RPPR Illustrated: Safehouse of a Forgotten Superhero

By Ross Payton

Art by Patsy McDowell

This safehouse is designed in the Base Raiders setting, but can easily be transplanted to any superhero RPG setting. Merely replace Build-A-Base technology with some other high technology source. No game stats have been provided so it can be used for any system. A label-free version can be used as a handout. Perhaps the PCs use this as their own base once they find and secure it or can be gradually revealed, room by room, during an online game. 

Description: This is a small base created with Build-A-Base technology. The owner was a minor superhero with stealth powers. They worked with the Ideal but avoided the news, so few even knew they existed. They went by the alias “Nocturne” when they had to work with an Ideal hero, but only used that name a handful of times.

The hero fought organized crime but had to occasionally fight powered villains. They disappeared in Ragnarök and only a few people alive remember them, mostly the crime bosses they put away and some reporters who covered the crimes.

The safe house can be located anywhere in or near a major city. It is in an out of the way location, underground. It could be below the basement of a low-rent apartment building or off a subway tunnel. Perhaps the person who found it through dumb luck or used a superpower like magical divination or high-tech sensors to locate the concealed entrance.

The Safe House’s most important contents are the evidence of the hero’s last investigation. Nocturne was looking into a secretive villain group. The group hired themselves out as assassins to the mafia and other syndicates. Nocturne realized all the assassins’ powers were coming from the same source. Ragnarök took the villains as well as Nocturne, so that source is still out there, waiting to be found.

1. Entrance – biometric data and passcode required to gain entry into the safe house. This can be faked with superscience but if the entry fails, it triggers a controlled explosive charge that collapses the entrance room. Digging through the rubble takes hours or days without super strength.

2. Hall of Mirrors: A shadowy room with mirrored walls. This enhances stealth powers, allowing characters to sneak up on others more easily. A cloaked sentry bot is active, waiting to sneak up and inject intruders with sedatives. It locks knocked out characters into a pillar (all pillars in this room are hollow) and then sends out an alert to Nocturne. Since Nocturne is gone, trapped characters will eventually starve to death if not rescued.

3. Medical station with robotic auto-doc.

4. Holding cell for interrogation. Ideal-based superpower negation technology. Traps characters in room if sensors detect intruders.

5. Reactor room. Cold fusion tech. Enough power for 30 more years without maintenance. Heavily shielded.

6. Armory and bunk – Weapons, gadgets, armor, and a bunk for sleeping. Grapple guns, knock-out darts etc. Ideal-designed crime-fighting tools.

7. The Crime Lab and Trophy Room – corners hold trophies from defeated villains. Crime computer in the center with data on the villain group’s power source. A number of sentry bots equal to the players and a turret with knock out darts guard the room.