I'm a huge fan of the adventure paths, having run Shackled City, Rise of the Runelords, and Curse of the Crimson Throne in D&D 3.x, and Kingmaker in Pathfinder. A few months ago, I realized I was completely burnt out on fantasy gaming and with the complexities of the d20 system. So I decided to convert the Age of Worms adventure path to a modern-ish setting. And since I was already doing a conversion, converting it to Savage Worlds seemed obvious.
Now some 15 sessions into it, I can honestly say that such a conversion is not for the faint of heart. There are certain questions that come up in a modern setting that aren't necessary in a standard fantasy setting, like "where did all the bodies for these zombies come from?" Modern adventurers also spend a great deal of time getting questioned by the police.
While looking for a workable hook in a modern game to rope the characters into the Age of Worms, decided to scavenge the Carrion Crown adventure path and mash the adventure paths together and start with the first adventure in the Carrion Crown, the Haunting of Harrowstone.
Despite being knee-deep in the campaign now, I have yet to write a coherent document of how the campaign is mapped to a modern setting. It has something to do with a lost, Aztec-like civilization. Luckily, I've been blessed with the GMing gift of babbling details until a player speaks up, so the players tend not to notice contradictory story elements and are generally comfortable with not having a clear picture of the story... which is good, because I don't have one either...
The game is set in the early 1990s, starting in the Four Corners area. With one exception, every one of the players was in their late teens or early 20s during this time. The game is regularly derailed by nostalgia and references to long-dead slang, but the lack of cell phones, the Internet, and large databases end up playing a big role (yes, I know those things did exist in the early 90's, but they were so rare (at least in the context of this game), that they might as well not exist).
Our soundtrack consists of our personal collections of music from the time, as well as the top 100 on the Billboard charts for 1990, 1991, and 1992. The soundtrack is set on shuffle, is occasionally distracting, and occasionally hilarious. Each session has a theme song for that session, generally chosen during or after the session.
Occasionally, bits of terminology from the Savage Worlds system creep into the notes. "Shaken" is the most common, with "soak" (removing a wound), and "benny" (essentially fate points) following close behind.
In play, we use Savage World's Action Deck. All magic items and most treasure has been offloaded to the Action Deck. If somebody plays a "relic" card, I roll it up on the magic item table and apply the results to the most obvious item in the scene. The other two cards that pop up a lot are "Enemy" and "Love Interest", both of which often require a great deal of improvisation on my part.
One of the major benefits of converting the entire AP to Savage Worlds is that it detaches the AP from a level-based system and allows adventures to be run out of order with a minimal amount of work. For example, the 4th adventure of the Age of Worms was run simultaneously with the Trial of the Beast, and before the 3rd adventure of the Age of Worms.
A warning: We tend to drink a lot of beer during our games. Parts of the session notes that make no sense (especially near the end of a session) are either the result of alcohol consumption or the note-taker getting excited by the game. We also are a foul-mouthed lot, and play the unpleasant sides of characters (racism, sexism, etc...) with great gusto. I've edited those parts of the notes out when necessary.
The overhead view:
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in Mesoamerican mythology or archaeology, nor are my players. Any gross misrepresentations of either are purely due to my not caring all that much.
The mythological background (from an email sent to the group):
The Aztec cosmology holds that there have been Five Suns (or Ages), each representing a botched attempt at creation by the gods. In each, a different god became the Sun by lighting themselves on fire, and at the end of the Sun, a great catastrophe is visited upon their creations, destroying the entirety of humanity in the process. The Maya had a similar cosmological structure, but referred to each Sun as a “World Tree.”
1) Nahui-Ocelotl (Jaguar Sun) - Inhabitants were giants made of earth who were devoured by jaguars. The world was destroyed by jaguars.
From the Popul Vuh (a collection of Quiché myths transcribed by the
Dominican priest Francisco Ximénez around the turn of the 18th century):
Here is the new creation,
made of mud and earth.
It doesn't look very good.
It keeps crumbling and softening.
It looks lopsided and twisted.
It only speaks nonsense.
It cannot multiply.
2) Nahui-Ehécatl (Wind Sun) - Inhabitants were made of wood and transformed into monkeys. This world was destroyed by hurricanes.
And as the words are spoken, it is done.
The doll-people are made
with faces carved from wood.
But they have no blood, no sweat.
They have nothing in their minds.
They have no respect for Heart-of-Sky.
They are just walking about,
But they accomplish nothing.The creatures of the forest
come into the homes of the doll-people.
"You have chased us from our homes
so now we will take yours,"
they growl.
And their dogs and turkeys cry out,
"You have abused us
so now we shall eat you!"
Even their pots and grinding stones speak,
"We will burn you and pound on you
just as you have done to us!"
3) Nahui-Quiahuitl (Rain Sun) - Inhabitants were destroyed by rain of fire. Only birds survived (or inhabitants survived by becoming birds).
4) Nahui-Atl (Water Sun) - This world was flooded turning the inhabitants
into fish. A couple escaped but were transformed into dogs.
5) Nahui-Ollin (Earthquake Sun) - We are the inhabitants of this world. We are made from maize. This world will be destroyed by earthquakes (or one large earthquake).
Now, to the Age of Worms and the Carrion Crown:
The mysterious seventh book of the Popul Vuh speaks of the world after Nahui-Ollin, Nahui-Kyuss, the Worm Sun. In this world, the only inhabitants are worms eating the remains of the previous world. This is the end point in the cycle, at which there are no future worlds. Kyuss will rise, creating the earthquakes that destroy the previous world and its inhabitants.
There are two major groups involved in this:
The Obsidian Cult - Mesoamerican fanatics who believe their efforts to hasten the Worm Sun will impress Kyuss so much that he will grant them both immortality and power in the next Sun.
The Whispering Way - A hermetic order of practitioners of magic, intent on surviving Nahui-Kyuss by becoming liches. They assist the Obsidian Cult at times, largely by providing magical materials and support in exchange for knowledge and samples (you have to get a Spawn of Kyuss before you can study it)
I wanted to cultivate an atmosphere of: "We're in way over our heads, and it's up to us to stop this. Nobody is going to come help us. There is no cavalry." To this end, I made it a point to strip out almost every helpful NPC or NPC group. The players are resourceful and tend to hoard contacts, so they're not entirely hopeless and isolated.
Because I never seem to know where to stop when shoving bits and pieces into my campaigns, I decided to start the game with a retelling of The Hangover. All the PCs were recently released from the Wyandotte County Jail (Kansas City, KS), after serving their full sentence. After release, they joined one another for a celebratory drink, or rather, a whole bunch of celebratory drinks.
Days later, they wake up in an abandoned mining cabin above the town of Creede, CO:
Dramatis Personae:
- Vicente "Candy" Rabottino -- He's the son of a mafia boss and is trying to avoid the family business. In jail for possession of an unregistered firearm.
- Manda Hugenkiss -- A black market antiquities dealer raised in universities and on archaeological digs by her older brother (an archaeologist, of course). She's been described as the anti-Indiana Jones ("This artifact belongs in a private collection!"). In jail for possession of stolen property.
- Joe Smythe -- A recently-unemployed bouncer from St Louis. In jail for assault.
- Blaine Johnson -- A trust fund industrial artist who dabbles in the occult (and created a mage before I could write up a tortuous substitute magic system, so I decided to let him roll with it and kept the magic system pretty much RAW). I honestly don't remember why he was in jail... I think it was arson
- Michelle "Mickey" Brown -- A tomboy mechanic daughter of a race car driver with a tragic past. This player recently had her second child and rarely could make it to the game. However, in general, she creates the richest and most awesome back stories for her characters, so I'm always willing to let her sit in if she's available. Mickey has a tragic backstory involving the death of her father in a racing accident, her affair with a supervisor at a mechanic shop where she worked, having a child at the age of 17, having that child taken from her by the state, and her continuous attempts to get sober, curb her temper, and make herself worthy of her daughter. In jail for taking a tire iron to the classic car of her baby daddy.
Not exactly the group of people you would look at and say, "I bet they're trying to save the world."
Session 1 ~ The Hangover
Theme Song : The Pixies -- Where is my Mind?
Carrion Crown #1 : The Haunting of Harrowstone
September 10, 1992.
They definitely aren't outside Kansas City anymore.
It is cold and dark, before dawn. A rooster crows outside somewhere. Everyone is passed out or just coming to, and Mickey is missing. The others are there, though. Blaine is slumped in a roller chair. Manda is propped against a wall. Candy's spread-eagle on the floor. The room smells like booze, sweat and fear. Furniture is shoved up against the doors and windows.
When everyone's awake and alert, they check for injuries. Nothing. They search around to find out where they are and what happened the night before. They find 2 axes, a baseball bat, a couple of Glocks and a rifle. No ammo in the ammo boxes. Empty liquor bottles. A pile of receipts from bars in Kansas and Colorado, the last one being from a saloon in Creede. The date is three days after they got out of jail and started drinking.
Peering through a crack in the boarded-up window, they see a lean-to close by, used for storing wood. A foot sticks out from behind it, attached to a leg. Joe and Candy unblock the door to the cabin and step out into the morning chill. Piles of spent rounds litter the ground. The corpse behind the wood pile is riddled with bullets. Manda notices the body is desiccated, meaning it is a really old one. It's got a wispy beard and sports some old wool clothing. Another old corpse lies nearby, also shot all up. This one's wearing a suit that would have made sense 20 years ago.
Manda: "Well, obviously we got drunk, dug up some corpses, and used them for target practice."
Tall pines and clear sky. They're on a gravel-covered mountain. A dirt road winds down. They check the cabin one last time for anything that might be useful. Joe takes an axe. Blaine takes the rifle and Candy grabs the Glocks. They check their pockets and find a claim check for a pawn shop in Creede. Blaine traded his watch for the guns and ammo. Manda's got a hotel room key - room 10. There's also an estimate from an auto body shop in Creede. There's a pager with no battery in Candy's pocket. A broken cassette player sits on a desk in the corner. They take the tape inside the player. They also find an invitation to a funeral service at Pioneer Cemetery for one Dr. Larimore. One last look around outside. Blood-spattered walls, empty bottles and cans everywhere. Bits of bone - really old bone, Manda says. She should know, with her relic and mummy background.
The road is pretty easy going, despite being in bad shape. On both sides are empty beer bottles and cans. They must have emptied them on their way up here. Eventually they hit a Y-intersection. One branch heads back up the mountain, so they take the other. Finally pick up some tire tracks. Find a dirt road. A beat up green pick up is down the road a ways, heading for them. Joe ditches the axe. A stinky crusty old farmer drives. He lets Manda sit up front. The boys climb in back and the farmer takes them to Creede.
Creede, Colorado. Population 895, Elevation 8852 feet. They're in Mineral County and there ain't s%!# for 70 miles. No freeway, no airport. No way out until they can get the car. But first they need to eat, so Farmer Ted drops them at the saloon on Main Street. The place looks like an authentic mining town saloon all right, but slathered with years of lacquer. Melinda is their waitress. She welcomes them back. Melinda last saw them drunk out of their gourds 4PM yesterday, shouting in the street about going to the pawn shop to get guns so they could get the mosquito.
After breakfast they head to the pawn shop. There's a weird turquoise bracelet there behind the counter. Blaine thinks it's important they have it for some reason. The pawn shop employee deciphers the receipt. They had apparently traded the turquoise bracelet and a watch for several guns (at which point the player of the industrial artist said, "hey, where's my watch?" He got a bennie for helping out the GM).
Candy manages to talk the guy into trading the rifle and $50 cash for the bracelet. Manda checks it out - it's way older than the guy thinks, but she doesn't recognize the tribe or nation or what have you that made it. And she's an expert on old jewelry.
They head to the body shop to get the car. The mechanic there tells them their buddy Mickey shot up the distributor then headed north in a Range Rover. Their vehicle is a '63 Jeep Willy, rare enough that the mechanic has to order the parts to fix it, and that will take three or four days. The pink slip indicates the Willy used to belong to Rico Torres, but he signed it over to Mickey last night. There's a drink coaster from the saloon in the front passenger seat. An IOU from Rico to Joe for $50 is scrawled on it.
They head to the motel to get cleaned up. The town sheriff is standing over three hippies in the park across the street from the motel. They are busy scrubbing down some monument. Looks like red paint was sprayed in a "V" shape overnight. Turns out, the sheriff says, he's pretty sure these hippies painted the "V" in blood, but no one knows what the "V" means, and the hippies aren't talking. As they arrive at the motel, finally, they spy Pioneer Cemetery up on a hill overlooking Creede, just a few blocks away up a side street.
The motel room ain't much to look at. Typical motel furniture. A hammer and two broken baseball bats sit on the table by the window. Joe's jacket is draped over a chair. On the bed is a suitcase with a shiny, new-looking lock. They check their pockets, but no one has a key. Manda easily picks the lock and opens the case.
A scary animated kachina doll leaps from the suitcase and latches onto Manda's face. (Seriously, tell me this thing isn't scary: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/228/Kachina_Doll_Ainsh i_Koko )
Manda: "We put the lock on the suitcase! Put it back on! No, wait. Get it off me first!"
Joe, extremely puppaphobic, screeches and bolts for the door. Blaine grabs the hammer and swings at the kachina doll. Candy swings at the doll and misses. Joe comes to his senses for a brief moment and grabs one of the broken bats, and connects with the doll. Manda screams as the doll rakes her arm with its sharp little claws. Eventually, Joe manages to shake the thing, then Candy throws it back in the case.
GM's note: I hadn't noticed that Joe's player had taken phobia: puppets until this moment. This was a combat that included more botches than I think I've ever seen. Since they were mostly trying to pry the little, toothful, animated puppet off of one another, I let each botch mean that they had accidentally transferred the little bugger to themselves. Several rounds went by with them trying to knock the doll off of one another with a hammer (resulting in one of the players getting shaken twice as other characters hit him while trying to dislodge the doll). The doll spent most of its time on the character with phobia: puppets, because there's no way I was going to let that opportunity get by me.
They shut and lock the case and stick it in the closet. Manda gets healed by Blaine - with magic. Joe is skeptical.
They all take turns in the shower.
Candy: "I am never taking another f-ing drink again."
After they have scrubbed off three days of sweat, alcohol and blood, they decide to check out the cemetery - maybe the old corpses they saw up at the cabin came from there. The best they can come up with is that they drunkenly dug up the bodies and took them up there for target practice. On the way to the cemetery Candy stops by the Western Union to have his mob boss daddy wire him some walking around money. The money comes through fast, and Candy buys some basic replacement outfits for everyone. What a swell guy. They stop by the laundry next and change, then finally head for Pioneer Cemetery.
There are three crypts in back and a single open grave. One of the crypts opens easily - the lock on the gate had been opened already. A gravedigger spots them and looks on, suspicious. Candy sends him scurrying. They check their pockets for some kind of light and come up with a Bic and a pen-light on a keychain. Inside they find a stone sarcophagus. The lid is heavy, but they eventually slide it open. Nobody's home. But they do see a couple of old wooden crates. Manda searches around and finds their own footprints! She also sees drag marks, as if made by a corpse. Obviously, they were here before. Why, they do not remember.
They open the crates. One is empty, yet still strangely heavy. The other contains four empty ghost catchers, which resemble small french presses filled with green glowing mist. In a hidden drawer at the bottom of the box they find a small black book filled with cipher-writing and eldritch diagrams. On the front of the book is a diamond-eye symbol. Manda tries to read the text, but it is too difficult, and she does not have the key. The book itself was made in New England in 1812. The other box's false bottom is empty, but in a second secret compartment they find a boot knife. They exit and notice the name on the crypt has been eroded away. They plan to look at the church records to figure out who was interred there.
The bar across from the saloon is their next destination. That was where they met Rico Torres and made the car deal, apparently. It starts raining on their way into town. They make the bar and the barkeep gives Joe $50 that Rico owed him - he left it for him earlier that day. Gus the barkeep tells them Father Miller might know who was buried in the crypt, or they might have some luck at the library. Gus also reminds the group that they were the ones who found the body of Dr. Larimore up at the old Harrowstone Prison site, crushed under a gargoyle. Candy and Gus get into a tiff, and Candy ends up paying Gus some cash to cover Blaine's really bad tipping from the night before.
Harrowstone Prison burned down during a riot in the 30's. Seventy-five prisoners and several guards perished. The monument in the park the hippies were scrubbing is a memorial to the guards that lost their lives that day, nearly 60 years ago.
They leave the bar and stop by the pawn shop, where Candy buys more bullets for the pair of Glocks. They remember the audio cassette and figure even though the bar has a boom box they could use, they don't want just anyone to hear whats on the tape. They head to the body shop to play it in the Willy. The tape contains a recording of little girls skipping rope and chanting. It's a creepy song about the five notorious serial killers who died in the fire at Harrowstone:
Put her body on the bed.
Take up the axe, lop off her head.
Watch the blood come out the pipe.
Feeds the skeeters, nice and ripe.
Drops of red so sparkly bright.
Splatters spells her name just right.
With a hammer killed his wife.
Now he wants to claim your life.
Tricky father tells a lie.
Listen close and then you die.
Candy and Blaine do some microfiche research at the library about the Harrowstone fire.
Turns out the skip rope chant described each of the five:
- "Father" Corvin. Con artist, traveling salesman. The heavy metals in his tinctures killed hundreds.
- The Lopper. Sneaked into women's houses when they were asleep and decapitated them.
- Israel O'Reilly. Irish immigrant and avant garde artist. He killed his cheating wife with a hammer to the head, then snapped and started collecting the pieces of skulls of other random women to "fix" her.
- The Piper of Durango. Stabbed people in the neck with his custom death-flute. He enjoyed watching blood from the cartoid artery spurt like a fountain.
- The Splatterer. Killed coeds and painted their names in blood on their dorm bedroom walls.
A nasty bunch. Warden Mark Harrison and his wife Vanessa also died in the fire. They left behind three children. Two died as adults, but one went missing in 1939.
Research done for now, the group heads to the church to find Dr. Larimore's daughter Kendra and attend the memorial service.
Father Miller and the town Mortician are there and greet the party. They are urged to sign the guest book. They head inside and find a closed casket and Kendra. She thanks them for coming. Kendra is slender, redheaded and in her 30's. She has the naughty librarian thing going on. Blaine asks if he could see the rest of her father's journals, because maybe they missed something the first time they went through them. She explains that they already have just about everything. The group figures out that Mickey took them when she went north to Boulder, as directed by one of the journals.
The service is short and sweet. Dr. Larimore was Creede's town doctor, had many interests and loved life and people. He was very popular. The place is packed, and all the townsfolk who showed up had something nice to say. Kendra invites the party back to her place for tea afterwards, and the chance to look at her father's personal journal, after the burial.
The townsfolk form a procession to Pioneer Cemetery. Blocking the gates is a human chain of Mexican immigrants. There are about 15 of them, and they seem intent to stop the procession from getting inside. Manda and Blaine speak Spanish, so they step forward to try to get the people to leave. They think the doctor was a brujo - a sorcerer - and refuse to allow him to be buried there. Manda and Blaine ask why they think that, and the immigrants tell them he talked to spirits at the prison, the mines, the tombs, the caves and the graveyard. Father Miller steps up to demand the immigrants leave, and he and Manda convince them finally to let the procession pass.
After the burial they head to the Larimore house. It is obvious that Kendra did not decorate - the place is stuffy and packed with books. They cover every flat surface - counters, floor, armrests on the couches, chairs, etc. He's got 12 different translations of the King James Bible. Blaine pores over the journal Kendra provides. It bears the same symbol as the little black book they found in the crypt. The back leaf seems to contain the beginning of a key to decode the cipher.
Three months ago Larimore wrote that the "Whispering Way" is here sniffing around. Three weeks ago he wrote that he was sure they were in town, investigating the prison ruins and the ancient tombs above. Two days before his death he wrote that he purchased a gun, prepared his will, and was headed up to the prison site. The last entry has him leaving that evening for the prison. Kendra tell the group that he was acting weird the last couple months, but she wasn't worried about him going up to the prison site alone, as he was very familiar with the country around here. He'd been hiking it since he was just a boy. Candy asks a couple of good, if pointed, questions, and Kendra kicks him out (GM's note: this begins what became a pattern in the game. Candy is continuously getting kicked out of people's offices and homes)
They head back to town, worn out and ready for a rest at the motel. Blaine spots a puking bum in a side alley, and being the curious type, decides to approach and see if he needs any help. The others wait at the mouth of the dark alley, figuring Blaine has the situation under control. As Blaine reaches the bum, the bum turns and attacks him! It's not a bum, it's a zombie! The zombie manages to take a chunk out of Blaine's jacket, then Blaine turns the foul creature to ashes with a fireball at point blank range. Manda screams and the party runs forward to find out what just happened.
Candy says, "You mean you just killed a guy because he bit your jacket?"
Blaine says, "Well, yeah!"
Candy responds with a shrug, "That's understandable."
They hear flute music from the direction of the park, around the corner. They creep forward to investigate, expecting maybe The Piper of Durango. Nope, just those three hippies hanging out in their van, playing "The Wind Cries Mary" on a recorder, and not very well at that. As the group is catching their collective breath, someone notices a flapping up near a streetlight overhead. Three strange creatures, that look something like a beachball-sized hummingbird crossed with a squid, fly into view. Blaine shoots some fire at them and Joe and Candy start shooting. They eventually take them all out, in a gory explosion of blood and entrails.
Meanwhile, Manda threatens the hippie girl, who thinks Manda is stark raving mad. Manda grabs and breaks their recorder, thinking that it was the flute that attracted the skeeters in the first place. Candy demands a trash bag so he can recover one of the skeeter bodies and examine it. The hippies have no trash bags. They are very eco-conscious, see, and avoid extra packaging when buying what little they need from bloated corporate entities, especially plastic bags, which take centuries to decompose, blah blah blah. Candy takes their burlap sack instead and kicks one of the skeeter corpses into it.
