Ars Mysteriorum
07-24-2008, 10:55 AM
So, I created a scenario for Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium to be run. The players, on a whim, decided it would be fun to set it in England. Luckily, I pride myself on having worked on my British accent for Warhammer games (even though, technically, it would be a German accent for Warhammer...).
Anyways, the characters.
We've got Jake, an investigative disciple who dresses to the nines and carries around what the other players have deemed as his "pimp cane." His drive is Integrity. Where the character lacks in strength, he makes up for it with creativity in his attacks.
Then there's Buster Wolf (names for Terry Bogard's awesome special move from King of Fighters where he says, "Are you OK? BUSTER WOLF!"), the combat disciple. He's a huge alcoholic and his drive is Hate. He managed to get his hands on an assault rifle, but ends up using his bare hands to make weapons from his enemies' limbs and bones in the middle of combat more than anything else.
Then, the creepiest character, Lars. Lars is the Sorcery Disciple, and he's a specialist in microbiology.. His drive is Misery, and apparently this Drive applies to more than just demons. He wants the whole world to feel misery, and his offhand comments in character made me shit bricks at times.
Their mentor is Mr. Welldone (in homage to the hella creepy commenter on creepypasta.com), an old English gent who never stops grinning. When it's quiet, you can hear his teeth creaking under the pressure of his mirthless smile.
Their headquarters is an incredibly old bank, where the vault acts as their weapons store-room and key defensive point if shit goes south. Jake's room is simple, with only the bare essentials, which his dog, Lady, keeps under guard. Wolf's room is basically a small gym filled with free weights (he uses a truck axle as a bar for his bench press), booze, and porn (he has a habit of confiscating any porn from any location they visit). Lars spends most of his time sealed in his lab, where he works on developing microbiological weaponry (that can't be good...).
The scenario in question involved some corrupt MI5 agents. After infilitrating and uncovering a highly funded terrorist cell, the leader of the group of agents (Nigel Evans) decided to take advantage of the terrorists plans to destroy Manchester's Central Business District to make an early retirement by supplying tactical information of the best places to strike. Nigel attempted to convince his friends and subordinates, Tara Haynes (the infiltrator) and David McPhee (longtime partner of Nigel) to lend their aid. David, the patriotic type, refused. Nigel pressured him with an old shame, and Tara added her own arguments (though she wanted to run away with David because she had long had the blazing red hots for him).
David relented. Torn apart by the grief, David confided in Tara, who used the emotional moment to admit her love for him. They slept together.
Sadly, David could not stand betraying both his country and his wife in the same night, so he blew his brains out in a hotel bathroom right in front of Tara's eyes.
A Hanekladd demon (created with the Demon Generator), which preys on the suicidal after possessing a person grief-stricken by witnessing a loved one's suicide, felt her grief and possessed her almost instantly. The demon got dressed and left to go on a killing spree. The demon was aware that Tara's clothes contained the data essential to the terrorist's plans and Nigel's dreams of sandy beaches, but didn't care in the least. The beautiful, delicious growth of the festering flower of grief in Tara's soul had consumed its mind.
Shortly after this, a divorced mother was found eviscerated with eight parallel slices across her abdomen in her son's bedroom. The son was missing. Oddly, a freshly tied noose was found hanging in the son's closet.
Enter the Cabal, at the behest of a police contact.
After some investigation, Lars discovered a strange poison yellowing the flesh around the wounds that eviscerated the mother, Wolf (while looking for porn under the bed, which turned out to be gay porn, just to irk the player) chanced upon a blood-stained photograph of two older men and a younger woman at a bar. The back of the photo stated, "David, Nigel, and Tara having fun at the Black Stag, our usual hangout, 25/9/03."
The Black Stag was occupied by 12 undercover MI5 agents looking for Tara Haynes, who carries the plans they need to become rich men and is also possessed by the demon. Upon showing the photo to the bartender, the bartender gave a nigh imperceptible signal towards the MI5 agents and pulled up a shotgun. The fight was on.
Wolf started the fight with maniacal laughing as he smashed an agent's face in with a bar stool, leapt on the bar, and rushed towards a throng of five very shocked agents. Shots were fired, with Jake taking a wound through his concealed armor.
