First off, just another reminder/plug that Night Horrors: The Tormented, a book I worked on, is now available!
And with that out of the way...
This post marks the first of the next game we're running for my 'homebrew' weeks: No Rest For the Wicked, Monica Speca's fan-made PbtA Borderlands RPG. For those unfamiliar, Borderlands is a first-person shooter/RPG hybrid where the characters ("Vault Hunters," in the local parlance) are seeking out hidden caches of powerful alien artifacts, with the sort of anarchic sense of humor one might find from, say, Rick and Morty. The games (of which there are four: Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and Tales from the Borderlands) take place on and around the planet of Pandora, a world of chaos and violence and strange alien ruins and annoying robots. This intro from the first game might give you a little better idea -- you don't necessarily need to watch the whole clip, but the 'storybook' bit at the beginning (the first minute and a half) will be informative.
This game takes place on a planet of my own design, the planet Minos. Minos is owned by Torgue, one of the various corporations that runs most of the setting, and mostly sees use for mining and weapons testing facilities. (This is basically so I won't be tempted to turn the game into me doing a one-man show of canon NPCs snarking at the players, which would only be entertaining for so long.) Timeline-wise, it takes place in between the end of Borderlands 2 and Tales from the Borderlands (spoiler alert for a 6-year old video game); Handsome Jack is dead and a buttload of new Vaults have been discovered around the universe, but Hyperion is still mostly functional.
Before we kick things off below the break, it would be very helpful to check out the intro from the second game (particularly the bit from 2:52 onwards), on account of the fact that my players and I worked together to craft a similar-style intro. Rather than break the flow of the write-up to get into detailed character stuff, I'll make that its own separate post.
But let's get to it.
[Voice: Marcus, the narrator from the game intros]
Would you like to hear a story?
Let's do one about someplace other than Pandora... It's not the center of the universe, after all.
In the beginning, the Vault Hunt spread across much of the Six Galaxies. Vault Hunters and corporations alike swarmed over planets and picked them clean like ants, racing for the prize, and not all of them were on Pandora when it became the finish line.
Many remained trapped on the smaller, less prosperous, out of the way worlds and moons. Some built a life with a home, a white picket fence, and a rack up on the mantle to put their dusty guns. Others became mercenaries, security men, private military contractors... bandits.
But the Destroyer wasn't the end, but a beginning. And in the wake of the Warrior, the Vault Hunt is back on, and bigger than ever. Just in time for the universe to adjust to this revelation, a shakeup comes to the planet Minos...
[Music: "Don't Say Nothin'," by The Heavy]
A low-flying shuttle flies over a valley floor of green grass peppered with bushes and craters, pursuing a utility vehicle (something like this with mounted guns, though not exact) over the uneven terrain. The vehicle is full of whooping, hollering figures in mismatched, post-apocalyptic-chic body armor. It fires shots from a railgun into the ground, punching neat holes into the terrain as the truck weaves back and forth.
The truck hits a skag, losing control and leaving an opening for the shuttle's weaponry to blast it -- but the blast sets something else off.
The earth rumbles and splits and cracks. There are gouts of flame as a chain reaction of explosions opens up and collapses the floor of the valley.
In the nearby town of Gamma, one of the various settlements dedicated to developing and producing weaponry, the citizenry watch as the valley seems to just explode, kicking up dust and flame and smoke. A bunch of the local wildlife comes rushing towards the barriers at the edges of town, but those barriers are more geared towards keeping out stray vehicles and slowing down incoming trouble than serving as any sort of hard border. In particular the town is assaulted by chargers, something like a horse-sized rhino with a headcrest like a triceratops -- except for all of the spikes. The chaos has also kicked up several swarms of dartweed, an aggressive plant creature with the ability to fly by spinning parts of it around like a helicopter until it folds itself up into something like a javelin or a lawn dart and dives at prey.
As a horde of creatures approaches the town, a quartet of individuals emerges to confront the threat...
An ambiguous figure in nondescript stealth gear and a face-covering mask steps forward, a fancy saber in hand, raising it to face the coming onslaught. One of the flying dartweed folds up into a green spike and rockets straight at them. It passes through their now-flickering form and spears the ground, where the real one appears from thin air and slices it up with the blade.
Thirt33n
as the Assassin
A muscular man in his late-40's in scrounged-up armor steps forward, pounding one meaty fist into the opposite palm as one of the chargers comes right at him. He grabs its head crest as it reaches him and slides back a little bit before getting his footing. It lunges at him again as a yellow-ish glow surrounds his fist, and as he punches the thing in the face the glow explodes like a shaped charge with a shouted "YEAH!"
