Dracula Dossier 46: Where’s Wally – errm, Dracula?

Previously, on The Dracula Dossier: Smyth and Emilia incapacitate Christina and the team tie her up aboard a commandeered motorboat, which they use to pursue Anton, Natalya and Varkony across the harbour to Dracula’s nuclear submarine. Emilia and Smyth make a quick raid onto the sub under covering fire from the rest , realise Dracula is aboard, set fire to the control room and retreat. We left our heroes preparing to board again and finish him off. But where is Varkony? Now read on…

Sevastopol, February 2014

Given a few seconds to reflect, the team decides to break contact. The terrain favours the enemy; sooner or later, Dracula will get lucky with his mental domination; Lonely, one of their two combat specialists, is badly carved up after a fight with a Renfield; and in a few minutes, the Russian Navy is going to react with helicopters, searchlights, and machineguns. It’s time to go.

Fortunately, Dracula also wants to break contact; he’s immortal, he has a lot to lose, and these enemies have disposed of a frankly disturbing number of fellow vampires. So, the sub and the speedboat part company in short order, with a desultory exchange of small arms fire which both sides intend to keep the enemy’s heads down rather than do any real damage.

The team head back to the boatyard and pick up their (stolen) vehicles, then head to a local hospital and steal an ambulance while Hopkins is leasing a jet for a medical repatriation to Tel Aviv and Cartwright is patching up Lonely as best he can in the back of the van. Ritter, supported by Cartwright, fast-talks them onto the jet and out of Ukrainian airspace via Turkey and over the eastern Med to Israel, where they hand over Christina and Natalya to Lilith for interrogation, which Smyth insists should not harm them. Lilith reassures him that will not be necessary.

Black Site Khoshekh, March 2014

While Lonely recuperates, Lilith talks to Natalya, Christina, and Rojas at Black Site Khoshekh. Meanwhile Hopkins can tell that the Russian maintenance crews in Sevastopol are working round the clock to fix up the submarine, but that only takes them a couple of days. The surveillance cameras also reveal that Varkony’s “body” is recovered by navy divers and placed in a coffin before being loaded onto the submarine. Within a week, the sub has slipped its moorings and headed out into the Black Sea before submerging.

A few days later, Lilith reports that based on telepathic interrogation of her captives, she thinks Dracula is bound for Buenos Aires. Hopkins can easily work out that it will take an Akula class submarine a minimum of 11 days to get there from Sevastopol, and 18-20 days is more likely. So, if the team hops a flight to Argentina, they’ll have 1-2 weeks before Dracula’s boat arrives; they won’t be able to beat him there if they travel by sea.

Lilith also reports something troubling: Based on telepathic leakage during the interrogation, she thinks that when in Argentina, Rojas was able to use her powers during the daylight hours, although at the moment Rojas is clearly only active at night.

The team decides to fly to Argentina in a suitably anonymous fashion, conscious that Dracula has infiltrated Argentinian Intelligence.

GM Notes

Various events in the real world have conspired to prevent the group getting together at any point in March, and I’m out of the country for six months starting in May. I think the final showdown will take 2-3 sessions, which is roughly how many we have left before I go, and I don’t want to leave the finale hanging for that long.

So, this session was entirely done by email exchanges, and now I’ve shared narrative control with the players. They need to tell me where Dracula’s hideout in Argentina is, and how they find out, and why they trust that information. Then, I’ll work up a suitable vampire lair for them to assault.