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Rondo
This adventure follows the characters' immersion through a future setting into the realms beyond Time and Space. The characters engineered, with help from an MGU chemistry student a drug that breaks down the Illusion tearing fractals into Inferno as opposed to Metropolis. After many weird and unwanted encounters from the trip the characters came to the conclusion that producing the drug for sale would be a terrible thing. However, the drug will be mass-produced. Malkuth created it just for that purpose and she instigates its distribution.
Here follows encounters in vague order and ideas on what certain NPCs are doing in Moskov.
NATALYA
After Natalya's rape, Sergei's inability to console her drives Natalya to suicide - an overdose of pills and heroin. He races her to the hospital where they do their best, and as they give up hope of her living she pulls through but is in a coma.
What has really happened?
Natalya is dead and being processed in the Memory Banks. Her body has become host for a human tied to the characters. In the first adventure they tried and failed to stop an abduction of a girl, her clothes and gold chain the only reminders. Taken to Dahzbog's Orphanage she was raped, humiliated and in a rare occurrence killed by Dahzbog and dragged to Inferno for further suffering.
This girl, Nikita Dolgorukiy, was seventeen, popular, rich, and fickle. Drugs, sex, and parties filled her life and her parents, transformed capitalists who had made it rich, provided everything for her and a career wasn't needed. In Inferno life was awakened for her, maturity through terror quickly gained. Chagidiel manipulated her torment into a desire for revenge against Dahzbog in an attempt to manipulate the characters.
He allowed her escape into Natalya's body with Nikita's gold chain, which Sergei took then lost. Chagidiel places it around Natalya and draws Nikita in. Nikita, now aware of the Illusion (though not fully comprehending it) awakens her host from coma, discharges herself and leaves in search of help to destroy Dahzbog. She evades Sergei, which leaves him with a dilemma. With money drawn from Nikita's bank she hunts for someone to teach her means to destroy Dahzbog.
She finds outlet in Passion Magic through Ivan, Adrianna Chernetskii's partner. Natalya becomes student to Ivan who grows more and more impatient with Adrianna's wanton lifestyle and disinterest in magic and concern only with pleasure. Sergei may find Adrianna should he look, but she has no memory of him save their initial meeting after he tracked her down, and he has a fair idea she is not his girlfriend. The characters are tied by their link to Dahzbog's orphanage, although they may not acknowledge this.
THE BAG LADY
Petr has met with the bag lady once before. She told him to stop dreaming. He will meet with her once again, but this time for longer. On the streets of Taganka she offers shelter, fire and food to him in a small hallway off an alleyway. Embers flare from the small tin drum, and she huddles in her rags on the floor against the wall scribed in graffiti. She has caught two pigeons which she is roasting over her ample fire. This she offers and she talks to him, asking after him…
The bag lady is a guardian of sorts, but not a beneficial one. Though not awakened she sees through the Illusion and is aware of things, but she has hang-ups, specifically attachment. The more Petr invests in her the more she becomes attached to him like a mother and she will become protective, to the point of obsession. She is lonely and the past has been cruel to her, and she needs something in the Illusion to cling to. Her mental balance is dangerously low and she is sexless because of it - another reason she needs a child to endear and defend.
Whenever Petr is feeling inadequate, defenseless the Bag Lady will appear and offer help.
THE INFERNO DRUG
Nikolai, the MGU chemistry student who agreed to recreate the drug on the notes they were given in exchange for much needed funds, is not safe. One night he is attacked by agents of Malkuth and torn apart in his small cell-like hostel. His screams, though heard by many in the dorm, are ignored and it is only until the smell becomes too much that it is cleaned by the hostel management and stripped of everything. The drug notes are taken by the agents of Malkuth and delivered to Stefan Nemchenko. He manufactures a small amount of the drug and tests it. The addictive rate compounded with the cheap manufacture drives his greed and he produces it enmasse. Slowly he severs ties with the Mafia as the strength of the brotherhood grows. Stefan enlists the aid of many ex-soldiers and KGB operatives. With these new men he is well protected and dangerous. Not even the Mafia can stop him.
Stefan enlists the aid of those pushers who still worked through him as a source of drugs, binding them closer to his group. He also enlists the aid of the Hellers in Taganka. The more the drug is pushed Stefan is drawn more and more into Malkuth's control as she tries to awaken the youth through this drug created by Baba Yaga's scientists.
Soon the Inferno Drug, entitled in usual pop cliché Arkhangel, is common on the street and youth succumb to its addiction, ascribing the hellish visual experiences to the hallucinogenic qualities of the narcotic. These visuals soon become more tangible and the children begin disappearing. Naturally there are repurcussions:
- Sergei and his crew suffer from the lack of business. Marijuanna and plastilin sales are bottoming-out in competition with this designer drug, Arkhangel. Savva, in an attempt to learn more is murdered by Stefan's men. Sergei is without a partner. Savva's body is never found.
- Distortions occur within the city, remnants of the use of the drug by children. The characters can suddenly find themselves in Inferno through small pockets where the Illusion has torn. They also witness reality as it is in places.
- Pavel offers Anichka some of the drug. Does she stop him? What is her reasoning, he asks.
