We have a new campaign going, where we are all a superhero family fending off Kaiju from Australia’s sunny shores! It’s using the Sentinel Comics RPG, based on the Sentinels of the Multiverse co-op card game (which we have also played a lot of.) The opportunity to use Australian slang is a huge draw!
Collection 1: Kaiju Defense: Next Gen
First Session – “Fire on the Deep”
Giant sea serpents and pretty darn big fleas attack an oil rig of the Australian coast and need fending off! It’s hard yakka!
Second Session – “Scared Heart Hospital”
The fleas have infected everyone with chest-bursting fleas and we have to go flea stomping yet again, and end up fighting a giant mutated dog in a trailer park with many bogans looking on.
Third Session – “Between the Tasmanian Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”
Our heroes have to go defend a supervillain transport barge from the attack of a giant mutated kaiju. You’d think the yobbos would be grateful, but of course not.
Fourth Session – “Melbourne Nights”
The Vegemite factory in Melbourne is at risk from not one but two kaiju! The heroes must overcome their greatest hurdle yet – getting to Melbourne from Sydney.
Fifth Session – “Basic Cthulhus and Catwomen”
The Dijkstra Museum of History in Sydney is threatened both by a giant sea kaiju called “Squidface” from without and from Ermine and the Gentleman (think Catwoman/Black Cat and Gentleman Ghost before he dies and becomes a ghost) inside. And our emo bro Nightwalker gets sucked into some bad dimension.
Sixth Session – “Advanced Cthulhus and Catwomen”
X-Celerate hooks up with villainess Ermine and gets to know her intimately and impregnates her. At the same time, the Nexus of the Void gets to know Nightwalker intimately and impregnates him. We rescue one of the two of them. Finally we go to a big spooky mansion to have it out with Cthulhu (aka the Herald of xxtz’Hulissh).
Collection 2: Atlantean Memories
Seventh Session – “We Come From A Land Down Under”
We travel from Australia to Argentina to earn our “international Kaiju hunter” certification from GLOBAL. There a giant hydra is molesting both the livestock and the gauchos. We fend it off with the help of El Genio (think El Santo), who is laid low in the process.
Eighth Session – “The Serpent and the Rainbow”
The heroes take on an Argentinian black site with a super-scientist in residence. Then things get really weird and we go deal with a bunch of gods of the Guarani people, including a set of challenges from Jasy Jatere and a wrestling match with Teju Jagua to get some juice from the infinita fruit to heal El Genio.
Ninth Session – “American Serpent”
The Heretic demands 300 billion pesos (which used to be worth something) or else he’ll destroy the Los Caracoles Dam and flood a lot of San Juan. We defeat the hydra and head out to find the Heretic, who has taken refuge in a vineyard and winery. Little does he realize that we are Australian and drinking plonk is one of our superpowers!
Tenth Session – “Armenian Vodka”
We get our own rooms back at Kaiju Defence Inc. headquarters until we are interrupted by a host of giant tentacles. Then we go sit down for a lovely Mordengradian lunch with what turns out to be the deposed Baron Blade aka the Luminary aka Ivan Romanat! Well obviously we have to team up with him to go to Atlantis…
Eleventh Session – “The Inevitable Betrayal”
Baron Blade turns on us and sics Cthulhu on us. We try to look surprised. He bails after we grind his forces to cornmeal and smack Space Cthulhu around. Piece of piss.
Twelfth Session – “Reality Discontinuity”
The Abyssal freaks out and goes dark magic crazy. But we need to go to a super hero convention, Freedom Con! More chaos than usual ensues.
Collection 3: Kaiju World Tour
Thirteenth Session – “New Charleston Incursion”
The Abyssal is now The Umbral, sinking even deeper into dark magic depravity. We go pub crawling until we are interrupted with a call for help fighting kaiju off from New Charleston Island. If the Samoans can’t handle it, it must be bad! Sure enough, it’s basically Starship Troopers except most of us don’t have guns, or look good naked. And Yowie gets a death curse put on him for appropriating Aboriginal magic. Fair enough.
Fourteenth Session – “The Beginning of the Endlings”
We get to meet the Endlings, which is some Jack Kirby on crack shit. Yowie likes the Terminarch, Jansa Vi Dero, because she’s huge! We then go to catch a kaiju for her, but of course way more dangerous than a giant monster is some rich one percenter bastard.
Fifteenth Session – “The Dreamtime”
The Aboriginal sorcerer Merricumana refuses to lift the bone curse from Yowie, which means we have to venture into the Dreamtime to try to fix the problem! We go to Ayers Rock and smoke it up and sure enough we end up in the Dreamtime. We then have to intervene in various Very Symbolic Activities, hoping that we are intervening in a way that will help and not hurt. And then we get to fight dark versions of ourselves! Except for Umbral, who fights a jolly shining elf version of himself (I’m kidding).
