Tag: night’s black agents

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Red Shift – Episode Six – Calais and Paris – #nightsblackagents Play Report

Finn CullenLeave a comment
After Sunday’s action packed episode, last night’s visit to the bloody world of Night’s Black Agents was one of evasion and consolidation.   Having had to flee from a murder scene, Hans and Rowan dug in at their safe house and ran through what they’d learned.   The word “vampire” was used for the first time with the comment that “it’s crazy but it’s the best fitting theory so far”.
Rowan contacted their Control at RedShift via a text message to their handler GAUNTLET to let them know what had happened.
This was shortly followed by a protocol breaching phone-call in return:
“This is Gauntlet, this is Gauntlet.   You’re burned.   Don’t report in.  Don’t come in.  Go dark.”
Hot on the heels of that disquieting message came a text from RedShift from an unfamiliar codename, Firebird.
6676 Firebird.
Message Received. Fall back to rendezvous Alpha Six for debriefing. See you soon
After a moment’s silence the pair decided simultaneously.   No way were they going to report in now.   They moved out of their safehouse at once, stole a new car, invoked a pair of previously unused identities and headed out of town.  Once in Paris, Hans visited a storage unit he’d set up previously (thank you Preparedness/Cache rules) and emerged with a suitably improved vehicle and some helpful if as yet unspecified equipment in the trunk.   Rowan then set them up with a nice apartment overlooking the Opera.
Here they went through the papers they managed to remove from Masson’s house before they fled, and went through the unsent draft email folder in his email account.    The papers consisted of pages torn from a Bible with certain verses highlighted.    The blood is the life… over and over again…  references from Genesis to living forever if Adam and Eve had stretched out their hand to the fruit of the tree of life…  All very unsettling but nothing conclusive.    

But in the draft message in his gmail account there was a reference to a Scotland Yard detective named Templeton who appeared to know something of Masson’s obsessions.   Routing a call through several cut-outs, Rowan called through to Templeton who was shocked to hear of Masson’s death.   He wanted to arrange a meeting there and then opposite the Salvation Army headquarters in Oxford Street but Rowan had to tell him they weren’t in the country yet…

Next stop, back to Calais and a night time trip through the channel tunnel.   As their car was being loaded into place on Le Shuttle they recalled a comment from Masson’s email about running water stopping Them… but what about beneath?
And a few cars ahead a familiar white transit van with Star Logistics livery was being loaded onto the same train… the same van that had chilled the air around it earlier that day, and that probably contained the sinister Hungarian visitor they had seen at the trafficking drop-off.

Roll Credits. 
Gaming

Red Shift Episode 5 – Calais – #nightsblackagents Play Highlights

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Last night started nice and easy with a quiet interview in Star Logistics with the secretary, a bored woman named Jeanne who was happy to chat with the potential client – Rowan with a fake identity – and let slip about the infrequent all-night shifts that the boss and his drivers pulled.   Rowan also got a chance to sneak a closer look at the transit van parked up with its rear doors against the building wall… and noticed just how cold the air was as she passed close to it, and found herself flashing back to the hallucinatory shower of blood she experienced in Casablanca.

After that they tracked the gangster Danglars to an abandoned construction site and exercised some bad ass infiltration skills to move through that place like ghosts.   In the climactic scene of the evening Rowan located some of the trafficking victims and began escorting them out while Hans confronted their captors.     The captors, as it turned out, were not what they seemed to be.

The first, Janos, when covered by Hans’ pistol just smiled, leaped to the wall and then to the ceiling and raced on all fours across the ceiling to drop down on Hans.   Hans pulled off some incredible rolls here, first for Stability and then for Shooting and Janos ended up face up on the floor, seemingly dead, with half a dozen bullets in him.   Shortly afterward though he was found on his belly, several feet away, as though he’d been crawling from the place where he fell.

The second guard, Istvan, proved a tougher opponent and he and Hans tussled to say the least.   A couple of bare handed blows from the Hungarian left Hans reeling and battered, while a few bullets and then Hans’ hold out knife into Istvan’s neck finally dropped Istvan to his knees.  In game terms Istvan was way negative on Health but not by any significant source…   at least until Danglars and his mooks burst into the building to help out their allies, and flooded the corridor with sunlight.

