User:Ref3rence/JoJo Campaign

Design Note: Much of this will likely be added to Adventures and Tables (JJBA Setting) after it's played and tweaked, but for the first play I am storing these on a user page.

General Outline

First monster → Speedwagon Foundation → First Shrine → Dress Organization → Second Shrine/discovering Umibozu → Third Shrine/Umibozu is awakened → Umibozu kaiju fight

The spirit graveyard is destroyed with Umibozu → Public conflict with Hellsing and Iscariot → Holy Wars: The Punishment Due → ???

Introduction

Our story starts around 4 PM, Tuesday, June 12th, 2008, Samidare, S-Prefecture JP. Ask each player what their character has been up to all day. As the players are walking, the ground beneath them begins to shake. Suddenly, a nearby wall caves in as a massive monster (an acrocanthosaurus that is invisible to people without supernatural powers) bursts through a nearby wall. If the players are native to Samidare, this likely isn't the first time this has happened; evil spirits can strike at any moment.

After the spirit is defeated, it vanishes into thin air. The players narrate the rest of their day; whether they go to work/after school activities, what life is like back home.

Later that night, if the players have a passive perception higher than 14, they hear a window break downstairs. Investigating results in a strange smell before they are swarmed by 6 soldiers, each clad in black tactical gear and loaded with tranquilizer rounds, and they must attempt a DC 20 Constitution saving throw at the end of each of their turns or gain 1 level of exhaustion as they inhale tranquilizer gas.

Both players wake up in a small room, handcuffed to comfortable wooden chairs bolted to the floor (can be broken as a DC 15 Athletics check). The floor is cold brown tile, but the walls are a red fractal pattern, like a hotel. In front of them sits an unassuming man, looks like an office worke holding a clipboard (Yuto Inoue, who uses this stat block). As the players wake up, he warmly welcomes them and asks if they know where they are. He begins to ask the following questions

1. Where were they at 4:00 yesterday afternoon?
2. What caused the explosion?
3. Any questions to delve deeper into what the party is capable of.

The party can attempt a DC 15 Persuasion check to get him to answer questions, resulting in an answer-trading situation. He can share the following information:

• His name is Yuto Inoue, age 33.
• He works for an organization dedicated to the research and cataloging of the supernatural; the Speedwagon Foundation.
• The players were brought in on suspicion of being the origin of the attack, this is not the first time they have been present at such a disaster, much less in Samidare, and reports of similar situations are only becoming more common.
• The players were attacked in their homes because in his line of work it is better to ask for forgiveness than to risk life, limb, and leads to such a degree.
• The party was brought here by Strike Team 6, one of 12 strike teams in the Speedwagon Foundation's disposal, which makes up one third of their total ground forces.

If he determines that the players are not a threat, he pauses for a minute (receiving psychic information from Sumire) before apologizing. He explains that he is not part of Strike Team 6, instead being part of Investigation Unit 11 alongside Sumire, a psychic, and Dorje, a Hamon initiate from Tibet. If possible, he would like them to join IU-11, converting them into a fully-fledged Strike Team to figure out how to fix the situation in Samidare before something big happens. Finally, he promises to return them home before the truck is gassed again.

If they respond violently, the long walls pull away as 6 soldiers flank them on either side (12 total), revealing that the room was made of 4 semi trucks in a large, back-alley parking lot in S-City. From there, they either back down or spend the rest of their life on the run.

The Next Day

The players wake up in their homes, no broken windows, no lingering tranq smell, no missing items. With a DC 20 Investigation check with the Search action, a player can discover a hidden microphone and camera in their entryway, but nowhere else. The players go about their day, but can succeed a DC 20 Perception check to notice that they are being followed, one by a disguised Yuto and the other by a disguised Dorje. When they return home, a letter is sitting just inside their house, likely slid under the door.

"Aoki Heights, need a ride?"

