Backwater Static

Run this before anyone's really "in character" yet — it's the hook, not a scene. The texts (already in the Player Primer) can be read aloud verbatim, or just hand a player your phone or a printed screenshot if you want it to land as a real object rather than narration. Either way, don't stretch this beat: five lines, then cut to arrival. The whole point is momentum — a player shouldn't have time to ask "wait, why would my character actually go?" before they're already walking in the door.

Marcus doesn't answer anything after the initial burst. If a PC texts back asking what's going on, the reply is just "not over text, please" or silence — the Incident wearing him is good at urgency, not at sustaining a lie under real questions yet. If someone calls instead of texting, it goes to voicemail; that's a deliberate choice, not an oversight to smooth over.

No rolls here. This beat is pure narration — resist the urge to call for an Insight check on text messages alone; there's nothing to actually detect yet. Let beat 02 be where the tell really lands.

A player who wants their character to just not show up is a real option to leave open, not something to railroad past — but make it easy to say yes anyway (Marcus is the group's actual center of gravity, per the Primer; not going costs something socially even if nothing's wrong yet). If a PC insists on investigating before going (checking on Marcus's known locations, etc.), that's fine and costs nothing mechanically — everything they'd find points to "he's fine, just acting weird," since the Incident hasn't tipped its hand yet.

The Screen itself is already covered in the Primer — don't re-describe the bar, describe Marcus. He's at his usual table, already there, already watching the door. The wrongness is small and specific, not spooky: too calm for someone who sent five panicked texts, laughing a half-beat late at his own joke, eye contact that holds a fraction too long before he remembers to look away. Play it completely straight. He's genuinely glad to see everyone — that part isn't fake.

See the battle map for the breach itself — to scale, hex overlay, ready to print.

He opens with something warm and ordinary — "hey, you came, good, sit down" — and stalls on anything specific. Ask him directly what's wrong and he deflects toward "I'll explain, just give me a second" rather than lying outright. He's not smooth about it; the Incident is running on borrowed familiarity, not real practice at being Marcus under pressure.

Everyone should feel that something's off regardless of any roll — this isn't a gated discovery. An optional Perception or Insight check can hand out one extra concrete detail (a half-second where his eyes catch the bar light wrong, or a stillness that doesn't match anyone's real posture) without changing what the table already knows.

If a player pushes hard — a direct "what happened to you," a hand on his arm, anything that forces a real answer — that's fine, it's what pulls the table straight into beat 03 early. Let it happen; the breach can interrupt him at any point in that conversation, not just on a fixed timer. If nobody pushes, give it one full round of normal catching-up before the door goes anyway.

Marcus finally starts — genuinely trying, fragments surfacing out of order, some of it real memory bleeding through from the Incident's own time in Foundation custody. He gets maybe three real sentences out: he was taken somewhere, he got out, whoever took him is still looking for him. Cut him off mid-word when the door comes in. Don't let this monologue run long enough to answer questions the table hasn't earned yet.

What he says should read as true and incomplete, not evasive — the Incident isn't hiding the shape of what happened, it just doesn't have the full picture of its own past any more than Marcus does. A workable line: "there were people, and a place, and I don't — I don't know how long, and they're going to —" and then the breach.

Treat the breach as a Surprise round for the table — nobody's expecting an armed entry, roll accordingly (rules.md's Surprised status). If someone was mid-roll on an Insight check against Marcus when the door goes, resolve it fast (a single die, no re-litigating) and move straight into action; don't let table mechanics slow down what's supposed to be the fastest beat of the session.

If the table's genuinely engrossed and nobody's reacted to Marcus by the time you're ready to cut, the breach doesn't wait for a natural pause — it happens on your timer, not theirs. This is the one beat in the session that isn't negotiable on pacing.

One clean beat of pure light and no sound — not an explosion, not violent in the way the rest of the fight will be. Marcus goes rigid, the light comes from everywhere and nowhere at once, and it's gone as fast as it started. Everyone in the room who was about to open fire simply stops being able to.

The response team doesn't get a reaction beat — they die in the flash itself, mid-motion, weapons still raised. Don't narrate fear or last words; the abruptness is the point. This should read as sudden and final, not as a fight the PCs won.

