Magically Altering Evidence

 A thread on the Steve Jackson Games Forums about using Glamor or other means to magically tamper with or remove evidence from a crime scene.

There are a lot of ways to go about this.

Obscure (Forensics) would give a penalty to the skill to analyze the crime scene. However it has a duration and though that can be bought up it adds cost and is more suited to illusions.

Telekinesis, especially with One Skill only is a good way to alter and especially move evidence.

Of course you can also destroy evidence with Innate Attack, though that is likely to be messy and just call more attention to things!

Payload is good for sneaking evidence offsite or carrying things in to frame someone else.

Ultimately my choice is Control from GURPS Powers. 

Control (Evidence) is a very broad category so fair at 40/level, making it rather pricey. However that would let you manipulate solids, liquids, and gases and even a single level would handle most evidence. Even minor changes could ruin evidence for practical use, remove fingerprints, reshape bullets to hide ballistics, move chemical traces, etc. Alternatively, instead of  just damaging things beyond useability or moving material the evidence could be altered to frame someone else or make it look more like an accident.. This should definitely require skills and knowledge to do but the user could change fingerprints, writing, DNA, etc. to try and match another sample if desired.

Create (Evidence) with Destruction is another way to go and fits a spell or power that simply removes evidence.

Another variant would be a cheaper version of Control (Evidence) [5/level] that required a contest of skills or a per level penalty. The tradeoff of an absolute for a minor penalty justifies a much cheaper cost.

AEON Season 7, Session 4 Family and Walls fall Apart

 

Cast

• Amie-Belle T. W. Lee aka Whisper (Played by Curtis): Cold War era super-soldier/spy that got put in the Freezer, because she got poisoned. After getting thawed out and cured she tried to back to work, and was given an “adjustment period”. Uncle Sam called 2 years later, with work… because once you’re in, you’re in for life. Tagline: “In and out without a whisper.”
• Beauregard K. “Bo” Ratnam aka Wirerat (Played by Brice): Technopath, inventor, and hacker. He specializes in co-opting enemy systems and tech assets. Tagline: “Nice tech – I’ll borrow that.
• Stainless Steel Rat aka “Sir” (NPC Ally): Bo’s best friend and assistant. A sentient drone in the shape of a stylized shiny metal rat mindlinked to Bo. Specialties are rapid repair construction and modifications. Imagine if K-9 and R2D2 made a baby and it looks a bit like a rodent. Tagline: “Repairs and upgrades in progress”
• Derrick K. Ratnam aka Ledgerdemain (NPC Ally): Spin doctor and media liaison for Project VANGUARD. Twin to Bo. Tagline: “Well, actually that’s not how it happened.
• Rafe Hanlon aka Nyx (played by Chris D.): An umbrakinetic petty thief still on work release several years later, on his way to becoming a true agent and hero. Tagline: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
• Layla A. de Blackburn aka Nox (NPC): CIA-trained child assassin all grown up to be Daddy’s Little Monster. Maybe a little mad. Argues with her shadow often. Tagline: “No, we shouldn’t do that…should we?”
• Vincenzo L. dePrezzo aka Threshold (Played by Rory): Doctor, Mathematician, and Scientist (yes, capitals) and Spatial Manipulator. Threshold can bend space like a pretzel, teleport, obliterate things, and has extraordinary senses. He’d rather be in a research lab than fight. Better known for his work with Doctors Without Borders, the United Nations, and disaster relief than famous battles. Tagline: “I can be there in a snap!”
• June B. O'Neill aka Prodigy (NPC): Savant with hyper-intelligence that may have cracked the universal power-dampening conundrum. Fresh out of the Meraki Institute for the advanced and gifted. Extremely intelligent, but young (she's 16).
• Rudy A. Coldwater aka Gimmick (NPC): Mildly hyper-intelligent savant. Stutters. Makes very accurate guesses. Typical nerd, not yet 20. Wants to make a difference, assigned to support duties.

