Let's Hit a Target (Night's Black Agents)

Hit. The agents must kill someone 

Briefly: the Bankhaus is an investment bank with a murky past and has offices in several major cities, of which the Conspiracy has control over the Paris and Zürich branches thanks to its control over Lisle Klingemann, daughter of the boss and a senior partner in her own right, and Albert Ahrens, controller of the Zürich branch and Lisle's devoted slave. The Bankhaus is mainly interested in software development companies, particularly in jurisdictions within Europe, though it has a significant sideline in mining, especially in East Asia, a holdover from its former interests. 

It has swanky offices, lawyers, a ton of assets on the book and off, and when it makes calls they get answered by senior politicians and members of the financial elite. It almost doesn't matter whether this is a Supernatural, Damned, Alien or Mutant game; all factions are going to want a piece of the Bankhaus whether to get access to its bottomless bank vaults or for more esoteric reasons. 

Day of the Jackal (1973)

Wetwork is one of the go-to plots for spy stories. It has drama, action, and an exciting goal. Added to that, there’s a wide range of options: will you opt for poison, a knife in the dark, a sniper’s bullet – or are explosive endings more to your taste?  

James Bond had to carry out two assassinations without a hitch before claiming the coveted 00 designation.  He did the first with a sniper attack, while the second was a much more up-close and personal approach. The Jackal, consummate professional, took on the assassination of Charles De Gaulle and intended to get him with a mercury-tipped sniper round at a distance of about 400 yards. Meanwhile Jason Bourne, inspiration for the Brainwashed Black-Ops Badass build, is a close combat specialist who dropped out of the program after a failed assassination in which he had to hide aboard a private yacht for five days to get close enough to the target to do the deed. Jason Statham’s Mechanic specializes in deaths that look like accidents, and goes to great lengths to make that happen. 

A Hit has a few things in common with Heists, in that the narrative is mostly about the Planning and the Aftermath, less about the Execution. As a general rule you want to make sure that your narrative is Thrilling, and it can be difficult to make the Planning stages of a Hit Thrilling. That’s doubly so if the agent’s intended hit strategy involves sitting at a distance of 400 yards and putting an explosive bullet between someone’s ears.  

No, for it to be Thrilling there needs to be stakes, action, consequences, and for that it’s worth going back to the Jackal – with a touch of Jason Statham’s Mechanic. 

In those stories it’s not about the moment when a finger tightens on a trigger. It’s about how difficult it is to get to a point where you can pull a trigger. In the Jackal the narrative is ultimately about the Jackal’s tortuous progress across France to reach a certain point at a certain time, and how often he comes close to being exposed or caught. In mechanical terms, the entire novel is an Extended Heat chase with the prize at the end being a President’s head.  

Mechanic: Ressurection (2016)

Statham’s Mechanic operates in very similar circumstances but the thrill is never in the kill itself. It’s in the climb across a skyscraper’s front to get to a point where he can make the kill. The narrative is almost entirely prologue with the sudden release of … water … being the climactic moment. Again, in mechanical terms the scene is an extended Thrilling Infiltration, to get to a point where the Bang-and-Burner’s prepackaged toy can do the most good. 

The actual killing takes seconds. It’s the minutes you spend getting to the point where you can kill that makes a Hit a Hit.   

In an RPG narrative you also have the option of the escape plan, which is usually hinted at in novels and movies but rarely becomes a significant part of the story. A Jackal may say that the ability to get away with it is all-important, and it is to him as a character, but it’s not important to the story of The Day of the Jackal. Similarly Statham’s Mechanic may get away without a scratch despite impossible odds, but the movie doesn’t spend much time showing you how he does it. What’s important is that he does it. 

Whereas an RPG story has the option of making the Aftermath the meat of the story, because the Aftermath can be Thrilling. It will definitely involve some kind of chase moment in the immediate aftermath of the Hit, and may involve a significant Extended Heat chase across the geopolitical landscape. This probably works best in Dust and Mirrors games, where betrayal and murky allegiances are paramount. However, it’s possible – and might be a lot of fun – to start the story with the target of the Hit collapsing in a welter of blood, and your agents then have to somehow get away with it. 

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

Marathon Man (1976)

The Three Days of the Condor is almost entirely an Aftermath narrative; there is a Hit at the beginning, and the protagonist has to deal with the consequences. The Boys From Brazil starts with a series of Hits, after which the protagonists have to unravel the complicated series of events that got to that point and discover the real reason for the Hits.  Marathon Man has a similar dynamic, with slightly more time spent in the Planning stage.  

All these are Dust narratives but they have one other thing in common: the protagonists of those stories aren’t the ones carrying out the Hit. They’re the ones that have to live with the consequences. This is because all these stories, and Dust narratives in general, are morality tales, and it’s difficult to make a killer the hero of a morality tale. A hero of a thriller, sure; but someone who pulls the trigger from 400 yards away is, at best, morally dubious.  

