The Shepherd's Inquisition

[Gnaskar]

What's this? A new campaign? Gnaskar's first try at a non-super-heroic game? Pretty much. Finding that my schedule had unexpectedly cleared up I prepared a list of possible campaigns and had interested players vote on which to run. The result was a Sci-Fi Action Horror Adventure, increasingly loosely based on a mix of Warhammer 40k and The Reality Dysfunction.

 

The Universe

In the 26th century humanity finally invents faster than light travel. The only problem (discovered 50 years later, by which time the economy is utterly dependent on FTL) is that the Void isn’t a feature-less space as first believed but rather as close to hell as one can get. And the locals are very interested in the ships that are starting to appear travelling through it…

 

Rather than risk collapsing the frail economy and ending humanity’s golden age, the AI known as Shepherd instead funds a clandestine organization dedicated to preventing Void Incursions and combating Void Entities as well as other supernatural threats. The Shepherd’s Inquisition is born.

 

In the mean time, humanity has split into three factions, now finally uniting into the Confederacy:

 

The Necrahians, a cult turned technocracy based on the teachings of Necrah (whose real/full name has never been discovered) have advanced nanotechnology, and a distinctly creepy styling (they use a color scheme of black and neon-green, a naming scheme centered around the undead, and generally appear to purposefully seem creepy and mysterious to outsiders).

 

The Jovians, a Hive Mind with advanced bio-tech, for whom the Zerg, the Tyranids and the Edenists have been named as sources of inspiration. They have a remarkably stable society due to the mind link that makes the discovery of psychological disorders remarkably easy, and treatments even more so. However, this also means that only the smartest and most careful sociopaths avoid detection. These so-called Serpents are a constant threat to society, and a special force known as Peacekeepers exists to hunt them down.

 

And the ordinary mortals who make up the rest of humanity.

 

The Players

Anonin Delacroix: A Tau Ceti hacker, conman and downright criminal, Anonin provides the team with access to the criminal underground as well as innumerable databases and secure sites.

 

John Hearst: An ex-confederate marine turned mercenary (well before his service time was up), John provides the team with significant muscle and military hardware.

 

Threoh Diode Takcravinath: One of the stranger team members, Threoh is not only a Necrahian but also a Digital Intelligence (a human mind uploaded into a computer) inhabiting a cloud of nanites. A scientist (well, Formshaper, the Necrahian equivalent), he provides the team with scientific understanding, and the intriguing possibility of walking through walls and transforming matter as needed.

 

Teal: A Jovian actor, biologically enhanced to be able to assume any humanoid shape, Teal provides the team with unique infiltration abilities. He’s also one of the most high profile members of the team which can give them access to high society, but also comes with its own problems.

 

Nemesis: A Jovian Peacekeeper, given official sanction to hunt down the sociopathic Serpents, Nemesis is a skilled investigator and a powerful warrior. With him he as a faithful companion in his travels he has a “Zergling” attack dog. Nemesis is probably the least subtle team member with a shoulder mount that aims wherever he’s looking and no experience with life outside of a hive where everyone can read your intensions from the inside of your head.

[Gnaskar]

Re: The Shepherd's Inquisition

 

Session 1

The inquisitors receive their briefing from their contact, whose name is not given, via holograph at their L4 space station. They are sent to the Nova Moscow colony to investigate a pair of murders that have tripped inquisitorial datataps as being potentially void related. The briefing is succinct as not a lot is known about the case.

 

Dmitri, a lawyer, was found dead in his office and Rosalina, a reporter, was found dead in her apartment 6 days later. Both showed signs of being tortured, and both were eviscerated by a six inch knife. Both rooms were locked and barred from the inside at the time.

 

The inquisitors, sans Threoh, make their way to Mars Orbit, and the Phobos spaceport, intending to take passage on a private freighter known to be heading that way. Threoh returns to his apprentice, and informs her that he is taking her to study the unusual minerals found in the mines of Nova Moscow. He then boards a separate transport to Phobos.

 

Antonin is quickly able to locate the ship going the right way, and arranges to meet the captain with Teal and John. Captain Calvert of the ship Lady Macbeth is initially suspicious of the inquisitors, first naming a ridicules price for the journey then offering to charge them a tenth of it in exchange for them revealing the true purpose of their mission. After he casually sees through three lies made by them, Teal and Antonin get suspicious that something not entirely natural is going on. Teal continues the negotiations while Antonin discretely looks into Calvert’s records. He discovers a number of abnormalities, but fails to ascertain anything definite.

