LOST ANGELS
Matt Houston (Jim), Henry Wilcox (Paul), Randoph Carter (Mark), Laney Chase (Joe), Judge Mayall (Darren)
We are in the west coast town of Lost Angels. Laney is in town collecting bounties. Judge Mayall is finishing up with his judge work before moving on. Matt Houston is a reporter looking for a story. Not sure why Henry is here. And into the middle of this comes Randolph Carter, fresh off the train from Baltimore, looking for his uncle, the judge, whom Randoph's mother insisted he see. During the first meeting (in the saloon), a fight breaks out. Henry shows his worth by using his powers to wrap up one of them into a lasso. The judge commands them to go outside but they take umbrage. The fight escalates, with most of us making our dodges, when the Marshall shows up and breaks it up. He then checks to see how many of us are here for the posse that is forming related to a murder. We adjourn with him outside and the posse is formed. He denies one well-meaning and possibly even skilled individual in favor of the Judge's nephew because nepotism.
The scene of the crime is a ranch of rich people who were murdered. A witness saw about 7 people riding off before he found the bodies. His story seems to check out. We set out and on the way we are diverted by a kid pleading for our help, which it turns out is just that... a diversion! Seems his family farm is beset by criminals purely as a means of delaying us, and it does work. We go to the farm, gun down some bad guys, and after catching at least one we interrogate and find out the truth of things.
On the road we find a farm where they are happy to put us up if we use the barn because it's bigger than the building. We set up shifts, which is something new to most of us and it pays off (?) when the young boy who lives on the farm is spotted going out beyond our barn. Laney follows and finds the boy is gone to another burnt out barn and is greeting a ginormous robot! The automaton spots/hears Laney and a chase ensues as she runs back to warn us and leads it to us. Fortunately it was out of bullets or it would have mowed down the judge (as it ignored the boy's pleads for it to stop). One piece of information Laney picked up was the boy calling it "daddy". The woman in the farm had thought her husban had gone off and gotten himself killed, which it seems he had, but a company called the Hellstrom corporation put his brain into a machine.
It tries to murder us as we are now trapped in the barn, but Laney's ability to blind it with a flash of light works well enough for us to get around it. It isn't until the "widow" is brought from the house that it ceases killing us, but not before it takes out the Marshall, nearly killing him. Fortunately Henry has healin' powers. We find out the bot's story and settle back in only to have its creators show up the next day at the farm. A group of "company men" for hellstrom show up and proceed to cut down the newly healed Marshall again. We try to pick them off from the barn, but these guys have a gatling gun leading us to have to target the gun's operator (and also a guy in an orange hat because... hey....orange hat.). We win this and cut them all down, including two that gunned down with their own gatling gun as they try to escape. The badly injured marshall and the few surviving hellstrom guys are hauled back to town before we set out again, now well behind the person we are pursuing. The most notable casualty of this fight was the robot man, who had massive armor, but took an NPC's blast to the chest and was ended.
The robot almost takes out some of us post-mortem when Randolph and Henry are near him trying to figure out if there's a way to save him when he goes nuclear and does heavy damage to them!
Back on the road we have to deal with wolves who are hungry and some of whom are imbued with ghost rock. That wasn't too bad. It helps that we took to sleeping in shifts now. Also on the way back past the earlier farm we help bury the remains of the robot man.
Oh yeh. The criminal we seek is a beautiful and merciless leader of a gang, named MERCY.
We reach Perdition, and while a couple people check out the facility nearby for processing ghost rock, the others in town get rooms, and the judge determines that the local sheriff is lying when he says Mercy has never been there. We set up shifts even while sleeping in the hotel.
I can't recall if there was another encounter after this or if this is where we ended. I think there was more, but I didn't keep notes.
PERDITION
Matt Houston (Jim), Henry J "Stumbles" Wilcox (Paul), Randoph Carter (Mark), Laney Chase (Joe), Judge Cyrus "Judge Cane" Mayall (Darren)
Disclaimer: Due to the short memory of players and the occasional item the GM needed to interject, at a couple points we had to do "go-backsies", but I'm just going to do this in narrative order as best I can. Also, I should be taking notes because my memory be less.
We are in the town of Perdition where last game we discovered that Mercy had been there. Well, we do discover that she not only was there, but is there now! We encounter her at one point in the streets, accompanied by a man and with an array of locals from the nearby brothel between us and her. She engages us in a discussion about how she doesn't want to kill anyone and that she's only there to guide her gang and steer them away from trouble, and she admits to having killed but only in defense. The lie-detecting judge believes what she has to say but she brings up the valid point that male judges tend to treat female defendants as guilty until proven innocent and there's no way he can convince her she'll be treated fairly. Some of the PC's are itching to just take her down but the judge persists in trying to get information right up until the moment she drops a ninja smokebomb and jets away. Seems not only is she a fast shooter and accurae, but she can run at blur speed! When she's gone the locals, who had been willing to defend her go back to being normal. The judge questsions the five who had been armed and ready to shoot and finds that at this point there's no benefit to charging them with anything due to local facilities and a lack of a marshal who would actually enforce any ruling (so we'd have to lug them around until we get them somewhere). Also, while trying to sneak up on her from behind, Henry falls on his face (fumbles) causing Laney to name him "stumbles".
