Begin A Session
When you begin a session you may review last session, set the scene, set the scene by envisioning your character’s current situation and intent. Take +1 momentum as you return to the present.
After last session, I spent some hard-won experience to add to my infiltrator so that when I Face Danger or Secure an Advantage to establish a false identity I add +1. If I get a hit establishing it, I can get +1 using that identity to deceive or manipulate others (that would have been useful BEFORE this session!). A miss with a match causes the false identity to fall apart.
During the session my “Mongoose” identity let herself get seduced by Tinker. Thanks to an accident with some coffee, we ended up naked and in my bed while her clothes got cleaned. Thanks to an accident with some dice, the bugs got replanted but from an unexpected source. I was going to decide who, but you have an option in consulting the oracle for “Influential character or faction is introduced or given new detail” and the types lend themselves to my choices with some twisting, so I’m rolling.
89 Fringe Group: Band of outlaws, outcasts or rogues.
This suits a criminal organisation (guild/specialists would have been the heddlu, dominion would have been a different branch of the Service if you’re interested).
So today’s session is going to consist of realising who I’m being surveilled by, and finding out a little bit about them and a training montage with the Honshu Insurrection to advance that story line a bit.
On to the story…
Tinker eventually leaves my bed. I watch her cross the room, glorious in her nakedness, and put on my robe before heading out to the bathroom and then to retrieve her clothes. I get up, slip on some baggy clothes, barely remembering not to slide into my ship suit, and smile as I go to make de for me, goffi for her. As we finish them, her comm buzzes and she goes vacant as she answers it.
“Trouble with work,” she says. She kisses me and takes her leave, promising me that we will do this again, soon. I press against her and return the kiss, sighing happily but not clinging. I surprise myself by realising that the happy sigh isn’t at all an act.
I make another cup of de, and go for a shower to wash away the sweat and aches. Tinker is considerate but enthusiastic and demanding lover. I’ve got bruises and bite marks and I want to shower (the joys of being planet-side, hot running water!) to ease the aches from my muscles before they get too tight.
That done, I surreptitiously dig out my electronic counter-surveillance gear and realise I’ve been bugged again.
Gather Information: roll+wits
Miss: 1+2 vs 3,4
Burn Momentum: Strong Hit
You discover something helpful and specific. The path or action you must follow to make progress is clear. Envision what you learn, take +2 progress.
I put my cameras somewhere that it was hard for whoever was bugging to see. They managed to get one, but I can safely recover the footage from the other. I do that, and play it back, making sure to giggle as if I’m watching silly gath flicks on the Weave - I actually have one playing in a split screen so the sounds are there. I wonder if they watched the little furry critters chase laser pointers before the Exodus?
I’m surprised at first that the people I see are not the other members of the Tinker’s strike group. I capture and blow up their faces and search against social media, pushing a bit deeper for more information as I uncover matches.
Gather Information: roll+wits
Strong Hit: 4+2+1 (infiltrator) vs 5,2
You discover something helpful and specific. The path or action you must follow to make progress is clear. Envision what you learn, take +2 progress.
There are a team of four people, they’re very good. A superficial look suggests that they’re part of a company called Gorchymyn Haearn, Iron Order in standard. But pressing deeper into their private connections there are a lot of people in their friends who are doing time in garchar, mostly for embezzlement, blackmail, Weave-based crimes. It’s not clear if Gorchymyn Haearn are a criminal front or these four are just bad eggs but it looks like I have attracted some unwelcome attention as well as the attention I wanted from the insurrectionists. I guess being a data specialist and down on my luck sounds like I could become, if not already be, a hacker or a cop cudd, a plant from the heddlu looking to try and get undercover with them.
These guys are not my priority and enough of them are getting arrested that the heddlu are obviously on to them. However, while I’m military intelligence, not an officer of the law, I did swear a vow to defend the clan, it’s peoples and its territory by any means necessary. These people may be criminals from within the clan but they’re preying on the clan. I consider my way forward.
I go for a run, that’s normal for me, and while I’m out, I comm Rhiannon, sending her a typed message rather than a video call. I spin her a pack of partial truths, I was staying in a rental apartment here in Prism for a few days, I visited a seedy pub with some of the workers from the factory I’d been visiting (she thinks I’m touring with a contact to see his manufacturing base) because I wanted to get their view of the working conditions. As I was packing up to go, the person from across the street told me that four guys had parked a hover van and gone into my apartment, it seemed fishy. I gave her a passable description of the Gorchymyn Haearn logo, and mediocre descriptions of the four guys. They were about 60% correct but about 30% incorrect - better than you might expect from an untrained eyewitness. I also gave her an entirely wrong address, but one that was close, in spelling terms to where I’d been living, so if she queried it I could pass it off as a slip of the fingers if she chases me up on it.
