Mission 2
PCs: John Brockway, Sarah Doherty, "Bud" Johnson, "Bic"
Raker
Briefing, 11AUG2000 (F)
As the team gathers before heading to the airport to catch their
flight to Kathmandu, they are pulled aside and informed that
their trip has been delayed indefinitely. They are taken
to a safe house and meet with Steven Pendergrass. Once
they are seated in the conference room, Steven walks in and
immediately begins talking. Malcolm walks in and sits down quietly
as the briefing begins.
"Sorry about the last minute change up. We sent in
some . . . sensitive people to scour McKinney for the Unknown.
We've been getting some subtle 'pings', for want of a better
word. There were sporadic hints of the Unknown in the
area. We were about to declare victory when a strong,
definite sense of the Unknown was picked up by one of our
people. We whisked them out of the area and called you
in immediately. Our Seers are not very visceral and
are generally quite fragile. Such is their sensitivity
that they can hardly stand to be near the Unknown for long.
Another complication is that aside from Bud and Masterson's
friends, we have no real ear to the street in that area, and
Bud has been very busy training.
"We need you to go in and investigate. Since this is
a new manifestation and the police are legitimate to the best
of our knowledge, more traditional investigation may be fruitful.
Your van has been outfitted with the usual gear, to include
two complete uniforms each of Undercover Magazine, the electric
company, Frank's equipment delivery staff, and the phone company.
A dark blue SUV has also been provided in light of your last
operational habits. A combat shotgun, four heavy revolvers,
and four heavy automatics are packed in a compartment in the
SUV. Each has one clip of silver rounds and two clips
of regular rounds. The combat shotgun is equipped with
a laser sight. Lionel will be on call throughout your
mission." Lionel nods and smiles to the rest of the
team as Steve continues, "He will be staying nearby.
Steven seems to assess something mentally and then hands a
beeper-like device to Sarah. Just push that button and
it will page Lionel and provide a homing signal for him to
track.
"Well, that's about all we know right now except that the
strong sense of the Unknown was detected at about 0100 last
night, Thursday night, outside of a local sports bar called
Rudy's."
"Any questions?" asks Steven as he looks expectantly
at the group.
Gaming Session 7 [August 13, 2000]
Mission Notes
11AUG2000 (F)
2200 Team at Rudy's. Daryl is not there. Bud calls
and leaves a message
2215 Bud called by Daryl
Daryl contacted, team regroups, Daryl runs, Bud catches him,
they go to Sleep Inn and Bud heals Daryl.
12AUG2000 (S)
2330
2345 John calls Joe Mathers masquerading as a doctor
and inquires about Joey's discharge and mentions grandparents.
Joe gets very upset and calls the police.
2350 Police scanner
0000 Back at Sleep Inn.
0000-0100 Bic listens and gathers that no one remembers
grand parents, but Joey was seen leaving the hospital.
0300 Bud goes to bed.
0400 Sarah takes watch.
0600 John conveys dream, can't get back to sleep.
Dream: he is a child playing near some houses with his friends.
A slim man walks up and starts watching him for a long time.
1100 Team wakes up and gets ready.
1200 Team gets lunch and talks.
1330 Bic finds nothing on missing kids of note.
John has a flash and sees the face of Daniel Masterson blurred
over the face of the lanky man from his dream.
1400 at cabin.
1500 Bud figures out that a bear or large wolf walked
from across the road from the cabin, down the gravel road, climbed
onto the roof, dropped down to the back door, and then went
into the house, attacked Daryl, and then left from the back
of the house to the stream.
1600 Seance to call spirits of girls fails, they are
not incorporeal creatures. Luke Barton offers to help.
1630 Steal stuffed animal from Joey's room.
1700 Ritual starts
1800 Ritual ends. See boy sleeping in loft of barn.
Bud knows the rough location (within miles) from the terrain.
1820 Luke rides off to get a tranquilizer gun.
1840 Luke returns with tranquilizer gun.
1850 Team heads out to find abandoned house.
1950 Team thinks they find the house.
1955 Team parks about 0.5 miles away and moves towards
the house.
2010 Team is about 100 meters from the house, at the
edge of the tall grass.
