After Action Report #1

Welcome Directors and Agents,

Director Jerry Blakemore sent me this awesome After-Action Report on his Agents of Oblvion Game.  As a result he is now officially agent OZ3.  I want to hear from any of our fans.  I want to hear about your games, characters, NPCs, settings, extras, whatever you are willing to share.  Email me at MisterE@Oblivioncentral.com

Let me start by saying that I am a big fan of Agents of Oblivion. It was love at first read. All I needed was players, as I loved playing with the mission generator.

Well low and behold I found a group of willing agents and now all I needed to do was pick which mission I had generated and flesh it out for my group. For their first mission I chose an assassination. Get them into some intense action right from the beginning. My target roll called for a scientist and remember the target should always be a wild card. Now I needed to place him on the globe. After rolling, I determined that he had built a palace in the middle of the Indian jungle. A perfect place for a mad man to perform his insane experiments.

The basic plot roll called for Wretched Excess. I sat  back and thought about what would be cool under these circumstances. I decide my scientist, Samuel Papadia lost his wife 15 years earlier. Since then he had been researching and experimenting with cloning. His goal being to create his bride and give them a second chance at love. But the work drove him and he turned mad in the process. His work did prove to be successful, but by the time he recreated his love, he was no longer content with just one. Soon he was surrounded by hundreds of his wife’s clones. The locals referred to these women, as the Wives of Shiva. The reason being, a large part of the mansion was dedicated to the worship of Shiva. In fact, Samuel Papadia sought to perform a ritual that would pull Shiva into our reality. When Agents of Oblivion became aware of his activity and that the chances of his success in summoning Shiva are high, this resulted in his becoming a target of Oblivion.

Now I needed a complication and this rolled up to be an Escalation. The agents needed to act fast or Papadia would open the world to a great evil, so they needed to act quickly to save the world. But how would they gain access to this compound? Well Samuel Papadia had always shunned outside contact with the world. But he, like so many other mad men, desires approbation. He extends an invitation to a National Geographic photographer to chronicle his deed. This was determined by an artist roll for the agent’s ally. Joan Mindak was on her way for an exclusive look at the man who cloned this wife over and over again. He did not inform Mindak regarding his summoning of Shiva, which would require the sacrifice of a hundred virgins. Mindak’s assistant was determined by the enemy roll. In this role I came up with an ex-Oblivion agent, Malcomb Easter. He had a personal mission of stealing the cloning methodology. What he might do with this technology remains undecided. He might use it or sell it. But his success will surely haunt the agents in the future.

With the major part of the story developed, now I needed to create some clones. The basic type rolled up as a Tainted Human Extra. This meant they would have a single hindrance, edge, and minor taint. The Hindrance was Death Wish, which I decided meant these women had lost some of their humanity in the cloning process. They possessed no joy in their heart and would gladly die to pursue their master’s goals. In fact, if he ordered them to die their heart would stop beating in that instant. This freaked the players out when he demonstrated it to them at a dinner before the scheduled big summoning. The edge rolled was Ghost, which is sweet. They would use their innocent and beautiful appearance to trick opponents. The Minor Taint gave them a die bump on Spirit, which allows them a better chance to recover from those annoying Shaken rolls.

How did the mission work once it was presented to the players? I think it went well. First off the group of agents in this particular cell are based in Washington DC. The senior agent is a brick with the Arrogant Hindrance, so he is definitely hands on and listen to me I am in charge, type of guy. His three assets include a psychic, a healing saint, and an infiltrator. A very well rounded team ready to take on mission that Oblivion assigns them to perform. Such as the assassination of Samuel Papadia in India.

The agents flew to Calcutta and then caught a train to take them to a town near the Papadia palace. While of the train they met Joan Mindak and Malcomb Easter. The best method of travel to the estate was by elephant, so the agents rode with Mindak and Easter. Once there they were taken in and constantly watched by several wives. They were surprised by the four additional people showing up, but Papadia thought it would be good to have a few more witnesses to his rise in power.

That evening there were led to a large banquet hall in the palace. Here they came face to face with Papadia who sat atop a large dias in the room. There were several wives in the room. At least one for each guest and several serving Papadia. A few others stood around the room as well. The infiltrator wanted to get a look at the compound. She requested to go to the restroom. Once there she knocked out her escort and put on the purple sari that the Wives of Shiva wore. Meanwhile back in the banquet hall the brick was trying to do something (I do not recall), but he failed miserably and I had chili juice squirt into his eye. This proved to be painful and during the commotion Malcomb Easter snuck out of the room. The infiltrator saw him and followed to see what he might be up to. Easter went directly to the cloning room and accessed a computer from which he extracted cloning technology data files. The infiltrator confronted him and Easter informed her that he was on a separate Oblivion mission. He was convincing as he spoke the language and new Oblivion protocols.

The infiltrator left him to his data extraction and went upstairs. There she came upon the ritual area. The floor was inlaid with precious stones and metal surrounding a huge fire. She was attacked here by a lone Wife of Shiva, who she quickly overpowered. She looked for ways to destroy the ritual area when a large gong resounded throughout the compound. She recalled a gong being located behind the dias in the banquet room. The infiltrator decided to turn back to join her fellow agents.

In the banquet room, Papadia had noticed Easter’s absence and sent a wife to check on the infiltrator. When they found the knocked out woman in the loo, that is when the gong was struck and the battle in the banquet hall began. The agents were extremely fortunate, as the psychic shot Papadia (with several raises) resulting in his brains decorating the wall behind him. They made short work of the kukri wielding clones and then the infiltrator returned saying that they needed to barricade the doors as more clones were assembling to attack.

They searched the room and found a trapdoor under the dias. Seeing as this provided the only means of exit that was not covered by few dozen Wives of Shiva they climbed on down. Below the banquet hall they discovered this was an escape tunnel. To make this exciting I had the doors breaking just as they last agent closed the trapdoor. Then I broke out Paizo’s Chase Cards and it made an interesting chase while avoiding various obstacles that were located in the tunnel complex. More chase cards were drawn as the clones continued to pursue them through the jungle. The cell finally found safety after crossing a rope bridge that crossed a raging river. They cut the rope and breathed huge sighs of relief as the wives could not cross in time and they made their way to town and caught the next train back to Calcutta.

Once they returned to Washington DC they discovered that Malcomb Easter was not a current Oblivion agent. There were further informed that two teams would not be placed on missions in the same location like that as it is a waste of assets. The big question now is did Easter escape and if so, what will he do with that cloning data? Will the Wives of Shiva hold a grudge and seek to strike back against Oblivion? And is there the ability to produce a clone of Samuel Papadia? There is just so much to have fun with here. And you can guarantee I plan on using this event to affect future missions.

Thanks Jerry.  Until next time this is Mister E saying “Shoot first, if you let the other guy do it, you may not get a turn!”