The Season of Xagrim (Adventurers)

The Season of Xagrim is a story arc by the Adventurers super team.

Background

Late in 2020, Red Spider began investigating the theft of an eclectic array of items by a group of masked cultists. The following spring, when she finally tracked the thieves down to a run-down paramilitary compound outside of the city, she was trapped inside while investigating. The Adventurers came to the rescue and fought the cultists openly, and found a dimensional horror guarding a dimensional fissure in the main fortress's sub-basement. The team became aware of an extradimensional entity calling himself the Lord of Nightmares who had the ability to mind-control normal humans. His arrival on Earth was presaged with terrifying nightmares and visions by psionics and those with dimensional powers, such as Sombra.

In April 2021, the Adventurers responded to a situation with a low-flying cargo plane that was causing panic as it repeatedly circled the city. The team got aboard and secured the plane, capturing several cultists, and dropping a strange bomb in the lake before it exploded.

Future visitor Spyder, daughter of Red Spider, shared in May 2021 that the dimensional being's true name is Xagrim, and she remembered a few details she had read about them - but it all happened long before her time as a superhero. But she did recall that the team discovered Xagrim would be attending a major public event, tracked him to his lair, and then defeated him and drove him back to his dimension forever.

Finally, in June 2020 the team got a bit of luck when they defeated and captured Xalmallen, a lieutenant of Xagrim who was a human with psionic powers Xagrim had warped. Xalmallen said that Xagrim was in human form, but still hadn't mastered the art of mimicry - he should stand out in a crowd. But left unstopped, Xagrim would grow in power and must be stopped, or he would bring upon an apocalyptic dimensional war that would see Earth ruined, or become part of Xagrim's nightmare realm.

Spyder saw the newspaper headline about a fashion show and it jogged her memory that that was when Xagrim would be discovered. Yet matters were complicated, because with Red Spider residing in the future, her role in the original timeline as the hero who discovered Xagrim's identity must now fall to someone else.

Mission

The team must find Xagrim and stop him.

Complications

• The venue is the Horizon Casino and Conference Center - owned by team adversary, mobster Cosmo Liddell. They must not attract mob attention.
• The event is under strident security measures due to some high-profile VIPs attending.
• If the presence of heroes becomes known, Xagrim will likely flee, and the Adventurers will lose their chance to find him.
• Passes are no longer being sold. The Adventurers will have to find ways into the event.

Gameplay

Each hero will have 3 social tokens to spend and will have one turn at a time to spend them.

They can be used in the following ways:

• 3 tokens to meet any VIP you wish
• 2 tokens to meet any non-VIP NPC you wish (2 stars or fewer)
• 1 token to meet a random non-VIP NPC
• 1 token can also be spent during a NPC encounter to leverage a certain desired outcome

Heroes might earn additional social tokens in the following ways:

• Find an interesting/risky way into the event (if you just got a ticket or an invitation, 0 extra tokens will be granted).
• Complete side quests that NPCs may issue to your character.

When meeting an NPC, you can try to interact with them and see if there is anything useful they can tell you. Some of them are total social duds, though.

Heroes can choose to go around in pairs if they want, and encounter NPCs together.