Monster of the Week: Nexus Nixes

Game Master Darkfire142

Since we're making a lot of commotion now, I'd like to make an Act Under Pressure roll to go and find that security room with the cameras. Given that everyone else probably has the corpse handled, Agent Silver wants to make sure A) nobody is coming and B) the cameras don't have the group's faces at the end of the night.

Act under pressure: 2d6 ⇒ (2, 3) = 5

Ok take an Experience Eugene. While he is able to fill the container with water, in his excited state he gets butter fingers and before he can throw it he slips and spills water all over himself, thus preventing him from washing off the chalk. Fortunately the creature's attention is on Joe so it pays him little mind.

"Enough!" shouts Joe, who tries to pin it down so that he can remove the chalk.

Kick some Ass!: 2d6 ⇒ (3, 2) = 5 Potential marked.

Joe struggles with the corpse, but is unable to keep it pinned down.

Cursing, Silver snaps at the group, "Deal with this thing - I'll go make sure we aren't on Candid Camera!" With that, Silver darts out of the room.

Here we go - Acting Under Pressure here. Silver wants to see if anyone's coming, and to hopefully find a way to get into the police department itself and turn off the cameras.

Act Under Pressure: 2d6 + 3 ⇒ (1, 4) + 3 = 8

Seeing as Eugene attempt at douse the dead body failed, Edgard tries to do the same, and grabs anything he can fill with water and then throw it at the creature.

Act Under Pressure: 2d6 ⇒ (5, 6) = 11

On vacation Monday. Didn;t think I would miss much. I was wrong.

2d6 ⇒ (6, 1) = 7

"Not the smell!" Instead of calmly going around the skunk, Kyle yanks it to the side as panic over the smell overrides his sensibilities.

Kyle is able to avoid the skunk but to do so he has to pull off the road, causing him to slam on the breaks to avoid crashing into a tree. While he is able to stop in time his vehicle stalls and sputters forcing him to stop the vehicle. Trying the key he finds the engine of his car has locked up. He's going to have to open up the hood and check out the engine to fix this.

In the meantime while he's sitting in the car someone comes out of the woods. It appears to be a teenager dressed in black winter clothing with a scarf around her face. She yells out,

"Hello over there! Are you OK?"

As for Edgard, he is able to grab some water and throw it on the disoriented zombie. This washes the chalk off and with the magic of the markings disrupted the link to the animating magic is disrupted causing the corpse to fall lifelessly to the ground.

As for Agent Silver, he rushes out but unfortunately does not make it to the security office as he runs smack dab into the night officer on duty who has his gun out and points it at Silver. So while rushing out protects the rest of the party from being seen, he now has a security guard to deal with.

The guard yells, "HEY YOU! Hold it right there! Hands where I can see them!"

Kyle takes a few breaths to calm himself. He looks in the rear-view mirror to see the skunk waddle off like his life hadn't just been in mortal danger. He flips the stupid animal the bird and gets out. Then he does what every man when their car breaks down. He opens the hood and stares at the engine. It didn't do any good. He knew nothing about cars except how to change the oil and rotate the tires. But he felt he must make an attempt. He looks up at the person that called out and does a double take. Someone just walked out of the woods and asked if he was okay. F!+*ing Canada. He turns back to the engine.

"Yeah. Do you know anything about cars or hunting? Cause if you can't fix it I got a hit I want to put on little striped a&~**%# a few yards back."

Can we in the autopsy room hear the officer and Silver's confrontation?

The girl approaches and says, "I know a bit about working a car. Let me take a look at that if you'll let me."

You get a closer look at the girl. She looks maybe 16 with hazel eyes, reddish hair and fair skin. She looks under the hood and looks carefully and says, "Ok, looks like you just have to let off some pressure. You're engine is a bit overheated."

She removes a cap and lets some steam come out as he opens up the radiator.

"Just give it a few minutes and you should be ready to be along your way. You should be careful driving the roads at night. Lots of wild animals in the woods can jump right out at ya."

As for the rest of you, you hear a distant voice although its rather indistinct due to the walls somewhat blocking the travelling of sound in this area.

Kyle starred as she looked at his car. Something about a woman who was good with cars was always attractive to men. And he in particular liked red hair over any other color so he was momentarily distracted. But 16 will get you 20 so he drove certain thoughts away with some real effort. "Wow. I have been here a year but this is by far the most Canadian thing that has ever happened. I break down outside of town and someone wanders out of the forest to ask if I need help. I love this town. But isn't hiking even more dangerous than walking? Your home is close right?"

