Dramatis Personae:

• S, playing Padraig - Irish actor, formerly linked to drug running, and then pressured by EUROPOL to act as a courier to provide gear and funds to informants and similar shady characters
• N, playing Yannis - Belgian hacker who got recruited by the ADIV/SGRS a while back. Saving his shoes from the sewer wandering.
• An, playing Cooper ‘Coop’ - All-American patriot. Former Marine, pulled into the CIA as a wetworker.
• Al, playing Petros - ‘Ambiguously Balkan’, openly works for the dog/horse racing rings that the various Balkan mafias are involved with. The Dogfather.

Recap

02 May 2011

The plan for getting into Drawes’ apartment was to replace a couple of the cleaners from the approved company, Skhygiene Cleaning (top flight service, guaranteed). The prepwork took a weekend to get onto the temp agency list and make sure that a vacancy was made available. Yannis and Padraig would be on the cleaning crew, to plant some bugs and snoop around. Petros was watching the front entrance with a nondescript van, and Coop had a couple of observation nests, one at the front, one at the back. The one at the front had a sniper rifle, but they decided that they probably did not need fire-power round the back.

Yannis and Padraig arrived with the cleaning crew and knuckled down to cleaning the apartment block’s gym. Mike, heading up the cleaning crew, swung past a few times to check on the newbies - even with references and experience for them this was a big contract - and he did not want anything going wrong. The plan was to get some of the other cleaning crew out of the way after lunch, since one of the vacancies was from a sudden bout of food poisoning….

They managed to do this with some of Petros’ special sauce in the lunch, and got assigned to a flat on the same floor as Drawes for after lunch. Coop had moved around to the back and saw that there was someone very at home within the flat. They were working on a laptop in the office and also used the kitchen. This was unexpected, since they had not seen him over the weekend or on Friday. The occupant also looked pretty well-built - they definitely work out.

Eventually, with some clever coordination, Padraig managed to hop a couple of balconies and get a camera and microphone on the window to watch for a couple of days.

Round about this time, the agents got a call from Cassandra Irving, who was working at the Romania desk at GCHQ. She was being followed and was sounding very scared. Coop and Petros, who had been waiting outside hared off in that direction to check it out.

They talked her through a few streets, getting near to her without anything happening. When getting closer, they noticed a police car redirecting traffic. Ducking into an alleyway, Coop quickly set up an ambush. As Cassandra came around the corner, Coop shot one of the two people who followed her into the alleyway. At the same time, Petros pulled her into the van and started it up, prepared to get involved. The first trailer, not shot at by Coop took cover in a nearby doorway and shot back blindly. Petros, seeing this revved the engine and blocked the entrance, dodging the shots. Coop fired off a few more shots to keep everyone’s heads down and got into the van as well, making sure to finish off the wounded opponent who had been shot first. The two peeled out, attempting to hit the last person who had been following Cassandra.

It took them some time, but they were able to lose their pursuers and get back to a safe house to be greeted by Yannis and Padraig, who had otherwise had a pretty quiet day, finishing off their cleaning.

Cassandra told them that she had not heard from her contact, Alvah, for a while now. She had also seen the same couple of strangers around for the last couple of days, including when leaving the office at an odd time for lunch. The agents calmed her down and settled her one of their secondary bolt-holes for now.

GM Notes and Thoughts

The person in Drawes’ office made the players a lot more cautious than I expected. In any case, the infiltration went off smoothly, and they at least have some observation in place, and can probably get in again if they need to. Not many rolls needed here, since they were not really trying anything too risky. The plan to lightly poison their temporary co-workers was cruel, but it let them have a bit more freedom to move.

The call from Cassandra was a somewhat random event, in that I had it as happening at some point, but the exact date was randomised away from the table. Luckily for the players their combat-focused person, Coop, was not stuck inside cleaning things. I used the same priority extended task approach that I had used before. Again, it worked pretty well.

The shootout and the short chase is going to raise their heat within London. So far though, they have not been properly identified, so the descriptions are still a little vague. In any case, the campaign is starting to ramp up a little now, so hopefully we can keep things going. I am aware that it is the Dracula Dossier, and there have not been many Draculas yet.

This post is quite delayed, in part because we have not done a DD session for a while - this one was at the end of February, and we had one now at the beginning of April, so about a month of people being away and some one-shots and board games instead. Hopefully the momentum will pick up again though.

Notable NPCs

• Dr John L Drawes - Director of an NHS Haematology and Malaria Research Institute in the Plaistow area. Lives in a fancy building.
• Cassandra Irving - GCHQ analyst on the Romania desk. Originally gave the agents the Dossier on behalf of a contact of hers.