This adventure is a sequel to the one that I ran last year, following up on the question of of "Has the Russian mob on Luna been totally compromised by Aberrants?" that came up in last year's session. That said, I'm wondering if running a sequel was the best idea since I had to spend time doing a recap of last year's session while also explaining the setting and system to a few players. I'm pondering my options for next year.
Again, the books aren't out yet and it's still kind of a new system for a lot of people. So if you read this and have any questions, feel free to ask me here or anyplace else where you can find me.
So here's the setup:
The player characters in this game are members of the Æon Trinity's Section Minerva. Section Minerva is kind of a covert ops/investigation team that doesn't officially exist. They don't do wetwork or anything like that, as Æon's really big on not becoming that type of organization (again), but either way they have a lot of autonomy and offer plausible deniability. Last year I let the group come up with a public cover for themselves and they didn't really jump on that, so for this year (and future years) I came up with one for them.
This particular team calls itself Grandstaff Consulting and Investigation, basically a private investigation firm.
The team's lineup this year[0] was:
- Jack Bryant, the group's Electrokinetic played by Ronnie[1]; a special operative with Orgotek, kind of a James Bond-type, recruited by the Trinity when they were looking to put an Electrokinetic on one of their teams
- Sollapo Lanzo[2], the group's Biokinetic played by Jared; a former criminal smuggler from Portugal recruited by the Norça and later lured away (with the Proxy's permission) by Æon
- Dingo, the group's Psychokinetic played by Daniel; a former Legionnaire soldier and tactician recruited by Section Minerva while looking for a challenge in his career, also possessing a Mindshare Auxiliary Mode, giving him a bit of telepathy as well
- Karl Westine, the group's Telepath played by Jack; a Jesuit from a well-off family who discovered his telepathic potential while exploring his faith but was recruited by the Trinity when the Vatican forbade him to join the Ministry
(For those of you interested in such things, I had a total of eight pregens available -- the above ones, including a Talent, a Quantakinetic, a Clairsentient, and a Vitakinetic. All of the pregens, barring the QK and the Talent, began as modified and updated versions of sample characters from the Order books because I love me a good Easter Egg. Furthermore, they've been updated and tweaked with a little more XP for this year. Between last year and this year, every pregen has been played but the Talent.)
Last year, in a nutshell, the group looked into the disappearance of a Clairsentient undercover operative (named William Tran) watching the local Russian mob. Apparently someone found an old Aberrant installation of some sort, the mob tried to cover it up before the authorities got a whiff of it and started crawling up everyone's butts to learn more. The Clairsentient, whose cover had been blown, was actually willing to help them keep it quiet until he could get the right people to handle it discreetly. The group found out where it was, raced to get there, to find that an Aberrant named Yegor had been also searching for it. They fought and subdued him. (William was found dead at the site, having been killed trying to cover it up.)
This session picks up a couple of days later. The news has reported on a horrible accident at the site -- no public mention of an Aberrant or the group. The group is in a sparse, recently-acquired space with Ben Parnell, their 'office manager' (in other words, their Æon liaison). The group is going to be looking more into the Aberrants' ties with the mob, and they've just gotten some paperwork they need to help sell their cover: someone's 'located' a life insurance policy for the recently-deceased William Tran, and Grandstaff Consulting and Investigation is officially determining the details of how he died to sort out how the policy is to pay out.
They've only got a couple of potential leads to start with. The relatively-weak Aberrant they captured is currently locked up in Lebedev Prison, elsewhere on the moon, and is supposed to be shipped back to Earth in a day or so. Ben thinks he could potentially arrange for them to have a chat with him, though.
Also, there's Miles Ross, a dealer at one of the casinos down in the lower levels of Olympus, who was hired to take out William and talked down. The President, the mysterious masked woman who runs the criminal underworld, kept him hidden for a while until the group found him, and now she's stashed him someplace again. The group has an address for him, but they also have reason to believe that someone's planning to get him off the Moon sometime soon.
