Night's Black Agents: Let Slip The Ovcharkas of War

Last time on Night's Black Agents: Jacob Novazembla, Nikolai Kaidanovsky, Sami Härkönen, Brendan, Shiina "Misha" Mikado and Zlatan Kljujic were finally reunited at the heavily fortified ranch of King Valentin the "Devil's Husband" after extracting his love, the Romani vampire Vienna "Vin" Cesarescu from the deadly R-Team, Inish Medical's special operations team. Leaving Faris Barrar and his men stranded in Bucharest, Romania, they fled across the Bulgarian border and the Danube river near Ruse and Shtraklevo. 

Day 05 Monday: Very Early Morning

Brunch Planning

It was late after midnight after everyone had some hours of catching up, rest and planning. 

Since Vin needed the Inish serum to function in daytime without adverse effects from the sun and going on a bloodlust, Nikolai - a former Russian GRU operative who was also a medical doctor - went immediately to work at the ranch's lab trying to analyse the vial she entrusted them with. She kept the other one, rationing it for herself.

Misha, who had arrived earlier with Brendan, told them that Julia, the cousin of Georgeta Andrea Grigore, their anti-human trafficking activist contact in Bucharest, was being held there - reminding them that King Valentin was still a human trafficking scum. They cannot rely on Valentin's help and would need to leave as soon as possible. But to where? Options include Stockholm (their allies from the Eurovision mission) and Novosibirsk (Nikolai's GRU allies), and how would they get Juila out as well.

Sami and Zlatan planned to take the Niva to scout the surrounding towns the next morning while the others would protect Nikolai and reconnoiter the ranch, looking for assets and exploits.

Zlatan used a burner cellular phone to call his former colleague Rosa Martinez in Munich. She was an American field office manager for Case Protection Services, a private military contractor Zlatan used to work for in Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda. She agreed to do a favour for him: to send a surveillance team over the border into Austria. If Farris Barrar and his team reached their safehouse in Vienna, Zlatan wanted to know. Zlatan told her, "Do not engage them whatever they do."

"What are you working on, Zlatan?"

"It's big. You'll know it soon. Thanks." The Bosnian wheel artist sent her contact instructions and hung up. Fatigue took its toll and he fell asleep.

Night's Black Agents: A Sunny Day in Pripyat

Previously in Bucharest, Nikolai Kaidanovsky, Sami Härkönen, Shiina "Misha" Mikado and Zlatan Kljujic were joined by the cleaner only known as Brendan. Their recent recruit, the French thief Marcel Clouseau was lost to the bite of thousands of vampire puppies and a well-placed thermobaric warhead near Lake Titan.

Nikolai, who was about to extract their ally Vienna "Vin" Cesarescu, suddenly found things at the Sunrise Hotel to be chaotic. Face to face with the lethal R-Team, Inish Medical's operatives sent to East Europe for a job, Vin's quick thinking saved Nikolai telling the others that he was a member of Julian Dragani's police cadre on their pay. But he found himself in a car fleeing the hotel with the driver Gregor, Faris Barrar, Mr. Chow and other members of Inish Medical's R-Team operatives.

The agents' tacnet still active, they began planning.

Misha and Brendan were to go directly to their teammate Jacob Novazembla (because their players were absent) who was with the Romani criminal cartel lord King Valentin, awaiting the retrieval of his love, Vin.

Sami and the visibly shaken Zlatan (at 0 Stability Points) still wearing their puce jogging suits and helmets drove their Lada Niva pacing the R-Team's vehicle as they headed away from city centre.

Eclipse Phase: The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades

Last time on Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star...

Location: Sacajawea Patera caldera in Ishtar Terra, the surface of Venus.

Active Gamera Security (GamSec) Personnel: The infomorph DANAI in a q-morph, the other infomorph Wandering Ina in a Venusian flyer morph, Billy Cable Jr. paranoid terrorist in a neotenic pod morph and Hokusai Tarnungshaut - neo-octopus artist in another q-morph.

Then

The Venusian chapter of Fastball Express, under the cover name of Gamera Security, had been commissioned by Morningstar Constellation security executive Kage Musha to investigate possible terrorist activity among the aerostats of Venus. They began operating on the orbital habitat Gerlach, then established a branch in a dirigible docked in the aerostat Aphrodite Prime. Their investigations brought to light that the orbital habitat Timothea Bush-Kennedy, also known as Timbuk3, had been attacked by TITANs during the Fall more than a decade ago, broke up and crashed into the surface of Venus, no one knows exactly where.

When the reclusive artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos farcasted to Aphrodite Prime to display the unique psycho-empathic sculptures he acquired from the aliens known as the Factors, GamSec discovered a terrorist organisation known as the Free Fall Network (FFN) were violently against the terraforming of the surface of Venus. The terraforming drive was headed by the Solid Ground Initiative (SGI), a patron of which was the Marquis himself.

Their investigations led them to the aerostat's Aviary where genengineered avian fauna were being developed for atmospheric terraforming. They discovered that the Aviary was being renovated and expanded by a hypercorp named Ikea-Tata Constructions. The construction site hid a flexbot combiner tank which GamSec and their allies neutralised before further damage was done.

Ikea-Tata Constructions, GamSec discovered, was created by a clique of Venusian thrill-seeking skydivers who was involved in a fatal crash to the surface, all cortical stacks lost. After their backups had been reinstated in new morphs they were compelled to form the hypercorp to vie for terraforming construction projects across Venus.

