Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Other TTRPGs

[Totenkindly]

 

[Totenkindly]

And merry effin' Xmas to you too!

Dungeons & Dragons owner lays off 1,100 staff two weeks before Christmas “to keep Hasbro healthy”

Hasbro, the toy company that owns Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, has laid off 1,100 workers two weeks bef…

www.dicebreaker.com

 

[The Cat]

And merry effin' Xmas to you too!

Dungeons & Dragons owner lays off 1,100 staff two weeks before Christmas “to keep Hasbro healthy”

Hasbro, the toy company that owns Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, has laid off 1,100 workers two weeks bef…

www.dicebreaker.com

When a cold wind blows it chills you. Chills you too the bone. But there's nothing in nature that freezes your heart like years of being a CEO. Its paints you with indiference like a child plays with blocks. and the worst of the worst, the most hated and cursed is the one that we call Cocks. Unkind as any and the wrath of many This is Christopher C. Cocks. There goes Mr Loot Box there goes Mr. Stocks, ifhe had his way the ogl would be locked. Ol Cocksy loves his money cause he thinks it gives him power, but you know if CEOs had a flavor you can bet his would be sour. There goes mr skinflint. There goes Mr Greed. The undisputed master of the underhanded deed. He charges folks a fortune for updated content in over priced empty sourcebooks, and has the sheer temerity to claim he's not a crook.

 

[Totenkindly]

We started our new Chronicles of Darkness campaign last week, pretty purely the "Deviant: The Renegades" sub-game flavor.

I wrote up the session in case anyone is interested. Zahra is my character, but as I get to know the others better, I can expound on them. The guy running Amal/Samara really didn't interact much, I think he's needing a while to find his feet. Modi has a weird Elliot Anderson thing going on.

This is set in the Cairo / NAC area of Egypt, and we're all Egyptian with Arabic as our first language.

Zahra Nadir finishes touching up her makeup and wondering if she is passable. She grabs her carry bag of gear, then heads to work under more layers of clothing than she is used to, anxious that someone might discover her new horrific secret. The hints from her workplace that maybe her self-imposed “COVID quarantine” had run its course left her with little choice but to return to the office after a two-week absence. It was fortunate her own supervisor had just come down with COVID shortly before her “incident,” which left her with a convenient excuse both to avoid work as well as face-to-face conversations with her roommate. But she really hated treating Khepri like that – really, she did.

As she walks to work, the call to prayer plays over the loudspeakers mounted on the regularly spaced light posts, and despite her not being regular Orthodox, she pauses to look down quietly. Eventually the period of contemplation ends and she continues her walk to work. It’s not clear whether she misses the gunshot in the nearby market area because she’s adjusting to the burka she’s now wearing to hide her deformed body or because she’s just stewing in her own thoughts.

Cutting a striking figure in a coffee shop just outside the central business district, Masil Jabir Sabbal recognizes the gunshot for what it exactly is because there’s a ting at the window and he looks up just in time to see a bullet hole appear above his head. As he looks at the hole in shock, a terrified cat leaps across his lap, which in turn sends him to his feet due to his deep-seated fear of felines. Coffee splashes everywhere, sending other customers to their feet as they give him dirty glances. Trying to get his composure back, he recognizes the bullet hole is now at eye level, so unless the shooter was a terrible shot, that bullet was not aimed at anyone sitting in the café.

Grabbing his things, Masil heads out to the street to see what happened. He quickly finds a blood stain on the pavement but no shooter or victim. However, there is a mount stick and a phone lying nearby, as if someone dropped it in their rush. He instinctively grabs it but it slips out of his hand momentarily and skitters a few feet on the concrete, forcing him to scoop it back up. A quick glance shows the screen to have a noticeable crack, and the phone itself isn’t powering up. Slipping it into his pocket, he takes a quick look around the area to guess where the shooter might have been standing. While he sees no obvious culprit, he does notice occasional drops of blood heading off to his left and hurries to follow the trail as the sound of police sirens nears.

Masil follows this trail down an alley to a locked fire escape door with a crack the size of a credit card. With no continuation of the trail and no way to quickly open the door, Masil continues down the alley, assuming maybe the blood trail stopped because the victim bound their wounds before continuing and keeping his eyes out for anyone clutching their arm or behaving oddly. As he emerges into a larger street, he sees a familiar couple emerge from a nearby alley.

A minute earlier, hearing the shot as well, a woman named Samara suggests to her companion Rasheed El Sharif that they retreat down a nearby alley. Considering that gunshots within the market area are not a common occurrence, Rasheed agrees with her suggestion and both hurry between the two nearby buildings – where they run across a man sprawled on the ground. He has a hip holster with a gun in it, but no apparent injuries.

As Rasheed goes to swipe the stranger’s wallet while helping him up, he notices and instead grabs a mysterious envelope. Oblivious to the robbery, the man thanks them and hurries out of the alley to acquire a robot taxi. His Arabic is crap, suggesting he’s not local despite an appearance that would place him locally or perhaps originating from a bit south. As they watch him go, Rasheed winks at Samara and flashes the envelope, then tugs her in the opposite direction before the man realizes what he might be missing. As they emerge from an alley, they hear someone call out – an acquaintance named Masil.

“Did you hear the shot?” he calls to them as he approaches. As they share information, Samara suggests going back to check out the door, while Rasheed is hesitant because it’s close to the incident location with the police are coming and Masil fears it could trigger an alarm.

As they argue, Rasheed reports now that there are police entering the alley and maybe they should go somewhere else until the scrutiny dies down. As they walk off, he slips out the unmarked envelope and peers inside. There’s 800 euros, which he pockets, and a letter which Masil is able to read once Rasheed shares it: “I expect it handled by midnight today. Don’t screw it up.” At the note’s bottom, there are a few numbers and a collection of letters. After pondering it for a minute, Masil realizes it is stock symbols and account numbers.

Rasheed says the man who “dropped” the envelope didn’t sound Arabic and even had a small pistol on him. Was he the shooter, he suggests? None of them are sure.

In a different part of town, when Zahra finally swipes herself in at work and passes the break room, she notices TV coverage of the shooting where surveillance cameras clearly caught a man picking up a discarded camera and shooting arm. “Why, that man is just a common thief!” she mutters to herself.

She sees that the gunman stood just out of reach of the camera, because the footage catches an arm sticking out, pulling the trigger, and the victim falling while clutching at his arm – and then he is suddenly gone, as if he just vanished. How odd. It doesn’t seem to be a trick of the camera.

Elsewhere, a man named Modi who has hacked into videocam footage around the market facility recognizes both the man who stole the camera as well the two people he meets up with a minute later in a different street. (Ironically he also knows Zahra because of reaching out to her previously online, but they have never met in person.) When he finds the footage of the shooting, which is also running on the news, he notices the same thing Zahra did about the disappearing victim, even after checking frame by frame.

Noting where the trio of his past acquaintances has gone to lay low, he heads out to meet them. They are all lost in discussion when Modi walks into the new coffee shop and sits down. Other customers can’t help but take note of him a bit: Deeply tanned, dark hair, covered head to toe by clothes and even wearing gloves and mirrored sunglasses inside the establishment. The contours of his face aren’t necessarily wrong, but there is still something abnormal about his appearance.

“I saw you on the TV,” he says.

“Which one of us?”

“All three,” Modi replies. “That was unwise.” He pauses to let that sink in. “What do you know about the shooting victim?”

“Nothing. What do you know?” says Masil.

Modi says it might be someone similar to “us.”

Rasheed describes the person he got the envelope from – moustache, beard, trim hair, and a really expensive suit.

When shown the letter, Modi recognizes the stock symbols immediately – an American pharmaceutical company, a Chinese corporation, a Qi-Gen labs branch, a French cosmetic and pharmaceutical brand, and a Sweden prosthetics manufacturer with computer connections – aside from one symbol he can’t make head or tail of. Eventually this is determined to be “Autumn Health Management Systems.”