Belly of the Beast (CR 9)

Adventure Outline

The party searches for the source of the spirit monsters in an obscure shrine nestled in the mountains to the north. They discover a secret passageway that leads to spiraling catacombs, but the catacombs are twisting and everchanging, with yet more mysteries within.

To the Shrine

In Aoki Heights, the party immediately finds a black car parked with Yuto and Dorje in the driver and passenger seats. Yuto explains that Sumire, who is back in their "hideout", his word for hotel room, has a pretty good knack for figuring out exactly where to wait to be seen by the right people, and motions for the party to get in the back. Once the party is in the car, Dorje explains that they looked into some more obscure local legends, and that one in particular pointed out Sea Fortune Shrine, in the mountains to the north, to have a history of strange monster sightings. When they arrive in the mountains, Yuto asks which of them is investigating with the party; one of them has to stay in the car as a lookout/getaway driver, but they're a team, they should work together.

The shrine itself probably hasn't seen proper maintenance in a decade; its paint is chipped and its offerings are faded, and 4d6 x 100 yen can be found. The altar of the shrine itself is interesting, as there's no seam to the ground, it's hollow, and the heavy stone top isn't secured to the rest of it. If the lid is removed, a straight drop into darkness can be uncovered.

Snooping around the area of the shrine, which consists mostly of forests, reveals a swarm of 1d4 snakes and a crack in the side of a rock face that leads into a large, dark cave.

The Chamber of Wails

The catacombs beneath the shrine consists of ten rooms. Each room is covered roof-to-floor in round red clay tiles, and it pitch black without a light source. Each of a room's doors do not lead to a defined room, and instead lead to a room randomly decided by rolling 1d10. Rooms can lead to themselves, in which case the party sees vague figures that they can determine to be themselves with a DC 15 Perception check. Additionally, when players enter a room, roll 1d20. On a 18 or higher, Chiyo is in the room. On a 4 or lower, the room is inhabited by a ghost shuvuuia.

1. Entrance Chamber

This 15 ft. cube room can be accessed from outside of the catacombs through a rectangular hole in the ceiling, though it requires a DC 15 Athletics check to open from the inside. The room is filled with sharp stalactites and stalagmites, all dripping with a green liquid. Creatures attempting to move through this room directly must attempt a DC 15 Acrobatics check to avoid being stabbed by the rocks. If a creature is stabbed by the rocks, they must attempt a DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failure, they take 1d4 poison damage and are poisoned for 1 minute. They may retry this saving throw at the end of each of their turns, ending this effect early on a success. Other than the entrance, this room has 1 door.

2. Exit Chamber

This 10 ft. wide, 60 ft. long room can be accessed from the outside of the catacombs through a crack in the wall, which Medium creatures must squeeze through, leading out to the woods surrounding the shrine. There is a small chamber past the crack, within which sits a small box with an even smaller silver key. Other than the exit, this room has 1 door.

3. Beating Chamber

This 20 ft. wide, 40 ft. long room contains a large pillar with a DT of 15 and 60 hit points in its center that flexes every few seconds, banging loudly each time. Any creature that ends its turn within 10 feet of the pillar must attempt a DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failure, they take 10 (2d6 + 3) thunder damage and are deafened for 1 minute. This room has 2 doors.

4. Moving Chamber

This 10 ft. wide, 120 ft. long room's floor is almost liquid, covered in a thick slime that ripples from one end to the other every few seconds. Any creature that ends its turn within this room is automatically moved 40 feet toward one of the doors. This room has 2 doors.

5. Full Chamber

This 45 ft. x 45 ft. cube room is filled with 2d4 ghost shuvuuia. This room has 3 doors.

6. Ribbed Chamber

The walls of this 20 ft. wide, 40 ft. long room is covered in sharp, metallic arches that wrap across its curved ceiling. Each one can be removed with a DC 15 Athletics check, rolling 1d4 on a success. On a 1, the blade counts as a shortsword; on a 2, the blade counts as a longsword; on a 3, the blade counts as a greatsword; and on a 4, the blade counts as a sickle.

