Aeon C-Team S302: Blue Skies Tattoos for Everyone!

We'll update the logo... eventually

The Team:

Niklos Xanthopoulos (Kevin): Multidisciplinary genius, medic/doctor, and general curmudgeon. Believes Morphazine is the answer for everything and enjoys asking Marsh to hold organs during autopsies. TIME LORD

Marsh Langston (Maverick): A blond, smiling hacker that will rip the most secure files out of your mainframe while convincing you that he's just downloading more RAM. Marsh is a technical wunderkind and social engineer with a shadowy background in intelligence. PROHIBITION MOBSTER

Mikhail Kovalenko (Alex): Measuring 6'4" and weighing about 230lbs, Ukrainian-born Mikhail Kovalenko was a former special agent in Eastern Europe and is extremely competent at drinking vodka, making friends with random people, piloting, field action, reminding others that he's from Ukraine (not Russia), field operations, and handling firearms. TOTALLY NIKO BELLIC

Agent Veracity (Me): The Subway's resident spook and dumpster diver, Agent Veracity is a highly skilled investigator, tradecraft expert and conspiracy nut. HE'S IN YOUR TRASH!

Miguel Drasil (Andre): The ultimate personal assistant. A sarcastic wiseass.

Events:

We're asked what the hell we want to do with Sr., the new info we've been given, and stuff the Cavalry has secured during their escapades.

We decide to follow up on Moya's address we received from Sr. We drive by the place with a Hyperspectral camera to see who is inside from the street before knocking on doors or otherwise kicking down doors. The place is over a coffee shop on the east side.

The place is full of dead lukewarm bodies- 16 dead bodies.

Just outside the doorway there's a bouncing betty- the trigger of which Veracity ends up stepping on.

Marsh attempts to disarm it, with Mikhail and Veracity making complimentary skill checks to help out. He rolls a 17 and spends Karma to prevent blowing up the entire team.

Marsh manages to disarm the mine entirely, giving it to Mikhail.

The scene is pretty terrible, bodies, blood, gore, and the works everywhere. All of us succeed on fright checks.

Veracity looks over the room to get a sense of what happened. Someone was let in without a struggle, they knew the people inside, they talked for a few minutes, then there was a fight. There are bent guns in spots, showing either super strength, TK, or something else. It looks like most people were put down with intent to maim.

Moya's sitting in a corner, dead. The rest of the bodies look like mostly hired thugs, with a few Blue Skies looking folk among the dead as well.

Mikhail uses his new astral projection powers to enter the spirit realm (or whatever the fuck the AEON equivalent is). Mikhail sees utter chaos and violence, ten replaying death scenes that loop over and over again.

Mikhail does his best to ask questions of the people stuck in death echoes. His best social influence being Intimidation, he rolls against that, succeeding by 11. Somehow he snaps a shade out of their echo. He tells the guy some ludicrous story about LSD and drugs that have influenced his mind.

It takes a while to talk the hired goon into describing what actually happened. He was working for "This guy", "for a lot of money so I can get my son into college...", "JUST ONE LAST JOB", "I answer the door and this guy came in. His eyes were red. Mikhail fails to get a physical description of the man. The dude spoke with the Boss of the hired thug for a moment before getting angry and starting to rip people apart.

The shade lifts up its dead arm from the floor to show Mikhail that he's not hallucinating. Marsh and Veracity both see the arm rise off the ground.

Mikhail and the goon get into an astral fistfight. At some point he yells that the Devil was Russian. The Mass Murderer and the Bossman were talking about a Doctor of some kind.

The dead guy goes about trying to reassemble his body. Mikhail slaps him out of it.

The dead body starts trying to talk and starts trying to walk out of the apartment. A shot from the electrolaser doesn't stop it for more than a few seconds. Mikhail resorts to emptying a clip into it. It's completely ineffective until he hits the head.

It appears Moya didn't give an answer 'The Devil' wanted when asked about Lesko, the Chief Information Officer for Blue Skies.

It's inconclusive whether the murderer is a meta or occult in nature.

