Random Encounters
Roll d66 (two dice, first as tens and second as units, 11 to 66). Thirty-six things that happen mid-Score, on the street, on a rooftop, deep inside a facility. When the pace needs a spike or a patrol is due, roll here. The suggested rolls are just that. Every one has a way to go loud.
| d66 | Encounter |
|---|---|
| 11 | The Following Balloon. A lone red balloon bobs along behind the Crew. Not drifting. Following. It's a Talos camera drone dressed as party decor. Tag it (Tag and Bag) to trace its signal home, or crack it open (Focus+Fix, Critical). Pop it wrong and a silent alarm brings a tail. |
| 12 | The Dead Air. A stretch of the route goes wrong-silent, all the ambient noise just stopping dead at some invisible line. Sound-dampening tech, fresh boot prints, the smell of ozone. Ghost Grind riders feel at home (+1 here). Everyone else rolls Nerves+Cool, Critical, or the quiet gets into their head. |
| 13 | The Sleeper. Someone slumped in a corner isn't napping, they're drugged. Help them (Focus+Heal, Critical) and maybe gain a witness, or leave them and dodge attention. Wrong treatment and they wake up swinging, causing exactly the scene the Crew was avoiding. |
| 14 | The Lost Baby. A woman screams her baby is gone, then points at the most lethal gap in sight: a ledge, a drop, a live rail. It's a pet rock with painted-on eyes and she is one hundred percent serious. Go fetch it anyway (Nerves+Stunt) and the whole neighbourhood hears how the Crew risked their neck to save a baby. |
| 15 | The Ice Cream Chase. A kid wails that someone stole their Ice Cream. Ice Cream is a cat, and it has bolted into the crowd. Mini-chase, Need 6, the cat has Speed 2 and zero respect for gravity. The Floor is Lava riders never lose it. |
| 16 | The Suspicious Vendor. A cart rolls up selling food that's too cheap and portions too big. The vendor knows things. Informant, or just a local who saw something? Smooth+Speech to open them up, Crime+Streetwise to read them. Eat first, ask later, and you're out cold for hours. |
| 21 | The Underground Market. A whole car or alley has become a bazaar: bootleg tech, street food, spray cans of dubious origin. Spend Cash for extra paint (1$ a can). Crime+Streetwise to move safe, because some "vendors" are Talos cataloguing every curious face. |
| 22 | The Ticking Package. An unmarked box sits abandoned, ticking softly. It's a harmless clock, but poking it draws every eye in the place, and some of those eyes are informants. Overreact and start a panic. Ignore it and maybe miss a real clue planted right beside it. |
| 23 | Emergency Protocol. Red lights, blaring announcements, doors sealing, the AI taking over. Talos interference or genuine failure? Work around it (Focus+Fix, Critical) or find the trigger (Focus+Detect). Trip more security and get sealed into a dead-end section as it powers down. |
| 24 | The Amnesiac. A stranger sits blank, no name, no idea how they got here. Talos memory tech? A medical episode? A plant faking it to watch the Crew work? Help them back (Focus+Heal or Smooth+Speech) and something crucial might shake loose. Or a violent episode does. |
| 25 | The Dead-Eyed Guard. A security guard counts down to his break by the restrooms. He's seen things and will trade "unofficial access" for a little charm or 1 Cash. Push too hard and he gets suspicious, or worse, he's already on Talos payroll and sells to the top bidder. |
| 26 | The Lost Shopper. An old woman clutches a shopping list in a script nobody reads, muttering about "the old entrance." She's a former employee who knows every back corridor and might have an ancient access card in her handbag. Brush her off and lose the best guide going. |
| 31 | The Toolbox. A maintenance worker wrestles a massive toolbox, running on no sleep. Help him carry it (Brawn+Force) and he lets slip he's headed to "the lower levels." Keep him talking and the way down spills out. Drop the box and the crash turns every head on the floor. |
| 32 | The Lost Child. A small boy sobs that he can't find his mum. Help him (Smooth+Speech) and it turns out mum is a Talos operative who uses a "secret door" the kid can describe in perfect detail. Handle it badly and his crying brings security, then it brings mum. |
| 33 | The Enthusiast. A "confused tourist" keeps asking about exhibits that don't exist. Dig in and they're a historian obsessed with the old tunnels the city was built over, carrying maps and far too much excitement. Great guide. Also stops to admire "historically significant" things mid-getaway. |
| 34 | The Junkyard Dog. A low growl from behind the scrap. A real dog, scarred and enormous, that considers the whole lot its turf and the souvlaki in your pocket its birthright. Feed it (1 Cash) and it leads the Crew through the maze like it owns the place. It does. Spook it and it howls the neighbourhood awake. |
| 35 | The Nostalgic Officer. Tonight's patrol is one tired old Talos who remembers real Easter fireworks from his yiayia's roof. Approach right (Crime+Stealth then Smooth+Speech) and he'll look the other way, maybe point out what the Crew's after. Read him wrong and you're in arm's reach of a Bad Guy. |
| 36 | The Scrap Artist. Behind a wall of crushed cars, a wiry old man with burn-scarred hands shapes launch tubes from scrap by the light of one bulb, over and over, just to remember how. Convince him it's real (Smooth+Speech) and he hands over perfect work. Panic him and he grabs the welding torch. |
