# [D20 Modern] The Winter of Our Discontent (updated Mar 13)



## Falkus (Nov 26, 2004)

Hi there, here's a writeup of the first session of d20 Modern with my new group at my universities new gaming club. Please post critiques, suggestions, mocking of my GMing ability, death threats, etc.

The Winter of Our Discontent

Staring:
Ryan Nichols, ex-military technician with a passion for the occult and pretty handy with his mini-Uzi
Giles Morgan, ex-CIA operative, can talk his way into or out of anything, also has a passion for the occult (to be introduced in episode two).
Steve, a student with a mysterious past and a keen hand with the throwing knives.
Colm “Mad” Braxton, a freelance sniper with a disdain for modern technology.

Episode One: Le Chien de l’Onyx, part one

November 20, 2008
New York City

The phone rang.

The office was nothing special, just a small building in a cheap part of town. A good place to serve as a simple gathering place for the group and to store the items they’d rather not be caught with. Better than using their own homes, the work they did wasn’t exactly legal.

To put it bluntly, they were mercenaries. Soldiers of fortune. Guns for hire. Not assassins, nor criminals by the strictest sense of the world. Problem solvers or trouble shooters were better terms. A group that got hired to do various activities that were morally sound, but not legally permissible. Hired by people who didn’t want to or couldn’t go to the cops, people who wanted things done quietly and efficiently. They had a small but burgeoning reputation in underground circles as problem solvers who stuck to their code of ethics.

It wasn’t the most perfect of jobs, mind you, but it paid the bills.

And the phone rang.

Steve was the one who answered. When Giles wasn’t around, Steve was usually the one who answered the phone. Ryan wasn’t so hot on the phone, and the team had let Colm “Mad” Braxton answer the phone once, and then never let him answer it again.

“Talk to me,” stated Steve into the phone.

“My name’s Alanna. I, I’d like to hire you,” it was a female voice. Nervous, worried, were good descriptors of the voice. She obviously wasn’t used to this sort of thing, and was in way over her head.

“What’s the problem?” asked Steve, taking out a pencil and pad. “Whatever is, we can deal with it, as quietly as you like.”

“An associate of mine, he’s been kidnapped. I have to find him. I can’t go to the police.”

“We can do that,” replied Steve, calmly. Nobody on the team knew too much about him. He was a student, supposedly, but he wielded his knives like a Navy Seal. “Just give me the details, and we’ll get right on it.” He wasn’t too concerned about the police factor. The team didn’t exactly function on the right side of the law themselves. It wasn’t that they were criminals, so to speak, it was just that they sometimes found that the best way to get  through red tape was to burn it with a white phosphorous grenade.

“I can’t talk over the phone,” she quickly rattled off an address; she definitely seemed frightened and close to tears. “I can be there in the alley at seven PM. I have to go now.”

And then she hung up.

Elsewhere
“Got the address?” said the first man, taking off a pair of headphones that were plugged into some rather sophisticated surveillance equipment.

“Yes. I’ll get in touch with our friends and stop this problem before it starts. Last thing we need is some loose cannons on this situation,” said the second, as he took off his headphones.

Four PM, the alley
It was a run down part of town. Not a place you’d want to visit or live if you had the choice. The team had come a couple hours early, suspecting a trap.

A quick routine search through the surrounding area revealed nothing particularly suspicious about upcoming meeting. Of course, that was no guarantee.

“We’ll run through this like usual,” stated Ryan. Being fairly knowledgeable with combat tactics, he was the nominal commander of the group. “Steve will make the contact since Giles isn’t here, and I’ll stay back, keeping a look out in case there’s trouble. Braxton, you know what to do, find some high ground and cover us from there.

The team moved out, Mad Braxton setting up with his PSG-1 in the second story window of an abandoned warehouse across from the alley. Perfect vantage point, he thought to himself.

At seven PM on the dot, a figure appeared at the mouth of the alley.

She was small, five feet at most. Green hair, obviously having been dyed. She looked around for a moment, then spotted Steve and started walking towards him.