Istvan’s last word “Fu..” came a second before his body burst into flames heralding the first Vampire destruction of the campaign.

The last twist came later as the pair returned to their patron, Professor Masson, in his home.  It became clear that the aged academic knew more about what he was sending them into than he’d let on.    This wasn’t just some concerned citizen with money to burn and a dislike of crime…   But before they could probe much further their world turned upside down.    The next moment they opened their eyes and found Masson dead, the room on fire, Hans pressing his gun into his own head and empty shell cases on the floor.  Masson had been shot and slashed with some cutting weapon.   Sirens were blaring, and a glance at the clock showed that an hour had passed.

The pair fled, not wanting to have to deal with official entanglement and as they made it to safety Rowan found a handwritten note on her, giving an email address and a password.

That’s where the session officially ended, but my players knowing the way I work actually decided to log on in real life to the gmail address they’d just been given.   Nothing in the inbox… nothing in the sent items… but in the Drafts section they found this:

I will never send this email.   I fear that any mail sent can be intercepted, can be monitored, can be changed or eliminated.   But I hope that I have had time to pass the details for this account to you, whoever you are.   


If I have done so then I know my time is short, and I am likely to be already dead.  I regret much and no doubt have cause to.

I have discovered that there are few people I can trust.   The enemy is ancient and cunning and inhuman and they have ways to bring under their control any man or woman they choose. They are everywhere and they are always scheming against the living.

Here I will record my notes in brief, the greater part of them are safely hidden with a friend.


Mirrors 
Wild roses
Allium sativum
The light of the sun scorches them

Blanchard is a link for them I think.  Unknowing?  Why would they trust him?   His vehicles are useful. Haulage company accounts – very profitable – front.

Schwartz?



L. reported dreaming of a great cat searching prowling round house unable to get in.

Of the sources encountered only Donald Templeton of Scotland Yard seems credible.  Advice useful.   Warns of their presence in London.  Hawkins Theatre.

“Old Firm”??  Chapel boys.   European gangs cutting into old territory, drugs, extortion. – Templeton suspects They are assisting.

Violence in Paris, manhunts.  Cover up?   Was government looking for Them?   Paranoia.  Am seeing Them everywhere now.

Running water – cannot be crossed except at certain times.   Oceans?  Link to tides?   How about beneath?

King in Yellow – a conceit of Chambers, mere fiction.  Why would T ask?

More than one strain of them?   Templeton reports vary from those of Zagreb and own observations.   Bloodlines?   Degenerates?

Now they have directly encountered Vampires and can’t really lie to themselves any more about what they are up against.    They are on the run for a number of reasons including probably being implicated in the death of Professor Masson, but at least they now have some cryptic leads in the form of Masson’s last message.
I guess the prologue is over.   Time for the hunt to start.
Gaming

Night’s Black Answers – a player’s response to my questions for #NightsBlackAgents

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In my last post I shared a short list of questions I’d asked the players in my Night’s Black Agents campaign in the hope of generating some backstory details I could plunder for drama and complications.

Tonight Rowan’s player replied – and instead of just answering the questions she copied me into a folder containing documents… a briefing document, an after action interview, and others with more game-related stuff.

I was blown away at the response anyway and then she pointed out that the group her character infiltrated was  real one, and the dates given corresponded to a real event of the type she described.  She did ask me to redact the name of the group just in case…     So I have.   But here is the response I got tonight.  I feel a very lucky GM indeed to be receiving campaign handouts from my players.

PDF Version

Gaming

Night’s Black Questions – quick backstory for #nightsblackagents characters

Finn CullenLeave a comment
I’m a handful of adventures into my Night’s Black Agents campaign and we’re all getting a feel for the characters.    Having refreshed my exposure to the spy/thriller genre I’ve noticed that most protagonists have something lurking in their pasts that made a big impact on them.  

“He’d never been the same since Kiev”
“Look, about that time in Madrid… ” / “Never mention that again.”
“Miller dropped his hand, numb, this was too much like the failed extraction in Tokyo”
Her thoughts drifted back to the moonless night camped near Petra, and the whispers that became roars.

