TOE-FAT COUNTRYSIDE: Session Five (part 1)

Bill interrogated the two ISI agents using his red beard and faked accent via fluency in Chechen to pretend to be part of the Taliban. "Just because the big man is gone doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. Now tell me, why does the ISI care about a UFOlogist?" In the scenario, agents Mirza and Kalmati are written as unflappable and tight-lipped. But I figured the recent course of events was enough to shake them up. Mirza explained al-Zahabi had tipped them off to a downed aircraft in North Waziristan and that the higher ups were very interested. There were machinations going on, but the conspiracy didn't go all the way to the top. It was just a new project within the ISI, albeit a large one. Jim drove them to the hospital where Chester unceremoniously rolled the unconscious Kalmati out of the truck bed and onto the ground. As they drove away, they could see Mirza frantically making a few calls on his phone. Pretending to be Taliban was a smart move, as ordinarily the ISI agents tell al-Zahabi the CIA is looking for him and that he needs to get out of town.

In the Agents' new unofficial headquarters in a hotel room, Taylor attempted to treat Jim's wounds. The dice gods were fickle, striking Jim down with a fumbled First Aid. Thankfully, Taylor also had Surgery and a critical success up his sleeve. A very painful hour later and Jim was theoretically feeling a lot better.

Meanwhile, William "Big Bill" Chester of the CIA phoned his home agency to request an Unusual Expense. He wanted to meet the courier at his original asking price, both as a way to apologize for getting one of his men shot and to cultivate him as a long-term source, as al-Zahabi clearly had the trust of several terrorist organizations. Unfortunately, the Bureaucracy roll failed. The CIA wasn't about to hand over a briefcase full of money for an unvetted source. Still, they approved his request for some money, a Standard Expense's worth. He then shifted his efforts to writing a formal request to the ISI to speak with Akhtar Ghazali. The response was swift: "fuck you, she's being released tomorrow," but phrased more diplomatically.

As the sun set, Gabriel and Jim set off to break into Ghazali's house again. Jim's HUMINT could tell the janitor didn't need to be bribed to keep quiet, but they bribed him anyway for some bleach, just in case. Jim began dabbing bleach onto every trace of DNA-laden evidence he could find while Gabriel searched the Ghazali's home office. It was small, with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and a knock-off "I Want to Believe" poster on the wall (it just said "I  Believe"). There was also a laptop and a heavily annotated world map and copy of The Mothman Prophecies. She'd marked out the South Atlantic Anomaly and Point Nemo as well as the Bermuda Triangle and the lesser known 'Tibetan Triangle.' This piqued special agent Almeida's interest, and he began to excitedly explain the significance to Jim. The mothman book was a bit cheesy, but everyone has a silly pet theory. The map, though, that was evidence they were dealing with someone who knew what they were talking about. Jim patiently listened as he searched Ghazali's closet, eventually finding a receipt for a storage locker across the street and a key. The key isn't there in the scenario, but I added it because no one had any sort of lock-picking know how. Plus, it makes sense that it'd be there, since the Agents had stopped the ISI agents from ransacking her apartment and taking the key.

The group wasn't done for the night just yet. Bill disguised Jim as a North African city-slicker, a cover strengthened by his fluency in Arabic, English, and French. He approached the storage facility and distracted the owner/custodian while Gabriel snuck in through the back. After an hour of language barriers, haggling, asking touristy questions about Peshawar, and complaining about geopolitics, Gabriel had pilfered the contents of Ghazali's locker: an SD card and a weird rock wrapped in a prayer rug. 

Back in their hotel room, the Agents puzzled over their new finds. The rock kinda glowed in the dark and everyone was suspicious of it, so they wrapped it back up in the prayer rug and stuffed it behind the toilet where it probably couldn't irradiate anyone. Gabriel didn't have a lot of Anthropology, but he could at least tell the rug had traditionally Pakistani patterns. Jim identified signs of wear and use from being used in a rural area with his Archeology. Now it was time to watch the video on the SD card. A horned man sprawls seemingly dead on the ground, face bisected with a too-wide and pointy-toothed smile. Then his eyelids flutter open, revealing pitch-black eyes. Gabriel identified the man as "what happens when black-eyed children grow up," though he admitted he'd never heard of adult forms like this before. I told Jim's player as an aside that with his high Occult, he knew that BECs were probably a hoax. He chose to voice this in character and a small argument ensued. Meanwhile, Big Bill tried to get on the phone with a geologist from the Directorate of Science and Technology. They were about to wave him off, when one of their scientists overheard the call and demanded to be patched in. After a minute or two, he identified it as some kind of lunar regolith, a 'moon rock.' Jim and Gabriel stopped fighting to high-five, as that had been their initial suspicion. Stuck with an excitable geology nerd, Bill attempted to extricate himself from the call, "Oh, a moon rock? Huh, well I suppose if anyone would have one it'd be Osama. Shit, pretend you didn't hear that," and hung up.

Before they went to sleep, the Agents planned their moves for the next day. They were going to meet up with Ghazali as soon as she was released and pay al-Zahabi the visit (and cash) they'd promised. Hopefully that'd leave them with enough intelligence to know what leads to pursue next.