Play report?

Okay, here it is! Sorry, I don’t use Theme, Setting and Ambience here. It’s not the way I usually write my stories, but I think most of it will come clear anyway. Have fun!

Characters
The players played FBI Agents of the Seattle FBI Division. They were members of the Violent Crimes and Major Offenders branch. Special Agent Connor Davis was the team leader. He believes that there is a conspiracy concerning the US President. An unidentified party wants to make a Coup d’etat, but nobody believes him. Furthermore he has amnesia, he lost 14 months of his life and doesn’t know what happened to him in this time. He guesses that he was abducted by the group behind the conspiracy, but he can’t prove anything. He is very fanatical about this conspiracy and tries anything to expose the men behind it.

The second Special Agent is called Ethan Stark. He comes from a rich family.He studied medicine, but had to cheat his way through college. In his first years as medical assistant a patient died, who could have propably been saved if treated properly. He had luck as there were no hard consequences for him, but he feels deep remorse for his lack of responsibility and competence. He became an expert for forensic medicine afterwards. The patients here are dead anyway, he thought. Furthermore he is claustrophobic and is an unknowing witness (I still have to make something up.).

They both and several other team members are part of the Bravo Team. The Bravo Team consists of agents the FBI would be happy to get rid of, but can’t officially fire at this moment. So they always get the undesirable assignments.

Story
The story starts on 5th May 2009. The characters are in their office in the FBI building on the 3rd Avenue in Seattle. Their office is crowed, has no windows and a faulty air conditioning. They were busy doing paperwork as the messenger brings them a new file and throws it on the desk of Agent Davis. He took the file and skimmed through it. It was an investigation request for the Organized Crime and Drugs branch. A witness made new accusations that the Faustos Corporation had connections to the Russian mafia of Seattle. He took the phone and called a colleague named Bishop in the OCD branch. Bishop had heard about the case, but hadn’t anything to do with it. So Davis called up the assistant director Bradley. Bradley told him that he wouldn’t waste his good men of the OCD to investigate a case that would be in all likelihood fruitless. They had better things to do and the Bravo Team nothing at all at this time.

Grudgingly Davis took the case and together with Agents Stark and Madison, a specialist for economic crimes, he hit the road. (I put the headquarters of Faustos Corporation into Seattle.) They hadn’t to drive far and got an appointment with the local manager Deborah Elgin, a tall, pretty woman with blonde hair and very serious attitude. She wasn’t very happy to hear about the new accusations but assured them her full cooperation. They got a room in the basement where the files were stored and started to work. After nine days of hard labour they found finally a little peculiarity. The Faustos Corporation bought a lot of land in 2002 in Washougal, WA. But after that there wasn’t a single reference about this lot as if it had been forgotten. It wasn’t much, but Davis and Stark were happy to do anything than searching through files. Madison stayed behind happy being able to do her trained work again for some time.

