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Message: <blockquote data-quote="THEMNGMNT" data-source="post: 8402062" data-attributes="member: 6809274">4th session of my Night's Black Agents campaign. This was the climax of the introduction, which was meant to explain how the agents became disavowed superspy vampire hunters. After three sessions of nonstop action, the 5 agents were pretty beat up. I gave them all a refresh of one pool plus some XP to help top up their skills.The agents had recovered their CIA handler from a Russian/Syrian stronghold in Aleppo. Along with about 20 other individuals, she'd been sedated and strapped to a gurney for transport on a military helicopter back to Russia. Exactly why, no one knew.The session started with the helicopter landing next to the stronghold/field hospital. The ramp dropped. Two Spetsnaz special forces troops emerged, led by a hulking figure that was clearly bad news. Mechanically, he was a dhampir. All of them wore hazmat suits.The agents tried to bluff their way past the Russians into the helicopter. Their goal was to get on the helicopter, jack it, and fly off. Things didn't go as planned. They'd been in a firefight earlier, their own hazmat suits were peppered with bullet holes, and the ruse lasted about two seconds.The dhampir grabbed the agent trying to bluff him by the collar and threw him thirty feet straight up into the helicopter blades. This was when the jaws hit the floor. The player of the agent who went into the chopper blades is also a DM, and he was delighted to be the example used to set the stakes. Which is fortunate because he spent the next 90 minutes with nothing to do.The agents lacked a coordinated plan. Some ran into the helicopter. Others tried to fight the dhampir. The dhampir regenerated half its health every turn, so without focused fire it was impossible to bring down. Mostly they just got shot up by the Spetsnaz soldiers without returning fire. It was a fiasco.The hacker got close enough to the dhampir to get drained. Twice. Yet somehow he managed to grab the agent who went into the chopper blades and drag him aboard the helicopter. The explosives expert had killed the pilot and grabbed the stick. So they took off.It was a narrow escape. Three of the five agents were at negative health. To my surprise, none died. I was confident that I'd kill at least one, for the most of the session I thought I'd kill two, and at times I believed it might be a TPK.The players had a lot of fun. They like how scary the vampires are. We're all looking forward to playing more NBA.At session's end I asked them which lead they wanted to pursue. They unanimously voted to go to Vienna, where they can intercept the founder of the Spetsnaz bioweapons cadre they'd just escaped from. This will be a tweaked version of Out of the House of Ashes, which is a pretty cool published adventure from The Zalozhniy Quartet.</blockquote>

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