The hippies were on their way to a Dead show in Albquerque a couple of days ago and decided it would be far-out to drop acid on the cliffs that overlook Creede and van-camp overnight near the park. That's when the sheriff found them and blamed them for defacing the monument. The sheriff pulls up and exits his vehicle, asking what all the shooting was about. Candy shows him the skeeter corpse and vouches for the hippies. The sheriff tells the hippies to "get the hell out of Creede and don't come back" and advises the party to head to the motel and settle in for the night.
It is very late when they get back. They discuss how to dispose of the animated kachina doll. Fire? Acid? Wood chipper? Joe refuses to sleep while the evil thing is in the room, and stays up all night, Glock in hand, staring at the closet.
Session 2: Harrowstone
Carrion Crown #1 : The Haunting of Harrowstone
Theme Song : Soundgarden -- Rusty Cage
September 11, 1992.
The next morning they wake and discuss the day's plans. Blaine had taken another close look at Dr. Larimore's journal and figured out he was translating right to left instead of left to right and was literally headed in the wrong direction. The crypt, they assume, was merely his hiding place for the book and arcane materials. They shower and dress and head to the saloon for breakfast, reluctantly leaving the animated kachina doll behind in the motel room closet.
Melinda the waitress greets and seats them at a table next to a big burly guy. They overhear Melinda and the guy chatting. He is just about done with the renovations on the old observatory, he is explaining, when a parade of big dump trucks and digging machines rolls past down Main street, headed up the mountain where the party woke in the hunting cabin yesterday. Thomas, the burly guy, says someone bought the old Jensen Mine and plans to clear it out, shore it up, and resume mining operations. That someone is Rudolph Jencks, and he paid Thomas to assay the mine and surrounding hills to find out if there was still silver up there. Blaine asks if Jencks is hiring, but Thomas says he only works with his trusted crew, guys he's been using for years.
Breakfast done, the group decides they had better head up and check out Harrowstone. They hit up Kendra for advice on who to ask to buy guns, a truck, and other supplies. Manda does the talking, and Candy stays outside. Kendra is happy to loan them guns and knives and her spare pick-up. Dr. Larimore happened to be a knife and gun enthusiast, so Kendra gives them a pump action shotgun, a .22 pistol, a hunting rifle, a hatchet, some survival knives and some hefty mag lights. Blaine convinces Kendra to give him her silver utensils, which he melts down and uses to coat his axe blade. Blaine repairs the unreliable pick-up and is pretty sure it'll make the trip up to the prison site and back.
They load the pick-up with gear and head up the mountain. A light snow starts to fall. The tracks of the heavy equipment veer left at the fork, so they go right. Joe is driving, and he's pretty good at keeping them on the road. The right fork is quite overgrown. A tree grows in the middle of the dirt track. At another fork, Joe takes the left side and stops. Twenty feet in stand two huge pillars on either side of a rusty iron gate. One of the pillars has a gargoyle on top. The other gargoyle lies on the ground next to the other pillar. This must be the spot where Dr. Larimore died. Joe turns the truck around for an easier fast getaway, if needed, and they pile out.
They investigate the scene, looking for any clues that might help them discover how Dr. Larimore died, but come up with zip. They head through the iron gates into the prison grounds. The place is surrounded by a 5 foot wall, which used to support a tall chain link fence, which has mostly collapsed. There are five or six stone guard towers around the outside wall, in various states of disrepair. A small lake has broken through the wall on the northeast side. There is metal debris everywhere. The main structure has two stories, and the walls and roof are broken, and any wood support beams and roofing is long burned away. A maintenance shack sits not too far from the gates, and Joe suggests they check it out before entering the prison proper. A distant bird cries. Little waves gently lap in the lake. Otherwise it is unearthly silent.
Manda and Blaine enter the shack. They hear a low creaking and are showered with dust, and the roof collapses on them. They are shaken, but uninjured. They thank Joe for his excellent suggestion and all head to the main building. The front doors are open, and they head into the lobby. Joe spots something strange with one one of the walls, and getting closer kicks a bowl of red fluid. Next to the bowl, on the wall, are strange red runes, three inches tall. Blaine copies them into his notebook. The lighting in here is awful, deep shadows punctuated by shafts of light from above where the roof is gone. They turn on the mag lights and push through a set of double doors that take them from the lobby to the main floor of the prison, the Intake area.
Blaine takes point and pushes through, followed closely by Manda and Joe. Candy is following. Suddenly it gets very cold. The doors in the room all open then slam shut, separating the group. A screaming crowd of burning bodies runs through one wall, across the room, then through the opposite wall. Manda freaks out, and Joe and Blaine barely manage to keep their cool. Candy sees none of this on the other side of the steel double doors. Joe tries prying the hinges off with a crowbar to reunite the party and create an exit when they decide to leave, but the hinges don't budge. Manda shoots the hinge, weakening it enough so that Joe and Blaine can force the door open. Together again, they discuss strategy. Manda suggests they always go left. They go left.
The door on the left is stuck, like the other doors that exit the room. Candy takes a running leap and smashes it open. It opens to a dark hallway lined with doorways. The doors are mostly missing. In each of the little rooms are desks and typewriters. At the end of the hall is a large office labeled WARDEN. Blaine checks out the desk, finds a ring of house keys, prison business papers and an uncorked bottle of whiskey. They discover a wall safe, and Joe and Candy start pulling it out of the wall. It is quite heavy, and as soon as they are tipping it out of its recess in the wall, they hear a loud creaking and a boom from below - the floor is giving way.
They drag the safe out to the lobby without the floor collapsing under the weight. Manda suggests they use powder from some shotgun shells to blow the safe. Blaine botches the first attempt, narrowly avoiding injury. Candy fails the second attempt at blowing the safe. They decide to leave the safe for later.
They explore some more and find a storeroom. A matronly-looking ghostly shape appears and levels a shotgun at the group. Blaine attacks the apparition and misses. The ghost points and shoots her shotgun and nearly tears Blaine in two. He miraculously survives the terrible bloody hole and the laceration of all his internal organs. Manda tries talking to the ghost lady. It's Vanessa Harrison, the warden's wife! She is there to keep the evil spirits of the prisoners who died in the fire at bay. She has been doing a great job of it so far, but the notorious five are too powerful and her hold over them is slipping. She needs something powerful and symbolic to help - she asks the party to bring her the warden's badge. She explains that someone came and questioned the spirits of the guards and drew them away. Candy asks Vanessa if he can have her shotgun, and she gives it to him (GM's note: Candy's player played a Relic card and got a shotgun that can hit ghosts).
Vanessa tells them they should check out the basement - that's where the warden and his guards put up a valiant last stand against the rioting prisoners, and his badge should be on his corpse down there somewhere. She knows of only two ways in - the elevator shaft and the lake.
After some discussion, the group decides to finish the hole they started in the warden's office. The elevator shaft is impassable - clogged with debris, and besides, Manda says, "Who goes in a haunted lake?" Blaine blasts open a hole to the level below. Manda clambers down a rope and falls, and sees a round table. On it are bone shards arranged in the shape of a skull. A ghost comes rushing through a wall swing a hammer and bashes Manda. It's the evil spirit of Israel O'Reilly, and he wants a piece of Manda's skull to finish his grisly work! O'Reilly is a wiry redhead, and his ball peen hammer is covered in gore. Joe climbs down the rope and lands badly. Blaine climbs down and botches his landing. Manda gets up and smashes the bones on the table. O'Reilly howls in agony and is shaken. Candy shoots him with the ghost-touch shotgun. Blaine gets up and opens a ghost trap, and O'Reilly struggles to not get sucked in. Joe figures between the trap and Candy's shotgun they have it covered, so turns to guard the door. Manda tries persuading O'Reilly to give in, but he's too pissed off to listen. Candy shoots again and O'Reilly is sucked into the trap. All is quiet once again.
Candy descends. There is a break room across the hall. Within are tables and chairs, all scattered about. A wheel is mounted to one of the walls. It turns easily and opens a steel door that leads to SOLITARY. They decide to avoid SOLITARY and head to the center of the basement where the elevator is - it's more likely a final battle happened there than in the cramped cells in SOLITARY. They head down dark corridors and find a large central area. An elevator shaft goes up here, choked with rubble. The skeletons of prisoners lie about. As they enter and near the pile of rubble, the skeletons animate and attack! Manda and Joe are shaken by the awful sight, but Blaine shrugs off the horror and vaporizes three of them. Joe comes to his senses and takes out two more. Candy, who had been bringing up the rear, strides in coolly, raises a Glock and the shotgun and takes out one, shaking the other. Blaine swings at the last one with his axe and bashes it to pieces.
They take the left-most hallway. It ends in a large empty room with steel grating for the floor. Manacles hang from above. Candy, leading the group, spots a flaming headless skeleton wielding a billy club. He lowers his double barreled shotgun and takes it out. A guard room to the side of the cell sports a wheel which opens a heavy steel door to the cell. They turn the wheel and enter. A gaunt hatchet wielding figure jumps down from above and swings at Joe, hitting hard. Joe manages to soak all wounds. Blaine steps forward and flames the ghost of the Lopper while Manda swings and misses with a crowbar. Candy shoots the Lopper in the head, and Joe delivers a final blow. They head back to the main chamber. GM's note: Joe's player played a relic card at this point and gained the Lopper's axe as a magic weapon.
Next they take the left-most hallway again. It ends in a waterfall and a large pool. They figure this connects with the lake above. In the pool are several corpses in guard uniforms. Candy and Joe pull the bodies out, looking for the warden and his badge. The corpses outjet nasty fumes and everyone nearly pukes or passes out. They find no badge, however, and move on. They head down the only hallway unexplored from the elevator chamber. It ends at a steel door and a guard room, as well. The wheel in this room is melted and spins uselessly. Blaine cuts himself on a metal shard and needs a tetanus shot, but gets the door open. Candy enters first. Like the other cell, this one sports a steel grating floor and empty hanging manacles. There is a body in one corner. On the far wall painted in shimmering blood: VIN. An old looking man rises through the grate - the Splatterer!
Manda taunts the ghost to get its attention while Blaine sets up another ghost trap. Candy shoots with both barrels and takes him out. The spirit is sucked into the ghost trap. The body in the corner turns out to be Warden Mark Harrison. They find his badge and an empty .45 revolver. They scramble back up through the hole in the warden's office and return to Vanessa. She falls to her knees and starts bawling. After a few minutes she stops, thanks the party and asks a favor. Her son Eric disappeared in 1939 up at Whispering Cave. She asks them to find what's left of his body and take it to the Harrison home and bury it. They agree to do so and leave. On their way out, now that they are not rushed, they crack the safe. Within are really old bonds and prisoner transfer orders. Manda plans to sell Israel's hammer, but she needs to find a buyer first. They get back to the pickup, return to the main road, and head up the mountain for Whispering Cave.
Session 3 ~ The Whispering Cave
Theme Song : Alice in Chains ~ Man in the Box
AoW #1 : The Whispering Cairn
September 11-12, 1992.
The party checks their gear and confirms they brought along a health kit. They head back to the motel and pick up rock climbing and spelunking gear. They also pick up penlights, helmets, straps, power bars, etc. They eat dinner at the saloon and Manda manages to replenish their dwindling shotgun shell supply at the bar - the bartender is willing to part with a couple of boxes. After a post-dinner drink they head back to the motel get some rest. Joe stays up all night, again (the animated kachina doll is still in the closet).
It's snowing in the morning when they head out. Joe drives again, until it becomes too overgrown to continue in the truck. They get out and grab all the gear and start walking, passing a thermos of hot coffee around. The road narrows and hugs a cliff as it ascends. The going is dangerous, as some parts of the road have been eroded and washed out. The road stops at a big flat clearing. Bottles and cans litter the area, and the group realizes they have been up here before. Little trees sprout up through the light snow cover here and there. Broken trailhead markers lie at the edges of the clearing, and a very weathered (and shotgun damaged) sign for ISPERING CA is still standing. A trail wanders up into the mountains above.
The trail is poorly maintained and hard to follow. They hike until they are well above the tree line. It's cold and windy, but the light snow does not hamper the view of the valley below. The trail ends at a smaller clearing, about the right for a campsite. There is a broken tent here and a dark cave entrance. The cave entrance is a mere three feet around. Manda checks it out and sees lots of cobwebs. Older ropes are also tied off here, in various states of disrepair. Manda climbs down to a flat spot and discovers a hole leading further into the mountain. Blaine makes a semi-controlled descent and nearly lands on Manda. Manda enters the hole headfirst, pushing her pack in front of her. Joe descends, but loses his grip and lands on Blaine.
Manda exits the tight tunnel into a bigger space. She hears a gentle whispering from somewhere ahead. The floor is seven feet down, and two tunnels lead out at the far end of the chamber. Blaine and Joe squeeze into the hole feet first to make way for Candy, who makes it down OK, despite his arachnophobia. They gather in the bigger space after much shoving, grunting and scraping through the tight tunnel. Manda spots something shiny - a candy bar wrapper. She looks around for foot traffic, and it looks like the right-hand tunnel has seen some use recently. They head that way. The tunnel twists and turns for a while, up, down, side to side, then they stop at a big hole in the tunnel floor. Another three foot hole gapes in the tunnel wall to the side. They traverse the big hole and keep on hiking.
They stop at another big hole - this one is giant and their meager penlight beams cannot find the bottom. Candy tosses down a glow stick. It lands about sixty feet down on a paving-stone-like floor. They tie off rope to a sturdy stone pillar and rappel down. Candy goes first and lands well. He takes a look around,and sees that after fifteen feet or so the bigger tunnel below opens into a HUGE tunnel beyond. Blaine descends next and examines the flooring. It's obviously man-made, but the stonework is exceptionally well done - there is no mortar and no arches. The whispering is louder here. Joe gets down safely and notices old carvings on the walls - too weathered to make out. He also notices small puddles on the floor. Once they are all down, they head into the HUGE tunnel.
It's sixty feet wide and about eighty feet tall. They walk in and pass two big side tunnels. One is caved in and filled with debris. The other contains a black rock pedestal. Mounted on the pedestal is part of a giant copper ring. Intact, it would be about six feet in diameter. It is etched with weird runes that remind Manda of Mayan writing. Blaine determines the ring used to be magical in nature. He sketches some of the runes into his notebook, and he and Manda both take a shard of copper to examine later. They move on down the hall, which ends with a set of stairs. The stairs are huge and it takes some effort to descend. As they scramble from step to step, the whispering grows even louder, and seems to emanate from thousands of tiny holes in the stone walls here.
They finally make it down the big stairs and enter another large hall-like chamber. A big side tunnel ends at a dais and fresco. Blaine's curiosity leads him down a set of stairs, which end in a big chamber. It has seven sides and seven short halls spoke out at the far end. Each sports a chain hanging down, and five end with a lantern. Each of the lanterns is a different color of the rainbow, though red and indigo are missing. A wide tunnel on the north side is caved in, but someone or something has dug a hole through the rubble. The green hall glows - the lantern is lit and the ceiling is eighty feet up. The walls and ceiling sparkle in the murky emerald light, they are composed of white plaster with little metal bits mixed in.
In the center of the seven-sided room stands a stone sarcophagus. It features a milky white carving of its occupant - seven feet tall and sexless - on the lid. Its right index finger is missing. It is silent here. The whispering has stopped. They return to the green hall and examine the lantern. It is made of brass and contains a small tea candle. The glass is composed of thousands of tiny shards melted together. The carved figure and the sarcophagus seem to be pointed at the orange hall. They decide to push the lid off to see what's inside. Joe hears a click and dives out of the way, just in time to avoid a gout of flame. The sarcophagus is empty. They wander down the yellow hall and see an indentation in the floor. Blaine discovers how to move the sarcophagus and points it at yellow, and moves the tea light from green to yellow. The floor and walls begin to rumble.
The circular indentation starts to descend - it's a elevator of sorts. Manda jumps on. The platform goes down into another chamber with stairs and a balcony. The wall carvings here are in great shape and feature the same androgynous hairless humanoids. They are all bowing down to something down the hall, in the direction of the stairs and balcony. Manda gets off the elevator and it rises again. Blaine goes next. Below, the air is fresh and they can feel a breeze. Candy and then Joe descend. They go to the stairs, Blaine and Candy leading the way, shining their meager flashlights into the gloom. The stairs lead up to another hall, this one lined with tiered shelves. The shelves are filled with about 100 kachina dolls. There is no easily identifiable pattern to their placement - they are of all shapes, sizes and styles. Luckily, they are also inanimate. Blaine and Candy tell Joe to close his eyes as he passes through the hall. He does and they make it through without a hitch.
The doll hall ends with stairs that lead down to a room. A dull gray pillar stands here and a tunnel leads out. Brown slick goo covers part of the room floor to ceiling. Set into the pillar is a niche containing a bowl of orange goop. The goop looks like vomit and smells like gravy. Joe lights his Bic and waves it at the brown goo. The brown goo seems to not like this, as it develops a pseudopod and snuffs the flame as it envelops Joe, knocking him unconscious. Blaine heals Joe. They examine the far side of the pillar and see boots and trousers sticking out from under it. This pillar seems to raise and lower, too. Blaine tries to repair the mechanism, but ends up breaking it instead. They decide to head down the tunnel leading out.
The tunnel leads to living quarters. There is a big stone slab here, bed-like. On the wall is carved a figure with outstretched arms. It seems like an important fellow, as he has a halo. A breeze blows up from the surface of the slab, sort of like an air hockey table. Blaine lays out on the air cushion - it holds him up comfortably. The walls here are lined with empty shelves and niches. A door opens into a seven by seven room - a privy. They head back up to the seven sided room. Green and indigo have similar indentations to the one in yellow. In blue, the hanging chain ends in the ceiling sixty feet up in a hole ten feet wide and five feet deep. They move the light and point the sarcophagus at blue, but nothing happens. They try green next. A deep rumbling noise starts and a deep creaking can be heard from below.
Joe pokes his head around the corner to take a look at blue, and suddenly the floor gives way! Manda utilizes her catlike reflexes and jumps to safety. The sound of falling stone is almost deafening. Manda takes a look at the rough tunnel the cave-in opened up and hears a hissing, clicking, skittering sound from below. Candy throws a glow stick down the rough tunnel which reveals millions of beetles carpeting the floor and heading for the party! They give off an acrid odor and glow slightly greenish. Also, they bite. Manda shakes off the wound the beetles gave her as Candy steps in to grab her and retreat. Blaine steps forward and blasts the swarm. A great deal of sizzling and popping is heard, and the air fills with a nasty-smelling smoke. The blast was big enough to take out lots beetles and scatter the rest, so the group heads down the rough tunnel.
The going is tough, as the floor and walls are mostly loose rubble. The tunnel ends at a chamber filled with small broken statues. Big brass plates etched with marching figures make up the walls. One has been removed and is tilted against the wall. They move the brass plate out of the way and hear a click and a deep grinding boom. A big slab of stone falls down behind them. A gaunt figure appears - it wears 30's-era explorer's clothing. It also has long fangs. The creature attacks Candy and was going to do some major damage, but trips and fumbles past him. Blaine boosts someone's trait and Joe connects with the Lopper. Candy empties a couple of barrels at the thing. Manda smells something acrid, and looks around for the source of the odor, but can't find it. The fanged beast knocks Candy down, and as he gets up, the stone slab rises behind them. Joe gets in a good blow, but
Fangy grabs Lopper. Candy steps forward and kills the creature with a well-aimed point-blank shot.
Joe retrieves Lopper and they examine Fangy's corpse. He's wearing old pants and a tattered shirt, waterlogged and moldy. The wall opens up as the group moves around the room, then close again. They find the pressure plate that controls the stone doors. They pile some stones on the plate to keep the doors open and head through. They enter another hall and head left. The hall opens to a big room with 24 more of the slab-beds. Also here is a headless statue wielding a wicked serrated blade. On one of the beds is a headless clattering skeleton dressed in plain brown clothes with metal buttons. Its skull lies on the floor ten feet away. They head down the hall to see what lies in the opposite direction.
They find a room with 4 benches and a trough full of the orange goop, overflowing. They head back to the bed room. Blaine picks up the skull and notes that several vertebrae are shattered. They also find a billfold on the corpse and a German passport. The owner was born in 1907 and entered the U.S. in 1931. The name on the passport is Gustav Beaukamp. They examine the statue next. Manda notices the joints are articulated - it moves. They also notice holes above the statue in the wall - old gunfire. Blaine attempts to repair the statue, but fails. The arm wielding the wicked serrated blade drops. They find some stairs down somewhere and descend.
A damp smell permeates the air here. They find a chamber filled with four feet of dank water. The ceiling is seven feet above the floor. Blue and yellow tile cover the walls and floor. Joe leads the way through the room, his guns held above his head. Something grabs Blaine's leg and wraps around his knee. The water is too murky to allow their meager penlights to cut through. Blaine swings a hatchet at whatever is holding his knee and brings up an algae-encrusted skull. An old bloated corpse bobs to the surface. Another Fangy appears, and it's so scary that it shakes Blaine, Manda and Candy. Manda recovers and stabs at it with a knife. Fangy swings at and misses Candy. Joe shotguns Fangy and it sinks into the water, dead.
An opening in the room leads south to a narrow passage and angles up into a room with two benches. They also spy a backpack, bedroll and canteen. Some clothing is stretched out as if it were being dried. In the backpack they find the indigo lantern. They head back into the water-filled room and find another narrow passage opposite the one they explored already. It, too, angles up into a small room with benches. They see more gear and in the backpack are 15 tea candles. Exhausted, hungry and thirsty, they head back to the seven-sided room to assess their options.
