I have a bunch of questions about Quantum Entanglement's storyline.
As the bare bones of an intro adventure, I like it enough that I'm planning to run it for some friends as my first time getting to actually play Aeon 2e. (Or anything Trinity Continuum at all, actually.) That said, there are a bunch of holes in the background storyline that I'm not sure how we are meant to fill.
1) What was Olivia Ramos/Anna White's actual reason for being in the park? How would she have known there was a body dump happening?
2) What causes the electronic disruption of the surveillance cameras throughout the story? The implication seems to be that it's a Quantum Flux side effect, since it affects Emil Rochevaunt's camera records as well, but it also affects the archival footage of Olivia Ramos/Anna White since her disappearance three weeks ago. Has she been being followed by Mother Maw's cultists for awhile? Is it somehow connected to Niko Karev's specialty in digital-video surveillance, a clue that otherwise seems to go nowhere in the storyline?
3) Why did she disappear? She clearly wasn't captured by Mother Maw's goons - did something tip her off?
4) The timing of the disappearances seems strange. Olivia/Anna disappeared three weeks ago, but wasn't captured and taken down to the FSA mining tunnels. Then two weeks ago, Niko disappeared, was apparently captured, but hasn't been eaten by Mother Maw yet. Mikael Gorskovski was the most recent disappearance (not stated explicitly, but logically must be the case, since Niko was the second and Olivia/Anna was before him), but has been eaten by Mother Maw. Why has Niko been kept alive? Why wasn't Mikael?
Right now, my plan for answering all these questions is as follows, but if there are official explanations I have not seen, I'd love to know.
Anna White and Niko Karev met at a "So you're thinking about becoming a psion!" support group organized by the Beaulac Clinic, to which all newly-discovered latents are invited as a pro forma thing. They hit it off immediately, going out on a date the next night and getting very close very quickly. A few days later, though, some men wearing FSA uniforms tried to abduct her. Anna's latency was for clairsentience and quite strong, meaning she had just enough bad vibes to manage to escape. Her childhood growing up in the FSA meant that she instinctively did not trust the Lunar authorities to deal with FSA agents, so instead she fled to Niko. She stayed with him for a few days, and during that time Niko used his digital surveillance knowledge to write an agent and release it into the Lunar surveillance networks to scrub Anna's images from surveillance cameras whenever she had to leave his hotel room. (He kept her hidden from the other residents and the hostel management because having non-paying guests was against the hostel's policy.) That agent is still out there, still doing its thing, which is why the footage of Anna since this is so hard to make use of.
A couple days after the agent was launched, though, Emil's goons came for Niko as well. Again, Anna's clear-latent luck saved her, but not him. Although by this point, Mother Maw had discovered its taste for latents, it recognized Niko's value in keeping its presence secret, and used its mind-controlling abilities to break him and turn him to protecting Mother Maw's own assets. There is a similar agent now protecting Emil Rochevaunt, though it is more selective than the one protecting Anna.
Then, fairly recently, Mikael Gorskovski was kidnapped, and Anna (now incredibly paranoid about disappearing latents) heard about it. No slouch at hacking herself, thanks to her time at Orgotek, and using a couple tricks Niko had showed her while writing his agent, Anna put a third one out into the network looking for Niko and Mikael. It is that agent's feed that she is following when she arrives at Luna Park in the hopper.
Does that make sense? Is there anything I'm missing? Is there an explanation that doesn't require quite so many SI programs floating through the Lunar networks?
That's actually a really good explanation.
"No one holds command over me. No man, no god, no Prince. Call your damn Hunt. We shall see who I drag screaming down to hell with me." The last Ahrimane says this when Mithras calls a Blood Hunt against her.
johntfs
If I had a gripe about QE it's that it didn't seem to be an introductory adventure. It seemed more like something that would have been the culmination of a series. One thing I remember liking about Old Trinity was that the Psions/PCs didn't fight their first real Aberrant until halfway through the third adventure in Darkness Revealed I.
Originally posted by johntfs View Post
Hmm. Good point. I never read Darkness Revealed but I like it when they slowly build up to the final villain and don't rush things.
To be honest, fighting Aberrants is the first thing I would drop over my players because it's why Psions exist, so the easiest hook. From that point I would move to a more hidden theme, maybe Doyen, maybe Coalition.
​Quantum Entanglement can be a first adventure that would reverberate for a long campaign. Things like, why starting now? Or at least why intensify the attacks now, and is this Aberrant alone, would be a great way to go deep into the Luna underworld.
But yes, the 3 Darkness Revealed have a nice crescendo to the villain, things to do until you reach the finale. QE is a shingle shot, so have no space for that, it must be intense.
I admit I'm not very experienced with Storypath yet, but the Mother Maw fight looks awfully difficult for the pregen characters, even without triggering the "fail state" boosts. Am I missing something?
No, it is pretty hard. Anytime an Aberrant is in game it's a difficult fight, and Mother Maw is a powerful one with some extra related to the place and the thralls. I still think the pregen characters can do the job if they work together (really together, like a network with everybody boosting each other).
To be fair it's really hard to predict the fight, I had the Red Widow fight last Sunday and it was fairly easy to the players (talents are more unpredictable to be honest).