The world of 2020 is a scary place. Djinn, Ghuls, and other beasties prey in the dark corners of sprawling metropoli, magicians make deals with dark creatures for massive arcane power, megacorps take advantage of the weak and unfortunate, turning people into exploited statistics. The rich are no longer human, but transhuman, qualitatively superior to the common masses. To be a normal human in this era is a terrifying thing.
Our protagonist is not a normal human. She isn't even a peak human, or an augmented super-commando.
Her name is Roberta, a post-human supersoldier for the SWF. She is to transhuman super-commandos what transhuman super-commandos are to unaugmented grunts. She hunts down the gribbly, horrible things at the edge of society and the people who worship them to make the world a safer place. She also enforces the rule of law on the nastier mega-corps, to make the world a nicer place, and she's rather miffed that even though those operations probably help the masses more than killing a bunch of Ghuls who snacked on some dude they get basically 0 publicity, except to be occasionally maligned as government-backed strong-arming.
Currently she is waiting in an honest-to-god helicopter that's at least forty years old, she's reasonably sure it's been ripped straight from the set of a cold war action movie. She's probably right, this entire operation's a bit of a rush-job. So much so that some intern* is doing the briefing instead of one of the automated analyses she's used to.
She isn't paying attention. Oh, she catalogs each and every word out of the intern's mouth, processes it and dissects it for clues and hidden meaning, but that's trivial.,the function of some aug what's name she can't remember. Instead she uses her massively accelerated, augmented consciousness to do something far more important.
...OK, I lied. She's surfing instagram while watching youtube videos. Ladies and gentlemen, our heroine. Millions worth of augmentations, a brain that can compete with supercomputers, a wifi connection built into her skull, and she's spending her time browsing cat pictures and videos on the internet at the same time.
In her defense, she has already figured out her plan and is mostly waiting for the helicopter to take off, but still. The principle of the thing. Hardened, post-human supersoldiers don't surf the net for cat pics during mission briefings. It's just not done
*:A new girl, not yet augmented by the looks of things. Probably came in through one of the Uplift programs
Objective:
Find and eliminate the Green Djinn cult before they complete whatever ritual they are in the midst of.
Rescue the hostages captured by the Green Djinn cult.
Secondary Objectives:
Identify mages and targets of interest amongst the Green Djinn cult
Link up with Jonaid and retrieve information
Recover artifacts of interest from the facility.
Destroy, contain or banish any Extra-Dimensional Entities or other horrors summoned by the Green Djinn Cult.
Known Information:
The Khartoum-5 Facility belonged to the Vult Biomechanics, a nominally christian megacorporation with an interest in the supernatural. They were performing some sort of research into the supernatural in the facilities heavily reinforced underground research bunker, though as it's only been a bit more than an hour since the attack they have not yet sent you the information detailing what. You have an exacting floor-plan of the facility, but there's some sort of interference keeping you from pinning down the location of any of the personnel or cultists.
There are at least fifty cultists in the facility (Ten on patrol in the facility proper, the rest in the research sections underneath it) and eighty employees failed to evacuate during the attack. They are probably either hostages or sacrifices, depending.
This game is running off the Aberrant 2.0 ruleset, made by our very own MJ-12. You can contact him for a link to the rules.
Mechanically, you are a Post Human Warrior (As the NPC Section of the Aberrant Handbook). You have 8 willpower, 8 [3] Strength (Brawler), 9 dex (Co-ordinated), 8 stamina (Why won't she die), and Bioenhancement 9. This basically means that you're strong willed and absurdly superhuman on every possible level, and at near the human limit of augmentation. You are in Personalized, Stealth-Optimized Powered Armor. Your weaponry is a wrist-mounted vibroknife, several explosive charges, and a modified machine gun.
You have Incendiary and Subsonic ammunition, in addition to the standard SWF UV-beam attachment, available, and may choose two other types of ammunition for the mission:
JHP: Unimpressive against armored targets, but absolute murder against infantry.
Armor Piercing: Pierces armor well, at a small penalty to the actual tissue damage dealt due to overpenetration. Cultists are unlikely to be particularly heavily armored, but if they summon something this could be useful.
Discarding Sabot: Incredibly good at piercing armor, has a bad tendency to over penetrate without actually killing the target. Generally only worth it against very well armored targets. Like you.
+P+: Overpressured ammunition, +P+ has quite a bit of stopping power and penetrates armor rather reliably, but has a bad tendency to explode.
