Category: comic books

Issue 3

The Junior Elite stood in the lab of Magnificent Man, Xion unconscious on the floor and robot-butler Symba having gone full berserk mode. Black Hoodie, with support, hacked into Symba and forced an emergency shutdown. Symba was locked up, and Xion explained that as he was constructing a possible gateway to bring back The Elite, a presence entered our dimension and possessed Symba. Xion is convinced that the Elite are lost and wants to take apart the gateway his was building before something worse passes through.

At the same time, local Halcyon news is reporting the team’s visit to the Eon Institute as an illegal break-in and framing is as youth gone wild in the absence of their adult authority figures. Magnificent Lad is fed up with this, as it adds to his internal frustration over his search for his parents, so he rockets off to the site of the live news story. He shows up attempting to plead his case. Earlier, Gen. Juliet Mayhem of AEGIS cryptically warned him that certain forces would seek to weaken The Junior Elite through public perception. Mag Lad begins explaining what is going on when a powerful force bolts from the sky and carries the hero off in a bear hug.

 

On the television, the rest of the team sees Apollonia is the culprit. Apollonia is the alien queen, exiled to Earth and was one of the lost members of The Elite. She’s apparently under strict mind control. Kid Atomic gathers the team onto his Warthog, and they fly off to help Mag Lad. A battle ensues and using an extension of Black Hoodie’s psychic powers they wrest control of Apollonia’s mind back. The heroine is grateful to be free of the control and explains that she believes The Elite are lost to the Dark Dimension, now in the thrall of an omnipotent entity called Golgotha.

 

Gen. Mayhem gives Kid Atomic a lead, letting him know the mysterious overpowered weapons Professor Dark and his crew were wielding came from a lieutenant in the Fortunato crime family, Rocco di Chiara. The Junior Elite arrive at Di Chiara’s front, an Italian tailor’s shop in the Little Sicily district. They try to talk their way in with the elderly Italian tailor, but he catches on and unleashes the shop’s hyper hi-tech security system. Busting their way through the blast door and past the energy cannons and find a shipping center in the back where made men are prepping weapons for distribution throughout the city. Rocco shows up with some more men, armed with the interdimensional weapons and fires on the team as they try to escape, disrupting Silver Arm’s energy construct. The team plummets and Mag Lad barrels into Rocco, creating a crater in the street that brings the villain subterranean. Rocco gets off a lucky shot, incapacitating Mag Lad and he and his men escape.

 

Meanwhile, back in the Magnificent Island laboratory, Xion is busy dismantling the interdimensional gateway when a twisted, talon-like hand bursts forth and grab’s his, crushing the bones like paper….

 

Issue 4

Xion is missing, and the Mag Island lab is in disarray. The team got beaten badly by Rocco Di Chiara and his men and now Gen. Mayhem has shown up to tell them it’s time to give up the search for The Elite. Apollonia sides with Gen. Mayhem but the Junior Elite defiantly say they will find their mentors with or without their help. Kid Atomic begins searching for Xion and discovers traces of his blood on the floor, Gravinian blood, which is extremely rare to see because of their species’ impervious skin. There are also traces of interdimensional energy, energy from the Dark Dimension in the lab. The Sphinx uses her postcog powers to see a half a dozen alien soldiers emerge from the gateway and leave Xion a bloody mess. Once they were done with him, they spread out through Mag Island.

A check of the island’s security feed finds them in the hangar bay attempting to commandeer a Gravinian shuttlecraft. Black Hoodie hacks the island’s security systems and uses the Warthog’s atomic ray to make quick work of the alien cyborgs. They rush to hangar bay to make sure it’s secured, just in time to witness explosions going off on the AEGIS city skyship that was over Halcyon. Apparently, sleeper agents belonging to the cult of Golgotha were onboard and are bringing the ship down over the city to perform a mass blood sacrifice to their god. Mag Lad calls on some guardian drones that patrol Mag Island and they rocket off to steer the crashing ship to the waters off the coast. Kid Atomic, Silver Arm, and The Phoenix rode in the Warthog while Black Hoodie and The Sphinx took the Gravinian shuttle.

 

The crashing ship was dropped roughly in the bay, but the sleeper agents began a weaponized assault on the AEGIS agents who were losing ground due to still being in shock from the surprise attack. Silver Arms extends his constructs as tendrils to wrest the weapons from the sleepers but the air is cracked by a sonic boom and Magnificent Man comes flying down. However, he is transformed, turned into a twisted shadow version of himself. Acting quickly, Silver Arm unleashed a giant winged dire wolf that swallows Mag Man and hurtles into space to take the ultra-powered hero out of the action. The tide turns between AEGIS and the Golgothans, which allows the Junior Elite to pursue the wolf and Mag Man.