Finally, there's Miles' boss at the casino, a higher-ranking mobster named Maxim, who might have a little more useful info but he might be harder to get to.
They decide to start with Miles, because he's a known quantity. They head down to the lower levels, to an area called Vila Jacinta which is one of the nicer, cleaner parts of the lowest parts of Olympus. They head to the apartment where they know Miles is, and see an old man at the end of the walkway obviously watching the door.
Jack uses Technokinesis to put a tap on the guy's phone, while Sollapo tries to use biosense to see if anyone else is in the apartment with Miles. He botches the roll, though, and gets overwhelmed with the life signs of everyone in the building, and is abilities spasm, causing his features to visibly shift for a moment. The old man spills the cards he's been playing with. Karl tries reading his mind to see what he's going to do, if anything, but the man's thoughts are just too disordered to get a grip on (he failed the roll, in other words -- the dice just aren't with these players).
Jack sighs and just knocks on the door, telling Miles inside that they're from the insurance company and have a payout for him. Miles opens the door, sees Jack and goes "Oh, what now," as Jack just grabs him and pushes him inside. Sollapo and Karl follow. Meanwhile, Dingo tries and fails to blow up the old man's water bottle to keep him distracted a little longer, and then he goes inside with the others.
Inside, the group interrogates Miles. Jack tells him that he wants him to think very hard about what he knows about the organization, because he knows that Karl is going to be reading Miles' mind to verify if he's telling the truth. As they're going over that, the old man outside tries calling Max on his phone, and Jack senses this and sends Dingo out to stop him. Dingo proceeds to mess with the guy's phone telekinetically so he can't make a coherent call to anyone.
The rest of the group asks Miles if there's been any organizational shake-ups, anything weird going on in the Vor V Zakone (the syndicate that was employing him). He says that Yegor (whom he doesn't know was the Aberrant they fought) has recently been spending a lot of time away from the casino he helps run, mostly with VIPs from Comstock Heavy Ores, one of the mining companies that frequent the spot. (Said mining companies also have lots of deals with the VVZ) He mentions that a woman he knows as Alice V is Maxim's and Yegor's superior, and she's been throwing her weight around a lot more than usual. They ask what she does, but he doesn't know, that's too far out of his pay grade. She's a captain, and has her fingers in a lot of pies. Karl gets an image of what she looks like from Miles' thoughts.
While they're interrogating him, Sollapo looks through the apartment (and goes out of his way to check the fridge) and finds that Miles is living out of suitcases, like he's not planning to stay long.
They think they've got everything they need from Miles, or at least everything they can get, so they go outside to find Dingo still messing with the old man's phone as he tries to get rid of it. Jack calls Ben about seeing if they can find out more about what's going on with Miles in the meantime.
They follow up on what Miles' name-dropping of Comstock Heavy Ores, and Jack checks to see what they can find publicly. Comstock is one of the bigger and older mining companies on Luna, and there are rumors that they may have once made a deal with the Space Brigade -- a group of Aberrants who took over the Moon some decades back -- to function during that time. They've also had some recent incidents -- a foreman at one of their sites named Morgan Beck died in a mysterious vehicle crash a few hours after the events of last year's session. Also, a mineshaft formerly owned by CHO wound up into the hands of a small independent mining firm, and that shaft had a very recent accident where a bunch of miners hit a gas pocket and suffocated. So sounds like some shadiness is going on there.
Comstock Heavy Ores is based out of Boltzmann Station, on another part of the Moon altogether, but there's a branch office conveniently down in the mob-controlled levels, 'close to the workers.' So they head down to that office to talk to them. When they arrive, Sollapo immediately sneaks around back of the building and starts assessing the security cameras. The rest go in the front.
There's a guy behind the desk named Shane, and Jack shows him their credentials and starts asking questions. While Shane tries to sort out who these people are, Jack leans in and touches his computer monitor, and uses his psionic abilities to try and bring down the security system. He botches, however. The lights go off, alarms start flashing, and Dingo starts telekinetically messing with his phone to keep him from calling the authorities. Jack offers to let Shane use his phone, mostly to keep track of who he's calling -- but he tells his software agent on the phone to inform Shane that the number is busy.
