Recaps

  • Game 08 -
  • Game 09
  • Game 10 -
  • Game 11 -
  • Game 12
  • Game 13 -
  • Game 14 -

 

GAME 01

Archie (Alan), James (Evan), Carver (Jeff), Jack (Jim), Dennison (Joe), Sampson (Paul), Nina (Darren)

Aka Marty (Alan), James (Evan), Tiberius (Jeff), Tom (Jim), Cecil (Joe), ? (Paul), Lucy (Darren)

So we wake up naked and afraid in a warehouse.  The doors are locked we know because Nina immediately bolted for one when she discovered she was naked in a room with a whole bunch of naked men and didn't know how she got there.  As we're trying to figure out individually what is going on a few things become apparent:  A pillar across the room with a many chained to it, a chubby guy in the corner who pays no attention to us, he just keeps playing a video game on a computer and powering down a pizza, and coming down the stairs is a man who greets us.  He points out that there are lockers across the room with our names on them with things in them to wear.  Two others show up.  "Mrs. White" (Betty?) and "Mr. Black".  The first man was Mr. Brown.

Rather than trying to retell this whole thing beat-for-beat, let's make this shorter. We are told that we are the ancestors of heroes.  Seems we have special abilities that may have skipped others in our family lines.  In the beginning there were the primordials.  They created the Gods (for some reason).  The Gods created all the stuff we're familiar with, as well as heroes, because the primordials now were making evil things to destroy all the stuff the gods made.  Heroes were made to protect that stuff.  We be drafted.

There's a lot (a LOT) of question asking, trying to suss out the whole scenario, and Mrs. White gives us a blessing (we gain a 2nd hit point), then Mr Brown gives us a blessing (Was that Hero's luck?).  Hero's Luck is where if the hero is where bystanders take the incidental damage rather than the hero.  Mr. Black withholds his blessing because he thinks we need to earn it.  He then prompts the man (who we've seen is a ravening zombie rather than a normal man) to attack us.  Off it's chain, it charges for Carver and takes a bite out of him.  A few of us attack (Samspon tries to climb the building to get awa, Nina tries to climb some much less treacherous shelving and fails).  Finally, Dennison steps up and puts a bullet through it's head that actually stops it (critical), leaving Mr Black a little bit stunned that we won, and gaining us Limited Immortality (We don't bleed to death when we reach zero; also we heal faster than regular people).

By now some of us have Madness points.  When you get 10 you get a free insanity, so try and collect them all!

In the lockers are suit cases.  In the suitcases are clothes, ID with new identities on them, and a card claiming we're members of the Carter Detective Agency (Presmably named for Randolph Carter).  Also in there are (7) baseball bats, (3) 38 specials, (4) Glock 9mms, and (2) Shotguns.  We each have two credit cards with a $2k limit on each.  We're supposed to itemize when we buy something.  And there are 3 cars (Minivan, Malibu, Camry).  And keys to the warehouse.

We are given the task of tracking down another of our kind:  A man named James Garner (Not Rockford/Maverick).  Then convince him to join us.  And we're supposed to take "Sludge", the guy who is playing video games, who it turns out is the worst smelling being ever.

We head out to a hotel, some of us head to Target for supplies.  While in the parking lot, a homeless man asks for a dollar, is turned down by Jack, but Sampson and Nina recognize him as one of these evil freaks that are out to get us.  So after the stranger jams a jagged bottle into Jack, drawing blood and Nina runs to get the car to run him over with, the Sampson manages to stick the guy, taking him down.  We speed away rather than deal with authorities.

We drop off bleeding Jack for Carver to heal and then we go get stuff at a different Target and bring it back.  So we're in the hotel, settling in and sleeping when James hears something and wakes up.  He gets out of bed, trips over something and falls onto some glass, then screams in pain.  The rest of us gather at his door but when Carver tries to open the door he touches the handle and gets electrocuted good!  The lights go out.  James goes into the bathroom and seals himself in.  Carver uses a fire extinquisher to bash the door knob off and open the door, then Jack and Nina go in with cell phone flashlights and look around.  Seems something let itself in (through a window that seemed closed but that could easily be opened), set a tripwire, some glass to fall on, and hooked a wire to the door from the electrical socket.

We don't see anything, but when someone from the hotel shows up and everyone moves to hide their weapons, Dennison fails to hide his in time, so the nervous hotelier runs off to call the police about the person in possession of a gun.  We scramble out with our stuff but Sludge is not a fast mover.  A very patient Archie manages to get him to the door but not out in time before the cops show up.  The rest of us can't get in our car and leave because the cops are next to it.  Archie speaks with the cops, who look at his new fake ID and then go to look at the room where the problem seems to be.  Shortly they scream and fire guns.  Everyone gets out.  The van is collected and picks up us who were down the block by now watching from a distance.  We leave the two cars behind for now and drive off.

We hit a Walmart for a few things then head to James Garner's place in Providence.  Seems he's an accountant staying in a boarding house.  Everyone there treats our envoys (James and Archie) suspciously.  Arriving on the scene they find that the manager is debating whether to go into Mr Garner's room because no one has seen him in a while.  She agrees to open the door with PCs prodding, and inside is the body of James Garner, in a pool of blood. Looks like there was some type of ritual.  The others from the boarding house come in and after some initial shock begin to go through his things.  The PCs inside send video out to us outside from cell phones and a few people go in to look around.  The crew in there are searching and arguing with one of the other boarders when someone decides to search the body.  When they do, it's mouth opens and thousands of spiders come rushing out!  The spiders injure Carver (badly) and take down the lady manager.  Others get hauled out (Archie picks someone up and carries them out).

