At the same time that Pirates of the Boundless Isles was wrapping up, my other gaming group also finished playing the campaign of Night’s Black Agents that we’d been doing.
Night’s Black Agents is a very specific game. The players are mercenary spies in Europe, who have discovered that vampires exist. Over the course of the campaign you must discover what the vampires’ weaknesses and powers are (which might be anything from all kinds of vampire media–you don’t know what you’re dealing with at all when the game starts), unravel their conspiracy, and destroy the threat that they pose to the world.
It’s a hell of a lot of fun, if you’re as much a fan of spy thrillers as I am.
This post contains all of the fun quotes that we recorded from about a year of hunting vampires in the world of international espionage.
Our cast of characters:
Brett as the gamemaster;
Caitlin as Harbor, a classic Cold War era British operative with a whole lot of friends and tricks from the old days;
Peter as Bird, a former US Air Force pilot who adheres to all of the Top Gun stereotypes with obvious delight;
Amber as Chance, a French master of disguise and martial arts expert;
Josh as Cu Sidhe, an Irish hitman with a drinking problem and a whole lot of knives;
Jake as Matzo, an Israeli doctor with an unnerving knowledge of chemical weapons;
And myself as Crossroads, a British intelligence analyst, hacker, and overwatch specialist.
Against us, those bloodsuckers didn’t stand a goddamn chance.
SESSION 1: THE BOSNIAN JOB
Matzo: “I brought some wine, by the way, if anyone’s interested.”
Crossroads: “Isn’t your character the poisoner?”
Crossroads: “I have three points in Electronic Surveillance. I’m sure I have some glasses with hidden cameras.”
Bird: Puts on neon-lit LED sunglasses “You walk into his office looking like this.”
Harbor: “We could distract the driver. What do you think his ‘type’ is?”
Crossroads: “Fire.”
Bird: “We send Chance in disguised as a French maid!”
Chance: “Oui oui! No one will suspect! Honhonhon!”
Chance, discussing surveillence of a target: “He didn’t go back to the restaurant on Tuesday.”
Harbor: “He’s a fiscally responsible man and doesn’t eat out every day of the week.”
Bird, having just returned from a one night stand with an NPC: “I eat out on Tuesdays.”
Matzo: “Handle this very carefully. It’s made partially from my own urine.”
Chance: I…take that with my handkerchief.
GM: You know that there’s still a lot of damage from the Bosnian war, and if there’s anyone in a ruined place like this, it would be squatters.
Matzo: “Just some slav squatters. Squatting.”
SESSION 2: GRAVE PERIL
Chance: “I hit him with the French technique du cœur explosif en cinq points.”
Bird: “I appreciate that all your martial arts are going to be stuff from movies, but in French.”
Crossroads, trying to find a café in Bosnia: “If we zoom far enough out on the map, we’re right next to Italy.”
Bird: “How much have you drank since we met a few minutes ago? Three flasks?”
Cu Sidhe: “Handle’s half empty.”
Crossroads, breaking into a target’s computer: “I log out of his ArchiveOfOurOwn account.”
Bird: “And log into his NeoPets account, and transfer everything to yourself.”
GM: Aha! The heist is now complete.
Chance: “Let’s go the party barge.”
Crossroads: “I’m a little nervous about…”
Chance: “Partying? Loosen up!”
Crossroads: “I was going to say nervous about going on a boat full of hostiles with no easy–“
Harbor: “The younger generation has no idea how to party.”
Crossroads: “Let’s change the license plates on these cars before we get into Serbia.”
Bird: I swap the license plates between the two vehicles.
Crossroads: “…Not really what I meant.”
SESSION 3: DISCO INFERNO
Bird: I have one point in Preparedness. I could maybe scrounge up a pencil or something, if we need one.
Bird: “I’ll go to his party boat and spend 2 points Flirting with him. Then it’ll have to work.”
Crossroads: “Hey. I heard you vampires like sucking on things.”
Harbor: “We’re just a couple tourists, looking for a party.”
GM: How old are your characters again?
Chance: “I’m in my 20s. This is my mother, she likes to party hard.”
Crossroads: “Just saying, we could use this in the future instead of a rental car.”
Bird, having rented a car with cash and not given a name: “Rental?”
Crossroads, examining blueprints: “That room is probably where they keep the bazookas.”
Bird: “Bazookas seem like a poor choice to have in your own underground nightclub.”
Crossroads: “Hey, you never know when you’re gonna need anti-armor for when they roll a tank into your club.”
Chance: “I go flirt with the bouncer to distract him.”
Crossroads: “‘Is that an assault rifle on your back or are you just happy to see me?'”
Harbor: “This is why you don’t get to do the flirting, Crossroads.”
Bird: “Because he’s too good at it. Leave some for the rest of us!”
Seeing someone leap clear across a street
Harbor: “I feel like Bird is offended because that’s basically flying.”
Bird: “I learned how to do that, dammit! I spent good money!”
SESSION 4: MONEY FOR NOTHING
GM: You hear too many car doors closing at the same time to be coincidence.
Cu Sidhe: My butthole clenches.
Matzo: “Ah, good, ze pills are working.”
Chance: “I have my handgun tucked into my sports bra.”
Cu Sidhe: “Is the safety on??”
Chance: “I never put the safety on. Also, my sports bra is bulletproof.”
Cu Sidhe: I throw the phone to one of them.
Crossroads: I catch that. This is mine to hack now.
GM: It’s unlocked.
Bird: “Hacked!”
Matzo: I’m also gonna bring some laxatives.
GM: Because shit’s about to go down?
Matzo: Yes. And also because I’ve played Hitman, and I’m sure they’ll come in handy.
GM: You make it clear that you’re here for business.
Bird: “I’m here for business.”
GM: Yep. You say those words, and now it’s clear.
GM: You hook him up with a discreet camera.
Matzo: “Surprising nobody, Bird is now the government drone.”
Crossroads: “They want us to give them the laptop? Give me a minute with that first and I’ll hand them a literal Trojan.”
Cu Sidhe: “Why would you put a condom on a laptop?”
Crossroads: “Look, I don’t tell you how to kill people.”
Harbor: “Is he immortal?”
GM: His passport says he was born in ’82.
Peter: “Which ’82?”
GM: 82. AD.
Bird: “No, that holds up. Canadians don’t mate.”
Cu Sidhe: “They bud?”
SESSION 5: COLD CASE
Cu Sidhe: “Is airport security going to take my flask?”
GM: They’ll ask you to empty it.
Cu Sidhe: “I’ll conceal my flask. Fuck the gun.”
GM: You give them your cover identity of a Canadian farmer who needs a pistol for reasons.
Chance: “Those cows. Sometimes you gotta intimidate them.”
Cu Sidhe: “A whole new way of herding.”
Chance: “Get in the barn! Blam blam blam.”
Bird invents a cover identity: “I’m Cal Calhoon, Calgary cop.”
Crossroads: “I got stabbed by the person who specifically called me in as a computer expert?!”
Chance: “She decided, ‘I’m gonna stab some nerds today!'”
Cu Sidhe: “Well she wasn’t gonna stab us. I wouldn’t stab me.”
Crossroads: “I use Preparedness to use a prepared code phrase over a walkie talkie to call for help.”
GM: “Code kumquat” means “I’ve been stabbed by the receptionist.”
Crossroads: “Does the window open?”
Cu Sidhe: “Eventually.”
Cu Sidhe: “Harbor, you also have Interrogation, right? We can Bad Cop, Bad Cop her.”
Harbor: “I have Reassurance, so I could be Good Cop…”
Bird: “He didn’t mention a Good Cop.”
Cu Sidhe: I check her teeth. Are they fangs?
GM: They appear normal.
Harbor: “Is this standard interrogation tactics where you’re from?”
Cu Sidhe: “How else would you know if they’re IRA?”
SESSION 6: THICKER THAN WATER
Bird: “We can buy a large plane to fly somewhere else, then deploy a smaller plane out of the larger plane to get to Serbia. Harder to track that way.”
Cu Sidhe: “Decoy plane!”