The Marquis security job also led them to the FFN terrorist agent Saladin Pelita who only appeared to them as an AR projection. After the Marquis returned home, Saladin was successful in somehow poisoning all the animals in the Aviary. Later, Kage identified him as Baron Julian Robbari, the heir to Soletta Corp. Robbari had instated a former employee of Timbuk3, Shelby Cobra, from storage and set him to work in city cybersecurity. Using remote surveillance, GamSec had discovered that Shelby had been bouncing line-of-sight signals off Gerlach's hull mirrors. The signals had been directed back to Venus, to a caldera on Ishtar Terra called Sacajawea Patera.

Under Kage's authority, GamSec travelled to the mining aerostat Lucifer where the ursomorph members of the Teddy Bear Roadside Picnic Company salvage hypercorp where their CEO himself Mr. Snuggles decided to fly them to Sacajawea Patera to  Shelby's signal was bounced, where according to Mr. Snuggles was an area claimed by a rival salvage hypercorp known as Ladyboys Salvage and Repo. They had claimed the area, but kept it dormant for months.

What were the Ladyboys protecting and what did it have to do with Shelby Cobra, Saladin Pelita, Free Fall Network, their anti-terraforming drive and attempts to keep the Marquis d'Homem-Christos away from Venus?

At the caldera, Mr. Snuggles and GamSec discovered a large fragment of a fallen orbital habitat that against the laws of physics had survived uncontrolled planetfall. It was being monitored by a Ladyboys domed encampment. A closer inspection identified the half-buried debris as Lake Okeechobee Research Facility, a compartment from Timbuk3! Its systems still active, it scanned and identified Billy Cable Junior's mesh ID as William Cable, confirming memories stolen from Shelby Cobra earlier that his father had been on the habitat before it crashed into Venus.

And despite Mr. Snuggles' protests, Cable was determined to get into the fallen fragment to discover its secrets.

Now

It took DANAI's persuasive skills to make Mr. Snuggles agree to the plan. (Persuasion success 43/60.) He only agreed when they informed him of a possible TITAN threat. The plan was for Mr. Snuggles to fly in with the lander, jam all comms as it approached allowing GamSec to attack the Ladyboys' q-morph guard. The universal airlock would then be used to board the fragment of Timbuk3 station for boarding from within the lander.

Eclipse Phase: At the Bottom of the Gravity Well

Last time on Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star...

Location: Lucifer, Venus.

Active Gamera Security (GamSec) Personnel: DANAI and Wandering Ina the infomorphs, William Cable Jr. - paranoid terrorist in a neotenic pod morph and Hokusai Tarnungshaut - neo-octopus artist in a slitheroid morph.

In Transit to Altitude 40km

The mining aerostat Lucifer was a bustle of activity. Miners. Support staff. Security. Tethered over Ishtar Terra close to the north polar region it was being assailed by gale force winds generated by a Venusian polar vortex. The aerostat appeared from a distance to be listing although tethers allowed it to maintain station keeping. But Lucifer was their destination, tracking a terrorist signal from the city aerostat of Aphrodite Prime that was bounced off a mirror assembly on the superstructure of the orbital habitat Gerlach.

GamSec descended upon Lucifer via an elevator from the floating high altitude docks. Their patron Kage Musha had his salvage contractors the Teddy Bear Roadside Picnic Company provide them whatever they needed to complete their investigations. The TBRPC representative who escorted them down was Mr. Goldie, sleeved in a sun bear-variant ursomorph.

Mr. Goldie explained to them that Lucifer mined minerals from Venus surface, and two security hypercorps were contracted to protect the operation. TBRPC and the Ladyboys Salvage and Repo hypercorp, who also had salvage operations on the surface. Teddy Bear and the Ladyboys had a well defined boundary of operations which they both adhered to. This caused a slight competitiveness to emerge between them.

EOTE: Return to Mos Shuuta

Edged by the Empire

Episode 04 Return to Mos Shuuta

The Star Wars RPG adventure continues from the previous session with Act 2 of The Long Arm of the Hutt free downloadable adventure (PDF download, low res version, 2.4MB). The story arc concludes with "Return to Mos Shuuta", but the module has been extensively modified to account for a lot of changes that took place in the course of several sessions.

Irfan rolls the Force Dice and gets 3 Dark Side Points.

Kaliklak Hive, Geonosis

As Teemo the Hutt's agent Zasvid the Brizzit was being taken away from Archduke Poggle the Irredeemable's audience chamber in Kaliklak Hive on Geonosis, Hondo Pash the captain of Lava Jaeger, the Twi'lek Numa of the Nabat Militia and the astromech droid R2-8B8 considered their next move. For his transgressions against Teemo's less-than-savoury enterprise on Ryloth and Geonosis, the Hutt planned to abduct Yuzy Pash, Hondo's sister at Mos Espa on Tatooine.

Because of his badly injured arm (Critical injury: Crippled Arm) Hondo spent the night in a bacta tank courtesy of Archduke Poggle. The next morning, after Hondo was decanted from the tank, Numa and he geared up for the mission to Tatooine.

Archduke Poggle gave permission for R2-8B8 to join their company and bade him farewell. Lava Jaeger took off and Hondo made a success jump to Tatooine. (Astrogation 1 success)

Night's Black Agents: Attack On Titan

Previously, Nikolai Kaidanovsky, Sami Härkönen, Shiina "Misha" Mikado and Zlatan Kljujic were joined by the French thief Marcel Clouseau in Bucharest who once dealt with Inish Medical before their exile fro Romania. (Clouseau has been relegated to a non-player character as his player had moved out of town.)