As Modi and the others discuss the shooting, Modi gets a text from Zahra advising him of the oddity of news footage this morning and perhaps the disappearing victim would warrant checking out based on their recent online discussions of shadowy conspiracies in the recent Cairo area, in addition to phenomena not necessarily explained by conventional science.

“We’re actually here discussing it now,” he texts back. “Perhaps you’d care to join us?”

The response takes a few minutes, as if Zahra had to mull over it, but she offers to meet them at the coffee shop later if it is worth meeting about.

“That’s for you to decide,” he replies.

In her cubicle, Zahra rereads this simple message a few times, feeling frustrated and anxious. Her roommate had dinged her this morning to see if she was okay, since she’d been in quarantine so long but now was disappeared from the apartment. Feeling bad because of not sharing any of her recent trauma with her, Zahra immediately lets Khepri know that she is okay but was just running out of leave and excuses to not attempt work, so today she went into the office.

Zahra thinks about Modi’s offer as she continues to work through a two-week onslaught of unanswered e-mail, meeting requests, safety appointments, and process review documentation. Her work attire had always been modest but trendy on what salary she could afford, so she had expected a lot of comments when arriving this morning in more traditional female attire, a burka, a face mask, and sunglasses – whatever she could find to cover all of her body. But despite a few scowls (perhaps at the insinuation she was nursing a hangover of some kind), most people seemed happy enough to leave her alone to get back to her work – perhaps being afraid of picking up an errant case of COVID. No one seems bothered when she grabs her bag and excuses herself early for lunch.

Back at the coffee shop, Modi and the others look at the phone, which is still messed up. Modi notes that anyone tracking it would be drawn to the last place it had power. As the others watch, he pulls and pockets the battery and hands the phone back to Rasheed. “In case they have already traced us here, we should leave this place. We can look at the phone more later.”

As they all head out, a man ramps his scooter up on the curb and then back off again. Remarkably they all manage to step out of the way of an actual collision. While slick enough to make it look like an accident, the driver appears odd in that he has no beard but way more muscle than they are used to seeing. Modi recognizes the man from his footage review as someone who tried to grab the phone shortly after Masil took it. Is that a look of alarm they all see on his face as he speeds off?

Rasheed scans the man’s surface thoughts as he wends away through traffic to get some distance. “Shit, I didn’t get the phone, Worse, they saw me and now we need to send someone else.”

Rasheed frowns to the others. “Yeah. That scooter crash wasn’t an incident – he was trying to grab the phone from us.”

“Can I just ditch it?” asks Masil, not really like all of the newfound attention.

“After we figure out what is on it,” says Rasheed. “Obviously it must have something of value.”

Samara looks around. “Where can we go to get off the street?” she asks warily. Masil suggests another coffee shop, and Modi quietly texts the new location to Zahra in case she plans to visit.

Shortly after they establish themselves at a table in the new shop, a short young woman enters, layered in traditional Muslim clothing and wearing a face mask and sunglasses. Modi waves her over and Rasheed pushes out a chair for her. Zahra’s speech seems assertive but edgy, and everyone gets the feeling she is sizing them up behind the sunglasses.

She asks Modi about the phone and then suddenly looks back at Masil. “You’re the man who swiped the phone on the news,” she blurts, which rattles Masil momentarily. He had really flubbed that snipe.

“I guess you’re a big star now,” notes Samara, elbowing him.

Masil insists he had simply recovered it from the scene, to review the contents, but there was always a plan to turn it in after he was done with his review.

“Uh huh,” says Zahra. “So – did you check for prints?”

“Do you think any might have been left?” asks Rasheed.

“Well, I think Masil is the only one who has touched the phone without gloves, so can’t we just get his prints and then look for any different ones?” asks Samara. Masil nods, although based on the oddities of his body, he doesn’t think he has any oil on his fingers to leave prints behind.

Going through her carry bag, Zahra uses some common makeup powder and items to dust the device for prints, then shares them with Modi. He takes a few minutes to crack the online local police database and quickly finds a match.

Amar Hassan (perpetrator’s name) was picked up on multiple counts of trespassing, loitering, generally being a nuisance, and filming for his streaming channel in places where he shouldn’t have been. His criminal record is now 3 years old. His channel has a number of videos that were removed. He might have green dyed hair on some videos. We note that in some of the skate park videos, he sports a nose ring he doesn’t wear in the others.

“So we now have a lead. Now we just have to find this Amar and figure out why he might have been a target.”

“This fellow Amar might have a special trick up his sleeve,” notes Zahra. “Did any of you figure out yet whether he turned invisible when he fell?” When only Modi seems to know what she’s talking about, she explains what she saw on the TV footage. If this is true, perhaps few would recognize where Amar might have actually gone.

“Masil did follow Amar’s blood trail to an emergency door,” contributes Rasheed, “but that’s where he got stuck.” Masil insists there wasn’t much he could do at the time, with the police arriving.

As they talk, Modi starts typing on his laptop, first locating information about the building, which is owned by the bank and real estate developer. He quickly pulls up a list of public leasers of the various spaces available. One of the companies was on the note that the assassin possessed.

The building had a note saying it was closed unexpected that morning, due to police inspecting the area, but it was reopening at 1pm – and it’s now a quarter after 1pm.

Discussing further, it’s clear a few of us were “made” by whoever is involved in this mess (as per the scooter incident), but Zahra likely has not been. When the list of companies in the building is listed, one of those stands out to Zahra – it was on a list of safety assignments she had received early today in her e-mail. While the storefront is on the 22nd floor, it should be easy enough for her to get into the basement under present of inspecting the utilities, to see if she can pick up Amar’s trail on the other side of the emergency door Masil found.

“But I don’t know a quick way to let you all know if there’s trouble, while I’m inside,” she says. Texting is doable, perhaps, but it’s not quick or informative if a situation quickly goes south.

“Don’t worry,” volunteers Rasheed, “I think I’ve got that taken care of.”

Zahra sizes him up. “Show me.”

She suddenly feels something prodding and pushing at the edges of her mind, while a good-natured smirk plays at the corner of the young man’s mouth. Zahra feels momentary apprehension until she realizes Rasheed cannot quite lock on her. She focuses her mind and opens a small window through which they can talk, without him seeing anything else. “That’s a nice trick,” she thinks at him. “Just don’t push your luck.”

Rasheed blushes momentarily, then nods. Meanwhile, Modi orders some earbuds online in case we need them in the future.

“Well, I guess it’s time for an impromptu inspection,” says Zahra, standing.

“Isn’t it polite to set up an appointment or something?” suggests Masil.

“Maybe,” says Zahra, “but this is far more effective.”

Staying in touch with Rasheed as needed, Zahra walks to the building and takes the elevator up, introducing herself to the facility receptionist, sharing her credentials, and saying she will need access to the location for the assigned safety review. There’s initial pushback – what’s new? -- but eventually she is buzzed in and introduced to the facility manager to look around the premises. Maybe he is used to rerouting these kinds of inspection tours, but he’s also edgy enough that Zahra knows he’s bullshitting her and finally she just nonchalantly pops open the main lab door before he can protest.

He follows along gamely as she notes a number of trivial infractions of code – and then opens yet another door he was trying to distract her from. Jackpot: There’s a number of biological samples here without permits that looks like they were placed in this room a few minutes ago to avoid her scrutiny. She carefully examines one dish that looks like it contains twitching muscle tissue – and this from a biochemical company supposedly testing antibiotics.

Both annoyed and panicked about an inspector managing to see what they’ve been up to, he stammers through an explanation as Zahra carefully observes his reaction.

“This is a temporary storage,” he insists, “and we’ll be moving it right back to where it belongs – none of this needs to show up in the report.” He slickly gets out his wallet and starts counting out money.

“No need for that,” she interrupts. “You’ll be hearing from my office once we’ve had time to write up our findings and you can discuss all of your concerns with them.” She’s a little put off but also amused to see that, by his response, instead of understanding she is refusing the bribe, he honestly thinks she’s redirecting him to discuss the details with her superiors. Won’t he be surprised by her report?