- Sandolphin swoops down upon the streets and the morsels of children. His purgatories grow more and more. Perhaps the characters witness him taking a youth.
- Valentin Danilenko takes advantage of the pernicious culture and abducts many teenagers while his flock damn and murder those using the corruption of the West.
- The Archbishop (Lictor of Binah) sees the affect of the drug in Taganka, the break-down of the Illusion and is frantic. He increases religious and political pressure against drugs in general and calls on the forces at hand:
Firstly he incites the Orthodox Ministers to step up their congregation's opposition to drugs by any means. Several ministers encourage violent means and small bands of religious fanatics beat children (innocent or not) and drug pushers they find.
As things deteriorate to the point where the Illusion is severely threatened, the Archbishop calls in the army who arrive via train (Note: the characters have had warning of this in a previous adventure when they saw soldiers murdering defenseless citizens) and descend upon Taganka and continue where congregation members ended. They shoot children they suspect using the drugs and what pushers they can find. Soon the streets are battlefields as ex-KGB agents retaliate against the army and hunt and kill them. The violence only increases the ties to Inferno.
At this point Gleb is concerned (he is a manifestation of Binah anyhow) and tries to rally the people with his charisma. But the people don't have guns. He may seek the characters' aid. Do they help him? Do they try to stop the army and Stefans' men? They can find allies in Anastasia and the Lorelei who fear the loss of the teenagers.
- With the Illusion crumbling so quickly and with Sandolphin's swelling banks of purgatides several escape. Notably Dimitrii's father who seeks out his son, and though finding him the perfect vessel for existing, his father has plans elsewhere and Dimitrii's body would not serve a suitable host for the level of intrigue he has in mind in the Moskov government . Besides, Dimitrii is possessed by Saint Princess' rosary beads. His father comes to him. Skin peeled back from forehead, the bloody skull is lanced with needles. His lips cut away exposing bloody and stitched gums, his father speaks awkwardly. His naked body is lacerated in threads of thin metal, where they exit the body dangling and bent. Dimitrii's father tells him to kill the angel guarding the Kotelnicheskaya Apartments and then he can find answers to his past. His father hopes to push Dimitrii to delaying his escape at the very minimum.
- Maniphestos readily escape and infect teenagers and adults alike and sexual crime is rampant. Attacks on the characters and on other people will be made.
With all of these factors what can the characters do? How do they fight the army? Or Stefan's minions? That is for them to arrange. It won't be easy, but arranging some means of eliminating Stefan would suffice and stopping his industry. Murdering all those involved in the process may be difficult.
The characters will not be safe on the streets. Attacks come from all sides, army, religious fanatics, Stefan's men. In time the army and the religious fanatics will comb buildings and even homes will feel the sting of Inferno. The damage to the Illusion will never be undone and the streets will be more dangerous than they used to be.
One escape is to contact The Lady. She can tell them that the monks that ride the worms can help them, although what they will demand she does not know. The characters can find the monks in the Metro and ask the Lictors' help. The Monks will ask for them to return a favour, then the Lictors will go back in time and kill Nikolai and take the drug formula so it never passes on, but the tears in the Illusion remain and everything above will have occurred, but has not continued to a point of no return. The characters owe the Lictors.
Additions
These are the result of playing out the above scenario and were thrown in to create momentum. They only relate to scenario and people in this campaign.
- Stefan tells Sergei he keeps dreaming about a train, vaguely remembering both of them in his dream, but not what they were doing. This happened in a future shock the characters underwent, before returning back to normal time... but reality is breaking and Stefan is remembering. (this is before Stefan tries to kill Sergei)
- Sandolphin trails Dimitrii, on the trail of his escaped father and hunts Dimitrii as Dimitrii himself stalks a girl (which he is doing because he believes she can get him protection if he offers her to a bunch of Hellers he saw in a future shock - it was what they asked in return for protection from things 'beyond').Just as Dimitrii is about to attack the Nepharite's clawed hands gently smoothed his shoulders, before leaving him for the girl - a child is more important than an escaped adult to Sandolphin at the moment, so locked in a frenzy of purgation. Sandolphin swoops with razors threaded on strands of shadow upon her. Should Dimitrii linger though...
- A character selling drugs (or trying to compete with the Arkhangel). A windowless van pulls up and a nervous man, conservative in dress asks to purchase drugs. Any sale results in religious hoods pouring out of the back of the van and giving chase, beatings if they are able. These are the religious fanatics the various churches have aroused within their faithful.
- Sergei hears people down the hall whispering about him. These grow worse and worse as the Nepharite's power grows and the Kotelnicheskaya Apartments fill in purgatory and drag Binah's seal to Inferno. These whispering grow more vocal and hint of participation in the rape of his girlfriend and the murder of his brother. Should he check the neighbours he will find empty rooms, no furniture and dust on the entire floor.
- Gleb asks the character's aid in stopping an Army truck, murdering the soldiers and taking arms against Stefan and the Army. He already has a few people inflamed by his speeches of brotherhood. Do they help him? Do they try to stop him?
- The characters, especially Anichka, are not safe. As the Maniphestos enter freely the streets in the suburb of Taganka more and more deviants are to be found.