An Old Dawn
One (a major supervillain) comes looking for the characters. Apparently one of his plans worked, worked too well. As he explains to the characters, One was able to gain control of the majority of the nuclear weapon systems of the major world powers. Then he launched them which caused those he did not control to also be activated. Nuclear rain fell upon the Earth destroying civilization and humanity. Those that did not perish in the immediate blasts fell to the nuclear fallout thereafter.
One felt remorse, loneliness, regret. He has sent himself back into the past, the character’s time, and is asking them to stop him. To this end they must disable the devices he has set up to control the nuclear weapon systems. He provides them with a hand-held device that can detect the control devices if they are close by (10’). They will need to do this by going to each world power and either asking for their aid or, at the most extreme, disable the device themselves by force.
The devices have already been planted and are set to go off in one week.
Talking to the World
Attempting to talk to a major world power into allowing the characters to visit their nuclear launch sites is almost impossible. You can either run this as a very hard skill challenge or base the reactions off what the country thinks of the character. This would be a good time to allow all the good work the characters have done in the past to pay off (of course, by the same token some countries will automatically hate the characters). Or you could simply rule there is no way for the characters to talk the governments into helping them.
It is reasonable to assume the governments will at least investigate what the characters say is going on. In a world of people with powers, a time travelling nuclear terrorist is not that far fetched. However, they will be unable to find anything.
Taking from the World
Each country has the usual set of defenses; soldiers, robots, detection, alarms. In addition they each have some specific and unique defenses protecting their nuclear launch sites. The characters are looking for small black boxes about the size of a toaster. If the characters loan the country their detection device that country will find One’s control device, but then the country will keep the detection device, forcing another adventure wherein the characters need to retrieve it.
All walls, floors, ceilings, doors of the complexes have been built with Referite, a metal that reflects the energy it is hit with; i.e. powers.
United States
-Five Keys. Access into the weapons launch site requires 5 keys spread amongst 5 people. Normally these people are near the base and have 1 hour to reach the site in case of actual need of use. If one of these people is disabled there are another 3 people, each with a separate key, who in conjunction function as the missing key. The characters need to gather the 5 keys all within one hour, as there is a check-in amongst the key carriers every hour. One complication could be that one of the 5 key holders dies (has a heart attack) before the characters can get his key and then they need to find the alternate 3 key holders.
-Feedback. While the complex is guarded by normal soldiers there is a Feedback System in place that causes any power that is used to also attack the user. After any power attack, check and see if the attack roll would have hit the character using it and apply any effects.
Russia
-Bases. There are a large number (23) of potential bases from deactivated bases and active bases that could be the true weapon systems control base. The characters will have to find a way to figure out which is the correct base.
-Meme. The nation has a Power Scrambler at the site. Whenever a character goes to use a power, randomly choose another character and randomly pick one of that character’s unused powers of a similar type (at-will/utility/encounter/daily) and use that instead. Yes, it is used up.
United Kingdom
-Archway. Archway “Archie” is a semi-AI that runs all the computers within the complex. Actually, Archway also has its bytes in much of the computer networks of the country, but for our purposes Archway will be able to mount an efficient defense using the cameras and other mechanical devices. In fact the complex is mostly armed with mechanical countermeasures (lasers, etc) and very few human personnel.
-Power Suppression. This is an experimental Power Suppressor. At the beginning of each character’s turn have them make a saving throw. If they fail they can use no powers. This can not affect a character two turns in a row.
France
-One Number. To access the control room the characters will need a code number. This number is created each morning by the person using it and only he knows it. There are a number of ways the characters could get the number; let them be creative.
-Venture Group. On standby is the powered mercenary company, the Venture Group. They will arrive soon after a breach is detected and engage the characters.
China
-Mirror. They have built an exact duplicate of the weapon launch site on top of and next to the real site. There are in fact 5 copies of the site, with the goal being to confuse anyone entering the site.
-Tentacles. Tentacles come out of the walls, ceiling and floor to entrap the characters. They are also made up of Referite so will be almost impossible to break.
Aftermath
There is no big pay off since this is only preventing something that was going to happen in the future. However, One is likely to know who stopped his latest master plan and will send a message that they have now moved up on his mortal enemies list.
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