The first chapter of the story, Ignorance is Bliss begins on June 18th, 2004, in Denver Colorado. The world of the Transcendent Circle universe is the real world. Everything is the same as it is now -- there is a war on terrorism, gas prices are just off of record highs, and it rained for a few days straight prior to Friday the 18th.
The story itself will not be as epic in length as Dark Mysteries. I'm going to get to the point much quicker, and the party should move through the story faster. I also plan to allow breaks between the chapters if the party rips through the story quicker than I can plan it.
As for genre, it's going to be a sci-fi fantasy (as opposed to a hard sci-fi story). I've been threatening to run this story as a campaign for years, and I finally found the angle to make it work without it being a total derivative of other stories. A few of you may already know what the story is about, but I found a few twists to keep the end of the story unexpected.
Party members know one another. The story begins at a bar in Denver for a birthday celebration for one of the party members. And then the game master takes over...
Watch the skies.
The House Rules that apply to this campaign will be updated as the campaign progresses.
Outside the Circles: Ignorance is BlissAliens are a pop-culture mythology. The so-called Roswell Crash was just a weather balloon and some over-zealous reporters thriving on the hysteria of the beginnings of the Cold War.
While meeting at a bar in Denver, the party witnessed an exchange between two men. The first was very nervous, while the second was composed. The latter wore dark sunglasses (inside the bar, at night) and a dark suit. He convinced the first man to leave the bar with him, but in doing so, he left his sunglasses. The first man left behind his wallet.
LLoyd collected those items, discovering that he could see through the dark lenses easily. The wallet contained the usual stuff, along with an unusual piece of foil that would not crease or stay folded. The foil had a post-note identifying a time and name for a meeting, along with a phone number.
The party drove to Colorado Springs to break into the man's apartment. There, they found lots of UFO paraphenalia. They also determined that the post-note identified a meeting at the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico. A road trip was quickly organized.
The First Circle: Accidents HappenAliens did crash on Earth in 1947. The government covered up the proof for some reason, and they refuse to admit to the truth. The wreckage was taken to Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Army Air Field. The government is hiding it while claiming there is no such hangar.
The party traveled to Roswell to meet with their contact at the IUFOMRC. He was very interested in the piece of wreckage, which he quickly authenticated as the best proof he had ever seen. He asked the party to return the following morning so that he could have some other experts also study it.
That evening, during the festivities, the party broke into the old Roswell Army Air Force hangar that allegedly held the wrecked flying saucer. They found a memo that alluded to wreckage being shipped to Wright-Patterson Army Air Field in Ohio. The memo included a password. Later, at the hotel, the well-dressed man with sunglasses that the party had seen in the bar in Denver broke into one of their rooms. A shootout ensued that left the intruder dead. The party fled, gathered the expert, and left town. After a brief chase, the expert insisted that the party return him to his home. The party did so and spent the night hiding in a campground.
The following morning found the expert's apartment occupied by someone else who claimed to have lived there for years. The IUFOMRC had never heard of the expert, and his office was now a storage room. The perplexed party returned to Denver to plan a trip to Ohio.
The party flew to Ohio and rented a car. At Wright-Patterson AFB, Lloyd was inexplicably lucky, and he was able to use the old password from the memo to get the party onto the base. After some poking around, they bought erstwhile disguises at the base PX, then found a building near the flight line that had some labcoat-dressed people entering. They went to that building and discovered that it had an interior card security system. The lock mysteriously opened when Lloyd grabbed it.
Inside, the party passed a security checkpoint to find an underground hangar that contained wreckage of a disc-shaped craft. The wreckage was horribly mangled.
The Second Circle: Picking Up the PiecesThere were, in fact, two flying saucers involved in the Roswell Incident. The first, badly mangled, crashed near Roswell. The second limped across New Mexico to crash in the western part of the state. The government is using the first one as a distraction, keeping it at Wright-Patterson in case someone got too close to the truth.
While at W-P AFB in the buried Hangar 18, one of the party talked with a lab tech who suggested that there was a second saucer being kept elsewhere, and that this wreckage was just there to throw off anyone who found things out.
Lloyd found an empty office in the hidden facility. The computer was unsecured, and it had equipment to fabricate identification badges. Lloyd created badges for the entire party identifying them as assigned to "S-4/Area 51".
The party left the facility. A man in black chased them, and a gunfight ensued. The party ended up abandoning their now-wrecked rental car, commandeering a minivan, and finding a small airport where they could rent a Cessna. They lied to the rental desk, claiming they were just going to do touch-and-go practice. Instead, they flew for Colorado as the sun set.
During the flight, Lloyd awoke on an examining table. He noticed the rest of the party standing in the room, unconscious, and three grey-skinned beings with their backs to him. Lloyd was undressed, but his equipment was near the table. He gathered a Desert Eagle (the preferred weapon of the MIBs) and awoke Martina. The Greys realized he was awake, and one of them cautiously got into a control seat, with Lloyd covering him the entire time. Lloyd then awoke in the plane. They had landed in Colorado, and they were abandoning the plane. Other than Martina, no one else remembered the abduction.
The Third Circle: Backwards ThinkingThe second saucer, the one recovered from western New Mexico, was intact. At the secret underground base S-4, near the Area 51/Groom Lake test facility, government scientists struggled to make sense of the strange technologies.
The party traveled to Las Vegas. Using the phony ID badges Lloyd made at W-P AFB, they were able to get aboard the private jet that carried employees to the Area 51 facility from the LV airport. Once inside, the party saw the second wrecked saucer. Through some luck, they were able to bring the power systems on-line. The scientists excitedly agreed to let the party take the saucer out of the underground hangar and "drive" it in the desert for a few minutes.
The party also heard rumors that the Grey aliens and the government were working together, but that relations had soured. There was a meeting of agents of the secret government agency, MAJI, meeting in Los Angeles the following morning.
On the way out of S-4, the party was ambushed by MIBs. A firefight ensued on the tarmac of Groom Lake, with the party escaping fairly well off. Once in Vegas, the party took their rented van and set out south on I-15 for LA. En route, a pair of MIB vehicles -- a black Lincoln Town Car and a black Chevy Blazer -- gave pursuit. The party's van's engine failed, forcing them to pull over on the side of the road just north of Barstow, CA. A firefight ensued, with Martina taking serious injuries. The party's van was shot full of holes, so they commandeered the fairly intact Blazer. They sought medical attention for Martina in Barstow, from a veterinarian, then continued into LA.
The Fourth Circle: Need to Know Basis
The Fifth Circle: Strange Bedfellows
The Sixth Circle: The Better to See You
The Seventh Circle: Who's in Charge?
The Eighth Circle: Down at the Farm
The Ninth Circle: Unreality
Beyond the Circles: TranscendenceBack to the Northern Colorado Gamers page.
This page was last updated 4 March 2005
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