WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

[oroborous]

Its been mulling around in my head for quite some time now, but I'm finally getting around to compiling a group of players for my new game. It takes place in the same universe as the World of Dark Champions, although I believe werewolves will be more prominently featured, since the game's beginning sessions will take place in the hinterlands of New Mexico.

 

If anyone in my group decides to play a WoD-based PC, I'm going to be using the conversion rules created by Dr. Robert Harrison and playtested by the late, great RJM Hughes, Andy Ferguson (aka Larry Black), and myself.

 

Since the conversion is points-heavy, I'm allowing my players around 250 points plus 100 in disads and spotting them up to 40 points in martial arts, but that isn't to say you automatically end up with a 390 point character. If their concept works on less points, I'm only giving them as much as they need to create it. No character is going to have outright superpowers, but mystic and psychic powers are possible.

 

I've got one character created with a few more to come, so I'll post it here as an example. The background isn't all fleshed out, but the character is the illegitimate son of the Japanese crown prince. Kenji Soto lived in obscurity for 16 years until a tabloid revealed his existence, which his father acknowledged. His father then got him a royal stipend, good schooling and a consulate job in the USA in an attempt to make up for lost time.

 

Kenji's step-father was a martial arts instructor and part of a secret clan of ninja. Kenji was trained in their style and continued his training after he was accepted into the royal family. The clan wanted to make use of his new found family ties, and are tickled pink at his new posting in the USA.

 

A character sheet can be found here

[oroborous]

Prologue

 

You were good, damn good. Your track record can speak for itself. Every tip you got, every skull you caved, every firefight and every thug you sent to the morgue in a zipper bag can attest to that. Sometimes you felt magnanimous and dropped them off at the station house, after you got your pound of flesh. You can’t help it that you were born better than normal people. You were destined to help protect your fellow man, but you don’t have time to play by the rules. The a**holes that you were dealing with weren’t. In fact, some of them threw out the whole g**damn rulebook and made it up as they went along.

 

You’ve seen some mighty strange s**t too. You remember the day that you emptied a clip into that guy and he just kept coming. You weren’t dumb enough to stick around either. Sometimes you have to live to fight another day. That one time when the hairy motherf***er in the bar nearly ripped your arm out of its socket you saw something in his eyes that made you want to melt. Then there was that b***h that literally lit a fire underneath your ass. All of the sudden you were engulfed – too bad she hadn’t heard of Kevlar.

 

You’ve got your own little bag of tricks too. You aren’t dumb. You never bring a knife to a gunfight, and even if you did you stand a better chance of walking out alive than they do. So what the hell went wrong?

 

As you wake up from your haze, you’re not quite sure where you are. All you remember is that your sources gave you a "good tip". You trusted them, because they never steered you wrong. This time was different. Maybe someone got sloppy. Maybe someone’s mother got kidnapped. Maybe someone got that extra million they needed to look the other way. You don’t even know how long you’ve been out. All you know for sure is that you got your clock cleaned.

 

“Don’t bother struggling, Two-eighty.”, says a bored aristocratic British voice, “You’re strapped down to a table in full restraints. It’s for your own protection. You’re still groggy from the sedation.”

 

For the first time you feel the sensation of leather and buckles around your wrists and ankles, and then a draft. “I’m naked.” you croak.

 

“No need for false modesty, Two-eighty”, drones the disembodied voice,”after all, you haven't any equipment I've never seen two hundred seventy nine times before, give or take.”

 

“Where am I?!? Who’s in charge here?!?”—The first coherent thoughts you can voice.

 

“You are at Camp Trinity, and you are Two-eighty. You are a reality deviant and you are being held for crimes against humanity. We cannot, obviously, reveal your existence to the general public, so you are being interred here. You will never be released, but you will be treated humanely so long as you submit to our authority. We’ve already suppressed any extra-human abilities you may have possessed, and any attempts to escape will be punished by death. You already have a tracking device planted in your body and you will be required to wear a uniform.”

 

“F**k you, a**hole!”

 

“A noble sentiment, indeed, but physiologically impossible, in fact, I would say you are the one who is f***ed. Even if you did escape, which would require an act of God Himself, you no longer exist, and if you were too famous to erase, you’re dead.

 

I’ll leave you now to recover your wits and clothe yourself. We’ll speak again later.”

 

“Hey! Hey! I want to speak with someone in charge! Who’s in charge here?!?!” you scream.

 

“You are, Two-eighty.”

 

I've included an attachment which is the symbol embroidered on all of the uniforms mentioned above

 

Not all of the players have played Hero before, so I'm going to run a couple of one-on-one episode zero's before I drop the bomb on them.

 

At least the first full episode will be in Camp Trinity, before some Deus ex Machina helps break them out.

[oroborous]

Mr. Clean

 

Mr. Clean is a freelance CIA agent. He has been involved in Colombian drug wars and political assassinations. He was given some sort of an injection that made him extra tough, but scientists can't say whether he was always disease free or just after the formula was given to him. Needless to say, a few men in high places have been given the AIDS vaccine based on his blood. He has been exposed to every disease known to the CDC as of 2002 when he became a free agent.

 

GM's Note: This character never got off of the ground because the player had an incompatible schedule and he was kind of a skeever anyway. If someone wants to use him as an NPC just let me know. I don't think he'll be showing up in this form for any of my adventures.

[oroborous]

In the Grasp of the Shadowdragon

 

I’ve played Hero intermittently for a while now, but this campaign is the first one that I’ve ever tried to GM, so I think this first mini-session could have taken a lot less time. I kept consulting the speed and OCV charts to make sure who was coming up next in combat and whether the attacks hit or not.

 

My sole purpose for this first outing was to throw myself and my player, John, into the deep end and see if we could swim. I guess it will get easier with time and more table space for all my NPC character sheets. I didn’t want the session to run longer than 2 hours so I concluded it before the dénouement, but at a good stopping point.

 

Here are some URLs that will set up the current action:

 

Japanese Consulate for Southern California/Arizona Kenji’s employer

Map of 256 Rocky Point Rd Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274-2662, US Kenji’s Estate

Zenshuji Soto Mission Kenji’s place of worship and where his contact leaves messages

 

 

Session 0.1: “In the Grasp of the Shadowdragon” Part I; IRL date 9/2/06

 

Beginning Location of Session: 350 South Grand Avenue, Suite 1700; Los Angeles, CA 90071

 

In-Game Date: September 11, 2006

 

Time: 11:00am

 

This all started out as a regular day in the office of Assistant Consul General Kenji Soto. The nation was busy having moments of silence and reflection in the wake of the 5th anniversary of the terror attacks. The Consul General went to a memorial service at city hall, just a few blocks away. Security was tight, as always, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Kenji went through his normal morning routine, waking at 4am and going through his meditations. Then he ate, showered and made the two hour commute to work on L.A.’s snarled freeway system. He had reflected about the message he had received at the temple. His contacts back in Japan had said that he should be vigilant today, but the message was pretty vague. No times were given, and no specific threat was mentioned. The monks also had a message, saying they a disturbance in the area, like that of a dark Ch’i somewhere in the vicinity.

 

With all of that in mind, Kenji kept an eye on his mirrors while driving to work. He wasn’t followed. He made his way from the parking garage to the elevator. No one else was with him and no one else rode the elevator. The elevator from the garage only went to the lobby, where he had to show his credentials to the ever-crappy rent-a-cops. They knew he had a carry & conceal permit and he un-holstered his weapon for them to see it like he had done a million times before. Once they were satisfied, he went to floor 17, where a JDF officer in a ceremonial uniform gave him a deep bow and then scrutinized him as if he had never seen him before. Kenji appreciated his thoroughness. Two other JDF men were seated behind a desk, dressed in more functional clothing. Anyone with business at the consulate would have to be inspected and then directed by these men to the correct office. One security guard and the officer were always at the desk.

 

The south half of the building was a cubicle farm full of functionaries. American tourists seeking visas for Japan or Japanese with need of extensions or green cards were conversing with them and business was running along briskly. Technically, Kenji was in charge until Consul General Kazuo Kodama returned from the memorial service. It began at around 6:30 PDT, near the same time the attacks in New York happened. Mayor Villaraigosa had invited the consul and his counterparts from other countries to take part in a show of unity. Governor Schwarzenegger was leading one in Sacramento and Senator Feinstein was in San Francisco doing the same. Kenji thought it was fitting that the consul was there, since city hall was on the site of a former Buddhist monastery.

 

Finally, at around 10:30, Kodama San popped into his office, looking a little tired, but excited. He regaled Kenji with the morning’s events. Apparently there was a big screen monitor where the governor addressed the whole state and led everyone in a moment of silence. The Consul General was a dyed-in-the-wool America-phile and Ahnald one of his favorite Hollywood stars. He considered his posting in L.A. a dream assignment. Eventually, at around 11:05, Kodama San left to go to his own office. Kenji always felt an uncomfortable aura around the Consul General, possibly because he was technically his social superior. But Kenji always did his duty and never lorded his family heritage over anyone.

 

During this woolgathering, the phone interrupted his reverie and he was listening to the latest pissant wannabe martial arts action star cum pop singer complain that her rider specifically stated that she have Tab backstage and that Dr. Pepper was not a suitable substitute. It didn’t do him any good to remind her that his responsibility ended at procuring her work visa; she wanted heads to roll. She wanted him to use his position as a Royal to get someone fired. He had a feeling INS was going to get a call and that someone’s work visa was going to go missing. As what’s-her-name was turning his phone blue over soda-pop, he heard a muffled thud come from down the hallway, and then half a second later a scream from the ladies’ room.

 

He quickly set the phone down and crossed his small office to peek out the door to see what was going on. What he saw was two men in black-ops gear exiting from the security lobby and making a beeline towards the Consul General’s office. He got off a Fist of the Wind and one shot from his pistol, but the first went wide, and the second had hit body armor. Now he had announced his presence. Obviously these two men, possibly more, had taken out security and meant to do something to the Consul General. The second thug shrugged off the shot and continued on to the CG’s office while the first closed with him. At the same time, Kenji noticed two more men exiting the ladies’ room – it had a door on both hallways, so they must have come from up the stairwell.

 

Kenji’s thug took his MAC-10 and pistol-whipped him in the face. Luckily Kenji was able to soak most of this and only took 3 STUN. Kenji then grabbed the gun with his left hand, struggling over the weapon, and backhanded him with his right, hitting the thug across the cheek. At the same time, four armed men breached the CG’s antechamber. One subdued the frightened secretary while the other three continued to the CG’s office. The CG had locked himself into his private bathroom and was dialing 911 on his cell. Seven other men were securing the cubicle farm and the other offices, making sure there were no other heroes in the building. One last operative exited from the center stairwell, and seeing his comrade struggling with Kenji, he closed to assist.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Kenji saw a man quickly cross from the stairwell and head towards him. He wasn’t wearing black ops gear like the rest of the crew. This Asian man was shirtless, with black pants and boots and some sort of dragonesque tattoo on his bare chest. Kenji was finally able to wrest the gun from the thug’s control, and was lowering his pistol to fire at point blank range when the Dragon Man clamped down on his arm. GM’s Note: Shadowdragon has 10” of movement. Since the stairwell door and Kenji’s office are 5” away, I decided to have Shadowdragon hold a half-phase action and I used it to have him grab Kenji’s arm.

 

In the CG’s office, the four thugs were leading a hooded man out of his office, using zip ties to bind the secretary to her chair and also to bind the CG’s hands. Over a comlink the thugs’ captain announced “Target secured” and the Dragon Man said in accented English, “Everyone out. I have one pest to deal with.” Kenji noticed that his voice had a strange, otherworldly quality that was quite unnerving. In that instant, every black-ops person, including the one who was just disarmed, retreated, leaving the Dragon Man clamped onto Kenji’s wrist.

 

In a flash, Kenji turned the tables on his would-be attacker and was able to perform a reversal. But his triumph was short-lived as the Dragon Man looked over his shoulder at Kenji and then performed a devastating mule kick right to his femoral artery, rendering him unconscious. GM’s Note:After performing a Find Weakness roll, Shadowdragon performed an 11d6 kick. Even after soaking 5 PD and 12.5% DR it was enough to drop him and do 3 BODY (ouch). The whole point of this episode was to intentionally outmatch my player ‘cuz he needed a little reality check, so I don’t feel that bad.

 

About a minute later Kenji woke up and realized his femur was broken and he was bleeding to death internally. He summoned up his inner ch’i and mended himself, but he had a nasty foot-shaped bruise right in the crease of his crotch. After gathering himself, he went in and freed the CG’s secretary and called building security. Getting no answer, he dialed 911 directly and they informed him that someone had already called on a cell phone and they were cut off, but that the E911 system said the phone was still in the building somewhere. Kenji found the CG’s cell phone still transmitting from his private restroom and switched it off; then he put it in his pocket. The next thing he did was check on the JDF men in the lobby and all of them were coming around. One of them obviously had tines from a tazer protruding from his neck, and they had all been zip tied, one around the legs, one around the wrists behind the back, and a third connecting the first two. Closer examination showed that they weren’t just regular plastic ties but police-grade flex cuffs impregnated with an aluminum strip for greater durability.

 

Since the consulate is technically foreign territory the LAPD couldn’t do much but secure the site and wait for the Feds. Kenji, the most senior Japanese official took charge and got a head count of all his people and everyone signed into the guest log. No one was killed and less than lethal methods were used on the unconscious guards. He also called the Japanese embassy in DC and the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo to advise them of the situation. Even for a man of his position, everyone was being tight-lipped and not very forthcoming with information. After he was debriefed by everyone Kenji called the next most senior Assistant Consul General and left him in charge, saying that he was going to follow up on some leads that he had kept from the American officials.

 

Back in his office, Kenji attempted to get hold of his underworld contact, and when that failed he was able to rouse his step-father. Once he had given him a description of the man and his eerie voice, Oatu Soto was able to put a name to the Dragon Man. “Shadowdragon”, he said, and Kenji heard him actually spit on the floor over the phone. “He is from Korea, and I don’t know which half. Not that it matters, because he has no allegiance to anyone. He follows the money. He is quite a traveler too. He’ll be in the Orient one day and Millennium City another. I’ve even heard he has a safe house in San Francisco. Better men than you or I have died at his hands.

 

“What is odd is that I’ve rarely heard of him operating in broad daylight. I’m pretty sure UNTIL has a file on him too. Maybe you should use your diplomatic ties and get a peek at the dossier. They usually have known weaknesses and vulnerabilities listed. It might give you the edge you need if you’re going to go after him.”

 

“It might take a day to get that, Father”, replied Kenji. “In the interim, I’m going to hit Little Tokyo and the other Asiatowns and see if anything has been brewing. Plus I need to find out who hired him and why the CG was abducted. Thanks for your help. I’ll call you soon.”

 

more to come

[oroborous]

Re: WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

 

Juan Espera is the third character in the game, but the second with an Episode Zero, because Mr. Clean's player has a crappy schedule and we haven't been able to work him into the game. He might even end up not coming, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

We've had a few more sessions now, but I am a slow typer and I'm busy too. The good thing is that it allows me to weave the character's stories into a more cohesive narrative (I hope).

 

So now for your reading enjoyment, the story continues:

 

Time: Around 13:00 PDT

 

After getting off of the phone with his father, Kenji had a new perspective on things and a few leads that he needed to follow. He contacted the Japanese Embassy in D.C. and asked them to contact the U.N. to see if they could get a dossier on Shadowdragon. The Ambassador’s aide advised him that she would fax and email the information to the New York City consulate with his official letterhead, and hopefully something would come to the L.A. office in the morning.

 

He then called a conference of all the other assistant Consuls General and advised them to cooperate fully with any American Federal, Japanese, or other investigations into the matter. He advised his next senior associate that he had a lead on the day’s events and that he would be questioning some people personally, leaving him in charge of the day to day operations. If any important decisions were to be made, he was to be called on his cell phone, and if he didn’t answer within a half hour to call Yamanaka San’s offices in San Francisco, as he was now the most senior diplomat in California.

 

After giving a brief statement as to his general ignorance of the perpetrators or any motive the LAPD and FBI allowed him to go. He politely refused an escort, stating that he still had faith in his JDF guards and that one would accompany him back to his estate. Kenji hated lying to them almost as much as he loathed the 90 minute traffic-clogged ride back to his home. Mapquest said it was a 45 minute drive, but they must have been flying above traffic at 120 Kph. The ride home was not fruitless, though. He was able to make a phone call and get an e-mail list of ships and airplane arrivals from the Far East for the past week. He hoped that this information would help him later, but now it was just a big PDF on his laptop, a list that he couldn’t narrow. A few hours of investigation would hopefully help him get a better bead on this Shadowdragon.

 

Unfortunately for him and his driver, neither of them noticed that a black, unmarked, GMC Envoy with tinted windows was following them at a distance. They had triangulated on Kenji’s cell phone and wireless Ethernet signals and now knew that he knew more than he let on back in the office.

 

Flashback to 11:30am

 

Juan Espera’s head hurt. He had tracked the strange man from the Orient all the way back to the USA. Of all the areas he had been in the world, the Far East was one place he felt utterly out of place. He could pass for Caucasian if he had to, although curly hair and distinct nose caused him some trouble with the anti-Semetic crowd. His travels took him from the Holy Land and eventually west to Spain where took his current name. Then he went north to London across the ocean to the Colonies and finally ended up in L.A. In all the time he had been alive he had kept traveling west, never once ending up east of the Jordan.

Jesus was right. He had once told him that if you go West long enough you’ll end up in the East. He was a great prophet, that Jesus. Juan finally realized that the Son of God wasn’t angry at him for what he had said to Him. To be insulted you would have to be proud, and Jesus wasn’t proud. Pride was a sin, and like all sins, Jesus was incapable of performing it.

