Mutants and Masterminds

Issue Synopses
Issue 1: Open the Vault
City Hall. Many of our heroes were new in town and seeking to complete their
registration. What was supposed to amount to a day at the DMV quickly became the
beginning their new careers and set in motion the events that would define them. A
seer named Azuria quickly picked each of you out of the throng of heroes, insisting
this specific collection were the only ones who could help her.
Apparently a group of street thugs had somehow breached an extra-
dimensional vault belonging to MAGIthe Modern Arcane Guild of Investigation. The
thugs clearly had outside help and were using it to plunder the vault of its magical
artifacts. After a bit of convincing and a quick step into the broom closet, you found
yourselves in a huge, stone entryway. It was here you first encountered The
Hellions. They seemed rather mundane at first, but further exploration revealed
some members carried objects that gave them demonic abilities.
The first room of serious note contained several artifactsa battle axe, a
coffin, a crystal orb, a staff, an urn and an empty pedestal. After some poking
around, the group ultimately decided it best to leave these totems be.
The proceeded onward, finding a room that was entirely barred to them. They
continued another way, coming across a room resembling a chapel. They terrified
the lone Hellion investigating the altar at the rooms head. He dropped a
pocketbook of incantations as he tried to flee. Upon touching it, the mystically
attuned hero AP nearly opened a portal to a hellish plane. Fortunately, his
connection with the book was severed before any demons could fully cross into our
world.
They proceeded back to the locked and warded door, using APs incorporeal
nature to investigate what lay beyond. He saw a vast room full of shelves of
artifacts and tomes, and the Hellions who were hard at work boxing these treasures
into crates. The crates were carried off to and through a portal. In front of it stood
two menone in ornate robes and a staggeringly tall hat, the other in full, black
body armor with red flames patterns up the arms and legs. His face was entirely
obscured by a rather sinister looking helmet complete with ventilation system.
After some experimentation, it was decided that the battle axe was the way
to go. After successfully overcoming a wave of anger upon grabbing it, Dante
charged down the hall and used it to shatter the wards that sealed the door. A huge
battle broke out. The wizard escaped, a fire was started in the corner of the
chamber, shelves were toppled and priceless trinkets shattered, but in the end, the
heroes prevailed. After some unique interrogation tactics, the armored villain gave
up his collaborators. The Hellions theft was a cover for the real aim. A group called
The Circle of Thorns wanted something in particular from this vault, something
dangerous, and your groups rash assault on the supervillain had shattered it; a
small, black and green rod.
 On your way back out of the vault, you noticed the battle axe had
inexplicably disappeared. Azuria wasnt pleased with all the destruction your efforts
to save the vault had caused, but accepted that it was better than a street gang
plundering the whole collection. She congratulated you on your victory and
welcomed you all to the city.
Issue 2: The Good Doctor
A reporter for the local paper, Tina Drenth, contacted you with a lead on a
series of mysterious disappearances. Wealthy citizens of Paragon City were
disappearing without warning. Stranger still, they re-appeared days later, seemingly
unharmed and with no solid explanation of what had happened to them. She gave
you the name of a man who had recently vanished, a Crey executive by the name of
Adam Wallace.
You devised a plan to infiltrate his office and seek clues as to where the man
had gone. Before the Crey security teams could arrive to escort you from the
premises, you found two cluesAdam was dying of a terminal disease, and in his
address book was a strange name: Dr. Demetrios Vasilokos. More commonly known
as Dr. Vahzilok in the seedier circles of Paragon City. Effigy recalled this man was
rumored to deal in plastic surgeries that help villains skip town after failed
endeavors.
You decided to investigate his office for yourself. Offering Effigy as bait, you
sent him in to request a surgery of his own. Unfortunately, the Doctor knew you
were on to him and sedated the unlucky hero. He was nearly dragged to certain
doom when your team leapt to the rescue. After battling homicidal nurses, you
found a secret escape tunnel from the office into the sewers and hurried after the
doctor.
Below the city, you discovered the extent of Vahziloks new enterprise. It
seemed he had moved on from simple disguises to enlisting hordes of psychotic
butcher-surgeons that were accompanied by zombies made of no more than rotted
flesh stitched to a mechanical skeleton. You confronted the doctor but your chance
to apprehend him was blocked by Adam Wallace, the very man you had set out to
rescue.
It seemed that these cobbled together zombies were only the beginning of
Vahziloks experiments. Adam was the most recent addition to the Doctors Eidolons
men and women who sought cures for their terminal disease through super-
powered tissue and organ transplants. A mix of living desperation and dead heroes,
this creature managed to beat your team back and rejoin the Doctor, but not before
leaving you with one last surprise. A squad of Embalmed Cadavers, zombies with
suicide packs strapped to their backs, rushed in to collapse the cavern and cut off
and further hope of pursuit.
You had solved the mystery of these disappearances and brought evidence to
light of Vahziloks evil nature, but failed to apprehend the man.
Issue 3: Lost Causes
Losing sight of Adam Wallace did not sight well with your team. You
relentlessly pursued him over the coming weeks until coming to a final showdown
deep within the city sewer system.
Fresh off your redemption, you quickly picked up a new casemembers of
the citys homeless population had been acting strangely, almost as if in a trance,
for weeks. Suddenly a group had organized and successfully managed to rob a bank
with a bizarre-looking mutant at the lead. You were asked to question the homeless
and seek clues as to who was behind such a coordinated assault.
After some work, you learned that some of the most hopeless citizens had
gone deep underground to join an organization called The Lost. Those you asked
spoke of this group with fear or loathing, clearly wanting nothing to do with
anything they touched.
As luck would have it, the Lost attempted another robbery that night. You
rushed to the scene to discover not only down-on-their-luck men and women, but
large, partially mutated men. They sported streets signs and trash as body armor.
You fought your way to the vault, encountering a villain whose deformities were so
extreme that he looked more alien than man. He attempted to overwhelm your
team with psychic powers and wielded a sword that certainly looked alien. You
managed to put him down for interrogation. He claimed these robberies were to
benefit the homeless, to provide for the people Paragon City refused to care for. He
also boasted of a massive recruitment rally that you would be far too late to stop.
You hurried to Perez Park, the scene of the rally. A central park within Paragon
City, it was known for being overrun with villains of late. You worked carefully to
avoid the Hellions as they fought over turf with their rival gang, The Skulls. As you
hunted for signs of the rally, you rescued a woman from being sacrificed by strange
looking mystics. Finally, you found the rally at an old amphitheater in the center of
the woods. Hundreds of desperate men and women scattered at the sight of the
heroes, fearing arrest. But a handful of mutants stayed. You fought two more of the
large, alien-like men and were nearly doomed when their small, shriveled
companion turned out to be capable of mind control. Fortunately, fate was on your
side and the rally holders were brought to justice.
 As you took them in, they boasted this was by far not the last you had seen
of the Lost and that its leadership ran much deeper than you could possibly
understand.