 

They find Mag Man shredding the wolf construct and then turning his rage back towards Silver Arm. Black Hoodie, her powers boosted with help from Kid Atomic, grabs Mag Man’s mind and lets Mag Lad speak to his father in an attempt to bring him back. Cracks form in the demonic hold, but Mag Man crashes himself into the moon as his mind and body go to war. Mag Lad talks his dad through it and destroys a device that seems to be phasing his father back and forth between this world and the dark dimension. When the device is damaged, Mag Man is back, but his powers are gone.

 

Returning to Halcyon, the Junior Elite finds a rift in space and time over the Eon Institute flooding more of the alien soldiers through. Also returning to action are Apollonia, Doctor Atomic temporarily recovered from his PTSD, and Mag Man piloting the Gravinan shuttle. They rush to Eon and muscle their way past Dr. Conway Claremont who wants to preserve the gateway in his lab. Waiting for the Junior Elite at the gateway is Gehenna, Golgotha’s second, with her pet, the twisted demonic version of adult Silver Arm. The Sphinx gazes back and sees the Gehenna uses a control rod to force adult Silver Arm to bend to her will. Junior Silver Arm unleashes his dire wolf construct again who pins Gehenna to the wall. The Phoenix wrests the control rod but she and her twins’ power go haywire due to the presence of the gateway. Multiple rifts in both time and reality are torn open. Through one of them, the team can see the young Phantom Spider, the man who would grow up to the guidance counselor at the high school. He can apparently see them and steps through the rift only to be killed by the manipulated adult Silver Arm. This pushes the team to return Gehenna and her soldiers through the rift and then destroying the gateway.

 

In the wake of this battle, a few things becomes apparent to The Junior Elite:

• Adult Silver Arm, like Mag Man, has lost his powers, the silver arm sloughing off as an inert shell
• Magnificent Woman and Vanity Fair are still lost
• Phoenix and The Sphinx encounter a being that exists outside of time and tells them the death of their mentor, Phantom Spider, outside the normal path of time is being added to a list of charges past, present, and future. He warns that one day they will be prosecuted for these time crimes, but for now, they are safe.

 

Our issue begins with Black Hoodie the Delinquent getting a hijacked text message from her former mentor, the imprisoned super genius Vincent Vincenzo. He baits her into visiting him at AEGIS Supermax where he’s locked up in a floating cell suspended in the middle of spherical chamber outfitted with lethal security measures. Through the intercom, he taunts Hoodie over the disappearance of the Elite and her team’s inability to find out what happened to them. Hoodie doesn’t go for it and tells him she’s leaving. Vincent replies that when she decides she needs his help just to let him know, he’s only choosing to stay in the cell for now.

 

Lily and Rose aka Phoenix and The Sphinx (The Joined) are called in for a meeting with their school guidance counselor Mr. Dritz. Dritz is a retired superhero formerly known as The Phantom Spider and one of the few people who knows Lily and Rose’s secret identities. He tells the girls he saw their powers go on the fritz during the battle with Nuada and warns he’ll go to the authorities if they continue putting their lives in danger, even threatening to contact DCS.Lily and Rose falsely promise but decide to call his bluff in the end.

 

 

 

Magnificent Lad (The Legacy) is still hoping he can find his parents and gets news from Xion that he’s picked up a transmission that matches Gravinian energy signatures coming from an old warehouse in Damnation, the old town district. Symba, the Magnificent Family’s robot butler, tells Mag Lad he’s still very uncomfortable with the family’s former foe Xion being allowed access to the laboratory. Mag Lad says that Symba should just keep a close eye on the man.

 

 

Xion stops by the Mag Family’s Interstellar Menagerie, a portion of their island dedicated to housing near extinct animals from across the cosmos. Silver Arm has voluntarily allowed himself to be housed there after his absorbed Nuada’s silver arm. Xion taunts the young hero telling him he could use his power to cripple his enemies and is weak by choosing to be imprisoned. Silver Arm spits his taunts right back and refuses to give into the power lust.

 

 

 

 

Kid Atomic visits his mentor, Doc Atomic, still in a state of dementia and PTSD from whatever happened at the Eon Institute. Doc has cracked open the ink pens he asked the medi-drones to bring him and has scrawled black hearts across the walls of the recovery room. Kid inquires what this means, and Doc can only reply “The black heart beats within” and finally just chants “Eon” repeatedly. Kid hops in the Warthog and rockets to Magnificent Island. He and Mag Lad share their individual and immediate concerns and decide to split the team. Kid will take Silver Arm, Phoenix, and The Sphinx to Eon under the guise of allowing the scientists there to run tests on Silver Arm. Mag Lad and Black Hoodie will check out the strange warehouse in Damnation.

