Characters do such unexpected things

On Sunday, we played another session of In the Shadow of the Blood-Red King. It sure was interesting.

In the previous session, we'd ended on a cliff-hanger. Our heroes had been investigating a museum break-in and found a hypodermic injector on the scene. Tracking down its manufacturer, they managed to get the address to which this unique compound was delivered. That address turned out to be a "sub-station" managing supplies for some other location. Fastlane, the time-manipulator, sneaked into the back of the out-going delivery truck and Stalker and Magma followed in their big panel truck from a discrete distance. (Magma transforms into a rocky body and throws lava. Stalker is a big, 800 pound suit of battle armor… which is why the heroes drive around in a big panel truck. :)

Two-and-a-half hours later, the delivery truck has led them deep into the mountain forest, to what is apparently a hidden military base. And that's where the previous session ended… the door of the truck rolls up and Fastlane sees more than thirty soldiers doing drills and other activities… and many of the soldiers do not appear entirely human. Roll this episode's credits.

In between sessions, I talked with Karen, my wife and the player of Fastlane, about Fastlane's powers. He's a time-manipulator… including the ability to stop time (from his perspective) and shift himself partially between the infinite threads of time. In Champions terms, he had Teleport (stop time, walk over there, start time), Desolidification (shift into a time thread in which the wall doesn't exist and walk to the target destination) and Invisibility (um… I'm not sure how this was justified, something similar to the desolid bit), among other powers.

It was this combination of powers we were discussing… mostly me asking how I was dumb enough to agree to a desolid/teleport/invisibility combo. I'd been GMing Champions for years, and I knew better than to allow this. Might have been that "GM's Girlfriend" thing. Anyway, the discussion centered on the fact that this power set would allow him to quietly walk away from the middle of a heavily armed military base. In effect, it allows him to walk away from nearly any conflict… which means he can walk away from very interesting stories. Like this one. It also means that, before he walks away, he can wander around and find all the secrets without much chance of getting caught.

So we agreed that the invisibility was a bit much, and wasn't very well justified anyway. He hadn't used it too much so far in this campaign, and we could retcon it out without much trouble. And it had the desired effect… he couldn't stop time long enough to make a clean getaway, so he had to take his time and look around a little. Of course, in this looking around, he found the high-tech armory. And decided to blow it up. I knew I shouldn't have put an ammo dump so close to the other buildings.

I'd been so focused on figuring how how to keep him on the base long enough to look around and maybe get caught, that I forgot he'd have easy access to the heavily-guarded armory. Nor had I considered that he'd decide to set off several grenades inside it.

But it works for me. The weapons aren't that important, and the event is going to set of a chain of events that will show our heroes just what they're dealing with. Up until these last two sessions, I'd been having trouble getting the heroes hooked on the right trail. No more… trouble's going to come looking for them.