Multiplex: Each of these cartridges has multiple bullets stuck in it. They're rather accurate and reliably lethal.
Your team is made of six augmented commandos in personalized, exo-skeleton equipped stealth armor. In addition to knives, they have assault rifles and the same ammunition loadout you do.
Detail Your Approach:
[ ] Write-In. Feel free to invent strategies, details of the building plan, ridiculously Tier One Operator backstories for your squad, and the poor Green Djinn Cultists on patrol outside of the underground levels
What's Your First Target:
[ ] The Research Labs, they'll have clues as to what was going on in the facilities, and there may well be people hiding there.
[ ] The Mysterious Giant Cylindrical Chamber in the deepest levels of the research facility. It's totally where the cultists are, and therefore probably where Jonaid is. Oh, it'll also be the largest concentration of cultists and you'll have not dealt with any of the other cultists in the facility. And the hostages will be decidedly unsafe.
[ ] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
[ ] The armory, you'd rather they not have whatever experimental weaponry Vult was toying with down here.
Pick One:
You're here instead of someone less horribly overkill for a reason, why?:
[ ] You know Jonaid from an incident with a necromancer in Salt Lake City. You're here half because you're worried about him, half because you're worried about what he's going to do to everyone else, and half because you want to make sure there isn't a minor clusterfuck between your troops and him.
[ ] Vult asked for you to oversee the assault personally, they felt that whatever happened it was worth your personal oversight, even if they aren't entirely sure what happened.
[ ] You're chasing a lead on a bizarre as fuck sorcerer, the Green Djinn attack seemed to fit his Modus Operandi. You tagged along to see if it was him, or at least if you could find some clues.
[ ] Write-In (May be vetoed)
...OK, I lied. She's surfing instagram while watching youtube videos. Ladies and gentlemen, our heroine. Millions worth of augmentations, a brain that can compete with supercomputers, a wifi connection built into her skull, and she's spending her time browsing cat pictures and videos on the internet at the same time.
I think I can conclusively state that we are the best heroine. Ever.
[X] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
Information! Wheeee! Let's not start a suicide charge just yet, mmm?
[X] You're chasing a lead on a bizarre as fuck sorcerer, the Green Djinn attack seemed to fit his Modus Operandi. You tagged along to see if it was him, or at least if you could find some clues.
Goddamn sorcerers, amirite?
No write-in because I'm currently in the middle of something, but:
[X] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
Intel.
[X] You know Jonaid from an incident with a necromancer in Salt Lake City. You're here half because you're worried about him, half because you're worried about what he's going to do to everyone else, and half because you want to make sure there isn't a minor clusterfuck between your troops and him.
Establishing pre-existing relationships with other characters.
I'm terrible at tactics so write in duty can fall to someone else.
[X] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
[X] You know Jonaid from an incident with a necromancer in Salt Lake City. You're here half because you're worried about him, half because you're worried about what he's going to do to everyone else, and half because you want to make sure there isn't a minor clusterfuck between your troops and him.
[X] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
[X] You know Jonaid from an incident with a necromancer in Salt Lake City. You're here half because you're worried about him, half because you're worried about what he's going to do to everyone else, and half because you want to make sure there isn't a minor clusterfuck between your troops and him.
I'll edit my vote later to support someone that comes up with a solid approach plan.
[X] The armory, you'd rather they not have whatever experimental weaponry Vult was toying with down here.
[X] You're chasing a lead on a bizarre as fuck sorcerer, the Green Djinn attack seemed to fit his Modus Operandi. You tagged along to see if it was him, or at least if you could find some clues.
[X] The armory, you'd rather they not have whatever experimental weaponry Vult was toying with down here.
[X] You're chasing a lead on a bizarre as fuck sorcerer, the Green Djinn attack seemed to fit his Modus Operandi. You tagged along to see if it was him, or at least if you could find some clues.
[X] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
[X] You know Jonaid from an incident with a necromancer in Salt Lake City. You're here half because you're worried about him, half because you're worried about what he's going to do to everyone else, and half because you want to make sure there isn't a minor clusterfuck between your troops and him.
Literally no such thing as "Too much information".
[X] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
[X] You know Jonaid from an incident with a necromancer in Salt Lake City. You're here half because you're worried about him, half because you're worried about what he's going to do to everyone else, and half because you want to make sure there isn't a minor clusterfuck between your troops and him.