One of the things we find out from the local madame is that when locals die, sometimes but not always, an effigy of them appears in a cavern up in the hills. The caverns came up becuase Mercy had let us know that her boss (someone known as "ghost") was seeking something in that cave. She also indicated that she had nothing to do with the murders we had been investigating (no lies detected). She suggests we go see the marshall who has some wanted posters, he just doesn't keep them out because if he did he'd have to contend with the local criminals who would take umbrage at this, which as a one-man shop, makes a certain amount of sense. We end up nagging him into showing us them and there is indeed a guy in a plague mask.
We can't trail mercy unfortunately. Our investigation of the cavern does show some cave drawings and each one does have a certain amount of uniqueness that could possibly be tied to distinct traits of the person they embody, but we don't know what they have in common and why other locals don't end up here. There is even an attempt at research. But while at the caves, Randoph uses his power to squeeze through a narrow opening in astral form and his magic detection to look at a hole that had been dug and that once had magic in it. We end up going to the next town to try and find her and find a whole other problem.
COFFIN NAIL
The town of coffin nail has a nearby 80' tall/40' wide at the base, CONE at the edge of town resembling an ant hill. Locals say it just showed up suddenly 10 days ago. Also, kids have been disappering for about a week. There's a local meeting that we attend on the subject where we introduce ourselves and are enlisted to get rid of the cone for the not inconsiderably sum of $1k each, courtesy of the mining company who doesn't want their people leaving because their kids are disappearing. We investigate the cone mostly by use of Matt's n-ray vision looking right through the sides to locate two bodies, and Randolph using his astral projection to find the place is filled with snakes including two big ones (a constrictor and a rattler), and supplemental help from the local super-hot school marm who can fly and give some area support. 5 of the locals are convinced to assist in defending the town from a little more distance by shooting at escaping snakes while we blow the joint up. There's a battle that ensues in which we shoot at incoming snakes, Henry uses his tunneling to get dynamite inside the cone, and we blow the shit out of it before dealing with the last two big snakes. The judge pays the 5 locals who assisted an we bail the next day.
We encounter a couple of (essentially) "blink dogs" who pop into camp and try to feast on us before we defeat them. We avoid a stampede through the senses and quick action of one of the team (Matt, I think?), and we finish off the evening fighting with The Taunting Dead. While we are in camp, a handful of skeletons approach, who are pretty fast (we find they run faster than us) and eventually another handful of zombie types. The skels ignore bullets, but are harmed by shotgun blasts, and double-harmed by blunt attacks. This is a long and nasty fight that sees Laney go down with injuries but revive due to regeneration, and the judge hits the dirt too after taking a number of wounds. Ultimately the skeletons are missing enough limbs that they can't pursue (or are entangled by Henry's magic lasso) and the zombies are just mostly too slow to catch up. But the whole time this is happening they are trading off communicating with us in a way that seems to imply that they are being directed by someone who is speaking through them. It's mostly stuff about how if we survive we should just flee! (Then the skeletons keep the judge from trying to flee! Just saying...)
Oh, and there were snipers. Can't remember where they were in the order of encounters. Four men behind big rocks try to get us but they are spotted by a party member and when we pause to discuss what to do they notice this and start shouting for us to surrender. When the fight happens it takes the form of a very splintered and varied attack pattern with at least one of us fleeing, another charging then getting off his horse before he's close, a second one full-on charging, and another shooting from righ there. The judge has a rare useful set of attacks (obliterating the head of one of them while firing from horseback as he closes the distance), and Laney counter-snipes one of them. When they've taken enough damage whatever is left flees.
Oh, and also we found a man standing by the road. Well, not a man. More like a former man. He wasn't a zombie, just a corpse standing there. Footprints indicate he had just wandered up there and stood there and died. (THEORY: We know from metagaming/gm out-of-game informing us that Stalker is the name of the guy animating and controling the dead. Sounds like maybe he animated this guy up to the road and then left him there? Maybe to use his eyes to watch the road or something?)
LIONS ROAR
Henry Wilcox (Paul), Randoph Carter (Mark), Laney Chase (Joe), Judge Cyrus Mayall (Darren)
A little bit of go-backsies since Mark was not at the end of last game with the defeat of snake-mound. Randolph goes back to visit Ms Applewood, the local teacher who assisted us. He learns that she was instrumental in what happened. She summoned a manitou which brought the snakes. He consoles her as best he can and we bolt.
There were a lot of things that happened, but I failed to make an notes, so (as usual) this will be very slapdash.
