Another bump
Another grim tale from days gone now, that same urban world where the unnatural and strange lurked just within reach but out of sight for most. This one is perhaps just as strange, maybe not as amusing, but it was a crucial point for an extended period and lives up to the mantra of, "If it can go wrong, it will go wrong." It begins simply enough with the players, some of whom I have noted are quite dangerous people in reality and others not so, receiving their mission.
A private security agency was preparing to move a high value asset, believed to be a supernatural artifact, from one location or another. There was virtually no way for them to acquire it head on - both facilities were too heavily guarded, had too many security measures, and would attract far too much attention if attacked. Sneaking in wasn't an option either, given the storage facilities for valuable goods were, as one imagined, designed to protect their client's most valuable items, some worth millions of dollars each. The weakness they found through research, between probing everything from the blueprints of the vaults and the like to attempting to feign being prospective members who wanted to keep their assets safe, were that the armored trucks were their weakest point.
Three armored trucks, three routes the couriers were going to take. No one would know which was which; they had no way of knowing what was loaded into each because the cargo was sealed in impact resistant containers. That made things bad, worse was that the only had so many people to complete their mission. They had the aforementioned ranger, another ranger, a specialist, a psychic, an occultist, and an actor. As one can imagine, they quickly determined which route the actual truck was going to take by observation, but the deadline was cutting it close; they near missed it. Thinking they had this in the bag, they installed remote hubs that tapped into the traffic lights and could control them along the route the truck was going to go.
Their plan was simple, force the truck to divert from any of its routes until it had to make one, one where less people were around, then hijack the truck. Simple, right? They even managed to wiggle their way in to the company and replace one of the security agents and a driver of the truck, leaving only two bad guys; the actual driver and the other guard in the back of the truck. They even pooled all of their money together to buy an identical armored car and paint it to match. But when they arrived with their crew for their day of work and the armored car they bought, the occultist had a brilliant idea when the actual driver told her to go let them know they were ready to load the truck.
She went and knocked on the high security door, not using the intercom everyone had noted was important.
She was then, in very short order, put in handcuffs by all of the guards who did not know her and replaced, carted off by the police who were summoned to figure out who in the hell this was and how she got in here or why. This left the one alternate driver with three bad guys. Fortunately the alternate driver was the psion, also the same one who hacked all the lights and would be able to trip the signals and carry out sending messages via his very expensive, very rare mess of wires he hid on himself to do it.
But it got worse.
He failed every single roll to hack he made, despite having a +10 or so to the associated skill. Nothing but terrible luck and now the truck was on the highway. But they had three lucky breaks, one which was the form of a police car they had stolen a few weeks back, as well as two other vehicles, all so they could try to drive the truck off the road and encircle it after. Solid back up plan, but the bad luck did not end there. When the ranger attempted to pull the truck over and stop it, the ranger and the actor showed up at the same time. The guards knew this was wrong, fast. The psion attempts to short circuit and seize up the truck with an hidden electrical outburst.
The next thing that happened was, was that the ranger got peppered by automatic gun fire and the second car hit the truck as it came to a sudden shutdown. The psion, using his psychic abilities, knocked out the two guards in the back, but the driver witnessed something clearly unnatural happen and the psion do it. Now this one guard is fending off enemies from everywhere, all of who are shooting him, but cant hit to save their lives; the actor isn't a prime tier shooter and the other ranger can never roll. The psion is trying to get out of the truck and sneak up on the driver, but of course fails his Hide check.
The other range and actor attempt to breach the containers in the truck, only to realize they're impact resistant and weigh a ridiculous amount. So between being shot at by the one (un)lucky guard holding them all off, they are in their futility fumbling with the cargo. Eventually the truck catches fire, they eliminate the guard, and save the original ranger who had nearly died. In the process they blew their cover, lost tens of thousands on the armored car, narrowly avoided two members dying, and barely escaped the police. All for what you might ask?
An unassuming pink quartz crystal the size of a palm. Of course a very plot relevant crystal, but at the time they legitimately broke open the correct crate at last (the others had all been empty and decoys), recognized it, and snatched it. That moment of, "We did all of this for a rock?"
If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. That was how their game played, no matter how well planned it ever was.