Game: Dark Conspiracy (GDW, 1991)
My Experience: Dark Conspiracy shares a game engine with several other GDW products, most notably the second edition of Twilight: 2000. Because of my T2k appreciation, I was primed for anything else in that neighborhood, so when DC released in ’91, I snapped it up pretty much immediately. I then flailed about for something to do with it. I wound up running a couple of unsuccessful sessions of it for my Boy Scout troop/gaming group, then shelved it for thirty-plus years. I’ve never gotten to play it – and, truth be told, I’ve never entirely gotten my head around precisely what sort of adventuring the designers intended PCs to accomplish within it.
Mercedes “Sadie” Cantrell, Two-Fisted Psychic
Sadie grew up on the Virginia-West Virginia state line in a holler so dark it only got six hours of sunlight on a good day. There were only a few ways for a girl like her to get out of that holler, and she wasn’t college material… and while she had the looks and equipment for it, she sure as hell wasn’t going to do the other thing. That left the Army, same as everyone in her family who wanted a way out had done for generations (and about half of ’em had even survived to come back). Sadie figured they’d take her for a truck driver or an air conditioner repairwoman or something, but she did better than anyone expected on the entry tests. They sent her off to California to learn another language, and then she spent the next six years attached to a unit that didn’t officially exist, officially not doing things in various countries down south.
Turned out those weren’t the only unexpectedly-high test scores in Sadie’s file. Someone had been keeping an eye on her. After the fourth or fifth avoided ambush, and the second or third weird encounter in the jungle that never made it into the official after-action reports, stories about her were starting to get around. A couple of months after she made sergeant and was thinking about staying in for life, she got a visit from some spooky types, the kind of guys who got deference from field-grade officers despite having no rank tabs or name tapes on their BDUs. They asked if she was interested in some kind of advanced training – asked in a way that strongly implied “no” would not be the right answer.
The following few years saw Sadie in a lot of labs, being run through a lot of examinations, some of which were far more interesting than others. She went along with most of it, but she drew the line when the lab coats asked her to kill a goat with her brain. She never got straight answers about what the end goal of the program was, but she could read between the lines. The coats and the brass never got exactly what they were looking for, though, and eventually funding for the program went away. Sadie signed a whole stack of paperwork agreeing to never talk about what she’d seen or done, and when it was all over, she was out on the street with a sore hand, a migraine that would never end, an honorable discharge, and damn few job prospects.
Over the course of twelve years in uniform (and occasionally not in uniform), Sadie had made a few friends here and there, so she started making some calls. Things were slow for a few months before Sadie got her next break. One of her old team’s engineering sergeants had wound up with a big Atlanta studio doing pyro and effects work, and his employer needed someone who could teach an up-and-coming actress how to hold a gun and throw a punch. Sadie packed her stuff – wasn’t a lot, she’d learned to travel light – and was on the next bus to Georgia. That gig was three months of her life she’d never get back. Turned out she wasn’t much of a teacher, but the producers took note of what she could do.
Sadie was never going to be the next action superstar, but she had a few years of fun in front of the camera. It couldn’t last, though. Pretending to do the things she’d once done for real… it left her feeling hollow. She missed living on the edge. But by now, she knew a lot of women in show business who had dangerous problems in their lives. Yeah, a lot of them already had personal security, but most of those boys were, well… a bit too obvious. It was surprisingly easy to step away from the cameras and go back to working behind the scenes with a gun and a different kind of camouflage.
That’s when Sadie started having run-ins with things she thought she’d left behind in the jungles.
Traits
Attributes and Skills
Strength 7
Heavy Weapons 1
Melee Combat (Unarmed) 5
Small Arms (Pistol) 6
Small Arms (Rifle) 6
Thrown Weapon 2
Constitution 9
Agility 5
Stealth 1
Intelligence 8
Observation 2
Psychology 1
Vehicle Use (Wheeled) 4
Willpower 5
Education 3
Charisma 8
Act/Bluff 3
Disguise 1
Interrogation 2
Language (English) Native
Language (Spanish) Native
Persuasion 3
Empathy 5
Animal Empathy 2
Human Empathy 3
Foreboding 5
Project Emotion 2
Age 37
Initiative 4
Hit Capacity: head 18, torso 48, limbs 32
Weight: 73 kg
Load: 48 kg
Throw Range: 28 m
Unarmed Combat Damage: 3
Equipment
Serengeti Vermilion sunglasses
designer wardrobe
registration/licensing paperwork for full-auto firearms
Kevlar vest
Kevlar helmet
IR/UV night-vision goggles
handcuffs x2
flashlight
individual tactical radio
G3 battle rifle w/ 5 magazines, telescopic sight
MP-7 submachine gun w/ 5 magazines, suppressor, infrared laser sight
Colt Krait semiautomatic pistol w/ 5 magazines, shoulder holster
case of 600 rounds 7.62x51mm
case of 1500 rounds 10mm
Contacts
1 empathic, American
1 entertainment, American
1 law enforcement, American
1 military, American
1 military, foreign
Notes and Afterthoughts
Never in my life have I rolled as well for a randomly-generated character’s stats as well as I rolled for Sadie’s attributes. Each one is a 2d6-2 roll, except for Empathy, which is 1d6-1. She’s a keeper. Her skill spread is all over the place, but I was going for a generalist with interesting character history more than an aggressively-focused build. My original intent was to make her a state highway patrol officer after getting out of the Army, but that Charisma 8 was just there begging me to do something with it.
For those following along at home, her life path phases were:
1 – US Army Elite/Enlisted (secondary activity: developing latent psychic powers – Foreboding)
2 – US Army Elite/Enlisted (secondary activity: developing latent psychic powers – Foreboding)
3 – Psychic Test Subject (secondary activity: maintaining marksmanship qualifications – Small Arms)
4 – Entertainer (secondary activity: martial arts training – Melee Combat [Unarmed]; aging -1 Agility)
5 – Bodyguard (secondary activity: honing her situational awareness – Observation)
For narrative purposes, she was still active-duty for that third phase and got out of the Army as a staff sergeant, but that should have no impact on play.