2015 Team moves to barn. |
De-briefing
The store room of the toy store brings back fond memories, but
they are held in check by the freakish encounter you just had.
only hours ago, a young boy was trying to tear past your defenses
to suck the life from your body. More than once, it seemed
that you would all die under the onslaught of tooth and claw
from the vampire child or his large wolf minions. However,
you managed to pull through and immobilize the abomination with
a stake to the heart, but not after John and Sarah was almost
killed in a span of seconds. Keeping your wits about you,
you held the little bloodsucker under running water to kill
him for good and left the body for the police to find, calling
in an anonymous report of the boy's body and a separate call
on the location of Bud's friend Daryl in the hopes of clearing
him since he had been in a motel room for a couple of days with
at least a half dozen witnesses to verify his story. The
nature of his girlfriend's death is still uncertain, but humanity
was willing to rationalize it as rabies and a handful of innocent
but ornery animals in the area were put down for good measure.
Daryl is dealing with his trauma, but at least he's a free man
and Bud had a chance to demonstrate the depth of his loyalty
to his friend. Now, if you could just make next week's
flight to Tibet without anymore surprises . . .
You are snapped out of your thoughts by the sound of the
door opening and Steve walking in. "Excellent job folks.
I have to be honest, if I had been there, I might not have
made it out alive." He strolls over to a pallet of boxed
tricycles and sits on it. The bright cheery promises
of childhood joy seem stained by the night's encounter.
"We postponed the travel arrangements until next week.
I brought some people along so that we can take a quick verbal
debriefing from you and let you get home and rest. You
all deserve it. We'll keep an eye on Daryl from the
official side of things and make sure that he is not implicated
in the Creature's crimes. Christ, what a mess.
I hear that the kid lived in your neighborhood. I can't
even imagine what that's gotta be like." Steve runs
his hand through his hair. It's pretty obvious that
he has not slept or bathed for at least a full day.
He stares off as if he forgot what he was talking about, but
quickly recovers. "All right then, let's all get this
taken care of and get some sleep."
Bud's Story
Bud heads into one of the other back rooms along with one of
the Society debriefing agents. He takes up a comfortable position
at a small employee lounge table, leaning back in the rickety
wooden chair.
"All right, here's what went down for ol' mission number
two," starts Bud. "We got sent in to check out some
weird Unknown vibes that got picked up 'round Rudy's. We showed
up, and talked around and didn't find nuthin' except that
my buddy Daryl wasn't there. He's usually there," adds Buddy
to the agent.
"I gave him a call at his place and left a message and a
couple minutes later he gave me a call. I went to check up
on Daryl at his cabin to make sure everything was all right.
He said the cops were after him and he was acting rather nervous-like.
I overheard some cops talkin' about talkin' with Daryl since
he got mixed up with something involving his girlfriend Peggy
Ann.
"I showed up at his cabin and the place was trashed, like
a big bear and smacked down the door and chased him around.
He was all right though, we found him under the house. So,
yeah I called the team and the headed over so that we could
try and find Daryl. We hadn't found him under the house yet,
ya see. I tracked the animal prints out into the woods, but
lost them at a river. I was pretty pissed off and worried
that Daryl had finally met an animal he couldn't shoot, but
we went back to search the house and found him underneath.
"He was all worried and thought the team might have sold
him out. I tried to restrain him, for his own good ya know,
but he got away and into his pick up. I took off after him
and chased him down into the forest off the road. He left
his truck just sitting there, but I tracked him down. No way
in hell, ol' Daryl was getting his ass chewed off by some
freaky vampire and its wolves. Fuck that!"
Bud takes a moment to get his bearings straight and then
continues, "We took Daryl to a hotel and I got him to lay
low while we checked things out. We checked out the hospital
and the bar and just tryin' to figure out what's going on.
Seems that the kid's grandparents checked him out from the
hospital, but they died a while ago in a car accident. Later
on, people just remember him walking out alone. Weird shit.
John checked out the parents' house and it looked like something
big had climbed in through the attic, maybe some beastie lapdog
of the vamp kid.
"Any ways, I thought of a good plan to find the bastard.
In all the movies and books there always a way for magic guys
to track down someone by having a piece of their hair or something
like that. I figure if we broke in and got something of the
kid's then Masterson's people could find the kid. Bam, Game
Over! I don't think we'd have found him so quickly if I hadn't
thought of that. And yup, it worked like a charm. Bam!
Got some teddy bear. Bam! Funky magic ritual. Bam! Find kid
in barn. Bam! Beat the shit out of woofies and some
fangjob. Mission accomplished."
Bud leans back as if finished and then remembers more, "Oh
yeah, John had one of those weird dreams of his. Something
about a tall cold guy leading some kid away to a floating
window. Then a big massacre in the hotel room where the guy
is killing the other team members. I figure he was going to
come after me next and then the real show would 'a started.
That vamp kid was a tough bugger, but one stake through the
heart and he was a sack of shit. He had some wolf pets too.