The man seems almost relieved when Zahra announces she’s finished with the lab inspection but just needs temporarily access to the basement to complete her facility review.

As he leads her from the room, Zahra notices odd logos on various items stashed in one non-descript corner. She’s seen these logos before and for a moment the world swims around her – they are the logos on the vats she had recently “fallen” into.

The other notable detail is some paperwork hastily stashed in a manila folder plopped on a nearby desk, with one paper sticking out marked with confidentiality and headlined with “Scarab Project Phase 2”.

She’s quickly handed off to another person to take her to the basement, as the manager hastily excuses himself. She wonders if he will need a stiff swig of whiskey after this.

The two women step into the elevator and head down to the basement as tinny instrumental covers of popular local pop songs play.

“So have you worked here long?” asks Zahra eventually, unsure of what to say.

“Only eight months.”

“Do you like it?”

“The pay is good.” The young woman seems almost more anxious than Zahra. She launches into an awkward description of a puppy she recently bought and named Marcel. What, after the monkey on Friends? Really?! Talk about terrible Western influence!

When Zahra remains coldly silent, the young woman ends by commenting on the nearby donut shop that adds a new terrible flavor every time she picks up a box for the facility but since she chooses last, she always seems to get stuck with it, and laughs nervously. Zahra clears her throat uncomfortably.

There’s a ding and the elevator door opens into a lesser lit area. Zahra’s guide hastily excuses herself to the bathroom, while Zahra begins to inspect all the nearby areas and labeled doorways. She finds all the expected items – utility, plumbing, air handling – to maintain a building. As she walks, she relays to Rasheed the overview of what she discovered on tour of the facility above, in case Modi can do further electronic investigation.

Eventually Zhara makes her way to the fire escape steps to reach the door that would have opened into the alley. She finds the trail – apparently Amar did enter here from the alley -- but she’s a bit disturbed to see that the alarm itself was not connected to the power, so no one would have heard him enter. There’s another potential violation to write up.

She follows the blood trail until she reaches another door, this one being locked. However, there is a small gap at the bottom of the door.

Zahra looks at the crack, and then back at the door. There’s no obvious way to get past that, unless…

The whole thought makes her feel wiggy. She has been finally feeling more like herself, today, and having everyone else see her human had been such a positive affirmation – does she really want to go back to this? “The heavens and the earth have been established through justice,” she reminds herself repeatedly. Yes. The people responsible for these troubles will never be caught unless she takes extraordinary measures -- and what is more important? Comfort or justice?

Slowly Zahra sinks down through her clothes and then slips carefully under the edge of the door, finds nothing to stop her, and simply continues to flatten out and slither forward until she’s completely on the other side of the barrier – albeit without her phone, gear, or clothes. She almost panics as she tries to reshape herself but can’t quite find the right configuration, but after a minute she finds a humanoid shape again. The area here is dark now, but she can still see and locate the blood trail. After a minute of tracking it, she realizes that she should have reached one of the outer foundation walls by now, but there is just an ongoing tunnel.

Eventually she comes to a lit stairwell leading downwards, which was obviously poured after the original construction was placed. It should not be here. She can hear the faint whirr of fans down below, as well as a moderately annoying high-pitched buzz from the illumination.

There is signage on the walls – a few signs in Arabic about the location of the fire escape, or marking hot the water, sewer, and fiber conduit lines… plus an odd extra line in English for one pipe that reads, “Extra Content: VOLATILE!” Zahra has no idea what this means, exactly, but she is sure it is not conforming to code.

The stairwell is now leading somewhere under the street, and she begins to descend. After two flights, she reaches a short landing and then another door that stymies her. It looks like a steel fire door, possessing three different locks as well as a motion-sensing keypad set in the nearby wall. As she ponders these obstacles, she notices a small plate on the door that suddenly reads, “Iris Scan Failed! Please face door.”

Unlike the first door, there is no gap for her to squeeze through, and the conduits passing through the wall were constructed well enough to seal up the gaps between pipe and wall. But her quarry definitely had access to the facility: The blood trail approaches and then stops at the door.

“Rasheed?” she thinks. “I have some good news and some bad news for you…” Zahra provides her report just as she would write it, explaining her route, the layout, and then what she is now looking at: A fire door with three deadbolts, a digital keypad lock, and a retinal scan device.

With little else to be done, Zahra heads back up the stairs and retraces her route, eventually slithering back under the locked door and slipping inside her clothes before reforming. Gathering her things, she heads back through the basement to return upstairs.

As the elevator comes back into view, she suddenly hears a scream from the bathroom. It sounds like her escort.

 

[The Cat]

waiting for my first cleric/druid multiclass. Got a nature themed aasimar based off green child folklore. 1 level nature cleric 4level circle of the moon druid. Acolyte background. Raised in the Church of Chauntea, druid circle follows Silvanus. worships Chauntea and Silvanus as something of a messenger between the two institutions they're something of a shamanistic type holy person

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[Totenkindly]

Lol, this is from Taliesin Jaffe??

 

[Totenkindly]

So I like my campaign.

I didn't include the last sessions, but in Session 2 an innocent woman was murdered during the plotline of our session. She had told me she had a little dog that she gushed over (annoyingly, I admit)... but after she got killed, since she was single, I tracked down her apartment that evening and slipped under the door because I could hear the dog barking. It was scared of me ("plasmoid girl" -- of course I'd freak it out), until I found its food and fed it. Now it likes me.

I renamed it Ptah and had my buddy hacker crack the national pet registration database (since the fines and jail time is pretty stiff for having an unregistered dog) and had its data changed over to me. Hilarious -- I am a plasmoid girl and proud owner of a little yip dog, which will spend most of its time with my roommate at our apartment.

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

My next D&D CharacterBased on Rudger Haur's character in Blind Fury: A druidic warrior(with cantrips Shillelagh and Vine Whip) level 4(feat taken fighting initiate: blind fighting) Melee Ranger with a level of Monk. Marine background. Plus a variant human with armor of shadows eldritch adept feat. with a shield it comes out to 22 AC with a proficiency in Perception and 18 on Wisdom gives him a 20 passive perception. Can't wait to play this weekend.​

 

[Totenkindly]

My next D&D CharacterBased on Rudger Haur's character in Blind Fury: A druidic warrior(with cantrips Shillelagh and Vine Whip) level 4(feat taken fighting initiate: blind fighting) Melee Ranger with a level of Monk. Marine background. Plus a variant human with armor of shadows eldritch adept feat. with a shield it comes out to 22 AC with a proficiency in Perception and 18 on Wisdom gives him a 20 passive perception. Can't wait to play this weekend.​

That sounds fun -- plus that's a pretty decent AC for 5e. I think my monk was 16-18 and my moon druid was around 18 although it fluctuated when she changed shape.

 

[The Cat]

That sounds fun -- plus that's a pretty decent AC for 5e. I think my monk was 16-18 and my moon druid was around 18 although it fluctuated when she changed shape.

The druidic warrior is a fighting style for Ranger Ive never played it before, so I'm excited to try it out. I was going to play a druid, but its an inside adventure. The ac was actually incidental I just didnt want to have to wear armor and i realized armor of shadows could stack with unarmored bonus and a slow quiet grin began to spread across my features. . What Monk tradition did you end up taking?

 

[Totenkindly]

The druidic warrior is a fighting style for Ranger Ive never played it before, so I'm excited to try it out. I was going to play a druid, but its an inside adventure. The ac was actually incidental I just didnt want to have to wear armor and i realized armor of shadows could stack with unarmored bonus and a slow quiet grin began to spread across my features. . What Monk tradition did you end up taking?

Oh, for Molly Hatchet? I think she had one Rogue level and one Fighter level (mostly to dip / get certain abilities), but otherwise she was a Monk of the Long Death. My other real choice was Drunken Master, since she was such a freaking sot. But she became this crazy striker/semi-tank class at higher levels with Long Death. it was nuts.