And it was at that point that Braxton spotted a brown Dodge Neon slowly cruising towards the entrance of the alley while a man holding an UZI leaned out of the left-side passenger window.

“Got ‘em,” Braxton said to himself, smiling as he scoped in on the car’s tire and pulled the trigger of his rifle.

The 7.62mm bullet bounced off of the pavement, and Braxton cursed his quick finger, he’d pulled the trigger too soon.

However, it wasn’t in vain. The sound of the shot was overheard in the alley. The women dropped to the ground immediately, saving her life as the car slowly cruised in front of the alley, and the gunner sprayed nine millimeter ammunition all over.

Steve and Ryan ducked to the sides of the alley, pulling out their weapons. Steve reacted first, running towards the car and throwing a knife at the front tire as he moved, slicing open the tire, and forcing the driver to slam on the brakes. Cursing, Ryan opened up with his mini-Uzi, peppering the wall on the other side of the street with bullets, but causing no harm to his intended targets.

The assassin opened up again, barely missing Steve, who grabbed Alanna and ducked behind some garbage cans for cover. There was a door next to him, which he tried to force, but failed. Ryan kept up the fire, but still didn’t hit anything.

Steve came up from behind the garbage cans after making sure their client was safe, and with a smile, threw a knife, which sunk into the flesh of the arm of the gunner. This was what he lived for. Braxton, meanwhile, finally managed to hit. A single shot blew a hole right through the gunner’s head, taking off half his face spraying blood over the alley, as the man slumped out the window, dead.

Screaming obscenities, the driver of the car pulled a .colt .45, and reached to roll down the window. It turned out to be unnecessary, as Ryan’s next shot, he had dropped the idea of autofire and switched to single, blew open the window, but missed the driver.

Steve, duck back behind the garbage cans, pulled out his taser, and tried to sink the darts into the screaming man, but missed, and the darts bounced harmlessly off the side of the car.

Braxton was on a roll. His second shot went right through the passenger side window and into the driver’s back, passing through and taking out the man’s heart and a few other internal organs.

It had been less than thirty seconds since the two men started shooting, but it was over. Both of the assassins were dead, and their target was unharmed.

Ryan quickly took charge of the situation. “There’s a Roasted Nut coffee shop six blocks from here, get to it. Now. We’ll meet you there after we clean up here,” he stated, all business as he put his mini-uzi back in its holster.

Alanna stammered a thank you, and quickly fled into the night.

Meanwhilem Steve was checking out the dead bodies, relieving them of their wallets. There was no identification, but the driver’s face was familiar. As Alanna left, and Ryan moved up to join him, Steve snapped his fingers.

“Now I know where I saw this guy,” he said, point at the driver. “He was in the paper, two weeks ago. He was being released on bail, had been charged with assault. He is, well, was, a member of the Aryan Nation.”

“Son of a bitch,” muttered Ryan. “Neo-Nazis. Scum of the world. Bet ya ten bucks that we’re going to be seeing more of them before we finish we finish with this job. Get the Uzi, you’ll need a gun.”

“But-” started Steve, starting to explain, like he had a few times before, that he didn’t like guns and he wasn’t particularly skilled in their use.

“No buts,” snapped Ryan. “Just take the damn thing, and let’s clean this place up.”

Steve shrugged, and divested the dead Nazi of his Uzi as Ryan took the driver’s M1911. Ironic, really, that a Neo-Nazi would be using a weapon originally designed by Israel, thought Steve. He then whirled a metal baton out from underneath his coat, and smashed in the teeth of each dead Nazi, ensuring that they'd never be identified by dental records. Once that grisly task was done, and as Braxton rejoined them, Steve took out a white phosphorous grenade, pulled the pin and dropped it in the window of the car.

The three left, walking back towards their van, as the car burst into flames behind them, burning merrily underneath the dark, New York skyline. There were faint sirens in the distance, as the police finally responded to reports of gunshots, but the crew was long gone by the time the police arrived.

Best quotes:
“Quick, tell our characters that the car is coming.”
“I’ve only got a cellphone, what do you want me to do? Put down my rifle and call you?”