So, following on from my recent use of directed questions in my Fate campaign I’ve just forwarded the following mini questionnaire to my NBA players.   Knowing them I’m sure they’ll provide some interesting backstory and plot-hooks from their previous lives…

The One That Ended Badly
Where was the mission?
What was the objective?
Was the objective accomplished?
Want went wrong?
Who died that shouldn’t have?
Why is it hard for you to talk about?
Describe/name one other character from that mission – ally, enemy, bystander that might crop up again in the future

Gaming

Red Shift episode 4: Calais – Night’s Black Agents play report

Finn CullenLeave a comment

Rowan and Hans regrouped after a few days of downtime during which Hans reminisced with an old special forces buddy back in Sweden and Rowan enjoyed an illicit few days of romance and hot funky adulterous action with her (married) lover, a former colleague of hers.   He floated the idea of her coming back to the group, telling her how her expertise at making and running networks of agents would be useful in the increasingly fragmented Middle East.  She declined.

The new job in Calais sounded straightforward enough.   There were rumours of a human trafficking operation there, and a local resident named Bernard Masson had enough money and sense of civic duty to want it stopped.  He was willing to pay good money, very good money, for evidence of what was going on and could point the team  toward a couple of good leads – a haulage company and a local gangster, both of whom were likely to be involved.

Rowan and Hans set watch on the haulage company and saw the local gangster, Danglars, make contact with the manager there.   Rowan checked out inside the building using unsecured security cameras and Digital Intrusion but couldn’t pick up any audio.   They followed Danglars back to the Indigo Nightclub in the centre of Calais.   Realising the place was a “cabaret bar” with lap-dancing, and that this might be a firm connection to the human trafficking they decided to return to the club that evening and make some sordid enquiries while posing as a couple looking to celebrate their anniversary in sleazy style.

Something special?  You need to speak to Maria, they were told.   Maria’s a German woman and in charge of the other dancers.  She was unshockable and was happy to arrange for a number of girls to be provided for the couple a few nights hence.  Money changed hands, and Hans schmoozed club owner Blanchard who was slyly ogling Rowan on the dance floor.    A call from someone named Karolus interrupted Blanchard who despatched the lurking Danglars at once.

The team had planted a tracker on Danglars car… they decided… and a suitable Preparedness spend made it so.   They were not surprised to see the hoodlum return to Star Logistics, the haulage firm.  Parking up some distance away Rowan used her backdoor into the security cameras to see what was happening in the forecourt.   What was happening was the arrival of a truck from Hungary (according to the plates) which quickly disgorged a dozen frightened young women and a couple of men.   The watchers saw intimidation and violence used to get the new arrivals to stop complaining.    Then someone else got out of the truck, someone that the trafficking victims clearly didn’t know had been in there.

Then the cameras went crazy.  Just as they had in Casablanca.   Cursing whatever damned jammers somebody was clearly selling these days Rowan left Hans watching the screens and went to take a look in person.  What she saw was a tall, patrician man with white hair and a neat beard receiving bows of respect from the locals.   She took a picture of him with her phone (she thinks) and then watched as the bearded man selected one of the women and took her inside.

Hans saw the external cameras suddenly clear up… but the internal one now went on the blink.  In between the static though he saw the woman… and only the woman… in the corridor inside the building.   Then something unseen slammed her against the wall and a curtain of blood flowed downward suddenly from her throat.    Hans made a Stability spend here to keep things together.

The session ended with the trafficked victims being shipped away in a new van, with Danglars the gangster driving somewhere that (according to the tracker) was in an industrial area to the west of the city, and with the bearded newcomer somewhere still on the premises at the haulage firm.   The cameras stopped screaming as something was placed within the rear of another of the firm’s trucks.

