[X] Plan T.S.P.W.A.C.A.B.A.W.H.C (The Second Plan Without A Cool Acronym, But Atleast We Have Coffee)
-[X] Mow the Lawn
--[X] Hex
-[X] Recruit News Staff
--[X] Hank
-[X] Re-Establish Coffee-rigs
--[X] Skips
-[X] Locate Sector V Members
--[X] Izzy
-[X] Gem Tech Integration
--[X] Professor XXXL
-[X] Un-Hypnotise Ice Cream Men
--[X] Toiletnator
-[X]Recruit a Hero
--[X] Mr Black and Mr White
-[X] Meet with the Black Knight
-[X] Tinker with Sir Toasty
-[X] Look into What All This "Super Villainy" Is
-[X] Look for Friends!
-[X] Perform a stunt
-[X] Take a sample from Father's suit
-[X] Catalog your germ collection
-[X] Prepare for the Ritual
NATIONAL ACTIONS
Mow the Lawn
DC 120 (CF 5% CS 5%)
1d100 = [ 3 ] + 37 + 5 + 27 + 3 = 75
CRITICAL FAILURE
Hex approached the task you had assigned him with the same attitude as all of his latest pursuits. With a stoic, calculating and cautious advance born of experience that left no room for mishap or confusion. He made a clear effort to minimize collateral damage, preferring to bind and subdue the creatures and rebels that had infested your estates and surrounding territory. In fact, it was almost entirely in hand when you finally departed for the Moonbase. Stepping into the shuttle, you gave him a curt nod of respect and left. When you returned, the situation had… escalated. Stumbling out of the crashed escape pod, you and Izzy found yourselves standing in a crater that had once been a major suburb alongside the mangled corpse of a birthday magician, an angsty teen, and a very shamefaced Hex.
Result: The monsters are gone but at what cost? Large reduction in public approval.
To be continued in Interlude: Charm: Cast
Recruit News Staff
DC 80 (CF 4% CS 6%)
1d100 = [ 94 ] + 21 + 5 +23 + 4 = 147
CRITICAL SUCCESS
Evidently, when you bought your news staff, there had been a big round of resignations. That wouldn't do. In fact, not only would that not do, but you knew Hank could do better, as did Hank. With a sweeping reform, you and Hank are able to snatch up a swathe of reporters, journalists, bloggers, influencers, and anybody off the street with anything resembling a communications degree. Evidently, Hank is just as good at giving interviews to reporters as he is at giving interviews to propane salesmen. Your news agency has ground back to life and they're itching to dispatch reporters to catch up on the very eventful past few months. A few exceptional individuals pop up on Hank's radar who might just be able to wrangle this new news beast into something truly awe inspiring.
Result: New hero recruitment options unlocked, New Position Unlocked (See Below for "Positions")
Re-Establish Coffee-rigs
DC 80 (CF 4% CS 6%)
1d100 = [ 81 ] + 19 + 5 + 15 + 2 + 10 = 132
SUCCESS
As you and Skips flew in over the abandoned remains of your long-dormant offshore coffee rigs, you estimated that it would take a few years at least to get them back in business. Skips assured you that years are relative. You chuckled at what you assumed was a joke. But a few months later, you were no longer laughing. Turns out Skips had done some time on an oil derrick, and while drilling for brown gold instead of black was new to him, he adapted to the task remarkably well. Looking out over the edge of the catwalk you even saw that he'd had begun construction of some auxiliary docks. Now that your rigs are back up, you can use them as a launching point to extend your influence over the high seas.
Result: Open Seaport Stewardship action available with reduced DC, unlocks actions for overseas trade and diplomacy.
Add to Stuff: Coffee Rigs [+1 Income]
Income applied to funds every other turn, starting with this turn.
Locate Sector V Members
DC 80 (CF 2% CS 8%)
1d100 = [ 93 ] + 27 + 29 + 2 = 151
CRITICAL SUCCESS
The recent KND sabotage has opened your eyes to the dangers even the scattered remnants of those meddling brats might pose. So obviously you immediately dispatched your sidekick to investigate the whereabouts of the most meddlesome of the lot, that accursed Sector V.
