GUMSHOE: Night's Black Agents - Tinker Tailor Vampire Die

Due to player demand, we're starting Season 2 tonight...as in any-second-now.

When we last left our team, things weren't looking so good. Most of the team was missing, unreachable or dead.

Before we talk about the adventure of tonight, here's an update on who we know is alive and kicking.

Mace Hunter & MikeSmith - sitting on the curb watching Headquarters burn
Dr Carter Byers - at home, having just been fired from the hospital

Nick Darter, Rossini - captured, sitting on a second floor cell of a disused oil derrick just off the coast.

Desdemona - also captured, also in the cell with Nick and Rossini, but also about halfway into the transformation to take her from mortal spy to immortal bloodsucker.

So that's where things stand. We begin Season 2: Tinker Tailor Vampire Die in the cell with Nick and Rossini.....

As always GM comments are in double parentheses and mechanics are in braces.

Nick didn't have much on him, but there was always the stake. [1 point Preparedness spend]. And sitting there in the cell, watching his would be executioner hunger and prepare to reach such an animalistic point that she'd

likely fly across the room faster than he could blink and tear out his throat, he remembered a conversation he had with Mace.

"Always keep a stake."
"In what?"
"No. I mean keep one close. It will mean the difference between life and death."

And that stake he kept in a dive knife sheath against his left calf, under a sock.

It was that stake, he knew, he'd have to drive into Desdemona's heart to keep her from killing him or Rossini.

Or both.

(([Staking a vampire won't kill them, it simply paralyzes them. Beheading, dissection or exposure to other material will destroy them. Staking a vampire is like pressing Pause. Removing the stake at any time depresses Pause.]))

Rossini held her down. It wasn't hard, she was in and out of consciousness at this point, so it was more a matter of just keeping away from her mouth. And Nick drove the stake into her. She squealed, a sick orgasmic sound he didn't want to have echoing in the cold room for very long. She twitched and sputtered, locking her face into a rictus somewhere between pleasure and terror. But she held, frozen, muscles tense, the buds of fangs just starting to break through the gumline.

(([Killing a teammate cost them each HALF their Stability]))

But it wasn't enough to leave her staked. If they slept, a guard, anyone could easily come in, remove the stake and they'd be toast. So, with a nod, they knew what had to be done.

There was a plate of food the guards had brought Nick earlier. He didn't eat it, but he kept the plate. He shattered it against the wall and gave Rossini a crescent sliver.

"You can't be serious." said the lunatic.
Nick sighed. "Either cut her or cut your wrists. Your choice. But I know what I'm doing."

Were this an op, they'd call Carter and have him talk them through dissection. Or they'd ship the body off to whatever lab he sequestered and leave him to his power tools and splatter shield and apron. But it was just them, and all they had was a broken plate for a knife.

The blood didn't splatter. Rossini thought it would, but the stake must have paused everything, so instead it was like cutting through flesh-with-a-gelatin-core. Messy. Smelly. Unbelievably intimate.

Desdemona died, though Rossini and Nick agreed that she likely died the moment she was infected, and all they were doing now was disposing of another fanged corpse. Part of Rossini, part not claimed by insanity, faux
insanity or some other part of his hardened criminal mind, wasn't sure if she died from the stake or when he took her head off. He hoped she didn't feel or remember it. He didn't want to think about it.

In a crude game of basketball, they lobbed the parts out the window, just in time for sunrise. They heard a few chunks catch fire like old logs in winter fireplaces as they tumbled out to the ocean. They wept as the sun rose.

MEANWHILE ((this is where we took a break and ate food))....

Mace and MikeSmith picked themselves up off the curb before the fire trucks arrived. Mace boosted a car [1 point Filch spend] and the two of them drove as far as they could on whatever gas was in the tank. Turns out, counting
the cash MikeSmith had in his pocket, they got all the way out of the state. They reached a small town in Vermont and found a truck stop.

Step one would be to contact the agents. At least that's what Tradecraft said. But Mace counted on the fact that everything he was doing was monitored, so it was time to cheat the system.

When your enemies know all your moves, the only smart thing to do is do everything they don't think you capable of.

So, from the counter of a greasy truck stop, Mace Hunter and MikeSmith launched a new operation - Operation Cuckoo.

Cuckoo would turn them from agents to criminals, from prey to predators and from food to hunters.

Mace gave the order to Mike to get them a new vehicle, by any means necessary. Mike "found" a set of truck keys in a guy's pocket when he went to the bathroom [1 point Filch spend]. They didn't even pay the tab on three cups of coffee and a piece of apple pie.

