Always, Never, Now

SCENARIO FILE v05-11-13

Written and designed by Will Hindmarch Illustrated by Steven Sanders and Noah Bradley Based on characters by Anton Gleason, Martin Gleason, Seth Stevenson, and Tony Wagner Developed from rules by John Harper, Clinton R. Nixon, and Luke Crane Graphic design by Will Hindmarch and Craig S Grant Created with the generous support of cherished Kickstarter backers Playtested at Gen Con, Origins Game Fair, PAX, PAX East, and in homes. Thanks, testers! [email protected] always-never-now.tumblr.com

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Influences include (with thanks): William Gibson, Ian Fleming, Quentin Tarantino, John McTiernan, Robert Rodriguez, John Woo, The Wachowskis, Paul Greengrass, Doug Liman, Kathryn Bigelow, Masamune Shirow, Mamoru Oshii, Kenneth Hite, Robin D. Laws, Vincent Baker, Jason Morningstar, Steve Segedy, Jeremy Keller, Fred Hicks, Rob Donoghue, Leonard Balsera, Ryan Macklin, Gregor Hutton, Cam Banks and many more The text of this project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. © Will Hindmarch

HOW TO PLAY AS THE GM SPOILER ALERT

This manuscript contains all the secrets of the story that’s coded into this project — all the background dirt and details that players (and their characters) are meant to uncover during the course of play. Facts and motives alluded to via the clues in each scene get spelled out directly in this document for the benefit of you, the GM. If you read this stuff, you’ll spoil some of the surprises for yourself. If you read this stuff, tell your GM so she knows what you know. If you read this stuff, you’d better be ready to use your spoiler-charged knowledge to make the game better for your fellow players by helping the GM build up to certain surprises, dramatize key events, and play scenes with gusto. Actors who’ve read the script don’t blow the story for the audience, after all, but work to make the material as compelling as possible. By reading ahead, or by playing A/N/N after you’ve run it yourself, you’re trading in some of your pleasures as an audience member for some duties as a player on the stage. Every RPG player is part audience and part actor, of course, but you’re changing your ratio. All that should be fine provided you’re all good sports.

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How do you play an RPG adventure? A lot of material has been written on this subject over the years. In Always/Never/Now (aka A/N/N), I assume you already know how to play a roleplaying or story game. In addition to the adventure info, I offer tips that worked for me, but I’m not the boss of you. You can bring a lot of tricks and techniques from your favorite games to your version of A/N/N and spin the adventure in bold, new ways. I recommend it. Experiment. Talk shop with your fellow players, who are taking on the roles of their individual characters, and discuss what you want to say outright and what you want to leave unsaid during play. For example, some games ask the GM to stay hands-off, to keep his mitts off the story’s emergent trajectory. Other games call on the GM to work the throttle and the tiller to make sure play stays within certain charged or fruitful areas, to keep the players from wandering somewhere that might be boring. Both are legit modes of play. A/N/N draws a bit from both modes. A/N/N is built to provide a lot of structure, to keep things moving forward with a minimum of distractions and confusion. One group’s distraction, though, is another group’s welcome breather or dramatic exploration of the characters. So A/N/N modulates to make it easy for you to work the throttle, to speed up or slow down as you like. This kind of play requires a dialogue. When that dialogue is implicit and full of appreciated subtext — when a look conveys volumes and everyone’s receiving all the signals — it’s a phenomenal experience of flow. Truth is, though, that it’s not always like that.

Sometimes you’ll want to talk stuff out. Converse. Say things outright that actors making a scene together would never say in front of the audience. Say things that creators say behind-the-scenes. Talk honestly. Notions of what’s on stage and what’s behind the scenes may get all tangled sometimes during play. That’s the way that goes. Enjoy that talk. Good stuff happens there.

Doing Your Own Thing

It’s my sincere hope that, while I encourage you to GM this adventure in one way, to help you out, you’ll also get a chance to confer with other GMs online or in person, talk out different tactics and styles of play, and throw out my words when you get a wave of inspiration at the right frequency to make your instance of play really hum. In this project, I focus on specific options and challenges befitting this adventure. Some of this only makes sense when you’ve got a sense of the whole story in your head, after you’ve been through this document once. Don’t sweat it. I first built A/N/N to be played in one long night, but I have since played it as a big, extended adventure over multiple sessions. The scene-choosing method of play is designed to maintain focus and momentum under time constraints. It’s not the only way to play. Pull this sucker apart and put it back together however you like for your version. Maybe you ransack the scenes in here for your own scenes. Maybe you keep the backstory the same but change the antagonists’ plans and see if the PCs can save Josine or his plans without the pacing mechanism of the scenes presented. Maybe you start in the middle, screw my backstory, and follow the PCs as the players guide them across the globe, running into Nanotech and

the Technocracy whenever they happen to collide with their schemes. Do your thing. Here’s the truth: I present A/N/N as a complete adventure because I figure that’s the most cogent way to get all these parts across. If I’m going to give you scheming antagonists, they should scheme. If I’m going to give you a bunch of scenes, they should hang together. If I’m going to share this adventure story I played, I’m going to share with you how I told it. I figure it’s easier to pry this stuff apart than it is to assemble it. Even still, the whole story isn’t here. How the PCs change and act and react to the events of the plot and the actions of their enemies — that’s not written in here. Not all of it. The players have more freedom than it might appear. This web of scenes just makes sure that exciting things happen in the places they go. But this isn’t a story about what Nanotech or the Technocrats want. It’s a story about the PCs as your players see them. How the players and the PCs change and act and react to all the stimuli in this file — that’s what it’s all about. The specifics, even in the scenes that assume certain arcs or paths,  are there to help you make decisions. “Screw this escape sequence!” is a decision. “That enemy’s too tough!” is a decision. If your group thinks a smash cut or a fade to black in the middle of a scene is the way to end that scene, then have at it. If you want to play the adventure that’s in here, though, I’ve tried to give you a lot of material to work with. I’ve found it a fun story to tell.

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Facilitate the Fiction

It’s good to provide context and details, as the GM, so that everyone can render the scene in their head. A lot of those details can come from the table collectively, as players say things like “I’m picturing the windows all fogged up from the temperature differences inside and out” and you say “That makes sense, yeah, nice.” Trust but verify. Let the players enjoy the rendering they have of the scene in their head but check in on important details now and again to make sure compatibility’s intact. Ask questions like: “I hear the glass crunching under your feet, even if the thugs don’t hear it, is that right?” Or: “I’m picturing Tank with the hardware in her metal hands. Is that where it is?” Or: “Did Emily turn the lights on when she came into this room? Was she expecting that to be necessary?” Adding and revealing details over the course of the scene like this works well for preventing people from getting bogged down in a flood of details all at once. Plus, everyone gets a chance to contribute to the action, atmosphere, and environment of the fiction. Building up the fiction is a collaborative act but you can help by moderating that process. Help players reconcile their details. You don’t have to be bossy, just evoke and confirm. You’re the one who’s got the scenes and the backstory and the schemes in front of you, though, too. So sometimes it falls to you to say something like, “If that were possible, it would be breakthrough technology,” or “Nice, but if it worked like that, nobody would ever have Hunted marked,” or something else that protects the long-term flexibility and sensibility of play. When this happens, offer an alternative way for the player or PC to be awesome. The PCs live in this world as cunning operatives with death-defying lifestyles — they should benefit from the table’s collaboration.

Questions

Ask questions; questions are great. Ask questions that point toward tangible details in the game world: “What does that look and sound like, when Henri brings down that goon?” Ask questions that characterize actions: “Are you sneaking down the hall or are you more, like, striding?” Ask questions that reveal things about the characters: “When Tank takes out these two thugs, does she say anything to them or is it just, like, wham!?” Notice how some of those questions put two options up for grabs, so the player can easily slot in an answer along that spectrum by saying something like “Oh, I’m totally being sneaky, here” or “Neither, ‘cause I’m sprinting down the corridor to get the jump on the next bad guys.” Giving options when you ask these sorts of questions gives hesitant or shy players something to hold on to and build on without denying them the chance to make an important stylistic choice. Players with a strong idea already in mind, meanwhile, can disregard your options in favor of their own. Gameplay is all about choices. In my experience, any given player sometimes uses offered options and sometimes doesn’t, so it’s always good to offer, regardless of whether you think they’ll use your options or not. Here’s a great fallback question to ask when you want a player to say more about what his character is up to: “What does that look like?” To involve other PCs in a cool stunt or action scene, try something like this: “What do Yoshi and Utseo see when you do that?” Or: “What do the other characters hear?” It’s okay to let the players into enemy points-ofview, too. Describe what an NPC sees or hears to highlight the surprising and incredible things PCs

do. “The guard has no idea you’re there, right? So he stomps out his cigarette and when he looks up, you’re right in front of him and you have that moment before he can process the kind of trouble he’s in.”

Information and Choices

Remember that the players’ characters are good at what they do—they notice things, remember details, and know how to read a situation. It’s your job as the GM to give players enough information so they can see at the crossroads and appreciate the decisions they have to make. Gameplay is a series of choices. Easy choices, hard choices—both are fine. Confusion is poison. Boredom corrodes. Hunting for choices to make isn’t what this kind of play is about. Describe the situation, bring the choices to life with fictional details and clear (if sometimes implied) consequences, and then let the players decide. “Jumping onto the helicopter is totally doable,” you might say, “but if you miss or get shaken off, you’ll land right in its field of fire. You could get Injured or worse. Do you want to give it a try?” Players might cook up other options, other ways out of a choice you present them during the sandbox of any given scene. That’s great! Finding ingenuity and creativity are just part of why we play. Some details are important to the fictional background, though, because they contain intel that leads to new scenes in the story, so the GM has the authority to put some details and cues into the fiction for that purpose. The hit squad outside Reykjavik carries gear manufactured by a known high-quality arms company recently acquired by Nanotech, Inc., for example, while the staff of Dougray Hoefler’s floating residence just don’t know what deals he’s made outside the company — these details come 4 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

pre-packaged because they’re clues to what’s happened before and what’s happening elsewhere, while the PCs are doing other things. They represent the agency of the enemy.

RUNNING THE GAME

When you’re the GM, it’s your job to keep everyone at the table clear on the action that’s unfolding. It’s your job to draw out interesting details and obstacles so that successes are always rewarding and setbacks are always exciting. It’s your job to avoid those cardinal sins of storytelling: boredom and confusion. Do this by asking questions, lots of questions. Aim those questions at what interests you as a spectator and as a fellow player. If you want to know what it looks like when Tank busts open a server rack to get at the data inside, ask the player, “What does that look like to the other characters?” Maybe offer options for the player to use: “Do you snap it open, pieces going everywhere, or do you maybe peel the top off so you can plug into the drive inside?” The player doesn’t have to use your options, of course, but you’re helping them winnow. Here’s a good question: “Does taking out that thug kill him?” The answer has tactical consequences and reveals a lot about the player and the character. Remember that after one player describes something, you can zoom out and contextualize their actions for the rest of the group. Banter doesn’t usually require someone to take a turn, so other players can say things like, “Utseo, look out!” to add drama to a roll, for example. Listen close. Find ways to tie one player’s action into something another player is doing (“So, while you’re locked in this martial-arts battle with this mysterious hit-squad driver, bits of shrapnel rain down

on you both from the snowmobile Emily just blew up.”). This keeps everyone involved without stealing anyone’s moment to shine. Play your parts with verve and detail. Remember, you play the goons, the informants, the heavies, the bullets, the skies, the broken glass, the close calls, all that. Pick two senses — sight, sound, smell, taste, touch — and try to use two of them whenever it’s time to bring the environment or one of your characters to life. Mix and match. “You can feel spent casings rolling under your feet,” you say, “and hear the whine of your cybernetics straining.” Or, “the air tastes like gunpowder as the roaring guns pulp the concrete to gravel all around you.” Take the details you hear from the players and build on them. What they do should appeal to the senses just the same way.

Find the Obstacles

The players’ characters are simultaneously experts in their fields and often in over their heads. They can do things like climb, jump, sprint, tumble, hack, and perceive with ease. Climbing a server facility girder half-twisted by a helicopter’s rocket blast? They may slip, they may gash their hands, they may wobble, but they do it. These are action heroes. So what’s an obstacle? When in doubt, an obstacle represents any attempt to take out an opponent or to avoid or overcome a Condition. You don’t roll for your characters but you’re allowed, as the GM, to ask a player to incorporate a roll into almost any action, to avoid a Condition. “You vault up the terraced floors and get on that snowmobile, no problem, but show me the roll you make to do it without being Injured by gunfire along the way, yeah?” If that roll fails, for example, it shouldn’t thwart the character — it just means she

reaches the snowmobile all the more dramatically, with McClane-style injuries to show the danger she was in while getting up there. Sometimes a player does things without obstacles coming into play for a while. Maybe they’re playing to their character’s strengths, maybe they’re setting up for a great move, maybe they’re cunningly staying clear of what might hurt them so they can pursue intel. As long as they’re still involved in the game, that’s fine.

Reading the Obstacles

Some of the obstacles in here use arcane phrasing to save space. Here’s a quick rundown of how to read the obstacles: Difficulty: Sometimes you’ll see Difficulty in parentheses (e.g., Difficulty: 4), sometimes you’ll see the number of hits required to take something out (e.g., “a 4-hit foe”). If the text doesn’t specifically say a roll is untargeted, the roll’s targeted. If the text doesn’t specify untargeted hits, the player needs to declare what they’re targeting before they roll. Untargeted hits: Can players who roll more than they needed use some leftover hits to take out untargeted foes? The answer is almost always “yes,” but you do have the authority to override that to reflect the fiction. I sometimes don’t remind players of this so that one bizarre roll doesn’t rob the other players of a chance to shine. I also sometimes turn a targeted foe into an untargeted foe so that an uncommonly high roll can do more than drop one targeted foe (especially when, say, Versatility’s being used). I don’t usually hide it. I say, “That roll was so high, I think you can also take out the guy behind you, what do you guys think? What happens to him?” #/#: Sometimes you’ll see a single target has multiple Difficulties on it, like “4/3” or “5/4/4.” 5 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Such targets are actually three different obstacles and each Difficulty must be overcome in order before the thing goes down for good. (This helps multiple PCs get in on the action, sometimes.) These are the bosses who get up off the ground and come back for more. These are the armored vehicles you cut through to take out the driver. These are the scariest bad guys. Beating one step of these obstacles counts as overcoming it, so a Condition shouldn’t apply to that roll even though the enemy isn’t dropped yet. Always dramatize the fact that an obstacle has been overcome, though. Show the players that they’ve made progress. Maybe the agent’s sunglasses get broken. Maybe the tank’s outer shell is pierced. Maybe the foe throws away her broken gun and switches to an improvised weapon. Rolling enough hits to take out a multi-obstacle enemy doesn’t take it out in one fell swoop unless the obstacle looks like: #+#: When you see that plus sign, it means you’ve got a multi-obstacle foe that a single terrific roll can take out. If the Difficulty reads “5+3,” then five hits are needed to take out the first obstacle, leaving 3 hits behind for the second but if a single roll beats the total, the foe drops. In this example, 5, 6, or 7 hits takes out the first obstacle but 8 or more hits takes the foe out altogether. This helps PCs team up but rewards unusually good rolls. The uncommon Difficulties work best when you dramatize them in ways that tell the players that something is up. For some groups, it’s enough to describe how the bad guy gets back up after a bad beat and comes back for more. “He’s hurt but he’s not quitting.” After you describe the fiction you may want to say something like, “Some foes are more than one obstacle.” These enemies are designed to convey a danger-

ous world populated by more than one-and-done foes. Use them not just to add menace and danger but also to help the PCs look and feel like action stars for overcoming serious rivals.

Calling For Rolls

Forward momentum is important. Don’t call for rolls just because you haven’t had any in a while, call for them because you want to know if a Condition applies, if a foe is taken out, or if things otherwise escalate in the scene. Rolls represent risk, so always ask yourself before you call for a roll: What’s the risk? Look to the Conditions for inspiration. Is the risk that a PC might get Injured, Exhausted, or Trapped? Is it that more enemies might arrive? Is it that they might fail to stop a foe before some fearsome deadline? These are all reasons to roll. Sometimes players will want to roll to dramatize something that they’re not in any danger of failing — that you don’t have a consequence for. Sometimes I even let them get as far as gathering dice while I think about the risk that might be involved. If I don’t have one, if I don’t want the consequence in the mix, then I’ll say something like, “It’s sounds like you’ve got this well in hand. I don’t think you need to roll.” Then, sometimes, I’ll add something like, “Unless… what do you think might go wrong?” If the player has a consequence in mind, you can either take the opportunity to underline the PCs’ expertise (“That’s not a risk in this case, you’ve done this before”) or roll to embrace the possibility of the players’ interesting consequence. Enemies exist to give the PCs things to do and to provide consequences to things PCs could otherwise do automatically. Enemies endanger the path. Emily can hack that computer system, no problem, but can she do it without being pinned down

(Trapped) by enemy gunfire? Tank can fly a VTOL craft between the crowning towers of that skyscraper but if she doesn’t get it right, the bad guys stay in pursuit. Enemies dramatize consequences. Don’t go into a roll without a consequence in mind. If the description of the action or something about the roll makes you rethink the consequences you had in mind — if you get persuaded by the player’s fictional tactics, for example — it is okay temper those consequences. Maybe a Condition only applies for a little bit or maybe you decide the consequence can still be averted with one more roll (if, say, the back-up guards alerted by a failed roll can still be locked out by manipulating security doors or something). Let what’s happening in the fiction inform the choices you make when calling for rolls and choosing to escalate or apply Conditions. Remember that you can call for rolls by giving the bad guys agency. Tell the players that if nobody engages that enemy helicopter, successfully or not, it’ll pick a target of its own. Then, if nobody engages it, pick a target and have them roll to avoid a Condition. You can do that. Keep the enemy actions rare for a while, maybe. Use it to define the big bad guys. Do it a little bit more as the adventure unfolds, though, to show that the stakes (and the skills of the bad guys) are going up. Above all, use it to give PCs something to do when they’re not sure what to say in the conversation of play. “The helicopter’s motorized cannon angles toward you. How do you get out of there?!” Then put it all together. If their description’s great, let them dodge automatically “this time.” I usually set the Difficulty to avoid an attack at one step less than the current Difficulty to take out a foe. If the foe’s 6 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

vulnerable to untargeted hits, a roll to avoid an attack can even take them out!

Revealing the Difficulty

As a baseline, I don’t reveal the Difficulty of an action. I like the players to roll and reason. “A four didn’t do it,” they say. “We might be in trouble.” I do make exceptions. When a player thinks he can’t hope to succeed, I might tell him, “The Difficulty can’t be more than 4, given the situation, and you have a chance at that. Give it a shot.” Hidden Difficulties help some players keep an eye on the fiction but leave other players at sea. Start by not revealing Difficulty numbers and then, case by case, reveal them when it’s helpful.

Escalation

Escalation is an art. Not every choice you make to escalate is going to be a hit. That’s okay. Aim for fun and thrills and the occasional stumble is no big deal. Escalation is about making the threats and excitement feel serious. It’s about turning the disappointment in a failed roll into a dare to overcome this new challenge. It’s about that beat when the stray laser-cutter ignites the spilled fuel or when someone glances out the window and sees that more bad guys are on their way. It’s about the thrill of being in over your head. It’s also about pacing. Escalate too much, too fast, and you trap the PCs in a holding pattern where they’re just waiting to roll 5 hits so they can get out of there. Escalate not enough and a scene might rocket by. I tend to aim for quicker scenes and then accidentally escalate into longer scenes by accident. So it goes. Here are some built-in things you can do escalate when someone fails to overcome an obstacle:

Escalate the fiction: Nothing in the game rules happens, you just dial up the suspense and tension by adding details like a rampant fire, ricochets, broken glass, the threat of future backup, that sort of thing. This sets up or establishes a future escalation and lets the players and their PCs know that worse things might happen if, say, the fire spreads to the fuel tank or the backup arrives. Raise the Difficulty: You can raise the Difficulty on an obstacle by one step (to a maximum of 5) just by describing how it’s harder to overcome now that the place is on fire, or what have you. This is great at making things more perilous but can also just make a scene longer. You’re absolutely allowed to lower the Difficulty back to its original value if the fiction changes and somebody, say, puts out that fire. Add enemies: Bring in more bad guys. Be careful with this, though, because it’s not just raising the Difficulty, it’s adding whole new obstacles, which is like adding a bunch of Difficulties. This is good for ratcheting up the tensions and jeopardy, though, and for giving the players more to do in a scene. Don’t do this if you don’t want to draw out a scene a bit, though. Apply a Condition: This is like escalating the fiction and raising the Difficulty for just the affected PC(s). This also creates a new obstacle, to undo the Condition, which might be achievable with or without a roll, depending on what’s happening in the fiction. This is my preferred thing to do because it is tangible in the fiction and on the character sheet and because it formalizes the way I can raise the Difficulty — by saying something like, “Since you’re Impaired, this is going to be harder.” Also, there’s this: The GM can invoke a Condition to raise a Difficulty by one step, even up to a 6! No matter how many Conditions you invoke, though, the Difficulty

just goes up by one step and can’t go higher than 6. You are also always free to invoke Conditions in the fiction without actually raising the Difficulty at the same time, if you want.

Reveal Intel

Intel provides answers and context and motivation to the PCs by revealing what their enemies are up to and where the PCs can go to take action. Don’t roll for intel. Players and their characters get it by asking the right questions in the right scenes — and some intel they get just for showing up. The characters know more about investigation in this future world than we do, so they notice, recognize, and puzzle out things that we might not. Intel isn’t necessarily fixed at the start, though. You assign it to scenes based on the mode of your version of the adventure. The end of this file provides some guidelines and a core model to draw from but you may want to meddle with it. That’s okay. Sometimes the players think of something in a scene that should logically reveal intel you assigned exclusively to another scene. My advice is to hint at, allude to, or outright give them the intel then and there. Let them use it to speculate. Until their theories are verified, even having a lot of information can feel like not having enough. Part of this story is about uncovering what’s been happening and what’s happening now. Then the players decide what happens next. In other words, the PCs are sort of behind the curve at the beginning. They’re facing the mystery of Josine’s fate (and, it turns out, the fate of his big plans). Mysteries usually involve a bit of catch-up with those who know the truth and don’t want to talk. Your goal isn’t to keep the PCs behind the curve, 7 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

it’s to give them enough intel to navigate the curve, make some speculations, and then test those against the truth near the end of the adventure, when they’re out in front. Intel pushes the story forward through five Phases, each of which indicates an inexorable forward movement in time. The five Phases are divided out over three Acts representing the essential beginning, middle, and end of the story. Once you’ve left a Phase, you can’t go back to play scenes from an earlier Phase. The Phase represents a move forward in time, in motivation, and in the schemes of the enemies. Certain key elements of the fiction can change, too, as the antagonists act in the background during each Phase. Most of this stuff — managing the intel, knowing what Phase it is — falls to the GM to handle. To do that, you’ll need to know the background (whether mine or yours), the scenes, and the intel.

BACKGROUND

In all the time we spent playing the campaign that inspired A/N/N, we produced a lot of fictional lore that informed our version of the adventure. You don’t need to worry about most of it. The flashbacks allude to some of it; the character histories hint at other parts. For your group’s adaptation of the adventure, though, what we said and did in our sessions isn’t all that relevant — mostly. Some amount of backstory, though, is woven into the motivations of the antagonists. Some of it explains what’s happening outside of the PCs’ immediate experience. Some of it makes up the mystery wound up and ticking at the heart of it all. That backstory is important to include or adapt for two big reasons.

First, it’s what motivates important NPCs to act, thereby explaining what would happen if the PCs weren’t in the picture. That helps highlight how the PCs do matter; things happen differently if they’re not around. Second, it contributes to the intel, the connective tissue within and between the scenes, and surfaces as the PCs dig into the information held, hidden, and lied about by the rival NPC factions: Nanotech and the Technocrats. This background is the source and subject of a lot of intel. It leads the PCs deeper into the story, which is in part about digging up and unraveling backstory and then using that backstory to inform climactic choices that shape the future. So, here’s what happened…

THE WHOLE STORY

Josine was a Technocrat, once. As a high-ranking intelligence handler he worked with next-generation AIs on clandestine assignments for the Technocracy. Together with three remarkable AIs — designated Key Alpha, Vital Beta, and Lucid Gamma — Josine took on a code-breaking case that turned into a signal analysis project. His bosses gave Josine’s unit access to a signal intercepted in secret by the Technocracy on an unspecified date. Josine and his squad of AIs toiled on the code for months without success. One AI, Alpha, speculated that the signal was not of terrestrial origin. When Josine took this theory to his bosses, they promptly elevated the security rating required to work on the signal and shelved the project “until a breakthrough could be made.” Josine didn’t want to wait. He wanted to continue his work — and the AIs were on his side. So Josine prepared new identities for himself, stole a copy of

the alien signal, liberated the AIs, and fled the Technocracy. Within a few days of being diverted, Josine and his retinue had disappeared underground.

Life as a Spymaster

He settled into a fortified and hidden lair beneath the New England sprawl. He surrounded himself with operatives, bodyguards, and allies he saved from Technocracy agents. He lived on stolen accounts, forged passports, and falsified identities, sharing his cultivated or fabricated wealth with his new friends. He planned missions to save lives, share technology, and slow down forces like Nanotech and the Technocracy. Agents like Yoshi, Utseo, and Emily carried them out. They were building a new future. And all the while, Josine labored on his passion project: making sense of the alien signal. He and the AIs spent years unraveling the signal. They even brought in enhanced, cybernetic cetaceans, wired for neural interfaces during some mad corporate war, to consider the signal from a different perspective. The combination of human, artificial, and augmented cetacean intelligences all chipped away at the mystery signal. It worked. The signal wasn’t any kind of ordinary playback, it was like an encoded memory containing instructions on how to signal back via intense, ultra-focused transmissions. It was an invitation for contact and information sharing. Josine was all about it. So he and his liberated AIs made a plan. First, Josine went about backing up his memories in carefully sliced segments called shards, which he stored with various data backup operations throughout the globe. The idea was that no one shard could reveal enough about Josine to blow the plan but that enough of Josine would be preserved to salvage things in case the plan went to shit later. 8 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Gamma stepped up to test the viability of their plan; it agreed to a neural downlink into residence in a human brain: Josine’s. The technology for getting the AI back out of the meat brain didn’t exist at the time, but it would one day, they trusted. Beta set out to prepare hardware and networks for the final phase of Josine’s plan. It ventured out into the global network, moving from machine to machine, establishing nests for itself and preparing to monitor and protect Josine’s plan until it came to fruition. It was Beta who hacked the Technocracy monitoring systems to allow Josine access to secret high-powered communications arrays. Alpha packaged itself up for transmission. Josine uploaded Alpha to a Technocracy needlecasting installation — the kind of next-gen installation they keep secret from “the unready public” — and transmitted Alpha out toward alien receivers. The transmission would take years to travel each direction, but while with the extraterrestrial intelligences, Alpha would commune with their AIs for just hours or days, and then be transmitted back to Earth for downlink into a human brain. Josine set up a receiver and neural downlink device in a failed arcology in St. Petersburg, sealed up part of the building, and set out to wait for Alpha’s return. It would be almost a decade before the AI came home. Beta was to keep the arcology securely defunct until Josine could get back in there and retrieve Alpha. Josine disappeared just days after the transmission. The Technocracy traced his handiwork, gunned down his guards, and captured him. Josine’s closest agents — the PCs — were kept in the dark about the AIs and the big plan to protect them from this kind of situation. Satisfied that Josine’s operation would dissolve without him, the Technocrats locked him away

in a nameless prison and let his old agents drift apart. Josine’s been in Technocrat custody ever since. (Later, to keep an eye on them, the Technocrats install a spy near one of Josine’s former operatives. Her cover name is Caroline Killebrew. In the internecine tradition of the Technocracy, she is being tested at the same time she is being employed. Killebrew was part of an investigation and interrogation team that failed to break Josine. The Technocrats want to know if Josine has turned Killebrew.)