They eventually satisfy the captain by admitting that they believe the colony, or potentially the whole Confederacy, could be in danger, and intend to do what they can to prevent it.

 

Nemesis meets with Captain Calvert next, having confirmed that no other ships will be heading for Nova Moscow for several weeks. When submitted to the same treatment as the earlier group he simply states that he is a private investigator who has been hired to look into an ongoing investigation on the planet. This explanation is accepted by the captain, who still charges him twice what the earlier group paid.

 

Threoh and his apprentice now meet with the captain, who refuses to believe he is in such haste to study rocks. Threoh makes vague allusions that lead Calvert to conclude he is traveling with the others, while keeping the apprentice in the dark. Threoh also discovers that he is more expensive to transport as cargo than as a passenger, to his surprise.

 

The trip is uneventful, though the inquisitors are understandably concerned during the dip through the void and the horrors hidden in it.

 

Upon arrival, the inquisitors first set up a base of operations in a Blue Suns Hotel. Antonin, Nemesis and John (the three inquisitors with paranoia) decide to share a defensible conference suite while Threoh and Teal take private rooms.

 

The inquisitors decide to split up to cover more ground. Antonin and Teal head to Dmitri’s office, intending to claim to be working for his life insurance company. Threoh and John decide to go to Rosalina’s office, pretending to have a scheduled meeting with her. Nemesis will go and declare himself to the local police department and request case access.

 

At Dmitri’s office the inquisitors discover that he had just pulled of an incredible case, getting local crime boss Vlad arrested. He was also apparently working on some follow up case, but didn’t want to tell anyone before he was completely sure. The two inquisitors decide to talk to the man who found Dmitri, Stephan.

Threoh and John have some problem getting more than gossip from the news paper secretary due to their cover not having an in-built right to ask questions. The do however discover that there has been a third killing at a public arcade and that Rosalina was acting more paranoid than usual the last few days before her murder.

 

Nemesis had some trouble getting access to the police station, but once it was made clear that he was in fact allowed to walk around with a gun on his shoulder he was allowed to speak with the officer in charge of the investigation. Chief Ivan briefed Nemesis on the murders personally. Information shared included a cut down version of the case files, a list of what was stolen from each site (generally odd items, including a potted plant, the lower half of a refrigerator’s contents, two staples and an arcade game), a summary of the autopsy report (the victims showed heavy signs of torture and extreme blood loss related to being nailed upside down to a wall, but the cause of death was a vertical incision with a six inch blade, starting below the navel and ending at the rib cage), and the odd detail that every location was soundproofed at some unknown time before the murders. Chief Ivan ended the interview by offering Nemesis a place to stay, but was assured that he had found a motel.

 

Antonin and Teal reach Stephan and are allowed to speak to him (they had some difficulty attracting his attention by knocking on his door; like Dmitri’s office to doors away, his office is soundproofed). Stephan isn’t able to give the inquisitors much new information, though claims not to have realized that his room was sound proofed before the police investigation discovered it and confirms that Dmitri was working on something big.

 

The inquisitors meet up, resolving to visit each crime scene in turn starting with Rosalina’s apartment. They are interrupted in their discussions by the crime photos being sent over to Nemesis. He is unmoved by the carnage (having seen Serpents do far worse), but Teal views it over the Hive Mind and is horrified.

 

Using Threoh’s unusual abilities the Inquisitors manage to get access to Rosalina’s apartment where they confirm that she had an unused pistol nearby when she was attacked and showed signs of habitual paranoia. They find several hidden compartments around the house, including a rough draft of a news article titled “Vlad’s Bloody Brother”. The article accuses the unnamed brother of using his position to cover for Vlad, money laundering, and cult activities, giving the inquisitors a clear suspect for the killings, as well as a link between the first two killings (Dmitri was Rosalina’s source for the article). They still don’t have a name for the brother though, and a search through the colony records shows only a corrupted file that confirms that Vlad has a half sibling.

