I ended up adapting the introductory scenario. I decided to punch it up by starting in media res, with the PCs hunted by mysterious bikers while racing along the Serbian country side. Where did these bikers come from? Well I took some liberties with the plot as well.
(S)Entries, Part 1
My players mostly built their characters a couple of weeks before, so we jump straight into the action. The cast includes (using their code names):- Robin, an ex-wetworker turned handler, who is built-in the mold of Black Widow. So she's a badass in every way. She also feels she needs to atone for her past misdeeds. Previous affiliation(s) unknown.
- Scarlet, an analyst and medic, who left Overwatch, a private espionage and defense contractor, in disgust over the material that they covered up. She's not much of a fighter but she makes up for it in technical skills.
- John, the muscle, who worked for the DOD after leaving the army. He's semi-retired though he talks to his old handler the "Chessplayer" regularly. He is an expert combatant and all around patriot.
Robin is hired by Georg Rudek by parties unknown for a heist. She assembles a team (Scarlet and John) and together they agree to steal a laptop from Brigadier-General Malcolm Lennart, a Canadian Air force officer working with the UN.
The job goes off without a hitch but as they crossover from Sarajevo to Serbia, they find themselves pursued by a group of bikers. A look at their insignia identifies the gang as part of the Bulgarian branch of the Night Wolves.
With John at the wheel, Robin leaps out of the agents' Jeep Cherokee and commandeers one of the motorcycles. With her help, the others manage to whittle down the gang's numbers. Though John does a fair job at the wheel of the jeep, they eventually crash into a barrier while entering a tunnel. After overpowering and/or killing the remaining bikers, the team take the sole survivor, Yoan, along with them to interrogate.
The chase rules worked well enough, though I would have liked better highlighting of how leaping from vehicles were handled. I didn't see them until after the session.
The bikers were somewhat hampered by the need to spend chase pool point to shoot and drive at the same time, which helped even the odds with the agents (who they outnumbered 4 to 1). All in all it was a fun fight. Robin used Military Science to pick out the leader which led to some complications later.
John crashed trying to Swerve. They probably need a dedicated driver (and get one in a few sessions).
The subsequent Interrogation (aided by Intimidation) was a straight clue finding expedition. No rolls or spends.
Yoan reveals that the gang was directed by their boss Boris (now sadly deceased thanks to Robin specifically targeting the leader earlier on) under orders from their chapter boss, the Axeman. Having extracted all the information Yoan has they eliminate him and dump the body off a bridge.
I'm not running with Burn rules, otherwise killing Yoan in cold blood would result in Stability loss.
Also on the Axemen, the real life overall leader of the Night Wolves is known as The Surgeon.
Working on a hunch Scarlet finds and disables the tracking device on the laptop. She identifies the model as one used by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, though modified to transmit on a different frequency.
Standard use of Electronic Surveillance with a 1 point spend for the CSIS info.
At the next town the team exchanges their jeep for a stolen car. Robin calls the contact number and leaves a message about a change of meet location to a night club in Belgrade she knows well. She also plants the number of one of her burner phones on the ditched jeep for the pursuers.
Robin has Infiltration 8+ so has the Open Sesame cherry which lets her open any standard locks. Like most car doors.
This is also where the paranoia due to the chase began to drive the story off the original plot as the group changes the meet site (and thus avoids an ambush). Also calling the contact number starts the clock on Rudek's death.
Robin takes them to a safe house inside a local hotel overlooking the club. With the cache of surveillance supplies hidden there, Scarlet keeps an eye on things while they wait for their contact Anton Dedopovic who has the other half of their money.
Robin makes a Preparedness roll for the "safe house" cache and Scarlet makes a good Surveillance roll.
Scarlet spots Anton’s ambush preparations as a sniper positions himself on a nearby roof. Down below Anton's men enter the club while Anton waits outside in his BMW. Quietly John takes out the sniper while Robin sneaks into Anton’s car and puts a gun to his head. When he resists she underlines her point by stabbing him in the leg.
Robin uses Infiltration again to access the car and then some great use of an Intimidation spend. She also added some great material by establishing a prior (poor) relationship with Anton.
John meanwhile makes his Infiltration roll and then beats the sniper unconscious with his Hand-to-Hand.
Persuaded Anton directs his goons to leave the money in the club and drive away. Scarlet retrieves it from the club and finds that all but the top bills are blank paper. Under pressure Anton babbles about vampires, his illness and how he no longer has their money.
At this point the PCs (who of course all have comms on them) begin to chuckle.
