Night's Black Agents
In From The Cold
by Adam Gauntlett
Premise: the agents are tasked with recovering data from a dead drop, only to discover a live agent on the scene, bleeding heavily. Do they bring this agent in from the cold, or are they being fed a poison pill?
A dead drop is a prearranged location for depositing and picking up messages and items in a clandestine manner. It was very popular in the Cold War, when there were few other options of communication for those whose conduct is closely monitored, and is still used today on occasion.
A dead drop works like this: you deposit the item, whatever it may be, at the location. You signal that there’s something to pick up by leaving a visual cue. It can be anything; the American spy Aldrich Ames used to leave chalk marks on a nearby public mailbox, so if there was a mark on the box Ames’ handler knew there was something at the drop. Then whoever’s meant to collect the item picks it up and removes the visual cue.
In this scenario the exact location of the drop doesn’t matter, so you can set this in Berlin, Tokyo or anywhere you please. However, for scenario purposes it’s assumed that the location is urban.
This scenario uses the Familiar Foe rules found in Double Tap (p52).
The agents are assumed to be working for an agency, so the Director may want to use this as part of someone’s backstory if all the agents are freelancers in the current campaign timeline. The scenario doesn’t use a specific agency; it can be Edom, the CIA, the KGB/FSB, or whichever agency is most useful to the Director.
The Drop
This is a spy rock in a public park.
It works by wireless transmission. It has a short range, no more than 20m. The idea is, the person depositing information gets within range of the rock, transmits, and leaves. Then the handler takes the information from the rock at their leisure. In 2006, the British were accused of using a system like this in Moscow.
The rock is fixed in place with screws and has a battery to power it. That battery is why the agents are here. They must replace it, while at the same time remaining inconspicuous. They have on them a rock exactly like the one in place, preloaded with a working battery. Their job is to get the new rock in and take the old rock out without getting caught.
Exactly how they do this is up to them. Disguises and cheap cover identities are the obvious solution but let agents be agents. If they have another plan, they can use that.
That’s the assignment. It gets complicated when the agents discover someone bleeding out on the spy rock.
The park is relatively isolated and nobody apart from the agents appears to have noticed the injured person. Whatever happened must have happened recently, within the past half hour or so, no longer.
Tradecraft knows that the injured person is in the business; they’re an agent, but they don’t work for the agency that the characters work for. It’s up to the Director whether the injured person works for an allied agency or one of the enemy. A 1-point spend knows the injured person’s backstory: which agency they work for, whether they’re an important figure in that agency, and the injured person’s obsession with a private project. The injured person is obsessed with the death of a friend, Ito, and is trying to find out who killed them.
Note: the Director is encouraged to use some of this information as they see fit. Does it help your campaign that the injured person works for Edom? Then in this game, they do. Use all the 1-point spend information this way.
Forensic Pathology realizes that the injured person was attacked by at least two trained assailants one of whom had a knife. Probably a combat knife or similar, judging by the injury. Whoever did this is probably close by; the attack was so recent that whoever it was didn’t have time to run very far. The arrival of the agents probably scared them off. Streetwise knows the area round about is peaceful enough that this probably wasn’t a random attack, a mugging gone wrong. This was deliberate.
Occult notices that the injured person is wearing several items of occult significance but isn’t sure what they’re for. Vampirology knows exactly what they’re for: the injured person has fitted themselves out with vampire banes.
The agents now have a decision to make. Do they help the injured person, or do they leave the scene?
The Chase
If the agents try to leave the scene with the injured person, then the first thing they need to do is make an Infiltration check followed by Sense Trouble.
The Infiltration is to see how quickly they’re spotted leaving the park with the injured person. There’s absolutely no question that they will be spotted; the place is too public, and the as-yet-unknown attackers are close by. The question is when, because that will determine the Lead in the chase scene that’s coming.
The Sense Trouble is to determine whether the agents realize they’re also being watched by supernatural opponents. The birds in the park are all being mentally dominated by someone or something, and those birds are paying very close attention to the agents. The watcher is a Strix (main book p153) who is in radio contact with the human attackers on the ground. The Strix is on the roof of a nearby building and will join the chase as an eye in the sky, when the chase begins.
Starting Lead is either 2 (base) or 3, depending on whether the agents managed a successful Infiltration. If the agents beat Infiltration difficulty by 4 or more, then starting Lead is 4.
So long as the eye in the sky remains in play, the OPFOR refresh 3 pool points every 2 rounds for the first six rounds in the chase scene. This gives them a significant advantage. If an agent spends 2 Occult points, or 1 Vampirology, and manages a Preparedness test difficulty 4, then that agent can improvise a temporary bane. This bane is enough to defeat the eye in the sky for the remainder of the chase.
