31 October 2014 Session
31 October 2014 Coda Session -- Text by Gaylord Tang, except where otherwise indicated, and used with his permission.
Gaylord:
A little more than a month passed from the night the ritual was re-energized on Liberty Island. Things settle slightly, to near normalcy; in the meantime, a few Summer Court try to make some trouble, and are defeated, a few archaically-garbed folks politely inquire about and receive a bit of spare change - but nothing much more of note in the larger scheme of things.
Bobby Rodriguez heads towards the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Being a pyschometrist, Lisa figured he like to avoid riding in mass transit or other vehicles.. except Kara's cab, when it was available, as it was alive. He finds the way blocked by the Fire Department when walking down First Avenue at around East 38th. An old apartment building further in the far East 30s has caught fire. Kara is one of the cars stuck in traffic. The connect and investigate the scene - it's the fiery remnants of Arthur's apartment, with several dead caged, rat remains left over. Further detection on Bobby's part shows the place was doused with something like Agent Orange before it was set on fire - she probably shouldn't be breathing the fumes. (Kara pretended to care about this, for appearance's sake.) Bobby called it in and was given the rest of the day off to shower and recuperate.
[ Josh: Actually, she didn't, really. Someone offered her a smoke mask, and she stared at it blankly before shoving it into a pocket to (as it turned out) be useful later.
Kara, incidentally, in a rather extreme case of "wear a costume that represents your secret self" was wearing a ballerina costume out of Swan Lake, complete with headress to make her daily rounds. ]
Gaylord:
Halloween night is the second biggest garbage night for the sanitation department. James put on little fairy wings, a pink tutu, blue wig, sparkly makeup rainbow suspenders, and hops into his garbage truck, parks near the parade, and waits to be called to the site of something odd and unusual that needs to be moved, all the while kibitzing with the revelers, freaks, and fey out in full force. James suddenly gets a ring on his cell phone. It's Audrey Finch's office phone calling him, at least by the caller ID. But after one ring, the call stops. After a few minutes, it's clear that she's not going to try calling back. Maybe it was a butt dial or something like that? He doesn't call her back. He follows a group of cops moving south, and hears that there's a gunfight at the city gym! He runs past them, reaching the gym first - in time to see Boris slip out. And the gym explode in cinematic fashion. Boris didn't ser anything - black-clad soldier-y types at best sneaking in. So he snuck out.
Kelly got some City-sponsored decorating funds for a Revolutionary War-themed Halloween party that night at Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights — the oldest house in NYC, and alleged to be haunted. Kelly's dressed as Eliza Jumel (in her younger days). Fatima, the Babylonian expert from the Museum, promised to "Ignorantly" bring candy and Kelly, expecting her at this time from the upper floor of the mansion (maybe 200 feet away), can see her getting off the M2 bus on Edgecombe Avenue. She's arranging herself when a white Sprinter van with dark tinted windows suddenly swerves and hops the curb at the bus stop, to the cries of at least half a dozen of the other pedestrians who just got off the bus. She's temporarily out of view, but the cries are the typical cursing at the unseen driver, rather than screams of pain or injury.
Kelly heads downstairs over to Fatima, and becomes more alarmed at the sounds of military-grade gunfire; she rushes out - several people are wounded. The van is gone. So is Fatima.
She investigates a little further; one of the victims tried to get a license plate number, but the van didn't have any plates on it at all. Kelly truthfully answers the questions the police have, and is relieved from further party-planning duties (considering what just happened).
Someone investigated, and discovered that there had been a high-security break in at a military base in New Jersey in the last week. Arthur wasn't answering his cell. The OATH offices and Arthur's work offices also were not picking up after several rings. The Primrose Cafe was on fire. Gathering at Chumley's (during mid-morning, to grumbles by the owner), Kelly cast a tracking spell on Fatima, which showed her heading to the Municipal Building... and then vanishing from the range of her spell.
-- -- --
This was more or less the set-up for the scenario. I'd wanted to give the Accelerated system a run, possibly with a little more fighting and testing to see how it'd fit with some "standard" adventure tropes, and also wanted to give Lisa a chance to play/playtest as a player. In retrospect, I probably could have used NPC stats more tactically or abused/used the fate point system a little more for advantage. From this point, there were about three fights and two confrontations in the course of three hours.
The group gathered at the Municipal Building, after an eerily easy drive and (legal, free) parking job. There were security guards about. One of their co-workers, a receptionist, ran out to them, "Strangers, if you could please move along? There's a gas leak or bomb threat or some such thing - you know - Halloween and all that, but we have to take it seriously." Seeing how nervous she was, and Kara noticing the the security guards had silencers and two sniper nests (high above) decided to move along.
The drove the cab to the Williamsburg Clocktower building. With a "it's Halloween, no one will notice" and a little coaxing, Kara's steed flew them across the East River, right into one of the middle areas of the building - a conference room.
[Josh: *crunch!*]
As they were gathering, Bobby noticed, through touching the building, that two vampires were approaching! The door swung open, to a cloud of poison gas, to show the Cleavers! "Surrender's necessary don'tchaknow," Ward said, "we weren't paid just to let you roam aboot." And a fight, more or less, began. I statted Ward the same as Lisa's version, but bumped June as WC1. They weren't very strong combat builds, so I thought it could be an easy first challenge. And this turned out to be true: a troll, a Valkyrie and a wizard can take out an ordinary and a weak WC vampire. Ward was soon stressed and thrown out/aspected out of the building's new taxi hole. June ran/flew after soon after him, knowing they were overmatched.