In that sense a Dust tale inherits the Noir mantle. Noirs are often morality tales as well, and the protagonist usually ends up getting martyred. 

All that said, let’s go to the Bankhaus. 

There are all kinds of targets here. Lisle and Albert are the obvious ones, but really anyone sufficiently interesting and plot-relevant can be the target. Or it could be a more crooked narrative where the subject of the Hit leads to the real Objective of the mission. Say, a crime carried out in such a way that it looks as if Lisle or Albert must be the killer. 

It’s generally the case in stories like these that the difficulty of getting to the target and carrying out the Hit provides the Thrills of the story. It’s one thing to smother someone in their sleep, something else to creep through a small army of guards, deactivate the alarm system, avoid the attack dogs and then smother someone in their sleep. That’s what makes Hitman’s Agent 47 the top of his class; not that he knows how to use a pillow, but that he can get to a point where the pillow is useful. 

So to spike the difficulty the Hit either has to take place in a difficult location, or be surrounded by difficult safeguards, or both. It’s not enough to get the door key; you need a biometric key set to one particular person’s keyprint. It’s not enough to walk into the nightclub; you need to get into the VIP lounge, and from there into the hidden VIP lounge. That’s not just a bodyguard, it’s a Renfielded rhoid-rage bodyguard with more points in Martial Arts than six Jackie Chans combined. 

Let’s say that the target is Lisle and that, for plot reasons, the Hit has to take place at an exclusive sex club in Berlin to throw suspicion on Albert. That knocks off two Node head honchos in one fell swoop. It has to look as if Albert did it and that means he can’t have an easily provided alibi, so timing is critical. It can look like a murder but it has to be his murder, and that means unless he’s suddenly discovered his inner Schwarzenegger it can’t be an overtly violent hand-to-hand killing. Poison, bullet, knife in the back, all these methods are on the table, but not something that would require more strength or skill than Albert has. Plus, if Albert is left-handed, say, better make sure you use your left hand too. Let’s also say that in order for this to work Lisle’s partner for the evening has to be distracted, so they don’t become an unexpected witness to something unpleasant. 

That’s a lot of moving parts, so there’s plenty of things for a team of agents to do. Someone has to keep Albert busy, someone else has to keep Lisle’s partner busy, there’s Infiltration, there’s probably also Digital Intrusion (either to control the security cameras or to wipe the records – perhaps both), all of which has to be timed perfectly which means someone has to be coordinating the whole thing. Not an easy job.   

What happens when we flip a Hit and make it so the story has to be about preventing a killing?

The trick there is, a lot of the things that make a scenario Thrilling happen to the killer, not the people trying to stop him. The hero of the Day of the Jackal is policeman Claude Lebel, but you wouldn't know it from the film and you barely know it from the novel, though I doubt that was author Forsythe's intent. It's just that the Jackal does all the eye-catching action-centric stuff. Claude makes a ton of phone calls and reports on the regular to the authorities in charge of the case, but in terms of directly affecting the narrative Claude has no role at all, except at the end.

Sherlock Holmes has a better option. His antagonist Colonel Moran is a sniper and game hunter without peer, who carries out his hits with an air-powered rifle that kills with a lead bullet, not a million miles away from the Jackal's bolt-action rifle with its mercury-tipped bullets. The idea being accuracy, plus an exceptionally lethal payload.

Holmes pulls it off by making himself the target and ambushing Moran - and no, that's not a spoiler, it's a Holmes story. If you haven't worked out that Holmes (nearly) always wins by now, you never will. It's a bit like expecting a Bond villain to triumph. The minute Bond steps into the ring the only question is how the villain will lose, not when or if. Make it so the agents aren't reacting to someone else's action but are themselves taking action, and the narrative becomes Thrilling again.

So in a reverse Hit story your best bet is to allow the agents to be the targets, either because they willingly put a target on their backs or because this is a Conspyramid reaction to something the agents did. Pit them against the best of the best. That way the narrative becomes personal, and if you're doing your job right the agents will become deeply paranoid.  Channel your inner Mike Pondsmith. Make them check under the bed and avoid all windows. If they can't bear to drink anything other than bottled water on the off-chance you've poisoned the martinis, you've done your job well.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Guns for Hire: Night's Black Agents

The Guardian recently published an article about academic investigations into the murky world of hitmen, which I highly recommend. Though it naturally has a British focus, it's not unreasonable to extrapolate a similar situation across Europe. In brief, the study divides hitmen into four distinct groups:

• The Dilettante. This killer is a complete novice, who until this point never had any criminal record. Circumstances - usually financial pressure - have forced this person to kill for cash. Like any novice, the dilettante is prone to mistakes, and may lose the will to carry through with the deed. Paul Cyrne, holder of the Guinness World Record for longest 24 hour underwater swimming, is one such. Penury persuaded him to fall in with Graham Birchwood's scheme to murder Birchwood's wife Sharon and collect the insurance payout. 
• The Novice. This killer knows about as much as the dilettante when it comes to murder, but does have a criminal record. The novice has almost certainly participated in some kind of violent crime before taking up killing, but has never killed for cash before. The novice is very likely to leave some evidence behind at the scene of the crime.
• The Journeyman. This is an experienced assassin with several kills to his credit. The journeyman knows enough to clean up after himself, but may make mistakes. When gangster David King aka Rolex Dave was gunned down outside a gym in 2003, his killers were of the journeymen type. Though the operation was meticulously planned and executed, the killers were traced because one of them left a plastic glove behind in the getaway vehicle. The palm print inside the glove led the police to one of the shooters, and after that tracing their movements before and after the attack was straightforward.
• The Master. This is an experienced killer with an unknown number of kills to his credit. The master is identified as such because of the care taken in carrying out the attack, and the lack of evidence left behind. Glagow gang boss Frank McPhee's killer is identified as a master. McPhee was sniped at a distance by someone using a .22 rifle, and his killer has never been identified. 

It's remarkable how little cash is involved. A novice can be had for just £200, while a more experienced hand might cost as much as £15,000. As a point of comparison, you can buy a decent used car for something like £5,000, more or less.  

What does this say about the world of Night's Black Agents?

Well, for one thing, if gunmen can be had so easily, it's probably fair to say that assets of any sort can be classified in a similar system, and at a comparable price tag.  The dilettante/novice/journeyman/master model could as easily apply to hackers, for example, as to killers. Or thieves, or spies, or any other variation on the human asset theme.

That includes the kind of occult assets a conspyramid might do business with, as well as the sort the protagonists are going to be hiring. For there will be times when the players say 'this job doesn't need our direct involvement; we can contract it out. But to who, and how much?'

The conspyramid will be interested in disposable assets for all sorts of reasons, both organized and disorganized. By that I mean that there are times when the conspiracy deliberately sets out to hire outside help for a definite purpose - organized - and there are also times when elements inside the conspiracy hires outsiders for reasons of its own. This is most likely when, as per Double Tap, the conspiracy is breaking down and it's everyone for themselves. At that point a node under threat may well pay off a few contract killers to take out its immediate rivals. It's reasonable to assume that an organized effort is disinterested in anything less that Journeyman class, while a disorganized effort takes what it can get.

With all that in mind, consider the same classification, applied to occult assets:

• Dilettante. This asset has no real knowledge of the nature of the conspiracy or horror in general, except for what it has seen in the movies. From a stats perspective, it's comparable with the Civilian in the main book, with Hand to Hand 4, Shooting 2 and slightly higher Health, also 4. This kind of asset it most often used by level 1 or 2 Nodes, and then only as fire-and-forget drones. However the advantage of the dilettante is twofold: first, it is usually desperate and thus willing to do anything. Second, it can turn up anywhere. The police and military stand out, but a civilian doesn't; often, a civilian with the right connections, or just the right key card, can get into any building, bypassing security. Can usually be bought for peanuts.
• Novice. This asset has very limited knowledge of the conspiracy. It may or may not appreciate the true horror behind the mask; perhaps it accepts the conspiracy at face value, as a drug smuggling organization or whatever the conspiracy's selling itself as today. This asset has carried out operations in the past, and is eager to qualify for the inner circle. From a stats perspective it is comparable to Militia, though often with a specialty - like Driving - at 6. Unlike dilettante, the novice usually stands out, and lacks the dilettante's go-anywhere-do-anything quality. The novice makes up for this with slightly better skills. It can be bought cheaply, perhaps for a few thousand.
• Journeyman. At this point and up, the asset is less and less likely to be human. The asset is aware of the conspiracy, and its true nature. It may be a feral, ghoul or Renfield that works outside of the conspiracy, either for cash or other rewards. It is careful not to get too close to the conspiracy, for fear of losing its independence, but at the same time it needs whatever the conspiracy is offering. This level of asset may, or may not, have had special training, perhaps as a government operative. It can be bought at a fairly high price.
• Master. These independent operatives are almost certainly vampires, or possess equivalent power. They are aware of the nature of the conspiracy, and don't much care. Their primary concern is prolonging their own existence at a comfort level that they find soothing. The value of these assets is their experience and power, but the risk to the conspiracy is that, if the asset is not loyal, it might betray the conspiracy. This is especially likely if the asset's safety is in any way threatened, and at that point it might decide to forward that dossier of special information it's been gathering to whoever might be interested. For that reason the conspiracy prefers to keep Masters at arm's length, or further. The characters might not be so picky, but Masters have no loyalty to anyone, and can prove fickle allies. Masters can be hired at an exceptionally high price.