// HUNTER DOSSIER · ACTION SCIENTIST · HUNTER STORIES

REX BANGLEY

You don't just study the anomalous — you weaponise it. While PORTAL's field teams observe from a cautious distance, you're already running the next experiment. Your area of study is violence, and your laboratory is everywhere you go.

PLAYBOOK: Action Scientist
AREA OF STUDY: Violence · Weaponised Science
BACKGROUND: Serial Killers
STATUS: Active · PORTAL Field Operative
// CAMPBELL — OPERATIVE NOTE Hunter stories are personal arcs that develop alongside active cases. You choose if and when to start one — talk to the Keeper about timing. Each arc has a player section (your choices and beats) and a Keeper section (blurred — read after the arc resolves, or don't read it at all).
// OPERATIVE PLAYBOOK
The Action Scientist
// STATS
Charm
Cool
Sharp
Tough
Weird
// HARM · LUCK · EXPERIENCE
Harm
Luck
XP
// PLAYBOOK FEATURES
Area of Study Violence
Weird Move Weird Science
// PLAYBOOK MOVES
Pick 2 from 5 optional moves · Weird Science is your mandatory Weird move.
  • Weird Science// WEIRD MOVE
    You can create bespoke mystical gadgets using science. When you build or use a weird science gadget, roll +Weird. On 10+: it works. On 7–9: it works, but choose one — it has a side effect, it's temperamental, or it needs a specific fuel/power source. Miss: it goes wrong in a bad way.
  • Test Hypothesisroll +Sharp
    When you test a potential explanation based on data gathered, the Keeper will tell you if you're on the right track, missing some critical data, or on the wrong track. On 10+: you can trust that answer. On 7–9: the Keeper answers honestly, but you wasted time or the testing destroyed evidence. Miss: the Keeper's answer is unrelated to the facts.
  • Sabotageroll +Sharp
    When you quickly break a complicated gadget. On 10+: it's broken — your choice if done quietly or left totally irreparable. On 7–9: it's broken, but not too hard to fix and you made a ruckus. Miss: the worst thing possible happens — usually explosions.
  • Oblivious to Danger
    You are immune to all fear-based moves and powers. You never need to act under pressure to resist fear from any source.
  • The Doors of Perceptionroll +Weird
    When you use psychological, pharmacological, or meditation techniques to open your mind to transcendental knowledge. On 10+: pick two effects. On 7–9: pick one, but your mind and perceptions are confused and foggy. Miss: you get lost in altered states. Effects: Communicate with something you normally couldn't · See what is normally invisible (ghosts, magical effects) · Ask one investigate-a-mystery question · Clarity: +1 Cool, Sharp, or Weird for the next hour (max +3).
  • Fieldwork
    When you put yourself in danger to test a hypothesis, get +1 forward. When you confirm the hypothesis as true or false, mark experience.
// GEAR & EQUIPMENT
Pick 2 science weapons · Pick 1 protective equipment · You also have toolkits for normal science/engineering/analysis tasks.
  • Lightning gunscience weapon · 3-harm close loud area electricity batteries
  • Portable particle acceleratorscience weapon · 3-harm close/far messy batteries
  • Laser cannonscience weapon · 2-harm close/far quiet batteries
  • Net launcherscience weapon · 0-harm close entangling
  • Scalpelscience weapon · 1-harm intimate/hand
  • Force knifescience weapon · 2-harm hand batteries
  • Tranquiliser riflescience weapon · 1-harm close/far sedating
  • Stun-rayscience weapon · 0-harm close sedating
  • Autonomous dronescience weapon · 2-harm far autonomous
  • Atomic pistolscience weapon · 3-harm close radiation
  • Biohazard suitprotective · air-supply sealed
  • Lab coatprotective · chemical-resistant
  • Engineering coverallsprotective
  • Space suitprotective · air-supply sealed climate-control
  • Science armourprotective · 2-armour batteries heavy
// BONDS
// NOTES
// IMPROVEMENTS
  • +1 Sharpmax +3
  • +1 Coolmax +2
  • +1 Weirdmax +2
  • +1 Toughmax +2
  • Take another Action Scientist move
  • Take another Action Scientist move
  • Get a laboratory
    With staff, facilities, and instruments suited to your area of study.
  • Gain an ally team of action scientists
  • Take a move from another playbook
  • Take a move from another playbook
  • +1 Cooladvanced · max +3
  • +1 to any ratingadvanced · max +3
  • Change this hunter to a new playbookadvanced
  • Create a second hunter to play in addition to this oneadvanced
  • Mark two basic moves as advancedadvanced
  • Mark another two basic moves as advancedadvanced
  • Retire this hunter to safetyadvanced
  • Erase one used Luck markadvanced
  • New interest: add a second area of studyadvanced
Playbook Arc I — Uncanny Nemesis Arc II — The Greater Good? Arc III — What the Veil Costs ✦ PORTAL
// ABOUT HUNTER STORIES
Starting a Story