Approach:
[X] LANO Drop. Low Altitude, No Opening. Look, why would all of you be fitted with reinforced cyberlegs and armored exoskeletons with shock absorbers if you weren't intended to drop in from a few thousand feet and hit the ground at terminal velocity while shooting everyone in the head from surprise in midair? The trick to a successful assault is speed and shock. You need to kill fast, and parachutes too slow.
[X] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
[X] Vult asked for you to oversee the assault personally, they felt that whatever happened it was worth your personal oversight, even if they aren't entirely sure what happened.
[X] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
[X] Vult asked for you to oversee the assault personally, they felt that whatever happened it was worth your personal oversight, even if they aren't entirely sure what happened.
[X] The security camera monitoring room. Recording of what is currently going on in the facility and the assailants attack would be enormously helpful in determining the location of any hostages.
[X] You're chasing a lead on a bizarre as fuck sorcerer, the Green Djinn attack seemed to fit his Modus Operandi. You tagged along to see if it was him, or at least if you could find some clues.
The internet surfing doesn't stop until well after the helicopter's in the air. Roberta considers it a good use of her time, helicopter insertions kind of lose any sort of excitement they had after the first dozen times, while cat videos are timeless. A thirty seconds from the drop zone she finally deigned to stop surfing the net and turn to the rest of the team.
"Plan's dead simple," she says, "The moment we hit the drop-zone, we're jumping. Switch to subsonics, hit their patrols, get inside the research facility, and straight to the security cameras to figure out what's going on. Got it?"
Six power armored heads nod in assent, the pilot thumbs the comms to tell them that they're over the drop-zone, and before he's even finished his sentence the Foundation Commandos have jumped. He mutters something about crazy fuckers as they go.
Most drop-troops would deploy parachutes or something from a drop at this height. Not them, after all, what's the point of millions in augmentations if you need something as dumb as a parachute to survive a landing from a thousand feet up? No, the seven-person commando team free-falls into the ground outside of the Facility and exits the impact craters sprinting.
There's a patrol, four men, at the front of the building. They can't quite see the squad, they can't see through walls after all, but to their credit they react swiftly an professionally. One moves to thumb his radio on, the rest raise their rifles, maneuvering to see what's going on.
Too slow.
Roberta sprints into the building first, downing the radio-man and a woman with a grenade launcher in two short bursts of subsonic machine gun fire. They fall in puffs of blood, and before they hit the ground the rest of the squad has already killed the other two. There's a short pause as they check the corpses and listen in on the cultists radio-traffic to make sure that they weren't heard, then it's back to the hunt.
The rest of the patrol-men are trivial to deal with. Three are relaxing in a break room, eating stolen food and laughing to each other, the other four are guarding the only entrance into the research facility. The team breaks up, three hit the group in the break room, Roberta and the rest of the commandos hit the four outside of the entrance. It's mercifully quick, only one of them even realized that they were there before it was over and he didn't have enough time to scream.
With the patrol dead, the squad formed up on the door to the research labs. It was a massive thing, a veritable slab of steel, and by the looks of things someone had done their best to weld it shut.
"Four life signs on the other side," says one of the commandos-Jacqueline, if Roberta remembers correctly- "They probably have control of the cameras, and there's no way we're opening this door quietly. Don't think we're going to be managing stealth from here on out. Might as well blow it down."
"No explosives yet," says Roberta, "They could have something nasty in there, I want to keep them around in case we need to blow up a mutant T-Rex or some shit."
"How do you want to get through, then?" asked another commando, Arjun.
Roberta grins behind her helmet. "You guys just sit back and watch," she says, "And sprint for those fucking cameras the moment I'm done." The commandos trade glances for a moment, and then stand clear with their guns at the ready. Roberta strides up to the door, braces herself and sticks her hands in the gaps between the door and the wall. The wall deforms and cracks where she forces her hands through, and then, with a massive effort that causes every augmented tendon in her body to burn, every servo in her armor to strain themselves to their limits, she rips the door out of the wall, and hurls it through the patrol on the other side.
The research lab is...bizarre. The floor is covered with root-like veins of stone, obviously incredibly ancient. Modern technology and architecture is built around the ancient ruins, power lines lying haphazardly across the floor and walls, bits and pieces of modern architecture installed where the ancient ruin had fallen apart, or opened into a chamber large enough to stick rooms in. Cameras are stuck haphazardly, wherever a modern wall was thick enough for the wiring, and even then much of the cabling to the cameras is exposed. It would be trivial to cut them off from the network, and by the looks of things the cultists already cut off quite a few on their way in.
