"Joe? Like the sketchy Fortune Teller Joe?"
Edgard chuckles and nods while on the phone.
When Agent Silver sees the news in the morning, he grips his forehead tightly and sighs. Wiping his hand down his face, he begins calling Joe. He reaches Joe's voicemail.
"Hi, Maxwell speaking," Silver says in a slow, more casual tone, like that of a friendly old man. "Joe, remember that hike we'd planned? Let's go ahead and do that today. I'll meet you down at that coffee place, the one with the donuts. Seven o'clock sharp, alright? Seven in the morning. Oh, and remind the others; I never wrote down their numbers. See you then."
Maxwell ends the call with a swish of his finger and sighs. It's going to be a long day, and he knows it. He starts gathering his things - including a certain guitar case, which he still hasn't opened since yesterday.
Silver puts on hiking clothes: sweat pants, jacket, beanie. He also grabs some utilities: binoculars, the camera, rope to throw in the back of the truck, and... Silver pauses. He notices the old Bible sitting on his bookshelf.
Silver stares at the Bible, then sets it down on its side. He heads into the kitchen, grabs a few bottles of water and a few energy bars, and heads out to the truck.
It was time to meet with the others, share information, and then plunge into the woods before another damned person died.
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Agent Silver is able to go to the campsite where the body was found. The area has mainly been cleared out of camping supplies by the police although there is some remains of some police tape but there is still a lingering bloodstain on the ground of where the body was found. If you want to dig around for clues that will be an Investigate a mystery roll.
Joe had spent the previous night taking what he had learned about the supernatural taint of the creature that had killed the man they No, I, he thought had accidently animated.
When he finally staggered awake in the morning, he saw there was a message. After listening to it, he dialed Silver and let him know, and then he sent text messages to the rest of the group.
Edgard puts away his phone.
"Nope, voicemail. Guess it's time to go get some sleep. I'll call you tomorrow morning."
In the morning, as soon as Edgard gets a text from Joe, he calls Kyle. "Get ready. We're going hiking. Meet me up at Joe's shop."
He takes a backpack with some stuff - a bit of food, some water, a flashlight, matches, all the things you usually take for a hike - and rides to "Deeper Mysteries".
What sort of creature is it?
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Ok well Eugene you find what looks like footprints in the mud of something big and heavy. The footprints are unusually large to be a person but nonetheless have a humanoid shape although the toes look twisted and warped and there is a sign it has large overgrown toenails. You also find hand prints likewise very big with twisted gnarled fingers and sharp impressions hinting large and sharp fingernails. So either you're looking at someone a freakishly large person whose gone all Hills Had Eyes Mutant, or some kind of monster with a vaguely humanoid shape like a Sasquatch. Of course as Eugene has not seen the creature he can't be sure what he's looking at until he gets some visible confirmation.
Eugene points at the tracks he found.
whatever made them isn't something documented to live in these woods
-Posted with Wayfinder
Joe will also investigate, this time using his magic.
Edgard joins the magician in his investigation. Are there any forest spirits nearby? If so, then he uses his Sight to ask them for help.
If there are no spirits, he'll use his magic to investigate - maybe the creature left some kind of magic tracks, or something like that.
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Joe turns on his arcane senses and does sense that magic involved. As for the sort of magic, it reads to him as some kind of infusion magic was involved. Infusion magic involves putting magical power into something. It can be voluntary or it can be forced. He gets the sense that the creature in question took something from the person he killed and added it to itself.
Edgard, you turn on your arcane senses and see that the monster headed off to the north. As for what is being hidden here, you see that there is some more recent shoe-prints off in the woods but it looks like someone tried to kick some dirt over them as they left to cover their tracks. What he can see of the footprints is that they resemble common sneakers, probably of a male make by the size of the shoe. Someone had recently viewed this crime scene and headed off into the woods afterwords.
Joe will share what he discovered with the rest of the group, adding "I wonder what sort of creature adds pieces of it's victims to itself. That might help limit the possible creatures it could be."
"Like Frankenstein? Ugh..."
Edgard then tells everyone what he found out.
"It headed north. Also, someone else was here recently, look," he points to the shoe-prints.
"Silver?" Joe turns to him and adds "are you good at tracking?"
Edgard puts away his phone.
"Nope, voicemail. Guess it's time to go get some sleep. I'll call you tomorrow morning."
"Right, cause I'm going to be able to sleep tonight," Kyle says. Despite his excitement, he does get some sleep but not a lot. His last thought being Joe? Really?
In the morning, he gets Edgard's message and throws together a bunch of random things he thought he'd need for hiking. He'd hiked before but never gotten serious about it. He then hopes in his beat up car and hauls ass to Joe's. When he gets there, he is surprised by the group of people there. Even Silver. All he can do is point and cry "I knew it."
At the crime scene though, he feels a little out of place. He piddles around looking here and there, not really expecting to see anything of significance.