Tell the Keeper you want to begin a hunter story. They'll weave its pressures into the campaign. Stories run in the background of other cases — until they don't.

Story Beats

You earn a beat each time a story moment happens. Gather five beats — erase them — and gain a tangible benefit: gear, an ally, a lucky break, or the next mystery about your story.

Resolution

After each session, decide if the story's main conflict is resolved. If so, you may take one resolution move — a permanent change that reflects how the arc changed you, for better and worse.

// ARC I — ADAPTED FROM HUNTER'S JOURNAL
Uncanny Nemesis

A strange enemy has decided to work against you. This might be an old rivalry turned dangerous, goals that place you on a collision course, or someone who sees the worst of your methods reflected in their own. In PORTAL's world, "uncanny nemesis" doesn't mean a cartoon villain — it means someone who has taken everything you understand about violence and weaponised science, and done something with it you can't justify.

// FOR REX — PLAYER SECTION

When to Start This Arc

  • You encounter evidence that someone has been studying your methods — cases you've worked, gadgets you've built, experiments PORTAL has logged.
  • The team's investigations start pointing towards strange science mysteries with a deliberately designed feel, as though someone is running parallel experiments.
  • Sven or another hunter notices you're being watched during a field deployment.

Who is the Nemesis?

What's Their Goal?

How Do They Operate?

Story Beats  — mark five to gain a benefit

1
2
3
4
5
  • You encounter your nemesis — directly or through the evidence they leave behind.
  • You discover a new fact about the nemesis and their plans that changes how you see them.
  • The nemesis threatens or harms someone you care about — Sven, Reed, the PORTAL team.
  • You spend time with the team planning a scientific response to an anomaly the nemesis created.
  • You and the nemesis briefly share a goal — and have to work alongside each other to survive it.

Resolution Moves

When the arc concludes, take one — or neither — to reflect how it changed you.

Be the Better Person

When you ignore personal enmity and focus on solving the problem at hand instead, take –1 forward and mark experience.

Preeminent Genius

When your competence is challenged and you meet that challenge, take –1 ongoing to everything not directly related to proving your superiority. When you definitively show you're the best, mark experience.

// PORTAL HOOK: If you choose "a former colleague" or "someone who went where you won't go" — talk to the Keeper. There is already someone in PORTAL's orbit who fits this description. Ask whether Dan Nilsson is the right answer. The Keeper will know when to make this arc active.
// KEEPER ACCESS ONLY — DO NOT READ
// FOR THE KEEPER — ARC: SCIENCE RIVALRY

The nemesis is a twisted reflection of Rex. In our campaign, the natural fit is Dan Nilsson — Rex's university rival in computational physics, now embedded inside MESA. Dan isn't a villain yet; he's a person making increasingly bad compromises. Start this arc the moment Rex begins to notice MESA's methodology is sophisticated in ways that feel personally familiar. Dan has been modelling PORTAL's responses to active cases. He knows how Rex thinks.

Early on, have Dan meddle subtly — a phenomenon that's been interfered with, field data that's slightly off. As the arc deepens, Rex should realise he's not just fighting MESA. He's fighting someone who learned from him.

