AWAKENED: GAME Eight
Vampire Haven (Saturday, May 22, 2010)

Purina Vampire Chow:

  • Simon (Robert)

  • Hank (Alan)

  • Gabriel (Joe)

  • Jack (Paul)

  • Nathan (Darren)

As we know already, there are main locations through which vampires are summoning demons around the city, their plan seemingly being to possess the population. The locations we’ve successfully dealt with are Harvard House, the Mage’s club, and to a much lesser degree, the Succubus Dinner club and theater (It’s like Medieval Times, with boobs). The latter we can’t say has been significantly disabled yet, though the other two are down for the count. Now there are two other places we know of that need dealt with: The Museum of Antiquities and the Sears Tower. We know the tower has a pentagram on the helipad. These 5 locations comprise 5 geographic stations of an enormous pentagram that covers Chicago. What we don’t know is that there’s a sixth location, at the center of said pentagram. But we’ll get to that.

Recon time! We roll by the Museum of Antiquities and discover: 1) The building itself seems very old, 2) Those with special vision powers cannot see through its walls, 3) It’s a $10 entrance fee. Damn them! We do check out the museum and discover its loaded with old stuff, and some of it has resonance, but nothing seems to leap out at us about any particular objects. Hank’s water control powers allow him to pick the security keylock on the elevator allowing us to go to the basement. As we browse around there, we find just offices and more old stuff, but nothing else important, though we don’t get to check out all the offices before a guy shows up. He’s a nice enough fellow, though he does have a magical aura of some sort. We explain to him we lost our way and during a handshake Hank tries to abscond with a small bit of his DNA so that Jack can analyze it. Sure enough he’s old.  Babysitting Jesus old. 5,000+ years old in fact.

We decide to go back later and after a protracted discussion of how to best assail the building we end up coming in by a rear door and skulking down to the basement, where we find a room we cannot peer into. Yes, this man is there and he welcomes us by name. In this room are 4 statues and a pentagram, though the man is sitting at a desk across the room. A congenial conversation ensues in which we discover a few things about him: 1) He’s immortal, in the sense that if we killed him he’d come back, 2) He was a sorcerer long ago who learned the ancient secrets of preservation, 3) He taught the vampires to build the pentagrams for summoning, 4) Payment to him from the vamps will be HIS DEATH. Yes, he’s very old and wants to die for good. We strike a bargain: He estimates that the vampires have only an outside chance of killing him, so if we can come up with a better means to end his existence then he’ll end his affiliation with them. Meanwhile, he will not stand in our way.

What’s that last part mean? Well, he’ll not stop us from destroying the pentagram. However, when he leaves the room, the pentagram’s guardian DOES try to stop us. It’s protected by a Mesopotamian statue that manipulates stone and uses a spear/trident kind of thingie. Oh yeh, it laughs and physical attacks too. Nathan tries the theory that destroying the pentagram may stop its incentive to attack us—however he doesn’t do much damage to the pentagram; hank does more with his new water-to-acid trick. The statue seems undeterred and tries to harm Hank, to very minor effect. Simon runs away to the far end of the room and discovers there that on the desk is an open book with a picture of the creature. With his speed-reading he proceeds figure out how to weaken its defenses and puts that knowledge to use as the team try the obvious stuff (Guns, Axes, Fire). It does crumble into rubble eventually. Speaking of rubble, we have cut our way out of the place since it sealed us in by stoning-over the door.

Another thing we learned from the immortal was that there is a sixth place in town that summons demons (See, told ya I’d get to it). At each of the “corner” summoning spots a new demon is brought in nightly. At the center spot, the heart of this nuttiness, they summon 6 a night. This Vampire Haven it turns out is a level 5 Hollow, and thus rife with power, and as Gabriel’s fate-sense tells us, its integral in the coming chaos (level 5 destiny). It too is resistant, to our peering, mostly because of all sorts of protective runes and such. Primarily these are against Forces, Matter, and a number of other destructive forces; “Life” is not one of them and thus Jack can keep track of who is where.

