Not the Ultimate Posse's Finest Hour

Friday we played another game from our Marvel Heroic Roleplaying campaign.  Here's the recap:

Scene One

Mr. Eternity, the Ferret, and Abrasax the Guardian Gargoyle were alerted by the authorities to a break-in at a Genesis Technologies facility that manufactures military- and industrial-grade construction vehicles.  Accompanies by the new heroine the Huntress, they rushed over in their new jet (whose name hasn't quite been determined yet) and discover three supervillains--Feral, Gale Force, and Crowdsource--obviously trying to steal something.  The four heroes and three villains ended up fighting a highly destructive battle that left most the facility in ruins.  Shortly after defeating the villainous trio, Lancelot shows up, rebukes the heroes for causing so much damage, and hauls the villains off into custody.

The Huntress was being played by my daughter, who wanted to try out MHR and would help flesh out the group.  The players rolled incredibly badly, and the doom pool at the end of the scene had nine dice it in, including four d12's.

Scene Two

The heroes grumbled about what a jerk Lancelot is, and Mr. Eternity wondered if Lancelot might have actually been in cahoots with the three villains (since he failed to show up during the fight).  The Ferret recollected an event several sessions ago where a technician at Genesis Technologies warned him that there was something amiss about Lancelot.
An investigation of the security footage and a quick accounting of the many destroyed vehicles revealed that two vehicles had been stolen during the battle, probably by several of Crowdsource's duplicates.  The two vehicles were a massive cargo transport and a drilling machine.  There's little time to speculate what the villains want with those items because back at Freedom City...

Scene Three

It's the attack of Atomo, the Atomic Horror from Beneath the Earth!

picture included just because I drew it

Atomo rampages through the city, shrugging off the attacks of Mr. Eternity, Abrasax, and the Ferret.  Finally the Ferret begins taunting Atomo, and the radioactive monstrosity descends beneath the ground, frustrated, confused, and upset.

Scene Four

But while the heroes were dealing with Atomo, someone's been using the excavation machines to dig a massive tunnel under Ground Zero, the location of the alien invasion that killed the original Wonders--the Celestial, Mystic, and Genesis Knight!  The heroes make their way down the tunnel when they are confronted by a holographic projection of Empyrean (the 9th Villain of Christmas) who scorns them for interfering with his plans.  Atomo appears to have been a distraction concocted by the Shaper of Flesh to keep the heroes away while he pursues his goals at the location of the major battle between the greatest heroes the world has ever known and the alien invaders.  To stop them, Empyrean collapses the tunnel, and the heroes flee back to the surface.

Scene Five

Mr. Eternity re-excavates the tunnel using his repulsors, and the three heroes rush into confront Empyrean and his trio of lovely bodyguards, Crimson, Cobalt, and Viridian.  Empyrean has successfully dug up the remains of the Celestial, and seeks to extract his alien DNA to be used in his own experiments.  Battle ensues, and Mr. Eternity manages to damage some of Empyrean's equipment but is then knocked unconscious by Crimson and Cobalt.  Empyrean uses his mutagenic gas gun to transform the Ferret into a giant ferret (d12 complication).  The Ferret's ferret companion, Kodo, is unable to reach the Ferret mentally and convince him to overcome his animalistic personality.  Meanwhile Viridian dukes it out with Abrasax, who realizes the battle is going against them.

Kodo fails his attempt to bring the Ferret back into semi-humanity.

Suddenly, the Celestial's body begins to glow with energy and suddenly comes back to live, only this time filled with corrupt, dark energy.  The being, calling himself the Dark Celestial, blasts hero and villain alike and flies out of the underground cavern.  Empyrean and the chromatic trio of ladies also make their escape.

In the epilogue, Mr. Eternity and Abrasax were able to use a combination of magic and technology to restore him to his semi-ferret state.

Again the die rolling were badly for the group.  Rolling the dice out in the open means that you have to live with all the bad luck, and the group had already hit 2d12 in the doom pool, Mr. Eternity was stressed out, the Ferret was suffering a severe complication, and Abrasax had used all his plot points to trigger his invulnerability to shrug off Viridian's attacks.

In the post-game review, I pointed out that the heroes losing now and then was a typical comic book convention, and the group grudgingly accepted that luck was completely against them this week.  However the group planned on getting their missing teammates back and stopping both the new menace of the Dark Celestial and get revenge on Empyrean, who is kind of smug jerk as supervillains go.