The Midnight Men - Icons Superpowered Roleplaying

The Midnight Men
Art by Dave after Frank Miller

 

Who's Who (Icons) - Masked Justice!

 

Masked Justice of the Midnight Men
Pencil and ink by Chris

Icons: Issue #5 - The Midnight Men... Payback!

Midnight Men #5
Pencil and ink by Chris

Having met defeat for the first time, The Midnight Men are now being held captive in Dirge's dark tower. They are behind bars and chained to the floor with their abilities drastically reduced in power by spells.

In a nearby cell is Malcolm Greybridge; child prodigy with a mutant-like ability to control computers. Our campaign started off with his disappearance and now, here he is, locked up in a cell beside us.

Dr. Midnight questions Malcolm, who provides the following information:

"I was here with two other children before , one girl, one boy, but both of them disappeared a day ago  and no one will tell me what happened to them."

Just then guards show up and start to take Malcolm away.

                                                    

                                           Dirge's guards

                                              

Masked Justice demands: Where the hell are you taking him?!

Guard: "He will be sacrificed. The stars are now right."

Malcolm then begins to scream and cry, saying he wants to go back to his mother and father.  He begs the Midnight Men to help as he is taken out of the room.

As the guards leave, one turns back and says: “You will live to see the Lord Dirge summon Shigg to your dimension and sacrifice you all to his glory.  All of your kind, what you call hero and villain alike, will fall like dust before the Great and Terrible Shigg.  None will be spared.”

Gate Keeper: "Does this include the Warbride and her crew? " (see last issue!)

The guards leave the room without answering.

With a combination of Dr. Midnight's tech skills,  Black Bolt's rage and GateKeeper's magic, the Midnight Men soon escape from the cells. Guards enter the room to stop them but are quickly bounced around like a pin-ball on a 50,000 point run.

Now free, the Midnight Men make their way to Dirge's throne room but on the way run into Speed Demon and The Ultra-Mind (Brain in-a-Jar) who want to negotiate, having found out they won't survive Shigg's arrival. However, before they can open their mouths, the Midnight Men, still angry from their defeat; beat, fold and flatten them like raw dough.

   

                                

                             Ultra- Mind (Brain-in-a-Jar)

Speed Demon

Afterwards, our heroes find the throne room near the top of the dark tower and are greeted by Warbride and Troll. 

                                 

                                  Warbride

Troll

In this room there is a platform being raised slowly to the ceiling's apex where there are writhing tentacles and a huge, alien eye poking through a gate. Dirge is on the platform casting a spell to bring forth Shigg, an all-powerful and evil Old One. Malcolm Greybridge is suspended from above by a beam of light emitted from the central eye, ready to be sacrificed at the spell's conclusion. The boy is screaming as he knows his death approaches. The Midnight Men have five pages left before the ritual is complete.

Dirge

Dirge: "Eons and gods have fallen before us.  The petty life of your ephemeral Earth has been forged into the door that will invite the Old Ones.  Your universe will die and be reborn as the Old One's domain.  And all of you will be the first to be sacrificed for their greater glory."

It's payback time!

Ding! Ding! The bell rings and Black Bolt delivers a haymaker to Warbride's china-chin, slamming her through the wall of the tower where she falls 80 stories. Nighty-night, princess.

 

Dr. Midnight, Gatekeeper and Masked Justice cut Troll's honeymoon short. A double kick to the ribs, a high speed hammer to the horn, then a power nullifying spell and Troll has no lead in his pencil. The big guy has fallen down and can't get up. Our heroes are pissed! They circle around him and start laying in with the size 13's. It's a hoedown on Troll's skull! They're doing the new dance called the "kick in the face." They pick him up and finish him off with a savage one, two, three to Troll's pie and it's bedtime for Mr. green and ugly.  

On the platform, Dirge is on the verge of completing his ritual when Black Bolt's on him like a nightmare come to life. He gives Dirge a close up of a monster fist to the eye. Black Bolt's in and out like a fiddler's elbow. An upper-cut to the bread basket and a lightning bolt to the donut hole and Dirge is flopping around on the ground like a fish out of water. Black Bolt grabs him by the lapels and screams: "You f*&@ed with the wrong guys, you child-sacrificing s*#@ licker!!!" He finishes with a world class five-knuckle sandwich and it's on the slab with a toe-tag for Dirge.

With the spell ended the gate closes on Shigg, stopping its entry into our world and the alien dimension quickly fades. 

The Midnight Men take Malcolm back home to his parents and he runs into their arms, all of them shouting and weeping with joy and relief. Black Bolt made a promise to Malcolm's parents and "Swore to Protect" (Black Bolt's Quality) Malcolm and bring him home. The Greybridges see that there is a man behind the monster and will never forget what he and the Midnight Men have done. 