 

It took several hundred years, but when Juan finally met his first son of Cain, he knew why he had been chosen to live. Over the centuries he had played a role in many of the turning points of the Annos Domini. Christians were all well and good, but they grew old and received their reward in Heaven. Christ needed someone who could be the thread that tied the generations of the Faithful together. He was the keeper of the continuity and the first Defender of the Faith. This was just one more hidden battle in a long line.

 

So now he was here in a parking garage, nursing one of the headaches that he got when an enemy of the Lord was in the area. He had seen them pile out of a couple of vans, armed with automatic weapons, body armor and high-tech communications gear. He decided to wait and see what their target was. If he attacked now he may not find out what the purpose of the raid was.

 

Around 10 men ran up into the central stairwell, but none of them were the one. Finally, about a minute later, the Asian with the dragon tattoo strode from the back of the second van and made his way up the stairs. Juan saw that there were still two men in each van – one driver and another lookout. He doubted that the drivers were unarmed, but he expected that they might only have a sidearm. He snuck close to the first van and saw that the driver was smoking and that his lookout was munching on an apple.

 

Juan pulled out a set of spiked brass knuckles, crossed himself and said a simple prayer to the Lord. The man eating the apple clutched his chest and then slumped over in his seat. His comrade looked over at him in alarm and started shaking him in an attempt to revive his stricken ally. In a crouching sprint, Juan positioned himself at the door of the van underneath the window. Then he popped up and shattered the glass on the driver’s side, and before the startled merc could do anything but yelp out in surprise Juan had him in a naked choke hold.

 

In the other van, the two men noticed that something was not right with their partners. The guard got out of the passenger side and went to investigate while the driver radioed something to the team in the building. Juan placed a few more blows on the crown of his struggling foe, who had begun to twitch and relieve himself uncontrollably. Satisfied that the man wouldn’t be getting up any time soon, Juan stole a Glock-9 from the man’s holster and braced himself just as the other merc rounded the rear of the van.

 

A quick double-tap hit the third merc in the chest, being absorbed by the body armor, and he made a hasty retreat behind the corner of the van while firing his MAC-10 blindly towards the area that he saw Juan last. This prompted the fourth merc to exit the second van and round the front of the van just as Juan had hit the ground and began to crawl under Van #1.

 

Mercs 3 and 4 converged on the driver’s side of Van #1, barely missing seeing Juan continue under the carriage towards Van #2. As they did a quick scan of the area to see where he was hiding, Juan jumped up and began to sprint the short distance to Van #2 to see if they had been dumb enough to leave the keys in it. The mercs were determining that Juan had not hidden on the driver’s side of Van #1 and were turning around just in time to see Juan open the door to Van #2.

 

Just as Juan closed the door, Driver 2 was able to get a few shots off, but they impacted just behind the door and lodged in the seat. The keys were still in the ignition and he fired it up and locked the doors. The two mercs opened up the driver’s side door of Van #1 and quickly got in and started it up. Juan’s plan was to park the van broadside to the stairwell door and prevent the exit of the merc team from that egress point. Just as he was getting there, Van #1 backed up into the driver’s door of Van #2 and prevented Juan from opening it.

 

Realizing that he could be trapped, Juan fired out the windshield and then jumped through. The two mercs couldn’t get out of Van #1’s passenger side without depositing their incapacitated buddy onto the cement, which took an extra few seconds. In that amount of time, Juan blinded his foes with the Glory of the Lord and as they were fumbling around he proceeded to blast one with a bolt of holy energy.

 

In a few more seconds, all four of the mercs had been incapacitated and Juan was alright, except for a little pain from the impact of the van. He took Van #1 and placed in front of the second stairwell, leaving only one stairwell for the merc team to leave from.

 

Now all he had to do was wait.

 

more to come

[oroborous]

Re: WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

 

There is a saying about the best laid plans of mice and men. There is also another saying about how great battle plans go to crap as soon as contact with the enemy is established. Both of these situations applied to Juan. After blocking two of the stairways and after the team of mercs had lost contact with their brethren in the parking garage, he was sure that they would be expecting something. He just hoped that the choke point of the door would suffice. He could try to blind as many people as possible with The Glory of the Lord, but he remembered that some of them were wearing shaded ballistic lenses and that those might mitigate some of the effects. He still also didn’t know what the target was. He knew that there were some finance companies and CEOs in the building. Also there was the Japanese consulate, but this team was good and the madman with the dragon tattoo held his cards close to the vest. His personal code of conduct wouldn’t allow him to attack the man just because he was suspicious and creepy or else he could have assailed him weeks ago when he didn’t have a retinue of armed thugs. But now that he was associated with armed mercenaries he felt reasonably comfortable that The Lord would not fault him for taking as many of the team as he could.

 

As he was thinking about all of this, he took the time to restrain the four men who he had just rendered unconscious. Each of them was carrying three sets of police-grade flex cuffs, so he bound their hands and feet and then tied the two sets together with a third. He searched them and found some maps and one working comlink, a Bluetooth earpiece connected to a military spec communicator. He looked it over and switched the earpiece to mute, so that his heavy breathing wouldn’t give him away, and then he listened to the traffic. He scoured the vans for ammo and found 6 clips for the Glock and 10 for the MAC-10s. That was also another habit of his, he never carried firearms, but he would use the enemy’s weapons against them when he got the chance. There were too many forms and too much scrutiny to legally owning one, and The Lord, although forgiving of his sins, wouldn’t allow him to knowingly flaut the law.

 

Over the comlink he heard the tattooed man say “Everyone out, I have a pest to take care of!” Was someone putting up a fight, or had he been detected? Someone else came on the line, “I haven’t heard from the basement. We’re going to hold in the lobby while I sort it out.” Feeling bold, Juan went up the stairs. He counted 20, the landing, and then another 20 up to the lobby. Luckily there was a narrow window looking out onto the main lobby. A few armed men were guarding the doors and one was right next to this one. If he moved quickly enough he could take the guard by the stairs before the ones by the front door knew what was happening.

 

Juan looked at the hinges. The door would swing towards the stairwell. He rapped on the door and then crouched behind it, hoping against hope. On the comlink he heard “I just thought I heard a noise from stairwell C. What should I do?” The reply: “Maintain your position. The parking garage may have been compromised. An UNSUB or UNSUBs may have incapacitated the drivers. No one will move from their positions without my or the Dragon’s command. Is that understood?” Several “Roger”s came over the line.

 

There was only one thing to do now. There were as many as 5 mercs in the lobby. He supposed the two he couldn’t see were guarding the other 2 stairwells. If he acted now, he could take at least 2 before they knew what was happening. Juan crouched underneath the window and cocked the hammer on the pistol. He waited for the cautious merc to pass in front. It took about 30 seconds. Juan popped up and put one straight in his ear through the glass. A fine mist of blood and brain came out the other side and there was a squelch in is ear for a split second as the merc’s own earpiece was shattered by the bullet.

 

“Man down! Shots from stairwell C! Converge on stairwell C!” came an anxious transmission. The two men by the doors, plus the ones by stairwell A & B were advancing. Juan saw the two by the doors go in a one by one cover formation. There was a trash can with a stone façade, and a tree in the lobby that made excellent cover and the information desk too.

 

Juan peeked out and sprayed one merc as he advanced. He fell, but Juan wasn’t sure if he was hit or just diving for cover. “Automatic fire from stairwell C.” was the call over the comlink. The 4th and 5th mercs had taken a position behind the info desk as the other two were going for the corner of the hallway that led to the stairwell.

 

Scanning the hallway, Juan saw the ladies’ room just cattycorner and decided that he better move in case someone came down the stairwell from above to flank him. He threw open the door while firing blindly down the hall and fell into the bathroom.

 

“One UNSUB on the move. I lost sight of him around the corner.”

 

Juan scanned his surroundings. He wasn’t very happy. From his vantage in the stairwell he had seen the female symbol on the door, but when he got in there he realized it was a unisex handicap stall. The door would lock from the inside, but he had no place to hide. Scanning the room he saw that the ceiling was a drop tile, so he pulled himself up on the stall and pushed up a panel. Looking around, he noticed that there was a truss within reach. He pulled himself through the hole and replaced the tile as he lay on the truss. He left just a little crack so he could see if someone came through the door. At the same time he heard footfalls in the hallway, passing the door.

 

“The son of a bitch just disappeared!” came an angry cry over the comlink. “He can’t have just f**king disappeared into thin air!”

 

“There’s a utility closet and restrooms on the hall.”, said another voice. “Maybe he’s holed up in one of them.”

 

“I’m not gonna be the first one through the door. That’s just ASKING to have your head blown off.”

 

“You motherf**kers are getting paid enough to get your head blown off”, came the voice of the captain, “Now one of you limp d**k a**holes is going to sort that guy out or the Dragon will use you for target practice! We’ll be in the lobby in 5 minutes, so keep this s**thead under wraps. As long as we have the package it doesn’t matter what the hell that guy does.”

 

“Jones is f**king dead! Who knows what’s happened in the garage? He knows too much. We have to kill him.”

 

“Enough of this bickering!” It was the voice of the Dragon. “They’re right. If he can take out five men, he’ll have already picked them clean of any clues. Use the grenades and be done with it!”

 

This was Juan’s cue. He wasn’t going to wait up in the rafters to be fragged. He shimmied along the truss until he got over where he thought the hallway was. The other four men were still at the other end of the hall drawing straws or something, trying to determine which would have the dubious honor of lobbing the grenades into the rooms and possibly getting his ass blown away for the trouble. He lifted up a panel and peered down. The coast was clear. He dropped down, but landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle and banging into the wall as he lost his balance. GMs Note: I told Vern he would have to roll a DEX roll to drop from the rafters silently, since he didn’t have Acrobatics. He rolled a 15 and needed a 12.

 

Juan cursed his clumsiness as he had lost the element of surprise. He winced as he put weight onto his ankle, but he would be able to run if he had to. He didn’t have much time to think. He bounded the two steps around the corner and said a prayer: “The Glory of the Lord!” A flash of holy light filled the hall as the four assailants fired wildly down the hall. Unfortunately one of them was in the direct line of fire of his blinded comrade and took a five-round burst to the back of the head and neck. The other two sent blasts down the hall. Of a total of 10 bullets 7 went astray, 2 hit Juan’s body armor, center mass and one hit him in the upper left arm, partially disabling it.

 

Juan was used to the pain. He had felt worse things and was determined to continue. As he charged the first of the remaining thugs, he drew a Bowie knife that was just shy of being a short sword. With a deft swipe he was able to nearly decapitate the man GMs Note: Vern rolled a 3 on the called shot, the first 3 of the campaign BTW. He’s always lucky, so I’m gonna check to see if his dice are loaded :-þ Then again, mooks are supposed to go down easy. Both of the other two men fired in the direction that they thought Juan was attacking from, but their dying buddy was a very good bullet catcher. 10 shots rang out and half went wide and the other half splatted the man who was clutching his own throat and wondering why he got out of bed this morning.

 

One of the remaining two had the presence of mind to make a desperate call for help on the comlink “He had a flash/bang! I can’t see s**t!”

 

“We’ve only got two more flights, but we can’t bring out the package if bullets are flying!” announced the captain.

 

The two mercs were firing blindly, but retreating and really didn’t want to do anything but keep Juan from advancing, so Juan did what any smart person would do: he searched the dead guys’ bodies for the grenades that they were supposed to have. He found four. The thugs were running back into cafeteria area and there were hostages there, so he didn’t want to hurt them. Instead he took a flex cuff and looped it through 2 grenade pins. Then he ran back into the stairwell and looked for a way to booby trap the door. He found that he could daisy chain the remaining flex cuffs he had from the arrester to the emergency lights over the door, so that when someone opened it the two pins would be pulled and drop onto anyone through the door.

 

From the sounds of the conversation, “The Package” was either something delicate or a person, since the men didn’t want bullets to hit it. He was reasonably sure that trained mercs would have their target secured in the middle of whatever formation they were in. He hoped any explosion would hit the bad guys and no innocents.

 

Juan scrambled back down the stairs to the garage and took up a defensive position. He would know they were coming from the explosion. How many he would have to confront was up to The Lord. He checked his guns and made sure they were full of ammo. He couldn’t risk using the other two grenades for fear of destroying the package. He would use the pistol first, since it was more accurate and then switch to the MAC if he had to lay down some lead.

 

Over the comlink he heard the voice of the Dragon: “Leave the package in the lobby. I will take responsibility. You take out our friend with the Die Hard complex and we’ll head back to base. Police bands indicate that LAPD will be here in a few minutes. Anyone not with me better be dead.”

 

No sooner than his transmission ended when Juan heard a mighty blast and felt a slight shake in the building around him. The agonized cries of several men came over the comlink and then all hell broke loose. Braced in a defensive position behind a car, Juan double-tapped the first merc through the door. Both shots hit him center mass and his life was spared by the body armor, but he was knocked down. Like a bad dream, another 8 men poured through the door guns blazing. Juan quickly dropped the Glock and unloaded with his MAC. For the next several seconds each group returned fire, first the mercs and then Juan who was retreating towards the parking garage exit.

 

As he was retreating he was able to take out one more merc, bringing the total number of mercs who were chasing him to 8. Then he heard an explosion and crunch of metal coming from the center of the garage. It sounded like someone was forcibly moving one of the vans he had parked. Bullets were flying everywhere and finally one struck Juan in the leg and he tumbled over. He kept crawling towards the exit but soon he was surrounded by the mercs and he threw his guns away and put up his hands.

 

The captain of the mercs radioed the Dragon: “We have him captured surrounded, what now?”

 

“Take 4 men and the package and get out of here! I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point. I want to see this man before I kill him. He’s thrown my plans into a cocked hat!”

 

The captain and four of his men shagged back to the middle of the parking garage. Juan winced in pain. He was lying on his back and they wanted him to sit upright. He would heal, given time, but he doubted this Dragon was going to afford him the opportunity to do that. Luckily, being unafraid of death had its advantages. Juan rolled over on his stomach and got onto his hands and knees.

 

“I’m sorry fellas, but this seems the only way I can do this”, said Juan. Behind him he heard the deft footfalls of a trained killer. Juan said a little prayer and confirmed his fears. The headache was enough alone to know that the Dragon was standing behind him.

 

“It’s bad enough I had one hero upstairs. He was skilled, for a mere human, but he was no match for me. You on the other hand are possessed. I hate ineffective men, so I disposed of the four you left tied up in the van. That way the rest of us will have more of the cut. I had 20 men and I’m leaving with 8. That’s $6.25 million for each of them and $50 million for me. Now are you going to turn around and face me or am I just going to have to talk to your ass?”

 

Juan remained on his hands and knees. “Your math is way off. The way I see it is that there will be $10 million a piece for your surviving men and $0 for you.”

 

The Dragon bellowed. “Never let it be said that Shadowdragon didn’t have a sense of humor. What miracle, pray tell, is going to cause that to happen?”

 

Juan rolled over, two grenade pins in his hand and a smile on his face “Easter”

***************************

 

So that was the end of Juan's Episode 0. I think Vern really relishes playing a character that can come back from the dead. The first time I saw the character concept and where he wanted his points, I thought he was going to be the brains of the group and a back-up combatant. But I guess when you don't fear death and no less than Jesus is your homeboy, you'll do some wild s**t. His code of conduct also prevents his inaction in these situations, or else he is subject to transform into a decrepit old man as a punishment from God. When I get some more time I'll post the character backgrounds too. It should make for some interesting reading.

 

Kenjii's and Juan's Episode 0's started out in concurrent times in the game world, although for dramatic purposes I have split Kenjii's with the flashback to Juan's more action-oriented scenes. Kenjii will return tracking down the Shadowdragon, or what is left of him, in the next post.

 

I've included a sketch of the ground floor, where the bulk of the maneuvering took place, to aid in the visualization of the action.

[oroborous]

Back to Kenji

 

Kenji went into his bedroom to grab his jump bag and get ready for a long day of persuasive bribery and beatings. He flipped on the TV to see if he could get any information from the news that the tight-lipped law enforcement wouldn’t impart. KCAL had a bimbette reporter with boobs bigger than her IQ reporting how some A-Lister narrowly avoided death in the cafeteria. A few other channels had some more hard-hitting but investigatively useless crap, until he finally settled on Fox News. He didn’t always care for their slant, but when it came to live reports, they were usually right up there.

 

“…as many as 20 armed men stormed the Japanese consulate in downtown L.A. Fox News has obtained exclusive security footage of the gunmen exchanging fire with an unknown party, possibly a security guard. We warn you that the following footage is graphic in nature.”

 

They cut away from the reporter to a grainy black and white film. Kenji could tell it was from one of the security cameras over the door of the corner stairwells, but couldn’t tell whether it was B or C. A few muzzle flashes came from off camera in the lobby area, apparently firing at the stairwell door. A body in a pool of blood could clearly be seen right by the door. It looked like the body of one of the assault squad. In the next few seconds a dozen or so gunmen converged on the door and then one of them opened it. About four seconds after that the footage was abruptly replaced by static.

 

“Witnesses report at least 2 explosions in the building just minutes after the abduction. The remains of at least 12 men were recovered from around the stairwell and in the underground parking garage. As of now, no group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The Japanese government have issued…”

 

Kenji flipped the TV off. If the kidnappers had encountered armed resistance, that could have accounted for why they bugged out so quickly. He wasn’t sure if 20 was the exact number counting Shadowdragon and if there were explosions it was possible the body count wasn’t exact either. Since there were no reports of captured men, he wondered if any men were injured and would they be foolish enough to go to the hospital. Or maybe there was an underground doctor that would accept their services.

