Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn Part Three

Supersworn Pre-Alpha
Designed & Written by Ben Adams

You can check out this game and many other hacks of Ironsworn here.

Read part two of our Supersworn campaign.

Here is a map of Forge City with essential locations marked that we have visited, will be visiting, or may visit in the future.

Slingshot travels to South Gardens, where he lives with his Aunt Laurie and sister Mari. He slips in through the upstairs window, which Sling leaves unlocked each night when he goes out on patrol. Stepping gingerly, he attempts to make sure not to wake anyone. It’s 4am, and now, back in his Chris Kelly persona, our hero decides to skip his first class. This is risky as he’s missed so many sessions of his MWF Investigative Journalism classes that the teacher, Professor Mercer, has given him both a verbal and written warning that he is in danger of failing. However, Chris’s body screams at him for rest. He disinfects & bandages his wounds with a first aid kit. He hides in his closet and finally collapses into the warm embrace of his bed. Sleep comes like a wave, washing over him. 

(Oracle question: Is anyone in the house when Chris wakes up? 50/50 odds. Answer: No)

Chris is surprised by the silence when he wakes up. He checks the clock: 9:00am. Investigative Journalism has been missed…again. He refuses to check his email to see the disappointed message from Mercer. Chris is surprised that at no point Aunt Laurie bursts in shouting her signature, “Time to start a beautiful day!” The kitchen is undisturbed when he comes downstairs, signaling more out of the routine activity. 

(Gather Information. Miss with a match. Evokes a personal memory. Pay the Price: Something of value is lost or destroyed)

Chris suddenly thinks about his box of his dad’s research hidden in the attic. Clambering back upstairs and using his tendrils to move quicker, he reaches the musty attic of the old Victorian-style house. The box is missing! He’d never really given it a good search and is now wondering if there hadn’t been a bug or tracking device in it, something that would guide the people behind his father’s death to this house. Did they take his sister & aunt? Another school day will likely be missed, but Chris has few options. He grabs his Slingshot costume and feels his powers take over, his hair turning shock white, arms crackling with energy. 

(Go on Patrol. Rank: Dangerous. Miss. Pay the Price: The environment or terrain introduces a new hazard.)

Zipping around South Gardens in this much daylight is a risky move. Aunt Laurie’s house is about as tall as buildings get around here, so anyone on the ground glancing up will certainly spot him. After a few minutes without spotting Aunt Laurie running errands, Sling notices the drone following him. A glance backward shows him the drone is outfitted with some nasty energy weapons. It must have detected Sling’s change in movement and opens fire.

(Enter the Fray + Iron. Strong Hit.)

Sling is able to swing out of the energy blast’s path and up into the dense foliage of an oak tree, quickly throwing out another tendril and swinging around behind the drone to bring his feet down onto it hard.

(Strike + Iron. Weak Hit)

Contact! Sling’s feet crash into the sturdy device, causing it to take some damage to its outer frame and drop down in the air a few feet. It quickly recovers and lights up in a way that causes Sling to realize it has been sent to bring him somewhere, dead or alive. This time the drone shifts its attention away from Sling to a city bus stopping at a nearby corner. Rockets locked in and fired.

(Face Danger + Edge. Weak Hit)

Sling pushes himself past what he should, there’s little fuel left in the tank, but he cannot let these civilians be harmed because someone is after him. Sling can feel his powers waning and sputtering. He reaches the bus, tearing the door off its hinges, spinning around, and thrusting it out like a shield to knock the missiles off-course. The missiles are now wildly out of control. The bus is safe, but who else could be harmed?

(Face Danger + Iron. Weak Hit. Endure Stress: You are overwhelmed. Face Desolation)

Sling envelopes the missiles in the twisted mass of his tendrils, letting him absorb the explosion. That energy transfers through the energy constructs into Sling’s body, causing his mind to endure immense suffering. His mind is consumed by a haze that seems to split apart reality for a brief moment. Sling understands what is happening is linked to his still mysterious powers. Staring across the water to Central Island, Sling glimpses a short vision of another time. The sky around the city is various shades of violet, with white lightning bolts streaking across it. The Eaton Industries tower appears to be a conduit, drawing this dark energy. The sky splits open, and a massive city-sized construct begins descending from its plane of reality into Forge City. Everything quickly crumbles away, and Sling returns to his senses, the vision lingering in the back of his mind. 

(Strike + Iron. Strong Hit with a match)

Swinging around a church bell tower, Sling builds momentum as the drone widely chases him, firing off every weapon it has. Our hero lowers himself and uses that speed to come up underneath the drone, a tendril-powered uppercut putting his fist through it and completely shattering a wing. The drone stutters and dips in the air. 

(Take decisive action. Strong Hit)

Sling comes around for another pass and obliterates the drone, fragments of it raining down from the sky. A well-placed and stretched-out tendril catches its core where the hard drive would be. He quickly heads back home to analyze the hard drive and see if it points him toward who sent it, though he has suspicions. In his bedroom, Sling pulls out a computer he uses for this occasion. None of his personal info on it, and a VPN routed through the Under Dimension thanks to Doctor Improbable, so if the hard drive tries to send out a ping to its owner, it leads them on a wild goose chase.