At midnight, the agents met up with the freelance cleaner Brendan, who had worked with Misha and MI6 before in Eastern European black ops. Plenty of codewords were exchanged at the cafe between Misha and Brendan before trustworthiness was established. In the end though no one could tell if a codeword was being used.

Brendan said, "Thank you, I'll leave now."

Misha paused for a second then asked, "Is that a code phrase or are you actually leaving?"

"Yes."

DAY 04 Sunday

Before Dawn

Sami and Zlatan prepared to support Clouseau's undercover dog-catching job at the Harmony Wings apartment building near Lake Titan. Zlatan bought them all a Toblerone bar each in case they need to defend themselves against evil, mind-controlling vampire doggies down in the park. Meanwhile Sami prepared their gear. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just some GoPro cameras, scooter helmets, jogging suits, firearms, quadrotor drones, remote listening devices, improvised explosive devices and one RPO-A Shmel rocket launcher with a thermobaric warhead.

Never know when one would come in handy against vampire dogs.

"This place looks worse than the first season of The Wire," Zlatan told Sami when they saw the condition of Harmony Wings. It was still dark when Clouseau and the other two hirelings Petru and Drago were met by Doctor Ana of Keller Training at the park. She led them through the trees by the decrepit 20-story building. It looked older than it was. It smelled worse than it looked. Other apartment blocks stood out among the trees of the park in the distance. Lake Titan was within eyeshot of the block. Connected to Harmony Wings by a pavement was an even worse looking building: the abandoned public swimming pool, its windows darkened by what appeared be extreme mildew.

Eclipse Phase: Thanks for the Memories

I missed two roleplaying sessions of Eclipse Phase since the last game.

Location: Aphrodite Prime, Venus.

Active Gamera Security (GamSec) Personnel: DANAI and Wandering Ina the infomorphs, William Cable Jr. - paranoid terrorist in a neotenic pod morph and Hokusai Tarnungshaut - neo-octopus artist in a slitheroid morph.

Hokusai-free Session 01: Don't Play Koi With Me, Cable

A more detailed write up of this session can be found on Obsidian Portal.

After the Cumulus Hotel caper, Hokusai stayed on their dirigible while Cable, Ina and DANAI went out into the field.

As Cable was viewing the flying gasbags that they'd saved from destruction at the Aviary, the animals began falling and crashing onto the deck dead.

Kage Musha their patron in Morningstar Constellation called for GamSec to chew them out. How could have the Aviary animals be poisoned? There was a danger of Kage punishing GamSec by resleeving their egos in koi fish and displaying the koi in his aquarium in his office.

Cable confidently allayed Kage's doubt about GamSec by informing him that he had direct connection with Free Fall Network (FFN) and their contact, Saladin Pelita. Saladin had believed that Cable was a fellow anti-terraforming terrorist. Satisfied by Cable's information, Kage informed him that from his own surveillance and intelligence gathering, the individual named Saladin Pelita was sleeved in the morph resembling Baron Julian Robbari, the heir to Soletta Corp a known front for the Fa Jing criminal organisation.

Cable also informed Kage that they would next be investigating FFN's agent in Cumulus Hotel cybersecurity, the reinstated civil servant named Shelby Cobra.

Hokusai-free Session 02: This Time We Keep A Copy

A more detailed write up of this session can be found on Obsidian Portal. 

The speck bot they left in Shelby Cobra's apartment alerted them to suspicious activity. The laser communication system had been transmitted while being pointed at Gerlach station in orbit. To investigate, Cable, Ina and DANAI booked seats on a shuttle from Aphrodite Prime.

Meanwhile, Cable had fabricated a new tripod walker morph with installed weapons ranging from railguns to seeker weapons for DANAI to use. The walker was named "Paul".

The trio investigated the spot where the laser comms had been transmitted to on Gerlach and discovered that the mirror system there had been hacked and coopted to bounce line-of-sight beams back onto Venus: specifically somewhere in Ishtar Terra at the north polar region of Venus. The patch was rigged with an improvised explosive devise. Unable to defuse it, GamSec had to call station security to help neutralise the bomb.

Unable to determine where the signal was directed to exactly, the team returned to Aphrodite Prime to interrogate Shelby Cobra.

As management consultants, GamSec would invite Shelby for an interpersonal, live interview. In preparation, they rented an office space and fabricated two more Paul walkers mounted with non-lethal armament and EMP microseeker launchers to quickly prevent him from calling for help. Ultimately, foam spray, EMP and neural agoniser were deployed to take down Shelby... who was basically a regular unarmed civil servant.

In simspace, Shelby was confused but cooperative, confirming that he was an indentured ego who was reinstated and offered work in Aphrodite Prime by one Julian Robari. But he did not remember bouncing the secret communication laser off Gerlach.

DANAI and Ina performed psychosurgery to delete Shelby's memories of them and released him. Also, they pocketed a fork of Shelby -  a copy of his ego - for further interrogation.

BareBones Fantasy: Over The Hills and Far Away

Some time ago, I ran BareBones Fantasy RPG for Irfan. The campaign is set in the default setting: the Keranak Kingdoms! Late afternoon yesterday, we continued the game with him playing the halfling spellcaster-warrior Jake Hastur and I running the human scholar-scout Finn Riverwyld. We stopped by sundown and resumed the game this morning.