You aren't quite sure how Izzy did it, but she delivered. Sure, her hair was a little bit on fire, she had a black eye and the file was covered in what was certainly not ketchup, but she got it, and she seemed pleased.
Numbuh 5 was the easiest to locate, and was actively a problem as you read it. It was only natural that Sector V's second in command was already making a nuisance of herself, having hijacked a Candy Pirate vessel and claimed it for her own. She was already raiding known candy pirate settlements and there was a persistent rumor that she'd be soon picking a fight with any shorebound Adult Co. facilities, armed to the sugar-rotten teeth with all sorts of not-so-sweet surprises.
THREAT LEVEL: HIGH
As for Numbuh 4… It's frustratingly vague. He left the United States for Australia along with his family, but after that, he seems to have gone MIA. Right now, you don't have any way of getting boots on the ground Down Under to go looking. You don't expect this dim-witted brat to be an issue unless he has someone else to do the thinking for him.
THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN, PROBABLY LOW.
The report on Numbuh 3 took a turn for the morbid. Izzy ran up against a lot of false starts before Skips apparently pointed her towards "the right kind of dead end." What she found was very, very unsettling. Numbuh 3 sightings traced a map of destruction. Each and every one in the wake of some terrible disaster. Eyewitness interviews describe a child-sized figure in oversized green robes wielding a glinting scythe and a Very Special Forever Good-Bye Rainbow Monkey. Izzy was unable and unwilling to try for a firsthand look. You always thought Numbuh 3 could be a bit… well, kooky. A little creepy, even. But this is new. Other than acting as some kind of harbinger of death, the only other consistent pattern to the stories are the rumours of her at the helm of a massive ghost ship called "Charon's Rainbow."
THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN
Numbuh 2's position was a little bit harder to narrow down, and was invariably what led to most of Izzy's bumps and bruises. Evidently the hair-brained flyboy's 2x4 plane had been last sighted buzzing around Mandark's territory hopping between old KND weapons caches. The trail went cold there, till Izzy took a "self-guided backstage tour" through Mandark's HQ. Thankfully, she's faced gameshow challenges more dangerous than his security, and she was able to get the scoop: evidently, Mandark has reached out to him as a candidate for something he's calling his "Think Tank." If he accepts, he'll probably be too busy in the lab to actively pick a fight with you, but no doubt about it he'll be itching for an excuse. Try not to give Mandark one.
THREAT LEVEL: MEDIUM
And finally.
Numbuh 1.
The worst of all.
Nothing.
Not a clue.
Not a one.
Result: Detailed breakdown on 3 out of 5 Sector V members w/ threat assessment. New National actions to deal with Numbuhs 2 and 5.
Gem Tech Integration
DC 95 (CF 4% CS 6%)
1d100 = [ 96 ] + 19 + 31 + 4 = 150
CRITICAL SUCCESS
Professor XXXL is a strange man. You assigned him to work on the Gem Warship to get it into a fully functional bastion of war and might, something you could use to show the absolute power you held within the grasp of your hand. Sure, it wasn't *precisely* his field of expertise, but hey, he said he had worked on big giant robots before! So why not. When he asked when he would get the chance to work on something more to his… tastes you brushed him off and said he could do whatever he wanted once he was done with the ship. So XXXL shrugged his shoulders and waddled out of your office.
Skip forward a month and you are furious. You were expecting a Warship. A big ALIEN Warship. And Professor XXXL had only sent you a single work update.