Cu Sidhe: “So let’s figure out what his car is, plant a car bomb.”
Bird: “The problem with car bombs is that it might be hard to ask him questions afterwards.”
Cu Sidhe: “I like my black bags to be burlap. That way they’re extra itchy.”
Crossroads: “I have a fine selection of black bags. This one is burlap on the inside for them, and silk on the outside for us.”
Crossroads: “I just don’t like to leave things to chance.”
Chance: “Hey!”
Chance: “Yo, I just robbed a place, what up? Serbia, right?”
Crossroads: “We have no reason to buy a yacht.”
Harbor: “…Don’t say that.”
GM: Before long, you’ve gambled away a few tens of thousands of dollars.
Crossroads: Phew. That gave me real life anxiety for a moment.
Harbor: “I feel like Serena’s a problem.”
Chance, being suspended by the throat by Serena, who turned out to be a vampire: “Yeah, I think so too.”
Harbor: “What are your brass knuckles made out of?”
Chance: “Brass.”
Harbor: “…Hm.”
Crossroads: “Adding to my notes about observed vampire qualities: real bendy.”
SESSION 7: SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM
Bird: “So with both sets of holes, it looks like one big bite?”
Cu Sidhe: “Fuck that noise.”
Bird: “Well, we were gonna kill vampires, but it turns out their mouths are too big, so never mind.”
Bird: “I don’t know what we’d get out of a meet with Gruber.”
Cu Sidhe: “Information.”
Bird: “Hm.”
Chance: “Dead.”
Bird: “Hmmm.”
Crossroads: “I mostly wanted a drone to spy on people. And that’s not weird in this context, because I’m a spy.”
Bird: “So I think filling that basement with flammables is justified.”
Chance: “We’re gonna find out it’s full of babies. There’s an orphanage down there.”
Harbor: “Does Crossroads have enough dexterity to set off those grenades?”
GM: He is capable of dropping an object through a hole in the floor, yeah.
Bird: “Hand cramp! Ahh!”
SESSION 8: DOCTOR’S ORDERS
Bird: “We probably shouldn’t start shooting the authorities.”
Matzo: “Can’t ask questions if they can’t breathe – actually, we already know that isn’t the case. Never mind.”
Bird: “That’s appropriation. You can’t wear aviators.”
Cu Sidhe: “You’re forging his ID, so you can make his name whatever you want.”
Bird: “Dr. Blas Aster.”
Matzo: “I specialize in laxatives.”
Crossroads: “That’s where the shady business happens. Down in the broiler room.”
Harbor: “…Did you say ‘broiler?'”
Bird: “It’s right under the cafeteria.”
Bird: “Maybe Zurich’s only clean because they’re turning their poor into soylent.”
Crossroads: “Soylent ghouls.”
Bird: “That went from investigation to combat sooner than I think was expected…”
Cu Sidhe: “I went in first. This was exactly what was expected.”
SESSION 9: REQUIEM FOR A HUMAN TRAFFICKER
GM: You guys pull up and see Bird loading a corpse into his van.
Bird: “Just keep rolling!”
Cu Sidhe: “Yeah, no questions.”
Harbor: “There are some companies who will run tests on whatever blood you send them.”
Crossroads: “You want to send the vampire blood to 23andMe?”
GM: There are a lot of good things about Switzerland, but their flag is a big plus.
Crossroads: I will break quarantine to walk over and punch you.
Matzo: It’s essential business.
Bird: “I feel like if we start burning places down too much, it’s gonna start causing us problems.”
Matzo: “International criminals, the Burnout Bandits.”
Bird: “The plane was actually a vampire!”
GM: Old vampires turned into bats, but they’ve evolved with the times.
Harbor: “Animal handling is not a skill in this game…”
Cu Sidhe: “No, but Weapons is. I draw my knife.”
GM: He has about the average amount of vampire erotica.
SESSION 10: ON A MISSION FROM GOD
GM: The rest of this campaign will now be saving dogs from distress. And vampires.
Cu Sidhe: We open a shelter. It’s not a bad retirement plan.
Crossroads: “I hate to admit this, but for some reason I had in my head that Milan was a coastal town in Spain.”
Cu Sidhe: “…What?”
Harbor: “Were you thinking of Madrid? Landlocked Madrid?”
Crossroads, looking at Google Maps and not really paying attention: “Man, we’re SO far from the beach. I did not come dressed for this.”
Cu Sidhe: I shame the arms dealer I’m buying from while handing them huge stacks of euros.
Bird: “I can’t believe you would sell me this illegal weaponry.”
Crossroads: “We should definitely set up a killbox at the abandoned amusement park.”
Bird: “No no, if we kidnap someone, we’ll bring them to the abandoned amusement park. But we should set up our base of operations somewhere else.”
Cu Sidhe: “…Are we the villains?”
Chance: I give them the Italian middle finger.
Bird: That’s like the chef gesture, but with your middle finger.
Matzo: “It would appear you have fallen into our…tarp.”
Bird: “Okay, I’m gonna take Matzo away. One of you guys handle the interrogation.”
Bird: “You guys ever seen Mulan?”
Kidnapped Suspect: “No. I’m not really into anime.”
Bird: I untie them. They’re my people.
Harbor: “You are the worst type of tourist.”
Bird: “Yeah, I really Karen’d it up. Came to another country and immediately asked to see the manager.”
SESSION 11: HE SAID, SHE SAID
Bird: “You didn’t actually blow up that building, right?”
Harbor: “I can leave a building without blowing it up. That’s definitely not why they fired me from MI6.”
Crossroads: “With a big enough black bag, you can kidnap anything.”
Bird: “Let’s black bag the boat!”
NPC Being Interrogated: “You’re the terrorist bombers, what’s this got to do with me?”
Bird, aside: “Actually he does have a point about the bomber thing.”
Cu Sidhe: “Yeah, you beat me to it.”
Cu Sidhe: “What skill would a prostate massage be?”
Bird: “Flirting.”
Harbor: “I don’t know if it’s flirting at this point. Maybe Hand to Hand…no wait, Digital Intrusion!”
Bird: “…We can never use that skill again.”
GM: You can get a silencer, but I don’t think anybody else is.
Cu Sidhe: Nah, fuck that noise.
GM: Yes, that’s what the silencers are for.
GM: I understand if you want to move some points out of Digital Intrusion now.
Crossroads: But if I did that, I would lose the cherry. Which I know makes it sound worse.
Harbor: Can’t remove those digits!
Bird: “We go in disguised as paramedics, already wearing night vision goggles.”
Cu Sidhe: “Sorry, we’re usually night shift.”
Crossroads: “We’re doing good work here.”
Cu Sidhe: “Well, hang on.”
GM: You haven’t set off an EMP in a hospital yet.
Bird: “But there’s still time!”
SESSION 12: YANKING THE WORM
Bird: “Remember – vampires are never civilians.”
GM: Not in the war on darkness.
Bird: “When you become a vampire, your citizenship is revoked. There are no American vampires.”
GM: So are you ready to kick the door in now?
Crossroads: “Wait. What song are we blasting when we do this?”
Cu Sidhe: “Move, bitch. GET OUT THE WAY.”
Crossroads: “Good. Now we’re ready.”
Cu Sidhe: “That’s how they get you. Put the bitch vampires in the first room to give you a false sense of security.”
Bird: I got us a “team” general pool to hit that vampire, and then spent the entire pool myself to kill him. Like a team player.
Crossroads, examining some kind of snake mutant in an infiltrated lab: “Did we just discover that the vampire conspiracy was actually the reptilian conspiracy?”
SESSION 13: ON THE LAM
Crossroads: “She’s still alive, so probably no autopsy there. Yet.”
Matzo, on video call: “Sorry, I cut out there. Who am I performing a live autopsy on?”
Bird: “Crossroads. There’s an alien inside him called an appendix.”
A captive in an abandoned amusement park: “Can I go see a doctor?”
Bird: “There is a doctor in the house.”
Crossroads: “In the funhouse, specifically.”
Crossroads: “We have excessive funds right now, and we need a way into this meeting. Who wants to invest in a vampire conspiracy?”