I'll take a break now. There are 12 more sessions of this to post, but I have to run a game in about three hours.
But some teasers:
This is both highly interesting (I mean, background-wise) and entertaining. Looking forward to reading more of it!
At the beginning of each session, we have a player read the previous session journal out loud. This is usually done by Candy's player, who does it in a thick, Brooklyn accent.
Sometimes things fall into place for the players during the recap, or I notice times when what they were hearing was a lot different from what I was saying and some clarification is in order. When notes are taken during this time period, the first bit of a session journal can end up as a sort of "plot dump" and occasionally contradicts previous entries.
Back to the story...
Session 4 ~ Bones
Theme Song : Pearl Jam -- Why Go?
AoW #1 : The Whispering Cairn
September 12-13, 1992.
On their way back to the seven-sided room they investigate the rubble-strewn tunnel with the recent excavation. There they find another explorer's backpack, and inside is the red lantern. They return and hook the indigo and red lanterns to their chains, then light indigo. A tiny glint of metal can be seen in an indentation there. It's a quarter, bent in half. When the sarcophagus is in place, a pillar slams down in the indigo tunnel, then slowly cranks back up - another deadly trap.
Violet's floor is completely smooth. Nothing happens in red. They figure the only area they haven't fully explored is the top of the blue tunnel, where the chain disappears into a ten by foot recess. Blaine climbs the chain,but falls about halfway up, falling and twisting his ankle - he'll have to stay below (Blaine's player missed this session). Blaine lights the blue lantern and turns the sarcophagus as Candy climbs the chain, but he doesn't have the strength to make it all the way. They rig some of their climbing gear to pulley them up, Candy gives it another go, and he makes it all the way. He finds a ledge with a dark hallway beyond. He's got to swing on the chain to get over to the ledge, but he lands it. Candy teeters for a brief moment, arms windmilling wildly in the air, then steps forward into the hall.
Candy uses crampons and the pulley system to lift Manda and Joe, and they move into the hall. It is pitch black up there, and the flashlights don't reach the far end. Candy pulls a glow stick and heaves it. The dim light stops at the far end of the hall. The wall there is actually a giant carved face with a wide open mouth. As they inch forward Manda notices a broken climber's axe in the floor, and worn pitons and weathered ropes along the walls. They figure the hall might change its pitch as a trap, and decide to set out new pitons and also rope themselves to one another before moving forward.
As they approach the carved face,they hear a click. The eyes open and light up. Something colorful - a back-lit prism - starts spinning behind the eyes. All of the rainbow colors can be seen (except blue), and the effect is quite mesmerizing. A whistling noise and a slight breeze can be felt, emanating from the face. They retreat a bit to shout down to Blaine to light each lantern in turn, figuring since blue is lit and missing from the color wheel, lighting the others may help stop the trap. Of course, Blaine is in no shape to complete his task quickly, so they are stuck up there until he finishes. The wind picks up a bit more, and a low howling begins to rise.
Manda's long hair whips around as she pounds in more pitons. It is becoming difficult to maintain a grip on the hammer. The wind picks up even more, and becomes hurricane strong. The party is finding it hard to keep their feet on the ground. Manda loses her grip on the hammer and it clatters away, down the hole. The Violet light goes out. It is hard to keep their eyes open - it hurts to look in the direction of the face. Indigo goes out. Manda finally loses her footing and flies off toward the hole! She pinwheels in midair, tethered to Joe and Candy, and manages to grab the chain above the hole. She grabs on with both hands while her body is held aloft, parallel to the floor. Green goes out, then yellow. Manda bounces around some more, then the howling dulls to mewling and the wind lessens and finally ceases.
Blaine curses from below. Candy and Joe pull Manda up and they continue down the hall. As they approach for the second time, they hear the click again. The mouth opens, the eyes open, but the prism light does not come on. There is no wind. They use a spike to hold the pressure plate in place, keeping the mouth open, and head inside. It opens into a long hall with no floor. A wooden beam two feet wide stretches down the center of the hall. Fifteen feet below they shine their mag lights over the "floor", which seems to be comprised of thousands of copper balls, the size of oranges. The walls, about thirty feet away, are covered in a crazy honeycomb-like pattern, riddled with orange-sized holes. The ceiling is thirty feet up. Manda decides she wants a closer look at the balls.
She ties off a rope and has Candy and Joe lower her down. The balls are hand-hammered copper, and are hollow inside. She tosses one up to Joe, he catches it. When she gets hauled back up, she stuffs the ball in her pack. They move forward across the beam. About halfway across, a shrill whistling starts up, and copper balls start shooting out of the holes in the honeycombed walls! Joe and Candy get hit, but manage to stay on the beam. Candy makes a run for it as the entire hall resounds with copper clanging on copper and stone. Joe gets hit again and lands roughly. Manda crouches and tosses a rope to Joe, then gets smacked on the ass by a copper projectile. Candy manages to avoid the spheres and makes it to the far platform, where he notes a big locked door. He yells over the din, telling Manda and Joe to hustle. Manda drops to a crawl and starts hustling to the platform. Just then Candy sees the balls bulge and move behind Joe. A snake-like creature emerges from the balls. It has tentacles in its mouth. It smacks Joe and smacks him good.
Joe turns and shoots, shaking the snaky. Manda scrambles, but still gets hit, and is battered and injured badly when she makes the platform. Candy drags Manda to safety. They can both hear a whispered voice say, "she was so close... he almost hit it...ooh, that's gotta hurt in these tight spaces..." It's some kind of commentary on their progress through the trapped room by some unseen observer. Joe blows the snake-thing's head clean off. The balls stop flying across the room and Joe approaches the platform, ready to be pulled up. The going is slow on the shifty surface, and while he gets into position, Candy and Manda strike up a conversation with the disembodied voice. It's the ghost of Eric Harrison.
Harrison's ghost says his bones are in the ball room. He also says there is a room beyond containing treasure, but he does not want to open the door for them until his bones are interred on the grounds of the Harrison ranch. The trio manages to talk Eric into opening the door while they are still there, so they won't have to leave, bury the bones, and return again. Eric directs Joe to the bones. He finds them and carefully wraps them up and puts them in his backpack. He notes a big crack in the skull.
Eric points out a gourd containing healing gunk a previous explorer had left behind. Manda drinks it and is instantly healed. There is a single dose left.
Eric opens the door for them and they venture into a huge room. At the bottom of a pit lies a stone sarcophagus. Manda recognizes the pit as a Meso-American ball court. There are tiers of benches for seating on all sides. A stone ring on either side is attached to a stone pillar. Four sets of stairs (each step is eighteen inches tall and six inches wide) descend from the top of the pit to the bottom, but two sets of stairs are broken and unusable. A stone pedestal on either side of the pit walls holds a sword, a big, wicked-looking serrated affair (a maquahuitl). They use a stone tier to hug the wall and get closer to the pit, the drop the three and a half feet to the main floor. Candy leads the way. As soon as they hit the floor, the two swords on pedestals float and spin, and suddenly two ghostly figures appear, holding the deadly blades. The ghostly figures wear collars decorated with bones and feathers. They scream and charge.
Candy shoots as Manda freaks out (GM's Note: Manda missed her Guts check, something both she and Joe would do with increasing regularity, resulting in plenty of temporary mental disorders). Joe shoots and misses. Ghost #2 charges at Joe as a handful of zombies scramble out of the pit to join the fray (Somebody played 'Reinforcements' from the Adventure Deck, a card that causes reinforcements to show up for the baddies). Joe swings the Lopper, and ghost #2 blocks the attack with a big clang. Manda recovers her senses and throws a grappling hook to the nearest stone pillar in the ball pit, about fifteen feet up. She nails the toss and ties off her end of the rope to something sturdy. Then she scoots up the rope, but doesn't get too far. Joe clangs with ghost #2 again, and Candy shoots it with Vanessa's shotgun. Ghost #2 scores a hit on Joe as Manda shimmies up the line. Candy gets whacked hard by ghost #1 and gets shaken, then unshakes as Manda reaches the ring attached to the pillar. She removes the copper ball from her backpack and throws it through the ring! The ghosts and zombies all drop to the ground and kneel. Wary of the baddies, the party rests a bit before moving on.
Weird carvings cover the sarcophagus. The carvings depict a ball game. Strange dark shapes are shooting out of the losing captain's body, killing the other team's members. Manda drops from the pillar as Candy and Joe decapitate the zombies. The swords dropped by the ghosts are made of wood and flint and weigh about twenty-five pounds each. Manda and Joe each take one.
They make their way down the steps and approach the sarcophagus. The featureless stone slab covering it glows and they hear a disembodied voice in a language they do not understand bark some sort of challenge.
Manda collects the zombie heads and places them on the slab. Nothing happens.
Joe places his new flint sword on the slab. Nothing happens.
Candy climbs on top of the slab and does a jig. Nothing happens.
The challenge is repeated. This time, Manda recognizes one of the words as "name". She says her own name. Nothing happens. She says, "Zokias." Something happens.
The slab jumps nine inches and begins to pivot. Within is an open space containing a seven-foot tall hairless mummified body. Manda takes some pictures. They also find a silver circlet, two painted big-horned ram horns, and a small box made of soft metal. The top and sides of the box are intricately carved and the lid is welded with a bead of silver. It's a bit bigger than a bread box. They decide it is about time to leave. Getting out isn't easy.
They argue the wisdom of using up all of the healing gunk, as Blaine might be able to synthesize some of it later, with a proper sample... They opt to save the healing gunk for Blaine's research later and end up dragging poor injured Blaine out through the tunnels, stairs, tight squeezes, and rope pulleys. He screams like a little girl the whole time.
They finally emerge from Whispering Cave. It is night and cold. They lay down in the snow, panting. Once they gather their wits, they decide that shelter is first, as a nighttime hike off the mountain would be even more dangerous in the dark. The tent they saw on their way in is broken, but can be scavenged. Manda makes a lean-to out of the broken tent and they gather wood for a fire. They eat some power bars for dinner and pack Blaine's twisted ankle with snow. They are exhausted, uncomfortable and quite cold, but they do their best to get some kind of rest.
Morning comes and they gather their gear and begin the trek down the mountain to the truck. Hours later they reach the vehicle. The road is too narrow to pull a three point turn, so Joe backs them down the mountain looking for a good turnout. After a couple miles of squat, Joe pulls a bootlegger's reverse and continues the descent pointing the right way. Eric had told them that the Harrison ranch was at the intersection of Maple Street and County Road 7. They make it back to the motel to clean up and drop their spelunking gear. They check out the map of Creede in the motel lobby, but there is no Maple road. They ask around and find a grizzled resident who points them in the right direction. They leave Blaine at the motel to recuperate. Manda catnaps in the truck.
They head up Main and take the required turn-off just outside of town. Joe slows down when two people run out of the woods and wave them down. They explain that to go forward would be foolish - there is a huge pissed-off bear up ahead by the Harrison place. They thank the hikers for the intel and keep going.
The ranch house used to be red, now it's a faded rust color. Only the walls stand now - the roof collapsed years ago. They look around for the family cemetery, but the whole property is so overgrown that they don't know where to start. After an hour or so of searching, Candy finds a couple empty graves and some headstones which have been knocked over. They check out the scene. The graves are fresh, and a new shovel leans against a fence post. Just then a roar and the crashing of underbrush startles everyone. A zombie bear emerges from the foliage!
Manda loses it and begins to suffer hallucinations and delusions... Candy shoots the beast with a well-aimed double-barreled shotgun blast to zombie bear face. Threat neutralized, they examine the headstones and figure that Eric's two brothers and aunt were buried here. Their bodies have been dug up and removed.
Joe picks up the shovel, ready to dig a grave for Eric's bones. Candy advises him, "All I can tell you is the hole doesn't have to be too deep."
Session 5 ~ The Mask
Theme Song : The Pixies -- Dig for Fire
AoW #2 : Three Faces of Evil
September 13-16, 1992.
After burying Eric's bones they head back to the motel. Joe, fed up with getting no sleep at night because of the scary animated murder doll, convinces Candy to go out looking for a wood chipper to finally dispose of the evil thing. Candy grabs the locked briefcase and they head out. Manda heads to the library to pick up some books, then to the saloon to read and relax. Blaine rests up his twisted ankle at the motel and works on deciphering the book. As they make their way down Main Street, another line of dump trucks and earth movers trundles past.
Candy manages to piss off the hardware store owner and he and Joe get booted. In the late afternoon Manda notices a maroon and tan van drive by. It catches her attention because the hooded figure in the passenger seat is wearing a creepy mask and is staring straight at her as the van passes. She is not sure if the scene is a vision of her growing mental trauma or if it's real.
Joe and Candy, in their wanderings up and down the streets of Creede, hear a running wood chipper. They follow the sound and discover a guy tossing cut-up trunk pieces in. He agrees to let them toss the doll in the wood chipper, but won't let them throw the entire suitcase in there, afraid the latches and padlock will damage the machine. Candy tells him the doll reminds him of his ex-wife. Joe and Candy pop the padlock off and position the briefcase over the running machine. When they yank the case open, the doll grabs onto the case and spins around, ready to attack. The guy remarks, "What the f--- was wrong with your ex-wife?!"
Joe, freaked out, swings and misses. The doll lunges at Joe and latches onto his shoulder, shredding up a chunk of his parka. The guy grabs a sturdy branch and circles, looking for an opening. The doll switches shoulders, but Joe is able to shake it off and into the wood chipper, which starts grinding away at the foul thing. The teeth of the chipper grab at the doll's legs as the guy throws a big rotted chunk of two by four in on top of it - a terrible grinding and a puff of feathers and the damned thing is gone for good.
The guy cuts power to the chipper and tells Joe and Candy to wait right there. He goes into his kitchen and returns with three beers. They drink in silence until Candy says, "Try being married to the b**ch."
Blaine, Joe and Candy meet up with Manda for dinner, then they grab a few drinks across the street at the bar. Then they all head back to the motel for some much deserved sleep. The next two days (14th and 15th) the boys spend most of the day playing pool and drinking beer at the bar, while Manda hangs out and reads across the street at the saloon. Their intent is to lay low while Blaine's ankle heals and Manda's head clears.
They check in at the mechanic, but the Willy still isn't done. The mechanic says he has the part but is super busy due to all the new vehicles in town headed up to the mine. Late on the second evening some miners come in to the bar. The bartender mutters something racist under his breath. Four guys from a moving company come in, too. At the saloon, Manda sees the creepy masked staring guy in the van pass by again, and heads over to the bar to tell the boys. She wants to track it down, and thinks she can convince Kendra to loan them the pick-up again.
Manda botches her attempt to persuade Kendra. Kendra wants $100 bucks to fix the truck, and blames the group for breaking it in the first place. Blaine gets permission to repair the truck and fixes it with some lube and a few well-placed hammer whacks. Blaine sweet-talks Kendra into loaning them the pickup again, then gets invited in for a drink. He takes Manda and the truck back to the bar. Joe and Candy come out and notice the truck is purring like a truck. Blaine says Joe is too drunk to drive (he's not), and makes some coffee, thinking for some reason that would sober him up. They pile into the pickup and Joe drives around Creede. They see no sign of the van after an hour or two of going in circles. They decide to call it a night and head back to the motel.
In the morning (of the 16th) they head to the mechanic to check on the Willy. The mechanic says it will be done by three. Manda feels her head is clearing up from the mental trauma she suffered earlier. They head over to the body shop and pick up the Willy. The vehicle is in Mickey's name. They return Kendra's pickup then head to Main Street where Manda saw the van at around the time she saw it the other days. They spot the van, but there is no creepy masked guy in the passenger seat. Instead they see a dirty guy wiping his face with a rag. They follow the van to a tiny convenience store. Manda yells, "Where is your mask?!" He misunderstands and holds up a respirator. The driver exits the store with milk and a case of Tecate and takes off. They follow in the Willy as the van heads up the two-lane highway up the mountain. The van takes the left fork - toward the mine. They decide to turn off and wait for the cover of night to get a look at the mining camp.
The night is a cool 62 degrees with no precipitation, visibility 10 miles, and light winds. (This is the actual weather for that date in Creede, CO, according to Mickey's player, who participates in odd little ways even though Mickey herself has yet to make an appearance.) There are patches of snow of the ground. Joe pulls over into the last turnout before the mine, and they hide the vehicle with loose branches. Then they hike through the trees, loaded for bear. Blaine and Candy snap every twig on the way, startling the wildlife and making a general ruckus. Joe is good at sneaking and distances himself from the noisy ones. They hear voices in Spanish headed their way. The guards have flashlights. Candy and Blaine decide to hide and maybe gain the element of surprise. They jam themselves into a hole under some exposed tree roots. Manda climbs a tree, but Joe gets spotted. He makes a run for it, and the guards give chase. One trips and falls on his face. Joe knocks the other guy out and turns off his light. Candy sneaks up on the other guard as he gets to his feet, but the guard hears him coming, spins, and points his UZI at Candy. Candy puts his hands up, but creeps forward as the guard backs up. Blaine jumps out and says something fabulous, and shakes the guard (GM's note : "says something fabulous" is pretty accurate. Blaine's player wanted to distract the guard, but had no idea what to say, so he improvised and said something completely incoherent... so incoherent that the entire table stopped and stared at the player, trying to figure out what he was trying to say. Utterly bewildered, I let it go...[i]). Joe sneaks up behind the shaken guard and knocks him out. They gag and bind the two men, take their UZIs and a walkie talkie, then head to the mine.
They approach a ridge that rings the mining camp area. Lots of light shines over from the other side. They spot the shack where they woke up days ago. The door has been removed. The lean-to wood pile has been removed, as well. The bodies and bullet casings and bottles are all gone, as well. A few portables have been erected. There is a lot of activity. They see a couple other maroon and tan vans, a few dump trucks, and tents. Lots of stuff to hide behind. They sneak up to the site manager's portable but are noticed by a miner, who informs them the visitor's office is open. ([i]GM's Note : This is the beginning of a theme throughout the campaign. The PCs sneak around, trying to avoid detection, only to run into an NPC who not only isn't part of the greater conspiracy, but doesn't care why the PCs are there in the first place... "I just work here.")
They thank him and sneak over to the assay office. Manda easily picks the lock and they creep inside. On a table they find maps and diagrams of the dig. They examine the papers and determine that the operation is definitely taking some silver out of the ground, but most of the initial digging was to open an enormous shaft and install an elevator well away from the vein. Blaine looks around for some equipment and in a locker finds several visitor's vests, lighted hard hats, and an official-looking clipboard. Blaine and Manda do a little more research on the papers. Blaine figures out a way to the elevator and Manda finds a payment schedule to HSR - El Hombre Sin Rostro - The Man Without a Face (GM's Note: I speak almost no Spanish. That's what Google Translate gave me for "faceless man" and I stuck with it).
They dress up in their visitor disguises and head for the elevator. Blaine tries to bluff the group's way into the mine, pulling a walkie talkie to convince a guard to let them pass, but botches the attempt. Manda steps in to smooth the situation and charms the guy into letting them past. They find Shaft One and locate the elevator. They descend past rough rock walls into a huge open area. The place has the same architectural features as Whispering Cave. Immense pillars are carved into warrior shapes and hold up the ceiling. A pool at the far end of the cavern is around thirty feet in diameter. Three big hallways lead out of the chamber. Near the elevator, a couple of guards are busy playing cards at a table. They look up and grab their MP40s when they see the party exit the elevator. Manda tries persuading them to drop the guns, and Candy tries intimidating them into dropping their guns. Neither gambit pays off. Candy shoots and shakes one of them with his trusty shotgun, but takes a hit in return. Gunfire is exchanged - Manda kills one guy, Candy the other. Blaine pockets the pornographic deck of cards they were using.
Electric lanterns light the cavern, powered by a gas generator. Bundles of cables lead down each of the three tunnels out. They investigate the pool. The water is quite clear, but they can't make out the bottom. Candy cracks a glow stick and tosses it in. The light gently descends, then stops at thirty feet down. It didn't stop at the bottom - the viscosity of the water changes dramatically at that depth. They head for the far right-hand tunnel to continue exploring after collecting the MP40s the guards were using. Manda recognizes the carved figures covering the walls here as reminiscent of the descent to Xibalba, the Meso-American underworld. The tunnel slants down and down and they descend. It ends at a set of double doors. At Blaine's nudge they swing open into a room twenty by forty feet. Bronze suits of armor are scattered about - Manda does not recognize the culture. They party waltzes right in, and, as you might have guessed, the armor animates and attacks!
Candy does some shooting and the armor does some attacking, and Manda and Blaine get shaken. Candy takes out a second suit and Joe does some shooting, but the armor deflects the shrapnel. Blaine recovers and heal-kills an armored skeleton. Candy and Joe manage to take out the other enemies, and when the dust settles, too-curious Blaine starts opening random doors out of the chamber. An enraged boar charges out of one door, and Blaine gets gored. Candy and Joe manage to shoot and kill the creature as two guards wielding Glocks enter from the direction they came from. Joe holds closed the double doors as the guards rush forward. Blaine grabs an axe and rushes as Joe throws the doors open. Unfortunately, Blaine trips on the jamb and hurtles past the guards, falling flat on his face. Candy shoots and kills them both and the party returns to the armor room to regroup.
Session 6 ~ Reunion
Theme Song : Jump Around -- House of Pain
AoW #2 : Three Faces of Evil
September 16, 1992
(GM's Note : This is the only session (so far) where Mickey's player got to show up. I had to quickly write her in to the adventure, and this is what came out.)