Via CB Mace left a message for Carter's ex-wife, who was a radio enthusiast and would get Carter a message without raising too many eyebrows. He told her to get Carter to Burlington Vermont, a place Mace chose because he once drove through there and hated it.

MikeSmith knew a church that would grant them a little leeway and asylum there. [3 point Network spend]. It wasn't much, but it had beds, showers and supplies. They were able to get cleaned up and even changed into new clothes before Carter arrived.

But Carter didn't come empty-handed. Although he had been fired from the Hospital on charges that he was smuggling drugs to local kids, he was able to walk out with boxes full of material from his desk. Boxes that security guards didn't really look too closely at. A trio of handguns, some flares, some silver ingots and a whole gallon of holy water all made Operation Cuckoo a little more comfortable.

They armed themselves, and honestly, didn't know what to do. They'd need money. They'd need resources. Mace's notebook laid out some possible targets - a church in Mexico, a shipping company in Seattle and this Adoption
agency all looked like good started points. Carter checked them out on the laptop and they started planning. [a 2 point Research spend] A route existed, and they could, if they planned to hit the Adoption Agency in California, could drive right down the coast and take them all out.

That's when the beeping started. Carter had GPS trackers running constantly on Agents, he used them to give data to Mace or Nick, whoever was running the Op. Each agent's tracker was pretty high-end, and Desdemona's flickered
on for just a second. The trackers run off body heat and pulse, but are built to give one last great burst of info when they go offline. And hers just went offline.

They'd need a boat.

Carter and MikeSmith became Tom Jacques and Jerry Cousteau, [2 point Cover and Disguise spends] two fisherman looking for the next big catch. Mace became Stephen Strange their navigator.

((Mace has ZERO navigation or piloting ability, so of course, he's going to set the course and steer it))

They left Vermont just after midnight and found a small Connecticut town with a boat for sale. Well, it wasn't so much for sale as it was poorly secured. [1 point Filch spend, 1 point Traffic Analysis spend, 1 point Preparedness spend]

And with the last of their cash they picked up two shotguns, sandwiches, a case of beer and a bottle of rum - all the things a good pirate needs. ((Arr.))

Carter's computer logged Desdemona's GPS tracker to an oil rig off the coast of NJ.

((Yeah I made it up, deal with it))

They stowed the boat and boarded the rig without so much as an "Avast" or "Ahoy there". The sun was rising at this point.

RE-MEANWHILE...

Nick and Rossini were frantically trying to wash the blood off their hands when they heard the engines of a boat approaching. Rossini was even certain he heard the racking of a shotgun. It was either a rescue or a death squad, and either way, they were ready to die.

RE-RE-MEANWHILE...one guard, half-asleep, staggered on deck to see what the ruckus was. Mace, without thinking, shot him. Yeah, Operation Cuckoo was now serious.

Shooting one guard invariably brings more. So MikeSmith put down another two while Carter got off the boat and began looking for a map or a sign [1 point Traffic Analysis spend, just to make sure]

Carter figured they'd keep prisoners in one of the storage rooms near the sickbay [1 point Human Terrain spend], so the team headed that way. All the while making pirate jokes.

They found Nick and Rossini. And MikeSmith took the door off its hinges.

It was good to see Nick again, thought Mace, but there was little time for reunion or satisfaction. The plan was

now to escape. Rossini explained to Carter all about the torture, and Mace explained to Nick what happened at home. No one talked about Desdemona.

Then genius fell on MikeSmith. Surrounded by sea water, baked in sunlight, what this party needed was fire. It wasn't hard to re-route the kitchen gas lines through the fire sprinklers [Mechanics 2 point spend, Explosive Devices 1 point spend] and fill the whole rig with a going away present.

The team boarded the boat and Mace let Nick fire the flare into the window of the cell that kept him.

The explosion and shockwave rocked the boat, and even as they sped off into the now noon-day sunny waters, they could see the flames and smoke as a sad tombstone for their fallen teammate.

Operation Cuckoo has the following team members:

Mace Hunter
Nick Darter
Rossini
Dr Carter Byers
MikeSmith

They also have nothing to lose.

How are you and your players balancing Preparedness with pre-planning?

Initially, they didn't make enough use of it, and after word spread throughout the playerbase that Preparedness was useful, everyone lobbied for huge Pools of it.

And then the story picked up momentum, and the players were okay NOT being Prepared for the sake of the story.

