Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Episode 2: Herald of a New Age

The Heroes return to Freedom City to assess their situation, and continue to investigate the mysterious Event and the subsequent events as well..
The discover a strange text ad on the web for something called the Teach Academy, which promises to Analyze, Counsel, Treat and Train recipients of Event related Gifts. It offered possible answers, but remained a mystery as they had trouble tracking the elusive Academy down.
Their search was interupted by news reports of a mysterious person calling himself The Herald. This man, they discovered a former carpenter by the name of Harold Feinz, claimed to be an extraterrestrial who was awakened by the Event with a message of peace for the world. He assembled a small following of hopeful people and preached his message to whoever would listen, usually getting kicked out of the church, or classroom he decided to speak in.
But that day, he promised to lead his followers to the Teller Nuclear Power Plant, and demand that they shut the plant, and eventually all Nuclear Plants down as well.
Sure enough, he led a small band of protesters to the plant, and met an equal number of police and journalists.
The heroes showed up as well.
James had a brief conversation trying to scope out the man. He seemed to recognise something about him, but he wasn't sure. At one point, the Herald touched him on the shoulder, and he experienced a strange vision.
He was standing on a beach before a deep purple ocean. There was a large nude woman coming out of the sea.
He shook his head to clear his sight, and saw that it was not a woman but a huge serpent. He was armed with a bow and a mace, and felt a strange purpose.
Then as suddenly as it started, the vision was gone. And the Herald was walking away.

Later as the ultimatum drew closer, they encountered a strange large man away from the crowd smoking a pipe and watching the scene intently. James went to talk with him and discovered him to be Ted Ormond, a distant descendent of Mary Ormond, wife of Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard the Pirate. He is filthy rich (must be some buried treasure somewhere). They suspect that Ted Ormond is connected with the Teach Academy.
But before James can get much out of Ormond, a nervous guard at the gate decides to shoot at the Herald. Jack intervenes, and racing at breakneck speed intercedes and takes the bullet for the Herald. (Hero Point!)
The other guards take this as a sign to fire and unleash a flurry of bullets at the two. Jack took another hit, and the Herald took several, but they just bounced of him. James entered the fray and also took a number of hits, none of the bullets seemed to hurt him (James had donned a mask enroute to hide his identity). After quickly checking on Jack, the Herald leapt over the guard fence (100ft or so) and started marching toward the reactor. James followed him. Jack needed to recover from stun first.
The Herald and James walked towards the reactor, and Jack showed up. They briefly discussed the situation. The Herald tried to convince them, that this was the correct action to take, and that they were not subject to the laws of Man. They basically disagreed and the necessary fight ensued. The Herald had some good moves, and managed to bruise and trip James up, but not cause any serious damage. Jack ran back to the Riot Police van and grabbed some Tear Gas which he distributed around the entrance to the reactor. Sadly for him, he was not immune to Tear Gas, and the Herald was. As Jack struggled to fight off the tear gas, James took advantage of the cloud and slammed into the Herald, knocking him down and stunning him, his next blow was a critical hit and KO'd the Herald. Before he passed out, the Herald told James that "His Eye was in Sari-Tash."
They wrapped him in a heavy metal tube from a nearby picnic table, and fled the scene.
Back in Freedom City, they watched the ambivalent news reports, some calling them heroes, others terrorists, and others uncertain. They would need to prove themselves to people somehow.
They also called the Teach Academy and spoke with Ormond. He seemed to know something about what had happened and offered to help them. They readily agreed. But before they left for the Academy. A package of Dr. Heimholtz's things arrived. James, was suddenly grief stricken. The Event which gave him these amazing powers robbed Heimholtz of his life, and his life's work, the search for the mysterious Eye of Ea.
So he decided, that the Academy would be there when he got back, but for now he was headed to Sari-Tash, which he discovered much to his chagrin was in Kyrgystan. So it would be long tough journey.
Summerhal, suddenly on his own decided to through his lot with the Teach Academy, at least for now.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home