In the meantime: Mickey got a DUI in Denver and spent several days sitting in the county jail. She tried paging Blaine, but messed up the phone number of the pay phone she was at, so he didn't return the call. When Mickey was released from jail, she found the books were missing from the car she had taken to Denver. It was still locked up in the impound lot, so she hitchhiked and Greyhounded it back to Creede. She got into town just in time to see the Willy leave and head up the mountain, so she followed on foot. She was right behind the others as they "sneaked" into the mining camp, and used their commotion as cover to gain entry into the mine. She descended the elevator after the rest of the party and caught up with them in the armor room during their regrouping session. Hugs and a quick catch-up scene ensued, then they pressed on.
They delve deeper into the mine complex and try an unassuming door. It opens into a storeroom. Camping and digging supplies fill the space. Another door nearby leads to a sleeping area - several recently used sleeping bags and mats cover the floor. A fruit crate sits in the center of the room, and a few magazines and books written in Spanish sit on it, including a well-worn copy of Don Quixote and a couple of bodice-rippers. A half-eaten strip of jerky lies on a corner of the crate. Manda grabs a bodice-ripper for later reading.
They move on down the hall, following the cable bundle running through the middle on the floor and find a very big room. It's another partly excavated ancient ball court. A pit, about seven feet deep and full of bones, is ringed with bright kleig lights. Near the pit are a folding table and chairs, knocked over. A seven foot high ledge rings the room. Blaine, curious, moves forward. They spot broken glass and an empty padded briefcase. Stakes and string have been placed in the pit - signs of an archeological excavation. Piles of human bones sit around the pit, and a pile of stone blocks (that presumably used to cover the opening), sits to one side. They also find a video camera attached to a tripod, knocked over on its side and broken. Mickey manages to repair the camera with a little help from Blaine. There is a tape inside. They rewind it by hand and watch it on the camera's tiny view screen.
The scene features HSR in his jade mask, Thomas Delfina (who they met at the bar) and the doctor in charge of the scientific side of the dig. Weird bad things happen, including the insertion of a jade spike into Thomas, which ends up infecting him with evil ancient worms. (The original, profanity-laden handout can be found at http://www.toxicwombat.com/docs/AoW.vhs.tape.transcript.pdf).
After viewing the shocking scene, the party hears gunshots and decides to get out of there. Candy spots an opening in a corner of the chamber and climbs the ledge to get to it - the opening leads to a set of stairs going down. Blaine also climbs the ledge at a different spot, followed by Mickey, and finds a door. Blaine and Mickey open the door and spot two miner bodies on the floor of the room beyond - they must be miners because they are wearing headlamps. Manda and Joe follow Candy down the stairs. Mickey and Blaine retreat and catch up to the others. The stairs lead to a room with benches and boxes. A door hangs open. The boxes are full of labeled specimens taken from the mine. Something dark and shadowy moves in the hallway past the open door. Candy pokes his head around the corner. He spots a bed, desk, and locker. Looks like someone's personal room. Blaine and Mickey follow closely behind Candy with Manda and Joe guarding the rear. The three in front see Delfina ahead in the bedroom.
Candy shoots the infected man and ends up wounding and shaking him. Delfina bounces back, though. He swings and connects with Candy, knocking him against the wall and depositing two worms into Candy's neck and shoulder, where they writhe and burrow under Candy's skin. Mickey rushes in to assist and freaks out. Joe also rushes in to help out Candy and freaks out as well. He develops mania, poor guy. Blaine tries taunting Delfina and the trick works - Delfina advances on Blaine. While he's distracted, Mickey recovers and sneaks up behind Mr. Wormy with her favorite weapon, a length of lead pipe. She connects and does some damage. Joe also recovers and shoots and hits Delfina. Manda, in the meantime, has been carefully observing the situation and aiming, and now takes a very well-placed shot. Blaine steps forward and "heals" the worm-infested man, killing him.
Blaine also turns to heal Candy, who gets an adrenaline surge in a freak-out moment of his own - he's a germaphobe playing host to two fat, green, three inch long ancient evil worms. Blaine heals him and kills the worms inside of him.
Candy is grateful until Manda says, "You know, they're just dead inside of you now."
Manda is interested in decapitating Delfina to retrieve the jade spike. While Blaine is rooting around in the desk and locker, he finds a matched set of jade and gold rings, a relic. They move on through the room and into a short hall. Off to one side is a small chamber with a grate-covered hole in the floor - the privy.
They reach the room that Mickey and Blaine had glimpsed earlier with the miner's bodies. Around the sides of the room are sleeping cots, picks and shovels. These guys were definitely miners. Manda and Blaine check for worms on the corpses. Manda finds none, but Blaine does, and he proceeds to chop at the corpse with his trusty fire axe. After that little gore fest they head back to the main chamber with the strange pool. There are two other hallways to explore. One has bundled cable running down it, the other does not. They decide to tackle the powered hallway first.
Candy listens at the doors at the end of the hall and hears heavy breathing beyond. The doors open at a nudge and a wind whisks by. They enter an L-shaped hall. The ceiling, thirty feet up, is supported by lots of stone pillars. The walls and pillars here are studded with irregular bumps of various sizes. Blaine takes point and creeps ahead. He notices lights ahead and motions Candy to back him up. A weird sucking-slurping sound can be heard. Candy and Blaine peek around a pillar into a room. Several gunmen crouch behind tipped-over tables for cover. A bullet whizzes by Candy. The gunmen sport multicolored ponchos. A shrine of some sort sits in the center of one wall. The pillars in this room are composed of interlocking limbs. Upon closer inspection, the thousands of irregular bumps are closed eyes.
Mickey steps forward and lays down some suppressive fire. Joe sprints past and attempts to strafe the gunmen, but misses. Blaine fire blasts the men. All the eyes in the walls open and stare directly at him. This creepy occurrence shakes Joe. Blaine takes a bullet from one of the gunmen's Desert Eagle, and Mickey gets hit and wounded, as well. Candy also takes a hit, but shakes it off. Manda attempts a strafe, but botches when her gun jams. Candy, fed up with this Mickey Mouse stuff, strides in with both guns blazing. He takes out one of the gunmen and reduces a table into splinters. Manda rushes in to cover Candy and hits a baddie with rotting teeth and a scraggly mustache. He grabs Candy and grapples him, then slams him into a nearby pillar - the arms and hands on the pillar animate and grab Candy! His most serious threat temporarily taken care of, HSR and his reinforcements enter the fray.
HSR summons a giant scorpion, which pinches at Mickey and blocks the entrance to the room. Blaine scorches the scorpion and a couple of mooks and his magic fire even manages to shake HSR. Joe runs into the fight wielding Lopper and manages to neatly trisect the scorpion. Manda shoots HSR and shouts, "I'm going to sell your mask as a trophy!" The pillar still has Candy well grappled, and he can't do much but try to wriggle free. Blaine works up a huge fire blast and lets it rip, but the baddies dodge, wisely using the little cover they have left. Mickey manage to vault over the giant scorpion corpse and tables and gives HSR three mighty wounds. He soaks the damage and gloats loudly, then turns and headbutts Candy. Mickey and Manda give HSR some lead, he falls and is bleeding out. The remaining mooks are eventually killed, even the one who surrendered, because according to Candy, "We ain't takin' no f-ing prisoners." HSR expires.
Manda removes HSR's jade mask. His face is a mass of scar tissue. His nose is a mere slit. It looks like he survived a mighty fire. They wipe off their dust and grime and move forward into a long hall behind the shrine room. Within are cots and bookshelves filled with bibles. A couple of crates of ammo allow them to replenish their supply. HSR was wearing a set of turquoise beaded bracers (relic. Basically bracers of armor). In a locker they find a five pound sledgehammer (another relic. essentially a +1 hammer). A door leads down a short hall into HSR's lab. They find lots of notebooks and lab equipment here. The middle of the room features a table with a splayed and partially-dissected human corpse. Jars sealed with wax line the shelves, filled with various disgusting things. Someone opens one of HSR's recent journals and reads a handout:
These secrets are most holy, blessed until the Tzitzimitl eat their brother Huitzilopochtli.
We toil for no less than the bringing of the Sixth Sun, Nahui-Kyuss, The Worm Sun. With the rising of the god Tlakyuss, great earthquakes will be unleashed upon the land, destroying the final people of maize and ending Nahui-Ollin, the Earthquake Sun. In Nahui-Kyuss, Tlakyuss will ascend to the Sun, claiming dominion over the other gods and creating a new humanity of the worms that crawl through the soil.
In this place, we grow closer to our goal. With the support of the Whispering Way, who believe themselves capable of surviving the ending of this Sun, we have delved into the secrets of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, Tzitzimimeh, and Xolotl. With our new allies in the dark caverns here, ancient worshipers of Tzitzimimeh, our studies of the dark aspect in the pool proceed. It stirs, but is not yet awake, as it awaits a great act of violence. The seventh secret book of Popul Vuh speaks of the dangers of awakening a dark aspect too soon, as it will rise with insufficient power to assist Tlakyuss in bringing about Nahui-Kyuss, the Age of Worms.
For now we must restrict ourselves to the worms themselves and to keep this most holy place hidden until the aspect can rise.
Session 7 ~ Coming Down the Mountain
Theme Song : Jane's Addiction -- Mountain Song
AoW #2 : Three Faces of Eeeeeeevil
September 16, 1992.
GM's Note : Mickey's player couldn't show up to this session, so she had to be written out...
The group regathers in the big hall with the pool. After some discussion, it is decided that the evil found in the mine must not be let out into the world, so Mickey heads up to wire the complex with dynamite. When the party finishes exploring the third tunnel, they plan to leave and blow the place. Manda remarks, as they make their way to the third tunnel, "There's no statute of limitations on murder, and that's doubly true for ancient pantheons."
Cabling runs about twenty feet down the third tunnel, but ends there. The last ten or so feet of the floor is bare. The tunnel ends at some big-ass double doors. Blaine, the curious one, steps forward and easily pushes them open. The hall beyond is dark, so they switch on their mag lights and headlamps and move in. The walls here are rough-hewn and feature faded paintings. Manda guesses they are a couple hundred years old. Most of the scenes feature the Xibalba descent into the underworld theme. The air is moist and the ambiance is creepy. A faint breeze smells of nothing, really. The twisty tunnel, three to seven feet wide in places, opens into a large cavern. The lighting is quite poor. There are streaks of mineral ore in the walls, and while the party examines the veins, Manda notices something. Figures rush out of the darkness!
Two males and a female, with too-wide mouths full of filed teeth, and gray skin descend on the group. Manda and Blaine are freaked out and get shaken. The gray things wield nasty-looking tomahawks. Manda recovers and shoots at one of the things, but it shrugs off the blast. When they get close enough and move into the groups' meager flashlight beams, a pattern of glittering stones embedded in each one's chest can be seen clearly. Joe shoots and shakes one as Candy shreds another. The last approaches as Blaine gets to his feet, swings wildly with his axe, missing. Joe hits another, killing it. Manda steps in and opens up with a round of autofire, killing the third. Blaine heals up himself and Manda and they move forward into the inky darkness.
A tunnel leading out of the cavern angles down and eventually they find rough steps carved into the floor. They enter another big cavern which opens up and then drops into darkness. Manda and Blaine spot two gray things ahead, across a sixty-foot-deep chasm through the center of the room. Joe carefully aims and takes one out, and is then hit with a spear thrown by another gray on the opposite wall. Candy, concerned for Joe, stands over him to guard him and double-taps another gray thing, blowing him off his perch. Candy finds two stalagmites supporting a primitive bone and rope ladder that stretches all the way down to the chasm floor. He tosses a glowstick down and illuminates a tunnel on the opposite at the floor of the cavern. As the glowstick falls, it lights up a second tunnel thirty feet up on the opposite wall. Joe has an idea - he figures going down the ladder and crossing the chasm floor is a great way to get ambushed. He grabs the spear the gray threw and ties a good length of rope to it, then hucks it across the chasm into the second tunnel - it sticks!
Candy rigs some climbing gear and a pulley to the rope, which they tie off securely, and rappels down to the tunnel opening. Blaine and Manda spot a shadowy shape in the tunnel entrance when Candy is only halfway down. The spear breaks, and Candy, hanging on for dear life, slams into the chasm wall. Blaine power surges and sends a fiery blast into the tunnel, wounding the shadowy figure there - it howls in charred pain. Manda shouts at it, taunting it to show itself, but the gray is unmoved. Joe descends the ladder. Candy wraps his arm around the rope ladder, turns, and double-taps the gray in the tunnel. Enraged, the creature shows itself long enough for the group to notice its larger embedded stones and to throw a spear at Candy, which misses but sends him spinning. Several more grays appear from niches in the opposite wall and start throwing rocks.
Joe gets hit by a rock and falls, but manages to catch hold of the ladder, but he's shaken. He recovers his wits and fires at the boss gray, shaking it. Candy shoots and misses as Manda lays down some suppressive fire, which kills one and shakes another. Joe botches and drops his shotgun. Manda takes out another with a round of suppressive fire just as the boss gray launches itself across the chasm and grabs onto Joe! It grapples him - it has awful breath, saggy breasts and a sharp-looking obsidian dagger. Candy lands a headshot on the foul creature as Manda takes out yet another gray with more suppressive fire. She turns her attention on the boss gray and hits her hard. The gray falls forty feet to the chasm floor and expires.
The party re-rigs Candy's contraption and zip-lines to the tunnel halfway up the wall. They advance and find yet another big cavern, this one featuring a rope bridge across the middle of it, about forty feet up. Blaine examines the bridge and decides it is stable and strong enough for them to cross. They spy two grays at the other end of the bridge, waving their tomahawks menacingly. Blaine creeps forward to blast range and lets them have it. They die a burning death. Blaine waves across that the coast is clear, and the others make it across without incident. They enter another tunnel which forks, and they take the left side. Eventually they stumble into a barracks chamber full of hides and beds and a fire pit. Three little grays and a bossy gray were eating around the pit, and turn to glower at the human intruders. Manda steps forward and shakes them all! Candy botches a shooting attempt, then the grays pick up clubs and rush forward, swinging wildly!
Joe kills a gray, but takes two wounds in return, which he manages to soak. Blaine axes one dead as Joe shakes the boss gray. Gunfire, club-blows and wounds are exchanged in a deadly scuffle, but in the end Candy neatly takes off the boss gray's head with an amazing called shot. The chief gray wears a bone breastplate (another relic). They search the barracks chamber and find a small hole in a corner that goes down into the depths. It is just wide enough for the grays to squeeze through, and they decide to avoid it and take the right fork. The tunnel leads to yet another big cavern. The floor is fifteen feet below the tunnel, and a huge gray shaman with sewn-on eyeballs awaits them across the room. He has six minor grays to back him up. The shaman is smoking a pipe, and the group realizes that all the grays here are on some kind of powerful hallucinogen. They charge and the shaman shouts some evil gibberish, shaking Candy and Blaine. Manda rallies the boys and underground combat ensues.
Blaine unleashes a blast of fire, taking out two mooks. Joe jumps down, swings Lopper, and shakes one as Manda drops some suppressive fire, shaking one and killing another. Candy hits the shaman, wounding him, but the shaman retaliates with a stream of hot coals, which hits and wounds Blaine. Joe gets hit hard and can't soak all his wounds - he starts to bleed out. Luckily, Manda remembers she is carrying the other half of the mega-potion that they were saving to see if Blaine could synthesize a copy. She heals Joe with it, and he is as good as new. They rally again and do some hitting and shooting, killing all the baddies. The shaman's blood gets sucked into the stone floor of the cavern, and a deep rumbling boom can be heard and felt. A stalactite falls and shatters. They carefully move forward and examine the shaman - he carries some rocks, a few bits of fungus, and a flint knife. The shaking and rumbling stops, and they figure it's high time to high-tail it out of there.
They make their way back to the main chamber with the pool unscathed. However, the aspect has been awakened and bars their exit. It is thirty feet tall, obsidian-skinned and has tentacles writhing out of its gaping maw. Also, it seems angry. Joe is completely demoralized by the sight. Blaine tries to lower the thing's vigor so it is not so Tough, but botches and gets some blowback. They manage to pump enough lead into it to shake it. It steps back, shakes its massive head, and rushes forward again. They figure they need some new tactics since the ancient evil thing seems to shrug off bullets, so Blaine rushes over to the gas generator and quickly converts it into a bomb. Candy and Joe distract the beast with gunplay as Blaine and Manda drag the converted jenny to the base of the elevator. They all manage to get inside and the elevator starts grinding up to the surface. The ancient evil below uses gecko-like toe pads to cling and climb the outer elevator shaft, but the elevator cab moves a little faster than the beast. The party reaches the top, exits the cab, and sends the bomb back down. They hear the blast and the scream of tearing metal, then the smoke clears and it is quiet. Then the ancient evil extends a tentacle through the blasted elevator doors! They triggered the bomb a hair too late. They run to the mine exit at full tilt and sprint across the mining camp to meet Mickey. She plunges the detonator, which sets off a huge explosion and chain reaction, which takes down half the mountain.
Great stuff, Wandering Monster, just great!
GM's thoughts:
By this point, I was feeling good. So far, the conversion had been well-received. The game was awesome and the players seemed exciting. I was prouder than I was when I ran Weekend at Bernies in a modern horror game. And it was in that state of mind that I made the fateful decision that running a single converted adventure wasn't nearly challenging enough, so I combined the Trial of the Beast and the Hall of Harsh Reflections (skipping over Encounter at Blackwall Keep, which came later).
It was a huge challenge, and not one for the faint of heart.
Dopplegangers are confusing enough whenever they're introduced into an adventure. Combining them with a crime scene investigation and tense courtroom drama is just too much. The players had a hard time following what the crimes of the beast were, as well as when and where they happened. Every session in this adventure required some sort of plot dump or recap to correct any misconceptions they had. If I were to do this again, I would give the players a handout of the police documentation on the crimes of the beast to keep them focused.
Note that this is also the first time that the players started having regular run-ins with the law. After they made the first move against the dopplegangers, they started a war. The dopplegangers, infesting the state police and New Mexico legal system, at first brought the law against them, but ended up stumbling and inhibiting any real investigation because they needed to protect their anonymity, and then later, because they wanted to take down the PCs for themselves.
Since the PCs were now in an urban area, detailed roleplaying in their day-to-day lives became more common. After a hard day's work killing bad guys, the PCs would go to TGIFriday's for dinner and plan over multiple rounds of Long Island Ice Teas and fajitas (which Candy pronounced with a hard "j" sound).
When I ran the trial (session 11), I had a list of 30 questions, some designed to trip up players and make them contradict themselves, some for informational purposes, and others designed to smear the PC's reputations. I went around the table and asked each player a question from the list, sometimes asking multiple players the same question. Each player was asked 10 questions each day, receiving rewards for good roleplaying for their answers.
I have no idea how well this method of running a trial worked.
Session 8 ~ Beast
Theme Song : I Want Candy ~ Bow Wow Wow
(not a 90's song, but it was appropriate)
CC2 - Trial of the Beast with a little of AoW #4 thrown in
September 16-21, 1992.
(GM's note. This session included a lot of information in interviews and basic plot dumps, as well as several dopplegangers, so the notes here are a bit more jumbled than in many other sessions.)
The group returns to the hotel to clean up and grab their gear. They fill the Willy and head to Albuquerque. One of their leads involves Hector Lunacon and a bloodbath (referenced in the video tape from two sessions ago).
On the drive, they sort out who's who and what's what.
* Hector apparently translated the Seventh Book of the Popul Vuh. It was widely thought that there were only six books, but this is not so.
* The Whispering Way has a chapterhouse in Waco. They are researching the Age of Worms, trying to find a way to escape or survive it.
* The cult is doing its best to hasten the Age of Worms and care not if they survive the coming apocalypse.
After a few hours of driving and talking, they stop in Pueblo for the night. On the morning of the 17th they head out for Albuquerque. They arrive on the 18th and get a room or two at a motel.
Some library research is done, but not much is found. Manda does some more skimming and finds pertinent information about Hector, the "Beast of Jicarilla", named after the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. Four weeks ago there was a break-in and fire at the University Museum - Hector was found at the scene. State trooper Diane Moss was the arresting officer. The DA was let go from the case, the trial has been delayed a week, and Hector sits in the county lockup under the courthouse, which is surrounded by protestors. Hector is also being held for the deaths of 7 children and their teacher on the nearby reservation several months ago, as well as four more deaths a few weeks ago on the shore of Lake Cortez.
Manda and Blaine pretend to be grad students from the university and try to get an interview with Hector while Joe, Candy, and Mickey knock back some Coronas at a bar near the courthouse. Manda and Blaine are informed that only Hector's lawyer, Victor Ruffini, and officials accompanied by his public defender, can have access to him. They join the others at the bar and Manda leaves a message for Victor from the bar's payphone. They discover the payphone won't accept incoming calls, so Candy uses his connections to get himself and Blaine in the same room with Hector for half an hour. Manda goes out to talk to the protestors and Joe shops for ammo.
Blaine and Candy ask good questions, but Hector seems to knows nothing, at first. He does not recognize Delfina's name, the Whispering Way, and doesn't even realize he's in Albuquerque. He is very polite, and even though the room is quite hot, Hector doesn't sweat a drop. When Blaine drops the Aztec name for the Age of Worms ("Nahui-Kyuss"), a light goes on behind Hector's eyes. Then his eyes roll back and he starts chanting in an ancient tongue. Blaine quickly rummages through his pockets and finds his mini-recorder and starts taping the chant. A guard knocks on the cell door - their time is up. Candy convinces him to allow them five more minutes. Hector's chant trails off. He leans on the table and sighs. He remembers the museum, now. Blaine boosts his spirit and he relaxes and smiles then recites a passage from the Second Book of the Popul Vuh. The strains of REM's Shiny Happy People can be heard floating in from the lobby.