We have an inkling that more of our people are here, we’re just not sure how to locate and get them, since this is the FORT KNOX OF VAMPIRE CRYPTS. It’s called the “Brotherhood of the Silver Twilight”, which should automatically make it wussy for its affiliation with the word “Twilight”.

There is a long, long, long, long discussion of how to get in, find our folks and get out, with new ideas being tossed out and either refined or rejected. In the end it’s closer to a smash-and-grab operation.

First step: Simon uses his mind powers to influence a young lady into coming back to his motel room for a good Simonizing. We spare her that but instead capture her for questioning. I can’t recall getting a lot of info out of her; I think we learned that the Brotherhood is run by the son of the owner, which seems odd—letting a kid run things. We do get her keys, which are important later on as they unlock some cells. With her aside, Jack can try to make himself look like her. What he comes up with something quite Tranny-esque, but enough to maybe help us rush the place.

We go in, with the aid of our gun-slinging ally/ghoul, Tarpen John Tarpen. We storm the castle, and while TJT is off fighting ghouls we come across a shade of some sort in the hall. It flings spines of darkness at us, and we do a remarkable job of not getting harmed before it is taken out by fire.

Below we find cells chock full of loved-ones.

Oh, I forgot the dream. We have an inkling that not all will be as it seems, as Simon did his “Dream” thing, where he gets a vague image of the future over night. In that dream, he walked a house past people he didn’t know who all studied him as he passed, and in the doorways of various doors was the same sinister “Damien” child from the Omen movies. Well, from the first Omen movie anyway; not the annoying teen from the second Omen film or the middle-aged guy from the third one. At the end of his dream journey is his son, who turns red and sprouts horns before his eyes.

So anyway, this room has cells with children who are running around screaming, kicking, spewing pea soup, etc. (You know, acting like kids.) The adults are less impressively psychotic. Study of them with our senses does reveal they are indeed possessed. We start by subduing Simon’s son, which involves Jack making him sick with his life powers and then binding him.

Of course about now the big problem comes in. TJT shows up and announces we’re in trouble before he collapses. Then little Damien Thorn shows up and combat ensues. Roll initiative!

And now happens perhaps the BEST sequence of teamwork I can recall in one of our games.

Nathan tries to burn Damien (who is a Vampire). Damien repels the fire with a wave of his hand. Damien then tries to use his 15 dice of mental manipulation powers to try and make Nathan do evil bad things to the others. However, Simon’s mind powers+prime+rote allows him to neutralize nearly all of the mind-attack and the rest Nathan soaks (exactly). So he tries another, and the exact same thing happens, down to the die. Nathan has to relight his fire, so to speak. Meanwhile Gabriel is off lighting a Molotov cocktail, the favorite drink of vampires, aside from the Bloody Mary. At this point, Hank hits Damien with his pseudo-water elemental then turns the water to gasoline with is primal power. Gabriel throws the Molotov at him but gets minimal damage (1pt). But that seems to be enough because it means the guy is slightly on fire and Nathan gets the chance to stoke that flame. He frenzies and then crumbles into dust.

We gather our possessions (See what I did there?) and hit the road.

Things left to deal with:

  •  Not sure we’ve destroyed the pentagram in the Brotherhood of the Silver Twilight meeting hall and bingo parlor. (“B666! Anyone have B66? Bealzebub666?”)
  •  The succubus club may need leveling yet. We did damage to it before with our invasion but not so much on the pentagram damaging.
  • The Sears Tower is still full of evil. And in the Evil department of Sears, little boys pants are half off!
  •  Information gathered from the vampire haven implies that our greatest tasks lay ahead in Washington DC, where we will be expected to turn the Washington Wizards into a decent basketball team. No, actually our task will be more dangerous but far less arduous, as we likely deal with Sam Haight, the mastermind of the Z-Virus and other schemes.
  • We still have to kill the Mummy guy, somehow.

When the demon quotient reaches 666, the Lords of the Abyss will be brought forth to enslave man, destroy the Mummy (if they feel like it and are able to), and to renew The Kardashians TV Show for another season, cuz that’s how evil they roll!
.