 

 

At the Eon Institute, the split team is met with a flustered and irritated Director Marissa Wolfman, the manager of the scientific research facility. She’s accompanied by armed security and eventually concedes to letting the young heroes in only if they remain monitored at all times. Dr. Conway Claremont runs a battery of tests on Silver Arm, but The Sphinx sees tests had been run previously on a sample of the metal composing the mystic arm and is took on demonic properties almost killing those present. She shouts out a warning just as thorny tendrils shoot off Silver Arm’s body and bore into the scanning equipment. Summoning a supreme level of will Silver Arm attempts to regain control of his powers and suddenly finds his consciousness floating in a black void.

 

 

A beacon of light floats towards him the void and feminine entity makes herself known. Silver feels a motherly love he had always wanted but never had as a foster kid and reaches out to her. She tells him she can soothe the pain of his arm if he accepts her. Silver hesitates but gives in and finds himself back in the laboratory with full and complete control of his now increased powers. Kid Atomic feigns the team departing now that the tests are over but instead hacks the security system and finds one curiously locked down sector. The half team fights past Eon guards and finally discovers a large testing facility containing a curious doorway connected to monitoring equipment. The Sphinx reaches out with her powers and sees the battle between the Elite and unseen, dark forces that occurred days ago. Strange cosmic interference shows her multiple realities where heroes are killed by chthonic forces emerging from the doorway or fighting them off and many other possible realities.

 

Kid Atomic remotely calls in the Warthog to blow a hole in the ceiling, but Phoenix detects another presence in the room. Shimmering into view is Mr. Drizt wearing his old Phantom Spider stealth belt. He tells the kids that they are going to the authorities to resolve the many crimes they committed breaking into this facility. Phoenix decides to solve things by overloading Drizt’s mind with images of his future and they leave him convulsing on the ground, regaining his senses after they have safely left.

Director Marissa Wolfman watches on the security feed, looking incredibly annoyed and frustrated. Dr. Conway Claremont shows her that Kid Atomic had hacked the lab’s readouts on Silver Arm and that he had reversed the hack tunneling into Doc Atomic’s secret files. She relays this news to Institute’s mysterious and shadowy benefactor Mr. Truman.

 

Across town, Mag Lad and Black Hoodie arrive at the warehouse and after Hoodies does some recon, they discover it’s housing an illegal metahuman pit fighting ring. Also, there’s some human trafficking going on as unwilling men and women are forced into the ring to fight the monstrous champion Khinzir, the Blood Pig. Mag Lad creates a distraction, busting in through the roof and drawing Khinzir’s rage while Hoodie sneaks into the management’s office to see where the Gravinian transmission is coming from.

 

Black Hoodie discovers Prospero, a decrepit, rotting old man that seems to the brains behind this operation. He summons a pair of infernal stone creatures using a device on his arm, but Black Hoodie uses her psi powers, channeled through a baseball to make short work of them. Prospero attempts an escape but is foiled. Hoodie questions him about what he knows in regards to the Elite’s disappearance. Prospero reveals that they were “given as a blood sacrifice” to aid in the coming of the “dark gods.” He mentions “Golgotha and Gehenna” and that more will die to hearken their visitation.

 

Mag Lad tricks Khinzir into letting down his guard, and the behemothic villain is tossed into deep space, belaying his threat for now. Mag Lad finds Hoodie and she shows him that Prospero was wearing a scrap of his father’s costume. Prospero will only say it was given to him as a boon from the dark gods. Hoodie attempts to burn the man alive in his business, but Mag Lad holds her back and turns the villain over to authorities. The Halcyon Police say Prospero was just a crazy old man, ranting on the street about some crazy religious nonsense, and that he’d dropped off their radar a few months ago.

 

The two half team reunite and head to Magnificent Island to debrief. When they arrive, however, they find Symba having gone mad and Xion lying bloodied and unconscious on the laboratory floor. To be continued…

For my first online Masks campaign, we have the following characters. To read more about the Masks game system check out my overview from Origins 2016. Illustrations of our campaign’s characters are done by John Alexander. Junior Elite logo by Mick Bradley:

• Black Hoodie the Delinquent (played by Ariana Ramos)
  • Mentored by and eventually discarded by an enigmatic figure, Black Hoodie can construct a useful gadget out of whatever materials are at her disposal.
• Silver Arm the Innocent (played by Mick Bradley)
  • Possessor of a silver arm that grants him mystic powers connected to Celtic mythology, Silver Arm was tossed forward from 1996 to present day where he finds his modern self to be a cynical, jaded jerk.
• Magnificent Lad the Legacy (played by Pamela Alexander)
  • The son of Gravinians Magnificent Man and Magnificent Woman, this young hero has been expected to follow in their footsteps since birth.
• Kid Atomic the Protege (played by John Alexander)
  • The orphaned son of a pair of super villains, adopted by Doctor Atomic and raised as his ward
• Phoenix and The Sphinx the Joined (played by Misha B)
  • Twins, one of whom is a precog and one a postcog, more powerful when in each other’s presence.