Meanwhile, Manda talks to protestors at the courthouse. They are mostly Apache, and give her a flier for a Powwow occurring the next weekend. They are of the collective opinion that the Beast of Jicarilla deserves the death penalty, despite the fact that only circumstantial evidence links him to the three crimes. (GM's note: this is more about a perceived racial injustice than the actual crimes. The protesting Native Americans believe that, were Hector accused of killing "white children", he would be treated differently by the justice system.).
Twelve weeks ago Hector was seen lurking around the Reservation, then seven students, mostly orphans, and their teacher went missing at the American Academy. State troopers responding to the scene found Hector carrying the body of Lacey White Eagle down the side of the highway. When they tried to apprehend him, he dropped the corpse, laughed, and ran off into the desert.
Hector had also been seen lurking around the old Mission on the Jicarilla reservation four months ago when time several locals went missing. He was ambushed by the locals and driven into the High Desert Exotic Animal Rescue and Petting Zoo on the banks of Lake Cortez. There he escaped into the "Gator Pit," where the pursuing locals heard thrashing and shouts of pain. By the time the locals managed to get employees of the rescue organization there to safely let them in, "Hector" had vanished, assumed to have been drowned in the Gator Pit.
Back in the interrogation room, Blaine asks Hector about the heat. Hector insists he is not hot. Blaine produces a small flame in the palm of his hand, and Hector freaks out, breaking his restraints and overturning the table. Hector calms a bit when Blaine kills the fire, but the guards rush in anyway and taze and tackle Hector, then drag him away. Blaine and Candy get checked out at the police station's infirmary, then join Joe and Manda at the bar once again. They decide it is high time to visit Victor Ruffini, Hector's lawyer.
They head to Victor's office and arrive at 5, just as the secretary is leaving. She ignores them. Rafini's office is on the second floor at the back of the building. They head up, passing a group of fancy suits - obviously not public defenders. The PD offices are small and poorly lit. They find his office. The door is closed and they hear someone singing along to Born in the USA within, badly. They knock. The voice shouts "Enter!", so they do. Victor is a short, rotund, balding man. He explains he got the case because he's the new guy. He pours whiskey all around and they talk. Victor and Candy have a nice bonding moment over their New York/Jersey origins. Turns out they both attended PS 32 back home. The party offers to assist Victor, who admits he's in over his head. He hands over the case file and says "Call me Vicky." They discuss the file.
The prosecutor's case is crap. There is no case, says Vicky.
* Hector was chased down and caught in a gator pit. There were shreds of his clothing and his blood on the fence, but no obvious way he could have escaped. State trooper Diane Moss screwed up the chain of custody with the shreds of clothing and blood sample.
* Hector was seen carrying Lacey's body, dropping it when approached by troopers, then laughing maniacally and running off into the desert. The only eyewitness? State Trooper Diane Moss.
* It took fourteen police personnel to tackle Hector and drag him out of the burning museum, but no one saw him break in or start the fire.
* Hector has no ID, no prints on file and no criminal record. He's a ghost.
Vicky tells them to come back the next day for some official-looking paperwork saying they're assisting the PD - it might get them more access to better information, crime scenes, etc. Before they leave, Vicky tells them who he's up against. The prosecutor in the trial is Daryl Miller. He recently married a bikini model (Felicia Miller) 20 years his junior.
The group bids adieu to Vicky and heads to the University to check out the burned museum wing.
Once there, Manda looks for the curator's office. They find out the main buildings are still open, but the burned wing is fenced and boarded up. It would be good to know what was destroyed or went missing during the fire, as that could shed some light on who may have been responsible. Dr. Alan West is the curator, and they find his office easily. It's locked, so Joe serves as look-out while Manda picks the lock. The office is stuffed with books and stacks of papers. Rifling through them, Manda finds several references to insurance forms. Items missing include jewelry, baskets, kachina dolls, and, oddly, the Seafoam Stelle - a seven foot tall, two and a half ton stone monolith! They decide to take a closer look at the burnt wing and head out that way, dodging a pickup full of drunk coeds on the way. Manda notices motion detectors on the building and cameras here and there, but there is no power going to the building, so they decide to break in. They figure they can grab whatever camera footage is still intact later.
Blaine returns to the Willy for a crowbar, and as he returns through the parking lot campus security rolls up and stops him. He shouts "Go Lobos!" but they don't buy it. They ask if he's there for the Scrimmage. Blaine admits he's an alum trolling for coed tail. The guards leave him be.
Back at the museum, Joe and Manda notice a gap in the chain link fencing and Joe pries off a board so they can squeeze through. Another security golf cart rolls by, and shines its spotlight right at them. Luckily, the guards don't see them. They get through the fence and into the museum. White sheets cover everything, giving the place an eerie aura. Garbage cans line the walls, full of burnt and broken artifacts. They find the Stella dais and notice drag marks. Gouges in the floor lead them to a door with a broken frame - it opens to the outside. More drag marks and the tire treads of a heavy truck are found there. They snap a few photos of the tire tread marks and head out.
On their way back to town, Candy notices they are being followed by a white SUV. Joe takes the next exit off the freeway and hits a Wendy's drive-thru to try to shake their pursuers. Manda orders a frosty. The SUV rolls past. Blaine gets fries and a frosty. Candy gets a couple of junior bacon cheeseburgers. Blaine, still hungry, orders a baked potato and a chili bowl. Joe orders a coffee. They roll out and park at the next intersection, scanning the streets for the SUV. Blaine exits the Willy to piss on a building. Just then the SUV rolls up from their left, stops, and then squeals off in a cloud of acrid smoke. They notice a female form in the passenger seat and a big burly guy driving. Blaine hurriedly zips up and jumps in the Willy, and a car chase ensues. The SUV runs a red light just outside of town and clips a truck full of chicken crates. There are birds all over the road, but Joe manages to serve to avoid them and keep the tail. The SUV is too fast, however, and Joe loses them. Manda did manage to get the plate number, though, and they stop at a payphone so Candy can call a friend to look into it. He gives the pager number for a callback and they hit a roadside bar.
Candy and Joe start slurring their speech and nodding off. A ZZ Top guy and his fat lady friend eyeball the party - they are sitting at the next table. Candy keeps an eye on the bartender. They are pretty sure someone dosed their beers with GHB, but no telling who. Manda and Blaine start up a game of pool with Jerry and Martha, the couple at the next table. A scuzzy-looking homeless guy walks in off the freeway. He stinks of urine. He motions to the barkeep and they talk in a low murmur. The street guy gets a beer and saunters over to the group's table. He offers weed, and Blaine buys a nugget and asks what else he might have for sale. Dave, the street guy, tells him he can get coke, meth and vicodin. Blaine asks about the vicodin and Dave says he can get 500 mg caps for 12 bucks. Martha hits on Joe while Manda flirts with Jerry. at this point the game has gone so far off the rails... Candy goes to the head. Dave comes back with the drugs, but the barkeep kicks him out. Candy does not return.
(GMs note: the above paragraph was all a shell game. I took advantage of Candy's player's tendency to drift off when nothing exciting was happening and started throwing NPCs at the other players, trusting that I could quietly replace Candy while the players were thrashing around trying to figure out all the "suspicious" NPCs)
Manda and Blaine check the bathroom then head out back to look for him, and Joe goes out front to get the Willy and meet them around the side. There is a caddy in the back alley, and Blaine looks inside for Candy. The owner of the caddy is a fierce-looking latino making out with his girlfriend. Blaine tells him to open the trunk, and gets his way with an intimidating gout of flame. The caddy contains no Candy, so they jump in the Willy and begin a standard search pattern, spiraling out from the bar. They try paging Candy, but he does not call back.They spend the rest of the night driving around looking for Candy, then head back to the motel. Candy's there, surrounded by piles of booze and beer bottles.
Turns out "Manda" and "Joe" led Candy out the back of the bar, which is why he didn't make a fuss. They then stopped at a 7/11 for beer and tequila. Manda crashes while the boys head to the 7/11 to grab the surveillance tapes from the previous night. Billy the clerk is distracted by Joe and Blaine while Candy sneaks to the back and breaks into the closet where the tapes are kept (literally kicking down the door). Billy hears the commotion, but Joe calms him. Candy slips him a fifty. They grab the tapes and head back to the motel. Luckily, the room sports a VHS player. The tapes show that a bit after midnight Candy, "Joe" and "Manda" walk in. "Manda" wears a leather jacket, "Joe" appears to tell a funny story, then buys Funyuns and Cornuts. (GM's note: Joe's player had already stated that Joe hated Funyuns) "Manda", at one point, takes out a pager and looks at it. The time between when they paged Candy the night before and the time on the 7/11 tape are two hours apart, so that obviously wasn't the same pager.
Candy missed the return call about the SUV plates, so he calls his contact back. It turns out the vehicle belongs to Felicia Miller, wife of Daryl Miller, the prosecutor.
They all crash for a few hours, too tired to do anything after staying up all night. When they wake they head to Vicky's office to pick up the paperwork. Afterward, they head to Miller's office, but the receptionist tells them Daryl's in court. She recommends they wait across the street at the courthouse if they want to talk to him. Candy digs for some dirt on Felicia, nada. Manda uses her sorority connections and comes up with a hit. While she was modeling bikinis, Felicia turned up in the first Girls Gone Wild video. She also posed for an adult magazine and was a stripper when she met Daryl.
Daryl finally emerges from court and Manda confronts him, but he has nothing but threats (GM's note: because of the tone of the accusations, Daryl assumed Manda was trying to blackmail him with information about his wife's past. Daryl had obviously been down this road before and demands proof of the wild accusations). They decide the next step is to track down Felicia. They head out to the Miller residence.
The white SUV is leaving Miller's house as they turn down the street, so they follow it.The SUV stops in Albuquerque's boutique district, right in front of a coffee shop/bookstore. Felicia heads inside. Blaine checks the doors of the SUV, but they are locked. Manda stands in line behind Felicia and orders a latte. Candy and Joe and Blaine wait at a table with coffees to see what happens. Manda confronts Felicia in the ladies room. She yanks Felicia's purse and punches her in the face. Felicia swings back and seriously wounds Manda. Jon Bon Jovi's Blaze of Glory is playing over the cafe's speakers. Blaine and Candy hear the catfight and decide to intervene - Joe stays put. They steps into the ladies room and see TWO Mandas. The classic "which one is the real one" scene ensues. Candy intimidates the fake Manda as the real Manda finds her .22 in her purse. Joe knocks on the door and suggests they get out of there, as the staff and patrons of the cafe are getting squirrelly. Felicia is getting squirrelly, too, as she realizes she is trapped. She keeps shifting between Manda and Felicia, over and over. They grab her and head out through the side door, throw her in the Willy and head out of town.
In the Willy, Felicia changes into Daryl, then George H.W. Bush, then back again. She screams that the Whispering Way is a bunch of idiots, and the cultists are, too. Felicia turns into Candy. Candy shoots her in the kneecap and sticks his finger in the still-smoking wound. Joe exits the freeway to the desert and pulls over.
Manda asks her if there's anything she'd like to tell Daryl. Felicia shifts and looks just like Manda again. Manda steps forward and shoots her in the head. Felicia melts and shifts. Her eyes become black, shiny and opaque, over-sized. Her nose turns into a slit, and her head and limbs stretch to too-long and too-large, non-human proportions. Felicia was a shapeshifter, there are more of them, and they have an agenda.
Session 9 ~ The Rez
Theme Song : The Pixies - There Goes My Man
Carrion Crown #2 : The Trial of the Beast
September 21-24, 1992.
The group stands at sunset over a dead body. The corpse at their feet used to look like an attractive, fit twenty-something model. Now its huge black eyes, gaping maw and too-long legs and arms tell a different story. Shapeshifters exist and are the newest power player as the world approaches the Age of Worms. They stand and look at one another for a few minutes. Manda's pistol stops smoking. They climb back into the Willy and Joe drives them the ninety minutes back through rolling barren hills and chapparal to Albuquerque. They grab a bite to eat at TGIF (potato skins and chicken fajitas (prounounced as "fah-djai-tas" by Candy)) and settle in at the motel. Booze is consumed, and Carson is on the television. They decide to visit the Rez the next day.
The mission is on the opposite side of Lake Cortez from the American Academy, so they stop at the Academy first. At the entrance to the Rez they spot the usual clutch of buildings - a diner, a pawnshop, a mechanic, a gas station and a collection of tiny houses. They get directions to the Academy at the gas station and move on. They drive through foothills and desert, punctuated here and there with stands of scrub pine. The road is unimproved and has many forks. Without directions, they would have gotten hopelessly lost. Eventually they roll up to a big yellow gate and a sign that reads AMERICAN ACADEMY 0.3 MI. TOGETHER WE ALL PROSPER. Manda easily picks the shiny new padlock attached to the shiny new chain and is startled by a rustling in the brush. A rabbit runs off, while eagles circle overhead. They roll through and close the gate behind them.
The Academy consists of a singular big building - it resembles a ranger station - and several smaller outbuildings. They pull up in front of the main building and take a look. A huge cross is erected out in front. The foyer walls, as they see when they peer through the windows, are covered with hundreds of drawings and paintings of past students all the way back to 1907. As the artwork age approaches modernity, the old Apache motifs of clouds, birds and horses fade out in favor of planes, cars, and televisions. They wander away from the main building to investigate the smaller outbuildings. A scarf blows in the slight breeze, caught on a branch. It's around noon and starting to warm up. The Academy was built as part of a BLA move to assimilate the Apache nation. It was built in 1907, then shut down in 1985. It reopened under the management of an Evangelical group in 1989. Two state senators went through the Academy, as well as two Apache chiefs and a nationally-renowned poet.
They check out a dilapidated building with trash bags covering the windows first. Manda easily picks the lock. It was a storage room. Stacks of firewood line the walls on one side, and the other side is stacked with tins labeled US ARMY. Inside the tins is red and yellow hard candy - bomb shelter candy. Some boxes at the back wall contain art supplies - glue, construction paper and macaroni. A couple bottles of wine and packages of wafers are there, too. They move to the next building with boarded-up windows. Manda easily picks the lock and they enter. Inside, in the middle of the room, sits a single child-sized chair. The walls are covered with carving and writing, mostly potty humor and names and lengths of time. This was Detention. A huge crucifix dominates one wall, and the other walls sport plaques etched with bible verses.
They move on to the girls' dorms next. The first is filled with bunk beds sans mattresses. The second looks lived-in. There are three mattresses there, dressers and suitcases, personal items, and way too many dream catchers. They find Lacey's journal in the tiny desk. It is full of pressed desert flowers, and pictures of a girl in brown riding the shoulders of a large man, smiling. They also find a little stone disk carved with a Mayan glyph - Manda says it means "wood". They head to the boys' dorms. They find a red baseball cap, too big for a small boy - it's probably Hector's. The first dorm is nearly empty and looks unused. They find sports equipment and tables stacked in a fort-like structure in the second. Outbuildings explored, they head to the main building.
The big building is mostly filled with a classroom that doubles as a chapel. A big chalkboard fills one wall with an unfinished English lesson on it. Scribbled in one corner they see "I WILL SAVE THEM", written with what looks like some force. They find nothing noteworthy in the kitchen and move on to the living quarters. Marcus Holbright left a journal behind, under his mattress. He had been keeping the journal since 1983 and it details his life through high school and college, all the way through his job at the Rez. The further they read, the darker it gets. He believes at the end that he failing the children, that they are too willful. He thinks killing them is the only way to keep them from sliding deeper into sin. The party, creeped out by the disturbing journal entries but glad to have found evidence to help Hector, takes a break and discusses options.
The original police report does not say that a vehicle was towed from the Academy crime scene. Holbright owned a light gray Toyota pick-up. He cleverly scraped off the TO and TA and painted LORD under it, so his tailgate proudly shouted YO LORD! No obvious wounds were founs on Lacey, but the Rez authorities also blocked her autopsy. Captain Padilla was the one who approved that request. He also approved the request by the Rez authorities to not dredge Lake Cortez. They decide to perform a perimeter check of the Academy grounds to look for signs of Marcos' pickup. During their search Joe stumbles on a body. It's a native guy with long hair wearing a flannel and an orange vest. A rifle lies next to his body. He appears to be about three days dead, and the look on his face is disturbing - it looks like he was scared to death. His ankle is twisted at an awkward angle, as well. Blaine examines the body and the surrounding bushes and determines from which way the guy ran. He also finds keys for a truck and a house and the guy's wallet. Joseph Youngtree was his name. They follow the trail to a stand of scrub pines.
Manda is able to track the faint prints, but loses them near the woods. She luckily finds them again. It is nearly three o'clock and the heat of the day is reaching maximum - they are all thirsty and hot. The trail leads through the woods, which open up above a dry sandstone gulch. Across the ravine they spot a small campsite, and figure that's where Joseph was. Manda spots a trail leading down the near side and up the far side of the ravine, and they carefully pick their way down. Joe spots a big rattler at the bottom, but they successfully bypass it. At Joseph's camp they find a one-person tent, a back pack, a sleeping pad, and a fire pit. They find a box of rifle ammo in the back pack, as well as a flask of whiskey, a canteen full of water, a small bottle of iodine, some nuts and deer jerky and a film canister full of bad weed. Blaine finds Joseph's tracks that led to the campsite and follows them back to his truck, about a quarter mile away. On their way back to the campsite, someone sees a glint of metal down the gulch a ways. They head out to check it out - it's the twisted wreck of Marcos' Toyota. While looking under the truck for a body, Blaine disturbs a six foot rattler. It lunges and misses him. Candy blows its head off. Blaine spots some drag marks - it looks like someone crawled away from the truck.
They follow the tracks to a crevice in the rock. They find Marcos' corpse there, untouched by vermin and the elements. He clutches a bible to his chest. They take pictures of everything they find, then head back up the gulch toward the Academy. On their way back, Manda recommends a shortcut. The sun is getting close to setting when they find the shed. Joe breaks down the door. It smells like dead children inside. In one corner are six tiny bodies, all huddled together. The shed had been bolted from the inside, and that fact and the postures of the children tell a story - they were very scared of something outside. The kids have no wounds. They head back to the Willy and pile in, disturbed at their findings. Joe heads back down the road toward the big yellow gate.
Blaine, shotgun, notices a deer in the road ahead and shouts a warning to Joe. Joe swerves to avoid the white shape - it's actually a small child wearing a nightgown - and hits a tree, lodging the Willy in a ditch. The child runs off into the nearby woods. They all get out to assess the damage, and Blaine and Candy follow the little girl deeper into the woods. She runs off, staying just outside of their peripheral vision, darting behind trees and bushes. Joe and Manda work on getting the Willy out of the ditch. As Blaine and Candy chase the little girl, another small child appears off in the distance, wearing pajamas. Candy tries intimidating the children, demanding that they stop, to no avail. The light finally fades, and luckily Blaine notices the cliff beneath his feet - the kids had led them to the ravine in an attempt to hurt or kill them with a fall to the sharp rocks below. The little girl that Blaine is chasing keeps on running, off the cliff and out into mid-air.
Joe and Manda don't notice the little boy with red eyes, an evil grimace and no feet (he walks on bloody stumps) approaching from behind. He reaches out and swats at Manda, shaking her. A couple more kids appear next to Joe. At the cliff edge, Candy spots another kid as he emerges from the woods. They have sharp teeth and no feet. Joe tries appealing to them, figuring correctly they are the spirits of the six dead students, promising to bury them properly. The kids don't buy it and rush in to attack, bringing the chill of the grave! Blaine manages to lay down some fire, taking out two of them. They burst into a shower of sparks and let out a blood-curdling scream when they die. Candy fires the ghost shotgun and shakes and wounds the third, and Blaine follows up with more fire, hurting it mightily. Manda moves to the back of the Willy and grabs the silvered fire axe. Joe punches one of the kids, but his fist eerily passes right through it. Manda, however, swings wildly and takes one out. It, too, dies in a keening wail and a shower of sparks. Manda takes out another as Joe runs to the back of the Willy for The Lopper. Candy and Blaine finish off the third child, Manda finishes the last one, and a deathly calm falls over the woods.
Candy and Blaine are lost. They have no flashlights, the sun has set, and they stumble around blindly (GM's note: the group has a really nasty habit of splitting up in the dark). Somehow Candy and Blaine get separated. Candy wanders into a black-robed figure with big red glowing eyes. The robe flutters in the slight breeze, and the agonized faces of children can be seen within. The figure speaks, "You shall not take my children from the Lord!" It's Marcus Holbright. Manda backtracks to look for Blaine and Candy, Joe follows. Blaine is still lost. Manda and Joe encounter Candy and Marcus. Candy shoots him, and Manda finishes him off with a mighty swing. Marcus vanishes. His empty cloak billows to the ground, and the children trapped inside scream away into the night like ghostly fireworks. They head back to the Willy, find Blaine on the way, and make it back to motel without further incident.
They wake on the morning of the 23rd. Candy wakes first and goes to the lobby for a coffee and a paper. He spots a photo of himself with a submachine gun at a 7/11, taken the night before. Apparently someone who looks just like him went on a robbery/killing rampage last night. The phone rings in the motel room. Blaine picks up - Vicky tells him Hector is being moved to Santa Fe, check out channel 6 for live coverage. Manda turns on the TV. Turns out, the news report says, Daryl Miller was excused from the case because of the disappearance of his wife Felicia. Back in the lobby, two cops spot Candy and tell him to get on the ground. Candy complies, and they cuff him and toss him in their cruiser. Up in the room, the news reports shift from Hector's move to a string of murder/robberies the night before. The group freaks out, notices Candy's been gone a long time, and head out to find him. They learn he was apprehended in the lobby and jump in the Willy to pursue.
