Tremors Storyline Writeup

[Sisip]

A Gentleman's Game plotline

OK, so I wasn't sure of what format to put this in so I'm going to just throw everything from beginning to end at you guys and hope for the best. The following is a plot idea I've been rolling around in my head for a while that seems ready to hatch and I think might be fun for any to want to join in. As a forewarning, there's a lot to this plot. There are characters and settings that need to be explained to fully appreciate where the plot could go, so please forgive the extensive post.

First a bit of back story:

Some time ago a secret cell of the government responsible for paranormal, extra-terrestrial and Meta-human affairs had become so powerful that the powers that be ended up dividing it into two parts that would work against one another in a sort of balance. The agents of these special cells were code named according to a chess theme and while the pawns would be exceptional agents of remarkable talent, the named pieces (Bishop, Knight, ect.) were all meta-human. For a time, the two sides conducted their secret war with relatively little collateral damage. As the years went by all members were eventually killed and replaced except for the kings.

In Tremor's plot line, The white king had grown old and was attempting to cheat death by creating a vessel disguised as a rogue project. Tremor had been selected, implanted with a dark personality to act as a place holder and channel the king's commands as well as subliminal combat techniques to give him a killing edge. Tremor's project was code named "Red Knight" and while he appeared to be a tool for rooting out the double agent who had infiltrated the White side's ranks, his end purpose was to serve as the White King's new lease on life. The plan was unsuccessful as Tremor and Kelly (A friend Tremor had met during his year on the run) stopped the King from taking possession of Tremor's body and destroyed King's frail form in the process. Unknown to the both of them, King had a backup in the form of the last remaining Rook, who was nearby. By castling, the King took possession of the rook's body and managed to escape.

Unknown to Tremor was the fact that Kelly was actually a black pawn agent sent to find Tremor, discover his true purpose and help him destroy the White's power structure. Thinking King was gone and with no further use for such a dangerous individual, Kelly shot Tremor and left him for dead. (NOTE: This is a part of the story that I've left open for future plot lines. In Tremor's story, a little girl who shines with a golden light appears and saves him by healing his wound. He wakes up confused and with little memory of how he survived. This girl has also popped up once before to save him from an impossible situation as well, but I have yet to iron out who she is or why shes doing it. She's not official by any means.) Kelly returns to Black HQ and is promptly promoted to Queen, both in recognition for her work and to fill the power vacuum left from where the previous queen had been killed by Tremor. As a badge of office, she is given meta-human powers.

On the other side of the plot is Wormwood. Worm was originally a black bishop agent that had been recruited back when the cell was relatively young. At the time, the cell's motives were less extreme and more focused on mission parameters fed to them by the unknown controllers. Worm ended up falling in love with the team's comptroller and commander who would later become their King, who's original code name was "Black Betty." The two had a child and tried to secretly raise their daughter free from the influences of their secret lives. This lasted for almost a decade. One day a routine order came down for them to meet with the rest of the cell for a mission. Betty's flight left first, Worm's a day later. When Worm arrived, he found their team almost completely wiped out by what was assumed to be the rival faction. Worm found footage of Betty valiantly defending the safehouse from the attackers only to be shot down. Working with Tray, their team's mind controller, Worm attempted to track down and avenge his lover and his fallen team members. After extensive investigation, Worm discovered that there was more to the attack than it seemed. What should have ended with Worm reporting the cell as compromised, instead resulted in Worm discovering a conspiracy within the Black side's ranks to subvert the goals of the cell and splinter off from the government, acting as an independent organization. To Worm's astonishment, Betty was at the head of the conspiracy. Her death had been staged, thanks to what had been her most closely kept secret, immortality. After confronting her, Worm learned that their relationship was largely fabricated, though he refused to believe it. Now referring to herself as the Black King, Betty indicated that she had plans for their daughter as well, as she was part of some larger unknown scheme. Worm would have tried to stop her, if not for being paralyzed by Tray, who had been working with Betty all along. As part of a larger design, or perhaps out of some inkling of personal attachment to Worm, Betty ordered that Tray wipe as much of the events as possible along with any trace of her existence from Worm's mind. This proved an imperfect process, as Worm's mind turned out to be an ocean of noise at all times thanks to his passive remote viewing powers. Instead, Tray managed to blank a scattered portion of Worm's memory regarding the conspiracy and random portions prior to then. As their final move, they branded him a traitor to the agency and had his agent status revoked. Left unconscious in a bus station in Pittsburgh, the burned spy would come to and begin trying to piece together the shattered memories of his former life.

