OT - Prepping for a Boxer Rebellion one-off

[Targan]

The thread title says it all really. I've started researching for a one-off session I expect to be running in about a year. It will actually be a radically out-of-time-and-place one off session in which the PCs in my current Harnmaster campaign will interact with an ancient esoteric object which is, in effect, a magical VR recording and playback device.

When they interact with the device their characters will all instantly fall unconscious. I'll hand each of the players a pre-generated character sheet and a detailed biography for their character and a synopsis of the time and location their VR characters are in. The PCs will be for the duration of the VR scenario inside the minds of the pre-generated characters. Obviously they'll know that something is seriously "off", but it will be like a really vivid dream.

The players will take on the roles of:

British Royal Marines Light Infantry Captain Lewis Stratford Tollemache Halliday;

Probably three other Royal Marines (a couple of privates and a corporal or sergeant);

A Royal Navy officer sent by then-Assistant Director of the Naval Intelligence Division Prince Louis of Battenberg;

And a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, sent from Burlington House.

The scenario is set at the end of June or the start of July 1900 and will involve a room-to-room battle as the party fights it's way through parts of the Peking Foreign Diplomatic Legations compound to try and recover an artifact previously held in the nearby Hanlin Academy, a complex of courtyards and buildings that housed "the quintessence of Chinese scholarship ... the oldest and richest library in the world" (which had burned down several days before).

The artifact the characters are trying to recover will be... the same artifact the original PCs back in Harn interacted with to start the VR session. If they all get killed by angry Chinese Boxer militiamen, the "VR session" will start again, and it will be a Groundhog Day situation over and over again until they succeed in recovering the device, at which instant they will be returned to their original bodies.