The party listens to live coverage of Hector being transported to Santa Fe. Protestors hurl rotten fruit at his transport van as it leaves the courthouse. Manda realizes all the photos they took at the Rez the night before have time-stamps, and will exonerate Candy. The cops in the front of Candy's car are BSing about who's going to get a raise and promotion for bringing Candy in. The cop car pulls up alongside of Hector's caravan on the freeway. Candy spots a woman in a black SUV in the caravan signal to the cop in the passenger seat. The cop unbuckles his sidearm. Candy has to do something, but he's cuffed and behind a cage in the back of a cruiser. He yells and warns the driver about the gun. The driver swerves and tries to grab the gun with one hand. The other cop tries to fire, but the gun jams. The Willy's radio is still blasting live coverage of Hector's transport, and now updates that a cop car unconnected to the caravan has been seen swerving all over the freeway.
Officer Bill Samson, Candy's driver, successfully grabs the gun, but loses control of the vehicle, tapping one of the caravan cruisers, which swerves off the freeway out of control. Bill swerves wildly to correct and hits the center concrete divider. Candy is shaken. Bill and the other cop are shaken as well, but Candy notices the grille closing off the back seat has been dislodged! Candy wrenches the grille off and checks on Bill - he seems OK but asks, "Why is Sammy trying to kill me?" Candy and Officer Sammy grapple over the gun, then Candy gets his cuffs around Sammy's neck. He pulls as hard as he can, and eventually Sammy stops jerking. Sammy dies and reverts to shapeshifter form. Bill, of course, is floored. A black SUV from the caravan pulls up behind the cruiser, guns blazing. Candy shoves the shapeshifter's corpse out the passenger side door and yells at Bill to floor it. He does and the SUV follows. The back window of the cruiser shatters - the SUV is right behind them. Candy manages to find the Willy's CB channel and they figure out a plan. A news chopper overhead has broken away from coverage of Hector and is now following their high-speed chase. What they need is a parking garage or something, to lose the chopper.
Bill knows of one near the airport and Candy gives Joe directions. As they speed down the freeway, Candy leans out and tries shooting out the SUV's tires. He hits, the SUV careens out of control, hits the center divide, and flies end over end into oncoming traffic! Another SUV pops up in the cruiser's rear-view. The Willy gets to the airport garage first, closely followed by the cruiser and the SUV, and slows. Manda pops out with an UZI, jumps a retaining wall, and shoots out the tires of a car at the entrance,effectively blocking any more vehicles from entering. Then she high-tails it up the ramp to follow the chase. She arrives on this scene: Candy is in the cruiser, and a woman cop from the SUV is out with her service pistol trained on Candy's head.
Joe guns the Willy, nudging the cop car enough to bump into the woman cop, knocking her down. Candy jumps out of the cruiser, grabbing the shotgun from the center console, and takes out the woman cop, who promptly changes into a (dead) shapeshifter. Candy pockets her badge. The SUV's siren is still whining so they shut it off. Officer Bill, understandably, is totally bewildered and shocked at the afternoon's events. Candy makes some calls to his connections to rig up a couple of fake FBI agents and a vehicle to come and take him off of Bill's hands. The rest of the group head to a rendezvous spot, meet the fake FBI vehicle, grab Candy, and head to Santa Fe.
Candy manages to set up the equivalent to a witness protection program for mobsters, and his connection throws in five thugs, to boot. They spend the night in a tiny motel in Santa Fe's outskirts. They wake on the 24th, drop the film at a 1-Hour Photo (and wait an hour to collect it), then head to Vicky's Santa Fe office - Room 7 at the Motel Six off Highway I-403. Manda sends a thug for coffee and snacks as Vicky and the party discuss yesterday's events. Vicky is thrilled and thinks he has enough evidence now to clear Hector. They leave Vicky with a copy of the photos and head out to the Rez again - Manda wants to interview the Chief. She calls ahead and is delighted to be granted an immediate audience.
They make the Rez by about 2 and find the Chief's office in the back of the community center. Fliers for the upcoming Powwow cover the walls of the halls and bulletin boards here. The Chief, of course, is expecting them, and welcomes them in. Manda offers a perfect traditional Apache greeting, and the Chief laughs and stands, and bids they all sit. He passes around deer jerky and cups of cold water with lemon. His response to her greeting is by the book, and he seems impressed with her knowledge of Apache protocol. Manda does the talking and produces the photos of the childrens' bodies. The Chief is shocked and agrees they need to be buried. Manda, taking a risk, presses the Chief about shapeshifters. He laughs nervously and declares that shapeshifters are the stuff of legend and fairytale. Manda produces the photos of Felicia from the car - Manda, George H. W. Bush and Candy all wearing the same dress, seconds apart. The Chief buys it. The party describes their encounter with the ghost children two days before, and the Chief frowns gravely, sure they must have been wendigos. He agrees to take them to the Mission to investigate the third and final crime scene.
Session 10 ~ Nest
Theme Song : King of Wishful Thinking ~ Go West
Carrion Crown #2 : Trial of the Beast with bits of doppleganger goodness mixed in
Thur-Fri, September 24-25, 1992
Chief Walking Dog and Sally, the medicine woman, agree to take the group to the mission. They climb into the Willy and Manda and Blaine ride in the Chief's truck. Chief chats about the mission on the way. It was founded before the Rez was established. It was Catholic-owned until the 1950's, then the Church gave the building to the Rez. They wrote it off as a charitable donation. Unfortunately the Rez never kept up the property, and it's in a sad state of disrepair. Rez kids go there to drink and smoke weed. Hikers from the Exotic Animal Reserve and Petting Zoo also hang out there. The mission is comprised of one building with two smaller additions. There is a graveyard out back.
They arrive and enter. The Chief and Sally the medicine woman stay in Chief's truck with the AC blasting. Manda stays with them to chat a bit. It's sometime after noon and it's starting to get hot. Within they see a destroyed pew, plenty of beer cans and broken bottles, and a worn-out mattress. A scorpion scuttles by. The four missing persons were all taken from around this area, according to the police report. All four of their vehicles were found here at the mission. Manda learns that there three other tribal elders besides Chief Walking Dog. He is quite surprised to learn that the other elders blocked the autopsy and dredging requests.
Blaine, unable to contain his curiosity, shakes a decrepit looking adobe outer wall to see how stable it is. The whole wall comes tumbling down. Candy, checking out the side rooms, finds half a dozen .22 casings in various spots on the floor. From their placement,it looks like someone came in shooting. Out back, Manda checks out the graveyard. She finds several native charms and warnings. Many of the headstones are broken or illegible. Eight graves seem to have been disturbed, and recently - they are covered with fresh dirt. She alerts the others, and they head back to the Willy for a shovel or two. They also let Chief and Sally know they probably should head back, as this could take a while.
Candy and Joe do the digging, and it is hot, thirsty work. Three feet down in the first grave they find an old coffin, empty. They dig to the bottom and find nothing. They start on the second, then finish four before night falls. In one they find a scrap of a wool suit from the 1940's. They go back to the Willy and pull out a tiny diesel genny and a couple of flood lamps to continue their work. Blaine wanders off to piss, and heads up and over a ridge, which at the top affords a great view of Lake Cortez. There is a scattering of lights across the water to the north. Directly across to the west looms a huge industrial plant. To the south are many houses and a marina, lit with many bright floods. Joe and Candy finish the eighth grave near 10:30, and they all decide to make camp. Setting up their new camping gear for the first time results in varying degrees of success. They light a fire in the mission's toppled wood-burning stove. They figure they'll check out the Petting Zoo in the morning.
The fence at the Petting Zoo is formidable, as an enclosure for rare and dangerous animals should be. A sign at the front gate asks $2/person and lists the Zoo's hours. The tall chain link fence topped with razor wire ends at a big steel gate and a guard building. A woman pushes through the gate and welcomes the party, introduces herself as Sally. She is wearing long surgical gloves and an apron, all spattered and soaked with blood. She offers a tour and points out a kiosk with pamphlets. Manda gets shown the restroom. Candy flashes Sammy's badge and the woman grants him all-access clearance. The restroom is quite stinky. Manda wanders into a barn-like structure and finds a dead goat and kid (baby goat, not human child) on a table, covered with and dripping blood and mucus. A guy with a hose and spray nozzle steps into the stall and introduces himself as Steve. He says he'll come out and show them around after he cleans up here, then tosses the dead goat kid into a nearby wheelbarrow.
Sally has removed her gloves and apron and rejoins the party, then takes them to the gator pit. They pass pens holding three mountain lions and a Siberian tiger. She explains that most of their animals are rescues from collectors with more money than sense. They pass a couple more pens holding an ostrich and an emu. The reach the gator pit. It is fed with fresh lake water which enters through a tough gate. The pit itself is huge - one or two hundred by three hundred feet. Sally points out two large gators and a cayman on the far side, and a huge eight-foot gator swimming in the middle. His name's Old F****r, because he's old and he's a f****r. Sally goes on to let them know neither she nor Steve were here when things with Hector went down. A couple drunk locals had broken into the Petting Zoo that night and called Sally and Steve when they saw Hector disappear near the gator pit. Blaine asks Sally if she and Steve could wrangle the gators so they could search the pit. She agrees to do so, but it'll take a while. In the meantime, they decide to take a tour of Lake Cortez. Sally recommends they check out the south shore - someone there can rent them a boat for the day.
They pile into the Willy and make the short drive to south shore. One of the residents runs a bar and rents boats, and he is more than happy to rent them a little outboard. Joe takes the Willy back to the mission, and the others slowly motor along the shore in the same direction. In a hidden cove, obscured by tall reeds and an overhanging willow canopy, they spot an abandoned boat, newly painted white. The registration number on the side reads R703. They search it and find a life jacket, first aid kit and a lockbox containing a flare gun and flares. Two ropes drape down into the water. One is tied to the anchor, but the other, when pulled up, is tied to a backpack. Inside are hammers, a collapsible shovel, a crowbar and a duffle bag. By the look of the algae that has grown on the metal, it has been down there for a couple of weeks. The boaters hook up with Joe near the mission, then gear up to check out the industrial building across the lake. They get close to the tiny dock on the west shore and see a couple more boats tied off, identical to the one they found on the other side.
They tie off their boat and step onto the dock, heading for a fifteen foot aluminum staircase and shack. They notice a big, nearly-empty parking lot behind the factory. A single semi sits and idles at a loading dock. Big signs here and there name the place - H & M Chemical Manufacturing Company. Candy is going to pretend to be a US Marshall. Manda will be an archaelogical consultant, and Joe and Blaine her assistants. Manda picks the lock of the gate and they slip inside. A guy loading the semi notices but ignores them. They pass the parking lot on their way to the main office. There's a couple shiny new BMWs and a red Toyota with stuffed animals in the back window. They make the main office and the secretary bids them sit and wait. The group flips through a couple old National Geographics and People magazines. The secretary wanders off looking for Dr. Gehring and Dr. Vermeer.
In five or so minutes they meet Gehring. He's around 60 with gray hair and little round glasses. He introduces himself as Dr. Peter Gehring, CEO of H & M Chemical. Candy intimidates Gehring while pouring coffee menacingly, and Gehring takes them up to his office on the second floor. On the way up, he tells Lisa the secretary to hold all his calls. Her eyes go wide, she tries to signal to Gehring that Candy was in the paper a couple days ago, and Manda manages to spill some coffee on a writing pad to distract her. Gehring leads them out of the foyer past offices and meeting rooms, up some stairs and around the central atrium to his office. He commands a great view of Lake Cortez, the mountains and the mission. The space is decorated minimally, just a desk, a couple of couches, and a telescope in the corner. Blaine peers through the device, looking for R703, but it is hidden from this angle. Gehring is pissed that Blaine touched his telescope, but calms down for some questions.
He absentmindedly pulls out a gold token from his pocket and rubs it - a five-year-sober chip from AA. Gehring does not know how long R703 has been missing - keeping track of boats is beneath his level of responsibility or interest, and he gestures at a pile of memos and papers on his desk that he has not had time to look at. Gehring excuses himself for a minute, and Manda and Blaine rush over to the pile of memos. Turns out an employee named Jason Smith did write a memo about the missing R703 a couple of weeks ago. They find a photo of (presumably) Mrs. Gehring and his kids holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Gehring returns, and escorts them back to the main lobby. Just then, a state trooper cruiser pulls up. Out jump two state troopers, including one who looks just like the one Candy shot in the parking garage. Officer Bill is the other, and he and Candy shake hands. He introduces his female partner as Officer Diane Moss. Blaine scans the room for cameras and sees none. Candy raises his shotgun at Diane's belly and tries intimidating her. She whips out her pistol, and it's a stand-off. Joe hurls a hot coffee pot at Diane's head and it's on.
Diane and Candy shoot and hit each other, then Diane leaps behind a couch for cover. Bill pulls his gun and protects Manda. Back-up arrives in the form of two more cruisers with several more troopers. They line up under cover outside, guns trained on the lobby. Manda finds a back door out of the lobby, but it requires a card to be swiped. Blaine blasts Diane with fire, and she and the couch get nice and roasted. The thick smoke and heat sets off the fire alarm and sprinklers. As the firefight goes on, Manda tries to convince Lisa and Gehring to escape with her. Candy blows Diane's head off and crazes the thick window behind her. The troopers are shouting on bullhorns outside, but with all the noise, sirens and light, their demands are drowned out. Joe runs forward to make sure Diane turned into her real form, which she did, then backs off. Officer Bill protects him as Blaine strides forth through the smoke and fire to the front double doors of the lobby. He lets go two huge jets of searing flame in slow motion, which catch and ignite the closest two trooper cruisers. They both explode, killing a couple troopers using them for cover. Candy steps out from behind Blaine, raises his Glok and shotty, then pulls two triggers, killing two troopers. They check all bodies and find they were all shifters. Manda sends Lisa and Gehring to safety. The sound of the big rig can be heard from the loading area - it is leaving, and at a high rate of speed. They follow in a trooper cruiser. Joe, naturally, drives. Bill and Candy take Bill's cruiser.
The semi leaves the gate and Joe and Bill give chase. They hit the freeway pretty quickly, which winds up into the hills and turns into a twisty two-lane road after a few miles. Bill pulls ahead of Joe. The guy in the passenger seat of the semi shoots out Bill's windshield, nearly taking out Candy. Blaine and Manda lean out the windows of Joe's cruiser and hit some semi tires. Bill falls behind a bit when the semi swerves its back end catches fire. The trailer is burning and belching green and blue acrid smoke. Bill manages to get alongside the truck and Candy takes out more tires. A pickup towing a boat appears in the opposite lane, and Joe barely swerves out of the way. Then the passenger of the semi gets out, crawls around to the hitch and releases the trailer! With a horrible screech of metal on asphalt, a fountain of orange sparks and a groan, the trailer slides to a halt and falls over, mostly blocking the two-lane road. Weird smoke still pours out of multiple rents in the sides of the trailer walls, and powder pours out onto the road. Joe and Bill swerve crazily to get around the trailer and continue the chase.
The semi picks up speed now that its load has been released. Bill pulls alongside the truck and Candy jumps from the cruiser to the back of the semi! He attempts to whack the semi passenger with the butt of his shotty, but botches the attempt, loses his grip, and falls, catching himself with one hand. Joe speeds up to the other side of the semi, Manda leans out and shoots, but botches, as well. She leans too close and a piece of debris flies up, ripping a hole in her favorite jacket. Then Joe loses control of his cruiser when he clips a station wagon. The car spins out of control and rolls once, then slides toward a cliff. Candy swings at the passenger, hits him under the armpit, grabs him, who then pinwheels and drops onto Bill's hood. Bill shouts approval, then swerves to get the guy off his car. He tumbles into the roadway. Candy tries intimidating the semi driver through the back window of the cab, but his shouts fall on deaf ears. The driver picks up speed as the road winds up into the mountains.
Joe gets the cruiser started and renews the chase. Bill drops out of the chase for a while when a tarp flies into his cruiser through the broken windshield. Candy clambers around to the passenger side door, opens it and gets into the cab, then trains his shotgun on the driver, who still refuses to stop. The semi driver swerves crazily, but Joe squeezes between the rocky wall and truck at ninety. Manda leans out and sends some lead into the semi's engine block. The semi driver swerves and hits a cement barrier, then loses control. The truck starts spinning. Joe and Bill stop to let the truck spin, and it finally hits a railing, flips on its side, and grinds to a halt. The radio plays Signs by Tesla. Candy comes to and whacks the driver, who shifts into his true form. Then Candy climbs out of the semi and pushes out the shifter. This one has no mouth - it's covered with skin. Manda wants to interrogate the shifter, and Blaine checks out the semi's glove box, where he finds a runed box of ammo (relic)! He trades it to Candy for his bone breastplate. They pile into Bill's cruiser and head back, stopping to get a sample of the mysterious powder leaking from the trailer.
Bill has a storage unit on the outskirt of town, and that is where they take the shifter. The unit is full of furniture and stuff from Bill's recent divorce. Framed Nagel posters are stacked against a crate. They sit the shifter down in a chair and apply smelling salts. The shifter wakes and turns into Candy. The creature gives no information, and denies everything. Eventually it breaks down and gives a few tidbits - Gehring is not a shifter. Vermeer told the shifters to keep it a secret, and there were about 20 shifters when they got started. It explains their nest is under the police station in a network of steam tunnels. The rest of the shifters and Vermeer are probably there right now, waiting for word on the trailer delivery. It was supposed to head north to the Bandimere Racetrack near Denver to be dropped off by February 7th, 1993. This was not the first shipment sent north.
Their next step is to gain access to the steam tunnels under the police station. It is clear that the entire police force is probably compromised by shifters, so they can't walk in through the front door. Candy decides to call in a favor from one of his contacts. He uses the payphone at the entrance to the storage facility, and finds out a guy on the corner at a gas station will sell him station plans for $500. He goes over there and finds a short woman with thinning hair. They trade the plans for the cash. The maps are from 1962, and may be inaccurate. The bomb shelter under the courthouse across the street should provide access if they unblock a passage or two. Their pet thugs are told to keep the shifter on ice, but the shifter gets the best of them, and escapes after killing two. The party gets to the courthouse around 11:00 PM. The side door sports a serious lock, but Manda picks the heck out of it. They descend into the bomb shelter to find the nest.
Two tunnels lead out, one labeled EXIT, the other SHELTER. They head for the shelter and enter a room. There they encounter four cops with guns and two with mag lights. One looks like Bill, another like Diane, and there is even a Candy. A brief firefight ensues and the mooks are put down. Then a door opens and Captain Padilla, a strange creature with tentacles for a head, and two more burly-looking shifters enter. The ilithid puppets Candy, who turns his guns on his friends. Joe manages to take out a shifter and shake the other. Candy's will is too strong for the ilithid and he breaks free of its control. Another round of gunplay and Blaine-blaze ensues, and the baddies are all finally killed. Blaine finds the ilithid's credit card. Turns out the ilithid was the mastermind of this whole scheme, using the shifters to infiltrate the New Mexico State Patrol and Santa Fe Police Department. The Whispering Way put up the money to create and deliver the strange chemical to Bandamere Racetrack. The formula for the strange powder calls for the ground bones of men who lost their faith (The Christianized Apache in the Mission Graveyard)) and the blood of four who have been poisoned by newcomers (the four missing persons at the mission (newcomers = Europeans; poison = alcohol)). They head back to the motel for a much-needed rest - the day after tomorrow, Hector's trial begins. There will be surprise witnesses.
Session 11 ~ Trial
Theme Song : Happiness in Slavery ~ Nine Inch Nails
Carrion Crown #2 : Trial of the Beast
Friday-Friday, 9/25-10/2, 1992.
(GM's note: This is my attempt at running a tense, courtroom drama. I'm not sure how well my experimental GMing translated to the notes here. By this time, almost all the dopplegangers were dead and those remaining were consumed with revenge... so they're getting sloppy)
Vicky calls the motel - he wants to meet at IHOP to discuss Tuesday's trial. He explains the group has to be at the courthouse Tuesday at 7 AM, and looking sharper than usual. The weekend is spent shopping, relaxing and sleeping. They need it after all their high-speed chases and brushes with eldritch danger. Joe finds someone to talk to about his feelings and the overwhelming sensation of paranoia fades away. They catch a Sunday matinee of Basic Instinct. Blaine does lots of research in the down tome. They drive up to Santa Fe and get rooms at a Ramada Inn on Monday. There is a Tex-Mex place down the road a bit where they have dinner Monday night, but it's too homey and charming to be the Chili's it's trying to be. They are up bright and early Tuesday morning and head to the courthouse.
Murray Freeman is the prosecutor and the Honorable Sam Felton is the presiding judge. Opening statements are delivered, and the party realizes Vicky is trying to present Hector as a sort of Boo Radley/Frankenstein's monster kind of character. He is facing thirteen counts of first degree murder, twelve counts of trespassing, theft, and a slew of other minor charges. A courtroom montage ensues.
Candy: "Everywhere I go I get accused of doing something a guy who looks just like me did."
Blaine tends to needlessly lean forward to speak into the microphone. Day one is taken up with discussion of the museum crime scene. Judge Felton gets pissed at a reporter and declares the courtroom closed to press.