By the time we return to the room armed for combat the spiders are gone, but now of course we've got James Garner's body and the manager's body.  So we carefully search while not touching either body.  Things found:

Mr. Garner gets up!  He opens his mouth and lets out a sound the requirers the hearers to save against or function at limited ability.  Then there's a second save for MADNESS, which some of us fail and the madness point race is on!  We engage this zombie in a fight. He takes some damage from conventional attack, and he takes damage from a stab with the obsidian knife that Nina had, and for the second time tonight Dennison finishes a zombie with a shot to the temple.

But wait, there's more!  The spiders who had vanished come back out of his corpse, but before they can do much damage, they get shotgun blasted.

We gather shit, collect the body (at the behest of Mr Brown after we call him) and blow town.  No one in the boarding house comes out of their rooms or tries to stop us.  We collect our cars from the hotel parking lot and get back to the warehouse.

We get a couple of bits of experience:  You raise your PRIMARY stat by 1 (to 14), Gain a point in an existing skill or a new skill at +0.

We do some reading assignments:

Nina reads the Journal and finds that she picks up Occult +0 which she hadn't had before, and it details that Garner was obsessed with getting back to a land he had visited in Dreams.  He did all this to himself.

Carver reads THE TOME and uses the Greek Primer, spending his +0 on the Greek, so that it is easier to translate this.  Ultimately, he gets us an english translation that we can all eventually read if we care to...

THE TOME:  Ritual #1--Prepare the body. Ritual scarification (like Mr Garner had) is performed and apparently can even make you tougher.  Ritual #2--Enter the Dreamlands.  Mr Garner was interested in returning to the dreamland that he once visited and has been trying to get back to ever since.  This can help you leave your body and go there.  Ritual #3--Bending the heart of the king.  It's a mind influencing ritual to bend the wills of others.

Also, there was a bookmark in it with a note written on it saying to James Garner a "thank you" for finally seeing things [the writer's] way and is signed by Efram Waite.

Our "Limited Immortality" Increases. Now it takes 1hr to recover the first HP from Zero, and a day to recover the subsequent HP.

There was a piece of paper written in Greek that the players managed to piece together the language using iphone apps.

Oh, and when Zombie Garner went down, a second obsidian knife fell out of him.  So we've got a second one (on Dennison) and the first one is on Nina.

And since we now have aliases in addition to our starting names, I'll probalby have to start using those instead.

 


 

GAME 02

 Marty (Alan), James (Evan), Tom Jack (Jim), Cecil (Joe), ? (Paul), Lucy (Darren)

We find out a little more about the things we gained at the end of last game.  There was a vial of powder and a vial of liquid among the things found at James Garner's place.  Marty manages to figure out that they are both drugs (Cocaine and Fentanyl).  The obsidian knives will be weilded by Lucy and [Paul].  Some of the team set to trying to make some effective weapons, using silver and other materials.  Since Jeff is now out of the campaign due to distance issues, it's decided that maybe Lucy could have been reading the book at the same time.  (The Tome, aka the book of dreams) so she gains a point of forbidden lore.  The only other person interested at this point is Cecil, so he takes up reading it.  Lucy spends a weak trying to read a PDF version of the book that we made and it turns out that while it may have information, you aren't imbued with any of its abilities, so that's a lost week.  Marty is making the argument for destryong the books.  Our only argument against at this point is "What if we need this knowledge later?"

We were told to move out of the warehouse and get a place of our own.  We pool resources and get a house and a safe house (for when we inevitably have to flee our house).  So we're in the house one night, Lucy is in her room reading the book, when she is assaulted by the ghost of James Garner, who apparently wants his book back.  We know this because he soundlessly says "Give me my book back".  We have a fight which includes a round of keepaway using the book.  In the end, he gets stabbed with one of the obsidian knives and goes away.

Cecil researches some information found on the bookmark enclosed in "The Tome".  It was signed Ephraim Waite, and mentioned a Church.  What Cecil finds is that this place existed in Boston, was raided because of missing children in the area, a whole bunch of people were rounded up but a few managed to have enough power to not get charged, while eight of them went to prison.

Now here's where I forget the connection to a house in the area.  There's a haunted house that has experienced all sorts of tragedy, the last of which was when the family who bought it had both parents committed to an asylum and the kids put in foster care.

James goes to the Asylum.  (I kind of wish he'd picked "Earnest" as his name because of how that line would read).  He's gone there to talk to two people who lived in that house.  After failing to bluff his way in the first time he gets a more sympathetic nurse the second time and manages to get to talk to the two of them individually.  He's no help.  He's gone bye-bye.  The wife is able to give a little help, talking some about the things there, but nothing that gives us a lot of help.

We decide to check out the church.  It's a ruined site and when checking the grounds, Marty falls into a hidden area below.  There's a hidden cellar that escaped the original search and inside it are two skeletons next to a cabinet.  They however are not the problem, the Night Gaunt standing over them is!  There's a fight.

Now I should mention that as a result of the earlier fight with James Garner, Cecil has passed the 10 Madness Point barrier, thus being first to have "a problem".  Whatever his insanity is, it ties right in to his blogging and documenting things without much difference.  The second to cross that line was Tom, who now refuses to lie about being Tom.  So now he's back to being Jack Reacher regardless of baggage associated with that character's past.  The third happens during this fight in the basement, when Lucy crosses the 10pt line and suddenly become certain that the obsidian knife she's weilding (and any other magic knives) are tools of evil.  She comes running in with the black knife in hand, sees the black night gaunt, and determines it's actually a part of that creature and hurls it away, forumately not hurting anyone.  Jack will pick up the knife and use it despite her warnings.  He subsequently bequeths his mortal-made silver knife to her.