Sixteenth Session – “Fear the Bunyip”
After enjoying some finger limes, we have to fight some weirdo carrying a giant black rock and protect a giant white rock who has two cute lil’ whale and koala pals. We are traumatized by having to fight the cute guys. We fight the Bunyip, the Yowie dies but is brought back to life by the Rainbow Serpent, and defeats the Bunyip with the help of his friends… We return successful to the waking world, to be confronted with a plague of spore-bearing pterodactyls.
Seventeenth Session – “What To Expect When You’re Expecting”
First we have to save Sydney from a rampaging Kangasaurus Rex (or, as we like to call it, “Tuesday”) when Golden Key’s daughter from the future comes back! She tells us we must fight the future and so we go to Zurich and fight a Tatzylwyrm and eat Strudel and look for magical instruments.
Eighteenth Session – “Sleepless in Seattle”
We have to join up with the Argent Adept, who Umbral hates, to fight Heretic, who we all hate, in Seattle, which we all also hate. A random environment generated dude, Stan the Battalion Mechanic, a gruff blue-collar maintenance man who keeps fixing the battle platform we’re trying to invade, becomes a favorite of ours during the fight so we recruit him once we win.
Collection 4: The Semi-Secret Invasion
Nineteenth Session – “The Savage and Confusing Land”
We take the Argent Adept who wields the Zither of Zarathorpe on an ekranoplan to the island of Insula Primalis to find the Nexus of the Void because… The Heretic is being controlled by the spirit Song of the Swarm… Or something… Jesus, I don’t even know any more. We do fight dinosaurs though.
Twentieth Session – “Inception”
From Insula Primalis, we go into the Void, which is remarkably like everywhere else, but then from there we go on a ganja-fueled vision quest and fight the Song of the Swarm. But the main villain as usual turns out to be our player-comrade Bruce, as his character Umbral goes full villain!
Twenty-first Session – “Rock Me, Dr. Chaos”
We “welcome” Bruce’s new character, the Argentinian two-fisted super-scientist El Genio. And we finally get to do more stuff back home in Australia instead of the less weird super-dimensions we keep going to! Sure enough, we go out to Woop Woop Station in the Outback where a “Razorbeast” has stomped the town flat. We go out to the aurichalcite mine and it is inhabited by Dr. Chaos!!! Chaos ensues, natch.
Twenty-second Session – “Eat This Kitten!”
We had loads of fun in this one – Golden Key has been going undercover as a villain, “Black Clavis,” and since his ex-wife and baby momma gets abducted we all join him in a place inspired by the Evil Eye Cafe from The Tick. We took great glee in coming up with supervillain identities. Kanga-Crime! El Rato de Piedra! And I take on the identity of “Creepy Uncle,” whose Grunkle Slam attack gives him the proportional strength of ten uncles. Many of my creepiest lines were omitted from the session summary by our delicate WASP session scribe. And then we go shoot up Kuala Lumpur.
Twenty-third Session – “Clones A-poppin’!”
We go to the Biomancer’s island and fight all manner of freakydeaks from antibody bots to radioactive shrubberies to cloned versions of Malaysian superheroes to cloned versions of ourselves! And we rescue Golden Key’s ex-wife and daughter.
Twenty-fourth Session – “Are Those Tentacles Or Are You Just Happy To See Me”
A giant Vibravore from the planet Vollax attacks Shanghai! We go there to beat it into submission and shoot it with N-rays and/or Q-rays but are then confronted with the dual threats of alien goons and wealthy Communists. The Oriental Pearl Tower and the Qingpu Loop Waterside Park may never be the same again, but we save Shanghai Disneyland at least.
Collection 5: Heart of Egg-celeration
Twenty-fifth Session – “My China Girl”
We did so well in Shanghai at the end of last issue that we have a secondary HQ there now. Our second string team, the Bondi Beach Brawlers, is getting pretty butch and star in their own cartoon show. And Golden Key’s villainous ex-wife (aren’t they all) and baby get kidnapped again! Talk about fridging! They want the Heart of Acceleration, which I guess is like the Speed Force from the Flash. We save her but I (The Yowie) get my ass well and truly kicked in the process. After recovering with lots of hot-pot, we decide rather than let the space baddies come after us again, we’re going to proactively hunt them down – IN SPACE!!!
Twenty-sixth Session – “Snarfhockers”
Super space battle! We use our new attack ship the McTits to attack General Stryken’s Domination. Pretty much one big fight scene, from ship combat to boarding to hand to hand on the enemy ship. Remember, even though “In space, no one can hear you scream,” your copilot will still turn around and tell your bitch ass to shut up. (Yes, this is a Star Thugs reference. RIP Mark Argyle.)
Twenty-seventh Session – “Battle of the Bands”
Splitting time between stalking Golden Key’s ex-wife and looting the Domination of alien tech somehow ends up with us forming a rock band to take on an evil rock band, Helfyre. Our band ends up consisting of Ermine on vocals, 4 entirely different genres of drums, and El Genio stripped to the waist and playing the saxophone like the guy in The Lost Boys. Then, a big ass battle. It has something to do with the Heart of Acceleration somehow since we need a theme.