Gaming

Red Shift – Episode 3 – Night’s Black Agents play report

Finn CullenLeave a comment
Episode Three of RedShift was played out on Sunday evening, and while lighter on the action than the opening two episodes was still pretty intense and we got to see the Heat mechanics close up.
Mysterious Arab fellow
Valiant freelance agents Rowan and Hans ended last session in a private room just off the ER of Casablanca’s main hospital.   Hans’ face and neck had been badly torn up by the mysterious Arab man who had punched through the windshield of his car and tried to break Hans’ neck during a high speed chase… until Rowan had blown the attacker’s brains all over the car with a point blank shot to the head.    The stability loss from seeing the man rise to his feet in the rear view mirror was the first big use of the Stability rules in the campaign but perfectly justified I think.
Hans had a contact at the hospital who he’d worked with before and agreed to fix him up off the books.   While Hans was recovering the doctor, Jean, brought some bad news.   The shoot-out they’d had against the operatives with the obscure Templar insignia at the railway station had made the news and blurry CCTV images of Rowan and Hans were all over the television.    Jean was glad to help an old friend… but perhaps now they’d been patched up they could go and recover somewhere else?
No slouch at disguise…
Rowan, who’s no slouch at disguise, spent a few points toward reducing the Heat and they ventured out into early-morning Casablanca to find somewhere to hole up.   They had a meeting to arrange with their mysterious patron in the early afternoon.  Finding a McDonalds (for that authentic North African ambience of course) they sat and planned the meet.   At this point they discovered that Casablanca was home to a vast high tech luxury shopping mall.   With an IMAX cinema (“We can go see Deadpool” suggested Rowan, and because they had time to kill, they did just that!) and the largest conical aquarium in the world – Aqua Dream.
That detail clinched it for them and they mailed their handler to pass on the details to their patron.   The mysterious MORDRED121 would meet them at 1pm at Aqua Dream.
This gave me a GM dilemma.   A huge high tech mall with all those lovely features, balconies, multi-level goodness, expensive shops and glazed frontages AND A WORLD RECORD HOLDING AQUARIUM… and there was no logical way I could introduce an action scene at this point.   They’d covered their tracks pretty well and – in my defense – neither were actually in any shape right now for any dangerous confrontations.    I filed away the venue for potential later use and squirmed at the missed opportunity.
When MORDRED121 turned up he was an arrogant English academic in appearance.  He wanted assurance that the team had recovered the stolen documents in their entirety and the team retired to an upper floor of the nearest large chain bookshop.   They decided that there would be an unused reading table in one of the less popular sections and I decided to throw them a bone… while MORDRED121 began poring over the 18th century manuscript of hand written Latin arcana Rowan spotted their patron’s picture on the spine of a book nearby.     MORDRED121 was, according to the author bio on the book, a Professor William Helm of Magdalen College, Oxford.  A medievalist.    Two questions got added to the team’s agenda here:

How does a university professor, even one at Oxford, afford to hire two deniable mercenaries to recover a stolen manuscript?
Why would a medievalist be so interested in this much later document?

Helm saw them looking at his bio in the book and was not best pleased.   He also wanted assurance that Rowan had not made any digital copy of the document she’d helped recover for him.
Of course not, she lied.   She’d photographed every page individually as soon as the document was in her hands.   Helm let slip the name of the package too – the Sangretti Collection.   Suspicious but mollified Professor Helm let that issue go and decided he’d want to engage the pair for a supplementary task – escorting him and the Collection safely to Paris where he apparently had a convention to attend.    The details were provided to RedShift, the agency that handled client/operative relationships and the appropriate funds were transferred and tickets obtained.
On the way out of the bookstore though the Heat roll I’d made earlier came into play.    There were local cops all over the mall, more than you’d expect, and one of them approached Hans directly asking for ID.   Hans bluffed his way past but the cops were not convinced and Hans spotted others moving to cut off his exit from the mall.   Rowan and Helm peeled off to avoid the trouble as Hans took the initiative and approached the cops.
They were looking for the man who’d been involved at the railroad station shootout.  His description matched that of someone at the scene.   He was to consider himself under arrest…
“Of course I work for Interpol you jackass”
Until Hans’ player decided to use his first Cover spend of the campaign.   He had the cops reach into his inside pocket and locate his Interpol warrant card.   Using a combination of Cover and Cop Talk he managed to bluster the locals into believing he was working a case here (albeit slightly out of his jurisdiction) and they were endangering it.    They weren’t completely convinced until one rang control to get the Interpol identity checked out… one very tense die roll later and they let Hans go with some harsh words about authority.
Things went pretty smoothly from then on.  The team arrived at the Mohammed V International airport.   Rowan saw Helm having a quiet word with security and flashing some sort of pass… she caught the word “EISENBRUCKE” on the card and the three of them were whisked through to board the plane with no questions asked about their carry on weapons.   Rowan recognised that name – the courier with the stolen documents that they’d abducted in Marrakech had asked them in terrified tones if they were working for the Eisenbrucke Foundation.    It turned out that maybe they were…
From there a flight north to Paris.   Rowan felt mysteriously relieved – and regained a point of Stability – after crossing the North African coastline and heading over the ocean (the magical connection forged by the mysterious Arab attacker having been cut off at the water’s edge, not that they know that yet) to safely deliver Helm to his destination.