Silver doesn't skip a beat. He rushes forward and tries to tackle the guard to the ground. "Sorry," is all he says.

He's wearing a flak vest under his jacket. I envision this jacket has a hood on it so he can SORT OF hide his face, but not entirely.

Kick Some Ass: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (4, 1) + 2 = 7

Also, NOT using a weapon. Just trying to tackle/disarm/knockout this guy, whatever happens to be easiest.

Agent Silver rushes forward and is able to tackle the officer. However you both tumble to the ground and the angle of your fall Agent Silver to twist his arm. This will give him a -1 to Kick Some Ass rolls until he has time to recover.

The Officer reaches into his belt for his Nightstick and attempts to beat Agent Silver off of him. He can either avoid using Act Under Pressure or trade blows with the officer.

Agent Silver grits his teeth and tries to shove the officer back onto the floor as he gets up, then dash down the hall and lead him away from the others... and go disable the cameras while he's at it.

Acting Under Pressure to escape the pursuer and get to the room in question.

Act Under Pressure: 2d6 + 3 ⇒ (2, 2) + 3 = 7

Ok giving you a hard choice Silver, you can get away to hopefully head towards the security office but you'll leave the officer to radio in for backup or you can stay and disable the officer.

Euuuugh... Yeah, I don't like the idea of having to beat up the security officer, but it might be for the best to stay and do so. Or at least yoink his radio from him. With that said, if we use the roll above and modify it for Kick Some Ass, it'd be 4+1=5=a failure. I'll stay. Should I reroll or take the failure?

You can make another roll Agent Silver. You already declared using act under pressure and made the hard choice. By staying around you will get the benefit of not getting hit by the Nightstick. As this guy is only a mook, I'll say if you can get a 10+ on a kick some ass you can get him in a sleeper hold and knock him out. On a 7-9 though you'll take some damage but still knock him out and 6 or less you will get overpowered.

As for Kyle the girl says, "Oh I live not too far away. I was just taking a short cut through the woods and I heard some car trouble from you so went to investigate. But yes, I read in the paper about a hiker being killed."

She seems a bit nervous when she mentions that, she then says, "Did you see anything unusual while you were driving by? Well other than the animal that ran in front of your car that is."

Let's see how this goes then.

Kick Some Ass: 2d6 + 1 ⇒ (5, 5) + 1 = 11

Agent Silver grabs the officer and puts him in a sleeper hold, then slowly eases him onto the floor. He lets out a sigh of relief as he gets up.

Agent dodges his nightstick and then moves to the rear of the officer and grabs him in a sleeper hold. He struggles a bit but eventually passes out unconscious. Still you don't know if anyone else will be responding to the alert so getting out of here fast would be a prudent choice.

Silver heaves out a sigh and does exactly that. He heads out the morgue the way he came, trusting the others to meet him outside, and makes a quick call to his superiors.

Maxwell really didn't want to have to call the Bulwark over this.

I'm going to try and ask the Agency to get rid of the video record for tonight. Agent Silver REALLY didn't want them to find out he wasn't the only one working there, and he knows they'll eventually find out this way, but he'd rather not become a fugitive or the like. Now, to roll +Sharp, which is a -1... I'll spoiler the roll in case you'd rather I not make it right now, so you can see the result after that decision.

I asked the nice young lady a question.

Well Agent Silver, get an experience point!

Agent Silver contacts Mrs. Melnik and informs her of the trouble caused at the Morgue. She is definitely not pulsed by this screw up and yells back "Agent Silver! I mentioned earlier to be Discreet in your investigation and instead you did exactly the opposite. Breaking into a City Morgue at night, being involved in disrupting evidence by allowing a third party to use magical intervention, assaulting a police officer and getting yourself caught on surveillance cameras! This is going to be a hell of a mess for us to clean up! You were trusted to get this job done quickly and discreetly but now it appears you're blundering around causing who knows how much trouble!"

There is some heavy breathing at the other end and after she calms down a bit she says, "I will pull some strings to see that the surveillance tapes are properly doctored. However, this is the last assistance the Bulwark will provide you on this case. I'm cutting you loose until the board has a chance to decide what administrative punishment to levy for this screw up. It would be good for your standing to see that your mistakes are rectified and that you are able to bring this case to a conclusion. Do not call me again until you get results, you hear me Agent Silver?"

