Part 2 of My job is done here

Sorry, I let this go so long.  It's been a rough couple of weeks between changes at home and changes in my pubescent daugther.

Anywho, to sum up:

We had several rounds of combat.  Doc Tangent hurled a guard into the abyss using telekinesis.  Singapore Sam discovered that his long-lost brother was a Planet X guard under the thrall of Princess Allura's secret captor - Marduk the Merciless!  Marduk played his hand when Damian teleported to his beloved's side to plead for leniency.  Mac Mercury's adventures were best summed up in JC Cohen's excellent summation on Story-games.com.

The threats just kept coming when it was established that there were bombs hidden around the perimeter of the palace.  At one point, Singapore Sam had a disaster and the player said to me: "Oh no! What next? Air sharks?" To which I replied, "There are now!"  With Planet X guards still attacking, the air sharks caused havoc.  Doc Tangent, showing the kind of thinking that made him a Doc, used his psychic powers to convince the sharks to attack the guards.

In one impassioned scene, Singapore Sam decided his imminent destruction would be the catalyst to break the mesmeric hold that Marduk had on Taiwan Tony.   While Tony struggled physically with the air shark, he struggled mentally with Marduk control.  When the player rolled a disaster, the scene played out like this:

Tony struggles desperately with the air shark, prying its hungry maw from snapping his favorite cranium in half.  BUT! There is a moment where we can see the hypnotic control of Marduk fail.  Tony's eyes clear.  He looks at his brother and says: "Sam?"  *CHOMP!*  The air shark takes of Tony's head in one bite.


At this moment, ALL of the players screamed, "OH NO!"  And we burst into laughter.  Anthony, the player running Sam, looked at me and said, "That must be worst scene I've ever experienced in all my years of gaming!"

I felt my job was done.

We continued to play and in the Alpha, the situation has an almost infinite possibility to escalate.  So, following the old "Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go, when things have gotten about as bad as they can reasonably get" school of thought, I had the final threat happen on board the ship as they tried to escape from Planet X.  The Action scene took 3 hours, but we still had fun.  I decided then to be more judicious with my threats.