Last time, Jake and Finn were commissioned by Duchess Lyla Keranak of Kingsbridge to look for her missing brother Captain Kane Keranak, or at the very least return his signet ring back to her. The duo travelled to the Island of Netharak where he was last seen. After having rested in Mr. Bonewall's house at the fishing port of Dronak, Jake and Finn geared up and set out northwest to where Kane was last seen headed.

Not the real cover of this game, but a bear does appear later in the game.

Day One

The duo headed into the thick jungle.

By noon, Jake had almost wandered into a river with foul black water but Finn with his superior scouting skills stopped the faux pas. Then a large, slimy tentacle burst out of the water. They both hastily retreated toward separate directions, but the tentacle hunted after Finn, who promptly hid in thick bushes beside a fallen tree. Jake hid up a slope by tall trees and bushes. Before the tentacle found Finn, Jake cast a lightning bolt (29 from Offensive Strike 56%) that blew a hole midway down the tentacle, spilling its black blood.

Finn used the distraction to roll under the fallen tree trunk and scramble up the slope toward Jake. As the flailing tentacle smashed up nearby flora in pain looking for prey, Jake's second lightning bolt hit, severing it where the bolt struck. The tentacle withdrew rapidly into the river. Finn thanked Jake as they resumed their journey.

We never did find out where the tentacle came from.

They were halfway up a heavily-forested mountain when night fell. It was raining heavily. Jake cast a spell to push away the rainclouds away from the mountain. Finn set up their tent and a fire and began dinner.

The night passed by without incident.

Night's Black Agents: A Romanian Rendezvous

Previously, the Agents completed a week-long mission at Inish Medical, a multinational medical corporation that was using the haemocanis serum derived from blood of certain East European dog breeds to give vampiric abilities to their subjects. Inish appeared to have larger, more diabolical plans for the serum application. It was up to them to discover what. 

The Agents began a new mission: to gather intel on Romania. Inish took interest in criminal underworld in Bucharest, who helped them acquire special breeds of dogs in Romania before the Heimdall debacle.

They also had a secondary mission: to extract their ally Vienna "Vin" Cesarescu from Inish's task force - the R-Team - that had a job to do in Romania. Vin was a Romani woman who displayed vampiric symptoms and abilities even before Inish abducted her and forced her to work for them. R-Team would be arriving in Bucharest on Saturday.

DAY 01 Thursday

King Valentin's Lair

Jacob Novazembla, freshly bitten by Vin several days ago during the Inish mission, had arrived a day earlier at the sea port of Constanța on a solo assignment to King Valentin a.k.a The Devil's Husband, a leader of a Romanian criminal organisation. (Jacob's player was absent, so he was relegated to the role of an NPC.) King Valentin's distrust of Jacob was alleviated when he sniffed his odour. When Jacob refused his insistence, King Valentin's men grabbed him and pulled down his pants for a visual confirmation. Valentin dropped his own pants as well to show what they both had in common.

Vampiric bite mark at the nether regions, caused by Vin. "The smell is unmistakable," Valentin remarked.

Then, still pantless, he embraced Jacob with glee and growled happily, "WE ARE BROTHERS!"

Valentin agreed to help the Agents.

Jacob wished his pants were back on.

Eclipse Phase: The Standoff at the Cumulus Hotel

Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star continued from the previous session.

Location: Aphrodite Prime, about 50 km above Venus' surface.

Active Gamera Security (GamSec) Personnel: DANAI and Wandering Ina (and Wandering Ina-α) the infomorphs, William Cable Jr. - paranoid terrorist in a neotenic pod morph and Hokusai Tarnungshaut - neo-octopus artist in a slitheroid morph

Inactive Personnel: Badal Jones - Lunar Lagrange Alliance (LLA) envoy and Boris Ivanov Rasputin the Second - a neo-hominid lawyer in the shaper morph.

Mission: To provide security and investigative services to Badal's superior the LLA's ambassador during an art show at the Cumulus Hotel, where reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos from the asteroid 163693 Atira would be showcasing alien sculptures he collected from the extraterrestrial Factors. LLA had intercepted a vague communique about a terrorist attack during the event and would like the attack thwarted. Their secondary mission was to help Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae by covertly disrupting the Marquis' event which will deal a blow to the terraforming efforts of Venus, something the Solid Ground Initiaive (SGI) was a proponent of, and what Venusian terrorist groups like the Free Fall Network (FFN) were against.

Crossposted on Obsidian Portal.

A Happy Place

DANAI found herself frolicking in a green field beneath a bright blue sky and under a nourishing yellow sun. Baffled by current events, she looked down and discovered that she was in a body of a living fox, red bushy tail and all. What had happened before? She was uncertain.

Suddenly a window opened in the sky. A man looked at her from behind the window. Just when she wondered why there was a window in the sky, another one slid open seemingly across from the first window. Another man was there looking at her.

He then looked at the first man and asked, What does the fox say?

Then DANAI woke up from her strange dream.

Night's Black Agents: The Quiet Week At Brentford

I missed the last two Night's Black Agents RPG sessions.

Since inflitrating the freighter Heimdall in the Irish Sea, Nikolai Kaidanovsky, Sami Harkonen, Shiina "Misha" Mikado, Zlatan Kljulic and Abraham von Helsing the Russian borzoi hound (all wearing keffiyehs - even Abe) escaped and sank the ship killing the vampire hounds in the cargo compartment. They abducted the surviving technician Jones who told them everything he knew about the Emartech Pharmaceuticals' and Inish Medical Group's plans to use the haemocanis parasite-infected blood from Eastern Europe dogs for nefarious purposes. Before returning to London, Jones had to take a walk with Zlatan because he knew too much and could identify the agents.