 

Speed was going to be of the essence today if he wanted to find the Consul before he was secreted away. Kenji went out to the garage and rummaged in the closet there. In it was a reasonable facsimile of a CHP uniform along with a badge that he had picked up at a flea market. To complete the disguise was a white 1998 Honda Goldwing Special with lights and a CHP logo. He had bought that on EBay a few years after it had been used on the TV movie CHiPs ‘99. He had equipped it with a working police band radio and scanner. He completed the disguise with a pair of mirrored shades and a name tag that read “Ofc. Takei”. Underneath his name tag were ribbons for long service and heroism. Most days he did his business after dark and he had never had to use this disguise. He hoped it would serve its purpose. The saddlebags would be able to fit everything he needed. He had a police-style weapon on his belt, but underneath his leather jacket was a Mini-Uzi, just in case he needed some extra firepower.

 

He called the front gate and let them know he was coming incognito. He trusted the men on the gate as much as he could trust anyone. They were paid enough to forget some of his extracurricular activities. The gate was already open as he screamed out. Once he got to the surface roads he turned on his lights and siren and screamed back towards downtown L.A.

 

Interlude: The Envoy

 

Mr. K and Coach C were sitting in their Envoy when, all of the sudden, a CHP cycle came screaming from their target’s driveway. “Hey C,” said Mr. K “did you see a CHP roll up after we got here?”

 

C sat motionless behind the steering wheel for a second or so. “I did not record the arrival of any local law enforcement units, and, in anticipation of your next question, none were on the premises before we arrived. In fact, a scan of CHP transponders does not indicate that the cycle we saw is an authentic CHP unit. Further analysis indicates the make and model of the cycle is not the current cycle being used by the CHP.”

 

“We’ll what are you waiting for, C? Let’s get after that little bastard!”

 

“Yes Sir! Should we call for local assistance?” replied C as he made a u-turn back towards the center of town.

 

“No way! This falls under direct jurisdiction of our division. We’d spend all day sorting through red tape and explaining ourselves if we did that.”

 

“As you wish.” droned C, his unblinking eyes scanning ahead for the target. Without taking his eyes off of the road he flipped two switches. The front headlights strobed in an alternating fashion and a few blue and red LED wig-wags came on above the rear view mirror and over the back door. “I assume you want no sirens?”

 

“That’s right, C. No sense in giving him too much warning.”

 

“Target acquired.” stated C. “He is two miles ahead in the HOV lane.”

 

Mr. K leaned forward and squinted. “I’ll have to take your word for it. My eyes are still the ones I was born with.

 

C cut across three lanes of traffic and stepped on the gas. It was mid-afternoon headed into town, so the HOV lane wasn’t full of traffic. “We will not be able to catch him if he continues at his present rate of speed, but I will be able to maintain visual contact.”

 

“That’s just fine, C; he can’t haul ass forever. I wonder why in the hell he’s disguised as a CHP?”

 

“I can think of three reasons. First, we were made following him home and he hoped to leave unmolested. Second, as a CHP he can make better time on the streets, and third, if he is questioning people about the kidnapping they may be more apt to divulge information to someone acting under color of law.”

 

Mr. K let out a guffaw. “I knew there was a reason I had you upgraded and put back into service. My mind is getting rusty.”

 

“Our last assignment together had an unpleasant outcome for me. Why did you not have it erased from my memory banks?”

 

“Well, C, I believe it is good for us to remember our failures, so that we may learn from them and not repeat those same mistakes a second time.”

 

Coach C sighed, which surprised Mr. K a little bit. “Mr. K, I do not believe the failings of our last mission had anything to do with mistakes that I made. I believe the blame can be shared by Iteration X, which did not foresee the eventuality that led to my inadvertent dismantling, and also to the Reality Deviants who teamed up in an unknown alliance to thwart our attempts to apprehend them.”

 

Mr. K chuckled. “As long as humans program there will be unforeseen eventualities. And Reality Deviants have their uses. Morton, Crandall and Grey are prime examples.”

 

“None of which have deigned to reappear since our last fiasco. It seems rather convenient that they have not resurfaced. You cannot convince me that they did not have something to do with our consternation in Phoenix.”

 

“Morton will be found if and when he wants to be found. As for Crandall, I have it on good information that he was killed, sadly. Grey is an Etherite, so we have less authority over his actions, but he makes himself out to be a crackpot and no one takes him seriously for it.”

 

“Maybe the Umbra swallowed him up. We could only be so lucky.” C looked ponderous for a second, or at least as ponderous as his programming allowed. “There were more than just those three. What of the others?”

 

“There was a guy named McGann who was found in the trunk of a car in an open space near Albuquerque, Rio Rancho to be exact. Before that witnesses say they saw him with ‘The Feds’ near Morton’s old apartment.” K zoned out for a second, in thought.

 

“It wasn’t us I take it?” C asked.

 

“I don’t think so….Hey! Wait a second! Did you just use a contraction?”

 

“I guess I did. Does that bother you? I am half human.”

 

K harrumphed.

 

For several minutes Coach C just stared ahead at the target as Mr. K was woolgathering.

 

“He just got off the freeway, Mr. K. Time to put our game faces on.”

 

“Well, C, can you give me the odds on where he is heading?”

 

“There are several Asian enclaves in the area, hospitals, warehouses, a Zen Buddhist monastery, and the consulate, of course. He seems to have slowed down and his lights are off. It looks like he is going to the monastery.”

 

Mr. K pulled out his sunglasses and put them on. He tapped on the temple and they zoomed in on Kenji, who was getting off of his bike and heading inside. “Ahhh! There he is. Hell of a thing, huh?”

 

“Meaning?”

 

“He isn’t even our primary or secondary target. He just happens to be a target of opportunity.” explained K.

 

“Our mission parameters allow for such an eventuality, sir” stated C.

 

“Still, C, with this mission we’re pissing in PRIMUS’s and UNTIL’s pools. They’re the public face of meta-law enforcement. I just want to pull this off without them getting wise.”

 

“Well, we have 3 days before we can go after him again. Unless, that is, you want to take him back to HQ in a sponge.”

 

“F**king Ahasuerus!” exclaimed K “He probably blew himself to bits taking out those terrorists, and God only knows if he took the Shadowdragon with him. He’s a teleporter, you know.”

 

“Sir, if there was enough left of him to pick up it will be at North Mission Road. Like I said, three more days.”

 

Mr. K perked up. “He’s coming back out. That was quick. Wanna do this?”

 

“Sir, I thought you would never ask.”

 

to be continued

[oroborous]

Weird Science

 

Kenji was making good time. He had gotten from his estate to downtown L.A. in thirty minutes. Drivers were giving way to his CHP disguise just as he had hoped. He stopped in front of the monastery and hopped off of the bike. He had to leave a request for his contact. No sooner did he set foot in the door than did the head monk, called Venerable Father, meet him.

 

“You must go outside and face your destiny, my child.” A withered finger pointed towards the door. In his other hand was a Buddhist Wheel. “You take this and go now! Do not darken my door again until you come as your true self.”

 

“What about my message?” Kenji protested.

 

“The dead cannot hear what the living speak.” warned the old man.

 

“But…”

 

With a force of will as much as strength, the old master all but shoved him out the door. “You go, NOW!”

 

Kenji stared at the door, puzzled. From behind it he could clearly hear the old man lock and bar the door, which was unprecedented during the daytime. He pressed his ear against the door, straining to hear anything that might explain Venerable Father’s strange behavior.

 

From inside he heard a raspy voice: “Is the policeman gone now?” it croaked.

 

“You profane my temple!” cried Venerable Father. “I have rid myself of the most powerful talisman. It was crafted by Boddidharma himself, according to the legend.”

 

“Yes, I could not abide while it was near me. I thank you for removing it from my presence. Perhaps you will have some use.”

 

“When will you let them go?” pleaded Venerable Father.

 

“Your nephew’s family will be released unharmed as soon as you get a doctor here to help me. Do NOT test me or there won’t be enough of them left to cremate.”

 

Kenji looked around trying to see if there was a way to get up on the roof from where he was. When he couldn’t find one he decided to circle around the building to look for another point of entrance. He was just about to where he had parked his bike when he saw two men approaching him from a black SUV. One was an older man, early 50s, average height and build with white hair, who wore a frumpy gray suit, white shirt and a black tie. The other man was mid-thirties, deep red hair, and stood well over six feet tall. His meticulously tailored suit was all black except for a white tie and could barely conceal his massive frame. By the look on his face he wasn’t just the muscle - he had some sort of intelligence. Both had stereotypical dark sunglasses.

 

“Excuse me, Officer” said the man in grey. “I’m Agent Kaye, and this is Agent Seay.” They both produced badges. “We’re investigators with the BATF, and we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

 

“I’m responding to a call of a hostage situation at the monastery!” called Kenji

 

“Oh, really?” replied Seay. “Nothing has come over the police band.”

 

“Sir, I assure you that the criminal, Shadowdragon, is in this building holding the occupants hostage.”

 

Agent Kaye’s eyes narrowed. “Hold on a second.” He trotted back to the Envoy and pulled out what looked to be a Treo. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! Seay, come look at this!”

 

“You stay put.” ordered Agent Seay. His voice held a warning.

 

Kaye was fiddling with the stylus and buttons on the PDA and pointing it towards the monastery. “Something’s rotten in Denmark.” he mused in a sing song voice.

 

Seay coughed in annoyance, arms akimbo.

 

“Jesus H. Christ, Seay!” blurted Kaye. “Do I have to quote The Bard verbatim in order to get my point across? Not all of us have The Complete Unabridged Works of Shakespeare downloaded into our craniums!”

 

Kaye turned to Kenji. “Mr. Soto, we’re willing to chalk your appearance up to a chronological faux pas, knowing you, in your American culture-deficient state, believed it to be Halloween. How much did all this cost you, by the way?”

 

Kenji froze for a second, hearing them call him by name, before he answered. “Am I under arrest or something?”

 

Seay took off his sunglasses and gazed at Kenji, menacingly. “Less than $40 for the badge, at least according to the ATM receipts for that day. Swap meets do not take credit or debit cards for the most part. And the bike was $3485 on EBay. The proceeds went to the CHP Survivors Fund for widowed and orphaned CHP family members.”

 

Kenji’s blood ran cold. How could they know all of this?

 

Agent Kay jumped back in. “Do you want to keep the bike? Then give Seay the badge and he’ll take care of the rest.”

 

Without much hesitation, Kenji reached into his jacket and produced the badge. He placed it into Seay’s outstretched hand.

 

Seay replaced his sunglasses, then, with no sign of effort, he crushed the metal badge in his hand like tin foil. Taking aim, he hurled the badge, where it landed precisely into a storm drain on the side of the road. Then Kaye handed him the PDA. Seay looked Kenji up and down. “Take off the helmet.” he ordered.

 

Puzzled, Kenji did as he was told.

 

Seay punched a few more buttons on the PDA. “Hold still, Mr. Soto.” Seay nodded, as if in approval, and then made one last keystroke.

 

Kenji felt light-headed for just a second. After he had composed himself, he looked down at his feet, then his arms and finally his helmet. The CHP uniform was gone! In its place were Levi’s jeans, riding boots and a white t-shirt. The jacket had stayed the same, but the helmet was now totally white with a mirrored wrap-around visor. He looked up again, but this time at his bike. The CHP markings and lights were gone too!

 

“Mr. Soto,” it was Kaye again. “I believe you’ll find your gear is intact in the saddlebags. If you would be so kind to come to the back of the Envoy, I need you to put on one final piece of equipment.”

 

Bewildered, Kenji followed Agent Kaye.

 

“As long as you cooperate with Agent Kaye and me, we will forget this minor transgression. In fact, it may give you a hash in the plus column.” explained Seay.

 

Kaye chuckled as he looked at Kenji’s new outfit. “Feeling a little vulgar today, Coach? That hair style you gave him makes him look like Gohan – Buu Saga, that is.”

 

“Well, K, I assume that is why you handed the RA device to me. Backlash does not affect me the same way it would affect an organic.”

 

“Mr. Soto,” continued Kaye, as he rummaged through the back of the SUV, “you will have to wear this button I’m about to give you on your outermost garment. Its technical name is a temporal stasis nullifier, but, since I doubt you know what temporal stasis is, that probably doesn’t mean anything to you.

 

“The Coach and I, with your assistance, are going to set up a series of pylons around the monastery. When we have finished placing these pylons in position we will activate them, which will create a temporal stasis field. Anything caught inside the field will be slowed to an imperceptible speed and time will not seem to pass for anyone inside. Anyone outside the field who crosses the barrier without a temporal stasis nullifier will be affected as well. Do you understand?”

 

Kenji nodded. “Who are you, really?”

 

Kaye smiled a wistful grin. “Son, I can’t tell you that. All you need to know is that without us the world would be a much more dangerous place.” As he was talking he pulled several of the pylons from the back of the vehicle. They looked like chrome-plated jack stands with a slightly blue hue. On top was a cobalt-colored light. “… 14, 15, 16, 17.” I think that will do. Oh! Wait! Mr. Soto, is there a basement in this building?”

 

“Yes, there is, Agent Kaye.” Kenji answered.

 

Kaye pulled one more pylon from the back. “Gotta think in three dimensions you know. Coach will do the infil into the basement and activate that pylon last. He’s more apt to be able to handle a confrontation should it arise. You’re a young fella. Get onto the roof. One pylon for the corners, one half way between each corner and then the last one as close to the center of the roof as you can. Follow?”

 

“Can I get a boost from Agent Seay?”

 

This time it was Seay’s turn to grin. “I don’t see why not.”

 

slowly but surely I'm getting them typed. join me next post where it all hits the fan

[oroborous]

Background

 

Just a bit of background information for those of you who haven’t had the time or inclination to read the classic World of Dark Champions thread: Mr. K, alias Agent Kaye, and Coach C, alias Agent Seay, are field agents of the Technocratic Union, also known as The Technocracy. There are three levels for agents. The first is the ubiquitous Man in Black. In a supervisory role are Men in Grey and above them are the inscrutable Men in White.

 

Agents Kaye and Seay have been part of an autonomous mission to seek out dangerous Reality Deviants – mutants, mystics and madmen – and remove them from society. They have access to all the files of major crime-fighting bureaus, agencies, mandates and tribunals. Unlike actual law enforcement, they are not under any compulsion to introduce their targets to the criminal justice system. Their targets will simply be there one day and gone the next.

 

To aid in their quest, Field Agents have a vast array of super-science weapons, at least fifty years in advance of cutting edge technology. All of their “magic” comes from applying scientific principles and using various foci. The main foci of all field agents are their sunglasses and suits. When used in combination with other devices, Field Agents can do extraordinary things.

 

Mr. K is approximately 90 years old. Technocratic advances in the field of geriatrics make him appear to be 35 years younger. He had completed a PhD in Nuclear Physics just as the United States entered WWII. He was immediately pressed into the service and started out as a captain in the Army, advising the Manhattan Project. He never had any formal military training and often appeared in a natty uniform with unkempt hair, a trait he has kept to the present day. Only his expertise in his chosen field prevented him from being drummed out of the Army. On one mission in Europe to recruit more scientists he had the misfortune of running into General Patton, who fined him a month’s pay and had him busted to 1st lieutenant for insubordination. The bust was quickly reversed and Patton was chastised for pissing in someone else’s pool. Mr. K was doing some research on the side, because he was always butting heads with the more noted scientists in the project, who thought he was an upstart. During this research he uncovered some files that shouldn’t have rightly existed – plans for an already-completed atomic bomb in 1943. Before he could ask any annoying questions two men in black suits visited him in his quarters and gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse: Join them or become a test subject.

 

Mr. K has spent the last 60 years or so chaffing against the Technocracy system. His superiors disdain his methods. Instead of destroying Reality Deviants, he has a veritable Baker Street Irregulars of trusted RDs that he calls upon when he needs help against the truly vile dregs of society that he is charged with apprehending. Even though he had the most tenure of any Man in Black he was passed up for promotion on several occasions, because he wouldn’t go by the book just because someone else told him to. Just last year the Union finally relented and gave him a mercy promotion. With that promotion he was granted greater autonomy and given a mandate to do what he was doing all along.

 

Mr. K affects a slovenly appearance to throw off those enemies that might underestimate him because of his appearance. However he is very keen, with a cutting and sometimes self-deprecating wit. He will also purposely “forget” something in order to let a partner feel useful. He has a mostly white mop of hair in a Beatle-cut style and deep blue eyes. His main scientific spheres are Correspondence (for conjuring and the like) and Time (for moving fast or draining SPD from an enemy).

 

Coach C is almost 137 years old. He was born on December 31, 1888. He spent his early years growing up on a farm in Upstate New York, near Albany. He attended Utica State College, now SUNY Utica and earned a teaching degree. In 1910 he began teaching Biology and Physical Education, as well as coaching football at his local high school. In 1917 he was drafted into the Army, where he was commissioned, and then sent off to France. His superiors and subordinates alike called him “Coach”. Sadly, Coach became the true-life inspiration for Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun in the Ardennes Forrest in 1918. First, his left side was disintegrated when he stepped on a land mine in no-man’s-land, then, as he lay dying, splayed upon the field, a British tank crushed his right side. He lay in a muddy hole for a few hours as the Germans gassed the field, blinding him, until a cease fire was agreed upon to retrieve casualties.

 

Miraculously, Coach survived long enough to be repaired at a hospital in London. An Iteration X (the Technocracy’s android/cyborg department) field agent heard of his case and knew he would be the ideal candidate for cybernetic reconstruction. For around the cost of $6 million dollars, the Coach was rebuilt with the latest in cybernetic enhancements, but at the cost of some of his personality. Every decade or so he is brought back to HQ and upgraded, just like all IX cyborgs. Over the past 90 years he has been involved in covert operations and conspiracies too numerous to mention, but he only remembers the last 30 years clearly and other memories have been implanted in him so he doesn’t recall his true past.