After three hours on the road they arrived in Washougal around 18 o’clock. The rural town had about 8500 inhabitants. The town was so small (to American standards) that the streets didn’t even have proper names. Davis only had the number of the lot of land but no address so they first hit the town hall. The town hall was closed to public at this hour, but they managed to get an employee to open the door for them. They checked the records and found an address to the lot they looked for. It was about 8 kilometers in the north of Washougal up the Washougal River Road and pretty remote. They decided to check it out although it was already getting dark. With the directions of the employee they found it without problems and arrived at a large gate in the middle of the surrounding forest of Washougal. Armed with flashlights they checked the place. They were standing in front of a large site with two buildings, a parking lot and a security cabin at the gate. On a column was a sign attached. It was overgrown with moss but they could clear it up a bit. The site belonged to a company called Barnes Tech Enterprises. They read the name already in the records in the town hall. So at least they were at the right place. The company was quite old, founded in the 50’s. The whole place looked unused and derelict. The gate was secured with a thick chain and they didn’t have the necessary tools with them to break it so they climbed over the gate and left the car behind.
First they checked the parking lot. Five cars were standing there all of them oldtimers of the 60’s and early 70’s. They weren’t used for a long time and weren’t much more than junk at this time. Next they checked out the four storey building, the largest building on the site. They checked every level one after the other. It was a simple office building. On the top floor they found the office of Director Karl Barnes, the founder of the company. The building was in a dangerous condition, but they could find several documents in the rubble (ten hand-outs and a photo of the three most important employees Karl Barnes, Rob Lang and George Krippke). They found nine pages of Barnes diary. According to the diary Barnes Tech Enterprises had built some large unspecified machine deep under the surface. After 11 years the construction was finally completed and the first test run was a success, too. One night they let the machine run on full power and something strange happened. Barnes descriped how they created an unknown black substance and he couldn’t explain how this happened. It wasn’t possible under the known physical laws. They stopped the experiment and built a container to secure the unknown substance. They experimented on it but all the scientists dealing with it got sick after a short time. The scientist Krippke was the sickest one of them all. His body showed unnerving changes. They were able to rule out radiation, but that made it even more mysterious. Barnes wasn’t sure what to do, but he didn’t want to risk contamination of the population of Washougal as the sickness was possibly contagious. So he quarantined all scientists in the underground complex. That was the last entry in Barnes diary. They also found a letter in which the security chief criticised that the ventilation shaft was a security risk and he couldn’t guarantee the security of the installation if the shaft wasn’t protected better.

Although they read about the ventilation shaft they wanted to check out the elevator on the first floor first. The elevator only went downstairs and there was no staircase going down. There was a keypad and an additional keyhole set into the wall next to the elevator. But they had luck someone already had opened the door by force. They could see the elevator cabin four meters below. There was a ladder on the side. They could get down to the cabin, but there wasn’t enough space to pass the cabin. Davis climbed down anyway. The rungs of the ladder weren’t particularly trustworthy and so he went as careful as possible. Carefully he stepped on the cabin, the wire-ropes groaned under his weight. But nothing else happened. He opend the lid of the cabin and climbed down. He had to let him fall the last bit. He had tough luck. The brittle cabin floor gave way and he broke through with one leg. The jagged floor cut open his leg and Davis screamed in pain. Stark watched all this and immidiately went back to the car to get his first aid bag. They managed to get Davis back up on the first floor and dressed his wounds. He had luck the wound wasn’t that bad and they were able to stop the bleeding, too. Before they did climb back up, they had used their flashlights and looked down the elevator shaft through the new created hole. It was pretty deep, at least additional 16 meters.

After that Stark checked the smaller building in the north, while Davis searched for the mentioned ventilation shaft. The smaller building was a storehouse for technical equipment. There was a larger elevator too, designed to transport larger crates. But this time the lift cabin crashed to floor a long time ago and dented and distorted the lift doors on the lower level so much they couldn’t be used anymore. In the meantime Davis found the large ventilation shaft used to aerate the underground complex in the northeast of the site. It was hidden behind bushes and other plants grown back over the last decades. The shaft had been opend already, too. There even was a rope attached someone used to climb down. Davis hoisted the rope up, but it was much shorter than he expected. He examined the end of the rope. It had obviously ripped. They didn’t have a rope brought with them so they dismantled the rope winch of an old truck in the storehouse. A short while later they were already climbing down the shaft. Half way down they suddenly felt an intense burning sensation on their skin they couldn’t explain. But it passed after only a few seconds and they continued their descent. As they reached the bottom of the shaft they found the body of a young man in his early twenties. He had a rope tied around him. The rest of the rope lay around him on the floor. He had fallen to his death as it seemed. He had his driving licence on him, but it was hard to make out. They could identify him as a man named Eric Clifton. The condition of his body indicated that he died only a few days ago. They couldn’t do anything for him, so they made a mental note to inform the police and went on.