Ok the side effect of this failure is that you're on administrative suspension. That means for the rest of this case you CANNOT use the Deal With The Agency move, nor will the Bulwark provide material support for the remainder of this case. You're even more on your own on this case than before.

On the bright side, free XP! That's two XP so far, and both come from dealing with the Agency. I need to improve my Sharp eventually.

"I hear you," Silver answers slowly. "Results will be had." With that, he ends the call and stows his phone away, wiping sweat off his brow. It could have been a lot worse.

I assume that the party escapes the Morgue before more security arrives and Agent makes the call post-escape. I will grant you a free getaway considering there has been a string of trouble. However you also have to lay low for the night while the Bulwark works to cover up the evidence.

The next morning another horrific death hits the news. This time a late night Walmart employee named Nancy Batts was the victim. She went off shift at 2:00 am and was ambushed in the parking lot. Her method of death was by having her head ripped oven and her scalp removed. It looks like the creature has claimed yet another victim!

Once they have left the morgue, Joe will pull Silver aside. "I'm sorry about bringing them. Edgard is...kind of my student; I'm teaching him about using his abilities. As far as Eugene goes, I thought he would be handy with computers, so I brought him with us. He apparently has a blog, whatever that means."

Glancing back towards the morgue, Joe will add "I'm not sure what happened with the ritual. These sorts of things have dangers, but I've never seen a corpse animate from the ritual I used. Something was clearly not right with the corpse. I'm going to try doing some reasearch to see if I can find out what could have caused it."

"You can do THAT research later," Silver says coolly. "There's still a monster on the loose, and we should focus on catching it. We need to start working early in the morning. Do research on something more relevant.

"And since they're already involved," Max adds after a pause, "they can stay involved, at least for now. But you and I are professionals. Those two are a kid and a conspiracy theorist. I don't want them getting hurt."

With that, Silver starts getting into his truck. "I'll get in touch with you at six o'clock sharp. We'll meet up - all four of us - and work out what we know before heading out. Whatever it is, it's in the woods."

With that, Silver revs up his vehicle and drives off.

Will post the morning bit later.

Animating corpses, attracting the cops, damn I thought these guys were professionals.

Eugene will head home and think about what they learned that night, which given our rolls was minimal. Upon learning about the Walmart incident, he will be in contact with the others about looking for clues and great deals at the store.

"It might've been the corruption," chimes in Edgard. "Whatever that thing is, the physical injury was not the only harm it did."

Zaitherin, what about my questions about the body? - Are muscles the only thing damaged - is there any kind of "soul" or "spirit" damage? Can the taint be traced?

Are you holding off on me for some reason? Do the others need to reach a certain point? I feel like they are day ahead now.

Not holding off Kyle, she did give a response to your question. Look further up in the posts. We'll be out of time to cover your conversation with the girl you met in the woods and then move onto the next day.

Oops. You're right. My bad. Didn't see it.

"A what now? And you're still walking through the forest?" This was news. He hadn't heard or read about a hiker. Was that on the blog? Did he miss that one? He looked back and forth along the road and up into the trees expecting something to attack. When it did not, he looked back to the girl. "Ah, no. I did not thankfully. Just the skunk. Do you want me to walk you back? Doubt I'll be much help against whatever killed the hiker but I might buy you time to run. Not that I am expecting an attack or anything. Geez now I am getting paranoid. Not helping right?"

She seems a little disappointed when Kyle mentions he had seen nothing else unusual. When asked to walk the girl shakes her head and says, "Thank you for the offer but I think I can handle things on my own. I am Sheila by the way. Glad I could be of assistance in your time of need."

She screws the cap back on the radiator and says "I think your vehicle should be fine to get going. Keep your eyes peeled out here at night. The woods aren't safe these days."

Kyle can get a sense of a finality in her tone with that. As though she is certain the woods are not safe.

He watches her leave, head cocked to the side in confusion. That was a little cryptic at the end. A nose from the right startles him out of his revelry. He slams the hood and hops in the car. He drives at a more sedate pace back to the city. At a stop sign he pulls out his phone. No messages from Edgard still. He shoots him one.

Sooo...? it says simply.

When he gets back to his apartment, he hopes online to check the Tin Man's Blog and the local news.

Eugene has spent the night looking into reports of reanimated corpses and has written a piece on his blog issuing concern for their unusual strength [note: nothing that mentions a who or where Eugene saw this stuff will be listed. We wouldn't want to get arrested now would we.] I'm sure Kyle will enjoy the read.

"B&&*@in. Zombies."