Issue 4: Blast from the Past

Our heroes were called in by a prominent city official to handle a task the police could
not. Police reports told stories of a group of terrorists who had been emulating the 5 th
Column, a super-powered Nazi strike force from WWII. You were asked to enter their base, a
small and simple office building, root out the small cell of terrorists and nip these imitators in
the bud.

After a brief period of investigationresearch, surveillance, checking in with contacts,

etc., the team reconvened a block away. Splitting up, they managed to take down the
snipers watching over the base entrance with mostly non-lethal success.

They attempted rooftop access only to find it blocked off. They opted instead to enter
through the second-story window. While the second floor was entirely gutted to the studs,
the first was much more eventful. They found several of the Columns footsoldiers working
and briefly blended in. It wasnt long before the soldiers caught on to the ruse. After the
heroes dispatched the soldiers, they moved into the building lobby to discover it had clearly
been owned by the Crey Corporation at one point. They could tell from the impressive
fountain-statue of the current CEO, Countess Crey, situated in the lobbys center.
Investigating a main office up the stairs, they came across some rather better trained and
armed soldiers who put up a solid fight, but were ultimately no match. The office revealed a
strange slip of paper with a series of numbers and a few files bearing the Crey logo and
regular references to something called The Revenant Hero Project.

Retreating back to the lobby, our heroes noticed an elevator with floor numbers 1-10.
Nothing the building only had two stories, they deduced the series of numbers was actually
a code for the elevator. It took them down to a secret cave lair.

They investigated the lair, first finding a large room containing four cages. These
cages were filled with sizable, perhaps human, bones. A few of these still had scraps of meat
on them. The stone walls held claw marks, there was a massive pawprint on the floor and
the entire chamber smelled vaguely of wet dog.

Opting to move further inward, the heroes discovered two more chambers. The first
contained dozens of small robots, Mek-Men, lined up and awaiting activation. They managed
to put down the super-soldiers in charge of their inspection and conducted a brief
interrogation. It became clear these men truly believed they were members of the original
5th Column and were more than willing to die for their cause.