Then Lars cast Dresden. Everything went to hell as the agents and the bartender began screaming and clawing at the flesh they believed to to be burning away under the heat of infamous flames. Jake broke a bottle of booze over the bartender and tossed his lighter on him to allow the bartender to get the full effect of the Dresden experience. Wolf's blinding hatred resulted in him grabbing an agent and using him as a ram to charge another (the human ram found his neck at a new and interesting angle as a result of having his head used to snap another agent's spine), followed up by a shiver-arm to another agent (his neck snapped as his head hit the corner of a table), a knife into the solar plexus of another (whose guts spilled out all over Wolf's pants) who was then thrown at the last of the group of five, shattering his bones as he found himself imbedded in the wall. The whole time, Jake attempted to remind Wolf to leave one alive... quite unsuccessfully.
Lars, drunk with the misery he was causing his foes, used his own knife to open up a foe from his abdomen to his neck, exposing his ribcage. Jake managed to throw an agent down to the ground and choke him out with his boot-heel.
Only four agents were left. Wolf smashed two of their heads together and stomped on the head of the one agent who survived the experience. He then tore the arm out of another, but the fourth was just out of his reach. Jake finished him off with a whip of his cane into the agent's neck.
They put out the fire and examined the place, finding a PO Box key with a tag saying "Nobody's Business," and a piece of paper with Nigel's address on it. They also discovered that the bodies were MI5 agents, and took their badges for later use. They decided that fire maybe wasn't such a bad idea, and, after stealing a few bottles of booze, torched the place to stall the authorities and buy time to figure out what was going on.
From here, the team split up, sending Wolf to the Post Office and Lars and Jake to Nigel's apartment. There were also some rather incriminating files on Nigel's heavily protected computer (Lars hacked it, just barely), which stated an agreement to exchange Plans with a terrorist cell called Al Moodam for £2,000,000. Nigel's heavily encrypted journal (Bullseyed by Lars, not taking any more chances) also stated that Nigel and Tara Haynes (the female in the picture found at the first location) had helped their MI5 comrade and friend (David McPhee, also from the picture) conceal the murder of his wife's lover. Nigel intended to use this to pressure David into complying with his plans to betray his country. There were also cryptic directions at the end:
"At the farmhouse, six steps in, four steps left."
The journal went on to quickly state:
"McPhee shot himself; Haynes missing, has plans."
Lars checked Nigel's e-mail, and found an unopened message from Elizabeth McPhee, David's wife:
“I need to talk to you. He accepted me after what I did to him… I don’t know if I can go on living without David. Call me.”
Lastly, there were GPS coordinates to Al Moodam's HQ.
Jake went into the bathroom to take a leak and discovered jets of blood on the sink and floor. There was also that strange yellowish liquid. Shrugging, Jake made water. As he pissed, all the yellow liquid flying about resulted in a flash of knowledge blasting into his mind, making Jake pee all over the bathroom (it would, wouldn't it?). He now knew the demon's name. After the revelation, Jake doused the room in hydrogen peroxide to cover up the DNA he'd been kind enough to spray everywhere.
Meanwhile, the Post Office box was filled with nothing but a trap intended for Haynes. Luckily, Wolf was the one who had volunteers to go there. After yet another bloody mess (which included a failed attempt to pull an agent apart, so Wolf settled on yanking the man's head and spine out and he ended up using the spinal chord as a sort of whip) and two agents running for their lives, Wolf discovered a hastily written note on one of the agents bodies to follow up on a lead where someone resembling Haynes had been spotted at the Wythenshawe Hospital psychiatric ward.
The group met at a pub, had a few mid-morning pints and went to the hospital.
The receptionist told them that a woman from MI5 had gone to meet one John Walton (a schizophrenic) for questioning regarding a case and should still be in his cell. After the Cabal flashed their newly acquired MI5 badges, they went to John's padded cell to find a decapitated nurse (eight wounds) a seperate jet of blood, and more yellow liquid, and a barred window neatly sliced open by bloody claws. The only forieign object in the cell (other than those already mentioned) was a paper-clip, bent into a straight line.
