A Glimpse Under the Hood: Mission Planning

Continuing on the topic of mission planning that Douglas Cole got me talking about, I'm going to talk further as I go through planning a mission.

I frequently browse Reddit. It's a frequent trove of interesting material, such as this Wikipedia article on the Archives of Terror they found in Paraguay.

I read about recent riots during my stay home over the holidays, which got me to thinking about a mission involving getting some kind of shady person out of a country currently embroiled by riots- preferably riots where most of those throwing bricks and firebombs want the team's principal dead.

While browsing the internet at work, I stumbled upon the wikipedia article on the Beltway Sniper Attacks that took place in 2002, which I think will provide more flesh to the riots + shady person idea above.

So let's lay it out as I piece it together:

• The players are being sent to a country, likely Turkey or Argentina. (I'm going with Turkey)
• This shows that Turkey can be a rough and tumble country much like Zeta controlled Mexico
• Their mission is to locate two individuals and facilitate their extraction to the United States (or another Agency 17 controlled location) so they can be brought into the fold for the organization (The Agents will be told that this is so they can be questioned/interrogated)
• The first individual will likely be a government official, featuring into the overall clash between pro and anti-government forces. I'll call him Mr. (e)X(ample). Mr. X is skilled enough to be an Agency 17 agent in his own right.
• The second principal is an accomplished wetworks man (woman?) for the other individual the players are hoping to extract. This person is just as skilled as Mr. X
• The riots started when some hactivists uncovered proof that Mr. X has been causing a great deal of those aforementioned human rights abuses- disappearances, torture, murder, blackmail, the whole shebang.
• Mr. X's cover involves copious plastic surgery which has changed his appearance. His head is swaddled in bandages- which he attributes to getting caught in the flames from a thrown molotov cocktail during the riots.
• Anti-government forces want to capture Mr. X. They'd like a public hanging.
• The Turkish government hope that Mr. X's downfall will relieve the pressure on their organization from anti-government forces.
• Mr. X's wetwork person's moderus operandi is very close to that used by the Beltway snipers- use a modified vehicle to serve as a sniper's nest to conceal mussle flash and help with suppression.
• The wetwork person is likely related to Mr. X to help explain why they're willing to help them escape both sides eager for his blood.
• Mr. X is probably a minister of some intelligence organization, possibly with ties to the PKK (What is the Intelligence Service of Turkey?)
• None of my character speak Turkish and only Virgil is likely going to have cultural familiarity there. This will isolate them and make them stand out to a great degree.
• Discussing the above bullet point with Virgil's character lead me to look up Newspeak.
• Attention span completely ruined, let me point you to this episode of Red Dwarf where JFK ends up shooting himself from the grassy knoll

I'll wrap this up in another post once when I can focus on it again.