It's interesting to overhear them talk about how much they think 1 point is worth. Before I even have to step in and adjudicate, they've narrowed their plans down considerably - deciding for themselves that 2 points of Preparedness is not the be-all, end-all of Master Plans.

Here's to hoping they continue

Man...it's been like...a month...

Sorry for the delays. I promise the update(S) are coming. I've just returned from a week-long conference in Anaheim, and am neck deep in preparations for the DexCon tournament next week. But I give you my word you'll get an update from me in the VERY near future (like as soon as I weed through my inbox and eat some lunch).

Update coming. I've got player notes to go through first.

For the curious, I'm co-running the DexCon Night's Black Agents Tournament with Ken Hite tomorrow afternoon.

I just wanted to lay a little teaser out there for the interested.

1. There's a new kind of monster, called a "Spider-Zotz".
2. There are 6 preliminary scenarios....they are named:
a) Doctors Without Border OR SAVIORS
b) The Ship of Souls
c) Die Hard In A Hotel With Vampires
d) The Long Night At the Clinic
e) Weekend At Byron's
f) The Ghost Train

3. This Conspiracy is tournament specific, although players in my 2 scenarios (Die Hard in a Hotel and The Ghost Train) may meet characters from TTVD.

4. There are no car chases in any scenario (because I'm still not comfortable adjudicating them, and they eat up precious time).

If you want updates on the event, check me out on twitter (awesome_john).

[Mechanics are in braces]
((GM Notes are in double parentheses)

In his dreams, Rossini was often either the center of attention -- everyone in his dream would stare at him, no matter what he did -- or he was a helpless observer to bad things: a school burning down, a monster eating kittens, a war breaks out.

He never told anyone about these dreams, because, well, who would listen to the dreams of a lunatic?

But one morning, as the team was figuring out how best to send a group of men into an adoption agency, Nick spoke to Mace about a nightmare:

"I was in Rossini's dream."

This simple sentence started a two-hour conversation about how dreams are doors for things to enter.

They'd have to find a way to keep some doors closed.

[Mechanical notes are in braces]
((GM Notes are in double parentheses))

While the team worked at keeping the "doors of their minds" closed, they were treated to this scene - revealed to them as a shared dream experience...((meaning they were all observers within this one particular dream-state))

The food was cold. Again. And Billy Thompkiss was tired of cold food. He was glad to be off the streets, sure, but everything he ate here was cold. Not cold like it was frozen, not even cold like it wasn't done thawing, just cold like everything got cooked and then sat in a big fridge for ten minutes before it got handed out.

He looked around the cafeteria, and saw all the kids eating, oblivious to the fact that the food was cold and it shouldn't be. He consoled himself with the thought that most of these kids were used to starving, so they didn't look a gift cheeseburger in the mouth.

But Billy wasn't used to starving. He was a good kid, at least by his own standards and he was used to food being warm when it was supposed to be, cold when it should be, or no food at all. Your cheeseburger shouldn't be this chewy, and he knew it.

((After this scene, I explained that Billy had a VERY low-powered character sheet, so I'll include the spends when we get to them.))

He ate and chewed and watched. Billy loved to watch. He wasn't social like Katie or really good during sports period like Chris, but Billy excelled at watching.

Now he didn't know much about orphanages, but since he came into the Ephraim Adoption Agency For Lost Youth four months ago (he traded two sticks of gum for a pocket calendar), he realized that within the walls of the building, the kids were pretty much free to do whatever.

----------------
A morning bell rang at 8:30 to wake everyone up.
They were given thirty minutes to pick out clothes, brush their teeth and get dressed.
At 9, another bell rang and they were lead from their rooms to the cafeteria, where food was served from 9 until 10.
At 10, another bell rang and you could either have a play period, a reading period or a sports period. The periods lasted 2 hours.
At 12, the lunch bell rang, and lunch was served for an hour.
At 1, and then again at 3, you could have another play, reading or sports period.
Dinner was served from 5 to 6
Dessert was served from 6 to 7. It was also during Dessert that kids routinely went to the nurse or the clinician for interviews and check-ups, especially if they were due to be adopted or visited by possible parents.
From 7 to 8:30, you could do whatever. Most kids used this time to clean their rooms, hang out with friends or watch TV.
Between 8:30 and 10, you had the option of taking a shower or bath.
At 10, the double bell rang, and that meant you had to be in your room, lights out. There was a bedcheck at 11:30.
The whole process repeated every day. Except Sundays. On Sundays, the food was warm and constantly served. And there wasn't a bedcheck or a nurse visit. Billy wasn't even sure that more than 5 adults were in the building on Sundays.
------------

Billy knew the names of the adults who were around to help him. Mrs Washington, his assigned nurse. Mr Jefferson, the sports period teacher. Mrs Madison the reading period librarian, Mrs Jackson, the play period supervisor.