With the end of this first story-arc, Stark City, and the world, are presented with undeniable proof that - for the first time in almost thirty years - true super-powered individuals have reappeared, wanting to take up the fight for justice, protection of the innocent and upholding the law. 

These heroes have a name... the Midnight Men!

Icons: Issue #4 - The Midnight Men...Defeated!

Midnight Men #4

For those late to the party, these covers are done by our gaming group with Chris doing the pencil and ink for each issue.

This issue had the Midnight Men entering the desolate, hostile alien dimension in search of child prodigy, Malcolm Graybridge. Off in the distance there was a huge dark tower and we figured the action was there.

As we advanced, the sky began to darken and before us, floating 50 ft in the air is the Acolyte (super villain and chief lieutenant)  and six cultists, chanting. 

The Acolyte then looked at us and rejoiced, saying:

"Shigg’s time on Earth has come. Dirge is the harbinger of the apocalypse and the boy (Malcolm) will open the gateway!"

Big scrap follows and after a thorough trouncing the Acolyte and his crew's tongues are sticking out and their eyes are flashing "No Sale."

After some persuasion, the Acolyte reveals that August Pickman joined the Cult of Doom in a bid to jump up the ladder and become a magical power-broker; instead, when confronted with the direct force of Shigg, his mind was destroyed and replaced with Shigg's power, which has taken on the identity of “Dirge” and been imitating Pickman's human conduct and expanding his “St. Philip's Academy” business in order to harvest minds that can help to crack the barriers between this world and the Old Ones.

Dirge intends to sacrifice Malcolm Graybridge (who possesses near-mutant abilities to program and link with computer systems) to Shigg in order to “align the stars” and open the portal to permit Shigg to our dimension.

The Midnight Men make it to Dirge's dark tower but blocking our way to the entrance are these goons: 

War Bride, The Ultra-Mind (Brain in a Jar), Speed Demon, Troll

War bride: "We've been given power as overlords in the New Order, but the Midnight Men can also gain this title if you cease resisting and join Dirge's forces!"

Black Bolt: "And what of Malcolm Graybridge?!"

War Bride: "There are always sacrifices needed in order to bring about change; the world has seen far worse than one child sacrificed to remake the course of the natural order."

Snap! We lose it! The Midnight Men launched into a furious assault but alas, were no match against the these malfactors. It seems our Gamemaster learned his lesson well, back when Genocide got his ass kicked.                                                

The Midnight Men take a nasty beating and for the first time, our heroes lay on the ground...defeated. 

Will Dirge's plans to sacrifice Malcolm Graybridge and summon forth Shigg, to send humanity into a new dark age succeed? 

Stay Tuned!

Black Bolt Says...

Black Bolt of The Midnight Men

 

Icons: Issue #3 - The Midnight Men... Slugfest!

 

Pencil and ink by Chris

In this issue the Midnight Men went down into the sewers looking for the missing children from issue #1. Down there we fought robots called Hunter Killers. 

Hunter Killer Robot

With some quick thinking, Dr. Midnight made an EM pulse that shutdown the HK s. Afterwards we found some kids that were hooked up to strange machinery and being drained of their psychic energy. However, one child was missing - Malcolm Graybridge. 

Malcolm is a child prodigy, gifted in computers and programming. In issue #0, Black Bolt met Malcolm's parents and swore to bring him back alive. One of BB's Qualities is Sworn to Protect so, suffice to say, he was not a happy golem.

Returning to the surface we spoke with some of our contacts/ persons of interest: Frank Stargell (The Red Wasp; retired; Knightley Community Centre manager), Paul Krevitz (Wrathmaster; retired; owner/operator The Crepes of Wrath restaurants), SCPD Capt. Jesus Ramirez and August Pickman, founder and CEO of a chain of private schools, St. Phillips Academies.

Soon after, while the Midnight Men were in downtown Stark City, a giant tear in space opened and through this rip we could see a pinkish sky and a desolate landscape.  GateKeeper determined a rift had opened and another dimension was starting to cross over into our own. Off in the distance we could see a huge black tower.

That's when we were confronted by:

           

In typical villainous fashion Dr. Deimos said:

"So, Stark City's best has come to the rescue? Well, you've finally met your match, heroes! Get ready for the...Ooofff!!!"

Just then, Dr. Midnight SMASHed Dr. Deimos in the chops, Ragtag had a SHOCKING encounter with Black Bolt, and Pulsar was BLASTED by GateKeeper then hammered by Masked Justice and finally pounded into the ground like a tent peg in a team coordinated BEAT DOWN!

It turned out these villains had been hired by an anonymous source to stop all from crossing the dimensional rift.

Our heroes pressed onward venturing into the desolate dimension towards the dark tower, in the hopes of rescuing Malcolm Graybridge; if he had not been killed already by whatever evil forces that lay ahead!