I will vouch for Druid spellcasting in 5e -- it is insanely good. I really did not expect to have great spells as a Moon Druid (I was going to spend most of my time in animal form), but even lower levels of druid casting are decent, and then you get up to 4-5th level spells and they absolutely are game-breakers.

 

[Totenkindly]

So Session 5 happened. Basically our team pulled together after the initial investigation of the corporate basement. We did some more investigations, somehow Silent (the assassin) has defected to us, and we settled on this plan with a key that Zahra found while retrieving Jameela Jamil's puppy to infiltrate the company and search the filing cabinets that the key opens.

Session 5 is what happens when Zahra (plasmoid girl) changes shape and wears Jameela's clothes and scan card to get into the company and snoop around while no one's there late on a Friday, while the rest of the team does recon -- and the aftermath of trying to get out of the building.

Disguised as Jameela Jamil, Zahra walks through the front door into the building lobby, and no one even attempts to stop her. She is greeted by the front desk clerk and explains that she unfortunately had to duck out earlier but is back to finish some work before the weekend.

The desk clerk raises small talk, then says Lift #2 is open. He gives her an odd look as she passes him on her way to the elevator, as if she isn’t acting exactly like Jameela, but otherwise says nothing. The doors to the lift open and she walks inside. There’s a button labeled G, along with even-numbered buttons for the floors. In case anyone is watching her over the elevator camera, she tries to stand like she recalls Jameela did earlier on their elevator ride.

The elevator bell rings twice and the doors open. Another lady hurries onto the elevator, almost bumping into Zahra, then freezes as her face turns white. “Oh, OH -- I’m so sorry!” she says, while moving to the other side of the car. Zahra acts aloof and business-oriented, which seems to put the woman off a bit but she rapidly punches buttons so she no longer needs to talk.

After she exits on the 22nd floor, Zahra uses Jameela’s swipe card to enter the facility she visited earlier in the day. Everything looks like just what she had seen previously. There’s a janitor mopping the floor, who looks like he’s trying too hard to not look at her, but no one else is around. Whatever role Jameela played at this facility, it seemed like people were quick to defer to her or at least be careful about how they engaged her.

Striding through the office as if she belongs there, Zahra first enters the filing room, where three of the cabinets she can access are located. The first cabinet she opens is the personnel and tax records. On a hunch, she pulls Jameela’s file and determines that her official title is “Assistant Director of Special Projects” and she made five times what Zahra did last year. Most of her file is fairly mundane, but Zahra determines that she should have access to the labs, the records room, Jameela’s office, emergency access to the legal office, and most weirdly access to the roof helipad. She also notes that Jameela has access to areas not in this building (which is labeled as Building 3). She passes all this information back to the others through Rasheed’s mental link.

She also checks out the man who originally led her around and determines he’s only a middle-manager for some specific product, only makes half Jameela’s salary, and has a lot less access – although it includes emergency basement access.

In the second cabinet is nothing of interest.

Zahra strikes gold on the third cabinet, which seems to house tape drives wrapped in static bags. Based on the labels, these are backup security tapes, each covering three days of time, and the latest ends yesterday (Thursday). Zahra casually positions herself to block the camera with her body and slips the latest backup into her carry bag, before shutting the cabinets and exiting the room.

While the labs are closer, Zahra decides to visit Jameela’s office next, which is in the back of the building with the others. Each one has the occupant’s name, so Jameela’s is not hard to find. She taps the passcard and goes in. It sure beats the hell out of her own cubicle at her workplace, thinks Zahra as she surveys the imported furniture, a pair of 30” monitors, the docking laptop station, and a minifridge. She opens the fridge door and finds some seltzer water and half a sandwich in a transparent plastic container – but underneath the container she sees the glint of metal. There’s a phone data card there, with metal contacts on the underside, which Zahra takes and slips into the bag with the security tape.

Interestingly, Jamella does not have any observable security cameras in her office.

Zahra starts going through each desk drawer in turn but finds nothing but standard office fare, almost feeling as if Jamella barely used the office. She looks around and just like the woman’s apartment notes that there are no pictures on the walls or other items to personalize the living space. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

She specifically digs around for a password list and cannot find anything secreted around, but she notices that the keyboard has a card reader. Zahra pops in the card, the screens wakes up, and the led lights up. A password screen flashes at her annoyingly. Zahra wasn’t really prepared for this… or was she?

She types in the name of Jameela’s puppy and waits, then smiles as the computer opens up.

Zahra can see three closed camera feeds on the desktop and opens each. One is a feed of the hallway approaching her office, another shows where the janitor is mopping, and there’s a third to a dark room she doesn’t recognize, with only blinking LEDs and faint outlines of tables and desks visible.

When she passes this back to the group through the telepathic link, Modi suggests she look at the network drive. Zahra finds several things on the network that even Jameela doesn’t have access to, as it won’t open but Zahra can see the card reader blink as she mouses over each – apparently it’s scanning her card for the correct privileges.

For the items she can access, not much seems interesting until she sees a folder called “Dung Beetle” – which Zahra knows refers to scarabs, which of course represents the Scarab project.

This electronic folder is full of documents that are labeled as unhelpfully as possible (5 digit names + a doc extension). Others are clearly binary files, and there is also an image logo for the project. Zahra starts opening graphic images and finds stills from a lab that doesn’t look to be in this building. She can see an operating table with a patient on it, along with some attendants and monitoring equipment. She pauses on one of them and zooms it up for a better look – the man we were just chasing through the park is clearly on the table: Amar was apparently one of the Scarab project test subjects.

Zahra correlates the labels enough to find the document for Amar and pulls it up. The first bit is describing his vitals, Patient ID 9885675309aGfz. Despite her biology background, Zahra does not recognize most of the statistics or what they represent, although one is tantalizingly labeled, “Compatibility Index = 28”.

There are two lines under conclusion: “Failure to accept treatment” and “whereabouts unknown.”

Up on the roof, Rasheed keeps transmitting Zahra’s information out to the link, while searching for surveillance devices. He finds a camera watching the elevator door, and then finds another better hidden one that is aimed right at the helipad.

As he’s pondering this, he hears the elevator ding and scrambles off to hide among the HVAC machinery.

A pair of men in security uniforms leave the elevator, with vests, weapons… and a guard dog.

“You sure something tripped the alarm up here? I don’t see anyone.”

“Oh well, we should check it anyway. You check the other side, I’ll let Set loose.”

Rasheed watches as they let the dog go and it heads straight for him. As Set begins barking wildly, drawing the men towards his location, Rasheed teleports to the neighboring roof hoping to land in a spot where he won’t be seen. He ducks behind some machinery structures on that roof before the men look across the gap.

“DID YOU SEE SOMETHING?”

“What’s he going ON about? There’s NOTHING here.”

They start circling around the roof, as Set sniffs confused around the spot where Rasheed had been hiding.

Down in the alley, the three others are just hanging out when they momentarily hear the faint sound of a dog barking along with some shouting up on the roof.

“I hope Rasheed didn’t get himself in trouble.”

Masil stands up straight. “Look lively,” he says right as a man casually walks down the alley towards them, wearing casual slacks and a colored shirt. As he passed, Masil pretends to tell the punchline of a fake joke with a little too much enthusiasm, which gets him an extra stare from the stranger. However, Modie laughs at the appropriate time, so he seems to assume it was authentic and keeps heading for the far end of the alley.

Masil suddenly lowers his voice. “I think I saw that guy at the park earlier!”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know, I just can’t remember what I saw him doing.”

They all pause as Rasheed relays what just happened to him on the roof, and the fact there is a roaming guard patrol with a dog.

Back inside, Zahra sees a blinking notification at the corner of the monitor. She clicks on it, and it gives her a camera feed of the roof, revealing the guards and the dog searching the premises as it pans back and forth. She relaxes when she sees their disappointment and consolation of the dog, as if they thought someone was there but couldn’t find him. Eventually they give up their investigation and trundle back to the elevator.