A lot of other kids envied Billy for being assigned to "Стадо N" which Mrs Madison said meant "Herd N" and that Herd was another word for "group of Orphans" but Billy knew she was lying. [BS Detector 1 point spend]

Herd N wasn't so bad. They had the laxest rules of all the Herds, and really the only time Billy even got in trouble was the night he wasn't feeling well and couldn't sleep. See, the rule was you had to be in bed and before midnight at the absolute latest, but Billy's tummy hurt, so he was coming back from the bathroom (he didn't like the one in his room, he liked the one at the end of the hall, because he liked hearing the people talking that strange language on the other side of the air vent)

He had been sneaking out to the hear the conversation ever since he was in the bathroom just before dinner and heard someone scream "Mace Hunter!" which Billy thought was like the coolest name ever, and he thought maybe it was like a television show (but he could never find it) or like an Internet thing (but Mrs Madison was always watching him when he went online), but if it was a person, it had to be a cool person because every time the name was said, people reacted.

So today, after his cold burger and soggy fries (Billy was starting to think that the people who made the food had a magic power to suck all the heat out), he told his lunchroom advisor Mrs Coolidge that he was going to a play period.

At play, Mrs Jackson asked him what he would like to play, and Billy said, "Today, I'm going to be Mace Hunter."

And then something happened. Mrs Jackson, who was already sort of pale, the way someone is when they sit under the umbrella all the time at the beach or the way someone is when you spill flour on them, got paler, and she hissed. She hissed like someone was letting the air out of her. And then she had to go lie down and left Billy and all the kids alone.

She left her laptop and her purse there though.

It didn't take very long to get the laptop turned on, and to find the password she kept in her wallet [Digital Intrusion 1, Filch 1], and Billy fired up Google and went looking for Mace Hunter.

He found news clippings of a building fire in New York, and old photos of a man who was always drinking with pretty ladies. And he found a nice French lady's blog who mentioned him in kind of sappy sweet ways, the ways Billy thought adults in love talked about each other. So he wrote her an email.

"Dear Lady, My Name Is Billy And I Am Looking For Mace Hunter. I Live At The Ephraim Adoption Agency in Bartlett Tennesse. I would like to Meet Mace, I Think He Is Very Cool. Can You Have Him Come Meet Me? Billy"

Billy felt this was a particularly mature email, and sent it from one of the free email sites he read about in the newspaper.

About an hour later, just as play period was starting to wrap up, and Billy didn't see any adults, he checked the email to see if he got any responses.

He got one - a phone number - and he quickly wrote it down. Then he got offline and started deleting things off the computer the way Mrs Madison taught him. He deleted the Internet Browser, the folder labeled "Email" (Because he wrote one and didn't want anyone to read it, duh) and then because he used the computer, he deleted it too. It took a few times of figuring out what to delete, but he thought "Format" sounded a lot like "Laundromat" and that's where clothes go to be cleaned, so Format had to be what you do to a computer to keep it clean.

He formatted the computer, wiped it all down with a tissue and was in line to leave play period when the 3 o'clock bell rang.

------------------------DREAM ENDS HERE-------------

It was around 9pm when Mace finally sat down on the small recliner of the motel room and poured himself a watery whiskey. He had emptied his pockets on the nightstand, and was waiting for Nick to come back with a few books on dream theory and psychology when the phone rang.

"Hello?"
"Mace?"
The voice was young, eager, male and innocent.
"Who is this?"
"My name is Billy Thompkiss..."
"Hello Billy. How did you get this number?"
"I'm at the Ephraim Adoption Agency."

There was a pause.
"Where, Billy, where are you?"
"Bartlett Tennessee."
"Billy, I'm on my way. You need to stay out of trouble and keep this phone number handy. Can you do that?"
"Yes sir."
"You'll have to be brave, and you'll need somewhere to hide. Billy, is there a church nearby?"
"Um...yeah, But tomorrow's Sunday."
"Okay, Billy, listen to me, can you make one more call for me? I need you to call Father Craig in Memphis [3 point Network spend] and tell him exactly this sentence 'I think it's time for dinner.' Can you do that? Promise me you'll be careful, call Father Craig and get to that church ASAP. I'll meet you there and I'll have friends with me, okay?"
"Mace?"
"Yeah Billy?"
"You really are the coolest."

Mace's drink never tasted better.