The team tries to figure out what to do with a captive lamia.
Harbor: “Wait. Maybe I know someone from the Cold War days who worked on a secret Soviet moon base! We’ll just leave her there at 0 Kelvin!”
Bird: “So we’re going to store everyone we feel bad about murdering…on the moon.”
Bird: “I don’t really want to get close enough to inject her with anything.”
Matzo: “I told you – ten foot syringe.”
Harbor: “It’s not torture, it’s medical testing!”
GM: It’s for science.
Harbor: “Just call me Mengele.”
Crossroads: “I think that’s Matzo’s role. Just the irony would be…actually, I’m going to violently retract that statement.”
Crossroads: “I’ll send her a DM. ‘Ayy gurl, I heard you was compromised.'”
SESSION 14: THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS ALSO A VAMPIRE
GM: How do you get through border security with Gambling?
Cu Sidhe: I pull out a golden fiddle and tell him that if he can outplay me, he can keep it.
Harbor: “I would like to point out that we’ve now come across lizard vampires. ‘The Spider’ might actually be a spider.”
Crossroads: “Why have you put these thoughts in my head.”
Crossroads: “I’m also checking all the hotel databases just for weird pattern recognition stuff.”
GM: You do found that seven people checked into this hotel yesterday whose initials consecutively spell VAMPIRE…
Chance: “Do we want to set the room on fire before we leave?”
Cu Sidhe: “No!”
Harbor: “Got a taste for it now, huh?”
Crossroads: “I would be surprised if a full-fledged vampire was working as museum staff.”
Chance: “It’s a hard economy right now.”
GM: I assume you’re just knocking these guards out and not murdering them.
Cu Sidhe: I’m not killing these guys!
Bird: We will, however, leave them here unconscious when we burn the building down later.
GM: Then the building killed them.
Cu Sidhe: Yeah, that’s not on my conscience.
Bird: “Are we now trapped in unknown close quarters, in complete darkness, with vampires?”
minutes later
Bird: “Are we really moving on to trying to ambush vampires in the dark?”
Bird: “If we kill them, then all we have are two vampires.”
Harbor: “Two dead vampires. Is that an oxymoron?”
Harbor: “Has Georg just been in Spain this whole time killing vampires?”
Bird: “Next time we see him he’s missing an arm and has a stake crossbow.”
Cu Sidhe: “No, his missing arm is the stake crossbow.”
SESSION 15: WHO CLEANS THE CLEANERS
GM: These vampires seem pretty thrown off by their home unexpectedly exploding.
Crossroads: “I understand that this must be a difficult time for them.”
Crossroads: Oh good, Caitlin’s here. Please tell me you brought dice with higher numbers than 1 on them.
Chance: “I’m French. Of course I smoke and have a lighter.”
Chance: “Can I use interrogative abilities on myself? I mean investigative-“
Harbor: “WHY AM I HERE?”
Crossroads: “Stop! You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of the vampires we already killed!”
Crossroads: “Does anyone have any iron on them?”
Bird: “There’s iron in my blood!”
Harbor: “I kind of want to put him a shark tank and send him underwater, and observe.”
Crossroads: “That’s how you get vampire sharks!”
SESSION 16: ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SPY
Crossroads: I just realized that the name I’ve been using for my gun is actually the airsoft model, not the real one…
GM: Well that’s canon now. Crossroads has been shooting vampires with airsoft pellets.
Crossroads: “I think about half of this campaign has been intimidating and shooting doctors.”
Bird: “Not all of them were real doctors! But some of them were.”
Bird: Time to spend a couple more Cover points.
GM: Cal Calhoun: International Cop.
Crossroads: No, this is Barry Barhoun: Barcelona Cop.
Harbor: Man, if you’re going for one on every continent the Antarctica police impersonation is going to be tough.
Bird: “The only thing we’d probably find on the cop car terminals would be, like, names and licenses.”
Chance, hopefully: “But that’s in the US. In Spain I hear they keep complete DNA records and blood samples.”
Harbor: Are you saying all that out loud, in public?
Bird: It’s loud. Everyone’s chewing on crunchy brunch. We’re at the Crunchy Brunch Café.
Harbor: Their specialty is breakfast popcorn.
SESSION 17: SNEAK PEAK
Harbor: “We split the party, and mysteriously half of us end up dead!”
Bird: “There’s no mystery about that. We get killed by vampires. It’s what you expect would happen.”
Bird: “I don’t think black-bagging a cop is gonna reduce our Heat.”
Cu Sidhe: “It does if it’s the right one. Gotta get the guy in charge of setting the Heat score.”
GM: The Thermocop.
GM: The resort website says they have helicopters and snowmobiles available for search and rescue operations.
Bird: “We’re going to be rescuing the world, from vampires.”
Cu Sidhe: “Did you say they had helicopters?”
Bird: “We’re going to be rescuing the world from helicopters too, yes.”
Coming up with a front company for our operations at a business conference where the vampires are hoping to find “investors.”
Harbor: “There’s an existing brand called Van Heusen. We can be an offshoot company, Van Helsing.”
Chance: “Maybe we’ll pronounce it Vohn Helsing.”
Bird: “Van Helz Inc.”
We went with Van Helz Inc.
Crossroads: “Have we seen any signs of vampirism granting immortality?”
Cu Sidhe: “We usually shoot them dead, so no.”
Harbor: “I’m sorry, what are you comparing the vampire bite to? A regular human bite? Do you get bit by regular people a lot?”
Cu Sidhe: “From what I’ve heard of your stories, Harbor, you don’t get to judge me.”
Bird: “Do we want an escape Humvee?”
Harbor: “How about escape reindeer?”
Crossroads: “So we swap the blood bags out for something else. I’m pretty sure they can’t drink, like, mercury.”
Bird: “We don’t know that! That’s the problem with vampires!”
SESSION 18: TRADE NEGOTIATIONS
Bird: “Well I’m all out of Flirting points.”
Cu Sidhe: “I still have Interrogation.”
GM: That’s how Cu Sidhe flirts.
Bird: “TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF!”
Crossroads: “We can’t do that to the real estate guy, he doesn’t deserve it.”
Cu Sidhe: “Yes he does. He’s British.”
Harbor: “I’m British! Crossroads is British!”
Bird: “Yeah, and Cu Sidhe is Irish!”
Chance: “So I go to the bathroom for one minute and now you’re pimping me out?”
Bird: “We’re not pimping you out. Harbor is pimping you out.”
Harbor: “No! It’s reverse pimping!”
Cu Sidhe: “We don’t know what the target truck looks like.”
Bird: “We RPG every truck that comes in.”
Cu Sidhe: “How many launchers do you have?”
Bird: “One. I’m hoping there’s only one truck.”
GM: You drag and drop the faces onto the footage, because you’ve got some super spy version of Photoshop.
Crossroads: I’ve got Photoshop 2.
Crossroads: “Let’s replace the blood with a substitute that tastes similar but doesn’t have the vital stuff.”
Bird: “Blud Lite.”
Harbor: “Chance is wearing a suit made of money and just took some meth. Are we the bad guys?”
Chance: “It’s the Get Stuff Done drug!”
SESSION 19: ALPINE ARSON
Chance: “Does he have any small children who he would rush to help if they had an accident? Not to say that I’m going to make them have an accident.”
Bird: “50/50, we either made things worse or better. No way to know. That’s real espionage, baby.”
Harbor: “Just like the real CIA!”
Crossroads: “If we could do it quietly, that would make things really easy for us.”
Bird: “You want to quietly…remove the roof?”
Crossroads: “At that point it would just be the vampires in the room. And you guys. And me, throwing white phosphorous grenades through the hole in the ceiling to encourage you to run faster.”
GM: I see we have moved on from Spy vs Spy to Looney Tunes.
Harbor: “We thought we were Jason Bourne, but we’re actually Mr. Bean.”
Crossroads: “Is turning into a worms a thing that vampires can do, or just a thing that Gloria can do?”
Bird: “Why would you think we know the answer to that?”
Harbor: “Do you have anything less war-crime than white phosphorous?”
