Session 2 — Opening Scene: The Hall

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played

This scene was played in Session 2. The Hall is now established as the team’s base. Sloane and Adrian are introduced.

Session 2 opening. Penciled in — subject to revision. This scene establishes the team’s new base of operations, introduces Sloane and Adrian as in-House resources, and sets up the beats that will follow.

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Scene Overview

Riley brings the team to the Hall — Ironworkers’ Local 44 at Dolan and Renner, Ironworks/Riverside border. It’s their first time inside as a team. The building is still being figured out. The union seal is still in the floor. Nobody has decided what to do about that.

Sloane and Adrian are already there. They’ve been operating out of this space. They are not leaving.

Beats

1. Arrival

Riley walks them in. No ceremony. The main entrance on Dolan is heavier, draws eyes — he uses the Renner side door instead. The ground floor is a converted union hall: high ceilings, exposed timber beams, concrete floors. Training space has been cleared, a reinforced wall installed on the south end, equipment cage in the northeast corner. It looks like a building that was handed over recently and is still being figured out.

The Local 44 union seal — a cast iron medallion, three feet across — is set into the concrete near the main entrance. It’s been there since 1938. Nobody’s moved it. The players may or may not notice it. It doesn’t need comment.

Riley’s tone: Matter-of-fact. He’s not giving a tour. He’s showing them where the light switches are. He’ll point out the essentials — side door, training floor, stairs — and let them explore the rest on their own. He has somewhere to be. (He always has somewhere to be.)

Establish: This is theirs now. It’s not Alliance Tower. It’s not sleek. The neighborhood is watching them — Tomás Reyes at the Kessler Market, Father Wróbel at St. Casimir’s two buildings down. The team is being observed before they’ve decided who they are in this space.

2. The Second Floor — Sloane

If anyone goes upstairs, they find Sloane already running.

The former administrative offices are now a surveillance and communications hub: Weaver drone relay stations, dual monitors, hardline terminals, a server rack running warm in the corner. Empty cups near a keyboard she’s clearly been at for hours.

Sloane swings around in her chair, looks them over, and starts talking before anyone introduces themselves. She already knows who they are. She already pulled their files. She’s not sorry about it.

What she can offer:

  • Intelligence access — surveillance feeds, personnel files, building schematics, financial trails. If the players need to find something or someone, Sloane is where they start.
  • Real-time comms support during operations. She talks them through doors she’s already mapped.
  • Pattern recognition across large datasets — she catches things faster than anyone should. She attributes this to being good at her job. (The story may eventually disagree.)
  • Context on current events — she’s been monitoring post-press-conference fallout, A.E.G.I.S. comms scuttlebutt (what little is getting through their lockdown), and local chatter in the Ironworks and Riverside Ward.

Her demeanor: Irreverent, fast, genuinely enjoys the work. She teases Riley when he’s around (he tolerates it, which is affection). With the new team she’s calibrating — warmer than she intends, quicker to help than she’d admit, watching who’s worth the investment.

Specific hooks available this session:

  • The EM anomaly she’s been tracking in Riverside Ward / Ironworks (Sable/Fault thread — she hasn’t told Riley yet, might mention it to the team)
  • Post-press-conference optics — what’s the city saying about them, what’s the media cycle looking like, is Signal’s broadcast still circulating
  • Anything the players want to look into, she can probably start pulling within minutes

3. The Ground Floor — Adrian

Adrian is already here. He’s been using the Hall as a solo base for months — Riley cleared it with Paragon before the team was formed. He treats the training space as his own but isn’t territorial about it. He just got here first.

He’s doing something mundane when the players arrive — running drills, reviewing footage, eating takeout at the equipment cage. He introduces himself without ceremony. He already knows who they are. He does not make a big deal of it.

What he can offer:

  • Tactical read on the Ironworks and Riverside Ward — he grew up here, he’s been operating here for two years. He knows which blocks to avoid, which rooftops have line-of-sight to Alliance Tower, which streets flood when it rains.
  • A direct line to Riley when Riley is available, and a steady presence when he isn’t.
  • Practical mentorship — he’s already made the mistakes the new team hasn’t. He’s not precious about sharing what he learned.
  • Grounding — the older-sibling energy is real, not performed. He doesn’t lecture, doesn’t position himself as authority. He’s just competent and present.

His demeanor: Relaxed, dry, genuinely funny. Teases Riley about being old with real affection. Knows when to push and when to let something sit. With the new team: easy, zero pretension.

4. The Third Floor — Unclaimed

If players go up to 3/F, they find an undeveloped space: six cardboard boxes of Local 44 records against the north wall (dues rolls, grievance logs, contract negotiations, minutes of hundreds of meetings going back to 1938 — unexamined), and at the end of the east hallway, a locked room. The key was not included when the building was transferred. No one has explained this.

