| From: | Arcady arcady@***.net |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Hiding your trakcs: help req on a scenerio |
| Date: | Thu, 29 Jul 99 14:11:37 +700 |
get through the scenerio, but will spoil some of the fun of the suprises.)
Can one mage make it hader for a group of mages to track a seperate mage via
using a focus of that mage? Can that first mage do it they are an initiate?
The scenerio that bring up this question:
It is the week before Easter in 2060. My PCs are 2 mages, 2 shamans, and a phys
adept.
Sunday young (8 years old) Amanda Gustavo is shopping in a downtown comic book
store after getting off from school. At around 3 or 4 pm or so. Two tall individuals
in black trenchcoats and masks burst in and gun down the shop keeper and another
customer (child), paint a pentagram and the phrase "The Dark One shall rise"
on a wall in goats blood and run off with Amanda...
Tuesday heroes are out cruising along after just having placed an order with
a fixer for a new van. A limo pulls up beside them at a red light and the window
rolls down. An attractive young human asian magically awakened woman wearing
white gloves reaches out and hands an envolope to one of the PCs. She then drives
off.
In the envelope is a letter with a picture of Amanda. It gives the girls address
and place where she abducted. It then says "She is important to us, retreval
fee negotiated upon delivery based upon condition, minimum fee of 50k for live
retrival" (or something like that, I'd have to check my notes). Two phone numbers
are attached. One for qustions and one to call to arrange delivery.
The PCs call and find that Amanda was to attend a special school but was abducted.
Ms. J wants them to find her before Lone Star (mostly as she believes Lone Star
will just file the case in a drawer and forget about it...)
They go to the comic store which is in a small outdoor mall in the downtown
area. Rather than break in past the police tape they go in astrally and observe
the crime scene. This lets them know of the two deaths and the blood on the
wall. One of them sends in a spirit through a mouse hole and gets a (somewhat
dry) blood sample from the wall. The place is otherwise full of police chalk
and fingerprinting dust.
Wednesday morning:
The PCs then decide to go to her home. They start astrally. They find it to
be a nice middle class home just north of downtown. The mother is home at the
time and not magically active. The father is due home soon. No occult texts
or magical items in the building save for in the childs room... Her closet has
a small background count which feels like a nightmare and her teddy bear appears
to be a level 4 shaman's focus. (what they don't know but are guessing at is
that the child has somehow awakened at this young age and through the shear
force of her dreams she has put a 'monster in her closet' and made a teddy bear
she adores into a protective focus through which I plan to let her be able to
summon an ally spirit in the form of said bear. She's powerful, but completely
untrained. A hot item).
Ok...
They decide they need to get that bear to track her down (using a mages focus
to astrally them). So the PC's shaman put's on a physical mask spell and pretends
to be a lone star mage-detective visiting the house for further evidence. Another
PC goes invisible and goes in with him. It works and from the mother they also
discover that the child had been asked to attend a private school by a group
that claimed she was magically talented (it is these people who hired the PCs
indirectly, they suspect; rightly so; that Lone Star won't find the girl in
time for her to be returned in a sane/healthy condition).
The goats blood and the message on the wall left the PCs believing she had been
abducted by a satanic cult to be sacrificed. This is close to the truth; though
not exactly on.
Thursday:
The PCs then go to their apartment and summon an earth elemental an a Djinn
(one PC is an Islamic Mage).
Late afternoon they astrally track the focus back to a nice apartment in Belmont
(or is Bellvue, I keep getting that mixed up). A place on the 7th floor with
a level 6 ward around it.
They begin to plan an assault. It's around 7pm and they decide to go in at 2am.
This due to having to wait on a rush delivery of some knockout grenades.
That evening at 10pm one of them meets a friend of a friend in pullyup to get
the set of knockout grenades (at 500 nuyen each due to rush delivery :))
They head over to the apartment. It is a block long complex with three entrances
each to a seperate section of the 10 story building. Each with one guard who
can see anyone who enters the parking lot in front of him or walks past him
to the elevator or stariwell.
They stunbolt the guard on their section and make their way up. One of them
levitates up to a window of the apartment and tries to peer in through a slight
space between the curtain and window edge. He sees dark rooms and a sleeping
form in a bed.
They have a spirit carry one grenade in through the air conditioning vents and
then the Djinn sets it off and blows wind to force all the gas into only that
one apartment.
Then they use stun bolt spells to blast down the barrior.
Here they get real bright. Rather than quietly pick they keypad lock the Giant
(troll variant) shaman pulls out an axe and bashes the door down. Setting off
the automatic security systems. I mentally give them about 10-20 minutes before
a police arrival and decide the guards downstairs aren't paid enough to leave
their posts when the know the cops are coming. :)
They search the place and find an unconscious caucasian woman in her late 30's
in the bed. A childs toothbrush somewhat wet in the bathroom, a pile of literature
with a slight taint to it's aura on a desk in the study, and one computer system.
The Islamic mage has a datajack and jacks in (rather than use the VR goggles
next to the machine or keyboard it through the monitor). He finds a very simple
home system with a few games, a home office application, and two files on the
2060 version of a 'PC desktop' that look a little odd: One shows as a tall black
door with a red inverted pentagram and is labled 'Levy Foundation' (as in Anton
Levy, auther of the Satanic bible). and another labeled 'Church' that appeared
as a huge gothic catherderal cast in dark shades. He downloaded these files
into his headware and they made a quick exit to the sounds of approaching sirens.
They now find themselves having the track the girl again. Apparently she was
moved since their last tracking. Which was what I'd intended from the get go
(none of them stopped to think that you don't put 'Evil Villains HQ Inc." in
a small residential apartment in a nice neighborhood where you can't go modifying
the facilities. The apt was just a holdover location while the cult prepped
it's real facilities for the girl).
The two files point to two different groups. One is a cult of blood mages the
woman they captured is an acolyte in. The other is a red herring designed to
throw them off.
I want to get them to investigate both... Which means I need o know if the blood
mages would have a way to prevent their tracking from working. I plan to have
their leader be an initiate of a decent level of potency. He'll have a few mage
followers but of his group are mundanes that do the legwork in return for promises
of power. The woman they have captured is magically active but on a very low
level (not yet decided).
