Correlación Subway y la legislación colombiana

So, what would prompt a superhero, Cana- dian or otherwise, to travel? There are plenty of prosaic reasons, such as being sent there by his boss in his Secret Identity or visiting his obnox- ious cousin Steve in Halifax. But a clever GM can come up with better plot hooks and stories than that! Some of the classics from the comics include:

THE “PEACEFUL” VACATION

Even the most dedicated superhero needs some time off occasionally! What better place for a relaxing vacation than Canada, with its wealth of natural beauty, historical sites, and opportunities for recreation?

Naturally, a superhero’s vacation is likely to come with a few complications that he has to resolve before he can truly relax. Some potential complications include:

The Mind Control Experiment

By some strange coincidence, the hero arrives at his chosen vacation spot at the same time that some villain’s conducting a foul mind control experiment. Perhaps he’s mentally commanding the locals to serve as slave labor — to build an alien device (or repair a damaged alien spaceship), dig wealth from a hidden mine, or worship some evil god. The victims could be close relatives of the hero, neighbors of relatives, a key demographic, or the entire town.

The villain could be an alien, a mystic, or a cult leader. He or she might be shapechanged to look like a respective town figure, or sequestered in his secret lair.

The mind control might be for temporary periods (like every night between midnight and dawn, after which the victims awaken with no memories of the influence), or permanent until broken by the PCs’ intervention. Even when mind control is temporary, there may still be side effects. The victims may spend their waking hours angry or paranoid, or so emotionally numb they almost seem to be in a trance. They also may be “inexplicably” very tired.

The most serious type of mind control plot is the body snatching scheme, in which aliens either possess townsfolk, or kill them and take on their physical forms. In body snatching plots, the local scene is usually just the beachhead for a larger invasion — if the PCs don’t stop it here, it will spread to the entire world! But of course, truly insidious aliens might secretly graft their “seeds” into Our Heroes and then wait for the PCs to leave town and spread the alien offspring like dandelion seeds in the wind....

Last but not least, sometimes the locals aren’t controlled at all — they’re scared of the dreadful power of the invader and have been frightened into cooperating (or even sending their loved ones into the mind controller’s waiting arms). In this case they may even fight against the heroes if they think the heroes can’t stop the villain and will simply cause more trouble.

And never forget — villains have all sorts of ideas for experiments. Instead of mind control they might want to transform the populace into animals, teleport everyone to a distant planet, or harvest their internal organs....

The Mysterious Disappearance

While the hero’s on vacation, someone just... vanishes. Little Sammy goes skinny-dipping in Lake Ogopogo, but the only thing anyone finds when he doesn’t return home for lunch are his swim trunks. Bob and Keith head off into the woods to shoot rifles, and then no one sees them for three days.

Alternately, or at the same time, “mysterious signs” appear or occur. A bear is found ripped to pieces. Trees are blown down in a circular pattern. Every wolf within a hundred kilometers goes nuts. All the fish in the local reservoir die. The Ghost of Farmer Brady is seen haunting the orchards, and it’s said the scarecrows are moving....

In either case, the mystery is a trigger for a PC to get involved in what turns out to be a strange and dangerous situation. The disappear- ance or signs may point to supervillain activity, an alien invasion, an imminent attack by Mole People, or just about anything else your fiendish mind can conceive.

The Villain Convention

A more comedic take on this situation is the convention of supervillains. Criminals take vaca- tions too, and perhaps they want to get together, compare notes, and network. Killing a superhero would be a great way to honor their keynote speaker (Black Paladin); maybe they’ve brought someone with them (a captured hero from another

city, whom the PCs need to rescue) or they go searching for “fresh meat” like Our Heroes.

Despite the serious undertones, a villain con- vention is mainly played for laughs and to give the PCs a chance to cut loose. They get to impersonate supervillains so they can mingle with the conven- tion attendees and spy on them. While “in dis- guise” they attend seminars like “Supervillainesses — More Than Cleavage And Black Leather” and “Critique My Master Plan.” They could also par- ticipate in special activities designed around the features of the vacation locate. For example, at an isolated ski resort they might let captured UNTIL agents have skis and then release them to give them a “sporting chance” to escape; at lake resorts, mad scientist villains breed mutant lake monsters for blood sports.

