This month, I’m writing a superhero adventure for Fate Accelerated Edition (FAE) titled This Vision of Darkness. I originally had the idea back when Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition came out, but I never ended up publishing it for that system. But now, I’m going to make it available under the Fate Open Gaming License.
Last week, I posted some sample superheroes for use in FAE.
This week, I’m just going to give you a quick overview of the adventure so you can see the main elements. The final adventure is going to include complete stats and artwork and will be available via DriveThruRPG.
This Vision of Darkness
Monsters out of time are wreaking havoc in your home city. A time-traveling terrorist is setting himself up to rule the world. In the midst of a violent confrontation, you are thrust into your own future… and it’s worse than you ever imagined.
Only you have the power to prevent this nightmare from occurring. But do you have what it takes to overcome true evil and return to your own time? Or will you help bring about This Vision of Darkness?
The heroes respond to reports of strange time-related anomalies occurring all over New York State, including the appearance of dinosaurs and other things from Earth’s past.
Investigations lead them to a supervillain named Epoch, and his attempt to gain possession of the Orb of Time. They manage to discover where the next appearance of the Orb of Time will occur, and race there to stop Epoch. Unfortunately, Epoch already has the Orb in his possession, but is having difficulty controlling it.
Epoch loses control of the Orb and he, the orb, and the heroes are tossed ten years into the future. The heroes remain together, but they lose Epoch and the Orb during the trip.
In this future, an evil villain named Cybernaut has taken control of North America, and he has bases situated on the ruins of large cities across the continent, including what was once the island of Manhattan. Most of rest of North America is in ruins, and the populace has been mostly eliminated. Only small pockets of humans continue to eke out a harsh existence among the ruins of their fallen civilization.
The heroes stumble across one of these enclaves being attacked by robotic minions of Cybernaut. Assuming they help the innocent people, they make allies and learn that they have arrived approximately ten years in the future. They meet the Resistance, a group of superheroes who are trying to find a way to defeat Cybernaut.
Once these superheroes hear the PCs story, they realize that this is their opportunity to change the fate of the world. Epoch arrived in this time about two weeks before the PCs and was immediately captured by the Cybernaut robots, and there are rumors that some kind of glowing orb of power was recovered by Cybernaut’s forces only a few days ago.
The PCs are asked to help rescue the leader of the resistance, a superhero named Bloodstone who is being held at a detention facility in the ruins of Philadelphia. If the heroes help their new allies rescue their leader, they are able to learn where Epoch and the Orb of Time are being held.
They also learn that Cybernaut was once a small-time crook named Snake Eyes, who lived in New York City. Apparently, on the same day the heroes tracked down and confronted Epoch, a rift opened in Times Square in New York, and Snake Eyes was infected by some kind of technological virus. He transformed into Cybernaut on the spot and began his campaign to conquer all of North America.
If the PCs can return to their own timeline and stop Snake Eyes, they can prevent this entire future from coming to pass. But that requires infiltrating Cybernaut’s Manhattan fortress, extracting both Epoch and the Orb of Time, and defeating Snake Eyes in Times Square before he transforms into Cybernaut.
The final PDF of the adventure will be available next week. I can’t wait to share it!
This work is based on Fate Core System and Fate Accelerated Edition (found at http://www.faterpg.com/), products of Evil Hat Productions, LLC, developed, authored, and edited by Leonard Balsera, Brian Engard, Jeremy Keller, Ryan Macklin, Mike Olson, Clark Valentine, Amanda Valentine, Fred Hicks, and Rob Donoghue, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Andrew J. Luther 