Keepers and Hunters: Eric Fattig, Karen Twelves, Adrienne Mueller, Sean Nittner
System: Monster of the Week
Supplement: Tome of Mysteries
Campaign Overview
Overview of the entire campaign here: Agents of Cisra
Adventure Log
AKA UC Davis Blues
At Dr. Noble’s lab the team decides they need to do something to sabotage these prosthetics in order to prevent the violence from Stasia’s vision from manifesting. Mordecai gets the tools he needs and gets to work sabotaging the prosthetics. He sends a clumsily worded text to his date to let her know that he won’t make their date. Stasia and Jessica keep watch as darkness falls. As Mordecai wraps up, Jessica and Stasia hear footfalls approaching. Stasia ensures that the lock “coincidentally” jams, buying the team time to hide.
The door explodes open in a storm of splinters. A primate strides in, only about four feet tall, but heavily augmented with cybernetics. A second follows with a cart, and the two start loading it up with prosthetics. The first, armed to the teeth, sniffs the air near the party…
Mordecai scans the room, spotting a third ape out the window, and indicates to the party that the room into the hallway is their only way out. Stasia jinxes the fire supression system, causing the sprinklers along the ceiling to spray fire suppressing foam. At the same time, the apes’ integrated machine guns spray bullets wildly, startling even them—as though the jinx may have spread to their systems. Jessica, with ice in her veins, beckons for the party to hold still, banking on the apes to retreat. They do, and the party is safe.
Their hearts still pounding, the party gathers their wits. How did the apes get onto campus? What was their goal? Comparing notes, the party realizes at least one of the apes matches the description of the escaped/kidnapped apes that were reported before the party arrived in Davis. Jessica suggests talking to Dr. Noble; they can visit under the pretense of inquiring about a reported incident at his lab.
En route, Maliq texts the party to let them know about an ethics case that’s just been opened against Dr. Beech. Arriving back at the lab, the party sees campus police surveying the scene as they wait for Dr. Noble to arrive. Jessica tries to assert control over the scene via our cover as FBI. The chief of campus police is no match for Jessica’s bureaucratic wrangling, although it takes considerable resources to take control of the scene and generate the necessary fake reports needed to smooth things over with local PD.
Dr. Noble arrives in a huff, and with some assurances from Jessica and Mordecai, tells the party what he knows. He’s rivals with Dr. Beech, the missing professor, who is pursuing less scientifically accepted means to the same end: mental control of prostheses. Dr Noble is quick to blame the lab accident on Dr. Beech, suspecting jealousy. Dr. Beech has worked heavily with apes, and one of the side effects of his methods were violent outbursts from the subjects. Amy (one of the members of the Animal Freedom Militia) had been one of his student assistant before becoming upset by the nature of his animal research.
The party withdraws to prepare for a confrontation with the cyber apes. Romeo is able to get a hold of the ethics complaint against Dr. Beech, which suggests he’s investigating a bio-etheric interface which can cause permanent neurological damage as a side effect. An EMP would disrupt the interface, causing the impants to go berserk. Some gumshoeing points the party towards an unusual power signature in a lab accessible only via the tunnels underneath Haring Hall.
Stasia suggests luring him out with the promise of offering him Dr. Noble’s research. Stasia and Jessica find an access terminal in the tunnels and prepare to send a message on the closed network that Dr. Beech’s lab is part of. Before they can start however, Stasia encounters an ape dragging the body of Dr. Holt (the head of the ethics committee investigating Dr. Noble). Discretion being the better part of valor, Stasia flees the enraged cyber-ape. Jessica tries to send a message but Maliq directs her to break the connection because she’s being traced.
Jessica draws the attention of the Cyberape and leads it on a wild goose chase, giving time for Stasia and Mordecai to get Dr. Holt safely above ground. Dr. Holt doesn’t know much, but he indicates that the cyberapes are working at Dr. Beech’s behest and that “He’s coming for all of us.”
Jessica is about to call in a fake bomb threat in order to get the innocents clear of the scene, but there’s not enough time! The monkeys are already on the scene! They’re blocking people in, holding them captive. The party realizes Dr. Beech likely wants to address the captive crowd, so the party anticipates the best path from the tunnels to the podium and ambushes him… and his enormous cyber gorilla bodyguard, Koko. Jessica shoots Dr. Beech with a tranq dart, slowing him but not stopping him—he’s more machine than man now. Akodo fires a pulse cannon in response, which Mordecai attempts to shield Jessica from, but the two are momentarily buried by rubble from the explosion. Jessica further slows him down with a jinx, but he still staggers past with help from Koko. The party recovers, as Dr. Beech begins his villainous monologue. Assessing the situation, Mordecai suggests Jessica distracts Dr. Beech while he breaks into his bio-etheric network to disable the quasi-mystical extradimensional connection that he’s (unintentionally?) tapped into. Jessica and Stasia draw his attention (and some fire) while Mordecai breaks into his neural network, physically prying loose one of his cybernetic tubes and pressing the exposed end against his forehead. Dr. Beech is disabled… but so is Mordecai, as the extraplanar entity flees into his very being, rendering him comatose.
The apes go berserk, and it’s only through the assistance of teams of CISRA agents that they’re able to contain the situation. It’s a mess, but at least there’s no loss of life. Dr. Beech is brought in by CISRA and partially de-cyberified, but he can’t be fully restored to normal.