Stabbies on the Night Gaunt eventually end it after only one of us goes down.  We find some stuff and then retreat.  Books from the armoire.

With Tiberius gone, James sets to scanning the new book in.  It's in Latin.  It will take a while to translate it yet so we don't know it's purpose, though it is Libre Ivonis (aka The book of Eilbon, or The Black Book).  We are back in our place, this time with Cecil reading The Tome and standing by is Jack, and James is nearby scanning the new book, when materializing from a mist comes a horrible black bloated humanoid who apparently has come for his book (Libre Ivonis).  He creates a horrible patch of inky blackness and tries to maul people.  He first grabs and pulls in Jack Reacher, then he gets Cecil.  Marty emerges from his room and tries to tackle everyone with enough force to drive them out of the cloud but just winds up in there himself.  Random bullets manage to miss most people, until we're in a situation where Cecil feels around for something in the dark and plugs it with his gun, harming a team mate.  It's looking pretty bad until a horrible stink pours in through the blackness as [Paul] manages to stab it successfully to finish it off.

Forbidden Knowledge tells us that the this gaurdian of the book is likely gone for good.  We take a few days to do side things (reading, scanning, etc.) and then we head to the haunted house.

After getting some kids outside to leave who are doing "dares", we check the place out.  Noting that it's accessible from the side door whereas everyting else is boarded up, we decide to go in the front door rather than the way that has seemingly been set up for us to come in.

Some rooms are full of furnishings while some are full of boxes of old stuff.  The first sign of something supernatural is when the light sturns on in the Living Room, shortly after that the front door slams.  We decide to take the door of the hinges, which is probably a good move since we will need to run out several times.  At one point everyone is in the main hall when Lucy gets jumped in the kitchen by something animalistic and cuts her and pins her to the ground.  She says she heard growling.  Man of us are in the same kitchen when something tries to successfully knock things out of our hands and sends a wave of fear through everyone in the room (All but Lucy failed the drop-things save, everyone failed the Fear save).  Most of us run for the exit, eventually recovering outside.  We realize that in addition to some flashlights and guns, an obsidian knife got dropped.  We want that back since it's one of two that actually hurt supernatural things.

On the subsequent incursion back into the place, the useful items (guns & knife) are gone.  We hear a baby crying upstairs, so naturally we decide basement is next!  Marty falls through the stairs, but the rest of us use ropes--well, everyone except for Lucy and James who are still at the top of the stairs waiting for a report on the search down there (and guarding the end of the rope) when James is attacked by the now visible GHOST WOLF.  Lucy takes the rope down the stairs since she can't reach the wolf.  Wolf claws James when he tries to get away.  Eventually a number of people get back upstairs and fight the wolf until it dies.  There's a whole thing with a person going down and the next one picking up his knife and attacking, lather rinse repeat.

Wolf dead (again?) we go down to check the basement.  Oh, the wolf shriveled up into something small and demonic looking (an Imp?) before it vanished.  In the basement a couple things are discovered:  Some boards that may have something behind them, and the handle of a dagger, which when [Paul] pulls it, begins to attack him as he tries to contro lit.  He winds up stabbing himself and going down eventually.  Marty tries to catch the dagger in a pale, Jack tries to hit it with something heavy, and finally Lucy hits it with a board and sends it to the ground where it remains at rest as Marty covers it in a pale.

We find some more books.  We are gong to head to the upper floor of the manor, except that has to wait for next game...


 

GAME 03

 Marty (Alan), Jack Reacher (Jim), Marvin? (Paul), Lucy (Darren)

We ended last game inside the mansion.  We actually put up the door and leave to recoup our injuries (since we don't have a specific time worry right now) and to recollect our weapons.  This will become a recurring theme.

Next time in, we poke around upstairs. In the second room the missing obsidian knife is there, on the window sill.  Everyone knows it's a trap but we want the knife so Marty moves on the knife and is promptly struck by the bed which came at him with force.  The knife is retrieved.  In the next room is a crib.  I don't recall anything attacking us in that room.

We go to the basement because that knife (the one that attacked of its own volition last game) is still there as is the section of wall through which we think there is a problem.  We come armed with tools, concrete, and water, hoping to fill the bucket with quickcrete and possibly neutralize that knife.  As one of us stands guard, one holds down the bucket, and the other two drill a hole in the bucket and prepare to fill in, Lucy hears rats!  Within seconds we are set upon by a couple swarms of rats that start taking chunks out of Jack and Marty.  We end up retreating because we don't have good means for combatting them.  We end up collecting diffrent weapons (a lot of fire) and going back.  During the interim the bad guys prepared another surprise in that it casts darkness.  Now everyone has to light shit up and forget the flashlights.  Marvin uses his WD40 and a lighter to illuminate the area, and eventually to burn down a swam.  A well-placed shotgun blast from Jack Reacher takes out the other rats.

First, a side-note about obsidian knives:  A detail that was not relayed to us by the GM last game but that is retroactively inserted this game, is that it seems when Marvin was using his ob-knife last time, it "swirled".  No one else saw it, but he swears that he could see a strange swirling effect in its surface when it made conctac with the bad guy.  What we will come to realize later in the game (Much later) is that those knives work two ways:  It helps you harm things that otherwsie could not be harmed, and it makes it easier for the evil to target you.  ("See, I told you those knives were bad!" -Lucy).