Day two's proceedings begin. Most of the day is spent discussing the police theory of what happened at the American Academy. "Diane Moss" gives testimony. Judge Felton takes issue with the party's tendency to investigate crime scenes, thereby tampering with evidence. The documents Vicky drew up naming them as his assistants are primarily to line up interviews, not do investigative work. In a heated exchange, Candy nearly gets slapped with contempt. After day two wraps, they head to TGIFs for dinner after dodging the rabid press outside the courthouse. Candy gets the shrimp fajitas. Joe gets a basket of onion rings. Long Island Iced Teas and beers are consumed all around. Blaine calls Kendra in Creede. They talk all night.
(GM's note: Judge Felton has been replaced by a doppleganger at this point, as have most of the witnesses. The judge grows increasingly antagonistic and is actively trying to get some of the party locked up where other dopplegangers can arrange "accidents")
In the morning they get their nice clothes dry cleaned and head to court. Judge Felton asks Blaine to link the Mission disappearances to the fire at H & M Chemical. He does so, but the story does not satisfy his Honor. To curry favor with Freeman, Joe lies about being a Jew. Candy's mob ties are brought up, and he responds, "I'm not calling you a racist, you just may be a victim of circumstance." Candy finally gets slapped with contempt for implying Judge Felton may have something against Italian-Americans. He gets to spend two nights (Thursday and Friday) in jail. The Judge then asks Blaine to explain a letter he wrote to Wiccan Monthly back when he was eighteen. Manda is also questioned about the Mission disappearances and the fire at H & M. Her response: "I didn't study physics."
During proceedings on day three Judge Felton acts very strangely, and at one point lets the press back into the courtroom. He accuses Blaine of perjury at one point, then downgrades it to a stern warning. Recess ensues. (GM's note: The player taking notes at one point in an old campaign realized he was writing "combat ensues" at least once every session. He's continuously playing with this throughout the notes...)
Outside, the press is everywhere. Joe, Manda and Blaine leave, and Candy is escorted to his cell. Someone outside is throwing tomatoes at someone else. Manda finds a young, dumb reporter for a local rag and bends his ear a bit. She unleashes a tirade about the corruption of the New Mexico State Patrol and the railroading of Hector Lunacon. The reporter offers her free tickets to something for the interview. His rag publishes at midnight and hits the stands at 3 the next morning. Candy is not idle in jail. He persuades a guard to let him have a phone call. He is led to the lobby pay phone, where in mob lingo manages to order a sniper to take out "Diane Moss" on the courthouse steps. The sniper is in Vegas, and will arrive in approximately twenty four hours - he'll page Blaine when he gets to town.
The others weave their way through the mob scene to the Willy, then drive out to their motel and eat at the HoJo's next door. As they dine, a bunch of protestors show up and start making a ruckus outside. They pay and leave and see a sheriff's vehicle across the parking lot. The sheriff is leaning against his car, smoking and watching them and the protestors for any signs of trouble. The get back to the motel in one piece. Blaine wants to go for a beer run. The cops show up and arrest Manda for talking to the reporter. Joe tries to stand up to them and protect her, to no avail. He and Blaine head to a bar and get hammered. Unfortunately, the protestors catch up to them. The barkeep is happy to help Blaine and Joe kick the protestors out of the bar - he likes peace and quiet in his place. Then four obese men accost Joe and Blaine, itching for a fight. Blaine fears them all - they wet their pants and run screaming. They make it back to the motel and crash.
The lock on Candy's cell clicks open in the middle of the night. Two men dressed as inmates enter his cell. One wields a length of pipe. They attack! A melee ensues, and Candy realizes that Pipe Guy is his enemy. Baleful glares are exchanged all around. Candy manages to grab the pipe from Pipe Guy. (GM's note: Savage Worlds can go really, really slow when there are two high-toughness characters duking it out. There were moments during this combat where I never thought it would end...)
Meanwhile, Manda receives a visitor around ten or eleven in the evening. She is escorted to the visiting room where sits Vicky Rafini. Something is wrong with his accent,she notices, as he reaches into a bag at his side. Manda tries outsmarting "Vicky", who stands with a gun trained on her gut. She stands up to him, and he hesitates. Meanwhile, the tables turn in Candy's cell and the bad guys pummel him. "Vicky" shoots Manda twice! She manages to soak a couple wounds as the guards run in.
Back at the motel, Blaine and Joe are restless and feel like visiting Candy. They have a sense of foreboding. They jump in the Willy and head to the courthouse. Immediately two pickups swerve into the lane behind them, and a chase ensues. Blaine fears one of the drivers, and the pickup spins out and hits a light pole. Joe forces the other into oncoming traffic, where it swerves and crashes, as well. They check out both crashed vehicles and find shapeshifter bodies. They switch motels. The guards protect Manda and grab "Vicky". She is taken to the infirmary. Candy is not (Candy tends to rub people the wrong way). In the morning, Joe and Blaine arrive at the courthouse early to see their friends. Manda meets with the real Vicky and tells him about "Vicky".
Day four of the Trial of The Beast of Jicarilla begins.
Judge Felton seems surprised and disappointed that Manda and Candy are in attendance. He rockets through a bunch of witnesses and begins closing arguments. Manda makes a scene, pointing out corruption and lack of justice and threatens to bring in the ACLU. The press in the courtroom eat it up. The bailiffs drag Manda out, kicking and screaming. The pager goes off. Blaine calls the number from a pay phone, and has no idea what the sniper is talking about - Candy never got the chance to tell the others what he had done. A long recess is called. Blaine goes looking for Judge Felton in his chambers. He riles "Felton" by taunting him, tells him "We killed your family..." Then Blaine flames "Felton", who manages to dodge out of the way. He shouts for help and lobs a snow globe at Blaine, but misses. He then pulls a gun and fires at Blaine, missing. Everyone in the courthouse hears the shots and guards come running. Blaine flames "Felton" again, and he goes up like a torch, then leaps screaming through the window. The guards rush in and grab Blaine and put out the fire.
Despite the chaos, the party is brought back to the courtroom. Judge Felton sits in his usual seat, but Murray Freeman is missing. While Manda and Vicky talk tactics in low whispers, Freeman finally appears, though he is wearing a different suit than earlier in the day. He gives his final speech then opens his blazer - he is wired with explosives. "Felton" urges him "Do it, Sascha, do it!" Manda rises slowly and inches toward "Freeman". Hector wrestles free of the bailiffs and leaps into the crowd of spectators, heading for a woman with two small children. Joe follows Hector, intending to protect him in the unraveling chaos. Candy grabs a gun from a deputy and shoots "Felton" - the courtroom goes off the rails. People scream and shout or hit the floor or start pushing and shoving through the double doors at the back. The woman with two kids is actually Candy's love interest (adventure card. she shows up again next session). Sheriffs run in and start shooting at Candy as Manda talks "Freeman" into waiting to hit the trigger. As he is distracted, Blaine gets behind him and tries grappling and defusing the bomb, but fails. The bomb goes off. People scream, bleed and die, but somehow the party escapes serious injury (GM's note: The bomb did 3d6 damage, and I rolled three 1's). Candy finds a sweet headband near the blood smear that used to be "Freeman" (relic). They are escorted out of the smoking ruin of the courthouse and let go. The case against Hector is dropped.
Seconded.
*poke*
Sorry about the lack of updates. I got distracted with running a Marvel Heroic game, and then actually getting to be a player. Now I've been distracted by my group's neverending, plaintive wailing, "finish the Kingmaker game..."
I'll try to get some of the session notes for this campaign up today. There's still the ending of Trial of the Beast, and then another 9 sessions covering two more Age of Worms adventures and another Carrion Crown adventure.
Session 12 ~ Museum
Theme Song : It's been a while since this session. I honestly don't remember/
Carrion Crown #2 : Trial of the Beast
Early to Mid October, 1992.
GM's note: This is where timekeeping started getting a little weird. I was attempting to time the next few adventures for historical accuracy (which I didn't do very well), so if you're following along with a calendar in hand...
The courthouse is a pile of rubble. Twisted bodies are lifted into waiting ambulances. The police are on the scene, interviewing survivors. The party blends in to the crowd and heads to the hospital. Candy spends the day there, but has no obvious wounds. Manda is treated for a bullet graze. Blaine gets penicillin for syphilis (GM's note: Blaine's player has an unerring talent for inviting GM punishment. He's the first to engage in narrative teleportation, generally has the craziest plans, and makes some of the most ridiculous characters. Although he invites punishment in non-mechanical ways, I'm appreciative of his presence. If I ever lack a plot for a session, I just look at his character...) . They are checked out in the evening, and a police sergeant recommends they stay in Santa Fe for a few days in case they need to be questioned as witnesses to the deadly explosion.
Candy spends some time with his new lady friend, Kathy Schmidt. She was Hector's psychological evaluator (read as: social worker). She has two kids, Johnny, 8, and Sally, 6, so Candy takes them all to the movies. Hector is put up in a halfway house. A couple days later, Kathy offers to take Blaine and Candy to see him after a date at the circus. Kathy and Candy have their first minor misunderstanding - how cute! Candy is talking smack about Hector's old man, but Kathy thinks he is talking smack about her ex and the father of her kids, Jeff. After Candy rejoins the group at the motel, they decide to go and find Hector's father's house. They figure he still talks about it and might be more comfortable in familiar surroundings. They get the green light to visit Hector's prior place of employment - a horse ranch - on October 13th. Sinead O'Connor rips up a photo of the Pope on SNL that night.
The day of the visit arrives and Kathy piles the kids and Candy into her '93 Cavalier. The rest jump in the Willy. They arrive at the ranch and are greeted warmly. The caballeros all crowd around Hector, shaking his hand and slapping his back, speaking excited Spanish. The white ranch hands all flex for Manda. They go for a ride after a lunch that includes sweet pickles. Blaine doesn't want to ride, but Candy cajoles him into doing so, and they race. Old Man Blake, the man who runs the ranch, comes along, too. Hector leads them within sight of the House of the Father, his name for his old man's place. It is located at the edge of a lake. Big plate glass windows reflect the late afternoon light across the water. A walkway leads from the main building to a second, and next to the second is a taller third structure with a bell tower. The outer walls of all three are glass and bronze and copper, and are strangely bulbous.
Blake explains that no lights have been on up at the House of the Father for weeks. It is easily accessible from Highway 43 and an access road. Someone started construction about three years ago, but work suddenly stopped a few weeks ago. Blake figures some corporate big shot or rock star owns the place and ran out of money, maybe. There is a fire road that runs between Blake's ranch and the American Academy (from a few sessions back). Hector points at the House of the Father and says he was born there. The look on his face is ominous and creepy. Maria back at the ranch told the party he is 27 years old, so being born there literally makes no sense. The party decides to camp. Unfortunately Hector has to go back - Kathy didn't get approval for an overnight outing - so she takes him and the kids back to the ranch to call the halfway house and see if he can stay. He can! Three of the ranch hands ride out to camp with the party, to help out and for safety.
On the way back to the camp, Blaine tries outsmarting the hands by telling them that Manda and Kathy are really into guys who like kids. The hands fall all over each other in showing Johnny and Sally rope tricks. Manda flirts with one of the hands and wanders off into the brush with him for a life-affirming romp (GM's note: "life-affirming romp" was the exact phrase used by Manda's player. It also may have been the point that the characters were beginning to become real, dynamic personalities) . Around the fire, they tell ghost stories, and the hands scare the kids with warning about rattlers and scorpions. When everyone is settled, quiet and asleep, the party sneaks off to investigate the House of the Father. Joe leads them carefully away from camp toward the little lake.
They find the edge of the canyon, at the bottom of which lies the lake. They climb a barbed wire fence and hike down the canyon side to the near side of the lake. The path is easy to find - the moon and stars light the way. Moonlight reflects off the big glass windows and huge bronze sheets of the House. They are about halfway around the lake when they are stopped by a deep gully. A trickling creek can be heard thirty feet below, but the is a rope bridge that spans the seventy foot wide gully, and it is stable enough for them to use. They cross and continue the fire road to the front gate of the House. There are old tracks of lots of heavy equipment there, and a sign: Welcome to CARMICHAEL CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL MUSEUM ~ OPENING in 3/1993 ~ made possible by the Arthur P. Carmichael Foundation. Candy and Joe easily scale the fence, Blaine and Manda get over with some effort. They approach the main building.
The windows are all covered from the inside. To their right, the lake yawns cold and deep. The shovel of a backhoe sticks out from the surface, and the telltale signs of a little landslide are evident. Manda tries and fails to pick the lock on the front door. Candy wants to break a window, but Joe manages to pry the front doors open. There is another chain and lock on the inside, which Manda easily picks. The doors swing open and they enter. The doors open to the museum's lobby and gift shop. The shelves are empty of merchandise. Strewn and stacked about they find postcards and random crap. They notice a deep thumping noise from somewhere in the building below, and Blaine hears a high-pitched chattering voice. They pass the ticket booth, flashlights on and guns drawn. A sign reads $3 for Adults, $2 for kids. Donations welcome ~ HELP US FUND THE SEARCH FOR WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE! There are some pamphlets there and a laminated placemat with a map of the museum. They study the map.
The top floor is devoted to Aberrations. Downstairs they will find Unknown Creatures of the Jungle and The Decent of Man. Building #2 houses an aquarium with prehistoric fish. Downstairs also houses a vertigo staircase. A walkway connects building #1 to building #2. They enter the Aberrations Room. Empty paint buckets and equipment sit in the corners - the room is only half-painted. Shelves and pedestals line the walls and floor of the exhibit room. Jars full of preserved baby animals sit on most available surfaces, two-headed snakes, sheep and pig fetuses, that kind of thing. Blaine sees a truly strange creature in one of the jars. He bends closer to examine it through the glass. It looks like a cross between a fish and a rodent, with sharp little teeth and a strangely flat face. Suddenly the building shudders - the deep thumping they felt earlier resumes. The jars rattle, and the weird creature Blaine is staring at opens its eyes and wiggles around in the jar! Blaine, understandably, loses it. He becomes obsessed with his silvered axe (GM's note: A random insanity table can be a wonderful thing). The others try calming him and drag him out of the Aberrations Room downstairs, to check out the thumping.
Downstairs, they pass a snake with obviously fake wings and see a sign for Unknown Beasts of the Land & Vertigo Staircase This Way! Scaffolding is erected here and there under the 25 foot ceiling. Drop cloths are draped over boxes containing more strange land animals, not yet set up. They round a corner and are stunned at the sight of an evil-looking sewn-together creature, about ten feet tall. It's vaguely humanoid, with a bloody bandage wrapped about its head, covering its eyes. A metal collar with six rings rests around its neck. Connected to each ring is a five foot leather cable each held by a smaller stitched-together creature. Every time the big creature takes a step, the floor and walls boom with the impact. The little ones have high-pitched voices and all chatter excitedly when the party appears out of the darkness. They are leading the creature to the party. Joe, at the head of the expedition, lowers his shotgun and fires at the biggie, but it seems to soak the damage. Combat ensues.
Manda botches a shot at the biggie, the biggie slams Joe, then Joe recovers and hits the biggie again, but it shakes off the damage again. Blaine tries instilling some fear in the creatures, but botches and shakes himself, falling to the floor. Candy fires with both barrels and takes the big creature's head right off! The corpse topples, crushing one of the little ones. The other chatterers scatter into the shadows. From behind the party, a few animated, taxidermied, albino gorillas enter the fray. One launches a mighty swing at Joe, but misses. The other attacks Manda, hitting pretty hard. Joe gets depressed for two days.Candy does some shooting and a gorilla explodes into a cloud of sawdust and twigs. A couple of the chitterers climb up into the scaffolding and dart around the edges of the battle, throwing the occasional paint brush or roll of tape. Manda pulls out the UZI and shreds another gorilla. Candy takes out the remaining gorillas with well-placed gunfire.
The room is quiet except for the occasional scuffle and chitter of one of the four loose little flesh constructs. Joe stomps one that was still alive and attached to the big construct, feels a cathartic sense of joy. Joe, Candy and Manda do some target shooting on the remaining three. They do a lot of missing, too. Blaine peels the skin suit off the big construct, then wanders upstairs to look around. Joe finds tracks and figures the big construct was doing patrols. Curious, Blaine finds and opens a set of double doors. They open to the walkway to building #2. Joe puts his gun away and heads up to find Blaine, who has revisited the creepy jarred fetus room. To his horror, the one that moved is missing - the jar is empty! Downstairs, Candy backs up against a scaffold to get a good shot at one of the little constructs. One was hiding above and drops down on his head! Manda comes over to help, and Candy manages to wrest it off and heave it high. He then shoots it midair, shredding it to bloody chunks. Upstairs, Joe spots the foul fish-rodent creature and shoots, but misses, breaking a bunch of jars and filling the air with an acrid stench. The thing starts crawl-flopping and drags itself away with a wet plopping noise. Finally Joe draws The Lopper and bisects the thing. Blaine whips out his sketchbook and draws a quick picture of it.
Candy and Manda tire of hunting the little constructs and come back up. They all head to the walkway to the next building. The walkway is bent and twisted and half gone due to the landslide that took out the backhoe. They carefully pick their way across - the lake is 50 feet below. They get across and climb some stairs, then reach a landing. There are a set of big glass doors here and a sign - MYSTERIES OF THE SEA. The doors open easily into a glass-walled room. A big room lies beyond. It contains four huge plexiglass tanks - petting tanks - and a walkway around the side. The room is half-flooded. Something moves in one of the tall tanks. The water is dark and murky, and their lights barely cut through the icy inkiness. Luckily, Blaine has water-breathing potions for everyone. There are two doors out - one is accessible from the catwalk and leads to building #3. The other is on the ground floor and leads to flooded offices. Candy tosses a piece of jerky into the water. Something tugs it under the surface, then it bobs back up. They decide to head to the flooded offices. Blaine rigs a grappling hook and rope to help them get up to the catwalk later.
They wade through the room and pass a plexiglass tank. It has no lid. The water within is weirdly tainted, and a mound covered with bright purple and lavender mushrooms sits in the middle. Blaine, of course, leans in to examine the mushrooms. As soon as he is in close, the mushrooms burst and release a cloud of spores right into his face. He stumbles back, but seems fine. Just then Blaine and Manda are jerked under the surface - they disappear! Turns out there are zombies with bricks tied to their ankles at the bottom of the deepest part of the room, and they are hungry. Joe notices a spray-painted scrawl across the front of the mushroom tank - BOOYAH GOT YOU MOTHER****ER! (GM's note: A recurring theme in my campaigns, especially modern ones, is that the bad guys aren't necessarily original or mature. They're just as inspipid as everybody else, and just like most people, all too enamored with their own self-perceived cleverness). Manda breaks free, then swims back down to attack. Joe, inspired and feeling enlightened, gets holy on them. One zombie is destroyed and four others are shaken. Candy quaffs a potion and swims down to shoot the zombies, but botches, dropping his shotgun. Manda gets raked by zombie claws and hard, but manages to hold her breath. Blaine quaffs a potion and treads water. Joe gets holy again, killing and shaking more zombies. Manda quaffs a potion, breaks free of zombie clutches, and butts one of them in the head with her UZI. They are all wearing orange vests - they must have been members of the construction crew. Blaine shoots fire at a remaining zombie foe, boiling and shaking it. Joe holies again and takes out another. Candy draws his silver knife and kills the heck out of the last zombie, beheading it. He grabs his shotgun and they move on.
The doors to the office are blocked shut by water pressure, but they manage to get them open. A cursory search reveals that everything in the offices is pretty much destroyed, so they head up to the catwalk and exit building #2. The door opens to another walkway which connects building #2 to the bulbous tower. Lots of antennae bristle at the top of the tower. A sign at the door at the far end of the walkway reads - EMPLOYEES ONLY - EXTREME DANGER INSIDE. The door is also locked, but Manda easily picks the lock. The door opens into a room with a spiral staircase climbing up. They spot more graffiti - HOW'D YOU GET THIS FAR? and PARTY ON! and I'LL BE BACK - Arnold. A big cage in the middle of the floor stands open. Manda spots something big about sixty feet up - it leaps from one side of the spiral staircase to the other. Candy leads the way up, followed closely by Manda, then Blaine, then Joe. A four-armed gorilla stitched monster appears out of the gloom and attacks. Blaine says something horrific, and everyone is shaken. The gorilla monster unshakes first and wollops Blaine. Manda unshakes next and unleashes a volley of UZI bullets, but botches. Joe hits the thing, then Blaine unshakes and flames it, but merely singes and angers it. Candy unshakes, steps back and unloads some shotgun love on the creature, which blows it backward reeling into space - it falls and breaks its back on the cage below with a sickening crunch. They pause a moment so Blaine can heal himself, then carefully creep up to the top of the tower.
They find a room dark and choked with webs. A pretty huge human-ish creature hangs over a metal sarcophagus. Tables and workbenches line the walls, filled with evil-looking equipment and jars and boxes of body parts of all kinds of animals. Upon closer inspection, the human-ish creature hanging is made of stitched-together animal and giant insect parts - and it's alive! Blaine successfully sneaks up on it, and Joe notices a weakness - they should aim for its legs. Joe jumps into the room and ducks behind a desk. Manda totally blows her shooting attempt, but Candy shoots both his weapons and hits the aberration hard. Blaine gets close to the metal sarcophagus, curious to know what's inside, but the creature picks up the box with its huge crab-claw hands and swings it at him, connecting with a solid thud, sending Blaine flying across the room. Manda manages to double tap and wound the beast, which enrages it. It stumbles about and swings wildly at Blaine and Joe, missing and hitting the bronze and copper walls of the tower with deep clanging gong sounds. Blaine blasts it and Candy finally puts the fell beast down. They search the room. Candy finds a relic - a pair of snakeskin gloves that grant Levelheadedness and immunity to lightning. Further searching reveals a big glass globe. Under the globe is a chunk of fossilized wood. They find a notebook filled with arcane diagrams and symbols and figure out that the globe, when it stores a blast of lightning, when touched, can control Hector. They manage to open the sarcophagus. Within is the body of Arthur P. Carmichael.