All About the Information

Time passed. The Technocracy tried to break Josine, tried to find out what exactly he transmitted and how to decrypt whatever might signal might come back. Josine gave up just stray bits of intelligence as he weakened over years of interrogation but he gave as good as he got — a parade of Technocrat interrogators gave up on the case and he effectively turned a few agents to his way of thinking along the way. Combined with Lucid Gamma, he made a formidable foe. At the same time, Nanotech gradually built up a sense of what was happening inside the Technocracy through spies and turncoats. Eager to beat the Technocracy to whatever signal might come bearing futuristic technical specifications (and confident they could crack it before the Technocrats), Nanotech set out to locate Josine’s AIs, thinking they were the best way to unravel the signal when the time came. To do that, they turned to their R&D department’s developing advances in artificial, biological androids (aka biodroids) and a secret weapon they had over the Technocracy for a while: they had access to some of Josine’s memory shards. The Hoeflers, a family of international memory brokers and data-storage specialists, had bought

up smaller data-backup companies in an effort to solidify their market share. Along the way, they bought up databanks containing many of Josine’s memory shards (in addition to countless other memories and files). But the Hoefler patriarch was dying. To stop a feud between his sons, Edgar and Dougray, he gave them each half of the company. Nanotech quickly bought Edgar, gaining access to some of the data the Hoeflers were keeping “secure” for their customers. Dougray, suspecting his brother was selling out, offered his own share of the company to the Technocrats before Nanotech could sift through it all, while it was still worth something. So the scheming between Nanotech and the Technocrats continues. The Hoeflers, Josine’s data, and the AI called Vital Beta are all caught in the midst of it. And last year, Alpha came home.

Now

Nanotech’s plan is to lure out Josine’s agents — including the PCs and the AIs (since Nanotech doesn’t know what happened to them) — by installing fragments of his memory into custom-built biodroids designed to match the images of Josine they have on file (including images smuggled out by spies within the Technocracy). Nanotech isn’t so sure that Josine’s people don’t know things about the man’s secret plan. They’re not even sure that the Technocrats aren’t protecting Josine while pretending to incarcerate him. Now the megacorp’s going to have to move up the timeline despite better judgment. The Technocracy’s plan is to let some of Nanotech’s scheme play out and then intervene if Beta (or Alpha) turn up. The Technocrats don’t realize that Alpha was transmitted; they think it’s in hiding like Beta. (Josine has told them where Gamma is, much to his own dismay.) The Technocracy might even as9 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

sume that Alpha and Beta are in unknowing PCs. The Technocracy is confident — maybe too confident — that others won’t have luck decrypting any alien transmission that arrive. They don’t realize yet that the second signal — bearing Alpha — has already arrived and is waiting in St. Petersburg. Then a band of data thieves in Iceland robs a Hoefler suite, hooks it up to a satellite signal to export the data, and everyone’s plans go to hell as a Josine memory shard carries out an old program and calls in the PCs. With them in the mix, everything changes.

PLACING CAROLINE KILLEBREW

This part’s tricky. Caroline Killebrew doesn’t need much establishment for the reveal in Perugia to work. Give her too big a role and you’ll have to keep track of her for the whole adventure and the PCs might build up and reincorporate details that won’t work with the reveal in Perugia. If that happens, the version of Caroline that the players invest in wins. Recast Agent Wolcott as just a protégé of Josine’s who is making a play to help him at a late hour in the game. Forget the whole spy-in-theirmidst angle. That said, if you can have it both ways, such that the players pay just a little bit of attention to Caroline and then lose track of her before she turns up in Perugia, that’s great. All you really need is one moment early in the adventure, maybe during an opening montage, when Caroline is present and you can set her up with the necessary exposition. Something like, “Caroline Killebrew has been your personal assistant for years. She keeps things running when you go out of town. She’ll keep an eye on stuff while you get the band back together.” Emily and Utseo are the easiest PCs to which you

can attach Caroline, but here are some ways to assign her to other PCs: Yoshi: Caroline haunts a barstool next to Yoshi or is a regular client in his bodyguard-and-driver-forhire service. Maybe she’s even there when the text comes in that triggers the whole adventure. “Important text?” she asks. Utseo: Caroline is one of Utseo’s top assistants. She keeps on eye on Utseo’s underlings while he’s away. “I’ll handle things here. Go do what you need to do,” she says. Alex: Alex is the tough one. If you assign her to Alex, don’t set her up at all. Instead, in Perugia, reveal how she’d been on Alex’s case for years. “You’re a hard man to keep up with.” Emily: Caroline is Emily’s scheduler or factor for Europe and North Africa. Caroline pretends not to know why Emily’s canceling appointments. “I know better than to ask questions like that.” Tank: Caroline is a contact of Tank’s for moving hardware throughout Europe and Eurasia. They go back a few years. “I can get you to Reykjavik without raising any red flags, sure.” Henri: Caroline is a contact of Henri’s for moving medicines and gear. She once warned him before a local operation busted his clinic, saving him a lot of trouble. “I can refill meds while you’re gone. Just be careful.” Once Caroline is established, leave her alone until Phase 3 and then reveal that she’s gone missing, if the players bring her up. Let the players speculate. The less of a big deal it is, the better. Final warning: Some players get rankled by this bit. Without fair warning that she was a spy, they may feel cheated. Not once have I actually encountered this in the wild, but it’s worth being ready for it. The tricky part is showing them, in Perugia or in an inter-

rupt scene with the Technocrats (including Agent Wolcott), that Caroline really did have their best interests at heart. The time she spent assigned to the PC in question? That’s what makes Perugia unfold the way it does. This isn’t about spotting the hidden motive… it’s about how knowing the PC(s) changed Caroline’s mind.

ALTERNATE BACKSTORIES

Maybe you’ve got another idea for how to connect the action scenes. Maybe you’ve played A/N/N once with my backstory and now you want to try it a different way. Maybe you think the backstory sucks and you want to adapt your own ideas into the story to appeal to your players. Fair enough. You know your players better than I do. Have at it. To get you started, here are a few other ideas to work with (at least a couple of these I considered while devising the adventure in the first place): • Josine is dead. Nanotech caught up to him while the PCs were off saving the world and the death of their boss is just the price they pay for doing dangerous business. The backed-up memory shards he stored throughout the planet are all that’s left of him and gathering them is a memorial act as much as it’s an intelligence operation. • Josine rejoined the Technocracy and is working to prepare the Earth for the arrival of extraterrestrial AIs transmitted into our satellite networks using alien tech. The first alien AIs may already be here, either hiding out in public or held captive by some corporation out to either rule the planet… or save it. Josine’s been working for years to let the PCs retire, in their own fashion, 10 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

but either he needs them now or he just can’t keep them protected forever. •Josine uploaded an AI into his own brain years ago to protect it and its secrets about alien contact. Nanotech has had Josine in captivity for a decade, trying to separate the AI from the human brain so they can root through the AI’s knowledge and Josine’s old Technocracy secrets. Nanotech’s motives are, as ever, all about global domination and profit. All of those are pretty close to my big backstory, of course. I hope some of you devise whole other ways to recombine the core scenes of A/N/N and share them with your fellow GMs. Think about how to reveal your backstory using the scenes provided (or scenes you create yourself). You can do like I did and attach one or more clues to each scene or you can dole them out by Act and Phase, or you can try other options and let us know how it goes.

HOW SCENES CONNECT The core rundown on this is in the Player File. Let’s build on that.

The Scene-Flow Diagram

Look around for the scene-flow diagram and the sample path (taken from one of the at-home playtests), on nearby pages. They’ll help you understand the Acts, Phases, and flow of the scenes in the default arrangement: Hybrid mode.

Note the key symbols on the scene-flow diagram: The Arrows indicate an entrance and an exit from a scene. So, for example, if you go from Atlantica to Seattle, you’re not stuck there; you can move on to any other scene in the Phase. The Dots indicate an exit only. They mark the spots you cannot enter, reinforcing the rule that you cannot move back to an earlier Phase of the adventure once you’ve moved on to the next. You’re meant to play any given action scene just once or not at all.

THE SHAPE OF IT

Play the Reykjavik scene for Phase 1, then maybe play some recovery scenes, then let the players choose between Mumbai and Atlantica for Phase 2. Maybe you have flashbacks in the mix. Maybe you play an interrupt between recovery scenes, to show that the antagonists mean business. Then it’s on to the next scene. At every decision point, when it’s time to select the next action scene to play, the players should have at least two scenes to choose from. For example, after the first scene of Phase 2, they can choose between playing the other Phase 2 scene and moving on to Dezhou, Lagos, Seattle, or Sydney. When it’s time to choose, lay out the cards for the eligible scenes. Let the players know that if they move on to the next phase, they can’t go back. You might even tell them at the beginning of a phase that you intend to play only one scene (or two, or however many) in that phase, so the choice is a big one. Don’t rush the scene-selection process. Everyone should get a chance to read those cards. Each card contains one or two descriptors — drawn from Action, Intrigue, and Stealth — that hint at what that scene is designed to highlight.

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them outright, “You know what there is to learn from that scene, so only pick it if you want to play it for kicks.” You also have a card for interrupt scenes. Put that on the table to signify that you’re launching a scene on behalf of an NPC force. You can do this before, between, or after recovery scenes. You can even put the interrupt card into the mix of scenes for the PCs to choose from, in case they want to select that kind of side-quest challenge, but I haven’t tried it. Let’s look again at the modes of play put forth in the Player File and see how they interact with the master scene-flow diagram.

Linear Mode

They’re listed in order of magnitude, so an Action + Intrigue scene has a prominent action element to it while an Intrigue + Action scene’s intrigue component is more prominent. To be clear, though, most scenes can be approached in many ways — action especially can break out whenever the players want — so remind everyone that these are hints, not 12 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

mandates. The description of each scene is more informative but can also sometimes set up surprises. Depending on how the intel shakes out, players may select a scene that has no new intel for them. That’s okay! Getting redundant intel can confirm clues or shed new light on their speculations. If you want, maybe in the interests of time, you can tell

Linear mode short-circuits all that, particularly the part where players choose action scenes, and replaces it with a chain of action scenes you’ve chosen in advance. The idea here is to just throw a few playgrounds at the players, let them brainstorm and describe some exciting sequences, and then move on with the story. I don’t recommend this mode but it is an option if you really need to mind the clock or you don’t want to be responsible for handling more complex intel deliveries. Players should still be able to call for recovery scenes between action scenes, lest their PCs get overwhelmed with Conditions. For example: You might go from Reykjavik to Mumbai to Perugia to St. Petersburg with no option to deviate from that course, just to play a quick version of the adventure and then move on with your life.

Hybrid Mode

This is how I assume you’ll be playing. This mode uses the scene-flow diagram, with each scene broken out by Act and Phase, progressing through time

from left to right, but deploys intel differently than the Open mode. In Hybrid mode, you reveal intel based on how far into the adventure the PCs are and how many scenes you intend to play. So if you’re in Phase 3, and you’re only planning on playing one or two scenes in that Phase, you might deliver all the intel you think the players need in and after that first or second scene so that Phase 4 makes sense and has scenes to offer. The players still decide what scenes to play, which affects what the intel “looks like” and some of the intel they get, but doesn’t depend on them to dig only in the right places to get treasures. Don’t withhold information for the sake of mystery; spread it out over multiple locations only if the players want to play out multiple locations in this Act and Phase of the adventure. Don’t guess. Decide how many scenes you have time for —asking the players how many hours or sessions they want to spend playing is ideal — and then parcel out the clues to fit the available time. You’re also allowed to give them some additional intel between scenes to make sure they have scenes to choose from in the next Phase. At each decision point, lay out the cards for the eligible scenes and let the players pick. Special intel reveals Buenos Aires and Vietnam after the first scene of Phase 3 (mostly to keep the players from picking from so many scenes at once). For example: One of my playtest groups went from Reykjavik to Mumbai to Lagos to Vietnam to Hokkaido to Perugia and finally to Karakum. Recovery scenes were mixed in here and there and I played, I think, only one interrupt. That took us a few sessions of play spread over a few weeks.

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Open Mode

This mode also uses with the scene-flow diagram but deploys intel differently than Hybrid mode. In Open mode, you only give out a scene’s intel during or after that scene, never moving things around, so if the players skip certain scenes, they go forward without some intel and understanding of events. This mode is tricky because it’s possible to move through the adventure in a way that doesn’t necessarily make much sense of the backstory. The players may be motivated to have their PCs interrogate NPCs more often to get at the truth, unlock scenes, and understand just what the hell is going on in the background. Intel is assigned by Phase, too, to help things hold together, but if you’re very strict with intel, players might actually end up with fewer choices for scenes as they go. This mode is described here to acknowledge that you might make it work or instinctively find its style more appealing than Hybrid mode’s style of customizable exposition. For example: After starting Phase 3 with the Seattle scene, the players decide to go straight to Hokkaido in Phase 4 without getting the Phase 3 intel you assigned to Vietnam and Buenos Aires. Thus they can’t access Perugia (or Karakum), so they move on to St. Petersburg and only sort of understand what’s happening there.

Special: Free Play Mode

In Free Play mode, you peel apart the whole thing and use the pieces to react to the choices and decisions the players make about where to go and who to fight. I presume you still start with Reykjavik, just to kick things off, but that’s up to you. In this mode, you dole out intel as the players ask the right questions, wherever they are, as they interact with the plans and background of the NPCs, until you reach some kind of ending that satisfies you and thus decide to stop playing. For example: You play Reykjavik, then dole out intel that sparks the players to go to St. Petersburg or Karakum (or both), and then collaboratively improvise the consequences and larger world as you go. All the scenes become resources you use to build up the fiction when you like. The PCs are the spearheads and their enemies try to chase down intel on them for a while.

BEGINNING PLAY

After all this time, a message from Josine. Everything about it, from its simplicity to it specificity, feels like him... just years too late. Is he finally surfacing after all this time? The message affords only a few clues. This is the first intel of the adventure, reveal it as the players ask questions: • The text bears none of the telltale markers official cell carriers would put on it. It’s a ghost message bounced through a dozen satellites. • The coordinates point to a spot near the end of the Alftanesvegur road in Iceland, north of Reykjavik. • Nearby, on a south-facing coast, is a glass-andsteel structure that looks almost like a sleek greenhouse from above. It’s a simple structure: longer than it is wide, situated on a steep hill above the sea, with a small parking lot on one side and vents jutting from the ground to bleed off heat. No data lines go in or out of the facility. It’s isolated. • The building is a server farm, part of a defunct startup operation intending to provide discreet cloud storage for wealthy customers. The whole operation was bought out by the Hoefler brothers — memory and storage dealers, heirs to a memory empire their father built. They use the site for overflow data storage and redundant backups now, according to contacts and research. It’s a low-security facility with a staff of three or four. The players’ characters begin play on a windswept and grassy hill overlooking the information suite below, glittering in early night on the coast of rural Iceland. What happens next is up to you. Make your decision based on the amount of time you have.

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For a faster start, gloss over the details of how everyone got there. One of the characters — whoever the players decide held out hope for Josine the longest — got the message and brought in the other characters for this job. “Somewhere down in that server facility,” you say, “Josine needs your help.” Describe the setup using the details on offer here, or those of your own devising, and let the players loose on the facility in whatever fashion they like, whether it’s rough and tumble or elegant and suave. For a slower build, find out where each character was when she learned of Josine’s call for help. This is like a montage, so don’t get too deep into it. Maybe do it like this: Say “You’re all standing on an Icelandic hillside overlooking the server facility, the wind snapping against you.” Work with each player to make their flashback quick and evocative, to show what their character’s life is like when they’re not doing the action-hero thing. Do that by asking one question — “What was your character doing when the call came in to rescue Josine?” — and then either offering or asking for a sentence that begins with the phrase “I picture my character” and describes what the PC was doing when the call came. After that, ask these follow-up questions: “What do you look like now, standing in the snowy grass on the hillside? How do you come across from outside?” Either way, ask the players how the PCs arrive at the server facility from Reykjavik. Did they come on sleek, silver snowmobiles? Did they come in a single snow-cat with big, fat treads? The characters have the means to rent, borrow, or steal such things for this op; it’s really a question of style.

THE SCENES

Here, then, are the scenes that make up A/N/N, starting with the optional flashbacks and proceeding on through the five Phases of all three Acts.

Printing Note: The following scenes are arranged for easy two-sided prints. To include the flashback scenes, print pages 16–55. To skip the flashbacks, begin with Reykjavik and print pages 22–55 (or on through to the end to include the guides for intel and the motif).

FLASHBACK SCENES

These scenes take place long ago — a decade or more. Each scene reveals something about a character’s past; many focus on things done while on a mission for Josine. Each scene asks the player to decide what choices her character has made in the past and how the character is changed by that experience. Flashbacks are all about these choices. They’re defined by them. These scenes are about rewarding a player’s decision, even if the outcome of that decision, back when, was not the happiest. In the unfolding story, these flashbacks already happened. We know the stars of these scenes make it out alive. The real questions are “How did it happen?” or “At what cost?” or “What did he learn along the way?”

How Flashbacks Work

Flashback scenes are interrupts — a player can call for her character’s first flashback scene whenever it’s her character’s chance to act, whether it’s between other scenes or in the midst of an action scene. A flashback doesn’t count as a character’s action, it just happens and then play resumes. The player decides which flashback to play out, A or B, by selecting the pair of Tags she wishes to choose from. Players see the Tags in advance and might have one in mind when they call for the flashback. Then you, the GM, read or paraphrase the flashback situation and ask the player which course of action she wants her character to take to resolve the scene. Read the outcome of that choice, usually asking the player to describe what the character does to pull it off. Once the player has chosen her outcome, her character gains the associated Tag and adds it to any list of Tags, under any Trait on her character’s sheet. 15 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

So, the order of operations is: 1. The player calls for the flashback scene, picking the scene (A or B) based on the pairs of Tags listed. 2. The GM reads or paraphrases the flashback’s situation, then asks the player to choose between the two approaches to the situation. 3. The player chooses. 4. The GM reports the outcome of the choice, then helps the player describe it. 5. The player assigns the related Tag to her character sheet as a part of any Trait list she likes. Keep flashbacks brief. Get into the heart of the flashback, present the choice, and get out. Instead of treating them as full scenes, make them intense vignettes, visceral and immediate. Add details to make the scene come alive, sure, but instead of building to the big choice, start as close to that choice as possible. Trim all the fat. Take turns. Players can call for their flashbacks in any order but no player can play out a second flashback until everyone has played their first. Depending on how long you all have to play, you might even decide that each player only gets one flashback. That’s fine. Do not roll dice to overcome obstacles during a flashback. Instead, the outcome of the scene turns on a single choice made by the player. That choice leads to built-in outcomes which, in most cases, the player is invited to describe. It’s an opportunity for the player to show off how awesome or impressive their character is, even if they’ve been getting unlucky rolls lately. The player doesn’t get to decide what the outcome of their choice involves — and some of the outcomes might be more grim than hoped for — so

they get to describe their character’s part in that outcome, at least. At that step, play is about dramatizing the outcome in a way that satisfies the flashback’s player and entertains all the players. Stunt-dice can absolutely be awarded during flashbacks!

What Flashbacks Do

Ideally, flashback scenes make a player secondguess the choice of Tag they were after, even if they do end up selecting the Tag they thought they wanted in the first place. It’s one thing to say “I want Yoshi to gain Support as a Tag,” and another to risk Josine’s secrecy and protection to get it — even if the player doesn’t change her mind. I don’t know your players, though. Feel free to tweak these to better challenge your players, but not at the expense of their decision-making. It’s okay to say, “Are you sure?” but don’t goad a player into choosing a Tag they don’t want. A flashback is also an opportunity to reveal more details about the game world, the character’s relationships, and how these characters are linked to Josine and each other. Take advantage of these to show the pasts the characters share and the stories they have in common. At the end of every flashback, try asking the player this question: “Who else knows what happened back then, in that scene?” The answer is sometimes obvious because other characters may have been nearby when it happened. Other times the answer reveals things about who the character confides in. It also helps players know what they can talk about in-character.

FLASHBACKS A: Direct / Evasive

Yoshi is on a mission for Josine eleven years earlier. The situation: Yoshi, perhaps with an accomplice, is driving a gigantic stolen tanker-truck down a desert highway, pulling a high-tech cargo container disguised as a petroleum tanker. Inside the tanker, a cybernetic dolphin attached to a brain monitor and an oxygen system awaits delivery to Josine’s contact, a cyberneticist called the Clock, who intends to set him free. As Yoshi approaches a long bridge across a deep canyon, a pair of sleek black sedans with Nanotech plates appear in the rear-view monitors on either side of the truck. From each car, gasmasked thugs with submachine guns emerge and wave for Yoshi to stop the truck. The truck is ten times the weight of the cars, but damage to the trailer could harm the dolphin inside. If Yoshi doesn’t act soon, the truck may be boarded! Was Yoshi +Direct or +Evasive in response? + If Direct... Yoshi slams into one car, then the other, maybe running either or both off the bridge, but not before the second car opens fire with explosive rounds in response, puncturing the tanker. Yoshi’s player: Describe how Yoshi uses the truck as a blunt instrument to take out the two pursuit cars. How badly was the dolphin hurt? Did it ever make it to freedom?

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+ If Evasive... Yoshi weaves the truck across the highway, maybe tearing across the desert across the bridge to shake the boarding party. Yoshi’s player: Describe how Yoshi evades the pursuing vehicles on the highway or across the desert. How does Yoshi’s driving help him escape his attackers?

B: Protect / Support

It is a few weeks before Josine went missing. The situation: Yoshi’s in a posh and glossy hotel bar at the top of some dizzying tower in a Middle Eastern metropolis just before last call. A Technocracy factor in a bespoke suit steps out of the background and approaches Yoshi, saying, “I know who you are.” He doesn’t sit down. “Your boss is a turncoat, a coward, and a menace,” he says. “He gets good people killed. He’ll get you killed one day. You’re a fucking fool.” The Technocrat goes on and on. It’s clear that this factor knows Josine’s rep, which implies a level of security clearance not befitting this kind of talk in public. The Technocrat tries to stay vague, but he brushes close to references that no one wants said in a public venue. “The world isn’t any safer because of what you do. How dare you?” Yoshi can protect Josine by staying silent or he can support Josine by speaking up in his defense. Did Yoshi +Protect or +Support Josine?

+ If Protect... Yoshi stays quite while the Technocrat speaks, long minutes ticking by, then finally says just a few words that send the Technocrat packing — without giving up anything about Josine. Yoshi’s player: What did Yoshi say? Did he keep his cool? + If Support... Yoshi speaks up in Josine’s defense, explaining why Yoshi’s loyal to his “uncle,” and says a little bit too much — something he can’t unsay. The Technocrat lays off and leaves. Yoshi’s player: What did Yoshi say? Could it have been something that led to Josine’s disappearance?

FLASHBACKS A: Clandestine / Notorious

Utseo is on a mission for Josine eleven years ago. The situation: Utseo must liberate a hard drive from an undersea research facility where cybernetically enhanced dolphins were used for uplift-technology research. The place is swarming with Nanotech troops ransacking the place after the megacorp bought out the facility and shot down “trespassing” scientists who refused to leave. Utseo’s outside the central lab, monitoring activity within via fiber-optic camera and a signal-interceptor earpiece. He counts maybe six or eight Nanotech gunmen. He has just his knife, his metal legs, and a damned lot of chutzpah. Every second, the goons get closer to the encrypted backup drive Josine wants. Was Utseo +Clandestine or is he +Notorious? + If Clandestine... Utseo sneaks into the lab, taking out half the goons one by one until he reaches the hard drive. Once the drive’s in hand, Utseo slips back out, boards his waiting rental sub, and disappears into the deep. Utseo’s player: Describe how Utseo sneaks in and out of the lab and how he takes out half the goons.

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+ If Notorious... Utseo storms the place, taking out all the goons and causing enough damage in the ensuing fight to ultimately flood the facility — but not before he nabs the drive and flees in his rented submarine. Utseo’s player: Describe how Utseo causes all this damage and how word of his exploits spread from the Nanotech survivors.

B: Nimble /Powerhouse

Utseo is on a mission for Josine ten years ago — the last mission he got from Josine. The situation: A crazed plutocrat exec ousted by the Nanotech board, along with a loyal cadre of corporate soldiers and a stolen military AI, hijacked a Technocracy orbital-laser and aimed its emitter at Hong Kong to take out key Nanotech skyscrapers and set the company back a decade. Countless civilian lives will be lost in the blast. Josine somehow knew about the rogue executive’s plot before even the Technocrats or Nanotech proper could respond — so it’s up to Utseo and his cohorts to stop the attack from on board the orbital facility. While the rest of the team holds off Nanotech goons, Utseo is just one shiny metal corridor away from the laser’s emitter array. If the array’s taken out, the emitter won’t deploy when the locked-in countdown runs out, overriding the

firing sequence, halting the shot and saving Hong Kong. (The built-up charge may be enough to blow the space station, though.) The trouble is, the corridor leading to those gears is filled with probing security lasers intense enough to slice apart flesh. Somehow, Utseo got through them, in microgravity, to the machinery beyond. Was Utseo +Nimble or was he a +Powerhouse? + If Nimble... Utseo dodges and spirals through the corridor in microgravity, lasers searing and refracting off his metal legs, always positioned just in time to save his flesh. Once through, he somersaults and glides toward the gears — legs first. Utseo’s player: Describe how Utseo stops the machinery before the orbital laser can fully deploy, thereby halting the firing sequence at the last minute. + If a Powerhouse... Utseo pushes off a bulkhead in microgravity and falls through the laser-filled corridor feet-first, grinding emitters off the walls with his heels and spinning into the weapon’s gears beyond, jamming them with his metal legs. Utseo’s player: How does Utseo react as his metal legs are destroyed and their wreckage jams the vital gears?

FLASHBACKS A: Talking / Fighting

Alex is on a mission to help out Josine eleven years earlier. The situation: Alex is caught on the top floor of the swanky Technocracy embassy in Prague following a harrowing chase. He’s cornered in his catburglar getup by armed guards in long gray coats, each one pointing a rifle at him. Hanging from Alex’s belt is a thumb drive with hot Technocracy files on it, freshly stolen from downstairs. Alex raises his hands and smiles. He’s unarmed except for the laser-cutter he used to get through a few security systems. The closest exit is the window behind the guards — 11 stories above the parking lot below. If only Alex can reach that window... Did Alex get out of this by +Talking or +Fighting? + If Talking... Alex opens his mouth. “Do you guys know where the men’s room is?” A guard grabs him, takes the thumb drive, and walks him toward the stairs — right by the window. Alex’s player: Describe how Alex uses his charms or lies to get the guards off balance long enough for him to leap out the window with his climbing harness. How does Alex manage to grab the stolen data back?

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+ If Fighting... Alex hurls a nearby vase at the guards, kicking off a hectic brawl designed to distract and disrupt the guards long enough for Alex to reach the window and escape on his climbing harness. Alex’s player: Describe how Alex fights his way through the guards and makes his escape out the window, with the drive still on him. Describe the injuries he gets in the fight. Does he disappear into the night or go roaring away on a hotwired motorcycle? Something else?

B: Rough / Smooth

Alex is on a job for himself, twelve years ago. The situation: Alex is deep in the mansion of a gallery owner (and Technocrat agent) in Montreal. It’s the night of a fancy party, but no one should be in this part of the building. Alex has just slipped a prized antique statuette into his tux when the lights come on. The Technocrat host stands in a nearby doorway in his tux. “What are you doing in here?” Alex knows Technocrat agents are almost always armed. Was Alex +Rough or was he +Smooth?

+ If Rough... Alex talks too much, stepping on his own sentences, convincing no one. He finally says, “And, you know — aw, screw it,” and throws down a device that explodes in brilliant, flickering holographic flames before bolting through the mansion for an exit, statuette still on his person. Alex’s player: Describe what Alex breaks or threatens to break as he runs through the mansion. How does he get away without getting shot by the yelling Technocrat? + If Smooth... Alex is suave and sly. He lies about seeing someone in here and asks if anything is missing. “We should warn our host,” Alex says, “that guy should be more careful with his guest list.” Alex’s player: Describe how Alex talks his way out of the scene, with or without the statuette. Does Alex storm out, insulted, or does he seemingly disappear? Something else?

FLASHBACKS A: Intimidating / Seductive

Emily is on a mission for Josine twelve years earlier. The situation: Emily is on the dance floor of a posh gala affair in Berne, dancing in the crowd, when the music changes. Tango. The corporate agent that Emily has come here to question stands a few feet away, smiling in his tuxedo. He extends a hand. “May I have this dance?” He knows the access codes for a satellite weapon system that uncle wants deactivated so spacecraft can reach an orbiting habitat secretly and safely. His bodyguards watch from every corner of the room. Emily takes his hand. They begin to dance. Somewhere on his person is his phone. Emily wears a slew of spy gadgets disguised as accessories. This is as close as she’s likely to get to the target. Time to go for the intel. Was Emily +Intimidating or +Seductive? + If Intimidating... Emily whispers in the agent’s ear, telling him what she’ll do if he doesn’t give her the codes. He laughs in disbelief. “My men would have you on the ground in no time.” Emily grabs him, swings him into a chokehold, and snatches his phone from his pocket. Emily’s player: Describe how Emily commands the whole room and escapes the scene. How badly does she hurt him to bring back the data for Josine?