 

The kitchen where Rosalina was killed, still sporting a chalk outline and a pool of blood and guts (that have decayed for 10 days), causes several inquisitors stress, especially Threoh, who is uncomfortably reminded of his own corpse.

 

They head for Dmitri’s office next, this time gaining access through Nemesis’s PI license. Antonin has some trouble disguising himself, but Stephan fails to recognize him. Teal has no such issues, of course, deciding to return as a Russian-Ethnic female. At the office they discover a three inch long footprint in the dirt from the stolen potted plant, sparking jests of possessed manikins. A call to the police department (where Nemesis skillfully avoids mentioning that he and his team are trespassing on a crime scene without permission) crime scene investigator Gregori (who has been assigned to liaison with Nemesis) claims police records dismiss the foot-print as scene contamination, but expresses skepticism towards this conclusion after reviewing the evidence. They fail to find any hidden compartments or files at the site.

 

The Inquisitors decide to stop for dinner before continuing, though Nemesis notes that this might not be wise, as the next scene is rather fresher than the last two. Threoh returns to his apartment to eat dinner with his apprentice (though in his case this is more a case of consuming mass), while the others have hamburgers at the mall where the arcade is.

 

They meet up at the arcade, with impresses the Jovians with its extent and variation. They are initially denied access to the site, but Gregori, seeing a chance to undermine the authority of “the Officer Jocks”, let them in to the storeroom where Vasiliy was killed. Though the first shock of the site makes a lasting impression on the inquisitors, sending Nemesis running out the door to steady himself and Threoh seeking the blessed sensory deprivation of the floor (dangerously close to going insane), they quickly outclass the CSI agents present.

 

Nemesis’s “Crime Bug” quickly scans the site, confirming the time of death (last night) and a general lack of forensic evidence consistent with the other sites. Threoh, after calming down, combs the floor, walls and ceiling for footprints and other evidence and looks through the arcade games for hidden compartments, but fails to find anything. Antonin uses an EM scanning device to locate Vasiliy’s cell phone, discovering that he a) was sent to this room three hours before his corpse was discovered, and that he met a Viktor Semenov who seemed to want access to the room.

 

Finding this extremely interesting, especially after a contact reveals that Viktor may have been planning an inside job against the secure transport firm he works for, the inquisitors decide to speak with him at the earliest opportunity. Otherwise they find little of interest and return the phone to the police after adding a wiretap in case someone calls it.

 

Hacking the secure records of Viktor’s employer isn’t a problem for Nemesis, who has a lot of experience with these kinds of businesses. They find he is currently in transit, and move to intercept him as he arrives with a large sum of money at the First Bank of Nova Moscow.

 

Heading there in all haste, they barely arrive before the armored truck pulls in. Quickly arguing to be allowed access (Nemesis’s Zergling doing a lot of the persuading) they’re given a front row seat view to the truck’s door being opened.

 

Viktor is nailed upside down to the inside of the mysteriously sound proofed truck, all his blood drained out on the floor mixing with the bills inside. There is a shockingly large amount of blood, which comes pouring out of the truck when the door is opened. This is too much for Threoh, who snaps under pressure and begins desperately expanding himself in an attempt to feel solid again. This leaves the inquisitors with not just a new body, but also a classic gray goo scenario. After recovering from the shock (only Nemesis and one of the bank workers managed to remain focused), the inquisitors begin investigating the site. Antonin checks over the corpse, and is disappointed to find that he wasn’t carrying his phone. Nemesis and the “Crime Bug” spring into action, discovering that Viktor was alive only 15 minutes ago and half of a bloody bill where the other half has been cut away of has simply disappeared. Teal meanwhile attempts to talk Threoh out of eating the planet.

 

By the time the police arrive, the inquisitors are ready to leave, and are already planning an emergency therapy session, both for themselves and especially for Threoh. They meet up in their rented conference room, after some trouble convincing Threoh that talking about it will help. The therapy goes amazingly well, bringing Threoh back from the brink of insanity, and doing wonders for the other’s nerves.

 

That is until, in a lull in the conversation, Teal notices that the sound of people passing in the corridor outside is strangely missing. They hear some rustling in the corners of the room and the soft click of the door being locked. Everyone grabs their weapons, except Threoh who begins sinking into the floor, intending to leave the room shoot the lock, and hope the others survive.