 

The Coach is 6’7” with a perfect physique. He has a dark red flat top haircut with no hair on the sides. His suit is always pressed and never seems to be mussed even after the most strenuous of activities. He tries to speak in proper English, although this is a Psych Lim and not programming. He is friendly to Mr. K and a few others, but mostly distant. His eyes, which are light grey with a dark ring in the outer iris, add to his haunting, yet handsome appearance. His spheres are Life (which helps keep him alive after so long) and Mind (for his cybernetic brain implants).

 

 

I swear I'll get back to the action but I hate typing so much

[oroborous]

Re: WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

 

With no effort at all, Agent Seay gave Kenji the alley-oop and almost hurled him onto the roof. Then Seay tossed up a bag that was full of the pylons that Kenji was in charge of placing. Almost as an after thought Seay threw Kenji an earpiece.

 

“Testing. One. Two.”, said Seay.

 

“I hear you.”, replied Kenji.

 

“Hey, Kid,” this time it was Kaye. “when you place a pylon, twist the blue light on top a half turn. That will anchor it to the surface and place it in standby mode. Don’t turn it past half way or else it will come up on the grid as the master pylon and activate the ones that are in place. Seay will place the last one and do the full turn. Got it?”

 

“I got it.” Said Kenji.

 

GM’s Note: This is one of those times where I made sure to stress the instructions to the player, just to see if he was really paying attention. When the GM gives ME instructions of this nature, I write them down. John did not.

 

Seay went to find a place to infiltrate the basement as Kaye started placing his pylons on the ground.

 

As Kenji was up on the roof placing his pylons he heard tires squealing and the sound of a fast car approaching. He looked up and saw from down the road a black and silver Mustang Mach II with a blower sticking out of the hood. Behind it were two police cars and an ambulance with lights on, but no sirens. “We’ve got company.” he called, alerting the agents.

 

“What’s going on?” asked Seay.

 

“Cops, from the look of things, and an ambulance.”

 

“S**t.” cursed Kaye. “Let me take care of this. Mr. Soto you’ll have to place the rest of my pylons while I run interference.”

 

The Mustang did a power slide, its back end just barely missing the agents’ SUV. The two squad cars and ambulance had to stand on their brakes to avoid hitting it. The car shut down and out stepped a grizzled man, looking to be in his mid 50s. He had a graying black flat top and a days worth of stubble on his cheeks. He was dressed all in black, and his dark sunglasses did not conceal a reddish glow coming from his left eye. A blunt stogey hung from his clenched teeth.

 

“Jesus F***ing Christ! Which one of you pantywaists is in charge here?” he grunted at Kaye. “You better be glad I got here before you f***ed this whole thing up!” he continued, before Kaye could answer.

 

“Excuse me, sir, but this is a federal matter. Who are you with?” queried Kaye.

 

“I’m a special advisor to PRIMUS and they heard about your little party here. They shipped me all the way from Millennium City to deal with this threat because I have first-hand experience in taking this Chink bastard down.”

 

“First of all, if this is the Shadowdragon, he is Korean, and second, my authority supersedes yours in this matter. If you want to assist in his capture, we still have more prep work to do.”

 

“I don’t give a s**t if he is a Chink, Jap, or Gook; I don’t discriminate when it comes to ass kicking, and I don’t give two s**ts who you’re with, because I’m going to ball you up if you get in my way. I didn’t come a thousand miles to play co-pilot to some wet behind the balls G-Man with delusions of grandeur.”

 

Kaye pulled out his PDA and pushed a few buttons. “If that’s the way you want it, we can get ugly, Mr. Wrath.”

 

“Ahhh! So you do know mEEEEEEE! WHAT THE F**K?!?!” Wrath clutched his bionic left eye in agony.

 

“The PRIMUS R&D department doesn’t exist in a vacuum, Mr. Wrath. Whatever they have my agency had it first. If you insist on interrupting my op then I’ll have to disable you, but I hope that we can cooperate.”

 

“You little chickens**t c**ksucker! I’ll be back with more LAPD and PRIMUS field agents. You better wait or else it’s your ASS!” raged Wrath. Then he hopped in his car and sped back down the road.

 

One of the LAPD officers got out of his car. “What are we supposed to do here, sir?” he called to Kaye.

 

“Just hold there. We may need more manpower.”

 

GM’s Note: It was after this little interruption that I asked John how many turns of the dial it took to put a pylon into standby mode. He promptly gave me the wrong answer, so I asked him how many pylons he had set up and where his character was. He told me 13 Pylons and gave his location as half way between the corners on the back wall. I decided that this was the perfect cue for Kenji to accidentally activate the Temporal Stasis Grid and see what happened next. Luckily, 18 Pylons are needed to complete the grid perfectly, so there was a good chance that Shadowdragon would be enveloped in the smaller grid.

 

“Goddammit!” swore Seay over the comlink. “Soto, you idiot! You activated the grid! You better pray that Shadowdragon was in it!” Seay fiddled with his pylon in the basement and placed it where he thought it would do the most good. “The grid isn’t at optimum, they may still be able to take limited movements until the rest are in place! Get moving Soto!”

 

Kenji moved as quickly as he could to set up the rest of the pylons, but luck wasn’t on his side today. In front of him appeared the man with the dragon tattoo, Shadowdragon, but he looked like part of his flesh had been burnt.

 

“You again!” Shadowdragon’s eerie voice rasped. “You’re tougher than you look. That mule kick would have killed a normal man. I’m going to have to teach you a lesson on Korean superiority!” He strode forward to attack Kenji, but then recoiled as if he had bounced of an intangible force field. “So you came prepared this time! It is of little consequence.”

 

Kenji was puzzled until he realized the only thing different since their last encounter was the holy symbol. That didn’t matter much because he was instantly surrounded by a cloud of darkness. Kenji used his Ch’i powers to bump up his damage soaking capabilities and took a defensive posture. GM’s Note: One of my house rules is that stating that you take a defensive stance adds 1 to your DCV and subtracts 1 from your OCV. This lasts one turn.

 

Shadowdragon attempted to drain BODY from Kenji using his The Souldark power, but a combination of bad luck and the warding power of the holy symbol prevented this from happening.

 

Kenji decided to use the darkness to his advantage and performed his Shadowmeld Ch’i power, so that Shadowdragon would have to bring the fight to him. (I know a few of you may have seen Kenji’s character sheet and see that Shadowmeld has the limitation “Only at night”. Well, I’m the GM, dammit, and I decided that this was an appropriate use of the power, so :-þ)

 

So Shadowdragon knows the approximate location of Kenji, because he hasn’t left the radius of the darkness, and the holy symbol is so powerful that it injures him at range, but because Kenji is patient and doesn’t move the only choice he has is to drop the darkness, which means he’ll have to fight Kenji toe to toe instead of resorting to his bag of darkness tricks.

 

Now it’s down to a mano a mano battle between an Überpowered martial artist with a good deal of defense, Shadowdragon, and highly competent normal with Ch’i powers, Kenji. After the last brief encounter, Kenji is really cagey, knowing that Shadowdragon could take him out with a few good hits, so he decides that his best strategy is to soak as much as possible and wait for his new friends to come to his aid. He has no idea of how far away either is.

 

Frustrated, Shadowdragon dropped the darkness, nullifying Kenji’s invisibility, and launched a Fist of Darkness blast towards Kenji. About three feet from Kenji the blast hit a force field of some sort, which caused a nimbus of light to flare around him, and then the blast just fizzled. It was then that Shadowdragon realized that the holy symbol that Kenji was wearing was pretty amped.

 

At the same time, Kenji was becoming emboldened by the fact that Shadowdragon’s best attacks seem to be failing while he is in possession of the Zen Wheel. So he darted forward and did a flying kick towards Shadowdragon’s solar plexus. The kick connected, but most of it was soaked, however it did a d6 of unsoakable damage due to his vulnerability to holy symbols. It would take a minimum of 10 turns to knock out Shadowdragon with just the holy symbol and that is if I rolled a 6 every turn

 

Shadowdragon just couldn’t overcome the power of the Zen Wheel, because when he tried just a plain old kick, Kenji was able to block it without taking much damage.

 

Just about this time Coach C busted out of the monastery wall like the Kool-Aid Man, startling both Kenji and Shadowdragon. (I figured that this would work as a PRE attack, and it did cause Shadowdragon to hesitate a phase) Not a hair was out of place and his sunglasses remained planted on his eyes.

 

As Shadowdragon wheeled to face the Coach, Kenji made a called shot and did a knife edge chop to his head. It connected and did a good amount of damage, unfortunately Shadowdragon has 12rPD so, again, most of it was soaked but a little made it through.

 

Coach happened to be standing next to the air conditioning unit for the monastery, so he ripped it from its slab and proceeded to pummel Shadowdragon with the improvised blunt weapon.

 

Shadowdragon didn’t want any part in this fight, since it was clear that his darkness powers were, for the most part, being nullified. Instead he did a blind teleport to the furthest place he could. He ended up inside of a festering dumpster about 28” away, but out of full sight of his adversaries.

 

Just about this time, K came huffing and puffing around the corner. Coach was dusting himself off. It was almost supernatural how unruffled he looked even after all the action.

 

“Jesus!” moaned K. “I don’t want to eat any crow when that jerk-off Wrath comes back. Where the hell do you think he got off to?”

 

“Records indicate that he can teleport 60 meters in any direction, provided that there is a shadow or darkness.” responded C.

 

“Well, he could be any goddamn where then couldn’t he?” bristled K. “Mr. Soto, how f**king hard is it to remember simple f**king instructions? Is my English too complicated for you?” He pulled out his PDA again and pressed some buttons. in Japanese {How about now, dumbass? Is this better?} He stormed away in a huff.

 

Sheepishly C approached Kenji. “{Maybe we should have gone over those instructions another time, but do not feel too bad. I keep telling them that the design is flawed to begin with. They keep saying they are going to come out with a new version, but no one wants to cough up the money to replace a design that has worked for over 100 years}”

 

“{I’m sorry.}” apologized Kenji “{I got a little distracted when that Wrath showed up.}”

 

“K will cool down soon enough. Let us see to the monks and whoever else was inside. I am afraid that I will have to pay some restitution for my impromptu redecorating, but I was trying to get to you as soon as I could.” Explained C. Then he went to the closest pylon and fiddled with it. “The field is down now.”

 

Kenji rushed in and found Venerable Father who was crying. “My poor nephew. He will surely be killed, and his family too. How did they know?”

 

“Where is your nephew now, Sir?” queried C.

 

“They live in San Francisco. That man came to the door and asked for asylum. I was bound by our code to honor his request, but as soon as I let him in he became belligerent. He killed two of the other brothers just for questioning him. Then he used the phone and made a call. He told me that he knew who I was and that he had men with my nephew’s family. He said he needed a doctor, and collapsed. When he woke up he told me that he felt the presence of some powerful holy symbol and that I need to get rid of it, and that is when you showed up, Kenji.”

 

“We will make some inquiries about your nephew and see what we can do to help, but the Shadowdragon is ruthless, they may already be dead.” Warned C. “Mr. Soto, we still have need of your services. My PDA detects that Zen Wheel as a powerful artifact and it seemed to interact in our favor with Shadowdragon. We are going to canvass the area and use our technology to see if we can locate him.”

 

**********************************

 

So that is the end of both session Zeroes. We've done a couple more sessions since then. Since my third player never decided to materialize after creating his character, I am going to continue along this plot line, scratching the surface of conspiracies and interdepartmental pissing contests, before I get into some of the deeper cabals and smoke-filled back rooms that are WoDC's bread and butter.

 

Please feel free to critique me and for God's sake put some comments into this thread.

 

My apologies to Killer Shrike, since I have been using John Wrath in my campaign as an NPC. I've tried to get his explicit permission, but he hasn't responded. Since he is supposed to be a Nick Fury send-up, I've just tried to portray him as a testosterone-laden, no-crap-taking, grizzled old warhorse. He has a Hunted:Shadowdragon, so I thought it would be alright to turn the tables on him. Check out his character sheet here

[Killer Shrike]

Re: WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

 

Sorry, must have gotten blocked by my spam filters. Feel free to use any of the Mill Men resources in your game; just give credit and if possible a link to the site somewhere in the footnotes.

 

If youve got Wrath working for PRIMUS again, you should give him back his flying cars:

 

 

PRIMUS Flying Cars (Advanced)

PRIMUS Flying Cars (Armed)

[oroborous]

Re: WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

 

If youve got Wrath working for PRIMUS again, you should give him back his flying cars:

 

Wrath isn't working for PRIMUS he was contracted by them to apprehend Shadowdragon, since he has done it before. That issue will be resolved as soon as I can peck out some more log notes.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

 

Yeah, some back history on that -- back when Wrath was still a Silver Avenger he had a VPP Gadget Pool for PRIMUS R&D Gadgets. His Cybereye was also modular and could be swapped out for different abilities.

 

He would need a Cybereye that let him "see thru" Shadowdragon's powers to make that a real fight. This is done by buying Vision again as a sperate Power that is not part of any sense group and thus isnt affected by sense affecting powers that arent bought specifically against it.

 

 

You should probably have Albert Reyes or PRIMUS tweak his eye to add something like this power for hunting down Shadowdragon:

 

Cybernetic Vision: Duplicate Sight Power 14- (no Sense Group), Discriminatory, Analyze, Range, Sense, Targeting, Telescopic: +4 (35 Active Points); OIF (Cyber-Eye; -1/2); Real Cost: 23 Points

[oroborous]

The Next Session

 

September 11, 2006 3pm

 

Dr. Roy Johnson is a pathologist with the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. So when the LAPD called him downtown to the site of a kidnapping, shooting and explosions, he wasn’t surprised to find bodies and parts of bodies strewn about the crime scene. Officially, the FBI was running the show, with help from the BATF and LAPD, plus probably a few “ghosts”. He felt it was a privilege to be called upon, because he was the most experienced person available.

 

He spoke with agents and other experts on scene and looked at footage that was on the security cameras. With reasonable certainty he was able to reconstruct what happened and put bodies back together. What he thought was remarkable was that the supposed suicide bomber’s body was more intact than he would have suspected.

 

Scattered reports from witnesses indicated that the terrorists were armed with SMGs, probably MAC-10s or Mini-Uzis, and a few hand grenades each. What was also puzzling to him was that, except for the terrorists, no one was dead. That didn’t really make much sense to him either. One of the good guys had to have taken out the men in the lobby and parking garage, but the FBI was standing firm on their theory: Shadowdragon, the super-mercenary, had accomplished the kidnapping and then killed his cronies so no one else would talk or maybe so he wouldn’t have to split the cut so many ways. They weren’t quite concrete on that point.

 

It took at least 3 hours to autopsy a body, maybe a little less if it was in pieces. Either way it would be probably 5 days before he was able to finish the 12 bodies he had, unless the night shift wanted to pitch in. They had their own messes to deal with though, so he resigned himself to some long days with the feds breathing down his neck.

******

 

September 12, 2006

 

Shadowdragon had fallen completely off of the map. Mr. K tried to mitigate his latest failure by blaming the flawed design of the pylons and that it was a faulty trigger mechanism on the pylon. His superiors had heard it all before. Every time he failed it wasn’t his fault. It was always due to some unforeseen act of God. Unfortunately, Technocrats and God don’t mix.

 

K took the drubbing from the Men in White as well as could be expected. He accepted all the blame so that Coach C wouldn’t be adversely affected by his failure. K was already on the outside looking in, but he didn’t want this to stain his partner. All he could do now was try to fix the problem.

 

The other problem was that PRIMUS and UNTIL both wanted their dirty mitts in the pie now. John Wrath was more a pain in the ass now than ever. Now that he had earned fame as a solo avenger and hero without PRIMUS, he had a big chip on his shoulder when they had crawled back to him a second time to rely on his expertise in bringing down the elusive Shadowdragon. When Wrath came back and found out that Shadowdragon had escaped, he nearly shoved his stale Cuban down K’s throat and pulled it out of his rectum.

 

There was a silver lining, though. He had been able to get a cordon put around the city and prevent Shadowdragon from escaping the city. Still that meant 50,000 square miles or so of territory to pick through, and he really had no idea of where to start. He was pretty sure that Shadowdragon would need some sort of medical attention soon, but he couldn’t keep tabs on all the underground doctors in the area. There was one person in the whole city that he knew would be able to help narrow the search, but he was still in pieces at the morgue with a few days left before he would be whole.

 

The irony was that Juan Espera (aka Ahasuerus, אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ, and Isaac Laquedem among others) was their primary target, because he was the only human in existence with certain knowledge of the location of the Spear of Longinus and possibly the Holy Grail. The powers that be wanted both of those items to study scientifically and see if there was any good scientific basis for the legends of their power. Juan had been on the Union hitlist since before time immemorial, at least since the 200s. Now K would have to use Juan to find Shadowdragon. It was like the snake eating his own tail.

******

 

Kenji Soto pulled a few strings with his superiors and also used his ties to the royal family to take an indefinite leave of absence from the consulate. They were somewhat sated by his explanation that he would be using the time to finding the Consul General’s kidnappers and ensuring his safe return.

 

Coach C had handed him a cell phone after Shadowdragon had escaped and told him to wait for a call. C had also explained to him that it was more important than ever that he help them, now that PRIMUS and UNTIL were watching Mr. K and himself. As far as C knew, PRIMUS or UNTIL didn’t know about Kenji’s small role in the attempted apprehension of Shadowdragon.

 

So Kenji spent the next few days covering his regular identity while also making discreet inquiries about what had happened on the 11th. He found out something interesting about the monastery that he didn’t know before: they were of a sect that had to offer shelter to anyone who asked. He knew Venerable Father had no good reason to refuse the Shadowdragon, and that was probably why Shadowdragon had shown up there. It also showed how insidious the plot was, because someone had researched Venerable Father’s family and used them as leverage.

