Johnnie To - Three (NBA)

OK, I'm on a little bit of a cinema kick.

Johnnie To is, by far, the best action cinema director working today. I'm going to take one of his films and make a Night's Black Agents Thrilling scene out of it. The film is Three, set in a hospital, where the cops have a robber in custody and are trying to get him to talk before manure hits the fan.

 Trailer sourced from Movie Maniacs

This is a Thrilling Interrogation.

It takes place in a Hospital:

Antiseptic, organized to a fault yet seething with chaos underneath. Security is tight yet not so tight; a little bluff, a little chutzpah, and anyone can get anywhere. Harried medical staff rush from crisis to crisis. Nurses exercise whatever authority they possess, as often as they can. Low chatter from the patients, sometimes moans, once in a while a scream. Expensive machinery hums and gives out information, to what end is unclear to anyone except the medical staff. High-powered consultants breeze in like little Gods, then breeze out again, leaving stressed medical staff in their wake. 

Extras and Cameos

Grim policemen watch over a captured felon. Injured Civilians from all walks of life kibbitz their fellow sufferers, offering unsolicited advice. Medical staff rest wherever they can find an empty space, smoking forbidden cigarettes. Relatives and friends hover on the sidelines, not sure what to do or what civility dictates, anxious and afraid. A Disgraced Doctor on their last day before they get kicked out, trying to steal as much as they can. Reporters in search of a story pretend to be relatives or friends.

Clues

There's a lot of activity in the Morgue for some reason. That Civilian's symptoms are familiar - is this an indication of vampire activity in the Civilian's place of work or home district? Why does that Doctor seem to be under the influence? Is it illicit drug use or something more supernatural? 

Rules Effects

It's easy to hide in this mess, provided you can score a medical gown and have any points in Surveillance. If that applies, refresh 3 points Surveillance at any time. Also, the difficulty for Preparedness for any medical-related task is reduced by 1. However, if an overtly violent act takes place Heat increases by an extra 1 point, due to the sensitivity of the location. 

In A Fight

Preparedness can be used to score impromptu weapons (scalpel, syringes, bone saws) and drugs. If your game uses tasers and stun guns, then assume that Medical Staff have access to sedatives and other drugs that act in exactly the same way as a taser but require a Called Shot (Limb) to work.

In A Chase

Hospital corridors can turn from calm to chaos at the drop of a surgical mask. Assume chases start Open and move to Cramped within two rounds. Hazards include pools of unidentifiable fluid on the floor, unexpected medical staff or civilians in a romantic clinch in what was supposed to be an empty room, cleaners trying to get rid of biohazardous waste.

Objective of the Exercise

A Renfield of interest to the agents has been brought in for emergency medical treatment. If they don't get that treatment they will die within 12 hours. The Renfield is refusing treatment, for reasons known only to them. 

The agents may be disguised as Police or similar, on a Preparedness check or a Cover spend. If they are not so disguised, they will need to justify their presence and may have to rely on Flattery, Flirting or other interpersonal skills. Anyone with 2 points Diagnosis can pretend to be a Doctor and avoid being challenged, but that only protects the one with Diagnosis, not any of their non-medically trained friends. 

The agents must successfully Interrogate the Renfield before one of two things happens:

• The Renfield dies.
• The Renfield's heavily armed associates arrive to bust them out of hospital. The Renfield may or may not welcome this intervention.

Potential complication: there is vampire blood on the premises. It can be there by accident; it can be there because someone smuggled it in. Regardless, if the Renfield gets hold of that blood they can access all of their powers. Otherwise, they are normal for their type. 

This seed assumes a base Thug template for the Renfield, with possible Gym Rat boosts. 

 

This is an Open interrogation for rules purposes, in that the Renfield is in a public area watched over by medical staff and civilian patients.

Assume for purposes of Maneuver that the Renfield is less ethically constrained.

Enjoy!

Twilight of the Warriors (film, 2024) (Night's Black Agents)

 

How do you make a Shaw Brothers film without actually being a Shaw Brothers film?

You make this.

Highly recommended to all fans of action cinema. Seldom have I seen better fight sequences. The plot is vintage wuxia with a very modern overcoat but there was never anything wrong with the plot of those films. There are good guys. Bad guys. Conflict. You come in, sit down, get dazzled, and the ending comes with a crash. That's pretty much the entirety of Twilight, and it doesn't surprise me one bit that Johnnie To was once attached to this production. This is exactly the kind of thing he's good at.

I am still a little amazed that Sammo Hung plays Mr. Big, the main Triad villain. Sammo Hung! The wacky guy from Encounters of the Spooky Kind and the Jackie Chan films, the one with a hand in all the Mr. Vampire films. The top tier fight coordinator. Ye Gods. I did not even know that was him on screen. To still be doing this kind of thing in his 70s ... Louis Koo is a very charismatic Cyclone and German Cheung's AV kinda steals every scene he's in, though I think he's helped by that mask of his. It draws the eye. Philip Ng does well as King, the villain's villain - the fella biting that sword in half - but you've seen this character a thousand times before. He's there to betray and be hated. Not that this is a bad thing, far from it, and he's got that manic laugh down. All in all, not a bad actor in the bunch.

But the bit that caught my eye and lured me in was that the whole thing's set in Kowloon Walled City. 

