Superhero Adventure: Bodyguards

Bodyguards

Hakeem al Din is a Muslim moderate, outspoken in his call for unity of mankind. For his ideals on the rights of all men, regardless of their faith, to live and prosper, he has long been targeted by extremists. And yet his influence continues to grow. There have been several attempts on his life and he has withstood them all; many see this as a sign he is blessed and thus his words carry more weight. Every failed assassination attempt bolsters his cause.

He is now making his way to the United States to garner more support and money. Anticipating further attempts on his life the government has asked the player characters to act as his bodyguards while he is within the States. Of course, this wouldn’t be worth writing up as an adventure if there wasn’t going to be such an attempt.

The Jihad has been hired to capture Hakeem al Din. They are then to deliver their target to a special location where he is to be executed live on television. Thus, his myths of being blessed and his cause will fall.

Losing the Body
Members of Jihad will attack at some point during the visit, preferably in a public location. The goal is to capture Hakeem, not to kill him. Run this as a normal fight with the following 5 members of Jihad: Faris, Jahar, Mamluk, Sha’ir and Shaitan. The fight will actually open with a bomb going off, not enough to kill the players or Hakeem, but enough to do some damage to everyone. This damage would be roughly equal to a level appropriate trap. It is possible to find this bomb before it goes off.

If the players lose the fight then Jihad will gloat a little and take Hakeem, but not kill the characters as that is not their goal.

If the players win the fight, Jahar will escape by making an unconscious person (there is bound to be one lying around-make sure to describe collateral damage during the fight) appear as himself. He will then make himself look like a policeman. As a policeman he will take Hakeem back to headquarters to both keep him safe and for questioning about the attackers. Try and play this off as allowing the characters to do other things for a little while. Of course Jahar will take Hakeem to the location. If the characters insist on staying with Hakeem completely and as a group, let it go. Hakeem will have to be away from the characters for a moment as the police ask him questions, and that is when Jahar will take him.

In addition, the rest of Jihad will be sprung later as well. This will either be Jahar in disguise again, or they manage to escape on their own due to police incompetence.

Finding the Body
There are a variety of ways to track down Hakeem, so follow the lead of the players. They will likely come up with their own ways of finding the location where he is hidden. Allow them to work. If they end up stuck, a police officer will mention that Hakeem had a cellphone and it might be possible to track its location. This will work. The only thing you should do is let out information that Hakeem is going to be executed within a certain time frame (tomorrow at 6pm). This information can be gathered when the characters interrogate an informant, or if they are having no luck, by a televised statement from the terrorists to this effect.

Lair of the Body
The terrorists are holed up in an abandoned factory. This is maze-like so simply kicking in the front door will not work. The exterior and immediate interior is guarded by terrorist mooks. These will consist of groups of Standard and Minion guards without powers. They should be relatively easy to take down. Once the party gets further into the complex things begin to get weird. Terrorists will be found dead. It looks as though all the water in their bodies was drained. Even more curious is that a trail of water leads away from each body into the nearest drain or crevice.

This is the work of Marid, a jinn Sha’ir attempted to summon. Once again, similar to Ifrit, it was too much for him and he lost control of the being. Marid has attacked most of the terrorists and is now questioning Sha’ir about this new world. The adventure has now changed from fighting terrorists to fighting Marid. Marid has not killed Hakeem. Mostly because Hakeem is tied up and did not pose a threat, so once they deal with Marid they can rescue Hakeem. If the players defeat Marid his body will disperse into water; he will live to fight another day. In fact, he will one day rival Ifrit in danger.