Now for a week’s downtime while Rowan has a sordid liaison with her married lover (and Source of Stability) and Hans recuperates… and then a new assignment already mailed to them by RedShift to deal with a patron in Calais.   And to ponder the questions raised from the last job.
Gaming

Red Shift – the story so far

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(I’m copying a couple of posts I made at Google+ for the sake of completeness and to avoid the Empty Blog syndrome that conjures the demons Blokk and Lackspiration)

First session of Red Shift my new Night’s Black Agents campaign has just finished and I have to hand it to +Pelgrane Press Ltd and +Kenneth Hite – the system worked so well we had a blast. Highlights included an inventive use of Reassurance (after first providing an imaginary threat that the subject needed Reassurance against… “Fucking Liam Neeson bullshit” as he commented afterward), a Thriler car chase through the crowded Medina streets of Marrakech, and a brief encounter with a mysterious Arabic gentleman who for some reason didn’t show up on the hidden cameras our surveillance expert had planted around the Saadian Tombs.

The Roll20 Incident board idea I implemented worked well… and is now looking a whole lot busier.

The second episode of Red Shift took place yesterday evening and I have to say that Night’s Black Agents is proving to be one of the most enjoyable role-playing systems I’ve used in many years of trying lots of different ones. The mechanics of the game just get out of the way and let the players make appropriate genre-appropriate decisions and actions and everything conveys the right thriller atmosphere.

In last night’s episode our intrepid freelancers fled from the mysterious Arab gentleman in the Saadian tombs who luckily seemed strangely reluctant to follow them into the sunlit streets of Marrakech. Still in the possession of the mysterious package they’d recovered from a low-life English art-thief they retreated to their safe house and discovered the package contained a sheaf of several centuries-old documents in Latin. Realising there were at least two other parties interested in this package, both of whom had shown a willingness to take extreme measures to get hold of them, they decided to drive out overnight toward Casablanca to go to ground.

Alas for tracking devices and rival teams that also have Electronic Surveillance… a car chase on the A7 highway ensued which ended with our heroes out distancing their pursuers and branching off into the railway station at Skhour Rehamna and picking up a couple of tickets for the first train northward.

Did I mention the tracking device? The pursuing team turned up minutes later and the first real gunfight of the campaign ensued on the northbound platform that left the two pursuers dead, the team’s Heat rating climbing through the roof, and our heroes deciding not to wait around the station for the cops to show up but to steal their pursuer’s car and complete the journey to Casablanca without delay.

Availing themselves of a decent hotel room (using money stolen from the rival team) Intrusion Expert Rowan hacked the hotel’s security camera system and set her laptop to cycle through the cameras for advance warning. After a gory hallucination in the shower (she put it down to stress) she let Hans take the first watch while she got some sleep.

But not much… the lobby camera kept fritzing out… dissolving into static just like the camera she’s set up in the Saadian tombs. When the image cleared the receptionist appeared to be talking to someone, but there was nobody else in view.

Suspecting trouble the pair exited quickly via the balcony and a quick clamber down a drainpipe to ground level, or at least Rowan did. Hans was still on the balcony when someone they recognised from the tomb kicked the hotel door entirely off its frame, burst into the room and slammed Hans so hard he made it to the ground the hard way, badly injured and barely able to stand. He was able to use his Driving cherry to boost a nearby Volkswagen Beetle though (expressing a certain distaste at the lack of choice) and the pair fled. The Arab gentleman who just stepped off the balcony and instantly broke into a run to purse the car managed to leap atop it and smashed the windshield, trying to throttle Hans with those perfectly manicured hands… Rowan put her gun to the side of the man’s head and fired, blowing a large chunk of it away and sending the assailant rolling off the car and into the gutter… where he was visible in the rear view mirror struggling to his feet and clutching at the bloodless wound in his head.

Stability losses ensued and we had the first Network spend of the campaign as Hans remembered an old acquaintance of his, a French doctor, working in Casablanca who didn’t mind doing off the books work for a friend.

TL/DR: Lots of fun was had, the rules support the action perfectly, and the plot thickens.