While this is going on, Dingo just pushes past Shane and heads into the back, where the woman who runs the office (named Agatha) comes out an threatens him with a weapon. (He is trespassing, after all) She tries to order him to go back out front, and he just tries to convince her to put down the gun -- badly enough that she tries to shoot him with the taser but misses. He uses his powers to pull the gun out of her hand and smack it into her head hard enough to incapacitate her. At the same time, Sollapo has just come in through the back and is poking through their records.
Back out front, Shane reaches under the desk for a gun while Jack grabs him and threatens him with a taser glove. He pulls Shane away from the desk and sends his software agent to rummage through the office's computers. Jack asks Shane what he knows about what's been going on lately, and Shane lets slip that CHO was the company that found that old Space Brigade lair, and that he also knows about the fight with the Aberrant (though he doesn't know this group was involved). He also confirms that Alice does some work for the company, often consulting with their surveying teams in some fashion and helping to find work crews.
Sollapo, going through records in the back, finds a bunch of stuff confirming what Shane's already telling them. He also finds that sometimes her surveying data leads the mining company to find 'rare mineral artifacts,' which she gets to keep and pays them bonuses for them. He also finds that Morgan had a meeting with Alice very shortly before she died.
Back in front, Shane asks if Agatha's okay, and Dingo implies that she's dead, just to mess with him. But Karl quickly steps in to rewrite Shane's memories of the whole ordeal to cover their tracks. While he's doing that, Sollapo steals Shane's lunch from the break room fridge, and they also make sure Shane remembers that he spilled his lunch which is why it's not in the fridge any more.
They head out, wondering if Alice could be some sort of rogue psion, and they make plans to take a closer look at things out at Boltzmann Station. Also, Dingo tries to use Thermokinesis to heat up the stolen lunch for Sollapo, and botches the roll and explodes it all over him. And with that distraction out of the way, they go to take one of the maglev trains out to Boltzmann.
So they're on the train, crossing the Lunar surface to get to Boltzmann Station. They're alone in the train car when the doors open on either end and a handful of guys (three on one end, two on the other) suddenly come in. Karl tries sensing their emotions to get an idea of what's likely to happen, but all he can get is some sort of weird static. Not just the normal sort of 'oh, I had trouble reading this guy's mind' static, but more like 'oh shit there's some sort of Aberrant in this train car' static.
Upon being informed of this, Jack warns the group to hold onto something. He then uses his abilities to take control of the emergency brakes and pumps them a little bit to throw the impending ambushers off-balance. At which point Sollapo runs at the three on one end, quickly disabling one of the goons. Karl tries to mind-control one of the others on the opposite end into turning on the rest, but the best he can do is slow him down enough that Jack can move in and take those two out (one with his sonic pistol, the other with a hard elbow strike to the head). Dingo telekinetically slams one of the remaining goons against the wall hard enough to drop him.
The remaining goon gets in Sollapo's face. He blinks and his eyes turn black, and smoke emerges from the corners of his mouth. It's not a full-blown Aberrant, but definitely someone who's been mutated an is under an Aberrant's control. He says something vaguely menacing (I'm actually blanking on what I came up with at the time) and produces an obsidian blade from his arm, which would have cut Sollapo's flesh to ribbons if not for the bioweave armor he was wearing. They're able to concentrate their efforts to disabling him and restrain him. Jack calls up Ben to inform him of what's just happened, and he makes a few calls ahead to give them a little breathing room to get away from the scene without having to answer any questions when they arrive at Boltzmann.
Karl tries reading the mutant's mind, but all he can get is an image of a large, hangar-like chamber with a retracting roof and some sort of launching system. Possibly Boltzmann Industrial Launch Systems which, well, launches cargo into space for varying industries. Jack picks through the guy's phone with his Technokinesis, and finds a text message ordering him to stop the investigators from reaching Boltzmann, and they should prepare to go dark for a while. But they get an idea...