This is a planted seed, not a scene to drive. Let players discover it if they explore. Don’t foreground it.

5. The Neighborhood

Make the neighborhood real. The Hall sits on the border of the Ironworks and Riverside Ward — a working district that has been through deindustrialization, decline, and slow reinvention. It has a long memory for who shows up and what they want.

Tomás Reyes — runs the hardware stall at Kessler Market. Hears everything, repeats nothing. He’s noticed the lights in the Hall. He has not asked questions. He is deciding what to do with what he knows on a longer timeline than anyone realizes.

Father Benedikt Wróbel — St. Sebastian’s, two buildings down on Dolan. Has seen people coming and going. Has said nothing to anyone. Knew the last union steward who worked here. Is of the opinion that the neighborhood could use whatever the building is becoming, but he would appreciate being told.

Neither of these people need to appear in this session. But they’re watching. The team is not operating in a vacuum.

6. The Gala (Planted Seed — Tomorrow Night)

Casimir Vane’s DA fundraiser gala is tomorrow night.

This is not a secret. Vane isn’t hiding — that’s the point. The gala is public. Invitations went out weeks ago, before his arrest, before the warehouse, before any of this. The Ironworks knows about it. The city knows about it. It’s in the society pages.

Sloane flags it. She doesn’t editorialize. She just puts it on a screen: Vane Capital Group — Annual Benefit for the District Attorney’s Office. Tomorrow. The Glassmont.

The team has Avi’s construct intel connecting Vane to the SHADE bodies. They have a man out on bail throwing a party for the DA. That information is in their hands. What they do with it — and whether they’re ready to move on Vane this fast — is their call.

GM Notes:

  • The gala is Beat 8. The players should know it’s coming so they can start pulling threads toward it, but they should not feel railroaded into attending tomorrow.
  • Sloane offering this unprompted is in character — she’s been monitoring Vane since the warehouse. She’s been waiting for someone to ask.
  • This seed gives the session a ticking-clock element if the players bite. If they don’t, the gala still happens. Vane doesn’t wait.

7. The Shipping Discrepancy (Planted Seed — PROMETHEUS)

While Sloane is pulling Vane’s public filings for the gala, she catches something else: a materials shipment volume to Vane’s Riverside Ward “materials testing depot” that’s running at 3x expected capacity. The suppliers are subsidiary shells — corporate nesting dolls. She flags it as anomalous but can’t crack the ownership chain without more time.

This is the PROMETHEUS facility seed. The shipping discrepancy gives the team an anomalous location to investigate. When Nightfall approaches in Beat 5, Morgan can connect the dots: those subsidiaries are Eclipse infrastructure. They know because they were shaped by the same system. “I can get you into the facility your spider-girl just found.”

GM Notes:

  • Sloane finds this organically while doing the gala research — it’s not a separate scene, it’s a byproduct of her diligence.
  • Don’t explain the Eclipse connection here. That’s Nightfall’s contribution in Beat 5.
  • The shipping discrepancy is enough to be suspicious. It’s not enough to act on alone. The team needs Nightfall to make it actionable.

Transition to Session Beats

After the Hall is established and the players have had time to settle in, interact with Sloane/Adrian, and decide what they want to look into, the session moves into the active beats:

  • Beat 4: Signal drops a three-part broadcast: (1) Sterling is Darkstar’s son, (2) the Renegade Force killed Darkstar — a threat the Alliance refused to deal with permanently, (3) “corpse” footage confirming the kill. Sterling recognizes the corpse is a fake. Red Pill cameo amplifies the crowd reaction. The city questions the team’s legitimacy. Carter Williams becomes a sympathetic figure — the one who did what the Alliance wouldn’t. Avi’s position gets harder.
  • Beat 5 (penciled): Nightfall approaches. Morgan Vale is done watching. They killed Artemis. They are not pretending otherwise. But they are here, and they know things — Eclipse infrastructure knowledge that connects to the shipping discrepancy Sloane flagged, plus Wavelength knowledge relevant to Jason’s dual-energy situation. “I can get you into the facility your spider-girl just found.”

The Hall gives the characters a place to process these beats between action. It’s where the quiet conversations happen. Let it breathe.

Notes on Pacing

  • Don’t rush Sloane and Adrian’s introductions. They’re not exposition deliveries — they’re people. Let the players meet them at their own speed.
  • Sloane will offer information if asked. She will not volunteer things unprompted (except maybe the EM anomaly, which is starting to bug her). The players have to decide what they want to look into.
  • Adrian will offer practical help without being asked. He’s not waiting for permission to be useful. He’s already making coffee and checking if the equipment cage has what the new team needs.
  • Riley leaves. He doesn’t linger. He gives them the space and goes back to whatever he’s not telling them about. This is texture, not a plot point — but it should be noticeable.
  • The building is still being figured out. Let the players figure it out too.

Last updated: April 2026 Status: Played — Session 2