It was time to stake out Inish. They rendezvous with Jacob Novazembla - who had returned from Italy - at their headquarters, while Misha had to forego the mission to visit her daughter. Before heading to Brentford in Ealing, Sami put Abe in the care of his dog handler contact out in the country.

The entire town of Brentford was under the thumb of Inish Medical. The Inish headquarters complex was a large building overlooking a golf course. A lot of the localtown services were contracted to Inish, such as security, medical and waste disposal. Information out of the town was monitored and filtered by Inish.

The founder of Inish Medical, Donal Inish, had died in a helicopter crash many years ago, leaving a wife. Among the confirmed vampires at Inish were Farris Barrar the Vice President of Safety who was the one that Misha saw tear the small-time mob boss Gary Camon into pieces. They also suspected one Mister Chow of being a vampire as well.

Jacob's contact at Blackberry Benny Snowden informed him that Inish was installing hardware and software in their servers that would allow encrypted communications for important employees via brand new Blackberry 10s. Jacob would infiltrate the heart of Inish Medical as "Rory Winston" one of the Blackberry employees tasked with installing and configuring the new gear. His real mission is to install a back door to their secured servers which the agents would be able to access.

Jacob, as Rory, got in easily enough. He was chaperoned by Anise, a beautiful Inish employee. While Jacob charmed the IT team over the course of five days, Nikolai, Sami and Zlatan stayed in B&Bs in town monitoring the situation. The IT team loved Jacob. They even went on a pub crawl that led to a brawl with some football hooligans, which the IT team later said they'd enjoyed! Jacob also learnt that Jessica Ellis, Zlatan's failed date (to put it lightly) and former Emartech employee from the Cardiff mission, was an informal security consultant there as well.

It was during the fifth day that Jacob, escorted by Anise, bumped into Vienna "Vin" Cesarescu, the vampire who was once their prisoner. She had been a member of the Camon Gang who was abducted by Inish Medical after the murder of Gary Camon and destruction of the group. Vin looked pale and anaemic.

In the deserted hallway, Vin hypnotised Anise, clouding her mind while she pleaded Jacob for help. She would meet him in the Rehabilitation Clinic level of the headquarters the next morning.

AND NOW THE CONCLUSION!

Day 06: The Penultimate Day

Information From Vienna

The Rehab Clinic took an entire ground floor of the Inish headquarters. It faced the golf course, although there was a security moat that prevented golfers from entering the facility grounds. Sami and Zlatan took up a reconnaissance position from within the bushes in the golf course. Encrypted comms allowed them radio contact with each other. Once in a while, golf balls would zip near their heads dangerously.

Doctor Who AITAS: The Flames of Salem

Doug ran a great Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG session just in time for Halloween! Continuing the previous session Feet of Flesh, Feet of Steel!

After discovering that the blue box that the Doctor and Cindy brought them into was bigger on the inside, Max Fox the amnesiac robot engineer from the year 3027 and Doctor Olujimi the Kenyan country doctor from 1975 were ready to leave the planet Klaris.

At the control room, the Doctor - looking bewildered - asked if they smelled something cooking. Max and Olujimi did. They followed the Doctor who ran through a doorway that brought them even deeper into the TARDIS. Ultimately, they halted in a room full of pipes. There was a heavily-built man, blonde and barrel-chested with thick arms wearing a grimy apron and a chef's hat. He was frying a kipper while singing The Turkish Song of the Dead. There was no stove, just glowing hot surfaces in the room. He had an array of condiments and a bottle of olive oil on a makeshift shelf on the wall, which might not have been designed to be a shelf. Olujimi asked, "Why do you have Popeye in your blue box, Doctor?"

He introduced himself as Sebastian Cuddy a sailor from Alaska who the Doctor picked up at a previous stop. He offered them some kipper, but the Doctor was aghast at his usage of the Transducer Modifier as a hot plate. After being chided by the Doctor, Sebastian cheerfully stowed away his cooking gear. Even the kipper was stuffed into his trousers pocket.

Sebastian appeared to believe that they were aboard a seagoing vessel, talking as if the TARDIS had a sail, an engine room and a bilge.

Without warning the lights went out. Even the Doctor was surprised. In the dark there emerged a ghostly vision of five faces: An African man wearing a top hat, a lady, a little girl who suddenly threw a spectral brick at Max scaring him, a shivering man with pointy ears and a woman with her eyes looking down. Suddenly the woman looked up at them and screamed a spine-tingling shriek.

As abruptly as it appeared, the vision disappeared.

The Doctor called everyone to follow him as he returned to the control room. He pulled on levers and pressed on buttons. Everything rocked and swayed violently. Cindy, Sebastian, Max and Olujimi struggled to stay on their feet.

The rocking ceased and the Doctor rushed to the entrance and opened the door. Cindy told the others, "You'll get used to this."

Episode 02

Salem, Massachusetts, 17th Century Earth

To Max and Olujimi's wonder, the TARDIS was now standing in a small clearing forest field surrounded by maple, oak and birch trees on what is recognisably the planet Earth. The Doctor led them all through the woods where he claimed there should be a town. Soon, horse-drawn carts were trundling past them and chimney smoke rose into the blue sky not far away.

Eclipse Phase: Web of the Jorōgumo

Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star continued from the previous session at Wira Games and Hobbies.

Location: Aphrodite Prime, about 50 km above Venus' surface.

