AEON E1-Team: Season 1, Session 8 – Mad About Macarons

Dramatis Personae

• Hannah “Hot Lips” Hayes (NPC): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.”
• Li “Cookie” Xuan (NPC): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.”

Previously . . .

The team is in the middle of eating burritos in Porto Alegre where they found a hole in a wall restaurant that serves authentic Brazilian cuisine, plus Tex-Mex that is surprisingly good. They’ve been there for a few hours when Apex’s stomach started growling and everyone knows that when that happens she’s just not herself. Nero is intrigued by the mixture of Texas and Mexas and enjoys his meal. Boombox does share, over the meal, that he saved some of the shirts from the ship for his companions, finding appropriate ones for each. Apex gets one that says “Gamers don’t die, they respawn.”. Electro gets one with a body building saying “Eat, lift, repeat.”. Hux gets a generic one while Nero gets a shirt with picture of a pizza on it. Electro orders more food while Hux questions who is going to pay for everything, Nero says he’d take care of it and places a penny on the table as it must be worth something since it’s copper. Electro finally puts money down while Apex slowly hides her credit card in her pocket.

With the bill settled, they try to figure out where to head first. Apex suggests checking to see if there’s someplace that’s meant to be picking up the shipment of humanitarian goods with Hux checking the local sites on his old phones. He finds a non-profit charity that’s using the Starry Night Petunia. Since they’ve got many of the items from the ship, it’s suggested they visit there to donate a lot of them and get in with some cover stories for why they’re donating things before deciding against it to start garnering goodwill for just donating items so they head off, with several of the group leaving the shirts that Boombox gave them all at the restaurant.

We’re Uhhh Returning This Stuff

Apex, Boombox, Electro, Hux, and Nero
Starry Night Social Ministries  
Thursday, April 23rd, 2020, 0800 hours 
Estr. João de Oliveira Remião, 6634 – Lomba do Pinheiro, Porto Alegre – RS, 91560-000, Brazil

Rolling in, they find that the address leads them to a seedier part of the city where there’s a large rundown looking warehouse with a large Starry Night Petunia on it with the words Starry Night Social Services. There’s a line of people leading into the building where there’s several sections, one is a thrift store, one’s for services, and there’s a kitchen wrapping up food. There’s even a needle station where they’re handing out clean needles as well. They send Boombox in to tell them that they’re doing some donations, asking where to go to do donations of multiple cases of surplus weaponry, wait, no, blankets and clothing. They’re directed to the back where there’s a door. They’re looking for clothing, medical supplies, non-perishable food which is what they gathered from the ship and the donation somehow turns into a giant photo op with background music provided by Boombox.

The woman taking the donations says something to Boombox in Portuguese, propositioning him which he turns down as he’s fairly sure that his actual girlfriend is still out there somewhere while Apex slips the woman a sheet of paper with her phone number on it instead. While they’re going through the donations, they’re also casing the building to see if there’s any electronic devices or any connection to the doctor. There’s one person that’s watching them from the corner of her eye, she’s pretty good but not quite as good as Apex’s perception. They’ve got Boombox to head over to the rather small, mousy looking lady, doing some probing small talk with not much success, noticing a small flower tattoo on her right hand between thumb and index finger. Somewhat shocked, Boombox sends a message to Nero to mimic a flower on his hands and come over to make it look like they’re part of the group, Nero goes a step further and manages to manipulate Boombox’s skin via touch to give him a tattoo as well.

Looking around, she gestures for Boombox to follow her towards the back while Apex shadows them while Electro looks around for electronics and helps with some manual labor and Hux tries to get access to their computer systems. As the follow the woman, they go downstairs where they see a large amount of firearms and many other questionable donated goods. She introduces herself as Sena, who leads the cell and asks if they’re the ones from Bahlia Blanca and there’s some conversation about the trouble that was had at the port there, Boombox attempts to bluff his way through saying that he joined as a mercenary but hopes that he can see the benefits of becoming a true believer someday as Nero memorizes what’s going on, watching people clean firearms, counting money, packing supplies into bookbags and setting them aside. Apex whispers to Boombox under her breath to tell Hux to get back to the plane and whip up some tracking devices and bugs to plant into the guns which he relays where Hux leaves for the plane to start crafting some passive bugs that should work just about anywhere in the world.

Looking around, Electro does find some cameras watching the main area as well as televisions around broadcasting various channels and sports. Boombox arranges with Sena to deliver the box of guns near midnight before asking what’s next when they get the guns to them where they get the next mission or the payment for the mission. They’re reminded that normally they’d get the information from their handler, but their handler may have gotten some problems from the raid in Bahlia Blanca so Sena offers them a role in her cell. Accepting it, they get some stacks of hundreds in American money much to their amazement and excitement for actually money. They’re also told that there’s something they could help her with, that there’s a local gang that was supposed to bring in some more firearms but they’re holding out for more money and she doesn’t want to pay more money. Sena tells them that the gang wouldn’t take their silver, now it’s time to take their lead and to take care of the problem. There’s some agreement about it with a shake of the hand before handing them a burner phone.

Boombox asks about Doctor Alvarez, and is told that the doctor is the one that created the society. In the meantime, Hux gets a truck to get the pallets of guns, but ends up being stuck in a half-gear which a couple good kicks to the transmission fixes before dropping off the entire truck. They then reconvene at the plane to discuss what they know, namely that the doctor was the one that set everything up and now they’re working against them from in the inside. They’re not quite as close as finding the guy, even with the bugs in the guns, but now it seems like they’re involved in a revolution to take over South America and there’s some discussion about how serious they want to get when joining their group and how they’re going to deal with the situation with the possibility of going up the chain. Nero does ask if they’ve killed anyone but they can’t actually think of anyone they’ve actually killed.

Aftermath

Either way, they’re going to need to learn more before they decide whether or not they’re going to backstab The Returners. They know that they’re specifically fighting the fascist governments of South America but they still don’t have a full picture of what’s happening. Boombox is following the current lead they’ve got to figure out what The Returners have going on while Apex wants to learn more about The Returners that were captured in Bahlia Blanco and what has happened to them. Hux is quite adamant to never split the group, suggests doing the mission that was given to them and get the guns from the gang and interrogate them for more information and complete the mission there or sabotage and destroy the guns, implying they got destroyed in the crossfire.

They’ve got some plans in the works now, including talking to the gang members and checking out what is happening to the people they turned in in Bahlia Blanco.

After Action Report (GM)

Getting back on the trail this was a good session. Lot of oomph packed into a short time. Hopefully, next week’s session I’ll be able to stretch the session longer and we’ll see what’s what. One thing I did do today was make sure the players knew that the “bad guy” they were fighting was…kind of ambiguous. Lots of shades of grey. I flat out told them if by the end of the season they weren’t sure who was right or wrong I hadn’t done my job. I stick by that.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“Money Money Money” by Dr Period
“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” by Eric Clapton

AEON E1-Team: Season 1, Session 10 – Getting Murky