Tracking Control
Since they relocated Heat is actually 0. So they don't need to worry about the authorities yet.To speed up play, I put my players on a timer for planning operations. If they put together a plan in under 5 minutes, they'd gain 8 General pool points to spend on the operation. If they did it in less than half that time, I planned to give them build points for Cover or Network. Sadly it took them 2 minutes 50 seconds.
Locating an ideal site required Urban Survival.
Scarlet hacks Gomez's phone. She gets her schedule, clearing the way for the abduction that evening. However she also detects and trips some CIA security software. Luckily she is able to spoof her location.
Scarlet fails her Digital Intrusion roll by 1 (the difficulty was an impressive 7) but uses Preparedness to elude any trace. Her Electronic Surveillance informs her that this is not knock off software but the real deal. Also surveillance indicates she calls her handler each evening at 8 PM.
Robin slips into the apartment on the third floor during the day, waiting in a closet. Gomez arrives home and does her normal evening routine. But something triggers Gomez's suspicions. As she retreats from the apartment, Robin rushes out and injects her with a sedative.
Robin fails the Infiltration roll by 1 (Difficulty 6) so Gomez notices something is off. Robin makes a Hand-to-Hand roll to deliver the sedative. I have Gomez spend 2 Health to beat the rapidly made up difficulty of 5, which she does.
At this point I mess up. Having not looked closely at the Toxin rules, I don't have a reduced effect occur. Since my wife has been in and out during the planning, she's also missed a few important bits of information. Like the fact that Gomez is an Olympic class athlete.
Gomez shakes off the effects and wrestles free. As she makes a break for the balcony, Robin tags her with a taser. The doctor stumbles onto the balcony and manages to swing down the level below.
Gomez actually fails the first roll to escape the room (2 points of Athletics spent against difficulty 4) but the game doesn't have a real grapple system (at least one that keeps someone from running away). Robin makes her Shooting roll but I totally forget the rules, thinking that it works like the stunner in TimeWatch. I have Gomez make another Health roll instead of losing the next 4 actions. I continue to get the taser rules wrong for rest of the game.
Robin alerts the others and stays to take care of Gomez's evening call in. John brings the truck around to ambush the doctor but she lands on top of it.
John makes a standard Driving roll to cut her off but only gets a 3. Gomez makes her Athletics check to swing down from the upper stories since she has points to burn.
He starts forward hoping to knock her loose. She does lose her grip but tumbles to her feet. Nasir jumps out and fires his Taser, missing her.
This is an opposed Driving and Athletics check. John loses. Then Nasir misses his Shooting roll.
We start a chase, which works to the groups favor as I've heavily spent Athletics by this point.
John chases her down on foot. He tases her again before taking her out with a haymaker.
Again I mess up the Taser rules and then he uses his Hand-to-Hand MOS to deliver a blow to her eye for max damage (dropping her -7 Health...).
The men drag her to go to a secure location while Scarlet helps Robin complete the call in with some voice scrambling software.
Basically using another Electronic Surveillance spend to boost Robin's Disguise roll.
At the interrogation, John poses as a U.S. official. Scarlet patches Gomez up and then leaves her to his probing questions. Gomez maintains her innocence but ultimately coughs up information on the headquarters for the operation, a ruined castle a few hours drive away.
Scarlet uses Medic to make sure Gomez can answer questions and then they use Interrogation (no spend) to get the intel.
They learn this is a CIA operation to fix up and enhance crippled and dying soldiers. Gomez is unaware of the full horror of the program. She does however tell them about Special Officer Steven Lynch and Doctor Gerhard as well as the details of the upper levels of the castle.
Robin recognizes the second name from her "second life" in espionage. She helped extract him from Russia's biowarfare program, only to see the doctor and his Nazi based research disappear into American hands. Lynch is also a known operator, a former field agent benched after damage to his knee. He might have been John's equal before the "accident".
Robin has a hidden history. Unlike most of the team, she didn't serve with an American intelligence service. She's ex-KGB and ex-Mousad. The latter was her second job, one where she hoped to atone for some of her earlier wetwork.
John uses Network to create Corporal Phil Drake so they can disappear her. He puts 3 points in him.