Sledge
as the Berserker
A young woman with long black hair braided down her back, wearing a duster and a face-covering mask backs up into an alley, pursued by chargers, firing at them with an SMG. She gets backed into a corner, out of sight of anyone else, and then behind her mask she grins wide before the vanishes in a corrosive cloud just as they charge. They lunge into the cloud as she reappears behind them, tattoos running up one arm glowing as she pours more of the acid mist at them.
B-light
as the Siren
Finally, a sheet of black smoke blows aside to reveal a man with sandy-blond hair in a fancy suit with the Tediore logo. The angle of the light makes his glasses opaque as he shoots a tiny pistol at a charger coming right at him, but to no effect. A briefcase sits at his feet.
Mr. Phillips
as a Company Man
The briefcase at his feet shimmers and flickers and a hard-light hologram of a comically-small anime-styled child holding a huge gun appears.
...with Hanabi-chan!
With a manic grin, she unloads the gun into the charger before chucking the weapon at it -- whereupon it explodes on impact, tearing the charger to shreds.
During a lull in the action, as other people in the town are shooting at the various beasties just outside the city, a Claptrap -- specially-colored for a Torgue-run city, red on the bottom with a black and white checkered pattern around the middle and a white-colored top -- rushes at them, squealing in a panic for protection.
Then a flying chunk of rock hits it and knocks it out with a loud clang.
[Imagine a 'No Rest for the Wicked' logo landing with the rock here as the music stops.]
And at this point, the group gets ready for the next wave of creatures, a pair of chargers and a swarm of dartweed overhead. B-light mostly provides covering fire as Thirt33n goes after one of the chargers, spawning a ring of holograms around it as a distraction (though at one point one of the dartweeds spears through a hologram and hits them in the process) as they move in to stab the hell out of it. After one of the chargers hits Hanabi-chan Sledge goes after it, taking it one-on-one. Hanabi-chan and B-light turn their attention to the dartweed. The hologram, rattling off stats for the simulated Tediore shotgun she's carrying in an annoying voice, unloads the weapon at them before chucking it at the flying plants -- whereupon they explode.[0] B-light uses her own abilities to add a corrosive effect to her bullets to melt the rest out of the sky.
The group is now greeted by the nails-on-a-chalkboard sound of something like metal scraping against stone as a giant crab made of dark crystal comes stalking up out of the wrecked valley floor. It looks to be held together by some sort of spongy substance, but it's nothing anyone in the group has seen before but recognizes as a badass. Hanabi-chan unloads into it and gets speared by a thrown piece of crystal while everyone else ducks behind cover to recharge their shields. Sledge gets a good shot at it, unloading at it with a Tediore SMG, chucking the gun at it for the grenade effect and doing a bunch of damage.
Mr. Phillips chimes in, because this is his job: "Accurate, convenient, deadly, and at a price point anyone can afford. That level of convenience is the Tediore promise."
B-light tries distracting it with covering fire, but draws its attention a little too strongly and gets a crystal shard punching through her shield to damage her. But Thirt33n sends out their holograms again as they vanish from sight, moving in closer and delivering a killing blow to a mass right at the center 'body' piece of crystal. The mass quivers and strands of the substance release the various bits of crystal like they were held together by now-cut bungee cords. The whole mess collapses to the ground.
Seeing that the madness has died down, Thirt33n takes a closer look at the remnants of the crystal monster. There's a fungal mass with limp tendrils coming off of it that seems to have been the center, and many of the crystals (a local substance called dusk crystal, which is dark but translucent) are covered in some manner of slime. They find a container to put the mass in and collects some of the crystals. While this is going on, Mr. Phillips tells Hanabi-chan that it's time to go to sleep and switches her off for the moment.
Meanwhile, B-light heads down to the edge of town to take a closer look at the devastation. An older man in outdoors-y clothes comes jogging up, putting away a pistol in a belt holster, warning her to be careful in case there's any more collapse.[1]
Admin Tom
Kinda like the mayor, but not the mayor
Admin Tom asks if they're okay, and he mentions that most of the wireless communication systems are down. He suggests that they get that fungus thing that Thirt33n has collected up to Dee, the town medic (and local scientist) to get a better idea of what it is. This seems like a capital idea, so Sledge, Mr. Phillips, and Thirt33n go to see Dee.
B-light, instead, heads a little out of town and a little further up the hill it's on to try and get a better angle on the destruction. There's pits and trenches all over the place, and while there doesn't seem to be a clear and obvious pattern to the damage, something about it does seem familiar to B-light though she can't quite put a finger on it. She makes a note to try and find some sort of access to the underground and see what's down there.
The others head into what counts as the local doctor's clinic, where they find a young woman with brown hair, goggles, and a lab coat cleaning up a lab mostly wrecked by the earthquake. Conspicuously, there's an examination table with straps, and some sort of ray gun-looking device is suspended over it. Off to the side is a vending machine with an anime-styled picture of her (though in the picture she has glasses), ready to dispense healing items.