“They’re Nazis? Sweet, I love killing Nazis.”


Tune in next time I can manage to write up a session summary for thriling second episode of the three episode series premiere of the Winter of Our Discontent.


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## pogre (Nov 26, 2004)

You cannot beat starting a story hour with a few dead Nazis!


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## Christopher Lambert (Nov 26, 2004)

Sounds cool. Be sure to post their characters.


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## Falkus (Nov 27, 2004)

Will do.


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## Falkus (Dec 1, 2004)

I'll be updating the story hour later this evening or tommorow at the latest, and uploading the characters on Friday or Saturday.


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## Falkus (Dec 4, 2004)

*Episode two*

“Giles, this is Ryan,” Ryan said into his cellphone as he drove the team’s van through the traffic of New York. “We’ve got a job, but we’re going to need some backup. You busy?”

“Just finished that deal I was doing,” replied Giles. Smooth and confident, Giles was the groups faceman, though he often had other business on the side that kept him away from some of their work. “You can pick me up at my place?”

“We’ll be there in two shakes.”

A short while later
Braxton sat down in the Roasted Nut, ordering some coffee. Alanna had already arrived, and was seated a few booths away. She didn’t know Braxton was there, and she wasn’t supposed to. Braxton was just there to watch over the meeting. She was drinking from a cup of coffee, and holding some sort of medallion in her left hand.

A few minutes later, Steve and Giles walked in. After satisfying themselves that they weren’t being watched by anybody suspicious, they took a seat across from her. She slipped the medallion back under her shirt as they approached.

“That was unrelated,” she stated, setting her coffee down on the table. “The attack did not have anything to do with what I want to hire you for.”

“Why do they want you dead?” asked Steve.

“Let’s just say that there are groups that hate certain people, like me, for what they are,” Alanna replied. She sighed.

“You do realize that we’ll expect compensation for this,” stated Steve.

“Agreed,” added Giles. “But we can put that off until later. Add it on the bill for the whole business. Tell us about the job you need us to do.”

“A, well, an associate of mine, Nieulor, has been kidnapped,” stated Alanna. Giles got the sense that Nieulor was more than an associate of Alanna.

“Got a description?” asked Giles, taking out a notepad and pencil.

Alanna put a picture on the table of a young man with green eyes and long, blonde hair. Dressed in a nice suit as well. “He’s been looking for something of his that was stolen some time ago. He called me, told me to meet him near city hall. He said he had found it, and would be able to retrieve it within a few days. But he never showed up at the meeting place. That was two days ago.”

“Are you sure he’s been kidnapped?” inquired Steve. “Maybe the people hunting you killed him?”

She shook her head. “No, they’d make it public, display the body somewhere. They wouldn’t just hide it. I know them.”

It made sense, hate groups rarely covered up the existence of their crime. They wanted people to know what they were doing. “What was he looking for?” asked Giles.

“I don’t know, he never told me.” She sounded honest enough, thought Giles. “But it was quite important to him.”

“Anything else you can tell us?”

“Just one other thing. When he called, he was at a restauraunt, it was a, what was the name? Oh yes, the Blanched Escargot. I don’t have anything else I can tell you.”

“Well then, we’ll see what we can do. But, back to compensation,” Giles named the price, factoring in the cost of shooting back at the alley.

“My associates have access to considerable financial resources,” stated Alanna. “We can meet your price.”

“Excellent, we’ll get right on it.”

Giles and Steve stood up and left. Braxton remained for a few minutes, keeping on eye on Alanna, so as not to seem suspicious by leaving at the same time. After a minute, Alana left as well, walking right by Braxton’s booth. 

Odd, thought Braxton. He had a good eye, and judging by some slight scars, it looked like Alanna had had some plastic surgery done on her ears very recently.


Later that evening, near the Blanched Escargot
The team was discussing their next course of action in their parked van. The restaurant was their only lead, at the moment.

