Dramatis Personae:

• S, playing Padraig - Irish actor, formerly linked to drug running.
• N, playing Yannis - Belgian hacker who got recruited by the ADIV/SGRS a while back.
• An, playing Cooper ‘Coop’ - All-American patriot. In an overwatch position.
• Al, playing Petros - The Dogfather. Tailing the folks outside (player not available)

Recap

09 May 2011

The previous session had the PCs watch some intruders waltz into their own intrusion. They took this poorly, and prepared to jump them. Yannis knocked at the door, but failed to talk them into opening it. At the same time Padraig sneaked into the flat properly, with a disguised pistol at the ready. The fight was short and sharp, with Yannis choking out one of the intruders in a surprise attack and Padraig shooting the other in the arm, causing him to be overpowered.

This meant that they had the situation under control. Searching their captives, they found nothing of note, suggesting that something had been left at the desk, not something taken. Heading carefully over to the desk, they found a bomb placed under it, such that anyone sitting down would be in the blast zone. Neither Yannis or Padraig have much training with explosives, so they decided not to mess about with it, but to leave a message for Drawes warning him: the unconscious intruder (that Yannis had knocked out) was gagged and tied up to a chair in the room alongside a burner phone and a note:

Dear Dr Drawes. This man left a bomb under your desk. Keep the phone. I’ll be in touch. A friend.

They then cleaned up the flat a little to minimise the damage, before escaping with their captive and the RFID card that they had previously found.

This whole event provided an impetus for them to go after the Institute, so Coop immediately headed over there to watch what was happening and if they had an opportunity to do anything. There was a fair amount of flutter after an hour or two, suggesting that the break in at Drawes’ flat had been discovered. Still, the institute was big enough that it seemed likely that they had at least a couple of days of work to clean it out properly.

10 May 2011

There was then a short timeskip to the next day, when the agents had their scheduled phone interview with Zarina Talbot. Padraig took the lead, asking fairly standard questions, before dropping a few key phrases: Carfax, Dracula, Demeter. This got her to cut the interview short, but with a promise to get in touch shortly to ‘discuss more details’.

GM Notes and Thoughts

It was definitely time to stop everything going the way of the PCs, so that was the meta reason for having a third party raiding their target. This definitely got the reaction that I was looking for! They are now speculating about who this third player might be, which is gratifying.

The time skip was because going into the institute halfway through the session was not something that I wanted to do. If nothing else, I needed to prep it, but there was also no way that it would be done before the session ended. This was something that had been arranged to happen, but it would not take long with the approach that my players had in mind, so I decided to play it out now.

They also needed to make a call as to whether to go for the institute now or wait, but they wanted a little time to think it over. They wanted to take advantage of the possible confusion of having another player on the field, and make it look like a coordinated attack on Drawes and the institute by some other party. This would give them some cover, and hopefully lead to them being less noticed. They also wanted to try and get ahead of any raid similar to the one that they had been planning by anyone else.

Zarina’s conversation went as well as could be expected. They are a little worried about the reaction being to cut the conversation off, but it is also one that indicates that she knows something. They will need to wait until she reaches out again for a follow-up though.

Notable NPCs

• Lady Zarina Talbot: Philanthropist. Her name was found in an Edom archive from the 1970s.