The D-Listers have set up regular patrols through town. While Velocimancer and Aria are out making their rounds, they’re approached, surprisingly, by another Saurid – the first Velocimancer has met on our world.
This Saurid has chosen “Natalie” as her human name, and says she’s heard all about the D-Listers and their famous leader, Velocimancer, and had come to them in hopes of finding aid. She says she recently escaped from a facility in the remote woods of West Virginia where a group of men are keeping a number of Saurids in captivity and performing biological experiments on them; she’s not sure of the goal.
V of course wonders if her missing family members could be there as well.
All squeeze into the BB-mobile and head off on a road trip. On the way, Natalie tells them the normal layout: 1 guard per tower w/tranq dart rifles. 1 guard in each guardhouse w/access to either blaster or tranq. “Boss guard” & 6 more guards w/blasters in barracks, 3 scientists in lab. There were 6 other saurid prisoners when she left. But they were talking about a “special shipment” from one of the other facilities coming soon.
Natalie has them pull of the road near where she emerged on the highway during her escape, and leads them toward the compound. As they approach it, she becomes visibly afraid, and finally says, “I’m sorry, I just can’t go back there!” – then sprints off into the woods.
Familiar figures are standing in the guard towers – Intercrime soldiers! (Their old friend Management Trainee Higgins has been re-assigned here as well.) There are several black SUVs parked inside the compound entrance. Characters need to decide how to approach compound. At some point they’ll be detected & Higgins will a) recognize them, and b) turn the mutated saurid against them.
During fighting, Natalie will sneak back in & set other Saurids free, some of who will attack guards.
Rescued Saurids return with group to base. Contact w/ECP results in someone driving the IC SUV with Saurids in it to a location where an on-call dimension traveler can send them home. They make arrangements ot transport the large mutated on to a remote facility where a specialist can try to reverse his mutation.
None of the prisoners are related to V, but they do say they overheard mentions of other, similar facilities, though they don’t know where.
Notes
This one was something of a filler episode. I wanted to touch just a little bit on Velocimancer’s backstory, but not too far yet as it will be a while before we really get into that. I also wanted to create the understanding that a little time had passed since Chapter 5, because Busybody is about experience Some Stuff ™ that needs a bit of a delay to get rolling.
The Intercrime soldiers used here were the same as back in Chapter 2, but added tranq-dart guns. Higgins was his old self, but with a few added experience points thrown into boosting his base stats to make him a little more formidable.
How it played out
The team started off strong with a distraction – Velocimancer running past the compound, creating the impression that a prisoner had somehow escaped, drew off a team of guards at the front gate for an ambush and drew the tower guards’ attentions so that Aria was able to grapnel one down over the wall to a very uncomfortable landing.
Eventually, though, it all turned to a big dust-up in the middle of the compound. The tranq rifles used by some of the guards were something of a game-changer: they enabled the henchmen to knock out a number of the D-Listers – including several of the Busybodies, early in the fight – so this was more of a challenge than anyone expected. There was a real chance of defeat for the team; the addition of Natalie and the freed captives to the fight really made a difference.