Snicker snicker snicker

All Night’s Black Agents Artwork on the Blog

The other RPG campaign I played in more-or-less regularly with the Gamers of Kuala Lumpur crew is Night’s Black Agents where we played an group of international freelance agents with contacts with various countries’ espionage network who were embroiled in a plot to take over the world. With dogs. Who might be sentient vampires. Also, an infectious hemovirus pathogen. Here are all the drawings I made for various actual play reports I wrote for the campaign on this blog.

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He spent the whole battle dressed like this, by the way

Night’s Black Agents: Let Slip The Ovcharkas of War

Last time on Night’s Black Agents: Jacob Novazembla, Nikolai Kaidanovsky, Sami Härkönen, Brendan, Shiina “Misha” Mikado and Zlatan Kljujic were finally reunited at the heavily fortified ranch of King Valentin the “Devil’s Husband” after extracting his love, the Romani vampire Vienna “Vin” Cesarescu from the deadly R-Team, Inish Medical‘s special operations team. Leaving Faris Barrar and his men stranded in Bucharest, Romania, they fled across the Bulgarian border and the Danube river near Ruse and Shtraklevo. Day 05 Monday: Very Early Morning Brunch Planning It was late after midnight after everyone had some hours of catching up, rest and planning. Since Vin needed the Inish serum to function in daytime without adverse effects from the sun and going on a bloodlust, Nikolai – a former Russian GRU operative who was also a medical doctor – went immediately to work at the ranch’s lab trying to analyse the vial she entrusted them with. She kept the other one, […]

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Needs more onions and capsicum

Night’s Black Agents: A Sunny Day in Pripyat

Previously in Bucharest, Nikolai Kaidanovsky, Sami Härkönen, Shiina “Misha” Mikado and Zlatan Kljujic were joined by the cleaner only known as Brendan. Their recent recruit, the French thief Marcel Clouseau was lost to the bite of thousands of vampire puppies and a well-placed thermobaric warhead near Lake Titan. Nikolai, who was about to extract their ally Vienna “Vin” Cesarescu, suddenly found things at the Sunrise Hotel to be chaotic. Face to face with the lethal R-Team, Inish Medical’s operatives sent to East Europe for a job, Vin’s quick thinking saved Nikolai telling the others that he was a member of Julian Dragani‘s police cadre on their pay. But he found himself in a car fleeing the hotel with the driver Gregor, Faris Barrar, Mr. Chow and other members of Inish Medical’s R-Team operatives. The agents’ tacnet still active, they began planning. Misha and Brendan were to go directly to their teammate […]

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It should read "Concealed Sidearm"

Night’s Black Agents: Attack On Titan

Previously, Nikolai Kaidanovsky, Sami Härkönen, Shiina “Misha” Mikado and Zlatan Kljujic were joined by the French thief Marcel Clouseau in Bucharest who once dealt with Inish Medical before their exile fro Romania. (Clouseau has been relegated to a non-player character as his player had moved out of town.) At midnight, the agents met up with the freelance cleaner Brendan, who had worked with Misha and MI6 before in Eastern European black ops. Plenty of codewords were exchanged at the café between Misha and Brendan before trustworthiness was established. In the end though no one could tell if a codeword was being used. Brendan said, “Thank you, I’ll leave now.” Misha paused for a second then asked, “Is that a code phrase or are you actually leaving?” “Yes.” DAY 04 Sunday Before Dawn Sami and Zlatan prepared to support Clouseau’s undercover dog-catching job at the Harmony Wings apartment building near Lake […]

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Sami Härkönen hard at work

Night’s Black Agents: A Romanian Rendezvous

Previously, the Agents completed a week-long mission at Inish Medical, a multinational medical corporation that was using the haemocanis serum derived from blood of certain East European dog breeds to give vampiric abilities to their subjects. Inish appeared to have larger, more diabolical plans for the serum application. It was up to them to discover what. The Agents began a new mission: to gather intel on Romania. Inish took interest in criminal underworld in Bucharest, who helped them acquire special breeds of dogs in Romania before the Heimdall débâcle. They also had a secondary mission: to extract their ally Vienna “Vin” Cesarescu from Inish’s task force – the R-Team – that had a job to do in Romania. Vin was a Romani woman who displayed vampiric symptoms and abilities even before Inish abducted her and forced her to work for them. R-Team would be arriving in Bucharest on Saturday. DAY […]

