Welcome to
In the Hall of the Disco
King
, an adventure for Green Ronin’s
Damnation Decade
campaign setting.
You’ll need the
DD
rulebook, as well as
the
d20 Modern Handbook
, to play this
module.
Disco King
was created as a demo for
Gen Con Indy 2006. As such, it’s a self-
contained adventure and comes with a
pre-generated team of heroes: the cast of
the wacky talent show
Do Your Worst!
,
all of them fifth level.
But you can easily
fit the events into an existing campaign,
and the threats can be dialed down for
less-powerful heroes or for smaller
teams. We’ll provide suggestions for
doing both throughout the adventure.
Statistics for the heroes and GM
Characters can be found at the end of
module. So can the maps and all
copyright and OGL information.
Thanks to my friends who test-drove this
module, as well as the folks who played
it and saved the world (twice!) at Gen
Con.
fortune, as well as near-immortality in
the form of a bionic body. Since then,
Cygnus has become a crucial front man
for evil on Earth, and he’s about to hatch
his wickedest plot yet.
In a word, bees. Cygnus has set a world-
wide scheme in motion to harvest the
creatures and smuggle them into Fun
City undetected. Satanists in Suramerico
trap endless swarms of bugs in the
jungle, cool them into near-hibernation
and hide them in fertility icons. They
then ship the statues to the States
through a high-toned sex club in Fun
City, which gets them past Customs
without a second look and keeps
Cygnus’s hands clean besides.
When the sun goes down on the evening
of July 4th, the mogul’s cronies will load
the icons into fireworks launchers on the
roof of the BootyDome. Then, with
thousands of people crowding the streets
to see the light show, the bees will get
blasted into the air—and the city will
descend into nightmare.
Meanwhile, Cygnus will be sealed up
tight inside the dancehall with the cream
of Fun City’s devil-worshippers. With
the town collapsing around them, the
baddies will dedicate the mayhem to
their dark lord in an orgy of sex, drugs
and disco.
Afterward, Cygnus will make sure the
blame falls on one Criswell Gynt, a
promising songwriter whom Cygnus
robbed of his work and, ultimately, his
life. Gynt had approached Cygnus for a
publishing deal but was no match for the
record mogul’s maneuvering. Cygnus
ended up with the rights to Gynt’s
magnum opus,
In the Hall of the Disco
King,
and turned it into a hit for his
protégés, a campy dance band called
Man Gang. Then, to hammer one last
nail into the songwriter’s heart, Cygnus
PLOT SYNOPSIS:
In a nutshell:
It is July 4th, 1976, and a
satanic mastermind has big plans for the
Bicentennial. As the festivities reach a
pitch, he’s going to release swarm after
swarm of killer bees over Fun City,
killing untold thousands and setting off a
cascade of havoc. Just as devious, he’s
setting up an old rival to take the blame.
The heroes must unravel a tangle of
clues, and battle a team of murderous
henchmen, to stop the plot and send evil
reeling.
In detail:
The big bad guy is Wickham
Cygnus, a record-industry mogul who
manages the infamous dancehall
BootyDome 57 in Fun City. Some years
ago, Cygnus sold his soul to the King of
the Damned in exchange for fame and
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seduced Gynt’s muse and drove her to
suicide.
Gynt snapped. He tried to take revenge
on Cygnus but failed horribly, ending up
mutilated and insane. So he refashioned
himself as the “Disco King”: a masked
phantom who haunts the shadows of the
BootyDome, scaring the patrons and
performing acts of sabotage. Cygnus
winks at all the mischief, since Gynt is
unwittingly making himself a perfect
patsy. The crazier Gynt acts, the more
plausible he looks as a terrorist out to
destroy the city.
The adventure begins when the heroes
get an indirect clue about the bee attack.
As they investigate further, they learn
about the Disco King and find evidence
linking him to the scheme. But by the
end they’ll figure out that Cygnus is the
one pulling the strings, and they’ll have
to battle past his toughest henchmen to
spoil his plans.
getting stronger and bolder, and even
the police won’t go into some
neighborhoods. The infrastructure is
crumbling, from yawning potholes to
balky subways to creaking bridges. And
the streets are getting denser and tenser
every day as refugees flood into town
from the ruins of the West Coast. From
what you’ve seen lately, Americo’s two
hundredth birthday might just be its last.
For the heroes, the 4th has an even
keener edge. Their patron, television
producer and cult personality Herman
Purvis, has found a timely passage in the
prophecies of Abednego Trestle. It
sounds like mumbo-jumbo (with lines
like
the twice-birthing day of a westerne
empyre
and
calamities divers attending
its city most prosperous
) but Purvis
assures the team the message is plain as
day: Something big and bad is going to
happen to Fun City during the
Bicentennial celebrations. And nobody
knows what.
Purvis has teams scouring the city for
any sign of the supernatural. For now,
he’s keeping your group in reserve so
they can be ready to move when the
threat is identified. So, your heroes begin
the day as usual, by taping an episode of
Do Your Worst!
—the talent contest-
cum-freak show that serves as their day
job.
