Godlike - The Dying Days

Glossary:

Abwehr – The intelligence wing of the German armed forces, led by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, a naval veteran of the Great War, and hero of the Battle of the Falkland Isles. He was the captain of the Dresden, the only ship to escape the British fleet. Their emphasis on working to military and practical objectives frequently places them at odds with the Gestapo’s pursuance of ideological and political objectives in occupied territories, where their jurisdictions overlapped.

Brandenburg Division – Technically, this could be described as Canaris’s private army. The Brandenburgers were an elite commando unit under the Abwehr’s command. By June 1944, the SS had established its own reputation for commando missions (largely thanks to daredevils like Otto Skorzeny and the SS’s near-monopoly on Ubermenschen), and the Brandenburgers had been largely reduced to acting as an elite infantry unit. Nevertheless, Canaris kept hold of his pet soldiers for operations where the SS’s fanaticism would be damaging to their effectiveness.

Gestapo - Short for Geheimstaatspolizei, or ‘secret state police’, the Gestapo are run by Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS.

Heer - the German regular army, from which the Abwehr primarily recruits.

Maquis - the French Resistance, who use guerrilla tactics to fight the German occupation of France and terrorist tactics to punish collaboration by French nationals.

SS - The Schutzstaffel, or ‘bodyguards’, were originally set up to provide personal protection for Adolf Hitler after the original SA storm troopers were purged and disbanded. Under Heinrich Himmler’s leadership, they have become one of the most powerful organisations in the Reich, running the concentration camps and the German police. The Waffen-SS is the military wing of the organisation, made up of the elite of the German military (including the Ubermenschen).

Talent - A parahuman ability, or (in Allied parlance) the possessor of such an ability. Talents are effectively a form of mental illness, manifesting during periods of extreme stress (such as combat or near-deadly accidents), or when a person’s self-belief is so great that they can warp reality around them. The latter is a common cause for the manifestation of abilities among ‘superhuman’ Nazis, although the official Nazi doctrine states that such manifestation is the natural result of Aryan racial purity. Adolf Hitler refuses to believe that non-German Talents exist, although most branches of the German and Nazi hierarchy beneath him have become practiced in avoiding mentioning them in official reports. The German war effort suffers because of this habit of skirting around the truth when planning strategy. Importantly, a Talent can always spot another Talent power in action, even otherwise stealthy ones like invisibility or shape-shifting.

Ubermensch - Literally ‘over-man’, plural Ubermenschen. The German word to describe men who display parahuman abilities. Nazi doctrine holds that such people are the offspring of two 100% pure Aryans, and that no parahumans exist outside of the Third Reich. Uberfrauen also exist, but in very small numbers (officially – in reality, there have been several thousand, most of them non-German victims of Nazi atrocities, their powers manifesting as a mental defence mechanism.).


The Brandenburg Division, Paris Unit
(Note: Each PC was generated with 50 Will points and was given the free skill points available to SS members, rather than the less appropriate TOG skills that would normally be given to a commando team.)

Hauptmann Cobhan Lebrous (a.k.a. ‘Fool’s Mate’) - played by Naomi.
Hauptmann (Captain) Lebrous is an exceptional Hyperbrain and Hypercommander with the ability to psychically and invisibly leave his body in a form of astral projection. Physically weak, yet mentally very agile, and habitually plays chess against several opponents at a time, beating them all within a few turns.

Leutnant Wolfgang Ritter (a.k.a. ‘The Flying Bullet’ or ‘Bullet’) - played by Cath.
Leutnant (Lieutenant) Ritter is Lebrous’s number two, a flier with Hypercoordination and a frightening ability to put a rifle bullet through any part of an enemy’s anatomy. Ritter is much more a fighter than the hauptmann and leads the squad from the front in combat situations.
Ritter intends to survive the war and return home to marry his fiancé Elise. He is a big fan of Konrad Rahn, the ‘Aviator’ and first of the modern wave of Ubermenschen.
Cath played Tancred the pilgrim in my Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign.