Crossroads: “I have…off-white phosphorous.”
Crossroads: “I’m a bit unhappy that we failed to capture any of our targets here.”
Harbor, holding a fistful of worms: “I have some of her!”
Harbor: Is there a big old hole in the ceiling letting sun in?
GM: There’s a big old hole in the wall, called a window.
Harbor: Fuck you.
Bird: “If I can light a fire by flicking a cigarette out the helicopter window, I’m in.”
Bird, after flicking a cigarette out the helicopter window to ignite a pool of alcohol under a vampire: “Couldn’t hold his liquor.”
SESSION 20: BUDAPEST CONTROL
Bird: “We still don’t know what the vampires are after.”
Crossroads: “I sincerely doubt they’re out there to, like…fight AIDS.”
Cu Sidhe: “They would have a vested interest.”
Chance: “I could pose as an…exterminator. Coming to clean out their bed bugs in the middle of the night.”
Crossroads: “‘We don’t have any beds here. This is an office building.’ ‘I know! Crazy how they got in.'”
Chance: “I’m wearing a disguise, if that matters. I’m always wearing a disguise. None of you know what I really look like.”
Chance: “Crossroads, how are you with combat?” I ask, as we head to the top floor alone with the rest of our team speeding away.
Crossroads: “There we go. No witnesses, no crime.”
GN: Never mind the blood stains, bullet holes, and scorch marks.
Bird: “Those aren’t witnesses!”
Harbor: “We should steal his steak.”
GM: You can use those to kill vampires, I’ve heard.
Cu Sidhe: “Are you aware that your secretary is a vampire?”
CEO of Whitecliff Trucking: “Like, metaphorically? Are you saying she’s embezzling?”
Cu Sidhe: “Embezzling blood!”
Cu Sidhe: “What do you actually do?”
CEO of Whitecliff Trucking: “I’m the CEO! I keep the wheels turning…heh.”
Harbor: “You can’t shoot him just for making puns, Cu Sidhe.”
Cu Sidhe: “Can’t I?”
SESSION 21: BAT OUT OF HELL
GM: You know Red Mercury is a term for a chemical substance used in nuclear reagents.
Bird: “Not looking forward to the vampire nukes.”
Cu Sidhe: “Atomic vampires!”
Bird: “What did you guys get from that office infiltration?”
Chance: “Worm bites.”
Crossroads: “PTSD.”
Bird: “I think the mission still works if we crash the truck. We just might not get the Red Mercury.”
Cu Sidhe: “Panic ensues as a nuclear explosion goes off on the Hungarian border.”
The initiative tracker shows us that the unknown monster in the back of the truck has an initiative of 23. Which, in this system, is based on how many points it has in its main combat ability.
Matzo: I turn and begin walking away.
Holy shit this bat monster in the truck is a tough customer.
Brett: You’re on the other side of the truck, but you can see that Chance just evacuated her tree.
Chance: And bowels.
Cu Sidhe: “You all talked shit about me black-bagging an old man through a window. This is my redemption.”
Bird: “I didn’t talk shit, I helped!”
Bird: “It was good intel to learn that he was a tool.”
Crossroads: “A tool professionally. He seemed like an all right guy personally.”
Escaping from our truck ambush gets complicated.
GM: Harbor and Cu Sidhe hike through the Hungarian wilderness in the dead of night.
Harbor: “Fearing for our lives from the man-bat that’s still on the loose in these woods.”
Cu Sidhe: “Are you kidding? We’re in Hungary, they have boars here! I’m more worried about the boars!”
SESSION 22: VAMPARAZZI
Crossroads: I’m looking at my Symbol to restore some Stability.
GM: Crossroads stares at his phone intently.
Bird: It’s porn.
Crossroads: It’s the connectivity symbol, actually. Reminder of civilization.
GM: The potential of porn.
Bird: Potential porn, instead of kinetic porn.
Crossroads: “Van Helz Inc. We’re an investment bank that occasionally gets involved with counter-insurgency work. Don’t ask too many questions.”
Chance, disguised as a journalist: “I’m investigating rumors about the recent disappearance of Kristof Varga. My sources tell me you didn’t like him very much.”
Interviewee: “I’m not sure what that has to do with your question.”
Bird: “Little accusatory there, Chance. ‘WHAT DID YOU DO WITH HIM?'”
Chance: “I’m an investigative journalist, I’m asking the hard questions!”
Receptionist: “I’m afraid she’s simply out of reach right now, she left this morning due to an urgent family health issue.”
Crossroads: “We’ve definitely been causing health issues for her family.”
Bird: “Get an interview with this vampire and then fuck him up with karate!”
Harbor: Arranges an after-dark meeting with a suspected vampire in the Budapest Castle District.
Bird: “Castle district? Never mind, sorry Harbor you’re gonna fucking die.”
Crossroads: “Cu Sidhe only knows one way to fight a war, and it’s ‘in the jungle.'”
Bird: “The jungles of…Ireland?”
Crossroads: “Metaphorical jungles.”
SESSION 23: THE HIT PIECE
Harbor: We’re disguised as a camera crew.
Cu Sidhe: I guess I’ll be the boom guy.
Crossroads: Yes, you will.
Harbor: “How are you gonna test if he’s a vampire in the middle of a fight? Shoot him in the head a couple times and see if he dies?”
Cu Sidhe: “It worked for witches.”
Bird: “Exactly. If I shoot him in the head and he lives, he’s a vampire.”
GM: He would take fall damage, if he was alive.
Cu Sidhe: Are we considering vampires to be “alive” now?
GM: I won’t open that can of worms.
Bird: But some of them are worms!
Chance: I take out a bag of meth, say “Don’t ask any questions,” and leave it on the body.
Bird: “These are pretty intelligent conspirators. I wouldn’t put it past them.”
Harbor: “But they don’t encrypt their emails? Come on.”
Crossroads: “They also have something in London. What was that about?”
Cu Sidhe: “Well, there’s a certain landlord I’d like to take out…”
Crossroads: “Do that on your own time, man.”
Chance: “Let’s get to Monaco. I’m out of meth and getting itchy.”
Bird: “We all learned something new about Chance today.”
SESSION 24: OFF TO THE RACES
Harbor: “What’s got you unstable? Was it the vampiric worms? Or was it the meth?”
Chance: “I am coming down off of meth, yes.”
Cu Sidhe: “I don’t know what would increase our Heat any higher than stealing a head of state.”
Harbor: “He’s got to have a weakness. Maybe it’s booze. Maybe it’s women. Maybe it’s men.”
Cu Sidhe: “It’s probably blood, now.”
Bird: “There’s no doctor grand prix to win big medical contracts. But just imagine.”
GM: “Doctors, prepare to race to save this man.” fires a starting pistol, directly into a bystander’s heart
Bird: “Cu Sidhe’s gonna be a security guard. I’ll infiltrate the pit crew. Harbor, marry into the Monaco nobility.”
Harbor: “On it.”
Crossroads: “Chance, you’re the Prince.”
Chance: “Done. Harbor, will you marry me?”
Crossroads: “If I throw the flashbang inside, and it hits Bird and Cu Sidhe, but also blinds the bad guys, the rest of us can probably just come in and mop them up. I think that’s a good trade.”
Cu Sidhe: “Says the guy not getting shot at!”
Cu Sidhe: “Bird got hit pretty bad.”
Bird: “So did you!”
Cu Sidhe: “Fucker, I’ve got 20 health.”
Crossroads, who has 9 max health at this point in the campaign: “…What?!”
Harbor: I don’t have any Medic points, so I just ask, “and how does that make you feel?”
Crossroads: “Can we get him somewhere that looks like a proper interrogation room?”
Cu Sidhe: “Everywhere’s an interrogation room if you’re creative enough, Crossroads.”
Bird: “We’ve got some leeway. We just have to be better than Liam Neeson in Taken.”
SESSION 25: BLEED FOR SPEED
Bird: Bird and Cu Sidhe are stitching each other up. At the same time.
Cu Sidhe: I just had a mental image of two people getting themselves stitched together.