They proceeded on to the final room. It was incredibly dark, the walls lined with large,
mechanical coffins. The walkways lined the walls and met inside of a circular space bearing
the 5th Columns symbol. It seemed empty at first. After a brief period of investigation, it
became clear they were not alone. A Vampyr, a man genetically modified into the
resemblance and traits of a vampire from classic mythology, was in the process of creating
more just like him. After vicious attempts to hypnotize, drain and generally terrorize our
heroes, he was brought down, but not before letting Effigy know he more than recognized
him and that a man called Requiem would soon come calling on our heroes.

While the city official who sent you on your quest responded incredulously at first, the
tales of what you had seen below ground shook her certainty that this was just a group of
simple pretenders. She provided you with one last history lesson, that Requiem was the
leader of the 5th Column back in the height of their power. She still questioned if even he
could have laid low for over sixty years.

Your group was sent along to City Hall to officially register as a Super Group. The
name would be revealed in the papers the following morning with tales of your exploits.

Issue Five: The Protectors

You were called by Dante and Top Ramen to discuss the future of the 5th Column base/former
Crey office you had cleaned out. In spite of the pairs best efforts, the rest of your expanding
supergroup, the other Devils Advocates, refused to reside in a location that clearly invited disaster.

During your arguing, a familiar face came calling. The seer Azuria brought a co-worker of hers,
Jonathan St. John Smith from SERAPHthe division for Scientific Experimentation, Research and
Application to Paranormal Humans. He requested your assistance investing a chemical bombing at
another Crey building.

You hurried to the scene, finding the building filled with corpses whose very muscle tissues had
wasted away to nothing. There were exploded barrels that clearly used to hold some chemical
compound or another. Your search for survivors turned up only one executive. He claimed anyone else
of importance had fled through rooftop access on jetpacks or in helicopters and that anyone below a
certain floor never had a chance. When pressed as to who was responsible for the attack, he described
men in strange, surgical gowns accompanied by walking corpses. It seemed the Vahzilok were on the
offensive again.

Jonathan St. John radioed your group to alert you that the Vahzilok were seen at the Faultline
Dam carting similar barrels to those found in the office building. He feared they intended to poison
Paragon Citys drinking water with them. Your team raced to the location, diverting Vahzilok minions
from the dams main doorway so you could make your entrance. Inside, you saw minions loading up
barrels, not unloading. This went largely overlooked as you sprang into action to evict the villains from
such a sensitive area.

Familiar with the groups tactics, you swept aside the surgeons that could revive their undead
counterparts first. You put down the lumbering zombies and even managed to topple the Doctors
super-powered henchmen with relative ease. Using the talents of one of your newest allies, you read
the mind of the strike teams leader to learn the location of Dr. Vahzilok himself.
 Not wanting to miss your second chance at the archvillain, you left the police to clean up the
dam mess and hurried to a part of the sewers long forgotten by any map. Inside, you found scores of
body bags. Some contained corpses of ordinary citizens, some the remains of heroes who had been
presumed missing or dead for weeks, and some filled simply with limbs of one type or another. You
fought your way to the Doctors laboratory, eager to put an end to his human puzzle game once and
for all.

You werent expecting him to have devised a puzzle for himself. Vahzilok stood fifteen feet tall
in a hulking meat-suit of his own design. Amidst the stitched together pieces of rotted flesh, he had
replaced an arm with an impressive cannon and threateningly large scalpel. Your team had never been
larger or more powerful, but the Doctor still managed to put several of you on the brink of death. He
demanded you leave him to the task of trying to undo the effects of this Wasting Disease someone
dared give his name. It took much more careful strategy and cooperation among your team to begin to
score the thick hide he had encased himself in. Just as you felt you were getting the upper hand,
everything changed.

In a blinding flash, two new heroes appeared in the laboratory and rapidly subdued Vahzilok.
Sporting matching uniforms that completely hid their identities and shielded their minds, they claimed
to be a part of a new security initiative for the Crey Corporation. Calling themselves the Paragon
Protectors, they declared they were the next step in heroism, bridging the gap between the citys
rookie heroes and its most accomplished saviors. They insisted they would handle threats such as
Vahzilok from now on, leaving you with more suitable missions lke dealing with petty criminals.

Though you were immediately distrustful of the Protectors convenient timing and hidden
minds, the police assured you they worked in tandem with these heroes now. You had little choice but
to let them take Vahzilok to the super-prison known as The Ziggurat. It was with bitterness you noted
the next day that they had stolen all credit in the papers for his capture. What would crime-fighting
become now that the private sector was involved? What was to become of your team in this new
world?