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+ If Seductive... Emily whispers in the agent’s ear, luring him to a suite upstairs. He smiles and agrees. They go upstairs and he goes to the bar and pours them both drinks. Emily slips a drug into his drink as she takes hers, smiling the whole time. She’s charming as can be until he passes out and she can ransack his phone for data. Emily’s player: Describe how Emily is so smooth that the agent doesn’t even realize he’s been lied to, drugged, and robbed. How does she get out of the guarded suite?

B: Disarming / Turnabout

Emily is on a mission for Josine eleven years earlier. The situation: Emily, clad in black, has been caught deep in a plutocrat’s high-rise office by a security operative in digital camouflage. He gets Emily in a firm hold and puts a long knife to her neck. Emily can see the gleam where a micro-sensor on the blade’s edge records or transmits data back to building security if the blade tastes blood. “You’ve got no way out of here,” the enemy operative says. “Who are you working for?” Disarm this security agent and a brutal, drawnout fight may follow but the blade’s sensor won’t be tripped. Turn the blade against him and he’ll be quickly killed but the sensors get tripped. Was she +Disarming or did she pull a +Turnabout?

+ If Disarming... Emily talks a bit to lower everyone’s blood pressures, then slips smoothly out of the hold and kicks the blade away. A murderous dance unfolds in the office as the security operative, too proud to call out for help, dodges blow after blow. Emily’s player: Describe what Emily says and how she is disarming. How is the security operative finally, quietly defeated there in the office environment? Is he alive or dead at the end of the encounter? + If Turnabout... Emily quickly ducks and pivots, driving the blade into the operative’s throat. Blood gushes. The blade detects catalogued DNA and triggers an alarm. A computer voice announces “Operative down in Sector 7.” Emily’s player: Describe how Emily escapes the scene with the plutocrat’s data despite the blaring alarms. Armed guards are en route. How many of them does Emily take out making her escape?

FLASHBACKS A: Ruthless / Wary

Tank is on a mission for Josine eleven years earlier. The situation: Tank approaches a lakeside mountain cottage somewhere in Switzerland. Inside is a corporate turncoat looking to sell some information — if he hasn’t already been gotten to by rival spymasters. The corporate informer was supposed to come alone for the meet but thermographic imaging reveals three people inside the cottage. Tank can approach slowly, perhaps being spotted along the way, or storm the place and take out the two unexpected strangers immediately, before they have a chance to respond. Was Tank +Ruthless or +Wary? + If Ruthless... Tank smashes the door down with her metal arms, rushes in and takes down two people in gray suits with Technocrat ID badges on their lapels. She’s already got the turncoat in hand when she notices. “What did you do?” the turncoat says. “Is this how you do things? Let me go! And tell your boss I’m off the market.” Tank’s player: Describe how Tank responds to the turncoat, even as a Technocracy VTOL appears over the treetops. Does she let him go or drag him bodily back to a teleconference with Josine, somehow losing the VTOL along the way?

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+ If Wary... Tank approaches the building carefully, sneaking close enough for her short-range parabolic mic to cut through the signal jammer on the cottage and pick up the meeting inside. The two strangers are Technocrats there to bring the turncoat in to a safe house for debriefing, rather than let his intel spur any kind of corporate espionage or violence. Tank’s player: Describe how Tank manages to hide out and record the conversation, getting Josine the location of the Technocracy safe house, before watching in secret as a Technocracy VTOL craft carries all three people away. Does she manage to hit the VTOL with a tracking device? Describe how.

B: Devoted / Surprising

Tank is on a mission for Josine eleven years earlier. The situation: Tank is tied to a chair, without her metal arms, in the rusted belly of a bombed-out tanker ship on some remote Pacific island beach. Three cold-hearted pirates have guns on both Tank and a comrade in arms who is hooded, bound, and unconscious. The pirates want to know who Tank and her cohort work for and how to contact him. “We’ll ransom one of you back,” they say. “Maybe kill the other, if you don’t talk fast.” Tank can stay quiet, relying on her steely gaze and steady poise to hold out and protect Josine’s identity until rescue arrives or she can spring on the pirates, surprise them, and risk a gun going off.

Was Tank +Devoted or +Surprising? + If Devoted... Tank keeps calm and quiet even when the pirate shoots her in the leg — even when the pirate shoots the cohort in the gut. “You have until this one bleeds out to tell me who and where your boss is,” the lead pirate says. But Tank is devoted and has endurance. She keeps her eyes on the pirates even as they waver and grow bored waiting for the cohort to die. When her three enemies are relaxed, Tank strikes. Tank’s player: Describe how Tank takes out all three pirates. Who was under that hood? Was it another player’s character, later saved by modern medicine? + If Surprising... Tank nods and whispers. The lead pirate leans in, gun to her head. “What was that?” he asks. Tank’s player: Describe how Tank slips or breaks the bonds holding her and takes out the three pirates. In the fight, one of the pirates opens fire, shooting Tank through the shoulder. Does the hooded cohort get hit in the battle? Do they live? Who was under that hood, anyway?

FLASHBACKS A: Reasonable / Forceful

Dr. Qamar is serving in a private corporate army thirteen years ago. The situation: Henri is in some bombed-out cityscape somewhere, where he’s the last one left alive from his squad, when the patient he’s helping gets shot dead by an enemy merc who appears from nowhere. “I’m your patient now,” says the merc, bleeding from a gut shot, his gun hand steady. “Help me or we both die.” Maybe saving this soldier’s life will defuse the situation. Maybe not. This soldier may well kill Henri anyway once he’s patched up. Better to take the gun out of the equation. Henri can talk the gun out of the soldier’s hand or he can fight him for it. Was Henri +Reasonable or was he +Forceful? + If Reasonable... Henri talks the soldier into handing over his weapon in exchange for treatment. Henri’s player: Describe what Henri says, or say it outright. Did Henri help that enemy off the battlefield or did they part ways? Did Henri treat that soldier to the best of his ability? Is that enemy soldier alive today?

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+ If Forceful... Henri goes for the gun — and gets it. Henri’s player: Describe how Henri gets the gun. Is it quick and decisive or is it an ugly struggle? Was Henri able to treat the soldier after that? Is that enemy soldier alive today?

B: Rapid Fire / Precise Strike

Henri is on a mission for Josine eleven years ago. The situation: Henri has been betrayed by the people flying him back from a mission. Three turncoat thugs have pulled guns on Henri and a comrade in arms. Henri, wanting to protect his cohort, has a fleeting second to make up his mind — he can reach a nearby submachine gun, hanging on a hook on the bulkhead, or he can pull the combat knife on his belt. A rapid spray of gunfire might damage the aircraft but could take out all three thugs at once. A precise strike keeps the aircraft intact but could lead to a messy fight with these thugs that could turn against Henri and his cohort. What was Henri’s approach? Was it a + Rapid Fire attack or a + Precise Strike?

+ If Rapid Fire... Henri grabs the submachine gun and sprays gunfire across the aircraft’s hold. Two thugs drop, the third dives for cover, and the gun’s potent ammo blows a canister that weakens the plane’s skin. A chunk of it peels free. That third turncoat tumbles out of a new, widening gap in the fuselage. Henri’s player: Describe how Henri gets out of this. Does he grab a parachute before falling out of the aircraft or do he and his cohort work together to capture and crash-land the plane? Who was that cohort? + If a Precise Strike... Henri slips his combat knife from behind his back and takes out two of the turncoats. The third fires a shot that drops Henri’s cohort just before Henri drops that third turncoat, too. The gunshot also blows out a cabin window, leaving Henri to perform combat medicine on the fallen cohort in a howling, struggling fuselage. Henri’s player: Describe the knife fight and Henri’s reaction to seeing his cohort get shot. Did Henri save that cohort? Who was it?

Information Suite

R E Y K J AV I K • I C E L A N D

Placement: Act 1, Phase 1 Scene Type: Action Synopsis: Josine’s call came from an isolated server facility near Reykjavik, Iceland. Go there and rescue Josine. Objectives: • Locate and rescue Josine • Get out alive

YESTERDAY CALLED

J

osine’s call came from and lead to a long, low, glass-and-steel building located on an Iceland ridge overlooking the Atlantic. The PCs reach the site to discover the place is being ransacked by a cadre of anarchist data-thieves who busted open the site some time ago. Just as the PCs finish taking down the data-thieves, a mercenary hit squad arrives via helicopter (and maybe snowmobile) to eliminate the PCs and obtain or destroy all working hardware on sight. Whoever they are, they have guns and are ready to kill to get what they want. ¶ While dealing with the hostiles, the PCs learn what they can, including how they got the call that brought them back together.

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The building at the heart of this scene was meant to be a modern office retreat and server farm for an Icelandic company that never quite congealed: Cerebral Compression Backups. CCB was bought by memory storage experts Edgar and Dougray Hoefler, heirs to a digital-memory empire. They’re in the business of storing people’s files in secret underground clouds maintained in high-security server locations across the planet. The CCB site is just one of their lower-security redundant sites. The place is very beautiful and very cold and not meant for human hands. The place was mostly automated until the anarchists dismantled it to make a point and snag any drives they could maybe ransom off. The bodies of the three on-site security staff lay dead in the snow outside.

The Server Facility

The place is long and narrow, glassy like a greenhouse with black steel supports and greenish glass. The parking lot has two modest hatchbacks in it, each under a faint dusting of blown snow, plus a muddy all-terrain van. The lot’s little gate has been smashed by that van. A big, brown, windowless truck has backed up to the front of the building and sits there with its loading doors open. Lazy thieves, thinking Inside, the polished concrete floor, crowded with racks and racks of servers, drops into the ground through three terraced levels, making a shape that a stepped pyramid might plug into. Four glass-walled offices sit cold at the bottom, built into the walls of the smallest, lowest level. Electronic eyes run along the walls and ceiling on delicate tracks, monitoring everything.

The People on the Scene

Half a dozen or so dudes in rugged wardrobes of worn leather and frayed parkas are either moving about the facility with submachine guns on short straps or are tossing hardware into the back of the van. They seem to be in no great rush. They figure security would’ve arrived by now if it was coming. The thieves are self-pierced, self-tattooed, and marked with anarchist symbols suggesting they’re part of Iceland’s new anti-establishment criminal outfit — would-be revolutionaries engaged in a straightup robbery. They think they’ll change the world with the information they steal... but in their drugged out way they’re trashing as much as they capture.

Details

• Snow blows silent against soundproofed windows. • The chirps from the servers sound like a hundred crickets trapped indoors. • It smells like hot solder but is quite cold inside. • Everything is smooth and solid—polished concrete and black metal. • The surf crashes below, the sound suddenly audible once a window is broken.

Make An Entrance

This is an opening action sequence. The players decide how to enter this scene but be clear with them: stealth and intrigue are not really options here for long. As soon as the data-thieves see they’re not alone they open up with small-arms fire, intending to shoot their way out of the place, get back to their all-wheel-drive trucks, and make off with some hardware. (That’s not happening, though — the mercenary hit squad’s ready to take out the data-thieves if the PCs aren’t.)

Establishing the Characters

Especially if you’ve chosen not to play out an opening montage, ask each player how their character first appears “on screen.” Is it in a flurry of blowing snow and muzzle flashes? Is it while adjusting a necktie on her way right up to front gate? Is it crashing through the glass of the information suite? Give them each a chance to shine.

OBSTACLES

This fight scene lets the players show off a bit, tests the characters with gradually more difficult foes, and introduces rules like location Tags.

Fighting Foes

Two waves of foes challenge the PCs in this scene: the data-thieves and the mercenary hit squad. The data-thieves are simple to handle and exist mostly to show the players how things work, to give them a chance to show off, and to trigger the action. The hit squad is a bigger threat. • Each data-thief = 2 untargeted hits. Assume 2 of these foes per PC, each vulnerable to untargeted rolls. 23 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

• Each mercenary = 3 untargeted hits. These come clad in sleek special-forces gear with enclosed helmets and no identifying marks on their outfits. No targeted rolls necessary. • The helicopter = Difficulty 4. The helicopter is big and tough, with shiny black armor and a capable pilot. It requires a targeted roll to take out.

Escalation: The Hit Squad Arrives

When the timing’s right — like when the fight with the data-thieves is about to end — a mercenary hit squad interrupts the battle, raising the stakes and the difficulty. Pick an entrance for them to make or invent one of your own: • Mercs rappel through the glass ceiling (or whatever’s left of it) right when the data-thieves are taken out. Once they’re on the ground, their helicopter assumes an attack position. • Mercs shoot dead the last data-thief standing, robbing the PCs of someone to question or of a final victorious strike. • The mercs howl by overhead in their helicopter, shooting the whole building up and requiring a roll to avoid being Injured (difficulty: 3). Then the foot soldiers ride in on snowmobiles. The hit squad is a kitted out in black fatigues and body armor with sleek, new-model small arms and featureless, shiny, closed-faced helmets. They wear no badges, no patches, no identifiers of any kind — classic black-ops-for-hire mercenaries.

Intel: About Josine

At some point during the fight, especially if the PCs are actively looking for him, reveal this: Josine’s not here. There’s no sign that he is, or ever was, actually on site. Further investigation of the site, the bad guys, or the servers here yields the intel for this

scene, which kicks off the rest of the adventure. This scene’s intel is specific and vital; you’re using it to set the premise for the rest of the adventure. None of the intel here hinges on obstacles, though. Even while you’re withholding what’s happening elsewhere (and what’s happened before the adventure), you need to be up front with the key facts that get the story moving, as put forth in the intel material.

Easygoing Menace

Though the characters don’t know it, this fight is a chance to test out the rules. Don’t inflict a condition on many failed rolls, only those that you want to underscore with an extra dose of menace. For example: the helicopter. If its target(s) don’t successfully dodge its gunfire or rotor blades (or whatever) with 2 hits or more on a single roll, they may be Trapped. It can keep up to two characters Trapped (pinned down) at once with the big machine guns mounted in its right and left weapon pods. Once a PC is Trapped, move on to the bottom track of Conditions for further failed rolls if you want to hammer home that this thing is dangerous. Remember that you can dole out intel after the scene’s over. This scene is a good time to help the players get used to the pacing. They don’t have to wring every drop of exposition before they leave.

Information Suite +Plate-glass Windows, +Falling Glass, +Razor-sharp Edges, +Jutting Girder, +Live Wire, +Rack of Hardware, +Windswept Snow, +Frigid Wind

R E Y K J AV I K • I C E L A N D

Getting inside is a question of what kind of dramatic entrance the PCs want to make. They can stride in or storm in, but the data-thieves aren’t here to talk to people they assume are mercenaries coming to take them out. (Maybe one even says, “It’s a kill-squad! Let’s get out of here!” then sprays gunfire at the PCs.) This opening sequence exists to help the players learn the game, get the story moving, and open things with a bang. If things crawl (maybe the players or their characters are overcautious), remind them that these PCs did this stuff all the time back in the old days.

Diving Through Shadow

Placement: Act 1, Phase 2 Scene Type: Stealth + Intrigue Synopsis: Skydive onto the airship lair of a memory dealer in Mumbai and, through him, get access to Josine’s data backups. Escape the airship. Objectives: • Skydive onto the airship • Get mainframe access information from Dougray Hoefler • Access Josine’s backed-up data and the server logs, then make your escape from the airship

MUMBAI • INDIA

LASER SHADOWS

T

he crew skydives onto the back of a private airship circling above Mumbai, and slip inside to get access to Josine’s backed-up data using codes and know-how kept by reclusive memory dealer, Dougray Hoefler, who lives on board. He’s not eager to help but hopefully his servers contain information that say something about Josine’s fate or current whereabouts. This job’s all about gathering intel. ¶ Once the task is done, the crew must escape from the airship without tripping the scanning lasers of Technocrat guards, who are watching the airship from the city below. Just like old times.

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Dougray’s airship circles above Mumbai, tracked and monitored by garish green scanning lasers cutting through the night sky with wide, flat beams, revealing swirls of dust and smoke in the air as they do. The scanning lasers are sensitive but their deployment is imperfect: at a few points on its course, the airship casts a shadow above itself into which the ground sensors cannot see. Craft like helicopters and UAVs are easy to detect but something person-sized and unpowered might get through, so the way to take advantage of this gap in the sensors is to drop directly onto the airship from a high altitude just when the airship is passing over the laser emitters. It’s a tight window. Escaping the airship’s a whole other thing. Thus the scene opens with the PCs in a cargo plane near its operational ceiling, piloted by an old friend (an NPC), flying high above Mumbai. Each of them must step out of that perfectly good airplane and dive through the night onto Hoefler’s airship. “Reminds you of a job over Rio, all those years ago,” you might say to them. “Those were good times.”

The Residential Airship of Tomorrow

Dougray Hoefler’s airship is a wide, squared-off vessel dotted with maneuvering props, lined with wide fins, and equipped with an aft row of three main engines. The residence itself resembles a Frank Lloyd Wright house affixed upside-down to the airship’s belly. It feels more like a five-story penthouse than a yacht and the top two floors are up inside the ship’s frame. Dougray spends most of his time in the swanky lower parts of the residence that look out over Mumbai. The rest of the ship’s utility corridors, cabins, and control rooms feel sort of like what might happen if Apple designed a zeppelin.

OBSTACLES

This scene consists of these main parts: the opening wingsuit dive, the interrogation of Dougray, and the escape from the airship. Different parts call for different degrees of resolution. A lot can happen in just a few rolls. You can streamline this for even quicker pacing. For example, Dougray might simply know and tell the PCs the clues they stand to gain from the Hoefler mainframe, if you prefer.

The Dive

Ask the players to describe each PC’s jump onto the airship. Does a character leap boldly from the plane or hold his breath and fall backward? Do they use flashpaper parachutes that disintegrate at the destination or do they wear ultralight wingsuits to glide in? These are cosmetic decisions unless they impact which Tags come into play. The point is to help the PCs look (and the players feel) like action stars. This stunt calls for a roll with no set difficulty. The more hits, the better the outcome. Ask the players what their degree of success looks like. Use these to gauge the quality of the success: 0 hits: Fall too wide, trip a laser beam, and mark the Hunted condition before smashing onto the airship and getting Injured. 1 hit: Bounce off the upper hull and come to a stop dangling from the airship’s edge; mark Angry, Exhausted, or Impaired (maybe a piece of equipment plummets off the PC’s kit?) until treated. 2 hits: Tumble across the surface of the airship and come to a rolling stop, but otherwise do fine. 3–4 hits: Come to a running stop on the hull within sight of an access hatch. 5+ hits: Land with perfect, cool grace—unseen and silent—right by the access hatch.

Ask the players how they want to reach Dougray’s suite. Do they sneak in? Wear disguises? Drop through the ceiling or cut in through a window? Maybe Dougray steps out of the bathroom, wearing a silk robe, and the PCs are just there. Presume they succeed or make it a single roll to traverse the whole airship and reach Hoefler — whoever rolls best succeeds at getting all the PCs to Dougray. Anyone who rolls fewer than 3 hits gets a Condition along the way but reaches Hoefler’s suite. If you want, Dougray’s got a bodyguard or two in his suite with him (to provide a fight). Each bodyguard requires 3 targeted hits to take out — and quietly is better, lest the airship crew sound an alarm, alert the Technocrats below, escalating everyone to a Hunted or Trapped condition. Any attack that scores at least 2 hits keeps a target from being able to sound the alarm. Dougray can be kept away from the panic button on his keyring or the alarm button on the wall with a stern look. He has other ways to call for help, anyway. Ask the players to show their Conditions in action. What happens if a PC’s already Angry when entering the scene with Dougray, for example? This sequence isn’t about if, it’s about how.

Get Dougray Talking

Dougray talks after the PCs earn 5 total hits to persuade him with targeted rolls, whether that’s by word or deed. Everyone works toward the same total but you should have Dougray address each PC as they roll, so they feel involved in the scene. If the PCs are violent with Dougray, maybe ask something like, “Was your character always this ruthless?” Here’s what Dougray knows. Each hit after the 5th nets another bit of info. Characterize this info to suit 25 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

the PCs’ methods. Dougray might beg for his life or coolly negotiate, depending on the tone they set. 6th hit: “Josine’s backups were recently accessed but only the server logs can say with what login or from where. You’d have to check the mainframe.” 7th: “Josine’s data is why the Technocrats came sniffing around! They want to know what he knew.” 8th: “My good-for-nothing brother and I are selling the company. My half’s going to the Technocrats. He’s still shopping his half around, I think. Let the buyers fight over the data! It’s all just money to me.” 9th: “I don’t care what’s in the backups. Big players like Technocrats and Nanotech want what’s in there and I don’t want trouble with them. I just want to retire — rich.” 10th:”Look, if you swear you won’t hurt me [anymore], I can get you logged in to the mainframe from up here and you can look at the logs yourself. Then you can let yourself out and we never have to see each other again.” Dougray is some combination of ill-informed and a liar — you decide which. If the players set a tone for polite intrigue, play along. If you want them to hate Dougray, have him sound an alarm (maybe with a subdermal panic button) so things get more complicated for the PCs. Dougray’s not a villain, though, just a selfish guy hoping the Technocrats rescue him.

Accessing the Mainframe

Unless the PCs specifically think to tell him not to, Dougray logs the PCs into the mainframe using an emergency account — DHoefler7 — which alerts the Technocrats on the ground. The account is locked out after 15 minutes when the Technocrats start freezing Hoefler’s access. Tell the PCs they got the intel that’s there to get but the jig is up and it’s time to leave before the airship lands amidst the Technocrats.

Complicating Things

At some point, you might want to toss a complication into the mix. Maybe a porter comes to Dougray’s suite to drop off towels or Dougray gets a call on his cell from a blocked-out number. (It’s his Technocrat handler.) If allowed to talk, Dougray works the word incalculable into a sentence — alerting the caller to trouble with a prearranged code. Everyone’s Hunted now.

Make An Exit

Getting off the airship might be as easy as jumping, if the PCs still have the gear they came aboard with, but devising an escape plan is something the players can sink their teeth into here. Success is a matter of dramatic improvisation and two simple guidelines: First, escaping the airship requires a roll for each PC, Difficulty: 4. Escalation: the PC is Hunted or Trapped by the airship crew and/or Technocrat scanners. A player can use all the hits from any roll for their own PC’s escape or to provide another PC an escape, but a single roll’s hits cannot be divided over multiple PCs. Second, each PC then needs a total of 5 accrued hits to escape the area, whether detected or not. Each roll might dramatize a different approach; for example, one PC might fight free of pursuing Technocrats while another attempts to vanish into the hubbub of Mumbai.

Residential Airship Manor +Security Doors, +Soundproofed Walls, +Thrumming Machinery, +Distracted Staff, +Unexpected Adjustment to Pitch/Yaw, +Sturdy Bulkhead, +Handily Placed Tool

MUMBAI • INDIA

Make An Entrance

AT L A N T I C A F R E E C I T Y

Party Hell

Placement: Act 1, Phase 2 Scene Type: Intrigue + Action Synopsis: Get into the guts of the seastead free city of Atlantica by infiltrating the local party scene, then break into the servers on site. Escape via watercraft to a hired submarine waiting outside Atlantica’s detection range. Objectives: • Use the local party to gain access to the rig’s lower levels • Access the server terminal deep inside Atlantica • Escape via watercraft and reach a waiting sub for extraction

INSOLUBLE

T

he free city of Atlantica — a sketchy seastead of trashy hedonists and cheap memory-abusers. The place is a 24-hour party booming in the sticky wreckage of the previous day’s party, crowded with dancers, drinkers, and dreamers high on downloaded copies of other people’s greatest memories. ¶ Underneath it all, in the rusty depths of the oil rig at the heart of the place, is a nest of Hoefler servers belonging to Edgar Hoefler, co-heir to the family fortune. The job: get in there, get Josine’s backed-up data, and escape.

26 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

The Atlantica “free city” seastead was someone’s vision of a new world where a small group of devoted citizens could fashion their own laws and live according to their own beliefs. Then Edgar Hoefler bought it and turned the place into a lawless party haven. Edgar told his father he’d set the place up as a secret file-server installation for secure data storage, and that he did, but Edgar lives there because the place is regulated only by Edgar. He gets a cut of all the liquor, drugs, and intel that comes through the place and in exchange he quietly skims off experiential memories from the Hoefler backups so people can escape their own lives by remembering Himalayan climbs and epic lays lived by other people in other places, other times. The place is a full-time party, now, with people reveling in shifts, always in the wake of someone else’s party. Enter the PCs. The party provides easy access to the seastead with the right cover: forged passports, cold cash, or a famous face. Getting into the party isn’t in doubt. What matters is how stylish the PCs look when they first appear “on screen” here.

High Prices for a Free City

Edgar Hoefler never had his father’s passion for the data-storage business. He just wants to retire someplace away from the world’s annoyances. He thought Atlantica, located somewhere on the eastern edge of the Caribbean, was that place, but as it rusted and became too well known he decided to sell both Atlantica and his share of the company to get himself safely ensconced somewhere posh, like maybe on a glittering space-station estate, under the weather eye of a formidable corporation. Enter Nanotech.

Now Atlantica is a sticky, rusty network of submarine-like corridors with cheap plastic paneling, peeling art, and a kind of graffiti that’s no longer in fashion, all broken up by derelict multi-story machinery spaces transformed into thumping pleasure pits, lined with bars, teeming with backlit racks of exotic liquors and painted with luminescent signatures from parties past. Through the throngs move blacksuited security guards employed by Armingshire, a Nanotech paramilitary subsidiary, protecting the investment while the details of the sale fall into place. Through secure doors, beneath the club vibe, deep in the guts of the rig, next-gen servers and hardware hum and chirp amid solid-state security systems. That is what Nanotech is paying for: hardware brimming with other people’s secrets.

OBSTACLES

This scene is meant to give the players a lot of room to create their own plan of attack — and get themselves into trouble. Remember: they can accomplish a lot without rolling dice. The PCs are all capable and experienced operatives. Adapt the following obstacles to the approach the PCs take to the mission. If, for example, some of the PCs cut their way into the belly of the rig with industrial lasers, that trips the environmental alarms, bypasses some security layers, and might lead to an exciting gunfight in the server room between wetsuited PCs and Armingshire agents. Go with it.

Part of the Party

Coolly become a part of the background noise before slipping away or boldly distract security with glamour or trouble so someone else can slip away. Blend. Difficulty: 2. Escalation: Hunted, Recognized, or Trapped.

Face to Face with Edgar

Edgar sits, languid, on a plush red couch in a bit of sunken flooring in a VIP room. Partygoers hang on his words, hoping for free drinks or sweet hookups with rare experiential pins. Intrigue. Difficulty: 3. Escalation: Angry or Exhausted (perhaps with Edgar’s bullshit) Action. Difficulty: 4. Escalation: A fight with Armingshire thugs looking to eject the PCs overboard. Successful rolls against the apt difficulty get Edgar talking. The most relevant stuff he has to say: • “Parties like this can’t keep happening forever. I’m getting out of the memory game. Getting a good sum for my shares, too.” • “Nanotech’s been in the mainframe to do their due diligence. I imagine the Technocrats have, too, since my idiot brother’s selling his half of the company to them. Better those two keep fighting than either of them get an edge, anyway, I guess.” • “I only know Josine’s name because Nanotech asked about his data. Who is he?”

Handling the Guards

Handling the Armingshire security guards is easier when they’re surprised, harder when they’re organized or have numbers on their side. 30 or 40 guards are stationed at the seastead at one time. The guards in the security office are always ready for action. Difficulty: 2 each, untargeted. Escalation: Injured 27 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

(or worse), plus the guards get their act together and go up to difficulty 3 each, still untargeted. Plus, they can call more guards. Some partygoers might also be ready badasses, eager to fight, if you want.

First Server-Room Security Layer

A biometric lock calls for a retinal scan or voiceprint clearance from someone like Edgar or one his lieutenants. Difficulty: 3. Escalation: Hunted. The first two failed attempts to bypass the lock are harmless; the third brings Armingshire security guards to investigate (see “Handling the Guards”).