 

Finally on the evening of the 13th, he heard some disturbing news from San Francisco. A family of Japanese immigrants had been killed in ritualistic style around the 9th, but had just been discovered after a foul smell emanated from their apartment. He called the SFPD under the auspices of the Japanese Foreign Ministry and confirmed that they were Venerable Father’s family. The officer in charge of the case couldn’t tell him much but confirmed that the deaths were not from natural causes and the manner of death was bizarre.

As he was making the call to the SFPD, his ‘Crat-phone rang and it was Coach C on the line. “Go to 1104 North Mission Road in L.A. Use your black van. Ask for John Doe 091106-22. You will put the body bag in the back and then you will get onto the 10 and take the van to 401 East Jefferson Street in Phoenix, Arizona.”

 

“What’s so special about Phoenix?” asked Kenji

 

“Our field office is near there.” answered C. “Also, it’s an away day and we could use the open space.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Just a little joke, Mr. Soto. I just figured the ball park would be easier for an out-of-towner to find. Besides, I really cannot reveal the location of our base of operations to an outsider.”

 

“Where’s Mr. K in all of this? I though he was in charge.”

 

“He is serving a 24 hour suspension for insubordination, and he will be back by the time we need him. I need you to walk to your garage now and get inside the van while I am still on the phone with you.”

 

“Uh, okay.” Kenji made his way to the black van he sometimes used on missions. It was the same model that was used on the A-Team, one of Kenji’s favorite shows. It was all black and even had a rotating plate on the front and rear bumpers. He kept a few magnetic signs inside so he could disguise it a little bit too. As he was walking towards the van the phone beeped.

 

“I just emailed your cell phone Mapquest directions to the stadium.” explained C. I expect you will be here within the next 12 hours accounting for traffic and red tape. If you run into any trouble just hit *2728.”

 

“I can do that.” Assured Kenji as he walked into the garage. “I’m here.”

 

“Yes, I know. We have very sensitive GPS monitors. Depress the camera button on the side and point it towards the van, please, and then remain still as you can for about 30 seconds.”

 

Kenji did as he was told, and 30 seconds later he felt just a little light headed. Once his head cleared he looked at the van again. On the side was FBI Mobile Forensics Unit.

 

“Mr. Soto, before I go I have one last thing to tell you: look inside the glove box. It has everything you need to pull this off. Do not let anyone else get that body bag, please. Goodbye”

 

Kenji opened the passenger side door and looked in the glove box. In it were papers for releasing the body and what looked to be an authentic FBI identification badge for Kenji. Under the photo it read “Hikaru Takei”. Kenji just rolled his eyes and hoped that there weren’t any Star Trek fans working at the coroner’s office. There was also a 9mm with a shoulder harness and a navy blue jacket with FBI emblazoned in yellow on the back.

******

 

September 13, 2006 9:30pm

 

Dr. Johnson was engrossed in his latest work when he heard someone clear her throat. One of his assistants had ushered a man back to the examination table, introducing him as “Special Agent Takei, of the FBI”. Both men paused to watch her walk away, admiring her shapely figure that not even a dowdy lab coat could hide. At about the same time, both men noticed each other looking and shared a chuckle.

 

“Hi, my name is Jim Takei.” Said Kenji reaching out to shake the doctor’s hand.

 

“My pleasure, Jim. You can call me Roy.” Said the doctor, while pumping his arm furiously. “I’m just finishing the paperwork up on John Doe 20. What can I do you for?”

 

Kenji chuckled again. “I’ve got orders here to pick up John Doe 091106-22. The FBI has reason to believe he is on the Terrorist Watch List.”

 

“I haven’t even begun the exam on him. How could your people even know who he is?”

 

“We have our ways.” Kenji nodded seriously. “I just need you to sign this…uhhh – Kenji glanced at the top of the sheet – Chain of Custody release form, and have the body put into the back of my van.

 

“Can I speak to your superior, just to make sure this is all Kosher?” asked Dr. Johnson.

 

“Sure thing. Use my cell phone and dial *2728.” Kenji handed him the phone the Men in Black had given him.

 

The doctor dialed the digits.

 

“Agent Seay, speaking.”

 

“Hi there, Agent Seay, I’m Dr. Roy Johnson of the LA County Coroner’s Office.”

 

“What can I do for you, sir?” asked C.

 

“I have an Agent Takei here requesting a body. I just wanted to make sure it was on the up and up.”

 

“Dr. Johnson, I assure you that everything is in order. There will be no repercussions on your end for transferring the body into Agent Takei’s care.” C explained.

 

“Okay then, Agent, sorry for wasting your time.” Apologized Johnson.

 

“It is no trouble. I appreciate your thoroughness. Have a nice night.” C hung up.

 

Dr. Johnson handed Kenji the phone and picked up a pen. With a flourish, he scribbled his signature on the form. “I’m pretty busy here, so I’ll get Miss Singh back here to help you.” He pushed the intercom button on his desk phone. “Linda, sorry to bother you again, but could you help the FBI wheel some remains out to their van?”

 

“Sure thing, Dr. J.” was the tinny reply over the speaker. A few seconds later, she reappeared from the front part of the lab. “What’s up?”

 

“Can you take Agent Takei back to the vault and get John Doe 091106-22? All his papers are in order.”

 

“Oh, no problem! This is so exciting, working with the FBI.” She guided Kenji towards another part of the building. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself earlier. I’m Linda Singh, 3rd year med student at UCLA. This is part of my internship. Dr. J lets me work on my papers and stuff after my shift is over. I got off like four hours ago, but its quieter here than at the dorm, you know.”

 

“I’ll bet.” Grinned Kenji. He didn’t mind being escorted by her. She had long dark hair that framed her beautiful face. Her hazel-colored eyes lit up her winning smile. She had a healthy tan that said she didn’t spend all of her time indoors, but that she wasn’t baking under a lamp either. GM’s note: Google Aishwarya Rai for a close approximation

 

“So what do you do when you’re not here?” he asked.

 

“Oh, I swim in the pool and go to the beach, but I’m really busy with school work. That’s why I’m glad I can get it done here. By the way, I like your accent Were you born in Japan?”

 

“Thanks, yeah, Tokyo.”

 

“{I maybe should practice you with}” she said in Japanese.

 

“{That isn’t bad}. Where did you learn?”

 

“I was an exchange student as a junior in high school. I stayed in Tokyo for a year. I haven’t used it in a while. Your accent reminded me of Japanese natives speaking English, that’s why I asked.” She explained.

 

“Well, I went to a private school, but I’ve been learning…”

 

A thud came from the far end of the hallway, and Linda jumped. “Dammit! The janitors probably knocked something over.” She was shaking a little bit. “I know its silly, but I still get creeped out sometimes.”

 

Kenji noticed that only one out of three lights was on in the hallway. “It must be a little spooky at night.”

 

They continued walking for a second and then there was another louder thud.

 

Kenji pulled out a 9mm that came with the FBI outfit, and stepped in front of Linda. “I don’t think that was a janitor.” Cautiously he started moving down the hall, the vault door about 15 feet away. Kenji could now see that it was slightly ajar, and a little light leaked out onto the tile floor. “Are the lights in the hall always off?”

 

“Uhh, yeah we try to save money when we can.” Replied Linda in a wavering voice.

 

A third, even louder bang escaped the vault. Linda let out a short scream before she caught herself.

 

“Call the police.” Ordered Kenji.

 

Linda ran back the way they came to find a phone.

 

Kenji crouched as he made his way towards the vault door, and that is when he noticed the janitor’s closet was open and the mop handle laying on the floor. He crept into the closet and pulled the chain of the bare lamp in the dank closet. His stomach did a slow lurch as he saw the corpulent janitor slumped over the sink, his throat slit ear to ear, turning the fetid water into a reddish brown mess.

 

Kenji reeled back into the hallway, trying not to lose his lunch, when Linda came running back.

 

“The phones are dead! I can’t find Dr. J! What the hell is going on?” she screamed. She stopped short as she looked upon the janitor’s body. She took a few gasping breaths and then wretched on the floor. “Oh! God!” She began to sob.

 

Kenji rushed to the door of the vault, peering in. A few running lights were on, but the lamps weren’t. He decided to concentrate his ch’i and toughen his skin before he entered the room.

 

His fears proved well-founded as he saw a muzzle flash and heard some bullets impact the solid metal fire door. He spied the light switch, and flipped it on as he did a double-tap in the direction of the fire. He saw the barest glimpse of a man in a black ops sneak suit headed toward the far wall.

 

Another shape moved and fired in his direction and he decided that it was a good time to hit the dirt. He didn’t hear much of a report, so he figured that they were using silencers. He crawled over to a metal examination table and peered around the edge towards the lockers where the stiffs were kept. A few of the doors had been opened.

 

He saw another man dart out from behind a hiding place near the far wall, carrying a body bag over his shoulder. That’s when he noticed a hole in the wall that looked like it might have been made by an explosion of some sort.

 

It was a straight line to the fleeing man, so Kenji did a Feather Walk move through on him, knocking the man and his package to the floor. GM’s Note: I know a normal teleport can’t be used for a move through, but since he has the Must Pass Through Intervening Space limitation, I allowed it. The man was tough, but he was still a little dazed, so Kenji took advantage by beating him unconscious. Then he pulled out his Men in Black cell phone, only to discover that he had crushed it when he tackled the fleeing suspect.

 

“Shit!” Kenji cursed as he looked for a way to secure the man. He noticed a vacant body locker and tried to lift the man into it, but he was too bulky. “Linda! I need some help!” he called.

 

Timidly, Linda inched into the room, still teary eyed. “What the hell is happening?”

 

“I don’t know. There were three goons in here trying to take this body.”

 

Linda came over to look at it. “That’s your body! What is so important about this guy?”

 

“Just help me lock this guy up and let’s get the hell out of here before they come back for him!”

 

With a little effort they were able to lug the unconscious man into a body locker and Linda placed a lock on the door. Then they hefted the body bag onto a rolling table and started towards the loading dock.

 

A bright floodlight shown in the hole in the wall. “This is PRIMUS! We have your two accomplices! Come out with your hands up!”

 

“Keep going!” ordered Kenji. “No one else is authorized to possess these remains!”

 

“PRIMUS!?! Are you kidding me!?! Is this some sort of federal pissing contest?” she screamed, as they wheeled the body down the corridor.

 

“Yes! Move!” replied an exasperated Kenji.

 

“What about Dr. J?” she whined.

“Do you want to be the next one they find in the janitor’s closet? Let’s get going!”

 

They careened through the two-way double doors onto the loading dock, just in time to be greeted by another floodlight. This time it was mounted on a helicopter.

 

“Stop where you are! Any actions other than surrender will be taken as hostile and we will use deadly force!” was the order over the loudspeaker.

 

Linda moved forward and opened the back doors to the van, dumping the body into the back. Kenji took cover and fired at the floodlight and it was a good shot too. Just as the light shattered he could see a flame streak from underneath the helicopter and he heard Linda scream.

 

The scream seemed to last forever, and all of the sudden everything was muffled, like after you went to a rock concert, but ten times worse. He saw a fiery explosion about four feet above the van and the concussion from it knocked him off of the loading dock onto the ground. When he looked up, Linda was still standing on the dock, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open and her ears covered, just like the painting. A reverberating energy seemed to emanate from her.

 

The pit of his stomach dropped out, like a roller coaster ride as all the air in his lungs seemed to be sucked from him. Then he saw a second brilliant explosion 70 feet in the air, as the gunship literally evaporated in a cloud of exploding fuel and munitions. He felt something wet and sticky trickle down his cheek and that is when he realized his eardrums had burst and that he was bleeding from them.

 

All of the sudden Linda collapsed on the loading dock like a flaccid balloon. Her mouth was frothy with blood and some dripped down her cheek as she lay unconscious. Kenji couldn’t tell if anyone was still firing at them or if the one gunship was all PRIMUS sent. He wasted no time dragging her into the van and high-tailing it out of the area. The police and fire department would be here soon and he couldn’t risk getting caught. Hopefully no one would pull him over in an FBI marked van.

 

After 30 minutes of solid driving, he finally pulled over. Taking a second to focus himself, he centered his ch’i and began the healing process. His ears started to tingle and then he turned the radio on just to see if he could hear again. When he was satisfied that he wasn’t permanently deafened, he turned his attention to Linda. She was curled up into a fetal position in the back of his van and he could see her eyes darting back and forth under her eyelids. She was breathing rapidly, but she didn’t look like she was going to die.

 

Gently, Kenji searched her for any ID cards or anything with her address on it, but she must have left them all at the office. He didn’t want to risk going further into town, so he decided that he would take her to Phoenix with him. Besides, maybe the agents could help him figure out what she had done. He’d heard of things like that before but it was the first time he witnessed it up close.

Kenji rummaged around the back of his van for some magnetic signs to put over the FBI decals. He found one that stated he was a delivery van for Fuji & Sons Florists. He wasn’t surprised when he found that the decals were big enough to place over the FBI sign. Then he rotated his license plates to a vehicle that came up as a mobile police surveillance center.

 

Satisfied, he looked through his glove box and found some Jack in the Box wet-naps and tried to clean himself off the best he could. He didn’t want any gas station attendants to get the wrong idea when he finally had to stop for gas. There was a long drive ahead.

more to come

 

I'll post a character sheet for Linda Singh when I get a little more time

[oroborous]

Linda Singh Background

 

Linda is the daughter of Gupta "Guy" Singh and Victoria (Vallejo) Singh. Guy was a gifted student who moved to Sydney, Australia for school and graduated with a doctorate in aeronautics. His doctoral thesis attracted NASA, who hired him to work at the JPL in Pasadena. Guy met Victoria on one of his long days at work, when she came in to clean the offices. Victoria's father was originally an illegal migrant worker from Mexico, who eventually gained citizenship and started a janitorial business, and she was working in her father's business and putting herself through school.

 

Guy was 29 and Vicky was 20 when their romance began, but they waited to marry until Vicky earned her business degree from UCLA. She became the first member of her family to graduate college. Vicky soon became pregnant and Linda was born on Valentine's Day in 1981. Soon after, Vicky went back to work and eventually took the business over from her father when he retired. The Vallejo Family Janitorial Service is now one of the largest and most successful cleaning services in Southern California.

 

Linda was an active child, interested in everything. She was getting into things and taking things apart at a young age. Her parents had her IQ tested at age 4 and she scored a 180. Her father was very demanding, and so was her mother, so they made sure she was put into the most advance courses for her age. Both instilled the values of self-determination and perfection into her. Because of her advance placement in school, she didn’t spend much time with kids her own age and as a result she didn’t develop the social skills that one should have.

 

Her father sailed in his free time and she showed some aptitude in sailing and took up surfing as a hobby. School was always easy for her, and it didn't seem like she had to try in order to get good grades, so she would breeze through her homework and then make poor attempts to get out and make friends. Eventually she would just find an out of the way place to take her surf board and try not to bother the kids. When she was surfing, chance meeting with Artie Jones at age 16 got her a part time modeling/acting contract in local TV and circular ads, but she was never interested in modeling as a full-time profession. Artie noticed that even though Linda was trying to maintain a low profile, she would attract a crowd of guys hound dogging her on the beach, and he rightly was able to convince her that she was pretty enough to do ad work, even though she is somewhat self-conscious.

 

She maintained a 4.0 GPA throughout high school and aced all of her college entrance exams. Her mother encouraged her to apply to UCLA where she was readily accepted into their medical program. Linda was also a shoo-in for a sorority. With her good looks and excellent academics, Delta Delta Delta was happy to pledge her.

 

Although she is beautiful enough to attract any man (or woman) she desires she is somewhat awkward when it comes to picking up those social cues from others. Instead, she prefers to concentrate on earning her degree in Forensic Medicine, and everything else is secondary. She doesn't really feel like she is missing anything. She is 25 and still a virgin, even though she doesn't personally believe that one needs to abstain until marriage. She just hasn't taken the time to find a guy to get with. She hasn’t even had what one would call a regular boyfriend. The only real socializing she does is in the classroom and her only real friend in the whole world is her mentor, Dr. Roy Johnson.

 

Over a thousand years ago, one of Linda's ancestors was a priestess in a cult dedicated to the Hindu goddess Kali. In an ancient rite, she and a priest of Shiva had ritual sex. It was during this coupling that Kali herself came down and possessed her body. Once the man had spent himself, Kali tore him apart in a rage of ecstasy. The result of this union was a girl whose soul contained part of the very essence of Kali. Throughout the years, this essence has distilled itself and become weaker over time, partly as Linda's ancestors became more secular and less superstitious and partly because it was diffused through more and more people. Although men could carry this essence and pass it on to their descendants, the female nature of Kali only allowed the girls in the family to manifest this power. As it grows weaker through the generations, those who carry the Spirit of Kali have less conscious control over it than those of years past. Some who are devout Hindus have developed this power that allows for psychic visions or other mystical effects.

 

She has no conscious control over any of her powers at this time. She is scientifically minded with no spiritual devotion to the Hindu way of life. She sees the beliefs of her ancestors as quaint, but would never tell any of her native Indian relatives that they were wrong for believing in them. When she foresees her own death through precognition, Linda takes a back seat to the Spirit of Kali inside of her. Many of her attributes are boosted to supreme levels for a short period of time. Her beauty and countenance alone would enough to cow most mortals who gaze upon her in this form. She can only use her powers to avoid death or to destroy that which would kill her. For example, if she foresees that she would fall to her death, she would fly out of danger, or if an attacker would strangle her, she would use her psychic limbs to crush him to death.

 

Once she is out of mortal danger, she falls unconscious and retains no memory of what she did after her transformation.