Jake used confound to gain access to the surveillance cameras, and watched John attempt to pierce his throat with the paper-clip. Tara entered the cell and sprouted three extra fingers on each hand adorned with long, dripping claws. She proceeded to neatly pierce John non-lethally, which made his body go rigid and fall limp. A nurse walked in and was callously decapitated with an off-handed swipe. Tara ignored the dead body, sliced the window open, grabbed John, and leapt out. When Jake checked outside the window, eight long furrows were found on either side of the window all the way to the ground.
After destroying the footage of the demon and the Cabal's presence, they went to Al Moodam's hideout. A well cast Miserere, use of intimidate (to convince the terrorists that the Cabal was from MI5 and that they were completely surrounded), and use of an assault rifle to shoot those not convinced, resulted in a lot of very confused and scared terrorists beating tracks. However, they knew it wouldn't last long. The group quickly hacked a computer (Bullseyed by Lars, again no longer taking chances), and downloaded a bunch of pictures. The terrorists had tailed Tara, David, and Nigel, and had taken photos of Nigel and David's wife embracing on her porch (the street address clearly visible), and David and Tara kissing. There were also recent pictures of Tara near an abandoned farmhouse, which the terrorists believed to be a secret MI5 installation. Thinking they were about to be betrayed, the terrorists had been preparing a strike against the farmhouse. The farmhouse is no installation, but rather the demon's lair.
The group tried to piece together the plot on the ride over to the McPhee residence. Interestingly, despite a lack of evidence, the group automatically suspected that David and Tara were sleeping together. I have no idea how they knew. Weird.
The Cabal arrived at Elizabeth's house to find the door slashed open and a suicide note on the counter:
"No one loves me. Not David, not Nigel. No one. I'm done with this unloving world."
Before the Cabal can react, they hear the sound of a car peeling out of McPhee's driveway. Utilizing Tara's excellent driving skill, it's impatient to complete the corruption of Tara's soul and has elected to use her Drive skill to get there faster.
The Cabal leapt into their truck and gave chase. Little did they know that the terrorists they hadn't killed at the HQ had followed them and would soon be joining the chase as well.
We stopped here. The dramatic conclusion at the farmhouse comes next Wednesday!
Anyways, the characters.
We've got Jake, an investigative disciple who dresses to the nines and carries around what the other players have deemed as his "pimp cane." His drive is Integrity. Where the character lacks in strength, he makes up for it with creativity in his attacks.
Then there's Buster Wolf (names for Terry Bogard's awesome special move from King of Fighters where he says, "Are you OK? BUSTER WOLF!"), the combat disciple. He's a huge alcoholic and his drive is Hate. He managed to get his hands on an assault rifle, but ends up using his bare hands to make weapons from his enemies' limbs and bones in the middle of combat more than anything else.
Then, the creepiest character, Lars. Lars is the Sorcery Disciple, and he's a specialist in microbiology.. His drive is Misery, and apparently this Drive applies to more than just demons. He wants the whole world to feel misery, and his offhand comments in character made me shit bricks at times.
Their mentor is Mr. Welldone (in homage to the hella creepy commenter on creepypasta.com), an old English gent who never stops grinning. When it's quiet, you can hear his teeth creaking under the pressure of his mirthless smile.
Their headquarters is an incredibly old bank, where the vault acts as their weapons store-room and key defensive point if shit goes south. Jake's room is simple, with only the bare essentials, which his dog, Lady, keeps under guard. Wolf's room is basically a small gym filled with free weights (he uses a truck axle as a bar for his bench press), booze, and porn (he has a habit of confiscating any porn from any location they visit). Lars spends most of his time sealed in his lab, where he works on developing microbiological weaponry (that can't be good...).
The scenario in question involved some corrupt MI5 agents. After infilitrating and uncovering a highly funded terrorist cell, the leader of the group of agents (Nigel Evans) decided to take advantage of the terrorists plans to destroy Manchester's Central Business District to make an early retirement by supplying tactical information of the best places to strike. Nigel attempted to convince his friends and subordinates, Tara Haynes (the infiltrator) and David McPhee (longtime partner of Nigel) to lend their aid. David, the patriotic type, refused. Nigel pressured him with an old shame, and Tara added her own arguments (though she wanted to run away with David because she had long had the blazing red hots for him).