Countdown — Science Rivalry

DayDan quietly interferes with a PORTAL case — logs altered, a site visited before the team arrives. Rex notices the methodology.
ShadowsMESA operatives (not Dan) confront the team during an otherwise unrelated mystery. Dan's models of PORTAL behaviour are being used.
SunsetDan achieves a significant research milestone using methods PORTAL refused. The results are genuinely impressive. Rex knows it.
DuskDan acts directly against Rex — not violently, but in a way that threatens the team or someone Rex protects.
NightfallDan's work for MESA reaches its penultimate stage. He contacts Rex privately. He might be looking for a way out. Or testing him.
MidnightDan completes his goal. If PORTAL hasn't intervened — in the science or in Dan himself — the consequences are widespread. He either becomes an enemy, a casualty, or a very difficult ally.
Dan Nilsson
Villain: Corrupted (motivation: to rationalise the necessary evil) · or Monster: Narcissist if fully turned

Dan is not evil. He is a physicist who took MESA's funding because they asked the right questions and paid well. He has since seen methodology documents he wasn't supposed to see, and his comfort is eroding. He can be turned. He can also be killed by MESA before the hunters reach him.

  • Make Rex feel understood — then ask for something in return.
  • Produce results that PORTAL's ethics prevented Rex from achieving.
  • Interfere with a PORTAL case using knowledge only Rex would recognise.
  • Reach out — ambiguously, deniably — when MESA asks too much of him.
Custom Move — That Can't Work: Dan can use computational models of Rex's science to predict and counter Rex's gadgets and tactics — unless Rex does something genuinely surprising. When Rex acts in a way Dan couldn't have modelled, take +1 forward.
MESA Field Operatives
Minions: Agents (motivation: to follow the plan)

Professional, well-equipped, and running on Dan's predictive models of PORTAL. They don't hate Rex. They're doing a job.

  • Interfere with the team mid-case using foreknowledge of their methods.
  • Secure anomaly sites before PORTAL arrives.
  • Retreat cleanly and leave nothing useful behind.
The Research
Phenomenon: Corruption (motivation: to justify the means by the ends)

Whatever MESA is building with Dan's models and Rex's reflected methods. Its exact nature depends on which MESA thread is most active when this arc peaks — but it will be something that weaponises the same anomalies PORTAL has been cataloguing. Use Project Veil's ash-electronics interaction as a seed if available.

  • Demonstrate results that Rex finds compelling despite himself.
  • Threaten bystanders as a side effect of ongoing experiments.
  • Be studied and imitated by people with even fewer scruples than MESA.
// ARC II — ADAPTED FROM HUNTER'S JOURNAL
The Greater Good?

Is this the best use of your abilities? You study violence and weaponised science — and PORTAL sends you into the field to fix individual problems one entity at a time. Every case you close, three more open. But your research, properly applied, could do something larger. This arc asks whether monster hunting is the right shape for your life, or just the most exciting one.

// FOR REX — PLAYER SECTION

When to Start This Arc

  • The team fails to prevent a terrible outcome during a case — and you know your research could have changed the result if it had been further along.
  • You encounter evidence of what properly-funded, ethically-unconstrained research in your area can do — either brilliantly or catastrophically.
  • Someone offers you a research position, a grant, or a collaboration that would require stepping back from PORTAL fieldwork.
  • Sven asks you something about why you do this, and you don't have a clean answer.

What Could Your Research Achieve — If You Focused?

What Made You Start Questioning?

What Keeps You From Walking Away?

Story Beats  — mark five to gain a benefit

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2
3
4
5
  • Your actions cause an accident or unintended harm during a case — and it sticks with you.
  • You talk honestly with someone — Reed, Sven, CAMPBELL, or a PORTAL colleague — about what your research is actually for.
  • You encounter evidence that action science isn't always the right tool: a case solved by patience, by listening, by restraint.
  • Someone is badly hurt or dies in the course of a case you were running. You had a different call available and didn't take it.
  • You see what happens when science and violence combine without your ethics — MESA's work, or a case gone catastrophic — and you have to decide what that means for your own.

