The session started with what Lucius (my character) has dubbed "The Most Boring Day of the Year." Its the one day of the year that all the immortals in House Del Dio have to come back to home base and preside over important decisions and family matters (like whether or not Urkel did that. See I made a 90s TV joke, that's how boring that day is).
The topic that we roleplayed out was a budget increase of about $40 billion for the intelligence branch of our House. My character barely paid any attention to the discussion; right off the bat knowing he was voting yes because frankly it was an easy decision. There were quite a few problems and potential threats out there that we were woefully under informed about and the House needed more information. As he said to someone else who joined him at the snack table "we can always make more money, but we might never get a chance to learn the information we need again before its too late."
So we ended up voting to give them the money, maybe not all of it if I remember correctly; but a large chunk. Then it was party time; the real reason we all gather together back home in Venice. We were enjoying a big celebration when one of the high ranking mortals in the house brought us a gift from one Terrance McBain, also known by at least me as The American. This guy is a 34 year old business man; kind of a cross between and Bill Gates and a Lex Luthor type of person in my understanding. And the impressive part is he is a mortal who has made himself a force to be reckoned with on the immortal scene. I don't want to go into a lot of details; but just trust me that that is pretty impressive.
So the gift is a container with 12 fancy Cuban cigars in it. One of us immediately sees the significance of the number. 12 is the number of immortals our House has; and this is a much smaller number than what we project to the world. Quite awhile back all of our immortals disappeared, and the mortal members of the house have been keeping up the illusion that they are still around for a very long time. For someone to potentially know that there are only 12 of us is huge, and possibly devastating. So we toss together another quick tactical meeting. Lots of arguing and discussing and political mumbo jumbo later we've got a two prong plan. Oh, the plan only makes sense if I tell the other piece of news we received. The one immortal in our family that wasn't at the meeting is basically retired from active duty and living incognito with a mortal family in the U.S. And we find out he has disappeared and his family has been captured. So now the plan:
1) The players team is to head to the USA to find Marco and his family and get them back home safe and sound.
2) The other field team of immortals is going to head off to Romania on the idea of Traci's character, Diannora, to try and make friendly with the Romanian immortal house; which is a very powerful house because of their powers of telekinesis.
So the other team heads off to Romania and we hop on a private supersonic jet to America. We land at Atlanta and are met by a member of the security team that was watching Marco and his family in secret. With the help of our coordinating members back at mission control, mostly our immortal sister Bellini, we find out that Marco's family was grabbed by the Justice Department. Or at least people that looked like they worked for the Justice Department.
So we trace down the car used to grab Marco's son and end up having to bust in to the JD headquarters. Brianna (Liz) and Dia (Traci) work together to help us bust in; Dia opening a whole in the wall with her Earth Control and Brianna using her illusions to hide our movements. Oh also, John's character (Roman) sneaks into the car before we head into the building and gets us some info that led us to believe the family had been brought to this building; which is why we busted in.
We end up finding Marco's whole family inside in a witness protection room. We evacuate them after our hand is suddenly forced by Marco showing up and using his crazy super strength to assault the building. We but into the room, get the family together and evac them to the next door parking garage through the wall we came through earlier. We give them to the security detail guy and have him head for a family safe house. We then head back inside and find Marco. After talking him down we let him know his family is safe and get him out too. We try to cover up the situation but too many people are already witnesses and we decide its a lost cause; so we just head to the safe house, then a private airfield and out of the country; back to Venice.
When we arrive we are ambushed on the tarmac by a small number of mercenaries and one of McBain's hired immortal lap dogs. We kill off the attackers; and capture one of them and the immortal. After getting them to a safe house and questioning the merc; we find out that the immortal we captured was in on it and it was some sort of setup. We then get called back to the house because of some emergency. When we get back we find out that Mia, one of the team sent to Romania has been killed. The House is in shock and panic and everything gets even worse when aerial footage of our fight at the airstrip is found to have been released to the various immortal houses; with the false propaganda that we were purposefully assault McBain's men and declaring war on him and his allies.
Which btw included India, China, and Brazil; three of the more powerful immortal houses out there. I can't remember when we learned this fact; but at some point during the session it was revealed that those three had signed a "If you attack him you attack us" treaty with McBain.
So we left the session with an immortal family member dead, a very powerful coalition having played us like puppets right into a war with them, and the whole family reeling and struggling to figure out what we can and should do. Good times.
Some very cool moments from the session:
1) In the fight at the airport my character kicked some serious ass; shooting down one assailant right off the bat and then using his powers to weaken a doorway and bust through it to disable and capture another one. Also Dia did some really cool stuff with an Earth shield and capturing the enemy immortal in a hole in the ground.
2) John did some great infiltration stuff in his crazy mist/ghostly form. Very useful.
3) Liz's illusions were insanely great; helping us pull off a bunch of stuff much more easily than we would have been able to.
Looking forward to next time a whole lot. I'm lucky I have two weeks to think on what to do; Lucius Del Dio probably only has a few short hours to think.