David relented. Torn apart by the grief, David confided in Tara, who used the emotional moment to admit her love for him. They slept together.
Sadly, David could not stand betraying both his country and his wife in the same night, so he blew his brains out in a hotel bathroom right in front of Tara's eyes.
A Hanekladd demon (created with the Demon Generator), which preys on the suicidal after possessing a person grief-stricken by witnessing a loved one's suicide, felt her grief and possessed her almost instantly. The demon got dressed and left to go on a killing spree. The demon was aware that Tara's clothes contained the data essential to the terrorist's plans and Nigel's dreams of sandy beaches, but didn't care in the least. The beautiful, delicious growth of the festering flower of grief in Tara's soul had consumed its mind.
Shortly after this, a divorced mother was found eviscerated with eight parallel slices across her abdomen in her son's bedroom. The son was missing. Oddly, a freshly tied noose was found hanging in the son's closet.
Enter the Cabal, at the behest of a police contact.
After some investigation, Lars discovered a strange poison yellowing the flesh around the wounds that eviscerated the mother, Wolf (while looking for porn under the bed, which turned out to be gay porn, just to irk the player) chanced upon a blood-stained photograph of two older men and a younger woman at a bar. The back of the photo stated, "David, Nigel, and Tara having fun at the Black Stag, our usual hangout, 25/9/03."
The Black Stag was occupied by 12 undercover MI5 agents looking for Tara Haynes, who carries the plans they need to become rich men and is also possessed by the demon. Upon showing the photo to the bartender, the bartender gave a nigh imperceptible signal towards the MI5 agents and pulled up a shotgun. The fight was on.
Wolf started the fight with maniacal laughing as he smashed an agent's face in with a bar stool, leapt on the bar, and rushed towards a throng of five very shocked agents. Shots were fired, with Jake taking a wound through his concealed armor.
Then Lars cast Dresden. Everything went to hell as the agents and the bartender began screaming and clawing at the flesh they believed to to be burning away under the heat of infamous flames. Jake broke a bottle of booze over the bartender and tossed his lighter on him to allow the bartender to get the full effect of the Dresden experience. Wolf's blinding hatred resulted in him grabbing an agent and using him as a ram to charge another (the human ram found his neck at a new and interesting angle as a result of having his head used to snap another agent's spine), followed up by a shiver-arm to another agent (his neck snapped as his head hit the corner of a table), a knife into the solar plexus of another (whose guts spilled out all over Wolf's pants) who was then thrown at the last of the group of five, shattering his bones as he found himself imbedded in the wall. The whole time, Jake attempted to remind Wolf to leave one alive... quite unsuccessfully.
Lars, drunk with the misery he was causing his foes, used his own knife to open up a foe from his abdomen to his neck, exposing his ribcage. Jake managed to throw an agent down to the ground and choke him out with his boot-heel.
Only four agents were left. Wolf smashed two of their heads together and stomped on the head of the one agent who survived the experience. He then tore the arm out of another, but the fourth was just out of his reach. Jake finished him off with a whip of his cane into the agent's neck.
They put out the fire and examined the place, finding a PO Box key with a tag saying "Nobody's Business," and a piece of paper with Nigel's address on it. They also discovered that the bodies were MI5 agents, and took their badges for later use. They decided that fire maybe wasn't such a bad idea, and, after stealing a few bottles of booze, torched the place to stall the authorities and buy time to figure out what was going on.
From here, the team split up, sending Wolf to the Post Office and Lars and Jake to Nigel's apartment. There were also some rather incriminating files on Nigel's heavily protected computer (Lars hacked it, just barely), which stated an agreement to exchange Plans with a terrorist cell called Al Moodam for £2,000,000. Nigel's heavily encrypted journal (Bullseyed by Lars, not taking any more chances) also stated that Nigel and Tara Haynes (the female in the picture found at the first location) had helped their MI5 comrade and friend (David McPhee, also from the picture) conceal the murder of his wife's lover. Nigel intended to use this to pressure David into complying with his plans to betray his country. There were also cryptic directions at the end:
"At the farmhouse, six steps in, four steps left."