Through the crack in the wall we find it's a false facade.  On the other side is a chamber with a skeletal/lich-like being who is chained to a platform.  We advance and there's a clumsy exchange as it starts by instructing Marvin that he doesn't know where he is.  Suddenly, Marvin doesn't know where he is.  Jack Reacher succeeds in sticking it with his silver knife.  Lucy hits it with her blessed bat (Oh yeh--In the down time, Lucy took her bat to a couple churches until she found a priest who was willing to bless the bat, which was not easy).  It then tells Marvin that he's confused, and that works for a little while, but ultimately he will un-confuse and help out.  The lich-thing is destroyed and the opressive feeling in the house is diminished.  Now it's just a generic creepy house.

We collect the papers there in that room and find they are some parts of Efraim Waite's journal.  They include in them the following bit still readable information:

We visit our benefactors once more to fill them in, then we hit the road of Monhegan Island.  Upon arrival, Sludge decides he's not coming.  He's got a problem with the water and won't get on the ferry.  We don't want him anyway, so we leave him with the van (and no keys) and head across the ferry, which doesn't allow vehicles of any kind.  ACTUALLY... we don't go across right away.  There are no tickets for the early crossing, and the late crossing would arrive an hour before dark--and as we are considering whether to wait or not we get word that the ferry is runing an hour late, so we decide we'd rather not go across in the dark.

Next day we cross along with about a dozen other people.  After an hour the ship breaks down.  They get to work on the boat and Jack Reacher actually calls the shore patrol to get help, but they've already been called by the ship itself and let them know that they'll be moving soon.  About fifteen minutes later the ship is up and running.  And within a short while it stops again.  But this time the ship suddenly becomes surrounded by a strange morning fog that's impenetrable.  Then the ship is struck by something (or strikes something) and a few people fall over.  Then the ship starts to list to one side, with at least two PCs falling in (Marvin and Jack) while Lucy and Marty manage to cross to the newly inflated life raft.  The heroes (Marvin and Jack) manage to drag in a few people along with climbing aboard themselves and the boat pulls away quickly because we can see that people keep being plucked down from the surface by something below.

Eventually we made it to the rocky shore once we spotted the lighthouse light in the fog and used it to guide ourselves as close as we can to port.  We relay these experiences to the locals.  Seems the island is having a power problem.  The hotel has a generator but it's one of the few places.  They don't have a working land line.

We visit a local bar, and also look around the town square which includes a plinth with the same strange eye sombol on it that we've beeen seeing on Ephraim-related stuff.

We sleep in the Monhegan House hotel.  We have four rooms but paranoia leads us to pick the two adjoining rooms and sleep in those.  During the night something pays Jack Reacher a visit but he isn't able to relay this to anyone until after the visitor moves on to Marvin, who shrieks loud enough to alet Lucy and Marty in the next room.  Lucy opens the door and finds that there is some sort of strange amorphous figure who it turns out has a face.  It's "Lisa", a young girl who wants us to play with her.  Her idea of playing is to kiss the boys which causes them acid-like burns.  She managed to fry Jack pretty good, who managed to fail each save to get up until he at last hit 0 and was unconscious.  Marvin remembers where he saw a fire extinguisher was and retrieves it.  When he sprays it on her, Lisa freezes and slows, on second application of spray she solidifies enough to crumble and fade.

For some reason this triggers a realization by Lucy that the girl is somehow tied to the plinth.  Next day we go and check it out.  Lucy's theory:  The Plinth is used in worship, but it's also used for warding and for summoning.  She can't say exactly in what way or to what end.  So we just know the plinth is a player in this.

We go to the library.  Put on the spot about what we're looking for exactly, Marty tells the librarian we are seeking information on Ephraim Waite, any "god children" he might have, and Mr Corbett.  She knows of only one Corbett, and that's Edward; she gives us the address.  Among other things found are a picture in a book about the local town square taken in 1956 which includes in it...Ephraim Waite!  So, 66 years ago he was lurking around.  (She snaps a picture of it with her cell phone.)  Reportedly the Waite family have been around here for a very long time.  She has no idea about any "god-children".

We decide to go scope out the Corbett place from the road.  When we reach the end of the driveway we see a small cairn of stones with the eye sombol on it.  We go past and eventualy find another angle to enter the place, but to no realy stealthy effect.  3 of us made it, but Marty did not, and so we hear a dog in the distance.  We are outside near a well.  The dog rushes us but translocates suddenly and is behind Marty, rending his back pretty good with its claws.  Marvin got on top of the platform over the well, but that turns out to be a problem for him when another gooey-g-g-ghost comes out of the well.  The boy who had been trapped in the well was Timmy, and the dog is Lassie--of course.  We try to deal with these things and as we do, Timmy successfully makes contact with Lucy and she instantly knows this is far worse than with Lisa!  On he next action she has to quickly get this goo/acid off her skin and does so by using a knife to slice the affected skin off and pitch it away!

Eventaully one of the obsidian-weilders manages to destroy the dog, which leads to a demoralized Timmy's defeat.  Some of us have some new insanities.  I believe Marvin got one (related to being unable to truthfully give information about himself to people he didn't completely trust) and Lucy got one wherein she becomes obsessed with an object or trinket (The blessed bat, which obviously works because it hurt that one guy; which she has named Louie, as in Louisville Slugger).

That's where we leave off.

