Madness Dossier ZIASUDRA Session Recap (9/18/2016) Part I

On Sunday October the 18th we played the first actual session of my GURPS Horror: Madness Dossier game. Here's what happened:

Briefing

On June 4th, 2014 Sir James Hook CB, SANDMAN Applied Anthropologist was summoned to Granite Peak and assigned to assemble direct field team ZIASUDRA, and spent the day in high level briefings concerning his new team and their current mission, code-named CLARITY:

• In 1969 a SANDMAN team was involved in an archeological dig at the Nineveh site in Mosul, Iraq.
• Several artifacts were tentatively identified as potentially significant to History B research, and potential reality shards.
• The Ba'ath government seized these artifacts before SANDMAN could smuggle them out of the country.
• These artifacts ended up in the Mosul Museum, and after they failed to cause any detectable ontoseismic activity, the Project concluded that they were inert enough that they did not warrant a risky retrieval operation.
• An assessment of the artifacts (by a team including PC archeologist Cornealus Bisset) in May was cut off by the instability in Iraq.
• Currently, so-called Islamic State troops are marching on Mosul, and instability in the Iraqi Army has Project Esmologists predicting an 83% chance that the city will fall by the end of the month.
• The Islamic State is believed to be a possible Anunnaki Cult (hence the "ISIS" meme). Additionally they have been destroying "pagan" sites and artifacts in their territory 
• ZIASUDRA's mission is to assess if any high priority artifacts are in the museum collection and retrieve them if required.
• In order to do this in the time available, the teams Control handler, Catherine Ballard, is sending them to the Project's long-term psychiatric care facility (code-named "The Park") on Ball Island, St. Alban's Bay Vermont (in Lake Champlain) to interview Frank Libretti, the last surviving member of the 1969 mission, under hypnosis.
• Libretti was a reality archeologist, recruited out of the University of Chicago as a grad student and was 27 during the mission (so he's 72 now).
• Libretti suffered extensive psychological damage in the 70s and was an early Cheval volunteer. 

The Team

Sir James assembled and briefed his team:
Sir James Hook CB Phd: Applied Anthropologist - Team Leader
Dr. Cornelius Q. Bisset Phd: Reality Archeologist -Has prior experience with the Nineveh site.
Josie Wills: Cheval (Loa are Wabbit and Damballah
Coheli: Golden Child

Three team members were not present in Granite Peak (because out of game, their players weren't present):

Lady Margaret Ballingall Phd, Baroness of Glenfalloch: Neurolingist
Charlie Knox:  Cheval (Loa is Oggun)
Both where involved in an unrelated mission in DC and were due to meet the team at The Park. Lady Margaret and Sir James were married once, and are on chilly but professional terms now.

The team's commando is still in the Middle East and (hopefully) will meet up with them when they get there.

Disadvantage Rolls and Specific Duties

 There's quite a few disadvantages of the roll at the start of the game variety in this team:
Sir James: Duty (Project Sandman; Extremely Hazardous 15 or less); Duty came up and he was assigned a secondary duty of assessing the effectiveness of the Park's human control techniques.
Dr Bisset: Duty (Project Sandman; Extremely Hazardous 15 or less); Duty came up and he was given the secondary duty of trying to determine if the unusual glyphs reported by the 1969 team correspond to any in the current catalog.
Josie Wills: Duty (Project Sandman; Extremely Hazardous 15 or less); Insomnia, Manic-Depression, Nightmares (12 or less); Duty came up, she made the HT roll for insomia and has eight days until her next episode, she started the game depressed, but avoided Nightmares. She was assigned the secondary duty of assessing the effectiveness of the experimental "Bodhisattva" loa that Frank was programmed with to make his residency at the Park easier.
Coheli: Dependents (Next Cohort of Golden Children, 12 or less), Duty (Project Sandman; Extremely Hazardous 15 or less). His dependents did not come up, but duty did. He was assigned the task of doing a security update to the Park's network.
 Lady Margaret: Duty (Project Sandman; Extremely Hazardous 15 or less). I waived the Duty roll as her absence for most of the session was explained as an unrelated Duty
Charlie Knox: Duty (Project Sandman; Extremely Hazardous 15 or less), Insomnia. I waived the Duty roll as his absence for most of the session was explained as an unrelated Duty. Charlie made the HT roll for insomnia and has 10 days until his next episode.

To be continued...