GURPS Special Forces

Story

Characters

World

Reference

Session 04 - Fallen Stars - Wrap-Up

Narrative Recap

The team barely had time to shake off their Vegas hangovers before being called back to the briefing room. NASA had tracked a second meteor — larger than the first — entering the atmosphere over Greenland and breaking apart in a wide arc across the Northern Hemisphere, with fragments expected to scatter from Greenland all the way to central Russia. Scientists estimated the rock would shatter into twelve to fifteen pieces of roughly equal mass, giving the team a daunting recovery window of just a few hours. Boss split the operation in two: Major Jenkins would take his team into Russia under the radar, while Guy, Ronnie, Sammy, and Jens were ordered to sweep east through NATO-allied territories, starting in Greenland.

Before wheels-up, the team scrambled to prepare. Ronnie made a quiet call to his outside contact Xander, reporting a half-million-dollar payout and confirming that a kill switch existed somewhere in the suits’ programming — with the actual password still dangling as a future prize for more recovered material. Jens tried to track down Brittany to say goodbye but couldn’t find her, leaving a note on her door before heading to the cargo plane. Sammy loaded up his limpet mines — eight rigged for tear gas, four as concussion grenades — and the team secured written authorization to command NATO ground forces if needed. An hour later, they were airborne and heading northeast.

The party landed at Nuuk International Airport in Greenland and transferred to a local helicopter, lifting off to conduct a grid search over a five-square-mile target zone. Ronnie planted himself at the helicopter’s machine gun as they swept back and forth over the icy, permafrost-scarred landscape below. Then Guy and Jens spotted something — a second object streaking on an intercept path with the falling fragment. Jens pressed his eye to his rifle scope and identified the figure: a caped individual bearing a State Farm logo, moving at extraordinary speed. It was The Dragon — a known superhero with flight, invulnerability, super strength, and the ability to breathe fire.

The team debated whether to engage, but without orders to fire on a figure considered one of the good guys, they held back and watched. The Dragon caught the fragment bare-handed in midair, and a crackling discharge of energy rippled outward from the impact. He lost altitude sharply, seemed to struggle, then righted himself, dropped something, and rocketed away to the west faster than anything living had a right to move. The helicopter descended to the drop site, and the team recovered what The Dragon had left behind — a used fragment, still faintly smoking, which they secured and reported back to base before moving on.

Iceland was next, and by the time the party landed in Reykjavik and loaded into Humvees, the fragment had already hit the ground and been cordoned off by local police. Ronnie commandeered the driver’s seat without ceremony, hauling the local driver out and taking the wheel himself. As they neared the site, Ronnie’s competitive instincts kicked into overdrive — he bailed out of the moving Humvee and launched himself toward the fragment in a massive, suit-powered leap. Sammy, sensing what was coming, attempted his own jump to beat him there, but Ronnie caught him mid-arc, grabbed him from behind, and hurled him backward before landing first beside the glowing fragment.

Without hesitation, Ronnie stripped off his glove and grabbed the fragment with his bare hand. A flash of energy crackled through him, leaving the fragment inert and Ronnie feeling strangely buzzed — lighter, almost electric, like a current running just beneath his skin. The rest of the team arrived to find him grinning, the fragment already spent. They secured it and moved on, though the suits’ constant feed back to base meant command had seen every second of it.

Norway proved to be a different kind of problem. Ronnie, still riding the high of Iceland, stopped short of the local authorities and launched himself toward the fragment site using a burst of suit power, activating his chameleon camouflage mid-jump to blur his outline against the sky. He landed beside the fragment — and then nothing. His suit locked up completely, every limb frozen in place by a remote kill switch triggered by command, who had been watching the entire feed in real time. He could speak but couldn’t move so much as his neck, standing rigid beside the fragment like a very angry statue while Jens poked at his suit claiming he could fix it. Command released the lock remotely, and Ronnie came back to life furious — rounding on Jens with a sharp “Don’t fucking touch me” before Guy stepped in to box the fragment properly and get everyone moving again.

Sweden went smoothly by comparison. The team drove to a cordoned site under local authority supervision, Guy secured the fragment in the containment box without incident, and command radioed with new orders before the dust had settled: Major Jenkins’ team was in trouble in Russia, and the party was needed immediately. They loaded back onto the plane and were in the air within the hour.

They parachuted into a twilight Russian forest — overcast sky, dense trees, hills and boulders swallowing the light — and linked up with what remained of Jenkins’ team. Andrews was dead. Miller was shaken. Thompson was barely holding it together. Jenkins reported that a bear, roughly thirty-five feet tall and seemingly impervious to conventional gunfire and grenades, had been tearing through the area. The suits of both Thompson and a Russian operative found near the fragment site had been corroded down to rusted, acid-eaten husks. Jens quietly retrieved the inert fragment from the site and pocketed it while the team began scanning the treeline for movement.

The plan came together quickly. Sammy activated his suit’s invisibility and moved forward through the trees, carrying a fourteen-pound improvised device — two Claymore mines packed back-to-back and wrapped in C4, wired to a remote detonator. He closed to within thirty yards of the massive bear, which was sniffing the air but hadn’t spotted him. With a powerful throw, he launched the bundle into the creature’s chest and hit the detonator at exactly the right moment. The explosion tore a hole through the bear’s torso, sending fur and flesh into the air, and the creature crashed backward onto the ground with a concussive thud that shook the earth. Sammy dropped his invisibility, drew his retractable blade, walked to the downed animal, and drove the blade through its eye and into its brain.