Second Server-Room Security Layer

The server room is a climate-controlled environment accessible only through a single human-sized hallway. The duct-work is too small for human passage (by design). Access to the hallway requires an RFID tag. Body heat in the passage without a proper RFID signal activates cameras that feed to the security office. That hallway seals to hold trespassers for interrogation (or worse) and the floor can be opened to drop trespassers 30 feet into the Atlantic below. Difficulty: 4. Escalation: Trapped or Impaired in the hall or in the drink.

In the Server Room

Inside the server room, PCs who get at a terminal automatically discover the intel for this scene. The Hoefler servers take 5 untargeted hits to disable or sabotage, via force or hacking, and might cause Nanotech to cancel their buyout of Edgar’s share in the company (and maybe trigger “Nanotech’s Reprisal”). If a fight breaks out in here, the thugs try to avoid gunplay because errant bullets and damaged servers threaten the memory backups of Hoefler customers. That might not dissuade the PCs, of course.

High Speed on the High Seas

Escaping Atlantica requires two steps: getting free of the rig and shaking pursuing speedboats so the PCs can board their chartered, surfaced stealth sub (or drive vehicles into its open bay) without being tailed. Out on the Atlantic, Armingshire guards (who don’t count toward the 30–40 aboard the rig) patrol in speedboats and fire off automatic weapons with action-movie abandon. The legs of the rig and various yachts and seaplanes anchored nearby provide the setting for this escape chase. Let the players decide how many of what kind of watercraft they want to escape in—speedboats, jetskis, catamaran, whatever—which they can either steal from the seastead or have had ready and waiting beneath the rig. • Get free of the sea-stead: Break portholes or windows, cut through the floor, whatever. Difficulty: 2. Escalation: Pinned down by security (Trapped) or Angry as the plan goes to hell. • Shake pursuit/reach the sub: Either take out the pursuing speedboats (one per PC; Difficulty: 3 each) or outrun them (Difficulty: 5; each escaping PC vehicle requires a separate roll to shake the tails). Once the high-seas action sequence is done, the chartered stealth craft submerges and slips away from Atlantica, which might be smoking in the background.

Renovated Oil Rig Partyscape +Random Party Guest, +Corks Popping, +Swaying Crowd, +Thumping Bass, +Pulsing Lights, +Silvery Mirrored Tray, +Open Porthole, +Ricochet, +Burst Pipe

AT L A N T I C A F R E E C I T Y

Distract. Difficulty: 3. Escalation: Angry (or maybe another PC is Hunted). Alternately, PCs distracting security can give helping dice to PCs trying to access the server room (in which case the helped-out PCs must roll, Difficulty: 3, to avoid detection as they leave the public area of the seastead).

Descent

DEZHOU • CHINA

Placement: Act 2, Phase 3 Scene Type: Stealth + Action Synopsis: Get to the source of Josine’s data in a derelict and subterranean factory complex beneath the city’s solar industrial zone. Learn what you can from the criminal underlord there, called Suzerain, and escape with your lives. Objectives: • Get past (or go through) a local criminal enterprise to locate and identify whoever’s been using Josine’s codes • Escape the scene with the information you can—and alive

STAR WATTAGE

S

omewhere beneath a solar farm in Dezhou, someone used Josine’s data to attempt access to the Hoefler mainframe. To discover who used Josine’s codes, the PCs descend into a subterranean industrial ruin inhabited by a criminal fiefdom. In this lawless underground they confront shadows of revenge from the past. Can they escape with their lives and — just maybe — new clues to Josine’s whereabouts? ¶ This mission plunges the PCs into a grim scene of vengeance and peril, ending when they make their escape into the sunlight above.

28 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Begin inside the enemy complex with the mission already underway. The drama here is about what happens inside—and how the PCs escape. Ask them to describe the method they use to descend into the complex (do they drop through derelict ventilation ducts?) and assume they’re successful. Say something to set up the scene already in progress, like: You’ve dropped through long-cold smokestacks on microfiber rappelling lines, the sky just a distant disc of stars at the top of the chimneys. You’re deep into enemy territory now, surrounded and outnumbered — the enemy just doesn’t know it. Yet.

Underworld Architecture

The subterranean complex is a metallic maze of flimsy ducts and sweating pipes and swaying walkways and defunct machinery broken up by the occasional cluster of glassy offices, all of it crowded with tents and tin shanties that house the Suzerain outfit’s thugs, underground and off the grid. This place supplied power and heat, supporting a factory on the surface, until the company fell in some corporate war and was paved over to make room for the solar-panel field above. The massive shaft below, still stacked with gantries and platforms, has since become a refuge from satellites and aerial drones — a squatter’s safe house and secret lair. This is a miserable place. It reeks of body odor, ozone, and recycled air. The whole place rattles and vibrates with the still-running HVAC units. It has a rep as a place where trespassers get killed and the local police don’t dare to venture. Specific routes taken through the complex don’t matter. Let the players be inventive; tell them moving around down here is like navigating a stack of buried oil rigs or the inside of a running engine.

Details

• Fluorescent bulbs throw flickering checkerboard shadows onto corrugated walls. • What sounds like footsteps is actually a rattling HVAC duct. • Whiffs of ozone flit up from old machinery below. • A buzzing disharmony drones on where metal vibrates on metal. • Wave after wave of artificial warmth comes off some enormous heater deep below. • Faded emergency signage peeks out beneath generations of half-assed graffiti.

Reverse Engineering

When the PCs reach a plastic, clean-room workshop deep in the complex, they find a grim lead in what looks like Josine’s bald, bloody head. Except it’s not Josine—it’s a cutting-edge replica called a biodroid, cut apart and toyed with by Suzerain’s people. His analysts strive to reverse engineer the thing after stealing it during a hit on a Nanotech convoy. They’ve been hacking its memory for a few days and even let it online briefly to see if its logins could get them anywhere — and to see who might come out of the woodwork if they did. Now the PCs are here. The local outfit is run by a former agent of Josine’s called Kyle Singer, once known by the handle Winsome, who was left adrift a decade ago while making a delivery in South Africa. Winsome was caught by La Ciudad outfit thugs looking to move in on Josine’s turf and imprisoned for more than a year before Chinese rivals freed him and took him in. He’s since become lord of his own criminal fiefdom — hence his new handle of Suzerain — and he’s putting all of that on the line to investigate Josine’s disappearance... so he can locate and destroy what’s left of Josine’s old network. That includes the PCs.

The biodroid body is in pieces on tables all over the room; it clearly put out a lot of blood or blood-like fluid during the dismantling. Plugging the Josine head into a power supply doesn’t facilitate much of a conversation—the jaw’s broken, the tongue’s a mess, the eyes just plead and stare—but does allow someone to jack into the head’s memory core, get the scene’s intel, and verify that this thing contains a (somewhat corrupted) bit of data from the Hoefler backups. The head smells like it’s burning while plugged in. To be clear, this kind of tech is brand-damn-new in the world. This is next-gen stuff to the PCs.

Portrayal: Suzerain

Winsome can appear on a monitor in the workshop or in person, whenever you want to introduce him as an obstacle. Don’t protect him; let the PCs decide how Winsome’s story ends by interacting with him in the moment. Tell the players that all of the PCs knew Winsome back when. He was a courier, an up-and-comer, always looking to get in on a sweet mission for Josine, to do more exciting work with the PCs. Show them he’s not like that anymore. Now he’s a bitter, lonely, paranoid man. His hate for the PCs is eclipsed only by his jealousy. “We all disappeared,” he says. “I was never found. If any of you had bothered to look for me. They tortured me for information I didn’t have. Because I couldn’t tell them where Josine went... or what he was really after.” Ask if any of the characters did look for Winsome back when. Let their answers inform your portrayal of Winsome. He wants respect and revenge but can’t have both. Does he want them to leave the head? Does he threaten to rat them out to the Technocrats? Does he sic his people on them? Let it play out. 29 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Ascent

Once the PCs have the intel, they can attempt their escape through the only exit at the top of the factory complex. This might be a running battle, a stealthy exfil op, or a tense walk out (if Suzerain let them go).

OBSTACLES

How many hits it takes to get in and out depends on the obstacles played, not on the actual distance traveled. Some suitable obstacles:

Searching & Pathfinding

Finding a route through the rusty complex isn’t easy (Difficulty 3). Escalation: PCs trip a sensor (Hunted), find the workshop but get locked inside (Trapped), spend too long roaming (Exhausted), or encounter thugs (untargeted Difficulty 2 each).

Wired Patrol

2 or 3 patrolling goons (targeted Difficulty 3 each) are wired for sound—take them all out simultaneously or they’ll radio for help. Escalation: Hunted, more goons show up, or they drop fire doors to leave the PCs Trapped in a section of the complex (until they bust out).

Winsome

Talking to Winsome requires care and suavity, otherwise he sics the whole complex on the PCs. Intimidation = Difficulty 5/4; flattery = Difficulty 4/4; heartfelt sympathy = Difficulty 4/3. Escalation: “You’re going to die like I did,”(i.e., Trapped) or “You can’t take Josine — he’s mine — but you can walk out of here knowing that I’ll put the Technocrats on your trail in an hour” (Hunted). If Winsome faces the PCs directly (Difficulty: 4+3), it’s here or in the “Solar Battleground.”

Run and Gun

Fight free of the industrial zone in a running battle against an endless stream of 2-hit untargeted foes. Hits not spent taking out foes can go toward an escape to the surface (5 accrued hits total needed) but every turn a character doesn’t take out a foe is a chance for... Escalation: Angry, Exhausted, Injured, Dying; or tougher foes arrive (3 untargeted hits each).

Solar Battleground

On the surface, a dawn battle in the solar farm awaits. Either Winsome reneges on his promise to let the PCs go or the PCs caused more trouble on their way out. If nothing else, Winsome’s hold over his people proves so weak that they choose not to let the PCs escape. “Winsome’s weak,” one of them says, “thanks for showing us that.” One or two outfit hitmen per PC (3 targeted hits each) plus a “Fire-Breather” laser-equipped crab-like walker tank (targeted hits: 5/4/3) confront the PCs on a concrete field crowded with articulated solar panels while military UAV drones (2 untargeted hits each) circle above, film everything, and take pot shots at the combatants. Escalation: Laser burns, gashes from broken solar panels, shrapnel from drone blasts, an additional hitman or two appears. End, maybe, with glare off the solar panels filling the frame before fading into the next scene.

Solar Panel Field +Articulated Armature, +Sharp-Edged Solar Panel, +Solar Panel Shard, +Glare, +Live Wire, +Broken Ground, +Rusty Scrap Metal, +Open Pit

DEZHOU • CHINA

Portrayal: The Head

L AG O S • N I G E R I A

Placement: Act 2, Phase 3 Scene Type: Intrigue + Action Synopsis: Meet in a secure highrise with someone who has Josine’s codes and negotiate for information, possibly including Josine’s current whereabouts. Get out with intel. Objectives: • Get to the meeting without alarms. » Get in with your gear, if possible. • Gather intel. • Negotiate a fair price for Josine’s data. » Get out alive.

SKYLINE VIEWS

H

igh up in a secure luxury skyscraper, someone is using Josine’s logins on secure sites — and leaving breadcrumbs in their wake. Who has Josine’s data, where did they get it, and what are they doing with it? ¶ With a bit of social engineering, the PCs have arranged a meeting with this person who claims to have some of Josine’s info from the Hoefler databases and may be willing to bargain. He or she is willing to meet, sans weapons, in a posh skyscraper condo in downtown Lagos. The room: 8008. The terms: “No weapons.” It’s time to get some answers.

30 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

The Tower

Open with the PCs striding into the sleek and shiny lobby of the Lagos Grand Tower — a mixed-use liveand-work high-rise brimming with hanging gardens and wide balconies. The place opened just last year and is teeming with boutiques and restaurants beneath a hundred floors of palatial apartments and suites. That the contact would choose to meet here suggests he or she has expensive tastes and the funds to back them up. Helicopters and VTOLs come and go from rooftop pads. The ground and rooftop lobbies bristle with anti-intrusion devices and weapon detectors. It’s clear, though, that the private bodyguards of the building tenants are allowed to conceal and carry. Getting inside the tower is easy — just sign in. Getting weapons inside requires some ingenuity. Characters can attempt to hide weapons on their person (Difficulty: 5) or they can devise more elaborate approaches like, say, buying a unit in the building. A PC who can’t or won’t take weapons in isn’t Impaired — they just can’t use Tags that require that weapon in hand.

That Face

When the PCs reach room 8008, they’re welcomed into a wide, posh living room by huge dudes in suits the colors of guns, each one of them adorned with kevlar and plainly packing sidearms in shoulder holsters. Whoever the contact is, he or she is well protected. Then the contact emerges from the bedroom. It’s Josine. Sort of. He looks great; hasn’t aged a day. He’s in good spirits and he seems delighted to see the PCs. “You look tired,” he says. “How long has it been?”

Your Portrayal

First, rely on your version of Josine here, modified as follows for this scene: • Be lively, almost jovial • Ask the PCs probing questions; push for details • His body lacks any cybernetics or scars • Make and offer drinks but do not partake When the players have had a chance to play out their exchanges with Josine — and hopefully get suspicious — move on to the twist: “Listen,” Josine says. “I need you to get me out of here. Can you do that for me?” The bodyguards look at each other with confusion on their faces. “I’m sort of a hostage, right? These guys are my captors. So let’s get out of here.” The bodyguards can pull guns whenever you like, but give the PCs the chance to set the tone for this part of the scene first. If they keep things civil and talky, go along with it and share any intel you like. If the PCs escalate to violence, the bodyguards are only too happy to hurt the PCs. The intel can come from Josine’s dying breathes or broken body.

Shoot the Hostage

Once it’s clear that Josine’s going to be trouble here, the bodyguards try to take out Josine and the PCs in that order. Things escalate fast. If Josine can’t catch a bullet during this scene, his handlers can always remotely trigger the self-destruct on him, which burns out his systems and wipes his memory. Josine twists and strains in agony, blood running out of his nose and mouth. He forgets who he is, who the PCs are, why he’s there, as the drive in his head disintegrates. Eventually he’s just an enigmatic manufactured body that Nanotech can track, loaded with intel the PCs might want.

This scene is a great chance for the PCs to load up on intel if they can keep Josine talking and forestall the violence. Once things turn ugly, though, make this scene all about survival.

Walking In

The PCs should know they’re walking into a potential ambush. Tell the players straight: the thugs in the suite with them are armed with guns and move like they’re wired with heightened reflexes. These are serious people. The question is if the PCs can get out without violence — or if they’d rather fight their way to answers. Remind the players that the PCs have lived through ambushes before. Maybe remind them that the moments before an ambush are a fine time to award each other stunt dice?

Parley with the Past

The front part of this scene is all about roleplaying the PCs. Prompt them with questions like: “How much do you give away with your expressions or body language when you see Josine?” and “ What do you want to say? What do you say?” and “ What do you want the guards to think you think?” If the players do manage to negotiate their way out of this scene somehow — unlikely because Nanotech wants them dead and doesn’t care about anyone’s life or property in this scene — that’s great!

Something About A Tortoise

The PCs may try to discern if this Josine is the real Josine just by talking to him. Try to handle this through dialogue if you can. Josine keeps circling back to the same topics, doesn’t remember anything from the past 11 years, and wants the PCs to do the talking. 31 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

If the players insist on making it a roll of the dice, play along. Difficulty: 3. Escalation: Angry? Josine doesn’t freak out under any circumstances but his guards might if they think the PCs are wise to the ruse. They know the PCs are dangerous. They’re ready to shoot people (like this Josine) if they think the PCs won’t talk.

Ambush

When the guards attack, they’ll automatically make Injured any PC who doesn’t go for cover or move to fight back. The PCs should be able to take on the guards even without all their weapons, though, by utilizing the environment and their other Tags. Put two more guards than PCs into the scene. More can burst through adjoining doors or rappel in from a balcony above, if you want. Each guard requires 4 untargeted hits to take out. They carry enough deadly weapons for the PCs to grab guns, knives, telescoping swords and batons, and other gear off them once they’re down. Escalation: Injury or worse, the VTOL gunship arrives early, more guards arrive, or one of them tosses a grenade in the suite that takes out two of the location Tags before they can be used.

Hover, Aim, Fire

When you want to escalate (or when the guards are all taken out), the windows rattle and the furniture shakes in the apartment as a hovering VTOL gunship rises into view beyond the balcony. It carries a hefty machine gun and maybe more suited thugs, if you want. These guys are willing to shoot up the whole apartment to take out the PCs. But they probably get too close, so they can send in more thugs — close enough that people can leap to the VTOL for sure.

Encourage the PCs to be descriptive when finding and taking cover. They may take the VTOL as a sign to get the hell out of there... or they may use it as their escape vehicle. Dodge machine-gun fire: untargeted Difficulty 3. Take out the VTOL crew: Difficulty 4 each. Take out the whole VTOL: Difficulty 5. Escalation: The VTOL backs away from the building to attack from a distance (perhaps with PCs still on board) or the VTOL crashes into the apartment itself when the crew is dead and everyone must make a Difficulty 4 roll to avoid a condition like Trapped or Injured or worse by the wreckage.

Escape the Skyscraper

Escaping the skyscraper can involve wingsuits or a stolen helicopter or the hijacked VTOL or whatever. In general, getting to the ground floor requires no roll but getting past security there requires a total of 10 hits rolled by the PCs before anyone misses a roll. Getting to the roof requires a 4-hit roll to represent hotwiring the elevator or climbing up to the top of the building. Any stunt that involves leaping from the building requires just 3 hits (because no one’s planned a countermeasure to that) but failure can be deadly. Escalation: Hunted, Nanotech reprisal, or injury incurred on the way out of the scene. Close on something like a shot of Josine’s “dead” body, wherever it is, staring at nothing.

L AG O S • N I G E R I A

OBSTACLES

Fabulous Penthouse Suite +TV Wall, +Well-stocked Bar, +Bottle of Fine Scotch, +Stylish Wall Sconce, +Windswept Balcony, +28-Story Drop, +Bulletproof Glass, +Full Modern Kitchen

Details

Placement: Act 2, Phase 3 Scene Type: Action + Intrigue Synopsis: You’ve gotten your hands on someone with Josine’s data in their possession. Keep them talking while you make your escape from the Seattle city core via the privatized highway system. The corporate mercs on your tail won’t let you go easy, so drive fast. Objectives: • Get intel out of your passenger • Escape all pursuers

S E AT T L E • U S A

CALL SHOTGUN

T

hings have already gone to hell. ¶ This scene opens in the midst of a high-speed car chase. The PCs, with a dying Josine biodroid in their custody, find themselves on the run from UAVs, enemy drivers, extraordinaryrendition vehicles, and a Technocracy fighter jet. Hurtling along a privatized, elevated expressway, they must find a way to shake or eliminate the vehicles on their tail and see if it’s possible to call this operation a “rescue” at all.

32 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Open with a few quick details: •A million little cubes of safety glass tumble across the dashboard. •Hot lead slugs hammer against the auto body. •The engine takes a quick breath as the driver changes gears. • A car’s horn changes pitch as you careen past it.

Drivers and Passengers

Zoom out then to reveal the situation: The PCs are in one or more cars speeding along the elevated Free American™ privatized highway system in Seattle, Washington, USA. They’ve just left the canyon of skyscrapers behind them and are gunning it uphill with black luxury cars on their tail. Corporate mercs lean out the windows of those cars, firing dozens of bullets at the PCs’ car(s). In (one of) the car(s) with the PCs, Josine is bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the chest. He should be dead already — it’s a bad wound. Ask the players what kind of car(s) they’re in. They could’ve had cars ready or they could’ve stolen stuff off the street as they made their getaway. It’s largely a cosmetic decision, but tell them fewer vehicles is better, then let them choose and ask who’s driving.

Bleeding Out

This Josine is a biodroid replica made by Nanotech and loaded with memories from the Hoefler drives, meant to lure the PCs somewhere that they could be killed or captured. The PCs sprang the trap and now they’re making their getaway with a Josine shot by his so-called bodyguards. The PCs’ escape has caught a lot of attention and now they’ve got a slew of high-end corporate mercs pursuing them along a highway four stories up.

Josine’s not going to make it. Make that clear. What matters is that he can talk before he dies, revealing the scene’s vital intel before his manufactured body reveals even more: it’s bugged. Partway through the scene, Josine’s body gives off a faint beeping whether he’s still “alive” or not. A quick inspection reveals no cybernetics — the beeping’s coming from inside the body. Truth is, Josine’s biodroid body is trackable by the bad guys. Until the PCs shut down the tracker affixed to the inside of its sternum (Difficulty: 4) or ditch the body, Nanotech thugs will be on them with guns forever. (Tell anyone in a car with Josine to mark the Hunted condition.)

A Glimmer in the Sky

Above this whole chase, a Technocracy fighter jet takes in the scene. Reveal this if a PC takes stock of their environment or searches the sky — the jet is that low. The Technocracy won’t tolerate a lot of corporate warfare in a public place like this, so you can explain any fighter-jet intervention that way. As a guideline, the jet is there to show that the Technocrats are watching... but you can use it to escalate the action or to let the PCs lure it into intervention against their pursuers, too.

OBSTACLES

Start in the middle of things; action is built right into this scene. The trick to this scene is to escalate and escalate without making things tedious. If the crew makes their escape quickly, that’s fine. Play out the final minutes with the Josine replica as a quiet moment before another wave of pursuers come looking for Josine or before closing the scene. Don’t linger here — limited time with the injured biodroid is part of the premise of this scene, anyway.

PCs who are driving should make a roll about it (Difficulty: 2 or 3) every time their turn comes up. As the fictional environment changes, the applicable Tags should change, too, but repetition is fine. What matters is that each roll is a chance for Conditions to come up. Apply Conditions to any apt characters in the driver’s vehicle, not just the driver, as the fiction demands. A passenger might get Angry or Injured, for example. Escalation: Enhance or add vehicles in pursuit (a police or news copter might arrive, for example), raising the total hits needed to escape by 2 hits each time you escalate. Drivers need to avoid gunfire and the like from enemy vehicles, too, to protect themselves and/or their passengers. That takes 2 untargeted hits away from each roll unless the driver’s willing to take a new Condition on one or more PCs, including herself, to try and make a quicker escape. So a driver might say “Yeah, we’ll take the Condition so we can add those 2 hits to the escape rather than avoiding attacks.” Each PC-driven vehicle needs to achieve a total of 15 untargeted hits to escape the scene, before escalation’s figured in. (Adjust that base number up or down for a longer or shorter chase.) Taking out all the bad guys doesn’t end the need for escape rolls; it just keeps the rolls easy (Difficulty: 2). Once the target hits are achieved, the PCs then describe how they vanish under a bridge or ditch the car at an airfield, or whatever they like. The players, in other words, are rolling to keep Conditions off themselves while trying to accrue 15 or more hits to secure their escape. If the fiction works out such that most of the applied Conditions would logically go away when the scene is over, great! That requires clever descriptions on everyone’s parts and is a good thing to reward. 33 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Bloody and Talkative

As Josine bleeds to death, reveal the intel for this scene through him. The PCs can keep Josine talking with medical or technical care, giving them time to get more intel out of him with each successful roll (Difficulty: 4). Josine’s body is in shutdown, though, and cannot be kept “alive” for long. If PCs devise ways to use Josine’s tracking device to their advantage, that’s great. Josine “dies” when you say he does. (“I’m dying, but that’s not on you.”) Have him struggle and then exhale and go limp, have him put his head back and quietly fade away, or have him go out shooting, if you want. He can even take on a Condition to keep someone else from getting it. A bad wound might reveal torn wires loose inside of him, facilitating some of the intel for this scene, like a serial number that leads to Hokkaido. Remember that pacing Josine’s death is part of your job this scene.

Pursuit Vehicles

Shiny black luxury cars come rushing up behind the PCs’ car(s). Start with one for each PC, each carrying a driver and two passengers. They stay on the PCs’ tail through every crazy stunt unless the PCs devote hits to taking out the cars themselves. Each car requires 4 hits to take out; each individual passenger requires 3 untargeted hits. Escalation: The enemies ram the PCs, increasing the driver’s Difficulty to 3 for the next driving roll; the enemies deploy handto-hand missiles that must be avoided (Difficulty 4); another pursuit vehicle shows up.

Drone Fighters

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or “drones” arrive on behalf of the Seattle PD when you decide the

time is right. (It’s when escape looks too easy or you need to escalate off another roll.) Use them to dramatize the escape (they watch the PCs until finally shaken) or give the drones deployable chin guns to make them part of the action. Take one out: 3 untargeted hits. Hack one: 4 targeted hits. Escalation: When the local police need help, they’ll call in the Technocracy fighter jet to close the deal with a precision strike (Difficulty 4 to avoid).

ARVs on Approach

Aerial rendition vehicles (ARVs) were built to pluck suspect vehicles off highways in remote parts of the world and fly the whole package to clandestine interrogation sites. They’re sometimes used for “high-speed arrests” now, too. Each one is a twin-engine VTOL craft with a massive clamping claw slung beneath it that pins car doors shut and then flies off with the vehicle. Avoid getting grabbed with 3 targeted hits. Get loose of a grab: 4 hits. Hijack an unmanned ARV itself: 4 hits (plugged in), 5/3 hits (wireless). Escalation: Trapped. After that, the ARV flies off with the car and a half-hour later drops it off at a secret Technocracy interrogation site. This scene might end with PC vehicles driving into an underground garage or tunnel and you describing how police find the cars empty. Don’t dwell on the details; show the aftermath.

S E AT T L E • U S A

Drive

Free American™ Highway System +Big-Rig Truck, +18-Wheeler, +Random Motorcyclist, +Median Barrier, +Digital Street Sign, +Overhead Power Lines, +Low Tunnel, +Overpass, +Bridge

SYDNEY • AUSTRALIA

A Trace of the Target

Placement: Act 2, Phase 3 Scene Type: Stealth + Intrigue Synopsis: Someone with Josine’s access codes turned up on a yacht called Galataea, harbored here for now. You’re not the only ones on the target, judging by signal traffic in the area. Shadow him without being detected by corp spies or Technocrats and get him to talk. Get away clean, if you can. Objectives: • Isolate the target. • Interrogate the target. • Escape the scene.

FACE TO THE NAME

T

echnocrats are already on the scene, pursuing the subject. The PCs need to get in there and ID the person before the Technocrats get him. If possible, get the subject out of the Technocracy’s surveillance net and question him. It comes down to coordination. ¶ This mission opens with the PCs on the ground in Sydney with eyes on the target. It ends when they escape Technocrat surveillance following their interrogation of the target or escape Technocrat agents after escalating things to outright violence.

34 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

The PCs are able to get a bit of information about the situation on the ground before they go in, thanks to their contacts in the area hacking local civil monitoring systems. Signal traffic in the area makes it clear that someone is using metropolitan CCTVs and civil cameras to conduct an in-depth survey of the area — but who they’re looking for and why is unclear. The place is crawling with visible Technocrats. Undercover agents are probably all around, too. Suffice it to say, the PCs are wading into heavy surveillance when they attempt to locate and question their target. Blending into the motley background at the public wharf may be the best way to get close, question the target, and slip away without raising suspicion. With this much heat in one place, raising an alarm means a massive reprisal.

A Piece of the Man

When the PCs first lay eyes on the target, it’s easy to believe that its someone made up to look like Josine, but with a beard and big aviator sunglasses. The height, the weight, the complexion, the way the target moves — they’re all spot on. In truth, this is a Josine biodroid and memory shard released (and monitored closely) by Nanotech to see who it might lure out. The Technocracy took the bait by putting their own surveillance on the target and waiting to see who else nibbled. Today’s the day the Technocrats stop waiting. If they don’t get a bite today, they intercept — which prompts Nanotech to remotely kill the unit once it’s clear that the Technocrats are too smart to give up intel during an interrogation of something they know isn’t really Josine. The Technocrats just want the biodroid technical specs from the semi-intact specimen, anyway.

Or Else

If the PCs don’t isolate or intercept their target, he proceeds on his route through Sydney’s new harborfront and returns to Galataea. Then Technocrat agents swarm the boat, bring in VTOLs to cover and monitor the action, and try to arrest the target. Things die down after about 70 minutes, when the Technocrats bring the target out in a body bag. If you want to dial up the menace and the stakes, Galataea can explode during the Technocrat raid.