Zahra feels at this point she is pushing her luck, so she takes the swipe card, grabs her things, and heads back towards her last stop, the lab. She runs across the janitor taking his pail to the closet to dump the dirty water. He mumbles good evening while trying to shrink unnoticed into the small space, and she doesn’t give him further mind.

Zahra swipes into the lab. The lights come on automatically. She sees the same things she recalled from earlier, including things that she had recorded as part of her inspection – although of course the Scarab folder is now missing. When the door swings shut, she sees all the safety sheets filed on its back where they should be. In fact it looks like everything has properly been secured and stored on the sides of the room, which would have pleased her if she hadn’t known it was a pretense for conducting illegal experiments on humans. Of course, the files she had noticed earlier including the Scarab folder are nowhere to be seen.

As she approaches the two filing cabinets in the room’s back, she notices the cryochamber – a combination freezer and storage cabinet, cooled by liquid nitrogen, refrigerator-sized. What might they be storing inside?

Zahra notices that one of the cabinets has been damaged. Closer inspection reveals that the lock was forced open. She finds that the third drawer has a noticeable gap in the hanging files. Those sons of dogs…!

She digs through the surrounding files. One side seems to be records on a muscle tissue growth experience involving anti-rejection rates and grafting, while the other looks beyond her expertise but involving fiber, nerve connections, and electrical conductivity. She notes that the Scarab logo folder is nowhere to be seen.

Frustrated, Zahra unlocks the first cabinet and sees a bunch of hard drives stored in the top drawer. She quickly pieces together they are the standard-size hard drives from all the computers in the lab room here. The lower drawers just have spare tubing and clamps, and then paper scraps that are scheduled for shredding. She quickly looks through the heap but it’s mostly just quick math or molecule sketches that aren’t much help.

After conferring with the others, Zahra starts loading up the courier bag with all the hard drives. Yes, it will reveal we had intruded into the lab, but Jameela’s use as a disguise won’t last long regardless once her body is found in the bathroom.

Zahra looks around the room another time and realizes this was not the surgical lab, as there is no camera here hooked to the feed in Jameela’s office. However, whatever is happening in this lab is not something they wanted to be recorded.

Suddenly the door pops a crack. It’s the janitor peeking his head to mumble goodnight and then quickly shutting the door. What is up with this guy?

After getting over this surprise, Zahra decides to take a quick look in the cooler before she goes. As she reaches for the door, while she hasn’t really used a cooler like this before, she realizes she will burn herself badly if she doesn’t protect herself. She searches the room and eventually finds the protective gloves, turns the handle, and then waits for a few minutes while the freezer vents and temperatures warm to something less destructive.

Inside the freezer, which has less than a cubic meter of storage area, is a smaller box with fog roiling around it, made of insulated ceramic. She carefully extracts it and sets it on a nearby table. It probably weighs less than six kilograms. While the outside of the box becomes warmer, she takes a few minutes to use her makeup kit to lift what prints she can on the jacked cabinet.

Zahra gets all her things and exits the lab with the courier bag full of tape drives and the ceramic box, while still wearing the protective gloves, since no one else should be in the office now. Based on group discussion, she heads not for the lobby elevator but the basement descent she took earlier in the day with Jameela. She scans her card to summon the elevator, then heads down. Floor after floor passes… and suddenly the car comes to a halt at Floor 8. A stranger in casual business attire enters but shows no recognition towards her, although he does glance at the box before getting in and standing on the other side of the elevator. When the elevator reaches the basement, he politely holds onto the door and gestures for Zahra to go first.

Prepared for anything, Zahra steps out. Instead of heading for the fire escape exit, she walks through the door leading to the underground facility as if she is heading that way – then waits and observes the man going through a different door. After a few seconds, she hurries back out and up the backstairs to the emergency door with the cut alarm, where her friends are waiting. She’s surprised to see no one there in the alley and relays to Rasheed that she has some items that need to be handed off, before she heads back upstairs to exit the building the way she came in, to alleviate suspicion.

Modi appears and takes the box and bag from her. As Zahra goes back down the steps, he sticks the box inside himself somehow (no description desired) and even manages to keep its temperature cold.

On her way back up, out of sheer morbid curiosity, Zahra enters the woman’s bathroom and stops in surprise. There is no blood. There is no body visible under the stall wall. Worse, the shattered mirror has been replaced as if it had never broken in the first place.

“The bathroom has been cleaned up,” she relays hurriedly. “They know everything. I’m coming back up the fire escape!”

But it’s too late. When Zahra steps out of the bathroom, she sees her elevator companion there – and this time he’s pointing a gun at her.

Zahra stands up straight, giving the man an impetuous stare, hands on hips. “What’s the meaning of this?” she snaps.

Out in the alley, Modi waits by the door for Zahra. There’s a blip and Rasheed suddenly appears next to him. Masil and Samara remain at the alley mouth, deciding whether to go help Zahra or remain in position to help extricate the package as a priority.

Down in the basement, Zahra is not cowed (after all, it’s just a gun) and takes a step forward. The gunman isn’t cowed either and keeps the gun aimed right between her eyes. “Put your hands up and get on the ground,” he demands.

After relaying this update to the others, and her position, Zahra plays along in order to stall. She awkwardly gets down on her knees, hands up. “Don’t you know who I am?” she insists. “You’re going to lose your job over this!”

She finds herself slightly impressed that the gun muzzle never moves except to track her head – for all the good it might do him. “You can drop the act,” he says. “So who are you, actually?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” replies Zahra, hands still up, stalling further.

Rashed hurries through the door and downstairs, followed by Samara, and a few moments later by Masil. Rasheed enters the basement quietly enough, and Zahra has to fight off an urge to smirk as she sees him appear behind the gunman. Unfortunately Samara is not nearly as quiet in her approach. The gunman wheels, realizes he’s surrounded, and immediately shoots Samara in the midsection – which fortunately doesn’t quite penetrate her body armor.

Hearing the shot, Masil leaps down the steps and into the room right as Rasheed mindblasts the gunman. The air shimmers briefly like heat rising off hot macadam and suddenly the security agent is wobbling on his feet as blood leaks out his nose and both ears. It’s a wonder the blast didn’t kill him outright.

Zahra immediately steps up behind him, her limbs wrapping him in a firm grapple. “You should have minded your own business,” she murmurs ominously in his ear.

Samara’s features suddenly change to not look at all like herself. She screeches and blue balls of energy whips out of her forehead to fly across the room and bombard the gunman. Zahra can feel each of them smack into the man, rocking his body against her, and he suddenly sags in her arms as there’s a loud long blatt sound. Zahra throws the body on the floor as she realizes he crapped his pants as he died.

“I wanted to interrogate him!” she yells – then steps back in surprise as Samara runs over to kick and stomp the corpse repeatedly, hurling terrible insults that start with, “You vile scum!” and quickly going downhill from there. While looking shocked at this turn of events, Rasheed somehow manages to go through the man’s pockets to grab his possessions before Samara destroys them. He comes up with a watch, a wallet, a phone, a 14k gold cross necklace, and an ID badge.

“So we’re back to this again,” says Masil as we eventually discuss how to stage the scene of this killing in the exact same basement we stashed a body in earlier that day. Under Rasheed’s direction, we eventually break into the janitor’s closet, trashbag the body, and scrub the place down.

As we are doing this, we realize the elevator is coming back down to the basement. As we all scramble to grab everything to leave, Samara faces the elevator doors haughtily and insists we should kill whatever comes down. “We are strong!” she barks. “We can do it!”

Finally it clicks for Rasheed – this isn’t Samara at all but the Hakim persona that he had only recently observed.

Ignoring her, we grab the trashbag with body inside and sneak up the back fire escape. As we reach street level, we hear the elevator ding back inside. As we step into the alley, Rasheed takes the bagged body and teleports back to the other building’s roof to hide it there.