Cu Sidhe: “I can frame one of the mechanics to make an opening on the pit crew. Chance, I’m going to need your biggest bag of meth.”
Crossroads: “We should try not to be too obvious. They do know we’re here.”
Cu Sidhe: “They don’t know Chance is on meth.”
Harbor: “How strong was that whiskey you gave Bird?”
Cu Sidhe: “I gave him the healing whiskey. That’s the good stuff.”
Bird: “I didn’t think it was gonna get me drunk. You poured it onto the wound by my ribs.”
Cu Sidhe: “Yeah, directly into the liver!”
Bird: “Maybe they’re expecting someone to assassinate their main driver before the race.”
Harbor: “Say, by setting his hotel on fire.”
Bird: “Who would do that?!”
Bird: “I hope Chance has successfully married the prince by now.”
Chance: “I married the prince 20 minutes ago.”
Harbor: “What’d you do with the princess and the kids?”
Chance: “Married them too. We’re poly now.”
Crossroads: “Are you telling me you don’t want to blow up a vampire on international television?”
Bird: “Hit his firewall with a double handshake. Now upload a trojan GUI to format his daemon drive.”
Crossroads: “Please stop saying these things.”
GM: The pit crew is saying that the reserve driver is going in, and they have to revamp his car because of his condition.
Matzo: “Hang on. They’re going to re-WHAT his car?”
GM: Oh, dammit.
Matzo: “We got ’em!”
SESSION 26: MONTE CARLO AND THE HALF-BLED PRINCE
Crossroads: “I’m providing sniper overwatch for one team, and drone overwatch for the other. Multi-overwatch drifting.”
Chance: I hesitate a little to use my point of Archeaology, which is a very critical skill that I use to great effect every operation.
Bird: “He needs to leave the door cracked to get the…wifi?”
Matzo: “Gotta let the 5G seep in.”
GM: He’s probably in desperate need of medical attention.
Chance: I shove him in a cabinet.
Harbor: “I don’t think there’s medical attention in there.”
Cu Sidhe: I briefly thought, “there’s no way he’s getting medical attention with that salary.” Then I remembered he’s in Europe, and he’ll be fine.
Cu Sidhe: “What kind of vampire needs blood actively pumped into them?”
Crossroads: “A high-performance racing vampire!”
Cu Sidhe: I use Human Terrain to tell them exactly what they don’t want to hear.
Bird: Can you even use Human Terrain on vampires? Are they human?
Crossroads: Or…are they dancer?
Crossroads: “This field agent fetishism, I swear.”
Bird: “Shut it, desk jockey.”
Crossroads: “‘Desk jockey?’ You really want to go there, air force?“
Cu Sidhe: “Cool it you daisies.”
Chance: “We could avoid using the word ‘vampires,’ and just warn him about…”
Harbor: “Werewolves.”
Crossroads: “We did good work here. No arson, low collateral damage…”
Cu Sidhe: “We did accidentally murder a few cops, and Bird is bleeding out…”
Crossroads: “I’m willing to call this an unqualified success.”
SESSION 27: CALIENTE FUZZ
Harbor: “Do we know of any disenfranchised vampires?”
Cu Sidhe: “Yes. We killed them.”
Harbor: “Maybe any that were recently bit?”
Cu Sidhe: “We killed them, too.”
Harbor: “So we need to find the Scottish vampire equivalents and play them off against MI6.”
Bird: “Those are called Highlanders.”
Discussing different vampiric weaknesses from old myths and stories.
Crossroads: “Back in Croatia, Serena jumped past the line of wild rose rose petals, then jumped back immediately.”
Cu Sidhe: “So it sounds like they worked.”
GM: She was also suddenly taking fire from an LMG.
Cu Sidhe: “No, pretty sure it was the rose petals.”
GM: The place you were told to go is a bar called The Silver Toad.
Bird: But in Spanish.
GM: Right. El Silver Toad.
Cu Sidhe: “Aren’t we familiar with the Barcelona sewers?”
Bird: “Yeah, but there are vampires down there sometimes.”
Cu Sidhe: “I’m assuming there are vampires up here all the time.”
Cu Sidhe: “So what you’re saying is that Armenians are bats. So they’re vampires.”
Crossroads: “No, no, no. I’m saying the vampires are bats, so they’re Armenian.”
SESSION 28: GRAVEYARD SMASH
Crossroads: I’ve got a low-brimmed hat to cover my face in case anyone there would recognize me, and I roll Surveillance to look for anyone watching the place.
rolls a 1
GM: The problem is your hat brim was so low, you couldn’t actually see anything.
Chance: I pull a sweat-soaked file from my jogging pants and show it to the party.
Cu Sidhe: “Yeah, you can just…hold onto that.”
Harbor: “What if he was cremated? Are we just gonna find an urn?”
GM: He was buried in a coffin.
Bird: “And inside that coffin, there’s an urn!”
Crossroads: “Matzo is definitely the sort of person who has at least tried to make Frankenstein’s monster.”
Matzo: “It was not alive.”
Harbor, using forged credentials: “I’m from Interpol…ahem, Europol. Sorry, something in my throat.”
Bird, aside: “Yes, and it is lies.”
Matzo: “Yeah, let’s get down into the grave rather than haul the coffin up.”
Cu Sidhe: “Plus now we’re already in this grave for when we die to the ghoul in this casket.”
Matzo: “They just gotta change the names on the headstone!”
Ghouls show up, and Cu Sidhe gets three throwing-knife-to-the-eye crits in a row
Cu Sidhe: “Oh yeah, and apparently ghouls can fucking BURROW.” I tell them this while driving only on main roads; it’s all asphalt from here on out.
Bird: I don’t step on dirt anymore.
SESSION 29: UNDER HALLOWED GROUND
GM: You can Google places before you get there. This is what you pay Crossroads for.
Bird: “Crossroads, can you Bing this for us? Can you Yahoo the Basilica?”
Crossroads: “Well now we have to kill all the vampires. They’re in my fucking flat.”
Bird: “I…think we crossed that line already. This is not the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.”
Cu Sidhe: “Yeah, I thought it was all the eating people.”
Crossroads: “I think I’m gonna get a private investigator to look into what they’re doing there.”
Bird: “You trying to get a private investigator killed?”
Cu Sidhe: “At what point is it just ordering the vampires really expensive takeout?”
Bird: “They’re in front of us AND behind us.”
Cu Sidhe: “The poor bastards.”
Bird: “They can’t get away now.”
Bird: “I don’t think Amazon delivers to secret underground lairs. But I wouldn’t put it past them.”
Crossroads: “A tunneler drone bores a hole through the wall and drops off our stuff.”
Bird: “Oh god, they’ve opened up a hole for the ghouls!”
Crossroads: “No wonder I forgot about him. Object Permanence isn’t one of my stats.”
Cu Sidhe: “…A lot just clicked.”
Bird: “We’ll get word out to our allies and Helm’s Deep this shit.”
Cu Sidhe: “Who gets to be Gandalf with a UV spotlight?”
Bird: “Unfortunately, probably Matzo.”
SESSION 30: DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Bird: “Crossroads, is Harbor your mom?!”
Crossroads: “Uh, yeah. Did you not notice I call her Mum?”
Bird: “I don’t know, you’re British.”
Chance: voice call cuts out while using Urban Survival
GM: Did you say “Herbal Survival”?
Chance: Then you just won’t care if you get caught!
Bird: 420, woo!
Bird: “We sent them to get guns and stakes, and they came back with sandwiches.”
Harbor: “They are stake sandwiches.”
Chance: I say “suck it” in French. “Le suck it!”
Harbor: “Can I have my taser in one hand and my UV baton in the other?”
Bird: “Going akimbo with…light sticks.”
SESSION 31: OUT FOR A PINT
Cu Sidhe: “How is Sanctuary’s plan different from what we do?”
Bird: “We don’t feed people to vampires.”
Harbor: “We just feed Matzo to vampires sometimes.”
Crossroads: “Hey. That’s by accident.”
Matzo: “It does keep happening.”
Cu Sidhe: “By the rules, I could lay on a grenade and, at maximum damage, would walk it off.”
