Pain Breaks the Rhythm - A PISCES Scenario

Pain Breaks the Rhythm

A street brawl in a Welsh suburb triggers a literal bug hunt at PISCES.

I originally imagined this one going on for days and days, with lots of intrigue and the Shan switching bodies every night, the factions gaining the lead over one another during the pursuit. The playtest was much faster paced, and that's a good thing.

The players loved the opening, quickly getting into character as teenage chavs. They successfully beat up the cultists, stole the neural whip and the car, and escaped. When the actual operation started, the Agents got their testimony from the police who eventually caught them. One of the Agents was an ex Shan host, and he quickly got the full story out of the captured cultists in the secure wing of the mental hospital.

The Agents staked out the house where Wilson was killed, and caught Wendy breaking into it. They assumed she was a cultist and followed her into the city, where she followed the actual cultists. The cultists went to a brewery. The Agents went in at the same as Wendy, and MacLaugherty's entourage of Ministry of Defense officers. Miraculously nobody died in the resulting scuffle, despite the gunfire and magic spells.

The one fatality came after the cultists and Shan were bagged. Dr Halvorsen arrived late to the scene, realized he wasn't getting through, and tried to leave. The Agents immediately ordered the police to grab him, and he panicked and broke the idol. This killed one officer, and created a huge problem for the Agents. They spent the next half hour arguing with each other and the NPCs about how to cover the incident up, as the Cardiff police arrived to take charge of the scene. They worked out a deal with MacLaugherty and the surviving MOD cop to disappear the wizard and make the entire thing look like a terror attack. They brought home the bug, and Control repaid their generosity by helping with the coverup.

I had hoped earlier that the players were learning NOT to immediately black bag every suspicious NPC they encountered. They were doing so well tailing the cultists! But they said they had fun arguing about how to make the problem go away.

PISCES' factional infighting is starting to feel a little old and I'm going to focus on something else in the future. With this one finished, I've got scenarios set in all four Kingdoms of the British Isles.