Dramatis Personae

• Derrick K. Ratnam aka Legerdemain (NPC Ally): Spin doctor and media liaison for Project VANGUARD. Twin to Bo. Tagline: “Well, actually that’s not how it happened…”
• Layla A. de Blackburn aka Nox (NPC): CIA-trained child assassin all grown up to be Daddy’s Little Monster. Maybe a little mad. Argues with her shadow often. Tagline: “No, we shouldn’t do that…should we?”
• Stainless Steel Rat aka “Sir” (NPC Ally): Bo’s best friend and assistant. A sentient drone in the shape of a stylized shiny metal rat mindlinked to Bo. Specialties are rapid repair construction and modifications. Imagine if K-9 and R2D2 made a baby and it looks a bit like a rodent. Tagline: “Repairs and upgrades in progress.”

Previously . . .

They’ve decided the best way to go would be to grab the salesman, Alvin Hooker, and kidnap him. Deciding to do it off-site, they rendition him to Lynch’s SCIF only to find it figuratively smoking. It’s a complete mess, Lynch is there poking through the ruins looking ticked, saying that maps are gone at least and he can’t tell the rest.

So…Do We Kill Him?

Nyx, Threshold, Whisper, and Wirerat
Neponsit Beach Hospital
Saturday, May 16th, 2020, 2030 hours (EST) 
67 Rockaway Beach Boulevard, Rockaway Park, NY 11694

Asking if they’ve taken anything out of there, any copies or anything. Threshold tries to divert it by saying he never took any of the records out of the SCIF. It doesn’t help either that Whisper apparently put down hard copies of everything she saw in there either, but almost wisely keeps her mouth shut except to point out that apparently it wasn’t as secure as he thought it was. Lynch does call Threshold arrogant and explains that there’s people out there that have ways of detecting the presence of such information, that there’s people that can detect it and track it down and apparently, they now have a map of “soft spots”. Threshold tries to remember what the map was but even with his memory it isn’t enough as there was information hidden in it as well.

When they ask what they have to do with Alvin now, Lynch shakes his head, grabs the guy and shoves him into a ruined chair in the remains of the SCIF. Lynch still isn’t too happy with things, cursing stuff and starts speaking to the salesman who seems to be friendly with Lynch and comments about Whisper’s size and how it’s funny that they seem to have found him. There’s some conversation about Alvin and possibly being killed. Threatening to kill the guy by sending Threshold to the North Pole, and that he may survive a bit longer than humans. Threshold argues with Lynch about medical information and that Alvin isn’t actually an alien. He explains that yeah, he’s native to their Earth but they went away and now they’re trying to come back.

Whisper starts pulling gear from her bag for torture. Alvin explains that he’s been there for twenty-five years and is ready to go back but then again he’s done his duty, making a pointed comment towards Lynch. Threshold keeps an eye on Alvin’s health as Whisper and Lynch work him over. Looking at Alvin, Lynch says that they both know they’re coming and that they’ve got the key now, he just wants to know when. He can already hear the homing beacons he just needs to know when. Alvin tells them that if he tells them then he’ll literally die. Whisper tells Lynch that there’s far worth things than death. Some intimidation, implying that Whisper wouldn’t let him die at all. Lynch suggests charades, and if that doesn’t work then he can just extract the tattoo from his back and try for a 50/50 shot. Some charades later, Lynch is apparently happy with what he’s heard and punches Alvin out.

Alvin had ended up communicating with Lynch the location of his rendezvous. He tells them to gather up as they don’t have much time. They’ve got a bunch of folks coming to invade the earth, their tech is more advanced and they’ve all got kyberic powers, not just one or two but full suites of powers. They come into the dimension decades beforehand and set up a beachhead with smaller teams to prep the dimensions for their arrivals. He mentions the map they took was of all the soft spots of reality, but it wasn’t just a 2d map, it also had more information embedded into it including the frequency of the soft spots and which was difficult to do with all technology on this planet. They probably know that the team knows, there’s probably someone checking the noosphere as they speak. They have to try to stop that, they’re going to have to put on some camouflage, get some umbrellas up, build some devices.

What’s going to happen is that people are going to die, and what they pulled at Rikers is going to look like a cakewalk. He wouldn’t blame any of them if they were to walk off, go to some cabin in the mountains and pray it all blows over. He tells them that they’ve got a chance now to do some real damage now, do something to potentially stall them if not repel them. If they come with him, however, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to come back alive, and if they do come back alive, they’re going to come back changed. There’s hope that there’s some way to grab someone and find their plans. Track the dimensional anomalies by a weird vibration, a humming. People and radios playing the same song all around. The list that they’ve got in the form of cards is who Lynch is aware of, but he doesn’t know how many more there are. Whisper explains that they could probably get Wirerat to build something to scan out everyone to find them overall, separate them out from actual people. Lynch says that’s possible, then then they’d detect that in the Noosphere, the collective unconscious.

To build devices to hide them from the Noosphere, he’d have to have ten pounds of orichalcum, activated orichalcum of such and the closest place he can think of that may have it would be the Van Doren Industries. He knows where the closest place that may have them is, but they’d need to scope it out. Whisper tells him to just tell her where they are and she’d get them. Perhaps through bribery or otherwise. Threshold tells them to give him a few minutes and he’d be back. He heads out and go to the pawnshop he got the weird watch from: From Between the Pages.