Harbor: “What are you made of? It’s not human flesh.”
Cu Sidhe: “Whiskey.”
Bird: “And we learned that they’re using a front company called HemoGlobal or something.”
GM: HemoDynamics. HemoGlobal is a real good name though.
Cu Sidhe, Googling: “HemoGlobal is a Canadian charity apparently.”
Matzo: “Talk about a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals.”
Harbor: “Wait, so you need Cu Sidhe to kill your landlord, who is a shell company, and also you?”
Crossroads: “I think I may have made the situation with my apartment more complicated than it needs to be.”
GM: You argue about it for 16 hours on the way to London.
Matzo: “Are we just fighting a bunch of Vamps?”
GM: Nanomachines, son.
Cu Sidhe: “Wait. Are we gonna have to take down an American senator?”
Bird: “Have we not all done that? I thought that was, like, a requirement for getting into this group.”
Crossroads: “Some backup while I’m in this pub meet would be nice.”
Cu Sidhe: You look over at the bar and I’m already sitting there. I’ve been there for hours.
GM: You didn’t even tell him the rendezvous was here.
Harbor: “Someone could go in to give blood.”
Bird: “I think Cu Sidhe has the most blood to spare. I think that’s how this works.”
SESSION 32: YOU’VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD
Harbor: “I’ve been watching too much Face/Off.”
Bird: “Like…watching it on repeat? Watching it more than once?”
Harbor: “Watching it at all is too much, yeah.”
Bird: “I’m putting us above them on the ethics line. And I’m the American in the group, I get to do that. World police, baby.”
Chance: “I’m not sure what disguise I should use here.”
Bird: “British royalty.”
Chance: “Low profile. I like it.”
Crossroads: “I’m gonna be real mad if we have a dramatic showdown in my flat.”
Cu Sidhe: “When have we ever damaged a property during a dramatic showdown?”
Crossroads: “You want that list alphabetically, or chronologically?”
Crossroads: “How exactly are we going to black-bag Rook? We’ve seen him twist a steel door shut.”
Harbor: “Giant hawthorn basket.”
A vampire double agent in MI6 codenamed Rook tries to set up an ambush for the party. Unfortunately for him, Crossroads has hilariously high Preparedness and Explosive Devices scores.
Bird: “Sorry if we’ve ruined the Rook monologue you had planned.”
GM: Oh, no. I think we’re now three levels deep into a counter-counter-counter-ambush. I’m here for it.
SESSION 33: KNIGHT TAKES ROOK
Cu Sidhe: I run up to him and try to put a round into his kneecap.
Bird: Josh with the same plan in both of our RPG campaigns: kneecap the undead.
Cu Sidhe: I don’t even slow down. I just take those two bullets to the chest.
Bird: I wonder if there’s a way to make the van carriage as tough as Cu Sidhe.
GM: Fill the gas tank with whiskey.
Harbor: “I feel like I should have a one-liner for this, but I didn’t really think it would work so I hadn’t prepared one in advance.”
GM: Bird, it’s your turn. I think the only person not in the escape van is Cu Sidhe, but you can delay…
Bird: “Goodbye, Cu Sidhe.”
Crossroads: “The worst thing I can think to do to this guy is hand him over to an Irish hitman who’s always wanted to kill an MI6 agent.”
Cu Sidhe: “What do you mean ‘wanted?'”
Crossroads: I keep saying the wrong thing, because I as the player am not actually British.
Chance: What?!
Crossroads: I know, I probably fooled you with the exquisite British accent I do whenever I’m in character.
Chance: “We’re just ignoring that Cu Sidhe’s been shot in the chest twice, yeah? While we’re over here like, let’s go to the spa!”
Bird: “To abbreviate, Operation OHPTLTCATWNTS.”
Matzo: “That does beat our other name, Operation Fly Swatter But For Spiders.”
SESSION 34: UNPROTECTED SECTS
GM: Bird arrives at the Imperial War Museum.
Bird: “I still remember the first time my parents took me here.”
Crossroads: “Last Thursday.”
Cu Sidhe: Cu Sidhe just shakes his head and mutters, “Almost sobered up a little there.”
Bird: What a shame that would have been.
Bird: I have a milkshake in-character too, by the way.
GM: Good to know. Please make a Sense Trouble roll.
Bird: Noooo! The milkshake has betrayed me!
GM: The guard asks for your names.
Cu Sidhe: I give him the name Mickey O’Rourke.
Bird: I give him the name Angus Wellington.
Harbor: “When we’re done with the Spider, are we going to have a cult? Would I just be the new prophet?”
GM: If you do a thorough enough job here, you can turn this into a Non-Prophet Organization.
Crossroads: We don’t have anyone in Brett’s apartment to smack him any more, so I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.
Cu Sidhe: I spend that point of Intimidation to let him know that I have a gun, and I’m just drunk enough to use it.
Harbor: So next week, Chance and Matzo have to save us all from the BDSM bunker.
Bird: “Save.”
SESSION 35: SPY VS SPIDER
Crossroads: Cut to montage of visiting tourist destinations across Europe while holding this guy hostage.
Harbor: His final request is to see the Eiffel Tower.
Crossroads: Europe’s mightiest stake.
Chance: “Someone hit me in the face. Crossroads?”
Crossroads: “Why does this keep happening?!”
Bird: “Do we want to take him with us in the chopper for interrogation, or…”
Cu Sidhe: “No, Bird, I want to throw a vampire out of a helicopter.”
Bird: “Ah. Okay.” Aside to GM: “He didn’t hear that.”
Bird: I don’t know if we want to blow all our valuable Shooting points here.
Cu Sidhe: I have a knife and he has eyes.
Crossroads: “I mean, they could just be performing a healthy, routine operation on someone…”
Chance: “Nope.”
Crossroads: “Or they could be turning someone into a ghoul.”
Chance: “Yep.”
Vampire Doctor: “If you kill me, you’ll deprive the world of a century of medical expertise!”
Matzo: “Doc, we’ve already figured out that leeches don’t work.”
Crossroads: I high-five Matzo from where I’m bleeding out on the floor.
GM: I don’t think you can using Flirting at this point – his bullet wounds are a bit of a turn off.
Harbor: Damn. I was hoping to go 2 for 2 on flirting past the doctors in this compound, but we did decide to go with the surprise attack.
Cu Sidhe: A different kind of flashbang.
Cu Sidhe: “I distinctly recall being given shit after black-bagging a CEO, and asking what I’d have to do to top it, like, black-bag someone while dangling from a helicopter? That’s been eating at me ever since. So now we’re doing this.”
SESSION 36: TAKE THE BODY AND RUN
Chance: I grab a bottle of wine as consolation.
Crossroads: “That’s blood.”
Harbor: “Gross.”
Chance: “Dope.”
Chance: “Let’s get to my, uh, armored pursuit vehicle, yeah.”
Five minutes later
Chance: “We head to my Toyota Camrey.”
Even later
Chance: “To the Honda Odyssey we go.”
Crossroads: “This escape vehicle is getting less and less badass every time.”
GM: You make it outside to where the Prius is waiting.
Crossroads: “They police by consent in the UK. And we don’t consent to be policed right now.”
Bird: Bird tries to laugh it off, and probably ends up coughing up some blood.
Cu Sidhe: “Bird, you gotta cut back on those cigars.”
Bird, with multiple bullet wounds: “That’s probably it, yeah.”
Crossroads: “You guys got put through the wringer. We just got into a firefight with Jason Statham.”
Cu Sidhe: “You guys fought Jason Statham?”
Crossroads: “No, he was on our side.”
Cu Sidhe: “Well yeah, you’re still alive.”
SESSION 37: BURY THE LEDE
Bird: “I don’t think they’re going to influence all of Europe by spying specifically on Polish phones.”
Cu Sidhe: “Poland is the gateway to Europe.”
Bird: “Yeah. Militarily. From Russia. Seventy years ago.”
Crossroads: “I’m going to be thirty in a couple months.”
Cu Sidhe: “Don’t worry, you don’t look a day over twelve.”