The journal went on to quickly state:
"McPhee shot himself; Haynes missing, has plans."
Lars checked Nigel's e-mail, and found an unopened message from Elizabeth McPhee, David's wife:
“I need to talk to you. He accepted me after what I did to him… I don’t know if I can go on living without David. Call me.”
Lastly, there were GPS coordinates to Al Moodam's HQ.
Jake went into the bathroom to take a leak and discovered jets of blood on the sink and floor. There was also that strange yellowish liquid. Shrugging, Jake made water. As he pissed, all the yellow liquid flying about resulted in a flash of knowledge blasting into his mind, making Jake pee all over the bathroom (it would, wouldn't it?). He now knew the demon's name. After the revelation, Jake doused the room in hydrogen peroxide to cover up the DNA he'd been kind enough to spray everywhere.
Meanwhile, the Post Office box was filled with nothing but a trap intended for Haynes. Luckily, Wolf was the one who had volunteers to go there. After yet another bloody mess (which included a failed attempt to pull an agent apart, so Wolf settled on yanking the man's head and spine out and he ended up using the spinal chord as a sort of whip) and two agents running for their lives, Wolf discovered a hastily written note on one of the agents bodies to follow up on a lead where someone resembling Haynes had been spotted at the Wythenshawe Hospital psychiatric ward.
The group met at a pub, had a few mid-morning pints and went to the hospital.
The receptionist told them that a woman from MI5 had gone to meet one John Walton (a schizophrenic) for questioning regarding a case and should still be in his cell. After the Cabal flashed their newly acquired MI5 badges, they went to John's padded cell to find a decapitated nurse (eight wounds) a seperate jet of blood, and more yellow liquid, and a barred window neatly sliced open by bloody claws. The only forieign object in the cell (other than those already mentioned) was a paper-clip, bent into a straight line.
Jake used confound to gain access to the surveillance cameras, and watched John attempt to pierce his throat with the paper-clip. Tara entered the cell and sprouted three extra fingers on each hand adorned with long, dripping claws. She proceeded to neatly pierce John non-lethally, which made his body go rigid and fall limp. A nurse walked in and was callously decapitated with an off-handed swipe. Tara ignored the dead body, sliced the window open, grabbed John, and leapt out. When Jake checked outside the window, eight long furrows were found on either side of the window all the way to the ground.
After destroying the footage of the demon and the Cabal's presence, they went to Al Moodam's hideout. A well cast Miserere, use of intimidate (to convince the terrorists that the Cabal was from MI5 and that they were completely surrounded), and use of an assault rifle to shoot those not convinced, resulted in a lot of very confused and scared terrorists beating tracks. However, they knew it wouldn't last long. The group quickly hacked a computer (Bullseyed by Lars, again no longer taking chances), and downloaded a bunch of pictures. The terrorists had tailed Tara, David, and Nigel, and had taken photos of Nigel and David's wife embracing on her porch (the street address clearly visible), and David and Tara kissing. There were also recent pictures of Tara near an abandoned farmhouse, which the terrorists believed to be a secret MI5 installation. Thinking they were about to be betrayed, the terrorists had been preparing a strike against the farmhouse. The farmhouse is no installation, but rather the demon's lair.
The group tried to piece together the plot on the ride over to the McPhee residence. Interestingly, despite a lack of evidence, the group automatically suspected that David and Tara were sleeping together. I have no idea how they knew. Weird.
The Cabal arrived at Elizabeth's house to find the door slashed open and a suicide note on the counter:
"No one loves me. Not David, not Nigel. No one. I'm done with this unloving world."
Before the Cabal can react, they hear the sound of a car peeling out of McPhee's driveway. Utilizing Tara's excellent driving skill, it's impatient to complete the corruption of Tara's soul and has elected to use her Drive skill to get there faster.
The Cabal leapt into their truck and gave chase. Little did they know that the terrorists they hadn't killed at the HQ had followed them and would soon be joining the chase as well.
We stopped here. The dramatic conclusion at the farmhouse comes next Wednesday!