Dramatis Personae

Previously . . .

After we last left off, the group returned to the home base with Darryl Bell getting his paperwork taken care of before they have to head out to check out Precinct 19. The four mind controlled thugs are being debriefed by the police, they don’t remember anything after a period with their vision having gone purple. The furthest back the gaps in memory are is six months meaning that they’ve been pawns for awhile.

But first, a nap!

Following the Cop

Amar, Doctor Thantos, Marduk,  and Nyx
Precinct 19
Tuesday, April 5th, 2017, 9:30 am (EST)
153 E 67th St, New York, NY 10065

Having been up all night, we needed to take a nap before setting out in the morning for the locale of the precinct. Pulling into a parking garage, Thanatos pops out for a moment to avoid getting cramped up and gets accosted by a man offering a good time. Apparently he’s selling some drugs, cocaine plus pixie dust plus LSD which Thanatos buys while the man then proceeds to sell some drugs to Marduk as well. Amar remains nice and cozy in the back of the old van making plans for getaways.

Nyx projects into the building and finding the man that they’re looking for. He stares at Nyx’s view location and immediately leaves the room, Nyx keeps track of everyone using his shadow scanning sense and sees the officer leave in the previously identified undercover car. Having not given the GPS tracker that Wayne put together, he plans on dropping it in the trunk and warping back out. That plan stops when he materializes inside the trunk with his shadow powers nullified.  Not to be completely deterred, he activates the GPS and starts digging at the brake light panel to screw with the electronics.

Before he can do too much, the car stops and Nyx hears the driver side door open and close and footsteps leaving. Taking advantage of the absence, Nyx wires the GPS device into the brake light electronics and then covers his tracks.

It’s Going Down For Real

Amar, Doctor Thantos, Marduk,  and Nyx
Owls Head Wastewater Treatment Plant
Tuesday, April 5th, 2017, 10:00 am (EST)
6700 Shore Rd, Brooklyn, NY 11220

Back on the other side, the crew realizes that Nyx has been gone too long and notice that the GPS tracker is now moving. Darryl and crew get on the road with Marduk continually asking if they’re there yet and if they can hurry up. When they catch up to the car, they find it in the parking lot of a waste treatment facility. Checking the trunk, they hear Nyx squirming around. Unfortunately they don’t have any way to open the trunk from the outside. Despite the backseat folding down, there’s tasers sewn into the lining that zaps the pee out of Nyx as he crawls through to find the saddest truth, the doors were unlocked and they could have let him out normally.

Trying to ignore the stains on his pants, he crawls out and gets some ointment for his electrical burns and then swaps back into his shadow form to let himself regenerate further as he checks out the parking lot for other cars, disabling them as a form of transport as Thanatos detects life inside the building. 23 people, majority under the control of Soul Cage. The police officer is speaking with Soul Cage about someone finding him out and following him. Soul Cage isn’t too happy with that result, considering that they’d found him there if he’s being followed. While this is happening, a man is extracting purple blood from his own body and putting it into a cooler at the water’s edge.

As they move into position, they have to listen to Soul Cage monologuing about how no one can stop his plan, and soon he could control the entire city and then the world!

They’ve got two targets in this case, Soul Cage to drop the possession and the cooler to keep it from being dumped in the water. Amar starts out by leaping off the balcony they infiltrated from and landing next to the cooler, wavering on the edge of the water and barely keeping his balance. Thanatos runs up into a man’s face and cripples his foot. Soul Cage’s purple glare aims at Amar, dominating him. Nyx tries to send a shadow binding at the purple man, stunting greater effects but Soul Cage just slides right out of it while the police officer gets bound in place.

The thug that Thanatos knocked down with a crippled foot fires at his assailant with his AK-47, absorbing all the blows and keeping standing. Thugs move throughout the plant while one opens fire on the dominated Amar while more thugs open fire on Thanatos, dodging the bullets.

The dominated Amar throws the closest thing on hand, the cooler of blood, at Marduk, falling short and throwing the sealed cooler in the river. Thanatos drains the man that shot him while stepping over the body. Marduk flies over to glowing machines to drain them, shrugging off Soul Cage’s attempt to dominate him. Nyx jumps into the middle of a group and uses his shadow grasp ability to detain a good amount of thugs while Thanatos gets shot in the bum.

The dominated Amar leaps through the air and slams Thanatos who trips over the thug in his attempt to retreat going down to Amar’s fists, and despite Thanatos’s attempts, Amar is able to resist his leeching attempts. Marduk attempts to drain the machine causes one of them to explode while Soul Cage takes over Nyx. Attempting to warp behind Thanatos to drain him, he cripples his powers and is dumped back into his fleshy and winded form.

The dominated Amar pulps a prone Thanatos again who tries to steal Amar’s power, grabbing Amar’s resistance to damage. Marduk blows up the remaining power absorber while Thanatos resists Soul Cage’s attempt to dominate and instead it’s Thanatos that’s absorbing the the bullets for health. Amar attacks Thanatos again, taking the blow on the chin. Swapping things around, Thanatos moves to drain Amar of his stamina to knock him out, but fails spectacularly.

Marduk flicks on his extended electricity field as he swoops towards Soul Cage’s location knocking out several thugs but leaving Soul Cage unaffected. The dominated Nyx gets to his feet while Thanatos takes more bullets and regains more stamina while twisted out of the way of Amar’s attempt to grapple him and miskicks a gun upwards barely getting it into his hands and unloads it on Amar, two slamming into his chest sending him reeling. Marduk stunts his electricity to affect Soul Cage. Apparently that’s what pain feels like when it goes through every nervous system when Soul Cage falls over and disintegrates into dust. The majority of the thugs fall to the ground into a seizure.

Aftermath

The cops are called and things are mopped up, the police officer is being detained on suspicion once Thanatos trips him up in conversation, revealing that unlike every other controlled person he could remember something. Marduk, in the meantime, apologizes for not focusing on Amar and tells him that he was not intentionally ignoring him and suggests going to McDonalds.

After Action Report (GM)

The PCs drew out getting to Soul Cage by quite a bit, but it was all in good fun and I’m going to have fun as they try to puzzle out why a mind-controlled cop had power dampening equipment in his trunk. In AEON, power dampeners are HUGE installations and not something readily portable. Only Arc Light (a gadgeteer PC long dead) has figured out a way to make it more portable and not without issues even then. His remaining prototypes are out of the hands of the PCs for now. Overall, a good session and I think the players enjoyed the PvP without consequences the mind-controller afforded them.

Other Notes

None.

Soundtrack

“Lovely Day” by Bill Withers (Opening Song)
“GDFR” by Flo Ride (Combat with Soul Cage)
“Till I Collapse” by Eminem (Closing Song)