| 41 | The Drone Swarm. Fist-sized security drones orbit in lazy figure-eights, paint-sensors glowing blue. They cluster and strobe the instant they clock you, then broadcast your position. Map the pattern (Crime+Awareness), slip the gaps, or fry the relay. Get tagged with UV and Talos tracks you all night. |
| 42 | The Night Shift. A lone worker does inventory up a lift platform, headphones in, paint under her fingernails and a faded tag on her bag. She's one of us. Win her over (Smooth+Speech) and she saves the Crew hours. Spook her and she hits the panic button on her belt. |
| 43 | The Catwalk. An upper catwalk gives a bird's-eye view of the whole floor, and creaks with every step under bright fluorescents. Move quiet (Nerves+Stunt) or ride the shelf-tops just below the light (The Floor is Lava). A section of grating can come loose at the worst moment. |
| 44 | The Wrong Drum. Two identical barrels, same size, same weight, coded not named. One's what the Crew came for. One's an industrial solvent that eats through metal, and through anything else. Decode it (Focus+Know) or grab both and sort it later, praying nothing leaks in transit. |
| 45 | The Loading Dock Hustlers. On the way out, two small-timers leaning on a van clock the Crew hauling goods and their eyes light up. One's big and blocking, one's fast-talking and already running numbers. Talk it down, cut them in, or lean on the rep. Turns physical and the noise brings the Dogs. |
| 46 | The Forklift. The haul's too heavy to carry and there's a forklift on charge, keys in it, and nobody's ever driven one. It handles like a shopping cart full of bricks and it is loud. Anyone who does something genuinely stupid and impressive with it, drift, jump, ram, earns 1 Flow for the sheer audacity. |
| 51 | The Neon Grid. The floor lights up under every step, turning the Crew into a walking beacon visible from every corridor. Cross without tripping too many panels (Crime+Stealth or Nerves+Cool). Neon Trail flips it: light a false path and walk the patrols right off a cliff. |
| 52 | The Steam Vents. Steam blasts the tunnel at random, great cover, terrible for skin. Ride the clouds past patrols (Crime+Stealth) but time it (Nerves+Cool) or get scalded. Chromatic Overload plus steam makes a wall of colour and fog, Total Cover for one turn. |
| 53 | The Mechanical Arms. Robotic arms burst from the walls grabbing at anything that moves, a Talos operator watching by camera feed. Dodge the gauntlet (Nerves+Stunt each turn), find the control room, or kill the arms one by one. Rail Slide Escape slides you clean under the lot. |
| 54 | The Holographic Decoys. Holographic Talos patrol the corridor, perfect fakes that turn corners and react to noise, with the real ones mixed in. Spot the difference (Focus+Detect) before wasting paint or walking into an ambush. Tag and Bag is the counter: paint passes through a hologram, sticks to a Dog. |
| 55 | The Market Weave. The street is packed with an evening market, food carts and hanging fabric and shoppers blocking every line, and the Crew is trying to ride fast through a space built for walking. Crowd Surfer turns the crowd into terrain. Clip a cart and wear whatever was cooking. |
| 56 | The Face Scan. The route funnels the Crew into a packed chokepoint, a market square, a station concourse, a festival crush, with a Talos Dog planted in the middle of it scanning faces. Blend and drift through (Crime+Stealth) or duck low and let the crowd swallow you. One scream and the Dog snaps around. |
| 61 | The Wall of Metal. Something massive comes out of nowhere at speed, a cargo hauler, a transport barge, a train on the next line, and at combined speed it passes like a wall of metal less than a metre away. Press flat (Nerves+Cool) or throw yourself clear (Nerves+Stunt, Extreme). The wind shear alone can rip you loose. |
| 62 | The Curious Phone. A bystander leans out wide-eyed, phone already up and filming the Crew mid-piece. Post it and they're either legends or hunted. Charm them down (Smooth+Flirt) or throw up a tag they'll laugh at instead of scream about (Crime+Dexterity). |
| 63 | Into the Dark. The route plunges into sudden total black with no warning, a tunnel, an underpass, a killed grid, walls you can't see centimetres away, the roar turned physical. Thirty seconds of nothing. Anyone moving fast holds their line by feel or gets scraped off by concrete. Ghost Grind riders paint the whole stretch blind. |
| 64 | The Squatter Family. A gutted upper floor is somebody's home now, fairy lights on a tapped line, kids asleep in a corner. Terrified of the Crew at first, until the father recognises the gear and says his mother taught him this exact trick. A quiet ally, if the kids don't scream first. |
| 65 | The Heritage Alarm. The fast route cuts through a floodlit glass dome full of preserved ancient marble, silent and empty at night. Grind the exhibit rails across it (Nerves+Stunt) without tripping the Vivid-funded preservation alarms, which don't call Talos so much as invite them. |
| 66 | The Dud. Something the Crew's carrying, a rocket, a paint charge, a salvaged battery, is unstable. Cracked casing, brittle fuse, chemistry gone crystalline. Stabilise it (Focus+Fix, Extreme) or lob it off the roof, satisfying but wasteful. Let it cook and it goes off exactly where you're standing. |