Research into Nieulor hadn’t revealed much, aside from the fact that he was a wealthy investor. Checking up on Alana had turned up a complete blank. The restaurant, however, was a different matter. The research had indicated that the place was currently under investigation by the IRS for certain accounting irregularities, but the exact details were unknown.

Braxton and Steve got out of the van, and headed towards the front door, with the purpose of scouting out the place, and maybe gathering some information from patrons or the staff. Giles and Ryan, on the other hand, headed around back of the restauraunt, to check out rear entrance.

As they approached the door, three large men in trenchcoats and cowboy hats pushed their way through the door, past the waiter, and into the kitchens.

Unusual, thought Braxton. These guys didn’t seem like ordinary thugs. Stance was more like bodyguards, really.

The restauraunt was pretty bare, not too many customers, and the staff didn’t appear to be particularly energetic. Steve managed to get them the best seat in the place, however, by sleeping the waiter a fifty dollar bill. The waiter was a bit suspicious, instantly realizing that the pair weren’t there for food, but he didn’t care, so showed them to their seats.

As the two scanned the menus, and looked around the room, a single shot rang out from the kitchen.

Followed by several more shots, a long burst of machine pistol fire, some inhuman screams of pain, a few more shots, more machine gun fire and another scream.

The waiters and customers, of course, panicked and charged the main door en masse.

“What the hell?” Ryan muttered, as they neared the back of the restaurant, his hand reaching towards his holster.

The backdoor of the restauraunt burst open, and out came one of the thugs, bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds. But what was more horrifying was his face. His hat was gone, revealing a brutish, furry face with large pointed ears, one of which had been shot away.

Despite this, Ryan didn’t look his cool. “You’re not going anywhere!” he snapped, grabbing the thug by the coat. Whatever it was looked at him, and then collapsed to the ground, expiring from its wounds.

“Jesus Christ, what the hell is this?” muttered Giles, dropping down to examine the body, and finding a Colt Python and some ammunition. Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t human.

Meanwhile, Steve and Braxton, after the panicing customers and waiters were gone, crept up on the kitchen door, and looked inside. They same a man disappear behind a closing hole in the wall, and three bodies on the ground. Two of them were the thugs that broke into the place, and the third was a normal human lying dead against the wall, with a Mac-10 in his hands. Loud French cursing was coming from the pantry, where the chef had locked himself.

“What the hell went on in here?” asked Steve rhetorically as Braxton took the revolvers from the corpses.

“These things, they aren’t human,” Giles stated as they walked in through the backdoor. Ryan was agreeing.

“What are they then?” replied Steve. Steve was no conspiracy theorist; he liked to keep his head rooted in reality.

“I’ve of heard of things like this,” continued Giles, as he searched through his extensive knowledge on the arcane and the supernatural. “Bugbears, I think they were called. Magical monsters-”

“And they call me mad,” stated Braxton, who was poking around, trying to figure out how to open the secret passage that they had seen close. “What's next, wizards?”

“I have to agree with him. You’re sounding real crazy. Monsters and magic, c’mon,” added Steve.

Giles stubbornly stuck to his beliefs. “And then Alana. Ever hear of elves? She was short, Braxton mentioned it looked like she’d had surgery done on her ears.”

“You’re crazy,” Braxton said, as he pushed in on a loose brick he found.

Meanwhile, Ryan was talking the chef out of kitchen.

“What happened here?” he asked, once the man finally calmed down and left his hiding place.

“THOSE BASTARDS!” shouted the Chef, angrily, gesturing at the dead man. “They assured me when we made this deal that nothing like this would happen! Sons of bitches!”

“What are you talking about?” asked Ryan.

The chef angrily pointed at the open passage. “Them, those smugglers. They said that it would be quiet when I agreed to let them set up here. That nothing like this would happen. You do what you want to them, I don’t care what!”

There were sirens in the distance. “We’d better get out of here before the cops arrive,” commented Steve, quietly as the group stepped away from the chef.

“Take the passage?” suggested Giles. “They’re getting close, we might not be able to get to the van without being spotted.

“See if we can close it from the inside,” said Ryan.