Active Gamera Security (GamSec) Personnel: DANAI and Wandering Ina (and Wandering Ina-α) the infomorphs, Boris Ivanov Rasputin the Second - a neo-hominid lawyer in the shaper morph, William Cable Jr. - paranoid terrorist in a neotenic pod morph and Hokusai Tarnungshaut - neo-octopus artist in a slitheroid morph.

Inactive Personnel: Badal Jones - Lunar Lagrange Alliance (LLA) envoy.

Mission: To provide security and investigative services to Badal's superior the LLA's ambassador during an art show at the Cumulus Hotel, where reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos would be showcasing alien sculptures he collected from the extraterrestrial Factors. LLA had intercepted a vague communique about a terrorist attack during the event and would like the attack thwarted. Their secondary mission was to help Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae by covertly disrupting the Marquis' event which will deal a blow to the terraforming efforts of Venus, something the Solid Ground Initiaive (SGI) was a proponent of, and what Venusian terrorist groups like the Free Fall Network (FFN) were against.

Crossposted on Obsidian Portal.

The Flurry of Planning Activities

Badal Jones stayed close to Karamojo Bell, his fellow Lunar ally and self-fashioned big game hunter from the Mare Imbrium Credit Union, whose biomorph killed during the battle with the flexbot combiner at the Ikea-Tata Constructions site at the Aviary. Unfortunately for Badal, Bell in his new morph has a new fun hobby: to get infected with tailored extinct diseases, enjoy the suffering and then purge the disease before the end. If he died from the disease, he would just happily resleeve in a new morph and enjoy a new disease all over again.

Elsewhere, Cable was just finishing up in a healing vat in a hospital, the medichines in his body expediting the treatment. Hokusai arrived to visit with some flowers. Unsure what to do with the flowers, he dumped the entire bouquet over the top of Cable's vat. Boris arrived shortly just in time to see flower petals drift down toward Cable's face.

Then Cable munched on them.

Back at the airship in his sheldon morph, Ina was preparing to unleash his DDOS attack onto the whole aerostat city's security systems. When Aphrodite Prime's systems would be under attack, it was hoped that the FFN's embedded agent would be flushed out. Meanwhile, out in the skies over Aphrodite Prime, a regatta was underway. Sleek, lighter-than-air racing dirigibles were circling the city's airspace.

Suddenly, the GamSec mesh network alerted them that the Marquis d'Homem Christos was now farcasting into his body all the way from his asteroid 163693 Atira. Isolated within the Marquis' resleeving computer in Total Rekall Resleeving Inc., DANAI and Ina-α were ready for action.

EOTE: Aggressive Negotiations

Edged by the Empire

Episode 03 Aggressive Negotiations

The Star Wars RPG adventure continues from the previous session with Act 2 of The Long Arm of the Hutt free downloadable adventure (PDF download, low res version, 2.4MB). The original title of this chapter is Geonosian Negotiations.

On the run from Teemo the Hutt, the smuggler Hondo Pash found himself with new Twi'lek allies on Ryloth after helping to overthrow a bullying mining boss at the town of New Meen. The Twi'leks of Nabat, including the commander Nyn Kablo and the fighter Numa, helped Hondo to repair the YT-1300 light freighter that he had liberated from the Trandoshan slaver Trex. The ship had now been renamed Lava Jaeger.

Yeesh. I need to organise things better.

Farewell to Ryloth

The return trip from New Meen to Nabat was uneventful. The Twi'lek miner B'ura B'an had decided to stay behind at New Meen to help with the clean up. Upon their arrival, they immediately reported to Nyn Kablo, who informed them that a crashed Dunelizard fighter was found about 30 klicks south of Nabat. It might have been the one that attacked the Lava Jaeger (then the Krayt Fang) during their Ryloth approach. No pilot was found, but they discovered a partial holo recording of Teemo the Hutt ordering a Kubaz named Thwheek to kill a Geonosian droid engineer. The recording of Teemo said, "The Geonosians must never know what Sivor discovered. Archduke Poggle the Irredeemable (no relation to Archduke Poggle the Lesser) of the Kaliklak Hive must never know we killed Sivor if we are to purchase battle droids from him. Bring Sivor to Trex. He'll dispose of the body. Meanwhile, track down this Hondo Pash and kill him."

Why had Teemo ordered the Archduke's droid engineer killed? What had Sivor found out? Numa said, "We must not let Teemo have battle droids. We have to stop it."

Numa geared up with an armoured jacket and grabbed an EE-3 blaster rifle that she had left with Kablo for safekeeping. As they headed for the Lava Jaeger, they saw someone slink out of the docking bay's front door. It was a Kubaz. Thwheek?

The Kubaz unholstered his blaster pistol. Numa fired a burst to distract him. It worked as Hondo's subsequent shot hit the Kubaz. Although wounded, he still stood. The Kubaz's blaster scored a blow. Hondo was hurt (minus 9 wounds to 3 Wound Threshold.) Numa managed to shoot his pistol out of his hands (Triumph in an attack roll.) He attempted to jump the weapon but failed to grab the tumbling blaster. Hondo had his DL-17 pistol trained on the Kubaz and he pulled the trigger. A flash heralded a billow of smoke from the Kubaz's chest.

Kablo and other armed Twi'lek came running to see what the commotion was all about. Hondo found two grenades on the Kubaz. Before their flight to Geonosis, both Numa and Hondo performed a visual inspection but did found nothing out of the ordinary on or aboard the black-and-yellow Lava Jaeger.

