Night’s Black Agents After-Action Report #2: Get a Cluj

Our last session ended with our crew having rescued American investigative reporter Olivia Liu from the people chasing her. It wasn’t clear if they wanted her dead or alive, but the safe bet was on the former. So with Liu in the hotel we used as a safehouse thanks to Dr. Satterthwaite’s contact, we did the honorable thing with an American journalist and pumped her for information instead of “accidentally” burying her alive in the Sahara.

The Doctor handles the interrogation, providing Ms. Liu with a drink and a cigarette before reassuring her that we are not the bad guys here and that we want to get her back home safe . . . but first, she needs to talk. The pertinent highlights of what we learn from Liu are as follows:

She is a reporter from a small, independent, hard-nosed outfit in the States that focuses on the kind of old-school journalism that used to be the norm a hundred years ago or so, where journalists exposed the corruption of those in power instead of protecting those in power from the people. The stuff about Romania the Doctor found in her hotel room involved the sale of mining rights in the Carpathian Mountains to a mining firm in London. Further, going over the photographs and other things in Liu’s files, we learn that there is an excavation going on in Romania, unearthing what looks to be a medieval castle. This is where Liu had been before she was chased out of Romania. She ended up in Morocco because it was as far as her Eastern European fixer could get her. Liu’s plan was to meet up with Safet for transport to the airport, where she’d be smuggled out on a cargo plane bound for the United States.MI6 is mixed up in this somehow, with a lot of activity going on in Gibraltar.

Gibraltar, huh . . . that’s where Skorpion had his contact we intended to leave Liu with. Things are getting interesting. Also, wasn’t that guy at the cafe outside of Liu’s hotel room, the one Crisp scared away last session, from MI6? His name was Harkness, by the way. That fact seems to have slipped past me last time.

Anyway, this is where the “soft” skills the Gumshoe system provides for come into play–gathering clues. I love stuff like this. I also like how, as long as the players have the skill, they can utilize them in any way they can think up. For example, with his Network skill, Skorpion calls his buddy in Gibraltar who informs us that MI6 has been using some World War II-era tunnels for something shady, and that weird signals are coming out of there. Gowen uses his hacking abilities to dig deeper into Liu’s files, and finds out that this mining company in London is owned by a shell, which is owned by a shell, and so on like nesting dolls, finally culminating in . . . a fake person in a nonexistent entity. Very strange. He also gleans from the info, thanks to his Cryptography skill, that MI6, or whoever is really pulling the strings, is sending someone after whoever it was that sent Gowen the encrypted email that got us started on this mission in the first place, so he fires off a missive telling that kindly soul to skip town. 

So Gibraltar it is! We were planning to go there next anyway, but now that we don’t need to bring Liu–which would likely put her in more danger, seeing as how MI6 is after her–we get her safely to her contact at the airport (after convincing Crisp we don’t need to kill her; he uses his high Intimidation skill to make it clear to her that if she mentions anything about us at all, we will kill her and her family), we hop a plane to the Rock. En route to the airport, the Doctor called a friend of his in London to see if it’s worth a trip back, but quickly learns that this mining company business is a road to nowhere and that a jaunt back to Old Blighty would be an utter waste of time. 

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is where things get interesting. We leave the airport in our rental vehicle, only to be passed by a windowless van going the opposite direction. Thanks to his high Noticing skill, Crisp sees that the driver is none other than our old friend Harkness. He gives the signal for Skorpion to turn around and tail these jokers, but not too close. Luckily, thanks to a point or two of Preparedness spent, Crisp has a small homing tracker he fires onto the car from a safe distance, allowing us to get a bead on it without attracting notice.

Harkness drives into the area of the airport where private flights takeoff and land, right up to a plane, and along with five other guys begins unloading several boxes that look like they’d be full of file folders and placing them into the plane. Skorpion parks a safe distance away while the Doctor makes note of the plane’s N number. We want to know what’s in those files, and where that plane is heading, but Gowen has no time to hack into the system and the plane is revved up and ready to go. Crisp and Gowen jump out to get closer, owing to their high Infiltration skills–which they can “piggyback” by pooling points–to see if they can swipe those files or otherwise delay the flight.

“The hell with this,” is Skorpion’s reply through our earpieces. “Watch this.” He immediately calls the airport, informs them there’s a bomb somewhere either in the airport or on the plain that’ll blow in four hours, and promptly hangs up. This gives Crisp and Gowen a chance to sneak onto the plane where they see Harkness arguing with the pilot about why he can’t take off.