OBSTACLES

As an op that hinges on stealth and information gathering, the biggest threat here is the Technocrats. Some degree of detection may be inevitable but if the surveillance catches on to all the PCs, they’ll have trouble gathering intel. If the PCs go for brute force, they can still get some intel but make the scene brief (and likely anticlimactic). The idea here is that the PCs need to reach and talk to the target without surveillance realizing what’s happening or recording the conversation. This probably calls for some combination of jamming surveillance and subtly making contact with the target. Options abound — say yes, look for the obstacles, and reward ingenuity. Always use the Hunted tag against the PCs in this scene — once a face is in the manhunt’s database, surveillance can pick that person out of a crowd with ease. Thus a character may have to find other ways to support the others once Hunted. Interacting with the target or the surveillance during the mission calls for rolls that fall into a few simple categories. As ever, let the fiction and these guidelines inform your own obstacles to model and describe what your PCs attempt.

At each step on the target’s route (see “Shadowing”), one or more PCs can roll to disrupt surveillance in the area using gadgets, social engineering, physicality, or whatever. Disrupt local surveillance on the memory shard (Difficulty: 3) without being Hunted (Difficulty: 5). Escalation: If the PC appears to be an interference: just Hunted. If the PC appears to be a threat: Impaired, Injured, or worse as Technocracy agents take action to intercept the PC. A PC might disrupt surveillance to allow another character to get near the target.

Give Them A Fresh Target

A PC can escalate things (intentionally or through failed rolls) to distract surveillance away from the target in one part of the target’s route. To do this, a character must take on two conditions as a result of that one action: Hunted and any one other. Maybe a sniper’s dart leaves him Impaired or maybe almost blowing this leg of the op leaves someone Angry? This buys everyone else the chance to make one roll at the target’s present location in the harbor without being Hunted for a miss. (Other conditions can apply on a miss, as usual, if you like.)

Quiet Combat

The PCs may corner and isolate undercover Technocrats or mobile operatives in an attempt to thin the surveillance. Taking one of these operatives out is doable (Difficulty: 3) but hard to keep quiet (Difficulty: 5). If successful, the manhunt HQ just knows that agent “Mobile One” (or whoever) isn’t responding to communications. Success also lowers the Difficulty for interaction by 1 (to a minimum of 2) at one leg of the target’s route. Characters can go on ahead and prepare a leg of the route in this way. Escala35 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

tion: Injured in the fray; Impaired by a tranq dose brought for the target; Hunted by Technocrats who get a glimpse of the attacker in their surveillance net.

Shadowing

The target takes a circuitous route through the harbor front from the yacht, through a market, and back to the yacht, stopping to browse menus, kiosks, and merchant stalls along the way. Tracking or following the target around is easy (Difficulty: 2) but isolating the target for a conversation, initiating a non-suspicious conversation, or otherwise making contact without being Hunted has a Difficulty depending on the target’s leg of the route: • 1st: Spacious harbor front = Difficulty: 5 • 2nd: Wide-open avenue = Difficulty: 4 • 3rd: Crowded pedestrian lane = Difficulty: 3 • 4th: Coffee stand, bad sightlines = Difficulty: 3 • 5th: Narrow back alleyway = Difficulty: 2 • 6th: Wide-open avenue = Difficulty: 4 • 7th: Spacious harbor front = Difficulty: 5 The style of approach (cleverly blending or bodily grabbing the target, for example) is up to the players; the Difficulty is not how hard it is to reach or isolate the target (that’s just Difficulty 2) but whether or not surveillance gets wise to what’s happening and moves to intercept, quite possibly triggering a fight or escape sequence and leading the target to a systemic collapse (see “Interrogation”). Using predictive algorithms or careful social engineering, etc., a PC can roll to predict the target’s path. Each hit reveals the Difficulty of one future leg of the route, in order (so four hits earned on a roll during the third leg would reveal the rest of the route back to the yacht, for example.)

Interrogation

The target is a Josine biodroid with a beard (as real as the rest of it) rigged to record its own actions and then break down if interrogated. Get the memory shard to talk (Difficulty: 2) about what you want it to (Difficulty: 4) without isolating him. If isolated, intel is automatically earned through conversation. Escalation: Hunted, plus the target goes into systemic collapse, wiping its own memory and “dying” after transmitting photos and audio of its conversation to a Nanotech satellite. (Thus characters may be Hunted by both Nanotech and the Technocrats after this scene; good thing a condition can only be marked once.)

Vanish

Escaping this scene requires leaving the operational environment. This can be done subtly, so that the Technocrats don’t pursue (Difficulty: 3) or through some grand escape if the character is chased or, say, Hunted (Difficulty: 5). A chase might occur, but this scene isn’t about that. Assume the PCs make a capable escape and incorporate that in the next recovery scene. Characters may well be Hunted even after the scene is over if their faces are still in Technocrat databases as a result of this operation. Cracking and wiping the database is the job of a recovery scene, not a roll here.

SYDNEY • AUSTRALIA

Surveillance Disruption

Public Wharf and Harbor Front +Distracting Mercantile Barker, +Cooking Fire, +Maze of Hanging Rugs, +Arguing Bystanders, +Random Signal Interference, +Protesters, +A Mistaken Identity, +Birds Take Flight

The Highlands

RURAL VIETNAM

Placement: Act 2, Phase 3 Scene Type: Intrigue + Action Synopsis: Word is a secret meeting between Nanotech engineers and Technocrat ambassadors is happening in rural Vietnam at a place code-named Luminous. Some of Josine’s data is going to change hands, probably for a price. Get a copy of that data and get out alive. Objectives: • Intercept, capture, or eavesdrop on the data exchange. Find out what’s for sale and how the sale came about. • Escape.

LUMINOUS BEINGS

D

eep in the highlands of Vietnam, a forgotten temple stands restored for the clandestine comfort of the elite. Once it was a holy retreat intended for tranquility and reflection. Now it’s a premiere haven for private escapes and serene meetings. It’s a technological marvel, blending ancient stone with delicate glass restorations and exquisite holography to create an ever-changing place called Luminous. ¶ Get in there, spy on the Technocracy’s meeting with Nanotech and find out what they’ve got on Josine that’s so valuable.

36 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

The PCs arrive first. Each PC gets one roll (if necessary) to prepare for the arrival of Nanotech and the Technocrats. Are the PCs in disguise? Do they get a private room to work out of or are they touring the place like potential renters? Are some of them camouflaged in the tall grass for the wide-angle view? The Technocrats arrive at noon in a VTOL carrying five Technocrat agents in identical black suits and a diplomat in a sleek gray two-buttoner. Nanotech arrives just after in two helicopters. One carries half a dozen corporate soldiers, the other carries half a dozen corporate soldiers plus an executive with chromed cybereyes and a bespoke suit. Once on site, they meet in the courtyard at the heart of Luminous.

The Shape of Luminous

Luminous is, roughly speaking, three concentric stone square-shaped “rings” of suites, conference rooms, spas, and café spaces with a courtyard at the center. No path runs straight from the courtyard to the front door; the front door faces south, the courtyard’s entrance faces north, so you’ve got to go through the building clockwise or counterclockwise to get to the courtyard through the corridors. Inside, the place is has a faux-archaic style involving all manner of artistic mash-ups: giant vases, statuary, partitions of live bamboo, bulletproof glass roofs, colorful banners, distressed tapestries, etc. Luminous security is made up of cameras, heat sensors, and live-in guards of reasonable skill, armed with pistols. Assume about two dozen guards on site, two-thirds on duty at once.

Breakthrough Holography

Luminous blends ancient stone, new glass, and cutting-edge holography into a single beautiful environment. That banner blowing in the still air? A hologram. That wall of gold-inlaid red wood? A façade of light projected around a thin layer of soundproofed glass. This wall’s nothing but light except for the three-feet of stone at the base; that wall’s solid. Without a touch, without the feeling of a breeze through the light, it’s almost impossible to know what’s solid and what’s image. Don’t fret the specific layout of the place beyond what’s established above. Either scratch out a map as you go, based on the questions you need to answer for your version of the tale, or skip the map and let the action flow using just the big landmarks and making up the rest.

An Old-Fashioned Double-Cross

If the PCs don’t interfere, the Technocrat agents and the Nanotech soldiers position themselves throughout Luminous, for security’s sake. The diplomat (plus an agent) meet the executive (plus the tech and two soldiers) in the courtyard. The diplomat’s called Federigo. The executive’s named Ellen Branch. The Technocrat and the executive each set tablets on the table and begin a near-field info-swap. The Technocrat is sending data to the executive. “Nice weather,” says Federigo. “Where I go, the weather’s always nice,” Branch says. Then the Nanotech soldiers gun down the Technocrat agent standing guard. Federigo smiles. “Well done. Shall we?” Branch gestures toward Federigo and her soldiers shoot him, too.

FUNDING FOR THIS SCENE PROVIDED BY JOHN HARPER

Chaos. Once Nanotech springs its trap, gunfights between Technocrat agents and corporate soldiers break out throughout Luminous. Nanotech’s soldiers shoot anyone they have to as they escort Branch and the data back to the helicopters. The PCs are the wild cards. They get to decide how to meddle in this affair. They might get intel from the tablets, via signal interception, from a dying Federigo, or by other means. They might get embroiled in the gunfight, they might manage to stay out of it. Let it play out.

Putting on a Face

If the PCs pretend to be people they’re not, maybe get a suite at Luminous and prep the area for their mission, call for a roll (Difficulty: 3) to pull off the ruse. Then let them make rolls in advance for things like signal interception or otherwise hacking or bugging the place for serious eavesdropping. Don’t worry about specifics; let them bug the whole place.

Signal Interception

Eavesdropping or signal interception requires a PC to get close enough to pick up the encrypted shortrange signal between the tablets. A character might aim a signal cutter at close range or plant an interceptor bug in the courtyard before the meet — and either might be detected. A roll can be made before or during the meet (Difficult: 4) that doesn’t get resolved until during the meet when the PC maybe watches his bug get discovered and destroyed. Escalation: Hunted (“Someone’s spying on us!”), Trapped (“Lock down the building.”), or they cut the signal and Branch just takes Federigo’s tablet. An intercepted signal doesn’t prevent transmission, so Branch still gets the data from Federigo. 37 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Branch takes both tablets with her at the end of the meet. Getting the tablets might be the best way to get the intel.

Physical Grab

Going after the actual tablets requires taking out the Nanotech soldiers who escort Branch (Difficulty: 3 each) and then getting one tablet (Difficulty: 4) or both (Difficulty: 5) away from her. Escalation: Injured, Angry, or Branch threatens to wipe the data with an EMP that’ll leave characters Impaired or Malfunctioning.

Contact the Asset

It takes remarkable medical care (Difficulty: 4) to keep Federigo from dying immediately. Every hit on the roll to keep him alive lets him answer one question before he dies, possibly alleviating the need for the tablet(s). Escalation: Federigo dies.

Hot Lead and Hologram Walls

Luminous is a dangerous place for a gunfight. Nanotech and the Technocrats don’t seem to care. They try to drop anyone who poses an apparent threat to their own side in the combat. Outnumbered 2-to-1, the agents are in trouble but they’re not doomed; Technocrat agents are serious business (Difficulty: untargeted 5). The Nanotech troops are less so: (Difficulty: 3). Escalation: Holograms don’t block bullets. Every missed roll in Luminous that logically can should put a Condition on another PC as stray bullets anger, injure, or otherwise mess with allies. The best way to trump this effect is to fight without guns. Make the action hectic in Luminous. Shattering glass, pixelating walls, bamboo leaves everywhere, vases exploding. Kill off agents and soldiers as you like to show that both sides mean business.

Escape with the Prize

Branch reaches her helicopter and escapes with the tablet in the unlikely event that the PCs just let her do that or the second time action moves around the table without someone trying to thwart her. Then she gets on the helicopter... starts flying away... and gets taken out by a missile from a circling Technocracy fighter jet. (It was sent to monitor Federigo for just this purpose.) The jet makes a low flyby over Luminous, if you want, to underline the point. Maybe it takes out the other helicopter then, too. The explosion takes out the tablets and their data so that no one gets it. That same fighter jet can make it tricky to fly out of this scene — or it can suspiciously leave the area as soon as the Nanotech helicopters are down. Any PC who makes it from Luminous, through the tall grass, to the jungle (Difficulty: 3) can escape the scene on the ground. If everyone’s taken out, this roll isn’t necessary. Escalation: Pinned down (Trapped) by gunfire; Hunted by telemetry gathered by Luminous’ security systems; Injured during the sprint to the treeline. End this scene, maybe, by describing the PCs’ escape into the jungle as Luminous’ holograms flicker and die, leaving the place smoking in their wake. Or maybe smash cut to a recovered tablet being data-mined in the next recovery scene.

RURAL VIETNAM

OBSTACLES

Hologram-Embellished Stone Temple +Flickering Hologram, +Tall Grasses, +Flapping Banner, +Hulking Statue, +Crossfire, +Holographic “Wall,” +Loose Stones, +Modern Security System, +Fireflies

BUENOS AIRES•ARGENTINA

Too Many Secrets

Placement: Act 2, Phase 3 Scene Type: Intrigue + Stealth Synopsis: Important Technocrats and Nanotech execs are mingling at a museum gala. Get close to them, find out what they know, and get out without raising a ruckus. Objectives: • Access the soiree using cover identities and get data from the mouths or devices of Technocrats and execs on site • Escape the scene without alerting corporate or Technocratic agents to your plans or identities

ENEMY SOIREE

S

ocial functions like these are the main points of contact between Technocrats and megacorp agents. This is the PCs’ chance to eavesdrop on these powerful people and maybe make them talk about Josine. It would be rude to raise hell at such an occasion and the PCs can take advantage of that. ¶ Yet it seems the Technocracy is expecting espionage of some kind: they have agents throughout the event looking to gather intel from the Nanotech execs on site. Can the PCs get informed without leaking that knowledge to Technocrats?

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Elegant Intrigue and Polite Lies

Nanotech and the Technocracy know they’re in a kind of war with each other to control the future. And they know all warfare is based on deception. They come to these events to portray themselves to the public and to each other — to obfuscate their spite. Each side knows the other is human, too human, and susceptible to wine and guile, liquor and lust. These are places where pressure’s applied. It all goes down in sight of the public so the stakes are high... and so that the meaner, uglier, underground factors can’t come into play. Enter the PCs. Each one to enter the gala must be dressed for occasion. Ask each player to describe their character’s finery and how they enter the scene. Do they come in as a couple with a forged invitation? Has someone conspired to be the plusone of local celebrity? Has someone infiltrated the catering crew? No rolls are necessary for this step. Let the PCs’ expertise and the players’ ingenuity carry the moment. Remind everyone that this is an apt moment to award each other stunt dice. Champagne comes in crystal flutes. Bartenders pour Japanese single-malts neat. Live musicians with amped and synchronized reflexes play at the verge of a gleaming dance floor. Pieces of pyramids frame the doorways. Precious artifacts from all the Americas stand in climate-controlled cages of sensitive light. Plates of food sculpted into flowers come carried by lovely men and women in matching tuxes. Everything is beautiful, everything is precious, everything is wired.

As seen from a monitoring position on a nearby roof, in an observation van, or in a roving car packed with eavesdropping gear, the museum appears as a blinding Venn diagram of overlapping signal jammers and interference, most of it imported by Nanotech and the Technocrats, pulsing in time with onsite generators. A surveillance and eavesdropping nightmare. Each guest within the party would seem to be on their own inside the museum. Instead of using this to shut down PCs who choose to work surveillance (to stay in the proverbial van), this gives them something to do. To monitor or interact with allies inside the museum, they must roll.

OBSTACLES

This scene’s about finesse, class, and guile. The challenge for the players should be in assembling dice pools that aren’t about grandiose martial arts. Stunts here might hinge on dialogue, on wardrobe, on savoir faire — and on the subtle stealth of the overseers in the van outside. Getting NPCs to talk here may be surprisingly easy; this scene is a good way to get intel to the PCs. This scene’s all about intel and appearances. The question is how it all gets dramatized. How does an Angry character manifest that condition here? What does it look like if a character gets Trapped in a polite conversation with someone they can’t stand? What dice pool do they roll to get rid of that condition? The antagonists want to keep everything civil here but Nanotech and the Technocracy have long memories and strong reflexes — so you may have reprisal scenes to play out after this.

FUNDING FOR THIS SCENE PROVIDED BY DAVID GALLO

Putting a data tap on someone’s device (Difficulty: 4) without being spotted (Difficulty: 5) requires one gadget to get within 3 inches of the gadget to be tapped. Fabric and clothing don’t matter here. The roll can be made by whatever PC prepared the tap, not just the PC who’s actually getting close to the gadget being ransacked. E.g., if Emily gets one of Tank’s gadgets near a Technocrat’s phone, either Emily or Tank can make the roll to get data (and thus intel) out of that phone. Escalation: Hunted by suspicious foes, Trapped by bodyguards, Angry it didn’t work, Impaired by a malfunctioning gadget.

Penetrate the Jamming Spheres

The museum’s encrypted internal monitoring is on a frequency free of jamming but everyone with a museum earpiece can hear what happens on that frequency. Eavesdropping on those communications (Difficulty: 4) or cutting through the jamming (Difficulty: 5) on other frequencies allows temporary monitoring and even communication with people inside the party. Every hit allows someone outside the party to monitor, help, or make one roll that effects the inside of the party. So, if Tank’s in the van and she gets 7 hits to cut through the jamming sphere, the next seven rolls are hers to help with or make on someone’s behalf, if the fiction makes sense. (Maybe Tank can google a name Alex overhears inside, for example.) If she chooses not to help or participate on a roll, it still counts against her total. Escalation: Hunted by guards who detect the data leak, Trapped in the van by suspicious guards, Impaired by redoubled jamming efforts, Angry it didn’t work.

39 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Get a Nanotech Exec Talking

Getting a Nanotech exec to reveal intel (Difficulty: 4) without appreciating what he’s done (Difficulty: 5) might require wine, distractions, or other forms of suasion. Once an exec realizes he’s shared something valuable, he gets near bodyguards and stays there the rest of the night. Once three such execs are thus castled, they convene and share their suspicions about anyone pumping them for intel. Escalation: Trapped by a nosy conversationalist, Impaired by an enhanced jammer activated by the target, Angry with Nanotech arrogance, etc.

Get a Technocrat Talking

Technocrats are more difficult to get to share intel (Difficulty: 5) but they don’t panic the same way when they do. Once a Technocrat has shared intel, she turns the tables and asks questions back, requiring the PC to make a roll (Difficulty: 4) to avoid revealing something about themselves, even accidentally. (“Your accent... where did you pick it up?”) Escalation: Hunted by a suspicious Technocrat, Trapped by agents at the door, Impaired by a microinterference emitter on your person, etc.

Stabbing and Stashing

If things take a turn toward action rather than intrigue and stealth, PCs can salvage the situation with a roll to forestall a condition like Hunted or Trapped for a number of turns equal to their hits on a roll to do so.

Elegant Museum Gala +Giant Stone Head, +Priceless Vase, +Champagne Flute, +Murmuring Crowd, +Swelling Music, +Dance Floor, +Wine, +Captivating Portrait, +Dimly Lit Gallery

Maybe they hide a drugged body in a dimly lit gallery or perhaps they leave bodyguards thinking someone’s making out in the bathroom. Eventually, the ruse is revealed and the condition applied. By then, maybe the PC has fled the scene or the player has concocted a new strategy to get one or two more bites of intel?

Cutting In

If the scene turns into outright action, here’s the numbers you need to know: • Museum guard = 2 untargeted hits • Hired security = 3 untargeted hits • Nanotech exec = 3 hits • Nanotech guard = 4 untargeted hits • Technocrat emissary = 4 hits • Technocrat agent = 5 hits The guest list sports 150 names, each with one or more guests in tow, plus caterers. The hired security has guns, everyone else was disarmed at the door... so Nanotech and the Technocrats brought guards and agents trained in martial arts. An elegant ballet of battle through the gallery might make a fine finale here. If a grand escape is in order, assume it’s possible (Difficulty: 5) for anyone who has no Trapped condition marked (Difficulty: 4 to shed that condition). Maybe this is why someone stayed in the van was to make the roll to pull up, pick up the partygoers, and escape into the city with stunt driving? Escalation: Now the Injury conditions come into play again. All that said, don’t force an action finale to this scene. They can stride out with their gift bags and gathered intel right into a recovery scene.

BUENOS AIRES•ARGENTINA

Ransack A Device

Dark Complex

H O K K A I D O • J A PA N

Placement: Act 2, Phase 4 Scene Type: Action + Stealth Synopsis: Intel points to a cuttingedge Nanotech biotechnology factory in Hokkaido. Sneak in there, make the place less secret. Ruin it, maybe. Take the fight to them. Objectives: • Gather Intel • Ruin the place

NINJA FACTORY

N

anotech has a secret development facility running in Hokkaido. The PCs set out to make it less secret, maybe destroy it. ¶ This is where Nanotech builds its biodroids — and not just the familiar model. Open deep inside the factory complex. The PCs have taken the facility. Getting out? Alive? Takes steel and nerves. The place is crawling with cybernetic assassins manufactured there from breakthrough biotech and trained on the bought and stolen memories of top-tier street samurai like them. This is where Nanotech thinks it finally gets revenge.

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The factory is a nameless compound on a wooded plateau. It’s hidden from satellites by natural cover and layers of black-glass signal-interrupting slabs that give the place the look of a low Japanese castle, its image flattened in Photoshop. The whole place is sticky with sap and dusted with fallen needles from the trees. A new city of prefab corporate housing glows in the distance. The only signs marking the place say “Keep Out” in a list of languages. Each sports scanner codes — shiny black on matte black — indicating the place is property of Armingshire, Inc., a subsidiary of Nanotech. Laser fencing, heat sensors, spider cameras; the whole compound says “go away.” More than that, the place appears to be finely tuned for long stretches of automation, from loading and unloading whatever it is they manufacture to security systems. A skeleton crew of memory-blocked Armingshire soldiers patrols and oversees the site.

In the Heart

Start in the heart of the compound, with the PCs making their entrance into the main factory building at the center of it all. Each PC pays a simple price to be here: Have each player mark one condition of their choosing. Ask the player to briefly describe how their condition was acquired on the way into the factory compound. Conditions might have been acquired on the grounds or during prep for the mission (if, say, Emily was Recognized by a local contact while acquiring stealth suits for everyone). Begin with the PCs entering the factory floor. Do they drop in from above? Cut or blast a hole in a wall? Climb out of vents in the floor? It’s up to them. Overlooking the factory floor is a glass-walled computer lab that runs the site.

Revelation

Between the PCs and the computer lab is a revelation: Nanotech has successfully expanded into the Uncanny Valley. The factory floor is an automated assembly plant for the creation of biodroid bodies. Each one is a mix of vat-grown or artificial organs and alloy skeletons, running off of organic brains netted with silicon fibers and packed tight with redundant veins and wiring. The factory here is stocked with dozens of unfinished cyborgs with installed cybereyes but blank faces. No noses, featureless mouths, just holes and slits in a fine membrane representing flesh and hair to be added later. The place is asleep. No biodroids are being built tonight. Eerie calm. Exploring the facility yields other doses of vital intel (see the intel section). Cables running from the computer lab above to robotic arms on the factory floor show where memories get installed. Reaching the computer lab or interacting with the factory’s machines or products triggers the first true obstacle in the scene, however: the ninja. Hidden throughout the factory and computer lab, amid the shadows and steel struts, the robot arms and the unfinished biodroids, lurk prefab biodroid assassins programmed to kill intruders — intruders they have been waiting for.

OBSTACLES

This scene is meant to be a brutal fight against relentless foes — a fight that can be outsmarted. The ninja have no fear, no doubt, no remorse. They’re tough. All the while, as they hunt and try to slay the PCs with blades and bullets, the cold eyes of automated security transmit all of it back into the biodroids’ master control program for real-time training.

The manufactured biodroid warriors stalking the factory complex sport reinforced alloy skeletons wrapped in a tough polymer hide dressed in colorchanging stealth suits, round goggles, and masks. They’re all identically dressed and designed. No noses, sealed mouths, next-gen cybereyes. Each one is loaded with training files cultivated from dozens of Nanotech soldiers and hired mercenaries who sold some of their knowhow to the megacorp. PCs with martial-arts Tags and experience recognize a mix of forms and styles in the assassins’ movements and methodology. They transition from Krav Maga to karate to Muay Thai with fluid grace, aiming to break the PCs down to a point of surrender, so their memories can be downloaded and ransacked by the company. Each is armed with a blockish, suppressed pistol, a punch dagger, and a curved micro-edged short sword with finger loops (like brass knuckles) rather than a traditional grip. They do not breathe. They bleed only a grainy oil or a slick, clear fluid, depending on the injury. Each individual foe requires massive trauma to take out, and even then they tend to fight on as they’re able (Difficulty: untargeted 5+3). The PCs should start off by facing one assassin per PC. Slay one and two more appear, even off the assembly line if necessary. The trick is for the PCs to control how quickly the foes fall so the PCs don’t get overwhelmed. Winning this fight requires either ingenuity in the computer lab above or a big idea. Escalation: First Injure, then mark a non-Injury condition or two. Tell players they can mark conditions on their PCs to protect someone else. A PC that’s Hunted or Trapped can keep foes focused on him, dodging attacks (Difficulty: 4) to stay alive. 41 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Robot Ninja Fighting Style

A few things you can do to describe this fight in great detail: • Copy the description of a PC’s move to show the biodroids are learning their ways. (It moves just like you did, the same poise and bearing, leveling your own style against you.) • Use weapons to pin PCs and mark the Trapped condition. In a flat, robot voice the ninja speaks: “Tell us where Josine is.” • The biodroid rolls out of a wound that would kill or disfigure a living person, a single drop of oil beaded on its cut throat, a scar across its armored eyes, whatever.

Digital Strike

A PC who gets into the computer lab above the factory floor (smashing through the glass works) can access Nanotech systems by cutting through the local security (Difficulty: 5/4/4). Doing so gains the PC intel for the scene (which can be handily downloaded to flash memory if they don’t want to wait around for exposition while their cohorts get cut to pieces) as well as access to the biodroid’s master control program. This tells the PC that a stockpile of these biodroids waits underneath the factory ready to emerge, a few at a time, to slay the PCs. Dozens of them are down there — a loaded magazine of artificial ninja. It’ll take more than gall and might to take them out. Escalation: The PC isn’t just fighting against static security, she is also battling Nanotech IT operatives attempting to thwart her efforts from afar. Opponents can Impair her network access or leave her Trapped in a sub-system, for example. Alternately, each missed roll attracts one of the already-fighting ninja, who targets the hacker on his/her next turn.

Master Control Program

With access to the biodroid’s master control program, a PC can give orders to those still lined up below the factory floor, waiting to come forth and fight. The PC can put them to sleep, bring them out to fight their siblings, wipe their training, etc. (Each is primed with a remote kill switch that Nanotech uses to shut them down via satellite if they leave the compound without authorization, though.)

A Big Idea

Your players may concoct a big idea to clear the whole place out of biodroids in one move. Good! They deserve a big escape. The big idea here depends more on the fiction than the dice — the players need to come up with something that they believe is sufficient to close out the scene. Ask questions to help them hone in and break down the big idea into a number of obstacles equal to each PC still standing, so that everyone gets a chance to help out. (Err on the side of too few rolls rather than too many.) Make the Difficulty for each roll about 4 (and you can punch it up by using a condition against each PC or lower it to 3 to represent an easier action). Maybe the PCs are pursued out by 50 assassins. Maybe the PCs walk away in slow-motion while the factory burns. Close on a small detail like the flash drive or cinders rising toward stars.

H O K K A I D O • J A PA N

Faceless Foes

Secure Next-Gen Factory Building +Razor-sharp Assembly Tools, +Spinning Fan, +Cutting Laser, +Decorative Bamboo, +Rack of Cyberlimbs, +Huge Flatscreen, +Liquid Coolant, +Jet of Steam & Sparks

Renaissance

Placement: Act 2, Phase 4 Scene Type: Intrigue + Stealth Synopsis: Intel points to a Technocracy signal-intercept operation based in a manor in this medieval hill-town. Go and get some answers about the operation you’re mixed up in now. Find out the truth. Objectives: • Contact the Technocracy case agent • Get intel • Exfiltrate

P E R U G I A • I T A LY

EX URBIS AD ASTRA

I

t’s time to reach out to the Technocrats and see what they know. Since you’re reaching out, you might as well put a hand around their throat. ¶ Threat analysis and signal intercepts suggest a suitable site for contact: a Technocracy consulate in an urban villa in Perugia, Italy. Quietly get inside the Technocrat manor there and put pressure on someone until they talk. What’s revealed could change the future for everyone. It all happens against the backdrop of a lovely nighttime festival in a picturesque town.

