Following the trail
Questioning villains
Investigating doomsday device
target sites
Dr. Demoniak has built up his operation over the last four years. Over that time he has hired a lot of men (supervillains, goons, technicians and so on), built shitloads of stuff - weapons, bases, vehicles and a gigantic robot dragon. It’s hard to do all this without there being some sign. This has also cost vast amounts of money, which has been acquired partly through criminal means - drug trafficking, largely, and partly through genuine companies - usually high tech using patents that Dr. Demoniak himself has come up with.
The following clues are intended to be given to the players at appropriate points during the scenario. The criminal events, strange events and membership news right at the start (to give the PCs something to discuss at the meeting), the Dr. Demoniak events after the first TV announcement or the attack on the heroes' base and the quantum energy events after the nature of Dr. Demoniak’s doomsday device is discovered.
As the heroes follow clues up the trail they will eventually come to one of half a dozen people, Sal Saunders being one, who handle Dr. Demoniak’s affairs throughout the world, make payments to supervillains, channel funds, procure high tech equipment and so on. The incriminating papers will no doubt be kept in high tech safes or in very advanced computers. Sal Saunders-level people know where Dr. Demoniak’s secret base is but they are one hundred percent loyal to him and will never talk. There will be equipment to contact the flying base in their houses. This is vital as it is really the only way the flying base can be located. There is also evidence of shipments to ports in the Bay of Bengal (Calcutta/Bangladesh area) and to Lhasa (capital of Tibet) international airport and various airports in eastern China.
Two of these agents live in the US, with the rest scattered around the world’s wealthy and/or industrialised areas. The six agents don’t really have bases as such but will live in great luxury in well furnished and defended dwellings (probably using state of the art security systems rather than Dr. Demoniak weapons).
It should be stressed that these six high-level agents are very hard to track down as they conceal their activities behind layers of other agents, lawyers, holding companies, paper trails and so on. That should be the pattern for most of the PCs investigations (such as the web site, for example) usually ending in ‘No contact details - he contacts us. And he paid in cash.’ Sal Saunders and his ilk will invariably use aliases in all their dealings.
To get to the heroes base, the villains stepped into a large mirror at the pre-arranged meeting point (a warehouse in New York). They know that a being called the Reflection arranged transportation but have not met him, her or it. The job was assigned to them by an individual called Jack Romney, who can be contacted at Greasy Joe’s bar. He is an agent for The Fixer, a well known New York underworld figure who basically just puts people in touch with other people and takes a hefty cut. Salford Saunders contacted The Fixer, using an alias. They have had a meeting but The Fixer has no contact details for him.
Out of Morgan's gang, Morgan himself knows a fair amount about the secret base in Tibet but not its location. He knows of the flying base but cannot contact it. It calls him every so often to give him instructions. The rest of the gang were put together by Morgan himself and know nothing.
The PCs may investigate the sites where Dr. Demoniak's doomsday device was activated, such as the Palomani crater (previously known as Mount Palomani). If appropriate means of detection are employed, the heroes will first be able to determine that 'quantum energy' was used. At this point it is appropriate to reveal the three quantum energy-related clues listed above. Secondly the PCs may be able to find the small dimensional rift created to channel the quantum energy from underspace to our dimension.