January 30, 1944
Timeline Events[]
Character Improvements[]
- Dan - 2d Sense (to Sense 5, 10xp)
- Deja Vu - 1d Stealth (2xp), 1d Brawling (2xp)
- Doris - 2hd Skeleton Key (4xp)
- Puddles - 2d Change to Waterform
Episode Summary[]
In this episode, the Talents manage to crash a pelican into the Yamato superbattleship. No, really. They did.
More detailed summary: The team leaves Saidor on the Nashville and is summoned by the captain. He has just received an alarming report and he wants us to check into it. They received a distress call from the USS Oklahoma, but it was strange - they received static and "Mayday" and "Under attack" but no explosions or gunfire. Also, the message was not coded according to regulations.
The ship was on patrol on its way to Guadalcanal. Our ship is closest to it, so he wants us to look it over, without endangering the Nashville.
We arrive in a small boat, accompanied by Easy Company. The Oklahoma seems dead in the water, adrift with no signs of a crew. Puddles starts muttering darkly about alien abduction or the Bermuda Triangle.
The team boards the ship, and quickly comes upon a corpse, a man with blackened flesh, burned alive. He had a service pistol but it was still holstered and no rounds had gone off - he probably didn't see anything to attack. Doris says she has not seen anything so bad since she tested the shrink ray.
Searching the ship, the team finds more bodies. There are scorch marks on wooden furniture, but much of the ship is undamaged. They find no signs of an accelerant. In the ship's galley, they observe that all food has apparently been cooked.
OOC: it looks like the entire ship has been microwaved. Doris researches this type of effect, using Gizmo as a source. The team uses their Kennedy family contacts to get access to restricted material. Doris finds out about a scrapped Japanese weapons program to create a microwave beam weapon, to damage electronics and flesh. The Japanese scrapped it because of range issues.
The team is fairly sure it isn't a talent. Deja Vu wonders if it might be on a submarine, since it apparently came upon the Oklahoma without them noticing it, and if the range is as limited as we've been told, they would have to be within visual range to work the weapon.
Puddles tastes the water and determines that there was no submarine nearby.
Deja Vu, using hindsight, observes the crew going to battlestations, as they noticed several Japanese ships on the horizon. But before they can attack, they collapse, flesh burning. The effect seems to sweep from the rear to the front of the ship, and several sparks or explosions occur on top of the ship.
We call it a Death Ray, and believe it to be located on the largest ship of the convoy. We turn over the Oklahoma and plan to try to take out the weapon. We obtain a submarine, but the sub's captain does not want to risk his crew by getting too close, so he drops us off 4 km from the convoy, out of sight.
The Japanese convoy consists of 4 destroyes, 1 regular battleship and the super battleship, Yamato.
After some discussion on how to approach it, we agree to field test Doris's shrink ray. She modifies Gizmo to fly (as a pelican) and shrinks the team so he can carry us. We plan to get dropped at the Yamato, and, while still tiny, try to take out the weapon. But, as we get close, suddenly Gizmo stops responding and crashes. The team pops out of his mouth, fully sized. We are captured by the Japanese, our talent powers negated.
We are taken to meet a supervillain (recognizable because of her spiny chair) and she monologs. She is from an alternative timeline, in which the allies won the war. But the world became a very hostile place for Talents, and her organization decided to create a different world, by helping the Axis win. She believes the Germans and Japanese would build a world much friendlier to Talents, and therefore (she says) they seeded the past with Talents. They refer to themselves as The Founders. They brought the microwave weapon from their alternative timeline.
They have technology which creates some sort of waves to disrupt Talent abilities.
Puddles tries to confuse her by talking babbling about conspiracies, but her distraction is unsuccessful.
The team is taken off to a prison, but escapes using the classic ploy of someone pretending to be ill and the team taking out the guard.
The team sabotages the Yamato's engines and reports back to the Nashville.
During the downtime, the team must plan how to take out the Yamato (now undergoing repairs in dry dock). Doris plans to make an interference device to counteract the frequency of the Talent-canceling waves. It may end up being a single use device.
Quotes[]
- "I think it was called jifk. I watched it on the duhvduh." - On the movie JFK by Oliver Stone
- "No one wants to try out the shrink ray... I know! We can shrink Easy company"
- "We don't know each other. We didn't even take the same pelican."
- "Actually, this Yamato is not from a parallel reality. Just the microwave."
Endgame Bonuses[]
- 3 XP
- Japanese Battleships