They needed to crawl through narrow air ducts now and Stark had to fight his claustrophobia. He mustered all his resolve and started to crawl through the ducts followed by Davis. They got into a pitchblack corridor. They started to investigate. They mainly wanted to secure the container with the unknown substance and of course try to discover want kind of experiments were conducted here. The underground complex consisted of several laboratorys, simple bedrooms, a large data processing center, a sickroom, a small storage room for chemicals and of course a control room directly attached to the 15 kilometers long linear particle accelerator. During their investigation they witnessed some bizarre occurences. Stark was standing in the door of one of the labs. He felt uneasy, something was wrong but he couldn’t say what. After he gazed intently he suddenly became aware that there was a shadow that couldn’t be there. He blinked, but then it was gone. Meanwhile Davis had found large amounts of dried blood in one bedroom. There was enough blood for two grown men bleeding out, but the bodies were missing. Later they entered the data room. The air was rich with a nearly unbearable fetor of rotten flesh. Stark wanted to check it out and disappeared between the large computer banks. Davis guarded the door, as he suddenly saw light in one side corridor. He heard steps and the voices of two persons conversing. He alerted Stark and together they went to check it out guns at the ready. But the corridor was dark again and nothing could be heard. The side corridor had only one door and after a short moment eavesdropping on the door, they went inside. Nobody was there. Everything was dark and unused for decades. They were in the control room. They could see a part of the linear particle accelerator through a window. A door warning against heavy magnetic fields connected the control room with the tunnel of the accelerator. They went inside and followed the tunnel for several hundred meters. It was dead silent. They turned around convinced that Davis had only imagined what he saw and nobody was there for a long time. Their flashlights suddenly flickered and went out. They jolted and hit them to get them running again. A short burst of light shot forward. Out of the corner of his eyes Stark saw bloody legs standing a few meters ahead of him. The light reflected on the sharp blade of a large kitchen knife. Then it was pitch black again. Stark dived for the ground drawing his gun and yelled “FBI! Who is there?” Davis didn’t see anything, but he prepared for a shootout or any other form of an attack anyway. Nothing happened. The flashlights went on again after a few moments and illuminated the tunnel. They were alone. They were both pretty shaken.
They wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. They found the storeroom for chemicals and the safe, which was supposed to contain the container with the unknown substance. They knew the code already and opend the safe. The container was still there. While Stark guarded the door Davis took the container and stowed it away savely. As he was ready to go he suddenly saw fresh blood soak through the wall. The blood formed words. “Destroy it!” In seconds the blood dried and crumbled away until nothing could be seen anymore. Davis started to run. Yelling to Stark “Let’s go!”

They got back to the air ducts and crawled back to the ventilation shaft. Standing in the shaft they heard a sound from above. As they looked up they saw two armed men rappelling down. “FBI! Who is there?” yelled Stark. The men stopped. “We’ve found them.” Someone called. The men started to fire with SMGs. Stark and Davis dived for the air ducts and got unharmed away. They weren’t particularly interested in a firefight, so they ran for it. They arrived at the dented elevator door. Together they mustered all the strenght they got and were able to open it seconds before the assailants could get to them. They started to climb the ladder up. Half way up they heard commotion from the bottom. Someone called something and the light of a flashlight shone up to them. But the man was interrupted in midsentence and they could only hear a muffled sound. The SMGs clattered on the ground. Stark and Davis didn’t stop for a second. They climbed as fast as they could. Not wanting to know what had happened down there. Finally on the surface again they were back in the storage building. Stark was quite upset and called the police using his cell phone. Almost yelling he demanded immediate backup. Not especially subtle they immediately draw attention of two other commandos searching the storage building. Shots rang and a few seconds later two black clad men lay dead on the floor. Stark had been shot into the leg, but Davis was unharmed. They took the MP5s of the assailants. They had radios with them and they could here that there was at least one additional team somewhere calling for the other two teams. They sneaked to the door and looked carefully outside. They saw two men running from the office building to a black Mercedes van in front of it. They jumped inside and drove off through the opened gate. Cautiously they went to their own car, checking for a possible car bomb. A few minutes later several police cars came up the forest road an ambulance on the tail. Davis and Stark reported what happened and the police went to secure the place. A short while later the paramedics had patched them up, too. Davis called the FBI and requested to consult an expert on chemicals. There didn’t seem to be an imminent danger. The expert ordered them to bring it to the Portland State University in Portland, OR, when they felt up to it. It was only an one hour drive to the west of Washougal.