Oberschutze Albrecht Hesse (a.k.a. ‘Sturmdrang’) - played by Regis.
Oberschutze (Private 1st Class) Hesse is a devoted national socialist and German patriot. He is incredibly gung ho and is convinced that Germany is destined to win the war. With the ability to dodge and shoot simultaneously, his favoured weapon is the MP40 submachine gun. He is also immune to bullets… but only when waving the swastika flag and singing Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles. Needless to say, the latter ability is of little use on stealth operations.

Schutze Hans Braunwitz (a.k.a. ‘Jerry’ or ‘Tank’) - played by Owen.
Schutze (Private) Braunwitz is the oldest member of the squad at 64 years of age. He is a wizened Great War veteran and is very much of the belief that if the first war didn’t kill him, neither will this one. Particularly since he’s now immensely strong, with iron hard skin and the willpower to ignore wounds that would cripple a normal man. Braunwitz’s weapon of choice is the MG42-S, a variant of the MG42 machine gun fitted with a drum magazine, rather than a belt feed, designed to be fired one-handed by hyperstrong Ubermenschen.

Schutze Konrad Ottman (a.k.a. ‘Void’) - played by Ricky.
Ottman is probably one of the earliest Ubermenschen to manifest, perhaps even predating the famed ‘Aviator’. His power was undetected for a long time, simply because he was a ‘wild’ Zed, perpetually dampening the Talent abilities of anyone within 100 yards, and he didn’t encounter any other Ubermenschen for quite some time. Unfortunately, the side-effect was that everyone within the same distance also felt horrendously depressed. The shock of his mother’s suicide was such that it caused him to become aware of his part in her depression and enabled him to gain control of his Talent. Not particularly keen on fighting the enemy, or on heroism in general, Ottman’s only goal is to survive the war.
Ricky played the nearly-disembowelled cleric-turned-monk Matthias in my Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign.

Schutze Elsa Hauptman (a.k.a. ‘Spook’) - played by Erfalaswen.
Elsa Hauptmann is currently the only woman in the squad, and specialises in undercover work, particularly among the French Maquis Resistance. Her already considerable natural abilities in this field are backed up by her ability to fade into transparency, spot enemies within 200 yards, and to transform (T1000-style) into any other person she touches.
Erfalaswen played Brother Alfred the monk in my Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign.


Mission 1 – The Paris Safe House: Operation Baguette (I’m denying all responsibility for the mission codenames. The PCs decided after the third mission that they were going to name them all after types of food that were relevant to the plot. I joked that borscht or vodka might become relevant.)

It is June 1st, 1944. Admiral Canaris, in a rare personal briefing, informs them that an Abwehr courier was murdered in Paris a few days earlier and an important document was stolen. He adds that the Gestapo have been observing the Maquis cell responsible for some time, and expects them to launch a raid at any time.

He emphasises the importance of the Abwehr raiding the house first and recovering the document. In addition, the Resistance leader Patrick St. Pierre is believed to be in the building, along with his second-in-command, Jean-Philippe Gervon, known among the Resistance as ‘Le Protecteur’. Canaris implies that Gervon has ‘special talents’ that make him difficult to hunt down using regular troops. There is no intelligence, however, as to what Gervon’s Talent powers are meant to be (because, of course, they don’t exist – he’s a Frenchman). Canaris adds that there is more to gain by taking the Resistance members alive than by killing them.

After an initial planning session, the squad decide that it is probable that St. Pierre probably also has ‘special talents’, since a superhuman would probably be the leader of the cell, rather than a lieutenant.

Hauptman Lebrous has his squad reconnoitre the suspected safe house (a Boulangerie-Patisserie, a bakery that sells cakes) for the day, ready for a night-time assault. Jerry and Spook, as the least military looking members of the squad, and both able to speak French, walk in and buy a loaf of bread. Spook makes a point of touching the baker’s wife’s hand as she receives her change, so that she can later transform her appearance, should the necessity arise. She also espies a trapdoor leading down to the cellar, just behind the counter.