7. Flooded Chamber

This 10 ft. wide, 120 ft. long room is flooded with water, though it doesn't spill out of the doorways, held back by some unseen force. This room has 2 doors.

8. Poisoned Chamber

This 45 ft. x 45 ft. cube room is filled with a thick, green liquid, though it doesn't spill out of the doorways, held back by some unseen force. Any creature that enters or ends their turn in the liquid must attempt a DC 15 Constitution saving throw. On a failure, they take 1d4 poison damage and are poisoned for 1 minute. They may retry this saving throw at the end of each of their turns, ending this effect early on a success. This room has 4 doors.

9. Strange Chamber

This 30 ft. cube room is unlike the others, with wood walls and floors and covered in various pieces of furniture and simple handmade toys, all in styles dating back to the country's earliest days with a successful DC 13 History check. Chiyo is in this room the first time the party enters it. This room has 2 doors.

10. Central Chamber

This room is much larger than the others; a 60 ft. x 60 ft. cube with four tall pillars near its center. In the center sits a near-identical copy of the altar in the shrine above, only in much better condition. The lid of this altar can be opened, but is locked. With the key from room 2 or a DC 15 Sleight of Hand check with thieves' tools, or by dealing at least 12 damage to the shrine in a single instance, the lid can be opened, revealing an ancient wooden Khakkhara and a snakeskin robe. On top of the shine sits a simple straw doll. This room has 3 doors.

Chiyo and the Snake

Chiyo is a young girl, probably elementary age, wearing ancient ceremonial clothes, possibly those of a priestess with a successful DC 12 History check. While overall dour, she enjoys scaring people, often walking just outside of view to give the appearance of a classic "ghost girl". She will accompany the party for as long as possible, but will almost certainly get separated by one of the chamber's shifting doors. If the party spends too long in a given room, she will hurry them out of it, afraid of something she won't directly mention.

Moving room 10's doll in any way causes Chiyo to disappear the walls of every room to begin spinning, coiling around the players, forcing any creature to attempt a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw at the end of each of their turns in initiative, falling prone on a failure. Replacing the doll causes this effect to end. Whenever Chiyo would appear, instead a massive spectral serpent (using a Giganotosaurus' stats that deals poison damage and can incur the effects of room 1's rock spikes as an action) appears. If room 3's pillar has been destroyed, the snake's hit point maximum is reduced to 40. If a player can communicate with the snake, it reveals that it is hunting Chiyo, as it has for the last 2000 years, for sealing him, and that if he is killed, the snakeskin robe, made of his own skin, will lose its power.

The Next Day 2

Hopefully the party makes it home. Regardless of if the snake is slain and Chiyo is allowed to pass on to the afterlife or if it is allowed to continue tormenting her in exchange for personal gain isn't of matter to the Speedwagon Foundation, as they can mark it off as a source either way; the spectral beasts were clearly different than the ones inside the city but could be used as a piece of data, and it seems to point the source closer to the city. Additionally, the party is paid 500,000 yen, basically an average monthly paycheck. They're allowed a normal day of rest before another note is slipped under their door.

"At the harbor; don’t keep her waiting."

Baoh Returns (CR 10)

Adventure Outline

As the party uncovers information regarding Dress's shady past and present, they discover that at one point dress was a part of the Speedwagon Foundation, during which many of their experiments were done. In the end they must choose to destroy all of Dress including innocents and the potential of a world-wide disaster, or to risk letting their highest ranking members go.

At the Harbor

It's night by the time the party arrives at the harbor and meet up with Sumire, who doesn’t look like she’s been waiting long. She makes a vague comment about how she can "feel him out there", but otherwise guides the party to walk along the rocky beaches as she explains that the Dress Organization, a bunch of monsters in human flesh posing as doctors, used to be based out of Samidare. She and a friend, another one of their experiments, made sure they were destroyed nine years ago. He never made it out, but she's positive he's alive.

After a minute, the party reaches a metal hatch buried among the rocks. Sumire explains that this is the last trace of Dress's main base; she was there when it caved in. She seems visibly shaken during the conversation, but understands why she needs to be the one to go.