We look up and down the alley. There are no cameras here, but we know once we reach the main streets on either side that they will be monitored. We’re not sure where Modi went, but the remaining three quickly start down the alley to get away from the building. As we walk, Zahra shifts her face to look more like her normal self although her body still resembles Jameela in order to fit into her clothes. Samara pulls her hajib around her face and follows with Masil.

As we reach the street, Samara suddenly shakes her head, then looks at us questioningly. “Where are we?” she asks in a far more feminine tone than she used in the basement. “What’s going on?” There seems to be real fear and confusion in her eyes. One of her other personalities – maybe Amal?

Zahra nudges her forward. “Just keep walking.”

Samara complies but can’t help asking anxious questions as we head down the street, to the degree that passerbys are giving her second looks. Zahra says we don’t have time to explain everything right now, but she’ll be okay for a few minutes until we reach a safe location. Rasheed links into her telepathically to tell her that Zahra and Masil are helping her to leave the area without attracting more danger, and all will be explained shortly.

As we continue on our way, feeling like maybe we escaped, Zahra realizes that the man she checked in with at the front desk is now trailing us, with Set the guard dog in tow.

I am really liking this campaign and my character. It's really scary because Zahra is the least human of the bunch but is its moral compass right now -- and she's not really THAT moral. I basically have all the powers I want, starting out the game, and they just need to be strengthened a bit and then I should build up her stats and skills. Which is a different approach than the last Deviant character I had. But basically I'm playing a slime girl trying to retain her humanity while taking down the conspiracy, and she can change shape and pretend to be other people -- but it's hard for her right now too because her body is so malleable, who is she REALLY? She's fighting to retain a sense of self in a body that can be shaped like anything. And meanwhile she's very deadly because her body is also made of acidic jelly.

 

[The Cat]

So Session 5 happened. Basically our team pulled together after the initial investigation of the corporate basement. We did some more investigations, somehow Silent (the assassin) has defected to us, and we settled on this plan with a key that Zahra found while retrieving Jameela Jamil's puppy to infiltrate the company and search the filing cabinets that the key opens.

Session 5 is what happens when Zahra (plasmoid girl) changes shape and wears Jameela's clothes and scan card to get into the company and snoop around while no one's there late on a Friday, while the rest of the team does recon -- and the aftermath of trying to get out of the building.

Disguised as Jameela Jamil, Zahra walks through the front door into the building lobby, and no one even attempts to stop her. She is greeted by the front desk clerk and explains that she unfortunately had to duck out earlier but is back to finish some work before the weekend.

The desk clerk raises small talk, then says Lift #2 is open. He gives her an odd look as she passes him on her way to the elevator, as if she isn’t acting exactly like Jameela, but otherwise says nothing. The doors to the lift open and she walks inside. There’s a button labeled G, along with even-numbered buttons for the floors. In case anyone is watching her over the elevator camera, she tries to stand like she recalls Jameela did earlier on their elevator ride.

The elevator bell rings twice and the doors open. Another lady hurries onto the elevator, almost bumping into Zahra, then freezes as her face turns white. “Oh, OH -- I’m so sorry!” she says, while moving to the other side of the car. Zahra acts aloof and business-oriented, which seems to put the woman off a bit but she rapidly punches buttons so she no longer needs to talk.

After she exits on the 22nd floor, Zahra uses Jameela’s swipe card to enter the facility she visited earlier in the day. Everything looks like just what she had seen previously. There’s a janitor mopping the floor, who looks like he’s trying too hard to not look at her, but no one else is around. Whatever role Jameela played at this facility, it seemed like people were quick to defer to her or at least be careful about how they engaged her.

Striding through the office as if she belongs there, Zahra first enters the filing room, where three of the cabinets she can access are located. The first cabinet she opens is the personnel and tax records. On a hunch, she pulls Jameela’s file and determines that her official title is “Assistant Director of Special Projects” and she made five times what Zahra did last year. Most of her file is fairly mundane, but Zahra determines that she should have access to the labs, the records room, Jameela’s office, emergency access to the legal office, and most weirdly access to the roof helipad. She also notes that Jameela has access to areas not in this building (which is labeled as Building 3). She passes all this information back to the others through Rasheed’s mental link.

She also checks out the man who originally led her around and determines he’s only a middle-manager for some specific product, only makes half Jameela’s salary, and has a lot less access – although it includes emergency basement access.

In the second cabinet is nothing of interest.

Zahra strikes gold on the third cabinet, which seems to house tape drives wrapped in static bags. Based on the labels, these are backup security tapes, each covering three days of time, and the latest ends yesterday (Thursday). Zahra casually positions herself to block the camera with her body and slips the latest backup into her carry bag, before shutting the cabinets and exiting the room.

While the labs are closer, Zahra decides to visit Jameela’s office next, which is in the back of the building with the others. Each one has the occupant’s name, so Jameela’s is not hard to find. She taps the passcard and goes in. It sure beats the hell out of her own cubicle at her workplace, thinks Zahra as she surveys the imported furniture, a pair of 30” monitors, the docking laptop station, and a minifridge. She opens the fridge door and finds some seltzer water and half a sandwich in a transparent plastic container – but underneath the container she sees the glint of metal. There’s a phone data card there, with metal contacts on the underside, which Zahra takes and slips into the bag with the security tape.

Interestingly, Jamella does not have any observable security cameras in her office.

Zahra starts going through each desk drawer in turn but finds nothing but standard office fare, almost feeling as if Jamella barely used the office. She looks around and just like the woman’s apartment notes that there are no pictures on the walls or other items to personalize the living space. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

She specifically digs around for a password list and cannot find anything secreted around, but she notices that the keyboard has a card reader. Zahra pops in the card, the screens wakes up, and the led lights up. A password screen flashes at her annoyingly. Zahra wasn’t really prepared for this… or was she?

She types in the name of Jameela’s puppy and waits, then smiles as the computer opens up.

Zahra can see three closed camera feeds on the desktop and opens each. One is a feed of the hallway approaching her office, another shows where the janitor is mopping, and there’s a third to a dark room she doesn’t recognize, with only blinking LEDs and faint outlines of tables and desks visible.

When she passes this back to the group through the telepathic link, Modi suggests she look at the network drive. Zahra finds several things on the network that even Jameela doesn’t have access to, as it won’t open but Zahra can see the card reader blink as she mouses over each – apparently it’s scanning her card for the correct privileges.

For the items she can access, not much seems interesting until she sees a folder called “Dung Beetle” – which Zahra knows refers to scarabs, which of course represents the Scarab project.

This electronic folder is full of documents that are labeled as unhelpfully as possible (5 digit names + a doc extension). Others are clearly binary files, and there is also an image logo for the project. Zahra starts opening graphic images and finds stills from a lab that doesn’t look to be in this building. She can see an operating table with a patient on it, along with some attendants and monitoring equipment. She pauses on one of them and zooms it up for a better look – the man we were just chasing through the park is clearly on the table: Amar was apparently one of the Scarab project test subjects.

Zahra correlates the labels enough to find the document for Amar and pulls it up. The first bit is describing his vitals, Patient ID 9885675309aGfz. Despite her biology background, Zahra does not recognize most of the statistics or what they represent, although one is tantalizingly labeled, “Compatibility Index = 28”.

There are two lines under conclusion: “Failure to accept treatment” and “whereabouts unknown.”

Up on the roof, Rasheed keeps transmitting Zahra’s information out to the link, while searching for surveillance devices. He finds a camera watching the elevator door, and then finds another better hidden one that is aimed right at the helipad.

As he’s pondering this, he hears the elevator ding and scrambles off to hide among the HVAC machinery.

A pair of men in security uniforms leave the elevator, with vests, weapons… and a guard dog.

“You sure something tripped the alarm up here? I don’t see anyone.”

“Oh well, we should check it anyway. You check the other side, I’ll let Set loose.”

Rasheed watches as they let the dog go and it heads straight for him. As Set begins barking wildly, drawing the men towards his location, Rasheed teleports to the neighboring roof hoping to land in a spot where he won’t be seen. He ducks behind some machinery structures on that roof before the men look across the gap.