No roll gates getting a Gift here — every PC present simply has it, activated. This is the moment to ask each player, one at a time, what their Gift actually looks like manifesting for the first time, using whatever they already built in the Character Creator. Not every Gift needs to be visually dramatic in the flash itself — a subtle Gift can just be a felt certainty, a sudden clarity, rather than a special effect.

If a player wants their character to resist or fight the Gift taking hold, there's genuinely nothing to resist — it's not an attack on them, it's the Incident's own trigger going off, and it isn't optional. Let them roleplay the shock of it instead of mechanically opposing it.

Give the table maybe thirty real seconds to react to what just happened before the second team hits the door — enough for one or two lines of shock, not enough to fully process it. This team is cautious coming in, not overconfident; they can see the first team is down before they're even fully inside.

Unlike beat 03's team, these two or three agents know something's wrong before they engage — a beat of real hesitation, checking their downed colleagues, is in character and buys the PCs a real tactical opening if they take it. They fight like professionals who are rattled, not like professionals who are confident.

Field Agent/Breacher-tier stat blocks from the Adversary Index. This is meant to be genuinely winnable for four newly-Gifted PCs — don't pull punches to the point of trivializing it, but don't stack Advantage against the table either. It's the first real chance to feel out a brand-new Gift under pressure.

A table that doesn't want a second combat encounter right after the Flash can skip or heavily abbreviate this fight — narrate it as quick and decisive rather than running it turn by turn. Either way, the outcome feeds directly into beat 06: this team's own radio call is what confirms the real response is already inbound.

The tone shifts hard here — sirens, radio chatter that isn't friendly, the specific dread of hearing something with real numbers behind it closing in. This isn't staged as a fight to preview; it's staged as a clock running out. Keep description moving — streets, alleys, whatever The Screen's neighborhood offers — rather than lingering on any one image.

The MTF team stays mostly unseen and audible — vehicles, comms, the occasional glimpse of movement at a distance. Don't stage a direct confrontation with them; the threat works better as pressure than as an encounter.

Run this as a straightforward escape using Movement Rate/Athletics, with Marcus as real, mechanical dead weight if anyone's carrying him — slower movement, Disadvantage on rolls made while hauling him, whatever fits the actual terrain in play. A few Obstacle-style checks (a locked gate, a fence, a stretch of open ground) work well to create real tension without a stat block on the other end of it.

This is the beat that resolves Marcus's fate, and it needs to land the same way regardless of how the table plays it. If the party prioritizes getting themselves clear and leaves him, that's straightforward — he's gone because they left him. If instead they try to carry or protect him, don't let that effort actually succeed: stage a real moment of chaos mid-escape (a collapsing structure forcing a split path, a PC getting cut off and having to choose between doubling back and losing the group, a grab in a crowd nobody can react to in time) where whoever's got him loses track of him for just long enough. When the dust settles, he's not with them, and nobody at the table gets a clean look at what actually happened to him. The read for the players should be "we tried and it still happened," not "we failed a roll."

The adrenaline drop is the actual content of this beat — give it real space. Wherever the party ends up once they're actually clear, let them catch their breath, take stock of each other, and realize Marcus isn't with them. This is a good place to slow all the way down after two beats of forward momentum.

Marcus is absent from this beat entirely — that absence is the point, not something to explain away yet.

A good spot for each player to describe how their Gift actually feels now that the immediate danger's passed, separate from how it looked manifesting in beat 04. No rolls required.

If the table wants to immediately go looking for Marcus, that's a real, worthwhile direction — treat it as a seed for the next session rather than something to resolve or shut down tonight. There's genuinely nothing to find yet; let that be an honest answer rather than a stonewall.

This is the handoff, not a scene — give the players Case File LA-1147 directly, in whatever form fits your table (printed, a shared link opened on someone's phone, whatever). It works either as something found at the scene before the party leaves, or as a session-end wrap-up prop; either placement is fine.

N/A — no NPCs present for this beat.

If a player wants to try the Portable Severance Anchor found in the packet, its real mechanics live in the Anomalous Objects Index's Foundation Equipment section — it's a real, usable item, not just a prop.

See The Organization for the full picture: this campaign's Foundation runs more like Warehouse 13 than a pure containment bureau — they field-issue anomalous items to operational teams as tools, not just study them in a vault. The requisition tag in the evidence packet is the first concrete proof of that the PCs will see, and it's worth letting a sharp-eyed player notice that on their own rather than pointing it out.