SpyCraft: Mission 1 - Annual training exercise

Our first mission in Codename: The Increment was standard training fare for our newly-created seasoned (5th level) characters.

We were tasked with infiltrating a Ministry of Agriculture laboratory near a sleepy rural town, and liberating some sensitive documentation stored in a safe. This was not a live fire exercise, but we were fully expecting the building to be a front, manned by other Secret Service employees. We had two days to get in, get the information, and get out...


Day One:

We rose early and scouted out the building, getting a good view of the perimeter from all sides, as well as the tight security in operation. On closer inspection, the fence turned out to be electrified, and the poles around the complex carried night-vision as well as visible-light cameras. Discounting the back door and fire escape - as they lacked door handles - we spent another four hours watching the comings and goings through the main gates, and soon got a good idea of the tight security procedures in place.

Several plans were discussed and dismissed - commandeering an employee's vehicle and ramming through the gates, parachuting onto the roof in the dead of night, and even arranging "distractions" for the guards while we snuck in... "Too much" DnD had us thinking a far too combat-centric way! Use of my character's air strike gear selection to create a distraction was vetoed due to the fact this was an internal training mission on UK soil.

We knew the safe was voice-locked (in true Mission Impossible style) and so needed to get the voice print of the high-ranking director of the facility - which was where our first real plan came into operation. Having considered several options, we bought a banger of a car for a hundred quid at the local garage, and "accidentally" ran into the back of him at the lights. Unfortunately, I rolled a 1 on my driving roll and caused several thousand pounds worth of damage to his Bentley... After a concerted effort to calm him down, we gave our (fake) details and got his - name, address, and eventually all the digits from 0 to 9 for the voice lock...

Retiring for the night, we ran a few errands - Millennium (Nath) went and rented a white van, and took it to the local 24h Tesco to pick up a printer and laminator for the laptop. Raffles (Me) called one of her contacts by leaving a cryptic message on a BBS somewhere, and was eventually able to request having our aliases, van registration (of the rental) and a bogus air-con repair job inserting into the facility's records for the following day. Can Opener (Mark) called back to HQ for a background check on the director, from which we started to piece together some ideas for code numbers for the safe.

Day Two:

After waiting 3d6 hours to see if our hacker contact had been successful, he sent confirmation of the job along with fake ID badges for us to print and laminate.

Having decided to try a non-violent tack on the mission, Millennium looked up some prescription sleeping tablets on his iPhone while Raffles knocked up a face prescription on the laptop. CO headed off to get some suitable work gear, and had it logo-embroidered, before meeting us at the supermarket cafe for an all-day-breakfast. After a tense moment at the chemist's counter - I rolled a 2 on my forgery roll (clearly a crappy printout), and waited with action die in hand while Dave rolled... a 2 as well. Seems the dispenser guy really wasn't looking that closely anyway - we headed out to spend the day filling the van with air-con gear, tools and bits of pipe.

Evening rolled by, and we rolled up to the security booth at the facility. Easily bluffing our way in - we were on the list, no roll needed - we were sent upstairs with one of the security guards watching over us. As the boys went to work "fixing" the AC - and trying to find the safe - Raffles headed down to the canteen to make the all-important workman's tea, bumping into half a dozen meatier security guys watching golf.

Brews all round.

After a few false starts and a couple of hours spent fannying around, we finally had the guards asleep, the safe located - behind a picture of The Queen, of course - and set about cracking the code. Dave's clues were good, but we just weren't thinking along the right lines, so we ended up cutting the thing open with a plasma cutter - very slowly, as time ticked away!

Grabbing the all-important USB stick just as the guards came back round, Raffles bolted for the front door and slammed the release button, CO and Millennium taking out the still sleepy guards with gunfire and grenades (laser tags, this time round...) before hot-footing it to the van. A couple more shots were exchanged before we screeched out of the compound, CO waving his MP5 at the civilian security guards to intimidate them into opening the gates for us.

In all, awesome.