Dee
Not a mad scientist, just a little angry
Like Tom, Dee is immediately concerned with making sure the group's okay with just what happened. She's the town medic, after all. Thirt33n gives her the container with the fungal creature and the crystals, and she takes them over to one of her lab tables for a quick examination. It's not something she's seen before, but it sounds like what they fought was something called a 'shardcrab.' Unfortunately, she only knows about them via someone at another settlement, called Lambda (the settlement, not the individual), and they haven't been in contact there for a while. Mr. Phillips suggests a better name for it would be 'geomorphic crustaceoid,' and she says she likes that and will put it in the official report to Tom and Mr. Nelson (who administers the planet for the Torgue corporation).
Outside, B-light is making her way through the town where she runs into Tom, who's running around to make sure everyone's okay. B-light asks him where the nearest access to the underground would be, and he mentions there's a mining town a little ways off the now messed-up valley called Strike. She asks where the others are, and Tom mentions they should be with Dee.
So B-light heads in just as the comms start coming back up, Dee's computer rebooting and all that, and everyone hears in their comms an annoying electronic voice...
"Helloooooo, residents! I appear to have been murdered!"
The group realizes, with horror, that Claptrap is in the cloud, because he's actually a major node in the local communications system. As Claptraps are nigh-unhackable, having one maintain the systems is a good way to keep it secure, and he's wired into lots of stuff as an assistant. (He spontaneously died a couple of years ago[2], but they managed to get him back up and running with some effort.) Mr. Phillips suggests to Dee that they replace their systems with some new, affordable Tediore-brand servers. But either way, they need to get Claptrap up and running again -- the sooner he's functional, the sooner he's out of their heads and back in his own body.
Doing this will require heading further up the hill to a Hyperion facility up there and getting the parts they need -- there's a basic repair kit that will have enough. B-light mentions that she was planning to check out Strike to find out more about what happened down in the valley, but everyone agrees that it's a higher priority to get Claptrap up and running again if for no other reason than to get him out of their heads.
Thirt33n dramatically gestures to Mr. Phillips, not wanting to speak aloud, and Phillips brings up to Dee that he believes that Thirt33n would like this to be an official job so they can get paid. Dee says that shouldn't be a problem, she'll talk to Tom about it and he can get them paid. He's got an expense account for stuff like this.
Mr. Phillips, as a representative of one of the corporations that run things, is keenly interested in checking out the Hyperion facility to make sure they're okay. Sledge asks if he prides himself on being neighborly, or if he's more interested in target-rich environments. Phillips says it's a bit of both.
Sledge openly hopes all of the Hyperion folks are dead, because he's got a bad personal history with them.[3] And at one point, as the group banters among themselves about their upcoming trek up the hill, he lets slip that one of these days he plans to rule Minos.
And just when that's about to get awkward, Claptrap chimes in that they should probably go get that repair kit... and he'll be with them for the adventure! He'll be there the whooooole way up and back!
And we decided to leave off there.
But don't worry, we'll be doing this again soon enough!
Footnotes--
First, before I get into the other stuff, addressing a couple of the character classes. (I just didn't want to interrupt the flow of the intro with the actual footnotes.)
Siren -- Sirens are women born with mysterious, poorly-understood powers, often elemental in nature. There are six in the universe at any given time, and they're believed to have some connection to the Vaults and the Eridian aliens. One of the known 'signs' of a Siren is by tattoo-like markings running down their left side that tend to glow when they use their powers.
'Company Man' -- Mr. Phillips, class-wise, is a Mechromancer reskinned slightly to have a hard-light hologram instead of a normal robot. The 'Company Man' branding is a reference to the fact that in the game intros, the last character introduced is introduced as something other than what they strictly are ("Brick as Himself," "Zer0 is a Number," "Claptrap as a Mistake").
Assassin and Berserker should be obvious enough. Further details on the individual characters' deals will come when I do a character writeup post.
[0]-- Every brand of guns in Borderlands has a special effect of some sort. Tediore guns, rather than reloading normally, can be thrown as grenades while a new one is 'digistructed' in the user's hand (imagine something like the Star Trek replicators, but faster and flashier) -- the idea is that Tediore guns are so inexpensive, it's perfectly viable to throw one away and get a new one. Also, for those of you paying attention to the playbooks, Hanabi-chan doesn't carry 'normal' guns -- this is part of the whole 'reskinning' thing, using the mechanics for the shoulder-mounted cannon since Tediore guns can be explosive.
[1]-- The games do little intro cards for the more significant NPCs as well, though not as dramatic -- so I'm swiping a little bit of that for these write-ups.
[2]-- See the end of the Borderlands Pre-Sequel DLC "Claptastic Voyage." Though the first few minutes of Borderlands 2 (after the intro) might give you enough of an idea.
[3]-- More about this when I get my "Meet the Vault Hunters" post up.
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