[Con Module] NPC Ideas on a (Levitated) Cruise Ship?
Oct 26, 2018 16:05:40 GMT -8
Post by GM Radio Rob on Oct 26, 2018 16:05:40 GMT -8
SPOILER WARNING for "Princess of the Sea (in the Air)" at AetherCon VII
I'm working on an Atomic Robo module for an online con in two weeks. It's set aboard a modern day cruise ship that's suddenly been levitated 500 metres into the air shorty after casting off from port. No one knows why, and the players, as members of an Action Science field team for the Tesladyne Institute, are called in to find out and resolve the issue.
Thanks to Atomic Robo's Brainstorming rules, I can let the players work out what the problem is and then potentially Invent something to solve it, but in the meantime, I want to make sure I'm throwing some interesting NPCs at the players.
So far, I have some general notes. The most detailed are about the unit from Department Zero, a former Soviet agency / orgnaised crime group dedicated to psychic phenomena, who got wind that something was being moved onto the ship; when it lifted out of the sea, their suspicions that the "something" was a very powerful psychic were confirmed and they're now using a couple of squads of Cold War-era experimental Russian warbots to round up crew and passengers in the hope of identifying them. I've got the group's leader who's an ex-Bratva member, the team psychic and the tech operator who's controlling the warbots (the logic being that the psychic they're looking for can't mess with the warbots' minds).
Are they right about a powerful psychic? That depends on what the players Brainstorm.
Aside from that, I have the crew, who are looking to help evacuate everyone form the ship by any airborne transport available (pretty much modern day with a slight technological edge, so helicopters and ospreys with perhaps the odd dirigible or VTOL), and the passengers, who either want to get off, want to say on and enjoy the trip they bloody well paid for (I can just hear that in a Northern England accent) or even rubberneck at the Action Scientists at work (science is more of a big deal in the world of Atomic Robo, and Tesladyne's action scientists have a little rockstar cred).
I put a random note in the blurb about the vanishing of the ship's entire stock of single malt scotch and can imagine a chief purser reusing to let anyone off the boat until the culprits are located.)
What do you reckon?
What do you reckon?