Previously in our Torg readthrough:
Having toured half of the invading cosms, we’re now going to… stop doing that and have some published adventures? Huh. I’m not sure I think that’s such a good idea – the cosms honestly need a full book each to really wrap your minds around, so I might have preferred it if the cosmbooks had all gotten out the door as soon as possible. Oh well. Let’s see how much sense we can make of the ones that haven’t gotten more than the cursory description in the core set, as we jump into The Destiny Map, part one of the Relics of Power campaign.
Our story starts in Atlanta, still part of Core Earth, where there has been a mysterious murder of a genealogist and a visiting Nile Empire citizen. At the same time, the players hear about how some crooks tried to break into an apartment and found a cyberpunk hacker all plugged in, who shot one of them with a giant cyberpunk gun before the other one escaped. They can investigate either crime scene, or see what the police knows.
If they check out the site of the ill-fated burglary, they find a “Cyberknight” named DeVris who works for the Cyberpope. They can fight him for a bit, though he’ll probably escape by means of his cyberleg-granted super-jumping skills. They can find his files on the Nile Empire victim, indicating that he was looking for an Eternity Shard called the Possibility Chalice. Needless to say, Malraux wants to get to it first. They can also encounter a witness who can give DeVris an alibi for the night of the murder, so he’s not the killer (a killer, certainly, just not the one in question).
Also, DeVris has a crucifix in his room where the cross is made of circuits and the spikes in Christ’s hands and feet are replaced with cyberjacks. That doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but it’s a cool touch.
Trying the police finds them unhelpful, and they don’t have any suspects anyway – the most the players can possibly learn is that the weapons used in the murder were high-tech but not from the Nile Empire, because the marks left by them looked “too realistic.” I kind of love the implication that Nile Empire rayguns leave marks that look like B-movie props.
Checking out the murder scene can let the players find a high-tech shuriken embedded in a wall, which indicates the involvement of Nippon Tech. Regardless of whether they find it or not, just going to the crime scene triggers an event whereby a bunch of Nippon Tech ninjas attack the players and, after being defeated, drop a key card for the nearby Magnolia Station Research Park. So that’s a pretty damn epic fail of a coverup operation, I guess.
Magnolia Station Research Park is indeed owned by the Kanawa Corporation through a convoluted series of shell companies, and there’s also a Nippon Tech talisman on site, meaning the whole place obeys Nippon Tech axioms. So when breaking in, the players end up fighting both ninjas and killer robots, but ultimately they can hopefully extract some files from a well-guarded computer. The files tell them that back in the days of the British Empire, a guy named Stevenson found a weird Indian temple with a set of tiles that made up a map. He nabbed some of the tiles and took them with him back home, and then to America when he eventually emigrated there. They were last seen on the farm he built, which is in what’s now the Living Land. The complete map supposedly shows the way to an Eternity Shard known as the Possibility Chalice.
They can also find plans for an atom bomb (!) that 3327 meant to trade to Doctor Mobius in return for the completed map, though the two have since had a falling out and are now both trying to get to it first. Malraux is also after it and has sent DeVris to get it, but he knows the least of the details, because he’s a loser and the game never gets tired of demonstrating it.
Anyway, the players have to make their way through the primeval Indiana wilderness, where they find a dig site run by Wu Han, one of Doctor Mobius’ Overgovernors. They arrive just in time to see the last of the tiles get loaded onto a truck, at which point a bunch of Nippon Tech goons in futuristic samurai armour riding hover crafts barge in and start shooting up the place. The players are supposed to understand that they should just hijack the truck and make their escape on it, leading to a nice big car chase scene where they have to outrun both Nile Empire storm troopers and Nippon Tech corporate ninjas. Good times.
With the tiles in their possession, the players then need to get their asses to India and make their way to the hidden temple. Wu Han is hot on their heels and chase them through the jungle, though he breaks off pursuit when they get to the temple and lays siege to it instead. When the players make their way in, they find DeVris waiting for them and have to fight him before they can place the tiles in their proper configuration and get a look at the map.
Finally, they have to get past Wu Han and his storm trooper. The way they’re supposed to do this is apparently to trade him the atomic bomb plans from the Nippon Tech base in return for free passage. Er… okay, I’m fine with some moral grey areas and all, but I’m feeling acutely uncomfortable with the idea of giving the cackling supervillain a nuke just to save our own skin! Like, I feel like that’s worse than just letting him have the map, frankly!
Oh well. Either way, the players are meant to get away. Their next step is to follow the map to the resting place of the Possibility Chalice, which is in an even more hidden Indian temple, but that has to wait for the next installment in the series, logically titled The Possibility Chalice.
All in all, this is a fine adventure. It’s a little railroady, but that’s arguably by design given how much the game stresses the telling of narratively satisfying stories. It showcases four different invading cosms (though the Living Land is a little underserved – there isn’t even any encounters that might happen while the players cross it, the GM is just expected to come up with his own) and feels nicely pulpy and ridiculous. I still think I would have preferred it if I actually knew something of substance about half the featured cosms (for instance, DeVris is apparently a “Cyberknight,” and I don’t actually know what that is!), but you can definitely work with the amount you’re given.