Our first encounter is random, and a big side-mission, which we pursue. A man on the road is in poor shape and is seeking help for his village of farmers who are dealing with a group of annual raiders who come and take a lot of their crops. Being law abiding people with a spine we do volunteer to help. This involves going to their village and setting up a trap for them when they arrive. The trap works perfectly as we gun most of them down without a scratch and capture a few others. Interrogration yields information about the rest of the group...and there are a LOT of them. Their leader can fire bullets around corners. We get a location, and in return the squealer's sentence from the judge is commuted to life in prison, and he is left behind to be held by the locals until we return from raiding the raiders. (Turns out while being watched by them he tries to escape and gets gunned down.)
We rushed to the caves where we learned their leader was holed up. Supposedly there are 50 or so of them but we know that most of them are out collecting their food from varioous places. Randolph went ethereal and checked the place out, fidning there was one room of 5 guys, one room of 3 guys, and a third room with 1 guy, plus a storage room. We decide the leader is the lone guy and head there. Laney sneaks in with us behind her in the distance, and she knocks him out without too much trouble, but there is sufficient noise that we have to rush the other 3 guys. The judge takes one out quickly and a second one puts up a force wall cutting us off from them. Henry let's go with a shotgun blast that blows through the force wall and takes out a second guy but the one who put up the forcewall is still up. In the distance the third room is stirring but we've got a few rounds.
Unable to run through the forecall (we think) we get back while Henry tries to spoon his way through the wall with his digging spoon, but it's too hard for that. He tries to instead blast his way through and now we change "Stumbles" Wilcox into "Fumbles" Wilcox when he somehow manages to shoot the nearest ally, which is the Judge who is literally about 15 feet behind him! (TALENT!) He managest to do more than the judge's entire hitpoints which also means more than he has HP in his abdomen and while he should be declared dead on the spot, the GM did not want someone on the team to die on a fumble and so he got one round to bring the judge back, which he did.
Randolph drops one enemy to the ground, alive but missing a leg. Laney decides to leap out and take some of the remaining 5 down (who are blocking our exit) and guns one down but gets blasted as well and drops untl her Regeneration kicks in. There's a slow process of killing them one-by-one to make them retreat. We do win and everyone is alive (on our side) but we have one down (the Judge) and a couple prisoners--including their boss, and we need to get out of there before everyone else comes back. A scheme is born: Leave the remaining/returning gang members with the impression that these guys were taken out by the Spectres (the gang we've been chasing). And without their boss, whom we've taken with us, we hope they will be without guidance and disband, but we don't have the resources to take them all on like we hoped. So we get back on the road.
As mentioned the man we left behind the in the village in their care has been executed. We also take the time to execute the men we captured. The group waited until the judge was up, an interrogation was held, and then they were summarily executed, but not before their leader tried to buy us off with rumors about where Spectre gang are in exchange for his freedom. He wouldn't accept anything short of freedom we couldn't let that happen so...death!
Back on the road we find a man hanging in tree. Concerned with the other dead that have been moving about, we aim to cut him down and burn him, but it turns out on his person were wanted posters for the Spectre gang. Seems this is the judge that had been traveling ahead of us and that they'd finally caught up with him as they intended. The wanted posters had all sorts of details on them about the Spectres. From memory (and boy is that a big risk): Sundown (speedster?), Ache (diseases), Stalker (undead animator), Mercy (teleporter?), Ghost (desolidification?), and at least two others. In the next town we turn over his goods to the Marshal to send off to his family. Seems the Marshal is not the "real" law in this town as the locals go see the Confederates when they have an issue, who are beloved by the locals for protecting them. We see them as well and meet their leader, who seems amiable enough (though we all get paranoid).
Seems there's a story about screams coming from the local doctor's house. The authorities will check it out next day. Us being who we are, we go snoop and astral-boy goes in and witnesses some severed hands wandering the hall, a body on the floor, and something horrible and knitted together in Frankensteinian fashion in the basement. We go with the cops and discover that inside are indeed severed hands lurking about and those scare off all the deputies, leaving the PCs and the marshal on them. Also... emerging from below now that one of the hands got blown away by a blast, is the creature we expected. It takes a solid blast to the abdomen from Randolph and we are left to deal with the hands, who are plenty tough on their own. One of them murders the Marshal, and after a few successful dodges by the judge one finally gets ahold of him (allowing me to try out my 1" teleport to get out of his grasp). Laney is getting pretty bruised and has to try and shoot the one on her in even at the risk of shooting herself. Before the last hand is down, Frankenpatient is stirring. We finaly put all the hands down (but not after a half dozen hand puns).
I can't remember if there was more after this.
Addendum: OH! And there WAS more. During town research, Randolph finds some interesting news stories involving 3 women who are able to give information for a price, and their ties to a local store that sells magical things. We go there of course.
The proprietor tells us the three women each has a purview: They can answer a question about the PAST, PRESENT, or FUTURE (depending which one you ask). Each person can only ask ONE question, there is a cost for asking the questions, and if they don't have an answer then they don't respond, your payment is forfeited to them, and you can't ask any further questions.