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In real world folklore, there's this Russian witch named Baba Yaga who lives in the woods in a hut that walks around on a pair of giant chicken legs. Baba Yaga also flies through the air in a magical mortar and has iron claws and teeth. She may also have a daughter or three, or maybe I just made up that detail and it's not really part of the traditional lore (I can't remember).
Adventure! has Dr. Hephaestia Geary-Wexler (a.k.a. The Machinatrix) and my Adventure! game was set in 1999. I and my players love all kinds of sci-fi, so after pasting together all of the above information, here's what we ended up with.
In 1975, the Machinatrix suffered a lab accident that left her disfigured and scarred. Her Reptilian Regeneration nanites healed her, but only at the cost of her physical appearance. She was left looking haggard with much of her skin shot through with silvery lines and her teeth and nails taking on a distinct metallic look. This didn't bother her at all, because after all, she's the Machinatrix and she's all about scientific logic. She's more efficient now—better, faster, stronger—and physical appearance is irrelevant.
Certain of her Russian contacts felt differently about her appearance and suggested that she looked like Baba Yaga. Always enterprising, she used that to her advantage, especially when she went out traveling in her spherical Kath-Yal corvette UFO (see the Conspiracy X RPG). At least one vodka-soaked witness described seeing "Granny Yaga in her flying mixing bowl" to my players' characters.
This led the characters to Gora Pobeda, a mountain in northern Russia that has been home to the Cherskogo Gulag (a.k.a. the Victory Collective.)
QUOTE
VICTORY COLLECTIVE (CHERSKOGO GULAG)
Baba Yaga’s base of operations is an old Soviet gulag in the Cherskogo region of eastern Russia. The gulag is built in the valley near Pobeda (“Victory”) near Ust Nera. It’s shielded from aerial observation by a hologram that causes it to look like a normal valley, when in fact it’s a fairly industrialized city of about 2,500 people.
The Machinatrix took over the valley in the 1960s, after Stalinist Russia had shut it down in 1956. In exchange for technological advancements and the output of her factories, she was allowed to run her utopian experiment as she pleased. She was provided with a steady stream of new inmates.
Timeline
Gold discovered in Kolyma c. 1910.
Mining began c. 1927.
1930s-1950s (Stalinist Russia) used forced labor in the gulags. Stalin ruled 1929-1953.
* 1956 — Victory Collective is “shut down” under Nikita Khrushchev, but remains a secret gulag used by the KGB.
* 1960s — The Machinatrix rents the gulag from the KGB and begins to build her technotopia. In exchange for raw materials and finished goods, she’s allowed to do pretty much whatever she wants. The KGB continues to send her “disappeared” dissidents and criminals, and even begins filling her requests for specific ratios and specific descriptions of men and women.
* 1965 — By the mid-1960s, work on hollowing out Gora Pobeda is well underway.
* 1971 — Russian and Chinese agents recovered a crashed UFO in North Vietnam. The UFO was a Kath-Yal corvette. They ask the Machinatrix to examine it.
* 1975 — A lab accident severely injures the Machinatrix. Her nanite metachinery saved her life, but only at the cost of shooting her skin through with visible silver lines, converting her nails and teeth into metal, and leaving her badly scarred. She doesn’t really care; in fact, she’s more machine than human now. She begins using the Baba Yaga cover story to disguise test flights of the reconstructed corvette.
* 1984 — The Machinatrix stages an avalanche and erects the shield that makes the camp and mining operation invisible. While the rest of the USSR is struggling with the transition between Andropov and Chernenko, her technotopia is assumed destroyed.
* 1991 — Soviet Union falls. The Machinatrix continues her work uninterrupted.
*Fictional
Baba Yaga’s base of operations is an old Soviet gulag in the Cherskogo region of eastern Russia. The gulag is built in the valley near Pobeda (“Victory”) near Ust Nera. It’s shielded from aerial observation by a hologram that causes it to look like a normal valley, when in fact it’s a fairly industrialized city of about 2,500 people.
The Machinatrix took over the valley in the 1960s, after Stalinist Russia had shut it down in 1956. In exchange for technological advancements and the output of her factories, she was allowed to run her utopian experiment as she pleased. She was provided with a steady stream of new inmates.
Timeline
Gold discovered in Kolyma c. 1910.
Mining began c. 1927.
1930s-1950s (Stalinist Russia) used forced labor in the gulags. Stalin ruled 1929-1953.
* 1956 — Victory Collective is “shut down” under Nikita Khrushchev, but remains a secret gulag used by the KGB.
* 1960s — The Machinatrix rents the gulag from the KGB and begins to build her technotopia. In exchange for raw materials and finished goods, she’s allowed to do pretty much whatever she wants. The KGB continues to send her “disappeared” dissidents and criminals, and even begins filling her requests for specific ratios and specific descriptions of men and women.
* 1965 — By the mid-1960s, work on hollowing out Gora Pobeda is well underway.
* 1971 — Russian and Chinese agents recovered a crashed UFO in North Vietnam. The UFO was a Kath-Yal corvette. They ask the Machinatrix to examine it.
* 1975 — A lab accident severely injures the Machinatrix. Her nanite metachinery saved her life, but only at the cost of shooting her skin through with visible silver lines, converting her nails and teeth into metal, and leaving her badly scarred. She doesn’t really care; in fact, she’s more machine than human now. She begins using the Baba Yaga cover story to disguise test flights of the reconstructed corvette.
* 1984 — The Machinatrix stages an avalanche and erects the shield that makes the camp and mining operation invisible. While the rest of the USSR is struggling with the transition between Andropov and Chernenko, her technotopia is assumed destroyed.
* 1991 — Soviet Union falls. The Machinatrix continues her work uninterrupted.
*Fictional
And finally, the bit about seducing Baba Yaga's daughter.
Baba Yaga/the Machinatrix also built herself three stunningly attractive female assistants to use in "negotiations" with the powerful men running Russia and other nefarious agencies, like the Disney corporation. These should be imagined as Metropolis' Maria and Austin Powers' femme-bots all rolled into one.
During our game, Toné "Big Air" Black—an exxxtreme athlete/supermodel—romanced one of the daughters. Toné romanced female NPCs all the time, so this was nothing new aside from the fact that the woman in question was a robot. Toné didn't know that she was a robot (although several of the other PCs did) and went ahead with his impressive game. Spending some Inspiration, the player rolled a spectacularly successful Dexterity + Perform check and Toné gave the robot the best night she'd ever had. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she went totally still for a second as her system rebooted and for just an instant, Toné saw the Blue Screen of Death scroll across her eyes.
So, in short, Metropolis + Mount Nevermind + Baba Yaga + The Machinatrix = Sexy robot reboot.
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