You are prepared to deliver one heck of a scalding to the absent-minded professor when you slam open the hangar doors and see a big giant ALIEN warship, retrofitted and in perfect condition, floating freely in its hangar. It was about as beautiful as one could call a giant evil warship, and it was covered in a frankly jaw dropping amount of ordinance. Clad in ultra-dark titanium, it looked like the gauntlet of an evil lord, with proper spikes upon the knuckles the size of a sudabaker. You figure it was a safe bet that at some point, some way, this thing was going to punch something. Segmented parts of the fist clearly showed where it could deploy the finger-fighters, while extending from the wrist came the bridge, jutting out like a laser cannon or a very obnoxious watch. In classic Evil Adult Fashion, it featured a red circular window that you could look out from. Finally, the massive propane powered engines in the back of the forearm rumbled, the energy generated by fossil fuels keeping it aloft while clean burning. Overall, it was looked just as dominating as you had dreamed it to be.
Over near the corner, Professor XXXL waved at you as he carefully dismantled a snow cone machine, dozens of schematics and research theorems on a board behind him.
"Ah! Father! Perfect timing! I had the giant hand thingy finished weeks ago. Now I just need your help working out how to make it dispense shaved ice…"
Result: Gem Warship upgraded into The Iron Fist (Substantial Quest Martial bonus), Learning Actions: Hardlight Vehicles & Hardlight Scaffolding, Thread Vote.
Now that you've figured out a reproducible way of integrating Gem components into human hardware, you're left wondering what to do with it. On the one hand, you DID figure this out by yourself. Adult Co's gonna have to start earning dough somehow, and keeping a monopoly on advanced alien tech would certainly help with that---not to mention the patent royalties. On the other hand, there is a war on. As the Gems deploy more earth vehicle hybrid technicals, the intel on how they're put together could help US troops take them apart on the battlefield, not to mention the possibility of Uncle Sam reverse engineering Gem weapons of war to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Select One:
[ ] Keep Gem Tech Integration Methods Proprietary
[ ] Share Gem Tech Integration Intel with the Military
VOTE WILL BE CALLED IN 24 HOURS
THERE WILL BE A 12 HOUR MORATORIUM
Un-Hypnotise Ice Cream Men
DC 60 (CF 3% CS 7%)
1d100 = [ 9 ] + 15 + 6 + 1 = 31
FAILURE
Tolietnator approached the task bestowed upon him by Father with the utmost sincerity. Those dastardly, evil, cruel Kids Next Door Operatives had done something to poor Father's loyal. hardworking, and honest Ice Cream men! Did they have no shame?
Never fear though, Tolienator knew just what to do! If showing them something spinny hypnotized them in the first place, then all he had to do was show them another hypnotic swirling pattern. And what could possibly be more hypnotic than the mesmerizing spiral of a flushing toilet bowl?
Toiletnator's attempt to deprogramme them ultimately amounted to a really gross waterboarding session. Eventually the sound of repeated flushing got on your nerves and you decided to go kick Tolienator in the keister. Sure, your Ice Cream Men were acting up, but they were YOUR henchmen darn it! And nobody was going to give them a swirly but you!
Result: You found out that Tolietnator knows nothing about hypnotism. Surprisingly good at waterboarding (swirlies).
PERSONAL ACTIONS
FATHER
-Recruit a Hero
Your meeting with Agent White and Agent Black goes smoothly enough. As government liasons, they seem alright enough. They explain their role as your government assigned secret agents, and were mostly clean cut. The rope-hand things are pretty weird, but you suppose your not one to judge.
-Meet with the Black Knight [ 49 ]
It was a busy week and your schedule was more packed than a KND knapsack between your meeting with Moltar, the purging of the lawn and the never-ending paperwork, so you had to make this quick. The meeting with Black Knight was over a light brunch guarded by a heavy security mandate. You had to go through a check point just to get into the cafe and then another to place an order, and despite the lack of visored goons with guns near her, you still didn't feel quite so secure in her presence. She was sharp, dark, and straight to the point, and hardly even showed a shimmer of discomfort at the fact that you were dressed like a looming shadow of paternal rage.
