General
The World Is Not Enough
by Adam Gauntlett
But once he’s entered that city, Babylon, built of brick and clay,
He must be content with it as his coffin. For death alone reveals
How small the remnants of a human being.
Juvenal, Satires X 147-187 The Paths of Glory
When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Premise: A Prince of Edom is dead, and in very peculiar circumstances. The body was discovered in a Berlin nightclub and is currently in a very secure and private morgue. The agents are tasked with retrieval from Germany and relocation to the UK.
Threat: There is a significant risk that the Prince was turned, and Edom is very anxious to know whether they were loyal to the end or betrayed their trust.
Twist: The dead were loyal; one of their fellow Princes, however, is not. At least, that’s where the evidence leads, but evidence can be faked.
It does not matter which Prince the Director chooses as the victim and which the alleged traitor.
The Incident
The death took place at BlackKat, a nightclub in blatant imitation of the older and more notorious KitKat. It was leather night. Obscure Forms was the techno DJ. According to the media the Prince overdosed and could not be revived. There was a delay getting them to the hospital; their companion became hysterical, and their command of German was not the best.
The identity of the companion has not been revealed by the media.
The body (Tradecraft or similar, 1 point) is being held at a private medical facility, Apollo Medical.
Potential 0 point, Vampirology: the BlackKat is suspected of being a Conspiracy asset, or at least Conspiracy-adjacent. Its owner, former porn star Melanie, is thought to be a Renfield.
Potential 0 point, High Society: the mystery companion was Legacy Tabitha Holmwood, known to be staying at a very high-end hotel in Berlin.
Potential 0 point, Bureaucracy: Princes don’t just go wandering as they please. Their schedules are meticulously documented, and they seldom go anywhere without personal protection. Having this one wander off to Berlin, solo, for unspecified reasons is setting off alarm bells in London.
Points of Entry
If the Agents are Edom, nothing’s simpler: their higher-ups assign them to the case. Their objective is to recover the body, perform a preliminary assessment for a future investigative team to pick up, and then return to London.
If the Agents are freelance, then they are hired through a Fixer of dubious provenance. This middleman is working on behalf of one of the other vampire-curious agencies (any except Germany’s Unternehmen Braun) and, for once, is reliable and not inclined to double-cross. The Agents’ instructions are the same, with the added complication that they have to dodge Edom agents trying to accomplish the same task.
BlackKat
This club is near the Holzmarkt (wood market), Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (counterculture district slowly gentrifying), on the banks of the river Spree. The building is a former East German landmark; gossip says it was used by the Stasi, but gossip is notoriously unreliable. Architecture knows several ways to bypass the front door and its bouncers.
The owner, Melanie, (Mafioso Athletics 10 otherwise as per book) is not a Conspiracy asset or a Renfield. However, she cultivates a mysterious persona and does a lot of business with shady characters, including Unternehmen Braun, who manufactured this persona for her.
Tradecraft 1, Vampirology 1: this is an interrogation site for suspected Vampires and their assets, protected by several Blocks. Unternehmen Braun set it up back in the 70s in what was then East Germany, and when the wall came down it was mothballed, only to be reactivated in 1998 as the BlackKat.
The story as it’s been told to the Agents is broadly true: the Prince collapsed of a suspected overdose, was taken away a shade too late by emergency services, Tabitha Holmwood went into hysterics. DJ Obscure Forms, bar staff, Melanie can all confirm this on a 0 point spend.
1 point Bullshit Detector: Melanie and Obscure Forms are hiding something.
1 point Flirting (bar staff, bouncers) finds out where Tabitha Holmwood is staying. Before the incident Tabitha told a bar worker she liked the look of to come and see her ‘afterward’.
1 point Intimidation (Obscure Forms, Civilian Gym Rat) finds out that the first responders who took the Prince away weren’t regular ambulance guys and carried what the Agents will recognize as vampire Banes. He’s under strict orders from Melanie not to let this slip.
1 point Notice (Melanie) sees that she’s had anti-vampire training and is careful to keep at least one Block or Bane close at all times. The extent of her training suggests she’s an intelligence asset.