Crossroads: “Cu Sidhe’s just going to walk in there and black bag this guy in thirty seconds. ‘Hello, I’m here for orientation. Don’t mind this canvas sack.'”
Harbor: “My resume is in it.”
GM: Look very closely!
Bird: “You’re from Complicated Technical Services, Inc.”
Harbor: “Damn, I wanted another tie-in to our Van Helz Inc business.”
GM: You’re an IT contractor from the phone company Van Helz Ring.
Chance: “I em ze window washer.”
Bird: “Vindo Vasher is actually her name.”
Crossroads: “Chance, can you give me a disguise before I go in?”
Chance: I give him a fake nose and eyebrows. And shave off his mustache.
Cu Sidhe: That took 30 years!
Chance: That wasn’t for the disguise, that one was for the rest of us.
Crossroads: “Vampiric influence spreads ripples through the fabric of their IT infrastructure.”
Bird: “You can SEE the vampirism in the code.”
GM: My god, this code can’t be seen in mirrors.
SESSION 38: FOLLOW THE MONEY
Crossroads: “I am a bit curious about the sniper angle, but I worry we’re focused too much on it.”
Cu Sidhe: “A person gets shot by a sniper RIGHT in front of you and you’re just slightly curious?”
Bird: “Could be a coincidence, man!”
Crossroads: “Imagine. A double decker sports car.”
Harbor: “It’s like you have two sports cars!”
Bird: “You’ve still got the wrong guy!” Crossroads proclaims for the seventh time, getting murdered.
Matzo: If there’s one thing I know is statistically impossible, it’s rolling two 1s in a row.
rolls
Matzo: I’m not playing anymore.
SESSION 39: A NIGHT TO REMEMBER
Crossroads: “This is terrifying. Does anyone remember anything from Monday night onwards?”
Cu Sidhe: “What, is this your first bender, Crossroads?”
Bird: “You understand you’re giving your spy expertise to the former Soviet bloc, right?”
Harbor: “I’m giving it to a journalist. That’s going to be hilarious in about five years.”
Bird: “Maybe meth really is the answer here!”
Bird: “This slender man thing didn’t have a mouth, right? So it couldn’t drink soda.”
Harbor: “It did have eyes.”
GM: I should mention it also had a nose.
Harbor: “Why does it have a nose?! That makes me more upset.”
Cu Sidhe: “To drink soda, obviously.”
NPC: “Do you know a Mr. Lacroix?”
Bird: “It sounds familiar…”
NPC: “I understand it’s a popular beverage across the pond.”
Bird: “Renfields will now be referred to as ‘the Lacroix of vampires.'”
Crossroads: “Is there a way to confirm that this body was a vampire?”
Cu Sidhe: “It’s dead, and we killed it. So it’s probably a vampire.”
Bird: “Yeah, we could probably fight the vampires better if we could wipe their memories all the time.”
Matzo: “I dunno. I’d probably just use it to troll my ex.”
Crossroads: “Okay, so this is too much power to trust Matzo with. But the rest of us.”
SESSION 40: FORGET ME NOT
GM: You can spend a point of vampirism. I mean, vampirology.
Bird: Let’s strongly differentiate between vampirology and vampirism. Those are very different things.
Crossroads: “Somebody did shoot that presumed vampire lawyer. Well…presumed vampire. Definitely lawyer.”
Chance: “I wonder if one of us should hang back in a car somewhere.”
Bird, the driver: “You don’t have to say ‘one of us.'”
Chance: “Hey, I can drive too!”
GM: The contact they were messaging is labeled “AP.”
Harbor: “The Associated Press?”
Crossroads: “‘AP’ stands for Aslender Pman.”
Bird “Alpha Pierogi.”
Chance: “I’m going to stay up here, since Cu Sidhe seems to have that under control.”
GM: Downside of having triple the health of everyone else in the party: everyone assumes he’ll be fine.
Cu Sidhe: “I’m down here, bloody, knife-fighting ghouls!”
Cu Sidhe: 1v1 in the Vampire Thunderdome: Cu Sidhe, black out drunk, versus the Bendy Man.
Crossroads: “Aside from the memory eating, Bendy Man has been nothing but helpful.”
Cu Sidhe: “Motherfucker, what?”
Crossroads: “I’m just saying, we could put him on a leash, and…”
Cu Sidhe: “That’s what they tried doing! Haven’t you seen Jurassic Park?”
Crossroads: “I have not.”
Harbor: I don’t think Harbor is religious, but she could just be holding up a cross, like, ironically.
Bird: And the irony is helping her stay stable?
Harbor: She’s British. Of course the irony helps her stay stable.
SESSION 41: YOUR UBER HAS ARRIVED
Cu Sidhe: “Can we propose a ‘moving meeting’ and get him in a car with us?”
Crossroads: “Easiest kidnapping ever.”
GM: Pull up with a white van with the words “FREE BLOOD” written on the side.
Bird: “So we go with the booby-trapped stake seats?”
Harbor: “Would a stake to the butt even…?”
Bird: “Stakes in the back of the seat, Harbor. We’re not Vlad the Impaler here.”
Matzo: “Get your mind out of the gutter.”
Bird: “This van is coming together nicely.”
Crossroads: “Yeah. I’m gonna feel bad when we end up leaving it burning under a bridge.”
Cu Sidhe: “Like we’re going to go to the trouble of finding a bridge.”
Cu Sidhe: “So you tried to Jurassic Park us.”
Vampire Politician: “What does that mean?”
Cu Sidhe: “You uncultured savages.”
Bird: “In 200 years, there’s going to be a new outbreak of vampire fish.”
Harbor: “They would be whales. It’s gotta be mammals.”
GM: Can you imagine a whale with fangs? That’s terrifying.
Bird: “It’s just…it’s all baleen! How does that work?!”
SESSION 42: THE FRENCH DEFLECTION
Crossroads: 22 advancement points saved up. Now we’re cooking with charcoal.
Cu Sidhe: No, that’s like…having a big bag of charcoal, and refusing to cook with it. It’s the opposite.
Harbor: “Does your drone have infrared? Presumably some of the gang is not vampires.”
Bird: “I like your optimism.”
Cu Sidhe: “Are you asking me, alone, to intercept three vampires, one of whom has a case full of white phosphorous?”
GM: No, no. All three of them have cases of white phosphorous.
GM: Matzo is in the back seat playing Gameboy.
Harbor: Old school. I like it. DS?
GM: It’s an SP. He’s got Dr. Mario.
Bird: He’s got a high score running and can’t be assed to take a break. He’s never made it this far!
GM: You could spend Interrogation here. Or Reassurance, or something.
Bird: Are threats like this “reassuring?”
GM: You reassure him that he’ll be dead if he doesn’t cooperate!
Harbor: “Could we have spiked this whiskey with something to make him more suggestible?”
Cu Sidhe: “The term you’re looking for is roofies, Harbor.”
Harbor: “Once all the vampires are dead, we’re just going to end up globe-trotting and taking down every crime family we find.”
Cu Sidhe: “And installing new ones.”
Bird: “We keep things fresh!”
GM: Let’s play “Is It Time For Domestic Terrorism?”
Harbor: “We already committed domestic terrorism with the white phosphorous.”
Cu Sidhe: “But that was someone else’s white phosphorous.”
Bird: “We set it off with a car bomb!”
SESSION 43: AGENT BONES’ WILD RIDE
GM: He’s got lots of fancy decor.
Crossroads: We’re in France. It’s dequiox.
Bird: I don’t know enough about French to be sure, but that sounds wrong.
Bird: I like how Cu Sidhe’s first idea was “let’s have someone spend Forensics to set up the scene so it looks like a suicide,” and then immediately kicked him out the 12th floor window in plain view.
Bird: “I don’t think we need proof. It’ll be in the news. ‘Man jumps from window, of own free will.'”
Cu Sidhe: “After shooting his four bodyguards.”
Harbor: “We must be pretty awful omens for these people.”
Cu Sidhe: “We’re kind of harbingers of arson anywhere we go.”
Cu Sidhe: “That’s Matzo’s signature concoction, explicitly banned by the Geneva Convention.”