THE PURSUIT AND/OR RETRIEVAL

One of the most obvious reasons for a for- eign hero to go to Canada is to pursue a fleeing criminal, and/or to retrieve an object or person. The hero doesn’t even need permission from the Canadian government, since he’s a firm believer in the wonderful power of forgiveness — as long as it’s his trespassing that requires it.

In a “pursuit” scenario, usually one of two sit- uations occurs: the heroes are literally in hot pur- suit of a villain fleeing from the scene of a crime; or the heroes learn that a master villain based in Canada is about to launch a major plot of some sort and they have to stop it immediately. The key element in both situations is that there isn’t time to ask for official permission, get clearance from the authorities, or liase with local heroes... which of course means there may be confrontations with those heroes, or other implications to the heroes’ actions even if they succeed in preventing Borealis from melting the polar ice caps.

In the “retrieval” scenario, the heroes have to recover a lost or stolen object that’s vital to national security, necessary to save a world from some supervillain’s plot, or otherwise of great importance. Examples include a fallen spy satel- lite with incriminating data, a spacecraft secretly transporting a supervillain to an orbital prison, a crashed alien starship occupied by someone the heroes’ scientists want to examine, a defector who knows too many secrets, or a prototype robot that wants to run free. The object might seem perfectly ordinary, or obviously be special; it might even have the ability to move or camouflage itself... or to fight back if it doesn’t want to be taken away.

THE WALKABOUT

Call it a walkabout, a vision quest, or a retreat, it’s basically the same thing: a hero experiences a tragedy (or a moment of angst), decides to leave his team for awhile to take a break from the chaotic life of a superhero, and ventures into the wilderness... only to encounter the very thing he’s trying to escape from!

If at all possible, this scenario should be player-driven — initiated by a PC, not the GM. If a hero decides to go off into the wilds of

Canada, then run a Walkabout plot, but don’t force the PC to go out just to facilitate the plot. Since this is largely a solo adventure, you may need to run it separately so that you don’t waste the other players’ time.

In a Walkabout scenario, one of four things usually happen to a PC:

The Arch-Enemy Attacks

Hunteds are Hunteds for a reason, and the Walkabout scenario is the perfect place for a sneak attack. In Canada-based Walkabout adventure, col- lateral damage is a must: bricks tear up mountains and shred forests like a rampaging tornado, energy blasters start forest fires. (Apparently superbattles in the middle of the wilderness tear up more real estate than in the city. Funny things, comic books.)

The Mystical Experience

In this adventure, the PC undergoes some sort of spiritual experience. Perhaps he goes hunt- ing and he ends up on the trail of a mystical beast or a monster like a wen-di-go. Maybe he’s partak- ing in a vision quest, and through a combination of physical hardship and natural hallucinogens he participates in a surreal vision that helps him deal with his current problems by exposing his sub- conscious feelings (or that grants him an oracular premonition of the future). In the end, he comes back to the team with a renewed purpose.

The Secret Installation

Canada is a big country. It’s so big that you’d expect that someone who runs off into the bush won’t find much, but coincidence is a staple of the comics. It’s entirely possible your wandering hero will stumble across a hidden VIPER base, one of Teleios’s monster pits, or even something as “pro- saic” as a band of smugglers.

Stranger In A Village

The character craves anonymity and accep- tance, so he travels to a fishing village or a mining town and blends in with the community. (Often he’s found half-dead, and possibly suf- fering from amnesia, in the wilderness by one of the townsfolk and nursed back to health.) Once he bonds with the locals, he discovers there’s trouble in paradise — a jealous rival intent on killing him, a local monster that’s killing people, a major industrial corporation that’s polluting the land, or the like. After seeing horrible things happen to the people he cares about, the reluc- tant hero gets caught up in a series of events that forces him back into action. (One of the other elements described above, like the hero’s arch-nemesis or a secret installation, could easily be involved.) But even if the hero does some good, in the end a break occurs between the hero and the village. Typically the hero real- izes his place is elsewhere, but in some cases the villagers see him as a destructive force and ask him to leave (or, more tragically, the village is destroyed during the course of the adventure).