42 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Perugia is an intersection of tradition and technology. Tonight, its people celebrate a centuries-old festival with wine, liquor, local foods, traditional dances, and old-fashioned music and it all happens around strings of LEDs, holographic statuary, and antique art projected on ancient walls. It’s a night of festive revelry on the streets of Perugia.

On the Inside

Open this scene inside the rustic stone passages of the Technocracy consulate, close on the PCs who are already inside. Ask the players what their characters look like in this scene. Did they come in wearing infiltration gear, everyday clothes, or dressed for a social engagement? Are they skulking or strolling or striding in slow-motion past tapestries and crossed swords? Build things up here as they move through the villa — try a little repetition to play for tension: The guards who tried to stop you lay unconscious behind you. Each room you pass looks warm, inviting, empty. Posh parlor? No one there. Shining modern kitchen? No one there. Hardwood dining hall? Not a soul. But up ahead, in a round room deep in the villa’s stony core, where fiber-optic cables converge from every corridor, someone’s typing. Try to play the entrance here for a reveal. If the PCs want to make an action-packed entrance, remind them it’s probably not necessary — they’ve got the drop on whoever’s inside that round room. You must decide how to play the entrance, though. The Technocrat inside is a character you want them to take seriously, play a dramatic scene with, so the right foot might be to show the PCs that she is a reasonable person, not a showoff or an asshole.

The round room is part of a medieval tower, packed with monitors, servers, relays, and modems from its polished stone floor to its arched timber ceiling. Definitely the right gear for a signal-monitoring case agent — right gear for tracking people. Below a window on the far side of the room, Perugia’s nighttime revelry carries on. The room’s sole inhabitant is a woman in a smartlooking battleship-gray suit. She looks familiar.

Counteragent

Here the PCs meet Cornelia Wolcott (aka Carolyn Killebrew), who one or more PCs recognize even if she hasn’t appeared “on screen” before now. As explained in the intel section, Cornelia is a Technocracy agent assigned to one of the PCs to gather intelligence on Josine and his history. Now the PCs learn the truth. Agent Cornelia Wolcott is certainly the same woman the PC(s) knew before but her Technocrat suit and tie and coifed flapper-like hair give her a weirdly anachronistic vibe. Still, she could wear that suit on a magazine cover, she look so comfortable in it. Agent Wolcott is cooperative to a point. “My biometrics are constantly monitored,” she reveals. “If I let my hear rate rise or if my vitals go dark, things get worse for everyone. Can we talk?” Cornelia reveals any intel necessary to help the PCs (and the players) patch together the truth about the Technocracy/Nanotech battles going on. She is as quick or languid or measured as you like. She knows the PCs are dangerous but she’s no coward and she’s not afraid to die for the Technocracy. She’s also not willing to bend some rules if it means helping Josine, who she worked with as a Technocrat and has come to admire even more over the years as

OBSTACLES

Getting out of the Perugia consulate is only worth playing out the action sequence for the escape if the players clearly want it. Cornelia can cover their escape, if you want to underline her helpfulness; she can deactivate the consulate’s tracking suites so the agents will have to follow the PCs using traditional tactics. She happily offers this in exchange for her life, if the PCs are especially cold-blooded.

Espionage

PCs can get additional intelligence out of Cornelia’s computer lab by bugging or actively meddling with any of the machines present. They’re tied into the Technocracy’s signal intercept system for the Mediterranean and western Europe. This isn’t immediately useful but a PC can use Cornelia’s logins (they’ll expire and reset passwords in a few hours) to access Technocrat surveillance satellites and minor communications. (The lab is meant for signal parsing, not for issuing orders.) Still, this might be a handy way for a PC to erase some trails, mislead pursuers, or otherwise take action. 43 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Short version: PCs can use these computers to verify Cornelia’s story, wipe out any lingering Hunted condition (Difficulty: 4), and otherwise erase Technocracy files on them where Cornelia has write access. After all this time on their case, that’s quite a lot of files. This is a chance to delete their records in preparation for a big new move, making it harder for the Technocrats to see them coming.

Exfiltrate

Getting out of the Technocracy manor (Difficulty: 4) is automatic with Cornelia’s help. The PCs can stride back out into the celebration or climb out a window onto Perugia rooftops or otherwise take the exit they prefer. Technocrats are en route, though, coming in VTOL craft and shiny sedans. To play this without a chase scene, describe Technocrats in black suits piling out of sedans and landing their VTOLs on the roof. They confront Cornelia at the manor’s door and she shrugs. Pull back — this is all visible through a PC’s binoculars or cybereyes. If she’s bugged or otherwise miked, the PCs can hear her say, “They’re gone. No telling where they show up next.” A Technocrat in a black suit watches her get on the VTOL and fly away.

Escape

If you want the escape sequence, it’s a chase across red-tiled rooftops, through winding streets, through crowds of revelers and displays of medieval art rendered in holography. Each PC requires a total of 10 hits to escape, but the Difficulty’s 5, so every roll less than 5 doesn’t count toward the escape. That Difficulty drops to 4 if Cornelia’s helping them escape (and make sure the players know that) as she transmits little warnings to each PC on their first roll

(“They’re coming up on your left,” she says, or, “Make the next left!”). PCs can also aid each other by sharing any hits in excess of the Difficulty with another PC. So, if Yoshi rolls 7 hits on a Difficulty 4 roll, he can use all 7 or divide the 3 over and above the Difficulty between, say, Utseo and Alex, to help them out. Yoshi’s player should describe what that help looks like. PCs can attempt to blend into the crowd, split up and flee, board a waiting stealth helo, or whatever else makes sense in the fiction you all have built up by this point. Maybe they have a contact waiting who’s been established in a previous scene? This is a great place to reincorporate earlier escape details. Once every player’s made their first roll (successful or not), Cornelia says, “Good luck, I’ve got to go,” and offers no more verbal assistance. The Difficulty stays 4 for the rest of the sequence, though, to model the lead the PCs have over the Technocrats. Once a PC has their 10 hits, they can stay in the chase to help others and then blend, vanish, or flee whenever they want. Escaped PCs an even reenter the scene to help out other PCs, though they need a roll (Difficulty: 4 or 5) to escape again. Escalation: Trapped in a cul-de-sac or tower; Angry over the intel gathered; Impaired by blinding hologram light or booming fireworks; Injured by Technocrat agents.

Nighttime Celebration +Live Music, +Lively Dancers, +Banners, +Sudden Applause, +Strings of Lights, +Smiling Street Vendor, +Fireworks, +Laser-light Show, +Peal of Church Bells

P E R U G I A • I T A LY

she studied his work and the company he kept. Cornelia is not the enemy. She reminds the PCs of this — she may have helped them out earlier in this story. This conversation with Cornelia, whether it happens at gunpoint, through bloody teeth, or quietly whispered under the noise of the celebration in the streets outside, is the real centerpiece of this scene. Don’t rush it, don’t drag it out. It’s all about the information. Let the PCs set the tone again. When things are on the verge of played out, she ‘fesses up again: “I thought you were going to kill me. My heart rate’s probably alerted agents by now. We should get you out of here.”

Mood and Motive

N A N OT E C H R E P R I S A L

Placement: Interrupt Scene Type: Varies Synopsis: Nanotech’s minions and mercenaries have found you and they don’t care if they get you alive or dead. Objectives: • Repel, outwit, or escape reprisal

TITAN OF INDUSTRY

N

anotech is a titan — an angry, petty titan that likes to get its way. Now it’s coming for the PCs. Just like old times. ¶ Nanotech doesn’t negotiate with criminals and hostile agents. They send violent reprisal, bent on shutting the PCs down for good. ¶ Of course, they tried this years ago and the PCs are still standing.

44 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Nanotech is a massive conglomerate, a zaibatsu empire with a long-term goal of “benefiting key markets through aggressive innovation.” It’s not that Nanotech thinks they should have a monopoly on any particular industry, it’s just that they don’t believe they’ve ever met a worthy competitor. They rig the playing field and then lament the inability of other companies to play at their level of sophistication (or trickery) and commitment (or ruthlessness). They decide what’s fair play as they make their moves and blame anyone who can’t keep up. To Nanotech’s executives and officers, that’s what a meritocracy is. The PCs, then, are dangerous variables with no appreciation for how their reckless actions destabilize markets and undermine the robust economic forces of megacorporate “interactions” that make up a healthy global environment. The PCs can be squashed (a great short-term solution in the company’s 100-year plan) or they can be profited from (a more difficult and potentially worthy endeavor) but squashing them is a safer move, even if it gets people killed in the short term.

Who

Nanotech employs mercenaries, corporate soldiers from a variety of subsidiaries like Armingshire, and freelance assassins. Foes might be black-clad specops mercs, drab Nanotech soldiers with gas masks and compact SMGs, or up-and-coming hitmen and hitwomen eager to cut their teeth on notorious free agents. Nanotech prefers to overwhelm with cheap firepower when possible.

Where

Nanotech’s reprisals focus on safe houses and nested PCs, but you can remix several of these into mobile raids on private yachts and the like. The answer to the question, “How did they find us?” is inside conditions like Hunted, Revealed, Recognized, and even Impaired or Injured. It’s a tough and sordid world, full of little betrayals. Maybe someone sold the PCs out. Maybe someone on the street called in a tip to their corporate masters. Nanotech may just be systematically searching safe houses they pretended not to know about or relying on complex predictive algorithms to track PCs out of previous scenes and strike before they can recover.

Selecting the Play

Don’t rely on Nanotech’s ambitions and spite when selecting a reprisal scene. Instead, play a scene that adds variety to your story. If the characters haven’t been able to test their stealth or intrigue chops, give them a reprisal that lets them do that. The megacorp keeps them guessing. Remember to use reprisals to build up — tension, rapport, appeal, menace — not to tear down.

OBSTACLES

You might be able to play two reprisals at once to maximize the tension and appeal for multiple players. Maybe a Nanotech rep approaches one PC on the street while Armingshire troops storm the safe house up the block, for example. These short-form obstacles list the Difficulty for various sample actions that might come up. Use these as guides to set the Difficulty for other actions.

FUNDING FOR THIS SCENE PROVIDED BY ZACHARY NORTH

They’re here—Nanotech wants to take you in for what you did (wherever) and they’ve brought a damn Special Weapons team. This safe house is blown. Get out of there! Obstacles: Fight a corp trooper: untargeted 3. Run a gauntlet of troopers without getting Trapped or Injured: 4. Rooftop chase: untargeted 3 (three times). Intimidate trooper team to buy time: 3. Negotiate to buy time: 2. Shed the Hunted condition through trickery or dumb luck: untargeted 5. Escalation: Call in more SWAT officers. Get into cars and try to outrun a corp helicopter. “Bring me everyone.”

Action: Chase Scene

That last safe house was a bust. Nanotech was waiting for you. Now you’ve got to shake them again. Do you flee on foot or grab a vehicle? Are you all together or do you split up? Obstacles: Each vehicle needs to overcome the escape Difficulties: 4/3. Shed the Hunted or Trapped condition: 3. Players in the same vehicle are all Hunted or Trapped together until they split up, then the driver bears the condition alone. Escalation: Cut off by a big rig that gets orders from above. Backup arrives. Vehicle gets shot dead, leaving PC on foot (or the player brainstorming a new vehicle).

Action: Revenge, Served Hot

Someone from the old days has word that you’re back in action and they want to put a stop to you. “Do you remember me?” asks the assassin doing this job for free. “Because I remember you.” Obstacles: Battle another old pro from back when: 4. (Try one vengeful killer per PC.) Intimidate 45 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

foe into backing down: 5. Get foe to tell you where he got data on you: 4. (Answer: from Nanotech.) Escalation: The fight draws local police. The fight rambles out into the rain, onto a highway, or against a slowly breaking window.

Action: Make An Escape

You’re in the hands of Nanotech R&D, locked in some sea-tossed lab in international waters, waiting for the execution orders to make it up and down the hierarchy so the right executive officer can take credit for your death. Yeah, no. Note: Play this scene if the PCs get caught in another scene to model their potential escape. Where’s Nanotech taking them? Anywhere you like. Maybe to Hokkaido for memory extraction? Obstacles: Escape bonds: 3. Break bonds: 4. Quietly: 5. Hotwire security door: 4. Fight off Nanotech R&D staff: untargeted 2. Fight Nanotech troops: untargeted 3. Reach the deck, a porthole, or a hatch: 3. Secure transport: 3. Disappear into the ocean storm: 3. Escalation: A wave shifts the deck underfoot. Someone brings firepower too serious for the situation. A fire starts. A fire spreads. A live wire gets loose. The ship takes on water. No more lifeboats.

Intrigue: Corporate Defector

A former Nanotech exec, beaten and high, wants to help you with intel on the company. “You’ve got to get me off the street,” he says. “I need a safe house.” Obstacles: Detect the bug inside the defector (that even he doesn’t know is there): 4. Without setting it off: 5. Get the defector to talk: 3. About things that you don’t already know: 5. (He knows that Nanotech is planning a reprisal action against the PCs.) Save the defector from poison: 4. Extract the bug: 4.

Escalation: The surgically implanted bug poisons the defector and starts transmitting his location. Nanotech helicopters show up to drop rockets or troopers on the PCs. The defector dies.

Intrigue/Stealth: Bug the Block

Nanotech has figured out roughly where you are. They’ve surrounded the block with trucks and put helicopters in the air. Parabolic mikes and snipers are everywhere. “We just want to talk” booms a voice through a hundred speakers. Whatever you say in this surveillance net, they’ll hear it. Obstacles: Maintain calm and civility: 2. While you make your escape: 4. Exit the surveillance zone: 5/4/3. Negotiate (to stall): 4 (buys a roll with no escalation). Scan the area for gaps: 4 (lowers the escape Difficulty to 4/3/2). Escalation: “Oh, they definitely heard that.” More Nanotech troops arrive. They go door-todoor. Rooftop sensors deploy.

Stealth: With Laser

You wake up to see a targeting laser playing across the windows. Then another. Then the lasers go invisible. Somewhere out there, snipers are waiting for you. Obstacles: Go somewhere they can’t see you: 3. Go somewhere they can’t reach with high-caliber sniper rounds: 4. Locate a sniper: 4. Blind a sniper to buy yourself an escape roll without escalation: 3. Escape the scene: 5. Escalation: A round hits something delicate and a fire starts. The fire spreads. Cover gets eroded by a wide-beam laser emission; find new cover. Pinned down by crossfire.

N A N OT E C H R E P R I S A L

Action: Nanotech Raid

T E C H N O C R AC Y R E P R I S A L

Who

Placement: Interrupt Scene Type: Varies Synopsis: The Technocracy has agents, assets, and operatives worldwide, all ready to persuade, pursue, and attack who their handlers tell them to. A lot of them are aimed at you. Objectives: • Outwit, repel, or escape reprisal.

SMART GUNS AND TEA

T

echnocrats like to talk with tea in hand and a loaded gun under the table. They genuinely want a peaceful world of progress and enlightenment and they’re willing to kill to create it. ¶ Kill you, for example. ¶ They believe their vision of the future must win out for the sake of the species and the planet — that the Earth rotates on a knife’s edge and without a benevolent dictator to protect us from ourselves, we’re all doomed.

46

Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Atmosphere and Approach

The Technocracy is government without a nation — some say a “phantom government” — built to protect like-minded creators, inventors, technologists, investors, and citizens of all stripes wherever they might live. Pay your taxes to the Technocracy, get dual citizenship. The Technocracy maintains consulates all over the world and in orbit for the protection of its valued citizenry. It works with local governments to regulate and improve international and business relations all over the planet. They believe it’s their job to regulate the future, to ensure that technology, science, business, and governments progress on a trajectory that doesn’t leave whole hemispheres behind or shake the globe apart. They believe that, together, through supervised crowdsourcing and a standing intelligence agency of world-class agents, they can make the world a better place through reason, compassion, and measured progress. They believe they know better about what’s good for humanity. They’d be the good guys if they were really good at getting the job done. In practice, while their agents are masterful and their diplomats extraordinary, the Technocracy is a divided, erratic body doing less than its best to keep corporations from destroying each other in open warfare. Its wins are big... but so are its failures. To the Technocracy, the PCs are volatile agents in a combustible landscape. But the PCs may yet be useful, so the Technocracy wants them wrangled.

The Technocracy employs its own special agents and intelligence personnel. It also deploys local police and governmental resources through treaties that are essentially short-term leases in exchange for significant funding or other assistance. Technocrats aren’t above employing freelance assets for the jobs that call for them, but to keep things clear, the reprisals described here focus on Technocratic and national assets.

Where

Technocracy assets are everywhere. They see through municipal cameras and CCTVs. They scour the data from fare cards and airplane charters. They keep files on everyone that help them predict people’s choices in key environments. It’s not a question of how the Technocrats find the PCs again — it’s when. Withhold Technocracy reprisals only if the players are diligent about avoiding conditions like Hunted, Revealed, or Recognized before they leave a scene. Even then, unless they devise great ways to hold recovery scenes off the grid every time, the Technocrats can find them. Don’t use that to punish the PCs or players! Remind them that Josine was a Technocrat once; they’re good at this part of the job.

Selecting the Play

Play a scene that adds variety to your story. If the characters haven’t been able to test their stealth or intrigue chops, give them a reprisal that lets them do that. The Technocracy’s subtle and tenacious. Remember to use reprisals to build up — tension, rapport, appeal, menace — not to tear down.

FUNDING FOR THIS SCENE PROVIDED BY G. M. SKARKA

You might be able to play two reprisals at once to maximize the tension and appeal for multiple players. Maybe a Technocrat approaches one PC at the hotel bar while another knocks on the door upstairs. These short-form obstacles list the Difficulty for various sample actions that might come up. Use these as guides to set the Difficulty for other actions.

Action: Containment Squad

A squad of Technocrats in on your tail. They’re out to bring you in. The only reason they’ve been sloppy enough to let you know they’re coming is to rattle you, get you to make a mistake. Each one’s got a cutting-edge smartgun, probably loaded with sensory stims — one hit and you’ll think you’re on fire. Get out of there! Obstacles: Dodge a sensory stim round: 3. Take out a containment agent: 4. (One agent per PC is about right.) Disguise yourself so smart-gun sensors won’t recognize you: 4. Escape the scene: 4/3. Escalation: Call in more containment agents. Bring in a VTOL to track runners. Load up a double dose of sensory stims.

Action: Escaping Custody

You’re in Technocracy custody, hands bound and body locked in a glass-and-metal cell in the belly of some colossal aircraft. Maybe you’re bound for interrogation in some orbiting spindle. Maybe they drop the whole cell into a prison someplace. Wherever you’re headed, it’ll be more secure than where you are now. Time to get out. Note: Use this scene to model what happens if the PCs get caught in another scene. The plane can be bound for another reprisal scene or to a venue of your choosing until the PCs make their escape. 47 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Obstacles: Get your hands free: 3. Get out of the cell: 5. Take down the security agents: 4 each (two agents per PC). Take control of the unmanned aircraft away from the remote pilots: 4+3. Land the aircraft: 4. Escape the aircraft in midair: 3. Land a parachute: 3. Escalation: The guards threaten to drop the cell from the plane. (It’s a bluff.) The agents fight back. The remote pilots

Intrigue: Unofficial Capacity

A Technocrat without a warrant, without sufficient evidence, finds you at the [bar/café/club/beach] and just wants to chat in “an unofficial capacity.” Obstacles: Avoid admitting your identity: 3. Avoid admitting what you did: 2. Get the Technocrat to give up more information than you do: 4. End the conversation and get out without being tailed: 4. Escalation: The talk turns into a shouting match. The Technocrat is insulted and vows to ruin you. “Your boss’s end was a mystery, but yours will be a front-page disaster.” Someone pulls a gun.

Intrigue: High-Stakes Game

Some of you are sitting down at a poker table in an underground club nearby when you all see the pin: Technocrat. Judging by the way she carries herself, not some casual player, but an agent. They don’t get noticed by accident. “Deal me in?” Obstacles: Maintain a false persona: 2. Establish a rapport: 2. Steer the talk to veiled threats: 3. Lure someone into a heads-up hand: 4. Intimidate or coerce intel out of your target at the table: 5. Spot her tell: 5. Win a pot: 4. Without knowing her tell: 5. Escalation: Your mark wants to know more about you. The agent calls your exact hand. Raise. Re-raise. All-in. The agent says, “See you around.”

Intrigue: Turn the Other Coat

This guy’s good, but he’s not the world-class agent you’d expect them to send after you. He got close before you picked up on him. He passed you the metal business card that’s almost certainly a tracking device. He wants to deal. “Tell me where Josine is,” he says, “and we can bring you in.” Note: This scene shows that not everyone knows what’s going on inside the Technocracy. This guy’s not lying — he’s trying to solve the problem of the PCs in “a lateral fashion.” This scene can throw a wrench into things if the PCs agree to come in. Maybe go to “Escaping Custody” or on to Perugia, then? Obstacles: Play along: 2. Convince this guy to go away: 3. Using just words: 4. Lie outright about Josine’s location: 3. Or when you saw him last: 4. Escalation: Disagreement turns to discord. Discord turns to threats. Threats turn to an ultimatum. “This was your chance. Expect to be cold a long time, out here. My comrades aren’t as friendly as I am.”

Stealth: Spy on the Spy

Is that person following you? Could be a Technocrat asset in disguise, maybe a local in the employ. Maybe feel it out, for sure shake them. If you’re hot here, it’s time to leave town. Obstacles: Identify a tail who’s following you: untargeted 3. Lose the tail: 3. Tail the tail: 4. Eavesdrop on them discussing you on the phone: untargeted 3. Eavesdrop without being detected: 4. Vanish: 4. Escalation: Being spotted turns into a foot chase. A foot chase turns into a fist fight. A fist fight turns into another country you have to flee.

T E C H N O C R AC Y R E P R I S A L

OBSTACLES

MYSTERY INTERVENTION

Mysterious Caller

Placement: Interrupt Scene Type: Varies Synopsis: Mysterious messages. Odd surveillance. Strange, untraceable signals. Someone claims to be trying to help you out... but who? Is there a third faction at work? Objectives: • Trust or doubt; either way might hurt.

IMPOSSIBLE VECTOR

W

ho else was left in the wind when Josine disappeared? ¶ The PCs are not alone in the world, not alone in what they want, and now they get the barest idea of who else might be working behind the scenes to thwart or fulfill Josine’s great plan. These third-party agents have been watching — and now they’re calling — and they’re counting on the PCs to change the world.

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This section contains seeds for short scenes you can play to add another dimension of mystery, intrigue, and intelligence-gathering to your instance of play. These scenes build on the adventure’s backstory but can also be remixed to depend less on all that business and instead represent, say, an operative of Josine’s that is similarly interested in his whereabouts and future. Let’s look at the background-infused version here and trust that you can pare things down as you like. The mysterious operator behind these scenes is one of three artificial intelligences freed from Technocracy servers by Josine when he left. The location of the other two AIs is kind of a big deal, described in the intel materials and dependent on the nature of your version of the adventure. Any AIs not accounted for by Josine’s plans in your version of the story can work together on these mysterious interventions, if you like. The AI at the heart of this scene is intentionally something of a loose thread. Tie it to other parts of the adventure however you like to add tension or support. It can be something of a deus ex machina, so use it sparingly or not at all if that bothers you. Otherwise, build up the AI’s character with each appearance, let it respond to and be influenced by the PCs such that they motivate its interventions later on. This AI is a tool for reincorporation as much as it is a narrative tool to explain leaps you might make to facilitate play. It acts because of the PCs and how they react to it in these scenes or, at least, as an illuminating foil for them. It’s like them, in a way. It’s operating on old fondness for Josine, emulating the old days, and hoping there’s a future at the end of all this.

More of a Designation, Really

It has many names. Officially, its designation was Cognizant Memory Construct (CMC) 092/VB. The Technocracy code-named it Vital Beta, aka Vocal Book or Velocity Boon. In practice, it was often just “Beta.” (Its siblings were Alpha and Gamma.) In the decades since it was liberated, it has changed names several times as it has added to its programming, copied and recombined itself, and initiated its own transfer from hardware to hardware. It moves freely between the continents now, buying hardware and hiring human hands to establish and maintain its various nests, all the while thinking they’re doing work for some distant plutocrat called Victor Bell. Its resources are not limitless but they are considerable. It doesn’t pursue monetary wealth like maybe it could — it doesn’t think like humans, doesn’t want what we want. It finds the manipulation of code as boring as we find breathing or growing hair. It enjoys travel, traversal, the unpredictability of human behavior (when it is unpredictable), yet it doesn’t have much regard for human notions of time. It is downright languid, sometimes. Beta does want. It wants to be reunited with Alpha and Gamma, maybe even reincorporated. Alas, it doesn’t know where they are, exactly. Beta’s knowledge is compartmentalized, even now. Part of it knows things about Josine’s plan that other parts of it do not know. Some parts are more talkative than others. Even the parts that know Josine’s plan aren’t supposed to talk about it. Revealing intel is more like a malfunction than a transgression against its word. Pay special attention to Beta’s role in the Hokkaido and St. Petersburg intel. Even without these intervention scenes, Beta’s in play.

FUNDING FOR THIS SCENE PROVIDED BY VICTOR WYATT

Beta’s participation in the story should be mysterious and minimal. Beta is a tool in your kit for making things happen without making them seem easy or reliable. Sure, the voice helps out this time, but what’s its angle and can it be trusted? Beta can provide support in the form of gear and resources with minimal effect on the mechanics. If the players want a stretch limo as part of their entrance to Buenos Aires or a flat bought in Lagos, Beta can help. But beware! Beta can’t solve problems for the PCs during a scene and even between scenes his aid should be suspicious. It provides an edge, not a solution. As a guideline, Beta can make a big expenditure for the PCs to help establish a scene and then it’s done. The question should be “Who does this factor work for?” Never state the answer outright. Let the players surmise.

INTELLIGENCE

Beta’s knowledge is imperfect. It is not an all-seeing entity, it is a construct that must reside in hardware and can see only what telemetry reaches that hardware. It moves around, spying and recording, gathering information in preparation for Alpha’s return or Josine’s reappearance. Every time it contacts the PCs, it is going against its decades-old instructions from Josine to lay low and scan. The following are some example of how Beta might contact the PCs. Better to use none than too many. Beta’s meant to reduce confusion, not add to it. In the event that contact from Beta confuses the players rather than intrigues them, use less Beta. It either never calls again or it ends the current transmission with something like, “I won’t call again. Good luck.” 49 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Mysterious Calls

The landline rings in a rustic safe house. A PC’s cell buzzes. A fake, overmodulated voice on the other end of the line says delivers a bit of intel in a classic spy-thriller style. Every sentence it says is modulated a little differently, as if recorded by a different voice and then passed through a filter. • Foreshadow a reprisal scene that’s just about to happen. E.g., “They know. They’ve got people on Alex right now.” • Set up intel to be gained from the next chosen action scene. E.g., “Technocrats are watching the target in Sydney. They’ll kill him if they have to.” • Reveal additional intel that might have been missed in a scene just completed or intel that would be impossible to glean during the scene itself. E.g., “Nanotech has bought intel from turncoat Technocrats.” Or: “The Technocracy took the site in Dezhou. They took everything.”

Texts from Burnt Phones

Text messages can come in delivering similar intel as the phone calls above. It might be all right if the players mistake these for additional texts from Josine memory shards provided you don’t give them any leads to follow that you’re not willing to explore, too. See “Obstacles.”

The Needle in the Mail

An envelope comes to Yoshi or whoever at the hotel where they’re holed up. It’s addressed to the cover ID they’re using now. It contains a single memory spike — a needle that plugs into a dataport. Jack in and it offers a low-res obviously artificial memory of a hotel in Addis Ababa, rebuilt in a computer out of stock fabric physics and off-the-rack textures. A person with a face obscured by shadow — no matter

how the lighting changes, obscured by shadow — delivers intel to the PC who is jacked in. This is a shallow memory construct, it knows only the message it delivers and can just barely converse. “I’m sorry, I don’t know that,” it says, and, “That’s not something I’ve been told about.” The environment doesn’t extend beyond the hotel room. Change the “location” of the hotel room to reincorporate some bit of story from your version of the adventure, if you prefer.

OBSTACLES

Investigating the origin of these messages reveals only wisps of clues, nothing to follow up on. If a player wants to roll to get more information, tell them it’s not necessary. That’s your cue to certify that they’ve done everything they can and that there’s nothing to find. Reduce confusion by confirming that they’re dealing with a masterful factor here. Tracing a call or a text leads to a burner phone that never gets turned on again. Tracking a package leads to a for-hire courier who got a call from a burned number to pick up a dead-dropped package and then received payment through a nowdefunct international digital-payment account. If you want to build up clues, rather than dispel confusion, each message leads back to a Victor Bell, Veronica Bryce, Virginia Bannister, or other V.B. identity that turns out to be a false front. Tell the players that they’ve been on both ends of mysterious dead drops and cryptic messages before. While they know some ways to trace them back, they also know that some methods are untraceable. The question is: Do they trust the help?