1 point Interrogation (bar staff) finds one who saw Tabitha Holmwood slip the Prince a pill.
Tabitha
Ms. Holmwood is staying at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin (in the heart of Berlin, facing the Brandenburg Gate and only a few steps from the government district).
The hotel staff are used to her antics and loyal to her bank account, if not to her personally. It will take at least 1-point spends (Flattery, High Society, Reassurance, Notice) to get her room information. She’s been staying in her room ever since the incident at the BlackKat. A 1-point also knows that she was meant to move out a day ago, but that hasn’t happened. The staff are frantically trying to accommodate her desire to stay but this does mean upsetting other guests’ arrangements.
Vampirology 0-point notices blocks amateurishly displayed on door entrances and windows.
Tabitha Holmwood was brought in on this by the Prince and doesn’t know anything about the operation other than it’s supposed to be a trap for someone. She doesn’t know who. The Prince told her to give them the pill. She wasn’t expecting the overdose.
The Prince expected her to be far from Berlin by this time but she panicked and is staying put until she knows it’s safe. She’s not sure what safe looks like, except that she doesn’t feel safe right now. To the Prince, Tabitha is window dressing; the Prince knows Tabitha’s reputation and figured the Legacy would be a useful screen for their plot.
The Director can replace Tabitha with another Legacy if needed.
Apollo Medical
This is a private clinic in an 1800s-era hospital in West Berlin. During the War this area saw heavy fighting and the hospital exterior is pockmarked with bullet holes and shell scars.
Apollo is privately owned, and its corporate structure can be traced (Accounting) to a Danish entity, Apollo ApS & Co. KG. Tradecraft or similar (1 point) knows that the Danish entity is a front for Unternehmen Braun.
The Prince is in hiding in a secure part of the facility. Armed guards and automated security protocols watch the immediate environs. These protocols are meant (1-point Infiltration, Sense Trouble as an Investigative pool) to be hidden as this is a trap.
The Prince spends most of their day in seclusion, occasionally reaching out to trusted contacts to find out what’s going on.
The plan is, fake ‘death’, lure the traitor Prince to Berlin, get them to commit themselves by trying to break into Apollo, and then expose the traitor. The ‘dead’ Prince prepared for this by leaving all sorts of incriminating tidbits in London for the traitor to find, to make them curious about why the ‘dead’ one ended up in Berlin and whether this has anything to do with their treason or the Conspiracy.
The ‘dead’ Prince assumes that the agents are working for the traitor and will want to capture them for interrogation.
The ‘dead’ Prince has promised to share their intel with Unternehmen Braun to get their cooperation.
Is There A Traitor, Yes Or No?
Yes. In which case, that traitor is indeed interested in what happened in Berlin but is far too cautious to commit themselves to a direct approach. Rather than beeline for Apollo Medical, they opt to coerce Tabitha Holmwood. The Legacy is the obvious weak link; if she can spill her guts, then the traitor finds out what they want to know and can potentially use Tabitha as a weapon against the ‘dead’ Prince. The Agents may discover this when they see that the blocks at Tabitha’s hotel room have been tampered with or see telltale signs of vampiric influence when they talk to Tabitha.
No. In which case the ‘dead’ Prince has been fooled by Conspiracy assets who have corrupted Unternehmen Braun. The whole point was to get that Prince to Berlin where they could conveniently die at the BlackKat, be whisked off to Apollo, and then rigorously interrogated. The Prince has not realized that those peculiar dreams they’ve been having while at the Apollo Medical are in fact advanced interrogation techniques. They’re being pumped dry of information and will eventually be let loose to return to Edom and a rapturous welcome. If this really goes well, then the Conspiracy will indeed have a traitor at the heart of Edom, and the traitor will be the Prince who thought they were going to expose one.
Auf Wiedersehen!
Night’s Black Agents by Kenneth Hite puts you in the role of a skilled intelligence operative fighting a shadow war against vampires in post-Cold War Europe. Play a dangerous human weapon, a sly charmer, an unstoppable transporter, a precise demolitions expert, or whatever fictional spy you’ve always dreamed of being — and start putting those bloodsuckers in the ground where they belong. Purchase Night’s Black Agents in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.