For anyone playing the GenCon 2024 Team Icarus vs. the Whisper Alliance, click on the Icarus link for characters and opening credits.
Mission Brief
August 2022
The Violet Plague's Plot (S1E02: Prometheus Bound)
Team Daedalus faced off against several Q-Gangs, including the SSA (in Episode One), the Akili Moja (One Mind) and the Scourge Disciples (minions of the Violet Plague). It turns out that the Q-Gangs were not in town by accident. AEGIS Deputy Commander Elaine Battle and her analyst Dr. Darvin Werwood identified that the presence of several Q-Gangs was orchestrated by the advanced hacking techniques later attributed to Violet Plague, who had used the Eastern European criminal organization front, The Ascendency, as the cover for his operations.
The team discovered, through investigation into Violet Plague's deeper investigations into nanite-based quantum implants, that their creation was an accidental event triggered by work that was originated by Dr. Stephen Anson. Lunotar was an experimental subject by TaraCon, but they lost control of her and Dr. Anson volunteered to take her into the GILEAD Base to help cure her conditions. Violet Plague attacked GILEAD and infected Lunotar, creating instability in the nanites that led to Lunotar's escape and the Willis Tower incident. The PC's and a handful of other victims were exposed directly to the activated nanites, which had attached to infectious viral elements in Lunotar's blood. They were inadvertently infected and Daedalus never learned that they had been exposed because of the actions of a Chicago SWAT Commander Chan Bailey. The party also learned that Dr. Anson chose not to tell them about the nanites in their bodies when he recruited them, for security purposes.
Team Daedalus, after responding to a fight between the Akili Moja and Geometrika at the Martin Super Grocer, managed to save several lives and learned that Emmett Grosby, a research executive at Quantek, had been blackmailing one of his employees to help him steal information on the Yellow Citadel Project along with other vital research and prototype material. Geometrika escaped and the team observed Hyram Foss (reported murdered close to Roco Brio, Shadow Strike's husband's restaurant and for which Shadow Strike was under investigation) fleeing with vans tracked to the Ascendancy.
The team later responded to a fight in an alley in Chicago's East Side, where they found themselves facing off against Scourge Disciples and once again, Geometrika showing herself to attack the Q-terrorists. In the ensuing battle, the Devas appeared and before leaving, killed Geometrika as part of what they classified as an "UNCOS-approved sanction operation". The team could not help but notice that the action was both out of character for Devas (based on their history) and extremely personal.
Finally, the team was called when it was discovered that two business men were kidnapped in a cab, looking to have been abducted by the Scourge Disciples. They discovered Violet Plague and his minions had taken over Alvera Laboratories and it appears they were doing research there while trying to crack the Yellow Citadel encryption.
The party attempted to breach the laboratory, and after setting off a major explosive trap on the roof, they entered through the side of the building and breached the laboratory. There, they fought some reinforced Scourge Disciples, along with a new villain named D-Generate (aka Hyram Foss) and the Ghoul (both of whom Violet Plague claims to have created using his modifications to the nanite technologies. After a pitched battle, the party prevailed, saving both the building and the employees in the facility (along with the kidnapped cab driver and his passengers) by disabling the explosives on two infected victims wearing bomb vests.
The Yellow Citadel prototypes were recovered, along with a still-encrypted drive that contained the Quantek design details. However, the party does suspect that Violet Plague did use one of his minions to gather a sample of the nanites in Mindario's blood -- with Dr. Anson proposing that while Violet Plague had successfully hacked the nanites to create monstrous effects, he needed a stabilized version from which to develop more powerful minions. As of the end of the adventure, AEGIS is on high alert for Violet Plague and his minions -- of which over two dozen have been captured. However, there is little information forthcoming from them, with Violet Plague creating more minions through infection when he needs them.