Weird."
Bud waits for the agent to get all of this and then adds
with an eager gleam in his eyes, "So when's the next mission?"
The agent makes a few final notes in some form of shorthand
then closes his book and stands in one smooth motion opening
the door as he answers, "As far as I'm concerned, they always
come too soon."
Sarah's Story
Now that her adrenaline level have come down, Sarah is extremely
exhausted and in a lot of pain from the gauging claws of that
bastard vampire. She wants to go home and sleep.
She takes some Motrin and then begins to speak.
Well, we went to Rudy's to investigate the unknown presence
that the society informed us of. Bud went in alone,
and then the rest of us followed as a separate party.
After some time two police officers came in and talked to
Bud about the whereabouts of his friend Daryl, who is apparently
accused of beating a small boy who was sent to the hospital.
Then the police questioned us (pointing to Bic, John and herself)
about being at the bar, probably because we looked completely
out of place, and then proceeded to question the other patrons
of the bar. when the police left, Bud received a call
from Daryl telling him that he was in trouble and to meet
him at the cabin. We eventually all went to the cabin
and found out that there was a struggle there, and initially
Daryl was no where to be found. An interesting note
is that we found deep slashing marks on the couch, as though
they had barely missed the target. The slashing marks
looked like claw marks. Anyway, we finally found Daryl
hidden under his cabin. his head was bleeding and it
looked like he had a concussion. he was angry that Bud
brought strangers to his cabin and became very defensive.
He said that he was attacked by a big animal, perhaps a bear,
and that the "animal" could not reach him under the cabin.
Bud tried to convince Daryl to go to a hospital because he
was severely injured, but Daryl refused, because the police
are looking for him, and decided to run off. Bud followed,
we stayed in the cabin. After a number of hours Bud
called and we decided to meet at a motel and spend the night
there. Bud and Daryl were in one room, and the rest
of us stayed in another. Daryl was unconscious, and
was obviously in bad shape. Bud used the healing art
to help his friend and cleaned him off before he could regain
consciousness. when Daryl woke up, he told Bud what
happened. Apparently on thursday, Daryl and his girlfriend
went to Rudy's. Daryl went in to get some beer while
his girlfriend waited in his truck. When he came out,
he saw that his girlfriend's throat was torn up and next to
her was this boy, with blood all over him and smiling sinisterly
at Daryl. This boy lives near Daryl, in other words
he was his neighbor. After seeing this, Daryl shot the
boy, but was not able to put him down, the boy ran away.
We found the address of the boy's family, I went in, incorporeal
that is, to investigate the house. Everything looked
normal except the attic. There, I noticed that the lock
on the outside of the window leading to the attic was broken,
and that a path was cleared to the attic door leading to the
house. Whatever cleared this path was very strong because
one of the boxes that was moved was crushed at one side.
Next we called the hospital were the boy was at and found
out that he was checked out by his grandparents. The
problem there was that his grandparents died a year ago.
Given the attack on Daryl, and the big claw marks on his couch,
we suspected that we were dealing with a lycanthrope.
But we had no idea were the boy was, and we were losing time
because there was another murder. John used the art
to have prescient dream. In the dream, he saw a tall,
pale, cold and lanky man holding the boy's hand while walking.
The man pointed to a window in the sky and then he woke up.
In the motel room the man appeared again. he had large claws,
tore my throat apart and ripped one of Bic's organs out.
Fortunately, this was yet another dream (a dream within a
dream). We knew we had to find the boy, at this point
we were not sure if he was just a victim that we need to save
or if he was controlled by the unknown. I would like
to point out that a period of time after his dream, John had
a sort of impression or vision of some sort that linked the
man in his dream with Daniel Masterson, almost as though they
were related somehow, perhaps even being the same person.
We asked Frank Masterson's group for help, and after acquiring
a personal item of the boy, we had a location, an abandoned
barn of some sort.
We went to the barn. Once inside we heard growling
and it looked like we were about to be attacked by wolves.
We closed the doors so that the wolves can't come in.
But as I closed the door next to me, the boy came out.
He has tremendously huge and powerful claws, and within seconds,
he nearly tore me apart. I crawled away, while the rest
of the team shot him. He was unaffected by silver bullets,
and he tore the doors open, thus allowing his wolves to come
in. We shot many of the wolves, and then Bic put up
a protection sphere. unfortunately, John was not inside
it. The boy attacked John, nearly killing him too, and
then the boy flashed his fangs. So now we knew we were
dealing with a vampire. Fortunately, we remembered that
we need to put a stake through its heart to immobilize it.