The Key To Knowledge Is…

Threshold
Aldwin’s Curios and Pawn
Saturday, May 16th, 2020, 2130 hours (EST) 
567 Union St Brooklyn, NY 11215

There’s surprisingly still a light on inside the shop. It still feels funny to him, he still can’t figure out why though. Scanning, there’s essentially a lack of sound which is itself a sound. Going inside and looking around, nothing catches Threshold’s eyes and the man at the counter is repairing a small clock. Scanning the man reveals him to be human. Telling the guy that he was just popping by to look around, commenting about various stuff. Asking about potential damage during the Erebus fiasco, there wasn’t anything that had really occurred to them. The man offers Threshold some tea from a kettle, some oolong tea with honey using an old-fashioned honey dipper. There’s an item made from Swarovski crystals that the clerk feels should just be used rather than just sitting on a shelf useless. Threshold starts broaching the subject about the watch he bought with the unusual geometry on it. The man essentially laughs at Threshold looking for such things in a pawn shop and suggests he speak with a colleague instead, giving him a business card for another pawn shop run by a man named Hardison.

The Key To Knowledge Is…

Whisper
Van Dorian Industries Manufacturing Facility 77
Saturday, May 16th, 2020, 2130 hours (EST) 
224-14A, Linden Blvd, St. Albans, NY 11412

Whisper, now that she knows where it is, does some research and recon to case the joint. It’s heavily guard with a rotating guard, people that she’s pretty sure has metahuman abilities and even robots. They almost manage to catch her shadowing the place. Once she gets away from there, she sends a message to Wirerat that they need to find a place to get orichalcum ore since the place is just too heavily guarded, they’ll probably have to refine their own. Nyx just asks why they can’t just go at the orichalcum they used against Erebus like a methhead going for a catalytic converter.

Whisper calls Lynch, telling him that they’ve got a serious issue, that she had to work for doing the recon and that they’re going to have to have a discussion about things. She’s tells him that there’s obviously something crazier going on there. Lynch merely tells her that they’re the only place on the East Coast that’s refining Orichalcum. Whisper dismisses it and says there’s got to be something more going on there and they all head back towards the NOMAD HQ.

Impenetrable

Whisper
Old FDNY Engine 299/Ladder 152 Building aka New Base
Saturday, May 16th, 2020, 2230 hours (EST) 
61-20 Utopia Pkwy, Fresh Meadows, NY 11365

Wirerat mentions that there’s no need to actually go out and look for things to track down as everyone is online nowadays and people tend to complain a lot. Nyx suggests checking for the bad vibes hashtag as Wirerat helps set up MIA to start datamining, looking for weird occurrences being mentioned online. There’s some people complaining about things and people complaining about spiders and there’s one person posting about being screamed at by a large spider. Threshold starts teleporting all around, looking for spiders and eventually ending up in the parking lot of a supermarket in the Bronx where a lone shopping cart is there slowly wheeling across the parking lot, weirding Threshold out. He looks into the shopping cart and hears The Doors playing from a passing car, turning to look and then looking back the cart is gone though the tracks still remain. Lynch, seeing it over video, says he has no idea what the heck that is and suggests staying away from it. Looking on the ground where it was sees a spider that’s somehow wrong, looking almost like it’s a fractal.

It’s obviously weird to Threshold’s senses, and he can detect some kind of aperture nearby that it came from. It’s definitely a baseball sized opening in reality that Threshold attempts to close with his abilities. He starts closing the hole and then a lot of spiders start emerging from the hole that he begins to disintegrates as they come through the hole before it’s closed. Lynch explains that they’re called the Spiderness. They come from between worlds and come in through the holes, potentially the same holes that the invaders have been using. With enough data points, they now just have to recycle the orichalcum they’ve got access to for the devices which SSR and Wirerat disassemble, getting at least 9lbs of orichalcum.

Aftermath

Lynch, standing over Wirerat’s shoulder, tells him what to do step-by-step on how to create a Noosphere Blocker that ends up looking sort of like a watch that doesn’t actually tell time, which annoys Wirerat, taking around half a pound of orichalcum for each blocker he makes. Lynch gives a grunt of satisfaction over the quality. It’ll detach them from the noosphere, and it’ll feel a bit weird for a bit before it stops, though excessive use may lead to some issues with sanity which most of the group wave off. As for a sensor for the portals, it’ll take a bit longer as he’ll need to invent it from scratch. With not much else going on, Threshold heads out going on patrol along with Nyx who can’t reasonably contribute to things at the moment.

After Action Report (GM)

Like C-Team I tossed some (slight) rails on the session and started us in medias res. The PCs were given some warning about what was happening and when the session began we talked for a bit, said our hellos and how we missed hanging out, then jumped right into it. A billion sessions ago Threshold did something he was told not to do and then he got to reap the consequences for it this session. It was pretty good. I got to use the spiderness again even though it’s not a truly multiversal campaign (AEON has its own internal multiverse which the PCs are about to find out the hard way).

Bit of a slow burn and I would have preferred more action, but the session moved along and there were very few stalls so that’s something. Next session should be more interesting and we’ve only got two more left after this one…

Other Notes

Bonus Report from Rory.

Soundtrack

“A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum
“Riders on the Storm” by The Doors
====