Then something moves in the shadows of the club. Something man-sized but much faster and stranger than a wolf attacks. It savages Scarlet badly while a similar creature, part man and part beast, gives Anton’s BMW a sunroof. A third climbs the building John is on. He puts a round in it before it jumps him.
The werewolves (whose stats I'll post at a later date) possess super human strength, wall climbing and inhuman speed. Things look bad for our agents. Scarlet in particular only had 7 Health and is soon dropped into the negatives.
Most of the group does well on Stability rolls except John who's Stability drops 5 points. He's okay for now but only a few points from zero.
Scarlet flees bleeding badly as the creature moves inhumanly fast from the building to a nearby alley and back. With a mighty heave John hurls his attacker off the building while Robin and Anton manage to smash their monster onto a wrought iron fence.
Anton blows his Drive pool on hurting the werewolf, Scarlet burns some Health remaining conscious and John uses his MOS to automatically succeed in a Hand-to-Hand roll.
Technically Robin's werewolf almost died, hover at -11 Health at the end of the encounter. They have no special immunities to death,
Robin leaves Anton under the watchful gun of a barely conscious Scarlet. She then retrieves John, who has outrun his monster, in a second stolen car.
An Architecture spend here helps put distance between the monster and them.
(S)Entries, Part 2
Our second session was much less eventful. Partly because I let the pressure relax and partly because we did more character creation (like sources of stability).Anton soon turns the tables on Scarlet by crashing the car and forcing her to escape down an alley. Anton searches for her but ultimately decides to cut and run. After chatting with the others over the comms, she arranges to rejoin them at a nearby bridge.
Yeah, Anton's a dick and intends to get the laptop. The group sensibly did not leave it in his presence (Robin is carrying it). Scarlet (somewhere around -3 Health) has to scramble to escape him. Luckily she makes her Infiltration roll.
Next they find a new safe house, far from the werewolf attack. John makes up a new contact and then spends all 2 of his points to establish a safe house. Obviously things will soon go south.
John calls up his friend, Serge Milic, a local who keeps an eye out for potential defectors in Belgrade's embassies. Serge agrees to take 'Sam' and his friends to his safe house. While they recoup, Scarlet does some digging into their employers. Unfortunately she gets blocked out trying to trace the money trail for their payment.
So the group refreshes three skills each. Scarlet also uses her Medic to patch up the team from the combat (and restore Health). She has the cherry for that ability so she can heal herself as well as the others. Robin uses some of her Shrink to shore up John's nerves (and Stability).
Scarlet tries some hard Digital Intrusion rolls but bids too low.
A half hour later several Serbian gangsters bang on the door. Serge is not happy. The team decides to flee, splitting with Serge on the rooftops.
I think I should have made it clear they could have taken these guys. They were just a half-dozen mooks and could have directed them to their quarry much faster. Oh well.
The chase was a quick Athletics test.
After escaping the gangsters, Robin calls a contact of hers known as Zer0. The expert hacker accepts her payment and a half hour later they have Rudek's location. He's just arrived in Beirut and is staying at a fancy seaside hotel.
Operating under cover identities the team crosses the border into Montenegro and then arrange a flight to Lebanon.
The team arranges their first set of Covers: a military historian (John), tourist (Scarlet) and Miranda Bletchly (Robin), a photojournalist. They make the easy Cover test.
When they reach Rudek;s room, they find the door unlocked. Inside Rubek hangs dead, a knife pinning him to the wall. Bite marks on his wrist resemble those of a snake bite. They collect samples, grab the burnt remains of his phone, and snag the security footage on their way out.
From the clues they determine the killer was Madison Smith, a supposedly deceased comrade of John’s. It seems she is very much alive though she walks with what appear to be prosthetic legs. She also possesses superhuman strength and possibly a poisonous bite. The venom is a neurotoxin.
Basic uses of Military Science and Diagnosis.
The group finds another safe house via Scarlet’s local contact, Peter Yared. There they dig into the laptop's files and into Brigadier-General Malcolm Lennart's background.
Another Network use here, again to gain a safe house. Yarad only uses a few of his points so they might be able to use them should they return (in say the Treason in the Blood section of the Zalozhiniy Quartet).
Most of this info comes from Data Recovery, Research and Tradecraft.
Lennart seems clean, except for one curious incident. His mother recently recovered from inoperable cancer thanks to the help of a firm known as Panecea Pharmaceuticals. It is possible he might have been leveraged by the Conspiracy through them.
Recovering the SIM card from Georg Rudek’s phone, Scarlet then tracks his recent calls to a boat in the Danube in Belgrade. That boat belongs to Danilo Brigovic, a boss in Nasa Stvar.
He must have been the money behind the operation. But who is the boss?
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