OOC Notes

Everyone showed up, one play a bit late due to internet issues. So we did a bit of a retcon since last session and played catchup for the first part of the session. I'm not fully sure where everything is at but think most of it will work out the same.

Watercooler Chat

A week has passed since the last session and its Monday morning. The new hires have not all been brought aboard yet, and apparently some not yet interviewed (kinda murky).

So were still very short staffed, Nyx and Nox are sleeping in one of the two bedrooms, Whisper is on patrol and drops in for lunch. 

Wirerat is still on bedrest from his brain surgery and being a slightly annoying patient, keeps trying to get people to sneak in food for him. Threshold is monitoring his condition and treating him. Wirerat should still be in the hospital but Threshold is a highly qualified M.D. and has access to powers and equipment that can monitor his condition better than an ordinary hospital. 

Gimmick has come on board and is fantastic at handling paperwork. Gimmick has already gotten some permits, scheduled interviews and started the approval process for the new members. They need to get certified, pass some tests and get authorized by the city and state.

June (Prodigy) drops by to speak with Nyx, her father is missing and had previously told her to go to him if there was any trouble. Her father is a guard at Rykers and had met Nyx in that capacity.

While waiting June talks with Whisper and Threshold, revealing that she never expected to be hired and had just interviewed in hopes of talking with Nyx. Threshold explains that was not necessary as the team is very open to the community. She also demonstrates her power-dampening tech on threshold and he is impressed.

Whisper sneaks in some food to Wirerat over Thresholds objections. Truthfully Wirerat could probably survive one of Nyx's dumpster diving meals, much less quality food prepared by Whisper. However he takes his medical duties very seriously and strongly favors proper procedure and protocol.

Some minor griping about the tarps covering a blown out wall are made, but Bricklayer is not scheduled to rebuild the base for a few weeks.

Family Matters

Nyx is woken up and talks privately with June. Her father has been missing for about 4 days and she is concerned and was told to reach out to Nyx if anything happened.

They go to his apartment in Brooklyn to see what they can find. Nyx spots that the lock has been picked and June notices that the penny didn't drop. Apparently he is paranoid enough that he places a penny on the top of the door whenever he goes out. June notices a few things out of place and an empty picture frame. 

Then the world blows up!

A rocket hits the apartment from across the street, critically wounding June and injuring Nyx. SSiR phones home, getting Wirerat in the game. Wirerat puts the call out and Threshold and Whisper arrive on scene. SSir undoes the neck tourniquet Nyx applied to June (crit fail on First-Aid) and after a quick scan Threshold warps her to Cedar Sinai where he works part time as a Resident.

Nox tries to get Nyx to a dark room to heal up but takes him to Cedar Sinai due to his protests to look after June. Nyx then fills out paperwork for June and is treated by MedEvac. Apparently, Junes father set it up so Nyx would take over guardianship of June. MedEvac is working the front desk and heals Nyx then takes him to June and heals her.

We pretty much end the session there.

Aftermath

Threshold did not recognize the explosive used but Whisper did, recalling reading about it in some classified papers. The rocket launcher self destructed and there is very little useable evidence at the scene,

Nyx, Nox, Threshold, Wirerat, and Whisper all checked the scene over. Threshold went back for a further check after June was released to Nyx.

The GM informed us that the next few sessions will be in fast time, probably over a few days.

AEON C-Team: Season 7 Session 2 & 3

 

