pleasedMay 25th, 2002 AD
The city of London, in the great nation of England.
The day starts off pretty mundanely. Gayle Tarrant, a thief and professional criminal recruited to UNIT by a mysterious figure known as Professor Chronotis, has her hands full with her current boyfriend, Kirk, who has just moved into her house the last couple of days. Edward Blake, a sergeant with UNIT specializing in weapons and a crack shot, begins his day with a visit to his ailing mother in a nursing home. She regales him with tales of his sister, Marsha's, exploits as a member of the peace corps. David Anderson III, a British blueblood and demolitions expert, is berated by his immediate superior, Colonel Jefferson Williams, for his latest experiments working on a new type of demolition charge - one that literally blew up in his face. Thomas Magnuson, a Swedish Boer soldier who has become a member of UNIT since being lost in time, is in the West End working on his socializing skills at a posh eatery. It's not working out. Kelasa "Kelly" Vostune, a space station technician from the 26th Century, is having difficulty explaining to her roommate, another UNIT tech Sandra Harker, one of the basic principles of mechanical engineering from when she comes.
As their regular work day commences and once the player characters report for daily duty, they are summoned by their immediate superior, Colonel Jefferson Williams. Williams tells them that they have just been assigned to a strange case - a security firm has reported difficulties with strange apparitions, disappearing employees, and other odd behaviour over the last several weeks. As the player characters prepare to head out, under Sgt. Edward Blake's command, they do some research and learn more about the security company, Nordstrom Securities, that they will be looking into. While Gayle Tarrant has no experience with them personally, she tells the others that they have a division that makes security and surveillance equipment and materiels, and they are state-of-the-art and top notch in their field.
When the team arrives at Nordstrom Security, Edward Blake finds the place in chaos. Another surveillance technician, Harper, has disappeared. He worked at the building late the night before, but no one saw him leave and no one saw him return that morning. The head of Security for Nordstrom, Eric Hale, is not happy about having the UNIT people there, but Blake tells him that the Powers That Be want him and his team there, and thus they shall remain. Several of the Nordstrom staff express relief at the fact that the UNIT personnel are there, and say they'll "get to the bottom of the weird and creepy stuff going on."
The rest of the player characters scatter through the complex following leads. Meanwhile, Kelasa and Edward are able to get Hale to let them talk to his boss, Adrian Clarke, and the two have a difficult time finagling the Nordstrom people into letting them access their security and surveillance camera systems, as this seems to be where the main crutch of the problem is. Blake is able to convince the Nordstrom higher ups, much against Hale's wishes, to let them gain access to the main security and surveillance cameras. He starts to tell them where they can go, but is interrupted by a message on the office intercom that informs him of trouble down on the basement level. Hale says he doesn't want them with him, but is told by Blake that if there's trouble, he wants to be there.
Elsewhere, Gayle Tarrant wanders around through the coffee room and near the water coolers, and listens in as people talk. She hears some conversations about the state of affairs at Nordstrom, and befriends Ellen Halvors, a young secretary. Halvors tells her that the company has had a great many problems over the last few weeks, and the employees are terrified. She leads Gayle over to one of the surveillance cameras, and Gayle sees the camera spark. The sparks fly from the camera, and while Gayle is able to dodge them, she is horrified as the sparks arc around Ellen Halvors, and she vanishes in a yellow, afterglow-like effect. Sparks continue to arc from surveillance camera, continuing to try to follow Gayle...
David Anderson III and Thomas Magnuson decide to do a bit of a recce of the Nordstrom building, and head out to scout the lay of the land. Anderson sees several signs of scorching on the floors of the lower levels of the building, but can't determine what made the marks. Their search eventually leads him deep into the bowels of the building, on the sub-basement levels, where David and Thomas find two employees, a security man and a technician, lying dead on the floor. There are several of the scorch marks in the area. When they try to radio up to Blake, they find that there is nothing but static on their walkie-talkies. Much against Thomas's better judgement, the two decide to follow the strange scorch marks. As the two round a corner, they find themselves facing a large set of heavy steel and concrete doors, from which orange and yellow sparks creep and crawl. A nearby surveillance camera on the wall turns to follow them as they look around a little bit. Neither notices as sparks start to build on the camera, so intent are they on the two doors...
And that was the first actual session of play that I've run of the new DW: AiTaS rpg. The players had a blast with the game, and afterwards, the players wanted to watch a bit of the Doctor Who series, so I showed them the first two episodes of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Lovely evening all told.