 


 

GAME 04

Under many different names:  Alan, Evan, Jim, Paul, Darren

So we're on Monhegan island.  We had once been on-point, motivated, directed... but a month off seems to have us puzzled for what we are doing and why.  This is underscored when we pick up from where we were, in the back yard of Mr. Corbit's estate.  Now we've just arrived and been assailed by Timmy and Lassie in the back yard but for some reason we go up and knock on the back door?  I think most of us were so adled by not still being "in the moment" that we didn't know what to do.  So that happened... and the owenr opened the door and wanted to know what we were doing in his back yard!  This eventually escalates after a nonsensical conversation to a point where we just leave.

So what now?  Well, we regroup, try ot remember why the hell we're here, and eventually settle on the fact that A) The Founders Festival is TONIGHT, B) Mr. Corbit will likely attend which means he'll be out of the house.  So we either wee what he's doing at the festival or invade his house.  We choose the latter.  We post up down the road and wait for him to leave and when he walks by we head to his place.  We go in through the back door, scope out the first floor, and decide on going DOWN since the basement is always the problem in horror films.  Sure enough, we find a door with the familiar EYE symbol on it.  We open it and someone sounding like a child says, "Uncle Effraim?  Is that you?"  And when we get in it says, "You're not uncle Effraim" and attacks us from its deep dark pit.  This is ALICE, one of Effraim Waite's godchildren.  What happens next would be keystone cops level if it weren't so horrible.

Patrick, Jack, and Marty move in to attack it.  Minor success (it can be hurt with fire).  When Patrick drops, Lucy runs in and drags him back as far as he can in a move (to the door).  James decides to drag him ou the rest of the way rather than engage.  Jack drops.  Lucy grabs him and drags him back out of reach, readies to go fill in the gap.  James again takes Jack further out of the room, so with just Marty there, he's the only target!  So he drops.  Lucy runs in and drags him back.  James, rather than engaging or continuing what he's doing with the third body, instead grabs a body he's already move and drags them further away.  This leaves Lucy with one last desperate move to pull Marty out of the room and push the door closed, and since the door is warded, it stays inside.

James and Lucy drag the others all the way back to the road and to the place we'd hid in earlier.  Half an hour later everyone is conscious.  We limp back to town unsure what to do next but most of us with only 1 HP (3 of us from that fight, 1 of us from last game).  With only one healthy person we go back to the hotel and rest.

As we do, Lucy thinks he (she) and James should go and see the festival.  What the end up seeing is that the town is LOADED with drunken revelers since the alcohol is free.  People dance, but as it goes on they start to perform ceremonial dances that they aren'te even aware are ceremonial.  They just dance, but the music and whateve enchantments are in the air compel them to recreate the pagan revelry necessary.  Eventually there is one last femal drunken reveler and she is the winner of this "dance-off".  Now everyone in the town is wearing halloween-style costumes, but the thing that comes to annoint the winner is most decidedly not in costume!  This is is a classic DEEP ONE, who scoops her up and carries her to the beach.  Knowing that he's taking her to the sea and that the two of them taking on a couple hundred people single-handedly is a fool's errand, Lucy and James run back to the Hotel.

When they report to the others what happened, Jack questions why they didn't save her.  "What the hell should we have done?"  "You said they were all drunk! You could have distracted them and got away with the girl!  I'm very disaapointed in you both!"  Which escalated to curse words exchanged and then Lucy punching Jack with a strike that would kill another person.  Jack is upset that it escalated to blows out of a "disagreement" but doesn't strike back, and Marty gets in the middle.  Jack demands an apology and doesn't get one.

Next day we find out who the people were (the 5 on the stage who were not dancing and who likely were judging or causing the dance contest).  There's Mr. Corbit, the Sheriff, the Mayor, the owner of the Hotel (we are in), and one other (I forget who).

First we consider killing all the 5 heads but Jack feels that's a lot of unnecessary killing, and for Lucy it's more like the task become insurmountable if we have to take out the 4 heads, go after Corbit AND Alice-in-the-basement.  PLUS we plan to destroy all these wards and get off the island.  The plan becomes:  Take out Corbit, the leader, then Alice, then figure out what to do next if we're healthy enough.

We break into Corbit's place, encounter him upstairs, and one of the godchildren we hadn't met, Johnny, who lives under the bed.  He rolls out, a hideous ball of slime, and we battle him with Fire while Patrick puts his slegehammer into the head of Corbit, discovering he is indeed not normal when his face cracks but he continues talking.

In a pretty quick fight (for us) we managed to put down Johnny and Patrick puts Corbit on fire.  As he dies he calls out to Johnny to go get Nolan!

As we're rifling through notes in his study and trying to decide how best to lure Nolan, he shows up on his own and he's the fifth godchild (In order by encounter:  #1 Lisa at the Hotel, #2 Timmy in the back yard at the well, #3 Alice in the cellar, #4 Johnny from under the bed, #5 Nolan the other house sludge).  We survive this one with a minimum of unconsciousness (I thin one character dropped) but this one was immune to Fire.  It took a shotgun blast from James to the  thing's brain that was suspended in it's goo-like form before it dropped.  Notes in the study seem to indicate there were 5 godchildren total and that apparently the one in the basement will be fine with cold or physical attacks, so we have to use fire on it.  Especially since during the first encounter the two people who had obsidian knives both dropped and their knives are still in that room near pool that Alice emerged from.

Seeing that she's not immune to fire, we close in with fire attacks.  Some have WD40 and a lighter, some have Aquanet and a Lighter, James has a tank from he hadrware store usually used for spraying for bugs but it's loaded with flammable liquid.  Oh yeh, we spent a lot of time at the hardware store this game.  We cornered the island's market on Sledge Hammers and many other things.

