Dramatis Personae

Previously . . .

When the team last left off, they brought back Ravil and several living ex-Spetsnaz soldiers to the surprise of the government agency that sent them on the chase. Ravil is kept in heavy sedation until they can get power-nullifier cuffs on him and then implanted with a nullifier. He’s not too interested in being interrogated despite numerous professionals being flown in. Marduk is in a regenerative tank to recuperate from the last mission. Doctor Thanatos is exploring the base while Nyx checks out various dark crawlspaces, ventilation shafts, and playing poker in the training room with the hard light bots.

Looking around for other places to go, the only known location of another Most Wanted is number 7, a huge telepath in Val Verde that has mind controlled the majority of the population. This leaves their possibilities down to following Lynch towards the black site to Ravil’s interrogation.  The guy was rather bad news with a confirmed thirty civilian kills and a general psycho for hire and, with the exception of a sniper that caught a ride, they got all of his team too. They’re conflicted before the finally go to the black site.

Whence Comes The Night?

Doctor Thantos, Iron Sikh,  Nyx, and the Commander
CIA Black Site “Mordor”
Sunday, April 2nd, 2017, 1:00 am (EST)
Albany, NY 12084

They’re slightly hassled at the front before given badges and they find Ravil crucified in what looks like a glass box, kept immobile and catheter up the whizhole. They explain that they apparently discovered that his real ability was neutralization, the extreme strength and toughness coming from an experiment. Doctor Thanatos sits in on one of the interrogations and speaks with the psycho.

Asking why they were sent to apprehend him results in no comment other than a glance at Lynch and back to Doc. A long monologue about gentlemanly behaviour ensues from the rather loquacious mouth of Doc as he asks who Ravil is working for that gets a small reaction from the prisoner and Doc quickly ushered out of the room and asked how he managed to get Ravil to react. Apparently they suspected that he was working under someone, but didn’t get any response until then. The rest of the spetsnaz were separated out as they weren’t considered important when a scientist shows Lynch a clipboard implying that they’ve only seen the results in one other person, looking directly at the Commander for a moment. The CIA asks for some of their super soldier blood back.

They haven’t seen results like that before except in the specific cases and some cases before WWII. Commander was the only one that responded properly in the third generation of trials while the first happened during WWII and the second happened during the Cold War. Ravil had a bit of a brain exam done between beating the hell out of Ravil and his present state that seems that it has caused some brain damage that may have turned him into a psychopath or worsened his empathetic state. Doctor Thanatos scans the two super soldiers and attempts to analyze what happened and how things may have ended up like that. The degeneration may have been worse in some other people, but in this case he escaped with some trauma.

It’s asked if they had some records on the experiments and the Commander recalls that the man that enhanced him, known simply as The Doctor, told him that there were a few issues with the first generation of the Promethian treatment. Russians spies had managed to get their hands on enough samples during the 80s and the Cold War to reverse engineer it and apply it. The Commander was an anomaly, nearly dying on a mission but they tried to keep him from dying that caused him to become a super-soldier. Ravil’s brain is slowly getting worse, but it’s more likely that he’ll die before he actually gets dementia from it. Thanatos tries to develop a map of how things would proceed with the disease. But he needs more samples or a greater field of subjects. Nyx starts asking when Ravil came onto the radar and when he actually disappeared from the Spetsnaz. Thanatos goes to ask Ravil’s comrades questions while the others mingle around, unfortunately they don’t prove susceptible to his questioning techniques. Ravil is staring at the Commander and when asked why, he mutters something in Russian.

One of the terrorists mention they have something to say, but he wants to be set free in return. It obviously relies on what sort of information they have. He reveals that they broke into a facility in Syria with a large amount of files and materials that Ravil packed away into a Swiss Security Box. Upon asking where they located it, the Russian sticks his fingers down his throat and vomits up a key, apparently he’s been doing that for awhile and that he has the key for it but not the box number. Thanatos calls one of the men with clipboards to wash up the key while the Russian asks for his freedom.

Aftermath

Nyx, in the meantime, sits down with a pack of cards and just starts talking with Ravil, rambling on and on as he cheats at solitaire. Ravil stares at Nyx, either trying to explode Nyx’s mind with his own mind, or he’s trying to tell Nyx to stick the red queen on the black king. The Commander says the second while Nyx continues to ramble on. Thanatos speaks with Lynch about freeing the man. They investigate the key, finding that the stomach acid has eroded some etchings on it which Nyx manages to investigate better with his scanning sense an writes down the numbers on it. It’s tracked down to a box in Belgium. They team goes to head off for Belgium to find the safety deposit box.

After Action Report (GM)

Lot of exposition done this session. No matter how exciting or interesting it is you’re basically just listening to your GM ramble on about his campaign setting. And, well, that can be boring as hell if you’re not directly involved. It’s why I try to involve PCs in the investigation as much as possible. Overall, I hope I charged up the PCs for the next session. We’ll see.

Other Notes

James, Marduk’s player was absent for this session. Session only lasted 2.5 hours due to me having to be somewhere later.

Soundtrack

“Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin (Opening Song)

“Stuck In the Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel

“Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica (Closing Song)