Roberta pauses a moment, trying and failing to cross-reference the ruins against known installations, and then follows the commandos. By the time she's there they've already cleared the camera room, both guards are tied, bound and disarmed in one corner. She gives the commandos a thumbs up, then goes to check out the camera feeds.
At least half of them are blacked out or damaged to the point of uselessness, not much more than fuzz or a distorted image. Most of the rest are empty, mostly useless except to update the group's maps of the facility. Among the junk data there are three camera feeds of note:
In the research lab fifteen cultists in stolen combat fatigues, led by a woman with cybernetic arms, are guarding fifty-five hostages. The hostages look terrified, and you can see the woman talking over the radio. There's no audio, but the video quality's good enough that you can read her lips. By the looks of things, they're not planning on keeping those hostages around for long. Either sacrifice, or simply 'disposing' of them where they are.
In the cylindrical chamber there are eight cultists and a pair of what you think are mages, big, bulky italian dudes in over-wrought robes. Ten of the Vult Employees lie dead on the ground, their throats slit, though there's less blood than you'd expect. The cultists are in the middle of drawing a massive ritual circle around a massive pillar that stretches all the way to the ceiling of the chamber. In addition to the odd, root-like engravings the pillar seems to have something carved into it. Unfortunately the camera angle isn't very good, and you can't see what it is. Perhaps instructions for a ritual? Whatever ancient thing Vult decided to study. They'll finish soon, and you're not keen on seeing what happens when that goes down.
In the armory an armored figure is watching the last fifteen prisoners. As you watch, its gauntlets retract and it grabs a young man with his bare hands. Its fingers dig into the man's throat as it hoists him off the ground, and you can see the man shrivel and waste away, his veins bulging as they're drained, as the figure throws its head back. It throws the man into the wall, barely alive, and turns its attention to the rest of its prisoners. It doesn't even move, the people just collapse as it watches them, dehydrating in front of your eyes. It's a vampire, definitely, but what it did to the rest...that's impossible, it must be some kind of magic. The drained hostages are alive, but you know how Vampires operate, you doubt they're going to remain that way for long. Especially after it decides it needs help to deal with you and starts making zombies.
There are eight cultists who you both haven't killed and have not shown up on the camera monitors. Which is...worrying. It'd be more worrying if you had any respect for their ability to threaten you, but it's worrying all the same.
For my next trick? Combat that actually requires rolling! Pick One. Plan of Action from Here?
[ ] The, uh, weird magical vampire in the armory is obviously the bigger threat and it's torturing people to death right now. Flip the UVs on and vape him before he realizes what's going on. Hopefully the guys in the Research Labs are going to wait a few minutes to start sacrificing people. (.8x)
[ ] There are more hostages in the Research Lab, it's far more important. It sucks, especially since that vamp's gonna eat those dudes in the armory, but you can't let those people die. (.9x)
[ ] Fuck letting people die. Split up, hit both locations. (1.2x. Pick how many people are going where, and where you're going personally)
->[ ] The Research Lab's just dudes, nothing impressive. The squad can take care of that. You're going to take this vampire motherfucker down personally. (+.2x. The entire squad hits the Research Lab, you get to go womano-a-mano with a weird magic vampire.) [ ] It's a Hard Decision, but you can't risk that ritual completing. You'll have to leave those civilians to their probably brutal fates in the name of killing people Not. Going. To Happen.
[X] Fuck letting people die. Split up, hit both locations. (1.2x. Pick how many people are going where, and where you're going personally)
->[X] The Research Lab's just dudes, nothing impressive. The squad can take care of that. You're going to take this vampire motherfucker down personally. (+.2x. The entire squad hits the Research Lab, you get to go womano-a-mano with a weird magic vampire.)
[ X ] Fuck letting people die. Split up, hit both locations. (1.2x. Pick how many people are going where, and where you're going personally)
->[ X ] The Research Lab's just dudes, nothing impressive. The squad can take care of that. You're going to take this vampire motherfucker down personally. (+.2x. The entire squad hits the Research Lab, you get to go womano-a-mano with a weird magic vampire.)
If Iteration X has taught me anything, it's that cyborgs > vampires. Besides, this way you can make all the bad puns.
"I've got a stake dinner for you."
"I knew you were a vampire the moment I saw you. Know why? Because you suck."
