For a full summary of sessions one to three, see here.
WE ARE USED TO GENRE MIXING, we role players. Shadowrun has been mixing cyberpunk and high fantasy for nearly thirty years. We've seen steampunk fantasy (Castle Falkenstein), horror westerns (Deadlands), superhero war dramas (Godlike), and multi-genre free-for-alls (TORG, Rifts). Even the original 1974 Dungeons & Dragons was a bit of a gumbo, a mix of weird fiction, high fantasy, and sci fi. Yet despite having run horror espionage before (Delta Green and Conspiracy X), something about The Dracula Dossier daunted me when I first sat down to sketch out the campaign. As an obsessive fan of the novel, it was essential to me that the game feel "Stoker," but I didn't want to neglect the crucial other half of it. I feel that four sessions in, my gaming group and I finally got the balance right.
Session four of Days of Dishonorable Peace opens with a bang. Well. Almost.
Having broken into the tomb of Laura Wexford (our Lucy Westenra) to examine her remains (or to see if the casket is empty), the team instead discovers the opposition has left a nasty surprise for them. The coffin contains neither a vampire nor human remains but a bomb, a combination of ball-bearings and C-4. Fortunately for the team, CIA operative William McPherson has eight points in Explosive Devices, saving their lives in a daring rapid defusing.
These leaves questions; who was behind this? Edom? Dracula? How did the opposition know the team was coming? The agents suspect their Internet searches for the identities of the 1894 network must have triggered red flags, while the players know Dracula has nightly been interrogating CIA agent Lacey Mickelson. Lacey's player has decided to keep these nightmares to herself, and to play the slow erosion of the character's stability. This was completely true to the spirit of Stoker, giving us a "Mina" in the group.
While McPherson and Mickelson investigate the bomb design, Douglas Reid and Luna Richter scout the grounds outside the Highgate tomb, and there discover the remains of Laura Wexford. Whoever planted the bomb simply dumped her skeleton, still in the decayed wedding gown, in the underbrush. Mickelson, an expert in forensic pathology, decides she needs to examine the remains. McPherson examines the door, taking samples in the hopes of figuring out exactly what the "red liquid" Van Helsing used a century earlier to seal it. In claiming the remains, the group finds something else pinned to the decaying gown...the silver and jet "Westenra Brooch."
Lacey has a London contact, a coroner named Parsev Singh. She convinces him to let her use an examining room and takes the remains there with McPherson. Reid and Richter head back to their London base of operations to catch up on some rest and pursue another lead; they have managed to make initial contact with Oliver Prenger, the husband of the dossier's last custodian, "Hopkins." They came across each other as both parties were investigating the same leads. Reid and Richter decide to set up a meeting.
In the lab, parallel discoveries are made. The stake driven through Laura's chest was not wood, but iron. The red liquid used to seal the tomb was also iron. Further analysis shows this isn't just any iron, this is extremely rare telluric iron. Given the weird electrical phenomena the team saw in Berlin, it gets them thinking about Faraday cages.
Reid and Richter, meanwhile, meet with Prenger at a cafe near the British Museum. Prenger is a special secretary to House of Lords MP Philip Douglas, descendent of "Arthur Holmwood" and the current Lord Drumlanrig. "Hopkins" was really Andrew Miller, an MI6 analyst and Russia specialist. Prenger is convinced the Russians have something to do with his husband's disappearance.
The conversation opens all sorts of questions; how did "Hopkins" get the dossier? What is the Russian connection? Is this recent, or does it go back to "Cushing" and the 1977 fiasco? More to the point...which came first; did "Hopkins" get the dossier first and then seek out and seduce a man who just happened to be secretary to one of the 1894 legacies, or was it an innocent coincidence? They discretely don't share this later bit with Prenger.
After regrouping, the team splits again. The two CIA agents decide to construct a Faraday cage while Reid and Richter set up a second meeting with Prenger, this time at a pub. While Mickelson and McPherson construct the cage, Lacey starts to confide in him her disturbing dreams and the growing fear she has that Dracula is invading her mind. When the cage is finished, they try an experiment and put Lacey inside it. After a flash of blinding headache pain, her connection with Dracula is severed by the cage and complete free of influence, gushes out all that has been happening to her and pleads for help.
Across town at the pub, a second meeting with Prenger is cut short when Reid and Richter realize Prenger has been followed. In the middle of the bar one of the suspects slides a knife into Prenger's side to silence him. Richter opens fire and takes down both, but before the surviving assailant can be questioned he kills himself with cyanide. As they fled the club, they notice a black limousine parked across the street. Watching them from the back is a beautiful blonde woman in white, wearing dark sunglasses. The car drives off as things heat up...
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