“DID YOU SEE SOMETHING?”

“What’s he going ON about? There’s NOTHING here.”

They start circling around the roof, as Set sniffs confused around the spot where Rasheed had been hiding.

Down in the alley, the three others are just hanging out when they momentarily hear the faint sound of a dog barking along with some shouting up on the roof.

“I hope Rasheed didn’t get himself in trouble.”

Masil stands up straight. “Look lively,” he says right as a man casually walks down the alley towards them, wearing casual slacks and a colored shirt. As he passed, Masil pretends to tell the punchline of a fake joke with a little too much enthusiasm, which gets him an extra stare from the stranger. However, Modie laughs at the appropriate time, so he seems to assume it was authentic and keeps heading for the far end of the alley.

Masil suddenly lowers his voice. “I think I saw that guy at the park earlier!”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know, I just can’t remember what I saw him doing.”

They all pause as Rasheed relays what just happened to him on the roof, and the fact there is a roaming guard patrol with a dog.

Back inside, Zahra sees a blinking notification at the corner of the monitor. She clicks on it, and it gives her a camera feed of the roof, revealing the guards and the dog searching the premises as it pans back and forth. She relaxes when she sees their disappointment and consolation of the dog, as if they thought someone was there but couldn’t find him. Eventually they give up their investigation and trundle back to the elevator.

Zahra feels at this point she is pushing her luck, so she takes the swipe card, grabs her things, and heads back towards her last stop, the lab. She runs across the janitor taking his pail to the closet to dump the dirty water. He mumbles good evening while trying to shrink unnoticed into the small space, and she doesn’t give him further mind.

Zahra swipes into the lab. The lights come on automatically. She sees the same things she recalled from earlier, including things that she had recorded as part of her inspection – although of course the Scarab folder is now missing. When the door swings shut, she sees all the safety sheets filed on its back where they should be. In fact it looks like everything has properly been secured and stored on the sides of the room, which would have pleased her if she hadn’t known it was a pretense for conducting illegal experiments on humans. Of course, the files she had noticed earlier including the Scarab folder are nowhere to be seen.

As she approaches the two filing cabinets in the room’s back, she notices the cryochamber – a combination freezer and storage cabinet, cooled by liquid nitrogen, refrigerator-sized. What might they be storing inside?

Zahra notices that one of the cabinets has been damaged. Closer inspection reveals that the lock was forced open. She finds that the third drawer has a noticeable gap in the hanging files. Those sons of dogs…!

She digs through the surrounding files. One side seems to be records on a muscle tissue growth experience involving anti-rejection rates and grafting, while the other looks beyond her expertise but involving fiber, nerve connections, and electrical conductivity. She notes that the Scarab logo folder is nowhere to be seen.

Frustrated, Zahra unlocks the first cabinet and sees a bunch of hard drives stored in the top drawer. She quickly pieces together they are the standard-size hard drives from all the computers in the lab room here. The lower drawers just have spare tubing and clamps, and then paper scraps that are scheduled for shredding. She quickly looks through the heap but it’s mostly just quick math or molecule sketches that aren’t much help.

After conferring with the others, Zahra starts loading up the courier bag with all the hard drives. Yes, it will reveal we had intruded into the lab, but Jameela’s use as a disguise won’t last long regardless once her body is found in the bathroom.

Zahra looks around the room another time and realizes this was not the surgical lab, as there is no camera here hooked to the feed in Jameela’s office. However, whatever is happening in this lab is not something they wanted to be recorded.

Suddenly the door pops a crack. It’s the janitor peeking his head to mumble goodnight and then quickly shutting the door. What is up with this guy?

After getting over this surprise, Zahra decides to take a quick look in the cooler before she goes. As she reaches for the door, while she hasn’t really used a cooler like this before, she realizes she will burn herself badly if she doesn’t protect herself. She searches the room and eventually finds the protective gloves, turns the handle, and then waits for a few minutes while the freezer vents and temperatures warm to something less destructive.

Inside the freezer, which has less than a cubic meter of storage area, is a smaller box with fog roiling around it, made of insulated ceramic. She carefully extracts it and sets it on a nearby table. It probably weighs less than six kilograms. While the outside of the box becomes warmer, she takes a few minutes to use her makeup kit to lift what prints she can on the jacked cabinet.

Zahra gets all her things and exits the lab with the courier bag full of tape drives and the ceramic box, while still wearing the protective gloves, since no one else should be in the office now. Based on group discussion, she heads not for the lobby elevator but the basement descent she took earlier in the day with Jameela. She scans her card to summon the elevator, then heads down. Floor after floor passes… and suddenly the car comes to a halt at Floor 8. A stranger in casual business attire enters but shows no recognition towards her, although he does glance at the box before getting in and standing on the other side of the elevator. When the elevator reaches the basement, he politely holds onto the door and gestures for Zahra to go first.

Prepared for anything, Zahra steps out. Instead of heading for the fire escape exit, she walks through the door leading to the underground facility as if she is heading that way – then waits and observes the man going through a different door. After a few seconds, she hurries back out and up the backstairs to the emergency door with the cut alarm, where her friends are waiting. She’s surprised to see no one there in the alley and relays to Rasheed that she has some items that need to be handed off, before she heads back upstairs to exit the building the way she came in, to alleviate suspicion.

Modi appears and takes the box and bag from her. As Zahra goes back down the steps, he sticks the box inside himself somehow (no description desired) and even manages to keep its temperature cold.

On her way back up, out of sheer morbid curiosity, Zahra enters the woman’s bathroom and stops in surprise. There is no blood. There is no body visible under the stall wall. Worse, the shattered mirror has been replaced as if it had never broken in the first place.

“The bathroom has been cleaned up,” she relays hurriedly. “They know everything. I’m coming back up the fire escape!”

But it’s too late. When Zahra steps out of the bathroom, she sees her elevator companion there – and this time he’s pointing a gun at her.

Zahra stands up straight, giving the man an impetuous stare, hands on hips. “What’s the meaning of this?” she snaps.

Out in the alley, Modi waits by the door for Zahra. There’s a blip and Rasheed suddenly appears next to him. Masil and Samara remain at the alley mouth, deciding whether to go help Zahra or remain in position to help extricate the package as a priority.

Down in the basement, Zahra is not cowed (after all, it’s just a gun) and takes a step forward. The gunman isn’t cowed either and keeps the gun aimed right between her eyes. “Put your hands up and get on the ground,” he demands.

After relaying this update to the others, and her position, Zahra plays along in order to stall. She awkwardly gets down on her knees, hands up. “Don’t you know who I am?” she insists. “You’re going to lose your job over this!”

She finds herself slightly impressed that the gun muzzle never moves except to track her head – for all the good it might do him. “You can drop the act,” he says. “So who are you, actually?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” replies Zahra, hands still up, stalling further.

Rashed hurries through the door and downstairs, followed by Samara, and a few moments later by Masil. Rasheed enters the basement quietly enough, and Zahra has to fight off an urge to smirk as she sees him appear behind the gunman. Unfortunately Samara is not nearly as quiet in her approach. The gunman wheels, realizes he’s surrounded, and immediately shoots Samara in the midsection – which fortunately doesn’t quite penetrate her body armor.

Hearing the shot, Masil leaps down the steps and into the room right as Rasheed mindblasts the gunman. The air shimmers briefly like heat rising off hot macadam and suddenly the security agent is wobbling on his feet as blood leaks out his nose and both ears. It’s a wonder the blast didn’t kill him outright.

Zahra immediately steps up behind him, her limbs wrapping him in a firm grapple. “You should have minded your own business,” she murmurs ominously in his ear.

Samara’s features suddenly change to not look at all like herself. She screeches and blue balls of energy whips out of her forehead to fly across the room and bombard the gunman. Zahra can feel each of them smack into the man, rocking his body against her, and he suddenly sags in her arms as there’s a loud long blatt sound. Zahra throws the body on the floor as she realizes he crapped his pants as he died.