The hatch deposits the players into a small cave full of rubble. With a successful DC 16 perception check, or by closing the hatch, the party can notice a light coming from one of the piles of rubble. After the rubble is cleared, the party discovers a small laboratory. The lab is empty and papers are strewn about, but there’s running power, and even food in a refrigerator (though some of it seems to have gone bad). Various vials of chemicals sit on a desk. As the party investigates the room, they discover multiple important notes:

• Note 1 contains details on the Baoh parasite gathered by Dr. Kasuminome, particularly its intended use as a biological weapon, its ability to take over its host, and its 200 day life/reproduction cycle.
• Note 2 consists of various "success reports" in experiments on multiple captured animals and 5 humans, recorded by Dr. Avril. Multiple creatures are used in a single experiment.
• Note 3 is a communication from "Mask" requesting more experiments in order to accelerate their schedule due to the "deterioration of Subject Zero".
• Note 4 is a list of requested supplies including food, more electricity, various chemicals, a joke at transferring to "Site Zero", and dog food.

As the party wraps up their investigation, one of the cave walls collapses as a Baoh dog bursts through and attacks. Roll for initiative. After 3 rounds, the cave begins to collapse, forcing each creature in the room to attempt a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw, taking 9 (2d6 + 2) bludgeoning damage on a failure at the end of each of their turns, and it's made clear that the room won't hold much longer. After 5 rounds, the whole cave collapses on top of any creatures still in the cave, rocks fall everybody dies.

Wrap Up

If the party escaped the cave, they may return their findings to the Speedwagon Foundation and request supplies in the form of a single Rare item, two Uncommon items, or four Common items that are delivered immediately. That night, roll 1d20 and have each player choose evens or odds. If one of the players' chosen numbers is rolled, they are attacked by a Baoh dog, though they flee after being reduced to half their maximum hit points. They must attempt a DC 14 Perception check. On a failure, they are surprised by the attack.

The next day, SPW analysts return to the party with their findings: power was being pulled from further into the city, not from the harbor nearby. Additionally, using sightings of trucks moving supplies around the harbor, they were able to narrow their next location to an office building near the heart of the city.

Primary Laboratory

By all accounts, the party's destination looks like a normal office building, even on the inside. However, with the input of a code using the elevator's keys (6347), the players are able to access a secret basement. Taking any of the CU-13 staff can be convinced the party with a successful DC 13 Persuasion check, but each consecutive member increases this DC by 5.

The first floor basement is a concrete cube lined with large, transparent tanks filled with a thick, green liquid. In the center of the room sits a Huge cage which seems to contain a bed, weights, and even some magazines. On the other side of the room is a door. The doors of the facility are armored, giving them 30 hit points and a damage threshold of 15, and can be picked open with a successful DC 20 Sleight of Hand check.

Closer inspection of the tanks reveals an unsettling sight – human bodies suspended in a greenish liquid, connected to tubes and wires. These individuals seem to be in a state of suspended animation, kept alive but dormant by the strange fluid. Each tank bears a label containing a number from 2 to 13, a "start date" (some dating back to over 4 years ago), and an "augmentation" (some labeled "psychotelemetry", others "bio-engineering", and a handful are labeled "Baoh control"). The players can also find a recording device containing an audio log of a "Dr. Avril" complaining about "Mask's" tight deadlines and limited understanding of his experiments. Touching a tank causes the person within to awake and begin to panic, but removing them from the tank causes them to die less than a minute later from an apparent heart attack.

If the cage is entered, its armored door slams shut after 12 seconds, trapping anyone in the cell until it is destroyed and two more invisible acrocanthosauruses emerge from the walls of the basement and attack the party.