 

It is possible for Linda to be in a life and death situation where the Spirit of Kali does not manifest itself, but this is because she would have lived through it under normal circumstances. So far they have only manifested themselves once, as seen above, when a helicopter gunship fired a rocket towards her. She unleashed a sonic scream that destroyed the rocket and then the helicopter that fired it.

[oroborous]

The Puppetmaster

 

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU CAN’T RAISE OUR F*ING TEAM IN THE CHOPPER!?!?!?!” roared John Wrath from his mobile HQ. He had gotten an anonymous tip that Shadowdragon’s men were going to do a raid on the morgue and recover the bodies of their teammates. He hated taking tips from people who didn’t give their names, but it looked like this one was too hot to take lightly. He had scrambled a chopper and was following them with ground units, including this souped-up RV command truck. They had been giving regular sitreps and had some bogeys cornered when all of his feeds got the worst high-pitched scream over them and then went dead. No one else had eyes on the team, and they were still several minutes behind the chopper. No one could get hold of them and a report on the emergency band said that several explosions and a fire were being reported by a Dr. Johnson, who fled the morgue after the first “BOOM!”

 

As they were heading up the road towards the morgue, the team spied a van tearing ass the opposite direction. A quick check of the plates and registry told him them it was FBI and they didn’t bother pursuing it when they had their own team members to worry about. They arrived on scene at the same time LAPD, LAFD and a FBI liaison did. The scene was utterly post-apocalyptic. The strewn wreckage of an exploded helicopter was still smoldering on the ground. The gunship was made out of ultra-tough material and should have been resistant to just about anything. It shouldn’t have just fallen out of the sky without a good explanation.

 

Over the next few hours the authorities were able to plot the wreckage and come up with an interesting discovery. The trees, power lines and glass that were destroyed were all in a cone pattern that originated from the loading dock of the morgue. On the loading dock, there were traces of human blood right where it was supposed to originate from. Signs pointed to a superhuman. Also, the FBI denied that anyone but their liaison was in the area for the past several hours. That meant the van they spotted was not FBI most likely, but someone had done a good job of documenting it as such.

 

They were able to recover the bodies of all the PRIMUS agents involved and some mercs that they had captured. They found the hole in the wall of the stiff locker and found only one body was missing: John Doe 091106-22. It wasn’t found in the wreckage either, so where the hell was it? It didn’t just get up and walk away.

******

 

Park Kwai-Bok was sitting on a black high-back leather chair stroking the fur of his white cat, Angel. One dim light bulb was on in his study. The shadows played on the mahogany wall as a fire stirred in the fireplace across the room. Mr. Park propped his feet up on the equally black ottoman, which caused his dark silk bath robe to come open. He was fit and young and he was the only one in the room, so with no false modesty he just allowed his robe to stay open. Next to him, on the mahogany table an ivory-colored phone jingled, causing Angel to start and jump from the armrest.

 

“Park speaking.” He said with tones of boredom.

 

A timid voice wavered on the other end, “The recovery did not go as planned.”

 

“I see.” Said Park, as his grip tightened on the phone. “What happened?” he asked in an even tone.

 

“There are more players than we realized. PRIMUS arrived as you had scheduled, but another was there. He had a van with FBI on it.”

 

“This is…unfortunate.” Opined Park. “His ch’i is strong. I may never again need to feed my hunger if I can have him.”

 

“What about the rest of the men?”

 

“Gather them here to my home in the Hills. I shall partake of them.” Park ordered.

******

 

Kenji didn’t know what time it was or where this truck stop was either. All he knew was that it was on Interstate-10 on his way to Phoenix. He was pulling in to get some gas and take a leak when Linda finally stirred behind him. She was a mess. Her lab coat had blood and puke on it and there was a dark stain on her dress where it looked like she had wet herself. She rolled onto her stomach, tried to get on her hands and knees and puked again, adding to the already foul aroma.

 

“Uggghhh. Shhhiit.” She moaned.

 

“Hold still there.” Admonished Kenji. “You’ve had a rough night. I’m gonna see if they have a shower and some clothes in there and then we’re going to clean you up. What size are you anyway?”

 

Linda groaned and rolled onto her back, collapsing in the vomit she had just regurgitated. When she realized what she had done she just lost it and began to sob.

 

“Umm… I’ll just guess.” He said, sympathetically.

 

Kenji went out and pumped a full tank, happy to get into the fresh air. He had gotten used to the stale smell of piss, vomit and decaying flesh, but now he was sure he would regret going back into the van. He walked into the store, happy to see a sign that said “Showers”. One arrow pointed to the women’s and the other to the men’s stalls. He went to the back of the store and it looked like a western wear shop. He found a size 2 pair of women’s Wranglers and a suitable t-shirt touting the Grand Canyon. There were some utilitarian towels too. Unfortunately there was no underwear.

 

“Excuse me,” he addressed the cashier, “my girlfriend got sick in the van; do you have a mop I can use to help clean it out?”

 

“Yeah, over there.” The clerk pointed to a dirty bucket and mop that had seen better days.

 

Kenji wheeled out the mop and bucket, along with the clothes and went back to the van. He opened the back door, only to find Linda passed out again. With a little effort, he scooped her up and put her over his shoulder. She didn’t weigh much. He brought her back into the truck stop to get cleaned up.

 

“God Damn!” said the cashier. “What happened?”

 

“She just got really car sick, I think. I’m just gonna hose her down in the stall. Is anyone back there?”

 

“No, man. I’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed. Use the ladies’ side.”

 

Kenji got to the ladies’ shower and called in just to make sure. When he felt safe he went in and got the water running. There was a little tiled in area with a bench and some hooks, so he hung her clothes up and put her underneath the shower head. Linda perked right up when the water hit her face, and then she spewed one more time and began to dry heave.

 

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” she kept repeating.

 

“Linda?”

 

“Yes?” she sobbed.

 

“I’ve got some fresh clothes for you out here, but no underwear, sorry. I’ll be outside if you need me.”

 

“Thanks, Jim.” She began to sniffle.

 

Kenji started to walk towards the door.

 

“Wait! Where’s the soap and stuff?”

 

“Oh dammit! I forgot. I’ll be right back.” He went out and grabbed a travel pack of shampoo and a bar of soap, and then he got some Scope, Crest and a toothbrush.

 

“You must have packed light.” Said the clerk.

 

“Yeah, it was only supposed to be a 24 hour trip. We were gonna use the soap in the motel.”

 

“Well, if it wasn’t for people like you, guys like me would be out of work.” The clerk grinned.

 

Kenji just grunted and headed back to the shower stall. When he got in there the steam had made the air humid and fogged the mirrors. “I got some toothpaste and mouthwash. You know, to wash the taste out of your mouth.”

 

Linda opened the shower curtain, revealing her nude body to Kenji. He couldn’t help but stare.

 

“You want to give me that soap or do I need to send you an invitation?” she asked. She had no clue or shame about what she was doing to Kenji’s libido.

 

Blushing, Kenji handed her the soap and other items. Clearing his throat he said, “Should I just toss this other shit?”

 

Linda closed the curtain. “Oh God! I’ll have to pay for a new lab coat. Where the hell is my pocketbook and IDs?”

 

“You must have left them at the morgue.” Kenji replied.

 

“I’m so hungry right now. I must have tossed up everything I ate today.” Complained Linda. “Is there somewhere to eat around here or are we gonna have to pig out on junk food?”

 

“I’m sure I can scare something up.”

 

Linda turned the water off, and grabbed the towel from the hook.

 

Kenji started walking towards the door.

 

“Jim! Hey, don’t leave. Are you shy or something?” called Linda.

 

“Do you always shower and get dressed in front of strange men?”

 

“I’d just feel safer if you were here with me. I’m sure you’ve seen a naked woman before.”

 

“Yeah, but…”

 

Linda stepped out of the shower with the towel wrapped around her. She picked up the jeans from the pile of clothes and slid them on under the towel. “Hey, you did a pretty good job! These fit great!” She let the towel fall to the floor, exposing her breasts.

 

Kenji did an about face before the towel had hit the ground. “How about a little warning, huh?”

 

“Okay, you can turn around now.”

 

Kenji turned around and was amazed at the transformation. Her hair, wet, fell to the middle of her back. The jeans looked as if they had been painted on. The shirt was very flattering and didn’t leave much to the imagination. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around her. “We need to get you a bra.”

 

“I guess so. But I feel 1000% better now thanks to you.” She leaned over and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

 

Kenji and Linda were walking back to the van and without him even realizing it she had slipped her arm around his waist. Kenji called to the cashier, “Is there any good food this time of night?”

 

“Is that the same girl? Wow! How are you feeling?” he responded, totally ignoring Kenji’s question.

 

Linda blushed. “I must have looked like a total nightmare. No more Taco Bell before we hit the road. I could use some really good food.”

 

“I don’t know about good, but my mom has a diner just a block down the road. The coffee is black and the food is hot. It’s the only place that’s open this time of night, morning actually.” Offered the clerk.

 

“I love America.” Declared Kenji.

******

 

John Wrath was burning the midnight oil, so to speak. He had questioned Dr. Johnson who gave him the name of the “FBI Agent”. When he entered Jim Takei he didn’t get any hits in the FBI database, but there was a Hikaru Takei assigned to the L.A. Field Office. When Wrath showed Johnson the picture he confirmed that they were the same man. Wrath called up the Director of the L.A. Field Office, he denied that there was any Hikaru “Jim” Takei in his office or on loan to him from any other office for that matter.

 

Whoever this “Takei” was, he or someone he was with was very good at making convincing official documents and cracking government databases. It was entirely possible that this man was a government agent of another sort using FBI credentials as a cover. The other possibility was that this man was a very clever mole using the color of FBI authority to get him places that he couldn’t get without it.

 

The other mystery was John Doe 091106-22. The only thing he did know about this John Doe was that he was the alleged security officer who took out some of the mercenaries from the kidnapping of a few days prior. The CSI made this conclusion based on the blast pattern and where they had found the body parts. No one from the building’s security firm listed any of their men as missing. The rent-a-cops weren’t getting paid enough to stop bullets; they had just lain low during the whole event.

 

That left the possibility that John Doe was some sort of vigilante or hero who had stumbled on the Shadowdragon’s plot and tried to intervene. Still, no one had heard from Shadowdragon or the rest of the mercenaries. No one had demanded a ransom or taken responsibility for the kidnapping, although the identity of perpetrator seemed obvious. Wrath was beginning to lose hope that the Consul General would be found alive. It had been almost 72 hours and no motive had even been hinted at. The Japanese government was breathing down the USA’s neck and pestering UNTIL to send a strike force. The USA was telling UNTIL to go to hell and stay in New York where they belonged, and PRIMUS was getting shat on by everyone from the President to whoever the hell the pissant representative for this district was.

 

Above all, he still had a score to settle with that NSA puke that had turned his pain-meter to 11. Wrath was not happy at all and he had a feeling this day was just going to get worse.

******

 

Park Kwai-Bok had an opulent mansion in the Hollywood Hills. He had designed it himself. Everything was in a dark motif, accented with lighter colors. He wanted it to be imposing to visitors, and he believed that his latest guests were feeling quite uncomfortable as his intermediary, Geoffrey, led them to the meeting room.

 

Mr. Park watched the men be led in over a CCTV feed. The long ovoid table was made from polished obsidian and the chairs were all black. He had them custom ordered from IKEA and made sure that they were two inches shorter than normal seats. His seat was at the head of the table, and could rightly be called a throne. Everything about the design of the room was made to give him the appearance of power while his guests were to feel small and powerless. Park allowed them to wait, nervously, just a little longer than they would feel comfortable. Again, the room was dark with just a few dim lights to prevent them from bumping into the nigh invisible table.

 

Mr. Park pressed a button on his desk in the study and spoke to his guests. “Pardon me, gentlemen, as I ready myself. I had not expected you so soon.”

 

Geoffrey entered the study, carrying an impeccable black wool suit from Brooks Brothers. Mr. Park shed his robe, wearing nothing underneath, and Geoffrey clothed him.

 

“Thank you, Geoffrey. I will have need of you shortly.”

 

Geoffrey nodded to his master and then left the study.

 

Mr. Park pressed another button on his study, and then left to the meeting room.

 

There were now six remaining men who had accompanied Shadowdragon on the kidnapping of the 11th. Five of them sat around the table, waiting for their captain, Geoffrey, and talking about what the meeting could be about. There was the sound of a servo whirring and the center of the meeting table flipped over. A small island of cash revealed itself and the men began to congratulate themselves on finally getting their cut when Mr. Park entered.

 

“Our business is now at an end. As promised, you get this lump sum to split however you see fit. Mr. Geoffrey will not be joining us; I have already settled with him.” Mr. Park took his seat at the head of the table and interlaced his fingers, watching the men, who in turn looked to him. “Is there something unsatisfactory with this?” he asked.

 

One of the men spoke up. “Why are we doing this now, at 4am?”

 

Then another one: “Geoffrey didn’t say anything about us getting together like this. He said we would be wired the money.”

 

“Things change.” Replied Park. “I wouldn’t complain when the five of you have $25 million to split.”

 

The men began to grumble. “I thought we were supposed to get $8 million each.”

 

“Yeah!” shouted a few others.

 

Calmly, Park looked down on them. “I paid Mr. Geoffrey what I thought to be a fair sum for his services. You get the remaining $25 million. It is a more than generous offer considering the interest I have had to deflect from myself due to your less than perfect execution.”

 

One of the men stood up and pointed an accusing finger at Mr. Park. “You sent your little butt buddy to hire us and then teamed us up with some kooky Fu Manchu supervillian! If anyone attracted attention to your little game it was him and Geoffrey!”

 

“I would sit down and take my $5 million before I did something that I cannot undo.” Warned Park

 

“I’m not leaving here until I get all the money that I was promised!”

 

“You will take what I give you and leave, if you know what is good for you.” Park rose from his seat.

 

The other men rose as well. “I’m taking what’s mine, and I’ll take it from your ass if you won’t give it to us!” warned one.

 

“You can’t take all of us, you lying bastard!”

 

“So be it.” Said Park, and faster than any of the men could react he closed with the closest mercenary and twisted his head clean off of his shoulders.

 

The other men pulled pistols and fired wildly at the man who had now become a blur.

 

Park’s hands elongated into claws and he beheaded two more men in short order. The other two were trying to escape when Geoffrey entered the room and shot one in the face. Park pounced on the back of the remaining man and then reached through his back pulling out his still-beating heart.

 

Mr. Park picked up the warm bodies and placed them on the table. “Greed, Geoffrey, it is one of the few constants. It makes men easy to manipulate. Please get my instruments.”

 

One thing was certain, Park Kwai-Bok would not go to bed hungry.

[oroborous]

Geoffrey Vallejo-Hernandez Background

 

Geoffrey Vallejo-Hernandez Background

 

Background/History:

 

Geoffrey is the second cousin of Linda Singh. His father, Tobias, is a Vietnam War veteran who was experimented on for a super-soldier program. Tobias was left with psychic/psionic powers from the experimentation and also a slight case of PTSD. Tobias' memory of the experiments and his military activities were largely wiped and replaced with memories of pitched battles against the VC. When he returned home to San Diego he drifted for several months and ended up in L.A. There he met Gloria Vallejo, whose uncle owned a small janitorial company in Pasadena. Gloria convinced her uncle to hire Tobias, and for a few months she and Tobias lived together happily. Gloria became pregnant and the couple had a shotgun wedding, which led to strain within the family.

 

Geoffrey was born on May 4th, 1976. He was 4 weeks premature and the labor had been rough, so mother and child stayed in the hospital for several days. A few days after his birth, a strange accident happened in the hospital. In the middle of the night, a nurse came to give Geoffrey an injection. As she was approaching his incubator she tripped on some unseen obstacle on the floor and shattered the base of her skull on the sharp corner of an adjoining incubator. She lay on the floor for about 30 minutes, bleeding out before she was discovered by the only other night nurse on duty in the NICU, who was pissed off because she wanted to eat and she hadn't been relieved yet. Worse yet, when the hospital investigated the accident they found that the substance in the nurse's syringe was not a beneficial medicine, but a deadly biotoxin. Several infant deaths on her watch were reinvestigated and attributed to the "Angel of Death", as she was dubbed by the media.

 

Not long after Geoffrey came home Tobias began behaving strangely. He complained of headaches more often and began medicating himself more heavily, along with drinking too much. One night, after several years of controlling his impulses, Tobias, who was drunk and upset with Gloria, unleashed a psionic mental blast which knocked her into the wall, injuring her gravely. Tobias was arrested and pled guilty to domestic battery and given 3 years in the state prison. When he was released, he never returned home, moving to Phoenix instead and restarting his life. Gloria received regular checks from him, but never got a call or anything. Finally she met another man with whom she grew to love. After several years of separation, she did the formality of filing divorce papers against Tobias, who did not contest any of her wishes and returned the signed papers hastily.

 

Geoffrey had a normal childhood by anyone's standards. His step-father, George Willis, was loving and a good role model. George, an African-American, was colorblind when it came to race, and treated Geoffrey like his own son. Soon, Geoffrey had a half-sister and then a few years later a half-brother. Color aside, Gloria, George and the children were perfectly Rockwellian.

 

Geoffrey was slightly above average in school, getting mainly Bs and a few As. George, a former college football defenseman, encouraged Geoffrey to participate in athletics in middle and high school. Geoffrey turned out to be a good, but not stellar, runner. Where he really shined was the football field, where he used his speed to become a star running back. Geoffrey also participated in JROTC and after high school he was recruited by Army to become a second-string running back at West Point. By his second year there, Geoffrey was very uncomfortable. He had known since high school that he liked boys and he didn't feel that he should be hiding in the closet anymore. Also, he and another male student had begun a secret relationship and it was straining his academic life. Finally, he went to the commandant and confessed his sexual preference, asking to be released honorably. However the commandant would not do that unless Geoffrey outed anyone that he knew to be gay. Because he didn't, Geoffrey received an Other Than Honorable discharge and one year of his academic records "mysteriously" disappeared when he tried to transfer to another college.

