As stated previously, this latter half is heavily influenced by “The White Queen” adventure from Top Secret/NWO and I’m continuing along those lines, although I’ll likely be expanding a bit. The original narrative has the PCs sent to Riga to discuss the abduction of a Russian bioweapon scientist (who had defected to England), the drive-by shootout occurs, the Serbian guy relates his intel, and the PCs move on to the next phase which is assaulting the boat where the defected dude is being held.
I’m going to pick up immediately after we ended, with local authorities arriving after the gunplay. The Serbian is “Robin Hood” in this city and rightly feared, so I’m going to have him cow the cops and the civilians who observed the shooting. Being a relatively intelligent fellow, the Serbian – Andris Millic – is going to want to know what’s going on, especially since he will have recognized several of the other PCs due to their faces having been used in combat actions across the globe. For example, I established during last week’s game that “Baum” attempted to assassinate the prime minister of Japan, so there’s that.
During this scene, I’m also going to try and do what I intended to do last week with regards to who Andris actually met in lieu of BRAGI. His description is going to sound suspiciously like ConsOps DDO Hamilton Riggs but unless a player mentions this, I’m not going to say it out loud.
I’m toying with having another attack take place while at Andris’ safehouse, but ultimately, after he’s been paid and he points the PCs toward the next location his part is done. In the original source material, if PCs continue following him, they will observe him be assassinated later, but I’m going to leave that open.
Regardless, the next location is the Azov, a Russian-owned (FSB, actually, but that’s something of an open secret) Global-class research vessel. It is currently scheduled to depart Riga tomorrow morning. Locating the Azov in the Riga harbor is easy enough, but if approached during the day, it’s very clear that the owners, whoever they actually are, take security pretty seriously. A successful Observation check plus some time might allow a PC to observe “BRAGI” aboard with a pair of bodyguards.
Damn. I need better tactical maps than the ones I actually have. Wonder if I can avoid making this a tactical encounter entirely? I also have a couple of semi-surprises that I would like to stick in here such as the reveal that DDO Riggs has been compromised, what with him telling the PCs that his compliance will be rewarded; or that LOKI has actually been trying to defect to the US (maybe – not sold on that one yet); or that there’s a larger plan in action here that the PCs don’t know about. I especially like the idea of the Bad Guy (whoever it is) laughing as he’s bleeding out that the PCs are too late and there, on television, we see that Berlin has gone mad due to the water being infected. Ultimately, though, I want to really end the session with a bang, like maybe incoming missiles or a massive scuttling charge & the PCs are all presumed KIA …
Jeez. I just realized that this could easily be the final session for my run (which is probably kind of overdue…)