“I wanted to interrogate him!” she yells – then steps back in surprise as Samara runs over to kick and stomp the corpse repeatedly, hurling terrible insults that start with, “You vile scum!” and quickly going downhill from there. While looking shocked at this turn of events, Rasheed somehow manages to go through the man’s pockets to grab his possessions before Samara destroys them. He comes up with a watch, a wallet, a phone, a 14k gold cross necklace, and an ID badge.

“So we’re back to this again,” says Masil as we eventually discuss how to stage the scene of this killing in the exact same basement we stashed a body in earlier that day. Under Rasheed’s direction, we eventually break into the janitor’s closet, trashbag the body, and scrub the place down.

As we are doing this, we realize the elevator is coming back down to the basement. As we all scramble to grab everything to leave, Samara faces the elevator doors haughtily and insists we should kill whatever comes down. “We are strong!” she barks. “We can do it!”

Finally it clicks for Rasheed – this isn’t Samara at all but the Hakim persona that he had only recently observed.

Ignoring her, we grab the trashbag with body inside and sneak up the back fire escape. As we reach street level, we hear the elevator ding back inside. As we step into the alley, Rasheed takes the bagged body and teleports back to the other building’s roof to hide it there.

We look up and down the alley. There are no cameras here, but we know once we reach the main streets on either side that they will be monitored. We’re not sure where Modi went, but the remaining three quickly start down the alley to get away from the building. As we walk, Zahra shifts her face to look more like her normal self although her body still resembles Jameela in order to fit into her clothes. Samara pulls her hajib around her face and follows with Masil.

As we reach the street, Samara suddenly shakes her head, then looks at us questioningly. “Where are we?” she asks in a far more feminine tone than she used in the basement. “What’s going on?” There seems to be real fear and confusion in her eyes. One of her other personalities – maybe Amal?

Zahra nudges her forward. “Just keep walking.”

Samara complies but can’t help asking anxious questions as we head down the street, to the degree that passerbys are giving her second looks. Zahra says we don’t have time to explain everything right now, but she’ll be okay for a few minutes until we reach a safe location. Rasheed links into her telepathically to tell her that Zahra and Masil are helping her to leave the area without attracting more danger, and all will be explained shortly.

As we continue on our way, feeling like maybe we escaped, Zahra realizes that the man she checked in with at the front desk is now trailing us, with Set the guard dog in tow.

I am really liking this campaign and my character. It's really scary because Zahra is the least human of the bunch but is its moral compass right now -- and she's not really THAT moral. I basically have all the powers I want, starting out the game, and they just need to be strengthened a bit and then I should build up her stats and skills. Which is a different approach than the last Deviant character I had. But basically I'm playing a slime girl trying to retain her humanity while taking down the conspiracy, and she can change shape and pretend to be other people -- but it's hard for her right now too because her body is so malleable, who is she REALLY? She's fighting to retain a sense of self in a body that can be shaped like anything. And meanwhile she's very deadly because her body is also made of acidic jelly.

I had a blast playing a sexy slime girl monk in my last one shot. To hold her humanoid shape more easily she kept the corpse of the monk who's sentience she absorbed at character creation inside herself. So whenever she would ooze through a crack for the party she would leave behind the mummified corpse of a monk with her gear and clothing. She had a far traveller background; drank like an irish fish was dfw and a bit of a space case: Whenever she slimed something or someone she would give a friendly warning of "Careful, that's mildly hallucinogenic." The DM had fun with that lol

 

[Totenkindly]

I had a blast playing a sexy slime girl monk in my last one shot. To hold her humanoid shape more easily she kept the corpse of the monk who's sentience she absorbed at character creation inside herself. So whenever she would ooze through a crack for the party she would leave behind the mummified corpse of a monk with her gear and clothing.

Lol, that's pretty awesome. Right now Zahra has to shed her clothes/belongings when going through a crack.

I was thinking about picking up a low-level version of a power that lets you create a "space" that you can put things in, I think it would be funny that even if her clothes have no pockets she can just stick it into herself without it getting destroyed. And if it is a "pocket," in effect she could stuff it in, then go through things and reshape, then pull it out. Like, wtf did you hide THAT? *shrug* Want to see what else i can hide?

She had a far traveller background; drank like an irish fish was dfw and a bit of a space case: Whenever she slimed something or someone she would give a friendly warning of "Careful, that's mildly hallucinogenic." The DM had fun with that lol

You can actually build that into Deviant, it would be part of a melee lash and you can add poison or drugged (etc) tilts to it to impact the enemy's scores/functionality.

I built Zahra more as a serious and intense overachiever who isn't naturally as gifted as some and had to work for what she has. She can be a little intimidating, she likes to just plow over people if they are in the way of her goal. Maybe becoming a slime is the best thing to happen to her; maybe she'll chillax a bit.

 

[The Cat]

Lol, that's pretty awesome. Right now Zahra has to shed her clothes/belongings when going through a crack.

I was thinking about picking up a low-level version of a power that lets you create a "space" that you can put things in, I think it would be funny that even if her clothes have no pockets she can just stick it into herself without it getting destroyed. And if it is a "pocket," in effect she could stuff it in, then go through things and reshape, then pull it out. Like, wtf did you hide THAT? *shrug* Want to see what else i can hide?


You can actually build that into Deviant, it would be part of a melee lash and you can add poison or drugged (etc) tilts to it to impact the enemy's scores/functionality.

I built Zahra more as a serious and intense overachiever who isn't naturally as gifted as some and had to work for what she has. She can be a little intimidating, she likes to just plow over people if they are in the way of her goal. Maybe becoming a slime is the best thing to happen to her; maybe she'll chillax a bit.

Oh that's really cool! There needs to be more magical girl slime love in the Fantasy RPG space(i know theres a lot already but oozes are just so dang cool)

In my homebrew campaigns I like using oozes for cosmic horror effects. The way I make Gelatinous cubes work is kinda like the Nexus in ST Generations. As they dissolve you your body is overwhelmed by pleasure and euphoria and your mind thinks you're wherever you most want to be doing whatever you most want to do with whomever you most want to be with. There's a wisdom saving saving throw when you get pulled out, if you fail you want to try to go back in. In higher magic settings the society has Ooze spas and Ooze dens where people can pay to be exfoliated and get high. There's big money for Oozes to be made in my campaigns. It's not the safest work, but it pays platinum. The only thing it cant over come is player character afraid to explore off the tracks. But thats 5e these days. I need to check out pathfinder for daring players maybe.

 

[Totenkindly]

Oh that's really cool! There needs to be more magical girl slime love in the Fantasy RPG space(i know theres a lot already but oozes are just so dang cool)

I was kind of excited when I thought of it, then saw there's a whole RPG slime girl subculture lol. I hadn't known it was a thing.

In my homebrew campaigns I like using oozes for cosmic horror effects. The way I make Gelatinous cubes work is kinda like the Nexus in ST Generations. As they dissolve you your body is overwhelmed by pleasure and euphoria and your mind thinks you're wherever you most want to be doing whatever you most want to do with whomever you most want to be with. There's a wisdom saving saving throw when you get pulled out, if you fail you want to try to go back in. In higher magic settings the society has Ooze spas and Ooze dens where people can pay to be exfoliated and get high. There's big money for Oozes to be made in my campaigns. It's not the safest work, but it pays platinum. The only thing it cant over come is player character afraid to explore off the tracks. But thats 5e these days. I need to check out pathfinder for daring players maybe.

That is pretty cool. It reminds me of the one-panel shot of Legion of Superheroes (Giffen) #4 where Mordru took over when Mon-El briefly killed the Time Trapper. Mordru was a sick bastard, and one of his "interrogations" involved dissolving subjects quickly in a DNA bath to harvest their memories (gotta love magic tech) and it was supposed to be highly pleasurable as you are quickly dissolved. I was tying it into Sumiko's machine she gets from Hel-Ix that allows her to generate bio fuel for her reconstituted tech-lich body. But your idea is really neat, a whole cottage industry has built up for that kind of slime service.