They agreed and drove off. It was midnight already and the roads were almost empty. They discussed about the attack. They suspected Faustos behind it, but they didn’t have any proof. A car had followed them for a time. They didn’t think anything about it, as this was a very rural place. There weren’t many places to go. But the car suddenly accelerated and closed in fast and bumped into them. It was the black Mercedes van from before. They tried to escape, but the driver of the van was too good to shake so easily. The van started to overtake them. The man on the passenger seat leaned out of the window readying his SMG. Davis watched them intently in the side mirror. He wanted to brake hard, make a U-turn and try to escape in the other direction. But before he could act a large truck struck full frontal into the black van, which was driving on the wrong lane. With an instant the van was gone. The man leaning out of the window was ripped apart. The van was almost glued to the towing machine of the truck. The truck driver slammed on the brakes. The wheels skidded over the tarmac, the wheels smoking. Davis and Stark turned around and stopped at the side of the truck. They could only gape watching the chaos. They got out of the car and Stark informed the police about the accident. The driver’s door of the truck was opened and a man in an expansive suit and tie climbed out of the driver’s cab. He noticed the two Agents looking at him unable to believe what they were witnessing. He smiled and went to them. “Good evening, gentlemen! Everything alright?” Stark didn’t take any chance and took aim with his gun. “Who the hell are you? How could you survive that accident?” The man stopped in his tracks, still smiling. “Oh, be careful. Those things can be dangerous.” answered the man. “Who are you? What do you want?” demanded Stark to know. “Alright, let’s get to the point. I am called Mr. Joy. And I want the container and I want it now!” He took another step forward. “Stay where you are!” Stark called. “Another step and I will shoot!” “Oh, I am so afraid.” Mr. Joy took another step. BAM! A shot rang through the night. Stark had aimed at the leg and definitely scored a hit but Mr. Joy didn’t even flinch. Faster than should be possible Mr. Joy was in front of him and punched the weapon out of his hand. Stark was able to get away from him safely and Davis used the opportunity to shoot Mr. Joy in the head. Two times! They could see the holes in his skull, but Mr. Joy still lived and he didn’t even go down or anything. He turned his head to Davis. “Would you stop doing that!” he said annoyed. “Ok!” Davis answered dumbfounded. Mr. Joy turned his attention back to Stark. “Now give me that container and I will let you live.” Not knowing what they could do to stop him they agreed grugdingly. They brought him the container. Mr. Joy took it and smiled fascinated while examining it. Then he opened one of the valves of the container and ingested the black substance completly. After he emptied the container he shook his body in delight. “That was pleasant.” he said without any fuss. “Thank you, gentlemen. Well, have a nice night.” He turned and went into the dark forest and disappeared. Stark and Davis waited for the police. Later they wrote their report but omitted the strange happenings on the forest road, pretending that another team of commandos stole the container. They tried to forget what happened as fast as possible. A few days later they got a message from the Washougal police department. They had identified the young man in the ventilation shaft. They couldn’t explain it, but the body was positively identified as Eric Clifton reported missing in the year of 1984, born in the year 1962. As they read the APB report they just mumbled “That has to be a mistake. It just has to!” and put it into the document shredder.

Behind the scenes
As the players already had guessed the commandos were sent by Faustos. As Faustos is under control of the Harbingers, I wanted to introduce the side of Ahriman in the form of the Mendroloth Mr. Joy. Mr. Joy isn't very subtle in his scene, but nobody would believe two unloved FBI agents anyway. Their death would have caused much more attention.
The scientists of Barnes Tech Enterprises just had bad luck. As they did run the accelerator on full power a gate to the coil happend to drift through the complex. The machine essentially materialized a part of the coil. Of course they couldn't explain what happend as they didn't know anything about the coil or even its existence. Krippke was defiled by the substance and later slayed the other scientists. The players sadly didn't find the room with all the corpses, but it didn't matter.
What exactly protected or haunted the underground complex I left open as it only was meant to give the player the creeps and it worked just fine!

I think that's all! If you want anything to know just ask!