The celebration lasted about four seconds. A roar split the air, and the ground began to shake. The bear’s wounds rapidly healed, and it rose back up, blood-rage in its eyes, charging straight for the party. Ronnie didn’t hesitate. He used his suit to launch himself onto the back of the creature’s neck as it charged, gripping on with one hand and driving his blades into the base of its skull with the other. The bear stopped its charge, thrashing and roaring in pain, unable to reach the man hacking away at its spine from behind.

Jens opened a spatial portal beneath one of the bear’s massive feet, hoping to trap or displace it, but without a second anchor point the effect was limited. Sammy drew his Gyrock — a compact, pistol-sized rocket launcher — and fired a round into the bear’s chest. The creature staggered, then collapsed face-down onto the ground, Ronnie still riding its back. He kept hacking. It took several brutal rounds of work, but eventually Ronnie severed the bear’s head clean from its body. He climbed off the carcass, picked up the massive skull — easily the size of a small car — and declared it his. Guy torched the remains with thermite, making sure the creature wouldn’t be getting back up again. Jenkins radioed the Russian forces hiding in a nearby cave to let them know it was safe to come out.

The flight back to Arizona was quiet. The team tallied their haul: two active fragments and three inert ones, with Jenkins holding the Russian piece in his containment box. All of it was turned over to the base upon landing. Boss informed them that scientists had already begun analyzing the alien materials recovered from Terra, and that he would be sharing what they’d learned before the next deployment. He also told them to expect to leave again in twenty-four hours — NASA had tracked three fragments that had landed in the North Atlantic, and someone needed to go get them.

Ronnie, faced with a mandatory blood draw to check for the effects of his bare-handed fragment contact, responded the only way he knew how: by going to the base bar and drinking as much as he could before security tracked him down. They found him eventually, drew the blood while he was barely conscious, and he woke up ten hours later with a bandage on his arm and a sore backside and no memory of the procedure. He made his way to the mess hall, went through the food line, and accidentally drained the life force out of a cafeteria server — the man crumpling to the floor while Ronnie felt a pleasant buzz wash over him. He finished going through the line, helped himself to the food of two suited personnel he intimidated into leaving the table, and later tested his new ability deliberately on a security guard at the R&D desk, watching the man stumble and grab the wall while Ronnie felt the familiar electric hum.

Meanwhile, Guy had been spending his downtime in the R&D facility under the pretense of suit maintenance, keeping his eyes open. He spotted a classified folder left carelessly ajar on a workbench and caught just enough of its contents to stop cold. The first two objects were meteors. The third one — the one still out there, the one nobody had talked about yet — was labeled with two words: Hungry God. Across the facility, equipment was glitching, lights were flickering, and systems were freezing and rebooting without explanation. Nobody had a good answer for why. The team’s suits were being upgraded with improved power cells developed from the recovered fragment material, scheduled for installation after the ocean mission. But the question of what exactly was coming — and whether it was coming for them — hung over the base like a storm that hadn’t broken yet.

Quick Bullets

PC Carry-Forward

Ronnie Vint (Ant)

Guy LeFleur (Timmah)

Sammy Castaneda (Jay S)

Jens Hartmann (Sean)

What Carries Forward

Unresolved Threads

Player-Stated Intentions

World State

Keeper Checklist

Quality Notes

Memorable Moments

  1. Ronnie removes his glove and grabs a glowing meteor fragment bare-handed in Iceland — a flash of energy renders the fragment inert and leaves him buzzing with new power. Racing Sammy and winning by literally throwing him backward mid-air.

  2. Ronnie’s suit locked down in Norway — command hits the kill switch the moment he goes rogue, leaving him frozen in place like a very angry statue. Jens pokes at his suit claiming credit. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

  3. Sammy’s invisible Claymore ambush — turns invisible, sneaks within 30 yards of a 35-foot bear, hurls 14 pounds of C4 and Claymores into its chest, detonates at the perfect moment. Walks up and stabs it through the eye with a retractable blade.

  4. The bear regenerates — four seconds of celebration before a roar shakes the ground and the bear rises back up, wounds closing, charging in a blood-rage.

  5. Ronnie rides the bear — leaps onto the back of a charging 35-foot bear’s neck and spends multiple rounds hacking at its spine until he severs the head. Claims the skull as a trophy cloak.

  6. Hungry God — Guy spots a classified folder in R&D. The first two objects were meteors. The third one is labeled “Hungry God.” Everything just changed.

  7. Ronnie accidentally drains a cafeteria server — wakes up from a drunken stupor, goes through the food line, and the server collapses as Ronnie feels a pleasant buzz. Then he deliberately tests it on a security guard. New powers, zero restraint.

  8. “They’ve subcontracted with a company called Ocean Gate.” — Ronnie’s deadpan joke during the briefing about the deep-ocean recovery mission.

Reconciliation Context

Reconciled: 2026-05-03

GM Decisions

Consequences

Salvageable Prep