Dramatis Personae

Previously . . .

Last left off, the team got a tip on where information on the Russian enhancement program may be. It’s in Belgium in a bank known as Beauchamps, more along the lines of bespoke banking rather than treasury. It’s 9 in the morning when they get there with very little sleep. Going through the customs to explain what they can do via their powers, giving them the explanation provided in their Project Vanguard paperwork. Getting some bracelets to wear in return, essentially GPS trackers for house arrests. The Commander and Doctor Thanatos gets some guff about their swords and they aren’t needed here since they have a strong metahuman response force.

The bank they’re looking for is within walking distance, though Doctor Thanatos insists on being driven there via taxi. The driver is from Uzbekistan and listening to some hard music. Halfway through the drive, the driver asks if they’re heroes, but explain that they’re clients. It would have taken them less time to actually walk there like Yukio did.

At the Bank

Doctor Thantos, Marduk,  Nyx, and the Commander
Beauchamp’s Banking
Monday, April 3rd, 2017, 3:00 pm (CEST)
Brusselsesteenweg 129, 9050 Gent, Belgium

The building is a rather nice looking one. Classic with purple columns and everything, not standing out in the least with the rest of the colourful city. Yukio, unfortunately, cannot enter the bank due to a No Dogs Allowed sign. Across the street is a housecat that is watching them as though it knows what they’re doing. Thanatos tries to detect about the cat, but being too far away to detect via his vampirism powers, he resorts to more mundane means. The cat flips the bird back at Thanatos while they note the collar around its neck looks like the GPS bracelets that everyone is wearing.

Inside the bank it looks fairly normal. Teller desk with three people standing there. Thanatos schoozes his way into the teller’s eyes with his story about needing to access his box and presents the key they obtained through lysol measures. The teller grabs a key from a box behind the counter and leads most of the crew downstairs to the vault. Yukio is standing outside watching the cat who rises on its hind paws and flips off the super-intelligent dog. The Commander decides to take this opportunity to watch the classic showdown.

Down in the vault, the group approaches a room full of lockers and a second smaller locker reveals a lockbox of various paper documents, microfiche, microfilm, poorly labled VHS tapes that may contain untold horrors. Most of it is shoveled into a bag that Nyx provides while the others take some of the heavier items. In the bottom of the lockerbox is a strange crystal which gives off a feeling of static. Thanatos bags that too, rather carefully.

Outside the feud between cat and dog escalated to the point where shit has hit the fan leading to a naked man with a collar on screaming at Yukio. Meanwhile, Commander notices some shady men heading towards the bank. These guys are carrying submachine guns, hidden under their jackets, Mp5Ks heading towards robbing the place according to their body language. The Commander and his Dog disappear into the shadows, preparing to choke out one of the targets. The Commander taking control of his target’s neck, Yukio also goes for his neck. They’re down for the count as the group heads upstairs to find the security guard freaking out saying they weren’t supposed to do anything, they broke the law since they did unlicensed heroing, as well as assaulting a man.

Thanatos tries to play innocent and asks what is going on there, convincing them that they might be unharmed and just stunned. Their medical discussion turns out that they’re fine and that they’re overreacting. Thanatos tries to swindle the guard that he could be a hero, he stopped the robbers. Nyx takes the time to grab some souvenir chocolate on the way home, shadow skipping his way to spend some of his $12,000 Euros he won in the poker game. The rest walk the couple miles towards the airport while Yukio gets stared at. They’re trying to avoid getting the crystal investigated by customs, to avoid it Nyx gets the crystal stuck into his sack, warps past customs, stows the sack, goes through customs, and retrieves the sack without issue. All in all, the trip to Belgium took eleven hours, most of which is stuck in customs.

Aftermath

While flying back home, Thanatos takes some time to read some of the papers, being the only person to actually know Russian. Basically it’s “How I did it, by Victor Frankengorbochev”. It’s taken from a precursor project and expanded upon with most of the papers dated back in the mid-80s and requiring some rather exotic chemicals. Most of the surviving test subjects experienced damage in the left frontal lobe killing off the empathy center. The crystal ends up being a Kyberic Capacitor, drained of all the energy. Thanatos questions if they should omit some of the paperwork, wondering if the CIA is to be trusted with information on how to make more Ravils. Thanatos takes 10% of the most important documents with Commander letting him know what would be safe to remove before they hand it to Nyx to hide it.

Arrival back at HQ is without pomp and circumstance where the CIA starts to investigate the documents. They’re still trying to interrogate Ravil as well, but are probably going to end up putting him in a secure facility. They don’t have too much else to do, so Nyx gives the beleaguered personal assistant a rather expensive box of chocolate and goes back to his room to put the remainder of his euros back into his room’s safe while everyone else discusses what Project Vanguard should be doing.

After Action Report (GM)

This was another short session because I’m still trying to get my legs back under me for the campaign – the PCs are together again and want to do some actual heroing – something which I approve of. I intend to try out my new “superhero events” random generator and see how that goes.

Other Notes

Christian, Amar’s player was absent for this session. Session only lasted 2.5 hours.

Soundtrack

None.