 

Frustrated with his betrayal, Geoffrey headed to the Big Apple to enroll in NYU's film school and to live in a community where gays were not treated with such intolerance. Beginning with NYU, all of the colleges he applied to rejected his applications. Apparently West Point had flagged his record and put less than flattering statements in his file, which prevented him from getting into another school. Geoffrey spiraled into depression and consoled himself with drugs and sex. He would quid pro quo sex for drugs and/or a place to stay.

 

The big turning point in his life came when he had degenerated into homelessness, living in Battery Park and bumming change from tourists going to the Statue of Liberty. One night he was on a bench, sleeping out of view of the public when a stranger leapt upon him, sinking sharp fangs into his neck. Geoffrey panicked and was fighting for his life. The attacker seemed genuinely surprised at the strength with which his prey was resisting. All of the sudden, this vampire (as he later learned his attacker was) clutched his head in agony and then his head exploded in a fine spray of mist and blood. A few seconds later, the body of his attacker turned to a pile of dust and blew away on the wind.

 

However terrible his life was before, Geoffrey sobered up in that very instant, his eyes opened to a terrifying new world. He cleaned himself up and began putting the pieces of his life back together. Eventually, he landed a job as a janitor at LaGuardia Airport. He was cleaning up the terminal when he spotted the man of his dreams. An Asian man with chiseled features and a dark suit, he was brooding and oozed of sex appeal. For some reason Geoffrey felt compelled to introduce himself to the man, who was waiting to catch a red eye to L.A. He introduced himself and told the man that he was from L.A. In turn, the man introduced himself as Mr. Park Kwai-Bok, a Korean businessman who kept a home in the Hollywood Hills. They struck up a pleasant conversation and Geoffrey could not help himself, he begged Mr. Park to let him accompany him back to L.A. and Park agreed, not the least bit off put by the request. In fact, he pulled out a second First Class ticket from his breast pocket and handed it to Geoffrey, as if he had anticipated it.

 

Geoffrey went down and cleaned out his locker. He didn't even tell his employer he was leaving. He showered and changed into street clothes and then used his airport ID to bypass security and return to the gate. Geoffrey and Mr. Park were the only two passengers in First Class. As they sat next to each other, Mr. Park took Geoffrey's hand and spoke. "I see that you have seen what others have not. If you stay with me and do what I say, when I say it, you will never need fear those Sons of Cain." Then Mr. Park called the stewardess assigned to First Class and handed her a roll of $100 bills and asked her not to disturb them or let anyone else up front for the remainder of the flight. Once they felt reasonably safe that no one was going to catch them, Geoffrey and Mr. Park proceeded to join the Mile High Club.

 

For almost 10 years now, Geoffrey has lived with Mr. Park and helped run his day to day affairs. Mr. Park is sometimes cold, but always a passionate lover. Mr. Park has explained his condition to Geoffrey, who is happy to work around Park's nocturnal schedule. Geoffrey is sometimes confused by Park's inscrutable plans, but over the last decade he has learned to trust Park's instincts. With Park's encouragement, he re-established ties with his birth father, who has since sobered up and cleaned up his act. Tobias even recommended that Geoffrey visit some of his contacts at the L.A. campus of the Marsh Institute for Higher Learning (aka The Institute), who could help him harness his latent psychic/psionic abilities.

 

Geoffrey is totally devoted to Mr. Park, and would die or kill for him. For his part, Park hasn't used many of his mind-altering abilities to sway Geoffrey. However, he obviously does not love Geoffrey with the same intensity that Geoffrey loves him. He sees Geoffrey as more of a useful plaything that will eventually die and need replacement. Park is not mutually exclusive to Geoffrey either; he has several trysts with other men and women. Most of them he kills during love making and drains their blood and then consumes their flesh. Geoffrey knows this and helps drain the bodies of blood and dismember them for his master. Every now and then, Geoffrey will also partake of the blood and flesh as a show of loyalty to Park.

 

Personality/Motivation

 

Ever since his eye-opening experience in Battery Park, Geoffrey is on the look out for Western vampires whom he will attempt to destroy or capture for his master. He is totally devoted to Mr. Park and madly infatuated with him. Park lavishes him with anything a man could want and gives him much free reign. Mr. Park doesn't ask Geoffrey for anything he isn't willing to give anyway: total obedience to his will. Geoffrey knows that Park's network of Eastern supernaturals will keep him safe from other supernatural threats and knows that this is the price he must pay for peace of mind.

 

Powers/Tactics

 

Geoffrey is a highly competent normal with mid-powered mental abilities. In a life or death situation his powers may gain a temporary boost to prevent him from being harmed or to destroy the threat. He can lift or manipulate objects 50 lbs or fewer with his TK powers or deliver up to a 50 lb force TK wallop. He is able to implant suggestions into non-supernatural creatures as a form of mind control. He can summon small, useful objects at will provided that they are less than 5 lbs: examples are aluminum foil or a cordless drill.

 

He has also trained to peak human levels in Hwarang-Do with Mr. Park. It is possible that he could kill or maim someone with just martial arts. His brief stint in the military has familiarized him with SMGs, Rifles, Machine Guns and Pistols. He prefers a Glock 9 semi-automatic pistol that Park bought and customized for him.

 

Campaign Use

 

Geoffrey is Mr. Park's right hand man. He takes orders unquestioningly. He will perform to the best of his abilities. If he fails he will not try to cover up his failure. Instead he will take full blame. Mr. Park appreciates his candor and willingness to take fault in an age where other spread blame and mitigate in their own self-interests. It is because of this that Park is more lenient of failure from Geoffrey than others, and also because no one else has his special talents. Fortunately, Geoffrey does not fail often, and when he does it was because of his humanity in the face of more powerful foes. Mr. Park realizes this and will adjust his tactics accordingly.

 

Appearance

 

Geoffrey is above average height with a muscular build. He is shaves his head bald, and is clean-shaven except for a soul patch which he trims neatly to contour his chin. His complexion is that of an average Hispanic male, lightly brown, and no tan because of his normally nocturnal hours. He does not have any mannerisms or wear clothing that is stereotypically gay, but he does not hide this fact either. He is out with his family, all of whom are supportive of his lifestyle. (His parents have even met and are enamored of Mr. Park.) When out in public he dresses in a custom-tailored business suit and drives a black BMW M-3. His business card says he is personal assistant to Mr. Park Kwai-Bok. He always carries $1 million in cash in a briefcase, which is either handcuffed to his left arm or secured in his car. In his wallet are corporate credit cards for the various companies that Mr. Park owns.

[oroborous]

Feedback Please

 

I appreciate the reps and hits my little story is getting from you out there. I hope that means I'm doing something right.

 

I'd love to see some public comments on the forum. What you like, what you don't like, what can improve, etc.

 

I also did get one PM that took issue with my writing style, insomuch as I don't include gaming terms as much as they would like. In response to that, I would say that this is a story and the readers (should) know the mechanics of the game. If you want to know every roll that John and Vern have made, even I don't have that information. I'll try to include parenthetical GM's Notes for something that may need explaination, such as house rules, or background info that will make the reading more pleasurable and informative.

 

That being said, for some of the tie-ins from earlier arcs of the WoDC you really have to read WoDC I, and that link is in the first post. Although I am building off of a previous body of work, I hope that this story will stand on its own and you wouldn't HAVE to read that thread in order to put together the pieces and see where everything is falling into place.

 

WoDC in all of its forms is about wheels in wheels and puppetmasters of puppetmasters. Its my hope that the story will keep you guessing as much as it keeps my players guessing. As readers, you are privy to some information that isn't known to the players yet, but included here to make the read more enjoyable. Besides that, if I didn't write it down somewhere, even I would forget who is the real BBEG.

 

I'm working 12 days in a row thanks to Uncle Sam, so my writing productivity is down, but I promise that I'll get the next session done ASAP, and I hope that you are anticipating reading it as much as I am anticipating publishing it to you.

[oroborous]

Re: WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

 

“God damn American piece of shit!” yelled Kenji as he kicked the blown out tire on the van. He had he had chocked the other wheels because they were on an incline, but the van kept rolling off the jack. Now the rim was bent and it had nearly landed on his foot the last time.

 

“Calm down, Jim.” Chided Linda. “Someone will be by and we can get to Phoenix.

 

Kenji jumped back into the van, jack in hand. “We’ll just have to limp it to somewhere flat. We’re already behind schedule, and we’re supposed to be there in 30 minutes. Even if I get this stupid tire changed we won’t be there for at least two hours and I don’t have any way to get ahold of my people.”

 

After 30 slow minutes of silence and steady incline, Linda could see that Kenji was about ready to blow his stack. “So, Jim, when did you move to the US?” she asked.

 

Kenji cleared his throat. “I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a while, but I’ve been preoccupied.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“My real name is not ‘Jim Takei’ and I don’t work for the FBI. I’m not even an American citizen.”

 

“So who are you then?” she asked, with no fear or hesitation.

 

“My name is Kenji Soto, and I’m with the Japanese Consulate in L.A. I’m cooperating with another American agency.”

 

“Well, Kenji, I don’t think it matters what your real name is. You seem to be a nice guy doing what you have to do. My radar usually picks up on creeps, or else I would have bolted along time ago.”

 

Kenji sighed. “It’s good to have it off of my chest, though. I have a feeling that whoever this guy was, he is more important than we will ever know. I just want the Consul found, and if this helps, then I’ll do it.”

 

Just off in the distance Linda spied a sign: Rest Stop, 1 mile. “Finally, Ji…Kenji, maybe there will be some flatter ground there.”

 

“You know, my American friends call me ‘Ken’, if that is easier for you.”

 

“Okay, but should I keep calling you ‘Jim’ while we’re on this secret mission?”

 

“I guess that’s a good idea. Just in case.” Kenji eased the battered van into the rest area and did find some flat ground. “I’ll change the tire. How about you stretch your legs?”

 

Linda smiled. “I won’t disagree one bit. Besides I need some fresh air after last night.” She stepped out of the van and a gust of breeze caught her, reminding her that she had one less layer on than she was used to. “Hey, Jim, can I borrow your jacket again? I really need to get something to hold these puppies, my back is gonna start hurting.”

 

“I’m sorry about that, but as soon as we get this delivery taken care of, I’ll take you to whatever store you want.”

 

“I’m kind of a Victoria’s Secret gal, but we probably won’t have that luxury until we get to Phoenix anyway.

 

Kenji handed her his jacket. “Oh, wait a sec!” He fiddled with the material, hiding the FBI logos. “This is one of those undercover jackets. Its probably better if you weren’t wearing it with FBI showing.”

 

Linda took the jacket and zipped it up just over her bust line. “You want a snack? I see some machines over there.”

 

“You got any change?”

 

“A little.”

 

“If they have some water, that’s fine with me.” Kenji requested. He watched Linda jog over to the restroom/vending area for a few seconds and then pulled the jack and spare out of the back.

 

About 15 minutes later Linda came back with some Gatorade and a few candy bars. “They were out of water, but I figured this would do, especially since you’ve been doing all the hard work.”

 

“Yeah, thanks Linda.” Kenji was just tightening the last few lug nuts on the spare. “It’s a good thing this is full-sized – I’d hate to have to go another hour on a doughnut.” He wiped his brow and took a sip of his drink. “I’m going to go freshen up, here’s the keys in case you want to turn on the air conditioning.” He headed towards the men’s room.

 

Linda climbed into the van and turned it over. The cool air felt good after being out in the sun, especially since she was trying to be modest. She was sitting there for a few minutes, woolgathering, when there was a thumping noise in the back of the van. She turned around and saw that the lug wrench had fallen over and rested on the body’s chest, so she got up and went to the back to rearrange it. Then she noticed that the lug wrench was moving up and down.

 

More fascinated than frightened, she bent over and placed her hand on its chest. It was moving! And then in a breathless voice, it spoke. Linda started, but then regained control and unzipped the bag. When his face touched the fresh air he gasped for breath, and Linda jumped back.

 

******

Juan Espera opened his eyes and looked at the tan-skinned woman leaning over him. “¡Ayuda, mé!” he rasped. “Agua, por favor.”

 

Just a bit startled, her eyes widened and then she scrambled to the front of this…van? He blinked. Yes, he was in a delivery van of some sort. “¿Mujer, como sé llama?” ¿Dondé estamos?”

 

The woman was starting to hyperventilate. “Yo soy Linda. ¿Y tú?”

 

“Mé llamo Juan” he replied.

 

“Mucho gusto, Juan.” Said Linda, and then she passed out.

 

Juan looked down at his naked body. Of all his deaths, he hated the ones where he went to the morgue the most. If he died in a remote area, at least he had a chance of being clothed when he arose. He stepped out of the body bag and wrapped it around is mid-section. It was obvious that Linda wasn’t traveling alone. Whoever she was with would be coming back. He got up and found the Gatorade that she was rummaging for and took a swig. Then he hefted her into the passenger seat and attempted to pour some down her throat. Just then the driver’s side door opened, and he heard the sound of a pistol being cocked.

 

“Put your hands where I can see them!” came an accented voice speaking English.

 

He did as he was told. “She passed out. I’m only trying to help.” Juan responded.

 

“Back up towards the sound of my voice and come out of the van!” Ordered the voice.

 

“I’m going to put one of my hands on this plastic around me, so I don’t expose myself.” Juan told the voice. Then he proceeded to exit the vehicle.

 

“Face down! Hands outstretched!”

 

Just then Linda awoke. She looked around and saw Kenji pointing a gun at something on the ground. “No! Kenji, don’t shoot! Its him!” She got out of the van and ran to Kenji’s side. “Its John Doe!”

 

“What the f*ck?!? Kenji ran to the back of the van and threw open the doors. “Holy Shit! No wonder they wanted him back on time!”

 

Juan picked himself up off of the ground. “Who was it? Who wanted me delivered to them?”

 

“Two agents. Kaye and Seay. They wanted you to be in Phoenix no later than 30 minutes ago.”

 

Juan grumbled. “They’re good men. They follow orders even though they don’t have the whole picture. We have to turn back.”

 

“What?!? Why? Why should I trust you?” asked Kenji.

 

“Events are in motion that will cause great bloodshed in L.A. Innocent lives are at stake. The Lord God will not let me stand idle when I can prevent it.”

 

Linda stepped in. “I’m a doctor, do you need anything? You were clinically dead for three days. Are you a yogi or something?”

 

“There are no breathing or meditation tricks, my friend, I was truly dead. Through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, I am raised whole three days after, just as he was raised by His Father.”

 

Reflexively, Linda crossed herself.

 

“Are you a believer, my child?” Juan asked her.

 

Linda stammered. “Um…not really.” She blushed and turned away from him.

 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. The God of Abraham loves you regardless of whether you believe in him. Do you believe in something, anything?”

 

“I believe there are things that I cannot explain, so I cannot discard your explanation outright, but I prefer science.”

 

“And you, son?” he addressed Kenji.

 

“My ancestors watch over me, and they give me strength when I need it.” Kenji answered.

 

“Indeed. Do not be fooled by the narrow minded. There is more than one true path. However, you must be devoted to it wholeheartedly or suffer the eternal consequences.”

 

Linda scoffed. “You are a Christian who says that Jesus isn’t the only way to salvation?”

 

Juan smiled. “There isn’t time right now to go into all of the details, but let’s just say that creating the universe was a collaborative effort, not that of one Supreme Being.”

 

“Can we get down to business?” asked Kenji impatiently.

 

“You can take me to Phoenix, and there I will be handed over to men who know nothing of the threat. They will not do anything but torture me, for I know something that they do not. Or you can come with me to L.A. and help stop a madman, bent on enslaving all of California and then the world.”

 

This time it was Kenji’s turn to scoff. “Kaye and Seay hardly acted like the leg-breaking type.”

 

“As I said before, they are good men. They will deliver me to their superiors and then I will disappear. It took me over 150 years to escape their clutches the last time.”

 

“150 years?” asked Linda. “How old are you?”

 

“By the Julian calendar I am 2040 years old.”

 

“Jesus!” blurted Linda.

 

Juan fixed a cold stare on her. “Every time you do that, He hears you. He hears you and it distracts Him from helping others with real needs. That’s when someone dies from something stupid or gets into a preventable accident, because you distracted the Son of God from His daily affairs!”

 

“Godda…”

 

Before Linda could finish, Juan stepped forward and slapped her across the face. “Do you think this is a JOKE?!? Even now an innocent soul is corrupted because of your oath!”

 

Kenji put himself between Linda, still stinging from the slap, and Juan. “If you do that again, I’ll put you back into that body bag!”

 

“Would you suffer the righteous indignation of the Most High?!? If it was just one person He might be able to overlook such a minor trifle, but millions of people take His name in vain every day! Imagine trying to conduct your life with a million strangers calling your name at random. What would you accomplish?

 

“Now, if you want to find your precious Consul General, you will free me and listen to what I have to say, or else he will die and his blood will be on your hands.”

 

******

Geoffrey got a good four hours of sleep after the meeting last night. He and Mr. Park ate well and then made love. He always seemed more passionate after he fed. Then it was almost sunup and he had to retire to his chambers. Geoffrey got out a sponge and mop and cleaned the meeting room. Then he polished the table, which had some scuffs from the melee. Finally he cleaned his pistol. He had only fired one shot, but he didn’t want the residue to build.

 

He finally arose as his alarm clock went off. He showered and then got into a jogging suit. There was a TV in the kitchen above the center island, and he clicked in on with the smart panel touch screen on the wall. The fridge was a side-by-side black and silver affair from Kenmore; he pulled the coffee beans from the freezer and some eggs from the other side. He opened up the meat drawer and pulled out some ham and a little Ziploc baggie full of fingers. Then he rummaged in the crisper for some lettuce and tomatoes.