In very eloquent and straight forward terms, she explained the role of Providence and the danger of EVOs. Providence is a global organization created by a coalition of numerous different countries in order to combat the threat posed by the creatures, although with the world as it is, she mentions that the initial goal might have grown since then. You're not sure whether you should be proud, bashful or threatened when she refers to your performance in Canada. When you politely ask what an EVO even is, she simply gestured to a man with shades, who then promptly slammed a canister-like container onto the table. With a hiss, the metallic sides moved, revealing what ought to be a bull-frog. Leaning forward, you look closer- a bit too close, as when it croaks, a massive eye-ball presses against its throat, making clear eye-contact with you. As you recoil back, flames hissing at your fingers, it takes advantage of the confusion and leaps forward, needle like teeth scratching into the glass with a horrid sound. With that, the agent reactivates the containment shields, hiding the little beast once more.
"An Exponentially Variegated Organisms. Or, an EVO."
With a slight chuckle, the face of Providence explained cooly that the frog used to be a principal. Although, she mentioned that he had also been a normal frog previously as well. You weren't sure what was so funny about that.
She goes on to explain that EVOs are capable of turning practically anything into a monster capable of ripping off faces, poisoning what's left and then wearing the skin to hide. People, animals, plants, viruses. Everything was infected. She was infected. You were infected. There was no telling when, where or why they'd activate. Only that Providence was the world's response.
You sit in silence and ask a few questions, gaining a smattering of insight before lying and saying your appetite had slipped away. Truth be told, it had left just about when you saw the frog. She mentions something about working together in the future, about magic or something, aliens. What ever. Your brain thinks your gut had the right idea, and after a minute or too more, you follow suite and scram.
-Tinker with Sir Toasty [ 79 ]
Heading back to your workshop, you recalled Sir Toasty and began to once more work on your loyal brass knight. Tinkering with all the little parts that meshed together to form his inner workings was almost soothing. You carefully attuned his gears, recalibrated his actuators and bit by bit improved your mechanical creation. Singeing hands seared away imperfections across his bronze armor, your eyes narrowing in satisfaction as you admired your exacting work. He's not quite "smart" but now he can act autonomously with a wide enough range of adaptability that you'd be comfortable using him as more than just a sentry for the mansion. You're also pretty sure that you could upgrade the rest of your knightamatons the same way.
Reward: Toasty's +5 Martial Bonus to defending Father's Mansion can be reassigned to quests. Automate Mansion Security Martial action unlocked.
HANK HILL
-Look into What All This "Super Villainy" Is [ 100 + 79 ]
Why are there children inside that birthday cake?
…
Wait a minute… Is that… Mr.
….
BWAH!?!?!
….
Oh dear lord, Bobby don't look!
To Be Continued in Interlude: Up Past Your Bedtime With Father
Result: Well, now he knows.
TOLIETNATOR
-Look for Friends! [ 55 ]
After you kicked him out of the house for waterboarding your Ice Cream Men Tolietnator hit the town looking for his old friends. Not that the people he's looking for are at all interested in reuniting. All the same, he was able to find somebody from the old days: the one and only Cuppa Joe! But the coffee-crazed tycoon wasn't his usual hyper-caffeinated self. Between calm slow sips from his trademark oversized mug, he explained that after a failed experiment to create an unprecedented quintuple shot of espresso left him comatose for weeks, he quit the hard stuff for his health and opened a decaff coffee bar. Before he kicked the Toiletnator out of his store for loitering, he mentioned something from his abandoned caffeine research: A theorized hyper-dense state of java made by compressing one thousand and one beans into a single molecule so pure and dark that not even light itself could escape the mug it was brewed in. The Black Hole Ristretto. Maybe he was just pulling Toiletnator's leg to get him to leave. You can only assume the fact that Tolietnator ran straight to you to blab about it was the intended effect. But when Toiletnator described what he'd heard to your resident food scientist, the look on XXXL's face was deeply disturbed, but not at all skeptical.
Result: Advanced Theoretical Stimulants Learning action unlocked.