The second floor basement is dimly lit, its walls and floor unfinished in rough concrete, and appears to be a prison of some sort, and they hear various shrieks as they enter from the stairwell. Some of the cages are filled with animals, others are filled with strange amalgamated beasts, and 5 of them are filled with humans. Three of the humans are children: small, scared, and malnourished; two are adults that look at the party with hollow eyes, apparently unable to speak after their tongues were cut out; and the third lies an adult-sized skeleton, small pieces of muscle still having from its bones. On the far side of the room stands a large man in a white suit, a smiling gold mask covering his face. He congratulates the party for making it there, but informs them that they don't need any more test subjects or guards at the moment. As the door slams in front of him without him moving a muscle, many of the cages throw themselves open, swarming the party with four medium beasts, two sap spiders, and a Martin clone.

In the third floor basement, white floors and walls reflect bright light in all directions, and various medical beds are lines up against the walls. In the center, a relatively small man in a lab coat begs the large man, who he identifies as Mask, to give him more time, but Mask simply states that he himself will survive activating "Subject Zero", and Dr. Avril is not nearly as individual a resource as he believes himself to be. The conversation ends with Mask throwing the doctor to the ground and going through yet another door. If the party attempts to interrupt the conversation, two Baoh dogs jump out from beneath the medical beds on either side of the room and attack. While the dogs will not prioritize Dr. Avril, they treat him as a threat just as they do the players. If Avril survives, he begs the party to let him live, that he wants to go back to the Speedwagon Foundation, potentially filling in the party on all members of Dress both current and past to have been part of SPW, and that they were only booted when Baoh destroyed their main facility on the coast.

The final room would be identical to the third floor basement main room save for the lack of overhead lights. Instead, the room is bathed in a cool blue light from the large cylindrical case in the center of the room. Strange worm-like creatures writhe among the tank, nearly filling it to the brim. As the party enters the room, Mask circles from the back to the side of the tank, gloating about how beautiful "Subject Zero" has become. As he places his hand on the tank, the worms flock to its edges, allowing them to see the face of a young man half-covered in the same growths as the Baoh dogs. If Sumire is present, she immediately identifies him as Ikuro Hashizawa; by now he's 25. Most of his body, at least that can be seen, is eaten apart and covered in circular growths; Baoh eggs.

Mask explains that the newborn parasites react to his "new, enhanced body", and that if the containment cracked even a little, the city would become overrun by monsters in a year at the latest; the office workers in the upper levels would become deadlier than any bomb. He explains that he knew SPW would come for him, even implying that members of his organization have infiltrated the Foundation, but it doesn't matter, either Dress's experiments continue or he condemns Japan to an eternal plague of parasites, revealing a parasite coiled around his hand as he does so; he even humors the idea of returning to his position as a high-ranking SPW member, just as he was before Dress splintered from the foundation.

Ikuro can be awoken with a successful DC 20 Persuasion check, which Sumire has advantage on, breaking him from his detached state, though involving Ikuro in the fight would likely break the glass, freeing a swarm of Baoh.

If the party threatens Mask in any realistic way, he levitates behind the tank and hops aboard an elevator as a large large hexagonal object on either side of the elevator ticks to life; one final failsafe if Baoh were to escape outside of Mask's control. In 30 minutes, the blast of the failsafe would level the building and completely burn everything inside, ensuring the deaths of not only the parasites, but Ikuro himself and anyone not evacuated. Additionally, activating the failsafe also locks down the elevators, meaning someone needs to stay as a sacrifice. The bomb can be disarmed with a DC 20 Investigation check, which Ikuro has advantage on due to his limited control over the parasites. Otherwise, the only way to escape would be to evacuate the building or drill through the foundation, both of which would take almost the entire 30 minutes and can't be done at the same time due to limited street space. If the party is in the first floor basement, they are reduced to 0 hit points instead of killed instantly when the bomb goes off.

Conclusion

With luck, the party will have survived in some way. They may requisition a single Rare item, two Uncommon items, or four Common items, or twice as many items if they and the civilians survived. If the bomb went off, it is covered up as a gas explosion. No members of CU-11 had any idea Dress was ever involved in SPW, particularly Sumire who seems to have taken it badly.