Braxton stepped inside, and looked down the dark staircase inside. Lights flickered on over his head. “Clear,” he shouted out. “And it looks like I can close it from in here.”

With that confirmed, the team entered the dark passage, closing the door behind them as the police cars pulled up in front of the restaurant.

Their guns came out, and they slowly started moving the staircase, Braxton and Ryan taking the lead.

Best quote:
Giles: “Look, monsters and magic plainly do exist. The truth is out there.”
Ryan: “And the government’s keeping it under wraps and spying on us through the TV.”
Giles: “Now that’s just plain crazy talk.”

“I think you’ve been playing DnD too much. There’s no such thing as magic.”


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## CalicoDave (Dec 4, 2004)

Very nice!

Looking forward to the next update.


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## jezter6 (Dec 8, 2004)

Yes...do commence with the updates. Looks good so far!


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## Falkus (Dec 8, 2004)

Thank you. Thank you every much. Updates will be slow for the next two weeks, due to finals, but I'm hoping to get all my groups sessions this semester up before the end of Christmas break.


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## Arkhandus (Dec 9, 2004)

Yeah, a neat and engaging storyhour you've started here, Falkus.  Nice opening and style I think.  Just enough detail to have a good idea of the action and setup, without being overly vague or excessive.  Can't very well go wrong with a start of dead neo-nazis and trenchcoated bugbears. {:^D


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## Thanediel (Dec 9, 2004)

Nicely done. Looking forward to next update.

Just one remark. It's "Chien d'Onyx", not "Chien de l'Onyx".. at least if your intent was offering a literal translation of "Onyx Dog". Don't worry about it, it's a common enough mistake


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## Falkus (Dec 10, 2004)

> Don't worry about it, it's a common enough mistake




Well, it's a mistake that Wizards of the Coast made, not me.

I'm hoping to have the next episode written and online by the end of the weekend.


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## Silver Moon (Dec 11, 2004)

A fun read and a good start.  Looking forward to continuing it.  And yes, Nazis always make the best villains.


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## Falkus (Dec 14, 2004)

Unfortunately, that promised update is going to have to wait about a week, as I deal with finals. I have more studying to do than I anticipated, and I can't find the time to complete the next episode writeup.


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## Falkus (Dec 23, 2004)

Part 3
Lights flickered on overhead as motion detectors built into the wall, a stark contrast to the slimy walls and the rusty, metal. It looked like it had been around for a long time, but had been renovated recently.

Ryan took point, Braxton a few steps behind, and the rest of the team trailing by a story. The lights coming on would mean surprising any enemies would be impossible, but that couldn’t be helped.

Two stories from the bottom, the lights above flickered on, then burnt out, plunging the two into darkness. Ryan smoothly continued, avoiding missing a step, as Braxton pulled out a flashlight.

However, it was a bit too late for Braxton, as he missed the next step, and tumbled down the stairs, catching Ryan in the back and taking them both down to the next landing to end up in a tangled pile.

Cursing quietly, they got up, dusted themselves, and continued down to the bottom, eight stories below the surface of the street.

The place looked like an old, sealed off area of the sewers, probably built over during the fifties. They were in a small room, with just a single, rusted iron door.

Ryan stepped forward, and started checking the door. “Reminds me of all those old buildings I looked through back in Iraq,” he muttered, as he found that the door was unlocked and hadn’t been booby trapped.

“Going to squeak, anybody got some oil?” he said aloud.

A quick check of the various toolkits owned by the group revealed no oil was present. With no  other choice, they aimed their guns at the door while Giles opened it.

The corridor beyond was empty, and it like an old sewer tunnel. Distant sounds of hip-hop music were heard as the team advanced into the tunnel

“I hate hip-hop,” muttered Braxton, and Steve nodded in agreement.

Continuing in the same formation, the team slowly advanced through the maze of tunnels, guns out and ready for trouble. Braxton, Steve and Ryan’s feet glided over the rough floor of the tunnel quietly, while Giles wasn’t so nimble.

Eventually, they reached an intersection in the corridor. The room at the other end was where the music was coming from, and the thrumming of a gas generator could be heard down the other branch of the intersection.

