In attendance:
- Johan Cilliers, Impulsive “Antiquities Dealer” & Interdimensional Parasite Host (Mystic, Level 4)
- Cobb "jury-rigged immortality is still immortality" Taylor (Doctor, Level 3)
- Zeke Witwer, Healing Sage (Occultist, Level 2)
- Devin Skull “The Punk Bard” previously of LudiCURSED (Mystic, Level 1) [Played by the same guy as Kaldron]
Remaining Sensor Locations Circled... Wait, what happened to the Big Bridge?
Nobody had a car, as usual. It was an hour and a half walk to the club. But as they exited the store, a plume of dust and mist erupted from the river, followed a second later by the sound of an explosion and collapsing masonry. For a second, the ground shook like an earthquake. As the sound echoed through the city, they could hear gunshots, coming in bursts.
They crossed the ped bridge over the river. To the North, the Big Bridge had collapsed into the water. Someone had hit it with explosives - a couple vehicles were burning. The shooting had stopped. Sirens were fast approaching.
They checked their phones. Word was the bridge had been taken down with explosives. Blurry cell phone footage showed the damage bridge tilting to one side, girders bending. A glowing blue shape oozed out of a burning truck and fell into the river, sending up a plume of steam where it hit. The video ended as the smoke trail of a rocket arced toward the bridge from the roof of a building on the West side.
The East side was a hive of activity. The gang ducked down an alley to avoid a trio of Fat Buddhas. They probably could have taken the gun toting hoods, but they didn't want to get in a fight before even reaching the underground. They made it to the Blood For Sex with time to spare. The barkeep told them that Kaldron's marker would be transferred to them - they could still call in a favor from the Red Caps. They went down into the underground club.
The booth was occupied by a group from the Union this time. They were crowded around a laptop, arguing about something. The gang introduced themselves as friends of Hooks the Stevedore and asked them what was going on. The Union men informed them that they were having trouble with a shipment to the West side, due to the usual logistical concerns with driver detention and customs troubles. The players asked them what the real cause of the problems was, and were told it was Union business. Internally, they had already figured out that this was the outcome of a job they were offered last session, but elected not to pursue. Rather than pester the stevedores any further, they went through the North door and into the Underworld.
They entered into a half-wild area, an "Underworld Frontier" littered with the detritus of both surface dwellers and underworld creatures. Their first foray led them to a room packed with mounds of debris, from which they heard a menacing rustling. After their last encounter with a trash golem, they decided to go around. The next chamber had the remains of a summoning ritual, which the Mystics identified as an the Leviathan cult's doing. They hadn't encountered the Leviathan gang yet, but knew their complicated theology centered on the worship of ancient squids. There was an old security camera watching the room, of unknown provenance.
The next chamber was sealed with an airtight bulkhead door. They opened it and released a wall of toxic gas. Zeke had his mask on, and Cobb got his on after getting a little in his lungs. Johan and Devin didn't have masks, and went into coughing fits. The gas formed a vile film on the surface of their possessions, making everything more fragile. They decided to try a different room.
To the West was a room filled with fish skeletons and diatomaceous ooze - leftovers of a once flooded chamber. The complete carpet of marine leftovers made the group suspicious. They probed the carpet of garbage with objects and triggered a bear trap harmlessly. They swept the room and discovered three more traps under the bones. Everything went fine until they depressed a pressure plate, which activated something in a passage to the North. Whirring servos, some kind of machine?
Johan went to investigate and almost got a bullet for his troubles. The pressure plate had activated a gun turret. Thinking quickly, the group threw trash through the door, triggering the gun's crude motion sensor and using up its ammunition shooting at nothing. When the last handful of fish bones didn't provoke a response, they poked their heads in to investigate. The "turret" was an FAL bolted to a servo assembly, with a crude motion sensor array attached to an electronic trigger. A valuable find, or a serious boost to their firepower if they could find a case of 7.62 NATO.
The next room was filled with ankle deep water, except for an abandoned hobo camp in the corner, elevated over the muck by duckboards made of old cargo pallets. The room after that was filled with desiccated corpses. One of the bodies reanimated when the gang went through its pockets, but was quickly clubbed to death, though Devin's axe broke in the process. The group decided this room was deep enough in that they could place the MIB sensor device. They hid it under one of the bodies and went back the way they came.
(I noticed that the encumbrance rules give serious skill penalties that incentivize players to keep their equipment loads down. With this in play, I don't feel so bad about no longer tracking movement in feet-per-turn across kilometers of boring tunnels. Kind of like how wandering monster tables are a more interesting way to apply time pressure than tracking torches and food)
The team paused on the way out to search the hobo camp for goodies. A seven foot, three headed ferret-hydra which tracked them from the garbage room attacked. What followed was a desperate battle. The hydra scored hit after hit, while the group struggled to damage it in return. Devin came close to driving it off with a spell to create the false sound of a giant eagle, the one predator all ferrets fear. But he flubbed the ritual, branding the sigil of his deity on his hand for his trouble. The ferret dealt him a serious wound, knocking him unconscious with severe head trauma. Cobb dragged him out of the room while the rest of the gang held the ferret to death with a sword and an improvised club. Surprisingly they killed it quickly with a couple of lucky hits.
(Ferret Hydras get one attack per head. If you deal any damage to their Flesh, but don't kill them that same turn, they regenerate all Flesh and grow a new head. Lucky for the team, they killed it fast before that could happen)
With Devin brain damaged and insensate, the team decided to return to the surface for a breather. The booth at Blood For Sex was now occupied by a large stone jellyfish, stuffed into a blazer and bell bottom slacks. It argued with the Union men in a voice that rumbled audibly under the thump of the music.
With no vehicle, and bus service halted by the collapse of the bridge, it was a long walk for Cobb and Devin back to the Doctor's lab in the suburbs on the West Side. Zeke and Johan stayed on the East side to fence the items recovered during the expedition.
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