While Edgard rides home, thinking about what happened, he remembers that he promised to give a call to Kyle. He taps his name in his address book.

"Hey, it's Edgard. Sooo... I'm free now and you wanted to talk, right? We can meet now, are you home?"

"Yep. I'll be here."

"Ok, I'll be at your place in five minutes."

Edgard hangs up and soon arrives at Kyle's place. He knocks and waits for answer.

So, since Kyle's an exchange student, he should be in some kind of dorms? If yes, then does he share the room with someone?

Yes there are dorms at the college. Its up to Kyle to decide if he's got a roommate or if he's got a room by himself.

The college I went to you got a roommate unless you became an RA. But it could be a suite. Two small rooms for sleeping with a central living space. That could give some privacy.

Kyle opens the door and smiles. "Finally. Tin Man's latest is about zombies." Edgard can tell that part of the reason he said that was for the benefit of the other guys in the room. They did not even look up from their game. Rocket-powered cars playing soccer it looked like. The two head for Kyle's room. "So what's up?" comes the loaded question.

"Already?" mutters Edgard and sighs, following his friend to his room.

"Weeell," he draws. "That's a bit of a story, to be honest. Remember that seance? It worked."

The youth rises his hand to show Kyle the black ring. "The call was answered, so to speak."

"Don't tell anyone, all right?"

"Already?" Kyle echo's. Did the Tin Man deal with an undead recently? How did Edgard know? These questions and more lasted until he mentioned the seance. Kyle's eyes bug out. He looked down at the ring and back up to Edgard then down at the ring again. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen that ring before the seance. "Get the f@$# out. Are you messin with me? This shit's real?" He says a little too loudly as he backs away a few steps. "This shit's real?" he asks more quietly.

It won't be nice if I break anything... Or if it backfires.
Edgard muses whether to prove his words with some harmless trick or not. Well, here it goes.

"Yep, shit's real. I wish it wasn't, but it is," Edgard sighs. "Here, I'll show you."

Edgard claps Kyle on his shoulder and imagines how he levitates for a couple of feet above the floor.

Use Magic: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (5, 1) + 2 = 8 Effect - levitation (Do one thing that is beyond human limitations). Side effect - The effect is of short duration.

Edgard levitates off the ground using the power granted to him by the Unseele Court. Indeed he does float off the ground to the amazement of Kyle but only for a few seconds before he abruptly falls to the ground with a thud on the floor but as it was not a long fall he lands on his feet although the power cutting out so quickly was a bit of a surprise.

"So... Yeah. Something like this. Now you know "what's up". At least some part of it."

Edgard smiles faintly and spreads his hands.

Given the description I think Kyle was supposed to levitate which would make for a far more effective show.

"Whoa. What?" Kyle goes completely rigid for a moment as he rises off the ground then flails futilely, only managing to smack his hand on his metal bed. The hit sends him into a quick spin about the time the spell stops. He is lucky to be back all the way around in time to land on his feet. For a long moment he is quiet, standing there with his hands out for balance. When he finally speaks, it is in an angry whisper. "The f&~~? Don't ever do that again without telling me first." Then after a pause. "Also you's a dick. Why didn't you tell me? This is amazing. You can do magic. Real Magic," he says, barely remembering to keep his voice down. His whole body was tense with excitement. "What else can you do?"

Edgard back away a little from the overenthusiastic and angry friend.

"Sorry, sorry, won't happen again. Just thought that it could prove my words faster."

"Well. I'm not really sure, since I haven't really used it that much. Curses? Hexes? See spiritual... things, i guess. It's not for free though, you know?"

Edgard stares in the windows, where tree branches sway from a light breeze.
"But let's leave sad stuff for later. Wanna take part in something cool? Sneak peek - it's connected with the "zombie" Tin Man wrote about. Since you're worrying so much, I think we should at least let you know what's happening."

"Oh. One of those double edge sword things?" Kyle's enthusiasm deflates a little at Edgard's melancholy. He had magic powers yet didn't seem as excited about it as Kyle was. Was it really that bad? But the word zombie worked on Kyle like treat did for a dog. His excitement returned, previous sadness all but forgotten. "Hell's yeah. Let me get my keys. Where are we going?"

"Right now? Hm... wait a bit, I'm gonna call Joe."

Edgard comes near the window and calls the mage.

"Hey, it's Edgard again. Hope you're not sleeping yet. So, um... I kinda told my friend about our stuff - he was worrying about me. Can we meet? Hope you're not mad," he says in one breath.