Meanwhile, Lebrous astrally projects himself into the buildings surrounding the bakery, searching for any secret access or escape routes, such as sewer entrances, shared loft spaces or tunnels, which would need covering during a raid. He takes care not to go too close to the bakery for fear that Gervon or St. Pierre might see his ghost form.

On the way out of the haberdashery opposite the safe house, Lebrous spots a pair of men hanging about on the street who don’t look particularly French. In fact, they look kind of German. And they’re wearing suspicious trenchcoats.

The decision is made to issue the squad with chloroform pads, to make stealth subduals and to prevent any Maquis using, ahem, ‘special talents’ to resist capture.

That night, the raid begins with The Flying Bullet flying up onto the kitchen extension roof. Close behind is Spook, who climbs up to join her. Sturmdrang and Void wait in the back alley, while Fool’s Mate and Jerry approach along the street. The plan is that Spook performs a final reconnoitre of the bakery before Bullet flies out of the house and relays her report before the assault begins.

This being Paris in the summer, and therefore fairly stuffy, many of the windows are open. Spook and Bullet sneak into the empty rear bedroom and Spook activates her Fade power. Merging with the cheap wallpaper, she sneaks out onto the landing. Light comes from under the doors of two of the three upstairs rooms. She creeps down to the darkened room and looks inside. There’s a young man, about seventeen years old, asleep in the furthest of a row of four beds. She checks his face from the photos produced during the briefing: it is neither Patrick St. Pierre or Jean-Phillippe Gervon. Propped against the wall beside his bed is a British Lee-Enfield rifle. Spook carefully removes the clip from the loaded rifle, freezing as it CLICKS loudly in the silent room. In the style of the motion pictures, the man in the bed turns over, mumbles in his sleep, and resumes lightly snoring. Spook pockets the clip and leaves the room.

She presses an ear against one of the illuminated doors and listens to the conversation within. Two Frenchmen are talking about an OSS cryptographer who will be parachuting in tomorrow night to decode the letter stolen from the murdered courier. She decides she needs to ID the speakers and risks opening the door a crack to peer inside. Patrick St. Pierre and the baker are indicating several maps on a table. The cell leader looks up at the ajar door and begins walking towards it. She backs off and presses herself against the wall.

St. Pierre looks out onto the gloomy corridor, squints for a moment, and sees the distorted space occupied by Spook. He bellows something in French and throws himself back into the room. Spook panics and flees into the rear bedroom, convinced that St. Pierre has ‘special talents’. How else could he have seen through her camouflage?

Just to help with orientation, the door to the rear bedroom faces the main landing and the stairs down to the bakery’s back room. On this landing is the other illuminated room. Leading off from this landing are the two rooms investigated by Spook, on opposite sides of the corridor, with St. Pierre in the room next door to the one containing Spook and Bullet.

The door to the room on the main landing opens and a Frenchman appears. He fires a revolver at Spook, but the shot merely splinters the door frame. Bullet fires a snap shot that takes him through the wrist, spinning him to the ground and sending the pistol skidding across the varnished floorboards.

The shot signals the beginning of the raid. Jerry charges the front door, smashing it from its hinges, and storms towards the shop counter. He does not have his MG42-S on this mission, because it is a little oversized for close quarters combat. Fool’s Mate cautiously follows, his MP40 covering the door to the kitchen. Jerry kicks over the counter and shoves it on top of the trapdoor, imprisoning any Resistance fighters hiding down there.

Sturmdrang over-extravagantly shoots the lock off the back door and he and Void sweep through the kitchen. It is empty. Oberschutze Sturmdrang orders Schutze Void to remain in the kitchen and cover his back as he clears the back room and heads upstairs. Having heard the gunfire from the upstairs landing, Void is in no hurry to disagree.