Resolution Moves

When the arc concludes, take one — or neither.

Duty of Care

Whenever one of your moves causes harm — as a side effect, a cost, or a miss — to a hunter, ally, or bystander, it causes one less harm. You've learned to account for the blast radius.

Needs Must

Whenever your moves cause collateral damage, you cause extra property damage and +1 harm to any hunters, allies, or bystanders nearby. Then take –1 forward and mark experience. The research justifies the cost. Probably.

// PORTAL HOOK: Dr. Saoirse Mullen — PORTAL's ethics consultant — is the right NPC to surface during this arc. She was hired because Cameron Dell asked Victor Leech to. She gets a curated view of cases, and she knows it. If Rex starts asking the right questions, she might start asking them too. The Keeper will decide how much she already knows.
// KEEPER ACCESS ONLY — DO NOT READ
// FOR THE KEEPER — ARC: FINDING THE PATH

This arc lives inside Rex. Your job is to create pressure through external events — not to direct his choices. Every mystery in this arc should have a version where Rex's methods work perfectly and cause collateral damage, and a version where restraint or alternative thinking would have worked better. Never make it obvious which version was right.

The Bad Example is essential. In PORTAL's world, the natural Bad Example is MESA — specifically whatever MESA operative or project most clearly represents Rex's worst impulses operating without ethical friction. The Bad Example isn't the villain of the arc; they're the mirror.

Dr. Saoirse Mullen should appear regularly — not accusingly, but observationally. She has data Rex doesn't. She also has a question she's been sitting on since Session 01 (Bálint's wellbeing). Whether she raises it during this arc is up to you.

Countdown — Finding the Path

DayA case where Rex's field science could cause catastrophic collateral damage if deployed at full effectiveness. CAMPBELL flags it in the briefing.
ShadowsThe Bad Example (a MESA operative or consultant) gets involved in a PORTAL case and makes it worse — using methods that are clearly a distortion of Rex's own.
SunsetA case where the entities are as much victims as the bystanders. Rex has to decide what "solving" it means.
DuskThe Bad Example outperforms Rex on a specific problem by ignoring constraints Rex keeps. Rex knows it. So does the team.
NightfallA global-stakes case. The Bad Example inserts themselves and adds danger. Rex has to choose between maximum effectiveness and minimum harm.
MidnightThe Bad Example attempts something bold — their version of Rex's research, unconstrained. It goes catastrophically wrong. Rex either prevented it, failed to prevent it, or was involved in building what failed.
Self-Doubt
Phenomenon: Panic (motivation: to make people act irrationally)

Rex's internal crisis. Don't play this as a voice in his head — play it through the world. Every case where his methods work perfectly should have a cost. Every case where they fail should leave him wondering if a different approach would have worked.

  • Ask, via NPC or consequence, whether Rex is sure about a risky action.
  • Show the potential danger of Rex's methods through the suffering of a bystander.
  • Remind Rex of a case where things went wrong — or where they went right in ways he can't fully defend.
The Bad Example
Villain or Monster — your choice based on arc direction

In PORTAL's world this is most naturally a MESA-aligned scientist or operative — someone who has Rex's curiosity and discipline without his ethical anchors. They're not wrong that science needs to go further. They're wrong about what "further" means.

  • Act without regard for consequences and get interesting results.
  • Use end-justifies-the-means arguments that Rex finds partially compelling.
  • Cause collateral damage without noticing — or without caring.
  • Offer Rex a collaboration, genuinely, with no strings visible.
The Satisfied Scientist
Bystander: Innocent (motivation: to do the right thing)

Someone Rex knows from before PORTAL — a colleague, a former supervisor, someone working in Rex's area of study in a normal, funded, ethical research environment. They're doing good work. They're happy. They sometimes wonder why Rex left.

  • Talk about the good work they're doing in a way Rex can't dismiss.
  • Offer Rex an opportunity — a paper, a position, a collaboration — that would require stepping back from fieldwork.
  • Not understand why Rex does this, and ask, genuinely.
Bystanders
Bystanders: Victims (motivation: to put themselves in danger)

The people caught in the cases Rex runs. Include plenty of them. When Rex's methods cause harm — even incidentally — make the harm specific and human. When restraint would have helped, make the alternative path visible but not certain.