The daughter was placed in foster care by Betty's indirect orders, as she couldn't come out of hiding without compromising her faked death. Knowing Worm would someday try and come for their daughter, she implemented a massive security detail, complete with satellite coverage to watch the child at all times. As such, Worm can never get within five miles of the girl without being quickly surrounded by multiple security agencies backed up by all local and federal authorities. To make matters worse, the girl is being kept in Washington DC, which means any action can quickly be explained and justified as counter terrorism. In the few years since then, Worm has only managed to sneak in under the security grid once to leave a Christmas gift for his daughter, from which he barely escaped alive.

During this time, Betty has repopulated her ranks with more like-minded individuals. She operates in shadow, the anonymity of her position ensuring that her organization may still act as though it works with the government while preparing to splinter as intended years ago. With Kelly having been made the new Black Queen, and the White King believed to be dead, there is little to stop their plans.

CURRENT PLOT LINE: Worm's Plan

Worm did not end up at Cobalt by accident. It was part of a plan to get his daughter back. Though currently run by/with META, Cobalt was once an independent organization, free from government ties. This made it the ideal place for him to fall off the grid. As a safe haven for mutants, it also meant that Worm could use Cobalt as a recruiting ground for possible assets he could use. Under the cover of an conspiracy theorist (Which wasn't much of a cover as his own mild disorders made many of these actions routine for him) Worm tried to weave himself into the fabric of Cobalt and wait for the right individuals to come along. He had several prospects, but none of them seemed like they would fit until Shiloh.

Perhaps out of desperation for any viable proxy or maybe because he was loosing patience, Worm approached Shiloh with the offer of training her to be a freelance agent. With the right amount of training, she could become a valuable agent. She wasn't on any of DC's watch lists, allowing her to gain access to Worm's daughter and then use her powers to possibly sneak her out. This was plan A. As one of the preliminary means of ensuring secrecy, Worm compiled a fake prescription for anti-psychotics for Shiloh. This would reduce her creditability with the authorities so that any change in behavior or unexplained private meetings with Worm would be dismissed as the most obvious explanation. (Also, if she tried to tell others about Worm's true nature, he could simply say she was crazy and offer up the fake prescription as evidence.) This plan backfired as Conrad and Sisip reacted swiftly to the exchange, putting pressure on the two that Worm had not counted on. With a shrinking time table, Worm went to plan B.

Worm had learned about Tremor after some extensive digging into the shadow games between the White and Black. He knew Tremor would be wary of anyone who even smelled covert, so he kept a distance and watched. Tremor was not an ideal asset. He was easy enough to direct, but difficult to shut down. Lacking better options, Worm began Plan B. First, he would isolate Tremor from his allies. This wasn't hard as Tremor was aloof anyway, but Worm also needed Tremor to believe he had no -friends-. This would disrupt his already fragile moral compass and make him easier to control. To do this, Worm utilized a subroutine that had been integrated into Tremor's subconscious during his programming. The riddle: "I stand beside the holy man" ect. was one of the triggers from Tremor's mental conditioning that caused him to lapse into a pure combat mode. Though the dark personality that had once taken control during those times was gone, the combat protocols were still in place. If Tremor heard or even could read those words, he would become susceptible to key commands and if no orders were given, would attempt to kill everything in the area. Worm made a note with the trigger riddle along with instructions for a meeting location inside and gave it to Sisip for her and any others to deliver to Tremor, knowing he would read the note and go ballistic on his friends. Worm could then lure Tremor on a warpath to DC and trigger him again (Though it might not even be necessary) so that the full weight of the local authorities would be brought down on him. The aim of this would be two-fold: First, When the Black side's agents realized Tremor was still alive, they would quickly attempt to send everything they had to kill him, allowing Worm to function in the background unnoticed. Second, The resulting chaos in the area would kick off an agency protocol that required all assets be moved to their designated safehouses outside the city. This included Worm's daughter. Worm couldn't get into DC without eyes on him, and any digging into where they were keeping his child would raise alarms, but Worm had found a backdoor: He had managed to find the location of the network of safehouses. Calculating for time and distance, along with process of elimination with all the other assets of which he -could- locate undetected, he knew exactly where they would move his daughter. The safehouse would still have security, but -much- less than would be directed at her in the middle of DC. In addition, Tremor would ensure the faction agents were busy elsewhere, allowing him to get in, get her and get out before anyone knew what had happened.

Of course, no plan survives the battle field. Worm had given Sisip the letter with the riddle and she had delivered it, resulting in Tremor attacking them and irrationally believing they were really agents all along. Talking to Sisip in secret after the fight at the warehouse, Tremor quickly concluded that maybe his friends were -not- out to get him, and quickly confided in Sisip of the factions and their secret war. Planning for such a contingency, Worm had set up with a sniper rifle from a hidden location and threatened by cellphone to kill Sisip if Tremor didn't comply. Reluctantly, Tremor Left Sisip asking that she stay out of it.