Mikhail's electrolaser goes off into Mikhail's leg, triggered by the spirit he pissed off during his jaunt through the Astral Space. Mikhail makes his HT check by 12 and more or less ignores it. Mikhail then jumps back into Astral Space to subdue the spirit (now poltergeist). A brief astral fistfight results in Mikhail pummeling the spirit into ectoplasmic goop.

Marsh and James are more than willing to cover up Mikhail's creation of a poltergheist- especially since they can feasibly deny knowing how exactly it happened.

Marsh collects phones and other computer devices for going through later, including one that needs hardware level authentication fobs to work without turning into slag.

We move onto the safehouses we've been given info on. We have info on eight of them. One's been scouted by the Cavalry, and the other we just checked out has obviously been burned. Five are within the city, two are outside of it. 

We head for Port Tilden to talk with the captured Chief of Information. We've cleared the safehouse where a board of director member was. When we arrive they're unhappy that Moya is dead. We hand off the hard copies of files we found off to a tech working the Blue Skies Task force, informing him what limited info we knew about them. The tech is Riley Porter, and he believes that the files are utter gibberish.

Veracity promises Riley a coffee for going through it.

Lesko is in a metallic straightjacket. It's clear they took keeping him from escaping very seriously.

Marsh starts to talk with him. Lesko questions if we're AEGIS or SENTRY. We bring up the slaughter at the safehouse and that Moya is dead.

Evidently there's some sort of curse that prevents Moya from talking about things. Marsh notices that Lesko is sporting a similar mind-tendril tattoo as he once had. We ask Mikhail to get Sr. for us. 

Lesko claims that we've fucked up the plans of Blue Skies- plans to avert Black Swan. Lesko also claims to have seen our files- especially Marsh and Mikhail's due to Sr's involvement in Blue Skies.

Evidently killing off Marlowe threw a huge wrench in their plans. He's a little confused he can talk about Marlowe to us.

Mikhail gets a sense that something is wrong as he goes to fetch his father. Yolena is concerned that Sr. hasn't been getting fed since he arrived. Mikhail fetches some snacks and a drink for his father.

Mikhail is suddenly karate-chopped to the back of the neck for 16 damage. He fails his knockdown roll (-5 due to major wound), and then takes an axe kick to the face for 8 points. His mothers eyes are glassy, like she's not really in control. (Christopher confirms she has one of those neural tattoos that whammied Marsh a while back.)

Yolena tosses Sr. some keys, then stomping Mikhail in the family jewels with a crit for 22 damage. Mikhail spends Karma to keep in the fight.

Mikhail decides to 'stay down' after his mother tells him to stop resisting. Waits until his father and Yolena run for it, taking a shot at Sr's knee. Marshall Sr. takes a "Flesh Wound" (costing a point of DOOM). 

I spend 3 Karma to add some details to the scene:

• BIG RED BUTTON
• BIG SECURITY DOORS
• Halon fire suppression system right where Yolena and Sr. are when Veracity hits the BIG RED BUTTON

Mikhail takes a moment to reflect on his treatment by his mother. He then goes to make sure that Sr. hasn't died.

Sr. is in rough shape and looks horrified at things. He grabs a pair of scissors and starts stabbing himself with them in the abdomen. (Guess who else has a lovely neural tattoo?)

Marsh busts ass to hack through the security alert, taking a -8 and still succeeding by 3 to open the door. Sr. is dying, rapidly, and Marsh crit-fails first aid (DOOOM) while trying to save him.

Marsh and Mikhail both dump Karma to counteract the DOOM to save their dirtbag father. Mikhail and Marsh both see something written on each's other foreheads in blood. Marsh has JON on his face and Mikhail has WAY written on his face. This name matches up to a name on the list the Cavalry got for us- someone by the Codename John Wayne.

The safehouse Wayne is at is a powerplant.

We decide to go for an aerial insertion through either parachuting or fast-roping. We opt for parachuting as hovering within fast-rope range would probably alert people to our presence. 

We end there with an additional game session tomorrow.