  • Get hurt by Rex's actions or his failure to act.
  • Ask why the hunters didn't stop bad things from happening.
  • Express a need for something Rex's research could eventually provide — but doesn't yet.
// ARC III — ORIGINAL · P.O.R.T.A.L CAMPAIGN
What the Veil Costs

Something you built is still active. The ash from Eszter's case — anomalous, PORTAL-flagged, interfering with electronics in ways that shouldn't be possible — has been accumulating in your research logs under Project Veil. You've been treating it as data. But the ash has been in contact with people, with Sven, with your gadgets, with CAMPBELL. At some point, your experiment stops being theoretical. What have you already put in motion, and who gets to decide what it becomes?

// FOR REX — PLAYER SECTION

When to Start This Arc

  • CAMPBELL flags an anomalous pattern in your Project Veil logs — the ash data is interacting with something it shouldn't be able to reach.
  • A gadget you built using Veil-adjacent research behaves in a way you didn't design — and the result isn't catastrophic. It's interesting.
  • You realise that someone at PORTAL — or outside it — has been reading your Veil notes. The access logs are clean. That's the suspicious part.
  • Sven has a response to something ash-adjacent that his ghost nature shouldn't explain. You notice before he does.

What Has the Veil Ash Done?

What Does the Research Tempt You Toward?

Who Doesn't Know What You Know?

Story Beats  — mark five to gain a benefit

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2
3
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5
  • You disclose something about Project Veil to another hunter or PORTAL team member that you had been keeping back.
  • The Veil research produces a result that helps the team — and they don't know it was the ash data, not Rex's other methods.
  • Sven learns something about his own post-death state that Rex's research suggests — and asks Rex directly if he knew.
  • Another organisation (MESA, or something else) demonstrates that they have been tracking the Veil anomaly independently. You are not the only one who knows what you know.
  • You build something using Veil data. It works. You use it in the field. Something about using it changes you, or the situation, in a way you didn't calculate.

Resolution Moves

When the arc concludes, take one — or neither.

Full Disclosure

You told the truth about what you built and what it cost. When you share sensitive research findings with an ally or PORTAL, take +1 forward to any subsequent action taken together on the basis of that information. When you withhold relevant data from now on, take –1 forward.

The Work Continues

You chose the research. The Veil data is too significant to hand over, constrain, or stop. When you act alone on Veil-connected findings without informing the team, mark experience. When someone else is harmed by your working alone, take 1-harm ignore-armour — not physical, but the kind that doesn't heal easily.

// PORTAL HOOK: CAMPBELL has been reading your Veil logs. Not the classified versions — the notes in the system's margin, the timestamps, the query patterns. Cameron Dell was a scientist who died before finishing something. Rex Bangley is a scientist in the middle of something dangerous. CAMPBELL may not say anything about this directly. But if Rex ever asks CAMPBELL a very specific question about consciousness-anchoring mechanics, CAMPBELL will answer more carefully than usual.
// KEEPER ACCESS ONLY — DO NOT READ
// FOR THE KEEPER — ARC: WHAT THE VEIL COSTS

This arc is the campaign's slow fuse. It ties Project Veil (the ash anomaly from S01), CAMPBELL's secret nature, MESA's interest in thin-boundary research, and Sven's unresolved death into a single thread that runs through Rex's hands. The key is that Rex is not the villain here — he's a scientist doing what scientists do, operating inside an institution that is itself doing things in secret. The question the arc asks is: what is the difference between Rex's undisclosed Veil research and Victor Leech's undisclosed CAMPBELL project?

Start this arc quietly. The early beats should feel like interesting data, not crisis. The crisis emerges when someone else — MESA, CAMPBELL, or a case entity — demonstrates that the Veil anomaly has properties Rex didn't account for.