“Well,” Crisp says to himself, “might as well kill them all.” And since these are not fighting men, just MI6 spooks with “desk jockey” written all over them, they go down easy owing to Crisp’s high shooting skill. Shooting is also Crisp’s MOS, a term meaning Military Occupational Speciality. It’s a mechanic the Night’s Black Agents uses which essentially lets the skill a player makes their MOS always succeed once per session. The Doctor’s, for example, is Medic. Anyway, Crisp perforates these dudes while feeling perhaps maybe the faintest glimmering of a slight twinge of what could possibly be called the embryonic stages of a thing almost resembling remorse if looked at sideways, turns to Gowen, and says, “Now we can get the boxes.”

They’re able to bring four of them back, load up the idling car, and hop in right as Skorpion hightails it for the ferry in the North of Gibraltar that’ll take us to Cadiz, Spain. The plan is to drive through Europe to Romania, since there’s no point in heading to London and we think we’ve already gotten what we’d have found in the MI6 tunnels in Gibraltar. Plus, the heat is on and we really need to hightail somewhere far, far away.

Combat, so far, has not been dice-heavy, nor does it require crunching many numbers. Without having pored over the rules myself, I’m assuming that combat becomes more stat- and dice-reliant against more formidable foes, but for now I’ll take the easy kills. It takes a toll on Crisp’s stability, already low, but by praying his rosary, which is in character, he is able to restore a point. 

Romania, home of beautiful mountains, Europe’s largest wilderness areas . . . and the birthplace of the vampire mythos thanks to the real-life 15th century Voivode of Wallachia, Vlad Dracul. The Doctor, with his research ability, and Gowen, with his Traffic Analysis and general computer skills, go through the files and see a lot of weird stuff–talk of research that has been going on for over a century involving–get this–vampires as deniable assets? Chatter using terms like “jacks,” “targets,” “assigns,” and “boxes.” “Boxes” is clearly code for “coffins,” while “jacks” seem to be the assets themselves. The project is called OPERATION EDOM–very Biblical, as the Doctor notes–and the dig is taking place near the cities of Cluj-Napoca and Târgu Mures . . . both in Transylvania.

Vlad III, aka Vlad Dracula

The Doctor notes that Edom was the name of a kingdom in the ancient Middle East. It’s the Hebrew word for “red,” so named because it was founded by Isaac’s oldest son Esau, who was born “red all over.” The Edomites claimed lineage from Esau, but what ancient Hebrew kingdoms have to do with vampires is beyond our team. 

Gowen doesn’t believe the vampire stuff for a second. The rest of the team is not so sure it’s nonsense, given the weird operatives that nearly deep-sixed their past few missions. Crisp, especially, recalls tussling with some baddies who were most certainly more than human,and wants to get some answers. Ditto the Doctor and Skorpion. Gowen checks his skepticism and, like a good teammate, doesn’t make fun of the rest of crew too much. 

There’s more: talk of a Monastery of Malard that a local lord demanded disband and leave sometime in the 13th century. The monks quickly left without a trace, and the monastery was buried by an earthquake soon after. Weird. All that’s known of Saint Malard is that he was the Bishop of Chartres in France, and that he attended the Council of Chalons-sur-saone in 650. 

We have a ringer here when it comes to Romania, since Alexandru, who plays Ricky, aka Skorpion, is actually from Romania, but it also fits that his ex-military character would know a lot about Eastern Europe. We decide to go to Cluj-Napoca a beautiful city of some 300,000 in the Carpthian mountains, which Skorpion likens to Boulder, but traditional Eastern Orthodox European and not hippy-dippy progressive. Our cover is that we’re with NATO, seeing as how Romania is a member of that organization, and it’s easy enough to get in with our fake documents, as Romania is also an EU member state. We ended this session with Crisp and Skorpion gathering intel that the mining company, whose name we still don’t know, recently hired a lot of local toughs as security.

Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Our next stop is the dig site to see what on Earth is going on with this ancient castle some fake British mining operation that may or may not be connected with MI6 is digging up . . . and what it has to do with vampires.  

Bonus style points for everyone staying in character. The Doctor can’t help but hit on Liu, albeit mildly. Gowen is always looking for the stealthy angle. Skorpion has a crazy story of a tangle in a far-off locale for nearly every occasion. Crisp wants to kill everyone. This is a fun crew to play with, and it makes me sad I’ve missed out on TTRPGs for the past 20 years. I’m really enjoying Night’s Black Agensts so far, and the Gumshoe system. Very different than anything I’ve played, very different than the typical TTRPG expectations, and yet really emphasizes the RP part incredibly well. Good times.

Hopefully next session (two Wednesdays from now) we finally get some answers.