The Lava Jaeger

Eclipse Phase: The Great White Hunter Job

Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star continued from the previous session at Wira Games and Hobbies.

Location: Aphrodite Prime, about 50 km above Venus' surface.

Active Gamera Security (GamSec) Personnel: Badal Jones - Lunar Lagrange Alliance (LLA) envoy in the splicer morph, Boris Ivanov Rasputin the Second - a neo-hominid lawyer in the shaper morph, William Cable Jr. - paranoid terrorist in a neotenic pod morph and Hokusai Tarnungshaut - neo-octopus artist in a slitheroid morph.

Inactive Personnel: DANAI and Wandering Ina.

Mission: To provide security and investigative services to Badal's superior the LLA's ambassador during an art show at the Cumulus Hotel, where reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos would be showcasing alien sculptures he collected from the extraterrestrial Factors. LLA had intercepted vague communique about a terrorist attack during the event and would like the attack thwarted. Their secondary mission was help Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae by covertly disrupting the Marquis' event which will deal a blow to the terraforming efforts of Venus, something the Solid Ground Initiaive (SGI) was a proponent of, and what Venusian terrorist groups like the Free Fall Network (FFN) were against.

Crossposted on Obsidian Portal.

A New Arrival

After being briefed by GamSec office administrator The Wandering Kid on Gerlach station, newly-employed lawyer Boris, wearing a shaper morph skinned as a male splicer, arrived at Aphrodite Prime to rendezvous with the team and brought up to speed on the mission.  His job would be to use local law to their advantage and to take down enemies. Boris was more of an intellectual property specialist than an Inner System Law specialist but he would have to do. (His Thrown Weapons skill was 40% so perhaps he could throw the book at enemies.)

A Convention Grounded Solid

The SGI was hosting a convention to lobby for terraforming on Venus at the Cumulus Hotel to the Morningstar Constellation, the political cooperative governing Venus. A minor ballroom was reskinned in AR to look like a lush, green tropical paradise with palm trees, sand and the sea. Waiters served pina coladas. People from near and far came in attendance to hear what SGI was offering. Socialites, politicians, businessmen.

Badal entered the ballroom, under his official LLA envoy capacity. His bodyguard was Hokusai, in his "Heinrich Ausfahrt Plissken" cover ID for GamSec and an official security contractor for the LLA. Boris also arrived to schmooze with those in attendance, attempting to obtain intel and if possible discover and ferret out names of possible terrorist agents. Cable sat outside in the hotel reception area, connected to everyone else via GamSec's secure mesh network.

SGI was pushing for healthy place to live and wellness on Venus. 160 years of investment is nothing for a green Venus for the children's children to live on.

Eclipse Phase: Machinations of a Lumpy Space Princess

The entry title for this Eclipse Phase session report is play on the title of the game Machinations of the Space Princess from Postmortem Press.

Gamera Security's Venusian investigations continued: Kai took on the role of neotenic-morphed Billy Cable Jr. (a.k.a. Brandon Leigh), Darren played infomorph DANAI (a.k.a. Vadislav Sender) and I was again the slitheroid-morphed Hokusai Tarnungshaut (a.k.a. Heinrich Ausfahrt Plissken).

Andrew's Venusian glider-morphed Wandering Ina (a.k.a. Kana) and Matthew's Badal Jones the Lunar Lagrange Alliance Envoy were absent and was used as NPCs at crucial times of the session.

Ivan GMed, as this photo shows:

The mission, which continued from the previous session, was to help Badal Jones with the security for his LLA ambassador's contingent as they attended the art show that would display the Factors' alien sculpture pieces collected by the reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos at the Cumulus Hotel on Aphrodite Prime. There was a second, a more secretive mission from Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae: which is to sabotage the art show. The team had decided that these two missions could be run side-by-side without any conflicts of interests.

Adventures in Lumpy Space

First thing in the morning, Cable aided Hokusai to build up Rep for his art social media meshsite renamed Obloquy (the original name Digital Easel didn't have a controversial online activist vibe enough. Also it sucked). Hokusai would update socially controversial artwork, slam heads together, induce squabbling then try to gain and sift intel from squabblers, by pushing the right buttons with people in F-Rep circles. Hokusai's cover ID in Obloquy was Pickman Algol, Cable's was The Lumpy Space Ambassador and although he hadn't activated his account yet, DANAI planned on being an online troll with an opposing viewpoint named Shasta.

Hokusai uploaded a digital painting of the disc of the planet Venus with three layers. The top third of the planet - encompassing the northern hemisphere - showed greenery and life. The middle equatorial third showed Venus' surface as it was. The bottom third was a mishmash of darkness and burning human skeletons that trailed bits of flame and debris into space.

Apparently this "Pickman Algol" dandy was against the terraforming of Venus.

EOTE: Rugged Road to the Ryll Mines Part 2

Edged by the Empire

Episode 02 Rugged Road to the Ryll Mines, Part 2

I totally forgot when this Triumph came up.

The adventure continues from the previous entry: I ran the second session for Act 1 of The Long Arm of the Hutt free downloadable adventure (PDF download, low res version, 2.4MB) on Tuesday morning.

Barreling Through the Badlands

The mission began in the morning. B'ura and Hondo were joined by a Rutian Twi'lek female named Numa. She was in her early twenties and bore a blaster pistol and a vibroknife. Kablo brought them to the east end of Nabat where a tech crew was rolling out an old landspeeder from storage. They were to head east through the badlands for about 300 klicks.