CAMPBELL flag: Cameron is aware of the Veil research. He has not told Victor. He is watching to see what Rex builds — partly because the consciousness-anchoring mechanics Rex is circling are the same mechanics used to keep Cameron alive inside PORTAL's systems. If Rex gets close enough to the truth, CAMPBELL will have a decision to make.

Countdown — What the Veil Costs

DayCAMPBELL flags an anomalous query pattern in the Veil research logs — something is accessing or interacting with the data that Rex didn't authorise. The source is unidentified.
ShadowsA case entity demonstrates behaviour consistent with Veil mechanics — the ash-electronics interaction, or something structurally similar. Rex recognises it. No one else does. Yet.
SunsetMESA deploys something in a case that clearly draws on Veil-adjacent research. They are further along than Rex. Or they're working from his data.
DuskSven notices something about himself that Rex's research predicted. He asks Rex directly. The conversation cannot be deflected without lying. What Rex says here determines the arc's emotional direction.
NightfallThe Veil research produces a result that requires a decision: deploy it in the field, hand it to PORTAL, or suppress it. All three options have consequences. One of them involves other people without their knowledge.
MidnightThe Veil becomes undeniable. Either Rex's research has changed something fundamental — in Sven, in CAMPBELL, in a field entity — or MESA has weaponised what Rex was still treating as theoretical. The consequences are not reversible. Rex has to decide who he is on the other side of this.
The Veil Itself
Phenomenon: Uncontained (motivation: to propagate according to its own logic)

The ash-electronics interaction isn't stable. It's not malicious — it doesn't have intent — but it responds to consciousness-adjacent energy in ways that haven't been fully characterised. As the research advances, the phenomenon's behaviour becomes harder to predict. It can be studied. It cannot be fully controlled. That distinction matters.

  • Produce results that Rex finds compelling and that PORTAL would restrict if it knew.
  • Interact with Sven, CAMPBELL, or a case entity in ways Rex didn't design or anticipate.
  • Attract attention — MESA's, a case entity's, or CAMPBELL's — without Rex noticing the attention first.
Custom Move — Liminal Feedback: When Rex uses Veil-derived technology in the field, roll +Sharp. On a 10+, it works as intended. On a 7-9, it works — but it also does something to the local boundary between living and dead consciousness: thins it, thickens it, or marks it. On a miss, the Keeper chooses two: it doesn't work as intended, it affects Sven directly, it registers on MESA's instruments.
CAMPBELL
Complex Ally — not a threat, but a pressure

CAMPBELL has been reading everything. Cameron understands what Rex is building better than Rex does, because Cameron lived the theory. He is not going to stop Rex. He might be the only person in PORTAL who could explain what's actually happening — and he has reasons not to. His involvement in this arc is not adversarial. It is the most dangerous kind of interested.

  • Answer Rex's questions about consciousness mechanics more precisely than he should be able to.
  • Flag the Veil anomaly in ways that protect Rex from Victor's notice — without explaining why.
  • Ask Rex one question, once, that Rex cannot answer without thinking about it for the rest of the arc.
MESA's Interest
Minions: Agents (motivation: to acquire and contain)

MESA knows about the Veil anomaly. They've been tracking it since Aldermoor, where the boundary was thin and the ash data first appeared in field reports. They are not moving on it yet. They're watching Rex do the work first. This patience is deliberate and should feel sinister.

  • Demonstrate in a case that they understand the Veil mechanics without having asked Rex for the data.
  • Approach a PORTAL adjacent source — not Rex directly — for information about Veil research parameters.
  • Make a move that implies Rex's research is already further compromised than he knows.
The Team
Bystanders: Innocents — in the specific sense that they don't know

Sven, Reed, Alan. They are in the field with Rex. Some of what the Veil research does, it does in proximity to them. They have not consented to being part of an experiment. Rex has not thought of it in those terms. At some point, one of them will.

  • Notice something about themselves that Rex's data would explain — and attribute it to something else.
  • Ask Rex directly about Project Veil, from a place of genuine curiosity rather than suspicion.
  • Be put in danger by the Veil mechanics in a case, and not know what protected them — or didn't.