This is the third and final installment of our play through of Blood Coda, from The Edom Files by Pelgrane Press. If you want to start at the beginning of the mission and get a feel for the player characters, you need to go here. Spoiler alert: do not read if you think there is a danger of your playing this scenario, although it might be of some use to GMs planning on running it.
The agents were heading back into the centre of London following their encounter with a sniper in Docklands. They had with them Vasile Costin, a Romanian Securitate agent who had been infiltrated into the Ballet Brasov, and now wanted out. Realising they had little time to spare, as it was now after 1500 hours, and would soon be dark, the team headed back to Covent Garden to Mart Street.
En route the group broke into yet another Catholic church, with this time Willis going in to secure some holy wafers and some more holy water. Reaching Mart Street, they left Costin in the car while Varoutte hid holy wafers around the front door of the address Costin had indicated. The building looked like it was being used as the administrative offices of the Royal Opera House.
Henley spent Architecture to realise there was a back door to the place. The team entered there, again leveraging Varoutte's expertise with locks. Once inside they started searching the basement level and soon came across a room with no working lights and what their flashlights picked up as a large wooden box. The agents entered, and closed the door behind them. As they started checking the walls for holes, and putting holy wafers in them, they began to hear a strange rustling sound. Somebody then locked the door behind them.
Out of the walls came hundreds of rats, attacking several of the agents. Varoutte ran to the door and started picking the lock using his Open Sesame cherry. Quentin opened the wooden box, to find it contained nothing but soil. Muller, Henley and Willis desperately defended Quentin as he poured holy water over the soil and sprinkled it with wafers. Varoutte got the door open, only to be confronted by the form of Martin Petrescu. The Swiss agent pulled his gun and Petrescu tried to snatch it from him, but lightning reflexes saved Varoutte's bacon, and he dodged aside. Two other Romanians with pistols loomed behind Petrescu.
Having killed most of the rats by stamping on them, Muller and Willis drew guns and ran forward. A firefight broke out in which more than one of our agents was hit, but both Romanian thugs were shot dead. Henley shot Petrescu in the EYE with a crossbow. The dancer managed to pull the missile out, and there was evidence the wound was healing already, but was promptly shot again in the throat and killed this time (much poring over the Gumshoe combat rules here).
Quentin emptied the soil from the box all over the floor, and the agents fled before the gunfire attracted any attention (+1 Heat). Reaching their car, they found that Costin was dead, his throat cut. Callously, Quentin hauled him out of the car and left his body on the pavement. Willis decided it was best to leave Petrescu's corpse for the Met pathologists - Edom could retrieve it later for examination.
The agents now retreated to a nearby pub to listen to the police sirens, sample the ale and refresh some of their pools, before moving onto the hotel. Here Henley created a new Network Contact (Vivian Lee), the night manager, who was happy to let the team into the hotel and search all the Ballet Brazov rooms and baggage. Nothing suspicious was found. Lee confirmed that Ileana Dragoi did visit the hotel occasionally - at night - but did not stay there. By this time it was dark.
The next step was the Royal Opera House, where the company was preparing its opening performance of The Strigoi. Sneaking into the Opera House with the assistance of Henley's contact Harvey Cole, they entered the main auditorium and saw the ballet company rehearsing on stage, in full costume, and being directed by Dragoi. In the front row, they spotted Quentin Watson.
Henley decided to take aim with his crossbow, and shot at Dragoi, hitting her in the chest and downing her instantly (12 damage on a called shot to the heart). Most of the dancers screamed and scattered. Muller, Willis and Quentin ran towards the stage. Russian ballerina Daria Ivanovna, scooped up Dragoi's insensate body, but before she could do anything, was shot in the head and expired. Another fleeing - innocent - ballerina was winged and fell as a hail of small arms fire peppered the stage. Romanian ballerina (and Varoutte love interest) Stela Lahovary ran across the stage, jumped onto a pillar, and climbed the wall, up onto the ceiling. Muller fired at her, but missed.
Quentin ran for the stage, and was almost tackled by Watson, but he expertly evaded the rogue Conservative fixer (Athletics contest). Jumping onto the stage, Quentin grabbed Dragoi and started running back with her. Watson exchanged fire with Willis and Muller, but was killed.
Lahovary now dropped onto Quentin from the cieling, knocking him flat. As he struggled to get up again, Lahovary was shot and collapsed over him. Quentin shoved her aside, just in time to see dozens of rats converging on him from all directions. Henley arrived and grabbed Dragoi, and then jumped onto the seats. He ran from seat back to seat back as he wended his way to the back door, out of reach of the rats. Quentin followed.
At this point the rear doors burst open, and in charged Denis Baicu, in full costume and armed with two pistols, which he used to start shooting at Muller and Willis, winging both of them. They started shooting back. With all this going on, Varoutte began heading for another exit (the rat swarm was focused on Henley and it is a BIG auditorium); a hand reached out and grabbed his ankle in a steely grip. It was Lahovary, who was still - barely - alive. Varoutte burned a point in Negotiation to persuade her to let him rescue her. He picked up the ballerina and ran for the exit.
Muller and Willis managed to shoot down Baicu, at which point the rats began to disperse. The agents fled from the opera house, carrying the seemingly wounded Dragoi, and escaped in their van. Varoutte fled by another exit, with Lahovary, and took the car back to his apartment in Knightsbridge. By the time he got there, he found to his shock that she had almost completely healed her wounds.
We concluded with the MI6 agents driving at night down the A3 on their way to Hampshire and the Edom HQ, with a comatose vampire in the back. And with Varoutte and Lahovary boarding a flight to Geneva together the following day...
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