The team has been named the Junior Elite by the press, due to two of their members’ associations with elder members of The League of Elite, Halcyon’s premiere superhero team. In our first session, we focused entirely on character building with lots of questions and note taking on my end.

The inciting incident for our campaign is the disappearance of almost all the League of Elite. The Junior Elite responds to an attack on the Eon Institute; a research laboratory focused on multiversal and temporal science. The attack is led by Professor Dark and his Children of the Night; a washed up 1990s goth styled villain. The Professor is wielding cosmic level weaponry that he couldn’t have made himself, and it takes the combined Junior Elite to stop him. Before the team can examine the weapons more carefully, Gen. Juliet Mayhem of AEGIS swoops in and absconds with the tech citing her organization’s ability to keep it locked up tight. The only member of the League of Elite that’s still around is Doc Atomic, and he seems to have been broken psychologically from whatever went down. The Junior Elite also met Dr. Conway Claremont, the lead researcher at the Eon Institute. Claremont explained that Professor Dark broke into the wing that housed viewing equipment for that the scientists had coined “The Dark Star Dimension” and that he believes this was all a diversion from something worse. The twins share a vision of a darkened void with a single molten planet floating in the darkness. From the darknesses rises a being composed of the world’s very essence. It reaches out to make contact with a small being consisting of pure light. The vision ends. The first mini session ended with an object hurtling from space and crashing into a farm on the outskirts of Halcyon. The farmer rushes out to investigate only to see a thorny silver arm reach up over the crater’s edge.

In our first full session, we kicked things off with Magnificent Lad at his family’s secret base on a jungle island off the coast of Halcyon. There his robot butler Symba is trying to get the young to sleep after 18 straight hours of searching the known universe for his parents’ using their alien equipment. The conversation is interrupted by Xion, a former friend turned enemy of the Magnificent family who has arrived on the island. Mag Lad and Xion clash, with Symba alerting the rest of the Junior Elite. The battle leaves the planet’s atmosphere and ends on the moon where Xion is able to explain that he has come to help Mag Lad find his parents. His reasoning is that with their disappearance it finally set in that their species was on the brink of extinction and he will help find them. The team can’t get a good read on Xion but he does seem genuine in his concerns. The former (?) villain sets up shop in the Magnificents’ lab explaining that Mag Lad’s father would likely construct a beacon wherever he might be and that Xion can build a receiver.

The team is pulled away quickly thereafter when massive destruction is reported in the district of Prosperity. Prosperity is a borough of the city that appeared from the 31st Century. However, none of the residents came with it so, while it was amazing and beyond anything Halcyon’s citizens were used to it quickly decayed because there was no one alive who knew how to maintain and repair the technology within it. Now Prosperity is a rundown area of squatters and homeless communities. The Junior Elite, airborne in Kid Atomic’s warthog helicopter, see a path of destruction coming from the farmlands into the city. On the ground is Nuada of the Silver Hand, the mythical Celtic hero who bears the same weapon as young Silver Arm. Silver Arm attempts to calm the time lost warrior but Mag Lad decides to get physical and wants to take Nuada down. The rest of team goes into rescue mode until Silver Arm miscalculates and causes a towering spire to collapse into the energy district, exploding a fusion reactor and taking power out across town. The Halcyon City Jail is hit, meaning Professor Dark has a chance to escape.

Black Hoodie, Phoenix, and Mag Lad head for the jail while Silver Arm, The Sphinx, and Kid Atomic hang back with Nuada. It becomes apparent that Nuada knows more than he originally let on. His silver arm separates itself from his body, revealed as a sentient demonic entity. The silver demon strikes at The Sphinx who loses control of her powers and begins opening rifts in space and time. We get quick glimpses of possible futures and alternate realities, including The Sphinx as a world-destroying cosmic force. Kid Atomic tries to fly the Warthog in to scoop her up but Nuada used his sword to blow out the engine. Across town, Phoenix senses Professor Dark is headed for Damnation, the old town district of Halcyon, but they head back to help her sister when she sense the twin’s pain.

Nuada is finally taken down when Silver Arm reaches out with his consciousness and absorbs the silver hand into his own arm, causing the liquid metal to grow from his arm and shoulder and down his torso and leg. Nuada shrivels into a husk and before he passes out utters, “Heaven has fallen.”

The final scene shows Professor Dark arriving at a strange pit fighting venue in Damnation. We briefly glimpse Apollonia, one of the supposedly missing League of Elite, fighting in the pits against other metahumans. There’s no time to figure out what’s going on there as Dark meets with a figure named Prospero who usher the villain into a backroom for a private conversation.

To be continued…