“Steve, you and Giles go check out the music, Braxton and I are going to go check out that generator,” Ryan ordered. “If run into trouble, just shoot your gun and we’ll be along shortly.”

“Got it,” nodded Steve, slipping a metal baton out from under his jacket. “But I won’t be using a gun.”

“Jesus, Steve, when are you going to give up on that baton and get a gun?” Ryan asked rhetorically, shaking his head before he headed off towards the generator.

A minute later
“Hold up,” whispered Steve, looking into the room at the end of the hall. 

“What have we got?” replied Giles, quietly.

“Two guys,” Steve reported, scanning the room. It was a living area, less of a mess than the halls. Clean, a bit, with some tables, chairs, a minifridge, and a fax machine and telephone with the wires running into a hole in the wall. The two men Steve referred two were standing in front of a CD player listening to the music. They had pistols in holsters. Neither of them were facing the door.

“What’s the plan?”

“Cover me, I’m gonna sneak up on ‘em,” Steve said, and started quietly moving into the room.

Meanwhile…
Ryan and Braxton reached the entrance to another room, from which the sounds of the generator were coming. Braxton looked first, poking his head into the room, and locking eyes with a man there.

“What the-” the man shouted, and then pulled a gun, and started shooting.

Braxton replied with a booming shot from his desert eagle, which richotched off the far wall. Ryan leaned around, and opened up on full auto with his mini-uzi, with a similar lack of effect.

Meanwhile, back in the living quarters
“What the hell?” shouted one of the men as Steve crept up on the two. They both spun around, reaching for their guns, and saw Steve.

“They must be cops!” he screamed, aiming his gun, the other thug following suit. “Kill ‘em quick and let’s get out of here!”

Damnit, thought Steve, swooping in low on the first one. With a quick hook of his leg, he knocked the man off his feet, and smashed his baton into the man’s chest on his way down. Giles, guessing what had happened, stepped into the room, and started popping off shots with his revolver, but missing each time.

Back in his fight, Braxton let fly with another missed shot, and ducked back around the corner as the return fire from the thug’s Sites pistol bounced off the wall. Ryan leaned around the corner again, and fired again, this time hitting home, and putting a nine-milimeter hole in the forehead of the thug.

The man slowly collapsed to the floor, dropping his gun as went down. Ryan and Braxton quickly scanned the room, noting the generator that was most likely powering the lights down here.

“I must have knocked the sights on this thing when I took that fall,” noted Braxton, as he examined his Desert Eagle.

The pair then heard the shots coming from the living area. Without a word, they both turned and ran back down the corridor towards their teammates.

Meanwhile, Steve was fending off one of the upright thugs as he brought his baton down on the prone one again, shattering his skull. Giles was circling the combat, firing shots with his revolver whenever he got an opening, but was missing, shooting holes in the furniture and the fax machine, but not much else.

Screaming with rage, as his companion died, the second thug blindly fired at Steve, only to find his feet no longer on the floor, and an instant later, was lying on his back. The last thing he saw was a metal baton rapidly descending towards his face.

Ryan and Braxton arrived just in time to catch the end of the fight.

“Son of a bitch,” Ryan said. “You use to work for the LAPD or something?” he asked, half-jokingly.

“Bet ya these guys have something to do with the disappearance the guy we’re looking for,” Giles said, holstering his gun. Death was something you had to become accustomed to in this business. It was kill or be killed, and not a single man felt guilty about gunning down a group of thugs who fired first.

The team quickly spread out, searching the room, some of the team members the dead men’s guns. None of them were carrying any ID or cash, and not much was of interest in the room. The fridge just had some canned food and bottles of water.

Slamming fresh magazines into their guns, the team headed back out into the hallway, sticking together this time, in case they ran into more opposition.

Five minutes later, the team piled up against another door in the tunnels, and burst in, rapidly covering the entire room with their weapons.

It was empty.

Except for one man.

A blonde man.

Wearing what used to be a nice suit before it got taken into the old sewer network.

Green eyes too.