Folks re-oriented themselves to the building. Bobby realized that the poison gas was a paralytic at high enough concentration, but a light breeze would safely disburse this amount of it. He fashioned additional gas protection for the group.
[Josh: Including Kara's until then unused mask, of course.]
They needed to get the building's ventilation working in the next few hours, or the whole building would be dead (the workers were all still there, just unconscious at their desks). They weren't sure where the HVAC machinery was so the group split up - Bobby and James headed downstairs while Kara and Kelly headed up towards the roof.
Kara and Kelly ran across a serious injured Aubrey Finch on the way up - she was staked in the eye and chest to a wall. After releasing her from it, and activating her "rescue me my WC minions" button on her wrist, she gasped before falling unconscious, "They took Arthur through a way in the basement. I don't know why. It's Bernard." They immediately recognized the danger and hopped onto Kara's horse to fly, fly down as fast as they could. (Kara took a compel to get dragged along - Kelly would arrive a little sooner, and in comfort. The horse did like her better!)
[Josh: The compel was actually for Kara to get cliped by a window on the way back in, ending up hanging from the sill and dragging herself in, while Kelly arrived on time on a horse carefully clip-cloping down the stairs.]
Downstairs, James and Bobby found the narrow corridor to the HVAC room blocked by a tabard-clad, black-clad soldier fellow. He was statted as WC2, but had fairly-relevant aspects: Combat sniper. Follower of "God". And another that I don't quite remember. By himself, he probably could have taken James and Bobby. But with Kara and Kelly's arrival soon after, it was only a matter of time. He was disarmed several times, got a broken arm or leg, and got taken out within two rounds of the group regathering. I though it was interesting that it seemed like a slightly harder fight that the vampires because of relevant aspects and scene aspects.
The HVAC room was on fire. A way to Summer was rapidly closing. Kara jumped in to hold it open. Fortunately, James knew these sorts of places were over-engineered and managed to get the system working while someone helped the flames die down. (The way became closing even faster without the flames.)
Slipping through, they found themselves on the outskirts of New Avalon, a large city that could be a possible winter residence for Summer's Court. Or so they were told by a group of Summer soldiers across the plaza. This could have gone several ways - Summer was relatively hostile because Jimmy was from Winter, and New York (which they all came from) now had a Winter aspect. So they let Bernard have passage with minimal to no cost, but weren't necessarily trying to stop anyone from following him.
After cutting a deal - Kara gave their leader the favor of a ride anywhere - they were given an hour's leave to do what they came for before Summer's soldier would come for them. Kelly began casting her tracking spell on Fatima (they didn't want to pay more for directions or other such help), and being easily flustered, took up the next ten minutes getting a direction.
The Babylonian plague god, naturally, was honored in Summer. And, naturally, was also not the central feature of New Avalon. In a more deserted area of New Avalon, they found the mini-ziggaurant where he still slept. Kelly, the historian, (success with style) knew the layout of the place. They came up with a plan (this was a 2-use aspect, "We have a plan"). Kelly and Bobby would head down from an airshaft at the top, while James and Kara would go through the front as a loud and fight-y distraction. Their goal was the get their friends out alive, and not wake the Babylonian plague god in the process (which is something the other sessions took pains to do).
Aspects of the inside: Plague pit, Black altar, Uneven surfaces.
Arthur was unconscious on the black altar, which was surrounded by the plague pit on three sides. Fatima was by him, apparently waving away, for hours, tendrils of disease that were trying to reach up and take them. A giant statue to the god made up the fourth. Bernard was standing behind the statue. (Had they spied before going in, they would have heard Bernard essentially tormenting Fatima/Arthur. "Why not let him die? Just walk over here with me; it'd be much easier, wouldn't it?")
Breaking the statue was bad. The pit was bad. Bernard was pretty bad. He was (aspect:) motivated by revenge. He was surprised to see the group, as they should have all been killed by his followers.
Bernard was statted as Lisa had him previously. However, in this situation I had a hard time justifying using much of the wizard side to him - he demoned out and was hellfiring the place up. And this was a foe the group had practice fighting before. It wasn't a foregone conclusion, because the goal was to get Arthur and Fatima out alive - and there were several things that probably could have happened to complicate the rescue. I was running overtime and felt the pressure, though. So the fight went against Bernard. The coin was knocked out of his front, left pocket (onto the Atlar, which was starting to wake the God before Kelly carefully took it without touching it), and Bernard - at full stress boxes and moderate and severe consequences - vanished into the plague pit.
And that was pretty much it. (Vic had saved Calla/her brother from the Primrose Cafe, and were hiding in his old haunts - the Staten Island sewers.)
Avram: Vinegar Hill. It’s near DUMBO, on the other side Navy Yards from Billyburg.
Me:
Hellfire is WC2.
Audrey's opening line was "In approximately 30 seconds, I will fall unconscious, because I am in excruciating pain. Now, what were you asking, again?"
The Cleavers were great. So politely Midwestern. "Oh, it looks like we missed a few people."