Once they have gotten everything from her, John calls up an old friend, Phil Drake, to debrief her while they move on to their next operation.
Robin suggests they let the CIA operation stew for now. The team heads for Zurich and the bank heist Robin has been planning. If all goes well this should fund the rest of the operation against the Conspiracy.
Yeah, I didn't see this coming yet. I thought I had at least until the end of this session. Good thing I prep well in advance.
Once in Zurich basic surveillance turns up the external security systems, the daily routines, and the identity of the security team (SBS). Scarlet inserts a breaker switch to cut off the SBS in case an external alarm is triggered.
Some basic Surveillance and a Cryptography spend.
Nasir meanwhile impersonates a Saudi prince and opens an account at the bank. Jean Montavan happily shows him around, allowing him to scope out the internal security and the vault. He also notes the combinations to the basement and vault locks.
Nasir puts 3 points into this Cover and spends 1 to pass a credit check. Notice spends get the team the combinations.
On the way out he notes someone watching from across the street. She disappears but they peg her as a possible thief. Based on his description the team determine she is Menena Chakroun, the so-called Queen of Thieves.
Criminology spend.
The team works on their plan. Nasir will snag Jean's card the night of the theft, then they will sneak in with the cleaning crew. Once inside they will build a false wall and hide until everyone but the night guards leave. Scarlet will hack the central servers to loop the security feeds. They will break into the manager's office where the keys are stored and retrieve them. Then they will slip down to the basement, use heat suits to get past the heat sensors, avoid the pressure plate and open the vault. Moving very slowly to avoid the motion sensors they will then rob the place starting with the money the Black Sea Bank is bringing in.
As they prepare, the agents notice another problem. Black birds and crows seem to be following them everywhere. Robin tranquillizes one and brings it back to their hideout (a hotel room) for study. Scarlet however discovers the bird is some sort of zombie, infected with the same bacteria that oozed out of Serge Milic. They cage it then seal it up once they realize it is sending out pheromones to communicate with its free brethren outside.
I give them team the option to use teamwork on a Sense Trouble roll (Difficulty 7). Robin makes an easy Shooting roll to catch a bird and everyone makes their Stability rolls once the truth is revealed. An Occult spend reveals the pheromone communication.
The team decides to break camp. John creates some noxious chemicals to cover their tracks and then they move location, leaving the bird behind.
A Chemistry spend boosts their Surveillance roll to avoid the supernatural surveillance system. They consider keeping the bird and breaking their code of communication but decide that would take too long.
Later as Robin and Nasir head back from a shopping trip, Nasir’s wallet is stolen. Spotting the thief as he doffs his disguise, Nasir chases after him, disguising himself as he goes. He quickly closes the gap, following the thief through a department store and into the back parking lot. Robin heads around the store to cut him off after buying a moped off a local.
The thief reaches his car just before the grab him. Then he goes up in smoke as it explodes.
The pair fail their initial Sense Trouble rolls but make the follow-up roll. Nasir uses Disguise to hide (upping the Difficulty of the other guy's Athletics rolls since he thinks he lost him). Robin makes a Negotiation spend to buy a moped giving the team +2 speed. Thus they win every Athletics roll of the chase.
As a crowd of onlookers watch the blazing wreckage, Nasir spots Menena and another man in the crowd. Robin recognizes the man from her earlier work: he's Mossad. Nasir follows after them.
He uses Urban Survival to keep pace. Robin makes a Sense Trouble roll.
Then someone shoots at Robin! She spots the sniper in time to avoid the shot and then races up to the building top as he or she escapes. Robin tags the heavily clad sniper with a tracker and then alerts the rest of the team.
Robin makes a Shooting roll as well as a Stability roll. Why she should make a Stability test isn't immediately clear. But if she had failed the monster would have erased her memory of the incident.
Scarlet tracks the signal as it fades in and out strangely. Eventually it settles where the Lisky Bratva have made camp. All camera footage along the route shows only blurs where the sniper should be. She's not sure if there is just one or several of the "blurries" in town.
Scarlet makes her Surveillance roll to track it and Electronic Surveillance yields the camera footage. A second Surveillance roll fails and thus they have no clue about numbers.
Meanwhile Nasir waits at a bar down the street from the flop house Menena and her team are hiding at.
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