Also nearly unconscious and tied to a chair.

Giles whipped out the photo he had been given. “This is him,” he announced, after comparing the picture to the man’s face. 

“How bad is he?” asked Steve.

“Doesn’t look to good,” replied Ryan as he inspected Nieulor, who was barely conscious. “But he’s not dead. Go get some of that water in the fridge.”

Steve nodded and jogged off. Braxton went with him, just in case.

A few minutes later, and after a bit of amateur first aid, Nieulor seemed to be looking better, but still not completely aware of what was happening.

“Give it a half-hour,” observed Ryan. “Let’s get him out of here and call Alana.”

“Back up the front entrance?” asked Giles.

“Hell no, the restaurant’s going to be crawling with cops for hours. Let’s see if we can find another way out, otherwise, we’re going to have to wait.”

“There’s a couple of tunnels we haven’t checked out, let’s take a look at them,” said Giles, and the team moved out, Ryan carrying Nieulor.

The team moved through the tunnels, anxious to get out. Steve called for a halt a minute later.

“Voices up ahead,” he said. Ryan set Nieulor down, who was looking much better, and they moved.

“You gotta send help! They’ve wiped out half of us. I just checked the rec room, they’re all dead! I don’t know who they are,” came a frantic voice, which then paused, listening to someone the team couln’t here.

“Telephone,” Ryan said. “He’s calling for help. Let’s take ‘em out, quick.”

“Let me handle this,” said Giles, moving up to the door into the cavern. He peaked inside, saw the two thugs on a phone whose wire ran up into the ceiling, and then he pulled out a small object from under his suit.

It was a tube shaped object, from which Giles pulled a small pin, and then tossed it inside the room. Giles may have been a smooth talker, but to think that meant he was a poor a fighter would be a serious mistake for anybody to make. He may not have been such a great shot with a gun, but he had no qualms about killing with the grenade.

“Oh sh-” one of the thugs said, and they both started to run.

It was too late; the white phosphorous grenade caught them both in its blast radius.

Two screaming, flaming figures ran out of the room. The team sent them hurling back in with a barrage of gunfire.

Once the fire died down, guns were holstered, and our heroes moved in.

The room looked like it was used by the goons to stole stolen goods. A chain fence in the back divided the room into two sections, and a significant number of crates and suitcases were located behind it.

Ryan went to work with a pair of boltcutters, and opened up the fence, revealing the goods. The team quickly went to work, searching through the remains, and grabbing some PDAs for themselves, and a set of military quality headset radios. Just what the doctor ordered, something they’d been planning on getting for a while.

“Interesting suitcase,” Braxton commented, finding one, and starting to pry it open.

“That would be mine,” said an unfamiliar voice. The team turned and saw Nieulor standing in the door. A remarkable recovery.

“Its yours?” queried Ryan.

“Yes. I’d like to thank you for your rescue, provided this is a rescue, of course,” Nieulor stated.

“It is,” confirmed Ryan.

“Excellent. We can discuss this further at my residence. Please, take me there quickly, so that I can explain some things, and compensate you for your assistance.”

(To be continued)


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## Falkus (Mar 29, 2005)

In the coming week, I hope to get this story hour moving again. Due to several players joining and quitting, as well as various other issues, I've decided to cut straight to the meat of the campaign, when things really started to liven up.

Here's a preview:

"Cut the red wire," said Ryan, as he traded gunfire with the assassin.

*snip*

"Wait, did I say red, I meant blue!" he suddenly blurted into the radio.

"Think! Think before you talk!" screamed Colm in reply.

***

Interspace with various scenes of gunfire, explosions and scantaly clad females.

***

"I am prepared to meet my gods-" the man was cut off as Colm leaned forwards, stuffed the thermite grenade in the man's mouth, and then dove out of the car.


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## Arkhandus (Apr 12, 2005)

A nudge to make you work faster.


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## Falkus (Apr 13, 2005)

This episode takes place several weeks after the first, and cuts past a couple of other episodes that really didn't advance the plot all that much. In other words, this was when things started to get interesting in the campaign.