We open the door and the creature on the other side is... above the door!  Fortunately the two in front were able to spot it right away.  I think it was Jack who hit it with a molotov cocktail.  Marty pulled back to not be under where a flaming creature might come down, and the rest of us did a quick step in, burn it, then step back.  We lit her up undil she stopped movie and died there on the ground in front of the warded door.

Now the wards around town worked like this:  The one at the center of town anchored LISA and allowed her to go anywhere on the island.  The one at the well allowed Timmy to roam the grounds.  The One at the front gate to the corbit manor allowed Nolan to wander the grounds, the one at the front door of the manor anchored Johnny to inside the manor, and the one on the cellar door kept Alice down in the cellar.  And the shorter the distance they were kept to the stronger they were.

We need to destroy the wards.  4 of them are easy.  The one in the town square we take a dry run at but noise alerts locals to come check things out so we hide.  The Ferry arrives the next day and after some voting we opt to leave the island, though we are considering gathering material on the main land to go back and destroy the last ward in the center of town square.  Also, it would be nice to make sure that THE GAPING HOLE IN THE WORLD through which they were summoned and which Alice guarded is somehow filled in.  (I"m thining we forget about that room but the room that leads to it needs to be filled in).

 


 

GAME 05

This week we are known as Jack Reacher (Jim), Archie (Alan), Cecil (Joe), and Lucy (Darren)

We collect what we need and head back to the island with the intent of taking out the last of the mystic wards, the one in the town square.  Turns out the object just falls right off of the base it is set into, so after having Archie find us someone who could boat us out to the island then give us a quick lesson in use of the raft thingie to get closer to shore, use getting there, sneaking into town, we didn't need to destroy it on the spot.  Instead we pluck it off there, make for the shore, deface it (after several attempts) until it has holes burnt into it, and then go back and rendezvous with our rent-a-captain and get back to shore.

Things we knew from the end of last game:  Efraim had apprentices of sorts around the world.  One is an Antique Dealer in Salem Massachusettes, another is Phillip Carstairs, a Psychiatrist in Maine.  "Carstairs has made contact" a note said.  Contact with what or whom?  We'll undoubtedly find out, because we head up his way.

We gather some supplies and head up.  As we get closer to his place we are refilling at a gas station when we meet an old man out of central casting, a local who wants to jaw with us about what's new and where we're headed.  Seems he another guy came through a couple days ago going the same direction we did, indentifying himself as Professor Winter.  He's from "That university in Augusta".  He hasn't come back this way that the guy has noticed.  Also, flying cows.

I was going to let that dangle there like so many teats, but I'll elaborate.  Seems this guy himself (Gas station guy) has seen flying cows.  We ask where, get a general idea, etc, and then head off in the direction of the Carstairs place, which is the same direction.  Cecil devises the idea of using a panormal group looking into weird phenomena like Flying Cows as the reason we are out here.

The road to the house is long, winding, and dangerous.  It has a number of features that would make a quick escape impossible especially if the weather were bad.  When we arrive, the place has a blue car parked out front which we will find eventually is a rental, so likely the Professor's.  We leave Sludge in the van/suv/whatever, and decide on the direct approach.  Multiple knocking attempts give way to simply opening the door and walking in.

A search of the place yields a couple of interesting things.  Just inside is a note from Winter to Carstairs saying he's going out to the Native American burial site.  In the master bedroom where someone has been sleeping is the Diary of Professor Jeremy Winter.  Among other things he's going to go out to the site according to an entry two days ago.  Also, there's a pair of glasses.  Jack Reacher puts them on and is weirded out.  He starts to explain they're hazardous to your health and before he can finish the sentence, Lucy has taken them out of his hand and put them on.  Everything is black except where there would be a, let's call it an "aura of life".  We appear quite vibrant.  Sludge (later on) will appear quite gray, as will during their encounters, Carstairs and Winter.  The tress and wildlife of the forest are quite flashy was well.  Side effect of the glasses, we soon discover is that the more you wear them the more they f-with your head.  Much later on, Lucy will get some insanity points for wearing them too much.

We hang around a while and decide we should move our vehicle to around behind the house.  Lucy goes out to do that and when she does, the vehicle seems to break beneath her.  She's a mechanic, so she gets out and looks and finds that roots have shot up under the vehicle and wrapped around both axels and the front one is torn free.  No way back using this vehicle.  As she sees the roots moving and discovers that behind her the biggest tree in the area has grown a face, she leaps on top of the van to escape the roots and pleads with Sludge to get out and run, which he does, but he decides to run straight away into the forest.

The tree topples the van and Lucy runs back to the house.  As she runs in, everyone else runs out... to... fight the tree?  First person gets flattened for their effort with one big tree limb swat.  We get everyone inside eventually, but Sludge is gone.  Later Lucy will spy him from the upstairs window as he's in the distance following the long dirt road back to the main road.

We try to find ways to burn the tree (which took minimal damage from a WD40+Lighter combo shot, and only a point from a badly aimed lantern oil throw from Lucy.  But it is afraid of fire enough that when the team start cutting up wood into logs, wrapping them in linen, and soaking them in WD40 and throwing them out there onto the tree base and then lighting that, which causes the tree to MOVE AWAY.  It's still out there, still dangerouns, but it does seem to understand the Frankensteinian concpet of Fire Bad.  We use this as a moment to siphon gas from the van, using a bucket and some hose scrounged from the destroyed rental card.  Oh yeh--the tree decided to kill the rental too, so it's undrivable.

During out sleep, something wakes us up by scratching on the front door, then the back door, and then a window.  Ultimately it is on the roof at some point.  Nobody sees what, though Lucy tries with the glasses.  However when we don't let it in, it lets itself in upstairs and then wanders down the stairs to us in the form of a SCARECROW.  We try to put fire to scarecrow and will eventually have success but not before it's evil touch tries to drain the life from Lucy, paralyzing her temporarily.  I think it was the axe blows of Archie that took it out.