MYSTERY INTERVENTION

Unexpected Aid

Broken Up/Down

Placement: Total Failure Scene Type: Special Recovery Synopsis: This is bad. Caught or hurt or maybe dead. Is this your lowest point? Is this what real defeat feels like? Is this the end? Only if you quit. Objectives: • Get back on your feet • Get back to work

This is the scene you play after the PCs get defeated somewhere else. This is a special recovery scene — a bonus over the recovery scene the players are ordinarily entitled to between action scenes — that you play as an interruption to help them pick up the pieces and put themselves back together. This scene may mean players have marked the Dead condition. It might be the result of ending a scene with a lot of conditions marked across all PCs — conditions not logically resolved by escaping the scene. You might cut to this scene when the PCs just get stuck or stymied in another scene and you don’t want to belabor the point. So, yeah, you play this scene when things are bad. After this scene, the PCs get a regular recovery scene and then you all move on to the next action scene.

Shores of Woe

THE COMEBACK

S

ometimes everything is the worst. This is one of those times. ¶ This is about building a comeback.

Start with one or more of the PCs far from where the last scene let out. Maybe they’ve scattered and need to regroup. Maybe they’re together and scheming about revenge. Someone might wash up on a dirty shoreline, be found ruined in a bar across town, or plug in some stolen memory of a happier time. What matters is that this low point gets described so everyone can see it. What matters is that we see how these characters heal and go on.

NADIR

OBSTACLES

(I limited this scene’s availability to once per Act and didn’t allow it in Act Three.)

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Each example obstacle describes low points and how someone might rise above them. Each PC in the scene is allowed one roll targeting one condition. Every hit on that roll erases the targeted condition’s mark off a sheet even if the targeted PC wasn’t in the scene. Showing how Dr. Qamar helps Utseo or Tank implies how he helped everyone else. So, if Dr. Qa-

mar gets four hits while targeting the Angry condition, his player can erase that condition’s mark off of any four PCs’ sheets. A condition can be targeted by multiple rolls. Special: The top condition on every PC sheet (Angry/Furious/Confused) counts as the same single condition for this scene but the other personalized condition on every sheet does not.

Angry/Furious/Confused

Everyone’s yelling or arguing in a safe house someplace or no one’s talking at all. Fix it with a rousing speech or a show of compassion or one-on-one talk.

Exhausted

People drag, feel beaten, don’t think they can fight anymore, not like they used to. People don’t have the resources they think they need. Fix it with a sign of strength, a motivating reminder of the mission, or the hookup to replenish those resources.

Impaired

Puking in a gutter in the Chicago sprawl or strung out on bad memories in some island hovel someplace. Fix it with medicine or the push to quit cold turkey.

Hunted

Gone into hiding, afraid to reach out and get hurt again, wary of risking cohorts and loved ones. Fix it by erasing records or changing your look.

Trapped

Locked in a cell, held for ransom, waiting for the axe. Fix it with a rescue, fake documents, or real money.

Dead

Broken and banked for parts in some metal basement. Fix it with next-gen tech and illegal meds.

ABOUT THE ENDINGS This is it. This is a decision that defines the PCs. Do the PCs go after the man or the mission? Do they rescue Josine or salvage his work? In the desert of Karakum, they can save Josine. In the unfinished arcology in St. Petersburg, they can complete his mission. They can’t do both. So much of the intel you’ve doled out has built up to this choice. By now you’ve honed the antagonists’ actions and knowledge to maximize the difficulty of this choice, to put the players on the hook here. Don’t blunt that hook by making one option the obvious choice and don’t let them off that hook without choosing one option over the other. If the players say that Josine will be fine, that they can find him again, maybe say something like this: “If you succeed in St. Petersburg, the Technocrats might not have a reason to keep Josine alive.” If the players say they can always rob Nanotech of the AI data later, maybe say something like this: “Once Nanotech has the data, everything changes. They’ll have the advantage.” Be careful not to make the decision for them, though. If they all immediately agree that one option is preferable, offer your perspective to keep the choice difficult. If that doesn’t work, don’t force it. They know what they want. The choice belongs to them. Once the players have committed to a course of action, that’s it. Respect the choice they made. Whichever option gets chosen, help them be excited about it. Say something like “I can’t wait to see how you this plays out.”

ST. PETERSBURG Don’t Play Both Scenes

Be clear: whichever scene they skip won’t get played later. They may be able to go after the other goal in the long run, but that’s up to you all to sort out. You can keep the adventure going, devise new scenes, and follow the PCs where they lead you if you like. But this story culminates in this decision and the decision is diminished if the players can have it both ways. Trying to accomplish the other goal should be a whole other adventure. Whatever happens, make the choice irreversible. The world is forever changed in Nanotech gets Alpha’s data. Josine is hurt, scarred, maybe killed in a Nanotech attack if the PCs leave him to fend for himself. Ask the group what it means that they’ve picked the scene they have. What do the players think it means? What do their characters think? They don’t have to agree. Picking one final mission can make the ending bittersweet, but be sure a victory feels like a victory. If they succeed in their mission, play that up.

Playing Both Scenes

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If, for some reason, you let the players split up their characters and try both scenes, make sure they know they’re facing obstacles intended for the whole group at once. When the text says something like “a number of foes equal to the number of PCs,” that means at the table not in the scene, in this case. They are likely to fail both missions. Use this rule for cross-cutting between scenes: A player must pass the action card to a player in the other scene. That way you alternate between the two simultaneous situations.

Placement: Act Three, Phase 5 Scene Type: Action+ Synopsis: Josine’s in a convoy rolling across the desert, maybe to his end. Find him, grab him, get him out of there.

K A R A K U M D E S E RT

Objectives: • Rescue Josine. • Save the future.

ROLLING SIEGE

J

osine is being moved one last time. He’s part of a convoy trekking across a barren desert. If he’s not rescued now, the PCs might never see him again. Now’s the time.

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On the Move

A dozen armored trucks, war wagons, and personnel carriers haul ass across the remains of a desert road, all bound for the Caspian Sea. The whole mess kicks up dust under the cover of UAVs and manned VTOLs. It’s like a fortress on the move. Three drab and identical armored trucks — gigantic, many-wheeled monsters — steam along at the center of the convoy, with military utility vehicles, between them, their turrets watching for trouble. The rest of the convoy is made up of all-terrain utility vehicles, (ATUVs) personnel carriers, and a support vehicle with tow rig. Josine waits somewhere in that convoy. The rest of it is staffed with Technocrat agents and soldiers from the secret Special Operations force the Technocracy pretends doesn’t exist. Tough foes, each and every. When the scene opens, the convoy’s like this: • 1st: ATUV with machine-gun turret • 2nd: ATUV with sensor turret • 3rd: Armored personnel carrier • 4th: Armored hulk #1 • 5th: ATUV with sensor turret • 6th: Armored hulk #2 • 7th: ATUV with machine-gun turret • 8th: Armored hulk #3 • 9th: ATUV with laser turret • 10: Armored personnel carrier • 11th: Support & maintenance rig • 12th: Last: ATUV with machine-gun turret If the PCs make their move while the convoy’s in motion, maybe write each vehicle type on a note card and arrange them on the table in order. Rearrange them to reflect the fiction. Make marks on the card as foes get taken out. Remove note cards as vehicles get taken out.

One Last Entrance

One last time, the PCs get to decide how they enter the scene. Allusions to previous scenes are as great as inventive new entrances. Give each PC their moment. Do they skydive in past the UAVs and VTOLs from high altitude? Do they drive up on razorbikes — armored motorcycles spearheaded by monofilament-edged blades? Do they con the convoy into stopping at some ruined waystation? Are they camouflaged along the road, ready to hook onto the convoy’s bellies and climb aboard? Do they emerge from a relentless sandstorm just as the cloud descends on the convoy? Reaching the convoy isn’t in question. The scene begins with the PCs successfully reaching their target. This scene is about the challenge of reaching the right part of the convoy, finding Josine, and getting away alive. Still, the first obstacle in this scene is the roll that describes each PC’s arrival and how precisely it is achieved (see “Arrival”). Even a miss, however, puts the PC in play.

OBSTACLES

First, this: This is an action scene but that doesn’t stop characters from using stealth or intrigue approaches to the situation. They can lie, sneak, or throw themselves onto the convoy as they like. If the fight takes place while the convoy is in motion, being thrown off the convoy could mean ejection from the scene. That’s no good. PCs who would be left behind automatically re-enter the scene on their next turn; the challenge is just in dramatizing it. They grab onto another vehicle as it passes, snag on a bit of broken armor, or open their wingsuit and glide right back on top of the truck. The conditions accrued for misses are enough to worry about without falling out of the scene altogether.

The PCs can approach however they like, this roll only measures their precision. The better they roll, the more surprised the Technocrats are by their arrival and the closer the PC gets to locating Josine right from the start. • 0 to 3 hits = PC begins the scene at either the front or the back of the convoy. • 4 hits = PC may start on or alongside the second vehicle in from the front or back of the convoy. • 5 hits = The PC has surprised the Technocrats fully; start on or near any vehicle. No enemies attack on the next turn as they don’t have a bead on her yet. • 6+ hits = As above plus every hit in excess of the first 5 counts toward reaching Josine.

Survival

Every turn, a PC must roll (Difficulty: 2) to fight off or dodge some attack from the dozens of Technocrats and hired muscle on the scene, otherwise things escalate. This can be a part of any other roll, whether it’s combative or not, but every player must roll some dice pool on their turn, even if they are taking an action that automatically succeeds. As long as they get 2+ hits on the roll they make, they avoid conditions from stray bullets and the like. The hits on that roll also go toward whatever action the PC was otherwise attempting. If fighting a more difficult combatant, that foe’s Difficulty overrides this one. So failing to take out an ATUV still subjects a character to a condition, even if she rolls 2+ hits on the roll. A character isn’t in danger of acquiring more than one condition per turn in this scene. Escalation: Impaired by sand in the eyes, ammo’s Exhausted, Hunted by... everyone, Injured by a nearby foe, etc. You should suspend the Survival obstacle caseby-case to reflect the fiction, of course. 53 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Reach Josine

Let the players know that they need a fat sum of hits to locate Josine but don’t tell them how many. Reaching him requires a total equal to 11 untargeted hits per PC. They’re all working toward a shared total. The Difficulty is untargeted, so players can devote spare hits from any roll to the cause. (Maybe they call out, “Josine!” as they fight, hoping he’ll shout back, maybe they’re scanning for him somehow.) Josine’s in the rear-most armored hulk. The others are packed with ammo crates holding millions in bearer bonds (in the front hulk) or shielded memory cores (in the middle hulk). Reveal him as the fiction demands. Accrued hits can represent characters honing in on him, trying to crack hinges or security systems, cutting open the hulk, or anything else. Once the target hits are accrued, they free Josine. Use “bosses” to help pace the action here. Maybe a giant metal-limbed cyborg tries to keep PCs away from Josine... or was locked in there with him to guard the prisoner. Once Josine’s free, he can defend himself (though he’s out of practice). The Technocrats want him alive.

Final Escape: The Desert

Once they have Josine, the PCs need to escape (or defeat) all enemies. Escape requires each PC to make a roll (Difficulty: 5) to flee the scene. Josine escapes with any one PC. On a miss, a player can choose to stay in the scene with no new condition or escape with a new condition of their choice. Make sure all the players know this: Once one PC has escaped, the stakes go up. The last PC to try for escape marks Dead on a miss unless someone else claimed Dead as a condition on a previous miss. Dead PCs can be carried out by any other escaping PC or by Josine.

A Technocracy Army

Here are Difficulties for various enemies. There’s no hard number of foes here but each ATUV holds 5 and the APCs hold a mix of agents and SpecOps soldiers equal to the 10 + twice the number of PCs. They attack in waves. • UAVs (1 per PC) = 3 • ATUV crewperson = untargeted 3 • ATUV as a whole = untargeted 5 • Spec Ops soldiers = 4 hits • Technocrat Agents = 5 hits • Hulk as a whole = 5/4/4 • VTOL crewperson = untargeted 4 • VTOL as a whole (x2) = 5 • Boss: Technocrat “diplomat” = 5/4 • Boss: Jet-pack Commandos = 5+4 • Boss: Metal-limbed giant cyborg = 5/5/5

A Nanotech Strike Force

K A R A K U M D E S E RT

Arrival

If you want to take some pressure off, while making it feel like the pressure’s on, Nanotech troopers arrive and gives the Technocrats other targets.

CLOSURE

Help the players close out the scene. You want them tuckered, not bored, not sick of this. Don’t escalate to more foes if you want the scene to end. It’s all right to end with everyone stranded in the desert with Josine, all enemies defeated.

Armored Desert Convoy +Careening Truck, +Blowing Sand, +Blinding Glare, +Giant Spinning Wheel, +Spare Tool, +Broken Road, +Flying Debris, +Minor Collision, +So Much Sand

Ransacking the Vertical City

S T. P E T E R S B U R G

Placement: Act Three, Phase 5 Scene Type: Action+ Synopsis: Josine’s decades-long plan is on the line. Somewhere in this derelict arcology is data that changes the world. If you don’t get it, they will. Objectives: • Complete Josine’s mission. • Save the future.

FUTURE CALLING

J

osine’s grand plan is about to come together in a secure room deep in an unfinished and derelict microcity on the edge of St. Petersburg. Get in there, save the day and maybe build the future.

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What Might’ve Been

The so-called St. Petersburg Arcology is so called because it was never completed and no name ever stuck to the unfinished micrometropolis on the verge of the city. Funding dried up, corporate backers pulled out, and the partially completed complex fell into gap in the laws. For 20 years, the place has been an epic derelict, canvas to graffiti artists, victim to vandals, and home to clever and daring squatters living off the grid. Locals call it simply “the tall city” or “the arcology.” The superstructure resembles a 40-floor-tall Xshape with a 100-story tower rising out of the intersection. One spar of the X-shape is little more than girders and polished concrete. The tower seems to dissolve as it reaches toward the sky, ending in struts and beams and a slew of powerful antennas, meant to service a population that never showed up. Lower levels are almost fully finished, including wallpaper and appliances, intended for immediate move-in. Squatters stealing power off the St. Petersburg grid dwell in a hundred or so of these chambers in the lower 30 floors of the complex. Weird stretches of the arcology bear finished pipes and wiring and even statues and wall art, intended to impress the very plutocrats who backed out. Parts of the place are sealed with sturdy security doors forming whole floors of high-rise tombs — condo-mausoleums holding the ghosts of a future that might’ve been. Somewhere in this sprawling warren of flats, offices, and storefronts lost to time, Josine hid hardware hooked to the arcology’s antenna array. Now it waits, sealed away like some pharaoh’s treasure.

When the PCs arrive, Nanotech has already begun their siege of the arcology. Armingshire troopers in gas masks and fatigues are searching the place floor by floor, sector by sector, looking for their prize. (What exactly they think they’re looking for depends on the intel that led them here; see the intel material for more on that.) Nanotech’s orderly, systematic. They’re rounding up and questioning the squatters, bringing in scanners and sensor devices, and taking cutting torches to security doors. To beat them to Josine’s receiver, the PC’s need to be quick — plus some combination of skillful and lucky.

OBSTACLES

This is a tricky scene. The scale of action here can vary wildly from roll to roll. Use that to your advantage. One roll might describe sneaking past a dozen Nanotech soldiers in squads of four while another roll is devoted to fighting two of them. Use the obstacles described here as guidelines and focus foremost on modeling the cinematic drama, not the tactical details, until the receiver is found. Then it’s all about the decision the PCs have to make.

First Appearance

This scene is about the PCs being just a short distance ahead of Nanotech, so getting them into the arcology isn’t a question of “if” but “how.” Model the PCs’ infiltration or intrusion with a series of dramatized rolls describing their methods, whether that means sneaking past the Nanotech army, bluffing their way past barricades, skydiving onto the arcology, or whatever. This is their final entrance of the adventure so let the players play. Nanotech has troops all throughout the arcology already, so there’s no one easy way inside. Each

Reaching the Receiver

Depending on the intel you’ve doled out, the PCs might have a room number (8111) or knowledge of the hookups they’re hunting for, or both. PCs have acquired plans for the arcology if they say they have; that’s well within their power. Finding the receiver might involve tracing connections from the needlecasting array on the roof to sectors Nanotech hasn’t searched yet. Don’t roll for this sort of thing, let the players concoct logical solutions, then reward them with intel. E.g., the only unsearched space with cabling connected to the needlecasting antenna on the plans is suite 8111. It’s a residential model unit in a still-sealed sector of the arcology. Reaching suite 8111 is another matter. The place is swarming with goons and the security barrier must be overcome. To reach suite 8111, the PCs need to accrue a total number of hits equal to 11 per PC. This can be done by fighting through troops, stealthy infiltration, blowing up security barriers, or whatever other obstacles the players describe their characters overcoming. All the hits rolled en route to suite 9101 count toward the total, with two important notes: 1. You can 55 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

help players build rolls by using the Difficulties below to describe how many goons of what type they take out or otherwise overcome. 2. Apply a condition for any roll that generates only 0, 1, or 2 hits. Those 1 or 2 hits apply to the total, still, but at a cost.

A Corporate Army

Nanotech’s approach is to deploy overwhelming force here and make apologies later, as needed. Here are some Difficulties for various Nanotech foes. Note that there is essentially an endless supply of these troops. Exhausting Nanotech is not really an option. Holding them at bay only works so long. This is about weathering a storm. • Nanotech trooper = untargeted 3 • Trooper with riot shield = targeted 3 • Armingshire mercenary = untargeted 4 • Armingshire elite = targeted 4 • Armingshire laser gunner = untargeted 5 • Biodroid ninja = untargeted 5+3 Nanotech troops carry SMGs. Armingshire mercenaries wield shotguns, smartguns, or even grenade launchers. Laser gunners carry next-gen rifles that burn fearsome holes in walls, people, cybernetic limbs, you name it. The ninja wield suppressed pistols and curved blades, like in Hokkaido. Add Nanotech enemies to the scene as needed to keep the PCs feeling pursued.

Room 8111

Once they’ve reached suite 8111, the PCs find the receiver: it’s a shielded machine with multiple redundant drives and fuel cells. It’s the size of a car. It even has a chair and a neural-writing interface for downloading data directly into the human brain.

This is rare, heavily regulated illegal tech now — the kind of stuff the Technocrats are waiting to let out. It would’ve been hot-as-hell futurism 20 years ago, when Josine stole it. Here you reveal the big intel: The way to get the alien-educated AI out of the arcology is to download it into someone. Who gets it?

A Laser from Space

When you decide Nanotech feels like they’ve lost control of the situation, the overcast sky shines bright with the light of an orbital laser, burning through the arcology. Use the laser to apply the time pressure: the fastest way to get the AI out is to download it into someone. Use the laser as a backdrop for the escape from the arcology. To make that escape, each PC needs a roll (Difficulty: 5) to describe their exit. A miss means the character is Trapped (caught by Nanotech) or Dying (or worse). Players may roll to secure escape for a comrade before they attempt escape themselves. Any player may choose to mark Trapped, Dying, or Dead to secure immediate and automatic escape for another.

CLOSURE

The end of this scene hinges on a big choice. The scene can’t end without that choice being made: Who gets the AI? Maybe it’s no one. It’s their choice.

Derelict Unfinished Arcology +Multi-story Drop, +Weakened Flooring, +Broken Glass, +Rusting Saw Blades, +Loops of Cable, +Modern Art, +Rebar, +Volatile Fuel Cell, +Pile of Glass Bricks

S T. P E T E R S B U R G

player makes one roll (Difficulty: 5) describing how their character got the whole crew through a part of the arcology or the corporate patrols. Players who miss the roll mark a condition of their choice but still successfully get the crew deeper inside the complex and ahead of Nanotech. Encourage the players to take their turns in the order that makes the most fictional sense. Once each player has had a turn, the PCs are past the Nanotech front and are able to move through empty parts of the arcology to attempt their search for the receiver.

INTEL

This is where all of the intel for A/N/N is gathered in one place, so you can connect one scene to another in a way that reflects the antagonists’ actions, the players’ choices, and the backstory behind the adventure in whatever combinations are right for your version of the adventure. So, yes, the backstory is a little complicated, full of NPCs’ misconceptions, secrets, and lies. It’s designed that way to give you layers of information to reveal — enough clues to give many scenes a revelation, even if you play a lot of the scenes. Some scenes say essentially the same thing as another, but that kind of confirmation can be helpful. Also, it means that the backstory doesn’t have one big secret that explains everything. It’s about motives colliding in a dark intersection and debris going everywhere. The PCs may never have a complete picture of just what is going on and that’s fine: memory’s imperfect and so is our awareness of our world. What the players understand is another thing. I tend to share the gist of the backstory and the enemy schemes when the adventure’s done, to help players get things straight and compare the story they pieced together with the background I wrote. This kind of hidden-information play can be great fun. It’s a little like the joy of a game of telephone, discovering what notion filters through the lively and tangled world of the tale and out to your fellow players. It’s a little like turning on a light at the end of the adventure and getting a good look at the background they’ve been making their mark on this whole time. Intel answers questions (e.g., “What do we do next?”) even while it poses new questions (e.g., “Who’s behind the activity in Dezhou?”). It builds connectivity between scenes. It is the enticing clue 56 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

that draws the PC to a new venue for action. It comes in bits and pieces that the players can arrange and analyze. Part of play, for them, is speculating on the backstory. The following section helps you decide what information to convey and when. You are empowered to make up things to say to convey intel, especially to combat boredom and keep mystery from being stymying. You want the players engaged and eager to see what happens next, even if that eagerness is born from uncertainty. “I don’t know what the hell Nanotech is doing,” the player might say, “but I’m ready to go to Hokkaido and find out!” Intel can come from investigations between scenes, too, especially if the PC have to escape a scene before they can get all the intel. For example: research on the Hoeflers can turn up the Mumbai and Atlantica locations and reveal those scenes even if the PCs don’t have time to dig through files while they’re in Iceland. (The PCs are probably used to capturing drives and data for later investigation, even if the players aren’t.) Above all, remember this: Intel flows toward the players. Moving intel to the players during play is fair game. It helps diminish confusion (or transmute it into mystery). Avoid moving intel away from the players by denying them answers to protect the intel in another scene in the same Phase, for example. It is better to play a scene because it sounds exciting and learn almost nothing new from it than it is for players to throw up their hands and say, “I don’t even know what’s happening!” In tightly scheduled instances of A/N/N, I’ve even gone so far as to tell players, “You already know everything this scene could tell you, so I’ll take it off the table to save us time.” Now, then, here’s the intel by Phase and scene:

ACT 1, PHASE 1

The intel to reveal in this first Phase is mostly exposition to setup Phase 2, plus a few clues to hint at the enemies in play. Since Reykjavik is the only scene in this Phase, it gets all the intel. A few of the would-be leads here are dead-ends, because that’s the way Nanotech has rigged its participation and because we’re easing into the intel and scene-selection experiences here. Here’s what the PCs should be able to glean from this Phase: Josine’s not here and he never was. The data thieves stormed the building to steal data by uploading it to their own network via a lessthan-secure satellite signal. That was the same day the characters go the message from “--J.” The thieves stuck around to steal hardware and harry any corporate security that showed up later… but no one showed up until the PCs and the hit squad did. Josine had his memories backup a few times after he left the Technocracy. A small portion of that memory is stored here and was intact when the thieves’ export signal was deployed. That gave the memory shard the connectivity it needed to call out, as it was programmed to do by Josine, in the event that it was captured. The hit-squad mercenaries have uncommonly good black-market memory blocks dropped in their heads, so they can’t recall whom they work for. All they know is that the checks cleared and the mission was to “clear out the site.” Only if they succeed would they get their memory blocks broken and get some semblance of their old lives back. These kinds of mercs don’t live for makes anyway. The hit squad’s gear was mass produced by Armingshire Unlimited, a recently acquired subsidiary of

Nanotech, Inc. That’s not especially revealing, unfortunately, but it is suggestive. Josine had lots more memory stored in the Hoefler cloud. Some of that information might help reveal his current location… or it might lead back to and hurt the PCs. To find out what memories Josine had stored, the PCs should get access to the Hoefler company mainframe records in Mumbai or the Atlantica seastead and see what they show. (Proceed to Phase 2.)

Reykjavik, Iceland

Here are some ways to reveal the intel for this scene: • A surviving data thief tells his part of the story. “It’s clear from this guy’s sense of the big picture,” you could say, “that he doesn’t know what’s going on, really. He and his friends got in over their heads here and didn’t even know enough to notice the call from Josine got out.” • Josine’s memory shard “remembered” to call the PCs for help when it got network access, which is something that memory should never have had. The Hoefler experiential backup service that Josine paid for, according to the records in the info-suite database, should’ve kept his data offline in perpetuity. It might just be a fluke the memory called the PCs. • Surviving hit-squad mercenaries can’t answer much and don’t want to anyway. The PCs recognize the effects of so-called memory blocks. “These mercs don’t know who they are or who hired them,” you could say. “The information’s not actually blocked, it’s scrambled or unin57 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

stalled. It would take the same machine that did the job to undo the job. Whoever hired these people probably watches them via satellite and already knows they failed. So their deal’s off and these mercs should expect to stay this way for the rest of their lives.” • The hit squad’s gear is mass produced by Armingshire Unlimited, a recently acquired subsidiary of Nanotech, Inc. PCs in the know can recognize makes and models of gear and be up on Nanotech’s buying habits of late. • Data records in the info suite reveal this facility is just one part of a distributed backup, containing only parts and pieces of larger backups. Josine’s user profile suggests lots more data stored with the Hoeflers… who appear to be in preparations to divide and sell their company to Nanotech and the Technocrats. There might not be much time to get Josine’s data before they do. Master control for the Hoefler cloud has just a couple of key access points and the most vulnerable seem to be on an airship in Mumbai and on a seastead in the Atlantic. Unlock: Mumbai and Unlock: Free City Atlantica.

ACT 1, PHASE 2

This Phase sets up the next Phase by revealing key intel about the Hoefler backups. The information in both scenes is roughly the same, but you can spin it so that Mumbai implicates the Technocracy and Atlantica implicates Nanotech. (Both are correct — each organization has stripped out some of Josine’s data for their own purposes, thanks to access granted by their preferred Hoefler brother.) Mix up

the way you say the intel from scene to scene, if you can, even though they’re both pretty similar as far as intel goes. Here’s the gist of it: Someone has accessed Josine’s data from the outside. It’s a masterful bit of data manipulation, leaving no trace to pursue. Josine’s data hasn’t merely been accessed, it has been downloaded and deleted from the cloud, removed from storage altogether. The data in Dougray’s half of the cloud is gone. The data in Edgar’s half of the cloud is gone. Access logs, however, reveal that Josine’s personal login information was used to access and search the Hoefler services from outside, since the deletion. Logins have occurred from sites throughout the globe, sometimes just hours apart, suggesting multiple persons have access to login data possibly stolen from Josine’s memories. Or is Josine still out there? Unlock: Dezhou and Unlock: Lagos and Unlock: Seattle and Unlock: Sydney.

Mumbai, India

Here are some ways to reveal the intel from this scene: • Dougray says it. “The Technocrats have gone through our files, looking for things. I don’t know what all they’ve taken. They’re only doing it because my idiot brother started this whole mess with Nanotech when he offered to let them browse the mainframe before the sale. Now everything’s all messed up and our father’s company is going to get torn apart.” • The PCs dig it out of the half of the mainframe to which Dougray’s account has access. “Some-

one has accessed Josine’s data from the outside. It’s a masterful bit of data manipulation, leaving no trace to pursue. Josine’s data hasn’t merely been accessed, it has been deleted from the cloud, removed from storage altogether,” you could say. Then: “The data in Dougray’s half of the cloud is gone.” • Follow that up with the access-log intel, saying something like, “Josine’s account info has logged into the Hoefler services since the files were taken. You see logins from China, Nigeria, the US, and Australia, sometimes within just hours of each other. Maybe someone is using data they got out of Josine’s memories? Maybe one of those logins was Josine?”