To start things off, play the part of the
show’s announcer and give each
member of the team a turn in the
spotlight. (“From the Iguana Lounge in
El Gordo, the lovely Flamingo Doom!”)
Then recap the rules of the game, such
as they are: Performers rush onto the
stage and, well, do their worst. Judges
can boot them at any time by ringing the
outsize bell behind their platform.
Anyone who actually finishes his act
gets a score from 1 to 10—usually a
PART ONE:
LIVING FOR THE CITY
If your group isn’t familiar with
Damnation Decade
, you might give
them a copy of the introduction from the
rulebook (available online at
http://64.17.155.164/gr_files/grr1411_pr
e_01.pdf) or read them some highlights.
Then read or paraphrase the following,
which sets the stage for the day’s events.
It is the morning of July 4th, 1976—and
Fun City is holding its breath. Your
home town is playing host to the nation’s
Bicentennial festivities, with tall ships in
the harbor, a flag in every window and
racks of fireworks on the roofs of
skyscrapers. But nobody thinks the big
party will come off without a hitch—not
after everything that’s happened here in
the past two years. Riots have torn apart
large chunks of the city, street gangs are
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wacky fraction—and at the end of the
show the performer with the highest
score gets $237.40. The runner-up gets
the home version of the game.
Today, the first guest is Dr. Sack, a fast-
talking cornball comic who performs
with a paper bag over his head. He will
barrage host Rudy Ringo with insults
(“Hey, Rudy baby! Rudy baby! You
ever make love to your wife in the
shower?” “No.” “You should! She loves
it!”) until the judges chase him from the
stage. Next up: Amos LePetomaine, who
will use “his body’s natural melodic
discharges” to perform the chart-topping
smash
In the Hall of the Disco King.
Be
sure to emphasize the title here, since it
will obviously play a big role later on.
LePetomaine begins by belching, and
seems ready to broaden his range, when
the heroes hear a commotion backstage
(Listen DC 10). Equipment is crashing
to the floor, and stagehands are shouting.
The cause: One of Purvis’s other
operatives, a black private dick named
Donnie Throb, has staggered through the
stage door and collapsed dead just at the
edge of the wings.
What happened? Donnie heard whispers
in the hipster circuit about the Disco
King. Always on the lookout for a
supernatural threat, he staked out the
BootyDome and tracked down Gynt.
After some pointed questioning, Donnie
realized he and Gynt were on the same
side. Similarly, Gynt sensed that Donnie
could help him bring down Cygnus once
and for all.
So the Disco King told Donnie all that
he knew. Gynt had been overhearing bits
and pieces of Cygnus’s bee scheme for
weeks, and had seen strange things in the
dancehall’s air-conditioning systems. He
scurried up into the ducts and brought
back one of the fertility idols as
evidence. Donnie left Gynt with a
promise that he would return with
reinforcements.
But as Donnie headed out of the
dancehall, Cygnus’s goons—the dance
band Man Gang—were waiting for him.
The group’s leader, a garish thug in a
police uniform, fired on the private eye.
The bullet shattered the idol in his
pocket, tearing Donnie’s jacket and shirt,
and releasing the bees. The bugs traveled
through the holes in Donnie’s clothing,
stinging him mercilessly and sending
him to his fate. But he stayed on his feet
long enough to reach the heroes—and
deliver his own battered body as
evidence against Cygnus.
If you’re playing this adventure with
established characters, or making up a
new set specifically for this story, you
could simply have Donnie burst into
your team’s headquarters instead of a
television studio. Or work up a brief
introductory scene: The heroes receive a
call from Donnie, saying he’s in trouble,
and when they arrive they find his
corpse. If the patron in your game
doesn’t have any other operatives,
Donnie could be a friend of a team
member, a trusted contact or a law-
enforcement agent who has followed the
team’s adventures.
A Search (DC 10) of Donnie’s body,
dressed in a leather trench coat and black
turtleneck, will reveal the following:
• The cause of death isn’t immediately
visible. But the right side of his
turtleneck, from his waist to his
shoulder, feels wet and tacky, and there
is a gash in the shirt just above his waist.
Lifting his clothing reveals a gruesome
wound stretching the length of his torso.
A further Search (DC 10) will show that
the injury is actually a constellation of
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tiny punctures, each dripping with pus.
A Handle Animal, Knowledge (earth and
life sciences) or Treat Injury roll at DC
12 will show that each puncture is filled
with an abnormally large bee stinger.
• There is a bullet hole on either side of
his right-hand jacket pocket, as if the
slug tore into the pocket from the rear
and then exited in the front. Inside the
pocket are the shattered remains of a
clay statue. Pieced together, the object is
quite large, about the size of a sports
championship trophy, and the inside is
lined with a smooth, glossy ceramic
that’s cool to the touch. The figure itself
shows a fat, grinning female form with
outsize breasts and genitalia. From the
fissures in the statue, it’s obvious that a
bullet shattered the object, entering in
the rear and exiting from the front.
• In addition, there is a slash in the inside
of the right-hand jacket pocket, close to
Donnie’s waist. The slash is about the
same size as the cut in Donnie’s
turtleneck, and it’s in roughly the same
place.