In the wee hours of the morning we get our next visitor, in the form of what is obviously some iteration of Professor Winter.  He speaks oddly low and stilted and is very confused by our presence.  Cecil gets him to come in at gunpoint at which point we ask him questions that really don't net us much more information.  He asks to go to the bathroom, Archie refuses to leave him alone and demands to hold it for him and aim cuffs the man, yanks down his pants and lets him sit and do his business.  We can see Archie, Archie can see Winter (all of him) when we see Archie's expression become horrified.  The thing that inhabits Professor Winter unzipped hims man-flesh suit and stepped out in some sort of insectoid form, covered in fungus, and then broke through the bathroom window and flew away.  Archie scoops up the man suit with a shovel and shoves it out the window then we decide we can close up the bathroom.  I think we'll just hop on one foot for a day or two.

Not long after this, headlights... then someone at the front door.  At this point we know there's no point in discussion so when the door opens, everyone sees Carstairs and unloads on him.  But he is tougher than us.  He takes one point from Archie, then swats Archie flat.  He takes a second point from a bullet from Lucy then swats her flat, which is something he seems to do quite easily.  For some reason he then flees, instead of doing the party.  We close the door and wait some more.

I believe this stalemate is where we leave off, with him likely out on the porch waiting for anyone to come to the door.

 

 

 


 

GAME 06

Jim, Alan, Paul, Jeff, Darren.

We are still in the cabin in the woods.  Outside somewhere are:  The big evil tree, Bugman who used to be Professor Winter, The strange creature who calls himself Phillip Carstairs.

We are in the house, playing the usual game of “what’s that scratching at the window” and “what’s that walking on the roof” when something proceeds to walk the perimeter of the house smashing windows.  Finally it gets in and “it” is the bugman that had been disguised as Professor Winter.  As he we engage him in an old fashioned shoot-out, he returns fire with a strangely jagged piece of metal that fires black ooze out of it.  Said ooze, covers and paralyzes Jeff’s character, sending him (at least in his own head) into an endless void.  Alan’s character tries to scrape it off but the darkness is absorbing into him, and he too will get coated in the stuff before the fight is over.

Coming down the stairs is a bug that is some sort of assistant/familiar/partner of Bugman.  When bugman goes down, that bug tries to flee, but is pursued by Paul’s character, who shoots it at the top of the stairs, causing it to not only die, but to produce a strange jar-like container which holds in side it… a brain!

What’s more, it speaks.  Professor Winter has somehow been made a brain-in-a-jar.  Arcane runes on it help determine his connection to the world. That is, his speech, sight, hearing, etc. can all be turned off.  But having recently (like seconds ago) been consigned temporarily to a void, Alan’s character objects to shutting him off like that.

I’m losing a lot of details by jumping between scenes.  But we go up into the mountain to the tribal burial ground in order to see if we can close whatever gate there was.  For once we are all healed when this scene begins, and we’re not certain that’s even necessary, since what we encounter next pretty much can one-shot us.  We find the dig site, some crumbled rock that was likely a ruin, a gap in the dig hole where likely something had once sat (perhaps the container thing that contains Winter).  All we know is that there is an ancient zombie who presents himself chanting IthaquaIthaquaWendigo as it closes in and bites people, taking down two of us before the others put a few obsidian knife-holes in it.  We don’t see any flying cows, portals, or anything else.  So we take our jar-head and go home.

Did I mention Sludge?  No?  Oh, there’s a reason for that.  Last time we saw the big evil (mobile) tree from a distance, it had Sludge crucified on it.

So we’ve got a new sidekick, and the lack of smell more than makes up for the lack of a body!

We eventually get home.  The trio of mentors insist that we keep track of the head; we can’t ditch him with them, which is fine since we can on occasion set him own with a TV equipped with Alexa for vocal commands.  Mr Black confirms that the twisted jagged piece of metal is indeed a weapon.

We still have the antique dealer to deal with so we go to Salem Mass to visit Curious Goods, home of another of Ephraim Waite’s evil minions.

“Mr Shiny” runs the place.  He has an assistant named Milo, who turns out to be normal.  We get there and engage him in usual shopping exercises.  The problem comes when my character uses the magic evil glasses (henceforth known as the Death Shades) to see that Mr Shiny is something horrible and magical and as soon as I look at him, he knows the jig is up and a fight breaks out.  He terrifies Milo and we go after him with guns and whatever else is lying around the shop.  Mr. Shiny is relieved of his lifeforce and Milo helps us go through all the stuff in the shop.  Seems he has a special room of special items.

Milo helps us by going through all the records in the back room and finds a common import connection in Ephraim Waite.  When he backtracks this he finds an assortment of items and their new owners out there in the world…

·       Ferris Widmark, NY Stockbroker, owning the “Sword of Wrath”

·       Dalia Vancov, Croatian heiress in Boston, owns the “Blood Ankh”

·       Galees Carpenter, Antique Collector in Newark, NJ, who owns the “Hand of Glory”

·       Darcy Fulcrum, on whom we know little due to a research fail

·       Cerus Hosa, Nigeran embassy attache in D.C. who owns an African Fetish

·       Todd Zakaria, a NY Times reporter with a Human Skull.  I mean a magic one.  I’m sure he has a normal one too.