A second fighter emerges, more cautiously, from the room on the main landing, this one toting a British Sten submachine gun. Before he can spray Bullet and Spook with lead, Bullet drops him with an expert shot between the eyes. His body lands on the wounded fighter, pinning him to the floor.

Jerry is the first upstairs. If Bullet hadn’t recognised his WW1 vintage spiked helmet, he might have accidentally shot him. Behind Jerry are Fool’s Mate and Sturmdrang. They confirm that the room on the landing is empty and make contact with Spook and Bullet. Sturmdrang brutally kicks the wounded Maquis in the head as he passes.

Spook sends a few Walther PPK shots down the landing towards Patrick St. Pierre, who is firing a Sten from the doorway to his room. She is flung to the floor by a bullet glancing through the meat of her shoulder. Bullet drags her further back into the room.

From the top of the stairs, Fool’s Mate looks around at the layout of the landing and the disposition of his troops. He factors in the estimated distance between St. Pierre’s position and the funnelling effect of the walls and the rear bedroom doorway on explosive force… St. Pierre’s best strategy now would be to throw a grenade and take out all five of the Germans on the first floor. He shouts a warning, just as he hears the clink-clink-clink of an Einhandgranate 39 rolling along the floorboards. Bullet slams the bedroom door shut.

In the kitchen, Void dives for cover as an explosion sends plaster crumbling from the ceiling.

Fool’s Mate picks himself up from the stairwell and dusts himself down. Jerry is stood on the landing, his uniform shredded, his moustache dishevelled, a bit dazed but otherwise unharmed. Sturmdrang had hurled himself over the dead and wounded fighters into the room off the main landing and avoided most of the blast. The unfortunate wounded fighter was clearly dead, having been within a few feet of the grenade’s detonation point.

Patrick St. Pierre had them pinned down, and there was still no sign of the other Resistance Talent, Jean-Phillippe Gervon. They had to hit St. Pierre from the rear. While Fool’s Mate offered covering fire from his MP40, Bullet flies out of the window and over the rooftop and Jerry turns himself into a living battering ram and ploughs through the internal dividing wall between the room off the landing and into the dormitory. Sturmdrang ducks through the OAP-shaped hole in the wall just in time to see Jerry laying out the Resistance fighter earlier disarmed by Spook with a single punch to the head.

Bullet hovers down over the front of the bakery and slips in through the window to St. Pierre’s room. The baker is crouched behind the map table with a British Webley revolver (it’s becoming pretty obvious that this cell has access to weapons from outside of France). Bullet reaches for his chloroform pad and grabs at the baker. Although surprised, he throws Bullet aside and levels his revolver. The shot goes wide as Bullet kicks him and the two of them grapple over the weapon.

Sturmdrang slips out onto the corridor behind St. Pierre’s doorway as he fires off another burst at Fool’s Mate. Fool’s Mate makes eye contact with St. Pierre and Hypercommands him, in French, to drop his weapon, just as Sturmdrang places a bullet through the back of each of St. Pierre’s knees. The Sten drops to the floor to be kicked along the landing by Sturmdrang as he chloroforms the suspected Talent.

Jerry moves into St. Pierre’s room and finds Bullet still trading blows with the baker. A single Hyperstrong punch fractures the Frenchman’s skull and renders him very unconscious.

With the last Maquis on the top floor taken down, Fool’s Mate moves to treat Spook’s wounded shoulder – it turns out the wound isn’t that bad. Then the hauptmann heads downstairs to Hypercommand a surrender from the Resistance fighters hammering at the cellar door.

When Jerry lifts the counter out of the way, and Sturmdrang opens the trapdoor, a rifle and a couple of pistols are thrown out, followed by three Resistance fighters with their hands raised. One of them is Jean-Phillippe Gervon, who is not presenting any evidence of Talent abilities but is immediately chloroformed anyway.