Civic duty done, I run back.
Develop Your Relationship
When you reinforce your relationship with a contact by… giving them something of worth (like a lead on a group of criminals) you may mark progress.
On the way my comm buzzes. I answer in the more normal way, pulling it from my pocket and looking at the screen. Training tomorrow. 10 am. Bring flat shoes and loose clothes. Joy.
I dutifully turn up for what I suspect is going to be combat assessment and training. I made sure to be up early and stretch out, running through the stretching and basic hand to hand routines we use in the Service. Even though I’m not good at these, I have been trained and I know they might save my life and it’s better to be loose and have them available to me. Then I sit down and meditate. “Mongoose” doesn’t know these things, has no reason in her cover story to know any of them. I can’t entirely suppress them but I need not to be beating people up with unexpected combat training.
Feeling ready, I head off.
The day starts with a different set of limbering up and stretching exercises to the ones I’m used to. Honshu special forces use a different regime to AWJ. They put more emphasis on blade work, less on archery so that makes sense, likewise they put more on duelling, facing your foes in honourable ways, AWJ SF is much more about skulking striking from the shadows, small blades or unarmed combat.
Battle roll+edge
Weak hit: 3+1 vs 9,2
You achieve your objective but not without cost. Pay the price
I honestly find it really hard to get through just the preliminary exercises. This is about fitness and mobility, but they give us practise swords and I’m just not used to, I feel constantly off balance. By the end of it, I’m shattered and not at all ready for what’s about to come next. I’m definitely in the weakest set of trainees here and I can see people watching me.
I get paired off with Tinker for… oh great, sword sparring. She’s going to leave me covered in bruises, again!
Battle roll+iron
Weak hit: 5+1 vs 2,7
You achieve your objective but not without cost. Pay the price. Mark -1 Health.
[There are many other options here but I know how this day is playing out and that this is the only time I’m going to get injured, and that I can get first aid soon, so I’m taking it.]
That wasn’t as bad as I expected. It helped that I have had some combat training so I could take the instruction and that Tinker is actually not only really good but a really good teacher. In the early passes she barely moved, encouraging me to attack her and just defending, correcting my footwork, posture and how I handled the sword. The bok more precisely, a kind of set of canes bound together to mimic the weight and shape of a traditional Honshu blade. Once I had that, she gradually went more and more on the offensive as I got better, teaching me defensive moves as well. She didn’t actually hit me anywhere hard, but I landed one lucky blow. She, on the other hand, hit me anywhere she wanted to, whenever she wanted to, and I probably have dozens of welts, bruises and scrapes.
Looking around at various points, I see not all the sword play is going so well. There are three of us left standing after an hour, and I saw several people being carried out with what I suspect are broken limbs or concussions. If you’re stupid and don’t listen, then you charge a soldier with a three foot long stick in their hand, it’s going to hurt…
Tinker walks me off to a private room.
“Let me look at your bruises, and there’s some water over there for you,” she says, reaching for a big field medical pack. She does very well not to leer as she says it, but as she turns back to face me and I’ve just stripped my top off, leaving me naked from the waist up, sweaty and bruised, one arm up as I swig the water I hear her gulp. I wouldn’t have done this if we hadn’t have had wild, slightly kinky sex together yesterday, but now I figure it’s fair play.
She gets her revenge by playing her fingers, sometimes her tongue over every mark before applying the cream, and stroking me in all kinds of places that aren’t exactly medically necessary, but I’m not complaining at all.
It’s apparent to me that Tinker may not be ready for the full honey trap, turning her back on Honshu, but she’s certainly very attracted to me. It occurs to me that she’s quite possibly pretty lonely, the rest of her squad is male and the rest of the people training with me are male. She’s probably had the training, like me, to be able to seduce anyone, regardless of preference, in the line of duty, but I think she likes the ladies, or femme-leaning NBs.
Reach A Milestone
When you make headway in your quest by… gaining meaningful insight… you may mark progress
Under Tinker’s careful ministrations I recover. It takes longer than perhaps it should, but it’s worth it for the time we spend together cementing our bond.