IZZY
-Perform a stunt [ 100 + 61 ]
Slipping aboard the take off shuttle was no small feat of its own. Live streaming the entire infiltration was another. And then waiting for just the right moment to make a leap from the very edge of the Moltar Array's threat range in a free-fall from orbit was utterly INSANE. Cackling madly, Izzy watched as the laser artillery swiveled aim and fire, realizing with perfect clarity that she had just waited a moment too long to escape their auto-lock. She began to descend from half way to the moon to Earth followed by a crimson trail of laser fire, orbital defense missiles, S.H.E.E.P-Laser blasts and everything else the Moltar array could garner at the last second. It certainly gave her something to do for some time, and it was only after she had escaped the effective firing range that she began to feel fear; mostly the fear that the ratings would dip. That's about when you came into the picture and things only escalated from there.
You knew all this because she was showing it to you from her own personal recording as part of an utterly delirious pitch. Izzy McBeth Callaghan Forest was now a household name according to her and every celebrity-channel she showed you on your mega-mondo-sized TV. People were calling it the most stellar stunt pulled in the last century. And to be frank, it was in every sense of the word, in your opinion. Thoroughly impressed by it, you decided to agree to her request. Izzy TV (a work in progress name) was a go.
To Be Continued in Interlude: Up Past Your Bedtime With Father
Result: Unlock Give Izzy A TV Show Diplomacy action, Izzy's Totally Famous trait buffed: +10 Diplomacy to fans of Izzy's stunt work. Izzy fandom expandable with future targeted Diplomacy actions.
HEX
-Take a sample from Father's suit [ 88 ]
Even after running through every magic test he could think of and finally borrowing one of XXXL's microscopes, Hex was unable to identify what your suit is made of. Extensive testing revealed that it acts as a powerful focus for pyrokinetic magic, affirming Hex's hypothesis that the suit itself is merely a conduit for innate abilities you could potentially channel through other means. It also seems to absorb all spectrums of visible light, resist high temperatures equivalent to the surface of the sun, and retain a strange connection to the original suit even when separated from it. While he's not much closer to figuring out the true nature of your powers, Hex has come up with a number of potential practical uses for this sample. The trouble is, there's not enough of it to pursue all of them.
Result: New Occult Action Unlocked: Craft Mantle of the Lesser Dad. New Learning Research Action Unlocked: Synthesise Artificial Shadowstuff.
PROFESSOR XXXL
-Catalog your germ collection [ 46 ]
The Professor dusted off his specimens and re-arranged them all in alphabetical order from Anthrax to Zika. Luckily, despite the chimp sized teeth marks on all of the petri dishes nothing was damages badly enough to cause a catastrophic containment failure and the whole thing proceeded tensely, but uneventfully. He's still not exactly sure why he has all these designer viruses but he's positive there had to be a good, presumably snow cone related reason.
Result: Germs successfully cataloged, Experiment with exotic diseases PA unlocked.
SKIPS
-Prepare for the Ritual [ 56 ]
After he finished up with the coffee rigs ahead of schedule, Skips took some time to himself to do… something. You're not exactly sure why he wandered off into the woods, but he came back the next day seemingly satisfied. He then pulled you aside and informed you that about once a year, he's going to ask for a day off with no explanation and he'd appreciate it if you didn't give him any trouble. It's more than a little suspicious, but given his work ethic, it might be worth letting it slide.
Result: The Ritual will proceed.
NEW MECHANIC: POSITIONS
In a new mechanic unique to Fatherquest, players can unlock additional national actions by selecting Hero units to fill key Positions. Positions work by placing a hero into a position (Media Czar, Head of Magical Affairs, Etc). Once a unit is selected to fill a Position, you may then take any actions marked with their specific positions tag. Actions taken by Position heroes do not roll with Father's National bonus, but rather, add the relevant stat of Position hero to that of the hero assigned to the action. In addition, Heroes in Positions may not be assigned to any actions as a hero normally would and may not take personal a personal action every other turn.
Heroes may be assigned to positions by a personal action by Father, or taken away via personal action by Father. Position Actions may still have other heroes assigned to them as per normal hero assignment rules.