Sollapo uses Transmogrify to reshape his vocal cords and allow him to impersonate the mutant's voice, and then they call the number back. A woman -- presumably Alice -- answers and they tell her that they succeeded at their mission, but one of the investigators has a biocomp that they can't get into. She sighs and tells them to go ahead and bring it to the launch site, and she'll just take it with her and figure it out later. When asked, she assures her flunky (or what she assumes is her flunky) that she's already gotten security out of the way so he should be able to just get to the launch site. Then Sollapo begins to ask her if there's a break room, and Jack cuts off the call.
They arrive at Boltzmann Station, and as promised they're able to stay ahead of security. They head straight to BILS, where they find that the place is empty except for a woman who matches the image they got of Alice V. She's at a terminal next to a mass driver cargo launching system, punching something in. Jack reaches out with his psi abilities and can sense the quantum energies coming off of her. Jack activates the chameleon suit he's wearing to hide himself while Sollapo achieves the same effect by rewriting his own flesh and bioarmor.
Dingo and Karl distract her while Sollapo sneaks up and grabs her, holding her still while Jack commandeers a forklift with his powers to try and ram it into her. He can't quite get it up to speed in time, so while she produces a massive obsidian blade of her own and slashes at Sollapo, Dingo telekinetically accelerates the forklift so it rams her and slams her into the side of the launcher. Karl reaches out to try and strip her of the will to fight.
Jack then overcharges the forklift battery to give her a powerful electric blast while she pushes the forklift away to continue clashing with Sollapo. He's unable to get past her stone-like skin, but she's able to impale him with the impossibly-sharp blade -- a strike that actually starts draining his life force. Dingo takes a loose chunk of control panel and throws it at her like a massive shuriken, cutting her open to reveal black blood. Her skin starts turning go black glass, spider-webbing out from the wound. Karl at this point tries to engage her in hand to hand combat, but he just can't get past her stone skin.
Jack then starts channeling electricity through that panel to blast her while she keeps taking down Sollapo -- but is visibly slowing down because of Karl's earlier efforts. Sollapo is slowing down as well, the life drain weakening his efforts and making it harder for him to dodge her own attacks. But before she can finish him off, Dingo gets a good grip on her telekinetically and throws her high enough to slam into the ceiling, and between that and letting her drop to the ground, the fight is taken out of her.
We had to wrap up there with another of the VVZ-aligned Aberrants taken out. But there's still the larger question as to whether or not these are individuals manipulating the criminal organization or if their grip goes deeper than that...
Which actually leaves me pondering what I want to do for next year's game. The group didn't really have the best chance to actually investigate the larger organization. We had a few things eating up available time -- I waited a little bit after the default start time to see if anyone else was going to show, as we had a less-than-full group, and I also had to teach people about the setting. And then there's just the usual little distractions you get with players. So it's probably for the best that I didn't make the investigation itself more complex.
But I am wondering if I want to try and continue this story next year[3], make a bit of a trilogy out of it, and just put more effort into making it more of a dedicated investigative thing. Or if I'd be better off coming up with a new story, maybe one that would work with a different cast of pregens. I dunno. We'll see. I welcome your thoughts in the comments.
But with that, I hope you enjoyed the write-up. Thanks for reading!
[0]-- The nature of the Trinity Continuum is that it's a multiverse with timelines strung together, so there's always different possibilities for the future (and the present!) and some such. Thus, it's easy enough to say that last year's team underwent a version of this year's adventure in their own timeline, and this year's team experienced a version of last year's adventure in this timeline.
[1]-- Yes, this is the same Ronnie from last year! Much to my delight, he came back to play for this one, so he basically picked up the character he played last year and continued with him.
[2]-- No, I don't know where that name came from either.
[3]-- I haven't fully decided whether I'm doing Gencon again next year, but I'm considering my options.
No comments:
Post a Comment