FUTURE PLANS: The Path to DC

Worm has had to modify his plan now that Tremor knows he's being used. To begin with, the letter was taken by Sisip in the warehouse fight, so Worm knows their original meeting spot is compromised, but he can use this to his advantage. First, he's going to track down Tremor and threaten Cobalt if he doesn't follow his instructions. This threat can be under the ruse of him being a White agent and claiming that he will bring the war to Cobalt, or it can simply be the claim that he has planted explosives around the sanctum and he will trigger them unless Tremor complies. Both of these threats are baseless. There are no explosives in the sanctum, and he obviously doesn't have any ties to the White agents. Maybe Tremor believes him, or maybe he's just trying to get to the bottom of what's going on, but ether way, Tremor complies with Worm's demands. Worm's next obstacle is the Cobalt members themselves. He can't risk them going after Tremor or himself and stopping things before they start. In any case, he thinks their presence in DC would only aid in keeping the Black agents off his back. Why send one when you can send an army? So Worm needs to direct their attention towards the black agents. Worm knows that they still have the letter with the prior directions on when and where Tremor should meet him. That meeting is compromised, but that doesn't mean the team wont try and leave to crash the meeting anyway. As such, Worm has a solid idea of when the team will be out in the open and vulnerable to the agent's attack. Next he needs to get the agents to attack the Cobalt team rather than Tremor, and he himself must remain unseen or risk the agents realizing his end plan. To do this, Worm sends Tremor's cell phone to Shiloh by mail with a note attached. The note has instructions for the night the team will go to crash the meeting. It says that just before they leave, she needs to turn on the cell and dial a particular number, then leave the phone on. (Worm is confident Shiloh will follow through, but if not, I can easily just engineer another reason for them being found.) The instructions then say that whatever happens, good or bad, she must tell Sisip or one of the other authorities at Cobalt exactly where she got the phone and cooperate with them in every way. Assuming this all goes as planned, the team will be attacked by agents in route to the meeting place. (For this I had a fight on the highway in mind, which I thought might be pretty cool as I'm not sure it's been done before. Four agents using their vehicles to box in the van while in motion and attack. It would be interesting to see how they would react or counter this situation.) The number being dialed is of course, on a watch list for the black agents. Worm knows they will spot the number, link it to Tremor (It's his cell) and then immediately attempt to trace the phone's location and attack, only to find the Cobalt team instead. Among the attackers will be Kelly the black queen, obviously with a grudge as the failure to kill Tremor represents a stain on the very action that got her promoted to her current station.

Worm in confident that the Cobalt team will win. The agents will be attacking thinking it's one man only to find possibly half a dozen trained mutants striking back. In the middle of the chaos, Worm has an idea to guarantee the team stays on his trail: He plans to kidnap one of them. Ether he or Tremor can do it depending on how things unfold. During or near the end of the fight, he will use the opportunity of the team being distracted or scattered to take one of them hostage and leave a note with instructions for future correspondence. Worm knows the earbuds are fairly standard issue for anyone going into the field, and that they can be traced, so he will use this as a sort of indirect way of giving the rest of the Cobalt members a message as they track the signal. The message may be friendly or hostile. Worm knows they are good people and might be sympathetic to his goals, but he's also burned a few bridges and it might also be beneficial to his plan to play the villain a little more to ensure things go smoothly. (NOTE: This part is my attempt to spice up the stakes for the Cobalt team and keep things interesting. It offers the chance for character to be placed deeper within the plot and should they escape, prove as a valuable information resource for the others. Like the fish ship plot, the kidnapping is -VOLUNTARY- and if a player decides they are tired their character being detained, they can get in touch with me and we can come up with a reason for their escape, ether by chance or with Worm/Tremor intentionally letting them go. If noone steps forward with a volunteer, the plot can still move forward on the wheels it's got.)

From here, the details are less defined. The plot can go a lot of different directions before this point so speculation on what happens after this isn't very useful. Worm plans to lure the team using ether Tremor or the hostage to key locations that lead up to DC. The hostage will likely escape or be given back before then, but Worm needs them to figure out where he's headed and what will happen when he lets Tremor loose there. The Black chess agents will be hot of their trail of course. They wont risk a direct attack on Cobalt, but it wont take them long to treat the Cobalt members as a threat. Worm is fine with this so long as it keeps him off their radar. Eventually the plot is supposed to end with a climatic battle in DC. I'm of course open to ideas.