(Create Advantage + Wits. Miss. Pay the Price: You face the consequences of an earlier choice)

Before Sling can even complete his scan of the device, he hears a violent crash from downstairs and the sounds of heavy boots flooding in. Climbing onto the roof, Sling spots a small squadron of armored people and a heavy-duty jeep parked outside. The jeep bears the same angular letter “D” symbol from the banners in Boss Frankenstein’s underground arena. How did they find him here? Sling reaches back and touches the scarred bump on his neck, the control capsule Doctor Pandemonia puts in the contestants. No time to analyze the drone hard drive now. His body still not fully recovered, and his mind reeling from that intense vision, Sling grabs the hard drive and swings away from his house in search of a safe haven.

---

Improbable Plaza is one of the most striking buildings that make up Forge City’s skyline. Despite the ludicrous decision to make it in the shape of a giant serif letter “I,” the facility is associated with two things: scientific innovation and The Improbables. The Improbables is a quartet of friends & explorers of the unknown responsible for many of the leaps in the scientific progress of the last thirty years. Sling befriended the Improbables early on in his career (as seen in the pages of the now legendary Sensational Slingshot #1). Doctor Improbable, the team’s leader, was responsible for upgrading Slingshot from a homemade outfit to something more sleek and responsive to his powers. Even the good doctor, one of Earth’s five most intelligent people, is still confused about where Sling’s powers came from. 

The rest of the Improbables are Behemoth, a scaly dragon-man who was once human & transformed by the spell of an intergalactic wizard. There’s Fusioneer, the young daredevil who can reshape the very foundations of matter with an internal alchemical flame. Finally, there’s Doctor Improbable’s wife, Mirage, whose ability to form intricate hard-light illusions has outwitted some of the most cunning villains on the planet and beyond. These three seem to be away today as Doctor Improbable works on one of the dozens of ongoing projects in his Wonder Lab. Slingshot uses a unique signal device built into his belt by the good doctor that opens a special door high up in the building. 

Doctor Improbable is a man turned from flesh into a living polymer. This has resulted in his skin taking on a plastic waxy sheen. To the unprepared, it can be unnerving to see him up close. This changed his dietary habits as well, no longer eating organic food but consuming manufactured plastics and petroleum. Doctor Improbable has jokingly (but also seriously) billed himself as the answer to the result of humanity turning Earth into a landfill. One man’s trash is Doctor Improbable’s dinner. He also likes to experiment with his look because his skin can be reshaped and molded easily, so the doctor never has a hairstyle considered “normal looking.”

(Sojourn. Miss. Healed but failed to Hearten. Pay the Price: The environment or terrain introduces a new hazard.)

Slingshot explains the situation from this morning and the information on the underground fighting ring. The doctor agrees to check out the hard drive and says he can attend to Sling’s injuries. A blast of nanobiotics floods Sling’s body and quickly seals up his physical injuries. Before they can attend to the young hero’s stress levels, one of Dr. Improbable’s many dimensional scrying windows cracks apart, this one linked to the dread Infernal Dimension. Dozens of singe imps begin flooding out and trashing the laboratory.

(Enter the Fray + Iron. Strong Hit)

Sling avoids many of the lab’s automatic security measures targeting the imps but starts to feel extreme claustrophobia. He knocks a few of them back into the fiery depths of the dimensional window while others begin to pile onto Sling’s back, their flaming claws burning small holes into his outfit.

(Strike + Iron. Weak hit)

The imps begin to overpower Slingshot. He focuses and turns his tendrils into a cool icy flame which repels some, but they keep piling on while Doctor Improbable fires a freeze ray into the demonic hordes.

(Take Decisive Action. Strong Hit)

Sling turns his tendrils into a shovel shape and drives the imps back towards the open window as Doc Improbable sets up a Fantastium metal shutter to roll down over the dimensional window, blocking any more imps until the viewing glass can be repaired. 

Doc apologizes for the inconvenience, but Slingshot has become used to these things when he hangs out around the Improbables. 

(Oracle question: Does Doc find anything on the hard drive to identify who sent it? 50/50 odds. Answer: Yes.)

(Oracle question: Was this drone sent by Ezra Eaton?. Likely odds. Answer: Yes).

Slingshot has to wonder if Eaton has figured out he is also Chris Kelly. Are his aunt and sister being held prisoner? He needs to get into Eaton Industries headquarters. Going straight in as Slingshot is not the best idea, so going in as college journalist Christopher Kelly looking to write up a story about some new scientific innovation might be better. Sling asks if the Doc has anything to spare that could help him infiltrate the labs in Eaton Tower.

(Secure Advantage + Heart. Strong Hit)

Doc has just the thing, a stealth generator that Sling can clip onto his belt. Our young hero thanks Doc and swings off, needing to make one more stop before he journeys into Eaton Tower.

To be continued in part four.