A few weeks had passed since the group had taken the job from Alanna to rescue Nieulor. They had learnt a number of unusual things during that period. For one, the man they rescued had turned out to be an elven mage who had been living on Earth since the French revolution. For another, the newest and most trendiest nightclub in New York was being run by a drow.

It had taken then some convincing, mind you. Ryan had been quick to accept, especially once Nieulor started tutoring Ryan in magic, something he’d always privately believed in ever since something attacked him in an old Babylonian ruin back when he was with the US military in Iraq.

Steve hadn’t been so quick to come around, but when a group of ghouls tried to pull down into a grave and eat him, he came around.

Colm, despite being the most mentally disturbed individual in the entire group, steadfastly continued to disavow the existence of the supernatural and the arcane. He’d been a bit cheerier lately, ever since he knocked Eldrin Cooper, the man who nearly tortured him to death several years ago, off the Brooklyn Bridge when they rammed his limo off of it during a job.

Giles had vanished, and nobody knew where he was. Neither did they really care.

And so, the fact that Nieulor could answer so many questions and was currently schooling him in magic, Ryan mused, was the reason why he, Steve and Colm were trying to rescue Alanna, without even a promise of payment, as well as Sam, another acquaintance of theirs, who was handy with a desert eagle.

Earlier that evening, they’d received a phone call from her. She was frantic, and claimed she was being chased, and then she got cut off and pulled away from the phone. It was the work of a few moments with the computer to determine the location of the phone she was calling from, an old toy factory that had shut down years ago after a serious scandal involving teddy bears with hidden microphones and transmitters and various cases of industrial espionage.

“We haven’t seen anything so far,” Ryan said over the radio, as he, Steve and Sam moved into the main factory area. The room was dark, except for a light on in the foreman’s office, set up so it could overlook the factory area.

“Bingo, think we got something,” continued Ryan. “Light’s on in the foreman’s office.”

“I can’t see anything from here,” Colm replied, as he looked over the factory area again. He had climbed up on the roof, and was looking in through the skylight, his Light Fifty, resting against his shoulder. When he was guaranteed a position, Colm liked to bring out the big guns.

Ryan signaled to his teammates, and had Sam stay at the entrance to cover them, as he and Steve moved cautiously across the factory floor, checking every nook and cranny for possible enemies or traps.

Outside the factory, several figures in combat armor slipped out from the adjacent warehouses that the team hadn’t searched.

Two figures suddenly appeared in front of one of the windows of the office, apparently struggling, before vanishing. There came the sound of breaking glass.

“Godamnit,” muttered Ryan to himself, then said into his radio as he reached the base of the stairs leading up to the office. “We got confirmation, let’s move.”

“Roger that, I'll keep an eye out," Colm confirmed, racking a fifty caliber BMG shell into the chamber of his rifle.

“Cover me from here,” Steve told him, pulling out a flashbang. He moved up to the top of the stairs, pulled the pin, cracked open the door and tossed the distraction device inside, following it as the flash went off. He wasn’t carrying a gun, he preferred his vast knowledge of martial arts in combat.

The room was clear, just a computer, a broken window leading outside, and a satellite phone.

“Odd, nobody here,” he reported, looking at the broken window. They must have gone out through there just before he went into the room. “I’m going to check out a computer here.”

Moving the mouse and canceling the screensaver, he saw two programs open. Microsoft Voice Emulator 2008 version. Capable of taking just a few minutes of recording of a person’s voice, like from a telephone tap, and then analyzing the inflections and then producing new words and sentences that sounded just like the person recorded was saying it. The second file was a text file that read simply: Fooled you.

This was coupled by simultaneous explosion as six MP5 packing, Neo-Nazi assassins detonated entry explosives, blowing open two parts of the wall, and pouring into the factory, guns chattering a staccato beat of nine-millimeter death.


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## Arkhandus (May 4, 2005)

Muahahaha......!

Awaiting your next update.....  Long as we keep you near the first page, more folks are sure to catch on and read. 

So that's a *bump* I guess.


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