 

We go after the closest one: The heiress in Boston.  We try to surveil, but her place is tucked away on Nob hill.  Finally we just end up following her to an event which happens to be an event for Childrens’ charity.  This would be fine except that the “Blood Ankh” takes on magical properties when it is  bathed in the blood of children.  Sure enough there’s an auction in which the winning lucky children get to spend the day with Dalia…The last day of their lives!  She takes them back to her place, we follow, and by the time we break in she’s already in mid-vampire mode.  Both kids are out cold, one of them is being siphoned of her blood.  We engage her and her two minions.  We do some damage but by the time the thugs are down and it’s just her, there are only two of us left standing.  When she finally goes down, we get awakened and head out with anything we find in a search of the house (which is not much).  We’ve got the other people for leads, so we’re not too concerned.

 


GAME 07

Playas:  Alan, Paul, Joe, Darren

 

Last game we had finished off one of the six people who had artifacts (The Blood Ankh), so that left a handful of artifacts:  The Sword of Wrath, The hand of Glory, an African Drum, A human ceremonial skull, etc.  Now I could go into the retrieval of each one, but that seems kind of unnecessary, seeing as how we didn’t run into fights getting any of them.  Of course we are suspicious (as players) of how easily this is going, but what we really should have been asking is, “Why is this brain-in-a-jar being so helpful?”  Well, with all the artifacts that we could find retrieved (there was one that we had very little knowledge of), we are doing shifts as always, sleeping at home, when a loud bang takes place on the front door.  We find that a horde of normal looking people are trying to get into the house through the front door, which they do easily.  As we’re being inundated, on the first floor and at the top of the stairs, Alan’s character grabs the sack of artifacts and goes out the window, which only gets him a little ways because they are all over him.

We start unloading into the crowd and they definitely are “normal people” because while they’re calling for us to give them the artifacts they easily take damage!  We’re eliminating two people per point of damage.  Pretty soon they are all down and we realize we need to leave before the gunshots draw cops and anyone coming down the streets sees bodies everywhere.  As we collect our things and get to the car, the head-in-a-jar that is Professor Winter proceeds to do the evil “It’s unfortunate you have survived this long” speech.  Seems he has been mentally calling these people from around the neighborhood.  We set to trying to bash the hell out of him, which we do succeed at but only after several times Winter compels one PC to attack another.

We burn the splattered brain bits and hit the road.  Back at the garage with the colorful trio, conferring with them they point out that maybe we missed the artifact back at Curious Goods.  We head there and upon arrival, Milo sees us, screams and runs into the back room.  When we rush him and get through the door, he is at an altar and using the last artifact!  From it he summons the big-bad!  I forget what the creature is called, but he’s big enough break down the walls and ceiling around him so we can all target him.  His tricks are to play music to rend reality, induce more madness with his flute music, and tentaclize the people in front of him.  We blast away and he takes damage from anything, but has LOTS of hit points.

Forgot to mention we have company this time.  Brown, White, and Black decided to come with us.  They had misdiagnosed the usefulness of the head-in-a-jar earlier and supposedly are along to make it up for us.  What the ultimately end up being is 3 get-out-unconsciousness-free cards, as on three occasions when someone is about to go down they throw themselves in front of the final blow, basically absorb that blow.  In order, White, Black, then Brown go down in big bloody red smears.  We get the heck out of there.  The ruptures in reality are gone that he was causing but for the locals, the madness remains as they are still flipping out.  Nothing we can do about it.

Back at our shop we go to sleep (in shifts still) when someone shows up.  We forgot to grab the artifact when we finished off the creature from beyond but it’s here now…in the hands of Milo, the dead caretaker from Curious Goods, who has shown up with a decidedly Ephraim Waite aura to him.  He chants the classic Call of Cthulhu phrase about “Strange Aeons” and then begins to animate the artifacts.  ALL OF THEM.  Each one of us happened to have one.  Paul’s character had an obsidian knife, Joe’s had the sword of wrath, Alan’s had…something, mine had the glasses.  Each item breaks free and if it has a form of attack it does so.  Daggers rip themselves free and go stabby stabby, the drum plays a sleep-inducing rhythm toward one person at a time, the hand of glory blinds one person for a round once every round, and Ephraim himself is attacking as well.

I have my character attack the floating glasses and set my sights on going after the skull thing that was left near the entrance by Ephraim when it’s suggested that we should be concentrating on Waite.  Round after round we make saves vs blindness and sleep, duel and grapple with floating weapons, and try to bash on a body that is already quite ruined when we realize that yes, we are destroying this body but it’s not making the fore that animates it any weaker.  Joe’s character makes a forbidden Lore and decides that the artifacts are fueling him.  That’s why he put them out into the world; she he always had a power source out there to call upon to re-enter this world.  My character starts taking out artifacts with her baseball bat and eliminates over half of them.  Now it seems there is a portal open in the shop, like the one that opened at the curiosity shop.  Waite is trying to bring through the same creature we fought earlier.  Right now it’s just a tentacle or two lashing out at us during the fight, but when all the artifacts are destroyed, Waite takes one more point of direct damage and goes down.  The gate closes.

So in the end, Ephraim Waite, Professor Winter, Sludge, the three mentors, and countless extras have gone and we are left.  Seems now we have a level of madness resistance that makes us immune to these things.  In fact, over the ensuing weeks we each lose madness points at a rate of 1D6 per week, losing our existing insanities (except as characters want to keep them or use them to influence their characters), until we are normal.

The battle is won.  We’re not sure if there was more to do but if there is, we can’t see what.

Gained this episode was another point to your Primary stat, taking it to 16—your first stat with a +2.  We got another skill point.  We got immunity to madness.

 


 

GAME 08