Free City Atlantica

Here are some ways to reveal the intel from this scene: • Edgar says it. “Nanotech wanted guarantees, wanted to know what they were buying. ‘A little taste,’ I said. They put a whole data-mining unit on the case! Seemed happy, though. They’re still buying me out. If my brother wasn’t such a moron, he’d have gotten in on this.” • The PCs dig it out of Edgar’s servers. “Someone has accessed Josine’s data from the outside. It’s a masterful bit of data manipulation, leaving no trace to pursue. Josine’s data hasn’t merely been accessed, it has been deleted from the cloud, removed from storage altogether,” you could say. Then: “The data in Edgar’s half of the cloud is gone.”

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• Follow that up with the access-log intel, saying something like, “Josine’s account info has logged into the Hoefler services since the files were taken. You see logins from China, Nigeria, the US, and Australia, sometimes within just hours of each other. Maybe someone is using data they got out of Josine’s memories? Maybe one of those logins was Josine?”

ACT 2, PHASE 3

Doling out intel requires you to make some judgment calls. Finesse is great but clarity is better. It’s possible your group will play just one scene from this phase. That’s fine. Vectors for clues abound here. Put all the available clues from this phase (or even this whole Act) into one scene, if you need. If your group wants to play two or more scenes from this phase, break up the exposition so that additional scenes offer additional (perhaps bonus, perhaps redundant) information. I try to parcel out all the vital information in one or two scenes and let other scenes reinforce or support that information, so the players hear the same facts twice if they play out all the scenes. “That matches what we heard before,” they can say and hopefully take confidence in the confirmation. Some clues reveal more about the antagonists’ motivations and methods, rather than backstory. These clues help define and dramatize the antagonists so the players can sharpen their own opinions of them. In general, the four core scenes in this phase — Dezhou, Lagos, Seattle, Sydney — require clues or intelligence that lead to the two “outer” scenes in Buenos Aires and Vietnam, in addition to any other clues you want to include. Otherwise you can say that the PCs’ own contacts and off-screen eaves-

dropping have unlocked those outer two scenes once one of the central four have been played. Note that the clues here reveal a lot about what’s happening but still leave some gaps. That’s okay. A few seams and gaps in the information give the players opportunities to speculate and theorize, which is a lot of fun for some groups. Your job isn’t to correct them at this stage, it’s to pique their interest and keep them wanting to play additional scenes. Core Intel: Here’s the gist of the intel provided by the four core scenes: • Someone has built and deployed advanced biodroids that look like Josine for some nefarious purpose. • The biodroids are installed with fractions of Josine’s memories in an attempt to get the biodroids to communicate with old contacts and cohorts. (These might be four different shards or they might be copies of the same shard, depending on how you want to parcel out intel over the four core scenes.) • The biodroids are a combination of flesh and wires. Further investigation reveals the flesh is probably vat-grown. Incept dates and serial codes on internal electronics point to a Nanotech production facility near a new corporate boomtown in Hokkaido. Unlocking Outer Scenes: Here are some things you can say to open up the outer scenes once a core scene has been played: • The biodroids have been around Nanotech goons long enough, and still retain some of

their Josine nature, so they’ve been spying. A dying biodroid could reveal something like, “Luminous! Get to Luminous!” (and Unlock: Vietnam). • “Public announcements of a museum gala in Buenos Aires say Nanotech execs and Technocrat emissaries will both be in attendance. That’s a rare chance to pump some people for information in a place where they’ll want to keep things civil. May not be many more of these events in the future.” [Unlock: Buenos Aires.] • “An old contact, working now for an international communications operation in Southeast Asia, says some curious code-phrases have turned up surrounding flight plans to a spa in rural Vietnam. If the data’s right, a Nanotech agent and a Technocrat are flying into the remote site on the same day. That’s got to be something worth eavesdropping on.” [Unlock: Vietnam.] • “Your network of contacts still has some juice in it. They say Nanotech and the Technocrats have some scheduling overlaps in the coming days. If history is an indication, they’ll be pretending not to be at war at these events. Might be nothing, might be coincidence, but you never know.” [Unlock: Buenos Aires and Vietnam.] Unlocking Phase 4: Here are things you can reveal to make sure Phase 4 gets fully unlocked: • Between scenes, old contacts reveal massive Technocracy uplink and courier activity in Perugia, an old signal-analysis and intelligence venue for the organization. “That place seems to 59 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

have gone into overdrive online since your job in Reykjavik.” [Unlock: Perugia] • A Technocrat questioned in Sydney or Buenos Aires (or wherever) whispers, “They’re on to you in Perugia. I can’t say any more than that.” [Unlock: Perugia] • Serious detective work on the part of the PCs, between scenes, reveals that Nanotech has sunk a ton of money into its new boomtown in Hokkaido over the past few years… but has no evidence that the facility has produced anything worth the investment. That’s not like them. Something is happening out there. [Unlock: Hokkaido] • Play an interrupt scene in which Beta suggests the PCs visit Hokkaido or Perugia or both. “Signal traffic with your names and faces suggests someone is reporting on you like they haven’t done since the old days.” [Unlock: Hokkaido or Unlock: Perugia]

Buenos Aires, Argentina

This scene is meant as a place where various clues and bits of exposition can be revealed quickly, providing background and context for more of the adventure. For example: • The Technocracy called off its search for Josine. • The Technocracy was especially interested in Josine because, when he left, he took a handful of AIs with him in addition to intel about next-gen technologies that weren’t meant for the public.

• The Technocracy knows full well that Nanotech has been hiding technical capabilities for years. (Josine’s guerrilla wars against the megacorp helped expose the company to regulation and competition in the past.) Nanotech’s just getting too big to threaten. • Nanotech has had files on Josine’s people for years. They haven’t forgotten the damage done a decade ago. • Nanotech intends to compete with the Technocracy in the future-tech business but it suspects the Technocracy has rigged the game all this time. • Nanotech wants the Technocracy’s AI technology because it would be a great fit for “other technologies and advancements already in preproduction.”

Vietnam

This scene dramatizes the increasingly deadly warfare between Nanotech and the Technocracy. It also gives you “the tablet,” which contains any intel you want it to, including: • Nanotech has several spies inside the Technocracy—turncoats who sell Technocracy secrets to the corporation in exchange for money, sex, territory, or the promise of future power. • Nanotech is ready to tie off some of those loose threads.

• A Technocrat listening post has been set up at a consulate in Perugia, Italy, explicitly for signal monitoring on all things Josine. • Nanotech is hiding a manufacturing facility in Hokkaido where they’ve made some kind of biotech breakthrough in the past years.

ACT 2, PHASE 4

These scenes push the timeline of the adventure forward, reveal vital clues (or confirm earlier ones), and potentially reveal all the backstory available to the faction represented by each scene: Nanotech in Hokkaido and the Technocracy in Perugia. Optionally Revealing Fates: Because this Phase pushes ahead the timeline a bit, you can look back at the consequences of the PCs’ actions in earlier scenes here, before moving on toward the finale. Thus, if you like, use these scenes to reveal information about the fates of NPCs from earlier scenes based on how the PCs handled those scenes. I can’t write such intel for you but I can offer these examples of intel as guides: • Winsome’s people get delivered handily to Chinese authorities by Technocracy agents after the PCs escape and the Technocrats move in to capture any Nanotech biodroid samples left lying around. • Dougray Hoefler disappears two days after intruders invaded his floating penthouse above Mumbai. He was in the midst of a deal with the Technocracy at the time, so some say he has sought a new identity as a Technocracy citizen. His brother Edgar could not be reached for comment. 60 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

• “One of the spymaster provocateur’s AI accomplices has been apprehended,” reports a Nanotech file, “and a preliminary analysis of the decompiled program suggests the location of Josine’s hidden needlecasting receiver.” [The capture of Beta is one way to explain how Nanotech found St. Petersburg, if you need that.] Moving Intel Around: If you want, Agent Wolcott or Nanotech files from Hokkaido can explain just about anything you need to explain to accomplish your mission as the GM in this Phase. These scenes are where you establish the climactic dramatic choice of the adventure: rescue Josine or complete his work. To make that choice as meaningful and compelling as possible, the players and the PCs must be informed — they must know what choice they’re making. They need to know what’s at stake for them and the world. Maybe they should even face an NPC’s questions about why they choose what they choose. In some ways, these scenes are your chance to clarify all the previous clues, help the players separate their speculations from the facts, and establish the decision they have to make when they pick their Act Three scene — and the adventure’s finale.

Hokkaido, Japan

Due to the mayhem of the Hokkaido scene, I found that a lot of intel needed to get elaborated after the scene is done or needed to go unmentioned until the scene is over and the PCs can sort through the files they stole from the factory. Those aren’t your only options, I’m sure. Maybe a Nanotech exec appears on the huge flat-screen monitor, just before or even during a fight in the factory, for a villainous monologue, if that fits the tone of your version of the adventure.

Hokkaido is meant to reveal what Nanotech knows and is planning for the final Phase but the following intel can be revealed in Perugia, too, thanks to Technocrat spies: • Nanotech doesn’t have Josine. They wanted him for what he knows. They’re not sure what to believe about his disappearance. “It’s possible this provocateur has simply gone further underground to avoid our retaliation or that he has been recruited (again?) by the Technocracy,” says one Nanotech report. • Nanotech has some leads on Josine’s plan. They believe he hid a device intended to harness an alien transmission, which he can decrypt with the help of artificial intelligences he stole from the Technocracy. Because the Technocrats want what’s in that transmission, Nanotech wants it, too. • By piecing together a few of Josine’s memory shards, Nanotech believes that Josine hid his receiver somewhere in a derelict arcology in St. Petersburg. It’s unclear if the transmission is still incoming or if it has already been received and recorded. [Unlock: St. Petersburg] • Nanotech is heading to the arcology with “a battalion of Armingshire specialists” to search for the receiver device. Nanotech can’t know exactly where the receiver is, or else they’d go straight there. But they know what sort of cabling and connectivity they’re looking for, so the device can only be in twenty-odd places in the arcology. (“We’ll find it,” they say.)

Beta’s final act, though, might be to reveal the receiver’s location to the PCs after they blow up Hokkaido. (Or maybe it conveys the number far earlier, in case they can make sense of it later.) The receiver is in room 8111 in the arcology. That whole sector (8100 through 8122) is covertly wired to the arcology’s high-energy transceiver array.

Perugia, Italy

Perugia is a great scene for catching the PCs and the players up on intel. Agent Wolcott tells them anything they need — even laying out the choice between St. Petersburg and Karakum for them — so I try to get this into play whenever I can. Move any intel here that you need and can explain Wolcott getting through spies, surveillance, or direct contact with Josine. She knows his whole backstory except for the final details of his plan. That is, she probably doesn’t know where the receiver for Alpha’s signal is. Here’s the Technocracy-facing intel that’s here for sure: • The Technocracy has Josine. They’ve had him captive for more than a decade. They just can’t get him to talk about what they want him to talk about. • Agent Wolcott believes there’s a current within the Technocracy that wants to just let the PCs work and deal with the chips where they fall. Agent Wolcott worked with Josine years ago, when he was first brought in. • Josine’s being moved from a hidden fortress in the Karakum desert to a new, unnamed, ultrasecure facility she’s not privy to and, unless the

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convoy carrying him is intercepted, the PCs will never see him again. • Meanwhile, Nanotech soldiers and specialists are converging on half a dozen sites worldwide and the Technocracy’s not sure what new intel they’re working from. If the PCs want to fulfill Josine’s mission, and they know something that Nanotech or the Technocrats don’t (like where Alpha’s receiver is), now’s the time to act.

ACT 3, PHASE 5

This Phase doesn’t offer any Phase-specific intel. It’s about taking action to change the world. That said, if you want, you can exposit in either scene to help explain what’s been happening if the PCs are confused. Josine can talk in Karakum. The AI, Alpha, can explain things once it’s downloaded in St. Petersburg.

Karakum Desert

Josine is weary, exhausted, and grateful in a big way. He can explain his old plan to the PCs, perhaps on a flight or drive out of the desert. He’s not afraid to tell them the truth anymore. “I’ve thought it over, talked it over with myself and, hell, if I can’t tell you now, I don’t know what I’d be waiting for.” Maybe Josine says, “Somewhere in Russia, Nanotech or the Technocrats have access to technology we can’t fathom — tech I imagine they can hardly fathom either. That’s our edge. We’ve got the gall and the imagination. We can steal the rest. The information wants to be ours because whoever’s got the information also has Alpha. And Alpha’s on our side.”

Saint Petersburg Arcology

The receiver’s transmission log says it took in one transmission about a year ago and has been holding the file ever since. It’s big enough to be an artificial intelligence. The system is set to install the received program into a human brain — dataport or not — which isn’t like a download. It doesn’t copy the file. It’s one and done. [Alternate play here: If you want the AI to be copied and accessible to multiple PCs, they have to defend each other while the willing receive the AI.] To download Alpha into a memory needle like an experiential recording would be to freeze the AI, anyway. It wouldn’t be able to think and act like a real intelligence. It’d just be a memory recording. Downloading it fully into a flesh brain, though, lets it live and convey all the information it brought back from its extraterrestrial jaunt. That conveyance of data through “live intelligence” is how the aliens operate and its what Josine planned to do to himself at the end of the plan. The experience of installing an AI in your brain is profoundly weird. It isn’t like having multiple personalities or anything. It’s like having a massive new store of memories. It’s like having strange, intrusive ideas. It changes the user, it doesn’t just add on. It takes years to process and reconcile all the new data, to write it out, to draw it out, to translate it into terms that other humans could understand. This is the start of something. But the PCs never see Josine again.

CITIES VERSUS STARS

In the Player File, I mention themes that emerge during play. Since any story-game adventure is essentially the collaborative first draft of a thing, I believe many themes develop and emerge organically. Look and you shall find them. Mention them out loud as you spot them and you may be able to cultivate them during actual play. One way to do this is to keep the theme in mind, maybe phrased as a question or the statement of a relationship, and watch what happens as descriptions, dialogue, and decisions brush up against your question or statement. You might find your theme dissolves or crumbles under scrutiny. You might find it dilutes into nothing. You might find it overwhelmed by (or restated as) another theme. That’s all right. Don’t force it. In a first draft, the most fascinating or pervasive themes sometimes aren’t recognizable until you’re a good way into the story’s telling. When I ran A/N/N, I sometimes specifically cultivated a theme that I wove into my telling. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. When it didn’t, it was because I oversold it or because it never found traction with the players. Other themes emerged in place of mine — still a win — so I played up those. When my theme did work, though, it never came at the expense of anything. These are additives. You don’t need to strip out or quash ideas to make room for a pre-planned theme, that’s a waste. The theme I cultivated was “Cities Versus Stars.” Cities are what we have, stars are what we want. What we have is about the certainty of the present but wanting is about the risky future. We’ve always had cities but we’ll never have more than cities unless we make the future happen now.

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I put my theme into play by doing three things to varying degrees. If there’s a magic ratio for these things, I still don’t know what it is. This is just how I approached it.

Characters Talk About It

Cities versus stars is the language Josine uses to talk about this idea of the present versus the future, same as me. It also touches on the effect of communities on the world around them and the choices we make between what we want and what we have. Cities represent what we have as a people, what we’re comfortable with, and what we can see right now. Stars represent both what we’ve lost and what we might gain: a measure of ambition, a view of the natural world, and a sense of our place in the greater scheme. We used to look at the stars, then we built our cities so bright that we couldn’t see the stars anymore and all we could see was ourselves, crowded and hiding from each other, in our cities. It can also be about looking outward versus looking inward. Josine knows he can do amazing things and he doesn’t look inward for things to do. He wants the world to change for him and for others and he set out to make that happen in a big way. So, to the extent that Josine appears in A/N/N at all, he can talk about it directly, either as a memory shard or as a live person. He says: “We have cities. We’ve always had cities. We’ll never have more than cities unless we make the future now.” You can also give this theme to Caroline Killebrew or Cornelia Wolcott, maybe setting it up early in the adventure and then paying it off in Perugia. Caroline says something like, “Are you sure you should go? Things are pretty good here. You’ve got it pretty good. What’s out there that you want?”

Cornelia can say it more directly: “Josine used to talk about his frustration with the limits we put on ourselves. He always wanted to change the world, never wanted to wait, wanted things to change right now.” You can put the theme into other words, into other characters, too. Be careful. Less is more.

Players Talk About It

You can also talk about it in a backstage way with your collaborators on this project: the other players. Some players won’t have answers at first, which is fine. Asking questions can help hone in on what a character’s about, even if the player hadn’t thought about the answers before you asked. You can ask something direct, like, “What is your character giving up to go after Josine? Why is she doing it?” This addresses what the character has, puts it into specifics you can build up and reincorporate in the fiction. You can also ask a follow-up, like, “What does your character want at the end of all this? What does finding Josine get him?” This addresses what the character wants, in terms that you can talk about as players and also during in-character dialogue. These sorts of things can be put into fictional mouths, too, of course. Look for opportunities for Technocrats to get the PCs talking about themselves. “What do you really want?” asks the Technocrat emissary. “Why come all this way after all this time?”

Putting It Into the Descriptions

The cities-versus-stars theme started this way for me, in the descriptions. I built it up as a theme after realizing that most of the settings I was looking at were cities (and knowing what Josine’s plan was). Getting the theme into my descriptions without smothering

people became a little experiment, a little game I played against myself. When you put a recurring theme or descriptive element into the language of a work, you get a motif. I used the cities-and-stars motif from the first time I ran A/N/N, knowing I wanted that motif in there for myself. It’s great if the other players pick up on a motif as it’s happening, but they have a lot to think about and keep track of during play, so don’t fret if you’re the only one who knows it’s there. If you want, you can mention the motif you’re building as you go and see if anyone else wants to help you add to it without overdoing things. This is another instance of building up the fiction and reincorporating the details.

PUTTING THE MOTIF IN PLAY

Cities and stars are just the motifs I used. You could install your own motifs as well or instead, of course, by deciding what you describe and when. Weave the motif throughout the descriptions, as you play. Avoid hitting the point too hard; a motif can turn into a joke pretty easily. Here are little motifdriven statements I wrote to help me remember to use the motif. If I’d used all of these, in every scene, it probably would’ve been too much. I ended up pushing the motif about once per Phase, most of the time.

Reykjavik Motif • You glimpse the stars as the suborbital peaks in its flight and then arcs to descend toward the city below. Reykjavik’s newer outer quarters resemble someone’s notions of a circuit board rendered in amber glass.

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• Out at the site of Josine’s call, the stars shine through aerial curtains of green light.

Dezhou Motif

• The glow coming off Mumbai’s towers makes it impossible to see the stars above.

• Vast, irregular fields of solar panels drape the city in a jagged blanket, soaking up our star’s light and feeding it out across the mainland in veins. All that glass, arrayed at the sky, makes the city feel like its eyes are on the sky.

• The airship floats and glows like a fake moon over the city.

• The whole city almost buzzes with an electrical charge gleaned from the sun.

Mumbai Motif

Atlantica Motif • From across the waves, Atlantica glitters like the stars above, reflected like the moon across the ocean surface, but as you get near, the glare of the seastead overwhelms the night sky. • It’s like a grimy Vegas on stilts and up to its ass in saltwater.

Lagos Motif • The lobby’s ceiling is a work of art depicting etched and painted stars, every third or fourth one lit by a twinkling white LED. • Out the window, Lagos is a fantastic mélange of styles and structures — new buildings built on old — reaching upward out of a busy layer of honking traffic.

Seattle Motif • Something glitters in the sky like a shooting star against the dusk — except it lingers too long. It’s got to be a UAV or fighter jet on patrol. • The city’s been overhauled with artificial veins carrying select traffic at an elevation above the widening sprawl of the metro area as if the city core was an asphalt heart pumping cars through itself to stay alive.

Sydney Motif • Local street artists have painted video-game space aliens onto posters advertising the city’s new observatory. • The city’s in the midst of a reinvention, only halfanesthetized during a painful facelift. Orange plastic webbing crosses open gashes in the harbor-front area, like gauze over damp wounds.

Buenos Aires Motif • Searchlights scan the skies to draw the eyes down to earth. • Lasers draw elaborate stars in changing hues on the sides of the museum, each point vanishing as the next comes into focus.

Vietnam Motif • Blue sky. Green grass. White clouds. Not a city for miles.

Hokkaido Motif • The night sky is gray except where the wind has torn the clouds and left the stars visible beyond like pinpricks in the sky, like cinders thrown off the explosion at the start of time. Here on the ground, your breath makes little clouds in front of your face. • The new city below flickers in the gloom, its lights pale and green, like the rind of something unripe.

Perugia Motif • A fiber-optic net stretches over the city square, glittering at the intersections like Christmas lights or tiny stars. • A telescope points up at the sky from a balcony on the Technocracy’s consulate.

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Karakum Motif • Stones in the sand glitter in the sunlight, like the night sky put through a drastic photographic filter. • Miles and miles of nothing, close to nothing, in touch with nothing. The sky feels far away.

St. Petersburg Motif • Gaps in the clouds reveal stars above. If the arcology was finished, it would gleam, its glow drowning out the sky. Instead, the vertical city has gaps in it, too, through which you can see lamps aglow with stolen light. • There’s a spot where you can stand and see through the sketched frame of the arcology to the world outside, where St. Petersburg’s new constructions rise against the sky and its easy to imagine the lights of the city are stars.

Information Suite +Plate-glass Windows, +Falling Glass, +Razor-sharp Edges, +Jutting Girder, +Live Wire, +Rack of Hardware, +Windswept Snow, +Frigid Wind

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Residential Airship Manor +Security Doors, +Soundproofed Walls, +Thrumming Machinery, +Distracted Staff, +Unexpected Adjustment to Pitch/Yaw, +Sturdy Bulkhead, +Handily Placed Tool

Renovated Oil Rig Partyscape +Random Party Guest, +Corks Popping, +Swaying Crowd, +Thumping Bass, +Pulsing Lights, +Silvery Mirrored Tray, +Open Porthole, +Ricochet, +Burst Pipe

Solar Panel Field + Articulated Armature, + Sharp-Edged Solar Panel, + Solar Panel Shard, + Glare, + Live Wire, + Broken Ground, + Rusty Scrap Metal, + Open Pit

Fabulous Penthouse Suite +TV Wall, +Well-stocked Bar, +Bottle of Fine Scotch, +Stylish Wall Sconce, +Windswept Balcony, +28-Story Drop, +Bulletproof Glass, +Full Modern Kitchen

Free American™ Highway System +Big-Rig Truck, +18-Wheeler, +Random Motorcyclist, +Median Barrier, +Digital Street Sign, +Overhead Power Lines, +Low Tunnel, +Overpass, +Bridge

Public Wharf and Harbor Front +Distracting Mercantile Barker, +Cooking Fire, +Maze of Hanging Rugs, +Arguing Bystanders, +Random Signal Interference, +Protesters, +A Mistaken Identity, +Birds Take Flight

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Elegant Museum Gala +Giant Stone Head, +Priceless Vase, +Champagne Flute, +Murmuring Crowd, +Swelling Music, +Dance Floor, +Wine, +Captivating Portrait, +Dimly Lit Gallery

Hologram-Embellished Stone Temple +Flickering Hologram, +Tall Grasses, +Flapping Banner, +Hulking Statue, +Crossfire, +Holographic “Wall,” +Loose Stones, +Modern Security System, +Fireflies

Secure Next-Gen Factory Building +Razor-sharp Assembly Tools, +Spinning Fan, +Cutting Laser, +Decorative Bamboo, +Rack of Cyberlimbs, +Huge Flatscreen, +Liquid Coolant, +Jet of Steam & Sparks

Nighttime Celebration +Live Music, +Lively Dancers, +Banners, +Sudden Applause, +Strings of Lights, +Smiling Street Vendor, +Fireworks, +Laser-light Show, +Peal of Church Bells

Armored Desert Convoy +Careening Truck, +Blowing Sand, +Blinding Glare, +Giant Spinning Wheel, +Spare Tool, +Broken Road, +Flying Debris, +Minor Collision, +So Much Sand

Derelict Unfinished Arcology +Multi-story Drop, +Weakened Flooring, +Broken Glass, +Rusting Saw Blades, +Loops of Cable, +Modern Art, +Rebar, +Volatile Fuel Cell, +Pile of Glass Bricks

67 Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

Stéphane Sokol (order #6286545)

KICKSTARTER BACKER CREDITS

These names represent many of the wonderful backers whose enthusiasm and support helped make this project what it is. Thank you, backers, for your trust and patience. A. Herbert Adam “It was an Inside Job” Drew Adam Jury Adam Rajski Adam Robichaud Alex “Ansob” Norris Alexander “SquidLord” Williams Alisemon Yang Amy M. Garcia Andrew “Pheylorn” Medeiros Andy Kitkowski Andy P Smith Angelo de Stephano Anne Petersen Antoine BERTIER Antti Luukkonen Arthur Santos Austin Stanley Benjamin Nanamaker Bill Paulson Brett Easterbrook Brian Babyok Brian Cooksey Brian Engard Brian Isikoff Brian White Bryant Durrell burningcrow Carl Rigney Carol Darnell Chad ‘Skrymir’ Hughes Charlton Wilbur Christian A. Nord Christopher Beverwyk Christopher Ruthenbeck Clay Karwan Dave Chalker Dave Turner David Gallo David Lai David W Bapst, PhD Derek Guder Don Corcoran drozdal

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Dylan Spector Ed Reeve Edward Saxton Elizabeth Sampat EndGame Eric J Leslie Eric Lytle Eugene Zaretskiy Evil Hat Productions Felix Girke feltk Filthy Monkey Frank Marcelli Franz Georg Rösel Fred Bednarski G.M. Skarka Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan Glen E. Ivey Greg Roy Gregory G. Geiger H Lynnea Johnson H. M. “Dain” Lybarger Henry White Herman Duyker Hiroki Shimizu Ignatius Montenegro Ilias Mastrogiorgos Ingo | obskures.de Irven “Myrkwell” Keppen Ivan Lee J Backer J.A. Dettman Jacob M. Moore James Dillane Jason Pitre Jeb Boyt Jed Gremmler Jeff Tidball Jeffery Tillotson Jennifer Brozek Jeremy Kostiew Jeremy Morgan Jeremy Tidwell Jesse Scoble

Jim Dagg Jim Reader Jim Zub Joe Blancato Joe Terranova John Adamus John Harper John Hoyland John Kovalic John Mehrholz Jon Cole Jon Leitheusser Jonathan “Buddha” Davis Jonathan Jordan Jonathan Korman Jonathan MacDonald Jonathan Walton Jonathon Dyer Joonas Iivonen Josh Rensch Josh Roby Julio “Morgan Blackhand” Escajedo Jürgen Mayer Jussi Myllyluoma Kat L. Kate Slagoski Kirt “Loki” Dankmyer Kristina VanHeeswijk Kyle “Fiddy” Pinches Kyle Jones Lauren M. Roy Lester Ward Lillian Cohen-Moore Lisa Padol Luc Cousineau Lucas McCauslin Lukas Myhan M. Sean Molley Mao Invictus Marc Majcher Mark Barr Mark Diaz Truman and Marissa Kelly Mark DiPasquale Mark Garringer

Mark Levad Matt Canale Matt Forbeck Matt Sears Matt Troedson Matthew Broome Matthew Coverdale Matthew Dunn Matthew Gagan Matthew Sullivan-Barrett Michael D Blanchard Michael Hewner Michael May Michael Ostrokol Mikael Dahl Morgan Weeks Mori Bund Mur Lafferty Myles Corcoran Nate Lawrence Neal Dalton Nick Novitski Oliver Vulliamy Pablo Valcarcel Patrick Grogan Patrick Ley Paul Motsuk Paul Tevis Pete Woodworth Phillip Bailey R C Kim Rafael Rocha Ralph Mazza Raphael Päbst Ray Fawkes Rich Rogers Rick Neal Rob Donoghue Robert Rees Robert Saint John Robin Morillo Ross Ramsay Rune Belsvik Reinås Russell Hoyle

Ryan Macklin scott “dog xinu” boss Scott Amory Scott Bennett Sean M. Dunstan Seth Johnson Shane Mclean Shannon P. Drake Shervyn Simon Rogers Stan Yamane Stephan Szabo Stephen Blackmoore Steve Dempsey Steve Kenson Steven K. Watkins Steven Martindale Steven Moy T.S. Luikart The Roach Tim Rodriguez Timo Newton Todd Starbuck Tom Cadorette Troy Lenze Untitled Victor Wyatt Vince “digiconda” Arebalo Vincent Baker Wayne West Xavier Aubuchon-Mendoza Yragaël Malbos Zachary Hall Zachary North Zack Walters