Cast

• Amie-Belle T. W. Lee aka Whisper (Played by Curtis): Cold War era super-soldier/spy that got put in the Freezer, because she got poisoned. After getting thawed out and cured she tried to back to work, and was given an “adjustment period”. Uncle Sam called 2 years later, with work… because once you’re in, you’re in for life. Tagline: “In and out without a whisper.”
• Beauregard K. “Bo” Ratnam aka Wirerat (Played by Brice): Technopath, inventor, and hacker. He specializes in co-opting enemy systems and tech assets. Tagline: “Nice tech – I’ll borrow that.
• Stainless Steel Rat aka “Sir” (NPC Ally): Bo’s best friend and assistant. A sentient drone in the shape of a stylized shiny metal rat mindlinked to Bo. Specialties are rapid repair construction and modifications. Imagine if K-9 and R2D2 made a baby and it looks a bit like a rodent. Tagline: “Repairs and upgrades in progress”
• Derrick K. Ratnam aka Ledgerdemain (NPC Ally): Spin doctor and media liaison for Project VANGUARD. Twin to Bo. Tagline: “Well, actually that’s not how it happened.
• Rafe Hanlon aka Nyx (played by Chris D.): An umbrakinetic petty thief still on work release several years later, on his way to becoming a true agent and hero. Tagline: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
• Layla A. de Blackburn aka Nox (NPC): CIA-trained child assassin all grown up to be Daddy’s Little Monster. Maybe a little mad. Argues with her shadow often. Tagline: “No, we shouldn’t do that…should we?”
• Vincenzo L. dePrezzo aka Threshold (Played by Rory): Doctor, Mathematician, and Scientist (yes, capitals) and Spatial Manipulator. Threshold can bend space like a pretzel, teleport, obliterate things, and has extraordinary senses. He’d rather be in a research lab than fight. Better known for his work with Doctors Without Borders, the United Nations, and disaster relief than famous battles. Tagline: “I can be there in a snap!”

Off Topic

Its been a rough several months for the campaign, We have had 3 game sessions since picking up for the new season and its hurt my motivation for writing up the session recaps.  Sorry about that!

Session 2: The Bridge

Two black capes attacked the Brooklyn? bridge, for no obvious reason. Bombardo and Behemoth, a blaster and brick respectively. Both have a record of alleged murders but have never been caught and tried and both considered mercenaries. Threshold portaled everyone to the bridge using a nearby dashcam for the targeting link. Several emergency vehicles were already on scene and there was a large hole in the bridge with some cars on fire.

Whisper went into stealth mode and snuck up towards Behemoth. Nyx and Nox quickly moved towards them and Threshold used his space folding to give Whisper a boost forward.

Nyx bound Behemoth in darkness and Whisper then hit him in the head with her hatchet (critical called shot). Nox encased them all in darkness but Bombardo flew up above the darkness and blasted a lot of people with a lot of small explosive attacks.

Nyx then portaled up to her and took her out with his darkness tentacles.

Fight ended in a few seconds!

SSR and Threshold did not have time to do much fighting and got in on the emergency first aid and recovery services. Wirerat traced their phones and ran into some kind of serious black ice that nearly killed him with a massive brain hemorrhage.

Threshold got him to the hospital and did some emergency brain surgery to keep him alive. He was in recovery for a week after.

Session 3: Aftermath and Recruitment

Nyx took the recovered burner phones and using his street contacts found where they were purchased but it was pretty much a dead end as to finding the person who hired them. At least so far, Wirerat may be able to follow up on some of that info later.

Threshold spent most of his time over the next week taking care of the injured.

We determined that we need more staff so we had better patrol coverage and did some job interviews.

We picked up several candidates, more on that next recap.

Post Take

The GM has decided to try and run if even one person shows up, normally the rule is 3 but we have two players who are often unable to make the game due to other conflicts.

We feel that the bad guys were paid to attack the bridge, possibly to test our team. If so they would have learned that we can respond in force and very quickly and that we have good crowd control (darkness), stealth, and at least two of our members (Nox and Whisper) can hit pretty darn hard. Much of this was already well known and Threshold has a public identity and I thin his disintegration powers are fairly well known, though its possible people underestimate them as he hasn't often used them on camera or in public. though an older metahuman he has only recently been active in a crime fighting role with most of his activities involving disaster relief. Wirerat as a gadgeteer is going to be fairly unpredictable, and Nyx is a long time white cape having worked for Team Vanguard for a few years. So they likely learned the most about Whisper, our super soldier.