• If the heroes don’t figure out what
happened, have them make an
Investigate or Intelligence check (DC
12) to piece together the following
scenario. Donnie was carrying the statue
in his pocket. Someone was pursuing
Donnie and fired on him. The bullet
struck the statue and shattered it. Shards
slashed a hole in the inside of his pocket
and in his turtleneck. Then whatever was
inside the idol traveled through the holes
in his clothing and attacked him.
Witnesses backstage will tell the team
that they saw Donnie rush out of one of
the elevators and barge past security.
The stagehands will be shaken but not
overly surprised at the sight: They all
know Purvis runs some sort of covert
operation out of the television studios,
even if the details are hazy. (Purvis’s
offices, by the way, are one floor above
the set for
Do Your Worst!
)
On the street, passersby (Gather
Information DC 15) will report seeing
Donnie staggering down the street,
surrounded by an overpowering
humming sound. The heroes can also
locate (Search DC 15) a trail of dead
bees stretching down the sidewalk to the
corner. The trail does not extend all the
way to the BootyDome, but the building
is hard to miss several blocks down the
avenue. If the dead bees confuse the
players, give them a DC 8 Intelligence,
Handle Animal or Knowledge (earth and
life sciences) check to recall that the
bugs die after stinging a victim.
To save the heroes from a snipe hunt,
Purvis will specify that Donnie was a
lone wolf who never told anyone what
he was investigating. As far as Purvis
knows, Donnie was too cagey even to
take notes. So there’s no need for the
team to tear apart his office or search for
his contacts. If they insist on doing so,
you could adapt the next few scenes to
fit. For instance, Donnie might have
heard about the Disco King from a
radical friend who attended one of
Candide Spangler’s fund-raisers.
But Purvis will make one thing
absolutely clear: This is the warning sign
the team has been waiting for. Donnie’s
death has something to do with the
ominous prophecies about Fun City. And
the heroes have only a day to figure out
what’s going on.
PART TWO:
KILLING ME SOFTLY
WITH HIS SONG
Most likely, the heroes will look into the
whys and wherefores of the fertility idol,
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which will quickly lead them to the
Disco King.
A note on locations: All of the spots
mentioned in this module are within a
couple of square miles of each other.
Travel time between them is basically
negligible: less than fifteen minutes, on
foot, from place to place.
usually get shipped to the States.
Crucially, the mass-produced idols don’t
have the inner lining of ceramic (which
also, remember, was cool to the touch).
So the statue was probably some kind of
special order.
GETTING TO THE CAVE
The trail could lead to Pankus and The
Philosopher’s Cave in a number of ways.
Most simply, the team could make the
leap of logic on their own: Swingers
love the idols; this particular idol seems
like a special order, and possibly pricey;
so let’s figure out where the high-end
swingers go. From there, it’s a simple
Research or Knowledge (streetwise)
check (DC 10).
More likely, the heroes will need a few
intermediate steps. They might contact
law-enforcement officials or the
Customs service and ask about recent
shipments from Los Manos. That will
take a simple Gather Information check
at DC 15, but you could also role-play
an encounter between, say, a surly clerk
and the irresistibly slinky Flamingo
Doom. If successful, the heroes will
learn that Pankus has been receiving box
after box of idols for some weeks now.
The heroes might also try going to the
source of the idols. A Research or
Gather Information check (DC 15) will
tell them that Los Manos’s ruling
strongman, Udolfo Capybara, has
nationalized the statue-making business.
So the local consulate will probably have
information about any shipments to Fun
City.
You can adjust this encounter depending
on how the adventure is going, and what
your heroes seem hungry for. If they
want to do some role-playing, send them
up against a troupe of single-minded
security guards, disingenuous secretaries
INVESTIGATING THE IDOL
The plan: Cygnus has been smuggling
killer bees into the country from
Suramerico in hollow fertility idols. The
statues are lined with a special ceramic
that keeps the creatures cool, and semi-
conscious, over the long voyage. To
keep his hands clean, Cygnus places the
orders through a third party: Maxton
Pankus, owner of a high-end Fun City
sex club called The Philosopher’s Cave.
Pankus often sends abroad for kinky
knickknacks, so the idols don’t raise any
eyebrows at Customs.
Meanwhile, Cygnus is planting plenty of
clues that his old rival is responsible for
the scheme. Cygnus always meets with
Pankus in a Disco King getup, gives his
name as “Gynt,” and insists that the
shipments be wrapped up by July 4th.
The heroes can figure out the
provenance of the idols by making a
Research check (DC 15), visiting an
expert or using Rudy Ringo’s Gather
Information prowess (DC 15). The
statues are native to the nation of Los
Manos in Suramerico, but have recently
become a hot export item: Mystical-
minded swingers up north use them for
bedside inspiration. Now Los Manos
devotes most of its industrial capacity to
cranking out copies.
The heroes should come away from their
research with one other crucial detail:
The idol in Donnie’s pocket was a lot
bigger and fancier than the models that
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