The Walled City is what happens when nobody lays claim to a chunk of territory. Conceptually, it was bitcoin in architectural form, with all the madness and lack of governance that description implies. As nobody was in charge, practically speaking, everybody had a hand in it, and that includes criminal syndicates. It was called the City of Darkness and, while the title's evocative, it probably had more to do with the actual lack of light than any metaphysical or moral aspect.

South China Morning Post

Oddly it reminds me not a little of Corbusier and concepts based on his theories of design, like London's Barbican. Not because of its architecture but because it exemplifies one of his basic principles: you should have everything you need for work, housing and recreation within walking distance. That definitely applies here. You could spend your entire life inside the Walled City and never have a reason to set foot outside. 

The Walled City sees some play in games like Shadowrun: Hong Kong or Call of Duty but it doesn't often appear in tabletop, which is a shame. It's often a background for a fight scene. 

Let's play with that concept.

Of all the settings I could use, Night's Black Agents seems the most appropriate. A Thrilling Trace, let's say:

Trace missions are similar to Hunts, but with an object instead of a person. 

Key differences: Trace missions tend to reach a lot further back in time. 

The target of a Hunt is unlikely to have remained hidden for more than, say, 30 or 40 years (for that “former Cold Warrior who knows too much about the vampire program and retired to a garlic farm in the wilds of Montana” or “archaeology student who opened the wrong tomb and is now a tour guide in the Vatican so he can stay on holy ground as much as possible”). The object in a Trace operation might be decades or even centuries old.

So, start with the object. How portable is it? How fragile? How valuable? How rare? 

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail but I will describe this McGuffin as one-man portable, moderately fragile (as in you can drop it and it won't break, but it doesn't require Sauron's One Ring circumstances to destroy it) and unique. 

I will also say that it was located in the Walled City from the late 1940s, when refugees first established the squatter's town that came to be Kowloon Walled City, till the Walled City's demolition in 1994. That it was damaged but not destroyed in the 1950s fire, that it first came to Edom's attention during the police raids in the 1970s, and that it is known to have been one of the last things to be taken out before demolition. 

I will further posit that the players, and possibly the characters, can still access Kowloon Walled City in the modern day despite the demolition. Whether through dream, virtual reality, time travel, or having the players temporarily play characters who happened to be there at the time.

There was a Jackie Chan film, Crime Story, that used the Walled City in several scenes while it was deserted in 1993, before final demolition in 1994. That can be the last time anyone saw the McGuffin in Kowloon; some of the film crew saw it. 

Kowloon Ghosts

The characters are tasked with Tracing a vampire McGuffin that is known to have been in China and removed to Hong Kong sometime between 1945 and 1946. 

The relocation happened as a result of the Manchurian Invasion by the Soviets.  Military Science, Research, Occult Studies establishes this first link in the chain. Possible Interrogation or Interview opportunity: Professor Chernenko, a military history expert who once interviewed a Soviet soldier who saw the McGuffin first-hand. The Professor is currently working at the University of Milan.

The 1950s fire damaged but not destroyed the McGuffin. Research, Occult Studies, Criminology discovers that the McGuffin changed hands from the mystic society that brought it to Kowloon to one of the criminal syndicates that controlled the Walled City. The Wo Shing Wo took it and would keep it for the next few decades. Whether the triad understood what it was or what it could do is open to question. Possible Interrogation or Interview opportunity: Kirkland, a student of the Tao and a self-proclaimed inheritor of the mysteries practiced by the original holders of the McGuffin. Kirkland is currently in San Francisco, operating a herbalist's shop.

Edom first became aware of the McGuffin during the 1970s raids. Research, Occult Studies, Tradecraft discover the intricacies of failed Edom recovery mission Operation PERIDOT and as a bonus may discover what really murdered Hong Kong Police staff sergeant Bernard Wei during that operation. Potential Interrogation or Interview opportunity: Lucy Wei, Bernard's daughter, currently living in London. 

The McGuffin was last seen during the filming of Jackie Chan vehicle Crime Story in 1993. Some of the climactic scenes, including an explosive setpiece, were filmed in Kowloon Walled City. Research, Occult Studies, High Society, Photography discovers what happened next, or finds photographic proof of its existence and location at the time of filming. Possible Interrogation or Interview option: Andy Wong, one of the stunt actors, still hard at work in the Hong Kong film industry.

OPFOR: codename TIGER, a Jin-Gui who's seen it all through dead, black eyes. TIGER can send visions of Kowloon Walled City's past through its Send Dreams ability. TIGER uses its Illusion ability to masquerade as a family restaurant owner in Hong Kong (with zombies as the 'family'); the barbecue pork buns are to die for.

Current owner possibilities include: 

• Blackie Ko, one of the cast of Crime Story, now deceased. Ko took it as a souvenir. Ko died in 2003; presumably his estate has it?
• Edom's Pearl, who keeps it at a private estate in Mumbai.
• Professor Chernenko, who tracked it down and is studying it. Perhaps in a crumbling castle somewhere in Italy ...
• A Conspiracy Node which spirited it out of Hong Kong to Macao. A triad linked to Wo Shing Wo has nominal possession, but the Node has actual control over it and plans to use it in some nefarious deed or other.

That's it for this week! Enjoy.