 

On the counter was a cheddar cheese wheel. He didn’t like cold cheese, so he would wrap it in Saran Wrap and then unwrap it as he needed it. He shredded some cheese and put it into a bowl. Then he cracked some eggs and scrambled them in another bowl. He took a knife from the knife rack and chopped up the lettuce and tomato and poured it into the eggs.

 

He opened up the baggie and dumped the fingers out, there were still 20 left over from last night. Eight were from the Nigerian fellow that he had shot in the face and he didn’t know about the others. Neither he nor Mr. Park liked thumbs, so Angel got the scraps. Dutifully, he removed the tips, because fingernails were not at all tasty and then he removed the bones. Finally he removed the skin. He took the skin and bones and put them in a large pot and added some water. Once it had boiled for some time, it would make an excellent broth.

 

He took the finger meat and put it in a blender, mincing it to a liquid consistency and adding it to the scrambled eggs. He put the omelet fixings into a skillet and cooked them over a stove, adding some salt, pepper and bacon bits. It looked like an excellent dish, and he took a taste just to make sure. He added just a little more salt, since the minced flesh made it slightly bland.

 

Geoffrey put the omelet onto a plate along with a parsley garnish. Then he poured a glass of milk and another of orange juice. He placed them on the counter and made two slices of wheat toast. He got a tray to put all of this on, along with some grape jelly and butter, and headed to the wine cellar.

 

This wine cellar was the smaller of the two, with only 50,000 bottles. At the far end, Geoffrey pulled on one particular bottle and a secret door opened. The room stank of piss, blood and other excrements. A mouse ran out and Geoffrey stepped on it. From the dark corner of this room he could hear the moaning of a pitiful man. Geoffrey pulled the chain of the light bulb to reveal an enclosed cage. He was reminded of the old Poe story The Cask of Amontillado.

 

“Breakfast!” called Geoffrey in a cheery voice. He placed the tray on the ground and slid it through the slot in the door.

 

A gnarled hand grasped his forearm and then he felt something slash his wrist. He withdrew his hand to see a shard of the juice glass protruding from his arm. The piece went in one side and out the other. Furious, Geoffrey unlocked the door, only to be beaten over the head with the tray. He recovered his wits and grappled the man before he could escape. Then he proceeded to slam the man’s face into the stone floor until he heard a wet snap. After that, he stomped on the man’s fingers and kicked him in the ribs repeatedly.

 

The beaten man gurgled, and spit up some blood and then went silent. His face was puffy from numerous beatings and his hands were twisted, having been mashed several times in the last four days. Geoffrey couldn’t figure out how he even found the strength to grasp the makeshift shiv. When Geoffrey listened, he realized the man wasn’t breathing, so he pulled out a syringe and injected the man with it. Then he took an AED and shocked him. The man gasped and was brought back to life. Geoffrey shackled him to the wall and mashed the food into the man’s mouth. The food had to be soft, because he had no more teeth to chew it with, and the taste really didn’t matter either since the man had no tongue.

 

“You’re paying for your crimes!” cried Geoffrey. “Yours and your father’s and his father before him! The Governor of Chosun!” Geoffrey spat in the man’s face. “You will know how my master suffered at the hands of your grandfather, and you will want to die, but you will LIVE!”

 

The beaten man whimpered.

 

Geoffrey took the shard of glass out of his arm. Then he pulled down the man’s pants. They reeked of four days of soiling himself. “So you want to cut me?!? I’ll cut YOU!” Geoffrey grabbed the man’s scrotum and gouged it with the glass shard. “You’ll tell my master where your only son is, mark my words. The Kodama line will end with him, and it will be only the beginning.”

 

Geoffrey punched the man in the gut and left him to hang. His master was patient, and they had all the time in the world to make the Consul General talk.

[oroborous]

Re: WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

 

Here is the character sheet for Geoffrey.

 

I also totally tweaked Linda into a three formed multiform NPC with an agitated and full-powered version. I had to do that to help necessitate the storyline as will be seen when I continue with my posts.

 

On a personal note, I've been accepted into an adult learning program that will help me get an accellerated degree, so we've decided to play our games about once a month now. That's okay by me because I still have a lot of ground to cover in order to catch this thread up to where we're at now.

[oroborous]

Re: WoDC IV:The Zia Chronicles --Campaign Log

 

Meanwhile…

 

September 14, 2006

5:30am PDT

 

It was a sunny day in Bend, Oregon, and for Stacy “Stace” Hawk it started out like any other. He rose before the sunrise and put on his workout clothes. Every morning before breakfast he would run several miles and then do some exercises. His neighborhood was nestled in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. He loved running on the trails in the foothills and climbing when he got the chance. Other folks in this middle-class neighborhood joked that they could set their clocks by Stace’s schedule. So it was little wonder that someone could track him down that early in the morning if they wanted to.

 

Stace was just getting off of the trail and back onto the sidewalk towards home when he noticed a black Pontiac Firebird pull along side him. It was an older model, kind of like the one used on Knight Rider, but without the red light on the grill. The passenger side window rolled down, and from inside a voice stated “Mr. Hawk, I have a message for you.”

 

Stace chuckled. Whoever was driving was doing a spot-on imitation of KITT. Amused, he stopped jogging and came up alongside the car. When he looked in the window he was taken aback to see no driver, but he did spy an envelope on the passenger seat bearing his name.

 

The voice spoke again. “I’m a classic TV junkie. You don’t even want to know how much this set me back, especially the remote control. Take the note, and I’ll see you in L.A. tomorrow.”

 

No sooner did Stace pick up the note than did the window roll up and the car sped off.

 

Stace looked around. One of his neighbors, John, waved at him as he was picking the paper off of his porch. Stace waved back and then jogged home. Once inside he poured himself some milk and put some energy powder in it. Drink in hand, he examined the envelope and then held it up to the light. Satisfied that it was just a note, he opened it with a butter knife and pulled out the contents. Along with the note were plane tickets to L.A.

 

The note read: So you’re calling yourself Stacey Hawk these days. I didn’t know that skateboarding was one of your many talents, but I’m sure you could convince a crowd of hundreds that you pulled off a standing 2160. Regardless, I’m not writing you to decry your choice of nom de guerre, but I am asking for your help.

 

Since our last encounter, the Institute has been under much federal scrutiny. As such, our members had to go underground to avoid detection by the Technocratic Union. If any of the other members of the Institute even knew that I was contacting you, my life would be forfeit. But I don’t believe I have anyone in the Institute that I can entrust this to. Even though we weren’t close friends, I saw your potential and I know your skills in engineering help make up for any other skills you might lack.

 

My request is simple. I believe my son has been kidnapped and brainwashed by a being known as Park Kwai-Bok. At first I thought that he was my son’s savior, but my son has become more and more erratic and fanatical concerning him. We used to exchange letters once a week and now that has tapered off to nothing, but the last few were bizarre and not like him at all. With my research, I have reason to believe that Mr. Park is some sort of undead creature, not unlike your vampire friends. I have no idea why he has chosen to target my son, other than the fact that he exhibits some special abilities like ours.

 

I want you to help rescue him. I cannot let the Institute know or else they will see me as a weak link and exterminate me. I have put some money and more information at a YMCA locker in Burbank. The combination and locker number are on your ticket jacket. If you have any information for me, buy a Map of the Stars from the redhead outside the Chinese Theatre, and ask him if he knows where the tomb of Sabu is. He’ll guide you to the next link in the chain.

 

I’m watching the flight manifest. If I see that the seats were vacant or given to a standby passenger then I’ll know you declined my request. I cannot offer you much but the knowledge that you are doing something good, and if you do help I will most certainly forget your whereabouts in Bend.

 

Most Obliged,

 

Tobias

******

 

11:30am Local time in Phoenix, AZ

 

Mr. K was pacing a rut into the floor of the MIB field office. Mr. Soto had not arrived with the package as planned. Coach C scanned for their special issue phone and found that its coordinates coincided with that of an evidence locker at the FBI field office. It also did not bode well that a PRIMUS chopper had fallen out of the sky at around the same time he was supposed to have been retrieving the body. Out of options, Mr. K swallowed his pride and picked up the phone.

 

“PRIMUS L.A., how may I direct your call?” came the voice on the other end of the line.

 

“This is Agent Kaye of the NSA, I need to get hold of John Wrath. This is in regards to the kidnapping of the Japanese Consul General and the whereabouts of the Shadowdragon.”

 

“Mr. Wrath is in the field; let me see if I can patch you through.”

 

K heard a few clicks and then “Wrath here. Speak up!”

 

“Mr. Wrath, this is Agent Kaye of the NSA. I’ve been asked to cooperate and share information vital to you in regards to the Shadowdragon case.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“There is a van with covered plates and a flower delivery logo on it. It’s on I-10 between L.A. and Phoenix. It was scheduled to be here in Phoenix almost an hour ago. Inside is a man who was dead, but has presumably arisen. This man was the ‘hero security guard’ from the kidnapping, also known as John Doe 091106-22. This man has information vital to your and my investigation. If we can recover him then we may find the location of the Consul General.”

 

“Arisen, as in was once dead and now lives?” was the incredulous reply.

 

“Yes, sir, that is exactly what I mean.”

 

“Alright. So explain to me how he was getting to Phoenix, since he was dead as dogshit when he left here.”

 

K sighed. “We contracted an interested third party to deliver him to us, but our GPS transponders are compromised. His last known was an hour and a half outside Phoenix and now nothing.”

 

“I’ll get a search team to check I-10, but that is about all the manpower I can divert right now. Did this ‘interested party’ have the capability of destroying my chopper?”

 

“Not according to our scans. He is at best a level 2 vigilante, but he has diplomatic immunity and he is the son of the Japanese crown prince or something, so try not to kill him.”

 

“What if he resists?” asked Wrath.

 

“Do what you have to. John Doe is our main objective. His last known alias is ‘Juan Espera’, and he is at least a level 2, but he has massive regenerative and resurrective capabilities.”

 

“So can I kill this son of a bitch?”

 

“Yeah, but only if you want to wait another three days for the info.”

 

“So, Agent Kaye, how do I get hold of you?

 

“Give me your cell phone number and I’ll fix it up with a direct line.”

 

“Okay then, its 1-248-867-4020” Disclaimer: I chose this number at random, knowing the area code was around the Millennium City area, and later did a check on White Pages. It comes back as a real Nextel cell phone number. I have no idea if it is an active number or just reserved, but please don’t call it looking for John Wrath ;-)

 

“Give me about 30 minutes and then after that you can press *TECH (8324) and get ahold of me directly”

 

“Nifty. Pleasure doing business with you.” Wrath hung up.

 

Coach C finally chimed in. “Do you know what kind of trouble we will get into if Mr. Soto is harmed?”

 

K grunted. “I was hoping that his incentive to find the Consul General would motivate him to be here and work with us, but he hasn’t made any contact and our GPS is kaput.”

 

“We had a GPS in his phone. We know where that is. There was one in the jack stand, and that one stopped transmitting altogether. Did we not have one more in the center console?” asked C.

 

“Actually it is inside of the front differential, and unless they tore that van apart French Connection style they shouldn’t have found it. The only other explanation is a high-level TK field interfering with it.”

******

 

12:30pm Local Time, El Mirage, Arizona, leaving the parking lot of the area Wal-Mart.

 

Kenji was driving the van while Linda sat in the passenger seat and Juan crouched in the back. Kenji was puzzled. Juan literally woke up naked in the van with nothing to his name. After much argument he decided that they needed to go to the Phoenix Area after all, but only to re-supply. Juan had them go to the closest Bank of America. Then he had to borrow Kenji’s clothes so that he could go in and make a withdrawal. Juan took one of the plastic bags from the truck stop in with him and 10 minutes later it was full of $100s, $50s and $20s. After a shopping spree at the Wal-Mart each of them had a few sets of clothes. Besides the clothes, Juan bought 3 aluminum baseball bats, 3 machetes, 3 hunting knives, binoculars, a fishing pole and other various camping gear.

 

“We need to go to a used car lot and get a different transport.” Said Juan. “You don’t happen to have the title for this van do you?”

 

“Not on me!” cried Kenji.

 

“Oh well, we’ll have to ditch it. I’ll buy you a new one later. This one is probably bugged worse than a crack house.”

 

“What’s next?” asked Linda

 

“I’ve spent a few days in the Valley of the Sun before. I need to sniff out some hardware and then we need to get back to L.A.” replied Juan.

 

“When you say ‘sniff out some hardware’, do you mean illegal weapons?” wondered Kenji

 

“Yes. I’m a non-person. I can’t own a gun permit nor can I get a gun legally on our time schedule, praise be to James Brady.”

 

Kenji coughed. “Isn’t offering praise to anyone but God blasphemy?”

 

“Only if you really mean it. And I’m sure you’re wondering if He’ll look down on me using illegal firepower. Well the answer is no. He isn’t that much of a hard ass. Besides, they aren’t for me. They’re for you two.”

 

“I’ve still got a legal weapon and a carry and conceal permit in California. Plus, I’ve got full diplomatic immunity. The worst thing that can happen to me is that I’ll be deported and tried in Japan, where the charges will be dropped because I am a member of the royal family.”

 

“You never told me that!” Linda punched him playfully in the arm. “Now I definitely have to take you home to meet my parents.”

 

“Linda, do you want a gun?” asked Juan.

 

“I’m trying to stay out of this. I’m only here because Kenji rescued me from the goon squad back at the morgue.”

 

“I doubt Linda will need a gun either.” Responded Kenji

 

“What? What if I need to protect myself?”

 

“Linda, when that chopper attacked us you went into some sort of trance and destroyed it along with the rocket they fired at us. I figured part of you did that on purpose. It was like your subconscious mind put you on autopilot.” Kenji said.

 

“I don’t remember a thing! I’ve been in plenty of hairy situations where I didn’t black out and blow things up. What if it only works some of the time?”

 

“She’s right.” Juan said. “We better get her a gun just in case.”

 

“What the f*ck do I need a gun for? You’re going to take me back to L.A. and that’s where my part in this grand conspiracy ends!” fumed Linda.

 

“She really doesn’t have a stake in this.” Kenji agreed.

 

“What if the Technocracy decides to pay her a visit?” argued Juan.

 

“Both of you! Shut up!” yelled Linda. Wisps of steam literally rose from the outer corners of her eyes. At the same time, Kenji’s stomach tried to crawl up his throat and Juan’s head felt a dull throb.

 

“I knew it!” yelled Juan. “She’s possessed!” He crossed himself and began chanting in Latin.

 

This time Linda’s voice was a throaty growl, as if it came from the depths of hell. “YOU! SHUT! UP!” She directed her comment to Juan alone.

 

Kenji quickly pulled into a nearby parking lot. “Everyone chill out! We can’t be causing a scene in broad daylight!

 

Linda began to sob. “I just wanted to get my report done in peace! I shouldn’t have even been there! Now I’m involved in this scheme and I just want to be left alone!” And with that she opened the passenger side door and bailed.

 

“Are you happy now?” Kenji asked Juan.

 

“We don’t have time to babysit a girl like that, especially if she gets stronger as she flies off of the handle. She’s a big girl. Just leave her.”

 

“Are you kidding me? I could be charged with kidnapping her if she pushes it and then there is no diplomatic immunity.”

 

“Then I hope you’ve got eyes on her, because I didn’t see where she went.” Juan responded.

******

 

MIB Field Office: Phoenix, AZ

 

Mr. K’s desk phone rang. The caller ID said that it was from the communications center. “Mr. K you’re not going to believe this.”

 

“What’s that?” he replied.

 

“It’s the third GPS signal. It just started working again.”

 

“Hot damn! Finally a lucky break. Where?”

 

“That’s the strange part. It says Sun City.”

 

K groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Get some men there now! And let that PRIMUS team know too!” He slammed down the receiver. “Of all the ballsy moves! I think Juan is calling the shots now.”

 

“What makes you say that?” queried C.

 

“Just call it a hunch. I don’t think Soto would have come this far and not come to us if Juan was taking a back seat.”

 

“What do you want to do?”

 

“I’m just going to let the PRIMUS team capture them and take all the risk. They’ve been apprised.”

******

 

Session Notes & Wrap-up

 

It took forever to get Juan introduced to Kenji. It was a long set-up but it was worth it. Session one ended right after Juan, Kenji and Linda decided to go to the closest metro area, which by then was Phoenix, to resupply before they took their next move. There was a lot of personal and behind the scenes action, but no combat. I’ll have to admit that I expected them to turn back to L.A. before ever reaching Phoenix, and I’ve had to wing a few things. I’ve got some more loose ends to tie up and some NPCs are on a collision course, but that will be coming up in the next posts.

[oroborous]

Game Over

 

Well, it has been quite a while since I posted, and there are several reasons. First off, I started back to college full time while working full time and that is taking up much of my time. That in and of itself wouldn't be explanation enough for why the game hasn't continued. The other half of that explanation is that one of my players took a job out of state and the other one is in jail, and if the charges are true he may stay there for a while. Even if they aren't true, I don't want to take the chance of hanging out with him anymore.

 

Therefore, without further ado, as GM I declare this campaign to be the dream of a little boy named Tommy, who watched too many episodes of Twin Peaks and didn't know how to tie all of his loose end plotlines together anyway.

 

As disappointing and strange as these turn of events are, I am not discouraged. I am currently developing a new plotline in the same universe, which may contain some of the same NPCs. I have three interested parties and perhaps a fourth. I am, however, going to change my campaign log from the current screenplay-esque format I've been using to more of a synopsis style. That's just because writing in the current format is kind of a pain in the ass and it takes too long considering my time constraints.

 

When the new game starts, I will try for once every two weeks, and maybe this one will survive sans incarceration.