After we emerge, and the still walking wounded, we’re down to six now, gather again, it’s on to firearms training. Strictly low powered laser training, but their training lasers are set up, in a very similar way to the first ones I used, to mimic the Honshu assault rifle, the Howa Type F112. Unlike my companions I’ve fired the real version of one of these. Perks of training in the Service, I’ve fired all the military hardware from all the clans, although the AWJ probably 10x more than the rest put together. But I stop, listen carefully to the briefing and do what I’m told.
Battle: roll+edge
Weak hit: 3+1= 4 vs 2,9
You achieve your objective but not without cost, pay the price.
I manage to shoot moderately well. They’re not going to employ me as their sniper, and that’s ok, although there’s one guy here who has the aptitude for it, probably not the attitude though.
By the end of the session I am feeling decidedly funky. I can’t work out what is up at first but when Tinker touches me, correcting my stance a little I get a bolt of pure lust that has my nipples tightening, a warm glowing feeling that can only be the start of love and a sense of unhappiness, that she signed up to make her [unclear parental figure] proud, not to make the fat cats richer. Why did [unlear, disliked authority figure in uniform] send them to line the pockets of the wealthy in this peaceful place? A little later I get a flash from Gutshot, who I think is their team sniper, that he too is deeply unhappy about this mission but I can’t read more.
A few moments later I take another shot at the target, knowing in my heart that I’ve missed because I get a sense from Cleric that they should see signs now and the target seems to move. Not far, it’s not a bullseye or anything, but it turns a clear miss into a hit.
Cleric is the team medic. Imaginative callsign there. But his feeing and thought is enough to let me realise what’s going on. It’s not clear to me whether anyone has noticed. Tinker is the most likely to have done, she’s pretty much behind me and looking at the target I’m looking at.
Ask the Oracle: fifty-fity
Roll: 52
No
As luck would have it, she’s just turned away to talk to Gutshot about lunch. She didn’t notice, nor did he.
Now I know what’s going on, I can feel the signs. I should have been warned by what happened to Steffon and his break out psychic powers. Something, presumably in the water, is amplifying any latent psychic powers we may have. I’ve been through this before. Puberty for psychics is hell, all those hormones don’t only cause our bodies to change, they cause our powers to manifest. Fortunately there are techniques we all learn to keep them under control, or we die trying. Sometimes quite literally. Firestarters who don’t learn can burn themselves away.
These new powers probably won’t become usable for some time but, eventually, they’ll come through and judging from what I’m seeing I’ll be an empath and a kinetic to add to a shade. Won’t that be fun.
Face Danger: roll+shadow
Strong hit: 5+3+1 vs 8,8
You are successful, take +1 momentum.
Because I still meditate for all kinds of reasons, it’s part of the combat training, it’s part of how I maintain cover and it was a huge part of my life for nearly three years as I learnt to control my shade abilities, I can parcel off part of brain to run through the meditations for controlling these bursts of psychic energy and still shoot their gun. I don’t want to reveal myself as a psychic to them, I get the strong impression (even without empath powers) that would take things down a different route. Just was we’re breaking for lunch one of the other people, Buzzard - a large, eccentric guy, who’d struck me as unhelpful, stubborn and indifferent starts muttering. It’s hard to make out his words clearly but I’ve worked around Seers and this sounds a lot like a prophecy. It’s too jumbled and distant for me to hear it clearly but it sounds pretty ominous. He’s rapidly taken away and I wonder if we’ll ever see him again.
After lunch we’re told training is done for the day. Tinker tells me that she has to stay and discuss the result of the morning’s work but can she see me that evening? I say of course she can, but warn her to call first to wake me up! She smiles, walks me to the door, and kisses me goodbye.
I head for home, pausing for a goffi and shooting off a report on the psychic enhancer, that I’ve been dosed and latent empath and kinetic powers emerged but are not currently controllable and did not break my cover. I also report that Buzzard broke out as a seer and was sequestered, and on all the injuries. I additionally report on the feelings that I picked up from Tinker and that I’m honey trapping her.
End a Session
Reflect on the session, develop relationships (done at the time) and reach a milestone - I think I’ve taken another step towards establishing myself as a double and to furthering the overall investigation into Honshu. Next session, more training, this time sneaky stuff and Weave/Data Hub stuff. Shit I’m good at!
Take +1 Momentum
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