Matzo: “I don’t know why. They feel great when they wake up, in a week.”
Bird: “So we just have to black-bag a vampire historian from the most famous museum in the world.”
Harbor: “What could possibly go wrong?”
Cu Sidhe: “I have a list. Most of it involves the Louvre being set on fire.”
SESSION 44: LOUVRE AFFAIR
Bird: “I think it was the alps where we started fighting entire teams of vampires.”
Crossroads: “Which was concerning, considering every fight we had had with singular vampires before that. And then we didn’t fight them with anything but rocket launchers and IEDs, and it actually went okay.”
Chance: I have two points in Art History that I’ve never used, I can help!
Chance: I’ll spend two points of High Society on this. Another first! This is an exciting new game for me.
Cu Sidhe: Bird, you’ve got Flirting points, right?
Bird: “Let’s Get It On” starts playing over the Louvre PA system.
GM: She’s got access to the whole museum. She could send you so many nudes.
Bird: Multi-thousand dollar nudes!
GM, looking at Google Maps: There are apparently 15 different cafes in the Louvre.
Harbor: 15?! How big is this place?
GM: It’s the Louvre.
Bird: Also, they’re French.
Crossroads: “If it was just vampires there, maybe. I’m not so inclined to pick a fight with the entire nation of France.”
Cu Sidhe: “Says the Englishman.”
Bird: “Didn’t you do that for like a hundred years once?”
Crossroads: “Give me five-hundred longbowmen on the fields of Agincourt and we’ll talk.”
Bird: “She seems weak. That’s why she has guards.”
Cu Sidhe: “We don’t know that. What if the guards were there to protect us?!”
SESSION 45: VAN GOGH FAST
Crossroads: I could spend one of my 22 advancement points on Tradecraft…
Bird: The new rule is that every time you mention how many advancement points you have, you lose one.
Cu Sidhe: I start pulling out the Fortunate Son vinyl.
Peter: “Cu Sidhe, there’s not…the car doesn’t have a record player!”
Bird: Mechanics and narrative! Mashed together into…game!
GM: Mecharrative.
Cu Sidhe: “Sorry, I got a little sober there and lost my cool. Won’t happen again.”
Bird: “Well right now you can call us Anne Rice because we’ll be interviewing this vampire.” I throw a pair of sunglasses into the sea before putting on another pair of sunglasses.
Crossroads: I’ll ask, since I’m the guy interested in figuring out if we can get superscience vampire powers without the downsides.
GB: The resident veeaboo.
Crossroads: …You know, I think I’ve changed my entire character motivation after hearing that word.
Bird: Veebs get out.
Cu Sidhe: I shoot her.
Crossroads: I actually had another idea before we go that far.
Bird: Stabbing her?
Cu Sidhe: “Nathaniel did tackle an elite ghoul with only his fists.”
Crossroads: “Yeah, but he also was in charge of an organization of serial killers.”
Bird: “Mixed bag, really. Who can judge.”
SESSION 46: STAKES ON A PLANE
Bird: I combat roll out of the van.
long pause as nobody else narrates getting out of the van
Chance: I turn the van around and shout, “Good luck!”
Crossroads: “Where are the other vampires? One man with a pistol didn’t do all this damage.”
Bird, sarcastically: “No Crossroads, I think he’s wielding a 609 millimeter pistol and blasting holes in the walls.”
Bird: “The heart is the eye of the chest.”
Crossroads utterly preempts a boss fight by once again having hilariously high Preparedness and Explosive Devices, dealing 26 damage to a giant mutant bat thing before it gets a turn.
Dying NPC: “She’s flying to New York tonight. You have to stop her.”
Crossroads: “Hm. Is she flying commercial?”
Bird: “These are probably not the questions we need to ask the dying man.”
Crossroads: “Damn it, man, tell me! Did she upgrade her seat using her airline miles?!”
GM: You’re able to grab Cu Sidhe by the arm and pull him back up into the plane before he falls.
Chance: “Yeah, I do CrossFit.”
Bird: “And you managed to avoid telling us until now? Unrealistic!”
Chance: “I’m also vegan!”
SESSION 47: BURIAL AT SEA
Crossroads: “That was the plan, yeah. But we may need to fight through a half-sunken airplane full of vampires to do it.”
Harbor: I want to grab that intel binder, but Disarm says it only works on guns…
GM: For the sake of this, you can consider that binder a gun.
Harbor: A smoking gun!
Crossroads: “They’ll understand the metaphor if we swap the plane’s black box for a Jurassic Park VHS, right? The plane went down due to man’s hubris. Too much meddling in God’s domain.”
Bird: “Ah, yes. Man was not meant to fly.”
Cu Sidhe: “So what was the plan with jumping into the ocean? Do vampires have to breathe, or do you have some city down there?”
Vampire VIP: “You got me. I was heading to New Vampire Atlantis.”
Cu Sidhe: We’ll have to deal with that in the next campaign.
Bird: We’re gonna need more harpoons.
Bird: I’ll just spend a bunch of network points on the mole people, and they’ll help us find him undergroun-
Computer blue screens, Bird’s player disconnects from the voice call.
GM: The mole people got Peter.
Cu Sidhe: I thought it was the vampires. Shovels are their only weakness. He had to be silenced.
Crossroads: “The advantage of hitting Razvan first is that if we alert the vampires, the cave can’t move.”
GM: You don’t now whether the cave can move.
Cu Sidhe: “What? No.”
GM: I will now break out my homebrew Shadow Of The Colossus rules.
Cu Sidhe: “Fucking giant cave golem powered by a red mercury spring.”
SESSION 48: VEINS OF THE EARTH
Cu Sidhe: Can I spend Outdoor Survival?
GM: Sure. Perhaps this isn’t Cu Sidhe’s first time spelunking.
Bird: Cu Sidhe has never intentionally gone spelunking, but has woken up in a cave and had to find his way out a few times.
Crossroads: “Do you have a Guy Fawkes mask or something you can put on before stepping onto this video call with the big bad?”
Cu Sidhe: “No, you fucking English git.”
Chance: “Harbor, do you still have the UV wand?”
Harbor: “I think I gave it to you, actually.”
Chance: “…Oh, yeah. I definitely have it.”
Bird: You ask “Hey Harbor, do you have the UV wand?” And she pulls it out of your pocket.
Chance: Can I shoot at worm guy? Is he in guy form?
GM: Yes, he’s currently in worm guy form, not guy worms form.
Harbor: “Have we been using a new black bag every time? Are we not reusing old black bags?”
Bird: “I think we specifically had to get different black bags for different targets.”
Cu Sidhe: “Each black bag has sentimental value.”
Matzo: “Let’s just find some skeletons to throw down there and make them think the bomb got us.”
Cu Sidhe: “Damn. The explosion just blew the flesh right off their bones.”
GM: It looks like the same type of machine that you pulled Alma out of in Italy.
Matzo: “I wonder if that machine still has some…Alma matter.”
SESSION 49: VAMPIRE KILLERS
Crossroads: “We’d just have to get access to their records and see if the vampires installed any generators in the last, like, twenty years.”
GM: A quick scan of two decades of records.
Harbor: “Just CTRL+F.”
Bird: “CTRL+F+vampires…yep, says right here, they sold some to some vampires.”
Bird: I would like to clarify that, even though we’re in a pitch dark cave, I am absolutely wearing my sunglasses.
Cu Sidhe: Maybe that music trick will still work on camazotz. I pull out my records of Fortunate Son.
Bird: Did you get the “Spanish Pop” version?
Cu Sidhe: Yes.
GM: “No soy yo, no soy yo!”
Razvan, the big bad: “To be honest, I never thought you had a chance.”
Chance: “Hey! I’ve been here the whole time!”
Matzo: I want to use my martial arts abilities and jump at him and just…open palm the knife deeper into his heart.
GM: They taught you that technique at martial arts school?
Matzo: Krav Maga don’t fuck around.
Matzo: Can we appreciate the fact that I never actually learned the advancement rules, so our Vampire Lord got death palmed by a first level character.
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