead?

Sniper (coming out, zombie squirrels nipping at his ankles): Arrest me! Just give me some sanitizer! For the love of god, just give me some sanitizer!

Cop: Arrest him!

One of the players: Cuff him, Daniel.

GM: _I_ get to say that!

GM: And that's the end of the riot of San Francisco. It peters out thanks to you guys.

Essentially, for the riot to end, three of the PCs needed to succeed at _some_ kind of persuasion, and only one of them could use intimidation. And, Peacekeeper, the obvious person to send for this, wasn't even there. However, Quickstrong was, and that counted for a lot.

So, the state of the city at this point:

Bay Bridge: Resignation at 30 minutes. Riot Aftermath: Petering out at 20 minutes.

I'm not sure if that ten minute difference between the two groups became significant.

The next problem the group faced, scattered as they were, was the aftermath of an Orbital Kinetic Weapon Strike.

GM (surveying the table to see if we know what that is): All the guys know what that is and none of the girls do? What a strange gender split.

For those of us who didn't recognize the terminology, he explained that this was the equivalent of dropping rocks, which was something I remembered from Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and from Babylon 5. Of course, this wasn't exactly a rock.

GM: more like a telephone pole made of tungsten.

And this went towards Amanda on the Golden Gate Bridge, too far away for the PCs to deal with, and, in any case, in the zone where no sane Tier 10 had any business being.

Peacemaker: Not my problem. (trying to figure out what is, and, while he's at it, to master the art of standing up after having been messed up by gunfire)

Then, the tungsten pole, also, iirc, known as a city killer bullet, I think (i.e., what you use when you want to take out an entire city), got knocked aside.

GM: There are 19 tons of tungsten cartwheeling through the sky.

Peacemaker: _Now_ it's our problem.

GM: What can the six of you do to prevent nineteen tons of tungsten from hitting the city?

Folks asked a couple of questions about their powers, involving a) reaching the tungsten pole and b) dealing with it.

GM (in response to a question from the Spectacle's player): If you push yourself to the point of self destruction, it will kill you in the next ten minutes -- but it _will_ get you there in nine.

Spectacle (taking a deep breath): Gotta do it.

GM: Big Damn Heroes!

I'm not entirely sure why sending 19 tons of tungsten in a straight vertical drop was the correct course of action, as my knowledge of physics is slim, but this is what happened.

Spectacle: Tell San Francisco I love them.

As final speeches go, that's a beauty.

Peacemaker and The Moment took several points of shock, which resulted in the Peacemaker being knocked out again.

GM: You guys have reduced the unrest through your selflessness.

Spectacle took human form upon dying (male, I think), and The Moment carried the body through the streets like Pieta as folks snapped pictures.

GM: That's what the statue will look like.

Then, without warning, all superpowers everywhere stopped working. Roadkill's zombies fell over, and so on. This was because the Battle of San Francisco had ended when Amanda, the Progenitor, fell into a coma. She was not quite dead.

Her coma lasted for about six month, iirc, and during that time, there were no superpowers anywhere. Then, she woke up, and superpowers turned back on.

I asked why no one had killed her while she was in a coma. Greg said that they weren't sure if it would work, and were terrified of what might happen if it didn't. Also, he noted, everyone on the planet owed their lives to Amanda, as she had stopped a nuclear holocaust.

Her husband, once his superpower was working again, did something that might prevent a similar situation from arising again. People thought her husband was a healer, but that wasn't precisely correct, as the villains who made the mistake of trying to attack during his daughter's wedding had learned. What he could do was turn time back to undo a wound or aging, and this is what he did for Amanda, de-aging her mind, I think, so that she was no longer insane.

Greg said we'd done very well, and that he had notes on what could go wrong. Things could have gone up as high as Fractures in Civilization from this battle!

Spectacle's player: Ever think of turning Progenitor into graphic novel?

Greg: Yeah, but where would I get artist?

Spectacle's player: I'm an artist...