John was unable to stab him through the heart before
being clawed again. But Bud managed to stake the little
bastard. then we took him to a stream and put his head
under running water until he "died". After the ordeal,
we made an anonymous call to the police about the boy's location,
and another call about Daryl's location hoping that would
clear him.
Bic's Story
"I gotta say, I think you already know most of what happened.
And what you don't already know is pretty confusing to me anyway.
But I'll go over what I can remember."
"We went and checked out that sports bar where you said there
was some violence. We were all pretty out of place except
for Bud, so we split up and let him do his own thing.
Anyway, we hadn't been there long when some cops showed up
and started asking everyone questions. It felt weird
talking to the McKinney police and not thinking they were
the bad guys. I kept expecting them to grow claws and
tear into us."
"Anyway, I guess it turns out that Bud's friend Daryl was
on the run from the cops. At first we thought it was
some problem with a local kid, who turned out to be the vampire,
but then there was also the matter of his girlfriend who was
killed at that sports bar. But that was done by the
vampire, so I guess it all feeds back into itself. So,
Bud and we all have the same idea, that Daryl is probably
hiding out at his cabin. The same one where we hid out
during the LZM mission. We start to head out there and
Bud calls us and tells us to meet him there."
"So, we get out there and snoop around and there's signs
of a fight or something, like some big animal broke down the
door and tore the place up, but there's no blood. We
find Daryl under the cabin, and he's not so sure of what happened
himself. To be honest, I though Daryl might have been
turned into a werewolf or something, and had blacked out when
it happened, but I guess I was wrong."
"Anyway, Bud and Daryl get into an argument, and Daryl leaves
with Bud after him. We really didn't know what to do
then, so the rest of us just sorta hung out at the cabin until
Bud called us and told us to go pick them up in town, which
we did."
"After that, I'm not really sure what we did. I know
that we began to suspect that the kid was more than he seemed.
He was in the hospital, we knew that, and we went to his house
and snooped around. Sarah and John
both found evidence that something strong had gone in through
the attic window, but nothing else was odd. The we checked
the hospital and found out that the kid had already left with
his grandparents. But the weird thing is we found out
that his grandparents were both dead. I don't think
he brought them back from the dead though. I think he
just fooled the people at the desk into thinking his grandparents
had come to get him. Vampires can do that, right?
I know in one movie I did, "Embrace of the Vampire", he could
hypnotize you if you looked into his eyes, so I guess that's
what he did."
"Anyway, we poked around and tried to find out what we could
about the kid. We even called his parents to see if
they were in on it, but they were just as surprised to find
out he had left the hospital. We really didn't have
much else to go on, when John had a dream about the kid.
At least, I think it was about the kid. Daniel Masterson
was somehow involved too. You should ask John about
it, though. Oh, speaking of Masterson, that's how we
eventually found the kid. One of us hit on the idea
of trying to find him using ritual magic, with the help of
the people Frank Masterson knows. Frank was out of the
country, as you know, but his cowboy friend helped us out.
We got ahold of a personal item of the kid's, and the cowboy
used magic to find out about where he was. Then we went
there to find him, although we really had no idea he was a
vampire at the time."
"Right, so we find this farmhouse and the kid is in the barn.
We go to the barn, and these big ass wolves start coming after
us. Plus the kid, who it turns out is really fast and
strong and nasty. He almost killed Sarah before we even
knew he was attacking her. We fought off the wolves
for a while and we shot at the kid, once we realized that
he couldn't have been human. But the bullets didn't
seem to hurt him at all. I started thinking we needed
to get out of there, but there were still the wolves and Sarah
couldn't really get away on her own. So I spent my time
trying to hold them at bay with the Art, which thankfully
seemed to work pretty well. I think the kid was even
confused by it, which to me says that he wasn't very experienced
at being a vampire. That goes back to John's dream,
because in the dream there's some tall pale guy who leads
the kid through a window or something. I took that to
mean the pale guy was Daniel Masterson, and he made the kid
into a vampire recently."
"Anyway, back to the fight. Somebody eventually realized
the kid was a vampire, and started trying to stake him.
I think it was Bud who succeeded at that, but the details
are a little fuzzy now. Once we had staked him, I wasn't
sure how to kill him, so I made that call to the safehouse.
I'm sorry I didn't use a land line, but I didn't think we
had time to find one, and I was a little scared and freaked
out. You told us to hold him under running water, which
we did, and he turned back into a kid. A dead kid, but
a kid nonetheless. Then we called in a couple of anonymous
tips to the cops and that's it."
John's Story
|