Session 13 ~ Waco
Theme Song : Ministry ~ New World Order
Age of Worms #3 : Encounter at Blackwall Keep
Time warp to Early February 1993.
GM's note: Encounter at Blackwall Keep is an adventure that's really hard to convert to the modern era. I finally decided to use it as inspiration to get the PCs to Waco for a certain fiery end to a cult. Some names are real people involved with the Branch Davidians. I heartily recommend all the wikipedia articles on the Branch Davidians and David Koresh for some real "truth is stranger than fiction" moments.
The party puts some pieces together with the aid of Carmichael's notes (read as: brain dump by the GM). Hector is a golem, a recreation of one of the folk from the Age of Wood. Blaine keeps the fossilized wood for further study. Carmichael had created Hector at the Museum then let him loose later on Blake's ranch to be socialized. The mysterious 7th Book of the Popul Vuh was actually inside Hector, a remnant from an earlier age, perhaps a genetic memory of the lore in his time. Hector was used for his great strength to steal the Seafoam Stella, then the dopplegangers set him up. It was the Whispering Way that killed Carmichael and trapped the Museum.
They head back to camp, bloodied and weary, and pass around a bottle of tequila. They finally manage to drop off to sleep in the wee hours of morning, but wake with the rest to a big breakfast of black beans, eggs and tortillas. The ride back to Blake's ranch is life-affirming, the clean air fills their lungs and reminds them why they are doing what they are doing. They say their goodbyes to Blake and his folk, drop Hector back at the halfway house, then call Vicky to say goodbye to him, as well. They mention they might need his services in the future. Cathy wants Candy to stay in town and get a real job, but Candy's got a world to save. They wrap up loose ends and pack up for a trip - the Willy is loaded and headed for Waco, Texas. They leave on October 15th and take three days to drive down to Texas. Time folds and it's the 28th of February when they arrive.
They hit the pavement in Waco, and find that everyone is talking about the Branch Davidians and the siege. At a cafe downtown, Blaine overhears a couple of old-time conspiracy theorists talking about a link between the Bush family and Lee Harvey Oswald. Turns out Prescott Bush sponsored Oswald's return from the U.S.S.R. and helped fund a failed coup against FDR back in the day. The party discusses the idea that the Branch-Davidians are actually part of the Whispering Way, and they have a wormy zombie named Emile somewhere inside. Four FBI agents went under cover as college students and rented a farmhouse down the street from the compound, but were outed under their neighbor's scrutiny - they were all in their thirties and drove brand new cars. Some research reveals that a mail-order gun shop, Mag's, shares an address with the Koresh ranch, and they have a booth at the Austin gun show.
They head to the Koresh ranch to join the rubberneckers on a hill close by. They count about 75 agents from various departments - FBI, ATF, DEA, as well as town and county officers. The FBI agents control the chaos. They have set up huge speakers and alternately blast Black Sabbath, jet engines, classical music, and screaming bunnies at the compound. Candy uses his connections to obtain a file on the Branch-Davidians. Joe and Manda run into Lisa Palmer, a reporter for a small local paper. Lisa wants to interview them for a "people on the street" piece she's working on, but they decline. As they stand and blend in with the other gawkers they overhear that the ATF is pushing for the release of the children. Since not much is happening at the compound, they head to the Austin gun show.
The party picks up flak jackets and novelty silver-cased bullets and slugs (GM's note: and here is where the game derailed for nearly half an hour about whether you could buy novelty silver-cased bullets at a gun show. Since only one member of the group had ever actually been to a gun show, I gave in and let them buy silver-cased bullets there.). Mag's Gun Shop booth is run by Paul Phatta and his twelve year old son Felani (GM's note: Real names. I'm not sure what kind of cruel parent would name their kid Felani Phatta.). They carry Hellfire triggers, which turn semi- to fully automatic guns, AK-47s, AR-15s, and a wide variety of handguns. Candy talks up Paul, starting with s!#*-talking the FBI. Paul takes the bait and starts blabbing. He tells Candy that Brother David is the Messiah. Brother David had a vision that the 7th Seal will break soon, releasing giant worms to devour everyone and the world. Manda scopes out the gun show crowd and notices government agents everywhere, but no one is paying any special attention to Mag's. The party joins in Candy's conversation and tell Paul they want to help Brother David. Paul tells them about a trapped escape tunnel that could get them in to the compound. He sketches a map, and tells them to get in and tell Brother David that Paul sent them.
They return to the motel in Waco and find a manila folder has been slid under the door to their room. It's the FBI file on the Branch-Davidians. The file provides a layout of the compound, but fails to note the escape tunnel. Inside are an unusual number of Brits and Aussies. They have lots of UZIs, 260 AR-15s, 4 grenades, 2 .50 cals, several sniper rifles, several hundred Hellfire devices, and 1.9 million rounds of ammunition (GM's note: seriously. They had all that inside the compound. Wikipedia is awesome). There are about 91 people inside, and about 31 of them are thought to be children. The FBI has a man inside, Bob, as well. Bob has been undercover with the Branch-Davidians for 7 years now, and the file indicated it is likely he has turned. They wait until evening and head out to find the escape tunnel.
The closest place to park is about two miles off over some fields and in the parking lot of a Wendy's. They have a lock and load scene under the neon light of the sign. As they are preparing to hike out, a big Ford Ranger pulls up. A local yahoo leans out the driver side and offers them a lift up the road. The guy is clearly drunk and weaves all over the dirt road, but he doesn't crash or roll into the ditch. He drops them off near the entrance to the tunnel. Lights are on at a neighboring farmhouse about 100 yards off, but they are not spotted. They head for the tunnel and drop down into an ditch 8 feet deep. The tunnel is big and round, made of corrugated metal. A trickle of water runs down the algae-encrusted middle, and they step over puddles and rodents on their way through. The tunnel turns a bit then exits into another deep ditch. They missed the entrance. The tunnel is only 700 yards long, and the entrance they were looking for was supposed to be about 300 yards in. They head back in and go slower this time, tapping on the walls, looking for a lever or handle to indicate a door.
They hit the 300 yard mark when suddenly Candy and Manda vanish! After a little searching Joe and Blaine find an illusory wall and step through to join them. Manda marches forward, but Candy stops her in her tracks when he notices a pit ahead. It's about 15 feet deep and 4 feet wide. There is dank water at the bottom. Candy jumps, slips and falls. Joe catches him and helps him up. Blaine jumps and slips and falls. Candy on the other side and Joe on the near side catch him and Blaine jokes that Manda can use him as a bridge. So she does, but then botches and falls. Candy and Joe are holding on to Blaine, so they fail to catch Manda. She hits the bottom, landing hard in nasty water. Joe easily jumps over the pit, and they use rope to get Manda out of the pit. Blaine leads the way after that. Manda's footsteps are squishy. Blaine stops when he finds a paving stone covering a trigger. He disarms the trap and they continue on. The metal walls eventually give way to rough-hewn rock walls propped up at intervals by thick wooden beams. Electric lanterns are strung up here and there, but they receive no power. The shaft ends at a big metal door. Blaine knocks, no one answers. Blaine gives Manda his dry socks so she'll stop squishing, then she picks the lock. The door swings open.
They find themselves in a 20 x 20 room. Across from them is another metal door with a wheel lock. Another wall sports a door with a sliding peephole window. Manda notices that the room has seen just a little bit of traffic by examining footprints in the algae on the floor. Candy turns the wheel and opens the door. It opens into a natural cavern with a set of metal stairs leading down. They descend and the stairs turn, ending on a platform that is bolted to the ceiling. They are in a huge chamber, some 200 feet around. The platform is 15 x 15 and the floor of the cavern is 70 feet down. They see the glimmer of water down there in the beams of their headlamps and mag lights. Luckily, a set of steps leads down to the water. They descend once more. They can faintly hear strains of Black Sabbath playing far above at the compound. The water is a murky grayish green and smells of sulfur. They find a floating platform and some broomsticks used to propel it. They get on the platform and push forward into the gloom. About 20 feet in they come to shore on a small man-made island. It is covered with hundreds of glistening egg-like sacs. In the middle of the mass sits another egg, but much bigger, white with blue speckles.
Blaine breaks open one of the smaller egg sacs. It leaks out rotten pus-colored yolk material and a lizard-like form. He steps up closer to the big egg and listens closely. Something inside is scratching and wriggling. Joe mentions the rat-fish thing that Blaine encountered at the Museum, and he freaks, slashing at another egg-sac with his axe. Green worms burst forth. Blaine flames them, catching the other egg-sacs in the fire, as well. They burn well, but the big egg doesn't even show a scorch mark. It starts rocking back and forth slowly - something is hatching. A crack appears in the shell, and a beak pokes out. The shell finally breaks apart and the dense air is suddenly tainted with the smell of rotting flesh. A lizard-like form shakes off the pieces of shell. It is turned away from the party - from out of its back sprout a pair of wings. It's a f+$@ing dragon! It slowly turns toward the group, aware of their presence, and squawks coarsely. Its eye sockets and mouth vomit bloated green worms, which wriggle and fume as they slither toward the group. Blaine flames the foul beast, and it lets out a scream like a tea kettle, then dies. The worms all shrivel into burned pus-colored husks, then explode with the sound of popcorn. Disgusted and horrified, they head back to the 20 x 20 room to check the other door.
The door's lock is easily picked by Manda, and opens into another 20 x 20 room. This room contains desks and tables filled with surgical equipment, hammers and picks, huge syringes and steel tubs and bins. Candy finds a really nice scalpel that adds +1 to Dmg if used as a weapon, or +1 to healing if used to heal someone. A row of pegs along one wall hold jackets and helmets. Stairs exit up out of the room. They go about thirty feet and end at a big metal slab. There are no hinges - the slab is laying on top of the staircase opening. Blaine finds no traps, so they all try to lift the slab together. It suddenly shifts a bit and they hear loud metal clanging above. They finally slide it out of the way and find themselves in a courtyard. A big filing cabinet lies on its side nearby. Around the courtyard are several buildings. One is just a bare frame, another holds apartments, one is the main church, and the fourth is a smaller building of unknown use. They also notice lots of guys standing in a circle around them, all pointing shotguns. A guy steps forward from the crowd. He carries a Desert Eagle and wears a white flowing shirt. "Who are you? Are you cops?" he asks. The party denies any affiliation with law enforcement and tell him Paul sent them. The guy in the white shirt seems to relax a bit and believe their story. Says he: "Hi, I'm David. Welcome to the siege."
He apologizes for the welcome, explaining that under normal circumstances they'd be greeted by pretty girls with flowers and soda pop. David gets one of the girls, Jeanie to set up rooms for them, and they are shown to the shower. Jeanie sets up Blaine and Candy in Paul's room. Joe and Manda (pretending to be a couple so that Manda isn't "shared") get a room that features a bedside stack of porn for inspiration. 15 minutes after the end of the 1812 Overture the recording of screaming rabbits start up again. They settle into their rooms and relax as well as they can.
Run DMC wakes the compound, and soon after a bell rings signalling breakfast. They gather in one of the buildings at long tables for fresh tangerines and scrambled eggs. David speechifies and the other cultists shuffle around. Girls and women crowd around Candy, Blaine and Joe, while Manda gets gently pushed toward David. David ends his speech: "We are not simple, we are complicated!" then gives Manda a big wet sloppy kiss on her forehead. Manda explains why they have come - to survive the Age of Worms. David, using every opportunity to touch and caress Manda, goes off on his wild vision and theories. Ministry's New World Order blasts over the compound walls. Candy breaks in to David and Manda's conversation and asks him about Emile. David dismisses everyone from the breakfast hall. He declares that Emile is in use, then offers a tour of his lab. The party suspects that David knows they are not true Whispering Way followers, but he is in a desperate situation and could use all the allies he can get.
David escorts them to the smaller fourth building. Within is a laboratory. Behind two sets of bars stands Emile, leaking worms. Standard lab equipment covers the tables and counters. A clear plastic box of worms sits on a desk. David holds up the box and explains that there are three kinds of worms - fast, slow and fossilized, then he holds up the jade spike he took out of Emile as an example of the latter. He also holds up a container of goop, the product of his studies. He calls it salve, and it hurts the worms. To illustrate he grabs a pair of long-nosed tweezers and plucks a worm from Emile's nose. The worm, a fast one, wriggles and squeals. He touches it to a dab of salve and the worm deflates with a puff of purple smoke and sparks. He talks about the details of his vision, that the Age of Worms is coming, that every surface will be covered with worms, and no living thing will escape. David finally puts it together that the party is not with the Whispering Way and says so. They acknowledge the fact and declare that they are there to stop the Age of Worms from happening.
David opens up to Blaine about his research and experiments, and lets him look at his notebooks. He claims to nothing about the Seafoam Stele or Hector, and is fascinated by the dopplegangers. Blaine wants to burn Emile, but David says no way. David says the Earth has at most twenty years until the Age of Worms arrives, and that most of the cult is in Mexico. A big dragon named Ilthuun (that lives in the Louisiana swamps) sent him the dragon egg. He is upset that they torched the egg and sacs down below, and flatly refuses to let Blaine burn Emile - he's the only source of worms he has to work with now. Blaine offers to help David rig a failsafe so they can be certain no worms escape. The party returns to their rooms to figure out their next step.
Land line phones have been cut, so there is no way to reach the outside world. First they need to get a hold of a satellite phone. Their idea is to convince David to vacate the compound with as many followers will go through the exit tunnel, then board a stolen rock band bus painted black. Blaine is pretty sure the salve can be made from other materials, so getting David out to safety to continue the research elsewhere is of the utmost importance (and theoretically allows them to burn Emile on their way out). They head back down - Joe and Candy are set to sneak out and steal a sat-phone from law enforcement outside the compound. Blaine overhears David talking to a hostage negotiator. Manda talks to several parents, convincing many of them to send their children out. She manages to save 19 kids (GM's note: this is one of those wonderful situations where a player managed to trigger something that happened in real life.). The ATF has a Bradley out front, and uses it to crush several cultists' vehicles.
Joe and Candy use that as a diversion to sneak out via the escape tunnel, removing obstacles and covering the pit on the way for an easier exodus. They creep up to the staging area. Joe manages to hide effectively, but Candy is spotted by an FBI agent. The agent approaches and grills Candy, but Candy bluffs and lies like a master. The FBI agent wanders off. Joe and Candy sneak into an abandoned portable and find an extra FBI jacket and a sat-phone. Joe also finds a really nice overcoat - it grants the user d8 Arcane Background skill and 10 power points to cast Fear and Burrow. The sat-phone is big and bulky and comes with a huge battery pack. They have to be fast, though - the battery is good for about 25 minutes. Candy calls a connection and tries to get a big black tour bus. Just as they drop into the ditch to head back to the compound, they are spotted. An agent runs up to stop them. Joe manages to hide, but the agent has his flashlight trained on Candy. Joe uses the coat to burrow and get the drop on the agent, popping up behind him. He slits the guy's throat. They drag the body back to the pit where Manda fell and dump him in. As they get back inside the compound, the kids are being released to the authorities in pairs. Achy Breaky Heart blares over the loudspeakers. David has a pig slaughtered and announces a great feast. Blaine gets a foxy 18 year old "research assistant" named Hannah (GM's note: I think Blaine's player played a "Love Interest" card for Hannah. It isn't a love interest that lasts long).
Session 14 ~ Crucible
Theme Song : Cypress Hill - Insane In The Membrane
Age of Worms #3 : Encounter at Blackwall Keep
Early February 1993.
GM's note: Wherein the players are manipulated into ending the seige of the Branch Davidian compound in fire and blood.
The party meets in Joe and Manda's room to make plans for their exodus. Insane in the Membrane blasts outside. Gunshots, followed by some shouting, erupt from the courtyard. Snipers have shot the water towers. David's voice rings out, telling his people to stand down. While chaos threatens to break out, the group discusses breaking out through the front gate versus sneaking out through the tunnel, and whether they want to take David with them. Blaine offers to use Hannah to grab all of David's notes from the lab (and torch Emile) while the others work out the details. They are to meet in the tunnel.
Blaine finds Hannah in the courtyard. He asks if she will help him get into the lab, but she refuses and slaps him hard across the cheek. Blaine (using Joe's special overcoat) burrows into the lab, undetected. Meanwhile, Candy approaches David in the courtyard and tries to convince David to come check something out in the tunnel. He is unsuccessful, and David sees right through the trap. He calls a dozen goons over to grab Candy, who tries to intimidate them, but fails again. Manda steps up and tries talking David into going with her to see the eggs, putting her hand on his arm and using soothing words. Up in the dorms, Joe gathers all the gear of theirs he can wear and stuff into duffle bags and prepares for an opportunity to make a break for the tunnel.
Blaine pops into the lab, and to his horror, Emile is gone. The failsafe that he and David worked on is disabled. He grabs the notebooks and the defused mortar then checks the closet and bathroom - nothing in the head, and the closet is locked. He hears something scratching around behind the door. Blaine grabs a crowbar and pries the door open, but the crowbar slips and the door pops open suddenly. Within sits an empty rabbit cage, its door hanging open. A kachina doll leaps out of the dark and latches onto Blaine's head and bites with its razor-sharp teeth. Screaming, Blaine tries to pry it off and throw it back into the cage. He eventually manages to get it into the cage and throws the lock - the doll is neutralized (GM's note: When I started this campaign, I had no idea the terror that an animated kachina doll would invoke.).
Joe sees his chance to get to the metal cover over the stairs and heads down. As he nears the plate a shout goes up - the tunnel has been compromised. Candy smartly uses the moment to tell David that was what he was trying to tell him, and David sics his men off Candy. Candy explains to David that the tunnel is the only way out, and David buys it. Club music starts blasting over the compound walls, and Candy and Manda hear more gunshots. Blaine grabs the rabbit cage and heads for the exit. The door rattles. He opens it and there stands Hannah. She seems pissed, and is shocked to see the empty cell, then bolts off to the mess hall. Blaine leaves the lab and runs right up to David. He tells him Emile has escaped and is likely in the sealed room in the tunnels below. Then Blaine triggers the event they have all been trying to avoid - he casts fear on David and the surrounding twenty or so armed followers. Only some are affected, some who aren't tackle Blaine and begin beating on him with rifle butts. Candy grabs a follower and puts a gun to his head.
Other unaffected followers get behind Candy and hit him hard. Blaine rolls free of the melee, then aims the claymore directly at David and lets it rip. Several followers are agile enough to jump out of the way, but David takes a direct hit from the device and goes down, a dirty, bloody, crawling mess. Candy gets the followers to stand down when he says the party can fix David, but they have to take him with them when they leave. He stoops and grabs David. Manda grabs his Desert Eagle - it's a really nice gun that grants the wielder +1 shooting and +1 damage.
Joe sees a sniper tumble off one of the water towers, and realizes that the Feds are about to move in. He easily moves the metal plate with his great strength. Two SWAT zombies clamber out of the stairwell - the tunnel, indeed, has been compromised. All of the cultists freak out at the sight of the worm-infested former law enforcement officers and run screaming (GM's note: Spawn of Kyuss in full SWAT gear. I cackle at my own evilness). Blaine torches the zombos and they go down. Their burning equipment smells foul and some of their ammo goes off as they topple back down the staircase. Black helicopters descend on the compound and tear gas containers sail over the wall. Manda jumps down into the dark stairwell as Candy struggles to drag David after him. Candy ends up dropping his burden - hell has broken loose and it's time to go. Cecil the Brit, one of David's favorite cultists, takes a claw to the guts from another zombie and starts spouting worms. As Candy heads for the tunnel, he sees the glint of metal in one of the dorm windows - a shadowy figure is up there taking pictures (GM's note: photos that will return to haunt the group).
Down below, Manda sprints past a couple SWAT zombies and runs smack into a third. She attacks and it goes down. In the courtyard, Cecil the zombie goes beserk, clawing at and infecting his fellow cultists. Blaine gets hit and can feel a worm crawling around under his skin, he falls, badly damaged. On his way to the tunnel, Joe blows a nearby propane tank, which sends a great gout of flame into the sky, followed by a roiling cloud of black smoke. The main church and the dorms, to either side, catch fire. Blaine gets hit and wormed again, but manages to use his fancy scalpel to dig both out, then heals himself and makes his way to back up Manda. Melee ensues in the tight dark halls below. The ATF sends in another round of tear gas and starts ramming the front gate. People are screaming and running around. Joe gets hit and goes down, but the newly refreshed Blaine manages to completely heal him. As they battle their way through zombies down the stairs and to the exit tunnel, they hear a dull thump above - another propane tank explodes.
Candy eventually fights his way through to the stairs. Those below have cleared the stairwell of zombos, so they all heave and pull the heavy metal plate over the entrance and switch on mag lights and headlamps. They have enough sense to grab the SWAT zombies' gear, and soon all are sporting fancy new Kevlar vests and night vision goggles. They creep forward carefully and make it to the 20 x 20 room with the wheel door. Emile lurches from the dark and attacks. They all unload on him at once and shred him into bite-sized morsels. Blaine torches the glistening pile of rotten flesh and slithering fat green worms. They head to the surface. The pit contains two SWAT zombies, but they ignore them and keep moving. The final tunnel is clear. They head for the dark end and sneak out over the fields using cattle for cover. They top a ridge and look behind them at the compound. Seems they got out just in time. The third propane tank blows as they stand there watching. The bodies of burning, worm-infested children fly into the air, rag-doll silhouettes against the hellish red and orange backdrop. The make it to the Willy and The Wendy's, safe, if for a moment.