EH Mission: Groundswell

GROUNDSWELL

A Mission Module for the Enhanced Heroes RPG · For 4 to 6 players at 4th level

Nobody on this block can chase it. Everybody on this block is standing on it.

Something is swimming under Mesquite.

It moves through asphalt the way a gar moves through river water, fast and low, and behind it the ground forgets how to be ground. Car lots fold in half. Warehouse floors crack in straight lines. An overpass pier starts to sag with morning traffic on top. The city keeps calling them sinkholes, because nobody at the city has seen the fin.

Your heroes can't chase it. Its tunnel collapses behind it within seconds, and nothing that needs line of sight can touch it while it's under. To win, they'll have to learn what it hunts, predict where it goes, find the one thing it can't swim through, and pick the ground where the fight happens.

On Saturday, a travel-ball tournament opens across town. Fifteen batting cages. Three thousand people. And the only man in Mesquite who ever stood between this neighborhood and the thing eating it has just hung his cap on a dugout fence.

Groundswell is a creature feature with real stakes: lighthearted in its people, deadly serious about its monster. Set one year after the novel The Southpaw, it brings Marcus Delgado back to face his first Enhanced threat since that winter, and it introduces the Shadow Cabal from the inside, as the underground alternative for Enhanced who refuse to register.

What's inside:

• A five-phase mission, from the first collapse to a last stand on ground of the heroes' choosing, plus a Tremors-style chase with a flatbed full of subwoofers.
• Sinker, a bioengineered burrowing boss with Breath and Heat, Collapse Wake, and lure mechanics, so your table can out-think the animal instead of out-punching it.
• Three hidden GM clocks: the Hum, the Tape, and the Scrub, which pull against each other so there's no clean way through.
• Full stat blocks for Sinker, a corporate recovery team, a Sentinel field lead with orders she hates, the Cabal handler known as Blue, and the Southpaw himself.
• Two new Drama Burdens, On the Fence and The Missing Hour, plus five Ledger endings.
• Seven full-color battle maps, each calibrated to true scale on a 2-meter grid.
• Player handouts and a one-page quick reference for lures, collapse, structures, and stranding.

Requires the Enhanced Heroes Player's Guide. Uses the Drama system introduced in Necessary Sky. Reading The Southpaw is not required, but this book spoils it completely.