The Director should assume the chase is Open for the first two rounds as the agents leave the park and get onto the busier streets. The chase changes to Normal for the rest of the scene and can change to Cramped if the agents deliberately choose to go to a Cramped location, perhaps because they think it gives them an advantage.
The agents have whatever transport they arrived in. If this wasn’t specified at the beginning of the scene then assume they are in a Van (Speed 0 Manoeuvre -1). The OPFOR have three Racing Motorcycles (Speed +1 Manoeuvre 0). If the Motorcycles are knocked out but the Lead is still 5 or less then the eye in the sky, if it is still operational, can call in another group of chasers, this time in an ordinary Car (Speed 0 Manoeuvre 0).
Treat the location as European Tourist City for challenge purposes. If you want to increase Difficulty then introduce modifier Raining (Difficulties go up by 1 for all participants) or Accident Up Ahead (chase is now Cramped).
The agents may decide to abandon the road and go on foot, perhaps because they think that ducking through, say, a Restaurant, might throw off pursuers. If the OPFOR are still on Motorcycles then no, it won’t; they just gun the cycles right through the restaurant. If the OPFOR are in a car then it will. However, if your game uses the optional Achievement rules found in Double Tap then there is the option of earning achievements this way (eg., Chef de Partie) which might provide a useful refresh. There is a special Achievement on offer: Don’t Drop The Baby. If the agents can keep the injured person alive for at least 6 rounds of chase scene, they earn this achievement.
Treat the initial OPFOR as Special Police with Driving 8 armed with Glock pistols, combat knives, flashbang grenades and tasers. If these OPFOR are replaced mid-chase then their replacements are Soldiers armed with Glock pistols and combat knives. The OPFOR’s objective is to kill the injured person. They don’t care about the agents, and if the injured person is obviously dead then the OPFOR will break off pursuit.
If the agents realize this, they can improvise a special Swerve: Dropped the Baby. They can make it look as if the injured person died mid-chase. This will want a Medic spend of at least 2 points (lots of ketchup and overacting needed to sell the bit) in addition to any other costs the Director may specify at the table on the day. If successful, the agents manage an immediate Sudden Escape.
Assuming the agents escape the chase with the injured person then when they report to their agency the injured person is whisked off to a hospital for treatment, the agents are debriefed, and the whole incident is shrouded in secrecy by the agents’ home agency. However, the agents have come to the notice of the Conspiracy, possibly for the first time. This may earn them a Level One Response.
The injured person may reappear later in the campaign as a vampire hunter, perhaps even a mentor figure.
The death of Ito, which is why the injured person got here in the first place, may become a story seed for future games. If that happens, assume Ito got too close to a major Conspiracy operation and had to be silenced.
The Familiar Foe
This assumes that the agents do not rescue the injured person.
If they go this route then, as soon as they leave the scene, the OPFOR return to finish the job. However, due to a combination of luck and grit, the injured person does not die. They escape on their own.
However, now they have a new purpose in life: destroy the agent who left them to die, however it can be done.
This makes them a Familiar Foe.
The Director and agents should choose which agent the injured person decides is most responsible for leaving them to die, and the injured person becomes that agents Familiar Foe. This gives that agent a 3-point pool to be used to find out more about the Foe’s background. Who are they? How did they come to be in that park? Who do they work for?
The Foe works for a vampire-curious intelligence agency, as a freelancer, or they work for one of the Conspiracy-adjacent groups. Say that, in your game, the Alraune, Carmilla, a Lamia, or some other significant supernatural entity has their own mini-network which it uses to achieve its goals. The Foe can be part of that mini-network.
The only thing the Foe will never willingly do is work for the Conspiracy, since it was the Conspiracy that tried to kill the Foe and nearly succeeded. In a game where mind control or possession exists, ‘willingly’ becomes a little flexible, but the Director should assume it will take extraordinary means and effort to get the Foe to work for the ones who tried to kill them.
The exact nature and stats of the Foe should be left up to the Director and the agent involved. Is the Foe some kind of super-hacker capable of incredible feats of Digital Intrusion? Someone skilled at Magic, perhaps with their own Aberrance pool? A brainwashed black-ops badass? The ultimate bang-and-burner? Something else?
The one thing the Foe has, regardless of type, is an in-depth knowledge of the Conspiracy. If the agents can somehow get the Foe to spill the beans, then they gain a 3-point pool to be used to find out more about the Conspiracy. This represents the Foe’s files, whether paper, a hard drive, or hidden in the deep recesses of their mind. The Foe will not give this information up willingly; any attempt to get it is probably worth a Thrilling scene of its own.
Thrilling scenes are, after all, what Familiar Foes are all about.
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.