At first piloting a speeder over the badlands was a cinch. Then rocky mounds appeared, and forced Hondo to steer carefully past the dangerous rocks. However (with a Piloting - Planetary roll that resulted in a Triumph) Hondo was able to swerve past all obstacles with no problems.

Fifty klicks from New Meen a tall mound of reddish, misshappen rocks loomed to their right as they passed it. (Hondo failed a Perception check so...) A sniper blaster bolt struck the speeder's right engine. Failing to avert a crash, both Hondo and Numa were lightly injured, and B'ura was unhurt. Numa used a stimpack to treat her own wounds and pulled back behind the crashed speeder's chassis.

However a well-placed bolt struck B'ura as he leapt for cover, badly injuring him. (11 damage out of 12 Wound Threshold - 3 successes with a 8 damage blaster rifle.)

EOTE: Rugged Road to the Ryll Mines Part 1

Edged by the Empire

Episode 02 Rugged Road to the Ryll Mines, Part 1

With the new EotE Core Rulebook, Irfan earlier created his own player character based on the Beginner Game pregenerated character Pash. His new PC in named Hondo Pash, a smuggler with a pilot specialisation, and purchased the Talents Let's Ride, Galaxy Mapper and Skilled Jockey. He wields a DH-17 blaster pistol and a vibrosword. His story continues from Pash's story from Escape from Mos Shuuta from the Edge of the Empire Beginner Game.

His Obligation was to the safety of his younger sister Yuzy Pash who lived on Tatooine. Fortunately, the Obligation was not triggered at the start of the game.

Previously, Hondo, who escaped the wrath of Teemo the Hutt - a crime boss based in the city of Mos Shuuta on Tatooine - by evading the Hutt's thugs, Imperial stormtoopers and stole the Krayt Fang, a rust-colored YT-1300 light freighter that belonged to Trex, a Trandoshan bounty hunter. After a brief skirmish with TIE fighters launched from an Imperator-class Star Destroyer, Hondo made a short jump to lightspeed and escaped his pursuers.

Quick Pause at the Heliopause

The Krayt Fang reverted back to realspace at the edge of the Tatooine system. There were loud klaxons, flashing alert icons at the navicomputer and loud snorting and grunting sounds coming from the cockpit speakers. Worst of all, there was a nasty stench from which there was no escape aboard the ship. Hondo tried to determine the source of the spoor but failed. (And thus incurred a Setback die for every dice pool thereon.)

Hondo shut off the klaxons and the Gamorrean opera (he discovered on the audio player's playlist). Then he found that one of the alert icons denoted that fuel was low. The navicomputer tagged the Ryloth system as the only location the ship could reach to refuel before fuel was depleted. However, he was unable to decipher the second alert icon.

The smuggler made the jump to Ryloth without any problem. (The Galaxy Mapper talent removed the stench-caused Setback die to the Astrogation roll.)

Eclipse Phase: Electromatic For The People

Last time on Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star the team was joined by Matthew's player character Christoph de Beers from the Jovian Republic.

However, there was a quantum temporal flux and the character metamorphed into the Lunar Lagrange Alliance envoy Badal Jones, a Welshman. The out-of-character retcon avoided difficulties of roleplaying a character from a racist, pure humans-only society mixed with a group of posthuman player characters.

Also, Kai played neotenic-morphed Billy Cable Jr. (a.k.a. Brandon Leigh), Andrew played Venusian glider-morphed Wandering Ina (a.k.a. Kana), Darren played infomorph DANAI (a.k.a. Vadislav Sender) and I was back as the slitheroid-morphed Hokusai Tarnungshaut (a.k.a. Heinrich Ausfahrt Plissken).

Jones had commissioned Gamera Security's services for the upcoming art gallery event at the Cumulus Hotel at Aphrodite Prime. The event would display Factors' alien sculpture pieces collected by the reclusive posthuman artist Marquis d’Homem-Christos who lived on the asteroid 163693 Atira and would be farcasting to Venus in a few days.

The mission objectives were clear: Jones engaged GamSec to protect the LLA ambassador during the show and (two session ago, when I was absent) Gretchen Ambelina informed Cable that she wanted the show to fail. The two objectives were not necessarily exclusive. They need to ensure the LLA visitors' safety while they sabotaged the event.

But how would they do that?

Doctor Who AITAS: Feet of Flesh, Feet of Steel

Doug GMed Cubicle 7's Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space RPG for Irfan and I for the first time and it was an enjoyable night. For Irfan this was the first time someone other than me was the gamemaster.

We played Fox and Olujimi just as they were stranded on the planet Klaris in the far future after hunting and failing to detain the big game hunter Breybrooke who was driven insane, corrupted by alien technology he had unearthed in Kenya in the year 1977.

Episode 01

Klaris

The game began as the duo was dining with their impromptu host Hermis, a Klarisian who served them haphis, a floating and slowly-spinning ball of edible mass that replenished itself as it was being scooped by cutlery. Olujimi thought it would taste more like cheese but it did not. Fox just ate away in silence.

Stranded on Klaris

City guards knocked on Hermis' door, and the guard leaded, a woman named Hollis, insisted that the newcomers who helped fight off Breybrooke be brought before their leaders. The guards were heavily hooded and gazed only at the floor. Hollis took them through the Klarisian city with domed buildings, columns and floating light globes. Olujimi and Fox were brought to a tall chamber with alien sculptures that floated and appeared to slightly move. Obus, a hooded man wearing elaborate robes and a tall collar awaited them there.