Twenty-eighth Session – “Bung on a Blue”
A very short session, mostly spent on forcing the Bondi Beach Bruisers to fight Fright Train by themselves. But hey get the home field advantage since we do it at Bondi Beach! It was on for the young and the old, a real barney. There is a perhaps unsurprisingly large number of Australian slang terms for a brawl.
Twenty-ninth Session – “Stowaway”
We take the Domination to planet Vollax and infiltrate Kronus Station in orbit around it with El Genio posing as the captured General Stryken. We disguise and sneak and sabotage and then break out into a good old fashioned melee. We capture Scientist Karna and plan on how to take the fight to the Unspeakable Wave! (To be honest, we’re not really sure what the Unspeakable Wave is – sounds like it might be weirder than some alien in Spandex but I guess we’ll find out.)
Thirtieth Session – “You Can’t Make An Omelet…”
If you haven’t noticed yet, Sentinels is organized into six “issues” of a “collection”, comic style, so this was inevitably a climax. We discover a giant Cosmic Egg and a priest-attended, Unspeakable Wave-infused – kaiju! Our specialty. We take it down, the Wave comes out, the scientist zaps it – all to plan, but then the Cosmic Egg starts hatching, which will apparently be a Neverending Story level negative event. The Yowie considers sacrificing himself somehow (getting in the egg?) but luckily enough violence solves all problems. And he gets to see the giant Jansa Vi Dero again and lay some mack down on her.
Collection 6: A Place To Call Home
Thirty-first Session – “Dark Side of the Moon”
Kaiju Defenders International (KDI) is doing well. Our sidekick team the Bondi Beach Brawlers are doing well, El Genio has an evil infiltrator girlfriend, and Golden Key, Overwatch, and Dynamo Joe have upgraded themselves. The Yowie is torn by his love for both social media maven Dr. Broussard and the giant queen of the Endlings, Jansa Vi Dero. However it is marred by our missing family member Haskell Marston, aka The Abyssal, aka The Umbral who has turned to evil and is lurking in some dimension or another. Sure enough, The Harpy shows up to tell us he’s abducted the Argent Adept. We have to go to the Moon to save him and then back to the Harpy’s manor to try to save a MacGuffin, but the Umbral is ahead of us at every turn.
Thirty-second Session – “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina”
We save the Sydney Harbor Bridge from “The Kookaburra” but then all our love lives go nuclear. The Yowie’s love triangle with Dr. Broussard and Jansa Vi Dero… El Genio’s torrid affair with an evil infiltrator… Golden Key’s dalliance with a chick who likes to cosplay as his ex-wife.. Dynamo Joe and the secretary based on “Roz” from Monsters Inc… Overwatch and Feral Juggernaut from the Brawlers… But evil does not rest and we have to to back to Argentina and deal with Guarani demigods to fend off Ivana Romanat, aka Baroness Blade, and her goon squad.
Thirty-third Session – “Around The World In About Eight Hours”
We are drawn too far into the land of the telenovela and go back to our home in Australia to decompress. Except for The Yowie, whose layover in El Salvador is interrupted by a summons from Jansa Vi Dero for a DTR talk. Meanwhile Sulimar the Magnificent is abducted from his magic shop leading the KDI crew to Hesse, Germany to fight some Aryan villains. “But no one who speaks German could be evil,” we lament!
Thirty-fourth Session – “They Snowblinded Me With Science”
After more love triangle drama we are off to Longyearbyen, Svalbard (home of the Global Seed Vault!) in Norway, which is having dinosaur attack problems. No one bothers to mention that cats are banned there, which is good because we’d probably leave them to their Eurotrash fate if we heard. We fend off the dinos and go to the EISCAT scatter radar station (it’s not Ikeas up there, they got lots of science). The Umbral is behind it but his plot is foiled by Yan-Gannoth the Nadir King and we have to pound on him and some rando villains. Then at the end a troll(?) appears from somewhere(?) to be seduced by El Genio(?). Your guess is as good as mine.
Thirty-fifth Session – “Neighbors”
Our grand opening of the Singapore branch of KDI is full of conflict – everyone’s women (including both Dr. Broussard and Jansa Vi Dero, which is a problem) but then also the Bondi Beach Brawlers don’t want to just be sidekicks any more. We set up a giant fight in the simulator with Yowie as a kaiju that needs subduing against the Brawlers and the other Marsden clan as sub-villans. We pound the Brawlers but they learn a valuable lesson. Then we go to the Dreamtime and fight the most dangerous enemy – Australian wildlife!
Thirty-sixth Session – “Wake in Fright”
The grand finale of our Sentinels campaign! We go to our final showdown with wayward family member The Umbral. Some are willing to kill him to end the threat! To others, blood is thicker than water! Atlantis! Cthulhu! Time travel! Dimensional travel! And most importantly, which woman (and personal fate) will The Yowie choose? Read on, true believers!!!
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