A search reveals that Gervon has an envelope in his pocket, bearing the (broken) wax seal of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Fool’s Mate takes the envelope and pockets it. At a quiet moment, he surreptitiously reads it, photographically memorising the contents. It is written in a German code, similar to those used by the Abwehr, but unknown to him. After a second or two of thought, he has cracked it and memorised the decoded version of the letter:

C,

The time is set, and I trust that you have obtained the necessary materials for our plan.

I suspect an invasion of the West to be coming soon; the build-up on the English coast is significant, and agents in the country are reporting that Calais is to be the target. I am confident that our comrade, General Rommel, will hold any attempt to land troops by the Pas de Calais. If Germany can achieve a successful defence, it will damage the American will to fight, and may totally destroy the British ability to do so.

Should this defence succeed and our plan bear fruit, we may be able to find an honourable end to this war, and possibly even retain possession of our holdings in France and the Low Countries. Doubtless, we will either lose or be required to surrender the East to the Stalinists. I know you have lines of communication of which even I am unaware, but I will tell you now, frankly, that we are losing the war in the East. With our forces stretched on two fronts, we may not even be able to protect Germany’s borders. As sickening as it may be to contemplate, if we do not act, Berlin may fall to the Red Army.

That is why we, and above all, -you- must succeed.

Good luck.

Germany will remember you.

Ever your friend and ally,
W.

Several members of the squad notice that the baker’s wife was not present at the bakery. They briefly entertain the theory that perhaps Gervon or St. Pierre were actually the baker’s wife all along, using a ‘special talent’ similar to Spook’s Dead Ringer ability, until they work out that it was impossible since none of the three people had shown the signs of Talent use when seen by the Ubermenschen. They are forced to conclude that she must have left the premises some time before the raid.

The squad recovers all the weapons used by the Resistance fighters, along with the maps that Spook saw St. Pierre refer to when talking about the scheduled OSS parachutist. A cross has been pencilled in over farmland northeast of Paris – the suspected drop point?

As the prisoners are dragged out into the street, awaiting the scheduled Abwehr truck’s arrival, another truck arrives instead. It has the twin lightning strikes of the SS on the side, and a dozen MP40 or rifle-toting Waffen-SS soldiers jump out. One of them, a black-uniformed man in his thirties, wearing a greatcoat and peaked officer’s cap, walks up to the Abwehr squad and their prisoners, while the rest perform a belated raid on the bakery.

They recognise the officer as Hauptsturmfuhrer-SS Wilhelm Kruger, also known as ‘The Terror of Paris’, and leader of the Gestapo’s anti-Talent unit, The Hounds. He is wearing the Odal rune on his lapel, indicating that he is an SS Ubermensch.

“Jean-Phillippe Gervon!” he snaps at Hauptmann Fool’s Mate Lebrous. “Hand him over.”

Fool’s Mate, being technically of the same rank as Kruger, albeit in the regular army rather than the SS, refuses. “These are our prisoners, we’re taking them to the Abwehr headquarters. If the admiral agrees, you can take charge of them afterwards.”

Kruger, with a reputation for being a psychotic killer, becomes angry at being beaten to his prize by the army intelligence corps. Worried about Kruger’s as-yet-unknown Talent abilities, Void (remember him?) activates his Zed power, nullifying all Talent powers in the area. Everyone feels a bit depressed and glares at him. Particularly Kruger.

“What the hell did you do that for, private!” he demands. “Switch it off now!”

Void ignores the order, seeing as how it comes from a non-army officer.

Kruger’s face reddens and he bellows, “Deactivate that fucking power now or I’ll have you sent to the Russian Front!”

Fool’s Mate quietly, and somewhat smugly, orders Void to deactivate his power. Void does so.

When Kruger’s men have finished searching the bakery (and found nothing), the SS give up and leave. Fool’s Mate and the squad head back to the regular army barracks and Abwehr HQ with their prisoners intact. From there, the prisoners are whisked into interrogation.

Spook goes to the field hospital for treatment and Jerry complains about a twinge in his hip from when he barged through the wall at the bakery.