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By Kenneth Hite

Night’s Black Agents: The Quiet Week At Brentford

I missed the last two Night’s Black Agents RPG sessions. Since infiltrating the freighter Heimdall in the Irish Sea, Nikolai Kaidanovsky, Sami Harkonen, Shiina “Misha” Mikado, Zlatan Kljulic and Abraham von Helsing the Russian borzoi hound (all wearing keffiyehs – even Abe) escaped and sank the ship killing the vampire hounds in the cargo compartment. They abducted the surviving technician Jones who told them everything he knew about the Emartech Pharmaceuticals‘ and Inish Medical Group‘s plans to use the haemocanis parasite-infected blood from Eastern Europe dogs for nefarious purposes. Before returning to London, Jones had to take a walk with Zlatan because he knew too much and could identify the agents. It was time to stake out Inish. They rendezvous with Jacob Novazembla – who had returned from Italy – at their headquarters, while Misha had to forego the mission to visit her daughter. Before heading to Brentford in Ealing, […]

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Puppers

Night’s Black Agents: Hipster Pirates of the Celtic Sea

GOKL returned to playing the modern age vampire conspiracy game Night’s Black Agents after a brief hiatus. Darren – Eclipse Phase‘s infomorph DANAI –  joined us as a burnt Russian agent Nikolai Kaidanovsky, a medical doctor. (No, Darren had not seen Pacific Rim.) The Story So Far The agents had been investigating Emartech Pharmaceuticals, the corporation which was experimenting and mass producing a certain type of blood. This blood had been tainted with a mutated mycoplasma haemocanis virus and had been used as a possible biological agent. In Sweden, the group had recently encountered a white supremacist terrorist group whose members were infused with this blood to wreak havoc during Eurovision 2013. The blood gave their operatives superhuman powers. The previous session was not blogged about here. Why? Because I failed a roll during an impromptu seduction scene on the head of human resources of Emartech in Cardiff, Wales. And […]

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Eurovision time

Night’s Black Agents: The Eurovision Job Ends

And thus ends the Eurovision Song Contest Job where the company investigates a white supremacist terror group in Malmö, Sweden. This arc of the game took four sessions and in the final session, things go south for the group and then some. A game campaign recap can be found here, followed by descriptions of certain scenes that led us to the finale. A thematic change in the game is that the players discovered that the Lampir-blood boosted terrorists were not merely from a fringe group, but part of the conspiracy that led to the top levels of the Försvarsdepartementet (Ministry of Defence), who was trying to bring down the Socialdepartementet (Ministry of Health and Social Services) who had become our allies in Sweden. Therefore, we were not just running our operation in neutral territory, but in a country that was steadily becoming an enemy territory. The party split up between […]

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The Two Abrahams

Night’s Black Agents: Zlatan’s Story

This is not a full actual play report of the recent Night’s Black Agents session gamemastered by Kai, but it highlights one of the reasons why I roleplay. One of the many descriptions of a tabletop RPG is a cooperative storytelling game where the gamemaster (GM) sets up a story and referees in-story conflicts and their outcomes. At the same time, players act accordingly as characters in that story and also provide foil for the GM to feed information and story points back at the players in a dramatically satisfactory way, if possible. In a way, we are reading a spy novel or watching a spy movie as we are developing it together. Here’s what happened which involved me playing the Bosnian wheel artist Zlatan Kljujic: But First, A Campaign Recap Here’s what happened beforehand during the first three game sessions of the “Eurovision Song Contest Job”: Sami Härkönen obtained […]

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Sami Harkonen

Night’s Black Agents: The Little Prince Job Ends

The second part of Night’s Black Agents game run by Kai continued two weeks later with everyone present, namely Shiina “Misha” Mikado the Japanese grifter and heavy hitter, Jacob Novazembla the Dutch hacker, Sami Härkönen the Finnish grunt and Zlatan Kljujic the Bosnian driver! The spy stuff adventure in London continues from the last episode. I did not have the time to produce a play report in my own words, so here’s Kai’s diligently written report (with bonus GM’s Commentary in italics.) Following the confrontation at Waterloo Station, Emelia Sanderson’s team took the wounded thief Vin to a secret interrogation facility in a warehouse near London City Airport. This team consisted of a former mob surgeon named Dr Kana, a former mob accountant named Sachs, and a young driver named Peltier. All of them, like Misha, were off-the-books operatives working for Emelia of MI-6. These were additional NPCs I created […]

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Night's Black Agents book cover

Night’s Black Agents: The Little Prince Job

Maulidurrasul, a national holiday, fell on a Thursday, and the GOKL guys invited me to play the new GUMSHOE system RPG Night’s Black Agents. The venue was at Doug’s new place which was not 3 klicks way from me along a straight road. I was happy to join them. Night’s Black Agents allow players to roleplay spies in a contemporary setting… where vampires exist in the shadows, and some of them call the shots. The group consisted of Shiina “Misha” Mikado the Japanese grifter and heavy hitter, Jacob Novazembla the Dutch hacker, Sami Härkönen the Finnish grunt and me, Zlatan Kljujic the Bosnian driver. We had been called to the Stafford London, a hotel at Saint James’s Place, which was across the way from Buckingham Palace by Air Marshal Morgan Prince of the British Ministry of Defence. Air Marshal Prince had foolishly allowed his son, Errol Kimberly Prince, to have […]

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