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OK Kyle, take an Experience Point for that failure. While Edgard, Joe, Eugine and Silver are examining the crime scene, you come across the crudely hidden footprints in the snow and decide to follow them to see where they're going. Unfortunately while out of sight from the party you stumble into a man in a snow jacket with a ski-mask covering most of his face although you can see his eyes and lips which hint more manly features (Shaded though as he has his hood up). He looks at you and gestures with his hands uttering a spell on his lips and a blast of magical energy is unleashed. Give me an Act Under Pressure roll to avoid the effect.
"Oh balls."
Ahh!
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Ok Kyle take another Experience point. A red ray of energy hits Kyle in the chest and his body immediately locks up and becomes rigid. The man then shoves Kyle causing him to fall backward into the snow. As Kyle has failed the roll he does not get a chance to scream out for help nor can you he can barely breathe and his body does not respond.
The man looms over Kyle looking down at him and he sternly says clearly altering his tone in some means to disguise his voice, "Stay out of this. We will deal with the Effigy, it is no concern of yours."
With that heads off into the woods and out of sight while Kyle lies in the snow.
As for Eugene's Act Under Pressure, his ears catch a vague voice on the wind and while he does get to Kyle the man has departed off into the woods and out of view. He is the first to find Kyle lying in the snow, rigid like a stature. He looks like he's suffering from some kind of Paralysis.
Eugene calls back to Silver, Edgard and Joe attempting to bring them over.
Man down!
Joe quickly stands up and rushes towards Eugene at his cry. Seeing the Situation, Joe will attempt to undo the magical effect on Kyle. He begins chanting and moving his hands in a very specific sequence of gestures.
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Ok sounds good. Indeed Joe identifies the spell as effects of a Ray of Paralysis, a magical spell that causes the target`s body to be briefly paralyzed. He would have recovered normally but Joe is able to speed up the process by casting dispel magic. Kyle White can instantly move his limbs again. What do you do now.
as Kyle begins moving again, Joe says "What are the first five words that you would use to describe what attacked you?"
Edgard dashes to Eugene and Kyle, to find his friend lying motionless.
"Kyle!"
Fortunately, Joe dispelled whatever spell Kyle was put under, and he seems to be fine.
"What happened? You all right?"
Kyle takes a deep breath and goes rigid after the spell is released. There was no need since he could still breath when paralyzed but he just felt he needed to do it. After a few deep breaths he relaxes. "A#$#+~+. A~$$&#+ five times. That's what I would use to describe him. Seriously, first time we meet and he zap me with a Tazer spell. What a dick." When he's asked for a better description he continues. "I don't know. He was wearing a sky mask and a jacket. Couldn't see anything meaningful. Disguised his voice too. He said something about an effigy and it was no concern of ours. He also said 'we' so all in all, very concerning."
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The word "Effigy" stands out to the more educated people among you. One of the definitions of the word is "A crude representation of someone disliked, used for purposes of ridicule". Could this creature be something related to that definition. More research and investigation may be needed on the subject.
When Eugene returns, Joe will ask him "Any luck with the tracks?"
No I was unable to find any trace of this attacker's whereabouts.
If I might suggest, we have one more victim to look into. Ready to go to Walmart?
"If we must." says Joe with obvious disdain.
"I guess. There's nothing more we can find here."
"Walmart? Wonder if they have tasers?"
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So the group heads off to the site of the second murder and find a police tapped off area of where the attack happened. The body has already been removed but there is still a massive bloodstain on the ground of where the victim was found along with specks of scrambled brain matter. Whatever wounds Nancy Batts got were hella fierce. There is a hell of a lot of blood splatter. Fortunately they haven't gotten to cleaning it up although the area seems to be watched by an officer. This time though you see there is large visible twisted bloody footprints that go out in a direction heading towards a corpse of trees far to the south. What do you do next?
"We're going to follow those aren't we?" Kyle says, dejectedly, pointing at the bloody foot prints.
Yes we should but first I though I think I want to talk to the officer, perhaps if I distract him and extract information from him you all could go check out the murder scene or sneak off into the woods without being bothered.
Eugene reads the scene to know how to make it to where the murder happened.
"You know, I think I'd rather stay with the officer, with the gun and the radio, in the open area within the safety of civilization. That sounds way more fun than following bloody foot prints into the forest."
Kyle approaches the officer but is looking towards the scene wide-eyed. "Oh wow. That...that is bad. Excuse me officer. I'm a student at Yorktown U. Kind of still undecided on major. Thought about doing forensics so my counselor said to try doing some research, maybe talk with a real forensics expert. I'm more of a hands on type learner and saw this in the news and thought I'd drop by. See what a crime scene looks like. Kinda having second thought," he says looking wearily at the blood. "You...mind if I ask what happened?" He pulls out his phone and opens a notes application and takes notes if the officer feels talkative.
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As you get close to the scene the officer, Constable Winston watching you as you approach, he says, "Please stand back from the scene. While the lab techs have taken evidence they want it preserved for one day in case they need to head back here for more searching. As for what happened, we had a murder here of a nice working woman. Can't go into too many details on the case but it was bad I'm telling ya."
"Yes, we're going to follow the footprints. Give me a moment and I'll try and get the officer away from the scene so that we can gather some evidence."
Joe begins chanting under his breath, allowing energy to build up, and then unleashes it on the poor cop.