Trailblazers Season 2

The following sums up the story from Season 2 of the podcast Trailblazers. These are only short and incomplete synopsis, complete information can be found on the relevant pages of the wiki. Summaries are only added after a chapter has been completely published.
THEME: The theme is Loss. Despite life often not giving us time to cope with loss and other major events in our lives, we manage to find ways to honor them and live with ourselves and circumstances even if we can't ultimately change them in any significant way. We have to manage the only things we can control even when life does all it can to prevent us from dealing with things the way we want to or think we should, and ultimately the coping and honoring that results from that is the true way we can do those very things.
== Chapter 1 - Grim Happenings ==
The party is working security for a shipping company when their cargo is attacked. They are the sole survivors and escape with a strange canister that was being shipped. They are picked up by the A.A.A. and offered a position. They attempt to learn more about the canister and in their fumbling suffer from bouts of insanity. The party find themselves constantly hunted by a man known as Baron Samedi, and eventually capture him. They are falsely accused of all his crimes and are unable to learn much from him. The base is attacked by Comet who is trying to get the canister, but they fail. A comet strikes the ground, and the party find a Nekojin in it's core. They learn she is from the Homeworld and that it is in danger, and she made a wish to stop it's source and the wish brought her to them. She then recognizes that Baron is her father.
=== Gameplay Features ===
==== World Exploration ====
* learned the basics about the world, and it's government
* hub-based missions
* limited access to world
* focused environment and NPC interactions
==== Conflict ====
* falsely accused of crimes
* hunted & ambushed
==== Combat ====
* defend the objective
* survive number of rounds
=== Player Characters ===
* Party 19
== Chapter 2 - The Upside Down Tree ==
The party learn that while Hope and Baron are both from the homeworld, they are from different times. Baron strikes a deal to help the party cure their insanity and learn more about this conspiracy they find themselves in exchange for his freedom. He leads them to a hidden structure from the homeworld hidden underneath the sea. The party enter it with Coba and Tar and after encountering several horrors find the source of their mania - Slenderman (the Upside Down Tree). They release him from his stasis prison and traverse an alien forest collecting pages until they're able to confront and defeat Slenderman. They are returned to Coba and Tar, free of their mania however a Shoggoth begins growing and they have to escape the structure with the aid of a government vessel that had entered the structure to extract the party. Coba is killed by the Shoggoth, but the rest of the party escapes. Along with the vessel and the A.A.A. the party defeats the Shoggoth and the captain of the vessel, Elson, agrees to let them go and investigate their claims of conspiracy. The party return to shore where Booker receives word that his work papers have gone through and he leaves for Upper Kadesh, only for the party to learn too late that Booker betrayed them having let Comet into their base earlier, and now steals the canister. They investigate a lead for a prototype of Project Dark, and discover a cybernetic soldier prototype. They destroy it, collect evidence, and return to the vessel. They find Hope and Baron have vanished, right before SWAT along with Psycho Squad raid the A.A.A. base and arrest them. Only Kintaro, Lanris, and Victor survive the raid. They are brought before a high-ranking policeman unsure of their fate.
=== Gameplay Features ===
==== World Exploration ====
* learned about homeworld
* moved from land to sea
* focused on one interesting location
==== Conflict ====
* sanity
* conspiracy
==== Combat ====
* dungeon
* traps
* single-boss encounters
* overwhelming
=== Player Characters ===
* Party 19
== Chapter 3 - Psycho Squad ==
The party is pressed into Psycho Squad by captain Hannibal Dewitt where they must do suicide missions for the police. They are implanted with cerebral bombs to ensure their cooperation and are released on their own cognizance. They take shelter with Lanris' sister but are soon visited by Baron who tells them not to pursue him, and says he will stop pursuing them, but not before magically compelling Lanris to cut off and eat his own ear in retribution for his finger. Victor is reunited with his wife. They discover that the Upside Down Tree's presence is spreading throughout the city as they see his image as graffiti not long before Lanris sees the Upside Down Tree in his sister's mirror and moves everyone out of the house. Psycho Squad, with their two other members Quetzalcoatl and Anubis, self-proclaimed gods, take on a mission to stop Alarak from robbing a bank. A fantastical carnival interrupts everyone's lives when it arrives and transforms Kadesh for a limited time. Over time the party's corruptions manifest further as their bodies deteriorate and change in various ways with Victor's organs failing, and Lanris' shadow behaving of it's own accord. VeeEm, a computer hacker, contacts the party at various times being various levels of helpful. The party, after illustrating to Hannibal that they have seen the kind of mania that the city is beginning to suffer from, get permission to perform an investigation. With what they find, combined with data they had gathered in the past and have gotten from VeeEm prepare to confront Hannibal about the conspiracy. J.G. Locke attempts to deter them however by driving Lanris' parents insane. It does not stop them however, and Hannibal is convinced and sends the entire lower police force to arrest Locke. They discover evidence in his office, as well as a Dark Trooper V.2. They confront Locke at Red's stadium and kill both as well as turn of the unity engine they were using to transform the city back into elves, not before it had turned some including the party. Quetzalcoatl and Anubis re-purpose the engine however but the party stop them before they can finish and the R.S.F. generator is destroyed in the process. The party is pardoned by president Katan and lauded as heroes as they are made free men.
=== Gameplay Features ===
==== World Exploration ====
* no longer restricted to a 'home base'
* freedom to choose living spaces
* still limited by legal restraints to their freedom
* respite from norm by introducing a limited-time distraction (Magical Mystery Tour)
==== Conflict ====
* legal system
* forced missions whether want to do them or not or have a moral objection
* personal attacks
* crescendo of attacks against them from main enemy
* their own bodies falling apart / killing them (corruptions)
* investigation/detective
==== Combat ====
* fight way to boss
* discreet 'tournament' style battles treated with a sense of gaming
* super boss
* fight equal amount of pc-power-level enemies
=== Player Characters ===
* Party 19__NOTOC__
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