Night's Black Agents: Van Helsing Letter

5 August 2016 Friday 8 pm: Night's Black Agents: Van Helsing Letter

• GM: Greg
• Matthew P: Morgan -- Wetworker
• Derick Larson: Varouette -- Black Bagger
• Me: Fleurey? -- Bagman -- MOS Explosive Devices
• Joshua Wallace: Green -- Medic

I don't remember a lot about this one either, apart from a screw up with explosives and being enthusiastic enough that one of the other players reminded me -- very gently -- to wait my turn.

The GM was smooth enough that I didn't realize until the end that this adventure was very freeform. That is, as with Dracula Dossier and Armitage Files, the GM has to decide whether each element -- NPC, location, item -- is mundane, helpful, neutral, sinister, magical, and so on.

In Strasbourg, France, the agents were contacted by a man named Pierre about the eponymous letter.

Pierre: A German man acquired a letter -- I sold it to him -- but fortunately, I made a copy.

The agents arrived and I think got the copy. I don't recall whether their intervention saved him from the return of the German and his minions who were returning to silence him permanently.

The letter was full of various bits of information that might or might not be true, and various things that could be interpreted in more than one way. Our takeaways included:

• Put a coin in the mouth first. Then, remove the head.
• Valid prey include those the vampire's shadow falls on and those who hear church bells.

I had a note about a wild pig.

Someone: Related to boar?

GM: It is a boar Hotch!

And somewhere within a day or so of the Czech border, the agents learned, there was a tunnel in which was Van Helsing's doctor bag.

The tunnel was located, and the agents watched and possibly spoke with the caretaker, but slipped away quickly. They didn't know whether he was anything more than he seemed.

Someone: If he really is a nice man, we're doing him a favor [by slipping away].

Inside the tunnel, there was indeed a bag, and that's where, by all rights, my agent should have died, stupidly.

I'd used the MOS the agent had in explosives earlier -- I forget why. So I was rolling for getting a bag with a lot of unstable explosives safely out of the place it had been stashed for possibly over a century, and I totally blew the roll.

I asked the GM if I should take one of the unchosen agents. He'd have been well within his rights to say yes. It wouldn't have slowed anything down, and it wouldn't have wrecked anyone's game. But he decided to go easy on me and have the agent wounded, but not so badly that we couldn't continue after relatively minor first aid. It wasn't a wrong call. It wasn't a necessary one either, but we were all fine with it as it kept things simple.

The agents learned there was some kind of high class party with some interesting guests. There was some family about whom someone said: Lot of anemia and blood diseases in that family.

Possibly this was the family of a woman at the party who had sequentially dated several men quite a bit older than she was.

Someone: Those men -- they don't suddenly die within next few months?

GM: Uh... Yeah!

And near the building with the party was a black van holding a very large church bell. Mind, by the time the agents got there to deal with it, there'd been an altercation, if a subtle one, that resulted in the death of an NPC agent that might have been an ally. Ah well. Mistakes were &c.

Someone made a Preparedness check for earplugs and succeeded. One of the agents grabbed a knife, punched someone or something, and cut a cable. I think that may have been to keep the sound of the bell from being heard over the sound system installed in the van or at the building where the party was. And Parkour definitely happened.

The bell rang, and an enemy shooter was killed by the vampire, for the shooter had heard the bell!

I have a note about the agents having an MP3 of Wedding Bells, a burner car, and a green syringe (which had to do with whatever kerfluffle resulted in the NPC agent dying).

I think one of us asked, "So church bells have been going off every Sunday?" I think the question having to do with why the vampire was only showing up now. I forget what the answer was, but it seemed to make sense at the time.

But, if the agents were to destroy the vampire, they'd have to ring the bell and lure it in with potential prey. The van didn't drive well, but I think the agents did their best, as they wanted it at least some distance away from the party. I think the GM noted that some castle had a bell tower, but I don't recall how that fit into things.

I think Morgan rang the bell and then dealt with vampire claws as best he was able. And there was a shooting MOS involved, which helped. My notes say:

-) shooting MOS 6 + 2 SMG -) 6
not blood

Which is to say that bullets weren't drawing blood, but when a bar was used as a spear -- again, if I understand my notes -- that worked.

Green: Note to self -- go back and shoot that woman.

Varouette tried to push the vampire onto the spear, essentially wrestling the undead creature. The vampire chose to take the damage and damage Varouette in turn, but I think the agent got lucky, i.e., did not die. The creature was, I think, destroyed.

One of the agents spoke to the woman who'd been involved with all the suddenly dying men: I'm just gonna ask one question. Why'd you summon this here?

Woman: So much money! (i.e., from dead guys)

Agent: I kick her -- I don't shoot her

She was kind of a hitman. The GSV was trying to acquire the vampire as an asset. The woman that my agent killed by accident was actually trying to kill the vampire. Oops. And the caretaker was indeed just an innocent caretaker.

All of this, of course, could have been quite different. As the GM said, the case is where you look for it.